Also present was a rather thin woman with rather beautiful eyes who was said to have been once the morganatic wife of a Grand Duke; be that as it may, it seemed to be the case that once a week a courier from the Russian Embassy did call upon her and, being shown that she was still in Bella and not, say, St. Petersburg, proffered a bow and an envelope which might very well contain an order upon a bank in Bella, and not, say, a copy of a poem by Pushkin. The lady was called Countess Zulkand was known to be interested in moral, ethical, and spiritual matters of all sorts.
Hovering over the Countess was a very striking figure indeed. This was the Yankee Far-vestern frontier poet, Washington Parthenopius “Pard” Powell, whose dark-red curls reached halfway down his back where they left a sort of Plimsoll line of perfumed bear-grease on the blue-flannel shirt which was his trademark. “The children of nature ma’am for so I denominate my beloved Redskin brethren who made me an adopted offspring under the name of Red Wolf Slayer when I lived amongst them as the one and only White Indian Scout and the husband of the great chief
Rainmaker’s beloved daughter the princess Pretty Deer whose death broke his heart and purt near broke mine too for pretty dear was she to me they have a mighty marvelous appreciation of the great spirit of nature ma’am and whut you might call a extra-ordinary pre-science of things happening afore they really happen oh I recollect many sitch occasions ma’am yessurree.” He wore buckskin trousers and moccasins embroidered with porcupine quills in several colors and he sometimes wore over his blue flannel shirt a vest of rawhide with long fringes and he wore a bowie knife and a broad-brimmed hat very much squashed and he smoked a calumet adorned with feathers and he was immensely popular right just then in Bella. Crowds gathered just to watch him stop and scan the city streets with one hand shielding his eyes and then wet one finger and hold it up to see which way the wind was blowing. Even now, Uncle Iggy was regarding him with fascination.
“Oh Mr. Powell —” the Countess began.
“Just ‘Pard’ ma’am eph yew please fur we ore all pardners in this great trade and commerce which is life ma’am.”
The Countess sighed and said How True! Oh How True! and then asked. “In this life with the Redskins, Pard... was this before or after you were in Honduras with William Walker?”
Pard struck a pose. “It was after ma’am it was oh long after though may I not call you Sis instid of Countess fur ore we not all brothers and sisters in this one great human family I may why shore well Sis as I was sayun Sis well now whut was I sayun ah yes now it come to me well as I declare in my Fifth Epic Poem in Honor of William Walker the last Conkwistadoree:
“Whenas a mere lad in Honduras with the great William Walker Who was a man of action and not much of a talker It is a vile canard to say he intended to extend slavery This is said in order to disparage his very manly bravery He set his calloused hand upon my boyish curly pate ‘Pard,’ said he, ‘love is much richer than hate.’
These words I always recollect when my life is far from ease He spake them unto me as we galloped through the trees. . . .”
Pard stopped at this point and turned away and brushed his eyes with his forearm; the applause died away in a murmuT of sympathy.
The murmur was interrupted by a harsh and argumentative voice, that of Baron Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg, widely known and widely feared and thoroughly disliked as “the worst-tempered backwoods noble in the Empire”: even now he was on one of his too-frequent trips to the Capital to complain about some fancied infringement of feudal privilege, threatening as always that if he obtained no satisfaction he would retire to his castle-fortress and haul up its drawbridge and fire his antique but stillfunctioning cannon upon any interlopers who came within gunshot — and meaning, anybody. “Yes yes, Mr. Wash Pard, we have often been informed that you were in Honduras, and we have often read that you were in Honduras, and you have just now told us that you were in Honduras; and so I have only one little small question to speak to you —”
“Speak without fear, my brother.”
“Wereyou ever in Honduras?”
The company froze. Would Pard’s hand reach for the scalping knife in its sheath at his belt? Would Pard’s hand reach for the tomahawk, set in the other end of the calumet? The company froze. Pard, however, was far from frozen; the look which he looked at Burgenblitz was far from freezing, it was burning hot. “Boss,” he demanded, “say, was Dante ever in Hell?" Burgenblitz’s mouth, already open to sneer, grew round. Then oval. All waited for him to say ... whatever. He said nothing. Nothing at all. At least not for a very long time, and then upon some other subject. It was, later, felt that Washington Parthenopius “Pard” Powell had had the best of that scene.
But to give a complete roster of those present might be felt tedious; it may however be mentioned that among them was a man in later middle age dressed rather in the manner of a riverboat captain trying to disguise himself as a provincial seed-and-feed dealer. It was a fact that Ister riverboat captains did, often, try to disguise their trade: whatever might have been the case on the Mississippi, it was not looked upon as especially glamorous on the Ister; and those obviously of it were likely to be followed at a safe distance by small boys calling, “Here comes the onion-boat!” and similar indignity. The man was carefully dressed in a suit of best broadcloth obviously tailored by a middling-good provincial tailor of cut at least a generation out of date; his shirt was of staunch linen but it was visibly yellowed from lack of having been sun-bleached. Nearby rested just such a beaver hat as still found fashion and favor in, say, Poposhki-Georgiou. But the riverboat captain had forgotten to take off his deck-boots, as they were called. And he was still wearing the green-glassed spectacles, even though the yellow-red gaslight of Eszterhazy’s room did not glare as did the ripples on the river. So, when Eszterhazy merely waved a hand by way of introduction, saying, “And this is Uncle Iggy from Praz,” at the very most the others smiled gently. No one noticed that Uncle Iggy’s beard, brushed straight downwards, showed a tendency to part, as if it were customarily brushed bifurcated; anyway Uncle Iggy fairly often ran his hands down along it, unobtrusively pushing it together again. Nothing could have been done to shorten the nose, but, somehow, the glasses seemed to change it. And the pouched eyes were unobtrusive behind the green glasses. When someone asked, “And what do you do in Praz, ah, Uncle Iggy?” and the answer, “Well, I be in the feed-and-seed trade and also we do a good line in butter and egg,” was delivered in a rich Scythian-Slovatchko border accent — well, weren’t most riverboat captains from the Scythian-Slovatchko border country? — no one recollected that his R. and I. Majesty was also from exactly there. And who knew how much the Court Gothic accent irked him damnably? For that matter, who called to mind the disguised, nocturnal roamings of Haroun Al-Rashid? Pseudo-bourgeois Uncle Iggy loading up on the black bread and head-cheese with strong mustard was perhaps suspicious, but the suspicion led up the wrong road. As Uncle Iggy meant it to.
At length, during one of those inexplicable pauses which occur in conversation, Katinka Ivanovna made a small sound sufficient to attract attention, tossed the end of her hand-rolled cigarette into the fire-place. Then she gave a frank stretch. Then, glittering with good humor, she said that perhaps it was time to see if the spirits might be ready to come. At her requests the gaslights were turned low and a silence was to be kept until such time as it might appear to the company that she, Katinka Ivanovna, had passed into a trance state: after which, questions might be asked her; she herself requested only that they should not be questions seeking for personal gain. To this rather broad hint that no tips on the bourse would be forthcoming, the company turned up its eyes in horror... and perhaps some slight disappointment.... She lounged back in her chair and closed her eyes. The inevitable squirming of people who have been told to be quiet died away, there was a very audible stomach-gurgle, a guffaw broken off. Then... nothing... and again nothing ... then the breathing of Katinka Ivanovna grew heavier. Her eyes were now partly open. She was not sleeping. She was not awake. Then her host, by gesture, by raising his eyebrows, indicated that it might be question-time.