The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (13 page)

“Lady Diana, in the face of our friend’s alarming information, I don’t hesitate for a second to offer to allow you to break our engagement. If you prefer not to undertake the adventure, I will release you from your vow. Much as it means to me, I don’t want to expose you to the relentless vengeance of a woman like Irina.”

I remarked that Lady Diana was deeply touched by her admirer’s
beau geste
. She placed her little hand on Varichkine’s and replied:

“Varichkine, I am infinitely grateful to you for your expression of unselfish generosity, but I would blush to flee in the face of a threatening rival. I am going to prove to you that a British gentlewoman does not even know the meaning of fear. If any real danger arises, you will find me by your side.”

The light of intense satisfaction shone in Varichkine’s eyes. He passionately kissed Lady Diana’s wrist and, turning to me, he apologized:

“My friend, forgive this sentimental demonstration in your presence. But Lady Diana’s response so pleased me that I simply could not restrain myself. I’m sure you understand. Ah, it is good to be in love!”

I considered with curiosity this extremist so suddenly ensnared by Cupid. I recalled Denys, the Tyrant of Syracuse, who was enslaved by a Sicilian beauty; Gengis Khan, who plucked the petals from a marguerite at the feet of a Mongolian adorned with the hides of wild beasts; Marat, who, before the bathing
hour, played the viola beneath the balcony of Charlotte Corday. There is no doubt about it, there are really some fine sentiments in the souls of the wildest revolutionaries and, under their purple cloaks, the rural garb of Berquin’s shepherds.

“My dear fellow,” I said, “since we are all three united in the idea of making this amorous conspiracy a success, you won’t think me indiscreet if I ask you a question. Have you informed Madam Mouravieff that the days of your liaison are numbered?”

“You’re joking again! I have taken good care not to give the alarm too soon. The day that Lady Diana and I actually cross the Rubicon, I shall let Irina know and, as is the custom, I shall deposit the proper indemnity to her account in a bank, either in Geneva or Zurich.”

“I am afraid that she still loves you and that no monetary inducement will appease her suffering.”

“Then I’m sorry. There are love affairs which, in the course of time, weigh too heavily on human hearts, especially when there is a certain amount of gratitude entertained. It’s like struggling with a dead body. No one under obligations ever bears the burden easily. I am speaking with the most brutal frankness. I used to love Irina very dearly. But I resent the fact that I owe so much to her. Earthly lovers have a thousand and one reasons for hating each other. When Eros dips his arrows in the gratitude of one of them, the slow poison does its work. And the one who, feeling the presence of that poison in her veins, contemplates the flame of his passion, is envious of crying, like Macbeth, ‘Out, brief candle.’ Love is not a great book in which the ‘I ought to’ of the man can make him subservient to the ‘I have’ of the woman. Or at all events, damn the man who thinks it is!”

These Communist theories, on a subject which has been
immortalized by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, were anything but insane.

“Varichkine,” I said smilingly, “you express yourself like a white guard who has read Schopenhauer while on duty at Wrangel’s headquarters.”

“Only because we are all reactionaries on this particular subject, old fellow. It is easy enough to nationalize mines and wheat fields. But love? It is protected from the dumdum bullets of reformers. It is immune from all pacifist serums. When peace reigns once more on earth—may we never live to see that condition of complete paralysis among civilized people!—war will take refuge in the hearts of lovers.”

Lady Diana rebelled against this prediction. “No, no! Lovers don’t make war. Better say little maneuvers, unimportant engineerings.”

“Don’t you mean unimportant outrages, Lady Diana?”

Varichkine stroked his beard.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Lady Diana. The French are never serious. They juggle with principles, make fun of difficulties and have been walking the tightrope of virtuosity for ten centuries. A singular nation, you know. Pleasing, but, at the same time, annoying. Like those pedantic old maids who have read too much, and, worse still, have retained too much of what they’ve read, France warms the far-from-fresh eggs of tradition under her skirts and keeps her house in order. When modern ideas enter her parlor, she tolerates them, because she cannot deny the mistakes she herself made in her youth and her follies, when, like a
jeune fille
tasting freedom for the first time, she frolicked about in front of the drawbridge of the Bastille. But now that the New Thought has left her house, she takes a broom and a duster to clean away every trace which that muddy-booted visitor may have left on her rugs! Yes,
that’s the France of today. Marianne has a muffler, a pair of mittens, and a woolen cloth to wrap around her right foot. She is a repentant coquette, who used to wear dainty underclothes with pretty ribbons but who now takes refuge behind red flannels. If she puts rouge on her cheeks now and then, don’t let her deceive you. It’s nothing but one of her old flirtatious habits breaking out for a moment. Tomorrow she will expiate on the altar of Democracy.”

The light fumes of an excellent Moselle had wafted away all Lady Diana’s preoccupation. She turned to Varichkine and approved: “Your description of France is good, dearest. Tell us something about my country. What do they say about it in Moscow?”

“England? A prude preserved in oil.”

Lady Diana threw back her head and bit savagely into her amber cigarette holder. “That is hardly fair to my compatriots!”

“You don’t expect me to indulge in worthless flattery, do you, Lady Diana? No? Then you know as well as I do that, individually, the English are very estimable and frequently generous, but that, once banded together to form a nation, they become unbearable. If Great Britain exported nothing but charming girls and bacon, the entire world would entertain grateful stomachs and—everything else for her. But she suffers from hyperegotism—a cancer which can only be diagnosed as the great
Me
and which is spreading slowly but surely. It will be a pity if it suffocates her some day.”

Varichkine sneered before concluding gallantly, “Forgive my cynical opinions. After all they have a merely speculative value. Great Britain now holds for me all the seductions of a Princess stolen from
The Thousand and One Nights
, since you are her personification.”

Lady Diana smiled radiantly; her little foot traveled about
under the table. As it encountered mine by accident, I pushed it gently in Varichkine’s direction, murmuring, “A little more to the left, my dear.”

The close-cropped Pomeranian waiter who served us, in a white coat, with a number in place of a decoration, had just brought the coffee when Lady Diana’s chauffeur appeared on the terrace.

“Your chauffeur is looking for you,” I whispered. “What do you suppose he wants?”

Lady Diana beckoned to him. He stood behind her chair.

“Milady, I have just been approached by a man who asked me if Mr. Varichkine was in the restaurant. I told him I did not know.”

Lady Diana, worried, looked at Varichkine, who asked the chauffeur, “A tall man with light hair and a gray cap?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, tell him at once that I am here, and that I want to see him.”

The chauffeur bowed and disappeared. Lady Diana and I failed to understand.

Varichkine explained briefly, “Don’t be afraid. That’s Tarass, my servant. A Ukrainian whose life I saved in nineteen-nineteen. He is absolutely devoted to me. I always keep him informed of my whereabouts so that he can find me if anything of importance occurs. If he has come all the way to Schlachtensee this evening he must have an urgent message to communicate.”

The Ukrainian entered the restaurant. A tall, thin fellow, pale and blond.
A silhouette of white wood, crowned above the mouth with the yellow wisps of a drooping mustache. He mumbled some words of Russian in Varichkine’s ear and
handed him an envelope. Varichkine tore it open, read the short note, and sat up straight in his astonishment. He waved the Ukrainian away and announced:

“At eight o’clock this evening Madam Mouravieff came to my house. She found Tarass who, invariably obedient, pretended to be in ignorance as to where I was dining. Irina scribbled these lines and told Tarass to give them to me upon my return. I will translate the note:

Dearest: Borokine has telegraphed that my presence is necessary at the Industrial Congress which is to go into session tomorrow at Moscow. I am taking the 9:20 train and am sorry to have missed you. I shall surely be back within two weeks. Don’t forget me, darling. Your adoring
I
RINA
.

Varichkine put the letter on the table. Although it was written in Russian, I recognized the fine, close hand of Madam Mouravieff. Lady Diana interrogated Varichkine with a look. He volunteered no reply. Instead he began designing figure eights with his spoon, in the coffee. As his silence evidently annoyed Lady Diana I remarked:

“Well, I don’t see anything extraordinary about that. Do you?”

Varichkine stopped the gyrations of his spoon and replied, “I wouldn’t see anything extraordinary about it if there were going to be such a thing as an Industrial Congress in Moscow. But, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. And you must admit I’d be in the know if there were—”

Varichkine’s response set me to thinking. “Then do you suppose she has invented that as an excuse for going to Moscow?”

“Apparently.”

Lady Diana looked curiously at the lines which she could not read and said, “She calls you ‘darling.’ That doesn’t sound
to me like the expression of an outraged or even a suspicious mistress.”

Varichkine folded up the paper and tucked it away in a pocket. “Rely on what I say—this sudden departure, on the same day that you have received the good news about your concession, is no ordinary coincidence. Irina has never mentioned this voyage. I saw her only yesterday. Nothing in her attitude suggested the slightest desire to return to Russia.”

“You think, then, that there is still some trouble ahead?”

“Not where the Telav affair is concerned. The London delegate has been officially advised and the president of your corporation has registered the act at the Foreign Office. Consequently, it seems to me materially impossible that Irina—if such were her purpose—could succeed in annulling the decree.”

“You mean that the only course left open to her is that of personal vengeance.”

“Yes.”

“In that case, she would need to be thoroughly acquainted with your intentions, and she would have to play her game under cover.”

Varichkine stroked his beard and smiled at Lady Diana.
“Would she be the first woman capable of wearing a mask in order to deceive someone?”

Lady Diana, in deep thought, made no reply. Varichkine, unmoved, inhaled the aroma of his steaming coffee. I warmed, between my fingers, my little glass of
eau de vie de Danzig
, and I recited to myself the sibylline text of the letter. A boat, carrying a green lantern which cast wavy reflections on the black water, glided by on the passive surface of the lake. In the stern, a man and a woman were wrapped in each other’s arms under the protecting cover of night, their accomplice. The dipping of
the oars broke the silence and a voice, as of the dead, seemed to answer:

“
Ach
! Egon, will you stop?”

The next morning while I was making a tour of the eastern hemisphere of my sunburned visage, Lady Diana called to me from her room:

“Gerard! Are you fit to be seen?”

“Yes. But I’m not shaved.”

“That’s all right. Open the door.”

She came in and handed me this telegram:

Arrived Nikolaïa. Have full power. Council of Administration to take up details with local authorities. If you think wise to attach someone charged with your interests to go inspect Telav lands send lawyer or secretary. Respectfully, Edwin Blankett, Hotel Vokzal, Nikolaïa
.

Lady Diana said, “You know that the corporation which my friend, Sir Eric Blushmore, has just formed to exploit my concession has chosen Mr. Edwin Blankett as it engineer. Evidently he has just arrived. Would you mind awfully going to Nikolaïa, Gerard? Mr. Blankett is right in asking for someone to represent my interests and I imagine that he has acted on Sir Eric’s suggestion with the idea of demonstrating complete loyalty to me. As it would take several days to induce one of my London attorneys to make the voyage and as you are the only man who really has my confidence, I would prefer that—”

I interrupted Lady Diana with a peremptory wave of my Gillette. “I will leave for Constantinople by the first fast train. I will catch the Orient-Express at Vienna and take the first boat from the Bosphorus bound for the Caucasus.”

Lady Diana thanked me enthusiastically. “Gerard, you are an angel! If you didn’t have all that horrid soap on your face
I would kiss you on both cheeks. May I help you with your packing? Let me do it and you can go on with your shaving.”

I rushed to the mirror while she busied herself with my baggage. When I returned, my cheeks still moist, I found that she had literally thrown into my bag twelve neckties and one pair of socks, my patent leather dancing shoes and a bottle of aspirin tablets, my opera hat, a bandanna handkerchief, and one garter. I entreated her to go and get dressed and explained to her politely that she was not a success as a valet. She seemed astonished and left the room accusing me of being a nasty old thing.

I SELECTED MY PLACE IN A COMPARTMENT OF the Berlin-Vienna Express and rejoined Lady Diana who had accompanied me to the Anhalt Station. She repeated her final instructions:

“You’re sure you understand, Gerard? When you have found Mr. Edwin Blankett, study with him the immediate value of the wells in my concession. Telegraph your opinion when you have visited the Telav lands together. I depend on you for detailed information on the eventual returns from the business.”