The Secret of the Night
“Wait here a moment,” urged Madame Trebassof, who did not know how to
take this abrupt action and whose anxiety was really painful to see.
She disappeared after the man of the false astrakhan. A few moments
afterwards she returned. She appeared even more agitated.
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, “but I cannot let them go like this.
They are much chagrined. They have insisted on knowing where they have
failed in their service. I have appeased them with money.”
“Yes, and tell me the whole truth, madame. You have directed them not to
go far away, but to remain near the villa so as to watch it as closely
as possible.”
She reddened.
“It is true. But they have gone, nevertheless. They had to obey you.
What can that paper be you have shown them?”
Rouletabille drew out again the billet covered with seals and signs and
cabalistics that he did not understand. Madame Trebassof translated it
aloud: “Order to all officials in surveillance of the Villa Trebassof to
obey the bearer absolutely. Signed: Koupriane.”
“Is it possible!” murmured Matrena Petrovna. “But Koupriane would never
have given you this paper if he had imagined that you would use it to
dismiss his agents.”
“Evidently. I have not asked him his advice, madame, you may be sure.
But I will see him to-morrow and he will understand.”
“Meanwhile, who is going to watch over him?” cried she.
Rouletabille took her hands again. He saw her suffering, a prey to
anguish almost prostrating. He pitied her. He wished to give her
immediate confidence.
“We will,” he said.
She saw his young, clear eyes, so deep, so intelligent, the well-formed
young head, the willing face, all his young ardency for her, and it
reassured her. Rouletabille waited for what she might say. She said
nothing. She took him in her arms and embraced him.
II. NATACHA
In the dining-room it was Thaddeus Tchnichnikoff’s turn to tell hunting
stories. He was the greatest timber-merchant in Lithuania. He owned
immense forests and he loved Feodor Feodorovitch* as a brother, for they
had played together all through their childhood, and once he had saved
him from a bear that was just about to crush his skull as one might
knock off a hat. General Trebassof’s father was governor of Courlande at
that time, by the grace of God and the Little Father. Thaddeus, who was
just thirteen years old, killed the bear with a single stroke of his
boar-spear, and just in time. Close ties were knit between the two
families by this occurrence, and though Thaddeus was neither noble-born
nor a soldier, Feodor considered him his brother and felt toward him
as such. Now Thaddeus had become the greatest timber-merchant of the
western provinces, with his own forests and also with his massive body,
his fat, oily face, his bull-neck and his ample paunch. He quitted
everything at once--all his affairs, his family--as soon as he learned
of the first attack, to come and remain by the side of his dear comrade
Feodor. He had done this after each attack, without forgetting one.
He was a faithful friend. But he fretted because they might not go
bear-hunting as in their youth. ‘Where, he would ask, are there any
bears remaining in Courlande, or trees for that matter, what you could
call trees, growing since the days of the grand-dukes of Lithuania,
giant trees that threw their shade right up to the very edge of the
towns? Where were such things nowadays? Thaddeus was very amusing,
for it was he, certainly, who had cut them away tranquilly enough
and watched them vanish in locomotive smoke. It was what was called
Progress. Ah, hunting lost its national character assuredly with tiny
new-growth trees which had not had time to grow. And, besides, one
nowadays had not time for hunting. All the big game was so far away.
Lucky enough if one seized the time to bring down a brace of woodcock
early in the morning. At this point in Thaddeus’s conversation there
was a babble of talk among the convivial gentlemen, for they had all the
time in the world at their disposal and could not see why he should be
so concerned about snatching a little while at morning or evening, or
at midday for that matter. Champagne was flowing like a river when
Rouletabille was brought in by Matrena Petrovna. The general, whose eyes
had been on the door for some time, cried at once, as though responding
to a cue:
“Ah, my dear Rouletabille! I have been looking for you. Our friends
wrote me you were coming to St. Petersburg.”
* In this story according to Russian habit General Trebassof
is called alternately by that name or the family name Feodor
Feodorovitch, and Madame Trebassof by that name or her
family name, Matrena Petrovna.--Translator’s Note.
Rouletabille hurried over to him and they shook hands like friends who
meet after a long separation. The reporter was presented to the company
as a close young friend from Paris whom they had enjoyed so much during
their latest visit to the City of Light. Everybody inquired for the
latest word of Paris as of a dear acquaintance.
“How is everybody at Maxim’s?” urged the excellent Athanase Georgevitch.
Thaddeus, too, had been once in Paris and he returned with an
enthusiastic liking for the French demoiselles.
“Vos gogottes, monsieur,” he said, appearing very amiable and leaning
on each word, with a guttural emphasis such as is common in the western
provinces, “ah, vos gogottes!”
Matrena Perovna tried to silence him, but Thaddeus insisted on his right
to appreciate the fair sex away from home. He had a turgid, sentimental
wife, always weeping and cramming her religious notions down his throat.
Of course someone asked Rouletabille what he thought of Russia, but he
had no more than opened his mouth to reply than Athanase Georgevitch
closed it by interrupting:
“Permettez! Permettez! You others, of the young generation, what do you
know of it? You need to have lived a long time and in all its districts
to appreciate Russia at its true value. Russia, my young sir, is as yet
a closed book to you.”
“Naturally,” Rouletabille answered, smiling.
“Well, well, here’s your health! What I would point out to you first of
all is that it is a good buyer of champagne, eh?”--and he gave a huge
grin. “But the hardest drinker I ever knew was born on the banks of the
Seine. Did you know him, Feodor Feodorovitch? Poor Charles Dufour, who
died two years ago at fete of the officers of the Guard. He wagered at
the end of the banquet that he could drink a glassful of champagne to
the health of each man there. There were sixty when you came to count
them. He commenced the round of the table and the affair went splendidly
up to the fifty-eighth man. But at the fifty-ninth--think of the
misfortune!--the champagne ran out! That poor, that charming, that
excellent Charles took up a glass of vin dore which was in the glass
of this fifty-ninth, wished him long life, drained the glass at one
draught, had just time to murmur, ‘Tokay, 1807,’ and fell back dead! Ah,
he knew the brands, my word! and he proved it to his last breath! Peace
to his ashes! They asked what he died of. I knew he died because of the
inappropriate blend of flavors. There should be discipline in all things
and not promiscuous mixing. One more glass of champagne and he would
have been drinking with us this evening. Your health, Matrena Petrovna.
Champagne, Feodor Feodorovitch! Vive la France, monsieur! Natacha, my
child, you must sing something. Boris will accompany you on the guzla.
Your father will enjoy it.”
All eyes turned toward Natacha as she rose.
Rouletabille was struck by her serene beauty. That was the first
enthralling impression, an impression so strong it astonished him, the
perfect serenity, the supreme calm, the tranquil harmony of her noble
features. Natacha was twenty. Heavy brown hair circled about er forehead
and was looped about her ears, which were half-concealed. Her profile
was clear-cut; her mouth was strong and revealed between red, firm lips
the even pearliness of her teeth. She was of medium height. In walking
she had the free, light step of the highborn maidens who, in primal
times, pressed the flowers as they passed without crushing them. But all
her true grace seemed to be concentrated in her eyes, which were deep
and of a dark blue. The impression she made upon a beholder was very
complex. And it would have been difficult to say whether the calm which
pervaded every manifestation of her beauty was the result of conscious
control or the most perfect ease.
She took down the guzla and handed it to Boris, who struck some
plaintive preliminary chords.
“What shall I sing?” she inquired, raising her father’s hand from the
back of the sofa where he rested and kissing it with filial tenderness.
“Improvise,” said the general. “Improvise in French, for the sake of our
guest.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Boris; “improvise as you did the other evening.”
He immediately struck a minor chord.
Natacha looked fondly at her father as she sang:
“When the moment comes that parts us at the close of day,
when the Angel of Sleep covers you with azure wings;
“Oh, may your eyes rest from so many tears, and your oppressed
heart have calm;
“In each moment that we have together, Father dear, let our
souls feel harmony sweet and mystical;
“And when your thoughts may have flown to other worlds, oh, may
my image, at least, nestle within your sleeping eyes.”
Natacha’s voice was sweet, and the charm of it subtly pervasive. The
words as she uttered them seemed to have all the quality of a prayer and
there were tears in all eyes, excepting those of Michael Korsakoff, the
second orderly, whom Rouletabille appraised as a man with a rough heart
not much open to sentiment.
“Feodor Feodorovitch,” said this officer, when the young girl’s voice
had faded away into the blending with the last note of the guzla,
“Feodor Feodorovitch is a man and a glorious soldier who is able to
sleep in peace, because he has labored for his country and for his
Czar.”
“Yes, yes. Labored well! A glorious soldier!” repeated Athanase
Georgevitch and Ivan Petrovitch. “Well may he sleep peacefully.”
“Natacha sang like an angel,” said Boris, the first orderly, in a
tremulous voice.
“Like an angel, Boris Nikolaievitch. But why did she speak of his heart
oppressed? I don’t see that General Trebassof has a heart oppressed, for
my part.” Michael Korsakoff spoke roughly as he drained his glass.
“No, that’s so, isn’t it?” agreed the others.
“A young girl may wish her father a pleasant sleep, surely!” said
Matrena Petrovna, with a certain good sense. “Natacha has affected us
all, has she not, Feodor?”
“Yes, she made me weep,” declared the general. “But let us have
champagne to cheer us up. Our young friend here will think we are
chicken-hearted.”
“Never think that,” said Rouletabille. “Mademoiselle has touched me
deeply as well. She is an artist, really a great artist. And a poet.”
“He is from Paris; he knows,” said the others.
And all drank.
Then they talked about music, with great display of knowledge concerning
things operatic. First one, then another went to the piano and ran
through some motif that the rest hummed a little first, then shouted in
a rousing chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect fracas of talk
and laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch walked across and
kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him great children who
amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and who drank in a fashion
more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna smoked cigarettes of yellow
tobacco incessantly, rising almost continually to make a hurried
round of the rooms, and after having prompted the servants to greater