The Secret of the Night Part 31

The wine-closet was in the dining-room. She rose to go there, but Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, "Stay there, mamma. I will go."

"Don't you bother, either. I know where it is," cried Rouletabille, and hurried after Natacha.

She did not stop. The two young people arrived in the dining-room at the same time. They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen. He stopped Natacha and planted himself in front of her.

"Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?"

"Because I don't wish to have any conversation with you."

"If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I would follow."

She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.

"Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don't write to me any more. Don't speak to me. Don't see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away. They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it. Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what I wished to tell you. And now, you go."

She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed instantly to regret.

"You go away," she repeated.

Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she did not wish to hear anything further.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "you are watched closer than ever. Who will take Michael Nikolaievitch's place?"

"Madman, be silent! Hush!"

"I am here."

He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.

"Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!" She did not know what to say. Her emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad straits.

"No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now, you would be dead to-morrow. Don't let them suspect. And above all, don't try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here too long. What if they learn of it?-and they learn everything! They are everywhere, and have ears everywhere."

"Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now that Michael tried to poison your father?"

"Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy."

Rouletabille desired something besides "I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy." He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn pale. She tried to rea.s.sure him while her trembling hands raised the lid of the wine-chest.

"What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well."

But he persisted still.

"And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, 'I wish to believe it, my poor boy.'"

"Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father, and not have come by way of the window."

"No, that is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible to them."

And she turned her head away again.

"Why, why," she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite indifferent, as if she wished to be merely 'the daughter of the house' in conversation with the young man, "the vodka is not in the wine chest, after all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?"

She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.

"Oh, here it is. Papa shan't be without it, after all."

Rouletabille was already into the garden again.

"If that is the only doubt she has," he said to himself, "I can rea.s.sure her. No one could come, excepting by the window. And only one came that way."

The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask. They crossed the garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he waited for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of "the const.i.tution." He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them carefully.

"Here," he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille. "Come here and I will explain to you as well what this Const.i.tution amounts to."

The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in the kiosk were intent on the matches.

"You see that match," said Feodor Feodorovitch. "It is the Emperor. And this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes. Now, here are the ministers and there the princ.i.p.al governors, and then the generals; these here are the bishops."

The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place, as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government and the social order.

"Well," continued the general, "do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna, what a const.i.tution is? There! That is the Const.i.tution."

The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches. Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:

"I don't understand, Feodor."

"Find the Emperor now."

Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently, and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor Feodorovitch took up one of the little gla.s.ses that Natacha had filled with the vodka she brought.

"Listen, my children," said he. "We are going to commence the zakouskis. Koupriane ought to have been here before this."

Saying this, holding still the little gla.s.s in his hand, he felt in his pocket with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large watch whose ticking was easily heard.

"Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer," Rouletabille remarked smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. "It looks like a splendid one."

"It has very fine works," said the general. "It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and sounds the hours and half-hours."

Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.

"You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?" inquired the young man, still examining the watch.

"Yes, but since he is so late, we'll not delay any longer. Your healths, my children," said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch and he put it in his pocket.

"Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch," replied Matrena Petrovna, with her usual tenderness.