"Wait a minute. Just take him these warm night-caps. I knitted them with red wool for the old man myself. He has always liked red caps. Tell him that I think of him, though he does not think of me. But what could he send me--tobacco ashes?"
(Alas! the _old man_ has long become dust and ashes himself. He was Anna Feodorovna"s husband, a martyr to gout, who did not see his wife once in a year, although they lived in the same house. Neither would visit the other. She could not endure a pipe; he could not live without it.
One day he, too, found that his mausoleum in the Alexander Nevski Cathedral was a more peaceful resting-place than his bed; but he was interred so silently that his old wife did not know of his death, and continued to knit him his red night-caps.)
"Where can Boysie be so long? My boy is surely not ill? It would be a fine thing if Boysie forgot me! I will give him a downright scolding for this."
Hereupon Ihnasko had to calm his old mistress by telling her that "Boysie" had been called upon to attend an important council held by his Imperial Majesty the Czar. Most probably concerning some new grant of territory.
That was quite another thing!
Of course, Boysie was a grown-up man now--a man of thirty, and the owner of many an order set in brilliants. It is her grandson, the haughty, powerful Prince Ivan Maximovitch Ghedimin, whom his old grandmother still calls the "Boy."
The lamp has long been lighted; indeed, for days together it is not extinguished. At the least current of air the windows are closely curtained, and three or four days may pa.s.s before daylight is again admitted. It matters little to the owner of the apartment whether it be day or night; she neither rises nor goes to bed. She lives in her arm-chair. If she is sleepy, she goes to sleep; when she awakes she is ready for her food, and with good appet.i.te. Every Sunday her maid washes and dresses her, and that function lasts for the week. When the bells of the Isaac Cathedral begin their midnight peal she knows that Sunday has come round again; when her newspaper is brought to her she knows that it must be Friday. Sometimes the two, Ihnasko and she, quarrel about politics.
Just now there are strained relations between mistress and man. A paragraph in the newspaper has stated that "the heroic George Csernyi has taken the fortress of Belgrade from the Turks."
The mistress chooses to understand by this that Csernyi had stormed the fortress and ma.s.sacred the unbelievers; the man, on the contrary, takes it literally, that he had bought the fortress from the Turks for sterling cash.
Over this they quarrel hotly.
"When Ivan comes, he shall decide it; and if you are right, you shall have a brand-new coat trimmed with fox; if I am right, you shall get five-and-twenty lashes with this rod from my own hands!"
From her hands, who had not the strength to kill a fly! But the old woman is vindictive, and has already, for the third time, ordered him to lay out the new coat and the courbash on two chairs, so that the instant Ivan comes he shall get either the one or the other. And yet she forgets all about her anger, Belgrade, and George Csernyi the moment "Boysie"
appears on the scene.
He comes in so gently at the tapestried door that she only perceives him when he stands before her.
Her Boysie is the handsomest man in the whole capital; he is as tall as the Czar.
His languishing gray eyes wear an earnest, thoughtful expression.
"Now, you bad boy--to come so late! Is school but just over? Are you not afraid that I shall make you kneel to ask my pardon?"
He is already kneeling before her; and the old grandmother pa.s.ses her thin, wrinkled hand over his face as he bows his head on her lap.
Laughing, she playfully ruffles his hair.
"This naughty Boysie! He knows how to coax his old grandmother, like any kitten. All right; you shall have no blows this time. I forgive you; so no need to cry. He has just the same shaped head as my Maximilian; only Maximilian loves me best, for he writes to me every month; and yet he is a great man. At your age two orders of merit already decorated his breast. But what have you done? Have you fought yet for the honor of your country? Are you following in your father"s footsteps?"
The old woman"s hands feel over the young man"s breast until they rest upon the diamond star of the Alexander Nevski order, upon which she cries, joyfully:
"This is no cross; it is a star! And set in brilliants! You have robbed your father, for this order would have sat well upon him. He is a hero, a great man; the diamond star would well have become him. But he, too, has already obtained the first grade of the order, has he not? And set with diamonds as fine as these?" (Ah yes--ah yes! he has received it set with glistening pebbles in the cool sands of the Muscovite soil.) "But now stand up. You are a grown-up man, and what would the Czar say if he were to know that his privy-councillor still knelt, like a boy, at his grandmother"s knee? Stand up, my dear boy, and tell me about matters of State. I know how to talk about them. Oh, in Czar Paul"s time I was up in everything. It was I who kept the old man back from joining in Count Paklem"s conspiracy, or he would be even now in Siberia. Eh, my boy, you love the Czar? That"s right. How many a time has Czar Paul bastinadoed your grandfather! And he never complained. But now there are no conspiracies throughout the whole land against the Czar."
"None, dear granny."
"If at any time you should hear of plots, mind you tell it at once to headquarters. If you knew there was a thief lurking under your grandmother"s bed, would you not straightway drag him out by the legs?
Much more is it your sacred duty to destroy all conspiracies against the Czar"s Majesty. He who works against the Czar will be punished, but he who serves him will be richly rewarded. How was it with Kutusoff? Did not the Czar take the finest jewel from his crown to present to him, and had a golden leaf set in the empty s.p.a.ce with "Kutusoff" inscribed upon it? The family of the Ghedimins is not inferior to that of the Kutusoffs."
Ivan turned pale. The family name, "Ghedimin," and the Czar"s crown? One was a part of the other. The topic was a dangerous one. High-treason might be named in the next breath.
"My whole life I have consecrated to the Czar, granny." And then he blushed at his own words, for he had spoken falsely. He neither can nor dare tell the truth to living soul. His old grandmother is the only being on earth he really loves; and her, too, he must deceive. From morning to night his life is a lie; he must look men in the face and lie; must lie to baffle the spies ever on his track, so that at night he dare not offer up the prayer, "Incline thine ear to me, O G.o.d," for dread lest he must lie even to his G.o.d.
"I have been waiting for you ever so long. I have had a sharp dispute with Ihnasko, and you must be the arbiter;" and she related the subject of their dispute. "So now, who is in the right?"
Ivan laughed.
"As far as experience goes, you were right, grandmother; for fortresses, as a rule, are taken by force. But in this case Ihnasko was right, for George Csernyi really did buy Belgrade for good coin of the realm. So give the good fellow the coat, and not the whip."
The old lady nodded to her man-servant.
"Do you hear, Ihnasko? Thus should a just judge decide. Like Prince Ivan, he should give the servant right over the master, if need be, even if it be over his own grandmother. Rejoice, ye people, that your fate will rest in the hands of a man whose lips only know the truth!"
Ivan turned away.
"But now come nearer, sit down by me, and make your confession. When are you going to marry? It is high time. Have you not made your choice yet?"
And Ivan had to answer, "No."
He could not tell her that he had been already married three years to a woman who was so utterly heartless that she would not be presented to his old grandmother because she was afraid of her age and wrinkles--so he had answered, "No."
"Now you are telling me a fib. Let me feel your pulse. Of course, it was a fib! And why should you not have fallen in love? Look! in this drawer I am keeping a diadem for your bride; it is the same diadem I wore when your grandfather led me to the altar. Then Moscow was the capital of the empire. Where this fine palace stands were nothing but clumps of willows. Now, your bride shall adorn herself with this diadem. Take it; I give it you. You best know who is to wear it. The girl you love shall be my very dear granddaughter."
But Ivan, in truth, did not know to whom to give the diadem. He had a wife who had no love for him, and he loved a woman who could never be his wife. Thus to neither could he give it.
"I will take care of it, dear granny, until the right one comes."
"But now you will stay to supper with me, will you not, that we may eat the last b.u.t.ter-night meal together? You are not going to be off to any bachelor drinking-party--to get into all sorts of wild company? You will stay, like a good son, with the old grandmother."
And so Ivan stayed to supper, and had to declare how much he was enjoying it, when he had dined but so short a time before, and knew all the while that in Zeneida"s palace a Lucullus-like feast awaited him. If his digestion rebelled against the sacrifice, his heart made it a thousand times heavier.
Oh, the unspeakable agony that overpowered him as he thought how at that very time his affronted wife would be venting her whole vengeance upon that other woman who the world knew had thrown her soft shackles over him, and whom he dared not openly protect, least of all against this aggressor, his own wife! Had the Czar been in St. Petersburg, she would not have dared to molest her; but, in his absence, his powerful favorite, Araktseieff, was supreme.
To tell the truth, Ivan was glad that his absence was compulsory. A warm, tender-hearted man, of weak will, he was unequal to the situation.
Taller by a head than most other men, he had been chosen as a leader among them; but the position oppressed him, for, capable as he was in all else, he lacked the necessary courage and decision for the post.
What he would most gladly have done would have been to say adieu one fine day to all his palaces, possessions, confederates, and to Russia, and to go out with Zeneida into the wide world to sing tenor to her soprano. Perhaps, too, it might have come about, had Zeneida been an ordinary artist and nothing more. But the disquieting thought is there--what may happen to-night on that other stage? Perhaps she is destined to mortification on the one; but on the other? On those boards the blood of the actors is wont to flow.
And all this time his fond grandmother could not press him enough to eat, as she asked news of Maria Louisa and the great Napoleon, of the little King of Rome, and many another who had long pa.s.sed away; to many of which questions Ivan returned such mixed answers that the good Ihnasko was constantly exercised to set him right, being far better informed through his newspapers of all these things than was the absent-minded Prince.
At the first sound of the bells the old lady conscientiously lays down her knife and fork; and Ihnasko, without awaiting orders, proceeds to clear the table, and spreads another silken cover over it.
It was Lent.
"Let us draw near to our heavenly Father!" whispers the pious old lady.
Ivan kisses her cheeks, and she his.
There was a small door opening out from her bedchamber into the chapel.
Opening this, Prince Ghedimin went in; and while his old grandmother, rosary in hand, began telling her beads, the tones of the organ were heard, and a man"s clear voice began chanting the penitential psalm.