The Lock And Key Library

V >> Various >> The Lock And Key Library


"I was returning home after my prolonged stay in Petersburg, intending to
linger on my way and test with mine own ears certain among the many
dialects of Eastern Europe--anent which there is a symmetrical little
cluster of philological knotty points it is my modest intention one day to
unravel. However, that is neither here nor there. On the road to Hungary I
bethought myself opportunely of proving the once pressingly offered
hospitality of the Baron Kossowski.

"You may have met the man, Major Travers; he was a tremendous sportsman,
if you like. I first came across him at McNeil's place in remote Ireland.
Now, being in Bukowina, within measurable distance of his Carpathian
abode, and curious to see a Polish lord at home, I remembered his
invitation. It was already of long standing, but it had been warm, born in
fact of a sudden fit of enthusiasm for me"--here a half-mocking smile
quivered an instant under the speaker's black mustache--"which, as it was
characteristic, I may as well tell you about.

"It was on the day of, or, rather, to be accurate, on the day after my
arrival, toward the small hours of the morning, in the smoking room at
Rathdrum. Our host was peacefully snoring over his empty pipe and his
seventh glass of whisky, also empty. The rest of the men had slunk off to
bed. The baron, who all unknown to himself had been a subject of most
interesting observation to me the whole evening, being now practically
alone with me, condescended to turn an eye, as wide awake as a fox's,
albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who
had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of
a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in
the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of
the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered into
conversation with me.

"He would no doubt have been much surprised could he have known that he
was already mapped out, craniologically and physiognomically, catalogued
with care and neatly laid by in his proper ethnological box, in my private
type museum; that, as I sat and examined him from my different coigns of
vantage in library, in dining and smoking room that evening, not a look of
his, not a gesture went forth but had significance for me.

"You, I had thought, with your broad shoulders and deep chest; your
massive head that should have gone with a tall stature, not with those
short sturdy limbs; with your thick red hair, that should have been black
for that matter, as should your wide-set yellow eyes--you would be a real
puzzle to one who did not recognize in you equal mixtures of the fair,
stalwart and muscular Slav with the bilious-sanguine, thick-set, wiry
Turanian. Your pedigree would no doubt bear me out: there is as much of
the Magyar as of the Pole in your anatomy. Athlete, and yet a tangle of
nerves; a ferocious brute at bottom, I dare say, for your broad forehead
inclines to flatness; under your bristling beard your jaw must protrude,
and the base of your skull is ominously thick. And, with all that, capable
of ideal transports: when that girl played and sang to-night I saw the
swelling of your eyelid veins, and how that small, tenacious, claw-like
hand of yours twitched! You would be a fine leader of men--but God help
the wretches in your power!

"So had I mused upon him. Yet I confess that when we came in closer
contact with each other, even I was not proof against the singular
courtesy of his manner and his unaccountable personal charm.

"Our conversation soon grew interesting; to me as a matter of course, and
evidently to him also. A few general words led to interchange of remarks
upon the country we were both visitors in and so to national
characteristics--Pole and Irishman have not a few in common, both in their
nature and history. An observation which he made, not without a certain
flash in his light eyes and a transient uncovering of the teeth, on the
Irish type of female beauty suddenly suggested to me a stanza of an
ancient Polish ballad, very full of milk-and-blood imagery, of alternating
ferocity and voluptuousness. This I quoted to the astounded foreigner in
the vernacular, and this it was that metamorphosed his mere perfection of
civility into sudden warmth, and, in fact, procured me the invitation in
question.

"When I left Rathdrum the baron's last words to me were that if I ever
thought of visiting his country otherwise than in books, he held me bound
to make Yany, his Galician seat, my headquarters of study.

"From Czernowicz, therefore, where I stopped some time, I wrote, received
in due time a few lines of prettily worded reply, and ultimately entered
my sled in the nearest town to, yet at a most forbidding distance from,
Yany, and started on my journey thither.

"The undertaking meant many long hours of undulation and skidding over the
November snow, to the somniferous bell jangle of my dirty little horses,
the only impression of interest being a weird gypsy concert I came in for
at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in the snow where we halted for
the refreshment of man and beast. Here, I remember, I discovered a very
definite connection between the characteristic run of the tsimbol, the
peculiar bite of the Zigeuner's bow on his fiddle-string, and some
distinctive points of Turanian tongues. In other countries, in Spain, for
instance, your gypsy speaks differently on his instrument. But, oddly
enough, when I later attempted to put this observation on paper I could
find no word to express it."

A few of our company evinced signs of sleepiness, but most of us who knew
Marshfield, and that he could, unless he had something novel to say, be as
silent and retiring as he now evinced signs of being copious, awaited
further developments with patience. He has his own deliberate way of
speaking, which he evidently enjoys greatly, though it be occasionally
trying to his listeners.

"On the afternoon of my second day's drive, the snow, which till then had
fallen fine and continuous, ceased, and my Jehu, suddenly interrupting
himself in the midst of some exciting wolf story quite in keeping with the
time of year and the wild surroundings, pointed to a distant spot against
the gray sky to the northwest, between two wood-covered folds of
ground--the first eastern spurs of the great Carpathian chain.

"'There stands Yany,' said he. I looked at my far-off goal with interest.
As we drew nearer, the sinking sun, just dipping behind the hills, tinged
the now distinct frontage with a cold copper-like gleam, but it was only
for a minute; the next the building became nothing more to the eye than a
black irregular silhouette against the crimson sky.

"Before we entered the long, steep avenue of poplars, the early winter
darkness was upon us, rendered all the more depressing by gray mists which
gave a ghostly aspect to such objects as the sheen of the snow rendered
visible. Once or twice there were feeble flashes of light looming in
iridescent halos as we passed little clusters of hovels, but for which I
should have been induced to fancy that the great Hof stood alone in the
wilderness, such was the deathly stillness around. But even as the tall,
square building rose before us above the vapor, yellow lighted in various
stories, and mighty in height and breadth, there broke upon my ear a
deep-mouthed, menacing bay, which gave at once almost alarming reality to
the eerie surroundings. 'His lordship's boar and wolf hounds,' quoth my
charioteer calmly, unmindful of the regular pandemonium, of howls and
barks which ensued as he skillfully turned his horses through the gateway
and flogged the tired beasts into a sort of shambling canter that we might
land with glory before the house door: a weakness common, I believe, to
drivers of all nations.

"I alighted in the court of honor, and while awaiting an answer to my tug
at the bell, stood, broken with fatigue, depressed, chilled and aching,
questioning the wisdom of my proceedings and the amount of comfort,
physical and moral, that was likely to await me in a _tete-a-tete_ visit
with a well-mannered savage in his own home.

"The unkempt tribe of stable retainers who began to gather round me and my
rough vehicle in the gloom, with their evil-smelling sheepskins and their
resigned, battered visages, were not calculated to reassure me. Yet when
the door opened, there stood a smart chasseur and a solemn major-domo who
might but just have stepped out of Mayfair; and there was displayed a
spreading vista of warm, deep-colored halls, with here a statue and there
a stuffed bear, and under foot pile carpets strewn with rarest skins.

"Marveling, yet comforted withal, I followed the solemn butler, who
received me with the deference due to an expected guest and expressed the
master's regret for his enforced absence till dinner time. I traversed
vast rooms, each more sumptuous than the last, feeling the strangeness of
the contrast between the outer desolation and this sybaritic excess of
luxury growing ever more strongly upon me; caught a glimpse of a picture
gallery, where peculiar yet admirably executed latter-day French pictures
hung side by side with ferocious boar hunts of Snyder and such kin; and,
at length, was ushered into a most cheerful room, modern to excess in its
comfortable promise, where, in addition to the tall stove necessary for
warmth, there burned on an open hearth a vastly pleasant fire of resinous
logs, and where, on a low table, awaited me a dainty service of fragrant
Russian tea.

"My impression of utter novelty seemed somehow enhanced by this unexpected
refinement in the heart of the solitudes and in such a rugged shell, and
yet, when I came to reflect, it was only characteristic of my cosmopolitan
host. But another surprise was in store for me.

"When I had recovered bodily warmth and mental equilibrium in my downy
armchair, before the roaring logs, and during the delicious absorption of
my second glass of tea, I turned my attention to the French valet,
evidently the baron's own man, who was deftly unpacking my portmanteau,
and who, unless my practiced eye deceived me, asked for nothing better
than to entertain me with agreeable conversation the while.

"'Your master is out, then?' quoth I, knowing that the most trivial remark
would suffice to start him.

"True, Monseigneur was out; he was desolated in despair (this with the
national amiable and imaginative instinct); 'but it was doubtless
important business. M. le Baron had the visit of his factor during the
midday meal; had left the table hurriedly, and had not been seen since.
Madame la Baronne had been a little suffering, but she would receive
monsieur!'

"'Madame!' exclaimed I, astounded, 'is your master then married?--since
when?'--visions of a fair Tartar, fit mate for my baron, immediately
springing somewhat alluringly before my mental vision. But the answer
dispelled the picturesque fancy.

"'Oh, yes,' said the man, with a somewhat peculiar expression. 'Yes,
Monseigneur is married. Did Monsieur not know? And yet it was from England
that Monseigneur brought back his wife.'

"'An Englishwoman!'

"My first thought was one of pity; an Englishwoman alone in this
wilderness--two days' drive from even a railway station--and at the mercy
of Kossowski! But the next minute I reversed my judgment. Probably she
adored her rufous lord, took his veneer of courtesy--a veneer of the most
exquisite polish, I grant you, but perilously thin--for the very
perfection of chivalry. Or perchance it was his inner savageness itself
that charmed her; the most refined women often amaze one by the
fascination which the preponderance of the brute in the opposite sex seems
to have for them.

"I was anxious to hear more.

"'Is it not dull for the lady here at this time of the year?'

"The valet raised his shoulders with a gesture of despair that was almost
passionate.

"Dull! Ah, monsieur could not conceive to himself the dullness of it. That
poor Madame la Baronne! not even a little child to keep her company on the
long, long days when there was nothing but snow in the heaven and on the
earth and the howling of the wind and the dogs to cheer her. At the
beginning, indeed, it had been different; when the master first brought
home his bride the house was gay enough. It was all redecorated and
refurnished to receive her (monsieur should have seen it before, a mere
_rendezvous-de-chasse_--for the matter of that so were all the country
houses in these parts). Ah, that was the good time! There were visits
month after month; parties, sleighing, dancing, trips to St. Petersburg
and Vienna. But this year it seemed they were to have nothing but boars
and wolves. How madame could stand it--well, it was not for him to
speak--and heaving a deep sigh he delicately inserted my white tie round
my collar, and with a flourish twisted it into an irreproachable bow
beneath my chin. I did not think it right to cross-examine the willing
talker any further, especially as, despite his last asseveration, there
were evidently volumes he still wished to pour forth; but I confess that,
as I made my way slowly out of my room along the noiseless length of
passage, I was conscious of an unwonted, not to say vulgar, curiosity
concerning the woman who had captivated such a man as the Baron Kossowski.

"In a fit of speculative abstraction I must have taken the wrong turning,
for I presently found myself in a long, narrow passage. I did not
remember. I was retracing my steps when there came the sound of rapid
footfalls upon stone flags; a little door flew open in the wall close to
me, and a small, thick-set man, huddled in the rough sheepskin of the
Galician peasant, with a mangy fur cap on his head, nearly ran headlong
into my arms. I was about condescendingly to interpellate him in my best
Polish, when I caught the gleam of an angry yellow eye and noted the
bristle of a red beard--Kossowski!

"Amazed, I fell back a step in silence. With a growl like an uncouth
animal disturbed, he drew his filthy cap over his brow with a savage
gesture and pursued his way down the corridor at a sort of wild-boar trot.

"This first meeting between host and guest was so odd, so incongruous,
that it afforded me plenty of food for a fresh line of conjecture as I
traced my way back to the picture gallery, and from thence successfully to
the drawing room, which, as the door was ajar, I could not this time
mistake.

"It was large and lofty and dimly lit by shaded lamps; through the rosy
gloom I could at first only just make out a slender figure by the hearth;
but as I advanced, this was resolved into a singularly graceful woman in
clinging, fur-trimmed velvet gown, who, with one hand resting on the high
mantelpiece, the other hanging listlessly by her side, stood gazing down
at the crumbling wood fire as if in a dream.

"My friends are kind enough to say that I have a cat-like tread; I know
not how that may be; at any rate the carpet I was walking upon was thick
enough to smother a heavier footfall: not until I was quite close to her
did my hostess become aware of my presence. Then she started violently and
looked over her shoulder at me with dilating eyes. Evidently a nervous
creature, I saw the pulse in her throat, strained by her attitude, flutter
like a terrified bird.

"The next instant she had stretched out her hand with sweet English words
of welcome, and the face, which I had been comparing in my mind to that of
Guido's Cenci, became transformed by the arch and exquisite smile of a
Greuse. For more than two years I had had no intercourse with any of my
nationality. I could conceive the sound of his native tongue under such
circumstances moving a man in a curious unexpected fashion.

"I babbled some commonplace reply, after which there was silence while we
stood opposite each other, she looking at me expectantly. At length, with
a sigh checked by a smile and an overtone of sadness in a voice that yet
tried to be sprightly:

"'Am I then so changed, Mr. Marshfield?' she asked. And all at once I knew
her: the girl whose nightingale throat had redeemed the desolation of the
evenings at Rathdrum, whose sunny beauty had seemed (even to my
celebrated cold-blooded aestheticism) worthy to haunt a man's dreams. Yes,
there was the subtle curve of the waist, the warm line of throat, the
dainty foot, the slender tip-tilted fingers--witty fingers, as I had
classified them--which I now shook like a true Briton, instead of availing
myself of the privilege the country gave me, and kissing her slender
wrist.

"But she was changed; and I told her so with unconventional frankness,
studying her closely as I spoke.

"'I am afraid,' I said gravely, 'that this place does not agree with you.'

"She shrank from my scrutiny with a nervous movement and flushed to the
roots of her red-brown hair. Then she answered coldly that I was wrong,
that she was in excellent health, but that she could not expect any more
than other people to preserve perennial youth (I rapidly calculated she
might be two-and-twenty), though, indeed, with a little forced laugh, it
was scarcely flattering to hear one had altered out of all recognition.
Then, without allowing me time to reply, she plunged into a general topic
of conversation which, as I should have been obtuse indeed not to take the
hint, I did my best to keep up.

"But while she talked of Vienna and Warsaw, of her distant neighbors, and
last year's visitors, it was evident that her mind was elsewhere; her eye
wandered, she lost the thread of her discourse, answered me at random, and
smiled her piteous smile incongruously.

"However lonely she might be in her solitary splendor, the company of a
countryman was evidently no such welcome diversion.

"After a little while she seemed to feel herself that she was lacking in
cordiality, and, bringing her absent gaze to bear upon me with a puzzled
strained look: 'I fear you will find it very dull,' she said, 'my husband
is so wrapped up this winter in his country life and his sport. You are
the first visitor we have had. There is nothing but guns and horses here,
and you do not care for these things.'

"The door creaked behind us; and the baron entered, in faultless evening
dress. Before she turned toward him I was sharp enough to catch again the
upleaping of a quick dread in her eyes, not even so much dread perhaps, I
thought afterwards, as horror--the horror we notice in some animals at the
nearing of a beast of prey. It was gone in a second, and she was smiling.
But it was a revelation.

"Perhaps he beat her in Russian fashion, and she, as an Englishwoman, was
narrow-minded enough to resent this; or perhaps, merely, I had the
misfortune to arrive during a matrimonial misunderstanding.

"The baron would not give me leisure to reflect; he was so very effusive
in his greeting--not a hint of our previous meeting--unlike my hostess,
all in all to me; eager to listen, to reply; almost affectionate, full of
references to old times and genial allusions. No doubt when he chose he
could be the most charming of men; there were moments when, looking at him
in his quiet smile and restrained gesture, the almost exaggerated
politeness of his manner to his wife, whose fingers he had kissed with
pretty, old-fashioned gallantry upon his entrance, I asked myself, Could
that encounter in the passage have been a dream? Could that savage in the
sheepskin be my courteous entertainer?

"Just as I came in, did I hear my wife say there was nothing for you to do
in this place?" he said presently to me. Then, turning to her:

"You do not seem to know Mr. Marshfield. Wherever he can open his eyes
there is for him something to see which might not interest other men. He
will find things in my library which I have no notion of. He will discover
objects for scientific observation in all the members of my household, not
only in the good-looking maids--though he could, I have no doubt, tell
their points as I could those of a horse. We have maidens here of several
distinct races, Marshfield. We have also witches, and Jew leeches, and
holy daft people. In any case, Yany, with all its dependencies, material,
male and female, are at your disposal, for what you can make out of them.

"'It is good," he went on gayly, 'that you should happen to have this
happy disposition, for I fear that, no later than to-morrow, I may have to
absent myself from home. I have heard that there are news of wolves--they
threaten to be a greater pest than usual this winter, but I am going to
drive them on quite a new plan, and it will go hard with me if I don't
come even with them. Well for you, by the way, Marshfield, that you did
not pass within their scent to-day.' Then, musingly: 'I should not give
much for the life of a traveler who happened to wander in these parts just
now.' Here he interrupted himself hastily and went over to his wife, who
had sunk back on her chair, livid, seemingly on the point of swooning.

"His gaze was devouring; so might a man look at the woman he adored, in
his anxiety.

"'What! faint, Violet, alarmed!' His voice was subdued, yet there was an
unmistakable thrill of emotion in it.

"'Pshaw!' thought I to myself, 'the man is a model husband.'

"She clinched her hands, and by sheer force of will seemed to pull herself
together. These nervous women have often an unexpected fund of strength.

"'Come, that is well,' said the baron with a flickering smile; 'Mr.
Marshfield will think you but badly acclimatized to Poland if a little
wolf scare can upset you. My dear wife is so soft-hearted,' he went on to
me, 'that she is capable of making herself quite ill over the sad fate
that might have, but has not, overcome you. Or, perhaps,' he added, in a
still gentler voice, 'her fear is that I may expose myself to danger for
the public weal.'

"She turned her head away, but I saw her set her teeth as if to choke a
sob. The baron chuckled in his throat and seemed to luxuriate in the
pleasant thought.

"At this moment folding doors were thrown open, and supper was announced.
I offered my arm, she rose and took it in silence. This silence she
maintained during the first part of the meal, despite her husband's
brilliant conversation and almost uproarious spirits. But by and by a
bright color mounted to her cheeks and luster to her eyes. I suppose you
will think me horribly unpoetical if I add that she drank several glasses
of champagne one after the other, a fact which perhaps may account for the
change.

"At any rate she spoke and laughed and looked lovely, and I did not wonder
that the baron could hardly keep his eyes off her. But whether it was her
wifely anxiety or not--it was evident her mind was not at ease through it
all, and I fancied that her brightness was feverish, her merriment
slightly hysterical.

"After supper--an exquisite one it was--we adjourned together, in foreign
fashion, to the drawing-room; the baron threw himself into a chair and,
somewhat with the air of a pasha, demanded music. He was flushed; the
veins of his forehead were swollen and stood out like cords; the wine
drunk at table was potent: even through my phlegmatic frame it ran hotly.

"She hesitated a moment or two, then docilely sat down to the piano. That
she could sing I have already made clear: how she could sing, with what
pathos, passion, as well as perfect art, I had never realized before.

"When the song was ended she remained for a while, with eyes lost in
distance, very still, save for her quick breathing. It was clear she was
moved by the music; indeed she must have thrown her whole soul into it.

"At first we, the audience, paid her the rare compliment of silence. Then
the baron broke forth into loud applause. 'Brava, brava! that was really
said _con amore_. A delicious love song, delicious--but French! You must
sing one of our Slav melodies for Marshfield before you allow us to go and
smoke.'

"She started from her reverie with a flush, and after a pause struck
slowly a few simple chords, then began one of those strangely sweet, yet
intensely pathetic Russian airs, which give one a curious revelation of
the profound, endless melancholy lurking in the national mind.

"'What do you think of it?' asked the baron of me when it ceased.

"'What I have always thought of such music--it is that of a hopeless
people; poetical, crushed, and resigned.'

"He gave a loud laugh. 'Hear the analyst, the psychologue--why, man, it is
a love song! Is it possible that we, uncivilized, are truer realists than
our hypercultured Western neighbors? Have we gone to the root of the
matter, in our simple way?'

"The baroness got up abruptly. She looked white and spent; there were
bister circles round her eyes.

"'I am tired,' she said, with dry lips. 'You will excuse me, Mr.
Marshfield, I must really go to bed.'

"'Go to bed, go to bed,' cried her husband gayly. Then, quoting in Russian
from the song she had just sung: 'Sleep, my little soft white dove: my
little innocent tender lamb!' She hurried from the room. The baron laughed
again, and, taking me familiarly by the arm, led me to his own set of
apartments for the promised smoke. He ensconced me in an armchair, placed
cigars of every description and a Turkish pipe ready to my hand, and a
little table on which stood cut-glass flasks and beakers in tempting
array.