(French of Iola Dorian: Nita Fitch: New York Saturday Review.)
It is the morning of the Epiphany.
The intense cold of the night has moderated, but the barometer still
marks fifteen degrees below zero. From the tall steeples of innumerable
churches the bells of St. Petersburg ring in the sacred feast. In an
exquisitely appointed room of a palace, where tender lights filter
through the golden shadows of silken hangings, sits a woman. Her
attitude is one of repose, deep, unruffled. From the crown of her
little flame colored head, to the tip of her dainty shoe, she is a
perfect bit of dame Nature’s art. If she were standing we should call
her tall, but she sits crouching in her chair with all the abandon of a
dozing tigress. She gives a little yawn.
“Ah! late as usual,” she says aloud.
As she speaks the door opens and a servant enters.
“Captain Repine,” he announces.
He follows quickly on the man’s heels, short, thickset, with a dull
Cossack face and kindly smile, wearing the uniform of an officer of the
Imperial body-guard.
“Pardon, my dear Elisaveta. Have I made you wait?”
She gives her shapely shoulders a slight shrug, but watches him with
contemplative eyes as he rattles on.
“Imagine, my beloved, I thought that I should not be able to take you
to the races. I was so rushed at the last moment. Oh! but they will be
superb! Never has the track been more perfect; hard as a rock and not a
flake of snow.”
“Indeed,” says the lady languidly. Putting out a lazy, be-ringed hand
she draws back the curtain that hides her window. “It is superb,” she
assents.
“You know how difficult it is to accomplish that,” continues the young
officer, “with this cursed wind drifting the Ladoga snow. Still I must
tell you that five hundred men have worked all night at it. Brave
fellows!
“The journals say something of a three-horse-race.”
“Yes; the event of the day. But come--”
“We have still an hour,” she answers, and motions him to a seat beside
her.
“No, no, at your feet, always at your feet, Princess Veta,” says the
young man gayly, flinging his head back to better look into the
opal-tinted eyes above him. Keeping time with a heavy finger, he sings
in a not unmusical baritone, two lines from a French love song:
“Quand tu seras ma femme
M’obeiras--tu mieux?”
But the fair Elisaveta is oblivious to the importance of his melody’s
burthen. With her little pointed chin against the rose of her palm she
sits lost in a world of reverie.
“Do you remember Sergius Hotzka?” she asks suddenly.
He shrugs his shoulders, accustomed to the willful wanderings of the
great city’s petted belle.
“How could I ever forget him,” he says in turn. “Was there ever a
man who left more ineffaceable traces behind him? He was an original
madman.”
“Original!” echoes Elisaveta. “Ah! what a cowardly word. Original?”
she repeats, as though interrogating her own thought. The young man
frowns slightly, but she goes on with calm retrospection. “Only three
years ago,” she said, “and he appeared among us like some brilliant
meteor; fabulously rich; astonishing the world with his eccentric
prodigalities. Then all those clod rooting swine, they deserted him
when he was no longer wealthy.”
Her lover’s white teeth are like a wolfish danger signal as he turns to
look at her.
“My dear,” he says coldly, “you can’t expect the world to be faithful
to a proscript.”
“Proscript?”
“Exactly. They say that political complications were his ruin. At any
rate he is banished from St. Petersburg.”
“Then he is in Siberia?”
With all a soldier’s diplomacy he says indifferently: “I believe
not. The peasants tell a story of a hermit of the Steppes, who mends
kettles, and plows for the farmers. Many believe it to be Hotzka with
the remains of his own famous stud.”
“Farmers,--Kettles,” echoes Elisaveta, absently.
Suddenly she turns on her moody swain.
“Come, Alexander,” she cries; “I can see the crowds gather from here.
Quick--we must hurry.”
It is scarcely a half-hour later and the race course presents a
brilliant spectacle. The river Neva is now only a colossal roadway,
between two walls of splendid rose granite that line its quays. It
is a mirror of polished steel. Stands, richly decorated with flags,
occupy at least a quarter of the inclosure, and over a hundred thousand
spectators surround the arena. In the center of everything, a great
pavilion draped in purple and gold shows that royalty is expected to
take part in the city’s festival. A huge figure in a white uniform
shows itself. The impassiveness of this countenance, with its eagle
profile and small glittering eyes, is unmistakable.
’Tis he, the Autocrat--the Emperor of all the Russias.
From the human hive mounts and swells a growing noise; cries, oaths,
calls from the _Kras_ senders, all blend themselves in a formidable
roar: “Long live the Tzar!”
At this moment a rosewood sled, drawn by white horses, stops in
front of the box nearest the royal pavilion; the president of the
jury precipitates himself at the horses feet and aids a young woman
to descend. The tall figure, with its long, loose wrap of priceless
blue fox and its aureole of wonderful red hair, is well-known in St.
Petersburg. She is the Princess Elisaveta Palorna, the beauty of three
seasons. Repine follows her. Under her little fur cap, with its jeweled
fez, Veta’s eyes look out, serene, impenetrable. A bell sounds and
silence falls on the waiting multitude. From open gates stream a dozen
or more horses harnessed to light sleds of gilded osier. They are pure
blooded Arabians, thickset mustangs from the Steppes, and highly bred
Orloffs with sweeping manes white and shiny as spun glass.
The people watch these preliminaries apathetically. They are waiting
for the _piece de resistance_, the three-horse-race with princes as
drivers. Already four races have been run, the track is cleared and the
five hundred workers take up their task of sweeping away the powdered
ice beaten up by the iron hoofs. Once more the gates open and three
splendid bays appear with the same sled of gilded osier, but larger and
more elegant; they are followed by three black Finlanders, with shaggy
coats and tails that sweep the ground. The last comers are Orloff
stallions, white and dazzling as the snow itself. Their short hair
glistens as though oiled, and silver reflections shadow their smooth
flanks and elegant necks; their mouths are black and their nostrils
immense, quivering and rose-lined; their eyes, tender, yet prominent
and full of fire, are circled by a sooty ring like those of the Asiatic
women. They are the pets of the hour. There they stand, the nine superb
creatures, controlled by a splendid discipline that does not permit
the most timid pawing of their impatient hoofs, and with over two
hundred thousand eyes admiring their matchless perfection.
Three sorry horses, emaciated and sad, splashed with mud, and covered
with a ragged harness, half string, half leather, advance slowly into
the arena; behind them trails a clumsy vehicle, made from the bark of
the Russian fir tree, and shaped like the Laplander’s hunting sled.
With drooping heads and dragging limbs the weary beasts come forward
and place themselves beside their aristocratic predecessors. A cry of
horror rises up from the crowd. Leaning back in her box, Veta watches
the late arrivals with fixed intentness.
The bell rings noisily. The race commences.
The bays lead by several lengths. The middle horse, an old favorite,
lifts his feet with all the alluring charm of a star of the nation’s
hippodrome; his companions, brothers from the Don, thin and ardent, run
without effort. After them come the Finlanders tearing furiously on
the reins. Sufficiently in the rear to astonish their backers, are the
Orloff stallions veritable wonders of beauty and breed.
Finally, following at a long distance behind their royal leaders,
are the three strange beasts with their Laplandish sled. They run
irregularly, and their little thin bells give out a melancholy sound.
It is in this order that the sleds pass for the first time in front of
the judges’ stand.
Half way on the second round the Finlanders fling out their sturdy
heels with such velocity that they look like the half circle of a
bounding hoop. They pass the bays. A quick swelling of their massive
chests and they forge ahead.
“Hurrah!” shriek the people, ravished with the success of their
favorites. At this moment the unknown peasant straightens up his giant
frame. Pushing back the heavy hat drawn down to his eyes, he grips the
reins with an iron hand and gives a curious prolonged whistle. His
skeleton horses are strangely metamorphosed. As though in answer to
some superhuman command, they give one gigantic leap and fairly fly.
For a moment they run beside the white stallions.
“The Orloffs lead!” screams the multitude, then shudders.
Beyond the shapely heads of the city’s favorites stretch six dark,
pointed ears, to be followed by three heads with glaring eyes, and
foaming, blood-flecked jaws.
With her body stretched half out of her box, Veta watches them with
fascinated eyes. Her chest heaves, her limbs tremble, and her face
takes on the anguish of the laboring brutes.
“Don’t worry,” whispers Repine. “They will lose.”
“They will _win_!” she answers hoarsely. “I know them.”
“The Orloffs gain,” says somebody in the next box.
“Ah!” groans Veta and bites her lip to the blood.
Once more the peasant’s whistle startles the still air, and with a
prodigious effort his horses leave the others behind. Transfigured by
the waking of their unknown blood, carried away by a secret ecstacy,
with floating manes and sonorous breath, they rush on toward the
expected goal.
They reach it--victorious--winners by three lengths.
For one long moment the people rest mute with stupefaction, literally
incapable of applause. They stare open-mouthed at the sordid beasts
that have beaten the noblest blood of the land, then like one man they
dash forward to look at them, to ask their race, and the name of their
uncouth driver.
As the victors pass Veta leans out to look at them. “I must see them,”
she says aloud.
At the sound of that voice, the peasant starts. Lifting his head their
eyes meet. She pales but that is all.
Months have passed, and the extraordinary event that astonished the
Peterbourgeois is no more than ancient history. Nobody has learned
the identity of the mysterious peasant. Many believed him a sorcerer.
Others thought him a great doctor of some unknown science, whose
powerful potion had galvanized the exhausted beasts. But it is all only
a memory now. A new sensation is on the _tapis_.
All St. Petersburg is talking of the marriage of Prince Alexander
Repine to Princess Elisaveta Palorna.
It is evening, and Veta stands for the first time in her husband’s
home. She is alone, on a great veranda that half circles the palace.
She still wears her wedding dress, and the stones of a diamond tiara
sparkle in her hair.
“Mistress,” says a voice behind her. She turns to confront her
husband’s faithful old servant. “Mistress, a present awaits you at the
palace gate. Shall I lead you thither?”
“Yes.”
She follows him down the steps with all the lazy insolence of a fine
lady who grants a favor; her long gown sweeps the dew off the grass,
and the moonlight mirrors itself in the soft curves of her naked arms
and shoulders.
Presently she stops, stricken by a mysterious influence.
A moment more and a strange sight meets her view.
They are the winners of the Neva.
With a wave from her hand, Ivan goes.
The horses whinny softly at the sound of her voice, and nose her hair
and face with dog-like gentleness.
“Why are you here?” she whispers, a sudden catch in her throat that she
stifles against the emaciated cheek nearest her.
From out of the deep shadow comes a trembling voice. “Why do you weep,
Princess?” it says.
She sees him now for the first time, still in his peasant’s garb and
with head uncovered, low before her. It is a noble head, with splendid
lines and a beautiful mouth, but worn and shadowed as those of the
famished beasts beside him.
“Why are they like this, Sergius? The best racers in the kingdom could
have brought their price; there certainly was no need to starve them.”
“We have starved together, Princess,” he answers gently.
“Then the story that the people tell is true?”
“Quite true.”
With the skeleton creatures between them they are silent a wavering
moment. Then with a mute caress of their unkempt necks he says: “Be
kind to Sergius Hotzka’s only friends. Good-night, Elizaveta Repine.”
“Repine!” she had forgotten that.
“Is it farewell?” she asks him blindly.
“Farewell!” he repeats.
The horses whinny piteously as the gates close behind him; then turn
with dumb, questioning eyes to the pallid woman beside them.
Brutes that they are they tremble at the sight of that countenance,
quivering and terrible.
“Wait,” is her husky whisper.
With her face pressed tight to the iron bars, she watches him turn an
angle in the roadway; his footsteps die away in the distance; he is
gone.
Flinging the gates wide open she says one word:
“Go.”
A sudden rush, and they are swallowed up in the night.
The next day the newspapers contain a sensation.
Three wild horses have killed a prince’s bride.