John Ironside - The Red Symbol

My ingenuous companion seemed embarrassed by the question.

“Well, no; though I’d have liked to. But – fact is, I – well, of course, I wasn’t alone, don’t you know; and though she was a jolly little girl – she – I couldn’t very well have introduced her to Miss Pendennis. Anyhow, I shouldn’t have had the cheek to speak to her; she was with an awfully swagger set. Count Loris Solovieff was one of ’em. He’s really the Grand Duke Loris, you know, though he prefers to go about incog. more often than not. He was talking to Miss Pendennis. Here’s the office. I won’t come in. Perhaps I’ll turn up and see you off to-night. If I don’t, good-bye and good luck; and thanks awfully for the lunch.”

I was thankful to be rid of him. I dare not question him further. I could not trust myself to do so; for his words had summoned that black horde of doubts to the attack once more, and this time they would not be vanquished.

Small wonder that I had not found Anne Pendennis at Berlin! What was she doing at Ostend, in company with “a swagger set” that included a Russian Grand Duke? I had heard many rumors concerning this Loris, whom I had never seen; rumors that were the reverse of discreditable to him. He was said to be different from most of his illustrious kinsfolk, inasmuch that he was an enthusiastic disciple of Tolstoy, and had been dismissed from the Court in disgrace, on account of his avowed sympathy with the revolutionists.

But what connection could he have with Anne Pendennis?

And she, – she! Were there any limits to her deceit, her dissimulation? She was a traitress certainly; perhaps a murderess.

And yet I loved her, even now. I think even more bitter than my disillusion was the conviction that I must still love her, though I had lost her – forever!

I took a cab from the newspaper office to Von Eckhardt’s address, – a flat in the west end.

I found him, as Medhurst had reported, considerably agitated. He is a good-hearted chap, and a brilliant writer, though he’s too apt to allow his feelings to carry him away; for he’s even more sentimental than the average German, and entirely lacking in the characteristic German phlegm. He is as vivacious and excitable as a Frenchman, and I fancy there’s a good big dash of French blood in his pedigree, though he’d be angry if any one suggested such a thing!

He did not know me for a moment, but when I told him who I was he welcomed me effusively.

“Ah, now I remember; we met in London, when I was there with my poor friend. ‘We heard at midnight the clock,’ as our Shakespeare says. And you are going to take his place? I have not yet the shock recovered of his death; from it I never shall recover. O judgment, to brutish beasts hast thou fled, and their reason men have lost. My heart, with my friend Carson, in its coffin lies, and me, until it returns, you must excuse!”

I surmised that he was quoting Shakespeare again, as he had to Medhurst. I wanted to smile, though I was so downright wretched. He would air what he conceived to be his English, and he was funny!

“Would you mind speaking German?” I asked, for there was a good deal I wanted to learn from him, and I guessed I should get at it all the sooner if I could head him off from his quotations. His face fell, and I hastened to add —

“Your English is splendid, of course, and you’ve no possible need to practise it; but my German’s rusty, and I’d be glad to speak a bit. Just you pull me up, if you can’t understand me, and tell me what’s wrong.”

My German is as good as most folks’, any day, but he just grabbed at my explanation, and accepted it with a kindly condescension that was even funnier than his sentimental vein. Therefore the remainder of our conversation was in his own language.

“I hear you’ve left the Zeitung ,” I remarked. “Going on another paper?”

“The editor of the Zeitung dismissed me,” he answered explosively. “Pig that he is, he would not understand the reason that led to my ejection from Russia!”

“Conducted to the frontier, and shoved over, eh? How did that happen?” I asked.

“Because I demanded justice on the murderers of my friend,” he declared vehemently. “I went to the chief of the police, and he laughed at me. There are so many murders in Petersburg, and what is one Englishman more or less? I went to the British Embassy. They said the matter was being investigated, and they emphatically snubbed me. They are so insular, so narrow-minded; they could not imagine how strong was the bond of friendship between Carson and me. He loved our Shakespeare, even as I love him.”

“You wrote to Lord Southbourne,” I interrupted bluntly. “And you sent him a portrait, – a woman’s portrait that poor Carson had been carrying about in his breast-pocket. Now why did you do that? And who is the woman?”

His answer was startling.

“I sent it to him to enable him to recognize her, and warn her if he could find her. I knew she was in London, and in danger of her life; and I knew of no one whom I could summon to her aid, as Carson would have wished, except Lord Southbourne, and I only knew him as my friend’s chief.”

“But you never said a word of all this in the note you sent to Southbourne with the photograph. I know, for he showed it me.”

“That is so; I thought it would be safer to send the letter separately; I put a mere slip in with the photograph.”

Had Southbourne received that letter? If so, why had he not mentioned it to me, I thought; but I said aloud: “Who is the woman? What is her name? What connection had she with Carson?”

“He loved her, as all good men must love her, as I myself, who have seen her but once, – so beautiful, so gracious, so devoted to her country, to the true cause of freedom, – ‘a most triumphant lady’ as our Sha – ”

“Her name, man; her name!” I cried somewhat impatiently.

“She is known under several,” he answered a trifle sulkily. “I believe her real name is Anna Petrovna – ”

That conveyed little; it is as common a name in Russia as “Ann Smith” would be in England, and therefore doubtless a useful alias.

“But she has others, including two, what is it you call them – neck names?”

“Nicknames; well, go on.”

“In Russia those who know her often speak of her by one or the other, – ‘La Mort,’ or ‘La Vie,’ it is safer there to use a pseudonym. ‘La Mort’ because they say, – they are superstitious fools, – that wherever she goes, death follows, or goes before; and ‘La Vie’ because of her courage, her resource, her enthusiasm, her so-inspiring personality. Those who know, and therefore love her most, call her that. But, as I have said, she has many names, an English one among them; I have heard it, but I cannot recall it. That is one of my present troubles.”

“Was it ‘Anne Pendennis,’ or anything like that?” I asked, huskily.

“Ach, that is it; you know her, then?”

“Yes, I know her; though I had thought her an English woman.”

“That is her marvel!” he rejoined eagerly. “In France she is a Frenchwoman; in Germany you would swear she had never been outside the Fatherland; in England an English maiden to the life, and in Russia she is Russian, French, English, German, – American even, with a name to suit each nationality. That is how she has managed so long to evade her enemies. The Russian police have been on her track these three years; but they have never caught her. She is wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove – ”

I had to cut his rhapsodies short once more.

“What is the peril that threatens her? She was in England until recently; the Secret Police could not touch her there?”