“Je m’en fiche pas mal!” responded Piotr, who was not often parliamentary. “And now show me your isba, Cousin Pavlo, and all the camp. Because it will be the only chance I’ll have if we are setting off to-morrow to see little darling Malou.”
“To-morrow? You absurd person! But, come, I’ll betray to you as much of the secrets of a military encampment as is compatible with my duty, since you are, according to Mamma, so admirably grown-up; then if she permits it I’ll drive back home with you for dinner.”
It was getting late when the Salvières carriage re-entered the magnificent park of Tsarsköe-Seloe, where the adolescent foliage of its venerable limes was undershot by the last slant of the setting sun.
The Imperial Park has, especially in the early gloaming, a somber grandeur that is very impressive, as though in the twilight its loveliness were on tiptoe to reveal to you something new and startling about the ancient past. Eight o’clock was booming when the horses left the Palace, emerging from its glorious parterres to their left, and trotted rapidly on beneath the vaulting boughs of the broad allée skirting the lake, which was now shining like molten metal of a vaguely roseate hue. Further on a gilt cupola—that of the baths—rising from a promontory biting tooth-like into the glancing water, burned into the fainting pink and lilac of the sky, and, further still, tier upon tier of slowly dusking greens seemed the boundary line of some untrodden forest. They finally emerged through the colossal bronze portal of Alexander I., whereon is inscribed in golden letters, Russian on one side and French on the other, the words: “To my beloved companions in arms”; and soon drew up before the Salvières villa.
One of Tatiana’s chief talents was to give to all her houses the peculiar charm with which she was herself endowed. Nothing banal or commonplace was ever inclosed between any walls belonging to her, but this, be it understood, without the slightest effort on her part to create originality. Every detail of exterior or interior decoration was obviously spontaneous, utterly natural, and this was what made her various homes so intensely attractive. Indeed, to-night, when her husband and her son entered the dining-room, they turned a simultaneous look of gratitude upon the woman who created so delicious an atmosphere for them. The square table strewn with dark violets and feathery little tufts of mimosa, the dazzling crystal and beautiful old silver, the lace-shaded silver hanging-lamp half sunk in a bowl of pale turquoise filled with more violets, and slender branches of green and white ivy that twined about the silver suspension-chains to the very ceiling, were as beautifully restful to the eye as the dove-hued window draperies and wall hangings, whereon a few very choice water-color pictures alternated with carven brackets supporting rare cloisonné vases in the same shade of blue as the lamp bowl—also crowned with delicate flowers. Through the open windows the peculiarly aromatic scent of northern poplars and larch mingled with the perfume of résèda and heliotrope rising from the gardens, and as they took their places and unfolded their napkins each of the three indulged in a little sigh of deep satisfaction. Hospitable though they were, this was how the Salvières really loved to be, “between themselves”; close together as a table just large enough for Tatiana’s scheme of decoration in fruit and flowers would permit; with comfortable chairs where one could actually lean back at dessert; satin damask upon which one might even familiarly venture an elbow, and noiseless servants in plain liveries. Coffee was, on those occasions, served there, and cigarettes—of which Tatiana made a rather immoderate usage, since, as she gayly boasted, it was her only vice—were smoked while chatting in a most agreeable post-prandial manner.
In her white dress of some crinkly material that was idealized crêpe-de-Chine, her pearls wound carelessly about her throat, and a sapphire arrow planted through her heavy torsades, the “Field Marshal,” as Jean often called his wife, looked amazingly young, almost as if she had been Pavlo’s elder sister by but a few years, and Salvières suddenly laughed.
“Heavens!” he said, helping himself to sterlet with an unstinting hand, “what can be nicer than a nice little home like this? A fig for the Petersburg palace, where one dines on an island of carpet in the midst of a parquet the limits of which are lost in dim distances—or the terrifyingly spacious banqueting-hall of Palitzinovna, that I dearly love in spite of its colossal proportions. No!” he lyrically declaimed. “Give me a tiny room, a crust of bread, a goblet of vin-ordinaire with peace and amity as sauces, and the plenitude of my sybaritism knows no bounds! By the way, what have we got to-night?” he continued, glancing at the little alabaster menu before his plate. “Ah! canapés Impératrice, consommé froid, sterlet au naturel—but— Bah! These are already things of the past.... And to come...? Poularde du mans aux truffes blanches—Excellent! Salade de crésson à l’orange—Yum, yum! Gelée d’ananas frais—etc., etc.! That’s just what I was saying, an unobtrusive meal—all green and white and subdued tints against all the rules of gastronomic bienséance—green and white just like the ivy enthroned above our heads. Bravo, Tatiana! You are a positive genius, and so’s your chef-de-cuisine! Poetic I assure you—these demi-teintes, and so fittingly underscored by those harmonious names, Chablis and Chambertin; the very tinkle of epicurianism with a final exclamation-point of quite enormous vividness. Kümmel—one imperceptible glasslet, not before, but after the frugal repast—an innovation of mine own!”
“My good Jean,” Tatiana protested in French, “assuredly your exuberance can only mask some terrible revelation or other that you keep for your after-Kümmel moment. I am always expecting a slate on the head when you are so gay before the roast.”
“Which only shows how cruelly misunderstood I am by the wife of my bosom,” he mocked. “Pavlo, I take you to witness that your angel-mother is casting aspersions upon the immaculate purity of my mood that is to be.”
Pavlo grinned. “Well, sir,” he said, “personally I suspect that dark clouds are gathering somewhere with or without your knowledge. Myself, I feel in the air an elusive but none the less convincing sense of coming thunder. Will it burst north, south, east, or west? Of course, not being much of a seer, I cannot tell, but it is there somewhere; pregnant with eventualities—perhaps only of ‘summer lightning,’ but I rather doubt that.”