CHAPTER XXXIV

A DIVIDED HEART

Zeneida was celebrating three days of mourning in one. The first, Sophie's funeral; the second, Pushkin's marriage; the third, her own name-day.

It had been Sophie's last wish that the wedding should precede her funeral.

Her soul in its ascent to heaven would see and hear the bliss of the two she had loved so dearly on earth.

According to Russian custom the lid was only screwed down on to the coffin just before it was lowered into the grave; with face uncovered the wanderer to the Hereafter is borne to his last resting-place.

"Make the ceremony a short one!" Zeneida had said to the officiating priest.

The Patriarch of Solowetshk, whose feet had sufficient Russian understanding to suffer from a severe attack of gout that day, had sent a priest in his stead. Let his inferior have his beard shaved off if things go amiss, and not him. For if a priest rashly marry a runaway couple the marriage is legal, but _the priest's beard is shaved off_, and he is forced to become a soldier. During the wedding ceremony, according to custom, two doves were set flying over the heads of the bridal pair. They fluttered for a time round the veranda, then let themselves down on to the catafalque, at the head of the dead girl, where the crucifix stood; there, the one on the right hand, the other on the left, above the head of the "martyr to love," they billed and cooed through the whole ceremony.

The dead girl might well be content. All had been done as she had directed; Bethsaba wore the pink silk wedding-dress; the platinum diadem adorned her brow.

"That is over," said Zeneida. "Now follows the other--quick, quick!"

Bethsaba must now change the pink wedding-dress for a black one for the consecration of the dead. Zeneida helped her to dress; Pushkin waited without.

Bethsaba wept on and on, whether clad in pink or black.

Zeneida betrayed no tendency that day to sentimentality. Her utter callousness bordered on cynicism.

"But we shall see Sophie again in the next world, shall we not?" sobbed Bethsaba.

"Yes, yes," muttered Zeneida. "And to which of you will Pushkin belong then?"

That was the question.

Bethsaba was startled. Her large eyes remained fixed on Zeneida.

"And suppose he should belong to neither of you?" continued Zeneida, drawing her strongly marked eyebrows together. "Or do you imagine that in the hereafter there will still be a greater Russia crushing a lesser Finland beneath its heel, so that even then a fool will be found to open the gate of Paradise for some one else, while she herself goes into perdition!"

This outburst revealed Zeneida's secret to Bethsaba. Rigid with dismay, she stammered out:

"You, too, loved him?"

"Do not ask. Rejoice that he is yours, and do not wish yourself in the next world with him, but do your utmost to keep him to you in this."

"And you, too, loved him?" repeated Bethsaba, sorrowfully.

"As you have discovered it, make your discovery of some use," said Zeneida, with seeming affectation. "Now, at least, you know from whom you have to guard him. Take care to keep him away from me. Now you know the sort of person I am. I take pleasure in enticing away the husbands and causing the wives bitter tears. Your godmother was right. _I am a very devil._ Do not bring your Aleko back to St. Petersburg."

Bethsaba, throwing herself on Zeneida's bosom, embraced her.

"It is not true--not true--not true! You cannot deceive me. Tell me why you gave me Pushkin's heart, when you might so easily have kept it for yourself? There must be some weighty reason that induced you to do it. Tell it me; he is my husband now. I must know all about him. Even if it be--that he loves me not."

Zeneida, now looking down with gentle smile on the young bride in her mourning-dress, took her in her arms, and in fond embrace drew her to her heart.

"So you do not think me so bad that you will need to guard your husband from me? Well, then, I will tell you from whom you must guard him. There is a lovely woman, more captivating than any you have ever seen--more seductive, intoxicating, more insatiable. Her name is 'Eleutheria.' She can entice the bridegroom from his bride at the very altar rails, and the father of a family from his dear ones; and whom she once captivates she keeps fast hold of till his last heart's blood is spent. His every thought is hers. It is this dread woman who is your rival. Guard your husband from all remembrance of her, for he is in love with her."

"'Eleutheria!' that means Freedom."

"She bathes in men's blood. It is that which makes her so beautiful. The only presents she will accept are hecatombs; and of hearts and men she only chooses such as are worth the price of gold and diamonds. The woman who has such a diamond to call her own should guard him well. No pleasure-seeker, no drunkard, no gambler follows his besetting sin so readily as he whom Eleutheria has once enslaved. She has but to proclaim, 'My service demands the lives of men,' and thousands upon thousands of her worshippers answer, 'Here is mine; take it.' Beware that Pushkin be not among them!"

Bethsaba let the arms encircling Zeneida's waist sink until they embraced her knees.

"Oh, unapproachable saint! You who rejected his heart that you might save his head. Speak, counsel me, how shall I set about doing that which you have charged me to do. It is so difficult. How shall I carry it out, that my work be successful?"

And Zeneida, raising the young bride, began to whisper the sensible advice to her that experienced women are wont to give their inexperienced younger sisters.

"Give up to him in everything. Do not contradict him. If he change his mind seven times in a day, change yours with him. Divine his thoughts and forestall his wishes. If you know one thought of his, you can guess the others. If he be out of temper, do not irritate him with questions as to the reason. In such a mood the dearest face is unwelcome. Requite his love with your whole soul, and do not hide your joy from him. But do not flatter him, for that would turn him from you. Do your utmost to make his home pleasant to him. Let your house and his surroundings be pure and peaceful, yourself be ever cheerful and loving; never let him hear your voice raised harshly to your servants. If he desire to show hospitality, see that you make a good hostess. Do not keep him back from his manly pursuits. Never ask where he is going, whence he comes. Above all, never betray jealousy. What woman is there who can sufficiently stifle jealousy as not to feel it? Therefore must her heart, his advocate, keep watch that it clear him, even if eyes and ears accuse him. Never meet him with tearful eyes, but keep a strict watch over your own actions. It is not necessary to play the prude with strangers and to be always flying to your husband for protection; that would only render him ridiculous, and lead to many disagreeables. But never, whether from high spirits or feminine vanity, allow other men to pay you attentions which might arouse your husband's jealousy. If anything annoy you, tell it him gently and at once. Do not brood over it until it grows and he reads the trouble in your face. Be easily pacified. Throughout, be yourself, equable, ever the same; for, in an evil hour, some fatal moment may suffice to recall his forsaken love, Eleutheria, to his mind, and to throw him again into her arms."

The little bride listened to her words as though they were the words of Holy Scripture.

"I will help you to keep him at home and from returning to St. Petersburg. I will write you letters saying that the Czar is furious that he whom he had chosen as his daughter's husband should have been capable of marrying another on the very day of her funeral. It will not be true, for I shall show the Czar Sophie's will, and it will disarm him, but Pushkin must be made to believe that he is in disgrace, and dare not return to St. Petersburg without special permission. And we will expunge his name from 'the green book,' that he receive no more invitations to meetings. Let him be hidden in your arms until better times dawn or--what I far rather believe in--until the day of our extinction. When all is over, then you may come back to the world. Until then we must keep him in the belief that for him, exiled by his Czar, vilified by his peers, there is no other world than his love and his Olympus. And are they not, in themselves, two worlds--two heavens?"

Pushkin entered.

"Not ready yet?"

"Leave us alone! I am just about to spoil your wife. I am advising her how to keep you under her thumb. You are not to listen."

"All very fine. The first hour we are together she will tell me all about it."

The choristers in the chamber of death now began their solemn chant. It was a long ceremony, but it, too, came to an end. The priest, taking the two candlesticks, held them over the cross while he spake the blessing, walked three times round the coffin waving incense, then placed the parchment containing the list of sins, at the end of which was inscribed the absolution, into the dead child's hands as her passport into eternity; after which the candles on the catafalque were extinguished. The two doves upon the crucifix continued their billing and cooing.

They carried out the coffin to the barge draped with funereal hangings. Many blossoms from the garden accompanied it; it was covered with wreaths. The blue, green, and red lights glared in the twilight. The choristers continued their chant, the gentle plash of the oars marking time to it. Long those left behind gazed after the departing boat, until the next wooded island hid it from their view.

"She has gone on her journey!" said Zeneida; there were no tears in her eyes. "Now it is your turn. Quick! No leave-takings; they are so wearisome. Be off with you! I have my guests to see to, a right merry company. I must hurry back. One kiss is enough, Bethsaba; you may give the others to your Aleko. Take quickly with you what is yours."

"Alas! that is impossible," sighed Pushkin, who had the bad habit of being unable to keep back what was in his mind. "One part she who is gliding away in that gondola has taken with her; a second part you take; to this poor child belongs only the remainder."

"That is not true," returned Zeneida, with proud, radiant face. "She who has gone back to heaven has bequeathed her part in you to your wife; she who is here has, even now, given up to her that which she might have possessed. Bethsaba knows all about it. You are hers, wholly, entirely. And now, God be with you!"

And she held out her hand to him. The allies of the new epoch did not kiss in greeting.

And as Pushkin pressed the hand she held out to him, a ray of joy passed over Zeneida's countenance. Freemasons have a sign by which they recognize each other in hand pressure. _Pushkin had not given the sign this time._

Already he had forgotten his former love. To the new one, to whom he had plighted his marital troth, he belonged wholly, entirely.

It was as "she" had desired; and smilingly Zeneida waved her white handkerchief to the vanishing gondola, which a troika awaited on the opposite bank. Only when she could see it no longer did she hide her face in the said white handkerchief, and whether it was bedewed with tears or not that handkerchief alone can tell. She did not remove it from her eyes until her gondolier addressed her.

"If you please, madame, the rockets on Kreskowsky Island have begun."

"Ah yes. You are right. The third funeral awaits me!"

With that she hastened into her gondola, and within its closed curtains sang, in a low voice:

"By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept; For they that led us away captive required of us a song, Saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning."