CHAPTER I.
AN AFFRONT TO HIS CZAR.
Alexander II. passed part of the summer of 1874 in a Germanhealth-resort taking the mineral waters. When not in the castle in whichhe was staying with his train he affected the life of an ordinarycitizen. He did so as much from necessity as from choice. Czar orsubject, the same water must be drunk at the same spot and hour by allwho seek its cure. Nor can any distinction be made in the matter of thewalk which the patient is to take after draining his two or threegobletsful.
The promenade at a watering place is a great parade-ground for thedisplay of plumage, the gayest and costliest gowns being reserved forthe procession that follows the taking of the remedy; but while the raceis under way and everybody is striving to throw everybody else into theshade, the fact of their being there pierces each dress as with "X"rays, showing their flesh to be of the same fragile clay.
So the Czar accepted the levelling effect of the place good-naturedlyand sought diversion in the unsustained role of a common mortal.Unsustained, because he carried his gigantic, beautiful form with agraceful self-importance and a martial erectness that betrayed hisincognito even in the open country stretches to which he would strolloff in search of mild adventure and flirtation.
It was a late afternoon in the valley. The river glittered crimson. Thehills on the other side of the summer town were capped by a sultry haze.Donkeys used in ascending these hills were trotting about impishly orstanding in stupid row awaiting custom. The sun blazed down upon aparade of a hundred countries, including a jet black prince from Africa,a rajah, a Chinaman in dazzling silks, a wealthy Galician Jew in atlas,and a pasha with German features.
The Czar, his immense figure encased in a light frock coat of excellentfit, was sauntering along apparently unaccompanied except by his terrierand cane. When saluted he would raise his straw hat and nod his enormouswell-shaped head with a cordiality that bordered on good-fellowship. Heseemed to relish this exchange of courtesies with people who were nothis subjects in this little republic of physical malady. It was asthough he felt apart from his autocratic self without feeling out ofthat pampering atmosphere of deference and attention which was hissecond nature; and he gave an effect of inhaling his freedom as one doesthe first whiffs of spring air.
As to his fellow patients, they either discovered something majestic inthe very dog that followed him, or were struck by the knuckles of hisungloved hands, for example, as if it were remarkable that they shouldbe the same sort of knuckles as their own. He was strikingly well-builtand strikingly handsome. He wore thick close-cropped side whiskers ofthe kind that is rarely becoming, but his face they became very wellindeed, adding majesty to a cast of large, clear-cut features. It wasthe most monarchical face of its time, and yet it was anything but astrong face. His imposing side whiskers and moustache left bare a fullsensuous mouth and a plump weak chin; his blueish eyes gave forthsuggestions of melancholy and anguish. Interest in him was whetted bystories of his passion for Princess Dolgoruki, lady in waiting to theCzarina; so the women at the watering place tried to decipher the taleof his liaison in those sad amative eyes of his.
Two refined looking, middle-aged women attracted attention by thebizarre simplicity with which one of them was attired and coiffured. Shewas extremely pale and made one think of an insane asylum or a convent.She was grey, while her companion had auburn hair and was shorter andflabbier of figure. They were conversing in French, but it was not theirnative tongue. The one with the grey hair was Pani Oginska, a Polishwoman; the other a Russian countess named Anna Nicolayevna Varova(Varoff). They had first met, in this watering place, less than afortnight ago, when a chat, in the course of which they warmed to eachother, led to the discovery that their estates lay in neighbouringprovinces in Little Russia. They were preceded by a slender youth ofeighteen in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly littleman in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel AlexeyevichBoulatoff, a son of the countess by a former marriage, and AlexandreAlexandrovich Pievakin, his private tutor, as well as one of hisinstructors at the gymnasium[A] of his native town. Pavel's straw hatwas too sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low that adelicately sculptured chin and mouth and the turned up tip of a rudelyhewn Russian nose was all one could see under its vast expanse of yellowbrim. The old man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad, sohis high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him in both theserespects, was explaining things to him, with an air at once patronisingand respectful. Presently Pavel interrupted himself.
[A] A classical Russian high school modelled after its German namesake.
"The Czar!" he whispered, in a flutter. "The Czar!" he repeated over hisshoulder, addressing himself to his mother.
Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was so overawed bythe sight that he forthwith dropped his eyes, a sickly expression on hislips.
When the men came face to face with their monarch they made way andsnatched off their hats as if they were on fire. Countess Varoff,Pavel's mother, curtseyed deeply, her flaccid insignificant little bodyretreating toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to theground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way stiffly without somuch as a nod of her head. The Czar returned the greeting of the Russianwoman gallantly and disappeared in the rear of them.
The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women now in the lead.When they reached a deserted spot the youth suddenly flushed a violentred, and, thrusting out his finely chiselled chin at his mother, hesaid, in quick pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with hisboyish figure as his hat:
"Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance with a person who hasoffered an insult to our Czar."
"Paul! What has come over you?" the countess stammered out, colouringabjectly as she paused.
"I mean just what I say, mother."
The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly, the cold sweatstanding in beads on his forehead.
"Don't mind this wild boy, I beg of you," Anna Nicolayevna said to thePolish woman. "Don't pay the least attention to him. He imagines himselfa full grown man, but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end oftrouble. Don't take it ill, _ma chere_." She rattled it off in a greatflurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back tenderly, while she wascondemning him.
"I don't take it ill at all," Pani Oginska answered tremulously. "He'sperfectly right. Your acquaintance has been a great pleasure to me,countess, but I can see that my company at this place would be veryinconvenient to you. Adieu!"
She walked off toward a row of new cottages, and Anna Nicolayevna, thecountess, stood gazing after her like one petrified.
"You are a savage, Pasha," she whispered, in Russian.
"Why am I? I have done what is right, and you feel it as well as I do,"he returned hotly, in his sedate, compact, combative voice, looking fromher to his teacher. When he was excited he sputtered out his sentencesin volleys, growling at his listener and seemingly about to flounce off.This was the way he spoke now. "Why am I a savage? Can you afford toassociate with a woman who will behave in this impudent, in thisrebellious manner toward the Czar? Can you, now?"
"That's neither here nor there," she said, with irritation, as theyresumed their walk. "She is a very unhappy creature. All that she holdsdear has been taken from her. Her husband was hanged during the Polishrebellion and now her son, a college student, has been torn from her andis dying in prison of consumption. If you were not so heartless youwould have some pity on her."
"Her husband was hanged and her son is in prison and you wish toassociate with her! Do you really? What do you think of it, AlexandreAlexandrovich?"
"A very painful incident," Pievakin murmured, wretchedly.
"As if I were eager for her company," she returned, timidly. "As if onecould help the chance acquaintances that fall into one's way whiletravelling. Besides, _she_ is no rebel. Indeed, she is one of the mostcharming women I ever met, and to hear her story is enough to break aheart of sto
ne. You have no sympathy, Pasha."
"She is no rebel! Why, if she did in Russia what she did here a minuteago she would be hustled off to Siberia in short order, and it wouldserve her right, too. And because I don't want my mother to go with sucha person I have no sympathy."
"Pardon me, Anna Nicolayevna," Pievakin interposed, with embarrassedardour, "but if I were you I should keep out of her way. She is anunfortunate woman, but, God bless her,--Pasha is right, I think."
"I should say I was," the boy said, triumphantly. "She wouldn't dare dosuch a thing in Russia, would she? But then in Russia a woman of thatsort would have no chance to do anything of the kind. Oh, I do hate theGermans for exposing the Czar to these insults. It is simply terrible,terrible. Couldn't they arrange it so that he should not have to rubshoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry and be exposed to every sort ofaffront? And yet when I say so I am a savage and have no heart." Hegnashed his teeth and burst into tears.
"Hush, dear, I didn't mean it. Don't be excited, now."
"But you did mean it; you know you did."
"Sh, calm down, Pasha," the old man besought him, and Pavel's featuressoftened.
Alexandre Alexandrovich was the only teacher at the high school of whomPavel was fond. He was an old-fashioned little man, with cravats of aformer generation and with features and movements which conveyed theimpression that he was forever making ready to bow. His cackling goodhumour when the recitations were correct and fluent, his distressed airwhen they were not; his mixed timidity and quick temper--these thingsare recalled with fond smiles in Miroslav. He was attached to both hissubjects and when put on his mettle by the attention of his class hereally knew how to put life into the dullest lesson. On such occasionshis timid manner would disappear, and he would draw himself up, and gostrutting back and forth with long, defiant steps and hurling out hissentences like a domineering rooster. It was only when a lesson of thissort was suddenly disturbed by some sally from a scapegrace of a pupilthat Pievakin would fly into a passion and then he would take to jumpingabout, tearing at his own hair, and groaning as though with physicalpain.
Pavel was perhaps the most ardent friend Alexandre Alexandrovich had inall Miroslav. The young prince was in a singular position at thegymnasium. Somehow things were always done in a way to make one rememberthat he was Prince Boulatoff and a nephew of the governor of theprovince of which Miroslav was the capital. He was the only boy whousually came to school in a carriage and it seemed as though theimposing vehicle had the effect of isolating him from the other boys. Asto his teachers, they took a peculiar tone with him--one ofill-concealed reverence which would betray itself with all the moreemphasis when they tried to take him to task. The upshot was that mostof the other pupils, including the only other prince in the class (whowas also the wildest boy in it) kept out of Pavel's way, while thosewho did not treated him with a servility that was even more offensive tohim than the aloofness of the rest. He had made several attempts to geton terms of good fellowship with two or three of the boys he liked, buthis own effort to laugh and frolic with them had jarred on him like afalse note. He had finally settled down to a manner of haughtyreticence, keeping an observant eye on his classmates and finding apeculiar pleasure in these silent observations.
The only two teachers who did not indulge him were Pievakin and theteacher of mathematics, a cheerful hunchback with a pale distended facelit by a pair of comical blue eyes, whom the boys had dubbed "truncatedcone." The teacher of mathematics made Pavel feel his exceptionalposition by treating him with special harshness. As to Pievakin, who hadbegun by addressing the aristocratic youth with an embarrassed air, hehad gradually adopted toward him a manner of fatherly superiority thatdeveloped in the boy's heart a filial attachment for the old pedagogue.In order to increase his income Pavel had made him his private tutor,although he stood high in his class and needed no such assistance, andthis summer, when the old man complained of rheumatism, he had causedhis mother to invite him to the German resort.
* * * * *
When they reached their hotel the countess unburdened herself to herson's tutor of certain memories which interested her now far more thandid her unexpected rupture with the Polish woman. She described a courtball at St. Petersburg at which the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,conversed for five minutes with her. She treated the gymnasium teacherpartly as she would her priest, partly as if he were her butler, andnow, in her burst of reminiscence, she overhauled her past to him withthe whole-hearted, childlike abandon which is characteristic of her raceand which put the humble old teacher ill at ease. "He told me to takegood care of my 'pretty eyes and golden eyebrows,'" she said. "And yetit was for these very eyebrows that Pavel's father disliked me."
She had been the pet daughter of a wealthy nobleman, high in the serviceof the ministry for foreign affairs, but Pavel's father, and her livinghusband, from whom she was now practically separated, had almostconvinced her that to be disliked was her just share in life. Herparents and sisters were dead. She had a little boy by her secondmarriage, but she was still in love with the shadow of her firsthusband, and the son he had left her was the one passion of her life.Having spent her youth in the two foreign countries to which herfather's diplomatic career took the family, she deprecated, in a dimunformulated way, many of the things that surrounded her in her nativeland. She was unable to reconcile her luminous image of the Emperor withthe mediaeval cruelties that were being perpetrated by his order. She wasat a loss to understand how such a gentle-hearted man could send to thegallows or to the living graves of Siberia people like the Polishpatriots. The compulsory religion of the Orthodox Russian Church, too,with its iron-clad organisation and grotesque uniforms, impressed her asa kind of spiritual gendarmerie. Yet she accepted it all as part of thatpanorama of things which whispered the magic word, "Russia." And now thesight of the Czar had rekindled memories of her better days and stirredin her a submissive sense of her cheerless fate.
Pavel was meanwhile putting the case of the Polish woman to Onufri, oneof the two servants who accompanied them in their present travels--aretired hussar with a formidable moustache in front of a pinchedhollow-cheeked face.
"Her highness, your mother, is good as an angel, sir," was Onufri'sverdict.
"And you are stupid as a cork," Pavel snarled. His sense of thedesecration to which the person of his Czar was being subjected bymingling with people like the widow of a hanged rebel rankled in hisheart. He worked himself up to a state of mind in which the verysimilarity in physical appearance between the untitled people with whomthe Czar and born aristocrats like himself and his mother were compelledto mingle at a place like this resort struck him as an impertinence onthe part of the untitled people.
Later when he lay between two German featherbeds and Onufri brought himhis book and a candle he asked him to take a seat by his bedside.
"Why are you such a deuced fool, Onufri?"
"If I am it is God's business, not mine, nor your highness'."
"Look here, Onufri. How would you like to have all common people blacklike those darkies?"
The servant spat out in horror and made the sign of the cross.
"For shame, sir. What harm have the common people done you that youshould wish them a horrid thing like that? And where does your highnessget these cruel thoughts? Surely not from your mother. For shame, sir."
"Idiot that you are, it's mere fancy, just for fun. There ought to besome difference between noble people and common. There is in somecountries, you know." He told him about castes, the slave trade inAmerica and passed to the days of chivalry, his favourite topic, untilthe retired hussar's head sank and a mighty snore rang out of his bushymoustache. Pavel flew into a passion.
"Ass!" he shouted, getting half out of bed and shaking him fiercely."Why don't I fall asleep when you tell me stories?"
Onufri started and fell to rubbing one eye, while with his other eye helooked about him, as though he had slept a week. The stories he oftentold young Boulatoff
mostly related to the days of serfdom, which hadbeen abolished when Pavel was a boy of five. Onufri's mother had beenflogged to death in the presence of her master, Pavel's grandfather, andthe former hussar would tell the story with a solemnity that reflectedhis veneration for the "good old times" rather than grief over the fateof his mother.
That night Pavel dreamed of a pond full of calves that were splashingabout and laughing in the water. He carried them all home and on his waythere they were transformed into one pair, and the two calves walkedabout and talked just like Onufri and the transformation was notransformation at all, the calves being real calves and negroes at thesame time. When he awoke, in the morning, and it came over him that thedream had had something to do with Onufri, he was seized with a feelingof self-disgust. He thought of the Polish woman and his treatment ofher, and this, too, appeared in a new light to him.
Two or three hours later, when the countess returned from her morningwalk Pavel, dressed to go out, grave and mysterious, solemnly handed hera sealed note from himself.
"Don't open it until I have left," he said. "I am going out for astroll."
"What you said yesterday about my being hard-hearted and incapable ofsympathy," the letter read, "left a deep impression on me. I thought ofit almost the first thing this morning as I opened my eyes, and it keptme thinking all the morning. I looked deep into my soul, I overhauled mywhole ego. I turned it inside out, and--well, I must say I have come tothe conclusion that what you said was not devoid of foundation. Not thatI am prepared to imagine ourselves as having anything to do with a womanwhose family is a family of rebels and who has the audacity to pass ouremperor without bowing; but she is a human being, too, and hersufferings should have aroused some commiseration in me. I envy you,mother. Compared to you I really am a hard-hearted, unfeeling brute, andit makes me very, very unhappy to think of it. My heart is so full atthis moment that I am at a loss to give expression to what I feel, butyou will understand me, darling little mother mine. I do _not_ want tobe hard and cruel, and I want you to help me.
"Your struggling son, "PAVEL."
When Anna Nicolayevna laid down the letter her large meek grey eyesfirst grew red and then filled with tears. She sat with her long slimarms loosely folded on a davenport, weeping and smiling at once. Therewas much charm in her smile, but, barring it and her mass of fine auburnhair, she was certainly not good looking. She was small, ungainly,flat-chested, with a large thin-lipped mouth and, in spite of herbeautiful gowns, with a general effect of rustiness.
When Pavel and his mother met at dinner he felt so embarrassed he couldnot bring himself to look her in the face.