In winter the Neva is a broad, silent thoroughfare between the Vassili Ostrow and the Admiralty Gardens. In the winter the pestilential rattle of the cobblestones in the side streets is at last silent, and the merry music of sleigh-bells takes its place. In the winter the depressing damp of this northern Venice is crystallized and harmless.
On the English Quay a tall, narrow house stands looking glumly across the river. It is a suspected house, and watched; for here dwelt Stépan Lanovitch, secretary and organizer of the Charity League.
Although the outward appearance of the house is uninviting, the interior is warm and dainty. The odor of delicate hothouse plants is in the slightly enervating atmosphere of the apartments. It is a Russian fancy to fill the dwelling-rooms with delicate, forced foliage and bloom. In no country of the world are flowers so worshipped, is money so freely spent in floral decoration. There is something in the sight, and more especially in the scent of hothouse plants, that appeals to the complex siftings of three races which constitute a modern Russian.
We, in the modest self-depreciation which is a national characteristic, are in the habit of thinking, and sometimes saying, that we have all the good points of the Angle and the Saxon rolled satisfactorily into one Anglo-Saxon whole. We are of the opinion that mixed races are the best, and we leave it to be understood that ours is the only satisfactory combination. Most of us ignore the fact that there are others at all, and very few indeed recognize the fact that the Russian of today is essentially a modern outcome of a triple racial alliance of which the best component is the Tartar.
The modern Russian is an interesting study, because he has the remnant of barbaric tastes, with ultra-civilized facilities for gratifying the same. The best part of him comes from the East, the worst from Paris.
The Countess Lanovitch belonged to the school existing in Petersburg and Moscow in the early years of the century—the school that did not speak Russian but only French, that chose to class the peasants with the beasts of the field, that apparently expected the deluge to follow soon.
Her drawing-room, looking out on to the Neva, was characteristic of herself. Camellias held the floral honors in vase and pot. The French novel ruled supreme on the side-table. The room was too hot, the chairs were too soft, the moral atmosphere too lax. One could tell that this was the dwelling-room of a lazy, self-indulgent, and probably ignorant woman.
The countess herself in nowise contradicted this conclusion. She was seated on a very low chair, exposing a slippered foot to the flame of a wood fire. She held a magazine in her hand, and yawned as she turned its pages. She was not so stout in person as her loose and somewhat highly colored cheeks would imply. Her eyes were dull and sleepy. The woman was an incarnate yawn.
She looked up, turning lazily in her chair, to note the darkening of the air without the double windows.
“Ah!” she said aloud to herself in French, “when will it be teatime?”
As she spoke the words, the bells of a sleigh suddenly stopped with a rattle beneath the window.
Immediately the countess rose and went to the mirror over the mantelpiece. She arranged without enthusiasm her straggling hair, and put straight a lace cap which was chronically crooked. She looked at her reflection pessimistically, as well she might. It was the puffy red face of a middle-aged woman given to petty self-indulgence.
While she was engaged in this discouraging pastime the door was opened, and a maid came in with the air of one who has gained a trifling advantage by the simple method of peeping.
“It is M. Steinmetz, Mme. la Comtesse.”
“Ah! Do I look horrible, Célestine? I have been asleep.”
Célestine was French, and laughed with all the charm of that tactful nation.
“How can Mme. la Comtesse ask such a thing? Madame might be thirty-five!”
It is to be supposed that the staff of angelic recorders have a separate set of ledgers for French people, with special discounts attaching to pleasant lies.
Madame shook her head—and believed.
“M. Steinmetz is even now taking off his furs in the hall,” said Célestine, retiring toward the door.
“It is well. We shall want tea.”
Steinmetz came into the room with an exaggerated bow and a twinkle in his melancholy eyes.
“Figure to yourself, my dear Steinmetz,” said the countess vivaciously. “Catrina has gone out—on a day like this! Mon Dieu! How gray, how melancholy!”
“Without, yes! But here, how different!” replied Steinmetz in French.
The countess cackled and pointed to a chair.
“Ah! you always flatter. What news have you, bad character?”
Steinmetz smiled pensively, not so much suggesting the desire to impart as the intention to withhold that which the lady called news.
“I came for yours, countess. You are always amusing—as well as beautiful,” he added, with his mouth well controlled beneath the heavy mustache.
The countess shook her head playfully, which had the effect of tilting her cap to one side.
“I! Oh, I have nothing to tell you. I am a nun. What can one do—what can one hear in Petersburg? Now in Paris it is different. But Catrina is so firm. Have you ever noticed that, Steinmetz? Catrina’s firmness, I mean. She wills a thing, and her will is like a rock. The thing has to be done. It does itself. It comes to pass. Some people are so. Now I, my dear Steinmetz, only desire peace and quiet. So I give in. I gave in to poor Stépan. And now he is exiled. Perhaps if I had been firm—if I had forbidden all this nonsense about charity—it would have been different. And Stépan would have been quietly at home instead of in Tomsk, is it, or
