“Ah, well!” he chuckled. “You’ll always be the same shiftless good-for-naughts. I’ve told you so before, little fathers. I say so again!” He went on licking his cigar to reattach a ragged edge of pseudo-tobacco. “See, you! Your tyrant married a little while ago. Did he perhaps wed a dame of his own rank, even of his people—of ours, I mean?” he hastily corrected. “No, he’s taken a wife from among strangers, from an island you don’t know anything about, nor even where it is; but I do. It’s called England, and they are all merchants there, and—as you’re so devout—you might just as well know that they have another God than we in Holy Russia. Their priests are no priests at all; they dress like you and me—that is,” he interpolated, “like me, for they, of course, don’t wear your touloupe or your kaftán!” He granted an approving tap to his eminently reproachable trousers and coat, which, according to him, were models of Anglican fashion, and once more glanced about him.
“Not of our religion!” chorused the audience. “Do you say that her new Highness is not of our religion?”
Gregor saw that he had scored a point, and gave instant attention to driving it home.
“They made her take some vows, of course,” he explained, unsatisfactorily. “I’ve read something of the kind in the news-sheets, but can you make a black heifer white by mumbling words over her? Can you change one from the south into one of us northerners? You can’t, eh? Well, neither can the Archimandrite change a foreign woman into a Russian lady fit to rule you as you seem to like being ruled.”
Marzof, the elder, rose to his full height. “You’re talking great foolishness, my son,” he calmly stated. “Why do you come and speak against strangers to us, who have known the grandmother of our Prince? She came from foreign parts, too, and she was an angel straight out of heaven, I’ll swear it. We gave her a name here, for we couldn’t say right the one she bore; that was too difficult for our stiff tongues, and the name we gave her was ‘Raïssa’ (the Heaven-sent). We were serfs then still—slaves, as you say—but she cared for us as if we’d been her own children. When the great sickness [cholera] came, she went from house to house, never afraid, helping us, feeding us, touching us with her tiny white hands.” The old man lifted his fur cap and reverently went on. “May God keep fresh the memory of Princess Raïssa, the blessed grandmother of our present Prince, and the mother of our late master, who, too, was kind to his people, and may He rest their souls in His Paradise!” He sat heavily down again, and Gregor Lukitch slipped from the table to the sanded floor.
“I abandon you—I leave you to your fate!” he clamored, spreading wide his arms, as one who lets drop a burden too heavy for his strength. “I leave you, I say, to your ignorance and your sloth. You will not see the truth when it’s shown to you dear as day. What more can I do!”
“You can speak less, in any case!” came witheringly from the corner near the stove, and a burst of laughter greeted old Marzof’s repartee. Plainly these people—save half a dozen hotheads or so who always drank in every word Gregor pronounced—were not ready yet to swallow his preachings whole; but he was no fool, and knew well that at a given moment in Russia a mere handful of powder will set a province on fire. Where, therefore, was the use of flurry or haste? And as by now his own throat was dust-dry, he helped himself to a few deep swigs of that vòdka he had so harshly condemned—and looked the better for it.
Tverna was, in its way, not a bad village, where it lay spread out like a handful of grain carelessly scattered at the foot of the great Castle. There were not many rowdies there—not at least considering its comparatively large population. A few lazy, leisure-loving individuals, over-fond of drink and carousing, who, if improperly led, might give trouble, but that was all so far.
Indeed, here, more than on any other of Basil’s estates, Laurence would find her opportunity for good, if she wished to take it. As has just been seen, her husband’s grandmother had been literally worshiped at Tverna (her favorite abode), and well-beloved wherever her lord’s dominions extended; although she had, like Laurence, never set her foot on Russian soil before her marriage. She had learned the prickly language of her adopted country with an ease perhaps due to the difficulty of her own native Breton, and had adapted herself so rapidly to the customs and modes of the land she had learned to love that the remembrance of her was living, and very vividly so, where once she had reigned as a beneficent queen.
At the beginning of their wedded life Basil had been convinced that Laurence, too, would become the adored of his people. Her beauty, her grace, were factors in this task that no Slav—those passionate admirers of pretty women—would overlook. She would be pleased by their reverence, he had decided, pleased and flattered by their natural and instinctive deference of attitude; and whenever he had thought thus of the future—which was often—he had represented her to himself riding by his side on the forest roads or wrapped in the furs of her sleigh gliding over the snowy plains, or driving across the steppe in the golden days of summer on errands of kindness and mercy; for if Basil had a serious fault, it was to idealize, almost to the point of rendering it unrecognizable, every object of his love or affection.