By Order of the Czar. The tragic story of Anna Klosstock, Queen of the Ghetto ... Second edition

Front matter

VOL. JOSEPH HATTON'S NOVELS. NEW HANDSOME LIBRARY EDITIONS. In cloth, gilt top, 2s. 6d. ; or in paper boards, 2s. CLYTIE. " If Clytie, in cold, silent Parian, was a favourite, her namesake, in real, hearty genuine flesh and blood, will be loved a thousandfold. . . The heroine is as fair and womanly as the hero is brave and unfortunate." — Standard. CHRISTOPHER KENRICK- " The book contains so manv well-executed characters and exhibitions of pleasantry akin to true humour, that it must be pronounced a success that will contribute to Mr. Hatton's popularity." — Tlie. Athenæum,. THE VALLEY OF POPPIES. "A charming story, tranquil and dreamy as its title." — Daily Telegraph. THE TALLANTS OF BARTON. "It has a certain touch of the grace which belongs to Tennyson's 'Lord of Burleigh.'" — Ulustrated London News.

BITTER SWEETS. " His sympathi£6fare always with kindly, charitable, straightforward dea* ings, and he;cp$k_e&'tlie reader feel that this is genuine. "—Pall Mali Gazette. ( ' ' NOT IN SOCIETY. ''A vastly entertaining work." — Sunday Times. IN THE LAP OF FORTUNE. " Lucy is picturesque enough for the central figure in a cottage idyll, and It is in such tender bits of domesticity that we see Joseph Hatton at his best." — Athenæum. CRUEL LONDON. *' Nothing so powerful has appeared in fiction since Charles Reade wrote his immortal story of ' Hard Cash.'" — Morning Post. THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. " To read Mr. Hatton's new novel ' The Queen of Bohemia ' without being amused would be impossible to any one capable of estimating and enjoying inventive power, constructive skill, and bright graphic diction." — Daily Telegraph.

" Mr. Joseph Hatton is seen at his best in ' The Queen of Bohemia,* a very bright and amusing novel. Special phases of society in London and New York are sketch jd with knowledge and spirit, and both the initiated and those who ' want to know ' will be interested in the scene* and characters of a book which has the additional merit of not being unduly spun out." The World. London: HUTCHINSON AND CO-, 25, Paternoster Square. THE TRAGIC STORY OF ANNA KLOSSTOCK, QUEEN OF THE GHETTO. BY JOSEPH HATTON. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: HUTCHINSON AND CO., PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1890. [All Rights Reserved.} Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS. II. (continued.) CHAP. PAGE VI. "WHAT FATES IMPOSE, THAT MEN MUST NEEDS ABIDE" I VII. HOW CHETWYND MET THE COUNTESS ... 36 VIII.

Chapter I. The Countess, The Jews, And The Gondolier

But Lady Stravensky had to be reckoned with in the Philip and Dolly business. The Jewish woman of Czarovna held a brief from Fate in regard to Lady Forsyth's pleasant calculations of matrimonial happiness and prosperity for her son. None of them knew or suspected how nearly the fortunes of the Countess touched theirs. It was a bad day for Philip when he saw that face at the opera. How far it was bad for Dolly and her sister Jenny, for Walter Milbanke and other persons in this drama of life, remains to be seen. The narrator is perfectly well aware what is to happen to Philip, and what must be the end of the Countess. These things are foreshadowed by those who read between the lines as well as on them. But Dolly Norcott floats gaily along the stream, and who knows where she shall find a port or what it will be like ?

She has charming qualities. One would like her to be happy. For that matter, Philip Forsyth is not undeserving of good fortune, but surely he is destined to have trouble. He dreams dreams. He mixes his professional ambition with his love. He is not stable. His impulses are fine. He is constant while he is with Dolly ; but on his way home he sees visions of the poetic face of the Countess, her violet eyes, her deep red hair. She is the central figure of his unwritten romances, the heroine of his unpainted pictures. And just as a certain set of people go mad over Ibsen's plays, so Philip was going mad over the aspirations of Young Russia, checked for the moment by the shadow of the Countess Stravensky, whom he regarded as one of those accidental endowments of birth which belong to a bad cause as if in fatal mockery of heaven.

When Philip was with Dolly, the pretty English girl had it all her own way ; when he thought of the foreign Countess, ten years his senior, as his mother had reminded him, his pulse rose and his face flushed. He put these physical manifestations down to ambition, to art fervour, to a nameless something that suggested destiny. This did not argue well for the domestic happiness of Dolly Norcott when she should be Mrs. Philip Forsyth. While it is placed on record that the Countess Stravensky had to be reckoned with, in the warp and woof of the lives of Dolly and Philip, in the plans of Lady Forsyth and the pretty sisterly intrigues of Mrs. Milbanke, let it not be understood that our unhappy Queen of the Ghetto had any desire or intention to interfere with the matrimonial or worldly prospects of Philip Forsyth, except in so far as she might help him on his way.

He had deeply impressed her. For a moment he had re-awakened feelings which had been dead since her love, her best instincts, her womanliness, her faith in heaven, her hope in the great Father, had been literally cut out of her heart and soul by the Russian knout. It was only for a moment ; and in that moment she saw herself an innocent girl, sitting at the feet of her lover in the peaceful home of her childhood In that moment the perfume of a lovely past fell around her ; and she gazed upon the young artist, who had Losinski's eyes and hair, and Losinski's voice and gait. As the mist cleared, it came to her to think that this was but a vision intended by Fate to whet her appetite of vengeance — a whisper from the red grave of the murdered rabbi. Then she remembered who and what she was ; the outrage of the Governor Petronovitch ; and with these memories came grateful recollections of the devotion of Stravensky, who in his heart had loved the beautiful maid of the Ghetto, and in his age, stricken with death, had endowed her with his name, and combined with hers his own passion of vengeance, and his aspirations for a free Russia.

Anna's interview with Philip Forsyth had for the moment given a tone of sentiment to her otherwise rugged ambition, when she found herself all suddenly in love with him, to discover as suddenly that it was love by proxy, the revival of a passion that belonged to the dead. But the passing weakness over, the retrospect that had come into her reflection now tended to strengthen the arm that was rather made for loving embraces than to wield the vengeance of a conspiracy. Fate has its own inscrutable purposes that make havoc with every human intention, and provide perpetual surprises for those who come to the conclusion that they can no longer be astonished. Lady Forsyth understood that the Countess Stravensky had gone to Paris en route for St. Petersburg, but this was not the fact. Ferrari had travelled to the gay city alone.

It was seldom that Ferrari left the side of the Countess, whom he served with the devotion of a slave, but with the authority also of a member of the same band of Russian regenerators. She had no wish to stray from the patriotic path upon which they travelled together ; and if she had, it would have been the duty of her secretary to hold her to her bonds. Immediately after Lady Forsyth's " At Home," Ferrari had sudden business in Paris and Venice ; and the Countess with drew to an almost equally foreign country in London, namely to Soho, an English land of exiles, conspirators, and Nihilistic wire-pullers, in the heart of a peaceful metropolis. While Ferrari had many disguises, the Countess had only two, and they were hers by right ; they infringed upon the personality of no other being ; she was the Countess, and she was Anna Klosstock.

As the Countess, she was what we have seen, a lady of position, recognised by the Russian Court, and in the very highest European society. As Anna Klosstock, she was the friend and accomplice of that very Brotherhood of which Ferrari had spoken to the Count on that never-to-be forgotten day when he had ridden into Czarovna to see if he could be of any assistance to the Klosstocks and their co religionists. At the time when Philip was singing his lullaby ditties at Westbury Lodge, Anna Klosstock, in the guise of a poor Jewess, was sitting in council with three members of the Brotherhood, and they were con gratulating themselves upon the vast ex tension of the military conspiracy which had that day been chronicled in the English papers ; the fact that the plot had been discovered was atoned for by the proof of its immense ramifications all over the Empire.

"You are Russian born, Paul?" said Anna, addressing one of the three, a tall, picturesque-looking man of fifty, muscular, with a flat face, sallow complexion, fiery eyes, grey hair, and a mouth that seemed to smile on one side of his face and sneer on the other ; " you were born in Russia, in Moscow ? " " Yes, sister ; my father was born there, and my mother too. and there Were five of us in family." " And you are the only one left ? " " That is so." " Siberia and the knout only spared you because you got away ? " "If there is work to do it is not necessary to remind me of these things ; I never forget them, nor my oaths — nor my pleasure." At this last remark both sides of his mouth seemed to smile. " You know Venice ? " asked Anna, with the manner of one who repeats a fact and invites information upon it.

" I was there with our brother Ferrari for three years." "You were a gondolier?" " Yes." " He was a merchant ? " " Yes." "He employed you?" "Yes." " You respect and honour him apart from your oath ? " "Yes." "As friend and chief?" " Yes." "You have friends in Venice?" " One." " He can be trusted ? " " Yes." " A gondolier ? " "Yes." " You will leave London by the next train and boat for Venice ? " "Yes." " The King of Italy is to be received in State by the municipality. The Countess Stravensky will be your mistress in the procession of boats. She will be attended by her secretary, Signor Ferrari ; you and your friend will be her gondoliers ; your uniform red, the decoration of your gondola red ; you will await the Countess by the Pesaro Palace until she makes her appearance ; the old watchword ; your rendezvous with Ferrari will be at the little hotel of the Beau Rivage.

In three days hence you will be there ; he will have arrived ; seek him and know the rest." " I shall," said Paul, holding out his hand for the bank-notes which Anna drew from the pocket of her black dress. " Within ten days Ferrari may expect me. The Royal function which the Countess Stravensky is to attend, and at which General Petronovitch is to be present, will take place two days after my arrival, when it will be shown that the arm of the Brother hood is strong and long-reaching." The double smile came into Paul's Sallow face, and the two other men remarked in different words, but with the same meaning, that the patriots needed encouragement. "You have seen a detective from Scotland Yard ? " " Yes," said Paul. " About the visit of the German princes ? " " Yes. We are safe in our asylum here so long as we respect it ; that was the police ii message.

" All must be free to come and go, eh ? " " That is so. Anything happening to any one of England's guests, and we shall be cleared out." " So far as we can, let us obey the mandate ; it is just. Any other reports ? " "None." " Good-night." During the next two or three hours, Anna Klosstock made her way through certain vol. ii. malodorous quarters of the East End, where the sweater demon held his grim court ; among Polish and other Jews, refugees, paupers — miserables of all kinds. Wherever her shadow fell upon them it brought comfort. Anna Klosstock was an angel in these benighted regions. She spoke the language of the sufferers. They told her their woes ; how they had been shipped from their native land like slaves ; how they arrived in London penniless, friendless ; how they laboured night and day for bread and shelter ; and their chief complaints were against their co-religionists.

As a rule the Jew is good to his people ; but in London, the English Jew seems to take advantage of his foreign brother ; the sweated and the sweater in the East End are mostly Jews. Why England should allow these waifs and strays to be cast penniless upon her shores was one of the questions that puzzled Anna in her studies of English freedom. But she did not stay to debate these or any other questions, she only remembered the sufferings of her race, and in whatever city she found herself she sought out poor and wretched Jews, and gave them of her bounty with words of sympathy and hope, " for surely," she said, " our term of probation is drawing to a close, and the day of promise is at hand."

Chapter II. The Heart Of Man Is Deceitful

It is not for the author of this history of Love and Adventure to attack or defend his hero. Philip Forsyth will fulfil his destiny, whatever his biographer or the reader may have to say to it. He is not the first who might have exclaimed, in regard to two women, " How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away ! " Or, at all events, not the first who had thought in this wise of two desirable ladies. The psychological novelist, or the student of physical and spiritual motives in man, would no doubt bend his intellectual energies upon an investigation of the difference between the influence of the Countess and that of Dolly Norcott on the sentiments and emotions of the young and impression able artist. Did he love the Countess ? And were his feelings toward Dolly the mere outcome of passion ?

Were the West bury Lodge influences physical and worldly, and the Russian impressions spiritual and divine ? Or vice versa ? Philip, it is plain, stood as between the Countess and Dolly somewhat in the position of Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, though he would not have admitted it to himself. If he had never seen the Countess Stravensky he might have had a calm domestic career with Dolly Norcott ; but the Russian Jewess exercised a strange fascination upon him, and he upon her. To what extent they were each under the other's influence was made clear to them, as it will be to us, under somewhat prosaic circumstances. The Milbankes had started for Venice via Paris, and had left Philip to join them at the little hotel in the Rue Castiglione, where Walter Milbanke had taken a very pleasant suite of rooms.

Philip had gone down to Charing Cross close upon train time, and had found every seat occupied, except one in a coupe1 nearly at the end of the train, upon which coupd the forbidding notice " Engaged " was very prominently displayed. As fate would have it, the coupd was occupied by the Countess Stravensky, and, as if that same watchful Fate had been more than usually active in the interests of Anna and Philip, the lady was thinking of the person who was seeking a seat in the Dover express. The Countess had composed herself to a journey of silent thought. She was alone. Her maid was in a second-class carriage, having a flirtation with Ferrari's servant, for Ferrari deemed it necessary to be attended on occasion, for appearances and conveniences, by a valet of knowledge and experience. The Countess, however ostentatious her establishments in Russia or Paris, only confided in one maid, who found her service both profitable and pleasant.

The Queen of the Ghetto was troubled with sensations that were entirely new to her since the tragic days of Czarovna. It was a relief from the dark ways of her woman's life to cherish the gleam of sunshine that had somehow crept into her heart with her visit to Philip Forsyth's studio. Though she might never see the young artist again, she would cherish his memory ; and while she was feeling this, rather than expressing it, even to herself, it came into her mind to think that Fate was exacting another sacrifice in her consent to part from him. She knew that nothing good could come of her association with him ; that if there were love passages between them, they could only be for her a passing relaxation of thought, the chief charm of which would be to try and dream herself back again into the arms of Losinski in that far-off time when she was betrothed to him.

But it was strange, she thought, that on the eve of seeing, as it were, the other Losinski, she should be on her way to that City of the Sea they had talked of and arranged to visit together, that city which Losinski loved, which Ferrari knew so well, where Jew and Gentile were friends, as they were in London, where the Ghetto was a name merely, and where " the badge of the tribe," if worn at all, was only treated as an ornament. It was a pleasant day. The sun was shining brightly even into Charing Cross Station, and the Countess, laying aside the light wrap which her maid had handed to her, was reclining in the furthest corner of her coupd, given over to her reflections, and her reflections, as we have seen, were more particularly occupied with Philip Forsyth, with whom, had circumstances permitted, she could have fallen desperately in love.

This thought gave her pain and pleasure ; but she suffered the pain for the sake of the little sweetness of fancy that took off the sharp edge of the bitters. She contemplated from the carriage window the bustle of the station without seeing it. Her thoughts were in a certain Primrose Hill studio, and her fancy had transplanted it to the head of the street in the Jewish quarters of Czarovna. Right in the midst of her fanciful picture of the past and the present, there was suddenly interposed the living figure of the young artist. For a moment she could not realise the truth of it, starting up as it did amidst the prosaic surroundings of the railway platform, of which she now became conscious. With the persistence that belongs to railway travellers in search of seats two minutes before the train starts, Philip looked longingly and inquisitively into the engaged compartment, and his eyes met those of the occupier.

He stood at the window as if transfixed. She smiled at him a dreamy recognition, and then suddenly came forward, and at a wave of her white hand the guard opened the carriage door. Philip stepped inside, and the next moment the Dover express was gliding on its way. " Why, my dear Countess," exclaimed Philip, "what a delightful surprise! I thought you were in St. Petersburg. How glad I am that I was late, and could not find a seat! How very kind of you to take pity on me ! " " I shall be rewarded for my compassion in your pleasant companionship." She looked at him, as she spoke, with what seemed to Philip to be an inviting sympathy of interest. He felt the blood rush into his cheeks. " You are very good," he stammered, "and so is Fate. I don't know what I have done to be so highly favoured."

"By Fate?" she said, interrogatively. " By Fate," said Philip, " and by you." " Fate and me," she said thoughtfully, and with her pretty accent, — " what a part nership ! but it is a strange world, and it may be Fate that brought us together here in this carriage, without our consent or our interposition." i) " Fate is not always kind." " Is it kindness to bring us together again when we had parted for ever ? " " Had we parted for ever?" Philip asked. " I thought so," said the Countess. " Did you hope so ? " he asked. " I think so." "Why?" " For many reasons." Tell me one." " Because I thought you were more interested in your model than in your picture." She looked at him steadily, but with a softness, he thought, of expression in her eyes. His heart beat violently, and she felt a strange desire to give herself over to the spirit of memory which Philip was once more stirring within her.

In a navy-blue serge suit, with a white silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, his deep, black eyes ablaze with his unconcealed passion, his black hair hanging about his temples, Anna saw again her love of Czarovna, could have sworn she heard his voice ; and in Philip's trembling accents she felt the thrill of an old passion. She had experienced so much suffering in the world that fate seemed to be whispering in her ear, "Why suffer always, why cast aside this chance of happiness ? Remember of the past only that which is pleasant." And she leaned back on the soft cushions, and gazed at the flashing eyes of the young painter, who at that moment forgot everything, everybody, but the woman who sat before him, to his mind a living dream of beauty. " My dear Countess ! " he exclaimed. She smiled and gazed at him.

A blush seemed to steal into her pale cheeks. Her lips parted as if she were about to speak " My love ! " he said, encouraged by her tender looks, and stealing to her side he took her hand. She neither moved nor spoke. He pressed her hand to his lips. She turned her face towards him. There were tears in her eyes. " I love you, I love you ! " he exclaimed. She withdrew her hand from his and shuddered. "God help you," she said, "and forgive me ; if He does help — if He does forgive," and she covered her eyes with her hands. Philip only repeated, " I love you," while the train went gliding along through green meadows, whitened here and there with the first blossoms of the spring. "You must not love me," she said presently ; "I can be to you nothing more than a memory, not even a friend." " You can, you must !

" replied the passionate youth, utterly oblivious of his engagement to Dolly, with no thought or sense or feeling but what belonged to the moment. " I wish it might be," she said, struggling against her fate. " From the first moment I saw you," he exclaimed, stimulated by her expressed wish " that it might be," and with the belief that to love or passion everything is possible, " on that night at the opera, I adored you ; from this happy day forth I am your slave ! " " Forbear ! " she said. " It will not prove a happy day. I would love you if I could, if I dared. It is impossible. Our destinies are as far asunder as the poles." " They shall be brought together," he replied passionately, " as close as our lips." And he had kissed her before she could make even a show of resistance. Then there was a pause, but she let the hand he had seized lie passively in his ; and the train went beating along its iron way, past farm and station, skirting woodlands and pastures.

The clouds went racing along too, and Philip's hot blood coursed through his veins in sympathy. He stole his arm about her waist, as no man had done since the days of Losinski. She permitted it, forgetting why she had at first shuddered at his touch, and allow ing herself to drift along with the fond embrace and honey words of her lover, who was beside himself with the success of his attack upon the stately, mysterious beauty. Presently she drew herself away from him, and assumed an air of entire selfpossession. " Philip, I hope you may learn to forgive me for this weakness, this tempta tion to forget a bitter past, in an unlooked for visitation of sweetness. Nay, listen, do not speak. You are young and impulsive. You will have time to forget. vol. ii. The world is all before you, full of glorious possibilities, love, fame, happiness.

For me, there is but a hard, thorny road, and I must tread the path alone. If you could know all, you would say it is so ; you would never seek to alter it ; you would indeed shudder at the depth of the precipice you have stood upon ; stand aghast at the escape my self-denial gives you ; for I could love you — yes, not alone for the sake of the past, but for your own ; but — and here I beg you to take note of my words — you might as well think of allying yourself with the worst woman your fancy can depict as with me." "You are saying this to disenchant me; you love another, or " " I am not saying it for any purpose but to save you and myself from a crime, a sin, and you from a suture of humilia* I tion. I do not love anyone ; I am a widow : I was widowed from my love on the eve of my marriage ; I was only a girl, and there are sufferings in this world worse than death, humiliations worse than the gallows."

Her lips quivered as she spoke, and the expression of terror and anger, of some thing between madness and grief, between defiance and vengeance, which Philip had noticed in that face at the opera, seemed to convulse her. All this, instead of dis couraging Philip, stirred in him the defiant desire for some opportunity to show to the woman either the madness or the sincerity of his passion. " I care not what you are, what you have been, what you may be — if we had to descend into the bottomless pit together, I love you, and will for ever and ever ! " You are mad," she exclaimed. I may be." " You are mad," I say ; " would you consort with a murderess?" "You are none," he replied, with a lofty smile. " For you I am worse," she said ; " and I tell you now, my dear, misguided friend, that this love of yours, of mine if you will, is not only madness, it is folly, it is worse ; " and then, noticing how firm was his madness, how impossible to shake it, she made a tremendous sacrifice of her feelings, her pride, everything that woman holds dear, and whispered in his ear, "What is worse than a murderess, what is worse than anything man considers bad in the woman he loves ?

I am that — yes, I am that ! " " My God ! " the boy exclaimed, moving away from her in horror, "is it true?" It is true," she said, and burst into tears. I pity you from my heart," he said I pity myself. She sobbed, or affected to sob. He sat silent, stunned by her confession. The train ran along just as smoothly, ust as swiftly as before. Neither of them spoke again for some time. At last, secretly congratulating herself on the success of her stratagem, and at the same time stung to the quick that he should believe her, Anna said, " And now let us be a man and woman of the world ; what has passed between us is our secret ; let us respect it ; let us talk no more of love ; if we meet again, we can know each other as persons in the world, you can know me or not as you wish ; we can think of this as an incident of our lives in which there was a little sweet and very much bitter, as there is in all incidents of this life ; and some day, when you are happy with your honest love and with your children about you, and you are a great painter, you will think of me as kindly as you can ; and one day in that future you shall, if it interest you, know my life all through ; and then you will for give and pity me."

"As I do now," said Philip tenderly, " as I do now." Her confession had done its work. She knew it would. She had reckoned up the passionate poetical nature of the young fellow quite truly. There is one sin which not the most romantic lover can overlook ; one crime which love cannot condone in the object of its worship. But Philip was in a miserable state of mind ; and in his misery he had the audacity to think of Dolly Norcott for the first time since he had encountered the Countess at Charing Cross — so selfish, thoughtless, ungrateful is it possible for the heart of man to be. And as he thought of her, he wished the woman before him was as good, and virtuous, and truly lovable — a piece of ingratitude which only a master in the analysis of the psychological evolu tion of love and passion can understand or excuse.