The Genius

by Margaret Horton Potter

"Let me go, Katrina! It is my cousin—from Moscow—Ivan Mikhailovitch!—I knew that you were in Petersburg, Ivan. But—you are out very early!"

Ivan gave a joyous laugh. He was, as a matter of fact, just returning from a night of festivity at the Nobility Club. But this, naturally, was not to be confessed.

"No earlier than you, at least, mademoiselle," he returned. "And will you accept my escort to wherever you are going?"

Nathalie gave one, quick glance into the old woman's scowling face. Then the demon of mischief entered into her, and she accepted Ivan's offer.

That fifteen-minute walk to the Serghievskaia, with the lynx-eyed guardian tramping at his heels, wrought new havoc with Ivan. It took sixty seconds to perceive that the closely cherished ideal of his boyhood had been worthy of every moment of adulation expended on it. Two minutes more, and the intensity of past emotions was quite swallowed up in the joy of the present. In just what light the maiden regarded him, she made it difficult enough for him to guess. But the interpretation of his own feelings,—this furious throbbing of his heart, the awkward hesitancy of his speech,—was no very difficult matter. When at last he left her, at her mother's door, he made himself an inward promise that this should be the first of many such meetings. And when he reached his own quarters, it was to amaze de Windt by the radiance of his expression and his apparent lack of fatigue. Though he retired presently to his room and lay down there, he found sleep to be a thing entirely undesirable, considering the subject of his waking dreams.

Next morning, somewhat earlier than on the previous day, he entered the church of the Virgin of Kazan. But though for an hour and a half he saw every soul that entered there, his cousin did not come. That morning was a black one. In the afternoon, driven by his folly, he presented himself, at an absurd hour, at the house of his aunt. There he was received, promptly. But he was not long left in doubt about the nature of his welcome. Madame Dravikine, it appeared, had learned the whole tale of yesterday's walk from the dragoness-serf; and her nephew had to endure a short and sarcastic sermon upon the nature of etiquette for young girls which finally sent him from the house, white-faced and furious. Truly, if his aunt had vented upon him her preposterous species of jealousy, she had gained thereby no good-will from the young man, who worshipped her daughter from afar as a creature scarcely to be treated as a mortal being.

Blindly persistent, Ivan refused to be discouraged by his misadventure. For a month, at every hour of the day, he watched the door of the Dravikine residence; but failed, by any strategy, to catch a single glimpse of his pretty cousin. Nay—one exception there was! Upon a reception-day he did find her in her mother's drawing-room, seated before a samovar, prepared to answer "oui" or "non" to any remark addressed to her. But Ivan had kept his place beside her for less than ten minutes when he was superseded by a deprecating envoy from the Countess. Fifteen minutes later he left the house and went raging home, to endure, for the first time, serious pangs of jealousy. And, as he sat listening to de Windt's calm prophecies of Nathalie's success, next winter, as a débutante, he cursed volubly, under his breath, to think how soon every wretched roué in the city would be free to pollute the spotless child with glances, with words, even, in dances, with a clasp of her waist! De Windt, watching him covertly, said to himself that by that time, should this madness continue, Ivan would be fit only for an asylum.

Meantime, the season advanced. The great thaw came; and there would be no more snow for months. Russia was a sea of mud. All young things were harkening to the call of the spring: and youthful blood, like sap, flowed fast. Ivan, vindictively acknowledging that, for the present, his ideal was quite beyond him, became, to a certain extent, interested in another woman, whose future career was destined, indeed, to touch his at points many and strange.

This young person was called Irina Petrovna; and she was a recent graduate of the Government School of Singing. Her father was one of the violins in the opera orchestra. And it was a great day for him when his daughter made her début on the boards over his head. She made her first appearance in a small rôle of a Mozart opera; achieving precisely the success predicted for her by her ironic master: a success of form, of face, above all, of manner. She had but a moderate voice, this remarkable young person. But she suffered no stage-fright; and though the ladies of the audience regarded her with no enthusiasm, it was to be observed that the vast majority of the men in the house, gave her brisk applause: hailing with delight this legitimate member of the troupe whom it would certainly be worth while to ask out to supper.

Ivan, rarely enough attracted by women of her type, was in a dangerously susceptible mood. And de Windt was hardly more displeased than surprised at the invariable attendance of Ivan on those evenings when Mademoiselle Petrovna was billed to appear. Ivan himself made no great effort to analyze the appeal she made to him: an appeal to the baser side of his nature. But, though he met the young woman more than once, it soon became evident, even to his friend, that he had no intention of attaching himself seriously to her following. What it was that held him back, he did not know: the memory of two sad, gray eyes, a voice raised for him in warning at the moment when it was about to die into eternal silence; or the nearer vision of a slender, dark-crowned maid, clad in whitest draperies;—who shall say? At any rate, Ivan was evidently determined to keep this latter picture unrivalled in his heart, let richly dangerous fascinations call to him as they might.