Boris Lensky
by Ossip Schubin · English · Gutenberg #35491 · 426,491 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Boris Lensky
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Boris Lensky
Author: Ossip Schubin
Translator: Elise Lathrop
Release date: March 5, 2011 [eBook #35491]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35491
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BORIS LENSKY ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VTMZAAAAYAAJ
2. Ossip Schubin is the pseudonym for Lola Kirschner.
3. There are 4 missing words or two-word phrases in the 3d para.,
Page 54; and 6 missing words or two-word phrases in the 2nd para.
page 55. Missing text is indicated with "[...]" sequences.
[Illustration]
BORIS LENSKY
From the German
BY
OSSIP SCHUBIN
Translated by Elise L. Lathrop
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
WORTHINGTON COMPANY
747 BROADWAY
1891
Copyright, 1891, by
WORTHINGTON CO.
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York
BORIS LENSKY.
* * *
"He had many faults, but one greatest of all faults he had not, that of
quackery--
"With all his faults he was a man, fiery real from the great fire bosom
of nature herself."--Carlyle.
I.
"Whoever wishes to know how great is the power which the charm of music
can exercise over humanity must visit one of Boris Lensky's concerts.
"Boris Lensky! The name in itself has a legendary sound--a magic
fascination surrounds the man and his violin. For every one who has
attended one of his concerts, the longing, listening expression on the
faces of the women who hear him is something which remains forever
interwoven in remembrance with the complaining sweetness of his art.
The best and noblest of women, when they listen to his wonderful
violin, fall into a feverish trance which makes them lose all power
over themselves.
"In Russia they call Boris Lensky the devil's violinist, and in
explanation of the godless charm which glows in his art, the following
neat little tale is told:
"Almost fifty years ago, crept through the poorest quarter of Moscow a
neglected, ugly child, who, in order to earn his scanty food, scraped
his violin as best he might, and sometimes received a copeck, but never
a caress. This child was Boris Lensky. His heart languished for
tenderness, like that of all repulsed ones. Then the devil met him, and
allured him with splendid temptations. He would lay the whole world at
his feet, if the boy would give him his soul for his own in exchange.
But the boy felt a terror at this hellish slavery and said: 'No.' Then
the devil at first went his way, and gnashed his teeth that he had not
succeeded in capturing a human soul. But suddenly he turned back and
called to the boy: 'I desire nothing of you; keep your soul; but you
shall accept a present from me--a gift. In your art shall dwell a charm
which no one can resist.'
"Then the boy was astonished at the devil's generosity, and accepted
the gift. But the devil rejoiced, for he said to himself: 'If I have
lost one soul, I have taken ten thousand others for it.' But the
violinist soon noticed what a curse had fallen to his share.
"Denying all nobility, and still feeling a horror of the degrading
power within him, he now goes through the world, restless, joyless, and
without power over his own demoniac art--a resisting tool in the
devil's hand. And he longs despairingly to find a being who could
resist the fiendish charm, but he finds none.
"Thus the Russian tale.
"Now Lensky has grown old and gray in the service of the devil. His
friends with fright notice in him the evermore plainly noticeable signs
of physical decay. In his art he stands greater than ever, and from his
violin sounds out to the public a wild, triumphing, and despairing swan
song!"
This somewhat exaggerated production an old lady read aloud with
declamatory emphasis, in whom at the first glance one perceived the
Englishwoman and the spinster. She sits in a pretty, charming room,
furnished with all kinds of rarities, by the hearth, and refreshes
herself by turns with the newspaper and with tea.
It is in Paris.
The newspaper in which the old Englishwoman revels is _Figaro_, and the
windows of the pretty little room look out on the Parc Monceau.
Already dressed to go out, a second, much younger lady in the same room
busies herself in hastily, and to all appearance disapprovingly,
looking through a just-opened package of books.
Somewhat vexed that her reading has called forth no remark from her
listener, the old Englishwoman now says:
"Well, what do you say to this legend?"
"What shall I say?" replies the young lady, without looking up from the
package of books, with blameless English accent, but in a decidedly
un-English deep, soft voice--"that the French write much nonsense, if it
is to raise the price of concert tickets."
"Nita!" said the Englishwoman, angrily; "you surely will not assert
that this article is a common advertisement?"
"Certainly I assert it, Miss Wilmot," is the calm answer. "I am firmly
convinced that Lensky's impressario has had the article printed."
"Well, I say, Nita, a strange change has taken place in you!" says Miss
Wilmot, astonished and discontented, while she at the same time let her
wrinkled hands sink down on her cinnamon-colored dress. "But,
advertisement or not, Nita, Lensky's results speak for themselves. The
Parisians run like mad to his concerts; recently there was such a crowd
before the doors of the Salle Erard that the police had to interfere!"
"Bah!" replied she addressed as Nita. "Reliable musicians have told me
that Lensky has gone very far back in his art. The animation with which
the French do him homage is only a new proof of their immoderate
worship of all that is Russian. This tasteless idolatry makes me
furious. Then, see here!" And Nita, for the first time in the course of
the above conversation, turned her face to the old lady, while at the
same time she drew a number of yellow books out from the package which
she had been busy glancing over. Piling these up on each other, she
said: "Three, five, seven books, translated from the Russian and mere
trash, not a sensible line in the whole! What does that matter? The
mere circumstance that 'from the Russian' stands upon it assures the
worst Galimathias in Paris a publisher and a circle of readers. It is
odious."
"Well, Nita, it seems to me that you least of all have the right to
wonder over any Russian worship," remarks the old Englishwoman
phlegmatically. "You yourself, in my recollection, have accomplished
considerable in this respect."
"Who has not some youthful folly to reproach one's self for?" said
Nita, shrugging her shoulders. "Fortunately, only in politics is one
sentenced to never perceive one's errors. I also once had a violent
passion for Russia leather, and I have gotten over that. Nothing in the
world is now more unbearable than too much Russia leather, especially
in a small room."
"A strange change has taken place in you, Nita," repeated the
Englishwoman, who, as if petrified with astonishment, sat there
motionless in the position of an Assyrian goddess, still with a hand on
each knee. "You not only raved over the Russians, you raved over Boris
Lensky; and how you raved!"
A dark blush rose in Nita's pale cheeks; at the same time her eyes
darkened. "Good-by, Miss Wilmot," said she, without replying anything
to the remarks of the old lady, and turned to the door.
"Will you not take a cup of tea before you go, Nita?" the Englishwoman
calls after her.
"No, Miss Wilmot; I must hurry a great deal without that in order to
reach the studio before twilight. I have promised Sonia to come; so
once more adieu; and I beg of you, send all this plunder"--pointing to
the books---"back to Calman Levy, and send him word he need no longer
disturb me with his Russian stories." With that Nita vanished.
"A strange change, a very strange change," says Miss Wilmot to herself,
while she still stares with the same abashed, astonished expression at
the door which has just closed behind her young friend. Then she wishes
to again take up _Figaro_ in order to translate the article on the
devil's violinist into German, for which language she has for twenty
years had a love. In vain--the paper is nowhere to be found.
II.
Nita von Sankjewitch is a young Austrian who lives perfectly
independent on her income in Paris. Miss Wilmot, her former governess,
now serves as chaperon in her little home.
If Miss Wilmot can be described in brief as an English old maid who
reminds one of David's Marie Antoinette on the poor sinner's car, it
would, on the contrary, have been quite difficult to give in as few
words a half-way significant and life-like description of Nita.
Her figure, tall and slender, with very delicate limbs and long,
slender hands and feet, has in carriage and movements something of the
harsh, so to say, repellant charm with which the Greeks loved to
characterize their Diana statues. Her abundant hair, which is cut
straight across her forehead and gathered up in a heavy knot on her
neck, is of a light-brown color with reddish lights; her face, long but
prettily rounded, is pale, with regular features, finely arched little
nose, and full, somewhat arrogantly curved little mouth.
But the most remarkable in her face, the most remarkable in her whole
appearance, are the eyes--large, brilliant gray eyes with greenish and
bluish lights in them, eyes which suddenly darken, and then become
strangely and unfathomably deep, as if she had tasted all the
bitterness of creation, and in the next moment look out upon the world
again as challengingly bright and cold as if they did not believe there
could be a heart-ache that could not be overcome by a gay jest.
In her family Nita was called the "melancholy scamp." Her age was
difficult to decide. Just as her nature completely lacked that
unrestrained, youthful exuberance, so her face, in spite of the ivory
smoothness of the skin, was without all freshness. From her manner she
might be forty.
She is the daughter of a born Countess Baerenburg and a Baron
Sankjewitch, who obtained the Theresien cross and the title of Freiherr
on the battlefield. Both parents are dead. On her father's side she has
no relatives; with her mother's numerous relatives she stands on the
best footing, without letting herself be much influenced by them. "It
would be very uncomfortable to me to be obliged to be as distinguished
as the clan Baerenburg," she used frequently to say, and preferred to
say it to the face of the clan Baerenburg. The clan Baerenburg shook its
head sadly at that, and regretted her peculiarities, without losing its
respect, or even its sympathy, for her. The sharpest judgment which the
family had ever pronounced upon her was: "Nita is an original."
Even the sun has spots, the most charming being has her unlovely
peculiarities--Nita von Sankjewitch is an artist! She has her
independent studio in the rear of a building in a little court adorned
with a pleasure ground, in the Avenue Frochot. Since some months she
has shared it with a friend, a young Russian, of whom she is very fond.
Nita's studio has two doors: one which leads directly out on the little
court, and one which connects Nita's own sanctum with the great
painting school of which Monsieur Sylvain is at the head. She has the
key of her art nest in her pocket. Before she has yet had time to put
it in the key-hole, the door is opened from within. A pretty, blonde
young girl comes to meet her, and embraces her as if they had been
separated for two years. It is Sonia--_i.e_., Sophia Dimitrievna Kasin.
"Do I come too late?" asks Nita. "Has Monsieur Sylvain already been?"
"No," replied Sophie, "we are about to give him up. Will you have tea?"
Nita laughs. "Tea, and yet again tea! At home Miss Wilmot has already
pursued me with offers of tea; that comes of it if one lives between an
Englishwoman and a Russian. Well, give me a cup of your nectar, Sonia.
I am a little out of tune to-day; perhaps it will do me good."
"You must wait a moment; if is not yet ready," replies Sonia, and bends
listening over the copper tea-kettle, which stands on a little table
delicately set with all kinds of tea things.
It is four o'clock in the afternoon. The last whitish light of an
already quickly dying November day falls through a large window
occupying almost one entire side of the studio, a roomy, square
apartment, whose gray walls are adorned with a couple of studies,
abundant bold sketches by Nita, anxiously neat attempts by Sophie;
beside those, a plaster cast of St. John, _bas reliefs_ of Donatello,
with many bits of picturesque old stuffs, and two or three Japanese
crapes. Furniture is scarce: a divan, over which an old Persian rug is
spread; a couple of comfortable chairs, mostly of cane, but with a
supplement of silken cushions; tables which bend under a weight of
books, portfolios, plaster casts, and paint-boxes; many easels; a vase
of withered chrysanthemums; in one corner a manikin with gracefully
bent arms, in the other a skeleton, many old paint tubes--form the
furnishings.
The door into the adjoining painting school stands half open. Idly
waiting for the completion of Sophie's brewing, Nita glances in there.
Between a forest of easels she sees eight or ten women, who look weary,
yawn; one of them smokes a cigarette, another nibbles at a biscuit; a
third, her hat already on her head and veil over her eyes, makes a
correction on her picture; while still another sits at a little piano,
and with desperate energy drums the Saint Saens _danse macabre_.
The lady who is making yet another correction in her picture is the
Countess d'Olbreuse, a butterfly of fashion, who not only raves over
painting, but also has a great love for music.
"It is useless to wait longer for Sylvain," she remarks, laying aside
her brushes and addressing the lady at the piano. "Apropos, have you
procured tickets for Lensky's concert in Eden?"
"Not yet, and yet I have telephoned for twenty-four hours like a
detective or a broker."
Nita turns away, and closes the half-opened door between the two
studios, not without force.
"Tea is ready," says Sonia; "but what is the matter, dear, you look so
gloomy?"
"Nothing," says Nita, "only that"--with a glance at the door--"vexes me
so. Such a ladies' studio is only a kind of hospital for ruined
feminine existences. There! what an absent-minded being I am! Where is
it?--a letter for you; perhaps it contains something interesting." And
after some search, Nita finds the letter in the pocket of her jacket.
Scarcely has Sophie opened the letter when she cries out for joy.
"Well, what is it, little goose?" asks Nita, quite pleased at Sophie's
beaming face.
"The letter is from my cousin, Nikolai Lensky, the son of the famous
violinist, you know----"
"I know nothing. I had no suspicion that you were related to Lensky,"
replies Nita, quickly and harshly.
"My mother was a cousin of his wife," stammers Sophie, somewhat vexed
at Nita's unpleasant tone. "Yesterday I met Nikolai at the Jeliagins.
He has recently come from St. Petersburg. He will soon come to see me;
meanwhile he sends me two tickets to his father's concert day after
to-morrow--the concert for which there is not a seat to be had in all
Paris, either for good words or for money. So you can rejoice with me."
"Over what?"
"You will go with me to the concert?"
"I?--no."
"But, Nita, what are you thinking of?"
"I really cannot; I have no time. Go with the Countess d'Olbreuse, who
hurried here from Madrid and missed a bull-fight in order to be present
at Lensky's concert, and who appeals by turns to the Russian ambassador
and her music-teacher to coax a ticket."
But Sophie shook her head. "I would rather burn the ticket than give it
to any one but you. I do not understand you, Nita--you who are so
musical that you attend every concert that is worth the while. You do
not wish to hear Boris Lensky? What is the reason?"
Nita tapped her little foot vexedly on the floor, and said: "When not
long ago a sceptical old Frenchman, who had nothing to do with death,
learned from his physician that his last hour had come, he said: 'Well,
it is not agreeable to me, but still I have one consolation: I shall,
at least, when I am dead, hear nothing more of Sarah Bernhardt and the
great French nation'--he could have added, and of Boris Lensky!"
III.
"You will certainly not run into the _foyer_ after him?" asks Nita,
dryly.
"I am not thinking of it," Sophie assures her.
"Well, I only thought that you are one of his relatives," says Nita.
"Since his wife's death I have had no intercourse with him," Sophie
confides to her friend. "He cannot bear me, thinks me narrow and
prudish. As a man, I have never been in sympathy with him; he treated
my dear cousin, his wife, much too badly for me to ever pardon him. But
as an artist--as artist--he stands alone. I have heard other wonderful
violinists, but it is only he that sends such hot and cold shudders
over one's back at each stroke of his bow."
"Yes, he is a great artist," says Nita. Her voice sounds weary and
hoarse, and the words fall slowly, syllable for syllable, from her
lips, as if they were forced from her in a magnetic sleep. She looks
pale, and her eyes again have their mysterious look. After much coaxing
and pleading from Sophie, she has at length resolved to go with her
friend to Lensky's concert, announced for that afternoon, and now seems
to regret her decision.
"I think that we have a great musical treat before us," remarks Sophie,
after a while. "Lensky has an uncommonly fine programme to-day. The
first number is a trio of Schumann; then his accompanist plays a couple
of little things; then comes a saraband, by Bach; something by
Paganini, I do not know what; then a melody by Lensky himself--'La
Legende' is the name, I think. It is dedicated to his wife."
"Ah! he plays that also?" asks Nita, shortly.
"Have you already heard him play it?" asks Sophie.
"Yes, once, a few years ago," replies Nita, without looking up.
"I am usually not very fond of his compositions, but I know of nothing
that goes to one's heart more than this melody when he plays it," says
Sophie. Nita is silent.
"You seem tired and ill, my heart," says Sophie, after a pause. "If you
really do not want to go to the concert, if you were really going
merely on my account, I would rather stay at home."
"No," says Nita, gloomily. "I have said it. I will go."
* * * * *
Lensky's concert is to take place at four o'clock. About half-past
three Nita and Sophie, in a rattling fiacre, roll out of the quiet Rue
Murillo into the noisy heart of the city. All at once the cab slows its
pace. "What is the matter?" asks Sophie, putting her head out of the
window.
"I cannot go on. The row of carriages blocks the way," answers the
coachman. The horses stop. Nita also looks out. "What a tumult!" says
she. "One carriage crowds another; it is as if a celebrity was to be
buried."
Meanwhile the rain pours down on the roofs of the carriages, on the
hard macadam, on the umbrellas of the pedestrians, who remorselessly
push each other forward on the sidewalks. The coachmen crack their
whips, cry out, curse; the horses stamp and press against each other.
At last, with difficulty enough, the carriage with the two girls pushes
forward a few steps. Sonia looks at her watch. Four o'clock! With a
start, she remembers Lensky's fabulous punctuality. "Nita, if we do not
wish to miss the beginning, we must get out and walk."
And they get out. They are not the only ones. The most distinguished
ladies get out of the prettiest coupes, thread their way between the
muddy carriage wheels, crowd on the slippery sidewalk between piano
teachers with waterproofs and overshoes, musicians with turned-up coat
collars and dented silk hats, and among them the Countess d'Olbreuse,
with a great bundle of music under her arm.
The young girls' places are on the stage. They go, or rather are pushed
forward by the crowd, through an endless length of corridors smelling
of gas and sawdust.
All the places on the stage Lensky has given to acquaintances. There is
no more generous artist than he--none who, with such an immense
crowding, and with doubled prices, still continues to keep hundreds of
free tickets for his personal disposal. In consequence, all kinds of
people are crowded together on the stage--ladies of every age and quite
every rank in life, music teachers, conservatorists, ladies from the
highest society, people who speak Spanish, French, Russian, or English.
"Where are our two places?" asks Sophie, looking round
attentively--"24, 25, 24, 25."
"Here, Sonia," says a gentle, good-natured man's voice.
Sonia suddenly becomes fiery red. Her blue eyes sparkle. She stands as
if rooted to the ground. A young man, tall, broad-shouldered, under
whose severely English exterior something of his true Russian
bearishness is betrayed, with an oval, rather yellow, unusually regular
face, sympathetic, almond-shaped eyes, and thick brown hair, comes up
to her and gives her his hand. "These are the places," says he, "here
in the third row. I only came day before yesterday; my father had no
better ones to give away."
"But, I beg you, we are splendidly placed. It was so nice in you to
think of me," Sophie assures him cordially.
"Well, the time has not yet come when I have forgotten you!" Suddenly
his glance rests on Nita, and remains fixed on her face.
"Have the kindness to introduce me, Sonitschka," asks he. His voice
trembles a little.
"My cousin, Nikolai Lensky," says Sophie, in a tone which betrays that
this cousin is not merely a cousin for her.
"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch," she adds, explanatorily. "But what is the
matter, my heart, you look so faint?" This turning to Nita.
"It is nothing; it will pass off," murmurs Nita, and sits down.
Nikolai's features take on a truly anxious expression, and he cannot
take his eyes from off her. Why does she, just she, please him, before
she has exchanged a word with him, better than formerly any woman has
pleased him? She looks unusually attractive to-day, besides. The weary
fever which quite weighs her down to the ground takes from her
appearance the harshness which often makes her somewhat cold. The
outline of her face is much softer than formerly. A mysterious light
shines from her large eyes, the eyes in which a strange grief
lies buried, and round her mouth trembles an expression as of
death-sentenced tenderness which will not die.
"Could you possibly get me a vinaigrette, Colia?" asks Sonia,
anxiously.
A mad storm of applause cuts short her words. Through the passage left
between the audience on the stage strides a large man, with long,
half-curled hair, which begins to grow gray; with a face whose features
remind one of an Egyptian Sphinx, a face with an indescribable
expression of gloomy sadness, austere pride, and touching kindness; a
face that is not handsome, but which one never forgets when one has
once seen it, the face of a man who has tasted all the pleasures of
earth and who is yet always hungry--the face of a man who still
desperately longs for something in which he has long ceased to believe.
The two cooperators are behind him--the 'cellist, a Parisian celebrity
with curly hair parted in the middle, and a very long mustache, which
he had inherited from an exiled Polish martyr; the pianist, a pupil of
De Sterny, like him in appearance, blond, slender, medium sized,
faultlessly attired, almost dandified.
Lensky bows simply, benevolently, in all directions; the Schumann trio
commences.
Dominating the two other instruments, the silvery sweet tones of the
violin vibrate through the hall.
Nita bends her head forward--listens--listens. Young Lensky has
brought her the vinaigrette which Sophie had asked for. She turns it
absent-mindedly in her hands. Her eyes become gloomier.
Why had she come here, why?--to oblige Sophie? No: because, again and
again, the whole night long, she had ever heard these silvery violin
tones, in a thousand caressing shadings, oppressive, sad, alluring. She
had promised herself the highest musical enjoyment which can be offered
to one, and feels a fearful disappointment.
Already after the first bars Lensky begins to hurry. He is vexed at the
cold playing of the Parisian 'cellist, at a gnat which has flown
against his face, at God knows what.
From that moment his playing differs from other violin virtuosos only
through a raging acceleration of _tempo_, an astonishing lack of
purity, and a luxuriant fulness of sound, an inimitable softness and
satiety of tone which none of the other violinists have ever attained.
His playing is of an arbitrariness which completely confuses the
'cellist, ignorant of his peculiarities. At many parts the three
instruments are not together.
It is pitiable music. The veins in Lensky's forehead swell with rage.
Ever more fiercely he draws the bow across his violin; it is now for
him merely an instrument on which he can vent his bad moods.
A critic who is present describes his playing as a musical crime, the
performance of the trio as a sin against Schumann's creation. Still, at
the close of the number, abundant applause falls to the share of the
artists. It is the fashion to rave over the "devil's violinist." What
in any case seems strange in the performance to the Parisians, they
describe as "Slavonic," and with this short word lull all such
thoughts.
"It is one of his bad days," sighs Sophie, "or it is no longer the same
man."
For the first time Nita's eyes rest on the virtuoso, who now, recalled
by the audience with loud cries of applause, again steps on the stage
between the two other performers.
He stoops, his lower lip is flabby, deep furrows are in his cheeks,
there are heavy shadows under his eyes, the chin has no longer the
firm, marked outline of formerly, and still-- "He is quite the same,"
says Nita, shortly, and turns away her head.
Naturally he is the same, only the dross in his nature comes to light
more hatefully and intrusively than formerly, when the whole charm of
fiery manhood glorified his faults. These faults become a young man,
but an old man they do not.
At last the audience has become quiet; the concert proceeds.
Monsieur Albert Perfection sits down to the piano, plays a nocturne of
Chopin, an _etude_ of Thalberg, and a Liszt tarentella with blameless
technical perfection, and without faltering a single time.
After the impure, confused, over-hasty, and still, in spite of
everything, fascinating playing of Lensky, his performance has a calm,
soothing effect on the nerves, and without reckoning to what phenomenon
to ascribe the effect, the public breathes freely, breaks out in stormy
bravos, then suddenly recollects itself--considers. To distinguish his
accompanist at one of Boris Lensky's concerts! It is not fitting.
Then follows quite a long pause, and at length Lensky once more steps
upon the stage.
In two minutes scarcely one of those present remembers that Albert
Perfection exists. Whatever musical adherents Lensky had lost, he has
quite won back.
Even now his playing is not perfectly free from continual little
technical faults and impurities, but still, who would have time to stop
at those while this sense-enthralling, oppressing, resonant charm flows
from his violin? It is now no longer a violin; it is a human heart
which spreads out all its treasures before the crowd, exposes its
holiest of holies to it, and in a wonderful, mysterious language, a
language which all understand, and to which no one can lend words,
confesses his joys and sorrows, his heaven-aspiring enthusiasm, and,
swooning, back to earth sinking, human sadness.
His appearance also has changed, become ennobled. His formerly flushed
face is now deathly pale; the deeply sunken eyes are almost closed; the
hateful expression about his mouth has disappeared, and has given place
to an inconsolably melancholy expression; his lips are half parted; he
breathes with difficulty, sometimes something like a gasp interrupts
his performance. The insane story from _Figaro_ comes to the mind of
more than one of his listeners. It is not to be denied, his playing
gives the impression of a bad charm to which he himself has fallen
victim.
Now Lensky plays his own composition, his famous, wonderful "La
Legende," for which every one in the audience waited eagerly. In the
middle of the powerful, striking melody of the piece something like a
sob and the wearily fluttering wings of an angel who has wandered into
Hades, and now vainly seeks the way to its home, sounds from beneath
his bow.
The audience is beside itself. Men laugh, weep, rejoice, clap their
hands, stamp their feet, mount on chairs in order to see him better.
"_Bis, bis, bis!_" sounds from all sides. He repeats it.
Then a murmur goes through the room: some one has fainted yonder on the
stage--Nita! Her head falls forward. With difficulty Sophie holds her
for one moment upright in her arms; then Nikolai springs to her help,
carries out the unconscious woman. Sonia follows him.
An unpleasant excitement overpowers the audience; without entirely
stopping, Lensky retards his strokes, coughs compassionately, looks
short-sightedly squinting after his son. A splendid fellow! How easily
he carries the dark form! Who was she? A slender, supple young body,
evidently. Then he takes up the rhythm anew--the incident is forgotten.
IV.
Now the concert is over. After much that was beautiful and noble, in
conclusion Lensky, in a superior, quite negligent manner, threw to the
public a bravura piece by some unknown Russian composer, a wild,
triumphal fanfare of neck-breaking double notes.
They hurrah, clap, are mad with enthusiasm, call him back again and
again, but Lensky shows himself no more. He and his son roll along in a
cab to the Hotel Westminster, where the great violinist, according to
old custom, has his quarters.
The fever of his musical excitement still throbs in Lensky's every
vein. His nerves are still quivering from the fierce, jubilant storm of
applause. Something like an echo of the hand-clapping, which sounds
quite like a hail-storm, yet rings in his ears.
Nikolai has no noise of applause in his ears, therefore he hears again
and again the first sweet, dreamy bars of the "Legende." They form in
his soul the musical background for a pale little face with large,
gloomy eyes and melancholy, lovely mouth. How she had listened to his
father's playing, quite with a kind of horror in her solemn gaze! He
had never seen any one listen so. At every tone the expression of her
face had changed. Were there, then, really people upon whom music could
have such an effect?
And then how she had suddenly sunk down! Ah! how charming it was to
take the slender, supple body in his arms, which scarcely felt the
weight. Her head had rested so heavily and wearily on his shoulder; her
hair, the silky, soft, golden-brown hair, had touched his cheek. He
could not forget it; it seemed to him that he still held her; he felt
the unconscious leaning of the warm young body against his breast. And
this little face! How much more beautiful it had become when the forced
self-restraint had left it. The cold, gloomy expression had vanished;
it looked deathly sad, the poor, pale little face. But what an
indescribable tenderness and goodness mingled with the sadness!
What might the great pain which lay hidden in her young heart be? Ah,
to be able to console her! A foolish wish! Where were his thoughts
wandering?
"Have you a match, Colia?" asks a rough voice near him.
Nikolai starts. He seems to himself impolite in his silence to his
father. He should have said a few words to him upon his success.
"To-day was an inspiration, father," he remarks, while he hands the
virtuoso his match-box.
"There was a great noise, at any rate," says Lensky, and shrugs his
shoulders. "That does not mean much. I beg you! A success is always
like an epidemic or a conflagration. No one really knows why. Sometimes
one achieves it, and not at other times. Apropos, some one fainted
to-day. Who was it? An old woman, was it not?"
"No; a young girl."
"Was she pretty?"
"She pleased me."
"H-m! h-m! And she fainted because she was too tightly laced?"
"No, father. She evidently fainted from excitement. I have never seen
any one listen as she listened to you."
"Swooned from excitement," repeats Lensky. "A pretty young woman! _Mais
c'est un succes de Torreador_--the highest that a man can attain."
The carriage stops before the Hotel Westminster.
"Will you dine with me?" Lensky asks, as he gets out.
"If you will permit me," replies Nikolai.
"Only no such formalities!" bursts out the violinist. "Do not force
yourself to anything from politeness. You must not, if you do not wish.
The company which you will find with me will not suit you without
that."
Lensky says that quite roughly and angrily. In general, the opposing
manners of the two men are strange enough. At heart they evidently
cling to each other very greatly; still, a perceptible lack of
confidence is apparent in the relations between father and son.
"And at what hour may I come?" asks Nikolai.
"May I come!" his father mimics him. "That is really not to be borne.
Leave me in peace with your aristocratic manners. Do not forget that
you have a proletary for a father. My guests come at half-past eight,
and you can come when you will."
With that they have reached the first story of the hotel, where are the
violinist's secluded rooms.
Nikolai's room is one story higher. "For, near each other, we would
mutually annoy each other," the virtuoso has from the beginning
signified to his son. "_Adieu a tantot_," he calls to the young man.
With that they separate.
When Nikolai joins Lensky, half an hour later, they are already at
table.
The atmosphere of the little dining-room is filled with the savory odor
of _potage bisque_, the virtuoso's favorite dish. Gay dishes of dessert
stand on the table, the chandelier sheds its glaring light over an
extremely mixed assembly. At Lensky's right sits Madame Grevin, a very
old friend of his; at his left, the Countess d'Olbreuse, who, probably
to accentuate the situation, has kept on her hat. This great lady, in
the _role_ of guest in artistic circles, is in some manner annoying to
Nikolai. He feels especially constrained, seems to himself awkward in
his pedantically correct clothes; he wears a dress-coat and white
cravat, because after dinner he is going into society--laughable. The
place opposite his father has been left vacant for him. His eyes wander
over the guests. He sees a strikingly dressed young harpist, with loud,
noisy manners and bold expressions, Mademoiselle Klein, from Vienna;
then a violin virtuoso of good family, Monsieur Paul, not without
intelligence and wit, but without belief in his art, which he seems to
consider a moderately remunerative trade; a vain French journalist with
pretentious cynicism--no single artist of really significant renown;
and in the midst of all this unenlivening gang--his father.
[Illustration]
"Can he feel at home with these men?" Nikolai asks himself, and looks
at him scrutinizingly.
At first he sits quite silently there, and only addresses a few
friendly words across the table to Madame Bulatow, the wife of a poor,
unrecognized composer. His boundless kindness of heart never fails with
poor unfortunates, however raging, untamably wild, quite rough he may
otherwise be. But to no one is he so tender as to his own country
people. Poor Russians in a strange land he treats as relatives.
The further the dinner progresses, the worse becomes the universal
tone, the more unrestrained Lensky. His manner to the Countess
d'Olbreuse becomes completely inadmissible.
In the beginning he scarcely noticed her. But as she, from vanity and a
whim, had evidently determined to make his conquest, to rouse him from
his indifference with all kinds of flatteries and coquetries, he
gradually warms, presses her hand, whispers all kinds of insidious
remarks to her with wicked glances, permits himself so much that at
last she is frightened and tries to restrain him. But to restrain
Lensky after the second bottle of wine, at the close of a good dinner,
and near a very pretty woman, who has suddenly become prudish after she
had, a few minutes before, thrown herself at his head, is no easy
thing.
Nikolai, whose blood burns in his brown cheeks, foolishly lets himself
be brought to remark a shy, "_Mais, mon pere!_" and by that attains a
not at all pleasing result. Always excited by the slightest weight or
restraint, to violent opposition, Lensky is least of all inclined to
submit to be lectured by his "aristocratic son." His face, flushed by
wine, becomes distorted, his eyes glisten. He is just about to say
something horrible, unpardonable--the word dies on his lips; he turns
his head and listens. A very excited child's voice outside is heard by
turns with a waiter's voice: "I wish to go in, _laissez-moi donc!_"
Was it possible? The door opens. Breathless, with cheeks flushed from
the cold, a girl of perhaps seventeen years bursts in and into Lensky's
arms, who has hastily sprung up.
"Here I am at last!" said she, breathless, between laughing and
weeping, in Russian. "Oh, if you knew how much trouble I had in getting
to you! They would not let me in. What does it matter, now I am with
you? And how are you? Are you well again? Oh, you poor dear, I could
not bear it any longer, I was so worried about you!"
He holds her delightedly to his breast, covers her whole face with
kisses. "It is my daughter," he explains to his astonished-looking
guests. "Please make room for her near me, Madame Grevin." And as a
waiter pushes a chair between the old woman and the virtuoso, he
continues: "Take off your coat and hat, Mascha, and now sit down and
get your breath." Then he passes his hand over her soft dark hair. His
touching tenderness has wiped away every trace from his face of the
hateful expression which formerly disfigured it. "Yes, yes, this is my
daughter, my foolish, ignorant daughter, a little goose, who loves me
dearly." And the voice of the spoiled despot, who recently only
tolerated the homage of hundreds of women crazy about him, trembles at
these words quite as if he wondered that his own child loves him! "Are
you hungry, my little dove?" asks he.
"No, papa, I am too happy to be hungry; but I am thirsty." And she
reaches for his champagne glass.
"Oh, you little wretch!" admonishes Lensky, tenderly, while Nikolai
calls to him across the table: "Don't give her any champagne; she
cannot stand it. A thimbleful goes to her head."
"And I like it so much," sighs the girl.
"Tell us, please, how you really came here, Mascha," Lensky asks his
daughter in French. "I thought you still in Arcachon."
"I ran away," says she, gayly, and laughs till her white teeth show
between her full child's lips. "Ran away secretly, and quite alone!"
"So, well, that is good," says Lensky, and immediately is vexed at
having made an unsuitable remark before his daughter. He adds: "You at
least took your maid with you?"
"No, papa, no one. Ah! please do not look so gloomy; only do not be
angry. If you must quarrel with me, quarrel to-morrow, but not to-day;
I am too happy to be with you. See, it was this way: Since October, I
have been with Aunt Sophie in Arcachon, because Aunt Barbara has not
yet arranged her house in Paris, and therefore cannot take me. Ah! I
must always go from one aunt to another, because you will not have me
with you, you naughty papa!"
At this jesting reproof Lensky's face darkens; meanwhile, the girl
continues: "All at once I heard you were in Paris. Ah! to know you were
in Paris and not dare to come--that was unbearable. But, however, I
begged.... 'It is impossible,' was the answer every time. Aunt Barbara
could not receive me before the fifteenth, and then, besides, no one
had time to accompany me to Paris--and all sorts of simple excuses,
which made me furious. Meanwhile, I read in the papers how people half
kill each other for places at your concerts, how all Paris is on its
knees before you, and I am happy and proud of you."
"Ah! you are proud of me?" says Lensky, in a tone which among all those
present only his son understands.
"But, papa," says Mascha, shrugging her shoulders impatiently at this
interruption, "am I proud? How can you ask? Yes, immensely proud of
you. But then I read that you look pale and weary; then I am quite
consumed with anxiety, and dream every night that you are ill. Then
yesterday evening I read that you had had a stroke of apoplexy. I was
beside myself. They tried to talk me out of my anxiety, to convince me
that if you were dangerously ill they would certainly have already
telegraphed me. They were all very kind, and wished to telegraph to
you, but I could not sit there idle for hours, waiting for a telegram.
And so I ran away at six o'clock in the morning while every one was
asleep. It was bitterly cold. I sold my watch, and then did not have
money enough to buy my ticket; a young man was so kind as to assist
me."
"Ah! an obliging young man," interrupted the journalist.
"He was very nice," affirmed Mascha. "He took the ticket for me--he
spoke English to me; only think, papa, he took me for an Englishwoman.
Then I left him and hurried into a coupe, and away we went. In my coupe
sat an old man and an old woman. I thought they were married, because
they quarrelled incessantly, but the old woman got out at Bordeaux. I
remained alone with the old man. For one moment I was afraid."
"Of what, then?" asks the journalist in an unpleasant tone.
"It was just before a tunnel; he drew out a large pocket-knife. I
thought he would murder me, but no, it was only to peel a pear. He
wished to force half of it upon me. When I refused, he offered me
chocolate; he became very insolent. I cannot bear that, and threatened
to signal for help." She interrupts her confession with a pretty little
shudder. "I did not know that it would be so unpleasant to travel
alone."
"In a ladies' coupe you would have been spared these unpleasantnesses,"
said Madame Grevin, provincially stiffly.
"Ah, madame!" says Mascha, with her soft eyes looking first at Lensky
and then at the old woman, "I had quite forgotten that there were
ladies' coupes. I only thought to come to Paris as quickly as possible.
It all turned out well, you shall see. God be thanked, just then the
train stopped. I opened the window, called to the conductor to open the
door; he did not hear me. French conductors never hear one. Then my
young gentleman discovered me. You know the one from the station in
Arcachon, who was walking up and down the platform smoking. He threw
away his cigar and hurried to my help. I would like to change my coupe,
I said, with a glance at my objectionable travelling companion. He
understood, took me in another compartment, said I was evidently not
accustomed to travelling alone, and asked if I would permit him to
offer me his protection. I was very thankful to him, and then I told
him my whole story, and that I was your daughter, papa. He said that he
was an old friend of yours, Nikolinka"--to her brother. "He told me his
name, Count Baerenburg. He is a diplomat, was in St. Petersburg, and
said he had often met you at Uncle Sergeis. Do you remember him,
Nikolinka?"
"I believe it," said Nikolai. "He is a man who saved my life on a bear
hunt. I was in very close quarters with a wounded beast."
"And he shot the bear?" said Lensky.
"No," replied Nikolai; "he was, as he modestly expressed it, too
cowardly to discharge his gun--the ball might have hit me. 'Every one
who will cannot be a William Tell,' said he, afterward, laughing. He
stabbed the brute with his hunting-knife, in danger of being strangled
with me."
"He saved you with danger to his life? Then he must like you very
much," bursts out Maschenka.
"He scarcely knew me."
"Ah, how generous!" said Mascha. "How glad I am to have learned to know
him, and you cannot think how nice he was to me. He spoke so pleasantly
of you, Colia. Then he got a paper to see whether there was anything
about you in it, papa. We found a notice which relieved me as to your
health, and then after the worry I had had, my heart was so light that
I cried. Arrived in Paris, he sent his servant with me because he did
not want me to drive all the way through the city alone, and here I am.
You see, madame"--she turns coaxingly to Grevin--"on the whole it was
certainly better than if I had travelled in a ladies' compartment."
But Madame Grevin only shrugged her shoulders, and said: "That is a
matter of taste; for my daughter, I should have preferred the ladies'
compartment."
Lensky is silent; he notices vexedly what a false effect the story of
his petted daughter has made on those present.
Most of the men smile; they seek behind Mascha's _naivete_ calculating
frivolity seeking for adventures.
Meanwhile, without embarrassment, she drinks a few sips of champagne
from her father's glass, and continues: "The stupidest was that they
did not want to let me in here to you in the hotel. They said,
'Monsieur Lensky is dining now.' And yet I told them that I was your
daughter. They said very coarsely: 'Anyone could say that.' For what
did they take me, then--for one of those fools who run after you?"
"Mascha!" Lensky says, reprovingly.
"And, besides, I look so strikingly like you," she continues.
"So, do you really look like me?" asks Lensky, who cannot look stern
before this sweet childish tenderness. "Really like me?" Then, taking
her by the chin and looking attentively at her face: "Well, yes; the
dear God is a great artist. Strange what wonderfully beautiful
variations he can write on an ugly theme!"
"Mamma always said it was quite laughable how much I resembled you,"
whispers Mascha; and adds softly: "She always said that to me when she
was especially good to me."
Those present have ceased to interest themselves in the child; only
Madame d'Olbreuse looks at her kindly across the virtuoso. The
journalist industriously supplies Mademoiselle Klein with champagne;
the other men talk together, murmur bad jokes in each other's ears,
half aloud, with the evident intention to be heard. The champagne goes
more and more to Mademoiselle Klein's head. After an animated tirade
upon Lensky, she says, laughingly: "I have been in Paradise often
enough to hear Lensky, but if it were necessary, I would go into hell
for him."
"Ah, so!" calls out Lensky, amused at the immoderateness of the young
woman. "But if they would not let you into hell?"
"I would pay a few sins for admittance." And looking at him boldly from
half-closed eyes, she takes a flower from the bouquet on her breast,
and throws it across the table at him. He catches it laughingly.
Suddenly he feels something strange. His daughter's eyes rest upon him,
astonished, surprised. With a gesture of anger, he throws the flower
under the table. "Nikolai, I beg you, take the child home," says he,
springing up.
"Where, father?"
"Where?" repeats Lensky. "Why, to the Jeliagin--anywhere, only away
from here."
"Will you permit me to take your daughter to Princess Jeliagin's? My
carriage waits below. I have room for her and Monsieur Nikolas," says
the Countess d'Olbreuse.
"I am very much obliged to you, Countess," replied Lensky. Then,
dismissing Mascha with a kiss on the forehead, he turns to his guests.
"I think we can go in the drawing-room; coffee is waiting already."
Still, while Mascha, quite amazed at her father's sudden
unfriendliness, slips into her sable-lined velvet coat, Lensky comes up
to his two children. "See that she is well wrapped up, Colia," says he
to his son. "She is very delicate, and takes cold easily. She is,
indeed, thoroughly like me, but still in much she is like her mother.
God, those eyes! And say a good word for her to Barbara; see that she
is not too harshly received."
"We will both defend her," says Countess d'Olbreuse kindly. "I
understand that an anxious papa is frightened at such a mad prank, but
one must be very hard-hearted not to pardon it."
"Ah, you have no idea what is before me! Aunt Barbara is not bad, she
even likes me; but her daughter, my Cousin Anna, is terrible!" says
Mascha "Why do you send me away, papa? I hoped that you would keep me
with you."
"It is impossible," says he, with a short, characteristic motion of the
head and shoulders, and with a gloomy decision which permits no
objecting.
"Really impossible?" repeats Mascha, depressed. "Well, then, good-by.
It still was lovely to see you again. If only those horrid people had
not been there! That bold girl who threw you the flower--how could she
dare to presume so with you!" And Mascha's eyes sparkled with anger.
"She is charming, your daughter; I am quite in love with her," says the
kind D'Olbreuse; "but now come, my dear child."
"One more kiss," murmurs Lensky, and takes the sweet, pale little face
of his daughter between his great, warm hands. It is as if he could not
look long enough on this sad, tender loveliness. "Oh, you angel, you! I
will visit you to-morrow in the morning; but do not come here any more,
I beg you. So--one kiss, and one more on your dear eyes--goodnight!"
V.
Now he sits alone in the desolate hotel parlor. He who usually flees
solitude, who keeps his guests always until his eyes close, has to-day
given them to understand before ten o'clock that they bore him. But now
he would fain call them back, however indifferent all, however
unsympathetic most of them are to him. At least they could dissipate
the troop of recollections which pass through his mind in a confused
throng. Involuntarily he compares his heart to a caravansary through
which thousands of men have gone in and out, without a single one
settling there, or leaving a trace.
He did not believe in friendship; he remained faithful to his old
acquaintances even if they became burdensome to him, from a
characteristic or from obstinacy; but he felt drawn to no one. His
passions were of such a fleeting nature, left his heart so completely
untouched, that the impression of women to whom he had stood in near
relations was quite summarily a mixture of scorn, compassion, and
disgust.
He had forgotten the names of the most. The pressure of every
restraint, every discipline, every check, had been unbearable to him;
he had given rein to all his instincts, had been moderate in nothing,
had submitted to nothing, had always preached that one must forget
one's self, and yet could never quite forget himself. No; during this
mad bacchanal, in which the last fifteen years of his existence had
been spent, something which he could not satisfy had remained within
him.
He denied every religion, even that of duty. He only lived for
enjoyment; but enjoyment died when he touched it, pleasure was in his
arms a cold, stiff corpse.
The only thing which could still rouse him was his art; and he was
about to lose his power in this. His compositions--that of his art
which really was dear to his heart--had more and more become a group of
contrasts seeking after effect. The inner voice which had formerly sung
him such sweet songs was--not strong enough to be heard in the noisy
confusion of his life--wearily silent. His creative power was
paralyzed, and his playing--the Parisians might clap as loud as they
wished; he knew best of all that it went downward.
For more than forty years he had given concerts, and for twenty years
he had played over the same _repertoire_--an immense one, but, with a
few little exceptions, still the same. It bored him. He no longer
listened to himself when he played, only sometimes, half unconsciously,
all that wounded head and heart slipped into his fingers, and then he
sobbed himself out in tones; and what so powerfully moved his listeners
was not what they suspected--it was compassion for a great man who
despairingly tries to find in art what he has wasted in life.
How slowly time passes! He had not suspected that it would be so
unpleasant for him to stay alone.
More, yet more, of those strange faces! There are princesses of blood
royal among them; then, again, beauties for whose favor potentates have
sued in vain; famous artists, and, finally, pale, poor girls whom a
moment of morbid enthusiasm had robbed of their senses. They nodded to
him, smiled confidentially, all the same smile of secret understanding.
"One just like the others," he calls out, and stamps on the floor, as
if he would stamp upon the whole crowd. "One just like the other----"
Then one form separated itself from the throng, and stepped up to him.
He stretches out his arms to her. "Natalie," he calls. She vanishes. It
was his wife; how plainly he had seen her!
She was not like the others. How had he ventured to name this angel in
the same breath with the others? He had loved her passionately, however
immoderately he had offended against her.
Her name was Natalie--yes, Natalie. And when he led her to the altar
she was a charming, petted young girl, a Princess Assanow, who had
married him against the wishes of her family. He had worshipped her,
and strewn flowers at her feet, and she had been happy, and he with
her. The children had come--how delightful all that was! Those were the
golden years in his life--five, six years. Then--then the demon had
begun to weary of Paradise. His gipsy nature had demanded its rights.
He had left home, only for a time, and to let his passions have their
sway; then oftener, ever oftener.
At first she had pardoned him only too easily, so easily that it had
almost vexed him, so easily that he had thought she would bear
anything.
But at last even she could endure it no longer--had separated from him.
That was terrible, so terrible that he had thought he could not bear
it. She also could not bear it, he imagined, but would recall him. He
waited for that every day, and she called him back--when she lay dying.
That was now four years ago; but it seemed to him that she had died
yesterday. He saw it all so plainly before him--the large room in Rome,
the half-emptied medicine bottles on the invalid's night-table, and the
ticking watch, a watch which he had given her years before at Colia's
birth; the dim night-lamp in the corner, her white morning-dress that
hung over a chair, the little slippers--the dear, tiny little slippers!
There in the white bed, she, so long, so thin, with her poor wasted
body, whose outline was so plainly visible under the covers, a white
flannel covering with red stripes on the edge--he even remembered that.
But, best of all, he remembered her, her wonderfully beautiful face.
She raised herself from the pillows at his entrance, and greeted him
with a smile that forgave him all; no, not only forgave, but begged his
forgiveness that she--she, the poor angel--had been too weak to save
him from himself, to redeem him. Then he had taken her in his arms and
kissed her. He would not believe that all was over. Then, suddenly, the
sun had risen, there, over the Spanish place, behind the church of
Trinita de' Monti; a broad, golden ray stretched out to the dying
woman.
It was like the shining arm of God who had come to take her soul. She
had raised her weary hand to point upward--the hand sank, sank.
What a horrible time! He, to whom the thought of dying caused a terror
that could not be overcome; he, who, if he met a funeral procession on
the street, turned away his head, and could not bear the sight of a
corpse, he had watched near her coffin for two nights long without
moving, without eating. In the second night he had fallen asleep from
unvanquishable weariness. He had dreamed of old times, of dead
happiness. It seemed to him that he sat with her on the terrace
of the country-house near St. Petersburg, where they had passed the
mid-summer, the short northern summer. It was a bright August night;
they sat together hand in hand, and her voice fell softly and
caressingly on his ear. Sometimes she laughed, then he laughed also,
only because she laughed, and pressed a kiss on her lips. Ah, how
warmly her thirsty young lips met his!
Suddenly he awoke; an insect had flown across his face. Around him all
was black--the walls, the floor, the ceiling--and there, near him,
surrounded by tall, red flickering candles by a blooming wall of
flowers--ah! how beautiful she still was! He bent over the coffin and
raised her from the white satin cushions and kissed her. The chill of
this touch penetrated to his marrow; for the first time he understood
what a terrible gulf had opened between her and him.
When Colia had come to relieve his father from his watch over the
corpse, he had found him lying senseless on his face near the coffin.
Yes, the one, the only one whom he had passionately loved; but she had
not been able to protect him from himself, either by her life or by her
death.
At first, really, in the first few days after her burial, he had
thought the fever had left his veins. He no longer felt it. Miserable
and weary, at that time, he had shut himself up for hours, for days in
her room, in the room in which all had been left as it was before she
had been carried out, in which all looked as if she must come back. And
when he had at length resolved to leave Rome, he had passed a few
months quietly and soberly with his children. He had even tried to work
again, to compose--but he had accomplished nothing. Then despair at his
wasted genius had come over him, and with despair the fever. He could
not bear quiet, he simply could not. He needed noise, incessant change,
excitement and stunning.
He sent Mascha to relatives--Maschenka, his charming little daughter,
whom he adored, and whom he now pushed out of his way with a violent
haste, as if she were merely an inconvenient burden for him. And then--
then he took up life again exactly at the point where he had left it
before Natalie died.
From city to city, from concert hall to concert hall, from hotel to
hotel he rushed, always the same, restless, joyless, without peace,
always idolized, raved over, only still madder in the waste of his life
than formerly, because sadness was greater in him, and it needed more
excitement to kill it.
Now all that was to some degree bearable, but how would it be in a
couple of years? Involuntarily his glance wandered to a pile of papers
which lay on the table in the centre of the room--thirty, forty copies
of that number of _Figaro_ which contained the fable. He laughed at the
people who had sent him this absurdity to flatter him.
"'I will lay a charm in your art which no one can resist,'" he murmured
to himself. "Bah! how long could that yet last?" He did not deceive
himself; things were going rapidly down with him, his violin playing,
his health, all.
"The devil will no longer be able to use me," murmured he. "One will
know nothing more of me; I am growing old!" he gasped out. Suddenly he
seized his head and called: "But what does a man like me do when he is
old?"
For the first time in his life he asked himself the question. "To grow
old without the courage to calmly submit, to be like a languishing
spendthrift who drinks repulsive sediment from emptied goblets."
How hateful, how horrible! Would it not be better to break with all, to
devote himself to his children, to lead a prudent existence?
He laughed bitterly. A prudent existence--he, whom two hours of
solitude brought almost to the boundaries of insanity! There could be
no more talk of that; it was too late. To grow old! Vain spectre of
fear! People like him never grow old--they die!
Yes, that was the end. To die, to leave nothing behind him, no name in
art, no enduring work; to be forgotten, wiped out of the world. A
little while longer, sunshine and air, and motion, color, and sound,
and then all dark, a great black blur, nothing more--death. Yes, it was
that. Perhaps it would come to-morrow, perhaps in a few years. Come it
must; he also would not fight against it. But meanwhile--meanwhile he
would live with every fibre, live with every drop of blood--live!
Then--around the window crept something like a sad, sighing, ghostly
voice. His face took on a strained, listening, thirstily longing
expression. It was like the sob of a tormented soul which has forgotten
to take the way to heaven because a great love holds her back to
earth--a great love and unrest at an unfulfilled task, an unlifted
treasure.
Was it an over-excitement of his nerves of hearing, or the beginning of
that mysticism to which, at a certain period of life, quite all great
Russian minds fall victim? However this may be, he would have sworn
that he heard her voice compassionately and tenderly. There, once more.
"Boris! Boris!"
He feels something strange, the calming of a loving presence. A
passionate, indescribable longing takes possession of him. He stretches
out his arms--it is gone! He shakes as with frost, sweat stands upon
his brow. He thought of the repellant coldness which had met his lips
when he had raised the corpse from the lace-edged pillows of the
coffin.
No; death took all, it lets nothing return. Weak-headed nervousness to
believe in such a thing! There is nothing but life! And while the
longing for the unattainable heavenly still consumes his heart, he
murmurs hoarsely: "Yes, to live, to live!"
VI.
To-day there is nothing left of Lensky's melancholy; at least for the
present he has put it aside, has not had much time to devote to it.
Since nine o'clock in the morning he has been overwhelmed with visits.
At the moment there is no one with him but the gay violinist of
yesterday, Monsieur Paul. As Lensky cannot remain unoccupied for a
moment without being nervous, he has proposed to Monsieur Paul to play
a game of piquet.
Just then Nikolai enters the room. He brings with him a cool, well-bred
atmosphere, which disturbs the two musicians. All comfort is over for
them. Monsieur Paul looks at his watch and declares that it is high
time for him to go and have his hair cut. Father and son remain alone.
"So you show yourself at last, sluggard?" says Lensky, while he still
mechanically shuffles the cards.
"I wished to present myself several times already," remarks Nikolai,
"but I heard that you were engaged."
"That need not have prevented you," replies the virtuoso. "Your
discretion has deprived you of great enjoyment, _per primo_, the
praises sung of a young lady whose voice I really could not well judge,
because she, as her companion told me, had been hoarse for six months
from unhappy love. I did not really learn what she wished to get from
me--a stipend, an engagement at the opera in St. Petersburg, or that I
should cure her of her unhappy love; but, apropos, I am really a little
tired of playing the Brahmin who gives his body prey to vermin for
penance. You can ring the bell. I will tell the waiter he shall admit
no one else."
The waiter has appeared and disappeared again. Father and son can be
assured not to be disturbed. They can now talk unrestrainedly together.
But the somewhat forced, humorous flow of speech of his father has
ceased. Stronger than yesterday is apparent the mutual lack of
confidence of the two, a lack of confidence which in the young Lensky
betrays itself by a quite exaggerated deference; in the older by a
grumbling roughness. He cannot understand this son. Not that anything
about him displeases him; his eyes rest not without pride and
satisfaction on the young giant with the slender, delicate hands, the
fine, aristocratic face. The most exacting father would be content with
this son. He has studied with distinction; he has never made debts; he
is scarcely twenty-three years old, _attache_ to the Russian embassy in
Paris, and a thoroughly good fellow. What more can Lensky wish, what
does he miss in Nikolai? A little imprudent enthusiasm, hot-blooded
frivolity, a little youthfulness--that he misses in him. Nikolai is old
at twenty-three.
And then these perpetual well-bred manners. Lensky could never bear men
of the world, and Nikolai is one; that enrages him.
"How did the Jeliagin welcome my little tomboy?" he asks his son at
last.
"Very graciously," replies Nikolai.
"That pleases me."
Nikolai is silent.
After a while Lensky begins anew.
"Yes, yes, I am very glad that things went well with the little one. I
was worried. No one can less easily bear loveless treatment than our
kobold."
Nikolai looks straight in his father's eyes.
"Do you imagine that Aunt Barbara will treat her lovingly?" he asks,
dryly.
"Well, you said--" says Lensky.
"I said that she received our Mascha graciously, _voila tout!_" says
Nikolai. "Her manner to the child did not please me. As the Countess
d'Olbreuse insisted upon pleading Mascha's cause, and as she is, as
Aunt Barbara informed me later, in spite of her apparent
eccentricities, very well accredited in the Faubourg St. Germain, the
warmth with which she defended Mascha may have made some impression. In
any case, aunt pleased herself with laughing at Mascha's exaltation.
She and her lovable daughter were about to go out, and it was arranged
that I should accompany them, but I would have preferred to remain with
Mascha to lecture her a little as she deserved for her over-haste."
Lensky frowned. "So you would have liked to scold the poor child! What
a narrow-hearted philister you are; have copied in everything your
distinguished uncle, the correct statesman, under whose protection you
are making a career, he who tore us apart--your mother and me. Poor
little Mascha! Poor little dove! But she was charming with her foolish,
childish anxiety and her incredible innocence." Lensky struck his fist
on the table. "I would have liked to box their ears, all of them, as
they sat there, the scoundrels who dared to wink at her tale," called
he.
"So should I, father, but still they did all wink," said Nikolai,
dryly.
"The idiots!"
"Yes, indeed, idiots--but----"
"Well, what will you say?" asked Lensky, roughly.
"I will say that Mascha will still meet many idiots in life who will
misunderstand her innocence, and that she may once meet a rascal who
will misuse her innocence."
"Nonsense! nonsense!" murmurs Lensky. "You do not understand your
sister. If she were frivolous, then she would need strict surveillance.
But our Mascha is not frivolous; she is given to exaggeration, tender,
romantic. And, between ourselves, life is so common, so boundlessly
common and dirty, that it seldom affords a temptation to a truly
exalted nature. No, no; I have no fear for my pretty defiant one. I do
not believe in the necessity of strict guarding."
"I think that young girls should be watched," said Nikolai, earnestly.
"Our Mascha has no more worldly knowledge than a six-year-old child.
She does not suspect that there is a danger in the world which she must
avoid."
"But that is beautiful, wonderfully beautiful!" the virtuoso thunders
at his son. "Would you wish it otherwise? Not I. No; I would not have
our little gipsy differ by a hair from what she is."
"Nor I, on the whole," says Nikolai; "but under the existing sad
circumstances----"
"What sad circumstances?" Lensky interrupts him. "Well, yes, that she
has lost her mother is sad; I can never replace her to her. A mother
cannot be replaced, least of all, one like hers; there is not another
one like her in the world. But otherwise I think she does not fare
badly. One pardons her wherever she goes; she is always treated like a
little princess, always well cared for."
"Well cared for!" Nikolai bursts out. "Well cared for! I think she
cannot be worse cared for than with the Jeliagins."
"Why?" asks Lensky, uneasily. "Barbara is not a bad woman. She is very
good-natured."
"And perfectly characterless," replies Nikolai. "You were pleased that
she overlooked Mascha's precipitation so easily yesterday. I was not.
Aunt Barbara is in bad circumstances; if I am not mistaken, she will
very soon turn to you in her money matters, and with Mascha she
will play the _role_ of an indulgent step-mother, who flatters the
step-child in order not to offend the father. If Mascha is to prosper,
she must live with people who understand her, who love her, but who are
conscientious enough to be severe with her, and to guide her from time
to time, tenderly but firmly, in the right way. She is much too gifted,
much too obstinate for one to dare to leave her to herself. Mascha is a
little race-horse who must be caressed, spared, but held very firmly in
check. I know her better than you, for I have had more opportunity to
observe her, and I tell you it is really dangerous to leave Mascha with
people who will trouble themselves as little about her as the
Jeliagins."
"You exaggerate, you exaggerate," grumbled Lensky. "Besides, how can I
help it? Shall I shut up my song-bird in a cage, in a convent or a
boarding-school? I tried it. She would not bear it. What shall I do
with her?"
"Take her with you," says Nikolai.
"With me! That is impossible," bursts out Lensky--"impossible! What can
a widower do with a grown daughter?"
Nikolai frowned. For a moment he is silent, then he says: "Do you
remember how strongly you expressed yourself about Kasin, when he sent
his daughter out into the wide world merely because she interfered with
his bachelor life?"
Lensky's face darkens. This time Nikolai's remark has hit its aim. "And
you will draw a comparison between me and Kasin?" says he, slowly,
cuttingly.
Nikolai thinks he has gone too far. "Naturally I did not think of
that," he begins; "the actions of a great artist, of a genius----"
But there Lensky interrupts him.
"Spare me this genius; I am sick of being eternally pursued with this
word," he cries. "I will be judged as a man with Kasin. As a man, what
have I in common with this frivolous egoist, who first ran through his
own and his wife's property, and then lived on still poorer devils,
while he went about the world without troubling himself that his wife,
his child, meanwhile suffered from hunger, without asking if they were
well or ill; while I"--he drew a deep breath--"while I have tormented
myself, worried myself about you my whole life long? All that you
possess I won with my head and hands. God knows, I desired little for
myself, but for you nothing was good enough. And if one of you wanted
anything, I left everything and came from the ends of the earth to look
after you--" He stops, out of breath.
"And you stayed with us as long as you were worried about us," says
Nikolai, softly. "Yes, father, you were boundlessly generous to
us, and still miserly. You never denied us anything, and still
everything--yourself!"
"H-m! and did you miss me?" asks Lensky, harshly, quite repellantly,
and looks at his son sideways, mistrustfully.
"Very much!" replied Nikolai.
Lensky had not expected that; the short, simple words went deep to his
heart. He changed color, rose, walked up and down a number of times,
and at length remained standing before Nikolai, and laid his hand on
his shoulder.
"I know that I was in the wrong," says he, in a changed, indescribably
gentle voice. "I do not deserve any children such as you are. If you
had both turned out quite badly, I still could not have wondered. But
you have but another's blood in your veins, and--and--" [....than you]
and lays his hand over his eyes, then he [...e her, a ...] foot. "I
have neglected you, that is true [... ..u] must not imagine--" Again he
pauses, [...] after awhile he continues: "As regards Mascha, God knows
I should like to have my little lark about me, but with me it is really
somewhat different than with--well, with Kasin. Kasin has his brilliant
position and lives in St. Petersburg; but I--to-day I am in Paris,
to-morrow in Berlin, the next day in Vienna. How, then, can I take a
young girl about with me?"
"Is it, then, necessary that you should still so torment yourself?"
remarks Nikolai gently, quite pleadingly.
Lensky is silent.
And Nikolai, who, in spite of his early knowledge of life, is still an
inexperienced idealist, thinks he has persuaded his father, hopes to
win him entirely to the plan laid out for him. "You could certainly
settle down now," says he. "I have planned that so finely. You could
have an old relative, Marie Dimitrievna, for instance, mamma's cousin,
who is sympathetic to you, to keep house for you; and under the united
influence of your fame and Mascha's charm, your home in St. Petersburg
or Moscow would become a true paradise. You could be so gay and happy,
so petted and honored in your old age, if you only would not grudge
yourself rest!"
"Not grudge myself rest?" groaned Lensky. "Yes, if I could [en.. ...]
rest." And with a gesture peculiar to him, [...] this back his thick
hair with both hands from h[...] and [...], he adds: "Ask what you will
of me, [only ...rer dev...] I should sit still; that I can do no more
[..." ...bli...] is silent for awhile, then, with hoarse, hollow voice, as
if in a dream, he begins anew: "Yes, if they had left me your mother,
perhaps it would have been different; just at that time, before our
separation, I began to be weary of the dancing-bear life: with her, I
perhaps could have led a respectable old age. But you knew better what
was suited to her than she herself. You pointed out to her what would
never have occurred to her of herself, poor angel!--that it was a shame
to have patience with me. Please yourself with the result! You have
killed her and me. But of what use to bring up again the old grief,
what use to reproach others? It is all my fault. Now nothing can be
changed. I am what I am; I can no longer subdue myself. I cannot be
without women and applause," says he, brutally. "Be as horrified as you
will, I cannot, I cannot. I will some time die with my bow in my hand,
and can be happy if I am not hissed before that!"
His breath fails him. He is silent. They stand opposite each other,
father and son, gazing into each other's eyes. Never before has Nikolai
seen a face which expresses a more incurable sadness. Why does he
understand now, just now, in spite of the inconsolable confession which
his father has just made to him, the unescapable charm which he
exercises on all men not fish-blooded?
Something of his thoughts are mirrored in his features. The polite mask
has disappeared, and for the first time Lensky feels that it is his own
flesh and blood that stands before him; for the first time he sees not
only a young diplomat, dressed in the most correct English style, but
his son, and in the features of the grown young man he finds something
of the dear little face of the boy who used to spring joyfully out to
meet him when he came home, who was so proud if he could show his
father the slightest service, who boasted so imposingly to his
playmates of his father's fame. He thinks of the tall, pale youth whose
ideal he was until the day when Nikolai began to understand, and his
bright eyes suddenly saddened with the hardest suffering that a young
man can experience, the pain of being obliged to see a flaw in the one
who is highest to him.
And from that time it was like an illness to the boy. He had learned to
understand life so soon that it had made him old before his time. From
his sixteenth year, and before that, he had carried about with him the
grief of his poor, idolized mother. And Lensky reproached him for
having lost his freshness.
Suddenly he takes his son by both shoulders and draws him to his
breast--for the first time in years.
VII.
A little later, Nikolai and his father are rolling along the boulevard
to see Mascha. The cab stops before a pretty private residence in the
Avenue Wagram.
"Is Madame Jeliagin at home?" asks Lensky, while his son pays the
cabman. Lensky never carries a groschen of money about with him.
"Madame cannot be seen," replies the servant at the house-door. Then a
charming figure in a short, dark blue dress rushes down four, five
steps at a time to the virtuoso.
"Ah!"
How often the little cry of joy with which his little daughter throws
her soft, warm arms round his neck will ring in the ears of the artist
as he grows older. And the kiss of her dewy, fresh, innocent lips--will
he ever forget it? Mascha has lips like a four-year-old child.
"Papa! Colia! How lovely that you are both here, but how late!" says
she, taking the hand of each and leading them into the hall. "Yes, how
late! I have been standing at the window since ten o'clock, and looking
to see if you were coming."
"You have lost much time, little one," says Lensky, and laughs.
"I had nothing to do but be happy with you, papa," replies she, and
rubs her delicate, flower-like face against his hand.
They are now in the hall. One can scarcely think of anything more
attractive than this room, with its old Flemish tapestry hangings, and
in the background the heavy oaken stairs leading to the upper stories.
"It is pretty here, is it not, papa?" says Mascha, as she notices
Lensky's glance slowly wandering over every object. "The colors all
harmonize so charmingly," she continues; and with the important
consciousness of saying something wise, she adds: "I call that eye
music."
"A highly descriptive word. I will write it down," jests Lensky. "I had
no suspicion that the Jeliagins lived so well," he adds, and seeks
Nikolai's glance. How could he have asserted that Barbara Alexandrovna
was in bad circumstances?
"Yes, the whole house is pretty, all the rooms," says Mascha. "I have
been all over it already, in the stable and in the attic. But sit down
here near the chimney, papa; and you here, Colia. Ah! how nice to have
you both together. Only poor mamma is missing!"
And the tender-hearted child, with whom joy and pain are always near
together, rubs the tears from her eyes. Then she gives herself a little
shake--this is not the day to be sad. "Only think, papa!"
"Well, what then, my angel?"
"When one comes in here, one imagines that aunt is very wealthy; but
she is quite, quite poor." Maschenka's voice sinks tragically. "Early
this morning some one came with a bill from the dressmaker, I think. At
first aunt denied herself; and then there was such a noise that she
came out to quiet the people. Poor aunt had to beg the people to wait.
How horrible! But the worst of all was"--Maschenka whispers quite
mysteriously to him--"the worst of it was that then, afterward, Anna
scolded poor aunt; the daughter scolded her mother. '_Vous manquez de
dignite maman!_' cried she. 'You behave like a baker-woman. Never would
these dirty loafers'--yes, she expressed herself so, '_ces sales
canailles_'--'permit themselves such insolence if you knew how to act
like a lady.' And poor aunt only replied quite humbly: 'Don't be vexed,
my heart. I will be wiser another time. Have patience with me.' That
went to my heart. I would have liked to fall on poor aunt's neck, but I
dared not let her perceive that I had heard anything. She is very nice
and good to me. Except Anna, they are all good to me." She throws her
arms round Lensky's neck, and drawing his head down to her, she
whispers in his ear: "What has Nikolai against me, papa? He does not
look at me to-day."
"He is dissatisfied with you."
"With me?" Mascha springs up. "What have I done to you, Colia? I have
noticed the whole time that you have not laughed a single time. Please
say it, so that it will be over."
Nikolai stands there like the picture of an earnest young mentor who
prepares himself for a lecture that will not cross his lips.
Mascha loses patience. "Don't cough incessantly; open your mouth and
speak!" calls out she, and the energetic little person stamps her foot
violently.
"Do not be so angry," says Nikolai, good-naturedly. Then he takes his
sister's hand in his, and looking down at her very lovingly, he says:
"Yes, Mascha, I am dissatisfied with you; you have guessed rightly.
Every one who really loves you must be dissatisfied with the imprudent
self-will which you showed by your yesterday's prank."
"H-m! were you dissatisfied?" asks Maschenka, turning to her father,
defiantly.
To her great astonishment, Lensky remains silent. She pouts, and
Nikolai continues: "Father was so touched by your tenderness that he
forgot everything else, but I assure you that the thought that you
could a second time go about in the world so unprotected is just as
fearful to him as to me."
"God knows it," Lensky assures her emphatically.
Maschenka's childish self-sufficiency diminishes considerably; she
lowers her head and bites her under lip; she fights back tears. She had
been so proud of her stroke of genius, and now----
"I do not want to quarrel with you," continues Nikolai, kindly, "only
warn you. You imagine that I am displeased with you for worldly
reasons, which you despise. Oh! we know that. But this time I have
nothing to say of the gossip to which you expose yourself. The
principal thing with me is, that by such wrong precipitation as your
flight from Arcachon you run the risk of dangers and embarrassments of
which you have no suspicion, and which could destroy all happiness in
your existence for you. Therefore, Maschenka, be wise, give me your
hand upon it, and your word of honor that you will never again run away
from home secretly and unprotected."
The tender tone in which Nikolai has delivered his little lecture has
evidently gone to Mascha's heart.
"Well, Maschenka, darling, will you give me your word of honor?" asks
Nikolai, earnestly.
She is just about to stretch out her hand to him to seal the solemn
promise he has asked; then suddenly her manner changes, she throws back
her head. "I will promise nothing," says she, looking at her brother
out of her dark blue eyes with tender roguishness--"nothing at all."
"But, Mascha!"
"No, no, no," says she. "Why should I? It would be no use, Nikolai.
For, do you see, if I should ever be in a similar fit of anxiety about
you, then, then, Colia, I should lose my head again, and not only run
away a second time, but, if it was necessary, break my word of honor."
And laughing, but with eyes full of tears, she throws both arms around
Nikolai's neck and says: "Now be angry, very angry, quickly!"
Lensky laughs his good-natured, deep laugh, and repeats mockingly: "So,
please be angry, Colia, really." And Nikolai draws himself up, wishes
to once more explain to his sister more emphatically and severely
how perfectly unsuitable he has found her behavior, and instead of
that--yes, instead of that--he only kisses her tenderly, and murmurs:
"Ah! you dear, good-for-nothing little witch, you, if you were only
half so wise as you are good and charming--or, or if one could always
be with you to protect you!"
At these loving words, Maschenka bursts into tears. "What is the
matter, darling?" asks Nikolai.
"But, my little dove!" says Lensky, quite amazed.
She turns from one to the other. "You are both too good to me, and I am
too happy," sobs she. While father and brother are still occupied in
calming her with jests and caresses, the rustle of a silk dress causes
them to turn their heads.
Down the broad oak stairs came two ladies, Madame Jeliagin and her
daughter Anna; the first, her hair arranged in the fashion of twenty
years ago, in a faded violet silk dress; the second, a brilliant
apparition in faultless morning dress, tall, blonde, with regular
features, which, alas! are disfigured by an expression of great
arrogance.
Barbara Jeliagin throws herself upon Lensky, and kisses him on both
cheeks. Anna scarcely gives him her finger-tips. She cannot bear these
barbarous caresses which are repeated at all Russian family scenes.
Lensky himself feels a little surprised at his sister-in-law's
affectionateness; he looks at her in astonishment. Is it possible that
this withered old woman in the faded dress is really the Barbe Jeliagin
formerly celebrated for the luxuriance of her toilets, the exotic
unusualness of her entertainments, his wife's sister, the arrogant
"Princess Barbe," who had never ceased to regard her sister's marriage
to the violinist as a _mesalliance_?
"My poor sister! You know that she refused Pierre Trubezkoy. We were
horrified at her marriage. Lensky is really a great genius!" He knew
that she used to say this to all her distinguished acquaintances. He
had heard her say it himself once, and now----
* * * * *
"Was I right with regard to the Jeliagins?" Nikolai asks his father,
when, an hour later, they leave the pretty house.
"Yes," replied Lensky, thoughtfully. He did not tell his son that
Barbara had made use of the first moment when she was alone with
him to ask him for money, but he murmured frequently to himself:
"Things have gone down with Barbe. Who would have thought it? Life has
not used her tenderly!" He remembered his son's words, who had boldly
asserted that Mascha could nowhere be worse taken care of than with
this good-natured, characterless woman, who turned with the wind, and
who was completely without will opposed to her daughter's arrogance.
"Not worse!" repeated Lensky. Now that was exaggeration. Still he must
try to seek another home for Mascha. But where, then, where? On the
whole, Colia's plan was not so bad. In spite of the extravagant
generosity which he had always shown to his family, in spite of the
unlimited benevolence which would have put many princes to shame, his
means sufficed to make Mascha's life as happy, as comfortable as the
vain little thing could wish. And how delightful it would be to have
this charming little being always about him, to be able to pet her from
morning to evening! That was his manner of loving a child! But that
would be all the same if it did not happen to-day or to-morrow. No;
only this one more last time would he loose the reins, satiate himself
with the mad, gipsy life.
The virtuoso tour which Herr Braun had planned for him lasted into
June. That was not much longer, scarcely six months. With that he would
finish, in order to then found a calm, quiet home somewhere.
VIII.
If any one had ventured to tell Nikolai that he would fall in love at
first sight with a girl with whom he had not exchanged a word, he would
really have laughed in the person's face.
In love with an unknown, he, Nikolai, the prudent Nikolai Lensky,
doubly prudent from opposition to his easily excited father, giving way
unresistingly to every momentary impression? Nonsense! And still he
could not deny it. For a week he had thought of nothing but Nita.
Besides, it must be said that fortune seemed to have given herself the
task of exciting into uproar his power of imagination, of fanning into
a flame the slight fire within him, by continually letting her appear
before him like a lovely _Fata Morgana_, without granting him an
opportunity of meeting her.
The day after the concert he had presented himself at the two young
ladies' studio, to inquire after Nita's health. He had not seen Nita,
only Sophie, who told him that her friend had kept her room on account
of a severe headache.
Dear, good Sophie! How glad she was to see him, so heartily, so truly.
She had grown much prettier in this last year; he told her so to her
face, at which she blushed charmingly. Then he asked about all kinds of
things: how she liked the modern Babylon, where she had learned to know
her friend, what kind of a person she was. That he naturally did only
in the interest of his little adopted sister. He must convince himself
whether association with the young Austrian was desirable for her.
Sophie did not need to be urged to tell him of her idolized friend. The
harshness, and at the same time the boundless goodness, of her nature
she described to him, the strange mixture of man-like strength of
decision and the charming loveliness with which she could make good her
vexing roughness. She repeated to him Nita's gay _traits d'esprit_, she
showed him Nita's studies.
An hour, an hour and a half he remained in the studio. Sophie made him
a cup of tea, told him of Nita's family, that she had a cousin in Paris
whose name was Count Baerenburg, _attache_ to the Russian embassy, a
very good-looking man, and very amusing in conversation, without much
depth. He often visited Nita in the studio. Nikolai must know him.
Yes, Nikolai said he knew him, and Sophie talked on until at length
twilight fell. Nikolai accompanied her to the house-door in the Rue
Murillo, and assured her that for a long time nothing had so truly
pleased him as to see her again.
What conclusions Sonia might draw from this unusual warmth of her
cousin he did not for a moment consider.
Two days later, at the opera--he sat in the parquet--he heard some
Paris dandies whispering of the beauty of a new apparition. These young
men's opera-glasses all aimed at the same front row box. He looked up.
There, near an old lady whom he had seen as a child in St. Petersburg
with his mother, and had recently met again in Raris, Lady Baerenburg,
he saw Nita. She wore a white low-neck dress, and a few red roses on
her breast.
Meanwhile the representation of "L'Africaine" went on with all the
effect which is given to a Meyerbeer opera in Paris. Nikolai scarcely
noticed it. Unchangedly he looked up and observed the young girl, each
characteristic movement, the incessantly changing expression of her
face, on which light and shade seemed to chase each other.
She attracted him as everything mysterious attracts one. Why did she
affect this mocking coldness? he asked himself. Why did she conceal the
most beautiful part of herself?
At the close of the performance, he stood at the edge of the broad
stairs to see her pass by. From afar he discovered her gold-lit hair.
Now she came by him. She was leaning on Baerenburg's arm. She was
wrapped in a white wrap whose fur border came up to her ear tips and
concealed half her face.
His look met that of the young girl. Before he had time to remove his
hat Nita had turned away her head with a short, repellant gesture.
The sweetness of fresh roses passed by him with her. He stood there as
if rooted to the ground. Why had she avoided his greeting? What had he
done? Rage gnawed at his heart; no longer would he trouble himself
about this arrogant girl; it was indeed scarcely worth the trouble to
rack his brains as to what secret lay hidden in her cold gray eyes.
The next day he met her again unexpectedly on the Boulevard de
Courcelles. She wore the same simple dress in which he had seen her the
first time at the concert, and walked very quickly without looking to
the right or the left, like some one who has a significant aim and a
fixed time before her.
A little child, frightened by a large dog, slipped and fell down on the
sidewalk, crying loudly. Nikolai wished to pick it up. Nita was before
him. She picked up the child and asked if she had hurt herself. She had
only scratched her hands and chin a little, but she was very dirty.
She soiled Nita's dress while she leaned close up to her in her
four-year-old sobbing, childish fear. But Nita did not seem to notice
that, or, at least, to pay any attention to it, and calmed her with all
kinds of caressing talk. Then she wiped the child's face with her
handkerchief, kissed her, and finally she took one of her hands, red
with cold, in hers, and quite unembarrassed, pursued her way with the
poorly dressed little thing to a cake-shop.
There she seated the child at a table. The child drank chocolate from a
large, thick cup which she had to hold with both hands; then she set
down the cup with a sigh of deep satisfaction, and consumed a cake with
the thoughtful slowness of a child unaccustomed to the enjoyment of
such luxuries, who seeks to prolong it as long as possible, while Nita
looks at her pleasantly, nothing less than sentimental.
Nikolai's heart beat loud. He left his post as listener from fear that
she would discover him at his lover's watch. For he was in love, that
he now knew himself; he no longer denied it, for he knew better; he
knew very well that the girl with the pale face and the brilliant eyes
held the happiness of his life in her hands, that great, warm happiness
for which his care-laden youth longed in vain.
IX.
There is a great uneasiness in the ladies' studio in the Avenue
Frochot. In spite of its being merely the beginning of December,
already many of the students have begun to think of the great yearly
exhibition of sending to the Salon.
Nita's sanctum has not caught the fever of acute striving for effect in
the adjoining room.
Sophie still paints with the same conscientious industry and touching
lack of skill at a skull, and Nita--Nita is quite sunk in the study of
a new model, over which she is unusually enthusiastic. The model is
none other than the brown-curled child whose acquaintance she recently
made on the sidewalk when Nikolai watched her. Just now she has gone to
look at the different attempts in the adjoining school, when she hears
a short scream, and a rattling, banging noise in her room.
"Pardon me, ladies," says she, while she turns her head and listens;
"if I am not mistaken something has come to grief in my room, probably
my little Lucca della Robbia. What is it?" says she, opening the door
of her studio. A memorable sight meets her eyes then. In the middle of
the studio, her little hands clutching her temples with horror, stands
a young girl with the face of Ribera's Maria Egyptiaca, and stares down
at a skull which, broken in two pieces, lies at her feet.
"It is only my Cousin Mascha, who is afraid of the skull; she even
threw it on the floor," says Sophie, in her wonderfully phlegmatic
manner, and with that she stoops down for the pieces to fit them
together and put them in their place again.
"Oh! how can you touch the horrid thing?" says Mascha, holding her
hands over her eyes, and tapping her foot. "Oh, oh!"
"Poor little thing, how she trembles!" says Nita, compassionately,
while she goes up to Mascha. "Throw your stupid skull in the fire,
Sophie. You see that the child cannot bear the sight of it."
"That is very foolish; one should be over that at seventeen. It is very
hard to get skulls," replies Sophie, vexedly.
But Nita does not notice that. She has taken Mascha in her arms, and
caresses her like a mother who would calm an excited child. "So, dear
heart, the ugly thing is gone. You can open your pretty eyes. Poor
little soul!"
"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch is very good to you," now calls a young man's
voice.
Nita looks up and perceives Nikolai. Evidently the little beauty is his
sister. He bows, and turning to Mascha once more, he says: "And now
tell Fraeulein von Sankjewitch that you are sorry to have been so
ill-bred."
Mascha has wiped the tears from her eyes; she looks at Nita touchingly,
thankfully; then smiling, with the tender roguishness which adds so
much to the charm of her little personality, she says: "I am not sorry.
You would not have been so kind to me if I had been polite, would you?"
And with that she lays her arm somewhat shyly around Nita's neck and
presses her soft lips to the young artist's smooth cheeks. "I was
beside myself," says she. "Ah! I am so afraid of death! If only there
was no dying!"
"It is a peculiarity of hers. One must have a little patience with her
in that direction," explains Nikolai.
"Give us some tea, Sophie. That will give the child something else to
think of," says Nita, without noticing Nikolai's remark.
To-day, also, she is strikingly stiff and cold to him, so that he asks
himself: "What has she against me?" Nevertheless, she warms somewhat in
the course of conversation. The young man visibly gains ground with
her.
He is decidedly very agreeable in intercourse. He has the quiet
manners, easily adapting themselves to circumstances, of a true
gentleman. He talks well, without tasteless chattering. Nita listens
to him with interest, asks him all kinds of questions about Russia,
and, on the whole, treats him with the indifferent kindness of a
fifty-year-old woman to a boy.
The ladies in the next room have long left their work; twilight falls.
Still they talk. Sophie is quiet for the most part, listens,
comfortably and idly reclining in her easy-chair, to the conversation
of the two persons who are dearest to her, and wonders at them both
silently.
But Maschenka, whose mood has completely changed, and who has now
become immoderately gay, is not at all content to play the _role_ of
silent listener. Every moment her trilling, childish laugh, or some
strange little remark, interrupts Nita and Nikolai's earnest
conversation, so that finally Nikolai, who is always afraid that his
sister will be misunderstood, remarks:
"My little sister has lately been with relatives who were a little too
cold and formal to understand her exaggeration. One must not be
astonished if she is at times a little bit wild; she is like a little
brook, long held captive by winter, which, after a little bit of
sunshine has set it free, now doubly laughs and chatters and foams,
because it is so happy to be free of the heavy, oppressive ice. Are you
not, little goose?" And he takes Mascha by the chin.
"Do not make excuses because you have a charming sister," Nita hereupon
answers him. "I shall be glad if you will bring her to see me very soon
again."
* * * * *
If Nikolai's vexation at his sister's flight from Arcachon very
soon lost itself in tender emotion, on the contrary, the horror which
Sergei Alexandrovitch felt at this headlong self-will was of a much
more enduring quality. The tender, repentant letter with which
Maschenka begged the uncle from whose house she had fled to pardon her
over-haste, Sergei left unanswered. To Nikolai's note which, joined in
his sister's request, tried to excuse Mascha's fault a little, and
asked whether he might, after his father had left Paris, again bring
the child to Arcachon, the old bureaucrat replied that there would
be no talk of that. The condition of his nerves would not permit
him a second time to undertake the oversight of such an unreliable
being as Mascha. In his opinion the best thing would be to send her to
boarding-school.
This was also Nikolai's opinion under the circumstances. For the
present a stay in an ordinarily strict school seemed to him decidedly
more desirable for Mascha than a continued existence with the
Jeliagins.
He even succeeded in winning his father to this view, but when Mascha
learned what they planned for her future, she rebelled angrily,
desperately, and with anxious, touching tenderness for so long that
Lensky, in spite of all his son's representations, gave way to her. He
could not bear to see the little one unhappy. He formally begged her
pardon, with caresses and endearing words, that he had proposed
anything which had excited and vexed her. Nikolai shrugged his
shoulders and was powerless. But Mascha laughed gayly, happy at her
victory.
How happy she was at that time--from morning till evening, happy!
Except for the little tear intermezzo, she had never been so happy as
in the three weeks which passed between her arrival and her father's
departure from Paris.
Every morning he passed at his sister-in-law's house; usually he
remained to lunch. He sent his pretty daughter all the wonderfully
beautiful floral tributes which enthusiasts sent him, and besides that,
indulged her with imprudent, immoderate generosity. Again and again he
turned to Nikolai with the same: "Get me something for the child; she
is so bewitching when she is pleased. She rejoices like a gipsy!"
"I have something for you, Puss," said he, when he went to see her,
after she had greeted him, and handed her a package done up in paper,
usually an ornament that was much too costly for her youth.
"Ah! give it to me, papa," and then she tore off the wrapping with the
active impatience of a young, playful kitten, and opened the parcel.
Lensky watched her good-naturedly with smiling expectation, like a
great child that every day rejoices in playing the same trick--a
sparkle of two dark blue eyes, a gay, penetrating cry of joy, and two
soft, warm arms are thrown round his neck. But he presses his lips to
the great, wonderfully beautiful eyes again and again, and murmurs
something tender, incomprehensible, to the girl's curly hair.
"Really, do you love me much, papa?" said she once, and looked at him
in astonishment piercingly at his moved face.
"Have you ever doubted it?"
"Yes, often," she nodded, earnestly. "I thought to love mutually with
all one's heart was only for ordinary people like we others; but a
great genius like you only tolerates one love, and sometimes is pleased
without really returning it. But no; you really like me!"
"Oh! you foolish little monkey!" murmured he, and kissed each separate
dimple in her soft, white, child's hands.
Sometimes he came at ten o'clock in the morning. At that time he
frequently saw Barbara in a spotted morning dress, creeping about the
house armed with a duster, polishing and putting everything to rights.
He never saw Anna at such an early hour; at most, he heard her sharp
voice wounding her mother by some sharp, insulting expression. Not only
did she never help her mother in her domestic activity, no, she shut
herself up in her room in order not to see Barbara about it.
But whom Lensky very often found busy about the house with Madame
Jeliagin, was Mascha. Enveloped in a large blue apron, she appeared now
here, now there, as zealously as gayly trying to assist her poor,
sickly aunt; and what a capable, vigorous assistance! Her firm young
fingers arranged things quite differently from Barbara's trembling
hands. She climbed up on the furniture to remove cobwebs from the
picture frames, she polished the mirrors and dusted the ornaments,
practical and active as a housemaid by profession, and still laughing
with gay, fairy-like grace, as a little princess, as if it were all a
joke.
All the servants worshipped her; even the weary, stupid, tormented old
Aunt Jeliagin learned to love her. It would be hard not to love this
quick, lively, impetuous, but always kind-hearted little girl; only the
intolerable Anna did not.
But if one, on the one hand, could think of nothing more enchanting
than the girl, glowing with happy, tender young life, on the other
hand, one could hardly imagine anything more touching and noble than
Lensky in the hours passed with his little daughter.
If he now, as soon as his nature was aroused, lost all restraint, and
then the worst part of him showed itself rougher, and less vaguely than
formerly--rougher than could be understood in a civilized man--on the
other hand, as long as the evil in him slept, he showed himself nobler,
more blameless than formerly in his best moments.
What had formerly been united in him was now separated. Nikolai, who
frequently accompanied him to the Avenue Wagram, observed him in
astonishment.
This was not the same man who in the evening, greedily eating, and with
cynical, twinkling eyes, sat between some pair of hysterical
enthusiasts, to whom he permitted himself to say all that was coarse
and familiar--the man with the hard, joyless laugh, the two-sided wit,
the shameless scorn of men, and especially women.
No; the Lensky who in the morning took his pretty little daughter in
his arms, was a pale, somewhat weary and sad man, a man with a hoarse
but soft and rather low voice, a man who spoke little, but listened
pleasantly, who was always ready to interest himself in the most
foolish childishness.
After lunch he usually remained an hour or so, and played with Mascha.
Even his art he involuntarily changed for love of her. The wild fire
with which he enslaved his concert audiences was perhaps lacking, but
how tender, how delicate, how noble, became his playing if he felt the
gaze of the child's eyes filled with tears and enthusiasm resting upon
him.
She might accompany him! Ah! how proud she was if he called out a
hearty word of praise to her in the midst of his playing! And there was
no lack of opportunity to applaud her.
Frequently he let her play to him alone on the piano, listened to her
with the greatest patience, yes, with true pleasure. He made little
conscientious corrections, mingled with jests--really troubled himself
seriously with her instruction.
Nikolai, as child and youth, had in vain tormented himself musically,
only at length to separate _a l'aimable_ from the piano, the violin,
and the 'cello. Mascha, on the contrary, was incredibly talented in
music. What others attained by weary study, she had inherited. The
flexibility of her wrists, the smoothness of her touch, were something
at which Lensky could not cease to marvel.
How they rejoiced in each other, father and child!
The only hours of those three weeks disturbed by unrepulsable
melancholy were, for Mascha, those which she passed at her father's
concerts. Naturally, she never missed one; but, very pretty and
tastefully dressed, sat now with Colia, at other times with her aunt,
in an especially good place, which was reserved for her, and listened
attentively to every tone. In the hall there was no one--no, not even
among the many professional violinists who envied him his triumphs--who
had more plainly remarked the great change which began to take place in
the genial virtuoso than his idolizing daughter. She felt it every time
that he played falsely. She could have wept, her breath failed her, she
looked around the hall, frightened and yet defiantly.
But unconfusedly the Parisians raved over even the falsest tones with
the same enthusiasm. One kindled another with the same madly expressed
animation, until at length Mascha persuaded herself that she must have
heard falsely from anxiety for her father, and, carried away by the
noise, forgot all her grief.
X.
"They have come from Felix with the dress for mademoiselle--oh, a
wonder of a dress! The girl is waiting up-stairs," the maid calls out
to Mascha, who has just returned with Nikolai from a walk in the Champs
Elysees.
It is the last day before Lensky's departure. Maschenka is very
depressed. She has almost cried her eyes out over the approaching
separation, and Nikolai has taken her out-doors to distract her, and
also so that she may not disfigure herself for the evening. An
important event is before her for this evening. Mascha is for the first
time to appear in society as a young lady, for the first time to wear a
real evening dress, a Felix evening dress.
Madame Jeliagin gives a _soiree_ in Lensky's honor. She hopes that the
charm which the great artist for the moment has for Parisian society
will suffice to at last once more fill her empty rooms.
"Yes, a dress, a true wonder of a dress," the maid had called out to
Mascha, and although the girl's eyes yet shone with recent tears, she
cried out with joy at this message. Throwing gay kisses to her brother,
she runs quickly up the stairs, and bursts open the door of her room.
"Where is the dress--where? Ah!!"
Indeed, a lovely dress, and how it fits! No, not quite; a little
alteration must be made, declares the girl who brought it. "When one
has the fortune to work for any one who has such a beautiful figure as
mademoiselle, one must not be careless."
Beautiful figure!
No one had ever yet told Mascha that she had a beautiful figure. She
turns her head on all sides to look at herself in the glass. For the
first time she finds the mirror over her toilet table too small. Her
eyes dance, her finger-tips twitch for joy. Incessantly she turns over
the dress, discovering new beauties. "Ah, it is superb! But will the
seamstress finish the alteration in time?" she asks, anxiously.
Now all is arranged. The maid has thrown a red scarf of India cashmere
around Mascha's shoulders. She hurries down the stairs, bursts into the
room, and throwing away the scarf, hurries up to her father and
Nikolai.
"_Eh bien!_" says she, and turns slowly around like a figure in a shop.
"_Eh bien!_"
They are alone in the drawing-room, the two Lenskys and the young girl.
What joy to let herself be admired by father and brother without being
at the same time submitted to Anna's icy, depressing criticism!
"I am quite ready on this side," she declares importantly, and points
to her right arm, which is enveloped to the shoulder in a tan-colored
glove, while the left is still bare.
"So! Well, I prefer the other side," says Lensky, laughing. And in
truth one can think of nothing more charming than this bare, round,
slender arm, not statuesque, white as the arm of a married woman of
thirty--no, even a trifle red on the upper part, but with such a
bewitching dimple at the elbow, with such tiny blue veins around the
wrist.
"Yes; I decidedly prefer it," repeated Lensky, and pushes his daughter
somewhat from him in order to observe her more particularly. Nikolai
also looks attentively at his sister, tries to make the necessary
remarks, to criticise a little. But as she stands before him in her
artistically simple white dress, her little fingers twitching with
embarrassment, and with her large, anxious eyes seeking approval in his
face which she awaited so securely and now cannot find, it really seems
to him that never in his life has he met a lovelier young girl than
Mascha. What shoulders, what a figure, so beautifully rounded, without
the immature thinness of other seventeen-year-old girls. And what is
most charming in this unusual little being, on these plump, dazzling
shoulders rests such a sweet, pale, little childish face, with such a
tender, innocent mouth, with such indescribably pure eyes, looking out
boldly and fearlessly at the world, so that the contrast is really
painful. One feels that the girl has been desecrated by no grovelling
curiosity, no passionate dreams; that she is perfectly unconscious of
her physical maturity.
"You are not as beautiful as your mother was," says Lensky after
awhile.
"No one else is as beautiful; but that is not necessary," says Mascha,
now really troubled. "But--but do I not, then, please you at all?"
"You foolish little goose, do you believe that?" says Lensky, drawing
his daughter to him. "We will not tease you any longer, eh, Colia? We
will at last tell her quite simply that she looks charming. Yes," he
repeated, holding her head down on his shoulder and stroking it, "you
are charming, my little dove. You will certainly hear it often enough
to-day, and later. Why should I not enjoy the pleasure of being the
first to say it to you? You are still a little bit tear-stained," adds
he very gently. "Poor little heart, poor angel! But it is becoming to
you!"
For the moment, Mascha is so filled with childish desire for praise
that she has no sense left for what is the dearest thing in the world
for her--the tenderness of her father.
"If I only had a cheval glass in my room," sighed she. "I really have
not seen myself yet." And, exhilarated by her father's praise, she
climbs up on a stool, and, turning her head to all sides, she tries to
see herself as well as possible in the glass over the chimney.
The chandelier sheds a golden light over her dark hair; the reflection
of the fire flickers over her white dress. "Father, Colia," asks she,
somewhat hesitatingly, "do you think that any one could ever fall in
love with me?"
Just then "Herr Graf Baerenburg," calls the servant, and opens the door.
Blushing to the roots of her hair, Mascha springs down from the stool.
Baerenburg has only had time to wonder at a pair of very white shoulders
in the fullest light, then to see a pair of tiny feet appear from a
fragrant cloud of valenciennes and muslin, and jump down to the ground.
"Well, what do you say to my vain daughter, Count Baerenburg?" asks
Lensky, gayly, to help Mascha over her embarrassment.
Baerenburg shrugs his shoulders with an approving expression, and
replies: "That I have never seen a pair of smaller feet, that is all."
Lensky laughs, Nikolai frowns, and Maschenka, with a quick gesture,
picks up the formerly discarded red cashmere scarf from the ground and
wraps herself in it. Her bare shoulders suddenly annoy her. She is
ashamed.
"Only so that you will not take cold," jokes Lensky, and teasingly
draws the red scarf together under her chin. "She appears in the world
to-day for the first time as a young lady," says he, turning to
Baerenburg, and looks at him significantly. Does the conceited Austrian
really remark how charming his little girl is?
The conceited Austrian notices it only too well. "The first evening
dress. I congratulate you," says he, bowing respectfully to Mascha.
"I had no idea--" now begins Mascha.
"That you would have the misfortune to be obliged to endure me at
dinner to-day," Baerenburg completes her sentence. "Mademoiselle
Jeliagin wrote me asking, if I were not engaged, to dine _en famille_
at her mother's. I was already engaged"--with a side glance at
Mascha--"but I excused myself. Have I perhaps made a mistake in the
date?"
"Oh, no!" replies Mascha. "Now I remember, Anna told me some gentleman
would come to dinner, and I was vexed that my last dinner with papa
would be spoiled."
"Mascha!" says Nikolai, shocked.
And Lensky says, half vexed, half laughingly: "My daughter looks like a
grown girl; really, she is, I believe, twelve years old at the most."
"Papa!" says Mascha, blushing hotly. "I did not know that it was to be
Count Baerenburg when I was vexed."
"So, and that alters the case," laughs Baerenburg.
"It seems so," replies Nikolai.
But Mascha, observing that they are making merry over her _naivete_,
suddenly becomes very dignified and says: "It stands to reason that a
man who has saved my brother's life should not be a mere casual
acquaintance to me." Then, becoming defiant from embarrassment, she
slips her little hand in Nikolai's arm and adds: "I love my brother
dearly."
Then the Jeliagins enter the room, the temperature falls a couple of
degrees, the atmosphere becomes icy.
They look strangely: Barbara in her faded lilac dress and imitation
diamonds. As for Anna, she is, in her cold, blond manner, without doubt
very handsome, and her black tulle gown becomes her somewhat too tall
and slender figure wonderfully. But although she is but twenty-six, her
appearance has already that not to be described sharpness, pointedness,
dryness, the sign of girls whose bloom begins to wither before it has
yet found opportunity to fully unfold.
But without criticising her cousin's charms, Mascha only calls out
enthusiastically and childishly: "Oh, Anna, how lovely you look--oh,
how lovely! What a shame that I am not old enough to wear black!"
"Do not act as if you had never seen a well-dressed woman before," Anna
whispers to her impatiently. "You behave like a village girl."
And Mascha blushes and lowers her head. During this skirmish between
the two cousins, Madame Jeliagin has welcomed Baerenburg in the most
friendly manner; now Anna stretches out her hand with the manner of an
empress conferring a favor. "It is very nice in you, Count, to have
drawn a mark through our old cotillon quarrel." And turning to the
others, she explains: "This autumn in Spaa, at a ball of the Marquise
d'Arly, I had no favor left for Count Baerenburg. He--h-m!--did me the
honor to be mortally offended at it." Baerenburg, who has forgotten the
whole affair as completely as the date of Shakespeare's birth, bows
deeply, and murmurs something. Suddenly Anna turns critically to her
cousin. "But, Marie," she exclaims, looking at the thick string of
pearls around Mascha's round throat, "what were you thinking of to
adorn yourself with wax pearls like an Indian?"
"Wax pearls?" burst out Mascha, indignantly. "They are the pearls which
our dear dead empress gave papa for mamma once when he played at court.
They are wonderful pearls!"
"I had already noticed them. I have seldom seen such beautiful ones,"
says Baerenburg. "My mother possesses a similar string, but only wears
them on great occasions."
"My mamma wore them day and night, from the hour when papa hung them
around her neck," announces Mascha, cordially. "Mamma told me at first
she was frightened at the gift, and said pearls mean tears; then papa
kissed the pearls and replied: 'Yes, but tears of joy.' Do you
remember, papa?" asks she, looking up at him.
"Yes," says he, shortly.
"And when, two years before her death, she hung the pearls round my
neck, she also kissed them, and said, with her dear smile: 'Do not
forget, Maschenka, they are tears of joy!' Since then I have never
parted with them."
"That is all very pretty and poetic," replies Anna, condescendingly,
"but as you cannot tell this touching commentary to your splendor to
every one, I would advise you to take off the pearls for this evening.
It is absolutely unsuitable for a girl of your age to wear such costly
ornaments. You are, without that, dressed absurdly elegantly--_c'est
d'un gout douteux!_"
"Take off my pearls!" calls out Mascha, unspeakably vexed at Anna's
condescending tone, with a violence which plainly betrays the dangerous
vehemence of her nature inherited from her father. "No, never! Never!"
she repeats, seizing the necklace with both hands. "I would rather stay
in my room the whole evening and not show myself, if you are afraid I
might shame you."
A moment before, Lensky felt an almost uncontrollable desire to throw
something at Anna's head, but Mascha's burst of rage has a subduing
effect on his own excitement. Not for anything in the world would he
have his daughter appear to disadvantage.
"But, Maschenka," says he, gently, laying his hand on hers, "collect
yourself. Anna does not mean badly. In the end it is quite indifferent
whether an insignificant little thing like you has a black or a white
neckband on. Restrain yourself, my little dove. Do not forget that you
are a guest here." A stern word would, perhaps, have steeled her.
Lensky's gentleness spoils everything.
"Ah! I am everywhere only a guest, and no longer at home anywhere,"
says she. Tears came to her eyes. She tried hard to be mistress of
herself, choked down what she could; her unpractised seventeen-year-old
self-restraint does not endure, and suddenly bursting into convulsive
sobs, she leaves the room. An unpleasant silence follows.
Anna boldly displays her vexation, old Madame Jeliagin smiles sweetly
and politely into air, Lensky looks angry, and Colia murmurs
excusingly: "She is very over excited. She cannot console herself for
the parting from you this time, father."
"Yes, yes, I know," says Lensky. "Poor child! No self-control--no
self-control." And turning directly to Baerenburg, he adds: "She lost
her mother three years ago, just when she needed her most, and since
then she has been, so to speak, left to herself. But she is a good
child--a very good child."
"Shall I perhaps go up and look after her?" asks Madame Jeliagin,
coaxingly, of her brother-in-law.
"No, no, aunt, let me go," says Colia, hastily preventing. "I know her
better than you. I usually succeed quickly in calming her. She really
deserves to stay in her room, and she will be ashamed to come down
again; but if you will let me, I still will bring her. She has looked
forward so to this evening!"
"What would you do if your sister had behaved like Marie?" Anna
whispers to Count Baerenburg.
He knits his brows in lazy consideration. "H-m! h-m! The same that
Nikolai did--run after her to console her," replies he, slowly. "That
is, granted that my sister were as charming as your cousin, which she
is not."
XI.
Except for a few trifles, the dinner is prettily served, abundant and
good. The mood prevailing leaves so much the more to be desired.
Lensky, who is vexed that Maschenka has made a scene before the
"stupid, arrogant Austrian," says nothing. Old Madame Jeliagin is
consumed with anxiety lest the service be broken. Mascha is awkward and
shy as an eight-year-old child who is ashamed of her naughtiness. Only
Anna feels thoroughly at ease, for it always has an exhilarating effect
upon her to sit between two handsome and polite young men, as to-day
between Nikolai and Baerenburg; but the latter looks quite
uninterruptedly over at Mascha.
"A charming creature, this Mascha," he thinks to himself. It pleases
him to repeat her strange name to himself. "Yes, a charming creature.
What a complexion, what a charming little mouth, and what a delightful
expression, changing incessantly from petulance to moving tenderness,
in her eyes! What shoulders! What a shame!"
Yes, what a shame to marry Marie Lensky. He could not think of it,
but--why should he not be a little pleasant to her? What Count
Baerenburg understands as being "a little pleasant," others would
describe as paying desperate court to a girl. But he sees nothing of
the sort, but takes the situation poetically.
"If only this silly Anna would not be so unbearably attentive!" thinks
he, and still looks secretly over at Mascha.
She now stands near Lensky, before the mantel, pale, and with a
treacherous redness of the heavy eyelids. With a kind but very earnest
face, bending down to her, holding one of her small hands between his
large ones, her father speaks very gently but impressively to her,
evidently reproves her, and in a strange, melodious language, which
goes to Baerenburg's heart, although he understands not a word of it,
the wonderful Russian tongue which, like no other, contains and
reflects the whole character of the people for whom it serves as
expression.
After Lensky has finished his admonition, Maschenka, innocently
unembarrassed, stretches out her arms to her father, and kisses him.
Baerenburg is thrilled.
Meanwhile, Lensky, gently reproving her, says in French: "And now
behave like a sensible being, Mascha. So! Sit up straight, and play
something for us, now, before the people come."
"But papa!"
"Yes, no evasions, only play. Rely on me, you may venture it," says
Lensky. "I have been enough ashamed of you to-day, and, for a change,
would like to be proud of you. Sit down--my heart--I take the risk; it
will go!" And with that he raised the piano lid himself. "The A minor
rondo of Mozart!"
For one instant she hesitated, then the wish to distinguish herself
before Baerenburg, to please her father, comes to her. She plays, and
how beautifully she plays!
As if electrified, Baerenburg rises and goes up to the piano. He has a
great love for good music. The A minor rondo is his express favorite.
In this composition of universal sadness, in which the purest artist
soul which ever came down to us from heaven weeps over the frivolity of
an entire century, Mascha's still immature but always tender and
delicately shaded mastery is especially noticeable.
"That was entrancing," calls out Baerenburg, with true enthusiasm. "You
are a God-gifted artist!"
"That is she; I heard her without," suddenly a deep, old woman's voice
joins energetically in his praise.
The first of the ladies invited for the evening has appeared.
She is a very handsome old lady, an old lady with gay, mocking, and
still good-natured, sparkling blue eyes which betray her Irish
origin--a woman whom calumny has never ventured to touch, although she
has for thirty years been one of the "influentials" of Europe, one of
the two or three women for whom Lensky feels respect, Lady Banbury.
"I congratulate you on your daughter, Lensky," says she, greeting the
artist cordially. "So this is the fat little baby whom I used to carry
about in St. Petersburg. I am very glad to see you again, my child."
And Lady Banbury gives her hand to Mascha. But when Mascha, with a shy
courtesy, wishes to draw it to her lips, the old lady says: "I grudge
the leather your fresh lips; let me embrace you, that is, if it is not
unpleasant for you to kiss an old woman who loved your mother very
dearly. Ah! good evening, Nickolai. You here also, Charley?" to
Baerenburg. Then, at length, remembering the circumstance that she is
really not Lensky's but his sister-in-law's guest, she turns to the
latter.
Strange, all the truly distinguished ladies who are present this
evening commit the same, perhaps somewhat voluntary, error--they have
all come on Lensky's account merely; they come early, in simple
toilets. All have a pleasant word for Mascha, tease Lensky with some
ancient reminiscence, and Mascha is pleased with their charm, with the
gay mood which they have brought with them, with the great respect
which they show her father. Sonia comes, but not Nita. It is a great
disappointment for Nikolai. He has not yet ceased to inquire of Sophie
for her friend's health, when a large, stout, handsome, painted blonde
enters, a woman with too bare shoulders and too long train, a woman the
sight of whom has the effect of the Medusa's head upon all the other
women.
"How does she come here?" ask the other ladies. "How does she come
here?" they ask each other oftener and oftener, as, one after the
other, a procession of brilliant social ambiguities file in--a
cosmopolitan battalion of Lensky enthusiasts, recruited from the
highest circles.
Men appear sparsely. They form scarcely a third part of the numerous
guests.
Lensky has been playing for more than an hour. The women crowd around
him so that he has scarcely room to move his arm. His eyes wander
about him. He sees a confusion of bare necks, of brilliant eyes, of
half-parted lips. The sight goes to his head. The most insane
flatteries are repeated to him. He feels twenty years younger; a
triumphant insolence overpowers him.
In a concert hall, where the resonance is better, where the public is
more critical, he exerts himself with all the force of his powerful
nature; but here, in this narrow room, where nothing can be distinctly
heard, surrounded by an audience of musically ignorant women, he plays
like an intoxicated person. The air becomes ever more oppressive.
One person is boundlessly unhappy this evening. It is Mascha. Totally
ignorant of what her duties as hostess may prescribe, she is
incessantly corrected by her cousin, pushed about, has the feeling of
being in every one's way, and while she, quite unknown as she is,
creeps through the crowd assembled in the adjoining rooms, she hears
remarks about her father, his playing, his relations to women, which
send the blood to her cheeks, although she only half understands the
most.
At length Lensky has laid down his violin. All the respectable women
have withdrawn. Maschenka has helped them find their wraps. Most of
them were very pleasant; some kissed her good-by, some even asked
Nikolai to bring his sister to see them--but not very urgently.
If dear Natalie were still alive, why then they would be delighted to
see this charming Mascha, but to be forced to take these unbearable
Jeliagins into the bargain--that one must consider!
The Lensky enthusiasts have remained. Madame Jeliagin has invited them
to partake of light refreshments. Mascha tried to help her, and had the
misfortune to upset a cup of tea, whereupon, for the tenth time this
evening, she is bidden to "get out of the way."
Depressed and namelessly unhappy, she stands among the guests, not
knowing where to turn, when Baerenburg, coming up to her, remarks: "How
pale you look! It must be frightfully fatiguing to be hostess on such
occasions, especially if one is not accustomed to the task. Come into
the adjoining room, it is cooler there, and rest a little."
He gives her his arm and leads her into the adjacent drawing-room. Many
guests have already found the way here; it is not especially secluded
here, but enough so that the sympathetic pair can talk apart and
undisturbed, if not unobserved.
He leads her to a divan which is partly concealed by a miniature
thicket of palms and ferns.
"Will you not have an ice? It will refresh you," says he, and beckons a
servant.
Maschenka takes an ice, tastes it, and pushes it away.
"You are evidently very tired," remarks Baerenburg compassionately.
"It is my first evening in society," sighs Mascha. "I looked forward to
it so, but if society is always as tedious as to-day--" She sighs
inconsolably.
"Great assemblies of people are always disagreeable," he answers. "One
can at first not find among the crowd the people one seeks, and must
not stay long with them when one has at length found them. At such
routs I mostly spend my whole energy in keeping from treading on
ladies' trains and being discovered yawning by the hostess. But this
evening an exceptional pleasure has been afforded us----"
"Do not speak of it," says Mascha. "My father's playing has given you
no pleasure this evening."
Baerenburg pulls his mustache.
"Your father's playing is almost too grand; it has a paralyzing effect
in a drawing-room," he murmurs.
"Ah, no, it is not that. You should only hear him play when we are
quite alone in the same room. Oh! then it is beautiful enough to move
one to tears; but this evening I scarcely recognize him." Maschenka
interrupts herself and lowers her head.
He is very sorry for her in her wounded, childish pride. He feels the
necessity of distracting her in some manner. A brilliant thought comes
to him. "Before I forget it," says he, "would the skin of the identical
bear in whose arms Nikolai almost perished, give you any pleasure? I
possess it."
"Oh!" says Mascha, jubilant, "an indescribable pleasure!" She gives him
her hand. Just then Anna, with two very beautiful and elegant
Englishwomen, goes through the room. Baerenburg rises and goes up to
them. Mascha waits for him to return to her. No; he gives his arm to
one of the Englishwomen, and escorts them out with Anna. Mascha creeps
away. She seeks her father, Colia--any one who really cares for her.
She looks through the portiere into the smoking-room. The whole room is
full of smoke; suddenly she hears a laugh which she does not know,
rough, harsh.
She looks through the smoke. There sits Lensky in a low chair. Now she
sees him plainly, sees him as she had never seen him before. His face
is very red. He laughs to himself and strikes his knee with a coarse
gesture. He is telling some racy story, and with an unpleasant glance
presses the hand of a woman who sits near him. How they all crowd round
him!
Mascha turns away.
When Nikolai, who has been very busy assisting his aunt all the evening
to do the honors, resting from his labors, stands with Sonia in the
vestibule, he hears the light rustle of a silk dress. He looks up.
There, up the stairs, with dragging feet, deeply lowered head, and hand
resting heavily on the balustrade, goes a little white figure.
"Maschenka," calls Nikolai in Russian, "is anything the matter?"
"No!" answers a voice choked with defiance and grief.
"Will you not at least wait until father goes?" asks Colia.
The little form quivers, a half-suppressed sob escapes her, then she
says shortly, violently: "No."
A half-hour later all is quiet, the last guests have vanished, the
servants extinguish the lights.
XII.
"Where is Mascha?" asks Lensky, as Nikolai helps him into his overcoat.
"She has retired. Will you go up to her room?"
"No, it is too late," says Lensky, frowning, and adds: "Do you object
to walking, Colia? A stroll has charms for me. I never walk in the
daytime, for every street boy runs after me; that is vexatious."
Nikolai himself was pleased to breathe some fresh air after the close
rooms.
Lensky was in an elevated mood. With head somewhat thrown back,
overcoat open, with swinging arms, he walked near his son. Not far from
the house two belated wanderers met them. They started at sight of the
virtuoso. "Ah, Lensky!" they exclaimed, and stood still. When Lensky
looked at them smilingly, although they were not personally acquainted
with him, they took off their hats as though he were a crowned head.
Lensky bowed politely, graciously. "It is too absurd," he remarked,
walking on. "Not even at two o'clock in the morning can one walk on the
street without being recognized. I believe Bismarck and I have the
best-known faces in Europe."
Scarcely had he said this when he felt how laughable it was; he is
vexed at it, and, as always after his great or small triumphs, now,
when the momentary intoxication of it begins to wear off, an
embarrassing, suffocating, quite humiliating feeling overcomes him.
All at once he stands still. Nikolai looks at him. He is frightened at
the tormented expression of the artist's pale face.
"Are you not well, father?" asks he, taking him by the arm, anxious
lest a new attack of giddiness, had overcome him.
"No, no, there is nothing the matter with me."
They had reached the end of the Champs Elysees. "Stop a little," says
Lensky. "Sit down on the bench--no, not that one near the light; here
in the shadow--and let us talk, that is, if you are not sleepy."
"I? Far from it, father. But you! Remember you leave at eleven o'clock
to-morrow morning. You should rest."
"No; I can sleep to-morrow on the train. Sit down."
Nikolai does as his father requests. For a while they are both silent,
then Lensky begins:
"Now I think of it, what was the matter with the hysterical enthusiast
who fainted that time at my concert in Eden? Mascha told me of her. I
thought she was invited this evening."
"She was invited," replied Nikolai.
"So!" murmured Lensky. "And she did not think it worth the trouble to
come?"
"She was ill."
"Excuse!" says Lensky. After awhile he begins again. "I was vexed that
she did not come. I asked after her. Mascha is quite in love with her.
Who is she?"
"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch."
"Sankjewitch, Sankjewitch? Is she a Pole?"
"No; her father was a Sclavonian, her mother was of a Bohemian family."
"So, h-m! You have seen her often?" He looks penetratingly at Nikolai.
"Yes."
"And are you as charmed with her as our little curly-head?"
"I find her very charming," murmurs Nikolai, softly.
"In what a tone you say that!" Lensky lays his hand on his son's arm.
"You are in love, eh?"
Nikolai is silent.
Lensky laughs. "H-m! h-m! It is the first time that I have ever
discovered you in any serious enthusiasm. Tell me, now you should be
already decided, have you any intentions?"
"What do you mean?" asks Nikolai, hoarsely.
"Just what I say."
In this moment Nikolai feels almost a kind of horror for his father.
"You cannot know of whom you speak," says he, icily; "it is a question
of a young girl of very good family."
"I know very well of whom I speak," replies Lensky, vexed at his son's
admonition. "It is a question of a young artist who, separated from her
family, goes her own way. I cannot possibly expect of such a gifted
exception that she will be restrained by the same prejudices as any
little goose."
The blood rushes to Nikolai's cheeks. "I would be in despair if I
believed that she thought herself above such prejudices," says he.
"Laughable," said the elder, unconvinced. Then looking askance at his
son: "H-m! you seem to have taken it greatly to heart. If you carry
such views with you through life, I congratulate you; you will have
much suffering. But I pain no one willingly. If I had known that you--I
would have been silent. I will not deprive you of your illusions; no
one should do that for any man. Heavens! what would men be without
illusions! They would creep on all fours. I am no longer far from that.
But let us not speak of me; it is better that we speak of you. Only
rave calmly to the blue air if it pleases you. I envy you the
capacity."
"I have not the slightest intention of raving to the air," replies
Nikolai, calmly, but still somewhat stiffly and coldly. "I have a fixed
purpose before me."
"You wish to marry?" Lensky exclaims.
"Yes," says Nikolai, shortly.
"Marry at your age! Pardon me, but I never thought you so unpractical."
An unpleasant pause follows. Nikolai at length begins in a trembling
voice: "Father, when you look back upon your whole life, even now a
long one, what is there in it more beautiful than the first years of
your marriage?"
Lensky's face twitches with a painful, scarcely to be mastered emotion;
he breathes difficultly. Then he murmurs bitterly: "You would be a poor
surgeon, Colia. You have a heavy hand, a very heavy hand. It pains."
Nikolai is shocked. He would like to make good his awkward roughness,
to say something loving, tender to his father. Nothing occurs to him.
Then Lensky suddenly turns to him and says: "If you should really meet
such a girl as your mother was, and she takes you, then hold her fast
in your arms and never part from her; carry her over every stone which
might bruise her feet, protect her from every too hot ray of sunlight,
from every too cold breath of air, which might harm her, and kneel down
before her every evening, and thank her for the happiness which she
gives you. But I do not believe that you will find her--she is not to
be found!"
"I am very sorry that you have not met Fraeulein von Sankjewitch,
father," begins Nikolai, in a warmer, changed tone.
"So am I," replies Lensky, shortly. "How does she look? A beauty,
naturally--that is, you think her one."
"No, father, no beauty; but so charming, so lovely."
"H-m! and her manner? If a lady of society wanders on Parnassus, she is
usually particularly genial. Is she a decided artist?" asks Lensky,
lighting a cigarette.
"A--well, yes, a little--not very much, but a little," answers Nikolai,
"and only in the best signification of the word. If you learn to know
her you will be just as charmed with her as I!"
"So!--h-m! That is a little bit strong," says Lensky. His voice this
time sounds decidedly more kindly, and he pulls the young man's ear.
"I am convinced of it," asserts Nikolai, boldly. "You have never seen
such a girl, so full of grace in every movement, and still with such an
interesting abruptness; peculiar, full of spontaneity; one moment
gloomy, repellant almost to rudeness, then again so kindly cordial, so
truly womanly and compassionate; all against a background of incurable
sadness--in short, charming, and comparable with nothing else in this
world!"
"There has never been any one similar," Lensky assures him earnestly,
and adds: "See, see how you thaw; you grow quite animated, dreamer." He
is silent awhile, then he begins again: "Does she receive much
company?"
"No; she sees as few people as possible."
"Ah!" says Lensky, with the triumphant expression of a hunter who has
at length found the trace which he has long sought.
"She does not go into society, because conventional society is too
tedious, too unmeaning for her," Nikolai hastily assures him.
"They all say that," replies Lensky, shaking his head. "My dear child,
as long as I thought that it was only some passing fancy of yours, I
was perfectly ready to let you have your way. But when it is a question
of something so important as your marriage, I must earnestly beg you to
be on your guard, to look into the matter more closely."
"But, father," says Nikolai, horrified, "all that I have told you
should certainly prove to you----"
"It proves to me that you are intensely in love," says Lensky,
good-naturedly. "For the rest, it points to all sorts of things which
you have overlooked."
Once again Nikolai wishes to interrupt his father, but without noticing
this, the latter continues:
"From all you say, she is much too interesting, much too attractive,
for a girl of good family, who lives alone with an ex-favorite
governess. And then, from whence comes the mysterious unsimilarity of
her mood, the incurable sadness which forms the fundamental tone of her
being? Inquire, Colia. If you come upon any trace of an unhappy love, a
sad disappointment, then I will own myself satisfied, then all is
explained. But if you discover nothing, then--then, be cautious. On the
risk of falling completely from your favor, I would wager that she has
secretly experienced some fearful shock--in a word, that she has a
past."
"It is not possible!" exclaims Nikolai.
"Do not be so violent," Lensky replies. "You are not the first young
man who has asserted that. Besides, I will not condemn her. Not the
most faultless are the best. Human nature is not different. I would
only be naturally very sorry if you, in spite of such a hateful
circumstance, still would persist in your resolution."
"You need not fear, father," bursts out Nikolai, harshly. "I would
never resolve to marry a dishonored, degraded girl. I would rather kill
myself."
"Those are great words," says Lensky.
"They are words which express my convictions. I should not have let
myself be drawn into speaking of my feelings to you. You see all in the
same light."
"In the light of my experience, Colia, in the light of truth. I cannot
help it if the world is as it is. The depth of our whole nature is
mire, and nothing but mire!"
"Do not speak so inconsolably, father; I cannot bear it," says Nikolai,
quite supplicatingly. "There is much that is beautiful everywhere, also
in your life. Think of your art!"
"Of my art?" says Lensky. "Of my art!" he repeats with indescribably
bitter emphasis. "Do you think that I do not know the condition of
that? An art whose highest achievement is to rob a few hysterical women
of the miserable remnant of respectability which they had. No; the
effect of my art--what is left of it--is not calculated to restore me
my lost idealism. I am sorry to have pained you; the last evening we
should have passed comfortably together. It vexes me not to have
learned to know her. If I had seen her, I could have told you exactly
whether she is a wife for you or not."
All the time it is to Nikolai as if a cold, slippery monster which he
could not shake off sat upon his breast.
"And have you in your whole life never been mistaken in a woman, never
too lowly estimated her virtue?" asks he, somewhat sharply.
Lensky looks thoughtfully before him. Suddenly he shudders, then
rising, he says, with the tone of a man who would fain break off a
useless and painful conversation: "I am cold, Colia; come home. Why
thresh mere straw?"
He takes a few steps, then looking in Colia's face, he stands still.
"Heavens, how sad you look! Put everything that I have said to you out
of your head--everything. I am mistaken; let us agree that I am
mistaken, and that I have a quite false view of life. Roses are not
rooted in the earth; angels throw them to us from heaven. Believe all
that you will, but show me a gay face for farewell!"
He lays his heavy, warm hand on the young man's shoulder; his voice
sounds hoarse and broken, while he continues: "Yes, yes, we will agree
that I am mistaken, that something beautiful is before you. See, of the
three things which were dearest to me, I have crushed two--your mother
and my genius. My children are left to me; I wish to see them happy!"
XIII.
The sunbeam which wakes Mascha every morning lies broad and full on the
carpet in her bedroom, creeps caressingly on her pillow, strokes her
round white cheeks, but she sleeps soundly and sweetly, like a very
young child who sleeps heavily after a great grief.
There is a knock at her door, first gentle, then louder. "Maschenka, my
little dove, it is I," calls a dear, well-known voice. She does not
hear. Softly Lensky turns the knob, hesitates a moment on the sill. He
approaches the little white bed; there she lies sleeping so innocently,
so peacefully. A touchingly sad expression is on her slightly swollen
eyelids, her red lips. How long and thick are the black lashes resting
on her cheeks!
"Maschenka--sluggard--lazy-bones!" calls he, teasingly, and strokes her
cheeks.
"Ah!" with the short, soft cry of a bird frightened out of its sleep,
she starts up. "You, papa!"
"Yes, I--who else? I have knocked twice at your door without any
answer. If one sleeps as soundly as you, my little witch, one should
certainly bolt one's door."
"Ah! I am not afraid of thieves, only of ghosts, and they creep through
key-holes," says Maschenka, laughing, and he laughs and strokes her
cheeks.
"Childish one!" murmurs he.
"How dear, how beautiful that you came!" says she, tenderly, and
presses her lips to his hand.
"And did you think that I would go away without taking leave of you?"
asked he.
She turns her head slightly away from him. "Ah! I did not know,"
murmured she. "How should I? Yesterday I no longer knew whether you
really loved me. You were so busy with all those insolent women who
swarmed around you. Ah! papa, how can you associate with that rabble?"
"That does not concern you at all," says he, looking at her quite
harshly, while he this time, as his old custom was, conceals his
embarrassment behind defiant obstinacy. Then he notices the significant
traces of the difficultly vanquished sadness of the past night in the
little childish face, and when Maschenka, frightened at her father's
roughness, starts anxiously and shyly, the greatest anxiety overcomes
him. "How pale you are, my angel; is anything the matter?"
"No, papa--no--only--I was ragingly unhappy yesterday, and then I
dreamed so horribly."
"What then?"
"It was oppressive; and I was followed by a horrible monster, and when
I called to you, you were busy with--with other strange men, and did
not look round--and in my mortal fear I called to mother--in my dream I
had forgotten that she is dead--and then I awoke."
"My poor little dove, my poor, orphaned little dove!" murmurs he. "Who
can replace your mother to you? That was a fearful loss. There is no
second mother like her."
For a while both are silent, then Mascha asks:
"How long shall you be away?"
"I shall come back to Paris in June."
"Then--then you will be unendingly loving to me again for two days; and
after that leave me alone again?"
"No, no; then I give up the wandering life, Mascha. It is the last
time. It is only to win a princely dowry for you that I go about the
world."
"Father, if you knew how willingly I would resign your wealth!" said
she, very softly.
He laughs somewhat constrainedly. "No, no; you must be wealthy. For
this time all must remain so; do not make my heart heavy; for believe
me that I long greatly for a calm, comfortable home, that it pains me
to part with you. You have grown fearfully into my heart, you defiant,
tender little curly-head, you! But how long will you stay with me, my
little white lamb? Who knows? When I return I will find a dreamy,
sentimental Mascha, a quite different----"
"Papa, you will be late!" now calls Nikolai from below.
"Is it time?"
"High time. You will miss the train."
"Adieu, papa!"
He bends over her. She throws both arms round his neck, kisses him,
sobbing violently. "Farewell!"
"My heart, my soul," murmurs he. "Write to me very, very often."
He has kissed her again and again; at last he has left her. At the door
he turns round to her once more, sees her in the snow-white bed, with
her tender, tearful face, with her sun-kissed hair, breathes once more
the atmosphere of the room slightly perfumed with violets. Carrying
away with him an impression of childish purity and innocence, he goes
out.
[Illustration]
XIV.
Two or three days after the elder Lensky's departure, Mascha, who is
busy dressing for dinner, is told that a large package has been left
for her. Immediately suspecting what it is, she summons the maid to
bring it to her.
"It is a huge package," the maid sighs while she drags it in and lays
it down before the chimney in Mascha's room.
"Where are the scissors, Lis, please?" Mascha dances with excitement
while she cuts the string in all directions. Her suspicion has not
deceived her: the skin of a remarkable bear, with immense head and
mighty paws, comes to view. In his horrible open jaws the monster holds
a bouquet of white roses and a note as follows:
"A disarmed enemy, Fraeulein Marie Lensky, for friendly remembrance of
an adventure in Katerinowskoe, and
"Your humble servant,
"K. Baerenburg."
Beside herself with delight, Mascha immediately hurries into Anna's
room, and with sparkling eyes calls out:
"Anna, Anna, please come--see--Count Baerenburg--he has----"
"Well, what about him?" asks Anna, indifferently.
"He has sent me the bear-skin, you know, the skin of the bear which
almost strangled Colia. It must have been a splendid bear. It has a
head--a head----"
"Ah! that is very nice," replies Anna, without moving. "But I beg you,
hurry a little with your dressing, and another time do not run into the
hall with floating hair and in your dressing-sack, like a prima donna
in the fifth act."
"H-m, she is jealous!" thinks Mascha. And shrugging her shoulders, with
a triumphant smile on her fresh lips, she returns to her room, where
she first completes her interrupted toilet, then crouches on the floor
and sinks herself in contemplation of the bear.
Then Anna comes in to her--Anna, with quite a changed, sweet face.
"Vinegar with sugar, we know that," thinks Mascha to herself, without
rising from her strange position.
"Ah! that is the skin," says Anna, with condescending interest.
"Yes," says Mascha, slowly rising, with a humorous, quite childish
impertinence, which would have forced a laugh from every unprejudiced
spectator. "That is the skin, those are the flowers, there is the
note."
"And you, indeed, take that for a proof of great admiration?" lisps
Anna.
Mascha nods defiantly.
"You are very inexperienced, my little Mascha," says Anna. "You always
have such a hostile manner to me that it is unusually hard for me
to--h-m! how shall I express myself?--give you the enlightenment which
in a certain manner, as your relative, I owe you. You do not know men
as I do, dear child."
"Have you had very sad experience in this direction, poor Anna?" sighs
Mascha, compassionately.
"I have had no experience, but I have observed," says Anna. "Baerenburg
is a man from whom one must guard one's self. He has a new flame every
moment, whom he overwhelms with the most poetic attentions until--one
day he no longer greets her on the street. I am very sorry to diminish
your pleasure, but I must warn you."
"H-m!" says Mascha, in the same tone of humorous impertinence; and
copying Anna's glance with photographic exactness, she says: "My dear
Anna, would you like very much to marry Count Baerenburg yourself?
_Seniores, priores_--I withdraw."
"One cannot speak to you," says Anna, and rises, blushing with anger.
But Maschenka holds her back; her impertinence suddenly truly pains
her. How indelicate it was to reproach Anna with her age! As if she
could help it! "Anna," says she, cordially, "I did not mean badly; I
only wanted to laugh. But tell me, I will not repeat it, do you like
Count Baerenburg? I will certainly not stand in your way."
Instead of being touched by this childish sacrifice, Anna stares
arrogantly at her cousin from head to foot. "I can, perhaps, put up
with your rivalry," says she. "Calm yourself, _moutarde apres diner, ma
chere_! If I had wished to marry Baerenburg, I could have had him this
autumn in Spaa. He is as indifferent to me as that"--with a snap of her
fingers. "But show me your hands; _comme vous avez les ongles
canailles_. I always tell you you should not practise so much; you
already have nails like a professional pianist--_c'est tres mal
porte_."
* * * * *
The Jeliagins have paid Mascha a little attention. To-day, at lunch,
she found on her plate a box-ticket for the Porte St. Martin. It has
long been her most ardent wish to go to the theatre.
"You can invite Sonia and Fraeulein von Sankjewitch. Nikolai will
accompany you. It would be better that you dine with Fraeulein von
Sankjewitch," proposes her aunt, "if that suits you."
"Oh, it suits, naturally it suits!" cries Mascha, and springs up to
embrace her aunt.
"Do not make so much of this trifle," says Madame Jeliagin, a trifle
ashamed. "It is not worth the trouble. I rack my brains often enough to
think how one can amuse you. But with girls like you, who are too old
to play with dolls, too young to go into society, it is hard."
"Am I, then, really too young, auntie? I was seventeen the fifth of
last December," says Mascha, looking longingly and coaxingly at
Barbara.
Barbara Jeliagin is silent with embarrassment, but Anna speaks. "Your
age alone is not the thing. You have no _tenue_, are not sufficiently
lady-like. You must accustom yourself to more repose and self-command
before one can think of taking you into society without fearing to be
embarrassed by you."
This kind remark Mascha receives silently, but with burning cheeks.
Madame Jeliagin, who has learned quite against her will to love Mascha,
perhaps because Mascha's obliging lovability is the only bit of
sunshine which has warmed her for years, pats her kindly on the
shoulder, and says: "It is not so dreadful. To be old and sedate is no
art; that comes of itself."
And Mascha wipes the tears from her eyes, and again is happy over her
ticket, inquires what she shall wear in honor of this festive occasion,
and is only sorry that one visits the Porte St. Martin in street
costume.
The box ticket is for the next evening. All arranges itself splendidly.
Nita and Sonia dine with the brother and sister in the Avenue Murillo.
The little dinner is excellent and Colia happy. But after the meal,
when they are about to break up, Mascha notices that she has left her
opera-glass at home. Great despair! Sonia has none, and Nita's is
really not enough for three shortsighted persons. They decide to take
the roundabout way through the Avenue Wagram and get the glass.
"I will come immediately; I will not keep you waiting a moment," says
Mascha, gayly. But scarcely has she entered the hall when she perceives
that something unusual is going on. The vestibule is brilliantly
lighted, several ladies' wraps and men's overcoats are there. Mascha's
large eyes become gloomy. "And I thought they wished to give me a
pleasure," thinks she, angrily. "They only got me out of the way
because they were ashamed of me." Then, turning to the servant who
appears, she asks ruthlessly, directly:
"Who is dining here?"
"The Ladies Anthropos, Count Baerenburg, Monsieur d'Eblis, Prince
Trubetzkoy----"
But Maschenka hears no more. "Baerenburg!" her passionate heart beats
loudly. "_Moutarde apres diner_ it may be; but, in any case, Anna seems
not to so lowly estimate my insignificant youthfulness as rival, as she
acts thus," thinks she to herself. "But we will see, Anna, we will
see!" And Maschenka sets her teeth and clenches her tiny fist.
XV.
The next morning she makes a great scene for her aunt and cousin,
reproaches them violently and with bitter tears for that she is
unlovingly pushed about and repressed, that she plays the _role_ of a
Cinderella in their house; that she cannot endure living with people
who do not love her, etc.
Barbara Alexandrovna bows her head with shame at these reproofs. Anna,
on the contrary, opposes the anger of her passionate, excited cousin
with icy calm.
"Before all," she begins, "I would beg to remark to you that we are not
at all obliged to put up with your rudeness. I do not condescend to
answer your ill-bred accusations, for I think without that you will be
ashamed of them in a calmer frame of mind. But for the rest, I tell you
very plainly, if life with us does not suit you, you can take refuge in
a boarding-school."
If Mascha had possessed shrewdness enough to declare herself agreed
with the plan of boarding-school, it would have placed the Jeliagins in
great embarrassment, on account of the pecuniary aid which they
received from Mascha's stay with them. But she did not think of that. A
boarding-school is for her something horrible--a prison, where she must
give up all possibility of seeing Baerenburg again. And so she submits,
shyly, shame-facedly.
When they tell her that, for the third time this week, she is to dine
alone, she takes it with such sad, helpless submission that it pains
her aunt, and she proposes to ask Nikolai to share her solitary meal;
perhaps he may be disengaged.
"Yes, that would be nice," says Mascha. And completely reconciled with
her fate, she sends a message to her brother, forms the most delightful
plans--then comes her brother's answer.
"Dear Heart:--Just received a despatch from Aunt Katherine. Uncle
Sergei is ill, desires me urgently. I must leave by the 3.25 train.
Have not even time to take leave of you. Unfortunate for our cosey
evening. God keep you, my little dove; be brave and prudent for love of
me, and also for your own sake. Write me all that is on your heart,
every little annoyance which weighs upon you. If you ever need
immediate advice, go to Sonia and Fraeulein von Sankjewitch, who both
love you. I kiss and embrace you.
"Your faithful brother,
"Colia."
"Is there nothing but unpleasantness in the world?" sighs Mascha, upon
receiving this note. "But still, what use to torment one's self?"
After she has devoted perhaps fifteen minutes to the deepest sorrow,
she runs singing about the house, and makes gay little jokes.
Now it is evening, and they stand in the vestibule and await the
carriage--Anna and aunt; Anna with her regal bearing and carelessly
trailing draperies; Barbara with her nervous anxiety and scant, short
dress.
"What lace is that around your neck?" calls out Anna, angrily, looking
at her mother through her _lorgnon_. "Did you buy that fichu on the
Campo dei Fiori? It is grotesque! You look like a stage mother."
Barbara pulls uneasily at her fichu and drops her purse.
"Wait, auntie, I have such wonderful lace of mamma's up-stairs," says
Mascha, who until now has been sunk in childish admiration of Anna's
ice-cold blond beauty and white _crepe de Chine_ splendor. "Only a
moment, auntie, I will bring it immediately." And she rushes up-stairs
and returns in a minute with sewing utensils and a box smelling of
_Peau d'Espagne_. "See, you must put on this scarf, auntie."
"We will call the maid," proposes Madame Jeliagin.
"Ah, no! I will do it myself. You will be beautiful at once, now,
auntie," says Mascha, while she removes the shabby ornament condemned
by Anna and replaces it with splendid old point lace.
"See, so; mamma wore it so. No, not the old mosaic brooch; here, take
my pin." And Mascha drags it from her neck. "Oh, how that becomes you!
Look in the glass, and see how pretty you are. Only a few stitches to
make it firm. Is it not nice so, Anna?"
"_Mais oui, tres bien_," Anna lets fall from her thin lips.
The servant announces the carriage. Madame Jeliagin becomes uneasy.
"Now we are ready." And Mascha springs up from the floor, where she has
knelt to fasten one end of the lace to her aunt's girdle. Then the
servant gives them their wraps, Anna's red embroidered one, another of
the unpaid-for articles which her mother has begged from the dressmaker
with tears, and Barbara's old-fashioned shabby mantle, and they go.
But at the door Barbara turns round. Her flabby, wrinkled, painted face
twitches a little, and taking Maschenka's head between both hands she
kisses the girl on the forehead.
"My good child!" murmurs she, "my dear good child, I am very sorry that
you must pass your evening alone. We will try to come home soon."
"How you smell of benzine, mamma!" Maschenka hears Anna say, as they
get into the carriage.
Maschenka had taken no further notice that the hands which had caressed
her were incased in cleaned gloves. It was so lovely to be a little bit
caressed.
Mascha has eaten her solitary dinner. Afterward she played a little,
improvised all sorts of droll, charming nonsense. About ten
o'clock--they have just brought the tea to her--she hears the
house-door open. Have they returned already? No; that is a visitor, a
well-known voice--he. How unpleasant, just to-day, when no one is at
home! Then the maid--a new one who has been engaged for Mascha and
works for Anna--opens the door. "Count Baerenburg," she announces, with
her insinuating, theatrical smile. "Does mademoiselle receive?"
Before she really knows what she does, Mascha says, "Yes."
Scarcely has she spoken the word when she would like to recall it. She
knows that it is not permissible from a social standpoint for her to
receive him, but for eight days she has longed so unspeakably to see
him again, to thank him for the bear-skin, and then, why was Anna so
hateful to her?
He enters, very handsome, very distinguished, very respectful. She
forgets all the _traits d'esprit_ prepared for him, and as if paralyzed
with shyness, she stammers:
"My aunt is not at home; had you perhaps a message for her which I can
deliver?" And with a charmingly diffident gesture she stretches out her
hand to him. He takes it in his, holds it a moment longer than is
absolutely necessary.
"Do you find it absolutely necessary to send me away again?" asks he.
Ah! she feels so happy in his presence. "At least not before I have
expressed my thanks for your gift," she stammers.
Braeenburg, to whom it would be indescribably vexatious to be forced to
break off his conversation with this strange, interesting little being,
seeks some pretext to prolong his visit. His glance falls on the tea
apparatus.
"Would your thankfulness go so far as to give me a cup of tea?" he
remarks, and adds with genial inspiration: "Perhaps your aunt will
return meanwhile."
"Yes; aunt said she would soon return," assured Mascha, gayly. The
situation is justified; how happy she is to dare keep him there, were
it only for a quarter of an hour.
She gives him his tea, he sits down in an arm-chair near the chimney
opposite her. A deep silence follows. In vain does she try to find
something suitable to the occasion in her carefully collected hoard of
intellectual anecdotes. At length she says simply: "It must have been a
splendid bear."
"Yes," replied the count. "It also was Russian boldness to creep into
the thicket after the beast. Poor Nikolai, how the brute had cornered
him! Really, I owed him the skin; but as I know him, he is always ready
to share the best of everything with his little sister."
"Yes; he spoils me very much," says Mascha, moved. "I shall miss him
fearfully--fearfully. You know, perhaps, that he has left the city
to-day. You cannot think how unpleasant it is for me to be so quite
alone."
"Alone?" repeated he.
"That is--well, yes, I am with relatives," Mascha hastens to explain.
"Aunt is very good to me, but I cannot warm to my cousin; I do not like
her. She is very beautiful, but intolerable. And you, Count Baerenburg,
how do you find Anna?"
"She has a very decorative effect," says he, dryly. "She reminds me of
an aloe, she is so stiff and pointed. She would do very well on a
terrace."
"I am only surprised that she has not yet married," remarks Mascha,
very pleased at Baerenburg's cool description of Anna's charms.
"I am not at all surprised," replies he. "I have often noticed that
these acknowledged beauties usually marry very late. They are like the
too beautiful apples on the dessert dishes, which remain because no one
has the courage to reach for them. And then, finally, to kindle a flame
one must have somewhere a spark about one; and your cousin is of ice."
"Yes, that is true," laughs Mascha; then, restraining herself, she
adds: "But I really should not speak so of my nearest relatives to a
stranger. I--I always forget that you are a stranger; you seem to me
like--a friend."
He smiles at her, and says softly: "When I so soon feel such warm
sympathy for any one as for you, it seems to me as if we had long been
good friends in heaven, and had found each other again on the earth."
"Really?"
"Certainly," says he, earnestly. "I can distinctly remember our
acquaintance up there. You were a lovely, gay, half-grown little angel,
with short, unformed wings, with which you could not yet majestically
sail about in the air, but only helplessly flutter a little. But every
one loved you, and all the other angels were jealous of you. Then--now
the affair becomes considerable; shall I go on?" he smilingly
interrupts his improvisation.
"Oh, yes, yes, please," begs she. She looks charming, leaning back in
the immense chair, with curious, friendly gay expression in the eyes
fixed on him. "Yes, yes, please!" And unconsciously she makes a
movement as if she would push the chair nearer the young man.
"Well," Baerenburg continues, "one day the devil presented himself in
Paradise and demanded you for himself. He said you were his property,
and had only by chance got into Paradise. We did not want to give you
up, but as it could not be agreed upon, it was decided to send you back
to earth so that you might make a second decisive trial of life and
show whose being you were. I was so frightfully bored without you that
I hurried down to earth to seek you."
"How droll you are!" says Maschenka, laughing loudly and childishly,
and again she makes a movement as if she would draw nearer to him. "And
do you think that I will go back to heaven?"
"I hope so." Meanwhile the clock strikes--eleven.
Maschenka suddenly grows red. "How long aunt stays!" murmurs she, and
rises.
Baerenburg also rises. "I really cannot longer wait for the ladies,"
says he in an undertone, and gives her his hand. She sinks her head.
"I--I really should not have received you," stammers she with
confusion.
"Why not?" says he, impatiently.
"No, I know it--but--" and suddenly raising her head, she looks at him
from a pair of such wonderful, tearfully bright eyes that his senses
swam--"but, I so longed to speak to some one who sympathizes with me a
little," whispers she.
The whole pitiful neglect of the poor child dawns upon him, and a great
compassion overcomes him. "You really need not fear being misunderstood
by me," says he. "Oh! if you only had a suspicion of how lovely you
are-- Good-night. And if you ever need a man who would go through fire
for you, you know where to seek him."
He kisses her hand tenderly, passionately, and goes.
Long after he has gone Maschenka stands on the same spot, frightened,
paralyzed, and looks at her hand.
A little later she goes up to her room.
"Has mademoiselle amused herself well?" asks the maid, while she helps
her undress. "I was so sorry that, mademoiselle must pass the evening
alone. Naturally, I will say nothing of it to madame."
"And why not?" burst out Mascha, violently.
"Oh! as mademoiselle wishes. I only thought----"
"I shall tell aunt myself that Count Baerenburg was here," says Mascha,
defiantly. "And now go!"
In the midst of all her tender-heartedness she has fits of harsh,
repellant roughness, which, like so much about her, are an inheritance
from her father.
With loosened hair, half undressed, she sits before the fire, with her
bare feet resting on the bear-skin. "Ah, it was lovely!" A great
embarrassment robs her of breath. Again she looks at her hand. "He
loves me!" And suddenly an uneasiness, something like dissatisfaction,
creeps over her. Why had he not immediately told her that he loved her?
Why had he not drawn her to his breast and kissed her?
She kneels down on the bear-skin, draws the shaggy head of the beast to
her breast, and kisses it on the forehead.
* * * * *
"Why are you so out of temper; is anything the matter?"
This question Karl Baerenburg hears to annoyance in the days which
follow his visit in the Avenue Wagram. And old friend even asked him:
"Have you gambling debts? Confide in me."
He looks badly, and his manner is absent-minded.
He does not show himself in the Avenue Wagram. The recollection of the
scene with Mascha is painful to him. He repeats to himself incessantly
that he has behaved perfectly correctly, that every other man would
have taken the situation differently. He would have given his life for
a kiss, and--really, she would not have fought against it. To have
renounced that was an heroic deed which bordered on quixotism. Why,
then, was he not satisfied with himself?
He was not a bad, but only a weak, wavering man, a man without any
originality, who, of his own inclination, had courage neither to do
anything good nor bad which was not on the fixed programme of life of
his companions in rank.
Still, he had fallen desperately in love with this little Russian. It
was really fatal, for he could not marry her. In principle he was
resolved to marry, to marry soon; he was urged on all sides to marry.
What could he wish better than Sylvia Anthropos? She was beautiful,
wealthy, of very good family, and, more than all this, she was wise,
practical, and possessed the strength of will which he lacked. She
would take the responsibility of his existence upon herself, think for
him, act for him, resolve for him. There had formerly been a time when
he was one of her most ardent admirers. She had refused him, but that
was long ago, full three years, and in the life of a young diplomat
that is an eternity. She had done her best to recompense him for her
former unkindness and win him back; but the charm was gone. He knew
that if he offered her his hand to-day it would not be refused. But
never had he felt such a warm feeling for any one as for Mascha. With
all her unconventional impulsiveness, her lack of restraint and social
routine, her physical and moral personality was yet penetrated by such
a subtle refinement! Shame, eternal shame! Well, he did not need to
decide to-day or to-morrow. Perhaps it would pass. Before he had made
up his mind he courted Sylvia Anthropos, and in a sympathetic hour, in
the Hotel Meurice, she laughed at him quite unexpectedly, and suddenly
resting her large eyes very seductively upon him, she said: "You good,
faithful, stupid man! Can you then never find courage to tell me that
you love me?"
When, about an hour later, he left the Hotel Meurice he was betrothed,
and carried away with him a comfortable feeling of general satisfaction
with himself. At least, all was now settled!
Between his betrothal and the moment when he had murmured to Mascha,
"If you ever need a man who would go through fire for you, you know
where to seek him!" scarcely five days had elapsed!
XVI.
Among the different returns of attention which the Jeliagins' musicale
have brought them, come several invitations to a large charity ball
in the Hotel Continental. Anna is not disinclined to attend it,
but has already been invited for the same evening to a dance. But
Mascha is going with Madame d'Olbreuse, who, at the last moment, has
good-naturedly offered to take her with her.
It is against custom to take such a young girl to this ball; but what
is not against custom in Mascha's loveless, unprotected existence?
Mascha, who has passed the last days in feverish expectation of
Baerenburg's proposal, looks forward with a kind of feeling between hope
and fear to this ball. Perhaps he will be there. "But will he trouble
himself about me?" she asks herself.
Ah! what does it concern her? He is quite indifferent to her, she
persuades herself--quite, however little she can understand him. Who
could? How can one say such feeling words to a girl, look at her with
such tender enthusiasm, kiss her hand as he had kissed Mascha's, and
then suddenly disappear, and for eight long days let nothing be heard
of him? It is incomprehensible. "Perhaps he thinks that with a child
like me he can permit himself anything," says she to herself, "but I
will show him that he has deceived himself in me. I wish he would be at
this ball, only that I might show him how little I think of him, how
arrogant I can be!"
Meanwhile she prepares for the ball, and takes the greatest pains about
her toilet. As, since Nikolai is gone, no one has time to accompany
her, she drives about the boulevards alone, and makes the wildest
purchases. In the midst of her preparations she takes a trip to the
Avenue Frochot, where she is always a welcome guest in Nita's studio.
With no one is she on such a good footing as with Nita, whom she clings
to with a kind of idolatry, and--Nita returns her affection. Sonia is
consumed with jealousy when she sees her friend, formerly not at all
inclined to exaggeration, caressing the dear little witch.
On the evening of the great event, Mascha puts on the same white dress
which she had worn in honor of her social _debut_, and places a wreath
of loosely fastened pink anemones on her head. That this adornment,
which she herself thought of and which became her excellently, was a
trifle too picturesque for a young girl of good family she does not
suspect, and who should direct her attention thereto? The Jeliagins
have already gone their own way, before she had begun to dress, and
Madame d'Olbreuse, when she comes to get Mascha, does not leave her
carriage, but merely sends her servant to announce that she is waiting.
They have reached the Hotel Continental. In the vestibule a gentleman
comes up to the Countess d'Olbreuse, some vicomte, who is introduced to
Mascha, bows to her, and troubles himself no further about her. He
offers the Countess his arm; she looks around for a cavalier for
Mascha, but finds none.
"Keep by me, dear child," says she, taking the Vicomte's arm. And so,
somewhat ashamed and vexed, as an accidental dependant of the Countess,
Maschenka enters.
People like the Countess visit such entertainments from curiosity, from
a wish to admire the arrangements and criticise the people.
She walks through all the rooms on the arm of her cavalier, and from
time to time turns round to Maschenka with a "Are you here, my child?"
Whereupon her companion shows her something droll, and she immediately
forgets Mascha again.
The heat is stifling, the crowd fearful. At first Maschenka takes
pleasure in shyly looking at herself in the mirrors along the walls,
then no longer--her eyes meet such a weary, disappointed little face,
with such a vexed, gloomy look.
"Now you have shown me enough foolishness. I should like at length to
see something beautiful," says the Countess, petulantly, to her
companion.
"Do you really wish to see something beautiful--the most beautiful
thing ever created?" replies the Vicomte. "A beautiful woman. Then you
must come with me into the patronesses' room."
"Oh, clear, no; I know all the ladies; they would immediately take
possession of me, and there would be an end of my independence for the
rest of the evening."
"At least take a peep through the door," the Vicomte proposes. "There,
the lady under the palm near the statue--an Englishwoman, one sees at
the first glance--blonde, and in a white gown."
Mascha puts up her _lorgnon_, looks into the room.
There, near the statue, in a white toilet slipping far down from her
shoulders, sits Sylvia Anthropos with her imperial diadem of reddish
curls, her short, antique upper lip, her large dark eyes, her golden
eyelashes, and finely pencilled eyebrows.
The regular faultlessness of her features is to-day warmed by an
expression unusual to her. She holds her head somewhat bent back, and
looks up--to whom? Mascha feels something like a cold, hard blow on her
heart.
There, leaning against the pedestal of the statue, speaking to the
beautiful Englishwoman, stands Karl Baerenburg. Now he raises his eyes,
discovers Mascha, starts perceptibly, and turns his eyes away from her.
* * * * *
An hour has passed since then.
Maschenka is one humiliation richer. The only man who has asked her to
dance was her Italian teacher, Signor Supino. Besides, a wealthy
leather dealer has offered her his arm for a promenade. Poor Supino she
dismissed with a harshness which later pains her, but her strength and
resolution did not suffice to shake off the leather merchant. He had
met Mascha a single time in Nita's studio, and treats her as if she
were his niece.
At length she is rid of him. With convulsive resolution she clings to
an old, white-haired American, whom she knows as the father of one of
the scholars in the Sylvain studio. His daughter is waltzing in the
ball-room, the Countess d'Olbreuse is waltzing. Maschenka sits with Mr.
Cornelius Merryfield in the prettiest room, a winter garden with
artificial moonlight and rocks; sits there weary, sad, and lets the old
man explain to her the narrow influence of the North American Quakers.
Suddenly she hears a voice near her say: "At last! I have sought you
already for half an hour!" It is Baerenburg.
All the blood in her body rushes to her heart. She has but the one
thought, not to let him notice how much she cares for him, to be as
indifferent to him as possible.
"Ah, really! Then Miss Anthropos has already left the ball half an hour
ago?" says she, slowly, raising her brows, whereupon, turning to Mr.
Merryfield, she asks: "Did you know President Lincoln?"
"Have the kindness to introduce me," interrupts Baerenburg, irritably.
"Count Baerenburg--Mr. Merryfield," says she, shortly; and still turned
toward Mr. Merryfield, she continues: "I heard once that when an
Englishman, in conversation with Lincoln, let fall a French phrase, the
latter remarked that he did not understand Greek. Do you think that
possible?"
"It may be," says Mr. Merryfield, with an uneasy glance at the door. "I
do not understand what keeps my daughter so long; she promised to only
dance one waltz. Permit me to go and look after her a little."
"But, Mr. Merryfield, I promised Countess d'Olbreuse to wait here for
her," says Maschenka, very excited, and catching him by the sleeve.
The American looks helplessly at Baerenburg. "You see that you must put
up with my protection, Fraeulein," says the latter, whereupon the two
men bow formally, and Mr. Merryfield withdraws.
Then she is alone with him in the green twilight of the winter
garden,--as good as alone. Truly, from time to time people pass by the
young couple, men with ladies and alone, but they are people who know
neither him nor her.
Here, in the pale pseudo-moonshine of the electric lights, her beauty
has a quite magical effect. The mixture of pride and sadness in her
manner, the poetic unusualness of the arrangement of her hair, the pink
wreath, on whose bloom lies already a touch of sad weariness, the dark
green background, against which her white child's face stands out--all
unite in heightening the charm of her fantastic, peculiar loveliness.
For a while both are silent, he and she. At length he begins: "In my
whole life, a week has never passed so slowly as the last."
"Indeed! I find it, on the contrary, very short. In my monotonous life
one day follows the other before one perceives it."
"Do you not go out at all?" asks he.
"No; my aunt says I am too young to go out in society; my cousin says I
have too bad manners; in consequence of which I stay at home," says
she, to a certain extent dropping the superior _role_ which she
childishly and defiantly has planned for herself.
"Your cousin speaks nonsense, and if your aunt really thinks you too
young to go out, she should not send you to such a ball as this one."
"Is it an unsuitable ball?" asks Mascha, quickly.
"No; but it is a ball which such a young girl as you does not visit
with a superficial chaperon like Countess d'Olbreuse. If one of the
patronesses had taken you with her, it would be quite different."
"The patronesses?" Mascha shrugs her shoulders. "The patronesses are
great ladies, with whom I have nothing to do; I am no one, only papa's
daughter." Her voice trembles a little. "That does not count here in
foreign parts; Anna tells me so every day. I did not know it; it was
certainly very necessary, but it pained me." She fans herself with her
large fan, and smiles as one smiles to keep from weeping.
Baerenburg pulls his mustache.
"And except your cousin, have you no one in Paris who is near to you?"
he begins anew.
"Yes, one--one person whom I love with my whole heart," says Mascha,
with the exaggeration to which hurt and vexed people are always
inclined. "She is sweet to me. It is your cousin, Fraeulein von
Sankjewitch."
"Do you ever go to the studio?"
"Yes," says Mascha, shortly.
"H-m! Will you be there to-morrow morning?"
She throws back her little head, looks at him from her dark eyes with
unspeakable, reproving pride, and says: "No!"
A longer silence follows. He knows that she was justified in repelling
him; knows that he acts unresponsibly to her. This consciousness only
assists in robbing him of his self-control. He loves her passionately,
unspeakably. He must have her, only her. More and more the recollection
of his betrothal shrinks to a purely theoretical hinderance which can
and shall be removed.
Then a large, bearded man comes up to Mascha, a man with round
shoulders and the insolently careless manner of men of good family who
have long moved in dubious circles of society. His eyes are watery, his
lips twitch, while bowing to Mascha, he says in French: "Do you
remember me, Miss Marie?"
"Prince Orbanoff," replies Mascha, affirmatively, nodding cordially,
"from Nice."
Behind the Russians stand two young men who have admired Mascha with
unconcealed boldness, and watch the scene.
"May I ask for this waltz?" stammers the Russian.
With the greatest readiness Mascha rises.
"You forget that you are already engaged to me," Baerenburg interposes.
"You are entirely mistaken, Count," replies Mascha arrogantly, and
takes a step toward the Russian.
"For Nikolai's sake, listen to me, do not dance," Baerenburg whispers in
her ear.
Softly, hastily, and in a strange language as the words were whispered,
the prince still has heard them.
"May I ask who the young man is who so insolently wishes to influence
your resolve?" he asks Mascha, with still more difficult utterance, and
his red face becomes yet redder.
Baerenburg draws out his card and hands it to him; at the same moment
the Countess d'Olbreuse comes up to her.
The Russian has disappeared. "Have you entertained yourself well, my
child?" says she. "I have danced _comme une perdue_; it is not suitable
for a woman of my age. Now we can go, the ball begins to be too
amusing."
Silently, laying the extreme tips of her fingers in Baerenburg's offered
arm, Mascha follows the Countess and her cavalier into the ante-room.
Suddenly she raises her head. "Why did you prevent me from dancing with
the Prince?" she asks in an angry tone.
"First, he was intoxicated; secondly--but that you do not understand--
secondly, he has such a horrible reputation that I would rather see my
sister dance with a clown from the circus ring, for example, than with
him. To dance with Orbanoff at a public ball when you had not moved
your foot before, and at two o'clock in the morning, would be something
so fearful, so ambiguous, so--well, I would rather have my right arm
cut off than let you do it."
They now stand in the ante-room. Baerenburg takes Mascha's wrap from the
servant and lays it about her shoulders. But Mascha's rage flames
stronger than ever. More than before she feels the need to pain him, to
injure him, to insult him.
"So you would let your right arm be cut off for me! How easily that is
said," mocks she. Then looking him full in the face:
"I am very much obliged to you for your good intentions, but I should
have preferred that you had not further troubled yourself with my
affairs. I have known the Prince longer than you."
Scarcely has she said these impolite words when she would give
everything in the world to recall them. It is too late.
"I was wrong; pardon me," says he, shortly. And taking leave with a
deep bow, first of her and then of Countess d'Olbreuse, he retires
without another word.
"Now, _ma petite_, come!" says the Countess, looking for her
_protegee_. Mascha stands there, pale, petrified, and looks at the
crowd in which he has disappeared. He did not once notice that,
repenting her rudeness, she had stretched her hand out shyly to him; he
did not even look at it.
Yes, she has shown him how little she thinks of him, how arrogant she
can be. But now that it is over, she has little pleasure in her heroic
achievement; on the contrary, torments herself over it, and would take
it back at any price. She suddenly knows that she loves him with all
her heart; loves him so that she would die to spare him one pang. And
this poor, physically mature, mentally still childish little being
suddenly longs for one thing only; namely, to see him very, very soon
again in order to expiate her harshness and intolerance.
But how should she see him again? she thought, as in the early morning
hours she sleeplessly tossed her curly head here and there on the
pillow. After her repellant manner, he would scarcely wish to come to
the Avenue Wagram. Ah! why had she not simply rejoiced in him, and let
herself be so happy and confidential with him!
XVII.
The following day was a Sunday. When Mascha came home from church, Anna
had just returned from a ride in the Bois. The Marquis de Lusignan had
come for her early with his horses, and accompanied her in the Bois.
Several diplomats had there joined her; they had been attentive to her.
She was in the best of humors, and so hungry that she did not take time
before lunch to take off her habit, but sat down to the table in it.
Anna told of her ride, of the leaps she had taken, of the enthusiasm
she had excited, and that she certainly must have a new habit from
Wolmerhausen. Maschenka listened with the childish, quite reverential
astonishment which the elder cousin always caused in her when she told
of the triumphs she had achieved in the great world.
"Did you see Baerenburg at the ball?" asked Anna, suddenly, turning to
her.
"Yes."
"Did he dance with you?"
"No; I did not dance at all."
"That is better," said Anna. "Young girls do not dance at such balls.
At such bacchanals in honor of charity, all sorts of things are
permitted. Have you a suspicion who the young lady was whom Baerenburg
was so attentive to?"
"Miss Anthropos."
"Not she, every one knows her; a new beauty whom nobody knows. It must
have been one of his Austrian cousins--a very young girl, exquisitely
dressed in white, with a wreath of red flowers on her head. It seems
that he had a scene on her account with Orbanoff, whom he would not
permit to dance with her. Evidently, it must be a girl who is very near
to him, one whom he thinks a great deal of, or else he would not have
interfered with the old tiger for her sake. As it seems, Orbanoff has
challenged him. It is a bad season for duelling; Monteglin told me that
three men of our set have already fallen in a duel since autumn. I felt
quite upset, especially as they say Orbanoff is the most
unconscientious man and the best pistol shot in Paris. He seems very
angry with Baerenburg-- But what is the matter? You are deathly pale.
Heavens; if you take the fate of every superficial acquaintance so to
heart!"
* * * * *
Anna has retired to her room and lain down. She is invited with her
mother to a dinner, and spares her complexion. Another solitary evening
for Mascha. But she does not think of that. Only of one thing does she
think: "He fights for my sake; fights on account of my arrogant,
obstinate lack of tact! Why would I not understand him; why did I not
let it pass when he said he was already engaged to me for that dance?
But no, I would not let him dispose of me as of an unresisting child,
and must show him that I thought nothing of him, and now--oh, my God!
now perhaps he will die, and it is my fault."
Uneasily she walks up and down, quicker and quicker. She sees nothing
in the future but a horrible, cold void, where he will no longer be,
and nothing will be left to her heart but the consciousness that she
has offended and misunderstood him, and that he died for her. His death
has ceased to be a fearful possibility for her; it is something that
must come if she does not prevent it. But how can she prevent it? If
Colia were here, she would beg him to arrange the affair, to speak to
Baerenburg or Orbanoff.
Oh! there must be some way of escape which he could find. But Colia is
away. She cannot longer bear her despair. She must confide in some one,
ask advice, seek consolation, or, at least, pity.
She goes down in the drawing-room to speak to her aunt. Her aunt has a
visitor, an old Russian friend.
With a kind of rage, she closes the scarcely opened door of the
drawing-room, and hurries back to her room.
A half-hour passes, a desolate, endless half-hour. It is half-past
four. Before the house still stands the visitor's cab. Ever more
restlessly Mascha wrings her poor little white hands; ever more
reproachfully every unkind word that she has said to him comes back to
her memory; her heart grows heavier. Oh! if she could only see him, at
least beg his forgiveness before he dies! No, he shall not die; she
cannot let it happen. Colia's farewell words come to her mind: "If you
should ever be in any embarrassment, go to Fraeulein von Sankjewitch."
Yes, she will speak with her; Nita is his cousin, she knows his
affairs; Nita will advise, will help.
"Hurry, Eliza, you must go out with me," says she, going into the
maid's room. But near the maid stands Anna.
"Must you go out just now?" says she, vexedly; "my dress is not ready.
Where are you going?"
"To Fraeulein von Sankjewitch."
"Eliza has not time. You can go the few steps alone."
And she goes alone, fairly runs through the Rue de la Prony, through
the Parc Monceau. She pants for breath, there is a ringing in her ears.
Now she has reached No. 8 of the Avenue Murillo. She hurries up the
steps, rings. The maid opens the door. "The ladies have gone out; they
will not be back before evening."
Quite crushed, Mascha stands there in the pretty little ante-room.
"Has mademoiselle any message for the ladies?" asks the maid.
"No, no!" sadly Mascha shakes her head. She trembles in her whole body,
rests her hand on a little table on which stands a plate with visiting
cards.
Her eyes mechanically dwell on one which lies uppermost:
Le Comte Charles De Baerenburg, Attache, etc. _Avenue de Messine,
No_. ----.
Then suddenly a new thought comes to her. Roughly she repels it; she
cannot make up her mind to do that. But why not? How cowardly, how
small she is! Only a few hours before she had longed for an opportunity
to prove to him her love by some painful sacrifice, and now, from
foolish fear that people might talk, she suddenly hesitates to do
something so simple. The accusations which her father used to hurl at
cold, calculating wisdom of the heart, and the scorn with which he
condemned women who could not once yield to inspiration, comes to her
mind. How does she know what he means by that? She creeps down the
steps slowly, as if in a dream. Now she is on the street. An empty
close cab comes rolling over the pavement. The coachman looks at
Mascha. Irresolutely she stands there; he drives up to her, opens the
door, looks at her, with lifted hat, questioningly.
"Avenue de Messine, No. ----," murmurs she, and springs into the
carriage.
The coachman dismounts and opens the door. Pale, with gloomy but not at
all ashamed--rather proud--resolve in her face, Mascha gets out and
goes up the steps. She reads the cards on the doors; there it is! She
rings loudly, violently. A servant opens. "Is the Count at home?"
"Yes, but he has company," replies the servant, and looks at her in
astonishment. It must certainly be his master's sister, he thinks. She
is too young for an adventuress of good society, too unembarrassed; she
does not even wear a veil.
"If mademoiselle wishes to go in the dining-room, I will tell Monsieur
le Comte," says he, and takes her into one of those gloomy Paris
dining-rooms, which even by day must be artificially lighted. The
curtains are drawn. The light of a hanging lamp falls over a table on
which stand the picturesque remnants of a recently left, abundant
dessert.
Suddenly a great confusion and even a painful shame overcome Mascha.
Perhaps it is all not true! How can one lunch so gayly if one is in
mortal danger? Shyly she turns to the door; she would like to escape.
Then Baerenburg enters the room.
"Fraeulein--you!" comes from his lips. But even in his startled surprise
he speaks softly, evidently from prudence.
She stammers something; her voice is so choked with shame and
excitement that he scarcely understands her.
The light of the hanging lamp falls on her deathly pale face, the
little, soft, childish face with the great, tender eyes. Baerenburg
grows hot and cold. He is in the pleasantly excited mood in which an
excellent meal and a couple of bottles of fine wine place men of his
kind. Coming up to her, he bends over her, and taking her hand kindly
in his, he says warmly: "You are certainly in some great difficulty in
which you wish to turn to me. I thank you for your confidence; you know
my life is at your disposal."
She comes to herself a little. "Ah, no!" says she. "It is about you,
not about me. They told me that through my obstinacy I had put you in a
painful position with Prince Orbanoff--that you are to fight a duel
with him. Is that true?"
He is silent a moment, then he says calmly: "Yes, it is true."
"Oh, my God!" she cries out, and then is silent, as if petrified by
pain.
His eyes rest on her in indescribable surprise.
"Did you come on that account?" murmurs he, warmly, and kisses her
hands again and again. "Oh, you dear, lovely being; and you have
forgotten the whole world from anxiety for me! I know no second girl
who would be capable of such generosity!"
But she scarcely notices these words, which would once have filled her
with pride. "So it is true," she murmurs to herself, "it is true! But
it shall not happen. You must give up the duel!"
"That is impossible," replies he, and smiles as one smiles at a pretty
child who desires the moon. "My life is at your disposal, but not my
honor."
"Oh, heavens! And if you fall it is my fault!" cries she, violently.
"But no; I must save your life. Now, how foolish it was of me to turn
to you. I must go to Orbanoff. I will write to him, I will beg-- When
is the duel?"
The affair begins to be unpleasant for Baerenburg. He had not considered
of what such a warm-hearted little barbarian is capable when he told
her that he should fight for her. Why had he told her? It was
overhasty--it was more, was tactless, tasteless. He had not even tried
to resist the temptation to excite her tender despair to the utmost. He
had succeeded. She is beside herself; she does not know what she is
about. At the same time her overstrained nerves give way, she trembles
in her whole frame, and with a tottering movement she passes her hand
over her temples. Her little fur cap falls from her head. How very
beautiful she is!
She staggers.
"Drink a drop of wine," says he, really anxious And taking a silver
goblet from the sideboard, he fills it with champagne. Thirsting with
inward fever, she places it to her lips, without knowing in her
excitement whether she drinks water or wine. He lays his arm round her
to support her; he does not as yet think of misusing her confidence.
Then he hears a whispering in the adjoining room, then a quick
succession of steps; the entrance door opens and closes. His friends
have withdrawn discreetly.
His blood burns in every finger-tip. He has forgotten Sylvia Anthropos,
all clear idea of life and its duties has left him.
"Mascha, oh, my sweet little angel! Do you suspect how I love you?"
whispers he. "Do not reproach yourself, even if I should die for you;
it seems to me beautiful to be able to surrender my life for you. But
Mascha, my angel, my treasure, do not grudge me one more happy moment
before I die. Maschenka, my darling, my love--one kiss!"
Without hesitating, sobbing, beside herself, with a passionate
vehemence of which a few minutes before she had had no suspicion, she
throws both arms round his neck.
* * * * *
The Jeliagins had gone when Mascha came home. With deeply lowered head,
hurriedly, without looking to the right or left, she went up to her
room.
The lamp burned. The young Russian's glance was gloomy and defiant. She
held her head high. What had happened had happened, she would not be
ashamed of it. She loved him, indeed, and he was in mortal danger.
Why did her heart beat so loudly? Why did the light pain her so? Why
was it as if she could never raise her eyes to any one? Aimlessly, with
weary steps, she crept about her room. She put out the light and got
into bed and turned her face to the wall.
And the hours dragged on and would not end. How long the night was!
Toward morning she fell asleep. She dreamed that her mother came to her
bed, in a white dress and with large, beautiful wings, and whispered to
her:
"Wake up, wake up, long sleeper; have you forgotten that to-day is your
wedding-day? I have come down from heaven to dress you and to bless
you!" And then she sprung out of her bed, and her mother dressed her.
Ah! how sweet it was to feel the soft, delicate hands once more about
her as formerly! All at once her mother grew uneasy. "I cannot find
your wreath," she murmured, and wandered round the room seeking the
wreath, and wept bitterly.
"Here it is, little mother, there," cried Mascha, and handed her the
wreath which she had worn to the ball. Then the mother was frightened
and said:
"Oh, no, that is not your wreath, it is torn and red with shame; hide
it, Maschenka, hide it. Your wreath must be white as my wings, and like
a crown, so round and firm, a crown of thorns concealed under roses;
that is the bridal wreath, thus we bind it for you poor mortals in
heaven. I will bring you one from above, and will break out all the
thorns for you, my treasure, my darling!" And her mother wished to
spread out her wings and ascend, but she could not, her wings were
broken. And she looked at Mascha with such large, helpless, sad,
deathly, frightened eyes, and then turned away.
"Mother!" cries Mascha, in her sleep; "mother!" She awoke. The sunbeam
which waked her every morning penetrated the curtains of her bed.
She hid her face in the pillow and wept.
* * * * *
If it had seemed to Baerenburg, on the evening before the duel, that
there cou
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35491