AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2520, 2 July 1902, Page 78

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

THE CASE OF THE PRINCFSS RADZIWILL,

It is curious how sometimes the same woman is able to exercise a strange if not sinister influence on the careers of several men. Therj is a grand passion ; and then there is a separation amid much tumultuous scandal; and then there is a Iragedy— a grim suicide or a sudden death or the obFcuring for ever of some brilliant and promising personality and career; and you imagine that the woman who has played the part in the tragedy will disappear into everlasting night and never be heard of again. And then an interval of a few years, and once more there is the murmur, and then there come the open whispers of some new drama ; and at once one of the old dramatis personae of the other tragedy turns up, and once again plays something of the same enigmatic part. Such is the case of the Princess Radziwill. She is a Pole by birth — a woman connected with the greatest £nd noblest families of both Russia and Germany. If she appeared in St. Petersburg, she would have the right to sit with the old aristocratic races that are almost on the steps of the throne ; if she visited Berlin she would find her daughter married to a Prince — and the grandson of Blucher — the historic old soldier who helped to decide the still trembling destinies of Europe in the battle of Waterloo. If .she went to Paris she might find in some salon the brilliant picture of her which has been drawn by Benjamin Constant — the great portrait painter, whose pencil emperors and kings, empresses and queens are too flattered to be allowed to employ. Perhaps, also, if one were to stroll up and down the Rue de la Paix, one might see unknowingly in the brilliant shop-win-dows of that street of jewellers some of the precious stones which once graced the neck of the Princess, and were part of the barbaric splendour of one period of her existence, and marked the recklessness and the rqualid shifts of another epoch.

A MKTEOHIC WOMAN.

The Princess Radziwill is the daughter of Count Rzewufcki, a Pollrh nobleman, and of the Countess Dachkoff, his wife — one of the best of Rus&iin names. .She married when she was a girl Prince Augustin Radziwill, a member of a Prussian family which figures in the annals for centuries of Prussian development and stands among the best 3nd must ancient of the country. By him she has had three children ; and one of them is the wife of Prince Blucwrr. Dazzlingly beautiful, clever, full of that in-cess-int movement and intoxi.-ating "go ' which make up the f<i-cinating woman who rules the heaits and the minds and the wills of men, and devoured by all the ambition*- — the ambition to rule in love, in politics, in finance — in short, turbulent and fascinating, beautiful in face, and d'iring ard resourceful in mind, i.he was a woman tj inspire gra'id pastors and to inspire thc/n in tho grand.

■IHE PHIXPI.-S \M) FXOISI.LFFF

Slir> ].>- Ijfliuvi »1 Lo l)j.vi! been the hidden <-pnii^ of tli it obicuie t raged y in which Sk'jbclefi v. eiit d iivn. I suppose people I'ji-cPdy bp n 'ju to forget Skobeleff ; and there is indeed, a generation who have never heurd his name. To ns of middle age, howc\er. lv '.ran <vi entrancinc; figure. He wa' the will, fearle&=, beautiful young knight who led th" troops of Russia in the wor-t moments of the v.ir wiih Turkey; he huns Jf iias at the liead of the column on thdt ay, ful day -n lien the frontal attack on Plevna \*Td some 8000 Russian poldiers in the dti-t : hr- it was whose plume, like that of IT nry nt Xavaire m the old French wu-js. io«e and fell, but .t'nvtivh led when the av.-ful blau_'htir of the fight w.is .it us worst. Indeed, Skobekii \\j& raoie like tLe

creation of a Wagner than a real humaii being, or like some survival of the age of mythical demi-gods, half man, half divinity. He was tall, very finely moulded; had features of dazzling beauty ; while his conrago . was of that supreme kind that stood oufc in relief even in an army- of brave men, solitary and unattainable, indestructible. And t<> complete the picture it should be added that he was a dandy of dandies, loved the finest of fine linen, and could spendhours over his looking-glass even in the midst of a campaign.

BEFORE PLEVXA,

MacGahan, the great war correspondent, gave two pictures of him on that dreadful day of Plevna which remain in my memory, though it is more than a quarter-of a century since I read them. In the first, Skcbeleff appeared to him in the midst of the* •battle, and he was a picture of all the horrors of war ; blood on his sword twisted out of all shape, his face black with powder and red with blood, his eyes straining with the frenzy of battle, of horror, of grief and rage over the deaths of all his men and the failure of the attack, and his clothes a mass of torn tatters and almost filthy rags. And then that same evening, sleeping in the tent of Skobeleff, MacGahan was awakened in the middle of the night, and ■was astounded to see' Skobeleff before the glass, with a new and brilliant uniform, his hair carefully curled, his hands manicured, his beard trimmed, even perfume scattered over his face and his clothes. And then in a iew moments more clune a third transformation ; the perfumed dandy threw himself on his csmp bed, and burst into a wild flood of passionate tears, crying over his poor men, whose corpses lay in thousands on the unconquered ramparts of Plevna.

skobeleff's doom.

Here was a soldier to lead men anywhere, and to inspire them with his own desperate coui;age, and — for he was still young — Skobcleff seemed to have anything and everything before him. And then, without warning, a brief Reuter's telegram announced to the world that the young hero was dead ; not- a detail was added ; he was dead — that was all. The Russian censor was able to closj hermetically the columns of the press of Russia against even the wild clamour of reports, p issionate demanda for the truth and all the other furious sounds that raged through Moscow ; and the journals of the rest of Europe could only give vague guesses The death was violent and sudden, that was certain; bufc where and how it took place — whether in his own house or in some of the subterranean and sinister haunts of vice that) underlie the smooth surface of our town life — all that has never vet been told.

DE BLOTMTZ'S VERDICT.

Biit now M. de Blowitz, in an article in a French paper, lifts i% little bit of the curtain and tells us that tho cause of the tragedy was the very Princess Radziwill who at this moment lies in a gaol in Capetown on a charge of vulgar though gigantic swindling. Skobeleff (writes M. de Blowitz in the Matin) was madly in love with the Princess ; but she, for some reason or other, resolved to break off the association ; he told liar she had passed sentence of death on him. Men say these things, and usually sack af'er a decent interval other distractions and sip from other flowers ; but Skobeleff was of the reckless type with whom act and word are the same, and two days after this stormy interview he was dead — under those circumstances of horror and mystery to which I have alluded. This was a terrib'e awakening for Princess R-ad-ziwill, and for some years her life was hidden from the world under the dark shadow in which remorse veiled her.

STALKING MR RHODES,

Then came a return to life and hope, and with these things the old desire for oonquet,t. Mr Rhode 3 was for years the lodestar of every woman in the world who had an adventurous disposition and the greed for power and money ; and his reputation as a woman-hater was probably due to his attempts to escape the always pursuing figure of the female lover of adventure or money or power. Where so many women had failed, Princess Radziwill — with all the scalps of "So many infatuated admirer's of so many lands — resolved to conquer, and thus began a chase on her part — in which sha was ever the pursuer, and Mr Rhodes, poor man, was now and then the prey,, trapped and helpless, and usually the fleeing and terrified victim, seeking escape anywhere.

In the intervals rhe Princess paid occasionally visits to her relatives at St. Petersburg, and, armed with shares in South Africans, was able to dazzle even the luxurious and spendthrift capital by the sumptuopiiy of her display. And then, again, she was on her way to South Africa. Once in South Africa, her turbulence filled the colony. She insisted on publishing a newspaper devoted to the glory of Mr Rhodes." She lived in fine style, and there v ere plenty ot people found ready to believe that the granite heart of the Colossus Lad at last been conquered ; and that the Princess might becom-i his wife — when the other husband in far-off Germany had been brought to reason. But poor Mr Rhodes was foreign to these designs apparently ; Mckened of the constant pursuit; and it is said that on one occasion he changed h;s ship simply because his haunting and pursuing spirit was found to have made herself a fcllow-pas^°nger on the ve-sel originally chosen by him.

THE END OF THE STOHY.

And then came the climax to the story. Mr Rhodes found himself responsible for bills, first of a comparatively small amount, ihen of larger amounts, until, in the end, he found th.it he was responsible for at least £40,000. He was one of the most <:<~neroi'" of me i : but what rnaTi can mako himftlf responsible for the infinite extravagances of vomen? A peer of enormous wealth h.is been known in our time to m.-et the bills of even as muck, as £40,000 lather than bring two great families to the. "ricf and sLame of a criminal trial of a worn in ; but then that was heroic ; and tins pirticular peer is known to be princely in rvciytLing. Tlio end of the story of the Princess IWiiwiU was that Mr Rhodes resolved to

repudiate these hills which were being floated in bis name;- and even faced the hideous exposure of a petty and squalid trial. And perhaps here is partly the secret of the poor man's early death. He was doomed to die of course, in any case, at an early age ; he saw that himself 20 or =30 years ago, and he saw it so clearly that he often discussed it in the year before his death. But there are moments in the life of many men when it requires \mt a straw to break the back — the merest trifle becomes a black and gigantic and overwhelming mountain of trouble. We Slave most of us known those hours, and probably Mr Rhodes had reached such an hour when this petty, squalid, almost disgusting little trouble came to irritate, annoy, and perhaps finally to overwhelm him.

THE GRAVE AND THE GAOL

He "was already ill when the investigation "began, but the shrewd gentlemen who always scent a scandal and rend a reputation, "winked and spoke of diplomatic illnesses, and nothing was spared to Mr Rhodes by tfaat merciless automaton, the machine of the law. Lawyers, examining and crossexamining, went to the dying man's bedside; possibly there, too, appeared before Jinn the avenging and furious figure of the woman, at last brought to bay and fighting for her dear life with tigress fierceness and ■with her back to the wall. The end was not. what she or. perhaps anybody else, except Mr ' Rhodes himself, expected ; for there entered upon the scene that ever unexpected but always possible character in all tragedies, "the fell sergeant death" ; end so ends the story for the present. It began probably in some light and frivolous bubble of conversation in a London drawing room between a man never disposed to take woman too seriously and a woman •who probably did not revcil to him all the dark past and all the tremendous passion and purpose behind her sparkling eyes And the curtain finally falls on a hero's grave in the far-off mountain-tops and a little cell in a common gaol. — T. P., in AI.A.P.