To-day there is nothing left of Lensky's melancholy; at least for the
present he has put it aside, has not had much time to devote to it.
Since nine o'clock in the morning he has been overwhelmed with visits.
At the moment there is no one with him but the gay violinist of
yesterday, Monsieur Paul. As Lensky cannot remain unoccupied for a
moment without being nervous, he has proposed to Monsieur Paul to play
a game of piquet.
Just then Nikolai enters the room. He brings with him a cool, well-bred
atmosphere, which disturbs the two musicians. All comfort is over for
them. Monsieur Paul looks at his watch and declares that it is high
time for him to go and have his hair cut. Father and son remain alone.
"So you show yourself at last, sluggard?" says Lensky, while he still
mechanically shuffles the cards.
"I wished to present myself several times already," remarks Nikolai,
"but I heard that you were engaged."
"That need not have prevented you," replies the virtuoso. "Your
discretion has deprived you of great enjoyment, _per primo_, the
praises sung of a young lady whose voice I really could not well judge,
because she, as her companion told me, had been hoarse for six months
from unhappy love. I did not really learn what she wished to get from
me--a stipend, an engagement at the opera in St. Petersburg, or that I
should cure her of her unhappy love; but, apropos, I am really a little
tired of playing the Brahmin who gives his body prey to vermin for
penance. You can ring the bell. I will tell the waiter he shall admit
no one else."
The waiter has appeared and disappeared again. Father and son can be
assured not to be disturbed. They can now talk unrestrainedly together.
But the somewhat forced, humorous flow of speech of his father has
ceased. Stronger than yesterday is apparent the mutual lack of
confidence of the two, a lack of confidence which in the young Lensky
betrays itself by a quite exaggerated deference; in the older by a
grumbling roughness. He cannot understand this son. Not that anything
about him displeases him; his eyes rest not without pride and
satisfaction on the young giant with the slender, delicate hands, the
fine, aristocratic face. The most exacting father would be content with
this son. He has studied with distinction; he has never made debts; he
is scarcely twenty-three years old, _attache_ to the Russian embassy in
Paris, and a thoroughly good fellow. What more can Lensky wish, what
does he miss in Nikolai? A little imprudent enthusiasm, hot-blooded
frivolity, a little youthfulness--that he misses in him. Nikolai is old
at twenty-three.
And then these perpetual well-bred manners. Lensky could never bear men
of the world, and Nikolai is one; that enrages him.
"How did the Jeliagin welcome my little tomboy?" he asks his son at
last.
"Very graciously," replies Nikolai.
"That pleases me."
Nikolai is silent.
After a while Lensky begins anew.
"Yes, yes, I am very glad that things went well with the little one. I
was worried. No one can less easily bear loveless treatment than our
kobold."
Nikolai looks straight in his father's eyes.
"Do you imagine that Aunt Barbara will treat her lovingly?" he asks,
dryly.
"Well, you said--" says Lensky.
"I said that she received our Mascha graciously, _voila tout!_" says
Nikolai. "Her manner to the child did not please me. As the Countess
d'Olbreuse insisted upon pleading Mascha's cause, and as she is, as
Aunt Barbara informed me later, in spite of her apparent
eccentricities, very well accredited in the Faubourg St. Germain, the
warmth with which she defended Mascha may have made some impression. In
any case, aunt pleased herself with laughing at Mascha's exaltation.
She and her lovable daughter were about to go out, and it was arranged
that I should accompany them, but I would have preferred to remain with
Mascha to lecture her a little as she deserved for her over-haste."
Lensky frowned. "So you would have liked to scold the poor child! What
a narrow-hearted philister you are; have copied in everything your
distinguished uncle, the correct statesman, under whose protection you
are making a career, he who tore us apart--your mother and me. Poor
little Mascha! Poor little dove! But she was charming with her foolish,
childish anxiety and her incredible innocence." Lensky struck his fist
on the table. "I would have liked to box their ears, all of them, as
they sat there, the scoundrels who dared to wink at her tale," called
he.
"So should I, father, but still they did all wink," said Nikolai,
dryly.
"The idiots!"
"Yes, indeed, idiots--but----"
"Well, what will you say?" asked Lensky, roughly.
"I will say that Mascha will still meet many idiots in life who will
misunderstand her innocence, and that she may once meet a rascal who
will misuse her innocence."
"Nonsense! nonsense!" murmurs Lensky. "You do not understand your
sister. If she were frivolous, then she would need strict surveillance.
But our Mascha is not frivolous; she is given to exaggeration, tender,
romantic. And, between ourselves, life is so common, so boundlessly
common and dirty, that it seldom affords a temptation to a truly
exalted nature. No, no; I have no fear for my pretty defiant one. I do
not believe in the necessity of strict guarding."
"I think that young girls should be watched," said Nikolai, earnestly.
"Our Mascha has no more worldly knowledge than a six-year-old child.
She does not suspect that there is a danger in the world which she must
avoid."
"But that is beautiful, wonderfully beautiful!" the virtuoso thunders
at his son. "Would you wish it otherwise? Not I. No; I would not have
our little gipsy differ by a hair from what she is."
"Nor I, on the whole," says Nikolai; "but under the existing sad
circumstances----"
"What sad circumstances?" Lensky interrupts him. "Well, yes, that she
has lost her mother is sad; I can never replace her to her. A mother
cannot be replaced, least of all, one like hers; there is not another
one like her in the world. But otherwise I think she does not fare
badly. One pardons her wherever she goes; she is always treated like a
little princess, always well cared for."
"Well cared for!" Nikolai bursts out. "Well cared for! I think she
cannot be worse cared for than with the Jeliagins."
"Why?" asks Lensky, uneasily. "Barbara is not a bad woman. She is very
good-natured."
"And perfectly characterless," replies Nikolai. "You were pleased that
she overlooked Mascha's precipitation so easily yesterday. I was not.
Aunt Barbara is in bad circumstances; if I am not mistaken, she will
very soon turn to you in her money matters, and with Mascha she
will play the _role_ of an indulgent step-mother, who flatters the
step-child in order not to offend the father. If Mascha is to prosper,
she must live with people who understand her, who love her, but who are
conscientious enough to be severe with her, and to guide her from time
to time, tenderly but firmly, in the right way. She is much too gifted,
much too obstinate for one to dare to leave her to herself. Mascha is a
little race-horse who must be caressed, spared, but held very firmly in
check. I know her better than you, for I have had more opportunity to
observe her, and I tell you it is really dangerous to leave Mascha with
people who will trouble themselves as little about her as the
Jeliagins."
"You exaggerate, you exaggerate," grumbled Lensky. "Besides, how can I
help it? Shall I shut up my song-bird in a cage, in a convent or a
boarding-school? I tried it. She would not bear it. What shall I do
with her?"
"Take her with you," says Nikolai.
"With me! That is impossible," bursts out Lensky--"impossible! What can
a widower do with a grown daughter?"
Nikolai frowned. For a moment he is silent, then he says: "Do you
remember how strongly you expressed yourself about Kasin, when he sent
his daughter out into the wide world merely because she interfered with
his bachelor life?"
Lensky's face darkens. This time Nikolai's remark has hit its aim. "And
you will draw a comparison between me and Kasin?" says he, slowly,
cuttingly.
Nikolai thinks he has gone too far. "Naturally I did not think of
that," he begins; "the actions of a great artist, of a genius----"
But there Lensky interrupts him.
"Spare me this genius; I am sick of being eternally pursued with this
word," he cries. "I will be judged as a man with Kasin. As a man, what
have I in common with this frivolous egoist, who first ran through his
own and his wife's property, and then lived on still poorer devils,
while he went about the world without troubling himself that his wife,
his child, meanwhile suffered from hunger, without asking if they were
well or ill; while I"--he drew a deep breath--"while I have tormented
myself, worried myself about you my whole life long? All that you
possess I won with my head and hands. God knows, I desired little for
myself, but for you nothing was good enough. And if one of you wanted
anything, I left everything and came from the ends of the earth to look
after you--" He stops, out of breath.
"And you stayed with us as long as you were worried about us," says
Nikolai, softly. "Yes, father, you were boundlessly generous to
us, and still miserly. You never denied us anything, and still
everything--yourself!"
"H-m! and did you miss me?" asks Lensky, harshly, quite repellantly,
and looks at his son sideways, mistrustfully.
"Very much!" replied Nikolai.
Lensky had not expected that; the short, simple words went deep to his
heart. He changed color, rose, walked up and down a number of times,
and at length remained standing before Nikolai, and laid his hand on
his shoulder.
"I know that I was in the wrong," says he, in a changed, indescribably
gentle voice. "I do not deserve any children such as you are. If you
had both turned out quite badly, I still could not have wondered. But
you have but another's blood in your veins, and--and--" [....than you]
and lays his hand over his eyes, then he [...e her, a ...] foot. "I
have neglected you, that is true [... ..u] must not imagine--" Again he
pauses, [...] after awhile he continues: "As regards Mascha, God knows
I should like to have my little lark about me, but with me it is really
somewhat different than with--well, with Kasin. Kasin has his brilliant
position and lives in St. Petersburg; but I--to-day I am in Paris,
to-morrow in Berlin, the next day in Vienna. How, then, can I take a
young girl about with me?"
"Is it, then, necessary that you should still so torment yourself?"
remarks Nikolai gently, quite pleadingly.
Lensky is silent.
And Nikolai, who, in spite of his early knowledge of life, is still an
inexperienced idealist, thinks he has persuaded his father, hopes to
win him entirely to the plan laid out for him. "You could certainly
settle down now," says he. "I have planned that so finely. You could
have an old relative, Marie Dimitrievna, for instance, mamma's cousin,
who is sympathetic to you, to keep house for you; and under the united
influence of your fame and Mascha's charm, your home in St. Petersburg
or Moscow would become a true paradise. You could be so gay and happy,
so petted and honored in your old age, if you only would not grudge
yourself rest!"
"Not grudge myself rest?" groaned Lensky. "Yes, if I could [en.. ...]
rest." And with a gesture peculiar to him, [...] this back his thick
hair with both hands from h[...] and [...], he adds: "Ask what you will
of me, [only ...rer dev...] I should sit still; that I can do no more
[..." ...bli...] is silent for awhile, then, with hoarse, hollow voice, as
if in a dream, he begins anew: "Yes, if they had left me your mother,
perhaps it would have been different; just at that time, before our
separation, I began to be weary of the dancing-bear life: with her, I
perhaps could have led a respectable old age. But you knew better what
was suited to her than she herself. You pointed out to her what would
never have occurred to her of herself, poor angel!--that it was a shame
to have patience with me. Please yourself with the result! You have
killed her and me. But of what use to bring up again the old grief,
what use to reproach others? It is all my fault. Now nothing can be
changed. I am what I am; I can no longer subdue myself. I cannot be
without women and applause," says he, brutally. "Be as horrified as you
will, I cannot, I cannot. I will some time die with my bow in my hand,
and can be happy if I am not hissed before that!"
His breath fails him. He is silent. They stand opposite each other,
father and son, gazing into each other's eyes. Never before has Nikolai
seen a face which expresses a more incurable sadness. Why does he
understand now, just now, in spite of the inconsolable confession which
his father has just made to him, the unescapable charm which he
exercises on all men not fish-blooded?
Something of his thoughts are mirrored in his features. The polite mask
has disappeared, and for the first time Lensky feels that it is his own
flesh and blood that stands before him; for the first time he sees not
only a young diplomat, dressed in the most correct English style, but
his son, and in the features of the grown young man he finds something
of the dear little face of the boy who used to spring joyfully out to
meet him when he came home, who was so proud if he could show his
father the slightest service, who boasted so imposingly to his
playmates of his father's fame. He thinks of the tall, pale youth whose
ideal he was until the day when Nikolai began to understand, and his
bright eyes suddenly saddened with the hardest suffering that a young
man can experience, the pain of being obliged to see a flaw in the one
who is highest to him.
And from that time it was like an illness to the boy. He had learned to
understand life so soon that it had made him old before his time. From
his sixteenth year, and before that, he had carried about with him the
grief of his poor, idolized mother. And Lensky reproached him for
having lost his freshness.
Suddenly he takes his son by both shoulders and draws him to his
breast--for the first time in years.