CHAPTER XIVYour secret thought, or foul or fair,Thrills in the currents of the air,And oft may breathe in careless playFrom lips unwitting what they say.
Your secret thought, or foul or fair,Thrills in the currents of the air,And oft may breathe in careless playFrom lips unwitting what they say.
Your secret thought, or foul or fair,Thrills in the currents of the air,And oft may breathe in careless playFrom lips unwitting what they say.
Basil, watching by his godmother’s bedside when not employed in replacing her as owner and personal manager of one of the greatest estates in northern Russia, felt a constant presentiment of evil things to come. He could not have explained this sensation had he been asked to do so, but nevertheless it was quite strong enough to oppress him almost continually by day and night.
Vera-Nikoláievna, Countess Lanièvitch, had in her day been a celebrated beauty, but this circumstance had never succeeded in spoiling the remarkably clever and high-minded woman she was. Her husband had fallen at the head of his regiment during the Russo-Japanese war, in the course of which her four sons, two in the cavalry and two in the navy, had also heroically yielded up their lives. Left alone and desolate, the Great Lady had turned all that remained of tenderness in her nature to Basil-Vassilièvitch Palitzin, who she claimed was all that was left in the world for her to care about, and had made little Piotr her heir, with that fitness of things which invariably brings more water to an already overflowing river. She had met Laurence but twice—once at her own place, where Basil had brought his bride to be presented, the second time at Petersburg, and the experienced woman of theworld had immediately formed the worst possible opinion of her beloved godson’s marriage. Nor had Laurence done anything to conciliate her husband’s aged relative. Stubborn, with that peculiarly impenetrable stubbornness that one can but call pig-headed, having once made up her mind that she would hate—and continue to hate—every single thing or person connected with Russia and her new life, she had ignored the kindly advances of Countess Lanièvitch, remaining from the first strictly polite and no more, which had both surprised and hurt the Dowager. Her health, always delicate since her great sorrows, had now finally given way, and Basil, filled with the greatest apprehensions, at last summoned the Court physician all the way from Petersburg to look deeper into the case. The great man came, and pronounced a far from reassuring verdict. The patient might or might not linger for another year. That there was no immediate danger he was willing to assert, but this was all, for the Countess suffered from heart trouble, and, moreover, complete discouragement—a very grave symptom in a person of her energetic nature—seemed to have overtaken her.
After his departure Basil had a long talk with his godmother, who urged him to go back to his family, for she was the most unselfish of women; but Basil could not make up his mind to leave her until she had at least regained some semblance of strength. It was then that Tatiana’s message concerning the late events at Tverna arrived. She had softened the facts, and put as little responsibility upon Laurence as was compatible with truth; but Basil, nevertheless, saw clearly that his immediate return was imperative, and, avoiding to alarm his kinswoman by a detailed account of the affair, spoke of trouble with the peasants, and after arranging everything for her comparative comfort and ease of mind left her with much regret.
He had to spend some hours in Petersburg on his wayhome, and preferring his club to his unprepared palace on the Nèwsky, all swathed in silence, cold, and brown holland, he repaired thither on leaving the train.
It had been quite a time since he had been there, and he was received with genuine enthusiasm by his numerous friends, who talked at once of killing the fatted calf for his benefit. In consequence, he dined that night with half a dozen men who had been his comrades when he was in theGardes-à-Cheval, and in spite of his peculiarly unjoyful mood he became, as the feast progressed, much more cheerful than he had been for weeks.
“Where can one be better than in the bosom of one’s patriotic family?” laughed Count Mourièff, throwing himself back in his chair as the coffee was brought, and blowing volumes of cigar-smoke toward the heavily gilded ceiling. The salon in which the dinner had taken place gave excellent testimony to theentrainof the occasion. In the corners of the big room huge Chinese urns were crowned with pyrotechnic bouquets of long-stemmed flowers; along the table windrows of rare fruits and gaily caparisoned bonbons demonstrated once more that in the very deeps of his nature the Russian is always more or less of a child, over-fond of sweets and pretty baubles—blossoms and luxuries of all sorts!
“You don’t miss your patriotic family, Palitzin, you lucky beggar!” cried Captain Zàptine, one of Basil’s most intimate friends. “You are too well provided otherwise! Gentlemen,” he continued, turning to the others, “this long-legged animal here before you has discovered the secret of eternal youth and happiness. Let us envy him with all our hearts. Do you remember how he left us one fine evening at the camp of Krasnöe-Sèloe during the fateful season of nesting and of love—left us, the wretch, without a word of warning concerning his roseate and orange-budded plans?”
“Did he at least bear away a feather in his beak as atoken of peace and good will toward woman?” queried a remarkably tall and handsome man still very much on the right side of forty, who was known far and wide as a hardened misogynist, and wore the Cross of St. George upon his tunic—in commemoration, his compeers alleged, of his many victories over the dragon as represented by the fair sex.
“No; but he has come back, doubtless with an olive branch to make us forgive his desertion. Ah, my friends, my dear friends!” cried Zàptine; “he owed us this apology for neglecting our sisters and cousins in order to annex the most beautiful woman out of Russia! Let us therefore drink to his ever-increasing felicity, now that hehasapologized.”
“I have done nothing of the sort!” Basil tried to assert, but his voice was drowned by laughter, and with a serio-comic gesture he sat down again. And then there followed a general hurrah and loud calls for a “monster” punch to honor the toast, and presently the beverage made its appearance, flaming like all the fires of the lower regions in an immense silver “crater,” embossed with the arms of the club, and flanked by little silver bowls marked in the same fashion. Without losing a moment Zàptine seized hold of the great ladle and began to make the punch dance—as he termed the operation.
“Ah!” the Chevalier-de-St. George declaimed. “Now we shall feel quite at home! No ‘Wein, Weib, und Gesang’ for me! Punch, and good old comrades to swallow it at command, that’s the only real thing!”
“Pfuhh ... h!” retorted Zàptine, assiduously stirring the Vesuvius before him. “Don’t listen to him, brothers; he is going to talk nonsense!”
“Nonsense! I? You don’t know me! Is it nonsense to deprive oneself of the anxieties, the troubles, the imprisonment, and other delights of home rule? I am a sensible man, and intend to remain my own master, forever and for ever—as in the old song, whatever it’s entitled. Petticoats! Don’t talk to me of them. It makes me sweat icicles to think of them!”
“How do you account, then,” put in Mourièff, scornfully, “for the charmingLesghise, who through some miracle worked by your Honor, finally passed from the high rank of a Caucasian prisoner of state to that of one of Petersburg’s most admireddemi-mondaines? Eh? Answer that if you can?”
There was a roar of laughter, in which even Basil joined as frankly as did the culprit himself.
“Caucasus is Caucasus,” he retorted, “andennuiwith a capital letter is its overlord. One is not responsible for anything one does there, I assure you.”
“An agreeable and eminently convenient theory,” Basil put in. “But look here; don’t tease him, Mourièff; he did his duty gallantly by the lady in freeing her from oppression and bondage, as also by affording her the chance of new fields to conquer.”
“She has certainly made admirable use of her opportunities! You know that Grand-Duke....”
“’Shh-sh-sh!” resounded from every side. “Hush-a-by baby! No personalities,please, especially about the Imperial Family.”
“Well,” grunted Zàptine, “it’s going to be lovely if we can’t dander the Grand Dukes between ourselves, especially as in this case it would be quite ancient history. Last year, by the way, the illustriousLesghisein question was on the friendliest of terms with a bonny Englishman who had more good looks than money—which shows that some women are cruelly misjudged.”
“Yes! Of course! But I heard that their friendship was a mere blind, a screen, alaisser-courre, as one might say.”
“A screen? For whose benefit?”
“Some benighted husband’s, I dare say, who believedin the pure and loyal satisfaction of matrimonial life. I was assured that the British son of Mars, who is in the habit of obtaining Russian passports at irregular intervals, was not here for thebeaux-yeuxof theLesghiseat all, but merely traveled with her to throw dust in somebody’s eyes.”
“Vier Kinder, kein Arbeit, und kein Geld, der kommt gewiss von Lerchenfeldt!” parodied Zàptine, singing at the top of his lungs. “And who’s the fortunate mortal who hides behind one fair woman in order to meet a fairer one with more safety? We must naturally suppose that the second one is the fairer, else how would you account for his criminal coldness toward the screen?”
“I don’t remember his name,” mused Mourièff. “Something ending with ay, I think. (Diable!but that punch is hot! Pour a bottle of brandy in to cool it!) I saw him, though—the happy mortal, that is—several times. Pleasing chap with square shoulders and many inches, soft, lackadaisical brown eyes, a promising trifle of a mustache, and big, white teeth.”
“The better to eat you, my child!” cried Zàptine. “Military, did you say?”
“Of course—could see it at a glance; been drilled, you know. Came here as a private individual, but was recognized by— Let me see, who told me? Oh, I remember—our Colonel, our beloved jewel of a Colonel, that Cavalier of Cavaliers whom we glory in obeying, said the interesting youth was Military Attaché somewhere, somehow, but mum was the word—he was so visibly here for other purposes than to slyly inspect our frontier defenses. I met him—not the Colonel—the Don Juan—one afternoon leaving the upper galleries of theGostinoï-Dvòr—there’s always plenty of solitude there, for that’s merely where the reserve merchandise from below is kept. He didn’t seem pleased to see me—pulled the collar of his coat up to his eyes, and slunk away with black guiltshowing in every line of his back. Talk of petticoats! Lord, it wasn’t theLesghise’she—”
Basil, who had been listening at first only with one ear and then with absorbed attention, threw his cigar away with sudden violence.
“You’re becoming indecent!” he said, and managed to say it with deceiving indifference. “I think I will retire; really, your conversation is unfit for my chaste hearing!” And he rose.
“Hear! Hear! A just and righteous man in our midst! Sit down, Palitzin, and preach us a sermon. Let’s vote him a speaking-trumpet of honor. Go on, Basil, give it to us, old boy! We deserve it! We’re a bad lot, we are!”
But Basil was inexorable. He elaborately explained that he was forced to catch his train at an unearthly hour, and that trains carryinghimalways started on time; sonolens-volens, after giving him a regular ovation, they let him go, accompanying him to the very portals of the club and his waiting sleigh, around which they gathered, uttering loud cheers.
The night was exceedingly cold. A half-congealed vapor formed a little cloud around the nostrils of the three horses held in rein by his coachman; the sidewalks, quite recently swept and powdered with fine sand, as is done again and again each day in Petersburg’s luxurious quarters, showed two lines of pale gold on either side of the broad, brilliantly lighted streets, and rime lavishly broidered with innumerable paillettes every roof and projection sparkling beneath the frigid moon. It was a scene to hearten up any lover of the North; but Basil, intrenched behind his high sable collar, was not enjoying it as he should have done. For there was something he did not like slowly taking shape in his mind.
It was past eleven o’clock, but notwithstanding this fact he gave hisyèmshikthe order to drive him to thehouse of a friend who had been his father’s comrade-in-arms, and had until recently held the post of Chief of Police. “He has got into the habit, while manipulating the Third Section, of never going to bed. I’ll find him as wide awake as a barrelful of mice,” thought Basil, and his previsions were fulfilled. “I must clear up a point or two, otherwise I will never rest easy again,” the Prince was saying angrily to himself, as he ascended the stairs; but when he entered the library where the General sat wrapped in a cloud of smoke, like a Buddhist image, his face was impassive.
“So here you are, you rascal!” chuckled the gray-beard, getting up to shake Basil warmly by the hand. “We never quite lose our old habits, and I knew that you had arrived this morning, the moment you put your foot on the quay. But here, what do you want of me that you look me up in this way? It must be something important!”
“Pardon me, my dear old friend,” smiled Basil, accepting the comfortable seat indicated to him by the General. “I do not always come to see you because I want something.”
“Let’s admit that you do not always come for interested reasons, but your nose is wriggling as if upon some scent or other, and so I conclude that this is one of your ‘on’ days.”
“You are dangerously perspicacious!” Basil remarked. “Yes, I did venture to disturb you to-night for some such reason.”
“I thought so,” laughed the ex-official, who had been dreaded above all his predecessors in office. “And now what is it you wish to find out?”
Basil lighted a cigarette, paused to expel two or three thin threads of smoke, and then spoke:
“I would like to know who is the English officer in mufti who has visited Petersburg on several occasionsduring—the last year or two, let us say—to meet a woman of the half-world—as a matter of fact, aLesghise; firstlançéeby—”
“A dashing officer of theGardes-à-Cheval?” interrupted the General.
“Precisely!”
General Lédòff glanced at his interlocutor from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, then fell to puffing once more at his enormous pipe with extraordinary industry.
“You,” he said, dryly, “have no longer the least business to occupy yourself with ladies of the merrier sort, my son, and unless you give me a pretty good reason for so doing I will certainly and most virtuously refuse to assist you in so unpardonable an enterprise. What do you want of that species of fallen Princess?”
“Nothing of her, I assure you!” Basil emphatically declared; “but—one of my friends is interested in the question, and it is for him I speak. Surely you have still means at your disposal, my excellent friend, of finding out what I ask.”
“Certainly! It would be fine if an ex-Chief of Police—who managed to escape the régime of bombs to which all of us are subject—had not retained enough intelligence to accomplish so slight a thing. But why do you bother about other people’s love intrigues? Now that you areà l’abris des voitures, as our amiable allies say. It’s a loss of time, and you’ll get no thanks for your pains.”
“I am not looking for thanks,” Basil dryly observed.
“All the better for you. But you don’t suppose I can give you the information you seek at five seconds’ notice, do you, boiling youth? My head is no longer pigeon-holed like a receptacle fordossiers.”
“I wish you could, for I am leaving for Tverna on the next train, and I do not expect to be in Petersburg again for some time.”
“As pressing as that? Had trouble with your peasants, I heard, some time ago. Nothing very terrible, eh?”
“No.”
“You have preserved your martial curtness, I see. I’m glad it wasn’t serious, since you are so constructed that you can’t bring yourself to shoot a few of them down to cool their blood. Ah! You can flatter yourself that your father and you were and are merciful proprietors! But, mark my words, my boy, you will get yourself shaken out of the saddle if you continue to ride without a martingale. The efforts of our worthy agitators will be crowned with success sooner or later; never doubt it; and when you have to call in asotniaor two of whole-hearted Kossàks in order to prevent murder and sudden death, thosemujiksof yours will rue the day when you gave them their head so imprudently. Here I am, however, galloping my favorite hobby again, instead of thinking of yourLesghise. Let me see—an English officer, did you say?”
He raised himself from the downy depths of his great arm-chair, and hobbled—for he had a gouty foot—to a large safe in the corner, draped and concealed beneath a Persian silk fabric that had the bloom of a ripe plum upon its soft folds.
Refusing Basil’s aid, he opened the ponderous steel door, turned on an electric bulb near by, and after a few moments’ search returned to his seat, holding in his hand a thick-set volume bound in dark-green morocco, and gold-lettered at the back “Daily Journal.”
“Here,” he laughed, “behold the heart of hearts of a police tyrant, thesacro-sanctumof his labors—aprécisof great and minute events that may or may not come to a head and endanger the peace of the Empire! Nobody, until now, has ever seen even the outside of this spicy little work.”
Basil inclined his head to thank the General for hisflattering confidence, and sat immovable while his companion flipped over the pages covered from top to bottom with close, small-writ lines, interspersed here and there with annotations in red ink, as he could clearly discern from where he sat.
Half an hour passed in complete silence, Basil lighting one cigarette from the butt of another, the General poring tirelessly over his patient handiwork. On a console a large malachite clock—an Imperial gift of gratitude—between two superb vases of the same luscious-looking stone, suddenly rang out an admirable rendition of the bells of St. Isaac’s, and Basil listened with curious attention and a sort of retrospective enjoyment, as if the harmony belonged to a happy life he liked to have recalled to him; but that had passed away for ever.
The final cadences of the Northern midnight, like the soul in music of snowy Russia, died away upon the air of the high-ceiled library: a room stamped, so to speak, with the General’s powerful individuality expressed in bronze and carven wood and trophies of arms, gorgeous textiles from far regions, and antique tapestries; and the old man, with two fingers between the pages of his “Daily Journal,” suddenly looked up.
“The last two years or so, did you say?” he asked, turning his piercing eyes full on Basil.
“I think that is what I heard!” hesitated Basil, who was no longer quite sure of what he had heard, shifting his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other. “I am not certain, of course.”
“Because,” the other explained, “my notes record here a sojourn of some duration—wait—a sojourn in Petersburg—four years ago of—of two weeks. The young man had previously visited the Crimea—or at least he came straight here from there.” The General once more began to thumb his little book. “At that time,” he went on, speaking very slowly, “he had been only for a short whileBritish Military Attaché in Paris. His name is Moray—Captain Neville Moray, of the Grenadier Guards. His arrival was brought instantly to my notice, owing to his connection with the diplomatic service. His passport had been obtained for him under the plea of traveling for pleasure. Moreover, he cannot be very rich, for he put up here at a decidedly second-rate hotel, made no calls on anybody, not even his Ambassador—which seemed rather queer—and did not once use his official position to obtain a presentation at Court or to any of the Grand Dukes or the military authorities. His acquaintance with the fairLesghisein question may have antedated his first trip here, because she had accompanied a mutual friend of ours—let his name remain unpronounced, for he is a great miscreant and a delightful man—to Paris a few months previously, and if our English Lovelace is at alllancéin the smart world, he probably met her then. As a matter of fact, it was taken for granted in our Secret Service that he had come here on purpose to follow her. She is, as you know, a strikingly beautiful woman.”
Basil had risen, and, standing with his face beyond the circle of light cast by the monumental lamp on the table, was studiously selecting yet another fresh cigarette.
“I never set eyes on her, General,” he replied, “and I am deeply obliged to you far taking all this trouble.” He waved his hand slowly before his face, as though to dissipate the gauzy volutes floating between himself and his old friend. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he added, sincerely.
“Don’t thank me, my boy. It has given me great pleasure to dip into my old trade again. One is like that. The very smell of the harness once worn is pleasing to the nostrils. How it all comes back to me! For instance, look at this: I had utterly forgotten the very existence of this Englishman, and now that a corner of the veil was lifted by you a while ago, I can see before me a greatmany incidents that lay dormant in an odd corner of my old brain, and, in particular, a little tableau that had its charms at the time.”
“What was that?” asked Basil, with a quick turn of the head.
“Oh, a trifle! but since it was connected with our Guardsman, I’ll tell it to you in two words. It was about three years ago, if I am correct, on a bitter winter day—thus does the tale begin. Ha! Ha! I am quite araconteurin my humble way, I beg you to observe! Well, we were at the time keeping our eyes upon a certain Servian ‘Prince’—the nerve they display, those Servians, in affording themselves, while away from home, the luxury of titles which do not exist in their own land, is truly marvelous! But to proceed: we were, as I was saying, having this questionable personage—er—watched, in a discreet fashion—you understand—so when driving out for my airing, the fancy seized me to go to the Botanical Gardens. I had been informed that the ‘Noble’ Servian was in the habit of dropping in there—to admire the flowers, and meet—quite by accident, of course—a friend—or perchance two—also naturally quite by accident—do you see? So I told Yèfime—you remember my old Yèfime—to drive me there. From a good distance the whole mass of the gardens began to gleam against the sky like some gigantic jewel-case open to the sun-rays. We had had a hard frost, which had incased every branch and twig in crystal—I can see it before me now. I stopped the sleigh and passed up the board walk leading to the conservatories beneath those gently clinking branches, and, pursuing my idea, I entered the great glass vestibule, and from there went into the main house. The first whiff of moist, heavily perfumed air after that cruel cold outside—I can really still smell it—was a sort of voluptuous delight, and I followed a broad, pebbled path bordered on each side by hedges of twenty-five-footcamellias in full bloom. You know the place, and what a joy to the eye it is. Precious palms and tree-ferns growing free to the very top of the cupola ... orange and lemon adored orchids! Ah! What orchids—above regular thickets of gardenias—a paradise! After a while I came to the aerial staircase winding among all those lustrous plants, and reached the top where it communicates with the astounding lacy bridge that spans the whole length of this particular conservatory, and there I paused to lean a moment on the balustrade. Just below me on the balcony of the first landing were two people standing close together, a man and a woman; he tall, slimly built, but rather square-shouldered and straight as an arrow. The collar of his long fur coat was raised—in that heat, mind you! She, I could see, was extremelyélégante, and heavily veiled. Both my natural and my official curiosity were aroused I confess, and, making myself as small as the good God ever permits me to be, I bent cautiously and listened. They were whispering, and so absorbed in one another that they had not heard my feet on the metal steps, and only a few disconnected words reached me. It struck me as peculiar that they were speaking English, for I greatly doubted whether my Servian would use that tongue, and, even more, whether he had ever used the Botanical Gardens for an amorousrendez-vous.Histalents had appeared to be entirely political. Perhaps I had done him an injustice; at all events, I had decided to leave him to his twitterings, when an interesting thing happened. The uniformed guardian who keeps watch over the collections approached from below, yawning to dislocate his jaws, and the lovers sprang apart in evident dismay.
“‘Good-bye!’ I heard the woman’s muffled voice say, and the echo came at once:
“‘Good-bye, my love—my heart and soul to you—always!’
“The sun was lighting up the whole place with extraordinarybrilliancy, and I distinctly saw a tear splash on his gloved hand that rested on the edge of the balcony, as she fairly ran for the opposite staircase. He—poor devil—remained for a few minutes where he was, his shoulders rising and falling queerly, and he nervously pulled down his fur collar as if he wanted air. The face I saw then, for a glancing second, was that of young Moray. And I wondered; because thatLesghiseassuredly spoke no English, barely a few lately acquired phrases of French, perhaps—if that! Next day a grave political complication drove the whole thing out of my head, and I have never thought of it since.”
“The winter of four years ago!” Basil soliloquized, and, recollecting himself, he added with a laugh: “You have a good memory, General. Fancy recalling—even with a little extraneous aid—so trifling an incident after four long years!”
The General, who was not quite proof against compliment, got up and rubbed his hands.
“Eh! Eh!” he cried. “It does not always follow that gray hairs must needs dull the brain beneath them. I could still have been of considerable use, I believe, to our Imperial Master; but, as I happen to know, he was strongly advised to the contrary, and so here I am now, lazing my life away, inactive and growing fat, with my ear split like a reformed French cavalry horse. But must you really go? Of course, now that you have wrung me dry, you leave me without a scruple, for such are the ways of the world. But you were always a cajoler, my dear Basil, and knew how to gain your ends. I hope that some day in the near future you will honor me with more details concerning this affair of the English captain, for I cannot understand how you can be so interested in him as to waste an hour over it.”
“Waste, General? An hour spent with you is never wasted.”
“There you are again! Flattery, vile flattery! And you are going straight on from here to your beautiful Tverna? Pray place my homage at Madame Palitzin’s pretty feet. How is she, by the way? Upon my word, I am losing my manners.”
“She is very well as far as I know,” Basil replied. “I am from my aunt Lanièvitch’s place; she is gravely ill, and I stayed with her quite a while. But Tatiana is with my wife and boy, so I felt quite safe about them.”
“Give Tatiana my love—my very dearest love. She is theonewoman among women. Lord! How she would scold me if she heard! Does she still fly into a rage when one calls her a woman? You remember when she was a little thing, no higher than my boot, the way she would behave when I told her she couldn’t enter theCorps-des-Pagesbecause little girls were never accepted there, for fear they should shock the young gentlemen of that great institution?” And, laughing and talking, the delightful old man accompanied Basil all the way down-stairs, indeed, to the very limits of his cathedral-like hall, the walls of which were almost invisible for the collections of arms, brought back from many campaigns on the confines of the grim White Empire he had so loyally served.
Basil buried himself in the furs of his sleigh with a sigh of utter weariness, but after a brief moment he squared his shoulders with an effort, and sat up again. His horses were making their hoofs ring on the bridge of the Greater Neva, and the enchained river was something to take even his brooding gaze. The “catching of the ice” had that year come on early and with a rush, just when the last late autumn gales were driving across the water, so the frost had fallen upon great waves rolling from bank to bank, and solidified them hand over hand, as it were. The aspect of their frozen strife had in it something singularly fierce and forceful, which well expressed the terrifying majesty of Winter in the North.Like a girdle of multi-colored gems, the electric globes of the quays showed mauve and pale-green and primrose along both sides of the sculptured turmoil of ice, picking out sharply the rigid wave-crests; and beyond, beneath a sky of pellucid sapphire powdered all over with twinkling stars among which winked and flashed the bigger constellations, the swarm of golden church domes—images of faith—looked as though countless fairy palaces were climbing one upon another toward realms of the pure ideal.
The splendidly illumined cross of St. Isaac’s caught Basil’s eye as the horses sped on, and he reverently repeated its sign upon his breast. “God have mercy!” he whispered, and sat very still, looking upward.