The Secret of the Night | Page 8

us this evening. Your health, Matrena
Petrovna. Champagne, Feodor Feodorovitch! Vive la France,
monsieur! Natacha, my child, you must sing something. Boris will
accompany you on the guzla. Your father will enjoy it."
All eyes turned toward Natacha as she rose.
Rouletabille was struck by her serene beauty. That was the first
enthralling impression, an impression so strong it astonished him, the
perfect serenity, the supreme calm, the tranquil harmony of her noble
features. Natacha was twenty. Heavy brown hair circled about er
forehead and was looped about her ears, which were half-concealed.
Her profile was clear-cut; her mouth was strong and revealed between
red, firm lips the even pearliness of her teeth. She was of medium

height. In walking she had the free, light step of the highborn maidens
who, in primal times, pressed the flowers as they passed without
crushing them. But all her true grace seemed to be concentrated in her
eyes, which were deep and of a dark blue. The impression she made
upon a beholder was very complex. And it would have been difficult to
say whether the calm which pervaded every manifestation of her beauty
was the result of conscious control or the most perfect ease.
She took down the guzla and handed it to Boris, who struck some
plaintive preliminary chords.
"What shall I sing?" she inquired, raising her father's hand from the
back of the sofa where he rested and kissing it with filial tenderness.
"Improvise," said the general. "Improvise in French, for the sake of our
guest."
"Oh, yes," cried Boris; "improvise as you did the other evening."
He immediately struck a minor chord.
Natacha looked fondly at her father as she sang:
"When the moment comes that parts us at the close of day, when the
Angel of Sleep covers you with azure wings; "Oh, may your eyes rest
from so many tears, and your oppressed heart have calm; "In each
moment that we have together, Father dear, let our souls feel harmony
sweet and mystical; "And when your thoughts may have flown to other
worlds, oh, may my image, at least, nestle within your sleeping eyes."
Natacha's voice was sweet, and the charm of it subtly pervasive. The
words as she uttered them seemed to have all the quality of a prayer
and there were tears in all eyes, excepting those of Michael Korsakoff,
the second orderly, whom Rouletabille appraised as a man with a
rough heart not much open to sentiment.
"Feodor Feodorovitch," said this officer, when the young girl's voice
had faded away into the blending with the last note of the guzla,

"Feodor Feodorovitch is a man and a glorious soldier who is able to
sleep in peace, because he has labored for his country and for his
Czar."
"Yes, yes. Labored well! A glorious soldier!" repeated Athanase
Georgevitch and Ivan Petrovitch. "Well may he sleep peacefully."
"Natacha sang like an angel," said Boris, the first orderly, in a
tremulous voice.
"Like an angel, Boris Nikolaievitch. But why did she speak of his heart
oppressed? I don't see that General Trebassof has a heart oppressed,
for my part." Michael Korsakoff spoke roughly as he drained his glass.
"No, that's so, isn't it?" agreed the others.
"A young girl may wish her father a pleasant sleep, surely!" said
Matrena Petrovna, with a certain good sense. "Natacha has affected us
all, has she not, Feodor?"
"Yes, she made me weep," declared the general. "But let us have
champagne to cheer us up. Our young friend here will think we are
chicken-hearted."
"Never think that," said Rouletabille. "Mademoiselle has touched me
deeply as well. She is an artist, really a great artist. And a poet."
"He is from Paris; he knows," said the others.
And all drank.
Then they talked about music, with great display of knowledge
concerning things operatic. First one, then another went to the piano
and ran through some motif that the rest hummed a little first, then
shouted in a rousing chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect
fracas of talk and laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch
walked across and kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him
great children who amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and

who drank in a fashion more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna
smoked cigarettes of yellow tobacco incessantly, rising almost
continually to make a hurried round of the rooms, and after having
prompted the servants to greater watchfulness, sat and looked long at
Rouletabille, who did not stir, but caught every word, every gesture of
each one there. Finally, sighing, she sat down by Feodor and asked
how his leg felt. Michael and Natacha, in a corner, were deep in
conversation, and Boris watched them with obvious impatience, still
strumming the guzla. But the thing that struck Rouletabille's youthful
imagination beyond