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.