Part 15 (1/2)
”It was a mean Siberian village half hidden in the Siberian snow, for the winter was unduly early. I observed my host closely, for I now knew him to be a traitor and a charlatan. The `monastery' as he called it in Petrograd, and for which hundreds gave him subscriptions, was not a religious house at all, and it had never been consecrated as such.
Rasputin himself was not even a monk, for he had never been received into the church.”
In describing this ”monastery” for which the monk had filched thousands upon thousands of roubles from the pockets of his neophytes in Petrograd, Helidor says:
”It was a large house, which had only recently been furnished luxuriously. It was full of holy ikons, of portraits of women, and of magnificent presents from their Majesties. The occupants of the place numbered a dozen women, mostly young, garbed as nuns and performing daily religious observances.”
Apparently the establishment was a Siberian ”Abode of Love,” much upon the lines, as the Smyth-Piggott cult, yet Helidor has declared that what struck him most was the open hostility of the mujiks towards the ”Holy Father.”
”They are annoyed, my dear brother Helidor, because you have come with me from Petrograd,” the ”saint” declared in excuse.
But Helidor noticed that Antoine, the Archbishop of Tobolsk, who visited him, betrayed the same marked hostility, while the people of the village all declared without mincing matters that Grichka, whom they had known as a convicted horse-thief and a.s.saulter of women, was merely a _debauche_.
Again came wild telegrams from the Empress. The ”Saint's” prophecy had been fulfilled and the Tsarevitch had been taken seriously ill at the exact hour he had predicted.
”Nikki has returned. Both of us are in deadly fear,” she telegraphed.
”Kousmin (the Court physician) cannot diagnose the malady. Come to us at once, Holy Father, I pray to you, come and save us. Give your blessing and your sympathy to your devoted sister.--A.”
At the same time His Majesty sent a telegraphic message to the man who made and unmade Ministers and who ruled all Russia at home and in the field. It was despatched from the Winter Palace half-an-hour after the message of the Empress, and read:
”Friend, I cannot command, but I beg of you to return instantly to us.
We want your help. Without it, Alexis will die, and the House of Romanoff is doomed. I have sent the Imperial train to you. It leaves in an hour.--Nicholas.”
Of this summons the villainous ex-thief took no notice.
Helidor says: ”He showed me the telegrams and laughed triumphantly, saying, `Nikki seems very much troubled! Why does he not return to the front and urge on his soldiers against the advancing hosts.' The greater our losses the nearer shall we be to peace. I shall take care that ignorant Russia will not win against the causes of civilisation and humanity.”
”Civilisation and humanity!” This illiterate and dissolute peasant, who each night became hopelessly intoxicated and who in his cups would revile his paymasters the Huns and chant in his deep ba.s.s voice refrains of Russian patriotic airs, was actually the dear ”friend” of the Tsar of All the Russias! The vicious scoundrel's influence was reaching its zenith.
To Western readers the whole facts may well appear incredible. But those who know Russia, with its complex world of official corruption and ”religious” chicanery, are well aware how anything may happen to that huge Empire when at war.
After a fortnight's silence, during which the sinister hand of Anna Vyrubova regularly administered that secret drug to the poor, helpless son of the Emperor, Rasputin, with amazing effrontery, dared again to put his foot in Petrograd. On the night of his arrival the Tsaritza, awaiting him anxiously at Tsarskoe-Selo, sent him a note by Ivan Radzick, the trusted body-servant of the Emperor for fifteen years, a note which the miracle-worker preserved most carefully, and which ran as follows:
”Holy Father,--I await you eagerly. Boris (Sturmer) and Fredericks are with me. Things are increasingly critical. Hasten to us at once and cure poor little Alexis, or he will die. The doctors are powerless. I have had urgent news from Berlin. Miliukoff must be removed, and so must Kerensky and Nicholas (the Grand Duke). Boris has arranged it.
You have the means. Something must happen to them within the next forty-eight hours. Nicholas has handed Nikki an abominable letter of threats. The British Amba.s.sador is wary and knows of this. His despatches to London to-night must be intercepted. I am sending the car for you, and await in eagerness once again to kiss your dear hands.-- Your devoted sister, Alec.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
BAMBOOZLING THE ALLIES.
As a result of the denunciation in the Duma of ”Russia's dark forces,”
Boris Sturmer was deprived of the Premiers.h.i.+p and appointed by the Tsaritza's influence to a high office in the Imperial household, where he could still unite with Baron Fredericks in playing Germany's game.
A few days after this re-shuffling of the cards, M. Trepoff, the new Premier, made a rea.s.suring statement to the Duma, in which he said: ”There will never be a premature or separate peace. Nothing can change this resolution, which is the inflexible will of the august Russian sovereign, who stands for the whole of his faithful people.”
How Rasputin and the camarilla must have chuckled when they read these words of rea.s.surance!
On the very day that declaration was made the monk had received a telegram in cipher from Stockholm, whither it had been first sent from the Koniggratzer-stra.s.se in Berlin, and which, de-coded, reads as follows: