A little later on the same day--namely, about two o'clock--a light carriage carried two passengers along the Pargoloff road: a quietly dressed young woman and a quietly dressed young man. Toward evening these same young people were traveling in a Finnish coach by the stony mountain road in the direction of Abo.
Four days later the old Princesss Chechevinski was buried in the Nevski monastery.
On his return from the monastery, young Prince Chechevinski went straight for the strong box, which he had hitherto seen only at a distance, and even then only rarely. He expected to find a great deal more money in it than he found--some hundred and fifty thousand rubles; a hundred thousand in his late mother's name, and fifty thousand in his own. This was the personal property of the old princess, a part of her dowry. The young prince made a wry face--the money might last him two or three years, not more.
During the lifetime of the old princess no one had known accurately how much she possessed, so that it never even entered the young prince's head to ask whether she had not had more. He was so unmethodical that he never even looked into her account book, deciding that it was uninteresting and not worth while.
That same day the janitor of one of the huge, dirty tenements in Vosnesenski Prospekt brought to the police office notice of the fact that the Pole, Kasimir Bodlevski, had left the city; and the housekeeper of the late Princess Chechevinski informed the police that the serf girl Natalia Pavlovna (Natasha) had disappeared without leaving a trace, which the housekeeper now announced, as the three days' limit had elapsed.
At that same hour the little ship of a certain Finnish captain was gliding down the Gulf of Bothnia. The Finn stood at the helm and his young son handled the sails. On the deck sat a young man and a young woman. The young woman carried, in a little bag hung round her neck, two hundred and forty-four thousand rubles in bills, and she and her companion carried pistols in their pockets for use in case of need. Their passports declared that the young woman belonged to the noble class, and was the widow of a college assessor, her name being Maria Solontseva, while the young man was a Pole, Kasimir Bodlevski.
The little ship was crossing the Gulf of Bothnia toward the coast of Sweden.
VIII
BACK TO RUSSIA
In the year 1858, in the month of September, the "Report of the St.
Petersburg City Police" among the names of "Arrivals" included the following:
Baroness von Doring, Hanoverian subject.
Ian Vladislav Karozitch, Austrian subject.
The persons above described might have been recognized among the fashionable crowds which thronged the St. Petersburg terminus of the Warsaw railway a few days before: A lady who looked not more than thirty, though she was really thirty-eight, dressed with simple elegance, tall and slender, admirably developed, with beautifully clear complexion, piercing, intelligent gray eyes, under finely outlined brows, thick chestnut hair, and a firm mouth--almost a beauty, and with an expression of power, subtlety and decision. "She is either a queen or a criminal," a physiognomist would have said after observing her face. A gentleman with a red beard, whom the lady addressed as "brother," not less elegantly dressed, and with the same expression of subtlety and decision.
They left the station in a hired carriage, and drove to Demuth's Hotel.
Before narrating the adventures of these distinguished persons, let us go back twenty years, and ask what became of Natasha and Bodlevski. When last we saw them the ship that carried them away from Russia was gliding across the Gulf of Bothnia toward the Swedish coast. Late in the evening it slipped into the port of Stockholm, and the worthy Finn, winding in and out among the heavy hulls in the harbor--he was well used to the job--landed his passengers on the wharf at a lonely spot near a lonely inn, where the customs officers rarely showed their noses. Bodlevski, who had beforehand got ready the very modest sum to pay for their passage, with pitiable looks and gestures and the few Russian phrases the good Finn could understand, assured him that he was a very poor man, and could not even pay the sum agreed on in full. The deficit was inconsiderable, some two rubles in all, and the good Finn was magnanimous; he slapped his passenger on the shoulder, called him a "good comrade," declared that he would not press a poor man, and would always be ready to do him a service. He even found quarters for Bodlevski and Natasha in the inn, under his protection. The Finn was indeed a very honest smuggler. On the next morning, bidding a final farewell to their nautical friend, our couple made their way to the office of the British Consul, and asked for an opportunity to speak with him. At this point Natasha played the principal role.
'My husband is a Pole," said the handsome girl, taking a seat opposite the consul in his private office, "and I myself am Russian on the father's side, but my mother was English. My husband is involved in a political enterprise; he was liable to transportation to Siberia, but a chance made it possible for us to escape while the police were on their way to arrest him. We are now political fugitives, and we intrust our lives to the protection of English law. Be generous, protect us, and send us to England!"The ruse, skillfully planned and admirably presented, was completely successful, and two or three days later the first passenger ship under the English flag carried the happy couple to London.
Bodlevski destroyed his own passport and that of the college assessor's widow, Maria Solontseva, which Natasha had needed as a precaution while still on Russian soil. When they got to England, it would be much handier to take new names. But with their new position and these new names a great difficulty presented itself:
