CHAPTER VI
On the night of October 1, the sirocco at last broke out. The storm howled with special fury round the summit of St. Elmo. Inside the castle, even in the closely shut up rooms, the noise of the wind was as intense as in the cabin of a ship in tempest. Through the voice of the air-storm which sounded now like the howling of a wolf, now like the sobs of a child, now like the frantic stampede of a herd of buffaloes, now like the gnashing and whistling of gigantic iron-winged birds, the roll of the sea’s breakers resembled the distant rumbling of artillery. It seemed that outside the walls everything was breaking down, the end of the world had come, and that illimitable chaos was raging.
In the apartments of the Tsarevitch it was cold and damp; yet it was impossible to light a fire in the hearth because the wind beat down the smoke. The wind seemed to penetrate the very walls, so that draughts blew through the room, the candles flickered and drops of wax grew cold on them in long, hanging, pointed needles.
The Tsarevitch was hastily walking to and fro; his angular black shadow ran across the white walls, now contracting, now enlarging, now breaking against the ceiling. Afrossinia sat with her feet on an arm-chair, and while pulling a fur coat around her kept silently following him with her eyes. Her face seemed indifferent; only the corners of the mouth twitched almost imperceptibly, and her fingers twisted and untwisted with monotonous action the golden cord torn off from the fastening of her fur coat. Everything was the same as it was six weeks ago when the joyous news had reached him.
At last the Tsarevitch stopped in front of her and said in a hollow voice:—
“It can’t be helped, Afrossinia. Get ready, to-morrow we will start for Rome, to the Pope. The Cardinal here told me the Pope will receive us under his protection.”
Afrossinia shrugged her shoulders:
“Idle talk! Tsarevitch, when the Emperor refuses to lend his protection to a poor lost girl like me, how can the Pope do so? He could not because of his clerical position. Besides, he has no army to protect you, should your father appear in force to claim you.”
“Then what can be done, Afrossinia?” he exclaimed, clasping his hands in despair, “a decree from the Emperor has come, to send you away at once. It was difficult to persuade them to wait till the morning; they can at any moment take you away by force. We must escape, escape at once.”
“Escape, where? they’ll catch us anywhere—then it will all come to the same thing. Return to your father!”
“You also, Afrossinia? I see Tolstoi and Roumiantzev have bamboozled you with their fairy tales; you have taken it all in.”
“Peter Andreitch only wishes you good.”
“Good! What do you know? Better hold your tongue. Women have long hair, but short wits. Do you expect to escape torture? Don’t you imagine it. Even your condition will stand you in no stead. With us it is no new thing for women to be delivered in the hour of torture, on a strappado.”
“But your father promised forgiveness——”
“Oh, I know what that means. That’s where he will apply his mercy to me,” and he pointed to the back of his head. “Should the Pope refuse we will go to France, England, the Turk, the Swede, to the devil, but not to my father. Never mention it to me again, Afrossinia! Do you hear? Never!”
“Well, the decision rests with you, Tsarevitch, only I won’t go with you to the Pope,” she said in a low voice.
“Not go, what are you thinking about?”
“I won’t,” she repeated, calm as ever, fixedly looking at him. “I have already told Peter Andreitch that I won’t go anywhere with the Tsarevitch except to his father. Let him go alone where he pleases, but I won’t go with him.”
“Afrossinia, what are you talking about? What is the matter with you? Be yourself,” began Alexis: he had grown suddenly pale, his voice had changed. “May God pardon you! How could I live without you.”
“Do as you like, Alexis, but I won’t go; so you’d better not ask me.” She tore the cord off the buttonhole and threw it on the floor.
“Are you mad, girl?” he cried, clenching his fists with sudden anger, “if I take you, you will have to go. You assume too much liberty, have you forgotten who you are?”
“I am what I always was, the faithful servant of his Majesty the Tsar, my sovereign Peter Alexeyevitch. Where the Tsar commands there will I go. I will do as he wishes. I won’t go with you against your father’s will.”
“Ah, is this how you talk now. You have made friends with Tolstoi and Roumiantzev, my assassins. Is this all your gratitude for my love, my kindness? Viper! Viper!”
“What is the good of reviling me, Tsarevitch? I will do as I say.”
He was awed; even his anger went, he grew weak and faint, sank into a chair at her side, took her hand and trying to look into her eyes, said:—
“Afrossinia my love, what does all this mean? Good heavens! is this a time for us two to quarrel? Why should you speak like this? I know you won’t do it; I know you won’t forsake me in my distress; or if you have no pity for me at least think of the little one.”
She neither answered, nor looked, nor even moved, but remained passive, like a dead thing.
“Or don’t you love me?” he continued, with mad, entreating caress, the pathetic cunning of a lover. “Well, if it is so, then leave me. God be with you! I won’t keep you back, only say you don’t love me.”
She suddenly started up and looked at him with a jeering smile which almost made his heart stand still.
“And you thought I loved you? When you made game of me, a foolish girl, used her with violence, threatened her with a knife, then was the time to ask whether I loved you or not!”
“Afrossinia, what is the matter with you? Don’t you trust me? I will marry you and cover up the sin by wedlock. I look upon you now already as my wife.”
“I thank your lordship for his gracious favour! a favour indeed! The Tsarevitch condescends to marry a serf-girl! And yet look at her, the fool is not glad of the honour! I have endured it all these years; I can no longer. Marry you! I would as soon be hanged or drowned. I would you had straight away killed me that time. ‘You shall be Tsaritsa,’—is that your allurement? Maybe my maiden honour and freedom are more to me than your kingdom! At court you live like wolves, each ready to devour the other. Your father is the old wolf, you are the young one; the old one will swallow the young one in the end. How can you stand against him? The Tsar did wisely when he took the inheritance from you. How can you govern? Go and be a monk, and pray for your sins, you hypocrite! You killed your wife, neglected your children, so entangled yourself with a woman that you can’t leave her. You have become feeble, hopelessly feeble, wearied out, degenerate. Look at your self now, when a woman insults you, you remain silent, afraid to say a word. Eh, my fine fellow! I cudgel you like a dog, and then just sign to you, whistle to you, and you will be again after me, tongue hanging out, like a dog after a bitch; and yet he asks me for love! Is it possible to love a cur like you?”
He started, unable to recognise her. Her pale face, lit up with an almost insufferable brightness in an aureole of fiery-red hair, was terrible, yet more beautiful than ever. The witch! he thought. All at once she seemed the cause of all the storm outside her. The wild shrieking of the storm was but an echo to her words.
“Wait a little, you will see how I love you! I will repay you! I would rather die myself than shield you. I will tell your father how you asked the Emperor for an army to make war on him; how you rejoiced at the mutiny in the army, and planned to side with the rebels, how you even wished your father’s death, you villain! I will report everything, you won’t be able to get out of it! The Tsar will torture you, flog you to death, and I shall be looking on and asking: ‘Well, dear Alexis! will you remember Afrossinia’s love?’ And as for your brat, the moment he is born I will with my own hands——”
He closed his eyes, stopped his ears, he wanted neither to see nor to hear. It seemed to him that all was falling, was breaking down, and that he himself was sinking with it. In a flash he realised, as he had never done before, that there remained no hope for him, and that, struggle as he might, do what he would, he was irrevocably doomed.
When the Tsarevitch opened his eyes Afrossinia had left the room, but a streak of light came through the bedroom door. He guessed she was there, and he went in to see.
She was hurriedly packing, tying things in a shawl as though preparing to leave him at once. The bundle was quite small—a few underclothes, two or three simple dresses which she had made herself, and the only too familiar box with a broken lock, and on the lid a bird—now nearly peeled off—picking a bunch of grapes; it was the same box in which she used to lay her marriage outfit while a serf-girl at Viasemski’s house. The expensive dresses and other things which he had given her she carefully put to one side, probably not wanting to take his presents. This hurt him more than all her cruel words. When she had finished packing she sat down at her little table, mended a quill and began to write, slowly, with difficulty printing each letter. He approached on tiptoe, stooped, and looking over her shoulder, read the first lines:
“Alexander Ivanovitch [that was Roumiantzev]. Since the Tsarevitch wants to go to the Pope, and not only does not heed but is even exceedingly angry with me for trying to dissuade him from going, please send for me as soon as you can, or rather come yourself, for fear he should carry me away by force, because he will go nowhere without me.”
A board creaked, Afrossinia turned round, shrieked, jumped up. They stood facing one another, speechless, motionless, and staring at one another with the same look as at the time he threatened her with the knife.
“So it is to him, then?” he gasped in a low hoarse voice.
A scarcely perceptible smile of irony flitted across her slightly pallid lips.
“I will do just as I like. I am not going to ask you where I am to go.”
His face became contorted, with one hand he gripped her throat, with the other her hair, then throwing her down he began to beat, drag her along and kick her.
“You vile creature!”
The thin short dagger she used to wear when disguised as a page, with which she had just cut a sheet for her letter, lay shining on the table. The Tsarevitch caught hold of it and raised his arm. He felt a mad joy, as on the day when he had done her violence. He realized that she had always deceived him, that she had never belonged to him, not even in their most passionate moments, and that only now, only in killing her, would he entirely possess her, and satisfy his implacable desire. She neither shrieked, nor called for help, but struggled silently, adroitly, as supple and nimble as a cat. During the struggle he knocked the table on which the candle was standing: it upset and the candle falling to the ground went out. Darkness ensued. Fiery circles danced before his eyes. The voices of the storm began howling, somewhere quite close to him, almost in his ear, and then burst into infernal laughter. He started, as if recovering from a trance, and, at the same time, he felt her hanging on his arm, motionless, apparently dead. He loosened the hand with which he had grasped her hair, her body fell to the ground with a short, lifeless, dull thud.
Such fear seized him that his hair stood on end. He flung the short dagger far from him, rushed into the next room, seized the chandelier with the half-burnt candles, hurried back to the bedroom, and then saw her lying on the floor prostrate, pale, with blood on her forehead, her eyes closed. He was again going to rush out and call for help, when it seemed to him that she was breathing. He fell on his knees and bent over her, put his arms round her and carefully lifted her on the bed. Then he lost all control over himself, and was no longer conscious of what he was doing. He now gave her some spirits to smell, now he tried to find a feather, remembering that burnt feathers restore people to consciousness, now bathed her head carefully with water, sobbing and kissing her hands and feet and dress; he called to her and knocked his head against the bed corner, and tore his hair.
“I have killed her—killed her,—killed her! accursed that I am.”
Now he again prayed.
“Lord Jesus, Blessed Virgin—take my life for her life!”
And his heart began to beat in such an agony of dread that he imagined he was dying.
Suddenly he noticed that she opened her eyes and looked at him with a curious smile.
“Afrossinia! Afrossinia! How are you? Shall I send for a doctor?”
She continued to look at him with the same silent, mysterious smile.
She made an effort to raise herself, he helped her and felt that she had put her arms round his neck, and was pressing her cheek close to his with a child-like fondness quite new to him.
“You got frightened, thought you had finished me, eh? Nonsense! it is not quite so easy to kill a woman. We are like cats, with nine lives. A lover’s blow does no harm.”
“Forgive me, forgive me, Afrossinia!”
She looked into his eyes, smiled, and fondled his hair with the tenderness of a mother.
“Ah, my boy, my foolish little boy! Now I come to look at you, you are quite a little boy. You know and understand none of us women. Ah, you foolish boy, you really thought that I did not love you. Come, let me whisper a word into your ear.”
She brought her lips close to his ear and whispered passionately:
“I love you, love you as my own soul, my life, my joy, how can I live on earth apart from you? Rather would I see my soul parted from my body. Do you believe me now?”
“I believe you, I believe you!” he cried, and laughed for joy.
She nestled closer to him.
“My light, Alexis, why do I love you so much? Where your thoughts are there are mine also, your word is my word, your will is mine. You are my master. This is my sorrow, that we women are all foolish and wicked, and that I exceed them all. God gave me a hungry grasping heart. I see you love me, but that does not satisfy me; what more I want I cannot tell. Why is my boy, I think, always so gentle and quiet, never contradicting, never saying a cross word, never admonishing me, stupid me? I never feel his hand upon me, nor his anger. It is not an empty saying that ‘they strike most who love most.’ Or is it because he does not love me? Let me make him angry; let me test him and see what he will do then? And this is what you are, you almost killed me. Just like your father. I nearly died of fear. Well, this will be a lesson for the future, I will remember it and love you, this is how I’ll love you, deep, deep——”
It was to him as if he saw for the first time those eyes kindled with a terrible dim fire, those parted, hungry lips, and for the first time felt this elusive, snake-like body. “Then this is her true self,” he thought, in blissful amazement.
“And you thought I could not caress?” and she laughed with a quiet laugh which seemed to set all his blood on fire. “Wait, and you’ll see how I can love! only satisfy my foolish heart, do what I ask you, then I shall know that you love me as I love you—unto death. My life, my dearest darling, will you do it?”
“I will do anything you ask. God knows there is nothing in the world I would not do. I’ll even meet certain death if you wish it.”
She did not whisper, but only breathed:—
“Return to your father.”
And again his heart sank in terror. The iron hand of his father seemed to stretch out and grip him from under this loving hand. “She lies,” the thought flashed across his mind with the swiftness of lightning.
“Well! let her lie, so long as she caresses me thus,” he concluded recklessly.
“I am sick, sick unto death of living with you in lawlessness. I don’t want to be a lost woman. I want to be your wedded wife before God and man. You may tell me I am as good as your wife now. Idle talk! What sort of a wife am I? Our boy, too, will be born a bastard. But as soon as you return to your father we can marry. Tolstoi himself says, ‘Let the Tsarevitch propose, as the condition of his return, that he may be allowed to marry.’ And the Tsar, he says, will be only too glad; all that will be expected from the Tsarevitch is the abdication of the throne and his retirement to the country. To marry a serf-girl means the same as going to a monastery; he will forfeit the crown. And this is all I want, my Alexis. I am afraid of the Tsardom, more than of anything else. When a Tsar you won’t have any time left for me. Your head will be turned. Tsars have no time for love. I don’t want to be a neglected Tsaritsa, I want to be your sweetheart always. Love is my kingdom. We will settle down in the country, in some village, either in Poretzkoye or Roshdestveno, and there we will live in peace and quiet, you and I and the boy, untroubled by anything. My heart, my life, my joy! Don’t you want it? Won’t you do it? Is it the throne you regret?”
“Why should you ask, Afrossinia, little mother? You know well I’ll do it.”
“You’ll return to your father?”
“I will.”
It seemed to them that the opposite of what had just happened, was going on now. No longer he, but she had the violent mastery. Her kisses were wounds; her caresses a murder.
She grew still, and, gently pushing him away, again breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper:—
“Swear it!”
He wavered, like a man on the brink of committing suicide, when the knife is already raised. Nevertheless he said—
“I swear, before God.”
She blew out the candle and embraced him with endless love, deep, terrible as death. It seemed to him he was flying with her, a witch, a white sorceress, towards some bottomless gloom, borne on the wings of the storm.
He knew it was his doom, the end of everything, and he rejoiced in it.