"You'll not be forgetting that we leave by the Berlin mail to-night," said he. "It's all fixed up that we spend a fortnight in St. Petersburg as the guest of Count Uspensky. I've a wish to see the city, and the arrangement suits me finely. He's a big man there, and has big friends; and he's to have the charge of us. There would be more surprising things than that we should make money there. Ye'll not omit the uniform. It's a poor figure I'd cut in civilian clothes, don't you think?"
I heard him out and then dressed him. You may be sure that I was pleased enough, since Paris was just stagnation then, and it was queer if something did not turn up in a new city and among new people. Little did I think, however, that this was the last journey Sir Nicolas Steele and I were to make together. Yet so it proved, as this story will tell you.
We arrived in St. Petersburg on a Wednesday morning, and by the following Saturday night I had learned enough Russian to bawl "Hisworshik" to a cabman and to get a glass of beer at a bar. The man whose guests we were took us to the Hôtel Klee; but I soon found that we were not to stop long in the city, he being about to set out for the house of one of his kinswomen, whose place was ten miles from Novgorod. And here let me say that Count Fédor Uspensky was never a friend to me, though I stood by him to the end of it. He was a cur right through; a swaggering, bullying, loud-mouthed swashbuckler that set my right arm itching every time he came near me. How it was that he made a friend of Nicolas Steele the Lord only knows. Yet friends they were from the first; and I don't think my master ever did so much for any man as he did for this little Russian captain, who was his host in St. Petersburg. It was a sight to see these two, just as different as chalk from cheese, walking arm- in-arm down the Nevski Prospekt, or ogling the women in Isaac's cathedral. Perhaps it was that each thought he would do the other; perhaps they fell together out of that odd sympathy which men who have known ups and downs show for each other. Any way, they were as thick as thieves; and little it was I saw of them during the five days we spent in the city.
This didn't matter to me, you may be sure. If ever there was a town to let a man play the fine gentleman, that town is St. Petersburg. The very breadth of the streets, the miles of palaces, the over-stocked shops, put a sense of gentility into you. Turn where you will, there are uniforms and pretty women to see. The whole city loves to kowtow to its great folks; even a gentleman's gentleman can find plenty to touch their hats to him and call him excellency. I lived like a fighting-cock the whole time I was there; and when the day came for us to move into the country, there was no man less pleased than I was. Nor did I understand, until Sir Nicolas told me, why we should move at all.
"It's this way," said he, speaking at bedtime on the last night we were at the Hôtel Klée—"there's a cousin of the count's to be married, and we're to go to the wedding with him. Rich people they are, let me tell you, the widow and daughter of Field-marshal Pouzatòv that was. The girl carried on with my friend a couple of years ago, and he's fretting to see the last of her. It wouldn't be decent to stand against this whim. We'll just have a week in the country, and there will be the end of it. Ye'll take plenty of silver with us, for you can't look up to the sky in this cursed place without tossing a rouble to the angels."
He spoke light enough, but his talk would have been different if he had known the black thing we were to see at that very Novgorod, and the end of those three days in the country. He hadn't an inkling of it then, however, and I was no wiser, needless to tell. All I saw before us was a holiday in a Russian village; and while that was not much to look forward to, I remembered that a wedding might smarten things up a bit. "There'll be girls about," said I, "and plenty to eat and drink; and though the women here have got faces like frying-pans, I'll manage to put up with them for a day or two." And with this to keep my spirits up, I packed his bag again, and set off with him to Novgorod by the early morning train.
It was about half a day's journey from the city to Mme. Pouzatòv's place, and when we arrived at the station, there were two four-horse carriages—"chatevkas" they called them—waiting there to meet us. I saw at once, from the silver on the harness and the cut of the horses and men, that we'd come to a slap-up house; and by and by, when the count and Sir Nicolas had done bowing and scraping to the young lady who sat with another gentleman in the first carriage, I came to the conclusion that the people we were to stay with were the right sort. As for miss, she was the best imitation of a pretty girl I had seen in Russia; and though I never had an eye for dark-haired women myself, I could not help but be struck by Marya Pouzatòv. It was as good as a glass of wine any day to see her laugh. She had those speaking black eyes which would make the fortune of the plainest woman alive. And chatter—I believe she talked from the minute we came out of the station until she pulled up the steaming horses at her own door.
I have said that the drive, from the great Moscow railway to the house where the wedding was to be, might be reckoned at an hour. It wasn't a pretty drive, for the country was as flat as a carpet, and what trees I saw were pines in square-cut clumps. We passed a few ragged peasants on the dusty road, and met a priest going to market; but for right down loneliness and desolation send me to the Czar's dominions, and I'll never ask to see any thing worse. I was glad enough when the house came in sight at last—a long white building for all the world like three or four bungalows planked down together. There was an attempt at a bit of garden round about it, and what the people would have called a park beyond that; but it was not until you were inside the house that the means of the lady who kept it were displayed; and that they were first-class I never had a doubt. It was a mansion fit for an English nobleman; and many's the nobleman's place I've been into that wasn't a patch upon it. As for Sir Nicolas, he was beside himself from the start, and when I took him up his hot water for dinner, he could do nothing but talk about it.
"’Tis beautiful quarters we've found, entirely," said he, "and pretty people. I don't suppose ye've much to say about the money here. Faith, I'm beginning to wish I was the general myself. There's twenty thousand goes with the girl, the count tells me, and the reversion of the place. It's many qualities in a wife I could dispense with at a price like that."
"So she's to marry a general, sir?" asked I.
"No one else," said he, "but General Stolitzoff, that was against Osman Pacha before Plevna. A great man, with as many medals on his coat as I have buttons,"
"He wouldn't be young, sir?" I suggested.
"He would be fifty-five, I'm told, and young at that. It was her father's wish on his death-bed that she should have him; but she leads him the devil's own dance, from all I hear. Truth, she's a very sweet little woman—and then there's the money."
"Is the wedding soon, sir?" I asked.
"It's for to-day week, but we'll have a gay time between. They dance to-morrow when the general comes from Novgorod—lucky devil that he is!"
After this, one did not want to be very clever to learn how the land lay with him. I believe he was in love with Marya Pouzatòv from the start; and it's no wonder if he was. A daintier little thing never stepped out of a drawing-room than the girl I saw go in to dinner that night. It was as good as a play to watch him and the count running after her like lap-dogs, now one, now the other dancing attendance on her, and pluming himself that his was the winning hand. Her sweetheart, you must know, was still away at Novgorod, where his regiment was, and the other two did their best to console her. Not that she wanted much of that sort of thing, for a wickeder little flirt never lived, as Sir Nicolas Steele may have found out by this time. But they weren't behindhand in giving her the lead, as the Irishman would say; and the way the three of them went it was a thing to remember.
This, I must tell you, was on the first night of our arrival at Mme. Pouzatòv's house. They had put me in a good room in the servants' quarters, but I was out in the gardens all dinner-time, and little went on that I did not know about. Not that I found my company dull, for the place was chock-full of servants, and though I didn't understand a word of the lingo, I made myself at home like one o'clock. There's a power of language in the squeeze of a pretty woman's hand,