VIII
At last Marian came, bringing a lunch-tray well laden with the proper things. She set it down on a table at the bedside, and drew up two chairs.
“Now, Andy dear!” she said in her old pleasant way. “Come on! You need food, you know. It’s after three o’clock!”
He was really very hungry. He began to eat without delay, while Marian watched him indulgently.
“I telephoned to Dr. Gryce. He’ll take your patients to-day,” she said. “You need a rest, don’t you? Miss Franklin’s gone home. Mr. Borrowby took Mavis home, and left a note, apologizing for his mistake. I explained to him about your theories, you know. I sent for Mr. Hamilton, and I stayed with his wife until he came. They had a perfectly beautiful reconciliation. They’re going out to Wyoming with the children, to start a new life; so there’s nothing to trouble you, is there?”
“Marian,” he said gravely, “I’ll tell you all about it later on. Just now I can’t think of anything but the relief—”
The parlor-maid knocked at the door.
“There’s a young gentleman from the Daily Review, sir,” she said. “He says the doctor promised him an interview.”
“The doctor is resting—” Marian began.
Andrew sat up.
“No!” he said. “I’ll see him. Bring him up, Sarah!”
“I’ll go,” said Marian.
“I’d rather you stayed,” said Andrew. “I’d like you to hear what I’m going to say.”
He was sitting up in bed, more rumpled and excited than ever, when the young man entered. The interviewer was surprised and a little embarrassed by the presence of a wife, because the opinions which the doctor was reputed to hold on marriage were not the sort of views that most wives like. However—
“We thought it would be of great interest to our readers if you would give us a few words on ‘Marriage from a Man’s Point of View,’” he began; “along the lines of the address you gave before the Moral Courage Club one afternoon last week, you know.”
“I said that marriage hampered and degraded a man, didn’t I? I said that marriage was slavery for my sex—don’t take that down, that’s only what I said last week. Now, please get this properly. I offer, as my earnest conviction, based upon experiment, that marriage is man’s only safeguard. Without its protection man could not survive. This is a woman’s world, dominated and developed by women. Every man imperatively requires the protection of a wife. Without it, he—he would be hounded to death.”
“Andrew!” murmured Marian, rather shocked.
The young man wrote it all down as faithfully as he could.
“That’s all. You can enlarge on that. I suppose you would, anyway. You might head it ‘Marriage Man’s Only Hope.’”
The young man thanked the doctor, took up his hat, and left.
Andrew looked at Marian, and she smiled affectionately at him.
“I shall never know,” said he, “whether you had any hand in all this, or whether it just happened; but I’m beaten, absolutely, and you are supremely vindicated. That’s what women always do. They’re able to prove a man wrong and make him see it himself, in spite of the fact that he’s right![Pg 14]”
The Foreign Woman
NO WONDER THE SOUL OF RUSSIA IS ONE OF THE GREAT ENIGMAS OF THE WORLD
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Author of “Angelica,” “The Married Man,” etc.
HE sat in the small, hot room, in a state of pleased expectancy. He awaited the entrance of something exotic and highly interesting, probably with a beard. The catalogue of the Institute of Foreign Languages had promised him a “native teacher,” and what could a native Russian be but a bearded and mysterious creature?
He looked again through the pages of the unintelligible little red book—all in Russian—and thought with delight of the time to come, when it should be plain as day to him, when he should be able to say, with a casual air, that he could read and speak Russian.
He was anxious, poor young fellow, for some claim to distinction. He was only too well aware of his own ordinariness—a pleasant, friendly sort of mediocrity which distressed him profoundly. He was slight, sandy-haired, wiry, not unattractive, but certainly not fascinating. People liked him but didn’t remember him.
He was not an idiot. He knew well enough that he had no brilliant or remarkable qualities, and therefore, sure that he could not be anything extraordinary, he had decided to do something extraordinary. He had decided, in short, to go to Russia, live there for a long time, and write amazing books about it all.
Why not? He was a journalist; he could and did write articles about everything; he wrote with facility and a certain skill. He had, moreover, a naïve and innocent journalistic point of view. He saw the “human interest” in things. He felt that he would very easily discern the “human interest” in this Russian situation and present it to America in moving terms. His paper was willing to buy the special articles he intended to write, and on the pay for them he would live, Bolshevist fashion, while he collected his material.
He took out his watch. He had paid for an hour, and fifteen minutes of it had already passed. He frowned. After all, you know, he was somebody. He was a newspaper man, and a graduate of Columbia University, and he had paid cash for his twenty lessons, and people had no business to keep him waiting.
He got up, opened the door, and walked about, hoping that his restlessness might be observed from the corridor, and assuaged; but no one passed. All the other doors along the corridor were closed, and he heard a diligent hum, with now and then a French or German word familiar to him, from other teachers and other pupils, properly employed. He had decided to return to the office and “make a row,” and had got himself into the proper mood for one, when he saw a figure hastening along the corridor, and he went back and sat down.
She came in, breathless, sat down beside him, closed her eyes, and placed both hands above her heart. He waited for her to speak with some alarm, she gasped so. She was a plump little woman of indefinite age—forty-five, he imagined—dressed in clothes such as he hadn’t seen for fifteen years. All that she wore was dainty and fresh, with a pitiful sort of elegance—little ruffles of fine lace about her wrists, a bit of black velvet about her high collar. Her very shape was old-fashioned—a succession of curves, a round, tight look, a sort of dowdy neatness.
Nothing more foreign could be imagined. She didn’t stir, and he ventured a look at her face. With her eyes thus closed, her[Pg 15] soft, plump visage had a look of profound sadness and immense wisdom. It impressed him, it almost hypnotized him.
Suddenly she opened her eyes—pale gray eyes, clear and blank.
“My heart!” she said, in excellent English. “I suffer very much!” She picked up the book. “Do you know any Russian words?” she asked, with a shadowy smile.
“No,” he said; “not one.”
“A beautiful, beautiful language!” said she. “Only listen!”
She began reading him something from the middle of the book. Of course he couldn’t comprehend a word, but he liked to hear it. Her voice was charming, and the foreign sounds entertained him. She turned a page and went on.
“This is an extract from a most beautiful Russian tale,” she explained. “You would surely admire it.”
She continued. Her voice became sad, she made soft, slow gestures with her small dimpled hand.
“Ah, how very sad this is!” she said. “All that is best in Russia is so sad!”
“What’s the story about?” he asked, with curiosity.
“It is about two young men who are in an inn—” she began, when suddenly a bell rang loudly in the room. “My God!” she said mildly. “What is this?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“It must be that the lesson is ended,” said she. “One would not believe how the time flies! You have not had your full time—I was so late. I think I must go with you to the office and ask if I cannot make this up to you.”
“Never mind,” said he. “Please don’t bother—it doesn’t matter!”
“Ah, but it does!” said she. “You have paid, and it is very important that one should secure what one has paid for.”
She had risen, and went walking briskly along the corridor, an odd little figure in a long, trailing skirt. He followed her into the quiet office, where a severe director sat writing at a desk. He looked up with a surprised air.
“I was late for this gentleman’s lesson,” said the stout little woman. “He has missed much of it.”
“Then why do you waste more time in coming here?” cried the director, with a frown. “Go back, madame, and finish it. Make the best of the time that is left.”
“I thought the hour finished.”
“But on the contrary—the half-hour bell has just rung.”
“Ah!” said she, with a pleased smile. “I did not understand!”
And they walked back again, down the corridor, to the hot little room.
“I don’t understand everything of this,” she explained to him. “This is my first lesson that I give. This position of Russian professor belongs to my husband, but he is ill, and they kindly permit me to take his place for this little while. Now we must not waste more time!”
She opened the book again, and studied it with serious regard.
“A difficult language,” she said; “but so very beautiful! The English and Americans can never learn to pronounce our consonant sounds—never! Could you say this?”
She uttered a sound, and he tried to imitate her, but failed. She smiled with a sort of benevolent triumph.
“Ah, it cannot be done—not ever! Now, on the contrary, we Russians have no difficulty whatsoever with any of the English words. I don’t know—it is the Russian soul, perhaps. We have so great a sympathy. Nothing is strange to us, nothing is foreign—nothing at all. We are at home in all languages, in all countries. It is our mystery.”
“You speak English very well,” he said.
“Why not? I lived for years in England; but in this country, only three months.”
She fell silent.
“Why is it that you wish to learn Russian?” she asked suddenly.
“Well, I thought of going to Russia, you know—to study the people and write a book.”
“Useless!” she said calmly.
“Why?”
“Never can you know our people—above all things, now, in our time of trouble. Oh,” she cried, “it is so terrible! I cannot bear that strange people should go there now—to our Holy Russia, to see our agony! If you knew!”
She covered her eyes with her hand.
“If you knew! We have left everything there, all we had on this earth. We have no news of our friends. Perhaps they are dead; certainly they are ruined. Such wonderful people—real Russian souls! We, too, are ruined. We have lost everything we had.[Pg 16]”
He was deeply impressed by the tragic note in her voice.
“I know,” he said; “but perhaps things will improve before long.”
“For Russia, yes—for us, no. We are ruined. We are finished,” she said quite simply. “We are torn up by the roots. We are not young enough to begin again. Above all, such a man as my husband—one of the greatest minds of Russia. A wonderful man! Imagine you, he is an artist, he paints, composes music, writes poetry, all in the most charming taste, and he is also a marvelous financier. Ah, what is one to say to comfort such a man? And that now he must teach Russian in this place!”
Again she was silent, and he didn’t like to interrupt her. He was deeply interested in her—her fine voice, her passionate gesture, the extreme novelty of her. He was aware of a depth and variety of feeling in her which amazed him. She was like a woman in a novel; and with it all she had a simplicity such as he had never seen before. It was impossible to doubt the sincerity of a single word she uttered.
She began to speak again.
“What is it that you think you will see in Russia?” she asked. “I tell you, nothing! You will never see the Russian soul. You will stay there a year, five years, ten years, and never will you know a single Russian. No; we do not wear our hearts on our sleeves. Shall I tell you something of us?”
“Yes, please do!” he said earnestly.
She began to tell him of Petrograd—of shops there, more elegant, she said, than anything to be found in Paris. She described a certain confectioner’s shop. When you went in, you were invited to sample all the sweets displayed there, and there were hundreds of different sorts—hundreds, she assured him! She described forty to him, lingering in ecstasy over their perfections.
She told him of the houses, warm, full of flowers, in the bitterest winter weather; and the women—the kindest women in all the world. She talked of the court, but only briefly. She began to speak of the Czarina, but she could not go on. The words strangled her.
“And all that is gone!” she said. “All that—my God!”
He carefully concealed his American disapproval of courts and sovereigns. He even felt sorry, on her account, that it had gone.
“I do not think that you know in this country what social life is,” she said. “Here it is so formal, so without heart. With us, it is so different. It may be that on a certain day I am tired, ill, lazy. I do not wish to dress. I am in negligee. My friends come, and I receive them just in this fashion. No one is surprised.
“‘For God’s sake, do not apologize, Anastasie!’ they say. ‘It is you we come to see, not your fine clothes!’”
And here the bell rang again, unmistakably for the lesson’s end. Again she was surprised.
“Ah!” she said. “It has been very pleasant for me to talk to you! You are of a sympathetic nature, there is no doubt of that!”
He hadn’t learned a word, not a syllable of Russian, but he was entirely satisfied. He felt that he had met with something even more truly Russian than the language. He walked out of the building, feeling decidedly more cosmopolitan.