Yet on the dull silence breaking With a lightning flash, a word, Bearing endless desolation On its blighting wings, I heard; Earth can forge no keener weapon, Dealing surer death and pain, And the cruel echo answered Through long years again.A.A.PROCTERCuriously enough, I must actually have started for Russia on the same day that Sigismund Zaluski was summoned by his uncle at St.Petersburg to return on a matter of urgent business.I learnt afterwards that the telegram arrived at Muddleton on the afternoon of one of those sunny September days and found Zaluski as usual at the Morleys.He was very much annoyed at being called away just then, and before he had received any reply from Gertrude's uncle as to the engagement.However, after a little ebullition of anger, he regained his usual philosophic tone, and, reminding Gertrude that he need not be away from England for more than a fortnight, he took leave of her and set off in a prompt, manly fashion, leaving most of his belongings at Ivy Cottage, which was his for another six weeks, and to which he hoped shortly to return.
After a weary time of imprisonment in my envelope, I at length reached my destination at St.Petersburg and was read by Dmitry Leonoff.He was a very busy man, and by the same post received dozens of other letters.He merely muttered--"That well-known firm! A most unlikely story!"--and then thrust me into a drawer with other letters which had to be answered.Very probably I escaped his memory altogether for the next few days: however, there I was--a startling accusation in black and white; and, as everybody knows, St.Petersburg is not London.
The Leonoff family lived on the third storey of a large block of buildings in the Sergeffskaia.About two o'clock in the morning, on the third day after my arrival, the whole household was roused from sleep by thundering raps on the door, and the dreaded cry of "Open to the police."The unlucky master was forced to allow himself, his wife, and his children to be made prisoners, while every corner of the house was searched and every book and paper examined.
Leonoff had nothing whatever to do with the Revolutionary movement,but absolute innocence does not free people from the police inquisition, and five or six years ago, when the Search mania was at its height, a case is on record of a poor lady whose house was searched seven times within twenty-four hours, though there was no evidence whatever that she was connected with the Nihilists; the whole affair was, in fact, a misunderstanding, as she was perfectly innocent.
This search in Dmitry Leonoff's house was also a misunderstanding, and in the dominions of the Czar misunderstandings are of frequent occurrence.
