Marie Tarnowska

His friend Paul! True. He was a friend, an intimate friend, of Kamarowsky's. How could I ever have had the idea that he would keep our secret, that he would not betray my intended flight? It was a crazy notion of Elise's. I cast a significant glance at her, and was silent.

He prescribed bromides and recommended absolute rest of body and mind. Scarcely was he gone when to my astonishment the long curtain that hung in front of an alcove where Elise kept my dresses moved slightly. Then they parted, and Prilukoff appeared.

Ah! he had not gone out as he had pretended when the doctor had been announced! He had hidden himself. What if I had spoken?

My fear of him turned to frenzy: I thought him endowed with supernatural powers. My room seemed to be filled with innumerable Prilukoffs peering out at me from every corner. I clung to Elise. “We must go away, we must go away to-morrow,” I whispered. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, madame,” was Elise's firm and humble reply.

“Send to fetch little Tioka; send for him at once.”

“Yes, madame.”

Later, while she was dressing me, she stooped to draw on my stocking—Prilukoff was reading in the adjoining room—and she murmured:

“We have no money to travel with.”

“You must ask Count Kamarowsky for some; he will give you all we want,” I whispered.

“Not without asking what it is for. We shall need a great deal.”

“Oh, Elise, think, think of something,” I sighed, and felt myself turning faint.

“What are you two mumbling and plotting?” growled Prilukoff's voice from the adjoining room.

We were silent.

Tenderly and anxiously assisted by Kamarowsky and Elise I went down to the terrace that day, and spent the afternoon reclining on a couch in the mild spring sunshine, with eyes closed and every limb relaxed. I thought of our impending flight. Kamarowsky, seated beside me, kept silence, thinking I was asleep.

Shortly afterwards I heard Tioka's quick little footsteps running across the terrace towards us. Kamarowsky doubtless warned him to keep very quiet, for I heard him stepping nearer on tip-toe, and without a word he clambered on to Kamarowsky's knee and laid his fair head confidingly against his shoulder.

Beneath my drooping lashes, I gazed at them, and thought of the hideous plot that was weaving itself round this kind and generous man, who all unknowing pressed forward towards treachery and death; and I thought of the iniquitous oath which had placed a circlet of blood round that fair childish head.

With a sob I raised myself and stretched out my arms to them both.

········

It was eleven o'clock on the following night. Elise put out the lights and prepared the bromide and water on my little table. Prilukoff was rambling backwards and forwards between bedroom and drawing-room, smoking a cigarette.

“Elise,” I whispered. “Are we ready?”

Elise nodded.

“Elise, when? When is it to be?”

“Hush, madame. Later on, towards morning; as soon”—with her head she indicated Prilukoff—“as soon as he is asleep.”

“But he never sleeps, Elise!”

Elise looked at me. “He will sleep to-night,” she said; and there was an icy hardness in her tone that I had never heard before.

“Why will he sleep? How can you know?”

Before she could answer, Prilukoff reappeared in the doorway. He had a glass of vodka in his hand.

“This accursed throat!” he said, throwing his cigarette away and putting his hand to his neck. “Everything I swallow burns and scratches me.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “You can go, Elise. I shall see to anything your mistress needs.”

Elise did not reply. With a hard, pinched face she poured the water into my glass and dropped two little bromide tablets into it. Then with her back turned to Prilukoff she fixed her eyes upon me and moved her lips: “Do not drink.” She formulated the words clearly but without sound. I stared at her in bewilderment, and she made the movement with her lips again: “Do not drink anything.” Then seeing that, notwithstanding my astonishment, I had understood her, she said respectfully: “Good night, madame,” and left the room.

She went out by the bath-room door, of which she always kept the key.

Prilukoff dropped into an armchair and yawned. “This accursed throat,” he repeated.

He poured out a glass of water from the crystal carafe on my table and swallowed it at a gulp. Then he coughed violently.

“The devil!” he exclaimed. “This too! It tastes like some beastly concoction of—of chloral.” He coughed and yawned again. Then he leaned his head against my bed. A few moments later he started up.

“The devil!” he repeated, rising to his feet. I saw him go to the little table on which Elise every evening left some coffee ready on a spirit lamp; he lit it, and I dreamily watched the thin blue waverings of the flame. While the coffee was heating Prilukoff constantly cleared his throat, with the same murmured oath. Now he poured the smoking coffee into a cup and sipped it. “By all the infernal powers—” he cried, and turned suddenly to look at me.

I did not dare to shut my eyes, much as I should have liked to do so. He came up to my bed and bending over me looked me in the face. Then he touched my shoulder.

“See here!”

I drooped my eyelids drowsily. “Yes, dear! What is it?”

“Just taste this coffee,” and he pushed the cup against my lips.

I sat up and with a smile took the cup from his hands.

“It burns,” I said, barely touching it with my lips and making a little grimace.

“Drink it!” he roared in a terrible voice, though his eyes were half shut as if he could not keep awake.

I took a sip of the coffee: it scraped my throat like a rake. I thought of Elise and understood. For a moment the idea flashed through my brain to say that I found nothing the matter with it. Then I changed my mind.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What have they put in this coffee? It tastes like poison!”

Prilukoff bent still closer over me.

“If you had said it was all right, I should have strangled you.”

My teeth chattered, partly through the taste of the chloral, partly through my fear of Prilukoff.

“Have you drunk much of it?” I gasped. “You ought to call for help.”

But Prilukoff had sunk into an armchair, and already, with his head rolled back and his mouth open, he slept.

XXXV