I.
My acquaintance with the brothers Kourásoff commenced as far back as when I was sub-professor at the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg and Loris, the elder, was in the Guards, while Vladimir, the younger, was still at the School of Gunnery. These two brothers were commonly mistaken for twins, although Loris was no less than four years older than Vladimir; but, though Nature had made them outwardly alike, she had not failed to mark an extraordinary difference in their characters. Fortune, too, having endowed them equally in the first instance, had unequivocally declared one to be her favored child.
Vladimir Kourásoff was by turns morose and flippant. He had managed to encumber himself with debts even sooner than young Russian nobles usually do, and was, moreover, suspected of inclining to revolutionary principles. The Government took good care to be informed of everything Vladimir Kourásoff said and did.
Loris, on the contrary, enjoyed a high degree of imperial favor. He had been sent, at his own request, to take command in one of the disturbed districts near the Turkestan frontier—a position which he filled to the satisfaction of the Government and of the local authorities too, a thing difficult to do. About this time he invented a new fuse, which was approved by the Ministry of War, and for which he declined to accept any compensation, which induced the emperor to decorate him. He belonged to the true party of order and progress, which seeks to improve the Russ as he is without vainly attempting to turn him into a German or a Frenchman. His estates near Wilna were said to prove by their flourishing condition that emancipation could be turned to the mutual benefit of proprietor and serf. Of his private character my great affection for him makes me speak with diffidence. I can only say that he had a multitude of friends who shared my opinion of him. His talents and accomplishments were adorned with a singular modesty, which, if it did not disarm jealousy, at least silenced it.
The Russ is essentially democratic; therefore it is not remarkable that Count Loris Kourásoff, one of the darlings of St. Petersburg society, should have for his friend a sub-professor who lived in modest lodgings in an unfashionable quarter beyond the Izaak bridge. Once a year we usually took a journey together; and one summer he accompanied me to Germany on a mission of a sentimental nature, which, if not settled to my satisfaction, was at least settled, and I set myself to forgetting Maria von Spreckeldsen as quickly as I could. This proved to be easier than I had imagined; and, though I wept tears of rage, and Maria tears of disappointment, when her father refused to let us marry on my salary as sub-professor, the anguish of both subsided by degrees, leaving only a feeling of placid regret. Maria, who could not talk philosophy so well as I, acted it much better, and in less than a year married Herr Sachs, one of the richest brewers in Bavaria; and when I last saw her I thought I would not exchange the image which dwelt in my heart of my adored Maria in her youthful slenderness for the excellent but stout Madame Sachs, while I am sure she would not have given her brewer for all the professors in Russia and Germany together. But we still correspond (with the full approbation of Herr Sachs), and in our letters call each other Gottlieb and Maria. O youth! O folly! O Maria!
Count Loris frequently complained that my affair with Maria had destroyed his fondest illusions, and that my inconstancy, as he was pleased to call my devotion to my ideal Maria, had made him a skeptic in love. He seemed to take a cruel pleasure in listening to my most harrowing reminiscences, and when we dined together always toasted Maria with a variety of unfeeling remarks.
I had never visited the Wilna estates of Count Kourásoff, but in the summer of 18—, being engaged in making studies of Russian village life, I presented myself at Ivánofka. Count Loris was at home when I arrived, and was overjoyed to see me. The house was very much like French chateaux of the best class, and maintained in a state of order and repair not always found in Russia. Everything showed a generous but wise expenditure. The village gave evidences of thrift and industry. The communal land, as well as that belonging to Count Kourásoff, was under an excellent system of husbandry. Instead of the complicated agricultural machinery for which the Russian proprietors have a mania, while their plows are made after the model of those used in the time of Iwan the Terrible, I found at Ivánofka that they had judiciously improved on their common tools and implements. The barley was of a superior order, and the cattle were fat and well-shaped. All the credit for this state of things was awarded to Count Kourásoff. It was he who had given Iwan Tiska a horse when his own died of lockjaw; it was he who had paid Mother Karlitch for her flax when it was all burned up; it was he who had given them seed in the year of the bad harvest. In short, the inhabitants of Ivánofka regarded Count Kourásoff as the general benefactor of the human race.
The only dissatisfied man in the village appeared to be the parish priest. The contempt in which the "White" or married clergy are generally held is well known, and in this instance the dislike of the parishioners was warmly reciprocated; but, in spite of the head-shakings and evident disgust of my village friends, I had formed a sort of intimacy with the old fellow, and sometimes amused myself by listening to his hearty denunciations of the souls committed to his charge. Once he said, shrugging his shoulders: "Count Loris is a man of sense, but he treats them like rational human beings, when, to show you how little they deserve it, about once a year the howling sickness breaks out among them. It begins with some woman whose husband has given her an extra beating—not a blow too much, I dare say" (the priest was accused of using this method of persuasion on his own wife occasionally)—"and in two days the whole village is howling."
"Well," I asked, "what happens then?"
"I will tell you. The first time it broke out, some disguised men—of course I knew nothing of it, you understand," said he, opening his eyes and shutting them again with a cunning look—"took seven of these howling devils in the middle of the night, and, cutting a hole in the ice of the lake, dipped them in two or three times. One of them—old Mother Petroff—died the next day, but that was no great loss—the village has been twice as peaceable ever since."
"The remedy was severe, but does not appear to have been effectual," said I.
"Oh, yes, yes! Now, when they begin to be troublesome—that is, more troublesome than women usually are—some fine morning they see a big square hole cut in the ice, and they leave off as suddenly as they began. Women are plagues at best," he continued after a pause of deep reflection.
"Well, little father," said I, still laughing, "if one wishes a picture of the dark side of Russian humanity, I know of no one so well fitted to give it as you."
"I am indeed well acquainted with it in my own parishioners. St. Nicholas help me to abuse them!" said he, piously crossing himself.
But there was for me something more interesting than the village priest or the commune: Count Kourásoff was seriously contemplating marriage. He scarcely allowed me time to make my modest toilet and eat my simple dinner on the day of my arrival before I was carried off to see his fiancée. He told me she was Mademoiselle Olga Orviéff, that she lived at Antokollo,—one of the two fine suburbs of Wilna,—and that she enjoyed a virtual independence, having as her only companion an old aunt quite deaf, nearly blind, and totally incapable.
"I suppose," said I on the way to Antokollo, "that Mademoiselle Orviéff is one of those gentle creatures with whom life flows—"
"As placidly as a canal," said my friend.
"I am gratified to hear it," I replied. "In marriage one needs repose."
"Exactly," said Count Loris.
"I imagine, therefore," said I after a pause, "she is not one of those superficially gifted women who appear to have minds. Perhaps my description of my beloved Maria may have inclined your fancy to the same type; and, while she embodies my ideas of female excellence, I am sure she never read a book through in her life."
"Mademoiselle Olga reads, I fear; but I can easily break her of that after we are married," said Count Kourásoff gravely.
"Is she handsome?" I inquired.
"She is not ugly," was his guarded answer.
"The shallowness of women makes them easily read," said I; "although I speak with diffidence. My knowledge of them is limited: yours, doubtless, is extensive."
"Far from it," said he with energy; "the more I see of them the less I know of them."
"Then what a frightful risk!" I cried. "My friend, I would not be in your place for the wealth of the empire."
"But Mademoiselle Olga has such soft eyes and such dark eyelashes!" said he. "That comforts me when the recollection of the vagaries of her sex casts me down. After all, if we marry at all, we must marry a woman—the philosophers give us no escape from that."
"Too true, my friend; but the philosophers bid us avoid marriage altogether."
"They did not on that account refrain themselves. However, I escaped until my time came; which is all that any of us can expect. Destiny can overtake all of us—even you, my gay and youthful professor. But I do assure you that Mademoiselle Olga has most beautiful eyes."
When at last I was presented to Mademoiselle Orviéff, I found that she possessed the essence of beauty—which is the power to please. Her appearance was exquisitely feminine, but there was a fire in her eyes and a curve in her red mouth that showed a spirit beyond her outward softness and delicacy. At first I thought her the simplest creature I had ever met with; but I afterward found her to be the most complex. This knowledge was not arrived at in a day, a week, or a month, but in a long period of familiar intercourse. She was a beautiful revelation to me; for the first time I comprehended the charm of a fine intelligence in a woman. She possessed without knowing it, a cultivated understanding, but she always appeared to me, in her serious moments, like a child playing at being wise. She did me the honor to exert all her powers of pleasing upon me, while Count Kourásoff looked on amused at her adroit cajolery of me and her determined effort to win my good opinion. She very soon established a remorseless tyranny over me under cover of the gentlest and most insinuating manner. I was her "dearest professor," her "best of friends," and meantime she held me in the hollow of her little hand. Her devotion to Count Kourásoff was of the nature of a religion. To me, and to all the world but him, she used all the flattering wiles and pretty artifices that render women charming, but she seemed to feel by a fine instinct that she needed but one art with him—to be her own true and natural self.
But the destiny to be loved too much and by too many seemed to be Olga's fate. Among those whom her evident preference for Count Kourásoff had not discouraged was General Klapka, commandant of the garrison at Wilna, and at the same time one of the richest men in Russia. He was a man at all times unscrupulous and dangerous to thwart, and a singular complication placed the power of inflicting a terrible revenge in his hands. Vladimir Kourásoff was stationed with his regiment at Wilna under a sort of surveillance, and General Klapka could add still further to his painful and perilous position. He had more than once intimated to Count Loris that he held Vladimir's life in his hands; and this could be readily believed, for nothing seemed to impress Vladimir with a sense of his danger. He openly and bitterly complained of his banishment from St. Petersburg, and his conduct showed equal levity and recklessness.
I was astonished at the tact and boldness with which Mademoiselle Olga managed so troublesome and dangerous a lover as General Klapka. But Count Loris did not seem disposed to aid her. Whatever anxiety he might feel for Vladimir, he did not on that account do much toward conciliating General Klapka on the occasions—and they were not infrequent—when they met at Antokollo. I made no doubt that each respected the personal courage of the other, but nothing but my friend's coolness under all circumstances and unshaken self-possession foiled General Klapka's evident efforts to disoblige him.
One day Count Loris proposed that we should drive over to Antokollo. It was a lovely afternoon in August, and we went in an open calèche, which we left at the entrance of the grounds. As we walked slowly under the rich and dappled shadows of the beech-trees, we saw a group before us—General Klapka and two aides in brilliant uniform, and Mademoiselle Olga sitting in a rustic chair lazily fanning herself and holding a gay pink parasol over her pretty bare head. No better foil for her youth and loveliness could be imagined than General Klapka. He was awkward and stout, with purplish moustaches and a suspiciously black and luxuriant head of hair. Mademoiselle Olga always described him as looking like a wild beast; and he certainly had a sort of savage glare in his fierce eyes. He did not appear overjoyed to see us as we made our greetings, but Olga, who had appeared somewhat bored before noticing our approach, became all animation.
The two aides, after politely saluting Count Kourásoff and superciliously surveying my plain coat, entered into a deeply interesting conversation with each other. Thereupon Mademoiselle Olga honored me with her particular notice, and, proposing a walk around the grounds, coolly took my arm, leaving Count Loris and General Klapka to pair off together. The latter, though not deficient in breeding, did not respond very cordially to Count Kourásoff's well-bred efforts at a good understanding, and perhaps felt the contrast between his companion's graceful figure and his own ungainly appearance. But whether they got on well or ill appeared to matter very little to Olga: she left them to amuse themselves, and chattered on to me in her pretty and entertaining manner.
The grounds were small but beautifully laid out. We presently came to a bridge over a little stream, and stopped to watch the water tumbling over the rocks at the bottom. Olga, leaning carelessly over the rail, dropped sticks and pebbles into the water, and ended by dropping her fan—a pretty thing of lace and ivory—after them. Of course we each offered to save it, but, with a coquettish imperiousness, she ordered General Klapka to the rescue. The General, highly gratified, tucked his military chapeau under his arm, made his slippery way down the bank, and, stepping cautiously upon the stones, reached out for the fan. In vain; it was just a little beyond him.
"A little farther, General Klapka—only one step more," cried Olga encouragingly.
"But mademoiselle, the rocks are wet, and—"
"Ah, Mademoiselle Olga, do not tempt General Klapka too far.—Beware of another step, General Klapka!" cried Count Loris, maliciously.
Of course General Klapka took the other step, but it was of no use; a mischievous eddy carried the fan still farther down.
"If you will accept of my services—" began Count Loris, turning to Olga.
General Klapka raising himself to scowl at his impertinent rival, just what all of us had foreseen happened; there was a plunge, a loud splash, and he was floundering in the water. It was very shallow, and he was on his feet in a moment, but Count Loris, with officious politeness, rushed to his rescue, literally dragging him out, completely drowning the general's angry assurances that he did not need any assistance by protestations of regret and earnest inquiries whether he had received any hurts. Meanwhile, Olga, standing on the bank, anxiously fished for the general's hat, which she triumphantly landed on the point of her pink parasol.
As soon as he was well out of the water, General Klapka sent one of his young officers, who looked as crestfallen as himself, to order their horses; but, in the little time that elapsed before his departure, Mademoiselle Orviéff seemed determined, by her endless regrets and apologies, not to let him forget his mishap, while, by a singular process of feminine logic, she taxed Count Kourásoff with being the sole cause of the accident. He, after all, had saved the fan, and bore her reproaches with great coolness. When at last General Klapka, sulky and discomfited, rode off Mademoiselle Olga and the count laughed at him as if they would never tire, and seemed to think his misfortune a source of boundless amusement; but I began to see that there were some tragic elements in this comedy they were playing.