CHAPTER XI

CATRINA

The man who carries a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition.  He is like a ship at sea with a “sprung” mainmast.  A side breeze may arise at any moment which throws him all aback and upon his beam-ends.  He runs illegitimate risks, which are things much given to dragging at a man’s mind, handicapping his thoughts.

Paul suffered in this way.  It was a distinct burthen to him to play a double part, although each was innocent enough in itself.  At school, and later on at the ’Varsity, he had consistently and steadily suppressed a truth from friend and foe alike—­namely, that he was in his own country a prince.  No great crime on the face of it; but a constant suppression of a very small truth is as burdensome as any suggestion of falsehood.  It makes one afraid of contemptible foes, and doubtful of the value of one’s own friendship.

Paul was a simple-minded man.  He was not afraid of the Russian Government.  Indeed, he cultivated a fine contempt for that august body.  But he was distinctly afraid of being found out, for that discovery could only mean an incontinent cessation of the good work which rendered his life happy.

The fear of being deprived of this interest in existence should certainly have been lessened, if not quite allayed, by the fact that a greater interest had been brought into his life in the pleasant form of a prospective wife.  When he was in London with Etta Sydney Bamborough he did not, however, forget Osterno.  He only longed for the time when he could take Etta freely into his confidence and engage her interest in the object of his ambition—­namely, to make the huge Osterno estate into that lump of leaven which might in time leaven the whole of the empire.

That a man is capable of sustaining two absorbing interests at once is a matter of every-day illustration.  Are we not surrounded by men who do their work well in life, and love their wives well at home, without allowing the one to interfere with the other?  That women are capable of the same seems exceedingly probable.  But we are a race of sheep who run after each other, guided for the moment by a catchword which will not bear investigation, or an erroneous deduction set in alliterative verse which clings to the mind and sways it.  Thus we all think that woman’s whole existence is, and is only capable of, love, because a poet, in the trickiness of his trade, once said so.

Now, Paul held a different opinion.  He thought that Etta could manage to love him well, as she said she did, and yet take an interest in that which was in reality the object of his life.  He intended to take the earliest opportunity of telling her all about the work he was endeavoring to carry out at Osterno, and the knowledge that he was withholding something from her was a constant burden to an upright and honest nature.