MOSCOW
This winter we had to give tiresome “At Homes” every Sunday from four to
six. I was so pleased when those tedious two hours were over.
Every morning I went out for a ride with Sergy and had a gallop round
the Park on my beautiful horse named “Sailor,” black as jet, with a coat
shining like satin, which Sergy had just presented to me. In bad weather
I went to a riding-school. I met there one day a stout lady perched on a
pacific-looking horse, who was rolling like a barrel on her saddle. She
wanted to try “Sailor,” and I seated myself good-naturedly on her old
hack. We had scarcely made two or three tours, when the “fatty” tumbled
off my horse and lay sprawling on the sand, whilst “Sailor,” feeling
himself free from his heavy burden, went gambolling round the track,
rearing and prancing after me with sheer joy of life, and trying to catch
my habit with his long teeth. Loosing my head, I cried out shrilly,
“Help! help!” and a gentleman who had come to the manège as a looker-on,
sprang forward and was just in time to catch me in his arms as I fell
from the saddle. He profited by the opportunity in coming to our “At
Homes” the very next Sunday, and the Sunday after, and many other Sundays
besides.
We frequented regularly the concerts of the “Philharmonic Society,” where
the audience, for the most part, was far more interested in themselves
than in the music to which they were supposed to listen. I often met at
these concerts an elegant young man, whose gaze followed me persistently;
turning my head I always found his eyes upon me. One night he came up
with a friend of ours and asked to be presented to me. When the concert
was over, he followed us to the cloak-room, and helped me on with my
pelisse, drawing it over my shoulders with lingering tenderness of
touch, and squeezed my hand in a manner that spoke volumes. According
to my permission, he came to call next afternoon, which happened to be
a Sunday, and took advantage of every possible occasion to visit us.
Wherever I was going he would find out and go too. I do not deny that
I flirted a little with him, for I love to be loved, but it was really
a shame of me to put ideas into his head. He flamed up one day, and
looking admiringly into my eyes, burst into the most fiery declaration,
telling me he had loved me since the first time he had met me, that
the fever of love consumed him night and day, and all sort of other
sentimental rubbish. But my temperature, as far as he was concerned, was
unvariably under zero, his great love left me unmoved, and his eloquence
was all in vain. He was extremely jealous into the bargain; he was even
angry with my parrot when the bird had too much of my attention. I soon
became thoroughly tired of him; he exasperated me with his suppressed
sighs and melancholy and I wished I hadn’t made him so fond of me. I
did all in my power to discourage him and heartlessly asked him to put
himself out of my way, but he would not obey me, and regardless of
the weather, it might rain, snow, or storm, he was always to be seen
standing before my windows on the opposite side of the street, looking up
through opera glasses trying to see what I was doing inside, and looking
profoundly miserable, just like a stock figure weeping on a tombstone. To
arrive nearer my heart my suitor loaded me with flowers and bonbons, and
bored me with passionate letters in prose and in verse, but I tossed his
epistles half-read into the waste-paper basket. Everything wears out with
time; his broken heart began to mend; he was seen no more and disappeared
completely from my horizon.