At the entrance to the hall the Princess Féodoreff parted from her astonished hostess, saying that she intended passing the night at the house of the Grand-Duchess—wife of the Governor-General. And, leaving her friends appeased by this sufficient but rather unexpected excuse, Nathalie hurried into a public droschky, and was presently flying through the streets towards the Petersburg station—and Ivan.
Thus was Ivan finally, and for all time, established in his own land. Thenceforward, while music shall endure, his name must be written among those who have advanced their most perfect of the arts to a higher standard. His work was done: his battle over. His name was blazoned for eternity on the roster of the Russian Great.
But the man? Where was he, what was he doing, upon this, his day?
It was half-past three when the first movement of the "Tosca Symphony" ended in the concert-hall. At that hour Ivan returned to his house from a long walk through the whitened fields, and, donning dressing-gown and slippers, went up to his work-room and shut the door. Moved by a most unusual impulse, he seated himself at the piano and began to play, from memory, some strains from the last act of "die Götterdämmerung." At the point where Brunhild, carried beyond herself and her abhorred mortality back to the heights of immortal perception and abnegation, sings, with divine calm, the words: "Ruhe, Ruhe, du Gott!"—Ivan paused. The phrase caught him up. The majesty of the chords in which the great German has framed it, suddenly fired him with longing: "Rest thee, Rest thee, thou God!" He played it over and over, meditatively, humming the words in the rich, low notes of the score. And in those moments his final hour was ushered in.
All day, struggle as he would, Ivan had been keyed to a pitch of nervous excitement by speculations concerning the concert in Moscow. Finally, at noon, he had gone out, determined upon attaining an animal fatigue which would rest his brain. His struggle with the wind and snow accomplished the first end, but not the second. Now, however, those words of the dying goddess—she who stood quietly awaiting her chosen death, brought a great calm to his mind. As he lingered over them his face changed, and a new look came into those eyes which had striven so many times, of late, to pierce the shadows that enshroud the future.
"Rest thee, oh God!"
Rest—for him! How often had he demanded it, in vain? Now, at last, he was enjoined to take it—for himself.
Rising from the piano he went to the door which led into the outer hall, locked it, and drew the bolt fast. Then, in the wall on the right, he pressed the spring which opened the invisible door to the room of the goddess. Entering there, he lighted the two candles at the flame of the burning lamp, and filled the little golden censer that swung before the statue, with incense; noting, the while, with his customary delight, the delicate transparency of the pure Carrara against the soft violet of the hangings behind her and the shadowy black at her feet. Finally, when the thin, fragrant smoke had begun to fill the room with its soft haze, he took the golden tube from its place on the pedestal, and prepared for himself the largest dose of the narcotic that he had ever dreamed of taking. After that he returned, quietly, to his piano.
Darkness had nearly come, and the unlighted music-room was lapped in a pleasant twilight, broken only by the faint gleam from the candles, which entered through the open doorway. The odor of the incense was everywhere; and the mystic scent and warmth of the inner air contrasted well with the shrieking of the demon-ridden wind outside the house. The atmosphere perfectly suited Ivan's state of mind. All anxiety about the concert had gone. Some inkling of success floated through his brain; but the matter now seemed infinitesimally small. The world, with its struggling millions of unknown men and women, was farther away from him now than the shadowland of the departed. For he was almost face to face with the problem of Eternity.