“what i propose is that catrina takes you for a drive, my dear baron, with her two ponies.”
the countess had taken very good care to refrain from making this proposal to catrina alone. she was one of those mothers who rule their daughters by springing surprises upon them in a carefully selected company where the daughter is not free to reply.
de chauxville bowed with outspread hands.
“if it will not bore mademoiselle,” he replied.
the countess looked at her daughter with an unctuous smile, as if to urge her on to make the most of this opportunity. it was one of the countess’s chief troubles that she could not by hook or crook involve catrina in any sort of a love intrigue. she was the sort of mother who would have preferred to hear scandal about her daughter to hearing nothing.
“if it will not freeze monsieur,” replied catrina, with uncompromising honesty.
de chauxville laughed in his frank way.
“i am not afraid of coldness—of the atmosphere, mademoiselle,” he replied. “i am most anxious to see your beautiful country. it was quite dark during the last hour of my journey last night, and i had snow-sleepiness. i saw nothing.”
“you will see nothing but snow,” said catrina.
“which is like the reserve of a young girl,” added the frenchman. “it keeps warm that which is beneath it.”
“you need not be afraid with catrina,” chimed in the countess, nodding and becking in a manner that clearly showed her assumption to herself of some vague compliment. “she drives beautifully. she is not nervous in that way. i have never seen any one drive like her.”
“i have no doubt,” said de chauxville, “that mademoiselle’s hands are firm, despite their diminutiveness.”
the countess was charmed—and showed it. she frowned at catrina, who remained grave and looked at the clock.
“when would you like to go?” she asked de chauxville, with that complete absence of affectation which the russian, of all women of the world, alone have mastered in their conversation with men.
“am i not at your service—now and always?” responded the gallant baron.
“i hope not,” replied catrina quietly. “there are occasions when i have no use for you. shall we say eleven o’clock?”
“with pleasure. then i will go and write my letters now,” said the baron, quitting the room.
“a charming man!” ejaculated the countess, before the door was well closed.
“a fool!” corrected catrina.
“i do not think you can say that, dear,” sighed the countess, more in sorrow than in anger.
“a clever one,” answered catrina. “there is a difference. the clever ones are the worst.”
the countess shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and catrina left the room. she went upstairs to her own little den, where the piano stood. it was the only room in the house that was not too warm, for here the window was occasionally opened—a proceeding which the countess considered scarcely short of criminal.
catrina began to play, feverishly, nervously, with all the weird force of her nature. she was like a very sick person seeking a desperate remedy—racing against time. it was her habit to take her breaking heart thus to the great masters, to interpret their thoughts in their music, welding their melodies to the needs of her own sorrow. she only had half an hour. of late music had failed her a little. it had not given her the comfort she had usually extracted from solitude and the piano. she was in a dangerous humor. she was afraid of trusting herself to de chauxville. the time fled, and her humor did not change. she was still playing when the door opened, and the countess stood before her flushed and angry, either or both being the effect of stairs upon emotion.
“catrina!” the elder lady exclaimed. “the sleigh is at the door, and the count is waiting. i cannot tell what you are thinking of. it is not every-body who would be so attentive to you. just look at your hair. why can’t you dress like other girls?”
“because i am not made like other girls,” replied catrina—and who knows what bitterness of reproach there was in such an answer from daughter to mother?
“hush, child,” replied the countess, whose anger usually took the form of personal abuse. “you are as the good god made you.”
“then the good god must have made me in the dark,” cried catrina, flinging out of the room.
“she will be down directly,” said the countess lanovitch to de chauxville, whom she found smoking a cigarette in the hall. “she naturally—he! he!—wishes to make a careful toilet.”
de chauxville bowed gravely, without committing himself to any observation, and offered her a cigarette, which she accepted. having achieved his purpose, he did not now propose to convey the impression that he admired catrina.
in a few moments the girl appeared, drawing on her fur gloves. before the door was opened the countess discreetly retired to the enervating warmth of her own apartments.
catrina gathered up the reins and gave a little cry, at which the ponies leaped forward, and in a whirl of driven snow the sleigh glided off between the pines.
at first there was no opportunity of conversation, for the ponies were fresh and troublesome. the road over which they were passing had not been beaten down by the passage of previous sleighs, so that the powdery snow rose up like dust, and filled the eyes and mouth.
“it will be better presently,” gasped catrina, wrestling with her fractious little tartar thoroughbreds, “when we get out on to the high-road.”
de chauxville sat quite still. if he felt any misgiving as to her power of mastering her team he kept it to himself. there was a subtle difference in his manner toward catrina when they were alone together, a suggestion of camaraderie, of a common interest and a common desire, of which she was conscious without being able to put definite meaning to it.
it annoyed and alarmed her. while giving her full attention to the management of the sleigh, she was beginning to dread the first words of this man, who was merely wielding a cheap power acquired in the shady course of his career. there is nothing so disarming as the assumed air of intimate knowledge of one’s private thoughts and actions. de chauxville assumed this air with a skill against which catrina’s dogged strength of character was incapable of battling. his manner conveyed the impression that he knew more of catrina’s inward thoughts than any other living being, and she was simple enough to be frightened into the conclusion that she had betrayed herself to him. there is no simpler method of discovering a secret than to ignore its existence.
it is possible that de chauxville became aware of catrina’s sidelong glances of anxiety in his direction. he may have divined that silence was more effective than speech.
he sat looking straight in front of him, as if too deeply absorbed in his own thoughts to take even a passing interest in the scenery.
“why did you come here?” asked catrina suddenly.
de chauxville seemed to awake from a revery. he turned and looked at her in assumed surprise. they were on the high-road now, where the snow was beaten down, so conversation was easy.
“but—to see you, mademoiselle.”
“i am not that sort of girl,” answered catrina coldly. “i want the truth.”
de chauxville gave a short laugh and looked at her.
“prophets and kings have sought the truth, mademoiselle, and have not found it,” he said lightly.
catrina made no answer to this. her ponies required considerable attention. also, there are some minds like large banking houses—not dealing in small change. that which passes in or out of such minds has its own standard of importance. such people are not of much use in these days, when we like to touch things lightly, adorning a tale but pointing no moral.
“i would ask you to believe that your society was one incentive to make me accept the countess’s kind hospitality,” the frenchman observed after a pause.
“and?”
de chauxville looked at her. he had not met many women of solid intellect.
“and?” repeated catrina.
“i have others, of course.”
catrina gave a little nod and waited.
“i wish to be near alexis,” added de chauxville.
catrina was staring straight in front of her. her face had acquired a habit of hardening at the mention of paul’s name. it was stone-like now, and set. perhaps she might have forgiven him if he had loved her once, if only for a little while. she might have forgiven him, if only for the remembrance of that little while. but paul had always been a man of set purpose, and such men are cruel. even for her sake, even for the sake of his own vanity, he had never pretended to love catrina. he had never mistaken gratified vanity for dawning love, as millions of men do. or perhaps he was without vanity. some few men are so constructed.
“do you love him so?” asked catrina, with a grim smile distorting her strong face.
“as much as you, mademoiselle,” replied de chauxville.
catrina started. she was not sure that she hated paul. toward etta, there was no mistake in her feeling, and this was so strong that, like an electric current, there was enough of it to pass through the wife and reach the husband.
passion, like character, does not grow in crowded places. in great cities men are all more or less alike. it is only in solitary abodes that strong natures grow up in their own way. catrina had grown to womanhood in one of the solitary places of the earth. she had no facile axiom, no powerful precedent, to guide her every step through life. the woman who was in daily contact with her was immeasurably beneath her in mental power, in force of character, in those possibilities of love or hatred which go to make a strong life for good or for evil. by the side of her daughter the countess lanovitch was as the willow, swayed by every wind, in the neighborhood of the oak, crooked and still and strong.
“in petersburg you pledged yourself to help me,” said de chauxville. and although she knew that in the letter this was false, she did not contradict him. “i came here to claim fulfilment of your promise.”
the hard blue eyes beneath the fur cap stared straight in front of them. catrina seemed to be driving like one asleep, for she noted nothing by the roadside. so far as eye could reach over the snow-clad plain, through the silent pines, these two were alone in a white, dead world of their own. catrina never drove with bells. there was no sound beyond the high-pitched drone of the steel runners over the powdery snow. they were alone; unseen, unheard save of that ear that listens in the waste places of the world.
“what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“oh, not very much!” answered de chauxville—a cautious man, who knew a woman’s humor. catrina driving a pair of ponies in the clear, sharp air of central russia, and catrina playing the piano in the enervating, flower-scented atmosphere of a drawing-room, were two different women. de chauxville was not the man to mistake the one for the other.
“not very much, mademoiselle,” he answered. “i should like mme. la comtesse to invite the whole osterno party to dine, and sleep, perhaps, if one may suggest it.”
catrina wanted this too. she wanted to torture herself with the sight of etta, beautiful, self-confident, carelessly cognizant of paul’s love. she wanted to see paul look at his wife with the open admiration which she had set down as something else than love—something immeasurably beneath love as catrina understood that passion. her soul, brooding under a weight of misery, was ready to welcome any change, should it only mean a greater misery.
“i can manage that,” she said, “if they will come. it was a prearranged matter that there should be a bear-hunt in our forests.”
“that will do,” answered de chauxville reflectively; “in a few days, perhaps, if it suits the countess.”
catrina made no reply. after a pause she spoke again, in her strange, jerky way.
“what will you gain by it?” she asked.
de chauxville shrugged his shoulders.
“who knows?” he answered. “there are many things i want to know; many questions which can be answered only by one’s own observation. i want to see them together. are they happy?”
catrina’s face hardened.
“if there is a god in heaven, and he hears our prayers, they ought not to be,” she replied curtly.
“she looked happy enough in petersburg,” said the frenchman, who never told the truth for its own sake. whenever he thought that catrina’s hatred needed stimulation he mentioned etta’s name.
“there are other questions in my mind,” he went on, “some of which you can answer, mademoiselle, if you care to.”
catrina’s face expressed no great willingness to oblige.
“the charity league,” said de chauxville, looking at her keenly; “i have always had a feeling of curiosity respecting it. was, for instance, our friend the prince pavlo implicated in that unfortunate affair?”
catrina flushed suddenly. she did not take her eyes from the ponies. she was conscious of the unwonted color in her cheeks, which was slowly dying away beneath her companion’s relentless gaze.
“you need not trouble to reply, mademoiselle,” said de chauxville, with his dark smile; “i am answered.”
catrina pulled the ponies up with a jerk, and proceeded to turn their willing heads toward home. she was alarmed and disturbed. nothing seemed to be safe from the curiosity of this man, no secret secure, no prevarication of the slightest avail.
“there are other questions in my mind,” said de chauxville quietly, “but not now. mademoiselle is no doubt tired.”
he leaned back, and when at length he spoke it was to give utterance to the trite commonplace of which he made a conversational study.
