THE next few days were crowded ones for me. The organisation of our conspirators went forward with astonishing success—the fruit, of course, of the previous efforts of Zoiloff and those working with him; and when we held our first big meeting to inaugurate our new “Club,” we had nearly three hundred splendid young fellows zealous to pledge themselves to the finger-tips in the cause of the Princess Christina.
Each of them had been presented privately to me, and each promised unreservedly to follow my leadership. All were animated by the most patriotic enthusiasm, and many of them were in a position to influence considerable numbers of their compatriots.
The scheme of the Gymnasium Club evoked great praise, and I was surprised by the ardour with which they threw themselves into the task of athletic training. All the details of this were managed by Zoiloff and a few carefully chosen men under him; and after the first meeting these leaders supped with me, and many were the exuberant anticipations of success that found expression. Zoiloff himself threw aside his customary reserve, and led on the rest to praise me.
“It is the finest movement ever started in Bulgaria, Count,” he said to me when Spernow and he and I were alone. “And it will spread like a heath on fire, from here to every town and centre in the country. In a month we shall have such power and influence as never before was wielded by anyone here;” and Spernow was equally enthusiastic.
“I am astonished, I think, by what I have seen to-night,” I said.
“Ah, you don’t know my countrymen,” exclaimed Zoiloff, whose eyes shone and sparkled with the fire of feeling. “They have been crushed under the curse of the Crescent; they have groaned under the oppression till the fire of patriotism has flickered low indeed, for there seemed no gleam of hope; they have suffered, God alone knows how bitterly and drearily, till the iron was like to enter their souls and corrode every generous instinct and fervour; but, thanks be to God, those instincts are not dead, and we shall rouse them into an activity that will startle Europe and save the Balkan States. We have done much in the past few years, as you know; but that is nothing to what we shall yet achieve. Were the Prince other than he is, the hand of Russia weighing less heavily on him, and their dastardly work of suborning and sapping the truth and honour of the prominent men of the country less deadly, we should not now be cowering and cringing under the talons of the Eagles. Think what it has been to work always under leaders whom we doubted and distrusted for traitors. But that is changed at last. We will have no more of the old leaders. It is the age of young men; and, by the God that made us all, we’ll never stay nor falter now till the glorious end is reached.”
“Good!” said Spernow, in a rousing tone of concentrated earnestness. “Good, and true, every word of it.”
“No looking back, that is the spirit I honour!” I exclaimed, infected by their enthusiasm, and thinking of the Princess.
“A toast!” cried Zoiloff, jumping to his feet, his eyes flashing, and his rough, rugged features aglow, as he raised his glass on high. “May the hand that holds this glass blight and rot if it ever falters or turns from the righteous cause—In the Name of a Woman.”
“Amen to that,” said I earnestly, as Spernow and I repeated his words, and finished solemnly together—“In the Name of a Woman.”
“I have never dared before to be enthusiastic, but you have inspired me, Count. We have a leader in you who will carry us far, and whom all will come to trust as I do;” and Zoiloff gave me his hand, holding mine in a grip that trembled under his excitement.
There was, however, a source of danger that these two knew nothing of, and I could not tell them—the fear of the Countess Bokara’s violence.
For the few days I had succeeded in evading her I calculated that she would attempt nothing by herself, but would endeavour first to use me for the work. She had said as much when I had seen her in the presence of the Prince; and it was, of course, obvious that if she could secure my aid her task would be vastly easier. I had the entrée to the Princess Christina’s house, as she knew, and could thus, were I so minded, render her just the kind of assistance she needed. But I knew she would act soon.
My anxiety on the score of General Kolfort’s intention to get me out of his way had been removed as the result of the visit of Duke Sergius coupled with what the General had heard from Spernow, and probably from the Princess herself. He did not send for me and I did not seek him, but on the morning following the meeting at my house he put himself in my way as I was returning from my military duties.
We were both on horseback, and I was passing him with a salute, when he reined up his horse and stopped me.
“You have not come to me, Count,” he said curtly.
“And do not propose to come, General,” I answered in a similar tone.
“I was not wrong in my estimate of you, I find.”
“I do not recall it for the moment,” said I indifferently.
He looked at me and smiled grimly.
“Good. A little open antagonism to me is your shrewdest course. I understand you. You are what I thought—a very clever young man. And you can assure everyone that you are not pledged to me—openly. I understand you, I say.”
“As a well-known judge of men your opinion is flattering, General,” I answered ambiguously.
His smile broadened.
“Very non-committal, as usual. And yet——” And here his smile vanished, and his eyes took an expression of deep penetration. “Be careful that your cleverness and ambition don’t carry you too far. If that time should come and I have to act, remember that I warned you. I know what you are doing, and am watching you carefully.” Then in a lighter tone he added: “I am glad to hear such good accounts of your military work, and glad, too, that I have not to compel you to leave a country that has such sore need of the valuable services which a man like you can render it.”
And with a salute he passed on, leaving me to digest the irony and hidden meaning of his last words. I rode on thoughtfully to my house. The impression he left on my mind was perhaps just such as he had designed—that the attempt to trick him was indeed like playing with fire on the top of a powder magazine. And I was profoundly uneasy as I thought of what that might mean to the woman whose safety and success were now infinitely more to me than my own.
At my house a surprise was in store for me. A carriage was at the door, and the servants told me that a lady was awaiting me.
I went to the room at once and found the Countess Bokara. She rose with a smile as she held out her hand.
“You look magnificent in your regimentals, Count. And I suppose you have been too busy with your new duties and new friends to think it worth while to see me. And you don’t seem over-pleased that I am here now,” she added, for my face clouded at the sight of her. She was a bird of ill-omen, as I knew.
“What is your object in honouring me with this informal visit?”
“Informal! Where is the need of formality between you and me?” she asked quickly.
“In Sofia the tongues of gossip run glibly.”
“You have soon developed into an authority on the manners of the people here. Spare me your cant, I beg of you. What do you suppose I should care if all the old gossips in the city talked me over till their tongues ached? You ask why I am here. I wish to see you, that is all.”
“I am at your service,” I answered, with a bow.
“Are you? That’s just what I wish to know,” she replied, putting a significant meaning to my conventional phrase. “You have not given much evidence of it as yet. I should rather think you have even forgotten your promise to serve me.”
“I am, at any rate, ready to listen to you.”
She looked at me piercingly during a rather long pause.
“If I thought——” she began, but checked herself abruptly.
“Your thoughts are always shrewd,” I returned.
At the reply she looked up and laughed, with such an expression of malignity that it made her face hateful, for all the beauty of her eyes.
“You little know how shrewd this time, Count Benderoff, or you would drop that insipid conventionality, I promise you.”
“You are pleased to speak in riddles.”
“Yes, because you act them,” she retorted, almost fiercely. “But I promise to be plain enough before I leave you. I will drop the one if you will drop the other—but, there, you’ll have to, as you’ll soon see.”
“I do not pretend to understand you,” said I.
“Well, then, I’ll try to make you. You are not generally dull. Tell me plainly, if you can, on what side are you in all these matters? The question is merely to give you a chance of being frank with me, for I know much.”
“I seek the same object as yourself—the freedom of Bulgaria.”
“Aye. In the Name of a Woman, you mean? You think I do not know your canting phrase.”
I was on my guard now, and did not let her see my surprise at her words.
“I have the honour to bear a commission in the Prince’s own regiment, as you know,” I answered evasively.
“The commission I got for you. Of course I know. But what do you mean by that empty answer? Are you for or against me? For Heaven’s sake try to speak frankly! Nothing else will serve either you or me in this.” And she stamped her foot with a gesture of impatience.
“So far as our aims are in common, I am with you.”
“Do you think an answer like that will satisfy me? I am beginning to understand you; and if my reading is right, you and those with you may well take heed for yourselves.”
“If you have come to threaten me——” I began, when she broke in:
“I have not come to threaten. I have come to have a clear understanding; that is all. And I will have it,” she said, impetuously. “I will give you another chance. What did the Prince say to you when you were with him?”
“I do not know there was anything——”
“For the love of Heaven, man, drop this conventional cant and speak as plainly as you can if you wish. What did he say to you about this mad intention of his to abdicate?”
“Intention to abdicate?” I echoed, as if taken by surprise.
“Which means that he did tell you, and you would now pretend that he did not.” And, yielding to a sudden storm of passion, she broke out into a torrent of indignant reproaches of what she termed my breach of trust in not telling her.
I did not interrupt her, and gathered that she had only just heard from the Prince what he had said to me. I understood now the cause of her visit and the reason of her passion.
“As his Highness told me in confidence, I could not betray it,” I said as soon as I could get a word in. “He no doubt told you that he laid a charge of secrecy upon me.”
“And you did nothing to dissuade him, nothing to stop him from a madly suicidal step. You, who pretend to pose as a disinterested friend of Bulgaria devoted to him and to me! And do you think, knowing me as you do, for all your flippant lip-service to the jargon of conventionality, that I will let this thing be? Do you think that I am so powerless a fool that I cannot stop it? Oh, I am a mad woman when I think of it!” she cried desperately. “It can be stopped and must be—do you hear? must; and you must help me.”
“I cannot see how I can help you.”
She had risen from her chair and was pacing the room in her anger and now came close to me, and in a tone of concentrated energy and fierceness said:
“The death of that woman Christina will stop it; and in that you can help, aye, and you shall help me.” Her face was ablaze with rage and hate as she uttered the Princess’s name.
“The Prince himself is opposed to any more bloodshed,” I said bluntly. “The sentiment does him infinite honour, and I share it.”
“You dare to say that to me? To set me at defiance? To go back upon the pledge you gave? Are you a coward, Count Benderoff?”
“I will be no party to the assassination of the Princess,” I answered sternly.
“You defy me?” And, laying her hand on my arm, she stared into my eyes for some moments in silence, and then, her lips curling and her face so hard and set that the nostrils dilated with the vehemence of her anger, she added: “I could kill you.”
Clearly it was to be open war between us, and I prepared for it. I drew my arm away and answered coldly:
“I think, Madam, this interview has lasted long enough.”
She started as if I had insulted her, and I looked for another passionate outbreak. But it did not come. Instead of that her expression underwent a complete change and she laughed.
“Poor fool!” she cried in a bantering tone. “Do you know where I shall go straight from here if you turn me away? Wait a moment and I will tell you.” She paused, paying no heed to my gesture of anger. “In the Name of a Woman, eh? This excellent house, this sumptuous display of wealth, this clever, shrewd Englishman, with his hatred of plots, this attractive idea of a gymnasium club—what does it all mean?” And she leered at me with a look infinitely cunning.
I kept my face quite impassive as I met her eyes.
“Would you like to tell me the inner secret, or shall I tell you? I know—I know everything.” She paused again, but I gave no sign; and then the rage began to return to her face, and her tone grew vehement again. “It is a lie—and a lie against the man whose eyes I can open with a word. You are working and plotting for the Princess, In the Name of a Woman, are you not? And these Russian fools and dolts think you are working for them at the same time. But I know your real intent. To fool them up to the moment when you can throw off the disguise—to put this precious Princess on the throne, and then to snap your fingers in the face of the old dotard, Kolfort, and obey only the Princess. This marriage, on which he counts so much, is never to take place; but when you have rallied and organised these members of your club, as you call it, you reckon you will be strong enough to throw over the Russians and declare for what you call Bulgarian independence. Independence, forsooth, with such a woman as Christina on the throne.”
I knew now the extent of the sudden peril, but I thrust the fear that filled my soul for Christina’s sake out of sight and laughed.
“You have a lively imagination, Madam!”
“Yes; turn it aside with a scoff or a sneer if you think you can. But do you believe General Kolfort will think it nothing more than the subject of a sneer when he learns it?” She was disappointed that I showed no sign of fear.
“You can take your own course, and if you think to help yourself or the Prince by filling the air with your fables, do so.”
“You are a coward, Count Benderoff,” she cried hotly, “to play thus on my helplessness. I know that I cannot help my Prince or strengthen his position by telling what I know, and what you dare not deny, to be true. But if I cannot help my cause, I can at least revenge myself, and I will. A word from me and where will be all your plots and plotters? Your club will exercise then in the yards of the gaols and behind the walls of Tirnova fortress. I tell you, you dare not play me false.”
I knew the grip she had on me now could tighten in a moment into strangulation, with the ruin of every man and woman among us; but I maintained my impassive, stern expression.
“If you choose to spread these tales, I cannot stay you,” I answered.
“Will you help me to my revenge upon the woman Christina?”
“What do you mean by revenge?”
“Death,” she cried fiercely.
“I would slay you with my own hand first,” I answered, the passion in me rushing to utterance.
She laughed again vindictively and hatefully.
“So it is true, then, she has bewitched you. I might have known it. I told you and warned you that she was a vampire using up men’s lives with the unpitying remorselessness of a wild beast. And you are her latest lover, I suppose!”
The slander suggested by her words maddened me.
“I can hear no more, Madam,” I said sternly.
She threw up her head with a gesture of pride.
“Do you order me to leave your house—knowing the consequences?”
I was in sore perplexity. She was a devil and she looked it as she stared at me, her lovely eyes glowing with rage and hate and menace.
“If you have more to say it must be at another time, when you are in a different mood,” I returned.
She seemed about to burst forth again in her wild, vehement way, but as suddenly changed her mood and said:
“I understand. You wish to find a bridge over as dangerous a chasm as a man ever yet had to cross. I will see you again; but next time it will be to hear from you that you accept my terms. You are not a man to walk open-eyed to sheer ruin. I will go.”
And as she left me, sweeping out of the room, with a challenging, defiant, triumphant smile, I could almost have found it in me to kill her.