The Green Book Part 12

Ryleieff was manager of the American Corn Company, and being, in truth, more business man than poet, received this doubtful compliment with an acquiescent smile.

The party, meanwhile, had risen from the table, and was standing about in little groups, awaiting Zeneida's return.

Ryleieff and Krizsanowski retired together into a corner. The Pole, smoking furiously, blew thick clouds of smoke about him, as though considering his rigid features a too transparent mask, likely to betray him. And in order not to be questioned, he began to question.

"There are one or two points I should be glad to have cleared up. The first spring of every great aim proceeds from selfish motives.

Freedom--well, yes, is the sun; private aims are earth. We are upon the earth. From mere abstract motives a new era has never been started. My private motives require no explanation; they are expressed in two words--I am a Pole. That is sufficient ground for me to stand upon.

Fraulein Ilmarinen is a Finn. I take it that is sufficient reason for her action. I have no fear that she will be dazzled by the pinnacle she stands on, encircled with wreaths and diamonds. I can also understand your moving spring. You love your own race; you see how it has remained behind other nations, and would raise it to their level. Pestel's motives also I can grasp. He has immense ambition. He would fain be the head of a newly formed state. The basis is broad enough; his foot rests on a sure pedestal. The rest are shifting, unstable, attracted to the movement by the hope of playing some brilliant part in it. Then we have Apostol Muravieff. He, too, is constrained to it by a paternal heritage, from which he cannot free himself. Pushkin is in love with Zeneida; that, too, is sure ground enough. That madman Jakuskin is actuated by revenge; another safe pa.s.sion on which one may rely. His sense of puritanical integrity binds that fine fellow Turgenieff to us. From earliest youth he has ever been in the advance guard of freedom, first in the first rank. Such iron rect.i.tude can be recast in no other form, rather it would break than yield. Now there is but one man here whose presence I cannot understand: that is Duke Ghedimin. A member of one of the twelve old Russian dynastic families, his possessions so immense that he is simply unable to expend his yearly income on Russian soil, holding the highest grade at Court, himself an accomplished, brilliant, sought-after aristocrat, who by any changes you may effect has everything to lose, nothing to gain--what does he seek here? What is his interest in making himself one of this conspiracy?"

"He is the very one, among us all, who has the weightiest reason: the recollection of an irreconcilable affront, for it was a personal one.

You know the Czar. You know that, as a man, no one is his enemy. Even Jakuskin merely hates in him the Czar, not the man. Duke Ghedimin is the sole one who stands opposed to him, as man to man. The Czar was married very young, to a delicate wife; his children died early. He grew cold towards his wife, and sought compensation in a new pa.s.sion. The only daughter of one of our first families, renowned far and wide for her great beauty, was willing to console him. The illicit connection had consequences--a daughter. The affair was kept strictly secret. The young d.u.c.h.ess journeyed to Italy as an unmarried girl, and returned from there the same. Soon after she married Duke Ghedimin. Meanwhile a young girl was growing up in Italy who went by the name of Princess Sophie Narishkin, and who, in her fourteenth year, was brought to St.

Petersburg. It was her father, not her mother, who brought her here. The girl resides in a house surrounded by a garden in the outskirts of the capital, where her father visits her constantly, her mother never. The father worships the child, who, moreover, is terribly delicate. The mother simply hates her. Her father is the Czar, her mother, Princess Ghedimin. Now do you see what brings Prince Ghedimin among us?"

"Yes, yes. But does he know the secret of the girl's birth?"

"Know it? We all do."

"Still, no reason why the husband should. Think a moment. What human being is there who could go to a man like Prince Ghedimin and breathe to him such a foul statement about his own wife? At the least whisper of such a slander an inferior would receive the knout, an equal be shot. A shopkeeper may denounce his wife; no gentleman does such a thing. Who could have made this known to Ghedimin?"

"Who other than his sweetheart! Is not Zeneida Prince Ghedimin's sweetheart, and has she not a thousand reasons to enlighten him upon his wife's shame?"

"Do not believe a word of it! She has not done it. You do not know Fraulein Zeneida; I do. First of all, I do not believe she is Ghedimin's sweetheart; or, if she love him, it is with a real love, not that of a _Ninon de l'Enclos_. But my belief is that she is in love with some one else; and I believe, moreover, that she controls that love. She is a woman capable of defying the scorn of the whole world, but not of doing anything to merit her own self-contempt. And for a woman who loves a man to denounce his own wife to him is a piece of vileness only fit for the lowest of the low. You do not know with whom you have to deal. Zeneida is playing some far-seeing game with you. You are mere chessmen in her hands; one may be a castle, another a bishop, the third a knight.

Possibly Ghedimin may be your king of chess, but she is not the queen.

She is playing the game."

"And you have confidence enough in her to consent to this?"

"Yes; because I am her partner."

The roulette ball spun round. Some one was coming. All hurriedly returned to their places. Krizsanowski did not deserve the scornful smile with which Ryleieff had silently received his great utterance--for, indeed, it was a great utterance--"You others are only the chessmen; we two are the players." But so it was. The others only saw single moves; these two saw the whole game.

Krizsanowski had also plainly observed--although he made as if he saw nothing--with what painful anxiety Zeneida was moved to keep Pushkin away from the dangerous chess-board. Such a head is too costly for a "p.a.w.n"; perhaps too precious to be staked for a whole nation--the whole world--certainly in her estimation.

She had chased him away as if he were the evil one; now she had hastened after him to prevent his coming back. She knew that the heads of all those taking part in the conspiracy would fall prey to the executioner did it not succeed, and Pushkin's must not be among them. And yet poets have their whims. Should Jakuskin on the way reveal anything of the fateful conference which had taken place round Zeneida's roulette-table, the very charm of danger would bring Pushkin back. If he learned that it was no mere academical discussion, but a council of war, which was being held, he would break open her doors to take his share in it.

Pushkin was still in the sulks. While Jakuskin hastened from one cabinet to another in search of Diabolka, he had thrown himself upon a sofa in the palm-grove, replying to all the blandishments of pa.s.sing fair ones.

"Leave me alone. I don't want you."

"Nor me either?" asked a well-known voice, at sound of which another, fairer, world seemed to open to him. And Zeneida, seating herself beside him on the couch, asked, "Are you angry with me?"

"Confess. It was you who put Ryleieff up to insulting me?"

"In what way, dear friend?"

"I will not submit to be called Byron! I am Pushkin, or no one. Men may say that my verses are common Russian brandy which gets into the head, but no one shall presume to call them the dregs of an English teapot. I may be only a hillock, but I will not pose as a miniature Chimborazo.

And it was your whisper to Ryleieff that did it."

"Yes; so it was."

"To drive me away?"

"To drive you away."

"I am not worthy, then, to join the society of the Bojars!"

"What care I for the Bojars and the whole Szojusz Blagadenztoiga? I give them shelter--and _basta_!"

"And am I not worthy to singe my wings in the fire of your eyes?"

"It would convert you to ice."

"Are you so cold, then?"

"Cold as the northern light."

"Have you no heart?"

"According to anatomy I have such a thing; but it has other functions than those ascribed to it by poets. That of which you speak has, Gall tells us, its seat in the skull, in No. 27 portion of the brain, and is not developed in my organization."

"Do not kill me with your phrenology. You know what love is--"

"I know. The compact of a tyrant with a slave."

"Be you the tyrant; I will be the slave."

"With these words as many women have been deceived as there are grains of sand on the sea-sh.o.r.e."

"I swear to you, my life, my very soul, are yours."

"By whom do you swear? By Venus, so inconstant; by Allah, who denies that women have souls, and divides the heart of man in four parts; by Brahma, who burns the widow on the funereal pyre; or by the great Cosmos?"

"There is nothing so formidable as a woman who takes to philosophizing!"

"That is why I do so."

"You kill every iota of poetry with it."

"Then speak prose."

"Well, then, I ask nothing of you--I give. I give you my soul, my hand, my name!"

"Ah, your name! That is a gift. A woman like me has diamonds, horses, houses, given her; but he who would offer her his name is indeed rare to meet with. And yet a name is the most precious ornament. Without such a name, I am n.o.body. Were I to marry my groom of the chambers to-morrow, I should be a woman of respectability. My poor good Bogumil never dreams that in his fur-lined gloves, besides his own red hands, lies my reputation! So you would give me your name?--a name which, so far, has been written on nothing else than overdue bills and ale-house doors. You silly boy! Why, people would not call me 'Frau Pushkin,' but you 'Herr Ilmarinen.' But once let your name be written in the fiery letters of fame, instead of chalked on innkeepers' slates, would you then unite it to another whose every letter is besmeared with--"

"With calumny!" broke in Pushkin, vehemently.

"It is but just. There is nothing so bad that can be said of me that I cannot fill in. I am selfish, unfeeling; I have no faith in religion, nor in honor. Both are sophistries, contradicting each other, according as the ethnographical relations change about. The only good is, what benefits mankind. Virtue is folly. The sole use of good men is to be the tools of their more clever fellows."