He bowed in his graceful way, spreading out his hands in mock humility. Etta did not answer him. For the moment she could see no outlet to this maze of trouble, and yet she was conscious of not fearing De Chauxville so much as she feared Karl Steinmetz.
“A lenient master,” pursued the Frenchman, whose vanity was tickled by the word. “I do not ask much. One thing is to be invited to Osterno, that I may be near you. The other is a humble request for details of your daily life, that I may think of you when absent.”
Etta drew in her lips, moistening them as if they had suddenly become parched.
De Chauxville glanced at her and moved toward the door. He paused with his fingers on the handle, and looking back over his shoulder he said:
“Have I made myself quite clear?”
Etta was still looking out of the window with hard, angry eyes. She took no notice of the question.
De Chauxville turned the handle.
“Again let me impress upon you the advisability of implicit obedience,” he said, with delicate insolence. “I mentioned the Charity League; but that is not my strongest claim upon your attention. I have another interesting little detail of your life, which I will reserve until another time.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving Etta white-lipped.
XXXI
A Dangerous Experiment
A Russian forest in winter is one of nature’s places of worship. There are some such places in the world, where nature seems to stand in the presence of the Deity; a sunrise at sea; night on a snow-clad mountain; midday in a Russian forest in winter. These places and these times are good for convalescent atheists and such as pose as unbelievers—the cheapest form of notoriety.
Paul had requested Catrina and Maggie to drive as quietly as possible through the forest. The warning was unnecessary, for the stillness of snow is infectious, while the beauty of the scene seemed to command silence. As usual, Catrina drove without bells. The one attendant on his perch behind was a fur-clad statue of servitude and silence. Maggie, leaning back, hidden to the eyes in her sables, had nothing to say to her companion. The way lay through forests of pine—trackless, motionless, virgin. The sun, filtering through the snow-laden branches, cast a subdued golden light upon the ruddy upright trunks of the trees. At times a willow-grouse, white as the snow, light and graceful on the wing, rose from the branch where he had been laughing to his mate with a low, cooing laugh, and fluttered away over the trees.
“A kuropatka,” said Catrina, who knew the life of the forest almost as well as Paul, whose very existence was wrapped up in these things.
Far over the summits of the pines a snipe seemed to be wheeling a sentinel round. He followed them as they sped along, calling out all the while his deep warning note, like that of a lamb crouching beneath a hedge where the wind is not tempered.
Once or twice they heard the dismal howl of a wolf—the most melancholy, the weirdest, the most hopeless of nature’s calls. The whole forest seemed to be on the alert—astir and in suspense. The wolf, disturbed in his lair, no doubt heard and understood the cry of the watchful snipe and the sudden silence of the willow-grouse, who loves to sit and laugh when all is safe. A clumsy capercailzie, swinging along over the trees with a great flap and rush of wings, seemed to be intent on his own solitary, majestic business—a very king among the fowls of the air.
Amid the topmost branches of the pines the wind whispered and stirred like a child in sleep; but beneath all was still. Every branch stood motionless beneath its burden of snow. The air was thin, exhilarating, brilliant—like dry champagne. It seemed to send the blood coursing through the veins with a very joy of life.
Catrina noted all these things while cleverly handling her ponies. They spoke to her with a thousand voices. She had roamed in these same forests with Paul, who loved them and understood them as she did.
Maggie, in the midst as it were of a revelation, leaned back and wondered at it all. She, too, was thinking of Paul, the owner of these boundless forests. She understood him better now. This drive had revealed to her a part of his nature which had rather puzzled her—a large, simple, quiet strength which had developed and grown to maturity beneath these trees. We are all part of what we have seen. We all carry with us through life somewhat of the scenes through which we passed in childhood.
Maggie knew now where Paul had learnt the quiet concentration of mind, the absorption in his own affairs, the complete lack of interest in the business of his neighbor which made him different from other men. He had learnt these things at first hand from God’s creatures. These forest-dwellers of fur and feather went about their affairs in the same absorbed way, with the same complete faith, the same desire to leave and be left alone. The simplicity of Nature was his. His only craft was forest craft.
“Now you know,” said Catrina, when they reached the hut, “why I hate Petersburg.”
Maggie nodded. The effect of the forest was still upon her. She did not want to talk.
The woman who received them, the wife of a keeper, had prepared in a rough way for their reception. She had a large fire and bowls of warm milk. The doors and windows had been thrown wide open by Paul’s orders. He wanted to spare Maggie too intimate an
