Part 27 (1/2)
”We cannot afford to allow evil tongues to speak of us; neither can we afford the vulgar scandal that some would seek to create.
If you, O Father, feel apprehensive, then act boldly in the knowledge that you have your devoted daughter ever at your side and ever ready and eager to place her power as Empress in your dear hands. Therefore strike your enemies swiftly and without fear. Lips prepared to utter scandal must be, at all costs, silenced.
”Our friend Protopopoff has returned from England and tells me that Lloyd George and his friends are exerting every effort to win the war. Those British are brave, but, oh! if they knew all that we know--eh? They are in ignorance, and will remain so until Germany conquers Russia and spreads the blessing of civilisation among the people.
”Nikki is returning. A seance is to be held on Sat.u.r.day. You must be back in time. He is sending a messenger to you to urge you to return to us to give us comfort in these long dark days. Anna and the girls all kiss your dear hand.--Your devoted daughter, ALIX.”
On the following day a middle-aged, fair-haired, rather well-dressed man, who gave the name of Nicholas Chevitch, from Okhta, a suburb of Petrograd, was brought to me by the monk who acted as janitor, and explained that he had private business with Rasputin.
I left him and, ascending to the monk's room, found him extremely anxious to meet his visitor.
”I will see him at once, Feodor. I have some secret business with him.
Here is the key of a small locked box in your room. Open it and take out ten one-thousand rouble notes and bring them to me after you have brought in Chevitch.”
This I did. Having admitted the visitor to Rasputin's presence, I opened the small iron box which the Starets always carried in his supposed ”pilgrimages,” and took out the money, leaving in it a sum of about twelve thousand roubles.
The ten thousand I carried to Rasputin, but as I opened the door I heard the fair-haired man say:
”All is prepared. The wire is laid across the river. We tested it five days ago and it works excellently.”
”Good! Ah, here is my secretary Feodor!” the monk exclaimed. ”He has the ten thousand roubles for you, and there will be a further ten thousand on the day your plan matures.”
I wondered to what plan the Starets was referring. But being compelled to retire I remained in ignorance. The man Chevitch stayed with the monk for over an hour, and then left to return to the capital.
Later on I referred to the visit of the stranger, whereupon Rasputin laughed grimly, saying:
”You will hear some news in a day or two, my dear Feodor. Petrograd will be startled.”
”How?”
”Never mind,” he replied. ”Wait!”
We arrived back in Petrograd on the following Friday morning, but although the Empress sent a messenger to the Gorokhovaya urging the monk to go to Peterhof at once, as she desired to consult him, he disregarded her command and did not even vouchsafe a reply. Indeed, Rasputin treated the poor half-demented Empress with such scant courtesy that I often stood aghast.
”The woman is an idiot!” he would often exclaim to me petulantly when she was unusually persistent in her demands.
Next evening, however, we went to the palace, whither another French medium, a man named Fournier, had been summoned, having, of course, been administered palm-oil to the tune of some thousands of roubles to give a ”message from the dead” in the terms required by the wire-pullers in Potsdam.
I was not present at the seance, but later that night, when Rasputin was sitting alone with me over a bottle of champagne which an ”Araby” flunkey had brought him, he revealed that the ”message” from the Tsar's dead father had been precise and much to the point.
”Nicholas, I speak unto thee,” the spirit had said. ”Though thou art brave and thine armies are brave, yet thine enemies will still encompa.s.s thee. Loss will follow upon loss. The great advance will soon become a retreat, and the hordes of William will dash forward and Poland will become German. Yet do not be afraid. Trust in the good counsel of thy wife Alexandra Feodorovna and in thy Father Rasputin, whom Heaven hath sent to thee. Believe no evil word of him, and let his enemies be swept from his path. Such is my message to thee, O my son!”
As Rasputin repeated those words with mock solemnity, he laughed grimly.
The pity of it was that Nicholas, Tsar of All the Russias, believed in those paid-for messages, uttered by those presented to him as mediums and able to call up the spirit of his lamented father.
”Poor idiot!” Rasputin remarked, first glancing to see that the door was closed. ”He must have something to occupy his shallow brain. That is why the Empress arranges the sittings. But Feodor,” he added, ”I must see this enemy of mine, Ivan Naglovski. He is not a person to be disregarded, and it seems from what you told me he has a number of important friends.
We will discuss the matter to-morrow.”
He afterwards dismissed me with a wave of his dirty hand, and I retired to bed in a room at the farther end of the long softly carpeted corridor.