Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso
by Ossip Schubin · English · Gutenberg #35396 · 336,587 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso
Author: Ossip Schubin
Translator: Elise Lathrop
Release date: February 25, 2011 [eBook #35396]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35396
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASBEÏN: FROM THE LIFE OF A VIRTUOSO ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive.
Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/asbeinfromlifeof00schuiala
[Illustration: With hands lightly folded in her lap and head leaned
back against her chair, Natalie has listened. In the beginning she had
been carried out of herself by a feeling of painfully sweet happiness,
but now she felt strangely oppressed. _p. 36_.]
ASBEIN
FROM THE LIFE OF A VIRTUOSO
BY
OSSIP SCHUBIN
_TRANSLATED BY ELISE L. LATHROP_
NEW YORK
WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY
1890
Copyright, 1890, by
WORTHINGTON CO.
Press of J.J. Little & Co.,
Astor Place, New York.
ASBEIN.[1]
FIRST BOOK.
"But--do you really not recognize me?" With these words, and with
friendly, outstretched hands, a young lady hastened toward a man who,
with gloomily contracted brow, wrapped in thought, went on his way
without noticing either her or his surroundings. He was foolish, for
his surroundings were picturesque--Rome, near the Fontana di Trevi, on
a bright March afternoon. And the young lady--she was charming.
Although she had called to him in French, something about her--one
could scarcely have told what--betrayed the Russian; everything, the
pampered woman from the highest circles of society.
The young man whose attention she had sought to attract in such a
violent and unconventional manner was just as evidently a Russian, but
of quite a different condition. One could hardly decide to what fixed
sphere of society he belonged, but one perceived immediately that his
manners had never been improved, polished, softened by society
discipline, that he was no man of the world. He was, evidently, a man
who was apart from the rank and file, a man who stood far out from the
conventional frame, a man whom no one could pass without twice looking
after him. His form was large and somewhat heavy; his face, framed by
dark, half-curled hair, in spite of the blunt profile, reminded one of
Napoleon Bonaparte, but Bonaparte in the first romantic period of his
life, before he had become fat and accustomed to pose for the classic
head of Caesar.
She was the Princess Natalie Alexandrovna Assanow; he the feted violin
virtuoso and well-known composer, Boris Lensky.
She had run herself quite out of breath to catch up with him; twice she
had called to him before he heard her; then he looked around and lifted
his hat.
"Boris Nikolaivitch, do you not really recognize me?" said she, now in
Russian, laughing and breathless.
"You here, Princess! Since when? Why have you given me no sign of your
existence?" and he took both the slender girlish hands, still
outstretched to him, in his.
"We only arrived here yesterday from Naples."
"Ah! and I go there to-day." His long-drawn words betrayed very
significantly a certain vexation.
"Yes, to give three concerts there. I know; it was in the newspapers,"
she nodded earnestly, and sighed.
"Hm!" he began; "then--" he hesitated.
"Then you do not understand why I did not wait for the concerts?" said
she, gayly; "it was impossible."
"Impossible?" said he with a short, defiant motion of the head, the
motion of a too-tightly checked race-horse who impatiently jerks at the
bridle. "How so impossible? What word is that from the mouth of a young
lady who has nothing else in the world to do but amuse herself?"
"As if I were independent!" she sighed, with comic despair. "First,
mamma could not leave Naples--hm--for family reasons. My sister is
married there, you know. Then--then--"
"Do not trouble yourself with polite excuses," he interrupted her. "I
see that you are no longer interested in my music;" and, half-jesting,
half-vexed, shrugging his shoulders, he added, "What of it? One must
put up with one's destiny!"
"I am no longer interested in your music!" said she, angrily; "and you
venture to say that to me, even after I have run after you--yes, really
run after you, which is not proper--only to----"
She stopped, her face wore a vexed, indignant expression. "Why did you
do it?" said he, roughly; "it is not becoming."
Instead of losing her self-possession, she laughed heartily. "But,
Boris Nikolaivitch," said she, "you speak as if you were a true man of
the world. However, as you please, I thank you for the lecture. Adieu!"
And nodding her head quite arrogantly, she was about to turn on her
heel, when her look met his. She saw that she had vexed him, remained
standing, blushed, and lowered her eyes.
The waters of the Acqua Nigo foamed and sparkled gayly between the
edges of the stone basin which Nicolo Salvi had made for them; the
noonday church-bells mingled their deep, solemn voices with the
caressing rippling of the waves; the sun shone full from the deep-blue,
ice-cold heaven, a glaring, unpleasant March sun, which was light
without warming, like the condescending smile of a great man, and
Natalie's maid who, grumbling and bored, stood a step behind her young
mistress, opened a round, green fan to shield her eyes, and at the same
time stamped her feet from the cold. Around, the Roman life went on in
its usual lazy way. Before a small, loaded cart stood a mule with a
number of red and blue tassels about its ears and on its forehead hung
a brass image of the Virgin. In the door of a vegetable shop, from
which came a strong smell of herbs, crouched a black-eyed, white Spitz
dog, that twitched its right ear uneasily. A fat, smooth-headed
Capuchin passed by, then came two shabbily dressed young people. The
Capuchin stopped to scratch the mule's head, the young people nudged
each other, and said in an undertone, while they pointed to the
virtuoso: "_E Borisso Lensky_."
"There you have it," said the princess, shaking off her vexation
with a charming, pleasant smile, and her head bent one side. "Great
man that you are, and still you take it amiss in me." She said
nothing more, only raised her great blue eyes and gave him a look, a
never-to-be-forgotten look, behind whose roguishness a riddle was
concealed.
"I take nothing amiss in you," said he, earnestly.
"Really nothing? Now, then, I can tell you how much, oh! how much, I
have longed to hear you play again, that I, _coute qu'il coute_, seized
the opportunity to ask you to stop in Rome on your return from Naples
only to--" She hesitated, as if she were suddenly afraid of being
indiscreet.
"Only to play something for the Princess Natalie Alexandrovna Assanow,"
he completed her sentence, laughing. "Good. I will come, Natalie
Alexandrovna; in two weeks I am there. But if you are then in Florence
or Nice----"
She was about to make a very positive assertion, when a slender,
fashionably dressed man, with a very high hat and faultless gloves,
passed by them, greeted the princess respectfully, and, with a slight
squint, measured Lensky from head to foot. Lensky recognized in him an
officer of the guard, Count Konstantin Paulovitch Pachotin, and
remembered last winter, during the season in St. Petersburg, he paid
court to Natalie. The scrutinizing look of the young man vexed him
beyond bounds; everything looked red before him. "Ah! he here?" he
asked the young princess with mocking emphasis. "May one congratulate
you?"
She frowned and turned away her head. "No!" murmured she. Then raising
her wonderful eyes to him again: "So, farewell for two weeks!"
"Perhaps."
"Say positively, I beg you, and throw the traditional soldo in the
fountain."
"With the best of intentions, I cannot do that; I have none with me,"
he laughed, now involuntarily.
She was charming. She wore a brown velvet bonnet that was fastened
under the chin with broad ribbons. She had pushed back her veil, and
the transparent brown gauze shining in the sun formed a golden
background for her pretty, pale face. It was cold, although the
beginning of March, and therefore her tall figure was wrapped to the
feet in a sable-trimmed velvet cloak, beneath which a scarcely visible
silk dress rustled very melodramatically. A delicate perfume of amber
and fresh violets exhaled from her.
"You have no soldo?" said she; "then I will lend you one." She
earnestly sought in her portemonnaie, whereupon she handed him the
coin. He threw it in the basin of the noisy, rippling Fontana di Trevi.
The water sparkled golden for a moment, when the coin sank, and tried
to form circles, but the spouting gayety of the cascade obliterated
them.
"You will come!" said Natalie, laughing gayly.
"Yes, I will come," said he, not gayly as she, but gloomily, even
grumbling. "But if you are not there," he added, "or----"
She had already turned to go, and without replying anything to his last
words, she called to him over her shoulder:
"_Via Giulia Palazzo Morsini!_"
He looked after her for a long time. The fashionable dress at that time
was very ugly. This little scene took place in the fifties, when the
Empress Eugenie had again brought into favor the hoop-skirt which had
disappeared quite a half-century before. But still Natalie Alexandrovna
was charming. How peculiar her walk was, so light and still a little
dragging, dreamily gliding, withal not weary, but with a peculiar
certain characteristic rhythm. He thoughtfully hummed a melody to it.
Yes, he would come back. Whether he would have come back if the glance
of the officer of the guard had not angered him? He must see, must
teach this dandy!
* * * * *
"You speak just as if you were a true man of the world," the princess
had replied to his--as he angrily told himself--highly unsuitable and
tasteless advice. Now it might perhaps be small; yes, certainly it was
small, but sometimes, sometimes he would secretly have preferred to be
a true man of the world instead of being--a celebrity.
"She ran after me!" he said to himself again. "Why did she run after
me? It was charming in her she would not have done it for any one else!
Bah! She is still only like all the others!" And the great artist,
whose life resembled a continual triumphal procession, of whom already
a finger-thick biography with glaringly false dates had appeared, and
concerning whom the papers every day reported something remarkable,
suddenly felt a kind of envy of Count Konstantin Paulovitch Pachotin, a
St. Petersburg dandy, whose name had never been in the papers, and whom
he despised for his narrow-mindedness.
He was a great genius, but, like many other great geniuses, he was of
quite obscure parentage. Some asserted he came from that horrible
citadel of the poor in Moscow where misery intrenches itself against
progress, in filth, stupidity, and vice; others said he had been found,
a scarcely week-old child, wrapped in rags, before the door of the
Conservatory in St. Petersburg. There were really all kinds of accounts
in the papers. This one said that he was the son of a princess of the
blood and a gypsy; that one, that he descended from an old princely
family of the Czechs, and many other such romantic inventions. He
shrugged his shoulders scornfully at all such improvisations, without
refuting them by accurate personal accounts. How did the cold, hungry,
maltreated sadness of his first youth concern the world? Now he was
Boris Lensky, one of the first musicians of his time. Everything else
could be indifferent to the man. It was indifferent to them; it was
quite indifferent to them all, only not to him. The wounds which the
tormenting martyrdom of his childhood had torn in his heart had never
quite healed; therefore he showed a sensitiveness and irritability
which even the most sympathetic person could scarcely comprehend.
But now he fared very well in the world. No one was so pampered, so
caressed as he.
His playing exercised such a penetrating, sense-ensnaring charm that
his listeners, transported in a kind of musical intoxication, lost
their capability of judging, and even the most well-bred women crowded
around him with allegiance so exaggerated that it tore down the
boundary of every customary demeanor.
Another would have enjoyed this allegiance without thinking further of
it; but for Lensky, on the contrary, it had a repellent effect. Child
of the people to the finger-tips, totally unused to the customs of
fashionable circles, his feeling of propriety was as wounded by what he
plainly called insolent shamelessness as that of a peasant who for the
first time sees a woman with bare shoulders.
Besides his sense of propriety, there was another that was wounded by
the lack of reserve which great ladies showed him, and that was his
pride. Not only gifted with musical genius, but with a very clear head,
he soon perceived that if the ladies of the great world permitted
themselves freer manners with him than did women of a more modest
sphere of life, they still took liberties with him of which they would
have been ashamed in association with companions of their own rank.
"_Mon dieu, avec un virtuose, cela ne tire pas a consequence_," he once
heard an elegant little St. Petersburg woman say. He never forgot the
words, and in consequence received all the feminine allegiance of good
society with hostile distrust.
He usually excused the tactless exuberance of a poorly cared for, badly
brought up woman of the Conservatory. In society of this kind, of
saddened womanly existence, incessantly touched with pity, he showed
kindness to the sad enthusiasts wherever he could, and laughed at their
tasteless animation. But for the great ladies, who should have known
better, who thought that they alone held the monopoly of good form, and
who still pursued a man like wild beasts--for these he had no
consideration. His roughness in intercourse with them had become almost
as proverbial as the success which he attained with them.
Still, in his home he quite unconsciously accustomed himself to an
aristocratic atmosphere, and, with the refined sense of a true artist
nature, susceptible to all beauty and distinction, in association with
great ladies he felt a mixture of irritation and pleasure, while
pleasure gradually won the upper hand; and in foreign countries, where
he was received only exceptionally and with official solemnity, and
really had intimate access to salons of the second rank only, he
renounced intercourse with that refined world which he abused, like so
many others, without being able to escape its perfidious charm, and
felt, every time that he met one of his despised pretty St. Petersburg
or Moscow enthusiasts, an unmistakable joy.
Two weeks after his meeting with Natalie at the Fontana di Trevi,
Lensky appeared for the first time in the Palazzo Morsini. From a very
large staircase, whose beauties he must admire by the light of the wax
matches which he had brought in his pocket, he stumbled into a large
vestibule, from which the servant conducted him through a heavy
portiere, painted with coats of arms as high as a man, into an immense
drawing-room with soiled and faded yellow damask hangings and
furniture.
"Monsieur Lensky!" announced the servant.
The virtuoso was accustomed to a universal exclamation following the
announcement of his name, and the looks of the whole assembly should be
directed to him.
Nothing of the sort this time. Natalie sat near an old French lady,
Marquise de C., whose knitting she kindly helped to arrange, and as the
young Russian introduced the virtuoso to her, she raised her lorgnette
and said: "Monsieur Lensky--ah! _vraiment_, that is very interesting!"
whereupon, without further troubling herself about him, she continued
to speak to Natalie of all kinds of social affairs, the marriage of
Marie X., the debts of Alexander T., the trousseau of Aurelie Z., and
the boldness of that parvenu A.
For the present he could not approach the hostess. She warded him
off with a nod from the distance, for she was engaged in a very
exciting occupation. Although the universal interest for spiritualistic
table-tapping and moving was already quite over, the repetition of this
experiment, which strangely enough often succeeded in the Palazzo
Morsini, was one of the favorite pastimes of Natalie's mother, the
Princess Irina Dimitrievna Assanow. She now sat at a table in the
middle of the drawing-room between many others, most of them old
Russians, men and women; opposite her a thin, very young man with long,
straight, blond hair, a well-known magnetizer.
It seemed to Lensky as if he had never seen anything more laughable
than these half-dozen almost exclusively gray-haired people who sat
with solemn bearing and attentive faces around a table whose edge they
could just surround with hands stretched out as far as possible.
Those present who did not directly participate in the attempt to
bewitch the table, stood around observing the interesting round
surface.
But the table continued in a state of desperately exciting passivity.
Lensky, usually specially invited to soirees, of which he formed the
centre of attraction, felt humiliated by the four-legged wooden rival,
who, to-day, took all the attention away from him.
At last the old French woman turned to the observation of the table,
which permitted the young girl to devote herself a little to Lensky,
rapidly becoming more gloomy; then the door opened and the butler
announced Count Pachotin. The virtuoso felt not at all pleasantly
toward the young dandy when he asked him unusually kindly and
sympathetically whether he was contented with the result of his last
concert tour.
After Pachotin had fulfilled the condescension, which as a finely
cultivated nobleman he thought he owed to an artistic star he turned to
Natalie and from then ignored Lensky as completely as the Marquise de
C. had done. Lensky meanwhile morosely pulled long horse-hairs from the
holes in the thread-bare arms of the damask chair. He was very helpless
in spite of his already great renown. His actions in society were
solely confined to playing and permitting the ladies to rave over him.
He did not understand how to take an inconspicuous part in the
conversation, and to cross the room for any other purpose than to take
up his violin made him quite giddy.
The table meanwhile still refused to move. The excitement became
general.
"_Voyons_, M. Lensky," called the Marquise de C., suddenly turning to
the young artist, lorgnette at her eyes; "if you should give us a
little music perhaps it would act upon the legs of this stiff-necked
table."
A man quick at repartee would have answered the silly remark with a gay
jest. But Lensky grew deathly pale, sprang up; in that moment the
resisting sacrifice of magnetism began to totter and tremble.
Even Pachotin left his place near Natalie in order to watch closely the
interesting spectacle. The magnetizers rose and, with earnest,
triumphant faces, accompanied the table, which now seemed to have
entered into the spirit of the affair and took the most remarkable
steps with its wooden legs.
"_Vous partez deja_?" asked Natalie, coming up to the virtuoso.
"I am no longer needed," said Lensky, with a glance at the table, and
bowed without touching the outstretched hand of the young girl.
Without, in the vestibule just as he was about to put his arms in the
overcoat which the servant held out to him, he saw the princess, who
had hastened after him.
[Illustration: "I cannot let you go away angry," said she. _p. 23_.]
"I cannot let you go away angry," said she. "Come to-morrow to lunch.
We never receive in the morning, but you will be welcome."
This time he took her hand in his, and looked in her eyes with a
peculiar mixture of anger and tenderness.
"You know I do everything that you wish," murmured he; "but----"
"Well?" She smiled pleasantly and encouragingly. He turned away his
head and went.
"Perhaps in reality she is only like the others, but still she is
bewitching!" he murmured, as he stumbled down the old marble steps of
the palace in the darkness.
* * * * *
Yes, she was bewitching. Many still remember how charming she was at
that time. She was from Moscow, and a true Moscow woman; that is to
say, deeper, more polished, more intellectual, than the average St.
Petersburg woman, whom a pert Frenchman has described as "_Parisiennes
a la sauce tartare_." Lensky had met her the former year at her
relatives' in Petersburg, where they had sent her for the ball season,
perhaps with the idea that she would make a good match.
Her domestic circumstances were quite disturbed. Her mother, a former
beauty, and who in her youth had been much admired at the court of
Alexander I., could not adapt herself to her poverty--that is to say,
she absolutely could not exist on the very moderate remains of a
splendid property which her husband had squandered. She never
complained; she only never kept within her means. She was always
planning new reforms, but her most saving plans always proved costly
when carried out.
When she summoned Natalie home from St. Petersburg the former May she
had just formed a quite special resolution: she would travel to a
foreign country, in order, as she expressed it, to be unconstrainedly
shabby and economical. Her unconstrained shabbiness in Rome consisted
in living in a very picturesque _palazzo_ with two maids brought with
her from Russia, a male factotum, and a number of Italian assistants;
by day, clad in a faded sky-blue _peignoir_, stretched on a lounge,
alternately reading French novels and playing patience; in the evening,
receiving an amusing assembly of _gens du monde_ and celebrities, among
whom the already mentioned magnetizer enjoyed her especial sympathy, at
dinner or tea. Her economy culminated in locking up the most trifling
articles with great punctiliousness and never being able to find the
keys; for which reason the locksmith must be frequently summoned.
The Russian maids naturally never moved their hands, the Italian
assistants wiped the dust from one piece of furniture to another, and
so the household would really have made quite an impression of having
come down in the world if the butler, whom they had brought with them
had not saved it by his aristocratic prestige. A Frenchman and valet of
the deceased prince, Monsieur Baptiste was not only outwardly
decorative, but of a useful nature. His principal occupation consisted
in sitting in the vestibule, with finely-shaved upper lip and imposing
side-whiskers, intrenched behind a newspaper, and overpowering the
creditors if they ventured to present their unpaid bills.
* * * * *
Lensky had resolved to leave Rome the next day, and to ignore the
invitation of the princess. Returned to the hotel, he immediately set
about packing; that is to say, he in all haste wrapped and squeezed his
effects together in any manner and threw them in his trunk as one
throws potatoes in a sack. Then he ordered his bill from the waiter and
a carriage for the next morning. When the waiter at the appointed hour
presented the bill and announced the carriage he showed him out. From
ten o'clock on he drew out his chronometer every quarter of an hour; at
twelve he appeared in the Palazzo Morsini.
"You are punctual," said the princess, stretching out her hand to him;
"that is nice of you. I was terribly afraid that you would not come. We
are quite among ourselves; only mamma and we two. Does that suit you?"
Again she bent her head to one side and looked at him with that
peculiar glance, behind whose roguishness a riddle was concealed. What
was it? Something sweet, perhaps something tender, earnest--or only a
gay triumph or planned conquest?
Meanwhile it cost him the greatest self-restraint not to fall at her
feet immediately, so charming and beautiful was she. Everything about
her was beautiful: her tall but beautifully rounded figure; her pale
oval face, framed in dark hair; her remarkable eyes, usually dreamily
half closed, and then suddenly looking at one so large and full; her
long small hands and her little feet. No Andalusian had a smaller,
slenderer, more finely-arched foot than Natalie. He had scarcely time
to reply to her amiability, when the butler announced that luncheon was
served, and they went into the dining-room.
It was a peculiar luncheon. The old princess presided in a wrapper. The
lukewarm dishes--brought every day from a restaurant in a tin box,
which Lensky had met on the steps were served by Monsieur Baptiste on
the largely shattered remnants of a Florentine faience service with
noticeable correctness. A broad golden sunbeam lay on the table between
Lensky and Natalie and gave the most extravagantly unsuitable colors to
the flowers which shed their fragrance from a low Japanese porcelain
bowl in the middle of the table, and over these flowers, sparkling like
diamonds, he looked at her.
She ate little and talked a great deal, told all kinds of droll
stories; one witty anecdote followed the other. He could not weary of
listening to her. Yes, even if what she said had not interested him, he
would not tire of hearing her. The sweet, somewhat veiled tone of her
voice seemed like a caress to his sensitive ear.
* * * * *
"I would like to ask you something, Boris Nikolaivitch," said the old
princess later, while they were taking coffee, in the drawing-room.
"I am at your disposition entirely, Princess," Lensky hastened to
assure her.
"It is about my violins," she began, in a drawling, whining voice,
which was her manner, and meant nothing.
"But, mamma," Natalie hastily interrupted her, "this is not the
moment----"
"Pray, permit me," said Lensky; and turning to the princess, "so it is
about your violins?"
"Yes. My husband--you know what an excellent player he was," continued
the old lady, "has left three violins. People have always told me they
were worth a small fortune, but I did not wish to part with them at any
price. I ask you--a souvenir. But finally--times are hard, and one must
not be too hard on the peasants, and, besides, as none of my children
play the violin, however musical they are--well, I would be very glad
if you would try the instruments and incidentally value them.
"You could perhaps advise me--yes---- What is the matter, Natascha?"
For Natalie had blushed to the roots of her hair. Tears stood in her
eyes.
Boris guessed that she feared he would look upon the explanation of her
mother as a bid.
"I remember the violins very well," he hastened to assure her;
"especially one of them excited my envy. It would please me very much
to try them again."
The servant brought the violins and at the same time a pile of hastily
snatched-up violin music, smelling of dust, dampness, and camphor. The
wonderfully beautiful instruments were in a pitiable condition--half of
the strings were gone, those that remained were brittle and dry. But
still there was a small stock of them. After Boris, with the loving
patience and surgical skill with which only a true violinist handles an
Amati, had put it in a suitable condition and then tuned it, he drew
the bow softly across it. A strangely sweet, tender, sad sound vibrated
through the great empty room. It seemed as if the violin awoke with a
sigh from an enchanted sleep. A pleasant shudder passed over Natalie.
Lensky bent his cheek to the splendid instrument like a lover. "Shall
we try something?" said he, and took from the pile of notes a nocturne
of Chopin, transposed for the violin, opened the piano, the only good
and costly piece of furniture in the room, and laid the notes on the
music-rack. "Now, Natalie Alexandrovna, may I beg you?"
Quite frightened by his artistic greatness--yes, trembling from
charming embarrassment--she sat down at the piano.
His violin began to sing; how full and soft, so delightfully
languishing, and also somewhat veiled, as is usually the case with an
instrument unused for years.
"How beautiful!" murmured Natalie, with eyes sparkling with animation.
"Yes, it is a splendid instrument," replied Lensky. "You cannot imagine
what it is to play on an instrument which understands one. It is still
only a little bit sleepy, but we will awaken it."
He placed a sonata of Beethoven before Natalie. They were alone. After
the first bar of the nocturne the princess had fallen asleep, at the
last she had waked, and had retired, with the remark that she could
hear much better in the adjoining room.
"Will you really tolerate my accompaniment?" murmured the young girl.
"And do you wish to hear again, vain little princess, what I already
told you in St. Petersburg, that I have seldom found a more sympathetic
accompaniment than yours?" he replied.
She was an uncommonly good pianist, and with an unusually fine
divination followed all the shades of his art. One piece followed the
other. After awhile a certain relaxation was perceptible in her.
"You are tired," said he, breaking off in the middle of the first
phrase of Mendelssohn's G-minor concerto. "I should not have given you
so much to do. Pardon me."
"Oh, what does that matter," said she, while she let her hands slide
from the keys. "It was splendid, only, do you see, I feel as if I am a
dragging-shoe for you. I would like to have a wish, a great immoderate
wish. I would like to hear you once alone, without accompaniment, from
your heart. Give me one glance into your soul, make your musical
confession to me!"
He felt a peculiar twitching and burning in his finger-tips. He would
rather have killed himself than let her glance into his inmost soul, as
the condition of that soul had been until then.
"Do not ask that of me," said he, hoarsely.
"It was very immodest in me, excuse me," said she hastily and confused.
"Oh, that is nothing," he assured her. "Do you think that I will spare
the little bit of pleasure that I can perhaps give you, only--but if
you really wish it--as far as I am concerned----"
He took up the violin.
It was a different affair now. Dragging-shoe or not in any case her
accompaniment had had a calming and perhaps purifying effect on his
musical instincts. With her he had played as a wonderfully deeply
sensitive and technically cultivated virtuoso; in spite of all the
heartfelt fulness of tone and vibrating passion, he had scarcely passed
the boundary of musical conventionality. It had been the highest
possibility of a quiet, artistic performance; but what Natalie now
heard was no longer art, but something at once splendid and fearful. It
was also no longer a violin on which he played, but a strange,
enchanted instrument that she had never known formerly and that he
himself had invented; an instrument from which everything that sounds
the sweetest and saddest on earth vibrated, from the low voice of a
woman to the soft, complaining sigh of the waves dying on the shore. A
depth of genial musical eloquence burst forth under his bow.
Inconsolable pain--dry, hard, cutting; tender teasing, winning grace,
mad rejoicing, a wild confusion of passion and music, the height and
depth of neck-breaking technical extravagance.
But what was most peculiar about his playing, and had the most magical
effect, was neither the mad bravura nor the flattering grace, but
something oppressive, mysterious, that crept maliciously into the heart
and veins, ensnaring and paralyzing--a thing of itself, a strange
horror. Again and again, like a mysterious call, appeared in his
improvisation the same bewitching, exciting succession of tones, taken
from the Arabian folk-songs, the devil's music.
Suddenly he seemed to be beside himself; he drew the bow across the
violin as if beset by an untamable, passionate excitement. It was no
longer one violin which one heard; it was twenty violins, or, rather,
twenty demons, who howled and cried together.
With hands lightly folded in her lap, and head leaned back against her
chair, Natalie had listened. In the beginning she had been carried out
of herself by a feeling of painfully sweet happiness. But now she felt
strangely oppressed. It seemed to her as if something pulled at every
fibre, every nerve, as if her heart was bursting. She would have liked
to cry out and hold her ears, and still did not move, but listened
eagerly to that piercing, wild, passionate tone. Never had she felt
within her such hot, beating, intense life as in this hour. Her whole
past existence now seemed to her like a long, stupid lethargy, from
which she had at last been awakened. Tears flowed from her eyes. Then
his look met hers. A kind of shame at his brutality overcame him, and
his playing died away in sad, sweet, anguished tenderness. With
contracted brows and trembling hands, he laid down the violin. "You
wished it!" said he. "You should not have asked it of me. I can refuse
you nothing. God! how pale you are! I have made you ill!"
She smiled at his anxious exaggeration, then murmured softly, as if
in a dream: "It was wonderfully beautiful, and I shall never forget
it--never forget it, only----"
"What have you to object?"
"Shall I really tell you?"
"Certainly; I beg you to."
"Well," she began, hesitatingly, with a somewhat uneasy smile, as if
she was afraid of wounding his irritable artistic sensibility, "I ask
myself how one can abuse an instrument from which one can charm such
bewitching harmonies, and which one loves as you love your violin, as
you have just now abused it?"
He was silent for a moment, surprised, looked at the violin with a
loving, compassionate glance, as if it were a living being. Then he
passed his hand across his forehead.
"I do not know how it is," said he, confusedly. "Sometimes something
comes over me. Ah! if you knew what it is to have, all one's life, such
a sultry, sneaking thunderstorm in one's veins as I have. Sometimes it
bursts forth; it must have vent. I cannot rule myself. Teach me how!"
He said that, so naively ashamed, quite pleadingly, like a great child;
he had strangely warm, touching tones in his deep, rough voice.
* * * * *
When Lensky presented himself again, the next day, in the Palazzo
Morsini, and, indeed, this time to arrange the purchase of the
wonderful violin, the princess called out gayly to him:
"The violins are no longer to be had. I have bought all three. I gave
all my savings for them. If you wish to play on them, you must come
here. But you may come as often as you wish!"
"For how long?" asked he, with a peculiar tremble in his voice.
She turned away her head. After awhile she said, apparently
irrelevantly, with her gay, ingenuous smile, that still never quite
banished the sadness from her pale face: "Do you know that we are
really as poor as church mice? It is comical. Mamma consoles herself
with the thought that I will make a good match. If she should be
mistaken, what a tragedy!"
She laughed merrily. What did she mean by that?
* * * * *
He came oftener and oftener to the old palace in the Via Giulia; came
every day, indeed.
Formerly intercourse with women of rank had always formed only a short
parenthesis in his otherwise dissolute life. Now the couple of hours,
or sometimes they were only minutes, which he daily passed with the
Assanows were the key-note of all the rest of his existence. How happy
he felt with them!
If elsewhere the great society ladies had raved over the artist Lensky
to an immoderate extent, they had quite ignored the man. But with the
Assanows it was different, or at least it seemed so. His fame was not
put forward from morning to night. There were days in which his
violin-playing was not even mentioned. The artist stopped in the
background, and in association with Natalie and her mother he was no
star, no lion, only a very wise, peculiar, sympathetic man, who pleased
quite aside from his artistic gifts. Besides, with them he appeared
differently than with any one else in the world.
His petulant defiance disappeared, as well as the helplessness for
which it was a shield.
He was completely uncultivated from the foundation. Grown up among
ignorant men who profited by his early unfolding talent, and misused it
in order to earn money thereby; sentenced consequently as a child to
just as many hours of hard musical practice as his poor still
undeveloped body could endure, he had, at fourteen years of age, when
he could barely read and write, not even the consciousness of his lack
of knowledge. That came later, came when great people began to be
interested in him. But then it was painful and humiliating beyond
measure.
Whatever one can acquire in later years he acquired. Another would have
made a show of the astonishing amount of reading which he had
accomplished in the course of years, but he never learned to display
his lately won intellectual riches with grace. He had not the frivolity
of superficial men. Much too clever not to be conscious that his little
bit of supplementary cultivation was still only patchwork, even if made
of very noble, large patches, he confined his remarks in society, if
the conversation was upon anything but music, to a few heavy
commonplaces.
With Natalie and her mother it was quite different. He never, indeed,
spoke very much, but everything that he said was characteristic,
stimulating, interesting, and as, in spite of his sad lack of
education, he was free from narrow provincialisms and affectations, and
with the capability of assimilation of all barbarians, understood
exactly Natalie's pure and poetic being, he never wounded her by a
coarse lack of tact, but attracted her doubly by the austere
unconventionality of his manner.
Every day he became more sympathetic to her; she had long been
indispensable to him.
He was suddenly struck with horror of his past. It seemed to him as if
everything that was beautiful in his life had just begun when her pure
bright apparition had entered it. She had brought a cooling, healing
element to his sultry existence. It was as if one had opened a window
in a room full of oppressive vapor--a great breath of sweet, spicy air
had purified the atmosphere.
A large part of his intellectual self which had formerly lain fallow,
now grew and blossomed. Often, in the morning, he accompanied the
ladies to some art collection. Very frequently he occupied a place in
the carriage which the princess had hired for their drives.
Every one looked after the carriage, and observed with the same
interest the wonderfully beautiful girl, and the great artist, who was
not handsome, but whose face once seen could never be forgotten.
What was most remarkable about it was the difference between the
expression of his eyes and that of his mouth, a difference which
betrayed the entire quality of his inner nature. While his eyes had a
spying, at times quite enthusiastic, expression, around the mouth was a
trace of intense earthly thirst for enjoyment.
This mingling predestinated him to that eternal discontent of certain
great natures who can just as little accustom themselves, on the earth,
to a condition of bloodless asceticism as to one of mindless
materialism. The first desires no enjoyment of the world, the second
pleases itself with whatever is to be had in the world. Those men only
who seek the heavenly spark in earthly joys remain forever deceived
here. He was destined never to cease to seek it. Even in gray old age,
when his finely cut lips were satiated with enjoyment, and were fixed
in a grimace of incessant, sad disgust, his eyes still sought it.
* * * * *
His colleagues in St. Petersburg asked each other what kept him so long
in Rome. He wrote one of them that he was working, and indeed he did
work. Through his soul vibrated melodies full of bewitching sad
loveliness, full of the rejoicing and complaint of a longing which
could not yet attain the longed-for happiness.
And there in Rome, in those mild fragrant spring nights, he wrote a
cyclus of songs which might rank at the side of the most beautiful
musical lyrics ever written.
In spite of their full richness of melody, his earlier compositions had
something too glaring, overladen, and trivially pleasing; they were too
much influenced by his virtuosity to please for themselves. In his
Roman cyclus of songs he showed himself for the first time a great
musician. And as until then he had distrusted his talent as composer,
he was pleasantly astonished over his own achievement.
He always worked at night. His writing-table stood in front of the
window of his room which looked out on the Piazza di Spagna. Very often
his glance wandered there. A dark-blue heaven lighted by thousands of
stars arched above the broad, irregular place, over the antique
columns, from whose height a modern art nonentity looks down on Rome.
All was silent, only the water, the resonant soul of Rome, tittered and
sobbed in the basins and fountains, and spouted up jubilantly in damp
silver streams, greeting from afar the unattainable heavens, and all
the tittering, sobbing, and rejoicing united in a long vibrating broken
chord.
Still vibrating in every fibre at the recollection of Natalie's
farewell smile, he sat at his shaky table and wrote. The mild night
wind, fragrant with the kisses which it had stolen from the magnolia
and orange blossoms, crept in to him and caressed his hot cheeks. He
inhaled it eagerly. He had often been warned of the Roman night air,
but he did not think of the warning, and if he had--? He was in that
happy mood in which man no longer believes in sickness and death.
The hateful melancholy which as he said often pressed him down to the
ground, and tormented him with predictions of his final annihilation,
was gone. He no longer saw, as formerly, an open grave at his feet.
Heaven had opened to him. An indescribable, light, elevating feeling
had overpowered him; he no longer felt the weight of his body. Had his
wings, then, grown in Rome?
* * * * *
He did not think what would come of all this. He did not wish to think
of it; did not wish to see clearly. With closed eyes he walked through
life--the angels led him.
* * * * *
It was the beginning of May, and he had finished his cyclus of songs.
With a beating heart he entered the Palazzo Morsini to ask Natalie
whether he might dedicate it to her.
The young princess was not at home, but her mother would be very happy
to see him, they told him.
It was very hot, the blinds were all lowered. The princess lay on a
lounge and fanned herself with a peacock feather fan.
After she had complained of the heat, she began to speak to him of all
kinds of family affairs. Her son had the best of opportunities to make
a career for himself, said she; her eldest daughter, who was far less
pretty than Natalie, added the princess, had married very well; her
husband was indeed a wealthy diplomat. "_Mois, je suis pauvre_,"
concluded the old lady; "but I could live quite without care, if
Natalie were only married. But she will hear nothing of that. She lets
the best years of her life pass, and if you only knew what good matches
she has refused. Pachotin has already offered himself twice to her, and
if you please----"
Just then a gay voice interrupted the inconsolable elegy. "Mamma, how
can any one boast so?" Natalie had entered, a large black hat on her
head, in her arms a huge bunch of flowers.
"I did not boast--I complained," replied the old woman, sighing.
After Natalie had greeted Lensky with her usual friendliness, she laid
the flowers on the table and arranged them in the vases which an
Italian chambermaid had brought her.
"Ah, Natalie, why will you have none of them?" sighed the princess.
"Little mother, I can love but once," replied Natalie, bending her
brown head over the flowers. "I have told you I will not marry until I
have found some one quite extraordinary--a hero or a genius."
"Am I dreaming, or did she look at me with those words?" Lensky asked
himself. "But why did she turn her eyes away so quickly when they met
mine?"
Meanwhile the princess said: "Yes, if all girls wished to wait thus!"
"I am not like all girls," said Natalie, laughing. "Most girls have
hearts like hand-organs, which every one can play; others have hearts
like AEolian harps, on which no one can play, and still they always
vibrate so sympathetically for the world; and still other girls--" she
interrupted herself to break a superfluous leaf from a magnolia twig.
The princess, who seemed to lay little weight on Natalie's naive
comparisons, fanned herself indifferently with her peacock fan, but
Lensky repeated, "Well, Natalie Alexandrovna, other girls----"
"Other girls have hearts like Amati violins; if a bungler touches them
there is a horrible discord; but if a true artist comes who understands
it, then----"
This exaggerated remark she had made in a voice trembling between
mockery and tenderness, and incessantly occupied with the arrangement
of her flowers.
Without ending the last sentence, she broke off, and bent her head to
the right to observe a combination of white roses and heliotrope with a
thoughtful look.
The princess yawned from heat and discontent. "Leave me in peace from
your musical comparisons, Natascha," said she. "Besides, I can assure
you that no one spoils a fine instrument quicker than one of your great
virtuosos. When I think how Franz Liszt ruined our Pleyel in a single
evening; it was no longer fit even for a conservatory."
"Violins are not ruined as quickly as pianos," said Natalie, laughing;
then, still speaking to the flowers, she said: "Don't you think, little
mother, that if such a piano had a soul, a mind, it would rather
rejoice to really live for once under the hands of a great master,
and even if it were to die of the joy, than merely to exist for a
half-century in a noble, charming room, as a carefully preserved
showpiece?"
Again it seemed to Lensky that she looked at him, and again she
turned away her head when their looks met. "You are astonished at this
great expenditure for flowers?" she remarked. "We expect guests this
evening--my cousins from St. Petersburg, the Jeliagins. You know them,
and I shall try to draw their critical looks away from the holes in the
furniture covering to these beautiful color effects. So! Now I have
finished; here are a few May-bells left for your button-hole. Ah!
really, you never wear flowers!"
"Give them to me," said he, contracting his brows gloomily. She smiled
at him without saying anything. Then something scratched at the door.
"Please open it, Boris Nikolaivitch," she asked.
He did so; her large dog, a gigantic Scotch greyhound, came in, and
immediately springing up on his beautiful mistress, he laid both front
paws on her shoulders. She took his heavy head between her slender
hands, and murmuring tender, caressing words to him, she kissed him
twice, three times, on the forehead.
Lensky took leave soon after without having mentioned his song cyclus.
His mind was in an uproar. "Is she only coquetting with me?" he asked
himself, "or--or--" A passionate joy throbbed in his veins, then
suddenly an icy shudder ran over him. "And if she is only like all the
others!"
At his departure Natalie had said to him: "You will come this evening,
Boris Nikolaivitch, in spite of this boring Petersburg invasion? I beg
you will, _vous serez le coin bleu de mon ciel!_"
* * * * *
The evening came.
A Roman sirocco evening, with an approaching thunderstorm that hung
heavily around the horizon and would not lift.
The heavily perfumed sultry air penetrated through the drawn curtains
into the Assanows' drawing-room. The Jeliagins had brought a couple of
Parisian friends with them, and naturally Pachotin was not missing. A
deathly _ennui_ reigned. They spoke of Parisian fashions, of the
Empress Eugenie's new court; they complained of the new cook in the
Hotel de l'Europe, and of the heat.
Then they spoke of national dances. The Jeliagins had recently
travelled in Spain and were enthusiastic about the fandango. The
Parisians had heard there was nothing more graceful than a well-danced
Polish mazurka; could none of the Russian ladies dance one for them?--a
very bold request, but they were all friends.
The Jeliagins announced that Natalie danced the mazurka like a true
woman of Warsaw. They left her no peace.
"Oh, I will put on no more airs," said she, "if one of the ladies will
take a seat at the piano, so----"
To go to the piano, even were it only to play dance-music, in Lensky's
presence! The ladies swooned at the mere thought.
"Very well, then you must give up the mazurka," said Natalie,
decidedly.
"Ask Boris Nikolaivitch," whispered one of the St. Petersburg women.
"If he is the first violinist of his time, he is also an excellent
pianist."
"No, no," said Natalie, firmly, and then her great brilliant eyes met
Lensky's.
Although at that time he maintained his artistic dignity with quite
childish exaggeration, he smiled very good-naturedly and said, "I see
very well that you place no confidence in me; you think I cannot catch
your mazurka music."
"No, no, no!" said Natalie. "You shall not degrade your art."
"And do you really think it would be degrading to improvise a musical
background for your performance? I should so like to see you dance."
And he stood up and went to the piano.
Such pretty little phrases were formerly not his style. He had, as
Natalie had often laughingly told him, no talent for _fioriture_ in
conversation.
The Petersburg ladies looked at each other. "How polite he has become!
You have changed him, Natascha," whispered they.
Meanwhile Pachotin gave Natalie his hand.
Lensky had seized the opportunity of admiring her grace with joy. He
had never thought how painfully it would affect him to see her dance
with another man. He did not take his eyes off her, and meanwhile
improvised the most bewitching devil's music.
She wore a white dress, her neck and arms were bare, and around her
waist was a Circassian girdle embroidered with gold and silver. One
hand in her partner's, the other hanging loosely at her side, her head
slightly on one side, she moved safely over the dangerously smooth
surface of the marble floor. At the beginning, pale as usual, except
her dark-red lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became
warmer and more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her
eyes beamed as if in a happy dream, around her lips trembled the sad
expression which the feeling of intense pleasure often causes us, and
her movements at the same time had something indescribably gentle and
supple.
[Illustration: At the beginning, pale as usual, except the dark-red
lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became warmer and
more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her eyes beamed as
in a happy dream---- _p. 56_.]
Pachotin, most correctly attired, with a collar which reached to the
tips of his ears and faultless yellow gloves, hopped around her in the
true affected knightly grimacing Polish-mazurka manner.
"An ape!" thought Lensky to himself; "but how handsome, how
distinguished he is! almost as handsome as she!" and suddenly the
question occurred to him: "Is it my music or his presence which
animates her? And if it were my music! Nevertheless, she will still
marry him; yes, even if she were in love with me, still she would marry
him, and not me! What a fool I was to imagine----"
After Pachotin had soberly placed his heels together and acknowledged
his deep devotion to the lady by a suitable courtesy, the mazurka was
at an end.
Quite beside themselves with enthusiasm, the Parisians surrounded
Natalie. When she wished to thank Lensky he had disappeared. It was his
manner many times to withdraw without taking leave, but still to-day it
made Natalie uneasy. She was vibrating with a great excitement, the air
seemed to her suffocatingly hot, she drew off her gloves; the noise of
the prattling voices became unbearable to her, and she passed through
the second empty drawing-room, into the arched loggia set with blooming
orange-trees, from which one looked across the court-yard to the Tiber.
The storm still hung on the horizon. Heavy masses of clouds, shot
through by pale lightning, towered, on the other side of the river,
above the gloomy architecture of the Trastevere. They had not yet
reached the moon, which, palely shining, stood high in the heavens. Its
light illumined the court, with its statues and bas-reliefs. The air
was sultry.
Natalie drew a deep breath. Suddenly she discovered Lensky. He was
staring down on the Tiber, which, rolling by in its bed, incessantly
sighed, as if from sorrow at its sad lot, which compelled it
continually to hasten past everything.
Could one really take it amiss in the stream if it sometimes overflowed
its banks in order to carry away with it some of the beautiful objects,
near which, condemned to perpetual wandering, it might not remain
standing?
"Ah! you here?" said Natalie. "I thought you had taken French leave. I
was vexed with you."
"So!"
"Yes, because--because I was sorry not to be able to thank you. It was
really----"
"Do not speak so," said he, quite roughly; "just as if you did not know
that there is nothing in the world, nothing in my power that I would
not do for you!"
She bent her head back a little and smiled at him in a friendly way,
but as if his words had not surprised her in the slightest. "You are
very good to me," said she.
He felt strangely thus alone with her in this sweet-perfumed,
melancholy, intoxicating sultriness, alone with this happiness that was
so near him, and which he was afraid of frightening away by an unseemly
imprudence. He felt by turns hot and cold. Why did she not go?
She rested her hands on the marble balustrade of the loggia and bending
over it she murmured: "How beautiful! oh, how wonderfully beautiful!
And it is so tiresome in there; do you not find it so, Boris
Nikolaivitch?"
His throat contracted, he felt that he was about to lose control of
himself.
"Shall I play?" he asked. "I will do it willingly for you."
"Oh, no! Why should you play to those stupid people in there?" replied
she. "I would be prepared to hear, in the middle of the G minor
concerto, the question: 'Before I forget it, can you not give me the
address of a good shoemaker in Rome?' You know how such things vex me."
"Is she coquetting with me, or--?" he asked himself again.
She stood before him with her enchanting face, and her tender glance
met his. She did not know that she tormented him. In spite of her
twenty-one years, she had the boundless innocence of a girl whose mind
has never been desecrated by the knowledge of passion, a degree of
innocence in which men do not believe.
"Is she coquetting?" His heart beat to bursting, and suddenly, when she
quite unconstrainedly came one step nearer him, he took her hand. "Oh,
you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoarse, scarcely audible voice,
and pressed it to his lips.
[Illustration: "Oh, you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoarse,
scarcely audible voice, and pressed it to his lips.
Crimsoning. She tore away her hand. _p. 61_.]
Crimsoning, she tore away her hand. "For Heaven's sake, what are you
thinking of?" said she, and started back with a proud, almost scornful
gesture.
Then a horrible anger overcame him.
"I was stupid, I was mistaken in you. You think no more nobly or better
than the others!" he burst out.
"I do not understand you. What do you mean?" murmured she.
What else had she to ask? Why did she not go, but stood before him, as
if paralyzed, with her pale, seductive loveliness, surrounded by
moonlight?
"I mean that if you observe our relations from this conventional
standpoint, your behavior to me was a heartless, arrogant abomination."
"But, Boris Nikolaivitch, that is all foolishness. You do not know what
you are saying," she stammered, quite beside herself.
"So! I do not know what I am saying?" He had now stepped close up to
her. "And if I, mistaking your coquetries--yes, that is the word; blush
now and be a little ashamed--if I, mistaking your coquetries, have
permitted myself to petition for your hand? Oh, how you start!
Naturally, you had never thought of such a thing!"
His voice was hoarse and rasping, his face very calm and as if
petrified by anger and such a mental torment as he had never before
experienced. "But go! Why do you stay and torture me? I will no longer
look at you. I abominate you, and still I love you so passionately, so
madly!"
Yes, why did she still not go? He could endure it no longer--he clasped
her to his breast and kissed her with his hot, burning lips. Then she
pushed him from her and fled.
He looked after her. Now all was over. For one moment he remained
standing on the same spot, then, with deeply bowed head, dragging his
feet along slowly, he passed through the vestibule and left, without
thinking of his hat, which he had left in the drawing-room.
For the remainder of the evening Natalie's whole being betrayed only
haste and uneasiness. She spoke more and quicker than formerly, laughed
frequently, and told the gayest stories.
When her Petersburg cousins wished to tease her with Lensky's
enthusiasm for her, and laughingly called him "your genius," she
mentioned him indifferently, quite disapprovingly, shrugged her
shoulders over his talent as composer--yes, even found fault with his
playing. She was friendly, quite inviting, to Pachotin; she no longer
knew what she did, only when he wished to give the conversation a more
earnest turn she broke it off suddenly and remorselessly.
When at last, at last, the drawing-room was empty and she might
withdraw, she locked herself in her room, threw herself down before the
holy picture before which she always said her evening prayer. But,
however she tried to pray, she could not. She did not know for what she
should pray. Her cheeks burned with dreadful shame. How could he have
so far forgotten himself with her!
She threw open a window. What did it matter to her that they said the
Roman night air was poisonous? She would have liked to take the Roman
fever, would have liked to die. Her window opened on the street. The
Via Giulia was divided by the moonlight into two parts, one light and
one dark. All was quiet, empty, deserted. Then there was a sound of
slow, dragging steps, and two lowered voices whispered down there in
the silent solitude. It was probably a pair of belated lovers, and
suddenly there was a soft, tender sound through the mild May night. She
caught her breath, closed the window, and turned back to her room.
Half-undressed, she sat on the edge of her little cool white bed and
thought again and again--of the same thing--of his kiss.
* * * * *
"Why has 'your genius' so suddenly tired of Rome? He leaves to-day,"
remarked the Jeliagins, who had come to lunch the next morning in the
Palazzo Morsini.
They were staying at the same hotel as Lensky--that is to say, in the
"Europe"--and had spoken to him in the court of the hotel. "He looked
miserably," they added, with a haughty glance. "Either he has Roman
fever or you have broken his heart."
Then they spoke of other things. Soon after lunch they went away.
Meanwhile Lensky stumbled up and down, up and down, in his room. A sick
lady whose room was beneath his, at last sent up by the waiter and
begged him to be quiet.
His departure was fixed for seven o'clock; it struck one, it struck
four.
Should he leave without having made a parting call upon the Princess
Assanow run away like any fellow who has borrowed thirty rubles? "But
they will not receive me," he thought, "if the princess has told her
mother. But, no, she will have said nothing; she is too proud. What a
lovely being! How could I only-- Oh, if I might at least ask her
pardon! But what kind of a pardon would it be? Such a thing a woman
pardons only if she loves, and how should she love me, a beast as I am?
She must have an aversion for me."
He resolved to take leave by letter. He tried it in French and Russian,
but could complete nothing. Ashamed of his laughable incapacity, he
tore up the different sheets of letter-paper adorned with "_Des
circonstances imprevues_," or "_La reconnaissance sincere que_."
Five o'clock! He hastened across the courtyard, sprang into a carriage.
"Palazzo Morsini, Via Giulia," he called to the coachman, and commanded
him to drive fast.
When he ascended the well-known stairs he asked himself a last time if
he would be received.
The servant conducted him to the boudoir of the old princess. She broke
off her game of patience to greet him, only betrayed a slight
astonishment at his sudden departure, and said that she and Natalie
should soon follow his example and go North, probably to Baden-Baden,
for the heat in Rome began to be unbearable. Then she rang for the
maid, whom she commissioned to tell the princess that Boris
Nikolaivitch had come to take leave.
Lensky waited in breathless excitement. The maid came back with the
decision: The princess was very ill and had lain down with a headache.
"Quite as I expected," thought Lensky, while the princess remarked
politely, "She will be very sorry."
Then he kissed the old lady's hand, she touched his forehead with
her lips in the Russian custom, wished him a pleasant journey, he
thanked her a last time for all the friendship she had shown him, and
went--went quite slowly through the large empty room, in which the dust
danced in a broad sunbeam which lay across the marble floor, and in
which the flowers which she had arranged so charmingly yesterday now
stood withered in their vases.
"Shall I never see her again, never--never?" he asked himself. He would
have given his life for a last friendly glance from her. What use was
it to think of that--it was all over!
Then suddenly he heard something near him like the rustling of an
angel's wings. He looked up. Natalie stood before him, deathly pale,
with black rings around her eyes, with carelessly arranged hair. A
passionate pity, a tender anxiety overcame him. "How she has suffered
through my offence!" he told himself and rushed up to her. "Natalie,
can you forgive me?" he called.
Her great, sad eyes were raised to him with an expression of helpless,
ashamed tenderness, as if they would say, "And you ask that!" She moved
her lips, but no word came.
He held her little hands trembling with fever in his. She did not draw
them away. He grew dizzy. For one moment they were both silent, then he
whispered, drawing her closer to him, "Do you love me, then? Could you
resolve to bear my name, to share my whole existence?"
Scarcely audibly she whispered, "Yes."
We are sometimes frightened at the sudden fulfilment of a wish which we
have believed unattainable.
And as Lensky under the weight of his new, strange happiness sank at
the feet of his betrothed and covered the hem of her dress with tears
and kisses, in the midst of his happiness he felt an oppressed anxiety,
a great fear.
* * * * *
A few days after Natalie's betrothal there was a short, imperious ring
at the door of the artistic gray anteroom, in which the imposing
butler, as usual, sat majestically intrenched behind his newspaper.
Monsieur Baptiste raised his eyebrows; he did not like this imperious
manner of ringing a bell, and did not hurry at all to open the door.
Only when the ring was repeated did he unlock it. His face changed
color from surprise, and he bowed quite to the ground when he
recognized in the entering gentleman the young prince, the eldest
brother of Natalie, Sergei Alexandrovitch Assanow.
"Are the ladies at home?" he asked shortly in a high, somewhat vexed
voice without further noticing the respectful greeting of the servant.
"The princess is still in bed, but the Princess Natalie is already up."
"Good. Do not disturb the princess, and announce me to Princess
Natalie," said Assanow, and with that he followed the butler, who was
hastening before him, into the drawing-room. There he sat down in a
mahogany arm-chair upholstered in faded yellow damask, crossed his
legs, rested his tall shining hat on his knee and looked around him. On
one of his hands was a gray glove, the other was bare. It was a long,
slender, aristocratic hand, very well cared for, too white for a man's
hand, but bony, and with strongly marked veins on the back--a hand
which one saw would certainly hold firmly what it had once grasped, and
a hand which was capable of no caress. For the rest it would have been
hard to judge anything from the exterior of the prince. He was a tall
slender man of about thirty, with light-brown hair that was already
thin on the top of the head, and a face--smoothly shaven except a long
mustache--which in the cut of the delicate regular features resembled
his sister's not unnoticeably. But the expression, that animating soul
of beauty which lent Natalie's pale face more charm than the regularity
of the lines, was lacking in him. Everything about him was as correct
as his profile--his high stiff collar, the drab gaiters which showed
beneath his trousers, his light-gray gloves with black stitching. He
was the type of the Russian state official of the highest category, the
type of men who in public life only permit themselves to think as far
as will not injure their advancement.
As he was a very clever, sharp, judging man withal, he revenged himself
for the discomfort which the systematic crippling of his intellectual
capacity in the service of the state caused him, by devoting all the
superfluity of his unneeded intellect to shedding an unpleasantly
glaring intellectual light about him, and condemning as absolute
foolishness all those little poetic, pleasant trifles which make life
beautiful.
He called this manner of pleasing himself doing his duty.
Strangely enough, with all his sterile dryness he was a true lover of
music. He played the cello as well as a man of the world can permit
himself to--that is to say, with an elegant inaccuracy, together with
pedantic bursts of virtuosity, and in consequence had cultivated
Lensky's acquaintance assiduously.
While he waited for his sister he looked around the room distrustfully
with his handsome dark but unpleasantly piercing eyes. He grew uneasy.
The atmosphere of the whole room was quite permeated with happiness.
Everything seemed to feel happy here--the shabby furniture, the music
which lay somewhat confusedly on the piano. On the table near which
Sergei Alexandrovitch sat stood a basket of pale Malmaison roses, under
the piano was a violin case.
Sergei Alexandrovitch frowned. Then Natalie entered the room; he rose,
went to meet her, kissed and embraced her. It seemed strange to her
that she did not feel as glad to see him as formerly, but rather felt a
kind of chill. Which of them had changed, he or she?
"What a surprise!" said she, and felt herself that her voice had a
forced sound. "It has not formerly been your custom to appear so
unexpectedly."
"My journey was only decided upon last month," replied he, somewhat
hesitatingly; and with his dull smile he added, "I hope I do not arrive
inopportunely, Natalie?"
"How can you ask such a thing!" said she. "But sit down and put your
hat away--you are at home."
He remarked the uneasiness of her manner. He coughed twice, and then
sat down again near the table on which the basket of roses stood.
Natalie sat down. Both hands resting on the red surface of the mahogany
table, she bent over the flowers, and slowly with a kind of tenderness
inhaled the dreamy, melancholy perfume.
"Have you had a pleasant winter?" began Sergei Alexandrovitch.
"I do not know," replied she without looking at him; "I have forgotten,
but the spring was wonderfully beautiful, wonderfully beautiful," and
she bent over the flowers again.
"Hm! So you prefer Rome to Naples?" said he condescendingly.
"Yes."
"You seem to have been very comfortably fixed here," he remarked, with
a glance around. "You have very pretty rooms. Those are beautiful roses
which you have there."
"Boris Lensky sent them to me," said she, while she at the same time
pulled a rose from the basket to fasten it in the bodice of her light
foulard dress. Then she sat down opposite Sergei. War was declared.
"Lensky seems to be a great deal with you," said Assanow,
condescendingly.
"Yes."
"I heard of it through acquaintances in Petersburg," began the prince.
"It did not quite please me."
Natalie only shrugged her shoulders, with an expression as if she would
say: "I am very sorry, but that does not change matters at all." In
spite of that she secretly trembled before her brother. The
announcement which she had to make to him would not cross her lips.
"It is hard to speak of certain things to you," he continued, while he
tried to make his thin high voice sound confidential. He did not wish
to make his sister refractory by overhasty roughness. "I have no
prejudices." It had recently become the fashion in his set, and
especially for the upper ten thousand, to boast of a kind of harmless
liberality. "No one can accuse me of smallness. I am always in favor of
attracting young artists into society--first, because they form an
animating element in our circles, and secondly, because one should give
them an opportunity to improve their manners a little; but all in
moderation. Too great intimacy in such cases is bad for both parties.
You are too much carried away by the generosity of your heart. I know
that in reality your immoderate kindness to Lensky does not mean much,
but----"
Her wonderfully beautiful eyes met his.
"I am betrothed to Boris Nikolaivitch," said she wearily but very
distinctly.
"Betrothed!" he burst out. "You to Lensky? You are crazy!"
"Not at all."
"Does mother know of it?"
"Certainly."
"And she has given her consent?"
"At first she was surprised; she cried a whole afternoon. I was very
sorry to pain her. Then she gave way. She is very fond of him. Every
one must be fond of him who learns to know him well." Natalie's eyes
beamed with animation.
Sergei Alexandrovitch pulled at his mustache. "Hm, hm," he murmured;
"we will leave that undecided. As it happens, I am one of those who
know him well; there are few in our set who know him as intimately as
I, and--hm--I do not know that he has caused me any very enthusiastic
feelings. As artist I rank him very high, not so high as has been the
fashion lately, for as a _beau dire il manque de style_, he lacks
style! But that has nothing to do with this. But if he united in
himself the genius of Beethoven and Paganini, I would still look upon
the possibility of your alliance with him as unheard of, and I tell you
frankly, that I shall do all that is in my power to prevent it." He had
taken up again the hat which he had formerly laid down, and held it on
his knee as if paying a call of state. While he spoke the last words,
he knocked on the top of it with malicious decision.
Natalie crossed her arms.
"I knew that you would oppose the mesalliance," said she, "but----"
He would not let her finish. "Mesalliance!" said he, and laughed very
mockingly, quite shortly and softly, to himself, and began to drum on
the top of his hat again. "Mesalliance! I cannot say that the marriage
of my sister to this Mr. Lensky would be especially pleasant--no, that
I cannot say. What must be my horror at your undertaking if I scarcely
think of my opposition on account of the unequal birth!" He was silent,
but then as Natalie remained obstinately silent, he continued: "That
you will in consequence change your social position is your affair. But
do not believe that this will be all that you give up. You sacrifice
not only your position, your whole personality, all your habits of
life, but more than all these, you sacrifice all your formerly so
spared and guarded womanly tender feeling if you insist upon marrying
this violinist. Oh, I know what you will say," said he, while he
noticed the glance which Natalie gave the roses on the table. "He is
full of poetic attentions for you. When they are in love, the roughest
men speak in verse. And I believe that he loves you. But his enthusiasm
for you is still only a passing effervescence. What will remain when
that is gone? I ask you, what would remain in a man without principles,
without a trace of moral restraint, who has grown up amid surroundings
which have forever blunted his feelings for things which would horrify
you, and others of which you have no suspicion?"
Again he paused, but this time Natalie spoke: "May I ask you," began
she, with the calm behind which irritation bordering on uncontrollable
anger concealed itself--"may I ask you to tell me exactly, without any
more finely veiled insinuations, what you have against Boris
Nikolaivitch, except that he is of lower birth and has enjoyed no
careful bringing up?"
"My God! If it is a question of my sister's future husband, that is
enough and more than enough!" said Assanow.
"Is it all?" asked Natalie, and looked at him penetratingly.
"What do you mean?"
"Is it all?" she repeated, while she slowly rose from her chair. "Have
you anything else against him?"
"I have really nothing against him as long as it is not a question of
my sister's husband," he hissed; "but in that case everything. And if
instead of Lensky he were called Prince Dolgorouki, I would still say,
as a husband for you he is impossible!"
"Why--I wish to know it--why?"
"Why? Good. I will tell you, as far as one can tell you--because he is
a wild animal, with bursts of roughness of which you cannot form the
slightest conception," said Assanow; and, striking his thin hands
together, he added, with evidently genuine excitement: "_Mais, ma
pauvre fille_, you have no suspicion to what humiliations, what
degradations, you expose yourself."
He stopped. He looked at his sister triumphantly. She still stood
before him with her hand resting on the top of the table, staring, pale
and without a word. It would be false, to say that his speech made no
impression on her. It had made an impression on her. Still, she
ascribed all that he said to boundless, passionate opposition. While he
spoke it seemed to her as if little pointed icicles were hurled in her
face. And weary and wounded from this hailstorm of fruitless prudence,
she longed with all her heart for a reconciling delusion.
He misunderstood her apparently great excitement, and in the firm
conviction that she already secretly began to fall in with his opinion,
he began, this time in a kindly, playful tone: "My poor Natalie, my
poor, unwise but always charming sister, you are like children who see
that they are wrong and are ashamed to acknowledge it. Well, we will
not press you too much. At first it is always painful to be undeceived;
but time cures everything, and when you are married to a distinguished
and reasonable young fellow--_un garcon distingue et raisonnable_--who
will rationally cure you of your romantic ideas, you will only think of
this youthful foolishness with a smile."
She threw back her head and measured him from head to foot. At this
moment he seemed to her quite pitiable. How poverty-stricken, how sad
was his whole inner life, his feelings, his thoughts, to those to which
she had recently accustomed herself! "And you really believe that it
could occur to me to give up Boris Nikolaivitch?" said she slowly with
proudly curved lips.
"I think, after what I have said to you--" He tried to be patient, and
even wished to take her hand, but she drew it back; the touch of his
cold, bloodless fingers was unpleasant to her. Yet it had never been so
before. What had changed in her?
The prince's face took on a hard, vexed expression. "I think after what
I have told you--" he repeated.
"Is it not true, after what you have told me, after the consolation you
have offered me, you cannot understand that I keep my word?" said she,
challengingly. "What will you, I am now so foolish?" Her voice, veiled
at first, became warmer and stronger, while she continued: "You take
away summer from me, and offer me winter as consolation--that is, you
ask of me that I should refuse everything in the world that blooms and
bears fruit, only because sometimes a devastating thunderstorm bursts
over this wealth of beauty and life! I know that in a normal winter
there are no thunderstorms, and in spite of that I prefer the summer!"
"But it is a tropical summer!" exclaimed Assanow.
"That may be," she replied, calmly; "but for that very reason it is
more magnificent--yes, even because of the dangers involved in it--more
magnificent than any other."
He stood up. "It is useless to speak to you," said he, coldly; "the
only thing that remains for me is to speak to Lensky. He has a clear
head in spite of all his genius. He can be talked over."
Then Natalie was startled out of her proud calm. "You would be
indelicate enough to say to him what you have said to me!" she burst
out.
"In such cases it is not only wisest, but most humane, to use pure
prudence instead of foolish sentimentality," announced Assanow; and,
bowing to his sister as to a stranger, he left, with all his vexation,
still elevated by the thought that he had again had opportunity to
display his "prudence" in a brilliant light. He loved his prudence as
an artistic capability, and was glad to give proofs, by all kinds of
virtuoso performances, of its extent and unusual pliability. Whether
these productions were exactly suited to the time troubled the virtuoso
little, and that by his last threat he had attained exactly the
opposite with Natalie from what he wished, did not occur to him at all,
momentarily.
He had gone. Natalie still stood in the middle of the room, her hand
resting on the table, and trembling in her whole body. Suddenly the
memory of the "musical confession" arose in her, which Lensky had laid
before her the morning when he tried the Amati, the confession which
had frightened her. And through her mind vibrated, piercingly and
cuttingly, the mysterious succession of tones from the Arabian
folksongs which echoed lamentingly through all his compositions--the
devil's music: Asbein.
As long as she had to defend herself from her brother, she had not
realized how deeply he had wounded her. She felt at once miserable,
wounded, and discontented with life--as a young tree must feel, over
whose fragrant young spring blossoms a hailstorm has passed. Then
Lensky came in. He perceived in a moment what had happened.
"They have tormented you on my account," said he. "Poor heart! if I
could only take all this vexation upon myself."
She smiled at him. "Then I would not be worthy of you," replied she.
He drew her gently toward him. Her discouragement had disappeared;
warm, strong life again pulsated in her veins.
"Everything has its recompense," whispered she; "it is sweet to bear
something for any one whom----"
"Well, for any one whom--please finish," he urged, and drew her closer
to him.
"You know it without."
"I would so love to hear you say it once."
She raised herself on tiptoes and whispered something in his ear.
He held her tighter and tighter to him. "Oh, my happiness, my queen!"
he murmured, and his warm lips met hers.
She felt as if wrapped in a sunbeam, in a warm, animating atmosphere,
through which none of the critical sneers and opinions of those who
stood without the consecrated magic circle of love could penetrate.
* * * * *
Six weeks later Natalie and Lensky were married, and at the Russian
Embassy in Vienna. Her dowry consisted of a very incomplete trousseau,
in part lavishly trimmed with lace; of a mortgaged estate in South
Russia that had brought in no rents for three years; and of three
Cremona violins.
While her elder brother silently concealed the true despair which the
marriage caused him behind stiff dignity, the younger, an officer of
the guard, with a becoming talent for arrogant impertinences, pleased
himself by jesting over this adventurous marriage, and describing the
"strange taste" of his sister, with a shrug of the shoulders, as a case
of acute monomania. When he spoke of his brother-in-law, he called him
nothing but "_cette bete sauvage et indecrottable_," even when he had
long made a practice of borrowing money of him.
Neither of Natalie's brothers or her married sister appeared at her
wedding. Only the old princess accompanied her daughter to the altar.
SECOND BOOK.
They trifled away the summer on the Italian coast and in Switzerland.
In the autumn Lensky made a concert tour through Germany and the
Netherlands, on which his young wife accompanied him, and attempted
with humorous zeal to accustom herself to the role of an artist's wife.
In the beginning of December Lensky and she came to St. Petersburg. The
residence had been prepared for the young pair by a friend of Natalie.
Natalie made a discontented face when she entered her new kingdom. How
new, how glaring, how unsuitable and tasteless everything looked. "It
is as if one bit into a green apple," said she; and turning to Lensky
she added, gayly, with a shrug of her shoulders: "The stupid Annette
did not know any better; but do not trouble yourself. In a couple of
weeks it will be different. You shall see how comfortably I will
cushion your nest. You must feel happy in it, my restless eagle, or
else you will fly away from me. What?"
She said this, smiling in proud consciousness of his passionate love.
What pleasure would it give him to fly away? And teasingly, jestingly,
she pushed back the thick hair from his temples.
Ah, how pleasant and yet tantalizing was the touch of her slender,
delicate fingers, which made him at once nervous and happy! As he
expressed it, it "almost made him jump out of his skin with rapture."
At first he let her continue her foolish, tender playfulness to her
heart's content; then he laughingly put himself on the defensive,
preached a more dignified manner to her, and when she did not yield,
but gayly continued her lovely, teasing ways, he at length seized her
violently by both wrists and quite crushed her hands with kisses.
If in the first weeks of their married life both had been quite solemn,
thoughtful, and confused in their manner to each other, now they often
frolicked together like two gay children.
While he took up again his long-interrupted duties at the Petersburg
Conservatory, she built him "his nest." She did not go lavishly to
work. Oh, no! She knew that one must not press down a young artist with
the burden of material cares. She imagined she was very economical. She
did not cease to wonder over the cheapness with which she could get
everything that was needed, beginning with the flowers--flowers in
winter, in St. Petersburg! He never enlightened her as to how much the
footing on which she maintained her "simple household" surpassed his
present circumstances.
Every time that he came home he found a new, attractive change. She
accomplished great things in artistic arrangement of the so-called
"confused style," which at that time was not so common as to-day, but
was still a bold innovation.
"_C'est tres joli, mais un peu trop touffu_," said he to her once when
she met him, quite particularly conscious of victory and awaiting
praise, with the knowledge of a new, costly improvement in the
arrangement of the drawing-room.
"Yes, my love; but a drawing-room is neither an official audience-room
nor a gymnasium," replied she, somewhat offended.
"Nor a ball-room nor riding-school," completed he, jestingly;
"but--h'm--still one should be able to move in it. Do you not think
so?"
"That is as one looks at it. I have nothing to do with it if you cannot
brandish around too freely in it."
* * * * *
They went out in society quite frequently--in Natalie's society. That
many people, especially Natalie's near relations, made comments on the
marriage of the spoiled child of a prince with a violinist is easily
understood. But scarcely had they seen Boris and his young wife
together a few times when the comments ceased. A full, true, young
human happiness always causes respect, and, like every achievement,
bears its triumphant justification in itself. The leader of fashion,
Princess Lydia Petrovna B., declared publicly, and, indeed, in the
highest court circles, that in her opinion Natalie had acted very
wisely.
Countess Sophie Dimitrievna went a step further when she energetically
declared that she envied Natalie. From that time every one vied in
feting the young couple and distinguishing them.
They both enjoyed society, but the best part of it was not entering the
brilliantly illuminated reception-rooms or being surrounded by
wondering strangers. Oh, no! the best of all was the last quarter of an
hour before they left their home, when Lensky, already in evening
dress, entered the dressing-room of his young wife. Each time he felt
anew the same pleasant excitement when he, slowly turning the knob,
after a teasing, "May I come in, Natalie?" entered the cosey room.
How charming and attractive everything was there! The room with the
light carpet and the comfortable, not too numerous articles of
cretonne-upholstered furniture; the two tiny gold-embroidered slippers
on the rough bear-skin in front of the lounge; not far off, Natalie's
house-dress, thrown over a chair, exhaling the warmth of her young,
fresh, fragrant personality. Then there on the toilet-table, with
clouds of white muslin over the pink lining, and with sparkling silver
and crystal utensils, a pretty confusion of half-opened white lace
boxes, and on the table dark velvet jewel-cases. The pleasant, mild,
and still bright light of many pink wax-candles, which stood about in
high, heavy silver candelabra, and the warm, strange, seductive
atmosphere which filled the whole room--an atmosphere which was
permeated with the fragrance of greenhouse flowers, burning
wax-candles, and the pleasant, subtle, spicy Indian perfume which clung
to all Natalie's effects.
And there, before the tall cheval-glass, Natalie, already in evening
toilet, almost ready, her beautiful arms hanging down in pampered
helplessness; behind her a maid, just finished fastening her corsage,
and a second, with a three-branched candelabra in her hand, throwing
the light upon her mistress.
Was that really his wife? This splendid, queenly being in the white
silk dress--she wore white silk in preference--really the wife of the
violinist, in whose life, not so far back, lay all kind of need,
humiliation, trouble of all kind?
Then she looked around. She had a charming manner of holding her small
hands half against her cheeks, half against her neck, and turning
slowly from the glass and looking at him with lowered eyelids, and a
kind of mischievously proud and yet tenderly suppressed consciousness
of victory. "Are you satisfied, Boris?"
What could he answer?
"You come just as if called," then said she. "You shall put the
hair-pins in my hair. Katia is so awkward." Then she sat down in a low
chair, and handed him the hair-pins. They were wonderful hair-pins, the
heads of which were narcissi formed of diamonds, a bridal present from
Lensky. He took them with gentle fingers, and the celebrated artist was
proud if his young wife praised him for the taste with which he
fastened her diamonds in her hair.
* * * * *
"Natalie!" exclaimed Boris, in a tone of the greatest surprise--a
surprise made up of the greatest astonishment and not of joy--"you
here?"
It was in his study, and nine o'clock in the morning. At this hour,
daily, in crying opposition to his former proverbial unreliability, he
had long been sitting at his writing-table. But that Natalie should
leave her bedroom before ten o'clock had hitherto been an unheard-of
occurrence.
But to-day, just as he was about to go to the piano, to try on that
modest representative of an orchestra a completed musical phrase, he
discovered her. Quite unobserved, she had mischievously crept in, and
now crouched comfortably in a large arm-chair, which formed a very
picturesque frame for her silk wrapper, bordered with black fur. She
sat on one foot; one tiny gold-embroidered Caucasian slipper lay before
her on the floor, and she smiled tenderly at her husband with her
great, proud eyes. But the pride disappeared from her glance at his
ejaculation, an ejaculation which expressed so much perplexity, so
little joy. She started and, embarrassed, reached out for her slipper
with the tip of her foot.
"Do I disturb you?" she asked, anxiously. "Must I go?"
Formerly he could not bear to have any one about him when he worked.
His face wore a forced, smiling expression, while he assured her:
"Oh, not in the slightest--pray sit down." Whereupon he pushed his
chair up to hers.
"Oh, if you are going to treat me so!" said she.
"How, then?" asked he.
"Like--like any visitor," she burst out, and hastened to the door. He
brought her back. Then he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"But what is the matter?"
"I am ashamed of my intrusion, that is all. Adieu--I will not disturb
you further!"
With that she wished to free herself from him. But that was not so
easy. He took her, struggling in his arms like a child, and carried her
back by force to the immense chair which they had left. "So now, sit
there, and don't spoil my mood, you witch. Why should I not enjoy your
company for a little? Do you think, then, that I am not glad to see
you? But you do not expect that I should bend over the table, and spoil
paper, while a charming little woman sits behind me? The temptation to
talk to you is too great."
She shook her head. "You wish to be good to me, but you pain me,"
murmured she. And she added, flatteringly, "Can you really not work
when I am with you?"
"Would you like it if I could?" he asked, and looked at her with a
quite new, penetrating expression in his eyes.
He drew his brows together humorously; he was now kneeling before her,
and held both her hands in his. "You are not only a charming little
woman, Natalie," said he, "but, what very few such beautiful and
seductive women are, of a good heart. But still I have noticed one
thing in you, namely, that you do not like to be second anywhere. And,
do you see, everywhere else you are not only the first, but the only
one in the world for me; but here, Natalie, here it must please you
that I should forget you for my art!"
"And do you think that I would wish it otherwise?" said she, and there
was an earnest, solemn expression in her eyes which he never forgot.
"Oh, you blind one, you do not yet know me at all. Do not kneel there
like a hero in a romance; in the long run, it looks not only awkward
but uncomfortable. Sit down by me--there is room enough in this immense
chair for us both. So! and now--now I will confess to you what I have
already so long had on my heart. Do you see, you love me, I do not
doubt that, how should I? but--do not be angry with me--sometimes I
wish that you loved me differently; I wish to be not only your petted
wife, your plaything----"
"My plaything!" he interrupted her, very reproachfully. "Oh, Natalie!
my sanctuary!"
"Well, then, as far as I am concerned, your sanctuary. That, looked at
in one light, is also only a plaything, even if of the most
distinguished kind." She laughed somewhat constrainedly. "It is
certainly immoderate," she continued, and hesitated a little,
"horribly immoderate, but still it is so--I--I do not want to be only
your plaything, but also your friend--do not be horrified at this
audacity--yes, your friend, your confidante. I wish to be the first to
share your newly arising thoughts. Lately, it has often hurt me that
you busy yourself so much with all kinds of trifles only to give me
pleasure. I know it is my fault; at first I was afraid of your genius,
which soared heavenward, and wished to accustom you to the earth,
and chain you close to me. But then--then I was ashamed of my
smallness--ah, so ashamed. You shall not stoop down to me; let me try
to rise to you. Spread out your mighty wings, and fly up to the stars,
but take me with you!"
He could not speak--only kisses burned on his lips. He pressed them on
her wonderful eyes, whose holy light humiliated him. Then, after a
while, he murmured, softly: "You are nearer the stars than I, Natalie.
Show me the way, show me the way!"
* * * * *
From then, she daily passed a couple of hours in his study. How happy
she felt in the great, airy room, which was almost as empty as a shed.
In here she had not ventured with her soft, seductive, decorative arts.
All had remained as sober and plain as he had always been accustomed
to have his surroundings while at work. High shelves almost breaking
under their weight of music, a piano, a couple of stringed instruments,
the arm-chair in which he had established her, and two or three
cane-bottomed chairs constituted the whole furniture. On the
writing-table stood a picture of Natalie, painted in water-colors by a
young French artist in Rome. The room could show no other ornament.
Still, there in the darkest corner hung a single laurel-wreath. No
large one, such as one lays to-day at the feet of great artists, but
poor and small, and in the middle of the wreath, in a common wooden
frame, drawn with a hard lead-pencil, the face of a woman, with a white
cloth on her head, from beneath which fine, curly hair fell over the
forehead. Without being beautiful, the face was strangely attractive,
and Natalie would have liked to ask the history of the laurel-wreath
and the picture. But she did not venture to. She never, by a single
question, touched upon Lensky's past.
He only continued to remain in solitude during the hours which he
devoted to technical practice. At other times he quietly let her stay.
She sat behind him, quite soberly and still, in the large, worn-out
patriarchal chair, and did not breathe a word. She never even took a
book in her hand, for fear of irritating him by the rattling of turning
pages, but busied herself with pretty, noiseless handiwork.
The feeling of her presence was unendingly sweet to him. His whole
activity was increased; he worked more intently than formerly. A
fulness of music vibrated in his head and heart. And if the inward
vibrations became too dreamily sweet, too luxuriant and exuberant, he
stopped writing, sat awhile in silence, and then, without taking the
slightest notice of Natalie, walked up and down a couple of times,
hummed something to himself, made a sweeping gesture, in conclusion
took up the violin--then----
Natalie raised her head and listened--how wonderful that sounded! He
had unlearned the madness, but still in his melodies always sounded the
strange Arabian succession of tones, the devil's music: Asbein!
She became, as she had wished, the confidante of his work. When he had
sketched on paper the plan of a composition, he played it to her, now
on his violin, which he passionately loved, now on the piano, which he
did not love; for its short tone, incapable of development, repulsed
him, but which he respected and made use of as the most complete of all
instruments. Although he played the piano, not with virtuosity, but
with the helplessness of the composer, he could still bring out
something of the "warm tone" which made his violin irresistible.
How eagerly she listened to his compositions! How much she rejoiced in
them, and how severe she was to him! She would not let him pass over a
single musical flaw. That she rejoiced and wept over the beauties in
his compositions, that she boldly placed his genius near Beethoven and
Schumann, that is to say, near what she ranked highest in the world,
that was another thing! For that reason she was so severe. He laughed
at her sometimes for her tender delusion. Then she took his head
between her hands, and said, triumphantly: "That is all very well; only
wait a little while, then the whole world will say that you have been
the last musical poet: the others are only bunglers."
* * * * *
In the beginning of March he made a short artist tour through the
interior of Russia. Naturally, he could not drag her around with him,
for she could not endure the exhausting fatigues of his quick journeys,
especially at that time. But how horrible, how unbearable the parting
seemed to him! He wrote her every day. His writing was ugly and
irregular, his orthography as deficient in French as in Russian; but
what tenderness, what passion and poetry spoke from every uncultured,
stormily written line. No one could better impress his whole heart in a
short, insignificant letter than he; and what rapture, what wild,
almost painful rapture at seeing her again! She had missed him much
less than he had missed her. He reproached her for it, complained that
the new love which now began to fill her whole existence left no place
for the old. But then she measured him with such a tender, and, at the
same time, a so deeply hurt look, that he was ashamed.
"You must not take it so," he whispered to her, appeasingly. "It is an
old story that if two hearts hasten forward together in a race of love,
one will naturally outdo the other, and still will be vexed that it is
so. But it is quite natural and in order that I should cling more to
you than you to me."
She smiled quite sadly. "We will see who will win the race in the end,"
murmured she.
* * * * *
Natalie no longer went into society. Her health was much impaired. She
passed the entire month of April stretched on her lounge, in loose
wrappers. She now reproached herself with having been foolish not to
have spared herself before. The time of tormenting fancy approached for
the young wife, the time of concealed anxiety for them both. In spite
of the consoling assurances of the physician, Lensky was no longer
himself, from anxiety and despair. But he did not let her notice it.
When he was with her he had always a gay smile on his lips and a droll
story for her diversion. He cared for her like a mother.
Then, toward the end of May, came the most tormenting hour he had ever
lived through, until at last--when he already believed that all hope
was lost--a little, thin, shrill sound smote his ear. It startled him,
his heart beat loudly; still he did not venture to move, but listened,
until at last the doctor came out of the adjoining room, and called to
him: "All is over."
He misunderstood the words. "She is dead!" he gasped.
"No, no! Boris Nikolaivitch; everything is as well as possible. Come!"
He felt as would a man buried alive, if one should raise the lid from
his coffin.
At the door of the bedroom a fat old woman, with a large cap, came
toward him. "A son, a very fine young one!" said she, triumphantly,
while she laid something tiny and rosy, wrapped in white cloth and
lace, in his arms.
Tears fell from his eyes, and his hands trembled so that the nurse was
horrified and took the child away from him.
He went up to Natalie, who, deathly pale and exhausted, but with a
lovely, indescribable expression on her face, at once of tenderness and
of a certain solemn pride, lay among the high-piled pillows. Quite
softly, with a kind of timidity which his violent love had hitherto
never known, he pressed her pale hand to his lips.
"Are you content?" she whispered, dreamily and scarcely audibly. "Are
you content?"
* * * * *
She recovered rapidly. Her beauty had lost none of its charm, but had
rather won an earnest--one might almost say consecrated--loveliness.
Her face reflected her happiness. That also had become a shade deeper,
nobler. In spite of all her pampered habits, she insisted upon caring
for the child herself. He let her have her way.
The former dressing-room was changed to a nursery. Sometimes, in the
long, transparent twilight of the spring, he entered the room in which,
in winter, he had passed so many charming hours by candle-light, and
where now everything was so changed. A cradle stood in the place which
formerly the toilet-table had occupied--ah, what a cradle--a dream of a
cradle! A basket with a canopy of green silk, hung with a long,
transparent lace veil, a costly nest for a young bird whose little eyes
must be shielded, by all kinds of tender devices, from the bright
light, which perhaps later would pain him so!
The air, quite filled with a pleasant, mild, damp vapor, was permeated
by a weak perfume of iris and warming linen, and, besides that, with
something quite strange, quite peculiarly sweet, stirring--the breath
of a healthy, fresh, carefully cared-for little child.
And there, where the cheval-glass had formerly reflected to him the
lovely form of a proud queen of beauty, now sat in the same large
arm-chair, a tender young mother, her child on her breast. The lines of
her neck, from which the loose, white dress had slipped down a little
so that the outline of the shoulders was visible, was charming; but
what was it, to the lovely, attentive expression with which she looked
down at the child?
Everything about her expressed tenderness: her look, her smile, the
hands with which she held the child to her. It was just these small,
white hands which Lensky could not cease to observe. How helpless they
had formerly been--and now! She would scarcely let the nurse touch
baby. He was never weary of watching how untiringly she touched the
tiny, frail body of the infant, and did a thousand services for it
which all resembled caresses.
* * * * *
"It is all very beautiful, but you have a manner of ignoring me in this
little kingdom," said Lensky, jokingly, to the young mother, while he
threw a look of humorous vexation at the young despot whom she just
laid in the cradle.
She bent her head a little to one side, and whispered roguishly, while
she came up to him and played with the lapel of his coat: "Do you see,
Boris, this is my study. Everywhere else you are not only the first but
the only one in the world for me; but here you must be content if I
sometimes forget you for my calling."
He laughed.
"Do you know that you once said something similar to me; that time when
I, for the first time, dared to enter your sanctuary?" she murmured,
and repeated petulantly: "Do you know it?"
He kissed both of her hands, one after the other. "Do you then believe
that I could ever forget such a thing, my angel?" whispered he. "I am
no such spendthrift; oh, no! If you knew how I cherish this dear
remembrance! That is pure happiness which we will keep for our old
days, when the sun no longer seems to us to shine as brightly, and we
must light a poor candle in order to find our path again to a suitable
grave."
* * * * *
Natalie still thought of the poor laurel wreath in his study. But she
did not venture to ask him a direct question about it.
He himself, of his own accord, at last told her the history of the
pitiful relic.
He had never spoken to her of his childhood, but once a great impulse
came over him to tell her the whole; to lay bare before her all the
pitiableness of his past. What would she then say to it?
It was a clear summer night, out on the terrace of the country house
near St. Petersburg, which they had hired for the summer, the terrace
which looked out on the small but pretty and shady garden. They sat
there, hand in hand; around them the dull, gray light of a day that
will not die, sweet perfume of flowers, and in the tree tops the gentle
rustling of the kissing leaves. She talked of gay, insignificant
things; gave him a droll, laughing description of a visit to one of her
friends. At first it amused him; then something, he could not have said
what, irritated him against this monstrous principle of gliding so
triflingly and mockingly through life without ever glancing into it
more deeply.
"What would she say if she knew?" thought he. "Perhaps she would shun
me!" A kind of madness overcame him. He felt the wish to risk his
happiness in order to convince himself of its durability, to put his
petted wife to the test. "How you butterflies, floating over flowers in
the sunshine, must be horrified at the miserable worms who creep over
the earth!" he began bitterly.
"What are you thinking of?" asked she, astonished.
"Nothing especial, only that I was originally just such a worm,
creeping over the earth."
"Ah! that is long past!" she interrupted him hastily. She wished to
keep him from long dwelling on an unpleasant thought, but he suspected
that his insinuation of his humble antecedents vexed her, and that she
felt the need of forgetting his derivation. He looked at her from head
to foot, with an angry, wondering glance. Her richly embroidered white
dress, the large diamonds in her ears,--how the diamonds sparkled in
the dull evening light!
Then he began to speak of his childhood, dryly, with a smile on his
lips as if it was a question of something quite indifferent and
amusing.
In a large tenement at Moscow, overcrowded with all kinds of human
vermin, had he grown up; in the half of a room that was divided by a
sail, behind which another poor family hungered. His father he did not
remember. His mother sang to the guitar in wine rooms. When he was five
years old she had bought him a fiddle for four rubles, and then some
one, a dissolute musician, who often came to them, had taught him to
scrape on it a little. From that time he accompanied his mother when
she sang in the wine rooms,--or even on the streets, as it happened.
She had been pretty; the drawing which hung in the laurel wreath, and
which an artist in their horrible dwelling-place had made of her, was
like her. Only she had quite unusually beautiful teeth which one could
not see in the picture. He remembered these teeth very well, because
she laughed so much, especially if there was little to eat and she made
him take it all, and declared she had spoiled her appetite at a
friend's house with fresh _pirogj_. Once the thought had occurred to
him that she only said so because there was not enough for two, and
then he could not eat anything more. If there was nothing at all to
eat, either for him or for her, she told him a story.
Had he loved her? Yes, he believed so--how could it be otherwise? But
the consciousness of what she really had been to him only came to him
when he was no longer with her. How that happened he really did not
know, but one fine day she took him in a part of the city which he had
never known until then, in a handsome residence that seemed so
beautiful to him that he only ventured to go around on tiptoes. At the
door a fat, yellow man, with long, greasy, black hair, received him,
and told his mother it was all right. Then she kissed him a last time,
told him she would take him away in an hour, and went.
He was taken in a room with gay furniture, and there greeted by a fat
woman with a thick gold chain over the bosom of her violet silk dress,
and with rings on all her short, stumpy, wrinkled fingers, and was
entertained with tea, cake, and honey. He had never before enjoyed a
similar repast. He felt in an elevated frame of mind.
When the fat man--he was a mediocre musician who had married a rich
merchant's daughter, who gave him none of her money, however--told him
that he should always stay with him, and never go back to his mother,
he was glad, and felt the consciousness of having taken a step forward
in the world.
Did that surprise Natalie? He could not help it, it was still so.
"Strange what roughness men show before a little bit of civilization
has taught them to conceal it," he added reflectively.
Did he not feel anxiety later? Natalie wished to know. Yes, for his new
life contained nothing of that which he had promised himself. That he
should live in the beautiful rooms with the master and mistress and eat
with them, as he had thought at first, had been an illusion. Only the
two children of the fat daughter of the merchant could tumble around on
the sofas, with their fiery-red, woolen, damask covering, and could
help themselves from all the dishes.
He lived on charity; they told him that every day. The musician had
bought him of his mother for fifty rubles, as Lensky afterward learned,
as a speculation, in order to make money out of him as a prodigy. The
time which he did not devote to his musical practice he must spend
helping the maid in the kitchen.
He slept, with an old sofa pillow under his head, on the floor, in a
gloomy little room, without window, only with dirty panes of glass in
the door--a room in which the cook put all kinds of rubbish. Dampness
ran down the walls, and every evening from all corners crept out a
whole regiment of black beetles, and spread themselves over the boards.
The food? Well, it was sparing. Sometimes he only received what the
family had left on their plates.
Was he not angry at this treatment? No. He found it quite in order at
that time. The well-fed, warmly dressed people impressed him,
especially the cap of Vauvara Ivanovna--that was the name of his
mistress. He felt a respectful shudder pass over him every time he saw
this structure of blonde, red flowers, and green ribbon. Except the
Kremlin, nothing impressed him so much as this house.
When the whole family, in festival attire, went to church on Sunday, he
stood at the door, quite oppressed by the feeling of modest wonder, and
looked after the well-dressed, well-fed people. He did his best to make
himself useful and agreeable, and to please them. Yes, he was just so
small and pitiable, as a half-starved six-year-old pigmy. And then,
in conclusion, one day he simply could bear it no longer and ran back
to his mother. He found the way. With that quite animal sense of
locality and traces, which only children of the lowest classes of men
have, he found it. His mother was at home; she was frightened when
she saw him. Had they turned him out? Yes, she was frightened. In
the first moment she was frightened; then--here Lensky stammered
in his confession--naturally she was glad; for, what use of losing
words?--naturally she was glad. How she kissed him and caressed him
with her poor, rough, toil-worn, and still such gentle, warm hands. He
still felt her hands sometimes on him, in dreams, especially behind his
ears and on his neck. Then she fed him. She spread a red and white
flowered cloth over the table in his honor, and after that she gave him
a holy picture. Then she said it could not be otherwise; he must go
back to Simon Ephremitsch; it was for his own good. When he had become
a great artist, then he would come to fetch her in a coach with four
horses.
That impressed him. And in order to calm him completely, she promised
to visit him very soon.
But she did not come; and when he ran back to her, after about a month,
she was no longer in her old abode; he never found her! Soon afterward
she sent him two pretty little shirts, delicately embroidered in red
and blue. But she herself did not come. Never!
At his first appearance in public--he had performed his piece
with the anxious assiduity of a little monkey that fears a blow, he
asserted--to his great astonishment, he was applauded. In the midst of
the hand-clapping he suddenly heard a sob. He was convinced that his
mother had been at the concert.
At the conclusion they handed him a laurel wreath, the same which now
hung in his room; quite a poor woman had brought it, they said. He
guessed immediately that the wreath came from his mother; and suddenly,
just as a couple of music-lovers had stepped on the stage, in order to
see the wonderful little animal near by, he began to stamp his feet and
clench his fists, to scream and to sob, until every one crowded around
him. His principal threatened him with blows; a very pretty young lady
in a blue-silk dress took him on her lap to quiet him; but all was of
no use.
He saw his mother once more--in her coffin.
His benefactor told him that she was dead, and that, after all, it was
suitable that he should show her the last honors. The coffin stood on a
table, surrounded by thin, poorly-burning candles, and she lay within,
so small and thin, her hands folded on her breast, in a poor shroud,
that they had bought ready made for a few copecks.
In the beginning, Natalie had interrupted him with questions, but now
she had long been silent. He looked at her challengingly, at every
pitiful, repulsive detail, especially if it brought forward a trace of
his own insignificance. It was quite as if he expressly tried to pain
her. But when he came to speak of the death of his mother, whose form,
in the midst of his glaring, sharp description, he drew so tenderly and
vaguely, obliterating everything disturbing, as if he saw her, in
remembrance, only through tears, he closed his eyes.
Suddenly he heard near him a suppressed sound of pain, then something
like the falling of the over-abundant load of blossoms from a tree
among whose spring adornment there yet moves no breath of air.
He started, looked up--there was Natalie on her knees before him, the
beauty, the queenly, proud one, and had embraced him with both arms, as
if she would shield him from all the woes of earth, and sobbed as if
she could not console herself for his past suffering.
"Natalie! my angel, do you really love me so?"
"One cannot love you enough, or recompense you enough for all that you
have missed," whispered she.
And he had really for one moment suspected that----
He raised her on his knees. They did not speak another word. Through
the garden at their feet the birches rustled in the mild night breeze,
and from the distance one heard the sad voice of a marsh bird, who with
heavy beating wings flew to the neighboring pond.
The most beautiful love will always be that which has been sanctified
by a great compassion. In that mild summer night, while all around them
was fragrance and veiled light, Natalie's love had received its
consecration.
* * * * *
Three, four years passed; a second little child lay in the pretty,
veiled cradle, from which little Nikolai first made his solemn
observation of the world--a dear little plump maiden, whom they
baptized Mascha, after the grandmother, and whom Boris particularly
idolized. There was still nothing to report of Natalie's married life
but love, happiness, and beauty. Lensky kept every unpleasant
impression far from her, surrounded her with the most touching care,
overwhelmed her with the most poetic attentions. Her life at his side
unrolled itself like a long, secret, passionate love-poem.
Natalie's family had reconciled themselves to her marriage. Even for
the wise and arrogant Sergei Alexandrovitch it had the appearance that
he had been mistaken in his discouraging prediction, as happens even to
the wisest men, if with their predictions they have only the sober
probability in view, without thinking of the possibility of some
underlying miracle. After four years of married life Natalie was as
happy as a bride.
Still, Lensky's happiness was not as unclouded as that of his wife. A
great unpleasantness became ever more significant to him, the quite
universal coldness of his artistic relations.
It would be wrong to believe that Natalie, with systematic jealousy,
had wished to estrange him from the world of artists. On the contrary,
she had complied with his wish to make her acquainted with his
colleagues and their families, had herself asked it of him,
flatteringly.
The world of artists interested her. There, everything was more
animated, more meaning, than the eternal sameness of good society which
she knew by heart, quite by heart, she assured him tenderly. She made
it her ambition to win his acquaintances for hers. But strangely
enough, in spite of all her seductive loveliness, she succeeded only
very incompletely.
She had already known the _elite_ among the artists. There is nothing
further to be said of her relations with these favored of the gods,
exceptional existences, than that she always felt honored by
intercourse with them, and pleased, and that, when with them she ever
vexed herself over the worn-out old commonplace, that one should avoid
the acquaintance of famous men in order to prevent disappointment--a
commonplace which was probably invented for the consolation of those
who, in advance, are excluded from intercourse with celebrities. That
Natalie always succeeded in winning the sympathies of these exceptional
natures stands for itself.
But when it was a question of that great crowd of artists, of the
mixture of sickly vanity, embarrassed affairs, depressing relations,
etc., then it was hard to build up a friendship between Lensky's wife
and his old colleagues.
Envy of Lensky, envy which had reference largely to his artistic
results, and in a less degree to his marriage and social position,
peeped out everywhere from these people, and had its own results in
soon completely embittering the not very pleasant relations between
them and Natalie.
In a truly friendly, touchingly friendly manner, they only met her in
quite modestly circumstanced families--families of a few true artists
who yet could accomplish nothing with their work but to honestly and
poorly provide for their seven or eight children. Families of simple
people, who had formerly been good to Lensky in the difficult beginning
of his career, and to whom he always showed the most faithful
adherence, the most prodigal generosity. She also felt happy among
these plain people.
What wonder that these people would all have gone through fire for him!
They would also have all given of their best for Natalie, whom without
envy they worshipped with enthusiasm as a queen. They rejoiced that
Lensky, their pride, their idol, possessed such a beautiful and
distinguished wife--in their eyes the daughter of the emperor would not
have been too good for him.
Natalie thanked them for their great attachment, as well as she could;
she reckoned it a special favor to receive these modest people in her
home, to invite them with their wives and children, to entertain them
with distinction, to stuff all the children's pockets full of bonbons,
and give them little parting presents.
But intercourse with these poor devils was in reality only a
sentimental game, even as intercourse with the artistic _elite_ was
nothing but an ideal recreation. Neither the one nor the other sufficed
to firmly knit the band between Lensky's wife and his former world, or
to keep up his popularity in that world.
* * * * *
Of all the opposition and difficulty which would arise therefrom for
Lensky's future and especially for his yet to be won future as
composer, Natalie still suspected nothing. For her, the whole heaven
was still blue.
Then the first deep shadow fell on her happiness. Lensky, to whom every
long separation from her was unbearable, when he undertook a long tour
through central Europe, in spite of her express request, could not
resolve to leave her behind with the children, in St. Petersburg. The
little children were left under the care of their grandmother.
For the first time, Natalie was no amusing, but a dull and nervous,
travelling companion. An unbearable anxiety followed her like a
foreboding. All his attempts to console her were in vain.
In Dusseldorf, she received, by telegraph, the news that little Mascha
was ill with diphtheria. When she arrived in Petersburg, half dead from
anxiety and breathless haste, the child lay in her coffin.
He was almost as desperate as she. He overwhelmed himself with
self-reproaches;--who knows, if they had watched the child better, if
they had thought of this or that in caring for it.... What torment, to
be obliged to say that to one's self! A reproach never passed her lips,
she even concealed her tears lest they should sadden him. But from that
unhappiness on, something in her formerly so elastic nature, so capable
of resistance, was broken forever. The first jubilant time of their
marriage was at an end.
* * * * *
Together with the evermore unpleasant friction with his colleagues, and
the great pain for his lost child, still another worry announced itself
to Lensky--something gnawing, and incessantly tormenting: a daily
increasing money embarrassment. Natalie decidedly spent too much, but
quite naively, with the firm conviction that she could not exist more
economically; wherefore it was doubly hard for him to be finally
obliged to tell her that he could not raise the money to continue the
household on the footing to which she had been accustomed.
It was quite touching to see how frightened she was when he made her
the first communication in reference to it--frightened, not at the
prospect of having to save, but only at the thoughtlessness by which
she had burdened Lensky with cares. She immediately showed herself
ready for the most exaggerated reforms. But to live with his wife like
a proletary, in St. Petersburg, among her brilliant relations and
friends, he could not bring himself to do.
In the autumn of the same year, he moved with his family to ----, a
large German capital, where he had accepted the direction of a
significant musical undertaking.
But here the conflict between his artistic and family life which had
arisen through his alliance with Natalie, came to light with more
detestable clearness.
He was in his element, as an artist whose powers have found a wide,
noble sway.
The great musical undertaking, at whose head they had placed him,
flourished wonderfully under his lead. The fiery earnestness with
which he undertook it won him all musical hearts. Also the atmosphere
in ---- was sympathetic to him for other reasons. He had a crowd of old
connections there, acquaintances of his first virtuoso period, people
who surrounded him, distinguished him, with whom he could speak of his
art--which always remained sacred and earnest to him, and never, for
him, deteriorated to a more or less noble means of earning his living,
or to a social pedestal--in quite a different manner than with the
elegant dilettantis who had gradually crowded out every other society
from his house in St. Petersburg. They gave one artistic festival after
the other in his honor, and all this entertained him.
His wife appeared with him a couple of times on such occasions, then
she excused herself--she had no pleasure in them. She felt isolated, an
insurmountable home-sickness tormented her.
Without confessing it, for the first time since her marriage the
position which she occupied with Lensky angered her.
In St. Petersburg she had always remained with him the Princess
Assanow, he had ascended to her world; here she must suddenly satisfy
herself with his world. She was too vexed, too angrily excited to seek
in this world all the true interest, earnestness, and nobility that
were to be found therein.
She had intimate intercourse only with an old friend of her youth, a
certain Countess Stolnitzky, who went out but little and consequently
had time enough for Natalie.
Lensky begged Natalie to open her drawing-room one or two evenings a
week, that is to say to his friends. Natalie's drawing-room became a
meeting-place for all kinds of artistic leaders, among which the
dramatic element formed the principal contingent, and this chiefly
because Lensky wished to have an opera performed.
For him, intercourse with dramatic artists had no unpleasantness; he
had been accustomed to it from youth. But it became unpleasant to
Natalie after she had satisfied that superficial curiosity which every
woman living in severely exclusive circles feels concerning these
theatrical people.
The only people that were still more unpleasant to Natalie, in her
drawing-room, than this crowd of people still smelling of freshly
washed-off paint, were the aristocrats who came there to meet the
artists. And many of these came--very many, all who coquetted with a
little bit of musical interest--yes, and many others. "Very
interesting, these _soirees_ at Lensky's," they always said, when these
were spoken of; "very interesting; they always have very good music
there, and then one meets a crowd of amusing people whom one never sees
anywhere else. And the wife is really charming--quite _comme il faut_."
"She is a Russian princess," a foreigner interrupted, who belonged to
the diplomatic corps.
The native women turned up their noses repellently. They placed no
great confidence in the distinction of Russian princesses who married
artists.
Natalie was so ignorant of their rooted prejudices that she greeted the
ladies who came to her house with the greatest frankness as her equals.
She caused offence by her naivete, and noticed it. People came to
Lensky, not to her--if she would only understand that they wished
to be as polite as possible to her, in the somewhat narrow limits of
well-bred society--but she must understand it.
She did understand. When she observed that most of the ladies accepted
her invitations without returning them, yes, when it happened that the
art-loving Princess C. sent Lensky an invitation to a _soiree_, and
overlooked his wife, then she understood. It began to tell upon her, to
aggravate her.
She fulfilled her duties as hostess with displeasure, did the honors
negligently, and did nothing to animate her receptions. My God! people
came there to hear music and to rave over her husband,--she was no
longer necessary. She became quite foolish and childish.
She was used to the homage that was paid her husband, she would have
been fearfully angry if they had not paid him enough; but in Russia,
this homage was shown in quite a different, much nobler, intenser form;
in Russia he was a great man, before whom every one removed his hat, a
sacred being of whom the nation was proud; men and women of the highest
rank showed him the same respect.
But in ----, except one or two particularly enthusiastic lovers of
music, none of the nobility appeared in his house, with the exception
of the ladies. Why did he ask them? He ridiculed them--but yet their
flattery pleased him. He had dedicated a composition to more than one
of them.
Natalie was almost beside herself with rage. For the first time she
felt a certain jealousy. Among others, there was a little dark Polish
woman, married to a Swedish diplomat, and separated from him, a
Countess Loewenskiold. She purred around him like a kitten.
Formerly he would have noticed the change in Natalie immediately, but
for the first time since their marriage he forgot, not only in his
study but elsewhere, his wife for his art. He was so happy in his art,
so completely occupied with it, that he scarcely noticed the pitiful
social pin-pricks which formerly would have caused him vexation enough,
and consequently did not consider the importance they had for Natalie.
The study of his opera, for which they had placed at his disposal the
best facilities at the command of the ---- Theatre, went steadily
forward. The artists liked to work under his direction, and with
enthusiasm did their utmost to do justice to his work. Joy fevered in
every vein when he came home from the rehearsals.
* * * * *
It was toward the end of the carnival. One of Lensky's musical
_soirees_ had been visited by quite an unusual number of brilliant
visitors. A very large number of ladies of the best society had been
there.
They had all appeared in brilliant toilets, with bare shoulders, and
diamonds and feathers in their hair. Natalie was also in evening dress,
while the wives of Lensky's colleagues and all the ladies present not
belonging to the court circle had come in high-necked dresses.
When the aristocratic ladies, with profuse thanks for the musical treat
offered them, had withdrawn before eleven o'clock, because they must,
"alas!" still go "into society," into Natalie's social world, but which
was closed to her in ----, Natalie remained the only woman in her
drawing-room with bare shoulders.
Lensky, who had just accompanied some tedious Highness politely out of
the room, now returned to the music-room, closed the door, behind which
the noble patroness had disappeared, and cried gayly: "So, children,
now we can be among ourselves, and enjoy a comfortable evening."
"Among ourselves!" These words pierced Natalie like a poisoned
stiletto. "Among ourselves!" She bit her lower lip, angrily.
Meanwhile, pushing back the hair from his temples with both hands,
Lensky asked: "Would the gentlemen like to play the Schumann E-flat
major quartette with me before we sit down to supper?" Then he looked
over at Natalie and smiled. She knew that he proposed this wonderful
quartette for her sake, because it was her favorite, but she was
already so over-excited that the touching little attention made no
impression on her. She remained as defiant and bad-tempered as before.
While they played she let her eyes wander gloomily over the already
empty hired cane-bottomed chairs, which stood around in regular rows.
She asked herself bitterly, what really was the difference between her
"reception evenings" and any other concert?--that the people paid their
admission with compliments instead of money! And while she made these
useless and vexing observations, the most noble music that was ever
written vibrated around her heart, like an admonition of how small all
these worldly, outward vanities were in comparison with the lofty,
god-like being of true art! And her obstinate heart had already begun
to understand the sermon and to be ashamed, when she observed two bold
eyes of a man staring from across the room at her bare shoulders. The
eyes belonged to a certain Mr. Arnold Spatzig, the most influential
musical critic and journalist in ----. Scarcely had he noticed that her
look met his when he left his chair, in order, crossing the room, to
take his place near Natalie, and continue his insolent scrutiny from
near by. He was a disagreeable man, with thick lips, spectacles, and
boldly displayed cynicism. Natalie, who could not endure him, had
formerly tolerated him on Lensky's account. Now she felt so insulted by
his manner, that, with the vehement impoliteness of a spoiled woman
whose pride is wounded and who is excluded from her natural sphere, she
sprang up, and turning her back directly to Mr. Arnold Spatzig,
hastened away from him.
And now the quartette was over, and also the supper which followed,
exquisite and over-abundant as ever, at which Lensky did the honors
with that heartiness, not overlooking the least of his guests, which
was peculiar to him.
It was two o'clock, and the house was empty; the lights still burned.
Lensky was busy arranging the music on the piano, Natalie stood in the
middle of the room, drawn up to her full height, evidently trying to
suppress a nervous attack. She held her handkerchief to her lips--it
was no use. Suddenly she cried out: "Must I receive these people? I
would rather scrub the floor!" And with that she made a gesture as if
she would tear something apart.
"What do you mean?" he asked slowly. He had become deadly pale, and his
voice trembled.
She only drew her brows gloomily together and continued to gnaw at her
handkerchief.
Then he lost patience. He seized a large Japanese vase, and threw it
with such force on the floor that it broke in pieces; then he left the
room, slamming the door behind him.
But Natalie looked after him, offended, and broke out in fierce,
whimpering sobs.
A few minutes later when she, still weeping and trembling in every
limb, leaned against a sofa, in whose cushions she had buried her face,
she felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She looked up, Lensky had come up
to her. The traces of his difficultly mastered irritation were still on
his deathly pale face, but he bent down anxiously to her and said
gently: "Calm yourself, please, Natalie; it is no matter. Poor Natalie!
I should have thought of it sooner. You shall never again receive any
one--not a person--who does not please you, only stop crying; that I
cannot bear."
At the first friendly word that he said to her, her whole ill humor
changed to tormenting remorse and shame. "You will not take what
I said to you in earnest," said she. "It is not possible that you
should take this madness in earnest. I am so ashamed--ah, I cannot tell
you how ashamed I am! I acted unjustifiably, but I was so tired, so
nervous--scold me, be angry with me, and only then forgive me, or else
your indulgence will oppress me too heavily," and with that she kissed
his hands and sobbed--sobbed incessantly.
He caressed her like a little child whom one wishes to soothe, and she
continued: "I will suit myself better to my position, I will be
friendly to every one--as if I could not make that little sacrifice to
your artistic position!"
Then he interrupted her: "I will accept no sacrifice from you, not the
slightest, that I cannot do," said he. "What have you to trouble
yourself about my artistic position? You have nothing at all to do but
to love me and be happy--if you still can," he added softly, with a
tenderness that for the first time since his marriage had a bitter
savor.
But she looked up at him in the midst of her tears, with glorified
happiness. "If I still can?" she whispered, drawing his head down
to her--he now sat on the sofa beside her, with his arm around her
waist--"if I still can!" His lips met hers, her head sank on his
shoulder.
The candles in the chandeliers had burned low down, one of them went
out, and in going out threw a couple of sparks down on the pieces of
the Japanese vase which Lensky had broken in his anger. He had sent it
to Natalie filled with roses, in Rome, while they were betrothed,
therefore she loved it and had brought it with them to ----.
His eyes rested on the pieces with a peculiar sad look. "And now lie
down and see that you sleep after your excitement," said he to the
young wife. She followed him like a little child. He mixed her the
sleeping potion of orange essence, to which she was accustomed, and
calmed her with pleasant patient words. A happy smile lay on her lips
when she at length fell asleep.
But he did not close his eyes during the whole night, he did not even
lie down; but sat in his room at the writing-table. He wished to work
on something, but the music-paper remained untouched beneath his pen.
How could she so give way, at the first little trial which she had ever
had? Why had she spoken of a sacrifice? sacrifice! he would take no
sacrifice from her.
* * * * *
Natalie's reception days were given up under pretext of the illness of
his young wife. From that time, Lensky saw most of his friends only
outside of his house--his "patronesses" he saw no more.
Natalie was ashamed of her small, pitiful discontent, was ashamed of
the scene she had made her husband, and still was foolish enough to
rejoice over her victory, and to fully profit by it.
She offered all her intellectual, flattering, charming lovableness to
recompense for the loss she had caused him, and to quite win him again
for herself. She thought of all his preferences in her housekeeping,
which, in the beginning, she had somewhat neglected in ----; with half
unconscious slyness, she knew how to profit by his small as well as his
great qualities; to attain her aim, knew how to touch his heart as well
as to flatter his vanity. In full measure she attained what she strove
for. Forgetting all the prudence which his position demanded, he laid
just as enthusiastic homage at her feet as in the very first time of
his marriage. But she was so charming! And how well her defiant
arrogance became her! that arrogance which would bend to no one and
only with her loved one melted into passionate submission.
What did the great artist coterie which his wife had repulsed say to
all this? Oh, who could trouble one's self about all these people?
Meanwhile, during this happy intoxicated period he had met with one
vexation that concerned him very nearly. Three weeks before the
appointed date for the production of his "Corsair," the prima donna of
the ---- opera, Madame D., an artist of the first rank, for whom he had
quite specially written the principal feminine _role_, declared that
she would not sing it under any consideration. Lensky knew very well
that he had to thank the senseless arrogance of his wife for the sudden
opposition of this irritable leader; it was bitter to him; but without
telling Natalie a word of it, he choked down this unpleasant affair,
and submitted to seeing the part which the artiste had thoroughly
learned and brought to such splendid perfection intrusted now to the
weak powers of a talented but awkward beginner.
* * * * *
The evening of the representation came. They were both feverish, he and
she; but she fevered in expectation of a great triumph, he trembled
before a defeat.
He knew that his work had three things against it: a libretto that, for
an opera, was over-finely poetic, and poor in dramatic effect, the weak
representation of the principal _role_, and the whole coterie of
artists and bohemians in the audience excited against him by the
arrogance of his wife. Perhaps his music would save the situation. The
music was beautiful, that he knew; he must build on that.
Natalie made the sign of the cross on his forehead and hung a
consecrated Byzantine saint's picture, in a strange gold and black
enamel frame, around his neck before he went into the fire, that is to
say, before he drove to the opera-house to take the baton in his hand.
He smiled at this superstitious action and let it happen.
The greatest heroes like to avail themselves of a little celestial
protection before a battle.
In the opera-house he found everything in the best condition,
courageous, ready for battle. An hour later he mounted the director's
rostrum.
Once he turned his head to the audience, and his eyes sought Natalie.
There she sat near the stage in a box in the first row, which she
shared with the Countess Stolnitzky. She wore a black velvet dress, in
her hair sparkled the diamond narcissi which he had given her as
bridegroom; around her neck was wound a thick string of pearls which
the Empress of Russia had sent him for her once when he played at
court. In the whole theatre there was no woman who could compare with
her in proud, beaming, and yet indescribably lovely beauty. She smiled
at him constrainedly. What was not hidden in that scarcely perceptible
smile! For the last time a kind of happy, proud delirium of love lay
hold upon him. He knocked on the desk, raised his arm, and the violins
began.
With a kind of magnificent, fiery earnestness, and with that, quite
classically severe in the musical roundness and connection of the
motives, the overture sounded through the crowded hall. It was rather
too long, and as the learned ones among the audience remarked, was
better suited for the first movement of a symphony than the
introduction of an opera. But what of that! the music was beautiful,
wonderfully beautiful, full of sad sweetness and quite demon-like,
ravishing power. Here, also, sounded the strange Arabian succession of
tones again, which was the characteristic of all his compositions, the
devil's tones: Asbein.
Natalie did not hear a sound, the buzzing in her ears, the beating of
her heart was too loud.
The last piercing chord resounded through the hall. What was that? An
immense burst of applause, unending bravos; the overture had to be
repeated.
It was with difficulty that Natalie could keep from sobbing aloud.
Again her smile sought his. A beautiful expression of noble, earnest
peace was on his features, but his glance did not answer hers, he had
forgotten her for his work.
The curtain rose. Natalie scarcely breathed, her hot blood crept slowly
through her veins like chilling metal, her ears no longer buzzed, on
the contrary her hearing was uncommonly sharp; only she could not take
in the music, but listened to all kinds of other things. The rustling
of a dress, the rattling of a fan, the whispering of a voice caused her
such excitement that it seemed to her, each time, as if she had been
shot through the heart by a pistol. The unexpected result of the
overture had increased her nervous tension still further.
During the first two acts the opinion remained favorable. After the
second act, the Russian ambassador presented himself to Natalie to
congratulate her.
While she received his congratulations, still trembling with
excitement, she suddenly heard quite loud talking, in a box not far
from her.
It was the box of that same Princess C., who was mentioned as
particularly musical, and who had invited Lensky to a _soiree_ and
passed over Natalie. Between her and another art-loving woman sat Mr.
Arnold Spatzig. Up to a certain point, he had access to the highest
circles of society, that is to say, he was patronized by a couple of
ladies who were bored in their "world," and who consequently liked to
attract men from some "other world" to them for a short entertainment,
not a long engagement, to be amused by them.
"These plebeian men at least take pains to amuse," the ladies were
accustomed to remark, and Arnold Spatzig decidedly took pains to amuse.
Once he raised his opera-glass to his eyes, and stared long and boldly
in Natalie's face.
The third act began with an aria by Gualnare, that is to say, with a
kind of duet between her and the ocean, which was represented by the
orchestra. For a concert piece the number was interesting and original,
but peculiarly unsuited to the beginning of the third act of an opera.
Only the splendid vocal powers and the poetic comprehension of Madame
D., for whom the aria was written, could have saved it; the powers of
the beginner who sang the part of Gualnare that evening were not at all
equal to her task, her voice, wearied by the exertions of the two
preceding acts, sounded almost extinct, her acting was awkward.
Natalie observed the bad impression which this number made on the
audience. Anxiously she looked around the theatre: the people were
patient, had too much sympathy for the virtuoso Lensky to
inconsiderately insult the composer.
On the stage, still continued the endless ocean duet. Still, in the
same monotonous time, Gualnare advanced to the waves and retreated from
them, quite as if she were dancing a _pas de deux_ with the sea. Then
Natalie heard laughing; the laughing sounded from the box of Princess
C.
Dr. Spatzig bent over to her, smiling, whispered something to her. She
laughed--how heartily she laughed! The opera-glasses of many ladies in
the boxes sought the Doctor's critical glance; Spatzig laughed, the
Princess laughed, the whole theatre laughed.
The aria was at an end, the gallery applauded. "Ss--ss--ss." What was
that cutting, piercing sound which killed the applause?
Natalie became white as chalk; her friend sought her hand; Natalie drew
it away; no human sympathy could be of use to her.
From that moment the enthusiasm of the audience rapidly declined. The
lack of dramatic action in the libretto became more and more
significant. More and more difficultly the poor music dragged along
amidst a succession of glaring spectacular effects, which monotonously
made place for each other without ever forming an interesting contrast.
And the music was so beautiful. There was something so heavily majestic
in the rhythm, here and there at once a trifle monotonous and
over-laden, but in the accompaniment so wonderfully beautiful in spite
of all, and furnished with a richness of melody unattainable by any of
the other composers of the time, never approaching the trivial, but
always remaining noble.
The audience was weary, and like every wearied audience, mocking; its
musical comprehension was worn out. From the middle of the fourth act
people began to leave the theatre, and when the curtain fell at the
close, not a hand moved.
Countess Stolnitzky accompanied Natalie silently down the steps.
Natalie got into her carriage and directed it to the stage entrance.
She had promised to call for Lensky after the opera. More dead than
alive she sat in the pretty coupe and waited. The air was sharp, it was
a frosty March night, the stars sparkled as if in cold mockery from the
unreachable heavens, quite as if they were laughing to think that once
more a child of man had tried to storm this heaven and had so pitiably
failed.
A half-hour had passed; at last Natalie sprang from the carriage and
hastened up the narrow stairs. There she met Lensky. He was deathly
pale, his hat was put on his head differently from usual, in a kind of
enterprising and challenging manner; his walk had something negligent,
swinging; there was a vagabond trace in his carriage that Natalie had
never before perceived in him. He held his cigarette between his teeth
and had the little singer on his arm who had to-day impersonated
Gualnare in his opera. Many of the singers, as well as the members of
the orchestra, came down the steps behind him, a gaudy, witty,
whispering throng. For the first time, Natalie remarked a certain
similarity, one might almost say a common family resemblance, between
her hero and these other "artists." The men all had the same manner of
wearing their hats and swaggering in their walk as he had to-day.
Although these men were more than ever repulsive to her, she greeted
them with anxious politeness. "I was afraid you were ill," she said,
while she glanced sadly and anxiously at Boris. "I have already waited
half an hour for you."
"So! I am very sorry," replied he, and his voice sounded rougher than
formerly. "I sent a messenger to you, he must have missed you. I cannot
go home with you this evening, we"--he looked over his shoulder at the
following crowd--"are going to have supper together. After a lost
battle the commander must care for the strengthening of his troops." He
laughed harshly and forcedly, and touched the hand of the singer who
hung on his arm.
"A lost battle!" said Natalie. "Lost--but the first two acts were a
great success!"
"'Don Juan' did not succeed at the first representation," remarked some
one behind Lensky. He turned around and looked at the man with a
comical, threatening gesture; then he said, with the expression of a
man with a bad toothache, who yet bursts out with a witticism: "Who
laughs last, laughs best!"
Natalie still stood, helpless and desperate, in the middle of the
narrow stairs. Her splendid fur cloak had half slipped down from her
shoulders; her simple, distinguished toilet stood out in strange relief
from the glaring, tumbled, inharmonious, motley evening adornments of
the singers.
"You will take cold, wrap yourself up better," said Lensky, while he
came up to her and drew the fur up around her neck.
"Will you take me with you to your supper? I would come with the
greatest pleasure; _je serai gentille avec tout le monde!_" she
whispered, softly and supplicatingly to him.
"What an idea!" said he, repellently. "No, to-night I sup as a
bachelor. You bar the passage. Drive home quite calmly. Adieu!"
He pushed her into the carriage, and went. She put her head out of the
window of the coupe to look after him. She saw how he got into a fiacre
with the singer; one of the men crawled in after him; then she heard
some one laughing, harshly, gipsy-like, was that he? Then came a great
rattling of windows, and creaking and rolling of wheels. Her way and
his parted. Hurrying by a row of ghostly gas-lights, which all seemed
red to her, she rolled away in a great, cold, black darkness. And ten
minutes later, weary and miserable, she crept up the steps of her
residence. She knew that something terrible had happened, something
that not only embittered her present, but would darken the future, that
for her much more had gone wrong than the result of an opera.
* * * * *
"Who knows, perhaps the thing will pull through; even the best operas
have sometimes not immediately found approval with the public," said
Lensky, with the awkward, forced smile that had not left his lips since
the morning after his fiasco. The challenging, gipsy humor with which,
in the beginning, he had sought to bluster over his disappointment, had
not lasted long. Quiet, weary, and depressed, he dragged himself around
as if after a severe illness. Natalie did what she could to be
agreeable to him; her heart bled with pity, but she did not venture to
approach him.
He avoided her, and if she spoke to him his answers sounded forced or
vexed.
To-day, for the first time since the fatal evening, he turned to her
with a remark in reference to his work. It was the third day after the
first production of the opera, and at breakfast. Natalie had just read
to him many criticisms from the newspapers which had arrived. In many,
Lensky's magnificent musical gifts were praised.
"Perhaps the thing will pull through," said Lensky, and Natalie
replied:
"Naturally, the opera will make a career for itself. You must yourself
have forgotten how beautiful your music is, if you can doubt that."
"Is it really beautiful? I really do not know," murmured he. "One is so
seldom able to believe it if others shrug their shoulders. To improvise
variations on the old theme _mon sonnet est charmant_ is a tasteless
occupation."
There was a ring at the door-bell; he listened.
"Do you expect anything?" asked Natalie, and then she accidentally
looked at the clock. It was already very late, and the hour at which he
formerly had been accustomed to sit down to work was long past. She saw
very well that he only trifled with time like a man who is too
tormented by inward unrest to be able to resolve on an earnest
occupation.
"Yes," he replied. "I do not understand why the _Neue Zeit_ has not yet
arrived."
Natalie lowered her eyes. The _Neue Zeit_ was the journal in which Dr.
Arnold Spatzig's musical criticism, or rather his musical
_feuilletons_, usually appeared.
"That"--Lensky motioned to the pile of other papers "is all very pretty
and pleasant, but it is not decisive. I am anxious to see what Spatzig
will say."
"Do you consider Spatzig decisive?" asked Natalie, constrainedly.
"Yes."
"But you told me yourself that his judgment was always one-sided,
prejudiced, and superficial; that he was really only a wit and no
critic," murmured Natalie.
"I still think so, but nevertheless he has here taken upon himself the
monopoly of musical good taste," replied Lensky. "The most intellectual
part of the public, that is to say all the subscribers, fancy they can
only consider an article of his as true. He has taken out a patent for
it, like Marquis, in Paris, for good chocolate. He is witty, which
these people like. A criticism is so easily noticed, one always appears
intellectual if one cites it, the more malicious it is the better.
Until now, Spatzig has spared me, hm--hm--" Boris smiled forcedly. "He
even once compared me to Beethoven, but recently he has seemed to avoid
me. Have you had anything with him, Natalie?"
Natalie blushed to the roots of her hair. "I cannot endure him," said
she; "and it is possible that he has noticed it; in fact, in reference
to a certain point, one cannot have patience with a man."
"He surely has not presumed upon you?" Lensky started up angrily.
"No, no! He did not have an opportunity," said Natalie, very
arrogantly. "Not that: but he has a way of forcing himself upon one; of
looking at a woman----"
"That is to say he has bad manners," said Lensky. "Now----"
At this moment there was another ring at the door-bell. Shortly after
the servant brought on a salver a whole pile of newspapers in their
wrappings, which had just come by post. Lensky opened them hastily;
they were all copies of the same paper--of _Fortschritt_, and in every
copy there was a twelve-column-long notice marked with a blue or black
pencil: "A musical enjoyment by design and intention," and with the
motto, for title, "From whence the great discord arises which rings
through this world (read opera)."
Hastily, Lensky looked at the signature.
"Arnold Spatzig," murmured he, dully. "I did not know that he also
wrote for _Fortschritt_."
"Do not read the thing," said Natalie, who, with feminine quickness,
had already glanced over the article. "I beg you; why should you
swallow the poison?"
But he shook her roughly from him, bent over the paper, and read half
aloud: "If there were a musical 'Our Father,' the last supplicating
request would be: deliver us from all evil, but especially from all
virtuoso music. By his opera, Lensky has again given us a significant
example of how greatly the reproductive activity of an artist hinders
the development of his creative powers. His first smaller compositions
really had always a certain melodic freshness. But in this last work,
Lensky, like all men poor in invention, has shown himself a follower of
that inconsolable musical pessimism which regards _ennui_ and a feeling
of universal, oppressive discomfort as a _sine qua non_ of every
distinguished musical work.
"The public, in a sympathetic frame of mind with the loved and
distinguished master, in the beginning of the opera strained their good
taste so far that they desired the repetition of the extremely tiresome
overture, made up of badly connected motives, reminding one of
Meyerbeer, Halevy, Gounod. But with the best intentions, the
cut-and-dried wonder brought with them was not proof against the
yawning monotony of the never-ending fourth act. Only the grotesque
side of the unfortunate opera, which ever became more prominent in the
course of the evening, helped the ill-used public over the dry
emptiness of this musical desert. One could at least laugh heartily.
What a consolation that was for the spectator, but hardly one for those
who took part.
"One cannot understand how such an artist of the first rank as
Mr. ---- could submit to make himself laughable in the _role_ of
_Conrad_...."
Lensky became paler and paler; he reached for a glass of water.
"Do not read any further," begged Natalie. "What does it matter what
the liar writes? your music speaks for itself. This evening you will
see how the public will applaud you, will receive you, to recompense
you for this pitiful insult."
The second representation of "The Corsair" was fixed for that evening.
There was another ring at the door-bell; the servant brought a letter.
Lensky broke it open hastily, and with a furious gesture threw it away,
struck his fist on the table, and sprang up.
"What is it?" called Natalie, beside herself.
"Nothing; a trifle; the opera is postponed; the tenor has announced
himself ill," said Lensky, cuttingly. "He has no pleasure in making
himself laughable a second time. It is over;" passing the palm of his
hand under his chin, with the gesture by which one understands that
some one has been executed.
Natalie rushed up to him, but he impatiently motioned her away, and
hurried by her to the door. All at once he remained standing, reached
under his collar, tore off the little gold chain with the saint's
picture which Natalie had hung round his neck before the first
representation of "The Corsair," and flung it at her feet. Then he went
into his study. She heard how he locked the door behind him.
How benumbed she still stood on the same spot where he had shaken her
off from him--he had shaken her off!
How he must suffer to pain her so! Then she bent down to the poor
little amulet which he had thrown away. She understood him. She had
never been lacking in sentimental-poetic manners, but when it was
necessary to sacrifice a humor for him, her love had not sufficed.
Her fault was great, but the punishment was fearful.
THIRD BOOK.
A short time after the fiasco of his opera Lensky resigned his office
in ----. His position there had become unbearable to him. He had made
no plans for the distant future; for the present he travelled with his
family to Paris.
How happy Natalie could have felt here if the still depressed mood of
Lensky had not caused her such heavy anxiety. Not that he had further
shown himself in the slightest degree disagreeable to her--no, not a
single direct reproof crossed his lips; he even, without speaking a
word about it, begged her pardon for his momentary roughness by a
thousand silent attentions. But what good did that do her? His
happiness was gone; he was gloomy and taciturn. Faint-hearted, like all
very self-indulgent men, even doubting his formerly revered talent as
composer, for the moment he had completely lost his belief in himself.
She did what she could to distract him--all was in vain. And all might
have been so pleasant! The Parisian artist world was so large that she
quite easily, avoiding all impure elements contained therein, could
associate only with those who were lovable, interesting, and
sympathetic. Besides, she was now ready for the most exaggerated
concessions. If Lensky had wished to write a ballet she would have
invited the ballet dancers to breakfast, and been intimate with the
premiere danseuse. The lovely imprudence which, even with her uncommon
intellectual gifts, still made the foundation of her petted,
undisciplined being, drove her from one exaggeration to another.
He gave a succession of concerts, and all Paris lay at his feet.
Natalie sat in one of the first rows in the concert hall and rejoiced
over the triumphs of her husband. Occasionally, if the hour for the
concert was early, she brought her little son with her and taught him
to be proud of his father. Little Nikolai looked charming in his
Russian costume, with the broad velvet trousers and silk shirt. He
always sat there quite brave and quiet, with the solemn expression of
face of a child whom one has taken to church for the first time; only
if the applause burst out quite too loudly, he became very excited
and stood up on his chair in order to see his father better. Then
Natalie kissed him, and blushed at her lack of restraint. And around
them the audience whispered: "That is his child"--"_Tiens! il a de la
chance!_"--"_Ils sont adorables tous les deux!_"--"_On dit qu'elle est
une princesse!_"
After the concert she went with the little fellow in the green-room to
fetch her husband. The most beautiful women in Paris crowded around
him. He received their homage quite coolly, and while Natalie, smiling
and polite, did honor to his fame, he played with his boy, whom he
overwhelmed with caresses, without being at all confused by the
presence of strangers. "Admire this if you must admire something!" he
burst out once, angry at the intrusive enthusiasm of a very pretty
American woman, and with that he raised the child on a table to show
him to her. "He is worth the trouble," he growled, and truly such was
the case!
One day, about the middle of May, when Natalie, somewhat out of breath,
holding her boy with one hand, and a bunch of red roses in the other,
came home to lunch, she found Lensky with two strangers in the little
hotel drawing-room. One of them was a young man with long hair and
short neck, in whom she recognized a famous piano virtuoso; the second,
a small, dried-up man, with a yellow, hard, sharp face, she saw for the
first time.
At her appearance they both withdrew. Lensky accompanied them out.
"How you have hurried," said he smiling, when he reentered the room.
"You are quite heated!"
"Yes, I hurried very much; I was afraid I would be late to lunch. I
know how you hate unpunctuality." And then she sat down on the sofa,
and handed her hat and shawl to the nurse, who had come in to get
Nikolinka--a nurse by the name of Palagea, in a Russian national
costume which created a furore on the boulevard.
"Why did you not take a carriage, little goose?" asked he.
"To economize, Boris Nikolaivitch," replied she, with mischievous
earnestness. Then laughing up at him with her great tender eyes, she
added: "Besides, the doctor has expressly advised me to take more
exercise."
"The doctor?" said he, anxiously. "Do you feel ill? Why did you consult
a physician?"
"Yes, why?" murmured she, softly. "Sit down on the sofa by me, so that
I can whisper something to you."
"What are you talking about?" said he, hoarsely, without stirring.
"What do you mean? What?"
"You are fabulously uncomprehending to-day," laughed she, and went up
to him. "One cannot scream such a thing across the whole room, and as
the mountain will not come to Mahomet"--she had now become very red;
laying her hand on his shoulder, she whispered: "O Boris; can you still
not guess?... I am so glad!"
"Natalie!" he burst out. "You do not mean to say" ... He shook her from
him, stamped his foot, and with a furious exclamation left the room.
Ten minutes later, when he entered the little dining-room where they
had served lunch, Natalie's maid announced that he must not wait for
her mistress, as she was feeling ill. He hurried to her bedroom. She
sat on a sofa, her hands in her lap. Her great eyes stared into the
distance, she looked like a corpse.
He sat down by her, drew her on his knee, and overwhelmed her with
caresses.
"You are right to be angry, quite right. I was detestable," said he;
"but you know what a bear you have for a husband. It is only because I
love you so dearly that now, just now, the thing is so inconvenient.
Oh, my little dove, my heart!" He pressed the palms of her hands to his
lips and stroked her cheeks.
Every vexation melted away in the warmth of his manner. She suddenly
began to sob, but not from grief.
"Do you think, then, that I would not have been glad?" he said to her
tenderly. "But now, do you see, just now----"
Then he told her the state of affairs. The man in the Havana brown
overcoat was the famous impressario Morinsky, with whom Lensky had just
made an engagement for a concert tour in the United States. Morinsky
had offered him a small fortune. "You know how hard it is for me to
part from you," he concluded. "I wished to take you with me--you and
the boy, for he can put off school for another year. I thought it was
the most favorable moment, and now--it is so stupid, so horribly
stupid!"
She had listened very quietly; now she raised her head and said
uneasily:
"And now you naturally will have to give up the American project?"
"That is impossible," replied he, turning his face from her, "but I
will try--that is, I will put off my departure in any case until the
great event is over."
"And then?" She had slipped down from his knee and walked up and down
the room uneasily. "And then?" she repeated, while she beat on the
floor quite imperiously with the tip of her little foot.
"Then," said he slowly. "Well, then you must either decide to accompany
me and leave the children behind, or I must go alone."
"How long will you stay away?" she asked with short breath.
"Eight months, ten months."
"So--ten months!" she spoke slowly. "And you will part from
me--voluntarily, without compelling necessity--for ten months?"
Her face had become ashy, the words fell harsh and cutting from her dry
lips.
"You must not take the thing so desperately," replied Lensky, with an
embarrassment which did not escape her. "Ten months are soon over."
Something that sounded half like a laugh, half like a cry of anguish
escaped her lips. She stroked the hair back from her temples with both
hands. Her eyes had suddenly become unnaturally large, and were opened
uncommonly wide. They were no longer the eyes of a usually wise woman.
"Ten months!" she murmured, with extinguished voice, like one who
speaks in the midst of an oppressive dream, "ten months--do you no
longer remember how you used to miss me, if it was only a question of
weeks, of days, and not--ten months! But this is no separation, this is
a final parting, this is the end of all! Oh, do not look at me so!--I
am not crazy, I know what I am saying--I know very well! You will come
back--certainly you will come back, if no malicious illness snatches
you away during your journey; but how will you come back? Like a
stranger you will return under your own roof, and a stranger, from that
hour, will you remain. You will have acquired other customs, other
needs; the tender restrictions of family life will confine you like a
forced burden! The good, and magnificent, and beautiful in you will
still exist, because it is immortal like everything that is god-like;
but it will be grown wild and soiled, and I will no longer be able to
force my way through what has towered between me and your heart! And,
more than all that, the sweet voice which, until now, has whispered
such wonderful songs within you, will be silenced in the confusion of
your wandering life; your genius will no longer be able to express
itself, it will from then burn in you like a great unrest, and you will
feel the treasure which Providence has implanted in you as an
oppressive burden, and will no longer be able to find the magic word
which can lift this treasure!"
He stared gloomily before him.
"Ah, Boris! do not sin against yourself, because I have sinned against
you," Natalie began once more, with hoarse, broken voice. "Do not let
your wings be broken by this first disappointment. Your opera was
wonderfully beautiful--yes--but it was not the best that you can give!
Give your best, it will stand so high that the hand of envy can no
longer reach it. Have patience, sacrifice the virtuoso to the composer
in you, and you will see what a splendid reward you will reap!"
With heavily contracted brows, he listened to this speech, vibrating
with desperation. When Natalie had ended, he remained silent. She
believed she had conquered. Leaning against him she laid both arms
around his neck, and whispered to him: "You will stay, Boris--will you
not?--you will stay!"
For a little while he let her stay, then he freed himself from her
arms, as one frees one's self from a shackle, and called out: "It
cannot be--torment me no longer--I must go!" With that he sprang up to
leave the room. At the door he turned round to Natalie, and said: "Are
you coming? Lunch will be cold."
"Presently!" said Natalie, "presently!" She shivered, she felt the
chill of a great fright in all her members. It was worse than she had
believed! Something allured him away. After the first unpleasant
surprise at the frustration of his plans had disappeared, he rejoiced
at the opportunity of being able to free himself from the chain, and to
separate himself from his family for a time. What she had feared for
the future had already arrived--the gypsy element in his nature had
awakened!
* * * * *
The agreement between Lensky and the impressario was really completed,
the contract was signed, Lensky's departure fixed for the beginning of
October. Meanwhile, he would pass the summer quietly with his wife, in
the country, in the vicinity of Paris.
The place which Natalie chose was about an hour's journey from Paris,
and perhaps fifteen minutes from the railway-station, a charming old
house in the shadiest corner of a park, in the midst of which a large
castle stood empty. The castle was modern; the house, on the contrary,
a carefully reconstructed ruin of the time of Francis First. The castle
was called "Le Chateau des Ormes," and the small house "L'Eremitage."
The last owner had restored it, in order that his favorite daughter
might pass her honeymoon there. Since the daughter had died the
Hermitage stood empty, and to reside in the castle was painful to the
owner. Both were to let. Lensky left the choice to his wife. What would
she have done with the large castle? The Hermitage pleased her better.
The windows were all irregular, one small and narrow, another very
broad, all surrounded by artistically carved and voluted stone
framings. The trees grew up high above the roof, and through the whole
day sang sweet, dreamy songs, to which a little brook, that ran close
by the house, furnished a harmonic accompaniment.
The ground floor was built in accordance with the architecture of the
early Renaissance period, with brown beams across the ceilings of the
room, and artistic wainscoting on the walls. Gigantic marble mantels,
iron chandeliers and sconces, and heavy furniture did what they could
to transport the spectator's imagination back to the much sung old
times of gay King Francis. At the right and left of the entrance door,
set far back in its carved niche, grew lilies, tall and slender; they
were in full bloom when the married pair moved in, and their white
heads nodded in a friendly manner through the windows of the rooms even
with the ground. Sage, lavender, and centifolias bloomed at their feet,
tall rose-bushes nodded a fragrant greeting to them from above. The
branches of the old trees before the windows were thick enough to
partially exclude the sunbeams if they became too intrusive; not thick
enough to completely bar the way for them.
In this lonely solitude, Natalie fought a last time for her happiness.
She tried to make her whole home as attractive and poetic as possible,
so that in Lensky's remembrance something might remain for which he
must long. She no longer tormented him with jealous, isolating
tenderness, but cared for his distraction and intellectual as well as
artistic recreation. She knew how to allure not only the first
musicians in Paris, but celebrities of the most different kinds from
the capital and surrounding villas, to the Hermitage; earnest men of
lofty aims and noble endeavors, together with an animation and
susceptibility which did away with the hindering respect which towers
between every plain, modest child of man and great people. It always
gave Natalie pleasure to see Lensky in the company of these prominent
men. He grew in such surroundings.
He was never very talkative; his intellectual capabilities were of a
heavy calibre, unsuited for the purposes of small talk. But how he
listened, what questions he asked! Then, quite without haste, he would
make some remark so peculiarly sharp and far-reaching in reference to
some impending political, artistic, or literary question, that, every
time, an astonished silence would follow.
One of the guests once remarked: "If Lensky mingles in the
conversation, it is as if one fired a cannon between pistol shots."
He was not one-sided in his interests, as other musicians. When one
learned to know him more intimately, for every accurate observer it had
always the appearance that his musical capabilities formed only a part
of his universally abnormally gifted nature.
* * * * *
Quietly and still animatedly passed the days, weeks, and months.
Natalie never spoke of the approaching separation.
An inexplicable discomfort tormented Lensky. Natalie had guessed
rightly--he had concluded the engagement with Morinsky with quite
precipitate haste, not only in order thereby to win the opportunity of
acquiring with one stroke a large sum of money which would put an end
to his pecuniary difficulties, but because in intercourse with the old
friends of his bachelor days in ---- he had first significantly
realized how much he had had to restrain himself to live morally and
uprightly at the side of his wife; and because his gypsy nature, bound
for years, now demanded its rights.
Still it vexed him that Natalie remained so calm in the face of the
approaching parting. Now, when the farewell drew near, his heart failed
him. Did she, then, no longer love him?
The thought was unbearable to him, prevented him from working. He wrote
everything wrong on the note paper.
The lilies were dead, the days became short, and the first leaves fell
in the grass, but the foliage was still thick, only here and there one
saw a yellow spot in a bluish green tree, and the rustling had no
longer the old soft sound.
"The trees have lost their voice, they have become hoarse, the old
melting sound is gone!" said Natalie. The roses, in truth bloomed more
beautifully than in summer; still one saw, significantly, the approach
of autumn, and Lensky had the repugnant feeling that near by something
lay dying.
His work did not please him. Three times already he had heard Natalie
pass by his door; each time he had thought, now she will come in; he
had already stretched his arms out to her, but she did not come. He
threw away his pen and sprang up to look for her.
It was a late September afternoon. It had rained for three days, and
the air was cool.
Natalie sat in the brown-wainscoted ground-floor sitting-room, in one
of the gigantic, high-backed arm-chairs near the chimney, in which
flickered a gay wood fire. The windows were open. The noise from
without of the rain drops softly gliding down between the leaves, the
blustering of the high swollen brook, mingled with the crackling and
popping of the burning wood.
In the middle of the room, on a large table with a dark-red cover,
stood a copper bowl filled with champagne-colored _Gloire de Dijon_
roses. From without came the melancholy odor of autumnal decay and
mingled with the sweet breath of the flowers.
The veil of twilight sank down from the mighty rafters of the ceiling.
The corners of the large, somewhat low room were already, as it were,
rounded off by brown shadows. Freakish, pale reflections slid over the
dark wainscoting, and over the brass and copper dishes which adorned
it.
Little Kolia crouched on a stool before his mother, and with both tiny
elbows rested on her lap, gazed earnestly and attentively up at her.
One could think of nothing more charming than this mother and this
child. Involuntarily Lensky's heart beat high in his breast. "How
beautiful my home is, how happy I am here. Why am I really going away?"
he asked himself.
"Ah!" cried Natalie when he entered, pleased and at the same time
surprised, for his appearance at this hour was something quite unusual.
"Do you wish anything?"
He shook his brown, defiant head silently and sat down near the chimney
opposite her. The little boy had sprung up, embarrassed, and now leaned
against his mother, with his little arm round her neck.
"You have been telling him fairy tales," began Lensky.
"Oh, no! I told him of the ocean, and how one lives and is housed on
the wide boundless water--of the ocean and of America. Before it was
too dark we were busy with something much more important," said
Natalie, and she pointed to a low child's table which was covered with
writing materials and lined paper. "Show papa what we have finished,
Nikolinka."
The little boy became very red and drew his brows together. "But,
mamma," said he, excitedly stamping his foot, "why do you tell that? It
is a surprise."
His mother stroked the offended child's cheek soothingly. "We will not
give papa your letter to read, only show it to him, so that he can be
pleased with it. Bring it, Nikolinka."
Resistingly the little fellow freed himself from his mother, then he
brought the document, which was concealed behind a vase, and carried
it, with importance as well as embarrassment, to his father. On the
already extensively sealed envelope, between three lines, stood the
unformed, but neatly and industriously written letters:
A
MONSIEUR BORIS LENSKY,
EN
AMERIQUE.
"The letter is to be sent to you when you are over there," explained
Natalie.
"How nicely the wight writes for his five years," said Lensky touched,
looking at the envelope. "You guided his hand, Natascha?"
"Oh, no!" declared Natalie.
"But you prompted him?"
"Certainly not; he thought it out all by himself; did you not,
Nikolinka?" said Natalie.
The little one nodded earnestly; he was quite crimson with pride and
embarrassment. His father took him between his knees, called him
"Umnitza," which in Russian means paragon of wisdom, kissed and
caressed him, then rang the bell for Palagea, and told him he must go
now and wash his hands, and have his curls brushed smooth, and then he
should take dinner with his parents, because he had been so clever.
When the child had tripped out at the nurse's hand, Lensky threw
himself down on the stool at his wife's feet. It had now become quite
dark. The heavy, regular-falling rain still rustled in the foliage
without, in a dreamy, melancholy cadence.
"Listen; how sweet, how sad!" said Natalie, turning her head to the
window, through which the landscape, behind its double veil of rain and
twilight, looked to one like a greenish-gray chaos only, without any
distinct outlines.
"The D-flat major prelude of Chopin," said Lensky.
She shook her head. "No, I did not think of that," whispered she. "But
see! Sometimes it seems to me that the ghost of the poor young wife who
died here creeps around the Hermitage, and sighs for the happiness
which she might not finish enjoying. She died after the first year,
while I, Boris--I was happy six years. It is too much for one human
life. Sometimes--it is a sin; I know it--and still, sometimes I quite
wished I might die, but I dare not; Kolia still needs me."
* * * * *
Soon after this she brought a little girl into the world, who was
baptized Marie, after the grandmother and the little dead sister.
A few weeks passed, she convalesced rapidly. The day of farewell came,
on which everyone hastened, with everything overhurried, incessantly
imagined there was too much to do in preparing for the journey, and
finally had nothing more to do. The day on which all the usual
occupations were sacrificed in honor of the pain of parting, when one
aimlessly trifled away the hours, tormented by nervous unrest, which
finally expressed itself in the dullest _ennui_.
* * * * *
They sat together; now here, now there, and did not know what to do.
Lensky was to take the six o'clock train to Paris; from there, the same
evening, he would travel with Morinsky's troupe to Boulogne, for they
would take ship in Liverpool for America.
The dinner-hour was changed from seven to four, lunch and breakfast
were combined at ten o'clock. These irregular hours took away one's
appetite, accustomed to regular hours, and increased the general
discomfort.
In order to kill the last half-hour before dinner they took a walk
through the immense, solitary park. Kolia went with them.
It was a beautiful October day, with a blue heaven over which only
filmy white clouds spread themselves, and from which the sun looked
down so sadly and mildly as only the October sun looks down on the
dying beauty of the year. Masses of foliage still hung on the trees,
but it was already withered--it no longer lived. And in the midst of
the windless peace, one heard, again and again, the gentle sighing of a
dead leaf that fell on the turf.
Both the parents were silent, only the little boy asked, from time to
time, tender, important questions of his father, whom he loved very
much, although he felt a kind of shyness of him. At first Lensky led
the child by the hand, then he took him in his arms, in order to have
the pleasure of holding the supple little body quite closely to him and
feel the soft, warm little arms round his neck.
They hurried back to the house so as not to delay dinner, and naturally
arrived much too early.
"Play me something for a farewell," begged Natalie.
"One of the Chopin nocturnes which I transposed for your sake?" asked
he.
"No, just what you have in your heart," replied Natalie.
He took up his violin. It was the same violin which he had tried in the
Palazzo Morsini, the Amati which Natalie had given him when they were
betrothed. He was very excited, and became paler with every stroke.
The whole desperation of a great nature which feels an unavoidable
degradation approaching, spoke from his improvisation, and in the midst
of the passionate and painful madness rose melodies so pure, so
beautifully holy, like the resting in heart-felt prayer of a nature all
in uproar.
When he had finished and wished to put the violin back in the case in
which he should take it with him to America, Natalie took it from his
hand.
"What do you wish with it?" he asked.
She kissed the violin and then handed it to him. "Here you have it,"
said she, very softly. "It will never sing so again until you return."
At last the servant announced that dinner was served. They sat down to
the executioner meal, the executioner meal for which all his little
favorite dishes had been prepared, at which everything was so abundant
and so good, only the appetite was lacking.
It was still light when they went to dinner. The light slowly died in
the course of the meal. The words fell seldomer and more seldom from
Lensky's lips; there was a leaden silence; the brook sobbed without.
Lensky held his wine-glass toward Natalie. "To a happy meeting!" said
he; "to a happy meeting!" She repeated, dully: "I will await you here
next year when the roses bloom." He pressed her hand; he could not
contain himself during the whole meal, but got up before the dessert
and began to walk up and down restlessly.
"You have still time," Natalie assured him; "the coffee will come
immediately."
"Thanks; is baby asleep? I would like to give her a kiss before I go."
They brought little Maschenka. He kissed and blessed the tiny, rosy
child, bundled up in lace and muslin. He has kissed Kolia, loudly
crying from excitement, and commissioned him to be brave and not to
grieve his mother.
Now he goes up to his wife. They have brought the lamps; he wishes to
see her distinctly before he goes. She tries to smile; she raises her
arms to stretch them out to him--the arms sink.
"My heart, be reasonable," says he, and draws her to him. A fearful
groan comes from her lips; she presses her mouth against his shoulder
so as not to scream aloud; her form shook.
He held her to him so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. For one
moment he is all hers--it is the last in her life! She knows it! The
happiness of her love rallies once more in a feeling of awful,
delirious happiness, and dies in a kiss!
Now he has gone! She accompanied him to the house-door. There she now
stands and gazes along the street, through the twilight, where he has
disappeared between the trees. It did not seem to her that she had
parted from a dear man who was about to make a journey. No; as if they
had carried a corpse out of the house. It is all over--all! Whatever
further comes is only more dry bitterness and inconsolable torment of
the heart. She sees his footprints in the half darkness. Why had she
not accompanied him to the railway? she asks herself, why--why? From
stupid anxiety, from pride of giving the few loafers at the station the
sight of her despair had she renounced the pleasure of enjoying his
presence until the last moment? She steps outdoors, hurries her steps,
wishes to hurry after him, to see him once more, only one moment--then
the loud voice of the railroad bell breaks the universal silence--a
shrill whistle--it is over! She falls down, buries her face in the cool
autumn grass at the edge of the garden path, and sobs as one sobs over
a fresh grave.
* * * * *
About three hours later, Lensky, with his colleagues and Morinsky, sat
penned up in a coupe of the first class. The train was over-full, there
were eight of them in the small compartment.
In one corner slept Morinsky, his fur collar drawn up over his ears,
his head covered with a fez, whose blue tassel waved to and fro over
his left ear, which lent his sharp yellow face a diabolical expression.
Opposite him sat an old woman with a copper colored skin, and held a
basket of lunch on her knees. At first she had uninterruptedly chewed
and smacked her lips, now she snored. She was the mother of a famous
staccato singer, who, large and blond, with her head and shoulders
prudently wrapped in a red fascinator, embroidered with gold, and
painted, and smelling of cosmetics, coquetted with the 'cellist, a very
effeminate young man who looked like an actor. They had spread a shawl
over their knees, and the diva laid the cards for him, which gave
occasion for the most entertaining allusions.
The accompanist of the troupe, a pedantic young pianist, afflicted with
a chronic hoarseness, which alone prevented him from becoming a tenor
of the first rank, formed the public to the beautiful duet, while he
laughed loudly at every particularly poor witticism.
The 'cellist and the diva were very familiar with each other, and both
constantly made use of expressions of the commonest kind.
The laughter of the diva became ever shriller, while that of the
'cellist sounded ever deeper from his boots.
Opposite Lensky, the short-armed, fat piano virtuoso of the troupe, a
very solid father of a family, who tried to sleep, and from time to
time looked round angrily at the disturbers of his rest; and near
Lensky, wrapped in furs to the tip of her nose, sat a new prima donna,
Signora Zingarelli, of whom Morinsky promised himself the highest
success, a beautiful, red-haired Belgian, with long, narrow sphinx
eyes. She had tried to enter into conversation with Lensky, but he had
turned from her, monosyllabic and coarse.
The train sighed and groaned. Fiery clouds flew by the window in the
black night. The close atmosphere in the coupe, the odor of paint,
musk, fat meat, hot fur and coal, maddened Lensky; he wished to open
one of the windows--the singers protested, Morinsky awoke, settled the
dispute:--the window remained closed.
A terrible longing for his love, for his beautiful, poetic home, came
over Lensky. He thought of his last night journey, with wife and child,
quite alone in a coupe. He saw the charming serpentine lines which the
slender, supple figure of his young wife described on the cushions. She
slept. Her little head rested on a red silk cushion which she took
about with her on all her travels. How tender and delicate her profile
stood out from that colored ground! She coughed in her sleep; he stood
up to draw the fur mantle which covered her closer up around her
shoulders. Drunk with sleep, she opened her eyes and with half
unconscious tenderness rubbed her smooth, cool cheeks against her hand.
The sweet fragrance of violets which exhaled from her person smote his
face. Then--a jolt!--He started up--he must have slept. In any case he
had dreamed. His travelling companions all slept now; their heads on
their breasts, only the pretty red-haired head of the Zingarelli lay on
Lensky's shoulder. She opened her long, narrow eyes, smiled at him--a
shrill whistle--the train stopped.
"Amiens!" cried the conductor. "Amiens!" All got out.
While his colleagues plundered the restaurant, Lensky, smoking a
cigarette, wandered around the platform alone. The others had all taken
their places again, when Morinsky, who had gotten out to look for him,
and saw him wandering to another coupe, called after him: "Here,
Monsieur Lensky, here!"
But Lensky only stamped his foot impatiently: "Leave me in peace, I am
not obliged to make the whole journey in the same cage with your
menagerie!" he said.
* * * * *
Six weeks later not a trace of his homesickness remained. At the artist
banquet, which usually followed the concerts, symposiums which began
with bad witticisms and ended with an orgy, he was the most
unrestrained, the wantonest of all.
He was like one who, suddenly relieved from the pressure of iron
fetters, at first, unaccustomed to every free movement, can scarcely
move his limbs, but afterward cannot weary of stretching them, and
moving them in unlimited freedom.
He broke every bond, indulged every humor. He no longer thought of
Natalie and the children, he did not wish to think of them. Remembrance
was ashamed to follow him on the way he now went.
It was hard for him to write to his wife, but it was still harder for
him to read her letters. And yet she wrote so charmingly, so lovingly!
She did not say much of herself, but so much the more of the children,
especially of Kolia. With what shining eyes he listened, when she read
the reports of the triumphs of his father to him, she wrote, and how he
seized every newspaper that he saw, and then asked her: "Is there
anything in it about papa?" and how, with his little playmates--she
passed the winter with her mother, in Cannes--he boasted importantly of
the homage which fell share to his father, and how she did not have the
heart to reprove him for it. How he drew ships incessantly, and how she
made use of the interest which he took in his father's journey to give
him his first lessons in geography, and many other such tender trifles.
These letters vexed him; when he had read them, he despised himself and
his surroundings, and for two, three days, remained melancholy and
unsociable.
At last he no longer read them, at most only glanced over them,
convinced himself hastily that "all was as usual," and then folded them
up and laid them aside.
Then came the time when he told himself it was foolish to have such
scruples. He was what he always had been, an exceptional man, a Titanic
nature. He could not be judged like the others, he could not have
exercised his compelling charm over the masses without the fiery
violence of his temperament. His success was wonderful. Since they had
celebrated the reception of Jenny Lind with discharge of cannon in New
York or Boston--history differs as to which, is always careless in
relation to prima donnas--no artist had received more homage than Boris
Lensky. The women especially seemed as if bewitched by him.
He did not take the situation sentimentally, but rather cynically;
still he accustomed himself to the horrible noise of the public, which
followed his performances, to the cries of the crowd which accompanied
him without, when he left the concert hall, to the illuminated streets
in which every window was filled with gazers when he drove home.
When the excitement was once over, a kind of shame overpowered him.
What signified these virtuoso triumphs? People always applauded the
stupidest piece the loudest. He attained no such effect with a sonata
of Beethoven, or Schumann, as with a mad tarentella which he had
composed long ago for his wonderful fingers, and of which he was now
ashamed.
In Boston, he omitted this tarentella, which had become a nightmare to
him, from the programme.
The people remained lukewarm, and so much already did his over-excited
nerves desire the shrill storm of applause, that he voluntarily added
the trivial and wearying piece of artifice--he, who had formerly so
despised his virtuoso triumphs!
* * * * *
The lilies stand straight and slender, with golden hearts in their
deep, white calices, right and left of the door of the little
Hermitage, into which Natalie has again moved when the first roses
bloom.
It is July. Lensky has fixed his return for the fifteenth. "Afternoon,
with the first train that I can catch; but do not worry if I should be
late," said his letter.
Not at the station, no, only to the hedge which incloses the park, will
Natalie go to meet him.
Kolia quivers with impatience. Natalie counts the hours, draws out her
watch--it has stopped. She hurries in the dining-room to consult the
clock on the mantel, and discovers Kolia, who, kneeling on a chair,
moves the hands.
"What are you doing?" says she, laughing.
The boy sighs impatiently. "I am fixing the clock, mamma. I am sure it
must be sick, it goes too slowly to-day."
How she kisses him for it! How pleased she will be to tell Boris of it!
"Hark!"
A shrill sound of a bell, a penetrating whistle; the train has come.
She fetches her little daughter, who has had a charming little white
dress put on her, in honor of her father's arrival.
With the little one on her arm, and Kolia at her hand, she steps out
under the lindens, which are in full bloom, and throw a sunlit shadowy
carpet over the path. Oh, how her poor heart beats! She kisses the tiny
hands of her little daughter from excitement, looks scrutinizingly at
the little child. Will he think her pretty?
She stands at the hedge of the park, looks out on the street, gazes,
waits, sees the people return from the railroad. Now he must come! but
no, the white, dusty street is empty; a scornfully whispering breeze
blows away the footprints of the last passer-by, a couple of white
linden-blossoms fall from the tree-tops--he has not come!
And with slow steps, as one wearily drags himself along after a great
disappointment, she turns toward the house. Kolia gives a deep sigh. "I
don't understand it, mamma," says he.
"Papa will come with the next train; he has missed this one," his
mother consoles him.
For a while he trips silently beside her, then suddenly raising his
head and looking at her with his earnest, thoughtful child's eyes, he
says:
"We would not have missed the train, would we, mamma?"
And once more the bell sounds in the solemn quiet, and Natalie's heart
beats loudly--and he comes not.
Ever sadder, she wanders through the empty rooms, into which the
sunlight presses through a shady, cool, perfumed curtain of foliage.
"How can one stay an hour longer than one must in the sultry, dusty,
sunny, wearying Paris?" she asks herself.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Lensky sits with his colleagues in the _Trois Freres_ at a
breakfast which began at one o'clock, and now at five o'clock has not
yet ended. A breakfast at which all laugh and make jokes--only he
broods silently.
He is satiated with this rope-dancer's existence--heartily satiated--he
longs for his home, for his dear, incomparable wife, but he delays the
moment of meeting as long as he can. A kind of shame contracts his
throat at the thought of meeting her eyes. He knows she will ask him no
questions, but still----
* * * * *
Once more the railway bell has in vain startled Natalie and her little
son. Evening has come. The excellent little dinner which was prepared
in honor of the return has been served and taken away quite untouched.
Kolia incessantly pulls his mother's sleeve and asks ever more
importunately: "Why does not father come? Why does he not come?"
Maschenka has long been divested of her white muslin finery, and lies
in her cradle. Kolia obstinately refuses to go to bed until his father
has returned. Weary and tearful he wanders from one corner of the
drawing-room to the other and will not play.
Now, with little head on his arm, he has fallen asleep over his picture
books at a low child's table.
The roses which Natalie arranged so carefully in the vases wither. The
white draperies of her dress are limp and tumbled.
Once again the bell rings. It is the last train to-day. She does not
wake Kolia. Why should he uselessly vex himself this time also?
Softly she steps on the porch. The moon stands in the heavens; the
trees are black. A gray, transparent mist arises from the earth which
obliterates all contours. The flowers smell unusually sweet, and, in
luxuriant melancholy, confess so much to the pale, cold moon that they
have shamefacedly been silent about to the sun.
Why does the little brook sob so loudly? Can it not be silent a moment?
Natalie's whole being is now only a strained, longing listening. Why
does her heart beat so loudly? Why does her strong imagination charm up
things in the stillness which do not exist? Or--no--no; she hears a
sigh, a step, slow, slow! Who can that be? No man walks so slowly who
after long, oh, how long absence, returns to wife and child! It is a
messenger of misfortune, who delays to announce some ill news to her.
Then, from out the shadow, in the foggy moonlight, comes a
broad-shouldered form.
"Boris!" calls Natalie, half to herself. She cannot go to meet him--she
cannot. Trembling in her whole body, she stands there, in the carved
Gothic portal, against the bright golden background of the lighted
hall; stands there in her white dress, between the tall, pale lilies,
like an angel before the door of a church, into which a wicked sinner
would like to slip.
"Is it you, at last?" she breathes out.
"Yes; I am somewhat late. You know, with one's colleagues, one must
offend no one; it is always so."
How rough his voice sounds! How fleetingly, how hastily he kisses her.
Is she dreaming?
"How are you; how are the children?" He steps in the hall, blinking
uneasily in the light.
Is this really the man to whose coming she has so foolishly, so
breathlessly looked forward? This irritable, heavy man with the tumbled
clothes, the badly arranged hair, the fearfully altered face, with a
new expression of God knows what! Her feet refuse her their service;
she catches hold of a support, and sinks down in a chair.
"How pale you are, Natalie!" says he. "Are you ill?"
"No--no--only--I have waited for you since five o'clock. I--I thought
you would never find the way back to us."
For an instant he hesitates; then he sinks at her feet, embraces her
knees with both arms. He, who at parting had not shed a tear, now, at
their meeting, sobs like a desperate one. What pretext, what falsehood
can he utter? As if his colleagues could have withheld him if he had
only really wished to come home!
"O Natalie! Natalie! Pardon me. We all fear to return to Heaven when we
have accustomed ourselves to Earth. Natalie! be good to me; never let
me leave you again."
He had plunged a dagger in her heart, but her whole tenderness is
awakened.
She bends over him, strokes his rough hair with her tender, white hand.
"My poor genius!" she whispers gently. "My poor, dear genius!"
"Papa!" calls a silvery voice, joyfully. "Pa--pa!" he repeats,
hesitatingly, frightened. Kolia has run up.
If he lives to be a hundred years old he will never forget how he saw
his father sobbing at his mother's feet after the first long
separation.
Then he did not understand, but later he understood--understood only
too well.
How sad life is: how sad!
* * * * *
It was the morning after his arrival. Lensky stood at the window of his
room, and looked down in the quiet garden. The little brook which
tumbled down the hill at the side of the Hermitage with exaggerated
violence, quite like a little waterfall, in front of the house from
whence Lensky looked down on it, plashed quite calmly, earnestly, and
dreamily along its here scarcely susceptibly descending bed, and bore
away on its dark waves only as much of the sunshine as c
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