Part 9 (1/2)
Gessner cast a searching glance upon the man's face And then mounted the great staircase with laborious steps. Pa.s.sing the door of the room in which Alban slept, he listened intently for a moment as though half of a mind to enter; but abandoning the intention, went on to his apartment and there, when the footman had attended to his requirements, he locked the door and helped himself liberally to the brandy. An observer would have remarked that drops of sweat stood upon his brow and that his hand was shaking.
He had dined with a city company; but had dined as a man who knew little of the dinner or of those who ate it. Ten days ago his energy, his buoyant spirits, and his amazing vitality had astonished even his best friends. To-night these qualities were at their lowest ebb--and he had been so silent, so self-concentrated, so obviously distressed, that even a casual acquaintance had remarked the change. To say that a just Nemesis had overtaken him would be less than the truth. He knew that he stood accused, not by a man, but by a nation. And to a nation he must answer.
He locked the door of his room and, drawing a chair to a little Buhl writing-table, set in the window, he opened a drawer and took therefrom a little bundle of papers, upon which he had spent nine sleepless nights and, apparently, would spend still another. They were odd sc.r.a.ps--now of letters, now of legal doc.u.ments--the _precis_ of a past which could be recited in no court of justice, but might well be told aloud to an unsympathetic world. Had an historian been called upon to deal with such doc.u.ments, he would have made nothing whatever of them--but Richard Gessner could rewrite the story in every line, could garnish it with pa.s.sions awakened, fears unnamable, regrets that could not save, despair that would suffer no consolations.
He had stolen Paul Boriskoff's secret from him and thereby had made a fortune. Let it be admitted that the first conception of the new furnace for the refining of copper had come from that white-faced whimpering miner, who could talk of nothing but his nation's wrongs and had no finer ambition in life than to feed his children. He, Richard Gessner, had done what such a fellow never could have done. He had made the furnace commercially possible and had exploited it through the copper mines of the world. Such had been the first rung of that magnificent pecuniary ladder he had afterwards climbed so adroitly. Money he had ama.s.sed beneath his grasping hand as at a magician's touch. He regretted, he had always regretted, that misfortune overtook Paul Boriskoff's family--he would have helped them had he been in Poland at the time; but their offences were adjudged to be political; and if the wretched woman suffered harm at the hands of the police, what share had he in it? To this point he charged himself lightly--as men will in justifying themselves before the finger of an h.o.a.ry accusation. Gessner cared neither for G.o.d nor man. His only daughter had been at once his divinity and his religion. Let men call him a rogue, despot, or thief, and he would shrug his shoulders and glance aside at his profit and loss account. But let them call him ”fool” and the end of his days surely was at hand.
And so this self-examination to-night troubled itself with no thought of wrongs committed, with no desire to repay, but only with that supreme act of folly, to which the sleeping lad in the room near by was the surest witness. What would the threats of such a pauper as Paul Boriskoff have mattered if the man had stood alone against him? A word to the police, a hundred pounds to a score of ruffians, and he would have been troubled no more. But his quarrel was not with a man but a nation. Perceiving that the friends.h.i.+p of the Russian Government was necessary to many of his mining schemes in the East, he had changed his name as lightly as another would have changed his coat, had cast the garments of a sham patriotism and emerged an enemy to all that he had hitherto befriended, a foe to Poland, a servant to Russia.
Acting secretly and with a strong man's discretion, no bruit of this odd conversion had been made public, no whisper of it heard in the camp of the Revolutionaries. Many knew Maxim Gogol--none had heard of Richard Gessner. His desire for secrecy was in good accord with the plans of a police he a.s.sisted and the bureaucracy he bribed. He lived for a while in Vienna, then at Tiflis--he came at length to England where his daughter had been educated; and there he established himself, ostensibly as a wealthy banker, in reality as the secret director of one of the greatest conspiracies against the liberty of a little nation that the world had ever seen.
Upon such a man, the blow of discovery fell with, stunning force.
Gessner had grown so accustomed to the security of this suburban life that he could imagine no circ.u.mstance which might disturb it. All that he did for the satisfaction of the Russian Government had been cleverly done by agents and deputies. Ent.i.tled by his years to leisure, he had latterly almost abandoned politics for a culture of the arts and the sciences, in some branches of which he was a master. His leisure he gave almost entirely to his daughter. To contrive for her an alliance worthy of his own fortune and of her beauty had become the absorbing pa.s.sion of his life. He studied the Peerage as other men study a balance-sheet.
All sorts and conditions of possible husbands appeared at ”Five Gables;”
were dined, discussed, and dismissed. The older families despised him and would not be appeased. To crown his vexation, his daughter named a lover for herself. He had twice shown Captain w.i.l.l.y Forrest from the door and twice had the man returned. Anna seemed fascinated by this showy adventurer as by none other who visited them. Gessner, for his part, would sooner have lost the half of his fortune than that she should have married him.
These vexations had been real enough ten days ago; but, to-night, a greater made light of them and now they were almost forgotten. Detection had stalked out of the slums to humble this man in an instant and bring him to his knees. Gessner could have recited to you the most trivial detail attending the reception of Paul Boriskoff's letter and the claim it made upon him--how a secretary had pa.s.sed it to him with a suggestion that Scotland Yard should know of it; how he had taken up the scrawl idly enough to flush before them all an instant later and to feel his heart sink as in an abyss of unutterable dismay. He had crumpled the dirty paper in his hand, he remembered, and thrown it to the ground--to pick it up immediately and smooth it out as though it were a precious doc.u.ment. To his secretary he tried to explain that the writer was an odd fanatic who must be humored. Determined at the first blush to face the matter out, to answer and to defy this pauper Pole who had dared to threaten him, he came ultimately to see that discretion would best serve him. Paul Boriskoff had named Kensington Gardens as a rendezvous where matters might be discussed. Gessner was there to the minute--without idea, without hope, seeking only that pity which he himself had never bestowed upon any human being.
Paul Boriskoff did not hurry to the Gardens, so sure was he of the success of his undertaking. The frowsy black coat, in which he made his bow to the millionaire, had not seen the light for many years--his hat was a wide-brimmed eccentricity in soft felt which greatly delighted the nursemaids who pa.s.sed him by. Gessner would never have recognized, in the hollow-cheeked, pale-faced, humble creature the st.u.r.dy young Pole who had come to him nearly a generation ago and had said, ”Our fortunes are made; this is my discovery.” Believing at the moment that money would buy such a derelict, body and soul, he opened the negotiations firmly and in that lofty tone which suited Throgmorton Street so well.
But five minutes had not pa.s.sed before he understood his mistake and realized that Boriskoff, the lad who had trusted him, and Boriskoff, the Pole who now threatened him, were one and the same after all.
”I remember you perfectly,” he said; ”it would be idle to say that I do not. You had some claim in the matter of a certain furnace. Yes, I remember that and would willingly admit it. But, my friend, you fell into trouble with the Government, and what could I do then? Was not I also compelled to leave Poland? Did not I change my name for that very reason? How could I repay the debt? Here in England it is different.
You make your existence known to me and I respond at once. Speak freely, then, for I shall hear you patiently.”
They were seated on a bench beneath a chestnut in full bloom. Distantly, through a vista of giant trunks, the waters of the Round Pond glimmered in the evening light. Children, worn out by the day, sat idle in groups on the benches of the Long Walk or lagged through a fitful game on the open s.p.a.ces between the trees. Few observed these two men who thus earnestly recalled the drama of their lives; none remarked their odd a.s.sociation, for were not both obviously foreigners, and who shall dictate a fas.h.i.+on to such as they? Indeed, they conversed without any animation of gesture; the one convulsed by fears he did not dare to express, the other by hopes on the threshold of realization.
”I speak freely,” said Boriskoff with unaffected candor, ”for to do that I have come here. And first I must set your memory right in a matter that concerns us both. You did not leave Poland to serve your country; you left it to betray us. Spare your words, for the story has been told many times in Warsaw and in London. Shall I give you the list of those who are tortured to-day at Saghalien because of what you did? It would be vain, for if you have any feeling, even that of a dog, they are remembered by you. You betrayed the man who trusted you; you betrayed your country--for what? Shall I say that it was for this asylum in a strange land; for power, for the temptations which all must suffer? No, no. You have had but one desire in all your life, and that is money. So much even I understand. You are ready now to part with a little of that money--so little that it would be as a few grains from the sands of the sea--to save your neck from the rope, to escape the just punishment which is about to fall upon you. Do not believe that you can do so. I hold your secret, but at any hour, at any minute, others may share it with me. Maxim Gogol--for I shall call you by your true name--if one word of this were spoken to the Committee at Warsaw, how long would you have to live? You know the answer to that question. Do not compel me to dwell upon it.”
He spoke in a soft purring tone, an echo of a voice, as it were, beneath the rustling leaves; but, none the less, Richard Gessner caught every word as though it had been the voice of an oracle. A very shrewd man, he had feared this knowledge, and fear had brought him to this covert interview. The Pole could betray him and betrayal must mean death--and what a death, reluctant, procrastinating, the hour of it unknown, the manner of it beyond any words terrible. Such had been the end of many who had left Poland as he had done. He had read their story and shuddered even in his imagined security. And now this accusation was spoken, not as a whisper of a voice in the hours of the night, but as the truth of an inevitable day.
And what should he answer? Would it profit him to speak of law; to retort with a threat; to utter the commonplaces concerning Scotland Yard and a vigilant police? He was far too wise even to contemplate such folly. Let him have this man arrested, and what then? Would any country thereafter shelter the informer from the vengeance of the thousands whom no law could arrest? Would any house harbor him against the dagger of the a.s.sa.s.sin, the swift blow, it might even be the lingering justice of such fanatics as sought to rule Poland. He knew that there was none.
Abject a.s.sent could be the only reply. He must yield to any humiliation, suffer any extortion rather than speak the word which would be as irrevocable as the penalty it invited.
”I shall not dispute with you, Paul Boriskoff,” he said, with a last attempt to save his dignity; ”yes, it would be in your power to do me a great injury even in this country which gives you liberty. It is your own affair. You did not come here to threaten me, but to seek a favor.
Name it to me and I shall be prepared to answer you. I am not an ungenerous man as some of our countrymen know. Tell me what you wish and I shall know how to act.”
Boriskoff's answer astonished him by its impetuosity.
”For myself nothing,” he exclaimed contemptuously--and these brief words echoed in Gessner's ears almost as a message of salvation--”for myself nothing, but for my children much. Yes, your money can make even Paul Boriskoff despise himself--but it is for the children's sake. I sell my honor that they may profit by it. I ask for them that which is due to me, but which I have sworn to forego. Maxim Gogol, it is for the children that I ask it. You have done me a great wrong, but they shall profit by it. That is what I am come here to say to-day--that you shall repay, not to me but to my children.”
The words appeared to cost him much, as though he had deliberately sacrificed a great vengeance that those he loved might profit. Leaping to the hope of it, and telling himself that this after all was but a question of pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence, Gessner answered with an eagerness beyond all bounds ridiculous.
”There could be nothing I would do more willingly. Yes, I remember--you left a daughter in Warsaw and she was not to be discovered by those of us who would have befriended her. Believe me when I say that I will help her very gladly. Anything, my friend, anything that is humbly reasonable--”
Boriskoff did not permit him to finish.