Asbein Part 23

"Is there a fire?" asks Maschenka, frightened.

"No, but something has happened; we cannot stay in the hotel; do not ask."

Sleepy, but obedient, as a good child who has the most complete confidence in her mother, Maschenka sets about putting on the clothes daintily arranged on a chair near her little bed. Natalie helps her as well as her fingers, trembling with fever, will permit her, then wrapping head and shoulders in a lace scarf, she takes the child by the hand and hurries down the stairs.

"Is the princess going out?" asks the porter, who has not the heart to give the sister of Prince a.s.sanow another t.i.tle. "The weather is very threatening; shall I send for a carriage?"

Natalie takes no notice of him, pushes by him like a strange, inexplicable apparition.

The stars are all extinguished, clouds cover the whole heaven, and close to the ground sighs a weary wind.

What is it in this confused, depressing sound of nature which chases the blood through her veins? In the midst of her excitement she hears the chromatic succession of tones--her breath stops--it is that inciting, musical poison, that now follows her with a longing complaint, a strange, alluring call--Asbein.

The wind rises, screams louder and more shrill, its sultry breath rages so powerfully against Natalie that she can scarcely proceed. One, two great water-drops splash in her face, then more. Pointed hailstones p.r.i.c.k her between them; all drive her back--back.

Has not some one seized her by the dress? She looks round. No! she is alone on the street with her child and the raging storm. Forward she hastens, panting, breathless. The way to Bellevue is quite easy to find--quite straight along the street. It grows darker and darker, the rain falls in streams, the clothes hang ever heavier on her body, she can scarcely lift her feet from the paving; it is as if all would drag her down to the ground--all! Twice she loses her way, twice she suddenly, as if attracted by an evil charm, stands before the Htel du Saxe.

Maschenka cries silently and bitterly to herself. There--this wall ornamented with black lead, Natalie remembers, and here--the large ma.s.s of formless shadow--is not that the Catholic church?

A flash of lightning rends the darkness--Natalie sees the immense stairs of the Brhl terrace, with its adornments of colossal gilded statues; she sees the broad, black river flowing along, cool, alluring; hastily she goes across the place, for one moment her eyes rest on the stream--Maschenka pulls her by the arm with her tender little fingers, and whispers: "I am afraid, mamma; I am afraid!"

Then Natalie turns away from the most alluring temptation that has ever met her in life, and the water ripples behind her as if in anger that they have torn away a sacrifice from it.

Now they have reached the Htel Bellevue; the phlegmatic Hollander in the porter's lodge looks after her in astonishment as she rushes past him, stretches his powerful limbs, sticks his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, closes his eyes, sleepily, and murmurs, "These Russian women!"

She finds the number of her brother's sitting-room. Light still shines through the keyhole. She bursts open the door. Varvara Pavlovna is still busy making flowers. Sergei sits bent over a railroad courier, the eternal samovar stands on its small table.

"What has happened, Natalie, for G.o.d's sake?" says Varvara, as she discovers Natalie's figure, dripping with water, her pale, staring face, her burning eyes, and the little girl by her side. "What has happened?"

The brother does not ask.

"I come to seek shelter with you," murmurs Natalie, breaking down, as she sinks upon a sofa; then turning to Sergei, she with difficulty gasps out: "You understand--I could not stay there--it--it is all over!"

Yes, it was all over--all. The bond between him and her was broken. He was beside himself when he discovered what had taken place, begged for a meeting, wrote her the tenderest letters. She left his letters unanswered.

Then a wild defiance overcame him. It angered him that she had placed herself under her brother's protection--that brother, who from the beginning had wished to sow discord between him and her. He also could not be persuaded that the prince had not alone been the cause of the separation.

The circ.u.mstance that Natalie travelled in advance with her sister-in-law to Baden-Baden, while a.s.sanow remained in Dresden to arrange with Lensky, strengthened him in his conviction.

It did not come to a legal separation. Lensky was not the man to use compulsion with a woman; if she did not wish to stay with him, he let her go voluntarily. That she wished to keep the child with her was understood of itself; he could see the child from time to time, for a couple of weeks, on neutral ground. Nikolas, as one could not interrupt him in his studies, quite naturally remained with his father in St.

Petersburg.

"All that is understood of itself; why lose words over it?" thought Lensky to himself, while he quite pa.s.sively consented to all the propositions of the diplomat.

For what reason did the unendurable man remain sitting there and tormenting him?

Quite everything was wound up between them--it was afternoon, and the brothers-in-law sat opposite each other at a long table strewn with papers, in a large, gloomy room, with dark green damask hangings, in the Htel du Saxe. A pause had occurred.

"What does he still wish?" thought Lensky, and drummed unrestrainedly on the top of the table, while at the same time he gave a significant glance toward the door.

a.s.sanow coughed a couple of times; at last he began: "In conclusion, I must touch upon a delicate point--the question of money. My sister formally rejects all a.s.sistance on your part, Boris Nikolaivitch, and wishes strictly to limit herself to live on her own income!"

Then Lensky flew into a rage: "And you have declared yourself agreed to that?" he cried, to his brother-in-law.

"I should have considered it undignified in my sister if she had wished to act otherwise!" replied a.s.sanow.

Lensky clutched his temples with a gesture which was peculiar to him.

"Ah! leave me in peace with your pasteboard dignity," said he, impatiently. "I cannot endure the word--a parade expression which means nothing--live on her own income--my poor luxurious Natalie--but that is madness, simply not possible! You are indeed her brother, but still you do not know her. Such a tender, guarded hothouse plant as she is! Why, she would die if she did not have what she needed."

"With the best will, I would not be able to persuade her to take anything from you," replied Sergei, earnestly.

"Not?" Lensky struck his clenched fist on the table. "Listen, Sergei Alexandrovitch, you are not only pitiless, you are also stupid. If she will not take anything from me, deceive her a little, tell her that the rents of her estate have increased, that you have sold building land for her, or what do I know! With women that is so easy, especially with her, poor soul!--who has never understood the difference in appearance between ten rubles and a thousand--but force the money upon her, she must have it! And hear me! if you do not so care for it that she takes it, then I will make a scandal for you, and insist upon a legal exposition!"

For a moment a.s.sanow was silent, then he said: "Good, I will arrange it!" with that he rose and offered Lensky his hand.

But Lensky refused it. "Let that go! Between you and me there is no friendship. After the 'service' which you have rendered me such grimaces are repulsive."

"You are mistaken if you believe I would have persuaded Natalie to the separation," a.s.sured the Prince. "Naturally, however, as a conscientious man, I could not dissuade her therefrom."

"Conscientious! Certainly, hangmen are always conscientious--that one knows," murmured Lensky, and stamped his foot on the ground. "Well, you will see what you have done! Meanwhile--go. I will not longer bear it--go!"

When a.s.sanow hereupon wrote Natalie in Baden that the affair was arranged with Lensky, and the separation declared he added, at the same time: "I feel myself obliged to say to you, that Lensky in this whole affair has acted not only honorably, but really n.o.bly."

To his wife wrote Sergei at the same time: "I do not understand the man!--_figurez-vous_ that I myself for a moment, was _sous le charme_.

What a depth of n.o.bility is in this prodigy! His is an enormous nature!"

As long as the separation was still impending, as long as the conferences still lasted, a kind of restless life fevered in Natalie; she forced her being, naturally inclined to tender reliance and dependence, to an independent strength of will, of which no one had thought her capable.

But when the last word was spoken, the separation at length validly arranged, she fell into a condition of brooding sadness from which nothing more could rouse her.

For still three years she lived after the separation; three years, in which every hour endlessly dragged itself along, and which flowed together in the recollection into a single endless, cold, dull day; a day in that northern zone where the sun, with far-extending, weak, weary beams, tardily remains the whole twenty-four hours long, standing on the horizon, and grudges the night its refreshing darkness and the day its light.

Her torment reached an exquisite culmination when Maschenka, who idolized her father, and who, in her childish innocence, had no idea of the state of affairs, in the beginning incessantly and anxiously asked her mother little questions referring to the separation. Natalie gave her no answer, frowned and turned away her head. And sometimes Maschenka then became ungovernable and angry. Her little warm, loving heart could not understand why they had taken away her idol.

Once, Lensky asked for his daughter for two weeks. Maschenka, with her English governess, was sent to Nice to her grandmother, where Lensky daily visited her. When, loaded with presents, her heart full of sweet, tender recollections, she came back again to Cannes, where Natalie had meanwhile awaited her, with fearful obstinacy she insisted in relating to Natalie endless things about the goodness and lovability of the father, and especially how impressively and anxiously he had inquired after mamma. Her full, deep little voice trembled resentfully thereby, and an angry reproach darkened her large, clear child's eyes.

For a while Natalie was quite calm, then, without having replied a word to the child, she stood up and left the room.

Maschenka observed with astonishment how she tottered and hit against the furniture like a blind person. Thereupon the child remained as if rooted to the ground, with thoughtfully wrinkled brow, her little hands glued to her sides, standing, staring down at the carpet as if she there sought the solution to the great, sad riddle which so occupied her. Then with a short motion as if shaking off something, which she had caught from her father, like so much else, she threw her little head back and hurried after her mother.

Natalie had retired to her bedroom. Maschenka found her deathly pale, with helpless, stiff bearing, and hands folded straight before her, sitting in an easy chair; her weary glance, directed in front of her, expressed inconsolable despair.