The Princess Mazaroff. A romance, etc

Front matter

fe >4 Vol. I. JOSEPH HATTON'S NOVELS. NEW HANDSOME LIBRARY EDITIONS. la cloth, gilt top, 2s. 6d. BY ORDER. OF THE CZAR. The Tragic Story of Anna Klo3stock, Queen ofthe Ghetto. [Ninth Edition. CLYTIE. " If Clytie, in cold, silent Parian, was a favourite, her namesake, in real, hearty genuine flesh and blood, will beloved a thousandfold. . • The heroine is as fair and womanly as thea hero, is brave and un fortunate."— Standard. CHRISTOPHER KENRICK. " The book contains so many well-executed characters and exhibi tions of pleasantry akin to true humour, that it .must be pronounced a success that will contribute to Mr. Hatton's popularity ."—The Athenæum. THE VALLEY OP POPPIES. "A charming story, tranquil and dieamy as its title." — Daily Telegraph. THE TALLANTS OF BARTON. " It has a certain touch of the grace which belongs to Tennyson's ' Lord of Burleigh.' " — Illustrated London Sews.

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" Mr. Joseph Hatton is seen at hie best in 'The Queen of Bohemia,' a very bright and amusing novel. Special phases of Society in London and New York are sketched with knowledge and spirit, and both the initiated and those who ' want to know ' will .be interested in the scenes and characters of a book which has the additional merit of not being unduly spun out." — The World. London ; HUTCHINSON AND CO., 25, Paternoster Sqcare. a "Romance of tbe "2>a^ BY JOSEPH HATTON. " Everything is two-faced— even virtue."— Balzac. IN TWO VOLUMES. Vol. I. LONDON : HUTCHINSON AND CO. 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1891. [All rights reserved] TO MY DEAR FRIES D AND NEIGHBOUR, AV. J. E. CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I. How The Trouble Began

"To see each other, to profess to love each other, to prove it, to quarrel, to hate, then to separate, that one may seek a new love — this is the history of a moment, and of every day in the comedy of the world." — De Varennes. " The Slav women have a natural grace and strength of physique, an earnestness of face and fine white teeth that should make up for the general absence of what in Western Europe is called beauty of feature. But the Princess — or barina, as they called her on her husband's estate — possessed the native characteristic of form and figure with a peculiar beauty of her own. She had, above all things, that which is very rarely seen in the Russian woman, a blooming complexion. It was as if all that is striking in the hand some, cultured, and aristocratic Russian lady had found a happy commingling with the typical grace of the woman of VOL. I. B the people.

Her gait was regal, her mien queenly, and her voice was music. Not an ordinary subject of the Czar, you will say ; nor was she ; but do not tell me there are no beautiful Russians, and as for hospitality, why the barina would often have her tumble-down palace full of guests, and would slaughter no end of calves and pigs in their honour." — Travels i?i Russia. "A lady to see Milord Travers," was the message of the concierge to the calm and self-possessed valet of the English traveller. "It is Madame the Princess," said Mellish to his master, who rose up from his chair, six feet odd of careless good nature, brown velveteen, and calf-skin slippers, moved by considerable surprise, not to say embarrassment. " At this time of night ! " exclaimed Travers, laying down a half smoked cigar, dustinsr some of its ashes from the front of his jacket, and shaking himself very much as a big Newfoundland dog might after an unfinished sleep.

The next moment, framed in the open doorway, with its massive portiere drawn aside, there stood before him a beautiful woman, enveloped from head to foot in a cloak of Russian sables. " I have quarrelled with the Prince for the last time ; I am here ; I seek your protection," she said, in a voice made all the more musical by a pretty, hesitating, foreign accent. "Yes," said Travers; "won't you come in?" "Ah, my friend," she answered, approaching him, "you do not know what indignity I have suffer, and yet my heart tells me it may be for the best." "I hope so," said Travers, offering her a chair by the fire. "I feel certain that it is so," the Princess replied. B "The Prince may naturally resent your seeking protection at my hands. What do you think he will say when he is informed of your visit, and at this time of night ?

" " The Prince has finished what he has to say," she answered, looking into the fire, her pale, handsome face catching the ruddy light, that emphasised the deep, golden red of her wealth of rippled hair. " You have taken a very serious step, Princess," Travers replied. " Ah, you say so ; you are not glad to see me, you do not give me welcome," the Princess replied, rising from her seat, and as she did so her cloak of sables fell in a heap upon the floor, disclosing her fair form in a soft, clinging evening dress of black lace. The effect was magical ; even to Dick's somewhat slow imagination it suggested the sun breaking through a sombre cloud. He looked at his visitor with undisguised ad miration, as he said : " My dear Princess, I should not speak the truth if I did not say you have given me a surprise, and I can not conceal from you or from myself that the pleasure is as great as the surprise."

" You English are reticent of nature. It is your character, but when you speak it is the truth ; and yet I did not look to be received so cold, so undemonstratif when I seek your protection against insult — against blows." " Blows ! " exclaimed Dick. " I carry their bruises, but I feel the pain most in my heart, my pride ; well, then, if I seek your friendship in vain, why it is only to go away again," and she stooped to pick up her cloak. "No, no," said Dick, his face flushing; " I am not a courtier, as you know, but I am at your command ; it is for you to say what you wish. I am your slave." Madame held out her hand with the regal air of an imperial station. Dick pressed the white jewelled fingers to his lips, and the Princess glided back into her seat before the fire. "You relief my mind," she said, with a sigh.

"You make me happy." "It is an honour and a delight to serve you," said Travers. The Princess looked into the fire. Her attitude was one of thoughtful repose. A small foot, in satin shoe peeped out from beneath a white frilled petticoat. Her dress was cut just sufficiently low — and that was all — to show the white, lovely contour of her shoulders and delicate bust. Her hair had partly fallen away from the jewelled fastenings of brooch and pin. Dick stood by her chair. Neither of them spoke for some time. Dick felt his heart beat against his waistcoat. He began to forget the Prince; his sense of propriety gradually became dulled ; his thoughts were absorbed in the lovely image before him. Presently the lovely image looked up into his face, with the somewhat matter-of-fact remark, "The Prince leaves Paris early in the morning for St. Petersburg.

I told him I should seek your advice, and your protection." "Yes," said Travers, with an alternating sense of pleasure and anxiety, " and what did he say? " " He replied, with a wolfish snarl, that I am not his serf. Ah, my friend, had I been that, he would have had me flogged, per haps. You know that the Prince and I have for a long time understood the one and the other as to our mutual responsibilities." " You informed me on the ship," said Travers, drawing a chair by her side, and taking her soft white hand in his great paw. " Do you love me as you tell me, oh, so often ? " she asked. A great diamond, lying serene on the bodice of her black lace dress, was not more lustrous in the fire-light than her great languishing violet eyes, into whose liquid depths the English traveller gazed with un disguised rapture.

"Do I love you!" he exclaimed. "By heavens, I ought not to, but I do, with all my soul," he said, kissing the upturned face. "Ah, how happy we shall be," she mur mured. Travers was not clever enough to shape his best thoughts into words, but he was a man of observation, and he had something of the dumb poet in his nature. It occurred to him that with all her cul ture there was a great deal of the unsophis ticated character of the savage Princess in this beautiful woman's wayward abandon ment. " Shall we not be very happy now that I have come? " she asked, rising, and survey ing the room, still her hand in his. " You have come to remain ? " "Oh yes." " You have dismissed your carriage ? " " Oh yes ! " she said in her dreamy way; and then suddenly turning to him ex claimed, " Did you not understand ?

" " Why, dearest, of course," he said, more in response to her upbraiding eyes than in reply to her question. " Did you not say on board the Oriental that if ever I should desire a friend, a true friend, I should come to you ? ': " Yes, yes ; of course, my love." "And at the Embassy Ball, two nights ago, that you died of envy ofthe Prince ; and oh, how you would give the world to call me your own ? Mon Dieu ! have I to remind you of these things ? What have I done ? Oh, but it is not too late : I go ! " She took up her cloak, but as she wrapped it about her fair shoulders, Travers suddenly drew her into his arms. " Princess, forgive me," he said, bending over her, "I am mad with joy; I do not realize the happiness you offer me ; do not leave me. I was only thinking of you — the trouble that might come out of this love for you, not for me, for you.

I love you ! I love you ! ' ' " Is it that I stay then ? " she asked, her cloak slipping to the ground, leaving her once more in full view, a lovely woman in evening dress, black lace and diamonds ; syren-like, beautiful, with hair of Titian hue, piled upon her well shaped head and fastened with a poignard sparkling with gems. Her complexion was of that "rich " tone which Lord Beaconsfield always associated with the highest class of aristocratic beauty. Her mouth was full and generous in its lines ; her nose somewhat small, but giving piquancy to features that otherwise might have seemed coarse, if not sensual. In short she was a fine, well-built, handsome, showy, graceful woman ; and one might well be permitted to wonder why the Prince, her husband, had parted from her with so much ap parent ease and freedom.

Having satisfied himself that the Princess had really resolved to take up her abode, at least for the time being, in the Place Ven dome, Travers summoned his man, a silent, respectful, sleek, grey-headed servant— valet, secretary, and sometimes companion, all in one — and requested him to call Madame the housekeeper, bringing meanwhile some tea for Madame the Princess. " There are two rooms overlooking the quadrangle," said the Englishman to his lovely guest, "they are occupied by the King's messenger; I had set them apart for any such guest, and I was going to ask a compatriot from England to come and see me ; but I little thought how much more honoured the rooms would be ; to-morrow you shall refurnish them as you please ; to-night the housekeeper shall make such arrangements as circumstances will permit.

What luggage have you ? " "A very little for to-night; my maid, Estelle, will bring it in a short time, and in the morning I will arrange for the re mainder ; you are very thoughtful, dear friend." " Tea for Madame the Princess," said Mellish, the Englishman's valet, introducing, with a silver tray upon which were various confections, a smart French maid, who pro ceeded while she waited upon the Princess, to announce that Madame the housekeeper would at once present herself before milord for his commands. Milord, it will be well at once to state, was simply Richard Gordon Travers, the only son of the famous ironfounder of Middles borough, in England, and^Middlesborough, in America, Sir Gordon Travers, M.P., one of the wealthiest of Northcountrymen, and one of the most devoted fathers in the world.

Travers had been educated at Oxford, but had been unable to do more than get up a tremendous reputation for strength of limb and capacity for everything that com bined common sense with physical capa city. He was a big-hearted, brave, kindly fellow, six feet two in his stockings, with large hands and feet, large mild grey eyes, a hearty laugh, and a cultivated manner, that on a first acquaintance suggested the brains of a don with the easy air of a gentleman. But when we meet Travers in Paris the captive of Cupid's most lawless arrow, he had only just returned from a three years' absence in the wilds of Africa, where he had, at his own expense, conducted an expedition of investigation and sport, and had " put in " at Paris, as he phrased it, to get a taste ofthe finest civilisation before he went down into the heart of Yorkshire, to see his kith and kin and take a long rest.

As luck or misfortune would have it, his father was away ; gone to Norway to see some new mines, and was probably ignorant of Dick's return. The traveller, therefore, felt little compunction in extending his visit to the gay city, and awaiting news of his father. He had met the Prince and Princess Mazaroff at Brindisi, and had tra velled with them to Paris. The Princess had been the admired of all admirers on board the P. and O. steamer, and Travers had suc cessfully competed with some half a dozen gallants for her special favour; he had joined her and the Prince in their state-room at tiffin, had played ecarte with them and a couple of French officers ; had lost heavily, and with a charming sangfroid that had made him quite pleasantly conspicuous. Within only a few days the Princess had confided to the easy-going young English man the fact that she was not happy with the Prince ; that she hated his country, that she was, in short, a miserable woman.

"Permit me to say that you do not look the part," Travers had said ; "you look as happy as you are beautiful." " Ah, you cannot read the heart," she had replied ; " and you think the Prince is sincere in all the pretty compliment that he pay to me. " He treats you, it seems to me, with great courtesy and respect," Travers had replied. "That is his cunning Russian way," she had answered ; " but you do not know him ; some day, perhaps, you will be better acquainted." " But you are a Russian, Madame, are you not?" '7 " I am a cosmopolitan, Monsieur," she replied ; " my father was a French count, my mother a Russian of the Court of Alexander. I have travelled much, I was married at seventeen, and I have never been a happy woman until I met you ! " With such a prologue as this, enacted in the moonlight on sunny seas, it is not diffi cult to imagine the possibilities of the scene which opens our drama of life in these free and-easy days of the world's social revolu tions.

" By Jove, I don't half like it ! " said Travers, when his guest had left the room with the housekeeper to be introduced to the apartments which he had mentioned for her use. " I should have had a bad quarter of an hour with an English housekeeper, but an English milord, with his hands continually in his pocket, can do what he likes on this side of vol. i. c the channel. I have come across queer hus bands in my time, not to mention brutes, but Mazaroff is a rum 'un, as Mellish would say. Perhaps they manage these things differently in Russia. I had pretty, if dusky, ladies offered to me as presents away beyond the Upper Congo, but no chief offered me his wife. Well, Mazaroff has not exactly done that ! I suppose I shall get into some deuce of a mess. One makes a tour of Europe and Asia, and comes through a three years' tramp of Africa, to get into trouble within the last few miles of home.

Well, that's common enough. Speke carried his rifle Through the heart of Africa to shoot himself accidentally at Bath. I have stood the fire of a thousand flashing eyes in Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, France; have indulged in mild flirtations with ebony Venuses, to fall at last before a Russian, and that Russian a wife and a Princess. What will be the end of it? Well, who cares; in for a penny, in for a pound ! It is not my doing — by Jove it is not. I would have avoided it. Hello, Dick ! are you going on the old Adam lay — the woman tempted me and I dide at ? No, old chap, take your pleasure and your punishment like a man ! " If the Princess had said that the Prince had bought her, a loveless bride, she would have spoken the truth. He was thirty years her senior — a shrivelled, querulous martinet, whom Kherasoff, where he lived, neither loved nor respected.

They had been married some three or four years and had parted on two occasions, as was known to the gossips of the town, who discussed the domestic differences of the Mazaroffs with a freedom they did not permit themselves in the more important matter of imperial policy. c Everybody admitted that the Princess was much too good for the Prince. One of the chief officials of the district, in an attempted flirtation, had as good as told her so, but got nothing by his candour. The Princess informed him that when she desired his sympathy she would send for him. Everybody at Kherasoff knew that she and the Prince had many and violent quarrels. Indeed, at Kherasoff everybody knew everybody else's business. Once a year, in connection with some sinecure office of Court and Government, Prince Mazaroff was called upon to put in an appearance at St. Petersburg ; and it is not to be wondered at that an excitable, vain, and beautiful woman should have found in that city attractions that were denied to Kherasoff.

A noble in the third degree, Mazaroff' s title of Prince had not the significance that belongs to that distinction in some other countries ; it nevertheless conferred honour and distinction and precedence, flattered the vanity of the Princess, gave her the entree to the very highest society, and enabled her to compare her dull, stupid, martinet of a husband with the more gallant men of the social world of St. Petersburg, and later with the men of Paris and Berlin. Mazaroff often treated her as if she were a serf; he had occasional fits of drunkenness, in which he forgot that she was his wife, and in various ways gave her cause for anger and retaliation ; and as Kherasoff well knew, she had twice left him for several months, to return each time, after a visit to his relatives in St. Petersburg, with diamonds and brocades fit for an imperial princess.

It was whispered that she had broken the bank at Monte Carlo ; it was boldly stated that she had a wealthy friend at Court who was not even a cousin ; and the most that even her few friends could say for her was that she had come into a fortune in her own right. As for the Prince, he rode about his barren acres, exercised a little official authority over the local police, dispensed a certain mean but ostentatious hospitality, got drunk once a week, received his few rents when he could, sold his farm produce how he might, got his official pay with happy regularity, and did not care a copeck for anything or anybody. On an unexpected and secret mission — arranged by his wife without his knowledge, or even a suspicion of what she had done — the Prince had recently visited one of the Russian posts in Asia, had made a short stay at Algiers, and had curiously enough stayed for some time at Alexandria, accom panied of course by his wife, whose beauty and extravagance had astonished and delighted the English and other travellers who had had the honour of introductions to their Russian highnesses.

Prince Mazaroff had himself been more than astonished, he had been annoyed at the pointed attentions lavished upon his wife by certain fellow voyagers, whose more than courteous admiration the Princess had appeared to encourage and accept. And thus the Prince and Princess had found themselves on board the same steamer as that upon which Travers was sailing homewards. On the day before the Princess appeared, without announcement or ceremony, at Travers's rooms, she and the Prince had had their latest and most violent quarrel. It had begun with lightning flashes and tempest, and the mischief done, it had ended in a deep dead calm. "Let us say no more," said the Princess. " I hate you, and there is an end of it." "You do not permit me to do anything more than reciprocate that most unnatural feeling," said the Prince, with vicious courtesy.

"Very well, then let us part." "For the third and last time," said the Prince; " is it so ? " "It is so," she said sharply, each little word like a pistol shot. "And where will you go this time — to whom will you go, I should say if I were the brute you make me out to be ! " "Well, you have said it. You make the question no better by apologising for it. I will tell you. I shall go to Mr. Richard Gordon Travers ; he has taste and appreciation." " And money," said the Prince, with a sneer. "Yes, he paid your winnings without a word." " Why should he not ? " "■ No reason that I know of; but you remarked that he had money." "I hope he is very rich," said the Prince, tugging at his white moustache, and wrink ling his narrow forehead. " Let me give you a parting declara tion." " The very last? " he remarked, interrupt ing her with a scoffing smile.

"Yes, the very last." " Then I must bear it." "You must! If I had met this English o-entleman before Fate had doomed me to you and Kherasoff, if he had been the veriest miserable, I could have loved him — yes, loved him. You bought me. I own it — bought and paid for me. But I would have given myself to this man, and been his slave ; I would have worked for him, tended him in sickness and sorrow, would have been his abject, devoted, loving wife. Yes, take that home to your barren halls at Kherasoff; you have never been a husband to me ; you do not know what it is to love or hate. I despise you ! " She hissed these last words between her teeth, her eyes flashing fire. The Prince shrank from her for a moment; then recovering himself said, with an effort at calmness, " Thank you, Prin cess ; then it is farewell at last, not au re7ioir?"

It is farewell," she said, taking up her cloak and drawing a fur hood over her head. " Farewell for ever ! " And while the Princess, torn with passion and indignation, went straightway to the address which Travers had given herin case she needed a friend, the Prince, with the assistance of his body servant, packed his personal belongings for an immediate de parture to St. Petersburg, en route for his gloomy palace at Kherasoff.

Chapter II. The Snow Falls, The Fire Burns

"Young, beautiful, disappointed, ill-used ; she was bom with an infinite capacity for love and friendship. There was in her soul a well-spring of that holy spirit of self sacrifice that gives inspiration to heroic natures. . . . Such women are not infrequently wrecked by ill-assorted unions and marriages of convenience. . . . You know not when Fate is at your elbow. It is not necessary to go forth into the wilds of Africa to seek him. He shadows you when you least suspect him. Beware of the day when you are most happy ! . . . The slavery of Passion is a bitter bondage, but the slavery of Love is holiday. . . . The revenge of a woman scorned is as ' a tiger's spring,' so saith the poet Byron, ' deadly and quick and crush ing.' " — Christopher Kenrick's Note Book. ''There are strange coincidences in life ; they occur so d. propos that the strongest minds are impressed, and ask if that mysterious and inexorable fatality in which the an cients believed is not really the law that governs the world." — A If red Mercier.

" I hope you like your rooms," said Dick the next morning at breakfast. 2g "Very much," said the Princess, smiling sweetly upon her host. " Your maid is comfortable, too, I trust? " said Dick. "Most comfortable," was Madame's reply, "and you? " "Oh, I'm all right," said Dick, taking a cup of coffee which Mellish handed to him. "You have charming apartments ; better than the Prince's at the Grand," said Madame. " Yes, a friend introduced me to this house oddly enough three years ago, and I found the same accommodating and agreeable hostess here on my return ; I telegraphed from Brindisi, and my Paris agents secured the place for me." " You are thoughtful for your com forts." "When I get back to civilisation, yes," said Dick. " Out yonder, in Africa, one has to rough it. Won't you take a little more chicken ?, " " No, thank you.

As you were saying, you " Oh, about roughing it ; I can do that as well as any fellow ; and I can do the other thing; the best is good enough for me." " The best ! Of course," she said, " and for me, too." " Hand Madame the peaches," said Travers to Mellish, who was watchful, silent, and alert. Mellish handed to Madame a dish of peaches, the cost of which, in the summer, would be something not to be forgotten in Paris ; but in the winter, Dick's breakfast table, which was a picture of rare fruits and flowers, must have been an enormous item in his weekly bill ; but he could afford it; and it amused him, after his scanty fare in the wilds of Africa, to heap luxury upon luxury and make feasting a function of importance. His rooms overlooked the Place Vendome. They were already decorated with many of his trophies of the chase and his relics of savage life, though the bulk of his collection had gone on, in many cases, to the Old Hall in Yorkshire.

The eyes of the Princess wandered about the room, with its three tall windows and its successful attempt at a bright and luxurious fire. She noted all the evidences of wealth and power that the apartment seemed to suggest. Dick had been making purchases in Paris for English friends, and they were scattered about; silver cups, trophies in gold, knives, dressing cases, jewellery, curious cabinets, laces, and various other works of Parisian art. " I have brought home for some of them skins and idols, knives, spears, elephants' tusks, and what not ; but after all Paris has so many things that are useful and pretty that I want to supplement the African curios with a few really good things that Yorkshire will appreciate, even more perhaps than trifles it has taken me both time and trouble to get — not to mention an occasional risk of bullets and arrows; Mellish and I have had some roughish times at what they call collecting, eh Mellish ?