XIX.
In the beginning of February, the news of the death of Sergei Alexandrovitch Assanow arrived in Paris. Early in March Nikolai returned to Paris as a wealthy young man wholly independent of his father. His uncle had provided for him brilliantly in his will. Anna Jeliagin and Mascha were wholly excluded. Anna was in despair. Mascha cared nothing about it. She no longer cared about anything--poor little Mascha!
"What have you done with my little bird?" Nikolai had exclaimed when he saw her again for the first time after his return to Paris. Instead of the round-faced child whom he had looked forward to seeing, a weary, sad person had come to meet him, who did not fall jubilantly on his neck, as he was accustomed to from his little sister, but only wearily, quite vexatiously gave him her cheek to kiss. When he wished to fathom the cause of her sadness, she grew angry, quite wild, so that, offended and at the same time frightened, he turned from her, and then--it was perhaps half an hour later, at twilight, and he did not know she was in the room--she crept softly up to him and kissed his hand silently and humbly. That went to his heart more than her rudeness. He wished to take her in his arms and caress her, but she escaped and left the room, with a soft, whimpering cry of pain. He inquired of his relatives whether they suspected the cause of the great change. Madame Jeliagin was silent, troubled. But Anna, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders, told him "Mascha had certainly set her hopes on Count Bärenburg, for her lack of spirits dated from his betrothal to Sylvia Anthropos, which really showed a great imagination, for she could boast of no remarkable attentions on his part."
At first Nikolai was relieved by Anna's explanation. "Such a heartache, which is really no heartache, but an imagined affliction, can be cured with a little distraction and much loving patience," he thought. But whatever he tried to amuse his sister failed.
The child grew daily more pale and miserable; her breath was short, she dragged her feet along. Nikolai consulted a physician. After a few superficial questions he prescribed iron and quinine. She took the medicine patiently, without attaining a favorable result, but when Nikolai proposed to her to consult another learned man, she grew painfully excited, and said: "Wait till father comes." So everything was postponed until then. They expected the virtuoso back early in June.
If he had not been so occupied and self-absorbed, the child's condition would have caused Nikolai more anxiety. But like all lovers, he had grown selfish, and his sharp sight was obscured by passion. The only reality in life, the fixed point about which everything revolved, was Nita. Everything else was of secondary consideration to him.
Had he approached his aim? On the whole he was contented. Nita had greeted him cordially when he appeared in her studio for the first time after his return, and since then had daily been more friendly to him.
He came frequently to the studio, was a kind of privileged guest. He did commissions for the ladies at the color dealers, grew very learned in all technical expressions of the trade. He brought them models from places where respectable women can scarcely go. He soon knew all the models by name; they smiled at him on the streets, and spoke to him when they met him.
At first he had often gone for Mascha before he went to the Avenue Frochot, but it became ever more difficult for him to induce the girl to accompany him. Mascha grew daily more gloomy and reserved. She ate nothing, she neglected her dress. Day by day she sat in the library and read--read everything that she could find, she, who formerly, as a thoroughly well brought up girl, had read only what Nikolai had proposed.
She slept badly, and never without being tormented by fearful dreams, from which she awoke always with the same cry for help on her lips which rang out into vacancy, and was always the same tender word, "Mother!"