XXI.
It is Sunday. In the midst of the little English Catholic chapel in Paris kneels Nita, her face in her hands. When mass is over, without waiting to greet any acquaintances, she returns home. She looks pale, has evidently slept badly. The shadow in her eyes is darker than ever. Sadly her eyes wander over the park. "Spring is dead," says she. And suddenly--she had thought it long past, but the conversation with Sonia revived the painful remembrance anew--she thinks of that time, six full years ago, when, in a sweet, dreamy May night, quite like yesterday, a sultry hurricane had killed the spring of her young, pure, sensitive life with all its poetic enthusiasm and Heaven-aspiring, jubilant exuberance.
And with this recollection, the old, never fully vanquished horror of life has again awakened in her, that terrible, all-consuming, all-degrading horror which must forever exclude her from every sweet, unconscious, surrendering inclination of the heart.
Wearily she mounts the broad stairs to her apartment. Sonia is not at home. Nita seats herself at her writing-table, as she does every Sunday, unwillingly, but punctually, to make up her weekly accounts.
Then there is a ring without. The maid announces: "Herr Lensky."
"Let him come in," says Nita, and as Nikolai enters, adds indifferently: "Take a seat and amuse yourself as you can. There is a book of Leech's caricatures. Sonia will be back soon; her father unexpectedly arrived, and she has gone to the exhibition with him; but they are to lunch with me. You are also cordially invited if you choose to accept. Meanwhile, permit me to finish my accounts." With pen in hand, she has led him from the drawing-room where the writing-table stands into the pretty little cosey corner, and now wishes to leave him and return to her work. With an imploring glance he withholds her.
"I am not in the mood to look at picture-books," says he. "If you cannot let your accounts wait, I will come another time."
"How sensitive you are! I would have thought that we two were beyond the plane of common politeness, at least as far as I am concerned."
She puts down the pen, and sitting down on the little sofa in the cosey corner, motions him to an armchair.
"I have a confidence for you, Fräulein," murmurs Nikolai.
"I thought so," replies Nita. Over her finely chiselled white face trembles something like a difficultly suppressed smile.
"It is so hard," he continues. "Will you not help me a little?"
"No," says she, energetically. "I have not the slightest wish to assist your awkward circumlocutions." And with friendly playfulness she adds: "How can one find so hard something which is so easy?"
How cordially and unconstrainedly she looks at him!
An uneasy sensation takes possession of him.
"So easy!" murmurs he, hoarsely. "Do you find it so easy to ask a question on whose answer depends the happiness of our whole life?"
"If one can be so sure of the answer," says she, still playfully, mockingly, but very good-naturedly.
"Sure?" His eyes rest penetratingly on her face. Nikolai feels very unpleasantly, but still can no longer be silent.
"I am designated to Washington," stammers he, hastily rushing through the words. "I start to-morrow evening. May I come back in the autumn to--fetch you?"
She starts up. "Me?" cries out she, beside herself. "Me?"
"And who else, then?" he asks, with desperate harshness. "Do you not know that I love you?"
"Me?" she repeats, hesitatingly, and paling.
"Do you then believe that it has seemed to me worth the trouble to look at another girl since I have known you? Oh, love, darling, only one!"
The for years restrained fire of his nature has awakened. Her silence encourages him. He kneels at her feet, draws her hands to his lips. He is no longer the well-bred young diplomat whom Nita had formerly known; he is Lensky's son. More slender, with more finely cut features, his face yet, in the expression, in the kind trace about the mouth, in the violent demand and still tender supplication of his glance, resembles his father's quite mysteriously. It is the same coaxing voice with which Lensky, in his good moods, if he had wished, could have charmed down an angel from heaven; they are the same full, warm lips.
His words she has listened to without moving, but as his lips touch her hands she repulses him with a violent movement.
"Leave me!" she gasps. "Go!"
Dizzily he rises. Such an expression of anxiety, of horror is depicted on her face that his pride is up in arms. "Yet I have said nothing insulting to you," says he, violently, and looks piercingly at her, as if he expected that she would reply something. But as she remains silent, he speaks, with difficulty forcing himself to be calm: "That you refuse my hand is your affair--at heart I was prepared for that; but you shake me off as an impertinent. You extinguish the sun of my life, and do not once tell me that you are sorry for me. Whom, then, have I loved so passionately, so boundlessly? The girl who is capable of such horrible treatment I simply did not know!"
His voice sounds harsh, but his eyes still supplicate her, tenderly, despairingly. He cannot believe that all is over, that she will let him leave her thus. She will yet find a friendly word for him as farewell.
She stands silent, resting her hand on the mantel, her eyes turned from him. She wishes to say something, but it does not pass her lips. Her face is ashy pale; she trembles; dizzily she gropes for a support.
Forgetting all, he makes a step forward to assist her, to support her. As if in deadly fear, she repels him. Her face expresses a kind of horror.
A last time his eyes rest on her longingly, desperately--then he goes.
When Sophie, a little later, returns, she finds Nita deathly pale, stretched on her bed, her hands folded over her breast, "like a corpse in the coffin," said Sophie, when she told of it later.
She wished to steal away on tip-toes, so as not to disturb her friend, but Nita held her back. She looked anxiously, piercingly, in her face. Then Sophie bent over her. "I have just met Nikolai," says she. "I know what has taken place. Oh, Nita, Nita, you have given him up for my sake, and now you are breaking your heart over it!"
"I?"--Nita smiled sadly--"on his account? I am sorry that he suffers, but else--no, no, my poor Sonia, you are mistaken."
"Then I do not understand," says Sophie in astonishment. "What has so shocked you?"
"Me?" Nita holds her hand before her eyes. "A slight heart cramp; I have it at times. I was frightened. It was very foolish, but I cannot help it. It comes over me suddenly sometimes. Poor Sonia, poor, dear little Sonia! Are you not, then, angry with me?"
Sophie had seated herself by her friend's bed; she was pale, but bore up bravely. "What is there to be angry about?" said she, wearily. "I do not understand why I did not long ago notice it. It is natural that he loves you."
"Ah, Sophie, it is only a mistaken idea; he does not know his own heart. It will all pass. He must return to you, learn to love you," assures Nita.
"Never! If you had seen him go down the steps slowly, step for step, as if carrying something wounded, you would not say that. Poor Colia!" And, suddenly raising her voice, quite reproachfully: "It is terrible that he must suffer so. Heavens! do you really not understand what the love of such a man is worth?"
A shudder ran over Nita's slender limbs. "Leave me alone, my dear, brave Sonia; only for a little while," murmured she. "Leave me alone."