Perceval Gibbon

“ Sandorf laughed. His whimsical cripple's face could express a very personal charm. "Is it Eva?" he asked. "She is wonderful, is she not? A little Englishwoman who will always be a little Englishwoman—remote, a prig, a fanatic for the conventions, but strong and faithful for ever. Wonderful! She was a nursery governess to two stupid babies, when Andreitch found her and took her into his hands; and now she teaches us all to wipe our boots on the mat and not to drop cigarette ash upon our knees. And by degrees we improve; we become gentlemen."
"I see," said Miss Gregory. ”

“ Miss Gregory, for some reason, was a little touched. It occurred to her that here, after all her adventures, she had come upon the real adventurer. This neat, reserved child, stamped with the seal of secure English middle-class life, had married her man and linked herself to his life in the harsh, barbarous outskirts of Europe, and exchanged the play fellows of her home for this gaunt cripple with the bitter, wry mouth, and eyes of a faithful dog. ”

“ They were at an angle of the stairs, where the only light came from the deep well between the iron banisters. Sandorf came to a stop as he spoke, and Miss Gregory paused likewise.
"I'm afraid not," she answered. "Should he have told me something?"
He inspected her grave, handsome face for a space of seconds before he replied.
"That's what I wonder," he said. "We are glad to see you—very glad and very happy. But it is not like our dear Constantin, there in London, to send you to us simply—well, as he might tell a tourist to visit a gallery. Because we do some strange things." ”

“ It was Orloff."
Miss Gregory glanced across him. The veteran was breathing hard, with swollen lids lowered over his small eyes.
"It was Orloff," repeated Sandorf. "We could not have found a better man. He is at the heart of things, a man holding the string of many movements in his hands. The very police are baffled by him; they no longer know for certain on which side he is—for them or against them. Just now they are sure he is for them; they pay him a salary. Soon they will be wiser. ”

“ It was a compliment to the Andreitch couple and to Anton Sandorf—if they had only known how to esteem it—that Miss Gregory, the figure of the moment in Odessa, withdrew herself so willingly from elaborate hospitalities to spend afternoons and evenings in the curious disorder of their flat. By degrees their function in the world became apparent to her. She met, in the big room where Sandorf's piano was, earnest persons of both sexes, always young, whose presence enlightened her. ”

“ Orloff was leaning against a pillar, with his hands clasped over the circumference of his stomach, his face torpid and benign. His companion stood a couple of paces from him, ill at ease and impatient; and Miss Gregory, passing serenely between them, took occasion to examine him. A man in civilian clothes that fitted him ill, she saw; a narrow, intolerant face; a way of standing with the shoulders braced back that would have rendered any disguise futile to so shrewd and experienced an eye as Miss Gregory's. The whole person of the man bespoke the promoted policeman ”

“ Eva and her husband glanced at each other. Miss Gregory was feeling a certain agitation, but she could not fail to notice the fellowship and understanding of the glance by which each consulted the other.
"We burn our papers from time to time," Andreitch said. "They accumulate and get lost, and some of them might get us into trouble."
"Then burn the lot," cried Miss Gregory forcibly. "Burn the lot at once! What do you think I've just seen? I came to tell Sandorf at once. There's treachery going on."
Andreitch interrupted her in his gentle voice. "But sit down," he urged. "You are upset. ”

“ He hesitated on the last word, and Miss Gregory put it down to a momentary hitch in his English.
"I should like it very much," she assured him. "Very much indeed."
"For instance," he suggested, "there is Orloff."
"Orloff," repeated Miss Gregory. "You don't mean the Orloff? The Anarchist, you know?"
At that time there had come again into the light of Russian revolutionary politics a veteran of the country's unrest, a human mole, living commonly below the social surface and emerging to the light only to let loose forces of violence and disorder. ”

“ Orloff vouched for me. They have not let any of the others go."
"Ah," said Miss Gregory, drawing in her breath. "Orloff didn't vouch for them."
Anton Sandorf sighed. "That was the arrangement," he said. "I will tell you all about it. You see, we had formed a little—er—society; we called it the League of Youth. There are many societies nowadays. People are tired of the shame and injustice of this country, and they join themselves into societies to argue about it. ”

“ But I was sure our dear Constantin would not send us a tourist."
"No apology necessary," Miss Gregory assured him. "That's quite all right."
Sandorf bowed. "A book," he repeated. "But that is charming. We are all artists together, then. Besides Madame, there is Eva, the little Eva, with a voice like a friendly little bird; and me, I am a composer; and Andreitch abuses a violin so that it would make you ill. We will make music for you some evening—not?" ”

“ He comes to your flat, then?"
"Sometimes," said Sandorf. "It is easily arranged. He is a gentle creature, and Eva is very fond of him. She keeps slippers for him to put on, because he always gets his feet wet."
Miss Gregory stared. "Good Lord!" she said. "That little thing! I hope—I do hope—she won't get into any trouble through knowing this man."
"I hope not, too," replied Sandorf, and made a motion to resume the descent of the stairs.
He put Miss Gregory into her droschky and gave the name of her hotel to the cabman. ”

“ He came through them slowly, like some vast and ponderous vessel shouldering through flotsam, and she had a view of the man whose great, fat-laden face was sketched in charcoal on the wall. He was huge to the point of unwieldiness, an immense, clumsy carcass of a man, ballooning along on shapeless short legs. ”

“ It makes them not only sympathizers with, but partakers of, the lot of the people; it sends young aristocrats to hunt their ideals in factories and slums. To Andreitch's flat in one evening came a dock-laborer who had discovered Christianity, and a wan, consumptive princess who spoke in a flat, weary voice of dynamite as a panacea for social wrongs.
"I can understand," wrote Miss Gregory in her diary, at this period, "that talking of massacres may relieve one's feelings. There are times when thinking of it relieves mine. I don't object to Eva playing with fire ”

“ To mention him was to invoke the bloodstained past of Russia.
"Not Orloff the Anarchist?" said Miss Gregory.
"That's the man," said Sandorf. "He isn't an Anarchist, though. But perhaps you don't understand the difference. ”

“ It was not only that she felt no sympathy for gentlemen whose trade is with fulminate of mercury put up in small parcels for every-day use, but all that was clean and eupeptic in her composition revolted at the lumbering, plethoric flesh of the man. ”

“ He was a Russian, certainly; so a telegram went from Constantinople to him also, and in reply came a note addressed to one Anton Sandorf, begging him to put himself at Miss Gregory's service for the writer's sake, who was her debtor for much goodness. And it concluded: "You will not let her involve herself, for she is much loved by her friends." Miss Gregory found that a little mysterious, but it became plain when she made the acquaintance of Anton Sandorf. ”