“It is a glorious day.”
Her voice, slightly harsh, but fascinating with its masculine and
bird-like quality, had the accent of spontaneous conviction. I was glad
of it. It was as though she had become aware of her youth--for there was
but little of spring-like glory in the rectangular railed space of
grass and trees, framed visibly by the orderly roof-slopes of that town,
comely without grace, and hospitable without sympathy. In the very air
through which she moved there was but little warmth; and the sky, the
sky of a land without horizons, swept and washed clean by the April
showers, extended a cold cruel blue, without elevation, narrowed
suddenly by the ugly, dark wall of the Jura where, here and there,
lingered yet a few miserable trails and patches of snow. All the glory
of the season must have been within herself--and I was glad this feeling
had come into her life, if only for a little time.
“I am pleased to hear you say these words.” She gave me a quick look.
Quick, not stealthy. If there was one thing of which she was absolutely
incapable, it was stealthiness, Her sincerity was expressed in the very
rhythm of her walk. It was I who was looking at her covertly--if I may
say so. I knew where she had been, but I did not know what she had seen
and heard in that nest of aristocratic conspiracies. I use the word
aristocratic, for want of a better term. The Chateau Borel, embowered
in the trees and thickets of its neglected grounds, had its fame in our
day, like the residence of that other dangerous and exiled woman, Madame
de Stael, in the Napoleonic era. Only the Napoleonic despotism, the
booted heir of the Revolution, which counted that intellectual woman for
an enemy worthy to be watched, was something quite unlike the autocracy
in mystic vestments, engendered by the slavery of a Tartar conquest.
And Madame de S-- was very far from resembling the gifted author of
_Corinne_. She made a great noise about being persecuted. I don’t
know if she were regarded in certain circles as dangerous. As to being
watched, I imagine that the Chateau Borel could be subjected only to a
most distant observation. It was in its exclusiveness an ideal abode for
hatching superior plots--whether serious or futile. But all this did not
interest me. I wanted to know the effect its extraordinary inhabitants
and its special atmosphere had produced on a girl like Miss Haldin, so
true, so honest, but so dangerously inexperienced! Her unconsciously
lofty ignorance of the baser instincts of mankind left her disarmed
before her own impulses. And there was also that friend of her brother,
the significant new arrival from Russia.... I wondered whether she
had managed to meet him.
We walked for some time, slowly and in silence.
“You know,” I attacked her suddenly, “if you don’t intend telling me
anything, you must say so distinctly, and then, of course, it shall be
final. But I won’t play at delicacy. I ask you point-blank for all the
details.”
She smiled faintly at my threatening tone.
“You are as curious as a child.”
“No. I am only an anxious old man,” I replied earnestly.
She rested her glance on me as if to ascertain the degree of my anxiety
or the number of my years. My physiognomy has never been expressive,
I believe, and as to my years I am not ancient enough as yet to be
strikingly decrepit. I have no long beard like the good hermit of a
romantic ballad; my footsteps are not tottering, my aspect not that of
a slow, venerable sage. Those picturesque advantages are not mine. I am
old, alas, in a brisk, commonplace way. And it seemed to me as though
there were some pity for me in Miss Haldin’s prolonged glance. She
stepped out a little quicker.
“You ask for all the details. Let me see. I ought to remember them. It
was novel enough for a--a village girl like me.”
After a moment of silence she began by saying that the Chateau Borel was
almost as neglected inside as outside. It was nothing to wonder at, a
Hamburg banker, I believe, retired from business, had it built to cheer
his remaining days by the view of that lake whose precise, orderly,
and well-to-do beauty must have been attractive to the unromantic
imagination of a business man. But he died soon. His wife departed
too (but only to Italy), and this house of moneyed ease, presumably
unsaleable, had stood empty for several years. One went to it up a
gravel drive, round a large, coarse grass-plot, with plenty of time to
observe the degradation of its stuccoed front. Miss Haldin said that the
impression was unpleasant. It grew more depressing as one came nearer.
She observed green stains of moss on the steps of the terrace. The front
door stood wide open. There was no one about. She found herself in a
wide, lofty, and absolutely empty hall, with a good many doors. These
doors were all shut. A broad, bare stone staircase faced her, and
the effect of the whole was of an untenanted house. She stood still,
disconcerted by the solitude, but after a while she became aware of a
voice speaking continuously somewhere.
“You were probably being observed all the time,” I suggested. “There
must have been eyes.”
“I don’t see how that could be,” she retorted. “I haven’t seen even a
bird in the grounds. I don’t remember hearing a single twitter in the
trees. The whole place appeared utterly deserted except for the voice.”
She could not make out the language--Russian, French, or German. No one
seemed to answer it. It was as though the voice had been left behind by
the departed inhabitants to talk to the bare walls. It went on volubly,
with a pause now and then. It was lonely and sad. The time seemed very
long to Miss Haldin. An invincible repugnance prevented her from opening
one of the doors in the hall. It was so hopeless. No one would come, the
voice would never stop. She confessed to me that she had to resist an
impulse to turn round and go away unseen, as she had come.
“Really? You had that impulse?” I cried, full of regret. “What a pity
you did not obey it.”
She shook her head.
“What a strange memory it would have been for one. Those deserted
grounds, that empty hall, that impersonal, voluble voice, and--nobody,
nothing, not a soul.”
The memory would have been unique and harmless. But she was not a girl
to run away from an intimidating impression of solitude and mystery.
“No, I did not run away,” she said. “I stayed where I was--and I did see
a soul. Such a strange soul.”
As she was gazing up the broad staircase, and had concluded that
the voice came from somewhere above, a rustle of dress attracted her
attention. She looked down and saw a woman crossing the hall, having
issued apparently through one of the many doors. Her face was averted,
so that at first she was not aware of Miss Haldin.
On turning her head and seeing a stranger, she appeared very much
startled. From her slender figure Miss Haldin had taken her for a young
girl; but if her face was almost childishly round, it was also sallow
and wrinkled, with dark rings under the eyes. A thick crop of dusty
brown hair was parted boyishly on the side with a lateral wave above the
dry, furrowed forehead. After a moment of dumb blinking, she suddenly
squatted down on the floor.
“What do you mean by squatted down?” I asked, astonished. “This is a
very strange detail.”
Miss Haldin explained the reason. This person when first seen was
carrying a small bowl in her hand. She had squatted down to put it
on the floor for the benefit of a large cat, which appeared then from
behind her skirts, and hid its head into the bowl greedily. She got up,
and approaching Miss Haldin asked with nervous bluntness--
“What do you want? Who are you?”
Miss Haldin mentioned her name and also the name of Peter Ivanovitch.
The girlish, elderly woman nodded and puckered her face into a momentary
expression of sympathy. Her black silk blouse was old and even frayed
in places; the black serge skirt was short and shabby. She continued to
blink at close quarters, and her eyelashes and eyebrows seemed shabby
too. Miss Haldin, speaking gently to her, as if to an unhappy and
sensitive person, explained how it was that her visit could not be an
altogether unexpected event to Madame de S--.
“Ah! Peter Ivanovitch brought you an invitation. How was I to know? A
_dame de compangnie_ is not consulted, as you may imagine.”
The shabby woman laughed a little. Her teeth, splendidly white and
admirably even, looked absurdly out of place, like a string of pearls on
the neck of a ragged tramp. “Peter Ivanovitch is the greatest genius of
the century perhaps, but he is the most inconsiderate man living. So if
you have an appointment with him you must not be surprised to hear that
he is not here.”
Miss Haldin explained that she had no appointment with Peter Ivanovitch.
She became interested at once in that bizarre person.
“Why should he put himself out for you or any one else? Oh! these
geniuses. If you only knew! Yes! And their books--I mean, of course, the
books that the world admires, the inspired books. But you have not been
behind the scenes. Wait till you have to sit at a table for a half a day
with a pen in your hand. He can walk up and down his rooms for hours and
hours. I used to get so stiff and numb that I was afraid I would lose my
balance and fall off the chair all at once.”
She kept her hands folded in front of her, and her eyes, fixed on Miss
Haldin’s face, betrayed no animation whatever. Miss Haldin, gathering
that the lady who called herself a _dame de compangnie_ was proud of
having acted as secretary to Peter Ivanovitch, made an amiable remark.
“You could not imagine a more trying experience,” declared the lady.
“There is an Anglo-American journalist interviewing Madame de S-- now,
or I would take you up,” she continued in a changed tone and glancing
towards the staircase. “I act as master of ceremonies.”
It appeared that Madame de S-- could not bear Swiss servants about
her person; and, indeed, servants would not stay for very long in the
Chateau Borel. There were always difficulties. Miss Haldin had already
noticed that the hall was like a dusty barn of marble and stucco with
cobwebs in the corners and faint tracks of mud on the black and white
tessellated floor.
“I look also after this animal,” continued the _dame de compagnie_,
keeping her hands folded quietly in front of her; and she bent her
worn gaze upon the cat. “I don’t mind a bit. Animals have their rights;
though, strictly speaking, I see no reason why they should not suffer as
well as human beings. Do you? But of course they never suffer so much.
That is impossible. Only, in their case it is more pitiful because they
cannot make a revolution. I used to be a Republican. I suppose you are a
Republican?”
Miss Haldin confessed to me that she did not know what to say. But she
nodded slightly, and asked in her turn--
“And are you no longer a Republican?”
“After taking down Peter Ivanovitch from dictation for two years, it is
difficult for me to be anything. First of all, you have to sit perfectly
motionless. The slightest movement you make puts to flight the ideas of
Peter Ivanovitch. You hardly dare to breathe. And as to coughing--God
forbid! Peter Ivanovitch changed the position of the table to the wall
because at first I could not help raising my eyes to look out of the
window, while waiting for him to go on with his dictation. That was not
allowed. He said I stared so stupidly. I was likewise not permitted to
look at him over my shoulder. Instantly Peter Ivanovitch stamped his
foot, and would roar, ‘Look down on the paper!’ It seems my expression,
my face, put him off. Well, I know that I am not beautiful, and that my
expression is not hopeful either. He said that my air of unintelligent
expectation irritated him. These are his own words.”
Miss Haldin was shocked, but admitted to me that she was not altogether
surprised.
“Is it possible that Peter Ivanovitch could treat any woman so rudely?”
she cried.
The _dame de compagnie_ nodded several times with an air of discretion,
then assured Miss Haldin that she did not mind in the least. The trying
part of it was to have the secret of the composition laid bare before
her; to see the great author of the revolutionary gospels grope for
words as if he were in the dark as to what he meant to say.
“I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To
give one’s life for the cause is nothing. But to have one’s illusions
destroyed--that is really almost more than one can bear. I really don’t
exaggerate,” she insisted. “It seemed to freeze my very beliefs in
me--the more so that when we worked in winter Peter Ivanovitch, walking
up and down the room, required no artificial heat to keep himself warm.
Even when we move to the South of France there are bitterly cold days,
especially when you have to sit still for six hours at a stretch. The
walls of these villas on the Riviera are so flimsy. Peter Ivanovitch did
not seem to be aware of anything. It is true that I kept down my shivers
from fear of putting him out. I used to set my teeth till my jaws felt
absolutely locked. In the moments when Peter Ivanovitch interrupted his
dictation, and sometimes these intervals were very long--often twenty
minutes, no less, while he walked to and fro behind my back muttering
to himself--I felt I was dying by inches, I assure you. Perhaps if I had
let my teeth rattle Peter Ivanovitch might have noticed my distress, but
I don’t think it would have had any practical effect. She’s very miserly
in such matters.”
The _dame de compagnie_ glanced up the staircase. The big cat had
finished the milk and was rubbing its whiskered cheek sinuously against
her skirt. She dived to snatch it up from the floor.
“Miserliness is rather a quality than otherwise, you know,” she
continued, holding the cat in her folded arms. “With us it is misers who
can spare money for worthy objects--not the so-called generous natures.
But pray don’t think I am a sybarite. My father was a clerk in the
Ministry of Finances with no position at all. You may guess by this that
our home was far from luxurious, though of course we did not actually
suffer from cold. I ran away from my parents, you know, directly I began
to think by myself. It is not very easy, such thinking. One has got to
be put in the way of it, awakened to the truth. I am indebted for my
salvation to an old apple-woman, who had her stall under the gateway
of the house we lived in. She had a kind wrinkled face, and the most
friendly voice imaginable. One day, casually, we began to talk about a
child, a ragged little girl we had seen begging from men in the streets
at dusk; and from one thing to another my eyes began to open gradually
to the horrors from which innocent people are made to suffer in
this world, only in order that governments might exist. After I once
understood the crime of the upper classes, I could not go on living with
my parents. Not a single charitable word was to be heard in our home
from year’s end to year’s end; there was nothing but the talk of vile
office intrigues, and of promotion and of salaries, and of courting the
favour of the chiefs. The mere idea of marrying one day such another man
as my father made me shudder. I don’t mean that there was anyone wanting
to marry me. There was not the slightest prospect of anything of the
kind. But was it not sin enough to live on a Government salary while
half Russia was dying of hunger? The Ministry of Finances! What a
grotesque horror it is! What does the starving, ignorant people want
with a Ministry of Finances? I kissed my old folks on both cheeks, and
went away from them to live in cellars, with the proletariat. I tried
to make myself useful to the utterly hopeless. I suppose you understand
what I mean? I mean the people who have nowhere to go and nothing to
look forward to in this life. Do you understand how frightful that
is--nothing to look forward to! Sometimes I think that it is only in
Russia that there are such people and such a depth of misery can be
reached. Well, I plunged into it, and--do you know--there isn’t much
that one can do in there. No, indeed--at least as long as there are
Ministries of Finances and such like grotesque horrors to stand in the
way. I suppose I would have gone mad there just trying to fight the
vermin, if it had not been for a man. It was my old friend and
teacher, the poor saintly apple-woman, who discovered him for me, quite
accidentally. She came to fetch me late one evening in her quiet way. I
followed her where she would lead; that part of my life was in her hands
altogether, and without her my spirit would have perished miserably. The
man was a young workman, a lithographer by trade, and he had got
into trouble in connexion with that affair of temperance tracts--you
remember. There was a lot of people put in prison for that. The Ministry
of Finances again! What would become of it if the poor folk ceased
making beasts of themselves with drink? Upon my word, I would think that
finances and all the rest of it are an invention of the devil; only that
a belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone
are quite capable of every wickedness. Finances indeed!”
Hatred and contempt hissed in her utterance of the word “finances,” but
at the very moment she gently stroked the cat reposing in her arms.
She even raised them slightly, and inclining her head rubbed her cheek
against the fur of the animal, which received this caress with the
complete detachment so characteristic of its kind. Then looking at Miss
Haldin she excused herself once more for not taking her upstairs to
Madame S-- The interview could not be interrupted. Presently the
journalist would be seen coming down the stairs. The best thing was to
remain in the hall; and besides, all these rooms (she glanced all
round at the many doors), all these rooms on the ground floor were
unfurnished.
“Positively there is no chair down here to offer you,” she continued.
“But if you prefer your own thoughts to my chatter, I will sit down on
the bottom step here and keep silent.”
Miss Haldin hastened to assure her that, on the contrary, she was very
much interested in the story of the journeyman lithographer. He was a
revolutionist, of course.
“A martyr, a simple man,” said the _dame de compangnie_, with a faint
sigh, and gazing through the open front door dreamily. She turned her
misty brown eyes on Miss Haldin.
“I lived with him for four months. It was like a nightmare.”
As Miss Haldin looked at her inquisitively she began to describe the
emaciated face of the man, his fleshless limbs, his destitution.
The room into which the apple-woman had led her was a tiny garret, a
miserable den under the roof of a sordid house. The plaster fallen off
the walls covered the floor, and when the door was opened a horrible
tapestry of black cobwebs waved in the draught. He had been liberated a
few days before--flung out of prison into the streets. And Miss Haldin
seemed to see for the first time, a name and a face upon the body of
that suffering people whose hard fate had been the subject of so many
conversations, between her and her brother, in the garden of their
country house.
He had been arrested with scores and scores of other people in that
affair of the lithographed temperance tracts. Unluckily, having got hold
of a great many suspected persons, the police thought they could extract
from some of them other information relating to the revolutionist
propaganda.
“They beat him so cruelly in the course of investigation,” went on the
_dame de compagnie_, “that they injured him internally. When they had
done with him he was doomed. He could do nothing for himself. I beheld
him lying on a wooden bedstead without any bedding, with his head on a
bundle of dirty rags, lent to him out of charity by an old rag-picker,
who happened to live in the basement of the house. There he was,
uncovered, burning with fever, and there was not even a jug in the
room for the water to quench his thirst with. There was nothing
whatever--just that bedstead and the bare floor.”
“Was there no one in all that great town amongst the liberals and
revolutionaries, to extend a helping hand to a brother?” asked Miss
Haldin indignantly.
“Yes. But you do not know the most terrible part of that man’s misery.
Listen. It seems that they ill-used him so atrociously that, at last,
his firmness gave way, and he did let out some information. Poor soul,
the flesh is weak, you know. What it was he did not tell me. There was
a crushed spirit in that mangled body. Nothing I found to say could make
him whole. When they let him out, he crept into that hole, and bore his
remorse stoically. He would not go near anyone he knew. I would have
sought assistance for him, but, indeed, where could I have gone looking
for it? Where was I to look for anyone who had anything to spare or any
power to help? The people living round us were all starving and drunken.
They were the victims of the Ministry of Finances. Don’t ask me how we
lived. I couldn’t tell you. It was like a miracle of wretchedness. I had
nothing to sell, and I assure you my clothes were in such a state that
it was impossible for me to go out in the daytime. I was indecent. I had
to wait till it was dark before I ventured into the streets to beg for a
crust of bread, or whatever I could get, to keep him and me alive. Often
I got nothing, and then I would crawl back and lie on the floor by the
side of his couch. Oh yes, I can sleep quite soundly on bare boards.
That is nothing, and I am only mentioning it to you so that you should
not think I am a sybarite. It was infinitely less killing than the task
of sitting for hours at a table in a cold study to take the books of
Peter Ivanovitch from dictation. But you shall see yourself what that is
like, so I needn’t say any more about it.”
“It is by no means certain that I will ever take Peter Ivanovitch from
dictation,” said Miss Haldin.
“No!” cried the other incredulously. “Not certain? You mean to say that
you have not made up your mind?”
When Miss Haldin assured her that there never had been any question of
that between her and Peter Ivanovitch, the woman with the cat compressed
her lips tightly for a moment.
“Oh, you will find yourself settled at the table before you know that
you have made up your mind. Don’t make a mistake, it is disenchanting
to hear Peter Ivanovitch dictate, but at the same time there is a
fascination about it. He is a man of genius. Your face is certain not to
irritate him; you may perhaps even help his inspiration, make it easier
for him to deliver his message. As I look at you, I feel certain that
you are the kind of woman who is not likely to check the flow of his
inspiration.”
Miss Haldin thought it useless to protest against all these assumptions.
“But this man--this workman did he die under your care?” she said, after
a short silence.
The _dame de compagnie_, listening up the stairs where now two voices
were alternating with some animation, made no answer for a time. When
the loud sounds of the discussion had sunk into an almost inaudible
murmur, she turned to Miss Haldin.
“Yes, he died, but not, literally speaking, in my arms, as you might
suppose. As a matter of fact, I was asleep when he breathed his last.
So even now I cannot say I have seen anybody die. A few days before
the end, some young men found us out in our extremity. They were
revolutionists, as you might guess. He ought to have trusted in his
political friends when he came out of prison. He had been liked and
respected before, and nobody would have dreamed of reproaching him with
his indiscretion before the police. Everybody knows how they go to work,
and the strongest man has his moments of weakness before pain. Why, even
hunger alone is enough to give one queer ideas as to what may be done. A
doctor came, our lot was alleviated as far as physical comforts go, but
otherwise he could not be consoled--poor man. I assure you, Miss Haldin,
that he was very lovable, but I had not the strength to weep. I was
nearly dead myself. But there were kind hearts to take care of me.
A dress was found to clothe my nakedness. I tell you, I was not
decent--and after a time the revolutionists placed me with a Jewish
family going abroad, as governess. Of course I could teach the children,
I finished the sixth class of the Lyceum; but the real object was,
that I should carry some important papers across the frontier. I was
entrusted with a packet which I carried next my heart. The gendarmes
at the station did not suspect the governess of a Jewish family, busy
looking after three children. I don’t suppose those Hebrews knew what I
had on me, for I had been introduced to them in a very roundabout way by
persons who did not belong to the revolutionary movement, and naturally
I had been instructed to accept a very small salary. When we reached
Germany I left that family and delivered my papers to a revolutionist
in Stuttgart; after this I was employed in various ways. But you do not
want to hear all that. I have never felt that I was very useful, but I
live in hopes of seeing all the Ministries destroyed, finances and
all. The greatest joy of my life has been to hear what your brother has
done.”
She directed her round eyes again to the sunshine outside, while the
cat reposed within her folded arms in lordly beatitude and sphinx-like
meditation.
“Yes! I rejoiced,” she began again. “For me there is a heroic ring about
the very name of Haldin. They must have been trembling with fear in
their Ministries--all those men with fiendish hearts. Here I stand
talking to you, and when I think of all the cruelties, oppressions,
and injustices that are going on at this very moment, my head begins to
swim. I have looked closely at what would seem inconceivable if one’s
own eyes had not to be trusted. I have looked at things that made me
hate myself for my helplessness. I hated my hands that had no power,
my voice that could not be heard, my very mind that would not become
unhinged. Ah! I have seen things. And you?”
Miss Haldin was moved. She shook her head slightly.
“No, I have seen nothing for myself as yet,” she murmured “We have
always lived in the country. It was my brother’s wish.”
“It is a curious meeting--this--between you and me,” continued the
other. “Do you believe in chance, Miss Haldin? How could I have expected
to see you, his sister, with my own eyes? Do you know that when the news
came the revolutionaries here were as much surprised as pleased, every
bit? No one seemed to know anything about your brother. Peter Ivanovitch
himself had not foreseen that such a blow was going to be struck. I
suppose your brother was simply inspired. I myself think that such
deeds should be done by inspiration. It is a great privilege to have the
inspiration and the opportunity. Did he resemble you at all? Don’t you
rejoice, Miss Haldin?”
“You must not expect too much from me,” said Miss Haldin, repressing
an inclination to cry which came over her suddenly. She succeeded, then
added calmly, “I am not a heroic person!”
“You think you couldn’t have done such a thing yourself perhaps?”
“I don’t know. I must not even ask myself till I have lived a little
longer, seen more....”
The other moved her head appreciatively. The purring of the cat had
a loud complacency in the empty hall. No sound of voices came from
upstairs. Miss Haldin broke the silence.
“What is it precisely that you heard people say about my brother? You
said that they were surprised. Yes, I supposed they were. Did it not
seem strange to them that my brother should have failed to save himself
after the most difficult part--that is, getting away from the spot--was
over? Conspirators should understand these things well. There are
reasons why I am very anxious to know how it is he failed to escape.”
The _dame de compagnie_ had advanced to the open hall-door. She glanced
rapidly over her shoulder at Miss Haldin, who remained within the hall.
“Failed to escape,” she repeated absently. “Didn’t he make the sacrifice
of his life? Wasn’t he just simply inspired? Wasn’t it an act of
abnegation? Aren’t you certain?”
“What I am certain of,” said Miss Haldin, “is that it was not an act
of despair. Have you not heard some opinion expressed here upon his
miserable capture?”
The _dame de compagnie_ mused for a while in the doorway.
“Did I hear? Of course, everything is discussed here. Has not all the
world been speaking about your brother? For my part, the mere mention
of his achievement plunges me into an envious ecstasy. Why should a man
certain of immortality think of his life at all?”
She kept her back turned to Miss Haldin. Upstairs from behind a great
dingy white and gold door, visible behind the balustrade of the first
floor landing, a deep voice began to drone formally, as if reading over
notes or something of the sort. It paused frequently, and then ceased
altogether.
“I don’t think I can stay any longer now,” said Miss Haldin. “I may
return another day.”
She waited for the _dame de compagnie_ to make room for her exit; but
the woman appeared lost in the contemplation of sunshine and shadows,
sharing between themselves the stillness of the deserted grounds. She
concealed the view of the drive from Miss Haldin. Suddenly she said--
“It will not be necessary; here is Peter Ivanovitch himself coming up.
But he is not alone. He is seldom alone now.”
Hearing that Peter Ivanovitch was approaching, Miss Haldin was not so
pleased as she might have been expected to be. Somehow she had lost
the desire to see either the heroic captive or Madame de S--, and the
reason of that shrinking which came upon her at the very last minute is
accounted for by the feeling that those two people had not been treating
the woman with the cat kindly.
“Would you please let me pass?” said Miss Haldin at last, touching
lightly the shoulder of the _dame de compagnie_.
But the other, pressing the cat to her breast, did not budge.
“I know who is with him,” she said, without even looking back.
More unaccountably than ever Miss Haldin felt a strong impulse to leave
the house.
“Madame de S-- may be engaged for some time yet, and what I have got to
say to Peter Ivanovitch is just a simple question which I might put to
him when I meet him in the grounds on my way down. I really think I
must go. I have been some time here, and I am anxious to get back to my
mother. Will you let me pass, please?”
The _dame de compagnie_ turned her head at last.
“I never supposed that you really wanted to see Madame de S--,” she
said, with unexpected insight. “Not for a moment.” There was something
confidential and mysterious in her tone. She passed through the door,
with Miss Haldin following her, on to the terrace, and they descended
side by side the moss-grown stone steps. There was no one to be seen on
the part of the drive visible from the front of the house.
“They are hidden by the trees over there,” explained Miss Haldin’s new
acquaintance, “but you shall see them directly. I don’t know who that
young man is to whom Peter Ivanovitch has taken such a fancy. He must
be one of us, or he would not be admitted here when the others come.
You know what I mean by the others. But I must say that he is not at
all mystically inclined. I don’t know that I have made him out yet.
Naturally I am never for very long in the drawing-room. There is
always something to do for me, though the establishment here is not so
extensive as the villa on the Riviera. But still there are plenty of
opportunities for me to make myself useful.”
To the left, passing by the ivy-grown end of the stables, appeared Peter
Ivanovitch and his companion. They walked very slowly, conversing with
some animation. They stopped for a moment, and Peter Ivanovitch was seen
to gesticulate, while the young man listened motionless, with his arms
hanging down and his head bowed a little. He was dressed in a dark brown
suit and a black hat. The round eyes of the _dame de compagnie_ remained
fixed on the two figures, which had resumed their leisurely approach.
“An extremely polite young man,” she said. “You shall see what a bow he
will make; and it won’t altogether be so exceptional either. He bows in
the same way when he meets me alone in the hall.”
She moved on a few steps, with Miss Haldin by her side, and things
happened just as she had foretold. The young man took off his hat, bowed
and fell back, while Peter Ivanovitch advanced quicker, his black, thick
arms extended heartily, and seized hold of both Miss Haldin’s hands,
shook them, and peered at her through his dark glasses.
“That’s right, that’s right!” he exclaimed twice, approvingly. “And so
you have been looked after by....” He frowned slightly at the
_dame de compagnie_, who was still nursing the cat. “I conclude
Eleanor--Madame de S-- is engaged. I know she expected somebody to-day.
So the newspaper man did turn up, eh? She is engaged?”
For all answer the _dame de compagnie_ turned away her head.
“It is very unfortunate--very unfortunate indeed. I very much regret
that you should have been....” He lowered suddenly his voice. “But
what is it--surely you are not departing, Natalia Victorovna? You got
bored waiting, didn’t you?”
“Not in the least,” Miss Haldin protested. “Only I have been here some
time, and I am anxious to get back to my mother.”
“The time seemed long, eh? I am afraid our worthy friend here” (Peter
Ivanovitch suddenly jerked his head sideways towards his right shoulder
and jerked it up again),--“our worthy friend here has not the art of
shortening the moments of waiting. No, distinctly she has not the art;
and in that respect good intentions alone count for nothing.”
The _dame de compagnie_ dropped her arms, and the cat found itself
suddenly on the ground. It remained quite still after alighting, one
hind leg stretched backwards. Miss Haldin was extremely indignant on
behalf of the lady companion.
“Believe me, Peter Ivanovitch, that the moments I have passed in
the hall of this house have been not a little interesting, and very
instructive too. They are memorable. I do not regret the waiting, but
I see that the object of my call here can be attained without taking up
Madame de S--‘s time.”
At this point I interrupted Miss Haldin. The above relation is founded
on her narrative, which I have not so much dramatized as might be
supposed. She had rendered, with extraordinary feeling and animation,
the very accent almost of the disciple of the old apple-woman, the
irreconcilable hater of Ministries, the voluntary servant of the poor.
Miss Haldin’s true and delicate humanity had been extremely shocked
by the uncongenial fate of her new acquaintance, that lady companion,
secretary, whatever she was. For my own part, I was pleased to discover
in it one more obstacle to intimacy with Madame de S--. I had a
positive abhorrence for the painted, bedizened, dead-faced, glassy-eyed
Egeria of Peter Ivanovitch. I do not know what was her attitude to the
unseen, but I know that in the affairs of this world she was avaricious,
greedy, and unscrupulous. It was within my knowledge that she had been
worsted in a sordid and desperate quarrel about money matters with the
family of her late husband, the diplomatist. Some very august personages
indeed (whom in her fury she had insisted upon scandalously involving
in her affairs) had incurred her animosity. I find it perfectly easy to
believe that she had come to within an ace of being spirited away, for
reasons of state, into some discreet _maison de sante_--a madhouse
of sorts, to be plain. It appears, however, that certain high-placed
personages opposed it for reasons which....
But it’s no use to go into details.
Wonder may be expressed at a man in the position of a teacher of
languages knowing all this with such definiteness. A novelist says this
and that of his personages, and if only he knows how to say it earnestly
enough he may not be questioned upon the inventions of his brain in
which his own belief is made sufficiently manifest by a telling phrase,
a poetic image, the accent of emotion. Art is great! But I have no art,
and not having invented Madame de S--, I feel bound to explain how I
came to know so much about her.
My informant was the Russian wife of a friend of mine already mentioned,
the professor of Lausanne University. It was from her that I learned the
last fact of Madame de S--‘s history, with which I intend to trouble
my readers. She told me, speaking positively, as a person who trusts her
sources, of the cause of Madame de S--‘s flight from Russia, some years
before. It was neither more nor less than this: that she became suspect
to the police in connexion with the assassination of the Emperor
Alexander. The ground of this suspicion was either some unguarded
expressions that escaped her in public, or some talk overheard in her
salon. Overheard, we must believe, by some guest, perhaps a friend, who
hastened to play the informer, I suppose. At any rate, the overheard
matter seemed to imply her foreknowledge of that event, and I think she
was wise in not waiting for the investigation of such a charge. Some of
my readers may remember a little book from her pen, published in Paris,
a mystically bad-tempered, declamatory, and frightfully disconnected
piece of writing, in which she all but admits the foreknowledge, more
than hints at its supernatural origin, and plainly suggests in venomous
innuendoes that the guilt of the act was not with the terrorists, but
with a palace intrigue. When I observed to my friend, the professor’s
wife, that the life of Madame de S--, with its unofficial diplomacy,
its intrigues, lawsuits, favours, disgrace, expulsions, its atmosphere
of scandal, occultism, and charlatanism, was more fit for the eighteenth
century than for the conditions of our own time, she assented with
a smile, but a moment after went on in a reflective tone:
“Charlatanism?--yes, in a certain measure. Still, times are changed.
There are forces now which were non-existent in the eighteenth century.
I should not be surprised if she were more dangerous than an Englishman
would be willing to believe. And what’s more, she is looked upon as
really dangerous by certain people--_chez nous_.”
_Chez nous_ in this connexion meant Russia in general, and the Russian
political police in particular. The object of my digression from the
straight course of Miss Haldin’s relation (in my own words) of her visit
to the Chateau Borel, was to bring forward that statement of my friend,
the professor’s wife. I wanted to bring it forward simply to make what I
have to say presently of Mr. Razumov’s presence in Geneva, a little more
credible--for this is a Russian story for Western ears, which, as I
have observed already, are not attuned to certain tones of cynicism and
cruelty, of moral negation, and even of moral distress already silenced
at our end of Europe. And this I state as my excuse for having left Miss
Haldin standing, one of the little group of two women and two men who
had come together below the terrace of the Chateau Borel.
The knowledge which I have just stated was in my mind when, as I have
said, I interrupted Miss Haldin. I interrupted her with the cry of
profound satisfaction--
“So you never saw Madame de S--, after all?”
Miss Haldin shook her head. It was very satisfactory to me. She had
not seen Madame de S--! That was excellent, excellent! I welcomed the
conviction that she would never know Madame de S-- now. I could not
explain the reason of the conviction but by the knowledge that Miss
Haldin was standing face to face with her brother’s wonderful friend. I
preferred him to Madame de S-- as the companion and guide of that young
girl, abandoned to her inexperience by the miserable end of her brother.
But, at any rate, that life now ended had been sincere, and perhaps its
thoughts might have been lofty, its moral sufferings profound, its last
act a true sacrifice. It is not for us, the staid lovers calmed by
the possession of a conquered liberty, to condemn without appeal the
fierceness of thwarted desire.
I am not ashamed of the warmth of my regard for Miss Haldin. It was, it
must be admitted, an unselfish sentiment, being its own reward. The late
Victor Haldin--in the light of that sentiment--appeared to me not as a
sinister conspirator, but as a pure enthusiast. I did not wish indeed
to judge him, but the very fact that he did not escape, that fact which
brought so much trouble to both his mother and his sister, spoke to me
in his favour. Meantime, in my fear of seeing the girl surrender to the
influence of the Chateau Borel revolutionary feminism, I was more than
willing to put my trust in that friend of the late Victor Haldin. He was
nothing but a name, you will say. Exactly! A name! And what’s more,
the only name; the only name to be found in the correspondence between
brother and sister. The young man had turned up; they had come face to
face, and, fortunately, without the direct interference of Madame de
S--. What will come of it? what will she tell me presently? I was
asking myself.
It was only natural that my thought should turn to the young man, the
bearer of the only name uttered in all the dream-talk of a future to be
brought about by a revolution. And my thought took the shape of asking
myself why this young man had not called upon these ladies. He had been
in Geneva for some days before Miss Haldin heard of him first in my
presence from Peter Ivanovitch. I regretted that last’s presence at
their meeting. I would rather have had it happen somewhere out of his
spectacled sight. But I supposed that, having both these young people
there, he introduced them to each other.