William Le Queux - The Price of Power

“This accursed system of police-spies and agents-provocateurs manufactures criminals. Can a man wrongly arrested and sent to the mines remain a loyal subject?”

“The many have to suffer for the few. It is the same in all lands,” was his reply. “But really the matter doesn’t concern me, my dear Trewinnard.”

“It will concern you one day when you are blown up as I have been,” I exclaimed savagely.

Shortly afterwards he left, and for hours I lay thinking, my eyes upon that square gilt holy picture before me, the ikon placed before the eyes of every patient in the hospital. Nurses in grey and soldiers in white cotton tunics passed and repassed through the small ward of which I was the only occupant.

The pains in my head were excruciating. I felt as though my skull had been filled with boiling water. Sometimes my thoughts were perfectly normal, yet at others my mind seemed full of strange, almost ridiculous phantasies. My whole career, from the days when I had been a clerk in that sombre old-fashioned room at Downing Street, through my service at Madrid, Brussels, Berlin and Rome to Petersburg – all went before me, like a cinema-picture. I looked upon myself as others saw me – as a man never sees himself in normal circumstances – a mere struggling entity upon the tide of that sea of life called To-day.

We are so very apt to think ourselves indispensable to the world. Yet we have only to think again, and remember that the unknown to-morrow may bring, us death, and with it everlasting oblivion, as far as this world is concerned. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were the two greatest figures of our time; yet a month after their deaths people had to recall who they were, and what they had actually done to earn distinction.

These modern days of rush and hurry are forgetful, irresponsible days, when public opinion is manufactured by those who rule the halfpenny press, and when the worst and most baneful commodities may be foisted upon the public by means of efficient advertisement.

The cleverest swindler may by payment become a baronet of England, even a peer of the realm, providing he subscribes sufficient to Somebody’s Newspaper Publicity Agency; and any blackguard with money or influence may become a Justice of the Peace and sentence his fellows to fourteen days’ imprisonment.

But the reader will forgive me. Perhaps remarks such as these ill become a diplomat – one who is supposed to hold no personal opinions. Yet I assert that to-day there is no diplomat serving Great Britain in a foreign country who is not tired and disgusted with his country’s antiquated methods and her transparent weaknesses.

The papers speak vigorously of Britain’s power, but men in my service – those who know real international truths – smile at the defiant and well-balanced sentences of the modern journalist, whose blissful ignorance of the truth is ofttimes so pathetic. Yes, it is only the diplomat serving at a foreign Court who can view Great Britain from afar, and accurately gauge her position among modern nations.

For ten days I remained in that whitewashed ward, many of my friends visiting me, and Stoyanovitch coming daily with a pleasant message from His Majesty. Then one bright morning the doctors declared me to be fit enough to drive back to the Embassy.

An hour later, with my head still bandaged, I was seated in my own room, in my own big leather armchair, with the July sun streaming in from across the Neva.

Saunderson was sitting with me, describing the great pomp of the funeral of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the service at the Isaac Church, at which the Tzar, the Court, and all the corps diplomatique had attended.

“By the way,” he added, “a note came for you this morning,” and he handed me a black-edged letter, bearing on the envelope the Imperial arms embossed in black.

I tore it open and found it to be a neatly-written little letter from the Grand Duchess Natalia, asking me to allow her to call and see me as soon as ever I returned to the Embassy.

“I must see you, Uncle Colin,” she wrote. “It is most pressing. So do please let me come. Send me word, and I will come instantly. I cannot write anything here. I must see you at once !”

Two days later, the ugly bandages having been removed from my head, Natalia was seated in the afternoon in my den.

Exquisitely neat in her dead black, with the long crape veil, she presented an altogether different appearance to the radiant girl who had sat before me on that fatal drive. Her sweet face was now pale and drawn, and by the dark rings about her eyes I saw how full of poignant grief her heart had lately been.

She had taken off her long, black gloves and settled herself cosily in my big armchair, her tiny patent-leather shoe, encasing a shapely silk-clad ankle, set forth beneath the hem of her black skirt.

“I was so terrified. Uncle Colin, that you were also dead!” the girl was saying in a low, sympathetic voice, after I had expressed my deepest regret regarding the unfortunate death of her father, to whom she had been so devoted.

“I suppose I had a very narrow escape,” I said cheerfully. “You came out best of all.”

“By an absolute miracle. The Emperor is furious. Twenty of those arrested have already been sent to Schusselburg,” she said. “Only yesterday, he told me that he hoped you would be well enough in a day or two to go to the Palace. I was to tell you how extremely anxious he is to see you as soon as possible.”

“I will obey the command at the earliest moment I am able,” I replied. “But how horribly unfortunate all this is,” I went on. “I fully expected that you would be in England by this time.”

“As soon as you are ready, Uncle Colin, I can go. The Emperor has already told me that he has placed me under your guardianship. That you are to be my equerry. Isn’t it fun?” she cried, her pretty face suddenly brightening with pleasure. “Fancy you! dear old uncle, being put in charge of me – your naughty niece!”

“His Majesty wished it,” I said. “He thinks you will be better away from Court for a time. Therefore, I have promised to accept the responsibility. For one year you are to live incognito in England, and I have been appointed your equerry and guardian – and,” I added very seriously, “I hope that my naughty niece will really behave herself, and do nothing which will cause me either annoyance or distress.”

“I’ll really try and be very good, Uncle Colin,” declared the girl with mock demureness, and laughing mischievously. “Believe me, I will.”

“It all remains with you,” I said. “Remember I do not wish it to be necessary that I should furnish any unfavourable report to the Emperor. I want us to understand each other perfectly from the outset. Recollect one point always. Though you may be known in England as Miss Gottorp, yet remember that you are of the Imperial family of Russia, and niece of the Emperor. Hence, there must be no flirtations, no clandestine meetings or love-letters, and such-like, as in the case of young Hamborough.”

“Please don’t bring up that affair,” urged the little madcap. “It is all dead, buried and forgotten long ago.”

“Very well,” I said, looking straight into her big, velvety eyes so full of expression. “But remember that your affection is absolutely forbidden except towards a man of your own birth and station.”

“I know,” she cried, with a quick impatience. “I’m unlike any other girl. I am forbidden to speak to a commoner.”

“Not in England. Preserve your incognito , and nobody will know. At His Majesty’s desire, I have obtained leave of absence from the service for twelve months, in order to become your guardian.”