Asbein Part 22

"We find her very like the Maria gyptica of Ribera--your favorite picture in the Dresden Gallery. Do you not remember it?"

"Indeed!" The prince bends down a second time, wonderingly, to Maschenka. Suddenly his face takes on a discontented expression. "She chiefly resembles Lensky; I do not understand how that could escape me!" says he, and his tone expresses decided displeasure.

"And still if he knew!" thinks Natalie.

"Kolia looks like you," says she, hastily.

"They have often written me that," says the prince. "Besides, they tell me only good things of him; I shall be glad to see a great deal of him in Petersburg. And now come, Natalie. I wished to have rooms in Bellevue for you, but there were none to be had; not a mouse hole; all engaged. We ourselves live at the extreme end of a corridor. So I have taken a little apartment for you in the Htel du Saxe. It is a plain house, but the nearest one to us, and you will not be there much. Send your maid ahead with the luggage. I hope you will now come direct to our rooms with me, you and the little one; my wife awaits you at dinner."

And now Natalie has been in Dresden since many hours. The joy of the meeting with her brother has fled, a great depression benumbs her whole being. What a home! Sergei's wife, born a Countess Brok, who is two years older than he, and whom he has married on account of the influential position of her father, suffers with rheumatism, on which account she fears a little bit of too warm sunshine as well as a slight draught. The meal is taken in the drawing-room of the married pair, instead of down on the gay, sunny terrace, as Sergei had ordered. After the princess has welcomed Natalie, and has said something in praise of Maschenka's beautiful hair, her remarks consist in commanding her companion, a very homely little Frenchwoman, by turns to open or close a window.

After dinner the married couple quarrel over several immaterial trifles, which momentarily interest no one; over the latest Russian table of duties, and as to whether it is better to treat scarlet fever with heat or with cold. Then Varvara Pavlovna busies herself in her favorite occupation; that is to say, twisting paper flowers. Natalie took part in this, but Maschenka, to whom they have confided an alb.u.m with views of Dresden for her entertainment, has uneasily crept about the room, now reached after this and now that, has hopped around first on the right, then on the left leg, until at last Natalie's maid presents herself to ask her mistress if she has anything to command or to be done, whereupon Natalie has commissioned her to take the little one out for a walk, and then to take her to the Htel du Saxe.

Then Sergei read something aloud from the newspaper; then tea was brought.

It is nine o'clock. Natalie rises, says that she is tired, and that she would like to retire early to-night. Sergei asks: "Do you wish to drive? Shall I send for a carriage? It would really be a shame! The evening is lovely; if you go on foot, I will accompany you."

They go on foot. "I do not know what fancy has seized me to loiter about a little," she says in the pa.s.sage, where Sergei has remained standing to light a cigarette. "Would you have time?" she asks her brother.

"Yes," replies he, "I am very willing to walk a little. Where do you wish to go?"

"Anywhere, where it is quiet and pretty, and where one does not hear this caf chantant music." She points over the Elbe, where from out a dazzlingly lighted enclosure, frivolous dance measures sound boldly and obtrusively over the dreamy plash of the waves.

"Come in the fortress grounds," says Sergei, and gives her his arm. And suddenly a kind of anxiety at being alone with him overcomes Natalie.

"Now he will question me," thinks she, and would like to tear her arm away from him and--has not the courage to do it.

They are quite alone in the court-yard, the world-renowned court-yard of the fortress, with its enclosure of strange, carved, exaggerated, and charming irregular architecture; only the sentinel continually goes along the same path, up and down, and above, on the flat terrace roofs of the fortress, a couple of friends are walking. One hears them laugh, jest; yes, even kiss, standing in the court below. They may be lovers, or some couple on their wedding tour.

The lanterns burn red and sleepily in the transparent pale gray of the summer half light, and the b.u.t.tons of the sentinel shine dully; all other light is extinguished in the world, but up in heaven the stars slowly open their golden eyes. What is there down here to-day for them to look at?

A thunder-storm threatens, but one does not see it as yet, but only hears its hollow voice growling in the distance.

Slowly the brother and sister wander along the narrow way between the old-fashioned, regularly laid-out flower-beds. The stony faces of satyrs and fauns grin down upon them with triumphant cynicism. One can still see their small eyes, slanting upward toward the temples, distinctly in the dull, shadowless, clear twilight. The air is sultry and close, and quite immoderately impregnated with the sad, penetrating perfume of weary flowers which have been tormented by an over-hot summer day.

"Do you remember the last time that we walked around here together?"

remarked Sergei, at length breaking the silence.

"Yes," says Natalie. "It was the year before our father's death. I was not much older than Maschenka, and you had not completed your studies."

"Quite right, I did not yet feel myself obliged to be ambitious, in order to help raise our family from its sunken condition," said Sergei very bitterly. "Father had taken me with him during my vacation, in order to cultivate my sthetic taste. Only think, Natalie, at that time I wrote a poem on the Sistine Madonna! I! that is very laughable, is it not?"

"You--a poem," says Natalie, astonished, and still absently; the affair has in reality little interest for her.

"Yes, I--a poem!" repeats Sergei. "I--now at that time I was an idealist, however improbable that may seem to you! Now, now I am a machine, who still sometimes dreams of having been a man!" He laughs harshly and forcedly, and is suddenly silent. After a while he begins again: "Just look at the roses, Natascha," and he points to the slender bushes which are almost broken under their weight of dried blossoms.

"Have you ever seen such an Ash Wednesday? Early this morning they were still fresh! It is a pitiless summer."

Natalie lowers her head. "Now it is coming," she thinks. "Now it is coming." But no, not what she has expected, but something different, comes.

"Did it ever occur to you," continues Sergei after a little while, "how very much a tree struck by lightning resembles one killed by frost? In the end it all tends in the same direction." He is silent. After a while he says, looking her straight in the eyes: "Did you understand me?"

"Yes, I understand," murmurs she, tonelessly.

"Hm! it was plain enough. You are dying of heat, I of cold!" says he, and laughing slightly to himself, he adds: "Do you still remember how I lectured you at that time in Rome?"

Instead of any answer, she pulls her hand away from his arm.

Compa.s.sionately her brother looks at her through the gray veil of the now fast-descending twilight. "Poor Natascha!" he says. "You surely do not believe that I will return to my wisdom of that time--no! I will make you a great confession!" His voice sounds hissingly close to her ear. She feels his breath unpleasantly hot on her cheeks. "There are moments when I envy you!" he whispers. "Bah! that one must say of one's self: it is over, one is old, one will die, without once having been deeply shaken by a true shudder of delight,--_sans avoir connu le grand frisson_--it is horrible! I know what you have to bear, Natalie, and still--yes, there are moments when I envy you!"

"Who has then permitted himself to a.s.sert that I have anything to bear?" Natalie bursts out.

"Who?" Sergei raises his eyebrows. "You surely do not fancy that it is a secret?" says he. "Many wonder that you endure it; as it seems, he exercises an incredible charm over all women!"

Her eyes and his meet in the sultry half darkness. "What have they told you?" asks Natalie, with difficulty.

But then he replies with fearful emphasis: "You surely do not demand an answer of me in earnest?"

She breathes heavily. "It is not true!" says she. "They have lied to you!"

Thereupon he remains silent. The sultriness becomes ever more oppressive. Heavy thunder-clouds creep slowly and threateningly over the roof of the fortress and blot out the stars from the heavens.

Natalie has turned away from her brother, and with uneasy haste she hurries to the gate of the yard; he comes after her. "I am sorry to have wounded you," he says. "I had not that intention."

She answers nothing; silently she walks along near him. From time to time he pulls her gently by the sleeve and says: "This is the way." The stars are all extinguished, clouds cover the whole heaven, and close to the ground sighs a heavy wind which cannot yet rise to a hurricane.

What is it in this depressing sound of nature which chases the blood more rapidly through her veins?

At the door of the great, many-storied hotel, Natalie wishes to take leave of her brother. "I will accompany you to your room," says Sergei.

Silently, she lets him remain near her. With bowed head she goes up the broad staircase to the first landing; then something wakes her from her brooding thoughts--the rustling of a woman's dress. She looks up--there goes a man up the stairs to the second story with a heavily veiled woman on his arm. She sees him for one moment only; then the shadow of his profile pa.s.ses quickly over the wall; she turns away her head. It is he--she has recognized him! Silently and with doubled haste she follows her brother's guidance. "Your room is No. 53," says he, and turns the door-k.n.o.b of a room. The lamp is lighted, everything cosily prepared for her reception. "I will disturb you no longer," says Sergei. His manner has become very stiff, his voice is icy cold, and before he leaves the room his glance seeks a last time the eyes of his sister.

She is alone. Trembling in all her limbs, she has thrown herself down on a sofa. The maid presents herself with the question whether her mistress wishes to undress. Natalie signifies to her to go away, to retire for the night to her room in an upper story. The maid goes, happy to be released from her service, weary, sleepy. Natalie does not think of sleeping. How should she think of it when she knows that here, under the same roof, a few rooms distant from her-- It is horrible! It seems to her that she is slowly suffocating in a close, oppressing dread.

The lamp burns brightly. As a maid of good form, Lisa has already unpacked those little objects which luxurious women always carry about with them, even on the shortest journey, in order to make a hotel residence cosey. On the table lies Natalie's portfolio; her travelling writing utensils stand near by; and near the ink-case two photographs in pretty little leather frames the pictures of her husband and of her son. Shuddering, she turns away. She pushes the hair back from her temples. "Sergei recognized him also!" murmurs she to herself. "It was impossible not to recognize him," whispers she, "and Sergei believes that I will still bear this also. And why should he not believe it?"

For years she has waded through the mire after a _fata morgana_, and the world laughs, and points its fingers at her. What does she care about the world, if she can only once shake off the feeling of boundless degradation which drags her down to the ground? In a few days he will come to her with loving glance, uneasily concerned about her, with a thousand anxious, tender words, with open arms. And she--well, she--she will rush into those arms, forgive and forget everything as before. Ah!--she springs up.

A few moments later she stands near the bed of her little daughter. The child looks very lovely in her white night-gown, richly trimmed with lace and embroidery. One of her hands rests under her cheek, the other is hidden under the pillow. Formerly Natalie has come every night to the bed of the child in order to kiss and bless her, still asleep. But to-night her tortured heart is capable of no tender emotion.

"Wake up!" she commands, in a harsh, strange voice. Maschenka starts up, thereby involuntarily drawing her hand out from under the pillow, and with the hand a little letter which she immediately tries to conceal again from her mother. But Natalie tears it away from her.

"What have you to conceal from me?" she says to the little girl, imperiously.

"I have only written to papa!" replies Maschenka excusingly, tearfully.

"I wrote him that you are sad, and that he must come very soon because we will be so glad--that was all."

Natalie tears the poor little letter apart in the middle. "Dress yourself!" she orders.