“You look as if you did not know what it was to be tired; but perhaps you will sit down. I can make room.”
He accepted with alacrity.
“And now,” she said, “let me hear where you have been. I have only had time to shake hands with you the last twice that we have met! You said you had been away.”
“Yes; I have been to Russia.”
Her face was steadily beautiful, composed and ready.
“Ah! How interesting! I have been in Petersburg. I love Russia.” While she spoke she was actually looking across the room toward the tall Frenchman, her late companion.
“Do you?” answered Paul eagerly. His face lighted up after the manner of those countenances that belong to men of one idea. “I am very much interested in Russia.”
“Do you know Petersburg?” she asked rather hurriedly. “I mean—society there?”
“No. I know one or two people in Moscow.”
She nodded, suppressing a quick little sigh which might have been one of relief had her face been less pleasant and smiling.
“Who?” she asked indifferently. She was interested in the lace of her pocket-handkerchief, of which the scent faintly reached him. He was a simple person, and the faint odor gave him a distinct pleasure—a suggested intimacy.
He mentioned several well-known Muscovite names, and she broke into a sudden laugh.
“How terrible they sound,” she said gayly, “even to me, and I have been to Petersburg. But you speak Russian, Mr. Alexis?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And you?”
She shook her head and gave a little sigh.
“I? Oh, no. I am not at all clever, I am afraid.”
IV
Don Quixote
Paul had been five months in England when he met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. Since his hurried departure from Tver a winter had come and gone, leaving its mark as winters do. It left a very distinct mark on Russia. It was a famine winter. From the snow-ridden plains that lie to the north of Moscow, Karl Steinmetz had written piteous descriptions of an existence which seemed hardly worth the living. But each letter had terminated with a prayer, remarkably near to a command, that he, Paul Howard Alexis, should remain in England. So Paul stayed in London, where he indulged to the full a sadly mistaken hobby. This man had, as we have seen, that which is called a crank, or a loose screw, according to the fancy of the speaker. He had conceived the absurd idea of benefiting his fellow-beings, and of turning into that mistaken channel the surplus wealth that was his. This, moreover, if it please you, without so much as forming himself into a society.
This is an age of societies, and, far from concealing from the left hand the good which the right may be doing, we publish abroad our charities on all hands. We publish in a stout volume our names and donations. We even go so far as to cultivate an artificial charity by meat and drink and speeches withal. When we have eaten and drunk, the plate is handed round, and from the fullness of our heart we give abundantly. We are cunning even in our well-doing. We do not pass round the plate until the decanters have led the way. And thus we degrade that quality of the human heart which is the best of all.
But Paul Howard Alexis had the good fortune to be rich out of England, and that roaring lion of modern days, organized charity, passed him by. He was thus left to evolve from his own mind a mistaken sense of his duty toward his neighbor. That there were thousands of well-meaning persons in black and other coats ready to prove to him that revenues gathered from Russia should be spent in the East End or the East Indies, goes without saying. There are always well-meaning persons among us ready to direct the charity of others. We have all met those virtuous persons who do good by proxy. But Paul had not. He had never come face to face with the charity broker—the man who stands between the needy and the giver, giving nothing himself, and living on his brokerage, sitting in a comfortable chair, with his feet on a Turkey carpet in his office on a main thoroughfare. Paul had met none of these, and the only organized charity of which he was cognizant was the great Russian Charity League, betrayed six months earlier to a government which has ever turned its face against education and enlightenment. In this he had taken no active part, but he had given largely of his great wealth. That his name had figured on the list of families sold for a vast sum of money to the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior seemed all too sure. But he had had no intimation that he was looked upon with small favor. The more active members of the League had been less fortunate, and more than one nobleman had been banished to his estates.
Although the sum actually paid for the papers of the Charity League was known, the recipient of the blood money had never been discovered. It was a large sum, for the government had been quick to recognize the necessity of nipping this movement in the bud. Education is a dangerous matter to deal with; England is beginning to find this out for herself. For on the heels of education socialism ever treads. When at last education makes a foothold in Russia, that foothold will be on the very step of the autocratic throne. The Charity League had, as Steinmetz put it, the primary object of preparing the peasant for education, and thereafter placing education within his reach. Such proceedings were naturally held by those in high places to be only second to Nihilism.
All this, and more which shall transpire in the course of this narration, was known to Paul. In face of the fact that his name was prominently before the Russian Ministry of
