The Adventures of an Ugly Girl

“Look up, my darling, you are safe now,” were the next words of which my returning consciousness was cognizant. Opening my eyes, I saw those of Sergius bent anxiously upon me, and thankfully realized that I was embraced by his strong arms and pillowed upon his warm breast. Surely it was as he said. I was no longer in danger, and might give all necessary explanations without the paralyzing presence of an assembly which put patriotism before every other duty to humanity.

“Thank God, I have found you!” I murmured, while the tears of relief flowed down my cheeks. “Oh, Sergius! how could you leave me without one word of farewell?”

“I was compelled in honor to come here without an instant’s delay. And it was hard enough to tear myself away on my wedding-day, without undergoing the agony of parting. Besides, I knew that you would refuse to let me come without you, and I dreaded to involve you in danger.”

“Yet you did not dread danger for my husband, who is dearer to me than life.”

“Indeed I did! But I dreaded dishonor still more. And there was another danger of which you are doubtless still ignorant. Had I not answered in person the telegram which summoned me hither, sudden death, at the hands of outraged patriotism, would have overtaken me in England. For our Society, which may strike you as a small one, has its ramifications all over Europe, and it never spares those who break their oath of obedience.”

“But you barely escaped from St. Petersburg without falling into the hands of enemies, and even the strictest Society could hardly accuse you of leaving the country to evade your oath.”

By this time all haziness had left my mind, and I felt altogether stronger. I raised myself into a sitting posture, and prepared for my first attempt to wean my husband from his determination to do all which his associates wished him to do. I looked around me to see that we were quite alone, in a small room, and that the door, which no doubt communicated with the larger apartment, was firmly closed. Then, with momentarily augmenting excitement, I began to tell Sergius all about my own journey hither.

“And do you know my principal object in following you?” I continued. “Nina told me that the special duty which demanded your presence here was the removal of the czar. For God’s sake, don’t lend yourself to so dreadful a deed! I could not bear to think of you as a murderer.”

Even as I made this appeal I saw that it was utterly useless. Sergius had pushed his domino away from his face, and there was nothing to hinder me from noting that he had blanched considerably and that his eyes gathered an expression of mingled anger and anxiety.

“Dora,” he said firmly, “you are treading on ground that is more dangerous than you dream of. Nina was a very foolish woman to make such a wild assertion, and you are still more foolish to act upon her information. Had I deemed it advisable, I would gladly have brought you with me. As I did not think such a course wise, I overconfidently imagined that my friends would have used some measure of discreetness. I certainly did not give Nina the particulars of my mission to Moscow, and even if I had done so, I should never have dreamed that she would betray my confidence.”

“Indeed, Sergius,” I protested, “Nina is the last woman in the world to betray her friends, and it was because she saw me tortured with all sorts of conflicting fears that she showed me the purely political nature of your sudden departure, which she no doubt knew without fresh information from you. And she certainly never dreamed that I would follow you, for I did not give her the slightest hint of my intention to do so. It was surely better for her to enlighten me than to leave me a prey to the misery of unexplained desertion.”

“Perhaps you are right, Dora. All the same, your arrival here will certainly complicate matters for me. Still, I can understand your desire to learn as much as possible—and, why, I do believe you must have been suffering from jealousy! Tell me, is that so?”

“Well, I knew that you had seen a woman at Hyde Park Corner, whom you would have liked to avoid while with me. She knew you, I could tell. And she is so much handsomer than I am that you must own it was natural for me to imagine her power to be of a different nature to what it has proved.”

“How do you know yet that she had anything to do with my sudden departure?”

“I don’t know. I can only conjecture.”

“Well, I will tell you. You have gone through such a bitter trial, and have suffered so much, that I cannot be angry with you, even for doubting my love. Vera Vassoffskoy is a member of our Fraternity. So also is her husband. Both have sad reason to hate an oppressive government, for it has robbed them both of kindred and fortune. But Madame Vassoffskoy, though at one with us in all our general plans, hates individual bloodshed. She was on a secret mission to London when she saw me. Before she left Moscow, she knew that the ballot had fallen upon me, with reversion to her husband in the event of my failure to appear on the scene in time. I shrank back when I saw her, for I regarded it as an evil omen to be confronted with my secret obligations on my wedding-day. But she was determined not to lose sight of me, and tracked us home by means of a cab which she called to her assistance. Having found my address, her next proceeding was to have an official message conveyed to me, commanding my instant return to Russia, to fulfill the great plan for relieving the sufferings of our oppressed country. Death is the reward of disobedience to the mandates of the Executive Council, and my grief at leaving you at such a time showed me that I could not have done my duty to my country if I had witnessed your distress. Hark! there is the signal! Our time is up, and we seem to have explained so little. And you still look so ill!”

“Indeed, I am quite recovered now, and will give you no trouble. To be with you is all I want to make me happy and well.”

It was even so. I felt that, by his side, I could bid defiance to the threatenings of fate. Sergius tightened his arms round me and kissed me with all a young husband’s devotion. But his caresses were rather those of one who is bidding a painful farewell than of one just reunited to the idol of his heart, after a trying separation.

“You must trust me, darling, whatever befalls,” he whispered; and, could it be true? were those tears of grief which trickled down his cheeks? I stood up in suddenly returned alarm, but before I could question him at all there was a much louder knock at the door than the first one had been. Another second, and it was thrown open. Sergius hastily replaced his domino, and, kissing me once more, said: “I am ready.”

The next moment I was standing alone in the little room. Sergius had gone. The door was closed and bolted, and I was a prisoner once more.

Still I did not, for some time, realize that my isolation and detention were to be of a prolonged nature. But when more than an hour passed away, and I had listened to the gradual dying out of all sounds in the outer room, I was seized by a species of panic. Was it possible that I had really brought danger upon the head of Sergius, and that he had already paid the penalty for my rashness?

I had seen with what little compunction the presumed spy had been dispatched, and my despairing fancy pictured my dear one already weltering in his blood, while I would perhaps be left to die in this cell of cold and starvation. There was a little light available for me, though not within my reach. It shone through an elevated grating which communicated with the larger apartment, and after a time this circumstance afforded me a little hope.

I concluded that, though the meeting was probably over, the place could not be entirely deserted. Otherwise the lights, feeble as they were, would most likely be extinguished. Then a new horror seized me. How many murders might have been committed on these premises! And how many corpses might be buried within a few yards of me!

I am not superstitious, in the general acceptation of the term. But I always had a horror of the near presence of death, and even the most strong-minded among those who may become acquainted with my history will admit that my circumstances and surroundings were uncanny enough to raise the hair of a much less nervous individual than myself.

My watch told me that I had been immured in this underground room for two hours, and I was feeling faint and sick with hunger; for it was now verging on dawn, and I had had very little food all the previous day, being too much engrossed in watching for Sergius to attend properly to my own bodily needs. Sleep refused me its refreshing aid, though I would gladly have welcomed the temporary oblivion of my surroundings which it might have given me.

After a time I fell into a species of semi-stupor, from which I was roused by the entrance of Sergius into my prison.

I am not sure that coherency of thought was not banished from me even after my husband had pressed wine and food upon my acceptance. I know now that I mechanically availed myself of the refreshment brought to me, but I cannot recall what transpired for a while, until a flood of tears relieved my brain from the pressure which the strength of my emotions exercised upon it.

Then I was able to comprehend all that Sergius had to tell me, and to realize how very nearly I had compassed his ruin, though I did not know until afterward what a battle he had had with the sterner members of the Society, whose motto was “Death to everything through which our plans may risk betrayal.”

Briefly, the position was this.

Sergius had been strictly cross-examined concerning me, and had been able to convince his interrogators that I was really his wife. They were also satisfied as to my fidelity and attachment to him. But they declined to trust my discretion at a time when a word might betray their plans, and ruin their hopes of revolutionizing the country. It was therefore decreed that I was to be kept a close prisoner until such time as Sergius should have fulfilled the obligations that the Society demanded of him.

“In other words,” I said, with a shudder, “I am never to recover my freedom until you have committed a hideous crime that would haunt us all our lives. I would rather die at once.”

“My poor child! you speak out of the ignorance born of residence in a free and happy country,” said Sergius sadly. “Could you but faintly realize the horror and misery that oppress the subjects of the czar, you would pray with us for the abolition of such a monstrous anomaly as a fabulously wealthy ruler at the head of a nation that is ground down to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. While incredible sums are exacted for the support of a prodigal court, each year sees a huge holocaust of the victims of starvation and oppression! Our rulers revel in costly frivolities, while famine depopulates our country by tens of thousands! No other European state can show such a perfect system of barbaric misgovernment and corrupt officialism as Russia. If any of the czar’s subjects show symptoms of originality or strivings after a better state of things, they are promptly consigned either to the state prison or to banishment, and all national reform has to be made the subject of secret plottings by a handful of men and women into whom patriotism or special provocation have instilled a greater amount of bravery than is possessed by their downtrodden and broken-spirited compatriots. The scoundrels whom despotism has put in office abuse their privileges to a brutal extent that would be tolerated nowhere else in Europe, and must come to an end even here some day. Our newspaper press is a dead letter, for it is so supervised and gagged that nothing even approaching a hint of discontent at the existing state of things is allowed to appear. A strict supervision is also exercised upon all our literature, and even that which is imported from other countries is examined so jealously that any article or paragraph which can be construed into disapproval of Russian politics is promptly detected and blocked out. Police spies intrude in our innermost sanctums, and true domestic privacy is practically unknown among us. Nor is this all. Physical oppression has been the heritage of us Russians for ages, and the slightest excuse is good enough to justify the confiscation of our property and the deprivation of our liberty. Liberty! why, even liberty of conscience is not allowed us, and we are asked to believe that God has gifted our cursed tyrants with the knowledge of the only true way in which to worship him. Whether it be Stundist or Jew, it is all the same. The Orthodox priests, who insult Christ by calling themselves Christians, are ever ready to instigate an ignorant mob into deeds of violence which are a disgrace to humanity. Dare to differ from them in creed, and you find yourself singled out for additional outrage. Your house will be wrecked, your home destroyed; your work taken from you, and all manner of vile insult heaped upon you. If you have wives and daughters, God might help them, but you can’t, and the priest won’t raise voice or finger to save them from the atrocities of the mob, which must be allowed to reward itself somehow for its readiness to support the Orthodox Church.”

“But surely the government would not refuse to punish those guilty of such shameful deeds?”

“My dear child, the government and the Church will never fight each other, and the only reward which a complaint against the latter would bring forth would be the ruin of the man who ventured to make the complaint.”

“But the czar. He is so powerful that a word from him would put an end to many of these evils. Surely if he knew—”

“The czar! He must know. He has been appealed to too often to be able to plead ignorance. But if he, who is nominally at the head of so huge a nation as ours, and who receives imperial emoluments for doing his duty to that nation, will not take the trouble to make himself acquainted with the needs of the subjects whom he is paid to govern and protect, then it is high time that he be made to give place to some one who will be honest enough to do the work for which he is paid. We want peace and prosperity at home, while our rulers neglect us in order to annex other provinces and enlarge an empire that is already too unwieldy.”

“Yet if this emperor is removed by violence, he will be succeeded by his son, who will probably govern just as he is doing, so that his murder would only prove a fruitless crime.”

“Not so. If his violent death does not frighten his successor into more humane methods of government, he will be removed in his turn. And so it will go on, until the rights of an oppressed people win the recognition that is demanded. You feel horrified at the idea of one man being turned over to avenging justice. How can you put his life in the scale against the lives and souls of the thousands who are the daily victims of governmental oppression and official cruelty? ‘Vox Populi, vox Dei’ is our watchword, and God and the People shall not always lift up their voice in vain!”

Oh, how noble my husband looked as he thus eloquently vindicated the right of the people to insist upon justice! And how strange it was that I, who had come to Russia fully resolved upon converting my husband to my own peaceable ways of thinking, should end by sharing his enthusiasm and by believing as he did. Yet so it was, and in defiance of possible subsequent conscience pricks, I began to look upon my husband’s contemplated act as that of a brave, self-sacrificing hero, rather than as the assassination against which my soul had revolted. Since that eventful night a reaction has set in, and I often thank God that, after all, no bloodshed stains my husband’s hands.

“You will feel your isolation very much, I am afraid,” said Sergius, after we had, by tacit consent, tabooed further conversation anent the czar.

“If I can see you often, I will try to be as patient as possible. But I cannot help being anxious for your safety while you are away from me.”

“My dear girl you need not worry at all on my account. You have seen for yourself how carefully I am guarded.”

“Yes, that is true. But I also know that your position must be a precarious one, or you would not be under the necessity of maintaining the disguise in which I saw you. You are, too, quite aware that you may be discovered and arrested at any moment.”

“How do you come to that conclusion?”

“Without much difficulty. Your manner, after leaving the hotel where I first saw you, showed that you feared to be tracked. Even the fact that your associates had mounted guard over you, and saved you from the government spy who was following you, is proof of the great danger you are in. How thankful I shall be when we are safe in England again!”

“So shall I, my darling. Meanwhile, we must make the best of the situation, which will perhaps not be quite so dreary for you as you imagine. You are to exchange this comfortless place for a room in another part of the building, where you will have every indulgence but that of perfect freedom until it is deemed safe to permit you to go abroad again. Ah! there is the signal. Your fresh quarters are ready. Come, Dora, but remember that you must not speak by the way.”

A few seconds later the door opened, and Sergius led me past two figures holding lighted candles, and in the wake of another, who pushed aside a heavy curtain, beyond which was a narrow, tortuous staircase, up which we climbed until my weary limbs found it almost impossible to go further. Fortunately, we had nearly reached the top, and Sergius half carried me into a room which was the picture of warmth and comfort.

A bright fire burned in the stove, and its enlivening rays made me suddenly conscious of the fact that I was shivering with cold. I sank quite exhausted upon a comfortable lounge, and it was like a transition to Paradise to find myself housed again in a haven of warmth and comfort, with the grateful odors of daintily prepared food assailing me. Yet I could neither eat nor drink of that which was set before me, and, so fatigued was I by my experiences, that I yielded to the languor which overpowered me, and was just conscious of being kissed affectionately by my husband, and covered over with multitudinous wraps, when I sank into a sound and refreshing slumber, from which I did not awake for several hours.