X.
"They have come from Félix with the dress for mademoiselle--oh, a wonder of a dress! The girl is waiting up-stairs," the maid calls out to Mascha, who has just returned with Nikolai from a walk in the Champs Elysées.
It is the last day before Lensky's departure. Maschenka is very depressed. She has almost cried her eyes out over the approaching separation, and Nikolai has taken her out-doors to distract her, and also so that she may not disfigure herself for the evening. An important event is before her for this evening. Mascha is for the first time to appear in society as a young lady, for the first time to wear a real evening dress, a Félix evening dress.
Madame Jeliagin gives a soirée in Lensky's honor. She hopes that the charm which the great artist for the moment has for Parisian society will suffice to at last once more fill her empty rooms.
"Yes, a dress, a true wonder of a dress," the maid had called out to Mascha, and although the girl's eyes yet shone with recent tears, she cried out with joy at this message. Throwing gay kisses to her brother, she runs quickly up the stairs, and bursts open the door of her room.
"Where is the dress--where? Ah!!"
Indeed, a lovely dress, and how it fits! No, not quite; a little alteration must be made, declares the girl who brought it. "When one has the fortune to work for any one who has such a beautiful figure as mademoiselle, one must not be careless."
Beautiful figure!
No one had ever yet told Mascha that she had a beautiful figure. She turns her head on all sides to look at herself in the glass. For the first time she finds the mirror over her toilet table too small. Her eyes dance, her finger-tips twitch for joy. Incessantly she turns over the dress, discovering new beauties. "Ah, it is superb! But will the seamstress finish the alteration in time?" she asks, anxiously.
Now all is arranged. The maid has thrown a red scarf of India cashmere around Mascha's shoulders. She hurries down the stairs, bursts into the room, and throwing away the scarf, hurries up to her father and Nikolai.
"Eh bien!" says she, and turns slowly around like a figure in a shop. "Eh bien!"
They are alone in the drawing-room, the two Lenskys and the young girl. What joy to let herself be admired by father and brother without being at the same time submitted to Anna's icy, depressing criticism!
"I am quite ready on this side," she declares importantly, and points to her right arm, which is enveloped to the shoulder in a tan-colored glove, while the left is still bare.
"So! Well, I prefer the other side," says Lensky, laughing. And in truth one can think of nothing more charming than this bare, round, slender arm, not statuesque, white as the arm of a married woman of thirty--no, even a trifle red on the upper part, but with such a bewitching dimple at the elbow, with such tiny blue veins around the wrist.
"Yes; I decidedly prefer it," repeated Lensky, and pushes his daughter somewhat from him in order to observe her more particularly. Nikolai also looks attentively at his sister, tries to make the necessary remarks, to criticise a little. But as she stands before him in her artistically simple white dress, her little fingers twitching with embarrassment, and with her large, anxious eyes seeking approval in his face which she awaited so securely and now cannot find, it really seems to him that never in his life has he met a lovelier young girl than Mascha. What shoulders, what a figure, so beautifully rounded, without the immature thinness of other seventeen-year-old girls. And what is most charming in this unusual little being, on these plump, dazzling shoulders rests such a sweet, pale, little childish face, with such a tender, innocent mouth, with such indescribably pure eyes, looking out boldly and fearlessly at the world, so that the contrast is really painful. One feels that the girl has been desecrated by no grovelling curiosity, no passionate dreams; that she is perfectly unconscious of her physical maturity.
"You are not as beautiful as your mother was," says Lensky after awhile.
"No one else is as beautiful; but that is not necessary," says Mascha, now really troubled. "But--but do I not, then, please you at all?"
"You foolish little goose, do you believe that?" says Lensky, drawing his daughter to him. "We will not tease you any longer, eh, Colia? We will at last tell her quite simply that she looks charming. Yes," he repeated, holding her head down on his shoulder and stroking it, "you are charming, my little dove. You will certainly hear it often enough to-day, and later. Why should I not enjoy the pleasure of being the first to say it to you? You are still a little bit tear-stained," adds he very gently. "Poor little heart, poor angel! But it is becoming to you!"
For the moment, Mascha is so filled with childish desire for praise that she has no sense left for what is the dearest thing in the world for her--the tenderness of her father.
"If I only had a cheval glass in my room," sighed she. "I really have not seen myself yet." And, exhilarated by her father's praise, she climbs up on a stool, and, turning her head to all sides, she tries to see herself as well as possible in the glass over the chimney.
The chandelier sheds a golden light over her dark hair; the reflection of the fire flickers over her white dress. "Father, Colia," asks she, somewhat hesitatingly, "do you think that any one could ever fall in love with me?"
Just then "Herr Graf Bärenburg," calls the servant, and opens the door.
Blushing to the roots of her hair, Mascha springs down from the stool. Bärenburg has only had time to wonder at a pair of very white shoulders in the fullest light, then to see a pair of tiny feet appear from a fragrant cloud of valenciennes and muslin, and jump down to the ground.
"Well, what do you say to my vain daughter, Count Bärenburg?" asks Lensky, gayly, to help Mascha over her embarrassment.
Bärenburg shrugs his shoulders with an approving expression, and replies: "That I have never seen a pair of smaller feet, that is all." Lensky laughs, Nikolai frowns, and Maschenka, with a quick gesture, picks up the formerly discarded red cashmere scarf from the ground and wraps herself in it. Her bare shoulders suddenly annoy her. She is ashamed.
"Only so that you will not take cold," jokes Lensky, and teasingly draws the red scarf together under her chin. "She appears in the world to-day for the first time as a young lady," says he, turning to Bärenburg, and looks at him significantly. Does the conceited Austrian really remark how charming his little girl is?
The conceited Austrian notices it only too well. "The first evening dress. I congratulate you," says he, bowing respectfully to Mascha.
"I had no idea--" now begins Mascha.
"That you would have the misfortune to be obliged to endure me at dinner to-day," Bärenburg completes her sentence. "Mademoiselle Jeliagin wrote me asking, if I were not engaged, to dine en famille at her mother's. I was already engaged"--with a side glance at Mascha--"but I excused myself. Have I perhaps made a mistake in the date?"
"Oh, no!" replies Mascha. "Now I remember, Anna told me some gentleman would come to dinner, and I was vexed that my last dinner with papa would be spoiled."
"Mascha!" says Nikolai, shocked.
And Lensky says, half vexed, half laughingly: "My daughter looks like a grown girl; really, she is, I believe, twelve years old at the most."
"Papa!" says Mascha, blushing hotly. "I did not know that it was to be Count Bärenburg when I was vexed."
"So, and that alters the case," laughs Bärenburg.
"It seems so," replies Nikolai.
But Mascha, observing that they are making merry over her naïveté, suddenly becomes very dignified and says: "It stands to reason that a man who has saved my brother's life should not be a mere casual acquaintance to me." Then, becoming defiant from embarrassment, she slips her little hand in Nikolai's arm and adds: "I love my brother dearly."
Then the Jeliagins enter the room, the temperature falls a couple of degrees, the atmosphere becomes icy.
They look strangely: Barbara in her faded lilac dress and imitation diamonds. As for Anna, she is, in her cold, blond manner, without doubt very handsome, and her black tulle gown becomes her somewhat too tall and slender figure wonderfully. But although she is but twenty-six, her appearance has already that not to be described sharpness, pointedness, dryness, the sign of girls whose bloom begins to wither before it has yet found opportunity to fully unfold.
But without criticising her cousin's charms, Mascha only calls out enthusiastically and childishly: "Oh, Anna, how lovely you look--oh, how lovely! What a shame that I am not old enough to wear black!"
"Do not act as if you had never seen a well-dressed woman before," Anna whispers to her impatiently. "You behave like a village girl."
And Mascha blushes and lowers her head. During this skirmish between the two cousins, Madame Jeliagin has welcomed Bärenburg in the most friendly manner; now Anna stretches out her hand with the manner of an empress conferring a favor. "It is very nice in you, Count, to have drawn a mark through our old cotillon quarrel." And turning to the others, she explains: "This autumn in Spaa, at a ball of the Marquise d'Arly, I had no favor left for Count Bärenburg. He--h-m!--did me the honor to be mortally offended at it." Bärenburg, who has forgotten the whole affair as completely as the date of Shakespeare's birth, bows deeply, and murmurs something. Suddenly Anna turns critically to her cousin. "But, Marie," she exclaims, looking at the thick string of pearls around Mascha's round throat, "what were you thinking of to adorn yourself with wax pearls like an Indian?"
"Wax pearls?" burst out Mascha, indignantly. "They are the pearls which our dear dead empress gave papa for mamma once when he played at court. They are wonderful pearls!"
"I had already noticed them. I have seldom seen such beautiful ones," says Bärenburg. "My mother possesses a similar string, but only wears them on great occasions."
"My mamma wore them day and night, from the hour when papa hung them around her neck," announces Mascha, cordially. "Mamma told me at first she was frightened at the gift, and said pearls mean tears; then papa kissed the pearls and replied: 'Yes, but tears of joy.' Do you remember, papa?" asks she, looking up at him.
"Yes," says he, shortly.
"And when, two years before her death, she hung the pearls round my neck, she also kissed them, and said, with her dear smile: 'Do not forget, Maschenka, they are tears of joy!' Since then I have never parted with them."
"That is all very pretty and poetic," replies Anna, condescendingly, "but as you cannot tell this touching commentary to your splendor to every one, I would advise you to take off the pearls for this evening. It is absolutely unsuitable for a girl of your age to wear such costly ornaments. You are, without that, dressed absurdly elegantly--c'est d'un goût douteux!"
"Take off my pearls!" calls out Mascha, unspeakably vexed at Anna's condescending tone, with a violence which plainly betrays the dangerous vehemence of her nature inherited from her father. "No, never! Never!" she repeats, seizing the necklace with both hands. "I would rather stay in my room the whole evening and not show myself, if you are afraid I might shame you."
A moment before, Lensky felt an almost uncontrollable desire to throw something at Anna's head, but Mascha's burst of rage has a subduing effect on his own excitement. Not for anything in the world would he have his daughter appear to disadvantage.
"But, Maschenka," says he, gently, laying his hand on hers, "collect yourself. Anna does not mean badly. In the end it is quite indifferent whether an insignificant little thing like you has a black or a white neckband on. Restrain yourself, my little dove. Do not forget that you are a guest here." A stern word would, perhaps, have steeled her. Lensky's gentleness spoils everything.
"Ah! I am everywhere only a guest, and no longer at home anywhere," says she. Tears came to her eyes. She tried hard to be mistress of herself, choked down what she could; her unpractised seventeen-year-old self-restraint does not endure, and suddenly bursting into convulsive sobs, she leaves the room. An unpleasant silence follows.
Anna boldly displays her vexation, old Madame Jeliagin smiles sweetly and politely into air, Lensky looks angry, and Colia murmurs excusingly: "She is very over excited. She cannot console herself for the parting from you this time, father."
"Yes, yes, I know," says Lensky. "Poor child! No self-control--no self-control." And turning directly to Bärenburg, he adds: "She lost her mother three years ago, just when she needed her most, and since then she has been, so to speak, left to herself. But she is a good child--a very good child."
"Shall I perhaps go up and look after her?" asks Madame Jeliagin, coaxingly, of her brother-in-law.
"No, no, aunt, let me go," says Colia, hastily preventing. "I know her better than you. I usually succeed quickly in calming her. She really deserves to stay in her room, and she will be ashamed to come down again; but if you will let me, I still will bring her. She has looked forward so to this evening!"
"What would you do if your sister had behaved like Marie?" Anna whispers to Count Bärenburg.
He knits his brows in lazy consideration. "H-m! h-m! The same that Nikolai did--run after her to console her," replies he, slowly. "That is, granted that my sister were as charming as your cousin, which she is not."