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 samerépertoire--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 ofFigarowhich 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!"
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,attachéto 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,voilà 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 therôleof 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.
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 dignité 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 amésalliance?
"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.
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 lovelyFata 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 gaytraits 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 Bärenburg,attachéto 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 Bärenburg, 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 Bärenburg'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.