The penitent

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

THE PENITENT

is VOLUME ONE OP

THE NEW WORLD TRILOGY

THE OTHERS TO FOLLOW ARE:

THE PASSION FLOWER AND THE PAGEANT-MAKER

THE PENITENT

THE PENITENT

BY

EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

&f)e £ibcrstbe $>ress Cambridge
1922

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

COPYRIGHT, IQ22, BY EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

tKfc Btoewibe $re««

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO

CALVIN THOMAS

Dedicated to the late Professor Calvin Thomas, late head of the
department of Teutonic Languages and Literatures, Columbia
University, New York City, to whom first this initial idea of
The New World Trilogy — three novels — picturing the crum
bling of the great civilization of the past was submitted and
which he was kind enough to commend.

Once my teacher; always my friend ; and to the world at
large a noble example of broad and accurate scholarship.

Er [Alexander] war seit dem dreizehnten Mtirz 1801, vom Bewusztsein
der ihm drilckenden Mitschuld am Todte des Vaters, ein Biiszer geworden,
der nach den Heilsmitteln und nach den Heiligengotles suchte, die ihm
den Last abnehmen sollten."

SCfflEMANN

(TRANSLATION)

" Since the thirteenth of March, 1801, Alexander, because of the
oppressive consciousness of his guilt in the murder of his father, had
become a penitent, who sought the means of healing, the Holy God, to
take the burden away."

SCfflEMANN

"Modern history knows no more tragic figure than Alexander. "

Encyclopedia Britannica

"The necessities of politics are the proper motive for modern
tragedy."

NAPOLEON THE FIRST

CONTENTS

I. THE MEETING 3

II. ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 34

III. THE JOURNEY SOUTH 60

IV. ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 76
V. THE DUEL 90

VI. THE NIGHT VIGIL 105

VII. PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 116

VIII. THE ART EXHIBIT 127

DC DAWN on THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 143

X. BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 159

XI. ODESSA 171

XII. MADAM WORONZOW 181

XIII. METTERNICH 195

XIV. CRIMEA AND THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 215
XV. A DINNER-PARTY BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 2 29

XVI. CAUCASIA 242

XVII. ALEXANDER 251

XVIII. THE RETURN 262

XIX. MtKHAILOVSKY 277

x CONTENTS

XX. THE DECISION 285

XXI. THE FAREWELL 303

XXII. TAGANROG 312

XXIII. COUNT WORONZOW 318

XXIV. ORCHIDS AND Music 327

XXV. KUSMITCH THE MONK 341

XXVI. THE NEWS 350

XXVII. PRINCE METTERNICH'S LETTER 363

XXVIII. THE PENITENT 366

THE PENITENT

THE PENITENT

CHAPTER I
THE MEETING

"THESE meetings are getting to be a bore!" thought Alexis
Sergiewitch Pushkin, concealing his yawning mouth hurriedly,
and glancing about at the same time to see if any one had ob
served his indifference.

He would not have come to-night, probably, this petted dandy
of the world of fashion, if it had not been a special meeting, and
if the members had not insisted vigorously that his presence was
necessary. Besides, to-night the leading members of the South
ern Society, from Moscow, were here too, and his absence would
iave been in the nature of a discourtesy.

It was easy enough for him, the petted darling of Petersburg's
smart set, to believe that his presence was necessary. Was he
not sought by the elite? Who was more popular? He was the
spoiled child of the fashionable crowd who was beginning to
think that he had been made for people to compliment, to caress,
[n addition, Ryleiev had asked him to come and in a manner
that he felt to be significant. He liked Ryleiev. He did not wish
to displease him. They were sympathetic. They were old
iriends. And Ryleiev was a poet like himself, but — of course —
not such an important one. Did he not have reason to believe
that he was the only real poet in Russia? Was not that what
people said?

Ryleiev was the host to-night too. He had procured permis
sion, for the occasion, to use one of the empty upstairs counting-
rooms of the Russian-American Company, for which he had been
working since he had given up his unpleasant position with the

4 THE PENITENT

Criminal Court whose procedures had spread before his mind
such an unhappy comprehension of injustice, of misrule, that he
was saddened. This was on the Moi'ka. Ryleiev, who was mar
ried, lived right next door, in a small, four-roomed, wooden house,
likewise owned by the Russian-American Company, from the
front door of which you could look out and see the Blue Bridge.

Alexis Sergiewitch, be it said, did not fancy greatly this plebe
ian quarter. And least of all to-night! He looked about the bare,
ugly room, where men spent their lives in prosaic work instead
of pleasure, with a suppressed frisson of distaste. A large, awk
ward, oblong table was in the center. It was covered with green
oilcloth, stamped with raised red and blue flowers. There were
yellow-painted wooden armchairs with low, round backs; some
high, narrow desks with tall, long-legged stools; unpainted pil
lars of wood supporting the low, none too clean, ceiling. The
cheap candles that lighted the room had not been cleaned for so
long they looked as if they were encrusted with ice, or had been
through a gray snowstorm. Alexis Sergiewitch hated everything
that savored of discipline ; discomfort, or shabby living.

By force of contrast with the ugly present, and its atmosphere
of compulsion and of toil, he recalled the night before. He had
spent it with one of Petersburg's loveliest women. What fun the
smuggling him in had been! He chuckled now at thought of it.
How well he had acted his part, too, that of messenger from the
fashionable modiste, Marcelle, bringing home late a gown! At
the recollection he looked down upon his slim, elegant figure with
approval. Then the luxurious, satin-hung, violet-perfumed room,
with its profusion of flowers, and its seductive inmate, swung be
fore the eyes of his brain and shut out the ugly present.

"Why don't you pay attention?"

Kakhovsky of the deep-set, treacherous eyes and brutal face
nudged him roughly, discourteously. This vexed him. He was
particularly sensitive to discourtesy.

Kakhovsky was a Pole, a gentleman by birth, he claimed, who
had gambled away his estates, and who was envious of men with
money, or who were better placed socially than himself. He had
the manners of a boor, and Alexis Sergiewitch hated him. He

THE MEETING 5

hated him also because he was ugly to look at, and offended his
sensitive poet's eyes. Kakhovsky had a huge, protruding under
lip, that hung down and made him look like an animal, a sort of
hog's jowl. His voice was rough, harsh. He had a mean, high-
tempered face. And he was shabbily dressed and looked dirty.
He looked like anything but the gentleman he claimed to be.

At the other end of the room they were crowding around
Ryleiev mysteriously. They were whispering. There was an air
of suspense and secrecy about them. Kakhovsky seemed to
understand. But he, Alexis Sergiewitch, did not. Kakhovsky
evidently was in the secret. But he would not tell. He watched
them intently for a moment with his little, twinkling, evil, pig
eyes, as if he knew just what they were saying. Then, without
addressing young Pushkin, or as if with intention to ignore him,
he sauntered jauntily over to join them.

Alexis Sergiewitch noticed, wearily, that to-night a light that
resembled inspiration shone in the great, sad, beautiful eyes of
Ryleiev, and the refractory brown curl that stood up on the top
of his head was bobbing briskly. His somewhat frail body looked
frailer than usual, too, he thought. He was nervous and restless.

Ryleiev, however, always dressed atrociously, in the worst
taste, affecting bright-colored plaid vests, huge, showy scarf-pins,
and his coat looked as if it had been made for some one else. But
his head, which would be noticed in any assembly, was a poet's
head. This made Alexis Sergiewitch remember the poem "Vo-
inarovsky" which Ryleiev had just written, and had dedicated
to the elegant Alexander Bestushew, the friend he loved, the
dark, sensitive, boyish figure that was now standing beside him.
Certain lines floated without volition through his memory. It
was poetry. He enjoyed it. He could not forget it. There was no
doubt about it. Ryleiev was a poet.

Prince Odojewsky, blond, slender, aristocratic, the petted
darling of his mother and the social elite, and like himself only
twenty, slipped supplely from a tall stool, beside a dirty, guttering
candle, and lounged slowly toward the others. Odojewsky was
charmingly frivolous and frail to look upon. He was a picture
worthy of a painter. He was pretty as girls are pretty, and

6 THE PENITENT

young. He was finely enough dressed to attract comment. He
had a waist so slender two hands could clasp it, contrasting
sharply with the long, full flare of his black broadcloth coat. His
shirt and the dramatic, Byronic swathing of his neck were
of the finest cambric from Marseilles. Like young men of fashion
of the day, he was tightly corseted, and his blond hair was
brushed out daringly into the middle of his cheek on each side,
where it swirled around like a yellow rosette.

The brothers Mouravieff-Apostol were aristocrats too, like
young Prince Odojewsky. But like Ryleiev they were older, a
little, than the others and they had both fought in the war with
France. Their father, who had been the childhood friend of
Alexander, the Emperor, and his playmate in the imperial pal
ace, and had shared likewise with him his careful classical educa
tion, was not only a great gentleman, after the courtly standard
of the past, but a Greek scholar of repute, and a philologist. He
lived in Florence now, in a luxurious, old, yellowing palace of
Italian marble, devoting his life to the study of Greek and Ro
man art. He had translated Aristophanes into Russian, and now
he was writing elegant if insipid verse, in the noble tongue of
Greece. Here in the proud, picturesque, Italian city, away from
his own untutored, rougher race, living in a luxury that was regal,
the accredited friend of princes and emperors, he was dream
ing his days away, like the patrician he was, over the perished
poets of antiquity. He was a figure, in short, such as only the
highly specialized life of a brief period, its leisure, its barely
touched wealth, could create.

He bore proudly an ancient name : Mouravieff, ancient nobles
of Russia; and Apostol, the revolutionary hetman of the Ukraine
who dared to defy Peter the Great, and who in the end won his
admiration. But none of this restless, warlike blood had come
down to him, the scholar, the exquisite, the lonely sybarite of
beauty. It had skipped him and become the perilous heritage, in
a perilous period, of his two tall, handsome sons, who were ar
guing now with such evident zest with Ryleiev, as Alexis Sergie-
witch stood idly watching them. Alexis Sergiewitch had no in
terest in this conversation which he could see was growing more

THE MEETING 7

and more animated, even to the point of resembling dissension.
They were just literary societies, anyway! What could any of
them tell him about art, about letters? He smiled disdainfully at
the thought. He wished again that he had not come. He did not
feel that he belonged in these amateurish, schoolboy debates.
Besides, they bored him.

The brothers Mouravieff-Apostol had both been in the Na
poleonic wars, those epoch-making wars, which had created a
new, a dangerous sense of fellowship among men, and had scat
tered bright firebrands of discordant thought throughout a con
tinent. They had been attached to the staff of Field Marshal
Wittgenstein, of the Second Army Corps. Pestel, as it happened,
a German by name but a Russian by blood, had been there too.
He, in fact, because of a peculiar stern ability, had been made
aid-de-camp to Prince Wittgenstein. These three were the initial
founders of the two societies which were meeting in joint session
to-night. The idea had been at first the result of a need of diver
sion in the black, lonely, unenlivened nights they had spent to
gether upon the battle-fields, when they were huddled together
in the discomfort of rain, of snow; merely a glittering, fanciful
dream to entertain their brains and make the slow hours go more
quickly. Then, boyishly enough, they had planned together the
remaking of their country. And Pestel, who had been most
serious, most interested from the beginning, had even gone so far
as to write, laboriously, a new code of laws, which he was con
vinced, because of a certain self-reliance which was his, an un
tutored conceit, was what Russia needed and would cure her
social ills.

The three saw and agreed upon various points of weakness in
the existing social structure. One was that there were only two
classes of people in the land; the one so few, the other so many,
and the distance between them was too great for safety. It made
them useless, in a way, to each other. It was a source of weak
ness, of not easily defined loss. The aristocrats, in minority; and
the rough, unmoulded mass of unlettered peasants who could
neither read nor write. It was this, at first, that the young men
hoped to change. This, they believed, created unrest, dissatis-

8 THE PENITENT

faction. This was a breaking spot which needed strengthening.
There must be some kind of leveling, some kind of filling in.

Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol had at length been promoted. He
had been made lieutenant-colonel. And he filled the office with
the dignity, with the pride that became his ancient race. It had
been the lot of his race always to command, not obey. With him
therefore it was an inherited instinct, and he' did it well.

He was a distinguished, tall, resolute, blond figure, well fitted
to lead. His brother, Ataman, younger, was less determined, less
aggressive. He was of gentler mould. He looked the artist he
was not. There was some indefinable quality in his face that was
appealing. He had the sensitive, trembling mouth of a child.
They were both aristocrats and they looked it. They belonged
to his world, and Alexis Sergiewitch looked upon them kindly.

But Pestel, who was talking with them now so earnestly, he
did not like. Pestel was considerably older than the others. His
hah- was beginning in places to turn gray. He was over thirty.
His face was yellow like a Chinaman's, with dull, small, black,
cruel eyes set too far apart; eyes which were peculiarly expres
sionless, unless he was moved to anger, when they took on a deep,
slow, sullen, coal-like glow. He dressed showily and badly. His
figure was unpleasant because his right shoulder was considerably
higher than the left. He was small and a little too slight of build,
but wiry. And he possessed great endurance. He had won a
medal, indeed, for bravery in the campaign of 1812. His nature,
however, was hard, cruel. He had little heart. And he came by
the lack of it honestly. His father had been the most savage,
brutal governor that Siberia had had. In that pale, barren land-
strip, reaching out to touch the far Pacific, he had made tears
fall like rain. His name, in that lonely land, had been a synonym
for sorrow. Within the son, too, could be felt something that re
sembled steel, that could not be made to bend; something deter
mined, resisting, beyond the normal.

The high-pitched, dictatory voice of Pestel now floated over
to where he stood. It was angry. It was harsh and argumenta
tive. It overrode the voices of the others and bore them down
brutally.

THE MEETING 9

"I came back from abroad, from France, with new ideas, new
points of view, ambitions, just like all the other soldiers," he de
clared dictatorially.

"We Russians, hundreds, thousands of us, had bought with
our suffering, our life-blood, the freedom of Europe. We came
home with a feeling of victory, of freedom. Were we not the
petted soldiers of a triumphing, a feted army? We came back
eager for the reward which we had earned. Did we not have a
right to it, my friends, I ask you?

"We came home, I repeat, to take possession of the advan
tages which belonged to us because we had paid for them. We
had bought them with our blood. And what do we find when we
get here? That there is nothing for us. Alexander, the Emperor,
has changed. We can no longer recognize in him the leader we
used to know. He has broken his promises. He no longer cher
ishes those noble dreams of youth which were ours — and his —
together. Suddenly, he is old — disillusioned, strange. We can
not understand him! He has thrown over his happy, broad-
minded plans for freedom, for enlightenment. The ideals, the
hopes, which were once his have now passed on to his people, ou.
of his reach, out of his guidance. He is terrified, we learn, at the
spirit of liberalism, of modernism, sweeping over the country,
which he himself helped to start. He can only condescend, it
seems. He cannot treat with equals.

"What does he do for us after our return from the battle
field? How does he repay us for our blood? What is his gratitude
for our suffering? He turns that hell-hound Arakcheiev loose
upon us. He doubles the number of his spies. He doubles his
guard. He gives us over to that stiff-necked drill-master, Count
Benkendorf, who inaugurates the baseness of the paid denun
ciation. He lets that mad priest, Photius, dictate, who has just
the grade of intelligence of a wolf.

"And what do we soldiers get for our reward? Tell me! This!
In his military colonies, presided over by Arakcheiev, we are
knouted to death. The officers who brought glory, who brought
distinction to Russia, are dishonored, or dismissed. Dismissed, I
tell you, without anything to live upon. Dismissed to starve, or
to become beggars in the street.

io THE PENITENT

"Revolution is loose in the world. Why should not we, too,
profit by it? Have we not every justification to do so? What else,
my friends, is there left to do? Alexander is not what we thought
him in the old days. He has changed, most unaccountably. In
stead of being the inspired leader of men we used to think him, he
is a tricky Byzantine.

"In addition, he is forgetting Russia in his eagerness for a
greater part, a world part. In his longing to make calm, to make
happy again the continent which Napoleon upset, he has neg
lected us. In trying to do everything he has done nothing. We
are forgotten — I tell you!

"The first few months that followed the invasion of the Little
Corsican, and the end of the war with him, found Petersburg
gay, to be sure, as you and I remember, and the scene of an exag
gerated social display. I grant you it was a brief period of happi
ness. It was a period of enterprise, of rich and varied activity.
We hoped a new era had begun. Poets, who need little encourage
ment at any time, began to pipe up, just Jike birds when the
year is young, and in rich contrast, I can tell you, to the gloomy
years of war preceding. Joy swept back to reinvigorate a world
that had grown sad with suffering. Russia was a good place to
live in then.

"But it did not last! Alexander changed. He would not let it
last! Why, no one knows, unless it was that which rules cow
ards, fear. He denied everything he used to champion. He gave
up his friends. He became the weak slave of an abandoned
woman, who cannot even count her lovers."

Alexis Sergiewitch began to shake off his weariness.

" You who did not go to the war, because you were too young,"
chimed in Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol, in a dignified manner,
without anger, a man's manner, which carried a conviction of its
own, "do not know, from personal experience, the truth of what
our brother, Pestel here, has just been saying. The men of old
Russia, our fathers, hated new France, and the Revolution."

At this moment, Alexis Sergiewitch, always at heart the aris
tocrat, thought: "What a relief to such boredom as this to
night, and to the crudeness, the rough ugliness of a land like ours,

THE MEETING u

was the gay spirit of pleasure, of highly developed living of old
France! What a thing to hold in memory, as an earnest of the
possibilities of man, was that polished race that had made life
fearless, finished, and at the same time so luxurious" — a vision
of the petted beauty of the night before occurring to him as an
example.

"They, our fathers, adored the France of Versailles. That is of
the past, we know. It is dead. Nothing like it can come again.
A new world has been born, my brothers, born upon the battle
field where worlds have before been born, around the cannons
of the Conqueror. The travail of the birth of civilizations is the
boom of cannons."

A silence, just such as the mysterious wind spreads over water,
followed this statement, and Mouravieff-Apostol paused an in
stant to enjoy it and to judge of its effect.

"After such a great war as ours, my brothers, not only are the
minds of living men different, but it may be the recent dead be
yond are tugging at us. You cannot easily make a list of the
powers that war unleashes." A pause longer and more dramatic
followed.

"What did we Russians get from that old France that is dead?
What did we get, I ask you? Nothing but demoralization! A
demoralization of heart, of mind — that has been steadily going
on — poisoning the sincere impulses of our natures. Dissipated
French emigres, fleeing basely to us for refuge, in 1796, from the
vengeance of the onrushing Revolution, fleeing from the logical
consequences of their own lives, came here to act as our teachers,
to bring up our children, to train them in the pernicious vices
of decadent France. Upon our youthful, honest, unsophisticated
race, just coming into sight upon the horizon of history, there
was set that old age of the mind, of the emotions, which are a
part of decaying France. We became dissipated before we had
lived. We paid a debt which we had not incurred — "

11 Wait! — I tell you. There is something to be said upon
the other side. You are dealing, like most orators, in half
truths."
Alexis Sergiewitch was glad of this interruption. He began to

12 THE PENITENT

pay attention. Prince Viazemsky was not only a friend of his,
but a poet, too. He wondered what he was going to say.

"That old world of Versailles, of corrupt, if you will, but still of
magnificent manners, was, in a way, the world's standard of ex
cellence, of a certain kind. It measured the greatest distance
between the savage and the civilized. It measured the distance
man has traveled from the brutal past. Poets, artists, even
thinkers, will continue to regard it with delight. It was some
thing perfect of its kind, something good to remember, the
height, perhaps, of the white race, that will with difficulty be
reached again. And you cannot reproach them with weakness,
you who boast so willingly of having fought in the wars, or with
enervation, or cowardice, these old French nobles, because few
have been able to meet death as they met it. They danced smil
ing, with gay gestures of farewell, from the minuets of Mozart to
the guillotine, keeping step with pleasure — "

"Sh — sh — shl sh — shl " The last sentence was drowned in
hisses. Prince Viazemsky was forced to take his seat and leave
the rest unsaid. But his words had not been ineffective. Via-
zemsky's tongue seldom missed its mark. It could sting like a
bee.

Kakhovsky, with a head that just now resembled a wild bull,
jumped up. He hated Prince Viazemsky for his social position,
his distinction, and his attitude of aristocratic disdain.

"You are only an artist — a poet!" he exclaimed with scorn.
"You cannot appreciate anything but pleasure. I wish to inform
you, my princely friend, that that is over — no matter what you
say or think — the few controlling the many. It will not come
again. The heads of kings and emperors are not fastened too se
curely to their shoulders these days. You know it as well as I do.
They must go, all of them ! And I, for one, am glad of it. They
cannot go too soon.

"After them — the nobility. And then, in time, the rich
man, too, must go. This is the logical progression. This is the
bottom of the long, steep, icy hill of descent down which we are
sliding. In the new world that is coming there will be no free
birth tickets to unearned seats. In this new world," he added

THE MEETING 13

solemnly, and with something that almost resembled reverence,
"which our brother, Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol, just told us
had been born upon the battle-field, by the light of the camp-
fires of the Conqueror, in this new world which Napokon was
bold enough to plunder of its old-fashioned, its trite ideals, its
unfair finenesses, the few cannot control the many.

"Why, I ask you, should they who create what the rich squan
der, the producers, be despised? They are the mainstay of life.
To the trained mind, the scientific mind, nothing can be despised.
We have been subjected long enough to the folly of the few so-
called chosen ones who rule. The miracle is that such subjection
should have lasted through the centuries. It could only be suc
cessful through the world's undeveloped youth, its period of
swashbuckling, unreasoning romance. But the slower the
awakening of the people, the greater its reserve of momentum.
It will become the irresistible force. Not much longer can it be
controlled. The period of realism has come."

"What a strange turn affairs are taking to-night," thought
Alexis Sergiewitch, who had expected to hear read the latest
poetic effusions of his companions. "Are they mad? How in
tently they are listening, too, the others! It is as if there were
some secret, some agreed-upon coup in reserve."

His eyes swept the group before him. Maximilian Klinger, the
German poet, the spy, who had been in the Russian army and
who was leaving on the morrow for his home, was here. Why
was he here to-night, unless to report, like the base tattler he
was, what was said in order to make trouble? His somewhat
square head unwaveringly faced the speaker. He did not intend
to miss a word. He was storing it up greedily.

Behind Klinger stood Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish poet and
patriot, now in exile in Petersburg. For an instant the sensitive
eyes of Pushkin were arrested by the striking beauty of the face
of Mickiewicz. There was something in the expression, the elo
quent pallor, the contour of the head, which resembled the ideal
which Titian and Veronese, in the great days of Italian art, had
attempted to give to the head of Christ; a haunting combination
of nobility and dramatic grace.

H THE PENITENT

In another group slightly to the right of the excited, noisy
speaker, was young Bestushew-Rjumin, a distant relative of the
Great Chancellor of the days of Catherine the Second; a graceful,
aristocratic youth of genius who wore his clothes with distinction.
He was a figure to be noticed in any crowd. He was poet, story
teller, goldsmith, artist, and accomplished man of the world \
Prince Odojewsky, Prince Troubetskoi, and young Baratinsky.
The latter was young, handsome, a poet, with the dark, eloquent
face of an Asiatic which race he resembled. He was a fashion
able, attractive figure. He possessed a peculiar, persistent
charm. And he was almost a rival of Alexis Sergiewitch in the
favor of the ladies.

The eyes of the Polish poet, Mickiewicz, looked back occa
sionally at the weary Pushkin, and at length a spark of interest
brightened them. He began to think, with the accustomed scorn
of his haughty, but treacherous race: "He looks to-night just
what he is, a little, frail, faded, yellow negro!" This judgment
was soon corrected by an opposing impression, that young Push
kin had something of the changeableness of a chameleon, be
cause he recalled just now, too, having seen him when he was a
figure of astonishing distinction. He was not easy to judge, evi
dently. He was not all upon the surface to see at any one mo
ment like a display of cheap goods in a small shop.

Alexis Sergiewitch was slender, of medium height, but supple
and strong, because he was one of the skilled swordsmen of the
time. He had light hair, so curly it was woolly and betrayed his
negro blood. His eyes were blue-gray, sparkling and intelligent,
but the white showed too conspicuously. His long, thin nose was
noticeably flattened at the end in a manner not characteristic of
the white race. The expression of his face held something alien,
un-European.

He had long, strong, white teeth that shone extraordinarily.
But the remarkable thing about his face was that it had no eye
brows. His figure, however, was superb. He could not be called,
perhaps, what is understood by handsome, but he did not look
like any one else. He was strikingly individual. He was unique,
as alien combinations are sometimes unique; and he possessed a

THE MEETING 15

peculiar, supple charm both of physical movement and mind.
About him, too, there was an indefinable air of conscious power,
something poignantly different, which sometimes was the cause
of irritating a new acquaintance.

Mickiewicz bent hastily to the ear of Klinger. He whispered,
not without malice: "I am beginning to think our fashionable,
petted Pushkin, over there, as a poet, possesses merely charm —
and not depth." Here he smiled significantly and noted the
effect of his words upon Klinger. " Liberty, the freedom of man,
do not mean anything to him. Why — he does not even know
what the words mean!" warming to the subject, because Klinger
looked sympathetic. "They are just new toys for his amuse
ment — new, fleeting enthusiasms — which he thinks are fash
ionable."

Klinger, who was envious of Pushkin's quickly acquired repu
tation, nodded hastily in agreement.

Such an adverse, whispered decision as this had never before
been uttered in Petersburg, where Pushkin happened to be the
fashion. And Klinger, by his quick approval, contented himself
with thinking that Mickiewicz might possibly set something dis
agreeable going with such opinions, after he, Klinger, had re
turned to Germany. He ended by wondering why Pushkin, that
luxurious sybarite, who seldom had a free evening, was here at all
to-night.

Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol was now nodding commandingly
toward his younger brother, Ataman, for the purpose of stimu
lating him to play a part, since with himself and Pestel, he was
one of the originators of the two societies, the Northern and the
Southern, which were meeting in joint session to-night. Ataman
was disinclined evidently, for some reason, to follow his broth
er's repeated command. He still hesitated. At length, being
unable longer to resist the older brother, whom he was accus
tomed to obey, he arose slowly, unwillingly.

" We know that in his youth Alexander had liberal ideas —
but his will was weak. In that perhaps he was just a Russian
like the rest of us. We make plans — vast plans — but we do not
execute them." He would have said "which are impossible to

1 6 THE PENITENT

execute" had he not feared the disapproval of his sterner brother,
who was watching him narrowly. "The making of plans evi
dently satisfied him. We must not be like him."

" H 'earl Hear! Hear!" Noisy applause all but swept the
timid, youthful speaker off his feet. Encouraged a little, he
went on more bravely.

"Our Russian mind, my good friends, is too much like the land
we live in. It is vast — and it has not been subjected, sufficiently,
to cultivation. It lacks map-making, charting — sure highways.
We must be different. We must know where we are going. There
must be ahead of us some well-defined termination."

"Hear! Hear! Hear!"

"Because of his sensitive and not particularly strong nature,"
thought Alexis Sergiewitch with disapproval, who was now be
ginning to pay attention to what was said, "he is merely the
mouthpiece through which the others are speaking. These are
no convictions of his. It is a sort of hypnotism. And it is a
damned shame to make him do it. He does not belong here. He
is as much out of place as I am, or — Baratinsky."

But young Mouravieff-Apostol was still continuing.

"The entire world is aflame for liberty. It is not only we, the
isolated Russians. Revolution is loose among men. Our time
has come!"

"Is he crazy?" thought Alexis Sergiewitch. "What in the
name of common sense does he think he is doing!"

But Mouravieff, under the compelling eyes of his brother, was
keeping steadily on.

" Why should we be behind the rest of the world? Long ago we
ceased to be nomads, mere, unknown, wandering Asiatics, carry
ing our tents upon our backs, footing it from place to place, out
of touch with the rest of the white race. The chosen ones, the
thinkers, of every land are now preaching liberty, the equality
of man. We are no longer ignorant, hesitating pathfinders. But
we are not playing the part of leaders that we should. In this
new, important, man-saving movement, which means the
coming of a different civilization, Russia is inert, uninspired,
and still sleeps on amid the dreams of the past — "

THE MEETING 17

"Aye! Aye! Aye! — and Russia should lead instead of fol
low," thundered Ryleiev, leaping to his feet excitedly and un
ceremoniously thrusting young Mouravieff-Apostol aside.

" Russia, my brothers, should lead! Russia is the greatest na
tion of them all! What other can compare with it? Only that
dim, polar star, our neighbor in space and the Arctic night, can
measure its vastness. It is both Europe and Asia. It is both
North and South. It is likewise of the world of the ancient, im
memorial East, with its prayer, patient pilgrimage, its spiritual
ity, and, at the same time, of the new, material, pessimistic West.

" What does our land not embrace? What other can equal it?
Tell me! Then why should we, the rich by inheritance, follow
dumbly the poor? Consider if you will be good enough. Does it
not border upon the polar midnight where the prohibition of God
passes: Here man may not dwell? And at the same time does it
not reach unto the south where luxuriant summer invites? It is a
combination of nature's most powerful opposites. That is why it
is not easy to estimate. That is why it is not easy to understand.

"Its steppes are most barren, most disconcerting, and its
mountains highest. Its rivers are most vast and lonely, and its
unmarked mountains still unknown. There are no other plains
on the face of the earth to compare with the plains of Russia.
They can measure boundary to boundary with the African des
ert. They are spaces from which seas have been swept away, and
vanished.

"In the South — it is a wild immensity, left just as the ice of
glacial periods left it, keeping the unpeopled, lonely levels of its
cosmic birth. The low country by the southern Volga, and to the
east of it, is the bed of some ancient, primeval ocean man did not
name nor know. From some just such gigantic space, perhaps, the
moon was once torn out and then flung forth to light the night of
space.

"In the North — a polar prairie, the tundra, treeless, almost
grassless, reaching out to meet a polar water. The monotonous
spaces have brought about certain peculiarities in our mental
constitution. They have helped to make that difference which
separates us from other Europeans."

1 8 THE PENITENT

"Another thing that has changed us is that we were shut off
from the life of Europe in the past. Europe's history was not our
history. But that is no reason why we should be shut off from its
life of freedom, hope, progress in the present. These various in
fluences, my brothers, and others which I will not pause to name,
have contributed to a sense of loneliness, of loss. But we need
not continue this life of isolation. We must not! Let nothing
force us to do it ! A part in the future must be ours.

"We missed, and therefore we have felt sadly the loss of that
first inspired propaganda of the teachings of Christ, fresh from
the lips of the Master. It did not reach us, in this vast, cold,
lonely land, until it had been filtered through the dying splendor
of Rome, the regretful glory of Greece, and, like a wanderer, at
length, weary, paused to rest for a time in the City of Constan-
tine. From there it spread slowly, across the Russian steppe. It
came to us.

"We did not see the old pagan civilizations fall prostrate be
neath it. We did not witness the magic of its coming nor the
completeness of its triumph. It came to us when all this was over;
but enriched, perhaps, for the soul, with a deeper pity, a new
comprehension.

" We did not know either that realized spirit of Beauty, made
visible for the longing eye of man a little while amid the confus
ing ways of earth, which was the counted days of Greece. And
we did not know that eloquent coming to life again, in resonant
Mediterranean lands rich with the past, that strange, belated liv
ing over again of the glad Greek genius, which was called the Ital
ian Renaissance; that gorgeous period of sanity, of bloom, which
came for a moment — with its blessed refreshment — after the
pagan world was gone; that resurgence of the youth of man,
with this addition — the gift of a soul.

"We did not know that ordered civic wisdom, that reasoned
support and strengthening for questioning life and its problems,
which had been distilled, as it were, through war, through con
quest, from all the past, the concentrated wisdom of history
which was the teaching of the Twelve Tables and Justinian Law.

"None of this came to us. But the separations, the prohibi-

THE MEETING 19

tions can hold no longer. We will become one with the rest of the
world. We will not only claim but hold our share."

Alexis Sergiewitch no longer leaned limply and indifferently
against the red, wooden pillar, wishing the meeting were over
and feeling disdainful. He was erect, intense. A new and surpris
ing thought was creeping slowly into his brain, an illuminating
thought. Perhaps he was not Russia's only man of genius after
all, its only poet and chosen one. For the /moment a feeling
came over him that was new and not altogether pleasant. He
felt small and insignificant. Ryleiev, evidently, was a poet with
the inspiration of heroes and martyrs in his soul, while he, Alexis
Sergiewitch, was only a petted poet of pleasure — of the roses
and the wine. What were words of sportive elegance in com
parison with such a faith as this!

Silence followed the outburst of Ryleiev, the silence that for
a moment impresses itself upon men who are suddenly thrust
without warning into the presence of something sacred.

Alexis Sergiewitch then made one of those sudden, supple
mental changes, which were characteristic of him, and a frequent
cause of misunderstanding among those who associated with him.
Whatever people might say of him he was the generous-souled
artist. He looked down now with eyes of love, sympathy, com
prehension, and approval at Ryleiev, who he knew had sur
passed him. In the depths of his nature he was generous and
just. No one had found him niggardly.

At length Pestel, Ryleiev, Kakhovsky, and the elder Mou-
ravieff-Apostol began to whisper together again significantly.
When this whispered conference was at an end, Pestel took the
place of the former speaker, and with a certain air of proud im
portance that was disagreeable, as if he were preparing to say
something he had long planned to say and that he alone was
fitted to say.

"We have played Hamlet long enough, my good friends. We
have debated; To be or not to be! We have at length, I am proud
to declare, reached a decision. That is why the two societies are
in joint session to-night. For too long we have merely medi
tated. Now we know what must be. We must exterminate the

20 THE PENITENT

Romanoffs. We must kill Alexander. Thus only can our country
live, be free."

Profound silence and no applause followed this statement.
Evidently they had not all been informed. And the agreement
was more than doubtful.

Alexis Sergiewitch left his place against the red, wooden pillar.
He walked defiantly to the center of the room, in order to face
them equally.

"God of our fathers! Are we scholars, I ask you? Are we
gentlemen, seeking to help, to enlighten our land? Or are we
criminals, murderers?" In an illuminating flash of mind he
realized how he had been tricked into coming here to-night; how
against his will he had been made a member of a criminal, secret
conspiracy against the life of Alexander whom he loved. He had
not only no interest in anything of this sort, but he was decidedly
opposed to it. This harping about reform he detested. It was
especially disagreeable to his nature. He hated nothing so much
as the thought of a world of men busy in improving other men's
morals. That was occupation for a reformer, not for a poet, an
artist. Life was well enough as it was. He did not care whether
people's morals were good or bad. He cared only for the bright
pageantry which life and its movements spread before his artist's
eyes, its resolving into eloquent, fluent lines. He enjoyed the
pictures of living. He loved color, form, instead of morals. In
this mental occupation with which he busied himself he did not
relish being limited by anything, least of all by reform, which to
him was synonymous with vulgarity, with dullness.

"You condemn Alexander, our Emperor, wrongly," he began
in a voice of forced calm because he was trembling with anger — •
"more, unintelligently. Your outlook is narrow. You persist in
seeing only half. He has done all that is humanly possible, in
the time given him, with the wars, too, with which he has had to
contend, to improve our country. He is doing it all the time.
The age just now is difficult. You ought to know this, you who j
pose to know so much, you who went to the war. It is one of
great, of varied activity — change — uncertainty — "

"Sh — shJ Sh^-sh — shl"

THE MEETING 21

Hisses for a moment silenced him. Then Kakhovsky de
manded, in a voice in which he did not trouble to conceal both
scorn and contempt:

"What do poets know? You are a poet."

Controlling himself with effort, Pushkin replied civilly enough,
although in a strained voice:

"Poetry, my Polish nobleman, is for the elect; politics for the
rabble. In addition, poets have always helped to light the road to
freedom. But they are not murderers. They do not stab men in
the back. They are usually able to find decent ways hi which to
work. At the same time they war against injustice. They are
scornful of power and place. They uphold truth for truth's sake.
A poet is seldom deceived by the shows of things. He has the
surest eye for what is hidden. In the poet, you who profess to
disdain him, there is something of the prophet. You can trust his
vision if you cannot his reason. Be assured of that.

"To return to Alexander, whom God protect!" he added de
fiantly, his slender body becoming rigid and determined; "re
member, my wise friends, that he did not wish to rule. And that
is equally true, as you know, of both his older brothers, Constan-
tine and Nicholas. They have lived always amid murders, amid
sudden deaths, you might say. They heard the blows struck,
they heard the struggle that killed their father. They prefer a
simple life, insignificance, to the throne.

"Alexander is ruling now, not because he wishes to, but for
your sake, for mine. And this is the way you wish to repay him.
He has no ambition. He was born above its vulgar impulses. In
stead of greed of power, there is in his nature the weariness, the
ensuing disillusion of Russia's turbulent — more, tragic past. In
him there is the physical reaction of that prolonged debauch
which was the life of his ancestors.

"You say that he has changed, that he used to be one of us.
That is true. But Russia has changed also, and you, who pre
tend to be so wise, cannot see it. And so have I. And all the
world — since the wars of Napoleon.

"Alexander has been forced to use new means in order to meet
new conditions. Other influences, too, have come upon him. He

22 THE PENITENT

is only a man. He cannot wholly escape the environment, the
usual life of a man. One of these unfortunate influences has been
Prince Metternich. Few men, you know, have resisted the fas
cination of Metternich. And Alexander is just the man not to do
it. It is tragic, my friends, instead of blameworthy, the way
Metternich has chilled the loving impulses of his heart. And he
has worked busily, too, to break up his friendships. He set about
isolating him, the better, sometime, to control him. That is why
after 1812 he sent away his former advisers. It is the finger of
Metternich, my good friends, that points the destiny of Eu
rope—"

"To hell with Metternich!" was the prompt response.

"Metternich," declared Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol solemnly,
with his air of studious deliberation, "is one of mankind's op
pressors. With a gesture of those long, white hands of his, or a
gay word, he sweeps away the freedom of races — "

"To hell with Metternich!" was the more gruff, responsive
roar.

"But he, Alexander, is ours," went on Alexis Sergiewitch ten
derly. " He belongs to us. We must stand by him. Alexander is
not a despot. These new measures of his, of which you disap
prove so greatly, are merely temporarily self -protective. He was
forced for the moment to make them. He is a broad-minded,
kind-hearted man placed by accident over a people who under
stand only physical force."

Hisses again.

" What do you know about it? " queried Kakhovsky insolently.
" You are only an artist. You are just a lapdog for a lady's bou
doir." In the tone there was a new reproach, a peculiar disdain,
which he had not heard before. It was the first touch of the bit
ter world's envy of which hatred is born. It was the first cold
breath of criticism to be spoken aloud against him.

Alexis Sergiewitch looked across at the man he had always
hated, with an expression upon his pale face that made Kakhov
sky remember suddenly that the poet was not only fearless, but
a famous swordsman. Kakhovsky therefore contented himself
with whispering in the ear of Pestel the words he did not dare say
aloud.

THE MEETING 23

"He only joined the society because he thought it was fashion
able. To him it is just a new way of wearing your mind. The
only thing he is really interested in," he ended maliciously, "is a
new style in cravats — or the smallness of the feet of his mistress.
Did you know he is foolish over the feet of women?"

Before Pestel could find time to reply, Ryleiev had arisen to
defend Alexis Sergiewitch and to conciliate him, and Pestel did
not wish to disturb in the least his recently acquired influence
over the eloquent, the popular Ryleiev.

"We are not murderers, Alexis Sergiewitch," he declared in a
voice that showed both kindness and indulgence. " We desire the
enlightenment of our people just as you do, their freedom, too,
and their happiness. A great goal this ! We must be ready to do
anything that is demanded, in return for good so great. You will
believe just as we do when the matter is placed before you differ
ently.

"It is our desire to right wrong, not to do wrong. It is our de
sire to banish suffering, not to cause suffering. It is for others we
strive, not for ourselves. With us there is no aim either petty or
personal. We work not for our present, individual triumph, but
for the future of the human family.

"There must be no more wars! There must be no more cruel
shedding of men's blood to gratify an autocrat's ambition, and by
loss of man-power retard the development of the world. The bat
tles of the future must be different. They must be bloodless bat
tles; battles of the drawing-room, the counting-house; battles of
commanding scientists, of wisely utilized industry; in short, eco
nomic forces.

"New battles must be for the increasing, numerically, of en
lightening fields of activity, for extended human welfare, not in
the sad suffering of soldiers who are helpless, and whose death
is a world-loss, even to the victor."

Again young Pushkin saw Ryleiev's eyes dilate with the mad
ness of inspiration, and he suddenly felt dwarfed, insignificant, in
the presence of this man who loved his fellows better than him
self or the gratification of any personal desire.

"Our Russia," Ryleiev went on to explain, "is perhaps chosen

a4 THE PENITENT

to lead the way in this vast enlightening movement, this spiritual
uplift. For sake of this goal, the freedom of man, the developing
of world-forces, here perhaps revolutions will come and go, with
regularity, with power, until storm, until electricity, have swept
clear the sky for the glory of a new sun, a new earth. It may be
come an active mental laboratory for the making of a nobler, a
more unfettered race. Of these revolutions new ideas, new ideals
will be born, and then held out toward the race. It will become
the world's hothouse, the world's forcing plant for thought of cer
tain kinds. The ideas will be seldom right in their entirety, be
cause man cannot like God create without trial, but on the other
hand they will be original, enterprising — most important of all,
sincere. The educated Russian will become the world's most dar
ing thinker. He will have the most completely emancipated mind.
He will not be hobbled mentally by the tenets of the past. Not in
any way will he be bound by tradition, nor by prejudice. He will
be ready to greet — the new earth.

"Here, perhaps, all laws, moral, political, civil, will be de
stroyed for the necessary making of new ones, different ones,
better ones. Laws must be remade, readjusted to people, just
like their clothing. It is just as necessary that they should fit,
should bear some relation to the wearer. Old-fashioned, useless
laws, regulations of mind, must be cut up and the material made
over into better ones. This will entail grief, suffering, perhaps
loss. It will be like the necessary but painful setting of a leg that
is broken.

"As I said, there will be suffering. But the eyes of men will be
strengthened to bear the suffering by the rainbow vision of hope,
of fresh creativeness, still existing, by the assurance of the end
less and as yet untouched possibilities of the future. It will
gladden their eyes with limitless promise.

"It will be the miniature world-stage upon which for a time
man's ideals will be visualized for them who cannot visualize;
embodied, would be better, for the surer comprehending. And
they who projected the idea, and then presented it as a play for
exhibiting, will pay, perhaps, for their pleasure, their unselfish
daring for enlightenment, with death. But a new force will have

THE MEETING 25

been born, a proof of endless, fresh creativeness always going on.
The eyes even of the doubters will have glanced farther into the
depths, where new worlds are being made, and they will gain a
little of the faith that there is no such thing as the reasoned, the
compulsory standstill, foolishly named perfection, for either in
dividual life or for governments, morally or politically. Life
means change, progress, growth."

Pushkin was impressed by the speech of Ryleiev. More, he
was moved by it, but in a way that Ryleiev did not count upon.
It did not draw Alexis Sergiewitch nearer to him, but, on the con
trary, it pushed him farther away. It threw the nature of Alexis
Sergiewitch, for the time being, into sharper relief. He saw that
this noble, this unselfish, vision was greater than anything that he
himself would ever do. And he saw, too, that he could not share
it. It was something outside the circle of his desires, his interests.
Ryleiev continued in a calmer voice.

"Because certain laws, certain beliefs, suited the year 1275,
does it in any way follow that they must suit the year 1820?
Why should they? What possible reason is there to give? Is a
law sacred aside from its timely applicability? Should not the
outworn and unfit be discarded for the better? Is law a matter
of sentiment? Is a threadbare idea any better than a threadbare
garment? Is it any more serviceable? And how can you know
whether or not a garment fits unless you try it on? How else can
you be sure that it is useful?

"These try-ons, which are disagreeable, are at the same time
instructive. They mean the vigor, the progress of humanity.
The flag of revolution is being unfurled throughout the world.
Even in Spain, a royal Bourbon stronghold. In Italy, no matter
how disdainfully Prince Metternich may speak of that country.
In the Low Countries. Even among the students in Germany.
Kings and queens will soon be as ridiculous in real life as figures
upon playing cards would be, parading along the streets in their
stiff, saw-tooth crowns of pasteboard. A prodigious, future up
heaval is on the way. Powers never before listed, and until now
unexplored, are to be called into use. We are going, too, to find
out that there is something greater than nationalism. And that

26 THE PENITENT

is internationalism, the welfare of all mankind. There is some
thing greater and more sacred than a geographical boundary,
and that is mankind working together for the good of man
kind.

"No matter how much we may differ individually, tempera
mentally, or intellectually, there is only one thing to be done,
and that is what our brother Pestel said. We cannot buy freedom
with words, with tears."

He ended amid consternation and slight applause. Pushkin
knew that Pestel had private political ambitions, and that at the
same time he was seeking revenge for his father's abrupt dismis
sal from office, and his disgrace in Siberia.

"I know — I feel in my heart" — Alexis Sergiewitch made
answer — " that you are wrong. Murder is always wrong. It
cannot be right. You have not understood him. With Alexander
a hope of justice, all things you ask for, in fact, is now near you.
It is you who are blind. It is you who cannot understand. His
one desire is to give Russia what you want, what I want, a con
stitution. He is merely waiting for the proper moment when the
people can both appreciate and use intelligently a good so great.
You cannot put a sword into the hand of a child, can you? He is
a political Messiah, I tell you, sent for your saving, whom you are
hastening to crucify — 0 ye of little faith!"

He sat down feeling baffled and defeated. In addition, he did
not have the peculiarly emancipated mind which was character
istically Russian, because he came of a mixed race. He did not
see so far ahead. And at heart he was aristocratic, conservative.
He kept his daring for the art of words. He was a poet, too, and
believed therefore that life was so good just as it was that it
would be foolish to trouble about making it better. His judg
ments were aesthetic judgments. Again the luxurious, violet-
perfumed boudoir of the night before swung seductively before
his youthful brain.

He was worn out physically, too; worn out with weeks of in
sufficient sleep, dissipation, gambling, drinking, and dangerous
love affairs. There was nothing left in him with which to com
bat.

THE MEETING 27

"Do you recall what Dershawin said?" questioned Pestel.
" 'Take but one step forward, Russia, and the world is yours.' "

"Dershawin was an old ass!" interrupted Pushkin savagely.
"He not only wrote in Tartar, but he thought in Tartar, too!"

This angered Pestel afresh. He resented the tone of superior
ity.

"I suppose you think you'll go free while the rest of us will be
punished, do you not?" remarked Pestel scornfully. "What do
you suppose people are saying about your 'Ode to the Dag
ger'?"

"That was — just poetry."

"Hear him! Hear him! " they roared scornfully.

When he wrote of the dagger as the last weapon of injustice,
to him it was merely the eloquence of words. It was a sort of
aesthetic, emotional escape valve. He had no interest in so prac
tical a thing as its application. He was just treating a subject
poetically.

"You will find out the world does not think so," Pestel flung
back maliciously. "You will see what will happen to you!"

There was little cunning in his nature. There was no inclina
tion to concealment. He usually said, with astonishing frank
ness, whatever occurred to him, with small regard at the mo
ment for consequences.

When Alexis Sergiewitch made biting epigrams or wrote
witty, jesting verses, there was seldom an evil intention in his
heart. He was merely playing with words. He was practicing, so
to speak, in the same way that a musician practices. But the
unpoetic world, unaware necessarily of this creative impulse,
placed a different interpretation upon his flexible word-play,
and condemned him. To-night for the first time this disparity of
judgment was clear to him, and it staggered him. It made him
for the moment unhappy. To him the "Ode to a Dagger" was
just poetry. To his companions it was a serious call to rebellion,
to revolution, which they were convinced he was basely attempt
ing to disavow.

What did he care about such a stupid thing as reform? The
thought that he could care for it was laughable. It shivered him

28 THE PENITENT

with restrained merriment when he heard it mentioned. He only
wished to live, to live superbly. He wished to touch life richly
at just as many points as possible. The world was well enough.
Besides, that was God's business and not his.

He was exclusively an artist. He was peculiarly uncaring of
other things. In his heart he was interested in beauty, not moral
ity, not political betterment. Why could not other people be
happy and careless and mind their own business just as he did?

"There is not a soldier nor a sailor, my fine dandy," Karhov-
sky continued, taking up the argument gladly, seeing the evident
defeat of Pushkin, "who does not know by heart your disrespect
ful epigrams against government officials, the nobility, the
church, and your obscene, unprintable stories, which surpass the
French Crebillon in indecency. What do you suppose Alexander
will say when some one sings to him what you wrote about his
favorite, Arakcheiev? " — humming merrily the naughty song
which began:

"Arak-cte-iev's — An-as-fcfc-ia"

— emphasizing insolently the accents and beating time mock
ingly. " You may just as well join us. You see, you can't escape

— after that I"

The combination of facts was disagreeable, to say the least.
Sergiewitch began to feel that torturing complexity of conscious
ness, that mental double-seeing, which is characteristic of the
creative mind. He disliked these difficult cross-currents of emo
tion, of thought.

Alexis Sergiewitch, in his heart, not only loved but respected
Alexander. Now he was ashamed to recall the number of times
the Emperor had pardoned like a father the indiscretions of his
wild youth. He felt a veritable gripping in the heart to recall cer
tain lines of his "Ode to Liberty," which once, with boyish van
ity, he had thrown in front of the carriage of the Emperor. That
was before he came to Petersburg to live, when he was attending
the Lyceum in Zarskoje Selo. Any other but Alexander would
have sent him to the mines. That was a shameful insult. He suf
fered to think of it. But the words rollicked through his mind and

THE MEETING 29

he could not stop them. Besides, that kind of thinking just then
was the fashion.

To him now this "Ode" represented merely youth, and, worst
of all, bad taste. Had words like these, which to him were only
poetry, the fleeting enthusiasm of a moment, set people to think
ing of revolution? And, worse than that, murder ? Now to his
shame guilt was added.

He believed in freedom, to be sure. Who does not? He believed
in talking, in writing, about everything. That was the way to en
large the horizon of life, of the mind. But putting words into ac
tion was something ridiculous, not to be thought of. It was out
of the question, of course. Stupidity was something puzzling to
deal with. What a disagreeable incomprehension!

Seeing how great was Pushkin's confusion, Ryleiev came over
to him. The face of Ryleiev, at close range, looked thinner than
usual to-night; the eyes more dream-haunted, as if he were being
consumed by some inner emotion.

"Hear what I wrote to-day, Alexis Sergiewitch ! " speaking in
a low, confidential, friendly voice close to his ear. Evidently he
wished to be heard only by him. "Do you suppose, Alexis Ser
giewitch, that there are moments in life when men look ahead and
foresee their own fate? I feel that is what I have done."

His voice trembled slightly. There was a new note of earnest
ness in it. Pushkin realized upon the instant that Ryleiev had a
great heart, and the bravery, the singleness of purpose, that
makes martyrs. He pitied him. He admired him. At the same
time he wished passionately to save him from something, and he
did not know exactly what. Ryleiev began to repeat:

It is time, the secret voice keeps whispering to me, to destroy the
tyrants of the Ukraine.

I am not ignorant of the fact that an abyss will open beneath the
feet of the first one who rises against the oppressors of the nation.
Destiny has chosen me —

This sentiment surprised Alexis Sergiewitch. He had no hint
until to-night that the desire to kill Alexander had taken root in

3o THE PENITENT

their minds. He had been dissipating gayly as usual, making
love, and penning merry jingles, while his friends had been plan
ning their own martyrdom. Again the disparity of plan, of out
look, struck him sharply. For the first time he felt an alien
among them. To him this was peculiarly distasteful. He saw
that he had slight interest in humanity, that his own serious in
terests were different. Aloud he said nothing. He waited hope
lessly for Ryleiev. At length he inquired hesitatingly, in a voice
which showed he had the subject at heart: "You will join us —
will you not, Alexis Sergiewitch? You know we need you."

Alexis Sergiewitch shook his head with sad determination.

Another disagreeable sensation followed; pity. And at the
same time he knew he could not hold him back from the course
he was pursuing. Kakhovsky had been right when he declared
that these boyish plotters were only dreamers — poets. What
had they to do with reality?

Young Mouravieff-Apostol was looking across at the two of
them sympathetically. He did not seem to be enjoying himself
any better than young Pushkin. He would gladly have slipped
away had he not been afraid of his stern brother's disapproval.
Alexander Bestushew, too, was as frightened at the turn affairs
had taken as he was. He was more than good-looking. He be
longed to the world of fashion and bore the nickname of "good
little boy." And so was handsome young Baratinsky, who was
known to be devoted to Alexander. He had no taste for anything
like this. But Bestushew was weak, and the influence of Ryleiev
was as great over him as the influence of Pestel, momentarily,
over Ryleiev. Prince Viazemsky was shocked. He was an aristo
crat with a bitter tongue. He made up his mind to get out of it.
He liked to rail at every one, to be sure. But that ended it. He
knew enough to pause on the right side of action. Prince Trou-
betzkoi no one could judge or count upon, because he had a habit
of standing on both sides of questions.

But there was handsome Baratinsky slipping softly away
toward the door, and not wearing his usual air of pleasant assur
ance. He was going to make a quick escape. He knew how dan
gerous it was to be here. "That," thought Alexis Sergiewitch,

THE MEETING 31

"is just what I am going to do." He knew it was what he should
have done an hour ago. This was an unsafe place to be found
to-night. There was no use trying to save Ryleiev. There was
no use arguing with him, while tkat wild light shone in his
eyes.

"Come — join us — Alexis Sergiewitch!" Ryleiev was plead
ing again.

"I cannot, Ryleiev. You know I have n't any inclination for
this thing. I do not belong here. Besides, I'm worn out. I need
sleep. Make my excuses to the others. I'm going."

The last three years, since he joined the Foot Guards, he had
been leading a fast life in the fashionable military set. He had
been continually on the go in a futile, brilliant society. This was
his first attempt at keeping up that perplexing dual life which
was always to be his; man of fashion, soldier, poet, libertine,
scholar, idle dreamer. He was beginning to feel the strain of it
now, young as he was. He was beginning to feel how dangerous
it is to try to live more than one life, however well dowered one
may be.

Ryleiev walked as far as the door with him, a little sadly,
Alexis Sergiewitch thought. The rest were still arguing, still
talking excitedly, when he slipped away. The only person who
saw him go out the door was young Mouravieff-Apostol, and he
knew he would say nothing. He was wishing bitterly that he
could get away as easily.

After Pushkin had gone downstairs, Maximilian Klinger, the
poet and German spy, who hated Austria profoundly, unfolded a
paper from which he read aloud some of the latest utterances of
Prince Metternich, in order to spur on hatred of that statesman.
He declared that Metternich was a cold-blooded cynic made es
pecially for cajoling of kings and the camouflaging of pernicious,
political faiths. He called him Europe's watchdog. He read in a
clear, distinct voice, and with malicious pleasure:

If I may impute to myself any merit, it is that of having opened
Alexander's eyes to the circumstances and the people now surrounding
him. I have all my life had to preach to deaf ears; now people are be
ginning to listen because their eyes are being opened. This is espe-

32 THE PENITENT

daily the case of Petersburg. The Emperor, Alexander, now sees clearly
— of that I have daily proof.

"What do you say to that? Here is another," gauging accu
rately as he unfolded the paper the effect of the first reading:

The Liberals have a peculiar talent for deceiving themselves.
They shall never make me move — and the Liberals with all their
following of fools shall not win the day as long as God gives me

strength.

"It is Metternich, my friends, who is killing the movement for
freedom. He has a genius for destruction. Why Metternich has
given Alexander a book on the fly-leaf of which he wrote:
'People to be checked.1 Our names are there."

"The world will find," declared Sergius Mouravieff-Apostol,
impressed by the reading of Klinger, " that the victorious soldiers
returned from France have not forgotten so speedily what they
learned of equality there."

" Be assured of that ! " agreed Pestel. " The plan," he went on,
"is this: Alexander is to be shot the next time he goes south to
review the troops. That time cannot be so far off. There is a
Turkish war threatening."

This evidently was the climax of the plot, as far as it was ar
ranged at this moment. Its disclosure was the reason of the joint
meeting of the two societies.

The Petersburg that met Pushkin's eyes as he stepped outside
on this early spring midnight was unlike that of the century that
had passed. It no longer resembled a Finnish village, something
hastily improvised, and of wood. The streets had been paved in
part. They were beginning to build granite quays along the
great river. The Mikhail Palace had been erected. Saint Isaac's
had been rebuilt and enriched. A new library had been opened
to the public in 1815, and statues of various personages had been
placed for adornment along the streets, most imposing of which,
aesthetically speaking, was Falconet's vigorous reproduction in
bronze of tie Great Peter.

Pushkin walked home instead of driving through the early

THE MEETING 33

spring night, chiefly for the purpose of helping disembarrass his
mind of the disagreeable impressions of the evening. He walked
alone through the long, dim streets which are wide.

He was glad to be alone. The evening had been not only dis
agreeable but dangerous. How could he know what report
Klinger would make of it? Klinger envied him. He would put
him in the worst light. What might not Kakhovsky report? He
was angry to think he had been simple enough to be tricked into
going.

In the great Square he paused for a moment to enjoy more
fully the sense of release from the crowd he had left, to shake off
their influence, and he turned to look seaward for a moment, to
ward those magnificent and lonely plains that stretch to meet
the Gulf of Finland. He saw the great river. It rose like a foun
tain of crystal from the depths of Lake Ladoga, and then swept
its shining length across the level plain. It was pale and smooth
to-night. It reflected the little cold stars which seemed to pene
trate it. It possessed the pale, the perverse charm of the North.

Day, according to the clock, was not so far away when he
reached his room. He was too restless, however, to go to sleep.
Too many worrying thoughts were besetting him. He dropped
down in a chair to rest.

When the light began to poke its pallid, prying fingers around
the windows, he took pencil and paper and wrote to Ryleiev.
He wrote a firm refusal to join the society. His conscience was
lighter. He called a schweizer and sent him with it to Ryleiev's
house.

He sat down again in the chair and leaned back. He relaxed.
The mask of living which we all make for ourselves was lifted,
and then, physically, he belonged, for the time being, to that
negro race from which he came.

Now over by the window there was a figure, which in the dull
light of the dawn of early spring, suggested a black man from
the jungles of Africa! There was something about it, tense,
dynamic beyond the power of the white race to express, some
thing burned, tempered, by the rays of deadly suns. Pushkin was
sleeping.

CHAPTER II
ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH

THE little room in the Winter Palace, which was the Emperor's
private workroom, was familiar to people not only in Russia but
throughout the Continent, hi the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, because it had been reproduced so frequently.

It was a small room. It was unostentatious. At one end a row
of windows. At some distance from the windows, but in direct
line with them, stood a long, square-cornered desk, opposing
flatly the light, a desk which might have belonged to a business
man. Upon the desk were two square, blue-glass ink-wells, and
a pile of pens, placed there freshly each morning. On either end,
two neat stacks of paper, even and white. A round-topped,
wooden chair at a little distance away; and facing the windows in
the rear, several straight-backed chairs, in a row; to the right,
against the north wall of the somewhat oblong room, a narrow,
hard, leather couch — brown — with a flat, leather cushion at
the head.

The paintings upon the wall, which were expensive and well
chosen, were the only marks of distinction, except the somewhat
lonely figure that was pacing gloomily back and forth in the
open space in front of the desk. The figure harmonized with the
paintings, which were the visible expression of beauty which
great painters, impelled by some spiritual longing, had realized.
Such a figure was Alexander.

He was tall. He was superbly formed, even to the details of
hands and feet. He wore a suit of fine, black broadcloth cut to
fit tightly like the clothes in which we remember the painted
Napoleon. He looked as if he were moulded from head to foot
in black, smooth, lusterless velvet. His waist was slender as a
woman's, and flexible, to match his fine, long-fingered hands,
and slender feet. His throat was swathed in cambric, and ruffles
of the same fine material fell over his hands. He wore no jewelry,

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH

35

no ornaments. Nowhere was there gleam of gold, nor gem. But
the face would arrest a sensitive observer first. It was not only
beautiful in its regularity beyond the ordinary, but noble, with
the light, slightly wavy, gold-brown hair brushed smoothly
back, a la the style of Metternich, but it was so full of kindli
ness — even gentleness — that it was not easy to turn away
from its charm.

The features had the fine precision of an unworn coin, and the
mouth almost always smiled. At the first glance it was not easy
to resist its fascination. It was a face, indeed, which had charmed
Europe, even cold-blooded Napoleon, who exclaimed with some
thing like enthusiasm when he first looked at him: "He is the
handsomest and the noblest of the Greeks!"

But if one observed it a little longer, perhaps, one found that
these gentle, clear eyes, whose lids were so lovely, so smoothly
white, seldom smiled. One found that one could not look within
them and reach the soul that dwelled there or make it respond.
They were like looking into superb, pellucid gems. And just as it
was impossible to read the eyes, it was likewise impossible to
read the mind behind the eyes. The impression would be grad
ually borne in upon the onlooker that few would be able to find
out what dwelled behind this charming face, whether because its
sphinx-like peculiarity was so natural, or because its owner was
so sensitive that he had made for himself a protective ideal from
which nothing could make him deviate; that behind this fasci
nating, polished exterior, he lived safe, sheltered. Then the ob
server would very likely question himself: Was he superfine?
Or was he so subtle, so self-contained, that no one could fathom
him?

It was spring. In the spring Alexander was melancholy. It
was the tune of year when he was most unhappy. It was usu
ally what might be termed a penitential period with him, be
cause it was then, as a boy, but as the eldest of the family, that he
had given unwilling consent for the murder of his father. He had
been forced to do it, in fact, in order to save the lives of his
mother, his brothers, his sisters — and Russia — from the ruin of
a madman. However extenuating circumstances might be urged

36 THE PENITENT

in his favor, he could not get over the fact that he had done it.
It was he who had given consent. It was he, therefore, who was
guilty, who must pay the penalty, in grief, in remorse, which his
too sensitive nature could not shake off. There was no way to
argue the deed undone.

They were all murdered in the spring — his father, Kotzebue,
and the Due de Berry. His father and Kotzebue, his spy, in the
same month, March. And they had all just reached the height of
power.

'Like them, I am about to reach my height of power — my
efficiency," he said to himself with decision, startled at sound of
his voice in the lonely room. "And then — like them — and all
things else in nature — comes — the end."

He walked over to the window and looked out. There he saw
his fat, German mother, now no longer young, pass on horseback
through the dirty, wet streets, attired in men's clothes, after
his having expressly forbidden her to ride in public in that attire.
She was a ridiculous figure. Her two legs looked like inflated
balloons. He was displeased. But no trace of displeasure showed
upon his face. Behind her came his sister, dressed the same way,
and looking almost as ridiculous, although youth helped her a
little. But he had forbidden them to ride like this.

He rang. A servant entered. He sent for his confidential sec
retary. A bent, old man with thin, pale hair who had the furtive,
uplooking eyes and trained, expressionless face of them who serve
the great came in.

"Have all letters written by my mother, sisters, brought to
me — before they are sent." One disobedience, he thought,
might lead to another.

" Very good, Your Majesty." The bent gray figure backed out
again. The door closed.

His mother had never forgiven him, he knew, for not letting
her rule in his place. Upon horseback just now, as she passed
his window, she had reminded him of her persistent inclination
to play Catherine the Great.

Years of discipline had taught him to respond to the slightest
governmental need, with the same slave-like obedience of the

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 37

old man who had just gone out the door. His extremely complex
mind saw at that instant the resemblance. They were both
slaves of state. And a slave is a slave, whether he stands at the
top or the bottom of the ladder.

There were other and external reasons, too, now that were
leading to a change of mind, of nature — perhaps — in Alex
ander, and each one of which was contributing its quota to make
him give up one by one the plans of the past. One was personal
observation of men, of affairs, as he was forced to view them from
his superior position. One was general contact with people. The
other was a peculiarity that had developed from this, gradually,
persistently, the power to read the hearts of others. And his
frequent trips abroad, too, had influenced him, especially the
trips upon which ne had come in contact with Prince Metternich,
and the resulting influence of that statesman over him.

The first time was in Vienna in 1817, when peace had been
promised to the world. With his present knowledge, gained by
personal experience, he smiled scornfully at the thought.

"Peace! What a wild, useless word was that! Man might as
well say: Let there be light. People could not agree upon peace
any more than upon anything else."

The second time had been at the Congress of Aix in 1819.
Here again Prince Metternich had gained ascendancy over his
mind, by restoring to him the feeling of happiness, of power.
Here, too, he had been astonished, disgusted, at the unkingly
actions of the German ruler, who disavowed whatever he said,
and then prayed aloud to God to release him from his oaths. He
had lied in a most unkingly manner. More recently he had re
turned from the little town of Troppau where again he had met
Metternich, and again come under that wily statesman's per
sonal charm, which was really the most dangerous of his powers.

Prince Metternich was older than he by a few years, and he
was a ruler of men whose ability had been tested. He had won
his diplomatic experience in the difficult period Napoleon had
dominated. He was a bulwark of reliance, of defense. He re
called just now that statesman saying: " My policy has the value
of a religion because it is not influenced by passion." This had

38 THE PENITENT

pleased Alexander particularly. It was a sentiment in harmony
with his nature. He had faith in him, too, as most men of his
class had faith in him then. And Alexander agreed with him
largely now, if but as a temporary need. Upon one point per
fectly, that the first need of the world was peace.

"Wars, you see," the courtly, eloquent Metternich had ex
plained to him, "leave long comet-like trails of pernicious in
fluence. They furrow deep the souls of races. It is not alone the
dead they kill. They dishearten, they destroy the faith, the cour
age in the living. It takes the green, sweet freshness of many
springs," he added slowly, "to efface their sorrow."

This was another argument to appeal particularly to Alex
ander. No one understood better than Metternich the nature
of the man with whom he was talking, and the best way to sway
him.

They were sitting alone at the moment in the drawing-room
of the oak-paneled ceiling in the little castle assigned them in
Troppau. Here Metternich had entertained him, banished his
melancholy, then played for him, improvised wonderfully, in
order to attune himself to the mood of Alexander.

"You know, Your Majesty," he declared — "because who
else could know as well as you? — that the disease, which was the
Revolution, is slowly undermining Europe, and the old, safe life
of our fathers — nay, more — civilization. This Europe of ours
is like a rotten cliff. It is already weakened to its foundation. It
is beginning to crumble, to feel the tottering weight of its height.
There would be nothing gained if you and I conceal facts from
one another. We both know that Europe is preparing for dis
solution — in a future whose date we may not with exactitude
determine."

He who was never in haste paused for his words to have full
weight, and to enjoy them himself, like the epicure of life he was.
He liked the sound of his voice. And he liked his well-placed,
effective phrases. Nevertheless his face was sad. The thought
grieved him.

" I doubt — to tell the truth — if Europe will ever again be
stable. . . . Not, anyway, until some new kind of civilization

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 39

comes — to sweep away completely the old " — with a touch of
sadness which was genuine this time. " But — both you and I
hold positions which are too important to coquette with untried
facts. We both must abide by what is best now. We cannot
gamble upon a future — that may not be."

Again the wily Metternich had paused, to frame effectively
Ms final sentence in silence.

Metternich knew that, however much Alexander might long
for good, he had no faith in men. He knew that he was born with
that distrust in his heart which his dissipated, worldly, old grand
mother had gained from a lifetime of debauchery. This weak
ened him.

" In your country — even more than mine — this is not pos
sible — coquetting with the new. Russia is large — therefore
unwieldy. It is composed of hostile, of heterogeneous elements

— as you know. It would be the first to crumble! "

As Alexander recalled now, in his lonely room, this last state
ment of Austria's long-headed Minister, he understood that it
was the lifted lash, held over his own head. At the same time he
was forced to admit to himself that it was true.

Metternich knew that the inherited weakness of Alexander

— his lack of faith in humanity — took away from him the
refuge to which he might have fled for help — his people. There
fore he must place his reliance in the same thing that he, Metter
nich, did, which was power, held in his own hands. However
much Alexander might pity, he could not trust. Pity is an act of
superiority. Trust means treating with an equal.

Despite the disclosures of the popular Austrian statesman,
these were happy days spent with Prince Metternich in the little
castle of Troppau. They were men of like elevation of nature,
of training. Both possessed the same suave, polished exterior,
the same discipline and savoir-faire in avoiding unpleasantnesses.
Metternich could be eloquent and entertaining even with the
multiplication table. He could treat the most tiresome details
with charm. He could give to politics the magic of romance.
He was a delightful causeur, and a musician, too, by nature and
training. He did not neglect to make use of the evident pleas
ure which Alexander found in his company.

40 THE PENITENT

He did not, to be sure, take up again the serious discussion of
things political. But from time to time — delicately — he inter
spersed his conversation with quotations which would have the
effect he desired. One of these quotations had had serious effect
upon Russia. It was from Napoleon. "You see me master of
France! Well — I would not agree to govern France three
months — with liberty of the press." This was one of the first
impulses to bring about the press censorship, which had so irri
tated the young societies. Alexander did not intend to perpetuate
it. It was merely a temporary measure of precaution.

The other quotation was from Napoleon, too, and said by him
to Metternich once in Paris: "You do not know what a mighty
thing is happiness." Alexander was just finding out to-day, in
his sad and lonely meditating, that that was what he was losing
— happiness. Under the continual strain of government, under
the pressure of opposition, of contending factions, of quarreling
place-seekers, he was beginning to lose happiness, to die within, a
sort of unseen, moral death. Many times since that day in Trop-
pau these words had occurred to him. He was losing happiness.

Despite these frank, these unreassuring political disclosures,
he still had a feeling of regret for those days of pleasant,unforced
companionship with the Austrian diplomatist in Troppau, which
was really the unuttered desire for the near presence of some one
upon whom he could rely, some one firmer of will, some one more
determined, more aggressive than himself — and more eager to
rule.

He was interrupted in his moody introspection by a tap at
the door. Again a servant entered. He announced that the priest,
Photius, was waiting without. This royal but disciplined servant
of the people, who had ceased to consider his personal pleasure,
gave word to admit him.

A brown, limp, cassock-clothed figure bounded through the
door, with a movement that suggested an animal. When he had
crossed the threshold, he did not speak, nor move toward a chair.
He remained haughty, erect, without a word of greeting, looking
the Emperor directly in the eye. For an instant the Emperor
looked back at him commandingly. Then with a graceful smile,

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 41

half indulgence to bad manners, half gentleness, he bent his head
before the uncouth, dirty being, who lifted a hand and made the
sign of the cross over his bent head. After this he advanced into
the room in increased good-humor. He took a seat in one of the
straight-backed chairs. Photius, the furious, was in the habit of
declaring that priests represent the incarnate God on earth, and
that any one of them who shows timidity in presence of a mere
ruler is no better than a wet rat. The phrases of Photius were
usually inelegant, but correspondingly easy of comprehension.

Alexander, knowing the ignorant man's hobby, bent his head
to the priest. Then he seated himself gravely in the rosewood
chair, resigned to the disagreeable interview which was sure to
follow.

Photius was an unpleasant object to contemplate. He was
tall, gaunt. He had reddish, long, graying hair, falling uncombed
about his cheeks. He had the round head — minus the elonga
tion in the back — the round eyes a trifle too near together, of
people who cannot reason and who like to combat. His eyes
were light blue and the white was blood-streaked. The face was
not very intelligent, not noble at all, and far from prepossess
ing. His forehead bulged somewhat, and looked as if it had
bumps upon it which would not go down. His nose was insig
nificant — as is frequent with people who are cruel by nature or
combative — and too small; and his mouth shapeless. Just at
this moment he happened to be the fashionable confessor for the
women of the Petersburg great world. This gave him increased
importance. He was in the habit of either wheedling them or
frightening them — as the case might demand — out of con
siderable sums of money. All of which he kept greedily for him
self.

He was ignorant, dogmatic. He was not well balanced. He
was narrow and fanatical. He seldom washed, considering it a
Godless act, nor troubled to keep himself decently clean. He
slept in a coffin, in a small, underground room where there was
little air, and whose walls were covered with icons, with relics.
He spent most of his time in trying to reduce society to a state
of ignorance equal to his own.

42 THE PENITENT

"How are things going in our city, which is sacred to your
patron saint, friend Photius? "

"Badly, Your Majesty — badly —"

"How is that?" — with surprise just tinged with interest.

"That is why I am here, Your Majesty."

Alexander made no remark. He merely looked sympathetic
and waited for the priest to continue.

"Men are on the wrong road, Your Majesty."

Alexander said nothing. Again he looked sympathetic and
waited for the priest to speak on.

"They are not headed for the pastures of faith — of good
works. They are rushing toward the pastures of desire " — his
voice rising with emotion unpleasantly.

" Be explicit, friend Photius. What has happened? "

" Young men, all over our country, are forming societies —
in Moscow — in Great Novgorod — here, too. They further
the ways, not of God, but the Devil. They are just as dangerous
as the Masonic Lodges."

Again Alexander looked sympathetic. Again he waited.

"What should a society be for if not to praise God? I tell you
it must be stopped " - his anger, restrained up to now, breaking
forth upon a sudden, like steam when a kettle cover is lifted.

"You are referring to the literary societies — the young men,
I presume."

" That is it. Exactly it, Your Majesty. Both here and in Mos
cow. They meet to study Godless writers, poetry. Why, a poet is
getting to be of as much importance as a priest," he added an
grily.

" We must have various kinds of people, I suppose, in our na
tion, friend Photius. We must live, in some sort, the life the rest
of the Continent live, must we not?" asked the Emperor con-
ciliatingly.

"Last night — they met" — taking no notice of the remark
and not replying. "They have been meeting pretty regularly.
They say anything — anything. The one who ridicules best the
state, the nobility, the church, they applaud most. They respect
nothing." Here the memory of a witticism by Alexis Sergiewitch

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 43

about the way Photius spent his nights, in a coffin, made him
tremble with rage. The jingle had set Russia laughing. For
weeks he had been longing to get even with the writer.

There was sometimes a point that stung like an adder in the
naughty lampoons of Pushkin. Mixed with the sting there was
usually just enough fact to set every one laughing.

But the words of Photius had winged Alexander's thoughts
in an altogether different direction than the priest had intended.
No one could count exactly upon the effect words might have
upon him. He was continuing as before his line of gently sug
gested protest.

"A civilized nation, friend Photius," he remarked without
emphasis, "must have a range of people — poets — priests —

scholars, scientists, administrators, men of commerce, soldiers

»

Then he paused without completing the thought, feeling that
reason could have no weight with the undisciplined, wild-fea
tured figure facing him. But while he still preserved his usual
charming, sphinx-like exterior, his mind took a little pleasure-
excursion of its own choosing by way of relief.

Photius was right. Poets were singing throughout the land.
And not only in Russia, but around the globe. It was blossom-
time for the human mind, a somewhat similar blossom-time to
that which once had been in Greece — long ago. Never but
twice before had man's mind shown such capacity for flowering,
such stored-up, unrestrainable energy, such quickly unfolded
power.

Eighteen hundred marks a no table 'date. At that time, and
the years that circle it closely, some inspiring impetus stole
softly upon the world bringing with it an army of poets, of
painters, musicians — of creative artists. Its effect was like that
of the wind of the South in spring, blowing blue-and-white
flowers over the steppe. Throughout the length, the breadth of
Russia there was a piping, a chirruping. It was spring in the
souls of men. This inspiring power of the youth of genius en
folded the land like a richer light. These young men, these poets,
were breaking their hearts with song just like the nightingales

44 THE PENITENT

which he remembered long ago on certain resplendent midnights
of his boyhood in the Ukraine. No other land had produced so
many in so short time, he reflected with pride. Another pecu
liarity was that in their inexperienced youth they wrote like mas
ters. They won their fame at an earlier age than the writers of
other countries had even begun to think about theirs. They did
not have to learn. They did not have to study, to work, to wait.
They burst, full-blown, into the life of artists. One could not
even enumerate them easily! There was Ryleiev, Baratinsky,
Schukowsky, Viazemsky, Griboiedof, Delvig, and young Alexis
Sergiewitch. It was like trying to count grass stalks in summer.
And this had come with his reign. The glory of this belonged to
him — in part.

"Oh! — it isn't poetry now, Your Majesty, they are busy
with" — divining his thoughts. "It is conspiracy" — throwing
up his cramped, dirty hands, with their claw-like nails. "They
want to rule, Your Majesty, according to their Godless plans."

"No, no, friend Photius! Not conspiracy. Do not take them
so seriously. They would not conspire against me. No one
would. What you call by that unfortunate name is merely the
distributed thought of the age — to which they, like many
others, are giving expression. They are merely doing the same
kind of thinking that is being done in various parts of the world
to-day."

"But we must stop it, I tell you — stop it!" — jumping to his
feet, and advancing in a threatening manner. "We must make
our country different, we must make it a land of convents —
houses of prayer — where one can hear only the tinkle of prayer
bells, the sound of fingered breviaries — order." Then he con
trolled himself with a powerful effort and dropped down upon
his chair.

"That is just it," thought Alexander. "He is a symbol of
old Russia; its narrow-mindedness, its fanaticism. It is what I
have worked to change, to modernize. It is just that that has
hindered the execution of all my plans."

Photius, annoyed by the meditative silence of Alexander,
slowly got up again. He advanced stealthily toward the front of

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 45

the desk behind which Alexander was sitting, without so much
as asking permission.

"Your Majesty, I must tell you the truth! Last night there
was a conspiracy, not against the government, but against the
sacred life of Your Majesty!"

For a second Photius paused for breath. But there was no
change of expression upon the trained face of Alexander. It was
still gentle, still calm.

"They met, the brothers Mouravieff-Apostol, Pestel, Ka-
khovsky the Pole, young Baratinsky, Prince Odojewsky, Ryleiev,
Alexis Sergiewitch — in short, all that crowd. Ryleiev and
Alexis Sergiewitch were the leaders, the most vicious of the lot.
First, Ryleiev amused the company by reading a disrespectful
article about our excellent, our able Minister of War, Arakcheiev.
The article was called 'The Favorite.' When he had finished
young Alexis Sergiewitch leaped to his feet and recited a dirty
verse about the same worthy representative of order, of decency,
in Your Majesty's land, which began:

Arak-cA^-iev's — An-as-/<fc-ia —

Every one roared with delight. Your Majesty knows what
influence the words of Alexis Sergiewitch have always had over
the people. Your Majesty knows how they sing in the streets
whatever he writes. They are most dangerous, his songs, because
people cannot forget them. They ought to be suppressed !

"After that the crowd arose. They sang his revolutionary
'Ode to the Dagger.' Then they made plans against the govern
ment — to overthrow it!" he whispered tragically, gasping for
breath. There was a pause, slight, but effective.

" What would you advise, friend Photius? " was the diplomatic
answer that broke the silence.

"This! — This! — Your Majesty! Send that insolent, danger
ous Pushkin to the mines — for life!"

Photius had now said what he came to say. The released,
electric energy of his heretofore suppressed hatred vibrated
through the little room.

"We cannot always do, you know, just what we would like,

46 THE PENITENT

friend Photius. There are restraints upon us, you understand;
restraints in form of world-opinion. What would enlightened
Europe say if Alexander sent to the mines of Siberia the young
men of genius of his land who are merely working off the super
abundant energy of their youth — their brains? What he has
done we deplore. We will take it under advisement. Can you not
suggest some less arbitrary means — of — restoring — what you
call — order?"

Photius felt mollified — more, flattered. Evidently he was
considered of importance, worthy to help rule. His anger visibly
decreased, seeing the goal so plainly within reach.

Alexander was too subtle to disturb with words this peace-giv
ing meditation which had taken such careful dealing to produce.
After a little Photius suggested, in a changed voice, which ex
pressed his satisfaction.

"Suppose we send him to the Monastery of Solovetz?" The
accented "we" amused Alexander, but he kept unchanged his
smooth gravity.

"Send him there — Your Majesty! The priests will take the
kinks out of him. I'll answer for that!" — smacking his lips in
revengeful anticipation.

That gray, turret-bristling, sad Monastery of Solovetz, upon
the Arctic Circle, by the shore of the White Sea! What a place to
send a fellow like Pushkin who had leaped up like a God in the
sunlight. The extensive training in Greek letters of Alexander
in his youth, and in literature in general, made him able to com
prehend the fact that in Pushkin there was some of that old Di-
onysian sense of joy, of vivid being, which meant stored-up, cre
ative energy. Pushkin, telling his beads! Pushkin wearing an
ash-hued cassock! Pushkin in the Monastery of Solovetz, on the
shore of the White Sea ! What a place for a poet in whom he knew
throbbed the old Neronic dreams, the old jeweled glamour of vi
sions, who loved the pageantry, the pomp of life. Alexander
sensed prophetically upon the moment that in all probability life
would be sad enough for him anyway. It is seldom too easy for
the poet who perforce must dwell in a prose world. And in
Alexis Sergiewitch there was African blood to make more peril-

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 47

ous the complexity. With his tropical blood and impulses he was
sufficiently out of place. He was a vivid, equatorial bird of fire
dropped by accident of destiny amid the sad fogs of a Finnish
marsh.

"We will consider your suggestion, friend Photius. We will
think it over. Important judgments, you know, require delibera
tion. We try to do our duty in this respect."

Photius was disappointed. He felt vaguely that his prey was
slipping away from him.

"Send him there, Your Majesty. Do it now! And send Ryleiev
along with him. Shut them up alone. Feed them on bread
and water. You'll see the change then — how it is good for
them."

" We will do something, friend Photius. We will do something.
We thank you — and we will confer with you again." Alexander
had risen in sign of dismissal.

"If you do not, Your Majesty" — bounding up with an angry
suppleness that again recalled a wild animal held by a leash —
" God will punish you ! " — his voice rang out prophetically, sonor
ously. "Or if you delay — too long — then the judgment of God
will be upon you. He will send His avenging floods upon the city
— His lightning. He will send death. He will send uprisings —
of peoples! — of nations! He will send His angry ocean to invade
the land!"

His little round eyes were red as blood now. Only ancient
Apocalyptic visions of terror dwelled in his undisciplined, narrow
brain. His wild hair was falling in strings over his disordered
face.

The door opened softly. The serene Alexander was bowing
him out. He was hoping at the same time, in that beautiful voice
that touched men's hearts, that he would have the pleasure of
seeing him, soon again.

When the door closed there hovered over the mouth of Alexan
der an expression that recalled tantalizingly the less lovely mouth
of his august grandmother, Catherine the Great, who was mis
tress of all dissimulation.

Photius had not gone far before he was fortunate enough to

48 THE PENITENT

meet his friend Arakcheiev, who had just returned to the city
from a flying visit to his estate, Gruzena. He had been on a little
shopping tour along the Nevsky Prospect, for the purpose of buy
ing a large number of the cheapest account books he could find
to send back by the peasant who had driven him in. Arakcheiev
had a passion for exactitude, for the making of infinite additions.
He had figured out a plan by which everything on his estate was
to be listed, and counted; every cucumber, every tallow-candle
end. Photius hailed him with delight. He told him of his inter
view with Alexander. He urged him to hasten to the Winter
Palace, and use his greater influence for the same end.

Hunting down human prey pleased Arakcheiev. He hastened
willingly to comply with the priest's request. He hated Alexis
Sergiewitch too. The witty jingle about Anastasia, the mistress
he loved, had touched him in a sensitive spot. At the same time
it made him feel ridiculous. People were laughing at him. It
made him rage, too, to confess to himself that he was unable to
pay young Pushkin back with the same bloodless but deadly
weapon, wit.

The Minister of War was ushered at once into the private office
of the Emperor, who was genuinely glad to see him. In the pres
ence of Arakcheiev, who did not have his own far, disconcerting,
mental range, the restless, questioning, vacillating nature of Al
exander found strength and poise. It was like a temporary resto
ration to health of mind. He enjoyed it. He knew, to be sure,
that Arakcheiev's nature was cruel, that it was brutal, but at the
same time he knew that a stronger, a less merciful hand than his
own was needed in governing. Only God can mete out justice
daily, without making mistakes. He knew that Arakcheiev sup
plied qualities that were lacking in himself. And then he had a
debt of gratitude to pay to him. In his youth, Arakcheiev used to
defend, to protect him, from the brutal anger of his father. He
had saved him from many an unpleasantness.

When Arakcheiev was young he had been a corporal in Gats-
china. He was ignorant. In the presence of a superior he was
humble, cringing, but in the presence of an inferior he went as far
the other way. He was a brutal master. He was an enemy of

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 49

liberalism, new ideas, because he sensed that their increasing in
fluence was sure, in time, to lessen his own.

The man who entered flashed upon the senses the impression of
something gray, colorless, without emotion. He was square-
shouldered, but only of medium height. His eyes were small and
cruel, like dots of intermittently visible flame. He was heavy.
He had the short arms which sometimes go with immaturity of
feeling, cruelty. He possessed neither the flexibility of body nor
of mind which were so richly displayed in the royal figure oppos
ite.

"I came in from Gruzena this morning, Your Majesty. My
men, who have watched faithfully over Your Majesty's city,
have informed me of a meeting last night. About this I find it
necessary to confer with Your Majesty."

Alexander waited.

"The two societies, the Northern and the Southern, met in one
of the upstairs rooms of the Russian-American Company, with
the poet Ryleiev as host. They were all there — the young noble
men, and the writers. Word has been brought to me that the na
ture of the societies is changing. It is no longer literature —
nonsense — songs — they talk about. It is government. In fact,
Your Majesty, it has developed into a criminal conspiracy. And
I am afraid that it has extensive offshoots — in other cities,
Moscow, of course — Great Novgorod — and even farther
south."

Alexander's face showed neither surprise nor fear. " Who told
you?"

" Klinger the German. He was in the army awhile. He started
back to Germany to-day."

"What did he say?"

"Enough to make me know that Ryleiev and Alexis Sergie-
witch are dangerous, a source of future trouble. They set exam
ple of talking disrespectfully about people in office, the church,
too. It is a bad example! I do not think it wise to let it go on.
Words precede acts, you know."

" What would you suggest? "

"Well, censorship is not effective, evidently."

50 THE PENITENT

It occurred to Alexander upon the moment that a secret litera
ture was now circulating in manuscript. He had read it, too,
some of it, with a guilty joy.

"You see," Arakcheiev went on, "it is this habit of treating
men of affairs lightly — with disrespect." He was careful not to
mention the merry lampoon which Alexis Sergiewitch had writ
ten about him. He had a different plan in mind, and one which
he felt would win. "Because of the universal restlessness of
people, since the war, when the country is like a sea trying to
regain quiet after a prolonged storm, measures taken must be
not only swift, but effective"

Alexander became thoughtful. While his face was still calm
and untroubled, the winning smile about his lips had disap
peared.

"He might be put in the fortress of Peter and Paul — "

"You mean?"

"Yes, Your Majesty, Alexis Sergiewitch -=-"

"Ah— "

"And there, cold, lack of food — well, various accidents
might happen. Life, Your Majesty, is uncertain" — looking in
tently at him with his penetrating, deep-set eyes.

Why could they not give him a chance to spare them, these gay
young men of genius, with whom he was in sympathy! Why
could they not confine their interest to letters — and let the
government alone!

"But we cannot suppress — our men of mind, our men of
ability. What would the rest of Europe say of us? "

"The rest of Europe, Your Majesty, need not know what
happens in Russia. That is only for Your Majesty — for me.
It is the business of papers to print what they are told. Facts
should have nothing to do with news — that is, if facts are not as
we wish them."

" You" and ((we." That made him an accomplice to deeds he
did not like to contemplate, much less be a party to.

Arakcheiev divined his thoughts. "We cannot always spare
our feelings — especially when the welfare of the nation is at
stake." This suggestion was fortunate on his part. Certainly

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 51

governing was the most unpleasant constitutional amusement
in the world.

Alexander had no personal inclination to be cruel. Besides, he
reasoned, if you cut off the top of a plant, its roots will strike out
more vigorously underneath. He knew also that important
events frequently have trifling causes. This swept him in an
other direction. His broad, his philosophical outlook was banish
ing, as usual, the individual point at issue.

"All these boyish thinkers," Arakcheiev continued, "are, as
none know so well as Your Majesty, merely the late offshoots of
the French Revolution, attempting to strike deep root, in a pro
ductive and unworn soil. If they are not destroyed at the start,
Your Majesty, and in such a way that there can be no recur
rence, it is probable that, in time, there will be another Revolu
tion here."

Aside from fear of revolution, Arakcheiev hated daring
thinkers. He was sullenly on the watch to turn his fanatics loose
upon them.

Arakcheiev was as cruel at heart as Photius, but he was more
intelligent. His mind was not of a high order. At the same time,
in a way, he was a man of some brain power. He had made
commendable changes in the army. He had reorganized suc
cessfully the artillery. His thinking, however, and his govern
mental helpfulness usually took the form of detail.

"Your Majesty must not fail to take into consideration, too,
that this is the first outbreak of the revolutionary spirit in the
north of Europe, if we except the comparatively recent student
uprising in Prussia — which they were wise enough to put down
upon the moment. We cannot look upon it any other way than
this — that it is our duty, to humanity, no matter what our indi
vidual inclinations may be, to suppress the young traitors.
Since they are Russians, we are responsible."

This was a gentle reminder of the murder of Alexander's pro
tege and spy, Kotzebue, by the Prussian students, and a possible
threat, therefore, to him. Arakcheiev meant this: // you do not
do it, the fate of Kotzebue will be yours. But Alexander did not
need to be reminded. With the prophetic sensitiveness of his

52 THE PENITENT

far-seeing, supple mind, he had sensed approaching the danger
ous might of an army of the people, the unlettered, the masses,
somewhere within the future. He had felt it coming nearer and
nearer, as we feel occasional chill breaths of wind from a distant
storm. It was something cold, something cruel, shivering the
safe surface of the present. He knew that it was on the way.
But, as his custom was, he had communicated this thought to no
one. Now that Arakcheiev expressed it, however, it had added
weight, because it echoed his unuttered convictions. It fell
upon him with the force of memory.

" One by one — Your Majesty — it would be best for them —
to disappear. No one will ever know — except us, what became of
them. It is our duty to our race." This "us" was the unfor
tunate word for Arakcheiev in the sentence he had uttered.

" Milorodovich, Your Majesty, Governor- General of the
city, has reported young Pushkin to me not only for an 'Ode to
Liberty,' but for an * Ode to the Dagger,' because the two poems
contain certain expressions against Your Majesty — which
cannot in safety be permitted. Count Nesselrode, too, has
spoken to me of his wild nature, his unruly tongue — and Count
Benkendorf. Youth, as a rule, needs disciplining."

Alexander did not hasten to reply. He had always been in
clined to overlook an attack against his personal self. This was
not wholly bravery. It was the first beginning of a certain weari
ness, of a settled conviction that to care was useless. What must
be, must be.

"Young Pushkin has no respect for anything!" Arakcheiev
went on. "And, in addition, he is faithless to his friends. Now
there is Karamsin, to give Your Majesty an example in point.
You know that Karamsin has been a lifelong friend of his
family. Pushkin has written and circulated an epigram in which
he dubbed him, 'poet of the Knout.' And Schukowsky, Push
kin's dearest friend and his protector, he called day before yes
terday, in a gambling club, la poet promoted to a court flunky '
Daily he turns that bitter tongue of his loose upon some one of
his benefactors — usually a man of position, too, in government
affairs." Arakcheiev was watching the face of Alexander. But

.

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 53

not even he, as well as he knew him, could gauge accurately what
was going on within.

Alexander had a liking for young Pushkin. His own cosmo
politan mental training, his extensive cultivation in his youth
in Greek made him able to understand, to appreciate him. He
had just read Pushkin's first published book, "Ruslan and Liud-
milla." He had enjoyed it. He was proud of it as a product of his
race. He was astonished, too, at its finished, its daring style.
He was confronted with a manner of writing the Russian tongue
that he had not seen, nor dreamed to be possible; a style literally
woven of dew and sunlight. The verse had astonishing ease. He
had not read anything possessing in the same degree this quality,
except Attic Greek, and this it resembled more than a little, he
knew. He appreciated the artistic excellencies. In young Push
kin's brain evidently now lay limpidly, and ready for future un
folding, a store of noble visions. These were qualities which
Arakcheiev, of course, could not understand. He was ignorant
in such things. He was unable to judge.

But Arakcheiev was an opponent to be reckoned with. He
had cunningly kept his strongest weapon for the last. It was not
his purpose to argue, but to conquer. He understood, as well as
any one could, the shifting, secretive nature of the man with
whom he was dealing. He knew, too, that Alexander was chang
ing rapidly, and it was not easy to measure accurately either the
degree or the direction of the change. Therefore the effect for
himself and his private plans was uncertain. He knew that
Alexander secretly revolted against things he was forced to do.
An impulse, to move him strongly, must be an impersonal one or
one of nobility. No motive, purely of self, could do it.

"Here is another example, Your Majesty, of Pushkin's ability
to set something going. It may, of course, be unintentional. I
do not say that it is not. Last week, in a gambling club he fre
quents, some one mentioned the name of that worthy nobleman,
Your Majesty's friend, Count Michael Woronzow, whom Your
Majesty has made Governor of Bessarabia, with Your Ma
jesty's customary Tightness of choice. Pushkin began to sing at
the top of his voice:

54 THE PENITENT

Half my lord, half tradesman, half sage, and half dunce,
Here's a hope that he'll wish to be whole for this once.

Of course, then, the others joined in. They ridiculed Woronzow'"
Alexander's left eyebrow curved upward. Arakcheiev knew
that he had succeeded, and beyond his hope. This was the only
mark of external emotion the exquisite person opposite was
known to show. Alexander's mind became instantly active.
Count Michael Woronzow was the most faithful, devoted serv
ant a sovereign ever had. He was a rock of reliability. Alexan
der, who was known to despise his fellow-men, was forced to re
spect him. Short-bodied, insignificant-looking, snub-nosed, in
elegant, Woronzow possessed a great, a noble soul. He led the
self-abnegatory life of a martyr. A lifetime, and a fortune, this
little old man had spent in southern Russia, trying to make the
desert bloom like the rose. Over barren, uncounted miles, his
short legs had tramped stubbornly, patiently, planting the olive,
the vine, the orange, for other men and other years to reap the
fruit, to enjoy. He asked nothing for himself. He gave all to his
fatherland. He had built cities. He had developed commerce.
He had opened seaports along the Black Sea. He had been one
of the men to build Odessa. He had kept out plagues and infec
tions. He had even paid entire regiments out of his own pocket.
What stories he had heard of him ! Officers, returning briefly to
Petersburg on leave of absence, related eloquently how in the
continuous warfare against the unconquerable Mohammedan
tribes of the Caucasus, when, the little old man used to sit down
to rest upon a tree-stump, he would take out his dirty notebook
calmly, while the bullets were flying and hissing around him, and
carefully make out a list of medicines which his soldiers needed,
to be sent for on the next ship from Odessa to Marseilles — or or
der new ball-gowns for the frail, lovely, but ungrateful woman
who bore his name. Bravely, too, he had opposed Napoleon. Al
exander's heart swelled with sympathy, with indignation.

Arakcheiev was too wise to speak and run the risk of disturbing
this meditation which he had so carefully set in action. Instead
he began to count. So many pictures first. Then so many chairs:
four in front of the desk and one behind it. So many pens. So

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 55

many piles of paper: one on one end of the table and one on the
other. He had done this dozens of times before. But in periods of
doubt and forced inaction he fell back upon the comfortable re
liability of figures. When in doubt, count. Just as he finished
the last addition, Alexander was recalling a parting word of Met-
ternich: "Woronzow is a very right-minded Russian"

The names of Metternich and Arakcheiev frequently occurred
to him at the same time, as dissimilar as these two men were, be
cause they both gave him the same pleasant feeling of stability,
of decision, which he could not easily procure for himself. At
length he spoke.

" I comprehend the importance of what you say. Later in the
day — I will send a message to you at the Ministry."

Arakcheiev showed no inclination to push further the discus
sion. He knew how to let well-enough alone. He knew he had
won.

"How are things going on your estate?"

"Well — Your Majesty — well! I am planning a hospital
now — for the people; and a training school for special workers."
He understood that things like these pleased the Emperor. Then
he arose, took up his rough, dark-gray coat lined with yellow fox
fur, bent his head humbly in salutation, and backed out, servile,
obedient.

After the door closed upon Arakcheiev, it seemed to Alexander,
suddenly, that he and young Alexis Sergiewitch were alike in a
peculiar, nameless kind of misfortune. They were two lonely,
somewhat helpless figures, opposing each other dumbly, but un-
derstandingly, across a vast area of disturbance.

His melancholy was increasing as it usually did at the end of
prolonged meditation. Now it occurred to him that, in spite of
his unlimited power, he seldom had anything the way he wished
it. He had always believed in peace. What was the result? Up
to the year 1815 he had signed more decrees for war than any
former ruler of his country in the same length of time. He ad
mired young Alexis Sergiewitch. More, he liked him — and
yet —

He began to consider the case of Alexis Sergiewitch. As usual

56 THE PENITENT

he sought a subtlety that would appease Photius and Arak-
cheiev, in some degree satisfy them, uphold the dignity of the
ruling class by defending it, and at the same time preserve in
tact, for his own pleasure, his customary, enigmatic position.

He had listened to what Arakcheiev and Photius had said. He
had seemed to agree with them without the committal of words.
But he had put off the hair-splitting delicacy of decision.

Arakcheiev was not so dull as Alexander might think. When
he left and walked briskly away toward the Ministry, he realized
afresh how few could understand him. There was not a single
member of his suite, who saw him daily, who could do it any bet
ter than he, Arakcheiev, he thought proudly. Not one of them
could form a reasonable guess of what was going on within the
ruler's head.

Arakcheiev then decided that the most difficult combination
there is, is sensitiveness, combined with subtlety. On top of both
these, he knew was Alexander's suspiciousness. He did not trust
any one but himself, unless it might be Count Woronzow. His
training had helped to make him more suspicious, and his self-
control was something colossal. This doubled the burden of life
upon him.

Alexander's meditation ended in his deciding to exile Alexis
Sergiewitch. He would send him to Bessarabia. There he would
put him under the care of Woronzow, whom he could trust. This
would serve several purposes at one time. It would get him away
from the city and its dangers. It would separate him from plot
ting companions. It would save his life probably, and at the
same time temporarily satisfy the ones who were clamoring for
his punishment.

He sent a note to Arakcheiev to this effect. He added to the
note the recommendation that in the army camps it would be
well to keep the soldiers busy at some kind of work. This ex
pressed the unuttered fear of what might happen if they had full
time in which to plot. In short, it was a measure of safety against
them, the equal of that against Pushkin.

When this was written he called a servant. He sent word to the
Empress that he would join her at tea at the usual time.

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 57

An hour later he was bending over her hand with courtly grace
and saying: "I ordered your room filled with forget-me-nots to
day, my dear, because outside is still our misty, chill cold — al
though the calendar declares it is spring. I wished you to be the
first to enjoy the spring."

The large, somewhat childish eyes that looked up to thank
him, were just the color of the flowers. They showed that she
was glad to see him.

She led him joyously across to her work-table to show him a
turquoise upon which she was engraving his profile. His eyes fol
lowed with pleasure the slender figure, in white, trailing lace,
whose heavy mass of golden hair seemed too great a weight, that
was preceding him.

Elizabeth Alexandra was forty, but there was that something
about her still girlish, which is felt sometimes in the presence of
unmarried women, or women of great chastity.

He examined the turquoise with apparent interest, as if there
was nothing else in the world of more importance at that mo
ment. His manner was unfettered and happy.

Then he followed her over to the small, curving-backed, ivory-
hued, satin sofa, near the window, where she always sat to pour
tea. The boudoirs of women gave him pleasure. They called to
that which was feminine within his own nature. It was a sort of
going home of the spirit, so to speak. He watched the two small
hands, with the huge gems upon them, fluttering over the price
less porcelain, the silver, and the graceful figure, with its sloping
shoulders and long, slender neck. When the tea was poured, and
the little round biscuits passed, she began to talk, to gossip, about
what her women in waiting had told her, and the ladies of the
court. She had heard a scandal about the unmoral life of that
negro poet, Pushkin. His immorality, she declared, was extraor
dinary even in a city noted, like Petersburg, for its immorality.
She heard he spent his nights in debauchery.

Elizabeth Alexandra was something of a puritan. The provin
cial notions of the petty German courts where she had lived still
clung to her. There was a certain lack of flexibility in her nature,
too. She could not accommodate herself easily to fresh points of

58 THE PENITENT

view. She urged the Emperor to restrain him. Then she re
peated a witticism of Pushkin's which she had heard:

In Russia there is no law,
Only a post, and on it a crown.

To her surprise Alexander laughed. He tried to make her un
derstand that Alexis Sergiewitch was a merry, harmless boy,
with a kind heart. "He is no more dangerous, my dear, than
our good-looking Baratinsky, or Prince Odojewsky, whom the
women find agreeable. There is no malice in him. He is having
a good time, because he has made his debut as a poet, and the
world is applauding him."

He treated her like a child, but like a spoiled child whom one
must not cross. She asked him if the wheels of government were
running smoothly, or if he were burdened with work, with worry.
The voice that replied was tender and alluring. He asured her
that everything was exactly as he desired.

When he arose to go, he explained that unfortunately he would
not be able to dine with her to-night, but that he had commanded
Count Alexis Orlow, whom he knew to be an agreeable compan
ion, to take his place. He trusted she would enjoy herself.

He bent and lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. When she
looked up to meet his eyes in farewell, she noticed how like the
sky they were; deep, serene, where no one could see to the depths.
For a fleeting instant she wished, plaintively, that he were less
exquisite and more human. When the door closed, and he had
gone, the lovely solitude of luxury seemed more lonely, and the
eyes of the flowers were just as comprehensible as those of the
man who had left.

Outside he hastily told his orderly to make ready a sleigh, that
did not bear the royal arms, and with the swiftest horses. His
relief from the burden of his great position, and its boredom,
which his secretive nature did not permit him to share, was the
swift feet of horses, or the arms of women.

Like the lightning, his black, silent, somber, muffled figure
sped through the wide, dark streets which were silent and secre
tive like his soul. The cold, gray-slipping Neva kept its secrets.

ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH 59

The fortress of Peter and Paul, which he was passing now, with
its dungeons beneath the level of the water, kept its secrets, too,
and did not tell. The long, gray, massive administration build
ing where Arakcheiev and Count Benkendorf presided, never
gave to the world a truthful account of its cruel or its unjust de
crees.

Outside the city the chill, wet night wrapped him about like a
swathing veil. Spring had not reached as far north as this. About
him spread the silent, secretive velvet of the snow. The wind
that whipped about his ears still kept the loneliness of night and
winter.

But this refreshed him, rested him, this beating up against the
unconquered, brutal North. He drew strength from its untamed
contact. When the dripping horses were taken back to the stable
again, Alexander sought the hard soldier's cot, in a little room
adjoining the cabinet, and, without undressing, threw himself
upon it and slept soundly until day.

In the middle of the night a slender figure, completely envel
oped in gray veils, seemed to float rather than walk down the
cold, windy corridors, floated through great door after great
door, which was opened softly by a servitor who neither looked
up nor spoke, until at length the room of the Emperor was
reached. Here she opened the door timidly and looked in. "Ah!
yes! He is here. Then he is not with her to-night." Softly, si
lently, the gray-draped figure floated back again through the
same long corridors, to the room where artificial heat was closing
too soon the drooping eyes of blue forget-me-nots.

CHAPTER III
THE JOURNEY SOUTH

ALEXIS SERGIEWITCH slept until past midday. A pale, fat serv
ant girl, two stiff blue ribbons floating behind from her cap, was
bringing him a belated breakfast, and arranging it upon the table,
when Schukowsky entered, somewhat hurriedly and without
ceremony.

"Come in! Come in, Vassili Andrejewitch ! " called young
Pushkin gladly. Then he happened to remember a merry and
none too respectful epigram he had given expression to about
his friend the day but one before. His sensitive, expressive face
changed. Vassili Andrejewitch stood looking at him with kind,
questioning eyes. He guessed easily the subject of his thoughts.
It amused him.

"I did not mean anything — Vassili Andrejewitch — I mean
— disrespectful — "

Schukowsky, who was twenty years older than Pushkin, was
still smiling at him indulgently. The older man not only under
stood him, but he liked him sincerely.

"In the couplet — I improvised about you the other day — "

" Do not worry about it — dear little brother, Alexis Sergie-
witch — I know you did not — "

Pushkin interrupted him. "I do not know what makes me say
the things I do, Vassili Andrejewitch. It is not my heart, God
knows it is not! It is as if my tongue went careering along with
out either head or heart " — looking up at him like a child, in
genuously.

"Forget it — dear little brother Alexis Sergiewitch! Forget it!
I understand. It is just the superabundant energy of a poet in
the flood tide of his years. I understand! I understand."

Pushkin gave him a grateful look and moved toward the table.

"Eat with me, Vassili Andrejewitch?"

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 61

"Thanks — no. Go ahead."

"Just a glass of tea?"

"No."

Schukowsky waited until the meal was finished, walking rest
lessly about in the little room.

"Anything up, Vassili Andre j e wi tch ?" Pushkin questioned as
he finished, pushed his plate and tea-glass back, turning his boy
ish face toward the older man. "How is your long poem coming
on — 'The Wandering Jew' ?"

" Well — so-so," a somewhat distrait voice replied, as if he had
lost interest in it.

"Did you bring it? I'd like to hear it, Vassili Andrejewitch.*

"No — not to-day."

"Why did n't you?"

"Time enough."

"But what is the matter with to-day?" — feeling dimly,
through the dull lassitude of late sleeping and preceding weeks oi
dissipation, something important withheld within the mind ol
Schukowsky.

Schukowsky looked at the pale, eager face with the tangled,
pale curls above it, much as a father would have looked. The
sensitive Pushkin felt it. He was aware of it in the same way that
one is aware of the soft touch of slipping sunlight.

Schukowsky went on speaking from the propelling impulse of
his own thoughts. "Early this morning, I gave a Russian lesson
to the wife of the Grand Duke Nicholas. I found out while I was
in the palace — no matter how! You know the underground
routes by which news travels in Russia — that there was a meet
ing of the two societies — last night — Northern and Southern.
It has been reported — pretty generally — that it was really a
revolutionary meeting — with the ultimate object of overthrowing
the government — "

Schukowsky paused. Pushkin looked frightened. He waited
nervously for him to go on. He felt that what he had feared
greatly the night before had really come true.

"Were you there, Alexis Sergiewitch?" sternly, with a sharp
accent of displeasure.

62 THE PENITENT

"Yes," was the answer, looking straight toward the black,
slanting, Mongolian shaped eyes of Schukowsky.
^"Well — it seems that that German poet, Klinger — whose
writing the wife of the Grand Duke Nicholas admires so — be
cause she is German, too — sent in a report. Your name was
mentioned as one of the leaders of the plot — against the Em
peror. Klinger left for his home in Germany to-day — and
stepped nimbly out of the affair."

"I was there — Schukowsky. But 1 opposed the plot — God
knows I did! I swear it to you upon my honor. I left the meeting

— on that account. Klinger told that lie because he hates me.
His is a mischief -making race! There is some professional jeal
ousy in it, too, on his part — of course."

"The fat is in the fire. The whole story, with I do not know
how many additions, has gone to Count Benkendorf, Arakcheiev

— and the Emperor. Those upon whom the blame fell hardest
were men — of the nobility — "

"Well?" — in surprise, looking more and more frightened.

"You are to be punished — I hear — exiled — "

"What for? What have I done? "

"I do not know; that is, not exactly."

"Are you sure, Vassili Andrejewitch?"

"Do not worry! Do not worry! In his heart the Emperor likes
you. Always remember that, Alexis Sergiewitch " — solemnly.
" Whatever is done will be ultimately — for your own good. So
do not rebel."

"Vassili Andrejewitch" — in a trembling voice — "The in
stant I reached here last night, I wrote a letter to Ryleiev, refus
ing to have anything more to do with the society. They tried to
make me join it."

"Good! Now write another letter just like it, explaining that
act on your part, and give it to me. Be quick! Address it to me."

Pushkin wrote the letter as he was told. Schukowsky put it
into his pocket and out of sight. "Hurry, now! Go through all
your papers — just as rapidly as possible. Burn, right here in
this stove, everything that could get you into trouble. I will help
you."

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 63

"Why, Vassili Andre jewitch, you do not think it will come so
soon, do you?" — in a frightened voice.

" You know the decrees of Alexander! Do they not usually fall
without warning? " Pushkin complied sadly, feeling as if he were
walking in his sleep, but not doubting for a moment the wisdom
of Schukowsky's advice. " I tried to find you night before last to
tell you to avoid meetings of the kind — for a while. Where in
the world were you?"

Pushkin stuffed a package of papers hurriedly into the stove,
then he put his mouth gayly to Schukowsky's ear. It was a great
name he whispered, which he dared not utter aloud.

"Why do you take such risks — you foolish boy? Do you
want a sword run through your body? "

Alexis Sergiewitch did not seem to hear. Happy memory for a
moment shut off the present, with its worry and its disagreeable
demands. " She has the loveliest feet — Vassili Andrejewitch.
Picture to yourself — that great palace on the Morskoi — her
room — at night. The flowers — the dancing light of candles —
over coverlets of satin, and her — with only — Schukowsky,
she— "

The amorous confidence was interrupted harshly. "Yes, Mon
sieur Pushkin is within," the voice of the fat, pale servant-girl
replied.

A feldjager entered. He placed his two feet together crisply,
bowed, and handed out a sealed paper. They both knew what
had come. It was hardly worth the trouble of reading. It ex
plained that Alexis Sergiewitch was transferred to work under
the direction of Count Woronzow in Kishenev, Bessarabia. In
an hour he must start. No books, no papers of any kind, could be
taken with him. He was forbidden to communicate, before he
left, with any one in the city. He was to write no letters. The
message came direct from Count Benkendorf.

The feldjager had left immediately after delivering the letter.
Two servants, however, of the government came in to remain un
til the moment of departure. Both Alexis Sergiewitch and Schu
kowsky knew that this meant exile under the polite guise of
change of work. Luckily the letters and papers were burned be-

64 THE PENITENT

fore the arrival of the message. There was nothing telltale left.

"It was more than decent of you, Vassili Andrejewitch — "
Pushkin began somewhat shamefacedly, as together they set
about packing his clothes.

"Do not think of it," interrupted Schukowsky.

"But it was — after that couplet, especially. Makes me
ashamed of myself — damned if it don't — when I see how much
bigger your nature is than mine. Do not forget that I appreciate
how decent it was — Vassili Andrejewitch — will you?"

They packed on in silence, trying, in a short time, and finding
it impossible, to cram in the young dandy's extensive wardrobe.
Pushkin was downcast and confused. He was like a little child,
and did whatever Schukowsky told him.

The sleigh was at the door. The two men on guard within
arose obediently to escort him. Just as the driver was preparing
to lift his whip, Pushkin leaned again toward Schukowsky.

"Write to mother for me, Vassili Andrejewitch. Tell her I'll
send a letter myself from Kishenev, as soon as I can. And —
Schukowsky — if you should see any one else — explain — "
The great gray eyes looked pleadingly out of the youthful face.
Schukowsky understood readily enough that "any one else"
meant the lady of the boudoir in the palace of two nights ago.

Schukowsky promised indulgently, and smiled to himself, be
cause he knew that his impressionable young friend would forget
about the lady in question before he reached the third post sta
tion.

"Try to live wisely, dear little brother Alexis Sergiewitch!
God be with you — " he called after him, with a sudden outburst of
emotion, as the sleigh disappeared from sight, in the thick yellow-
black mists of spring.

When Alexis Sergiewitch saw the open country spread its cold
desolation before him, he tried to turn about, in order to take one
last, farewell look at the luxurious city which has been unkind to
Russia's men of genius. But no such thought as this occurred to
him. It was already indistinguishable now, a black blur. He
could not see it because the mists had swept in so thick between.
Instead of taking farewell of the city, he was saying farewell, in

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 65

his heart, to happy, care-free years, when he had been the spoiled
child of that capricious, dissipated aristocracy and its beautiful,
idle women; a farewell really to untrammeled, careless youth.

For days the extraordinarily swift feet of Russian horses had
been carrying him steadily southward, on that smooth, wide
chaussee, the finest in all Europe, which leads from Petersburg
to Moscow. This road starts proudly, eloquently, toward the
warmth, the fervor of the south. Straight away it leads, a line
vigorous and white under the light; an imperious road that
rushes onward with a sort of zest, as if it might lead to conquest.

Alexis Sergiewitch did not arouse himself sufficiently from the
sad moroseness that enveloped him, to look about, or to take note
of his surroundings. It was sadly disturbing, this exile, because it
was so sudden, so unexpected. And he had been having such a
good time. It was unpleasant to be snatched away in a moment
from his friends, his pleasures, with this quick, harsh uprooting
of life.

The order had been given to go with speed. They moved on
ward, therefore, with rapidity while the dull, wet landscape
slipped past on either side. Too few hours were given for sleep at
the different post stations, so Alexis Sergiewitch slept on a part of
the day. He slept sitting upright, his youthful body swaying
supply with the motion of the vehicle. In these days of sleep and
a sort of dazed subconsciousness, he merely remembered dully
dawn after dawn, gleaming yellowly across many leagues of un
known land. But the fresh air, the absence of excitement, drink,
dissipation, the prolonged rest, m short, were having their effect,
and reburnishing with vitality his body, elastic with youth.

"It is lucky we made the change, Fedor. Look ahead!" ex
claimed the driver one day, pointing with his blunt whip-end for
the companion who was really sent to guard him. The words
rang refreshingly in young Pushkin's ears.

"What change? " questioned Alexis Sergiewitch, suddenly be
coming aware of his surroundiftgs.

"Can't you see, yourself? The snow is gone!" was the surly
and none too polite reply. To be sure, the sledge had given place
to a kibitka, and the kibitka had been exchanged for a troika.

66 THE PENITENT

They were on wheels now, and the three horses made their speed
even greater. The face of his guard was pale, cruel, and dull.
Evidently he was a Livonian. Pushkin disliked him instinctively.
His eyes were hard and light. The lashes that shaded them were
perfectly white. He was unpleasant to look at. He avoided him.

No one understood better than Count Benkendorf how to
select a jailer, for that was what he really was, a reliable jailer
who could not be bribed, and who could act with swiftness, with
decision, should the occasion require. There would be no use in
thinking of getting away from this man. There was nothing to
do but submit.

But the snow was gone! That was something to be glad of . He
drew a deep breath of relief. He felt happier. It was as if a gen
tler world had come with its vanishing. No longer did he feel that
bitter wind upon his face, that bends the black pine boughs in
the North, and that sings with the shrillness of sorrow. The
melancholy of the North was giving way.

He looked about. He saw wet, newly green, smiling fields,
which the vanishing snow had left burnished and bright; patches
of bushes, still unleaved, of a dull, rust-red; the burnt-orange of
bare soil, and far away the ripple of an horizon swept with the
wine-hued purple of distance.

In the center of chosen places, where the sweet green was
freshest, were the roof lines of little villages. He said to him
self, thinking of proud Petersburg at the moment, that to hum
ble places spring comes first, and with greatest splendor. He
looked at them with youthful, receptive eyes. These little vil
lages, he observed, were almost all just alike: two long rows of
wooden houses, a street between, with the gable ends of the
houses turned toward the road. Pictures like these, strung
upon the long brown road he was traveling, were passing con
tinually before his eyes.

This awakening world of nature, which he had not taken the
time to observe before, because he was usually accompanied by
a crowd of noisy, talkative friends, began to stimulate him. He
set about observing the scenes before him, with sympathy and
interest.

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 67

They were just beginning to enter the broad, fertile rye-fields
of Muscovy. What a distance they had driven! The season was
advanced down here. The spring was early. The bustle of the
warm, merry outdoor days was at hand. The fields were ani
mated. They were pleasant to look upon. The broad spaces were
dotted as far as he could see with workers. Blond peasant girls
were busy on the land. As the driver paused to repair a slight in
jury to the axle of the right front wheel, one who had a long braid
of flaxen hair, and who happened to be working near the road,
could be heard singing lustily while she worked.

Come . . . beautiful spring!

with fruitfulness —
Over the forest. . . .

Under the white moon!

Alexis Sergiewitch listened with enjoyment. He liked to look at
her, too. She was blond and golden like the spring. And she was
young — like himself. "How rich, how musical is our Russian
tongue! " he thought. He was surprised he had not thought of it
before. It is really nobler than French, he affirmed proudly, in
fluenced upon the moment by anything that pleased him, sway
ing easily to the sensitive adaptability of his nature.

And there ahead ! Why, Moscow was there ! Was it possible?
And in so brief a time! How rapidly they had driven! How it en
ticed the eyes! Bright hues in squares, circles, triangles, and
above it crosses, the bright tremble of gold prayers. It was a huge
piece of gay, sparkling embroidery flung across the monotonous,
level rye-fields. He could hardly believe his eyes. He could
hardly believe that they had come so far. They had covered the
ground in those days of sleep of his as if by magic. He saw dimly,
but recognized, because he knew them so well, the red- white mist
that marked the Donskoi Convent — the ancient battlements of
the Devitschei — and the wide, fertile plain beyond, where
twinkled the winding Moskva. The outline was typically Rus
sian. Alexis Sergiewitch remembered that one of the Italian

68 THE PENITENT

architects who had helped build the city had been named Fiora-
vente (flower in the wind). And that was just what it looked like
from the distance from which he was now viewing it, a monstrous
bouquet of huge-petaled flowers suddenly made stationary in
space, and changeless. It belonged to the old gay night of Slavic
fable and monstrous faith.

The Moscow which Alexis Sergiewitch now saw before him, on
his road to exile, was the new Moscow, which Russian enterprise
and patriotism had rebuilt after the dramatic conflagration
which marked Napoleon's approach and the beginning of his
downfall. It was therefore a proud monument to revolt against
aggression and autocracy.

It was in truth a marvelous city, in outline, for the eye. It
thrilled him. He loved to look at it. They were so near now he
could distinguish easily the gold crosses on the great churches.
He knew that beneath these crosses there were shining half-
moons, which boasted to every beholder that here Islam had met
defeat. The city was a proud testimonial to the faith of his race,
and an eloquent one.

Now they entered. Bright buildings swept swiftly past him.
Above his head he saw a wild, double-headed eagle, which
seemed to be looking suspiciously just now toward both the east
and the west. They passed the Kremlin, that stupendous monu
ment to Slavic genius, which the peasants call "the white stone-
built, the gold-domed"

Moscow was home, in a way, to Alexis Sergiewitch. It was
good to be here again. It renewed former pleasant sensations.
The current of his thoughts changed. He felt that he would like
to find out if his family were still in the city, where they had,
passed the winter as usual in social pleasures, or if, the spring be
ing so early, they had gone to one of their country estates, per
haps Mikhailowsky. But there was no way to find out. Not for
anything would he ask a favor of this pale-eyed Livonian jailer
who had been set to watch him, and whom he had disliked at
sight. Not for the world would his pride risk refusal from an
inferior like him.

As they dashed noisily onward, through street after street, to

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 69

the hostelry assigned them, and the low sun sent its late rays to
light the towers, the walls, of strangely formed buildings, fre
quently painted a wild and savage red, he felt proud of his an
cient city. It occurred to him speedily that it takes something
besides money to build a city of charm like this. The petulance
and pride of kings is necessary, the caprice of autocrats, some
thing, in short, altogether removed from the reasoned reliability
of democracy, or of republican institutions. They, the latter,
make serviceable buildings; autocrats make lovely ones. There
are certain grandeurs that can belong only to a monarchy, he de
cided. And he smiled faintly, so speedily did change influence
him, as he remembered those foolish young enthusiasts for re
publicanism whom he had left behind in Petersburg.

Shut up alone that night in his room in the hostelry, without
the changing interest of the journey to enliven him, he began to
be homesick and sad. He chafed under restraint.

He would like to see the old town home in Moscow, where they
had lived in a sort of faded, pretentious splendor; rare furnishings
from abroad in one room, and in the next, rough, rush-bottomed
chairs made by their own peasants, and where they used to enter
tain in such a princely manner.

Was his mother in Moscow to-night, he wondered? She had
not loved him greatly, perhaps, although they had been merry
enough together, but still to-night he longed to see her. Then he
had a quick vision of her as he saw her last, having her fortune
told, which was one of the things of which she never tired. She
was standing under two tall poplars by the edge of the flower gar
den, on the south side of the house where the ragged pinks grew,
a slender, gray-eyed mulatto, whose face showed plainly her ne
gro blood. Her head with the thick, dry, curling, unruly hair,
which was of a color no one could name, and which must be des
ignated merely blond-ashen, was bent in rapt attention, toward
the short, black, gypsy girl who knelt in front of her and held her
palm. She wore a pale-blue dress, trimmed with long, slender
points of inset white lace. Her eyes were happy and attentive.
They were large and round and gray, like his own, where the
white showed unnaturally, and within them there was an expres-

7o THE PENITENT

sion that was un-Russian. Her face was the yellow, gray-white of
the mulatto. And she was so astonishingly thin. Her shoulders
were high, sharp, like old Egyptian statues of black basalt. He
could see just how the line of them lifted the soft, blue silk of her
gown. How happy she had been that day, and absorbed in the
fortune-telling! The picture persisted strangely. She cared only
for pleasure, idleness, and she had no sense of responsibility nor
duty. His sister Olga — He longed to see her the most. He loved
her. They were sympathetic and fond of each other. His brother
Leo was probably drunk to-night as usual. His father was drink
ing wine and reading Moliere, or gossiping, if he could find any
one about the house who was not already worn out with his
tongue, and who would listen. His uncle Vassili, his father's
brother, was very likely correcting bad verses, in a ragged writ
ing-pad, placed on top of his knee.

Arina Rodionovna — his nurse — A hi there was his real
mother! He felt a pulse of real contrition now. But what was the
use! He was a prisoner. It did not make any difference what he
wished to do. He could not see them to-night. And he could not
even make a guess when the time would come that he could.
Who could estimate the length of his exile?

When they rattled away from Moscow the next morning, just
as the sun was coming up, they turned sharply toward the south
west, toward a new world, which he, who had had no opportunity
to travel, had not entered. He looked forward to it with enthu
siasm, with interest. He was developing a little of the traveler's
zest for novelty.

For days and days what he saw most vividly now and kept the
pleasantest memory of was the rich, kaleidoscopic passing of the
old centers of Slavic civilization, the early strongholds of his race,
his faith; picturesque cities, most of them, he observed; all more
or less alike, showing where the Orient had taken its last poign
ant farewell of the Occident. Rapidly Alexis Sergiewitch drove
through them one after the other. Many of them had been
walled cities in an earlier, more warlike day. In the distance, as
he approached them, they showed bunched cupolas, gay domes,
like beds of budded tulips fantastically colored and capricious of

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 71

line. Frequently they rose out of the plain upon a group of little
fat, round hills, beside the shore of dull, sluggish rivers that re
flected them grudgingly, all keeping something of the solemn at
mosphere of mediaeval days, of protest against influences new or
un-Russian. They were usually imposing when seen from a dis
tance, and he liked to look at them. They made him vaguely
happy. Some of them fascinated him. He wished he could have
the liberty to explore them. And the sunsets down here in the
South, across lonely levels, when they had left for a day the ;
cities behind! They were something grand and not easily to be J
forgotten. They swept his soul with joy, and a keen, almost fever
ish desire for things new and unattainable. More and more daily
here the level distances were becoming disconcerting, the horizon
more and more variable, and more readily effaced. He gained
the impression of rich, peopled spaces, which he knew nothing
about, and over which he longed to travel.

The cold, deathlike, unpleasant smell of wetness left by melt
ing snow was gone. The ground, the trees, were clothed again in
vivid garments of green, and his boyish heart throbbed respon-
sively with pleasure. The errant air was warm.

Broad spaces in front of him became busy with a life he had not
seen before, and which interested him. Those marvelous migra
tory merchants of the South, the tschoumaks, heading their own
caravans, stretched out in long, black, wavering lines. Tents
sprang up anywhere as if by magic. Hungry herds, freed from
the prison of winter, moved lightly and happily in the sunny
spaces. Cranes circled above his head their long deferred but
annual flight. The forests were no longer black and frowning.
Farm gardens showed splashes of variegated, smiling green.
Pale, tangled willows, still vibrant from the storms of night, were
swinging at dawn their wild green hair beside the brooks he
was crossing. In short, spring had arisen, resplendent, over the
steppe.

The space they had covered now was great, at the speed they
had been making. Alexis Sergiewitch had been traveling what
seemed to him a long time. But it was no wonder because even
from Tchernigow to Kiev, here in the South, was five stations.

7a THE PENITENT

He first saw the sacred ancient city far ahead, when the road
took a sharp turn, perched upon its mile-long, rocky hill. It re
sembled a painted, penitential picture out of some missal of the
past. It looked like the chromos with their pensive reds and yel
lows that hang sometimes upon peasant walls. The melancholy
of the North was fast giving way to a different spirit, the more
expansive spirit of the South. He felt this first markedly in Kiev,
which is looked upon as a holy city, and which was the scenic
background of his first important book, "Ruslan and Liud-
milla." The sight of this venerable city charmed him. It was so
different from Petersburg, which is set out in straight lines, like a
stiff, military parade, where in the out-of-doors he had always
felt something a little morose. He liked its crooked streets. Even
the Dnieper seemed to feel the importance of the ancient place
it passed, and became less noisy, less turbulent.

The rebellious feeling of being snatched away from his friends,
his poetry-making, his love-making, his pleasures, in short, had
disappeared with the snow. It had melted in the warm sun of the
South. He had forgotten, in fact, all about them; even his new
beauty of the dangerous night rendezvous; faithful Schukowsky;
his young companions who were plotting and dreaming, fool
ishly, as he thought, of freedom; his neglected duties in the For
eign Office, everything, in short, in his facile habit of turning to
whatever is new. He was glad he was here. He looked only
ahead, and with delight.

Before him now the broad, inspiring steppe shone, where the
wind is wild and free and tumbles with the grasses, where the sky
grows bluer and the horizon broader. It was as if he had been
swept suddenly along head first into grandeur, into space. He
began to understand sympathetically the popular saying: Free
as a Cossack.

Below mediaeval Kiev of the religious past and archaic silhou
ette, the blessed land of freedom for the oppressed among men
begins. The country from here south to the Black Sea was to old
Russia what in an earlier day still New England, Massachusetts,
had been to the Pilgrim Fathers, and other Europeans fleeing
from religious and political persecution. He thought of all this

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 73

with zest. Before him lay a land of freedom, of mad dreams, of
wild and untamed energy. And who was more fitted by nature to
appreciate such things than Alexis Sergiewitch? It was as if it
were a replica, indeed, of the spirit of his own soul. Almost all
the cities and villages from here to the coast of the Black Sea —
Mohilev, which he had just entered, Kishenev, and far away to
the south on the shore, Rostov, Mariopol — had been founded
by nameless fugitives. Here men had dared to think their own
thoughts. Here men had dared to be free.

Even the rich and respected in these Southern cities, the mer
chants, the men of affairs, Alexis Sergiewitch knew, had been
serfs two generations before. They had a different mental out
look, therefore, than men of noble blood; broader, more humanly
elastic. These cities had been built and peopled by men who
were strong and daring. There was something about them, too, of
that spirit that makes the heyday of youth.

As he rolled through strange city after strange city, he sniffed
this atmosphere sensitively, responsively, just as a spread
sail sniffs the fresh, impelling sea wind. The land between the
Dnieper and the Dniester is the land of freedom. He felt at once
its stimulation of lawlessness, of rebellion. This had always been
the blessed place of escape for the oppressed, and he thought
merrily, with his accustomed nimbleness and levity of mind:
"What are laws, anyway? Are they not just a corset, which no
two nations wear tight in the same place?" He had something
that resembled a woman's lack of respect for them. To his mind
law was just a way to make trouble legitimately. This was a
good country, indeed, in which to be. He was happy to be here.
Here Heaven was high, and the Tsar was far off, and he was glad
of it.

He was just passing the first artel and he was turning to look
back, at this movable, out-of-door club-village, where fugitive
serfs, escaped criminals sometimes, men hi hiding for various
causes, without acknowledged name or passport, lived through
out the warm season, and hired out as workmen on the great
farms, the meierhdfe, whose comfortable, even luxurious, low
dwelling-houses he was passing so frequently now. These houses

74 THE PENITENT

looked inviting, happy. He longed to enter. Through their wide,
pleasant, sunny windows the great, free, steppe winds blew.
Merry, noisy children were tumbling about in the yards in front
of them. The picture was animated and attractive.

Broad, felt-hatted Moldavians, slow-moving and deliberate as
Quakers, jogged by from time to time on fat horses. Or he saw
them at a distance driving flocks of broad-backed, fat-tailed
sheep. They wore long white woolen caftans. They were ef
fective figures in the fields. Beside the road, grain and tobacco
plantations outspread their fertile patchwork squares of dif
fering hues.

There were little, noisy shops occasionally which were kept by
talkative, bargaining Jews and Armenians in their long black
caftans, and who are the world's greatest traders.

A dirty gypsy camp, a tabor, swung into view. From it Alexis
Sergiewitch could hear the high, shrill notes of a violin, and
sounds of gayety. All was animation down here, movement.
And then came his first glimpse of Kishenev, the journey's end,
the capital of Bessarabia, the province which Alexander had an
nexed to Russia. He looked at it eagerly, anticipatingly.

Kishenev at this date was a city of considerable extent, and
some importance. Just as Petersburg was built upon islands and
suggested Venice, Kishenev was built upon hills and suggested
the situation of Rome. The hills lifted it to easy visibility for the
approaching traveler. It was pleasant enough to look upon. It
had long streets, and most of the modest dwellings stood in their
own gardens, which Alexis Sergiewitch saw now, gay with the
flowers of spring, grass, and with trees.

The Old Town — because there were two side by side —
looked like an old woodcut. The buildings were shabby. They
suggested lonely places far to the east. There were some old build
ings, to be sure, in the new, more recently built sections, but not
so many. The new section looked just like any town of Europe
with nothing particularly distinctive to mark it. Some of the
buildings were expensive and up to date. They were frequently
painted in bright colors while the roofs were green. He saw little
parks, where there were white columns, and an abundance of

THE JOURNEY SOUTH 75

flowers, and decorative shrubs. It was a pleasant picture from the
rich, vineyard-covered hills they were rattling up and down so
noisily. His boyish heart was expanding with the joy of novelty,
of anticipation, and at the knowledge that if he must still have a
jailer, it would no longer be this pale, stubborn-faced Livonian
whose menacing silence nothing could break. He liked the looks
of the Old Town as it swung nearer. It promised interesting
places to explore. As they rattled through the streets he was sur
prised at the varied population; Italians, Greeks, Turks, Bulga
rians, French, a generous sprinkling of gypsies, Armenians, and
Jews.

Then the merry lampoons which he had improvised about
Count Woronzow, with whom he would soon be face to face, oc
curred to him to depress him. Did he know about it, he wondered?
And if he did, what did he think? But he remembered on fuller
consideration that there was nothing to fear on his part from
that, because Woronzow was a good deal like Schukowsky in that
he was noble and forgiving. So he resigned himself with the flexi
bility of youth and looked out upon the green-squared city
which now did not seem to be so large as he had thought when he
first viewed it from a distance. It had the appearance of greater
extent because most every little house had each its own garden
and shading trees of acacia or poplar.

He wondered briskly what it would be like, this new life which
he was about to begin in this far city of the South, toward which
he had been journeying so long. What would it hold for him?
Did Fate have something important up her sleeve here? And
when would he be permitted to go back?

CHAPTER IV
ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER

ALEXANDER had been alone in his cabinet since daylight, reading
state documents. Indeed, to his regret, nowadays, he seldom had
a chance to read anything else. They filled his waking hours. His
devotion to duty was so unusual that he made, without murmur
ing, the necessary sacrifice. The state had no more devoted
slave nor overburdened serf than he. Indeed the old order of
things of Russian sovereigns was in his case showing a peculiar
reversal. Instead of Alexander taking everything away from the
people, as they of old had sometimes done, the people were more
and more taking away from him, and the most important of the
things taken was happiness. He recalled, too frequently, the wise
words of Napoleon: "You do not know what a mighty thing is
happiness." (Vous ne savez pas quelle puissance est la bonheur.)
It was true he did not know until he was beginning to lose it.

As he sat, reading document after document, there was a run
ning accompaniment of unpleasant thoughts, of dawning con
sciousnesses, perhaps deferred fears, that he was unable to put
away. In spite of his unlimited power, his proud position, his
will was constantly thwarted. He seldom had his way. Conces
sions were wrung from him of which he did not approve, but could
not at the moment find the proper means to resist.

It did not need the uneasy, provocative, evil whispering in his
ear of Metternich to make him see from his lofty lookout position
as ruler that the old Europe of the past, of kings and unquestioned
power, of the supremacy of the leisure class, was beginning to
topple, like a brittle, tall, porcelain pagoda, and that the day of a
different kind of living was dawning.

His religion, however, forced him to believe that whatever God
wills must be good. He did not presume to question it. Yet it
was coming somewhat speedily, he thought, the destined change.
He wondered nervously what it would do to the poor, unlettered,

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 77

helpless people of his too extensive land, and how much he, per
sonally, might be held accountable, because of the bold proclam
ations of freedom of his generous but perhaps foolish boyhood.
He had been at fault himself. He could see it now. Without
knowing it he had been helping on the dissolution.

Perhaps now it would be better to put on the brakes, so to
speak, and thus hinder, as best he was able, the too swift descent
of the hill. The liberal thoughts of his youth were the property of
the nation. He was no longer the intellectual leader which he had
started out to be. It was the people now who were the leaders.
A peculiar reversal, this, which he had not seen coming. And
now it was here.

If liberty was a toy which his people, his children, were not
capable of using just now, and with which they might wound
themselves, it was his paternal duty to withhold, for a time, the
toy. When they were ready for it, it would be time enough to
give it to them. This meant the increasing of the number of spies.
This meant punishments against whose rigor his gentle heart re
belled. This meant delegating a certain amount of power, which
he could not always personally supervise, both to Count Benken-
dorf and Arakcheiev. This meant drawing tighter and tighter
the reins of government, which had its dangers. -*

And they, the governed, could not know that what he was
doing was merely a temporary expedient, based upon the desire to
give them their fill of liberty in a safer future, which he hoped was
near, and one less menaced by a world in revolt.

But how could he tell them so they would wait and be patient,
they who knew nothing of political conditions at home, nor
world conditions abroad, they who could not understand?

These were stern curative measures, like the amputation of a
limb to prevent the spread of a pernicious ill. Forbidding Rus
sians to travel abroad, import books, limiting carefully those
permitted to be read, were, in their opinion, protective, curative
measures, against the inroads of fresh mental maladies from
neighboring countries. Along all these disagreeable roads, except
that of the death penalty, Alexander had been pushed farther
and farther, and always against his will, in the weak hope that a

y8 THE PENITENT

change of conditions might lessen the need of proceeding. But
with the concessions he had made there had been within him this
basic thought: // is only temporary. I will withdraw at the first op
portunity. Always his subtlety, his habit of concealment, made
them feel the shadowy, threatening outlines of unknown terri
tory, which they could neither measure accurately nor dominate.
This caused a double vacillation: first, in him as ruler; second, in
them, as his advisers and helpers. This vacillation reacted upon
the people. It was felt dumbly by them.

There was dissatisfaction in the army, which had found life
stale and in need of enlivening, back home again after the exciting
entertainment of the wars. The soldiers could not settle down to
the narrow humdrum which held no promise. Patriotism had
changed to ennui. It missed the stimulus of war.

There had been an uprising in Great Novgorod. The Caucasus
was restless. Something was brewing there. Tim's had been in
vaded not so long ago. Turkey was warring on Greece. Poland
could never long be relied upon.

He would have felt better if outside of Russia he could have
looked out upon a calm and reassuring Europe. But this was not
to be. In France, Louis XVIII, the old Bourbon, was tottering,
rapidly now, to a not greatly regretted rest, and the political
horizon was threatening.

Spain had won a constitution, from another Bourbon grown
weak and incapable, with a dangerous shaking-up of government
foundations and general discomfort. The weak hands of John
the Fourth of Portugal had been forced to give up their hold upon
that glorious, glowing, unexploited continent, South America,
from which fabulous place ships returned with their scuppers
awash with emeralds, with gold. Metternich, Alexander's evil
genius, had just declared that Italy was no longer a political
entity. In the Low Countries, his sister, Anna Pawlowa, might
any day lose her throne. Sicily and Naples were in the direst
straits. The German student bodies were clamoring for a consti
tution from a monarch who had forsworn his word. Austria, to
be sure, under the watchful genius of Metternich, presented
tentative peace. And England, with Metternich's hated arch-

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 79

fiend Canning its ruling providence, now at head of the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, protected its national existence basely as
usual; by sheltering the revolutionary mischief-makers of other
nations in return for promises of peace and immunity. Surely a
stormy political sea to contemplate, whence neither strengthen
ing nor comfort could come to him.

But the political concessions which had been wrested from him
one by one, unpleasant and self-depreciatory as they were, were
not causing him the keen sense of present discomfort, of a certain
domestic concession, it may be called, of the week before.

Alexander's children by the Empress Elizabeth were dead, in
their infancy. He had only one child living, a daughter, Sophie,
now eighteen, by his mistress of many years, Marie Antonova
Narischkin, whose position in Petersburg society was hardly
second to that of the Empress. His deep, trusting love for this
woman, and for his daughter, was the one safe refuge of happi
ness in the confusion and slavery of his life. Their palace shel
tered him as frequently as the Imperial Residence.

The husband of Marie Antonova, Dmitri Lvovitch Narischkin,
bore from the crown the nominal title of grand ecuyer, but he was
almost never in Petersburg. His duties were delegated to another.
In the merry but irreverent conversation of the envious onlookers
upon the doings of a court, he was dubbed "King of the Corri
dors," while Marie Antonova herself was nicknamed the Rus
sian La Valliere, with this difference (as a contemporary re
marked) that she would do anything rather than become a nun.

Dmitri Lvovitch was an old man now, and not a bad one. He
was a member of a distinguished family, who in the past had re
fused to be ennobled, which is the reason the name is not found
in le livre de velours. His health was not too good just at present.
He had been slightly paralyzed in fact, and one side of his face
twitched violently, like the face of Peter the Great. The luxuri
ous Petersburg palace over which Madam Narischkin presided
was kept up, partly, with no ill-will by him, but its air of royal
luxury, its wasteful surplus of liveried attendants, came from the
too easily opened purse of Alexander. The "second family" of
Alexander had become a matter of such long standing in Peters-

8o THE PENITENT

burg that it had ceased to be a subject for discussion among Rus
sians. It was not the only " second family" of high rank in the
city, where the title was not unfamiliar. The cosmopolitan fame
of the city of the North had, in a way, rested upon its licentious
ness, which no great pains was taken to conceal. And in Alex
ander's case it was considered merely as one of the necessary
perquisites of power.

The undignified position of Dmitri Lvovitch Narischkin did
not reflect especial discredit upon him. It did not lessen the
personal respect in which he was held by his friends. They
understood that it was a misfortune neither of his making nor
continuing.

Marie Antonova herself was a Polish woman of noble but not of
princely rank. She possessed in a high degree the fickle change-
ableness that characterizes her emotional race. She had black
eyes, radiant, the kind one cannot see within; long, silky, luxuri
ant black curls that might have blazed upon the head of a Sul
tana, and that grew with a gracious caress upon her brow; a pink-
and- white complexion; a mouth which close scrutiny showed to
be somewhat shapeless, devoid of character; and a rather small,
round, dimpled, soft, voluptuous body. She was forty now, but
by some marvel she did not look a day over twenty. She wore,
frequently, Grecian gowns of heavy white silk crepe, which
clung gracefully to her beautiful body. Her voice was low, sweet ;
her manner gentle, seductive, and caressing. There was some
thing about her physically that helped to lull the little cares of
Alexander to sleep, and to make him vaguely happy. For him
her presence held a potential charm.

The domestic concession which had been wrung from him and
which was now gnawing him with discontent, with useless re
gret, referred to the contemplated marriage between his beloved
daughter Sophie Narischkin and Count Schuvalow. When Count
Schuvalow presented himself unexpectedly be it said, and rather
too suddenly, as a suitor, Marie Antonova insisted upon accept
ing huii with the fervor, the lack of reason that characterized her
acts. It was impossible to discuss the matter with her calmly. It
was impossible to consider it from different angles. When she

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 81

wanted a thing, reason had nothing to do with it. She not only
insisted upon acceptance, but it must be at once.

There was nothing in particular to urge against Count Schuva-
low, although he himself would never have selected him. He was
sufficiently rich, in the late twenties, possessed of considerable
distinction, and the usual requisites of his class. But like most
of the young men of his set he was a good deal of a viveur. In
deed, the handsome, blond men of the Schuvalow family had for
generations been imperial lovers of the women of the Romanoffs.
It had become with them a sort of profession, handed down from
generation to generation. Alexander would have preferred to
avoid a repetition of this scandal in the case of his daughter.
The chief cause of his hesitation, and the cause of his regret now,
was because he did not think that Count Schuvalow had any
affection for his daughter. How could he have? They had con
versed, had seen each other seldom. They were barely ac
quainted. In that case the marriage was merely an object to an
ambitious end with him, hi which his daughter was being made
use of. His own desire was that she should have not only a pro
tector, but a man who loved her.

And the attitude of his daughter in the affair had puzzled him
more than anything else. She did not take sides in the dispute.
It was as if it did not concern her. If she showed a temporary in
terest, it was to take the side that pleased him, as if, with her,
her devotion to her father were the only question.

Count Schuvalow was kind-hearted. He need have no fear on
that score. And yet he would not have selected him.

If his daughter were married, in a home of her own, protected
by the great fortune which he intended to settle upon her, her
present anomalous social position, in the house of a man who was
not her father, but who still had legal authority over her accord
ing to the law of Russia, would be at an end. And in case he,
Alexander, should die suddenly, it would be better. This was a
point in its favor.

But Sophie Narischkin was not well. It was more than probable
that she had consumption. This was a fact he did not permit him
self to think of except under pressure. It was the horror that

82 THE PENITENT

stalked in the background of his mind. If this were true, what he
had permitted was both hasty and brutal. She was frail. She
was delicate. He could not look upon it any other way than as an
unkindness to drag her away from her chiklhood's home, from the
watchful care of himself. And what was the excuse for doing it?
A man who did not love her and whom she barely knew, not to
mention feeling affection for; a weak yielding, therefore, to one
of the tantrums of Marie Antonova. Might he not be condemn
ing her to a life of loneliness, of illness? She was young yet —
too young. There was no hurry. She was just a schoolgirl. He
could not think of her as grown. Why had he not merely deferred
the matter to some undated future, when, if it possessed sparks
of genuineness, it would have resurrected itself? Had he not
weakly been forced into this against his will, against his judg
ment, by the tears of Marie Antonova, who might any day, like
the unaccountable child she was, insist upon having the moon?
He had yielded in the face of all his reasoning powers which
were against it. He had done wrong, and he knew it.

These arguments and discussions had taken place some months
before. But the party celebrating the engagement had been only
the week before. Since that day he had not seen his daughter,
although an equerry had carried daily a message to her.

The papers of Petersburg had been loud in their praise of the
expensive, the lavish trousseau, which had been made in France,
and the jewels and noble gifts presented by himself. They were
on display now, he knew, in one of the upper rooms in the
Narischkin Palace.

He could not recall how she had looked that night without a
certain gripping of the heart. She was thin and frail to unreality.
He did not know she was so thin until he saw her in white, un-
draped satin, which increased her height, her thinness. The
sight shocked him. Her cheeks were too red, a desperate, perni
cious red that was not of health. The great mass of her blond
hair, piled high on the top of her childish head, seemed to crackle
with a dry and angry light, as if infused with some unnatural
heat. In the long ropes of yellow pearls which he twined about
her neck for a gift, she did not take an interest. She did not look

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 83

at them. Her only word of thanks was to whisper in his ear:
"Remember — you have promised to let me name the wedding
day!"

His assent had given her visible pleasure. It was the only thing
she seemed to care about. She showed neither interest nor dis
like for her intended bridegroom. She was calm and apparently
happy. This seemed to Marie Antonova to be as it should be.
She was glad of it.

But to Alexander, whose senses were finer and more discrimi
nating, there was something wrong which he could not get at. It
baffled him. He knew, sensitively, that it was only an appear
ance of right. He recalled, too, how the dark, expressive eyes of
young Baratinsky had followed her that night, with mingled
longing, regret, adoration. He had fresh consciousness of being
hurried into error.

She danced but once, he remembered, that night, and with
Count Schuvalow, because dancing made her cough. He could
never forget his unbidden, mental impressions as he watched her;
a figure, eloquent, pathetic, arresting, and so perishingly lovely.
Suddenly there had swept over him a sort of infinite regret that
Marie Antonova could not feel as he did, could not appreciate
her. In the light of his great love for his daughter he saw for an
instant the limitations of the mother. When she sat down to rest
after that one dance, young Baratinsky came and looked at her
with eyes that haunted him still. And there was about her that
night such a peculiar, pitiful combination of the child and the
woman. It was as if she were both at once, and yet never wholly
either. Baratinsky had felt this at the moment just as he had.
Baratinsky was sad, too. He knew he loved her.

He could endure the torture of thought, of regret, no longer.
He put aside the rest of his unread papers, carefully marking the
exact place where he had left off. He rang. He ordered his car
riage. He made up his mind to go to see her at once.

To his inquiry upon entering, a servant told him that Made
moiselle Narischkin was in her apartments. He made his way
hastily up the yellow marble stairs, and directed his steps to her
door. As he folded her tenderly in his arms to kiss her, he felt

84 THE PENITENT

dimly that she clung to him with a new resistance, a new com
prehension.

The similarity of the two heads so close together now was
striking. In both were the same fine lines, like the handing down
by heredity of an antique ideal. Both were blond, elegant, and
aristocratic. It was indeed as if Sophie Narischkin were the visi
ble image of his own poetic dreams in his vanished boyhood. His
visions stood incarnate before him. It was as if he were looking
upon his regenerated self made young again. From Marie Anto-
nova she seemed to have inherited neither physical nor mental
traits. And a more far-reaching, generous, a finer mind looked
out of her eyes. Strangest and most inexplainable of all, in a cer
tain grand nobility of heart, she might have been the spiritual
child of his own wife. By some unregistered subtlety of the law
of selection she had rejected the blood of her mother.

"Are you happy, Sophie, my darling?" — holding her at
arms' length and looking down into her eyes searchingly.

" Why should I not be? Have I not pleased you? "

"No, darling — not me. This concerns you wholly."

"Well, what difference does it make?"

"What difference — / You can ask? Why — your whole fu
ture—"

She laughingly shook her head and looked up at him with
loving eyes.

"Why does it not? Tell me!"

Again she shook her head and would not explain. They seated
themselves facing each other, on a canape in the pale-green room
whose walls were painted to simulate the first flush of spring upon
the woodlands.

Alexander was still uneasy and conscience-stricken. Her laugh
ing replies had not satisfied him. He was searching in his mind
for some surer way of getting at the facts.

" Now that you have had a week of intimacy with Count Schu-
valow — and have learned to know him better — what do you
think of him? It is not too late yet, you know. Does he please
you? Do you think he will make you happy? Tell me exactly
how you feel. You alone are to be considered."

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 85

"He is pleasant enough. But I hardly see him. He looks in for
a moment — asks for my health — kisses my hand — and then
goes to see mother." She said this happily, indifferently, inter
ested evidently only in the presence of the one beside her. Then
to allay further worry, she added: "He is polite, courteous, al
ways. Do not worry, dear love! Everything is as it should be.
Yesterday he sent me this — this miniature of himself" — pick
ing up a tiny picture from the table at the head of the canape.

Alexander looked for a moment at the fresh face of youth it
framed. He felt the painter had made the blue of the eyes too
seductive, and the mouth too lasciviously red. He handed it
back without comment. It displeased him.

" What does your mother say, dear, the more she sees of him? "

She hesitated slightly before replying, as if to choose her words
with care.

"I almost never see her."

"How can that be? Is she not here as usual?"

A slightly longer hesitation followed this. She evidently was
confused. She did not know what to say.

"Since the engagement was announced — she — has told me
never to come to her room without first sending a valet de pied to
tell her I am coming." Her voice sounded strange in her ears.
She wished now she had kept on saying she did not know.

"What can that be for?" the sweet, deep voice questioned
calmly.

"I do not know."

" That is a strange thing to do. It seems to me wholly without
cause."

"That is what I felt, too. So I thought I would ask you —
to see if you agreed with me."

Her voice was just as he remembered it as a little girl when he
answered some childish query. Alexander looked thoughtful.

His daughter continued hurriedly as if she wished to get the
subject off her mind:

"One day I forgot. I went into her room without being an
nounced. She was very angry — very. She acted just as she did
when we were discussing the engagement. That " — looking up

86 THE PENITENT

at him sympathetically — " is why I am glad that the engage
ment is settled — is over with — the scenes made you unhappy.
I could not bear to have them last — any longer"

"That is just what worries me so, darling. You assented for
me. I felt it all the time. That is what makes me feel I have done
wrong."

"But did you not say that I can name the wedding day?" she
questioned, so merrily, with such a change of manner, and such a
brave light in her eyes, that he was reassured. "Ah — you will
see how that makes it right!"

Again he was puzzled and his face showed it. She laughed.
The laughter made her cough. She put her handkerchief to her
lips. When she took it away, she concealed deftly from his in
quiring eyes the little drops of blood that spotted it.

"This morning I heard two maids talking when they thought I
was asleep. What do you suppose they said? Perhaps I ought
not to tell you."

"I am sure I cannot guess what they said, dear."

"It seems too foolish to repeat. Perhaps I ought not to — "

"Tell me!"

"I do not even know why I should remember it."

"Well — what did they say, dear?"

"They said — that when Count Schuvalow visits mama, she
always locks the door. Why do you suppose she does that? Then
they laughed and whispered a long time with their heads so close
together I could not catch what else they said."

A white mask slipped swiftly over the face of Alexander. The
sensitive eyes of his daughter saw it in an instant. It pained her.
She regretted her words, although she did not understand why
they had affected him.

Quickly he put away the thought that caused it, and his lips
wore their old flexible grace again. She changed the subject
abruptly, wishing she could make the former words unsaid.

"I'd like to prevail upon mama to go to the country. Do you
not think it is a strange caprice for her to insist upon remaining in
Peter in summer! I think it would be better for me out of doors,
do not you?" .

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 87

" Decidedly — my dear! You shall go, too. I will see to it."

" She will oppose it! She is always so bored when we are down
by the Gulf of Finland. You know how she hates the country —
how cross she is there — "

The little French clock on the table by the miniature marked
the early afternoon. A change was discernible in Sophie Narisch-
kin. Her little hands were restless. The hue of carmine was
creeping up across her cheeks. Fever was lighting its sparkling
candles in her eyes and insinuating an added glitter among the
tresses of her heavy hair.

"Let us take a look at the gift-room together, little one — just
you and I! Then I will look in upon your mother for a moment
— and go."

"Leave the gift-room until another day," she pleaded.

"Are you tired of seeing it?"

"How could I be?"

"Why?"

"I have not seen it at all."

"You have not seen it? Astonishing! Why have you not?

"Is there not time enough, dear one?" she answered evasively,
her young face for an instant wearing a mask that resembled his
own.

"You have not seen the jewels — the gowns from Paris — all
for you?"

She shook her head.

She was walking with him toward the door now. When he put
his arms about her in farewell, he was surprised at the heat of her
body. It was like embracing a flame.

When, a few minutes later, he mentioned to Marie Antonova
that it was imperative they go to the country, and right away,
she did not say anything, but he was conscious of her stubborn
resistance.

"It is imperative, my love, because of Sophie's health. I
should think you could see it yourself. You should consider her
more than you do." He sensed within her then a hardness, at
variance with her gentle, velvety exterior. He felt she was indif
ferent, just then, to everything but the wishes of her personal

88 THE PENITENT

self. Yet her voice was so low, and the little movements of her
voluptuous body so caressing, that the unpleasant impressions
were fleeting.

"One cannot leave at a moment's notice," she replied.

"One can do many things — if duty demands it." He knew
that this reply displeased her.

"I cannot see how I can get away before another month."

"You cannot take a month out of a Russian summer, my dear,
and have any summer left. You must go — as I said, immediately.
Do not force me to issue an imperial ukase" he added lightly.

He was as putty in her hands, she knew, in everything, unless
it concerned the health of his daughter. On that subject argu
ment was useless. She said nothing more, but he could feel the
weight of her increasing displeasure.

"Come," rising when he found she was not inclined to talk,
"accompany me down the hall that I may have the comfort of
your presence a little longer."

She obediently put down the Italian lace which she was tenta
tively draping upon a blush-rose robe of silk, and walked along
beside him, a little sullenly.

"Be sure to order my apartment made ready for to-night," he
remarked carelessly.

"I am going out to-night," was the somewhat nervous reply.
"It will be very late when I return."

"Where, dear?"

"First, to Prince Viazemsky's reception. Later to a little sup
per at the Austrian Embassy — Count Fiquelmont's — "

" Well — that has been before — has it not? Can I not wait as
usual for you?"

"No — not to-night I To-night it would be better to sleep at the
Imperial Palace — "

11 Oh! — I see you are going to punish me," he replied good-
naturedly, "for insisting upon your going to the country —
against your will."

She smiled a trifle enigmatically.

"These requests that I sleep at the Palace are coming rather
frequently of late, are they not?"

ALEXANDER AND HIS DAUGHTER 89

"I do not know why you should be surprised/' she added, with
suspicious haste and a little anger. "Have I not had much to see
to? The engagement of Sophie — the trousseau — new gowns
for myself, for the occasion — and my usual social engagements,
too. What can you expect? " Her voice was a little unsteady now,
out of its customary key.

He noticed it sensitively, and turned to look at her.

"As you wish my love — always" the indulgent voice replied.

She did not say anything in return. He kissed her lightly and
ran down the stairs and out to his waiting carriage.

CHAPTER V
THE DUEL

" WHAT 's your name? "

"Sari."

"Sari what?"

"I just told you, did n't I?"

"I mean your other name of course!"

"Other? There is n't any!"

"Just Sari?" questioned Alexis Sergiewitch indulgently, look
ing down upon the pretty gypsy.

"Isn't that enough?"

"If you say so, it has to be."

It was late at night, some time after the arrival in Kishenev of
Alexis Sergiewitch. They had met between the crowded tables in
the Kabak of Samus (the Wine-Shop of Little Samuel) which is
situated in the Old Town which he had promised himself to ex
plore the day of his arrival, a part of Kishenev which was both
evil-looking and shabby.

"My — how elegant you are!" — patting softly with the flat
palms of her two hands his fashionable white pique coat, and
pleated shirt-front of fine cambric. He wore, too, the superb long
boots of soft leather, common with men of the upper class, which
fitted as if they had been moulded upon his feet.

"You are from Peter, are n't you?"

He nodded amicably, still smiling, as one would at a pretty
child.

"Are you a prince?"

"No; but I'd like to be one to you" — laughing until his long
white teeth gleamed like ivory.

"Well, you can be, if you want to — "

He looked down upon her caressingly, but he did not hasten
to reply. Through open doors and windows came the warm,
sweet scents of summer, the pale night of polar summer, slipping

THE DUEL 91

down toward the sea of the South. The sky outside was gray-
white. One could see at a distance. The Kabak was crowded with
the variegated human conglomeration that borderlands usually
show, where life is rough and noisy. There were Moldavians,
Russians both of the North and the South, Bulgarians, Greeks,
Armenians, Jews, Turks, gypsies, and an occasional fat-bellied,
phlegmatic German colonist, with a sprinkling of Italians. It
looked like a scene from a comic opera. Some were eating mama-
liga with butter, and the highly spiced and peppered dishes of the
locality. Food had never been more plentiful in Russia than now.
The masses were seldom better fed, because foodstuffs were so
easily procured. Beef and mutton, any cut, cost one kopec a
pound. Dried and candied fruits of all kinds were five kopecs a
pound. French and Italian wines were five kopecs the bottle.
A turkey, a fowl, or a duck cost little more. Vegetables were even
cheaper than meat, fowl, or fruit, while milk and cheese seemed al
most to have lost a money value. And when holidays or fete-days
came, the fattest turkey could be bought for a ruble; or else a
small sucking pig.

Those who were not eating were gambling with cards or domi
noes. Others were playing chess; all were drinking, talking,
laughing. Women mingled with the men freely. The great
est license in both action and speech prevailed. Moldavian
youths in white-belted caftans were carrying about drinks on
bright, painted, wooden trays. Young Russian men in bouffant
trousers and tall boots, and who wore beards, helped with the
food when the rush was greatest, while the owners kept the ac
counts by means of a Tartar reckoning-board. The dry click,
click of the little balls, that slipped from side to side, punctuated
the noise.

" What 'syour name?'*

"Alexis, little one, pretty one" — caressingly playing with
the words.

Her face was grave for a moment. "That is unlucky! Can't
you change it?5'

"No, dear. Only women can do that" — laughing again.

She did not understand, and she did not laugh in return.

9a THE PENITENT

" You see I don't ask about your other name/'

" Well, you can if you want to, little one."

" My, how slim you are — and — and young," she added a
little wistfully. " I don't believe you are strong — like our men! "

In an instant his arm circled her. He held her in a vise. She
lifted her face toward him childishly. But some butterfly caprice
of perversity touched him and he did not kiss her, but instead
merely swept her face gayly with his light, perfumed curls as he
released her and set her down.

"I am not younger than you — am I?"

She looked at him sidewise, and he wondered at the pale, green,
ungypsy eyes in this dark face. Some wild, uncatalogued mix
ing of races was there.

"How old are you?"

She shook her head. "How do I know? I am young till I
have wrinkles. Then I 'm old — What difference does the count
make?"

"Not any, little one, to me. If I like you — "

"Well, do you not?"

"I like you all — a little — if you are pretty — "

" Come — with me ! " She seized his hand and drew him eagerly
toward the door, along the narrow space between the tables. He
followed unwillingly. At the door he paused despite her efforts.

Outside the door, on either side, and resting against the wall
of the Kabak, were rows of green-painted scythes, made in the
United States of America. They belonged to the workers eating
within, who lived in the little summer camp-villages near by.

" Where are you taking me? "

She smiled at him without answering.

"Do you wish to steal me?"

"Home, with me — "

"What for?"

"7 like you. Don't you know it?"

"Where do you live?"

"Nowhere — that is, everywhere. Wherever the wagon is!"

" Where is the wagon to-night? "

"Down there! Across the Bug — in the field — beyond Jacob
Eisenstein's meierhof — "

THE DUEL

93

"That's too far, little one. Too far!"

"Come!"

"Not to-night."

"Why? Don't you like me?"

" Oh, yes/ Who could help it? " — noticing that the eyes looked
bluer now that emotion touched them, and that her dark cheeks
were underflushed richly with red. Her nose was short, straight,
and her little teeth sharp, and slightly pointed like an animal's.

"Then what is wrong with to-night?" — leaning toward him
as if in anticipation of a caress.

" Too far — I told you. Too far / "

To her this petted dandy of the great world was like some ex
quisite human toy, which she could not understand nor classify,
but which she longed for. She had never seen anything to com
pare with him, his dash, his elegance, his air of conquest.

Again tantalizingly he evaded the offered caress, and he felt
her dumb longing surge up against him.

He looked back at the gayly variegated picture within the
Kabak. It was a brilliant, changing, human canvas that pleased
his eyes. It was new, strange, interesting, gayly colored, dra
matic. He was flattered, too, by the servile, admiring glances his
fashionably dressed, slender body evoked. The form of him dom
inated the assembly. And that was what he had an inclination
to do always wherever he went, to dominate. In addition, these
first weeks in Kishenev had been spent by him in a wild revel of
recklessness, when he first set out to break the fast, in regard to
both women and wine, imposed upon him by the long journey
south and the Livonian guard whom he knew could not be trifled
with. He was tired to-night. He had dissipated to the limit.

Weekly accounts of his insubordination, his rebelliousness,
had been regularly sent to Petersburg by Count Woronzow. He
refused to appear, on time, with the other young men, in the
Counting-House, in the morning. Here his daily task was laid
out. This not only injured the spirit of discipline, but the respect
ful esteem in which work should be held.

He shrugged his shoulders indifferently when reprimanded,
at the idea that a gentleman, a scholar like himself, should be

94 THE PENITENT

asked to work. Work was for people of a different mental and
social status. He would hold the position, nominally, if they in
sisted and he had to. But let some one else do the work! He
would not do it, and he let them know it.

He had spent most of his nights in the narrow, crooked hill-
street that led to the Old Town, which had fascinated him so. Here
were houses of pleasure, open night long, and kept by women
of all nations. He had found a different, a more interesting
world of people than in Petersburg, and he was exploring it thor
oughly. It had the color, all the license, and some of the glamour
of the Orient.

Within the Kabak now he could hear the dull click, click of the
Tartar reckoning-board alluring his sleep-heavy eyes like a lul
laby. At the right end of the long bar where drinks were poured,
in a corner a little dim and sheltered, he caught sight of an empty
table which looked attractive. " Let's go inside, little one!
There is a table, empty. See it? We will drink and watch the
crowd awhile together." She followed him, but reluctantly, be
cause she wanted him alone to herself. He felt a sudden longing
to look upon the scene through lazy, sleep-dulled eyes; his arm,
perhaps, about the wiry little body of Sari; and to listen, without
the trouble of replying, to her prattle. "Which will you have,
Sari? " he asked in a lazy, indifferent voice, " the red wine of Eri-
van, or the white wine of Kisliar?"

She was awed a little by this grand seigneur manner to which
she was unused and did not speak. She reckoned, however, quickly
that the price of this wine, if she could only have it, would buy her
a new yellow-and-white silk head-kerchief. Whether she spoke
or not evidently did not matter. He told the boy to bring plenty
of both. He took a long, slender cigarette and fitted it into a
receptacle of chased gold, first offering one to her. Then he
watched the thin blue smoke-circles twine and twine about the
small dark head of Sari, which was gracefully poised and round,
watched it with a certain conscious voluptuousness, like one who
loves pictures better than life.

" You are not — real Russian, are you? " — looking at him
curiously, and burning with eagerness to know more about him.

THE DUEL 95

•

"What am I, if I am not?"

" I don't know. That's why I asked. Some Russians have gold
hair. Yours is just as light, but it is n't gold at all" — observing
critically the pale curls, so thick, so deep. It was as if their gold
had been muted by the black, forward-stretching shadows of
some long ago, some ancient, imperishable dusk, that still per
sisted in enveloping him. She felt this as she sipped her wine and
looked up timidly, from time to time, at the exquisite, arresting
pallor of the youthful face beside her, which passion was etching
so rapidly. He was drinking red wine thirstily, eagerly, and
seemed to have forgotten her. She had not met anything so pecul
iar as this disdain. She did not know what it meant.

" Why did you speak to me? " He did not hear. "Don't you
want to have a good time with me? "

"Talk if you feel like it.'*

"Are n't you going to say anything to me?"

"Perhaps. It may be I wanted to know your name. Or I
wanted to hear your voice — / don't know — What difference
does it make? " He was not looking at her. "Ah, yes!" he went
on in a weary voice, thinking he had been rude. "I have heard
you play other nights here. Sometimes — right in the middle of
the music — you stop — break it off and your hand falls on the
balalaika. Perhaps I wanted to ask you why you do it? I think
that's it!"

"Oh, that! — It 's because I remember — "

"Remember what?"

"Yancksi."

"Who is Yancksi?"

"My lover—"

"Did you love him?"

"He went away."

"Where?"

"To Hungary — perhaps to play the fiddle to fat Germans —
somewhere — when they eat and listen — or dance and make
love — But he despises them all — the white men — "

"I do not care! What's that got to do with it?"

"He did n't say good-bye. He just went — "

96 THE PENITENT

"Did you care? "

"I don't know what you mean by care. I just remember him
when I play pieces he used to play — then — "

"WhowYancksi?"

"Yancksi? Oh! Everybody knows him. He's the handsomest
gypsy from here to the Black Sea. And the best fiddler, too.
He'll bring back gold from Hungary. You just ask any one.
Fow'tfhear!"

Then Alexis Sergiewitch recalled a certain petted beauty in a
great pale palace in Petersburg, whom he, too, had left without
saying good-bye. Aloud he remarked:

"They are alike just under the skin, great lady or little gypsy.
Woman is woman; made after the same pattern" — and in his
opinion not in the image of God. Then he leaned back, half
closed his eyes, put his arm about Sari carelessly, and prepared
to observe the tables in a pleasant, warmly luxurious mood.

Diagonally across from where they sat, a young Jewess, in
a high gold-embroidered turban, was playing chess for money
with a Greek who wore full bright-blue Turkish trousers, a
short red jacket, and a little blue round cap, set high on his head.
He was evidently one of the service men guarding the border.
The face of the Jewess was pale and eloquent. It showed the dis
tinguished lines of a highly specialized race. Only the face was
marred a little, he thought, by greed, by shrewdness.

An Armenian woman, in loose green robe, a khalat, from whose
head depended a swinging black veil, was going from table to
table whispering something. A h, yes! he had seen her before, in
the crooked hill-street that led to the Old Town, which was the
Kasbah of Kishenev. She kept a pleasure house there. He re
membered a young girl he had met there once, in whose eyes
there was the starry splendor of the nights of the East. The
woman herself was no longer young. He turned his eyes away.
Four handsome Italian men were gambling and quarreling. He
liked the gleam across their faces of the red wine when they lifted
their glasses. A Wallachian woman, who was handsome, and
whom he had seen dance the czarda, was sitting sleepily against
the wall. She was perfectly motionless. The round gold placques

THE DUEL 97

on her h^ad and breast did not tremble. He watched her elo
quent black lashes against her cheeks.

A Turkish woman, wearing a short, red-velvet, gold-braided
bolero, whose face suggested warm ivory and black velvet, and a
glance of whose smooth black eyes was like an unearned caress,
was evidently trying to get some important information out of a
half-drunken, long-bearded Great Russian, who still preserved
his native subtlety despite the wine. Perhaps she was a spy. A
Turkish war was threatening. He noticed that her body had the
suppleness, the grace, that mark the Asiatic. He liked her. She
possessed th&t peculiar energy in languor that belongs to the
East. Everywhere his sleep-dazed eyes turned he saw dully, but
with a distinct pulse of pleasure, arresting lines, striking groups,
clash of colors, love-affairs concealed or in embryo, so to speak,
the marked intermingling of the manners of Europe with savage
Muscovy and the Orient. Upon life here, despite the continued
efforts of Count Woronzow, there was no restraint, and the busi
est, gayest hours, when the sham coverings of morality were
thrown off, were those of night. A dark woman, whose race he
could not even guess, was sheathing a sword. He had seen her
use it in a dance earlier in the night, when she stood naked to
the waist, the sword poised upon her head. She was making
her way toward the door now, wrapping about her brow, as she
walked along, a bright-green gauze, that gleamed like a wet,
shining emerald. The balls of the Tartar reckoning-board
clicked seldom. The crowd was leaving. The young waiters
were snatching naps along the wall. Sari was asleep, too.

"Did you mistake me for a pillow, little one?" he laughed,
shaking her somewhat roughly. She looked uncomprehendingly
for an instant into the pale, distinguished face that resembled a
vision that was beside her. He shook her again, still laughing
and indifferent. "Come. Wake up! It is time to go."

Wearily she bent to pick up her balalaika of kissel wood, dotted
with little white diamonds of inset bone. She tried to put the
strap over her head. Then she paused a moment to look at him,
realize just where she was, and put up one hand again to touch
softly the fine material of his clothes, which attracted her so.

98 THE PENITENT

"Good-bye, little one! I'll see you again sometime, perhaps"
— touching her shoulder and bending his face for an instant tan-
talizingly near her own, as if he were going to kiss her, then
straightening up swiftly.

She was dazed, and slightly displeased, as if some swift swal
low's wing had grazed her eyes.

"Good-bye — Prince — Alexis!" She was just a little dark
figure now, moving unsteadily toward a square of veiled pallor
which was the door.

On the threshold she paused a moment, as if hesitating to
breast the freshness and light outside, and because she hated so
to leave him. She turned to look at him again, to make sure that
he was real. "The wagon — Alexis — goes in a few days — " If
he heard what she said, he did not trouble to answer. He paid no
heed to her going.

The guests of night in the Kabak were being replaced by guests
of the early morning. The server of drinks, the keeper of accounts,
were gone and new ones had taken their places. A tall, dark,
gaunt Mongol-faced Calmuck was cleaning up the long brown
counter, and washing the glasses noisily in dirty water. A sleepy-
eyed, tousle-headed Russian boy, roughly awakened, was sweep
ing awkwardly between the tables. The balls on the Tartar
reckoning-board had been slipped back to place, to make ready
for new accounts. Fresh, sweet air, from open doors and windows,
was beginning to pulse, like a tide, under the heavily suspended
tobacco smoke and the vapors of wine. Alexis Sergiewitch de
cided that he would order his breakfast, one of the hot peppered
dishes they made so well here, which he liked, and some tea. But
before he had time to give the order there was noise, disturbance,
at the door. At the same time the reapers were boisterously
sorting out their scythes. A number of young men were entering,
newcomers, Russians, and mostly from the North like himself.
Among them were some of his office companions in Woronzow's
Counting-House, and Lvovitch Stolischnikow, a wealthy mer
chant's son from Riga, to whom most of his own neglected duties
had fallen. They had been having a gay night like himself, but
farther up the hill, in the Old Town. They had stopped into the

THE DUEL 99

Kabak of Samus for breakfast, before going on to their work in
the new city, which was lower down. " There he is — the white-
figured dandy — from Peter — who is too proud to work," called
out Stolischnikow scornfully at sight of Alexis Sergiewitch, re
membering wrathfully, upon the moment, the added duties that
had fallen to him.

Alexis Sergiewitch looked him steadily in the eye without
replying.

They sprawled noisily over chairs at one of the larger tables,
and called for a waiter.

" Keep still, Stolischnikow," whispered one of the others.

" You are drunk! He is n't so pale, nor so weak as he looks."

" Do you suppose I 'm afraid of that society butterfly? That — "

"Sh-hl — Sh — shl " came the warning from another.

" He 's a dressed-up whipper-snapper." Then one bent merrily
and whispered something in Stolischnikow's ear, which made
him laugh immoderately, and glance from moment to moment
toward young Pushkin, who sat stern and white, alone at his
table, pretending not to know the others were there.

Stolischnikow proceeded to pass the whispered story around
the animated, eager, youthful group at his table. Each gave way
to an uncontrolled guffaw as he heard it, and his eyes gleamed
across toward Pushkin. The early morning crowd gave promise
of being more noisily unrestrained than the night crowd which
had left. The night crowd was usually given to love and wine,
cards and dancing, while the first morning hours caught the
worn-out brawlers on the wing, making change of place, either
weary or disgruntled.

" He 's what I call a filcher! " asserted Stolischnikow, louder.

"What's that?"

"It is a kind of stealing you can't punish."

Pushkin paled visibly. The group of newcomers were too in
terested in this statement to notice it. Like all Russians they
talked, talked, all the time, and were endlessly greedy for any
thing that promised surprise or novelty.

"Explain!"

" Well — first — he steals my time in the office. I do his work

ioo THE PENITENT

— I get nothing for it. Oh! no! — He has not done six hours'
work since he has been here. What does he do, you ask? He digs
Greek coins on the banks of the Bug, cleans them — tries to
catalogue them. He writes poetry — makes love — gets drunk

— idles— "

The faces of the listeners looked sympathetic. "And you do
his work? Well, you 're an ass! "

"Back in Petersburg — he niched other men's wives — or
sweethearts — "

This statement did not arouse particular interest in his hearers
because it was so common. They knew stories enough of that
kind.

" They say" — looking about carefully, as if not wishing this

information to be general — " that even the of the he

did not let alone " — whispering the name of a woman of soci
ety whom every Russian knew.

This was a more interesting morsel of gossip. They looked
at each other with bright eyes in which unsuppressed interest
shone. They would like to hear more about this. This was in
teresting.

"He niches poems from poets of other nations. He translates
them, signs his name to them, and then sells them as his own —
and takes the money."

Stolischnikow was growing madder and madder, as he waited
hungrily for the breakfast unaccountably delayed. Wrongs rolled
up within his mind like huge snowballs.

"That 's what zfilcher is. Now do you understand?"

This silence showed that they did understand. They were
sympathetically impressed.

"What's he here for?" at length came the query.

"Don't you know?" scornfully.

" If I did, do you think I should ask? " replied another one,
equally hungry and inclined to be irritable. "Why?"

" It can't be you don't know! "

" Well — why don't you say it and have it over with? " —
impatiently.

"Because he's a traitor to Russia. He plotted against the
Emperor"

THE DUEL 101

" That 's a lie! " thundered a voice so deep, so savage, it was not
easy to believe it came from the thin, white-coated figure at the
neighboring table. "No man is more loyal to Alexander than I!
No man respects him more." Pushkin was on his feet.

"Don't anger him more, Stolischnikow!" whispered one of his
friends.

"No, don't!" seconded another.

"There is no better swordsman in the land," warned a third.

Pushkin walked toward the table where the young fellows were
sitting. The room suddenly became silent. Fear spread over it.
The other early breakf asters began to look intently at the group.
They forgot to eat.

"Take back what you said, or apologize," demanded Alexis
Sergiewitch.

Stolischnikow was silent.

"Take it back, I say! No man is more loyal to Alexander than
I. I will not permit any one to make a statement to the contrary."

The black, sullen eyes of Stolischnikow looked doggedly back
into Pushkin's without replying.

"Will you take it back?"

"No!"

" Then take that, you coward — you traitor! You — " striking
him across the face with his hand.

The young men jumped up, just as Stolischnikow made a dash
across the table for Pushkin, which they had hoped to prevent.

"Gentlemen" came the stern voice of the day bartender,
"fighting is not permitted. Settle your differences outside. But
I would advise you to remember the prohibition which the new
Governor of Bessarabia, His Excellency Count Michael Woron-
zow, has made against dueling."

They paid little attention to this wise recommendation.

"We will settle this outside, gentlemen, as he says," agreed
Alexis Sergiewitch with dignity. "Where shall we go?"

"The best place," one of Stolischnikow's companions hastened
to explain, "is the cherry orchard, just beyond Jacob Eisenstein's
meierhof. We cannot be seen there, nor heard either. Choose
your seconds, Monsieur Pushkin!" was the scornful advice.

102 THE PENITENT

"Oh, I do not need any! You take all you want. This is not of
importance to me."

"I suppose you'd rather use swords, wouldn't you?" asked
one of Stolischnikow's friends hesitatingly.

"It does not make the slightest difference!" was the rejoinder.
"I'll fight with anything you say."

"Then I'll choose pistols for Stolischnikow."

"Suit yourself! It is all one to me!" Alexis Sergiewitch was
almost good-natured.

As the crowd started toward the door, he began to chat uncon-
strainedly with the other young fellows.

Just outside the door they paused to examine pistols, match
two and judge of their condition. This discussion was proceeding
in an almost friendly manner when .two wagons filled with fash
ionable youths drove up with a dashing curve upon the noisy
white pebbles in front of the Kabak. In addition to the youths
there was a good-sized basket of champagne in one of the wagons.
The bottles were packed carefully in wet sawdust to keep the
wine cool.

"What good fortune, boys! A duel!" Their words expressed
the delight they felt.

"Where is it going to be? But first, gentlemen, drink with us.
The best vintage of France, gentlemen!" — boastingly. "Then
with your permission we will drive to the place you have chosen
for the duel — to see that it goes according to rule. That is,
gentlemen, if you have nothing to say against it," they added
politely.

They uncorked the bottles. They drank lustily of the proffered
champagne, except Alexis Sergiewitch. He kept proudly by him
self and a little apart. But he observed with flattered pride the
admiring glances from time to time turned toward himself. He
knew they were asking each other: Who is he? Who is he? — and
he liked it.

He had seldom felt happier, indeed, nor more fearless than on
this enchanting morning of spring. When they reached the edge
of the cherry orchard and climbed out of the carriages, he seldom
stepped more daintily or nimbly across a polished floor in Peters-

THE DUEL 103

burg to meet some fair dancer than he was moving now across the
wet, lush grass of morning. Larks were singing jubilantly over
his head. The free, shining steppe unrolled before his joyous,
youthful eyes, like a pulsing ocean, ready to bear him to some
promised land, as he walked along to keep, perhaps, his last
tryst with death. Far across the Bug — he could see horses now
and a wagon. Ah! — that, very likely, was the peregrinating
home of Sari of the night, Sari of the narrow eyes the color of
green ice. And now a little black dot was moving toward it,
slowly — slowly — far out across the tumbling grasses. It looked
like a little black flower, the round black head of Sari. And just
at this moment, unreasonably and capriciously, Sari symbolized
love, pleasure, and the seductive power of himself, largely be
cause he had refused her, and had not followed to the night ren
dezvous. The wind upon his face was sweet from the winnowing
darkness of night. He enjoyed it. He sniffed it with pleasure.
Suddenly he paused in his walk with the others toward the place
they had agreed upon for the duel. He looked up. Jacob Eisen-
stein's cherry-trees were red with fruit. Gems, precious and rare
in color as a ruby, dotted the green, and laughed in splendor
above his head against the blue.

"Goon/ Choose the place. Get ready. Whistle when you have
done it and I will come" — reaching up to pull down nearer a
bough of shining fruit. He ate as fast as he could, and then be
gan to fill his pockets, like a child who expects to be scolded and
taken away. When both pockets were filled, he plucked all that
he could carry in his hands. Just then the whistle sounded. He
turned regretfully to follow it.

"Here is your pistol, Monsieur," one of the young men of the
champagne wagon declared, holding out the weapon to him.
"And here is your place. It is measured off. Stand here!"

Alexis Sergiewitch did exactly as he was told, without looking
up, or seeming to pay attention, because he was busy with a
pleasanter occupation. His anger, his excitement of a little while
ago, had disappeared. He was enjoying himself thoroughly, to
the amazement of the onlookers who had stumbled by accident
upon the amusement so popular with young men of Russia.

io4 THE PENITENT

"When my friend here counts four, you are to fire. Do you
hear?"

Alexis Sergiewitch acted as if he did not hear. He went on eat
ing the cherries which he held in his free hand, his body turned
slightly away from his opponent, at whom he had not so much as
glanced.

"Monsieur Pushkin, the time to begin has come."

"Very good. Go ahead."

"But it takes two to fight a duel, does it not?"

"Of course! Here I am. Fire whenever you feel like it."

"Kindly turn in the correct position, toward your opponent,
Monsieur Pushkin. Place ! "

He obeyed, holding the pistol limply in his free hand, while he
crowded the fruit into his mouth with the other.

"One — two — three — four." One shot rang crisply on the
clean air. It whizzed over the pale curls of Alexis Sergiewitch,
who did not trouble to look up. No one spoke. They watched in
amazement the aristocratic, white-coated figure, eating so hap
pily and greedily.

"Are you satisfied, gentlemen?" he questioned, without look
ing at them.

"Why did you not fire?"

"Well," was the merry answer, "I had to pay him some way,
did I not, for doing my work? I do not mind death — but — I do
hate office work" — laughing with gayety and good-humor.

"I beg your pardon for the foolish things I said in the Kabak,"
declared Stolischnikow frankly, walking toward him and offering
his hand. " I rm ashamed of myself . It was inexcusable."

"Don't mention it! Don't mention it!" was the quick reply,
his vanity satisfied by the admiration he had received, and the
gratification of his love of dominating.

CHAPTER VI
THE NIGHT VIGIL

AFTER her father had embraced her and left her at the door of her
room, Sophie Narischkin stood idly for a moment looking at the
woodland scene painted on the wall near where she was, a repro
duction of her favorite outdoor nook at their summer home by
the Gulf of Finland, thinking that in a short time she would be
there again. The silk door covering fell and she remained where
she was for a few moments, looking lovingly at the paintings he
had had made for her. In this position she overheard without in
tention the conversation between Marie Antonova and Alexander
in the hall without, and the request that he should sleep at the
Palace again that night. She rang for her maid then to dress her
for the street, and sent word to her English governess that they
would go out at once for the doctor's prescribed two hours daily
in the open air.

During the drive she was distrait. She was preoccupied. She
barely spoke a word to her companion. She was going over the
old subject of worry which had annoyed her continually of late,
and of which she could not stop thinking. She had been sur
rounded by carefully instructed, silent, highly paid servants from
whom no information was to be obtained. And in the insincere
social world there was no one to whom she could go. At the same
time it was covert hints, exchanged glances, guarded innuendoes,
half-heard whispers from these two worlds, the world of social in
feriors and the world of her equals, which first raised the suspi
cion that there was something peculiar about her situation, that
all was not as it should be. Why did the other young ladies of her
acquaintance have only one father and mother, while she had
two? And why was she not a Grand Duchess of the Romanoffs
instead of just Sophie Narischkin, if, as she did not doubt, she
was the daughter of Alexander?

As a little girl she remembered Dmitri Lvovitch Narischkin,

106 THE PENITENT

whose name she bore, to her childish eyes then an old man, and
she gained the peculiar impression that in some way he was suf
fering, and she was sorry. She thought probably that that was
what made his face twitch.

He was always courteous, always gentle. But he did not come
near her. He did not pet her. He seemed not to see her. Soon
she learned that he avoided her whenever he could. She could
not recall that he ever voluntarily spoke to her.

There were long months when he was away somewhere, she did
not know where, and she did not see him, and no one spoke
of him. Marie Antonova treated him badly, she thought. She
pitied him. She rebelled against it. She had an unwomanly sense
of impersonal justice that would give to each his right. She re
membered protesting once with her for this. Her mother had re
plied sharply that it was none of her business. And she had an
swered, questioningly: "Why is it not? Is he not my father?"

Then Marie Antonova had looked long at her with round, large,
black, angry eyeSi in which there was a puzzling glint of surprise.
It was one of the few times she had seen the soft, deceptive, vel
vety surface of her mother changed. It had shocked her. She
did not know that two persons so seemingly different could
dwell in one body.

Later Dmitri Lvovitch seemed to be ashamed of her. This had
caused her a very real, childish grief. This was worst of all. It
had cut her to the quick, and all but made her ill. For a long
time she had puzzled her head about it. After that, they used to
quarrel violently, Marie Antonova and Dmitri Lvovitch, and her
mother told her she would whip her severely if she ever told of it
to any one. By any one she understood Alexander. These quar
rels were at night, and they terrified her so that for days follow
ing she slept nervously like one in a nightmare. And then she
was not well as a result.

Dmitri Lvovitch remained away for longer and longer periods
after the quarrels, and when he did come home for a little while,
he looked so old, so out of place and strange, sitting about lonely
and unnoticed in the great, splendid rooms, that she felt sorrier
for him than ever. But whenever she tried to show him her sym-

THE NIGHT VIGIL 107

pathy, to get near him, she found it displeased him, she felt he
wanted her to go away, where he could never look upon her
again. This was painful. The older she grew the more he seemed
to dislike her. He seemed to have a fresh grudge against her for
growing up.

Long years came when Alexander was almost always with
them, and she forgot about the past and was happy. He petted
her enough for a dozen fathers. She used to think sometimes that
Marie Antonova was jealous of her. He used to take her to the
Imperial Residence, too. There the Empress Elizabeth petted
her, and always called her "my little daughter." Yet the Em
press did not come to see her. Why was that? Since she had been
ill, she frequently sent an equerry, however, to inquire for her
health, or to bring her a gift.

During these two years that she had been out in society, it was
evident to her intelligent eyes, trained unconsciously from her
lonely childhood to observe freely and impersonally, that women
shunned her mother, despite her mother's happy, high-handed
ruling of the court set, and that just at present they were shun
ning her more than ever. It was as if her mother had recently
done something that forever put her out of reach of pardon.
They were civil enough to her face, to be sure, especially if Al
exander were present, but behind her back there were significant
looks, exchanged glances, guarded and scornful smiles. And as
for herself, the attitude of the social world toward her was one of
mingled pity and admiration. It puzzled her. The pity hurt.
Why should it be? It was intangible; she could not get at it. It
was something that had to be borne.

She observed, too, that the various members of the Emperor's
family, his mother, sisters, brothers, their wives, almost never
addressed Marie Antonova, but they were unfailingly charm
ing to her, Sophie. But her mother evidently did not miss their
attentions, and she cared nothing at all for their opinions, be
cause she was usually surrounded by an admiring coterie of men.
This made her mother happy. This gave her all that she re
quired, which meant adulation and social triumph.

There is perhaps nothing more difficult than to try to observe,

io8 THE PENITENT

with just, appraising eyes, conditions which have surrounded one
from birth. In the case of a person of middle class, acquaint
ances, sharp-eyed, critical schoolmates, envy, perhaps, occasion
ally perform this bitter service. But in the case of Sophie Nar-
ischkin, highly placed as she was, and protected by an Emperor,
there could be no such possibility of sudden enlightenment nor
contact.

The past two years, during which time she had frequented
her mother's salons, her drawing-rooms, and associated with her
mother's acquaintances, not too carefully chosen, she had heard
many questionable conversations, and risques stories, many scan
dalous accounts of liaisons in high places, when Alexander, be it
understood, was not present. Her mother had not taken pains
either to shield or enlighten her. And she had always found lying
about in easy reach of her hands the erotic, immoral, French
novels which alone amused the idle hours of her sensuous mother.
This had given her an outlook, a knowledge of another kind,
quite as unusual for a young girl of her years and station. Now a
thought, perhaps better a fear, was rising slowly in her mind like
the black, threatening upheaving in the western sky in summer
of a vast and alarming storm. Like the storm it shadowed the
happy pleasant living beneath it, and cast its shadows in all di
rections. Was her mother one of the celebrated bad women of her
generation, such as she had read of in history, such as Isabella
Orsini, for instance, to choose at random a noteworthy example?
Could it be possible that she, too, was a courtesan, protected by
royal favor? But Alexander loved her. He was noble. He could
not love her surely if she were so unworthy. So how could that
be? Or was it that she deceived him? No, no, on no account
could that be! She could not be so base in the face of such love,
such consideration, such lavish generosity. They lived, she re
flected, in just such state as the royal family lived, thanks to
him. She could not hold him up to ridicule, she could not be so
ungrateful, uncaring. She dismissed the thought.

Her mind was so preoccupied that she did not even observe
where they were driving, nor did she see young Baratinsky, hand
some, dark, emotional, who passed them on horseback, and who

THE NIGHT VIGIL 109

read easily the grief and worry upon her face. He cursed his luck
again that something always separated him from her. Nor did
she know when they turned toward home.

Yet she could not help linking fact with fact with precision,
and contemplating the sum total of those facts, and realizing that
that sum total was something considerable. And there were, of
course, other facts, perhaps greater ones, that she did not know.

She had never, to be sure, seen much of her mother, who was
usually either going to or coming from some entertainment. She
was not a mother to waste time in a nursery. This fact she offered
to herself hastily, gladly, in rebuttal of her suspicions. This was
always the case except when they were in the country. Then
Marie Antonova was ill-tempered, unsociable, and spent her
days reading French novels, which depicted the only life she
loved and could find satisfaction in, or in looking forward to the
date of her return to the city she found so pleasant, where life
could be made what she wanted it to be. So there had not been
much companionship even there.

But what possible reason could there be now in forbidding her to
enter unannounced the apartments of Marie Antonova? Was not
this an astonishing prohibition? This had come since Count Schu-
valow had begun paying court to herself. When she had told this
to her father earlier in the day, she saw that it had shocked him.
Then she had quickly regretted having mentioned it. He, too,
thought something then. And the thought had not been pleas
ant.

When she had heard Marie Antonova tell Alexander that to
night she was going to a reception at the palace of Prince Via-
zemsky, the unbidden thought had come that it was a lie. She
had felt many times lately that her mother's laughing accounts
of goings and comings were false and that they concealed some
thing else very different. Then she tried bravely to correct this
thinking in herself, declaring it was wholly base, unwarranted;
that it was merely the false fabric built up by her lack of health
and consequent wrong seeing. It was undutiful. She would stop
it. In this brave, repentant mood, insisting that all was right be
cause she wished it to be, she returned to the Narischkin Palace.

no THE PENITENT

On her way to her rooms she passed a servant in the hall below.
She noticed that he wore the Schuvalow livery. A few moments
after the curtain of her own door had shielded her from sight, she
saw Marie Antonova run hastily down the yellow marble stairs
to talk to this messenger in person, instead of sending word by her
maid or a lackey, which would have been the usual thing to do.
Evidently she wished no one to hear what she said and she did
not dare risk it in writing. Concealment could be the only im
pulse back of this. She waited for a few minutes without taking
off her hat, thinking the message from Count Schuvalow must
surely concern herself, and that soon her mother would come
across the hall to her room to give it to her. But she did not
come. She waited awhile longer. Then she rang for her maid and
began to dress for dinner, puzzled and worried anew throughout
the dressing as to what could be back of this.

At eight she dined alone with Marie Antonova, who was in
excellent spirits, her eyes shining with happiness and anticipa
tion, but who carefully refrained from mention of Count Schu
valow, as did her daughter. This was suspicious, too, in her
talkative, indiscreet mother.

For the first time Sophie Narischkin saw her mother's beauty
with a new, a different comprehension. She saw her with an em
phasis that was quite unusual and not pleasant. There was some
thing about it that was shameless. It was too bold. It was al
most vulgar. It lacked refinement. It lacked sensitiveness, deli
cacy. She felt that she was dressed only for show, to attract the
greedy, lustful eyes of men. She did not look to her like a great
lady to-night, not like the Empress, but like a courtesan. She
recalled — quite involuntarily as she watched her across the
table, her massed pile of silken black curls, where gems sparkled,
her languorous eyes, her voluptuous shoulders and gestures, her
dress cut too low — a story her governess had told her when she
was just a little girl. She was provoked that the story was so
d propos and that it should occur to her now. It was how once
Marie Antoinette had sent a portrait of herself, most resplend-
ently attired, to her mother, Marie Therese, and that astute
ruler of a nation and penetrating judge of men had returned the

THE NIGHT VIGIL in

picture immediately with this reply: " This is not a portrait of
the Queen of France you send me. This is some cheap French ac
tress" After she thought this over, she felt ashamed of herself,
and sorry again that she had thought it.

When they arose from the table and went into the little blue
drawing-room, Marie Antonova still wore her happy air, and she
told her daughter glibly that she was going to look in upon several
of her friends to-night, one of whom was Prince Viazemsky, who
was receiving, because they were leaving the city so soon, and
that she should not return until very late. She took it as a matter
of course that her daughter was not to accompany her. She was
evidently nervous. She was eager for the time to come to go.
Her little satin-shod foot patted the floor restlessly at intervals,
and hidden thoughts passed behind her eyes. At half-past ten
she rang for her carriage. Her maid wrapped her in a cloak of
gold lace and black sable, and accompanied her down to the
carriage door, where she arranged carefully the long train of her
gown.

Sophie Narischkin, left alone, idled for a while at the blue-and-
gold painted spinet, trying to recall the words of a song of Bara-
tinsky's. Vaguely in the song she felt his love touch her, and the
beauty of his dark face flashed across her mind. Then she found
that the motion of her arms in playing made her cough more
than usual. She left the spinet and slowly climbed the yellow,
lighted staircase, and turned idly into her mother's suite of
rooms. The long windows here were open. She stepped out for
a moment upon one of the little, round, iron balconies to breathe
the freshness and to observe the pale, daylight night of summer
above her head, which put out so persistently the dim polar stars.
She let the curtains fall behind her.

She had stood here but a little time when two maids came in to
straighten up Marie Antonova's room from the unavoidable dis
array of dressing, and to fold back her bed-coverings for the
night. Their voices came to her distinctly. They had the free,
unrestrained notes that proved the absence of superiors. They
were both scornful and merry. Their words betrayed the dis
respect they felt for their mistress.

iia THE PENITENT

"Madam Narischkin told me not to wait up for her to-night."
Here they both laughed.

" We all know what that means — with her — don't we? "

La-la-M —

beginning to hum a risque French love-song about a night ren
dezvous that probably paralleled in their minds those of Marie
Antonova. Then they both laughed again, whispered together
for a moment, finished putting the room to rights for the return
of their mistress, and went out gayly and noisily.

Then she, Sophie Narischkin, was not alone suspicious of her
mother? It was common talk, evidently, among the servants.
And her own belief that she had told a lie to Alexander was not
unfounded or wicked. Her vague feeling that something was
wrong could be trusted. Her cheeks burned with shame. Her
pride was wounded. A sort of sickening terror swept over her, in
which the only clear thought was that it must be kept from
Alexander, because it would hurt him so. And she, no matter
what it cost her, must be one of the brave ones to help keep it.
This made her, in a way, an accomplice against him whom she
loved. Not only the physical beauty, but some of the noble na
ture of Alexander had been inherited by his daughter. She re
volted at this baseness. From any angle the situation for her was
painful — more, humiliating.

But he must be protected first. This she saw clearly through
the confusion and shame that gripped her, realizing afresh how
great was her love for him.

Upon the balcony late, with bare shoulders, bare arms, and
without a wrap, she at length began to feel chilly. She turned
and made her way slowly to her own room, where she asked the
waiting maid to disrobe her and to bring a padded dressing-
gown. Then she dismissed her for the night and sat down.

Here alone in the sweet, all-night twilight of sub-Arctic
summer, she rapidly recalled the past, seeking anew interpreta
tions of things that had puzzled her in the light of her recently
acquired knowledge.

THE NIGHT VIGIL "3

There was a night at the theater in the early spring which she
remembered particularly. Lasky, the handsome Pole the women
were so crazy over, who resembled nothing so much as a lithe,
brown-black tiger, was playing. She and her mother occupied a
box alone. Her mother was in gala attire. She was wearing a
new, high, pointed tiara of red and white stones, which Alexander
had had made for her. Whenever Lasky received any especial
triumph upon the stage, glasses were lifted first at him, and then
turned at once upon her mother. Sometimes it had seemed to her
that the words the popular Pole uttered were addressed to her
mother; that Lasky and her mother were the real actors whom
the house were applauding. And in the eyes of Marie Antonova
as she watched him, her daughter saw a light that transformed
her and made her almost a stranger. She had been restless, too,
just as she was to-night. And she had tapped her pretty feet
impatiently. Then Alexander made his entrance. The audience
arose. He came at once to their box, serene, handsome, noble to
look upon. But she had felt upon the instant that, for some rea
son she could not at all explain, his presence displeased her
mother. She felt that great waves of anger, great waves of re
bellious disappointment, were sweeping over her, like an in
coming sea which no one may check. She had been astonished
at the time at the subtlety of her discernment. She had won
dered how she knew. Then she remembered thinking it was be
cause she played the part of an observer in life, a mere looker-on,
so to speak. Her penetrating mind was not obscured by selfish or
personal wishes.

Alexander came home in the carriage with them that night.
She felt that this had displeased her mother more than any
thing else. After Alexander took a seat in their box, the Polish
actor did not again look in their direction. He seemed to avoid
them with his eyes. But the audience kept looking stealthily, as
if to observe, for some reason, her mother anew. The audience
evidently had some fresh interest in her. It had been a most un
happy evening for her. She had been glad when it was over.
And now she hoped they would go away to the country without
delay. If they did, she would secretly beg Alexander to prolong

"4 THE PENITENT

their stay there, by some means or other. That would give her
added time for peace, for self-adjustment.

She heard a slight noise in the outer hall. She picked up the
miniature clock from the green table and held it up in front of the
tiny blue flame which was flickering in front of the Virgin. It was
twelve o'clock. Marie Antonova surely could not be returning so
early. Social life in Petersburg had only just begun. She peered
out carefully from the shelter of the silken curtain. There she
was, however ! Her cloak of gold lace was trailing heavily behind
her, and exposing her bare, white shoulders, and the sparkle of
gems, like a night of sullen stars, in her curly, thick hair. Her
head was thrown back. There was delight in her eyes — a reck
less, wild delight. The expression changed her so that it shook
her daughter, like grief or fear. There she was! And bending
over her now, as his hand was just reaching out for the doorknob
to turn it softly, bending over her lovingly, so that from time to
time he hid her face, was Count Schuvalow, young, blond, se
ductive. They opened the door stealthily. They went in.

She did not know how long she stood there after that. She
could estimate the length of time only by the fact that her feet,
her limbs, were cold, numb, and a heavy weariness enveloped her.

The air was icy now. It came through the pallid window
squares in little, petulant breaths. She wished that she had
closed some of the windows. She felt chilly again just as she
had upon the balcony.

The door of her mother's room opened again, timidly this
time. Count Schuvalow came out. She watched him walking
carefully on tiptoe along the edge of the thick blue velvet floor
covering to the top of the yellow marble stairs which the dying
candles were lighting dimly. She saw him turn the collar of his
coat up quickly, and then balance carefully for the space of an
instant upon the top stair, before he stepped down.

She did not feel any added personal resentment in the fact
that the lover she had just seen leave the room of Marie An
tonova at this hour was her fiance, or that this greatly increased
the enormity of the sin. She knew that Alexander's promise
that she could name the wedding day released her. She had no

THE NIGHT VIGIL 115

delusion about the cough that racked her. She knew that when
the gay leaves of autumn took their departure she would very
likely go with them. But Alexander! What would the knowledge
do to him? Alexander, whom the people of Petersburg were be
ginning to call the Prince of Peace when they looked out of their
windows and saw him pass in the streets, what would it do to
him! What would it do to him whom her childish heart wor
shiped as she worshiped her God? She felt that she was base for
being glad that she, perhaps, with the autumn, would get out of
it; the worry, the nerve strain, the humiliation, the shame, and
leave him alone, alone without her love to protect him, to shelter
him, alone to suffer on.

Perhaps Dmitri Lvovitch, in the years long passed, had loved
her mother, too, and she had betrayed him. That was why he was
old and sad now. That was why he was neglected and driven
away. Perhaps that was what she always did, betray — betray
— She was vile — base — and it could not help but reflect
upon her. Was she not the daughter of this monster whom men
mocked? Who was she? Was she not merely the accidental re
sult of one of her mother's many nights of stolen love of long ago?

Shortly afterwards she heard servants beginning to be astir.
She found then that the pillow was wet. Broad summer daylight
had come. It was flooding the room with cold, clear light. It
showed that she had had a slight hemorrhage of the lungs dur
ing the night. She rang for a maid and had the pillow changed.
She cautioned her carefully against mentioning the fact to any
one.

She asked the solicitous maid to close the window shutters to
keep out the light and the early chill, and to tell her mother that
she would not be down for breakfast because she was sleeping
late, but that she would meet her at three o'clock as she had
promised.

CHAPTER VII
PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW

THE affair of the duel could not be kept from Count Woronzow
for any length of time. When the news of it, together with all the
astonishing, slightly ridiculous details, greatly enlarged and dis
torted, putting, naturally, the burden, the blame for law-break
ing upon Alexis Sergiewitch, reached the old man's ears, it was
three days later. Lvovitch Stolischnikow he shut up in the
Guard-House without delay, ordering a diminished food ration
and the highly sobering recommendation of solitude and medita
tion. Young Pushkin he could not find, or he would have pun
ished him the same way. He issued a general order, however, for
search. Alexis Sergiewitch had hidden, hoping the affair would
blow over if he were not present to keep alive its interest, hidden
in a little white house kept by a Turkish woman, halfway up the
long hill, in the Old Town. Here he could listen to Oriental mu
sic, eat strange, highly spiced foods that tickled his palate pleas
antly, smoke and idle, in short, enjoy himself considerably in his
own way, if it had not been for the pressing need of clean clothes.
And here they found him, despite his silence and the willing sac
rifice of cleanliness.

Count Woronzow, in the meantime, had done a good deal of
speculating about this perplexing specimen of the genus hu-
manum who had been unceremoniously handed over to his pro
tection and discipline.

Count Michael Woronzow was not so stupid as he looked. In
addition he had had experience with men. Few knew them bet
ter. Few would be quicker to see or give credit for merit of any
kind, unless it happened to be artistic merit. He had seen no
little of the world. His powers of observation had not been
limited to Russia or his own race. He had seen something of all
races. He had been born upon a ship off the coast of Spain. The
renowned cities of Europe had passed in turn in review before

PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 117

his childish eyes. He had received his diplomatic education out
side of Russia. He had been sent to school at a great English
university. In manner and dress there was something about him
still of an English country gentleman of the richer class. His
wealth was colossal. Palaces which he seldom saw, in various
parts of Russia and the Crimea, owned him as master. The
combined estates of himself and his wife were reported to equal
in extent the realm of France. Yet he lived soberly, with no out
ward show, giving himself almost no more comforts or luxuries
than his men, and never in any way acting the superior.

He was small, dark, stubby, and of a bearing far removed
from imposing. His noble birth was in no wise evident. His fore
head was insignificant, his hair was unruly, and his eyes small,
dark, nondescript, deep-set, and expressionless. But what was
lacking in exterior finish and adornment had been richly added
to his heart, his nature. They contained the beauty his body did
not. At the risk of his life he had saved the lives of soldiers under
fire. He had commanded in person in the dramatic siege against
Erivan. He was a brilliant figure by virtue of his bravery in the
battle by Borodino. Once in 1 8 1 5 he generously paid off the debts
of his officers that they might feel unencumbered; to the amount
of two million rubles.

When Alexis Sergiewitch was found, he, too, was ordered to
the Guard-House, with a like recommendation concerning soli
tude and meditation. A punishment exactly equal with that of
Stolischnikow was meted out to him.

That day, as it happened, he had received a letter from his old
nurse, Arina Rodionovna, in which she wrote: "I have just had
a mass said for your health. Live, my darling, a good life, and
never do anything to be ashamed of." When he read this, the
dramatic, unflinching hero of the duel in the cherry orchard, who
could face death, wept like a child.

Count Woronzow meditated. His meditation had inharmo
nious heights and depths. It coasted occasionally near dazzling,
and, for him, dangerous islands of speculation. He saw plainly
that pleasure was the only life the boy could comprehend. This
was cause more for pity than blame. Life is sweeter to poets, to

n8 THE PENITENT

artists, he said to. himself, in that brief fury which is their youth,
than it is to other people. It seems to them then that the world
is made for them alone. Count Woronzow was educated. He
knew that the road of poets almost always lies along the dizzy
edge of an abyss. He saw plainly in young Pushkin, too, that
great, vibrant, unrestrainable power of life, such as is born
under equatorial suns. But if he was gay-spirited and reckless,
he knew at the same time that the boy was not cowardly. "And
he is young!" he said to himself. "Youth, and a poet! A bad
combination. In the unfortunate case of Alexis Sergiewitch, the
only rule of conduct that he knows anything about is a fantastic
honor, which even in our old-fashioned Russia is beginning to
be passe."

Here he smoked vigorously, as if trying to gather courage for
the conclusion which he could not seem to avoid.

"A poet's idea of the conduct of life is usually old-fashioned,
no matter how much of a modern he may be in his art. A poet,
usually, lives — emotionally — at least a generation behind his
age."

Before he ventured upon the next observation he smoked even
more vigorously. Then he made hastily the sign of the cross, as
if in horror of his unregeneracy. Who was he to pass judgment
upon his fellows? Was he, too, not filled with original sin? Not
for any consideration would he have uttered aloud such a revo
lutionary idea. Even the thinking soiled the whiteness of his
upright soul.

"The best thing that can happen to a poet — is to die young.
He cannot put up, decently, with what life gives later; old age,
disillusion, and the loss of that marvelous joy which, as soon as the
world sees it, marks him out for envy, for hatred and trouble.
Old age has no place for him where he is not either useless — or
ridiculous — in the world to-day. His butterfly nature must
feed upon the flowers and be flattered by the sun of youth. Only
life's loveliest gardens are suitable for him, its pleasances. To
the poet, old age is fatal."

Here he puffed so furiously that his round, inconspicuous face,
with its rows of horizontal brow-wrinkles, vanished in a cloud of

PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 119

smoke; for what was he, he thought humbly again (by way of
retribution this time), that he should pass judgment upon his
brothers! He shook his head wearily with something that re
sembled despair. How confusing, how perplexing was life ! Then
he arose. He opened another window. This seemed to relieve
him. The heat in Kishenev, in summer, was intense. Through
the open window came a wind current from another direction,
and the heat-tinged fragrance of a pale, tall poplar and two white
birches which grew close by. The current of his meditation
changed slightly as he reseated himself.

"He is different, racially, from the others" — recalling some of
the wild adventures, the hairbreadth escapes, during the past
weeks, of young Pushkin, whom Alexander, in a private letter,
had commended to his protection. "I cannot therefore reason
ably expect — from him — the same results."

Count Woronzow was interested in horticulture. He studied it.
He experimented in plantings of various kinds. He had made
independent scientific observations of his own. He was coming
to believe in certain peculiar but interesting affiliations between
men and plants. .This had a bearing upon his present outlook.
The same laws were applicable, largely, to both. Both were life,
only in different stages of progression.

" He is of a different race," he said aloud, as if he had reached a
new and more definite conclusion. " Not so long ago some of his
progenitors were savages — of the jungle. He is not to be blamed
because he is as he w." Count Woronzow was fast finding step
ping-stones across the place of difficulty. The opposite shore
was heaving into sight. It was steadying him.

"He can comprehend no spiritual truth. He can see only the
sensuous beauty of his surroundings. He feels only the superb-
ness of surfaces. This is reality to him.

"In him, too, there is that tremendous, outbounding vitality
that characterizes tropic growths, like the exuberant, expanding
wonder of jungle plants, under equatorial suns, with which we of
the North do not sympathize and which we cannot gauge. One
should not be angry because the jungle flowers more profusely
than the plain. That view would be unintelligent — unscientific"

THE PENITENT

He concluded that beyond the quick judgment of our conceit,
our shabby momentary wisdom, there is a greater judgment
which unself-conscious facts unfold slowly.

"Besides — there are no places of amusement here — no legit
imate ones, at least. There is only the wine-house. Young men
must be amused! The wine-house is the social center — club,
gambling-house, dance-hall, general place of meeting for ex
change of ideas — the bank — the exchange — place of rest — "
Again he shook his head wearily. There was much to be done by
him, in the way of bringing about civilized living, loftier stand
ards — in this South of Russia, which he was trying to remake,
to bring up to the measure of the rest of Europe, and nearest of
all to that dull, well-ordered England where he had spent much
of his youth.

Another reason that he felt peculiarly responsible for the wel
fare of Alexis Sergiewitch was that he believed that the keeping
together and in influence of the native aristocracy possessed
elements of strength that meant the future saving, the security
of the land. The aristocracy of a country must be kept intact.
It was the backbone. It was the model. In his heart there was
the respect that good men keep for the best of their race. This
belief had been strengthened by his education in England, this
feeling of fellowship, this feeling for caste. If it was not altogether
just, it had been proved to be serviceable. He was convinced
it was best in the long run.

The ancestors of Alexis Sergiewitch, on one side, had been the
same as his own. He respected them, therefore. They had fought
in the old dramatic, fanatical wars for the faith with Poland,
against the Turk, where his fathers had fought. They had
stormed off the slant-eyed Mongol. They had opposed the
Swede. They had helped build the ancient cities of the Slav in
the South just as his ancestors had done. They were part of the
picturesque past. He came, in short, of a celebrated boyar race.
For that reason Count Woronzow had a certain increased con
sideration for him, or rather felt greater his responsibility. He
belonged to the caste whose duty it was to keep Russia intact,
and free of foreign influence. In addition, a friend of the old

PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 121

man's, in whom he had considerable confidence, had observed
young Pushkin at night in the wine-houses, and in various
places of pleasure in the Old Town. He had confided to Count
Woronzow that he did not think Alexis Sergiewitch got any
pleasure out of his wild nights of drinking and gambling, nor
even from his relations with women. He longed for pleasure,
but he could not grasp it. He searched for it continually, but it
eluded him like a will-o'-the-wisp. What he gets oftenest is
weariness, his friend had explained, and disappointment, which
he is not old enough now to understand. He has some wild pagan
ideal in his brain which he is not able to make real. He longs to
duplicate the pleasures of Petronius, of Catullus, but he does
not know how. The only thing that can bring him this intensity
of pleasure he longs for is his art which he neglects. He longs
to live poetry instead of writing it. The double vision confuses
him. In short, Count Woronzow gained the impression from his
friend's wise conversation that the pursuit of folly was an obses
sion with the young man. He was merely trying to find some
thing unfindable that belonged to the spirit, and that symbolized
to his mind what men mean by spring, youth, delight.

He concluded now, as a result, that he, Woronzow, had not
done his duty. Or, better, perhaps, he had not understood what
his duty was in its petty and peculiar ramifications. Any wrong,
he acknowledged generously, means accountability in two places.
He must give up some of the few hours of leisure that remained to
him for the purpose of directing the amusements of the young
men who were with him. It was his duty. He wondered that he
had not seen this before. He must superintend not only their
work, but their play. He must cut another slice out of his own
hard-working, perplexed day. He would invite them to take
dinner once a week with him. He would provide from his own
pocket a dinner so good that they would be glad to come. Then
they could talk together as friends, and in the talk he would
scatter helpful and suggestive thoughts, just as he had scattered
apple and fruit seeds the length and breadth of the uncultivated
steppe, and wait, with the same absence of impatience or prej
udice, for the good fruit to be borne.

122 THE PENITENT

He received his young guests at dinner a few nights later in the
same distinguished attire, with the graceful, affable manner with
which he would have received men of his rank in any of his
sumptuous palaces. When dinner was announced, he arose and
stepped in front of a small brass icon hanging on the wall, the
same one he had carried with him faithfully through the Napo
leonic wars. He made the sign of the cross, and said a brief prayer.
The substance of the prayer was that he hoped the bread of the
spirit would redound to the good of his youthful guests, like the
bread upon his well-filled table to their bodies. As usual he was
sincere, reverent, and commanded respect.

After the dinner was over, and they had returned to his plain
little living-room, and he had explained his interest in having
them as guests at his board in future once a week, and after they
had chatted awhile, chiefly upon the injury the locusts were doing
to the midsummer fruit crop about Kishenev and its grape-
curled hills, the threatening rumors of an approaching war over
the Greeks and the sacred faith, he asked the other young men
to be good enough to excuse him. He explained that he had some
matters of importance which he wished to discuss alone with
Alexis Sergiewitch.

" My dear Alexis Sergiewitch/' he began when they two were
alone together, "because your fathers were friends and com
panions of my fathers, and our interests, our sentiments must
have, therefore, in some sort, the same objective, because they
had a similar origin, I have felt moved to remonstrate about this
goal you seem to have set for yourself, namely, Pleasure. Pleas
ure as a goal, my boy, is like drinking only the foam upon your
champagne and then throwing the rich liquor, which is beneath,
to the dogs. Pleasure, of your kind, is possible only in youth.
And youth is so brief — my boy — lasts such a little while — It
is not worth living, alone, for. Long years come after it, Alexis
Sergiewitch — sobering years — to all — when pleasure — as
you interpret it — is not only unreachable — but ridiculous.
Long years — which pleasure cannot help us to meet — to live
through. But there is something that persists and is great, both
in youth and age; and that is service — service to man — to

PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 123

Russia — without hope — or wish for reward — and duty." In
the voice that was speaking there was no spirit of dictation, no
command, no I-am-holier-than-thou tone, only a great kindness.
Alexis Sergiewitch could feel it shining upon him warmly, like a
generous, all- vivifying sun.

"You have refused to perform your duties in the office. No
one, under me, can eat the bread of our blessed Emperor without
giving return, according to his strength, his ability. I cannot
permit, in honor, & filching from him." The word filching touched
the ears of Alexis Sergiewitch unpleasantly.

"When you learn to substitute duty for desire, you yourself
will be happier, too. You will have found something to live for.
You will be richer."

This closing sentence sent defensive thoughts, not altogether
flattering, flying like dust-clouds across the surface of his mind.
He had the intelligence to grasp very distinctly the expanded
meaning of the old man's words. He knew upon the instant that
there was truth in them, and that he could put up only with
things that Were pleasant. He could not suffer. He was not
brave enough, spiritually, to learn how. He could not put up,
for an instant, with boredom. It was necessary for him, he knew,
to keep himself wrapped about with joy. He must feel contin
ually the titillation of happiness that was changing. He must
keep himself continually in a mental world that both enchanted
his senses and made him happy. He could not subsist upon the
same kind of mental food as his fellow-workers in the office. The
long, dull, dutiful, unmarked working days of ordinary human
ity would be death to him. That was probably the difference, he
thought upon the moment, between the mental atmosphere
poets live in and that of people who are not poets. He saw, in a
cruel, clarifying flash, that unconsciously he had been reversing
the normal, healthful, conditions of living. He was becoming
that most perilous thing, for which wise life makes no provision
— but sadness — the rare, the exceptional.

"I have not so much myself to live for," the little old man was
continuing, in a sort of chastened voice which caught his ear
sharply and which hurt him, "not so much love — not so much

124 THE PENITENT

happiness — But perhaps I was not good enough to deserve it,"
he concluded soberly. "So I work for others. I work to bring
God's good into the world. I put service in the place of self."
The old man was becoming now a pitiful figure.

Varying emotions swept confusingly over Alexis Sergiewitch.
They swayed him now this way, now that, as he listened to the
old man's words. He viewed clearly as Count Woronzow spoke
that other, that different world of work, of duty, for which he
had no ability and not sufficient respect. But it was what made,
what safeguarded mankind, he was forced to admit.

"The impersonal good that you get from helping others —
with no wish for return — has something in it that satisfies, that
armors the soul; you might call it the manna of the spirit. Self,
my boy, is a little, shabby thing to live for. Self, however, is all
that little minds can find. But we must pity, not blame, them who
have eyes for nothing else. I thank God that He has given me the
eyes — to see something else. With the power to see comes obliga
tion, and then the joy of service.

"When I am stern with you, Alexis Sergiewitch, it is duty,

not revenge. Duty, as I see it. I may not always be right. I

pray to God for light. I have no help. I live in lonely outposts

— for years at a time — the hard life of a soldier, a pioneer. The

blood of me goes to make the desert bloom."

Pushkin was listening to a new poetry, the poetry that the
heart of great men makes. In nobility of nature he recognized a
poetry superior to that of words. He felt again that queer little
jostle of mind he had felt first the night in Petersburg when he
had listened to his inspired friend, Ryleiev, unfold his unselfish
dream for the freedom of man. Evidently there were outposts in
the unmapped Land of Poesie, which he, the fashionable, petted
Pushkin, did not know and had not suspected.

"Whenever anything happens to wound me — to grieve me,"
the kind old voice which the years had tempered was continuing,
"I perform some fresh service for my fellow-men."

The pause that followed swung in upon them with the power
of a sea that is silent in its surging. Then the conversation
changed as a tide changes that has reached its full, and in Count

PUSHKIN AND COUNT WORONZOW 125

Woronzow the entertaining courtier took the place of the as
cetic, the reformer, and to a question of young Pushkin's he re
plied :

" Yes — I saw him once, face to face — your hero — Napoleon
in the battle. It was on the smooth and level land, just this side
of the Polish border, in the beginning of that fateful autumn,
when he was first turning his face toward what he thought was
glory — and Russia. As usual, he was commanding in person.
I was in command myself that day of a detachment under Ba-
gration. Bagration, you know, had ninety thousand men at one
time on the Niemen. It was what you might call the flower of the
Russian army. He was hot-headed. He wanted to give battle at
once. But Barclay de Tolly refused. At the first light — at
dawn — we were right opposite the enemy. Our play, as you
know, was to withdraw — to withdraw — refuse to give battle,
lure them on — into the heart of the country, where winter and
cold would destroy colossally — as the arms of man could not.
Barclay de Tolly kept making Bagration retreat. He had to do
it, you see, to keep up with him. He was no mean tactician, and
Bagration, who had been to school to Suwarow in the art of war,
had a genius for protecting retreats. Before I knew what was
happening, there I was, face to face with him! What do you
suppose he looked like? A god — a pagan god; white, relentless,
beautiful, and unmoved."

Count Woronzow was now rapidly making the sign of the
cross. An expression that united ecstasy and fear was upon his
face.

"That was what he really was, not a man, a pagan god — the
spirit of evil — come out of the South into our pious, God
fearing Russia, to destroy the work of the Cross.

" I knew it then. I knew he was the spirit of evil, made incar
nate. I spurred my horse. I started toward him. With God hi
my heart I would have destroyed him. I felt the strength. I felt
the courage. A bugle-call rang out, clear, pure, shattering as the
first sun ray. In between him and me swept the rhythmic feet of
protecting Polish cavalry. First, the light hussars; then the
heavy dragoons — those pitiful, eloquent, dramatic Poles, who

i26 THE PENITENT

were of so little account in the humdrum of a long siege." He
paused here for the full effect of his words to be felt by his youth
ful listener. Then in a changed voice, whose distributed empha
sis could not be missed, he remarked: "The Polish cavalry,
Alexis Sergiewitch, is to the army what the genius is to life;
something splendidly effective, but only in rare moments. The
commonplace, broadly considered, is far more important."

Back alone in his room that night, Alexis Sergiewitch did not
like to contemplate the fact that the life he led was, as Count
Woronzow had endeavored to point out, frequently ridiculous,
and almost always exaggerated. He felt dimly, to be sure, and
often enough, without any one's help the wrongness, the unrea
son of his acts. But he did not like to confront unpleasant facts.
He did not like, either, to plan a way to avoid them. It suited him
better to put away their disagreeable memory, with a gay and
eloquent gesture, and to flee for comfort to that invisible world of
creative power, which Count Woronzow was so disposed to be
little, where he, too, by means of what the world calls folly, could
reign superbly.

CHAPTER VIII
THE ART EXHIBIT

SOCIAL and intellectual Petersburg was on its way to the Art
Exhibit. It had opened, under the patronage of Alexander, in
what was called the Engelhardt Salon, a semi-public place, where
promenade concerts were given in winter, sometimes great balls,
and where conventions had been called. It was good, the Em
peror thought, to develop interest in impersonal things such as
painting, music, the dance, and to divert the popular mind from
politics and affairs governmental.

The painters exhibiting, it is hardly necessary to state, were
not Russians. Petersburg was a city where there was little that
was genuinely Russian, and where most things were imported,
including the current speech, except food, the dance, and the
earth upon which the buildings, copied from those of other na
tions, were built.

In this hastily, sketchily improvised civilization of the Far
North, where necessarily there must be much lacking, in this
mad, willful attempt to make life sumptuous and rich without
the careful, complacent aid of time, there was nothing old, noth
ing venerable, save perhaps the pitiful human race and its endless
continuance. There was nothing here hallowed by years and af
fection. There was nothing made interesting or important by
past generations, by their love, by their efforts, or by their ca
prices. There was no native expression here in the North hi ar
chitecture, either stone or wood, or in painting, of the reasoned,
patiently evolved life of the people. There had been no eloquent,
inspired, shadowing Middle Age in this country to temper richly
the present, or to pile lavishly its ecstatic treasures about them.
All was new, glaring, harsh, imitated, dull.

In the proud palaces of Petersburg, where moved people so
richly dressed, there were no superb accumulations from the past,
from ancestors, that belonged here by right of origin. They, the

128 THE PENITENT

present owners, were frequently superior to their surroundings,
while princely families of the south of Europe to-day are occa
sionally inferior to theirs.

The rich Petersburgers lived gayly, uncaringly, amid the false
splendors, filched and furnished backgrounds, of alien races.
This, unconsciously absorbed through the eyes, the senses, had
no little to do with their mental suppleness, their astonishing in
tellectual receptivity. And they who were on their way to the
Art Exhibit, the members of Petersburg's polite world, and the
members of its mentally alert world, the intelligentsia formed a
mosaic, an ethnological mosaic, as richly varied and as geograph
ically interesting as the background formed by their homes and
their belongings.

Few of them — almost none of them, in fact — were of pure
Russian blood. Among their ancestors had been Tartars, Greeks,
Georgians, Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes, Germans, Wallachians,
English, Scots, and so forth and so forth; a list too great to enu
merate or to give in half its entirety. This had shed upon the
conduct of their lives contradictory impulses, conflicting energies.

The people who had made the beautiful but to them foreign
furniture amid which they lived their dissipated lives and played
their parts, and who had formed the great society of the days be
fore the Terreur, which they adored so and copied assiduously,
had been a race of one blood. They had possessed the social har
mony that comes of homogeneity. But now the powerful oneness
of the past of them they copied was broken up, even in France,
just as it had been already racially broken up in them here, the
Russians. All that the world of Alexander's day could do was to
look back upon it, the great past, just as we look back, perhaps,
at some proud moment of Greece, with regret for a vanished ideal.
This interesting ethnological world-map, which was Petersburg
society in the eighteen-twenties, was not, perhaps, readily read
able by all. It was only under the pressure of rare or intense
moments that the hidden impulses of the racially varied people
who lived here showed or became effective. In small but his
trionically unimportant ways all individuals, in their petty dis
contents, hatreds, their personal preferences, give expression

THE ART^EXHIBIT 129

again to the old primitive impulses of races. He who is nearest
to the primitive past cannot be depended upon so greatly in the
present. His blood is not sufficiently chastened. Not yet sin
cerely enough does he worship civilization, which has the power
not only to subdue, but to kill. There is a lack of harmony within.
The inner man is not at peace. He is still a hybrid. That is what
Petersburg society was. And that is what its leader, Alexander,
was too, an exquisite, political hybrid, not reducible to exact
cataloguing anywhere.

The cosmopolitanism of Petersburg, its astonishing, complex,
hothouse, human growths has never been equaled in the world,
and it has been curiously neglected by the social historian. Cos
mopolitanism, that brilliant, useless thing, that superb ineffi
ciency, suggesting the glowing, golden surface of a seedless
orange, was to be studied at its best here, with its shifting shad
ows, its disconcerting complexities. Cosmopolitanism means,
usually, an end of desirable, genuine things, but almost never a
beginning. It is the last fine flowering of a garden soon to be de
stroyed, which is permitted to bear no fruit.

The paintings to-day on view, in the otherwise bare and ugly
rooms, were by three Frenchmen who were popular just at pres
ent in Russia. Carlo Vernet, his younger brother Horace, and
the portraits painted here some years before by Joseph de Mais-
tre. whose daughter, Countess de Laval, now held the salon
most French in Petersburg.

When the carriage was announced at the Narischkin Palace, it
found Sophie Narischkin ready and waiting. At that moment
her mother entered. She wore a large lace hat upon her curly
head, and in her corsage a bouquet of fresh, dewy, red roses just
sent by Alexander. She told her daughter with a sort of nervous
haste, always a little impressed by the clear, truthful eyes she
confronted, that she would have to drive on without her and
meet Alexander at the Exhibit. They were, as of course her
daughter knew, leaving town in the morning, and she would be
obliged to call at her dressmaker's on the way. She had quite
forgotten, until just now, about the necessity to do this. She in
sisted, however, upon Sophie going on immediately in the wait-

130 THE PENITENT

ing carriage. She herself would take another carriage, she ex
plained, and come to join them as soon as the engagement with
the dressmaker was at an end. She seemed impatient for her
daughter to go. She was eager in fact to be rid of her. Her daugh
ter knew only too well what this meant, this freedom and safety
to do as she pleased, while the rest of her friends were busily en
gaged elsewhere. She knew, too, that argument would be useless.
She drove away without her.

Alexander was outside the Engelhardt Salon in his carriage
awaiting her. She looked at him with the old thrill of mingled
love and pride.

"But — my darling — surely you have been ill since I saw
you? " the grave, sweet voice with its deep heart tones questioned.

"No, indeed! I am quite well" — not mentioning the hemor
rhage of so short a time before.

" But — to me — you look ill — or changed. What is the mat
ter, darling? " — the old fear clutching frantically at his heart.

"Is it not this dress?" To conceal her increasing thinness
from his kind, wise eyes, she had had gowns made of colored
gauze, with long sleeves shirred on both sides to the wrist, and
high, shirred collars. The one she wore to-day was dark blue.

"Perhaps it is, dear!" — grasping at anything that would
drive away for a moment the fear he did not have the strength to
confront. "Where is your mother?" — hastily, a new surprise
in his eyes. " She promised to meet me here."

"I merely came on ahead; that is all — in order not to keep
you waiting. She is with her dressmaker," she fabricated hesi
tatingly. "She will be here very soon."

"I am sorry she could not come with you." There was regret
in his voice.

"She will not be late, I assure you." She could not meet his
eyes as she said this. She felt small and mean. She was forced to
the untruth to save him. They entered the Exhibition together
now, and the whisper was passed around :

"The Emperor is here/"

All eyes were now turned upon the eloquent figure of Alex
ander. Members of the court circle hastened to pay their re-

THE ART EXHIBIT 131

spects. Young Prince Odojewsky led Sophie Narischkin trium
phantly away to show her a picture which had impressed him.
It was Horace Vernet's dramatic canvas "Mazeppa," the one
showing the naked body of the hero bound to a horse which
hungry wolves with red, out-lolling tongues were following with
eagerness to destroy.

"Do you know, Mademoiselle Narischkin, why that picture
impresses me so?" questioned his frail, somewhat effeminate
voice. She turned toward him kind eyes that comprehended.
"It is because those ravening wolves, with their pointed, lecher
ous tongues, are the griefs that have followed me since the death
of my mother. That is just the way I feel! The picture tells it."
The last words trembled in his throat. Grief was choking him.
"I knew you would understand." He looked at her gratefully.
"It comforts me to see you."

She on her part thought then, without daring like him the
satisfaction of expression, that the wolves were like the fears, the
mental torments that beset her. Only in her case they had over
taken and caught her. And now they were eating her up.

Prince Odojewsky was sensitive and gentle. She liked him.
He was blond, too, and young like herself. Baratinsky, poet and
nobleman, with the dark, supple beauty of an Asiatic, was bow
ing before her. She remembered his love-song and her heart
responded. He had the deep, arresting, eloquent eyes that belong
to desert races. There was something about them that echoed in
her heart. He had been greatly delighted, he told her, with the
chalk drawings which the younger Vernet had made of the head
of Napoleon. He was just on the point of asking her to go to look
at them with him, when the younger of the brothers Mouraviefl-
Apostol, the one with the sensitive mouth that trembled so
easily, came to tell her to be sure not to miss Horace Vernet's
picture of Prince Poniatowsky on horseback by the banks of
the Elster. He went on to explain, with boyish enthusiasm, that
one of the pupils of Horace Vernet had seen this very scene, just
the moment before the Prince leaped from the white horse he was
riding into the river to his death. From this description Vernet
had made the painting.

132

THE PENITENT

Mouravieff-Apostol was the grandson of a famous hetman.
Therefore things Polish appealed to him. He had inherited, too,
a little of his distinguished father's art-sense.
^Baratinsky was sorry he could not have her to himself awhile.
Some one always took her away. It was his usual luck. He was
always planning, scheming to be alone with her. But she seemed
as elusive as she was frail physically. Lately he knew she was
worried about something. He longed dully to shield her, to help
her. But, of course, some one came and took her from him. He
was always baffled. There was never any chance for him.

This group of young people were sympathetic temperamentally.
They enjoyed each other. They sought each other's society.
Alexander looked over from time to time and saw them. He
wished dully that it was one of these young men his daughter was
to marry, and not Count Schuvalow, for whom he felt more and
more an antipathy he could not conquer. Of the three he would
have selected Prince Odojewsky. Yet he knew that young Bara-
tinsky was more than fond of her.

Sophie Narischkin, while apparently listening politely and
with interest to what was being said to her, and replying intelli
gently enough, was wondering why her mother did not come.
The time was too long now. It would soon begin to arouse sus
picion. Why had she done this? And to-day! And where was
she? She had seen Count Schuvalow, at a distance, down a
cross-street, on horseback, with some of his men friends, as she
drove here. So she was not with him. Then with whom was she?
Could it be Lasky? He was in the city now, she knew, rehearsing
for an early fall opening. She had read it in the "Petersburg
News." Had she driven in a hired carriage, which no one could
recognize, to the rooms of Lasky? Had she been so foolish, so
reckless? She believed in her heart that that was where she was.
She could not well doubt her recklessness now. It was Lasky she
was so crazy over. It was Lasky she was with! Fear over
whelmed her.

Count Alexis Orlow, Prince Viazemsky, and Schukowsky the
poet now made their appearance. They told her young compan
ions merrily that they had been permitted to monopolize her

THE ART EXHIBIT 133

long enough. Schukowsky stayed only a moment, however. He
was one of the ugliest-featured men she ever saw, with a face like
a Chinese puzzle. But she liked him as every one else liked him
because of the nobility of his heart. She admired his writing, too.
He hoped she would look attentively at Carlo Vernet's drawing
of the valley of the Po. It was one of the set belonging to his
scenes from the Italian Campaigns of Napoleon. It was as good
as a trip to Italy. It had given him pleasure. It was like visiting
the battle-ground of the Conqueror. He hoped it would give her
pleasure, too. He bowed with old-fashioned grace, and went on.

Prince Viazemsky, of the penetrating gray eyes and bitter
tongue that spared no one, she did not like any better than her
father liked him. She had about the same attitude toward him.
He was always finding that humanity was baser than he thought
it. But he was a man of comprehensive cultivation and no slight
poetical gift. He had a scornful, disillusioned mind which
shocked her. He railed at everything and everybody. His sar
castic, revealing witticisms were current coin of mental exchange
in the society he frequented.

He inquired politely about her health. She knew he did not
believe her when she said that she was well. Then he hoped, with
an inflection of voice that asked a question without daring to
hope for an answer, to see, later, her mother. She felt that this
was a spider-web trap for her unwary tongue. She ignored the
stressed word. She spoke hastily of their departure on the mor
row for the summer home by the Gulf of Finland. After she said
this she knew that it was wrong. She wished she had not said it.
It told him that this was her mother's last afternoon in town.
The sly old fox knew that she would not waste it. He knew per
fectly well to what use she would put it. He did not remain long
after this. He soon left her alone with Count Orlow. He, per
haps, had merely wished to assure himself of something.

Count Alexis Orlow was a great gentleman, a trained courtier,
older than Viazemsky, and graver; blond, and retrospectively
handsome. She felt that he had a peculiar, mole-like quality of
burrowing into the mind secrets of people which one must guard
against. He was slightly of the old school in conversation, which

i34 THE PENITENT

rather pleased her. She liked the courtly, deferential men of the
past. She did not find him unpleasant. He declared he knew
that her mind was occupied with something foreign to the pic
tures, noticing the shadows that were flitting across her youthful
face. He laughingly begged her to confide in him, and asked
abruptly if he were not correct. Why did shefiot tell him what it
was, he insisted. Surely it was safe to confide in an old man like
him.

She knew on the instant that he wished to find out if she knew
what sort of a person her mother was, and especially what she
was doing at this moment, when he knew the Emperor was ex
pecting her here. And that was exactly what he was meditating
about. In fact, this question had been a most absorbing one with
him of late. He and Prince Viazemsky were never tired of dis
cussing the subject pro and con, and the evident blindness of
Alexander. He wondered if it were this knowledge or ill-health
that made her sad, meditative. All his conversation was a polite,
far-away attempt to satisfy this curiosity. Did she, or did she
not know? And if she knew, what did she think? Would she tell
Alexander? Or would she help conceal it?

Viazemsky was the talkative Russian, greedy for news, for
human observations, happenings, because his ancestors had lived
upon lonely estates in the country and had lacked companion
ship. Count Alexis Orlow, on the other hand, was impelled by a
different motive. He had a hobby. He loved emotions, espe
cially the emotions of women, just as he loved swords, war, horses,
gorgeous uniforms, and his huge, velvet-hung palace, with its
pictures, its marbles. It was a stimulus which he needed and
sought. He procured it for himself just as he procured his fa
vorite wine. He amused himself by watching them, by dissect
ing, like the virtuoso he was, the petty impulses that led to these
emotions. That was what he was busying himself with mentally
now, while he was looking down into the honest, childish, blue
eyes of Sophie Narischkin.

Prince Viazemsky had passed on. He was now pausing in
front of the picture of Madam Pushkin, painted by Joseph de
Maistre, when Alexis Sergiewitch was four years old. It was a

THE ART EXHIBIT 135

glowing canvas, a sort of gorgeous bloom from a tropic jungle.
It was an arresting picture even to the casual observer, who
cared nothing for art. It was, perhaps, a trifle perverse. It
showed the erratic, unexpected flowering of equatorial blood
in an Arctic land, where its strangeness had been still further
heightened by wealth, by leisure. It was troubling, unique, but
at the same time attractive. A chance passer asked Prince Via-
zemsky, audaciously, what he thought of it. The reply was no
less audacious: "Can you wash a negro white?"

The lazy, handsome, dissipated, youthful face of Pushkin's
father was beside it. The eyes were shining with suppressed
eagerness to talk, to gossip. It showed remarkable zest for life.

Madam Woronzow was next in line, charming, queenly, friv
olous. She was the care-free aristocrat, the superior one, whom
no cry of the masses could reach. She was painted as she lived,
throned above them in a sort of imperial disdain. And for most
of the moral laws she kept the same lofty disdain.

Prince Viazemsky bent his aristocratic head carefully over the
pencil sketches that showed Napoleon. The fine lines of scorn
that marked his mouth were lessened. But he did pause to think
that Vernet was one of the first artists whom Napoleon had deco
rated. He looked long at the dashing " Poniatowsky " whose
name recalled to him the many lovers of Catherine the Great.
Few could draw a horse better than Vernet, he knew. He re
flected that he was one of the great battle painters of France.
Something of the respect he felt was expressed in his face. He
knew, too, that Horace Vernet adored poetry and liked to think
he used his brush as poets their pens. And because he prided
himself upon his exact knowledge, he was mentally estimating
how many of these pictures had been exhibited before and how
many were new. The only flattery Prince Viazemsky really en
joyed was that which he gave himself. No matter how strained
might be his relations with others, he was usually on good terms
with himself.

The young men belonging to the two secret societies were out
in force, all except Pestel and Kakhovsky. They could find no
pleasure in so gentle and unselfish a thing as art. There was

136 THE PENITENT

something about all of them that impressed an onlooker with the
fact, that although they were young in years, most of them, they
had had no youth. It had been destroyed by dissipation. Men
tally, emotionally, they had grown old too fast.

Ryleiev, the elder Mouravieff-Apostol, Prince Odojewsky, and
young Baratinsky were studying the pictures with interest. They
were discussing animatedly the dominant traits of Latin painters.
The canvases showed the highly perfected art-sense of France.
Prince Odojewsky was enthusiastic over the brothers Vernet.
"They were born with hands, with eyes which were trained for
this," he declared. "On both sides their ancestors were artists,
draughtsmen. Horace Vernet first opened his eyes in the palace
in which there were the best paintings of France. It takes two or
three generations — of specialization — to lift artistic power to a
height that is really of consequence. Look at the soldiers — in this
one — here! No one has known how to portray the soldier as
these men have."

"That is all very well," objected Baratinsky with profounder
critical acumen. "But there is a certain point of what you call
style that none of the Vernet family reached — to my mind."

"I agree with Baratinsky," chimed in Ryleiev. "They have
loved the applause of the crowd too much to choose with sufficient
care. Besides — great art is not produced so facilely. It came a
little too easy to them. The fine frenzy — of what, for a better
term, you might call of the soul. Don't you say so, Baratinsky?"

Baratinsky agreed a little too hastily; while Prince Odojewsky
added:

"Horace Vernet is young at the game yet. Wait awhile, boys!
Wait awhile!11

They enjoyed most the pictured faces of men of the Slav race
seen independently through a French painter's brush; men like
Count Woronzow, General Ravesky, Kutusov, Prince Galitzin,
Sergius Lvovitch Pushkin, a peculiar mingling of modern France
and savage Muscovy. Another reason they enjoyed these por
traits is because their race is interested solely in people.

The great, humane heart of Ryleiev looked out of his poet's
eyes somewhat sadly to-day. But he was dressed showily and in

THE ART EXHIBIT 137

bad taste as usual. He was regretting just now, in a way that
made him suffer, the plotting that was in progress against the
life of Alexander, whose aristocratic noble form his eyes followed
with an artist's sensitive pleasure. In the light of the moment,
he glimpsed the plot's baseness. He was vaguely wishing that he
could run away from the country and get out of it all. Sometimes
he wished he were dead. He was tired of the prolonged struggle
of life with duty.

"Look at the Emperor now!" he whispered to Prince Odo-
jewsky on a sudden; "standing there alone, in profile, against
that wall!"

The eyes of his young companion turned slowly from the pic
tures and obeyed his order. He had felt a certain thrill in the
voice of Ryleiev, who continued, sure of sympathetic under
standing in the poet, Prince Odojewsky:

"Faces whose physical beauty was like that of Alexander, my
friend, looked down from the marble of old Athenian friezes, or
else — out of delicate, patiently carved Alexandrian gems. Be
lieve me — we shall not soon again see such an one," he added
sadly. "How dull we are — you and I — and the rest!

"Imagine, will you," he explained in a tone which scorn of self
and his fellow-men dominated, "a handsome Greek athlete —
who looks like the ones who used to win in the games — so flex
ibly, so symmetrically is he formed, dressed in an ugly, uncomfort
able Russian military uniform, and poised upon the awkward,
uncertain edge of a social-political upheaval. And we blame
him! Who could hope to understand such a puzzling situation?
Who could control it?" The words made the same deep impres
sion upon his hearers that the thought had made upon him. In
the eyes of some of them there was regret mingled with shame.

"Can you get ahead of that for reasonless contrasts, my
friends? Can you get ahead of that !"

They did not reply. They, too, perhaps, were thinking some
thing similar only they did not have the courage to say it.

"And in his heart," after a pause added Odojewsky, "there is
something nobler than in his body."

Alexander had now circled the room. He had examined the

ij 8 THE PENITENT

paintings with pleasure and with intelligent comprehension. He
found upon the walls the pictured faces of former friends, former
youthful acquaintances, not only of Russia, but whom he had
known years ago, in Paris, in his boyhood. He looked carefully
at the numerous sketches of Napoleon, whom he generously
called the world's greatest organizer. He looked at Italian land
scapes which he had loved and visited. Carlo Vernet had out
spread patiently, truthfully, vast expanses of towns, of country.
He admired the powerful, the fresh brushing-in, of Horace Ver
net, who was one of the first to begin to break the iron classic
tradition, and whose expansive soul was hypnotized by love of
distant countries, exotic scenes, and the tragic episodes of his
tory. He enjoyed thoroughly these fine expressions of Latin
genius.

He had reached the side of his daughter again. With her were
two old gentlemen, faithful friends of the family, grands sei
gneurs of an earlier reign: Count Bobrinsky, now seventy-five
years old, the son of Catherine the Great and that proud profes
sional beauty, her lover, Gregory Orlow; and Count Cyril Razum-
owsky, usually slightly sentimental, his companion, who was a
nephew of the morganatic husband of the lovely dead Empress
of the mid-eighteenth century, Elizabeth Petrowna. Men of the
old school liked to associate together, in these days of social
disparity. Count Bobrinsky of the old days and Prince Viazem-
sky of the present could not understand each other. Mentally,
they were centuries apart. Society was broken up now into
numberless definite groups, marking every degree of shading
from the old opinions and way of living to the most reactionary
upholders of what is newest.

"Surely Madam Narischkin is not coming !" Alexander re
marked in a dull, disappointed voice to his daughter, somewhat
questioningly. She was glad that Prince Viazemsky and Count
Alexis Orlow were not beside them to hear this remark, but were
now watching them instead from a little distance. She could not
think of anything to reply that seemed satisfactory. She was
saved the necessity luckily, however, by the rapid, somewhat
breathless entry of Marie Antonova herself. Sophie Narischkin

THE ART EXHIBIT 139

looked at her sharply, quickly. The delicate, wire-held edge of
her large lace hat was bent slightly. The roses Alexander sent,
which had been so fresh when she started, were completely
crushed now, and, worst of all, pinned on in a different place.
It was evident at once, to her trained, appraising eyes, that
Marie Antonova was not her usual poised self, that she was more
than a little confused at meeting so suddenly this battery of eyes.
Alexander saw nothing of this, however. He smiled down upon
her tenderly, and held out a hand in glad greeting.

"I have had the most annoying time!" she pouted. "The
draping of one of my gowns was wrong. She misunderstood me
— the modiste — entirely. It had to be taken off and draped over
again! The model was gone, as bad luck would have it. I had to
stand for all the redraping myself. I was forced to do it —
to remain right there until it was done — because we are leaving
to-morrow. I am so sorry to be late!" She looked nervously
about to judge of the effect of this impromptu explanation. Her
daughter knew at once that it was a lie. She knew that back of it
was some fresh indiscretion. She wondered wildly if the others
knew it too.

"It was too bad for you to miss the pictures," the voice of
Alexander was replying gently, with evident intention to calm
her. The more her daughter observed her, the more signs she saw
of her mother's agitation and her hasty dressing.

" It is getting too late for me to make the round of the gallery
again," Alexander was declaring gently. Marie Antonova was
secretly glad. Pictures bored her. But she smiled sympatheti
cally her regret. Sophie Narischkin knew that smile. It usually
meant dust successfully flung in some one else's eyes, a triumph
which it was impossible to acknowledge.

Count Bobrinsky and Count Cyril Razumowsky greeted her
politely. They blandly paid her the social compliments she
was accustomed to hear. It was a part of their tradition and
training.

Count Alexis Orlow and Prince Viazemsky, under pretense of
examining critically another picture, had drawn perceptibly
nearer. Sophie Narischkin saw this move. She knew what it

THE PENITENT

meant. It was really her mother whom they wished to observe
critically, and not the picture at all. She understood.

"Notice the light in her eyes," remarked Viazemsky in a whis
per, "and, her hair!"

"Yes," replied Count Orlow, "and the slippers she could put
off and on quickly — without a maid. And the Grecian robe,
sparsely fastened down the front."

" Where do you think she was, Orlow? "

"Not with Schuvalow!" replied Viazemsky with decision.
"I saw him in the street as I came here."

"Then it must be Lasky."

"Lasky? Yes, probably."

"She does not put the slightest sense in her affairs. Nothing
but caprice, passion, enter into them. No plan ! No forwarding
of ambition! No fear — no consideration of consequences —
nothing"

"It is just as if she had no head at all. She flies ahead like
a sailboat with the wind," declared the discriminating Prince
angrily. "I have studied her, and other women of her stamp,
because of a certain pleasure the study gives me — for a long
time, Viazemsky. Passion, I tell you, with Marie Antonova is a
drug which dilutes the reality of the unpleasant but necessary
wearinesses of life. It is the narcotic which her weak but slightly
vicious nature demands. It dulls her, pleasurably, to duties of
all kinds, which she detests. And it is largely a physical question
with her, too, do you not think so? It is a need that must be
supplied, like food, and of which she thinks — if she ever thinks
about anything — with no more shame, or misgiving."

" But her daughter is not deceived by her any more, the way
Alexander is!" declared Viazemsky with conviction. "I have
seen it in her face to-day for the first time. Believe me — she
knows. She was worried for fear her mother would not get here
on time, and Alexander would drive away and happen upon her
in a hired carriage — in some questionable locality. She was
worried, too, about her personal appearance as she entered. Did
you not observe her? Did you not see with what critical eyes she
looked at her?"

THE ART EXHIBIT 141

" You may be right, Viazemsky ! I rather think you are right."

"The daughter is not only finer, but far more intelligent than
the mother."

The too hastily arrayed appearance of Marie Antonova was
not lost, either, upon the two wise old worldlings who had just
addressed her after the manner of men of their inherited position
and courtly habits. They knew her as the others knew her.
Alexander alone was innocent of what was going on in the minds
of his associates. He was happy as usual in her mere presence.

"There is an important matter awaiting decision in my cabi
net," Alexander was explaining. "If you do not care to remain
longer, I will see you both to your carriage. I came only for the
pleasure of being with you a little while," directing the words to
Marie Antonova. She signified her readiness to go, without
looking at him, and they walked toward the door together.

When the two women were seated in the carriage, Alexander
leaned toward Marie Antonova, and told her happily that the
important work awaiting him pertained to his now fully matured
plan of spending some weeks alone with them by the Gulf of
Finland, while the Empress and her ladies-in-waiting and some
of the court were still at Tsarskoje Selo, where they had gone
early in the spring.

This piece of news delighted Sophie Narischkin. She looked at
him with loving eyes. He, however, looked tenderly at Marie
Antonova, expecting her to say something, to be glad, too.
Marie Antonova was apathetic. She was indifferent. She was
too eager to get home to care what anybody wanted. But as
usual he did not notice her mood, a thing which his daughter had
recently told herself that he never seemed to do, no matter how
marked it might be. This showed how great was his love, his
trust. He believed unquestioningly that her affection for him
was as great as his for her. It was just this quality of deep, abid
ing faith which touched the heart of his daughter. He left them
with the happy promise of joining them as early as the next day
but one, by the Gulf of Finland.

As they drove rapidly homeward, Sophie Narischkin ob
served carefully the indifferent, to-day slightly dissipated, face

1 42 THE PENITENT

of her mother, who was so busy thinking her own thoughts,
thoughts which always excluded her, the daughter.

She was surprised to find that the great mass of her mother's
black curls was not fastened up at all, but instead merely shoved
hastily under the hat which held it. The curliness somewhat
covered up the disorder. She hoped wildly that no one else had
observed this. The crushed red roses had left wet, dirty stains
along the front of her dress. She understood better now the ill-
concealed confusion of her entrance, which could not be delayed
longer, and which she was forced to make.

But it was terrible, this clear, disillusioned seeing, which was
hers for the moment, this sudden snatching away from her eyes
of the protecting veils of illusion and happiness. It was like living
in a roofless house in a land where the rain fell continually.

For a moment she envied Alexander his happy innocence and
the faith that accompanied it. She wished she too could have
it back again.

CHAPTER IX
DAWN ON THE ACKERMANN STEPPE

" IT is a crowd of horsemen. Russian cavalry, as I live!"

"Are you sure?" questioned Sari.

"Yes! I can see the uniforms plainly," replied Alexis Sergie-
witch.

"They must have been sent by Count Woronzow to find you
and bring you back," declared the gypsy.

" Let them search ! I don't care! They cannot find me."

This conversation took place a little more than a year later,
after the dramatic duel in the cherry orchard. It had been a year
of friction and unhappiness. Count Woronzow, according to his
conception of duty, had kept on trying to make a conventional
keeper of accounts out of Alexis Sergiewitch whose mind did not
reach beyond the two gray canvas covers of his ledger, and who
was devoted to obedience, accuracy, and order. He could not do
it because it was impossible. He was disappointed. Never before
had he been given such refractory material.

He set out to accustom him to regular, to daily toil. He wished
to make him appreciate the reasonable rewards of patience, of
discipline. In this young land, Russia, where there was so much
to be done in the way of material labor, in developing, in up
building a country which was rich and new, there must, of course,
be countless young men, just like Alexis Sergiewitch, whose per
sonality, whose independent living must be crushed for the pur
pose of making them dutiful, unrebelling slaves. Count Woron
zow believed that this was not only right, but necessary. It
meant the preserving, the developing of his native land. He had
given up his life to this despite the opportunities for freedom, for
leisure, his colossal wealth offered. Why should not others do
the same?

If he was occasionally harsh, it was because his effort to be just
toward all was great. No one under him could eat the bread of

144 THE PENITENT

his blessed Master without giving a return in labor. But with
Alexis Sergiewitch he could do nothing. He would neither work
nor obey. And not only this, but he was going the limit in every
excess. He had been leading the wildest kind of life since he came
to Bessarabia. He had caused old Count Woronzow sleepless
nights and days of worry. He did not think the work assigned
him was of importance. He looked down upon it with a sort of
contempt. Alexander had trusted this wayward youth to him to
be reformed. But try as he would he could do nothing with him.
There was nothing to do but confess failure. He who had gone
bravely to battle with Napoleon must confess to failure in the
person of this slender youth. That discipline, that honor, to
which he had given belief throughout his life, were useless here.
He wondered from time to time if he would be able to explain
to Alexander why he had failed, just why the young man was so
insubordinate.

He saw plainly that in Alexis Sergiewitch there vibrated emo
tions, passions, mightier than the power of civilization to subdue
or dominate. He understood, after these weary months of ex
perimenting, that sometimes the call of his black blood, the in
herited past in him, outweighed the present or any present-day
consideration. In him there was something entirely different
from the other boys in his Counting-Room, who daily sat upon
their tall stools as they were bidden, and figured. There was a
contradictory, resentful, dominant power of life such as can be
found only under tropical suns. Count Woronzow knew, of
course, that his ancestors on one side, the Russian side, had been
tent-men from the cityless uplands of Asia, where the thirst of
the desert is great; restless nomads, next, of old Muscovy; and on
the other side from the black lands of Africa.

He kept wondering if he could explain this satisfactorily to
Alexander. He must explain! It was not his habit to confess
futility or failure. He was seeing more clearly, too, that people
who create aesthetically — and especially if they can create with
power — must in some way be closer to the unnamed forces of
nature, which man cannot change so easily or make over for his
approbation. There must be in them, along with the cultivation

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 145

of their own day, the seemingly inharmonious combination of
the child and the savage. When the connecting proof cannot be
in this life, one may be assured that some unweighed law of na
ture has swept upon them the motive-power of the past. He saw,
in short, when he could not explain to his own conscience Push
kin's unreasoning insubordination, his contradictory traits of
character, that he would have to fall back upon unexplored, un
explained ethnic laws, profound, organic.

He could not make him work with regularity. It was impos
sible. He had some of the faithlessness, the lack of dependable
persistency which characterizes the black people. With them
pleasure will slip in between just like sunlight through the chinks
of a hut. He lacked, too, the moral energy, the purpose of direc
tion, of the white races. He saw this clearly now after so many
months of observation, of discouraging experience, but the
question was, would the dispatches he had been sending to Peters
burg make the Government understand it too? Alexis Sergie-
witch resembled a new variety of peach-tree which he had im
ported recently, and whose roots would not take hold readily of
Russian soil.

One day, after a particularly wild night of gambling and quar
reling in the Kabak of Samus, where Alexis Sergiewitch had not
only lost so heavily that he had begun to pawn his clothing, but
had created a disturbance that was setting tongues wagging, he
thought of sending him to Ismail, to the fortress there, for disci
pline. When this was reported to Alexis Sergiewitch, he felt
rather pleased than otherwise. The Oriental name, the far un
known place to the south by the shore, tickled his romantic sense.
It made him dream of adventure. He felt a hero of romance.
Then, too, the name reminded him of one of his childhood's
heroes, Suwarow, and that general's military feats there. His
grandfather had told him endless stories of poor, old, bent,
grumbling, rheumatic-bodied Suwarow, who soaked his feet,
said his prayers, and planned the bloody massacre of Ismail. In
Ismail he would be out of sight and hearing, for a time at least,
while gossip subsided in Kishenev.

But Count Woronzow did not send him there. Another of his

146 THE PENITENT

hobbies intervened. This time it was his devotion to service.
There Pushkin would be useless save for the fact that he would
suffer merited punishment. But punishment for its own sake was
waste. He must unite punishment with service. In this way he
would be serving his government twice in one act. After some
more confused and not too pleasant meditation, in which he
prayed repeatedly to be freed from anger and be given vision,
he decided to send him on a mission through southern Bessarabia
to report upon the injury the locusts were doing to the young
fruit-trees which had been planted by his order.

This command enraged Alexis Sergiewitch. He lost his head.
He saw in it merely a desire to humiliate him. He fell into a
passion of unreasoning temper. A poet, a dandy of the great
world like himself, a leader of fashion, to spend a summer count
ing little black bugs upon peach-trees! He would not do it. His
stormy and excitable nature rose in rebellion. He wrote a curt
note of refusal to Count Woronzow and ran away.

And just at that dramatic moment he thought of Sari of the
summer before, and how one night in the Kabak of Samus, she
had pointed out, when they were standing by the door together
where the green-painted scythes were piled, the direction of
their gypsy tabor; "Down there — beyond Jacob Eisenstein's
meierhof" she had said. He joined them as they were breaking
camp and starting south. That had been several days ago. Now
he and Sari were sitting comfortably together in the back of the
front wagon that led the way, while a herd of untethered saddle
horses trotted after them. He was wearing gypsy clothes like the
rest of the men. A red handkerchief was over his head and tied
under his chin. Over this he wore his hat, and Sari had laughed
and insisted upon making, with a coal, very black eyebrows for
him to whom nature did not give any. Now his face was tanned
and wind-burned. He was as black as the others.

General Ingoff, with a detachment of cavalry, sent to find him
and bring him back, dashed by with noisy uprearing of horses*
hoofs as they passed the untied ponies, which proceeded to stam
pede. They pirouetted upon their thoroughbreds like a Moorish
"fantasia" on the edge of the desert. Alexis Sergiewitch looked

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 147

boldly out at the old man's dull, sluggish blue eyes with the
round, protruding flesh-sacks beneath them. He saw his red
pouchy cheeks like a little red squirrel's distended with nuts,
they were so close together. He felt happy and gay at the suc
cessful deception, and very safe. His heart laughed within him.
He tightened gayly the arm that encircled Sari.

After General Ingoff and his men had whirled on and out of
sight, Sari's father, who was driving the head wagon, left the
road. He turned southeast toward Ismail, where he plunged in
among the pathless grasses. Sometimes these grasses were so
high that it gave them the sensation of swimming. Scents of
earth, of leaves, were in his nostrils. Here, once in a while, they
passed a lonely, detached izba, that looked as if it were lost.
Flocks of blue-legged quail, which are poisonous and not fit to
eat, started up with terror, spread out their short wings and scam
pered away. Flocks of birds swept over their heads, on their way
to the lush marshes of the South. Once they caught glimpse of a
distant caravan whose wagons were drawn by huge Mongolian
camels, which even at a distance looked ragged and shabby at
this season, because their winter coat had fallen off in patches.
Then the unmarked loneliness began and did not end.

After they had traveled toward the southeast for days, still
in the direction of Ismailow, where they were comfortably sure of
not encountering traveling merchant caravans or a detachment
of border soldiery headed by Greek officers on duty of inspec
tion, a crevasse or small canon, in which were trees and running
water, broke diagonally the level monotony of grass. Here they
camped.

After the unhappy, exasperating year in Kishenev, this was a
great relief. There they had tried to make Pushkin live like a
convict. They had hounded him day and night. He had been
under sharp and irritating supervision. He had had no liberty
except what he stole, and then paid for in punishment, in im
prisonment in the Guard-House. Every movement had been
spied upon, then reported.

And now came this, this blessed Eden; freedom from duty,
freedom from obligation of every kind. He decided impulsively

i48 THE PENITENT

that this was the life for which he was made. He would not go
back to civilization. He would give up the white man's existence,
which is largely legalized slavery at best. With the gypsies he
would keep to the life of pagan nature. He would be free, happy,
untrammeled. Pleasure was the only life that he could compre
hend. Just now this gave him pleasure. Because of his sensi
tiveness, his adaptability, he was influenced as usual by anything
that made him happy for a moment. And it was usually easy for
him to justify himself just as he was doing now. Restraint,
civilized living, restrictions, are for the mediocre, he kept telling
himself. They could not have anything permanently lasting with
a person like him. He was able at length to reach the pleasant,
the self -laudatory conclusion that it takes a certain amount of
dullness to lead a well-regulated life. Dullness is to life what
blinders are to a horse was his last flattering deduction. They
shut off the alluring vision of the forbidden roads one should not
travel. With this he flung himself heart and soul into the life
about him. And there was much in it, in truth, that suited him.

Now that inherited past was not only calling him, but claim
ing him. Atavistic flesh-memories, which he did not understand,
were beginning to move dimly within him. Contact with the
wild stirred turbulent longings and emotions. Sometimes, over
his subconscious self, when sunset was dyeing the vast levels
about him, there swept, as invisible wind sweeps and then shivers
the surface of water, but far below the insistent boundary of
speech, forgotten cell-memories of the colors of Africa, that land
so wonderful in hue-tingling sensations — like a delirium —
too powerful and too fleeting for words to express. For a swift
instant it was as if his spirit glimpsed the ancient, astounding
sunsets of the desert. Vast visions piled up within him, towering,
trembling, like the huge, up-piled, white, Quixote cloud-castles
of summer. And then at touch of passion which enslaved him, at
touch of the hand of Sari, they crumbled, they fell. The en
nobling sensation lost its gold. It was transmuted into base
metal.

The camping place was the level land by the edge of the canon.
Here he and Sari slept upon a blanket. A tree growing lower

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 149

down within the wall of the canon-side, hung over them like a
roof. Sometimes, when the metallic sheen of the heat lightning
of late summer brightened the night, he could see the strange,
ice-green eyes of Sari, whose color never ceased to be a surprise.
She had the round, somewhat dry, muscled superiority of body
which is the property of races not white, and who have not known
padded luxury. He who had lived always amid the false, the
borrowed graces, the exaggerated luxury of a hastily imitated
civilization, appreciated this unmasked vigor, this sincerity.
Sari's hair smelled like camp-smoke, and her clothing slightly,
too. Before they went to sleep he used to watch the leaping
camp-fire, over which the evening meal had been cooked, play
ing over bronze bodies, or even spangling with bright green the
swinging branches, the soft leaves above their heads. Or the
stars drew near. They began to glow with a sympathetic luster,
which loosened the tongues of the story-tellers.

Then the throbbing voice of the nightingale dominated them,
like the pulse of night. The night seemed to come to life, and the
leaves above their heads whispered wildly. When the song and
the whispering leaves were stilled, there was a silence so mys
terious, so weighty, it was as if caused by some new, some mighty
power of which he had never heard. And late, late, a large
round yellow moon would come swinging dizzily out of the un
known, ploughing the blacknesses about them, and gilding ca
ressingly the levels. And always there was the night voice of
grasses, grasses that swept southward in unbroken vigor to the
shore of the Black Sea. There were haunting, shifting, frail
sounds, too, he could not name nor catalogue. He was con
fronted with the language of nature, which only the unself-
assertive, the humble, learn well. Here was a world he did not
know existed.

And the mind and nature of Sari were just as far away from
his comprehension, just as new, just as strange and interesting,
as the unlearned speech of nature. Of love, of emotion, of the
fine things of the heart, she had just the same understanding as
the nightingale which was singing above them. And yet the
very difference pleased him.

1 5o THE PENITENT

Sometimes, when she was not sullen, she told him the names
her people had given to the flowers about their bed. The violet
they called the "flower of the night." He kissed her at this. He
told her that that was what she was to him, his flower of the night.
But in gypsy clothes he did not enchant her as he had that magic
night of summer long ago in the Kabak of Samus, when he wore
the white pique and the fine cambric of Petersburg which had
so delighted her. His hands were not so white now nor so
heavily ringed. And they did not finger a cigarette case of
gold. Nor was his hair perfumed and exquisite. In short, he
looked just like all gypsies such as she had always seen. The
charm was broken. It was the new, the untried, or the alluring
that Sari wished.

She confided to him her longing for a silk head-kerchief of
white and gold. Also she hoped sometime, in the winter, when
even down south by the shore of the sea, or by Ismail under the
wall, it rained too often and was cold, to have a lover who had a
house. It was frightful sleeping out in the winter — or even in
the wagon. Always wet — always uncomfortable. But in sum
mer — no! There was no other way to sleep — in summer.

One night, upon a sudden, they heard the wild, impassioned
note of a violin, ending as speedily as it began. For a second,
until she found out who made the music, her eyes darted green
fire, just like a cat's. Some tremendous emotion swayed her.
"7 thought it was Yancksi!" she gasped, as she lay down beside
him again.

And sleep was so good upon the ground, the heavy, dreamless
sleep, with the age-old magnetism of the earth upon them. And
it was good to open his eyes, morning after morning, with Sari
beside him, and look out across a vast, green land, inspiring,
refreshing — a vast, primitive land, where man has left no mark
any more than he has left a mark upon the sea; where duty is not,
nor law with its bristling restrictions. And the joy, too, each
morning of the wind upon his face, wind frolicsome and free, and
that called to him with the voice of youth. Sometimes, in the
first deceiving light of early day, the ragged, ill-dressed gypsies
upon their shaggy ponies, going slowly down the sloping canon-

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 151

side for water, became superb, dramatic figures, and for the mo
ment were fine. Looking out across the distance, he learned that
any lonely little figure, black and moving among the grasses,
possessed a certain eloquence of art. He was gaining broader,
different, more impersonal vision. And the blessed peace of blue
unmarked day following day — and of love.

Sari, whom once he had disdained, was becoming more and
more necessary to him as passion forged unbreakable chains
upon him. And the oneness of it all! This pleased him. There
were no inequalities here. No rulers; no ruled. No one had more
than the other. Home to all of them was the same, the little red
point of flame around which at night, with the great blackness
beyond, their food was cooked. He was rapidly learning nature's
compensations for them who have nothing. And in this great
immensity of nature the values of life began to change slowly,
subtly. There were new virtues, new vices, and the ones that he
had' always been accustomed to were discarded of their own
weight. Right and wrong became unstable. They were not evi
dently eternal things like the stars, as he had always thought
them. In addition, there was enough of the Russian in him, in
whom there is always something of the instinct of the wanderer,
to become accustomed to anything. And he enjoyed greatly, too,
the picture of his youthful self, with the sun of summer upon
him, in the great free steppe filled with flowers and nodding
grasses.

The father of Sari was more diligent and more intelligent than
the other men of the tabor, who did nothing but hunt occasion
ally. He, on the contrary, worked. He made pipes; he made
small ornaments of kissel wood which he inlaid with a good deal
of taste with designs made of white bone, and which he sold suc
cessfully in the towns.

While the old man worked he liked to talk. He dispensed
freely to Alexis Sergiewitch the unlearned philosophy of his race,
the philosophy of nature's man.

"To be what you call civilized, Prince Alexis" — he had
adopted Sari's first name for him — he explained one day, "is to
become a voluntary slave. It is to be the subject continually of

1 52 THE PENITENT

petty tyranny, the slave of things that are not only false but
foolish. The way to be happy and free at the same time is to
have nothing — just like the birds — except wings — and that
other freedom, which only lasts a minute — youth" he added a
little sadly.

Alexis Sergiewitch was listening with attention. This was as
firm and reasonable a plan for the guiding of life as that of Count
Woronzow. And the old fellow possessed a dignity of his own,
too, just as unshakable.

"We are wiser than your civilized man, whom we despise.
You cannot fool us into thinking that one man is better than
another because he happens to own a new coat — which again
happens to be cut either long or short — or to be blue or brown.
How does it change what dwells inside of a man whether his house
is stone or wood, a palace or a hovel?" The other side of the
human tapestry was being held up for young Alexis Sergiewitch
to contemplate.

" We have not been corrupted by the white man's laws. Laws
corrupt oftener than they cure. Laws are just like giving medi
cine to a well man. We are superior in many things. The gypsy
has never learned to feel the duty of revenge. There are certain
basenesses of soul that belong only to civilization. We have re
fused to learn this false, this civilized viewpoint. Of youth we
say — why should it not be just as free as the bird? There is too
much hypocrisy in the white man's morality. There is too much
suffering, too much unfairness. And then, how does he know that
he is right? We choose not to have any, because we prefer the
genuine to the imitation. To escape law, to escape its restric
tions, its corruptions, its injustice, we cheerfully give up all the
comforts of life — warmth, shelter — soft living."

To his surprise Pushkin found that he had much to learn from
the gypsies. Any living, evidently, that is sincere has points
of justification. He was beginning to look down upon civilized
follies with some of the grand disdain of the savage.

The old gypsy's beliefs were as well grounded as those of Count
Woronzow. And he was just as faithful to them. He began to
think that it takes a certain kind of unestimated ability to sup-

THE ACKERMAN STEPPE 153

port, day after day, this complete inaction, a balance between
mind and body which civilization has destroyed.

" While we do not play games like the civilized man, neither do
we grieve nor rage like him. We do not laugh so much either. We
are not so merry. We are not so ruled by fear. We are
more like the inanimate things of nature in this — the trees,
the flowers on the steppe — with which we live and from which
we have learned by long association. Long association has drawn
us nearer to them — made us become alike. A tree is not so dif
ferent from a man, Prince Alexis! If we have not the white man's
good qualities, neither have we his evil ones — his boasting, his
cant, his hypocrisy, his highly developed cruelty, his unfairness."

Summer was drawing to an end. Alexis Sergiewitch, who had
become fully accustomed to this life and its habits, paused in his
general looking about, and began to observe Sari more critically.
To his surprise he saw that she was waiting for something. She
was like a wary animal on the point of being startled. In the
depths of her cold green eyes were the shadows of memory. He
could see them just as one can see dark objects through ice. Her
ear caught quickest any sound that came upon the wind. She
was alert for the near coming of something distant. Often, in the
night, he knew that she was not sleeping, and he always knew
now that she was not thinking of him. She was lying perfectly
quiet, her arms folded under her head, with wide, open eyes
watching the stars measure the slow course of night and time.
Then it seemed to him that she did not sleep at all. She was not
nervous. She merely waited, patiently, as an animal waits. In
the day she looked too frequently and long toward the southeast,
the direction of Ismail. He wondered what it was that made her
do it and what she was thinking about. She did not try any more
to conceal her indifference to him. He was evidently merely an
incident of the season when the sun rides high, and there are
huge, bright-colored blossoms splashing the steppe. He was just
a part of sun and summer.

She did not play her balalaika. Nor did she idle. She worked
industriously sewing four large yellow-plaid handkerchiefs she
had bought in Kishenev into a basque, down the front of which

154 THE PENITENT

she sewed large, white, glass, square-cornered buttons. While
she sewed she was mentally absorbed, and her mind was far
away, or else turned inward upon something she remembered.
She was busy retelling the emotions of the past.

One night, when they went to bed, the sound of th» leaves
above their heads was dry. Summer had gone. Far down in the
bottom of the ravine below them, he could hear a wind in whose
voice there was something that resembled a threat. Late in the
night the surface of sleep was worn thin, and he awoke with a
start. The place beside him was empty. Sari was gone. He arose
to reconnoiter. It was a night of scudding clouds with filmy, un
stable light. The ground was a restless checker-board of black
and white. The camp were asleep. But one of the horses, the
best one, that had followed the wagon, was gone. She must have
made a good distance by now, he thought, because he could not
hear a sound. He was stunned with anger. He was stunned with
wounded pride, with grief. To be tricked like this — by a gypsy.
He awoke the old man.

"Do you know where she is?" he asked excitedly. "One of
the horses is gone, too!"

"She did n't tell me — but I know that she has gone to meet
Yancksi."

"How could she know where to meet him?"

" We heard last summer, in Kishenev, from another tribe, that
last winter he left Hungary — going down the great river — to
winter in the South in the City of the Golden Horn. From there
he sent word he was going to come by water to Ismail at the end
of this summer. This is the end of summer — now."

So that was the reason of this journey toward the southeast,

toward Ismail. He had thought all along that it had been taken

for his sake. It was not for him at all. It was just to meet Yancksi

— Sari's lover. He had been traveling all this time to meet him.

The others, of course, knew this.

The face of Pushkin became black with rage. A fit of ungov
ernable anger took possession of him. "I will take another horse.
I will find them. Then I will kill them, both! " — trembling so he
could scarcely speak.

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 155

"Wait — my boy! Wait!" — placing a detaining hand upon
his shoulder. " Did I not tell you that youth is as free as the bird?
She will leave Yancksi too — after a time — and come back to
you — if you wait. Things that are new, you know, are fine for
women. Her mother used to do the same thing to me. But she
always came back."

Alexis Sergiewitch, whose only guide was a fantastic sense of
personal honor, in which pride was mixed, still declared his in
tention of revenge, still insisted that he would follow them, that
he would kill them.

" Listen to me, Prince Alexis!" the old man responded sternly.
" Take this horse, and return to the people from whom you came.
Over there, not far away, is the road. Follow it north. In time you
will come upon tschoumaks with their caravans, headed for
Kishenev. They will let you ride to the city with them. They
will feed you. Turn the horse loose. It will find its own way back
to us.

"You are not fitted for our life. You cannot forget that ig
noble belief of the white man — revenge" he declared solemnly.
"While you ask freedom for yourself, you are not willing that
other people should have it. We do not punish. We do not make
others suffer under the pretext that we are right. We do not kill.
But we will not live with a murderer! Take the horse and go.
You cannot learn the wisdom of the savage. You are unfit to
learn it. All you can understand is having your own way," he
added solemnly. "And while you ride along, meditate upon this:
If you pluck a wild tulip upon the steppe in spring, does that make
it impossible for any one else to pluck another wild tulip the next
spring?"

Life was so simple, so easy for them who had neither religion
nor prejudice. It was not so easy to unlearn as to learn.

Unceremoniously he found himself thrust out of his Eden.
He was alone on the highway headed toward Kishenev. He was
bounced about from place to place like a rubber ball. Just as
when he had been put out of Petersburg he had nothing to sav
about it, so he had nothing to say about it now. He did not fit
in well either with civilized or uncivilized man. In fact, in the

156 THE PENITENT

mood of grief and anger that ruled him, he could not seem to
think of any place where he did fit in, any place where he was
permitted to live or be happy. He was a superfluity, something
not wanted anywhere. There was a guiding wisdom for all
people, it seemed, except for him.

He had been happy here. The life suited him. He hoped it
would never end. Now it had been taken away from him, with
out consulting his wishes in the matter. He was just a coin tossed
from hand to hand, with no will of his own. He was heartbroken.
And Sari — the interrupted life with Sari! Grief, anger, unas-
suaged desire, blind passion, longing for revenge choked him.
Sari/ Sari! . . .

When, weeks later, with a slow merchant caravan, he entered
Kishenev at night, he did not need either paint or gypsy clothing
to disguise him. He was ragged, dirty, black from exposure,
and so thin from emotion and hard living that no one would
recognize the white, pique-coated dandy of the summer be
fore. He made his way at once to the Kabak of Samus for food
and wine.

When he entered the Kabak the crowd within at the little
round tables were perfectly still. They were hushed. They were
listening with breathless attention to a sad and tragic figure, to a
man who was improvising a song, a song which was a confession
of his life. The man, who sat alone at a table, was young, too,
like Alexis Sergiewitch. He had black curls, but his face was fur
rowed and marred with grief. It was tragic with suffering. Be
tween every verse he sobbed aloud, and bent his head upon the
dirty table slopped over with wine and food. Then he stood erect.
He stretched out his arms to attract attention, and sang — sang
recklessly for the unburdening relief of his soul. Over his chair
was a blood-stained Caucasian shawl, black, with an embroidered
border.

Like a madman I stand here with eyes fixed on the shawl,
While anger and anguish upon my heart fall.

I was youthful in years then, scarcely more than a boy,
When I gave my heart up to a Greek girl with joy.

THE ACKERMANN STEPPE 157

She was sensuous and fair; I was proud of her love;
But the wings of misfortune spread darkling above.

I was sitting, gayly, with a guest, undisturbed,
When a Jew came and in my ear whispered a word.

" Proudly here with your friends you drink, not dreaming how
Your Greek girl with her lover is deceiving you now."

I curse the Jew roundly, but my purse at him fling,
And I order my servant the horses to bring.

We mount, we set off with the speed of the wind,
While madness takes hold of my heart and my mind.

I enter her chamber on tiptoe, and alone,

An Armenian embraces her as if she were his own.

She was lifting her lips for her new lover's kiss,

When with one blow I struck her fair head off with this.

I snatched from the quivering head this black shawl
And with it I wiped bright my long sword-blade all.

Since then I kiss no more eyes sweet as the skies;
Since then pleasure no more in long love nights lies.

Like a madman I stand here, with eyes fixed on the shawl,
While anger and anguish upon my heart fall.1

What terrible grief breathed from his face! What grief trem
bled upon his voice ! No one would report the murder or its con
fession to Count Woronzow. Every one, on the contrary, would
help conceal it. Murder meant exile for life in the mines of Si
beria. Every listener here to-night in the Kabak of Samus, just
like Alexis Sergiewitch, probably had some personal, some private
memory that would temper judgment. The poor fellow had
sobbed out his repentance here by the table in the wine-house, to
a crowd of listeners who had understood. He had concealed
nothing. He had received the consolation of confession. Now he
would slip away. He would hide in the long, waving grass of the

1 Translated from the Russian by the author.

158 THE PENITENT

interminable steppe, the trackless desert, and be forgotten, this
man whom the tragedy of living, for a few vivid moments, had
lifted to the power of expression of a poet.

Alexis Sergiewitch forgot his own grief in something that re
sembled thankfulness. If he had had his way, if something
blessed had not intervened to save him, this fate, the fate of the
murderer, would have been his to-night.

After he had eaten, he made his way wearily to the hill-street
of the Old Town, and to the house of the Turkish woman. Here
he could rest in hiding and recuperate. And here, while the first
chill rains of autumn fell, and the leaves, and the wind became
fitful and sad, he, too, made his confession; made it just as the
poor murderer in the Kabak of Samus had made his, in song. He
poured forth the story of his We with Sari, of that one brief sum
mer spent in Eden. He wrote "The Gypsies." He who had
moved in the court set was the first to discover the people. In
writing it he broke away impetuously from the limitations of the
age, just as he had broken away from the iron discipline of Count
Woronzow. He broke away from the art-ideal of the day, and
bravely sketched the quick, sure outline of something new that
was to come, a kind of writing that would dominate the modern
world, which he was the first to discover for art.

He recalled the song, too, "The Black Shawl." It was poetry
not influenced either by Anacreon or French models, but by life.
That was the way he would write in the future. He, too, would
throw away models, stale school learning, and look out upon life
and create.

CHAPTER X
BY THE GULF OF FINLAND

SOPHIE NARISCHKIN enjoyed the day's drive to the summer home
by the Gulf of Finland, and in a new way, a way in which she had
not enjoyed anything before. The belief that another year was
not likely to find her driving down this pleasant road of child
hood, through the bright, buff, blue-dusted polar day, with the
delight of the shining, keen sea-edge beyond, and the peaceful,
green, planted farm-lands cozily nestling on either side, gave her
the detached, impersonal outlook of a farewell. She looked lov
ingly at everything, with fresh interest, fresh comprehension, and
a chastened, not bitter, regret that none of these gay, sun-lighted
scenes of earth could be hers but a little longer. The disease that
gripped her she knew was proceeding by leaps and bounds. It
was sweeping onward like a fire across dry pine-lands. She was
losing flesh. Her fever was increasing. Her cough was dryer. It
was harsher.

She looked carefully at the well-known landmarks as she passed
them, as if to imprint them upon her mind forever, so that she
could not forget them. Grief at the knowledge of what her mother
was, together with the inescapable disgrace for herself connected
with it, had had the effect of lessening the hold upon life of her
will. But along with the giving-up, there was the release from
worry, from shame.

The mood of her sullen, rebellious mother who was sitting
beside her, and who would neither speak nor reply when spoken
to, did not disturb her. She saw it with the same diminishing
emphasis of vision as a person floating in a balloon looks down
upon any small, moving, human object which is out of voice-
reach.

When, two days later, Alexander came, to their surprise he did
not wear the usual military uniform. He was in the fashionable
white pique and fine French cambric of a country nobleman. The

160 THE PENITENT

only thing that kept in mind his official importance was the fact
that couriers went day and night between Petersburg and the
summer home.

Marie Antonova did not come downstairs any day until noon.
Alexander arose at four in summer. He attended to his dis
patches until breakfast. He and his daughter not only break
fasted, but passed the mornings alone together. These summer
mornings by the Gulf of Finland were the happiest hours she
had spent in her life. If her mother was all that was wrong and
undesirable, her father more than compensated. He realized her
ideals of beauty, of charm, of loving kindness, of gracious, benefi
cent presence. He was father and mother in one. He was like an
ideal character keeping some of the old, unreal, perished charm
of romance. She never tired of looking at him. Even in the pal
aces of Petersburg she had noticed how his presence dwarfed
other men into crude inconspicuousness. Here alone with him,
in these sweet mornings of summer by the sea, in the spacious,
flower-filled gardens above which birds scattered their songs,
gardens so rich, so lovely, so blossom-buried, that they dimmed
man's dream of the valleys of Paradise; immaculate in white
pique, graceful, eloquent, with a great love shining in his eyes,
she was startled to find that he reminded her of the Saviour of
Man. It seemed to her day after day that it was the two figures
blended in one that she walked with, and conversed with, amid
the flowers, and the sunshine, and the song of birds.

Long ago, when she was just a little girl, he had reminded her
of the noble white Greek marbles that she saw in the long shin
ing palace corridors, on the days when he took her to visit the
Empress. Then she knew that the change from that time to this
had been persistent, although gradual. There had been a slow
taking-away of one quality, and an equally slow adding of an
other. It was as if the soul of him had been slowly filtered of the
petty basenesses, the inequalities, the hatreds, the shrewd but
vulgar self-assertiveness that are of life. He was to her now like
the pictures of that impressive, protecting, draped figure, which
the priest who had prepared her for confirmation used to show
her of the white-robed Christ meditating upon the hills of Pal-

BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 161

estine, where grew the lily and the olive-tree, in the brief, bright
days before the Betrayal.

When he bent over a flower he admired to show it to her, it was
as if his presence blessed it. When they walked side by side,
across the slightly yellow-green grass, to a remote corner of the
garden, past the hill of the scented cedars, and came upon a hid
den nest rilled with tiny, speckled eggs, it seemed his smile swept
them into life. The roots of the giant pines, upheaving angularly
out of the earth, and the broad leaf surfaces above them, seemed
to leap with the light of his love.

She watched the wild birds bend nearer to him their circling
flight, as if under some magnetic control. Butterflies settled
upon his hands. Seldom at his approach did the green, burnished
humming-bird desert the tall, pink, swaying hollyhock.

When their happy morning wandering in the garden by the sea
was over, she always felt a little pang in her heart, because it was
he who remembered first, and mentioned the fact, that it was
time to meet Marie Antonova for lunch and they must not keep
her waiting. There was always the tiny pin-prick of grief that
she alone did not suffice for him, that at an appointed hour his
heart turned longingly toward her mother. Then they went to
the long, brown, rustic settee, by the yellow roses, which were
riotous and rich just now with the gold of the sun upon them, and
there they awaited her, patient at any delay. She came directly
toward them usually, from the front door, a little distance away.
She was a seductive figure in blond lace or pink mull, moving
along a pebbly walk, bordered on each side with round, large,
bright-hued blossoms that splashed her skirt; or she passed
pointed- topped evergreens, some of which had a shining, blue-
white, unmeltable dew upon them, a magic, unheralded effect of
summer beneath the Pole. Her silken, soft, black curls were light
in the little breezes that touched them.

Alexander looked up at her always with the same delighted,
happy eyes. But they met no response of any kind in hers. Her
morning mood was regulated by how much or how little she hap
pened to be satisfied at the moment with her personal appear
ance. She seldom ventured beyond the safe boundary line of self .

1 62 THE PENITENT

Usually, too, she was hungry, more than a little cross, and too
impatient to greet either one of them. But her small harshnesses,
her petty indifferences, disappeared in the great loving sea of
his kindness like a pebble dropped into the deep. This was con
stant pain to his daughter, the being forced to observe the daily
tragedy.

During the first week of their stay by the Gulf of Finland, Marie
Antonova concealed her boredom, her ill-temper, as best she
could. Every summer she told herself that she would not be
punished like this another summer. She cared nothing for the
blond, unfolded beauty of the sunny world of nature that sur
rounded her. She did not read except books of a type she would
not dare have Alexander see. She had no interest in the extensive
estate, the serfs who dwelled there, nor her daughter. She was
not fond of boating nor exercise. She did not care for music nor
any womanly pastime. She would not play outdoor games. She
hated rustic amusements and what she called peasant mirth.

Family life was to her a terror to be escaped. And Alexander
was a lover of such long standing she could not remember when
she had not been tired of him. She would not have endured him
all these years if it had not been for his great position, and the
fact that he possessed the purse of Fortunatus. His position per
mitted her to lord it over other women. It protected her from
men's scorn and evil tongues. And his wealth gave her what the
merely moderate income of Dmitri Lvovitch could not give her.
But even with this she felt that her security, her soft living, were
purchased at too high a price. Each year, before the summer
was over she told herself angrily that she would not put up with
another one. In short, at her summer home there was nothing
she wanted, while in Petersburg there was everything.

She had been torn from her new, impetuous, boyish lover,
Schuvalow, whose youth delighted her, and whom she had not
had long enough to become tired of. At the same time, against
her will, she had been taken away from much-applauded, fascin
ating Lasky, whom at this moment she loved as much as she was
capable of loving anything. Women were wild over Lasky. She
was afraid of losing her precedence and power by being away.

BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 163

All of which helped to make her more resentful, more rebellious.
Petersburg, too, meant freedom. There she could do many
things, and no one know it. It meant balls, soirees, gossip, flir
tations, dressmakers, admiration, gambling, the diversions that
were important to her. This family solitude a trois, in the coun
try, made her unhappy. It was something she could not endure.
The fact that she was forced to remain here made her hate
Alexander.

. Besides, Elizabeth the Empress had persisted in living on
throughout the years, with what seemed to her unpardonable
perversity. This kept her from marrying Alexander. This kept
her from being Empress in name. She was growing careless with
anger, with disappointment. The older she grew and the more
danger she saw of the proud position that is vouchsafed to so
few slipping through her fingers, the more it annoyed her. Alex
ander could not be influenced to set Elizabeth aside in her favor.
There were a few things that not even she could sway him
to do.

Sophie Narischkin was watching the growing restlessness of
her mother with alarm. She had seen it before. She knew what
it meant. She had become skillful by practice in forecasting the
mental weather of her dissipated mother. Daily now she dreaded
the noon hour to come, which meant her mother's regular re
appearance, and her own nervous, sensitive watchfulness over
her conversation, her manner. Daily she dreaded a dramatic
explosion of some kind.

Alexander seemed neither to see nor sense anything of this, he
was so deeply content in the presence of the woman he loved.
She felt forced, at length, to speak to her mother in private, and
to chide her for her unpleasant moods. In doing this she was sur
prised to find that the only means to appeal to her was by using
base motives, because such motives alone could sway her.

" You know how greatly it pleases him to be here with you —
alone. You might sacrifice, more willingly, it seems to me, your
private interests when it is he who provides for you lavishly.
Especially since it is a question of such a little while — just a
little rest from care for him — In the end you return to Peters-

1 64 THE PENITENT

burg — and the things you enjoy. It is he who gives you your
position, you must remember. Everything comes from him."

To her surprise her mother did not say anything in return.
She did not show an inclination to quarrel. She could not at
once, however, judge of the effect of her words. She did not con
tradict her nor seem disposed to be revengeful. During the next
few days she refrained from saying anything particularly dis
agreeable, although she would not talk much, and she was notice
ably silent.

Sophie soon became aware, however, that Marie Antonova
was meditating profoundly. She was plotting something.
Thoughts were passing and repassing behind her eyes like the
great, shadowy, blurred forms of fish looked down upon in deep,
green sea-water. She awaited with suppressed anxiety the result
of this continued meditation.

She judged at length that the meditation was considered suc
cessful and favorable to her wishes, because Marie Antonova sat
late quite willingly, one pallid, silvery, north-Russian night upon
the lawn with Alexander. Her voice was soft and velvety as of
old, and the sound of her little laugh had been happy, seductive.
She could hear it plainly in her chamber above through whose
broad windows the gentle wind came and brought the night
sweetness of yellow roses.

The next day, at lunch, Marie Antonova declared she was
getting fat. She knew she was losing her figure. She jested about
it, however, and to her daughter appeared too good-natured for
the fear to be genuine. She said she believed it was because she
was not dancing nightly here as she did in Petersburg. She felt
that she ought to make up for this lack of exercise in some way.
Not only her appearance demanded it, but her health. To com
bat increasing flesh she decided she would ride. She had been
told that it would restore the figure. She would be obliged to do
something or have a new wardrobe made. Her dresses were grow
ing so tight it was difficult to fasten them.

Her watchful daughter understood that she had found a way
out, but Alexander did not, so he offered, generously, to ride with
her. To this she demurred gently. She replied she planned to

BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 165

ride fast; that that was the only way to reduce successfully, and
it would not be good for him. He needed rest. He declared that
that made no difference, that he would do anything to please her.

The plan had now expanded fully in her daughter's alert mind.
She had learned how to read her mother. But Alexander was
ignorant of it as usual.

"No," she answered gently, somewhat denyingly. "I will ride
alone in the morning — while you and Sophie are taking your
usual walk in the grounds. That will not take away any of the
hours which you and I are accustomed to spend together. I will
ride during the morning — the time when I usually sleep." This
gentle consideration for other people, her daughter knew, meant
the selfish and safe gratification of getting her own way.

"Very well, dear," Alexander replied. "As you wish — of
course. I will select a groom, then, to accompany you."

Sophie knew that this displeased her mother, but that her
mother did not dare say so. She wondered again that he did not
understand. She knew also that Alexander's money would pay
for that same groom to remain in hiding, in a perfectly safe place,
until her mother was ready to reenter the grounds.

This plan was carried out for a few days. She returned promptly
to lunch as she had promised. Then she not only did not return
for lunch, but not until late in the afternoon. She had reasonable
excuses each time to cover these changes, these delays. One day
the horse got a stone in its foot and it took a long time to get it
out. Then the horse limped. It seemed to suffer and she was
forced to go slowly to spare it. She made a show of sympathy
which her daughter saw through readily. Once she lost her way
by turning off the main road. One day the heat made her faint,
and she was obliged to sit in the shelter of some trees for a while.
She did not dare to mount and start back until late when the
heat had lessened. She regretted this. She was almost apologetic.
Sophie knew that this meant fear or some hairbreadth escape
from being caught. At length the hour of returning became so
very late that they were forced to sit down to dinner alone with
out her. These dinners were sad and solemn. No one spoke.
There was nothing safe to say. Alexander was either worried for

1 66 THE PENITENT

her safety or suspicious. His daughter was unable to tell which.
She was worried, too. He had spent his afternoons in walking
restlessly about the paths in front of the house that led to the
gate and in looking expectantly up and down the road. Sophie
was at her wits' end to know what to say. She had had all she
could do to keep him from mounting and riding out in search of
her. That would have been, she knew, the worst thing that could
happen.

One night Marie Antonova came in too tired either to put in
an appearance at dinner or afterward. Sophie felt sure that Alex
ander suspected something. He was meditative. His face wore a
look she could not read. He forbade her going again. He was
sterner than his daughter had ever seen him. She wondered
futilely what it was of which he was thinking.

To the surprise of her daughter, Marie Antonova was neither
rebellious nor angry. What could this mean ? She settled back
into the habit of getting up at noon with perfect good-humor.
Sophie wondered what could possibly be back of this. Something
must be, of course. Some new plot, and a subtler one. That it
was not just what it seemed on the surface she felt certain. But
for the little space it lasted she was grateful.

The correctness of her suspicion was proved three days later.
It was a night when she had coughed a good deal and been rest
less. These daylight nights of summer were hard for her. A little
before four o'clock she gave up the effort of sleeping, threw a
padded robe about her for protection, and sat down by the win
dow. Her apartment, as it happened, was along the front of the
house, where it overlooked the broad highway that led whitely
away toward Petersburg. Her mother's apartments and those of
Alexander were on the other side of the house, with a view upon
the water, and upon the woods beyond. She looked out quickly.
She was just in time to see Marie Antonova, disheveled and
frightened because she had been so long away, coming in on
horseback. She was trying vainly to make the horse walk softly
upon the edge of the turf so no one could hear him.

The cause of her late good-humor, her apparent indifference to
Alexander's command, was clear. She had been going out occa-

BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 167

sionally during the night, and then, to make up for it, sleeping
half the day.

But how had she been able to conceal her night absence from
Alexander? That she did not know nor have any means of find
ing out. But here she was! This proved it.

Sophie Narischkin stepped back quickly from the window, so
that Marie Antonova would not know that she had seen her.
She must have a groom or one of the house servants in her pay to
help conceal her stolen exits, her daughter thought at once. "I
wonder which one it can be!"

Sophie crept softly back to bed. She was determined to think
up a plan to circumvent, without any apparent act of interven
tion, these night adventures of her mother; something that would
put a stop to them effectively, before the truth was disclosed to
Alexander, and to their summer neighbors along the highway.

To her surprise she hit upon a plan easily. It pleased her so she
determined to tell Alexander at breakfast and beg him to put it
into execution, before Marie Antonova could hear of it, or come
downstairs. She would beg Alexander to send the saddle horses
in the stables to a pasture by the sea which belonged to their es
tate, and where their sheep and cattle were. The ostensible ex
cuse would be that making them stand upon a hard floor in sum
mer was cruel, that it injured their hoofs, while the soft, damp
sea-meadows would not only be a kindness to them, but would
restore their feet. Their neighbors saw to things like this. Why
should not they? And she would beg him to see to it that very
morning before her mother got up to hear about it, or attempt to
prevent it. This last she would think herself. She would not, of
course, say it.

After he had met her in the morning room, kissed her, inquired
how she had slept, and they had begun their breakfast together,
she set about carrying out her plan. It pleased Alexander. It
succeeded at once, just as she had expected it to do, because of
its unforced reasonableness.

That day Marie Antonova did not come downstairs to lunch.
Her first appearance was toward the late dinner hour, when she
wore the air of happy-hearted restlessness her daughter knew so

1 68 THE PENITENT

well. Alexander was happy too. He thought this bright-eyed,
loving buoyancy was for him. One of his radiant hours seemed
to be rising. His daughter knew better. She knew that it was
because she had a rendezvous that night, and that she was
happy, not in contemplating her daughter and Alexander in the
present, but in forgetting them, in making-believe to herself
that they were not. Evidently one of the grooms sent to the
meadows with the saddle horses had been the one who was in
her pay, and she still knew nothing. With suspense Sophie
Narischkin awaited the disclosure that must come.

Liqueur was served after dinner out of doors upon the lawn.
Among the trees, the birds were beginning to sing their good
night songs, and spill their farewell sweetness upon the flowers.
Frogs were calling. The blond, bright day of summer was dying.

As evening came on, Alexander was happy and talkative. He
was telling Marie Antonova how he had missed her during the
day. The tender words he uttered in that magic voice, so rich,
so moving, fell upon her ears as unheeding as the bird songs upon
the flowers. Then he recounted in detail what he had done to put
in the time until she came downstairs to join him; how, first, in
the morning after his dispatches had been attended to, it had
occurred to him to give the saddle horses a little rest, a little
freshening in the meadows. So he had sent them away. He did
not happen to mention Sophie's name in connection with this,
and she was glad. Luck was on her side evidently this time. She
Was careful not to look up so her mother could see intelligence
shining in her eyes.

"Did you send them all?" she inquired a little hastily and
with a change of tone her daughter noticed.

"Yes, dear, all. We do not need them since you are riding no
longer, do we? "

Sophie held her breath. Alexander was not watching Marie
Antonova's face at that moment, but her daughter was. She saw
such a look of wild disappointment followed by savage hatred
leap into her eyes that it terrified her. What depths of evil were
within her! She felt that the old waves of anguished rebellion
were sweeping over her, just as she had felt that night at the the-

BY THE GULF OF FINLAND 169

ater when Lasky was playing and Alexander had come to take
them home. She had guessed correctly. Marie Antonova had an
appointment for to-night. There was no way to know with
whom, of course. But one thing was certain, she could neither
keep it nor send word. She had been outwitted. Now she was
held fast in a net where struggling was useless. Sophie was both
amused and glad. She did not dare look up. She hardly dared
breathe. She sat perfectly motionless, her eyes fastened upon her
shoes. She had outwitted her long-practiced, scheming mother
who was iri the habit of fooling them all.

Alexander continued pouring words of love and tenderness
upon her unheeding ears, while she sat rigid, looking straight
ahead, the unemptied liqueur glass arrested halfway to her lips,
just where it was when the disclosure came.

Finally she managed to say dully, with little blunt, measured
pauses between the words, as if each word were difficult to get
over: "I find — I have a headache coming on. I think I will go
to my room — and have my maid brush my hair."

"Do not desert me to-night, love!" he begged in a disap
pointed voice. " Fresh air will do you good. You have been in
doors too much. I have waited all day for this."

She did not answer. Her daughter watched her face grow thin
and strained, with the violence of suppressed emotion, sup
pressed anger.

"Let us walk awhile in the garden together. See — what a
night it is for love ! Let us be lovers again — as we were once
long ago — Marie ! Marie! — " Emotion and surprise rang in
his voice.

She was halfway to the house now. She did not look back nor
answer, nor say good-night. Sophie Narischkin realized that,
try as she might, to-night she could not fill the place of Marie
Antonova in the heart of Alexander. She alone did not build his
happiness. She realized, too, afresh the hard, wicked nature of
her mother, and the great love that had for so many years been
wasted upon her.

The expression upon the face of Alexander made her suffer.
His face wore that stern, white, rigid mask she had seen but once

1 7o THE PENITENT

before, but which she could not bear to look at. No word, how
ever, of either complaint or criticism crossed his lips. But there
was grief in the depths of his eyes.

In a few moments, after a servant had taken the liqueur
glasses away, he offered his arm to her with the old, gentle grace,
to which she was never insensible, and they strolled down the
flower-bordered avenues together, toward the Gulf, which white
mists were blotting now into sad similarity to that vast unknown
men dread, which it seemed uncannily to her then that they two
were both approaching.

He felt that she was suffering, and suffering for him, and his
every word was expended in brave attempt to bring joy back to
her.

CHAPTER XI
ODESSA

THE presence of Alexis Sergiewitch in Kishenev could not be
concealed indefinitely from Count Woronzow, nor indeed the
fact that he had written truthfully, even boastfully, in a verse
that was new at this period, a description of his shameful life
among the gypsies, and forwarded the manuscript to Petersburg
to be printed. With " The Gypsies " he had also sent on to Peters
burg another poem, "The Black Shawl," to which, in momen
tary enthusiasm or caprice, he signed his name, too, as author,
because it had pleased him to remember the words. For the past
year every courier who went North took along and then scat
tered over the country the resentful or the inspiring melody of
his writing.

The official dignity, the conventional feelings, of Count Woron
zow were outraged. It was useless, the old man thought, to try
again to influence him by talk, by argument. He refused, there
fore, to see him or to have any contact with him. But he issued
an order for his imprisonment. After the imprisonment came
the same round of futile meditations. He could not make him
work. He had tried and failed. He could not keep him hi prison
permanently either. That would injure his health. His presence
in Kishenev was becoming pernicious. It was leading to the form
ing of imitative bands of rebellious, admiring youths, who if they
could string a few jingling words together thought they were
poets and therefore had the right to do anything. What was to
be done? He could not let it go on. He could not let his disci
pline be broken up. He had repeatedly written to Petersburg for
advice. The replies had just as repeatedly left the decision to
him. He decided at length that Pushkin must be removed from
Kishenev. Since he could not go back to Petersburg, but re
mained, nominally under his supervision, he would send him to a
new milieu, to Odessa. There he could place him in another office,

172 THE PENITENT

under his supervisor of accounts in that division of his govern
ment, who happened to be a man in whom he had confidence.
He could not dissipate so madly there at first, because it would
take time to make acquaintances.

And so just as Alexis Sergiewitch had set out from Petersburg
without will of his own, and with a driver who was likewise his
jailer, so he set out from Kishenev. But Count Woronzow was
not so successful in selecting jailers as that arch-fiend, Count
Benkendorf, in Petersburg. This was a merry, good-looking
fellow, young like himself, and one who admired Pushkin greatly.
He knew all about his dramatic adventures, too, in the Kabak,
the Old Town, and down on the steppe, toward Ismail.

When he had left Petersburg at the sudden command of au
thority, it was with grief. Since that time he had been slowly
acquiring a new sensation, a sort of pleasurable trust in the un
known, which he went gladly to meet. It had some of the allure
ment of a game of chance, only the stakes were greater. He was
learning to enjoy the giving himself over to new influences.

And he was not now in his usual wild, emotional mood. After
the period of creative exaltation in the little white house of the
Turkish woman, on the long hill, where he had temporarily ex
hausted himself in writing, he was experiencing, as he usually
did, a reaction which either took the form of indifference to
things in general or a peculiar, ill-defined, nervous fear. And
then the autumn frequently had a salutary effect upon him. It
was the season when he was calmest and most reasonable, and
did his best writing. With the feverish scarlet of the forest he,
too, put away some of the wild impulses of his blood, and became
quiet, tractable. And, too, he was acquiring a liking for travel,
especially down here in the less inclement South where it was
warm. He enjoyed promenading his eyes over the outlines of
strange cities, new and unseen landscapes.

This was another world down here. It was unlike anything his
limited experience had come in contact with, in the North. It
was a pleasure to set out across the autumn land, with the clear,
pale sky above him, which held no threat. Southern Russia in
autumn caressed his senses. The pale, level distances pleased

ODESSA 173

him. The steppe even showed a variety of late flowers. There
were sweet williams, canterbury bells, goldenrod in abundance,
and the late-flowering sweet pea. White butterflies with mar
bled wings fluttered over the flowers. Blackbirds flew up like
grasshoppers from the harvested fields. Sometimes caravans
passed them which were drawn by camels; not the tiny, North-
African variety, but huge, majestic Mongolian camels, looking,
in the enveloping yellow dust of distance, like a realization of a
vision of Apocalyptic beasts, monstrous, ungainly.

The levels were yellow. Amber scents came on the wind.
There was something in the air, too, that was gentle, meditative,
like repentance. In farmhouse gardens along the highway were
striped melons, called arbuses, whose leaves the frost had killed,
and tall poles covered with dying hop- vines which floated in the
wind. There were purple grapes and russet pears. There were
kissel plums and rich reaped fields of maize. Alexis Sergiewitch
saw here, too, the result of Count Woronzow's work, in aston
ishing apples, some of which measured twenty- two inches
around, and a wealth of opulent fruit. The nightingale which
had sung to him of love, of passion, down upon the Ackermann
Steppe toward Ismail during the nights of that magic summer,
was gone now, gone to the warm sheltered valleys of the Cauca
sus. Less eloquent- throated songsters had taken its place.

Bender, the first place of consequence he came to, where the
Dniester is narrow, but still deep and swift, recalled to him Prince
Potemkin who had died here by the side of the road, just where
he was traveling now, in the arms of his niece, Countess Bran-
icksi. He observed Bender with interest.

Next came Tirospol, a place founded by German agricultural
ists. He could see their pale, dull, patient faces in the fields about
him, and the results of their diligence. Then after Tirospol the
vast plain began to be visible, that spreads its pale, unmarked
defense, like a desert, about Odessa on the land side; a yellow
plain which the winds rule, and where they race violently, tum
bling up huge clouds of dust; tremendous winds that pound and
howl, sweeping all the way from remote Asia toward the lonely
outpost of Russian civilization.

174 THE PENITENT

After interminable, weary hours across the yellow plain came
white Odessa, and beyond — the Sea, which to him was the
ocean he had never seen. He felt the joy of coming into view of
the Black Sea after days of unenlivened levels. It was charm
ingly blue just when he first saw it, and enticing, with white,
pointed sails upon it. It allured him. It beckoned him on.

The first, far glimpse of Odessa, the first Russian city where
semi-modern methods of swift city-building had been demon
strated, is impressive. He felt it. He greeted it with gay exclama
tions. The building of Odessa brought about a marked division
between the methods of construction of the mediaeval and the
modern world.

Alexis Sergiewitch was sensible to its impressiveness, even at
this distance. It was the first city he had looked upon which was
not in appearance a Russian city. He was charmed at once by
the thought that its building was connected with a magic name,
which had dominated his childish imagination just like Napo
leon ; a French name, too, the name of its early maker, Richelieu
the Duke, which made him recall the merry, spirited tales he had
heard of that other Richelieu, Richelieu the Cardinal.

Alexis Sergiewitch immediately set happily about making
plans, with the young driver, to conceal their arrival, for a time
at least, from Count Woronzow's staff of office men, so that
they could amuse themselves in their own way. They would!
both be free for a few days, enjoy themselves in sight-seeing,
and in putting up at some expensive French hostelry. Alexis
Sergiewitch had a little money. They would use that until it was
gone. Then he would borrow more upon his father's name, which
was what other young men of his class were in the habit of doing.
He was not going to let either duty or lack of money lessen his
enjoyment when there was such an opportunity to do as he
pleased.

Wide, pleasant, and very modern-looking they found the
streets of Odessa. Here sea-winds sported. Here the gay South
ern sun rejoiced the heart. The city was luxurious to the eye.
It was spacious, well suited, in short, to be new in this land,
which was new and vast. It had the cosmopolitanism, the broad

ODESSA 175

world-contacts, which characterize popular seaports. A breath
of that modern, scientific era of commerce was already being felt
here. It was a night city, too, just like Petersburg or Moscow.

In the streets of Odessa, which with his young friend, who was
as reckless as he was, he now proceeded to explore, he found to
his astonishment not Russia, but Europe and Asia amicably
shaking hands. Here East met West. Their mingled costumes
dominated the wide, windy streets; the ancient caftan and tur
ban of Asia jostling the latest fashions of France. Women were
wearing luxurious gowns upon the street down here in the warm
South, gowns of silk, of pique, of muslin, with velvet shoes upon
whose toes were monograms of gold or of diamonds; costly In
dian shawls, gold-embroidered cloaks of gay velvet, and hose
of transparent French silk. And in the women who wore these
clothes Alexis Sergiewitch saw a new beauty, the misty, the
veiled eyes of the North, uniting with the voluptuousness and
the richer freedom of the South.

Upon the street signs above his head various languages were
written. And there were small open bazaars along the business
thoroughfares just like those in Damascus or Stamboul. He ex
plored them all in a sort of greedy haste. He longed to buy every
thing he saw displayed for sale, for sake, chiefly, of the emotion
of buying.

He explored the long terrace which overlooks the sea — the ter
race bordered on one side by palaces, sumptuous residences, and
occasional monuments — which is imposing. At the base of this
terrace spreads a large semicircle where on a sudden he found
himself face to face with the hero of his dreaming childhood,
Richelieu the Duke, in bronze, who had been one of the first to
plan building a city by accurate, scientific methods. He paused
to look intently at the slightly scornful but highly intelligent face
of the great Frenchman who had amused himself, when forced to
flee from the Terreur, by building a Russian city. Then he ad
mired the mammoth staircase back of the statue, with its count
less, uniform, shining steps leading to the terrace above, and the
general atmosphere of sumptuousness and space, symbolizing
as it were the limitless ambition of that subtle Latin face fixed in

1 76 THE PENITENT

bronze, that had flung upon the semi-savage, south-Russian
shore, the ordered, the ennobling vision of those city-building,
Mediterranean peoples. The newness of the city pleased him too.
There were no marks here of a melancholy past.

He loitered gladly hi the long, wide streets, which looked so
pleasant to his boyish eyes, so alluring. Frequently these spa
cious streets were interrupted by squares. Sometimes they were
bordered by acacia-trees. He was happy and free. He was inter
ested in everything.

Best of all in Odessa he loved the wharf. Here he idled for
hours. He never grew tired of it. It was in truth in these years
a remarkable place, and at the height of its importance. There
was no merchandise in existence that did not enter the free port
of Odessa. It was one of the ultimate destinations for the cara
vans of the world: carpets from Persia; perfumes and shining
brass, rainbow porcelains and massed exquisite colors from
China; splashed muslins, precious carvings, and scents from
India; jewels, silks, laces from France; Arab horses; French
thoroughbreds; gold furniture; tropic fruits; bright-hued birds;
English stoneware; Birmingham cottons. It was as rich in mar
vels, indeed, as the fabulous seaport of Tyre, which boasted ivory,
apes, and peacocks, which Biblical kings admired and ancient
writers chronicled.

Daily here, with an untamable, nervous, sensitive joy, he
promenaded his delighted eyes over the piled-up treasures of the
earth, displayed by the edge of this blue-black sea. Hours and
hours he stood here happily watching the waves shake out mer
rily their little white ruffles of foam, and thinking how they had
come all the way from that vast, that mysterious Asia he dreamed
of and longed to see.

After his companion had started back for Kishenev, not dar
ing to remain longer and sure of punishment as it was, he forgot
about Count Woronzow, his Counting-House, and duty. He
became merely a young aristocrat, a traveler, who idled and
amused himself. In his eyes the greatness of novelty, of pleas
ure, more than justified the attitude.

One night at the French hostelry, where he happened to be

ODESSA 177

dining late, he was alone at the table with an Englishman of
about his own age, who the next morning was taking ship for
Marseilles on his homeward way to England. When he found
out that Alexis Sergiewitch, his young Russian vis-a-vis, spoke
not only French, but English in some degree, reading it per
fectly, he asked if he would care to have two small books of verse,
the work of two young poets of his land, by name Byron and
Shelley, for which he had not been able to find room in his bags.
The pale, young, un-Russian-looking Russian, not only accepted
the gifts with alacrity, but he showed a restless haste to get hold
of them.

For the next few days, while the Englishman was sailing calmly
away toward Marseilles and thinking of England, Alexis Sergie
witch barely left his room except to eat. He could with difficulty
find time to sleep, so greedily did he read.

Alexis Sergiewitch had never seen any such poetry as these
two books contained. It was a revelation. It moved him more
deeply than anything had ever moved him. Never had he
dreamed of such poetry as this ! Its beauty, its vigor, its daring,
its wild, unrestrained, onrushing verbal sweep; its defiance, its
thunderous assailing of God and man, its creative fire that burned
away falsenesses, basenesses. It was the last, free, late flowering
of the stormy, fight-loving Saxon's sea-robbing soul. It was the
last outflung glowing splendor, in civilized man, of the Berserk
er's rage. It was one of the last expressions in literature of un
mixed racial unity before the great amalgam came with its blend
ing, its blurring. It was the last genuine expression of that which
was England. The reading made him mad. It destroyed what
little respect for order, for duty, remained to him. It made him
arrogant. It made him more proud of his poet's calling. 4

This was not the first time in the history of letters that poetry
had made men mad. History has recorded the fact in the case
of two poets of an earlier day, Hafiz the Persian, and Anacreon.
There was a time when the reading of the former was prohibited
both by church and government, because it was declared he made
men mad. Both Hafiz and Anacreon had flung at commonplace
man a flashing, consuming fire that dazzled while it burned, just

178 THE PENITENT

as in these books Alexis Sergiewitch was reading. And in them
both was the same old, unreasoned joy, the same battling de
fiance, the same disregard of duty, of obedience; in short, the
unleashing of a dangerous power that teaches man he is a god and
not a slave. And the pictured faces in the front of the two books
enchanted him so: Shelley's, the delicately featured, high-bred
face of another race; and the noble beauty of Byron which Law
rence never ceased to regret he did not paint. He could not look
enough at them. He could not turn his eyes away.

The more he read, the more Alexis Sergiewitch saw in himself
another Byron. He was pleased. He was flattered. He felt that
he was abused, too, by the world just as Byron did. He sympa
thized eagerly with Byron's contempt for conventions. He had
less in common with the brave, free soul of Shelley.

From Byron he took only the bad qualities, such as rebellion
against law, against order, and not the great ones, which were
love for his fellow-men and willing warfare for their freedom. He
was too racially dissimilar to assimilate them as they were, be
cause there were not only centuries but vast geographical spaces
between them. With Alexis Sergiewitch democratic ideals were
largely a pose; but he had the same wayward pride, the same
desire to touch life supremely at as many points as possible. His
emotions, however, were not so deep. They were not so sincere.
And they were always changing. They were merely for the mo
ment's amusement, rather than the substance of which life is
made. But he was a subtler and a more delicate artist than either
of them, even if he had less strength. He had more charm, if less
vigor, and a lightness of touch which neither could approach.

Alexis Sergiewitch was something of a butterfly instead of an
intellectual heavyweight. In his soul there was no grand passion
for the freedom of mankind such as redeemed richly the wild
deeds of Byron; there was no dream of the unselfish sacrificing of
self for a world's ideals. But very likely no one has seen the art
istry of the two Englishmen, the power, the beauty of their
word-craft, as he saw it. And certainly no one ever drank in their
untamable fire as he did that lonely winter of exile by the sea of
the South.

ODESSA 179

How deeply would he have been moved if he could have known
that Shelley of the unforgettable face had died in Italy the winter
before, and strangely enough, that it should occur while he was
writing "The Triumph of Life/' a poem powerful, defiant, and
somber. Byron, too, was not far removed in time from a death
equally moving, equally dramatic.

From the Englishman's stories about Byron and Greece, Alexis
Sergiewitch got the idea that they were both there, and a plan
began to develop in his head to join them. " What a life," he kept
saying to himself, "could we lead together! What could we not
effect!" He saw already in fancy the form of his youthful self,
outlined against the classic marbles of that lovely land. He
painted eloquent dream-pictures with himself as hero, by the side
of Byron. Then, overcome by the splendor of his vision, his own
emotions, and the longing to get away, he wept. He wept, too, at
thought of the Roman poet Ovid, once exiled here in southern
Russia, just as he was exiled now. The golden-tongued heroes of
the past dwelled with him spiritually. And he suffered deeply to
think of his childhood's hero Napoleon, exiled upon an island
where he had died. He felt a magic, sympathetic union with the
great men of his age.

He wandered alone by the water, forging impossible, wild plans
of getting to a Turkish ship, that would bear him south, out of
Russia; via another Turkish ship he could make his way to Greece,
and Byron. If he could only get away from Russia! If he could
only free himself from its constraining laws!

But a Turkish war with Greece was threatening. The ships of
that country were unsafe. They were out of the question. And
there was no other way to leave Odessa without a passport.

Alone by the water, in the grave and violet evening, when the
breath of the wind was suave, he declaimed the classic lines de
scriptive of Italy and Greece, of Byron and Shelley, until it
seemed to him that he could hear coming across this sea their
sweet, shrill, far flutes of song, coming across space as now they
would be forced to come across time. That, in the early evening,
is what the deep's voice was to him here, in the wind and in the
dusk. It called to his poet's soul with the resistless lure of the

I8o THE PENITENT

Greek lyrics. The old mad songs of Anacreon, of Sappho, rippled
in his ears. He wandered here in the night, too, and the storm.
When cold, white hail, like a dagger dance, dimpled the sea with
dots and disguised its levels, he felt that he could glimpse the tot
tering, towering galleons of old, with their gorgeous prows, with
their sweep of banked oars, coming for him.

When fact at length began to penetrate his longing dream, he
wrote, forgetting in his enthusiasm the excellent resolution he
had made in the white house in Kishenev, to look out upon the
world and do his own seeing. He wrote of it in the manner of
Byron.

CHAPTER XII
MADAM WORONZOW

AFTER Alexis Sergiewitch had given vent in words to his first
Byromc rage, he had written out his soul in song. After all his
plans for escaping from Russia via a Turkish ship and joining
Byron had failed, the old thirst for wine, for the caressing arms
of women, love, which was seldom suppressed lon^ at a time
came back. He made one of those supple, startling changes,'
which were so much a part of his nature and so necessary to
him, and swung, mentally, toward something different.

Down here in the South of Russia, where her husband's word
was law, Madam Woronzow queened it more royally than the
Wife of Alexander in Petersburg, because the Empress had no
interest in queening it. Madam Woronzow was a beauty. She
was legtre, superficielle, seduisante. She was the daughter of
Countess Branicksi, who was favorite niece of that great reveler
Prince Potemkin. Her father, according to Russian law and the
service of the church, had been Commander-in- Chief of the armies
of Poland. But who he really was in fact would have been diffi
cult, indeed, to tell, so many lovers had the fair Countess had
especially when she lived in the gay, Oriental pavilions of Prince
Potemkin, down on the Ackermann Steppe, near Ismail. Her
father might have been the Prince de Ligne or the Duke of Nas
sau. And we recall, too, certain possible, merry, confirmatory
proofs about Count Roger de Damas, the young French hero of
the brutal siege of Ismail, which he wrote down in his diary on
the spot. The futility of fact here is proved amply. Now to the
lady herself.

Madam Woronzow was just as unlike that worthy and re
sponsible person, the Count, her husband, as it is possible to be.
He regarded her, it may be said, with the forgiving eyes with
which the saint regards the earthly cross that paid for sainthood.
If he included her in his nightly prayers, which is more than

1 82 THE PENITENT

probable, it was from habit and good-breeding, not because he
hoped the prayers would prove effective over her.

Madam Woronzow had the gayly impertinent face of old
France; spirited, a trifle maline, petulant, with saucy, up til ted
nose. A bunch of curls frolicked high upon the back of her head.
Her brown, merry eyes were full of twinkles, like water when the
sun shines. Her mouth broke readily into smiles. She looked
proudly down upon the mass of untitled plebeians beneath her
with an arrogant Marie de Medici look. She was mistress of
every high-handed prerogative of class, together with caprice,
and various other more intimate personal addenda, some of which
could not well be dwelt upon with profit. She was a singularly
fine specimen of the woman of her type, a worthy pupil of those
dissipated old emigres, who had taught the Russians not only
their polished, courtly speech, but their moral laxity, their
legerete.

Being the daughter of Countess Branicksi, the favorite niece,
she had inherited a goodly part of the colossal fortune of Prince
Potemkin, who had laid not only Russia but the East under
tribute, and who once piled high his library shelves with dia
monds instead of dusty books. With the money she had inherited,
too, his princely nature, some of his caprices, and his tastes.

Late on Wednesday night, which was the night when Countess
Woronzow received, Alexis Sergiewitch went proudly up the
steps of her pale, slate-stone palace and sent in his name by one of
her footmen. He was wearing new clothes to-night and a new
style of cravat, both made just as closely to imitate those worn
by the pictured Byron as possible, while his pale, scented curls
were brushed back with a daring, an abandon, that reminded one
of Shelley. He was in gay spirits to-night, too. He felt flattered
by his English style and foreign appearance.

Accustomed as he was to the palaces of Petersburg, he was
startled slightly at the outspread vista of salons that unfolded
before his eyes as he entered. Height, space, splendor. The walls
were hung with pale, pink-tinted silk velvet. Pink silk velvet,
figured, covered the floor, a carpet that had been the gift of a
Turkish prince and a trophy of Persian war. White crystal chan-

MADAM WORONZOW 183

deliers hung at regular intervals from the ceiling. Along the
walls were mirrors from Venice, as huge as doors, reaching to the
floor, and each one was framed in cut, rose-hued, flashing crystal.
The furniture was gold and pale-blue satin. And the woman who
bowed to receive him, despite her diminutiveness, her exquisite
baby- Venus type of body, had the regal air of a grande dame at
the court of the Grand Monarque. She spoke the French of that
period, too. She wore bright sea-green satin, covered with flut
tering ruffles of the filmiest white silk lace, and she carried a
painted fan.

Alexis Sergiewitch had come at an opportune time. Madam
Woronzow was ennuyee. Winter in Russia was, to be sure, the
belle saison. But not in Odessa. That referred to Petersburg, to
Moscow, where she was not permitted to be. Her gay and com
panionable friends had gone North, therefore, to the court. The
French and English had sailed south by the sea, so her great
salons were not filled as usual to-night, and now the last comers
were leaving.

She received Alexis Sergiewitch with cordiality. His name was
familiar to her, and so were his escapades. They understood each
other at a glance. They were alike; both children of pleasure who
drank deep of the moment, regardless of cost. He kissed the little
hand that looked like a doll's, and then, before he thought, he
kissed the slender wrist. She looked up and laughed. Her little
dimples twinkled.

"Is it really Monsieur Pushkin, or is it Monsieur Byron? "

She recognized his carefully copied attire. This pleased him.
Then they both laughed together because they were young and
careless.

"OhI Countess Woronzow — I should not have come here to
night! I forgot!" — in a burst of confidence.

"Forgot what? " — eagerly scenting a secret.

" I was sent here, Odessa — ever so long ago, by Monsieur le
Comte — to work in his offices. And I never reported — "

" What did you do? " She was visibly interested.

"I ran away and hid. Then I had a good time."

Madam Woronzow was delighted with the merry confession.

1 84 THE PENITENT

Nothing so interesting had happened for a long time. The way
ward curls of her high chignon were dancing approval.

"What will become of me — now, if you tell!" There was
genuine fear in his voice this time.

" Well — serve me — instead of Monsieur le Comte. It will be
all in the family, will it not? " she replied, restraining again, with
difficulty, her laughter at the humor of the situation. This was
the way she liked life to be.

She was walking rapidly toward the rear of the great salons
now, her green-and-white train dragging heavily behind her
across the pink carpet, and showing the tiny gold slippers and
gold lacework hose she wore. Then she turned abruptly, paused,
wrapping herself up for the instant in its white flutter. " We will
go into the little sitting-room, where we can chat. The drawing-
rooms are too large for conversation, don't you think so? I will
smoke. And there I will order wine for you."

The smaller room they entered was like a daytime dusk, being
hung and furnished in pale violet satin. It was lighted by one
huge, yellow, swinging lily, an Indian lotus made of Venetian
glass. Upon little tables of satinwood, scattered here and there,
were boxes of solid gold, of solid silver, which held sweetmeats,
cigarettes, or powdered perfumes to inhale. She reached for the
silken bell-rope and ordered champagne. She found then that
she was thirsty, too. She drank the merry, sparkling liquid with
him, drank it from a long-stemmed, scarlet, Bohemian glass, on
the outside of which were gold knobs, each holding a turquoise.
Alexis Sergiewitch saw about him here something of that mate
rial splendor of living which in the last days of Catherine the
Great had been something enormous.

"It is a great bore to be forced to spend la saison in Odessa,"
she complained, settling herself comfortably upon a pate, a piece
of furniture in vogue now, half sofa, half easy-chair, over the end
of which her long, green, lace-flounced train billowed.

" Monsieur le Comte, you see, is building a new palace for me —
in the Crimea. Occasionally, of course, I am obliged to run down
by boat, and look it over. No — not so far! Yes, it is at Gursuf
— near Alupka. The coast of Crimea, you know, is rapidly be
coming an Asiatic Riviera.

MADAM WORONZOW 185

"This place is getting shabby — don't you think so?" —
glancing about with a little pouting air of disapproval. " The one
he is building is an Oriental marvel!" She clasped her little
hands excitedly, whereon great gems sparkled. "It is just such a
piece of architecture, Monsieur Pushkin, as the Venetians at
tempted to build in India — long ago — for the Grand Moguls.
When it is completed it will rival the Alhambra. It will be a
realized dream of Haroun el Raschid!" declared the spoiled
beauty, whose colossal wealth had left no limits in life for her.
"I am tired of this" She put her wineglass down, and held out a
long, slender cigarette until it touched the red flame- tongue of a
bronze-green Japanese dragon. Then she settled back comfort
ably to smoke, to gossip, and to enjoy herself.

"Oh! Count Michael is making things merry for you — my
young friend!"

"You mean his reports?" he questioned somewhat quickly.

"I should say so! Both Arakcheiev and Photius are furious"

He did not need to be told how they hated him. "And the
Emperor?" he inquired with an interest he tried to conceal.

" No one — you know — ever really knows just what he thinks
— he is buttoned up so tight on the inside" Here she paused
and looked at him with her merry eyes in which laughter slum
bered. "Count Michael, you know, is the best man in the
world — but — he takes things seriously. That is a mistake.
Don't you think so? " She did not wait for a reply.

"Photius is feather- white, like the Terek — in spring. You
see — Count Galitzin in Moscow has gone over to the Catho
lics — the Jesuits? Had n't you heard of it? You had not! Now
Photius demands that all the Catholics be driven out of Russia,"
the indiscreet tongue continued. "Think of that! Foolish!
Don't you think so? " — blowing carefully a smoke-ring and
watching it drift away. "Sometimes I say French Catholic
prayers — and sometimes Russian Orthodox prayers. But it
comes out the same in the end. A prayer is a prayer, whether it is
French or Russian. Don't you say so? I knew you would agree
with me.

"Fancy! He has made Alexander put Shishkov in Count

1 86 THE PENITENT

Galitzin's place as Minister of Education. And just because of a
prayer! I don't know of any one who has a worse time of it than
Alexander. I would rather be Countess Woronzow than Emperor
Alexander."

"And I would rather you would — if it is here I am permitted
to be," he reciprocated warmly.

Alexis Sergiewitch did not care at this moment what they were
saying of him in Petersburg. That was far away, the champagne
was ample — and fine, not to mention the merry face of youth
that was leaning so amiably toward him.

"Have you heard the latest about Marie Antonova? You
haven't? Is it possible! She deceives Alexander — right
along — " Here she hesitated and looked at him appraisingly.
"Lean over here! And don't look at me and then I'll whisper it
to you."

He obeyed. His pale curls touched her red, alluring lips.
Laughing, and all but setting his curls on fire with her careless
cigarette, she whispered in his ear the latest amorous escapade
of the mistress of the Tsar. " Would you believe it? Is n't it
amazing! And — he 's — to be her own son-in-law." Then they
laughed aloud together like the two merry children they were.

"But Alexander is changing," she declared in a tone of fi
nality. " My friends write I would n't know him. He is growing
melancholy. He is afraid of Europe — books — new ideas. And
they say he is so sensitive — even fancies his lackeys make fun of
him behind his back, when they hand him his coat — his hat —
Fancy! Serves him right, too. He has never had eyes for any
one but Marie Antonova. I don't think she is so very good-
looking — do you ? I thought you 'd say so ! If a man changes his
gloves — should he not — also — " Again she bent her curly
head and whispered gayly, naughtily, in his ear. This time he
brushed slightly with his lips, his cheek, the white arm. Then he
finished the bottle of champagne.

"Oh! so many things have happened in Peter!" she exclaimed
in a tone that expressed regret that she had not been there. Then
she added with a touch of that shrewd aperqu that distinguishes
French women and surprises one into admiration in the midst of
folly:

MADAM WORONZOW 187

"You know, I believe we live more in two years here in Russia
than in ten years elsewhere. What do you think? "

She folded her painted fan quickly, placed it upon the table
and lighted another cigarette, stretching out luxuriously beneath
the rich light the soft whiteness of her arms.

"Did you hear about young Prince Odojewsky? You did not?
Poor boy! His mother is dead. He is literally grieving himself to
death. Young Mouravieff-Apostcl is one of your friends, is n't
he? I thought so! Well — he brought a pretty, blond girl up from
one of his estates. Yes — to Peter! I don't know exactly — it's
political — but anyway she was reported, and sent to Arakche-
iev's estate — near Smolensk — and there — Anastasia had her
knouted to death. I thought it would shock you. The knout cut
the end of her little white nose right off"

Alexis Sergiewitch shook off the wine. The picture flashed to
his brain. He suffered. He recalled the sensitive, almost girlish
mouth of young Mouravieff-Apostol, and how it used to tremble
if anything unpleasant affected him.

"Now the secret societies — I guess they are political, too,
some of them, are n't they? — are raging — for revenge. I don't
believe much in Pestel's sincerity, do you ? "

Alexis Sergiewitch did not hear. His mind was far away
with the pretty, childish, blond mistress of young Mouravieff-
Apostol.

"The only reason he's against the government is because he's
mad — because his father was dismissed from office. But that
handsome Ryleiev — he's in earnest!"

The heart of Alexis Sergiewitch was bleeding and he did not
listen.

Countess Woronzow looked down upon such affairs from the
impersonal height of one who cannot accept even criticism be
cause placed in life so securely. " The Grand Duke Constantine"
— her unwise tongue went rattling on. "You know how stupid
he is? Well, he said something witty — the other day. The
Countess de Laval wrote me. You know her! He said: Preserve
me, 0 God! from death by fire or water — or from marriage with a
German princess!" She laughed immoderately at this. Her

1 88 THE PENITENT

white throat rippled like a canary's in song. "You know they
all have square ankles — and wrists — just like peasants."

Her gold shoes twinkled softly in the dim light. Alexis Ser-
giewitch looked down upon them. He adored beautiful feet.
Impulsively he bent his blond head and ran his lips along her
gold-clad ankles. Madam Woronzow was enchanted. She sat
very still, smiling, and watched him. She knew that she had the
prettiest feet in Russia.

"It's a long time since you heard the gossip of Peter, is n't it?
I thought so! Baratinsky is still deeply in love with the Emper
or's daughter. Why in the world did n't Alexander give her to
him?"

Alexis Sergiewitch wondered why, too. This was not news to
him.

"I have been told that that mad monk, Photius, is demand
ing your death, or permanent exile, from Alexander."

Again, through the fumes of wine that confused him, a little
needle of pain entered his heart, and he suffered. Countess
Woronzow was just like a bird. Words, futile or deadly, dropped
from her dimpled lips with the cruel inconsequentiality of song
from a golden canary. She, however, was observing with a sort
of zest this abnormal sensitiveness of his. She enjoyed it. It
was something so unusual to watch.

"Very good people would be all right, if they could just let
other people alone. But you see, they never have any affairs
— of their own. I should n't be surprised if that were the reason.
Should you?"

He nodded his head without hearing.

"Have you heard about the beautiful Oriental, Persian, I
think, with whom Prince Metternich is in love? You haven't?
Not a word? How is that! She is one of his spies. I should n't
be a bit surprised if — sometime — she came to Russia. Should
you? Every one of consequence, does — sometime. Don't you
think so?

"In Vienna — this came straight from Count Fiquelmont in
Peter — in Vienna, he has a room walled in pale-gray velvet; a
room no one enters but himself. And in that room there is only

MADAM WORONZOW 189

one object. Guess what it is! You can't? A life-size copy of
Cupid and Psyche, a copy made by Canova himself. And there,
beside it, beside this naked, beautiful woman in marble, he
dreams of the woman of flesh whom he loves. Is n't that a
splendid thing to do? What do you think of that!

"I have never met Prince Metternich!" she added a little pen
sively. She became meditative now. She puffed on at her ciga
rette without talking, as if gathering together carefully, or else
shaping to suit her caprice of the moment, some impression which
interested her. " Sometimes I have thought — that you — and
Prince Metternich and Alexander might be called the poetic tri
umvirate"

This unexpected shrewdness of perception aroused him. He
began to listen.

"Why?" he inquired a little hastily.

"Well — you are a little poet — with words — of roses — and
the wine. Alexander is a divine poet dreaming of universal
peace — the rebirth of humanity; but Prince Metternich — is a
sort of sane poet — a poet in his daily living — "

He did not wait for her to finish. The wine was working its
will with him now. He was longing, too, to drown the suffering
which her careless tongue had caused.

"That is what I am going to be, and now!" His face showed
a sort of white and tragic fire, which for the moment dominated
her, and which she liked. Decidedly she was having a good time.
The boy was interesting.

With this he slipped over to her silken seat and took a place
behind her. He bent impulsively his fresh lips of youth to her
smooth satin shoulders. She was pleased. She laughed just as a
child laughs with a new toy, but she did not repel him.

Love was something he did not experience. He was lonely in
some sad, indefinable way. He wanted to shut out effectively for
a while his mental vision of the world's cruelty. He must have
warmth just as people suffering with physical cold seek heat.
The beauty of the room, the late hour, the wine, the sumptuous
surroundings, the sense-disturbing presence of the woman her
self, called to the artist in him. He loved only the beautifully

1 90 THE PENITENT

gowned body of the woman beside him, the highly evolved art of
dress which was hers, developed in Paris; her wit, her social finish,
her royal gems, her immoral frivolity, her unbridled license of
speech, her aristocratic hauteur, her cultivated taste for pleasure,
and the fact that she looked upon life, and its enjoyments just as
he did — but the woman herself he had no thought of loving.
He did not even trouble to see her. That was something so alto
gether different that it did not darken the edge of his thinking.
She merely flattered his senses after long abstinence. But was
not that enough? Why should one demand that every daisy be
come a rose? They were young. They were careless and gay.
They both belonged, by nature and training, to that powerful,
pagan, unrestrained, free eighteenth century that was passing,
and the present was theirs.

"Sunday night" — unclasping forcibly his detaining arms,
arising, sweeping out with a quick motion of little gold feet, the
long, fluttering, lace-flounced train, and opening and closing her
painted fan — "Sunday night — you will dine with me. Are
you not now in my service — for punishment — because you ran
away and hid from Monsieur le Comte?"

Her little laugh rang merrily again. She was happy. He was
such a charming boy fro play with. And he was so astonishingly
sensitive! "And Sunday night — I am going to give you a little
gift. Perhaps it is what you call pay for service — just as if you
were working in the Counting-House. Will not that be fun, to
play? No — I will not tell you now what it is! It's a secret!
No — 7 will not! To tell — would spoil the pleasure."

Again she was the proud mistress of the rose-hued salon,
bowing out a guest.

" Until Sunday night, Monsieur Pushkin, adieu"

He bent over her hand. "You may be sure, Madame la Com-
tesse, that this time — I shall not run away."

He hailed the arrival of Sunday with delight, not because of
love for Countess Woronzow, but because in the meantime im
aginative terrors had been tugging at his mind. The imagination
he was not using just now in art was turned inward destructively

MADAM WORONZOW 191

upon himself. " That mad monk Photius is demanding your death
of Alexander " These words repeated themselves in his mind by
some independent volition of their own. It was not the definite
thought of death, but the words gave life to a huge, tragic, phan
tasmagoria of fear, something that frequently fell upon him like
a monster and devoured him, after prolonged periods of writing
or imaginative strain.

But the childish, blond mistress of his friend, young Mourav-
ieff-Apostol, he had known and liked. He saw with his brain the
little cut-off white nose. It made him suffer. He longed for re
lief from the futile torture of his undisciplined thinking.

Countess Woronzow had ordered after-dinner coffee and
liqueur served in her boudoir, giving way to one of her caprices,
which were many. He followed happily the large half-moon of
curving garnets that held the curls on the top of her head, and
that matched her dress, into the cold, white, satin-shining frosti-
ness of the painted room, where Cupids along the walls were
blowing blue roses from puffed cheeks, or weaving lassoes of pale
ribbon the hue of sentimental ashes of roses. She heeded not at
all, conversationally, the grave dignitary who poured coffee, and
then offered them diminutive crystals filled with a liqueur yellow,
fine, sparkling.

" Can you guess what the gift is? " she inquired at once.

He shook his head.

"Have you not thought of it?"

"Of course! I have thought of nothing else," he fabricated
glibly.

" It is just the color of me — to-night. Now can't you guess? "

Again he shook his head.

"How can you be so stupid? Pull the curtains when you take
out the coffee," she commanded the expressionless-faced individ
ual. Straight folds of white satin to match the windows fell over
the door giving upon her private sitting-room without, and with
it fell solitude on them, and the lure of youth, and love.

"How stupid you are! See! Did n't I say it was the color of
me?" She held out a large, inscribed cornelian stone set in a
ring.

1 92 THE PENITENT

He looked at it with sparkling eyes. It was, indeed, a charming
gift and one worthy of the giver. "What does it say upon it,
Countess Woronzow? " taking the ring delightedly and fitting it
upon his finger.

"It is in Hebrew, the inscription. It says: Simha, son of the
most holy Rabbi Joseph. Blessed be his name. The ring has magic
power. It will protect you from evil. Wear it always for me."

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Let me repay you," he
called in a voice which emotion was swaying. He walked across
to one of the white-curtained windows, where he stood in medi
tation for a little while. Then, turning swiftly, his head flung
back, a rapt, eloquent look within his eyes, he walked toward her,
with inspired face and gesture and began to improvise.

Where the sea with ceaseless wave beat

Lonely shore flecks white with foam,
Where the moonlight glows all golden

From a southern heaven's dome,
Where in wanton harem-pleasures

Revels oft the Mussulman,
An enchantress twixt her kisses

Gave to me this Talisman.

Set thy heart not upon treasures,

'T will not aid a miser's greed,
Nor the favors of the Prophet

To a worldly end e'er lead;
If thy soul is filled with longing

For kindred at dark or dawn,
To the North it may not bear thee

Back again, my Talisman.

But when in the hour of midnight

Lustful eyes shall lure like morn,
When false lips that do not love thee

Kiss in pity or in scorn;
From love's sin and deep repentance,

From the sway of passions strong,
From betrayal and love's heartache,

Will guard thee, my Talisman! 1

1 Translated from the Russian by the author.

MADAM WORONZOW 193

As he finished reciting the last line, his fresh voice ringing with
passion, and just as he was approaching her to bend down and
put his emotional young arms about her, to repay her in his way
for the gift, the white satin door-covering was flung back with
an air of authority. In the door stood Count Woronzow, and
behind him, an orderly.

The Countess arose, bowed gracefully, and exclaimed :

"Mcmsiew, mon mari, I welcome you! I cannot tell you how
lonesome I have been, nor how sadly I have longed for your
presence."

The orderly meantime had signaled to Alexis Sergiewitch,
who, as he passed the Countess, saw her jewel-crowned head in
clining for a second in graceful dismissal of him. Count Woron
zow came in.

Alexis Sergiewitch glanced back. He saw a little white hand
behind the Count's coat fluttering him a merry if brief farewell.
The face of the Countess showed no trace of surprise or discom
fiture. She was receiving the Count with the dignity that be
fitted his rank. Her eyes were merry, happy. It had been a
charming little comedy. And she had played her part so well!
She was proud of herself. In addition, it had ended at the right
moment. A lover might become insistent or wearisome, es
pecially when he is so young. Not always could one be rid of one
at the psychological moment when emotion reaches its height,
and have something so pleasantly dramatic — one might al
most say romantic — to remember. She had enjoyed herself
hugely while it lasted. He was so tremulously sensitive, so full of
fire. Now she approved of herself. How much more satisfactory
to play real comedies, in life, and be yourself the heroine, than to
play them for other people — upon a stage! And then no one had
written a poem to her. So this time there had been something
new.

Late that night, in a little bare room which belonged to Count
Woronzow, a room which did not look like the other rooms of
the palace, where he kept a picture of his mother, an old Russian
Bible, a battered icon of brass that had belonged to his grand
father, and a few sacred books, Count Woronzow wrote a solemn

i94 THE PENITENT

letter to Alexander in Petersburg, the last paragraph of which
was as follows:

It would be well to take Pushkin quickly away from Odessa, from
this enthusiastic and applauding milieu, who are all trying to make
him believe that he is a great writer, while in reality he is only a feeble
imitator, of an original very little worthy any one's praise — Lord
Byron,

CHAPTER XIII
METTERNICH

PRINCE METTERNICH was walking happily in the marble hall
of that luxurious chateau, situated at no great distance from
Verona, on Lake Garda, which had been lent him by one of his
royal friends, and which bore in the neighborhood various sug
gestive or romantic nicknames, such as "Cupid's Nest," "Love's
Bower," because it had been the dramatic, elegant setting for the
liaisons of men of his class. Over its parapets, through its long,
graceful windows, the faces of lovely women had looked. The
oval-topped mirrors of its halls, its drawing-rooms, had reflected
women renowned at that period. Only imperial beauties came
here or women of princely blood.

He was awaiting in the spacious hall, with its rich, time-yel
lowed seats and statues of marble, eloquent of the great past of
Rome, Chali the Persian, whom in her tender, formative youth
he had taken and trained to be a super-spy; who in various Con
tinental cities had performed creditably his bidding, and whom
he had summoned from Algiers to meet him here.

Any approach to Verona made Prince Metternich high
hearted and happy. It was a place of glorious memory. Here, in
1822, he had won triumphs over the best diplomatists in Europe.
Here, for a proud moment, he had been master of the world.
Here he had succeeded in making the nations believe that the
stability of the Hapsburgs meant the stability of Europe. He
knew the technique of diplomacy as few knew it. He loved it as
an art. And he loved it for its own sake.

He recapitulated the events of that year with an equal min
gling of pleasure, of pride. He had conceived the idea of the
Congress of Verona, the forming of a league of rulers against the
ruled, and it was he who summoned the representatives of other
nations to come. Alexander of Russia, when he reached Verona,
because of his share in the recent, triumphant overthrow of Na-

196 THE PENITENT

poleon, and his avowed intention to become the savior of the
Continent, was the foremost figure in Europe. When the Con
gress was over, Alexander had fallen. He was not the great, the
dominating figure of his debut in Verona, but instead, he, Prince
Clement Metternich, had taken his place. He had there forced
Alexander to join his policy. In doing it, he had made him break
his pledged word to the Liberal party. The result was that he
stood convicted, before Europe, of double-dealing. This was the
master stroke of Metternich.

" I would rather be the one who rules a king than the king,"
he was reflecting proudly, as he paced the luxurious hall. "It is
just as glorious — and a good deal safer," he added with a
chuckle.

At that Congress, just as Alexander, when a vote was being
taken, had responded confidently: I answer for Russia! he,
Metternich, disclosed the fact that Alexander's favorite regi
ment was in revolt, that it had killed its colonel, and that there
was rioting in the streets of Petersburg. This was his second
master stroke. It weakened the power of Alexander. It sur
prised him. It grieved him. Like magic it reversed the relative
positions of power of the two men. Then he, Metternich, became
the bulwark of Europe. He, Metternich, became a super-king,
throned above the others. But that was of the past. The time
between had been unpleasantly productive of change. Now,
somewhat figuratively speaking, perhaps, and yet with basic
truth, a world stood in arms, powerful, revengeful.

" Ah — Chalil" There was unconcealed pleasure in the voice
that called her name, as he heard steps upon the stairs and turned
to meet her. It was in truth a picture calculated to win the ap
proval of the sensuous, luxurious Metternich, that connoisseur of
women.

Down the white, gleaming stairs of marble swept, with the
alluring ease that distinguishes the Asiatic, a tall, slender woman
wearing a gown of trained, flame-hued gauze which left her
arms and shoulders bare. It was gripped tightly at the waist.
But the skirt was draped and dragged its reverberating reflection
along the floor. It was as if the room had suddenly burst into
bloom.

METTERNICH 197

The black hair upon the small, round head was parted in the
middle, combed smoothly back and coiled upon her neck. Not a
lock broke the outline. It resembled a hood of ebony. She had
the broad, low brow, the short, straight nose of antique races.
The eyes, however, were brown, transparent, wide-set, with a
mingled expression of nobility and intelligence. She wore no
jewels, no ornaments, but she carried a fan of ostrich feathers,
the color of pale, green jade.

He moved quickly to meet her. He took her two hands in his.
He drew her toward him emotionally, longingly, touching with
his lips fondly, first one shoulder and then the other. His eyes
expressed the pleasure he found in her presence.

"A h! Chali — the suns of Algiers have colored you richly!
You are the hue of that precious ivory which has been the pride
of kings." Then he added a little sadly, so evocative was her
presence, as if momentarily grieved by some luxurious thought:
"You bring to me the South I have always loved. Despite the
power, the prestige which life has lent me, I have regretted it has
been a necessity it be spent in the North. It is a good deal to
miss — the caress of blue water, flowers — and that luxury of
light."

A servant entered. He proceeded to set flames upon the many
tiny, tall, white glistening candles in the gold and marble sconces
along the walls. The quick meeting of candlelight with the not
yet perished day transformed the long windows that gave upon
the lake, and the double entrance doors that opened upon the
curving front portico, into huge, translucent gems of aqua
marine and melted sapphire, forming recurring backgrounds of
wonderful blue, while the gauze flame of the gown of Chali shone
deeply in the heart of tall mirrors, which alternated with doors
and windows like the dusk of mysterious water.

Prince Metternich was a worthy companion to stand beside
her, as they turned toward the dining-room where dinner had
been announced. He was tall, handsome, blond, with amber
curls brushed loosely back, a noble figure that had known how to
keep the grace of centuries. He had blue eyes, merry, kindly; a
sensual mouth, but the royal presence, the dignity of a king. He

198 THE PENITENT

had been painted by Lawrence and by Gerard, and in those elo
quent portraits of the last of the great aristocrats, there is some
thing compelling, some fine, unanswerable argument for the past
and its arrogance, to make men forgive it, and long for it again.
He was about fifty years old now, but he looked younger, so
slender was his body, youthful.

To-night he wore, save for the powdered hair, a suit resem
bling the court costume of France; black satin coat, tight trou
sers of the same material, long silk hose, lace falling profusely
over his hands, and buckled shoes. Love and unbridled desire
for the seductive woman moving so supplely beside him, were
surging in his heart as they walked along. This helped to in
crease the youthful glamour of his appearance.

Upon the two ends of the table which awaited them flowers cut
from their stems were loosely piled after the Roman manner:
blue lilies on one end of the table, pink, late, single-leaved roses
upon the other. Slender glasses, slender decanters, of carved or
etched crystal, poised white, cold, clear as aspiring thoughts,
upon the thick, lustrous linen. Here to-night for Prince Metter-
nich some of the elements of happiness were brought together
and commingled: love, intrigue, and a pretty woman.

As he observed critically the arresting head, rising with such
distinction above the gown of unfigured gauze, and the flowers
across the table, it occurred to him, and the thought pleased him,
that upon the highways of the dead and perished East, those
ancient highways that had led to Sidon — to Babylon and Tyre
— there had been women who looked like her. Beauty in women
inspired in him an increased richness of phrase, and widened
certain boundaries of thought. This was one of the pleasures
they procured for him. Like wine, like pictures, they heightened
the energy of life.

Like the egotist that he was, he could not enjoy anything that
was not in a way his own creation. He was a collector of beau
tiful and rare objects, just as his friend Talleyrand was a col
lector of prints. Chali was one of the lovely human objects which
he had collected.

About ten years ago, when she was little more than a child,

METTERNICH 199

although a girl widow, one of his companions, for the moment
in Greece, Count Esterhazy, to be exact, had come upon her, told
Prince Metternich of her, and brought them together. At once
he had seen, not only her beauty, but the clear, poised mind of
her race, which promised usefulness to him. He had begun to
employ women spies, such as Princess Bagration, who had been
one of his first ones, and who still continued to annoy him with a
passion of which he had grown weary.

He had taken her first, escaping briefly and gladly from the
mist and cold of a Viennese winter, to the Azure Coast, the
world's playground; so sunlight and flowers had been symbols of
her, together with pleasure and delighted escape from work, from
duty. There had been brief meetings at other seasons; in emer
ald-green valleys set high amid the white snows of the Alps; and
once among the gayly peopled boulevards and the lights of Paris.
In all places tutelage along the lines of service for him had been
joined with pleasure.

Just as Prince Metternich liked to collect gems of art, just so
he liked to collect human gems, women. But the human gems
aroused in him a finer range of feelings, not only personal pride,
the titillation of pleasure, but satisfied vanity, because frequently,
as in the case of Chali, he had been instrumental in their per
fecting. In short, he saw in them the handiwork of himself as
creator. Not only had her body belonged to him, but her mind
bore the imprint of his training and his pet ideas. She had re
ported to him conditions of life, socially, economically, politically,
in various countries. She had employed the charm, the power
of her personal self to sway individuals to his demands. For the
past few years she had been in Algiers, keeping him informed of
the progress, the plans of that race he so hated, the English, and
chronicling the increasingly unstable footing there of France.
Her religion, her unmistakably Oriental origin, had been pe
culiarly effective for him there, with Moslems of high position.
In Algiers she had procured information that was important.

Because of this Chali had been surprised by the sudden, the
unexpected removal from a place of such pregnant activity, and
the summons to join him here as speedily as possible. She knew

200 THE PENITENT

something out of the ordinary was at stake. She knew some
thing up to now concealed must be the mainspring of the sum
mons. Although she understood his admiration, his enjoyment
of herself, her poised mind, trained to read facts without a foolish
admixture of flattery, told her that desire for herself was not the
reason. The pleasure he found in her, she believed, was merely
one of the more or less inconsequential pleasures he was in the
habit of finding by his path of life. His cultivated selfishness had
not escaped her.

Chali belonged to a type of women who attained peculiar per
fection for a brief period in these fleeting, transition years which
marked the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the so-called modern age, but who did not persist until to-day.
A woman of brains, of beauty, trained not by fond, loving, flat
tering parents and friends, or foolishly indulgent husband and
relatives, but by brilliant, impersonal men of the great world
for posts of efficiency, and associating almost never with other
women except punctiliously, upon purely perfunctory grounds of
etiquette, in the political salon, the legation, the public place. A
sort of woman who replaced, temporarily, perhaps, in the early
difficult transition years of the young nineteenth century, a little
of what the highly educated hetaira had been to man's social life
in pagan Greece. Such women had come oftenest from the Le
vant. They had played an important part in history ; in the
Mediterranean lands; in southern Russia in particular; in France,
in Italy; women trained to silence, to observation, to the domi
nance of self, to the folly of unwise speaking, and to become
at length splendidly poised, eloquent figures in the changing
pageant.

Metternich was pouring, with evident enjoyment, golden
Chartreuse into a sensitive, long-stemmed glass that shivered at
the touch, and remarking a propos of his thoughts and his happi
ness : "I have always loved flowers, music, and beautiful women."

"But why, Your Excellency, do you mention women last?"

— taking the proffered wine gravely.

" Because to my mind they unite the charm, the sweetness of
the other two. It is merely my way, you see, of adding the sum "

— Uf ting his glass toward her significantly, and drinking.

METTERNICH 201

Her deep-set, unsmiling eyes met his across the wine.

"How old are you now — my Chali?" — his words veering
swiftly with his thoughts, and taking on a tone of tenderness.

"Almost twenty-five, Your Excellency."

"Ah! could it have been so long ago, those years of love and
youth of ours — in the South of France — on the Cdte d'Azur/
O! that I could live them over again!" he exclaimed, surrender
ing himself to a maelstrom of memory in which love played the
predominant part. He smacked his lips slightly, either because
of the sweetness, the enjoyment of wine, or of memory.

"Then you are not so far from the age of the year — just half
my age. Your feet stand upon the edge of the eighteenth cen
tury — a time when all women knew how to love," he added,
with mingled conviction and regret, because he felt that pleasure-
free period was withdrawing.

"They have never forgotten, in the East, Your Excellency."
The glance that answered this was a caress.

No one could be more charming than the great Metternich in
his hours of self-indulgence. Now he was giving free reign to his
inclinations, to the natural man within him which politics sup
pressed. Unusual attractiveness and affability were his; his
mind was flexible and pleasure-loving. It was rich with learning
too, and his companions had been the leaders of his day. With
no one, perhaps, did he so perfectly put away the crafty political
tricksman as with Chali, because few women had so met the
approval of both his heart and his head.

"Life has dealt me many blows," he continued, but not sadly.
" It is only love that has preserved for me my vigor. I believe
that I am a greater man in that the slavery of the scholar, and
the burdensome detail of a diplomatic life, have not destroyed
in me my love for pretty women. It is love that has helped to
keep me mentally flexible — "

And Chali knew, as she listened, that the secret of a pretty
woman, when she succeeds, is silence and not words; the evoca
tive silence that inspires the man beside her. She knew that her
influence with Metternich was the result of the fact that she was
the point de depart for his more effective thinking, the thinking

202 THE PENITENT

that suddenly discovers new ideas, and which increased his sat
isfaction with himself. Into his difficult diplomatic profession
Prince Metternich put bitter reality, cold reasoning, determi
nation. He used no fantasy there. Into his living he put dreams,
conversation, music, pleasure, cultivation of all kinds, idealism,
love. In short, he made life his work of art.

Some such thought as this was passing rapidly through her
mind, but she gave no sign of it. The meeting of men of power
had made her able to appreciate the unusual range of his nature.

"I have brought to Your Excellency the flowers for which you
wrote," the low-toned, even voice that melted so easily into the
brooding blue of the night was saying.

"What flowers?"

"Flowers of Africa, Your Excellency. Those strange flowers
that live upon air which you have been eager to see."

His face showed delight as his memory swung back to the for
gotten request.

"Orchidea! Oh! — I remember — "

"And such as no one in Europe has seen. I can assure you
that in this, too, you shall be first." He was listening with in
terest, with pleasure. "I have had them collected from jungles,
from well-nigh inaccessible mountain-tops — from tall trees.
Some look like phosphorescent moons. From the center of others
long, satiny ribands depend. In the dusk they are white, waving
arms. They are like the call of a woman who loves. Some with
mouths wide open and red. Some with dots like wild, white eyes
that may not sleep. Some frail, sweet, evanescent, as gray butter
flies in the day."

His face expressed pleasure. Besides, he loved extravagances.
He had an inclination, inherited from his father, to squander
money. The collector's zeal for a moment awoke, as he thought
of those fabulous flowers of which he had only heard.

" I will hang them upon the walls of my study in Vienna. Next
winter, when they bloom, I will think of Africa — and you."

"And I did not forget the music. When my boxes are un
packed, I will play for you upon my violin some of that discon
certing, wild music."

METTERNICH 203

This interested him again. He was a musician. He could
improvise at will. He could reproduce upon the spinet whatever
he heard. "There will be plenty of time for that," he replied as
they arose, and walked toward the drawing-rooms again. "Do
not think I am going to give you up in a day — after this jour
ney. We shall be together awhile." Again he was beside her,
and for an instant his cheek rested upon the dark, shining shoul
der. "Is it not something to be proud of, my Chali," he asked,
lifting his head, "to be the woman chosen from all Europe for
the pleasure, the companionship of Metternich, on one of his
rare vacations — the woman for whom he makes kings, em
perors, wait patiently in their cabinets? " In her deep, calm eyes
for the moment shone the starry flattery of pleasure.

In the cream-hued satin-and-gold drawing-room which they
were entering, and which precious porcelains and paintings
splashed emotionally with color, they lighted their cigarettes.
They moved about freely for exercise, glimpsing from moment to
moment in their walk the purple dimness outside, where occa
sional yellow stars were swinging dangerously from the wild
black hair of wind-touched trees, and the scents of night came in.

Suddenly she felt that Prince Metternich was becoming pre
occupied. A thought was pushing her from him. It was as if a
cloud drifted confusingly in between them. She felt it sensitively.
She did not speak. She feared to break in upon his meditation
which probably was of importance. At length he looked over at
her with a new expression in his eyes. She felt he was estimating
her afresh. When this silence on his part had lasted what seemed
to her long, he declared:

"You will play havoc, Chali — with the hearts of those blond,
pale Russians!"

The secret was out. To Russia!

'''Russia!" The trained voice expressed something that re
sembled dismay.

"You are not displeased — little love?"

"It is, of course, as Your Excellency wishes." But he knew
that the thought of that land of cold and storm was not welcome.

"Do not worry. The journey will not be hard. First to Tagan-

204 THE PENITENT

rog in the South, by the Sea of Azov. Almost all of it you can
make by water — quickly — without discomfort. In addition
you can afford to go leisurely — stop whenever you wish." He
was trying to make the plan pleasant. But even these words, he
knew, had not lessened the dismay which she felt at the sug
gestion.

"It is only you, Chali, I can trust with this most delicate, dan
gerous venture — because this little head of yours nothing has
turned."

"And my duty there? What is that to be, Your Excellency?"

"Briefly, this. Alexander before long will be on the way to
Taganrog. The pretext of his going is to review the army of the
South, to see if it is in condition for the impending war with
Turkey. But I do not believe that that is the cause. I feel sure
that it is a pretext. Conditions in Russia are bad — very bad.
Alexander is the cause of it, too. He is a romantic dreamer —
and unfortunately upon a throne. Instead of putting romance
into life as I do " — looking down upon her tenderly and smiling
reminiscently, as she seated herself upon a fauteuil beside him —
"he puts romance into politics. I do not know of a worse place
where it could be put.

"He is thinking, planning, to free the serfs — and I think —
fear — of giving Russia a constitution. Freeing the serfs at this
critical moment would be like removing a dam which holds in
check for utilitarian purposes waters which would become de
structive. This must not be, now! This has alarmed me. His
emotional, vacillating vision is threatening the ruin of mankind.
It will bring on another French Revolution."

She waited, alert, silent, interested now, for what would come
next. It was no slight undertaking, however, this he was to send
her on. She did not know whether to be vexed or flattered.

" In addition, there is a widespread plot against his life, a plot
whose roots are far-spreading, deep. You see, Russia has felt
dimly what I have seen clearly — that just at this time Alexander
is wrong. This barbarous monster, Russia, that is awakening
from the sleep of centuries, must be my ally. It must help me
stop world-revolution. It must help me combat the influence of
England, with that arch-fiend Canning at head of foreign affairs."

METTERNICH 205

She looked at him interrogatively, fear slowly creeping into the
depths of her eyes.

" Not a crime — Your Excellency? "

"You know you are what I might call my honorable spy,"
he replied evasively. "That is what I was in my youth at the
Court of Napoleon. What I want you to do is this: Urge on
Alexander's natural inclinations — one of which is to give up the
throne — on some pretext or other. He has thought of it often.
You are merely to urge him toward what at the time happens to
be the level of his greatest weakness. The spread of revolution
must be stopped. Foster his dreams. Urge him toward those
that will be useful to me. Make such use of the gifts with which
nature and training have provided you as you have never made
before."

She was listening intently, but with apprehension again in
stead of pleasure.

"To-day, perhaps, Alexander thinks he is Marcus Aurelius.
To-morrow he is a philosopher. The next day he is a priest of
the Church of Rome, or — a penitent. Is it wonder no one under
stands him? I doubt," he added, "if any one ever will."

Her mobile face showed how readily she was grasping his
meaning. The road began to unfold a little. She recalled a min
iature she had once seen of this Russian ruler. She had remem
bered long the peculiar charm of his mouth.

Again the great statesman became meditative and preoccu
pied. She had faith in his mental clairvoyance, his winged, far-
reaching vision. She knew that the senses of Metternich were as
alert for sounds of future, of popular demonstration, as the senses
of the savage for game. Prince Metternich could now distinguish
plainly the stealthy, oncoming feet of uprising masses, not only
desirous enough, but angry enough, from centuries of deprivation,
of oppression — and now, being united, mighty enough — to
overthrow, to trample under foot the power of kings, the no
bility, and then the prerogatives of wealth. She understood now
that this discernment, the firm determination to check it if he
could while yet there was time, were the motive power behind
the present plan. She knew, too, that the part he had selected for

THE PENITENT

her to play would not be inconsiderable. She was flattered by
this display of faith in her. And yet it was a good deal to con
front, that unknown land. He interrupted her meditation.

"I assure you, Chali, that the terrors of the French Revolu
tion were not over on the day the guillotine first fell into disuse
in that laughing city by the Seine. Quite the contrary ! Its power
was increased. Instead of being centered in Paris, it was multi
plied. It was scattered over the world, undermining beliefs, old
standards, former habits of living, just as the persistent sun of
spring slowly melts the snow-fields. I fear — " Here he hesi
tated. He dreaded to clothe the thought with the brief reality
of words.

"I fear — it was the beginning of a slow world-dissolution, out
of which, and after which, centuries later, a new and an entirely
different civilization will be born. I fear, sometimes, that it was
the first terrifying announcement of a new cycle of time. They,
of course, who are not trained thinkers, or sensitive sociological
observers, who live just from day to day, between the potage
and the pudding, so to speak, are incapable of foreseeing — or
fearing —

He hesitated again, for some reason she did not know. Then
his mind reverted to the past. "I had a chance to see it with my
own eyes — the first breaking-up of the old world, the first fierce
onslaught of the French Revolution — the masses turned loose
upon the aristocracy. I was brought up, as you know, at the
Rhenish Courts, where my father filled various posts in capacity
of Minister — just as I do now. I was a student in Strassburg
University — when suddenly the city was filled with refugees,
with the naked, starving nobility of France — fleeing from the
rabble. The public buildings were opened tc shelter them — and
the University halls. We students were turned out to make room
for them. I saw these pale, terrified people — men, women,
little children — clad in ragged silks, velvets, laces, clutching
frantically their gems, fleeing with feet that were bare, that were
bleeding; delicately nurtured people who were unused to hard
ships. It is something I cannot forget. It is something I do not
wish to see again. I learned then what it meant to stir up the

METTERNICH aoy

dormant, unfriendly masses. It is the power of an ocean, un
leashed in storm."

Now she had received the significant key to his policy of the
last few years. She understood things that had puzzled her. In
the light of this fear all was clear. But Russia — how she hated
the thought! Russia — so faraway —

"Do you know, Chali, that pleasure has not existed, for itself,
I mean, since the Revolution? Joy is dying out of the world.
The time will come when it will be no more. Something new then
will light the hearts of men. Upon the pleasure stored up in
mankind in the old days of leisure and of power, the heart of
France must live for generations. From this same stored-up
wealth of pleasure all its art will have to be born, until art can
no more be made.

"Every one, of course, knows that there has been nothing that
can be called Society since the Revolution. There has been noth
ing since but its pale, its cheapened simulation. Think what it
meant, my dear! A race of specially trained men and women,
delicately tempered, witty, brilliant, and some of them noble —
living upon the heights of life, freed from work, freed from forced
effort, from base emotions such as envy, poverty, greed, and
busied with cultivation of the things of the mind! Unjust? Un
fair? But God gives varying talents to men when they are born.
Is that unfair, too? Then it is God whom we must condemn.

"Unfairness, probably, enters into the making of things that
are supremely fine — or that other name for unfairness — Na
ture's name, selection. I speak not as a moralist alone. I speak not
as a political reformer, but as an artist, and as a trained observer.
Absolute equality can exist only in an imaginary world, my dear!

"And we have not yet seen its supreme dissolution, this great
society of the past. Ah! my Chali, I suffer, at the vision of what I
believe to be coming! All the superiorities of the past, which are
a part of place, of preferment, will vanish. On the way to the
making of that future, which no one now can foresee in its en
tirety, there will be a sort of human hash, a social condition which
will resemble chaos, when the descendant of kings will marry
(say) the peasant's son, the ditch-digger's daughter. In this way

THE PENITENT

will be brought about the leveling for the successful upbuilding
of that new world, that vaunted socialistic super-structure, which
I am glad to say I shall not live long enough to see. But, the
future belongs to the people"

While he was speaking, it seemed to Chali that Metternich
had changed subtly. He had become, upon a sudden, a figure
great, pitiful, even tragic, bemoaning as he was the slow crum
bling of that old civilization in which he had been brought up,
which was the only thing he could love or respect, and not know
ing how soon the final collapse would come, nor what sort of a
community would remain after it. She saw at the same time how
well he himself, in body and mind, represented that old civiliza
tion of kings, that aristocracy of courtly living whose end he pre
dicted, in short, the superiority of the few at the expense of the
many. She began to wonder at this changed world of Europe, so
different from what it was when she went to Algiers. She herself
had seen the difference. People were not so happy. Conversation
and friendship were not things existing now purely per se. Even
happiness was being commercialized. In the depths of joy, of
pleasure, there was Fear, wearing a dissembling mask, to be sure,
but still it was there. Joy was gradually being withdrawn from
life like the necessary heat of a dead and fading sun.

He went on in the same even, if slightly saddened, voice. She
listened with the struggle of conflicting emotions growing stronger
and stronger within her.

" I can look with respect upon the king if he was born a king,
but not upon his serf made king by chance. In addition, the serf
cannot be equal to it. The lowly born cannot withstand the se
ductions of power. It will make of him either a fool or a mad
man. I love marble and iron, but I could not love tin because I
could not love anything base.

" In addition, I like a world that is orderly, where all is in place.
It is autocracy and the church that have best done this. It may
not represent ultimate good, but it is the best of which mankind
is capable. The new world will not soon make anything to equal
the old, in fineness, in delicacy of feeling, in unmixed power of
faith. Too many cooks spoil the broth, even if it is only cabbage

METTERNICH 209

soup. I hate the vision of a world all working for reform, and not
living, not enjoying. Life was made to live. I hate this meddle
some setting to rights of other men's lives."

Emotion, anger like this, she had not seen in the princely Met-
ternich.

"In another hundred years or so, however, there will be no
shackles upon the world, of any kind, not even of wealth. After
kings, power, place, then the rich man, too, must go. And then,
it may be, faith — and the old religions — Intelligence, highly
forced utility for purely commercial ends, will take the place of
heart. Philanthropy will become a part of business. It will be
come one of the new trades. But when the world gets this great,
this long-dreamed-of freedom, this outspread, dull, level monot
ony of democracy, of equality, it will not last forever. Nor will
man wish it to. It will last until it reaches its zenith, its power of
inner self-unfoldment, ripens, like a fruit, just as Society reached
its zenith in France before the 'Terror.' Then the pendulum will
begin to swing back again, toward the old autocratic, toward the
personally centralized rule. History has recorded many times
this swing of the political pendulum. Entire civilizations have
died and been forgotten, which moved between these two different
extremes. It will swing back again ! I assure you that it will be
cause, to give only one reason, there is an end to the range of in
ventiveness in man, although there may not be to the progression
of forces in nature; and because, in recurrent time, the best will
dominate. Life will not renounce easily or forever that glorious
picture which was the past. Perfection can never be reached, but
merely a temporarily greater or lesser good. And the reality of
good must continue to exist in men's minds, more than in ex
terior facts. Good really is largely a reflected vision of something
the physical eye may not register; an ideal, necessary, but still
superior to life. That is why the thinkers, that is why the most
enlightened, the most experienced, should decide for the masses,
who are not intelligent enough to know what is best for them.
The more developed the mind, the more unwilling it is to give
governmental power to the masses."

And yet as he said this, within his heart there was grief, born

210 THE PENITENT

of the realization that nothing can stop the incoming of the tides
of human evolution.

"Governments, peoples, races, pass through cycles of exist
ence just like flowers, just like fruit-trees; bud, flower, fruit, de
cay. But the life-circle of governments, the life-circle of races is
so large that one small human lifetime cannot sweep its entirety
with vision. So the short-sighted individual thinks that each
change must be final. Man, very likely, is chiefly happy for his
inability to think.

"Individuals, foolishly and conceitedly, set out to seek some
hidden, some mysterious, self-flattering cause for that which is
merely Nature minding her own business, ripening dutifully the
fruit of the human tree. It is like hiring a detective to find why a
ripe apple falls to the ground. There are causes, to be sure, that
hasten or delay the fall of the apple. But the detective is not
necessary.

"It is upon disease, it is upon the manifold wonders of science,
not upon brief, pitiful human life, and its mad political dreams,
that man should place his detectives. He should do it in order to
make man live centuries, instead of a few paltry decades. He
should do it to banish illness, to banish waste of all kinds, to un
cover and develop the powers latent in the earth; to chain the
wind and the tides; to harness the sun; in short, to make the
powers of nature, not man, work for man. That would make us
all kings. Then there would be no political question, no economic
question."

She saw that the great thinker was now forgetting, in some de
gree, the grief of the political seeker after power.

"Ah! — the future will be very different! It will not be bravely
then upon the field of battle, after the manner of heroes of old,
that wars of races will be fought. The old dramatic, picturesque
days are dead. It will be basely, in the counting-room, in the
factory, the diversified fields of commerce; in short, not in mus
cle, not in wasted blood, but in mind active upon the forces of
matter."

Metternich's restless and imaginative brain was rapidly fore
casting tune and that astounding mechanical civilization of the
future.

METTERNICH 211

"Victory then will be something new, something altogether
undreamed of; something wholly material, and as soul and no
bility of spirit count, petty, even base. Victory will be in the
weave of a piece of cloth, the invention of some sordid economical
device — a washing-machine, an egg-beater, a new construction
material; not in bravery, not in the skill of armored warriors, nor
the sweep of cavalry; something petty. I repeat, deadening to
the spirit, uninspired, but commercially useful. The basis of life
will change.

"Most people, of course, would like only freedom, idleness,
and their own way, which is just what the revolutionists are
fighting for. Revolutionists are grown-up children who insist
upon wreaking their will upon the world. There is baseness to be
trained out of us all when we are young.

"Do you suppose I would not like it sometimes, too? Do you
suppose I enjoy toiling like a beast of burden, day in, day out;
living only for the good of a nation, and seldom, as just now, my
love, for my own pleasure? Think what leisure would mean to a
man like me! I am a musician, a trained scientist, a student of
ancient literatures. As rich as leisure would be for me, I have
been forced to forego it, because my conscience, because my in
telligence, tell me how necessary I am to the place I fill.

"This is not merely personal preference on my part. Both ob
servation and study have gone to strengthen me in what I be
lieve; namely, the selective breeding of man, long descent, the
chain-like going on and on of the aristocratic tradition. After
the world has sated itself upon revolution, and its impossible
dream of universal freedom, it must, I feel sure, come back to
this. In the descendants of great races, great families, there are
certain excellences, certain dependablenesses, certain points of
honor, of fineness, certain rich, ripened kindnesses, that are not
found frequently among the masses. The masses wish only to
destroy. They wish only to pull down, to satisfy self. They
know nothing of poise. They know nothing of the grace of peace,
of the preciousness of preservation. What we are confronting
now is what in all probability destroyed ancient civilizations,
whose cycle of ripening had been completed, and whose greatness

2i2 THE PENITENT

to us to-day exists only in the flaunted name of some fabulous
city. In addition, the Continent has been raked with wars.
What we need now is peace. Peace is what we must have. Eu
rope places itself in my hands to be saved — from the horrors of
revolution, which means wholesale murder, suffering, poverty,
destruction. I must be faithful to that trust."

Prolonged silence fell between them. Each was buried in his
dream, while outside the purple, velvet night turned to black and
the stars lengthened cruelly their cold light-arrows.

Metternich was the first to speak. She awaited the words with
a sort of fear. " Here is the important point. For this I have sum
moned you from Algiers." His voice trembled slightly. He did
not meet her eyes. "When Alexander reaches Taganrog — he
must not go back again — to Petersburg."

"Your Excellency?"

" Alexander must not go back again!"

"Your Excellency!"

"The machinery to prevent it is already at work. Do not
worry. Neither you nor I are to be blamed. In great politics the
welfare of the individual is negligible. I told you that there was a
plot against his life. In case you cannot influence him to abdi
cate — all you will have to do is to keep me informed of the prog
ress of the plot. But he must not go back! The safety of Europe
demands it. His weak, wild dreams are sending mankind to ruin.
The ambassadors of Alexander at all the courts of Europe are
disseminating his dangerous thoughts. Everywhere his states
men are proclaiming his sympathies with liberalism. I have
worked against these romantic notions of his as long as I can.
The next move must be decisive. What, in addition, makes the
matter more critical just at present is that Canning is England's
Minister for Foreign Affairs. Canning is trying to array Russia
against me. He is trying to isolate me in this corner of Europe,
with only little, powerless, unpopular Prussia as my ally. If
Alexander abdicates — or dies — either one of his brothers, Con-
stantine or Nicholas, will join me and combat Canning. I am
forced to bring into play every possible power to checkmate
England. I am forced to do it, to save Europe. England's policy

METTERNICH 213

has always been a selfish one, saving herself at the expense of
others.

"Canning is brilliant — I grant you! But it is a misfortune
that he is in power now. He hates me — perhaps envies me. And
he fears me, too. He is brilliant — but he cannot be trusted.
His nature is full of caprices. I do not know of a harder person
to follow unless you throw reason away. You can no more trust
the Irish than you can trust the gypsy. There is something
within the two races that can neither be reckoned with nor relied
upon. Even England has never fully trusted him."

Again to Chali he seemed pitiful, because it was evident that
bravely, with his brain, and all alone, he was trying to stem the
tide of a changing world — a world in transition, which his pro
phetic, powerful brain could vision clearly. Fresh passion of de
votion for his ideals began to inspire her. He had always had the
power to sway her with his aristocratic presence, his charm, and
his eloquent tongue.

"A selfish dullness, to state facts as they are, is the secret of
England's success, and the ability to make the world believe that
she is something which she is not. England's cliffs are chalk, my
darling, but they resist the waves as if they were granite. There
you have England, dear!"

Again she was forced to admire the subtle diplomatist who
knew so well how to combine seriousness with frivolity. His pro
fession had no more skillful mouthpiece than this last representa
tive of the old order.

"I must dominate Russia! That alone can save the present,
and guarantee the future. Alexander must not go back. There
is a saying to the effect that no one can trust an Asiatic. But
that must be proved to me." He smiled down upon her signifi
cantly.

"A truce to politics!" — getting up and drawing her up by
her two hands from the fauteuil. "Let us change politics to love.
Before we retire we must go out upon the portico, to look at the
face of the night bending over the lake.

" When you first came to me, dear one, you were only a little
girl — in your teens. But you brought me the silence, the peace,

214 THE PENITENT

of those rich, painted mosques of your East. Now you come to
me from Africa — with the scents of the desert upon you."

Then Prince Metternich, preoccupied as he frequently was
with what posterity would say of him, declared:

"Sometime here guides will point out to tourists the chateau
where Metternich loved Chali the Persian, just as to-morrow
they will point out to you and me, over there on the south shore,
the villa where Catullus, the Roman exquisite, lived and loved.
In history, beautiful Garda will belong to you and me as much as
to him."

His happiness and his high spirits were returning. This villa-
bordered lake, which the Roman poet had worshiped, formed a
fitting setting for that atmosphere of love, of luxury, in which
statesmen of the old regime, like Prince Metternich, who pos
sessed great range of personal tastes, carried forward their
political plans.

His words had had their old effect. They had attuned her to
harmony with himself. He put his arms gently about her. For a
few minutes they enjoyed in silence the sweet late night together
by the water. Then he turned her toward the great stairway,
shining, eloquent and white and lonely, under the flickering
candles.

"Together we will dream to-night, my Chali, that the world is
as it used to be, not in unrest, in revolution. We will dream to
night, you and I, that we are still enjoying the proud security of
imperial calm, that the splendor of the past, of time, still unfolds
for us alone. We will forget the vulgarity, the danger, of those
wild and rampant masses that cry for blood."

By the porticos of the chateau as the night wore on the plumed
and purple peacocks sometimes became restless, ruffled their
wings, or lifted their airy crests as if desirous to measure time or
sense the day. A yellow luxurious moon rose over the lake, poised
in the serene sky above the white roof ; and the love of Metternich
caressed her with a subtle delicacy devoid alike of too much pas
sion or insistence.

CHAPTER XIV
CRIMEA AND THE GARDEN OF A KHAN

WHEN Alexis Sergiewitch awoke the next morning he was ashamed
of the trick he had played upon Count Woronzow. It was more
than shabby, look at it as he would. It was contemptible. This
self-confession made his delinquences fall upon him like a be
sieging army. It was just as shabby not to have remembered his
friends in Petersburg with letters, Schukowsky in particular,
whose wise counsel had shielded him, and who had worked to
help him get away safely. And his own family at home! He had
not written to his mother, his old nurse, Arina Rodionovna, nor
his sister Olga. It was as if they had ceased to exist. He had
thrown wisdom and common sense to the winds since he came to
Bessarabia, where he had lived in a wild delirium. He had ex
pended his energy in orgies. He had been a madman. In this
momentary, clear, hard grasping of reality, this coming to, so to
speak, he could not look upon himself favorably.

It was bad, very bad, the affair with Countess Woronzow. But
if he had not been caught making love to her, some other man
would have been caught doing it. And then he was not really in
earnest. That made it some better, he thought. Old Woronzow,
too, could not be expected to understand that making love nowa
days was merely a pastime, not a tragedy. He was behind the
times, of course. All young men did it when they could not think
of anything else to do, just as they dueled, danced. It had the
same importance. It was one of youth's catalogued amusements.
It was a combination of duty and necessity, which belonged to
young manhood. Besides, if you are alone, at midnight, with a
pretty woman like Countess Woronzow, and the champagne is
both plentiful and good, what else is there to do? Then he smiled
whimsically at the thought that it was old man Woronzow him
self whom in his heart he loved, and not the pretty young wife at
all. When life was so strange, so upside down as that, how could
any one blame him greatly?

216 THE PENITENT

Count Woronzow's morning meditations were no clearer, nor
more easily disentangled than those of Alexis Sergiewitch. His
gayly frivolous wife did not make an appearance before midday.
He ate breakfast alone, and had abundance of time in which to
think.

Odessa was ringing with the scornful epigrams, the naughty,
unprintable jingles, the undignified escapades of Alexis Sergie
witch. When any one longed for revenge upon an enemy, he made
up a rhyme about him and tacked to it the name of young Alexis
Sergiewitch. He had become a walking reference-book in which
evil intentions of various kinds were inscribed. In addition, the
example of insubordination he had been setting for the other
youthful office employes was bad. It could not safely be put up
with. He must send him away. The best thing he could do, he
concluded, would be to follow his courier of the night before with
another this morning, telling Alexander that he was going to send
Alexis Sergiewitch farther south for a while, and for two reasons.
One was to get him out of the country and away from Odessa;
and the other to enable him to regain his health. There was no
doubt about his looking ill. These years of unrestrained dissipa
tion of various kinds, in the South of Russia, had made inroads
upon his constitution. Any one could see that. He was too pale,
too thin. This time he should have a guardian, since, evidently,
recalling swiftly the dramatic interrupted scene of the night be
fore, he was incapable of taking care of himself. That would be
good for young Pushkin, and it would bring back peace to himself.

But who should the guardian be? Not a pleasant position,
surely, for any one. He thought solemnly for a while. He went
carefully over his list of friends, of acquaintances. Ah — he had
itl His old friend, General Raevsky, who was right here in Odessa
at this moment, and whom he had had the mishap to overlook.
General Raevsky was not only a friend of long standing, but a
person after his own heart, upon whom he could rely. He had
been through the Napoleonic wars with Count Woronzow. He
was one of the heroes of 1812. He had commanded, nobly, at
Borodino, under Kutusov. It should be General Raevsky! He
felt happier and relieved. He had hit upon the right expedient.

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 217

The two should set out from Odessa for the Crimea, for the
Caucasus, taking their time for the trip. The latter, he would
make emphatic. He hoped they would remain away long. This
not only relieved his mind now, but for a considerable period for
the future. And until he was well out of the city, no matter how
long that might be, he would see that he was strictly guarded.

At length Alexis Sergiewitch and General Raevsky sailed from
Odessa. That morning, as it happened, the broad, hospitable
Gulf, which can shelter the ships of all nations, was calm, and
serenely azure. To look out upon it was like a promise of happi
ness. Alexis Sergiewitch felt this. He rejoiced. There was some
thing about contact with beauty that usually restored him to his
normal condition of being. He was glad to be going away. It
was not so bad, after all, this traveling at an Emperor's expense.

Odessa from the sea, as they sailed away that soft morning of
spring, shone white and splendid, crowning the bold cliff upon
which it is situated. And General Raevsky, contrary to his
youthful companion's expectation, proved to be a sympathetic,
even an agreeable acquaintance, despite his exterior, which belied
such judgment. He was a short, fat, dark man, with the air of
command, common to officers of experience. He had a short chin,
a mouth that shut together somewhat sternly, and large dark
eyes that bulged a little. He wore short "burnsides." They
made two black, straight marks in the middle of his cheeks; and
when he walked he leaned back, as if he were strutting, and his
round, fat belly stuck out. He treated Alexis Sergiewitch like
a friend. It was just as if they were two boys setting out on a
pleasure excursion. He did not in any way refer to the past, nor
the reason of their going, nor offer the vain but impolite hope
that Alexis Sergiewitch would behave better in the future. He
merely smoked comfortably day after day, or read a new novel
called "Hans of Iceland," by a young Frenchman by the name of
Hugo, watched the blue, sunny water, and left Alexis Sergiewitch
to himself. He had been reprimanded, scolded, until he was
confused and weary. He appreciated the treatment of General
Raevsky. And the trip they were starting on was beginning to
be so delightful. There was plenty to occupy his mind and eyes.

ai8 THE PENITENT

Leaning upon the railing and looking down upon the second-
class deck below him, Alexis Sergiewitch saw a varied crowd; tall,
black-capped Persians, gay-coated, laughing Georgians, hand
some Circassians, eloquent-eyed Syrians, and peoples he could
not readily classify, all turning homeward after transacting busi
ness in the popular world-port they had left, where free trade pre
vailed. On this deck they smoked, quarreled, gossiped, made
tea, ate, dressed, and slept, and he could not look enough at the
kaleidoscopic picture.

It was truly delightful, the sailing leisurely southward on this
warm sunny sea in spring. He was conscious of a luxurious, satis
fying sensation that day after day helped to prolong. It was al
most as if his heart's wish of escaping from Russia by a Turkish
ship and joining Byron were being realized, and he was really on
his way to that land of white-columned marble and black cypress-
trees. Perhaps something really would happen, he thought
hopefully, allured by the sunny vistas that spread about him, to
make the wish come true.

The water was changing color daily as they swung south. It
was growing brighter. It was growing richer-hued, and the dis
tances more deeply blue.

At Eupatoria, which was the first place where they were sched
uled to stop, he observed with interest his first mosque. The
Orient had come to meet him. It was holding out a welcoming
hand. Here f ezzes and turbans came on board in greater numbers.
He regretted he could not land. He watched the city disappear in
a merry, rollicking wind, which set all its little windmills whirling,
and made him clutch sharply at his cap.

South from Eupatoria began the radiant coast which Countess
Woronzow had talked about, which princes have made their
playground, poets sing of, and where the new-rich, after the
Great War, had been erecting fairy palaces.

At Sebastopol, where the halt of the sailing vessel was length
ened to land cargo, which was intact and uninjured by cannon
fire now, since this was more than a quarter of a century before
the Crimean War, the indulgent General Raevsky decided they
would land, leave their baggage at an hotel, and take a trip in-

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 219

land. They agreed to take a look, at least, at famous Bakshi
Serai.

Alexis Sergiewitch could not look enough at the round, blue
circle of the Gulf, under that tremendous wall of rock that domi
nates it, and the bristling fortifications which bore the name of
Sebastopol. He remembered that Catherine the Great gave it the
name when she came here once with Prince Potemkin. General
Raevsky, who was just as interested in everything to be seen as
Alexis Sergiewitch, and who had all the enthusiasm of a boy in
the subject of traveling, pointed out upon a cliff what he believed
to be the entrance to the Kozarsky Gardens, and then he named
the forts. The water by the side of the vessel was swarming with
little boats which had come out to meet them, and the landing-
place there was all gayety, excitement, and noise.

General Raevsky, after depositing their traveling-bags safely
in a French hostelry near the wharf, hired two saddle horses and
a red-capped Tartar guide, and they turned their eager faces
inland.

A journey of some length lay before them. They agreed to
take it leisurely. It seemed to Alexis Sergiewitch that he had never
been so happy in his life. There was no one to nag him. There
was no one to try to reform him. There was no one to insist
upon his doing anything he did not wish to do. He was looking
out upon a new, strange, interesting world. Here about him in
Crimea, in early spring, he had found, for the first time, a sort
of delirium of light that corresponded to some old unuttered
longing within him. It seemed to beat upon him in great waves
of brightness, great waves of joy.

Sometimes they trotted along under walnut-trees of pro
digious size. Then they rode softly through gracious groves of
white mulberry-trees, where the grass was thick and yielding
and the young blossoms floated down like feathers. It was an
attractive land to look upon. It charmed his eyes.

In little valleys, hidden away among the wooded hills, he saw
the pale, sulphur-yellow moons of the evening primrose. He
smelled the wet fragrance of the white lily-of- the- valley. On
the levels, along the highway, the poplars and the white birches

220 THE PENITENT

gave off fragrance, and everywhere the plum-trees were in
flower. Under his feet were wild tulips, both yellow and red.
The little farmhouses they passed were set in friendly gardens,
where hollyhocks were glad to grow. Wherever they stopped for
food, they drank freely of the fine white wines of the country.
He was so happy he even forgot those lightly spoken words of
Countess Woronzow: " Photius has demanded your death of Alex
ander" Death seemed far away in this radiant land of spring.

Suddenly, then, like penance after pleasure, the farms, the
gracious field-lands ended. The light lessened. They rode
briskly into a deep, narrow valley of black, fantastic rocks which
towered gloomily above them, like a dream out of the "Purga-
torio." After picking their way carefully over this rocky road,
which was difficult and little more than a path in places, they
came out upon a level desert space. Nothing grew upon this vast
pale plain. Its unmarked surface was melancholy, disconcerting.
The hoofs of their horses echoed hollowly upon it as if it were a
crust concealing a cavern. It took them more than two hours to
cross it. Then General Raevsky galloped up excitedly and seized
the arm of Alexis Sergiewitch, who with loose-hanging bridle
was riding a few paces ahead, lost in thought.

"Stop your horse, boy! Look!"

In the distance he could see a bouquet of white, slender mina
rets, glistening above the plain.

"Bakshi Serai!" repeated the old man, with emotion in his
voice. "That means a palace made of gardens, my boy."

Bakshi Serai is one of the places of earth whose approach keeps
a peculiar delight because it is so unexpected.

When they entered the little city which bears this name so
freighted with the magic, the tragedy of the past, they found that
it occupied another long, narrow valley similar to the one through
which they had just traveled, in which there was a winding river
called the River of the Fetid Water. It was frowned down upon
by a top-heavy, crumbling mountain, which looked to Alexis
Sergiewitch as if at any moment it would fall over and crush them.

It seemed to Alexis Sergiewitch, as they started to ride through
a poplar-bordered street to a Russian inn, because General

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 221

Raevsky insisted upon Russian food, that the sky overhead was
bristling with lacework muezzin towers, and that he had entered
fairy-land.

" It was not so long ago, my boy, that the Tartar Khans them
selves ruled here ! " declared the old man. " They were not driven
out until 1783. Not so long ago, you see!"

They were standing at the moment in the famous palace of
Girei of the many loves, which Prince Potemkin, the uncle of
Countess Woronzow, had had restored. They were in that noble
court of the old Crimean Kings, with its slender, glistening col
umns, with its spaciousness, its elegance.

"It is a veritable palace of the Arabian Nights!" exclaimed
Alexis Sergiewitch excitedly, looking about at that lovely com
mingling of stone and Moorish inlay, where line follows line in
bewildering tracery. Upon the walls about him he beheld for the
first time that divine interlacing of design, the loveliest the hand
of man has made, the arabesque. Just then General Raevsky
was reading aloud the inscription upon the fountain — that
charmingly worded boast of desert people who have so loved the
decorative richness of water: "In Damascus, in Bagdad, you can
see many things, but you cannot see such a beautiful fountain"

"This is the farthest north," went on the General, "that the
faith of Islam has penetrated. And even here it could not last."

"It was made for the South, it seems to me," replied young
Pushkin abstractedly.

"That is right. That is right — for the South," agreed the old
man.

Together they wandered happily through those solemn and at
the same time voluptuous gardens, which Islam alone has known
how to make wherever its faith has predominated. They felt
upon their hearts its peculiar gift, peace, as if the pressure of
time had suddenly become less heavy. They felt its non-inquisi
tive contentment with the present. In their ears there was the
lulling murmur of doves and the tinkle of water. And in the
atmosphere about them the blossoming scent of the orange and
the olive.

"This architecture," the old General insisted, "was made by

222 THE PENITENT

the only race in the world who knew how to lift idleness to the
plane of art. The world has lost something, my boy, by not
being able to produce it to-day," he added regretfully. "Some
thing rich has gone out of life, something that had the gift of
making man happy."

He watched the graceful, youthful body of Alexis Sergiewitch
moving nimbly about in the sunlight, between the shining col
umns, or under eloquent Moorish arches; and he did not wonder
that women had found him so likable and did not make effort to
resist him, and then he wondered why he had not seen anything
of that evil, insubordinate temper of which Count Woronzow had
warned him. But General Raevsky was a Russian. Count Wo
ronzow was more of an Englishman, and he worked sincerely to
make Russia like that England which kept no surprises, which he
had known in his boyhood. With General Raevsky, Alexis Ser
giewitch was courtesy and amiability itself. There was nothing
to complain of.

Alexis Sergiewitch, in return, found the old gentleman as in
defatigable a sight-seer as he was. He, too, despite his fat, shak
ing belly and toothpick legs, could appreciate beauty and no
bility of line. In truth their tastes were not dissimilar.

They explored the Khan's palace, the vast, flower-bordered
gardens that surrounded it, and then the mosques of the city,
whose number was considerable. The old man told him their
history, their romance. Afterward, they turned their attention
to the little shops along the winding street, which are rather
bazaars than shops, and where articles of red morocco are found,
fine daggers, weapons, objects of iron and silver. Alexis Sergie
witch saw that here began that marvelous mastery of metal
which reaches its final perfection farther East, in Mecca, in
Damascus.

When evening came, however, the old man succumbed to the
pleasures of the table. Food and wine were his seductions. He
could not resist them. This made him disinclined for exercise
and long for an easy-chair. He spent the evening in his room,
resting, writing letters to his family or assembling notes of his
journey. In the evening Alexis Sergiewitch was left alone.

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 223

He, in truth, was not averse to this. For some days he had been
trying to get at the bottom of what seemed to him an interesting
mystery. Near their hostelry was a palace of Tartar days which
had a mysterious tenant. The tenant was a woman about whom
he was not able to find out anything, however he tried. This
increased his eagerness. Her servants had been quizzed. They
would not tell who she was. Nor would they say what her busi
ness was nor where she was going. Hotel employes told him how
long she had been there. She must be a person of importance,
they declared, otherwise she could not be temporarily installed
in this building, which was for tourists to see, and not for hire.

The room of Alexis Sergiewitch in the Russian hostelry was on
the side nearest the Unknown. He could see her occasionally, in
the garden, in the day. But most important of all, at night he
could hear her playing upon a violin. Sometimes he caught
glimpses of her in an upper chamber, between the pillars, under
the dim light of a swinging lamp of Turkish glass. Her face,
however, he could not see distinctly however much he tried, but
he felt that she must be young.

The music held him spellbound. It poured madness into him.
It was strange. It was sense-disturbing. It was the music of
Africa. There was something about it hypnotic, compelling. It
was as if his flesh remembered in some fabulous long ago. It was
music as old as the pyramids, and their monstrous architecture,
and like them it was monstrous, too. It evoked the soul of some
thing prodigious, something perished, yet alluring, of which noth
ing tangible remained to-day, and which the mind must be able
to re-create within its lonely chambers if it wishes to see. This
music brought to him the old imperious longings which the di
verting incidents of travel had temporarily put to sleep : for light,
warmth, pleasure, the seductive sweetness of women, and the
gratification of emotion.

The last night of his stay in Bakshi Serai came. The traveling
bags had been packed, the hotel tariff paid, the red-capped Tartar
guide informed of the hour of departure, and General Raevsky
gone early to bed. The violin called. He could resist no longer.
He started to follow it.

224 THE PENITENT

Where the shrubs, the trees, made a temporary shelter of
darkness, he climbed one of the slender pillars. He entered softly
the room of the swinging lamp of Turkish glass, where long rows
of open, curving-topped windows gave upon the night.

Chali was in the room. She was standing opposite him. It
was just as he thought, she was young. But she did not look as he
expected her to. She was of some other race. She belonged in
this architectural setting because she was a woman of the East.
To-night, as it happened, she was dressed like the women of
Algiers where she had lived and some of whose habits she kept.
She wore loose, overlapping gauzes, leaving the arms bare. The
gauzes were held together in points upon the top of her shoulders;
emerald green under sad violet under lemon yellow, splashed
with magenta dots.

She was not afraid. She did not cry out. She stood and looked
at him with eyes in which there was neither anger nor fear. He
had no thought that such a woman would be his vis-a-vis.

She, on her part, who knew so well African races, saw before
her a slender, yellow negro, although he was dressed as a man of
the upper class. His hands, she observed, were pink on the inside
like the hands of any negro. At the same time he was a figure of
distinction, even if he did not possess what is strictly known as
beauty. They both spoke the same world-tongue, French.

"I am not a robber, Madam," bowing, smiling gracefully.

She looked at the slender figure as if the explanation were super
fluous.

"Your music called — you. What could I do?"

Her face was grave.

"I was forced to break in here — by homesickness, the lure of
you."

She understood. She did not appear surprised.

"I have been listening all these nights. Do you blame me:
To-morrow I go away. I shall never return to Bakshi Serai. I
shall never see you again. Surely you will forgive me — and play
for me, once. Be good enough to let me have that to remember! "

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, this request
from an unknown visitor who had climbed into her window, she

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 225

picked up her violin. While she tested the strings, he was speak
ing.

"A momentary weariness of living, a boredom that amounts
almost to illness — a longing for something, I do not know what,
impels me to do things for which there can be no explanation —
and for which, usually, I am punished."

An Arab love-song sobbed upon the air.

" Where did you first hear that? Tell me!" he implored ex
citedly, as it ended.

A far memory came sadly back to Chali which she could not
utter. She had heard it first upon the wild, red soil of Africa, the
ecstasy of black palm-plumes above her, under a voluptuous
tropic night. And the man who sang? Again in memory she saw
him, too. How was it possible to forget? Strange to say, he
resembled the man who was standing before her now. Such
a resemblance could not be without kinship of some kind. In
this unknown, too, there were the ardors of the black races.

To-night she was slightly homesick, lonesome like Alexis
Sergiewitch. She was regretting the South which she did not
wish to leave. She did not relish this formidable Russian jour
ney ahead of her, with its hinted, tragic culmination. She wished
there were some way to get out of it. She had had enough of
danger. She wished she could turn around and go back. " Most
people," she reflected, "who fall into the clutches of Metternich
become his prey." In the presence of this Unknown she recalled
vividly her life in Algiers. He was the color of the lions of the
desert there — tawny and pallid.

"Once more, play for me!" he begged, emotion audible in his
voice. He had no desire now to run away and join either Byron
or Shelley. This caprice had gone to join his other caprices.
There were lives besides theirs. Was not there his own? There
were many other lands, too — Africa I What distant magic in
the world! As he listened to her violin, he became increasingly
conscious that no present would ever be sufficient for him to live
in, however rich. With his brain, with his longing heart, he would
live in all lands, in all ages. Sumptuously, as the fiddle bow
swept on, he projected himself outside the limiting bonds of

THE PENITENT

time, in the potential splendor of dreams. He did not know,
luckily, or he could not have been so happy in the present, that
in his undeveloped, crude Russia, there was no one who could
appreciate such an accomplished sensualist. He did not know
that he must suffer the peculiar, the sad exile of isolation caused
by envy. The tragedy had not touched him. He was still young,
still brave.

How evocative was her presence ! It enlarged the boundaries of
vision, of comprehension. Vast landscapes swung before his
brain, unknown countries which he had not seen and perhaps
could never see. Again the longing became imperative to get out
of Russia, to be free. To be free — somewhere upon the face of
the earth ! To lead the life that was impelled by his own genius.

Centered upon her he felt the distilled magic of ancient civi
lizations. Fascinating cities of Islam flashed their fervor upon
him, and in the brain of him who dreamed so prodigiously under
the spell of music there was something akin to the dream, some
thing of opulent Asia. Her presence made him live intensely.

"Let us go to the old Khan's garden," he begged when the
(fiddle bow fell. "Make my last night in Bakshi Serai something
always to remember — or regret," he added upon a sudden with
wistful premonition.

"Will you not tell me who you are now?" he pleaded, his
breath softly caressing her neck, as they entered the lonely space
of flowers, and felt about them in the warm night an expanding
of the soul of youth.

She shook her head gently.

"Why not?"

"Perhaps — I cannot. Perhaps — I may not — "

" Countess Woronzow told me in Odessa of a beautiful Oriental
who is the spy of Metternich. I believe that is who you are."

At the name of Metternich, he thought her face changed
slightly, but he could not be sure in this uncertain light. To her it
occurred upon the moment that Metternich was old and blase.
He had loved too many women. The man beside her was nearer
her own age. He was young, impressionable, full of fire.

"Hear my reasons!" he continued. "You are not frightened,

THE GARDEN OF A KHAN 227

you did not call your servants when I entered, as another woman
would have done. That presupposes training. You are traveling
alone, I do not know where — but under powerful protection,
else you could not be in the Tartar palace. You are concealing
your identity, the destination of your journey. The reason is
political, I believe, not personal."

"I am merely making a pilgrimage, as you see, to one of the
shrines of my race," she explained indifferently. "I am not a
European, you know!"

"You have been in Algiers, where Metternich has been busy
watching the ambitious plans of other nations, France in par
ticular."

" You see, I do not ask your name," was the gentle reminder.

" No, because you are playing fair. I suppose we must remain
mysteries to each other."

"I know that you are Russian, young, and that we can meet
amicably in the Land of Music," she answered with gentle eva
sion.

The perishing, columned palace, which had been so lovely in
some romantic long ago, threw its charm about them.

"What a night!" whispered young Pushk'n as they seated
themselves upon a bench of stone where a young Crimean Khan
had once loved and dreamed, just as he was doing now.

"You should know the nights of Algiers! " was the quick reply.
" And the flowers ! In cafes at night there, the people are literally
drunk with the breath of roses, the breath of jasmines. And" —
in a whisper, as if the words were not meant for him — "almost
always — at night — on the edge of the desert, there is love."

They were silent, both feeling the urge of youth and emotion,
while around them spread that disconcerting mingling of volup
tuousness and solemnity which characterizes the gardens of Islam.

The hour was late. White valley mists were drifting in. They
were drowning the moon. There was something of the fabulous
glamour of Asia here now. There was something that had be
longed to the nights of the Grand Moguls, to the nights of that
furious lover, Akbar the Great. They, too, had built gardens like
this, gardens suitable for artists in their youth, warriors, lovers,

228 THE PENITENT

the supreme delights of earth. As if divining his thoughts, the
woman beside him asked:

"Did you know that the greatest monuments to love have
been built by men of my faith? "

He looked at her wonderingly and shook his head. "But I am
willing to believe anything — after this"

"Then believe me, and ask no questions."

" Why not tell me who you are? " — his voice trembling now.

Again gently she shook her head.

"It is impossible."

"Then — if I must give you up forever after to-night, and
never know your name — love me now! I cannot go away — never
to see you again — know where you are — "

Beautiful and calm she sat beside him giving expression to the
words of fatalism of her faith.

" If it is written that we shall meet again," she replied, touched
by his communicative youth, his evident sincerity, and pain,
"we shall meet. Be sure of that! If it is not written — names
would not help it — either yours or mine."

She lifted one hand, either in protest or farewell, he could not
tell which. He did not know what impulse was swaying him most.
Above them a nightingale burst into song, a lone, belated one
evidently, that had neglected to migrate at the same time with
the others, northward to the steppes of Russia. The old, impas
sioned song was ringing in his ears again, the same song of pas
sion, of delight, that had echoed above the love of him and Sari
that lost summer, down on the Ackermann Steppe, toward Is
mail.

Chali had risen. She had moved a few steps away, where she
stood graceful, aloof.

"Tell me that sometime you will be in Petersburg!" he
pleaded. "Tell me I shall see you again! Do not let me go
without hope!"

The mists were floating, blurring, between. She was becoming
indistinct.

"In the language of my country," she replied softly, and he
fancied a little tenderly, " the words garden and Paradise are one.
That means promise, does it not?"

CHAPTER XV
A DINNER-PARTY BY THE GULF OF FINLAND

AFTER the deb&cle of the carefully arranged plan of Marie An-
tonova, which resulted from sending the saddle horses away to
the meadow, sullen, impenetrable silence settled upon her, in
which it was as difficult to find a companionable, conversational
pathway as it is for a skilled mariner to steer upon the sea in
winter, under impenetrable fog. If Alexander and Sophie amused
themselves alone together, it seemed to their delicate intuition a
deliberate neglect of her. Then they were ashamed. And if they
attempted to draw her into any pleasant plans with them, to
have her join in a drive, a boating trip, she sulkily refused, and
they remained at home. She managed not only to spoil her own
happiness, but theirs. The house, the gardens, seemed to vibrate
with her displeasure. Even the disciplined servants seemed
tainted with it. Without saying a word she knew how to make
life unbearable for every one. Not at any time had it come to her
to consider the pleasure of others. The word duty did not occur
in her limited, personal vocabulary.

At length she complained to Alexander that this narrow, con
fined way of living was injuring her nerves, and she could not put
up with it. It was making her ill. She really feared that she was
becoming melancholy. She felt that she ought, for her own good,
to return to Petersburg. He could remain here with Sophie, if he
wished — and as long as he wished. He replied with some firm
ness that it was out of the question.

The end of the discussion was that he consented to a party.
They spent two comparatively peaceful days following, while
she made out the list of guests. When the list was submitted to
Alexander, he drew his pencil through the names of a number of
her woman acquaintances and that of the Polish actor Lasky.

At this Marie Antonova wept. She retired to her room with
another headache. For one day thereafter she was invisible.

THE PENITENT

Then the argument was taken up anew. He explained to her
gravely that guests invited to a country house signified a closer,
a more intimate acquaintanceship, than those asked to huge
public affairs in a city home. Here now, since his presence made
it the royal summer residence, it became matter of state; she
could invite, therefore, only the old nobility and intimate friends
of long standing, among whom, of course, Count Schuvalow was
numbered. And it would be good, as she suggested at once, to
ask him to stay on for a few days after the dinner. Many of the
invited list were summering like them on near-by estates. Sophie
knew that the slight clearing-up after this of the domestic weather
and the occasional rifts of feeble sunshine were due to the fact
that Count Schuvalow was to come for a visit. Alexander, be it
said, had no such knowledge. Easily placable always, he began
to feel sorry that he had kept her here so long against her will.

The only important note of discord after this was just before
the guests arrived, the early evening of the party, when Marie
Antonova appeared in a dress which displeased Alexander. It
lacked dignity, refinement, he told her. In it she resembled not
the aristocratic chatelaine of a great mansion, but some wander
ing gypsy dancer. A skirt, too short, of white silk ruffles to the
waist, each rufHe edged with black, and a very low bodice made
entirely of jet. She carried a red feather fan. Upon her head was
a crown of red roses. Alexander continued to look at the costume
with displeased eyes. She stubbornly refused to change it.
Sophie wore white, a simulated little girl's dress, and around her
head, his last birthday gift, a filet of enameled forget-me-nots
upon which tiny, diamond dewdrops trembled. A long scarf of
heavy Spanish lace covered her shoulders to conceal her aston
ishing thinness.

When Count Schuvalow bent over her hand in greeting, then
tenderly lifted it to his lips, it was evident that he was shocked at
something he saw in her face, in her eyes. He looked again,
quickly, sharply, as if to make sure. She had changed greatly
in these weeks of summer he had not seen her. He paused by her
side for a little before looking in the direction of Marie Antonova,
or even greeting her, whose eyes rested upon him with a curiously

A DINNER-PARTY 231

complex expression. When he left to speak to her mother, it was
somewhat reluctantly, and there was a touch of mingled rever
ence or regret in his attitude. Gladly she saw him move on, be
cause her more companionable friends, Prince Odojewsky, young
Baratinsky, and young Mouravieff-Apostol, were just behind.
Her slightly veiled voice was clearer and happier when she ad
dressed them. He heard it. He knew at once how little he meant
to her. Young Baratinsky bent hastily and whispered in her ear.
There was a look in his eyes which only his heart could light. He
wished to remain by her side. The others had to pull him away.
Schuvalow noticed how Baratinsky's voice grew tender when he
addressed her. She had much in common with both Odojewsky
and Baratinsky, and nothing at all with him.

Then the clear, beautiful eyes of Alexander rested upon young
Schuvalow for a moment, and his kind voice spoke inconsequen
tial words of courtesy. He felt the impatient, lustful greed of
Marie Antonova surge up against him like a buffeting wave. He
could not think of anything that just suited him to say to her.
He merely sensed that her smooth shoulders, under the jet, were
very white, and the little clustering curls on her neck were soft
and silken. He left her quickly. He avoided her eyes.

The gray, scornful, penetrating eyes of Prince Viazemsky were
almost tender when he bent his head to touch his lips to the little
feverish hand of Sophie Narischkin. Plainly he saw death in her
face. He wondered that Alexander and Marie Antonova did not
see it too.

Prince Viazemsky did not remain long with Alexander, because
he knew the Emperor did not like him. In Marie Antonova he
found a satisfactory target for his sharp tongue, and a shield al
ways quick in defense, from much practice, to ward off the bitter
arrows of his wit. He could not wound her and she did not care
what he said. Women like Marie Antonova were a pleasant relief
to Prince Viazemsky. He could have carte blanche with them. He
could say whatever he wished. He knew perfectly well for whose
eyes she was dressed to-night. And she probably knew that he
knew and she did not care.

Count Orlow was serene, handsome, and Sophie Narischkin

THE PENITENT

was not displeased to meet him. He kept her two little childish
hands in his for a few moments, with the freedom of a privileged
acquaintance. He looked down upon her with a grave, impersonal
tenderness. He told her he was glad not to find any shadows to
night upon the face of his little friend. She was very charming to
look at, very appealing, and she pleased his aristocratic taste.
Only women of race could appeal to the princely Orlow.

He lingered somewhat with Alexander, who was unfeignedly
glad to talk with him. Alexander at once promised himself a
longer conversation with Count Orlow after dinner had been
served, and the guests were dispersed at their own good pleasure
throughout the gardens.

Count Orlow found zest and amusement in delaying by the
side of Marie Antonova, and dissecting, with his trained eyes, her
present emotions. This was really the chief source of pleasure
for him in society, the laying bare and then analyzing the im
pulses of women. She was restless, he knew. She was eager for
dinner to be over. She was eager for the guests she was receiving
to be scattered throughout the spacious gardens, which would
mean temporary freedom for her. She was longing for the arms
of Schuvalow. She had spent miserable weeks of starved solitude
here, he felt, and the mere sight of the old Petersburg crowd glad
dened her with memories of the past. She was especially gracious
to him. Yet he knew that while she talked with him her mind
was elsewhere and she wished he would hasten away. And on
her part, she was vaguely wondering, too, why the good-looking,
blond Orlow had never paid court to her. She was not fine-
fibered enough to sense his peculiar psychological penetration.
She did not appreciate his loyalty to Alexander. And she did not
know that the Orlow men were famous judges of both women
and horses.

In the polished but somewhat ponderous manner of old court
days, Count Cyril Razumowsky and Count Bobrinsky were pay
ing their respects to Sophie Narischkin. Count Bobrinsky 's pon-
derousness was somewhat increased by his years, and now one
could see plainly the peculiar, unlovely elongation from below the
end of his nose to the end of his chin, which he had inherited from

A DINNER-PARTY 233

his mother, Catherine the Great, in high relief just at this mo
ment as he was bending his head to pass on. He was of the same
blood as Alexander and they met in a friendly, intimate manner.
Then his empty compliments, light as star-dust, brushed Marie
Antonova, whom he despised, as he bowed quickly and moved on.

The tender sentimental heart of old, faded Count Razumow-
sky was touched at the appearance of the Emperor's daughter.
The mere sight of her made tears come to his eyes, just as singing
did some tunes, or a wild sunset over the lonely fields of his
Ukraine, or the unexpected finding of a pressed rose in a yellowed
love-letter. The romanticism of the South was in his heart.
She could have touched to-night a heart much less susceptible
than that of this faded, sentimental beau of long ago. Alexander
was sincerely glad to see him. Such men were the reliable sup
port of his realm. He wished they were all like old Razumowsky,
who looked as if he had never been young.

The other less intimate friends went onward quickly, and tar
ried only an instant over the hand of "la belle Narischkin" as
Marie Antonova was popularly called.

At dinner Count Schuvalow found himself by his frail little
fiancee with her crown of unfadable forget-me-nots, and he de
termined to talk with her, to get better acquainted with her if he
could. But his plan was upset by the fact that Prince Odojewsky
was on the other side of her, and she paid no attention to him.
All he saw of her was the disappearing sparkle of the little cold
gem-dots that circled her brow, as she turned her face toward the
young Prince, with whom she had entered happily upon some
engaging topic. Young Baratinsky was longing to be beside
her, too, and that consoled him a little. But the eyes of Marie
Antonova were looking too often in his direction. He understood
her without speech. He wondered futilely then if the ignoring of
himself by Sophie was accidental, or if she knew something that
had impelled her to do it. Baratinsky loved her. Could he have
told her? He could not read her. He was not so used to women
of her type. It was like trying to understand the heart of a
lily. But Baratinsky could have understood her, he felt with
quick regret.

234 THE PENITENT

Count Alexis Orlow was in his element. He was sitting beside
Marie Antonova. He was telling her how the country had worked
wonders for the beauty of her complexion. He declared that it
was so necessary for both her and her daughter that he was going
to suggest to Alexander that he keep them here until snow came.
Then he pretended to be greatly surprised at her displeasure,
and at her eagerness to return to Petersburg. Every once in a
while Prince Viazemsky, who sat within hearing distance, joy
ously added a word to help on Count Orlow for the discomfort of
Marie Antonova.

She asked for news of the city. He replied that there was not
any, in their set, but that Lasky the actor was having an attack of
midsummer madness, he had heard, for a ballet dancer. Try as
he would, he could not recall the dancer's name. And neither
could Viazemsky. But Viazemsky hastened to add that mid
summer madness was, in his opinion, a dangerous disease. By
these refractions, so to speak, of her temperament, he was de
lightedly measuring the condition of her amour. He believed
with Viazemsky that nature had expended a good deal more upon
the exterior than upon the interior of la belle Narischkin.

She was heartily glad when the meal was over and the guests
gathered in companionable, self-chosen groups, preparatory to
going out to view the famous flowering gardens of the Emperor
under the pale, Arctic night.

Alexander had disappeared as if by magic. Her daughter,
Prince Odojewsky, young Baratinsky, and young Mouravieff-
Apostol were glad to be together again, and they were merrily
wending their way toward the nearest door. She waited until
Count Orlow and Prince Viazemsky had excused themselves,
and were well out of sight. Then she went hastily after a black
lace shawl and stood with it over her arm for a few moments, in
a little hall adjoining the dining-room on one side. Presently
Count Schuvalow saw her, but he did not approach. He under
stood at once that the shawl was to cover the whiteness of her
arms and her skirt in the depths of some sheltering arbor, and
that he was expected to watch where she went and then follow
discreetly at a distance.

A DINNER-PARTY 235

Alexander, as it happened, had gone with Count Bobrinsky to
show that talkative old gentleman the growth of a pink crepe-
myrtle which the Count had given him two years before. The
rest of the large dinner crowd were now surging toward all the
exits, and the dining-table, under the tall candles, had the long,
white, startling emptiness of a coffin.

After Count Bobrinsky and Alexander had inspected the
shrub's growth, and had considered one or two confidential mat
ters together, old Count Cyril Razumowsky joined them, and
Alexander left to speak a word here and there to less known
guests. Then it occurred to him that now he had the time for
that pleasant, deferred conversation with Count Orlow to which
he had been looking forward throughout the slow serving of the
long dinner. He started in search of him. He walked about in
various directions without being able to find either him or Prince
Viazemsky, being detained from time to time by people who saw
an opportunity to address the Emperor.

At length he paused by the little rise of ground whereon the
scented cedars grew, in order from this slight elevation to mark
better the places where he had not looked. He heard voices.
On the other side of the tall shrubs was a seat he could not see.
The first words he heard made him pause. It was Viazemsky's
penetrating, slightly nasal voice that was speaking.

"You know, Orlow, you belong to the intimate family circle
of the Emperor. Therefore it is your duty to tell him."

"I know — I know — " was the troubled response. "I've
thought that way — sometimes — too — "

"No Orlow has been faithless to his Emperor. They have al
ways protected them."

"That's true! That's true. But you see it would hurt him sc
— love is necessary to Alexander — It would destroy all hi?
happiness."

"But — think — what will the result be — if you do not! It
is bad enough now."

"I could not bear the grief hi his face, Viazemsky. Honestly,
I could not!"

" God in Heaven, man, see what she has done! She has taken

236 THE PENITENT

Schuvalow, the man her own daughter is to marry — for a lover.
For weeks he has been, night after night, occupying Alexander's
own apartment in the Narischkin Palace. How can you hesitate
in the face of a thing like that? "

"But, you see, I love him, Viazemsky! I could not be the one
to do it."

"And not only Schuvalow — but Lasky! Every one in Peter
knows that she goes to that low-down fellow's rooms — where
women of the street go, too. You know Lasky's reputation, do
you not?"

" I know — I know — " more sadly.

"Think of the other men before these, too — There were — "
Here his voice was so low that the listener, slightly deaf, did not
catch the names. But the list was long.

"I talked it over with Bobrinsky — once — I tried to get him
to tell him. But he does not see things the way you and I do to
day. He belongs to an earlier century, you know. And he could
not bear to grieve Alexander any more than I could — "

"Right now, Orlow, she is with Schuvalow — in the honey
suckle arbor — down in the southeast corner of the gardens.
She does not put the slightest discernment into her actions.
And all these people strolling through the grounds to-night,
who— "

Here the tall, listening figure moved quickly away and sought
the honeysuckle arbor, which Viazemsky had just mentioned.
His soft evening shoes made not a sound upon the dew-weighted
grasses. His height enabled him to look down upon them easily.
The arms of Schuvalow enfolded Marie Antonova. Their atti
tude showed they were just preparing to leave the arbor. He
waited to hear no more.

He went directly to his sleeping apartments. He directed one
valet to order a carriage, with the fastest horses, at once, and to
take it outside the grounds to a place on the highway, protected
from sight by the hedge. The other valet was ordered to pack his
clothes and to start immediately for Peter in another carriage.
He picked up a long black cape and prepared to descend the
stairs again. Outside, in the upper hall, he met Marie Antonova,

A DINNER-PARTY 237

who was breathlessly trying to return the black shawl to her
room. He went up to her at once.

"Marie — I have just heard of your relations with Count
Schuvalow, and Lasky — and from sources that leave no doubt.
I learn that in the spring, when you requested me to sleep at the
palace, Count Schuvalow was occupying my apartments. I
have just seen your rendezvous with him in the honeysuckle
arbor."

She was so surprised, and so breathless with haste, that she
could not speak.

"This is the last time that you and I converse together. Keep
everything from Sophie! I shall see her as usual.'*

Still she could not regain her breath or her self-control. When
she lifted her eyes to his face she involuntarily shrank back.
Scorn curved his lips. As dull as she was, she realized that this
was not the type of man to do bodily injury. He was too far above
her. But there was something about his face that was terrifying.
It was as if it were frozen. It was a white mask of ice. For one
sickening instant she had a glimpse of the abysmal depths that
are in the human soul. And then he was gone.

As he went through the tall, curving hedge that formed the
front entrance to the estate, he paused to look back. Sophie had
just arisen from the rustic settee beside the yellow roses. She
started toward him, when something in his face, something in his
attitude, arrested her. She tried to speak. She tried to call his
name. Her voice refused to obey.

He never forgot, in the after time, how pitiful she had looked,
how helpless. The weird polar midnight, its unearthly pallor,
which keeps a light that is neither day's nor night's, wrapped her
about with an added unreality. The little sparkles of cold light
about her brow were like the dim, lost stars of far, other worlds.
She resembled a sprite of the snow. She resembled the fabled
spirits of lovely women who belong neither to life nor death,
and who are said to float above the falls of the Dnieper, in spring.
He sensed rather than saw the deep love in her eyes. She tried
to lift her arms. She tried to hold them out toward him. But his
tall, athletic figure seemed unstable. It seemed to crumple.

THE PENITENT

Something terrified her and she could not speak. In a few minutes
she started to follow him. When she reached the gate, he was
swinging into the carriage which sped away.

Baratinsky, who had been looking for her, and had just suc
ceeded in getting rid of Odojewsky and Mouravieff-Apostol,
came up at this moment. She was white and trembling. Impul
sively he put his arms about her to support her.

" What is it, little one? Tell me!"

She shook her head in a grieved, dazed manner.

"Darling — darling, tell me!"

She broke away from his detaining arms and disappeared.
His face expressed a grief as great as her own. " If you knew how
I love you!" he called after her.

Marie Antonova was like a drug addict, who in any painful
climax of life has recourse at once to the drug that brings forget-
fulness, that stills. Marie Antonova was a passion addict. She
gave orders for Alexander's apartments to be prepared, that
night, for Count Schuvalow, and then, calmer, she descended to
her guests.

Sophie Narischkin, obeying a sudden but imperative impulse,
told the lackey to find Count Schuvalow as soon as he could and
tell him she wished to speak to him alone. She would await
him by the bed of yellow roses in front of the house.

He wondered a little at this summons from his frail fiamee who
had ignored him so pointedly at dinner and throughout the
evening. He was considerably worried as to just what could be
the cause of it. Her face, however, reassured him. It expressed
no anger, no storm of emotion. She declared that she had never
asked a favor of him and now she was going to begin by asking
the first one. She hoped that he would grant it, and keep it
secret from every one — even her mother. Relieved on his guilty
conscience to find that trouble was not brewing, he promised
readily enough, feeling, perhaps, he could pay a little of the sad
debt that had made him feel ashamed of himself to-night.

"I wish you to order your carriage at once, and return to Peter.
And I do not wish my mother, nor any one else, to know that
you are going. You can leave your good-bye for my mother with

A DINNER-PARTY 239

me. " She spoke rapidly, with queer little pauses, as if to catch
her breath.

"But why — is this?"

"Nothing but a caprice" — trying to laugh. "Nothing in the
least important. You can trust me, can you not?"

Count Schuvalow was not, in truth, unwilling to go. He did
not relish greatly days of intimacy under the roof of the Emperor,
when that august person was present, with the indiscreet, emo
tional Marie Antonova. The unrestrained, reckless mood that
he had found her in to-night in the honeysuckle arbor made him
wish for an excuse to get away. It was risking too much to stay.
In addition he was glad of an opportunity to please his rather
difficult, childish fiancee, who so seldom addressed him. He
promised good-humoredly. He left at once.

Late that night, when the guests were gone and Marie An
tonova and her daughter were alone together, the former
said:

"Where is Count Schuvalow?"

"He has returned to Peter."

"Wkatl"

"Just as I said."

"Why did he go? " — in a tone that indicated rising emotion.

"I asked him to."

"Why?"

"I do not know, exactly. It was an impulse."

"You . . . you . . . you/" — getting up and advancing to
ward her daughter.

Marie Antonova went to extremes both in love and hate. So
phie Narischkin, exhausted by the late hour, the long dinner, the
receiving, and the dramatic wordless interview with her father,
sat weak and trembling, looking helplessly at the figure of fury
that was advancing toward her.

" What do you not owe to me, you ungrateful girl? Why have
you lived a soft life, and had flowers and diamonds flung at you?
Why have people crawled on their knees to kiss your hands when
they would not speak to me? Do you know? Because of a sin of
mine! That is why. That is what made you the daughter of an

240 THE PENITENT

Emperor, instead of the daughter of that poor old fool, Dmitri
Lvovitch, who sits in a corner and lets his face twitch."

The English governess and nurse for whom she had rung,
feeling, suddenly, peculiarly weary, appeared now in the door at
one end of the long drawing-room. The tense scene struck their
senses. It prevented for the moment their entrance.

"All that makes you superfine and petted, I bought — I —
with the sale of my body — I — with the sale of my soul! Now
you think you are better than I, because you have not been
forced to do such things. Now you think you can sit and judge
me, reform me — make me different — you little waxen idiot —
you . . . you . . . you . . . " Relapsing easily into the shocking
speech of a woman of the street, such speech as her daughter had
never heard before, Marie Antonova began to shriek in disap
pointed rage. She was like a wild animal whose prey has been
forcibly snatched from its hungry jaws.

"Alexander has gone — gone, I say — and he will never come
back — You will never see him again. Now you go — too. Do
you hear me? You go too! — Go, go — I have no money to sup
port you! For you my house has been turned into a combination
hospital — for years — a sort of high-class nursery — to spoil
my pleasures — Do you suppose I am going to spend my money
on you — when I have n't enough for myself? Get out! Go and
earn it — the way I did! "

The head of Sophie Narischkin fell forward in a dull, heavy
way. A gurgling sound came from her throat. Two thin streams
of red began to trickle slowly from her lips, across the white front
of her gown and the scarf of Spanish lace. Marie Antonova, the
wreath of red roses on her head wilted now and falling rakishly
over one ear, rage, disappointment, and despair in her face,
looked like a disgraceful, drunken, lascivious maenad on the
Greek mountains, in some wild pre-Christian orgy.

"You English-faced bull-dog, you!" she screamed, noticing
for the first time the governess standing by the door. " Come in
here and take her away ! "

The English governess, joined by the nurse, carried Sophie
Narischkin to her room, where they disrobed her gently and put

A DINNER-PARTY 241

her upon the bed. Her head bumped against them dully, as if it
were made of wood.

As they climbed the long stairs slowly with their burden, the
hysterical shrieks of Marie Antonova, who had now lost all self-
control, rang in their ears.

In the morning Sophie Narischkin was dead.

CHAPTER XVI
CAUCASIA

THEY set sail from Sebastopol, upon a sea as smooth and gracious
as the one that had speeded them from Odessa. If General Raev-
sky knew anything of the romantic night which Alexis Sergie-
witch had spent in the garden of the ruined palace of Bakshi
Serai, he kept the information to himself.

He had a chart of the radiant coast they were rounding so
rapidly, and his mind was intent upon it. The high rock cliffs of
Sebastopol threw long black shadows after them upon the water
as they swung away. Its proud forts were intact now, and un
injured by cannon fire.

At Balaclava, where the vessel was made fast again to dis
charge and take on cargo, the old man was enchanted with the
almost landlocked harbor and the green hills sloping down to it
in such a friendly manner. The famous " Valley of Death, " which
later during the Crimean War was to be world-renowned for
English bravery and the " Charge of the Light Brigade," was now
merely a peaceful expanse of red and yellow poppies.

They had reached that delightfully curving bit of land which is
the shore of the south, and which is dotted with semi-regal es
tates, where white villas shine among the orange groves, and the
old man was marking his chart busily. "Alupka is as lovely as
anything on the Cote d'Azur," he scribbled excitedly. And then
he wrote right after it: "lalta is a Russian Monaco, as far as
the setting of nature goes; but the houses are very ugly. It is
too bad the lovely architecture of Spain, or France, could not
have been duplicated here."

For all that, lalta was pleasure-giving. It was unlike the
North. They feasted their eyes upon it.

After lalta came Oursuf . Here Count Woronzow was building
the mansion for the gay Countess, which he planned to make one
of the sights of Russia, and upon which he had expended a for
tune.

CAUCASIA 243

Near Alupka, Count Woronzow had another palace, General
Raevsky remembered to note down in his diary at that instant.

Alexis Sergiewitch was just as busy in his way as the old Gen
eral. He was writing, too. He was collecting together in his mind,
and then arranging, his impressions of Bakshi Serai, and the
gardens with the fountain. To the billowing of warm winds of
spring in the sails and the inspiring song of blue water beneath
him, he was writing happily and fluently.

To the east, after Oursuf, the billowing Black Sea, unmarked
of land, spread clean before them. And it was in this direction
they turned. Old General Raevsky was all excitement, enthu
siasm. No one liked traveling better than he. They were headed
directly for a new land, an Oriental land — Caucasia; and this
gave him pleasure. To him at this period, as to every one in
Russia, the word spelled danger, romance, adventure. The
hand of Russia was beginning to rest heavily again upon the
Caucasus. Travel here was none too safe. It was a place much
talked of. What lay before them was a Promised Land, therefore,
to them both.

They set foot to shore at Novorossiisk. It was a tiny group of
wood and dirt houses in Pushkin's day, set in a wild amphitheater
of dark, somber hills. The impression it made upon Alexis Ser
giewitch was of a place sad, barren, far away, and lonely; although
the spicy scent of wooded heights tingled his nostrils.

Here in the Caucasus Alexis Sergiewitch found that God had
heard his prayer, to get away. He was, to all intents and pur
poses, out of Russia. A world of different language, different
customs, different religions, spread around him. Nothing re
membered or seen before was here.

The slightly depressing effect which the mud-plastered houses
which bore the name of Novorossiisk had made upon Alexis
Sergiewitch when they landed, after the bright, blue, enveloping
light of the sea, was not altogether dissipated the next morning.
He was disheartened, dull. Their journey, however, was not de
layed. They started inland. They turned toward the southeast
accompanied by a guard of Russian soldiers. The Caucasus was
disturbed at present. Eagland, they knew, was trying to stir up

244 THE PENITENT

the tribes all along the Persian border. Not long before, the Per
sians had even invaded Tiflis. Alexander was driving the Cir
cassians of the coast out of their old quarters. He was driving
them toward the Kuban, farther southeast. And that fierce
Mohammedan leader, Schamyl, was making an effort to unite
all the tribes, in order to have revenge by driving out the Rus
sians. He planned to establish a kingdom here whose govern
ment was to be centralized in Daghestan. Schamyl was power
ful. He was a leader of ability. Therefore their guard was not
amiss. Danger might lurk at any turn.

The road led up. Soon it was so narrow they were forced to go
single file. Broader and broader the land unrolled beneath them.
Alexis Sergiewitch saw a luxuriant world of spring and tropic
summer, with great vistas of veiled or snowy mountains shut
ting in the horizon. Above him were pine, fir, and hemlock,
higher than his eyes could reach; beside him, blossoming anem
ones, violets, lilies; and in the valleys below a tropical wonder
land, a world of blossoms, azaleas, white rhododendrons, pink
thistles, Bengal roses, almond-trees, the white English thorn,
and the blue fringed gentian. Black forests above him; and be
yond the cruel," electric, blue flash of the sea. His indifference left
him, face to face with wild Caucasia.

He began to join in the interest, the emotion of General Raev-
sky, whose fat belly made him look ridiculous, climbing these
steep ascents upon a little mountain horse which all but disap
peared beneath his overhanging belly. At the first level large
enough to hold them comfortably, he called a halt.

"Alexis Sergiewitch," he began to discourse solemnly, "do you
realize that from the height here you are looking down upon two
continents? Here is Europe. There is Asia. This is one of the
roofs of the world, my boy."

Each day they journeyed on now, the more remote became
the wilderness, the more astonishing the circle of uplifted moun
tains. In their ears was the sea-like sound of wind coming across
primeval forests, or the song of hidden water, or the velvet, fur
tive tread of wild life in the underbrush. The harmony of nature
began to dominate them. How puerile were social dissensions,

CAUCASIA 245

restrictions! How vain the jealousies, the petty differences of
opinion, that made men unhappy, and blasted their lives, when
confronted with this tremendous nature! The spirit of Alexis
Sergiewitch began to soar, just as he was now watching an eagle
soar, above a dizzy Caucasian summit. He could see the old
hemming world of his weaknesses, his boyish wrongdoing, out
spread inconsequentially, like a map he had thrown away. He
had risen above the past. He was serene, happy. With each
day's traveling his spirit was becoming more unfettered, free.

How mighty was the power that had made the mountains
bubble up and down like boiling tea-water when the samovar
was made ready! What inconceivable force tossed up these
heights, the greatest in Europe, and then cut out the round, blue
seas and set them down carefully between them! They were
round as the botibliki which the faithful eat at Eastertide. His
spirit was filled with reverence. It was as if he were approaching
the throne of God. The unusual range of his nature enabled him
to progress from disenchantment to ecstasy. His health returned.
General Raevsky saw this. He understood that it was the effect
of beauty upon the sensitive nature of an artist. But he made no
remark. And not once had he referred to the past.

Around the camp-fire at night they were too tired to talk after
the day's ride. They smoked in silence, listened to the tethered
horses chewing their food or moving their feet, or watched the
yellow flame gradually lessen its light-dance on the leaves above
them. Alexis Sergiewitch loved the nights. They had a cold,
pure lustration at these heights. As he watched the steady stars,,
which were brighter and nearer than down on the Russian Steppe,
he wondered sometimes if the lovely unknown Oriental of the
gardens of Bakshi Serai were perhaps journeying toward the east
now, Persia, Turkey, and looking up to-night at these same stars
and thinking of him. The thought held no bitterness, although
he longed to see her again.

As they approached the traveled Pass, the natural bridge over
the mountains which connects Asia with Europe, they met other
travelers. Alexis Sergiewitch was astonished at the beauty, the
grace, of these mountain people; tall, muscular, flashing-eyed

246 THE PENITENT

Georgians whose waists were so slender two hands could span
them. They were marvelous horsemen. He had never seen any
to equal them. Around camping-places they pirouetted on horse
back on the edge of abysses. They were fearless. They were
friends with every variety of danger. They leaped ravines, where
a false step meant death. They shot, exactly in the center, silver
coins tossed into the air. An interpreter enabled him to talk with
them. He was surprised to find their speech embroidered with
poetry. It was like the delicate, intricate pattern upon a Persian
shawl. They were intelligent, witty, subtle.

The Circassians were just as handsome, too. The men wore
long coats, richly galooned with gold braid, high caps set rak-
ishly upon their heads, and gay silken shawls swathed about
their flexible waists, where damascened daggers glittered. The
women were even more attractive. But he looked upon them in
differently, calmly, with the appraising eye of an artist. He was
amazed at the variety of people he met. It seemed to him that
in no other extent of territory equally small could so many dif
ferent races be found. And there was one beauty common to all
these races — their eyes. He knew now what the old saying
meant, "The eyes of Asia"

There are two highways that lend a seeming of order to the
tumbled, twisted, indeterminate mountain-world of the Cau
casus: the old Caspian Road, of a time so remote it may not be
dated; and the great Georgian Military Road; but neither was
the fine, comparatively smooth highway of travel and commerce
of a later day. The Georgian Military Road, as it is known now,
was really built in 1861. Both at this date resembled mere rough
pathways more suitable for the feet of mountain goats than well-
kept world-highways. The Caspian Road led to Kisliar, to the
east, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and after a while down to
Baku where oil had recently been found. The Georgian Road led
along the Terek, over the dizzy Gorge of Dariel, past Kasbek and
Elbrusz, and then connected at Jekkaterinogradskaja, with all
the great highways leading to the cities of Russia. The latter,
the more traveled of the two and the more important to Russia,
which is the one they took, is probably the most astonishing

CAUCASIA 247

scenic road in the world. It leads over abysses which the eye
cannot fathom, over mountains where the snow never melts,
through tropical, flower-filled valleys.

When Elbrusz, the highest mountain in Europe, swung to
view, with its satellite peaks, marking grandly great voids of
space, it was midday. General Raevsky was almost beside him
self with excitement. He declared they must pitch camp here
and spend the night. "My boy" — his -voice was trembling —
"have you thought that you are now standing where perhaps was
the beginning of the human race? There, to the southeast, not so
far away — although from here we cannot see it — is Ararat,
where the Ark rested after the Flood. An ancient land, this, my
boy! And the people who live here will tell you that it was upon
Elbrusz, yonder, that the Dove, returning to the Ark, paused to
rest. The birthplace of man — it may be — is here."

Alexis Sergiewitch looked up reverently at the aged cone, white
with snow that could never melt, and he felt suddenly that he
was looking out upon a landscape, not only as ancient, but as
chaotic as any landscape of the moon. It looked as worlds must
look when they are born, flung forth, and first begin to be bur
nished by the brawling winds of space.

A few days later Kasbek was before them. This, the guide
explained, was known to the people as "Christ's Mountain,"
just why no one could tell. But to the mountain tribes, it was
sacred. The great Georgian Highway leading from Europe to
Asia, along which they were traveling, passed by here. The day
was clear. They saw plainly its magnificent deep, blue glaciers
shining like an oblong, furrowed gem of aquamarine. From the
top of the Pass, Alexis Sergiewitch saw in all directions, far away,
the mighty, billowing, veiled phantoms of mountains, nameless,
ageless; a sight at once grandiose and terrible.

"It was upon Kasbek," General Raevsky informed him
briskly, "that the Greeks fabled Prometheus to have beea
chained, after he stole the fire from Heaven. So here East meets
West. The old world of Asia meets the unromantic, newly scien
tific, upbuilding Europe."

The descent into the valley of the Terek on the other side of

248 THE PENITENT

the Pass was not great. It was only about fifteen hundred feet,
to be exact, but it was steep, slippery, dangerous. Here, for a
space, the hillsides were bare, treeless, and stony, which made
the descent more impressive.

On the other side of the Pass, however, villages were more fre
quent. At night, when they camped here, looking out upon the
wild mountain summits of Daghestan, there echoed for the first
time in the ears of Alexis Sergiewitch the solemn evening prayer
of Islam. They were getting ready for war, a sacred war against
the infidel. Some of the men were wearing chain-armor exactly
like that worn by the Crusaders, only there was no scarlet cross
upon it. And the smiths were busy forging it now in many little
dark forges hidden away among the hills, and daggers of beauty,
upon whose hilts, or blades, was written: "Be slow to anger, but
prompt to vengeance."

Amid these mountains of Daghestan, which are wild and mag
nificent, Alexis Sergiewitch became like a little child, in wonder,
in admiration. Here he met, too, a greater variety of people, and
their attire was more varied, more richly hued. He saw women
in wide, white pantaloons, over which were bright, swinging
tunics of silk. He saw men smoking fragrant, Persian tobacco
in long-stemmed, Circassian pipes. Even shepherds painted their
sheep with daring splashes of orange, of yellow. There was a
charm in the air. There was a charm in the sky. When he first
opened his eyes in the morning, something so splendid, so in
spiriting seemed to envelop both body and brain that it re
minded him of primordial day. There was something about life
here that must have been as it was in scriptural times, free from
fictitiousness, with a certain rich heart-sincerity. General Raev-
sky noticed this. He agreed with him. And in the morning, too,
the same, fanatical, impassioned cry of the faith of Islam, which
he had heard the evening before, spread slowly like the wings of a
gigantic eagle above the pointed mountains. And in his sensitive,
poet's heart he trembled at sound of that fierce, all-conquering
cry of the spirit.

Alexis Sergiewitch found that the little Moslem villages were
made for a different life than he had known; more of meditation,

CAUCASIA 249

more of silence. The people did not talk, talk, like the Russians,
whose tongues are never still.

General Raevsky, who was somewhat of a glutton, which did
not interfere with the kindness of his heart, praised the food.
They were served with roast bear's feet washed down with wines;
partridges; smoked tongues of elan; milk-fed pig; jerked beef;
marmalade with vinegar sauce; ragout of young lamb made with
vinegar; speckled trout served with a rich sauce made of sour
cream mixed with nuts; and a rich fragrant brandy called Kisli-
arxa. He ate, slept, smoked, said his prayers, declaimed elo
quently for instruction of his young charge, looked about him,
and was happy. He was taking heed, too, of the parting ad
monition of Count Woronzow: "Take all the time you want!
Do not hurry."

They camped by the Gorge of Dariel, that gorge so deep that
it is night in its depths for some time after the sun has risen.
When he climbed to any of the heights, if the day were clear, he
liked to fancy that a narrow blue strip of enamel, which he could
see far away between the gaunt, gashed mountains, was the Cas
pian Sea. Here General Raevsky caught up with his diary, while
Alexis Sergiewitch wrote poetry. Here he wrote not only lyrics,
but he began to sketch out a more extended piece of story-telling
in verse, descriptive likewise of this journey, which he decided to
name "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," a name, no doubt, sug
gested by another book, "Prisoners of the Caucasus," written in
French by Joseph de Maistre, whom he remembered had painted
the portrait of his graceful, Creole mother, and which now hung
in the old town home in Moscow. Among such favorable sur
roundings, solitude, the snowy summits of lonely mountains, the
voice of the great river which shook the night, the somber song
of ancient forests, and the friendly, generous-spirited man with
whom he was traveling, it was finished speedily.

From Piatigorsk, where the hot sulphur springs and the mod
ern hotels are, he sent the manuscript on to Petersburg. With it
he sent a letter to his long-neglected friend, Schukowsky, telling
briefly of his experiences in the South and how he had learned to
know two English poets, Byron and Shelley. The latter, he ex-

250 THE PENITENT

plained, was a free-thinker. After reading him he did not know
but that he had become one, too. About the Caucasus he would
say nothing, because the verse he was sending on to be printed
would tell the story.

The journey of General Raevsky and himself up to now had
been in the same general direction in which the Circassian people
were being driven by Russia, south and east. Now it was changed.

From Piatigorsk they began to turn slightly north and west.
Winter could not be spent in the semi-shelterless, wild Caucasia,
where snows were heavy and frequent. Autumn was bearing
down upon them. They had both felt it sensitively and without
wishing to mention it. For both there was a measure of grief in
the fact.

One morning after they passed Novogeorgevsk, where the
sunny air about them was like liquid amber, they found they
stood upon the last height of the somber Caucasian range. Gen
eral Raevsky pointed sadly to vague blue levels below them and
to northward. Here huge circling coils shone, which the old man
told him a little sadly were the great rivers of Russia, the Don
and the Volga.

1 l There, my boy — look — there where the mountains fade
into the plain — that is Russia. There our journey, our happy
companionship ends." The sight saddened Alexis Sergiewitch.
He wished impetuously that it could be made to last forever.
*' Cheer up, my boy! We are not there yet."

Alexis Sergiewitch looked down upon the awkward, fat, emo
tional figure beside him, and a wave of love, of gratitude for this
man, who had given him so many months of calm and reasonable
living, when he had possessed creative power, surged within him.

"It is a great country, my boy — over there — our Russia!
Something to be proud of. A great country, did I say ? Why, it
covers half the earth. And Russia is going to be proud of you,
some day — I feel it. I know it. Never lose courage — my boy I "

CHAPTER XVII
ALEXANDER

WHEN Alexander reached Petersburg, after overhearing the
frank disclosure of the infidelities of Marie Antonova which had
taken place between Count Orlow and the scornful Viazemsky,
and after seeing her in the arms of the handsome Schuvalow in
the honeysuckle arbor, he sat in his cabinet a night and a day,
without sleeping, without changing his apparel, or seeming to
take notice of anything. He gave orders to admit no one. He did
not glance toward his accumulated papers. He did not open his
dispatches. He forgot his duties. Food was carried to him. He
ate only bread and fruit, and little of that. He washed it down
with water.

He sat rigid and white, looking straight ahead, as if he were
made of stone, but seeing nothing. The servants who answered
his bell hastened to report that there was something "queer"
about the Emperor, but they did not know how to tell what it
was. They agreed that he did not appear like himself. They
whispered cautiously to each other that "he looked as if he had
lost his mind."

Like the earthquake, swift, unannounced, which topples over
tall buildings of masonry and then lays bare the hidden heart
of the earth, the disclosure had come. It had not only shocked
him, but it had torn loose and then uprooted the protecting,
hidden fibers of being. He had loved Marie Antonova tenderly,
and for a period of years. She was interwoven with the happy,
care-free days of his young manhood. He had trusted her. More,
the mere thought that she could be unfaithful to him had not
occurred to him. He believed she loved him in return just as he
loved her. All the serene, peaceful, home life, with its ensuing
happiness, which he had known had been with her. There had
really been no happy family life, with its little foolish but neces
sary pleasures, for him to look back upon when he had been a

252 THE PENITENT

child and lived with his grandmother at court. Life there had
been secure, triumphant, splendid, a kind of continual pageant.
In his own home his father had been a wild-tempered, unrea
soning madman. There had been trouble, excitement, danger
there. So this life with Marie Antonova had supplied the need
of his nature. Its love had given him the heart-warmth, the
courage to go on, and the necessary human background. She
was a part of the happy memories of youth.

And hers was no weak, no accidental stepping from right, to
be overlooked or forgiven great-heartedly. It had been deliber
ate. It had been planned throughout the years — and not with
one — but with many. There had been no regard to station in
life, no regard for decency of any kind. She had lived like any
woman of the street. She was another Orsini. He had lived with
her, protected her, loved her, through the best years of his life
and not known it. He had given her the best of himself. He had
made life for her something delightful, to be envied. She was vile.
She was contemptible. And he had not suspected it. Her base
ness shocked him. The knowledge filled him with suffering. It
shattered his sustaining courage. In baseness she surpassed any
woman of whom he had heard. It was baseness unprovoked —
of independent choosing. It was something her nature required
and sought. There was no other view to take of it.

Just as his daughter had recast the past after she saw Count
Schuvalow enter her mother's room at night, and had then in
terpreted things that puzzled her in the truthful light of acquired
knowledge, Alexander began to do the same. And the scenes
that occurred to the two were surprisingly similar. He under
stood now the feigned excuse of riding daily to reduce her flesh;
the late and later hours at which she had returned from these
rides, with the glibly plausible but now foolish excuses. How
could he have believed them at the time? What faith was his!
He understood various extraordinary, and to him unreasonable,
attacks of ill temper, of sulkiness, which he had regarded indul
gently at the moment, as little human inequalities, and then
made futile efforts to please her, usually by some dazzling gift.
He remembered feeling how angry she had been that night when

ALEXANDER 253

Lasky was playing, and he had entered the box, and how she had
refused to speak or even to look at him when he took her home in
the carriage. Sophie had been sad that night. She had looked up
at him wistfully, sympathetically, with great, tragic eyes. Could
it be that she had suspected something, and he alone had been
blind? Could it be possible that she had tried to conceal her
mother's wrongdoing to save him from suffering! It was then
that her health changed so suddenly for the worse, he remem
bered. It was clear enough now. Probably the only thing of in
terest to Lasky had been the triumph, and the ensuing profes
sional advertisement for himself, of having taken away the Em
peror's mistress, Lasky I At the theater that night she and Lasky
had been playing the real comedy, while amused Petersburg
looked on and applauded. And he was the one who paid for it!

There was the day of the Art Exhibit. Very likely every one
of the intimate palace circle who had been present had had an
idea as to where she was when they waited for her so long — ex
cept himself. He alone was the dupe. He recalled now how in
tently Count Orlow and Prince Viazemsky had scrutinized her
when they stood by the door ready to go to the carriage. They
had looked her over appraisingly from head to toe. Even Via
zemsky, whose wit sometimes had such a flexible, such a feline
cruelty, and whom he disliked, probably pitied him then. And
she had been cross that day, too. Vernet's eloquent canvas
"Mazeppa," which he had been looking at just before Marie
Antonova entered, flashed upon his super-active memory. He,
Alexander, was another Mazeppa, a royal one, bound helpless
to destiny — whom the wolves of ingratitude, betrayal, envy,
were following to destroy.

He understood now why she was determined she would not
leave the city when summer came. And he had yielded to her,
let her go on, thereby endangering his daughter's health. The
city gave her opportunities of freedom, which were denied her,
alone with him, upon a country estate.

In what moral filth had he been living all his days, he who had
longed to be Christ's depositary of power, and to restore peace
to the nations ! He who had longed to right the wrongs of man

254 THE PENITENT

throughout the ages! He had been right on a level with the petty
butcher's clerk whose wife betrays him for a new pair of red
morocco shoes. The sickening horror of it! The futile disgust!
The sad regret! His intimate family life had not been one whit
superior. He could not think of any man's that had been so vile.
The life he had lived with her all these years, which had made
him happy and contented, had been an enormous, constantly
growing wrong. He had not only deceived himself, but others
had worked to deceive him, because they believed the undeceiv
ing would make him suffer. It was more than painful, this waking
up to find things the opposite of what he thought them. It was
something huge, impalpable, with which to contemplate dealing.
It shook the soul of him.

Sophie — his beloved daughter! Did she know? If she did not,
and if she were not trying to protect him, why had she begged
him to^send the saddle horses to the meadow? And the time she
chose to do it was in the morning, while Marie Antonova was
asleep. They were sent before she came downstairs. That was a
defensive measure evidently which she had thought out. In
what a rage Marie Antonova had been when she found they were
gone! She had remained in her room and sulked an entire day.
And he had suspected nothing! How could he have been so blind?

Why had Sophie begged him, too, to keep her mother in the
country as long as possible? It was not for her own health. It
was to keep Marie Antonova out of trouble. It was to avoid
fresh scandal. Why had she whispered to him to go there as
speedily as possible? She knew. She was trying to protect him.

And there was the wedding to confront! That was a new hor
ror. It must be confronted bravely, without loss of time. Marie
Antonova's liaison with Count Schuvalow was base beyond
comprehension; even knowing it, it was hard to believe. She had
fought for the engagement merely to facilitate her relations with
Schuvalow and place them beyond the range of suspicion.

It must be stopped. What a scandal there would be, not only
in Russia, but throughout the Continent, when he called it off!
How could he explain, with any show of reason, a change so
great, so sudden? Sophie would not care! It would come as re-

ALEXANDER 255

lief to her. He was glad of that. What veiled, bitter caricatures
the humorous publications of England, of France, would have!
Those of England would fall heavily, like the blow of a club.
Those of France would sting deeply and smart for months after
ward. Both would make him sad. Both would increase the
range of his suffering. It was an unequaled opportunity for the
wits. They would not miss it. What a figure he must have cut.
to those who knew, on the night of the announcement party —
in the great glowing Narischkin Palace — when the presents he
had given his daughter were displayed! What scornful, merry
remarks must have been whispered! And he had permitted this
woman to bring up the daughter he adored. He was grieved. He
was humiliated, beyond the power of retaliatory thought.

The disclosure had as many shining, different facets of thought
as the sun finds when it strikes the ocean's surface. These flash
ing thought-facets blinded, confused, annoyed him. They sent
their barbed arrows of bitter comprehension to all the vulnerable,
unprotected places of his nature. With one there was mingled
surprise, with another fresh shame. With another the forgotten
but not healed surface of some ancient wound. With his unusual
knowledge of the human heart, he had not been able to fathom
hers, it seemed. She had mystified him just as he had mystified
the world. His ability to read the hearts of men was something
profound. It was an unusual, an unguessed superiority. It had
helped to make him suspicious. It had destroyed his faith in hu
manity. It had shaken his pleasure in friendship, in society. It
was, perhaps, a gift of genius. Like such gifts it brought with it
the usual fatal, not to be separated attribute. And the one time
it had failed him, in the case of Marie Antonova, had been rich
in destructive results. The happiness of most people, he under
stood, depends upon their inability to see and to think. Alexan
der had always been able to think. Now he was facing the un
sparing light that comes with seeing.

His yielding, generous nature, in the slow course of years, had
made a monster out of her; a monster of selfishness and vanity;
of sinful folly. He saw how much more dangerous to the social
structure is a spoiled woman than a spoiled child. He saw how

256 THE PENITENT

much more widespread is the wrong dealt out. He supposed no
bility must call forth nobility, just as flame, flame. But in her
there had been no corresponding fiber of fineness, of gratitude.
There was nothing there to call out. Humanly speaking, she had
not progressed that far. His persistent kindness had been merely
a superb kind of folly, a superior way of wasting. It had. been
the planting of seeds of love upon the desert. He had builded
his dwelling upon the sands where it is not permitted to build.
Therefore, the tides had come and had washed it away. Life, as
he had lived it, had been a masterpiece of wrong seeing, of false
thinking. He was humiliated.

Visualizing memory now showed him a different Marie An-
tonova physically. He looked at her with the same discriminating,
disillusioned eyes with which his daughter had looked across
the dinner table at her that fatal night when she had watched
Count Schuvalow come from her mother's room in the dawn.
She was bold. She was vulgar — and commonplace of mind.
She looked like a courtesan — not a woman of birth, of refine
ment. Hard, abusive names, which not for anything would he
have uttered, unused as he was to such words, floated of their
own will across the surface of his mind. He was surprised to see
how they fitted her. And he who had been summoned of God to
rule the earth's greatest empire had been tricked by this second-
rate woman. The mouse had moved the mountain.

Among these surging and rebellious memories, the one that
disgusted him most, and that recurred oftenest, was a certain
expression her face, her eyes, had kept, the day of the Art Ex
hibit, when she had hurried unwillingly, he knew, to him, straight
from the arms of Lasky.

If he had been baser, he would have suspected her, found her
out quicker in the past, and he could have found some consola
tion in the present in dreaming of, or in planning, revenge. But
revenge was something outside the circumference of that fine,
that generous life-ideal which was his. He possessed too high a
degree of intelligence to think of revenge.

Metternich occurred to him, as he frequently did in times of
trouble, because of the sustaining sense of strength that states-

ALEXANDER 257

man gave him. He thought of Metternich now. He knew, of
course, because all the world knew, except himself. He had
warned him of many things — why had he not warned him of
Marie Antonova? Metternich had usually been ready enough
to increasee his distrust of any friend. It was Metternich who
stirred up ill-feeling between him and Napoleon. It was he, too,
who first made him suspicious of Russia's band of young poets
and who had insisted that they be checked. The Austrian was
an adroit mischief-maker. He had never before shown any hesi
tancy in pointing out new boundaries of evil in the heart of man.
Why had he hesitated here? It must be that the reason he had
not warned him was because, when Alexander was with Marie
Antonova, he thought he was safely employed. He believed the
time well squandered, for him, Metternich.

Yet he felt no ill-will toward this capable statesman. Almost
all the hours he had spent, whose happiness was pure and un
blemished, which were free from the pin-pricks of disturbing
thoughts, had been with that charming diplomatist. His happi
nesses were too few to discount them recklessly. He clung to
them now as the hungry cling to a crust. That seductive smile
upon the lips of Alexander, which had played such a part in
the restless history of the last few years, was gone. And for
ever. Not again was it seen in the old flexible grace. This smile
had been variously effective. It had made his slightest word of
weight. It had not only ensnared the hearts of women, the
masses, and the credulous public, but it had made its influence
felt in affairs of state. It had held captive fickle France when
he had ridden at the head of a triumphing army through
the streets of Paris. One glance at it had melted the none too
easily won heart of Napoleon. It even touched the dull-fibered,
self-sufficient Wellington. When he had gone to Verona to meet
Metternich on that memorable occasion, it had kept crowds wait
ing eagerly in the streets, to look upon it again. For a period,
until suffering and disillusion had begun to dun it, it had
matched the guile of Metternich. There was something differ
ent, very strange, about it now. There was something that sug
gested the fixed, but spasmodically recurring, momentum of

a5 8 THE PENITENT

madness, the reflex of a piece of human mechanism that had
been roughly broken.

He was not sure whether automatically, impelled by habit,
he had answered the ringing of the bell, or if the door had been
opened without his signal. However it may have been, Photius
stood before him. Alexander did not this time bow his head first,
gracefully, yieldingly, in greeting to the priest, while awaiting
the priest's tardy blessing. He sat at his desk and looked straight
at him, with eyes which seemed to be uncentered.

Photius was surprised. He intended to insist as usual upon the
homage which he considered his due. He did not intend to yield.
But the look disconcerted Photius. And the figure in elegant
evening attire, the throat swathed with fine cambric, a wilted
flower in the buttonhole, with the white, grieved, insensitive
face of the dead, all bore witness to something out of the ordi
nary, and helped to disconcert him more. Something serious was
wrong. He began to feel uncomfortable. Then he felt out of
place. At length he wished that he had not come.

Here was a new Alexander whom evidently he could not brow
beat, whose seduction of manner was gone, and who did not care
greatly about anything. He took a seat awkwardly in one of the
chairs opposite the desk, and facing the window. He began to
speak somewhat more limply than usual, but he was still dis
agreeable and ready to become contradictory. His hair did not
look as if it had ever been combed. His robe was dirty.

"I have just learned of Your Majesty's return." The figure
opposite did not reply. He felt the weight of its indifference.

"I hastened to see Your Majesty because I thought perhaps
Your Majesty had not been informed — how the Turks are
murdering, and then mutilating, the priests of our faith — in
Greece. The infidels have followed them into the temples. They
have desecrated the altars with blood — while Your Majesty
has been resting — and enjoying yourself — by the Gulf of Fin
land." He was not able to tell whether the figure opposite was
listening, or just looking at him without listening. The eyes were
looking through him — beyond him — at something he could
not see. They were beginning to make him angry.

ALEXANDER 259

"As head of the Greek Church," he began stiffly, intending to
make his displeasure felt quickly, "it is Your Majesty's duty to
lead a holy war — for the extermination of the Turk. It is your
duty — I repeat" — his voice rising disagreeably now, and ex
pressing the anger behind it — "to drive him out of Europe.
Russia is crying for you to avenge the faith. Russia is waiting
for you — wondering what is wrong — " From the usual fluent
mouth of Photius words were beginning to come, slowly, lamely.
The silence of the figure opposite was so disconcerting. Opposi
tion he could meet and struggle with. In fact, he liked it. He
sought it. But with this he did not know what to do. " If you
do not — Your Majesty — God will punish you — as I warned
you once. Now I warn you again." Still there was no answer.

"God will take away from you the things you love! God will
not permit so great a wrong — which you have not lifted a finger
to help — you, who alone could stop it — "

His voice began to sound in his ears like the vain wailing of the
wind, hi some deserted house where no one comes. It frightened
him.

Suddenly Photius paused. Something that resembled fear
began to creep over him. He was a coward. He did not know
now but some unthought-of ill was threatening himself. That
was sufficient to modify his conduct. He could not, like his good
friend Arakcheiev, find strength and comfort in counting ob
jects, in making infinite additions. He did not have anything so
reliable as figures to fall back upon. He contemplated his long
dirty finger-nails for a while. Then he looked wisely at his un
kempt hands. Words had failed him. He could not find any new
point of attack. He arose and slipped out the door by which he
had entered, with something of the same gesture with which a
stoned dog slinks away. In the anteroom without he did not find
any one who was willing to talk with him. There was no one who
could or would explain. He was obliged to leave the building
without his usual, collected budget of gossip, to distribute wher
ever he felt that it would make the most trouble. But there was
one thing he could do, and that was to make the most of the
strange appearance of the Emperor, for the Emperor's discredit,

260 THE PENITENT

his undoing. His father had been forced from the throne ! What
had been done once could be done again.

He had barely time to round the corner of the huge piece of
masonry which was the palace, and gain the open street beyond,
when a messenger from the Gulf of Finland, who had evidently
ridden at speed, judging from the condition of his horse, de
manded admittance.

The messenger bowed. He handed Alexander a letter. It was
written by the English governess at the command of Marie An-
tonova. It said that Sophie Narischkin was dead; and that they
were starting that morning for Petersburg with the body, in
order that Alexander might arrange the details for the funeral.
It named an hour at which they expected to reach the Narischkin
Palace. On her own account the governess added the information
that she herself and the English nurse were leaving for Riga that
day, also by order of Marie Antonova, from which place they
would set out for their home in England. Alexander, with a wild
gesture of the arm, waved the messenger away. The door closed.
He was alone. He bent his head upon the desk. And he whom
no one had seen show any mark of violent emotion sobbed aloud:
" The curse of Photius is fid filled! The wages of sin is death."

The God who punished him had also solved the problem that
confronted him. There was no wedding to be avoided now.
There was no difficult double living to confront, in seeing his
daughter as usual, and not seeing Marie Antonova. There was
no daughter for whom it was his duty to arrange a different, a
safer place of residence. His relations with Marie Antonova were
severed. The death of Sophie Narischkin had wiped out the past.
The slate was clean. It was ready for beginning over again. It
was ready for the beginning of another life.

Another life! He was bounding back from the depths of the
abyss of grief. He started at the thought. The shock was con
siderable. It was one, too, of combined grief and gladness.
another life! What astonishing, vast thought was that. He had a
tantalizing, impotent vision of unmeasured space with its worlds
of revolving light. Another life? Could man have more than
one? Especially could this be possible if he had used the first one

ALEXANDER 261

futilely? Half of his own allotted space of days was gone already.
Would God prolong it? Would He give to him what He did not
give to others? Would He give him space for another upon earth?
Could He grant the trying over again! And might it be some
where else — in some fresh place — world forgotten — unmarred
by bitter memories?

Then that sea of grief whose surging was not stilled swept over
him again, and he cried aloud in his agony: "The wages of sin is
death!"

CHAPTER XVIII
THE RETURN

AFTER they had left the mountains behind, now become merely
rows of ash-colored billows growing dimmer and dimmer, de
scended into the steppe, and were well across the Don Cossack
country, the high spirits and the happiness of Alexis Sergiewitch
began to decrease. The old man saw the peculiar sadness growing
upon hun. He did not know just how to set about hindering it.
He sensed rightly enough that the foundation was fear, of some
kind. Without mentioning the subject directly, he did what he
could to dissipate it.

"You have seen a good bit of Russia — in the last few years,
my boy — now, have n 't you ? " The quick, sympathetic response
he expected was not forthcoming. "You have traveled the
length and breadth of it, not to mention Crimea and the Cau
casus. Even if Alexander will not permit young men to go to
France, to Italy, just now, it is better to travel the way you have
than not at all, now, is n't it?11

Alexis Sergiewitch was grateful to the kindly nature that was
trying to warm him back to happiness. "Oh! — I have been
happy with you! But what is to become of me now? Am I free,
or am I not? My own wishes, of course, or what I deserve have
nothing to do with the question," he added dully.

General Raevsky, too, was expecting daily some word from
Count Woronzow. He could not see any reason why Alexis
Sergiewitch should not be set free. All this young fellow needed
was the proper treatment. In his opinion, which he did not dare
to express, however, it was ridiculous to keep him subjected to
restraint.

They did not have to wait long. At the first post station, after
they reached the old Yekkaterinoslav Highway, a messenger
from Count Woronzow awaited them. He handed General
Raevsky a sealed document. The old gentleman made the sign

THE RETURN 263

of the cross over it twice before opening it. It contained the in
formation that a letter which Alexis Sergiewitch had sent from
Piatigorsk did not reach the person to whom it was addressed.
It was opened, read, and the information it contained sent to
Count Woronzow and likewise to Petersburg. The information
was that Alexis Sergiewitch had forsworn the Orthodox Russian
faith, and proclaimed that he was an atheist.

Count Woronzow added the remark that the generous heart of
Alexander would forgive, as was his habit, a lack of respect
toward the throne, but he could not overlook lack of reverence
toward the faith. In this decision of the Emperor he, Count
Woronzow, concurred heartily.

The unlucky letter written by Alexis Sergiewitch had reached
Petersburg at an unpropitious moment. The subject of religion
happened to be up for discussion. The zeal of French tmigres,
preaching Catholicism, had converted many of the upper class
to the faith of France. This disturbed the zealots. There was a
spirited dispute in progress between Photius and Alexander,
because Prince Galitzin, Governor of Moscow, had gone over to
the Jesuits. Photius was demanding the old man's punishment
and the burning of Jesuit property in Russia. He was foaming
with rage and the zeal of persecution. The news of Pushkin's
letter fell on top of this like fat on fire. Photius insisted upon the
mines for him, or the Monastery of Solovetz — for life. He
pointed out, aptly enough, that lesser punishment had been tried,
and it had failed. At this moment nothing could have been more
unfortunate for Alexis Sergiewitch. His Majesty, Count Woron
zow went on to explain, in the mercy of his heart, instead of pun
ishing, merely requested young Alexis Sergiewitch to return to
the family estate, Mikhailovsky. Here he was to be under the
supervision of the village police, the Archimandrite of the nearest
cloister, and his father, whose right-mindedness was unques
tioned. He was not to leave the estate unless permission was first
obtained from Petersburg.

This piece of news fell like a thunderbolt out of a blue sky.

" What did you write, my boy? " gasped the little old man.

" Nothing — that I can recall now — plainly. Nothing of

264 THE PENITENT

importance. I think I said I had been reading an English poet,
named Shelley, and that he seemed to be an atheist. Afterward I
may have made some remark to the effect that if there was not
much comfort in such thoughts there might be some truth. But
the memory is hazy, because I did not attribute importance to it.
I do recall that I closed by saying that we were now on the way
back, and that I had sent a story in verse called ' Prisoner of the
Caucasus,' on to Peter to be printed. That was all."

"To whom was the letter addressed?"

"My old friend, Schukowsky, the poet."

"And it never reached him! May the saints protect you!" he
exclaimed, dropping down upon a chair where he began to cross
himself rapidly, while his fat belly shook. "There is nothing in
the world that would anger Woronzow like that!"

Alexis Sergiewitch was so disheartened he could not speak.
They sat in silence looking solemnly across at each other. Alexis
Sergiewitch recalled with a shudder the lightly spoken words
of Countess Woronzow in Odessa: " Photius is demanding your
death of Alexander! " He did not repeat the words to the old man.
The horror of it, to his excitable nature, held his tongue tied.
But it came back to him with the force of a blow.

He began to regret bitterly that he had not run away when
he was in the Caucasus and the opportunity to do so was good.
From there, the home of fugitives, he could have made his escape
safely. He could have reached, at length, France, Italy, and not
been caught. There he could have been free, happy, like other
men. He exclaimed aloud at length: "The Devil surely must
have been in me to be born in Russia — and with talent!" They
regarded each other sympathetically. They both understood
what it meant.

"After you look at it a little, my boy, it is n't really so bad as
it seemed at first," ventured the old man, by nature an optimist.
"It is the work of some trouble-making spy — of course. There
is envy in it, too! But I feel, at the same time, that Alexander
has done this to protect you. / know him! I was in the war with
hun. No one is kinder at heart. He is placing you hi imprison
ment at home, to save you from the anger of some one who is

THE RETURN 265

pursuing you. Instead of being sad, my boy, be thankful! You
know that Count Benkendorf, Arakcheiev, and Photius are al
ways at his ear now."

Alexis Sergiewitch did know this. Yet he could not share on
the moment the older man's conciliatory view. He was too
grieved. His sense of injury was too great.

"The trouble with us, my boy," he was trying to observe
cheerfully, "is that we are hungry. Now do you not think so?
I will order a good meal. What do you say to some sturgeon, or
jellied partridge, or roast wild boar's head stuffed with herbs?
We might get some of that white wine of Crimea here, too. Or
would you rather have a sparkling French wine? Say, Burgundy?
I am willing to leave it to you."

The table was served by two good-looking young moujiks.
They wore belted tunics, bouffant trousers, and they had blond
beards.

Food, well cooked and well chosen, was beginning to have its
customary effect upon the old gourmand, when Alexis Sergie
witch was summoned sharply and told to start. General Raevsky
was affected by the harshness of the order. Protest he knew, how
ever, would be useless. He did not attempt it.

"Keep up courage, my boy! Never forget that what Alexander
does is for your good." Then he blessed him, made the sign of the
cross over his blond head, and sat down to finish his lonely meal,
while Alexis Sergiewitch went whirling away in the dusk, across
the sad autumn country, toward Mikhailovsky. All that night
his mind was tortured by two questions so he could not rest.
What was it I wrote in that letter? Why did I not escape from Rus
sia when I had the chance? He felt helpless like a mouse over
which the cat's paw is suspended.

The father of Alexis Sergiewitch, Sergius Lvovitch, was a
grand seigneur, a courtier, after the manner of the preceding
century, which was that of France. His education was wholly
French. He even spoke Russian badly, he used it so infrequently,
and so infrequently came into personal contact with his serfs.
Nothing could have induced him to read a Russian book because
the language was not made to read in. His mind was devoted to
society, to pleasure.

266 THE PENITENT

Sergius Lvovitch was not bound to the soil that supported him
either by sufficient love or sense of duty. He suffered from lack
of serious occupation either political or economic. His days were
filled with folly. He had neither plan nor ambition for his es
tates, his serfs. He had no ideal in life of any kind except pleas
ure. Circumstances had made of him a superfluity. The social
exquisites of France before the Terreur were brave. They could
meet death with a smile. These Russian exquisites, being merely
an imitation, were different. They were of a slighter moral stat
ure. They were merely toys of life. They cannot command the
same respect. Sergius Lvovitch had the fine if insincere manners
of the period that was past, and a proud and aristocratic bearing.
He had rather a noble head, although the features were a trifle of
the rough blond Russian type. Yet he resembled considerably
certain miniatures of the period of Louis Seize. And he still wore,
on most occasions, the old court garb of France, or one that was
a slight modification of it. He had that lack of love, of enduring
affection for his children, that sometimes characterizes roues
grown old, who have recognized no duties in life, who persist in
hanging on to the last ragged fringe of pleasure, who find children
in the way, and usually irrelevant. In addition, Sergius Lvovitch
was lazy. He did not like to be disturbed about anything that
was foreign to his personal well-being.

For the last year or two eloquent if exaggerated accounts of
the misdemeanors of his son and namesake had been reaching
him rather frequently. Naughty, scornful jingles one could not
forget, bitter epigrams about people of position, sometimes his
own friends, had been repeated to him. That his son should have
love-affairs, duel a little, incur gambling debts, was natural.
That was part of the life of a young man of society. But that he
should cherish revolutionary or unorthodox thoughts, or pro
claim them, associate with people out of his social class, and,
worst of all, incur the displeasure of a man of such high position,
both socially and politically, as Count Woronzow, were outside
the range of his comprehension.

The books of verse his son had been publishing rapidly the
past few years, he knew were rot. He did not take the trouble to

THE RETURN 267

look at them. Besides, why should a gentleman write verse? The
fact that he had run away and lived with the gypsies made him
so angry that he all but lost his breath whenever he thought of it.

Here came the last straw. He had been stricken from the list of
employes of the Foreign Office. This automatically wiped out his
salary, also hope for future promotion. He was nobody now. He
belonged nowhere. And what an opportunity to throw away,
with Woronzowl And now he, Sergius Lvovitch, must be answer
able for him ! A pretty kettle of fish ! The household under sur
veillance of the village police! What a disgrace! What an in
justice to a man like him ! He had been planning, as usual, for a
winter of social diversion in Moscow. Sergius Lvovitch was al
ways more or less ill-tempered when he was forced to remain
upon one of his country estates any length of time. This meant
being away from balls, gossip, the discreet flirtations of his age,
the occasional sentimental recollecting of the past, the news, the
romances of Paris, dinner-parties, cards, which alone spelled life
for him. With bitter wit he murmured to himself: " Children are
surely a blessing in disguise. And in my case the disguise becomes
harder and harder to penetrate."

The country home, Mikhailovsky, resembled the majority of
Russian country places. It was a typical manor house of long
ago. A large, rambling, two-storied wooden structure, with ad
joining one-storied sub-buildings, out-buildings. It stood end
to the road. The broad face of the building looked out upon a
good-sized pond, plentifully stocked with fish, some little dis
tance away. Beyond the pond was a heavy windmill that creaked
sharply in the wind. Still beyond, a humble peasant village, and
still beyond that bare, limitless fields. At one end of the pond
stood a grove of fir-trees, thick, well grown. On the broad high
way, which connected them with the world outside and which
had to make a sharp turn in order to pass the long side of the
house and the front door, were three tall, imposing pines, growing
close together. A somewhat ambitious flower garden was in front
of this side of the house, too, and across the road. Here ragged
pinks grew in summer, in profusion.

In the house there was noticeable diversity of furnishing.

268 THE PENITENT

There was a drawing-room in tarnished gold and faded tapestry.
There was a marble mantal in the room whereon stood a porce
lain nymph and a blushing shepherd boy. In one corner was a
French spinet, that stood on three legs. There was a library
walled with glass doors where the books were wholly French:
Voltaire, the Encyclopedistes, Moliere, the poems of Beranger,
Saint-Simon, Marquis de Crecqui, the naughty stories of Cre-
billon, a Bibliotheque Amour euse, which was in all Russian houses
of the better class, and a book of galanteries from the Bible. In
the other rooms there were pieces of rough furniture made by
their peasants; coarse, reed-bottomed chairs and tables put to
gether with pegs; a combination, in short, of rusticity and faded
splendor. Neither Sergius Lvovitch nor his wife Nadezhda
Nicolaevna paid much attention to their inherited estates, except
spending the incomes from them, and demanding more and more
money from their stewards, to whom they delegated care. They
did not pay more attention to their children. They were chiefly
concerned in seeing that they were annoyed by them just as little
as possible. They gave them over to nurses and a governess.
That ended it.

When Alexis Sergiewitch drove up to the door, it was just after
the midday meal had been served. His father came out to meet
him. He did not say a word. This was a bad symptom. He
knew that silence on the part of Sergius Lvovitch, from whose
lips words rippled during his waking hours like the water of a
brook, argued ill. Sergius Lvovitch ordered the man who ac
companied him to drive to the village, and there to inform the
police that Alexis Sergiewitch had arrived, and likewise to inform
the Archimandrite of the cloister. Also would he be good enough
to ask them to call at their earliest convenience, to decide upon
what should be done with the prisoner? Evidently Sergius
Lvovitch took his deputed duty as jailer seriously.

Fresh flame had been added to the fatherly wrath of Sergius
Lvovitch by the personal appearance of Alexis Sergiewitch. His
clothes were dirty. They were ragged, too. They were the same
clothes in which he had slept out of doors for months in the Cau
casus. His hair was long. It looked rough. His face was tanned,

THE RETURN 269

unshaven, and burned until it was three shades darker than his
hair. His hands were uncared-for. His shoes were full of holes.
In short, he was just a vagabond, a tramp. The old, perfumed,
cambric-shirted courtier looked at him with unconcealed con
tempt. This, his son!

Within, in the old-fashioned living-room, furnished in black
walnut and green cotton rep, on whose walls ascetic, sad-faced
icons jostled questionable, merry color-prints from France, the
family were assembled to greet him. Arina Rodionovna, his
nurse, folded him in her arms and wept. His delicate, picturesque
mother embraced him languidly, without either love or reproach.
The dark eyes of his sister Olga regarded him with frank sisterly
love. His brother Leo was not at home.

" My pet — are you hungry? What shall I bring you to eat? "
questioned Arina Rodionovna, anxiously, just as when he was a
little boy.

"He does n't need to eat!" thundered Sergius Lvovitch. "Let
him wait."

No one dared to speak. Sergius Lvovitch was showing symp
toms of a tantrum.

At that moment the dressmaker, who was putting the finishing
touches to Madam Pushkin's winter wardrobe for Moscow,
entered humbly. She brought a blue velvet trained gown,
trimmed with white swan's down. "If you please — I would
inquire of Madam — "

A gesture from Sergius Lvovitch closed her mouth. Another
gesture sent her scampering away like a frightened rabbit, the
long dress trailing behind her.

" Shut that door ! " he commanded. The family looked at each
other with inquiring eyes. "I suppose you have come to accom
pany us to Siberia, haven't you?" — bending upon Alexis Ser-
giewitch a look of wrath.

Arina Rodionovna began to wipe her eyes.

"I do not know what you mean, sir."

"Well, you'll find out — soon enough! This house — I would
inform you, because of you, is under police surveillance. Do you
know what that means? If we have any enemies (and who has

270 THE PENITENT

not?) we shall go to Siberia. That's the way such things end.
And if we should happen — to escape that, your bad reputation
has ruined your brother's prospects in life — and probably your
sister's too." He glanced wrathfully in the direction of the sister
it was his duty to marry to some one, or else provide for.

" I have not done anything wrong, sir — I assure you. Noth
ing to be imprisoned for — to be reproved, like this," he re
plied hoping to calm his father by his own restraint.

"Silence!"

" I just wish to explain. I merely wrote a letter to Schukowsky,
from Piatigorsk, telling him, because he is a friend of mine, that
we were on our way back from the Caucasus. In that letter, too,
I happened to refer to the fact that I had read Shelley and that
he was an atheist. There was not a word about the government,
nor about any official."

"Well — what do you want to write letters for, anyway?
Have you lost your tongue? " His conciliatory explanation was
of slight avail. "You have ruined your family — with your evil
life—"

He was beginning to work himself up into one of his frenzies.
The listeners looked at each other helplessly. Anna Rodionovna
was standing behind the chair of his mother. From under her
high cap, now a little awry, she was looking at him with pitying
eyes. His sister Olga was frightened. He knew how scenes dis
tressed her. It was plain that she did not know what to do, but
he knew her heart was with him. He was impressed, on the in
stant, by the expression upon the face of his Creole mother. He
felt that she touched life so lightly, so like a feather, that no
grief, no reproach of others could reach her. While her body was
there near them, she lived somewhere far away, in a world of her
own. £he sat silent, probably indifferent as usual, a smile half
scornful, half plaintive, upon her lips, and her large gray eyes,
where the white showed so pronouncedly, in some unreachable,
far reverie where she was happy. It was just this, probably, that
had always been able to stem successfully his father's torrent of
words.

"What a life I am leading! What a life!" Sergius Lvovitch

THE RETURN 271

was moaning, losing self-control more and more. "Buried half
the year in this accursed hole! Bored to death! Burdened with
responsibility — care — everything works against me! Every
thing! Even the cattle — the steward — This year the ewes
insisted upon lambing just at the time a box of new novels
reached me from Paris. Why could they not have waited — say,
a week? Whenever for a moment I was beginning to be happy
— whenever I was beginning to forget this accursed country
life — the steward sent a man to tell me how many new lambs I
had. As if that made any difference to me — in comparison with
what I was reading! And now your mother and I were planning
for a little diversion — it would be better to say "well-earned di
version — after our hard-working summer here — in Moscow.
And along you come! What a life! What a life!" Sergius Lvo-
vitch was on the verge of tears. " I can't stand any more now.
Take him to his room — out of my sight."

He signaled Arina Rodionovna. His mother got up with sus
picious haste to join her dressmaker. Olga went to the lonely
drawing-room to practice on the painted spinet. Sergius Lvo-
vitch put on his riding-boots, in order to relieve his anger by a
spirited gallop across the pale, autumn country.

He had not ridden far before he began to feel better. He was
riding a new horse. Just yesterday the village shoemaker had
brought the long riding-boots made under his personal supervi
sion. In them the calf of his leg looked something as he thought a
calf should look. He began to talk aloud, for talk he must, if not
to people, then to space.

" Sacrifices are bad — of course. But still sacrifices have to be
made. And that is not any fault of mine. It is better for one —
than for many — a family, say. Besides — to have a member of
the family devoting his life to the church — in case there is
anything in religion — might bring unexpected good to the rest.
If Alexis Sergiewitch were placed, say, for life, in the Monastery
of Solovetz — he would be safe. He would be out of the way.
He would be where he would not cost me any more money —
Alexander would approve of it. So would Woronzow! It would
make peace at once in high places — for the family. It seems

272 THE PENITENT

to me the thing to do. To have a son in the church brings a
family about the same amount of social approbation as to have
one in the navy or army," he rambled on.

When five days later, the police and the Archimandrite came,
Sergius Lvovitch spent a day that was almost happy. They con
sumed together many small, round, yellow, raisin-dotted cakes
and countless glasses of tea. He used their receptive intelligence
as a kind of large blotting-paper, to receive and then soak up his
vast overflow of words. They listened. They applauded. They
sympathized with him. He orated. He became eloquent to the
point of tears. He quoted Moliere and the Bible, his two stanchest
authorities, to brace up his statements. They assured him time
and again of his unshakable loyalty to church and state. And in
the end they agreed about Alexis Sergiewitch. They would place
him in solitary confinement, permit him to have no visitors, and
forbid him to read or write. The Archimandrite signified his
willingness to come over at stated intervals, as seemed best to
him, to inquire into the conditions of his soul. Then, later, they
would take up the question of committing him for life, to the
Monastery of Solovetz.

That night, after the household were in bed and asleep, his
sister Olga tiptoed to the door of his room. She told him about
the afternoon conference and what had been said. She had over
heard her father telling it over again to her mother.

The next morning, Alexis Sergiewitch arose early. He sought
his father's room. He found that elderly, dissipated beau in bed
and not too pleased to be awakened. There was a French novel
under his pillow. Evidently he had read late. He seldom arose,
however, before midday. He often ate his breakfast in bed.
"I have come, father, to make an appeal to you."
"Don't you dare call me father — you antichrist!"
"Is n't it a father's duty to protect his children?"
"Well, what have I done! Haven't I sacrificed my life to
mine? Who works harder than I do? "

"Then help me pass the exile pleasantly. Let me be a member
of the family. Don't shut me up alone like a criminal!"

"You ingrate! You unnatural son! I forbid you from now

THE RETURN 273

on to speak either to your brother or your sister. If you do —
I'll punish them, too. I am not going to have you make revolu
tionists — atheists, out of them. His Majesty has made me jailer.
That means he has faith in me. That is because he considers
me a person of importance. I am forced to do my duty. If I did
not, our land would be confiscated. We might be turned into the
streets — sent to Siberia — " He was waving his arms excitedly
now and preparing for another session of orating. He liked the
subject of his personal honor. He could expatiate upon it for
hours.

"I will tell you right now I will not stand it. I have done no
wrong and I am not going to be punished for things I have not
done. I came here to talk the matter over with you calmly. If
you refuse to listen to reason you '11 have to hear the truth."

"What are you going to do?"

"That is my business."

"I repeat — what are you going to do?"

"I refuse to reply."

Sergius Lvovitch jumped out of bed. "Murder! Murder!" he
shrieked.

The servants came running in. He commanded them to call
the grooms from the stables. His mother in a white negligee, a
French fashion-book clasped to her breast, appeared for a mo
ment upon the threshold, graceful and alien. Seeing that it was
just another of the numerous tantrums of her husband, she went
calmly back and told her maid to finish dressing her hair.

"Bind him! Now take him to the empty west room . Put a
bed in there, a chair, and a table. Put narrow boards across the
windows so he cannot get out. Lock him in! Then bring the
key tome."

"I'll send you," he called as they were bearing him away, "to
the Monastery of Solovetz. Then you'll be safe."

Under stress of anger the face of Alexis Sergiewitch turned
black. His father noticed it.

" You negro antichrist!" he hurled after him as he disappeared
in the arms of two grooms.

Alone in the bare room, Alexis Sergiewitch began to suffer a

274 THE PENITENT

sort of tragic despair, after the peak of anger had been passed.
He had been under suspense and strain for days. Although he
was unaware of it he was ill physically. He was suffering from a
slow fever of the nerves which had frequently been one of the re
sults of the violent dissensions with his father. It did not seem
that he could breathe well down on the plain, after the long pe
riod spent in the sparkling, keen air of the heights. And one cause
of his suffering was an hereditary one which he knew nothing
about, and could not therefore take into consideration. Descend
ants of mixed black and white blood, like himself, in the third
generation are not capable of meeting emotional strain. They
may be strong physically, even muscular, but there is a peculiar
lack of balance between the resisting power of body and brain.
Now the great fear of his life, the Monastery of Solovetz, con
fronted him. Death, as he looked at it, would be nothing in com
parison with this.

Knowing that Sergius Lvovitch would insist upon unburden
ing his mind of his griefs both large and small, and his thoughts,
and more than likely would be present at breakfast, Madam
Pushkin ate her breakfast in her room. Then she put on a pink
flowered cashmere, which had a voluminous skirt covered to her
slender waist with tiny ruffles bound with blue satin ribbon,
seated herself at the painted spinet, and sang old French love-
songs all the morning.

Phyllis, speak, dost love me well?

Arina Rodionovna went from room to room wiping her eyes
with one corner of a huge white apron. She had been told that if
she made any attempt to see the prisoner she should be sent away
to one of the other estates. Olga locked herself in her bedcham
ber and went without breakfast to avoid the cataract of words of
her father that would surely await her.

Both Sergius Lvovitch and his wife, Nadezhda Nicolaevna,
were nobles of the old school. Their idea of life was to dance,
read French novels, gamble, dissipate — in short, idle. Had they
been asked by a steward even to think about any practical affair,
they would have considered it in the nature of an affront. That

THE RETURN 275

was a steward's business! They knew nothing of that new, that
more seriously minded Russia, that was just beginning to spring
up about their feet like the weeds of a neglected garden. In truth,
so rapidly was the country forging ahead in every department
since the Napoleonic wars, and the return of the soldiers with
new ideas from abroad, that a man of sixty could not compre
hend very well a man even of thirty. There was no common level
of conversational exchange. Each looked out upon a different
mental world.

Sergius Lvovitch and Nadezhda Nicolaevna were altogether of
the Russia that was passing, whose gentlefolk were interested
chiefly in flowers, books, music, pictures, games of all kinds,
theatricals, charades, but seldom in anything that possessed a
practical relation to life or resembled work or responsibility.
One reason, perhaps, for the general dissipation, the accomplished
time-wasting for them who lived in the country, was because of
the sad, monotonous immensities outside, and the dearth of
people.

But for all classes the year 1820 meant change. It meant a
visible breaking-up of the old ways of living, and the unrest that
comes with too quickly attempted adaptation to the new. The
Tsar felt this upon his throne. The petty noble-autocrat felt it
upon his isolated estate. There was a gradual giving-way of the
forces that had held life together and had ruled in the old days.
This giving-way became at length the reaction of mind that gave
birth to the revolutionary spirit. Now between the serf and the
upper class, a bourgeois middle-class was just beginning to be, a
class whose mental ideals were different.

One of the contributing influences had been the little cotton
and woolen factories, springing up now like mushrooms in the
south-central and southeastern part of the country, whose
employes possessed a mental equipment unlike that of the serf or
the intelligentsia. They began to form little mental circles of
another kind. But they did not make for harmony. The noble
did not like the rich merchant, and the rich merchant did not
like the noble. The rich merchant felt that he was looked down
upon. All classes of Russians were jealous of the favors accorded

276 THE PENITENT

by the government to these foreign workers. The owners of the
factories did not live upon hereditary estates. They were only
men of business, but at the same time they had that disconcerting
if not respected power that money gives. This put a new ele
ment into the social life. Among the most diligent of these for
eigners, who were always forging ahead for preferment of some
kind, were the Germans. Their minds were well ordered. They
were equipped with a definite plan.

In Alexis Sergiewitch there was something of the new world
and something of the old. He adored the imagined, picture-
vision of that accomplished aristocracy of the past. Its pageant
pleased his eyes. It satisfied his senses. It was in fact one of the
few things that he respected. At the same time the noble ideal of
impersonal justice, equality, pulled the muscles of his mind an
other way. And yet, largely because of this same social leaven so
powerfully at work now, he and his father could not understand
each other. They could not find and hold enough pleasant, com
panionable places of contact. So the sad quarrels went on.

At night, when the members of the household were asleep, his
sister Olga tapped upon his window. She wished to speak with
him a little. She wished to try to console him. Alexis Sergie
witch had had time to meditate, to plan. He must ask for help,
he saw. There was no other way out of it.

"Bring me paper and pen, Olga, as quickly as you can! I am
going to write two letters. One is to Prince Viazemsky, the other
to Schukowsky. I am going to tell them the whole story, and
beg them to save me from the Monastery of Solovetz. To-mor
row you must make some excuse to go to the village. It would
never do to entrust the letters to a servant. Then, in the village,
you can hire them taken to Peter by a courier. Do not let any
one suspect a thing! If they happen to be in Peter, they will try
to save me."

CHAPTER XIX
MIKHAILOVSKY

WHENEVER Sergius Lvovitch passed the door of his son's prison
he bent down and shouted through the keyhole: "Antichrist!
Negro antichrist!" In this way he felt that he was performing his
duty as jailer. He felt that he was saving the family from Siberia.
Everything depended upon him. He considered himself a martyr
to duty.

The Archimandrite had been too busy to make the promised
call upon the supposed penitent to pass upon the condition of his
soul. There had not vet been time to decide, permanently, upon
the Monastery of Solovetz. The horror still threatened him.

Arina Rodionovna was forbidden to go to see him under pen
alty of exile. And so was his sister Olga, although she seldom
failed to be under his window at night, no matter what might be
the weather. She consoled him. She propped up his courage as
best she was able. And she was sorry for him.

His mother was permitted to visit him. She intended to do
so. But the last days of the sewing woman were approaching. It
was necessary to look over her wardrobe rigorously, in case
something should happen and they went to Moscow. In addi
tion, a new French fashion plate had come. She and her maid
were busy experimenting in new ways of doing her light, too curly
hair. She did not like to risk herself out of her apartments too
much either these days, for fear of running into Sergius Lvovitch
and being drowned in a wordy sea of plans, of complaints. Years
of practice had given her astonishing skill hi avoiding this latter
calamity.

Sergius Lvovitch did not escape suffering, too, be it said. And
of a kind peculiarly hard for him to bear. He had no one to talk
to. When he went to the stables, hoping to find them less lonely
than the house, the grooms, who knew his failing, saw him com
ing and escaped, carrying with them the harnesses to be mended

278 THE PENITENT

or cleaned. The lonelier his day, however, the oftener he shouted
"Antichrist!" through the keyhole. He was forced to fall back
upon the comedies of Moliere which were the most gossiping
books he could find.

The condition of Alexis Sergiewitch was pitiable. He was
alone, in semi-darkness. He had no amusement. He had no
occupation but his thoughts. And the thoughts happened to be
sad ones.

In the wandering years of exile spent in the South of Russia,
continued practice had made of him a more experienced writer,
but it had not brought him any wise or comfortable living. His
mind was free and unfettered. It could climb the heights of
poetic seeing. But the body was left behind. It received the un
dignified chastisement that falls to the lot of children. And he
was no more a child in years. He had no income of his own. He
had no secure or independent place of living. He was at the
mercy of others. He smiled grimly when he thought of the dis
proportion between the fate of his body and his mind. He
seemed to be extraordinary in everything, even in his ill luck.
Even if he could create, reach out in some degree toward his
poetic ideals, how many in Russia would read them? The serfs
could not read at all. The upper class read French. The books he
had printed rapidly the past few years had brought him about
an equal mingling of hatred and admiration. From his acquaint
ances, hatred mostly, inspired by envy. The admiration came
from the generous-minded young poets who were his brothers in
effort, and who understood what he was doing. The great im
personal reading public he would like to have was not in Russia,
then, in sufficient numbers to make a reliable or profitable fol
lowing. So any genuine success in writing was a peculiar kind of
failure. And all this time he was suffering with fear of the Mon
astery of Solovetz. v

After his sister Olga told him that she had succeeded in send
ing his letters to Peter without being found out, he began to
count the days in which he could reasonably expect some result.
He had told them not to try to get a letter to him unless it bore
the address of his sister, because no mail would be given to him.

MIKHAILOVSKY 279

It would be opened and read. This would get the senders into
trouble.

When he had counted up the greatest possible length of time
for the going to Petersburg and returning of a courier, a morning
came when his father, instead of the usual greeting through the
keyhole, unlocked the door and came in. It would be more truth
ful to say he strutted in. He was in a radiant — nay, more, an
expansive mood. His tongue was bubbling like a brook. He held
in his hand an important-looking document. It was heavily
sealed with red wax. It was taped. And on his face was a
pleased, flattered expression.

& ."My son!" he began pompously, "I have come to show you
what are the results of a life well lived — I might even say,
without exaggeration, a life devoted to duty. This, this — my
son — Look at it / This is from His Imperial Majesty — It
releases me from duty as jailer — because of my honest — my
upright character. And it commands me — with the family —
to Moscow for the winter. This shows how the Emperor appre
ciates me. You will be left here; you will be nominally under the
care of the village police — and the Archimandrite." Alexis
Sergiewitch recognized at once the good offices of Schukowsky
and Prince Viazemsky. " Now, my son, left alone, I want you to
meditate, I want you to consider my devotion to duty. Con
sider the life I have lived! Try to emulate it. It is absurd for you
to think you are a poet. Monstrous! Read Beranger if you want
to know what poetry is. Read — Beranger, my son! Do you
suppose for a moment that any one would read Pushkin, when he
could read Beranger? Absurd! Absurd!"

Just then some one called him. The harangue which he had
started successfully was left unfinished. There was joy and con
fusion in the household. Bags, boxes, trunks were noisily hauled
to view and emptied for refilling. The tongue of Sergius Lvovitch
did not pause for an instant. It afforded an unresting, running
accompaniment to all the other noises. He planned what he
would do as soon as he reached the city. He had mock conver
sations with all his boon companions and old sweethearts. He
recalled what he had said and how he had looked in such and

28o THE PENITENT

such a box at the opera on such and such a night, with Princess
So-and-So.

Alexis Sergiewitch's mother was invisible. She was closeted
with a maid and the sewing woman, whom now she had decided
to take along with her. The kitchen and the cook were just as
busy as the packers. The entire household was upset. The cook
was getting food ready for the trip; bread, chickens, jellied
meats, marmalade. Supplies of country produce had to be taken
along for the town house in Moscow. Sergius Lvovitch was se
lecting horses to keep in the city during the winter. For the
moment the house hummed like a beehive with happiness and
diligence.

The morning they left Sergius Lvovitch did not bid him good
bye. He was so excited, so flustered with happiness, he forgot it.
Olga wept. She kissed him again and again. He had never seen
his mother look so graceful. She wore a large poke bonnet of
pale pink velvet covered with dull blue satin morning-glories,
which matched her eyes. A huge pink satin bow with streamers
tied it under her chin. She wore a long, pointed pelisse of gray
squirrel, little gray squirrel bootees, and a voluminous black
velvet skirt, ruffled to the waist with narrow black satin ribbon.
It seemed to sweep her frail, swaying body along. She looked
barely thirty-five. She bade him a languid and indifferent good
bye, but her wide gray eyes were not thinking of him. They were
thinking of balls, operas, discreet flirtations, soirees; in short,
the only things that meant pleasure. His brother Leo, just re
covering from a protracted drunk, appeared. They took him
along with them.

After the noisy departure, which was like the starting of a
huge circus caravan, or an army transport, there were so many
vehicles and such confusion, he heard heavy, faltering steps out
side his door. The key turned. The door was thrown open. The
voice of Anna Rodionovna called: "Come, my darling! Come,
my pet — my lamb! It is you and I now."

He made his way slowly from the semi-darkness of his prison
to the old sitting-room. He found it perfumed with an odor he
used to like as a child, verbena. The great green rep chair with

MIKHAILOVSKY 281

the worn arms was by the window that looked out upon the
withered pink garden. Beside it were some picture books he
used to look at when he was a little boy.

He dropped down in the chair and began to weep. To his sur
prise he could not stop weeping. He wept on and on. It was as
if some part of him were gradually dissolving. In the last few
months, since he had stood on the roof of the world with General
Raevsky, and looked down upon two continents at the same
time, his nature had swung between such wild extremes of ec
stasy, despair, and anger, that it had all but cost him his reason.
For the next two weeks he was like a man convalescing from a
long illness. He sat by the window idly in the pale sunlight. He
soaked in renewed life through his pores. The fever in his nerves
gradually subsided. His mental agitation was allayed.

Then the snow came. Alexis Sergiewitch and his old nurse
stood alone together by the window and watched it. It danced
in the air like a battle of gnomes. For days it fell. It covered up
the garden where the dry pink stalks rattled. It blotted out the
pond. It powdered the humble peasant cots as pure and white
as the abodes of the angels. The fir grove at the end of the pond
and the three tall pines on the highway were the only visible,
black landmarks, except the windmill, which shook the snow
slowly from its heavy wheel.

Winter was upon them. With each turn of the calendar the
cold increased. The storms multiplied. There was something so
sad, so terrible sometimes in the lonely voice of the wind of night
and winter, that Alexis Sergiewitch shuddered and seemed afraid.
He begged Arina Rodionovna to sleep again in the little room
next to his, where she used to take care of him when he was a
baby. Here, sometimes at night now, when some unconfessed
fear made him suffer, some imagined terror loomed larger than
any reality, she told him stories to soothe him to sleep, because
artists are merely sensitive children grown up. Sometimes they
were the tales of Rurik. Sometimes they were her own extem
porized but more picturesque version of the builini, or what had
happened to the grandmother of Alexis Sergiewitch at the elegant
court of Catherine the Great

282 THE PENITENT

No letters came from either his father or mother. They were
too busy to write. His sister Olga, however, wrote once in a
while. Her letters told of the constant round of festivities in
which they were living, and which turned night into day. She
declared that she seldom saw her mother save when she was en
tering her carriage to attend some function. The nobility were
trying to be very gay because of the continued sadness of the
Emperor. Sergius Lvovitch had been unlucky at cards. He had
lost large sums of money. She wished Alexis Sergiewitch would
tell the steward to raise all that he possibly could, even if he had
to sacrifice horses or a piece of land, and send to him immediately.
She explained that they were particularly short for ready money
just now, because her mother had found her evening toilettes
out of date. This had necessitated having new ones made in
haste. It had been a heavy and unexpected drain upon them.
All the women of Moscow were in love with a Polish actor, Lasky,
she said. The ones who had been to Peter recently talked of him
continually. Leo stayed drunk for days at a stretch. The family
had so many social engagements they could not find time to look
after him. And so the occasional letters read. The diversions of
the Moscow winter with people of their own rank had made them
forget about Alexis Sergiewitch whom they never cared to re
member any too well.

After a time, in the sunshine of love and peace, his heart began
to blossom again, in song. He wrote down in verse in the morn
ing the old nurse's tales of the night. If in this verse there are no
great ideas, few noble or uplifting thoughts, it is of a marvelous
limpidity, a marvelous fluency. It is like the clear, sparkling
rivers which he found among the lofty Caucasian Mountains.
Like them, it had come from the deep, hidden sources of life,
from the primeval heart, and only an ancient tongue, be it said
(say, Attic Greek), can ever translate it.

He began to link himself to the outer world again. He began to
take up relations with his friends. He wrote to Schukowsky.
He wrote to Prince Viazemsky. He thanked them for what they
had done for him. He told them he was thinking of beginning a
long novel in verse, something on the order of ''Don Juan.'1

MIKHA1LOVSKY 283

Then he recalled to memory, in verse, the Caucasus. He fin
ished "The Fountain of Bakshi Serai." While the snow fell and
blotted out the land about them, and the polar winds shrilled
in the ancient chimneys, he dreamed longingly of the beautiful,
unknown Oriental he had met there, of the scent of orange blos
soms in the night, in rich gardens of the South, and the nightin
gales. He longed passionately to see her once more. He won
dered if she were lost to him forever. There was no clue by which
to find her because he did not know her name. He did not know
where she came from. He did not know where she was going.
But he still clung to the belief that she was the spy of Metter-
nich. Then the old nurse began to coax him out of doors. She
encourgaed him to try the winter sports he used to enjoy when he
was a child. She called his attention to the beauty of the Russian
winter. She urged him to write of it.

He began the novel which he mentioned in the letters to
Schukowsky and Prince Viazemsky. He called it " Eugene One-
gin." It pictured a life like his own, on a country estate. It was a
remarkably truthful reproduction of the day in which he was
living. It was something new, too, in the realm of letters of his
race. Without attempting to finish, at the moment, the verse
novel, which promised to be long, so insistent was the propelling
creative power that urged him, he began to read Shakespeare.
Another and a healthier world of mind unrolled before him.
Shakespeare stimulated him to original creation, as genuine
writing of great periods surcharged as it is with electric and
communicative life, has the power to do. He planned a play,
along new lines for Russia, something still picturing the roman
tic history of his land, but in a period that was past, "Boris
Godunoff."

As the snow fell and all but buried them with its cold white
ness, and the angry winds of a sub-polar winter whirled about the
lonely manor-house sang threateningly in the great chimneys, he
trod happily the old, sunny lands of romance. He moved freely
whither he would. The wings of genius proved to be more effec
tive in annihilating man's ancient enemies, time and space, which
to the Russia of his day were potent, than the "Magic Cloak" of

284 THE PENITENT

Faust or the "Winged Shoes" of Mercury had been. The sure,
the far-reaching vision, the serene contemplation, of great crea
tive artists, for the time being, was his.

Just as General Raevsky had guided his mind upward to ap
preciative consideration of the sublime mountain-world of the
Caucasus, the material roof of the world, so the old nurse, with
an equal faith but a greater love, guided his footsteps upward
again to an equally elevated world, but one of mind this time, to
the roof of the spirit's life, so to speak, the Hebrew Bible. And
they were not so unlike. In both were the same heights of lone
liness, of grandeur, the same uplifting nobility dwarfing the
shabby pettiness of ordinary surroundings, the same inspiring
propulsion to far visioning, to faith. The Hebrew Prophets were
unconsciously associated in his mind with the giant cliffs of rock,
whose feet rested upon the humble levels where man is permitted
to dwell, but whose heads reached Heaven. Both were mighty.
Both were props of earth. Both overtowered life.

He read the Bible. He wrote his "Paraphrase of Isaiah,"
which the Russians renamed "The Prophet." In doing this, in
this his second most productive period of creation, he reached
his highest point of inspiration, of calm, of noble vision, a height
which it is regrettable to admit he did not reach again, in the
vexation, the sad confusion of his days.

CHAPTER XX
THE DECISION

AT forty men begin to revalue life. At forty men begin to think
about the past and change their former judgments. They find
their fellow-men are not as they thought them. Reversals take
place. Sometimes the bad become the good.

In Alexander's case the revaluing had been put off for a few
years. But when it did come, it was not less penetrating through
delay.

He had lived to find most things the opposite of what he
thought them. This had saddened him. It had made him feel
uneasy, unsafe. It had shaken his belief in himself, his belief in
the vigor of his intelligence. In his case it had happened in two
separate ways: first, in the domestic tragedy which had occurred;
second, in governmental and social affairs. The latter was more
difficult to deal with, because it was widespread and not easily to
be compassed. At the same time it was impalpable like envel
oping fog.

It was not easy for him to believe that that safe past was over
forever, that gorgeous, resplendent pageant of existence in which
he had spent his petted boyhood. It was not easy to believe that
he was not only not the dictator of Europe, but not even of
Russia. The detailed information of the rapidly growing plot
against his life, the plan for overthrowing the government at the
same time, had come to him from so many different sources, from
such reliable sources, that he found himself in the impossible situ
ation of believing two opposing things at the same time. He had
believed himself the dictator of the Continent, the defender of the
oppressed. Now, it seemed, he was being driven from his own
throne, and was less and less the dictator of himself. He not
only was not master of others, but it was not easy to hold on to
what was his. An humiliating, puzzling, contradictory situation.

Without preparation, he was confronted with a reversal of

286 THE PENITENT

his dreams, his hopes, his beliefs. And the cause of it? That he
could not get at. Why had he not been able to see it first him
self? Why had he not felt quicker than others what was going
on? Why did he not know his country better?

A penetrating German thinker had recently remarked that
revolutions are made by the men against whom they are directed.
This brilliant statement, true or untrue, had moved him. Since
he heard it he had been debating, like Hamlet. Is it true, or is it
not true ? If it were true then he alone was guilty. He considered
his failures. They were many. They could not be winked out of
sight. He had failed in dealing with the domestic situation which
had caused sorrow and upset his life. Perhaps he was equally
incapable of dealing with the political situation which was threat
ening a wider destruction, threatening to upset the government.

If the reports were true (and how could he doubt them?) a
crisis was at hand which must be met without delay. Surely no
one disliked the harsh definiteness of a crisis, not to mention its
surprising upheavals, as he did.

The country must be filled with spies, with informers. Every
thing would be destroyed or else uprooted. There would be se
cret, cruel trials. There would be imprisonments. There would
be sudden deaths in dungeons. There would be sad and harrow
ing exile trains, setting out in the night and the storm for Siberia.
There would be hundreds suffering, dying, in the mines. The
land would be filled with sorrow. Tears would fall like rain.
The innocent would be punished with the guilty. Men entrusted
with a little temporary authority would take revenge upon their
enemies. Some of his personal friends would have to be sacri
ficed. Countless unknown wrongs would be committed, and in
his name. A reign of terror would begin.

For all the suffering, all the deaths, would not he be account
able, because it was he who ordered it? Who else could set this
ponderous machine in motion, except himself? He would become
a wholesale murderer. He felt that he was being pushed to act
with fear as a motive power instead of reason. This was a dan
gerous thing to do. It was productive of ill. His mind was bom
barded by thoughts which he could neither get rid of nor adjust.

THE DECISION 287

It was as if his mind were the bed of a river and his thoughts the
destructive, uncontrollable torrent that was rushing through it.

He was glad, indeed, that Constantine had returned to War
saw. He was glad, too, that the distance between Petersburg and
Warsaw was considerable. That false, make-believe cheerful
ness during his brother's visit, that brief putting back upon his
shoulders of the burden of the old ways, had been a strain upon
him. He was glad that Constantine was gone. He was rid of his
insistence. He felt that it further freed him from the past. He
no longer had reasons to put up against Constantine. He had
only vague sensations, feelings, not thoughts.

Constantine evidently had right and reason on his side. Since
Constantine's departure he had been paralyzed by the assault of
these feelings, these vague, indeterminate emotions; so much so
in fact that he had turned over temporarily governmental mat
ters to Count Benkendorf and Arakcheiev, and begun to live in
accessible to any one, plunged in meditation. It was not easy for
him to focus his mind long upon a point that had to be decided.
If he went out to drive, it was preferably in the early morning
or the late afternoon. People who watched him pass, ignorant
peasants, the superstitious, or they who loved him, crossed
themselves involuntarily and murmured the name of the Prince
of Peace. There was something in his face now, something in his
bearing, that made the words come of themselves. They floated
up from depths of consciousness. There was a different look in
the eyes that had been so clear. And he was profoundly sad.

If what the various tale-bearers said was true, there was no
safe place for him. He was not safe in the vast palace of his an
cestors whose walls were rich with that old Muscovite art, which
is so prodigal of gems, of gold. He was not safe in Zarskoje Selo,
nor on his country estates; in his gardens among the flowers he
loved; nor in the theater, the concert-hall. He was not safe in
his cabinet where death might come with an opening door. He
was not safe in the silence of the great cathedrals. If what the
tale-bearers said was true, there was no safe place for him. Life
had cast him off. The effect of this realization was that he was
sick of living, and not what is ordinarily understood as physical

288 THE PENITENT

fear. He had lost all he loved. There was nothing left to live for.
He had struggled until he was weary. He wished that it was
over.

Just as when on the sudden break-up of the happy domestic
life with Marie Antonova, having found things not what they
seemed, he had recast the past, for strengthening, for guidance,
so now, when he found the social political surroundings not what
he thought them, he did the same, with the hope of reassuring
himself, with the hope of finding a way out.

If it was not easy for him to set in motion a reign of terror, it
was not wholly weakness, not wholly personal distaste. It was
partly because still as basic thought in his mind was the forced
reliance that in so brief a time the unlimited power of the past
could not have perished. How could such a change come and he
not see it?

The first years of his reign had been happy. They had been
gay with the gayety of youth, youth in his heart, youth in the
land about him. Artists, scientists, thinkers came. Poets began
to sing like birds in tall tree-tops in spring. And it was partly
because of him! These years had been sportively nicknamed
"The truce of the poets." Life gave promise of "glorious sum
mer" in the sun of his youth. "The winter of discontent" was
over. In every department of the broad land these years had
been a blossom period. He had not been lonely then, either, as
he was now. He had had happy, similarly minded friends with
whom he had enjoyed his political dreams. With them he had
made and unmade worlds. Then, suddenly, he remembered how
he had disappointed these young friends. He paused a moment
in his meditation, astonished at the thought.

The proud, the brilliant, Prince Adam Czartoryski had relied
upon Alexander's pledged word to make his native Poland free.
And Pozzo di Borgo had been similarly happy in the promise that
he would give freedom and power to Greece. His personal charm,
his yielding grace, had been a false promise to them. In both
cases he had intended to do it. Nay, more, he had planned to do
it. It was his wish. But the definite decision he could not bring
himself to face, that brief, momentary crisis, which meant the

THE DECISION 289

sudden severing of a part of the present. He kept putting it off
from year to year. In the end he disappointed them both.

His grandmother had loved him. She had been proud of him.
He was her favorite always. She had expected him to duplicate
the conquests of Alexander of Macedon. She had expected him
to conquer the earth. That was why she had given him the Mac
edonian's name, so he could not forget. That was why he had
been taught to speak the Greek tongue like a native. Thte golden
dream for the future had hovered over his flexible, alluring youth.
It had made him happy in its contemplation, which was as near
as he liked to approach the definiteness of any reality.

Suddenly it occurred to him that in her youth she could have
done what she planned so proudly for him. He paused again,
astonished at the force of this. In her, he knew, there had been
various greatnesses whose harmonious coming together had
given strength. But in her day there had been harmony among
the people. They did not disagree upon important points of pol
icy. He must admit, too, that in her there had been a persistent,
enterprising joy of mind, a youth age could not touch, which
carried her triumphantly over difficulties. Circumstances could
never have mastered her because of this youthful elasticity of
nature which enabled her to look down upon them with disdain.
It might be true, as bitter critics had asserted, that with her all
was not real gold. But the imitation, if imitation it was, had
been satisfactory and yielded charm. And no one could dispute
its effectiveness, its power. He had disappointed this proud
promise of his youth, and therefore his people, just as he had
disappointed his boyhood friends. But he had not intended to.
He had planned to do everything. Now reality showed him that
he had done nothing. He did not comprehend how the result
could be what it was, nor where the years had gone. They had
rushed past him like a mill-race. He had not gone with them.
It was not his wishes that were wrong. He had been right. It
was facts. Facts had been obstinate. Life with him had been
a brilliant, impressive improvisation, because whatever he had
planned had remained undone. The old landed nobility had stub
bornly resisted his efforts for reform. They would have none of

290 THE PENITENT

them. They wanted life lived on lonely ancestral estates just as
their fathers had lived. He never had had anything as he wanted
it. He loved peace. He loved quiet. And he had lived in agita
tion, in dissension. He hated cruelty. Daily it was done in his
name. This explained why Arakcheiev, who was rough and bru
tal, was ruling now with such high hand. Arakcheiev formed
the necessary, the logical pendant to the indecision of Alexander.

But how could he be blamed for failing, he asked himself on a
sudden with a refluence of courage, for not doing more than he
had done, with the Napoleonic wars upon his hands?

The events of that sickening Russian campaign! It had sad
dened his sensitive, emotional nature. He had never succeeded
in putting its memory out of his mind.

He recalled too often, even now, the thousands and thousands
of glad-hearted boys he had lured to death by sight of his manly,
handsome, uniformed figure, by the clasp of his hand, by the
foolish gift of silken flags, of bright banners, by the fervent elo
quence of his prayers. The guilt upon his soul! And the long
period of carnage that followed! How horrible for a nature like
his, a poet's nature, that loved flowers like an Asiatic, and love
and silence; literature; and the white, caressing arms of women!

Then fell God's judgment — upon the battle-fields of ice!
God1 s judgment! And in his favor. God gave victory to him. This
had shaken him to the verge of reason. In gratitude of soul he
promised his future to his Maker.

And here, too, he had been a disappointment, a disappoint
ment therefore to man, and God. From whatever he promised or
planned, he slipped away. And he did not know how. Now there
was the murder of the Greeks, his own co-religionists, by the
Turks, in the face of his prohibition. The Mussulmans had just
sworn extermination of the Greeks. The Peloponnesian War was
in full blast. There was savage butchery. There was mutilation
of bodies of priests, of his faith. He had promised to protect
them. But he did nothing. It was as if something uncanny para
lyzed his will and he could not shake himself free.

Diplomacy, too, was intercepting him now. Metternich was
determined that Alexander should not interfere. He wanted

THE DECISION 291

Austria to gain fresh territory and a sea-outlet in the south. He
worked to discourage him. England agreed with Metternich.
England had her own personal, selfish reasons against his inter
fering. She wanted an open passway toward those clear cities
of Asia, a passway for herself, which should not be policed by
Russia.

In addition his mind was of a caliber to permit him to find out,
like Canute of old, that after all he was only a man, and that he
could not bid the waves be still. He was only a man, whom a po
litical superstition, already going out of date, had given tempo
rary supremacy. These were all unavoidable, direct meeting with
facts and they pained him. Their unyielding surfaces made him
suffer. His vision of life was a poet's idealized vision, which
sugar-coats facts, with whom fact is merely a starting-point,
from which to forget. He had no stern, logical, realizable prose
ideal to guide him. Beauty, fineness had to be ingredients of
things that interested him. If not, serviceability must remem
ber to wear their dissembling cloaks. He was a poet, not a poli
tician, not a social reformer. His living was ruled by delicately
graded sensations, exquisite adjustments, not by logic nor stra
tegic thought.

Metternich, too, was dimming more and more that gorgeous,
hummingbird, poet's iridescence which was his by birth. Met
ternich, one of the most practiced and unscrupulous intrigants,
was more and more frequently keeping him from doing things
which were to his advantage to do. By forcing Russia down,
Austria perhaps could rise.

Metternich was in the habit of selling individuals and nations,
cheaply, for personal inclination, for any slight political reward,
payable in no matter how remote a future. He sold Marie Louise
in marriage to Napoleon for the purpose of being permitted to
increase the standing army of Austria. By trickery, by treach
ery, he sold the popularity of Alexander at the Congress of Ve
rona. He placed him in the light of a moral defaulter to his people.
He was a masterly bargainer in the little dun Shops of Discon
tent for other men's honor, other men's power. And he disap
proved just now of a Russian war against the Turks. He had

292 THE PENITENT

plans of his own to carry out. He wanted delay in everything.
He preached continually watchful waiting because the country he
was guiding was weak. It needed peace. It needed time for re
habilitation. In the South was its only chance for expansion.
Alexander had been frequently, of late, getting in Metternich's
way. Here England met Metternich, strange to say, and Alex
ander was confronted by the irresistible foreign policy of Can
ning.

He was as deeply grieved by the bitterness, the treachery in
men's hearts, as by the domestic tragedy that had befallen him,
or the present threatening political one. His grief over the base
ness of humanity was greater than for any loss that could come
to him. From his point of view pleasant intercourse with people
was largely founded upon liking them. If he could not like them,
for him there was no reason left for conversation. His growing
deafness was having its effect, too. It was blurring the spoken
word. This increased both his suspiciousness and his sensitive
ness.

There was no one now he fully trusted except Arakcheiev and
the Empress. In this he was right. Both were loyal to him.
What his own suspicious nature failed to see, Metternich stood
ready to suggest to him. He missed, therefore, the reliable, the
consolatory support of friendship, its heat of courage in the heart.
He saw seldom the devoted companions of his boyhood. They
had made life happy in the old days. Without them he had grown
lonelier. In that vast Russia it was especially necessary that
men should warm their hearts by each other. He was like an
unanchored ship now. He drifted helplessly.

His friends had not been able to understand him, to be sure,
any more than any one else. No one had had his confidence, ex
cept, perhaps, Marie Antonova. And she had not deserved it.
Now, since the shock of finding out what she was, he was more
than ever a master of concealment, more than ever lonely. In
the forgiving splendor of art he might have found consolation.
But his days had been devoted to politics, to dry detail.

The prime motive power back of this concealment may have
been some unconfessed fear, a snapping of one of the multiple

THE DECISION 293

spider-thin bonds of reason. Something, probably, had hap
pened to him, in his impressionable youth, at his grandmother's
dissolute and intriguing court, that had dried up forever the fine
and happy springs of confidence and filled him with fear, with
distrust of humanity, which he could not get over. Now, just as
with other men, he was merely falling prey to his greatest weak
ness.

Not many, of course, are given the power which had been his,.
to force dreams to reality, and then find them soap-bubbles, their
glowing color changed to dirty water. He had watched too many
gay realities suffer this sad transformation. This was making
him more and more, as the days went by, a figure unique, lonely,
and pathetic. Within the souls of other men he felt there was a
poise, a calm, a stern decision, which would have saved him, but
which he could not get hold of, and which he desired more than
anything else in the world. But no simple human thing, it seemed,
could be his and be retained. To him came the glittering useless-
nesses which burned while they illuminated.

He had lost that puissance de bonheur which Napoleon in his
heyday used to talk about, without which men cannot live nor
succeed. He thought of it again and again in his present dilemma.
Historical facts, too, at this moment uncatalogued, were begin
ning to throw their perplexing influences around him. The Rus
sian nation was just beginning to react from the self -sympathetic,
unifying emotion which had acompanied the driving-out of
Napoleon. He, too, unconsciously, was in some degree at the
mercy of the same reaction. He had been proud of his part in
defeating Napoleon. But now, as he looked at it, he saw that it
was not he who had defeated him. It was the masses. That
great, inert, dull, unlettered, despised mass called the Russian
people had risen in fury like a sea and swept him out. The peopl*
had saved Russia, and not Alexander, the glorified, the princely
leader. It was the spirit of an entire race speaking in outraged
resentment, and not himself. Nations usually fall or rise by their
own momentum, the king being an accident and not a potent
force. Somewhere in the far future, evidently, justice was going
to be done to humble man.

294 THE PENITENT

Another powerful cause at work in his present mental condi
tion he could not know nor suspect, and therefore could not be
blamed for, a cause reserved for the discovery of prying psychol
ogists a century later. It was this: The Russians of the eight
eenth century, his grandmother's period, did not live long. The
Russians of the early nineteenth century, Alexander's day, suf
fered from premature old age of the mind. The educated Rus
sian of this period was a forced hothouse growth of time, and like
all such abnormalities lacked endurance. This was the price they
paid for civilization too quickly absorbed. This was the price
they paid for insisting upon leaping over the safe boundaries of
the centuries. The bodies of the men of the eighteenth century
wore out too soon, and the minds of the men of the first half of
the nineteenth century. The reason that his grandmother had
escaped so triumphantly was because in her there was no Russian
blood, and the law became inoperative. She belonged to a more
enduring stock that had been slow in reaching maturity.

Mental weariness came quickly to men of the upper class now;
disillusion, which means loss of pleasure in living; and in extreme
cases the madness of melancholia. Old age of the mind, in short.
In obedience to the working of this law, Alexander had lost the
elastic strength of hope which is the dominant quality of youth.
He was feeling that indifference to living which was a trait of the
cultivated men of his time. He had lost, partly through this, his
faith in his fellows, his illusions, too, his fine, free, unforced re
liance upon humanity, which, however foolish it may seem, man
must have. Saddest, perhaps, he had lost sense of kinship with
his race. As he looked out now upon that great confusion which
men call the world, his own thoughts were far more revolutionary,
far more astonishing, than those of the young men for whose
punishment Arakcheiev was still clamoring.

A huge, a glittering sun of disenchantment was rising slowly
and majestically in his mind. It was rising victoriously. It was
forcing its painful, penetrating rays in all directions. Nothing
escaped it. It shriveled first and then dried up his little happi
nesses until now he did not have any left. It was making of him a
desert where nothing gracious grew. And it was making of his

THE DECISION 295

old, waiting fears, a black, threatening, monstrous army of night,
ready to descend en masse upon him. His glad, unreasoned
courage was gone; his mind's youth.

The thing most disconcerting of all which this bitter sun
showed him was another reversal and an astonishing one. That
bitter sun of disenchantment was showing him that, while the
army of Napoleon, who was the little grandson of the Great
Revolution, had perished upon the snow-fields and met defeat,
the invisible army of his ideas was still marching on. It was at
work now defeating him. The scales, without warning, had been
turned. What witchery was this! What dizzy will-o'-the-wisp
had been lighting false pathways for his feet! Who could dream
that such a thing could come to pass? That little grandson of the
great upheaval was unconquerable now. The material conquest,
which he had so unwisely ascribed to himself, was, like most of
his other conquests, of not so much importance. What a faculty
he had for turning pluses into minuses! The will of Napoleon
had destroyed that old world he used to know and love and be
happy in. It had killed its dreams. It had weakened its ambi
tions. Like the waving of a magician's wand it had brought
about a mighty materialization. Impersonal justice, too, the right
of every human being, irrespective of color or race, to a share in
the good things of the earth was a part of that new world-spirit
for which the invisible army of the Great Conqueror was fight
ing on.

Was there nothing he could lay hold of? Was there nothing
he could keep? Must whatever his hands touched slip away like
illusive water? Was there some curse upon him? What classic
fable could compare with what in reality had happened to him?
He had been proud of having conquered Napoleon. Now this
fact, too, was slipping out of sight. The ideas Napoleon's sol
diery had disseminated were a mighty, invisible army. These
ideas were rapidly moulding a new race of men in the world, men
whom he could neither understand nor control.

And before his brain there was a vision he did not like to con
template, but which he could not put away. It was ihe troubling
vision of that upstart soldier, Napoleon, who had leaped by sheer

a96 THE PENITENT

ability, unaided, to the heights where he was born, but where he
was not strong enough to maintain himself. What geographical
magic he had wrought! He had ripped up the old Rhine States
and then made them over into a confederation to suit his ends.
He had cut off a slice of Germany reaching from the Elbe to the
Alps and named it France.

He recalled, involuntarily, those nights of brilliant conversa
tion between Napoleon and Metternich, long ago, in Paris, sto
ries of which the great Austrian had related to him, with such
relish. Fragments of phrases burned in his memory, quickly
etched impressions, worded by Metternich: Napoleon, artist of
power. . . . That superb egotism that must live art. . . . That mind
that clothed words in flashing symbol and then translated symbol into
fact. . . . That man for whom the round earth was just a play
ground. That daring figure which arose without warning to dim
the splendor, the efficiency of him, Alexander.

In this period of the general breaking-down of usual laws he
was forced to admit that he did not have that personal, that po
tent word over men which had been Napoleon's, and which
might have hindered somewhat further the moral decay. He,
Alexander, had charm, seductive grace; weaker characteristics.
The difference between gold and steel. He, Alexander, knew the
human heart, but hs was unable to turn that knowledge to ac
count.

The vivid phrasing of Metternich came back to memory again:
That swift shaping, that swift cutting-out of new nations, by one
man's will. That shaking-up of monarchies and then setting them
down upon their feet like naughty children after punishment. That
dizzy, deft, sweeping away of the old regime. ... All this shook his
faith in the ancient blood of kings. He saw sadly that wars are
not over when articles of peace are signed. That is merely the
signal for crueler wars to begin, wars more deeply destructive,
more intangible. The great upheaval still goes on. It merely
changes its weapons. Civilization then sets about forging for
itself new worlds out of the fragments of the old worlds.

Then he succumbed to the natural impulse to shift the blame.
There had been too many meddlesome foreigners in Russia.

THE DECISION t 297

They had always tried to take a hand in affairs. In early days
the foreign influence had been that of honest, capable worlanen.
Now it was largely of crafty adventurers. Russia had been ex
ploited as a place of quick fortune-making. How could it be all
his fault? Had not Russia been a rich grab-bag into which merry,
unthinking feminine rulers had plunged their pretty hands to
seize its monstrous wealth and then fling it away in gifts of ex
travagant living before the eyes of an amazed world? A long,
theatrical fair! While it lasted, it was something gorgeous and
splendid, this stripping open of the rich, untouched heart of a
continent to make its treasures ripple in the light.

There were colonies of alien races scattered throughout the
land. They were centers of hostile and unassimilable thought
with fecund, long, outreaching tendrils. He, too, had helped
foster this quick colonization by trained and habile foreigners.
Once permitted, it was not easy to still the longing in the intel
lectual Russian for the mental life of Europe. Patriotism could
not console him for starvation of the mind. But it was wrong
now, he felt. It was the result of a sort of foolish impatience;
namely, the unwise attempt to make, to ripen a civilization too
quickly. Different races could not be formed into a compact one
without the slow aid of time.

Like the rulers before him, his mind had been dazzled by the
power, by the beauty, by the progress of Europe. Like them he,
too, longed to transplant this, all in a moment, to his own land.
It would have been better for the little native centers of industry,
village arts, peasant arts, to have been given a slow fostering,
and then waited, with patience. The result would have had a
greater, a more dependable strength. Almost every country of
the globe had its little separate colonies in Russia. These many
tongues made it the modern, toppling, threatening Tower of
Babel. The great, level, central plain which bore the name Rus
sia was merely a mammoth road for the restless migration of na
tions.

That much-talked-about conquest over Napoleon was not
really so important to his native land as the very different indus
trial conquest being carried on everywhere now by these for-

298 THE PENITENT

eigners. This turning upside down of civilization was presenting
everywhere different surfaces of life to the light. Some of them
were astonishing. In this new world a man did not need to be
noble of heart, or gracious of soul, or condescending, but to pos
sess something astonishingly different, a clear comprehension of
the possible combinations of the earth's unexploited substances.
The old picturesque past where kings swaggered about in crown
and ostrich feathers was over forever. A world as new as that
which Columbus discovered was heaving into sight, only it was a
good deal stranger. In his meditating upon the difficult situation
little separate pin-pricks of misery shone, for the most part the
result of suggestions coming from Metternich, but all of which,
when carried to ultimate reason, belittled him, the sovereign.
As an example in point, the close relations, which had been in
existence so many years between Russia and England, were not
wholly the result of wise, imperial initiative, nor far-seeing dip
lomatic cunning, but of the humble, tongueless, armless cotton
bobbins in Birmingham mills. Economic, therefore. This con
stant uncovering of the ghosts of unannounced facts was star
tling. It was really this economic rivalry, with France and Ger
many entering the game, that had brought on the war of which
he and Napoleon were the glittering figureheads. This constant,
convincing agony of mind which was slowly destroying himself
was terrible. It was the first exhibition of a new tragedy which
the future would duplicate and duplicate again, a mean, sordid,
base, agonizing tragedy, the tragedy of a new world devoid of all
nobility.

He was peculiarly out of harmony, peculiarly ill at ease, with
this commercial, this increasingly middle-class society, which the
war had ushered in, and which heralded untried ways of life,
and which his own tolerant, generous nature had not hastened
quickly enough to check.

Different thoughts were the property of the people. There was
a disturbing sense of comradeship, of sympathy for each other
among the masses which meant strength for them, and which
had not been before. The power of the middle classes was in
creasing. To add further to the general confusion, his country

THE DECISION 299

was beginning to think its own thoughts, in this widespread social
demoralization. It was getting tired of leading-strings.

And he who held by the spirit saw that this spiritual change did
not have a spiritual cause. It was merely an exhibition of mind
adjusting itself to matter.

The cause was material. Those bourgeois, those middle-class
men, whose manners needed mending, and whose taste was
commonplace, sometimes had brains. With their brains they had
made little cold-blooded, tireless, nimble-moving machines, which
turned out luxuries with which to clothe the body, to protect the
home. In time they would bring to commonplace man the com
fort of kings. They would help protect him against cold, disease,
toil, weariness, discomfort. In addition they brought to his brain
a comprehension of the earth's latent wealth and its possibilities
for himself. With these little machines increasing in number and
cheapness, there had come a new and an unexpected light in his
ambition, a demand for a broader, a finer living. He thought
such a change could come alone through prayer. He had been
taught that. He believed it. The surprise to him was not slight.

The new world-spirit which the soldiers of Napoleon had dis
seminated, and which the inventive genius of the middle class
had illustrated and developed, did not depend upon the old pic
turesque doctrine of servant and master, the old slave system,
that one man is better than another, one born to eat cake which
he does not earn, and another black bread which he does earn,
but upon something more powerful, something more broadly
beneficent, material efficiency. The far expansion of material
things suggested a new, a potent, an unguessed divinity. It
meant that all must work for the good of all. There would be no
place for kings. This was a blow. He had not reached this thought
before. There would be place for no personal superiority of in
herited possession either of place or wealth. Inherited superiori
ties, such as had prevailed under the old regime, were just so
many warts on the body politic, ugly excrescences to be cut
away. In the heart of every human being, born in the age of the
machines of the whirling spindles, there would be somber distrust
of centralized power. When man could live like a king he would

3oo THE PENITENT

soon begin to think like one. The real difference was on the out
side as much as on the inside. The mainspring of the new world
just at hand was material, not spiritual. The old regime had
broken his spirit by first crushing his body. It had taught him
suffering, and as reward pitiful patience. The new world would
teach him political power, then equality. That new world would
be astonishing! He shuddered at the thought. The words ma
terial power expanded to their limit, then carried to logical re
sult in individual application, meant something tremendous. In
this new world they would not always pray pitifully for mercy
for the dying. They would work, first, to delay death, then to
eliminate it. Man, heretofore, had been a suppliant, prostrate,
crushed. Now he would learn to stand. What could man not
become !

The ideal of the old world that was passing, which reached its
first height in France before the Revolution, and its second, as a
sort of mirrored, exaggerated, false echo, in the nobility of Rus
sia, had had three supreme ideals: The Penitent, The Passion
Flower, The Pageant-Maker. Three ways of artistic playing.
These ideals had hindered material progress. They were unfair.
They were unjust. They were dramatic, useless exploitations of
the ego which could not go on. They were illustrations of one
absorbing the life-forces of many. They could not exist, power
fully, in the future. They must die. They must pass away.
They were merely prodigious leeches upon an old romantic civi
lization, such as poets like him dreamed as children, but now out
of date. The new world would find these ideals weak, cowardly,
slightly ridiculous, and cheaply showy. Pagandom and the old
France of kings had been the earth's childhood. Now its mature,
responsible manhood was at hand.

Business, commerce, in their broadest expansions, would be the
evolutionizing force, instead of religion. Commerce would open
new continents. It might chain and then exploit the stars. It
would be the forerunner to plant civilization. It would walk hand
in hand with a wizard, Science. Motive power back of living
would change. It would be scientific, not emotional. But the
heart would go out of life.

THE DECISION 301

This great, outswinging, tragic vision of melancholy gave him
a sort of soul-homesickness, unuttered longing, for that spirit
ually nobler, more delicate civilization which was fading, but in
which he was meant to live and play his part. He did not wish to
confront the new, the different race to be born, whose watchword
would be economy, not exquisiteness. He did not feel anything
within himself with which to meet it. Wars, evidently, left
wounds which could neither be healed nor effaced. •

He was acrobatically trying to straddle two spheres of time,
which were showing more and more an inclination to swing away
from each other. In the broad streets of his proud Petersburg
different ages of time were now beginning to meet and to jostle
each other in a manner that was noticeable, like the masked
grotesqueries in a village carnival. He, too, was just one of the
stumbling figures that swept by. The difference between him
and the other maskers was not one of indwelling superiority, but
merely of greater richness of cloak and mask. He was just one of
the passing street carnival to be jeered at along with the others:
" You funny, you old-fashioned creature!"

The old world to which he was accustomed, in its holiday car
nival in one of the long Streets of Time, had gayly held up an
Hellenic mask. This represented joy, physical beauty, luxury of
the senses, superiority of the individual, freedom from work and
care, emotion of the eye.

The Christ came. There was inaugurated a different carnival
in the long Streets of Time. It wore an Hebraic mask. It repre
sented the practical, the economic. It stressed the present. It
stressed the humble. It stressed sympathy for suffering — and
love. The old Hellenic carnival in these long streets which can
never end, where always carnivals go on and on, had made a dis
play of masks of beauty, of external loveliness. But he himself
had worn a double mask, the Hellenic, which Hebraic pity had
made incomprehensible.

In the light of this rising sun of disillusion, this heightened
vision of melancholy, if he saw exaggeratedly, he saw, too,
prophetically, and far.

Not only was this change going forward in his country, he

302 THE PENITENT

knew, but throughout the world. Not alone were Slav lands
restless. Europe was restless too. It was ill of la maladie fran-
$aise. Daring and brilliant thinkers were welcoming the new
world which was just swinging into sight. There had been Byron
and Shelley in England. There were Goethe, Heine, Borne, La
Salle, in Germany. There were Chaadaiev, Polevoy, Ryleiev,
Griboyedow, and Alexis Sergiewitch, to mention only a few, in
Russia; Manzoni, Ugo Foscolo, in Italy. In France, Chateau
briand, Constant; Simon Bolivar, in South America; and pre
ceding them, George Washington, in the United States, and the
negro of Haiti, Toussaint L'Ouverture.

How could he alone be expected to meet a world-crisis? He
knew now that it was not exclusively a Russian crisis. No mat
ter what Count Benkendorf and Arakcheiev had tried to talk
into him in the last stormy interviews, he could not be expected
to turn aside a world in transition. This lessened his responsi
bility. Their vision was short and feeble. That was the reason
they demanded so much of him.

Now he had found the way out. Now he knew how to step
aside. An ancient proverb of his race occurred to him with for
cible applicability. To-morrow — to-morrow, but not to-day! He
would go South, ostensibly to review the troops for the impend
ing war. But he would not commit himself, absolutely, yet to war.
This would leave a possible exit for him either way, and it would
divert the popular mind. The gate of escape necessary for his
mental outlook, his comfort, would be left open. He would go
South, at once. He sensed dimly now, with something that
might have risen to the pleasant relief of humor, in this refresh
ing moment of relaxing, a similarity between himself and young
Alexis Sergiewitch. Just as he had once exiled young Pushkin
from Petersburg, now Fate, ironically enough, was exiling him.

But he had found a temporary way out. The crisis was de
layed. He would go South.

CHAPTER XXI
THE FAREWELL

THE carriage was at the door. It was three in the morning.
Alexander, dressed for traveling, a long black cape thrown over
his arm, wearing no sword, no mark of his exalted position, was
walking slowly through the vast lonely rooms of the Winter
Palace, where myriads of dying candles flickered; a lonely, sad,
dramatic figure in this proud, triumphant setting of the past.

The day before he had made a will. He felt relieved. It left
everything to his brother Nicholas. Nicholas was reliable. He
could depend upon him. At the same time he had exacted from
him a promise to burn immediately his letters, his papers. He did
not wish any telltale writing of his to be left behind.

With his upper, his reasoning mind, he kept telling himself
that he was just setting out for a brief visit to his Southern pos
sessions, to stop a while in Taganrog on the way, for the sake of
change and the health of the Empress. But with his subcon
scious mind he was making preparations for a prolonged ab
sence. A part of life, he sensed dully, for him was over. The
destroying of his little personal pleasures, the commonplace joys
of every day, with their reasoned guidance, had thrown him over
suddenly to the dark, swift power of that mighty, invisible cur
rent which is the subconscious self, which binds us to the infinite
and sweeps us along with no will of our own.

He had slept but little of late. When he did sleep he was tor
tured with unhappy visions. It was not rest. His waking hours
had not been much better. They had been filled with gloomy
presentiments. He saw what he felt to be omens of death every
where. Because of the terror of these presentiments he kept
candles burning throughout the Palace in the day. In their light,
in their forlorn effort for their former festal air, he found some
thing feebly akin to courage. He crept close to them. He stood
in front of them trying to warm back his heart to the old calm.

3o4 THE PENITENT

The disciplined servants who stood guard at the doors watched
him in astonishment. They whispered to each other timidly,
when relieved from duty, that it was like serving a stranger, that
something was wrong. He was the same, and yet he was so dif
ferent they could not find words with which to express it. They
did not know how to describe it. It surprised them. It made
them uneasy. His eyes did not seem to focus upon them when he
looked at^them. This began to frighten them. When, the morn
ing before, the order had been given to keep candles burning
throughout the night in the unused state apartments and to open
them and set them in order, they concluded that, like his father,
he must be mad. To-night there was another change in him.
To-night the old expression of double meaning upon his face was
gone. In its place there was something sterner, something that
foreshadowed resolve.

Through the vast, lonely, glittering rooms, where countless
candles twinkled, where his days had been so glorious, so futile,
his tall, black figure moved, while the round, frightened eyes of
inquisitive servants peered after him. He paused first and long
est in front of the chair beneath the long Venetian mirror, in the
little anteroom, where he had sat as a boy, on a night just like
this, alone under the candles, and listened to the sounds of agony
that came from an adjoining room where they were strangling
his father to death. The long mirror had recorded his face of
boyish suffering, just as now it was recording his maturer face
of cold resolve. What futile years stretched between !

In the state ballroom, the polished floor twinkled like the feet
of invisible dancers, where the boasted beauties of Europe, with
smiling eyes, had offered their hearts to him, where the passion
of music had intensified life, making them forget its limits, its
forced reserves. The deep mirrors were rich with the visions of
the past. Within them slept the memory of jewels that had
sparkled, eyes of love that had lured, and the lifted languor of
arms. Across them once had moved all that muted mirage which
was the past. He crossed the solemn, the stately splendor of
drawing-rooms. Here Marie Antonova had queened it, wearing
upon her throat and brow the jewels of Russia. All the rooms

THE FAREWELL 305

kept intimate memories for him, because it was in this regal set
ting that he had played his part. Here admiration for his great
position, flattery, love for his personal beauty, his charm, had
lured him fatally, had made him smile, and forget, and then
drift on.

He paused longest before the portrait of his grandmother. It
had been painted when she was old and fat. His mind registered
accurately the robust vitality, the coarse animal strength, and
the slight distortion of the too long chin. She seemed alive and
vibrant now.

The former Empress, who had preceded her, Elizabeth Pet-
rowna, was luscious and lovely, like the rich pigment of the can
vas that preserved her for posterity. They had been two of the
world's most immoral women. They were merely crowned cour
tesans. But how successfully they had lived! As he recalled the
past, walking alone with the dead, under the fading candles, it
was like looking down on dead cities, they were so far away. He
saw plainly. He understood. But that was all.

The next picture he did not look at. Try as he would, he could
not. He stood in front of it with bowed head. It showed his frail
little daughter wearing his last gift to her, her crown of pitiful
forget-me-nots, and painted on her eighteenth birthday. His
celebrated maitrise de soi-meme forsook him here. He turned
away. He went quickly over to the window as if for relief. The
blackness struck him like a blow. Cold night and space frowned
in upon him.

He wrapped himself hurriedly in the long, concealing cape. He
left the Palace. Outside, at the foot of the stairs, he told his
adjutant-general, Prince Volkonsky, to drive on ahead, to a place
he designated outside the city, and there to await him. When
Prince Volkonsky had disappeared, he gave a whispered order to
his own coachman. He took his seat.

It was four o'clock when he reached the door of the Church of
Alexander Nevsky. But it was still dark. The daylight nights of
summer were gone. Over the city bent the night.

He was not unexpected evidently. There was movement about
the solemn enclosure. A crowd of silent, gray-clad, ghostly

306 THE PENITENT

figures were there. They were lined up in order awaiting him.
They were the monks, the living dead. In his long, black cape as
he swept commandingly between them, wearing no insignia of
rank, no mark of worldly power, he did not look so greatly dis
similar.

In the churchyard here his little children slept. He did not
visit them. He did not even turn his head in their direction. The
past did not matter now. He seemed to resemble both the mon
ster and the saint, who seldom leave descendants for posterity.
Like them he had been surprising and splendid instead of useful.
There were no children of his left living. There was nothing of
him, in fact, left behind in Petersburg to trouble the peace of the
future. The severance was clean.

He crossed the courtyard quickly. When his foot touched the
outer threshold, the group of ghostly figures in their grave-clothes
chanted in unison with a penetrating vibration: "Lord, save thy
people!" The chant echoed after him dully upon the darkness.
He walked on to the circular space under the hollow dome whose
edges were just touched with gray. He knelt here awhile in si
lence. Then he kissed the cross. At a slight distance glimmered
the tomb of the saint himself, Alexander Nevsky. Upon it he
could see faintly huge figures of barbaric metal, torn from his
country's rich but brutal heart, keeping forever here that solemn
gesture of submission, which was his for the moment.

He arose. He was still muffled in the long, black, concealing
cape. He made his way slowly in the dimness to the interior of
the church where he chose at random a seat among the great
number vacant.

The aged Metropolitan, Seraphim, entered. He paid no atten
tion to the silent, seated figure. He wore robes of mourning. He
began at once, in a voice that was old and shaking, to celebrate
the solemn mass for the dead.

He began to listen in what seemed to him an unusual way.
He began to listen with ears that were not those of his physical
body. He was listening with the aroused, the prophetic powers
of them who have taken a step away from life, and whose senses
are not so dulled by its deceptive attachments. Passing over his

THE FAREWELL 307

head, in cold, far spaces above him, in this ghostly hour between
the night and the day — passing with the swiftness of silken
but invisible wings — went the greatness of Russia which had
reached its apex of governmental power in Europe just as mel
ancholy began to touch his mind. Then passed in solemn suc
cession the imperial, the brutal ambitions of his ancestors, re
gretfully, perhaps angrily, as if power were ill-placed with him.
The banishing wrath of that forceful, slightly brutal personal
ity, his grandmother, now rested with scorn upon him. He had
overturned the structure she had so carefully built. He was
undermining the security of the past. He felt little regret,
however.

The music of the impressive litany swayed on. It bore him
with it. His lips began to frame words to suit it. His lips framed
unuttered prayers. "Of God, let me shed no more blood! Let me
punish no more! No more let me lift my hand in judgment against
men! O! God — make me free! No longer let me be a slave to the
vain, the foolish attachments of life. Like the winds, 0! God, make
me mighty, and free!" His heart was making its own, its despair
ing chant to the rise and fall of the music.

As soon as the mass for the dead was over, he arose. He went
out. When he reached the outer door, just preparatory to leav
ing, he found the aged Seraphim. He was awaiting him. The old
man held a tiny silver statue in his hand. It was a statue of the
Christ. Upon it was scratched faintly the letter "A," the initial
of the Emperor's name. He lifted it and made with it the sign
of the cross over the bent head of Alexander. Then he presented
it to him and disappeared. When the outer gate clanged behind
him, the living dead in their ash-hued robes were still there.
Again they lifted the old resounding chant. It echoed in his ears
as he walked away: "Lord, save thy people! "

Day was not far off now. Three thin bars of level, steely
light superimposed each other in the east. The highest towers
were growing visible. He saw the gold dome on Saint Isaac's.
He saw the shaft that topped the Palace of the Admiralty,
which sailors recognize at sea. But in the streets below it was
still so dark that the bdutchnicki in their sentinel kiosks on

3o8 THE PENITENT

the street-corners did not know him as he drove swiftly past
them.

They were crossing the first pleasant prairie levels when he told
the driver to stop. Petersburg, the city that had been fatal to his
race, was visible here for the last time. After hesitating a mo
ment, restlessly, he stood up in the carriage. He turned. He looked
back. His face was whiter now, and pitiful. It recalled vaguely
that of the Christ when he wept over Jerusalem. Through his
mind swept the cry of Christ, "Jerusalem, why stonest thou the
prophets!" His lips did not move. He did not utter a sound.
But before he sat down again he stretched out his arms toward
the vanishing city with an almost awkward gesture, an ambigu
ous gesture. In his eyes there was an expression that suggested
a long farewell.

Then the driver turned with a quick noise of wheels into the
broad, smooth chaussee, the same along which Alexis Sergiewitch
had traveled on his way to exile. Only now the time of year was
different. Alexis Sergiewitch was going toward the promise of
spring, while winter confronted Alexander. The road stretched
away proudly before him, vigorous and white under the new day.
At no great distance ahead now, at the place he had designated,
he came up with Prince Volkonsky. Here Alexander gave him
self over to his passion for driving at speed which had been his
most persistent relaxation in tune of trouble. They dashed away
noisily together across the autumn landscape, which here in the
North was cold and austere. Its riotous colors were gone. The
air about them was silent. The birds had left. Thus, monoto
nously for days, the wheels rolled on through flat leagues of unen
livened fields.

As usual, when night came, Alexander could not sleep. They
drove a part of the night, to the discomfort of the driver. That
night, too, as it happened, which was the thirteenth, a fiery,
bearded cornet appeared for the first time in the sky. It traveled
in their direction. It traveled along with them. Like a beacon,
its bloody light led the way.

When Prince Volkonsky first looked up and saw it, he said to
himself, somewhat superstitiously for him: "That must be just

THE FAREWELL 309

such a comet as men saw when Caesar fell" He crossed himself.
But he did not trouble to communicate his thoughts to others.
The superstitious driver saw it. He was in terror. He kept
murmuring to himself. He crossed himself vigorously. Once or
twice he spoke as loud as he dared to the erect, white-faced
figure that did not hear nor reply: "Master — that means evil/
Master — do not go on."

In the days that followed, the vast, lonely levels that sur
rounded him began to comfort him. They gave him the same
relief that the cold wind of night and winter used to give him in
the old days when vexations beset him. They were perhaps sym
bols of that desolation where human importunities, human weak
nesses, which had grieved him in the past, are not. The cloistral
impersonality of space refreshed him. The relief to be going
away! The relief to have given up the temporary guidance of
government! The relief of having given up even the temporary
guidance of self to the driver! Facts, he could not deal with. He
could no longer struggle with them. He was helpless, useless.
All he could do now was to run away. That hot, beating, quiver
ing, perplexing thing which was humanity, with its wrongs, its
griefs, had always made him suffer.

And humanity could not understand him, because the word
strength, to people at large, means merely an alloy in the gold.
Pure gold is rare. And it is less serviceable.

In a way, perhaps, he had always managed to keep his own
soul out of it, above it, this suffering, struggling humanity, in a
sort of exquisite, proud aloofness, but now at how terrible a cost
— loneliness. Anything, however, was better than its entangling
perplexities, its labyrinthine wrongs, from which one lost the way
out, from which one could never get free. And these wrongs not
only entangled but ruined. Therefore he welcomed desolation.
Desolation re-created him. And sometimes it promised him new
fields of vision, which he scarcely dared contemplate now be
cause the break with the past was too recent. Perhaps within
himself he had already made the great decision, but he was un
willing to avow it even to his secretive self.

Traveling, swift moving ahead in space, was good. It brought

3io THE PENITENT

him the momentary illusion of getting away from unpleasant
nesses. It brought a brief cessation from responsibility. It was an
uninsistent decision. It freed him from people whose presence
he more and more avoided. It put him out of reach, too, of
Count Benkendorf and Arakcheiev. The relief was so great it
was like a sad kind of joy.

The harvests in the lonely levels around him had been
gathered. Here now were only dying colors, the echo of a sad, a
sterile summer; an ending, not a beginning. The sky was cold
and radiant. It had that immobility, that clear, wide-eyed wait
ing, which are heralds of winter.

Day after day he watched idly, almost indifferently, the wind
run over the rollicking dry grasses that bent so gallantly. Some
thing just as imperious, just as invisible, was driving him on.
Day after day on this long drive to the southward, the early
evenings of autumn spread their rich light about his erect, lonely
figure with a strange regret. Day after day they shed the long,
oblique splendor of their gold upon him.

Because he could not sleep, they started each morning early.
Sometimes the little, ungrown moon, pale and livid, looked down
upon him before the dawn. Sometimes the white, wild-flying
splendor of the rain whipped his face. He liked its cold, brief
touch. Or, in the late afternoon, great, glittering, gray-edged
storm-clouds lifted themselves above the desolation and swung
across the blue. But instead of rain there came from them, usu
ally, the chiller wind of autumn, with a touch of its shivering
sadness.

The distance covered now was considerable. It was as if he had
entered a different zone, a world of tepid, unimpaired, early
autumn. Its paler radiance enveloped him. His senses expanded
under the touch. The indestructible, the brutal calm of nature
was swaying him. It was beginning to light far horizons of de
ferred hope.

The increasing distance from the hopeless human tangle
which had smothered him gave him courage. The burnished
levels caressed him. He began to exchange words occasionally
with Volkonsky. It occurred to him at length that they might

THE FAREWELL 311

ride together again the way they used to. The threatened crisis
which had made him suffer seemed far.

Then the warm, forgiving South began, the Don Cossack
country, with its late flowering, its canterbury bells, goldenrod,
its black-and-white mottled butterflies; the Don Cossack coun
try, with the breath of great rivers and a freer living.

CHAPTER XXII
TAGANROG

THIS was an unprepossessing place, Taganrog, which he had
chosen. It was situated on the north shore of the Sea of Azov.
It was lonely. It was isolated and unlovely. A deserted steppe
spread behind it where the winds raced. In front of it spread a
desolate water which was drying up and threatening to become
land. It was a harsh and unpleasant change, indeed, from the
alluring fertile Don country, with its song and dancing, with its
profusion of wild, late flowers, its acacias, its sensitive aspen
groves, its happy farming people, who cultivated successfully the
peach, the chestnut, and the money-making white mulberry.

Taganrog, on its narrow projection of land, the sea on three
sides, had been founded for an army post by Peter the Great,
who had planned for it an ambitious future. It had only about
one thousand houses, however, now, most of which were of stone.
There were only two which were worthy of consideration: namely,
the old Greek Monastery, which was not so bad to look at, and
the comparatively recent, commercially ugly, Marine Hospital.

Along the one main business street, the little shops, which
looked more like bazaars, they were so small, so dark, so crowded,
were kept by enterprising Greeks and Armenians who had been
doing a thriving business since the war. Ships from Marseilles,
which usually were forced to anchor at some distance from shore,
because of the shallow, reedy water, brought regularly to these
little, dirty, ill-kept shops the luxuries of France, of Europe.

Light-draft sailing vessels, which could easily reach the land,
did a brisk, money-making business in iron, in ship timber, in
wool, which had come by way of the Don and the Volga, from the
rich, unexploited Russian interior, and even from remote Siberia,
and the Pacific. From here these natural products were sent on
again to Odessa by sea or by caravan, and from Odessa to other
cities which were centers of distribution, even as far as Constan-

TAGANROG 313

tinople. Lonely Taganrog which looked as if it were in danger
of being pushed into the sea, which was pummeled by the winds,
was really important and energetic commercially. The great
fleet of its light-draft sailing vessels went a great way toward
provisioning the mountainous, occasionally snowbound, and
always unfrequented, Caucasus.

The house Alexander had designated as the royal residence
stood on the shore. It was so long and low, with so many little
windows just alike on each side, that it recalled a rope factory.
It had a yellow front and the roof was painted green.

The night he arrived a warm, black-yellow fog from the sea
was creeping slowly in and enveloping lonely Taganrog. This
gave it an uncanny, an unfriendly appearance. When he entered
the house a faint, evasive perfume greeted him unpleasantly and
made him think of his one other visit here some years ago. Grate
fires made of burrian, the steppe weed used in place of wood, had
been lighted to drive off the dampness, and the heavy atmos
phere was forcing some of the smoke back again and down into
the low rooms.

When he embraced the Empress, and the childish, trustful
eyes, which were the color of forget-me-nots, looked up into his,
he felt the old burden of the past, from which he hoped he had
freed himself forever, fall back upon him. The restful change of
the long journey with its free, diverting distances, with its great,
winnowing winds, was annihilated in a moment. Here was the
old Petersburg furniture, too! And the pictures! And as they sat
opposite each other at dinner, here was the old dinner service
of fine porcelain of Dresden, with the little round covers of beaten
silver, recalling the tragic wrongdoing of the evenings of the past.

The house was filled with flowers in honor of him. The little
friendly flower-faces of his rich gardens by the Gulf of Finland
were grouped to greet him. His heart pinched with sudden pain
at thought of how that garden of delight must be looking now,
blasted and pallid, under the shrill winds of autumn.

And she was so unfeignedly glad to see him, the Empress, glad
in spite of the past. A sort of divine, unearned forgiveness. It
was as if he had returned, not from a long journey, but from

3 H THE PENITENT

some more vital, perilous separation, of the heart, say, or the
mind. It was her silent, unobtrusive celebration that the long
agony with Marie Antonova was over. Her day had come, she
believed. He was hers at last.

After dinner, in the room of the low ceiling and little windows
that was used as drawing-room, where coffee was served, he felt
this more keenly. And he suffered again to think that in her was
unused, stored-up youth, while in him was the desolation, the ex
perience won from disappointment, from unrestrained pleasure.
He could not begin over again so easily.

There were yellow roses in the drawing-room because she
thought he liked them. She believed that the Russian must have
flowers about him. When she first came to live in the country,
she used to declare that the passion for flowers proved the kin
ship of Petersburgers with the Orient. These yellow roses were
just like those that grew beside the rustic bench where he used
to sit with his daughter Sophie, in the sunny mornings, to await
Marie Antonova's late, ill-tempered coming down to lunch with
the wild fervors of a night of sin upon her. Fitfully, they flung
the grief, the glamour of the past upon him. For a moment they
smothered his senses. He thought of the wages of sin which one
must keep paying and paying.

He sensed now, dully, that she knew about the present polit
ical unrest, the growing threats against the government and his
own life, but that she would say nothing. She had learned well
from him the habit of concealing what she thought. He knew,
too, that she would stand beside him, proudly, bravely, and
await any fate, even death. He admired this quality. It was
royal.

There was something of pity, too, mingled with her happiness
to-night, and vague, uncharted fears for the future. She believed,
naturally enough, that the change she saw in him was due to the
sudden wrench caused by the break with Marie Antonova and
the unexpected death of his daughter. It was this grief that had
changed him so. It was this grief that had brought him back to
her at last, after all the years. He felt waves of self-forgetful
pity touch him, while they were talking calmly of inconsequential

TAGANROG 315

things, such as the visit of Constantine, his journey, the house,
just as if nothing had happened. He estimated, on a sudden, the
elevation of the nature of the woman who sat opposite, that was
capable of sacrifice like this. But at the same time, this sacrifice,
together with her childish dependence upon him, were riveting
again those chains that bound him to the past, which he had
been trying so hard to break away from, to be free.

Along with her majestueuse tournure, there was something about
her now that was appealing, almost pitiful. A most astonishing
combination, this. And this peculiar, grand indifference, too,
which was the height either of the aristocratic idea or of personal
fearlessness. They shook him. They made him feel contempt
ible, especially her superb giving-up of life. Try as he would, he
could not get rid of the feeling.

And they were both so lonely. This bound them together.
This made it tragic. His own personal peculiarities, his con
stantly changing mind, together with the persistent intrigues for
their own ambitious ends of Arakcheiev and Photius, had re
sulted in his seeing seldom his boyhood friends. He was as iso
lated as a tree in a desert. There was nowhere he could turn
for help, for support.

Her condition in this particular surpassed his own. Fate had
willed it that the girlhood friends she had made when she first
came were either dead or for political reasons living abroad
where she never saw them, like Countess Tolstoy, as an example
in fact. She had either not wished or not been able to make new
ones. She did not care sufficiently for people. She had no inter
ests left now but the carving of gems and her prayer book. The
same force was operative in both their lives, namely, a force
cutting them sbwly loose.

No fiber of her being had taken deep root in this adopted land.
She lacked flexibility, probably. She lacked interest, too. She
was mentally incapable, for some reason, of transplanting. Life
with her here, he reflected on a sudden with self-reproach, had
been merely a proud, a lonely waiting for the end, any end. She
had been an imposing figure in the past. Now she was becoming
an appealing one.

316 THE PENITENT

If she still loved him, which he did not doubt, it was a love
made up of too many renunciations, too many unsparing soul-
disciplines to be humanly happy. It was made up of too many
extraordinary qualities to be effective in the little, pleasant, care
less round of every day. Both she and Marie Antonova marked
two too far extremes to be reconcilable with comfortable living.
They were two superb dissimilarities, each impossible in her way.
He had not been able to reach the safe mean and hold it, which
any commonplace man can do.

Like him, she did not care for her great position. She was tired
of it. It bored her. She was held to it by loyalty to him. They
were both of too elevated intellect to succumb happily, if fool
ishly, to its base, always selfish, flattery. They were not suffi
ciently plebeian to feel superior, flattered, by elevation. They
despised the cringing courtier, who sought promotion by appeal
ing to a sovereign's weakness. The petty, the illogical superiori
ties of place which please the vulgar, meant nothing to them.
And both of them, without the exchange of a word to each other
on the subject, were consciously confronting that changing civi
lization whose terrors Prince Metternich had pictured for them
so convincingly. Now they could both see that what Prince
Metternich said was true, that the sword of Napoleon had shaken
to its foundation the old civilization in which they were brought
up. They did not find within themselves anything left with which
to face readjustment to the new. They did not pause to think
whether it would be better or worse. They had no curiosity about
its unexplored expansions.

But a ray of light, somewhat cruel though it was, suddenly
shone for him. The invisible, subconscious current was still
bearing him on. It occurred to him that her mother was living.
She would be glad, indeed, to go back again to her girlhood sur
roundings, to Baden, and forget, if she could, in the atmosphere
of home, the futile years between. It would be like beginning all
over again, only in a safer milieu. But he would think no more
now. He would let it all rest with this thought which he would
not seek to probe.

When he said good-night to her, he put his arms about her

TAGANROG 317

tenderly, with a kiss that seemed to ask forgiveness for the past,
a lingering kiss, in which his regret for life was dissolved. He
seemed more human, and not so exquisite, so remote. She felt
that her silent, flowery celebration of his coming had been suc
cessful. She was happy. Like the child she was, she fell speedily
asleep to the rhythm of the fog-covered sea.

CHAPTER XXIII
COUNT WORONZOW

THE next morning he breakfasted late with the Empress. Upon
her face he saw that magic return of youth which happiness
sometimes causes in women of great chastity in whom there is a
fund of stored-up life. He was hers at last — all hers. No one
could take him away from her. In her childish blue eyes shone
the deep, trusting joy of possession. He wondered vaguely at
woman's heart in which an indestructible spring seems to be
waiting. He decided it was because they are a part of nature's
creative plan.

After breakfast he retired to his improvised cabinet for a little
while. He explained that he must look over some papers which
were awaiting him. There were the usual long, detailed reports
about the army of the South. There was a certain necessary
redistribution of officers in question. This he put aside for the
next day. He had stomach for only pleasant things now. He
read carefully, however, the request of the citizens of Taganrog
for the granting of a park and a garden to be used for band con
certs and amusement. The citizens explained that they were
needful because of the isolated situation and the lack of enter
tainment in this lonely outpost planted by the Great Peter.
Then the petition went on to mention, more casually, the need
of paving for the more frequented streets. The blowing of violent
wind, the citizens urged, and the light, dry soil, not only caused
the inhabitants to suffer from dust, but they were a menace to
the general health. Likewise the people hoped that sometime he
would be pleased to embellish their city with a royal residence.
The only government building erected here for a great many
years, the petition made bold to remind him, had been the
Marine Hospital. The citizens felt that they had been neglected
in the quick upspringing of new buildings on this wave of
material prosperity which had followed in wake of the war.

COUNT WORONZOW 319

Another paper, which he did not read through just now, be
cause of his temporary giving over of government affairs, referred
to the astonishing increase in crime of all kinds, not only in
Petersburg, but in the other large cities of the realm. There was
added, by way of proof, a list with explanatory details. The im
plied suggestion, of course, was, that a sterner hand at the helm
of state was needed. He did not read this to the end. It prom
ised too many unpleasant disclosures.

He turned with pleasure to a long letter from Prince Metter-
nich, written to the Empress just the week before, to wish her
speedy restoration to health in the South. At the same time it
informed her that one of his super-spies, by name Chali, an
Oriental whom he had employed for years to report to him con
ditions in various countries, would probably reach Taganrog
during Her Majesty's visit, preparatory to a journey through
Russia. It was necessary to reinvigorate her health, he explained,
by the dry, cold breezes of the steppe, after several seasons spent
in the enervation of an African climate — Algiers. His chief
object in mentioning her name, however, was because he re
called His Majesty's fondness for music, when he had once had
the honor of entertaining His Majesty in the Castle of Troppau.
Chali was a violinist of ability. She would, of course, be at the
disposal of Their Majesties, in case they found Taganrog dull
after the gayety of their luxurious Petersburg. He went on to
state that in Africa she had acquired a repertory of African
music which he thought they might find not only unusual but
enjoyable. Then he chatted lightly, as was his habit, of European
affairs, in that charming manner which made politics read like
a romance. After finishing the letter, which was long and ap
parently confidential, Alexander felt the little frisson of happiness
which contact with the mind of Metternich gave him. He ap
proved of this polished affability which disguised unpleasant
facts. He wished it could be found more frequently.

He was just going to send word to the Empress to prepare for
a drive of inspection through Taganrog, when to his astonish
ment Count Woronzow was announced.

The old man entered hastily. He was covered with dust. He

320 THE PENITENT

was weary. Evidently he had driven at speed throughout the
night. They embraced with the cordiality which testified to
their trust in each other and to their long acquaintance. Alex
ander looked lovingly at the short, undignified figure, with the
furrowed brow and dull, deep-set eyes, the ugly body that gave
no hint of the inspired, noble soul that dwelled within. A second
glance told him that the old man was suffering, that he was
restraining with difficulty some painful emotion. But strange
to say he did not sense the message.

"Are we alone, Your Majesty?"

Alexander hastened to assure him that they were.

Stealthily then he drew his chair a little nearer. A cloud of
yellow dust flew from his traveling coat, which he had not taken
time to remove. The urgency, evidently, was great. " I have just
discovered — " Here his voice shook so he was forced to pause.
Emotion overcame him. Alexander waited, his face betraying
no impatience. "I have just discovered — " The dull eyes
looked up at him with a dog's faithfulness and love. " — A
plot — against your life. Forgive me the necessity of uttering
such treasonable words!" Here he crossed himself fervently.

Alexander turned white. Not with fear, be it said, but because
that crisis which had made him suffer, and which he had crossed
Russia to get rid of, had found him here. Evidently he could not
escape it.

"I did not pause to eat, I did not pause to sleep, after I heard
it. I left Odessa within the hour — to be the first to warn
you."

Again Alexander turned white. This did not deceive the old
man. He knew that the physical courage of the man opposite
him was as great as his own. Had he not been right by his side
in the Battle of Nations, fought under the gates of Leipsic,
when for four days and four nights not once was Alexander out
of range of the guns of Napoleon? To the falling bullets he paid
no more attention than if they had been hailstones. He and
Alexander were blood-brothers. They had been baptized in
flame together. Both were indifferent to death. Both believed
sincerely that there is something better than life.

COUNT WORONZOW 321

"Just what is it you have heard, Count Woronzow?" came the
calm answer.

"The night before I started, two soldiers were overheard talk
ing in one of the barracks. One was unfolding, in detail, the plot
to shoot you when you make your first review of the troops here
— out on the plain — "

"They wish the fate of my father, I suppose, to be mine."

"The one selected to do the shooting — is Colonel Pestel."

"Ah — yes — I know that sort of man. And his father,
too!"

"It seems" — Count Woronzow continued — "that this first
started in a society, a club of boyish poets. Then the poetry
society gradually changed into a revolutionary society — just
how I do not know. The object now is to exterminate the Roman
offs — make a republic here — In short, they plan a repetition
of the French Revolution on Russian soil."

"No one can escape his sins!" exclaimed Alexander, crossing
himself and recalling the murder of his father. He did not tell the
old man, however, that he already knew about the plot. In this
tragic moment the dominant trait of his nature, which was
secretiveness, asserted itself. He did not tell him that he had
heard it from many sources in Petersburg before he left. Nor did
he confide to him the solemn warning of Constantine and his
hasty journey from Warsaw.

" I came to offer my services — my influence — over the army
of the South, as Your Majesty knows, is considerable," he added
modestly.

"What do you suggest, Count Woronzow?"

"The sternest — the quickest measures!"

The face of the Emperor pinched suddenly with grief.

" I know — / know — your dislike — because of the nobility of
your soul, to causing suffering. But here, now, is no place for
yielding to personal inclination. Only duty can be considered,
Your Majesty. Duty, and the saving of Russia, which means,
too, the saving of the faith of Christ." Count Woronzow bowed
his head. He crossed himself with deep humility, as if grateful
for being permitted to give his life to such an undertaking.

THE PENITENT

" While unshaken power is still in Your Majesty's hands, before
the disaffection in the army has had time to grow, to weaken you
— you must strike. No matter what our hearts, what our con
sciences may say, we must strike. And it must be to conquer —
to kill —" He added in a dull voice, "It is duty." The ignoble
little figure, seated in the low leather chair, looked almost ma
jestic in the triumphant victory of his soul. "Once more, let me
have the honor of leading Your Majesty's troops!"

Alexander was moved. He was swayed from the multiple
clutch of his crab-like fears. With something that resembled the
exaltation of the artist, his mind leaped forward to hold those
heights of duty the old man pictured. Triumphant visions of
victory touched him and for the moment lifted him out of his
melancholy.

"You are right, Count Woronzow! We will proceed, immedi
ately. It is the thing to do."

"The plotters, Your Majesty, must be ferreted out by spies.
They must be sent then, secretly, to the mines. Over Russia, over
Siberia, with the swiftness of magic, we must fling a network of
informers. Then we will enlist the priests. Then we will enlist
the newspapers. Then we will proclaim a holy war against the
Turk — inflame the mind of Russia, in short, with patriotism.
That will be useful. That will make people forget — and thus
unite the race. We will save our country!"

"And Russia then shall acknowledge its debt to you, Count
Woronzow, I promise you." Alexander was now enthused with
the prospect.

"First, Your Majesty, send couriers to Petersburg. Arrest
the young men of the societies. There is no time to lose. Every
minute must count for us. Arrest the young men of the branches
of these societies, too, in Novgorod, and especially in Moscow.
In Moscow, you know, there is always too much daring
thinking."

"I agree with you, Count Woronzow! That is the way to pro
ceed. I agree with you heartily. It shall be done."

Relief was evident upon the old man's face. He had succeeded.

In contact with the firm, quick power of decision of this stern

COUNT WORONZOW 323

commander's soul, Alexander regretted the futile weeks of suf
fering, of trying to avoid the crisis. He would meet it now,
bravely. He would make up for the time he had lost. What a re
lief it was — this decision — at last !

They talked then of various other matters. In the course of the
conversation Count Woronzow hastened to inform him that
Alexis Sergiewitch must not be numbered among the plotters,
that he was loyal to the Emperor.

"He is too much of a butterfly, Your Majesty, to cherish
political convictions. He is young and hot-headed, but his heart
is not bad."

Alexander recalled on the instant the "Ode to the Dagger."
He knew that it very likely had had a certain effect, and that
effect not good. But he dismissed the thought as soon as it
came, because he knew the writer was only a poet and not a
political disturber. But the officials behind in Petersburg were
of a different opinion. In addition they were angry personally,
because of the sting of his bitter epigrams.

At length Alexander suggested that a room be prepared for
Count Woronzow. He told him that the midday meal would be
served shortly, and he hoped he would give them the pleasure of
a visit. Count Woronzow replied that he wished merely to wash,
to remove the stains of travel, in order to be presentable to meet
Her Majesty. A room, however, was unnecessary, because he
was returning immediately to Odessa. In the present unsettled
condition, he could not afford to be away.

Count Woronzow greeted the Empress with something that
resembled reverence. In more ways than one she represented his
ideal woman. Various entries in his diary at this time go to prove
it. She had most of the qualities he respected in women, and of
which his own wife had none, whom for long, be it said, he had
looked upon as his earthly cross. In addition to his respect for
the Empress, he felt sorry for her. He had something of the
sympathy that unites like to like.

Just before he drove away, he saw Alexander alone again for
a few moments. Alexander renewed his intention of prompt
action. Count Woronzow asked him for a definite plan of pro-

324 THE PENITENT

cedure. In reply Alexander told him to use his own initiative in
Odessa and places under his immediate supervision. He added,
however, that he thought best to set about it secretly. He
explained that he would send on to him immediately definite
orders.

When Count Woronzow, satisfied with the result of his visit,
turned to take farewell of Alexander, he was startled by some
change in the white face. It was almost as if he were paying his
adieux to a stranger. He concluded that when he first reached
Taganrog he had been so excited by weight of the news he bore,
and so weary by the forced journey, that he had been in no
condition to observe.

After Count Woronzow had driven away, Alexander and the
Empress took their deferred drive through the unprepossessing
streets of windy Taganrog. He did not refer again to the object
of the old man's visit. He left her in the belief that it was merely
a call of courtesy, made equally upon them both. She gained
the impression that the interview had been merely one of pleas
ure. The manner of Alexander was happier than usual, lighter,
and their conversation was care-free. They chatted easily. He
asked her help in selecting a place for a park and for a public
garden for flowers. This pleased her. She felt flattered. She
enjoyed doing it. She felt that she was helping him, that at
last she was coming into her own. She had always wished to be
useful.

Above their heads as they drove through the one business
street, with its ugly, flat-topped buildings, the signs over the
shops displayed the world's most picturesque, ancient alphabets:
Greek, Syrian (Arabic), and Russian.

There were noisy little wine-houses at intervals, where crowds
gathered, and from which throughout the night ruddy, enliven
ing light streamed. There were rough groups of caravan drivers.
There were boatmen whose cruel, pale faces kept startling Mon
gol traits, but whose half-naked bodies were hairy and blond.
Among them were Black Sea pirates, bare to the waist, wearing
tiny caps, that were perfectly round, on the backs of their heads.
They were taking brief land-leave. They were rejoicing, with the

COUNT WORONZOW 325

native population, in the present cheapness and abundance of
food and wine. Russia was feasting. Never had the land been so
well fed. There were dance-halls. There were gambling-resorts
which were never closed. Black gypsy women were dancing in
the street for money in front of some of them. There was more
than a sprinkling of Asiatics. In short, there were the usual
harsh, noisy contrasts of a lonely outpost.

They agreed at length upon the expediency of embellishing
the city. The Empress suggested the adding of one or two public
buildings. They talked freely, easily. There was no restraint.
The rich corn country, back of the steppe, would warrant con
siderable upbuilding, Alexander thought, as if at the moment he
had interest in nothing else. Gayly, out of words then, they built
their toy city.

Just as the summer mornings he had spent with his daughter
by the Gulf of Finland, in the flower-filled gardens, were the hap
piest period of his daughter's life, so were the next few days the
happiest with the Empress, because such power of giving pleasure
to others was his. In the glory and strength of his new-found
decision, he was something as she remembered him in his happy
youth, when, impractical, imperial dreamer that he was, he was
sketching plans for the welfare of the world without taking time
into account, or its destructive tides.

Happily, together now, they planned the freeing of the serfs,
and the possible putting aside the burden of a crown, so wearisome
to them both, in giving the country a constitution or a govern
ment after the style of the United States of North America. She
felt flattered to be consulted like this. She was content. Since he
had come back to her after the years, what else could matter?
They were one in mind. They were living harmoniously in that
brilliant-colored world of the imagination where no companion
could be so delightful as he.

What she believed fondly to be his late refluence of love, of
devotion to herself, was in fact the result of reconciliation in his
own shifting, melancholy, restless mind of having been able to
reach a decision, the thing he had struggled so long and so vainly
to do.

326 THE PENITENT

He would show Russia that his hand could be stern, could be
sure in its dealings when occasion demanded. He would show
them that he was not so inferior to Peter. He confessed to him
self now that he had vacillated too long. It was easy enough see
ing as he did through the eyes of Count Woronzow. He was
untroubled. He felt dominant and brave.

CHAPTER XXIV
ORCHIDS AND MUSIC

FIVE days passed. The promised order of procedure had not been
forwarded to Count Woronzow. Neither had order against the
plotters been sent to Arakcheiev or Count Benkendorf in Peters
burg. The same was true of Moscow. Alexander had done noth
ing. The nation waited.

Each of those five days since the departure of the old man, he
had felt that fine courage, that brave, independent initiative
which he had imbibed sensitively from Count Woronzow's
presence, slowly oozing. Each morning when he awoke he found
that he had less than the day before.

He could not do it. Try as he would he could not force himself
to set in motion that vast, that cruel enginery of destruction.
The dumb impulses of his body fought against it. The deep
undercurrent of his mind, flowing through him with the imperious
necessity of his blood, forbade it. "O/ God, keep me from wrong!
Do not permit me to set my hand to the murdering of men!" he
prayed.

Again that uncontrolled torrent of thought, of worry, was
rushing destructively through his brain. Granted that it would
be better for Russia, were there no personal rights of his own to
be considered? Was it his duty for any man's say-so, however
reliable, to mortgage his soul-welfare through vast cycles of
living to come, by the act of murder? — recalling vaguely at the
moment that majestic prohibition of Eastern thinkers, and the
Christian prohibition, too: Thou shall not kill! Was it his duty
to do a thing against which his nature revolted? Would he not
commit a greater crime if he did? His grandmother had been
forced onward from crime to crime, from murder to murder, by
so-called political necessity. In his boyhood he had begun, too,
by being forced on along the same road, to sanction, namely,
the murder of his father. That murder had embittered the years

328 THE PENITENT

between. It had shadowed his days. He would not be forced to
it again. It was not his duty. There was a court of loftier appeal.
He would not be the nation's royal, vigorously applauded exe
cutioner. He would not murder and then accept praise for patriot
ism. In the Napoleonic wars he had had enough of that. Great
wars, it occurred to him with a lightning-like illumination of
mind, not only sacrifice the lives of soldiers, but ultimately, too,
with a crueler, a larger logic, the leaders on both sides, the vic
torious as well as the vanquished. It seemed to be an inevitable
progression. In the slow subsidence of that gigantic confusion,
no one goes unscathed, not even the victor.

With the feeling of impotence growing upon him, and with the
great, yawning void of expectation calling him louder and louder,
which was of men of the government, men of the army, men of
affairs throughout the country who were awaiting his action, he
became melancholy again. He was face to face with the crisis.
He suffered. Fear, which is the child of suspicion and lack
of faith, ultimately, too, of madness, increased. Daily for him,
logically, slowly, it unfolded its unknown terrors. There were
vague inquietudes which words might not express. There were
troubled presentiments in the twilight. There was a new, un
suspected, latent hostility in people. Even the unyielding, harsh
indifferences of material things began to impress him. Special
sadnesses awaited him if the evenings fell with rain, or the warm,
yellow fogs of the South in winter enveloped the land.

The Empress, however, saw and felt little of this. She was
protected against impressions just now by her sudden, her new
found happiness. She was self-absorbed. He had come back to
her after the years! He was hers. Nothing else mattered greatly.
Suddenly, by a stroke of Fate, the obstacle to her contentment,
her supremacy, had been swept away. The rays of this unex
pected happiness which had just arisen blinded her to other
things. Her unused life of suppressed youth burst into blossom
like the flowers in some magic garden.

The meddlesome Metternich, the Continent's most accom
plished mischief-maker, in his official cabinet in Vienna was al
most as restless as Alexander. The silence in Taganrog was

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 329

worrying him. He was playing for the rehabilitation of the Haps-
burg dynasty. It was weak. It needed time for restoration. In
addition, as he saw it, it was now or never to save the ruling
class. His strong will steeled itself anew for the task.

Daily, couriers brought him the same word from Taganrog.
No change. From Chali likewise came this message. What if
Alexander should make Russia free! What if he should give it a
constitution! Then about his own ears would come the clatter
ing ruin of his carefully erected schemes. All that he had worked
for would be destroyed. His mental atmosphere resembled that
which precedes a thunderstorm. To content himself a little
in the weary period of waiting, he wrote notes to all the courts
containing carefully guarded warnings against Alexander.

Count Woronzow was waiting, too. And now with appre
hension. So were the state officials in Petersburg, in Moscow.
They were upon the edge of a volcano.

Each one of these days Alexander walked alone by the shore of
the sea for hours, just as Alexis Sergiewitch used to in Odessa
when he was meditating running away from Russia. He recalled
vividly what the Greek poets whose verses he had learned by
heart in his childhood, Euripides in particular, had written about
the sight of the sea, and its sound, banishing the grief of men.
He wished pitifully that the miracle might be performed for
him.

Sleeplessness came back to torture him. Night-long he heard
the weeping of that somber Sea of Azov, where, as winter drew
on, mists clung like the poised, sad approach of some other world.
Surely nowhere else, he began to think dismally, do the dawns
rise so solemnly. He read the Scriptures. He read the lives of
the saints. He read Saint Francis of Assisi. Hours of the night he
remained upon his knees in prayer — begging for guidance, begging
for a way out.

Another thing that paralyzed in him the power of quick, of
effective action, was that in most Russians there is a slight ad
mixture of the fatalism of the Orient, that what must be must be.
And just now Alexander was beginning to believe that determi
nation for the future of his country no longer rested with him

330 THE PENITENT

alone; that these young plotting poets were the future, casting
its shadows ahead. He was beginning to believe that they were
the forerunners of an unreckonable uprising of the masses, that
new civilization of Metternich, that in time was to destroy utterly
the kind of life in which he had been brought up. This was fear
enlarged a thousand fold and then generalized. So in addition to
being unwilling to proceed, he felt helpless.

The old desire for travel, for swift moving across space, which
was his way of meeting trouble, came. With him it was a sign of
desperation. Just now it marked something resembling mental
rabies, a disease. He could not oppose it. There was nothing to
do but yield.

He informed the Empress, suddenly, and the members of his
improvised entourage of the South, that he was going to make a
swift visit of inspection to some of his Crimean cities, alleging
various feigned necessities as immediate cause. Adjutant-Gen
eral Prince Volkonsky, as usual, accompanied him. This time
again they did not ride together. The Prince wondered at it.

First to Perekop he started, and insisting upon driving at a
speed that astonished even Prince Volkonsky. Through Perekop,
on its narrow peninsula, the little village founded so many cen
turies ago by the Tartars, the great highway leads straight ahead,
like a road of conquest, to Crimean lands.

He did not see anything of the lovely, sun-warmed autumn
country through which they were rattling with such speed, nor
the gladness of the gay mirror of blue reflecting water beside him,
his mind was so blinded by fears. He was swinging helplessly
now to that fixed thought which sometimes heralds madness.

At Simferopol, another old Tartar stronghold, in which a more
prosperous new Russian quarter was springing up with the rapid
ity of weeds in spring, and where mosque, synagogue, Greek
Orthodox church, and a new pointed- topped Catholic cathedral
rubbed elbows amicably, Prince Volkonsky fell ill. They were
forced to stay over for two days. But the Emperor had no inter
est in the busy little place or its picturesque situation at the foot
of a spur of those crumpled-looking Crimean mountains, nor its
spacious gardens, now luscious with ripened fruit, where the

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 331

Sultans of the North used to live. He spent both days in the
church in prayer. Both Perekop and Simferopol had been given
to Russia by that virile, all-conquering grandmother of his, who
above all things knew how to live.

They sailed across from Goursuf to Aluschta, an hour's pleas
ant sail if the wind is fair. Prince Volkonsky felt that he was in
Italy. He was happy. A more charming place could not be
imagined. Billows of conquest, for centuries, had rolled over this
southern shore; from east; from west and south; Mongol, Tartar,
Greek, Latin. Powerful, restless, rapacious races had ruled it.
It was not impossible, indeed, that once here the soldiers of
proud Justinian, with the golden eagles of Rome, had passed,
and Prince Volkonsky tried earnestly to divert Alexander's
mind by these poignant memorials of human history, and to
suggest to him, from them, fresh plans for the expanding future.
He observed that Alexander did not adequately estimate, or
appreciate, the economic forces at work now, forces which were
wholly disassociated from the moral world. But Alexander
seemed neither to see nor hear what he said. And over his head
here again the birds were singing, the same birds that used to
scatter their songs so lavishly above that gorgeous garden by the
Gulf of Finland. He did not hear them. They made him neither
sad nor happy.

From Goursuf two highways lead. Alexander had no interest
in either one of them. One leads through spacious lands belong
ing to Count Woronzow ; the other through the estate of another
Russian nobleman. The choice was made by Prince Volkonsky.
He took the lower road. It led through the vine-lands where
grape-pressers were working now noisily and merrily and where
rich scents of wine were on the air.

Then the road led uphill, rather steeply for some distance,
between rows of dust-covered, tall cypress-trees, where they
could see, broader and broader, a stretch of water shine like
silver. He had no more interest in the sumptuous crown-estate,
Oreanda. He did not wish to visit it. He did not turn his head
to look at it. Prince Volkonsky began to wonder again just what
could be the object of this last, mad journey.

332 THE PENITENT

Each morning, when they started, very early, a transparent,
blue haze was hanging over the vast water, while to landward
spread the first wild rose of the sunrise.

Smiling, sheltered Alupka, the health resort, swung to sight.
Near it Count Woronzow was erecting the famous Moorish
palace which was intended to equal the Alhambra and become
one of the world's wonders. Its park was of an extent, a luxuri
ance, both natural and cultivated, to dazzle even an Emperor's
eyes. All along this alluring Southern shore in fact they found
another summer, and at the same time something resembling
the spirit of gay, sensuous Cairo, where pretty women who
had laughing eyes wore the gowns of Paris. Here fruit that
glowed like little round suns showed enticingly among the
green gloss of leaves, and scents of late harvest came on the
breeze.

Afterward came Sebastopol on its lofty cliff, and Balaclava,
later to be battle famous, shutting in sharply a blue circle of sea
with white sand that glittered like diamonds.

The drive from SebastopoJ to Eupatoria, with its mosque and
its whirling wind mills, on the homeward curve to the north,
where the gigantic walnut-trees grow, is one of the loveliest in
the world. It does not need to stand second where beauty is the
question, if perhaps it must in grandeur, to that which Alexis
Sergiewitch had taken across the wild Gorge of Dariel, in whose
depths light died in the day, and where Caucasian eagles whirled.
But Alexander saw nothing of it. It did not inspire him. It did
not give him pleasure. He did not even look at the wonders the
lavish world was spreading before his inattentive eyes. Prince
Volkonsky was beginning to be worried in earnest. He could not
guess the cause of this new, this unexpected strangeness, when
everything seemed to be moving smoothly. He puzzled his head
over it. He began to believe that Alexander's upbringing had
been wrong. It had been in the hands of emotional priests and a
dreaming philosopher. If, instead, he had had some scientific
training, he thought, it would have helped to steady him, to give
him a different outlook. Then he could have considered what
happened in the world about him as some phase of growth, of

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 333

evolution. Instead of seeing everywhere emotionally either
punishment or penalty, he would have viewed nature's uninter
rupted progress.

Fresh life, increased commercial energy, was now flowing into
these little cities of the South. He tried to make Alexander see it.
He tried to show him what it meant for Russia. He tried to
open his eyes to future possibilities of commercial conquest.
This Crimean country, which is Russia's Italy, was just enter
ing upon that heightened era of business development, of modern
scientific exploitation of natural resources, in the way of mines,
medicinal baths, fruits, wines, grain, leather, timber, which was
to meet its first impetuous if temporary check, a little more
than a quarter of a century later, with the breaking-out of the
Crimean War. It was just getting in full and inspiring swing
now. But the Emperor's mind was so swayed by gloomy pre
sentiments that he could not see it.

Back in Taganrog the truthful, childish eyes of the Empress,
which bound him to the slavery of the past, and were living
memorials of his folly, his wrongdoing, awaited him. Back in
Taganrog the invisible threads of fear, which made him helpless,
miserable, were awaiting him, too, to make him a prisoner, to
bind him again.

He had gained nothing by the journey. This time he had not
found in it the temporary relief which usually resulted. His last
pleasure was gone. The crisis still confronted him. And there was
nowhere he could turn for help, either to personal friend or polit
ical power. He did not feel any too friendly toward England
since her refusal of the last Russian loan. In addition, like Met-
ternich, he disliked her Foreign Minister, Canning. He had a
horror of his disrespectful, Irish wit. He could not rely upon
Poland even with his brother as Governor. He knew too well
the fickleness, the undependableness of the race. Spain and
Italy had troubles enough of their own. Austria, he knew, was
forced to cling closely to that necessary selfishness which is a part
of weakness. There was nothing for him anywhere. He had lost
even the power to hope. Only in some other world now could he
live and find that happiness, cette puissance de bonheur, which

334 THE PENITENT

must be, to go on; some other world where an entirely different
mental equipment was required.

Alone, in desperation of soul, he stood by the Sea of Azov,
while about him spread the impalpable agony of the twilight,
like a new, a strange land, stretching on and on. The last faint
streaks of peach-bloom in the west had faded. Night was shut
ting down.

Suddenly in something the way that the drowning clutch at a
straw, the letter which Metternich had written to the Empress oc
curred to him. Anything connected with Metternich was in the
nature of a relief. He recalled his mention of that woman musi
cian, Chali. In his increasing deafness the violin was the only
instrument he could enjoy. He turned back toward the Resi
dence. He walked a trifle more briskly than usual. On arrival,
he dispatched an equerry to the low, square, somewhat isolated
stone dwelling which was Chali's, to apprize her of his coming.

When she lifted her eyes from the customary reverence to
royalty with which she greeted him, what seemed to her a figure
of pity stood before her. This was no Moscow Tsar. He brought
to mind the memory of Holy Men to which, in the East, she was
not unaccustomed. He recalled slightly to her that marble face
lit by the light of tapers, in the dim, old cathedrals of Italy, to
which men prayed. Could this be the man, she asked herself in
amazement, whom Metternich had declared must not go back to
Petersburg alive? Was it for this, this unutterable thing, that she
had left her happy living and come to Russia? To her swift-
moving, figure-making, Oriental mind the man before her sug
gested a noble animal, wounded, at bay, with the base, yelping
hounds of political envy, personal hatred, after him. By force
of contrast Metternich occurred to her, and, in unflattering juxta
position; an old, faded roue; a selfish, intellectual sensualist. She
all but hated him. She had a dramatic moment of fierce, of angry
revolt against the mission upon which he had sent her. Then the
suppleness of her race proclaimed itself. Emotions change easily
in the heart of an Asiatic. This stood her in good stead now.
She would save him, some way or other. She would please her
self and throw dust in the eyes of the mischief-making Austrian.

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 335

She would serve personal desires for once. Swiftly she regretted,
as she stood face to face with Alexander, those informatory letters
she had been sending to Vienna. She disbelieved now most of
the things she had heard of him. Rapidly she reversed her
opinions. She made new ones. All his ills she believed came from
his superiority. The charm of Alexander which had been so
fatally powerful over the hearts of people in the past was height
ened now by his inaccessibility.

She sensed, suddenly, that some death-dealing blow had killed
the living heart of him, until now it was merely a huge, an in
visible wound. She knew that her, the woman, he could not even
see. He had swung out beyond living, so to speak. Waves of
self-forgetful pity began to sweep over her. She cursed futilely
that twist of destiny that made her the slave of others.

But she would wait and see what acquaintance might disclose.
There were weapons in her hands. She would know how to use
them. She was quick to see. She was quick to act.

This, then, was the man whom the crafty diplomacy of Met-
ternich had, for years, been pulling slowly down, from his great
height of power, to ruin! This was the man in whose ear he had
stood and whispered, to put shaken faith, distrust. First, he had
worked to destroy his friendships. Then he had saddened his
heart. At last he had made him lonely. Deep in the clear eyes
she was looking into she could count all those accumulated disap
pointments.

Alexander, on his part, was confronted with a bare, dismal,
ill-furnished room. The usual, red-flannel-framed bear-skins
were on the floor. There were a few pieces of awkward, brown,
leather-covered furniture made in Germany. The windows
were narrow and deep-set. The ceiling was low. In one corner
stood a medium-sized stove of painted porcelain. The walls
were bare save for three great, wild, blossoming orchids from
Africa, which kept a beauty in which there was something
savage.

A magnificent figure of a woman, however, was bowing before
him, tall, slender, with a small, round, smooth-shining, black
head. He saw a pale face, amber- tin ted, with arched, eloquent

336 THE PENITENT

brows. But the eyes impressed him most. In them he read con-
noisseurship of life, and in her heart he felt a touch of that in
telligent pity which only the wounds of living can give. He
recalled swiftly Metternich having said to him: "I have never
loved anything base. I love iron and marble, but I could never
love tin nor lead."

A voice that pleased her touched responsively her ears. " I am
taking advantage, with your gracious permission, of Prince
Metternich's invitation to hear you play."

"I feared, Your Majesty," bowing him to a seat, "that you
were going to permit me the honor of being the first to announce
to His Excellency the giving of a constitution to Russia." She
would simulate frankness. She would strike with the suddenness
of surprise.

"Would that be so bad? " — gently. The thought evidently
did not displease him.

"Perhaps, for an old nation — far ahead in the future."

"You mean?"

"With your gracious permission, Sire, Russia is young."

" Cannot all people enjoy freedom? "

"A dagger is a dangerous plaything for an infant."

"You do not flatter."

" Russia is youngest of the nations. If the elders — France,
England — have not dared try it, how could one less experi
enced?" Unconsciously the political faith of Metternich had
become hers.

Alexander became thoughtful. His doubts came back. They
were seldom but partially asleep. It took little to arouse them.
She was probably right. His people were children.

"Sometimes, you know, the governing hand grows weak/-'
was the gentle rejoinder.

"Freedom is for the chosen, Sire. It has nothing to do with
the masses."

In the mood of despair that held him his subtlety was gone.
Perhaps for the first time in his life he was frank. He wore no
mask to-night.

"The one who governs has a harder time than the governed,"

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 337

She saw he had no pride in his great position. The voice that
moved her with its beauty was infinitely weary.

Vaguely, then, the memory brushed him of long years of
wasted youth, of wasted love, with Marie Antonova, of whom he
seldom permitted himself to think, when there were women in
the world like this. Metternich was a good judge of many things;
not only men — but women. Always the great statesman's
power, his penetration, were substance for the storehouse of
memory.

"And now is there to be a Turkish war, Sire?" — carrying on
her beginning of undisguised frankness. In this she herself was
interested. It concerned the people of her faith.

" There are always wars — or near — or far, it seems." He
evaded for the first time.

"And Charles X, Prince Metternich writes me, is planning
immediate invasion of Algiers" — thinking again of people of
her faith.

The clear eyes looked across at her without particular inter
est. "Being ruler, you see, is not exactly what you might call
a divertissement" — a faint shadow of the old enchanting smile
caressing the corners of his lips.

Then, like an inspiration, the way out of it all, for herself, for
her master, flashed before her. This was what Prince Metternich
had so frequently praised her for, this vivid^this independent
seeing.

"When one is tired of ruling, Sire, there is always the other
life."

His expression changed instantly. "The other life! What do
you mean? " The thought had occurred to him first, words bub
bling up bravely from the depths of his spirit, when the death of
his daughter automatically severed relations with Marie Anto
nova, and cut off the past. This was just what Chali was saying
now. The words struck his ears with uncanny power and with
out personal volition.

"In the old world" — her voice was flowing evenly on — "the
East, in short, kings used to put aside the crown for some
thing greater — meditation, prayer — to live in solitude the

338 THE PENITENT

life of the mind. That was a stepping-up, Sire, not a stepping-
down."

She saw the suggestion moved him. She began to understand
why he was such a riddle to his contemporaries. It was because
people could neither understand nor believe in nobility so great.
He did not have the usual human equipment of pettinesses,
shabby vanities, cheap cruelties which are so many overcoats
against the storms of human happenings. Whirlwinds of thought
swept through her. She pitied him. And the pity was mixed
with something that resembled reverence. She had heard much
of him, to be sure, from that astute judge of men, Metternich.
But no word of his had reproduced the living man who sat before
her.

Leaning toward him with supple grace, with sincere, eloquent
eyes, Alexander saw a figure of charm, wearing draperies of soft
silk the color of pimento splashed with sulphur yellow. " Some
times, Sire, I have thought that the world has seen three super
men. Prince Metternich and I discussed it when I met him a
little while ago by Lake Garda. It is one of his beliefs. Three
supermen, Sire — Buddha, Christ, and Napoleon. I mention
them in their order of birth. The latter gave his heart to conquest.
His reward was comparable. The other two sought dominion
over the world of the spirit. Their scepter of power was love.
They have changed the minds of races throughout long periods
of time, in a degree that cannot be estimated. Life has bent be
fore them, Sire, like grain-fields before the tornado. And Buddha,
you know, was first an Emperor. Beyond the circles of existence
that we see, Sire, there are other circles. There is always some
thing — beyond."

The thought she projected before his mind glowed with the
savage splendor of those enigmatic flowers upon the wall that
drew their substance not from the earth, but from the shining
atmosphere. They represented a certain fury of life, its untamed
persistence, perhaps. They were emphatic in assertion of its in
destructibility. This was strength. This was courage.

She was sitting opposite him perfectly motionless, with the
praiseworthy calm of the Moslem. But she was looking at him

ORCHIDS AND MUSIC 339

with eyes in which there was sympathy and understanding.
Something touched him which was grateful as warm sunlight
after winter. It was pity.

But her mind was active. It was not motionless like her body.
She had found in Alexander a mental quality she had met but
once before, in her midnight visitor in the rained palace of Bakshi
Serai, a man without self, without greed. Perhaps this was a
quality findable only in this vast country which she had not
visited before, whose past had not been the same as that of
Europe's.

He, on his part, was picturing busily those heights of prayer,
of renunciation, which are greater than Tsardom. He was think
ing that failure cannot exist for them who follow the way of the
spirit. He was picturing — that other life.

When the silence had lasted long enough, she spoke.

"Shall I play for you, Sire?"

"Play, if you will be good enough."

She took her shining brown violin from its case. She tested the
strings quickly with trained fingers. She took a position across
the room, not far from where the orchids hung.

Then there burst upon the surprised senses of Alexander for the
first time that astonishing music of the black races, that music
built up by Nature's self, music at once wild and sweet, com
bining, as great art must, the friendly union of impossibilities.
With imperious power of self -projection it promenaded before
his bruised and weary senses that land of ruddy soil, burnished by
prodigious suns, the background for life savage and free. Like
his journey southward from Petersburg, with the winnowing
winds about him, it refreshed him. It was that quick contact
with the untamed from which he could draw courage. His bruised
sensibilities were wrapped about deliciously with the concealing
splendor of tone. He all but wept at the blessed relief it afforded.
He sat dulled, the sting of misery lessened, under the protection
which it gave him. It brought him temporarily that simulated
realization of perfection of milieu, where alone he could succeed
and be happy. It appealed to the hidden powers of his mind
which misery had put to sleep. It released them. It made them

340 THE PENITENT

active. Beneath the magic of that leaping bow his grief, his
agony, were impotent.

When she finished, he did not move nor speak. He hesitated to
break the charm. When he arose to take leave, it was as if he
were desirous of keeping intact the music's memory.

In parting, he bent over her hand with the old, inimitable
grace which a lifetime at court had taught. Chali felt fleetingly,
in her woman's heart, the fascination of that inscrutable smile.
And then, like a vision, he was gone.

CHAPTER XXV
KUSMITCH THE MONK

ON the night that followed, Alexander was making his deferred
but long-promised tour of inspection of the new Marine Hos
pital. During his absence, on his journey around the Crimean
shore, typhus had broken out and the number of patients was
increasing alarmingly.

The obsequious, smooth-faced interne who accompanied him,
took him first to the rooms where the newcomers and those less
dangerously ill were kept, explaining, as they walked along be
tween the beds, certain changes and certain planned enlarge
ments of the floor-space which were desirable.

At length they entered the room of those who were most seri
ously ill, where the dimmer light and the weight of silence swept
upon huii suddenly a fresh conception of suffering, of human
instability. Unconsciously he began to walk more slowly, to look
with added sympathy, added comprehension, at the faces of
those who soon would meet the Great Unknown, and for whom
life was over. A depressing sense of its sadness, its impossible
complexities, its futility, touched him. They walked without
speaking, softly, between the long straight rows of little white
beds, where the faces kept the same silence, the same monotony
of suffering. Here the interne volunteered no explanations.

Suddenly Alexander paused. He looked down fixedly. The
occupant of the bed was a sailor who resembled himself so
closely, it was as if he were looking into the mirror. The interne
saw the resemblance as soon as he did. Even his controlled face
showed a trace of surprise. The man was younger, to be sure, but
suffering had in some degree wiped out the difference in years.
Alexander could not force himself to go on, so astonishing was this
physical likeness. He still stood in silence and looked down at
him. He felt that the interne was glancing stealthily first at his
face and then at the face upon the bed, in order to compare them.

342 THE PENITENT

At length he signified to the attendant that his visit of inspection
was over.

In the hall outside, he turned and said to him: "Will he get
well — the young sailor? "

"No, Your Majesty."

"How long will he live?"

"Perhaps half the night out."

"Not longer?"

"Not possibly longer, Your Majesty."

Alexander became thoughtful. At length he remembered his
companion again.

"It is time for you to be relieved from duty, is it not?"

"Yes, Your Majesty. But I am glad to remain if I can be of
service to Your Majesty."

Alexander thanked him and dismissed him. Then he entered
the small bare, receiving-room, which was empty now, and
dimly lighted. Here the prolonged, low, growling sound of the
night sea greeted him. It was like the hoarse song of some far
ocean of eternity beating upon shores he could not discern. Dully
he felt the power of its continuance.

He stood in the small, ugly room like one dazed. He looked
about with eyes that did not see. A wild, a romantic idea, had
flashed across his brain. In that dying sailor's astonishing re
semblance to himself lay the long-sought way of escape. The crisis
still confronted him. But he did not fear it now. He could escape
it! He had found the way!

He did not wish to go back to Petersburg again. Too many
tragedies, too many ugly memories were there. And he was not
sure that he could go if he wanted to. For Russia to live on, to
prosper, it would be better for him to die, or to disappear. What
a reversal of his old dream of world dominion was this ! The mass
of the people were in just the same mood now as the Roman
populace used to be before the gladiatorial games. Something
must be thrown to them to appease them — a human sacrifice
- just as in Caesar's day a life must be flung to the mob to keep
it still.

For the few black hours of the night that followed now, his

KUSMITCH THE MONK 343

will would be supreme for the last time. For the last time, "S0
be it — Alexander" would work the old magic of command.
He would have the dead sailor's body substituted for his own.
He would seemingly die, and then disappear. A messenger to
the Greek Monastery would bring immediately to the Residence
for him a monk's robe. He would put it on. And then —

Despite the misery that had gripped him so long, a pale, far
dawn was beginning to rise, and for him. It held promise. It
held the promise of that other life, which is greater than Tsardom,
which Chali had pictured and which the magic revealing splendor
of music had presented as relief to his despair. He returned
to the Residence speedily and alone, to hasten his plan to ex
ecution.

Here, in his improvised cabinet of the low ceiling and little
windows all around, he could still hear outside the weeping of that
somber Sea of Azov, like an accompaniment that might not be
stilled. It was urging him on and on. Through his brain moved
the summed-up deeds of that fated race of which he was born.
Father had murdered son; son, father; brother, brother. And
he himself stood guilty among the rest. He longed to get away
from it all, the regretful memory, the sickening homage, the
tinsel splendor, the base intrigues, the foolish pomp, and his own
peculiar but uncontrollable contempt for his fellow-men, the
bitter knowledge that to wish well to the world, to will its better
ment, or to work for it, may bring results as pernicious as crime.
In addition, the heart of him was dead. Grief, melancholy,
betrayal, ingratitude, had dealt the blow.

A world that was not like his ideals, and could never be now,
must be governed in a different way. It would be better for it to
be governed by some one else. Life was forcing him every day to
act the lie, to deny his convictions, to be false to his ideals. The
new world which was just arising to confront him with such
sharp surprises, with such harsh dissimilarities, after the Napo
leonic wars, had nothing whatever to satisfy his poet's dream.
It was soulless. It was prosaic and unpicturesque. It would be
come increasingly vulgar, increasingly plebeian.

That new word found in the days of the Terreur — Justice —

344 THE PENITENT

which men had not dared to use before, was capable of terrific
expansion. It meant, in the end, the doing-away forever with the
civilization which he had known. The political ideal of humanity
was undergoing a change. And it was a disturbing basic change of
structure. He sensed before him prophetically vast spaces, which
only the distant future could people, the background for some
far but very different period of time. What a vision spread before
his eyes — the vast spiritual crumbling of an order of living which
it had taken nearly two thousand years to build up and to main
tain, the best that man had known. People were beginning to
dress for that change even now. He had seen it in the cities. He
had seen it in the villages. Their clothing indicated the banish
ing of servility. They were wearing coats and dresses not made
solely for pleasure, for frivolity, for the gratifying of kingly eyes,
but for usefulness, and inaugurated by the Great Revolution.
Not alone their minds had changed! The mental change was
translated into daily living. Their bodies would change, too.
Under the rule of the masses, the unaccountable but inevitable
intermingling of blood, those nobly formed, aristocratic bodies
of the past would disappear. The repeated admixture of base
blood would gradually thicken the ankles. It would coarsen,
make less flexible, the wrists. It would blur the features. It
would take the long, silky length from the hair. It would shorten
the long neck, suitable for command, disdain. It would change
round bones to square. It would thicken, shorten, hands and
feet. The changes upon the mind would be even greater. It
would make plebeian. In the same degree it would change the
spirit. In short, the fine, highly specialized race with which he
had been reared would now slowly disappear. It would be grad
ually transformed into a useful race. The fine breeding of the
human flower, merely for display purposes, to perpetuate the
aristocratic ideal, would cease. Already wild hopes, which he
believed the future would fulfill, were dancing like gay soap-
bubbles before the brains of the poorest, the humblest. And
what furious, pent-up determination there was in the mob to pos
sess, to enjoy! He trembled at the thought. It would be the swine
let in upon the gardens, the flowers, the fruit. When the last

KUSMITCH THE MONK 345

barrier was down, what would it do to the stored-up riches of the
past?

Above the materialization, the grossness, of the pagan world,
Beauty had arisen to dominate, to uplift, to console. And later
still, to shine above the Dark Ages, had come Love, the Christ, to
make beneficent, to make pitiful. In the far future, what new
sun would rise? Above that struggling, noisy, onrushing sea of
the masses, which Prince Metternich, for his own selfish ends, had
just pointed out to him, and which, since, he had seen better and
more prophetically than his Austrian guide, what new form of
consoling superiority would come? Would there be some new
nobility of the future? Would there be another room built on to
the human mind to house some fresh ideal?

He was forty-eight years old. He was vigorous of body, young,
as years count. But mentally he was an old man. He had lived
too much. He was disenchanted, worn out, weary. The body,
still young to look upon, clothed scornfully this ageing soul.

To get away I To get away I This was his only thought. To sub
stitute the dead body of the sailor, who looked enough like him
to be his twin, for his own body, and then to escape in the dis
guising garb of a monk.

He longed for the primitive things, things not connected with
the life of man, the things that heal; the sincere, the unspoiled.
He longed to bathe his soul in the silences of an untenanted land.
He longed for the healing of lonely forests, for winter, and for
dull waters unspotted by activities of commerce. He longed for
the peace of spirit that is born of solitudes. He longed for freedom
from false, cringing, self-seeking, treacherous courtiers. He longed
for prayer.

There was nothing the material world could give him. He had
had it all. And his impression of it now, in this moment of fare
well to the past, to power — in retrospect — was as of innumer
able fetters that bound. Only in the possession of nothing was
there peace. By prayer, perhaps, he could avert the curse that
had fallen upon the Romanoffs. By prayer, perhaps, he could
set others free.

To be f reel Free as the birds are free! To be able to behold

346 THE PENITENT

with self-forgetful rapture the pure sky of space which the hand
of a Creator had unrolled above his head. To have time to look
with care, with scholarly pleasure, at the little blowing grasses
of the fields, at the flowers upon the steppe. To idle in the out-
of-doors as scientists, as artists idle, with wise, kind, sensitive
eyes. To be free from responsibility over the lives of men: their
punishing; their guiding, which had tortured him so. To be un
observed. To be closer to his fellows. To be unenvied. To be
unhated.

No more to meet betrayal, disillusion ! To have nothing either
to preserve carefully or to conceal. To be unattached. To own a
few of the humble privileges that are the inalienable right of man,
but which he had not been able to get hold of or to keep. To
come back, in short, to the race after his long, sad, lonely exile
of namelessness, which had been kingship.

He was born a king. And he looked a king, in height, in grace
of body, in beauty. But the mind of him was not formed for a
king's iron, irksome tasks. Napoleon was not born a king. He
was of humble birth. He was inferior in stature. He was not
much taller than a child. But the mind of him was kingly and
iron-armored for the task. And then — who could tell? — in
years of solitude, of prayer, of meditation, what far boundaries
of realms spiritual he might reach ! Who could foretell what un
discovered springs of love, of wisdom, of spirituality, unfettered
as he was by pride, by earthly impedimenta, and thus enabled
to progress, he might reach?

In all abnormalities there is power, because of concentration,
because of the yielding-up of the little things that go to preserve
balance. Who could estimate how much of the added power born
of chastity, the mental, the spiritual, born of renunciation would
come to him? With this power intensifying throughout the years
he might purchase pardon for his family, peace for his people;
and who could measure what divine compensation for himself?
What gift of health, of healing?

Prince Metternich's vivid picturing of a changing world, and
his own growing belief in it, that new, that different civilization
that was on the way, had impressed him sadly. It had inspired

KUSMITCH THE MONK 347

him with fear. It made him long to avoid it. There was nothing
within him now with which to adapt himself to the new. He be
longed to the old. Despite the splendor of his body, its suitability
for the picturesqueness of pageants, his mind had grown anti
quated. It belonged to the past. An enormous mental evolution
was in progress. Vast visions were piling up like storm-clouds in
the minds of humble working-men. A fatal, an imperious leaven
was at work. It was not easy for the best minds to digest so much
new life, so much new thought, now flowing into the world. The
uncommon receptivity of the Russian mind made Slav lands
more restless, more dangerous.

Most changes in his realm had been caused by lack of money,
shortage of food, unpopular governmental measures, real or
fancied oppressions. This was something different. It was not
the result of financial bankruptcy nor an increased money
shortage, which makes people restless, unmanageable. It was
just the opposite. It was a world in ferment. It was a world busy
in adjusting itself to more commodious living. Old horizons,
which once seemed fixed, had expanded, not contracted. The
material splendor of life which had in the past belonged only to
the ruling class was now threatening to belong to all. There could
be but one first result: turned heads, reasonless folly, widespread
madness. Then change of opinion as to the worth of the individ
ual. A new equality would be born.

Changes of government before this had been brought about by
his own class, the nobility. This was the first time the people had
presumed to meddle. This made it more dangerous. It was the
beginning of taking power from the hands of the ruling class. A
perilous beginning. These crude, these upspringing people from
below would be hard to deal with. They would have voracious
appetites for former prohibited things, such as posts of honor,
adulation, ease, luxury. It would equal the thirst of the desert
for rain. It would be swine at the table of kings. The changes
of the new cycle would be fearful. They would be unguessed.
There would be a vast sweeping-away to make room for the new.
There would be neither respect for nor knowledge of the old. It
would be a world in which art would temporarily perish and

348 THE PENITENT

merely the economy of material domination remain. It would
be a world in which the little flowers of Saint Francis would be
things of ridicule.

Alexander, with his excessive sensitiveness, his delicacy of
perception, saw prophetically the social debacle that was on the
way. He felt the first cold, changing wind-breath of the changing
world, where there would be less fineness, where courtesy, kindli
ness, friendship, would perish until the words were all but obso
lete.

Soon the elite, with its high ideals, its specialized living, its
nobility of blood, of training, purchased by the slow refining, the
sure selection of centuries, would be no more. The horror which
the leveling must bring ! He could not meet it. In the new civili
zation there would be no place for fine emotions, useless fervors.
There would be no self-forgetful sacrifice of any kind, because
no one would make bold to claim for himself so much squandered,
if resplendent, life of the soul.

His melancholy saw humanity as a mighty, onrushing tidal
wave, with new beliefs, less heart, less pity, less soul-nobility,
but armed with a fury of earth-exploitation, of material develop
ment, and lighted perilously by the fearless, far-seeing, electric
eyes of science, rolling onward with an incomparable totality of
destruction, over the old world of gentle, tender things which the
love of Christ had implanted in the heart of an earlier genera
tion. It would sweep it all away, with the weapons of science,
man's intellect grown cruel, grown destructive.

Nor would it rest content with the plunder of earth. It would
leap at the heavens with the released power of man's limitlessly
developed, fearless brain. And then across at the stars. Little
man would become the monster of the future. But the tender,
tortured heart of him clung to the old.

He alone of that old world that was passing, passing under the
rush of war, and the pouring-in of new ideas more destructive
than war, was left to preach love, to preach prayer, to preach
penitence.

These alone, he believed, could calm the rough waters of
anarchy, rebellion, and hinder the social disintegration that was

KUSMITCH THE MONK 349

threatening the world. He longed to bring to the brains of men
again a vision of love, of unselfishness, a realization of the duty
of all for shepherding. Perhaps behind this act of his a future of
higher promise lay hidden. Not yet, he thought, has the modern
world created a symbol for love, for joy, because its ideals are
dead.

Two days later, just as the pale December dawn was breaking
over the first light, dusted snow-fall here in the South, a band of
pilgrim monks passed. A tall, lithe figure, wearing likewise the
garb of a monk, came swiftly from the door of the Residence and
joined them. The figure walked with a glad, free motion, like a
young god breasting the dawn! When the leader of the band
told the newcomer, who said his name was Priest Kusmitch, that
they were bound for Siberia, he was happy. Something like song
arose in his heart: To the East! To the East — that still kept
belief in the things of the spirit. Away for a while from that
onrushing, tidal wave of the masses, that sad, uncomfortable,
disconcerting, new civilization in which the great individual, the
significant personality, must disappear, drowned, obliterated,
and only the rabble be left.

By the wings of his heart Alexander had lifted himself to that
impersonal height of human intellect, the greatest of all, which
is renunciation.

He went forth with no sense of defeat, but instead with truimph.
Was he not bearing away to safety, holding it clean above the
rabble where onrushing destruction could not touch it, the only
thing left of the old life he had known that was worth while —
Us faith?

To the East! Now Tsar no longer, but merely one of the Carni
val of Time, keeping the appointed way.

Against the background, wrought dramatically of blood and
gold, of Russia's brutal past, its twisted history of torture and
cruelty, moved now this noble, priestly, gray-clad figure, plastic
with pity — free at length — the last Disciple of Christ.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE NEWS

ANOTHER year had come to mark the stay of exile in Mikhailov-
sky. Alexis Sergiewitch had watched the pink, red-gold burnish
of another autumn grow pale and paler upon the unlimited leagues
of barren fields that spread their restraining circle about him,
until again the deep, forgiving snows of January had come, and
covered them. The autumn had been peculiarly lovely. It had
been long-drawn-out, radiant, with days and days of yellow sun
shine, with petulant puffs of wind almost vernally warm and
sweet, until November. Yet the birds had migrated early,
strange to relate. They hardly waited for their usual fill of rich,
reaped food from the yellowing stacks and abandoned gardens.
The cuckoo, which cannot endure a moment of cold, took wing
the last of August.

As he observed critically the marks of the decreasing sun and
the changing season, he began to remember, with a sort of hope
less, heartbreaking regret, the lovely semi-tropical valleys hidden
away so cozily among the lofty Caucasian Mountains, as they had
looked to him, in spring, where blossomed the azalea, the rhodo
dendron, jasmine; the fig-tree, the almond, and the peach. He
recalled, too, the superb, the ancient forest of Georgia. Oh! to
be back there again! Oh! to be under the soaring eagles, under
the keen light above the summits that cuts like a knife!

Then he set himself resolutely to work, because life was peace
ful here now and well ordered, and he was happy enough. " Boris
Godunof " was all but finished, and the long verse-novel, "Eu
gene Onegin," was progressing well. In "Onegin" he had been
sketching, just as the plastic artist with his brush sketches, the
unsettled Russia of his time, and life on a lonely estate in the
country. He was beginning to see the Russian landscape as
something good to look upon, and he was the first to try to repro
duce it with words. He was making marvelously clear and lucid
pictures of his surroundings.

THE NEWS 351

There is no other lyric verse in the world that resembles that
which he had just been writing. There is no denying the fineness
of its quality. And yet it keeps close to the ground like the
light butterflies. It breaks tradition. It makes no attempt to
reach the height of the birds. It is, in a way, the poetry of
things as they are. It has none of the fantastic, imaginative
visions of Germany. Nor has it the proudly reasoned, logical
structure of France. It reveals the unknown, unexplored soul of
a youthful race.

The family were still away. He heard from them even less
frequently than of yore. Months went by without a word. They
had been to Petersburg. They had lived upon one of their other
estates for a time. Now they were back in Moscow for another
winter of pleasure.

The letters of his sister Olga, rare as they were, were less com
municative. They seemed sad. Evidently she was not in the mood
for letter-writing. She had hinted once that her marriage was
being considered, because of the family lack of money. He gained
the impression that she saw nothing else to do than sacrifice
herself to help pay the accumulating debts. Leo, the brother,
was doing nothing, as usual. He was sinking daily nearer to the
level of a drunkard. His father continued to lose large sums at
cards and to dissipate uncaringly. His mother was trying to
rival in lavish dressing and entertaining some of the princely
households of Moscow, such, for instance, as that of Prince
Bagration. This necessitated not only large but constant outlay.
His father attributed the present money shortage, the continued
unemployment of his brother, to Alexis Sergiewitch having lost
imperial favor and thereby injured the family. If a rich marriage
could be arranged for Olga, and speedily, it would be helpful. It
was her duty, of course, to sacrifice herself for the others. With
this partial information, somewhat grudgingly given, or sadly,
letter-writing from his family had come to a standstill. His
mother intended to write, but it was not easy for her to find the
time. The fine, calm mood was still his, however, and the con
trolled, powerful writing. He was contented enough, although
he was shut off from the rest of the world.

352 THE PENITENT

From reading the Bible he had progressed to the lives of the
saints, and then to the ascetics whom duty dominated. Arina
Rodionovna still told him stories at night when the storms raged
and shrieked and he was restless like a little child, filled with
fear, and could not sleep. She improvised rich, magic romances
out of the varied past of Russia, of Peter the Great, of Mazeppa
who rode bound to the back of a horse with the wolves at his
heels. She related with relish incidents in the life of his great
grandfather, Ibrahim Hannibal, the Abyssinian negro who had
not only been the pet of the Great Peter, but lover of a great
lady of France, and who married a blond princess of Russia. No
romance could equal his life. And she embroidered it gayly with
her unrestrained fancy, until her listener all but choked with
delight.

He began to plan the long narrative poem "Pultava," which
has Peter and Mazeppa for heroes. He saw richer and richer
material in the history of his land, impelled by the old nurse's
peasant vision, and whose spoken tongue in its flexibility, its rich
ness, she and his maternal grandmother had taught him.

The third week in January a kibitka, with two horses, drove up
noisily to their unvisited door. It had come from a long distance
judging from the appearance of occupant and horses. At sight of
it Arina Rodionovna began to cross herself rapidly. When the
occupant came into the house, he proved to be a servant, Sasha,
of Schukowsky. After pulling off his protecting outer coats,
shaking off the snow, warming himself, putting his huge striped
mittens to steam upon the stove, he gravely held out two books
to Alexis Sergiewitch. They were an arithmetic and an old Rus
sian grammar by Lomonossov. Alexis Sergiewitch looked the
surprise he felt.

" Did he send no letter? "

"No."

Alexis Sergiewitch began to understand. The books were
merely the pretext of coming. Both were safe books. This meant
that the censorship was heavy. He must have some other mes
sage to deliver by word of mouth, remembering relevantly the
trouble that had come from his own innocent letter sent to

THE NEWS 353

Schukowsky from Piatigorsk, and which had not reached its
destination.

"No letter — you say?"

" No. He sent only the books. But he told me to tell you of the
outbreak."

"What outbreak?"

"The societies — of young men. Revolutionary, he said."

"When was it?"

"Christmas Day."

Alexis Sergiewitch sat down quickly. Arina Rodionovna looked
across at him understandingly.

"I saw it! I was there, in the Square — all the time."

"What happened?"

"They tried to kill the royal family — take over the govern
ment—"

"Tell me just what you saw! Tell me what you know!" — in
a strained voice, whose tone was not lost upon his old nurse.

"Well — Mouravieff-Apostol — both of them — Pestel, Kak-
hovsky, Bestushew, Ryleiev — and some more, had influenced the
regiments to revolt. They had marshaled them in the Great
Square of Saint Isaac's, just back of the statue of Peter the Great.
They were ready. They were waiting, to charge upon the Palace

— to make its inmates prisoners. But Prince Troubetzkoi, who
was to lead them, because he was a prince and they thought the
soldiers would obey him better, did not come. So they waited —
and waited — The soldiers became restless. In the meantime
they killed the Governor of the city — "

"Milorodovitch?"

"Yes."

"Milorodovitch I" exclaimed Alexis Sergiewitch, turning white,
knowing that it was partly this man's influence over Alexander
and the others that had kept him from being sent to the Monas
tery of Solovetz.

"Yes — they kitted him:1

Alexis Sergiewitch groaned.

"But Troubetzkoi did not come. Still they waited — waited

— I saw it all. I was right there! I had just been sent on an

354 THE PENITENT

errand by Vassili Andrejewitch, when I found myself in this
crowd, which was growing larger all the time. There was no way
for me to get out of it. So there I was! "

"What happened next?"

"The old Metropolitan of Petersburg, Seraphim, and the
Metropolitan of Kiev, who happened to be there on a visit, fol
lowed by several diakons, came out of the cathedral. They saw
the crowd. They hoped to calm it. They tried to disperse it.
They had on their state robes of gold, crown — and everything —
They held up crosses covered with jewels, which sparkled in the
sunlight. They started to chant a prayer. But the crowd of im
patient soldiers began to curse them. Then they flung dirty
snowballs at them. They drove them back — and out of sight.
What do you suppose happened then, little master? "

"I don't know" — in a voice that trembled.

"Nicholas, on horseback, accompanied only by Prince Michael,
and unarmed, rode right up to the revolting soldiers and faced
them. He defied them! I saw him."

"Where was the Emperor?"

"How do I know?"

"You sheep's head! Where was Alexander?"

"He was not there."

"Of course, you fool! You said that before."

"Did I?"

" Where was he, I ask you? "

"Gone."

"Gone where?"

"Gone away! How should I know?"

Alexis Sergiewitch cursed and ground his teeth. He was so
worried, so puzzled, he did not know what to think. No news
came here. Winter and distance had cut them off from the world.

"Kakhovsky," Schukowsky's servant was explaining, "had
promised to shoot him."

" Shoot whom?"

"The Emperor!"

"You fool, you! You said the Emperor was not there!"

"So he spurred his horse and rode right up to meet him."

THE NEWS 355

"Whom?1'

"Nicholas!"

" Kakhovsky held one hand, the one with the revolver, hidden
in his coat. Nicholas looked him calmly in the eye and demanded,
' What do you bring me? ' And Kakhovsky could not even look
at Nicholas, not to mention kill him. He just turned his horse
around like the dirty coward he was and sneaked away. They do
say, though, that not even a wild beast can look into the eyes of
Nicholas — they are so terrible. They are not a man's eyes. For
years, Schukowsky said, Kakhovsky had been leader of the
plot to kill him. He had sworn to do it!"

"That was a royal thing, Nicholas confronting an army in
revolt, come to kill him!" thought Alexis Sergiewitch dully.
Aloud he made no comment. He was overwhelmed with emo
tion.

"I saw Nicholas myself. I was not far away. I tell you he
looked as big as three men, every bit. He was the size of a whale
— no stretching it."

"Who could withhold admiration from Nicholas!" he thought.
Kakhovsky/ He had always disliked him. He had always known
he was a cowardly braggart. They should have known better
than to have trusted Kakhovsky. If there had been anything in
him at all, when he rode, armed, to meet Nicholas, the Decem
brists would have triumphed and Russia been saved, and free.

Yet how could they triumph at the first attempt? he medi
tated. History does not record such things. The past must
count in all men. It is the past that has built up the present.
Result must first have cause. The poor little Decembrists had
not known anything but an autocrat's will; nor their fathers
before them. In their inherited blood was the suppressed mem
ory of yielding, of undertakings begun and failed, of domination.
They wilted at the approach of Nicholas despite all their proud
boasts of despising imperial power. They were routed at the
mere sight of him who was born to rule. They could do nothing
but yield. With heartbreaking clearness he saw it all. These
brilliant young friends of his, dreamers, artists, poets, who had
some of the magic technique of veterans in word-craft, knew

356 THE PENITENT

nothing about war. They were just interesting, grown-up chil
dren whose heads were filled with generous, fantastic fervor. The
example of Napoleon and contact with France had unsettled
them, but it had not given them any military experience. And
that eloquent, fiery-tongued, dissension-breeding Pole, Mickie-
wicz, who had remained so long in exile in Petersburg, had helped
to unsettle them more and more.

The servant of Schukowsky broke in upon his meditation.
"I began to crawl back toward the edge of the Square, where
the women and children, accidental passers-by, and foot-goers
were grouped. I was frightened. I knew I hadn't seen the
worst.

"Then I heard a clattering of horses' feet. Hooked. I heard a
great rushing. From behind one corner of the Palace swept
Count Alexis Orlow, shining like a sun. He was commanding
the Horse Guards. They were all in full regalia. In the snow
light their buttons shone until they put your eyes out. They
dashed into sight, the great Orlow leading, so swiftly you could
not take it in. They drew up in form by the Emperor."

"You blockhead, you said it was Nicholas."

" So it was! They protected him. It was a splendid sight. You
should have seen the princely Orlow. I tell you the effect of what
he did was tremendous! When I described this to Vassili Andre-
jewitch he exclaimed: l Again an Orlow has saved the throne!'

"Then Nicholas turned to his aid-de-camp of the day, who
happened to be Suhozanet. He pointed to the cannon. He com
manded: 'Fire!' Suhozanet gave the order to the man in charge
of the first cannon. He passed it on to the others. But there
was n't a sound. Not a sound! A second time Nicholas signaled
his aid-de-camp. A second time he gave the command. This
time an answer was brought back: 'But they are our own people,
Sire/' pointing to the Square black with the crowd.

"Not a muscle of the face of Nicholas moved. He gave the
order again: 'Nicholas commands you to fire!' &*

" Then the cannons burst forth. They mowed the people down
just as the scythe mows the yellow wheat in August. Ten times
Nicholas repeated the word: 'Fire!' Ten times the cannons burst

THE NEWS 357

forth. There was no resistance. They were just as helpless as
the wheat. He sat there like a statue. Just as motionless! Just
as heartless! He slaughtered them until he himself was sick of
slaughter. But his face looked just the same. Just as if he saw
nothing at all.

"The snow in the broad Square of Saint Isaac's was crimson
as velvet. The cries of the dying became louder than the roar of
the cannons had been. The cold increased the suffering."

The picture with all its frightful details flashed before the
brain of Alexis Sergiewitch and made him suffer.

"Poor little figures I" he cried aloud, covering his eyes with
both hands, trembling, as if he would shut out the picture.

"Poor little figures, crushed and crumpled, with the infinite
pity of God upon them!"

"You ought not to take on like that, little master! Vassili
Andrejewitch says you are the luckiest dog he ever heard of, to
be saved. And I must not forget. He said for you to say nothing,
and on no account leave your estate for an instant."

Ah, here was the object of the message! A second time Schu-
kowsky had acted swiftly to save him. How noble was the heart
of Schukowsky.

"What became of the leaders?"

"You mean Ryleiev, the brothers Mouravieff-Apostol, Bestu-
shew, Pestel, Kakhovsky, and the rest? They were thrown into
the dungeons. More than a thousand others were arrested."

"Prince Troubetzkoi? "

"Oh! — he escaped. At least I think he did. I may be wrong.
You see, he played double on both sides."

Alexis Sergiewitch shuddered. They would rot with filth.
They would die of disease, hunger. They would be buried alive
in the mines of Siberia. General Raevsky had been right in his
parting words: "Remember, whatever Alexander does, it is for your
own good. It is to save you."

" It took a night and a day to haul away the dead bodies from
the Square. They were frozen together in piles. They had to be
beaten apart. Some of them had four arms and four legs they
were beaten apart in such haste. And some did n't have any legs

358 THE PENITENT

and arms. But they could n't haul away all the snow! So that
stayed red."

Alexis Sergiewitch, with his poet's visualizing power, saw it all,
in its gruesome details. He suffered. He suffered from head to
foot.

" I 'm pretty sure, now, that Troubetzkoi did get off, some
way — I think he ran and hid. No one saw hair or hide of
him!

" Nicholas wanted to pardon as many of the nobility as he
could — if he could find any excuse at all. And that reminds me.
You know the father of the brothers Mouravieff-Apostol lives
abroad somewhere. Well, he was an intimate friend of all the
imperial family. Nicholas wanted to help his boys for love of the
father. He summoned one of them."

"Which one?'1

"I — I — can't tell— "

"Think a minute!"

"No — no — I know I can't tell."

"Goon!"

"Well — Nicholas questioned him. If he would tell about the
plot, and name the other conspirators, Nicholas would have set
him free, because he loved his father so."

"Well! Well?" broke in Pushkin nervously.

" Well — he questioned him."

" I know, I know! You said so before."

"So I did."

" Go on — go on — I tell you! "

" He would n't answer. He would n't say one word, not even
to save himself. Nicholas lost patience. He declared: '/ am master
oj 'your life.' Mouravieff-Apostol replied: lTo me you are only the
son of a bastard! ' Then Nicholas flew at him. He kicked him al
most to death. He broke his bones. He would have killed him
on the spot, but Count Benkendorf, who happened to be in the
next room listening at the door, rushed in and pulled him away.
That saved him, for the moment.11

Alexis Sergiewitch slipped down in his chair and groaned.
Arina Rodionovna feared that he was going to faint.

THE NEWS 359

"Before I came away, some of them — in the dungeons — went
mad. Some strangled themselves to death with pieces of their
clothing. And they are still making arrests! All the prisons are
full — all the dungeons. Some say the leaders are to be quar
tered alive. But not one of them would buy life by telling on the
others!"

Some divine providence evidently watched over his own good-
for-nothing days, while they who were braver met death, torture.
Agony, like a fiery breath, enveloped him. He had never suf
fered so acutely in his life.

He heard but vaguely the monotonous voice of Schukowsky's
servant saying: "I Ve got to move on. I have another errand to
do for Vassili Andrejewitch, over there, in the village" — turn
ing his head toward the window and looking out. "It won't be
light much longer." He was pulling on his greatcoat, tying the
long, fringed, red-and-gray muffler around and around his neck,
beating his snowy, frozen mittens against the stove where they
still steamed. Soon there was a sharp jangle of little bells outside.
He was gone.

Alexis Sergiewitch sat like one stunned. His mind reverted to>
that last night in Petersburg, and the meeting in the house of
Ryleiev that looked out on the Blue Bridge. That was an ill-
starred night, and year, for many. But he had not really believed
that they were serious. Then he recalled with quick joy, which
he smothered in quicker shame, the letter he had written at dawn
the next day to Ryleiev, refusing to join the society. Schukowsky
came then and urged him to write another letter saying the same
thing. This probably had purchased his safety. They who had
been fearless, who had honorably stood by their beliefs, were
to die, in torture, disgrace, while he — the — yes, he could not
withhold the honest self-confession, nor the word — yes, he, the
butterfly, the coward, had escaped.

Again he had one of those brief, periodical, mental awakenings,
whose pain it seemed increased each time, in which he saw, for a
second, life as he should have lived it. This made him melan
choly. But, strange to say, it gave him no help toward directing
the future. For the moment he saw how wild, how disordered,

360 THE PENITENT

his life had been. And it had been lived only for pleasure, never
for any great ideal.

But he did not take into consideration, because it was im
possible, the changes that had been going on in Russia during
these years of exile. While he had been traveling in the South, in
Bessarabia, in Crimea, in the Caucasus, he had been out of touch
with Petersburg and Petersburg thought. He had forgotten his
revolutionary companions of that spring night so long ago. He
did not know what they had been plotting nor how they had
progressed. He had been occupied differently. He had been
occupied with the eternal things of nature in a land where na
ture is both grand and lovely, instead of with the passing fads of
man. He did not realize with what rapidity the revolutionary
faith of his friends had penetrated and spread among the people.
In addition, it was a characteristic of his mind to look upon all
things lightly except art. With him, unconsciously, art and life
had been changing places. Art, the fictitious, the unreal, was to
him the real. Here he moved happily, bravely. Life he could not
see. He approached it undeftly, or only to disturb. Besides, he
had the eminently un-Russian characteristic of not caring greatly
for social problems. He knew now that he had looked down
upon these boyish friends of his as inaugurating merely a new
social fashion. If they had influenced him for a moment, it was
because he was so infinitely interested, but only for a little while, in
everything. Interest with him, too, frequently meant keeping
up with what was going on. His inability to believe any one
definite thing was as great as his interest. He had no inclination
to try to improve life. To him that was a vulgarity. The people
who did that were prosaic people. He merely wished to picture
life, be it good or bad, to look out upon it and feel joy.

He realized how far he had been from being one of them. His
brief association with the brilliant young Decembrists was be
cause some of them were poets like himself, and young, merely
one of his transient emotions. He was a beauty-lover, a sybarite.
His revolutionaryism, his feebly boasted modernism, he reserved
for art. He was inclined to be conservative as regards opinions
political. He liked too well the picture of the old, aristocratic

THE NEWS 361

ideal that was passing. He felt a peculiar combination of hatred
and contempt for the shop-keeping middle class so rapidly de
veloping.

They, his old Petersburg companions, who were suffering in
dungeons now, or perhaps dead, lived for an ideal in some far fu
ture. With them the present did not count. With him it was the
only thing that did count. They, perhaps, were the first heralds
of the future, where he doubted if he would like to live. He was
not sure whether he cared very much about laws anyway, be they
good or bad. He looked upon them as a sort of disagreeable way
in which people who could not write, like him, amused themselves.

Then he began to suffer differently. The torturing complexity
of consciousness which is characteristic of the artist's mind, and
usually helps to destroy its owner's happiness, became upper
most.

Alexander had understood him better than he had understood
himself. He was not worth being taken seriously. The thing to
do with him was to put him on a shelf somewhere, in safety, out
of the way. Then he thought of his writing dismally, as merely
the record of a vagabond's days. But he had loved it so, this pleas
ant kaleidoscopic picture world, that had floated past his eyes in
his travels!

Night had overtaken his sad meditating. He had not seen it
coming. Arina Rodionovna entered bringing candles. A servant
was right behind her with others.

"My pet — my lamb, do not feel so bad! You were not one of
the conspirators. There is no reason for you to blame yourself.
A slice of bread cut off is not a part of the loaf, is it?" — setting
the two candles upon his reading-table, and pulling the curtains
to cover the cold night outside.

" Every one has to fold his mantle according to the wind, does
he not? My darling — you lack faith — faith in yourself, to be
bravely what God made you. Faith is made to live with as well
as to die with," she added sagely.

When the evening meal was laid and the warm room enlivened
with the sparkling dots of candles' flame, she coaxed him to the
table. But he could not eat.

3 62 THE PENITENT

"No, nurse, I'm a coward, a miserable coward who lacked the
courage to die with the others. I was there, that night!"

"The shock has unsettled your nerves, my lamb. That is all.
A man who is ill has no stomach for life any more than for food.
What is man without a stomach? And no wonder — after these
years of exile, driven from place to place — no freedom."

When late night came she could not coax him to bed. He still
sat in the big green rep chair of the worn arms, by the window,
half stunned with the tragic news, and his own bitter self-revela
tion. The old woman took up her bedtime candle, made the sign
of the cross over him, and said good-night.

CHAPTER XXVII
PRINCE METTERNICH'S LETTER

THE news of the death of Alexander reached Prince Metternich
very speedily by way of Warsaw, as speedily, indeed, as it
reached Petersburg. He had been awaiting decisive news of some
kind from Taganrog with something as nearly approaching nerv
ous suspense as was possible with his disciplined German tem
perament and long diplomatic training. Whatever that news
might happen to be, it would be of weighty moment to him and
to the development of his future policy of statecraft. For a long
time whenever he thought of Russia he had quoted Shakespeare
with deep sincerity: " Aye, there 's the rub!"

Now the die was cast. Whoever ruled, Nicholas or Constan-
tine, he knew them both to be autocrats by conviction and train
ing, and this was a source of strength and promise to him. No
more uncertainty. No more vacillation, from that huge, torpid,
polar bear Russia, just awakening to dangerous activity from the
s^.eep of centuries.

At once he wrote to Chali, not in cipher, but in free and open
hand for any one to read, thereby disclaiming culpability or too
great interest in the recent eventful affair in Taganrog, knowing
well that no one was more skillful than the woman he addressed
in sifting out carefully the exact meaning intended for her alone.
His letter showed that astonishing commingling of seriousness
and frivolity which he knew so well how to command. He passed
easily, as was his habit, from matters of state to love without any
appreciable lack of harmony. He wrote:

As usual I have reason to be pleased with you, my Chilli, and in more
ways than one. You have understood in a brief time, better than I
thought it would be possible, that in whatever moves the Russian
mind there must be a combination of the sentimental and the religious.

As cold-blooded as I am, the sudden death of Alexander shook me.
He was once my friend. But I could not follow him in friendship and

364 THE PENITENT

contemplate thereby the coming wreck of what little of our old civi
lization the French Revolution has left untouched.

Yet I should not be shocked at the death of Alexander. The heart,
the soul of him, died long ago. They died when he gave up the glo
rious dreams of his youth to attempt compromises which were im
possible. One may not serve, at the same time, both God and Caesar.

With him, if I do not err greatly, the youth of Russia is over. Now
its manhood will begin. My one-time powerful friends of long ago —
or enemies, as you may wish — are leaving me alone to grow old with
out them. Napoleon is gone, and Talleyrand; Richelieu, too, and the
Due de Berry, to mention only a few. And now, Alexander! I seem,
indeed, to lead a charmed life. I survived Napoleon, it would be truth
ful to say. I have outlived Alexander. And now I am trying to live
through the destructive foreign policy of that English arch-fiend, Can
ning. I feel sometimes that I am alone in the midst of a crazy world.

The greatest of these crazy ones is Canning. And because of him,
my Chali, you must prepare to go North at once. Would to Heaven
it were possible to bid you come to me! I must still live on for a while,
I suppose, upon the stored-up memory of the happiness of our last
meeting by Lake Garda.

So I will think of you soon, setting out across the hyperborean
splendor of the forests and the frosts of the North. First, to Moscow.
Remain there for the coronation. From Moscow go on to Petersburg
to be present at the first winter of the new Court. I have already in
structed our ambassador there, Count Fiquelmont, to find you a suit
able residence and to arrange for your presentation to the social elite.

You see, Canning will leave no stone unturned to win over the new
Emperor, whoever he may be, and the Court circle, to the side of Eng
land. He will send his most powerful diplomatists. That is why I wish
you to be there, too, beautiful, brilliant, gorgeously gowned. You see,
I could not fail to have you there! I must not lose any chance to array
Russian influence on my side. My son, Victor, may, too, in case his
health should permit, go on to observe the installation of a Court.

You have heard, of course, of the revolutionary outbreak in Peters
burg. That outbreak, if I mistake not, has deep and widespread rami
fications, threatening to undermine all Russian life.

Nicholas behaved very creditably on that difficult occasion. Nicho
las can be depended upon! Count Woronzow, of whom you spoke in
your last letter, is a very worthy Russian. You can rely upon what he
says. You will probably meet sometime, perhaps in Peter, that wild,
hair-brained, negro poet, Pushkin. If even half I have heard of him is

PRINCE METTERNICH'S LETTER 365

true, there is something of the blackness of the jungle still lurking in
his heart. But he is a poet! Many irregularities may be forgiven on
that score. "Little Nesselrode," at present Minister for Foreign Affairs,
probably, will hold an important place in the new Cabinet. He has
ability. As I told you when I met you by Lake Garda, you are sure to
play havoc with the hearts of those blond, pale Russians.

My greatest grief in life just now is Canning. He is trying to check
my Russian policy at every turn. And you cannot put your finger
upon Canning any more than upon a flea. It is all the result of his
Irish blood! The caprices, the senseless fervors, the fleeting likes, the
reasonless dislikes, the complex intrigues, the ill-timed wit, the sudden
swerving from an agreed-upon act, caused in his nature by Irish blood!
This makes him dangerous to Europe now. Did you know, my dear,
that he is the one man whom not even Lawrence could paint sympa
thetically? That tells the story!

Have you heard what he has done? He has acknowledged the in
dependence from Spain and Portugal of the Colonies of South Amer
ica. A most unwise act at this time!

Revolution is rife in the world. And he is encouraging — socially —
in London those disagreeable, ill-bred North Americans, because they
can say in the drawing-rooms, the salons, things that it would be im
polite or impolitic for him to say.

In the Irish, my dear, there is a quality similar to the gypsy, some
thing that no one can ever reckon with nor rely upon. A drop of Irish
blood in a man is like a drop of yeast in mixing. It makes everything
foam over. It produces a ferment.

My one comfort, politically, has been my Imperial Master. Europe
has been witness of the care, of the efforts, with which he has con
stantly met the torrent of disorganization advancing now so rapidly
over peoples, over empires.

I cannot tell you how I have longed for you this autumn. We had a
lovely warm, golden autumn in Vienna. I spent much of it out of doors
among my flowers which I love better than politics.

Now my outdoor garden flowers are gone, the orchids you brought
me from Africa are beginning to bloom. They hang upon my wall.
One of them, the one with a mouth that is luscious and red, reminds
me of you. Be assured that my regret is great that this long journey
takes you away from me instead of toward me, longing as I do daily for
your presence.

CLEMENT
Manu propria Prince Metternich

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PENITENT

YEARS later.

Summer over sparsely settled Siberia. Here summer means
space, sunlight, silence, and the blowing of great winds over pale,
blond fields of Northern grain, and scents of wild honey on the
air.

Along the rough, narrow, ill-kept roads, driving slowly in
home-made, awkward wooden carts with heavy, creaking wheels,
come country people, poorly dressed. They are coming from all
directions. They come from great distances. They come like
pilgrims upon a quest.

Some from the far northeast, through the mighty, frowning
forests, which grow rich, black here, and impenetrable upon
rotting bog lands, where at high noon the air is chill and wet.

Some come from the lake region, where restless water-birds
rustle the reeds, and unsuspectedly long blue levels shine, and
haze floats like mirage.

Some come from still farther away, from the lonely cattle
country, from the uplands, from the banks of great hurrying or
interminably placid rivers, whose distant, unseen destinations
keep an inscrutable charm.

But they are all going to the same place. In their minds is the
same thought; in their hearts the same hope. They are going to a
little, low, wooden dwelling on the outskirts of Tomsk. They are
talking of the miracles performed there by Kusmitch the Saint.
Some, more intelligent than the others, and shaken with pain,
are questioning wistfuHy: "If a man can give up self utterly, if
he can live only for others, incorruptible and pure, lifted to
heights of vision by faith, do you not think it possible that in
compensation the power of healing might come? Are not the
laws governing the world of mind exact like the laws of matter?
There, too, is there not exact addition, exact subtraction? "

THE PENITENT 367

In the dooryard of the humble house of Tomsk, where grew
gladly the larkspur, the gentle columbine, and gentian, for the
last time, perhaps, the world was permitted to look upon the
sovereignty of the spirit. Here, upon a rush-bottomed chair,
sat Kusmitch the Monk. He was barefooted. He wore a rough
robe girdled at the waist with a rope. With a tiny silver statue
of the Christ in his hand, whereon was scratched dimly the letter
" A," he healed and blessed the blind, the sick, the syphilitic, the
twisted with pain, the worn with age, the worn with work and
suffering. Brighter than the diamonds of his crown of old burned
now the white fire of his spirit.

Through the warm days of the brief Siberian summer he sat
here healing the sick, spilling the wealth of his heart, making rich
with the treasures of the spirit, giving, giving, with no wish for
return.

He had not grown older as men grow old with years. Some
new, some indestructible youth had become his. He had changed,
to be sure, but subtly. His face expressed superb peace. It was
the face of one who had risen to a height where he could survey
life, but where life could not vex nor grieve him.

All the past, all its sad, its tragic memories were melted,
blended, made one, and then annihilated in the pure whiteness of
the flame of impersonal love, of the bonfire of self. Around him
spread the wild, inspiring breath of untrodden lands, where
fresh, where unexhausted vigor dwells in the red earth.

Again mankind beheld a figure of divine beneficence, sitting
amid the fields and the folds, blessing the poor, the aged, the suf
fering, making the hearts of children open to his love as the sun
light opens the flowers. He had found — that other life.

THE END

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