II
Two days later he returned for his next lesson, in the dusk of a snowy February afternoon. This time he found her waiting for him, sitting before the table in the little room. They smiled in friendly fashion.
“I was thinking, as I came,” he said, “that this must be like a Russian winter afternoon.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “It isn’t! It has not the—the feeling. There is—how shall I tell you?—a sort of excitement about our snowy days. But I must not waste your time. Let us begin!”
For ten minutes or so she worked industriously, teaching him Russian words for chair, table, wall, floor, ceiling.
“You are really learning now?” she asked solicitously.
“Yes,” he answered, very much pleased.
“It seems, however, that as a teacher I am not successful,” she said, with a melancholy little smile. “To you I give my first lesson, and to you I give my last. After this I have finished.”
“Why? Is your husband coming back?”
“No,” she said. “He is not well—yet.”
She got up, went over to the window, and stood there looking out. He couldn’t help thinking, as he regarded her round form in profile, that she looked like the[Pg 17] little wooden figures of Noah’s wife in the arks that children play with. And then he saw her face, and was sorry for his fancy. She was gazing out across the dark, snow-covered expanse of Madison Square, wonderfully misty in the falling snow, and she was silently weeping.
“No,” she said. “He is not coming back. He is very ill.”
He felt terribly sorry for her, but he could think of nothing at all to say. She came back and sat down in the full glare of the electric light. She looked intolerably pitiful, her scanty eyebrows red with weeping, her mouth compressed and trembling a little.
“And they tell me this morning that there will be no more lessons for me. It seems that I talk too much English to the pupils, and that must not be. I must talk only in Russian, and I always forget.”
She shrugged her shoulders, while she wiped her eyes, quite unaffectedly, with an elaborate little lace handkerchief.
“And now,” she said, “do you remember the word for ‘table’?”
But he couldn’t bear that.
“About your husband,” he began respectfully. “Are you sure you have a good doctor? Being in a strange country, you know—”
“I don’t need a doctor, my friend!” she told him, with a stern smile. “I have seen too much of illness and death. A doctor can tell me nothing and can do nothing for me.”
“But,” he said, “in other ways—if you’re leaving here, can’t I help you to find some other sort of—occupation? I’m a newspaper man; I know all sorts of people. I should be more than happy to help you.”
She bowed her head gravely.
“Thank you! I know enough of the world to appreciate kindness. You are very good—very kind. I had a little plan. I thought perhaps I would give private lessons in my home, if I could find pupils.”
“I’d like to come, very much.”
“Oh, no! With you that is not possible. At least, not now. You have paid for a course of twenty lessons here.”
“I’d rather take them from you.”
“But you have paid!” she cried, with a sort of horror. “You must not waste that money!”
He smiled, with a slight feeling of superiority toward this foreign thrift.
“I’ll arrange it,” he said.
So before the end of the lesson she gave him a card on which was engraved:
MME. PAUL SENSOBIAREFF
“The French form of the name,” she explained. “It would be impossible for any one in this country to pronounce the Russian form.”
He felt a fleeting doubt of this. He would have liked a try at it.
“And your name?” she asked.
“Hardy,” he said. “Winslow Hardy.”
She repeated it, and in spite of Russian ease in foreign tongues, she certainly said “Vinslow.”
They arranged for an afternoon the next week, and they settled the terms, which were high. Hardy was by no means well off, and his heart sank a little at the thought of this expense; but a fine pity swayed him. He would have made many sacrifices for this unhappy woman.
He had never before been conscious of this chivalry in himself. He had been in love from time to time, but it had not been a disinterested passion. He had always sought for the advantage. He had always been kind, generous, a little idealistic in his dealings with his fellows; but never before had he been really moved by pity.
He thought time and again of the poor Russian lady. In fact, he hardly ever forgot her. He imagined the unhappy soul, with all her little elegancies, living in squalor and anxiety, and his mind was busy with schemes for her salvation. He planned to force or persuade every one he knew to study Russian.