Part 5

Mascha has wiped the tears from her eyes; she looks at Nita touchingly, thankfully; then smiling, with the tender roguishness which adds so much to the charm of her little personality, she says: "I am not sorry. You would not have been so kind to me if I had been polite, would you?" And with that she lays her arm somewhat shyly around Nita's neck and presses her soft lips to the young artist's smooth cheeks. "I was beside myself," says she. "Ah! I am so afraid of death! If only there was no dying!"

"It is a peculiarity of hers. One must have a little patience with her in that direction," explains Nikolai.

"Give us some tea, Sophie. That will give the child something else to think of," says Nita, without noticing Nikolai's remark.

To-day, also, she is strikingly stiff and cold to him, so that he asks himself: "What has she against me?" Nevertheless, she warms somewhat in the course of conversation. The young man visibly gains ground with her.

He is decidedly very agreeable in intercourse. He has the quiet manners, easily adapting themselves to circumstances, of a true gentleman. He talks well, without tasteless chattering. Nita listens to him with interest, asks him all kinds of questions about Russia, and, on the whole, treats him with the indifferent kindness of a fifty-year-old woman to a boy.

The ladies in the next room have long left their work; twilight falls. Still they talk. Sophie is quiet for the most part, listens, comfortably and idly reclining in her easy-chair, to the conversation of the two persons who are dearest to her, and wonders at them both silently.

But Maschenka, whose mood has completely changed, and who has now become immoderately gay, is not at all content to play the _role_ of silent listener. Every moment her trilling, childish laugh, or some strange little remark, interrupts Nita and Nikolai's earnest conversation, so that finally Nikolai, who is always afraid that his sister will be misunderstood, remarks:

"My little sister has lately been with relatives who were a little too cold and formal to understand her exaggeration. One must not be astonished if she is at times a little bit wild; she is like a little brook, long held captive by winter, which, after a little bit of sunshine has set it free, now doubly laughs and chatters and foams, because it is so happy to be free of the heavy, oppressive ice. Are you not, little goose?" And he takes Mascha by the chin.

"Do not make excuses because you have a charming sister," Nita hereupon answers him. "I shall be glad if you will bring her to see me very soon again."

* * * * *

If Nikolai's vexation at his sister's flight from Arcachon very soon lost itself in tender emotion, on the contrary, the horror which Sergei Alexandrovitch felt at this headlong self-will was of a much more enduring quality. The tender, repentant letter with which Maschenka begged the uncle from whose house she had fled to pardon her over-haste, Sergei left unanswered. To Nikolai's note which, joined in his sister's request, tried to excuse Mascha's fault a little, and asked whether he might, after his father had left Paris, again bring the child to Arcachon, the old bureaucrat replied that there would be no talk of that. The condition of his nerves would not permit him a second time to undertake the oversight of such an unreliable being as Mascha. In his opinion the best thing would be to send her to boarding-school.

This was also Nikolai's opinion under the circumstances. For the present a stay in an ordinarily strict school seemed to him decidedly more desirable for Mascha than a continued existence with the Jeliagins.

He even succeeded in winning his father to this view, but when Mascha learned what they planned for her future, she rebelled angrily, desperately, and with anxious, touching tenderness for so long that Lensky, in spite of all his son's representations, gave way to her. He could not bear to see the little one unhappy. He formally begged her pardon, with caresses and endearing words, that he had proposed anything which had excited and vexed her. Nikolai shrugged his shoulders and was powerless. But Mascha laughed gayly, happy at her victory.

How happy she was at that time--from morning till evening, happy! Except for the little tear intermezzo, she had never been so happy as in the three weeks which passed between her arrival and her father's departure from Paris.

Every morning he passed at his sister-in-law's house; usually he remained to lunch. He sent his pretty daughter all the wonderfully beautiful floral tributes which enthusiasts sent him, and besides that, indulged her with imprudent, immoderate generosity. Again and again he turned to Nikolai with the same: "Get me something for the child; she is so bewitching when she is pleased. She rejoices like a gipsy!"

"I have something for you, Puss," said he, when he went to see her, after she had greeted him, and handed her a package done up in paper, usually an ornament that was much too costly for her youth.

"Ah! give it to me, papa," and then she tore off the wrapping with the active impatience of a young, playful kitten, and opened the parcel. Lensky watched her good-naturedly with smiling expectation, like a great child that every day rejoices in playing the same trick--a sparkle of two dark blue eyes, a gay, penetrating cry of joy, and two soft, warm arms are thrown round his neck. But he presses his lips to the great, wonderfully beautiful eyes again and again, and murmurs something tender, incomprehensible, to the girl's curly hair.

"Really, do you love me much, papa?" said she once, and looked at him in astonishment piercingly at his moved face.

"Have you ever doubted it?"

"Yes, often," she nodded, earnestly. "I thought to love mutually with all one's heart was only for ordinary people like we others; but a great genius like you only tolerates one love, and sometimes is pleased without really returning it. But no; you really like me!"

"Oh! you foolish little monkey!" murmured he, and kissed each separate dimple in her soft, white, child's hands.

Sometimes he came at ten o'clock in the morning. At that time he frequently saw Barbara in a spotted morning dress, creeping about the house armed with a duster, polishing and putting everything to rights. He never saw Anna at such an early hour; at most, he heard her sharp voice wounding her mother by some sharp, insulting expression. Not only did she never help her mother in her domestic activity, no, she shut herself up in her room in order not to see Barbara about it.

But whom Lensky very often found busy about the house with Madame Jeliagin, was Mascha. Enveloped in a large blue apron, she appeared now here, now there, as zealously as gayly trying to assist her poor, sickly aunt; and what a capable, vigorous assistance! Her firm young fingers arranged things quite differently from Barbara's trembling hands. She climbed up on the furniture to remove cobwebs from the picture frames, she polished the mirrors and dusted the ornaments, practical and active as a housemaid by profession, and still laughing with gay, fairy-like grace, as a little princess, as if it were all a joke.

All the servants worshipped her; even the weary, stupid, tormented old Aunt Jeliagin learned to love her. It would be hard not to love this quick, lively, impetuous, but always kind-hearted little girl; only the intolerable Anna did not.

But if one, on the one hand, could think of nothing more enchanting than the girl, glowing with happy, tender young life, on the other hand, one could hardly imagine anything more touching and noble than Lensky in the hours passed with his little daughter.

If he now, as soon as his nature was aroused, lost all restraint, and then the worst part of him showed itself rougher, and less vaguely than formerly--rougher than could be understood in a civilized man--on the other hand, as long as the evil in him slept, he showed himself nobler, more blameless than formerly in his best moments.

What had formerly been united in him was now separated. Nikolai, who frequently accompanied him to the Avenue Wagram, observed him in astonishment.

This was not the same man who in the evening, greedily eating, and with cynical, twinkling eyes, sat between some pair of hysterical enthusiasts, to whom he permitted himself to say all that was coarse and familiar--the man with the hard, joyless laugh, the two-sided wit, the shameless scorn of men, and especially women.

No; the Lensky who in the morning took his pretty little daughter in his arms, was a pale, somewhat weary and sad man, a man with a hoarse but soft and rather low voice, a man who spoke little, but listened pleasantly, who was always ready to interest himself in the most foolish childishness.

After lunch he usually remained an hour or so, and played with Mascha. Even his art he involuntarily changed for love of her. The wild fire with which he enslaved his concert audiences was perhaps lacking, but how tender, how delicate, how noble, became his playing if he felt the gaze of the child's eyes filled with tears and enthusiasm resting upon him.

She might accompany him! Ah! how proud she was if he called out a hearty word of praise to her in the midst of his playing! And there was no lack of opportunity to applaud her.

Frequently he let her play to him alone on the piano, listened to her with the greatest patience, yes, with true pleasure. He made little conscientious corrections, mingled with jests--really troubled himself seriously with her instruction.

Nikolai, as child and youth, had in vain tormented himself musically, only at length to separate _a l'aimable_ from the piano, the violin, and the 'cello. Mascha, on the contrary, was incredibly talented in music. What others attained by weary study, she had inherited. The flexibility of her wrists, the smoothness of her touch, were something at which Lensky could not cease to marvel.

How they rejoiced in each other, father and child!

The only hours of those three weeks disturbed by unrepulsable melancholy were, for Mascha, those which she passed at her father's concerts. Naturally, she never missed one; but, very pretty and tastefully dressed, sat now with Colia, at other times with her aunt, in an especially good place, which was reserved for her, and listened attentively to every tone. In the hall there was no one--no, not even among the many professional violinists who envied him his triumphs--who had more plainly remarked the great change which began to take place in the genial virtuoso than his idolizing daughter. She felt it every time that he played falsely. She could have wept, her breath failed her, she looked around the hall, frightened and yet defiantly.

But unconfusedly the Parisians raved over even the falsest tones with the same enthusiasm. One kindled another with the same madly expressed animation, until at length Mascha persuaded herself that she must have heard falsely from anxiety for her father, and, carried away by the noise, forgot all her grief.

X.

"They have come from Felix with the dress for mademoiselle--oh, a wonder of a dress! The girl is waiting up-stairs," the maid calls out to Mascha, who has just returned with Nikolai from a walk in the Champs Elysees.

It is the last day before Lensky's departure. Maschenka is very depressed. She has almost cried her eyes out over the approaching separation, and Nikolai has taken her out-doors to distract her, and also so that she may not disfigure herself for the evening. An important event is before her for this evening. Mascha is for the first time to appear in society as a young lady, for the first time to wear a real evening dress, a Felix evening dress.

Madame Jeliagin gives a _soiree_ in Lensky's honor. She hopes that the charm which the great artist for the moment has for Parisian society will suffice to at last once more fill her empty rooms.

"Yes, a dress, a true wonder of a dress," the maid had called out to Mascha, and although the girl's eyes yet shone with recent tears, she cried out with joy at this message. Throwing gay kisses to her brother, she runs quickly up the stairs, and bursts open the door of her room.

"Where is the dress--where? Ah!!"

Indeed, a lovely dress, and how it fits! No, not quite; a little alteration must be made, declares the girl who brought it. "When one has the fortune to work for any one who has such a beautiful figure as mademoiselle, one must not be careless."

Beautiful figure!

No one had ever yet told Mascha that she had a beautiful figure. She turns her head on all sides to look at herself in the glass. For the first time she finds the mirror over her toilet table too small. Her eyes dance, her finger-tips twitch for joy. Incessantly she turns over the dress, discovering new beauties. "Ah, it is superb! But will the seamstress finish the alteration in time?" she asks, anxiously.

Now all is arranged. The maid has thrown a red scarf of India cashmere around Mascha's shoulders. She hurries down the stairs, bursts into the room, and throwing away the scarf, hurries up to her father and Nikolai.

"_Eh bien!_" says she, and turns slowly around like a figure in a shop. "_Eh bien!_"

They are alone in the drawing-room, the two Lenskys and the young girl. What joy to let herself be admired by father and brother without being at the same time submitted to Anna's icy, depressing criticism!

"I am quite ready on this side," she declares importantly, and points to her right arm, which is enveloped to the shoulder in a tan-colored glove, while the left is still bare.

"So! Well, I prefer the other side," says Lensky, laughing. And in truth one can think of nothing more charming than this bare, round, slender arm, not statuesque, white as the arm of a married woman of thirty--no, even a trifle red on the upper part, but with such a bewitching dimple at the elbow, with such tiny blue veins around the wrist.

"Yes; I decidedly prefer it," repeated Lensky, and pushes his daughter somewhat from him in order to observe her more particularly. Nikolai also looks attentively at his sister, tries to make the necessary remarks, to criticise a little. But as she stands before him in her artistically simple white dress, her little fingers twitching with embarrassment, and with her large, anxious eyes seeking approval in his face which she awaited so securely and now cannot find, it really seems to him that never in his life has he met a lovelier young girl than Mascha. What shoulders, what a figure, so beautifully rounded, without the immature thinness of other seventeen-year-old girls. And what is most charming in this unusual little being, on these plump, dazzling shoulders rests such a sweet, pale, little childish face, with such a tender, innocent mouth, with such indescribably pure eyes, looking out boldly and fearlessly at the world, so that the contrast is really painful. One feels that the girl has been desecrated by no grovelling curiosity, no passionate dreams; that she is perfectly unconscious of her physical maturity.

"You are not as beautiful as your mother was," says Lensky after awhile.

"No one else is as beautiful; but that is not necessary," says Mascha, now really troubled. "But--but do I not, then, please you at all?"

"You foolish little goose, do you believe that?" says Lensky, drawing his daughter to him. "We will not tease you any longer, eh, Colia? We will at last tell her quite simply that she looks charming. Yes," he repeated, holding her head down on his shoulder and stroking it, "you are charming, my little dove. You will certainly hear it often enough to-day, and later. Why should I not enjoy the pleasure of being the first to say it to you? You are still a little bit tear-stained," adds he very gently. "Poor little heart, poor angel! But it is becoming to you!"

For the moment, Mascha is so filled with childish desire for praise that she has no sense left for what is the dearest thing in the world for her--the tenderness of her father.

"If I only had a cheval glass in my room," sighed she. "I really have not seen myself yet." And, exhilarated by her father's praise, she climbs up on a stool, and, turning her head to all sides, she tries to see herself as well as possible in the glass over the chimney.

The chandelier sheds a golden light over her dark hair; the reflection of the fire flickers over her white dress. "Father, Colia," asks she, somewhat hesitatingly, "do you think that any one could ever fall in love with me?"

Just then "Herr Graf Baerenburg," calls the servant, and opens the door.

Blushing to the roots of her hair, Mascha springs down from the stool. Baerenburg has only had time to wonder at a pair of very white shoulders in the fullest light, then to see a pair of tiny feet appear from a fragrant cloud of valenciennes and muslin, and jump down to the ground.

"Well, what do you say to my vain daughter, Count Baerenburg?" asks Lensky, gayly, to help Mascha over her embarrassment.

Baerenburg shrugs his shoulders with an approving expression, and replies: "That I have never seen a pair of smaller feet, that is all." Lensky laughs, Nikolai frowns, and Maschenka, with a quick gesture, picks up the formerly discarded red cashmere scarf from the ground and wraps herself in it. Her bare shoulders suddenly annoy her. She is ashamed.

"Only so that you will not take cold," jokes Lensky, and teasingly draws the red scarf together under her chin. "She appears in the world to-day for the first time as a young lady," says he, turning to Baerenburg, and looks at him significantly. Does the conceited Austrian really remark how charming his little girl is?

The conceited Austrian notices it only too well. "The first evening dress. I congratulate you," says he, bowing respectfully to Mascha.

"I had no idea--" now begins Mascha.

"That you would have the misfortune to be obliged to endure me at dinner to-day," Baerenburg completes her sentence. "Mademoiselle Jeliagin wrote me asking, if I were not engaged, to dine _en famille_ at her mother's. I was already engaged"--with a side glance at Mascha--"but I excused myself. Have I perhaps made a mistake in the date?"

"Oh, no!" replies Mascha. "Now I remember, Anna told me some gentleman would come to dinner, and I was vexed that my last dinner with papa would be spoiled."

"Mascha!" says Nikolai, shocked.

And Lensky says, half vexed, half laughingly: "My daughter looks like a grown girl; really, she is, I believe, twelve years old at the most."

"Papa!" says Mascha, blushing hotly. "I did not know that it was to be Count Baerenburg when I was vexed."

"So, and that alters the case," laughs Baerenburg.

"It seems so," replies Nikolai.

But Mascha, observing that they are making merry over her _naivete_, suddenly becomes very dignified and says: "It stands to reason that a man who has saved my brother's life should not be a mere casual acquaintance to me." Then, becoming defiant from embarrassment, she slips her little hand in Nikolai's arm and adds: "I love my brother dearly."

Then the Jeliagins enter the room, the temperature falls a couple of degrees, the atmosphere becomes icy.

They look strangely: Barbara in her faded lilac dress and imitation diamonds. As for Anna, she is, in her cold, blond manner, without doubt very handsome, and her black tulle gown becomes her somewhat too tall and slender figure wonderfully. But although she is but twenty-six, her appearance has already that not to be described sharpness, pointedness, dryness, the sign of girls whose bloom begins to wither before it has yet found opportunity to fully unfold.

But without criticising her cousin's charms, Mascha only calls out enthusiastically and childishly: "Oh, Anna, how lovely you look--oh, how lovely! What a shame that I am not old enough to wear black!"

"Do not act as if you had never seen a well-dressed woman before," Anna whispers to her impatiently. "You behave like a village girl."

And Mascha blushes and lowers her head. During this skirmish between the two cousins, Madame Jeliagin has welcomed Baerenburg in the most friendly manner; now Anna stretches out her hand with the manner of an empress conferring a favor. "It is very nice in you, Count, to have drawn a mark through our old cotillon quarrel." And turning to the others, she explains: "This autumn in Spaa, at a ball of the Marquise d'Arly, I had no favor left for Count Baerenburg. He--h-m!--did me the honor to be mortally offended at it." Baerenburg, who has forgotten the whole affair as completely as the date of Shakespeare's birth, bows deeply, and murmurs something. Suddenly Anna turns critically to her cousin. "But, Marie," she exclaims, looking at the thick string of pearls around Mascha's round throat, "what were you thinking of to adorn yourself with wax pearls like an Indian?"

"Wax pearls?" burst out Mascha, indignantly. "They are the pearls which our dear dead empress gave papa for mamma once when he played at court. They are wonderful pearls!"

"I had already noticed them. I have seldom seen such beautiful ones," says Baerenburg. "My mother possesses a similar string, but only wears them on great occasions."

"My mamma wore them day and night, from the hour when papa hung them around her neck," announces Mascha, cordially. "Mamma told me at first she was frightened at the gift, and said pearls mean tears; then papa kissed the pearls and replied: 'Yes, but tears of joy.' Do you remember, papa?" asks she, looking up at him.

"Yes," says he, shortly.

"And when, two years before her death, she hung the pearls round my neck, she also kissed them, and said, with her dear smile: 'Do not forget, Maschenka, they are tears of joy!' Since then I have never parted with them."

"That is all very pretty and poetic," replies Anna, condescendingly, "but as you cannot tell this touching commentary to your splendor to every one, I would advise you to take off the pearls for this evening. It is absolutely unsuitable for a girl of your age to wear such costly ornaments. You are, without that, dressed absurdly elegantly--_c'est d'un gout douteux!_"

"Take off my pearls!" calls out Mascha, unspeakably vexed at Anna's condescending tone, with a violence which plainly betrays the dangerous vehemence of her nature inherited from her father. "No, never! Never!" she repeats, seizing the necklace with both hands. "I would rather stay in my room the whole evening and not show myself, if you are afraid I might shame you."

A moment before, Lensky felt an almost uncontrollable desire to throw something at Anna's head, but Mascha's burst of rage has a subduing effect on his own excitement. Not for anything in the world would he have his daughter appear to disadvantage.

"But, Maschenka," says he, gently, laying his hand on hers, "collect yourself. Anna does not mean badly. In the end it is quite indifferent whether an insignificant little thing like you has a black or a white neckband on. Restrain yourself, my little dove. Do not forget that you are a guest here." A stern word would, perhaps, have steeled her. Lensky's gentleness spoils everything.

"Ah! I am everywhere only a guest, and no longer at home anywhere," says she. Tears came to her eyes. She tried hard to be mistress of herself, choked down what she could; her unpractised seventeen-year-old self-restraint does not endure, and suddenly bursting into convulsive sobs, she leaves the room. An unpleasant silence follows.

Anna boldly displays her vexation, old Madame Jeliagin smiles sweetly and politely into air, Lensky looks angry, and Colia murmurs excusingly: "She is very over excited. She cannot console herself for the parting from you this time, father."