Author of “Angelica,” “The Married Man,” etc.
He sat in the small, hot room, in a state of pleased expectancy. He
awaited the entrance of something exotic and highly interesting,
probably with a beard. The catalogue of the Institute of Foreign
Languages had promised him a “native teacher,” and what could a native
Russian be but a bearded and mysterious creature?
He looked again through the pages of the unintelligible little red
book--all in Russian--and thought with delight of the time to come, when
it should be plain as day to him, when he should be able to say, with a
casual air, that he could read and speak Russian.
He was anxious, poor young fellow, for some claim to distinction. He was
only too well aware of his own ordinariness--a pleasant, friendly sort
of mediocrity which distressed him profoundly. He was slight,
sandy-haired, wiry, not unattractive, but certainly not fascinating.
People liked him but didn’t remember him.
He was not an idiot. He knew well enough that he had no brilliant or
remarkable qualities, and therefore, sure that he could not _be_
anything extraordinary, he had decided to _do_ something extraordinary.
He had decided, in short, to go to Russia, live there for a long time,
and write amazing books about it all.
Why not? He was a journalist; he could and did write articles about
everything; he wrote with facility and a certain skill. He had,
moreover, a naïve and innocent journalistic point of view. He saw the
“human interest” in things. He felt that he would very easily discern
the “human interest” in this Russian situation and present it to America
in moving terms. His paper was willing to buy the special articles he
intended to write, and on the pay for them he would live, Bolshevist
fashion, while he collected his material.
He took out his watch. He had paid for an hour, and fifteen minutes of
it had already passed. He frowned. After all, you know, he was somebody.
He was a newspaper man, and a graduate of Columbia University, and he
had paid cash for his twenty lessons, and people had no business to keep
him waiting.
He got up, opened the door, and walked about, hoping that his
restlessness might be observed from the corridor, and assuaged; but no
one passed. All the other doors along the corridor were closed, and he
heard a diligent hum, with now and then a French or German word familiar
to him, from other teachers and other pupils, properly employed. He had
decided to return to the office and “make a row,” and had got himself
into the proper mood for one, when he saw a figure hastening along the
corridor, and he went back and sat down.
She came in, breathless, sat down beside him, closed her eyes, and
placed both hands above her heart. He waited for her to speak with some
alarm, she gasped so. She was a plump little woman of indefinite
age--forty-five, he imagined--dressed in clothes such as he hadn’t seen
for fifteen years. All that she wore was dainty and fresh, with a
pitiful sort of elegance--little ruffles of fine lace about her wrists,
a bit of black velvet about her high collar. Her very shape was
old-fashioned--a succession of curves, a round, tight look, a sort of
dowdy neatness.
Nothing more foreign could be imagined. She didn’t stir, and he ventured
a look at her face. With her eyes thus closed, her soft, plump visage
had a look of profound sadness and immense wisdom. It impressed him, it
almost hypnotized him.
Suddenly she opened her eyes--pale gray eyes, clear and blank.
“My heart!” she said, in excellent English. “I suffer very much!” She
picked up the book. “Do you know any Russian words?” she asked, with a
shadowy smile.
“No,” he said; “not one.”
“A beautiful, beautiful language!” said she. “Only listen!”
She began reading him something from the middle of the book. Of course
he couldn’t comprehend a word, but he liked to hear it. Her voice was
charming, and the foreign sounds entertained him. She turned a page and
went on.
“This is an extract from a most beautiful Russian tale,” she explained.
“You would surely admire it.”
She continued. Her voice became sad, she made soft, slow gestures with
her small dimpled hand.
“Ah, how very sad this is!” she said. “All that is best in Russia is so
sad!”
“What’s the story about?” he asked, with curiosity.
“It is about two young men who are in an inn--” she began, when suddenly
a bell rang loudly in the room. “My God!” she said mildly. “What is
this?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“It must be that the lesson is ended,” said she. “One would not believe
how the time flies! You have not had your full time--I was so late. I
think I must go with you to the office and ask if I cannot make this up
to you.”
“Never mind,” said he. “Please don’t bother--it doesn’t matter!”
“Ah, but it does!” said she. “You have paid, and it is very important
that one should secure what one has paid for.”
She had risen, and went walking briskly along the corridor, an odd
little figure in a long, trailing skirt. He followed her into the quiet
office, where a severe director sat writing at a desk. He looked up with
a surprised air.
“I was late for this gentleman’s lesson,” said the stout little woman.
“He has missed much of it.”
“Then why do you waste more time in coming here?” cried the director,
with a frown. “Go back, _madame_, and finish it. Make the best of the
time that is left.”
“I thought the hour finished.”
“But on the contrary--the half-hour bell has just rung.”
“Ah!” said she, with a pleased smile. “I did not understand!”
And they walked back again, down the corridor, to the hot little room.
“I don’t understand everything of this,” she explained to him. “This is
my first lesson that I give. This position of Russian professor belongs
to my husband, but he is ill, and they kindly permit me to take his
place for this little while. Now we must not waste more time!”
She opened the book again, and studied it with serious regard.
“A difficult language,” she said; “but so very beautiful! The English
and Americans can never learn to pronounce our consonant sounds--never!
Could you say this?”
She uttered a sound, and he tried to imitate her, but failed. She smiled
with a sort of benevolent triumph.
“Ah, it cannot be done--not ever! Now, on the contrary, we Russians have
no difficulty whatsoever with any of the English words. I don’t know--it
is the Russian soul, perhaps. We have so great a sympathy. Nothing is
strange to us, nothing is foreign--nothing at all. We are at home in all
languages, in all countries. It is our mystery.”
“You speak English very well,” he said.
“Why not? I lived for years in England; but in this country, only three
months.”
She fell silent.
“Why is it that you wish to learn Russian?” she asked suddenly.
“Well, I thought of going to Russia, you know--to study the people and
write a book.”
“Useless!” she said calmly.
“Why?”
“Never can you know our people--above all things, now, in our time of
trouble. Oh,” she cried, “it is so _terrible_! I cannot bear that
strange people should go there now--to our Holy Russia, to see our
agony! If you knew!”
She covered her eyes with her hand.
“If you knew! We have left everything there, all we had on this earth.
We have no news of our friends. Perhaps they are dead; certainly they
are ruined. Such wonderful people--real Russian souls! We, too, are
ruined. We have lost everything we had.”
He was deeply impressed by the tragic note in her voice.
“I know,” he said; “but perhaps things will improve before long.”
“For Russia, yes--for us, no. We are ruined. We are finished,” she said
quite simply. “We are torn up by the roots. We are not young enough to
begin again. Above all, such a man as my husband--one of the greatest
minds of Russia. A wonderful man! Imagine you, he is an artist, he
paints, composes music, writes poetry, all in the most charming taste,
and he is also a marvelous financier. Ah, what is one to say to comfort
such a man? And that now he must teach Russian in this place!”
Again she was silent, and he didn’t like to interrupt her. He was deeply
interested in her--her fine voice, her passionate gesture, the extreme
_novelty_ of her. He was aware of a depth and variety of feeling in her
which amazed him. She was like a woman in a novel; and with it all she
had a simplicity such as he had never seen before. It was impossible to
doubt the sincerity of a single word she uttered.
She began to speak again.
“What is it that you think you will see in Russia?” she asked. “I tell
you, nothing! You will never see the Russian soul. You will stay there a
year, five years, ten years, and never will you know a single Russian.
No; we do not wear our hearts on our sleeves. Shall I tell you something
of us?”
“Yes, please do!” he said earnestly.
She began to tell him of Petrograd--of shops there, more elegant, she
said, than anything to be found in Paris. She described a certain
confectioner’s shop. When you went in, you were invited to sample all
the sweets displayed there, and there were hundreds of different
sorts--hundreds, she assured him! She described forty to him, lingering
in ecstasy over their perfections.
She told him of the houses, warm, full of flowers, in the bitterest
winter weather; and the women--the kindest women in all the world. She
talked of the court, but only briefly. She began to speak of the
Czarina, but she could not go on. The words strangled her.
“And all that is _gone_!” she said. “All that--my God!”
He carefully concealed his American disapproval of courts and
sovereigns. He even felt sorry, on her account, that it _had_ gone.
“I do not think that you know in this country what social life is,” she
said. “Here it is so formal, so without heart. With us, it is so
different. It may be that on a certain day I am tired, ill, lazy. I do
not wish to dress. I am in negligee. My friends come, and I receive them
just in this fashion. No one is surprised.
“‘For God’s sake, do not apologize, Anastasie!’ they say. ‘It is _you_
we come to see, not your fine clothes!’”
And here the bell rang again, unmistakably for the lesson’s end. Again
she was surprised.
“Ah!” she said. “It has been very pleasant for me to talk to you! You
are of a sympathetic nature, there is no doubt of that!”
He hadn’t learned a word, not a syllable of Russian, but he was entirely
satisfied. He felt that he had met with something even more truly
Russian than the language. He walked out of the building, feeling
decidedly more cosmopolitan.