"It is horrible!" says Sonia, dully, and shuddering.

"Yes," says Nita, shortly. She sits down opposite Sonia. "Do they know who it was?" she asks after a while.

"No," replied Sonia. "She will not tell. My father has spoken to Barbara. Nothing can be gotten out of her. When they first asked her, she replied: 'It is no use, and they would harm him.' She does not wish that any harm should happen to him. Now she says nothing at all. She lies the whole time with her face to the wall, silent. Really, there is something generous in her silence."

"How does he bear it?" asks Nita, suddenly, quite startlingly.

"Barbara told papa that he--you mean Lensky?--was completely broken. At first, he could have almost killed Mascha from rage; since then, he sits near her, strokes her hands, her hair, and calls her little pet names. But she listens to nothing--lies there silently with set teeth."

Nita lowers her head; then she, absent-mindedly, throws a piece of wood on the fire.

"And we imagined that the child had a fancy for Barenburg!" says Sonia.

"Thus we explained her striking depression; but no, Barenburg was betrothed. We were evidently on a false track. It must have been one of our exiles--a nihilist with revolutionary moral and political ideas."

"No, no!" Nita shakes her head, and looks thoughtfully before her. "It was Karl!" she cries out. "Do you remember how, that time, at the Jeliagins' reception, when Mrs. Joyce brought the news of Karl's betrothal, Mascha let a cup fall, and tottered out half swooning? It must be Karl!"

"It is not possible!" says Sonia. "He was betrothed. Do you then believe that a half-way respectable man would be capable of such an action? Ah, it is horrible, horrible! Poor Nikolai!"

Nita does not hear her.

"My father insists that I shall go to Vienna with him to-morrow,"

begins Sophie, whom nothing can long rob of her inward equipoise. "Will you let your maid help me pack?"

Nita does not hear.

After a while Sophie leaves the room,

Nita glows with burning heat. She cannot bear the warm room, and goes out on the terrace. A sharp breeze sobs in the trees of the park, and has a refreshing effect upon her.

Why can she not forget? She has emerged blameless from the trial. How can the affair further concern her? Another would have simply shaken off the remembrance of this unpleasant experience. But she was not like others. From childhood she had occupied one of those strange positions which cause in all young people left to themselves a tendency to strongly exaggerated feelings.

Her father died young. Her mother never ceased to mourn him, and after his death completely withdrew from the world. Except a few summer months which she regularly pa.s.sed with her eldest brother, Karl Barenburg's father, she lived year in and year out in a picturesque villa an hour's journey from Vienna.

Nita grew up solitary, under the influence of such a mother and the instruction of Miss Wilmot. The great pa.s.sion of her youth was music.

She secretly cherished the wish to become an artiste and astonish the world with her performances. Sunk in an enthusiastic study of the art, and reading all that is poetic and unworldly, she grew up without girl friends, without all childish amus.e.m.e.nts. The great wealth of her stormy young heart remained untouched.

The legendary fame of the devil's violinist penetrated even to her. She saw a picture of him--the strange face that was not handsome, and which one could never forget if one had once seen it, made a deep impression on her young mind. From that time she worshipped the strange musician, whom she had never heard and never seen; thought of him, dreamed of him, wrote enthusiastic childish letters to him--which she never sent--and sang his songs. Her mother, who was still more given to exaggeration than her daughter, and just as little worldly wise, smiled at this enthusiasm and gave Nita Lensky's picture for a birthday gift.

Nita placed it on her writing-table and daily garlanded it with fresh flowers as long as she could find one out-doors.

She knew that he was married, and was proud for him that his wife was a princess, and a great beauty, and that she loved him idolatrously. Then she heard other things about him: that his distinguished wife had left him; that he wandered about the world, without rest or peace, bitter and desperate. A warm, deep compa.s.sion mingled with her enthusiasm.

Her whole family called her Senta, and did not ascribe the slightest importance to the matter.

Then it was announced that Lensky would give three concerts in Vienna, which he had avoided for some years. A true fever of excitement took possession of Nita. The Baroness Sankjewitch did her utmost to fulfil her daughter's wish, to take her to one of the concerts. To go to Vienna and return by railroad was out of the question, as the concert took place late in the evening. She decided, therefore, to pa.s.s the night with Nita at a hotel.

At last came the concert. He appeared. He had never been handsome, and was no longer young. His hair was gray, and his fifty years were written plainly enough in deep furrows on his face. But he looked different from other men. There was something powerful and attractive in his personality, and a mysterious magnetism which could not be described or explained. Was Nita disappointed? No. She was more interested in him than ever. Only intensely musical natures could sympathize with the rapture amounting to pain with which she listened to the magic tones of his violin.

The next morning they were to return home. But on the same evening, after the concert, in the reading-room of the hotel, they made Madame Njikitjin's acquaintance. She was a still handsome elderly lady, with correct bearing and very charming manners. She won the Baroness' heart at once, and a few acquaintances gave her the best reports of the family of the stranger.

She laughed at Nita's enthusiasm, flattered the young girl, flattered the mother, and finally promised to take Nita with her to Lensky's two other concerts, for which no places were to be bad. The Baroness was boundlessly inexperienced. The day after the concert she left Vienna, leaving Nita under the Njikitjin's protection, who had promised to personally escort the young girl back to her mother.

The same day, Nita learned to know her great man at Madame Njikitjin's, who laughingly described to him the young girl's enthusiasm, and called her nothing but Senta. And Nita only looked at him with her clear, childish eyes, and could not say a word. He must have been of stone not to be touched by this pure and deep enthusiasm. He was not of stone.

She pleased him--pleased him unusually. No one could be so charming as he if he wished.

With other great men, we have a stiff neck from looking up to their unapproachable loftiness. But nothing of the kind with him. The timidity which had at first oppressed her wholly vanished before the winning heartiness of his manner. How pleasantly he listened to her gay little anecdotes! Sometimes he leaned a little forward in the course of conversation, gazed into her eyes, then suddenly kissed her hand and laughed--laughed without her having the slightest suspicion of what had been so droll in her story. At coming and going he kissed her on the forehead; when he talked with her, he sometimes took her hand in his and stroked it kindly, paternally. She was proud of every little distinction. And while she felt a kind of reverence for him, Lensky's surrounders began to mock and laugh at her enthusiasm. She did not notice it at that time, but later, every significant look came back to her memory, and for a year sent the blood to her face.

When the day of farewell came, she was unspeakably sad and did not conceal it. Instead of calming her with a pleasant word, he smiled uneasily, constrainedly, at her emotion.

He promised to see her that evening at Njikitjin's, in the hotel. When he came, the Russian was not at home. It did not occur to Nita to ask herself if she should receive him under the circ.u.mstances. He was different from usual. He fell into brooding silence; now suddenly seized her hand, then freed it. He sprang up and walked uneasily about the room. Suddenly he sat down near her and took both her hands in his.

Something in his face startled her and she drew them away. He seized them and kissed them. Then--then he said something which admitted of but one interpretation. He--to her!

Beside herself, she sprang up to leave the room. But before she had reached the door, he came up to her. Was that really he--the man with the red face and shining eyes? Even to-day the desperate cry of fear which she gave rings in her ears. Steps approached from without; he let her go.

Yes, that was the end of all the touching kindness, of all the heaven-aspiring enthusiasm.

The next day the Njikitjin was to have taken her back to her mother.

She did not wait for that. By the earliest train, she secretly hurried from Vienna. A few hours later she lay in bed with a violent fever.

When, six weeks later, still very weak, and holding to the furniture for support, she entered her little boudoir, dust lay everywhere thick and gray, even on his picture, so that it was quite unrecognizable. She took the picture and wished to burn it. She could not. As she held it over the coals, it seemed to her as if she would throw something living into the fire--and she only hid it and did nothing further.

For a full year after her recovery she could bear no music. She had liked to draw from childhood, without thinking much of this talent with her pa.s.sion for music, but in her great depression it served to distract her thoughts. At her urgent request, her mother left Austria and settled in Paris with her daughter, who now devoted herself to painting.

When her mother died, the despair which Nita felt at this loss for the first time completely pushed the old recollection in the background.

She had scarcely thought of it until the day when for love of Sonia she had let herself be persuaded to attend Lensky's concert. When she heard him play, when at those wonderful tones the old intoxication overpowered her, then also awoke a horror of the fascination which this man had for her, and with this horror the great hatred which she had felt for years, a boundless loathing. She wished him ill with all her heart; she, who formerly would not have hurt a hair of any one's head, could not think of anything that would be painful enough to sufficiently wound him.

She is revenged; the blow has fallen! But what is that? She looks back, the recollection of the fearful scene makes no impression on her, shrinks together, grows dim--it is gone. She seeks her hatred in her heart, and cannot find it.

XXVIII.

The Jeliagins' trunks have already gone with the maid to the railway station. The carriage which is to take the two ladies already stands waiting. In vain has Barbara represented to her daughter how this precipitate flight will make Mascha's position much worse, how it will be almost impossible to conceal the misfortune.

Not an hour longer than was necessary to arrange her affairs would Anna consent to remain, and, as always, the mother had obeyed her daughter's command. But at the last moment, when she and Anna stood in the vestibule, she, so to speak, broke loose from the chain. "I--I have forgotten something--I must get something." With these words she rushes up the stairs, stumbling, treading on her dress at every step, and knocks at Mascha's door.

"What do you want?" calls out Lensky, harshly, while he comes out to her.

"I would like to see Mascha. I--I would like to give her a kiss before I go," murmured the old woman, and tears are on her wrinkled cheeks.

"She was a good child--always very good to me. Please--please let me in to her."

He steps back, lets her in. She bends over the bed, over the girl glowing and trembling with fever. "Maschenka, good-by, my little soul.

I love you. I will always love you," murmured she, and stroked the child and wished to kiss her; but Maschenka hid her face in the pillows, and half mad with shame, repulsed her aunt with an impatient shrug of her shoulders, and suppressed weeping.

"G.o.d keep you, Maschenka!" murmured the old woman.

"What shall he keep?" cried out Lensky, pointing to the bed, with horrible bitterness. Then, seizing her roughly by her thin arm, he pushed her out of the room.