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!"
"Fräulein von Sankjéwitch 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 Fräulein von Sankjéwitch 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 therôleof 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 separateà l'aimablefrom 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.
"They have come from Félix 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 Elysées.
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 Félix evening dress.
Madame Jeliagin gives asoiréein 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 Bärenburg," calls the servant, and opens the door.
Blushing to the roots of her hair, Mascha springs down from the stool. Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg?" asks Lensky, gayly, to help Mascha over her embarrassment.
Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg, 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," Bärenburg completes her sentence. "Mademoiselle Jeliagin wrote me asking, if I were not engaged, to dineen familleat 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 Bärenburg when I was vexed."
"So, and that alters the case," laughs Bärenburg.
"It seems so," replies Nikolai.
But Mascha, observing that they are making merry over hernaïveté, 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 Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg. He--h-m!--did me the honor to be mortally offended at it." Bärenburg, 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 Bärenburg. "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 goût 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 Bärenburg, 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 Bärenburg.
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."
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 Bärenburg; 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 Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg'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.
Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg, to please her father, comes to her. She plays, and how beautifully she plays!
As if electrified, Bärenburg 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 Bärenburg, 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 Bärenburg. 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 Bärenburg, 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 Bärenburg 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."
Bärenburg 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. Bärenburg 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 portière 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.
"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 Elysées. "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?"
"Fräulein von Sankjéwitch."
"Sankjéwitch, Sankjéwitch? 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 Fräulein von Sankjéwitch, 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!"