The Torrents of Spring Part 22

There were moments when he actually did not know whether he was furious or delighted, bored or amused. Oh, if Gemma could have seen him!

'It's really curious,' Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. 'A man informs one and in such a calm voice, "I am going to get married"; but no one calmly says to one, "I'm going to throw myself in the water."

And yet what difference is there? It's curious, really.'

Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. 'There's a great difference, Maria Nikolaevna! It's not dreadful at all to throw oneself in the water if one can swim; and besides ... as to the strangeness of marriages, if you come to that ...'

He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.

Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.

'Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on--I know what you were going to say.

"If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov," you were going to say, "anything more curious than _your_ marriage it would be impossible to conceive.... I know your husband well, from a child!" That's what you were going to say, you who can swim!'

'Excuse me,' Sanin was beginning....

'Isn't it the truth? Isn't it the truth?' Maria Nikolaevna p.r.o.nounced insistently.

'Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!'

Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes. 'Well, if you like; it's the truth, if you absolutely insist upon it,' he said at last.

Maria Nikolaevna shook her head. 'Quite so, quite so. Well, and did you ask yourself, you who can swim, what could be the reason of such a strange ... step on the part of a woman, not poor ... and not a fool ... and not ugly? All that does not interest you, perhaps, but no matter. I'll tell you the reason not this minute, but directly the _entr'acte_ is over. I am in continual uneasiness for fear some one should come in....'

Maria Nikolaevna had hardly uttered this last word when the outer door actually was half opened, and into the box was thrust a head--red, oily, perspiring, still young, but toothless; with sleek long hair, a pendent nose, huge ears like a bat's, with gold spectacles on inquisitive dull eyes, and a _pince-nez_ over the spectacles. The head looked round, saw Maria Nikolaevna, gave a nasty grin, nodded.... A scraggy neck craned in after it....

Maria Nikolaevna shook her handkerchief at it. 'I'm not at home! _Ich bin nicht zu Hause, Herr P....! Ich bin nicht zu Hause.... Ksh-sk!

ksh-sh-sh!_'

The head was disconcerted, gave a forced laugh, said with a sort of sob, in imitation of Liszt, at whose feet he had once reverently grovelled, '_Sehr gut, sehr gut!_' and vanished.

'What is that object?' inquired Sanin.

'Oh, a Wiesbaden critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. He is in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praise everything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he is soaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he does not dare to give vent. I am afraid he's an awful scandalmonger; he'll run at once to tell every one I'm in the theatre. Well, what does it matter?'

The orchestra played through a waltz, the curtain floated up again....

The grimacing and whimpering began again on the stage.

'Well,' began Maria Nikolaevna, sinking again on to the sofa. 'Since you are here and obliged to sit with me, instead of enjoying the society of your betrothed--don't turn away your eyes and get cross--I understand you, and have promised already to let you go to the other end of the earth--but now hear my confession. Do you care to know what I like more than anything?'

'Freedom,' hazarded Sanin.

Maria Nikolaevna laid her hand on his hand.

'Yes, Dimitri Pavlovitch,' she said, and in her voice there was a note of something special, a sort of unmistakable sincerity and gravity, 'freedom, more than all and before all. And don't imagine I am boasting of this--there is nothing praiseworthy in it; only it's _so_ and always will be _so_ with me to the day of my death. I suppose it must have been that I saw a great deal of slavery in my childhood and suffered enough from it. Yes, and Monsieur Gaston, my tutor, opened my eyes too. Now you can, perhaps, understand why I married Ippolit Sidoritch: with him I'm free, perfectly free as air, as the wind....

And I knew that before marriage; I knew that with him I should be a free Cossack!'

Maria Nikolaevna paused and flung her fan aside.

'I will tell you one thing more; I have no distaste for reflection ...

it's amusing, and indeed our brains are given us for that; but on the consequences of what I do I never reflect, and if I suffer I don't pity myself--not a little bit; it's not worth it. I have a favourite saying: _Cela ne tire pas a consequence_,--I don't know how to say that in Russian. And after all, what does _tire a consequence_? I shan't be asked to give an account of myself here, you see--in this world; and up there (she pointed upwards with her finger), well, up there--let them manage as best they can. When they come to judge me up there, _I_ shall not be _I_! Are you listening to me? Aren't you bored?'

Sanin was sitting bent up. He raised his head. 'I'm not at all bored, Maria Nikolaevna, and I am listening to you with curiosity. Only I ...

confess ... I wonder why you say all this to me?'

Maria Nikolaevna edged a little away on the sofa.

'You wonder?... Are you slow to guess? Or so modest?'

Sanin lifted his head higher than before.

'I tell you all this,' Maria Nikolaevna continued in an unmoved tone, which did not, however, at all correspond with the expression of her face, 'because I like you very much; yes, don't be surprised, I'm not joking; because since I have met you, it would be painful to me that you had a disagreeable recollection of me ... not disagreeable even, that I shouldn't mind, but untrue. That's why I have made you come here, and am staying alone with you and talking to you so openly....

Yes, yes, openly. I'm not telling a lie. And observe, Dimitri Pavlovitch, I know you're in love with another woman, that you're going to be married to her.... Do justice to my disinterestedness!

Though indeed it's a good opportunity for you to say in your turn: _Cela ne tire pas a consequence_!'

She laughed, but her laugh suddenly broke off, and she stayed motionless, as though her own words had suddenly struck her, and in her eyes, usually so gay and bold, there was a gleam of something like timidity, even like sadness.

'Snake! ah, she's a snake!' Sanin was thinking meanwhile; 'but what a lovely snake!'

'Give me my opera-gla.s.s,' Maria Nikolaevna said suddenly. 'I want to see whether this _jeune premiere_ really is so ugly. Upon my word, one might fancy the government appointed her in the interests of morality, so that the young men might not lose their heads over her.'

Sanin handed her the opera-gla.s.s, and as she took it from him, swiftly, but hardly audibly, she s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand in both of hers.

'Please don't be serious,' she whispered with a smile. 'Do you know what, no one can put fetters on me, but then you see I put no fetters on others. I love freedom, and I don't acknowledge duties--not only for myself. Now move to one side a little, and let us listen to the play.'

Maria Nikolaevna turned her opera-gla.s.s upon the stage, and Sanin proceeded to look in the same direction, sitting beside her in the half dark of the box, and involuntarily drinking in the warmth and fragrance of her luxurious body, and as involuntarily turning over and over in his head all she had said during the evening--especially during the last minutes.

XL

The play lasted over an hour longer, but Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin soon gave up looking at the stage. A conversation sprang up between them again, and went on the same lines as before; only this time Sanin was less silent. Inwardly he was angry with himself and with Maria Nikolaevna; he tried to prove to her all the inconsistency of her 'theory,' as though she cared for theories! He began arguing with her, at which she was secretly rejoiced; if a man argues, it means that he is giving in or will give in. He had taken the bait, was giving way, had left off keeping shyly aloof! She retorted, laughed, agreed, mused dreamily, attacked him ... and meanwhile his face and her face were close together, his eyes no longer avoided her eyes.... Those eyes of hers seemed to ramble, seemed to hover over his features, and he smiled in response to them--a smile of civility, but still a smile.

It was so much gained for her that he had gone off into abstractions, that he was discoursing upon truth in personal relations, upon duty, the sacredness of love and marriage.... It is well known that these abstract propositions serve admirably as a beginning ... as a starting-point....

People who knew Maria Nikolaevna well used to maintain that when her strong and vigorous personality showed signs of something soft and modest, something almost of maidenly shamefacedness, though one wondered where she could have got it from ... then ... then, things were taking a dangerous turn.

Things had apparently taken such a turn for Sanin.... He would have felt contempt for himself, if he could have succeeded in concentrating his attention for one instant; but he had not time to concentrate his mind nor to despise himself.

She wasted no time. And it all came from his being so very good-looking! One can but exclaim, No man knows what may be his making or his undoing!

The play was over. Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to put on her shawl and did not stir, while he wrapped the soft fabric round her really queenly shoulders. Then she took his arm, went out into the corridor, and almost cried out aloud. At the very door of the box Donhof sprang up like some apparition; while behind his back she got a glimpse of the figure of the Wiesbaden critic. The 'literary man's' oily face was positively radiant with malignancy.

'Is it your wish, madam, that I find you your carriage?' said the young officer addressing Maria Nikolaevna with a quiver of ill-disguised fury in his voice.

'No, thank you,' she answered ... 'my man will find it. Stop!' she added in an imperious whisper, and rapidly withdrew drawing Sanin along with her.

'Go to the devil! Why are you staring at me?' Donhof roared suddenly at the literary man. He had to vent his feelings upon some one!