The Sowers | Page 8

lying alone on the steppe
twelve miles away.
Steinmetz returned to the large refreshment room, and ordered the
waiter to bring him a glass of Benedictine, which he drank slowly and
thoughtfully.
Then he went toward the large black stove which stands in the railway
restaurant at Tver. He opened the door with the point of his boot. The
wood was roaring and crackling within. He threw the handkerchief in
and closed the door.
"It is as well, mon prince," he muttered, "that I found this, and not
you."

CHAPTER III
DIPLOMATIC
"All that there is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe," M.
Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening, apropos
of the great gathering at the French Embassy, and the mot had gone the
round of the room.
In society a little mot will go a long way. M. le Baron de Chauxville
was, moreover, a manufacturer of mots. By calling he was attaché to
the French Embassy in London; by profession he was an epigrammatist.
That is to say, he was a sort of social revolver. He went off if one
touched him conversationally, and like others among us, he frequently
missed fire.
Of course, he had but little real respect for the truth. If one wishes to be
epigrammatic, one must relinquish the hope of being either agreeable or
veracious. M. de Chauxville did not really intend to convey the idea
that any of the persons assembled in the great guest chambers of the
French Embassy that evening were anything but what they seemed.
He could not surely imagine that Lady Mealhead--the beautiful spouse
of the seventh Earl Mealhead--was anything but what she seemed:
namely, a great lady. Of course, M. de Chauxville knew that Lady
Mealhead had once been the darling of the music-halls, and that a
thousand hearts had vociferously gone out to her from sixpenny and
even threepenny galleries when she answered to the name of Tiny
Smalltoes. But then M. de Chauxville knew as well as you and I--Lady
Mealhead no doubt had told him--that she was the daughter of a
clergyman, and had chosen the stage in preference to the school-room
as a means of supporting her aged mother. Whether M. de Chauxville
believed this or not, it is not for us to enquire. He certainly looked as if
he believed it when Lady Mealhead told him--and his expressive Gallic

eyes waxed tender at the mention of her mother, the relict of the late
clergyman, whose name had somehow been overlooked by Crockford.
A Frenchman loves his mother--in the abstract.
Nor could M. de Chauxville take exception at young Cyril Squyrt, the
poet. Cyril looked like a poet. He wore his hair over his collar at the
back, and below the collar-bone in front. And, moreover, he was a
poet--one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems
could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did
not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in
white kid, with green ribbon--a very thin volume and very thin poetry.
Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt's
father kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds.
But one must not always believe all that one hears.
It appears that beneath the turf, or on it, all men are equal, so no one
could object to the presence of Billy Bale, the man, by Gad! who could
give you the straight tip on any race, and looked like it. We all know
Bale's livery stable, the same being Billy's father; but no matter. Billy
wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell you,
there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than that.
Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French
Embassy picking holes in the earthly robes of society's elect. Suffice it
to say that every one was there. Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had
made a place in society and held it by the indecency of her language.
Lady Mealhead said she couldn't stand Kitty Whyte at any price. We
are sorry to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young
person of the gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized. And
it is a bare fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte,
because society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she
would say next. She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum
that the safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of
an upset.
Every one, in fact, was there. All those who have had greatness thrust
upon them, and the others, those who thrust themselves upon the
great--those, in a word, who