Part 11

"He wished to take me with him," she still repeats, as if the words held consolation; "yes, he wished to take me with him." Then she remembers the embarrassed, uneasy expression which his face wore when he returned at the last minute to ask her to accompany him. Evidently he had had a fit of remorse.

"I could have prevented it," she murmured, with hollow voice. Then she shook in her whole body with rage and horror.

* * * * *

About this time, gloomily looking before him, Lensky went through the Rue de la Paix. He did not know why he went along this street rather than another. It was quite indifferent to him where he was; he only wished to kill time. A furious anger with himself shook him; at the same time disgust tormented him. It was always the same; one woman was just like the others. The only one who was different was his own wife; and he--well, he had taken the first slight opportunity to insult her.

He came by the hotel in which he had lived with her the former year. He hastened his steps. From a jeweller's shop the most wonderful jewels sparkled at him. He entered. He would take something to Natalie; would give her a little pleasure. He purchased a pretty pin set with emeralds. She had a preference for emeralds. Scarcely had he left the shop when it seemed to him that the little case in his pocket weighed upon him, pulled him down to the ground. How had he dared venture to offer her a gift in this moment! He took the little case and threw it on the ground--trod on it, once, twice, raging, beside himself. So! that did him good. He must vent his wrath in some way.

* * * * *

When he returned home about five o'clock, he was calmer. What had happened could not be changed, it was now only worth while not to ruin the future. It disquieted him that Natalie did not meet him, but after all, he was not very astonished. She still felt a little vexed with him. He would soon make an end of that. He asked where she was. "In her room," they told him. But what was that? Everything was upturned, chests stood open, on chairs and tables lay piles of linen, clothes, as before a departure. He did not yet understand, but still he noticed that she started violently at his entrance, without looking around at him.

"What are you doing, Natalie? Are you preparing for departure?" asked he.

"As you see," replied she shortly, and continued her strange occupation.

"It is a good idea," said he. "I already myself wished to make the proposition to you to move away from here. But how did you really come to think of it?"

Instead of any answer, she merely shrugged her shoulders. A short pause followed.

He stepped somewhat nearer to her. "Natalie," said he, earnestly, warmly and gently, with his old, dear voice, the voice which always went so deep to her heart, and which she now heard again for the first time since his return from America, "Natalie, do you not think that we would do better to make peace with each other?"

He wished to put his arm round her, but she repulsed him. In so doing, for the first time she turned her face to him. With horror he perceived how miserable she looked.

Her lips were pale, her features sharpened like a dead person's. For one moment she still restrained herself, her eyes sought his. An unrest, a hope fevered in her. "Perhaps I have in vain martyred and tormented myself," she said to herself. "He certainly could not speak so to me, if----"

With trembling hand she opened a little box, and took out the half-singed letter which she had not been able to overcome herself from carrying about with her. She handed Lensky the letter.

He changed color. "What accident has played this silly note into your hands?" he burst out.

"No matter about that," she replied dully, and with that she tottered so that she must catch hold of a chair so as not to fall. "Were you--in company--with the Loewenskiold--in Paris--or--not?"

Why could he not lie? He remained silent.

Once more she looked at him, despairingly and supplicatingly. He turned away his head.

She gave a gasping cry, pushed back the hair from her temples with both hands, and sank in a chair. Then she pointed with her pale, trembling hand to the door.

Lensky did not move.

"Go!" said she, severely; and her hand no longer trembled, and her gesture was more imperious, more proud.

Instead of obeying her command, he sank down at her feet and covered the hem of her dress with kisses. "I have sinned against you," he said; "yes, but if you knew how furious I am with myself, and how little my heart was concerned in the affair, you would pardon me. You will not certainly be jealous of something that is quite beneath one's notice; one does not always think immediately what one is doing." He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "For this reason you are still the only woman in the world for me. Really, my angel, it is not worth the pains that you should torment yourself!" He took her hand in his.

But she started back from his touch. "Leave me!" said she, violently. "All is at an end between us--go!"

For the first time he comprehended the gravity of the situation. "All at an end--" he murmured, while he rose. "What do you mean?"

"That I will no longer bear to be under the same roof with you; that I will go back to my mother; that I insist upon a separation--that is what I mean. Did you, then, expect anything different?"

He clutched his forehead. "A separation! but that is impossible!" he gasped. "A separation--the children!"

She started. "Yes--the children!" murmured she, dully, inconsolably; "the children!" And with a bitter smile she looked down on her preparations for the journey, on the trunks, the effects lying about.

Then he once more stepped up to her. "You see that the bond between us can never more be broken," said he, gently. "You cannot go!"

"No!" said she harshly. "No, I cannot go--not even that consolation remains to me. As the mother of your children I must remain under your roof. But in everything else between me and you all is at an end. Go!"

He went.

* * * * *

He betook himself to his study. Scarcely had he entered here when a peculiar feeling of mingled emotion and anxiety came over him. He noticed that she had been here, noticed that she had everywhere removed the dust; that she had arranged his of late neglected writing-table, and how understandingly, with what loving consideration of all his whims! He noticed the vase with fresh roses. Evidently she had busied herself for him during his absence. She had wished to be reconciled to him, and while she troubled herself for him she must have found the note somewhere in this room. "It is all over," he told himself; "but that is really not possible. It is jealousy that speaks from her; that will pass away." Jealousy! Yes, if it had really only been jealousy, but that which he had read in her features was something else--almost a kind of loathing. What, then, had he done? He had left a distinguished young woman, beautiful as a picture, alone for eight months, and when he returned, instead of recompensing her for her long, sad loneliness by loving consideration, he had daily, before her eyes, let himself be raved over by other women, and at last----

"She despises me, and she is right!" he murmured to himself. "If she had borne this also, she would have been pitiable, and I must have despised her like the others--she, my proud, splendid Natalie!"

He sat at his writing-table, and rested his head in his hand.

The twilight shadows spread over the floor, and slid down from the ceiling, and made the corners of the room invisible, and obliterated the outlines of the furniture. The colors died; only the white roses shone in a ghostly manner in the half light.

Then the door opened; the servant announced that dinner was served.

It seemed strange to him that he should go to the table to-day as any other day; it was not possible for him to eat anything, but he was ashamed to cause talk among the servants, and so he went into the dining-room. "Will she be there?" he asked himself. How could he have even fancied such a thing? Naturally she was missing. Only Kolia was there, and stood expectantly near the silver soup tureen, which shone on the table. In their little family circle, Lensky always himself served the soup. Kolia had raised himself on tiptoes, and with one slender finger had pushed the cover of the dish somewhat to one side. He stretched his little nose eagerly forward, and slowly inhaled the rising odor, while with a deliciously old, wise connoisseur expression he drew down his nostrils and closed his eyes.

"I see already, it is crab soup--my favorite soup, papa!" he remarked, and then with agility he climbed up on the chair, which, on account of his still insufficient stature, was prepared with a cushion for him.

It was certainly only a quite trivial little affair, and yet it stabbed Lensky to the heart.

_Potage au bisque_ was also his favorite soup. He stared at Natalie's place, which remained vacant.

A great embarrassment mingled with his pain. He sent the servant, busy at the side-board, out of the room on some pretext.

"Mother is not coming?" he turned to the boy, who had already begun to eat his soup.

"No; mamma has a headache. Poor mamma!"

"Do you wish to be a very clever boy, Kolia?"

"Yes, papa!"

"Then take this bowl of soup to your mother. Do not spill it; perhaps mamma will take a few drops."

With an important face Kolia undertook his errand. Lensky opened the door of the dining-room for him, and looked after him while he tripped along the green-carpeted, dimly-lighted corridor. How pretty and pleasing all that was! The lamps, which stood out from old-fashioned inlaid plates of polished copper, the stags' antlers on the brown wainscoting. And he had not felt happy at home!

Then Kolia came springing back. "I left the soup there," he told his father, who had remained listening and spying in the doorway, "but mamma did not wish to eat it."

"What is mamma doing?"

"She is holding little sister on her lap."

In the course of the meal, and when he noticed that his father's plate continually remained empty, Kolia also lost his appetite. At first, in the most caressing tones, he urged his father to eat.

"But, papa, don't you see, you must help yourself to a little bit; it is such a good dinner to-day. We made out the bill of fare, mamma and I, early this morning at breakfast, and I remembered all your favorite dishes which she had forgotten. She was so gay to-day, before she had a headache, and she only got that headache because she ran through the park to-day without any hat, in the noon sun. But eat something, papa."

Lensky still stared at Natalie's empty place.

All at once he noticed an unusual commotion in the house; confused talking together, quick running to and fro. He sprang up and went out in the corridor.

There he saw Natalie's maid, with disturbed face, and anxious, over-hasty steps, coming out of her mistress' room.

"What is the matter; is madame more ill?" he asked in sudden fright.

"No, monsieur, but the little girl is very ill; it came on quite suddenly. Madame has told me to hurry over to Chancy for the doctor."

For one moment he stood still; then he turned to the sick-room--entered.

It was no contagious illness. Kolia was not sent away from the house; only they told him to keep very quiet, for which he was ready without that, for the weight which oppressed the house was sufficient to constrain the fresh animation of his elastic child-nature. Quite cautiously he only occasionally crept up to the sick-room, opened the door, whose knob he could scarcely reach with his little hand, and whispered: "How is little sister now?"

Yes, how was the little sister?

It was an inflammation of the lungs which had attacked the little one. The physician did not conceal from the parents what little hope there was of recovery.

Two days, three nights long, they both sat together near the cradle in which the sick little girl lay; two days, three nights, in which the tiny body restlessly threw itself here and there between the lace-trimmed pillows, while the breath, interrupted by fierce and tormenting fits of coughing, with difficulty gaspingly forced itself out from the little breast. Sometimes Maschenka cried impatiently and pulled at the coverings with her weak little hands, and then looked at her parents with that hurt, reproachful look with which quite little children desire relief from their parents.

Why did not her parents help her--why must she suffer so?

And Natalie, who formerly had been the tenderest mother in the whole world, took this all wearily, almost indifferently, as a person whose heart, benumbed by a great despair, is no longer susceptible to a new pain. She scarcely worried herself over the endangered little life. Yes! Maschenka would die, she told herself, the dear, charming Maschenka, over whom she had always so rejoiced. She still heard her cooing laughter like a distant echo in her remembrance. Yes, Maschenka would die! Why should she not die? It was really better for her than to grow up to feel such grief in the future as had burned and parched her mother's heart. Yes, she would die, and then Natalie would lay her head down on the little pillow, near the pale face of the child, and fall asleep forever rest forget! When Maschenka was dead, Natalie had no more duties!--Kolia?--Oh, Kolia would make his way in the world.

But Maschenka did not wish to die: this world pleased her too well, she did not wish to.

The fever became higher; ever more impatiently the child threw herself about in the cradle. On the evening of the third day the doctor, a skilful, wise, conscientious family physician, whom Natalie had frequently consulted for any little illness of the children, and who, under the direction of a Parisian specialist, fought with death for Maschenka's little life,--on the evening of the third day he said that probably the crisis would occur in the night; he would come again at six o'clock in the morning and look after it. He said that very sadly. Lensky accompanied him out. When he came back in the sick-room, the expression of his face was still sadder than before.

The little one became still more restless--she would not stay in her cradle. Incessantly she raised herself from the pillows, cried pitifully, and stretched out her little arms. Natalie took the little patient, warmly wrapped in coverings, on her lap, but the little one would not stay there either. She felt that her mother was not just the same to her as formerly. Quite angrily she turned away from her, and stretched out her little hands to her father. Lensky took her in his arms, wrapped the covering still closer round her tiny limbs, and with a thousand tender words, coaxed her to rest. With what evident pleasure the little body leaned against his breast!

Natalie's eyes rested on him. It had been just the same for two days. He had cared for the child, not she. Only she now, for the first time, took account of it. How tenderly he held the child! what touchingly poetic words of love he whispered to it! Expressions, such as one finds only in those songs in which the people complain of their pain! Just such words had he formerly found for her--at that time--in those old days, when he still loved her--and a stream of new, animating warmth crept through her benumbed heart.

She still watched him. Her eyelids became heavy.

Suddenly she started up, looked confusedly about her; she had been fast asleep. What had happened meanwhile? The morning light already streamed into the room; without the rain rattled against the window panes. When had it begun to rain then? Where was Lensky? He stood near the window and gazed out. How sad he looked, how pale!

The child!--and with a feeling of immeasurably painful anxiety her heart now fully awoke to new life. She had not the courage to look in the cradle. Then Lensky turned to her. "The child!" murmured she.

He laid his finger on his mouth. "She sleeps--" Then listening: "The doctor comes."

The physician entered. He bent over the cradle; the little patient slept calmly and sweetly, her little fist against her cheek. Her little face was very pale and sadly lengthened, but her brow was moist and a peaceful expression was on her tiny mouth.

"She is better," said the doctor, astonished and pleased. He scarcely understood it. "The fever is gone, the crisis is past, and if there are no quite unusual circumstances, the danger is over. A couple of spoonfuls of strong broth when she wakes, and no more medicine. Adieu, _a tantot!_" and he left the room.

The door had closed behind him, his steps resounded in the corridor. Natalie rose; she did not know what she wished; to look at the child, to fall on her knees, to pray! Then her eyes met Lensky's. She started, stretched out her arms as if to repel a suddenly awakened pain--a swoon overcame her--she sank down. He took her in his arms, carried her into the adjoining room, and stretched her out on a couch. He opened the window and let the spicy, rain-cooled morning air stream in. Then he wet the temples of the unconscious woman with cologne and loosened her dress. At that her only carelessly fastened-up hair loosed itself and slid down in all its dark abundance over her shoulders.

How wonderfully charming she looked in her pale, melancholy loveliness! Involuntarily he approached his lips to her temples; then she opened her eyes; a shudder shook her frame and she turned her face away from him.

It went through him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot. He had forgotten, but now he remembered accurately. How dared he approach this woman so confidentially!--she was no longer his wife. She had only tolerated him near her as long as the child lay sick, really only tolerated! With fearful bitterness he remembered how she had held herself far from him, even near Maschenka's bed of pain. And now, when the little one was well--why let himself be shown the door a second time?

"You need not be afraid, Natalie, I am going; I had only forgotten--pardon!" With that he could not deny himself to take her hand; he believed she would draw away her hand from him; no, she let it lie quite passively in his. Now he wished to free it, but then, quite softly, but ever firmer, her fingers closed round his. She herself held him back. Rejoicing and sobbing he drew her to his breast.

Scarcely a moment later he felt in his inmost heart quite strangely, uncomprehendingly, a cold gnawing vexation.

He did not understand that she could pardon so easily. He had not expected that of her.

FOURTH BOOK.

Dear Natalie!--Owing to business affairs which will claim me still longer, it will be impossible for me to come to Trouville before the beginning of September. I am very sorry, but I hope and wish that you will not, on this account, put off your journey to the sea-shore; you know how you need the stay in the bracing air. I have engaged a residence for you through Madame de C., and also had everything arranged for your comfortable reception--a low chalet with a look-out over the sea. I know how you love it,--the poor wild sea, that cannot help it if it sometimes crushes a ship, and that finds no rest from despair over the evil which it does and cannot prevent.

You must not take any sea-baths; Dr. H. suitably impressed that upon me in the spring. But in any case, wait until I come.

From my great, clever boy I often receive long, pretty, regularly written letters which please me very much. I will show them to you when we are together again. The boy is romantic, through and through, which touches me in these our present times, and also a little of a pedant, which makes me impatient, but still, he is a dear, splendid fellow, and that you must tell him from me.

The little note, which I recently received from Maschenka, was laughably comic, and sweet enough to eat. The little witch wrote me quite secretly, without telling you anything about it. She confessed all her naughtinesses to me very remorsefully and over hurriedly, from anxiety that you might write something about them to me. Is she really so naughty, and passionate, and wild? She is still charming in spite of all, so thoroughly good-hearted and tender and generous, and withal so incredibly gifted. I tell you her little note--it was adorned with three ink spots, and I could not read a word of the writing--but still it was a little poem.

And how she loves you! Just as she is, I find her charming enough to make one lose one's head over her; and I am very sorry that one must cure her of her amusing little faults; they are so becoming to her. That you must naturally not tell her from me, but give her a very warm kiss from me on her full, defiant lips, of which you always assert that they are like mine. Do not vex yourself too much over it,--rejoice in our little gypsy as she is. And if you again worry over her inherited good-for-nothingness, then look in her wonderfully beautiful, large eyes, which she did not inherit from me. You will find your soul in them--let that be your consolation. Farewell, my angel, spare yourself really--really! Only do not think of saving at all on the journey. You know that I cannot bear that. Think only of your comfort and of what a joy it would be to me if, at our next meeting, I should find your poor thin cheeks somewhat rounder than when I left you.

Your boundlessly devoted

BORIS.

It is in Berlin, in the Hotel du Nord, nine years after the first violent quarrel, the first passionate reconciliation with her husband, that Natalie receives this letter.

She had left St. Petersburg a few days before, in order, as by agreement, to meet Lensky, whom she has not seen since the beginning of March, in the German capital. It had been a great disappointment for her that she had not found Boris in Berlin, but he has accustomed her to disappointments.

She reads the letter once more. It is a dear, good letter. Ah! Natalie has received such dear, good, tender letters from all the large cities in Europe and America--and knows----

Not that Boris is deceiving her when he writes to her in this tender tone. No, every trace of falseness is strange to him, his attachment to her, his anxiety about her, are sincere--but----

What use to grieve over it? These great geniuses are never different. One must not judge them like other men! With this shallow commonplace, with which she has so often put to sleep her inconsolable heart if it sometimes wishes violently to rise up against its oppressive, ignominious lot, she compels it to rest again to-day. It is easier now than formerly; her poor heart has already accustomed itself to grievances.

Nine years have passed since that time in the pretty, cosey Hermitage when she--forgave him too easily, and thereby lost her power over him forever. She has known it a long time. Late in that following autumn a great symphony by him was given in the "Gewandhaus," in Leipzig. The work was beautiful, the success moderate, Lensky's discouragement exaggerated, quite morbid. A few months later he took up his wanderer's staff anew, and left Petersburg, where he had returned with his family, in order to distract himself by the most exaggerated virtuoso triumphs from the humiliation which had befallen the composer. Oftener, ever oftener, he had then left wife and children, and now, in his own house, he had long been only an indulged, distinguished guest.

But in the time which he every year devoted to his wife, to his family, he behaved in an exemplary fashion. He did everything that lay in his power to make life bearable to Natalie--everything except to lay a restraint upon himself; that he simply could not, and for that reason he must leave home so often in order to vent his passion.