Part 10

Then one of the men turned round from her picture. He was a famous critic who knew her. "_C'est elle_," whispered he to the others. Bowing deeply, he stepped up to her and asked if he might introduce several of her particular admirers.

She could not refuse. She was surrounded. Nikolai remained respectfully in the background and watched her. At length she freed herself. He came up to her again.

"Why are you laughing?" she asked him, quite vexedly.

"You look so unhappy," he replied. "I have never seen any one who could have received an ovation with such an expression of mere tolerance."

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "H-m! And you perhaps think that I am above such flatteries, that they are wearisome to me?" she asked.

"It had that appearance."

"How appearances deceive!" sighed she, humorously. "No one is more susceptible to flattery than I; but, quite aside from the fact that many of these men said coarse things which they considered compliments to me, the expressions of merely two or three of them were agreeable to me. Men artists with us women artists completely ignore that thus far and no further, that atmosphere of apartness, which forms a convenient barrier between a modest woman and a man. What _sans gener_ their conversation requires; they treat us as men, and that is unbearable."

Nikolai smiled still more. He was indescribably pleased at her unvanquishable maidenly sensitiveness.

She thrust her hands thoughtfully in the pockets of her jacket. "Do not ridicule me," sighed she; "but how agreeable it is to associate with a really well-bred man like you, for instance. One feels that first when one is an artist."

"You are a droll artist," said he, and laughed quite heartily.

She shrugged her shoulders comically, and said: "It seems so to me sometimes."

His heart was in his mouth. Was not that the moment? But before he could have said a word, she turned away her head and said: "Ah! there is Sonia."

Sonia perceived her friend. "Ah! there you are at last," cried she, gayly. "I have sought you for an hour. Your picture is splendid; your success indescribable. You cannot imagine how proud I am of you."

Her true, unselfish enthusiasm became her so well that Nikolai could not help pressing heartily her cordially outstretched hand.

"They are closing," said Nita, and they turned to the entrance.

"A true success, a great success," repeated Sophie to her friend as they went out. "Are you not a little glad, you pale sphinx?"

"Certainly," replied Nita, "certainly I am glad; but I cannot understand it. I would like to give myself a treat after all this past anxiety. Suppose we make an excursion to some of the Paris suburbs. Are you of the party, Monsieur Nikolas?"

And Nikolai's head swam with happiness.

XX.

"Adieu, Nikolai! Adieu, Mascha! Thank you many times. I have enjoyed myself wonderfully, splendidly! Good-night."

It is Sonia's voice on the steps of the house in the Avenue Murillo. She had gone to the theatre with Nikolai and his sister. A month has passed since the opening of the Salon, the whole wonderful month of May.

On the stair landing stands Nita, who, on account of great weariness, had refused to go with them--a lamp in her hand. Nikolai sees her white face, surrounded with light, over an abyss of blackness. "Good-night, Fraeulein," calls he. "Good-night," repeats a hoarse, weary little voice--Mascha's.

Then brother and sister depart, and Sonia hurries up the stairs.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" asks Nita, in her sympathetic, motherly way, while she embraces her friend.

"Splendidly; it was charming," says Sonia, enthusiastically.

"What was the play?"

Sonia is silent a moment, confusedly. "'_Les deux Orphelines_,'" murmured she, hesitatingly, ponderingly. Then she corrects herself. "No, no; how stupid I am! '_Les Pilules du Diable_.'"

And Nita strokes her flushed cheeks laughingly, and kisses her on her eyes. "How pretty you are; you grow prettier every day," she whispers to her.

"Nikolai said that to me to-day also," says Sonia, proudly, and blushes deeply.

"So! And did he not say something more significant?" laughs Nita.

"What should he say?" stammers Sonia. "I do not know."

"What droll people you two are!" says Nita, shaking her head. "To think that this moonlight-twilight has lasted since December. Pardon me, Sonia, but Nikolai is a riddle to me. How can one be so nice, so clever, and at the same time so slow and awkward? How can one need so long a time to bring something from the heart to the lips?"

"How do you know what he has in his heart?" replies Sonia, with a frown, but with only half-repressed joy in her voice. "And now, tell me, have you nothing for me to eat? I am fearfully hungry."

"I was prepared for that; come in our cosey corner."

The cosey corner is a little three-cornered room off of the drawing-room. A piano, a chair almost breaking under its load of music, a single sofa, a large arm-chair, and a little Japanese table, all grouped about a Parisian fire-place, form the furniture.

On the miniature table stands a little repast prepared--a dish of strawberries, sandwiches, little cakes, and, amongst all these delicacies, a sensible silver tea-pot.

"Ah, how nice you are!" says Sonia, pleased. "A mother could not care for me better; I cannot bear to think how horrible it was before I was with you! I live as if in Paradise with you!"

"Did poor little Mascha become at all gayer in the course of the evening?" asked Nita, as she poured tea for her friend.

"No; I am sorry for the child. She looks badly, pale, her face so lengthened and aged. I do not understand how she can take the affair so to heart. She scarcely knew Baerenburg. His wedding must be soon."

"Poor midget!" murmurs Nita.

"Nikolai is very anxious about her," goes on Sonia. "It is touching to see her with him. At every funny part of the piece his eyes rested on her face to see if she would laugh, but she never did."

Nita hands her friend a letter. "From Berlin; it is your father's writing," says she.

Sonia opens it. "Yes, from papa. He is coming here in a day or two; he may be here tomorrow."

"And then you will be untrue to me," says Nita, smilingly. "Have you finished your supper? Do you not wish to retire?"

"No, no; I am not sleepy, and it is so nice to talk," replies Sonia. "Come out on the terrace for a little."

Silently Nita follows. The heavens are cloudless. It is bright moonlight.

"Only think whom I saw in the theatre this evening," begins Sonia. "As you do not know the person, my communication will, alas! lack the impressive effect."

"Well?"

"The most singular woman--a certain Njikitjin."

"Marie Petrovna Njikitjin?" says Nita, who until then has been dreamily looking over the terrace railing. "Is she in Paris?"

"Yes. Do you know her?"

"A little," murmurs Nita.

"I know her well," sighs Sonia.

"How so?" asks Nita shortly, quite cuttingly.

"Papa left me with her before he left Paris."

"That is incredible," says Nita, shocked. "He certainly must know--" She hesitates.

"Naturally, I also wondered at this choice of a protector," says Sonia, evenly.

"At first it was all very well; she only seemed a little peculiar and very untidy. She passed the whole morning in a wrapper, nibbling now at _pate de foie gras_, now at bonbons. In the afternoon she slept, and in the evening she by turns wrote letters and played the piano, especially Beethoven's sonatas. But at the full moon she became terribly abnormal. The whole night long she rushed here and there, wringing her hands, threw herself on my bed, demanded promises of friendship from me, which she returned with the most fiery kisses, and finally--you will not believe it, Nita, and you are the first to whom I tell it, but I still remember the petrified horror which seized me at that time--she confessed to me, minutely, it was in vain to wish to restrain her, her love affair with Lensky!"

"Shameless woman!" murmured Nita, angrily.

"Think of my position," continued Sonia. "How could I free myself? I could not repeat her confession. Then she herself helped me out of the difficulty--in what a manner! Three days after the moonlight scene, she told me, in the greatest excitement, Lensky was to give a concert in Berlin, and asked me to travel after him with her. When I refused, she travelled alone. Heavens! how pale you are! My story has angered you. No wonder; I know what an effect the thing had on me! And only think, Njikitjin had the shamelessness to speak to me this evening as we left the theatre. She wishes to visit me; what do you say to that?"

"She dare not cross my threshold," burst out Nita, with flashing eyes. "That is what I say."

"When did you, then, learn to know her?" asks Sonia, confidentially.

"I? As a very young girl in Vienna. I visited her then for a short time," says Nita, tonelessly.

"And have you never met Lensky at her house?"

"Yes, certainly."

"You never told me that," says Sonia astonished. "Why should I?" says Nita, very harshly. "It is no pleasant recollection."

When Sonia again looks round for Nita, she has vanished. She is about to hurry after her. Then she hears a voice from below call: "Good-night, good, good-night!"

"Good-night, Colia," says Sonia, joyfully, as answer.

"Is it you?" calls Nikolai, slowly, disappointedly.

"Whom else should it be?" asks she, frightened, fearfully. And softly whispering, she repeats: "Who--who----"

Yes, it is Nikolai, haunting the Pare Monceau at midnight. After he had taken his sister home, he had returned to the park to look up at Nita's windows.

He stands before a decisive point in his life. The sudden illness of the Russian diplomat in Washington has caused him to be sent there. He is advanced from attache to second secretary.

Time presses. Affairs must be quickly decided; before his departure he must have spoken to Nita.

But if his happiness should escape him now, at the last moment; if he frightens it away by some foolish, violent word!

On the other hand, if she says yes! His heart beats high. He builds the most fantastic air castles, and, charmed by his own fancies, he says to himself: "How beautiful, ah, how beautiful!"

And around him the spring dies and the blossoms fall--fall--they all fall!

XXI.

It is Sunday. In the midst of the little English Catholic chapel in Paris kneels Nita, her face in her hands. When mass is over, without waiting to greet any acquaintances, she returns home. She looks pale, has evidently slept badly. The shadow in her eyes is darker than ever. Sadly her eyes wander over the park. "Spring is dead," says she. And suddenly--she had thought it long past, but the conversation with Sonia revived the painful remembrance anew--she thinks of that time, six full years ago, when, in a sweet, dreamy May night, quite like yesterday, a sultry hurricane had killed the spring of her young, pure, sensitive life with all its poetic enthusiasm and Heaven-aspiring, jubilant exuberance.

And with this recollection, the old, never fully vanquished horror of life has again awakened in her, that terrible, all-consuming, all-degrading horror which must forever exclude her from every sweet, unconscious, surrendering inclination of the heart.

Wearily she mounts the broad stairs to her apartment. Sonia is not at home. Nita seats herself at her writing-table, as she does every Sunday, unwillingly, but punctually, to make up her weekly accounts.

Then there is a ring without. The maid announces: "Herr Lensky."

"Let him come in," says Nita, and as Nikolai enters, adds indifferently: "Take a seat and amuse yourself as you can. There is a book of Leech's caricatures. Sonia will be back soon; her father unexpectedly arrived, and she has gone to the exhibition with him; but they are to lunch with me. You are also cordially invited if you choose to accept. Meanwhile, permit me to finish my accounts." With pen in hand, she has led him from the drawing-room where the writing-table stands into the pretty little cosey corner, and now wishes to leave him and return to her work. With an imploring glance he withholds her.

"I am not in the mood to look at picture-books," says he. "If you cannot let your accounts wait, I will come another time."

"How sensitive you are! I would have thought that we two were beyond the plane of common politeness, at least as far as I am concerned."

She puts down the pen, and sitting down on the little sofa in the cosey corner, motions him to an armchair.

"I have a confidence for you, Fraeulein," murmurs Nikolai.

"I thought so," replies Nita. Over her finely chiselled white face trembles something like a difficultly suppressed smile.

"It is so hard," he continues. "Will you not help me a little?"

"No," says she, energetically. "I have not the slightest wish to assist your awkward circumlocutions." And with friendly playfulness she adds: "How can one find so hard something which is so easy?"

How cordially and unconstrainedly she looks at him!

An uneasy sensation takes possession of him.

"So easy!" murmurs he, hoarsely. "Do you find it so easy to ask a question on whose answer depends the happiness of our whole life?"

"If one can be so sure of the answer," says she, still playfully, mockingly, but very good-naturedly.

"Sure?" His eyes rest penetratingly on her face. Nikolai feels very unpleasantly, but still can no longer be silent.

"I am designated to Washington," stammers he, hastily rushing through the words. "I start to-morrow evening. May I come back in the autumn to--fetch you?"

She starts up. "Me?" cries out she, beside herself. "Me?"

"And who else, then?" he asks, with desperate harshness. "Do you not know that I love you?"

"Me?" she repeats, hesitatingly, and paling.

"Do you then believe that it has seemed to me worth the trouble to look at another girl since I have known you? Oh, love, darling, only one!"

The for years restrained fire of his nature has awakened. Her silence encourages him. He kneels at her feet, draws her hands to his lips. He is no longer the well-bred young diplomat whom Nita had formerly known; he is Lensky's son. More slender, with more finely cut features, his face yet, in the expression, in the kind trace about the mouth, in the violent demand and still tender supplication of his glance, resembles his father's quite mysteriously. It is the same coaxing voice with which Lensky, in his good moods, if he had wished, could have charmed down an angel from heaven; they are the same full, warm lips.

His words she has listened to without moving, but as his lips touch her hands she repulses him with a violent movement.

"Leave me!" she gasps. "Go!"

Dizzily he rises. Such an expression of anxiety, of horror is depicted on her face that his pride is up in arms. "Yet I have said nothing insulting to you," says he, violently, and looks piercingly at her, as if he expected that she would reply something. But as she remains silent, he speaks, with difficulty forcing himself to be calm: "That you refuse my hand is your affair--at heart I was prepared for that; but you shake me off as an impertinent. You extinguish the sun of my life, and do not once tell me that you are sorry for me. Whom, then, have I loved so passionately, so boundlessly? The girl who is capable of such horrible treatment I simply did not know!"

His voice sounds harsh, but his eyes still supplicate her, tenderly, despairingly. He cannot believe that all is over, that she will let him leave her thus. She will yet find a friendly word for him as farewell.

She stands silent, resting her hand on the mantel, her eyes turned from him. She wishes to say something, but it does not pass her lips. Her face is ashy pale; she trembles; dizzily she gropes for a support.

Forgetting all, he makes a step forward to assist her, to support her. As if in deadly fear, she repels him. Her face expresses a kind of horror.

A last time his eyes rest on her longingly, desperately--then he goes.

When Sophie, a little later, returns, she finds Nita deathly pale, stretched on her bed, her hands folded over her breast, "like a corpse in the coffin," said Sophie, when she told of it later.

She wished to steal away on tip-toes, so as not to disturb her friend, but Nita held her back. She looked anxiously, piercingly, in her face. Then Sophie bent over her. "I have just met Nikolai," says she. "I know what has taken place. Oh, Nita, Nita, you have given him up for my sake, and now you are breaking your heart over it!"

"I?"--Nita smiled sadly--"on his account? I am sorry that he suffers, but else--no, no, my poor Sonia, you are mistaken."

"Then I do not understand," says Sophie in astonishment. "What has so shocked you?"

"Me?" Nita holds her hand before her eyes. "A slight heart cramp; I have it at times. I was frightened. It was very foolish, but I cannot help it. It comes over me suddenly sometimes. Poor Sonia, poor, dear little Sonia! Are you not, then, angry with me?"

Sophie had seated herself by her friend's bed; she was pale, but bore up bravely. "What is there to be angry about?" said she, wearily. "I do not understand why I did not long ago notice it. It is natural that he loves you."

"Ah, Sophie, it is only a mistaken idea; he does not know his own heart. It will all pass. He must return to you, learn to love you," assures Nita.

"Never! If you had seen him go down the steps slowly, step for step, as if carrying something wounded, you would not say that. Poor Colia!" And, suddenly raising her voice, quite reproachfully: "It is terrible that he must suffer so. Heavens! do you really not understand what the love of such a man is worth?"

A shudder ran over Nita's slender limbs. "Leave me alone, my dear, brave Sonia; only for a little while," murmured she. "Leave me alone."

XXII.

How he passed this long, terrible Sunday afternoon, what he did during these endless hours, Nikolai could later not have told. He walked--walked without looking round, like a man who has no more aim in the world, who seeks nothing but weariness.

If she had given him a friendly word! But no! He does not understand, does not understand! Somewhere there is a secret.

It is dark when he returns to the Hotel Westminster. He finds his servant in the middle of his room, on his knees before an open trunk. Clothes hang over all the chair backs. Nikolai remembers that he is to travel to-morrow evening. At first he wishes impatiently to send away the servant, who conscientiously questions him about the packing. Then he draws himself up. Life must still be borne, even if there were no more joy in it. He gives orders as to the arrangement of his things.

The windows of his room are open. A carriage stops before the hotel. That voice! He leans out of the window, but sees nothing but an open cab; from without approaches a step, the door opens, Lensky enters. "Colia!" The musician's rough voice expressed such hearty, violent joy that Nikolai quite forgets his despair. Never before has he had the feeling of close, intimate relationship with his father so warmly as now. With unspeakable joy his gaze rests on the old artist. It seems to him as if there were something new, noble about him. He has grown thin, the furrows in his forehead are deeper, his hair is gray. He has aged greatly. But how well it becomes him! The lovable, benevolent expression of the lips, the patient, one might almost say pardoning, sadness of his gaze.

"Father! You--what a surprise!" fairly rejoices Nikolai, and rushes in the arms which his father stretches out to him. And Lensky, however spoiled he is otherwise, each time rejoices anew when his children show their love for him.

"I came upon the message which you sent me of your transferment. I wished to be with you at least twenty-four hours before you leave. Naturally you have already dined. I have ordered the waiter to bring my supper up here, that is, if I am welcome to my son. Send away your valet," with a glance over his shoulder at the servant; "we will wait on ourselves. We could go down-stairs, but then Braun would appear with my travelling accounts, and--and we would like to be alone, my boy, eh?"

The waiter has come and covered a little table and placed upon it tea and cold meat, whereupon he goes. Lensky pours tea. "You will take a cup, Colia? One can always drink tea."

And Nikolai, to whom until then the thought of taking any nourishment to-day had caused a true horror, sets his lips to the cup.

"I hope that you have much to tell me," says Lensky, good-naturedly. "In your letter there was indeed much; I have sufficiently questioned you, have I not? But still not all that I would like to know. Mascha, little rascal, did not write at all. Apropos, what is the matter with the silly girl? I drove to her directly from the station. She is completely changed. I had so looked forward to seeing her. She was fresh and crisp as a moss-rosebud when I left in January, and now she is flabby and yellow as a withered flower left forgotten in a glass. She is no longer even pretty, our little beauty! What is the matter?"

Lensky lays down knife and fork, and looks uneasily, questioningly, at Nikolai. "You wrote me nothing of it," he continues; "and still you must have noticed the change in her."

"What use to write you of it? I consulted a physician; he ordered something for her which had no effect. Her condition is not dangerous, only tediously unpleasant--anaemia in a high degree, nothing else. Why worry you?"

"Anaemia! It is incredible that I should have an anaemic daughter. Poor Mascha!" said Lensky. "Well, I drove to the Avenue Wagram, pleased at the thought of seeing my gay, vivacious darling, like the old child that I am. 'Mademoiselle Lensky at home?' asked I. 'Yes; she is in the garden.' There sits something wrapped in a shawl, shivering and bent over her folded hands; a pale thing, with black circles around her eyes. At first I did not recognize her; then, 'Maschenka,' said I, 'my little dove, my soul!' If you perhaps believe that she rushed in my arms with the little bird-cry which you know--of all the music in the world, that little cry was perhaps the dearest--far from it! She started, quite as if I had frightened her, came very slowly up to me, gave me her cheek. When I wished to inquire the cause of her change, she grew irritable and excited; she was not well, she said; she had a headache--would lie down. But when I prepared to go, she clung to my neck and sobbed, oh! so bitterly. I could not calm her at all. She was alone at home. The Jeliagins were dining out. They must have left her much alone."

He is silent awhile; then, throwing back his head, and in an obstinate tone, as if he wished to cut short some one's argument, he said: "Anaemia! She must have some unhappy love affair. It is too foolish, just like any other girl! And I thought it must need, at least, a Siegfried to unsettle my daughter. Now I have it!" He pushes the hair back from his temples with both hands, and sighs with humorous exaggeration. "Do you know who is in her mind? She certainly did not wish to confess to me."

"I really did not know," stammered Nikolai, uneasily, "if she had an interest--" He suddenly ceases.

"It is evidently one-sided," said Lensky. "But, even then, it needs a cause. Has no one, then, made love to her?"

"I have noticed nothing," says Nikolai, growing more embarrassed. He knows what a burst of rage against aristocrats the mention of the only reason he could give for Mascha's unhappiness would call forth from his father.

"Poor thing!" grumbles Lensky. "And one must have a pair of such pretty eyes only to attain that!"

"You must not take it so seriously," consoles Nikolai. "A little distraction, one of the water-cures. Aunt Barbara spoke of St. Maurice."