United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One day, in one of the most brilliant reception-rooms of the Northern capital, the subject of Father Ivan's miracles having been introduced, a gentleman in very high social position, and entirely trustworthy, spoke as follows: "There is something very surprising about these miracles. I am slow to believe in them; but there is one of them which is overwhelming and absolutely true.
Foyle tried again, and this time his voice was silky and soft as ever as he uttered a plainer threat. "I want to help you if I can. I don't want to have to charge you with the murder of Mr. Grell." The warm blood surged crimson to Ivan's face. In an instant he was out of his chair and had leapt at the throat of the detective.
Never, perhaps, was heavier price paid by two offenders for the folly of a single hour. After the night of November 12th, any man in Petersburg could gain audience of Mademoiselle Dravikine more easily than the one man whom Mademoiselle Dravikine cared to see. Nathalie, indeed, made herself miserable enough over the situation to have warmed Ivan's heart, could he have known the fact.
There is only one unchangeable custom observed in Ivan's kingdom: The man with toil-hardened hands is always given a seat at the table, while the possessor of soft white hands must be contented with what is left.
For some time, every evening after dinner, Stephane passed an hour in his little parterre; he plucked out the weeds, planted, watered, and watched with a paternal eye the growth of his favorites. Yesterday, an hour after the sanguinary castigation, while his father was dressing Ivan's wounds, he had gone out on tiptoe.
Ivan's mind whirled in a chaos of regimental introductions and instruction, wearying hunts for suitable bachelor quarters, long afternoon hours filled with the pungent smell of tanbark and the careerings of a horse with whom he never came to be on terms of absolute equality; evenings spent in the glamour of strange restaurants, the discussion of French entrées, and the contemplation of much-dressed denizens of the high and the half worlds; and, finally, retirement in a room at the Hôtel Bellevue, where a young lieutenant with only two thousand rubles in his pocket was not a person of any special importance.
Some ultra-sanctimonious persons may feel inclined to cavil with this association on Elsie's part of "immortal beings," as they would style her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a "dead brute," because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul; but were these gentry to broach the subject before her, being a somewhat outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge that she estimated poor Ivan's sagacious instinct combined with his courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with matter-of-fact religionists of the stamp of her questioner.
Ivan, sick with amazement and regret, had promised his old friend to seek the young fool out and and what? Remonstrate with madness? Right, in an hour or two, a situation that was the climax of months of wrong? Impossible! All Ivan's instincts rebelled against the idea. Nevertheless, as Nicholas had clearly pointed out, something must be done.
"You also are growing courageous when you can speak to your physician thus abruptly," he observed quietly. "Death has nothing to do with our friend as yet, I assure you. Zara, you had better leave us. Your face must not be the first for Ivan's eyes to rest upon. You," nodding to me, "can stay."
But so beyond his own nature was this combination, that it never entered his head to watch and guard the young fellow as he might have done had he understood. Perhaps, in this way, Joseph's gift might have been saved to the world. But fate grants much help to no man; and when Ivan's eyes were opened, it was already too late.
Word Of The Day