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. And this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is the Grand–duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes. Now, here are the ministers and there the principal governors, and then the generals; these here are the bishops."
The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place, as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government and the social order.
"Well," continued the general, "do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna, what a constitution is? There! That is the Constitution."
The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches. Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:
"I don't understand, Feodor."
"Find the Emperor now."
Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently, and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor Feodorovitch took up one of the little glasses that Natacha had filled with the vodka she brought.
"Listen, my children," said he. "We are going to commence the zakouskis. Koupriane ought to have been here before this."
Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand, he felt in his pocket with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large watch whose ticking was easily heard.
"Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer," Rouletabille remarked smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. "It looks like a splendid one."
"It has very fine works," said the general. "It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and sounds the hours and half–hours."
Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.
"You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?" inquired the young man, still examining the watch.
"Yes, but since he is so late, we'll not delay any longer. Your healths, my children," said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch and he put it in his pocket.
"Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch," replied Matrena Petrovna, with her usual tenderness.
Rouletabille and Natacha only touched their lips to the vodka, but Feodor Feodorovitch and Matrena drank theirs in the Russian fashion, head back and all at a draught, draining it to the bottom and flinging the contents to the back of the throat. They had no more than performed this gesture when the general uttered an oath and tried to expel what he had drained so heartily. Matrena Petrovna spat violently also, looking with horror at her husband.
"What is it? What has someone put in the vodka?" cried Feodor.
"What has someone put in the vodka?" repeated Matrena Petrovna in a thick voice, her eyes almost starting from her head.
The two young people threw themselves upon the unfortunates. Feodor's face had an expression of atrocious suffering.
"We are poisoned," cried the general, in the midst of his chokings. "I am burning inside."
Almost mad, Natacha took her father's head in her hands. She cried to him:
"Vomit, papa; vomit!"
"We must find an emetic," cried Rauletabille, holding on to the general, who had almost slipped from his arms.
Matrena Petrovna, whose gagging noises were violent, hurried down the steps of the kiosk, crossed the garden as though wild–fire were behind her, and bounded into the veranda. During this time the general succeeded in easing himself, thanks to Rouletabille, who had thrust a spoon to the root of his tongue. Natacha could do nothing but cry, "My God, my God, my God!" Feodor held onto his stomach, still crying, "I'm burning, I'm burning!" The scene was frightfully tragic and funny at the same time. To add to the burlesque, the general's watch in his pocket struck eight o'clock. Feodor Feodorovitch stood up in a final supreme effort. "Oh, it is horrible!" Matrena Petrovna showed a red, almost violet face as she came back; she distorted it, she choked, her mouth twitched, but she brought something, a little packet that she waved, and from which, trembling frightenedly, she shook a powder into the first two empty glasses, which were on her side of the table and were those she and the general had drained. She still had strength to fill them with water, while Rouletabille was almost overcome by the general, whom he still had in his arms, and Natacha concerned herself with nothing but her father, leaning over him as though to follow the progress of the terrible poison, to read in his eyes if it was to be life or death. "Ipecac," cried Matrena Petrovna, and she made the general drink it. She did not drink until after him. The heroic woman must have exerted superhuman force to go herself to find the saving antidote in her medicine–chest, even while the agony pervaded her vitals.
Some minutes later both could be considered saved. The servants, Ermolai at their head, were clustered about. Most of them had been at the lodge and they had not, it appeared, heard the beginning of the affair, the cries of Natacha and Rouletabille. Koupriane arrived just then. It was he who worked with Natacha in getting the two to bed. Then he directed one of his agents to go for the nearest doctors they could find.