XXVIII
As soon as we reached the frontier I telegraphed to Prilukoff. I wanted to send Elise back to Hyères with the money, but she refused to leave me.
“What if Mr. Prilukoff were to kill me,” she cried. “Then what would your ladyship and poor little Master Tioka do, all alone in the world?”
“But my good Elise, why on earth should Mr. Prilukoff kill you?”
“I don't know,” sighed Elise. “But he has become so strange of late—” and after a pause, she added, under her breath: “We have all become very strange.”
It was true. I could not but admit it. We were “very strange.” We were not at all like other people. The people that we met on our journeys and in hotels, for instance, all took an interest in external things—in the surrounding landscape, or in works of art and monuments and cathedrals. As for us, we never spoke about monuments. We never entered a cathedral. We took no interest whatever in anything beyond our own dolorous souls. We were even as those who travel with an invalid, watching him only, caring for and thinking of nothing else. The invalid I traveled with was my own sick soul.
The least peculiar among us was Count Kamarowsky. Yet even he, I fancy, was not quite like other people. His was not a strong nature, like that of some men I had known. Perhaps the Slav blood is responsible for much that is abnormal and unconventional. Surely we are from the inmost depths of our nature strangely removed from the Teutonic, the Anglo-Saxon and even the Latin races, and our thoughts and actions must frequently appear to them singular and incomprehensible.
As for Paul Kamarowsky, his dread of suffering was so great that he preferred to know nothing that might cause him distress. In fear lest he should see aught that might displease him, he chose to shut his eyes to facts and truths, preferring voluntarily to tread the easy paths of a fool's paradise. I longed to open my heart to him, to unburden my travailed soul and clear my sullied conscience by a full confession; I was ready to abide by the result, even if it meant the loss of my last chance of rehabilitation, even should I forfeit thereby all hope of marriage with a man of honor, rank and repute. But he closed my lips; he sealed my heart; he firmly avoided all confidences and disclosures.
“Mura,” he said, “my life and yours have been too full of errors and of sorrow. Do not embitter this, our hour of joy. The past is buried; let it rest. Do not drag what is dead to the light of day again.”
I bowed my head in silence. But in the depths of my conscience I knew that my past had been buried alive.