CHAPTER XLI

HOW TO ROB A MAN OF HIS WIFE

It must be a poor toy that cannot amuse children. And there can be no greater children than a newly married couple who are deeply in love with each other.

There is kite-flying in the park at Pleskow; Bethsaba is in high glee at her kite always flying straight up and remaining aloft, while Alexander's is always coming to grief. Her kite, too, is much handsomer than his. In the form of a dragon, it has two large eyes, a mouth, nose, and movable ears; while Alexander's is just a commonplace thing, made out of old scraps of manuscripts pasted together. The wide expanse affords the two grown-up children room enough to run with their kites. No eyes to see them but those of the stag on the edge of the forest.

A post-chaise rolls quickly along the highway skirting the park walls; the postilion blows his horn cheerily.

"I think that post-chaise must have stopped at our gate," observes Bethsaba.

"So it has. It means either a guest or a letter."

"Oh, I hope no guest," sighed the little wife.

Newly married folk are not hospitable, as a rule. Still, somebody appeared to have come. The dvornik came out towards them from the castle. They hastily let down their kites; they must not be caught at such childish amusements. In the hurry the dragon caught in the withered bough of a pine-tree and lost one eye.

"What a pity!" murmured Bethsaba, in vexation. "Now my dragon has only got one eye. Have you a scrap of paper about you to repair the damage?"

"Where should I get it from? Haven't you already seized upon every vestige of paper to make your dragon with?"

"Do look! Perhaps you'll find some old bill or other."

Meanwhile the dvornik had come up to them.

"Well, Tanaschi, what is it?"

"A letter."

"To whom?"

Bethsaba seized the letter from the dvornik.

"Oh, oh! A woman's handwriting! Take it. A love-letter. Some former flame writing to reproach you. Read it. Of course it is to make an appointment."

"You are right enough. It is a woman's handwriting, but addressed to you, not to me, my dear."

"To me?" cried Bethsaba, in surprise. "Who can have written to me? Perhaps Zeneida?"

"No, it's not Zeneida. I know her handwriting."

"Perhaps too well. But who else could have written to me?"

And they began guessing who the writer could have been while the letter passed from one to the other. At last Alexander proposed that the best way to see who had written the letter would be to open it.

As they saw the signature both simultaneously cried, "My godmother!" "Your godmother!"

"What can she have written about?"

Presently, as if it were intended for a joke, Bethsaba laughed heartily over the letter.

"Ha, ha, ha! She wants me to go to the Masinka Fête! Alone! Without Alexander! 'It is to be a grand affair; the Czar and Czarina and several foreign princes will be there; I shall have an opportunity to entreat the Czar to grant Alexander permission to go back to St. Petersburg!' Ha, ha, ha! Did you hear that, Alexander Sergievitch? My godmother sends me an invitation to a ball without you! The letter could not have come at a more opportune moment--I just wanted it!"

And with these words she seized the precious epistle; it just covered the damage the dragon had sustained, and a couple of pins fixed it in place--the black seal just forming the pupil of the eye. (The court had gone into mourning for six weeks after Sophie's death, and society used black sealing-wax during the period.)

"A large case also arrived by post-chaise," said the dvornik.

"Put it on one side. I have no time now to look at it."

What more incomprehensible than that one of the fair sex should have no time to look at a ball-dress sent direct from the capital? The dragon was mended, and ready now to resume its flight in the air.

Laughing and shouting, Bethsaba ran along with the tail of her kite dragging after her; the second child stood looking on, laughing, while the dragon disapprovingly waggled its foolish-looking head. While starting a kite, the flyer has to run back with head turned upward. Bethsaba, therefore, was not aware that she was running directly against some one coming towards her from the English garden; and was startled to find herself suddenly embraced from behind, and a long kiss impressed upon her face. Then she gave a loud, joyous cry, and the next instant her arms were round the intruder's neck; and, not content with hanging upon that neck, she pulled its owner on to the grass, and, rolling over, kissed her enthusiastically, interposing the most endearing epithets: "You love!--you darling!--you precious!" Pushkin was fain to go to the rescue, and help them both up again.

It needed no extraordinary acumen to guess who the guest, so affectionately welcomed, could be.

"Do not quite strangle me, you little goose!" exclaimed Zeneida. "Look; your dragon has meanwhile flown away."

"Let it fly out into the wide world, and my godmother's letter with it. Do you know I have had a letter from my godmother? Do you know she has invited me to the Masinka Fête without Alexander? Do you know what I did with her letter? My dragon had a slit, and I mended the slit with it. How dear and good of you to come and see us!"

"It is the correct thing. Six weeks after marriage it is the wedding-mother's duty to come and look after the young couple and see that they are happy together--and if they really care for each other. Has your husband beaten you yet?"

"Oh, dreadfully," said Bethsaba, pretending to complain. "The last time it was here!" And she secretly rubbed a place on her arm until she had made it red; but a redness, Zeneida detected, which had come from no blows.

"And you, Pushkin, have you been writing many fine verses?"

"Not a line! You know my muse is never active in fine weather. It requires storm, rain, and snow."

"And your sky has remained sunny?"

"As you see. I have not written a word."

This was very possible. There are times in his life when a poet only feels poetry, does not write it.

"Why, we have not a sheet of paper in the house," said Bethsaba, whose woman's instinct whispers to her it is her greatest boast when a poet's wife can say that it has been through her that the poet has been faithless to his muse. "We really have not. I had to use my godmother's letter to make my dragon's eye."

"Indeed! Is that how you treat your correspondence? That is a good thing to know. I will never write to you then, but, when I have anything to tell you, will rather come myself."

"That will be nice."

"Or I will take you with me."

To this the same response, "That will be nice," did not come. Clinging to Alexander's arm she looked up to him, saying:

"You will not let me go, will you?"

Zeneida answered for him:

"To that we shall not ask Alexander Sergievitch. His business it is when his little wife wants to go visiting to order out the carriage and horses, and to take care of the house in her absence."

"But I could not go anywhere if I wished it. Do you not see how I am dressed? It is the Pleskow costume! Alexander tells me it was also the costume of the first Russian Christian, Princess Olga. And I like it so much. Admire this sarafan with its many buttons, the pearl-embroidered povojnyik on my head, my red boots and striped silk stockings!" And with childish _naïveté_ she lifted up her dress to her knees. "How people would stare if I were to appear among them in this costume! I have no other dress; this is what pleases my Alexander to see me in!"

She told the truth. The ball-dresses sent her were not her own property yet; she had not accepted the present.

Alexander drew his little nestling wife closer to him.

"We have become thorough peasant farmers."

"Heaven grant that you may remain so!" thought Zeneida to herself. "I fear, however, that some day you will be leaving wife and village, and it will no longer be the pearl-embroidered cap upon your wife's head you will then consider the greatest adornment, but the Phrygian cap you will be running after!"

That which Dante omitted among the tortures of hell was that a woman should be condemned to see the man she loves, who might have been hers, revelling in the love of another woman, and she his wife. Had Zeneida's love been that of ordinary women, it would have mattered little to her that the man, round whom her fetters had been cast, should, sooner or later, be dragged by these very fetters to the grave. The joys of the present would have outweighed the tortures of the future, the dread secrets of eternity. But so dearly had she loved Pushkin that she sought for him a happiness in which she had no part. It was an unnatural situation, and one requiring a nobler courage than most possess. But is not the woman who devotes herself to play a part in politics an unnatural, abnormal creation? Upon the altar of politics the heart is the lamb of sacrifice. In the service of a Moloch sensual passion may exist, but not love. Those who become political leaders have no longer father or mother, brother or sister, lover or friend; they recognize no difference between honesty and roguery, between the laws of God and the expediencies of man. Hence the pursuit of politics is an unnatural occupation for women, with whom love and justice are ruling principles. The Amazon who went forth to war had first rooted out the gentler feelings.

The possibility of women taking up such a part is only comprehensible in countries where oppression is so unbearable, so utter, that the thirst for freedom extends from the starved hearts of the men to those of the women. The poet-laureate might love the court prima donna, but not the plenipotentiary of the Szojusz Blagodenztoiga. Between those two lay "the green book"--a far more efficient obstacle than the green ocean.

But, all the same, the anchorites of St. George's Monastery had not carried their self-torture to greater perfection than had this woman who had forced herself to come as a guest to the house where she would be witness to the happiness denied her, and which she had voluntarily given to another. And now she has come to guard that happiness against the storms of the future. And she is not only witness to their happiness when they are together, but even when his farm-yard or stables tear Pushkin for a short hour from Bethsaba's side, the young wife can talk of nothing but to boast of her happiness. No peacock is so proud of spreading his tail as is a fond wife of telling of her happy lot. She has so many things to tell. Her husband is a perfect model of virtue and perfection! And to all this Zeneida must listen with utmost composure; to see, if the husband were absent over the expected half-hour, how uneasy and distraught the young wife grows; to read from her face: "Oh, you dear benefactress mine, my good fairy, my goddess, how gladly, were you not with me, would I run out to seek him!" And this, too, must she bear with a smile on her face! Oh, this Moloch!

"Listen, child: my sole object in coming was to steal you away from Alexander Sergievitch for a time."

"Ah! If you want to steal either, take both of us. Alexander would not mind being run off with by you."

"Only, as it happens, he is neither invited, nor may he come. You must accept your godmother's invitation."

"What! The invitation to her ball!"

"There you will meet the Czar and Czarina; they will speak to you."

"I--there--without Alexander?"

"Upon you it depends that Pushkin may be free to go where you go. Your marriage with him has entirely marred his career. He does not feel it now, but in the course of a year or two he will remember that formerly every step he took was accompanied by the clank of spurs. The soul of a man is not to be confined in a cage like a tame bird, especially when he has eagle's wings. Be it your task to implore forgiveness from the Czar for your husband, that Pushkin may proceed on his interrupted career. Now the meadows are still green; in another month they will be covered with snow, and the couple condemned to fireside and indoor life will not be so light-hearted as the one flying their kites in the open meadow."

"Then it is your wish that I should intercede for Alexander's return to St. Petersburg?"

"Not for all the world! No; a thousand times rather entreat the Czar to give him a mission that shall take you and him to your own people and country. Describe to the Czar and Czarina the land in which you were born, as it lives in your memory, with its genial climate, its aromatic woods, its fruit-bearing trees. Tell them all the lovely and beautiful things of it that your memory can recall, and entreat the Czar, as an act of mercy to yourself, to send your husband there."

"Oh, the tempting thought!" sighed Bethsaba.

"But he will never consent that I should leave him and go away, and stay days and weeks away from him."

"It would only be one week."

"But that is a century! Oh no! Alexander would never consent to it."

"You leave that to me; I will talk him over."

"Oh, if you succeed in that you will be a real fairy. But what an odd fairy! Had you wanted to carry off Alexander from me, I could have understood it; but me from Alexander--that I cannot understand."

"See! here he comes through the garden. Place yourself here at the window and watch. I will go and meet him. You listen how I am going to bewitch him!"

"That I am curious to hear."

One intrenchment was already taken. Zeneida hastened to besiege the second.

Pushkin, crossing the lawn, was astonished to see Zeneida hurrying towards him.

"Turn back, and let's have a little talk," said she, putting her hand on Pushkin's arm. "Are you quite happy?"

"One can never be too happy."

"My object in coming is to ask you to spare me a portion of your happiness. I want to run away with your wife for a week."

"My little wife! What to do with her? Already she loves you ever so much better than she does me."

"Do not fear. She loves you above everything in heaven and earth, and all that lies between them. She positively must accept the invitation to Princess Ghedimin's ball."

The girl wife, watching at her window, sees how her husband vehemently draws away his arm from Zeneida's retaining hand. Zeneida does not shrink; she takes possession of his arm again.

"Hot head! She will not be staying with the Princess, but with me; I will be her chaperon. Since I gave up the stage my house has become strictly proper; I have held no more frivolous gatherings; since the Szojusz Blagadenztoiga made its final decision I have had no more conspirators coming near me; no need for masquerades or riotous meetings; I live a quiet, secluded life. The Czar has sent me the Order of the Cross as an amend for my recent dismissal; and, _noblesse oblige_, the bestarred Zeneida no longer consorts with Diabolkas. So, have you not the courage to trust your wife to me if I keep vigilant watch over her?"

"But to what purpose? If you want to beg some favor of the Czar for me--you little know me!"

The woman at the window saw Pushkin fiercely slash off the heads of the asters at his feet.

"I know you perfectly well. You have made up your mind to stay on here at Pleskow, see the grass grow, hunt hares, shoot wild duck, smoke the house out, play ombre, and discourse of dogs and horses. It will be your ambition to keep a good cellar, be known as a good dancer, to occasionally slash an officer or two in duels, and to leave your papers and periodicals uncut. You would have just strength and energy for such a life! But there are others interested in your wife's coming."

"Who?"

"First the Szojusz Blagadenztoiga; then the Czar."

"At my little Bethsaba's coming?"

"Do not interrupt me; I must speak quickly. You are aware that this second return of Araktseieff has made it impossible to stave off rebellion. His violent measures have had so imbittering an effect that no one any longer attempts to defend the life of the Czar save I alone. Perhaps because I am a woman; yet there have been illustrious examples enough to show that women can be as cruel in the matter of blood-shedding as men, and even in a more cold and calculating fashion. Any outbreak initiated by Kubusoff's air-guns or Kakhowsky's infernal machine, or, as Jakuskin has planned, by an opportune ball, giving the signal for attack upon the entire imperial family, would have no beneficial result. It would simply bring about the overthrow of the empire, the war of the knife and the axe _versus_ bayonet, the war of rags _versus_ gold lace, inaugurating a reign of chaos which would make the country bless the return of despotism, and welcome a peace, even though accompanied by their old fetters. Now the Czar and Czarina must not be hurt! This reason, not sentiment, dictates.

"My plan is as follows: The Czarina's physician has advised her being taken to a milder climate. But her Majesty will not hear of leaving the Russian dominions, and the Caucasus she looks upon as a wilderness in which it is impossible to live. She gives no heed to the naturalists who describe the country, saying they are mere flattering official reporters. But if a young, unsophisticated little bride, presenting herself to the imperial pair, were to petition as a special favor to be allowed to go back with her husband to her beautiful native land, describing this native land with enthusiasm of early and tender recollection, it is possible that though this request may be refused, yet the Czarina herself might be attracted to the idea of going to that lovely land. The Czar worships his consort to such a degree that he would accompany and stay with her there; with this result, that those who want to inaugurate the outbreak with the violent death of the Czar would be constrained to devise some other nobler, more humane, more politic plan of action. On the Black Sea the Czar will live his life without cares; here we should have the imperious favorite only to bring to judgment. The constitution would be proclaimed in St. Petersburg without blood-shedding; the army would declare in its favor; and Czar Alexander will be free to choose either to fulfil the universal wish of his people, and come back as their beloved monarch, or, if he prefer it, to embark on board a ship in the Black Sea and sail away to seek the hospitality of--say, the Sultan of Turkey, if he wish it. Anyway, his life would be preserved."

The young wife at the window sees her husband kiss the hand of his guest. He is won over already. Zeneida has succeeded in carrying off the wife from the husband.

"Those whom you love are loved indeed, even when they are tyrants!" said Pushkin, deeply moved.

"It is the holy cause, not the Czar, I wish to save!"

"Both! Come, I will trust my wife to you! Take her with you! Let her, with her lark's song, bid the storm to cease!"

Bethsaba standing at the window sees her husband and Zeneida come quickly back to her. "Truly you are an enchantress!" she thinks.

Pushkin comes in to his wife.

"Only think! your kite has been brought back from the far end of the town! Here is your godmother's letter, as kind as can be. You must do as she wishes. How could you refuse an invitation so worded, especially as Zeneida undertakes to be your chaperon?"

Bethsaba looked at each in amazement, and then raised a threatening finger and shook it at Zeneida.

"You are a fiend, after all, then. Well, then, come along, and let's see what kind of ball-dress my godmother has sent me."

This may be called a thorough capitulation.

The box was brought in and opened, the most exquisite of ball-dresses produced, and, with Zeneida's aid, duly tried on. In it Bethsaba showed herself to her husband.

"Shall I look lovely? Shall I turn many men's heads?"

"Every one of them!"

"Oh, take care, take care! You must not embrace me; you will crush my lace!"

This is the way in which a man is deprived of his wife in the very midst of his honeymoon.