Piers spoke of it as a mere bit of apprentice
work, meant rather to amuse than as a serious essay.
"At all events, it's a success," said his listener. "One hears of it
in every drawing-room. Wonderful thing--you don't sneer at women.
I'm told you are almost on our side--if not quite. I've heard a
passage read into French--the woman of the twentieth century. I
rather liked it."
"Not altogether?" said Otway, with humorous diffidence.
"Oh! A woman never quite likes an ideal of womanhood which doesn't
quite fit her notion of herself. But let us speak of the other
thing, in the _Nineteenth Century_--'The Pilgrimage to Kief.' For
life, colour, sympathy, I think it altogether wonderful. I have
heard Russians say that they couldn't have believed a foreigner had
written it."
"That's the best praise of all."
"You mean to go on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort
of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea.
The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ
against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood.
All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you that I don't
like Russia."
"No more do I," returned Piers, in an undertone. "But that only
means, I don't like the worst features of the Middle ages. The
Russian-speaking cosmopolitan whom you and I know isn't Russia; he
belongs to the Western Europe of to-day, his country represents
Western Europe of some centuries ago.
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