In the fire-place of Nita's pretty little drawing-room crackles a gay
wood fire. Everything in the room is attractive and pretty, as usual.
In the midst of these cosey surroundings sits Sonia, shivering, with
bent head. Nita enters the room, goes up to her, and lays a hand on her
shoulder. Sonia looks up; her eyes meet those of her friend almost
anxiously.
"Ah! you know it already?" murmurs she. Nita nods. For a moment they
are both silent.
"It is horrible!" says Sonia, dully, and shuddering.
"Yes," says Nita, shortly. She sits down opposite Sonia. "Do they know
who it was?" she asks after a while.
"No," replied Sonia. "She will not tell. My father has spoken to
Barbara. Nothing can be gotten out of her. When they first asked her,
she replied: 'It is no use, and they would harm him.' She does not wish
that any harm should happen to him. Now she says nothing at all. She
lies the whole time with her face to the wall, silent. Really, there is
something generous in her silence."
"How does he bear it?" asks Nita, suddenly, quite startlingly.
"Barbara told papa that he--you mean Lensky?--was completely broken. At
first, he could have almost killed Mascha from rage; since then, he
sits near her, strokes her hands, her hair, and calls her little pet
names. But she listens to nothing--lies there silently with set teeth."
Nita lowers her head; then she, absent-mindedly, throws a piece of wood
on the fire.
"And we imagined that the child had a fancy for Baerenburg!" says Sonia.
"Thus we explained her striking depression; but no, Baerenburg was
betrothed. We were evidently on a false track. It must have been one of
our exiles--a nihilist with revolutionary moral and political ideas."
"No, no!" Nita shakes her head, and looks thoughtfully before her. "It
was Karl!" she cries out. "Do you remember how, that time, at the
Jeliagins' reception, when Mrs. Joyce brought the news of Karl's
betrothal, Mascha let a cup fall, and tottered out half swooning? It
must be Karl!"
"It is not possible!" says Sonia. "He was betrothed. Do you then
believe that a half-way respectable man would be capable of such an
action? Ah, it is horrible, horrible! Poor Nikolai!"
Nita does not hear her.
"My father insists that I shall go to Vienna with him to-morrow,"
begins Sophie, whom nothing can long rob of her inward equipoise. "Will
you let your maid help me pack?"
Nita does not hear.
After a while Sophie leaves the room,
Nita glows with burning heat. She cannot bear the warm room, and goes
out on the terrace. A sharp breeze sobs in the trees of the park, and
has a refreshing effect upon her.
Why can she not forget? She has emerged blameless from the trial. How
can the affair further concern her? Another would have simply shaken
off the remembrance of this unpleasant experience. But she was not like
others. From childhood she had occupied one of those strange positions
which cause in all young people left to themselves a tendency to
strongly exaggerated feelings.
Her father died young. Her mother never ceased to mourn him, and after
his death completely withdrew from the world. Except a few summer
months which she regularly passed with her eldest brother, Karl
Baerenburg's father, she lived year in and year out in a picturesque
villa an hour's journey from Vienna.
Nita grew up solitary, under the influence of such a mother and the
instruction of Miss Wilmot. The great passion of her youth was music.
She secretly cherished the wish to become an artiste and astonish the
world with her performances. Sunk in an enthusiastic study of the art,
and reading all that is poetic and unworldly, she grew up without girl
friends, without all childish amusements. The great wealth of her
stormy young heart remained untouched.
The legendary fame of the devil's violinist penetrated even to her. She
saw a picture of him--the strange face that was not handsome, and which
one could never forget if one had once seen it, made a deep impression
on her young mind. From that time she worshipped the strange musician,
whom she had never heard and never seen; thought of him, dreamed of
him, wrote enthusiastic childish letters to him--which she never
sent--and sang his songs. Her mother, who was still more given to
exaggeration than her daughter, and just as little worldly wise, smiled
at this enthusiasm and gave Nita Lensky's picture for a birthday gift.
Nita placed it on her writing-table and daily garlanded it with fresh
flowers as long as she could find one out-doors.
She knew that he was married, and was proud for him that his wife was a
princess, and a great beauty, and that she loved him idolatrously. Then
she heard other things about him: that his distinguished wife had left
him; that he wandered about the world, without rest or peace, bitter
and desperate. A warm, deep compassion mingled with her enthusiasm.
Her whole family called her Senta, and did not ascribe the slightest
importance to the matter.
Then it was announced that Lensky would give three concerts in Vienna,
which he had avoided for some years. A true fever of excitement took
possession of Nita. The Baroness Sankjewitch did her utmost to fulfil
her daughter's wish, to take her to one of the concerts. To go to
Vienna and return by railroad was out of the question, as the concert
took place late in the evening. She decided, therefore, to pass the
night with Nita at a hotel.
At last came the concert. He appeared. He had never been handsome, and
was no longer young. His hair was gray, and his fifty years were
written plainly enough in deep furrows on his face. But he looked
different from other men. There was something powerful and attractive
in his personality, and a mysterious magnetism which could not be
described or explained. Was Nita disappointed? No. She was more
interested in him than ever. Only intensely musical natures could
sympathize with the rapture amounting to pain with which she listened
to the magic tones of his violin.
The next morning they were to return home. But on the same evening,
after the concert, in the reading-room of the hotel, they made Madame
Njikitjin's acquaintance. She was a still handsome elderly lady, with
correct bearing and very charming manners. She won the Baroness' heart
at once, and a few acquaintances gave her the best reports of the
family of the stranger.
She laughed at Nita's enthusiasm, flattered the young girl, flattered
the mother, and finally promised to take Nita with her to Lensky's two
other concerts, for which no places were to be bad. The Baroness was
boundlessly inexperienced. The day after the concert she left Vienna,
leaving Nita under the Njikitjin's protection, who had promised to
personally escort the young girl back to her mother.
The same day, Nita learned to know her great man at Madame Njikitjin's,
who laughingly described to him the young girl's enthusiasm, and called
her nothing but Senta. And Nita only looked at him with her clear,
childish eyes, and could not say a word. He must have been of stone not
to be touched by this pure and deep enthusiasm. He was not of stone.
She pleased him--pleased him unusually. No one could be so charming as
he if he wished.
With other great men, we have a stiff neck from looking up to their
unapproachable loftiness. But nothing of the kind with him. The
timidity which had at first oppressed her wholly vanished before the
winning heartiness of his manner. How pleasantly he listened to her gay
little anecdotes! Sometimes he leaned a little forward in the course of
conversation, gazed into her eyes, then suddenly kissed her hand and
laughed--laughed without her having the slightest suspicion of what had
been so droll in her story. At coming and going he kissed her on the
forehead; when he talked with her, he sometimes took her hand in his
and stroked it kindly, paternally. She was proud of every little
distinction. And while she felt a kind of reverence for him, Lensky's
surrounders began to mock and laugh at her enthusiasm. She did not
notice it at that time, but later, every significant look came back to
her memory, and for a year sent the blood to her face.
When the day of farewell came, she was unspeakably sad and did not
conceal it. Instead of calming her with a pleasant word, he smiled
uneasily, constrainedly, at her emotion.
He promised to see her that evening at Njikitjin's, in the hotel. When
he came, the Russian was not at home. It did not occur to Nita to ask
herself if she should receive him under the circumstances. He was
different from usual. He fell into brooding silence; now suddenly
seized her hand, then freed it. He sprang up and walked uneasily about
the room. Suddenly he sat down near her and took both her hands in his.
Something in his face startled her and she drew them away. He seized
them and kissed them. Then--then he said something which admitted of
but one interpretation. He--to her!
Beside herself, she sprang up to leave the room. But before she had
reached the door, he came up to her. Was that really he--the man with
the red face and shining eyes? Even to-day the desperate cry of fear
which she gave rings in her ears. Steps approached from without; he let
her go.
Yes, that was the end of all the touching kindness, of all the
heaven-aspiring enthusiasm.
The next day the Njikitjin was to have taken her back to her mother.
She did not wait for that. By the earliest train, she secretly hurried
from Vienna. A few hours later she lay in bed with a violent fever.
When, six weeks later, still very weak, and holding to the furniture
for support, she entered her little boudoir, dust lay everywhere thick
and gray, even on his picture, so that it was quite unrecognizable. She
took the picture and wished to burn it. She could not. As she held it
over the coals, it seemed to her as if she would throw something living
into the fire--and she only hid it and did nothing further.
For a full year after her recovery she could bear no music. She had
liked to draw from childhood, without thinking much of this talent with
her passion for music, but in her great depression it served to
distract her thoughts. At her urgent request, her mother left Austria
and settled in Paris with her daughter, who now devoted herself to
painting.
When her mother died, the despair which Nita felt at this loss for the
first time completely pushed the old recollection in the background.
She had scarcely thought of it until the day when for love of Sonia she
had let herself be persuaded to attend Lensky's concert. When she heard
him play, when at those wonderful tones the old intoxication
overpowered her, then also awoke a horror of the fascination which this
man had for her, and with this horror the great hatred which she had
felt for years, a boundless loathing. She wished him ill with all her
heart; she, who formerly would not have hurt a hair of any one's head,
could not think of anything that would be painful enough to
sufficiently wound him.
She is revenged; the blow has fallen! But what is that? She looks back,
the recollection of the fearful scene makes no impression on her,
shrinks together, grows dim--it is gone. She seeks her hatred in her
heart, and cannot find it.