E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
THE GENIUS
by
MARGARET POTTER
Author of
"The House of De Mailly" "Istar of Babylon" Etc. Etc.
London and New York
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1906
Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Published March, 1906.
TO
MY BROTHER
EDWARD CLEMENT POTTER
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Prologue 3
I. The Czar's Ball 8
II. Michael 26
III. The Gregoriev Heir 42
IV. The Corps of Cadets 60
V. Death Joy 75
VI. Nathalie 90
VII. Spring and the Rose 105
VIII. In Camp 126
IX. "Half-gods Go" 156
X. Self-Destiny 184
XI. The Moscow Conservatoire 202
XII. The Gods Arrive 226
XIII. Student's Folly 255
XIV. The Third Section 272
XV. Engulfment 285
XVI. Joseph 302
XVII. Heritage 319
VIII. Joseph the Sower 337
XIX. His Harvest 353
XX. Madame Féodoreff 364
XXI. Tosca Regnant 381
XXII. The Lion 400
XXIII. The Hermit 427
Epilogue 446
THE GENIUS
THEMA
Hark, ye Great, that withdraw yourselves from the Multitude!
_Loneliness_ is written for your word. Alone shall ye strive to solve
the riddle of Creation.
Seek ye help of them that have gone before? Ye shall find it not. Dream
ye of sympathy, of praise, from those that watch your work to-day? They
shall give ye rather mockery. Finally, would ye leave to your children
legacies of wisdom that shall be as gold unto them? Lo! Such desire,
also, must be vain.
Dowered of Vision, Power or Wantonness, ye shall not escape this scourge
of Fate. Alone shall ye cut your way through the rock of Destiny up to
the High Place of Restitution. Yea! Solitary shall your labor be. But
out of solitude cometh, in good time, that Understanding of the Law that
all, at last, must seek--and find.
THE GENIUS
PROLOGUE
THE ANNUNCIATION
In the Western world of the revised calendar it was the evening of
January twelfth. In Russia it was New Year's night, of the year 1840.
The year was twenty-three hours old; for the bells of the three churches
in Klin had just chimed eleven times. But in "Maidonovo," a
country-place of the Gregorievs just outside the town, the mistress of
the house, Princess Sophia, had not yet gone to bed. She had been alone
in her bedroom for some time, and was now on her knees before a little
shrine presided over by a great, golden ikon, with its flaring colors,
and stiff, Byzantine figures of Mary and the infant Christ. There,
before the World-Mother, knelt the loneliest of unhappy women: daughter
of an old, impoverished Muscovite house, and wife, by necessity, of
Michael Gregoriev, a man of millions, chief of the Third Section in
Moscow: an official after the heart of the Iron Czar, and of Satan, his
master, too.
For nearly an hour the Princess had knelt on a heavily rugged floor, her
eyes lifted to the face of the Virgin, her lips revealing, in those
whispers that had become part of her life, the ever-living anguish of
her heart. She was in her thirty-third year, poor creature: had known
now sixteen years of married life--sixteen years of revelation, of
repulsion mental and physical, of misery not to be told. One by one her
little illusions, fancies, hopes, and, with them, all the graces of her
youth, had fallen from her, till there remained but a shadowy, faded
creature, holding, in the depths of her bruised soul, just one more
desire, one final hope, of which the very possibility was by this time
all but extinguished.
Yet it was of this hope she was speaking to-night to that distant,
shadowy Mary, who, her confessor had told her, can always understand and
always pity. Here, in the chill silence of her lonely rooms, while the
wide world without grew stiller and more still under its pale covering,
the wife had gathered her last resolution together, and dared a demand
of those High Immortals whose contact with humanity had ended so long
ago. They had hitherto been pitiless enough with her; though this she
would scarcely acknowledge even in her feeble rebellion. But she should
ask them, at last, to make her a tardy restitution.
Sophia was unaware that her wish was a selfish one. It seemed so natural
a thing she asked; and her mind, poor lady, was all upon herself, there
being no other soul to think for her. That the helpless life she longed
for would be ushered into a dreary world, too dark for bright innocence
to face, never occurred to her. Her outlook had grown strangely
one-sided during the past long years of constantly weakening defence.
"Mary-Mother--protect me! I have waited very long. I have done all Thy
will. I have kept the fasts: have made my confessions and been absolved.
I have striven so long for strength to endure--all that has been given
me to endure! I have not avoided any pain, or abuse, or disgrace. I have
borne without complaint all the isolation of _his_ life, till my very
family shuns me. Oh, Thy hand has lain heavy upon me, but I have not
complained! Therefore, in this New Year, I come to Thee, Holy Mother,
with my wish. Grant me, I beseech, that which has been given so many
times to others! Give me at last a companion in my life: one that cannot
leave me. Thou, holiest of women, intercede for me! Make me one with
Thee! Give me, too, a child!"
Once more, and over and over again, did the frail woman make her
request: so many times, indeed, and at last so fervidly, that her
excitement grew, and tears came. Little by little she drooped towards
the floor. Her face shone wet in the candle-light; and she clutched at
the little shelf below the ikon, where a handful of flowers stood in a
silver vase between the candles.
The minutes crept by. The few other lights in the big room burned low,
flared, flickered, and went out. There was a vast, muffled stillness in
the snow-filled air. The first night of the New Year was nearly dead. As
the light in her room grew ghostlier, Princess Sophia's voice became
gradually incoherent, dropped to a vague whisper, and finally ceased.
She slid gently from her knees to a sitting posture, her head resting
against the wall, under the little shrine. And then her eyes fell shut.
She slept.
For a quarter of an hour there was no sound in the room. The last candle
before the ikon at length followed the others, wavered high for an
instant, and then went out. Yet, strangely, the room was not left in
darkness. On the contrary, in the corner by the door had appeared a
soft, misty radiance which, second by second, grew visibly more
luminous. Far over the snow-fields came the clear chime of bells,
ringing the midnight hour. As their echoes died, the Princess, without
moving her body, opened her eyes again upon the form of a woman who had
emerged from the mist and now stood near at hand, looking down at her.
Tall she was, and classically robed, this visitor. Her face, shaded by
a drapery of dove blue, was as fair as sculptured marble. But there was
a fire of deep compassion in her dark eyes, and her mouth was curved
into the gentlest smile. The great pity in that wonderful face stirred
Sophia with a sudden pang of joy; and it was long before her gaze moved
from those features. But when they did, her lips parted in a faint cry;
for she saw that the Mary-Mother was not alone. Her left hand was
clasped by that of a child: a tiny, shadowy shape, sweet-faced and
slender-limbed. Looking, Sophia's breath came fast; and leaning forward
instinctively, she held out her arms. At that gesture, the stranger and
her charge came forward a little more, and the holy woman spoke:
"Sophia, I come to answer your prayer, bringing with me the soul of your
child."
The Princess bowed to the floor.
"Your eyes behold a little, lonely spirit, that is to be given into your
care. Guard it and guide it; for the way of its life stretches far, and
is difficult and long. Your paths meet for but a few years: for you are
yourself nearing the end of your unhappy journey; and during these last
years, comfort shall be given you. Look, then, upon the face of your
son."
Swiftly the little spirit left the protecting shadow of its holy guide,
and paused beside Sophia. She would have clasped the shadowy body in her
eager arms, but a sense outside herself forbade this, and she could only
gaze searchingly into the gentle, childish face.
"Thou art mine?--my son?" she whispered, softly.
The little creature looked up at Mary-Mother and then, at once, returned
to the sad mortal at its side. The little face brightened with a smile,
and the lips formed the dear word, "Mother!"
Then, immediately, darkness had fallen. The visitors from afar were
gone. Sophia lay upon the bare floor beneath the ikon, fast asleep.
In a few moments the door from the hall opened hastily, and a woman's
voice whispered in frightened haste:
"My lady! Khazyaceka! His Excellency Prince Michael is coming up-stairs!
He is almost here!"
CHAPTER I
THE CZAR'S BALL
After the night of what she came gradually to call the Holy Dream, the
years passed more swiftly, with less of inward tumult, for Sophia
Ivanovna Gregoriev. It was now the close of the year 1851; and the reign
of the Iron Czar was wavering towards its dark end. Meantime the son of
the chief of the secret section in Moscow was eleven years and three
months old: a straight-limbed, quiet child, the son of his mother. And
all Sophia's recent life, that life which had entwined itself wholly
about the promised babe, was mingled the inexplicable strangeness of her
dream-memory. To her, New Year's night had become a sacred time; and she
loved to keep a vigil through it in her own, lonely way. This year,
however, it was to be marked in a different manner. For Michael
Gregoriev had planned that, on the first night of 1852, he, and perforce
his wife, should make a final effort to obtain that social recognition
which had never been the accompaniment of his political advancement.
At this time--as, indeed, to-day, there stood, in the south-central part
of trans-Moskva Moscow, only two private buildings of any note. One of
these was the low-spreading palace of the Governor; the other that of
Prince Michael Petrovitch Gregoriev. The first had stood in its gardens
for a century and a half. The other was nearly fifty years older. The
dwelling of the Gregorievs was at some distance from its stately
neighbor, however; for it stood on the southeast corner of the Konnaia
Square, approachable by carriage only through the Serpoukhovskaia. Its
surroundings were of the humblest sort; for it was a long way south of
the Merchants' quarter, and so far from the sacred precincts of the
Kremlin that the voice of Ivan Veliki had melted into an echo ere it
reached the Gregoriev gateway.
It is certain that neither age nor environment made this old place less
grewsomely interesting: this ancient dwelling of a family whose unsavory
annals were lost in the gloom of Tátar rule. The Gregorievs were closely
bound to the gloomy stone pile; and would dwell there, in all
probability, as long as their line continued. Michael, the present
Prince, was loyal to his house. Yet its situation was one of the
greatest of crosses to this man, who had known and cast away many a
heavier burden during his career. Remote as he was from the fashionable
districts, there was neither man nor woman in the city, from the
proudest house in the Equerries' quarter to the outskirts of the Novaia
Andronovka, but knew and shuddered, agreeably, at the Gregoriev
reputation.
It was not strange, then, that the affair of New Year's night had become
the sensation of the season. For on this night Prince Gregoriev had
vowed a triumph over the massed society of the Mother City. He intended
to accomplish now what his wedding with a daughter of one of the oldest
and most honored families had failed to do: what no use of his
unscrupulous power could force, what all Moscow society, for once banded
unanimously together, had sworn he should never accomplish--enter their
ranks, the ranks of the old nobility of the Empire.
By New Year's morning, however, the numbers were admitting, bitterly,
their defeat. Once more Gregoriev was about to achieve the impossible.
Eighteen years before, Moscow society had defeated him, superbly. At the
time of his marriage to a daughter of the Blashkovs, the question of
his admission into the "court circle" had been violently agitated. But
at that time even his prospective father-in-law had not had the
hardihood to suggest an informal presentation of this man to his
Majesty. Nay, it was the bride, pale, pretty, sensitive Sophia, who,
when it was seen that she had no slightest influence over her dread
husband, had been, not, perhaps, without a sigh, dropped from their
acquaintance by her former associates: nay, by her very family, all save
one sister, a girl younger than herself.
For eighteen years, then, the Gregoriev palace had stood in its
isolation, echoing only to the revelry that money can always obtain. For
eighteen years its master, buying what the world had to sell, had been
secretly planning to obtain what was not for sale: had faced, unmoved,
an isolation which, to a nature less strong, would have been unbearable.
Now, at last, he was about to win. His amazing intrigue had succeeded.
Its results were for the eyes of all men. For Moscow society had been
suddenly _commanded_ to his house, to a ball, given on New Year's night,
in honor of his Imperial Majesty Nicholas I., who had decided, by his
appearance, to honor the house of his subject and immediate servant.
* * * * *
It was eleven o'clock on that night of nights; and the bed and dressing
rooms of the Princess Sophia were lighted to suffocation with smoking
candles. Two maids and old Másha, general factotum of her mistress, were
bustling importantly from one room to the other, bearing to her, piece
by piece, their mistress's burden of jewels. At her dressing-table,
pale, still wearing, as always in public, her mask of emotionless
impenetrability, sat Sophia. Her neck and shoulders, which, according to
the rigid etiquette of court-dress, were fully exposed, were white, and,
considering her extreme slenderness, surprisingly round. A broad collar
of sapphires and diamonds clasped above an Oriental necklace of pearls,
successfully hid whatever there was to betray the too-visible marks of
the "certain" age. On her head she bore the oddly becoming kakoshnik,
which, in her case, was set with a triple row of superb diamonds. The
face below this gleaming structure, the delicate, weary face, robbed of
its customary frame of smoothly banded yellow hair, looked more sharply
pointed than usual, but surprisingly pretty. For there was actually a
fire--whether of pleasure, expectancy or nervousness--in her gray eyes;
and there had come a delicate flush to the usually pallid cheeks. Sophia
was, indeed, living with her dead to-night. Dreams of the old days held
her in a kind of spell. The woman of memories--memories of a brief
youth, a swiftly blighted flowering of life--had for once been forced
back to a forgotten theme. And she found, recalling the days of her
first balls, that the customary bitterness of contrast had suddenly
disappeared. There was much that was new in this present situation: she
was alive to sensations unfelt for years. There stirred in her heart
what she was only to define after it had gone again: that which for most
people forms the great staff of the inner life: on which she had been so
long unaccustomed to lean--the great Phoenix, Hope.
At length they had fastened the last pin in her veil, the last hook in
the heavy gown of cloth of silver. The maids stood off from her a
little, whispering. But she herself remained motionless, gazing absently
into her quaintly framed old mirror, lost in one of those reveries that
her servants had learned not to disturb. The pause had lasted some five
minutes when the door opening into the outer hall opened, vigorously,
and the Princess started suddenly up, her face changing pathetically, a
look of dread painfully contracting her features.
As their mistress rose, the three women shrank instinctively backward.
To one understanding it, the act was pathetically familiar. An instant
later, however, the Princess cried out, "Caroline! It is you, then?" and
so turned deathly white and reeled a little till old Másha came to her
support.
"Sophie! You are not ill--_to-night_!" The new-comer, who had spoken
in French, halted near the door, an expression of dismay on her face.
Madame Gregoriev, however, laughed faintly, and the color began to creep
back into her cheeks. As old Másha left her to hobble briskly out of the
room, she continued, "No, no! I am perfectly well. It was only that
you--startled me a little. I--I thought it was--Michael Petrovitch."
Once more the face of the other changed, but she said nothing as she
came slowly forward, examining her companion the while with a critical
eye. She was the Countess Dravikine, Sophia's younger sister, who, a
year or two after Sophia's misalliance, had herself married remarkably
well: a young diplomat of the capital, already high in the graces of the
official world, and destined to rise steadily, through the clever
management of his wife. The Countess Dravikine fitted her adopted world
extremely well. She was a woman whose one tender sentiment was that
which she held for the sister of her youth. Otherwise she had, not
entirely without justice, been called heartless. She was, in any case,
admirably adapted for the life she had chosen. And strife social and
political, as well as every move in the great game of state intrigue,
were as the breath of life to her. She had not come through the fires
unsinged. There had been, nay, still were, whispers about her in her
world. But they were whispers such as heightened rather than tarnished
the brilliance of her reputation. For, whether wrongly or not, her name
had more than once been linked with that of the Iron Ruler himself.
This may or may not have been the reason for her presence to-night in
Moscow, whither she had journeyed to stand beside her sister at the
anticipated triumph. But whatever her motive, no one could deny that the
evening would gain by her presence. Here, beside her glittering sister,
she was superb, in her magnificently poised maturity, the voluminous
gauzes of her Paris gown floating like clouds about her: the numberless
opals in her hair and at her breast only continuing the delicate
coloring of the green-and-white costume that was as unusual as it was
becoming to her _chic_ ugliness of feature. But to-night, for perhaps
the first time in her life, Caroline Dravikine was more interested in
the costume of another than in her own. She was determined that her
sister's appearance should be even more perfect than hers. And to this
end she went over the other's toilet detail by detail, only ending the
silent scrutiny as Másha reappeared with a slender glass of wine for her
mistress.
"Eh bien, Sophie,--yes! drink the wine. If you will not rouge you must
keep what color you have!--the sapphires are not in the least too heavy.
They have done you up very well. Sonya!" turning to one of the maids,
"catch up that curl over the right ear of the Princess. It spoils the
effect of severity that suits your face so well. So. Et maintenon, ma
chère, renvoyez vos femmes de chambre. Je veux causer avec vous en
particulier."
Sophia complied with the request: the maids, with the simple familiarity
of the Russian serf, taking their dismissal reluctantly. But Madame
Dravikine held them all in awe, and before her they did not dare the
protest that their Princess might have listened to. When the sisters
were alone, they crossed the room together and seated themselves on a
great sofa upholstered in a beautifully faded old brocade, made before
the birth of the great Catharine. And while Caroline, mindful of her
fresh gauzes, sat upright, like a bird poised for flight, her sister lay
back, wearily, crushing the veil of her headdress against a heap of
pillows.
There was a moment's pause; then the Countess began, resolutely: "Has
Michael Petrovitch seen you yet?"
"Oh no! He has not come up-stairs. I hope that he will not, Katrelka!
He--he would not be satisfied, you know."
"Sophie! Sophie! sometimes I cannot wonder that the man is a terror in
your life! Satisfied with you! Ciel! If Alexis Vassilyitch expressed
dissatisfaction with a toilet of mine, I should not speak to him for a
week. No! I should get him into such difficulties with the ministry that
he would come to me on his knees in three days! I tell you again,
Sophie, that you must assert yourself! Tell me--"
"Stop, Kasha, stop! I am too tired for all this just now. Say what you
will to-morrow. You know the thing is a great strain. Tell me only this:
Are you quite sure that his Majesty will come? Do you believe it
possible that at last everything is to be right--that we are to have
Moscow--our old Moscow--here again?"
Having with some little self-control waved aside the unusual rebuff of
Sophia's first words, Madame Dravikine listened to the last with a
smile, a trifle self-conscious; and in spite of her sister's look--a
stare that suggested coldness, the expression remained with her as she
answered: "Yes, at last you are safe, dear. You see--I am here from
Petersburg; though it has meant leaving Nathalie with her nurses, and
Alexis Vassilyitch to spend every night at the yacht-club at baccarat.
Besides, Moscow always bores his Majesty; and even the Czarevitch isn't
with him this time, you know."
"Caroline, I wish--" Madame Gregoriev's hesitating voice trailed into
silence. She knew that it was scarcely the hour for remonstrance of
that kind. After a moment she began again, "Do you remember how many
years it is since we were all at home together, in the Nijny Kislovsky?
I should hardly be able to name over the old families now. All the
leaders of our day--Madame Apúkhtin, Princess Osínin, the
Dowager-Countess Parakoff--they are all dead. It is the wife of the
younger Smirnoff--Alexander married a dancer who cannot be received--who
keeps up the name. Eugen married Olga Lodoroff. She was a child when I
was married. She wouldn't remember me at all now. But we have had not
one excuse. They are all to come. Kasha, I am happy to-night! Think--"
"Of course, Sophie, they are coming. One would think you a parvenue,
absolutely, to hear you!" broke in Caroline, sharply, still smarting a
little at her reading of that unfinished sentence.
Sophia colored at her sister's appellation, but had no time for
rejoinder; for at this moment an inner door was pushed gently open and a
boy entered.
Sophia rose, hastily. "Ivan! You were asleep two hours ago!"
"But I woke up. And Másha said you were so splendid with the diamonds
all on, that I came to see." He looked up at his mother, his big, black
eyes shining with interest as he inspected her unusual array. His aunt,
sharper-eyed than her sister, perceived that, under his eider-down
wrapper, the boy wore no night-flannel, but a more or less complete suit
of day-clothes. She said nothing, however, for, though she had no love
for children, Ivan was quiet enough to have won her liking.
"Eh bien, mon fils, tu m'as vu. Allez vous en! Retournez immédiatement
au lit. Tu vas prendre un rhume! Allez! Vite!" Laughing, she kissed the
boy--nor had far to stoop to reach his lips. Then, with a gentle hand,
she led him back to the door. The boy moved reluctantly, and, ere he
left the room, caught his mother round the neck and whispered in her ear
a question which was answered by a determined shake of the head.
When he had gone, the Princess stood for an instant looking after him,
all her heart in her unconscious eyes. Then, her eyes shining with a
softened light, she turned again to her sister, saying, with a smile:
"Come, Katrelka, let us go down. The opera must be over by this time;
and I must see the rooms before the first arrival."
"Just one moment more, then, Moussia." Madame Dravikine rose, crossed
the room, and laid her hand caressingly on the other's arm. "If Michael
Petrovitch should be out of temper when we meet him, do not be
disturbed. Do not, for the sake of our family, Sophie, betray yourself
by--by your face--to-night. Remember, if the scene should grow
unbearable I can always--"
"Yes, yes, Kasha. Thank you. But let us not speak of it further--just
now."
A moment's silence. Then suddenly, by a common impulse, the two women
threw themselves into each other's arms and kissed fervently. When they
had separated again, the eyes of the Countess were no less suspiciously
wet than those of her sister, the wife of Michael Gregoriev.
It was a pity that functions of formal magnificence were affairs of such
rarity in the Gregoriev palace; for no private dwelling in Russia was
better adapted to the purpose. The grand entrance opened into a hall of
royal dimensions, at the back of which rose a massive staircase, which,
ascending to a broad marble landing, separated there into two parts, one
of which wound upward to the right, the other to the left, to the upper
floor. Upon this landing, facing the hall below, stood the figure of a
Diana carved from Carrara marble, its exquisite Greek curves wreathed
to-night in smilax and white roses, brought up from the southern estates
of the Prince.
As the sisters descended the stairs together, each critically surveying
the decorations of the rooms below, Prince Michael himself appeared from
the direction of the great dining-room, accompanied by his major-domo, to
whom he was giving some final orders concerning the reception of his
Imperial Majesty.
A remarkable man was Michael Petrovitch, Prince Gregoriev; nominally a
chief of the Third Section under Ryeléff; actually head of the secret
police of the whole Moscow district; confidential adviser of the royal
Governor-General; and privately and intimately known to the Czar, who
had long been aware that he had at least one man in his Empire who would
balk at no order that should be given him.
In Prince Michael, as so seldom happens, the story of the mind was
plainly written upon the body. Six feet three inches he stood in his
stockings--two inches more in his regular dress; his head large in
proportion, and finely shaped; eyes black, glittering, and unfaceable;
mustache jet-black and upstanding, as if made of wire, from the set,
ugly mouth, below which jutted a square, blue-shaven chin. And the
appearance thus presented was not to be overshadowed, in any feature, by
the magnificence of the uniform he wore to-night. Tunic and trousers
were of heavy white cloth, the first garment so long, and so heavily
embroidered in gold, that his body seemed cased in a glittering sheath
down to where the edge of the coat met the top of the boots of softly
wrinkling black, that cased his legs almost to the thigh. On his breast
were ranged half a dozen orders; conspicuous among them that of St.
George, for gallant conduct on the field of action, won years before in
the streets of thrice-sacked Warsaw.
As the two women halted, Gregoriev finished his orders; and, turning
from the cringing serf, stood staring at his wife and her sister. Madame
Dravikine was smiling brightly; but Sophia's face was set, her cheeks
flaming, her burning eyes unwontedly hard.
"So! Madame, there is a hair-pin caught in the flounce below your right
ankle."
Involuntarily the Princess quivered, stooped, and extricated the fine
wire pin which even Caroline had not noted. Then she straightened up
hastily, sought to meet her husband's sneer with something like
resolution, faltered before him, and moved slowly away towards the
reception-rooms. The Countess, however, turned to her brother-in-law,
and covered her sister's retreat. Certainly Prince Michael gave her his
attention; and his manner with women of station was unresentable.
Nevertheless, the covert amusement in his voice and in the eyes that
looked after his wife, set even Caroline's experienced teeth on edge.
She talked with him on the prospects of the evening; and it was a theme
so interesting to both of them that neither perceived the little figure,
dressed in black velvet, that stole quietly down from the second floor
and concealed himself on the landing behind the floral drapery that
spread, star-fashion, from the statue of the goddess. An hour or two
before Ivan, filled with a vague excitement, had bribed his old nurse to
dress him in his best, and, having seen his mother and his aunt in their
court-dress, he had been seized with the desire for more. After waiting
in his room as long as he could, the boy had stolen down the staircase
to a point whence he could see the progress of that great ball which
was, in some mysterious way, to change the fortunes of his father's
house, and, with them, the long loneliness of his own, dreamy days.
So he crouched there through the hours, well concealed, a figure
unconsciously pathetic, his great, sad eyes--eyes begotten by his
mother, and with all her own woe in their liquid depths--glowing
brightly in the white, wistful, childish face; the suggestion of a smile
on his straight, delicately chiselled mouth. He had been in his place
barely ten minutes when the great doors opened to the first guests; and,
during the hour that followed, they were scarcely shut. The opera was
over. Fashionable Moscow, accustomed to live at night, swathed itself in
furs, and, grumbling at the unwonted distance, had spun across the city,
in open sleighs, to the distant Gregoriev palace.
Prince Michael, with his wife and his sister-in-law beside him, stood at
the entrance to the gold drawing-room, welcoming the men and women who
were announced in rapid succession: men and women whose names set
Sophia's heart beating with memory. There were few, indeed, that any
major-domo in Petersburg would not have shouted in his best voice. For
all of them were members of the great Russian world: Apúkhtin and
Mirski, Chipraznik, Smirnoff and the omnipresent Nikitenko--names that
had been the last to fade into, the first to reappear from, the baleful
night of Tátar rule. Not one of them all but had once known Sophia
Blashkov intimately: none but greeted Madame Dravikine as a familiar
acquaintance of to-day. But, for the first time since his wedding-day,
Michael Gregoriev felt himself slighted for that woman he had so long
despised. One and all, women and men alike, they slid by him as rapidly
as decency would permit, nor cared to notice him again, though, from far
corners and discreet retreating-places, they bestowed on him glances
that ran the gamut from curiosity to open horror. Not so did Sophia
fare. There was for her at least one hour when the immediate past was
blotted out, and her heart warmed and thrilled again as it had in that
long-past, joyous winter of her presentation.
By half an hour past midnight the rooms were crowded and there had
settled over the company a hush: that peculiar stillness of expectancy
that is destruction to the nerves of a host. In this special pause,
however, lay something beyond the ordinary: a discomfort, a palpable
uneasiness, that sheathed a subtle threat. Sophia, with her woman's
instinct, was no quicker to perceive it than her husband. They, with
Countess Caroline and every other woman in the rooms, put the same
interpretation upon that significant lull. It spoke thus: "It is late,
and he whom we were commanded to meet is not here. His Imperial
Majesty's name forced us to this house. Now he has not come. Is the
thing a trick? Michael Petrovitch Gregoriev, have you been capable of
_this_? Dared you dream that such folly of deceit could really help
you?"
Such was the unmistakable sentiment in the air when, at a quarter before
one, the sisters met in a corner of the dining-room, and there passed
between them a white-faced look. Then Madame Dravikine whispered:
"Sophie, what does it mean? _Did_ Nicholas promise?"
The question was a mistake. Princess Gregoriev's lips went white, and
she seemed to speak with difficulty. "Caroline! Then _you_ were not
assured by him? You as well as Michael have deceived me?"
Madame Dravikine flushed scarlet. "I have never discussed your affairs
with his Majesty," she returned, haughtily.
Sophia made no reply. Her face, if possible, grew a little more livid,
her eyes a trifle more piteous.
Caroline, in spite of her resentment, was touched with pity and with
fear; so that, presently, she burst out, impulsively: "Then you are
_ruined_, Sophie! Absolutely ruined!"
Suddenly, Princess Sophia's lips curled into a bitter smile. "I have
been ruined, as you call it, for eighteen years. This--this fiasco
cannot make it any worse!" And, before that expressionless tone, Madame
Dravikine was still.
A moment or two after this encounter, however, there came a sudden stir.
Beyond the dining-room, in the central hall, was a visible flutter of
excitement, and whispers sped rapidly through the rooms.
"He has really come!"
"The Czar is here!"
"After all, his Majesty has arrived."
"Where is he, then?"
"In his dressing-room. The royal sleigh is at the gate."
"Ah! Then we must remain!"
During the first seconds of the excitement, the Prince and Princess
Gregoriev came together near the door of the specially prepared
antechamber where his Majesty was to have his furs removed. Sophia's
cheeks were flushed, her eyes burning again; but the face of Michael
Petrovitch had become once more impenetrable. There were three minutes
of the strained attention. Then, from the door of the antechamber,
appeared a stately man, clad in a magnificent uniform, his breast
covered with medals and crosses. When they were still many feet apart, a
look passed between him and Prince Michael; and, in that look, a new,
undying enmity was born in Gregoriev's fierce soul. For the guest from
the Kremlin was _not_ the Czar, but the Czar's most detested envoy: the
notorious Count Alderberg, Minister of the Imperial Household. And his
words to the host and hostess began with the infuriating, formal: "I
regret--"
Even through that moment of greeting, Princess Sophia scarcely
understood the full significance of this presence. Surely, if the Czar
had sent a proxy, it meant, at least, recognition. But as the Count
carried his cynical smile and gorgeous personality away in the
direction of the dining-room, and the poor lady turned to her husband,
she was stricken dumb at sight of the blind fury in his face. It was a
look that she had known before--too well. Yet never, perhaps, had such a
concentrated mixture of defeat, rage, and rebellion glared from those
eyes or straightened that heavy mouth. Now, indeed, she knew that they
were undone.
"Alderberg! Alderberg! By God and the devil, had I dreamed--" The
low-muttered words trailed off and were bitten into silence, while, by a
fierce contortion of the muscles, Michael straightened his face into a
semblance of calm. But the hands hanging at his sides were clinched till
the nails pierced his palms, and the veins started out, knotted and
purple, from his flesh.
For some moments the Princess stood irresolute, terrified lest her
guests should witness some part of this outbreak. Madame Dravikine was
first to emerge from the throng; and she came towards them, dismay
written in her face. She sent one glance at Michael; and then, biting
her lip, took her sister's hand in a gentle clasp.
"Ah! You, too, Katrelka!" whispered Sophia. "You, too, think it so bad?"
Caroline shook her head sadly. "We are helpless, Sophie. A fit of
Nicholas' laziness has lost the world to you. Look!"
There was no time for response; for, at this moment, the Prince and
Princess Mirski came up with chill good-nights that were passively
accepted. They were immediately followed by the Osínin, who barely
looked towards Michael, but had the grace to murmur some excuse to his
wife. On their heels hastened the Apúkhtin, who played the few seconds
of farce with angry hauteur. Then, injury to insult, Alderberg himself
approached, having been in the rooms a bare five minutes. And, as he
disappeared into the royal alcove, the throng in the rooms began to fly
the house as from a spot plague-smitten.
At the instant of Alderberg's appearance in the hall, word of the
defection of the Czar had swept like wildfire through the rooms. The
Minister of the Imperial Household was nearly as unpopular among the
court circle of Moscow as he was among the peasant class; and nothing
could have been more unfortunate than the choice of him as the proxy of
his Majesty. Within five minutes, whispers were everywhere. The drawing,
dining, and dressing rooms were full of the rippling hiss of talk which
in every case preceded either frowns or angry laughter. Ivan, from his
hiding-place on the stairway, caught many phrases the significance of
which he could not fathom; but which filled him with prescience of evil.
His troubled eyes sought the face of his mother in the hall below; and
he found there what he had feared. From his vantage-point he had a clear
view of the quickening rush of departure. Crowds were pouring up-stairs
to re-don their furs; though many of these people had not yet recovered
from the chill of their long drive from the Grand Theatre. Soon the
great staircase was so crowded that many who were still below made no
effort to ascend, deputing the bringing of their wraps to friends who
had forced an upward passage. For so bitter was the night that few had
pursued the usual custom of leaving their sables outside, on the arms of
patient footmen.
Ivan watched the good-nights to his father and mother; and noted also
the lack of them. He beheld the drooping, weary figure of the Princess,
in her blaze of gems, forcing piteous smiles of farewell. And he was
glad that there were so many who, under cover of the throng, evaded the
ordeal of the good-night, and slipped away from the brilliant rooms as
from a dwelling haunted with evil.
There was but one consolation for this misery--it was very brief. The
crowd that had taken a long hour to assemble, dispersed and melted away
into the darkness of the city within the space of fifteen minutes. There
had, indeed, been some who had arrived after his Excellency the Count.
These, perceiving the crowd out-streaming, divined calamity, and,
without so much as descending from their sleighs, turned about and
departed as they had come.
By half-past one o'clock three figures stood alone in the great hall;
while on the staircase, beside the motionless Diana, crouched a lonely,
frightened child, who still stared, as if with enchanted eyes, at his
mother's white, despairing face. Princess Sophia stood motionless, her
head bent, her hands clasped tightly before her, persistently avoiding
her husband's eyes. Caroline, with a half-protective air, was between
her sister and her brother-in-law. Michael, his face as colorless as
that of the statue, his eyes alight with the fire in his brain, stared
straight before him, into some bitter world of his own. About them was
the unbearable silence which Madame Dravikine, who alone was
unaccustomed to it, finally broke in desperation:
"Come, Sophie! Come to bed. You are too tired to stay down here. You'll
be ill."
But, at the moment, Sophia had, in her heart, the thought of another
than herself. At sight of some unwonted suggestion in his face of a pain
with which she had been long familiar, there had entered into her heart
a sudden pity for the man she so feared. Imbued with a momentary
courage, she advanced to her husband and took his hand. "Michael," she
murmured, "I--am sorry."
The man started in amazement, and then drew away from her, at the same
time turning upon her his burning eyes. "_Sorry!_ Good God! Then get to
your ikons and pray. For me--there's no sorrow for me. Nicholas has
played his game. Now mine begins. Sorrow for him, if you like. For, by
the help of Satan, he and Moscow shall know me yet!"
The low-spoken words ended with a snarl of inarticulate anger. And the
moment they were uttered, he turned brusquely, and, without another word
or look, disappeared in the direction of his offices, where, as his wife
knew, he would probably work till far into the next day.
The two women watched him go. Then, after a pause, they found themselves
clinging to each other, and in this fashion began the ascent of the
stairs. Both of them were weeping: not loudly; rather as the reaction
from the strain of the past hour. As they reached the landing, they were
joined by another. Ivan came openly from his hiding-place, and barred
their path, guilt-laden. But there was to be no rebuke to-night for his
disobedience. On the contrary, his mother took him into her arms and
clasped him close, as if his presence brought comfort for much immediate
pain. And the boy, feeling the hot tears from her eyes fall upon his
face, laid his arms about her neck, and yielded himself to a grief and a
terror that he understood vaguely, but could not as yet define.