The orchestra played the overture from “Faust.” Iván Mikhailovich and his wife walked arm in arm through the long, carpeted aisle between two long rows of orchestra chairs toward their seats. Iván Mikhailovich felt as if all eyes were directed toward him, and he tried to walk with greater dignity, with his head proudly thrown back and his rounded paunch thrown forward. Xenia Pavlovna walked with downcast eyes and a face which looked rigidly cold and offended, as if she had been sentenced to die and were walking toward the gallows. The electric lights went out; the curtain rose upon a sea looking very much like a sky and a sky very much like a sea, with some sort of fantastic ruins and tropical vegetation. The traditional Faust, in his brown dressing-gown, nightcap, and long, gray beard, sang in his metallic tenor voice, smoothing his beard with his hand:
“Accursed be human science, human prayer, human faith!”
At first Xenia Pavlovna was not much affected by either the music or the singing. She looked more than she listened. When the red Mephistopheles appeared and sang that everything was well with him, and that he had plenty of money, Xenia Pavlovna remembered that it would soon be the twentieth and that they owed the butcher for two months. “Emancipation!” she seemed to hear Iván Mikhailovich exclaiming, and when she stopped thinking of the butcher and emancipation, Faust had already thrown off his dressing-gown and beard, and had changed from a decrepit old man into a handsome, strong youth, and this unexpectedness called forth the first smile upon her lips.
“To me returned lovely youth!” victoriously sang Faust, approaching the footlights and raising his hand, and Xenia Pavlovna began to think how old she was and how old Iván Mikhailovich was; that their youth had already passed, and would nevermore return. Xenia Pavlovna sighed and stealthily glanced at Iván Mikhailovich’s face. He sat deep in his chair, with head bent to one side and his hands locked over his paunch, and in his well-groomed face, with its waxed and twisted mustaches, there was so much of that self-sufficiency and well-bred sleekness of the native that Xenia Pavlovna hurriedly turned away.
During the first entr’acte they went into the lobby of the theatre, she leaning on his arm, and he feeling uneasy the whole time at the thought that his wife’s hair was badly dressed and that her face was not alight with the joy and rapture of the other women, who, with their sparkling eyes and rustling skirts, laughed and talked incessantly in their ringing, happy voices.
After walking a little up and down the spacious lobby, engrossed in their own thoughts, the pair returned to their seats. Under the cascades of light falling from the electric lustre, the orchestra dazzled the eyes with the beautiful dresses of the ladies, and buzzed like a beehive from the multitude of noises, motions, and rustling, but this talk, glitter, and dazzle seemed to Xenia Pavlovna distant and strange, and the walls of people, the boxes resembling rich bouquets of flowers, awakened in her a feeling of loneliness and remoteness. She sat with her hands lying listlessly on her lap and with downcast eyes; she did not wish to be disturbed in her present brooding mood, and feared that some acquaintance might approach them and ask how they were, or that Iván Mikhailovich might suddenly begin to compare the singers with those they had once heard.
When the lights went out and the curtain rose again, she felt a great relief, and it suddenly seemed to her that she was once more in her maiden bower and had locked the door on the outside world. Gazing at the scene before her, she was gradually carried away into the realm of sound and melody, and wholly surrendered herself to the vague, disturbing emotions that had arisen in her soul under the influence of music and song. The rancor and vexation she had felt toward her husband gradually subsided, and the memory of the harsh wrangles, petty disputes, all the tiresome prosiness of her daily life, vanished, and an exquisite calm and tranquillity took possession of her soul, brightening and clearing up everything within her. In the third act the soul of Xenia Pavlovna flew away from her native town, and she forgot herself and everybody else, and wholly surrendered herself to the power of music and song, to the moonlit night, the silvery shimmer of the stars, and the contemplation of a happy love, which waxed stronger and stronger, seemingly measureless and all-powerful, but at the same time full of a sadness and pensiveness as quiet and gentle as this moonlit night itself, and as this exquisite young girl before her, with her thick, long braid of golden hair, who, with the sincerity and straightforwardness of a child, was kneeling before her handsome, youthful lover, pleading with him for mercy. Here she stands flooded by the radiant moonlight, trembling with fear and happiness, her head resting on the shoulder of the handsome youth. Here she sings at the wide-open window, telling the stars, the quiet night, and the slumbering old garden, that seems to have been enchanted by dreams of love, of her happiness; and her song, pure and sacred like a prayer, soars upward to the starry, blue heavens.
How very dear and near this is to people who have lived through the fantom of happiness. She, Xenia Pavlovna, had once been just such a sweet girl, with a thick, golden braid hanging down her back; she had been just as happy and carefree, and sang just as sweetly to the stars and the silent garden flooded with the mysterious, sad moonlight, and she also, just as this maiden, had trembled with fear and pleaded with the man she loved for mercy.
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” rolled the thundering laugh of Mephistopheles—such pitiless, powerful, and provoking laughter—and the chord, which echoed in Xenia Pavlovna’s heart with inexpressible tenderness and sadness, broke and grew silent, leaving room only for this laughter, oppressive and revolting in its triumphant triviality and truth. And reality suddenly broke into the realm of dreams and fancies. Xenia Pavlovna lowered her eyes, compressed her lips, and a smile passed over her face, the strange smile of a person who has been caught unawares.
“He laughs first rate!” remarked Iván Mikhailovich in an earnest voice, slightly moving in his chair.