The Prophet's Mantle

The Prophet's Mantle
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Hubert Bland

Edith Nesbit, Hubert Bland

The Prophet's Mantle

PROLOGUE

TO be the son of a noble of high position, to be the heir to vast estates in a western province, and to a palace in the capital, to have large sums safely invested in foreign banks, to be surrounded by every luxury that to most men makes life worth living, to be carefully inoculated with all the most cherished beliefs of the territorial aristocracy, and as carefully guarded from all liberal influences; to be all this does not generally lead a man to be a social reformer as well. Such causes, as a rule, do not produce a very revolutionary effect. But in Russia, tyranny, officialism, and the supreme sway of ignorance and brutality, seem to have reversed all ordinary rules, and upset all ordinary calculations. There the 'gentlemen of the pavement' are nobles, with a longer lineage than the Romanoffs, and progressive views find some of their most doughty champions in the ranks of the old nobility. So Count Michael Litvinoff was not such a startling phenomenon, nor such a glaring anomaly, as he would have been in any other country. His parents died when he was about eighteen, and after their death he spent most of his time in close study of physics, philosophy, and of the 'dismal science,' as expounded by its most advanced apostles. He wrote, too, extensively, though most of his works were published in countries where the censorship was not quite so strict as in his own. When he was about twenty-five, and was deep in the heart of his great work, 'The Social Enigma,' he woke up one morning with a conviction that all his last chapters were utter nonsense, and, what was worse, he couldn't for the life of him make out what they meant even when he read them over. Bewildered and anxious, he hastened to refer the matter to a personal friend and political ally, whose answer was brief and to the point.

'Nonsense? Why, the book's as clear as daylight, and as convincing as Euclid. You've been working too hard—overdoing it altogether. Go to the South of France for a month, and lose a few roubles at Monte Carlo. It will do you good.'

Michael Litvinoff took the first part of this advice; and though he did not take the second part, he did sometimes spend an hour in watching others lose their money.

One night he noticed a young man on whom fortune appeared to be frowning with more than her usual persistence and bitterness. Again and again he staked, and again and again he lost. At last he collected the few coins that remained of the good-sized heap with which he had begun, and staked them all. He lost again. He got up and walked out. Struck by the wild look in his eyes, Litvinoff followed him into the gardens of the Casino. At the end of a dark alley he stopped, pulled something from his breast, which might have been a cigar-case, opened it, and took out something which Litvinoff saw was not a cigar. The Count sprang forward, and knocked the other's hand up just in time to send a tiny bullet whizzing through the orange trees.

'Damn you!' cried the other, in English, turning furiously on Litvinoff. 'What the devil do you mean?'

'Come to my rooms,' said the Count simply; and the other, after a moment's hesitation and a glance of sullen defiance, actually obeyed, and in silence the two walked side by side out of the gardens.

When the door of his sitting-room was closed upon them, Count Litvinoff waved his new acquaintance to an easy-chair, and, taking one himself, remarked,—

'You're a nice sort of sportsman, aren't you? Suppose you have some tea and a cigar.'

'The cigar with pleasure; but tea is not much in my line.'

'Ah, I forgot; you English don't worship tea as we Russians do. By-the-way, as there's no one else to perform the ceremony, I may as well introduce myself. My name is Michael Litvinoff.'

The other looked up.

'Let me withdraw my refusal of your offer just now. I must confess that it would be pleasant to me to drink tea, or anything else in reason, in the company of the man who has written "Hopes and Fears for Liberty."'

The tea was made, and before the cigar was finished Litvinoff had learned not only that his new friend was a political sympathiser, but also the main facts in the young man's personal history.

His name was Armand Percival; his father English, his mother French. He had been brought up in Paris, and had been left an orphan with a small but sufficient property, which, with an energy and application worthy of a better cause, he had managed to scatter to the winds before a year was over. It was the last remnant of this little possession that he had brought to Monte Carlo in the desperate hope of retrieving his fallen fortunes, and with the fixed determination of accepting the ruling of fate and of ending his life, should that hope be unfulfilled.

'And really,' he ended, 'you would have done better to have been judiciously blind in the gardens just now, and have let the farce be played out. As it is, affairs are just as desperate as they were an hour ago, and I, perhaps thanks to your good tea, am not so desperate. When I leave you I must go and grovel under the orange trees till I find that pistol, for I haven't even the money to buy another.'

'It won't do to let the world lose a friend of liberty in this fashion. They are scarce enough. We can talk this over to-morrow. Stay here to-night. We'll hunt for your little toy by daylight if you like.'

They did find the pistol the next day. By that time they had had a good deal of talk together, and Armand Percival had become the private secretary of Count Michael Litvinoff.

Life on the ancestral estate of the Litvinoffs was utterly different from anything Percival had ever known before, but he had conceived an unbounded admiration and affection for his friend and employer, and he threw himself into his new duties with an ardour which made boredom simply impossible, and with a perseverance almost equalling that which he had displayed in the dissipation of his little fortune.

He helped Litvinoff in all his literary work, and was soon admitted to his fullest confidence. His new life was wrapped in an atmosphere of romance, and it contained a spice of danger which was perfectly congenial to his nature. The most commonplace action ceases to be commonplace when one knows that one risks one's life in doing it. He soon made rapid progress in the Russian language—Swinburne was given up for Pouchkine, Tchernychewsky displaced Victor Hugo, and Percival revelled in the trenchant muscular style of Bakounin as he had once delighted in the voluptuous sweetness of Théophile Gautier. He had always had a leaning towards Democracy, and a fitful kind of enthusiasm for popular liberty. The strong personal influence, the much bigger enthusiasm, and the intense reality of Michael Litvinoff's convictions served to swell what had been a little stream into a flood with a tolerably strong current.

Both men worked hard, and at the end of some twenty months 'The Social Enigma' was published in London and Paris. In this, Litvinoff's great work, he managed to keep just on the right side of the hedge, but he indemnified himself for this self-denial by writing a little pamphlet, called 'A Prophetic Vision,' which was published by the Revolutionary Secret Press, and circulated among the peasants, for whom it was specially written; and all those concerned in its publication flattered themselves that this time, at any rate, the chief of the secret police and his creatures, in spite of their having obtained a copy twenty-four hours after it was printed, were thoroughly off the track.

One night in winter the secretary sat at his old-fashioned desk in the oak-panelled room in the east wing of the mansion. Big logs glowed on the immense open hearth, in front of which a great hound stretched its lazy length. The secretary was correcting manuscripts in a somewhat desultory way, and varying the monotony of the penwork with frequent puffs of cigarette smoke. Some wine stood at his elbow.

Count Litvinoff had been away ten days, and would be away as long again. He had gone to a meeting of friends of the cause at Odessa, and Percival felt the strength of his enthusiasm beginning to give way before the appalling deadly dulness of his perfectly solitary life. There was not a creature to speak to within miles except the servants, and Russian servants, as a class, are not much of a resource against ennui.

He flung down his pen at last, leaned back in his chair, and poured himself out some more wine. He held it up to the light to admire its ruby colour, and then tasted it appreciatively.

'H'm! not bad. About the best thing in the place now its master's away. Heigho!—heigho! this is very slow, which, by-the-way, is rhyme.'

He spoke the words aloud, and the hound on the bearskin by the fire rose, stretched itself, and came slowly to lay its great head on his knee.

'Well, old girl, I daresay you'd like a little hunting for a change. Upon my soul it's almost a pity we're so very clever in keeping our literary achievements dark. We should have something exciting then at anyrate, and I'd give anything for a little excitement.'

'You're likely to have as much as you care about, then,' said another voice, which made Percival leap to his feet as the purple curtains that hung across the arched entrance to the sleeping-room were flung back, and a tall figure, muffled in furs, strode forward. The dog sprang at it.

'Down, Olga! Quiet, quiet, old lady!'

The coat was thrown off, and fell with a flop to the ground; and Litvinoff held out his hand to his secretary, who had started back and caught up the manuscripts, and was holding them behind him.

'Good heavens!' said Percival. 'Litvinoff, what is it? Are they after you? How did you come in?'

'I came in the way we must go out before another half-hour. They've found out the distinguished author of the "Vision," and they're anxious to secure the wonder. Lock that door; we don't want the servants.'

'It is locked. I don't do work of this sort with unlocked doors.'

Litvinoff glanced at the manuscript on the oak writing-table.

'We must collect all this and burn it, though I don't think we could be deeper damned than we are, even if we left it alone.'

'But where have you come from?' asked Percival, laying his hand on the other's shoulder. 'You're wet through. Have a drink,' and he poured out a tumbler of the Burgundy.

Litvinoff took it, and as he set down the glass replied, 'I fell into some water. There was snow enough to hide the ice.'

'Well, then, the very first thing is to change your clothes. Shall I get you dry ones, or will you go?'

'No, no; neither of us must leave this room. There may be a traitor in the house for aught I know. No one saw me come in. I shall do well enough.'

'You may as well be executed at once as be frozen to death in the course of the night. You must make shift with some of my things. You change while I see to the papers. We can talk while you're changing.'

Each went deftly and swiftly about what he had to do, and neither seemed to be in the least thrown off his balance. There was much less fuss than there is in some families every morning when the 'City man' is hurrying to catch his train. Drawer after drawer was emptied out on the wide hearthstones, and as stern denunciations of tyranny and eloquent appeals to the spirit of freedom vanished in smoke and sparks up the great chimney, Percival, a little puffed by his exertions, asked, 'How soon must we go? What's the exact state of things?'

'Our friends at Odessa were warned. There's an order for my arrest. I was to have been taken at Odessa, and long before this they'll have found out that I'm not there, and will have started after me here.'

'But how are we to go? Are we to walk, and fall into a succession of pools? Can't we get some horses from the stable?'

'I have a sleigh not a quarter of a mile off. Zabrousky is with it, waiting. We can reach Kilsen to-night, and get horses for the frontier. There is a revolver in the desk. The one in my belt is full of water. I've got two passports that will carry us over. You are Monsieur Mericourt of Paris, and I am Herr Baum of Düsseldorf, friends travelling.'

It was lucky that this room, the ordinary work-room of the friends, contained all their secrets and most of their 'portable property.'

'How about money?' asked the secretary.