There is a great uneasiness in the ladies' studio in the Avenue
Frochot. In spite of its being merely the beginning of December,
already many of the students have begun to think of the great yearly
exhibition of sending to the Salon.
Nita's sanctum has not caught the fever of acute striving for effect in
the adjoining room.
Sophie still paints with the same conscientious industry and touching
lack of skill at a skull, and Nita--Nita is quite sunk in the study of
a new model, over which she is unusually enthusiastic. The model is
none other than the brown-curled child whose acquaintance she recently
made on the sidewalk when Nikolai watched her. Just now she has gone to
look at the different attempts in the adjoining school, when she hears
a short scream, and a rattling, banging noise in her room.
"Pardon me, ladies," says she, while she turns her head and listens;
"if I am not mistaken something has come to grief in my room, probably
my little Lucca della Robbia. What is it?" says she, opening the door
of her studio. A memorable sight meets her eyes then. In the middle of
the studio, her little hands clutching her temples with horror, stands
a young girl with the face of Ribera's Maria Egyptiaca, and stares down
at a skull which, broken in two pieces, lies at her feet.
"It is only my Cousin Mascha, who is afraid of the skull; she even
threw it on the floor," says Sophie, in her wonderfully phlegmatic
manner, and with that she stoops down for the pieces to fit them
together and put them in their place again.
"Oh! how can you touch the horrid thing?" says Mascha, holding her
hands over her eyes, and tapping her foot. "Oh, oh!"
"Poor little thing, how she trembles!" says Nita, compassionately,
while she goes up to Mascha. "Throw your stupid skull in the fire,
Sophie. You see that the child cannot bear the sight of it."
"That is very foolish; one should be over that at seventeen. It is very
hard to get skulls," replies Sophie, vexedly.
But Nita does not notice that. She has taken Mascha in her arms, and
caresses her like a mother who would calm an excited child. "So, dear
heart, the ugly thing is gone. You can open your pretty eyes. Poor
little soul!"
"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch is very good to you," now calls a young man's
voice.
Nita looks up and perceives Nikolai. Evidently the little beauty is his
sister. He bows, and turning to Mascha once more, he says: "And now
tell Fraeulein von Sankjewitch that you are sorry to have been so
ill-bred."
Mascha has wiped the tears from her eyes; she looks at Nita touchingly,
thankfully; then smiling, with the tender roguishness which adds so
much to the charm of her little personality, she says: "I am not sorry.
You would not have been so kind to me if I had been polite, would you?"
And with that she lays her arm somewhat shyly around Nita's neck and
presses her soft lips to the young artist's smooth cheeks. "I was
beside myself," says she. "Ah! I am so afraid of death! If only there
was no dying!"
"It is a peculiarity of hers. One must have a little patience with her
in that direction," explains Nikolai.
"Give us some tea, Sophie. That will give the child something else to
think of," says Nita, without noticing Nikolai's remark.
To-day, also, she is strikingly stiff and cold to him, so that he asks
himself: "What has she against me?" Nevertheless, she warms somewhat in
the course of conversation. The young man visibly gains ground with
her.
He is decidedly very agreeable in intercourse. He has the quiet
manners, easily adapting themselves to circumstances, of a true
gentleman. He talks well, without tasteless chattering. Nita listens
to him with interest, asks him all kinds of questions about Russia,
and, on the whole, treats him with the indifferent kindness of a
fifty-year-old woman to a boy.
The ladies in the next room have long left their work; twilight falls.
Still they talk. Sophie is quiet for the most part, listens,
comfortably and idly reclining in her easy-chair, to the conversation
of the two persons who are dearest to her, and wonders at them both
silently.
But Maschenka, whose mood has completely changed, and who has now
become immoderately gay, is not at all content to play the _role_ of
silent listener. Every moment her trilling, childish laugh, or some
strange little remark, interrupts Nita and Nikolai's earnest
conversation, so that finally Nikolai, who is always afraid that his
sister will be misunderstood, remarks:
"My little sister has lately been with relatives who were a little too
cold and formal to understand her exaggeration. One must not be
astonished if she is at times a little bit wild; she is like a little
brook, long held captive by winter, which, after a little bit of
sunshine has set it free, now doubly laughs and chatters and foams,
because it is so happy to be free of the heavy, oppressive ice. Are you
not, little goose?" And he takes Mascha by the chin.
"Do not make excuses because you have a charming sister," Nita hereupon
answers him. "I shall be glad if you will bring her to see me very soon
again."
* * * * *
If Nikolai's vexation at his sister's flight from Arcachon very
soon lost itself in tender emotion, on the contrary, the horror which
Sergei Alexandrovitch felt at this headlong self-will was of a much
more enduring quality. The tender, repentant letter with which
Maschenka begged the uncle from whose house she had fled to pardon her
over-haste, Sergei left unanswered. To Nikolai's note which, joined in
his sister's request, tried to excuse Mascha's fault a little, and
asked whether he might, after his father had left Paris, again bring
the child to Arcachon, the old bureaucrat replied that there would
be no talk of that. The condition of his nerves would not permit
him a second time to undertake the oversight of such an unreliable
being as Mascha. In his opinion the best thing would be to send her to
boarding-school.
This was also Nikolai's opinion under the circumstances. For the
present a stay in an ordinarily strict school seemed to him decidedly
more desirable for Mascha than a continued existence with the
Jeliagins.
He even succeeded in winning his father to this view, but when Mascha
learned what they planned for her future, she rebelled angrily,
desperately, and with anxious, touching tenderness for so long that
Lensky, in spite of all his son's representations, gave way to her. He
could not bear to see the little one unhappy. He formally begged her
pardon, with caresses and endearing words, that he had proposed
anything which had excited and vexed her. Nikolai shrugged his
shoulders and was powerless. But Mascha laughed gayly, happy at her
victory.
How happy she was at that time--from morning till evening, happy!
Except for the little tear intermezzo, she had never been so happy as
in the three weeks which passed between her arrival and her father's
departure from Paris.
Every morning he passed at his sister-in-law's house; usually he
remained to lunch. He sent his pretty daughter all the wonderfully
beautiful floral tributes which enthusiasts sent him, and besides that,
indulged her with imprudent, immoderate generosity. Again and again he
turned to Nikolai with the same: "Get me something for the child; she
is so bewitching when she is pleased. She rejoices like a gipsy!"
"I have something for you, Puss," said he, when he went to see her,
after she had greeted him, and handed her a package done up in paper,
usually an ornament that was much too costly for her youth.
"Ah! give it to me, papa," and then she tore off the wrapping with the
active impatience of a young, playful kitten, and opened the parcel.
Lensky watched her good-naturedly with smiling expectation, like a
great child that every day rejoices in playing the same trick--a
sparkle of two dark blue eyes, a gay, penetrating cry of joy, and two
soft, warm arms are thrown round his neck. But he presses his lips to
the great, wonderfully beautiful eyes again and again, and murmurs
something tender, incomprehensible, to the girl's curly hair.
"Really, do you love me much, papa?" said she once, and looked at him
in astonishment piercingly at his moved face.
"Have you ever doubted it?"
"Yes, often," she nodded, earnestly. "I thought to love mutually with
all one's heart was only for ordinary people like we others; but a
great genius like you only tolerates one love, and sometimes is pleased
without really returning it. But no; you really like me!"
"Oh! you foolish little monkey!" murmured he, and kissed each separate
dimple in her soft, white, child's hands.
Sometimes he came at ten o'clock in the morning. At that time he
frequently saw Barbara in a spotted morning dress, creeping about the
house armed with a duster, polishing and putting everything to rights.
He never saw Anna at such an early hour; at most, he heard her sharp
voice wounding her mother by some sharp, insulting expression. Not only
did she never help her mother in her domestic activity, no, she shut
herself up in her room in order not to see Barbara about it.
But whom Lensky very often found busy about the house with Madame
Jeliagin, was Mascha. Enveloped in a large blue apron, she appeared now
here, now there, as zealously as gayly trying to assist her poor,
sickly aunt; and what a capable, vigorous assistance! Her firm young
fingers arranged things quite differently from Barbara's trembling
hands. She climbed up on the furniture to remove cobwebs from the
picture frames, she polished the mirrors and dusted the ornaments,
practical and active as a housemaid by profession, and still laughing
with gay, fairy-like grace, as a little princess, as if it were all a
joke.
All the servants worshipped her; even the weary, stupid, tormented old
Aunt Jeliagin learned to love her. It would be hard not to love this
quick, lively, impetuous, but always kind-hearted little girl; only the
intolerable Anna did not.
But if one, on the one hand, could think of nothing more enchanting
than the girl, glowing with happy, tender young life, on the other
hand, one could hardly imagine anything more touching and noble than
Lensky in the hours passed with his little daughter.
If he now, as soon as his nature was aroused, lost all restraint, and
then the worst part of him showed itself rougher, and less vaguely than
formerly--rougher than could be understood in a civilized man--on the
other hand, as long as the evil in him slept, he showed himself nobler,
more blameless than formerly in his best moments.
What had formerly been united in him was now separated. Nikolai, who
frequently accompanied him to the Avenue Wagram, observed him in
astonishment.
This was not the same man who in the evening, greedily eating, and with
cynical, twinkling eyes, sat between some pair of hysterical
enthusiasts, to whom he permitted himself to say all that was coarse
and familiar--the man with the hard, joyless laugh, the two-sided wit,
the shameless scorn of men, and especially women.
No; the Lensky who in the morning took his pretty little daughter in
his arms, was a pale, somewhat weary and sad man, a man with a hoarse
but soft and rather low voice, a man who spoke little, but listened
pleasantly, who was always ready to interest himself in the most
foolish childishness.
After lunch he usually remained an hour or so, and played with Mascha.
Even his art he involuntarily changed for love of her. The wild fire
with which he enslaved his concert audiences was perhaps lacking, but
how tender, how delicate, how noble, became his playing if he felt the
gaze of the child's eyes filled with tears and enthusiasm resting upon
him.
She might accompany him! Ah! how proud she was if he called out a
hearty word of praise to her in the midst of his playing! And there was
no lack of opportunity to applaud her.
Frequently he let her play to him alone on the piano, listened to her
with the greatest patience, yes, with true pleasure. He made little
conscientious corrections, mingled with jests--really troubled himself
seriously with her instruction.
Nikolai, as child and youth, had in vain tormented himself musically,
only at length to separate _a l'aimable_ from the piano, the violin,
and the 'cello. Mascha, on the contrary, was incredibly talented in
music. What others attained by weary study, she had inherited. The
flexibility of her wrists, the smoothness of her touch, were something
at which Lensky could not cease to marvel.
How they rejoiced in each other, father and child!
The only hours of those three weeks disturbed by unrepulsable
melancholy were, for Mascha, those which she passed at her father's
concerts. Naturally, she never missed one; but, very pretty and
tastefully dressed, sat now with Colia, at other times with her aunt,
in an especially good place, which was reserved for her, and listened
attentively to every tone. In the hall there was no one--no, not even
among the many professional violinists who envied him his triumphs--who
had more plainly remarked the great change which began to take place in
the genial virtuoso than his idolizing daughter. She felt it every time
that he played falsely. She could have wept, her breath failed her, she
looked around the hall, frightened and yet defiantly.
But unconfusedly the Parisians raved over even the falsest tones with
the same enthusiasm. One kindled another with the same madly expressed
animation, until at length Mascha persuaded herself that she must have
heard falsely from anxiety for her father, and, carried away by the
noise, forgot all her grief.