Lensky is silent; he notices vexedly what a false effect the story of his petted daughter has made on those present.

Most of the men smile; they seek behind Mascha's _navete_ calculating frivolity seeking for adventures.

Meanwhile, without embarra.s.sment, she drinks a few sips of champagne from her father's gla.s.s, and continues: "The stupidest was that they did not want to let me in here to you in the hotel. They said, 'Monsieur Lensky is dining now.' And yet I told them that I was your daughter. They said very coa.r.s.ely: 'Anyone could say that.' For what did they take me, then--for one of those fools who run after you?"

"Mascha!" Lensky says, reprovingly.

"And, besides, I look so strikingly like you," she continues.

"So, do you really look like me?" asks Lensky, who cannot look stern before this sweet childish tenderness. "Really like me?" Then, taking her by the chin and looking attentively at her face: "Well, yes; the dear G.o.d is a great artist. Strange what wonderfully beautiful variations he can write on an ugly theme!"

"Mamma always said it was quite laughable how much I resembled you,"

whispers Mascha; and adds softly: "She always said that to me when she was especially good to me."

Those present have ceased to interest themselves in the child; only Madame d'Olbreuse looks at her kindly across the virtuoso. The journalist industriously supplies Mademoiselle Klein with champagne; the other men talk together, murmur bad jokes in each other's ears, half aloud, with the evident intention to be heard. The champagne goes more and more to Mademoiselle Klein's head. After an animated tirade upon Lensky, she says, laughingly: "I have been in Paradise often enough to hear Lensky, but if it were necessary, I would go into h.e.l.l for him."

"Ah, so!" calls out Lensky, amused at the immoderateness of the young woman. "But if they would not let you into h.e.l.l?"

"I would pay a few sins for admittance." And looking at him boldly from half-closed eyes, she takes a flower from the bouquet on her breast, and throws it across the table at him. He catches it laughingly.

Suddenly he feels something strange. His daughter's eyes rest upon him, astonished, surprised. With a gesture of anger, he throws the flower under the table. "Nikolai, I beg you, take the child home," says he, springing up.

"Where, father?"

"Where?" repeats Lensky. "Why, to the Jeliagin--anywhere, only away from here."

"Will you permit me to take your daughter to Princess Jeliagin's? My carriage waits below. I have room for her and Monsieur Nikolas," says the Countess d'Olbreuse.

"I am very much obliged to you, Countess," replied Lensky. Then, dismissing Mascha with a kiss on the forehead, he turns to his guests.

"I think we can go in the drawing-room; coffee is waiting already."

Still, while Mascha, quite amazed at her father's sudden unfriendliness, slips into her sable-lined velvet coat, Lensky comes up to his two children. "See that she is well wrapped up, Colia," says he to his son. "She is very delicate, and takes cold easily. She is, indeed, thoroughly like me, but still in much she is like her mother.

G.o.d, those eyes! And say a good word for her to Barbara; see that she is not too harshly received."

"We will both defend her," says Countess d'Olbreuse kindly. "I understand that an anxious papa is frightened at such a mad prank, but one must be very hard-hearted not to pardon it."

"Ah, you have no idea what is before me! Aunt Barbara is not bad, she even likes me; but her daughter, my Cousin Anna, is terrible!" says Mascha "Why do you send me away, papa? I hoped that you would keep me with you."

"It is impossible," says he, with a short, characteristic motion of the head and shoulders, and with a gloomy decision which permits no objecting.

"Really impossible?" repeats Mascha, depressed. "Well, then, good-by.

It still was lovely to see you again. If only those horrid people had not been there! That bold girl who threw you the flower--how could she dare to presume so with you!" And Mascha's eyes sparkled with anger.

"She is charming, your daughter; I am quite in love with her," says the kind D'Olbreuse; "but now come, my dear child."

"One more kiss," murmurs Lensky, and takes the sweet, pale little face of his daughter between his great, warm hands. It is as if he could not look long enough on this sad, tender loveliness. "Oh, you angel, you! I will visit you to-morrow in the morning; but do not come here any more, I beg you. So--one kiss, and one more on your dear eyes--goodnight!"

V.

Now he sits alone in the desolate hotel parlor. He who usually flees solitude, who keeps his guests always until his eyes close, has to-day given them to understand before ten o'clock that they bore him. But now he would fain call them back, however indifferent all, however unsympathetic most of them are to him. At least they could dissipate the troop of recollections which pa.s.s through his mind in a confused throng. Involuntarily he compares his heart to a caravansary through which thousands of men have gone in and out, without a single one settling there, or leaving a trace.

He did not believe in friendship; he remained faithful to his old acquaintances even if they became burdensome to him, from a characteristic or from obstinacy; but he felt drawn to no one. His pa.s.sions were of such a fleeting nature, left his heart so completely untouched, that the impression of women to whom he had stood in near relations was quite summarily a mixture of scorn, compa.s.sion, and disgust.

He had forgotten the names of the most. The pressure of every restraint, every discipline, every check, had been unbearable to him; he had given rein to all his instincts, had been moderate in nothing, had submitted to nothing, had always preached that one must forget one's self, and yet could never quite forget himself. No; during this mad baccha.n.a.l, in which the last fifteen years of his existence had been spent, something which he could not satisfy had remained within him.

He denied every religion, even that of duty. He only lived for enjoyment; but enjoyment died when he touched it, pleasure was in his arms a cold, stiff corpse.

The only thing which could still rouse him was his art; and he was about to lose his power in this. His compositions--that of his art which really was dear to his heart--had more and more become a group of contrasts seeking after effect. The inner voice which had formerly sung him such sweet songs was--not strong enough to be heard in the noisy confusion of his life--wearily silent. His creative power was paralyzed, and his playing--the Parisians might clap as loud as they wished; he knew best of all that it went downward.

For more than forty years he had given concerts, and for twenty years he had played over the same _repertoire_--an immense one, but, with a few little exceptions, still the same. It bored him. He no longer listened to himself when he played, only sometimes, half unconsciously, all that wounded head and heart slipped into his fingers, and then he sobbed himself out in tones; and what so powerfully moved his listeners was not what they suspected--it was compa.s.sion for a great man who despairingly tries to find in art what he has wasted in life.

How slowly time pa.s.ses! He had not suspected that it would be so unpleasant for him to stay alone.

More, yet more, of those strange faces! There are princesses of blood royal among them; then, again, beauties for whose favor potentates have sued in vain; famous artists, and, finally, pale, poor girls whom a moment of morbid enthusiasm had robbed of their senses. They nodded to him, smiled confidentially, all the same smile of secret understanding.

"One just like the others," he calls out, and stamps on the floor, as if he would stamp upon the whole crowd. "One just like the other----"

Then one form separated itself from the throng, and stepped up to him.

He stretches out his arms to her. "Natalie," he calls. She vanishes. It was his wife; how plainly he had seen her!

She was not like the others. How had he ventured to name this angel in the same breath with the others? He had loved her pa.s.sionately, however immoderately he had offended against her.

Her name was Natalie--yes, Natalie. And when he led her to the altar she was a charming, petted young girl, a Princess a.s.sanow, who had married him against the wishes of her family. He had worshipped her, and strewn flowers at her feet, and she had been happy, and he with her. The children had come--how delightful all that was! Those were the golden years in his life--five, six years. Then--then the demon had begun to weary of Paradise. His gipsy nature had demanded its rights.

He had left home, only for a time, and to let his pa.s.sions have their sway; then oftener, ever oftener.

At first she had pardoned him only too easily, so easily that it had almost vexed him, so easily that he had thought she would bear anything.

But at last even she could endure it no longer--had separated from him.

That was terrible, so terrible that he had thought he could not bear it. She also could not bear it, he imagined, but would recall him. He waited for that every day, and she called him back--when she lay dying.

That was now four years ago; but it seemed to him that she had died yesterday. He saw it all so plainly before him--the large room in Rome, the half-emptied medicine bottles on the invalid's night-table, and the ticking watch, a watch which he had given her years before at Colia's birth; the dim night-lamp in the corner, her white morning-dress that hung over a chair, the little slippers--the dear, tiny little slippers!

There in the white bed, she, so long, so thin, with her poor wasted body, whose outline was so plainly visible under the covers, a white flannel covering with red stripes on the edge--he even remembered that.

But, best of all, he remembered her, her wonderfully beautiful face.

She raised herself from the pillows at his entrance, and greeted him with a smile that forgave him all; no, not only forgave, but begged his forgiveness that she--she, the poor angel--had been too weak to save him from himself, to redeem him. Then he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. He would not believe that all was over. Then, suddenly, the sun had risen, there, over the Spanish place, behind the church of Trinita de' Monti; a broad, golden ray stretched out to the dying woman.

It was like the shining arm of G.o.d who had come to take her soul. She had raised her weary hand to point upward--the hand sank, sank.

What a horrible time! He, to whom the thought of dying caused a terror that could not be overcome; he, who, if he met a funeral procession on the street, turned away his head, and could not bear the sight of a corpse, he had watched near her coffin for two nights long without moving, without eating. In the second night he had fallen asleep from unvanquishable weariness. He had dreamed of old times, of dead happiness. It seemed to him that he sat with her on the terrace of the country-house near St. Petersburg, where they had pa.s.sed the mid-summer, the short northern summer. It was a bright August night; they sat together hand in hand, and her voice fell softly and caressingly on his ear. Sometimes she laughed, then he laughed also, only because she laughed, and pressed a kiss on her lips. Ah, how warmly her thirsty young lips met his!

Suddenly he awoke; an insect had flown across his face. Around him all was black--the walls, the floor, the ceiling--and there, near him, surrounded by tall, red flickering candles by a blooming wall of flowers--ah! how beautiful she still was! He bent over the coffin and raised her from the white satin cushions and kissed her. The chill of this touch penetrated to his marrow; for the first time he understood what a terrible gulf had opened between her and him.

When Colia had come to relieve his father from his watch over the corpse, he had found him lying senseless on his face near the coffin.

Yes, the one, the only one whom he had pa.s.sionately loved; but she had not been able to protect him from himself, either by her life or by her death.