Chapter V: Part 5

"She gave him quite a scratch, she was not defenceless," said Barbara Alexandrovna, while she sat down and closed her umbrella. "But to come to something more interesting," she continued; "we have, in spirit, followed you on every step of your American triumphal march, Boris Nikolaivitch; the newspapers gave us the guide thereto. I hope we will now see very much of you. Natascha can tell you how well all artists are received at our house,--and h'm!--and if it is a question of a relation--_a propos_, could you not come and dine with us this evening? We are quite _entre nous_, only Lis, Princess Zriny, that eccentric Hungarian, Marinia Loewenskiold, a good friend of yours, you remember her, a few diplomats, etc.; and we are bored as only _gens du monde_ are bored if they have been together under the same roof for ten days. Natalie can tell you how bored we are--merely people from our coterie, who know each other by heart; if you please. And how stupid we are! ha, ha, ha! In desperation we arranged a race in the drawing-room yesterday. Arthur de Blincourt, while jumping a barrier, dislocated a joint, and now lies on a lounge, and lets himself be looked after. But we all long for a new element--_on vous attend comme le Messie_, Boris Nikolaivitch. You will come, will you not? We dine at eight o'clock."

While she chattered on with self-satisfied fluency, it seemed to Boris as if some one scratched a knife on a porcelain plate.

"Why does she roll her eyes so incessantly when she speaks? They do not look more beautiful when one sees so much of their orange-yellow whites," he thought to himself. Aloud he only remarked: "Do you really believe that I would amuse you better than a drawing-room race?"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed she. "That is splendid! I must repeat it to Marinia Loewenskiold, who raves about you. You will come, will you not?"

"No, I will not come," replied he sharply. "I do not feel myself equal to the task of amusing a dozen _gens du monde_ who are bored."

"Well, as you will," said the Jeliagin, shrugging her shoulders. "Try to persuade him before evening, Natalie, and come, or send me word. I must go, we wish to ride out _en bande_, at eight. Adieu! Give me your hand, please, Kolia, and come and lunch with us. Anna will be pleased, and you shall have strawberries and whipped cream. Adieu!" With that she went away.

Lensky stared gloomily before him for a while, then he struck his clenched fist on the table so that all the dishes rattled: "From whence did this goose drop down so suddenly?" asked he.

"She lives in the castle in the park," said Natalie. "She has hired it for the summer."

"So!" grumbled Lensky. "Now if I had known that, I should never have thought of coming here."

"But I wrote you of it."

"Not a word."

"Certainly, in many letters; did you not have time to read them?"

Instead of replying to this, for him very unpleasant remark, Lensky said, in increasing rage: "Oh! now I understand the change which has taken place in you. She is horrible, your sister! For what does she hold me, that she takes this tone with me?"

"I cannot help her lack of tact," replied Natalie, gently and reproachfully.

"Ah, you are still influenced by your relations, by that narrow stupid crowd," he growled, crimson with rage. "You are condescending to me, yes, that is the right word, condescending, indulgent. Why do you start back from me when this silly machine comes near? Are you then ashamed of our love before her?"

"Our love!" repeated Natalie, with broken voice, strangely emphasizing the word "our."

He did not suspect anything from the trembling sadness of her voice, and did not once look at her.

Meanwhile he felt the anxious touch of a silky, soft child's hand. Little Kolia had come up to his father, and whispered to him shyly and pleadingly: "Papa, mamma is crying."

Lensky looked up, frightened. Yes, she had done her utmost to courageously smile through the unpleasant scene, but her overexcited nerves could not bear it; she sobbed convulsively.

"But Natalie, my angel, my little dove!" He could not see any woman weep, least of all his wife, whom he loved. He sprang up, took her in his arms, covered her eyes, her mouth, her whole face with kisses. "Do not torment yourself, my treasure! You are much, much too good to me; you are an angel! How could you ever take such a rough clown as I am? We are not suited to each other, Natascha."

"Oh, Boris! do you mean that?"

"Yes, I mean it," said he, gloomily. "Better, a hundred times better, would it have been for you if you had never seen me! You are so charming, so good, and I love you so idolatrously; but I am a fearful, a horrible man, and I cannot always govern myself--I cannot! I will yet torment you to death, my poor Natalie!" And he did not cease to caress and to kiss her.

Then she raised her head from his shoulder, and looking at him from eyes still shining with tears, with a glance full of tender fanaticism she said: "What does it matter, even if you kill me? it would still be beautiful! I would change with no woman in God's world, do you hear, with none! Think of what I have said to you to-day when one day you give me a last kiss in my coffin!"

* * * * *

Lensky could no longer get back into the old ways at home; however much he tried, he could not. As in the former year, only more significantly, more tormentingly, the feeling of growing discontent made itself felt in him. It seemed to him as if he could not remain for any length of time on the same spot; as if he must incessantly seek something which was no longer anywhere to be found.

For a couple of days he ill-humoredly stayed away from the castle, but when his brother-in-law paid him a visit and repeated the invitation of Barbara Alexandrovna in the most polite manner,--when one day, all the ladies staying at the castle as guests had come out in a body to give him an ovation and especially when he had become immeasurably weary of the poetic monotony of life in the Hermitage; he replied to Natalie, when she once asked him smilingly, with the intention of freeing him from his own constraining obstinacy, whether he thought it was really worth the trouble to longer play the bear: "No!"

From that time, he passed every evening in the castle.

At first Natalie had been glad that the social intercourse there offered him a distraction. But soon the evenings in "Les Ormes" became a torment to her. The hateful change which had taken place in him during his long absence from his family, that change which Natalie had predicted, and by which she yet had been frightened at his return, as by something quite unexpected, never became more significant than during these evenings at the castle.

If, during the first years of his marriage, through the lovely influence of his young wife, and especially through the wish to satisfy, to please her in everything, he had learned with quite incredible rapidity to follow the usual social customs of the country, and no longer to bear himself in the world as a genius, but as any other cultivated, well-bred man, he had completely forgotten it during his vagabond life, or rather it had become wearisome to him.

More than ever, his circle of action in a drawing-room limited itself to producing music and then being raved over by ladies. The incessant self-bewilderment in this smoke of incense how, where and whenever it might be, had become a necessity of existence for him. Everything in him had gone wild, even his art.

Together with a preference for perilous technical artifices, challenging musical unrestraint of every kind showed itself. Oftener than ever he fell into those mad moods in which he demanded things of his poor violin which it could not perform, until it groaned and screamed as if in the torments of hell, and if he had formerly complained that he could not govern himself, he now boasted of it. It was his specialty, by which he was distinguished from all the virtuosos of his time. And, in spite of all the underlying lack of restraint and the impurity, that the sense-enslaving glow of his art now unfolded stronger than before, there could be no doubt. Especially over the feminine portion of his listeners his playing exercised a quite degrading charm. The triumphs which he achieved in "Les Ormes" proved this.

He profited by the situation. Although it would have been tiresome to him to have passed a whole evening among these people of the world, far removed from all his most intimate interests of life, without playing, he sometimes let himself be urged almost to lack of taste before he took up his violin. It happened once that he waited until a particularly crazy enthusiast presented, kneeling, his violin to him.

One of the musical ladies present sat down to the piano to accompany him; the others grouped themselves as near as possible round him, while they anxiously tried to express by their positions a kind of dying-away charm. He felt the longing glances of their eyes resting on him while he played. He saw the beautiful heads bent forward. It went to his head like a stunning oppression; he no longer knew himself. But they no longer knew themselves. If in the bearing of the great ladies who frequented his house in ----, in spite of all their enthusiasm for his art, there had still been a trace of patronage with reference to the artist, many of these beauties now fawned upon him like slaves who would sue for his favor.

When he had finished, no one of them knew by what special insanity she should over-trump the others, in order to prove to him her enthusiasm. And while the music-bewitched women crowded around him, to beg autographs or locks of hair from him, and carefully picked out the remains of his thrown-away cigarettes from the ash receiver, in order to keep them as relics, the Jeliagin told some new guest, in an adjoining room, the "romance of her sister," which she always concluded with the words: "My poor sister; so courted as she was! You know that she refused Prince Truhetzkoi. We were inconsolable when we heard of her betrothal with Lensky. He is really a great genius!" And then she sighed.

But Natalie stood on the terrace which opened out of the music-room, quite alone. She was happy if she could remain alone; if no one came up to her to ask if she had a headache, or if anything else was the matter. Was anything the matter with her? No one could feel what she suffered, and there was also no human consolation which she would not have felt as an insult, however tenderly it was offered to her.

What were the little pin pricks which had excited her impatience in ---- to this pain!

Around her was the summer night, sultry and still. The black shadows of the trees stretched themselves in the moonlight over the gray-green turf on which not a single dew-drop sparkled.

Out into the stillness of the night sounded a loud, harsh laugh. Natalie looked through one of the flower-encircled windows into the drawing-room. There sat Lensky in a circle of ladies.

Heated by his wearying performance, he wiped the perspiration from his temples, from his neck. He was relating something that Natalie could not hear distinctly, but which evidently seemed very droll to him, and which convulsed his listeners; they exhibited a kind of comically exaggerated irritation. An embarrassed smile appeared on his lips, he seized the hand of the lady who sat nearest to him, played with it appeasingly, and drew it to his lips. This was his manner of making his apologies if he had said something too racy.

Natalie stepped back in the shadow. A desperation, which was mingled with aversion, lay hold of her. Then, hollow, paining, quenching all the pleasure of life, quite like a physical discomfort, something crept over her which she would not explain to herself, which at no price would she have called by its name--jealousy.

* * * * *

The whole mud of his inner nature was stirred up as a stream highly swollen and unsettled after a wild storm, raving and foaming, tumbles in its bed, and can no longer find peace and rest therein.

From time to time he invited guests from Paris; sometimes they came uninvited. They usually remained to luncheon only, but Natalie had always time enough to be alarmed at them and to wish them away. They were no longer artistic celebrities like those whom Natalie had charmed to the "Hermitage" the year before; no, Lensky had reached that point in his career when an artist only tolerates courtiers and court fools about himself.

What a motley rabble that sometimes was which assembled around him--artistic Bohemians, freed from all social and moral restraint!

The men usually remained to luncheon. Natalie did her utmost to conceal the repulsion which the bearing and manner of expression of the throng caused her, even from her husband. But sharp-sighted as he was he guessed her feelings.

At first he tried to spare her; to keep the conversation in suitable bounds as long as she was present. But one day it became too tiresome for him. Whether the wine had gone to his head, or whether some secret vexation irritated him, in any case he felt the need of breaking his conventional shackles. Scarcely had he given the sign for excessive freedom of speech, when the other men followed his lead. They laughed, jested with Natalie and about her, without the slightest consideration for her, as men heated by wine do when they are together--Lensky by far the worst among them all.

From time to time he looked at Natalie challengingly and angrily. Why was she so prudish? Why was she so affected? It was laughable in a married woman of her age--was nothing but foolishness and affectation.

At dessert she could bear it no longer; she left the table and locked herself in her room.

A kind of illness had come over her; she was near a swoon.

How painful the recollection of his roughness was to him later she knew nothing of. He was much too proud to let it be noticed. On the contrary, when he was with her again he acted as if he had a humor of hers to pardon.

From that time Natalie no longer appeared at these lunches. But in the distance she heard the rattling of glasses, the laughter.

She stopped her ears and bit her teeth into her lips.

* * * * *

With all this he became daily more out of temper and discontented.

At first his drawing-room triumphs in "Les Ormes" had amused him; gradually he lost the taste for them, found everything empty childish. His position in the midst of this exclusive worldliness vexed him. While the women threw themselves at his head, he noticed a smile on the lips of the men which offended him. If, even at the beginning of his career, he had felt quite _a son aise_ with the ladies of the aristocracy, he never, on the contrary, to the end of his life, learned to live in harmony with the men of that rank. Their treatment of him always remained objectionable to him. True, they always met him with the greatest politeness, but they never treated him as their equal, and were always a trifle too polite to him. If he entered the smoking-room while they, with hands in their pockets and cigars between their teeth, confidentially talked of politics, race-horses or ladies, the conversation immediately took a more earnest tone. As soon as he opened his mouth the others all listened in solemn silence; then one of them would leave the group, take him apart from the others, and try to talk of music with him. He embarrassed them and they embarrassed him.

Formerly, he had taken such things quite philosophically, but his sensitiveness had increased in recent times. In the long months which he had passed, going from city to city, winning triumphs and absolute, surrounded only by artists of the second and third class, he had gradually begun to feel himself the central point of the world. But here, in spite of the insane homage of the ladies, he very soon saw what a small _role_ he really played on the world's stage, although he could give pleasure to so many by his art.

He could still tolerate the Russians, but sometimes strange diplomats came to the castle. The condescending flattery of these gentlemen was unbearable to him. What was he really in the eyes of these empty heads? he asked himself; an acrobat of the better sort, a man who existed merely for their accursed amusement. As if music were not the most beautiful of all arts, an art ten times holier, more God-like than the political, bungling work of these diplomats! "Art is the most enduring in the world. I am the only immortal among you all!" he said to himself. But then came the question: "Yes; am I then immortal? What have I accomplished up to this time to deserve artistic immortality?"

He only felt really happy on the days when all the men were occupied in hunting, and he and a handsome Spanish painter with a wooden leg were the only men in a circle of ten or twelve ladies, although, in his heart, the unmanliness of his position struck him bitterly enough.

* * * * *

The most charming of his admirers in "Les Ormes," the one who had decidedly taken the first place in his favor, was the Countess Marinia Loewenskiold. As already mentioned, she was a Pole, and married to a northern diplomat, from whom she lived separated, _a l'aimable_.

Naturally, she was an idealist, as almost all women are who have departed from the usual course in life. In addition, she was very musical. What was most piquant about her was the fact that, in spite of the separation from her husband, whom, besides, no one could bear, and in spite of her perilous coquetries, no one could say anything against her which could seriously injure her reputation.

Perhaps it was just this, her former haughty blamelessness, which attracted Lensky to her. She was very beautiful, she pleased him; and then--why did they say that this little Pole was invincible? He would see!

Among the guests in the castle was Count Leon Pachotin. Touchingly faithful to his old enthusiasm, he busied himself by singling out the wife of the virtuoso on every possible occasion, with the most exaggerated homage and attentions. He was still a very handsome man, was rich, had changed his military career, as is quite customary with young cavaliers, for that of diplomacy, in all appearances bid fair to reach the highest honors, and--was still unmarried. It was indescribably bitter to Natalie to play the humiliating _role_ which had fallen to her in life, so near to him. Sometimes she felt his kind blue eyes resting upon her in sad compassion. Then the proud blood boiled within her. She collected herself in order that nothing might be noticed, and was again, so truly the charming, seductive, unapproachable Natalie Assanow of former days.

* * * * *

On a sultry evening, toward the middle of August, the company in the castle was unusually brilliant and numerous. The men and women sat in groups here and there in an immense pavilion--in which, by means of screens and thickets of flowers, all kinds of confidential nooks were formed--talked, laughed, coquetted, and sipped the refreshments which tall servants with solemn bearing and brilliant liveries presented.

Natalie had the consciousness this evening of looking particularly beautiful. Pechotin scarcely left her side. She observed that the count's manner to her irritated Lensky, that he looked over to her more than once uneasily, and she was glad and doubled her lovability to Pachotin.

Then she noticed that Boris had left the pavilion. With instinctive jealousy her eyes sought Countess Loewenskiold. She also was missing. Natalie's blood throbbed in every vein, she suddenly found Pachotin intrusive and awkward, wished to do nothing more speedily than to get rid of him.

"Please see if you can get me an ice, Count," she remarked. He rose obligingly. Scarcely had he left her when she stepped out from the pavilion on the terrace.

There was no one there, but out in the park, not very far, no further than a lady should permit herself to wander in the garden on a beautiful summer night in the company of a gentleman, she discovered two figures--he and she. A quite irresistible impulse drove her to follow them, to interrupt their conversation in some manner. Already she had taken a step forward, then, blushing for herself, she remained standing. Had it already gone so far with her that she should show herself capable of a degrading, pitiful act! She stood as if rooted to the ground. The pair in the park, yonder, also remained standing. She saw how Lensky stamped his foot, and threw back his brown head. She knew this despotic, violent movement. Then it seemed to her that she heard the words: "_pas de sens commun--enfantillages!_" Her heart beat violently, she turned away and reentered the room. Soon after, Lensky joined the other guests, so did the Countess Loewenskiold. It did not escape Natalie that the latter entered the room by another door from him. The Polish woman was deathly pale, and her lips burned with fever. In Lensky's manner, on the contrary, not a trace of excitement betrayed itself; he was even more lovable than usual, and polite to all the ladies, and without being specially urged, took up his violin.

While he played, he turned away from the Loewenskiold, and he charmed such tones from his Amati that evening, tones of such touching, painful sweetness, that the most earnest men present, with the women, bowed before his art.

While he played, the nervous countess was seized with a fit of weeping, and left the room.

A little later, Natalie and Lensky walked home together through the park. The way which they took was enclosed on both sides by thick bushes, which almost met over their heads in a transparent arch. The moonbeams slid through the branches, and the shadows of the leaves spread themselves out like ghostly lace-work over the yellow gravel. An oppressive sultriness, the breathless, sticky sultriness of the old heat of the day, which remained hanging in the thicket, made breathing difficult.

Neither of them spoke a word. But while she, holding her head very high in the air, looked straight before her, his glance rested ever more frequently on her. In accordance with the custom which ruled in the castle, she wore evening dress, and, on account of the heat, had let the white, gold-embroidered burnous slip down a little from her bare shoulders. The moonlight shone on her neck. She held her little head somewhat averted. In vain he tried to look in her eyes; he only saw the outline of her cheek, her chin, and neck; but how charming all that was! Never before, since his return, had she pleased him so. It really was worth the pains to only look at another woman near this one. Giving way to a sudden excitement, mingled with remorse, he drew her to him and pressed his lips to her shoulder. But she escaped his embrace, not without a certain correcting roughness. His arms fell loosely at his sides, but he could not remove his gaze from her. How high she held her head, what annihilating arrogance her little mouth expressed! In his mind he saw Pachotin bent over her chair, humbly intent on the slightest sign of her favor.

Who knows? perhaps she regrets, thought he to himself, and a furious rage gnawed at his heart.

* * * * *

About three days after this scene--three days, during which Natalie and Lensky had lived together in mutual wrath, without speaking a word to each other, Lensky told his wife he must to-day go to Paris, in order to arrange with Flaxland the publication of one of his works; at the same time he wished to make use of the opportunity to see and hear Gounod's new opera. He could, therefore, only come home the next day on the five o'clock train. He said all that in a very grumbling tone, did not give her a kiss for farewell, and immediately went to the railroad.

She fancied him already far away, when he returned again. "Have you forgotten anything?" she asked him.

"Yes; namely, I would like to know if you perhaps have anything to be done in Paris--and then--if you wish, you can come with me; we will go to the opera together. I will wait, as far as I am concerned, for the next train, so that there will be time enough for you to make ready."

If he had only said that pleasantly, but he said it roughly, disagreeably, as if it did not concern him at all. He had offended Natalie too much recently for her to agree with his first attempt at reconciliation.

"I thank you very much," she replied coldly; "you will amuse yourself much better without me."

For one moment he hesitated; then he shrugged his shoulders and went.

Scarcely had he gone when Natalie was overcome with remorse for her stubbornness and obstinacy.

Truly it was unwise and hateful not to come to meet him, if he, proud as he was, took the first step. She could have cried from anger with herself. A true child, as in the bottom of her heart she still was, she could not cease to think of the pleasure which she so petulantly had renounced. How charming it would have been to pass a whole day alone with him in Paris. To dine in the Cafe Anglais, very quickly and quite early, so as not to miss the opera, but still very excellently; she even made out the _menu_--ah! she knew all his favorite dishes so well; then the next day they would have bought all kinds of useless, pretty things together. She knew, from former years, how good-naturedly and patiently he would let himself be dragged in the great bazaars. She would have bought Kolia playthings and baby an embroidered dress--she saw the little dress before her--and instead of all that--ah, how vexatious!

The hours dragged slowly; she scarcely put her foot out of the house. She also remained at home in the evening; the castle had really no power of attraction for her. When Kolia took the place opposite her at dinner, and unfolded his napkin with an important air, he remarked: "See, mamma, now it is just like the day after papa had gone away to America, only you are not so sad, because you know that he is coming back soon."

Natalie smiled at the child. After awhile Kolia began anew:

"Mamma, shall we go to meet papa tomorrow?"

She nodded.

Kolia rested his little head thoughtfully on his hand.

"I wonder if he will miss the train again?" said he.

* * * * *

In accordance with a loving agreement, Natalie had formerly been the only one who possessed the right to move anything in Lensky's sanctum, and to remove the dust from his writing-table. With devoted punctuality she had always performed this task. Only very recently had she been untrue to this dear custom. But this time he should observe, as soon as he returned, that she had busied herself for him during his absence.

She was in an optimistic frame of mind. She would no longer be angry with him because he of late had caused her so many bitter hours. He himself had not been happy. He was not yet really acclimatized at home. She had known that she must first win him back again after his long absence. Why had she from exaggerated pride so soon crossed arms? To remember the low expressions which he sometimes now made use of, and especially in company with the motley crowd that came over to him from Paris, this really sent the blood to her cheeks--but still he had scarcely known what he said. She had needlessly irritated him by her childish prudery; one must take these great natures, always inclined to exaggeration, as they were, and not make them obstinate by quite uselessly checking and restraining them.

Only at the thought of the Countess Loewenskiold an unpleasant shudder ran over her. And suddenly the thought flashed through her: "What does he really wish in Paris?" But almost laughingly she answered herself: "As if he could wish anything evil when he asked me to accompany him!"

After she had carefully and daintily set everything to rights on the writing-table, she went down in the garden to cut for it the most beautiful roses which she could find.

Softly humming one of the songs which he had dedicated to her as bride, she carried the flowers, tastefully arranged in a vase, into his room, and placed them on his writing-table. There she discovered in a brass ash receiver a half-burned paper which had formerly escaped her. She looked at the paper to see whether she might throw it away. Her heart stood still. She read the words written in French: "O thou my creator, my redeemer--my ruiner--broken--Paris." The rest of the lines were burned.

She could scarcely stand. From whom were these lines? was not that the writing of Countess Loewenskiold? No, no, it was not possible--he asked me to accompany him. Yes, he asked me to accompany him. She repeated it ten times, a hundred times, in order to shake off from herself the conviction that began so pitilessly to weigh down upon her. She could not believe such a thing, she would not. Countess Loewenskiold had certainly not left "Les Ormes"!

But, however she fights with her distrust, she cannot overcome it. A thousand little particulars occur to her.

The sun shines down hot and full from the sapphire-blue heaven. Natalie does not trouble herself about that; straight through the park she hurries, without parasol, without hat, over to the castle. She will inform herself with as little risk as possible. There is no one at home; the ladies have not yet returned from a walk. What a shame! "_La princesse regrettera beaucoup_," remarked the _maitre d'hotel_, who had received her in the entrance-hall. "Perhaps madame will remain to lunch; they will lay a place for madame."

He is an old acquaintance, a servant whom Natalie has known for years. "Oh, no; I cannot stay; I only wished to inquire after the health of the Countess Loewenskiold; she has looked so miserable of late," murmured she.

"Madame la Comtesse Loewenskiold?" says the man, astonished. "Ah! she is no longer here. The poor countess left day before yesterday evening, quite unexpectedly. It occurred to me that she looked very badly. Did madame also notice it?"

What she stammered in answer to his question she does not know. A few minutes later she hurries homeward again through the park, hatless, parasolless. The sun still beams down full and golden upon the earth from the sapphire sky. She does not feel the burning of the sun, and does not see that the sky is blue. For her the sun is dead and the sky black. It seems to her that it sinks slowly down upon her, heavy and breath-robbing, like a sultry, bruising weight.

"He wished to take me with him," she still repeats, as if the words held consolation; "yes, he wished to take me with him." Then she remembers the embarrassed, uneasy expression which his face wore when he returned at the last minute to ask her to accompany him. Evidently he had had a fit of remorse.

"I could have prevented it," she murmured, with hollow voice. Then she shook in her whole body with rage and horror.

* * * * *

About this time, gloomily looking before him, Lensky went through the Rue de la Paix. He did not know why he went along this street rather than another. It was quite indifferent to him where he was; he only wished to kill time. A furious anger with himself shook him; at the same time disgust tormented him. It was always the same; one woman was just like the others. The only one who was different was his own wife; and he--well, he had taken the first slight opportunity to insult her.

He came by the hotel in which he had lived with her the former year. He hastened his steps. From a jeweller's shop the most wonderful jewels sparkled at him. He entered. He would take something to Natalie; would give her a little pleasure. He purchased a pretty pin set with emeralds. She had a preference for emeralds. Scarcely had he left the shop when it seemed to him that the little case in his pocket weighed upon him, pulled him down to the ground. How had he dared venture to offer her a gift in this moment! He took the little case and threw it on the ground--trod on it, once, twice, raging, beside himself. So! that did him good. He must vent his wrath in some way.

* * * * *

When he returned home about five o'clock, he was calmer. What had happened could not be changed, it was now only worth while not to ruin the future. It disquieted him that Natalie did not meet him, but after all, he was not very astonished. She still felt a little vexed with him. He would soon make an end of that. He asked where she was. "In her room," they told him. But what was that? Everything was upturned, chests stood open, on chairs and tables lay piles of linen, clothes, as before a departure. He did not yet understand, but still he noticed that she started violently at his entrance, without looking around at him.

"What are you doing, Natalie? Are you preparing for departure?" asked he.

"As you see," replied she shortly, and continued her strange occupation.

"It is a good idea," said he. "I already myself wished to make the proposition to you to move away from here. But how did you really come to think of it?"

Instead of any answer, she merely shrugged her shoulders. A short pause followed.

He stepped somewhat nearer to her. "Natalie," said he, earnestly, warmly and gently, with his old, dear voice, the voice which always went so deep to her heart, and which she now heard again for the first time since his return from America, "Natalie, do you not think that we would do better to make peace with each other?"

He wished to put his arm round her, but she repulsed him. In so doing, for the first time she turned her face to him. With horror he perceived how miserable she looked.

Her lips were pale, her features sharpened like a dead person's. For one moment she still restrained herself, her eyes sought his. An unrest, a hope fevered in her. "Perhaps I have in vain martyred and tormented myself," she said to herself. "He certainly could not speak so to me, if----"

With trembling hand she opened a little box, and took out the half-singed letter which she had not been able to overcome herself from carrying about with her. She handed Lensky the letter.

He changed color. "What accident has played this silly note into your hands?" he burst out.

"No matter about that," she replied dully, and with that she tottered so that she must catch hold of a chair so as not to fall. "Were you--in company--with the Loewenskiold--in Paris--or--not?"

Why could he not lie? He remained silent.

Once more she looked at him, despairingly and supplicatingly. He turned away his head.

She gave a gasping cry, pushed back the hair from her temples with both hands, and sank in a chair. Then she pointed with her pale, trembling hand to the door.

Lensky did not move.

"Go!" said she, severely; and her hand no longer trembled, and her gesture was more imperious, more proud.

Instead of obeying her command, he sank down at her feet and covered the hem of her dress with kisses. "I have sinned against you," he said; "yes, but if you knew how furious I am with myself, and how little my heart was concerned in the affair, you would pardon me. You will not certainly be jealous of something that is quite beneath one's notice; one does not always think immediately what one is doing." He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "For this reason you are still the only woman in the world for me. Really, my angel, it is not worth the pains that you should torment yourself!" He took her hand in his.

But she started back from his touch. "Leave me!" said she, violently. "All is at an end between us--go!"

For the first time he comprehended the gravity of the situation. "All at an end--" he murmured, while he rose. "What do you mean?"

"That I will no longer bear to be under the same roof with you; that I will go back to my mother; that I insist upon a separation--that is what I mean. Did you, then, expect anything different?"

He clutched his forehead. "A separation! but that is impossible!" he gasped. "A separation--the children!"

She started. "Yes--the children!" murmured she, dully, inconsolably; "the children!" And with a bitter smile she looked down on her preparations for the journey, on the trunks, the effects lying about.

Then he once more stepped up to her. "You see that the bond between us can never more be broken," said he, gently. "You cannot go!"

"No!" said she harshly. "No, I cannot go--not even that consolation remains to me. As the mother of your children I must remain under your roof. But in everything else between me and you all is at an end. Go!"

He went.

* * * * *

He betook himself to his study. Scarcely had he entered here when a peculiar feeling of mingled emotion and anxiety came over him. He noticed that she had been here, noticed that she had everywhere removed the dust; that she had arranged his of late neglected writing-table, and how understandingly, with what loving consideration of all his whims! He noticed the vase with fresh roses. Evidently she had busied herself for him during his absence. She had wished to be reconciled to him, and while she troubled herself for him she must have found the note somewhere in this room. "It is all over," he told himself; "but that is really not possible. It is jealousy that speaks from her; that will pass away." Jealousy! Yes, if it had really only been jealousy, but that which he had read in her features was something else--almost a kind of loathing. What, then, had he done? He had left a distinguished young woman, beautiful as a picture, alone for eight months, and when he returned, instead of recompensing her for her long, sad loneliness by loving consideration, he had daily, before her eyes, let himself be raved over by other women, and at last----

"She despises me, and she is right!" he murmured to himself. "If she had borne this also, she would have been pitiable, and I must have despised her like the others--she, my proud, splendid Natalie!"

He sat at his writing-table, and rested his head in his hand.

The twilight shadows spread over the floor, and slid down from the ceiling, and made the corners of the room invisible, and obliterated the outlines of the furniture. The colors died; only the white roses shone in a ghostly manner in the half light.

Then the door opened; the servant announced that dinner was served.

It seemed strange to him that he should go to the table to-day as any other day; it was not possible for him to eat anything, but he was ashamed to cause talk among the servants, and so he went into the dining-room. "Will she be there?" he asked himself. How could he have even fancied such a thing? Naturally she was missing. Only Kolia was there, and stood expectantly near the silver soup tureen, which shone on the table. In their little family circle, Lensky always himself served the soup. Kolia had raised himself on tiptoes, and with one slender finger had pushed the cover of the dish somewhat to one side. He stretched his little nose eagerly forward, and slowly inhaled the rising odor, while with a deliciously old, wise connoisseur expression he drew down his nostrils and closed his eyes.

"I see already, it is crab soup--my favorite soup, papa!" he remarked, and then with agility he climbed up on the chair, which, on account of his still insufficient stature, was prepared with a cushion for him.

It was certainly only a quite trivial little affair, and yet it stabbed Lensky to the heart.

_Potage au bisque_ was also his favorite soup. He stared at Natalie's place, which remained vacant.

A great embarrassment mingled with his pain. He sent the servant, busy at the side-board, out of the room on some pretext.

"Mother is not coming?" he turned to the boy, who had already begun to eat his soup.

"No; mamma has a headache. Poor mamma!"

"Do you wish to be a very clever boy, Kolia?"

"Yes, papa!"

"Then take this bowl of soup to your mother. Do not spill it; perhaps mamma will take a few drops."

With an important face Kolia undertook his errand. Lensky opened the door of the dining-room for him, and looked after him while he tripped along the green-carpeted, dimly-lighted corridor. How pretty and pleasing all that was! The lamps, which stood out from old-fashioned inlaid plates of polished copper, the stags' antlers on the brown wainscoting. And he had not felt happy at home!

Then Kolia came springing back. "I left the soup there," he told his father, who had remained listening and spying in the doorway, "but mamma did not wish to eat it."

"What is mamma doing?"

"She is holding little sister on her lap."

In the course of the meal, and when he noticed that his father's plate continually remained empty, Kolia also lost his appetite. At first, in the most caressing tones, he urged his father to eat.

"But, papa, don't you see, you must help yourself to a little bit; it is such a good dinner to-day. We made out the bill of fare, mamma and I, early this morning at breakfast, and I remembered all your favorite dishes which she had forgotten. She was so gay to-day, before she had a headache, and she only got that headache because she ran through the park to-day without any hat, in the noon sun. But eat something, papa."

Lensky still stared at Natalie's empty place.

All at once he noticed an unusual commotion in the house; confused talking together, quick running to and fro. He sprang up and went out in the corridor.

There he saw Natalie's maid, with disturbed face, and anxious, over-hasty steps, coming out of her mistress' room.

"What is the matter; is madame more ill?" he asked in sudden fright.

"No, monsieur, but the little girl is very ill; it came on quite suddenly. Madame has told me to hurry over to Chancy for the doctor."

For one moment he stood still; then he turned to the sick-room--entered.

It was no contagious illness. Kolia was not sent away from the house; only they told him to keep very quiet, for which he was ready without that, for the weight which oppressed the house was sufficient to constrain the fresh animation of his elastic child-nature. Quite cautiously he only occasionally crept up to the sick-room, opened the door, whose knob he could scarcely reach with his little hand, and whispered: "How is little sister now?"

Yes, how was the little sister?

It was an inflammation of the lungs which had attacked the little one. The physician did not conceal from the parents what little hope there was of recovery.

Two days, three nights long, they both sat together near the cradle in which the sick little girl lay; two days, three nights, in which the tiny body restlessly threw itself here and there between the lace-trimmed pillows, while the breath, interrupted by fierce and tormenting fits of coughing, with difficulty gaspingly forced itself out from the little breast. Sometimes Maschenka cried impatiently and pulled at the coverings with her weak little hands, and then looked at her parents with that hurt, reproachful look with which quite little children desire relief from their parents.

Why did not her parents help her--why must she suffer so?

And Natalie, who formerly had been the tenderest mother in the whole world, took this all wearily, almost indifferently, as a person whose heart, benumbed by a great despair, is no longer susceptible to a new pain. She scarcely worried herself over the endangered little life. Yes! Maschenka would die, she told herself, the dear, charming Maschenka, over whom she had always so rejoiced. She still heard her cooing laughter like a distant echo in her remembrance. Yes, Maschenka would die! Why should she not die? It was really better for her than to grow up to feel such grief in the future as had burned and parched her mother's heart. Yes, she would die, and then Natalie would lay her head down on the little pillow, near the pale face of the child, and fall asleep forever rest forget! When Maschenka was dead, Natalie had no more duties!--Kolia?--Oh, Kolia would make his way in the world.

But Maschenka did not wish to die: this world pleased her too well, she did not wish to.

The fever became higher; ever more impatiently the child threw herself about in the cradle. On the evening of the third day the doctor, a skilful, wise, conscientious family physician, whom Natalie had frequently consulted for any little illness of the children, and who, under the direction of a Parisian specialist, fought with death for Maschenka's little life,--on the evening of the third day he said that probably the crisis would occur in the night; he would come again at six o'clock in the morning and look after it. He said that very sadly. Lensky accompanied him out. When he came back in the sick-room, the expression of his face was still sadder than before.

The little one became still more restless--she would not stay in her cradle. Incessantly she raised herself from the pillows, cried pitifully, and stretched out her little arms. Natalie took the little patient, warmly wrapped in coverings, on her lap, but the little one would not stay there either. She felt that her mother was not just the same to her as formerly. Quite angrily she turned away from her, and stretched out her little hands to her father. Lensky took her in his arms, wrapped the covering still closer round her tiny limbs, and with a thousand tender words, coaxed her to rest. With what evident pleasure the little body leaned against his breast!

Natalie's eyes rested on him. It had been just the same for two days. He had cared for the child, not she. Only she now, for the first time, took account of it. How tenderly he held the child! what touchingly poetic words of love he whispered to it! Expressions, such as one finds only in those songs in which the people complain of their pain! Just such words had he formerly found for her--at that time--in those old days, when he still loved her--and a stream of new, animating warmth crept through her benumbed heart.

She still watched him. Her eyelids became heavy.

Suddenly she started up, looked confusedly about her; she had been fast asleep. What had happened meanwhile? The morning light already streamed into the room; without the rain rattled against the window panes. When had it begun to rain then? Where was Lensky? He stood near the window and gazed out. How sad he looked, how pale!

The child!--and with a feeling of immeasurably painful anxiety her heart now fully awoke to new life. She had not the courage to look in the cradle. Then Lensky turned to her. "The child!" murmured she.

He laid his finger on his mouth. "She sleeps--" Then listening: "The doctor comes."

The physician entered. He bent over the cradle; the little patient slept calmly and sweetly, her little fist against her cheek. Her little face was very pale and sadly lengthened, but her brow was moist and a peaceful expression was on her tiny mouth.

"She is better," said the doctor, astonished and pleased. He scarcely understood it. "The fever is gone, the crisis is past, and if there are no quite unusual circumstances, the danger is over. A couple of spoonfuls of strong broth when she wakes, and no more medicine. Adieu, _a tantot!_" and he left the room.

The door had closed behind him, his steps resounded in the corridor. Natalie rose; she did not know what she wished; to look at the child, to fall on her knees, to pray! Then her eyes met Lensky's. She started, stretched out her arms as if to repel a suddenly awakened pain--a swoon overcame her--she sank down. He took her in his arms, carried her into the adjoining room, and stretched her out on a couch. He opened the window and let the spicy, rain-cooled morning air stream in. Then he wet the temples of the unconscious woman with cologne and loosened her dress. At that her only carelessly fastened-up hair loosed itself and slid down in all its dark abundance over her shoulders.

How wonderfully charming she looked in her pale, melancholy loveliness! Involuntarily he approached his lips to her temples; then she opened her eyes; a shudder shook her frame and she turned her face away from him.

It went through him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot. He had forgotten, but now he remembered accurately. How dared he approach this woman so confidentially!--she was no longer his wife. She had only tolerated him near her as long as the child lay sick, really only tolerated! With fearful bitterness he remembered how she had held herself far from him, even near Maschenka's bed of pain. And now, when the little one was well--why let himself be shown the door a second time?

"You need not be afraid, Natalie, I am going; I had only forgotten--pardon!" With that he could not deny himself to take her hand; he believed she would draw away her hand from him; no, she let it lie quite passively in his. Now he wished to free it, but then, quite softly, but ever firmer, her fingers closed round his. She herself held him back. Rejoicing and sobbing he drew her to his breast.

Scarcely a moment later he felt in his inmost heart quite strangely, uncomprehendingly, a cold gnawing vexation.

He did not understand that she could pardon so easily. He had not expected that of her.

FOURTH BOOK.

Dear Natalie!--Owing to business affairs which will claim me still longer, it will be impossible for me to come to Trouville before the beginning of September. I am very sorry, but I hope and wish that you will not, on this account, put off your journey to the sea-shore; you know how you need the stay in the bracing air. I have engaged a residence for you through Madame de C., and also had everything arranged for your comfortable reception--a low chalet with a look-out over the sea. I know how you love it,--the poor wild sea, that cannot help it if it sometimes crushes a ship, and that finds no rest from despair over the evil which it does and cannot prevent.

You must not take any sea-baths; Dr. H. suitably impressed that upon me in the spring. But in any case, wait until I come.

From my great, clever boy I often receive long, pretty, regularly written letters which please me very much. I will show them to you when we are together again. The boy is romantic, through and through, which touches me in these our present times, and also a little of a pedant, which makes me impatient, but still, he is a dear, splendid fellow, and that you must tell him from me.