CHAPTER XThere be twin crowns, whose kingly dowerForbids to fail or swerve,Borne by twin angels, Love and Power,And writ thereon, “I serve.”
There be twin crowns, whose kingly dowerForbids to fail or swerve,Borne by twin angels, Love and Power,And writ thereon, “I serve.”
There be twin crowns, whose kingly dowerForbids to fail or swerve,Borne by twin angels, Love and Power,And writ thereon, “I serve.”
“Ah, yes, Princess, I pity you with all my heart! Imagine hiding your charm, your beauty, in a prison like Tverna—excuse me, Basil-Vassilièvitch—but you know that Tverna, magnificent though it be,isa prison nine months out of the year ... a grand prison, I admit, but still a jail—a place to distract one with its loneliness.”
Countess Chouróff, sitting bolt upright in her chair of state, was heading her hospitable table in a dazzling haze of jewels that outlined her meager person at every edge.
“She reminds me of a wire sign illuminated by electricity,” thought Basil, who sat on her right hand.
“You are very severe, Vassilissa-Andrièvna, very severe indeed, to my birthplace!” he said, smiling.
“Severe! Hear this miscreant talk!” she appealed to the company, nodding a tiaraed coiffure until the gigantic diamonds and emeralds spiking it in every direction flashed again. “But men are like that ... they do not understand our tenderer natures. My poor husband was identically the same—God rest his soul!” She crossed herself scrupulously with a bony yellow hand loaded with enormous gems. “Duty was his eternal rallying-cry—bless him! It was our duty to vegetate in the wilds at his side until it became imperative for our daughters tobe presented, and then the grumbles, the lamentations that ensued! Dear! Dear! One would have sworn he was on his way to be crucified. I assure you, Princess, that if you yield at the beginning to marital tyranny you will never again be able to call your soul your own.”
Laurence, in all the panoply of a great mondaine at a feast given in her honor, was somehow or other entirely out of it. This was something never dreamt of before: a dinner at one of the most ancient houses of a far-off Russian province, carried out with the pompous ceremonial and curious discomforts of past days, in a banqueting-hall spacious enough to shelter an army and evidently open to all the winds of heaven. It was raining heavily outside, with no promise of better things to come, and from her place she could see files of servants in full livery running to and fro from the kitchen—builtà la mode d’il-y-a longtemps, in the middle of the inner court—bearing covered silver dishes, all adrip with the diluvian downpour. The majordomo, stiff as a ramrod, advanced as far as the edge of the glass marquise every five minutes or so, to convey his orders in a withering autocratic voice which grew sweet as honey the minute he re-entered the banqueting-hall, and the four butlers in attendance marched and countermarched with the omnipresent lacqueys, all attired in the Chouróff scarlet and gold, like captains heading small detachments of troops. What manner of country was this?
Another surprising anachronism—at least so it appeared to her—was the fact that albeit this was an occasion when, to use the French simile, the little dishes had been rammed into the big ones (les petits plats dans les grands), yet the feudal custom of “guests below the salt” was strictly adhered to. Indeed, the implacable etiquette of the House of Chouróff separated the festive board into two exact parts, one reserved for ceremoniously invited gentlemen and ladies, the other for the poor relatives,the hangers-on, and the household proper—comprising tutors, governesses, the Polish land-steward, a host of lady companions, another of penniless noble damsels awaiting the Countess’s good pleasure to obtain a small “dot” from her generosity, the almoner, the medical officer of the district, and other functionaries of similar importance.
“What an idea!” Laurence reflected. “What extravagant barbarism and outlandishness! How they would laugh at home if they saw this.” Laugh she did not, however. She was impressed, in spite of her silent disapproval, and a little frightened, too. This masterful woman in claret-hued velvet, who led her people with something like a field-marshal’s bâton, and managed, however, to inspire them with a curious mixture of passionate devotion and abject terror, remained a mysterious and awesome power to her. Also Countess Chouróff was by no means dazzled by her, Laurence’s, high rank and fortune, for she was absurdly wealthy herself, and a very great lady, notwithstanding her oddities and extravagances of speech; a personage of weight and power in the land such as Laurence could never hope to be, and one with whom the new-comer could not, as she had done with almost everybody elsewhere, pose and posture, which, of course, vexed the bride not a little.
“You can never realize,” Madame Chouróff was saying now, “what a trip to Petersburg meant then, Princess! Oh, it was a voyage indeed! We looked like a veritable Noah’s ark procession, let me tell you, setting off from here after the snow began to bear.Berlinesswung on runners, andkibitkasandfourgons—preceded by couriers on horseback or in light wagons—tèlégas—and what not? A noise, a clamor, when getting under way, of which you can have no conception! Of course we had to carry with us half of thebatterie de cuisine—how else would we have fared on the road?—and thechefwith his scullions, hissilver saucepans! How he would swear over the portable stoves to be useden route, at the miserable post-houses!” She laughed heartily, creating thereby a veritable pyrotechnic commotion with her jewels.
“I remember once when we were snowed in, stuck fast between two stations—post-stations, you understand—flakes as big as swans’ wings falling, falling, falling in a dense curtain. Four of my children were almost infants then, eight and nine years old, I think. Let me see, was it the twins?... I can’t remember; perhaps Zina and Dimitri, Nikola and Sônitzkà; it does not matter, however. Anyhow, they were asleep in their father’s traveling-carriage, at full length, so that he had to get out and join me and the girls—four of them, mind you—that made six of us pressed together like sardines, eating on our laps from the provision-baskets, and swallowing red-hot tea brewed by the chief of our kitchens beneath a lean-to of pine branches in the very throat of the tempest. Behind theberlinethe maid’s rumble was getting full of snow. It was droll! You must understand theberlinewas honeycombed with drawers and receptacles, and there were supplementary sacks of leather attached everywhere. As to my ‘sleeper,’ it did not boast so many appendages andcachettes; it was much lighter, and lined with—what do you think?—with rose-colored satin—a conceit of my poor husband. It had served us on our honeymoon. And that night he was in a vile humor, thanks to the fact that for the first time in his existence he had been deprived of his indispensablerastigaï—marrow-filledpatés—since you do not know Russian, Princess. Oh, but we had ices!... Don’t laugh, Basil-Vassilièvitch! That cook was a pearl, and with the aid of essences of various fruits and powdered nuts, of which he always took a quantity along, he manufactured a sort of Nesselrode in little moulds. Delicious they were, too, but they did not appease my poor husband’swrath concerning thoserastigaï. He told the butler some impatient things when he brought the Nesselrode shapes on a frozen tray, and repented afterward, for he was consummately golden-hearted. I recall that he gave him tenrubles—gold—the next morning. We left theberlineto the girls after that, and took refuge, he and I, in my ‘sleeper.’ He became quite too amiable then, poor fellow, also he was very handsome, an all-conquering mustache—a leg!—men wore knee-breeches still—but I was adamant. I had to punish him for his previous evil mood, and so I threatened to send him to sleep in the cook’s shelter. Ah, the days of our youth ... how often we regret them!”
Laurence’s amazement knew no bounds when she heard the bursts of laughter that followed at her end of the table—echoedpianissimoby those below the salt. All this was hardly decent, she thought, for she had a singular fund of prudishness concealed far down below many other more agreeable defects. This old woman, with her angular shoulders, her corded neck and parchmented skin, seemed to her own youth positively odious as she sat enthroned there, flying her arms and bewailing her lost opportunities. She wondered at Basil, who seemed quite touched, and patted almost filially one of the flat wrists, crowded to the elbow withporte-bonheurs, that reposed for a fleeting second on the cloth beside him. To Laurence the deeps of those wonderful sapphire eyes that had been always the Countess’s sole but very potent beauty, and were still so infinitely expressive and youthful, said nothing at all, although they were just now not quite free from a certain telltale moisture. “An old absurdity,” she called the great lady in her own mind, and, like the Nesselrode tray of the defunct Count, she froze up through and through, becoming with every new experience more hostile to the foreign atmosphere surrounding her.
The farther she penetrated into the heart of Russia the less she comprehended or liked her new country. Indeed, slowly but surely a sort of abhorrence for everything pertaining to it was rising within her; and her hard face and unsympathetic expression made one young officer on leave murmur to another young officer on leave, who sat beside him at table that night: “I say, Voïnóff, Palitzin’s efforts to marry a foreigner are all in vain. He’s caught a Tartar, after all!”
The other, whose uniform glittered like sunshine, and whose name was the vernacular for “Warrior,” was blessed with one of those meek faces that are greatly confirmed in that expression by sleek, butter-hued hair rigidly parted all the way down the middle, as was his. Also he had a habit of blushing all over his scalp, which made him resemble for minutes at a time what the Italians frivolously callun piccolo porcellino. He indulged in one of these manifestations at his comrade’s words, adding thereto a smothered squeal of delight, which completed the likeness very neatly.
“I catch you laughing at me, Yégor-Alexandréitch!” Countess Chouróff called out to him. “You think my little stories are not befitting this noble assemblage!”
“It ... it is Zakbarièf!” choked the youth, getting pinker and pinker under his pale, silky thatch. “He is so funny!”
Zakbarièf tried to protest, but vainly, for Madame Chouróff had already launched herself into another anecdote, and he relapsed into silence, bestowing dagger-like looks upon his grinning brother-at-arms.
Dessert was approaching, heralded by turreted confections, reminding one involuntarily of the glorious ice palace that every winter is built on the Neva; by pyramids of sweet cakes and transparent edifices of jelly which it took two men to carry. According to Russian fashion, the fruit and bonbons and minor toothsomenesseshad had their place on the cloth from the beginning of dinner, cincturing with their appetizing battalions the masses of flowers and feathery foliage forming the center and wings of that opulent display. Lucullus dining with Lucullus could have devised nothing more truly complete.
“You are bored, madame? You think ouragapestoo ostentatious?” The question was asked by Laurence’s left-hand neighbor, whom it must be admitted she, in her fault-finding and sulky mood, had absolutely neglected, as she had also her right-hand one, who, by the way, was a corpulent Chouróff, more interested in his plate than in pretty women. To be sure, when the general presentations had been gone through she had not heard either name, and, as if perversely inclined, the little dinner-cards inscribed with them had lain prone on their faces between her cover and theirs. Yet the speaker was not a man to be easily overlooked. Tall, slender, without being in the least thin, he had the most interesting face imaginable: a delicately aquiline face, barred by a long, slender mustache inclining to a light frost of grayness, which was repeated in his thick, short-cut hair. Deep under well-marked brows were what could well have been called, after the fashion of lady-novelists, “eagle’s eyes,” so penetrating were they, and he wore his dress-coat like a hauberk—a soldier every inch of him, if out of uniform—a Grand Seigneur of olden times in modern mufti.
“Not precisely bored,” drawled Laurence, turning languidly toward him. “But a little surprised at what I see. Surely, monsieur, you are not a Russian?”
“I am not, madame, and sometimes I regret it, for they are a great people over here.”
“Think so?”
“Yes, madame, I do, from the bottom of my heart, else I would not have married my wife.”
The taunt did not pierce Laurence’s thick vanity and self-righteousness.
“You are wedded to a Russian?” she askeddu bout des lèvres.
“I am afraid you did not catch my name a while ago, madame. As a matter of fact, I have the honor of being closely related to you—by marriage. I am Salvières.”
“TheDuke!” Laurence exclaimed, with sudden attention, and with the same animation she had displayed when the “Gamin” had mentioned Salvières to her at Plenhöel; for he was a very great personage indeed, even to Laurence’s colossal ignorance of the intimate lining of affairs, both social and diplomatic.
He smiled amusedly. “TheDuke!” he said. “Why, yes, I suppose I can call myself one of the unfortunates so hampered, although why you flatteringly emphasized the article I can’t imagine. A greater distinction is mine, as being now your brother-in-law, very much at your service,belle petite madame!”
“But where is your wife?”
“Alas! at home, where an incredible variety of occupations detains her.”
“What do you call ‘at home’ when you are here?” she asked. “Madame de Salvières has pretty nearly as many estates as Basil.”
Salvières laughed. He had a charming laugh, disclosing beautifully regular teeth. “My dear wife’s castle of Palitzinovna—a prolongation of Tverna, so to speak. We are very fond of it.”
“How can you, the owner of Salvières, bear to abide in Russia?” Laurence insisted, with deplorable bad taste.
“Decidedly you do not like the White Empire!” he said. “May I be allowed to give you a small paternal hint, which is, do not let Basil notice this too much, or Tatiana, either. She is quick as a flash of lightning, ismy blonde beloved, and would resent such heresy, even more than her brother would.”
“Heresy! I cannot believe that you mean what you say. I hate Russia, and I don’t mind who knows it, Monsieur de Salvières.”
“My name, dear madame, to family and friends is Jean—one of Biblical simplicity and easy to remember. May I venture to hope that you will in future deign to use it? Moreover, my character, undistinguished though it be by any startling virtues, is simple also, and I always mean what I say, even if I do not always consider it a duty to sayallI mean. That is why I spoke of heresy just now. Your new country is delightful, as you will speedily find out for yourself.”
“You really like Russia, then?” she questioned, helping herself mechanically to peach-ice. “Yes, Cyprus,” she said to the footman behind her.
“I do, very, very much; and so will you when you know it better, I assure you. It is an attaching land, peopled by splendid races, one and all; a place of great deeds, of courageous lives, of extraordinary intellects, talents, and more than talents—achievements. Themujiks, I think, are unique in their brave placidity; but they are fighters, too, and mighty good ones, when occasion requires. Look at what Skobèléff could do with them! The nobles are by no means the profligate gamblers and feather-brained spendthrifts they are often supposed to be, but large-hearted gentlemen, devoted to their very arduous duties; and as to the women, rich or poor, patrician, peasant, or bourgeois—you must pardon me if I find it difficult to find words adequate to translate my opinion of them, for they are more than women; companions in the true sense of the word, comrades, counselors—and precious ones at that!”
“This is sheer enthusiasm! How long have you felt all this? Since your marriage?”
Salvières smiled. “No,” he said, softly, “ever since as a lad I came to visit Basil’s grandmother at Tverna—years ago. She was the most exquisite creature one could imagine. Lovely, clever, able, wise, sweet as a flower, and so comprehending, so full of mercy and charity; the courage and spirit of a knight—perfection! Indeed, her personal magnetism and charm were so great that every man who approached her fell in love with her. And how gracefully she used to transform them into lifelong friends! Physically she was a wonder: little hands and feet that were a sculptor’s dream, an oval face lighted by violet eyes—yes, violet as the petals of deep larkspur; a mass of undulating hair—white as nacre at thirty, and almost as iridescent, it was so bright—and a poise, amaintien. I could become lyrical when I think of that exquisite woman, whom no one has ever quite resembled, excepting, perhaps, Marguerite de Plenhöel. Strangely enough, later on the ‘Gamin’ will assuredly be a second Véra Petrovna Chemensky. Qualities, manners, virtues, and talents are the same already, and even as she is now she always reminds me strongly of her.”
Laurence was looking wide-eyed at him. Was Marguerite de Plenhöel going to pursue her even here? Extremely vexed, she curtly retorted:
“You are lyrical enough, I assure you, to suit any taste, even the famous ‘Gamin’s’!”
Salvières twirled the ends of his mustache with a familiar gesture. He felt annoyed, not only on account of the slighting reference to Marguerite, not only because he was not accustomed to be spoken to in that peevish manner, but because he was becoming aware of a decided sense of disquiet concerning Basil’s future happiness—Basil, who was as near and dear to him as if he had been his blood brother. Jean de Salvières had not expected to find in the twenty-year-old bride of hisbrother-in-law—who had been described to him as a well-born beauty—so pert and altogether uninhabitable a nature. Beautiful she certainly was—of that there could not be the faintest doubt—but her self-assertion, her cutting way of saying things, and her lack of punctilio, did not impress him as befitting so young a woman, and once again he tugged impatiently at his mustache. He was too frank to attempt playing her at the end of a line with the cunning andsavoir-faireof an angler (although this would have been easy enough to him) in order to pry more deeply into her character. Moreover, she repelled him. If he liked a person he showed it at once; if he disliked one, he made a point of having nothing more to do with him or with her; but here was a problem not soluble by either plan; for he could neither ignore her nor cast her aside, owing to many reasons, chief among which was the dawning conviction that in Basil’s interest it would be well if he followed up Laurence a little, helped her if he could, advised her, certainly.
He and his wife had been in India on a pleasure trip at the time of the marriage, and his surprise at what he now discovered was painful.
“Thefamous‘Gamin’!” he said, speculatively. “Why famous? Has that dear little thing rendered herself guilty of any more heroic deeds since I last had the happiness of seeing her?”
“Heroic deeds? I was not aware she dealt in that sort of thing!” said Laurence, who for so lofty a soul was now within measurable distance of snappishness, and she looked at Salvières with a severity indicative of an intention to keep him strictly in his place. Yet had she taken the trouble to do so, she might have realized that she sat in the presence of that rare and indefinable creation—a strong man, whom no feminine trickery could find at any moment off his guard.
“I beg your pardon,” he quietly replied. “She frequently, on the contrary, deals in such things. Only a few months ago she jumped into the sea from a high rock—a very high rock, understand—to save from drowning a silly gawk of a ship’s boy. Half a gale was blowing at the time, and it was something more than a man’s ordinary risk for her to take.”
Laurence’s eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her eyes to the uncomfortable neighbor whose simple directness of speech found no favor in her sight.
“Really!” she remarked. “I never heard of it!”
“It is your loss then, madame, and I am glad to have been so fortunate as to repair this lack of knowledge on your part.”
She made a grimace expressive of real annoyance. “I am not much of a gossip,” she shrugged, “and therefore never greatly given to listen to it.”
“That being the case,” retorted Salvières, “we may remain hopeful that this will go no further. Good actions are best left out of general conversation, excepting in such particular cases as this one. They are so seldom credited.” [“Why in the world does she hate the ‘Gamin’?” he was asking himself. “What has the poor child done to her?”]
“You seem very fond of Marguerite de Plenhöel?” Laurence remarked. “Everybody I know appears to have some weakness or other for her, and yet she is really nothing extraordinary!”
“Perhaps that might explain it,” he said. “You see, she is simplicity itself, without pose of any sort, but also very bright and clever; also she is gay and brave—Heaven help her!”
“If she is all that, why should Heaven need to interfere?”
Salvières was again thoughtfully twisting his mustache, Decidedly this new relative of his was not improvingon better acquaintance. Unhappy Basil! When the scales—thick as window-shutters he was forced to believe—fell from his eyes, what would he do?
“Heaven,” he said, slowly, “must always interfere with its own, although God forbid that I should attempt to explain to you the ways of Providence.”
“You evidently consider Marguerite an angel, then?” Laurence queried, in an odd voice.
“Oh, by no means! She has faults, great faults, not the least of them being her over-confidence in others.”
“You know her very well, I suppose?”
“As well as one knows a creature one has carried about in one’s arms before it could walk,” he acquiesced.
“As long as that? I heard that you were personally related to her, but not very closely.”
“She is my niece,à la mode de Bretagne par alliance,” he explained.
“Oh, that accounts for your enthusiasm, I suppose,” Laurence proposed, with a pale smile. “One is apt to be more or less proud of what belongs to one, whetherpar allianceor otherwise.”
“Not always!” he vigorously rejoined. “Ah!Sapristi!Not always, I assure you! (Can she be stupid into the bargain?” he mused. “That would be a superfetation of calamities!”) And as Countess Chouróff was rising, he pushed back his chair and drew Laurence’s out of the way of her train, while she moved at his side with that subtle rustle of superfine silken linings that conveys even to the dullest masculine mind an especial care for dress and the wisdom of dealing with a greatcouturier.
In any other case, Salvières could in all probability have dismissed from his mind the thoroughly disagreeable quarter of an hour he had just passed, but this was impossible for him to do. His keen eyes unrolled before him a long and dark array of eminently unpleasant possibilities, not concerning him or his wife, precisely,and yet liable to make things a bit dreary for both of them.
“How do you like her?”
The question took him by surprise as he was escaping from the concert-room, to which the Countess’s guests were being marshaled, and, turning quickly, he found his brother-in-law at his elbow.
“Like whom?” he demanded, eager to gain time.
“Why, my wife, of course!” Basil answered. “I saw you chatting nineteen to the dozen with her, until the end of the Pantagruelian feast Madame Chouróff euphemistically calls a simple little dinner.”
“She is remarkably beautiful,” Salvières sincerely approved. “Indeed, I find that the portraits you sent us were far from doing her justice.”
Curiously enough, this time Basil did not flush with gratification, as when Régis de Plenhöel had been the appraiser; instead, an almost worried expression overcast his features.
“Come here, Jean!” he said, drawing Salvières into the billiard-room, which was entirely unoccupied at the moment, and both men seated themselves upon a broad, mellow divan far away from the central hanging-lamps.
“I don’t wish,” Basil said at once, “simply to know how you like Laurence’s looks—that is not necessary. I am anxious—very anxious to hear what else you have to say about her. Between you and me there has always existed a sympathy and a comprehension greater than ordinarycamaraderie, and that is why I don’t scruple to question you as I do. What do you think of Laurence, and what do you think Tatiana will think of her—which,” he concluded, “makes many ‘thinks’ in one request.”
“Plain speaking and clear understanding. An exchange without robbery! Eh?”
“Exactly!”
“Humm ... m! I wonder if in this all-blessed cornerI could venture to light my pipe?” And Salvières peeped cautiously round the open panel of the door. “There’s nobody about, as far as I can see,” he laughed, “and you know that I do not consider digestion perfect without a few whiffs of my trusty briar.” He was watching Basil covertly as he spoke, and was somewhat relieved to see the strained expression of his eyes relax a little.
“I know. You’re lucky that Tatiana does not object to such a pernicious habit,” he interposed; “but there is nothing to ‘oxidize’ here, fortunately.”
“Your sister,” the Duke averred, “is too fine a woman to object to anything I fancy. She’s true blue, like all the Palitzins. But what’s that you were saying about oxidizing?”
“Nothing! Nothing! I was thinking of something else,” Basil hastily rejoined, repressing his untimely flash of memory, as he continually repressed similar ones. “Light your pipe first, and answer my question as soon as you have satisfied your brutal instincts,” he concluded, with a praiseworthy effort at banter.
“Your question? Oh! Yes, of course!” dallied Salvières. “Well, it is not possible for me to give you a very complete opinion after ten minutes’ conversation with a lovely woman, my dear Basil. It is too large an order for yours truly.”
He gave a wave of the hand descriptive of intricate complexitiesad infinitum, and, deliberately leaning back on the luxurious cushions of the divan, began to puff at his trusty briar.
“Nevertheless,” Basil said, frowning, “if you had something agreeable to say, you wouldn’t need half a dozen personal interviews to do so. It is first impressions that count.”
“Not a bit of it!” Salvières contradicted. “Were you to ask my opinion of a passer-by—Lord, I hope thereisnobody around”—he interrupted himself, glancing at hispipe with mock apprehension—“I would satisfy your curiosity at once; but when it comes to passing judgment upon so considerable a personage as the Princess Basil Palitzin, my sister-in-law and your wife, words become momentous; although this does not exclude my assuring you that I found her interesting beyond all expression!”
Basil, who was smoking a cigarette—a dainty Russian affair all white and gold, and long, hard mouthpiece—brusquely threw it into an ash-tray.
“I am glad you found her interesting,” he put in, with averted eyes, “but there are a good many ways of being interesting. Why don’t you speak out? Surely it is natural for me to ask you how you like my wife!”
Salvières sat suddenly up, drew his long legs under him tailor fashion, and stared at his friend and brother, rocking softly backward and forward as he did so.
“My dear boy,” he said at last, “of course it is natural, but I cannot understand why you seem so worried about my opinion. I have just told you that I find your wife both surpassingly beautiful and extremely interesting. What more can I sayà première vue?”
Basil took a fresh cigarette, lighted it from the still burning stump on the tray, and gazed for a moment at the ends of his pumps, as though noticing something amiss with those irreproachable articles of footwear.
“Do you think,” he suddenly asked, with apparent irrelevance, “that perhaps I did a foolish, an unwise, or even a cruel thing in separating her from her friends, her country, her pleasures, and in bringing her to live at Tverna?”
“A woman shall forsake her family, her land, and her own surroundings, to cleave to her husband, quoth Holy Scripture!” Salvières pronounced, severely.
“It does nothing of the kind! It is the other way about. It is the husband who is particularly mentioned,” Basil contradicted, unable to repress a smile.
“Oh! It works both ways undoubtedly! Behold me, who spend neatly the half of every year over here. Besides, not being me, or an Irishman, I presume it isn’t your intention to become an absentee landlord?”
“No, naturally not, but I do not think Laurence likes Russia. She does not complain, you understand, but I cannot help noticing—”
“I believe you, my boy,” commented Salvières, inwardly. And then as the pause threatened to draw to an embarrassing length, he quietly remarked: “She’ll get used to the change after a while, never fear. Women are eminently adaptable, and, given the merely nominal duties she will encounter, and the enormous advantages that will counterbalance these, you ought not to worry yourself about the result!”
“But that is just the devil of it!” Basil exclaimed. “She does not understand those duties you are pleased to call nominal, but are as a matter of fact very serious. She’s afraid—I honestly believe—of the people! You see, she has heard all her life in England that we Russians are a bloodthirsty, violent race, capable of any evil; so what will you? Poor child, the isolation, perhaps even the ‘grandeur’ of her new position, are weighing upon her!”
“Nonsense! Who’s afraid?” Salvières said, with some irritation. “She, the daughter of a line of sailors and soldiers, the granddaughter of that old fire-eater, Admiral Seton, the ‘Orror of the Horient—as they nicknamed him at Alexandria! Bah! Try and make some one else believe that!”
“Physically afraid, of course not! Morally afraid, yes!” asserted Basil, straightening himself. “We are having some little trouble over at Tverna just now, as you know; a mere trifle not worthy of serious consideration; but, strangely enough, it makes her nervous. She has not caught on since our arrival there. Imagine, she considered it quite improper when old General Hiltròwknelt on the threshold of the drawing-room and kissed her hands in greeting, awaiting the kiss on the brow that is customary here, though I had warned her of all these things. The people all and sundry were ready enough to prostrate themselves at her feet, but”—he hesitated, cleared his throat, and glanced appealingly at his relative—“but,” he continued, seeing Salvières raise his shoulders ever so slightly, “but she drew away from them—no, I don’t quite mean that—rather she showed her—her indifference—a little too plainly. For instance, she takes no interest in the sick, the ailing, the unhappy; she never sets foot in anisba; she has handed over the key of the pharmacy to the housekeeper, a thing never heard of in mother’s time; and when the land-steward or thestaròstácome in quest of remedies, delicacies, or any of the many comforts we always provide, she sends them word that she does not know what they want—which is true enough, of course—and that they must not bother her.”
“You should teach her to do better!” Salvières hazarded.
“But—my dear fellow,” Basil began, “I am not inclined to make her life here a misery.”
“Then don’t complain,” was the cool rejoinder. “Let her have her head; bid her amuse herself in her own way, encourage her to see and receive people of her own choice, and thereby obtain peace—that most desirable of possessions!”
“It is not everybody’s privilege, after all, to know by instinct how to treat the lower classes,” Basil said, irritably, “or to become popular, and to find the secret of assuring a number of unprepossessing and almost total strangers that one remembers them individually and perfectly!”
“Yet that is just what we must do, if we seek popularity. Besides which popularity means—plus a cruelstrain on the digestive organs—a deep pocket—which your wife fortunately has—and the patience of an archangel—although Archangel Michael does not give the impression of extreme longanimity. Neither does your wife, if I judge her aright.”
“There’s no earthly use in joking, Jean! Try and help me, rather, for, to tell you the truth, I’m a little at a loss what to do. If I yield to her unspoken wishes, and take her away, it means utter ruin to all my plans, my projects, and also to the welfare of my people. And if I do not yield—”
“Don’t yield on that point, Basil!” Salvières quickly interrupted. “Don’t take her away. It won’t do. No, certainly not; it won’t do, for her, for you, or for them.”
“I know; I feel just as you do about it, but what then?”
Salvières gave a sharp sigh, then he laughed; but his laugh was not easy, and at last he spread out both arms in a gesture almost of discouragement.
“You are letting yourself be driven into animpasse, my dear Basil,” he said, gravely. “A very dangerous proceeding. You ask me to help you. You know that I’m only too ready to do so. But how the deuce am I to get about it? Let me see. How long have you been at Tverna now?”
“A little over two months.”
“That all! Well, you surely did not expect amondainelike your wife to get accustomed to your citadel in so short a time. Still, what do you say to Tatiana and myself coming to stay for a couple of weeks or so with you? Tatiana is the most capable manager ever created for the joy of this world, and her advice might work wonders. She is to the manner born, and I think she wouldn’t mind teaching your beautiful Laurence how to go about it on an estate as large and difficult to rule as a whole province.”
Basil turned upon Salvières a pair of rather hopeless eyes.
“Do you think they would go well in double harness, those two?” he asked, diffidently. “Besides, Laurence is a little impatient of advice.”
Salvières reflected before replying. “I dare say! And whether she would get along with Tatiana—that’s the question!” He knocked the ashes out of his cold pipe, and thoughtfully replaced this object of his affections in its chamois-linedétui. “I bought this delightful article on the Jarozolimskà in Warsaw,” he casually remarked, “where it is claimed that the shops are better than in Paris. Lord! Moreover, the man who sold it to me said, with a lugubrious grin on his foolish Teutonic face, that this was the finest pipe ever made; and he was right, curiously enough, for I never had a better one. However, to return to our muttons, or rather to our lambkins: I’m afraid, Basil, that perhaps you are by way of building molehills into very tall mountains. You would scarcely have enjoyed a strong-minded, assertive wife—a leader at home and afield, violently interested in politics of every caliber, a platform orator, bowing from the waist up to admiring multitudes—i. e., the sort that so many unfortunate husbands are trying to get used to nowadays.”
Basil could not restrain a laugh. “My dear fellow,” he said, “I do not ask so much. You know very well that I consider men who help women to make fools of themselves unmanly crawlers. But between that and complete indifference to the masses—since you force me to adopt that jargon—there is a yawning gulf.”
“I dare say,” Salvières was beginning, when Countess Chouróff’s deep bass made itself heard at the door, and that lady, followed by four yards of purple-velvet draperies, advanced into the room and faced the two absconders.
“I have lived for years,” she exclaimed, “under the impression that I saw in you gentlemen an overworked Russianproprietor and a French Seigneur, overworked also, but in wifely interests. I apologize for my mistake; you are merely a couple of idlers, confirmed in that same lamentable sloth that enables men of the south to do nothing, very gracefully, for long hours at a time.”
“What procures us this withering indictment?” Salvières protested, laughing. “Remember, dear lady, that it is months—months since the rights of brotherhood have been exercised between Basil and myself! Would you proscribe them beneath your hospitable roof?”
“And what about the rights of my guests to the companionship of the two most important and—let me add—the two most agreeable personalities beneath the roof you invoke?” she replied, with spirit. “Give me your arm, Salvières; and as to you, Basil-Vassilièvitch, seek the protection of your own wife from the ides of my wrath. She is looking for you, anyhow,” she concluded, returning to a simpler form of address.
“Salvières,” she ruefully whispered in the ducal ear almost on a level with her mouth—for she was a remarkably tall woman—“that young and strangely disquieting couple need watching, or we will see them upset by the roadside.”
Salvières started a little and stared surprisedly at her.
“What makes you think that?” he asked, irritably, for his nerves were beginning to be jangled.
“Intuition, assisted by clear sight and miles of experience,” she said, gravely. “That sweet girl in there,” and she pointed to the buzzing drawing-room—which she often playfully alluded to as thesala-del-trono, because it was only thrown open on solemn occasions—“has been purposely created to cause the downfall of great and good men. Remember what I say. Some day, perhaps not so very distant, you’ll find that I’m no idle prophet.”