It was not an especially good dinner that Mascha set before her father, and still she had evidently taken pains with it. But the cooking was of that extemporaneous, not well-organized kind which betrays the household where cooking is done for the wife and children only, in consequence of which no especial care is taken, and every culinary luxury forms an exception. The wines, on the contrary, were excellent; the service strikingly correct. Barenburg appeared in a dress coat, and Mascha also wore evening dress.
In every particular was betrayed the unhomelike one-sidedness of a household in which everything revolves round a spoiled, discontented man who mostly seeks his amus.e.m.e.nts out of the house.
Barenburg tried to show his best side. He had all sorts of attentions as host, for his father-in-law, and called Mascha jesting pet names.
But still he treated her with the uncertain, tentative tenderness of a man who feels himself in the wrong to his wife, which did not escape Lensky.
About an hour after dinner Barenburg excused himself after he had offered his father-in-law an especially good cigar, and had kissed his wife"s hand and forehead.
Mascha invited her father to play bezique with her. He consented. But they were both so absentminded, played so foolishly, marked so confusedly, that they very soon, teasing each other with their mutual faults, lay down the cards.
Now Lensky absently builds card-houses on the table; Mascha crochets diligently on a child"s dress.
"H-m! Your husband goes out often in the evening?" he asks, after a long, thoughtful silence.
"Yes," Mascha answers, calmly.
"And you? Do you go out much?"
"I? I am occupied with the baby."
"The child claims much of your time?"
"Yes," whispers Mascha, and a particularly tender expression creeps over her mouth. "But she is charming--or does she only seem so to me?"
"To me also," a.s.sures Lensky. "Just as you looked at her age."
"I hope that she will fare better than I." The young wife lowers her head, blushing deeply, still more over her work, and draws the little dress destined for Natascha to her lips.
Lensky overthrows all his card-houses with an impatient gesture. "You prefer her to Harry?" he asks.
"Yes--I think--she is so loving, so tender, and looks so entirely like our family. I certainly love the boy also, but I cling to the little one, as to Colia and the remembrance of my dead mother."
Lensky drums in silence on the table for a while, then he begins: "Yes, yes, that is all very beautiful; but you are becoming one-sided, Mascha. The consequence is that your husband is too emanc.i.p.ated from you. You will rue that later."
Mascha does not answer a word. Ever more diligently her active fingers busy themselves with the white wool.
"You trouble yourself too little about him," says he, and looks at her sharply.
She crochets and is silent.
"Or"--with a burst of his old, untamable violence, Lensky strikes the table--"or he troubles himself too little about you."
There must have been some mistake in Mascha"s work. She unravels a great piece of it. Her father draws the crochet work from her hand.
"Leave that stupid stuff," cries he, angrily. "You cannot deceive me with your awkward, helpless comedy. I will see clearly into this affair. What position do you really occupy with your husband?"
Mascha pa.s.ses her hand wearily over forehead and temples. Lensky is frightened at the unspeakable sadness which he reads on her pale face, now, when the brilliance of joy at seeing him again is gone from the large eyes.
"What position?" murmured she. "The position of a woman who must be thankful for her life long to her husband, for that he has saved her with the protection of his personality from a horrible shame."
"He ill-treats you?"
"No, no! All roughness is foreign to his nature. I have never had to complain of a harsh word from him since we were married; yes, he is even very tender to me." She pauses. "I am not disagreeable to him--"
Then she continues, slowly, with more evident bitterness at every word: "But--but he is ashamed of me."
She rises, and pulls at the lamp-shade. Her father confusedly strokes her hand, then suddenly springing up, he cries out: "You poor child!"
and clasps her to his breast. She bursts into fierce, not to be quieted sobs, and yet is happy as she had not been for years. What a feeling of warm security in these strong arms! What happiness to thus lean on a man whose caresses are not embittered for us by their compa.s.sionate graciousness, who loves us without criticism, blindly.
"Mascha, it is not to be borne that you torment yourself so," says he.
"I will not consent. Leave him, and come to me."
But then she slips out of his arms, and says, firmly: "No, father; I will stay at my post."
She smooths her hair mechanically. After a short pause, she continues: "I often felt urged to tell you what makes my life so sad. Ah! how I longed for your compa.s.sion! And I wrote long letters to you, in which I confessed all, and then tore them up again, because, in the last moment, fear of saddening you conquered everything. But now, as you have guessed it, I will once--once--complain of my grief. What I have suffered in my married life, I cannot describe to you. I thought at first it would be better if I had a child. When Harry came I was glad that my husband was proud of him, but I felt that I was not necessary to the child. Sometimes I told myself that I was in my husband"s way, that my death would bring about a reconciliation between him and his parents. And once I was so restless and inconsolable that I was within a hair"s breadth of running away from him. I would even have left him the boy. But--it was not the moment to run away, and when baby came I knew that I must bear it, that no one could guard my treasure as I. No one can replace a mother to her daughter, and even if Karl left her to me, a separated wife is still only a discredited mother--a mother without authority. And what is the position of the daughter of a separated wife?--and a separated wife in my circ.u.mstances? I would rather bear all the bitterness in the world than risk the future of my child."
For a moment he is silent; then he takes her hand and draws it to his lips. "You are right, Mascha!" said he. "Bear your cross patiently.
Nothing weighs more heavily upon one than the consciousness to have forfeited the happiness of those whom one loves. All else is only a trifle--all!"
Now he was in his room, the room which Mascha had prepared for him with such loving care. For the first time in years he was in a home.
Everything about him was simple but home-like; a few flowers, a few tasteful ornaments, several photographs in pretty little frames. Every article of furniture had a physiognomy which bade him welcome. A feeling of home-like warmth and satisfaction overcame him. He looked about him with emotion. She had taken such pains, poor Mascha! There stood a picture of Colia as a four-year-old boy; there she was herself, as a baby, with bare little arms; and there, everywhere, pictures of Natalie. She had collected everything that could please him. He could have felt so happy if--if--ah! He held his hand before his eyes. How beautiful it might have been, and how horrible it all was! His son he had not seen since that fearful farewell evening in the Hotel Westminster; all tenderness had vanished from their relations. At regular intervals he received stiff, formal letters from Nikolai, in which the young diplomat related the most important events of his life--that was all. Lensky knew that Nikolai advanced rapidly and brilliantly in his career; he guessed that his son, in spite of all, felt dissatisfied, and his heart remained closed to his father.
Mascha? That was quite different; she had never found anything to criticise in him, her love had ever remained the same. But she was unhappy, miserably unhappy--she, his darling, his idol. And whose fault was it, then?
With the manner of a being weighed down by a burden, he sinks into an arm-chair. What had he done? how was it, really? He had loved them all so boundlessly--Natalie and the children--and still, what had really driven him into this desolate, restless existence which resolved itself into disgust and misery? It had always been the same, even in these last years it had sometimes come over him; but now it was over, his nature had entered upon a new phase, the wild thirst for pleasure was quenched; he was weary--weary unto death.
He sought something supernatural to support him. A mysterious longing tormented him. From without sounded the plashing of the waves, monotonous, sad, hopeless, like the sobs of a rejected human being driven out into the cold.
Had no one knocked on the window? He sprang up, flung open the window.
He trembled in every limb, cold sweat stood on his brow. The lamp threw long, trembling, wavering rays of light on the rippling water. As if built of shadows, like the ghosts of a city long dead, rose the palaces in the moonlight, dimmed by drifting clouds. The sirocco brooded over the lagunes. A soft breeze, the gentle warmth of a pa.s.sing caress, blew over his cheek. He heard the tender sound of a sympathetic human voice close to his ear; it was Natalie"s voice, but she spoke a strange language. He did not understand her. His heart stopped beating in breathless listening; he stretched out his arms--it was over, all vanished, all was vacancy!
He closed his lips tightly and groped for a chair. For years, at times, the same alluring, incomprehensible fancy pervaded him. The first time, he had fought against it with the whole strength of his intellect, had ascribed it all to an overexcitement of his nerves; now he firmly believed in a supernatural apparition. She came ever nearer, but he could never reach her. He tried to think of other things. He sought a book, a newspaper, which he might read to distract his mind, but found none. He remembered that he had left a new romance by Daudet, which he had glanced over before dinner, when Mascha had left him to dress, in the drawing-room. With a light in his hand, he went to get the book. He fancied that Mascha had long since retired. To his great astonishment, he heard voices in the drawing-room. He opened the door. There sat the young couple. Barenburg was very pale. His head was bowed. An expression of deep shame lay on his finely cut face. One saw plainly that this was no bad man, but only a weak one, who, torn from his natural condition of life, could not thrive in strange ground. A thick necklace of pearls lay on the table.
At Lensky"s entrance, Mascha, as well as her husband, turned her head.
She had evidently been crying, but still tried to take on a pleasant, indifferent expression. It went to Lensky"s heart to see how she restrained herself to spare him a pang.
"Do not force yourself to smile," said he, going straight up to her.
"It is of no use." He seized the pearl necklace and looked at it with peculiar emotion. "I have understood!"
For a moment there was utter silence, then Barenburg began, constrainedly: "You must not take the situation so desperately--it is only an inconvenient moment--naturally very painful to me, very----"
Lensky interrupted him. "It is better that we do not speak of it,"
cried he, crimson with restrained rage, and with hoa.r.s.e, quite gasping voice; "if I once begin, I would say things to you which a n.o.bleman could not pardon me, and I do not wish to quarrel with you--not on account of my child--but--but--" He grasped his throat with both hands.
"No, I shall suffocate; it must out!"
"Father, hush, for G.o.d"s sake!" cried Mascha. "You do him an injustice.
Think how hard it was for him--another in his position--" She leaned against her father, pleadingly, tearfully.