Asbein Part 6

Natalie only shrugged her shoulders, with an expression as if she would say: "I am very sorry, but that does not change matters at all." In spite of that she secretly trembled before her brother. The announcement which she had to make to him would not cross her lips.

"It is hard to speak of certain things to you," he continued, while he tried to make his thin high voice sound confidential. He did not wish to make his sister refractory by overhasty roughness. "I have no prejudices." It had recently become the fashion in his set, and especially for the upper ten thousand, to boast of a kind of harmless liberality. "No one can accuse me of smallness. I am always in favor of attracting young artists into society--first, because they form an animating element in our circles, and secondly, because one should give them an opportunity to improve their manners a little; but all in moderation. Too great intimacy in such cases is bad for both parties.

You are too much carried away by the generosity of your heart. I know that in reality your immoderate kindness to Lensky does not mean much, but----"

Her wonderfully beautiful eyes met his.

"I am betrothed to Boris Nikolaivitch," said she wearily but very distinctly.

"Betrothed!" he burst out. "You to Lensky? You are crazy!"

"Not at all."

"Does mother know of it?"

"Certainly."

"And she has given her consent?"

"At first she was surprised; she cried a whole afternoon. I was very sorry to pain her. Then she gave way. She is very fond of him. Every one must be fond of him who learns to know him well." Natalie's eyes beamed with animation.

Sergei Alexandrovitch pulled at his mustache. "Hm, hm," he murmured; "we will leave that undecided. As it happens, I am one of those who know him well; there are few in our set who know him as intimately as I, and--hm--I do not know that he has caused me any very enthusiastic feelings. As artist I rank him very high, not so high as has been the fashion lately, for as a _beau dire il manque de style_, he lacks style! But that has nothing to do with this. But if he united in himself the genius of Beethoven and Paganini, I would still look upon the possibility of your alliance with him as unheard of, and I tell you frankly, that I shall do all that is in my power to prevent it." He had taken up again the hat which he had formerly laid down, and held it on his knee as if paying a call of state. While he spoke the last words, he knocked on the top of it with malicious decision.

Natalie crossed her arms.

"I knew that you would oppose the msalliance," said she, "but----"

He would not let her finish. "Msalliance!" said he, and laughed very mockingly, quite shortly and softly, to himself, and began to drum on the top of his hat again. "Msalliance! I cannot say that the marriage of my sister to this Mr. Lensky would be especially pleasant--no, that I cannot say. What must be my horror at your undertaking if I scarcely think of my opposition on account of the unequal birth!" He was silent, but then as Natalie remained obstinately silent, he continued: "That you will in consequence change your social position is your affair. But do not believe that this will be all that you give up. You sacrifice not only your position, your whole personality, all your habits of life, but more than all these, you sacrifice all your formerly so spared and guarded womanly tender feeling if you insist upon marrying this violinist. Oh, I know what you will say," said he, while he noticed the glance which Natalie gave the roses on the table. "He is full of poetic attentions for you. When they are in love, the roughest men speak in verse. And I believe that he loves you. But his enthusiasm for you is still only a pa.s.sing effervescence. What will remain when that is gone? I ask you, what would remain in a man without principles, without a trace of moral restraint, who has grown up amid surroundings which have forever blunted his feelings for things which would horrify you, and others of which you have no suspicion?"

Again he paused, but this time Natalie spoke: "May I ask you," began she, with the calm behind which irritation bordering on uncontrollable anger concealed itself--"may I ask you to tell me exactly, without any more finely veiled insinuations, what you have against Boris Nikolaivitch, except that he is of lower birth and has enjoyed no careful bringing up?"

"My G.o.d! If it is a question of my sister's future husband, that is enough and more than enough!" said a.s.sanow.

"Is it all?" asked Natalie, and looked at him penetratingly.

"What do you mean?"

"Is it all?" she repeated, while she slowly rose from her chair. "Have you anything else against him?"

"I have really nothing against him as long as it is not a question of my sister's husband," he hissed; "but in that case everything. And if instead of Lensky he were called Prince Dolgorouki, I would still say, as a husband for you he is impossible!"

"Why--I wish to know it--why?"

"Why? Good. I will tell you, as far as one can tell you--because he is a wild animal, with bursts of roughness of which you cannot form the slightest conception," said a.s.sanow; and, striking his thin hands together, he added, with evidently genuine excitement: "_Mais, ma pauvre fille_, you have no suspicion to what humiliations, what degradations, you expose yourself."

He stopped. He looked at his sister triumphantly. She still stood before him with her hand resting on the top of the table, staring, pale and without a word. It would be false, to say that his speech made no impression on her. It had made an impression on her. Still, she ascribed all that he said to boundless, pa.s.sionate opposition. While he spoke it seemed to her as if little pointed icicles were hurled in her face. And weary and wounded from this hailstorm of fruitless prudence, she longed with all her heart for a reconciling delusion.

He misunderstood her apparently great excitement, and in the firm conviction that she already secretly began to fall in with his opinion, he began, this time in a kindly, playful tone: "My poor Natalie, my poor, unwise but always charming sister, you are like children who see that they are wrong and are ashamed to acknowledge it. Well, we will not press you too much. At first it is always painful to be undeceived; but time cures everything, and when you are married to a distinguished and reasonable young fellow--_un garon distingu et raisonnable_--who will rationally cure you of your romantic ideas, you will only think of this youthful foolishness with a smile."

She threw back her head and measured him from head to foot. At this moment he seemed to her quite pitiable. How poverty-stricken, how sad was his whole inner life, his feelings, his thoughts, to those to which she had recently accustomed herself! "And you really believe that it could occur to me to give up Boris Nikolaivitch?" said she slowly with proudly curved lips.

"I think, after what I have said to you--" He tried to be patient, and even wished to take her hand, but she drew it back; the touch of his cold, bloodless fingers was unpleasant to her. Yet it had never been so before. What had changed in her?

The prince's face took on a hard, vexed expression. "I think after what I have told you--" he repeated.

"Is it not true, after what you have told me, after the consolation you have offered me, you cannot understand that I keep my word?" said she, challengingly. "What will you, I am now so foolish?" Her voice, veiled at first, became warmer and stronger, while she continued: "You take away summer from me, and offer me winter as consolation--that is, you ask of me that I should refuse everything in the world that blooms and bears fruit, only because sometimes a devastating thunderstorm bursts over this wealth of beauty and life! I know that in a normal winter there are no thunderstorms, and in spite of that I prefer the summer!"

"But it is a tropical summer!" exclaimed a.s.sanow.

"That may be," she replied, calmly; "but for that very reason it is more magnificent--yes, even because of the dangers involved in it--more magnificent than any other."

He stood up. "It is useless to speak to you," said he, coldly; "the only thing that remains for me is to speak to Lensky. He has a clear head in spite of all his genius. He can be talked over."

Then Natalie was startled out of her proud calm. "You would be indelicate enough to say to him what you have said to me!" she burst out.

"In such cases it is not only wisest, but most humane, to use pure prudence instead of foolish sentimentality," announced a.s.sanow; and, bowing to his sister as to a stranger, he left, with all his vexation, still elevated by the thought that he had again had opportunity to display his "prudence" in a brilliant light. He loved his prudence as an artistic capability, and was glad to give proofs, by all kinds of virtuoso performances, of its extent and unusual pliability. Whether these productions were exactly suited to the time troubled the virtuoso little, and that by his last threat he had attained exactly the opposite with Natalie from what he wished, did not occur to him at all, momentarily.

He had gone. Natalie still stood in the middle of the room, her hand resting on the table, and trembling in her whole body. Suddenly the memory of the "musical confession" arose in her, which Lensky had laid before her the morning when he tried the Amati, the confession which had frightened her. And through her mind vibrated, piercingly and cuttingly, the mysterious succession of tones from the Arabian folksongs which echoed lamentingly through all his compositions--the devil's music: Asbein.

As long as she had to defend herself from her brother, she had not realized how deeply he had wounded her. She felt at once miserable, wounded, and discontented with life--as a young tree must feel, over whose fragrant young spring blossoms a hailstorm has pa.s.sed. Then Lensky came in. He perceived in a moment what had happened.

"They have tormented you on my account," said he. "Poor heart! if I could only take all this vexation upon myself."

She smiled at him. "Then I would not be worthy of you," replied she.

He drew her gently toward him. Her discouragement had disappeared; warm, strong life again pulsated in her veins.

"Everything has its recompense," whispered she; "it is sweet to bear something for any one whom----"

"Well, for any one whom--please finish," he urged, and drew her closer to him.

"You know it without."

"I would so love to hear you say it once."

She raised herself on tiptoes and whispered something in his ear.

He held her tighter and tighter to him. "Oh, my happiness, my queen!"

he murmured, and his warm lips met hers.

She felt as if wrapped in a sunbeam, in a warm, animating atmosphere, through which none of the critical sneers and opinions of those who stood without the consecrated magic circle of love could penetrate.

Six weeks later Natalie and Lensky were married, and at the Russian Emba.s.sy in Vienna. Her dowry consisted of a very incomplete trousseau, in part lavishly trimmed with lace; of a mortgaged estate in South Russia that had brought in no rents for three years; and of three Cremona violins.

While her elder brother silently concealed the true despair which the marriage caused him behind stiff dignity, the younger, an officer of the guard, with a becoming talent for arrogant impertinences, pleased himself by jesting over this adventurous marriage, and describing the "strange taste" of his sister, with a shrug of the shoulders, as a case of acute monomania. When he spoke of his brother-in-law, he called him nothing but "_cette bte sauvage et indcrottable_," even when he had long made a practice of borrowing money of him.

Neither of Natalie's brothers or her married sister appeared at her wedding. Only the old princess accompanied her daughter to the altar.