CHAPTER XVIII
FOR FRIENDSHIP’S SAKE
MY friend’s question came like a clap of thunder in the clear blue of a summer sky, so absolutely startling was its surprise.
In the second’s pause before I replied, many of the complicating possibilities involved in it flashed upon me as his burning almost passionate gaze was bent upon me.
I pushed my chair back, rose and gripped his hand. “We must talk this over, Ladislas, as friends.”
“Answer me. Answer me,” he cried, trying to release his hand. “I must know, before we talk of friendship.”
“I will answer you. I give you my honour you shall have nothing but the truth from me; but I must first know all that lies behind the question and all that depends upon it. Come, man, speak out. Don’t try to drag your hand away. We are men as well as dear friends; and whatever has to be said or done, must not and shall not break our friendship.” I placed my other hand on his shoulder. “Can’t you agree to this?”
“Not if you have come between me and her.”
“You are unbalanced in your excitement, or you would never say that to me. Understand what I say. Nothing—mark, nothing shall ever make me other than your friend.”
I felt him trembling under my hand; and again he tried to free himself.
“No, Ladislas; I do not let you go until you agree in that. You saved my life once. Do you think I forget? I told you then that if the day ever came for me to pay the debt, I should be glad. Now, what is this girl to you?”
“More than my life. My God, much more. More than even my honour, I believe, God help me.”
I steadied myself and spoke firmly. “What is it you ask of me?”
His large expressive eyes lighted with eagerness. “Can you do this for me? Can you give her to me?”
I clenched my hands until the nails dug into the palms with the intensity of my effort for composure. It was the crisis of my life.
“My God, you cannot? You will not? And you pledged your oath. I saved your life; and you are false to your word.” He said this rapidly, vehemently, fiercely. Then with a sudden change he flung himself into a chair and covered his face with his hands, crying: “God, God, what a coward I am!”
I resumed my seat and as I faced the sacrifice that was now demanded of me, the old scene flashed vividly into my thoughts.
On a treacherous slope of crumbling rubble not thirty feet from the edge of an Alpine abyss, dropping a thousand feet sheer to the rocks below, a young fellow lay on his back, sweat-stained and staring, heels and hands dug desperately into the yielding surface as he measured the inches and reckoned the moments between him and the death yawning just below him. Slip, slip, slip, an inch or two at a time, he slid. Clutch as he would with his bleeding fingers and strain as he did, he could not prevent himself from being carried down, down, down with slow but heart-sickening certainty.
Death seemed inevitable; and as it is better to die quickly than to linger with nerve-racking hopelessness, he had made up his mind to let himself go and get it over, when a cheery call came from above, and the light of hope was kindled once again in his beating heart.
At the hazard of his life another man launched himself on that death slide and, with a courage equalled only by his mountaineering skill, carried a rope to his friend and saved his life just as his feet reached the very brink of the abyss.
I was the clumsy fool who had stupidly jeopardized my life and Ladislas the friend who offered his to save me.
And now Volna was to be the price! He had called for it: had thrown in my teeth the pledge I had given; and had chided me for my unreadiness to redeem it. This the friend whom I had always deemed the type of honour and chivalry! Bargaining for the body of the woman he loved!
In the first bitter moment my soul rose in passionate rebellion against the sacrifice. Nothing in all my life had ever moved me so deeply. To make myself a party to the bargain was to do dishonour to Volna herself. What right had we to take this thing into our hands and settle her life for her? It was for her, not for us, to make a decision so vital to her happiness.
Such a price as this had never been in contemplation. He knew this as well as I. And at that point my memory played me a curious trick. My thoughts flashed back to the moment of cold despair when death lay gaping just below me on that mountain slide; to the dazzling change to hope at the sound of Ladislas’ cheery call of encouragement. I saw him again working his way toward me, death the certain penalty of a single unskilful step; and once again the warm glow of gratitude for the dauntless courage and devotion which had prompted my pledge then, came back in all its force now.
It ended the struggle. I would pay the price, let the cost be what it might.
I sighed heavily and turned to find him leaning forward watching me intently and waiting, as though he divined the struggle that was rending me.
I smiled. “I won’t pretend that it hasn’t cost me a struggle, Ladislas; but it’s over: and we can still be friends.”
“How strong you are!” he exclaimed.
“You wouldn’t think there was much strength in me if you knew the bitter things I was thinking just now of you.”
“You love her, then?”
“I can’t help that—but I can trust myself for the rest. Would to Heaven I had known before this had happened at Bratinsk! So little did I suspect, I came to-day to ask you the meaning of her betrothal to Colonel Bremenhof.”
“It is an awful mess!” he exclaimed, and began pacing the room again. “Count Peter arranged that. It was a blind to keep the Drakonas from being suspected. Volna consented for her mother’s sake; but she was candid, telling the man she did not care for him. She is as true as a crystal. Her sister and brother—do you know them? No?—they fed him with lies and blinded him; all at the Count’s instigation.”
“Well?”
“Bremenhof is a devil for cunning. He was not deceived; and he saw at once that his hold over Volna was her fear for her mother. So he wormed and moled and got a case against the mother; and now he swears that if the marriage does not take place at once—to-day or at latest to-morrow—he will have the mother arrested, and Volna, too.”
“You know of my affair with him?”
“Volna told me you struck him. He took her there to satisfy himself privately that she had been at Bratinsk; and have that to hold over her.”
“Why have you let her stay at Warsaw?”
“Count Peter was bringing her to Cracow to be married to me.”
“Married to you! I don’t understand. Were you secretly betrothed?”
“No, no. She had no thought of it, until Count Peter told her at Bratinsk. But she knows how I love her; and we should have won her to consent.”
I remembered her statement to me at Bratinsk; that she had meant to escape and return to Warsaw. But I kept this to myself.
“And now?”
“She is changed. It is you who have changed her. She can scarcely be kept from breaking with Bremenhof. I don’t know what to do. My God, I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s plain enough. Take her and her mother away from Warsaw.”
“How can I go, man? In Heaven’s name, how can I go? We are on the eve of the most glorious crisis in our country’s history; and we leaders dare not leave our posts.”
“Send them away then in some one else’s care.”
“Why? This city is the safest place in all the Empire for them. To-day the great demonstration at Petersburg will show the Czar and those about him and all the world that the people’s just demands can no longer be resisted. The power of these tyrants will be shattered against the greater might of the people’s will. You know my dreams of old. They are coming true. We are on the eve of the greatest revolution the world has ever seen: greatest in purpose, widest in area, most beneficial in results—and what is greatest of all—to be achieved without the shedding of a drop of blood.”
“A bloodless revolution will be a new thing in history, Ladislas, especially under Russian methods.”
“You do not understand and so you doubt. But we know. The army is with us almost to a man. They are of the people, blood of blood and bone of bone in close-knit kinship; and when the hour strikes, the people will rise in every city, town, and hamlet, rise as one man; and at that rising the musket of every soldier will be grounded and not a sword will leave its scabbard. Peace is our watch-word; peace our method; peace and brotherhood our end.”
“It is not only Polish independence then?”
“Poland will be free. Poland will lift her head again, a nation among the nations: but all Russia will be free in the gigantic upheaval.”
His eyes gleamed with excitement as he strode up and down flinging his arms about; his enthusiasm fired by his own rhapsody. He was very much the dreamer; and he gave the reins to his dream with voluble energy.
“Have you any practical men among you?” I asked, when at length he paused.
“We are all practical. My dear friend, you do not know us.”
“True; but suppose you are wrong and that in some places the troops stand by the Government, what will you do?”
“Should we legislate for the impossible?” and he went on with a hundred and fifty unconvincing and inconsequent reasons why nothing of the kind could occur. “We are offering liberty—liberty, the grandest gift on God’s green earth—not only to the people, but to the soldiers themselves. They are not fools, or blind, or idiots to refuse it.”
“But your troops here are not Poles, but Russians hating the Poles; and the disposition of the regiments all over the Empire is on the same principle. Do you tell me that national and tribal hatreds are going to be smothered just because a few good fellows like you hold up your hands and cry ‘Liberty’? To put it in a nutshell, if you believe this, why are you afraid of what Bremenhof can do in regard to Volna?”
To my surprise and concern he collapsed entirely. He threw himself into a chair and pressed his hand to his face. “Don’t, don’t,” he cried. “You give life and form to the one deadly fear that chills me when I can’t suppress it; that haunts me at night like a spectre, and paralyzes me with the agony of its hideous possibilities. I dare not think of it, my friend; I dare not. God, God, I dare not.”
I said no more. He was curious material for revolutionary work; but if there were many like him, the Fraternity was a much less formidable body than I had deemed, despite the evidence I had had of its widespread organization.
Presently he roused himself, stood up and apparently with only the slightest effort shook off his depression.
“I didn’t mean to inflict this on you,” he said, with a smile, charming but almost pathetically weary.
My patience was nearly exhausted, however. “What are you going to do to save her?” I asked bluntly.
He shook back his long hair, and smiled. “To-morrow there will be no more thought or talk of danger.”
Just then he was called out, and when he returned a few minutes later, his face was grey and drawn and haggard with anxiety.
“You must take her away from Warsaw,” he said.
“I? Ladislas! What do you mean?”
He held up a paper in his trembling hand. “News from Petersburg. The soldiers are drawn up in thousands all over the city there. Guns are posted in all directions; God knows what is going to happen. If there is bloodshed there, hell will break loose here. You alone can save her.”
“But, Ladislas, you forget. For me to do anything now——”
He caught both my hands in his agitation. “You’ll do this, Robert? For our old friendship’s sake? For her sake? If she stays here, God alone knows what may happen. You must do it. You must. You must.” He was almost hysterical.
“But after what I have told you about her and you have implied to me, my position——”
“What is all that compared to her safety? Do you think I would not trust you? Come to the house with me at once—this instant. Would you leave her in Bremenhof’s power?”
“No, no, I cannot go with you. You ask too much. For her sake, no less than mine, you must find some other means,” I protested.
“There is no other way,” he cried, impetuously and vehemently. “She shall know the truth. I will tell her that you renounce—that—you know what I mean. For God’s sake, don’t hesitate or it may be too late. At any cost she must be saved; and her family can do nothing. She shall know that you are acting for me. I will explain everything. It is no time for mere scruples or personal feeling. If I trust you, surely you can trust yourself.”
I was dead set against the plan: every impulse and instinct protesting, except the desire to help Volna. But that she would be in grievous danger, should there be a rising in the city, was a fact nothing could explain away; and that Ladislas was about the last man in the world to be able to save her in such a crisis appeared no less certain. If anything was to be done, some one capable of taking a practical view of things must do it; and her friends appeared to be a set of most unpractical theorists.
But if I was to do anything, it must be made absolutely plain to Volna that I was acting for Ladislas—to save her for him. Surely a most awkward situation to explain. But he continued to urge me and declared he would leave no doubt in her mind; and at length I yielded, and we started for the Drakonas’ house.