II
Natalie could not obtain speech alone with Estenega that evening; butthe next morning the Princess Helene commanded her household and guestto accompany her up the hill to the orchard at the foot of the forest;and there, while the others wandered over the knolls of the shadowyenclosure, Natalie managed to tell her story. Estenega offered his helpspontaneously.
"At twelve to-night," he said, "I will wait for you in the forest withhorses, and will guide you myself to Monterey. I have a house there, andyou can leave on the first barque for Boston."
As soon as the party returned to the Fort, Estenega excused himself andleft for his home. The day passed with maddening slowness to Natalie.She spent the greater part of it walking up and down the immediatecliffs, idly watching the men capturing the seals and otters, theship-builders across the gulch. As she returned at sunset to theenclosure, she saw the miller's son standing by the gates, gazing at herwith hungry admiration. He inspired her with sudden fury.
"Never presume to look at me again," she said harshly. "If you do, Ishall report you to the Governor."
And without waiting to note how he accepted the mandate, she swept byhim and entered the Fort, the gates clashing behind her.
The inmates of Fort Ross were always in bed by eleven o'clock. At thathour not a sound was to be heard but the roar of the ocean, the softpacing of the sentry on the ramparts, the cry of the panther in theforest. On the evening in question, after the others had retired,Natalie, trembling with excitement, made a hasty toilet, changing herevening gown for a gray travelling frock. Her heavy hair came unbound,and her shaking hands refused to adjust the close coils. As it fell overher gray mantle it looked so lovely, enveloping her with the silversheen of mist, that she smiled in sad vanity, remembering happier days,and decided to let her lover see her so. She could braid her hair at themill.
A moment or two before twelve she raised the window and swung herself tothe ground. The sentry was on the rampart opposite: she could not makeher exit by that gate. She walked softly around the buildings, keepingin their shadow, and reached the gates facing the forest. They were notdifficult to unbar, and in a moment she stood without, free. She couldnot see the mountain; a heavy bank of white fog lay against it, resting,after its long flight over the ocean, before it returned, or sweptonward to ingulf the redwoods.
She went with noiseless step up the path, then turned and walked swiftlytoward the mill. She was very nervous; mingling with the low voice ofthe ocean she imagined she heard the moans with which beheaded convictswere said to haunt the night. Once she thought she heard a footstepbehind her, and paused, her heart beating audibly. But the sound ceasedwith her own soft footfalls, and the fog was so dense that she could seenothing. The ground was soft, and she was beyond the sentry's earshot;she ran at full speed across the field, down the gorge, and up the steepknoll. As she reached the top, she was taken in Mikhailof's arms. Fora few moments she was too breathless to speak; then she told him herplans.
"Let me braid my hair," she said finally, "and we will go."
He drew her within the mill, then lit a lantern and held it above herhead, his eyes dwelling passionately on her beauty, enhanced by thecolour of excitement and rapid exercise.
"You look like the moon queen," he said. "I missed your hair, apart fromyourself."
She lifted her chin with a movement of coquetry most graceful in spiteof long disuse, and the answering fire sprang into her eyes. She lookedvery piquant and a trifle diabolical. He pressed his lips suddenlyon hers. A moment later something tugged at the long locks his handcaressed, and at the same time he became conscious that the silencewhich had fallen between them was shaken by a loud whir. He glancedupward. Natalie was standing with her back to one of the band-wheels. Ithad begun to revolve; in the moment it increased its speed; and he saw aglittering web on its surface. With an exclamation of horror, he pulledher toward him; but he was too late. The wheel, spinning now with thevelocity of midday, caught the whole silver cloud in its spokes, andNatalie was swept suddenly upward. Her feet hit the low rafters, and shewas whirled round and round, screams of torture torn from her ratherthan uttered, her body describing a circular right angle to the shaft,the bones breaking as they struck the opposite one; then, in swiftfinality, she was sucked between belt and wheel. Mikhailof managed toget into the next room and reverse the lever. The machinery stopped asabruptly as it had started; but Natalie was out of her agony.
Her lover flung himself over the cliffs, shattering bones and skullon the stones at their base. They made her a coffin out of the copperplates used for their ships, and laid her in the straggling unpopulouscemetery on the knoll across the gulch beyond the chapel.
"When we go, we will take her," said Rotscheff to his distracted wife.
But when they went, a year or two after, in the hurry of departure theyforgot her until too late. They promised to return. But they never came,and she sleeps there still, on the lonely knoll between the sunlessforest and the desolate ocean.