As soon as we reached the frontier I telegraphed to Prilukoff. I wanted
to send Elise back to Hyères with the money, but she refused to leave
me.
"What if Mr. Prilukoff were to kill me," she cried. "Then what would
your ladyship and poor little Master Tioka do, all alone in the world?"
"But my good Elise, why on earth should Mr. Prilukoff kill you?"
"I don't know," sighed Elise. "But he has become so strange of late--"
and after a pause, she added, under her breath: "We have all become very
strange."
It was true. I could not but admit it. We were "very strange." We were
not at all like other people. The people that we met on our journeys and
in hotels, for instance, all took an interest in external things--in the
surrounding landscape, or in works of art and monuments and cathedrals.
As for us, we never spoke about monuments. We never entered a cathedral.
We took no interest whatever in anything beyond our own dolorous souls.
We were even as those who travel with an invalid, watching him only,
caring for and thinking of nothing else. The invalid I traveled with was
my own sick soul.
The least peculiar among us was Count Kamarowsky. Yet even he, I fancy,
was not quite like other people. His was not a strong nature, like that
of some men I had known. Perhaps the Slav blood is responsible for much
that is abnormal and unconventional. Surely we are from the inmost
depths of our nature strangely removed from the Teutonic, the
Anglo-Saxon and even the Latin races, and our thoughts and actions must
frequently appear to them singular and incomprehensible.
As for Paul Kamarowsky, his dread of suffering was so great that he
preferred to know nothing that might cause him distress. In fear lest he
should see aught that might displease him, he chose to shut his eyes to
facts and truths, preferring voluntarily to tread the easy paths of a
fool's paradise. I longed to open my heart to him, to unburden my
travailed soul and clear my sullied conscience by a full confession; I
was ready to abide by the result, even if it meant the loss of my last
chance of rehabilitation, even should I forfeit thereby all hope of
marriage with a man of honor, rank and repute. But he closed my lips; he
sealed my heart; he firmly avoided all confidences and disclosures.
"Mura," he said, "my life and yours have been too full of errors and of
sorrow. Do not embitter this, our hour of joy. The past is buried; let
it rest. Do not drag what is dead to the light of day again."
I bowed my head in silence. But in the depths of my conscience I knew
that my past had been buried alive.
Not in my spirit alone did I suffer agonies at this period; my frail
body was racked with disease and my sufferings were continuous and
intense. Day by day I felt my strength decline, I saw myself wax thinner
and paler; rarely indeed did an hour pass that I could count free from
pain. The deep-seated ill that since the birth of my little daughter
Tania had struck its fiery roots into my inmost being now bore its toxic
fruits, slowly diffusing its poison through my veins. Sometimes the
pangs I suffered were so acute that I cried out in anguish, while beads
of cold perspiration started to my brow. But as a rule I was tortured by
a deep, dull, perpetual ache, a sense of utter weakness and weariness
that stifled all hope in me and all desire to live.
Oh, daughters of Eve, my purer and stronger sisters, women who have not
transgressed--you whose hatred and scorn have overwhelmed me, you whose
white hands have been so quick to throw the wounding stone--you alone can
comprehend the agony that racked my frame, the flaming sword that
pierced me, the sacred ill of womanhood that girt my body as with a sash
of fire. You who in such dark hours can shelter your sufferings in the
protecting shadow of your home, you who can seek refuge in a husband's
tenderness and hide your stricken brow upon a faithful breast, can you
not summon one throb of sorrow to your womanly hearts, one gleam of pity
to your gentle eyes, when you think of the tortures I dragged from hotel
to hotel, seeking to conceal my martyrdom from the inquisitive or
indifferent gaze of strangers, not daring to confide in the man who
loved me but who yet was almost a stranger?...
Who can describe the minor and yet genuine torment of the tight garments
cramping the aching body; the weight of the ornate head-dress on the
throbbing brow; the irony of rouge and cosmetics on the ashen cheeks;
and the nauseating distaste for the rich viands that one pretends to
enjoy while the noise of voices and music pierces your brain, and the
glaring electric lights stab your aching eyes like a hundred
knife-thrusts?
How often, on returning from some brilliant banquet to the silence and
solitude of a desolate hotel bedroom, have I wept aloud with vain
longing for one great joy denied to me, one supreme privilege of a happy
woman: that of being weary, ill, and miserable--and yet loved all the
same! How keenly have I envied some women I have known--women who were
not beautiful, not brilliant and not young, but by whose sick-bed in
their hour of pain a husband watched in tenderness and pity, faithful
throughout the years, throughout the changes that time brings, faithful
to the sad and pallid woman who had the right to lay her faded cheek
upon his breast.
None, none of those who vowed they loved me, would have loved me thus!
Not Vassili, not Bozevsky, not Stahl, not Kamarowsky. Prilukoff perhaps?
Who knows?
But Prilukoff was a thief, a fugitive, a criminal; and day and night I
prayed that he might not cross my path again.
He had not replied to my agitated telegram informing him that Elise had
unwittingly taken the money away. Nor did he, as I thought he would,
join us in Vienna where we stayed several days, expecting yet dreading
his arrival.
We were at a loss to know what to do with his stolen money. We did not
dare to send it to him at Hyères, where I knew he had been staying under
an assumed name and in constant terror of discovery. We did not dare to
leave it in our rooms at the hotel. Elise carried it about with her day
and night in the hated black leather satchel, which had become to us a
nightmare, an incubus, an obsession. With a bitter smile I recalled the
story of the English hunters in India who succeeded in capturing that
most precious and sacred among all animals: a white elephant. And having
captured it they knew not what to do with it. They trailed it after them
across land and sea--ponderous, slow, magnificent; and nobody wanted it,
and nobody knew what to do with it nor how to get rid of it. Prilukoff's
stolen money was indeed a white elephant for us.
Kamarowsky with his little son had joined us in Vienna, bringing all our
luggage with him. He was as boisterous as a schoolboy out for a holiday.
"There are no spies here, are there, Mura?" he laughed, kissing my cheek
loudly. "No spies to drive us away!"
Again I was hurt that he should thus make light of the mysteries of my
existence. Should he not have demanded an explanation of my flight from
Hyères? Should he not have insisted upon knowing who had followed me
there? What love was this that could voluntarily blindfold itself and
evade all explanations?
Not this, not this was the love I had dreamed of and hoped for, the
steadfast refuge for my wavering spirit, the longed-for haven for my
storm-tossed soul.
We proceeded almost immediately to Orel. At this period I possessed no
money at all of my own; what little I had had when I left Moscow had
been spent; but not for a moment did I entertain the thought of touching
Prilukoff's ill-gotten wealth. Paul Kamarowsky insisted upon providing
all our traveling and hotel expenses; but it was embarrassing to be
unable to tip a servant or to pay for even the smallest trifle that
Tioka or I might want.
I made up my mind to lay frankly before my betrothed my deplorable
financial situation. And I did so on the journey to Orel. He seemed much
amused at my confession; and the fact of our utter dependence upon him
seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure.
He filled my purse with gold, and made me promise that I would always
ask him for anything I might need or desire.
How well I remember our arrival at Orel! It was a radiant afternoon in
October. Count Kamarowsky accompanied us to our hotel, where
flower-filled apartments awaited us; then he left us at once to go in
search of a young friend of his, the son of the Governor of Orel, who
had promised to see to our passports as soon as we arrived.