below the windows of a long, low, stone house, in its architecture remarkably like a fortified farm—below these deep-embrasured windows the river oster mumbled softly. one of the windows was wide open, and with the voice of the water a wonderful music rolled out to mingle and lose itself in the hum of the pine-woods.
the room was a small one; beneath the artistic wall-paper one detected the outline of square-hewn stones. there were women’s things lying about; there were flowers in a bowl on a low, strong table. there were a few good engravings on the wall; deep-curtained windows, low chairs, a sofa, a fan. but it was not a womanly room. the music filling it, vibrating back from the grim stone walls, was not womanly music. it was more than manly. it was not earthly, but almost divine. it happened to be grieg, with the halting beat of a disabled, perhaps a broken, heart in it, as that master’s music usually has.
the girl was alone in the room. the presence of any one would have silenced something that was throbbing at the back of the chords. quite suddenly she stopped. she knew how to play the quaint last notes. she knew something that no master had ever taught her.
she swung round on the stool and faced the light. it was afternoon—an autumn afternoon in russia—and the pink light made the very best of a face which was not beautiful at all, never could be beautiful—a face about which even the owner, a woman, could have no possible illusion. it was broad and powerful, with eyes too far apart, forehead too broad and low, jaw too heavy, mouth too determined. the eyes were almond-shaped, and slightly sloping downward and inward—deep, passionate blue eyes set in a mongolian head. it was the face of a woman who could, morally speaking, make mincemeat of nine young men out of ten. but she could not have made one out of the number love her. for it has been decreed that women shall win love—except in some happy exceptions—by beauty only. the same unwritten law has it that a man’s appearance does not matter—a law much appreciated by some of us, and duly canonized by not a few.
the girl was evidently listening. she glanced at a little golden clock on the mantel-piece, and then at the open window. she rose—she was short, and somewhat broadly built—and went to the window.
“he will be back,” she said to herself, “in a few minutes now.”
she raised her hand to her forehead, and pressed back her hair with a little movement of impatience, expressive, perhaps, of a great suspense. she stood idly drumming on the window-sill for a few moments; then, with a quick little sigh, she went back to the piano. as she moved she gave a jerk of the head from time to time, as schoolgirls who have too much hair are wont to do. the reason of this nervous movement was a wondrous plait of gold reaching far below her waist. catrina lanovitch almost worshipped her own hair. she knew without any doubt that not one woman in ten thousand could rival her in this feminine glory—knew it as indubitably as she knew that she was plain. the latter fact she faced with an unflinching, cold conviction which was not feminine at all. she did not say that she was hideous, for the sake of hearing a contradiction or a series of saving clauses. she never spoke of it to any one. she had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it outside discussion. all her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all her vanity centred, on her hair. it was her one pride, perhaps her one hope. women have been loved for their voices. catrina’s voice was musical enough, but it was deep and strong. it was passionate, tender if she wished, fascinating; but it was not lovable. if the voice may win love, why not the hair?
catrina despised all men but one—that one she worshipped. she lived night and day with one great desire, beside which heaven and hell were mere words. neither the hope of the one nor the fear of the other in any way touched or affected her desire. she wanted to make paul alexis love her; and, womanlike, she clung to the one womanly charm that was hers—the wonderful golden hair. pathetic, aye, pathetic—with a grin behind the pathos, as there ever is.
she sat down at the piano, and her strong, small hands tore the heart out of each wire. there are some people who get farther into a piano than others, making the wires speak as with a voice. catrina lanovitch had this trick. she only played a russian people-song—a simple lay such as one may hear issuing from the door of any kabak on a summer evening. but she infused a true russian soul into it—the soul that is cursed with a fatal power of dumb and patient endurance. she did not sway from side to side as do some people who lose themselves in the intoxication of music. but she sat quite upright, her sturdy, square shoulders motionless. her strange eyes were fixed with the stillness of distant contemplation.
suddenly she stopped and leaped to her feet. she did not go to the window, but stood listening beside the piano. the beat of a horse’s hoofs on the narrow road was distinctly audible, hollow and sodden as is the sound of a wooden road. it came nearer and nearer, and a certain unsteadiness indicated that the horse was tired.
“i thought he might have come,” she whispered, and she sat down breathlessly.
when the servant came into the room a few minutes later catrina was at the piano.
“a letter, mademoiselle,” said the maid.
“lay it on the table,” answered catrina, without looking round. she was playing the closing bars of a nocturne.
she rose slowly, turned, and seized the letter as a starving man seizes food. there was something almost wolf-like in her eyes.
“steinmetz,” she exclaimed, reading the address. “steinmetz. oh! why won’t he write to me?”
she tore open the letter, read it, and stood holding it in her hand, looking out over the trackless pine-woods with absorbed, speculative eyes. the sun had just set. the farthest ridge of pine-trees stood out like the teeth of a saw in black relief on the rosy sky. catrina lanovitch watched the rosiness fade into pearly gray.
“madame the countess awaits mademoiselle for tea,” said the maid’s voice suddenly, in the gloom of the door-way.
“i will come.”
the village of thors—twenty miles farther down the river oster, twenty miles nearer to the junction of that river with the volga—was little more than a hamlet in the days of which we write. some day, perhaps, the three hundred souls of thors may increase and multiply—some day when russia is attacked by the railway fever. for thors is on the chorno-ziom—the belt of black and fertile soil that runs right across the vast empire.
karl steinmetz, a dogged watcher of the wandering jew—the deathless scoffer at our lord’s agony, who shall never die, who shall leave cholera in his track wherever he may wander—karl steinmetz knew that the oster was in itself a wandering jew. this river meandered through the lonesome country, bearing cholera germs within its waters. whenever osterno had cholera it sent it down the river to thors, and so on to the volga.
thors lay groaning under the scourge, and the countess lanovitch shut herself within her stone walls, shivering with fear, begging her daughter to return to petersburg.
it was nearly dark when karl steinmetz and the moscow doctor rode into the little village, to find the starosta, a simple russian farmer, awaiting them outside the kabak.
steinmetz knew the man, and immediately took command of the situation with that unquestioned sense of authority which in russia places the barin on much the same footing as that taken by the anglo-indian in our eastern empire.
“now, starosta,” he said, “we have only an hour to spend in thors. this is the moscow doctor. if you listen to what he tells you, you will soon have no sickness in the village. the worst houses first—and quickly. you need not be afraid, but if you do not care to come in, you may stay outside.”
as they walked down the straggling village-street the moscow doctor told the starosta in no measured terms, as was his wont, wherein lay the heart of the sickness. here, as in osterno, dirt and neglect were at the base of all the trouble. here, as in the larger village, the houses were more like the abode of four-footed beasts than the dwellings of human beings.
the starosta prudently remained outside the first house to which he introduced the visitors. paul went fearlessly in, while steinmetz stood in the door-way, holding open the door.
as he was standing there he perceived a flickering light approaching him. the light was evidently that of an ordinary hand-lantern, and from the swinging motion it was easy to divine that it was being carried by some one who was walking quickly.
“who is this?” asked steinmetz.
“it is likely to be the countess catrina, excellency.”
steinmetz glanced back into the cottage, which was dark save for the light of a single petroleum lamp. paul’s huge form could be dimly distinguished bending over a heap of humanity and foul clothing in a corner.
“does she visit the cottages?” asked steinmetz sharply.
“she does, god be with her! she has no fear. she is an angel. without her we should all be dead.”
“she won’t visit this, if i can help it,” muttered steinmetz.
the light flickered along the road toward them. in the course of a few minutes it fell on the stricken cottage, on the starosta standing in the road, on steinmetz in the door-way.
“herr steinmetz, is that you?” asked a voice, deep and musical, in the darkness.
“zum befehl,” answered steinmetz, without moving.
catrina came up to him. she was clad in a long dark cloak, a dark hat, and wore no gloves. she brought with her a clean aromatic odor of disinfectants. she carried the lantern herself, while behind her walked a man-servant in livery, with a large basket in either hand.
“it is good of you,” she said, “to come to us in our need—also to persuade the good doctor to come with you.”
“it is not much that we can do,” answered steinmetz, taking the small outstretched hand within his large soft grasp; “but that little you may always count upon.”
“i know,” she said gravely.
she looked up at him, expecting him to step aside and allow her to pass into the cottage; but steinmetz stood quite still, looking down at her with his pleasant smile.
“and how is it with you?” he asked, speaking in german, as they always did together.
she shrugged her shoulders.
“oh!” she answered indifferently, “i am well, of course. i always am. i have the strength of a horse. of course i have been troubled about these poor people. it has been terrible. they are worse than children. i cannot quite understand why god afflicts them so. they have never done any harm. they are not like the jews. it seems unjust. i have been very busy, in my small way. my mother, you know, does not take much interest in things that are not clean.”
“madame the countess reads french novels and the fictional productions of some modern english ladies,” suggested steinmetz quietly.
“yes; but she objects to honest dirt,” said catrina coldly. “may i go in?”
steinmetz did not move.
“i think not. this moscow man is eccentric. he likes to do good sub rosa. he prefers to be alone.”
catrina tried to look into the cottage; but karl steinmetz, as we know, was fat, and filled up the whole door-way.
“i should like to thank him for coming to us, or, at least, to offer him hospitality. i suppose one cannot pay him.”
“no; one cannot pay him,” answered steinmetz gravely.
there was a little pause. from the interior of the cottage came the murmured gratitude of the peasants, broken at times by a wail of agony—the wail of a man. it is not a pleasant sound to hear. catrina heard it, and it twisted her plain, strong face in a sudden spasm of sympathy.
again she made an impatient little movement.
“let me go in,” she urged. “i may be able to help.”
steinmetz shook his head.
“better not!” he said. “besides, your life is too precious to these poor people to run unnecessary risks.”
she gave a strange, bitter laugh.
“and what about you?” she said. “and paul?”
“you never hear of paul going into any of the cottages,” snapped steinmetz sharply. “for me it is different. you have never heard that of paul.”
“no,” she answered slowly; “and it is quite right. his life—it is different for him. how—how is paul?”
“he is well, thank you.”
steinmetz glanced down at her. she was looking across the plains beyond the boundless pine forests that lay between thors and the volga.
“quite well,” he went on, kindly enough. “he hopes to ride over and pay his respects to the countess to-morrow or the next day.”
and the keen, kind eyes saw what they expected in the flickering light of the lamp.
at this moment steinmetz was pushed aside from within, and a hulking young man staggered out into the road, propelled from behind with considerable vigor. after him came a shower of clothes and bedding.
“pah!” exclaimed steinmetz, spluttering. “himmel! what filth! be careful, catrina!”
but catrina had slipped past him. in an instant he had caught her by the wrist.
“come back!” he cried. “you must not go in there!”
she was just over the threshold.
“you have some reason for keeping me out,” she returned, wriggling in his strong grasp. “i will—i will!”
with a twist she wrenched herself free and went into the dimly lighted room.
almost immediately she gave a mocking laugh.
“paul!” she said.
