Part 6

"Yes, yes, I know," says Lensky. "Poor child! No self-control--no self-control." And turning directly to Baerenburg, he adds: "She lost her mother three years ago, just when she needed her most, and since then she has been, so to speak, left to herself. But she is a good child--a very good child."

"Shall I perhaps go up and look after her?" asks Madame Jeliagin, coaxingly, of her brother-in-law.

"No, no, aunt, let me go," says Colia, hastily preventing. "I know her better than you. I usually succeed quickly in calming her. She really deserves to stay in her room, and she will be ashamed to come down again; but if you will let me, I still will bring her. She has looked forward so to this evening!"

"What would you do if your sister had behaved like Marie?" Anna whispers to Count Baerenburg.

He knits his brows in lazy consideration. "H-m! h-m! The same that Nikolai did--run after her to console her," replies he, slowly. "That is, granted that my sister were as charming as your cousin, which she is not."

XI.

Except for a few trifles, the dinner is prettily served, abundant and good. The mood prevailing leaves so much the more to be desired. Lensky, who is vexed that Maschenka has made a scene before the "stupid, arrogant Austrian," says nothing. Old Madame Jeliagin is consumed with anxiety lest the service be broken. Mascha is awkward and shy as an eight-year-old child who is ashamed of her naughtiness. Only Anna feels thoroughly at ease, for it always has an exhilarating effect upon her to sit between two handsome and polite young men, as to-day between Nikolai and Baerenburg; but the latter looks quite uninterruptedly over at Mascha.

"A charming creature, this Mascha," he thinks to himself. It pleases him to repeat her strange name to himself. "Yes, a charming creature. What a complexion, what a charming little mouth, and what a delightful expression, changing incessantly from petulance to moving tenderness, in her eyes! What shoulders! What a shame!"

Yes, what a shame to marry Marie Lensky. He could not think of it, but--why should he not be a little pleasant to her? What Count Baerenburg understands as being "a little pleasant," others would describe as paying desperate court to a girl. But he sees nothing of the sort, but takes the situation poetically.

"If only this silly Anna would not be so unbearably attentive!" thinks he, and still looks secretly over at Mascha.

She now stands near Lensky, before the mantel, pale, and with a treacherous redness of the heavy eyelids. With a kind but very earnest face, bending down to her, holding one of her small hands between his large ones, her father speaks very gently but impressively to her, evidently reproves her, and in a strange, melodious language, which goes to Baerenburg's heart, although he understands not a word of it, the wonderful Russian tongue which, like no other, contains and reflects the whole character of the people for whom it serves as expression.

After Lensky has finished his admonition, Maschenka, innocently unembarrassed, stretches out her arms to her father, and kisses him.

Baerenburg is thrilled.

Meanwhile, Lensky, gently reproving her, says in French: "And now behave like a sensible being, Mascha. So! Sit up straight, and play something for us, now, before the people come."

"But papa!"

"Yes, no evasions, only play. Rely on me, you may venture it," says Lensky. "I have been enough ashamed of you to-day, and, for a change, would like to be proud of you. Sit down--my heart--I take the risk; it will go!" And with that he raised the piano lid himself. "The A minor rondo of Mozart!"

For one instant she hesitated, then the wish to distinguish herself before Baerenburg, to please her father, comes to her. She plays, and how beautifully she plays!

As if electrified, Baerenburg rises and goes up to the piano. He has a great love for good music. The A minor rondo is his express favorite. In this composition of universal sadness, in which the purest artist soul which ever came down to us from heaven weeps over the frivolity of an entire century, Mascha's still immature but always tender and delicately shaded mastery is especially noticeable.

"That was entrancing," calls out Baerenburg, with true enthusiasm. "You are a God-gifted artist!"

"That is she; I heard her without," suddenly a deep, old woman's voice joins energetically in his praise.

The first of the ladies invited for the evening has appeared.

She is a very handsome old lady, an old lady with gay, mocking, and still good-natured, sparkling blue eyes which betray her Irish origin--a woman whom calumny has never ventured to touch, although she has for thirty years been one of the "influentials" of Europe, one of the two or three women for whom Lensky feels respect, Lady Banbury.

"I congratulate you on your daughter, Lensky," says she, greeting the artist cordially. "So this is the fat little baby whom I used to carry about in St. Petersburg. I am very glad to see you again, my child." And Lady Banbury gives her hand to Mascha. But when Mascha, with a shy courtesy, wishes to draw it to her lips, the old lady says: "I grudge the leather your fresh lips; let me embrace you, that is, if it is not unpleasant for you to kiss an old woman who loved your mother very dearly. Ah! good evening, Nickolai. You here also, Charley?" to Baerenburg. Then, at length, remembering the circumstance that she is really not Lensky's but his sister-in-law's guest, she turns to the latter.

Strange, all the truly distinguished ladies who are present this evening commit the same, perhaps somewhat voluntary, error--they have all come on Lensky's account merely; they come early, in simple toilets. All have a pleasant word for Mascha, tease Lensky with some ancient reminiscence, and Mascha is pleased with their charm, with the gay mood which they have brought with them, with the great respect which they show her father. Sonia comes, but not Nita. It is a great disappointment for Nikolai. He has not yet ceased to inquire of Sophie for her friend's health, when a large, stout, handsome, painted blonde enters, a woman with too bare shoulders and too long train, a woman the sight of whom has the effect of the Medusa's head upon all the other women.

"How does she come here?" ask the other ladies. "How does she come here?" they ask each other oftener and oftener, as, one after the other, a procession of brilliant social ambiguities file in--a cosmopolitan battalion of Lensky enthusiasts, recruited from the highest circles.

Men appear sparsely. They form scarcely a third part of the numerous guests.

Lensky has been playing for more than an hour. The women crowd around him so that he has scarcely room to move his arm. His eyes wander about him. He sees a confusion of bare necks, of brilliant eyes, of half-parted lips. The sight goes to his head. The most insane flatteries are repeated to him. He feels twenty years younger; a triumphant insolence overpowers him.

In a concert hall, where the resonance is better, where the public is more critical, he exerts himself with all the force of his powerful nature; but here, in this narrow room, where nothing can be distinctly heard, surrounded by an audience of musically ignorant women, he plays like an intoxicated person. The air becomes ever more oppressive.

One person is boundlessly unhappy this evening. It is Mascha. Totally ignorant of what her duties as hostess may prescribe, she is incessantly corrected by her cousin, pushed about, has the feeling of being in every one's way, and while she, quite unknown as she is, creeps through the crowd assembled in the adjoining rooms, she hears remarks about her father, his playing, his relations to women, which send the blood to her cheeks, although she only half understands the most.

At length Lensky has laid down his violin. All the respectable women have withdrawn. Maschenka has helped them find their wraps. Most of them were very pleasant; some kissed her good-by, some even asked Nikolai to bring his sister to see them--but not very urgently.

If dear Natalie were still alive, why then they would be delighted to see this charming Mascha, but to be forced to take these unbearable Jeliagins into the bargain--that one must consider!

The Lensky enthusiasts have remained. Madame Jeliagin has invited them to partake of light refreshments. Mascha tried to help her, and had the misfortune to upset a cup of tea, whereupon, for the tenth time this evening, she is bidden to "get out of the way."

Depressed and namelessly unhappy, she stands among the guests, not knowing where to turn, when Baerenburg, coming up to her, remarks: "How pale you look! It must be frightfully fatiguing to be hostess on such occasions, especially if one is not accustomed to the task. Come into the adjoining room, it is cooler there, and rest a little."

He gives her his arm and leads her into the adjacent drawing-room. Many guests have already found the way here; it is not especially secluded here, but enough so that the sympathetic pair can talk apart and undisturbed, if not unobserved.

He leads her to a divan which is partly concealed by a miniature thicket of palms and ferns.

"Will you not have an ice? It will refresh you," says he, and beckons a servant.

Maschenka takes an ice, tastes it, and pushes it away.

"You are evidently very tired," remarks Baerenburg compassionately.

"It is my first evening in society," sighs Mascha. "I looked forward to it so, but if society is always as tedious as to-day--" She sighs inconsolably.

"Great assemblies of people are always disagreeable," he answers. "One can at first not find among the crowd the people one seeks, and must not stay long with them when one has at length found them. At such routs I mostly spend my whole energy in keeping from treading on ladies' trains and being discovered yawning by the hostess. But this evening an exceptional pleasure has been afforded us----"

"Do not speak of it," says Mascha. "My father's playing has given you no pleasure this evening."

Baerenburg pulls his mustache.

"Your father's playing is almost too grand; it has a paralyzing effect in a drawing-room," he murmurs.

"Ah, no, it is not that. You should only hear him play when we are quite alone in the same room. Oh! then it is beautiful enough to move one to tears; but this evening I scarcely recognize him." Maschenka interrupts herself and lowers her head.

He is very sorry for her in her wounded, childish pride. He feels the necessity of distracting her in some manner. A brilliant thought comes to him. "Before I forget it," says he, "would the skin of the identical bear in whose arms Nikolai almost perished, give you any pleasure? I possess it."

"Oh!" says Mascha, jubilant, "an indescribable pleasure!" She gives him her hand. Just then Anna, with two very beautiful and elegant Englishwomen, goes through the room. Baerenburg rises and goes up to them. Mascha waits for him to return to her. No; he gives his arm to one of the Englishwomen, and escorts them out with Anna. Mascha creeps away. She seeks her father, Colia--any one who really cares for her. She looks through the portiere into the smoking-room. The whole room is full of smoke; suddenly she hears a laugh which she does not know, rough, harsh.

She looks through the smoke. There sits Lensky in a low chair. Now she sees him plainly, sees him as she had never seen him before. His face is very red. He laughs to himself and strikes his knee with a coarse gesture. He is telling some racy story, and with an unpleasant glance presses the hand of a woman who sits near him. How they all crowd round him!

Mascha turns away.

When Nikolai, who has been very busy assisting his aunt all the evening to do the honors, resting from his labors, stands with Sonia in the vestibule, he hears the light rustle of a silk dress. He looks up. There, up the stairs, with dragging feet, deeply lowered head, and hand resting heavily on the balustrade, goes a little white figure.

"Maschenka," calls Nikolai in Russian, "is anything the matter?"

"No!" answers a voice choked with defiance and grief.

"Will you not at least wait until father goes?" asks Colia.

The little form quivers, a half-suppressed sob escapes her, then she says shortly, violently: "No."

A half-hour later all is quiet, the last guests have vanished, the servants extinguish the lights.

XII.

"Where is Mascha?" asks Lensky, as Nikolai helps him into his overcoat.

"She has retired. Will you go up to her room?"

"No, it is too late," says Lensky, frowning, and adds: "Do you object to walking, Colia? A stroll has charms for me. I never walk in the daytime, for every street boy runs after me; that is vexatious."

Nikolai himself was pleased to breathe some fresh air after the close rooms.

Lensky was in an elevated mood. With head somewhat thrown back, overcoat open, with swinging arms, he walked near his son. Not far from the house two belated wanderers met them. They started at sight of the virtuoso. "Ah, Lensky!" they exclaimed, and stood still. When Lensky looked at them smilingly, although they were not personally acquainted with him, they took off their hats as though he were a crowned head.

Lensky bowed politely, graciously. "It is too absurd," he remarked, walking on. "Not even at two o'clock in the morning can one walk on the street without being recognized. I believe Bismarck and I have the best-known faces in Europe."

Scarcely had he said this when he felt how laughable it was; he is vexed at it, and, as always after his great or small triumphs, now, when the momentary intoxication of it begins to wear off, an embarrassing, suffocating, quite humiliating feeling overcomes him.

All at once he stands still. Nikolai looks at him. He is frightened at the tormented expression of the artist's pale face.

"Are you not well, father?" asks he, taking him by the arm, anxious lest a new attack of giddiness, had overcome him.

"No, no, there is nothing the matter with me."

They had reached the end of the Champs Elysees. "Stop a little," says Lensky. "Sit down on the bench--no, not that one near the light; here in the shadow--and let us talk, that is, if you are not sleepy."

"I? Far from it, father. But you! Remember you leave at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. You should rest."

"No; I can sleep to-morrow on the train. Sit down."

Nikolai does as his father requests. For a while they are both silent, then Lensky begins:

"Now I think of it, what was the matter with the hysterical enthusiast who fainted that time at my concert in Eden? Mascha told me of her. I thought she was invited this evening."

"She was invited," replied Nikolai.

"So!" murmured Lensky. "And she did not think it worth the trouble to come?"

"She was ill."

"Excuse!" says Lensky. After awhile he begins again. "I was vexed that she did not come. I asked after her. Mascha is quite in love with her. Who is she?"

"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch."

"Sankjewitch, Sankjewitch? Is she a Pole?"

"No; her father was a Sclavonian, her mother was of a Bohemian family."

"So, h-m! You have seen her often?" He looks penetratingly at Nikolai.

"Yes."

"And are you as charmed with her as our little curly-head?"

"I find her very charming," murmurs Nikolai, softly.

"In what a tone you say that!" Lensky lays his hand on his son's arm. "You are in love, eh?"

Nikolai is silent.

Lensky laughs. "H-m! h-m! It is the first time that I have ever discovered you in any serious enthusiasm. Tell me, now you should be already decided, have you any intentions?"

"What do you mean?" asks Nikolai, hoarsely.

"Just what I say."

In this moment Nikolai feels almost a kind of horror for his father.

"You cannot know of whom you speak," says he, icily; "it is a question of a young girl of very good family."

"I know very well of whom I speak," replies Lensky, vexed at his son's admonition. "It is a question of a young artist who, separated from her family, goes her own way. I cannot possibly expect of such a gifted exception that she will be restrained by the same prejudices as any little goose."

The blood rushes to Nikolai's cheeks. "I would be in despair if I believed that she thought herself above such prejudices," says he.

"Laughable," said the elder, unconvinced. Then looking askance at his son: "H-m! you seem to have taken it greatly to heart. If you carry such views with you through life, I congratulate you; you will have much suffering. But I pain no one willingly. If I had known that you--I would have been silent. I will not deprive you of your illusions; no one should do that for any man. Heavens! what would men be without illusions! They would creep on all fours. I am no longer far from that. But let us not speak of me; it is better that we speak of you. Only rave calmly to the blue air if it pleases you. I envy you the capacity."

"I have not the slightest intention of raving to the air," replies Nikolai, calmly, but still somewhat stiffly and coldly. "I have a fixed purpose before me."

"You wish to marry?" Lensky exclaims.

"Yes," says Nikolai, shortly.

"Marry at your age! Pardon me, but I never thought you so unpractical."

An unpleasant pause follows. Nikolai at length begins in a trembling voice: "Father, when you look back upon your whole life, even now a long one, what is there in it more beautiful than the first years of your marriage?"

Lensky's face twitches with a painful, scarcely to be mastered emotion; he breathes difficultly. Then he murmurs bitterly: "You would be a poor surgeon, Colia. You have a heavy hand, a very heavy hand. It pains."

Nikolai is shocked. He would like to make good his awkward roughness, to say something loving, tender to his father. Nothing occurs to him.

Then Lensky suddenly turns to him and says: "If you should really meet such a girl as your mother was, and she takes you, then hold her fast in your arms and never part from her; carry her over every stone which might bruise her feet, protect her from every too hot ray of sunlight, from every too cold breath of air, which might harm her, and kneel down before her every evening, and thank her for the happiness which she gives you. But I do not believe that you will find her--she is not to be found!"

"I am very sorry that you have not met Fraeulein von Sankjewitch, father," begins Nikolai, in a warmer, changed tone.

"So am I," replies Lensky, shortly. "How does she look? A beauty, naturally--that is, you think her one."

"No, father, no beauty; but so charming, so lovely."

"H-m! and her manner? If a lady of society wanders on Parnassus, she is usually particularly genial. Is she a decided artist?" asks Lensky, lighting a cigarette.

"A--well, yes, a little--not very much, but a little," answers Nikolai, "and only in the best signification of the word. If you learn to know her you will be just as charmed with her as I!"

"So!--h-m! That is a little bit strong," says Lensky. His voice this time sounds decidedly more kindly, and he pulls the young man's ear.

"I am convinced of it," asserts Nikolai, boldly. "You have never seen such a girl, so full of grace in every movement, and still with such an interesting abruptness; peculiar, full of spontaneity; one moment gloomy, repellant almost to rudeness, then again so kindly cordial, so truly womanly and compassionate; all against a background of incurable sadness--in short, charming, and comparable with nothing else in this world!"

"There has never been any one similar," Lensky assures him earnestly, and adds: "See, see how you thaw; you grow quite animated, dreamer." He is silent awhile, then he begins again: "Does she receive much company?"

"No; she sees as few people as possible."

"Ah!" says Lensky, with the triumphant expression of a hunter who has at length found the trace which he has long sought.

"She does not go into society, because conventional society is too tedious, too unmeaning for her," Nikolai hastily assures him.

"They all say that," replies Lensky, shaking his head. "My dear child, as long as I thought that it was only some passing fancy of yours, I was perfectly ready to let you have your way. But when it is a question of something so important as your marriage, I must earnestly beg you to be on your guard, to look into the matter more closely."

"But, father," says Nikolai, horrified, "all that I have told you should certainly prove to you----"

"It proves to me that you are intensely in love," says Lensky, good-naturedly. "For the rest, it points to all sorts of things which you have overlooked."

Once again Nikolai wishes to interrupt his father, but without noticing this, the latter continues:

"From all you say, she is much too interesting, much too attractive, for a girl of good family, who lives alone with an ex-favorite governess. And then, from whence comes the mysterious unsimilarity of her mood, the incurable sadness which forms the fundamental tone of her being? Inquire, Colia. If you come upon any trace of an unhappy love, a sad disappointment, then I will own myself satisfied, then all is explained. But if you discover nothing, then--then, be cautious. On the risk of falling completely from your favor, I would wager that she has secretly experienced some fearful shock--in a word, that she has a past."

"It is not possible!" exclaims Nikolai.

"Do not be so violent," Lensky replies. "You are not the first young man who has asserted that. Besides, I will not condemn her. Not the most faultless are the best. Human nature is not different. I would only be naturally very sorry if you, in spite of such a hateful circumstance, still would persist in your resolution."

"You need not fear, father," bursts out Nikolai, harshly. "I would never resolve to marry a dishonored, degraded girl. I would rather kill myself."

"Those are great words," says Lensky.

"They are words which express my convictions. I should not have let myself be drawn into speaking of my feelings to you. You see all in the same light."

"In the light of my experience, Colia, in the light of truth. I cannot help it if the world is as it is. The depth of our whole nature is mire, and nothing but mire!"

"Do not speak so inconsolably, father; I cannot bear it," says Nikolai, quite supplicatingly. "There is much that is beautiful everywhere, also in your life. Think of your art!"

"Of my art?" says Lensky. "Of my art!" he repeats with indescribably bitter emphasis. "Do you think that I do not know the condition of that? An art whose highest achievement is to rob a few hysterical women of the miserable remnant of respectability which they had. No; the effect of my art--what is left of it--is not calculated to restore me my lost idealism. I am sorry to have pained you; the last evening we should have passed comfortably together. It vexes me not to have learned to know her. If I had seen her, I could have told you exactly whether she is a wife for you or not."

All the time it is to Nikolai as if a cold, slippery monster which he could not shake off sat upon his breast.

"And have you in your whole life never been mistaken in a woman, never too lowly estimated her virtue?" asks he, somewhat sharply.

Lensky looks thoughtfully before him. Suddenly he shudders, then rising, he says, with the tone of a man who would fain break off a useless and painful conversation: "I am cold, Colia; come home. Why thresh mere straw?"

He takes a few steps, then looking in Colia's face, he stands still. "Heavens, how sad you look! Put everything that I have said to you out of your head--everything. I am mistaken; let us agree that I am mistaken, and that I have a quite false view of life. Roses are not rooted in the earth; angels throw them to us from heaven. Believe all that you will, but show me a gay face for farewell!"