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The Land of Thor. John Ross Browne
Читать онлайн.Название The Land of Thor
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Автор произведения John Ross Browne
Жанр Книги о Путешествиях
Издательство Public Domain
Utterly helpless – drugged – yet perfectly conscious of all the lovely creature was saying, I was truly in a most deplorable situation. Again and again she begged me, if there was a spark of French chivalry left in my nature, not to respond to her appeals by such a look of unutterable disdain. She was thrillingly beautiful; and beauty in tears is enough to melt the hardest heart that ever was put in the breast of man. I could feel her balmy breath upon my face, and the warmth of her delicate hand in mine, as she struggled to arouse me; and I declare it is my honest conviction that, had I been simply a corpse, life would have come back to my assistance; but this diabolical drug possessed some extraordinary power against which not even the fascinations of beauty could successfully contend. Under other circumstances, indeed, there is no telling – but why talk of other circumstances? There I lay like a log, completely paralyzed from head to foot. At length, unable to elicit an answer, a flush of mingled indignation and scorn illuminated her beautiful features, and, drawing herself back with a haughty air, she said, “If this be the boasted chivalry of my countrymen, then the sooner it meets with a merited reward the better. Allow me to say, monsieur, that while I admire your prudence, I scorn the spirit that prompts it!” and, with a glance of fierce disdain, she swept with queenly strides out of the room. A moment after I heard some voices in the passage, and scarcely five minutes had elapsed before the door was opened again. To my horror I saw the ruffian who had first followed me enter stealthily with a darkened lantern, and approach toward my bed. He carried in his right hand a heavy bar of iron. Stopping a moment opposite a shrine on one side of the room, he laid down his lamp and bar, and, bowing down three times, crossed himself devoutly, and then proceeded to accomplish his fiendish work. No conception can be formed of the agony with which I now regarded my fate. Crouching low as he approached, the wretch soon reached my bedside, peered a moment into my face with his hideous white eyes, laid down the lamp, then grasped the bar of iron firmly in both hands, and raised himself up to his full height. I made a desperate effort to cry out for help. My voice was utterly gone. I could not even move my lips. But why prolong the dreadful scene? One more glance with the fierce white eyes, a deep grating malediction, and the ruffian braced himself for his deadly job. He tightened his grip upon the bar, swung it high over his head, and with one fell blow – DASHED MY BRAINS OUT!!
Don’t believe it, eh?
Well, sir, you would insist upon my telling you the adventure, and now I stand by it! If it be your deliberate opinion that my statement is not to be relied upon, nothing remains between us but to arrange the preliminaries. I have no disposition to deprive my publishers of a valuable contributor, or society of an ornament; but, sir, the great principles of truth must be maintained. As it will not be convenient for me to attend to this matter in person, you will be pleased to select any friend of mine in California who may desire to stand up for my honor; place him before you at the usual distance of ten paces; then name any friend of yours at present in Europe as a similar substitute for yourself – the principals only to use pistols – notify me by the Icelandic telegraph when you are ready, and then, upon return of signal, pop away at my friend. But, since it is not my wish to proceed to such an extremity unnecessarily, if you will admit that I may possibly have been deceived – that there may have been some hallucination about the adventure – that strong tea and nervous excitement may have had something to do with it, then, sir, I am willing to leave the matter open to future negotiation.
It is true I found myself in my room at the Hotel de Venise when I recovered from the stunning effects of the blow; also, that the door was locked on the inside; but I am by no means prepared to give up the point on such flimsy evidence as that. Should the physiological fact be developed in the course of these sketches that there is still any portion of the brain left, and that it performs its legitimate functions, of course I shall be forced to admit that the case is at least doubtful; yet even then it can not be regarded in the light of a pure fabrication. Has not Dickens given us, in his “Dreams of Venice,” the most vivid and truthful description of the City of the Sea ever written; and what have I done, at the worst, but try in my humble way to give you a general idea of Moscow in the pleasing form of a midnight adventure, ending in an assassination? You have seen the Kremlin and the Church of St. Basil, and the by-streets and alleys, and the interior of a low traktir, and the cats, and the Russian beds, and many other interesting features of this wonderful city, in a striking and peculiar point of view, and I hold that you have no right to complain because, like Louis Philippe, I sacrificed my crown for the benefit of my subject. Besides, has not my friend Bayard Taylor given to the world his wonderful experiences of the Hasheesh of Damascus; his varied and extraordinary hallucinations of intellect during the progress of its operations? And why should not I my humble experiences of the tchai of Moscow?
Reader. Slightly sprinkled with vodka, or “the little water.”
Oh, that was just thrown in to give additional effect to the tea!
Reader. It won’t do, sir – it won’t do! The deception was too transparent throughout.
Well, then, since you saw through it from the beginning, there is no harm done, and you can readily afford to make an apology for impugning my voracity.
Lady Reader. But who was the heroine? What became of her?
Ah! my dear madam, there you have me! I suspect she was a French countess, or more likely an actress engaged in the line of tragedy. Her style, at all events, was tragical.
Lady Reader (elevating her lovely eyebrows superciliously). She was rather demonstrative, it must be admitted. You brought her in apparently to fulfill your promise, but sent her off the stage very suddenly. You should, at least, have restored her to her friends, and not left her in that den of robbers.
That, dear madam, was my natural inclination; but the fact is, d’ye see, I was drugged —
Lady Reader (sarcastically). It won’t do, Mr. Butterfield – your heroine was a failure! In future you had better confine yourself to facts – or fresh water.
Madam, I’d confine myself to the Rock of Gibraltar or an iceberg to oblige you; therefore, with your permission, I shall proceed to give you, in my next, a reliable description of the Kremlin.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE KREMLIN
Not the least of the evils resulting from this harum-scarum way of traveling and writing is the fact that one’s impressions become sadly tumbled together and very soon lose their most salient failures. To be whirled about the world by land and sea, as I have been for the last year, is enough to turn one’s brain into a curiosity shop. When I undertake to pick out of the pile of rubbish some picture that must have been originally worth a great deal of money, I find it so disfigured by the sheer force of friction that it looks no better than an old daub. The pity of it is, too, that the very best of my gatherings are apt to get lost or ruined; and sometimes it happens that when I varnish up what appears to be valuable it turns out not a groat. Want of method would ruin a Zingalee gipsy or a Bedouin Arab. No doubt you have already discovered to your sorrow that when we start on a visit to the Kremlin, it is no sure indication that we will not spend the day in the Riadi or the old-clothes market. If either you or I ever reach our destination, it will be by the sheerest accident. And yet one might as well undertake to see Rome without the Capitoline Hill, or Athena without the Acropolis, as Moscow without the Kremlin. We have had several glimpses of it, to be sure, in the course of our rambles, but you must admit that they were very vague and indefinite – especially the last, when, if you remember, we were laboring under some strange mental hallucination.
The Kremlin has been fully described by many learned and accomplished travelers. Coxe, Atkinson, Kohl, and various others, have given elaborate accounts of it; yet why despair of presenting, in a homely way, some general idea of it, such as one might gather in the course of an afternoon’s ramble? After reading all we find about it in books of travel, our conceptions are still vague and unsatisfactory. Probably the reason is, that minute details of history and architecture afford one but a very faint and inadequate