The rustic table of rough wood was covered with a short cloth and was spread with zakouskis.It was a meal under the open sky, a seat and a glass in the clear azure.The evening could not have been softer and clearer.And, as the general felt so gay, the repast would have promised to be most agreeable, if Rouletabille had not noticed that Matrena Petrovna and Natacha were uneasy and downcast.The reporter soon saw, too, that all the general's joviality was a little excessive.Anyone would have said that Feodor Feodorovitch spoke to distract himself, to keep himself from thinking.There was sufilcient excuse for him after the outrageous drama of the other night.Rouletabille noticed further that the general never looked at his daughter, even when he spoke to her.
There was too formidable a mystery lying between them for restraint not to increase day by day.Rouletabille involuntarily shook his head, saddened by all he saw.His movemerit was surprised by Matrena Petrovna, who pressed his hand in silence.
"Well, now," said the general, "well, now my children, where is the vodka?"Among all the bottles which graced the table the general looked in vain for his flask of vodka.How in the world could he dine if he did not prepare for that important act by the rapid absorption of two or three little glasses of white wine, between two or three sandwiches of caviare!
"Ermolai must have left it in the wine-chest," said Matrena.
The wine-closet was in the dining-room.She rose to go there, but Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, "Stay there, mamma.I will go.""Don't you bother, either.I know where it is," cried Rouletabille, and hurried after Natacha.
She did not stop.The two young people arrived in the dining-room at the same time.They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen.
He stopped Natacha and planted himself in front of her.
"Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?""Because I don't wish to have any conversation with you.""If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I would follow."She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.
"Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don't write to me any more.
Don't speak to me.Don't see me.Go away from here, monsieur; go away.They will have your life.And if you have found out anything, forget it.Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost.That is what I wished to tell you.And now, you go."She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed instantly to regret.
"You go away," she repeated.
Rouletabille still held his place before her.She turned from him;she did not wish to hear anything further.
"Mademoiselle," said he, "you are watched closer than ever.Who will take Michael Nikolaievitch's place?""Madman, be silent! Hush!"
"I am here."
He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.
"Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!" She did not know what to say.Her emotion checked all utterance.But it was necessary for her to enable him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad straits.
"No.If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now, you would be dead to-morrow.Don't let them suspect.And above all, don't try to see me anywhere.Go back to papa at once.
We have been here too long.What if they learn of it? - and they learn everything! They are everywhere, and have ears everywhere.""Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word.Do you doubt now that Michael tried to poison your father?""Ah, I wish to believe it.I wish to.I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy."Rouletabille desired something besides "I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy." He was far from being satisfied.She saw him turn pale.She tried to reassure him while her trembling hands raised the lid of the wine-chest.
"What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the little balcony.Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well."But he persisted still.
"And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, 'I wish to believe it, my poor boy.'""Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father, and not have come by way of the window.""No, that is impossible."
"Nothing is impossible to them."
And she turned her head away again.
"Why, why," she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite indifferent, as if she wished to be merely 'the daughter of the house' in conversation with the young man, "the vodka is not in the wine chest, after all.What has Ermolai done with it, then?"She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.
"Oh, here it is.Papa shan't be without it, after all."Rouletabille was already into the garden again.
"If that is the only doubt she has," he said to himself, "I can reassure her.No one could come, excepting by the window.And only one came that way."The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask.They crossed the garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he waited for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of "the constitution." He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them carefully.
"Here," he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille."Come here and I will explain to you as well what this Constitution amounts to."The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in the kiosk were intent on the matches.
"You see that match," said Feodor Feodorovitch."It is the Emperor.
