THE TARTAR PRINCESS.
She was staying at a Finnish hydro near Helsingfors. I asked for her on the telephone and her old mother answered.
"Is it you, Monsieur Anatole? Fancy ringing up so early—twelve o'clock! Of course Tatiana is in bed. One can see you have been away from your native country a long time. We left Petersburg three months ago. Come and see us at a reasonable time—say three o'clock—and we'll tell you all about it."
My two years' sojourn in England had accustomed me to English ways. I had certainly committed an indiscretion in ringing up my former clients (I was their legal adviser in Petersburg) at such an unconscionable time.
I found Tatiana, in a smart black glacé gown, reclining on a sofa and smoking a cigarette in a dull sitting-room, surrounded by other Russian émigrés. She jumped up when she saw me.
"At last, Monsieur Anatole," she said. "You remember when you left Petersburg in 1918 I told you that you would be submarined, but here you are back again safely. I'm so glad." Her eyes shone and she held out her little white hand. "You have brought it with you?"
"What with me?"
"The soap, of course. Surely you remember. I asked you to buy me some Savon Idéal in Paris. It is the only kind that suits my skin."
"But I haven't been to Paris."
"You haven't brought my soap! Why haven't you been to Paris?"
"I have been to London."
She pouted. "Why stay in London instead of Paris? What silliness!"
"And how did you get here?" I asked.
"By sledge. It was terribly exciting and illegal, of course, and dangerous. Petersburg's awful. All the pipes have burst and there are no Russians there."
"No Russians!" I exclaimed.
"Because the best people—I mean, of course, the people who won't work—have all adopted other nationalities. We are—what are we, Mother?"
"I think it's Adgans, my dear," the old lady chimed in.
"Adgans," I repeated.
"Something of that sort," said the Princess. "It doesn't matter about the name, but it's more convenient. You are under the protection of your Government and then your property benefits."
"Do you mean Azerbaijans?" I asked.
"Oh, I daresay."
"But what claim have you to become Azerbaijans?"
"Every claim," she answered with asperity. "Somebody had a property there once—either one of our family or a friend. Why don't your family become Esthonians? You'd find it much more convenient. Your father could leave Petersburg."
"But he's never been to Esthonia."
"That's nonsense," said Tatiana; "he must have travelled through Reval at some time, and besides I remember he went to Riga once to fight a case for the Government."
"But Riga's in Latvia," I protested.
"What does that matter? Anyhow we escaped with two hundred thousand roubles and one small trunk. The first few weeks we had a great time here and spent all our money, but after that we had to 'put our teeth on the shelf.'"
"But how did you manage without money?"
"Well, we sell our things—jewellery and clothes. I think you might at least have come back through Paris; I can't understand how you forgot about the soap. You've no idea what bad manicurists the Finns are; they've torn my fingernails to bits."
"But when you've sold all your clothes and jewellery what do you intend to do?" I asked.
Tatiana laughed. "Then there's the house in Petersburg that will fetch quite a lot of money, and there are a number of people here who want it."
"How can you sell a house to people who can't get to it?" I asked.
Tatiana shrugged her shoulders. "Of course I can sell it all the better because they don't know the state it's in. I think England must have made you rather silly. You wrote and asked me to lunch without my husband and you know it's not done in Petersburg; you've become quite English."
"But last time we met you were just divorcing the Count and I wasn't quite sure of your relations with your new husband."
Tatiana kissed the tips of her fingers. "He's lovely!" she cried enthusiastically. "A real Cossack officer. Why, there he is! Dmitré, this is Monsieur Anatole, our family lawyer. He'll sell the house for us, and he's promised me some Savon Idéal from Paris. You'll go to Paris, won't you?" she said, putting a very seductive face close to mine.
I parried. "It's difficult for Russians——"
"Oh, that's all right; you can become a Czecho-Slovak. I can give you a letter; you need only stay there half-an-hour when you're passing through."
I felt my cherished Russian nationality slipping away and my only safety seemed to lie in an instant departure. I caught her hand and kissed her polished finger-tips. She bent forward and kissed my forehead.
"Good journey," she said.
"A happy time at home," I answered, and, saluting her husband, I hurried to the door.
"I'm glad there's a little bit of Russian left in you," she called after me. "And by the way you might bring two boxes of the soap; it doesn't last long."