In spite of these two wretched blemishes, Piotr was the most fascinating boy one could imagine, and Plenhöel paid him homage as to a beloved Dauphin. Ireland, Monsieur Quentin, François, Madame Hortense, the coachmen, gardeners, stablemen, chefs, footmen, grooms, the aged housekeeper, the maids, not to mention the farmers, villagers, and salt-workers, were his willing subjects. As to the crews of the yacht and sailing-boats, they raised him to the throne of a little sea-god, pure and simple.
Warm-hearted, hot-headed, plucky as they make ’em, and generous to a fault, this was Piotr. Also he had the religion of remembrance—a rare gift—and not a day passed without his speaking of his father. He was handsome, too, to a surprising, an alarming degree; with features too classically perfect for a lad of his years, and magnetic eyes, changeful in shape and hue with every new expression.
“Quand il aura vingt ans il faudra enfermer les poulettes, par exemple!” the doctor was quoted as declaring on repeated occasions, and this seemed like prophetic talk.
Basil wrote almost regularly to Régis, “from China or India, Mars or the Moon,” as the Marquis was wont to vaguely explain, and Marguerite helped Piotr pencil a couple of lines to accompany every one of her father’s replies to each of those erratic missives.
My dear, dear Papa. When are you coming back? I am very big now. I love you.
Piotr.
he had written the evening before the prawn-fishing, but, as he impatiently declared, “I never get a letter from him, little darling Malou!”
Marguerite cruelly felt this persistent neglect of Piotr. She invented messages with untiring assiduity, but as a matter of fact, “Mes remerciements émus à ma cousine Marguerite,” was the only allusion ever made by Basil to Piotr’s existence.
The de Salvières were in Russia, looking after both their own estates and Basil’s; Pavlo was now a first-lieutenant of great promise; the peasants of Tverna, trotting easily in firm but light harness, exploded no longer. As Tatiana once had told Preston Wynne, “Tout est pour le mieux dans çe meilleur des mondes.”
It was then that a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand began to float imperceptibly upward toward the coast of Brittany from the blunt apex of South Africa, where Basil had been sojourning for a while, as a letter bore witness:
I am heartily tired of wandering [he wrote confidentially to Régis]. Weary of visiting place after place which holds no interest for me, and yet I cannot make up my mind to settle down again, either in France or in Russia. There seems nothing for me to do in either—or, for the matter of that, anywhere else in the world, alas! Duties I have none left—or if I have, disgust obstructs my view, and I do not see them. As soon as Piotr is old enough to be put in a military academy I will know better what to do. I had a nice surprise some time ago! Imagine that among the effects and personal possessions left in the Paris house by the lady who bore my name, and which I had caused to be packed and stowed away under the supervision of Stepàn-Stepànovitch, my agent, he found a writing-map I had once given her—a very splendid affair of Tula-work and turquoises. Well, overstepping my orders, he made an exhaustive examination of this object, read with a looking-glass from the reversed writing printed and on the blotting-paper inside, more convincing proofs yet of her guilty conduct with the young English captain I had the misfortune to despatch from this world—God knows his life was too dear a price to pay for her love—and also traces of equally enlightening letters written to that poor chap who gave me satisfaction in a way—Heaven is my witness—I will mourn for a long time to come. I would much rather that Stepàn had let bad enough alone. It is hard as it is to try and forget a little of all this—if not to forgive it. But now to come to the real point of my letter: Do you think I could venture to come and spend a few days near you? Not at Plenhöel, for I cannot—no, I cannot see Piotr just yet—but in the neighborhood, so as to be enabled to see you and discuss matters with you. I am thinking of starting for Canada, or perhaps Mexico, afterward; I don’t know which, nor do I much care! One thing is certain: I will not go to the States, and be looked upon from the moment of landing as a conspirator, a fugitive from justice, a mendicant in gilded guise, or a wretched fortune-hunter. I don’t blame the people over there for seeing an intriguer and a scoundrel under every coronet that submits itself to their criticism—perhaps they should not receive them either enthusiastically or cringingly; not, at all events, before they have made a few inquiries as to their wearer’s particular brand of indignity—for, when one comes to think of the needy and abject individuals who are continually “crossing the Pond,” as the English say, to offer to the highest female bidder imitation names, bogus titles, or genuine ones so tarnished as to have become unrecognizable, how can one feel surprise at the variegated denunciations which transatlantic invaders of our shores indulge in? Forgive this vacuous and interminable missive. I am alone, sad, bad-tempered, and altogether uninhabitable. Indeed, it would have been far simpler for me to tell you at the outset, like a man, that I am yearning for a home—anybody’s, since my own is destroyed, and sign myself,
Your affectionate
Basil.