CHAPTER XVIThere always is—you’ll find it true,A dance before a Waterloo.
There always is—you’ll find it true,A dance before a Waterloo.
There always is—you’ll find it true,A dance before a Waterloo.
“One little, two little, three little, four little, five little Russian boys!” chanted Piotr, counting on his fingers as he stood in the window recess of his aunt Tatiana’s boudoir. Outside the sun was shining bravely on the tender spring verdure of Tsarsköe-Seloe, one of the most deliciousvillegiaturasin the immediate neighborhood of Petersburg. Behind him towered Garrassime, whose thick hair had during the last few months turned from dusky iron to silver, and in whose faithful eyes dwelt an unconquerable pain.
“I say, Garrassime,” cried Piotr, interrupting his game, “there’s going to be a review! The soldiers are coming to camp at Krétovsky—the tall ones you know—with the big sabers and the long cloaks. Won’t that be jolly? Cousin Andrei-Andreitch is a captain there!”
“Of theGardes-à-Cheval, my little dove. Yes!” replied Garrassime, gently stroking the chestnut locks straying across the boy’s forehead; “yes, my lambkin, it will be jolly for you.”
“And for you, too, Garrassime,” the child declared. “I’ve noticed you don’t like this place as well as Tverna, or is it because you miss papa? I miss papa. Oh, so much!—not mamma, she was always so nasty. Don’t you think she was nasty, Garrassime?”
“Hush, hush, little Highness! You should not saythat!” Poor Garrassime in the bitterness of his heart could have wept aloud.
“And why not?” questioned the miniature tyrant he worshiped. “It is true. She is never like Aunt Tatiana, nor Aunt Nàstia—nor my little darling Malou, either. Where is my little darling Malou, Garrassime? Do send for her to come and play with me as we did at Plenhöel on the pebbles. Why can’t you?”
His straight brows quivered as he raised those brilliant eyes of his to his patient attendant.
“Why can’t he what?” Tatiana de Salvières asked, entering from the veranda door in her quick, resolute way.
“Send for my little darling Malou!” stoutly responded Piotr. “I am Prince Pierre Palitzin. Why should not people do my bidding?”
“You are Prince Dourák Palitzin,” laughed the Duchess, “when you speak like that. Yes, Prince ‘Donkey’ Palitzin, and that adds no grace to the name. Do your bidding indeed, illustrious Sir! Wait until the littlest ones are not able to eat their soup off your head before you assume command of us all.”
With immense dignity Piotr drew himself up. “I am very tall for my age,” he gravely declared. “Cousin Pavlo was saying it only this morning.”
“Cousin Pavlo is my son, Piotr, so I know that he often speaks great nonsense. Still, you are tallish for your age, and especially old enough to understand that you can’t always have your own way.”
“About little darling Malou, you mean, Aunt Tatiana?”
“About her, if you like, and about many other things, too. She, for instance, is not in Russia, so how could she play with you?”
“Make her come to Russia, then!” insisted Piotr; “or if you can’t I’ll ask Uncle Jean. He is much nicer thanyou are, or Aunt Nàstia, even, Aunt Tatiana. Uncle Jean will bring little darling Malou.”
His lower lip was beginning to tremble oddly, and the Duchess exchanged a look of apprehension with Garrassime.
“There, there, my pet,” she consoled, quickly kneeling down beside her nephew, who with a sudden howl of distress flung himself violently into her arms.
For months and months and again months the same unceasing request for “little darling Malou” had been droned into the ears of Garrassime. While still at Tverna he alone had heard it, but lately the sympathetic uncle and aunt and young cousins had been assailed by that monotonous demand. Piotr never quite lost sight of it, and the slightest incident served to bring his desire to the surface, for during his sojourn in Brittany those two, Piotr and the “Gamin,” had become fast friends indeed.
“Come,” murmured Tatiana, lifting the heavy boy in her arms—“come, don’t cry, Piotr dear. Get Garrassime to put on your coat and we will go and walk in the park. There’s military music at the Kiosk to-day.”
But Piotr refused to be comforted. Tears as big and round as glass beads kept rolling down his sun-kissed cheeks, and he clung about his aunt so desperately that at last she was forced to sit down and rock him to and fro like a baby.
“I want papa—I want little darling Malou,” the boy sobbed. “Why has everybody gone away?” And with a sudden jerk of fury he tore himself loose, jumped to the floor, and, stamping both feet on the carpet, began to yell at the top of his lungs: “I want them now, at once! I’ll kill somebody—if they don’t come—I will—if they don’t come this minute!”
Instantly Garrassime’s arms were about the lad. “That’s what I feared,” his eyes said, plainly, and Tatiana, well aware of Piotr’s ungovernable fits of rage, feltherself getting pale as she saw him struggling in his gigantic attendant’s restraining grasp.
“What,” she was asking herself, dismally, “will become of this boy, now as good as orphaned, with such a temper?” And just then Salvières, drawn there by the noise, hurried in.
“What’s all this?” he asked, glancing at his wife.
She raised her shoulders imperceptibly, nodding toward the child. Salvières moved to Garrassime’s side and firmly took Piotr from him, and at his touch the boy suddenly ceased fighting.
“Tell me, Piotr,” Salvières said, very calmly sitting him down on his knee, “why do you act like this?”
“I want papa!” gulped Piotr, swallowing his tears. “I want little darling Malou!”
“You do! Well, there’s no harm in that; but what makes you ask for them in such an unmanly way?”
Piotr drew himself up, and, slipping from his uncle’s knee, stood, still shaking and trembling, before him, his eyes opened to their widest extent.
“Unmanly!” he glumly repeated. “I am not unmanly, Uncle Jean.”
“Ah, but yes you are, and you who wish to be a soldier, too! Don’t you know that it is only women who cry and stamp their feet and go off the handle like this?”
“Thanks!” murmured Tatiana, who felt much relieved already.
“Women,” pronounced Salvières, dictatorially; “all women, excepting your aunt Tatiana, of course!”
“And little darling Malou,” came from the young unregenerate, one thumb in his mouth, and the shadow of a roguish smile dawning through his tears like watery sunshine at the close of a violent rain-storm.
“Allons bon!” grumbled Salvières. “You don’t easily give up an idea, do you, Piotr? And now be a good boy; go with Garrassime to put on your things, andyou can come with me to the parade-ground at Krasnöe-Sèloe.”
“Yes, Uncle Jean, I’ll put on my things; but I’ll go for a walk with Aunt Tatiana here in the park. She asked me first, you know, and I’m sorry I frightened her.”
He wheeled on his flat little heels, honored his uncle with a perfectly executed military salute, and, going to his aunt, raised his rosy mouth to be kissed; then attended by Garrassime he ran swiftly up-stairs.
“My God!” said Tatiana, as soon as he was out of hearing, “what shall we do with him?”
Her husband rose, and, taking her hand, kissed it tenderly. “My dear Tatiana,” he said, gravely, “we will, as usual, try to do our duty. It is not an easy one, I grant you, but still it must be accomplished somehow or other.”
“Poor little fellow!” she said, rather hopelessly. “Oh, Jean, isn’t it pitiful to think of Basil, who adored him, and now refuses to see him—with that terrible obstinacy and strength of purpose we Palitzins are cursed with? What will come of all this? Tell me that, if you can?”
Jean de Salvières had been asked this question before, but now, as then, he was quite unable to answer it.
“It is so heartbreaking,” continued Tatiana, who evidently did not expect a reply. “That miserable woman who has spoiled all our lives and is now amusing herself at Beaulieu on her yacht—for she has a yacht of her own, if you please—and Basil practically a fugitive after that fatal duel. Tverna closed up and all those splendid plans for the peasants at a standstill. Howcanshe exist with such a remorse? How can she laugh on, trifle with life, think of nothing but her own precious self, and never of her poor little son—of Basil?”
“Que voulez-vous, ma chérie?” he said, soothingly. “She’s made that way. I for one never could endure her; but things will come out right in the end. I havethought more than once lately that we might do worse than go to Salvières for the summer, and ask Régis and Marguerite to stay with us for a while.”
Tatiana turned and gazed at him in undisguised admiration.
“You’ve got it!” she cried. “You’ve got it! You dear, clever, dazzling old boy!” And, throwing her arms about his neck, she gave him a resounding kiss.
“Delicious!” he exclaimed, smacking his lips. “Your kisses, Tatiana, are like yourself—quite out of the common nice.”
“Not so loud!” she admonished. “Think of it, there’s frost on both our heads, and we’ve been lovers for nearly—”
“’Ssh, ’ssh!” he laughed. “Never mention figures except when they are slender ones.”
She was about to riposte, but Piotr at this juncture bounded in from the veranda, waving his Kossàk cap in his chubby gloved hand, with a “But aren’t you ready, Aunt Tatiana?” that sent her flying to her dressing-room.
In the park it was delightful. The trees were covered with a delicate veil of tender green, while flowers newly bedded and glistening with drops from the gardeners’ “lances” breathed the very breath of spring, and the ruffled surface of the lakes gleamed and glinted like pailleted satin, showing soft azure lights through their dancing transparencies.
Salvières and his Tatiana had determined to go together to Krasnöe-Sèloe in order to cheer up their little nephew, and in a short while they reached the camp.
The dust raised in the early morning by cavalry hoofs and the marching feet of infantry had settled down after a fashion, but there still remained a sort of golden haze about the whole place which gave it a mysterious charm. The great mess-tent, its front flaps symmetrically looped back, stood in the midst of the officers’ toyisbaslike a snowy mother-hen tending her brood; while in the middle distance the gay little summer theater, where youth and middle-age and valor congregate in the evening, to while away the boredom engendered by banishment all of a fewverstsfrom Petersburg, displayed its gay façade. Here and there a general or a colonel, already a trifle heavy on the wing, passed at a canter saluting right and left, and many a “selfish”dròchkirattled by—narrow as a dagger-blade, with some young subaltern holding the reins, and often with one of his comrades perched on the very edge of his knees—so to speak—for lack of space to sit beside him.
And here, there, and everywhere—like pastilles of peppermint and cherry, as Piotr sapiently remarked—the flat, white capslisérédwith red ofMessieurs les Gardes-à-Chevaldotted the fresh verdure, for that distinguished corps had just arrived to take up its manœuvering quarters.
“Pavlo,” or, rather, Paul, Prince de Salvières, oldest son and heir of the charming couple of that ilk, had out of adoration for his mother elected to enter the Russian army, and more particularly theGardes-à-Cheval—a crack corps—nor had his father objected to this. “You are not needed in France, my boy,” he had said to the lad, “at least not as long as what one of the Republic’s amiable ministers called ‘draughty names’ (des noms à courants d’air) are systematically discouraged in both the army and navy. Should the day of theRevancheever dawn, it will be another affair, but for us, unfortunately, there is nothing to do now in our own beloved land. It is,” he had added, although little given to sentiment, especially when expressed aloud, “the only real sorrow of my life to see that from day to day our rôle, political, diplomatic, or military, is rendered more and more impossible. However, our hour may come sooner than we expect. Let us, at any rate, pray that it may be so.”
A strong Legitimist by inheritance, tradition, and personalfaith and feeling, the Duc de Salvières recognized that he owed his allegiance to Philippe d’Orléans after having given it unstintingly to his father, the Comte de Paris—the elect of Henry V.—and the inconceivable delay of a final return to monarchy grieved him profoundly. That the Duc d’Orléans should have been incarcerated in a fortress because he had enlisted as a private to serve France had amazed and revolted Salvières, and the fact that the young Duc de Montpensier, brother and heir of the virtual King, should on that account and on no other have been refused the same privilege, and in consequence had entered the service of Spain, had once and for all heartened him. Thus did Pavlo himself becomeplus Royaliste que le Roy, perhaps, and, moreover, brought up mostly in Russia, he felt the greatest pride in wearing the Czar’s uniform.
To-day there was even the tiniest hint of a swagger in his extraordinarily martial attitude as he met his parents. His handsome young face, his bonny blue eyes and tightly curled short hair—that his mother was wont to call his “copper cap”—were a pleasure to behold, and Piotr, with one of his clown-like bounds, rushed into his arms, shouting, “Aunt Tatiana says you often talk great nonsense, Cousin Pavlo, but I don’t believe it; you are too great a soldier for that.”
There was a general laugh—Pavlo, red as theliséréof his cap, joining in gaily enough, though with a rapid, circular glance to see if any of his loitering comrades had overheard this singular compliment.
“Piotr’s franknessissometimes embarrassing!” exclaimed Tatiana, leaning on her tall-handled, fluffy parasol. “Indeed, he is becoming so very grown-up that your father and I are thinking of giving him the benefit of travel for his further enlightenment.”
Pavlo, the softest-hearted of budding warriors, whose own home life was and had always been so ideal, was fullof the greatest pity for his small cousin. He patted Piotr’s headen camarade, thinking in spite of himself of the catastrophe that had deprived the child of father and mother at one stroke.
“Travels are famous for people who are growing up as fast as my cousin here,” he gravely acquiesced; “but where is the voyage to lead you, my dear father and mother?”
“To Salvières, where, if it is at all possible, I should like you to join us later, ‘Polo.’” Tatiana explained. “Surely you can get leave of absence easily enough.”
Pavlo straightened his slim form and attempted to twist a mustache—which as yet consisted of some easily counted silken threads too blond to be truly noticeable.
“My beloved darling dear,” he exclaimed, “I cannot be spared. Remember the August reviews; they are of the greatest importance, especially this year, when mobilization is so continually on thetapis.”
“And of course they cannot take place without you,” smiled Salvières. “His Majesty would certainly find it difficult to fulfil his Imperial duties without your sword and counsel.”
Pavlo flushed again. It was his shame and distress that amusement, pleasure, sorrow, or vexation should invariably have this humiliating result. Just now it was merely amusement, for he was accustomed to his father’s teasing and liked it, but yet he could have boxed his own ears for feeling his cheeks get hot.
“Oh, but you mustn’t come and beard me in my den with unseemly jokes, father!” he remonstrated. “Here I am quite a personage, I assure you. Especially,” he added, gracefully, “because I am Mamma’s son and yours. Oh yes, I am quite a personage!”
“God forbid that I should doubt it for a single instant, my boy,” solemnly rejoined Salvières. “And, by the way, our stay in Normandy will probably stretch overAugust and perhaps September, so I do not see what will prevent you from spending your autumn leave—after the manœuvers—with us.”
“That of course alters the case,” Pavlo said. “Speaking with all moderation, I believe that what you propose is feasible later on; ... at present, however....”
“The present,” Tatiana interposed, dogmatically, “is a thing without breadth or thickness,mon lieutenant, so let us pass it over. Also let me tell you as a further inducement to come to Normandy as soon as you can, that you will meet there your old friend the ‘Gamin,’ for your father and I are going to ask the Plenhöels to stay with us for a while.”
At the name of the “Gamin” the blood, which had begun to recede, once more flew its brilliant color to the very roots of Pavlo’s bright hair.
“The ‘Gamin,’ really?” he said, as casually as he could. “She must be quite a big girl now.”
Tatiana and Salvières were about to speak in chorus; but Piotr, who for once in his tender life had been silently listening, gave them no chance to do so. “Malou! my little darling Malou!” he shrieked, jumping into the air, rubber-ball wise. “Are we going to see little darling Malou?” He had become three shades redder than Pavlo himself, and his eyes were sparkling with joy.
“Dear me!” commented Salvières. “If this Piotr was a few short years older you could look to your laurels, Pavlo; he certainly is a most ardent lover of beauty.” But the ardent one was gambading like an escaped colt, and Pavlo hid his confusion by endeavoring to catch him, and as he put it, “to make him behave.”
“Now do your worst!” he cried, capturing the delighted child and pinioning his arms behind him. “Here one must be awfully serious, you know, Piotr, or one gets put under arrest.”
“Je m’en fiche pas mal!” responded Piotr, who was notoften parliamentary. “And now show me yourisba, Cousin Pavlo, and all the camp. Because it will be the only chance I’ll have if we are setting off to-morrow to see little darling Malou.”
“To-morrow? You absurd person! But, come, I’ll betray to you as much of the secrets of a military encampment as is compatible with my duty, since you are, according to Mamma, so admirably grown-up; then if she permits it I’ll drive back home with you for dinner.”
It was getting late when the Salvières carriage re-entered the magnificent park of Tsarsköe-Seloe, where the adolescent foliage of its venerable limes was undershot by the last slant of the setting sun.
The Imperial Park has, especially in the early gloaming, a somber grandeur that is very impressive, as though in the twilight its loveliness were on tiptoe to reveal to you something new and startling about the ancient past. Eight o’clock was booming when the horses left the Palace, emerging from its gloriousparterresto their left, and trotted rapidly on beneath the vaulting boughs of the broadalléeskirting the lake, which was now shining like molten metal of a vaguely roseate hue. Further on a gilt cupola—that of the baths—rising from a promontory biting tooth-like into the glancing water, burned into the fainting pink and lilac of the sky, and, further still, tier upon tier of slowly dusking greens seemed the boundary line of some untrodden forest. They finally emerged through the colossal bronze portal of Alexander I., whereon is inscribed in golden letters, Russian on one side and French on the other, the words: “To my beloved companions in arms”; and soon drew up before the Salvières villa.
One of Tatiana’s chief talents was to give to all her houses the peculiar charm with which she was herself endowed. Nothing banal or commonplace was ever inclosed between any walls belonging to her, but this, be itunderstood, without the slightest effort on her part to create originality. Every detail of exterior or interior decoration was obviously spontaneous, utterly natural, and this was what made her various homes so intensely attractive. Indeed, to-night, when her husband and her son entered the dining-room, they turned a simultaneous look of gratitude upon the woman who created so delicious an atmosphere for them. The square table strewn with dark violets and feathery little tufts of mimosa, the dazzling crystal and beautiful old silver, the lace-shaded silver hanging-lamp half sunk in a bowl of pale turquoise filled with more violets, and slender branches of green and white ivy that twined about the silver suspension-chains to the very ceiling, were as beautifully restful to the eye as the dove-hued window draperies and wall hangings, whereon a few very choice water-color pictures alternated with carven brackets supporting rare cloisonné vases in the same shade of blue as the lamp bowl—also crowned with delicate flowers. Through the open windows the peculiarly aromatic scent of northern poplars and larch mingled with the perfume of résèda and heliotrope rising from the gardens, and as they took their places and unfolded their napkins each of the three indulged in a little sigh of deep satisfaction. Hospitable though they were, this was how the Salvières really loved to be, “between themselves”; close together as a table just large enough for Tatiana’s scheme of decoration in fruit and flowers would permit; with comfortable chairs where one could actually lean back at dessert; satin damask upon which one might even familiarly venture an elbow, and noiseless servants in plain liveries. Coffee was, on those occasions, served there, and cigarettes—of which Tatiana made a rather immoderate usage, since, as she gayly boasted, it was her only vice—were smoked while chatting in a most agreeable post-prandial manner.
In her white dress of some crinkly material that wasidealized crêpe-de-Chine, her pearls wound carelessly about her throat, and a sapphire arrow planted through her heavy torsades, the “Field Marshal,” as Jean often called his wife, looked amazingly young, almost as if she had been Pavlo’s elder sister by but a few years, and Salvières suddenly laughed.
“Heavens!” he said, helping himself to sterlet with an unstinting hand, “what can be nicer than a nice little home like this? A fig for the Petersburg palace, where one dines on an island of carpet in the midst of a parquet the limits of which are lost in dim distances—or the terrifyingly spacious banqueting-hall of Palitzinovna, that I dearly love in spite of its colossal proportions. No!” he lyrically declaimed. “Give me a tiny room, a crust of bread, a goblet ofvin-ordinairewith peace and amity as sauces, and the plenitude of my sybaritism knows no bounds! By the way, what have we got to-night?” he continued, glancing at the little alabaster menu before his plate. “Ah!canapés Impératrice,consommé froid,sterlet au naturel—but— Bah! These are already things of the past.... And to come...?Poularde du mans aux truffes blanches—Excellent!Salade de crésson à l’orange—Yum, yum!Gelée d’ananas frais—etc., etc.! That’s just what I was saying, an unobtrusive meal—all green and white and subdued tints against all the rules of gastronomicbienséance—green and white just like the ivy enthroned above our heads. Bravo, Tatiana! You are a positive genius, and so’s yourchef-de-cuisine! Poetic I assure you—thesedemi-teintes, and so fittingly underscored by those harmonious names,ChablisandChambertin; the very tinkle of epicurianism with a final exclamation-point of quite enormous vividness.Kümmel—one imperceptible glasslet, not before, but after the frugal repast—an innovation of mine own!”
“My good Jean,” Tatiana protested in French, “assuredly your exuberance can only mask some terriblerevelation or other that you keep for your after-Kümmelmoment. I am always expecting a slate on the head when you are so gay before the roast.”
“Which only shows how cruelly misunderstood I am by the wife of my bosom,” he mocked. “Pavlo, I take you to witness that your angel-mother is casting aspersions upon the immaculate purity of my mood that is to be.”
Pavlo grinned. “Well, sir,” he said, “personally I suspect that dark clouds are gathering somewhere with or without your knowledge. Myself, I feel in the air an elusive but none the less convincing sense of coming thunder. Will it burst north, south, east, or west? Of course, not being much of a seer, I cannot tell, but it is there somewhere; pregnant with eventualities—perhaps only of ‘summer lightning,’ but I rather doubt that.”
“Hush!” exclaimed Tatiana. “Don’t joke about more eventualities. We have had quite enough of them lately; betides, you both know that I am desperately superstitious.”
“A weakness which is the only flaw in your armor,” observed Salvières.
“Nonsense!” she expostulated. “You are superstitious, too, and so is ‘Polo.’ Now you know you are, ‘Polo’ dear, and there was a white moth as long as that”—she extended her rounded arm to its full extent—“bothering about my dressing-room half an hour ago. It nearly committed suicide by falling into the bath I’d just quitted, and after flitting and winging and flopping round the lights, flew away by the crack of the door into Piotr’s room. He was asleep already, and I had to adopt the hunting methods of the last of the Mohicans to retrieve the ghostly beast, and bear him, struggling like a demon, to the balcony, out in the gloaming. Stupid little soul! He wouldn’t depart, although I blew on him and swung mypeignoirsleeves in his face. There he hovered defiantly, as if saying, ‘I’llget at the boy whether you like it or not.’ Brrrrrrrr—rrrrr—! It made me feel cold all down my back.”
“My dear mother,” Pavlo exclaimed, raising his nose from his salad, “surely abrave-des-braveslike you cannot be scared by a poor, innocent butterfly?”
“A poor, innocent butterfly!” mocked Tatiana. “You make me laugh!Vieux grognardthough I may be, I don’t like white moths with three or four or five—I didn’t count—but they were there—black bars across their wings. You don’t remember, I suppose, that those are unshriven souls wandering sorrowfully about in hope to find a holy priest to bless them; and truly if I were to hear that something untoward has happened to somebody, I wouldn’t be a bit astonished.”
Salvières stared at his wife. “Tatiana,” he chided, half laughingly, “how can you? Moreover, I rather fancy your way of blessing unshriven souls. To flap your sleeves in their faces is scarcely courteous under the circumstances.”
“Good Lord! Jean, please don’t make fun! I feel queer, I tell you; and if you will only hurry with your dessert and coffee—and of course yourKümmel—dear me, youareslow feeders!—we can go into the garden and send all evil forebodings to the moon. As she is a cloud-devourer, she can doubtless make shift to swallow them, too.”
“Into the garden?” both men said at once. “It is too cool there for you in your evening gown.”
“Well, then, ‘Polo,’ ring for Marie to get me a fur-linedpelisse—a long one down to the feet—with straps, if possible, to button beneath my heels, and a hood attached. Remember the hood! I had no idea I was so delicate; however, since you both think so— But wait, Marie must be dining; I don’t want you to disturb her.”
Salvières and Pavlo were laughing, and the lad was in the act of going to fetch a scarf himself when a footman carrying a telegram entered.
“For Monsieur le Duc,” he said. Tatiana sat down abruptly on the nearest chair, her face suddenly white. Pavlo stopped short, looking at her concernedly, and Salvières quickly tore open the message.
Very carefully he refolded the tinted sheet, replaced it in its envelope, and, turning to the man waiting in readiness with pad and pencil, said, “No answer,” in his ordinary matter-of-fact tone; then he offered his arm to his wife.
“Let us go to your little salon,” he calmly remarked. Pavlo, without a word or question, followed his parents, looking perturbed, as though he felt that his joking prognostications had come true.
“And now,” Salvières said, after closing the boudoir door behind them, “here comes a very pretty bit of news. Don’t take it unnecessarily to heart, Tatiana. Laurence has run away with Preston Wynne on her yacht, destination unknown. Régis de Plenhöel telegraphs me not to allow Basil to find this out, since as yet there has been no public scandal.” He paused and glanced first at his wife and then at his son. “Well?” he added, after a second.
Pavlo made a helpless little gesture with his hands, as one utterly at a loss to find adequate words; Tatiana rose quickly and whirled toward her husband.
“What did I tell you?” she cried. “Misfortune over misfortune around that unfortunate child’s head. The wretched woman! Oh, the villain! My poor Basil and—that poor Mr. Wynne, too! What a fool!”
“You are the only person in the world,” Salvières observed, “who could make one feel like laughing at such a catastrophe. What in the name of all common sense induces you to pity Wynne?”
“Why,” Tatiana rejoined, her eyes sparkling with anger, “because he is such a nice chap; so was that young Moray; and, moreover, because I never blame theman in such affairs. It is the woman who is invariably the guilty party, and it issoeasy to behave oneself, especially when one has a good and good-looking husband. Besides, fancy any man landing that Laurence on his back for the rest of his natural existence—without being obliged to do so. A second Basil! Good Lord!”
Salvières took her strong little hand in his and patted it; but she was in no mood for tenderness, and, tearing herself away, she began to pace the floor, speaking as she moved.
“I have no patience with misconduct—inexcusable misconduct—like this! A cold-blooded coquette ruining life after life, dishonoring everybody concerned with her. How do you suppose that Basil will ever accept little Piotr as his now, after this new proof of Laurence’s incorrigible lightness? And—oh! but it is too atrocious! Now Basil will kill Preston Wynne, too! He does not joke about such things, as he has proved.”
“À qui le dites vous!” muttered Salvières, and continued, louder: “As luck will have it, your brother is in China or thereabouts, and it is not likely that he will hear of this for the present. Meanwhile, it seems to me that we should hurry our departure. Régis and I may be needed at any moment—indispensable, in fact. It stands to reason that that infernal woman will not turn her yacht’s nose toward the North Sea or any Mediterranean port. If you believe me she’s off to the States or to South America—and I wish it were the devil!” he wrathfully concluded.
“So do I,” assented Pavlo. “Between all of them they are worrying my little mother to pieces.”
“Nonsense!” protested Tatiana. “But it is true that this woman is really occupying too much room on the stage. Can’t she keep quiet? And Preston Wynne, we all took such a fancy to him when he came with Sir Robert and Lady Elizabeth to Salvières two years ago.He was so gay, so amusing—by no manner of means the type of man one would expect to sacrifice his whole future for a worthless woman like Laurence.”
“Queer! He told me once he didn’t approve of divorce,” put in Salvières. “I distinctly remember his saying so, and even denouncing rather vividly the laxity in that respect in his own country. What’s he going to do with her? I wonder if she’ll ask him to marry her—and she by birth a Catholic and now an Orthodox? D’you think that after embracing so much she’ll end by embracing Protestantism as a much-needed ally?”
“Jean! But you are right. There’s no knowing what will happen now. What a pity!Le petitWynne was a rarity! He knew how to behave; knew how to move about a drawing-room; knew how to eat and how not to drink too much; knew how to present himself and take leave; knew that one does not wear colored gaiters with a cut-away coat and a top-hat; knew that a boudoir is not a bedroom, but a—boude-heure—a place to go and sulk by the hour—which makes me think I’ve got a fine large one here, and at Salvières, too. It will come in useful to me now.”
“You—useful to you!” exclaimed Pavlo. Running to his mother and throwing his arm about her slim waist, he kissed her little flushed ear. “You sulk! I’d like to see you just once. It isn’t in your power. You simply can’t!”
“Oh, leave me alone!” she objected, but in a greatly mollified tone. “You are aSchmeichler; and what am I going to do without you, ‘Polo,’ during all these long months to come?”
There were tears in her eyes, and she turned almost brutally to conceal them; but her voice betrayed her, and in an instant the lad was humbly pleading for forgiveness.
“Oh, mother darling,” he said, contritely, catchinghold of her again, “I was a brute this afternoon. Of course I can obtain leave. What do they want with a kid like me? I was only showing off. I’ll come with you and Papa if you’ll let me, and glad enough I’ll be, my own pretty mother dear.”
He was once more to her the baby of yore, caressing and altogether delicious, and her heart gave a great bound.
“My dear, my dear!” she said, choking a little. “Do you think I’d really interfere with your career? Who’d you take me for? No, no! You’ll come to us after the great manœuvers, and then enjoy your holidays without any qualms of conscience—a bad thing to take about on such occasions. But remember that I just adore you, my little ‘Polo.’ And now, Jean, when shall we start?”
“To-morrow if you can manage it,” he replied, and she instantly acquiesced.