Asbein

Did that surprise Natalie? He could not help it, it was still so.

"Strange what roughness men show before a little bit of civilization has taught them to conceal it," he added reflectively.

Did he not feel anxiety later? Natalie wished to know. Yes, for his new life contained nothing of that which he had promised himself. That he should live in the beautiful rooms with the master and mistress and eat with them, as he had thought at first, had been an illusion. Only the two children of the fat daughter of the merchant could tumble around on the sofas, with their fiery-red, woolen, damask covering, and could help themselves from all the dishes.

He lived on charity; they told him that every day. The musician had bought him of his mother for fifty rubles, as Lensky afterward learned, as a speculation, in order to make money out of him as a prodigy. The time which he did not devote to his musical practice he must spend helping the maid in the kitchen.

He slept, with an old sofa pillow under his head, on the floor, in a gloomy little room, without window, only with dirty panes of gla.s.s in the door--a room in which the cook put all kinds of rubbish. Dampness ran down the walls, and every evening from all corners crept out a whole regiment of black beetles, and spread themselves over the boards.

The food? Well, it was sparing. Sometimes he only received what the family had left on their plates.

Was he not angry at this treatment? No. He found it quite in order at that time. The well-fed, warmly dressed people impressed him, especially the cap of Vauvara Ivanovna--that was the name of his mistress. He felt a respectful shudder pa.s.s over him every time he saw this structure of blonde, red flowers, and green ribbon. Except the Kremlin, nothing impressed him so much as this house.

When the whole family, in festival attire, went to church on Sunday, he stood at the door, quite oppressed by the feeling of modest wonder, and looked after the well-dressed, well-fed people. He did his best to make himself useful and agreeable, and to please them. Yes, he was just so small and pitiable, as a half-starved six-year-old pigmy. And then, in conclusion, one day he simply could bear it no longer and ran back to his mother. He found the way. With that quite animal sense of locality and traces, which only children of the lowest cla.s.ses of men have, he found it. His mother was at home; she was frightened when she saw him. Had they turned him out? Yes, she was frightened. In the first moment she was frightened; then--here Lensky stammered in his confession--naturally she was glad; for, what use of losing words?--naturally she was glad. How she kissed him and caressed him with her poor, rough, toil-worn, and still such gentle, warm hands. He still felt her hands sometimes on him, in dreams, especially behind his ears and on his neck. Then she fed him. She spread a red and white flowered cloth over the table in his honor, and after that she gave him a holy picture. Then she said it could not be otherwise; he must go back to Simon Ephremitsch; it was for his own good. When he had become a great artist, then he would come to fetch her in a coach with four horses.

That impressed him. And in order to calm him completely, she promised to visit him very soon.

But she did not come; and when he ran back to her, after about a month, she was no longer in her old abode; he never found her! Soon afterward she sent him two pretty little shirts, delicately embroidered in red and blue. But she herself did not come. Never!

At his first appearance in public--he had performed his piece with the anxious a.s.siduity of a little monkey that fears a blow, he a.s.serted--to his great astonishment, he was applauded. In the midst of the hand-clapping he suddenly heard a sob. He was convinced that his mother had been at the concert.

At the conclusion they handed him a laurel wreath, the same which now hung in his room; quite a poor woman had brought it, they said. He guessed immediately that the wreath came from his mother; and suddenly, just as a couple of music-lovers had stepped on the stage, in order to see the wonderful little animal near by, he began to stamp his feet and clench his fists, to scream and to sob, until every one crowded around him. His princ.i.p.al threatened him with blows; a very pretty young lady in a blue-silk dress took him on her lap to quiet him; but all was of no use.

He saw his mother once more--in her coffin.

His benefactor told him that she was dead, and that, after all, it was suitable that he should show her the last honors. The coffin stood on a table, surrounded by thin, poorly-burning candles, and she lay within, so small and thin, her hands folded on her breast, in a poor shroud, that they had bought ready made for a few copecks.

In the beginning, Natalie had interrupted him with questions, but now she had long been silent. He looked at her challengingly, at every pitiful, repulsive detail, especially if it brought forward a trace of his own insignificance. It was quite as if he expressly tried to pain her. But when he came to speak of the death of his mother, whose form, in the midst of his glaring, sharp description, he drew so tenderly and vaguely, obliterating everything disturbing, as if he saw her, in remembrance, only through tears, he closed his eyes.

Suddenly he heard near him a suppressed sound of pain, then something like the falling of the over-abundant load of blossoms from a tree among whose spring adornment there yet moves no breath of air.

He started, looked up--there was Natalie on her knees before him, the beauty, the queenly, proud one, and had embraced him with both arms, as if she would shield him from all the woes of earth, and sobbed as if she could not console herself for his past suffering.

"Natalie! my angel, do you really love me so?"

"One cannot love you enough, or recompense you enough for all that you have missed," whispered she.

And he had really for one moment suspected that----

He raised her on his knees. They did not speak another word. Through the garden at their feet the birches rustled in the mild night breeze, and from the distance one heard the sad voice of a marsh bird, who with heavy beating wings flew to the neighboring pond.

The most beautiful love will always be that which has been sanctified by a great compa.s.sion. In that mild summer night, while all around them was fragrance and veiled light, Natalie"s love had received its consecration.

Three, four years pa.s.sed; a second little child lay in the pretty, veiled cradle, from which little Nikolai first made his solemn observation of the world--a dear little plump maiden, whom they baptized Mascha, after the grandmother, and whom Boris particularly idolized. There was still nothing to report of Natalie"s married life but love, happiness, and beauty. Lensky kept every unpleasant impression far from her, surrounded her with the most touching care, overwhelmed her with the most poetic attentions. Her life at his side unrolled itself like a long, secret, pa.s.sionate love-poem.

Natalie"s family had reconciled themselves to her marriage. Even for the wise and arrogant Sergei Alexandrovitch it had the appearance that he had been mistaken in his discouraging prediction, as happens even to the wisest men, if with their predictions they have only the sober probability in view, without thinking of the possibility of some underlying miracle. After four years of married life Natalie was as happy as a bride.

Still, Lensky"s happiness was not as unclouded as that of his wife. A great unpleasantness became ever more significant to him, the quite universal coldness of his artistic relations.

It would be wrong to believe that Natalie, with systematic jealousy, had wished to estrange him from the world of artists. On the contrary, she had complied with his wish to make her acquainted with his colleagues and their families, had herself asked it of him, flatteringly.

The world of artists interested her. There, everything was more animated, more meaning, than the eternal sameness of good society which she knew by heart, quite by heart, she a.s.sured him tenderly. She made it her ambition to win his acquaintances for hers. But strangely enough, in spite of all her seductive loveliness, she succeeded only very incompletely.

She had already known the _lite_ among the artists. There is nothing further to be said of her relations with these favored of the G.o.ds, exceptional existences, than that she always felt honored by intercourse with them, and pleased, and that, when with them she ever vexed herself over the worn-out old commonplace, that one should avoid the acquaintance of famous men in order to prevent disappointment--a commonplace which was probably invented for the consolation of those who, in advance, are excluded from intercourse with celebrities. That Natalie always succeeded in winning the sympathies of these exceptional natures stands for itself.

But when it was a question of that great crowd of artists, of the mixture of sickly vanity, embarra.s.sed affairs, depressing relations, etc., then it was hard to build up a friendship between Lensky"s wife and his old colleagues.

Envy of Lensky, envy which had reference largely to his artistic results, and in a less degree to his marriage and social position, peeped out everywhere from these people, and had its own results in soon completely embittering the not very pleasant relations between them and Natalie.

In a truly friendly, touchingly friendly manner, they only met her in quite modestly circ.u.mstanced families--families of a few true artists who yet could accomplish nothing with their work but to honestly and poorly provide for their seven or eight children. Families of simple people, who had formerly been good to Lensky in the difficult beginning of his career, and to whom he always showed the most faithful adherence, the most prodigal generosity. She also felt happy among these plain people.

What wonder that these people would all have gone through fire for him!

They would also have all given of their best for Natalie, whom without envy they worshipped with enthusiasm as a queen. They rejoiced that Lensky, their pride, their idol, possessed such a beautiful and distinguished wife--in their eyes the daughter of the emperor would not have been too good for him.

Natalie thanked them for their great attachment, as well as she could; she reckoned it a special favor to receive these modest people in her home, to invite them with their wives and children, to entertain them with distinction, to stuff all the children"s pockets full of bonbons, and give them little parting presents.

But intercourse with these poor devils was in reality only a sentimental game, even as intercourse with the artistic _lite_ was nothing but an ideal recreation. Neither the one nor the other sufficed to firmly knit the band between Lensky"s wife and his former world, or to keep up his popularity in that world.

Of all the opposition and difficulty which would arise therefrom for Lensky"s future and especially for his yet to be won future as composer, Natalie still suspected nothing. For her, the whole heaven was still blue.

Then the first deep shadow fell on her happiness. Lensky, to whom every long separation from her was unbearable, when he undertook a long tour through central Europe, in spite of her express request, could not resolve to leave her behind with the children, in St. Petersburg. The little children were left under the care of their grandmother.

For the first time, Natalie was no amusing, but a dull and nervous, travelling companion. An unbearable anxiety followed her like a foreboding. All his attempts to console her were in vain.

In Dusseldorf, she received, by telegraph, the news that little Mascha was ill with diphtheria. When she arrived in Petersburg, half dead from anxiety and breathless haste, the child lay in her coffin.

He was almost as desperate as she. He overwhelmed himself with self-reproaches;--who knows, if they had watched the child better, if they had thought of this or that in caring for it.... What torment, to be obliged to say that to one"s self! A reproach never pa.s.sed her lips, she even concealed her tears lest they should sadden him. But from that unhappiness on, something in her formerly so elastic nature, so capable of resistance, was broken forever. The first jubilant time of their marriage was at an end.

Together with the evermore unpleasant friction with his colleagues, and the great pain for his lost child, still another worry announced itself to Lensky--something gnawing, and incessantly tormenting: a daily increasing money embarra.s.sment. Natalie decidedly spent too much, but quite naively, with the firm conviction that she could not exist more economically; wherefore it was doubly hard for him to be finally obliged to tell her that he could not raise the money to continue the household on the footing to which she had been accustomed.

It was quite touching to see how frightened she was when he made her the first communication in reference to it--frightened, not at the prospect of having to save, but only at the thoughtlessness by which she had burdened Lensky with cares. She immediately showed herself ready for the most exaggerated reforms. But to live with his wife like a proletary, in St. Petersburg, among her brilliant relations and friends, he could not bring himself to do.

In the autumn of the same year, he moved with his family to ----, a large German capital, where he had accepted the direction of a significant musical undertaking.

But here the conflict between his artistic and family life which had arisen through his alliance with Natalie, came to light with more detestable clearness.

He was in his element, as an artist whose powers have found a wide, n.o.ble sway.

The great musical undertaking, at whose head they had placed him, flourished wonderfully under his lead. The fiery earnestness with which he undertook it won him all musical hearts. Also the atmosphere in ---- was sympathetic to him for other reasons. He had a crowd of old connections there, acquaintances of his first virtuoso period, people who surrounded him, distinguished him, with whom he could speak of his art--which always remained sacred and earnest to him, and never, for him, deteriorated to a more or less n.o.ble means of earning his living, or to a social pedestal--in quite a different manner than with the elegant dilettantis who had gradually crowded out every other society from his house in St. Petersburg. They gave one artistic festival after the other in his honor, and all this entertained him.

His wife appeared with him a couple of times on such occasions, then she excused herself--she had no pleasure in them. She felt isolated, an insurmountable home-sickness tormented her.

Without confessing it, for the first time since her marriage the position which she occupied with Lensky angered her.

In St. Petersburg she had always remained with him the Princess a.s.sanow, he had ascended to her world; here she must suddenly satisfy herself with his world. She was too vexed, too angrily excited to seek in this world all the true interest, earnestness, and n.o.bility that were to be found therein.