Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812

"A lady wishes to have me presented?" said Sasha, frowning slightly. "Well, I'll come presently; I am busy entertaining another lady, as you perceive;—stop, which is she?"

Constantine pointed Vera out.

"What, that child?" exclaimed Maximof. "Tell her I have no time to talk to children."

"She isn't a child, and it's not likely I will give such a message," said Constantine angrily. "If you knew–" he paused.

"Well—what?"

"If you knew who she is," stammered Constantine, "you'd go to her."

"Why, is she anybody very particular?" asked the other, devoting a second and more interested glance in Vera's direction.

"You can only learn all about her by becoming personally acquainted with her," said the younger lad. "She is somebody rather particular."

"Well, I'll come, if I can, later; there are so many who want to speak to one on an occasion like this."

Sasha Maximof's companion had listened with amusement to this conversation; she, too, had glanced at Vera and had recognised her instantly, for the circumstances of the betrothal of these two were a matter of common knowledge.

"I see you are looking at the young lady who desires my acquaintance," said Sasha, when Constantine had departed; "do you happen to know who she is?"

"Do you seriously mean to say that you do not?" asked the girl, laughing.

"I'm afraid I cannot recall her name, though I believe I have seen the face somewhere; one does not take special notice of children; I cannot imagine why she should be any one in particular, as that little fool declared. Of course one knows every one who is any body! Well, who is she?"

"First tell me, do you consider her pretty?"

"Passable—but of course a mere child; she may improve and may go the other way. She's Russian, of course?"

"Certainly, but has been absent from Russia for five years. Her clothes are of the last French mode—she has French relations—have I shed light liberally enough to illuminate your intelligence?"

"She is Vera Demidof, you mean; I did not know she had returned. Well, she has come too soon, she is a child, I will say neither yes nor no to her until I can judge of her when full grown." Sasha flushed and looked aggrieved. His companion laughed.

"You are not a very ardent fiancé," she said. "Remember, it is your duty to love her; she will expect to be greeted radiantly, to hear words of endearment, delight at her unexpected return, and so forth; compose your features, my friend, you are frowning; look pleased, ardent, full of affection, and so go and do your duty."

"You speak foolishly; it is not for you to bid me perform this foolery, you who know that my heart contains but one image. You must be aware that my betrothal is a mere farce, a thing to be shaken off as easily as assumed. I shall speak to the girl—courtesy demands it, but I shall pretend no affection."

"Poor child, she will be heart-broken; see how lovingly she gazes at you even now!"

Sasha looked, but Vera's gaze did not strike him as being aptly described by the word "loving"; on the contrary, though she turned her head when she observed that she was watched, he was in time to surprise what appeared to him to be an indignant rather than a languishing expression.

As a matter of fact Vera was very angry indeed. Constantine had returned to her shy and shamefaced.

"Well—is he coming? What did he say?" she had asked.

"His vanity is terrible," said Constantine, "and his manners are even worse."

"How—what do you mean—does he recognise me and refuse to renew our acquaintance?"

"Oh no, he did not suspect who you were. He said you were a mere child and hinted that he had no time to waste upon children."

"Children!" repeated Vera indignantly; "and I in my seventeenth year! Bah—he has, as you say, no manners. So he has refused to be presented."

"Not quite that! 'I will come, if I can, later,' he said; I think he is much absorbed, at present, by the lady at his side; it is a different one, with him, every month."

"I will wait for half an hour, and then, if he comes not, you shall take me away, Constantine," said Vera; and though the lad at her side protested against her doing Maximof so much honour, she insisted upon staying.

Presently, however, seeing that Sasha showed signs of crossing the room in order to approach her, she said quickly:—

"See, Constantine, now he comes; when it is quite clear that his intention is to speak to me, I will rise and you shall give me your hand to escort me away!"

"Good," exclaimed her cousin delightedly. "Yes, that's the way he should be treated—see, he is approaching—come!"

The two young cousins rose and passed down the room, almost meeting Sasha Maximof, who stopped, obviously expecting them to do the same. "Demidof," he said, "be so kind as to present me to your friend."

Vera passed on, taking no notice whatever. Constantine looked round, over his shoulder.

"You will have to wait now, my friend, until she is a little older," he said, and Vera pinched his arm with delight.

"Bravo, cousin," she said, "that was splendid."

"It was rather daring," said Constantine, somewhat ruefully, "to a senior cadet; I don't know what will happen to me."

Sasha returned to his charmer, who, unfortunately, had witnessed his discomfiture.

"You've met your match, my friend!" she laughed; "she's decidedly pretty, too, when one sees her closely."

"She's an impudent little minx at any rate," said Sasha, laughing also, though somewhat artificially, and at the same time flushing hotly; he was not used to rebuffs from the fair sex. "By such conduct—revealing a tendency to bad manners—she commits felo de se as regards—well—a certain object she has in view."

On the way home Vera, following up some train of thought, remarked to her cousin that it was a pity Sasha Maximof was so good-looking; to which Constantine replied that he did not see much to admire in the fellow.

CHAPTER VI

The Boyar Demidof, though not by profession a diplomat, had procured for himself an appointment as Attaché to the Embassy in Paris, in order to be near his daughter as well as his married sister. Vera's presence in St. Petersburg was in the nature of a flying visit. She would return with her mother to Paris in a month or two.

During that period she saw little of Sasha Maximof. He called upon the Demidofs once or twice, but was obviously but little attracted by Vera, whom he treated as a child, and from whom he did not attempt to conceal the fact that he had on hand more than one affaire de cœur and that he thought but little, if anything, of the contract entered into by their respective fathers when both of the principal parties were too young to understand the nature of the proceedings.

Vera began by treating Sasha with much hauteur, desiring to punish him for his indifference; but when it became clear to her that he cared nothing whether she bore herself haughtily or kindly, and was, indeed, very little interested in her, she began, with the inconsistency of human nature, to realise that whether she would have it so or no her interest in him grew, and with it the recognition that the young man was undoubtedly very good-looking and had a certain attractiveness about him. Before Vera returned to Paris Sasha Maximof had quite made up his mind that he was far too good to waste himself upon the commonplace little person his father had seen fit, without consulting his wishes, to select for his partner in life. He intended to do much better. The Countess, his mother, was inclined to agree with him. He consulted her upon the question as to whether a contract of marriage so made was binding or not.

"If both parties desire to annul it," the Countess thought, "surely no one would compel them to hold to it."

"The question is," said Sasha, "will the girl agree to annul it? The match is a good one, from her point of view; I don't suppose there's much harm done yet, in a personal way, I mean, for we have scarcely met and I certainly have not gone out of my way to be in any way attractive to her."

"Go and see the girl and talk it over with her," suggested the Countess, and this advice Sasha presently followed.

He called upon Vera and plunged quickly into the business on hand, though he began somewhat diffidently, for, though in speaking with his mother he had taken for granted that the girl could scarcely have fallen in love with him yet, Sasha, in the secret realms of his inner consciousness, was by no means so assured of the matter; indeed, he was strongly of opinion that no girl could see him and pass entirely unscathed through the ordeal.

Somewhat to his disgust he could detect no sign of regret or disappointment in Vera's attitude; on the contrary, he was not at all sure that she was not as anxious as himself to be relieved from the foolish obligation imposed upon both of them as children.

"I never could understand what was the object of our honoured fathers in making so foolish an arrangement," said Sasha; "my idea is that living down in the wilds as they did, they were so put to it for amusement that they invented this as a pastime; it would be interesting, they thought, to watch our affection bud and blossom and so on; but of course, as you know, my father died and neither my mother nor I ever lived in the country again, while you went to Paris. Of course if we had met constantly, living close to one another, and never seeing any one else, it might have been different."

Vera suddenly burst out laughing at this point.

"You mean that if neither of us had ever met any other young people besides our two selves we might one day have come to like one another? Believe me, Alexander Petrovitch, I am far from being so conceited as to suppose you could ever have learned to admire me. Is this, then, your theory: that if, for instance, a man and a woman were thrown together upon a desert island, they would be bound eventually to fall in love with one another? On the contrary, I should think they would soon be wearied to death by one another's society."

"I did not mean that at all," said Sasha, flushing rather angrily, for it occurred to him that his amour propre was in some way being attacked. "I meant that if we had seen more of one another than we have, it might have been quite a different matter. You might have liked me, which I see is not now the case, and of course I might have fallen in love with you."

"Which also is certainly not the case as any one might perceive," laughed Vera.

"I am not pretending that it is; I could not very well."

"For after all I am a mere child," she said.

"I see you cannot forgive me that expression. Why should it offend you? You are not fully grown up. However, I apologise for using it if you dislike it. Well now, I think I have made my meaning clear; I do not love you—indeed, I may tell you that I have fallen in love elsewhere, for which you can scarcely blame me, since you have never given me the opportunity to lose my heart where our revered parents desired that it should be lost; and of course the same may be said of you; you have had no opportunity of learning to like me."

"For which I certainly ought to be most grateful," said Vera, "under the circumstances. How terrible if one of us had fallen in love and the other not! If it had been I, I must have sacrificed my heart's happiness, for of course I could not well have admitted the pathetic truth. You would have gone away and never known!"

"Well, at any rate, we are fortunately quite agreed upon the subject," replied Sasha, who was not enjoying the conversation and wished it over. "And since we are agreed that the betrothal was a mistake and that we shall both be happier if we annul the agreement and go upon our respective ways in life in pursuit of our respective ideals of happiness, I now suggest to you that the foolish document be torn up."

"By all means," said Vera; "tear it up, if you have it."

"Yes, I have it. I am sorry, Vera, that things should have turned out as they have; neither of us is to blame. As I said before, if we had seen more of one another–"

"It would have been an exceedingly dangerous thing for me, is that what you would imply?" asked Vera, laughing.

The girl looked so handsome as she said the words, her eyes aflame and a heightened colour lending a wonderful charm to her somewhat pallid Russian complexion, that Sasha stared for a moment in surprise before he answered.

"It might have been dangerous for either of us," he said; "for though you are only a child, you are a very pretty one."

Vera curtsied pertly and laughed. "In every way the document is a horribly dangerous thing then," she said; "destroy it by all means, Alexander Petrovitch. You will now have a free hand with the lady whose name you have not mentioned. How relieved she will be to hear that I have given you a certificate of discharge."

"As to that," replied Sasha, flushing, "every one who knows of our betrothal laughs at it. Two persons thus bound, they say, would be sure to loathe one another long before the time came to marry, simply because they are bound."

"But we agreed just now that if we had seen more of one another, each would probably have found the other irresistible," Vera laughed; "let us hold to this pleasant conclusion, it is more flattering to both of us than the other. We will leave it at this, that I might have stood well in your regard, one day, but for the fact that another lady stands better, having supplanted me in time. As for yourself, except for my good fortune in being a mere child, I must, of course, have lost my heart at first sight, this, I understand, being the usual fate of my sex."

"You are pleased to jest, Mademoiselle Vera," said Sasha, uncertain whether to feel elated or angry. "It is time I departed; until the contract is destroyed we are still betrothed; may I kiss your hand?"

"The betrothal ended at the moment of mutual agreement. Farewell, Alexander Petrovitch, and a happy ending to your courtship."

"That girl will grow up into a lovely woman," thought Sasha as he strode away; "but what a little tigress she looked more than once. She is angry with me for wishing to annul the contract."

"I don't see why it should be actually destroyed," he reflected later, fingering the document. "Why not keep it in case of accidents? A year or two hence I may be heart free, and she may be uncommonly handsome—I think the paper may remain for the present."

He put it back in his desk and sat thinking.

"The little devil was laughing at me all along," he said presently; "it was pique, simply pique. She'll be a pretty woman, that's certain!"

As for Vera, she felt forlorn and unhappy. She was not in the least in love, but for better or worse she had been accustomed lifelong to look upon this man as her husband-to-be, and now the air-castle had fallen in ruins. There was a sudden gap, an empty space in her life, and she felt lonely and deserted.

She actually cried over the matter and this did her a world of good. "He's certainly good-looking," was the conclusion she now arrived at; "but, as Constantine said, his vanity is terrible. I don't think I could have borne it!"

CHAPTER VII

A well-known establishment in a suburb of Paris, in the early part of last century, was the fencing-school of old Pierre Dupré, maître d'armes and retired Major in the French army. Old Pierre was growing somewhat old for the personal exercise of his art, but he could still superintend the practice of his pupils, who fenced with his assistants, and give such advice as they could receive from no other swordsman in all Paris.

Of assistants he had four, one a fine young fellow named Karl Havet, the second an equally excellent exponent of the beautiful art he taught, one Georges Maux. The other two helpers were, strange to say, females, strapping fine girls, both, and splendid swordswomen, old Pierre's daughters.

How it befel that his girls had become such adepts in their father's profession, and why, are matters easily explained.

It had been the greatest grief to the old man and a bitter grievance against destiny when, at the birth of his first child, he learned that he was the father of a girl. When the second and last child made its appearance and proved, like its sister, to be of the wrong sex, he was in despair. He had longed for a son to train in the use of arms which he should wield in his country's honour.

"Bring them up as boys," some one suggested, "they are fine girls both of them, and would make splendid boys."

From the moment that this idea took root in his mind, old Pierre found consolation. He adopted the suggestion in toto. The girls, while still young children, were dressed as boys, taught as boys, treated as boys, and perhaps almost, though not quite, loved as boys. From the earliest day upon which their little hands could hold and manipulate a rapier, he taught them to fence, and now—at the age of nineteen and twenty—the girls—Louise and Marie—could hold their own with almost any swordsman in Paris.

Though no longer dressed in male attire, old Pierre's daughters still wore garments as nearly allied to the fashion of those worn by men as was consistent with propriety. The girls looked as like men as handsome girls could look; they associated entirely with men, talked and thought like men, were men to all practical purposes, excepting in one particular: their women's hearts remained to them. One, Marie, was engaged to marry young Karl Havet, to whom she was devotedly attached, much to the chagrin of her father, who regretted Marie's "weakness" as a sad falling away from the state of grace to which his daughter had attained. To have been brought up as a man and to have reached the point of perfection, or near it, in the most manly of all exercises, and then to exhibit the weakness of a silly woman by falling in love—"Bah!" said old Pierre, in speaking of it to his friends, "it is sad—it is cruel—it is incredible!"

Nevertheless, the evil existed and must be recognised and put up with. The pair were engaged and within a month they would marry.

As for the second daughter, Louise, her father's favourite, his pride and joy—for not only was she a little taller, a little stronger, a little more skilful with the rapier than her sister, but also possessed the crowning glory, in his eyes, of a deep contralto speaking-voice, which added a point to her score of manly virtues—Louise, too, though Pierre guessed it not, had fallen a victim to the universal weakness of womankind; she, too, had lost her heart to a man. Louise did not tell her father this; she did not even tell Marie, her sister; it is probable that she did not whisper it even to her own heart of hearts, and yet she knew well that it was so: she was in love.

After all, it was no wonder that she should have become attracted by one or other of the many handsome and manly youths who came either to learn to fence or to practise the art, already learned, by engaging in a set-to with one of Pierre's accomplished daughters. Louise was acquainted with half a hundred of the most attractive young officers in Paris. Nearly every one of Napoleon's marshals had visited Pierre's establishment, nay, even the Emperor himself had been there and had laughed and applauded the skill of the two demoiselles d'armes. He had spoken to Louise and praised her to her face which was nearer the sky than his own by four inches at least.

Yet never, until a certain afternoon in this very year of 1812, had Louise been conscious of the quickening of her pulses in response to the instincts of womanhood; for though assuredly there were many of the gilded youths of her acquaintance who had wasted upon her the eloquence of the eye, of the whispering lips, of the tightened hand—all these things had left Louise as they found her, calm and unmoved, and wondering, maybe, at the foolishness of men who could waste time upon such silly matters as love-making and love-talking.

The fatal afternoon was that upon which young Baron Henri d'Estreville first visited the fencing establishment in order to see for himself the skill of the two girls with whose fame as swordswomen all Paris was ringing.

The Baron was himself a first-class swordsman, but in fencing a bout with Louise he distinctly had the worst of it, a fact which he was himself the first to admit.

This was a good-looking youth, merry and debonair, an officer in a Lancer regiment and the first cousin of one with whom we are already acquainted, Vera Demidof. He spoke with Louise both before and after the fencing match, and for some reason or another he took her fancy as no other man had done. D'Estreville was no exception to the rule of young men of his age. Louise was a woman, young and handsome, and of course the Baron employed against her all the artillery he possessed. Louise had thought this sort of thing only silly in others; but the whispered words, the meaning looks, the pressure of the hand appeared very charming when these measures were employed by her new friend.

The Baron said he would come again.

"You beat me handsomely to-day," he laughed, "but next time I intend to turn the tables; ah, Mademoiselle, it was not the rapier that overthrew me to-day, but the light of your eye, the beauty of your face–"

To his bosom friend and constant companion, Paul de Tourelle, the Baron said, "You must come down to Pierre Dupré's fencing establishment and see those girls of his fence. Also you should see Louise's eyes and complexion—by all that's bewitching, they are splendid! You shall admit it! As for her fencing–"

Young Paul de Tourelle laughed. "Yes, you shall take me to see them," he said; "I am anxious to know whether their skill is really so great as it is said to be by their admirers. As for her eyes and the rest of it, that sort of thing is not likely to have much effect upon me just now, for reasons well known to you."

"Poor Paul! nevertheless come and see; when a man is so hard hit as you seem to be this time, to gaze upon something equally attractive may do him good, just as a change of air is beneficial to a sick man."

"Equally attractive! beware what you say, my friend; such words savour of disrespect towards—some one; there is no one equally attractive, and cannot be; you speak of impossibilities."

"I retract the words," said the Baron, laughing; "we will say that here is a personality displaying remarkable attractions, falling short, however, of the highest. Joking apart, she is a splendid woman, strong as a man, handsome as one of the Graces, and she fences—well—even the great exponent Paul de Tourelle must look to his laurels if he measures swords with her."

"Âme de mon Épée! is it so?" exclaimed Paul, flushing; Paul was acknowledged to be one of the finest, if not the very first swordsman in France. "That is a thing which I cannot afford to have said of any man, still less of any woman. I will come and see, my friend, and if she is willing we will try a bout."

"She will be willing; fencing is the breath of life to her; but seriously, if you fear that your reputation might suffer by defeat, you must do your best, Paul; she is a supreme mistress of the art."

"Fear not; I will remember to be careful!" laughed the other.

When the Baron visited the establishment of old Pierre on the following day he found the fair Louise somewhat inclined to avoid him, or at any rate less disposed to play the bon camarade than on the previous occasion. This attitude was the direct result of a conversation between old Pierre and his daughter Marie.

"I am no longer the black sheep, mon père," said Marie, laughing. "This day Louise has also shown that she is a woman."

"What mean you?" asked the old man, looking up startled from his occupation.

"Hitherto Louise has been with our visitors as a man among men; this day, in the presence of Monsieur le Baron, she has behaved as a woman in the presence of the man who is her soul's affinity."

"I'll not believe it of her," said old Pierre angrily; "because you have been a fool, Marie, and proved yourself no wiser than other silly women, you would have me believe that Louise can be equally foolish. I will speak to Louise; she shall belie your accusation."

Louise did belie it, but with blushing and much confusion. Possibly her father's words were the first intimation to her heart that it was no longer fancy-free.