Part 5

“She was our only one! Our one beloved treasure! Many children were born to us before her, but it was not Jupiter’s will that they should grow up. They were all poor little mites, born thin and puny, and with big heads. They lived for about two years, tottered round the yard on their poor, weak little legs, and then died. Lydia was the last. At her birth she was so thin and fragile that we never hoped she would grow up. Besides, I was already turned forty, and my old man was getting on for sixty; what sort of children can one expect to have at that time of life! But, somehow, the gods took pity on our lonely old age. Lydia began to improve and get strong. Ye gods! How we loved her and caressed her and spoiled her! Her father simply worshipped her, and strictly forbade me ever to punish her. For that matter there was never any reason to punish her, she was quiet and thoughtful, and always alone in a corner, away from other children. Even when nearly grown up, she never wanted girl friends. ‘I want no one but you,’ she would say, embracing us lovingly. She always sat at home, and could not be induced to join in any gaieties. She had only one passion—the Vestal Virgins. Often and often she went to gaze at them and admire them, weeping bitter tears because she was not one of them, and carrying flowers to the shrine of the goddess Vesta. We greatly feared, my old man and I, that she would never consent to marry. We longed to see our grand-children, and besides, we wanted an heir to carry on the business. My old man is the best jeweller in Rome. All the great people give us orders, and our things are highly valued. My husband found a suitable son-in-law, also in the jeweller’s business—but we did not dare to tell Lydia. She was so proud, and would never look at men. And oh! how beautiful she was! Pale, like marble, with her thin little face, her large, grey eyes, and her heavy dark tresses. All the young men were in love with her, but she would have nothing to say to any of them. Then, all of a sudden, those accursed Jews appeared. They used to live quietly on the other side of the Tiber, until one day when they all seemed to have become possessed. Over they came, swarms of them, telling some story of a new God of theirs, born somewhere in Palestine, and asking everyone to believe in Him. Dirty, miserable wretches, disgusting in their filthy rags, gesticulating, excited, really quite absurd. Beggars, you know, but with the pretensions of Emperors. Of course, old people only laughed at them. As if anyone would dream of changing his religion in his old age! But the young people began to be interested, and to go to the Jews’ meetings. Those miserable wretches spoke so passionately—just as if they really had seen a great new God! Lydia went once too, and came home all of a tremble with emotion. At first we were pleased, because her passion for the Vestal Virgins seemed to have cooled. But our joy was short-lived. She began to disappear for days and nights at a time, always praying with her Jews, and calling herself a Christian. My old man and I grew alarmed, and then, suddenly, began the persecution of Christians. At first we, of course, thought that only those good-for-nothing Jews would be persecuted, and we were very pleased, because we hated them. But the news spread that there was an order to catch all other Christians too. We lived in terror, expecting trouble every day. We did all we could to keep Lydia at home, but there, she would not even listen to us. ‘We pray together,’ was all she said, ‘and we will die together.’ One day, a month ago, she went to a secret meeting, and never returned. We learned that she was in prison, we bribed the gaolers, and managed to see her. She was in a feverish state of rapture and exultation. ‘Be happy for me,’ she said; ‘I shall see Christ, and be with Him for ever.’ With bitter tears, we implored her to renounce this madness. Her old father and I, we fell on our knees before her—nothing helped! It was not only once that we went to her, nor twice, nor three times. What a fortune we spent on bribes! Though that, indeed, matters little. What do we want with riches now that we have no one to whom to leave them? One day, about a fortnight ago, we went to her. She was pale and faint, and in tears. She took us into a corner, away from the other prisoners, threw them furtive, frightened glances, and whispered: ‘We are condemned to death. They are going to throw us to the wild beasts in the circus. It is terrible—oh! it is terrible!’ She was shivering and sobbing. ‘I cannot sleep at night—I always see a tiger, falling on me and tearing me to pieces. Save me! Save me! I will agree to anything now! But don’t tell the others, or they will despise me and laugh at me.’ In wild haste we rushed off to our best client, the Senator Claudius Massimus. All day we sat in his atrium, waiting to be received. At last, in the evening, the Senator comes to us, hears us, and answers: ‘Very well, my good old people, I will do what I can for you. Let your daughter only make a sacrifice to the gods, and publicly curse her past folly.’ Hardly feeling our feet under us for joy and thankfulness, we rushed with our news to Lydia. But oh! misery! misery! In the meantime their chief priest had been to the prison, the wicked, accursed old villain! I don’t know what he told them, but Lydia came out to us, beaming with happiness. ‘I no longer need anything,’ she said, embracing us. ‘Thank you for your solicitude on my behalf, but however great your love may be for me, you cannot give me the joys that are prepared for me in Heaven.’ We implored her, besought her all in vain. Lydia only laughed, and kissed us. We staggered home, and the same night my old man had a paralytic stroke. From that moment I have not been able to leave him. To-day we have been together in silence, without moving from dawn till sunset. Do you know, do you understand, you merciless, pitiless daughter, all that we have suffered? Had you the right to buy for yourself eternal salvation at such a price? Oh! wicked, cruel, beloved one! When the sun had set, my old man gave me money, and said: ‘Go and bring me all they have left us of Lydia.’ So I have come, and have found her tattered tunic, and her scalp and hair, and her lovely hands, with the bracelets her father put on them when she was fifteen. Oh, ye gods, ye gods! Is it for this that we have brought her up and watched over her, and cared for her, that she should be a fairer sacrifice for the accursed Jews? Talk of mercy and love, and then take away from anguished parents their only joy, the light and mainstay of their old age! May they be accursed and thrice accursed, these demented, perverted villains, these murderers of our children!” And the old woman fell forward with a cry, on the tresses of the hapless Lydia.

Not far away from her sat a proud young beauty, in a luxurious gold-embroidered tunic, her eyes fixed on the head of a young handsome Roman. Large, slow teardrops followed each other down her face, but she did not notice them nor attempt to brush them away. She only threw herself, at intervals, on the bleeding corpse, embraced it with her soft arms, and passionately kissed the cold lips and the golden moustache.

“What have you done? What have you done? My adored, cruel husband! How could you leave me, forget my love, forget our happiness together? Were we all, your relations, your friends, your nearest and dearest, of so little import to you, that you could abandon us for the sake of a mad dream? How could you, a clever, well-bred noble Roman, fall under the influence of low, filthy slaves? They are all frantic about some wild idea, some frenzied vision, and _you_—_you_ could believe them, and share their madness!

“Oh! What shall I do with my life without you? You took me, a young, careless, innocent child, you taught me the happiness of love, and now you have pitilessly abandoned me! I pass whole days and nights in the remembrance of your caresses, I stretch out my hands, I grope for you in the dark, and I shall never find you again! Oh! How terrible, how incredible is this thought. Thousands, millions of people are born every day, but never again will the world see your like!

“Who is it that has dared, that has taken on himself the right to destroy that most splendid work of nature—man? You tried to console me with the assurance that your soul would live for ever; but of what use is your soul to me? I love your body, your eyes, your features. When I meet, in the street, someone who but slightly resembles you, I blush, and the blood rushes to my heart. Your irresistible smile, your charming laugh, maddened me with happiness! And now—all is over. You will never smile again, you will never look at me with your beloved blue eyes. To-morrow worms will begin to eat this flesh that is dearer to me than all else on earth, and I am powerless to prevent this outrage. Oh, ye gods! How have I sinned, that I should have deserved to suffer so madly?

“Rather than this, why were you not untrue to me—why did you not go away, and love another? Terrible as this would have been, I should at least have known that you lived, that my eyes could look upon you. Secretly, in the darkness of the night, I could have come to gaze upon you, and this would have given me life.

“Oh! Why do we not know the future? Why does fate give us no warning? How much time I lost in idle gossiping with girl friends, in needless outings and amusements, while I might have spent this time in talking with you, in gazing at you, in enjoying your caresses!

“The moon will appear in the sky, the nightingales will sing, but you will not hear them. The sun will rise, but its rays will not penetrate into your cold tomb. Life at best is but short, and now you yourself, of your own free will, have deprived yourself prematurely of its joys.

“Oh! This terrible, meaningless life! I am cold, I shiver, I cannot live in the world without you! All is pale, all is dark and tarnished around me. Nothing interests me, nothing pleases me. Alone! Alone! From now onwards, alone on this accursed earth.”

And the unhappy one repeatedly kissed the dead body, passionately embraced it, beating her head upon the sand.

* * * * *

Irene clearly heard the groans, curses, and cries that re-echoed in the ancient circus. Tears fell from her eyes. She forgot where she was, and started when Gzhatski, having also for some time kept his eyes fixed on the arena, broke the silence by a sudden remark.

“May I ask you an indiscreet question?” he asked, turning sharply round, and facing his companion. “Is it really true that you have decided to be a traitor to your faith, and become a Roman Catholic?”

“Why a traitor?” retorted Irene, a little angrily. “Orthodox Russians and Catholics believe alike in the Gospel, and that is the principal thing. As to dogmas, they were all invented by the perverted intelligence of crafty Byzantian Greeks, who did not understand the Gospel in the least, and dragged it down to their own level by eternal quibbling about words. Already, in my childhood, I studied with disgust the history of the Œcumenical Councils, and found nothing intelligent in them, except the decision of the seventh one, that there should be no more. Evidently all the theologians had become so entangled in their own disputes that they had grown desperate, and had at last realized that the more they talk the further they get from the truth.”

“But if you despise dogmas, and believe only in the Gospel, then why need you give up Orthodoxy?”

“I am leaving Orthodoxy because, among the Catholic clergy, I have found a man who is a true believer, who guides me, and helps me to unravel my own doubts, and to see the true meaning of life.”

“In other words, like so many Russian ladies, you have fallen into the hands of a clever Jesuit.”

“In other words, like so many Russian men, you have gathered your information about Jesuits in the novel ‘The Eternal Jew.’”

“I have never read that novel. I only see very clearly that your dear Pater wants money for some convent, and therefore wants to shut you up in it.”

“Not in the least. Père Etienne thinks that I shall be happier in a convent than in the world. He has no objection to an Orthodox convent. He only told me, a few days ago, that he always speaks of Catholic ones, because he knows nothing about Russian convent life.”

“But why, then, do you not go into some Russian convent?”

“Because I know them too well. A Russian convent is a collection of vulgar, chattering, idle, lower-class women. The convent itself is a vulgar absurdity, since it is neither directed nor controlled by anybody. And, indeed, who is to control it? Not the officials of the Synod, I suppose?”

“Yes, but is not all that true also of Roman Catholic convents?”

“No. Every Catholic convent has not only its own head, but also higher control and direction. The discipline is quite different. Every Italian convent has one definite aim and object: to give its inmates the possibility of saving their souls in peace and silence, and everything is done for the attainment of this object.”

“Well, even if we admit that this is true—by what right do you turn your back on all that life imposes on you, and think of nobody and nothing but the saving of your own soul?”

“By what right!” exclaimed Irene in amazement. “What a strange question!”

“Allow me. The Gospel, which you apparently respect, teaches us that we are all brothers, that we must help each other and live for each other. Whom will you help, whom will you save, if you hide yourself in a convent and think of nothing but your own soul?”

“Had I taken the veil when I was twenty, there might perhaps have been some reason in your reproaches. But I am now forty. I have lived through a long life, and have convinced myself that I can be of no use to my fellows. My views on life are so personal to me that no one will ever understand me. I have always suffered through the vulgarity and roughness of other people, and as time passes I despise mankind more and more. In separating myself from human companionship, I may, little by little, forget what people are like, and so may perhaps learn to love them a little.”

“Is it possible that among all your friends and acquaintances, you have never met one man who might be worthy of your attention or your love?”

Irene smiled bitterly.

“Russian men have not reached the period of development at which they could understand good women. They are still in the harem period, and they need only rough, vulgar, immoral females.”

“I see you can make nice compliments. But if you have such a poor opinion of our higher circles, what about the masses? What about our honest, simple-minded, warm-hearted, noble-souled people? Is it possible that they awaken no sympathy in you, that you have never felt the wish to help them, to educate them?”

“Don’t speak to me of those pitiful cowards!” exclaimed Irene contemptuously. “They are incapable of anything better than losing the war, and disgracing Russia in the eyes of the whole world.”

“I see you hold somewhat original views. Hundreds and thousands of soldiers have become hopeless cripples for the rest of their lives, in order to keep the enemy from our Russian soil, and in order to ensure for idle people like you the secure and safe enjoyment of their leisure and their capital. And in return you travel in strange lands, and insult our modest heroes. Allow me to congratulate you—such sentiments unquestionably do you honour.”

Irene blushed, but maintained a scornful silence. Several minutes passed. The English party, with its guide and torches, drew near. Gzhatski rose, bowed dryly to Irene, and joined the tourists.

VII

They separated, both with the feeling of having said a great deal that was needless. On the whole, however, Irene was almost pleased that she had succeeded, for once in her life, in expressing to a Russian man the profound contempt that he and all his like awakened in her. As often happens in such cases, her indignation had poured itself out on the wrong person. Sergei Gzhatski had nothing whatever in common with Irene’s despised and hated Petrograd career-hunters. His life indeed had arranged itself in its own fashion. He was born in Petrograd, but having, at the age of three, been taken to the far-off province of S⸺, he had remained there until his eighteenth year. His mother had suffered a paralytic stroke after the birth of her second child, and had therefore been ordered to live in the country, which she did until her death. Deeply hurt by the fact that her husband had been unwilling to sacrifice to her illness his brilliant position in Petrograd, she had turned away from him, and lavished all her love upon her child. By her desire little Sergei had been educated at home, first by governesses and later by tutors. His mother wielded an immense influence over him. She was clever, intuitive, sensitive, and religious, and she brought up her son in a way that is more than rare in Petrograd families, where parents are too occupied with the distractions of the Metropolis to pay much attention to their children. Sergei adored his invalid mother, and her illness filled his heart with profound pity. He never indeed forgave his father for being so indifferent to her, and felt but little love or sympathy for the latter. On the death of his mother, Sergei was sent to college, where, thanks to an excellent grounding, he worked splendidly. He did not, however, like Petrograd, and having finished his course, he decided, in spite of his father’s advice and persuasion to the contrary, to return to the S⸺ estate, which his mother had left him. He loved country life, managed his estate well, and greatly increased the prosperity of his farms and crops. He occupied himself also with social activities, and was first chosen Marshal of the Nobility of the district, and then of the whole province. He was greatly loved and respected, being a man of the old school, honourable and conscientious, and as full of consideration for the interests of all the noble families in the neighbourhood as for his own well-being and prosperity.

His dream was a happy hearth and home and a large family, and yet he never married. Perhaps the reason of this might have been found in the pure and sacred image of his mother, with which he unconsciously compared all other women to their detriment; also a little in the fact that he was inclined to be proud and suspicious. He rarely went to Petrograd, and the provincial young ladies whom he met in S⸺ were far too frankly in ecstasies before his wealth and brilliant position. Gzhatski was never happy abroad, and now deeply regretted that, after an attack of inflammation of the lungs caught during an autumn hunt, his doctors had persuaded him to pass the rest of the winter in Italy.

In spite of the mutual impertinences they had exchanged at their first meeting, Irene had not displeased Gzhatski, and, seeing her a few days later on the Corso, he approached her with a friendly greeting. Irene was so touched by this absence of rancour, that, wishing to destroy the unpleasant impression of their previous conversation, she invited him to come and see her. Two days later Gzhatski availed himself of her invitation, and, in the good old provincial Russian fashion, stayed three hours! He told Irene all about his estate and about the other S⸺ landowners, and expressed his horror at the indecent haste with which many of them, frightened by the recent “revolution,” had sold their ancestral estates and moved to Petrograd.

“I say nothing,” he remarked, “of the fact that their children will be penniless, since they will very quickly lose their newly acquired money in all sorts of doubtful speculations; our landowners are proverbially credulous and unbusinesslike! But the principal trouble is that these ruined children will, in addition, have lost the ties which bound them to our soil—and it is my firm belief that one can only be a true patriot if one has lived from childhood on one’s own land and among one’s own people, and has stored in one’s heart all the charming recollections and associations of an early youth spent in one’s ancestral country home. Even now, when after a long absence I approach my little station, my heart beats, and I recognize with joy, almost with tenderness, the station officials, my coachman, my _troika_.[1] It is all near and dear to me; the woods, the fields, the peasants who greet me smilingly, and who have known and loved me all my life. How much that is sacred breathes in memories of childhood, and how sad life must be when they are absent! I think, for instance, that if you, Irene Pavlovna, had in your heart the remembrance of some modest little village church where you prayed as a child, you would never have dreamt of betraying the faith of your childhood; you would never even have formulated your vague, cosmopolitan belief in Christ, a belief that certainly cannot give you happiness.”

From that day they became friends. Irene enjoyed the society of Gzhatski, who was always gay, interesting, and sincere. However dear Italy had grown to her, however deeply she respected Père Etienne, it was delightful to talk to a Russian, a man of her own race, her own social circle, and her own education and traditions. She never suspected that she, on her side, represented for Gzhatski a sort of anchor of salvation.

Poor Gzhatski had been unbearably lonely in Rome. Active, energetic, busy as he had always been, the enforced idleness of this new existence was insufferable to him. The Roman museums and monuments did not touch his heart. He had not enough imagination to people them with shadows of the past, as did Irene. He tried to study Rome with a Baedeker’s guide-book in his hand, but soon abandoned the task, and came to the conclusion that all the churches and ruins and galleries were exactly alike.

“When you have seen one, you have seen them all,” he remarked frankly to his acquaintances.

Gzhatski had begun to take an interest in Italian fox-hunting, but happened the very first time he joined a hunt to be caught in a downpour of rain, and developed such a severe chill that his alarmed doctor forbade him any future expeditions of the kind, on pain of death from galloping consumption!

Every day the poor man wandered about sadly and aimlessly, finding fault with everything, hating everything, and abusing the strange Southern town that held him prisoner! Everything irritated him, even the climate, with its eternally warm, balmy breezes, even the dry Southern vegetation. Often, when sitting in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, he shut his eyes, and pictured to himself a Russian winter, the snow on the fields gleaming under the blue sky, the red sun, the little waves of smoke rising from a cottage chimney, the crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground, the frosty, invigorating air…! And then he opened his eyes, and looked resentfully at the broad Roman pines and the dusty grass and shrubs.

“What is this extraordinary time of the year?” grumbled Gzhatski capriciously. “It is not autumn, because there are no yellow leaves; it is not winter, because it is not cold; it is not summer, because it is not hot; and it is not spring, because there is nothing vivifying or rejuvenating in the air. No—this is a sort of fifth season, Roman, stupid, and senseless!”