must wait till the morning," she said. "Don't worry. It's just what one might have expected."
Don't worry! Piers had no wink of sleep that night. At post-time in the morning he was at Miss Bonnicastle's, but no news arrived. He went to business; the day passed without news; he returned to Great Portland Street, and there waited for the last postal delivery. It brought the expected letter; Olga announced her marriage that morning to Mr. Florio.
"It's better than I feared," said Miss Bonnicastle. "Now go home to bed, and sleep like a philosopher."
Good advice, but not of much profit to one racked and distraught with amorous frenzy, with disappointment sharp as death. Through the warm spring night, Piers raved and agonised. The business hour found him lying upon his bed, sunk in dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER XXXII
Again it was springtime--the spring of 1894. Two years had gone by since that April night when Piers Otway suffered things unspeakable in flesh and spirit, thinking that for him the heavens had no more radiance, life no morrow. The memory was faint; he found it hard to imagine that the loss of a woman he did not love could so have afflicted him. Olga Hannaford--Mrs. Florio--was matter for a smile; he hoped that he might some day meet her again, and take her hand with the old friendliness, and wish her well.
He had spent the winter in St. Petersburg, and was making arrangements for a visit to England, when one morning there came to him a letter which made his eyes sparkle and his heart beat high with joy. In the afternoon, having given more than wonted care to his dress, he set forth from the lodging he occupied at the lower end of the Nevski Prospect, and walked to the Hotel de France, near the Winter Palace, where he inquired for Mrs. Borisoff. After a little delay, he was conducted to a private sitting-room, where again he waited. On a table lay two periodicals, at which he glanced, recognising with a smile recent numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Vyestnik Evropy_.
There entered a lady with a bright English face, a lady in the years between youth and middle age, frank, gracious, her look of interest speaking a compliment which Otway found more than agreeable.
"I have kept you waiting," she said, in a tone that dispensed with formalities, "because I was on the point of going out when they brought your card----"
"Oh, I am sorry----"
"But I am not. Instead of twaddle and boredom round somebody or other's samovar, I am going to have honest talk under the chaperonage of an English teapot--my own teapot, which I carry everywhere. But don't be afraid; I shall not give you English tea. What a shame that I have been here for two months without our meeting! I have talked about you--wanted to know you. Look!"
She pointed to the periodicals which Piers had already noticed.
"No," she went on, checking him as he was about to sit down, "_that_ is your chair. If you sat on the other, you would be polite and grave and--like everybody else; I know the influence of chairs. That is the chair my husband selects when he wishes to make me understand some point of etiquette. Miss Derwent warned you, no doubt, of my shortcomings in etiquette?"
"All she said to me," replied Piers, laughing, "was that you are very much her friend."
"Well, that is true, I hope. Tell me, please; is the article in the _Vyestnik_ your own Russian?"
"Not entirely. I have a friend named Korolevitch, who went through it for me."
"Korolevitch? I seem to know that name. Is he, by chance, connected with some religious movement, some heresy?"
"I was going to say I am sorry he is; yet I can't be sorry for what honours the man. He has joined the Dukhobortsi; has sold his large estate, and is devoting all the money to their cause. I'm afraid he'll go to some new-world colony, and I shall see little of him henceforth. A great loss to me."
Mrs. Borisoff kept her eyes upon him as he spoke, seeming to reflect rather than to listen.
"I ought to tell you," she said, "that I don't know Russian. Irene--Miss Derwent almost shamed me into working at it; but I am so lazy--ah, so lazy! you are aware, of course, that Miss Derwent has learnt it?"
"Has learnt Russian?" exclaimed Piers. "I didn't know--I had no idea----"
"Wonderful girl! I suppose she thinks it a trifle."
"It's so long," said Otway, "since I had any news of Miss Derwent. I can hardly consider myself one of her friends--at least, I shouldn't have ventured to do so until this morning, when I was surprised and delighted to have a letter from her about that _Nineteenth Century_ article, sent through the publishers. She spoke of you, and asked me to call--saying she had written an introduction of me by the same post."
Mrs. Borisoff smiled oddly.
"Oh yes; it came. She didn't speak of the _Vyestnik_?"
"No."
"Yet she has read it--I happen to know. I'm sorry I can't. Tell me about it, will you?"
The Russian article was called "New Womanhood in England." It began with a good-tempered notice of certain novels then popular, and passed on to speculations regarding the new ideals of life set before English women. Piers spoke of it as a mere bit of apprentice work, meant rather to amuse than as a serious essay.
"At all events, it's a success," said his listener. "One hears of it in every drawing-room. Wonderful thing--you don't sneer at women. I'm told you are almost on our side--if not quite. I've heard a passage read into French--the woman of the twentieth century. I rather liked it."
"Not altogether?" said Otway, with humorous diffidence.
"Oh! A woman never quite likes an ideal of womanhood which doesn't quite fit her notion of herself. But let us speak of the other thing, in the _Nineteenth Century_--'The Pilgrimage to Kief.' For life, colour, sympathy, I think it altogether wonderful. I have heard Russians say that they couldn't have believed a foreigner had written it."
"That's the best praise of all."
"You mean to go on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea. The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood. All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you that I don't like Russia."
"No more do I," returned Piers, in an undertone. "But that only means, I don't like the worst features of the Middle ages. The Russian-speaking cosmopolitan whom you and I know isn't Russia; he belongs to the Western Europe of to-day, his country represents Western Europe of some centuries ago. Not strictly that, of course; we must allow for race; but it's how one has to think of Russia."
Again Mrs. Borisoff scrutinised him as he spoke, averting her eyes at length with an absent smile.
"Here comes my tutelary teapot," she said, as a pretty maid-servant entered with a tray. "A phrase I got from Irene, by the bye--from Miss Derwent, who laughs at my carrying the thing about in my luggage. She has clever little phrases of that sort, as you know."
"Yes," fell from Piers, dreamily. "But it's so long since I heard her talk."
