“Oh, no!” disclaimed Paul, with that gravity at which some were ready to laugh. “I only judge in a small way from, a small experience.”
“Ah! you are too modest. You know the peasants thoroughly, you understand them, you love them—so, at least, I have been told. Is it not so, Mme. la Princesse?”
Karl Steinmetz was frowning over an olive.
“I really do not know,” said Etta, who had glanced across the table.
“I assure you, madame, it is so. I am always hearing good of you, prince.”
“From whom?” asked Paul.
Vassili shrugged his peculiarly square shoulders.
“Ah! From all and sundry.”
“I did not know the prince had so many enemies,” said Steinmetz bluntly, whereat the marquise laughed suddenly, and apparently approached within bowing distance of apoplexy.
In such wise the conversation went on during the dinner, which was a long one. Continually, repeatedly, Vassili approached the subject of Osterno and the daily life in that sequestered country. But those who knew were silent, and it was obvious that Etta and Maggie were ignorant of the life to which they were going.
From time to time Vassili raised his dull, yellow eyes to the servants, who d’ailleurs were doing their work perfectly, and invariably the master’s glance fell to the glasses again. These the servants never left in peace—constantly replenishing, constantly watching with that assiduity which makes men thirsty against their will by reason of the repeated reminder.
But tongues wagged no more freely for the choice vintages poured upon them. Paul had a grave, strong head and that self-control against which alcohol may ply itself in vain. Karl Steinmetz had taken his degree at Heidelberg. He was a seasoned vessel, having passed that way before.
Etta was bright enough—amusing, light, and gay—so long as it was a question of mere social gossip; but whenever Vassili spoke of the country to which he expressed so deep a devotion, she, seeming to take her cue from her husband and his agent, fell to pleasant, non-committing silence.
It was only after dinner, in the drawing-room, while musicians discoursed Offenbach and Rossini from behind a screen of fern and flower, that Vassili found an opportunity of addressing himself directly to Etta. In part she desired this opportunity, with a breathless apprehension behind her bright society smile. Without her assistance he never would have had it.
“It is most kind of you,” he said in French, which language had been spoken all the evening in courtesy to the marquise, who was now asleep—“it is most kind of you to condescend to visit my poor house, princess. Believe me, I feel the honor deeply. When you first came into the room—you may have observed it—I was quite taken aback. I—I have read in books of beauty capable of taking away a man’s breath. You must excuse me—I am a plainspoken man. I never met it until this evening.”
Etta excused him readily enough. She could forgive plenty of plain-speaking of this description. Had she not been inordinately vain, this woman, like many, would have been extraordinarily clever. She laughed, with little sidelong glances.
“I only hope that you will honor Paris on your way home to England,” went on Vassili, who had a wonderful knack of judging men and women, especially shallow ones. “Now, when may that be? When may we hope to see you again? How long will you be in Russia, and—”
“Ce Vassili is the best English scholar I know!” broke in Steinmetz, who had approached somewhat quietly. “But he will not talk, princess—he is so shy.”
Paul was approaching also. It was eleven o’clock, he said, and travellers who had to make an early start would do well to get home to bed.
When the tall doors had been closed behind the departing guests, Vassili walked slowly to the fireplace. He posted himself on the bearskin hearthrug, his perfectly shod feet well apart—a fine dignified figure of a man, of erect and military carriage; a very mask of a face—soulless, colorless, emotionless ever.
He stood biting at his thumbnail, looking at the door through which Etta Alexis had just passed in all the glory of her beauty, wealth, and position.
“The woman,” he said slowly, “who sold me the Charity League papers—and she thinks I do not recognize her!”
XIX
On the Neva
Karl Steinmetz had apparently been transacting business on the Vasil’yevskiy ostrov, which the travelled reader doubtless knows as the northern bank of the Neva, a part of Petersburg—an island, as the name tells us, where business is transacted; where steamers land their cargoes and riverside loafers impede the traffic.
What the business of Karl Steinmetz may have been is not of moment or interest; moreover, it was essentially the affair of a man capable of holding his own and his tongue against the world.
He was recrossing the river, not by the bridge, which requires a doffed hat by reason of its shrine, but by one of the numerous roads cut across the ice from bank to bank. He duly reached the southern shore, ascending to the Admiralty Gardens by a flight of sanded steps. Here he lighted a cigar, and, tucking his hands deep into the pockets of his fur coat, he proceeded to walk slowly through the bare and deserted public garden.
A girl had crossed the river in front of him at a smart pace. She now slackened her speed so much as to allow him to pass her. Karl Steinmetz noticed the action. He noticed most things—this dull German. Presently she passed him again. She dropped her umbrella, and before picking it up described a circle with it—a manoeuvre remarkably like a signal. Then she turned abruptly and looked into his face, displaying a pleasing little round physiognomy with a smiling mouth and exaggeratedly grave eyes. It was a face of all too common a type in these days of cheap educational literature—the face of a womanly
