The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer). Vicente Blasco Ibanez
looked at him with an air of interest, scrutinizing him from head to heel without detecting anything of the displeasing youth of former times. She knew of his adventures in Russia, his loves, his duels, his expulsion. An interesting man! A Byronic fellow! Besides, she had heard that he was a bit of a brute with women.
"Come and see me. We must be friends. Remember we are relatives."
Michael scrutinized her also, but with a certain seriousness. He had heard a great deal about her since arriving in Paris. During her three years of married life the Duke had tried twice to divorce her. It weighed on his mind to think that he should be enjoying immense wealth just in return for allowing her to bear his name. When he shook hands with a friend, he was never sure of the latter's relations with his wife. But Alicia had married the Duke in order to be a Duchess, and in the end the couple came to a practical agreement. Half of her income was to go to the Duke, who was to travel, or, if he wished, reside in Paris with a former mistress. Alicia might live as she pleased in her splendid white mansion in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and display a ducal coronet on her underwear, on her silver, and on the doors of her motor cars.
The little horsewoman of the Mexican plains, trained to morning gallops, had been transformed into a woman of proud and arrogant beauty. To Michael she looked like a California orange, golden, gleaming, wafting a strong sweet fragrance.
Inwardly he winced at the gaze of those dark eyes, so enticing and fascinating, so provoking and commanding, in full consciousness of power.
But no. He remembered that various men whom he disliked, had, according to common gossip, already preceded him in falling under Alicia's spell. And for the time being he was interested in a French actress, whom he had met on the train returning from Russia.
Besides, he suddenly beheld her again in his imagination as she was years before. Perhaps she had not changed. She was used to managing men with a firm hand, to changing from one to another, as though they were post horses. He and Alicia would quarrel at their second meeting. They might easily end by coming to blows.
He saw no more of her. New preoccupations changed the direction of his thoughts. One day in the street he met a Russian who seemed old and ill. It was Sergueff, his former teacher. Sergueff must now have been some forty years of age. He looked as though he were in his seventies, with a dirty white beard, grayish skin, and a wrinkled almost motheaten face, with no sign of life save in the two green holes that marked his eyes. From Saint Petersburg they had sent him to a prison in Siberia. He had escaped, crossed half of Asia on foot and alone, as far as a Chinese seaport, and there he had taken ship for the United States. The story of this tour of the world was told in a few words, as though it were a single walk on the boulevards.
Michael Fedor took him to the palace. The Colonel seemed dismayed by Sergueff's presence, and drew back into his shell. He must remember his own connections with nobles of the Russian court! Some of them were former generals of police!
The son of Princess Lubimoff talked for several days with the fugitive. The memory of his own expulsion from the court caused Michael vaguely to sympathize with this man who was likewise an exile. Besides, in the depths of his mind something of his mother's character was stirring, with all its inconsistencies and hazy vague desires. The officer of the Guard listened as attentively as a scholar to the doctrines of the revolutionist.
"Why, those men are right!" he exclaimed with the passionate enthusiasm that the Princess herself expressed for every novelty.
For the first few days he felt a yearning for martyrdom, a deep desire for renunciation, the mystic abnegation of the man of his race. He thought of many princes like himself, educated at court, with high social positions, who had given away their wealth to live among the poor and dedicate their lives to the triumph of truth and justice. He would do the same. He would reawaken to true life, and he was sure that his mother would approve. General Saldaña had given his blood to rehabilitate the past; he would give his to overcome all obstacles in the pathway of the future. Times change. The past consists of a certain number of centuries; the future is infinite.
But Lubimoff was not a true Russian. No sooner had he decided to carry out his mystic determination, than the Latin love of pleasure reawakened in him. Life is good, and offers many pleasant things! For him the tree of life was still overflowing with sap; there still remained for him so many leafy springs, so many fruitful summers! Later, perhaps, when only the dry wood remained. …
The one positive and immediate result of this resurrection was Michael's sense of his own ignorance and of the emptiness of his life. There was something in the world besides knowing languages, wielding rapiers, and riding horses. Man should seek the realization of his greatness in more serious enterprises than love making, duels and betting. Fate, in giving him wealth, had exempted him from the harsh necessity of work. But that was no reason why he should renounce making his mark in the world, as he passed through it, just as thousands of his predecessors had done, and as millions of men to come would continue to do.
For the first time in his life Michael sought the comradeship of books, and this initial reading stirred him with a new desire. He made up his mind to know the world, to see strange countries, to struggle with the blind forces, which form the pulsing of the planet, and to live the coarse rough adventures of men who go from port to port. His father had told him of remote ancestors of the Saldaña family, who had gained titles and fortunes by setting sail from humble Spanish harbors, swooping out like sea gulls across the gloomy Ocean, in the track of Columbus and the Pinzons, in search of new lands of mystery. An ancestor of his, disembarking with the aged Ponce de Leon in Florida, in search of the famous "Fountain of Youth," had been one of the discoverers of the present United States. The first Saldaña to be a noble had obtained his title of "don" by founding a city in the neighborhood of Panama. Why should he not be a navigator like his forebears, a wanderer of the seas, enjoying exotic pleasures, and perhaps succeeding in wresting some secret from the blue deep?
Life in that palace which his mother's mania had rendered ugly, was becoming uncomfortable and distasteful, and was impelling him to flee. The Princess did not make the slightest objection, when informed that her son desired to buy a yacht to navigate the seven seas. Let him do so, by all means! It was a princely pastime, quite worthy of a Prince Lubimoff. They were constantly growing richer. The oil, the platinum, all the precious ores of their properties and the products of their lands, as large as nations, made up an enormous income. The preceding year it had reached the sum of seventeen million francs: a million a month! For a single private family it meant unbelievable wealth, and the Princess Lubimoff, who had temporarily regained her sanity, modestly added:
"But for a queen it isn't much."
In England Michael purchased a sailing yacht, with a sharp bow, bold masts, and an auxiliary engine, and gave it the Spanish name for the sea gull, the "Gaviota."
His idea was to continue on the ocean the life he had led on land, selecting, however, only its most interesting phases. For that reason he decided to take Sergueff along. The teacher seemed melancholy, as though the comforts and the liberal sums of money which the Prince bestowed on him weighed on his conscience like remorse. He had something more urgent to do in the world than voyage idly hither and thither in a luxurious boat. He disappeared one day, to return to Russia, as though the gallows had a fascination for him. Or was it that he preferred, in case of better luck than that, to travel once again around the world, but in his own manner?
The Colonel, as the aide de camp of the Prince, felt obliged to embark. He had never yet left "his boy's" side! But, oh, he was not blessed with sea legs, and, much less, with a sea stomach! He was a hero of the mountains! They were obliged to send him back to Paris from a port in Brazil.
The voyage of the Gaviota lasted for five years. In the second year Michael Fedor thought his career as a navigator was about to be interrupted. The war between Russia and Japan had just broken out and he cabled from a Pacific port, asking for his former place in the Guard. The reply was a long time in coming. The Czar was still angry with him and kept him in exile.
"So much the better!" Michael finally said to himself in a voice choked with anger. He guessed what was going to happen; what was to be the final fate of those brave Russians