III
Imagine Hardy’s surprise when he reached the address given him, and found it to be an imposing apartment house, with a palm-bedecked entrance and two negro boys in uniform to receive him and inspect him with a hostile air. He went up on the lift to the top floor, and found her there in a splendidly furnished sort of double salon, high-ceilinged, bright with sunshine, with flowers and plants all about. She herself was dressed in a short white garment suspiciously like a wrapper, worn over a voluminous black skirt. Over her soft, mouse-colored hair was tied a bit of lace.
He could scarcely avoid staring at her; she didn’t look dressed. It took him a long time to get used to her domestic costume.
The room, too, disconcerted him. It[Pg 18] was no sort of room to have a lesson in. The elegance, the airy charm of it, destroyed his serious intent. He wanted to sit there and chat with his hostess; and in fact that is what he did.
She offered him Russian cigarettes from a little lacquer box, and while he smoked she instructed him for a few minutes; but they were interrupted by the entrance of a gaunt young girl who brought them weak, fragrant tea and a plate of biscuits. After that there was no more lesson. They talked—or, rather, Mme. Sensobiareff talked and he listened.
The hour passed very agreeably. When he saw by his watch that it was finished, he got up to take his leave.
“One minute, if you please!” she said, and went out of the room.
He waited, looking about him, wondering how it was that a woman existing in such comfort should either need or wish to give lessons for a living. Though it increased the illusion of aristocratic refinement there was about her, it filled him with some misgiving. They couldn’t be entirely ruined!
There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, the curtains parted, and she came in again, followed by a man.
“My husband,” she said. “Paul, this is the gentleman who has been so very kind to me.”
Oh, no doubt that he was ruined, poor devil! His face was like wax, his eyes sunken and extinguished, all his bearing hopeless and despairing. He was a slender, high-shouldered man, younger than she by some years, with fair hair and a light mustache—an upcurled mustache, bitterly at variance with his utter despondency. She was right—no doctor was needed to read his fate. Whatever mysterious malady he had, it had progressed beyond any earthly check.
He shook hands with Hardy. He offered him cigarettes again, and insisted upon giving him a glass of sherry. He was very polite, very nervous. He spoke English beautifully, but so fast, so volubly, that it was difficult to follow him.
Hardy couldn’t get away; he had to stay and talk for a long time. The poor chap was marvelously well informed upon American affairs, and it delighted him to talk. He said that he was “considering financial opportunities”; he asked questions about the stock market.
All the time he talked, Hardy was conscious of the stout little woman beside him, watching her husband’s ghastly face with a terrible fervor. It was as if she wanted to remember every one of his looks and his words forever.
It was a devotion of absolute simplicity. He was her sole object in life, her one interest. At the next lesson she began talking about him, and she never stopped. She felt obliged to interpret this great mind of Russia for her American friend. She showed his paintings, she played his music on the piano, she read aloud his Russian poems, and she explained his surroundings.
“Paul is dying of nostalgia,” she said. “He loved his country so! He is used to big, beautiful rooms and light and air. Ah, I never thought they could cost so dear! I have got the best I could for him, but at what a cost—what a cost! It is draining us of every penny. I am taking it, little by little, all we had put away, only to give him these few little things. He is so ill he doesn’t know how I manage. It is the last I can ever do for him. At least he shall die in peace and quiet!”
She did, inevitably, teach Hardy a little Russian. He was presently able to speak to the servant and to be comprehended; but he learned other things of greater value to him. He had before him a lesson in fortitude, in sublime unselfishness, which touched him to the heart. He was beginning to learn something of the charm and the magic that lie in utter sincerity, in spontaneous and artless intercourse.
However, his lessons were abruptly terminated. He found a new position on a Middle Western newspaper, and he left New York.
He parted from Mme. Sensobiareff with real regret. She listened to his plans with an actually motherly interest. He had decided, after all, that he would write a book about the Middle West, which he had heard was replete with atmosphere, and she approved his plan.
“Write, by all means!” she said. “I am sure that you will do well. You Americans are so clever! With us, it is so different. We feel—my God, we feel so deeply, but we are dumb!”
He hadn’t found her or her husband noticeably dumb; however, he didn’t say so. He said that he would write to her, and he went away, filled with hope and his own special and touching enthusiasm. It was[Pg 19] not that he particularly liked writing, but it seemed to him the readiest way to distinguish himself, and that was his great desire.