XXVI.
The evening was already far advanced. Lensky sat alone in his sitting-room, a prey to all sorts of feelings. A kind of rage chokes him. "Why did I tell him all that?" he asked himself. Yes, why? Because he has a hatred for all falseness, which amounts to exaggeration; because it seemed to him as if he expiated some of the disgracefulness of his behavior to Nita by the exposure of his own shame.
When he had so suddenly looked into Nita's pure eyes, it had seemed to him as if it had all at once grown unbearably light around him. He saw his whole life so plainly as he had never before seen it, and it was repulsive to him. A short time ago he had sent the waiter to announce to Nikolai that dinner was served. Nikolai had excused himself.
Then Lensky had not even taken his place at the table. As if he were capable of forcing down anything!
The waiter had asked if he should light the lamps, but Lensky had only impatiently motioned him away. What need had he of more light? He saw plainly enough.
A great uneasiness overcame him. If Nikolai should really leave, there was not much more time to delay. He heard Nikolai's trunk carried downstairs. "He will not even come to take leave of me! But I cannot let him go thus," he cried out, "not thus!" He went up to Nikolai's room. Nikolai stood before the fire-place and busied himself with tearing and burning some letters. A new, harsh, stiff expression hardens his features. When he perceives his father, his face expresses uneasiness and astonishment, so that Lensky's heart grows cold. For one moment they stand silently opposite each other. "Colia!" Lensky at length manages to say in an unrecognizable, half-suffocated voice: "You--surely would not leave without having said farewell to me!"
"No; naturally not," replies Colia, mechanically, while he continues to tear up letters.
"Colia!" The artist's voice trembles, he lays his hand on his son's sleeve, he notices that he shrinks at his touch. Then he clutches his temples and stamps on the ground. "That is not to be borne," cries he. "Have you, then, no penetration? Do you not understand how all this torments me--me, who would have brought down the stars from heaven for you? And now that I should be the obstacle to your happiness! What, obstacle! Be sensible, there is no obstacle at all. Nothing has happened. You need not give her up. And if she is at all afraid of meeting me again, I swear to you that she shall never meet me, that I will never burden you with my presence. I will bear everything, only not the thought of having disturbed your existence. Colia--do you not hear me, then?--Colia!" He shakes his son's shoulder; Nikolai turns toward him. His father is frightened at the dull, uninterested glance which falls on him from the eyes formerly so brilliant with enthusiasm of his child.
The waiter enters to announce that the carriage has arrived. Nikolai takes his hat, Lensky holds him back, and at the same time motions to the waiter to leave the room.
"You will write when you have arrived there?" he says.
"As soon as I am settled," replies Nikolai, with the same weary, dull voice.
"Why was not the boy angry, rough even to rudeness, repellent to him?" Lensky asked himself. A violent feeling would have yielded to time, but for what he saw before him there was no more cure. He understood that something in this young man was dead forever; the elasticity of his nature was gone, the sacred fire was extinguished.
"Farewell, Colia!" murmured Lensky, hoarsely. He took his son in his arms, held him convulsively to his breast, kissed him three times in accordance with the Russian custom. He might as well have embraced a corpse, so perfectly irresponsive did Colia remain to his tenderness. Only once before had his lips touched anything so cold, stiff, and that was--when he kissed Natalie in her coffin.
Then Nikolai went down-stairs. Lensky slunk after him to the house door, looked after the carriage which rolled away with him until it was lost in the crowd, whereupon he turned, and with heavy steps returned to his sitting-room.
Perhaps an hour had passed since Nikolai's departure, when there was a knock at Lensky's door. At first he did not hear it; the knocks grew louder, more urgent. Angrily he raised his head; he had left word down-stairs that he wished to receive no one.
"What is it?" he called out, angrily.
"A messenger from Madame Jeliagin."
"Come in! What is it?"
"He left this note for monsieur," said the waiter.
Lensky tore it open.
"A carriage!" he called out to the waiter, who had waited for an answer. "But quickly!"
The waiter left the room; Lensky once more glanced at the note.
"Come at once. Barbara."
Nothing further. What could have happened? He took his hat, followed quite on the waiter's heels, and sprang in the carriage.
"Avenue Wagram, No. ----," he called to the driver, "as fast as you can."
The cab stops, Lensky plunges out, the house door was open. An unpleasant smell of mire met him.
From the entrance, along the hall, he saw great drops of mud. He noticed it without thinking particularly of it. A feeling of painful discomfort grows in him with every step which he takes, and yet he could not have said what he feared.
He found no one to announce him, to tell him where his sister-in-law, where any one could be found. The whole household is in commotion. Uncertainly he stands still for a moment. Then he notices that these same large, black mud-drops which he has seen in the vestibule had soiled the linen stair-covering.
And suddenly he remembers how he had already seen such a train of muddy spots--in Moscow, on a hot summer night, when they carried a drowned person through the streets. He followed the drops, went up the stairs, still following them to one door; he knew in which room the door opened.
For one moment he hesitates, as if he could not face the horror which awaited him. Then he bursts open the door. The room is dimly lighted. A single candle flickers near the bed, from which the white curtains are remorselessly pushed back, and there on the bed lies something--he cannot exactly decide it. Trembling in her whole frame, Madame Jeliagin stands before it. Great, wet, black drops are on her dress, as if she had handled a mud-covered body.
"Mascha!" he groans, beside himself, seizing his sister-in-law by her thin arm and pushing her away from the bed.
Yes, there lies Mascha, waxy pale, with closed eyes and wet hair clinging to her cheeks.
"She is dead!" he gasps.
"No, no; she lives," assures Madame Jeliagin, but there is no joy in her voice, but uneasiness and discomfort.
Mascha opens her eyes, turns them away from her father, and shudders.
Lensky has seated himself on the edge of the bed near her. One of her little hands lies on the counterpane; he takes it in his, kisses and strokes it.
"How did it happen?" he asks, bent over the child.
"When I came home she was not here," declares Madame Jeliagin, hastily. There is something flattering, dog-like, whining in her tone, as if she feared being blamed. "She had left word with the maid that she would not return to dinner, as she was to dine with you and Nikolai. I sat calmly down to dinner--alone, Anna dines with friends--about half-past ten. I had just sent the servant for Anna; a carriage stopped before the door. I heard a heavy stamping in the vestibule; voices speaking together. The maid said they desired madame. I rush out; then I see two men who carry in the child. They told me--from a steamer--somewhere near Passy--a girl had been seen to fall into the water--Mascha--only at the right time they plunged after her--saved her. Fortunately, there was some one among the passengers who knew her, a servant who sometimes assists here, who brought her here, or else they would have taken her to the police station. It is fearful--an accident, a terrible accident, an imprudence--the gate of the steamer was badly secured she leaned against it--and----"
With deeply bent head Lensky has listened to the simple report. He still rubs and strokes his daughter's little hand. "What, accident!" murmured he. "How did she come on the ship? She wished to kill herself from grief. Poor little dove! What grief can one have at seventeen? Oh, my petulant, gay darling, my tender, defiant little curly head, who has grieved you so?" Then, again turning to his sister-in-law: "Have you, at least, sent for a physician?" he says, imperiously.
"I did not know," murmurs she, confusedly.
Mascha trembles from head to foot, and drawing her hand away from her father, she hides her face in the pillows and groans: "No--no--no doctor!"
Lensky looks at her more attentively; he has understood! It is no human sound; it is the cry of a wild animal which now escapes his breast; then he rushes upon his daughter, seizes her by the throat, strikes her in the face. "Shameless one!" he screams.
"Pas de violence, for God's sake!" stammers Madame Jeliagin, anxiously.
But he does not listen to her.
"Who was it?" he gasps. "Who was it?" he thunders at his sister-in-law.
"I do not know--I had no suspicion--I never noticed the slightest," stammers she.
"So! You never noticed anything," he repeats after her. "Noticed nothing! So! Did you, perhaps, pick up a lover on the streets?" he sneers at Mascha.
Then she opens her eyes, rests them on him with a touchingly sad, supplicating, humble, reproachful glance. It seems to him that something has snapped within him. The anger is gone; only a great pity yet lives in him, and he bends over the child and takes her in his arms, clasps her to his breast, sobs and covers her pale little face with kisses and tears. Meanwhile he notices that Madame Jeliagin still stands near him, that she watches him. He stands up. "What have you to do here now, you--you who did not know how to guard my child? Go!" And imperiously he points to the door.
Still murmuring, explaining, excusing herself, she vanishes.
The door has closed behind her.
"Mascha, how was it possible?" he asks, softly.
She is silent.
"Mascha, for God's sake, say it, or else I shall go mad," he implores. "There must be something which excuses you. How did it happen? who was it?"
"I will not say; it is no use. You will harm him; I do not wish that any harm should happen to him."
In vain does he urge her further; she gives him no answer. Her little face turned to the wall, she lies there motionless and silent, like a corpse. And at length he is weary of questioning her, and sits by her, weary, relaxed, with the confused expression of a man who has been struck on the head. His thoughts wander to indifferent things. He asks himself if he has taken the key out of his trunk; whether the waiter will post the letter which lies on his desk. Then he hears the house-door open, hears the rustle of a silk dress. Anna has returned. Cold shivers run down his back. Now she will hear it, the arrogant creature who has always looked down upon his darling. He would like to go out and close old Jeliagin's mouth, forbid her to speak.
Can he, indeed, close the mouth of all Paris? To-morrow the gossips will tell it to each other before the house-doors in the half light--it will be in all the newspapers.
And he sits there as if petrified, and does not move; listens--listens as if he could hear up-stairs what they say to each other. Sweat is on his brow, the blood burns in his cheeks, and now he really hears something, Anna's thin, icy voice, which cries out: "Quelle honte, quelle horreur!"
Mascha holds her hands over her ears. Lensky springs up, hurries to the door which Madame Jeliagin has neglected to close tight behind her. He closes it carefully, draws the portière over it, only that Mascha may not hear anything else offensive. Then he goes up to her bed again, and notices that she is glowing with fever. He passes his hand over her cheeks; she clutches his hand, presses it first to her mouth, and then holds it before her eyes.
"Shall I put out the light?" he asks, gently.
She nods. Then he sits by her in the dark. Ever stronger he has the feeling as if the despotic yoke of a misfortune to which he must bow because he is powerless against it, were weighing down upon him. In all his nerves trembles the fearful shock. It seems to him that he has seen something fall together before him--all that he clung to, the future of his child!
He thinks of his ambitious dreams; of the money he has saved for her--he, who formerly squandered everything. A boundless shame torments him; it is all over--all.
The whole night long, restless, without peace, he seeks only a hand-breadth of blue sky for his child, seeks no great, brilliant happiness such as he has dreamed of for Mascha; no, the most moderate, only a tolerable life--seeks a salvation--in vain--nothing--nothing! His mind is like a captive bird which wounds itself at every beat of its wings against the bars of a too small cage. And yet he is not weary of seeking, of tormenting himself.
The longest night has an end, and the nights in early June are not long. Morning dawns. In ruthlessly plain outlines, all the objects in Mascha's room meet Lensky's eyes. All looks soiled, everywhere the dark spots of mud; there the shawl in which the men had wrapped the suicide after they drew her from the water, there a heap of soiled, wet clothes. It goes to his heart. On that morning when he took leave of his darling, on the same spot lay a dress also, but as white, as pure, as fresh as spring blossoms.
The picture of the light, fragrant room, the dear picture which he had continually carried about in his heart during his last journey, rises in his mind. It is indeed the same room, the same girl. She sleeps as also at that time--no, not as at that time. Her cheeks are flushed with fever, her limbs twitch incessantly. Softly he draws the covers up over her uncovered shoulders. She murmurs something in her sleep; he listens; always the same word: "Mother--mother!"