A Rock in the Baltic

“The day after Jack arrived in London, there being nothing whatever to detain him in England, we set off together for St. Petersburg, and are now domiciled above his blacksmith shop. We are not on the fashionable side of the river, but our street is wide, and a very short walk brings us to a bridge which, being crossed, allows us to wander among palaces if we are so disposed. We have been here only four days, yet a good deal has already been accomplished. The influence of the Prince has smoothed my path for me. Yesterday I had an audience with a very important personage in the Foreign Office, and to-day I have seen an officer of high rank in the navy. The Prince warns me to mention no names, because letters, even to a young lady, are sometimes opened before they reach the person to whom they are addressed. These officials who have been kind enough to receive me are gentlemen so polished that I feel quite uncouth in their presence. I am a little shaky in my French, and feared that my knowledge of that language might not carry me through, but both of these officials speak English much better than I do, and they seemed rather pleased I had voluntarily visited St. Petersburg to explain that no discourtesy was meant in the action I had so unfortunately taken on the Baltic, and they gave me their warmest assurances they would do what they could to ease the tension between our respective countries. It seems that my business here will be finished much sooner than I expected, and then I am off on the quickest steamer for New York, in the hope of seeing Niagara Falls. I have met with one disappointment, however. Jack says he cannot possibly accompany me to the United States. I have failed to arouse in him the faintest interest about the electric works at Niagara. He insists that he is on the verge of a most important discovery, the nature of which he does not confide in me. I think he is working too hard, for he is looking quite haggard and overdone, but that is always the way with him. He throws himself heart and soul into any difficulty that confronts him, and works practically night and day until he has solved it.

“Yesterday he gave the whole street a fright. I had just returned from the Foreign Office, and had gone upstairs to my room, when there occurred an explosion that shook the building from cellar to roof, and sent the windows of our blacksmith’s shop rattling into the street. Jack had a most narrow escape, but is unhurt, although that fine beard of his was badly singed. He has had it shaved off, and now sports merely a mustache, looking quite like a man from New York. You wouldn’t recognize him if you met him on Broadway. The carpenters and glaziers are at work to-day repairing the damage. I told Jack that if this sort of thing kept on I’d be compelled to patronize another hotel, but he says it won’t happen again. It seems he was trying to combine two substances by adding a third, and, as I understood him, the mixing took place with unexpected suddenness. He has endeavored to explain to me the reaction, as he calls it, which occurred, but I seem to have no head for chemistry, and besides, if I am to be blown through the roof some of these days it will be no consolation to me when I come down upon the pavement outside to know accurately the different elements which contributed to my elevation. Jack is very patient in trying to instruct me, but he could not resist the temptation of making me ashamed by saying that your friend, Miss Katherine Kempt, would have known at once the full particulars of the reaction. Indeed, he says, she warned him of the disaster, by marking a passage in a book she gave him which foreshadowed this very thing. She must be a most remarkable young woman, and it shows how stupid I am that I did not in the least appreciate this fact when in her company.”

The next letter was received a week later. He was getting on swimmingly, both at the Foreign Office and at the Russian Admiralty. All the officials he had met were most courteous and anxious to advance his interests. He wrote about the misapprehensions held in England regarding Russia, and expressed his resolve to do what he could when he returned to remove these false impressions.

“Of course,” he went on, “no American or Englishman can support or justify the repressive measures so often carried out ruthlessly by the Russian police. Still, even these may be exaggerated, for the police have to deal with a people very much different from our own. It is rather curious that at this moment I am in vague trouble concerning the police. I am sure this place is watched, and I am also almost certain that my friend Jack is being shadowed. He dresses like a workman; his grimy blouse would delight the heart of his friend Tolstoi, but he is known to be a Prince, and I think the authorities imagine he is playing up to the laboring class, whom they despise. I lay it all to that unfortunate explosion, which gathered the police about us as if they had sprung from the ground. There was an official examination, of course, and Jack explained, apparently to everybody’s satisfaction, exactly how he came to make the mistake that resulted in the loss of his beard and his windows. I don’t know exactly how to describe the feeling of uneasiness which has come over me. At first sight this city did not strike me as so very much different from New York or London, and meeting, as I did, so many refined gentlemen in high places, I had come to think St. Petersburg was after all very much like Paris, or Berlin, or Rome. But it is different, and the difference makes itself subtly felt, just as the air in some coast towns of Britain is relaxing, and in others bracing. In these towns a man doesn’t notice the effect at first, but later on he begins to feel it, and so it is here in St. Petersburg. Great numbers of workmen pass down our street. They all seem to know who the Prince is, and the first days we were here, they saluted him with a deference which I supposed was due to his rank, in spite of the greasy clothes he wore. Since the explosion an indefinable change has come over these workmen. They salute the Prince still when we meet them on the street, but there is in their attitude a certain sly sympathy, if I may so term it; a bond of camaraderie which is implied in their manner rather than expressed. Jack says this is all fancy on my part, but I don’t think it is. These men imagine that Prince Ivan Lermontoff, who lives among them and dresses like them, is concocting some explosive which may yet rid them of the tyrants who make their lives so unsafe. All this would not matter, but what does matter is the chemical reaction, as I believe Jack would term it, which has taken place among the authorities. The authorities undoubtedly have their spies among the working-men, and know well what they are thinking about and talking about. I do not believe they were satisfied with the explanations Jack gave regarding the disaster. I have tried to impress upon Jack that he must be more careful in walking about the town, and I have tried to persuade him, after work, to dress like the gentleman he is, but he laughs at my fears, and assures me that I have gone from one extreme to the other in my opinion of St. Petersburg. First I thought it was like all other capitals; now I have swung too far in the other direction. He says the police of St. Petersburg would not dare arrest him, but I’m not so sure of that. A number of things occur to me, as usual, too late. Russia, with her perfect secret service system, must know that Prince Lermontoff has been serving in the British Navy. They know he returned to St. Petersburg, avoids all his old friends, and is brought to their notice by an inexplicable explosion, and they must be well aware, also, that he is in the company of the man who fired the shell at the rock in the Baltic, and that he himself served on the offending cruiser.

“As to my own affairs, I must say they are progressing slowly but satisfactorily; nevertheless, if Jack would leave St. Petersburg, and come with me to London or New York, where he could carry on his experiments quite as well, or even better than here, I should depart at once, even if I jeopardized my own prospects.”

The next letter, some time later, began:

“Your two charming notes to me arrived here together. It is very kind of you to write to a poor exile and cheer him in his banishment. I should like to see that dell where you have swung your hammock. Beware of Hendrick Hudson’s men, so delightfully written of by Washington Irving. If they offer you anything to drink, don’t you take it. Think how disastrous it would be to all your friends if you went to sleep in that hammock for twenty years. It’s the Catskills I want to see now rather than Niagara Falls. Your second letter containing the note from Captain Kempt to Jack was at once delivered to him. What on earth has the genial Captain written to effect such a transformation in my friend? He came to me that evening clothed in his right mind; in evening rig-out, with his decorations upon it, commanded me to get into my dinner togs, took me in a carriage across the river to the best restaurant St. Petersburg affords, and there we had a champagne dinner in which he drank to America and all things American. Whether it was the enthusiasm produced by Captain Kempt’s communication, or the effect of the champagne, I do not know, but he has reconsidered his determination not to return to the United States, and very soon we set out together for the west.

“I shall be glad to get out of this place. We were followed to the restaurant, I am certain, and I am equally certain that at the next table two police spies were seated, and these two shadowed us in a cab until we reached our blacksmith’s shop. It is a humiliating confession to make, but somehow the atmosphere of this place has got on my nerves, and I shall be glad to turn my back on it. Jack pooh-poohs the idea that he is in any danger. Even the Governor of St. Petersburg, he says, dare not lay a finger on him, and as for the Chief of Police, he pours scorn on that powerful official. He scouts the idea that he is being watched, and all-in-all is quite humorous at my expense, saying that my state of mind is more fitting for a schoolgirl than for a stalwart man over six feet in height. One consolation is that Jack now has become as keen for America as I am. I expect that the interview arranged for me to-morrow with a great government official will settle my own business finally one way or another. A while ago I was confident of success, but the repeated delays have made me less optimistic now, although the gentle courtesy of those in high places remains undiminished.

“Dear Miss Amhurst, I cannot afford to fall lower in your estimation than perhaps I deserve, so I must say that this fear which has overcome me is all on account of my friend, and not on my own behalf at all. I am perfectly safe in Russia, being a British subject. My cold and formal Cousin Thaxted is a member of the British Embassy here, and my cold and formal uncle is a Cabinet Minister in England, facts which must be well known to these spy-informed people of St. Petersburg; so I am immune. The worst they could do would be to order me out of the country, but even that is unthinkable. If any one attempted to interfere with me, I have only to act the hero of the penny novelette, draw myself up to my full height, which, as you know, is not that of a pigmy, fold my arms across my manly chest, cry, ‘Ha, ha!’ and sing ‘Rule Britannia,’ whereupon the villains would wilt and withdraw. But Jack has no such security. He is a Russian subject, and, prince or commoner, the authorities here could do what they liked with him. I always think of things when it is too late to act. I wish I had urged Jack ashore at Bar Harbor, and induced him to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. I spoke to him about that coming home in the carriage, and to my amazement he said he wished he had thought of it himself at the time we were over there.

“But enough of this. I daresay he is in no real danger after all. Nevertheless, I shall induce him to pack to-morrow, and we will make for London together, so my next letter will bear a British stamp, and I assure you the air of England will taste good to one benighted Britisher whose name is Alan Drummond.”

CHAPTER X —CALAMITY UNSEEN

THE habit of industry practised from childhood to maturity is not obliterated by an unexpected shower of gold. Dorothy was an early riser, and one morning, entering the parlor from her room she saw, lying upon the table, a letter with a Russian stamp, but addressed in an unknown hand to her friend Katherine Kempt. She surmised that here was the first communication from the Prince, and expected to learn all about it during the luncheon hour at the latest. But the morning and afternoon passed, and Katherine made no sign, which Dorothy thought was most unusual. All that day and the next Katherine went about silent, sedate and serious, never once quoting the humorous Mr. Gilbert. On the third morning Dorothy was surprised, emerging from her room, to see Katherine standing by the table, a black book in her hand. On the table lay a large package from New York, recently opened, displaying a number of volumes in what might be termed serious binding, leather or cloth, but none showing that high coloring which distinguishes the output of American fiction.

“Good-morning, Dorothy. The early bird is after the worm of science.” She held forth the volume in her hand. “Steele’s ‘Fourteen-Weeks’ Course in Chemistry,’ an old book, but fascinatingly written. Dorothy,” she continued with a sigh, “I want to talk seriously with you.”

“About chemistry?” asked Dorothy.

“About men,” said Katherine firmly, “and, incidentally, about women.”

“An interesting subject, Kate, but you’ve got the wrong text-books. You should have had a parcel of novels instead.”

Dorothy seated herself, and Katherine followed her example, Steele’s “Fourteen-Weeks’ Course” resting in her lap.

“Every man,” began Katherine, “should have a guardian to protect him.”

“From women?”

“From all things that are deceptive, and not what they seem.”

“That sounds very sententious, Kate. What does it mean?”

“It means that man is a simpleton, easily taken in. He is too honest for crafty women, who delude him shamelessly.”

“Whom have you been deluding, Kate?”

“Dorothy, I am a sneak.”

Dorothy laughed.

“Indeed, Katherine, you are anything but that. You couldn’t do a mean or ungenerous action if you tried your best.”

“You think, Dorothy, I could reform?” she asked, breathlessly, leaning forward.

“Reform? You don’t need to reform. You are perfectly delightful as you are, and I know no man who is worthy of you. That’s a woman’s opinion; one who knows you well, and there is nothing dishonest about the opinion, either, in spite of your tirade against our sex.”

“Dorothy, three days ago, be the same more or less, I received a letter from John Lamont.”

“Yes, I saw it on the table, and surmised it was from him.”

“Did you? You were quite right. The reading of that letter has revolutionized my character. I am a changed woman, Dorothy, and thoroughly ashamed of myself. When I remember how I have deluded that poor, credulous young man, in making him believe I understood even the fringe of what he spoke about, it fills me with grief at my perfidy, but I am determined to amend my ways if hard study will do it, and when next I see him I shall talk to him worthily like a female Thomas A. Edison.”

Again Dorothy laughed.

“Now, that’s heartless of you, Dorothy. Don’t you see I’m in deadly earnest? Must my former frivolity dog my steps through life? When I call to mind that I made fun to you of his serious purpose in life, the thought makes me cringe and despise myself.”

“Nonsense, Kate, don’t go to the other extreme. I remember nothing you have said that needs withdrawal. You have never made a malicious remark in your life, Kate. Don’t make me defend you against yourself. You have determined, I take it, to plunge into the subjects which interest the man you are going to marry. That is a perfectly laudable ambition, and I am quite sure you will succeed.”

“I know I don’t deserve all that, Dorothy, but I like it just the same. I like people to believe in me, even if I sometimes lose faith in myself. May I read you an extract from his letter?”

“Don’t if you’d rather not.”

“I’d rather, Dorothy, if it doesn’t weary you, but you will understand when you have heard it, in what a new light I regard myself.”

The letter proved to be within the leaves of the late Mr. Steele’s book on Chemistry, and from this volume she extracted it, pressed it for a moment against her breast with her open hand, gazing across at her friend.

“Dorothy, my first love-letter!”

She turned the crisp, thin pages, and began:

“‘You may recollect that foot-note which you marked with red ink in the book you so kindly gave me on the subject of Catalysis, which did not pertain to the subject of the volume in question, and yet was so illuminative to any student of chemistry. They have done a great deal with Catalysis in Germany with amazing commercial results, but the subject is one so recent that I had not previously gone thoroughly into it.’”

Katherine paused in the reading, and looked across at her auditor, an expression almost of despair in her eloquent eyes.

“Dorothy, what under heaven is Catalysis?”

“Don’t ask me,” replied Dorothy, suppressing a laugh, struck by the ludicrousness of any young and beautiful woman pressing any such sentiments as these to her bosom.

“Have you ever heard of a Catalytic process, Dorothy?” beseeched Katherine. “It is one of the phrases he uses.”

“Never; go on with the letter, Kate.”

“‘I saw at once that if I could use Catalytic process which would be instantaneous in its solidifying effect on my liquid limestone, instead of waiting upon slow evaporation, I could turn out building stone faster than one can make brick. You, I am sure, with your more alert mind, saw this when you marked that passage in red.’”

“Oh, Dorothy,” almost whimpered Katherine, leaning back, “how can I go on? Don’t you see what a sneak I am? It was bad enough to cozen with my heedless, random markings of the book, but to think that line of red ink might have been marked in his blood, for I nearly sent the poor boy to his death.”

“Go on, Katherine, go on, go on!”

“‘In my search for a Catalytic whose substance would remain unchanged after the reaction, I quite overlooked the chemical ingredients of one of the materials I was dealing with, and the result was an explosion which nearly blew the roof off the shop, and quite startled poor Drummond out of a year’s growth. However, no real harm has been done, while I have been taught a valuable lesson; to take into account all the elements I am using. I must not become so intent on the subject I am pursuing as to ignore everything else.’ And now, Dorothy, I want to ask you a most intimate question, which I beg of you to answer as frankly as I have confided in you.”