Asbein Part 21

FOURTH BOOK.

Dear Natalie!--Owing to business affairs which will claim me still longer, it will be impossible for me to come to Trouville before the beginning of September. I am very sorry, but I hope and wish that you will not, on this account, put off your journey to the sea-sh.o.r.e; you know how you need the stay in the bracing air. I have engaged a residence for you through Madame de C., and also had everything arranged for your comfortable reception--a low chlet with a look-out over the sea. I know how you love it,--the poor wild sea, that cannot help it if it sometimes crushes a ship, and that finds no rest from despair over the evil which it does and cannot prevent.

You must not take any sea-baths; Dr. H. suitably impressed that upon me in the spring. But in any case, wait until I come.

From my great, clever boy I often receive long, pretty, regularly written letters which please me very much. I will show them to you when we are together again. The boy is romantic, through and through, which touches me in these our present times, and also a little of a pedant, which makes me impatient, but still, he is a dear, splendid fellow, and that you must tell him from me.

The little note, which I recently received from Maschenka, was laughably comic, and sweet enough to eat. The little witch wrote me quite secretly, without telling you anything about it. She confessed all her naughtinesses to me very remorsefully and over hurriedly, from anxiety that you might write something about them to me. Is she really so naughty, and pa.s.sionate, and wild? She is still charming in spite of all, so thoroughly good-hearted and tender and generous, and withal so incredibly gifted. I tell you her little note--it was adorned with three ink spots, and I could not read a word of the writing--but still it was a little poem.

And how she loves you! Just as she is, I find her charming enough to make one lose one's head over her; and I am very sorry that one must cure her of her amusing little faults; they are so becoming to her.

That you must naturally not tell her from me, but give her a very warm kiss from me on her full, defiant lips, of which you always a.s.sert that they are like mine. Do not vex yourself too much over it,--rejoice in our little gypsy as she is. And if you again worry over her inherited good-for-nothingness, then look in her wonderfully beautiful, large eyes, which she did not inherit from me. You will find your soul in them--let that be your consolation. Farewell, my angel, spare yourself really--really! Only do not think of saving at all on the journey. You know that I cannot bear that. Think only of your comfort and of what a joy it would be to me if, at our next meeting, I should find your poor thin cheeks somewhat rounder than when I left you.

Your boundlessly devoted

BORIS.

It is in Berlin, in the Htel du Nord, nine years after the first violent quarrel, the first pa.s.sionate reconciliation with her husband, that Natalie receives this letter.

She had left St. Petersburg a few days before, in order, as by agreement, to meet Lensky, whom she has not seen since the beginning of March, in the German capital. It had been a great disappointment for her that she had not found Boris in Berlin, but he has accustomed her to disappointments.

She reads the letter once more. It is a dear, good letter. Ah! Natalie has received such dear, good, tender letters from all the large cities in Europe and America--and knows----

Not that Boris is deceiving her when he writes to her in this tender tone. No, every trace of falseness is strange to him, his attachment to her, his anxiety about her, are sincere--but----

What use to grieve over it? These great geniuses are never different.

One must not judge them like other men! With this shallow commonplace, with which she has so often put to sleep her inconsolable heart if it sometimes wishes violently to rise up against its oppressive, ignominious lot, she compels it to rest again to-day. It is easier now than formerly; her poor heart has already accustomed itself to grievances.

Nine years have pa.s.sed since that time in the pretty, cosey Hermitage when she--forgave him too easily, and thereby lost her power over him forever. She has known it a long time. Late in that following autumn a great symphony by him was given in the "Gewandhaus," in Leipzig. The work was beautiful, the success moderate, Lensky's discouragement exaggerated, quite morbid. A few months later he took up his wanderer's staff anew, and left Petersburg, where he had returned with his family, in order to distract himself by the most exaggerated virtuoso triumphs from the humiliation which had befallen the composer. Oftener, ever oftener, he had then left wife and children, and now, in his own house, he had long been only an indulged, distinguished guest.

But in the time which he every year devoted to his wife, to his family, he behaved in an exemplary fashion. He did everything that lay in his power to make life bearable to Natalie--everything except to lay a restraint upon himself; that he simply could not, and for that reason he must leave home so often in order to vent his pa.s.sion.

Natalie's nature was broken. An unexpressed, numbing, blunting conviction that this was the natural course of things, and that nothing of all this could be changed, had overpowered her. As to what might take place while he was away from her, of that she did not permit herself to think.

With his art matters had long gone downward, even more rapidly than Natalie--who already after his return from America had been startled by the exaggerations to which he had accustomed himself in his playing--had deemed possible. At that time he had given the reins to his temperament with a.s.siduity in order to dazzle the public. Now--now, he had long lost power over himself. And concerning his compositions! A fearful pain contracted Natalie's heart if she thought how she had formerly, in her tender enthusiasm, called him the last musical poet, in opposition to the other great composers of modern times, whom at that time she had described as--musical bunglers. She could no longer remember the speech without blushing.

The bunglers had all grown above his head. One scarcely spoke of his compositions now, and the worst of it was--Natalie herself no longer cared to hear them.

Where was the sweet, sunny, charming element of his first little works?

Where the fiery earnestness, the penetrating, n.o.ble sound of pain in his later works?

Sleepy monotony, noisy emptiness were now the characteristics of his musical creations. Certainly, here and there appeared melodies of wonderful beauty; but who had the patience to seek out the lovely oases in this sterile musical wilderness?

Once, Natalie had hesitatingly made a remark to him about a new composition. But he, who had formerly showed himself of such unimpeachable gentleness toward her, had flown into a pa.s.sion, and had even for many days remained irritable. Since that time she said nothing more, but let him have his way, as she let him have his way in everything, only that she might not break the last thin thread which still held them together.

She had read the letter a third time. "Business affairs detain him,"

she murmured to herself. "Business affairs! He writes from Leipzig; why does he not ask me to come to him?" She shrugged her shoulders--what good to think of it?

Suddenly her cheeks burned, her breath came short. She pours out a gla.s.s of water, throws a couple of bits of ice from a porcelain bowl in it, and drinks thirstily. "Such great geniuses are never different,"

she says to herself again. She begins to walk up and down in the room uneasily. At last she goes to the window and looks out.

A great weariness lay over everything. The lindens slept, wrapped in white dust; the stony heroes at their feet looked morose and weary, as if they were satiated with letting themselves parch on their pedestals.

They throw pitch-black shadows over the sun-burned road. A black poodle lies at the foot of one of the memorials, on its back, and does its utmost to pull off the muzzle on its nose. The people are weary and pale, and crowd into the shadow wherever they can. Everything flees the sun. No one remembers another such hot, dry, oppressive summer. And suddenly a strange longing for shade comes over Natalie; for some deep, cool, shady place in which she can rest.

The hollow, oppressive feeling about her heart has become more significant, has taken, at length, the form of a piercing physical pain. She lays her hand on her breast; the physicians have told her that she should spare herself, should guard against every vehement sensation, because her heart is affected. Suddenly she breaks out in convulsive sobbing. Spare herself! Is it worth the trouble to spare one's self; to exert one's self for the preservation of this poor life; is it worth the trouble to bend down again and again in the mire for the poor little bit of happiness that is thrown to one as an alms?

Then the door opens; a charming little girl of about ten years, large-eyed, gay, with wonderful curly hair hanging far down her back, with very long black stockings and very short white dress, hops in--Maschenka, who had been to walk with the maid. The first thing which she discovers when she has scarcely greeted her mother and given her a somewhat breathless and hurried account of the various impressions she has formed on her walk, is Lensky's letter, which has remained lying on the table. "Oh, from papa!" says she. "When is he coming; to-morrow?" and her eyes shine.

"He is not coming; we are going to Trouville without him," replies Natalie, wearily.

"Without him," repeats Maschenka; her sweet, large-eyed cherub's face lengthens. "Oh!"--looking at Natalie attentively--"Did you cry over that, mamma?"

Natalie says nothing, only turns her head away with a gesture of displeasure.

"He is coming after us?" asks Maschenka, embarra.s.sed.

"He promises to," replies Natalie, with difficultly restrained bitterness.

"Poor mamma!" and Maschenka tenderly kisses the tears away from her mother's cheek. "You must not cry, it is not good for you. You know papa cannot bear to see you cry."

It is quite inexplicable how nature has been able to bestow upon this tender, childish, velvet-cheeked little being such a striking likeness to the face stamped by time, weather, and life of the virtuoso. The troubled, strangely deep look with which Maschenka regards her mother; the tender and still defiant expression of her full lips; the manner of drawing together her delicate brows, all that reminds one of her father. But that in which her likeness to him is most strikingly announced, is the bewitching heartiness of her manner, the flattering insinuation of her caresses.

Natalie observes her with quite fixed attention, then draws her to her and kisses her pa.s.sionately on both eyes.

Meanwhile there is a knock at the door. It is a waiter, who brings a telegram from Petersburg. Natalie starts, her thoughts fly to her son whom she has left behind them. But no the telegram has nothing to do with Kolia. It is really not from Petersburg, but has only sought her there, and has been sent after her to Berlin. She reads:

Dresden, Htel Bellevue, _August 4th_.

Can you not take the roundabout way through Dresden? We would be very glad to see you.

Sergei.

Why should she not take the roundabout way through Dresden? Why should she hasten to reach Trouville, the full, empty Trouville, where no one will be glad to see her?

Shortly after his reconciliation with his sister, Sergei had left St.

Petersburg, in order to follow his brilliant but exacting diplomatic wandering career from one important but remote post to another, and now he had at length been recalled to Petersburg, to fill a high position at home. Natalie cherished the conviction that he suspected nothing of the slow crumbling together of her happiness. How should he! Before him, more than before all the others, she had concealed her great inconsolableness. In the long letter which, by agreement, she wrote him every month, she had always forced herself to take as gay as possible a tone, and even if she was accustomed, in the description of her "domestic happiness" to dwell at especial length on the lovability and happy dispositions of both of her children, she yet had never failed to mention the goodness of their father and his unwearied consideration for her. "How he would triumph if he knew!" she said to herself, on the platform in Dresden, while she uneasily looked round for her brother, whom she had informed by telegram of the hour of her arrival. "If he knew anything of it!" she said to herself, and at the mere thought, it seemed to her that she would flee to the end of the world, rather than bear the cold scrutinizing glance of his eye. Then a very slender man in blameless English clothes came up to her, looked at her a moment uncertainly, put up his eye-gla.s.s--"Natalie! it is really you!" and evidently truly pleased to see her again he draws her hand to his lips.

And now she is also glad to see him, is pleased to be with her brother, as she has never yet been glad since her betrothal to Lensky. He has changed very much since that time in Rome when he had vainly sought to destroy Natalie's illusions; but, as with all really distinguished men, growing old was becoming to him. If his bearing is still proud, it has yet lost much of its harsh, nervous, immature arrogance of that time.

His fine features are still sharper, but his glance has become softer, more benevolent.

"That is your little girl?" says he, bending down to Maschenka, pleasantly. "May one ask a kiss of such a large young lady?"

The gay Maschenka, always bent upon the conquest of all hearts, hops up to him with hearty readiness, and throws both her little arms round his neck. "_Elle est charmante!_" whispers Sergei in a somewhat patronizing tone to Natalie.