“What I propose is that Catrina takes you for a drive, my dear baron, with her two ponies.”
The countess had taken very good care to refrain from making this proposal to Catrina alone. She was one of those mothers who rule their daughters by springing surprises upon them in a carefully selected company where the daughter is not free to reply.
De Chauxville bowed with outspread hands.
“If it will not bore mademoiselle,” he replied.
The countess looked at her daughter with an unctuous smile, as if to urge her on to make the most of this opportunity. It was one of the countess’s chief troubles that she could not by hook or crook involve Catrina in any sort of a love intrigue. She was the sort of mother who would have preferred to hear scandal about her daughter to hearing nothing.
“If it will not freeze monsieur,” replied Catrina, with uncompromising honesty.
De Chauxville laughed in his frank way.
“I am not afraid of coldness—of the atmosphere, mademoiselle,” he replied. “I am most anxious to see your beautiful country. It was quite dark during the last hour of my journey last night, and I had snow-sleepiness. I saw nothing.”
“You will see nothing but snow,” said Catrina.
“Which is like the reserve of a young girl,” added the Frenchman. “It keeps warm that which is beneath it.”
“You need not be afraid with Catrina,” chimed in the countess, nodding and becking in a manner that clearly showed her assumption to herself of some vague compliment. “She drives beautifully. She is not nervous in that way. I have never seen any one drive like her.”
“I have no doubt,” said De Chauxville, “that mademoiselle’s hands are firm, despite their diminutiveness.”
The countess was charmed—and showed it. She frowned at Catrina, who remained grave and looked at the clock.
“When would you like to go?” she asked De Chauxville, with that complete absence of affectation which the Russian, of all women of the world, alone have mastered in their conversation with men.
“Am I not at your service—now and always?” responded the gallant baron.
“I hope not,” replied Catrina quietly. “There are occasions when I have no use for you. Shall we say eleven o’clock?”
“With pleasure. Then I will go and write my letters now,” said the baron, quitting the room.
“A charming man!” ejaculated the countess, before the door was well closed.
“A fool!” corrected Catrina.
“I do not think you can say that, dear,” sighed the countess, more in sorrow than in anger.
“A clever one,” answered Catrina. “There is a difference. The clever ones are the worst.”
The countess shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and Catrina left the room. She went upstairs to her own little den, where the piano stood. It was the only room in the house that was not too warm, for here the window was occasionally opened—a proceeding which the countess considered scarcely short of criminal.
Catrina began to play, feverishly, nervously, with all the weird force of her nature. She was like a very sick person seeking a desperate remedy—racing against time. It was her habit to take her breaking heart thus to the great masters, to interpret their thoughts in their music, welding their melodies to the needs of her own sorrow. She only had half an hour. Of late music had failed her a little. It had not given her the comfort she had usually extracted from solitude and the piano. She was in a dangerous humor. She was afraid of trusting herself to De Chauxville. The time fled, and her humor did not change. She was still playing when the door opened, and the countess stood before her flushed and angry, either or both being the effect of stairs upon emotion.
“Catrina!” the elder lady exclaimed. “The sleigh is at the door, and the count is waiting. I cannot tell what you are thinking of. It is not every-body who would be so attentive to you. Just look at your hair. Why can’t you dress like other girls?”
“Because I am not made like other girls,” replied Catrina—and who knows what bitterness of reproach there was in such an answer from daughter to mother?
“Hush, child,” replied the countess, whose anger usually took the form of personal abuse. “You are as the good God made you.”
“Then the good God must have made me in the dark,” cried Catrina, flinging out of the room.
“She will be down directly,” said the Countess Lanovitch to De Chauxville, whom she found smoking a cigarette in the hall. “She naturally—he! he!—wishes to make a careful toilet.”
De Chauxville bowed gravely, without committing himself to any observation, and offered her a cigarette, which she accepted. Having achieved his purpose, he did not now propose to convey the impression that he admired Catrina.
In a few moments the girl appeared, drawing on her fur gloves. Before the door was opened the countess discreetly retired to the enervating warmth of her own apartments.
Catrina gathered up the reins and gave a little cry, at which the ponies leaped forward, and in a whirl of driven snow the sleigh glided off between the pines.
At first there was no opportunity of conversation, for the ponies were fresh and troublesome. The road over which they were passing had not been beaten down by the passage of previous sleighs, so that the powdery snow rose up like dust, and filled the eyes and mouth.
“It will be better presently,” gasped Catrina, wrestling with her fractious little Tartar thoroughbreds, “when we get out on to the high-road.”
De Chauxville sat quite still. If he felt any misgiving as to her power of mastering her team he kept it to himself. There was a subtle difference in his manner toward Catrina when they were alone together, a suggestion of camaraderie, of a common interest and a common desire, of which she was conscious without being able to put definite meaning to it.
It annoyed and alarmed her. While giving her full attention to the management of the sleigh, she was beginning to dread the first words of this man, who was merely wielding a cheap power acquired in the shady course of his career. There is nothing so disarming as the assumed air of intimate knowledge of one’s private thoughts and actions. De Chauxville assumed this air with a skill against which Catrina’s dogged strength of character was incapable of battling. His manner conveyed the impression that he knew more of Catrina’s inward thoughts than any other living being, and she was simple enough to be frightened into the conclusion that she had betrayed herself to him. There is no simpler method of discovering a secret than to ignore its existence.
It is possible that De Chauxville became aware of Catrina’s sidelong glances of anxiety in his direction. He may have divined that silence was more effective than speech.
He sat looking straight in front of him, as if too deeply absorbed in his own thoughts to take even a passing interest in the scenery.
“Why did you come here?” asked Catrina suddenly.
De Chauxville seemed to awake from a revery. He turned and looked at her in assumed surprise. They were on the high-road now, where the snow was beaten down, so conversation was easy.
“But—to see you, mademoiselle.”
“I am notthatsort of girl,” answered Catrina coldly. “I want the truth.”
De Chauxville gave a short laugh and looked at her.
“Prophets and kings have sought the truth, mademoiselle, and have not found it,” he said lightly.
Catrina made no answer to this. Her ponies required considerable attention. Also, there are some minds like large banking houses—not dealing in small change. That which passes in or out of such minds has its own standard of importance. Such people are not of much use in these days, when we like to touch things lightly, adorning a tale but pointing no moral.
“I would ask you to believe that your society was one incentive to make me accept the countess’s kind hospitality,” the Frenchman observed after a pause.
“And?”
De Chauxville looked at her. He had not met many women of solid intellect.
“And?” repeated Catrina.
“I have others, of course.”
Catrina gave a little nod and waited.
“I wish to be near Alexis,” added De Chauxville.
Catrina was staring straight in front of her. Her face had acquired a habit of hardening at the mention of Paul’s name. It was stone-like now, and set. Perhaps she might have forgiven him if he had loved her once, if only for a little while. She might have forgiven him, if only for the remembrance of that little while. But Paul had always been a man of set purpose, and such men are cruel. Even for her sake, even for the sake of his own vanity, he had never pretended to love Catrina. He had never mistaken gratified vanity for dawning love, as millions of men do. Or perhaps he was without vanity. Some few men are so constructed.
“Do you love him so?” asked Catrina, with a grim smile distorting her strong face.
“As much as you, mademoiselle,” replied De Chauxville.
Catrina started. She was not sure that she hated Paul. Toward Etta, there was no mistake in her feeling, and this was so strong that, like an electric current, there was enough of it to pass through the wife and reach the husband.
Passion, like character, does not grow in crowded places. In great cities men are all more or less alike. It is only in solitary abodes that strong natures grow up in their own way. Catrina had grown to womanhood in one of the solitary places of the earth. She had no facile axiom, no powerful precedent, to guide her every step through life. The woman who was in daily contact with her was immeasurably beneath her in mental power, in force of character, in those possibilities of love or hatred which go to make a strong life for good or for evil. By the side of her daughter the Countess Lanovitch was as the willow, swayed by every wind, in the neighborhood of the oak, crooked and still and strong.
“In Petersburg you pledged yourself to help me,” said De Chauxville. And although she knew that in the letter this was false, she did not contradict him. “I came here to claim fulfilment of your promise.”
The hard blue eyes beneath the fur cap stared straight in front of them. Catrina seemed to be driving like one asleep, for she noted nothing by the roadside. So far as eye could reach over the snow-clad plain, through the silent pines, these two were alone in a white, dead world of their own. Catrina never drove with bells. There was no sound beyond the high-pitched drone of the steel runners over the powdery snow. They were alone; unseen, unheard save of that Ear that listens in the waste places of the world.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Oh, not very much!” answered De Chauxville—a cautious man, who knew a woman’s humor. Catrina driving a pair of ponies in the clear, sharp air of Central Russia, and Catrina playing the piano in the enervating, flower-scented atmosphere of a drawing-room, were two different women. De Chauxville was not the man to mistake the one for the other.
“Not very much, mademoiselle,” he answered. “I should like Mme. la Comtesse to invite the whole Osterno party to dine, and sleep, perhaps, if one may suggest it.”
Catrina wanted this too. She wanted to torture herself with the sight of Etta, beautiful, self-confident, carelessly cognizant of Paul’s love. She wanted to see Paul look at his wife with the open admiration which she had set down as something else than love—something immeasurably beneath love as Catrina understood that passion. Her soul, brooding under a weight of misery, was ready to welcome any change, should it only mean a greater misery.
“I can manage that,” she said, “if they will come. It was a prearranged matter that there should be a bear-hunt in our forests.”
“That will do,” answered De Chauxville reflectively; “in a few days, perhaps, if it suits the countess.”
Catrina made no reply. After a pause she spoke again, in her strange, jerky way.
“What will you gain by it?” she asked.
De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders.
“Who knows?” he answered. “There are many things I want to know; many questions which can be answered only by one’s own observation. I want to see them together. Are they happy?”
Catrina’s face hardened.
“If there is a God in heaven, and he hears our prayers, they ought not to be,” she replied curtly.
“She looked happy enough in Petersburg,” said the Frenchman, who never told the truth for its own sake. Whenever he thought that Catrina’s hatred needed stimulation he mentioned Etta’s name.
“There are other questions in my mind,” he went on, “some of which you can answer, mademoiselle, if you care to.”
Catrina’s face expressed no great willingness to oblige.
“The Charity League,” said De Chauxville, looking at her keenly; “I have always had a feeling of curiosity respecting it. Was, for instance, our friend the Prince Pavlo implicated in that unfortunate affair?”
Catrina flushed suddenly. She did not take her eyes from the ponies. She was conscious of the unwonted color in her cheeks, which was slowly dying away beneath her companion’s relentless gaze.
“You need not trouble to reply, mademoiselle,” said De Chauxville, with his dark smile; “I am answered.”
Catrina pulled the ponies up with a jerk, and proceeded to turn their willing heads toward home. She was alarmed and disturbed. Nothing seemed to be safe from the curiosity of this man, no secret secure, no prevarication of the slightest avail.
“There are other questions in my mind,” said De Chauxville quietly, “but not now. Mademoiselle is no doubt tired.”
He leaned back, and when at length he spoke it was to give utterance to the trite commonplace of which he made a conversational study.
A week later Catrina, watching from the window of her own small room, saw Paul lift Etta from the sleigh, and the sight made her clench her hands until the knuckles shone like polished ivory.
She turned and looked at herself in the mirror. No one knew how she had tried one dress after another since luncheon, alone in her two rooms, having sent her maid down stairs. No one knew the bitterness in this girl’s heart as she contemplated her own reflection.
She went slowly down stairs to the long, dimly lighted drawing-room. As she entered she heard her mother’s cackling voice.
“Yes, princess,” the countess was saying, “it is a quaint old house; little more than a fortified farm, I know. But my husband’s family were always strange. They seem always to have ignored the little comforts and elegancies of life.”
“It is most interesting,” answered Etta’s voice, and Catrina stepped forward into the light.
Formal greetings were exchanged, and Catrina saw Etta look anxiously toward the door through which she had just come. She thought that she was looking for her husband. But it was Claude de Chauxville for whose appearance Etta was waiting.
Paul and Steinmetz entered at the same moment by another door, and Catrina, who was talking to Maggie in English, suddenly stopped.
“Ah, Catrina,” said Paul, “we have broken new ground for you. There was no track from here to Osterno through the forest. I made one this afternoon, so you have no excuse for remaining away, now.”
“Thank you,” answered Catrina, withdrawing her cold hand hurriedly from his friendly grasp.
“Miss Delafield,” went on Paul, “admires our country as much as you do.”
“I was just telling mademoiselle,” said Maggie, speaking French with an honest English accent.
Paul nodded, and left them together.
“Yes,” the countess was saying at the other end of the gloomy room; “yes, we are greatly attached to Thors: Catrina, perhaps, more than I. I have some happy associations, and many sorrowful ones. But then—mon Dieu!—how isolated we are!”
“It is rather far from—anywhere,” acceded Etta, who was not attending, although she appeared to be interested.
“Far! Princess, I often wonder how Paris and Thors can be in the same world! Before our—our troubles we used to live in Paris a portion of the year. At least I did, while my poor husband travelled about. He had a hobby, you know, poor man! Humanity was his hobby. I have always found that men who seek to do good to their fellows are never thanked. Have you noticed that? The human race is not grateful en gros. There is a little gratitude in the individual, but none in the race.”
“None,” answered Etta absently.
“It was so with the Charity League,” went on the countess volubly. She paused and looked round with her feeble eyes.
“We are all friends,” she went on; “so it is safe to mention the Charity League, is it not?”
“No,” answered Steinmetz from the fire-place; “no, madame. There is only one friend to whom you may safely mention that.”
“Ah! Bad example!” exclaimed the countess playfully. “You are there! I did not see you enter. And who is that friend?”
“The fair lady who looks at you from your mirror,” replied Steinmetz, with a face of stone.
The countess laughed and shook her cap to one side.
“Well,” she said, “I can do no harm in talking of such things, as I know nothing of them. My poor husband—my poor mistaken Stipan—placed no confidence in his wife. And now he is in Siberia. I believe he works in a bootmaker’s shop. I pity the people who wear the boots; but perhaps he only puts in the laces. You hear, Paul? He placed no confidence in his wife, and now he is in Siberia. Let that be a warning to you—eh, princess? I hope he tells you everything.”
“Put not your trust in princesses,” said Steinmetz from the hearth-rug, where he was still warming his hands, for he had driven Maggie over. “It says so in the Bible.”
“Princes, profane one!” exclaimed the countess with a laugh—“princes, not princesses!”
“It may be so. I bow to your superior literary attainments,” replied Steinmetz, looking casually and significantly at a pile of yellow-backed foreign novels on a side-table.
“No,” the countess went on, addressing her conversation to Etta; “no, my husband—figure to yourself, princess—told me nothing. I never knew that he was implicated in this great scheme. I do not know now who else was concerned in it. It was all so sudden, so unexpected, so terrible. It appears that he kept the papers in this very house—in that room through there. It was his study—”
“My dear countess, silence!” interrupted Steinmetz at this moment, breaking into the conversation in his masterful way and enabling Etta to get away. Catrina, at the other end of the room, was listening, hard-eyed, breathless. It was the sight of Catrina’s face that made Steinmetz go forward. He had not been looking at Catrina, but at Etta, who was perfect in her composure and steady self-control.
“Do you want to enter the boot trade also?” asked Steinmetz cheerfully, in a lowered voice.
“Heaven forbid!” cried the countess.
“Then let us talk of safer things.”
The short twilight was already brooding over the land. The room, lighted only by small square windows, grew darker and darker until Catrina rang for lamps.
“I hate a dark room,” she said shortly to Maggie.
When De Chauxville came in, a few minutes later, Catrina was at the piano. The room was brilliantly lighted, and on the table gleamed and glittered the silver tea-things. The intermediate meal had been disposed of, but the samovar had been left alight, as is the habit at Russian afternoon teas.
Catrina looked up when the Frenchman entered, but did not cease playing.
“There is no need for introductions, I think,” said the countess.
“We all know M. de Chauxville,” replied Paul quietly, and the two men exchanged a glance.
De Chauxville shook hands with the new-comers, and, while the countess prepared tea for him, launched into a long description of the preparations for the bear-hunt of the following day. He addressed his remarks exclusively to Paul, as between enthusiasts and fellow-sportsmen. Gradually Paul thawed a little, and made one or two suggestions which betrayed a deep knowledge and a dawning interest.
“We shall only be three rifles,” said De Chauxville, “Steinmetz, you, and I; and I must ask you to bear in mind the fact that I am no shot—a mere amateur, my dear prince. The countess has been good enough to leave the whole matter in my hands. I have seen the keepers, and I have arranged that they come to-night at eleven o’clock to see us and to report progress. They know of three bears, and are attempting to ring them.”
The Frenchman was really full of information and enthusiasm. There were many details upon which he required Paul’s advice, and the two men talked together with less constraint than they had hitherto done. De Chauxville had picked up a vast deal of technical matter, and handled his little knowledge with a skill which bade fair to deprive it of its proverbial danger. He presently left Steinmetz and the prince engaged in a controversy with the countess as to a meeting-place at the luncheon-hour.
Maggie and Catrina were at the piano. Etta was looking at a book of photographs.
“A charming house, princess,” said De Chauxville, in a voice that all could hear while the music happened to be soft. But Catrina’s music was more remarkable for strength than for softness.
“Charming,” replied Etta.
The music rose into a swelling burst of harmonious chords.
“I must see you, princess,” said De Chauxville.
Etta glanced across the room toward her husband and Steinmetz.
“Alone,” added the Frenchman coolly.
Etta turned a page of the album and looked critically into a photograph.
“Must!” she said, with a little frown.
“Must!” repeated De Chauxville.
“A word I do not care about,” said Etta, with raised eyebrows.
The music was soft again.
“It is ten years since I held a rifle,” said De Chauxville. “Ah, madame, you do not know the excitement. I pity ladies, for they have no sport—no big game.”
“Personally, monsieur,” answered Etta, with a bright laugh, “I do not grudge you your big game. Suppose you miss the bear, or whatever it may be?”
“Then,” said De Chauxville, with a brave shrug of the shoulders, “it is the turn of the bear. The excitement is his—the laugh is with him.”
Catrina’s foot was upon the loud pedal again.
“Nevertheless, madame,” said De Chauxville, “I make so bold as to use the word. You perhaps know me well enough to be aware that I am rarely bold unless my ground is sure.”
“I should not boast of it,” answered Etta; “there is nothing to be proud of. It is easy enough to be bold if you are certain of victory.”
“When defeat would be intolerable, even a certain victory requires care! And I cannot afford to lose.”
“Lose what?” enquired Etta.
De Chauxville looked at her, but he did not answer. The music was soft again.
“I suppose that at Osterno you set no value upon a bear-skin,” he said after a pause.
“We have many,” admitted Etta. “But I love fur, or trophies of any description. Paul has killed a great deal.”
“Ah!”
“Yes,” answered Etta, and the music rose again. “I should like to know,” she went on, “upon what assumption you make use of a word which does not often—annoy me.”
“I have a good memory, madame. Besides,” he paused, looking round the room, “there are associations within these walls which stimulate the memory.”
“What do you mean?” asked Etta, in a hard voice. The hand holding the album suddenly shook like a leaf in the wind.
De Chauxville had stood upright, his hand at his mustache, after the manner of a man whose small-talk is exhausted. It would appear that he was wondering how he could gracefully get away from the princess to pay his devoirs elsewhere.
“I cannot tell you now,” he answered; “Catrina is watching us across the piano. You must beware, madame, of those cold blue eyes.”
He moved away, going toward the piano, where Maggie was standing behind Catrina’s chair. He was like a woman, inasmuch as he could not keep away from his failures.
“Are you advanced, Miss Delafield?” he asked, with his deferential little bow. “Are you modern?”
“I am neither; I have no desire for even the cheapest form of notoriety. Why do you ask?” replied Maggie.
“I was merely wondering whether we were to count you among our rifles to-morrow. One never knows what ladies will do next; not ladies—I apologize—women. I suppose it is those who are not by birth ladies who aspire to the proud name of women. The modern Woman—with a capital W—is not a lady—n’est ce pas?”
“She does not mind your abuse, monsieur,” laughed Maggie. “So long as you do not ignore her, she is happy. But you may set your mind at rest as regards to-morrow. I have never let off a gun in my life, and I am sensible enough not to begin on bears.”
De Chauxville made a suitable reply, and remained by the piano talking to the two young ladies until Etta rose and came toward them. He then crossed to the other side of the room and engaged Paul in the discussion of further plans for the morrow.
It was soon time to dress for dinner, and Etta was forced to forego the opportunity she sought to exchange a word alone with De Chauxville. That astute gentleman carefully avoided allowing her this opportunity. He knew the value of a little suspense.
During dinner and afterward, when at length the gentlemen came to the drawing-room, the conversation was of a sporting tendency. Bears, bear-hunting, and bear stories held supreme sway. More than once De Chauxvilie returned to this subject. Twice he avoided Etta.
In some ways this man was courageous. He delayed giving Etta her opportunity until there was a question of retiring to bed in view of the early start required by the next day’s arrangements. It had been finally settled that the three younger ladies should drive over to a woodman’s cottage at the far end of the forest, where luncheon was to be served. While this item of the programme was arranged De Chauxville looked straight at Etta across the table.
At length she had the chance afforded to her, deliberately, by De Chauxville.
“What did you mean?” she asked at once.
“I have received information which, had I known it three months ago, would have made a difference in your life.”
“What difference?”
“I should have been your husband, instead of that thick-headed giant.”
Etta laughed, but her lips were for the moment colorless.
“When am I to see you alone?”
Etta shrugged her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit.
“Please do not be dramatic or mysterious; I am tired. Good-night.”
She rose and concealed a simulated yawn.
De Chauxville looked at her with his sinister smile, and Etta suddenly saw the resemblance which Paul had noted between this man and the grinning mask of the lynx in the smoking-room at Osterno.
“When?” repeated he.
Etta shrugged her shoulders.
“I wish to speak to you about the Charity League,” said De Chauxville.
Etta’s eyes dilated. She made a step or two away from him, but she came back.
“I shall not go to the luncheon to-morrow, if you care to leave the hunt early.”
De Chauxville bowed.
At bedtime Catrina went to Maggie’s room with her to see that she had all that she could desire. A wood fire was burning brightly in the open French stove; the room was lighted by lamps. It was warm and cheery. A second door led to the little music-room which Catrina had made her own, and beyond was her bedroom.
Maggie had assured her hostess that she had every thing that she could wish, and that she did not desire the services of Catrina’s maid. But the Russian girl still lingered. She was slow to make friends—not shy, but diffident and suspicious. Her friendship once secured was a thing worth possessing. She was inclined to bestow it upon this quiet, self-contained English girl. In such matters the length of an acquaintance goes for nothing. A long acquaintanceship does not necessarily mean friendship—one being the result of circumstance, the other of selection.
“The princess knows Russian?” said Catrina suddenly.
She was standing near the dressing-table, where she had been absently attending to the candles. She wheeled round and looked at Maggie, who was hospitably sitting on a low chair near the fire. She was sorry for the loneliness of this girl’s life. She did not want her to go away just yet. There was another chair by the fire, inviting Catrina to indulge in those maiden confidences which attach themselves to slippers and hair-brushings.
Maggie looked up with a smile which slowly ebbed away. Catrina’s remark was of the nature of a defiance. Her half-diffident rtle of hostess was suddenly laid aside.
“No; she does not,” answered the English girl.
Catrina came forward, standing over Maggie, looking down at her with eyes full of antagonism.
“Excuse me. I saw her understand a remark I made to one of the servants. She was not careful. I saw it distinctly.”
“I think you must be mistaken,” answered Maggie quietly. “She has been in Russia before for a few weeks; but she did not learn the language. She told me so herself. Why should she pretend not to know Russian, if she does?”
Catrina made no answer. She sat heavily down in the vacant chair. Her attitudes were uncouth and strong—a perpetual source of tribulation to the countess. She sat with her elbow on her knee, staring into the fire.
“I did not mean to hate her; I did not want to,” she said. “If it had been you, I should not have hated you.”
Maggie’s clear eyes wavered for a moment. A faint color rose to her face. She leaned back so that the firelight did not reach her. There was a silence, during which Maggie unclasped a bracelet with a little snap of the spring. Catrina did not hear the sound. She heard nothing. She did not appear to be aware of her surroundings. Maggie unclasped another bracelet noisily. She was probably regretting her former kindness of manner. Catrina had come too near.
“Are you not judging rather hastily?” suggested Maggie, in a measured voice which heightened the contrast between the two. “I find it takes some time to discover whether one likes or dislikes new acquaintances.”
“Yes; but you English are so cold and deliberate. You do not know what it is to hate—or to care.”
“Perhaps we do,” said Maggie; “but we say less about it.”
Catrina turned and looked at her with a queer smile.
“Less!” she laughed. “Nothing—you say nothing. Paul is the same. I have seen. I know. You have said nothing since you came to Thors. You have talked and laughed; you have given opinions; you have spoken of many things, but you have said nothing. You are the same as Paul—one never knows. I know nothing about you. But I like you. You are her cousin?”
“Yes.”
“And I hate her!”
Maggie laughed. She was quite steady and loyal.
“When you get to know her you will change, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps I know her now better than you do!”
Maggie laughed in her cheery, practical way.
“That seems hardly likely, considering that I have known her since we were children.”
Catrina shrugged her shoulders in an honest if somewhat mannerless refusal to discuss the side issue. She returned to the main question with characteristic stubbornness.
“I shall always hate her,” she said. “I am sorry she is your cousin. I shall always regret that, and I shall always hate her. There is something wrong about her—something none of you know except Karl Steinmetz. He knows every thing—Herr Steinmetz.”
“He knows a great deal,” admitted Maggie.
“Yes; and that is why he is sad. Is it not so?”
Catrina sat staring into the fire, her strange, earnest eyes almost fierce in their concentration.
“Did she pretend that she loved him at first?” she asked suddenly.
Receiving no answer, she looked up and fixed her searching gaze on the face of her companion. Maggie was looking straight in front of her in the direction of the fire, but not with eyes focussed to see any thing so near at hand. She bore the scrutiny without flinching. As soon as Catrina’s eyes were averted the mask-like stillness of her features relaxed.
“She does not take that trouble now,” added the Russian girl, in reply to her own question. “Did you see her to-night when we were at the piano? M. de Chauxville was talking to her. They were keeping two conversations going at the same time. I could see by their faces. They said different things when the music was loud. I hate her. She is not true to Paul. M. de Chauxville knows something about her. They have something in common which is not known to Paul or to any of us! Why do you not speak? Why do you sit staring into the fire with your lips so close together?”
“Because I do not think that we shall gain any thing by discussing Paul and his wife. It is no business of ours.”
Catrina laughed—a lamentable, mirthless laugh.
“That is because she is your cousin; and he—he is nothing to you. You do not care whether he is happy or not!”
Catrina had turned upon her companion fiercely. Maggie swung round in her chair to pick up her bracelets, which had slipped from her knees to the floor.
“You exaggerate things,” she said quietly. “I see no reason to suppose that Paul is unhappy. It is because you have taken this unreasoning dislike to her.”
She took a long time to collect three bracelets. Then she rose and placed them on the dressing-table.
“Do you want me to go?” asked Catrina, in her blunt way.
“No,” answered Maggie, civilly enough; but she extracted a couple of hair-pins rather obviously.
Catrina heeded the voice and not the action.
“You English are all alike,” she said. “You hold one at arm’s length. I suppose there is some one in England for whom you care—who is out of all this—away from all the troubles of Russia. This has nothing to do with your life. It is only a passing incident—a few weeks to be forgotten when you go back. I wonder what he is like—the man in England. You need not tell me. I am not curious in that way. I am not asking you to tell me. I am just wondering. For I know there is some one. I knew it when I first saw you. You are so quiet, and settled, and self-contained—like a person who has played a game and knows for certain that it is lost or won, and does not want to play again. Your hair is very pretty; you are very pretty, you quiet English girl. I wonder what you think about behind your steady eyes.”
“I?” said Maggie, with a little laugh. “Oh—I think about my dresses, and the new fashions, and parties, and all the things that girls do think of.”
Catrina shook her head. She looked stubborn and unconvinced. Then suddenly she changed the conversation.
“Do you like M. de Chauxville?” she asked.
“No.”
“Does Paul like him?”
“I don’t know.”
Catrina looked up for a moment only. Then her eyes returned to the contemplation of the burning pine-logs.
“I wonder why you will not talk of Paul,” she said, in a voice requiring no answer.
Maggie moved rather uneasily. She had her back turned toward Catrina.
“I am afraid I am rather a dull person,” she answered. “I have not much to say about any body.”
“And nothing about Paul?” suggested Catrina.
“Nothing. We were talking of M. de Chauxville.”
“Yes; I do not understand M. de Chauxville. He seems to me to be the incarnation of insincerity. He poses—even to himself. He is always watching for the effect. I wonder what the effect of himself upon himself may be.”
Maggie laughed.
“That is rather complicated,” she said. “It requires working out. I think he is deeply impressed with his own astuteness. If he were simpler he would be cleverer.”
Catrina was afraid of Claude de Chauxville, and, because this was so, she stared in wonder at the English girl, who dismissed him from the conversation and her thoughts with a few careless words of contempt. Such minds as that of Miss Delafield were quite outside the field of De Chauxville’s influence, while that Frenchman had considerable power over highly strung and imaginative natures.
Catrina Lanovitch had begun by tolerating him—had proceeded to make the serious blunder of permitting him to be impertinently familiar, and was now exaggerating in her own mind the hold that he had over her. She did not actually dislike him. So few people had taken the trouble or found the expediency of endeavoring to sympathize with her or understand her nature, that she was unconsciously drawn toward this man whom she now feared.
In exaggerating the power he exercised over herself she somewhat naturally exaggerated also his importance in the world and in the lives of those around him. She had imagined him all-powerful; and the first person to whom she mentioned his name dismissed the subject indifferently. Her own entire sincerity had enabled her to detect the insincerity of her ally. She had purposely made mention of the weak spot which she had discovered, in order that her observation might be corroborated. And this Maggie had failed to do.
With the slightest encouragement, Catrina would have told her companion all that had passed. The sympathy between women is so strong that there is usually only one man who is safe from discussion. In Catrina’s case that one man was not Claude de Chauxville. But Maggie Delafield was of different material from this impressionable, impulsive Russian girl. She was essentially British in her capacity for steering a straight personal course through the shoals and quicksands of her neighbors’ affairs, as also in the firm grip she held upon her own thoughts. She was by no means prepared to open her mind to the first comer, and in her somewhat slow-going English estimate of such matters Catrina was as yet little more than the first comer.
She changed the subject, and they talked for some time on indifferent topics—such topics as have an interest for girls; and who are we that we may despise them? We jeer very grandly at girls’ talk, and promptly return to the discussion of our dogs and pipes and clothing.
But Catrina was not happy under this judicious treatment. She had no one in the world to whom she could impart a thousand doubts and questions—a hundred grievances and one great grief. And it was just this one great grief of which Maggie dreaded the mention. She was quite well aware of its existence—had been aware of it for some time. Karl Steinmetz had thrown out one or two vague hints; everything pointed to it. Maggie could hardly be ignorant of the fact that Catrina had grown to womanhood loving Paul.
A score of times Catrina approached the subject, and with imperturbable steadfastness Maggie held to her determination that Paul was not to be discussed by them. She warded, she evaded, she ignored with a skill which baffled the simple Russian. She had a hundred subterfuges—a hundred skilful turns and twists. Where women learn these matters, Heaven only knows! All our experience of the world, our falls and stumbles on the broken road of life, never teach us some things that are known to the veriest schoolgirl standing on the smoother footpath that women tread.
At last Catrina rose to go. Maggie rose also. Women are relentless where they fight for their own secrets. Maggie morally turned Catrina out of the room. The two girls stood looking at each other for a moment. They had nothing in common. The language in which they understood each other best was the native tongue of neither. Born in different countries, each of a mixed race with no one racial strain in common, neither creed, nor education, nor similarity of thought had aught to draw them together. They looked at each other, and God’s hand touched them. They both loved the same man. They did not hate each other.
“Have you every thing you want?” asked Catrina.
The question was startling. Catrina’s speech was ever abrupt. At first Maggie did not understand.
“Yes, thanks,” she answered. “I am very tired. I suppose it is the snow.”
“Yes,” said Catrina mechanically; “it is the snow.”
She went toward the door, and there she paused.
“Does Paul love her?” she asked abruptly.
Maggie made no answer; and, as was her habit, Catrina replied to her own question.
“You know he does not—you know he does not!” she said.
Then she went out, without waiting for an answer, closing the door behind her. The closed door heard the reply.
“It will not matter much,” said Maggie, “so long as he never finds it out.”