XXI
ON SATURDAY AT MIKLEVNI!
THOUGH not remote in distance, yet Volseni was apart and isolated from all that was happening. Not only was nothing known of the two great neighbors—nothing reached men in Volseni of the state of affairs in Slavna itself. They did not know that the thieves were quarrelling about the plunder, nor that the diplomatists had taken cold; they had not bethought them of how the art of the ventriloquists would be at work. They knew only that young Alexis reigned in Slavna by reason of their King's murder and against the will of him who was dead; only that they had chosen Sophia for their Queen because she had been the dead King's wife and his chosen successor.
All the men who could be spared from labor came into the city; they collected what few horses they could; they filled their little fortress with provisions. They could not go to Slavna, but they awaited with confidence the day when Slavna should dare to move against them into the hills. Slavna had never been able to beat them in their own hills yet; the bolder spirits even implored Lukovitch to lead them down in a raid on the plains.
Lukovitch would sanction no more than a scouting party, to see whether any movement were in progress from the other side. Peter Vassip rode down with his men to within a few miles of Slavna. For result of the expedition he brought back the news of the guns: the great guns, rumor said, had reached Kravonia and were to be in Slavna in a week.
The rank and file hardly understood what that meant; anger that their destined and darling guns should fall into hostile hands was the feeling uppermost. But the tidings struck their leaders home to the heart. Lukovitch knew what it meant. Dunstanbury, who had served three years in the army at home, knew very well. Covered by such a force as Stafnitz could bring up, the guns could pound Volseni to pieces—and Volseni could strike back not a single blow.
"And it's all through her that the guns are here at all!" said Zerkovitch, with a sigh for the irony of it. Dunstanbury laid his hand on Lukovitch's shoulder. "It's no use," he said. "We must tell her so, and we must make the men understand. She can't let them have their homes battered to pieces—the town with the women and children in it—and all for nothing!"
"We can't desert her," Lukovitch protested.
"No; we must get her safely away, and then submit."
Since Dunstanbury had offered his services to Sophy, he had assumed a leading part. His military training and his knowledge of the world gave him an influence over the rude, simple men. Lukovitch looked to him for guidance; he had much to say in the primitive preparations for defence. But now he declared defence to be impossible.
"Who'll tell her so?" asked Basil Williamson.
"We must get her across the frontier," said Dunstanbury. "There—by St. Peter's Pass—the way we came, Basil. It's an easy journey, and I don't suppose they'll try to intercept us. You can send twenty or thirty well-mounted men with us, can't you, Lukovitch? A small party well mounted is what we shall want."
Lukovitch waved his hands sadly. "With the guns against us it would be a mere massacre! If it must be, let it be as you say, my lord." His heart was very heavy; after generations of defiance, Vol^ seni must bow to Slavna, and his dead Lord's will go for nothing! All this was the doing of the great guns.
Dunstanbury's argument was sound, but he argued from his heart as well as his head. He was convinced that the best service he could render to Sophy was to get her safely out of the country; his heart urged that her safety was the one and only thing to consider. As she went to and fro among them now, pale and silent, yet always accessible, always ready to listen, to consider, and to answer, she moved him with an infinite pity and a growing attraction. Her life was as though dead or frozen; it seemed to him as though all Kravonia must be to her the tomb of him whose grave in the little hill-side church of Volseni she visited so often. An ardent and overpowering desire rose in him to rescue her, to drag her forth from these dim cold shades into the sunlight of life again. Then the spell of this frozen grief might be broken; then should her drooping glories revive and bloom again. Kravonia and who ruled there—ay, in his heart, even the fate of the gallant little city which harbored them, and whose interest he pleaded—were nothing to him beside Sophy. On her his thoughts were centred.
Sophy's own mind in these days can be gathered only from what others saw. She made no record of it. Fallen in an hour from heights of love and hope and exaltation, she lay stunned in the abyss. In intellect calm and collected, she seems to have been as one numbed in feeling, too maimed for pain, suffering as though from a mortification of the heart. The simple men and women of Volseni looked on her with awe, and chattered fearfully of the Red Star: how that its wearer had been predestined to high enterprise, but foredoomed to mighty reverses of fortune. Amidst all their pity for her, they spoke of the Evil Eye; some whispered that she had come to bring ruin on Volseni: had not the man who loved her lost both Crown and life?
And it was she through whom the guns had come! The meaning of the guns had spread now to every hearth; what had once been hailed as an achievement second only to her exploit in the Street of the Fountain served now to point more finely the sharpening fears of superstition. The men held by her still, but their wives were grumbling at them in their homes. Was she not, after all, a stranger? Must Volseni lie in the dust for her sake, for the sake of her who wore that ominous, inexplicable Star?
Dunstanbury knew all this; Lukovitch hardly sought to deny it, though he was full of scorn for it; and Marie Zerkovitch had by heart the tales of many wise old beldams who had prophesied this and that from the first moment that they saw the Red Star. Surely and not slowly the enthusiasm which had crowned Sophy was turning into a fear which made the people shrink from her even while they pitied, even while they did not cease to love. The hand of heaven was against her and against those who were near her, said the women. The men still feigned not to hear; had they net taken Heaven to witness that they would serve her and avenge the King? Alas, their simple vow was too primitive for days like these —too primitive for the days of the great guns which lay on the bosom of the Krath!
Dunstanbury had an interview with Sophy early on the Tuesday morning, the day after Stafnitz had started for Kolskol. He put his case with the bluntness and honesty native to him. In his devotion to her safety he did not spare her the truth. She listened with the smile devoid of happiness which her face now wore so often.
"I know it all," she said. "They begin to look differently at me as I walk through the street—when I go to the church. If I stay here long enough, they'll all call me a witch! But didn't they swear? And I—haven't I sworn? Are we to do nothing for Monseigneur's memory?"
"What can we do against the guns? The men can die, and the walls be tumbled down! And there are the women and children!"
"Yes, I suppose we can do nothing. But it goes to my heart that they should have Monseigneur's guns."
"Your guns!" Dunstanbury reminded her with a smile of whimsical sympathy.
"That's what they say in the city, too?" she asked.
"The old hags, who are clever at the weather and other mysteries. And, of course, Madame Zerkovitch!"
Sophy's smile broadened a little. "Oh, of course, poor little Marie Zerkovitch!" she exclaimed. "She's been sure I'm a witch ever since she's known me."
"I want you to come over the frontier with me— and Basil Williamson. I've some influence, and I can insure your getting through all right."
"And then?"
"Whatever you like. I shall be utterly at your orders."
She leaned her head against the high chair in which she sat, a chair of old oak, black as her hair; she fixed her profound eyes on his.
"I wish I could stay here—in the little church— with Monseigneur," she said.
"By Heavens, no!" he cried, startled into sudden and untimely vehemence.
"All my life is there," she went on, paying no heed to his outburst.
"Give life another chance. You're very young."
"You can't count life by years, any more than hours by minutes. You reckon the journey not by the clock, but by the stages you have passed. Once before I loved a man—and he was killed in battle. But that was different. I was very hurt, but I wasn't maimed. I'm maimed now by the death of Monseigneur."
"You can't bring ruin on these folk, and you can't give yourself up to Stenovics." He could not trust himself to speak more of her feelings nor of the future; he came back to the present needs of the case.
"It's true—and yet we swore!" She leaned forward to him. "And you—aren't you afraid of the Red Star?"
"We Essex men aren't afraid, we haven't enough imagination," he answered, smiling again.
She threw herself back, crying low: "Ah, if we could strike one blow—just one—for the oath we swore and for Monseigneur! Then perhaps I should be content."
"To go with me?"
"Perhaps—if, in striking it, what I should think best didn't come to me."
"You must run no danger, anyhow," he cried, hastily and eagerly.
"My friend," she said, gently, "for such as I am to-day there's no such thing as danger. Don't think I value my position here or the title they've given me, poor men! I have loved titles"—for a moment she smiled—"and I should have loved this one, if Monseigneur had lived. I should have been proud as a child of it. If I could have borne it by his side for even a few weeks, a few days! But now it's barren and bitter—bitter and barren to me."
He followed the thoughts at which her words hinted; they seemed to him infinitely piteous.
"Now, as things have fallen out, what am I in this country? A waif and stray! I belong to nobody, and nobody to me."
"Then come away!" he burst out again.
Her deep eyes were set on his face once more.
"Yes, that's the conclusion," she said, very mournfully. "We Essex people are sensible, aren't we? And we have no imagination. Did you laugh when you saw me proclaimed and heard us swear?"
"Good Heavens, no!"
"Then think how my oath and my love call me to strike one blow for Monseigneur!" She hid her eyes behind her hand for a moment. "Aren't there fifty —thirty—twenty, who would count their lives well risked? For what are men's lives given them?"
"There's one at least, if you will have it so," Dunstanbury answered.
There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for a bidding Zerkovitch came quickly in; Lukovitch was behind, and with him Lepage. Ten minutes before, the valet had ridden up to the city gates, waving his handkerchief above his head.
Sophy gave a cry of pleasure at seeing him. "A brave man, who loved his King and served Mon^ seigneur!" she said, as she darted forward and clasped his hand.
Zerko vitch was as excited and hurried as ever. He thrust a letter into her hand. "From Stenovics, madame, for you to read," he said.
She took it, saying to Lepage with a touch of reproach: "Are you General Stenovics's messenger now, Monsieur Lepage?"
"Read it, madame," said he.
She obeyed, and then signed to Lukovitch to take it, and to Dunstanbury to read it also. "It's just what you've been saying," she told him with a faint smile, as she sank back in the high oaken seat.
"I am to add, madame," said Lepage, "that you will be treated with every consideration—any title in reason, any provision in reason, too."
"So the General's letter says."
"But I was told to repeat it," persisted the little man. He looked round on them. Lukovitch and Dunstanbury had finished reading the letter and were listening, too. "If you still hesitated, I was to impress upon you that the guns would certainly be in Slavna in less than a week—almost certainly on Sunday. You know the course of the river well, madame?"
"Not very well above Slavna, no."
"In that case, which General Stenovics didn't omit to consider, I was to remind you that Captain Lukovitch probably knew every inch of it."
"I know it intimately," said Lukovitch. "I spent two years on the timber-barges of the Krath." "Then you, sir, will understand that the guns will certainly reach Slavna not later than Sunday." He paused for a moment, seeming to collect his memory.
"By Wednesday evening Colonel Stafnitz will be at Kolskoi. On Thursday morning he'll start back. On that evening he ought to reach Evena, on Friday Rapska" Lukovitch nodded at each name. Lepage went on methodically. "On Saturday the lock at Miklevni. Yes, on Saturday the lock at Miklevnii"
He paused again and looked straight at Lukovitch.
"Exactly—the lock at Miklevni," said that officer, with another nod.
"Yes, the lock at Miklevni on Saturday. You see, it's not as if the Colonel had a large force to move. That might take longer. He'll be able to move his company as quick as the barges travel."
"The stream's very strong, they travel pretty well," said Lukovitch.
"But a hundred men—it's nothing to move, Captain Lukovitch." He looked round on them again, and then turned back to Sophy. "That's all my message, madame," he said.
There was a silence.
"So it's evident the guns will be in Slavna by Sunday," Lepage concluded.
"If they reach Miklevni on Saturday—any time on Saturday—they will," said Lukovitch. "And up here very soon after!"
"The General intimated that also, Captain Lukovitch."
"The General gives us very careful information," observed Dunstanbury, looking rather puzzled. He was not so well versed in Stenovics's methods as the rest. Lukovitch smiled broadly, and even Zerkovitch gave a little laugh.
"How are things in Slavna, Monsieur Lepage?" the last named asked.
Lepage smiled a little, too. "General Stenovics is in full control of the city—during Colonel Stafnitz's absence, sir," he answered.
"They've quarrelled?" cried Lukovitch.
"Oh no, sir. Possibly General Stenovics is afraid they might." He spoke again to Sophy. "Madame, do you still blame me for being the General's messenger?"
"No, Monsieur Lepage; but there's much to consider in the message. Captain Lukovitch, if Monseigneur had read this message, what would he have thought the General meant?"
Lukovitch's face was full of excitement as he answered her:
"The Prince wouldn't have cared what General Stenovics meant. He would have said that the guns would be three days on the river before they came to Slavna, that the barges would take the best part of an hour to get through Miklevni lock, that there was good cover within a quarter of a mile of the lock—"
Sophy leaned forward eagerly. "Yes, yes?" she whispered.
"And that an escort of a hundred men was—well, might be—not enough!"
"And that riding from Volseni—?"
"One might easily be at Miklevni before Colonel Stafnitz and the guns could arrive there!"
Dunstanbury gave a start, Zerkovitch a chuckle, Lepage a quiet smile. Sophy rose to her feet; the Star glowed, there was even color in her cheeks besides.
"If there are fifty, or thirty, or twenty," she said, her eyes set on Dunstanbury, "who would count their lives well risked, we may yet strike one blow for Monseigneur and for the guns he loved."
Dunstanbury looked round. "There are three here," he said.
"Four!" called Basil Williamson from the doorway, where he had stood unobserved.
"Five!" cried Sophy, and, for the first time since Monseigneur died, she laughed.
"Five times five, and more, if we can get good horses enough!" said Captain Lukovitch.
"I should like to join you, but I must go back and tell General Stenovics that you will consider his message, madame," smiled Lepage.