Chapter X: From Alexis Bozevsky to Stepan Nebrasoff

KIEFF, _Thursday_.

DEAR STEPAN, MY GOOD FRIEND,--

I am here in the house of your cousin, Dr. Stahl, who seems to
have grown longer and leaner than ever. He is a mere shadow.
It is here that your letter reaches me. You tell me to write
to you about myself. To-day, the 15th of October, 1903, I am
twenty-four years old. What gift will Destiny give me for my
birthday? Love? Wealth? A hero's death?

Your cousin Stahl, in his cavernous voice that seems to come
echoing up from underground, says that the gift of Destiny is
precisely these four-and-twenty years of mine! Perhaps he is
right. I feel them eddying in my blood like four-and-twenty
cyclones.

The world is a whirlwind of youth.

Kaufmann this morning lent me his sorrel stallion--the finest
horse in the Empire--and I had a gallop along the bastions. All
the women looked at me. In a phaeton I saw the brazen and
beautiful Princess Theodora, blonde and torrid as a Mexican
landscape. She was resplendent in amethyst and heliotrope, her
red locks flaming to the sun; no one but a princess would
permit herself to display such a riot of violent colors.

Soon afterwards I saw Vera Voroklizkaja, reclining in her
carriage, aloof and severe as a vestal virgin; her glossy
black tresses parted over her brow enclosed the narrow oval of
her face like soft black wings. Beside her sat little Miriam
Grey, clothed in her youthfulness as in an armor of roses. The
beauty of all these women courses through my blood like sun
and wine.

Upon my word life is an excellent institution.

And you--what are you doing?

Ever yours,

BOZEVSKY.

_The next day._

STEPAN, STEPAN, STEPAN!--

I am in love! Madly, sublimely, tragically in love! This
morning I went to the parade-ground as in a dream; I found
myself speaking to the colonel in a gentle winning voice that
was perfectly ludicrous. When I drilled my company I could
hear myself giving the words of command in an imploring tone
which I still blush to remember. I am obsessed, hallucinated;
there floats before my eyes a slender, ethereal creature, with
red lips that never smile, and hair that looks like a cataract
of champagne.

Stahl introduced me to her yesterday, here at his house.
"Come," he said, taking me by the arm. "You are going to make
the acquaintance of a superior being, soft of voice and sad of
countenance, who bears the gentle name of Marie."

"Let me off," I replied skeptically. "Sad and superior beings
are not to my liking."

"You will like this one," said Stahl.

"I know I shan't," I replied curtly. I saw Stahl's eye warn
me, and, turning, found myself face to face with the subject
of our conversation, a tall, flower-like vision, with
translucent eyes and a mystic inscrutable face.

I knew she had overheard me, and as I bowed low before her,
she said: "That you should like me is of no importance. What
really matters is that I should be pleased with you."

Her beauty and the scornful levity of her words struck me
strangely. "Madame," and I was surprised to feel that I spoke
with sincerity, "to please you will be henceforward the
highest aim of my desire."

She looked at me a moment; then she spoke quietly: "You have
attained your aim."

She turned and left me. I stood thunderstruck by the brief and
daring reply and by the flash of that clear gaze. She had
spoken the words without a smile.

She did not address me during the rest of the evening. When
she left, she barely glanced at me and vouchsafed neither
smile nor greeting.

Just for an instant she raised her black-fringed eyes and
gazed at me; then her lashes fell; and it was as if a light
had been blown out.

I am in love with her! Madly, divinely, desperately in love.
Ah, Stepan, love--what an ecstasy and what a disaster!

Your BOZEVSKY.

It was Dr. Stahl, the "Satanic Stahl," who got these letters from his cousin Stepan Nebrasoff, and showed them to me. They bewildered and troubled me. What? Was I really so attractive and so perturbing in the eyes of the gallant young Pole--the handsomest officer in the Imperial Guard? I repeated to myself his disquieting epithets: "flower-like," "ethereal," "inscrutable"; and in my room at night when I loosened my hair, I wondered: "Does it really look like a cataract of champagne?" When I went out I never smiled, even when I felt inclined to do so, since my gravity had seemed so charming to him.

Night and day he followed me like a shadow--or rather, should I say, like a blaze of light. In whatever direction I turned I was sure to encounter his radiant smile and his flashing glance. His passion encompassed me; I felt like Brunnhilde surrounded by a sea of flame. I was elated yet terrified.

One evening at dinner I made up my mind to speak to Vassili about it.

"Vassili," I said falteringly, "I think we ought to go away for a time."

"Away? Where to?" asked my husband.

"Anywhere--anywhere away from Kieff."

"Why?"

I felt myself turning pale! "I am afraid," I stammered, "I am afraid--that Bozevsky--"

"Well?" asked Vassili serenely, pouring some vodka into his champagne and drinking it.

"I am afraid that Bozevsky is falling in love with me."

"And who would not fall in love with you, dushka?" laughed Vassili. "As for Bozevsky, may the wolves eat him."

And dinner being over, he lit his cigar and went out.

* * * * *

I go sadly upstairs to the nursery where Tioka and Tania, like blonde seraphs, lie asleep.

A dim lamp hangs between the two white cots and illumines their favorite picture--an artless painting of the Virgin Mary, holding in her youthful arms the infant Jesus with a count's coronet on His head.

I kneel down beside the two little beds and weep.

Aunt Sonia, rectilinear and asexual in her gray flannel dressing-gown, comes in softly and bends over me.

"You must trust in Providence," she says, raising towards the ceiling her long virginal face. "And take a little camomile tea. That always does one good."

I obey her meekly and gratefully. It comforts me to think that a day will come when I also shall be like Aunt Sonia; when I also shall be content to wear gray flannel dressing-gowns and turn in my sorrows to Providence and to camomile tea.

And I wish that that day of peace were near.