XXV.
At the same hour Maschenka stands before the clock in her room and counts the strokes--"One, two, three, four, five. It must be now," says she to herself. "It must be now."
It must be. Slowly but surely and overpoweringly has the conviction mastered her. At first it was only an uneasy anxiety, but then an iron command.
She has fought against it with all the wild, rebellious horror which a very young person feels at the thought of death. She will not--she will not! But at length despair and a daily increasing weariness have strengthened the decision. "Yes, it must be."
How shall she accomplish it? Poison? No; she will go out of the world some way so that no one shall ever find her who knew her. And in the short spring nights she matures a plan, slyly carried out as only such a romantic little brain could think of.
All is ready.
She has granted herself the respite until her father's return, and for this reason she is frightened instead of pleased to see him again. It seemed to her that the executioner appeared to her and said: "Come, it is time!"
How good he was to her! What a beautiful future he planned for her! A black wall towers before her--there is no future.
One, two, three, four, five, six! The hour is here. She undresses; not any garment which can be recognized as hers will she keep on, but changes everything for articles which she has gradually purchased.
If she is washed ashore, no one shall suspect that the girl in the plain working-clothes might be the petted daughter of Boris Lensky.
Then she takes her mother's pearls, which she has not worn for a long time, from her jewel box, and kisses them. She kneels down before her holy picture, and prays.
Now she rises; a last time she slowly looks round her pretty room. Her heart beats to bursting.
"Eliza, tell aunt that she need not expect me to dinner to-day," she calls to the maid through the closed door of the adjoining room. "I shall dine with papa."
"Très bien, mademoiselle!"
And Mascha goes. On the stairs she suddenly feels a burning thirst. She goes into the dining-room, takes a carafe of water from the side-board, and drinks with a kind of eagerness. A red pyramid of fine, fresh raspberries, Mascha's favorite fruit, is piled up on a glass dish. She reaches for the inviting fruit, takes two, three. Suddenly something chokes her, a kind of spasm overcomes her; she hurries out. She has already reached the house-door, she hesitates. It must be! But must it be now? To live one more week, a fortnight; to enjoy the sunshine; to be indulged by her father; to forget all; to be happy! Fourteen happy days are long!
A clock in the house strikes the quarter past six. In a few minutes her aunt will return. She goes.
Now she is on the street. The Avenue Wagram lies behind her. She is in the Champs Elysées. She beckons to an empty cab. "To the nearest landing of the Swallow," she says.
The Swallow, the pleasure steamer which daily runs between Paris and St. Cloud, is about to start when Mascha reaches the landing. She will wait for the next boat. "Mais non, ma bonne fille," says a coal-blackened fireman. "Montez toujours," and he helps her on board.
Klip, klap, plash the waves on the ship's wooden sides. Maschenka watches everything very calmly. At times she forgets why she is here, but for not a moment is she free from a hateful cold weight on her mind. Occasionally she involuntarily makes plans for the morrow; then she shudders. To-morrow at this time--where will she be?
On glides the ship.
"Meudon--Meudon!" A little gray city nestling against a green hill.
Every time that the steamer stops, she says: "It must be now." Each time she will land, seek some place between the green, drooping willows, in order undisturbed to carry out what she has undertaken--once more kneel down in the tender spring grass, between the dear young blossoms, confide her weak, child-soul to her dead mother, and then-- Yes; at each station she wishes to land, and yet cannot, and remains sitting as if paralyzed with boundless anxiety of the fearful deed to which she would force herself, and against which every fibre of her warm young life rebels.
"Sèpres!"
All the beauty in this laughing, sunny world passes through her mind. In vain does she try to fix her mind on a glorified eternity, and with all her tormenting thoughts mingles a cowardly fear, not only of death, but of the physical torment which precedes death, of the horrible gasping for breath in the water.
"St. Cloud!" It is the last station. Some one of the ship officials asks her if she wishes to land. She rises. It grows black before her eyes. A cold sweat is on her forehead, dizzily she sinks back on the seat.
Slowly the boat works up the stream to Paris. Around its plump wooden body the waves plash sweetly and soothingly; between the whisper of the trees on the banks one hears the jubilant twittering of the birds who rejoice in the last sunbeams.
Weary, as after a severe illness, Mascha sits there. She no longer comprehends the situation. Why should she kill herself? Her father will pardon, his love is inexhaustible, that she knows; and the others--with something of her old childish defiance, she shrugs her shoulders. Ah! what does she care about the others?
Then, quite suddenly, a sharp wind springs up.
The people leave the deck, flee to the cabin. Only some young men who, smoking and talking, do not care about the storm, have remained above. Mascha observes that they notice her. One of them makes a jest, the others laugh.
Heaven knows what they are laughing at! Mascha imagines they have guessed----
Like a leaping flame she feels permeated from head to foot with newly awakened, consuming, despairing shame. She springs up, bursts open the door of the little gate in the ship's railing. She holds both hands to her eyes. "Mother!" she cries in her death agony.
It is done.