Short Stories, - [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

“How could I ever forget him,” he says in turn. “Was there ever a man who left more ineffaceable traces behind him? He was an original madman.”

“Original!” echoes Elisaveta. “Ah! what a cowardly word. Original?” she repeats, as though interrogating her own thought. The young man frowns slightly, but she goes on with calm retrospection. “Only three years ago,” she said, “and he appeared among us like some brilliant meteor; fabulously rich; astonishing the world with his eccentric prodigalities. Then all those clod rooting swine, they deserted him when he was no longer wealthy.”

Her lover’s white teeth are like a wolfish danger signal as he turns to look at her.

“My dear,” he says coldly, “you can’t expect the world to be faithful to a proscript.”

“Proscript?”

“Exactly. They say that political complications were his ruin. At any rate he is banished from St. Petersburg.”

“Then he is in Siberia?”

With all a soldier’s diplomacy he says indifferently: “I believe not. The peasants tell a story of a hermit of the Steppes, who mends kettles, and plows for the farmers. Many believe it to be Hotzka with the remains of his own famous stud.”

“Farmers,—Kettles,” echoes Elisaveta, absently.

Suddenly she turns on her moody swain.

“Come, Alexander,” she cries; “I can see the crowds gather from here. Quick—we must hurry.”

It is scarcely a half-hour later and the race course presents a brilliant spectacle. The river Neva is now only a colossal roadway, between two walls of splendid rose granite that line its quays. It is a mirror of polished steel. Stands, richly decorated with flags, occupy at least a quarter of the inclosure, and over a hundred thousand spectators surround the arena. In the center of everything, a great pavilion draped in purple and gold shows that royalty is expected to take part in the city’s festival. A huge figure in a white uniform shows itself. The impassiveness of this countenance, with its eagle profile and small glittering eyes, is unmistakable.

’Tis he, the Autocrat—the Emperor of all the Russias.

From the human hive mounts and swells a growing noise; cries, oaths, calls from the Kras senders, all blend themselves in a formidable roar: “Long live the Tzar!”

At this moment a rosewood sled, drawn by white horses, stops in front of the box nearest the royal pavilion; the president of the jury precipitates himself at the horses feet and aids a young woman to descend. The tall figure, with its long, loose wrap of priceless blue fox and its aureole of wonderful red hair, is well-known in St. Petersburg. She is the Princess Elisaveta Palorna, the beauty of three seasons. Repine follows her. Under her little fur cap, with its jeweled fez, Veta’s eyes look out, serene, impenetrable. A bell sounds and silence falls on the waiting multitude. From open gates stream a dozen or more horses harnessed to light sleds of gilded osier. They are pure blooded Arabians, thickset mustangs from the Steppes, and highly bred Orloffs with sweeping manes white and shiny as spun glass.

The people watch these preliminaries apathetically. They are waiting for the piece de resistance, the three-horse-race with princes as drivers. Already four races have been run, the track is cleared and the five hundred workers take up their task of sweeping away the powdered ice beaten up by the iron hoofs. Once more the gates open and three splendid bays appear with the same sled of gilded osier, but larger and more elegant; they are followed by three black Finlanders, with shaggy coats and tails that sweep the ground. The last comers are Orloff stallions, white and dazzling as the snow itself. Their short hair glistens as though oiled, and silver reflections shadow their smooth flanks and elegant necks; their mouths are black and their nostrils immense, quivering and rose-lined; their eyes, tender, yet prominent and full of fire, are circled by a sooty ring like those of the Asiatic women. They are the pets of the hour. There they stand, the nine superb creatures, controlled by a splendid discipline that does not permit the most timid pawing of their impatient hoofs, and with over two hundred thousand eyes admiring their matchless perfection.

Three sorry horses, emaciated and sad, splashed with mud, and covered with a ragged harness, half string, half leather, advance slowly into the arena; behind them trails a clumsy vehicle, made from the bark of the Russian fir tree, and shaped like the Laplander’s hunting sled. With drooping heads and dragging limbs the weary beasts come forward and place themselves beside their aristocratic predecessors. A cry of horror rises up from the crowd. Leaning back in her box, Veta watches the late arrivals with fixed intentness.

The bell rings noisily. The race commences.

The bays lead by several lengths. The middle horse, an old favorite, lifts his feet with all the alluring charm of a star of the nation’s hippodrome; his companions, brothers from the Don, thin and ardent, run without effort. After them come the Finlanders tearing furiously on the reins. Sufficiently in the rear to astonish their backers, are the Orloff stallions veritable wonders of beauty and breed.

Finally, following at a long distance behind their royal leaders, are the three strange beasts with their Laplandish sled. They run irregularly, and their little thin bells give out a melancholy sound. It is in this order that the sleds pass for the first time in front of the judges’ stand.

Half way on the second round the Finlanders fling out their sturdy heels with such velocity that they look like the half circle of a bounding hoop. They pass the bays. A quick swelling of their massive chests and they forge ahead.

“Hurrah!” shriek the people, ravished with the success of their favorites. At this moment the unknown peasant straightens up his giant frame. Pushing back the heavy hat drawn down to his eyes, he grips the reins with an iron hand and gives a curious prolonged whistle. His skeleton horses are strangely metamorphosed. As though in answer to some superhuman command, they give one gigantic leap and fairly fly. For a moment they run beside the white stallions.

“The Orloffs lead!” screams the multitude, then shudders.

Beyond the shapely heads of the city’s favorites stretch six dark, pointed ears, to be followed by three heads with glaring eyes, and foaming, blood-flecked jaws.

With her body stretched half out of her box, Veta watches them with fascinated eyes. Her chest heaves, her limbs tremble, and her face takes on the anguish of the laboring brutes.

“Don’t worry,” whispers Repine. “They will lose.”

“They will win!” she answers hoarsely. “I know them.”

“The Orloffs gain,” says somebody in the next box.

“Ah!” groans Veta and bites her lip to the blood.

Once more the peasant’s whistle startles the still air, and with a prodigious effort his horses leave the others behind. Transfigured by the waking of their unknown blood, carried away by a secret ecstacy, with floating manes and sonorous breath, they rush on toward the expected goal.

They reach it—victorious—winners by three lengths.

For one long moment the people rest mute with stupefaction, literally incapable of applause. They stare open-mouthed at the sordid beasts that have beaten the noblest blood of the land, then like one man they dash forward to look at them, to ask their race, and the name of their uncouth driver.

As the victors pass Veta leans out to look at them. “I must see them,” she says aloud.

At the sound of that voice, the peasant starts. Lifting his head their eyes meet. She pales but that is all.

Months have passed, and the extraordinary event that astonished the Peterbourgeois is no more than ancient history. Nobody has learned the identity of the mysterious peasant. Many believed him a sorcerer. Others thought him a great doctor of some unknown science, whose powerful potion had galvanized the exhausted beasts. But it is all only a memory now. A new sensation is on the tapis.

All St. Petersburg is talking of the marriage of Prince Alexander Repine to Princess Elisaveta Palorna.

It is evening, and Veta stands for the first time in her husband’s home. She is alone, on a great veranda that half circles the palace. She still wears her wedding dress, and the stones of a diamond tiara sparkle in her hair.

“Mistress,” says a voice behind her. She turns to confront her husband’s faithful old servant. “Mistress, a present awaits you at the palace gate. Shall I lead you thither?”

“Yes.”

She follows him down the steps with all the lazy insolence of a fine lady who grants a favor; her long gown sweeps the dew off the grass, and the moonlight mirrors itself in the soft curves of her naked arms and shoulders.

Presently she stops, stricken by a mysterious influence.

A moment more and a strange sight meets her view.

They are the winners of the Neva.

With a wave from her hand, Ivan goes.

The horses whinny softly at the sound of her voice, and nose her hair and face with dog-like gentleness.

“Why are you here?” she whispers, a sudden catch in her throat that she stifles against the emaciated cheek nearest her.

From out of the deep shadow comes a trembling voice. “Why do you weep, Princess?” it says.

She sees him now for the first time, still in his peasant’s garb and with head uncovered, low before her. It is a noble head, with splendid lines and a beautiful mouth, but worn and shadowed as those of the famished beasts beside him.

“Why are they like this, Sergius? The best racers in the kingdom could have brought their price; there certainly was no need to starve them.”

“We have starved together, Princess,” he answers gently.

“Then the story that the people tell is true?”

“Quite true.”

With the skeleton creatures between them they are silent a wavering moment. Then with a mute caress of their unkempt necks he says: “Be kind to Sergius Hotzka’s only friends. Good-night, Elizaveta Repine.”

“Repine!” she had forgotten that.

“Is it farewell?” she asks him blindly.

“Farewell!” he repeats.

The horses whinny piteously as the gates close behind him; then turn with dumb, questioning eyes to the pallid woman beside them.

Brutes that they are they tremble at the sight of that countenance, quivering and terrible.

“Wait,” is her husky whisper.

With her face pressed tight to the iron bars, she watches him turn an angle in the roadway; his footsteps die away in the distance; he is gone.

Flinging the gates wide open she says one word:

“Go.”

A sudden rush, and they are swallowed up in the night.

The next day the newspapers contain a sensation.

Three wild horses have killed a prince’s bride.