George Gibbs - The Vagrant Duke

At the piano a man sat playing the "Revolutionary Étude" of Chopin. The room was magnificent in its proportions, its furnishings were massive, its paneled oak walls were hung with portraits of men and women in the costumes of a bygone day. Through the lofty windows, the casements of which were open to the evening sky there was a vista of forest and meadow-land stretching interminably to the setting sun. The mosquelike cupola of a village church, a few versts distant, glimmered like a pearl in the dusky setting of wooded hills, and close by it, here and there, tiny spirals of opalescent smoke marked the dwellings of Zukovo village.

But the man at the piano was detached, a being apart from this scene of quiet, absorbed in his piano, which gave forth the turbulence which had been in the soul of the great composer. The expression upon the dark face of the young musician was rapt and eager, until he crashed the chords to their triumphant conclusion when he sank back in his chair with a gasp, his head bent forward upon his breast, his dark gaze fixed upon the keys which still echoed with the tumult.

It was at this moment that a door at the side of the room was opened and a white-haired man in purple livery entered and stood in silence regarding rather wistfully the man at the piano, who raised his head abruptly like one startled from a dream.

"What is it, Vasili?" asked the musician.

The servant approached softly a few steps.

"I did not wish to intrude, Highness, but – "

As the old servant hesitated, the young man shrugged and rose, disclosing a tall, straight figure, clad in a dark blue blouse, loose trousers and brown boots liberally bespattered with mud. The glow of the sun which shot across his face as he came forward into the light, showed swarthy features, level brows, a straight nose, a well turned chin, a small mustache and a generous mouth which revealed a capacity for humor. He was quite calm now, and the tones of his voice were almost boyish in their confidence and gayety.

"Well, what is it, Vasili?" he repeated. "You have the air of one with much on your conscience. Out with it. Has Sacha been fighting with you again?"

"No, Master, not Sacha," said the old man clearing his throat nervously, "it is something worse – much worse than Sacha."

"Impossible!" said the other with a laugh as he took up a cigarette from the table. "Nothing could be worse than a Russian cook when she gets into a rage – "

"But it is, Master – something worse – much worse – "

"Really! You alarm me." The Grand Duke threw himself into an armchair and inhaled luxuriously of his cigarette. And then with a shrug, "Well?"

The old man came a pace or two nearer muttering hoarsely, "They've broken out in the village again," he gasped.

The Grand Duke's brow contracted suddenly.

"H-m. When did this happen?"

"Last night. And this morning they burned the stables of Prince Galitzin and looted the castle."

The young man sprang to his feet.

"You are sure of this?"

"Yes, Master. The word was brought by Serge Andriev less than ten minutes ago."

He took a few rapid paces up and down the room, stopping by the open window and staring out.

"Fools!" he muttered to himself. Then turning to the old servitor, "But, Vasili – why is it that I have heard nothing of this? To-day Conrad, the forester, said nothing to me. And the day before yesterday in the village the people swept off their caps to me – as in the old days. I could have sworn everything would be peaceful at Zukovo – at least, for the present – " he added as though in an afterthought.

"I pray God that may be true," muttered Vasili uncertainly. And then with unction, "In their hearts, they still love you, Highness. They are children – your children, their hearts still full of reverence for the Grand Duke Peter Nicholaevitch in whom runs the same blood as that which ran in the sacred being of the Little Father – but their brains! They are drunk with the poison poured into their minds by the Committeemen from Moscow."

"Ah," eagerly, "they returned?"

"Last night," replied the old man wagging his head. "And your people forgot all that you had said to them – all that they owe to you. They are mad," he finished despairingly, "mad!"

The Grand Duke had folded his arms and was staring out of the window toward the white dome of the church now dyed red like a globule of blood in the sunset.

The old man watched him for a moment, all the fealty of his many years of service in his gaze and attitude.

"I do not like the look of things, Highness. What does it matter how good their hearts are if their brains are bad?"

"I must go and talk with them, Vasili," said the Grand Duke quietly.

The old man took a step forward.

"If I might make so free – "

"Speak – "

"Not to-night, Master – "

"Why not?"

"It will be dangerous. Last night their voices were raised even against you."

"Me! Why? Have I not done everything I could to help them? I am their friend – because I believe in their cause: and they will get their rights too but not by burning and looting – "

"And murder, Master. Two of Prince Galitzin's foresters were killed."

The Grand Duke turned. "That's bad. Murder in Zukovo!" He flicked his extinguished cigarette out of the window and made a gesture with his hand.

"Go, Vasili. I want to think. I will ring if I need you."

"You will not go to Zukovo to-night?"

"I don't know."

And with another gesture he waved the servant away.

When Vasili had gone, the Grand Duke sat, his legs across the chair by the window, his arms folded along its back while his dark eyes peered out, beyond the hills and forests, beyond the reddened dome of the village church into the past where his magnificent father Nicholas Petrovitch held feudal sway over all the land within his vision and his father's fathers from the time of his own great namesake held all Russia in the hollow of their hands.

The Grand Duke's eyes were hard and bright above the slightly prominent cheek bones, the vestiges of his Oriental origin, but there was something of his English mother too in the contours of his chin and lips, which tempered the hardness of his expression. The lines at his brows were not the savage marks of anger, or the vengefulness that had characterized the pitiless blood which ran in his veins, but rather were they lines of disappointment, of perplexity at the problem that confronted him, and pity for his people who did not know where to turn for guidance. He still believed them to be his people, a heritage from his lordly parent, his children, who were responsible to him and to whom he was responsible. It was a habit of thought, inalienable, the product of the ages. But it was the calm philosophy of his English mother that had first given him his real sense of obligation to them, her teachings, even before the war began, that had shown him how terrible were the problems that confronted his future.

His service in the Army had opened his eyes still wider and when Russia had deserted her allies he had returned to Zukovo to begin the work of reconstruction in the ways his awakened conscience had dictated. He had visited their homes, offered them counsel, given them such money as he could spare, and had, he thought, become their friend as well as their hereditary guardian. All had gone well at first. They had listened to him, accepted his advice and his money and renewed their fealty under the new order of things, vowing that whatever happened elsewhere in Russia, blood and agony and starvation should not visit Zukovo.