CHAPTER XI
My house and all it holds is thine,
But your deeds shall be no guests of mine.
Tverna, 12th of May.
My dear Régis,—I must apologize, and apologize humbly, for not having answered your letter sooner. To tell you the truth, we have “enjoyed”—as your Breton peasants say—some rather unquiet times here. When we first came, as you know, I found my “vassals” a trifle out of hand, but, after all, very reasonably so. Unfortunately the spirit of the age—or whatever you call it—has never ceased seeping through our marches—I should say marshes, the season being peculiarly rainy—and thus has my time been strenuously taken up by what I may term salvage-work, to the almost complete exclusion of any pleasanter occupation—this, of course, includes writing to those I love. In spite of the above-mentioned drawbacks, I am hale and hearty enough—that is to say that the years have not as yet left a serious mark upon me! Of course it is a great deprivation to abandon the sojourns abroad I used to delight in, but you see there is no choice in the matter. We spend a month or two every season in the Crimea, where the estates, of course, also demand the weary and wary eye of the master, but this cannot veraciously be described as a vacation, since work, work, work, is the keynote of my stay there. I wish I could have induced you to stop with us for a few weeks at least, during your trip around the world. How interested my cousin Marguerite must have been by this charming voyage. I hope she is well, and you also, my good Régis. Has she outgrown the “Gamin” stage? I can scarcely believe it of her—she is so essentially and delightfully young. And now I come to the heart of my letter, as it were. Laurence has for a long time, I fear, been homesick—I believe she never was anything else—as it is quite natural she should be, at so grim a distance from her own country. She is planning an expedition to the banks of the Thames, and I would willingly accompany her, but duty forbids so unlandlordly a thought, and so she will probably travel with Tatiana and Salvières, arriving in “Europe”—she insists that Russia is in no wise included in that division of the globe—some time in late June. After much reflection I have decided to let the boy accompany his mother, in the care of his niania, who has my absolute confidence. My occupations are such that I could not be much with him during Laurence’s absence. I am not certain whether a sojourn in England would suit him. He is, as you know, my treasure of treasures, and since you tell me that you intend leaving Paris for Plenhöel in June, could I, upon the strength of our long and loyal friendship, venture to impose yet another duty upon you? Perhaps you will think it pleasant. You are so kind-hearted. It is, namely, to accept my little Piotr as your guest, or rather charge, while Laurence visits her friends. The niania and my faithful old Garrassime, who never leaves him, will be responsible for his behavior. Am I too indiscreet? I think not, provided my cousin Marguerite pleads my cause with you. Tell her that I send Piotr to her as a little messenger from afar, a playfellow, or a toy, according to choice. He is very advanced for his age (all paternal pride laid aside), even too much so—which is one of the reasons why I think that a thorough change will be good for him—very advanced indeed, and sometimes preternaturally solemn, as his eminently Slav nature inclines him to be, not to mention some decidedly British and splenetic strain, inherited, doubtless, from some maternal ancestor or other.
I am waiting your reply very anxiously, and remain, my dear Régis,
Your devoted friend and cousin,
Basil.
Marguerite, curled up on an uncompromisingly bamboo lounge in the flower-gallery of the Hôtel de Plenhöel—where five years before she had bidden Basil farewell—was reading for the tenth time at least Basil’s letter, received some days before. Her father had answered it by return post—of course in the affirmative—and ever since then Marguerite had been preparing to receive her youthful guest.
At twenty-one the “Gamin” was still the “Gamin” of yore. To the eye she had not changed at all, yet she was more than ever the “Moonglade” of her cousin’s fancy, by right of some quality as apparent as the path of its transmission to the observer was obscure. She was the picture of ethereal health—if one may thus express oneself—so delicately tinted was her little person, so gravely sweet her eyes. The rose hue of her skin was the exact color of those tiny waxen blossoms the Bretons call fleurs-de-Jesus, that have but the very faintest hint of a blush beneath their white surface. Her hair was the same pale-golden nimbus as when she left her convent, but she wore it differently now—more smoothly coiled around her small head. In one word, there was about her a sort of crystalline aureole that set her apart from other beings. “Antinoüs,” if questioned, would have asserted—and with truth—that she was the “jolliest little chap” in creation, though a finer observer might have maintained that her laughter was often from the lips only and not from the eyes—those eyes that at this moment, while she was alone with Basil’s letter, were not entirely dry. Once or twice she breathed quickly, impatiently, as she thought of all that had happened. Indeed, the past years had sometimes been hard to get through with. She knew without the possibility of a doubt that Basil was not happy. She had never been told so, but, nevertheless, she knew! Had it been otherwise the “Gamin,” the gay and brave according to Jean de Salvières, would have felt differently, and accepted life and its burdens easily enough. Unfortunately, it cost her, in the light of this intuitive knowledge, a good deal of energy to do so, and her oft-repeated silent vows to think no more about it were writ in water.
She was looking forward with suppressed delight to the arrival of Piotr. Was he like his father, or his beautiful mother? she wondered. Marguerite adored children—especially little boys—and here again she was swayed by a clear-sightedness far beyond her age, for the modern little girl did not please her, less because of what they really are than on account of what they are bound to become—pleasure-loving, noisy, untutored beings, now that the wholesome principles of other times have been trampled under foot, and the fad for feminine “emancipation” has become the most dangerous craze the world has ever known.
The Hôtel de Plenhöel was en fête, and decked with flowers as for some royal reception; toys of superfine quality and astounding quantity were piled up in Marguerite’s personal salon to greet the baby prince, and all the morning Marguerite herself had flitted to and fro, up and down stairs, to arrange and prepare.
In an hour she would be with her father at the terminus, awaiting the private car attached to the express bringing Laurence and her suite, Piotr and his own. How large and magnificent that sounded! She suddenly laughed, pocketed Basil’s epistle, and jumped to her feet, ready for action. “Poor little boy!” she mechanically murmured. “I must hurry!” But why poor? She could not have said why, though instinctively she pitied the child—and pity is akin to love.
In her fresh summer frock of white piqué, a white-banded sailor-hat on her golden locks that seemed to shine as through a wash of silver, a knot of Malmaison carnations thrust through her waist-ribbon, she looked indeed exquisitely young as she stood beside “Antinoüs,” inside the station. He, too, had not altered, and was still the beau garçon, full of chic and vim, who conquered all hearts at the point of his blond mustache. There was a white carnation in his coat, and his straw hat, set at the exactly correct angle, gave him an almost boyish appearance.
In a few minutes the corridor-train came puffing up the shining metals in the wake of its spick-and-span locomotive, and the doors of the waiting-rooms were thrown wide. Marguerite had paled a trifle as she advanced to the private car (beside which now stood a Kossàk of the Russian Embassy in his dressing-gown of a coat, all brilliant with silver, holding high his astrakhaned head), and saw a graceful, languid figure wrapped in diaphanous veils, assisted to alight. Behind her came the towering form of old Garrassime, carrying in his arms a boy of startling beauty. “Antinoüs,” hat in hand, was already bowing before Laurence, who, disentangling a slim, gloved hand from her many dust-draperies, allowed him to press it to his lips.