Part 15

His glance turned to the virtuoso, while it involuntarily remained fixed on his not sufficiently clean hands. Lensky noticed it, and with a mixture of embarrassment and anger, he hid his hand.

"For heaven's sake, do not force yourself to anything on my account!" cried he, sharply.

The situation had become painful, and would certainly have led to rough words, if Harry, who had meanwhile begun to weary of his corner, had not suddenly sprung up, in order to now voluntarily offer to his grandfather the caresses which, with the same capriciousness, he had formerly refused him. With such nimbleness did he hop up on the old man's knee, embraced him so tenderly, offered him with such triumphant roguery his fresh lips for a kiss, that Lensky could not but forget his vexation, and yield to the advances of the petted little prince.

XXXIII.

It was not an especially good dinner that Mascha set before her father, and still she had evidently taken pains with it. But the cooking was of that extemporaneous, not well-organized kind which betrays the household where cooking is done for the wife and children only, in consequence of which no especial care is taken, and every culinary luxury forms an exception. The wines, on the contrary, were excellent; the service strikingly correct. Baerenburg appeared in a dress coat, and Mascha also wore evening dress.

In every particular was betrayed the unhomelike one-sidedness of a household in which everything revolves round a spoiled, discontented man who mostly seeks his amusements out of the house.

Baerenburg tried to show his best side. He had all sorts of attentions as host, for his father-in-law, and called Mascha jesting pet names. But still he treated her with the uncertain, tentative tenderness of a man who feels himself in the wrong to his wife, which did not escape Lensky.

About an hour after dinner Baerenburg excused himself after he had offered his father-in-law an especially good cigar, and had kissed his wife's hand and forehead.

Mascha invited her father to play bezique with her. He consented. But they were both so absentminded, played so foolishly, marked so confusedly, that they very soon, teasing each other with their mutual faults, lay down the cards.

Now Lensky absently builds card-houses on the table; Mascha crochets diligently on a child's dress.

"H-m! Your husband goes out often in the evening?" he asks, after a long, thoughtful silence.

"Yes," Mascha answers, calmly.

"And you? Do you go out much?"

"I? I am occupied with the baby."

"The child claims much of your time?"

"Yes," whispers Mascha, and a particularly tender expression creeps over her mouth. "But she is charming--or does she only seem so to me?"

"To me also," assures Lensky. "Just as you looked at her age."

"I hope that she will fare better than I." The young wife lowers her head, blushing deeply, still more over her work, and draws the little dress destined for Natascha to her lips.

Lensky overthrows all his card-houses with an impatient gesture. "You prefer her to Harry?" he asks.

"Yes--I think--she is so loving, so tender, and looks so entirely like our family. I certainly love the boy also, but I cling to the little one, as to Colia and the remembrance of my dead mother."

Lensky drums in silence on the table for a while, then he begins: "Yes, yes, that is all very beautiful; but you are becoming one-sided, Mascha. The consequence is that your husband is too emancipated from you. You will rue that later."

Mascha does not answer a word. Ever more diligently her active fingers busy themselves with the white wool.

"You trouble yourself too little about him," says he, and looks at her sharply.

She crochets and is silent.

"Or"--with a burst of his old, untamable violence, Lensky strikes the table--"or he troubles himself too little about you."

There must have been some mistake in Mascha's work. She unravels a great piece of it. Her father draws the crochet work from her hand. "Leave that stupid stuff," cries he, angrily. "You cannot deceive me with your awkward, helpless comedy. I will see clearly into this affair. What position do you really occupy with your husband?"

Mascha passes her hand wearily over forehead and temples. Lensky is frightened at the unspeakable sadness which he reads on her pale face, now, when the brilliance of joy at seeing him again is gone from the large eyes.

"What position?" murmured she. "The position of a woman who must be thankful for her life long to her husband, for that he has saved her with the protection of his personality from a horrible shame."

"He ill-treats you?"

"No, no! All roughness is foreign to his nature. I have never had to complain of a harsh word from him since we were married; yes, he is even very tender to me." She pauses. "I am not disagreeable to him--" Then she continues, slowly, with more evident bitterness at every word: "But--but he is ashamed of me."

She rises, and pulls at the lamp-shade. Her father confusedly strokes her hand, then suddenly springing up, he cries out: "You poor child!" and clasps her to his breast. She bursts into fierce, not to be quieted sobs, and yet is happy as she had not been for years. What a feeling of warm security in these strong arms! What happiness to thus lean on a man whose caresses are not embittered for us by their compassionate graciousness, who loves us without criticism, blindly.

"Mascha, it is not to be borne that you torment yourself so," says he. "I will not consent. Leave him, and come to me."

But then she slips out of his arms, and says, firmly: "No, father; I will stay at my post."

She smooths her hair mechanically. After a short pause, she continues: "I often felt urged to tell you what makes my life so sad. Ah! how I longed for your compassion! And I wrote long letters to you, in which I confessed all, and then tore them up again, because, in the last moment, fear of saddening you conquered everything. But now, as you have guessed it, I will once--once--complain of my grief. What I have suffered in my married life, I cannot describe to you. I thought at first it would be better if I had a child. When Harry came I was glad that my husband was proud of him, but I felt that I was not necessary to the child. Sometimes I told myself that I was in my husband's way, that my death would bring about a reconciliation between him and his parents. And once I was so restless and inconsolable that I was within a hair's breadth of running away from him. I would even have left him the boy. But--it was not the moment to run away, and when baby came I knew that I must bear it, that no one could guard my treasure as I. No one can replace a mother to her daughter, and even if Karl left her to me, a separated wife is still only a discredited mother--a mother without authority. And what is the position of the daughter of a separated wife?--and a separated wife in my circumstances? I would rather bear all the bitterness in the world than risk the future of my child."

For a moment he is silent; then he takes her hand and draws it to his lips. "You are right, Mascha!" said he. "Bear your cross patiently. Nothing weighs more heavily upon one than the consciousness to have forfeited the happiness of those whom one loves. All else is only a trifle--all!"

* * * * *

Now he was in his room, the room which Mascha had prepared for him with such loving care. For the first time in years he was in a home. Everything about him was simple but home-like; a few flowers, a few tasteful ornaments, several photographs in pretty little frames. Every article of furniture had a physiognomy which bade him welcome. A feeling of home-like warmth and satisfaction overcame him. He looked about him with emotion. She had taken such pains, poor Mascha! There stood a picture of Colia as a four-year-old boy; there she was herself, as a baby, with bare little arms; and there, everywhere, pictures of Natalie. She had collected everything that could please him. He could have felt so happy if--if--ah! He held his hand before his eyes. How beautiful it might have been, and how horrible it all was! His son he had not seen since that fearful farewell evening in the Hotel Westminster; all tenderness had vanished from their relations. At regular intervals he received stiff, formal letters from Nikolai, in which the young diplomat related the most important events of his life--that was all. Lensky knew that Nikolai advanced rapidly and brilliantly in his career; he guessed that his son, in spite of all, felt dissatisfied, and his heart remained closed to his father.

Mascha? That was quite different; she had never found anything to criticise in him, her love had ever remained the same. But she was unhappy, miserably unhappy--she, his darling, his idol. And whose fault was it, then?

With the manner of a being weighed down by a burden, he sinks into an arm-chair. What had he done? how was it, really? He had loved them all so boundlessly--Natalie and the children--and still, what had really driven him into this desolate, restless existence which resolved itself into disgust and misery? It had always been the same, even in these last years it had sometimes come over him; but now it was over, his nature had entered upon a new phase, the wild thirst for pleasure was quenched; he was weary--weary unto death.

He sought something supernatural to support him. A mysterious longing tormented him. From without sounded the plashing of the waves, monotonous, sad, hopeless, like the sobs of a rejected human being driven out into the cold.

Had no one knocked on the window? He sprang up, flung open the window. He trembled in every limb, cold sweat stood on his brow. The lamp threw long, trembling, wavering rays of light on the rippling water. As if built of shadows, like the ghosts of a city long dead, rose the palaces in the moonlight, dimmed by drifting clouds. The sirocco brooded over the lagunes. A soft breeze, the gentle warmth of a passing caress, blew over his cheek. He heard the tender sound of a sympathetic human voice close to his ear; it was Natalie's voice, but she spoke a strange language. He did not understand her. His heart stopped beating in breathless listening; he stretched out his arms--it was over, all vanished, all was vacancy!

He closed his lips tightly and groped for a chair. For years, at times, the same alluring, incomprehensible fancy pervaded him. The first time, he had fought against it with the whole strength of his intellect, had ascribed it all to an overexcitement of his nerves; now he firmly believed in a supernatural apparition. She came ever nearer, but he could never reach her. He tried to think of other things. He sought a book, a newspaper, which he might read to distract his mind, but found none. He remembered that he had left a new romance by Daudet, which he had glanced over before dinner, when Mascha had left him to dress, in the drawing-room. With a light in his hand, he went to get the book. He fancied that Mascha had long since retired. To his great astonishment, he heard voices in the drawing-room. He opened the door. There sat the young couple. Baerenburg was very pale. His head was bowed. An expression of deep shame lay on his finely cut face. One saw plainly that this was no bad man, but only a weak one, who, torn from his natural condition of life, could not thrive in strange ground. A thick necklace of pearls lay on the table.

At Lensky's entrance, Mascha, as well as her husband, turned her head. She had evidently been crying, but still tried to take on a pleasant, indifferent expression. It went to Lensky's heart to see how she restrained herself to spare him a pang.

"Do not force yourself to smile," said he, going straight up to her. "It is of no use." He seized the pearl necklace and looked at it with peculiar emotion. "I have understood!"

For a moment there was utter silence, then Baerenburg began, constrainedly: "You must not take the situation so desperately--it is only an inconvenient moment--naturally very painful to me, very----"

Lensky interrupted him. "It is better that we do not speak of it," cried he, crimson with restrained rage, and with hoarse, quite gasping voice; "if I once begin, I would say things to you which a nobleman could not pardon me, and I do not wish to quarrel with you--not on account of my child--but--but--" He grasped his throat with both hands. "No, I shall suffocate; it must out!"

"Father, hush, for God's sake!" cried Mascha. "You do him an injustice. Think how hard it was for him--another in his position--" She leaned against her father, pleadingly, tearfully.

"She is right," he murmured. "Who knows, another would have perhaps been still worse, still worse! But now leave me alone with my child; it would be better."

Baerenburg left the room. "He gambles!" said Lensky, looking Mascha straight in the eyes.

Mascha lowered her eyes. "Only since our marriage," murmured she.

"The miserable fellow!" burst out Lensky.

"Do not be too severe with him," said Mascha. "He is indeed almost as much to be pitied as I. Ah, father, father!" She wrung her hands, then suddenly, with a gesture of unspeakable despair, pushing back the hair from her temples, she cried: "If I only had the courage to hold my Natascha close to my heart and kiss her for a last time, and spring down into the water with her--there--" She points to a window; she has evidently already busied herself with the thought. "But how can I have the courage when she smiles at me, and twitches her little limbs so gayly, and so rejoices in life!"

Lensky laid his arm round the young wife and leaned the head of the unhappy woman on his shoulder. "It will be better; he will change in time. You only must not yield too much to him; you must take the reins in your hand, must have head and character for two. Forget the old story, demand your right of him; then all will go well, believe me. As for your pecuniary affairs, I will take counsel. Only this--" He took the pearl necklace which had remained on the table and let it slide caressingly through his fingers. "Do not give this away; that you must not inflict upon me--only not that. I will take counsel, do not worry yourself."

XXXIV.

Yes, he would take counsel. It was harder than he thought. By the necessary inquiry into his affairs, it turned out that nothing more of his fortune was left to him. Where had it gone? He had lived so simply these last years, quite like a beggar. Where was the money?

The great sympathy which he had always felt for every living being, for everything that feels pain, had latterly become morbid and exaggerated in character. He gave and gave to every one who turned to him; gave without reckoning, without thinking, assisted every need, every weakness, every burden, in order to alleviate a grief, were it only for an hour. He gave until he had nothing more to give. The only thing that was left him to procure relief for his unhappy child was to again appear before the public. So he took up anew the wanderer's staff.

This time also he allowed his former manager, Herr Braun, to plan his foreign tour. He gave his first concert beyond the frontier in Koenigsberg. He did not feel anxious about the audience. With the thundering applause which had everywhere fallen to his share at his last concert tour still ringing in his ears, he quite did not comprehend the possibility of a fiasco. Another kind of discomfort tormented him.

In the recently flown years, which he had earnestly and solitarily passed in the effort to listen once more to the inner voices, which had been silenced in the mad whirl of his virtuoso life, but which anew, at first hesitatingly, but then ever more powerfully, more enthusiastically, vibrated through his mind--in these four years of exclusively creative activity, virtuosity had lost its nimbus for him. This kind of triumph seemed to him small, quite degrading. He was really ashamed to appear before the public with his old arts. But--he did it for his child.

But not the slightest doubt that he would be received with rejoicings occurred to him. He was mistaken. When early in February he gave his first concert in Koenigsberg, the hall was half empty, the audience remained cold. How was that possible?

He thought that the critics would revenge him for the pitiable indifference of the throng, that his colleagues would bring him ovations, would rebuild for him his old pedestal of subjection and flattery. But no. The critics were lukewarm, and the artist world showed itself quite adverse.

How was it, then, that he, by his boundless generosity could win no enduring gratitude, by his astonishing genius could not win respect which should secure him, at his age, from the severity of an objective judgment? How was it that he, a few years after his disappearance from the arena, already was accounted with those to be judged? He had never believed in friendship, and now, as it appeared, he really had no friends.

In his time he had been raved over, adored, flattered, and secretly envied; he had not been loved, and people were not inclined to spare him. He had always been too rough, too ruthless, too arrogant. Always ready to give to every one, he would never accept anything, even thanks. In spite of his outward benevolence, his winning kindness in superficial intercourse, he was at heart very reserved and inaccessible. Except to his wife and children, he had never been intimate with a single being, however much painful compassion he might feel for every misery.

This repellent arrogance of feeling, which always showed upon nearer acquaintance, had something paining and humiliating. People were ashamed to be dependent upon a man who made so little of it.

A number of new, clever virtuosos, who formerly could have won no recognition, had appeared in the foreground, and the public had grown accustomed to them. Indeed none of these new artists equalled Lensky in the might of his talent, but the magnificent splendor which had characterized his art in its zenith was no longer remembered. The faults, on the contrary, which disfigured his performance still more significantly at his last appearances, were remembered only too well. People asked themselves how they could have been so pleased by such arbitrariness, and every form of musical failing. They were happy to have escaped this fame carrying all before it, and near which no other genius could expand.

His reappearance on the musical horizon had the same effect as the sudden apparition among the living of one for years believed dead. The chasm which his retirement had made was closed; there was no longer a place for him. Instead of defending him, his colleagues triumphantly gave reasons for the repellent bearing of the public.

He felt as if annihilated. It was not possible that his old power had really left him, he told himself. If he had, a short time ago, thought poorly of his virtuoso success, he now longed for it. A consuming, morbid ambition overcame him, a thirst for triumph. He who had formerly hated all exaggerated figures of speech, all flowery phrases, now hungered for great, enthusiastic demonstrations. He rejoiced at every flattery, however tasteless it might be. That fatal giddiness which overcomes great men when they must descend, overcame him.

He clung to everything to win a support. He who had once so roughly held aloof from all advertising, only tolerating about him those journalists who might afford him a passing diversion, or who suited his humor, now stooped for the favor of the most subordinate reporters. He crowded concert-halls, which else would have remained half empty, with free tickets, in order to secure himself a receptive audience. It was all in vain.

A wild defiance overcame him. He everywhere suspected cabals, grew quite foolish and childish in his fancies. They were unfavorable to Russians in Germany. The indifference of the public was a political demonstration.

Before the public he purposely exhibited a haughty, rough manner, but when he knew himself unobserved, then he hid his head in his hands and wept like a little child.

The old pact with the devil was broken. He sought something else which he could not find--a musical expression for the new, elevating charm which had recently enthralled him and for which he forgot his old art.

XXXV.

"Dear Father:--I have a great joy to confide to you. My husband's parents have become reconciled with me. They are here in Venice, where they will pass several weeks. They live in a hotel, but I see them every day, and have already learned to love my mother-in-law dearly. She reminds me a little of Lady Banbury, only she is not quite so magnificent and wise, but she is a very kind and distinguished old lady, and friendly beyond expectation to me. She is indescribably charming with the children.

"You should only see her sitting on the floor building the St. Mark's Church with blocks for Harry. Harry is naturally the favorite; he has the Baerenburg family look.

"But still he has something of my dear, wild father; he prefers to build the Campanile than the St. Mark's Church, because 'it falls together with such a nice noise when it is finished,' he said to me yesterday, and then his eyes sparkled so, and he danced about so that I embraced him for it.

"Naturally my position has changed for the better. My mother-in-law is one of those who do nothing by halves. She has introduced me to many ladies, and already taken me several times 'into society'--the Venetian society as preliminary. Ah, if you knew how hard it was for me to go among people the first time! I could scarcely stand. Now I have almost accustomed myself to it. I still indeed prefer to remain at home, but my mother-in-law may be right when she forces me to 'show myself,' when she tells me that it is an injustice to my family to yield to my selfish preference for solitude. Yes, certainly she is right. The proof of it is the total change which has taken place in my husband since I have won my little place in society, and--I may say it to you without vanity--since I have been made something of, for they are really very good to me. My music comes to my help. Karl is as pleased as a child at my social success, and is not weary of repeating to me the compliments which they pay him about me.

"He suddenly sees me with quite different eyes, and pays court to me like a lover. He asks my advice in everything, and is never weary of saying how pleasant it is to have a clever wife who can think for one.

"And I, at first--I tell this to you only, papa--at first this change filled me with bitterness. I was no worse at that time when others would know nothing of me. But I restrain myself. Do I not fare better, much better, than I ever dared expect? Whatever I can do to make his life pleasant I will do.

"Can you guess who has done all this for me? My old friend, Nita. Soon after you left here she came to Venice to see me, because my letters had made her sad. And she did not rest until, with the powerful help of Lady Banbury, who is, as you know, the sister of my mother-in-law, she had brought about the reconciliation between Karl and his parents. What trouble she took, how many letters she wrote, how she travelled here and there--it is not to be described.

"Ah, what a lovely girl! You should learn to know her more intimately. She is prettier than ever, although she is nearly thirty. Her fame grows daily, and if you perhaps believe that she poses as a muse, and boasts exaggeratedly like any other female celebrity--far from it! There is something so purely womanly, tender, in her manner, and such a charming smile when she raises a child on her knees.

"And now of what lies nearest my heart.

"My husband resumes his career. We leave for Washington in the latter part of April.