CHAPTER III
Peter drove in his cabriolet along the quay to the Summer Palace, where he was staying that year until late autumn, owing to alterations which were going on in the Winter Palace.
He was wondering why, in the olden days, he used to delight at going home to dinner and meeting his wife, while now it seemed almost burdensome. He remembered anonymous letters full of hints with regard to his wife and the handsome young German, the gentleman in waiting, the Kammerjunker Mons.
Catherine had always been a faithful wife and true helpmate. She had shared all his toils and dangers; she had followed him in his campaigns like a common soldier’s wife. During the Pruth campaign, acting in a truly manly way, she saved the whole army. He called her his mother. When without her he felt helpless, and complained as a child:—
“Mother, there is no one to wash clothes and mend for me.”
They used to feign jealousy of one another for fun.
“On reading your letter, I fell a thinking profoundly. You write bidding me not to hurry home, for the sake of the cure; but it is more likely you have found somebody else a little younger than myself. Please write and tell me whether it is one of our own, or a foreigner. That is how you women treat us poor old men!”
“I don’t accept the term, old man,” she replied; “it’s all nonsense to call yourself one. I am sure that so dear an old man will easily find some one to love him! Is that what you think of me? Well! I too have heard that the Swedish queen is in love with you. I have my suspicions!”
When they were separated they were wont to exchange gifts like affianced lovers. Catherine would send to him at a distance of a thousand miles, Hungarian wine, strong vodka, freshly salted cucumbers, lemons, oranges, because—“our own will be more agreeable to you. I hope they will do you much good.”
But the presents he most delighted in were children. With the exception of the two elder ones, Lisa and Anne, they came, however, into the world puny things, and soon died. Most of all he loved the last born, Peter, “The Master of Petersburg,” who had been proclaimed heir to the throne in Alexis’ stead. Peter, too, was a sickly child, always ailing, and only kept alive by medicine. The Tsar was in continual dread of losing him. Catherine used to comfort the Tsar, saying: “I dare say if our dear old man were here, we might have another Peterkin before the year is over.”
There was a certain affectation of sentiment mingled with this conjugal tenderness, the sentimentality of a gallant, quite unexpected in a fierce Tsar.
“I have had my hair cut here, and though it may not be a very pleasing gift, yet herewith I enclose a lock.”
“I have received your beloved hair and am glad to learn you are well.”—“I am sending you, my sweetheart! a flower and a sprig of mint which you yourself have planted. I am glad to say all goes well here, only it feels so lonely without you in the garden.” This he wrote from Reval, from her favourite garden, Catherinenthal. The letter contained a withered blue flower, mint, and a cutting from an English newspaper: “Last year on the eleventh of October, there arrived in England from the county of Monmouth two people who had lived in wedlock one hundred and ten years, the man was one hundred and twenty-six years old, and the woman one hundred and twenty-five.” As much as to say: “May God grant us as long a time in the happy state of matrimony!”
And now, on the verge of old age, on this melancholy autumn morning, he mused over the life they had lived together. At the idea that Catherine might perchance be false to him, and exchange her “old man” for the first-come handsome boy, some German of base origin, he felt neither jealousy, nor anger, nor indignation, only the helplessness of a child forsaken by his mother.
He gave the reins to his orderly, and, sinking back, hung his head. The jolting of the carriage over the uneven road made his head shake, as if from old age, and his whole figure suggested age and decrepitude.
The clock beyond the Neva struck eleven. But the morning light as yet only suggested the lurid look of a dying man. It seemed day would never break. Snow mingled with rain. The horse’s hoofs splashed sonorously through the puddles, the wheels scattering mud.
Long trains of grey clouds were creeping slowly like fat-bellied spiders across the skies, so low that they completely shrouded the pinnacle on the Peter and Paul fortress; grey water, grey houses, trees and human beings, all losing their precision in mist, seemed but dull phantoms.
When Peter reached the wooden drawbridge across the Swan Channel there came from the Summer Garden a mortuary smell of earth and damp rotten leafage, which the gardeners were sweeping into heaps along the avenues. Rooks were cawing in the bare lime-trees. The clang of hammers was heard: men were busily engaged in nailing narrow long boxes over the marble statues to protect them from the winter’s snow and frost. It seemed as if the risen gods were again buried, nailed up in coffins.
Through the dark, lilac-hued, wet stems gleamed the bright yellow walls of a Dutch house, many-windowed, and with glazed doors opening on the garden; with its iron checkered roof, a weathercock in the shape of St. George the Dragonslayer, and white stucco bas-reliefs depicting sea monsters, Tritons and Nereides.
This was the Summer Palace.