^EUNIVERS//, Ur^ ^ ? fit g j s ? ^ raiti^ i a S "- J? p UONYSOl^ ^ ^lOSANCElfj^ o <^ ^ T O P = = .< O u- ?3 O MOTHS THIRD VOLUME LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET MOTHS, CHAPTER XXI. A FEW weeks later they were at Svir. Svir was one of the grandest summer palaces of the many palaces of the Princes Zouroff. It had been built by a French architect in the time of the great Catherine's love of French art, and its appanages were less an estate than a province or principality that stretched far away to the horizon on every side save one, where the Baltic spread its ice-plains in the winter, and its blue waters to the brief summer sunshine. It was a very grand place ; it had VOL. m. B 2 MOTHS. acres of palm-houses and glass-houses ; it had vast stables full of horses; it had a theatre, with a stage as large as the Folies-Marigny's ; it had vast forests in which the bear and the boar and the wolf were hunted with the splendour and the barbarity of the royal hunts that Snyders painted ; it was a Muscovite Versailles, with hundreds of halls and chambers, and a staircase, up which fifty men might have walked abreast ; it had many treasures, too, of the arts, and precious marbles, Greek and Roman ; yet there was no place on earth which Vere hated as she hated Svir. To her it was the symbol of despotism, of brutal power, of soulless magnificence ; and the cruelties of the sport that filled all the days, and the oppression of the peasantry by the police-agents which she was impotent to redress, weighed on her with continual pain. She had been taught in her girlhood to think ; she knew too much to accept the surface gloss of things as their truth ; she could not be con- tent with a life which was a perpetual pageantry, without any other aim than that of killing time. MOTHS. 3 So much did the life at Svir displease her, and so indifferent was she to her own position in it, that she never observed that she was less mistress of it than was the Duchesse de Sonnaz, who was there with the Due Paul, a placid sweet-tempered man, who was devoted to en- tomology and other harmless sciences. It was not Vere, but Madame Jeanne who directed the amusements of each day and night. It was Madame Jeanne who scolded the manager of the operetta troup, who selected the pieces to be performed in the theatre, who organised the hunting parties and the cotillons, and the sailing, and the riding. It was Madame Jeanne who, with her pistols in her belt, and her gold- tipped ivory hunting-horn, and her green tunic and trowsers, and her general franc-tireur aspect, went out with Sergius Zouroff to see the bear's death-struggle, and give the last stroke in the wolf's throat. Vere to whom the moonlit curee in the great court was a horrible sight, and who, though she had never blenched when the wolves had bayed after the sledge, would have turned sick 4 MOTHS. and blind at sight of the dying beasts with the hunters' knives in their necks was only glad that there was anyone who should take the task off her hands of amusing the large house-party and the morose humours of her husband. The words of Correze had failed to awaken any suspicion in her mind. That the presence of Madame de Sonnaz at Svir was as great an insult to her as that of Noisette in the Kermesse pavilion never entered her thoughts. She only as yet knew very im- perfectly her world. ' It is well she is beautiful, for she is only a bit of still life,' said Prince Zouroff very con- temptuously to some one who complimented him upon his wife's loveliness. When she received their Imperial guests at the foot of her staircase, with a great bouquet * of lilies of the valley and orchids in her hand, she was a perfect picture against the ebony and malachite of the balustrade that he granted ; but she might as well have been made of marble for aught of interest or anima- tion that she showed. MOTHS. 5 It angered him bitterly that the luxury and extravagance with which she was surrounded did not impress her more. It was so very difficult to hurt a woman who cared for so little; her indifference seemed to remove her thousands of leagues aw^y from him. ' You see it is of no use to be angry with her,' he said to his confidant, Madame Jeanne. ' You do not move her. She remains tranquil. She does not oppose you, but neither does she alter. She is like the snow, that is so white and still and soft; but the snow is stronger than you ; it will not stop for you.' Madame Jeanne laughed a little. ' My poor Sergius ! you would marry ! ' Zouroffwas silent; his eyebrows were drawn together in moody meditation. Why had he married? he wondered. Be- cause a child's coldness, and a child's rudeness had made her loveliness greater for a moment in his sight than any other. Because, also, for Vere, base as his passion had been, it had been more nearly redeemed by tenderness than any- thing he had ever known. 6 MOTHS. ( The snow is very still, it is true/ said Madame Jeanne musingly ; ' but it can rise in a very wild tourmente sometimes. You must have seen that a thousand times.' ' And you mean ? ' said Zouroff, turning his eyes on her. ' I mean that I think our sweet Vera is just the person to have a coup de tete, and to forget everything in it.' ' She will never forget what is due to me,' said Zouroff angrily and roughly. Madame de Sonnaz laughed. ' Do you fancy she cares about that ? what she does think of is what is due to herself. I always told you she is the type of woman that one never sees now the woman who is chaste out of self-respect. It is admirable, it is exquisite ; but all the same it is invulnerable ; because it is only a finer sort of egotism.' ' She will never forget her duty,' said her husband peremptorily, as though closing the discussion. ' Certainly not,' assented his friend ; ' not as long as it appears duty to her. But her MOTHS. 7 ideas of duty may change who can say ? And, man cher, you do not very often remember yours to her ! ' Zouroff blazed into a sullen passion, at which Madame de Sonnaz laughed, as was her wont, and turned her back on him, and lighted a cigar. * After all,' she said, * what silly words we use ! Duty ! honour ! obligation ! " Tout cela est si purement geographique," as was said at Marly long ago. I read the other day of Albania, in which it is duty to kill forty men for one, and of another country in which it is duty for a widow to marry all her brothers-in- law. Let us hope our Vera's views of geo- graphy will never change.' They were standing together in one of the long alleys of the forest, which was resounding with the baying of hounds and the shouting of beaters. For all reply Sergius Zouroff put his rifle to his shoulder ; a bear was being driven down the drive. ' A moi ! ' cried Madame Jeanne. The great brown mass came thundering through the 8 MOTHS. brushwood, and came into their sight; she raised her gun, and sent a bullet through its forehead, and snatched Zouroff's breech- loader from him, and fired again. The bear dropped ; there was a quick convulsive move- ment of all its paws, then it was still for ever. ' I wish I could have married you ! ' cried Zouroff enthusiastically. ( There is not another woman in Europe who could have done that at such a distance as we are ! ' ' Mon vieux, we should have loathed one another,' said Madame Jeanne, in no way touched by the compliment. 'In a conjugal capacity I much prefer my good Paul.' Zouroff laughed restored to good humour and drew his hunting-knife to give the cus- tomary stroke for surety to her victim. The day was beautiful in the deep green gloom and balmy solitude of the forest, which was chiefly of pines. ' Sport is very stupid,' said Madame Jeanne, blowing her ivory horn to call the keepers. ' Vera is employing her time much better, I am MOTHS. 9 sure ; she is reading metaphysics, or looking at her orchids, or studying Nihilism.' 'Let me forget for a moment that Vera exists,' said her husband, with his steel in the bear's throat. Vere was studying Nihilism, or what has led to it, which comes to the same thing. The only town near Svir was one of no great importance, a few miles inland, whose citizens were chiefly timber-traders, or owners of trading ships, that went to and from the Baltic. It had some churches, some schools, some war of sects, and it had of late been in evil odour with the government for suspected socialist doctrines. It had been warned, pun- ished, purified, but of late was supposed to have sinned again ; and the hand of the Third Section had fallen heavily upon it. Vere this day rode over to it, to visit one of its hospitals ; her mother, and other ladies, drove there to purchase sables and marten skins. Lady Dolly had been so near at Carlsbad, a mere trifle of a few hundred miles that she hid been unable to resist the temptation of 10 MOTHS. running over for a peep at Svir, which she was dying to see, so she averred. She was as pretty as ever. She had changed the colour of her curls, but that prevents monotony of expression, and, if well done, is always admired. She had to be a little more careful always to have her back to the light, and there was sometimes about her eyes lines which nothing would quite paint away; and her maid found her more pettish and peevish. That was all; twenty years hence, if Lady Dolly live, there will be hardly more difference than that. Her Sicilian had been also on the banks of the Teple only for his health, for he was not strong but he had been too assiduous in carrying her shawls, in ordering her dinners, in walking beside her mule in the firwoods, and people began to talk ; and Lady Dolly did not choose to imperil all that the flowers for the Children's Hospitals, and the early services at Knightsbridge, had done for her, so she had summarily left the young man in the fir woods, and come to Svir. ' I always like to witness my dear child's MOTHS. 11 happiness, you know, with my own eyes when I can ; and in London and Paris both she and I are so terribly busy,' she said to her friends at Carlsbad. Herself, she always recoiled from meeting the grave eyes of Yere, and the smile of her son-in-law was occasionally grim and disagree- able, and made her shiver ; but yet she thought it well to go to their houses, and she was really anxious to see the glories of Svir. When she arrived there, she was enraptured. She adored novelty, and new things are hard to find for a person who has seen as much as she had. The Russian life was, in a measure, different to what she had known elsewhere, the local colour enchanted her, and the obeisances and humility of the people she declared were quite scriptural. The grandeur, the vastness, the absolute dominion, the half-barbaric magnificence that prevailed in this, the grandest summer palace of the Zouroffs, delighted her; they appealed forcibly to her imagination, which had its vulgar side. They appeased her conscience, 12 MOTHS. too; for, after all, she thought, what could Vere wish for more? Short of royalty, no alliance could have given her more wealth, more authority, and more rank. These Baltic estates were a kingdom in themselves, and the prodigal, careless, endless luxury, that was the note of life there, was mingled with a despotism and a cynicism in all domestic relations that fascinated Lady Dolly. * I should have been perfectly happy if I had married a great Russian,' she often said to herself; and she thought that her daughter was both thankless to her fate and to her. Lady Dolly really began to bring herself to think so. * Very few women,' she mused, ' would ever have effaced themselves as I did; very few would have put away every personal feeling and objection as I did. Of course she doesn't know but I don't believe any woman living would have done as I did, because people are so selfish.' She had persuaded herself in all this time MOTHS. 13 that she had been generous, self-sacrificing, even courageous, in marrying her daughter as she did ; and when now and then a qualm passed over her, as she thought that the world might give all these great qualities very dif- ferent and darker names, Lady Dolly took a little sherry or a little chloral, according to the time of day, and very soon was herself again. To be able to do no wrong at all in one's own sight, is one of the secrets of personal comfort in this life. Lady Dolly never ad- mitted, even to herself, that she did any. Tf anything looked a little wrong, it was only because she was the victim to unkindly circum- stance over which she had no control. People had always been so jealous of her, and so nasty to her about money. 1 It is all very well to talk about the saints,' she would say to herself, ' but they never had any real trials. If the apostles had had bills due that they couldn't meet, or St. Helen and St. Ursula had had their curls come off just as they were being taken in to dinner, they might have talked. As it was, I am sure they enjoyed 14 MOTHS. all their martyrdom, just as people scream about being libelled in "Truth" or "Figaro," and delight in having their names in them.' Lady Dolly always thought herself an ill- used woman. If things had been in the least just, she would have been born with thirty thousand a year, and six inches more stature. Meanwhile she was even prettier than ever. She had undergone a slight transformation; her curls were of a richer ruddier hue, her eyelashes were darker and thicker, her mouth was like a little pomegranate bud. It was all Piver ; but it was the very perfection of Piver. She had considered that the hues and style ot the fashions of the coming year, which were always disclosed to her very early in secret conclave in the Rue de la Paix, required this slight deepening and heightening of her com- plexion. * I do wish you would induce Vera to rouge a little, just a little. Dress this winter really will want it ; the colours will all be dead ones/ she had said this day at Svir to her son-in-law, who shrugged his shoulders. MOTHS. 15 ' I have told her she would look better ; but she is obstinate, you know.' 'Oh-h-h!' assented Lady Dolly. * Obsti- nate is no word for it ; she is mulish ; of course, I understand that she is very proud of her skin, but it would look all the better if it were warmed up a little ; it is too white, too fair, if one can say such a thing, don't you know? And, besides, even though she may look well now without it, a woman who never rouges has a frightful middle-age before her. Didn't Talley- rand say so ? ' ( You are thinking of whist ; but the mean- ing is the same. Both are resources for autumn that it is better to take to in summer,' said Ma- dame Nelaguine, with her little cynical smile. ' Vera is very fantastic,' said the Duchesse Jeanne. ' Besides, she is so handsome she is not afraid of growing older; she thinks she will defy Time.' ' I believe you can if you are well enamelled,' said Lady Dolly seriously. ' Vera will be like the woman under the Merovingian kings,' said Madame Nelaguine. 16 MOTHS. ' The woman who went every dawn of her life out into the forests at day break to hear the birds sing, and so remained, by angels' blessing, per- petually young.' ' I suppose there was no society in France in that time,' said Lady Dolly ; ' or else the woman was out of it. In society everybody has always painted. I think they found all sorts of rouge-pots at Pompeii, which is so touching, and brings all those poor dear creatures so near to us ; and it just shows that human nature was always exactly the same.' ' The Etruscan focolare, I dare say, were trays of cosmetics,' suggested Madame Nela- guine sympathetically. * Yes ? ' said Lady Dolly, whose history was vague. ' It is so interesting, I think, to feel that everybody was always just exactly alike, and that when they complain of us it is such nonsense, and mere spite. Vera, why will you not rouge a little, a very little ? ' 1 1 think it a disgusting practice,' said her daughter, who had entered the room at that moment, dressed for riding. MOTHS. 17 ' Well, I think so too,' said Madame Nela- guine with a little laugh. ' I think so too, though I do it ; but my rouge is very honest ; I am exactly like the wooden dolls, with a red dab on each cheek, that they sell for the babies at fairs. Vera would be a sublime wax doll, no doubt, if she rouged; but, as it is, she is a marble statue. Surely that is the finer work of art.' f The age of statues is past,' murmured the Duchess Jeanne. ' We are in the puppet and monkey epoch.' * It is all cant to be against painting,' said Lady Dolly. ' Who was it said that the spider is every bit as artificial as the weaver ? ' 'Joseph le Maistre,' said Madame Nelaguine, ' but he means ' ' He means, to be sure,' said Lady Dolly with asperity, 'that unless one goes without any clothes at all, like savages, one must be artificial; and one may just as well be be- comingly so as frightfully so ; only I know frights are always thought natural, as snubbing, snapping creatures are thought so sweetly VOL. III. C 18 MOTHS. sincere. But it doesn't follow one bit ; the frights have most likely only gone to the wrong people to get done up.' ' And the disagreeable snappers and snub- bers and snarlers ? ' ' Got out of bed the wrong end upwards,' said Lady Dolly, ' or have forgotten to take their dinner-pills.' 1 1 begin to think you are a philosopher, Lady Dolly.' ' I hope I am nothing so disagreeable,' said Lady Dolly. ' But at least I have eyes, and my eyes tell me what a wretched, dull, pawky- looking creature a woman that doesn't do her self up looks at a ball.' ' Even at twenty years old ? ' ' Age has nothing to do with it,' said Lady Dolly very angrily. ( That is a man's idea. People don't paint because they're old; they paint to vary themselves, to brighten them- selves, to clear themselves. A natural skin may do very well in Arcadia, but it won't do where there are candles and gas. Besides, a natural skin's always the same ; but when you paint, MOTHS. 19 you make it just what goes best with the gown you have got on for the day"; and as women grow older what are they to do ? It is all very well to say "bear it," but who helps you to bear it ? Not society, which shelves you ; not men, who won't look at you ; not women, who count your curls if they are false, and your grey hairs if they are real. It is all very well to talk poetry, but who likes decheance. It is all very well to rail about artificiality and postiche, but who forced us to be artificial, and who made postiche a necessity? Society; society; society. Would it stand a woman who had lost all her teeth and who had a bald head ? Of course not. Then whose is the fault if the woman goes to the dentist and the hair-dresser ? She is quite right to go. But it is absurd to say that society does not make her go. All this cry about artificiality is cant, all cant. Who are admired in a ball-room ? The handsome women who are not young but are dressed to perfection, painted to perfection, coiffred to per- fection, and are perfect bits of colour. If they come out without their postiche who would look c 2 i'O MOTHS. at them ? Mothers of boys and girls you say ? Yes, of course they are; but that is their misfor- tune ; it is no reason why they shouldn't look as well as they can look, and, besides, nowadays it is only married women that are looked at, and children in short frocks, which is disgusting.' Lady Dolly paused for breath, having talked herself into some confusion of ideas, and went away to dress and drive. She forgot the wrongs of fate as she drove to Molv with the old ambassador Lord Bangor, who was staying there, and a charming young Russian of the Guard, whose golden head and fair beauty made her Sicilian seem to her in memor} r yellow and black as an olive ; he had really had nothing good but his eyes, she reflected as she drove. When she reached Molv she admired everything ; the bearded priests, the churches, the bells, the pink and yellow houses, the Byzantine shrines. She was in a mood to praise. What was not interesting was so droll, and what was not droll was so interesting. If her companion of the Imperial Guard had not MOTHS. 21 had a head like a Circassian chief, and a form like Hercules, she might perhaps have found out that Molv was ugly and very flat, dirty and very un- savoury, and so constituted that it became a pool of mud in winter, and in summer a shoal of sand. But she did not see these things, and she was charmed. She was still more charmed when she had bought her sealskins and sables at a price higher than she would have given in Regent Street ; and, coming out opposite the gilded and painted frontage of the chief church, which was that of St. Vladimir, she saw a sad sight. Nothing less than a score of young men and a few women being taken by a strong force of Cossacks to the fortress ; the townspeople looking on, gathered in groups, quite silent, grieved but dumb, like poor beaten dogs. * Dear me ! how very interesting ! ' said Lady Dolly, and she put up her eye-glasses. ' How very interesting ! some of them quite nice-looking, too. What have they done ? ' The Eussian of the Guard explained to her that they were suspected of revolutionary con- 22 MOTHS. spiracles, had harboured suspected persons, or were suspected themselves : Nihilists, in a word. ' How very interesting ! ' said Lady Dolly again. ' Now, one would never see such a sight as that in England, Lord Baugor ? ' 'No,' said Lord Bangor seriously; 'I don't think we should. There are defects in our constitution ' ' Poor things ! ' said Lady Dolly, a pretty figure in feuillemorte and violet, with a jewelled ebony cane as high as her shoulder, surveying through her glass the chained, dusty, heart- sick prisoners. ' But why couldn't they keep quiet ? So stupid of them ! I never under- stand those revolutionaries ; they upset every- thing, and bore everybody, and think themselves martyrs ! It will be such a pity if you do get those horrid principles here. Russia is too charming as it is ; everybody so obedient and nice as they are at present, everybody kneeling and bowing, and doing what they're told not like us with our horrid servants, who take them- selves off the very day of a big party, or say they won't stay if they haven't pine-apples. I think MOTHS. 23 the whole social system of Eussia perfect quite perfect ; only it must have been nicer still before the Tsar was too kind, and let loose all those serfs, who, I am quite sure, haven't an idea what to do with themselves, and will be sure to shoot him for it some day.' Lady Dolly paused in these discursive political utterances, and looked again at the little band of fettered youths and maidens, dusty, pale, jaded, who were being hustled along by the Cossacks through the silent scattered groups of the people. A local official had been wounded by a shot from a revolver, and they were all implicated, or the police wished to sup- pose them to be implicated, in the offence. They were being carried away beyond the Ourals; their parents, and brothers and sisters, and lovers knew very well that never more would their young feet tread the stones of their native town. A silence like that of the grave which would perhaps be the silence of the grave would soon engulf and close over them. Henceforth they would be mere memories to those who loved them : no more. 24 MOTHS. ' They look very harmless,' said Lady Dolly, disappointed that conspirators did not look a little as they do on the stage. ' Really, you know, if it wasn't for these handcuffs, one might take them for a set of excursionists; really now, mightn't we? Just that sort of jaded, dusty, uncomfortable look ' * Consequent on " three shillings to Margate and back." Yes; they have a Bank holiday look,' said Lord Bangor. 'But it will be a long Bank holiday for them ; they are on their first stage to Siberia.' ' How interesting ! ' said Lady Dolly. At that moment an old white-haired woman, with a piercing cry broke through the ranks, and fell on the neck of a young man, clinging to him for all that the police could do, till the lances of the Cossacks parted the mother and son. ' It is a sad state of things for any country,' said Lord Bangor ; and the young captain of the Guard laughed. ' Well, why couldn't they keep quiet ? ' said Lady Dolly. ' Dear me ! with all this crowd, MOTHS. 25 however shall we find the carriage ? Where is Vere, I wonder? But she said we need not wait for her. Don't you think we had better go home ? I shouldn't like to meet wolves.' * Wolves are not hungry in summer,' said Lord Bangor. ' It is only the prison's maw that is never full.' ' Well, what-are they to do if people won't keep quiet?' said Lady Dolly. 'I'm sure those young men and women do not look like geniuses that would be able to set the world on fire. I suppose they are work-people, most of them. They will do very well, I dare say, in Tomsk. Count Rostrow, here, tells me the exiles are beautifully treated, and quite happy ; and all that is said about the quicksilver mines is all exaggeration ; newspaper nonsense.' ' No doubt,' said Lord Bangor. ' To object to exile is a mere bad form of Chauvinism.' ' Why couldn't they keep quiet if they don't like to go there ? ' she said again ; and got into the carriage, and drove away out into the road over the plain, between the great green sea of billowy grasses, and the golden ocean of ripened 26 MOTHS. grain ; and, in time, bowled through the gilded gates of Svir ; and ate her dinner with a good appetite ; and laughed till she cried at the drolleries of a new operetta of Meta's, which the French actors gave in the little opera- house. ( Life is so full of contrasts in Russia ; it is quite delightful ; one can't be "dull,' she said to Lord Bangor, who sat beside her. ' Life is full of contrasts everywhere, my dear lady,' said he. ' Only, as a rule, we never look on the other side of the wall. It bores us even to remember that there is another side.' Vere that night was paler and stiller even than it was her wont to be. She went about amongst her guests with that grace and courtesy which never changed, but she was absent in mind ; and once or twice, as the laughter of the audience rippled in echo to the gay melodies of Meta, a shiver as of cold went over her. * She must have heard something about Correize that has embarrassed her,' thought Madame de Sonnaz, but she was wrong. MOTHS. 27 Vere had only seen the same sight that her mother had seen, in the little town of Molv. That night, when the house party had broken up to go to their apartments, and she had gained the comparative peace of her own chamber, Vere, when her maids had passed a loose white gown over her and unloosened her hair, sent them away, and went into the little oratory that adjoined her dressing-room. She kneeled down, and leaned her arms on the rail of the little altar, and her head on her arms ; but she could not pray. Life seemed to her too terrible ; and who cared ? who cared ? Riches had done their best to embellish the little sanctuary : the walls were inlaid with malachite and marbles ; the crucifix was a wonderful work in ivory and silver ; the prie- dieu was embroidered in silks and precious stones ; there was a triptych of Luke von Cranach, and Oriental candelabra in gold. It was a retreat that had been sacred to the dead Princess Mania, her husband's mother, a pious and melancholy woman. Vere cared little for any of these things ; 28 MOTHS. but the place was really to her a sanctuary, as no one ever disturbed her there ; even Zouroff never had presumed to enter it ; and the painted casements, when they were opened, showed her the green plain, and, beyond the plain, the beautiful waters of the Baltic. Here she could be tranquil now and then, and try to give her thoughts to her old friends the Latin writers ; or read the verse of George Herbert or the prose of Thomas a Keinpis, and pray for force to bear the life she led. But to-night she could not pray. She was one of those who are less strong for the woes of others than for her own. She leaned her face upon her arms, and only wondered wondered wondered why men were so cruel, and God so deaf. It was nearly two in the morning ; through the painted panes the stars were shining; beyond the plain there was the silver of the dawn. Suddenly a heavy step trod on the marbles of the pavement. For the first time since their marriage, her husband entered the place of MOTHS. 29 prayer. She turned, and half rose in astonish- ment, and her heart grew sick; she was not safe from him even here. He marked the instinct of aversion, and hated her for it ; the time was gone by when it allured and enchained him. ' Excuse me for my entrance here,' he said with that courtesy to which the presence of his wife always compelled him, despite him- self. ' I am exceedingly annoyed, compromised, disgusted. You were in Molv to-day ? ' ' Yes ; I rode there. I went to see your mother's hospital.' She had quite risen, and stood, with one hand on the altar rail, looking at him. ' I hear that you saw those prisoners ; that you spoke to them ; that you made a scene, a scandal ; that you gave one of the women your handkerchief; that you promised them all kinds of impossible follies. Be so good as to tell me what happened.' * Who spies upon me ? ' said Vere, with the colour rising to her face. ( Spies ! No one. If you choose to exhibit 30 MOTHS. yourself in a public street, a hundred people may well see you. What did happen ? Answer me.' 'This happened. I met the prisoners. I do not believe any of them are guilty of the attempt to assassinate General Marcoloff. They are all very young, several were girls ; one of the girls broke from the guards, and threw herself before me, sobbing and begging my help. Her arm was cut and bleeding, I suppose in fastening the chains; I took my handkerchief and bound it up ; I promised her to support her mother, who is old and infirm. I spoke to them all and bade them try and bear their fate calmly. I wept with them, that I confess ; but I was not alone there were not many dry eyes in Molv. I believe all these young people to be quite innocent. I believe if the Emperor saw the things that are done in his name, he would not sanction them. That is all I have to tell you. It has haunted me all the evening. It is horrible that such tyrannies should be ; and that we should dine, and laugh, and spend MOTHS. 31 thousands of roubles in a night, and live as if no living creatures were being tortured near us. I cannot forget it ; and I will do what I can to serve them.' She had never spoken at such a length to her husband in all the three years of her married life ; but she felt strongly, and it seemed to her that here reticence would have been cowardice. She spoke quite tranquilly, but her voice had a depth in it that told how keenly she had been moved. Zouroff heard her with a scowl upon his brows ; then he laughed contemptuously and angrily. 1 You believe ! ' he echoed. ' What should you know, and why should you care? Will you learn to leave those things alone? A Princess Zouroff dismounting in the dust to bind up the wounds of a Nihilist convict ! What a touching spectacle ! But we will have no more of these scenes if you please ; they are very unbecoming, and, more, they are very compromising. The Emperor knows me well, indeed, but enemies might carry such a tale to 32 MOTHS. him ; and he might see fit to suspect, to order me not to leave Russia, to imprison me on my estates. It is as likely as not that your theatrical vagaries may get bruited about at Court. I neither know nor care whether these creatures shot Marcoloff or abetted shooting at him ; what I do care for is the dignity of my name.' Vere, standing beside the great ivory cruci- fix, with the draperies of plush and ermine falling about her, and her fair hair unbound and falling over her shoulders, turned her face more fully upon him. There was a faint smile upon her lips. ' The dignity of your name ! ' she said merely ; and the accent said the rest. The calm contempt pierced his vanity and his self-love, and made him wince and smart. The first sign she had given that the unworthiness of his life was known to her had been when she had ordered him to remove the pavilion of Noisette. He had always set her aside as a beautiful, blonde, ignorant, religious creature, and the shock was MOTHS. 33 great to him to find in her a judge who cen- sured and scorned him. 'The dignity of my name/ he repeated sullenly and with greater insistance. * We were great nobles with the Dolgarouki, when the Romanoffs were nothing. I do not choose my name to be dragged in the dust because you are headstrong enough, or childish enough, to fancy some incendiaries and assassins are martyrs. Have politics, if you like, in Paris in your drawing-room, but leave them alone here. They are dangerous here, and worse than dangerous. They are low. I deny you nothing else. You have money at your pleasure, amuse- ment, jewels, anything you like ; but I forbid you political vulgarities. I was disgusted when I heard of the spectacle of this morning ; I was ashamed ' 1 Is it not rather a matter for shame that we eat and drink, and laugh and talk, with all this frightful agony around us ? ' said Vere, with a vibration of rare passion in her voice. 'The people may be wrong; they may be guilty ; but tlieir class have so much to avenge, VOL. III. D 34 MOTHS. and your class so much to expiate, that their offence cannot equal yours. You think I can- not understand these things? You are mis- taken. There are suffering and injustice enough on your own lands of Svir alone to justify a revolution. I know it ; I see it ; I suffer under it ; suffer because I am powerless to remedy it, and I am supposed to be acquiescent in it. If you allowed me to interest myself in your country, I would try not to feel every hour in it an exile ; and the emptiness and nothingness of my life would cease to oppress and to torment me ' 1 Silence ! ' said Zouroff, with petulance. 'You may come here for prayer, but I do not come here for sermons. The emptiness of your life ! What do you mean ? You are young, and you are beautiful ; and you have in me a husband who asks nothing of you except to look well and to spend money. Cannot you be happy? Think of your new cases from Worth's, and let political agitators keep the monopoly of their incendiary rubbish. You have been the beauty of Paris and Petersburg MOTHS. 36 for three years. That should satisfy any woman.' ' It merely insults me,' she answered him. ' Society conies and stares. So it stares at the actress Noisette, so it stares at that nameless woman whom you call Casse-une-Croute. Is that a thing to be proud of? You may be so; I am not. Men make me compliments, or try to make them, that I esteem no better than insults. Your own friends are foremost. They talk of my portraits, of my busts, of my jewels, of my dresses. Another year it will be some- one else that they will talk about, and they will cease to look at me. They find me cold, they find me stupid. 1 am glad that they do ; if they did otherwise, I should have lived to despise myself.' ( Nom de Dieu ! ' muttered Zouroff ; and he stared at her, wondering if she had said the names of Noisette and Casse-une-Croute by hazard, or if she knew ? He began to think she knew. He had always thought her blind as a statue, ignorant as a nun ; but, as she stood before him, for the first time letting loose the D 2 36 MOTHS. disdain and the weariness that consumed her heart into words, he began slowly to perceive that, though he had wedded a child, she was a child no longer; he began to perceive that, after three years in the great world, his wife had grown to womanhood with all that knowledge which the great world alone can give. As she had said nothing to him, after the Kermesse, of the absence of Noisette, he had fancied her anger a mere boutade, due perhaps to pride, which he knew was very strong in her. Now he saw that his wife's silence had arisen not from ignorance but from submission to what she conceived to be her duty, or perhaps, more likely still, from scorn ; a scorn too profound and too cold to stoop to reproach or to reproof. * Why cannot you be like any other woman ? * he muttered. * Why cannot you content your- self with your chiffons, your conquests, your beauty ? If you were an ugly woman one could understand your taking refuge in religion and politics ; but, at your age, with your face and figure ! Good heavens ! it is too ridiculous ! ' The eyes of Vere grew very stern. MOTHS. 37 ' That is your advice to me ? to content myself with my chiffons and my conquests ? ' ' Certainly ; any other woman would. I know you are to be trusted ; you will never let men go too far.' ' If I dragged your name in the dust throughout Europe you would deserve it,' thought his wife ; and a bitter retort rose to her lips. But she had been reared in other ways than mere obedience to every impulse of act or speech. She still believed, despite the world about her, that the word she had given in her marriage vow required her forbearance and her subjection to Sergius Zouroff she was still of the ' old fashion.' She controlled her anger and her disdain, and turned her face full on him with something pleading and wistful in the proud eyes that had still the darkness of just scorn. * You prefer the society of Noisette and Caase-une-Croute ; why do you need mine too ? Since they amuse you, and can content you, cannot you let me be free of all this gilded bondage, which is but a shade better than their 88 MOTHS. gilded infamy ? You bid me occupy myself with chiffons and conquests. I care for neither. Will you give me what I could care for ? This feverish frivolous life of the great world has no charm for me. It suits me in nothing ; neither in health nor taste, neither in mind nor body. I abhor it. I was reared in other ways, and with other thoughts. It is horrible to me to waste the year from one end to the other on mere display, mere dissipation to call it amusement is absurd, for it amuses no one. It is a monotony, in its way, as tiresome as any other.' ' It is the life we all lead/ he interrupted her with some impatience. ' There is intrigue enough in it to salt it, God knows ! ' ' Not for me,' said Vere coldly, with an accent that made him feel ashamed. ' You do not understand me I suppose you never will ; but, to speak practically, will you let me pass my time on one of your estates ; if not here, in Poland, where the people suffer more, and where I might do good ? I have more strength of purpose than you fancy ; I would educate MOTHS. 39 the peasant children, and try and make your name beloved and honoured on your lands not cursed, as it is now. Let me live that sort of life, for half the year at least ; let me feel that all the time God gives me is not utterly wasted. I helped many in Paris; I could do more, so much more, here. I would make your people love me; and then, perhaps, peace at least would come to me. I am most unhappy now. You must have known it always, but I think you never cared.' The simplicity of the words, spoken as a child would have spoken them, had an intense pathos in them, uttered as they were by a woman scarcely twenty, who was supposed to have the world at her feet. For one moment they touched the cold heart of Zouroff, as once before at Felicite the uplifted eyes of Vere had touched him at their betrothal, and almost spurred him to renunciation of her and refusal of her sacrifice. And she looked so young, with her hair falling back over her shoulders, and behind her the white crucifix and the stars of 40 MOTHS. the morning skies and her child had died here at Svir. For the moment his face softened, and he was moved to a vague remorse and a vague pity ; for a moment Noisette and Casse-une- Croute, and even Jeanne de Sonnaz, looked to him vulgar and common beside his wife ; for a moment les verves epais du cabaret brutal seemed tainted by the many lips that used them, and this pure golden cup seemed worthy of a god. But the moment passed, and the long habits and humours of a loose and selfish life resumed their sway within him ; and he only saw a lovely woman whom he had bought as he bought the others, only with a higher price. He took the loose gold of her hair in his hands with a sudden caress and drew her into his arms. ' Pardieu ! ' he said with a short laugh. * A very calm proposition for a separation ! That is what you drive at, no doubt ; a separation in which you should have all the honours as Princess Zouroff still ! No, my lovely Vera, I am not disposed to gratify you, so. You MOTHS. 41 belong to me, and you must continue to belong to me, nilly-willy. You are too handsome to lose, and you should be grateful for your beauty; it made you mistress of Svir. Pshaw ! how you shudder ! You forget you must pay now and then for your diamonds.' There are many martyrdoms as there are many prostitutions that law legalises and the churches approve. She never again prayed in her oratory. The ivory Christ had failed to protect her. All the month long there was the pressure of social obligations upon her, the hot-house atmosphere of a Court about her, for imperial guests followed on those who had left a few days earlier, and there could be no hour of freedom for the mistress of Svir. Her mother was radiantly content; Count Eostrow was charming; and a Grand Duke found her still a pretty woman ; play was high most nights ; and the Sicilian was forgotten. All that troubled her was that her daughter never looked at her if she could help it, never spoke to her except on the commonplace 42 MOTHS. courtesies and trifles of the hour. Not that she cared, only she sometimes feared other people might notice it. These days seemed to Vere the very longest in all her life. Her apathy had changed into bitterness, her indifference was growing into despair. She thought, with unutterable scorn, 1 If the world would only allow it, he would have Casse-une-Croute here ! ' She was nothing more in her husband's eyes than Casse-une-Croute was. All the pride of her temper, and all the purity of her nature, rose against him. As she wore his jewels, as she sat at his table, as she received his guests, as she answered to his name, all her soul was in revolt against him ; such revolt as to the women of her world seemed the natural instinct of a woman towards her husband, a thing to be indulged in without scruple or stint, but which to her, in whom were all the old faiths and purities of a forgotten creed, seemed a sin. A sin ! did the world know of such a thing? Hardly. Now and then, for sake of MOTHS. 43 its traditions, the world took some hapless boy, or some still yet unhappier woman, and pilloried one of them, and drove them out under a shower of stones, selecting them by caprice, persecuting them without justice, slaying them because they were friendless. But this was all. For the most part, sin was an obsolete thing ; archaic and unheard of ; public prints chronicled the sayings and the doings of Noisette and Casse-une-Croute ; society chirped and babbled merrily of all the filth that satirists scarce dare do more than hint at lest they fall under the law. There was no longer on her eyes the blindness of an innocent unconscious youth. She saw corruption all around her ; a corruption so general, so in- sidious, so lightly judged, so popular, that it was nearly universal ; and amidst it the few isolated souls, that it could not taint and claim and absorb, were lost as in a mist, and could not behold each other. A dull hopelessness weighed upon her. Her husband had counselled her to lose herself in chiffons and in conquests ! 44 MOTHS. She knew very well he would not care if she obeyed him ; nay, that he would perhaps like her the better. As he had often bade her put red upon her cheeks, so he would have awakened to a quicker esteem of her if he had seen her leaving ballrooms in the light of morning, with the ribbons of the cotillons on her breast, smiling on her lovers above the feathers of her fan, provoking with effrontery the gaze of passion, answering its avowals with smiling reproof that meant forgiveness, and passing gaily through the masque of society with kohl around her eyes, and a jest upon her mouth, and hidden in her bosom or her bouquet some royal lover's note. He would have esteemed her more highly so. Perhaps, then, she might even have stood higher in his eyes than Casse- une-Croute. She thought this, as she sat in the evening at his table, with her imperial guests beside her, and, before her eyes, the glow of the gold plate with the Zouroff crown upon it. She was as white as alabaster ; her eyes had a sombre indignation in them; she wore her Order of MOTHS. 45 St. Catherine and her necklace of the moth and the star. * If one did not keep to honour, for honour's sake,' she thought, ' what would he not make me ! I should be viler than any one of them.' For, as she saw her husband's face above that broad gleam of gold, the longing for one instant came over her, with deadly temptation, to take such vengeance as a wife can always take, and teach him what fruit his own teachings brought, and make him the byword and mock of Europe. The moment passed. ' He cannot make me vile,' she thought. ' No one can save myself.' As her breast heaved quicker with the memory, the ever trembling moth of the medal- lion rose and touched the star. * An allegory or a talisman ? ' said one of the imperial guests who sat on her right hand, looking at the jewel. ( Both, sir,' answered Vere. Later in the evening, when, after seeing a 46 MOTHS. Prov&rbe exquisitely acted, the princes were for the present hour absorbed in the card-room, Madame Nelaguine lingered for a moment by her sister-in-law. Vere had gone for an instant on to the terrace, which overlooked the sea, as did the terrace of Felicite. 1 Are you well to-day, my Vera ? ' ' As well as usual.' ' I think Ischl did you little good.' < Ischl ? What should Ischl do for me ? The Traun is no Lethe.' 4 Will you never be content, never be re- signed ? ' ' I think not.' Madame JSTelaguine sighed. She had never been a good woman, nor a true one, in her world; but in her affection for her brother's wife she was sincere. ' Tell me,' said Vere abruptly, ' tell me you are his sister, I may say so to you tell me it does not make a woman's duty less, that her husband forgets his ? ' 'No, dear at least no I suppose not. No, of course not,' said Madame Nelaguine. MOTHS. 47 She had been a very faithless wife herself, but of that Yere knew nothing. ' It does not change one's own obligation to him,' said Vere wearily, with a feverish flush coming over her face. t No ; that I feel. What one promised, one must abide by ; that is quite certain. Whatever he does, one must not make that any excuse to leave him?' She turned her clear and noble eyes full upon his sister's, and the eyes of Madame Nelaguine shunned the gaze and fell. ' My dear,' she said evasively, ' no, no ; no wife must leave her husband ; most certainly not. She must bear everything without avenging any insult ; because the world is always ready to condemn the woman it hardly ever will condemn the man. And a wife, however innocent, however deeply to be pitied, is always in a false position when she quits her husband's house. She is declassee at once. However much other women feel for her, they will seldom receive her. Her place in the world is gone, and when she is young, above all, to 48 MOTHS. break up her married life is social ruin. Pray, pray do not ever think of that. Sergius has grave faults, terrible faults, to you ; but do not attempt to redress them yourself. You would only lose caste, lose sympathy, lose rank at once. Pray, pray, do not think of that.' Vere withdrew her hand from her sister-in- law's ; a shadow of disappointment came on her face, and then altered to a sad disdain. ' I was not thinking of what I should lose,' she said, recovering her tranquillity. ' That would not weigh with me for a moment. I was thinking of what is right ; of what a wife should be before God.' 'You are sublime, my dear,' said the Russian princess, a little irritably because her own consciousness of her own past smote her and smarted. ' You are sublime. But you are many octaves higher than our concert pitch. No one now ever thinks in the sort of way that you do. You would have been a wife for Milton. My brother is, alas ! quite incapable of appreciating all that devotion.' ' His power of appreciation is not the MOTHS. 49 measure of my conduct,' said Vere, with a contempt that would have been bitter had it not been so weary. 'That is happy for him,' said his sister drily. * But, in sad and sober truth, my Vera, your ideas are too high for the world we live in j you are a saint raising an oriflamme above a holy strife ; and we are only a rabble of common maskers who laugh.' ' You can laugh.'