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The Sowers

by Henry Seton Merriman · English · Gutenberg #10132 · 618,530 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Sowers

Author: Henry Seton Merriman


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10132]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOWERS ***

THE SOWERS

BY

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN



1895




CONTENTS

CHAP.


I. A WAIF ON THE STEPPE

II. BY THE VOLGA

III. DIPLOMATIC

IV. DON QUIXOTE

V. THE BARON

VI. THE TALLEYRAND CLUB

VII. OLD HANDS

VIII. SAFE!

IX. THE PRINCE

X. THE MOSCOW DOCTOR

XI. CATRINA

XII. AT THORS

XIII. UNMASKED

XIV. A WIRE-PULLER

XV. IN A WINTER CITY

XVI. THE THIN END

XVII. CHARITY

XVIII. IN THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES

XIX. ON THE NEVA

XX. AN OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP

XXI. A SUSPECTED HOUSE

XXII. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

XXIII. A WINTER SCENE

XXIV. HOME

XXV. OSTERNO

XXVI. BLOODHOUNDS

XXVII. IN THE WEB

XXVIII. IN THE CASTLE OF THORS

XXIX. ANGLO-RUSSIAN

XXX. WOLF!

XXXI. A DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT

XXXII. A CLOUD

XXXIII. THE NET IS DRAWN

XXXIV. AN APPEAL

XXXV. ON THE EDGE OF THE STORM

XXXVI. À TROIS

XXXVII. À DEUX

XXXVIII. A TALE THAT IS TOLD

XXXIX. HUSBAND AND WIFE

XL. STÉPAN RETURNS

XLI. DUTY

XLII. THE STORM BURSTS

XLIII. BEHIND THE VEIL

XLIV. KISMET



THE SOWERS




CHAPTER I


A WAIF ON THE STEPPE

"In this country charity covers no sins!"

The speaker finished his remark with a short laugh. He was a big, stout
man; his name was Karl Steinmetz, and it is a name well known in the
Government of Tver to this day. He spoke jerkily, as stout men do when
they ride, and when he had laughed his good-natured, half-cynical laugh,
he closed his lips beneath a huge gray mustache. So far as one could
judge from the action of a square and deeply indented chin, his mouth
was expressive at that time--and possibly at all times--of a humorous
resignation. No reply was vouchsafed to him, and Karl Steinmetz bumped
along on his little Cossack horse, which was stretched out at a gallop.

Evening was drawing on. It was late in October, and a cold wind was
driving from the north-west across a plain which for sheer dismalness of
aspect may give points to Sahara and beat that abode of mental
depression without an effort. So far as the eye could reach there was no
habitation to break the line of horizon. A few stunted fir-trees,
standing in a position of permanent deprecation, with their backs
turned, as it were, to the north, stood sparsely on the plain. The grass
did not look good to eat, though the Cossack horses would no doubt have
liked to try it. The road seemed to have been drawn by some Titan
engineer with a ruler from horizon to horizon.

Away to the south there was a forest of the same stunted pines, where a
few charcoal-burners and resin-tappers eked out a forlorn and obscure
existence. There are a score of such settlements, such gloomy forests,
dotted over this plain of Tver, which covers an area of nearly two
hundred square miles. The remainder of it is pasture, where miserable
cattle and a few horses, many sheep and countless pigs, seek their food
pessimistically from God.

Steinmetz looked round over this cheerless prospect with a twinkle of
amused resignation in his blue eyes, as if this creation were a little
practical joke, which he, Karl Steinmetz, appreciated at its proper
worth. The whole scene was suggestive of immense distance, of countless
miles in all directions--a suggestion not conveyed by any scene in
England, by few in Europe. In our crowded island we have no conception
of a thousand miles. How can we? Few of us have travelled five hundred
at a stretch. The land through which these men were riding is the home
of great distances--Russia. They rode, moreover, as if they knew it--as
if they had ridden for days and were aware of more days in front of
them.

The companion of Karl Steinmetz looked like an Englishman. He was young
and fair and quiet. He looked like a youthful athlete from Oxford or
Cambridge--a simple-minded person who had jumped higher or run quicker
than anybody else without conceit, taking himself, like St. Paul, as he
found himself and giving the credit elsewhere. And one finds that, after
all, in this world of deceit, we are most of us that which we look like.
You, madam, look thirty-five to a day, although your figure is still
youthful, your hair untouched by gray, your face unseamed by care. You
may look in your mirror and note these accidents with satisfaction; you
may feel young and indulge in the pastimes of youth without effort. But
you are thirty-five. We know it. We who look at you can see it for
ourselves, and, if you could only be brought to believe it, we think no
worse of you on that account.

The man who rode beside Karl Steinmetz with gloomy eyes and a vague
suggestion of flight in his whole demeanor was, like reader and writer,
exactly what he seemed. He was the product of an English public school
and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of
athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed
muscles--that is to say, he was no scholar but essentially a
gentleman--a good enough education in its way, and long may Britons seek
it!

This young man's name was Paul Howard Alexis, and Fortune had made him a
Russian prince. If, however, anyone, even Steinmetz, called him prince,
he blushed and became confused. This terrible title had brooded over him
while at Eton and Cambridge. But no one had found him out; he remained
Paul Howard Alexis so far as England and his friends were concerned. In
Russia, however, he was known (by name only, for he avoided Slavonic
society) as Prince Pavlo Alexis. This plain was his; half the Government
of Tver was his; the great Volga rolled through his possessions; sixty
miles behind him a grim stone castle bore his name, and a tract of land
as vast as Yorkshire was peopled by humble-minded persons who cringed at
the mention of his Excellency.

All this because thirty years earlier a certain Princess Natásha Alexis
had fallen in love with plain Mr. Howard of the British Embassy in St.
Petersburg. With Slavonic enthusiasm (for the Russian is the most
romantic race on earth) she informed Mr. Howard of the fact, and duly
married him. Both these persons were now dead, and Paul Howard Alexis
owed it to his mother's influence in high regions that the
responsibilities of princedom were his. At the time when this title was
accorded to him he had no say in the matter. Indeed, he had little say
in any matters except meals, which he still took in liquid form. Certain
it is, however, that he failed to appreciate his honors as soon as he
grew up to a proper comprehension of them.

Equally certain is it that he entirely failed to recognize the
enviability of his position as he rode across the plains of Tver toward
the yellow Volga by the side of Karl Steinmetz.

"This is great nonsense," he said suddenly. "I feel like a Nihilist or
some theatrical person of that sort. I do not think it can be necessary,
Steinmetz."

"Not necessary," answered Steinmetz in thick guttural tones, "but
prudent."

This man spoke with the soft consonants of a German.

"Prudent, my dear prince."

"Oh, drop that!"

"When we sight the Volga I will drop it with pleasure. Good Heavens! I
wish I were a prince. I should have it marked on my linen, and sit up in
bed to read it on my nightshirt."

"No, you wouldn't, Steinmetz," answered Alexis, with a vexed laugh. "You
would hate it just as much as I do, especially if it meant running away
from the best bear-shooting in Europe."

Steinmetz shrugged his shoulders.

"Then you should not have been charitable--charity, I tell you, Alexis,
covers no sins in this country."

"Who made me charitable? Besides, no decent-minded fellow could be
anything else here. Who told me of the League of Charity, I should like
to know? Who put me into it? Who aroused my pity for these poor beggars?
Who but a stout German cynic called Steinmetz?"

"Stout, yes--cynic, if you will--German, no!"

The words were jerked out of him by the galloping horse.

"Then what are you?"

Steinmetz looked straight in front of him, with a meditation in his
quiet eyes which made a dreamy man of him.

"That depends."

Alexis laughed.

"Yes, I know. In Germany you are a German, in Russia a Slav, in Poland a
Pole, and in England any thing the moment suggests."

"Exactly so. But to return to you. You must trust to me in this matter.
I know this country. I know what this League of Charity was. It was a
bigger thing than any dream of. It was a power in Russia--the greatest
of all--above Nihilism--above the Emperor himself. Ach Gott! It was a
wonderful organization, spreading over this country like sunlight over a
field. It would have made men of our poor peasants. It was God's work.
If there is a God--bien entendu--which some young men deny, because God
fails to recognize their importance, I imagine. And now it is all done.
It is crumbled up by the scurrilous treachery of some miscreant. Ach! I
should like to have him out here on the plain. I would choke him. For
money, too! The devil--it must have been the devil--to sell that secret
to the Government!"

"I can't see what the Government wanted it for," growled Alexis moodily.

"No, but I can. It is not the Emperor; he is a gentleman, although he
has the misfortune to wear the purple. No, it is those about him. They
want to stop education; they want to crush the peasant. They are afraid
of being found out; they live in their grand houses, and support their
grand names on the money they crush out of the starving peasant."

"So do I, so far as that goes."

"Of course you do! And I am your steward--your crusher. We do not deny
it, we boast of it, but we exchange a wink with the angels--eh?"

Alexis rode on in silence for a few moments. He sat his horse as English
foxhunters do--not prettily--and the little animal with erect head and
scraggy neck was evidently worried by the unusual grip on his ribs. For
Russians sit back, with a short stirrup and a loose seat, when they are
travelling. One must not form one's idea of Russian horsemanship from
the erect carriage affected in the Newski Prospect.

"I wish," he said abruptly, "that I had never attempted to do any good;
doing good to mankind doesn't pay. Here I am running away from my own
home as if I were afraid of the police! The position is impossible."

Steinmetz shook his shaggy head.

"No. No position is impossible in this country--except the Czar's--if
one only keeps cool. For men such as you and I any position is quite
easy. But these Russians are too romantic--too exaltés--they give way to
a morbid love of martyrdom: they think they can do no good to mankind
unless they are uncomfortable."

Alexis turned in his saddle and looked keenly into his companion's face.

"Do you know," he said, "I believe you founded the Charity League?"

Steinmetz laughed in his easy, stout way.

"It founded itself," he said; "the angels founded it in heaven. I hope a
committee of them will attend to the eternal misery of the dog who
betrayed it."

"I trust they will, but in the meantime I stick to my opinion that it is
unnecessary for me to leave the country. What have I done? I do not
belong to the League; it is composed entirely of Russian nobles; I don't
admit that I am a Russian noble."

"But," persisted Steinmetz quietly, "you subscribe to the League. Four
hundred thousand rubles--they do not grow at the roadside."

"But the rubles have not my name on them."

"That may be, but we all--_they all_--know where they are likely to come
from. My dear Paul, you cannot keep up the farce any longer. You are not
an English gentleman who comes across here for sporting purposes; you do
not live in the old Castle of Osterno three months in the year because
you have a taste for mediaeval fortresses. You are a Russian prince, and
your estates are the happiest, the most enlightened in the empire. That
alone is suspicious. You collect your rents yourself. You have no German
agents--no German vampires about you. There are a thousand things
suspicious about Prince Pavlo Alexis if those that be in high places
only come to think about it. They have not come to think about
it--thanks to our care and to your English independence. But that is
only another reason why we should redouble our care. You must not be in
Russia when the Charity League is picked to pieces. There will be
trouble--half the nobility in Russia will be in it. There will be
confiscations and degradations: there will be imprisonment and Siberia
for some. You are better out of it, for you are not an Englishman; you
have not even a Foreign Office passport. Your passport is your patent of
nobility, and that is Russian. No, you are better out of it."

"And you--what about you?" asked Paul, with a little laugh--the laugh
that one brave man gives when he sees another do a plucky thing.

"I! Oh, I am all right! I am nobody; I am hated of all the peasants
because I am your steward and so hard--so cruel. That is my certificate
of harmlessness with those that are about the Emperor."

Paul made no answer. He was not of an argumentative mind, being a large
man, and consequently inclined to the sins of omission rather than to
the active form of doing wrong. He had an enormous faith in Karl
Steinmetz, and, indeed, no man knew Russia better than this cosmopolitan
adventurer. Steinmetz it was who pricked forward with all speed, wearing
his hardy little horse to a drooping semblance of its former self.
Steinmetz it was who had recommended quitting the travelling carriage
and taking to the saddle, although his own bulk led him to prefer the
slower and more comfortable method of covering space. It would almost
seem that he doubted his own ascendency over his companion and master,
which semblance was further increased by a subtle ring of anxiety in his
voice while he argued. It is possible that Karl Steinmetz suspected the
late Princess Natásha of having transmitted to her son a small
hereditary portion of that Slavonic exaltation and recklessness of
consequence which he deplored.

"Then you turn back at Tver?" enquired Paul, at length breaking a long
silence.

"Yes; I must not leave Osterno just now. Perhaps later, when the winter
has come, I will follow. Russia is quiet during the winter, very quiet.
Ha, ha!"

He shrugged his shoulders and shivered. But the shiver was interrupted.
He raised himself in his saddle and peered forward into the gathering
darkness.

"What is that," he asked sharply, "on the road in front?"

Paul had already seen it.

"It looks like a horse," he answered--"a strayed horse, for it has no
rider."

They were going west, and what little daylight there was lived on the
western horizon. The form of the horse, cut out in black relief against
the sky, was weird and ghostlike. It was standing by the side of the
road, apparently grazing. As they approached it, its outlines became
more defined.

"It has a saddle," said Steinmetz at length. "What have we here?"

The beast was evidently famishing, for, as they came near, it never
ceased its occupation of dragging the wizened tufts of grass up, root
and all.

"What have we here?" repeated Steinmetz.

And the two men clapped spurs to their tired horses.

The solitary waif had a rider, but he was not in the saddle. One foot
was caught in the stirrup, and as the horse moved on from tuft to tuft
it dragged its dead master along the ground.




CHAPTER II


BY THE VOLGA

"This is going to be unpleasant," muttered Steinmetz, as he cumbrously
left the saddle. "That man is dead--has been dead some days; he's stiff.
And the horse has been dragging him face downward. God in heaven! this
will be unpleasant."

Paul had leaped to the ground, and was already loosening the dead man's
foot from the stirrup. He did it with a certain sort of skill, despite
the stiffness of the heavy riding-boot, as if he had walked a hospital
in his time. Very quickly Steinmetz came to his assistance, tenderly
lifting the dead man and laying him on his back.

"Ach!" he exclaimed; "we are unfortunate to meet a thing like this."

There was no need of Paul Alexis' medical skill to tell that this man
was dead; a child would have known it. Before searching the pockets
Steinmetz took out his own handkerchief and laid it over a face which
had become unrecognizable. The horse was standing over them. It bent its
head and sniffed wonderingly at that which had once been its master.
There was a singular, scared look in its eyes.

Steinmetz pushed aside the enquiring muzzle.

"If you could speak, my friend," he said, "we might want you. As it is,
you had better continue your meal."

Paul was unbuttoning the dead man's clothes. He inserted his hand within
the rough shirt.

"This man," he said, "was starving. He probably fainted from sheer
exhaustion and rolled out of the saddle. It is hunger that killed him."

"With his pocket full of money," added Steinmetz, withdrawing his hand
from the dead man's pocket and displaying a bundle of notes and some
silver.

There was nothing in any of the other pockets--no paper, no clue of any
sort to the man's identity.

The two finders of this silent tragedy stood up and looked around them.
It was almost dark. They were ten miles from a habitation. It does not
sound much; but a traveller would be hard put to place ten miles between
himself and a habitation in the whole of the British Islands. This,
added to a lack of road or path which is unknown to us in England, made
ten miles of some importance.

Steinmetz had pushed his fur cap to the back of his head, which he was
scratching pensively. He had a habit of scratching his forehead with one
finger, which denoted thought.

"Now, what are we to do?" he muttered. "Can't bury the poor chap and say
nothing about it. I wonder where his passport is? We have here a
tragedy."

He turned to the horse, which was grazing hurriedly.

"My friend of the four legs," he said, "it is a thousand pities that you
are dumb."

Paul was still examining the dead man with that callousness which
denotes one who, for love or convenience, has become a doctor. He was a
doctor--an amateur. He was a Caius man.

Steinmetz looked down at him with a little laugh. He noticed the
tenderness of the touch, the deft fingering which had something of
respect in it. Paul Alexis was visibly one of those men who take mankind
seriously, and have that in their hearts which for want of a better word
we call sympathy.

"Mind you do not catch some infectious disease," said Steinmetz gruffly.
"I should not care to handle any stray moujik one finds dead about the
roadside; unless, of course, you think there is more money about him. It
would be a pity to leave that for the police."

Paul did not answer. He was examining the limp, dirty hands of the dead
man. The fingers were covered with soil, the nails were broken. He had
evidently clutched at the earth and at every tuft of grass, after his
fall from the saddle.

"Look here, at these hands," said Paul suddenly. "This is an Englishman.
You never see fingers this shape in Russia."

Steinmetz stooped down. He held out his own square-tipped fingers in
comparison. Paul rubbed the dead hand with his sleeve as if it were a
piece of statuary.

"Look here," he continued, "the dirt rubs off and leaves the hand quite
a gentlemanly color. This"--he paused and lifted Steinmetz's
handkerchief, dropping it again hurriedly over the mutilated face--"this
thing was once a gentleman."

"It certainly has seen better days," admitted Steinmetz, with a grim
humor which was sometimes his. "Come, let us drag him beneath that
pine-tree and ride on to Tver. We shall do no good, my dear Alexis,
wasting our time over the possible antecedents of a gentleman who, for
reasons of his own, is silent on the subject."

Paul rose from the ground. His movements were those of a strong and
supple man, one whose muscles had never had time to grow stiff. He was
an active man, who never hurried. Standing thus upright he was very
tall--nearly a giant. Only in St. Petersburg, of all the cities of the
world, could he expect to pass unnoticed--the city of tall men and plain
women. He rubbed his two hands together in a singularly professional
manner which sat amiss on him.

"What do you propose doing?" he asked. "You know the laws of this
country better than I do."

Steinmetz scratched his forehead with his forefinger.

"Our theatrical friends the police," he said, "are going to enjoy this.
Suppose we prop him up sitting against that tree--no one will run away
with him--and lead his horse into Tver. I will give notice to the
police, but I will not do so until you are in the Petersburg train. I
will, of course, give the ispravnik to understand that your princely
mind could not be bothered by such details as this--that you have
proceeded on your journey."

"I do not like leaving the poor beggar alone all night," said Paul.
"There may be wolves--the crows in the early morning."

"Bah! that is because you are so soft-hearted. My dear fellow, what
business is it of ours if the universal laws of nature are illustrated
upon this unpleasant object? We all live on each other. The wolves and
the crows have the last word. Tant mieux for the wolves and the crows!
Come, let us carry him to that tree."

The moon was just rising over the line of the horizon. All around them
the steppe lay in grim and lifeless silence. In such a scene, where life
seemed rare and precious, death gained in its power of inspiring fear.
It is different in crowded cities, where an excess of human life seems
to vouch for the continuity of the race, where, in a teeming population,
one life more or less seems of little value. The rosy hue of sunset was
fading to a clear green, and in the midst of a cloudless sky,
Jupiter--very near the earth at that time--shone intense, and brilliant
like a lamp. It was an evening such as only Russia and the great North
lands ever see, where the sunset is almost in the north and the sunrise
holds it by the hand. Over the whole scene there hung a clear,
transparent night, green and shimmering, which would never be darker
than an English twilight.

The two living men carried the nameless, unrecognizable dead to a
resting-place beneath a stunted pine a few paces removed from the road.
They laid him decently at full length, crossing his soil-begrimed hands
over his breast, tying the handkerchief down over his face.

Then they turned and left him, alone in that luminous night. A waif that
had fallen by the great highway without a word, without a sign. A
half-run race--a story cut off in the middle; for he was a young man
still; his hair, all dusty, draggled, and bloodstained, had no streak of
gray; his hands were smooth and youthful. There was a vague suspicion of
sensual softness about his body, as if this might have been a man who
loved comfort and ease, who had always chosen the primrose path, had
never learned the salutary lesson of self-denial. The incipient
stoutness of limb contrasted strangely with the drawn meagreness of his
body, which was contracted by want of food. Paul Alexis was right. This
man had died of starvation, within ten miles of the great Volga, within
nine miles of the outskirts of Tver, a city second to Moscow, and once
her rival. Therefore it could only be that he had purposely avoided the
dwellings of men; that he was a fugitive of some sort or another. Paul's
theory that this was an Englishman had not been received with enthusiasm
by Steinmetz; but that philosopher had stooped to inspect the narrow,
tell-tale fingers. Steinmetz, be it noted, had an infinite capacity for
holding his tongue.

They mounted their horses and rode away without looking back. But they
did not speak, as if each were deep in his own thoughts. Material had
indeed been afforded them, for who could tell who this featureless man
might be? They were left in a state of hopeless curiosity, as who,
having picked up a page with "Finis" written upon it, falls to wondering
what the story may have been.

Steinmetz had thrown the bridle of the straying horse over his arm, and
the animal trotted obediently by the side of the fidgety little
Cossacks.

"That was bad luck," exclaimed the elder man at length, "d--d bad luck!
In this country the less you find, the less you see, the less you
understand, the simpler is your existence. Those Nihilists, with their
mysterious ways and their reprehensible love of explosives, have made
honest men's lives a burden to them."

"Their motives were originally good," put in Paul.

"That is possible; but a good motive is no excuse for a bad means. They
wanted to get along too quickly. They are pig-headed, exalted,
unpractical to a man. I do not mention the women, because when women
meddle in politics they make fools of themselves, even in England. These
Nihilists would have been all very well if they had been content to sow
for posterity. But they wanted to see the fruits of their labors in one
generation. Education does not grow like that. It requires a couple of
generations to germinate. It has to be manured by the brains of fools
before it is of any use. In England it has reached this stage; here in
Russia the sowing has only begun. Now, we were doing some good. The
Charity League was the thing. It began by training their starved bodies
to be ready for the education when it came. And very little of it would
have come in our time. If you educate a hungry man, you set a devil
loose upon the world. Fill their stomachs before you feed their brains,
or you will give them mental indigestion; and a man with mental
indigestion raises hell or cuts his own throat."

"That is just what I want to do--fill their stomachs. I don't care about
the rest. I'm not responsible for the progress of the world or the good
of humanity," said Paul.

He rode on in silence; then he burst out again in the curt phraseology
of a man whose feeling is stronger than he cares to admit.

"I've got no grand ideas about the human race," he said. "A very little
contents me. A little piece of Tver, a few thousand peasants, are good
enough for me. It seems rather hard that a fellow can't give away of his
surplus money in charity if he is such a fool as to want to."

Steinmetz was riding stubbornly along. Suddenly he gave a little
chuckle--a guttural sound expressive of a somewhat Germanic
satisfaction.

"I don't see how they can stop us," he said. "The League, of course, is
done; it will crumble away in sheer panic. But here, in Tver, they
cannot stop us."

He clapped his great hand on his thigh with more glee than one would
have expected him to feel; for this man posed as a cynic--a despiser of
men, a scoffer at charity.

"They'll find it very difficult to stop me," muttered Paul Alexis.

It was now dark--as dark as ever it would be. Steinmetz peered through
the gloom toward him with a little laugh--half tolerance, half
admiration.

The country was here a little more broken. Long, low hills, like vast
waves, rose and fell beneath the horses' feet. Ages ago the Volga may
have been here, and, slowly narrowing, must have left these hills in
deposit. From the crest of an incline the horsemen looked down over a
vast rolling tableland, and far ahead of them a great white streak
bounded the horizon.

"The Volga!" said Steinmetz. "We are almost there. And there, to the
right, is the Tversha. It is like a great catapult. Gott! what a
wonderful night! No wonder these Russians are romantic. What a night for
a pipe and a long chair! This horse of mine is tired. He shakes me most
abominably."

"Like to change?" enquired Paul curtly.

"No; it would make no difference. You are as heavy as I, although I am
wider! Ah! there are the lights of Tver."

Ahead of them a few lights twinkled feebly, sometimes visible and then
hidden again as they rode over the rolling hillocks. One plain ever
suggests another, but the resemblance between the steppes of Tver and
the great Sahara is at times startling. There is in both that roll as of
the sea--the great roll that heaves unceasingly round the Capes of Good
Hope and Horn. Looked at casually, Tver and Sahara's plains are level,
and it is only in crossing them that one realizes the gentle up and down
beneath the horses' feet.

Soon Steinmetz raised his head and sniffed in a loud Teutonic manner. It
was the reek of water; for great rivers, like the ocean, have their
smell. And the Volga is a revelation. Men travel far to see a city, but
few seem curious about a river. Every river has, nevertheless, its
individuality, its great silent interest. Every river has, moreover, its
influence, which extends to the people who pass their lives within sight
of its waters. Thus the Guadalquivir is rapid, mysterious,
untrammelled--breaking frequently from its boundary. And it runs through
Andalusia. The Nile--the river of ages--runs clear, untroubled through
the centuries, between banks untouched by man. The Rhine--romantic,
cultivated, artificial, with a rough subcurrent and a muddy bed--through
Germany. The Seine and the Thames--shallow--shallow--shallow. And
we--who live upon their banks!

The Volga--immense, stupendous, a great power, an influence two thousand
four hundred miles long. Some have seen the Danube, and think they have
seen a great river. So they have; but the Russian giant is seven hundred
miles longer. A vast yellow stream, moving on to the distant sea--slow,
gentle, inexorable, overwhelming.

All great things in nature have the power of crushing the human
intellect. Russians are thus crushed by the vastness of their country,
of their rivers. Man is but a small thing in a great country, and those
who live by Nile, or Guadalquivir, or Volga seem to hold their lives on
condition. They exist from day to day by the tolerance of their river.

Steinmetz and Paul paused for a moment on the wooden floating bridge and
looked at the great river. All who cross that bridge, or the railway
bridge higher up the stream, must do the same. They pause and draw a
deep breath, as if in the presence of something supernatural.

They rode on without speaking through the squalid town--the whilom rival
and the victim of brilliant Moscow. They rode straight to the station,
where they dined in, by the way, one of the best railway refreshment
rooms in the world. At one o'clock the night express from Moscow to St.
Petersburg, with its huge American locomotive, rumbled into the station.
Paul secured a chair in the long saloon car, and then returned to the
platform. The train waited twenty minutes for refreshments, and he still
had much to say to Steinmetz; for one of these men owned a principality
and the other governed it. They walked up and down the long platform,
smoking endless cigarettes, talking gravely.

Steinmetz stood on the platform and watched the train pass slowly away
into the night. Then he went toward a lamp, and taking a
pocket-handkerchief from his pocket, examined each corner of it in
succession. It was a small pocket-handkerchief of fine cambric. In one
corner were the initials S.S.B., worked neatly in white--such embroidery
as is done in St. Petersburg.

"Ach!" exclaimed Steinmetz shortly; "something told me that that was
he."

He turned the little piece of cambric over and over, examining it
slowly, with a heavy Germanic cunning. He had taken this handkerchief
from the body of the nameless rider who was now lying alone on the
steppe twelve miles away.

Steinmetz returned to the large refreshment room, and ordered the waiter
to bring him a glass of Benedictine, which he drank slowly and
thoughtfully.

Then he went toward the large black stove which stands in the railway
restaurant at Tver. He opened the door with the point of his boot. The
wood was roaring and crackling within. He threw the handkerchief in and
closed the door.

"It is as well, mon prince," he muttered, "that I found this, and not
you."




CHAPTER III


DIPLOMATIC

"All that there is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe,"
M. Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening,
apropos of the great gathering at the French Embassy, and the mot had
gone the round of the room.

In society a little mot will go a long way. M. le Baron de Chauxville
was, moreover, a manufacturer of mots. By calling he was attaché to the
French Embassy in London; by profession he was an epigrammatist. That is
to say, he was a sort of social revolver. He went off if one touched him
conversationally, and like others among us, he frequently missed fire.

Of course, he had but little real respect for the truth. If one wishes
to be epigrammatic, one must relinquish the hope of being either
agreeable or veracious. M. de Chauxville did not really intend to convey
the idea that any of the persons assembled in the great guest chambers
of the French Embassy that evening were anything but what they seemed.

He could not surely imagine that Lady Mealhead--the beautiful spouse of
the seventh Earl Mealhead--was anything but what she seemed: namely, a
great lady. Of course, M. de Chauxville knew that Lady Mealhead had once
been the darling of the music-halls, and that a thousand hearts had
vociferously gone out to her from sixpenny and even threepenny galleries
when she answered to the name of Tiny Smalltoes. But then M. de
Chauxville knew as well as you and I--Lady Mealhead no doubt had told
him--that she was the daughter of a clergyman, and had chosen the stage
in preference to the school-room as a means of supporting her aged
mother. Whether M. de Chauxville believed this or not, it is not for us
to enquire. He certainly looked as if he believed it when Lady Mealhead
told him--and his expressive Gallic eyes waxed tender at the mention of
her mother, the relict of the late clergyman, whose name had somehow
been overlooked by Crockford. A Frenchman loves his mother--in the
abstract.

Nor could M. de Chauxville take exception at young Cyril Squyrt, the
poet. Cyril looked like a poet. He wore his hair over his collar at the
back, and below the collar-bone in front. And, moreover, he was a
poet--one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems
could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did
not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in
white kid, with green ribbon--a very thin volume and very thin poetry.
Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt's father
kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds. But one
must not always believe all that one hears.

It appears that beneath the turf, or on it, all men are equal, so no one
could object to the presence of Billy Bale, the man, by Gad! who could
give you the straight tip on any race, and looked like it. We all know
Bale's livery stable, the same being Billy's father; but no matter.
Billy wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell
you, there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than
that.

Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French Embassy
picking holes in the earthly robes of society's elect. Suffice it to say
that every one was there. Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had made a
place in society and held it by the indecency of her language. Lady
Mealhead said she couldn't stand Kitty Whyte at any price. We are sorry
to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young person of the
gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized. And it is a bare
fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte, because
society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she would say next.
She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum that the
safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of an upset.

Every one, in fact, was there. All those who have had greatness thrust
upon them, and the others, those who thrust themselves upon the
great--those, in a word, who reach such as are above them by doing that
which should be beneath them. Lord Mealhead, by the way, was not there.
He never is anywhere where the respectable writer and his high-born
reader are to be found. It is discreet not to enquire where Lord
Mealhead is, especially of Lady Mealhead, who has severed more
completely her connection with the past. His lordship is, perchance, of
a sentimental humor, and loves to wander in those pasteboard groves
where first he met his Tiny--and very natural, too.

There was music and the refreshments. It was, in fact, a reception.
Gaul's most lively sons bowed before Albion's fairest daughters, and
displayed that fund of verve and esprit which they rightly pride
themselves upon possessing, and which, of course, leave mere Englishmen
so far behind in the paths of love and chivalry.

When not thus actively engaged they whispered together in corners and
nudged each other, exchanging muttered comments, in which the word
charmante came conveniently to the fore. Thus, the lightsome son of
republican Gaul in society.

It is, however, high time to explain the reason of our own presence--of
our own reception by France's courteous representative. We are here to
meet Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, and, moreover, to confine our attention to
the persons more or less implicated in the present history.

Mrs. Sydney Bamborough was undoubtedly the belle of the evening. She had
only to look in one of the many mirrors to make sure of that fact. And
if she wanted further assurance a hundred men in the room would have
been ready to swear to it. This lady had recently dawned on London
society--a young widow. She rarely mentioned her husband; it was
understood to be a painful subject. He had been attached to several
embassies, she said; he had a brilliant career before him, and suddenly
he had died abroad. And then she gave a little sigh and a bright smile,
which, being interpreted, meant "Let us change the subject."

There was never any doubt about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. She was
aristocratic to the tips of her dainty white fingers--composed, gentle,
and quite sure of herself. Quite the grand lady, as Lady Mealhead said.
But Mrs. Sydney Bamborough did not know Lady Mealhead, which may have
accounted for the titled woman's little sniff of interrogation. As a
matter of fact, Etta Sydney Bamborough came from excellent ancestry, and
could claim an uncle here, a cousin there, and a number of distant
relatives everywhere, should it be worth the while.

It was safe to presume that she was rich from the manner in which she
dressed, the number of servants and horses she kept, the general air of
wealth which pervaded her existence. That she was beautiful any one
could see for himself--not in the shop-windows, among the presumably
self-selected types of English beauty, but in the proper place--namely,
in her own and other aristocratic drawing-rooms.

She was talking to a tall, fair Frenchman--in perfect French--and was
herself nearly as tall as he. Bright brown hair waved prettily back from
a white forehead, clever, dark gray eyes and a lovely complexion--one of
those complexions which, from a purity of conscience or a steadiness of
nerve, never change. Cheeks of a faint pink, an expressive, mobile
mouth, a neck of dazzling white. Such was Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in the
prime of her youth.

"And you maintain that it is five years since we met," she was saying to
the tall Frenchman.

"Have I not counted every day?" he replied.

"I do not know," she answered, with a little laugh, that little laugh
which tells wise men where flattery may be shot like so much
conversational rubbish. Some women are fathomless pits, the rubbish
never seems to fill them. "I do not know, but I should not think so."

"Well, madam, it is so. Witness these gray hairs. Ah! those were happy
days in St. Petersburg."

Mrs. Sydney Bamborough smiled--a pleasant society smile, not too
pronounced and just sufficient to suggest pearly teeth. At the mention
of St. Petersburg she glanced round to see that they were not overheard.
She gave a little shiver.

"Don't speak of Russia!" she pleaded. "I hate to hear it mentioned. I
was so happy. It is painful to remember."

Even while she spoke the expression of her face changed to one of gay
delight. She nodded and smiled toward a tall man who was evidently
looking for her, and took no notice of the Frenchman's apologies.

"Who _is_ that?" asked the young man. "I see him everywhere lately."

"A mere English gentleman, Mr. Paul Howard Alexis," replied the lady.

The Frenchman raised his eyebrows. He knew better. This was no plain
English gentleman. He bowed and took his leave. M. de Chauxville of the
French Embassy was watching every movement, every change of expression,
from across the room.

In evening dress the man whom we last saw on the platform of the railway
station at Tver did not look so unmistakably English. It was more
evident that he had inherited certain characteristics from his Russian
mother--notably, his great height, a physical advantage enjoyed by many
aristocratic Russian families. His hair was fair and inclined to curl,
and there the foreign suggestion suddenly ceased. His face had the quiet
concentration, the unobtrusive self-absorption which one sees more
strongly marked in English faces than in any others. His manner of
moving through the well-dressed crowd somewhat belied the tan of his
skin. Here was an out-of-door, athletic youth, who knew how to move in
drawing-rooms--a big man who did not look much too large for his
surroundings. It was evident that he did not know many people, and also
that he was indifferent to his loss. He had come to see Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough, and that lady was not insensible to the fact.

To prove this she diverged from the path of veracity, as is the way of
some women.

"I did not expect to see you here," she said.

"You told me you were coming," he answered simply. The inference would
have been enough for some women, but not for Etta Sydney Bamborough.

"Well, is that a reason why you should attend a diplomatic soirée, and
force yourself to bow and smirk to a number of white-handed little
dandies whom you despise?"

"The best reason," he answered quietly, with an honesty which somehow
touched her as nothing else had touched this beautiful woman since she
had become aware of her beauty.

"Then you think it worth the bowing and the smirking?" she asked,
looking past him with innocent eyes. She made an imperceptible little
movement toward him as if she expected him to whisper. She was of that
school. But he was not. His was not the sort of mind to conceive any
thought that required whispering. Some persons in fact went so far as to
say that he was hopelessly dull, that he had no subtlety of thought, no
brightness, no conversation. These persons were no doubt ladies upon
whom he had failed to lavish the exceedingly small change of compliment.

"It is worth that and more," he replied, with his ready smile. "After
all, bowing and smirking come very easily. One soon gets accustomed to
it."

"One has to," she replied with a little sigh. "Especially if one is a
woman, which little mishap comes to some of us, you know. I wonder if
you could find me a chair."

She was standing with her back to a small sofa capable of holding three,
but calculated to accommodate two. She did not of course see it. In fact
she looked everywhere but toward it, raising her perfectly gloved
fingers tentatively for his arm.

"I am tired of standing," she added.

He turned and indicated the sofa, toward which she immediately advanced.
As she sat down he noted vaguely that she was exquisitely dressed,
certainly one of the best dressed women in the room. Her costume was
daring without being startling, being merely black and white largely,
boldly contrasted. He felt indefinitely proud of the dress. Some
instinct in the man's simple, strong mind told him that it was good for
women to be beautiful, but his ignorance of the sex being profound he
had no desire to analyze the beauty. He had no mental reservation with
regard to her. Indeed it would have been hard to find fault with Etta
Sydney Bamborough, looking upon her merely as a beautiful woman,
exquisitely dressed. In a cynical age this man was without cynicism. He
did not dream of reflecting that the lovely hair owed half its beauty to
the clever handling of a maid, that the perfect dress had been the
all-absorbing topic of many of its wearer's leisure hours. He was, in
fact, young for his years, and what is youth but a happy ignorance? It
is only when we know too much that Gravity marks us for her own.

Mrs. Sydney Bamborough looked up at him with a certain admiration. This
man was like a mountain breeze to one who has breathed nothing but the
faded air of drawing-rooms.

She drew in her train with a pretty curve of her gloved wrist.

"You look as if you did not know what it was to be tired; but perhaps
you will sit down. I can make room."

He accepted with alacrity.

"And now," she said, "let me hear where you have been. I have only had
time to shake hands with you the last twice that we have met! You said
you had been away."

"Yes; I have been to Russia."

Her face was steadily beautiful, composed and ready.

"Ah! How interesting! I have been in Petersburg. I love Russia." While
she spoke she was actually looking across the room toward the tall
Frenchman, her late companion.

"Do you?" answered Paul eagerly. His face lighted up after the manner of
those countenances that belong to men of one idea. "I am very much
interested in Russia."

"Do you know Petersburg?" she asked rather hurriedly. "I mean--society
there?"

"No. I know one or two people in Moscow."

She nodded, suppressing a quick little sigh which might have been one of
relief had her face been less pleasant and smiling.

"Who?" she asked indifferently. She was interested in the lace of her
pocket-handkerchief, of which the scent faintly reached him. He was a
simple person, and the faint odor gave him a distinct pleasure--a
suggested intimacy.

He mentioned several well-known Muscovite names, and she broke into a
sudden laugh.

"How terrible they sound," she said gayly, "even to me, and I have been
to Petersburg. But you speak Russian, Mr. Alexis?"

"Yes," he answered. "And you?"

She shook her head and gave a little sigh.

"I? Oh, no. I am not at all clever, I am afraid."




CHAPTER IV


DON QUIXOTE

Paul had been five months in England when he met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
Since his hurried departure from Tver a winter had come and gone,
leaving its mark as winters do. It left a very distinct mark on Russia.
It was a famine winter. From the snow-ridden plains that lie to the
north of Moscow, Karl Steinmetz had written piteous descriptions of an
existence which seemed hardly worth the living. But each letter had
terminated with a prayer, remarkably near to a command, that he, Paul
Howard Alexis, should remain in England. So Paul stayed in London, where
he indulged to the full a sadly mistaken hobby. This man had, as we have
seen, that which is called a crank, or a loose screw, according to the
fancy of the speaker. He had conceived the absurd idea of benefiting his
fellow-beings, and of turning into that mistaken channel the surplus
wealth that was his. This, moreover, if it please you, without so much
as forming himself into a society.

This is an age of societies, and, far from concealing from the left hand
the good which the right may be doing, we publish abroad our charities
on all hands. We publish in a stout volume our names and donations. We
even go so far as to cultivate an artificial charity by meat and drink
and speeches withal. When we have eaten and drunk, the plate is handed
round, and from the fulness of our heart we give abundantly. We are
cunning even in our well-doing. We do not pass round the plate until the
decanters have led the way. And thus we degrade that quality of the
human heart which is the best of all.

But Paul Howard Alexis had the good fortune to be rich out of England,
and that roaring lion of modern days, organized charity, passed him by.
He was thus left to evolve from his own mind a mistaken sense of his
duty toward his neighbor. That there were thousands of well-meaning
persons in black and other coats ready to prove to him that revenues
gathered from Russia should be spent in the East End or the East Indies,
goes without saying. There are always well-meaning persons among us
ready to direct the charity of others. We have all met those virtuous
persons who do good by proxy. But Paul had not. He had never come face
to face with the charity broker--the man who stands between the needy
and the giver, giving nothing himself, and living on his brokerage,
sitting in a comfortable chair, with his feet on a Turkey carpet in his
office on a main thoroughfare. Paul had met none of these, and the only
organized charity of which he was cognizant was the great Russian
Charity League, betrayed six months earlier to a government which has
ever turned its face against education and enlightenment. In this he had
taken no active part, but he had given largely of his great wealth. That
his name had figured on the list of families sold for a vast sum of
money to the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior seemed all too
sure. But he had had no intimation that he was looked upon with small
favor. The more active members of the League had been less fortunate,
and more than one nobleman had been banished to his estates.

Although the sum actually paid for the papers of the Charity League was
known, the recipient of the blood money had never been discovered. It
was a large sum, for the government had been quick to recognize the
necessity of nipping this movement in the bud. Education is a dangerous
matter to deal with; England is beginning to find this out for herself.
For on the heels of education socialism ever treads. When at last
education makes a foothold in Russia, that foothold will be on the very
step of the autocratic throne. The Charity League had, as Steinmetz put
it, the primary object of preparing the peasant for education, and
thereafter placing education within his reach. Such proceedings were
naturally held by those in high places to be only second to Nihilism.

All this, and more which shall transpire in the course of this
narration, was known to Paul. In face of the fact that his name was
prominently before the Russian Ministry of the Interior, he proceeded
all through the winter to ship road-making tools, agricultural
implements, seeds, and food.

"The prince," said Steinmetz to those who were interested in the matter,
"is mad. He thinks that a Russian principality is to be worked on the
same system as an English estate."

He would laugh and shrug his shoulders, and then he would sit down and
send a list of further requirements to Paul Howard Alexis, Esquire, in
London.

Paul had met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough on one or two occasions, and had
been interested in her. From the first he had come under the influence
of her beauty. But she was then a married woman. He met her again toward
the end of the terrible winter to which reference has been made, and
found that a mere acquaintanceship had in the meantime developed into
friendship. He could not have told when and where the great social
barrier had been surmounted and left behind. He only knew in an
indefinite way that some such change had taken place, as all such
changes do, not in intercourse, but in the intervals of absence. It is a
singular fact that we do not make our friends when they are near. The
seed of friendship and love alike is soon sown, and the best is that
which germinates in absence.

That friendship had rapidly developed into something else Paul became
aware early in the season; and, as we have seen from his conversation,
Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, innocent and guileless as she was, might with
all modesty have divined the state of his feelings had she been less
overshadowed by her widow's weeds.

She apparently had no such suspicion, for she asked Paul in all good
faith to call the next day and tell her all about Russia--"dear Russia."

"My cousin Maggie," she added, "is staying with me. She is a dear girl.
I am sure you will like her."

Paul accepted with alacrity, but reserved to himself the option of
hating Mrs. Sydney Bamborough's cousin Maggie, merely because that young
lady existed and happened to be staying in Upper Brook Street.

At five o'clock the next afternoon he presented himself at the house of
mourning, and completely filled up its small entrance-hall.

He was shown into the drawing-room, where he discovered Miss Margaret
Delafield in the act of dragging her hat off in front of the mirror over
the mantelpiece. He heard a suppressed exclamation of amused horror, and
found himself shaking hands with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The lady mentioned Paul's name and her cousin's relationship in that
casual manner which constitutes an introduction in these degenerate
days. Miss Delafield bowed, laughed, and moved toward the door. She left
the room, and behind her an impression of breeziness and health, of
English girlhood and a certain bright cheerfulness which acts as a
filter in social muddy waters.

"It is very good of you to come--I was moping," said Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough. She was, as a matter of fact, resting before the work of the
evening. This lady thoroughly understood the art of being beautiful.

Paul did not answer at once. He was looking at a large photograph which
stood in a frame on the mantelpiece--the photograph of a handsome man of
twenty-eight or thirty, small-featured, fair, and shifty looking.

"Who is that?" he asked abruptly.

"Do you not know? My husband."

Paul muttered an apology, but he did not turn away from the photograph.

"Oh, never mind," said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in reply to his regret
that he had stumbled upon a painful subject. "I never--"

She paused.

"No," she went on, "I won't say that."

But, so far as conveying what she meant was concerned, she might just as
well have uttered the words.

"I do not want a sympathy which is unmerited," she said gravely.

He turned and looked at her, sitting in a graceful attitude, the
incarnation of a most refined and nineteenth-century misfortune. She
raised her eyes to his for a moment--a sort of photographic
instantaneous shutter, exposing for the hundredth part of a second the
sensitive plate of her heart. Then she suppressed a sigh--badly.

"I was married horribly young," she said, "before I knew what I was
doing. But even if I had known I do not suppose I should have had the
strength of mind to resist my father and mother."

"They forced you into it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Bamborough. And it is possible that a respectable and
harmless pair of corpses turned in their respective coffins somewhere in
the neighborhood of Norwood.

"I hope there is a special hell reserved for parents who ruin their
daughters' lives to suit their own ambition," said Paul, with a sudden
concentrated heat which rather startled his hearer.

This man was full of surprises for Etta Sydney Bamborough. It was like
playing with fire--a form of amusement which will be popular as long as
feminine curiosity shall last.

"You are rather shocking," she said lightly. "But it is all over now, so
we need not dig up old grievances. Only I want you to understand that
that photograph represents a part of my life which was only
painful--nothing else."

Paul, standing in front of her, looked down thoughtfully at the
beautiful upturned face. His hands were clasped behind him, his firm
mouth set sternly beneath the great fair mustache. In Russia the men
have good eyes--blue, fierce, intelligent. Such eyes had the son of the
Princess Alexis. There was something in Etta Bamborough that stirred up
within him a quality which men are slowly losing--namely, chivalry.
Steinmetz held that this man was quixotic, and what Steinmetz said was
usually worth some small attention. Whatever faults that poor knight of
La Mancha who has been the laughing-stock of the world these many
centuries--whatever faults or foolishness may have been his, he was at
all events a gentleman.

Paul's instinct was to pity this woman for the past that had been hers;
his desire was to help her and protect her, to watch over her and fight
her battles for her. It was what is called Love. But there is no word in
any spoken language that covers so wide a field. Every day and all day
we call many things love which are not love. The real thing is as rare
as genius, but we usually fail to recognize its rarity. We misuse the
word, for we fail to draw the necessary distinctions. We fail to
recognize the plain and simple truth that many of us are not able to
love--just as there are many who are not able to play the piano or to
sing. We raise up our voices and make a sound, but it is not singing. We
marry and we give in marriage, but it is not loving. Love is like a
color--say, blue. There are a thousand shades of blue, and the outer
shades are at last not blue at all, but green or purple. So in love
there are a thousand shades, and very, very few of them are worthy of
the name.

That which Paul Howard Alexis felt at this time for Etta was merely the
chivalrous instinct that teaches men their primary duty toward
women--namely, to protect and respect them. But out of this instinct
grows the better thing--Love.

There are some women whose desire it is to be all things to all men
instead of every thing to one. This was the stumbling-block in the way
of Etta Bamborough. It was her instinct to please all at any price, and
her obedience to such instinct was often unconscious. She hardly knew
perhaps that she was trading upon a sense of chivalry rare in these
days, but had she known she could not have traded with a keener
comprehension of the commerce.

"I should like to forget the past altogether," she said. "But it is hard
for women to get rid of the past. It is rather terrible to feel that one
will be associated all one's life with a person for whom no one had any
respect. He was not honorable or--"

She paused; for the intuition of some women is marvellous. A slight
change of countenance had told her that charity, especially toward the
dead, is a commendable quality.

"The world," she went on rather hurriedly, "never makes allowances--does
it? He was easily led, I suppose. And people said things of him that
were not true. Did you ever hear of him in Russia--of the things they
said of him?"

She waited for the answer with suppressed eagerness--a good woman
defending the memory of her dead husband--a fair lioness protecting her
cub.

"No; I never hear Russian gossip. I know no one in St. Petersburg, and
few in Moscow."

She gave a little sigh of relief.

"Then perhaps poor Sydney's delinquencies have been forgotten," she
said. "In six months every thing is forgotten now. He has only been dead
six months, you know. He died in Russia."

All the while she was watching his face. She had moved in a circle where
everything is known--where men have faces of iron and nerves of steel to
conceal what they know. She could hardly believe that Paul Alexis knew
so little as he pretended.

"So I heard a month ago," he said.

In a flash of thought Etta remembered that it was only within the last
four weeks that this admirer had betrayed his admiration. Could this be
that phenomenon of the three-volume novel, an honorable man? She looked
at him with curiosity--without, it is to be feared, much respect.

"And now," she said cheerfully, "let us change the subject. I have
inflicted enough of myself and my affairs upon you for one day. Tell me
about yourself. Why were you in Russia last summer?"

"I am half a Russian," he answered. "My mother was Russian, and I have
estates there."

Her surprise was a triumph of art.

"Oh! You are not Prince Pavlo Alexis?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, I am."

She rose and swept him a deep courtesy, to the full advantage of her
beautiful figure.

"My respects--mon prince," she said; and then, quick as lightning, for
she had seen displeasure on his face, she broke into a merry laugh.

"No, I won't call you that; for I know you hate it. I have heard of your
prejudices, and if it is of the slightest interest to you, I think I
rather admire them."

It is to be presumed that Mrs. Sydney Bamborough's memory was short. For
it was a matter of common knowledge in the diplomatic circles in which
she moved that Mr. Paul Howard Alexis of Piccadilly House, London, and
Prince Pavlo Alexis of the province of Tver, were one and the same man.

Having, however, fully established this fact, from the evidence of her
own ears, she conversed very pleasantly and innocently upon matters,
Russian and English, until other visitors arrived and Paul withdrew.




CHAPTER V


THE BARON

Among the visitors whom Paul left behind him in the little drawing-room
in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville
and Chauxville le Duc, in the Province of Seine-et-Marne, France,
attaché to the French Embassy to the Court of St. James; before men a
rising diplomatist, before God a scoundrel. This gentleman remained when
the other visitors had left, and Miss Maggie Delafield, seeing his
intention of prolonging a visit of which she had already had sufficient,
made an inadequate excuse and left the room.

Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that
simplicity which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness,
had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the
misfortune to fall short of those ideas. He was too epigrammatic for
her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the
presence of something dark and nauseous. Her mental attitude toward him
was contemptuous and perfectly polite. With the reputation of possessing
a dangerous fascination--one of those reputations which can only emanate
from the man himself--M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor
intimidated Miss Delafield. He therefore disliked her intensely. His
vanity was colossal, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.

M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a
queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough.

"Your cousin," he said, "is a typical Englishwoman--she only conceals
her love."

"For you?" enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The baron shrugged his shoulders.

"Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists.
However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward,
perhaps, for the rose always wins."

He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near
the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the
white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had
reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.

M. de Chauxville laughed--the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read
in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it.
He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class--creatures
to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a
singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve
in a woman's negative--singular, that is, when one reflects that the
majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a
negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman's life.

"I am aware," said M. de Chauxville, "that the rose has thorns. One
reason why the violet is hors de concours."

Etta smiled--almost relenting. She was never quite safe against her own
vanity. Happy the woman who is, and rare.

"I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into
competition," said Etta.

"Knowing," suggested De Chauxville, "that although the race is not
always to the swift, it is usually so. Please do not stand. It suggests
that you are waiting for me to go or for some one else to come."

"Neither."

"Then prove it by taking this chair. Thus. Near the fire, for it is
quite an English spring. A footstool. Is it permitted to admire your
slippers--what there is of them? Now you look comfortable."

He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a
perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge. As a carpet knight he
was faultless. And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these
things--or would do none of them--Paul, who never made her feel like a
doll.

"Will you not sit down?" she said, indicating a chair, which he did not
take. He selected one nearer to her.

"I can think of nothing more desirable."

"Than what?" she asked. Her vanity was like a hungry fish. It rose to
everything.

"A chair in this room."

"A modest desire," she said. "Is that really all you want in this
world?"

"No," he answered, looking at her.

She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.

"I was going to suggest that you could have both at certain fixed
periods--whenever--I am out."

"I am glad you did not suggest it."

"Why?" she asked sharply.

"Because I should have had to go into explanations. I did not say all."

Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him.
There was something in the nature of a duel between these two. Each
thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.

"Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?" she asked.

The baron laughed. Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his,
for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist. A finished
diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe and an
unreliable friend.

"Perhaps--now that I reflect upon it," continued the clever woman,
disliking the clever man's silence, "the person who said all would be
intolerable."

"There are some things which go without it," said De Chauxville.

"Ah?" looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.

"Yes."

He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly
claim for their own. He really loved Etta. He was trying to gauge the
meaning of a little change in her tone toward him--a change so subtle
that few men could have detected it. But Claude de Chauxville
--accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature,
especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves
women of the world--Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest
change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.

The ring of indifference, or something dangerously near it, in Etta's
voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attaché
knew it. It had been in her voice whenever she spoke to him then. It was
there now.

"Some things," he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for
this man was innately artificial, "which a woman usually knows before
they are told to her."

"What sort of things, M. le Baron?"

He gave a little laugh. It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere
that he felt awkward and abashed. He was surprised at his own sincerity.

"That I love you--hum. You have known it long?"

The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman.
Etta was smiling.

"No--o," she almost whispered.

"I think you must have known it," he corrected suavely. "Will you do me
the honor of becoming my wife?"

It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained control
over himself. He was able to think about the riches which were evidently
hers. But through the thought he loved the woman.

The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her
face and the fire. Regardless of the imminent danger in which she was
placing her complexion, she studied the glowing cinders for some
moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.

"No, my friend," she answered in French, at length.

The baron's face was drawn and white. Beneath his trim black mustache
there was a momentary gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.

He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the back of her chair,
looking down. He could only see the beautifully dressed hair, the
clean-cut profile. She continued to look into the fire, conscious of the
hand close to her shoulder.

"No, my friend," she repeated. "We know each other too well for that. It
would never do."

"But when I tell you that I love you," he said quietly, with his voice
well in control.

"I did not know that the word was in your vocabulary--you, a diplomat."

"And a man--you put the word there--Etta."

The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection--presumably to the
Christian name of which he had made use.

He waited; passivity was one of his strong points. It had frightened men
before this.

Then, with a graceful movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair,
looking up at him. She broke into a merry laugh.

"I believe you are actually in earnest!" she cried.

He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response
to her change of humor.

"Very clever," he said.

"What?" she asked, still smiling.

"The attitude, the voice, every thing. You have known all along that I
am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months. You have seen
me often enough when I was--well, not in earnest, to know the
difference."

Etta rose quickly. It was some lightning-like woman's instinct that made
her do so. Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.

"Do not let us be tragic," she said coldly. "You have asked me to marry
you; why, I don't know. The reason will probably transpire later. I
appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it. Et voilà tout. All is
said."

He spread out apologetic hands.

"All is not said," he corrected, with a dangerous suavity. "I
acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word. In this
matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual."

Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled. She leaned against the mantelpiece, with
her chin resting on her curved fingers. The attitude was eminently
calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure. She evidently
had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny. She shrugged her
shoulders and waited.

De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal his vanity.
He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which
was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly.
But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for
Etta--by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously
beautiful--by the thought that she might never be his.

"It is not only that I love you," he said, "that I have a certain
position to offer you. These I beg you to take at their poor value. But
there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy
of your attention--circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider
your determination."

"Nothing will do that," she replied; "not any circumstance."

Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.

"I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never
could under any circumstances marry me," pursued M. de Chauxville. "Not
that it matters, since it is too late. I am not going to allow you to
draw back now. You have gone too far. All this winter you have allowed
me to pay you conspicuous and marked attentions. You have conveyed to me
and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in
order to obtain your hand."

"I doubt," said Etta, "whether the world at large is so deeply
interested in the matter as you appear to imagine. I am sorry that I
have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing my
footsteps wherever and whenever I please. I am sorry I conveyed to you
or to any one else the impression that you had only to speak in order to
obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has
led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue
about."

The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.

"Mais--" he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his
own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive
monosyllable.

"I think you had better go," said Etta quietly. She went toward the
fire-place and rang the bell.

M. de Chauxville took up his hat and gloves.

"Of course," he said coldly, his voice shaking with suppressed rage,
"there is some reason for this. There is, I presume, some one else--some
one has been interfering. No one interferes with me with impunity. I
shall make it my business to find out who is this--"

He did not finish: for the door was thrown open by the butler, who
announced:

"Mr. Alexis."

Paul came into the room with a bow toward De Chauxville, who was going
out, and whom he knew slightly.

"I came back," he said, "to ask what evening next week you are free. I
have a box for the 'Huguenots.'"

Paul did not stay. The thing was arranged in a few moments, and as he
left the drawing-room he heard the wheels of De Chauxville's carriage.

Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men,
looking at the portière which had hidden them from sight, as if
following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh--a queer laugh
that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary
purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine,
with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by
Claude de Chauxville.

In a few minutes Maggie came into the room. She was carrying a bundle of
flannel.

"The weakest thing I ever did," she said cheerfully, "was to join Lady
Crewel's working guild. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday
morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously
small."

"If you never do anything weaker than that," said Etta, looking into the
fire, "you will not come to much harm."

"Perhaps not; what have you been doing--something weaker?"

"Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville."

Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to
be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended
for the waist of the young.

"If one could manage it without lowering one's dignity," she said, "I
think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de
Chauxville."

Etta had taken up the magazine again. She was pretending to read it.

"Yes; but he knows too much--about every-body," she said.




CHAPTER VI


THE TALLEYRAND CLUB

It has been said of the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications
required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib
tongue. To explain the whereabouts of the Talleyrand Club were only a
work of supererogation. Many hansom cabmen know it. Hansom cabmen know
more than they are credited with.

The Talleyrand, as its name implies, is a diplomatic club, but
ambassadors and ministers enter not its portals. They send their
juniors. Some of these latter are in the habit of stating that London is
the hub of Europe and the Talleyrand smoking-room its grease-box.
Certain is it that such men as Claude de Chauxville, as Karl Steinmetz,
and a hundred others who are or have been political scene-shifters, are
to be found in the Talleyrand rooms.

It is a quiet club, with many members and sparse accommodation. Its
rooms are never crowded, because half of its members are afraid of
meeting the other half. It has swinging glass doors to its every
apartment, the lower portion of the glass being opaque, while the upper
moiety affords a peep-hole. Thus, if you are sitting in one of the deep,
comfortable chairs to be found in all these small rooms, you will be
aware from time to time of eyes and a bald head above the ground glass.
If you are nobody, eyes and bald head will prove to be the property of a
gentleman who does not know you, or knows you and pretends that he does
not. If you are somebody, your solitude will depend upon your
reputation.

There are quite a number of bald heads in the Talleyrand Club--bald
heads surmounting youthful, innocent faces. The innocence of these
gentlemen is quite remarkable. Like a certain celestial, they are
"childlike and bland"; they ask guileless questions; they make blameless
mistakes in respect to facts, and require correction, which they receive
meekly. They know absolutely nothing, and their thirst for information
is as insatiable as it is unobtrusive.

The atmosphere is vivacious with the light sound of many foreign
tongues; it bristles with the ephemeral importance of cheap titles. One
never knows whether one's neighbor is an ornament to the Almanac de
Gotha, or a disgrace to a degenerate colony of refugees.

Some are plain Messieurs, Señores, or Herren. Bluff foreigners with
upright hair and melancholy eyes, who put up philosophically with a
cheaper brand of cigar than their souls love. Among the latter may be
classed Karl Steinmetz--the bluffest of the bluff--innocent even of his
own innocence.

Karl Steinmetz in due course reached England, and in natural sequence
the smoking-room--room B on the left as you go in--of the Talleyrand.

He was there one evening after an excellent dinner taken with humorous
resignation, smoking the largest cigar the waiter could supply, when
Claude de Chauxville happened to have nothing better or nothing worse to
do.

De Chauxville looked through the glass door for some seconds. Then he
twisted his waxed mustache and lounged in. Steinmetz was alone in the
room, and De Chauxville was evidently--almost obviously--unaware of his
presence. He went to the table and proceeded to search in vain for a
newspaper that interested him. He raised his eyes casually and met the
quiet gaze of Karl Steinmetz.

"Ah!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," said Steinmetz.

"You--in London?"

Steinmetz nodded gravely.

"Yes," he repeated.

"One never knows where one has you," Claude de Chauxville went on,
seating himself in a deep arm-chair, newspaper in hand. "You are a bird
of passage."

"A little heavy on the wing--now," said Steinmetz.

He laid his newspaper down on his stout knees and looked at De
Chauxville over his gold eye-glasses. He did not attempt to conceal the
fact that he was wondering what this man wanted with him. The baron
seemed to be wondering what object Steinmetz had in view in getting
stout. He suspected some motive in the obesity.

"Ah!" he said deprecatingly. "That is nothing. Time leaves its mark upon
all of us. It was not yesterday that we were in Petersburg together."

"No," answered Steinmetz. "It was before the German Empire--many years
ago."

De Chauxville counted back with his slim fingers on the
table--delightfully innocent.

"Yes," he said, "the years seem to fly in coveys. Do you ever see any of
our friends of that time--you who are in Russia?"

"Who were our friends of that time?" parried Steinmetz, polishing his
glasses with a silk handkerchief. "My memory is a broken reed--you
remember?"

For a moment Claude de Chauxville met the full, quiet, gray eyes.

"Yes," he said significantly, "I remember. Well--for instance, Prince
Dawoff?"

"Dead. I never see him--thank Heaven!"

"The princess?"

"I never see; she keeps a gambling house in Paris."

"And little Andrea?"

"Never sees me. Married to a wholesale undertaker, who has buried her
past."

"En gros?"

"Et en détail."

"The Count Lanovitch," pursued De Chauxville, "where is he?"

"Banished for his connection with the Charity League."

"Catrina?"

"Catrina is living in the province of Tver--we are neighbors--she and
her mother, the countess."

De Chauxville nodded. None of the details really interested him. His
indifference was obvious.

"Ah! the Countess Lanovitch," he said reflectively, "she was a foolish
woman."

"And is."

M. de Chauxville laughed. This clumsy German ex-diplomat amused him
immensely. Many people amuse us who are themselves amused in their
sleeve.

"And--er--the Sydney Bamboroughs," said the Frenchman, as if the name
had almost left his memory.

Karl Steinmetz lazily stretched out his arm and took up the _Morning
Post_. He unfolded the sheet slowly, and having found what he sought, he
read aloud:

"'His Excellency the Roumanian Ambassador gave a select dinner-party at
4 Craven Gardens, yesterday. Among the guests were the Baron de
Chauxville, Feneer Pasha, Lord and Lady Standover, Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough, and others.'"

Steinmetz threw the paper down and leant back in his chair.

"So, my dear friend," he said, "it is probable that you know more about
the Sydney Bamboroughs than I do."

If Claude de Chauxville was disconcerted he certainly did not show it.
His was a face eminently calculated to conceal whatever thought or
feeling might be passing through his mind. Of an even white
complexion--verging on pastiness--he was handsome in a certain
statuesque way. His features were always composed and dignified; his
hair, thin and straight, was never out of order, but ever smooth and
sleek upon his high, narrow brow. His eyes had that dulness which is
characteristic of many Frenchmen, and may perhaps be attributed to the
habitual enjoyment of too rich a cuisine and too many cigarettes.

De Chauxville waved aside the small contretemps with easy nonchalance.

"Not necessarily," he said, in cold, even tones. "Mrs. Sydney Bamborough
does not habitually take into her confidence all who happen to dine at
the same table as herself. Your confidential woman is usually a liar."

Steinmetz was filling his pipe; this man had the evil habit of smoking a
wooden pipe after a cigar.

"My very dear De Chauxville," he said, without lookup, "your epigrams
are lost on me. I know most of them. I have heard them before. If you
have anything to tell me about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, for Heaven's sake
tell it to me quite plainly. I like plain dishes and unvarnished
stories. I am a German, you know; that is to say, a person with a dull
palate and a thick head."

De Chauxville laughed again in an unemotional way.

"You alter little," he said. "Your plainness of speech takes me back to
Petersburg. Yes, I admit that Mrs. Sydney Bamborough rather interested
me. But I assume too much; that is no reason why she should interest
you."

"She does not, my good friend, but you do. I am all attention."

"Do you know anything of her?" asked De Chauxville perfunctorily, not as
a man who expects an answer or intends to believe that which he may be
about to hear.

"Nothing."

"You are likely to know more?"

Karl Steinmetz shrugged his heavy shoulders, and shook his head
doubtfully.

"I am not a lady's man," he added gruffly; "the good God has not shaped
me that way. I am too d--d fat. Has Mrs. Sydney Bamborough fallen in
love with me? Has some imprudent person shown her my photograph? I hope
not. Heaven forbid!"

He puffed steadily at his pipe, and glanced quickly at De Chauxville
through the smoke.

"No," answered the Frenchman quite gravely. Frenchmen, by the way, do
not admit that one may be too middle-aged, or too stout, for love. "But
she is au mieux with the prince."

"Which prince?"

"Pavlo."

The Frenchman snapped out the word, watching the other's benevolent
countenance. Steinmetz continued to smoke placidly and contentedly.

"My master," he said at length. "I suppose that some day he will marry."

De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders. He touched the button of the
electric bell, and when the servant appeared, ordered coffee. He
selected a cigarette from a silver case with considerable care, and
having lighted it smoked for some moments in silence. The servant
brought the coffee, which he drank thoughtfully. Steinmetz was leaning
back in his deep chair, with his legs crossed. He was gazing into the
fire, which burnt brightly, although it was nearly May. The habits of
the Talleyrand Club are almost continental. The rooms are always too
warm. The silence was that of two men knowing each other well.

"And why not Mrs. Sydney Bamborough?" asked Steinmetz suddenly.

"Why not, indeed?" replied De Chauxville. "It is no affair of mine. A
wise man reduces his affairs to a minimum, and his interest in the
affairs of his neighbor to less. But I thought it would interest you."

"Thanks."

The tone of the big man in the arm-chair was not dry. Karl Steinmetz
knew better than to indulge in that pastime. Dryness is apt to parch the
fount of expansiveness.

De Chauxville's attention was apparently caught by an illustration in a
weekly paper lying open on the table near to him. Your shifty man likes
something to look at. He did not speak for some moments. Then he threw
the paper aside.

"Who was Sydney Bamborough, at any rate?" he asked, with a careless
assumption of a slanginess which is affected by society in its decadent
periods.

"So far as I remember," answered Steinmetz, "he was something in the
Diplomatic Service."

"Yes, but what?"

"My dear friend, you had better ask his widow when next you sit beside
her at dinner."

"How do you know that I sat beside her at dinner?"

"I did not know it," replied Steinmetz, with a quiet smile which left De
Chauxville in doubt as to whether he was very stupid or exceedingly
clever.

"She seems to be very well off," said the Frenchman.

"I am glad, as she is going to marry my master."

De Chauxville laughed almost awkwardly, and for a fraction of a second
he changed countenance under Steinmetz's quiet eyes.

"One can never know whom a woman intends to marry," said he carelessly,
"even if they can themselves, which I doubt. But I do not understand how
it is that she is so much better off, or appears to be, since the death
of her husband."

"Ah, she is much better off, or appears to be, since the death of her
husband," said the stout man, in his slow Germanic way.

"Yes."

De Chauxville rose, stretched himself and yawned. Men are not always, be
it understood, on their best behavior at their club.

"Good-night," he said shortly.

"Good-night, my very dear friend."

After the Frenchman had left, Karl Steinmetz remained quite motionless
and expressionless in his chair, until such time as he concluded that De
Chauxville was tired of watching him through the glass door. Then he
slowly sat forward in his chair and looked back over his shoulder.

"Our friend," he muttered, "is afraid that Paul is going to marry this
woman. Now, I wonder why?"

These two had met before in a past which has little or nothing to do
with the present narrative. They had disliked each other with a
completeness partly bred of racial hatred, partly the outcome of diverse
interests. But of late years they had drifted apart. There was no reason
why the friendship, such as it was, should not have lapsed into a mere
bowing acquaintance. For these men were foreigners, understanding fully
the value of the bow as an interchange of masculine courtesy. Englishmen
bow badly.

Steinmetz knew that the Frenchman had recognized him before entering the
room. It was to be presumed that he had deliberately chosen to cross the
threshold, knowing that a recognition was inevitable. Karl Steinmetz
went farther. He suspected that De Chauxville had come to the Talleyrand
Club, having heard that he was in England, with the purpose in view of
seeking him out and warning him against Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

"It would appear," murmured the stout philosopher, "that we are about to
work together for the first time. But if there is one thing that I
dislike more than the enmity of Claude de Chauxville it is his
friendship."




CHAPTER VII


OLD HANDS

Karl Steinmetz lifted his pen from the paper before him and scratched
his forehead with his forefinger.

"Now, I wonder," he said aloud, "how many bushels there are in a ton.
Ach! how am I to find out? These English weights and measures, this
English money, when there is a metrical system!"

He sat and hardly looked up when the clock struck seven. It was a quiet
room this in which he sat, the library of Paul's London house. The noise
of Piccadilly reached his ears as a faint roar, not entirely unpleasant,
but sociable and full of life. Accustomed as he was to the great silence
of Russia, where sound seems lost in space, the hum of a crowded
humanity was a pleasant change to this philosopher, who loved his kind
while fully recognizing its little weaknesses.

While he sat there still wondering how many bushels of seed made a ton,
Paul Alexis came into the room. The younger man was in evening dress. He
looked at the clock rather eagerly.

"Will you dine here?" he asked, and Steinmetz wheeled around in his
chair. "I am going out to dinner," he explained further.

"Ah!" said the elder man.

"I am going to Mrs. Sydney Bamborough's."

Steinmetz bowed his head gravely. He said nothing. He was not looking at
Paul, but at the pattern of the carpet. There was a short silence. Then
Paul said, with entire simplicity:

"I shall probably ask her to marry me."

"And she will probably say yes."

"I am not so sure about that," said Paul, with a laugh. For this man was
without conceit. He had gradually been forced to admit that there are
among men persons whose natural inclination is toward evil, persons who
value not the truth, nor hold by honesty. But he was guileless enough to
believe that women are not so. He actually believed that women are
truthful and open and honorable. He believes it still, which is somewhat
startling. There are a few such dullards yet. "I do not see why she
should," he went on gravely. He was standing by the empty fire-place, a
manly, upright figure; one who was not very clever, not brilliant at
all, somewhat slow in his speech, but sure, deadly sure, in the honesty
of his purpose.

Karl Steinmetz looked at him and smiled openly, with the quaint air of
resignation that was his.

"You have never seen her, eh?" enquired Paul.

Steinmetz paused, then he told a lie, a good one, well told,
deliberately.

"No."

"We are going to the opera, Box F2. If you come in I shall have pleasure
in introducing you. The sooner you know each other the better. I am sure
you will approve."

"I think you ought to marry money."

"Why?"

Steinmetz laughed.

"Oh," he answered, "because every-body does who can. There is Catrina
Lanovitch, an estate as big as yours, adjoining yours. A great Russian
family, a good girl who--is willing."

Paul laughed, a good wholesome laugh.

"You are inclined to exaggerate my manifold and obvious qualifications,"
he said. "Catrina is a very nice girl, but I do not think she would
marry me even if I asked her."

"Which you do not intend to do."

"Certainly not."

"Then you will make an enemy of her," said Steinmetz quietly. "It may be
inconvenient, but that cannot be helped. A woman scorned--you know.
Shakspere or the Bible, I always mix them up. No, Paul; Catrina
Lanovitch is a dangerous enemy. She has been making love to you these
last four years, and you would have seen it if you had not been a fool!
I am afraid, my good Paul, you are a fool, God bless you for it!"

"I think you are wrong," said Paul rather curtly; "not about me being a
fool, but about Catrina Lanovitch. If you are right, however, it only
makes me dislike her instead of being perfectly indifferent to her."

His honest face flushed up finely, and he turned away to look at the
clock again.

"I hate your way of talking about women, Steinmetz," he said. "You're a
cynical old beast, you know."

"Heaven forbid, my dear prince! I admire all women--they are so clever,
so innocent, so pure-minded. Do not your English novels prove it, your
English stage, your newspapers, so high-toned? Who supports the
novelist, the play-wright, the actor, who but your English ladies?"

"Better than being cooks--like your German ladies," retorted Paul
stoutly. "If you _are_ German this evening. Better than being cooks."

"I doubt it! I very much doubt it, my friend. At what time shall I
present myself at Box F2 this evening?"

"About nine--as soon as you like."

Paul looked at the clock. The pointers lagged horribly. He knew that the
carriage was certain to be at the door, waiting in the quiet street with
its great restless horses, its two perfectly trained men, its gleaming
lamps and shining harness. But he would not allow himself the luxury of
being the first arrival. Paul had himself well in hand. At last it was
time to go.

"See you later," he said.

"Thank you--yes," replied Steinmetz, without looking up.

So Paul Howard Alexis sallied forth to seek the hand of the lady of his
choice, and as he left his own door that lady was receiving Claude de
Chauxville in her drawing-room. The two had not met for some weeks--not
indeed since Etta had told the Frenchman that she could not marry him.
Her invitation to dine, couched in the usual friendly words, had been
the first move in that game commonly called "bluff." Claude de
Chauxville's acceptance of the same had been the second move. And these
two persons, who were not afraid of each other, shook hands with a
pleasant smile of greeting, while Paul hurried toward them through the
busy streets.

"Am I forgiven--that I am invited to dinner?" asked De Chauxville
imperturbably, when the servant had left them alone.

Etta was one of those women who are conscious of their dress. Some may
protest that a lady moving in such circles would not be so. But in all
circles women are only women, and in every class of life we meet such as
Etta Bamborough. Women who, while they talk, glance down and rearrange a
flower or a piece of lace. It is a mere habit, seemingly small and
unimportant; but it marks the woman and sets her apart.

Etta was standing on the hearthrug, beautifully dressed--too beautifully
dressed, it is possible, to sit down. Her maid had a moment earlier
confessed that she could do no more, and Etta had come down stairs a
vision of luxury, of womanly loveliness. Nevertheless, there appeared to
be something amiss. She was so occupied with a flower at her shoulder
that she did not answer at once.

"Forgiven for what?" she asked at length, in that preoccupied tone of
voice which tells wise men that only questions of dress will be
considered.

De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders in his graceful Gallic way.

"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "For a crime which requires no excuse, and no
explanation other than a mirror."

She looked up at him innocently.

"A mirror?"

"Yours. Have you forgiven me for falling in love with you? It is, I am
told, a crime that women sometimes condone."

"It was no crime," she said. She had heard the wheels of Paul's
carriage. "It was a misfortune. Please let us forget that it ever
happened."

De Chauxville twirled his neat mustache, looking keenly at her the
while.

"You forget," he said. "But I--will remember."

She did not answer, but turned with a smile to greet Paul.

"I think you know each other," she said gracefully when she had shaken
hands, and the two men bowed. They were foreigners, be it understood.
There were three languages in which they could understand each other
with equal ease.

"Where _is_ Maggie?" exclaimed Mrs. Bamborough. "She is always late."

"When I am here," reflected De Chauxville. But he did not say it.

Miss Delafield kept them waiting a few minutes, and during that time
Etta Sydney Bamborough gave a very fine display of prowess with the
double-stringed bow. When a man attempts to handle this delicate weapon,
he usually makes, if one may put it thus crudely, an ass of himself. He
generally succeeds in snapping one and probably both of the strings,
injuring himself most certainly in the process.

Not so, however, this clever lady. She had a smile and an epigram for
Claude de Chauxville, a grave air of sympathetic interest in more
serious affairs for Paul Alexis. She was bright and amusing, guileless
and very worldly wise in the same breath--simple for Paul and a match
for De Chauxville, within the space of three seconds. Withal she was a
beautiful woman beautifully dressed. A thousand times too wise to scorn
her womanhood, as learned fools are prone to do in print and on platform
in these wordy days, but wielding the strongest power on earth, to wit,
that same womanhood, with daring and with skill. A learned woman is not
of much account in the world. A clever woman moves as much of it as lies
in her neighborhood--that is to say, as much as she cares to rule. For
women love power, but they do not care to wield it at a distance.

Paul was asked to take Mrs. Sydney Bamborough down to dinner by the lady
herself.

"Mon ami," she said in a quiet aside to De Chauxville, before making her
request, "it is the first time the prince dines here."

She spoke in French. Maggie and Paul were talking together at the other
end of the room. De Chauxville bowed in silence.

At dinner the conversation was necessarily general, and, as such, is not
worth reporting. No general conversation, one finds, is of much value
when set down in black and white. It is not even grammatical nowadays.
To be more correct, let us note that the talk lay between Etta and M. de
Chauxville, who had a famous supply of epigrams and bright nothings
delivered in such a way that they really sounded like wisdom. Etta was
equal to him, sometimes capping his sharp wit, sometimes contenting
herself with silvery laughter. Maggie Delafield was rather distraite, as
De Chauxville noted. The girl's dislike for him was an iron that entered
the quick of his vanity anew every time he saw her. There was no
petulance in the aversion, such as he had perceived with other maidens
who were only resenting a passing negligence or seeking to pique his
curiosity. This was a steady and, if you will, unmaidenly aversion,
which Maggie conscientiously attempted to conceal.

Paul, it is to be feared, was what hostesses call heavy in hand. He
laughed where he saw something to laugh at, but not elsewhere, which in
some circles is considered morose and in bad form. He joined readily
enough in the conversation, but originated nothing. Those topics which
occupied his mind did not present themselves as suitable to this
occasion. His devotion to Etta was quite obvious, and he was simple
enough not to care that it should be so.

Maggie was by turns quite silent and very talkative. When Paul and Etta
were speaking together she never looked at them, but fixedly at her own
plate, at a decanter, or a salt-cellar. When she spoke she addressed her
remarks--valueless enough in themselves--exclusively to the man she
disliked, Claude de Chauxville.

There was something amiss in the pretty little room. There were shadows
seated around that pretty little table à quatre, beside the guests in
their pretty dresses and their black coats; silent cold shadows, who ate
nothing, while they chilled the dainty food and took the sweetness from
the succulent dishes. These shadows had crept in unawares, a silent
partie carrée, to take their phantom places at the table, and only Etta
seemed able to jostle hers aside and talk it down. She took the whole
burden of the conversation upon her pretty shoulders, and bore it
through the little banquet with unerring skill and unflinching good
humor. In the midst of her merriest laughter, the clever gray eyes would
flit from one man's face to the other. Paul had been brought here to ask
her to marry him. Claude de Chauxville had been invited that he might be
tacitly presented to his successful rival. Maggie was there because she
was a woman and made the necessary fourth. Puppets all, and two of them
knew it. And some of us know it all our lives. We are living, moving
puppets. We let ourselves be dragged here and pushed there, the victim
of one who happens to have more energy of mind, a greater steadfastness
of purpose, a keener grasp of the situation called life. We smirk and
smile, and lose the game because we have begun by being anvils, and are
afraid of trying to be hammers.

But Etta Sydney Bamborough had to deal with metal of a harder grain than
the majority of us. Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to
assume the humble rôle of anvil because he had no choice. Maggie
Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make
her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid
fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen slowly, like
the best fruit.

During the drive to the opera house the two women in Etta's snug little
brougham were silent. Etta had her thoughts to occupy her. She was at
the crucial point of a difficult game. She could not afford to allow
even a friend to see so much as the corners of the cards she held.

In the luxurious box it was easily enough arranged--Etta and Paul
together in front, De Chauxville and Maggie at the other corner of the
box.

"I have asked my friend Karl Steinmetz to come in during the evening,"
said Paul to Etta when they were seated. "He is anxious to make your
acquaintance. He is my--prime minister over in Russia."

Etta smiled graciously.

"It is kind of him," she answered, "to be anxious to make my
acquaintance."

She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying
back mentally over half a dozen years. She had never had much to do with
the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the
faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality.
Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this
incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.

"At what time," she asked, "is he coming in?"

"About half-past nine."

Etta had a watch on a bracelet on her arm. Such women always know the
time.

It was a race, and Etta won it. She had only half an hour. De Chauxville
was there, and Maggie with her quiet, honest eyes. But the widow of
Sydney Bamborough made Paul ask her to be his wife, and she promised to
give him his answer later. She did it despite a thousand difficulties
and more than one danger--accomplished it with, as the sporting people
say, plenty to spare--before the door behind them was opened by the
attendant, and Karl Steinmetz, burly, humorously imperturbable and
impenetrable, stood smiling gravely on the situation.

He saw Claude de Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round
the expression on Steinmetz's large and placid countenance had changed
from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to one of
a dim recognition.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting madame somewhere before, I think. In
St. Petersburg, was it not?"

Etta, composed and smiling, said that it was so, and introduced him to
Maggie. De Chauxville took the opportunity of leaving that young lady's
side, and placing himself near enough to Paul and Etta to completely
frustrate any further attempts at confidential conversation.

For a moment Steinmetz and Paul were left standing together.

"I have had a telegram," said Steinmetz in Russian. "We must go back to
Tver. There is cholera again. When can you come?"

Beneath his heavy mustache Paul bit his lip.

"In three days," he answered.

"True? You will come with me?" enquired Steinmetz, under cover of the
clashing music.

"Of course."

Steinmetz looked at him curiously. He glanced toward Etta, but he said
nothing.




CHAPTER VIII


SAFE!

The season wore on to its perihelion--a period, the scientific books
advise us, of the highest clang and crash of speed and whirl, of the
greatest brilliancy and deepest glow of a planet's existence. The
business of life, the pursuit of pleasure, and the scientific demolition
of our common enemy, Time, received all the care which such matters
require.

Débutantes bloomed and were duly culled by aged connoisseurs of such
wares, or by youthful aspirants with the means to pay the piper in the
form of a handsome settlement. The usual number of young persons of the
gentler sex entered the lists of life, with the mistaken notion that it
is love that makes the world go round, to ride away from the joust wiser
and sadder women.

There was the same round of conventional pleasures which the reader and
his humble servant have mixed in deeply or dilettante, according to his
taste or capacity for such giddy work. There was withal the usual
heart-burning, heart-bartering, heart--anything you will but breaking.
For we have not breaking hearts among us to-day. Providence, it would
seem, has run short of the commodity, and deals out only a few among a
number of persons.

Amid the whirl of rout, and ball, and picnic, race-meeting, polo-match,
and what-not, Paul Howard Alexis stalked misunderstood, distrusted; an
object of ridicule to some, of pity to others, of impatience to all. A
man, if it please you, with a purpose--a purpose at the latter end of
the nineteenth century, when most of us, having decided that there is no
future, take it upon ourselves to despise the present.

Paul soon discovered that he was found out--at no time a pleasant
condition of things, except, indeed, when callers are about. That which
Eton and Cambridge had failed to lay their fingers upon, every
match-making mother had found out for herself in a week. That the
discovery had been carefully kept in each maternal breast, it is
needless to relate. Ces dames are not confidential upon such matters
between themselves. When they have scented their game they stalk him,
and if possible bag him in a feline solitude which has no fears for
stout, ambitious hearts. The fear is that some other prowling mother of
an eligible maiden may hit upon the same scent.

Paul was invited to quiet dinners and a little music, to quiet dinners
without the music, to a very little music and no dinner whatever. The
number of ladies who had a seat in a box thrown upon their hands at the
last minute--a seat next to Angelina in her new pink, or Blanche in her
sweet poult de soie--the number of these ladies one can only say was
singular, because politeness forbids one to suggest that it was
suspicious. Soft cheeks became rosy at his approach--partly, perhaps,
because soft and dainty toes in satin slippers were trodden upon with
maternal emphasis at that moment. Soft eyes looked love into eyes that,
alas! only returned preoccupation. There was always room on an
engagement card for Paul's name. There was always space in the smallest
drawing-room for Paul's person, vast though the latter was. There
was--fond mothers conveyed it to him subtly after supper and
champagne--an aching void in more than one maiden heart which was his
exact fit.

But Paul was at once too simple and too clever for matron and maid
alike. Too simple, because he failed to understand the inner meaning of
many pleasant things that the guileless fair one said to him. Too
clever, because he met the subtle matron with the only arm she feared, a
perfect honesty. And when at last he obtained his answer from the coy
and hesitating Etta, there was no gossip in London who could put forward
a just cause or impediment.

Etta gave him the answer one evening at the house of a mutual friend,
where a multitude of guests had assembled ostensibly to hear certain
celebrated singers, apparently to whisper recriminations on their
entertainer's champagne. It was a dull business--except, indeed, for
Paul Howard Alexis. As for the lady--the only lady his honest, simple
world contained--who shall say? Inwardly she may have been in trembling,
coy alarm, in breathless, blushing hesitation. Outwardly she was,
however, exceedingly composed and self-possessed. She had been as
careful as ever of her toilet--as hard to please; as--dare we say
snappish with her maids? The beautiful hair had no one of its aureate
threads out of place. The pink of her shell-like cheek was steady,
unruffled, fair to behold. Her whole demeanor was admirable in its
well-bred repose. Did she love him? Was it in her power to love any man?
Not the humble chronicler--not any man, perhaps, and but few women--can
essay an answer. Suffice it that she accepted him. In exchange for the
title he could give her, the position he could assure to her, the wealth
he was ready to lavish upon her, and, lastly, let us mention, in the
effete, old-fashioned way, the love he bore her--in exchange for these
she gave him her hand.

Thus Etta Sydney Bamborough was enabled to throw down her cards at last
and win the game she had played so skilfully. The widow of an obscure
little Foreign Office clerk, she might have been a baroness, but she put
the smaller honor aside and aspired to a prince. Behind the gay smile
there must have been a quick and resourceful brain, daring to scheme,
intrepid in execution. Within the fair breast there must have been a
heart resolute, indomitable, devoid of weak scruple. Mark the last. It
is the scruple that keeps the reader and his humble servant from being
greater men than they are.

"Yes," says Etta, allowing Paul to take her perfectly gloved hand in his
great, steady grasp; "yes, I have my answer ready."

They were alone in the plashy solitude of an inner conservatory, between
the songs of the great singers. She was half afraid of this strong man,
for he had strange ways with him--not uncouth, but unusual and somewhat
surprising in a finnicking, emotionless generation.

"And what is it?" whispers Paul eagerly. Ah! what fools men are--what
fools they always will be!

Etta gave a little nod, looking shamefacedly down at the pattern of her
lace fan.

"Is that it?" he asked breathlessly.

The nod was repeated, and Paul Howard Alexis was thereby made the
happiest man in England. She half expected him to take her in his arms,
despite the temporary nature of their solitude. Perhaps she half wished
it; for behind her business-like and exceedingly practical appreciation
of his wealth there lurked a very feminine curiosity and interest in his
feelings--a curiosity somewhat whetted by the manifold differences that
existed between him and the society lovers with whom she had hitherto
played the pretty game.

But Paul contented himself with raising the gloved fingers to his lips,
restrained by a feeling of respect for her which she would not have
understood and probably did not merit.

"But," she said with a sudden smile, "I take no responsibility. I am not
very sure that it will be a success. I can only try to make you
happy--goodness knows if I shall succeed!"

"You have only to be yourself to do that," he answered, with lover-like
promptness and a blindness which is the special privilege of those happy
fools.

She gave a strange little smile.

"But how do I know that our lives will harmonize in the least? I know
nothing of your daily existence; where you live--where you want to
live."

"I should like to live mostly in Russia," he answered honestly.

Her expression did not change. It merely fixed itself as one sees the
face of a watching cat fix itself, when the longed for mouse shows a
whisker.

"Ah!" she said lightly, confident in her own power; "that will arrange
itself later."

"I am glad I am rich," said Paul simply, "because I shall be able to
give you all you want. There are many little things that add to a
woman's comfort; I shall find them out and see that you have them."

"Are you so very rich, Paul?" she asked, with an innocent wonder. "But I
don't think it matters; do you? I do not think that riches have much to
do with happiness."

"No," he answered. He was not a person with many theories upon life or
happiness or such matters--which, by the way, are in no way affected by
theories. By taking thought we cannot add a cubit to the height of our
happiness. We can only undermine its base by too searching an analysis
of that upon which it is built.

So Paul replied "No," and took pleasure in looking at her, as any lover
must needs have done.

"Except, of course," she said, "that one may do good with great riches."

She gave a little sigh, as if deploring the misfortune that hitherto her
own small means had fallen short of the happy point at which one may
begin doing good.

"Are you so very rich, Paul?" she repeated, as if she was rather afraid
of those riches and mistrusted them.

"Oh, I suppose so. Horribly rich!"

She had withdrawn her hand. She gave it to him again, with a pretty
movement usually understood to indicate bashfulness.

"It can't be helped," she said. "We"--she dwelt upon the word ever so
slightly--"we can perhaps do a little good with it."

Then suddenly he blurted out all his wishes on this point--his quixotic
aims, the foolish imaginings of a too chivalrous soul. She listened,
prettily eager, sweetly compassionate of the sorrows of the peasantry
whom he made the object of his simple pity. Her gray eyes contracted
with horror when he told her of the misery with which he was too
familiar. Her pretty lips quivered when he told her of little children
born only to starve because their mothers were starving. She laid her
gloved fingers gently on his when he recounted tales of strong men--good
fathers in their simple, barbarous way--who were well content that the
children should die rather than be saved to pass a miserable existence,
without joy, without hope.

She lifted her eyes with admiration to his face when he told her what he
hoped to do, what he dreamed of accomplishing. She even made a few
eager, heartfelt suggestions, fitly coming from a woman--touched with a
woman's tenderness, lightened by a woman's sympathy and knowledge.

It was in its way a tragedy, the picture we are called to look
upon--these newly made lovers, not talking of themselves, as is the
time-honored habit of such. Surrounded by every luxury, both high-born,
refined, and wealthy; both educated, both intelligent. He,
simple-minded, earnest, quite absorbed in his happiness, because that
happiness seemed to fall in so easily with the busier, and, as some
might say, the nobler side of his ambition. She, failing to understand
his aspirations, thinking only of his wealth.

"But," she said at length, "shall you--we--be allowed to do all this? I
thought that such schemes were not encouraged in Russia. It is such a
pity to pauperize the people."

"You cannot pauperize a man who has absolutely nothing," replied Paul.
"Of course, we shall have difficulties; but, together, I think we shall
be able to overcome them."

Etta smiled sympathetically, and the smile finished up, as it were, with
a gleam very like amusement. She had been vouchsafed for a moment a
vision of herself in some squalid Russian village, in a hideous
Russian-made tweed dress, dispensing the necessaries of life to a people
only little raised above the beasts of the field. The vision made her
smile, as well it might. In Petersburg life might be tolerable for a
little in the height of the season--for a few weeks of the brilliant
Northern winter--but in no other part of Russia could she dream of
dwelling.

They sat and talked of their future as lovers will, knowing as little of
it as any of us, building up castles in the air, such edifices as we
have all constructed, destined, no doubt, to the same rapid collapse as
some of us have quailed under. Paul, with lamentable honesty, talked
almost as much of his stupid peasants as of his beautiful companion,
which pleased her not too well. Etta, with a strange persistence,
brought the conversation ever back and back to the house in London, the
house in Petersburg, the great grim castle in the Government of Tver,
and the princely rent-roll. And once on the subject of Tver, Paul could
scarce be brought to leave it.

"I am going back there," he said at length.

"When?" she asked, with a composure which did infinite credit to her
modest reserve. Her love was jealously guarded. It lay too deep to be
disturbed by the thought that her lover would leave her soon.

"To-morrow," was his answer.

She did not speak at once. Should she try the extent of her power over
him? Never was lover so chivalrous, so respectful, so sincere. Should
she gauge the height of her supremacy? If it proved less powerful than
she suspected, she would at all events be credited with a very natural
aversion to parting from him.

"Paul," she said, "you cannot do that. Not so soon. I cannot let you
go."

He flushed up to the eyes suddenly, like a girl. There was a little
pause, and the color slowly left his face. Somehow that pause frightened
Etta.

"I am afraid I must go," he said gravely at length.

"Must--a prince?"

"It is on that account," he replied.

"Then I am to conclude that you are more devoted to your peasants than
to--me?"

He assured her to the contrary. She tried once again, but nothing could
move him from his decision. Etta was perhaps a small-minded person, and
as such failed to attach due importance to this proof that her power
over him was limited. It ceased, in fact, to exist as soon as it touched
that strong sense of duty which is to be found in many men and in
remarkably few women.

It almost seemed as if the abrupt departure of her lover was in some
sense a relief to Etta Sydney Bamborough. For, while he, lover-like, was
grave and earnest during the small remainder of the evening, she
continued to be sprightly and gay. The last he saw of her was her
smiling face at the window as her carriage drove away.

Arrived at the little house in Upper Brook Street, Maggie and Etta went
into the drawing-room, where biscuits and wine were set out. Their maids
came and took their cloaks away, leaving them alone.

"Paul and I are engaged," said Etta suddenly. She was picking the
withered flowers from her dress and throwing them carelessly on the
table.

Maggie was standing with her back to her, with her two hands on the
mantel-piece. She was about to turn round when she caught sight of her
own face in the mirror, and that which she saw there made her change her
intention.

"I am not surprised," she said, in an even voice, standing like a
statue. "I congratulate you. I think he is--nice."

"You also think he is too good for me," said Etta, with a little laugh.
There was something in that laugh--a ring of wounded vanity, the wounded
vanity of a bad woman who is in the presence of her superior.

"No!" answered Maggie slowly, tracing the veins of the marble across the
mantel-piece. "No--o, not that."

Etta looked up at her. It was rather singular that she did not ask what
Maggie did think. Perhaps she was afraid of a certain British honesty
which characterized the girl's thought and speech. Instead she rose and
indulged in a yawn which may have been counterfeit, but it was a good
counterfeit.

"Will you have a biscuit?" she said.

"No, thanks."

"Then shall we go to bed?"

"Yes."




CHAPTER IX


THE PRINCE

The village of Osterno, lying, or rather scrambling, along the banks of
the river Oster, is at no time an exhilarating spot. It is a large
village, numbering over nine hundred souls, as the board affixed to its
first house testifieth in incomprehensible Russian figures.

A "soul," be it known, is a different object in the land of the Czars to
that vague protoplasm about which our young persons think such mighty
thoughts, our old men write such famous big books. A soul is namely a
man--in Russia the women have not yet begun to seek their rights and
lose their privileges. A man is therefore a "soul" in Russia, and as
such enjoys the doubtful privilege of contributing to the land-tax and
to every other tax. In compensation for the first-named impost he is
apportioned his share of the common land of the village, and by the
cultivation of this ekes out an existence which would be valueless if he
were a teetotaller. It is melancholy to have to record this fact in the
pages of a respectable volume like the present; but facts--as the orator
who deals in fiction is ever ready to announce--facts cannot be ignored.
And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity,
and noted the singular unattractiveness of Russian life--any such man
can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his
privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes
away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.

That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the
noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the
Creator's power; for this dimly lighted "soul" has nothing to cheer him
on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink
and the hope of more to come. He is harassed by a ruthless
tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous distances over
impracticable roads. When the famine comes, and come it assuredly will,
the moujik has no alternative but to stay where he is and starve. Since
Alexander II. of philanthropic memory made the Russian serf a free man,
the blessings of freedom have been found to resolve themselves chiefly
into a perfect liberty to die of starvation, of cold, or of dire
disease. When he was a serf this man was of some small value to some
one; now he is of no consequence to any one whatsoever except himself,
and, with considerable intelligence, he sets but small store upon his
own existence. Freedom, in fact, came to him before he was ready for it;
and, hampered as he has been by petty departmental tyranny, governmental
neglect, and a natural stupidity, he has made very small progress toward
a mental independence. All that he has learnt to do is to hate his
tyrants. When famine urges him, he goes blindly, helplessly, dumbly, and
tries to take by force that which is denied by force.

With us in England the poor man raises up his voice and cries aloud when
he wants something. He always wants something--never work, by the
way--and therefore his voice pervades the atmosphere. He has his evening
newspaper, which is dear at the moderate sum of a halfpenny. He has his
professional organizers, and his Trafalgar Square. He even has his
members of Parliament. He does no work, and he does not starve. In his
generation the poor man thinks himself wise. In Russia, however, things
are managed differently. The poor man is under the heel of the rich.
Some day there will be in Russia a Terror, but not yet. Some day the
moujik will erect unto himself a rough sort of a guillotine, but not in
our day. Perhaps some of us who are young men now may dimly read in our
dotage of a great upheaval beside which the Terror of France will be
tame and uneventful. Who can tell? When a country begins to grow, its
mental development is often startlingly rapid.

But we have to do with Russia of to-day, and the village of Osterno in
the Government of Tver. Not a "famine" Government, mind you! For these
are the Volga Provinces--Samara, Pensa, Voronish, Vintka, and a dozen
others. No! Tver the civilized, the prosperous, the manufacturing
centre.

Osterno is built of wood. Should it once fairly catch alight in a high
wind, all that will be left of this town will be a few charred timbers
and some dazed human beings. The inhabitants know their own danger, and
endeavor to meet it in their fatalistic manner. Each village has its
fire organization. Each "soul" has his appointed place, his appointed
duty, and his special contribution--be it bucket or rope or ladder--to
bring to the conflagration. But no one ever dreams of being sober and
vigilant at the right time, so the organization, like many larger such,
is a broken reed.

The street, bounded on either side by low wooden houses, is, singularly
enough, well paved. This, the traveller is told, by the tyrant Prince
Pavlo, who made the road because he did not like driving over ruts and
through puddles--the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because
Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to
save them from starvation--not at all, although, in the gratification of
his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely
because he was a great "bárin"--a prince who could have any thing he
desired. Had not the other bárin--Steinmetz by name--superintended the
work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they
never see. Ask the "starost"--the mayor of the village. He knows the
bárins, and hates them.

Michael Roon, the starosta or elder of Osterno, president of the Mir, or
village council, principal shopkeeper, mayor and only intelligent soul
of the nine hundred, probably had Tartar blood in his veins. To this
strain may be attributed the narrow Tartar face, the keen black eyes,
the short, spare figure which many remember to this day, although
Michael Roon has been dead these many years.

Removed far above the majority of his fellow-villagers in intelligence
and energy, this man administered the law of his own will to his
colleagues on the village council.

It was late in the autumn, one evening remembered by many for its
death-roll, that the starosta was standing at the door of his small
shop. He was apparently idle. He never sold vodka, and the majority of
the villagers were in one of the three thriving "kabaks" which drove a
famous trade in strong drink and weak tea. It was a very hot evening.
The sun had set in a pink haze which was now turning to an unhealthy
gray, and spreading over the face of the western sky like the shadow of
death across the human countenance.

The starosta shook his head forebodingly. It was cholera weather.
Cholera had come to Osterno. Had come, the starosta thought, to stay. It
had settled down in Osterno, and nothing but the winter frosts would
kill it, when hunger-typhus would undoubtedly succeed it.

Therefore the starosta shook his head at the sunset, and forgot to
regret the badness of the times from a commercial point of view. He had
done all he could. He had notified to the Zemstvo the condition of his
village. He had made the usual appeal for help, which had been forwarded
in the usual way to Tver, where it had apparently been received with the
usual philosophic silence.

But Michael Roon had also telegraphed to Karl Steinmetz, and since the
despatch of this message had the starosta dropped into the habit of
standing at his doorway in the evening, with his hands clasped behind
his back and his beady black eyes bent westward along the prince's
high-road.

On the particular evening with which we have to do the beady eyes looked
not in vain; for presently, far along the road, appeared a black speck
like an insect crawling over the face of a map.

"Ah!" said the starosta. "Ah! he never fails."

Presently a neighbor dropped in to buy some of the dried leaf which the
starosta, honest tradesman, called tea. He found the purveyor of
Cathay's produce at the door.

"Ah!" he said, in a voice thick with vodka. "You see something on the
road?"

"Yes."

"A cart?"

"No, a carriage. It moves too quickly."

A strange expression came over the peasant's face, at no time a pleasing
physiognomy. The bloodshot eyes flared up suddenly like a smouldering
flame in brown paper. The unsteady, drink-sodden lips twitched. The man
threw up his shaggy head, upon which hair and beard mingled in unkempt
confusion. He glared along the road with eyes and face aglow with a
sullen, beast-like hatred.

"A carriage! Then it is for the castle."

"Possibly," answered the starosta.

"The prince--curse him, curse his mother's soul, curse his wife's
offspring!"

"Yes," said the starosta quietly. "Yes, curse him and all his works.
What is it you want, little father--tea?"

He turned into the shop and served his customer, duly inscribing the
debt among others in a rough, cheap book.

The word soon spread that a carriage was coming along the road from
Tver. All the villagers came to the doors of their dilapidated wooden
huts. Even the kabaks were emptied for a time. As the vehicle approached
it became apparent that the horses were going at a great pace; not only
was the loose horse galloping, but also the pair in the shafts. The
carriage was an open one, an ordinary North Russian travelling carriage,
not unlike the vehicle we call the victoria, set on high wheels.

Beside the driver on the box sat another servant. In the open carriage
sat one man only, Karl Steinmetz.

As he passed through the village a murmur of many voices followed him,
not quite drowned by the rattle of his wheels, the clatter of the
horses' feet. The murmur was a curse. Karl Steinmetz heard it
distinctly. It made him smile with a queer expression beneath his great
gray mustache.

The starosta, standing in his door-way, saw the smile. He raised his
voice with his neighbors and cursed. As Steinmetz passed him he gave a
little jerk of the head toward the castle. The jerk of the head might
have been due to an inequality of the road, but it might also convey an
appointment. The keen, haggard face of Michael Roon showed no sign of
mutual understanding. And the carriage rattled on through the stricken
village.

Two hours later, when it was quite dark, a closed carriage, with two
bright lamps flaring into the night, passed through the village toward
the castle at a gallop.

"It is the prince," the peasants said, crouching in their low door-ways.
"It is the prince. We know his bells--they are of silver--and we shall
starve during the winter. Curse him--curse him!"

They raised their heads and listened to the galloping feet with the
patient, dumb despair which is the curse of the Slavonic race. Some of
them crept to their doors, and, looking up, saw that the castle windows
were ablaze with light. If Paul Howard Alexis was a plain English
gentleman in London, he was also a great prince in his country, keeping
up a princely state, enjoying the gilded solitude that belongs to the
high-born. His English education had educed a strict sense of
discipline, and as in England, and, indeed, all through his life, so in
Russia did he attempt to do his duty.

The carriage rattled up to the brilliantly lighted door, which stood
open, and within, on either side of the broad entrance-hall, the
servants stood to welcome their master. A strange, picturesque, motley
crew: the majordomo, in his black coat, and beside him the other
house-servants--tall, upright fellows, in their bright livery. Beyond
them the stable-men and keepers, a little army, in red cloth tunics,
with wide trousers tucked into high boots, all holding their fur caps in
their hands, standing stiffly at attention, clean, honest, and not too
intelligent.

The castle of Osterno is built on the lines of many Russian country
seats, and not a few palaces in Moscow. The Royal Palace in the Kremlin
is an example. A broad entrance-hall, at the back of which a staircase
as broad stretches up to a gallery, around which the dwelling-rooms are
situated. At the head of the staircase, directly facing the
entrance-hall, high folding doors disclose the drawing-room, which is
almost a throne room. All gorgeous, lofty, spacious, as only Russian
houses are. Truly this northern empire, this great white land, is a
country in which it is good to be an emperor, a prince, a noble, but not
a poor man.

Paul passed through the ranks of his retainers, himself a head taller
than the tallest footman, a few inches broader than the sturdiest
keeper. He acknowledged the low bows by a quick nod, and passed up the
staircase. Steinmetz--in evening dress, wearing the insignia of one or
two orders which he had won in the more active days of his earlier
diplomatic life--was waiting for him at the head of the stairs.

The two men bowed gravely to each other. Steinmetz threw open the door
of the great room and stood aside. The prince passed on, and the German
followed him, each playing his part gravely, as men in high places are
called to do. When the door was closed behind them and they were alone,
there was no relaxation, no smile of covert derision. These men knew the
Russian character thoroughly. There is, be it known, no more
impressionable man on the face of God's earth. Paul and Steinmetz had
played their parts so long that these came to be natural to them as soon
as they passed the Volga. We are all so in a minor degree. In each
house, to each of our friends, we are unconsciously different in some
particular. One man holds us in awe, and we unconsciously instil that
feeling. Another considers us a buffoon, and, lo! we are exceedingly
funny.

Paul and Steinmetz knew that the people around them in Osterno were
somewhat like the dumb and driven beast. These peasants required
overawing by a careful display of pomp--an unrelaxed dignity. The line
of demarcation between the noble and the peasant is so marked in the
land of the Czar that it is difficult for Englishmen to realize or
believe it. It is like the line that is drawn between us and our dogs.
If we suppose it possible that dogs could be taught to act and think for
themselves; if we take such a development as practicable, and consider
the possibilities of social upheaval lying behind such an education, we
can in a minute degree realize the problem which Prince Pavlo Alexis and
all his fellow-nobles will be called upon to solve within the lifetime
of men already born.




CHAPTER X


THE MOSCOW DOCTOR

"Colossal!" exclaimed Steinmetz, beneath his breath. With a little trick
of the tongue he transferred his cigar from the right-hand to the
left-hand corner of his mouth. "Colossal--l!" he repeated.

For a moment Paul looked up from the papers spread out on the table
before him--looked with the preoccupied air of a man who is adding up
something in his mind. Then he returned to his occupation. He had been
at this work for four hours without a break. It was nearly one o'clock
in the morning. Since dinner Karl Steinmetz had consumed no less than
five cigars, while he had not spoken five words. These two men, locked
in a small room in the middle of the castle of Osterno--a room with no
window, but which gained its light from the clear heaven by a shaft and
a skylight on the roof--locked in thus they had been engaged in the
addition of an enormous mass of figures. Each sheet had been carefully
annotated and added by Steinmetz, and as each was finished he handed it
to his companion.

"Is that fool never coming?" asked Paul, with an impatient glance at the
clock.

"Our very dear friend the starosta," replied Steinmetz, "is no slave to
time. He is late."

The room had the appearance of an office. There were two safes--square
chests such as we learn to associate with the name of Griffiths in this
country. There was a huge writing-table--a double table--at which Paul
and Steinmetz were seated. There were sundry stationery cases and an
almanac or so suspended on the walls, which were oaken panels. A large
white stove--common to all Russian rooms--stood against the wall. The
room had no less than three doors, with a handle on no one of them. Each
door opened with a key, like a cupboard.

Steinmetz had apparently finished his work. He was sitting back in his
chair, contemplating his companion with a little smile. It apparently
tickled some obtuse Teutonic sense of humor to see this prince doing
work which is usually assigned to clerks--working out statistics and
abstruse calculations as to how much food is required to keep body and
soul together.

The silence of the room was almost oppressive. A Russian village after
nightfall is the quietest human habitation on earth. For the moujik--the
native of a country which will some day supply the universe with
petroleum--cannot afford to light up his humble abode, and therefore
sits in darkness. Had the village of Osterno possessed the liveliness of
a Spanish hamlet, the sound of voices and laughter could not have
reached the castle perched high up on the rock above.

But Osterno was asleep: the castle servants had long gone to rest, and
the great silence of Russia wrapped its wings over all. "When,
therefore, the clear, coughing bark of a wolf was heard, both occupants
of the little room looked up. The sound was repeated, and Steinmetz
slowly rose from his seat.

"I can quite believe that our friend is able to call a wolf or a lynx to
him," he said. "He does it uncannily well."

"I have seen him do so," said Paul, without looking up. "But it is a
common enough accomplishment among the keepers."

Steinmetz had left the room before he finished speaking. One of the
doors of this little room communicated with a large apartment used as a
secretary's office, and through this by a small staircase with a side
entrance to the castle. By this side entrance the stewards of the
different outlying estates were conducted to the presence of the
resident secretary--a German selected and overawed by Karl Steinmetz--a
mere calculating machine of a man, with whom we have no affairs to
transact.

Before many minutes had elapsed Steinmetz came back, closely followed by
the starosta, whose black eyes twinkled and gleamed in the sudden light
of the lamp. He dropped on his knees when he saw Paul--suddenly,
abjectly, like an animal, in his dumb attitude of deprecation.

With a jerk of his head Paul bade him rise, which the man did, standing
back against the panelled wall, placing as great a distance between
himself and the prince as the size of the room would allow.

"Well," said Paul curtly, almost roughly, "I hear you are in trouble in
the village."

"The cholera has come, Excellency."

"Many deaths?"

"To-day--eleven."

Paul looked up sharply.

"And the doctor?"

"He has not come yet, Excellency. I sent for him--a fortnight ago. The
cholera is at Oseff, at Dolja, at Kalisheffa. It is everywhere. He has
forty thousand souls under his care. He has to obey the Zemstvo, to go
where they tell him. He takes no notice of me."

"Yes," interrupted Paul, "I know. And the people themselves, do they
attempt to understand it--to follow out my instructions?"

The starosta spread out his thin hands in deprecation. He cringed a
little as he stood. He had Jewish blood in his veins, which, while it
raised him above his fellows in Osterno, carried with it the usual
tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of what the people
who stood without Pilate's palace took upon themselves and upon their
children.

"Your Excellency," he said, "knows what they are. It is slow. They make
no progress. For them one disease is as another. 'Bog dal e Bog vzial,'
they say. 'God gave and God took!'"

He paused, his black eyes flashing from one face to the other.

"Only the Moscow doctor, Excellency," he said significantly, "can manage
them."

Paul shrugged his shoulders. He rose from his seat, glancing at
Steinmetz, who was looking on in silence, with his queer, mocking smile.

"I will go with you now," he said. "It is late enough already."

The starosta bowed very low, but he said nothing.

Paul went to a cupboard and took from it an old fur coat, dragged at the
seams, stained about the cuffs a dull brown--doctors know the color.
Such stains have hanged a man before now, for they are the marks of
blood. Paul put on this coat. He took a long, soft silken scarf such as
Russians wear in winter, and wrapped it round his throat, quite
concealing the lower part of his face. He crammed a fur cap down over
his ears.

"Come," he said.

Karl Steinmetz accompanied them down stairs, carrying a lamp in one
hand. He closed the door behind them, but did not lock it. Then he went
upstairs again to the quiet little room, where he sat down in a deep
chair. He looked at the open door of the cupboard from which Paul Alexis
had taken his simple disguise, with a large, tolerant humor.

"El Señor Don Quixote de la Mancha," he said sleepily.

It is said that to a doctor nothing is shocking and nothing is
disgusting. But doctors are, after all, only men of stomach like the
rest of us, and it is to be presumed that what nauseates one will
nauseate the other. When the starosta unceremoniously threw open the
door of the miserable cabin belonging to Vasilli Tula, Paul gave a
little gasp. The foul air pouring out of the noisome den was such that
it seemed impossible that human lungs could assimilate it. This Vasilli
Tula was a notorious drunkard, a discontent, a braggart. The Nihilist
propaganda had in the early days of that mistaken mission reached him
and unsettled his discontented mind. Misfortune seemed to pursue him. In
higher grades of life than his there are men who, like Tula, make a
profession of misfortune.

Paul stumbled down two steps. The cottage was dark. The starosta had
apparently trodden on a chicken, which screamed shrilly and fluttered
about in the dark with that complete abandon which belongs to chickens,
sheep, and some women.

"Have you no light?" cried the starosta.

Paul retreated to the top step, where he had a short-lived struggle with
a well-grown calf which had been living in the room with the family, and
evinced a very creditable desire for fresh air.

"Yes, yes, we have a little petroleum," said a voice. "But we have no
matches."

The starosta struck a light.

"I have brought the Moscow doctor to see you."

"The Moscow doctor!" cried several voices. "Sbogom--sbogom! God be with
you!"

In the dim light the whole of the floor seemed to get up and shake
itself. There were at least seven persons sleeping in the hut. Two of
them did not get up. One was dead. The other was dying of cholera.

A heavily built man reached down from the top of the brick stove a cheap
tin paraffin lamp, which he handed to the starosta. By the light of this
Paul came again into the hut. The floor was filthy, as may be imagined,
for beasts and human beings lived here together.

The man--Vasilli Tula--threw himself down on his knees, clawing at
Paul's coat with great unwashed hands, whining out a tale of sorrow and
misfortune. In a moment they were all on their knees, clinging to him,
crying to him for help: Tula himself, a wild-looking Slav of fifty or
thereabouts; his wife, haggard, emaciated, horrible to look upon, for
she was toothless and almost blind; two women and a loutish boy of
sixteen.

Paul pushed his way, not unkindly, toward the corner where the two
motionless forms lay half concealed by a mass of ragged sheepskin.

"Here," he said, "this woman is dead. Take her out. When will you learn
to be clean? This boy may live--with care. Bring the light closer,
little mother. So, it is well. He will live. Come, don't sit crying.
Take all these rags out and burn them. All of you go out. It is a fine
night. You are better in the cart-shed than here. Here, you, Tula, go
round with the starosta to his store. He will give you clean blankets."

They obeyed him blindly. Tula and one of the young women (his daughters)
dragged the dead body, which was that of a very old woman, out into the
night. The starosta had retired to the door-way when the lamp was
lighted, his courage having failed him. The air was foul with the reek
of smoke and filth and infection.

"Come, Vasilli Tula," the village elder said, with suspicious eagerness.
"Come with me, I will give you what the good doctor says. Though you owe
me money, and you never try to pay me."

But Tula was kissing and mumbling over the hem of Paul's coat. Paul took
no notice of him.

"We are starving, Excellency," the man was saying. "I can get no work. I
had to sell my horse in the winter, and I cannot plough my little piece
of land. The Government will not help us. The Prince--curse him!--does
nothing for us. He lives in Petersburg, where he spends all his money,
and has food and wine more than he wants. The Count Stépan Lanovitch
used to assist us--God be with him! But he has been sent to Siberia
because he helped the peasants. He was like you; he was a great bárin, a
great noble, and yet he helped the peasants."

Paul turned round sharply and shook the man off.

"Go," he said, "with the starosta and get what I tell you. A great,
strong fellow like you has no business on his knees to any man! I will
not help you unless you help yourself. You are a lazy good-for-nothing.
Get out!"

He pushed him out of the hut, and kicked after him a few rags of
clothing which were lying about on the floor, all filthy and slimy.

"Good God!" muttered he under his breath, in English, "that a place like
this should exist beneath the very walls of Osterno!"

From hut to hut he went all through that night on his mission of
mercy--without enthusiasm, without high-flown notions respecting
mankind, but with the simple sense of duty that was his. These people
were his things--his dumb and driven beasts. In his heart there may have
existed a grudge against the Almighty for placing him in a position
which was not only intensely disagreeable, but also somewhat ridiculous.
For he did not dare to tell his friends of these things. He had spoken
of them to no man except Karl Steinmetz, who was in a sense his
dependent. English public school and university had instilled into him
the intensely British feeling of shame respecting good works. He could
take chaff as well as any man, for he was grave by habit, and a grave
man receives the most chaff most good-humoredly. But he had a nervous
dread of being found out. He had made a sort of religion of suppressing
the fact that he was a prince; the holy of holies of this cult was the
fact that he was a prince who sought to do good to his neighbor--a
prince in whom one might repose trust.

This was not the first time by any number that he had gone down into his
own village insisting in a rough-and-ready way on cleanliness and
purity.

"The Moscow doctor"--the peasants would say in the kabak over their
vodka and their tea--"the Moscow doctor comes in and kicks our beds out
of the door. He comes in and throws our furniture into the street But
afterward he gives us new beds and new furniture."

It was a joke that always obtained in the kabak. It flavored the vodka,
and with that fiery poison served to raise a laugh.

The Moscow doctor was looked upon in Osterno and in many neighboring
villages as second only to God. In fact, many of the peasants placed him
before their Creator. They were stupid, vodka-soddened, hapless men. The
Moscow doctor they could see for themselves. He came in, a very tangible
thing of flesh and blood, built on a large and manly scale; he took them
by the shoulders and bundled them out of their own houses, kicking their
bedding after them. He scolded them, he rated them and abused them. He
brought them food and medicine. He understood the diseases which from
time to time swept over their villages. No cold was too intense for him
to brave should they be in distress. He asked no money, and he gave
none. But they lived on his charity, and they were wise enough to know
it.

What wonder if these poor wretches loved the man whom they could see and
hear above the God who manifested himself to them in no way! The
orthodox priests of their villages had no money to spend on their
parishioners. On the contrary, they asked for money to keep the churches
in repair. What wonder, then, if these poor ignorant, helpless peasants
would listen to no priest; for the priest could not explain to them why
it was that God sent a four-month-long winter which cut them off from
the rest of the world behind impassable barriers of snow; that God sent
them droughts in the summer so that there was no crop of rye; that God
scourged them with dread and horrible disease!

It is almost impossible for us to realize, in these days of a lamentably
cheap press and a cheaper literature, the mental condition of men and
women who have no education, no newspaper, no news of the world, no
communication with the universe. To them the mystery of the Moscow
doctor was as incomprehensible as to us is the Deity. They were so near
to the animals that Paul could not succeed in teaching them that disease
and death followed on the heels of dirt and neglect. They were too
ignorant to reason, too low down the animal scale to comprehend things
which some of the dumb animals undoubtedly recognize.

Paul Alexis, half Russian, half English, understood these people very
thoroughly. He took advantage of their ignorance, their simplicity,
their unfathomable superstition. He governed as no other could have
ruled them, by fear and kindness at once. He mastered them by his
vitality, the wholesome strength of his nature, his infinite
superiority. He avoided the terrible mistake of the Nihilists by
treating them as children to whom education must be given little by
little instead of throwing down before them a mass of dangerous
knowledge which their minds, unaccustomed to such strong food, are
incapable of digesting.

A British coldness of blood damped as it were the Russian quixotism
which would desire to see result follow upon action--to see the world
make quicker progress than its Creator has decreed. With very
unsatisfactory material Paul was setting in motion a great rock which
will roll down into the ages unconnected with his name, clearing a path
through a very thick forest of ignorance and tyranny.




CHAPTER XI


CATRINA

The man who carries a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is
apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition. He is like a
ship at sea with a "sprung" mainmast. A side breeze may arise at any
moment which throws him all aback and upon his beam-ends. He runs
illegitimate risks, which are things much given to dragging at a man's
mind, handicapping his thoughts.

Paul suffered in this way. It was a distinct burthen to him to play a
double part, although each was innocent enough in itself. At school, and
later on at the 'Varsity, he had consistently and steadily suppressed a
truth from friend and foe alike--namely, that he was in his own country
a prince. No great crime on the face of it; but a constant suppression
of a very small truth is as burdensome as any suggestion of falsehood.
It makes one afraid of contemptible foes, and doubtful of the value of
one's own friendship.

Paul was a simple-minded man. He was not afraid of the Russian
Government. Indeed, he cultivated a fine contempt for that august body.
But he was distinctly afraid of being found out, for that discovery
could only mean an incontinent cessation of the good work which rendered
his life happy.

The fear of being deprived of this interest in existence should
certainly have been lessened, if not quite allayed, by the fact that a
greater interest had been brought into his life in the pleasant form of
a prospective wife. When he was in London with Etta Sydney Bamborough he
did not, however, forget Osterno. He only longed for the time when he
could take Etta freely into his confidence and engage her interest in
the object of his ambition--namely, to make the huge Osterno estate into
that lump of leaven which might in time leaven the whole of the empire.

That a man is capable of sustaining two absorbing interests at once is a
matter of every-day illustration. Are we not surrounded by men who do
their work well in life, and love their wives well at home, without
allowing the one to interfere with the other? That women are capable of
the same seems exceedingly probable. But we are a race of sheep who run
after each other, guided for the moment by a catchword which will not
bear investigation, or an erroneous deduction set in alliterative verse
which clings to the mind and sways it. Thus we all think that woman's
whole existence is, and is only capable of, love, because a poet, in the
trickiness of his trade, once said so.

Now, Paul held a different opinion. He thought that Etta could manage to
love him well, as she said she did, and yet take an interest in that
which was in reality the object of his life. He intended to take the
earliest opportunity of telling her all about the work he was
endeavoring to carry out at Osterno, and the knowledge that he was
withholding something from her was a constant burden to an upright and
honest nature.

"I think," he said one morning to Steinmetz, "that I will write and tell
Mrs. Sydney Bamborough all about this place."

"I should not do that," replied Steinmetz with a leisurely promptitude.

They were alone in a great smoking-room of which the walls were hung all
round with hunting trophies. Paul was smoking a post-prandial cigar.
Steinmetz reflected gravely over a pipe. They were both reading Russian
newspapers--periodicals chiefly remarkable for that which they leave
unsaid.

"Why not?" asked Paul.

"On principle. Never tell a woman that which is not interesting enough
to magnify into a secret."

Paul turned over his newspaper. He began reading again. Then, suddenly,
he looked up.

"We are engaged to be married," he observed pointedly.

Steinmetz took his pipe from his lips slowly and imperturbably. He was a
man to whom it was no satisfaction to impart news. He either knew it
before or did not take much interest in the matter.

"That makes it worse," he said. "A woman only conceals what is bad about
her husband. If she knows anything that is likely to make other women
think that their husbands are inferior, she will tell it."

Paul laughed.

"But this is not good," he argued. "We have kept it so confoundedly
quiet that I am beginning to feel as if it is a crime."

Steinmetz uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and then spoke after
mature reflection:

"As I understand the law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a
lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent. I
imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human
justice finds it expedient to do so!"

Paul shrugged his shoulders. Argument was not his strong point, and,
like most men who cannot argue, he was almost impervious to the
arguments of others. He recognized the necessity for secrecy--the
absolute need of a thousand little secretive precautions and disguises
which were intensely disagreeable to him. But he also grumbled at them
freely, and whenever he made such objection Karl Steinmetz grew uneasy,
as if the question which he disposed of with facile philosophy or
humorous resignation had behind it a possibility and an importance of
which he was fully aware. It was on these rare occasions that he might
have conveyed to a keen observer the impression that he was playing a
very dangerous game with a smiling countenance.

"All that we do," pursued Steinmetz, "is to bow to a lamentable
necessity for deceit. I have bowed to it all my life. It has been my
trade, perhaps. It is not our fault that we are placed in charge of four
or five thousand human beings who are no more capable of helping
themselves than are sheep. It is not our fault that the forefathers of
these sheep cut down the forests and omitted to plant more, so that the
flocks with whom we have to deal have no fuel. It is not our fault that
a most terrific winter annually renders the land unproductive for four
months. It is not our fault that the government to which we are forced
to bow--the Czar whose name lifts our hats from our heads--it is not our
fault that progress and education are taboo, and that all who endeavor
to forward the cause of humanity are promptly put away in a safe place
where they are at liberty to forward their own salvation and nothing
else. Nothing is our fault, mein lieber, in this country. We have to
make the best of adverse circumstances. We are not breaking any human
law, and in doing nothing we should be breaking a divine command."

Paul flicked the ash off his cigar. He had heard all this before. Karl
Steinmetz's words were usually more remarkable for solid thoughtfulness
than for brilliancy of conception or any great novelty of expression.

"Oh!" said Paul quietly, "I am not going to leave off. You need not fear
that. Only I shall have to tell my wife. Surely a woman could help us in
a thousand ways. There is such a lot that only a woman understands."

"Yes!" grunted Steinmetz; "and only the right sort of woman."

Paul looked up sharply.

"You must leave that to me," he said.

"My very dear friend, I leave every thing to you."

Paul smiled.

There was no positive proof that this was not strictly true. There was
no saying that Karl Steinmetz did not leave every thing to every-body.
But wise people thought differently.

"You don't know Etta," he said, half shyly. "She is full of sympathy and
pity for these people."

Steinmetz bowed gravely.

"I have no doubt of it."

"And yet you say that she must not be told."

"Certainly not. A secret is considerably strained if it be divided
between two people. Stretching it to three will probably break it. You
can tell her when you are married. Does she consent to live in Osterno?"

"Oh, yes. I think so."

"Um--m!"

"What did you say?"

"Um--m," repeated Steinmetz, and the conversation somewhat naturally
showed signs of collapse.

At this moment the door was opened, and a servant in bright livery, with
powdered wig, silk stockings, and a countenance which might have been of
wood, brought in a letter on a silver tray.

Paul took the square envelope and turned it over, displaying as he did
so a coronet in black and gold on the corner, like a stamp.

Karl Steinmetz saw the coronet. He never took his quiet, unobtrusive
glance from Paul's face while he opened the letter and read it.

"A fresh difficulty," said Paul, throwing the note across to his
companion.

Steinmetz looked grave while he unfolded the thick stationery.

"Dear Paul [the letter ran]: I hear you are at Osterno and that the
Moscow doctor is in your country. We are in great distress at
Thors--cholera, I fear. The fame of your doctor has spread to my people,
and they are clamoring for him. Can you bring or send him over? You know
your room here is always in readiness. Come soon with the great doctor,
and also Herr Steinmetz. In doing so you will give more than pleasure to
your old friend,"

Catrina Lanovitch.

"P.S. Mother is afraid to go out of doors for fear of infection. She
thinks she has a little cold."

Steinmetz folded the letter very carefully, pressing the seam of it
reflectively with his stout forefinger and thumb.

"I always think of the lie first," he said. "It's my nature or my
misfortune. We can easily write and say that the Moscow doctor has
left."

He paused, scratching his brow pensively with his curved forefinger. It
is to be feared that he was seeking not so much the truth as the most
convenient perversion of the same.

"But then," he went on, "by doing that we leave these poor devils to die
in their--styes. Catrina cannot manage them. They are worse than our
people."

"Whatever is the best lie to tell," burst in Paul--"as we seem to live
in an atmosphere of them--I must go to Thors; that is quite certain."

"There is no must in the case," put in Steinmetz quietly, as a
parenthesis. "No man is compelled to throw himself in the way of
infection. But I know you will go, whatever I say."

"I suppose I shall," admitted Paul.

"And Catrina will find you out at once."

"Why?"

Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one
of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.

"Because she loves you," he said shortly. "There is no coming the Moscow
doctor over her, mien lieber."

Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men--daily growing
fewer--who hold that a woman's love is not a thing to be tossed lightly
about in conversation.

"Then--" he began, speaking rather quickly, as if afraid that Steinmetz
was going to say more. "If," he amended, "you think she will find out,
she must not see me, that is all."

Steinmetz reflected again. He was unusually grave over this matter. One
would scarcely have taken this stout German for a person of any
sentiment whatever. Nevertheless he would have liked Paul to marry
Catrina Lanovitch in preference to Etta Sydney Bamborough, merely
because he thought that the former loved him, while he felt sure that
the latter did not. So much for the sentimental point of view--a
starting-point, by the way, which usually makes all the difference in a
man's life. For a man needs to be loved as much as a woman needs it.
From the practical point of view, Karl Steinmetz knew too much about
Etta to place entire reliance on the goodness of her motives. He keenly
suspected that she was marrying Paul for his money--for the position he
could give her in the world.

"We must be careful," he said. "We must place clearly before ourselves
the risks that we are running before we come to any decision. For you
the risk is simply that of unofficial banishment. They can hardly send
you to Siberia because you are half an Englishman; and that impertinent
country has a habit of getting up and shouting when her sons are
interfered with. But they can easily make Russia impossible for you.
They can do you more harm than you think. They can do these poor devils
of peasants of yours more harm than we can comfortably contemplate. As
for me," he paused and shrugged his great shoulders, "it means Siberia.
Already I am a suspect--a persona non grata."

"I do not see how we can refuse to help Catrina," said Paul, in a voice
which Steinmetz seemed to know, for he suddenly gave in.

"As you will," he said.

He sat up, and, drawing a small table toward him, took up a pen
reflectively. Paul watched him in silence.

When the letter was finished, Steinmetz read it aloud:

"My Dear Catrina:

"The Moscow doctor and your obedient servant will be (D.V.) in Thors by
seven o'clock to-night. We propose spending about an hour in the
village, if you will kindly advise the starosta to be ready for us. As
our time is limited, and we are much needed in Osterno, we shall have to
deprive ourselves of the pleasure of calling at the castle. The prince
sends kind remembrances, and proposes riding over to Thors to avail
himself of your proffered hospitality in a day or two. With salutations
to the countess,

"Your old friend,

"Karl Steinmetz."

Steinmetz waited with the letter in his hand for Paul's approval. "You
see," he explained, "you are notoriously indifferent to the welfare of
the peasants. It would be unnatural if you suddenly displayed so much
interest as to induce you to go to Thors on a mission of charity."

Paul nodded. "All right," he said. "Yes, I see; though I confess I
sometimes forget what the deuce I _am_ supposed to be."

Steinmetz laughed pleasantly as he folded the letter. He rose and went
to the door.

"I will send it off," he said. He paused on the threshold and looked
back gravely. "Do not forget," he added, "that Catrina Lanovitch loves
you."




CHAPTER XII


AT THORS

Below the windows of a long, low, stone house, in its architecture
remarkably like a fortified farm--below these deep-embrasured windows
the river Oster mumbled softly. One of the windows was wide open, and
with the voice of the water a wonderful music rolled out to mingle and
lose itself in the hum of the pine-woods.

The room was a small one; beneath the artistic wall-paper one detected
the outline of square-hewn stones. There were women's things lying
about; there were flowers in a bowl on a low, strong table. There were a
few good engravings on the wall; deep-curtained windows, low chairs, a
sofa, a fan. But it was not a womanly room. The music filling it,
vibrating back from the grim stone walls, was not womanly music. It was
more than manly. It was not earthly, but almost divine. It happened to
be Grieg, with the halting beat of a disabled, perhaps a broken, heart
in it, as that master's music usually has.

The girl was alone in the room. The presence of any one would have
silenced something that was throbbing at the back of the chords. Quite
suddenly she stopped. She knew how to play the quaint last notes. She
knew something that no master had ever taught her.

She swung round on the stool and faced the light. It was afternoon--an
autumn afternoon in Russia--and the pink light made the very best of a
face which was not beautiful at all, never could be beautiful--a face
about which even the owner, a woman, could have no possible illusion. It
was broad and powerful, with eyes too far apart, forehead too broad and
low, jaw too heavy, mouth too determined. The eyes were almond-shaped,
and slightly sloping downward and inward--deep, passionate blue eyes set
in a Mongolian head. It was the face of a woman who could, morally
speaking, make mincemeat of nine young men out of ten. But she could not
have made one out of the number love her. For it has been decreed that
women shall win love--except in some happy exceptions--by beauty only.
The same unwritten law has it that a man's appearance does not matter--a
law much appreciated by some of us, and duly canonized by not a few.

The girl was evidently listening. She glanced at a little golden clock
on the mantel-piece, and then at the open window. She rose--she was
short, and somewhat broadly built--and went to the window.

"He will be back," she said to herself, "in a few minutes now."

She raised her hand to her forehead, and pressed back her hair with a
little movement of impatience, expressive, perhaps, of a great suspense.
She stood idly drumming on the window-sill for a few moments; then, with
a quick little sigh, she went back to the piano. As she moved she gave a
jerk of the head from time to time, as schoolgirls who have too much
hair are wont to do. The reason of this nervous movement was a wondrous
plait of gold reaching far below her waist. Catrina Lanovitch almost
worshipped her own hair. She knew without any doubt that not one woman
in ten thousand could rival her in this feminine glory--knew it as
indubitably as she knew that she was plain. The latter fact she faced
with an unflinching, cold conviction which was not feminine at all. She
did not say that she was hideous, for the sake of hearing a
contradiction or a series of saving clauses. She never spoke of it to
any one. She had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it
outside discussion. All her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all
her vanity centred, on her hair. It was her one pride, perhaps her one
hope. Women have been loved for their voices. Catrina's voice was
musical enough, but it was deep and strong. It was passionate, tender if
she wished, fascinating; but it was not lovable. If the voice may win
love, why not the hair?

Catrina despised all men but one--that one she worshipped. She lived
night and day with one great desire, beside which heaven and hell were
mere words. Neither the hope of the one nor the fear of the other in any
way touched or affected her desire. She wanted to make Paul Alexis love
her; and, womanlike, she clung to the one womanly charm that was
hers--the wonderful golden hair. Pathetic, aye, pathetic--with a grin
behind the pathos, as there ever is.

She sat down at the piano, and her strong, small hands tore the heart
out of each wire. There are some people who get farther into a piano
than others, making the wires speak as with a voice. Catrina Lanovitch
had this trick. She only played a Russian people-song--a simple lay such
as one may hear issuing from the door of any kabak on a summer evening.
But she infused a true Russian soul into it--the soul that is cursed
with a fatal power of dumb and patient endurance. She did not sway from
side to side as do some people who lose themselves in the intoxication
of music. But she sat quite upright, her sturdy, square shoulders
motionless. Her strange eyes were fixed with the stillness of distant
contemplation.

Suddenly she stopped and leaped to her feet. She did not go to the
window, but stood listening beside the piano. The beat of a horse's
hoofs on the narrow road was distinctly audible, hollow and sodden as is
the sound of a wooden road. It came nearer and nearer, and a certain
unsteadiness indicated that the horse was tired.

"I thought he might have come," she whispered, and she sat down
breathlessly.

When the servant came into the room a few minutes later Catrina was at
the piano.

"A letter, mademoiselle," said the maid.

"Lay it on the table," answered Catrina, without looking round. She was
playing the closing bars of a nocturne.

She rose slowly, turned, and seized the letter as a starving man seizes
food. There was something almost wolf-like in her eyes.

"Steinmetz," she exclaimed, reading the address. "Steinmetz. Oh! why
won't he write to me?"

She tore open the letter, read it, and stood holding it in her hand,
looking out over the trackless pine-woods with absorbed, speculative
eyes. The sun had just set. The farthest ridge of pine-trees stood out
like the teeth of a saw in black relief on the rosy sky. Catrina
Lanovitch watched the rosiness fade into pearly gray.

"Madame the Countess awaits mademoiselle for tea," said the maid's voice
suddenly, in the gloom of the door-way.

"I will come."

The village of Thors--twenty miles farther down the river Oster, twenty
miles nearer to the junction of that river with the Volga--was little
more than a hamlet in the days of which we write. Some day, perhaps, the
three hundred souls of Thors may increase and multiply--some day when
Russia is attacked by the railway fever. For Thors is on the
Chorno-Ziom--the belt of black and fertile soil that runs right across
the vast empire.

Karl Steinmetz, a dogged watcher of the Wandering Jew--the deathless
scoffer at our Lord's agony, who shall never die, who shall leave
cholera in his track wherever he may wander--Karl Steinmetz knew that
the Oster was in itself a Wandering Jew. This river meandered through
the lonesome country, bearing cholera germs within its waters. Whenever
Osterno had cholera it sent it down the river to Thors, and so on to the
Volga.

Thors lay groaning under the scourge, and the Countess Lanovitch shut
herself within her stone walls, shivering with fear, begging her
daughter to return to Petersburg.

It was nearly dark when Karl Steinmetz and the Moscow doctor rode into
the little village, to find the starosta, a simple Russian farmer,
awaiting them outside the kabak.

Steinmetz knew the man, and immediately took command of the situation
with that unquestioned sense of authority which in Russia places the
bárin on much the same footing as that taken by the Anglo-Indian in our
eastern empire.

"Now, starosta," he said, "we have only an hour to spend in Thors. This
is the Moscow doctor. If you listen to what he tells you, you will soon
have no sickness in the village. The worst houses first--and quickly.
You need not be afraid, but if you do not care to come in, you may stay
outside."

As they walked down the straggling village-street the Moscow doctor told
the starosta in no measured terms, as was his wont, wherein lay the
heart of the sickness. Here, as in Osterno, dirt and neglect were at the
base of all the trouble. Here, as in the larger village, the houses were
more like the abode of four-footed beasts than the dwellings of human
beings.

The starosta prudently remained outside the first house to which he
introduced the visitors. Paul went fearlessly in, while Steinmetz stood
in the door-way, holding open the door.

As he was standing there he perceived a flickering light approaching
him. The light was evidently that of an ordinary hand-lantern, and from
the swinging motion it was easy to divine that it was being carried by
some one who was walking quickly.

"Who is this?" asked Steinmetz.

"It is likely to be the Countess Catrina, Excellency."

Steinmetz glanced back into the cottage, which was dark save for the
light of a single petroleum lamp. Paul's huge form could be dimly
distinguished bending over a heap of humanity and foul clothing in a
corner.

"Does she visit the cottages?" asked Steinmetz sharply.

"She does, God be with her! She has no fear. She is an angel. Without
her we should all be dead."

"She won't visit this, if I can help it," muttered Steinmetz.

The light flickered along the road toward them. In the course of a few
minutes it fell on the stricken cottage, on the starosta standing in the
road, on Steinmetz in the door-way.

"Herr Steinmetz, is that you?" asked a voice, deep and musical, in the
darkness.

"Zum Befehl," answered Steinmetz, without moving.

Catrina came up to him. She was clad in a long dark cloak, a dark hat,
and wore no gloves. She brought with her a clean aromatic odor of
disinfectants. She carried the lantern herself, while behind her walked
a man-servant in livery, with a large basket in either hand.

"It is good of you," she said, "to come to us in our need--also to
persuade the good doctor to come with you."

"It is not much that we can do," answered Steinmetz, taking the small
outstretched hand within his large soft grasp; "but that little you may
always count upon."

"I know," she said gravely.

She looked up at him, expecting him to step aside and allow her to pass
into the cottage; but Steinmetz stood quite still, looking down at her
with his pleasant smile.

"And how is it with you?" he asked, speaking in German, as they always
did together.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh!" she answered indifferently, "I am well, of course. I always am. I
have the strength of a horse. Of course I have been troubled about these
poor people. It has been terrible. They are worse than children. I
cannot quite understand why God afflicts them so. They have never done
any harm. They are not like the Jews. It seems unjust. I have been very
busy, in my small way. My mother, you know, does not take much interest
in things that are not clean."

"Madame the Countess reads French novels and the fictional productions
of some modern English ladies," suggested Steinmetz quietly.

"Yes; but she objects to honest dirt," said Catrina coldly. "May I go
in?"

Steinmetz did not move.

"I think not. This Moscow man is eccentric. He likes to do good sub
rosa. He prefers to be alone."

Catrina tried to look into the cottage; but Karl Steinmetz, as we know,
was fat, and filled up the whole door-way.

"I should like to thank him for coming to us, or, at least, to offer him
hospitality. I suppose one cannot pay him."

"No; one cannot pay him," answered Steinmetz gravely.

There was a little pause. From the interior of the cottage came the
murmured gratitude of the peasants, broken at times by a wail of
agony--the wail of a man. It is not a pleasant sound to hear. Catrina
heard it, and it twisted her plain, strong face in a sudden spasm of
sympathy.

Again she made an impatient little movement.

"Let me go in," she urged. "I may be able to help."

Steinmetz shook his head.

"Better not!" he said. "Besides, your life is too precious to these poor
people to run unnecessary risks."

She gave a strange, bitter laugh.

"And what about you?" she said. "And Paul?"

"You never hear of Paul going into any of the cottages," snapped
Steinmetz sharply. "For me it is different. You have never heard that of
Paul."

"No," she answered slowly; "and it is quite right. His life--it is
different for him. How--how is Paul?"

"He is well, thank you."

Steinmetz glanced down at her. She was looking across the plains beyond
the boundless pine forests that lay between Thors and the Volga.

"Quite well," he went on, kindly enough. "He hopes to ride over and pay
his respects to the countess to-morrow or the next day."

And the keen, kind eyes saw what they expected in the flickering light
of the lamp.

At this moment Steinmetz was pushed aside from within, and a hulking
young man staggered out into the road, propelled from behind with
considerable vigor. After him came a shower of clothes and bedding.

"Pah!" exclaimed Steinmetz, spluttering. "Himmel! What filth! Be
careful, Catrina!"

But Catrina had slipped past him. In an instant he had caught her by the
wrist.

"Come back!" he cried. "You must not go in there!"

She was just over the threshold.

"You have some reason for keeping me out," she returned, wriggling in
his strong grasp. "I will--I will!"

With a twist she wrenched herself free and went into the dimly lighted
room.

Almost immediately she gave a mocking laugh.

"Paul!" she said.




CHAPTER XIII


UNMASKED

For a moment there was silence in the hovel, broken only by the wail of
the dying man in the corner. Paul and Catrina faced each other--she
white and suddenly breathless, he half frowning. But he did not meet her
eyes.

"Paul," she said again, with a lingering touch on the name. The sound of
her voice, a rough sort of tenderness in her angry tone, made Steinmetz
smile in his grim way, as a man may smile when in pain.

"Paul, what did you do this for? Why are you here? Oh, why are you in
this wretched place?"

"Because you sent for me," he answered quietly. "Come, let us go out. I
have finished here. That man will die. There is nothing more to be done
for him. You must not stay in here."

She gave a short laugh as she followed him. He had to stoop low to pass
through the door-way. Then he turned and held out his hand, for fear she
should trip over the high threshold. She nodded her thanks, but refused
the proffered assistance.

Steinmetz lingered behind to give some last instructions, leaving Paul
and Catrina to walk on down the narrow street alone. The moon was just
rising--a great yellow moon such as only Russia knows--the land of the
silver night.

"How long have you been doing this?" asked Catrina suddenly. She did not
look toward him, but straight in front of her.

"For some years now," he replied simply.

He lingered. He was waiting for Steinmetz, who always rose to such
emergencies, who understood secrets and how to secure them when they
seemed already lost. He did not quite understand what was to be done
with Catrina--how she was to be silenced. She had found him out with
such startling rapidity that he felt disposed to admit her right to
dictate her own terms. On a straight road this man was fearless and
quick, but he had no taste or capacity for crooked ways.

Catrina walked on in silence. She was not looking at the matter from his
point of view at all.

"Of course," she said at length, "of course, Paul, I admire you for it
immensely. It is just like you to go and do the thing quietly and say
nothing about it; but--oh, you must go away from here. I--I--it is too
horrible to think of your running such risks. Rather let them all die
like flies than that. You mustn't do it. You mustn't."

She spoke in English hurriedly, with a little break in her voice which
he did not understand.

"With ordinary precautions the risk is very small," he said practically.

"Yes. But do you take ordinary precautions? Are you sure you are all
right now?"

She stopped. They were quite alone in the one silent street of the
stricken village. She looked up into his face. Her hands were running
over the breast of the tattered coat he wore. It was lamentably obvious,
even to him, that she loved him. In her anxiety she either did not know
what she was doing, or she did not care whether he knew or not. She
merely gave sway to the maternal instinct which is in the love of all
women. She felt his hands; she reached up and touched his face.

"Are you sure--are you sure you have not taken it?" she whispered.

He walked on, almost roughly.

"Oh, yes; quite," he said.

"I will not allow you to go into any more houses in Thors. I cannot--I
will not! Oh, Paul, you don't know. If you do, I will tell them all who
you are, and--and the Government will stop you."

"What would be the good of that?" said Paul awkwardly. "Your father
cared for his peasants, and was content to run risks for them. I suppose
you care about them, too, as you go into their houses."

"Yes; but--"

She paused, gave a strange little reckless laugh, and was silent. Heaven
forbid that we should say that she wanted him to know that she loved
him. Chivalry bids us believe that women guard the secret of their love
inviolate from the world. But what was Catrina to do? Men are in the
habit of forgetting that plain women are women at all. Surely some of
them may be excused for reminding us at times that they also are capable
of loving--that they also desire to be loved. Happy is the man who loves
and is loved of a plain woman; for she will take her own lack of beauty
into consideration, and give him more than most beautiful women have it
in their power to give.

"Of course," Catrina went on, with a sudden anger which surprised
herself, "I cannot stop you from doing this at Osterno, though I think
it is wicked; but I can prevent you from doing it here, and I certainly
shall!"

Paul shrugged his shoulders.

"As you like," he said. "I thought you cared more about the peasants."

"I do not care a jot about the peasants," she answered passionately, "as
compared--It is you I am thinking about, not them. I think you are
selfish, and cruel to your friends."

"My friends have never shown that they are consumed with anxiety on my
account."

"That is mere prevarication. Leave that to Herr Steinmetz and such men,
whose business it is; you don't do it well. Your friends may feel a lot
that they do not show."

She spoke the words shortly and sharply. Surreptitious good is so rare,
that when it is found out it very naturally gets mixed up with secret
evil, and the perpetrator of the hidden good deed feels guilty of a
crime. Paul was in this lamentable position, which he proceeded to
further aggravate by seeking to excuse himself.

"I did it after mature consideration. I tried paying another man, but he
shirked his work and showed the white feather; so Steinmetz and I
concluded that there was nothing to be done but do our dirty work
ourselves."

"Which, being translated, means that you do it."

"Pardon me. Steinmetz does his share."

Catrina Lanovitch was essentially a woman, despite her somewhat
masculine frame. She settled Karl Steinmetz's account with a sniff of
contempt.

"And that is why you have been so fond of Osterno the last two years?"
she asked innocently.

"Yes," he answered, falling into the trap.

Catrina winced. One does not wince the less because the pain is
expected. The girl had the Slav instinct of self-martyrdom, which makes
Russians so very different from the pleasure-loving nations of Europe.

"Only that?" she enquired.

Paul glanced down at her.

"Yes," he answered quietly.

They walked on in silence for a few moments. Paul seemed tacitly to have
given up the idea of visiting any more of the stricken cottages. They
were going toward the long old house, which was called the castle more
by courtesy than by right.

"How long are you going to stay in Osterno?" asked Catrina at length.

"About a fortnight; I cannot stay longer. I am going to be married."

Catrina stopped dead. She stood for a moment looking at the ground with
a sort of wonder in her eyes, not pleasant to see. It was the look of
one who, having fallen from a great height, is not quite sure whether it
means death or not. Then she walked on.

"I congratulate you," she said. "I only hope she will make you happy.
She is--beautiful, I suppose?"

"Yes," answered Paul simply.

The girl nodded her head.

"What is her name?"

"Etta Sydney Bamborough."

Catrina had evidently never heard the name before. It conveyed nothing
to her. Womanlike, she went back to her first question.

"What is she like?"

Paul hesitated.

"Tall, I suppose?" suggested the stunted woman at his side.

"Yes."

"And graceful?"

"Yes."

"Has she--pretty hair?" asked Catrina.

"I think so--yes."

"You are not observant," said the girl in a singularly even and
emotionless voice. "Perhaps you never noticed."

"Not particularly," answered Paul.

The girl raised her face. There was a painful smile twisting her lips.
The moonlight fell upon her; the deep shadows beneath the eyes made her
face wear a grin. Some have seen such a grin on the face of a drowning
man--a sight not to be forgotten.

"Where does she live?" asked Catrina. She was unaware of the thought of
murder that was in her own heart. Nevertheless, the desire--indefinite,
shapeless--was there to kill this woman, who was tall and beautiful,
whom Paul Alexis loved.

It must be remembered in extenuation that Catrina Lanovitch had lived
nearly all her life in the province of Tver. She was not modern at all.
Deprived of the advantages of our enlightened society press, without the
benefit of our decadent fictional literature, she had lamentably narrow
views of life. She was without that deep philosophy which teaches you,
mademoiselle, who read this guileless tale, that nothing matters very
much; that love is but a passing amusement, the plaything of an hour;
that if Tom is faithless, Dick is equally amusing; while Harry's taste
in gloves and compliments is worthy of some consideration. That these
things be true--that at all events the modern young lady thinks them
true--is a matter of no doubt whatever. Has not the modern lady novelist
told us so? And is not the modern lady novelist notable for her close
observation of human nature, her impartial judgment of human motives,
her sublime truth of delineation when she sits down to describe the
thing she calls a man? By a close study of the refined feminine
literature of the day the modern young lady acquires not only the
knowledge of some startling social delinquencies--retailed, not as if
they were quite the exception, but as if they were quite the correct
thing--but also she will learn that she is human. She will realize how
utterly absurd it is to attempt to be any thing else. If persons in
books, she will reflect, are not high-minded or pure-minded, or even
clean-minded, it is useless for an ordinary person out of a book to
attempt to be any of these.

This is the lesson of some new writers, and Catrina Lanovitch had,
fortunately enough, lacked the opportunity of learning it.

She only knew that she loved Paul, and that what she wanted was Paul's
love to go with her all through her life. She was not self-analytical,
nor subtle, nor given to thinking about her own thoughts. Perhaps she
was old-fashioned enough to be romantic. If this be so, we must bear
with her romance, remembering that, at all events, romance serves to
elevate, while realism tends undoubtedly toward deterioration.

Catrina hated Etta Sydney Bamborough with a simple half-barbaric hatred
because she had gained the love of Paul Alexis. Etta had taken away from
her the only man whom Catrina could ever love all through her life. The
girl was simple enough, unsophisticated enough, never to dream of
compromise. She never for a moment entertained the cheap, consolatory
thought that in time she would get over it; she would marry somebody
else, and make that compromise which is responsible for more misery in
this world than ever is vice. In her great solitude, growing to
womanhood as she had in the vast forest of Tver, she had learned nearly
all that she knew from the best teacher, Nature; and she held the
strange, effete theory that it is wicked for a woman to marry a man she
does not love, or to marry at all for any reason except love. St. Paul
and a few others held like theories, but nous avons changé tout cela.

"Where does she live?" asked Catrina.

"In London."

They walked on in silence for a few moments. They were walking slowly,
and they presently heard the footsteps of Karl Steinmetz and the servant
close behind them.

"I wonder," said Catrina, half to herself, "whether she loves you?"

It was a question, but not one that a man can answer. Paul said nothing,
but walked gravely on by the side of this woman, who knew that even if
Etta Sydney Bamborough should try she could never love him as she
herself did.

When Karl Steinmetz joined them they were silent.

"I suppose," he said in English, "that we may rely upon the discretion
of the Fraülein Catrina?"

"Yes," answered the girl; "you may, so far as Osterno is concerned. But
I would rather that you did not visit our people here. It is too
dangerous in several ways."

"Ah!" murmured Steinmetz, respectfully acquiescent. He was looking
straight in front of him, with an expression of countenance which was
almost dense. "Then we must bow to your decision," he went on, turning
toward the tall man striding along at his side.

"Yes," said Paul simply.

Steinmetz smiled grimly to himself. It was one of his half-cynical
theories that women hold the casting vote in all earthly matters, and
when an illustration such as this came to prove the correctness of his
deductions, he only smiled. He was not by nature a cynic--only by the
force of circumstances.

"Will you come to the castle?" asked the girl at length, and Steinmetz
by a gesture deferred the decision to Paul.

"I think not to-night, thanks," said the latter. "We will take you as
far as the gate."

Catrina made no comment. When the tall gate-way was reached she stopped,
and they all became aware of the sound of horses' feet behind them.

"What is this?" asked Catrina.

"Only the starosta bringing our horses," replied Steinmetz. "He has
discovered nothing."

Catrina nodded and held out her hand.

"Good-night," she said, rather coldly. "Your secret is safe with me."

"Set a thief to catch a thief," reflected Steinmetz. He said nothing,
however, when he shook hands.

They mounted their horses and rode back the way they had come. For half
an hour no one spoke. Then Paul broke the silence. He only said one
word:

"D--n."

"Yes," returned Steinmetz quietly. "Charity is a dangerous plaything."




CHAPTER XIV


A WIRE-PULLER

The Palace of Industry--where, with a fine sense of the fitness of the
name, the Parisians amuse themselves--was in a blaze of electric light
and fashion. The occasion was the Concours Hippique, an ultra-equine
fête, where the lovers of the friend of man, and such persons as are
fitted by an ungenerous fate with limbs suitable to horsey clothes, meet
and bow. In France, as in a neighboring land (less sunny), horsiness is
the last refuge of the diminutive. It is your small man who is ever the
horsiest in his outward appearance, just as it is your very plain young
person who is keenest at the Sunday-school class.

When a Frenchman is horsey he never runs the risk of being mistaken for
a groom or a jockey, as do his turfy compeers in England. His costume is
so exaggeratedly suggestive of the stable and the horse as to leave no
doubt whatever that he is an amateur of the most pronounced type. His
collar is so white and stiff and portentous as to make it impossible for
him to tighten up his own girths. His breeches are so breechy about the
knees as to render an ascent to the saddle a feat which it is not
prudent to attempt without assistance. His gloves are so large and seamy
as to make it extremely difficult to grasp the bridle, and quite
impossible to buckle a strap. Your French horseman is, in fact, rather
like a knight of old, inasmuch as his attendants are required to set him
on his horse with his face turned in the right direction, his bridle in
his left hand, his whip in his right, and, it is to be supposed, his
heart in his mouth. When he is once up there, however, the gallant son
of Gaul can teach even some of us, my fox-hunting masters, the way to
sit a horse!

We have, however, little to do with such matters here, except in so far
as they affect the persons connected with this record. The Concours
Hippique, be it therefore known, was at its height. Great deeds of
horsemanship had been successfully accomplished. The fair had smiled
beneath pencilled eyebrows upon the brave in uniform and breeches. At
the time when we join the fashionable throng, the fair are smiling their
brightest. It is, in fact, an interval for refreshment.

A crowd of well-dressed men jostled each other good-naturedly around a
long table, where insolent waiters served tepid coffee, and sandwiches
that had been cut by the hand of a knave. In the background a number of
ladies nodded encouragement to their cavaliers in the intervals of
scrutinizing each other's dresses. Many pencilled eyebrows were raised
in derision of too little style displayed by some innocent rival, or
brought down in disapproval of too much of the same vague quality
displayed by one less innocent.

In the midst of these, as in his element, moved the Baron Claude de
Chauxville, smiling his courteous, ready smile, which his enemies called
a grin. He took up less room than the majority of the men around him; he
succeeded in passing through narrower places, and jostled fewer people.
In a word, he proved to his own satisfaction, and to the discomfiture of
many a younger man, his proficiency in the gentle art of getting on in
the world.

Not far from him stood a stout gentleman of middle age, with a heavy
fair mustache brushed upward on either side. This man had an air of
distinction which was notable even in this assembly; for there were many
distinguished people present, and a Frenchman of note plays his part
better than do we dull, self-conscious islanders. This man looked like a
general, so upright was he, so keen his glance, so independent the
carriage of his head.

He stood with his hands behind his back, looking gravely on at the
social festivity. He bowed and raised his hat to many, but he entered
into conversation with none.

"Ce Vassili," he heard more than once whispered, "c'est un homme
dangereux."

And he smiled all the more pleasantly.

Now, if a very keen observer had taken the trouble to ignore the throng
and watch two persons only, that observer might have discovered the fact
that Claude de Chauxville was slowly and purposely making his way toward
the man called Vassili.

De Chauxville knew and was known of many. He had but recently arrived
from London. He found himself called upon to shake hands à l'anglais
with this one and that, giving all and sundry his impressions of the
perfidious Albion with a verve and neatness truly French. He went from
one to the other with perfect grace and savoir-faire, and each change of
position brought him nearer to the middle-aged man with upturned
mustache, upon whom his movements were by no means lost.

Finally De Chauxville bumped against the object of his quest--possibly,
indeed, the object of his presence at the Concours Hippique. He turned
with a ready apology.

"Ah!" he exclaimed; "the very man I was desiring to see."

The individual known as "ce Vassili"--a term of mingled contempt and
distrust--bowed very low. He was a plain commoner, while his
interlocutor was a baron. The knowledge of this was subtly conveyed in
his bow.

"How can I serve M. le Baron?" he enquired in a voice which was
naturally loud and strong, but had been reduced by careful training to a
tone inaudible at the distance of a few paces.

"By following me to the Café Tantale in ten minutes," answered De
Chauxville, passing on to greet a lady who was bowing to him with the
labored grace of a Parisienne.

Vassili merely bowed and stood upright again. There was something in his
attitude of quiet attention, of unobtrusive scrutiny and retiring
intelligence, vaguely suggestive of the police--something which his
friends refrained from mentioning to him; for this Vassili was a
dignified man, of like susceptibilities with ourselves, and justly proud
of the fact that he belonged to the Corps Diplomatique. What position he
occupied in that select corporation he never vouchsafed to define. But
it was known that he enjoyed considerable emoluments, while he was never
called upon to represent his country or his emperor in any official
capacity. He was attached, he said, to the Russian Embassy. His enemies
called him a spy; but the world never puts a charitable construction on
that of which it only has a partial knowledge.

In ten minutes Claude de Chauxville left the Concours Hippique. In the
Champs Elysées he turned to the left, up toward the Bois du Boulogne;
turned to the left again, and took one of the smaller paths that lead to
one or other of the sequestered and somewhat select cafés on the south
side of the Champs Elysées.

At the Café Tantale--not in the garden, for it was winter, but in the
inner room--he found the man called Vassili consuming a pensive and
solitary glass of liqueur.

De Chauxville sat down, stated his requirements to the waiter in a
single word, and offered his companion a cigarette, which Vassili
accepted with the consciousness that it came from a coroneted case.

"I am rather thinking of visiting Russia," said the Frenchman.

"Again," added Vassili, in his quiet voice.

De Chauxville looked up sharply, smiled, and waved the word away with a
gesture of the fingers that held a cigarette.

"If you will--again."

"On private affairs?" enquired Vassili, not so much, it would appear,
from curiosity as from habit. He put the question with the assurance of
one who has a right to know.

De Chauxville nodded acquiescence through the tobacco smoke.

"The bane of public men--private affairs," he said epigrammatically.

But the attaché to the Russian Embassy was either too dense or too
clever to be moved to a sympathetic smile by a cheap epigram.

"And M. le Baron wants a passport?" he said, lapsing into the useful
third person, which makes the French language so much more fitted to
social and diplomatic purposes than is our rough northern tongue.

"And more," answered De Chauxville. "I want what you hate parting
with--information."

The man called Vassili leaned back in his chair with a little smile. It
was an odd little smile, which fell over his features like a mask and
completely hid his thoughts. It was apparent that Claude de Chauxville's
tricks of speech and manner fell here on barren ground. The Frenchman's
epigrams, his method of conveying his meaning in a non-committing and
impersonal generality, failed to impress this hearer. The difference
between a Frenchman and a Russian is that the former is amenable to
every outward influence--the outer thing penetrates. The Russian, on the
contrary, is a man who works his thoughts, as it were, from internal
generation to external action. The action, moreover, is demonstrative,
which makes the Russian different from other northern nations of an
older civilization and a completer self-control.

"Then," said Vassili, "if I understand M. le Baron aright, it is a
question of private and personal affairs that suggests this journey
to--Russia?"

"Precisely."

"In no sense a mission?" suggested the other, sipping his liqueur
thoughtfully.

"In no sense a mission. I give you a proof. I have been granted six
months' leave of absence, as you probably know."

"Precisely so, mo' cher Baron." Vassili had a habit of applying to every
one the endearing epithet, which lost a consonant somewhere in his
mustache. "When a military officer is granted a six months' leave, it is
exactly then that we watch him."

De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders in deprecation, possibly with
contempt for any system of watching.

"May one call it an affaire de coeur?" asked Vassili, with his grim
smile.

"Certainly. Are not all private affairs such, one way or the other?"

"And you want a passport?"

"Yes--a special one."

"I will see what I can do."

"Thank you."

Vassili emptied his glass, drew in his feet, and glanced at the clock.

"But that is not all I want," said De Chauxville.

"So I perceive."

"I want you to tell me what you know of Prince Pavlo Alexis."

"Of Tver?"

"Of Tver. What you know from your point of view, you understand, my dear
Vassili. Nothing political, nothing incriminating, nothing official. I
only want a few social details."

Again the odd smile fell over the dignified face.

"In case," said Vassili, rather slowly, "I should only impart to you
stale news and valueless details with which you are already acquainted,
I must ask you to tell me first what you know--from your point of view."

"Certainly," answered De Chauxville, with engaging frankness. "The man I
know slightly is the sort of thing that Eton and Oxford turn out by the
dozen. Well dressed, athletic, silent, a thorough gentleman--et voilà
tout."

The face of Vassili expressed something remarkably like disbelief.

"Ye--es," he said slowly.

"And you?" suggested De Chauxville.

"You leave 

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