It was not an especially good dinner that Mascha set before her father,
and still she had evidently taken pains with it. But the cooking was of
that extemporaneous, not well-organized kind which betrays the
household where cooking is done for the wife and children only, in
consequence of which no especial care is taken, and every culinary
luxury forms an exception. The wines, on the contrary, were excellent;
the service strikingly correct. Baerenburg appeared in a dress coat, and
Mascha also wore evening dress.
In every particular was betrayed the unhomelike one-sidedness of a
household in which everything revolves round a spoiled, discontented
man who mostly seeks his amusements out of the house.
Baerenburg tried to show his best side. He had all sorts of attentions
as host, for his father-in-law, and called Mascha jesting pet names.
But still he treated her with the uncertain, tentative tenderness of a
man who feels himself in the wrong to his wife, which did not escape
Lensky.
About an hour after dinner Baerenburg excused himself after he had
offered his father-in-law an especially good cigar, and had kissed his
wife's hand and forehead.
Mascha invited her father to play bezique with her. He consented. But
they were both so absentminded, played so foolishly, marked so
confusedly, that they very soon, teasing each other with their mutual
faults, lay down the cards.
Now Lensky absently builds card-houses on the table; Mascha crochets
diligently on a child's dress.
"H-m! Your husband goes out often in the evening?" he asks, after a
long, thoughtful silence.
"Yes," Mascha answers, calmly.
"And you? Do you go out much?"
"I? I am occupied with the baby."
"The child claims much of your time?"
"Yes," whispers Mascha, and a particularly tender expression creeps
over her mouth. "But she is charming--or does she only seem so to me?"
"To me also," assures Lensky. "Just as you looked at her age."
"I hope that she will fare better than I." The young wife lowers her
head, blushing deeply, still more over her work, and draws the little
dress destined for Natascha to her lips.
Lensky overthrows all his card-houses with an impatient gesture. "You
prefer her to Harry?" he asks.
"Yes--I think--she is so loving, so tender, and looks so entirely like
our family. I certainly love the boy also, but I cling to the little
one, as to Colia and the remembrance of my dead mother."
Lensky drums in silence on the table for a while, then he begins: "Yes,
yes, that is all very beautiful; but you are becoming one-sided,
Mascha. The consequence is that your husband is too emancipated from
you. You will rue that later."
Mascha does not answer a word. Ever more diligently her active fingers
busy themselves with the white wool.
"You trouble yourself too little about him," says he, and looks at her
sharply.
She crochets and is silent.
"Or"--with a burst of his old, untamable violence, Lensky strikes the
table--"or he troubles himself too little about you."
There must have been some mistake in Mascha's work. She unravels a
great piece of it. Her father draws the crochet work from her hand.
"Leave that stupid stuff," cries he, angrily. "You cannot deceive me
with your awkward, helpless comedy. I will see clearly into this
affair. What position do you really occupy with your husband?"
Mascha passes her hand wearily over forehead and temples. Lensky is
frightened at the unspeakable sadness which he reads on her pale face,
now, when the brilliance of joy at seeing him again is gone from the
large eyes.
"What position?" murmured she. "The position of a woman who must be
thankful for her life long to her husband, for that he has saved her
with the protection of his personality from a horrible shame."
"He ill-treats you?"
"No, no! All roughness is foreign to his nature. I have never had to
complain of a harsh word from him since we were married; yes, he is
even very tender to me." She pauses. "I am not disagreeable to him--"
Then she continues, slowly, with more evident bitterness at every word:
"But--but he is ashamed of me."
She rises, and pulls at the lamp-shade. Her father confusedly strokes
her hand, then suddenly springing up, he cries out: "You poor child!"
and clasps her to his breast. She bursts into fierce, not to be quieted
sobs, and yet is happy as she had not been for years. What a feeling of
warm security in these strong arms! What happiness to thus lean on a
man whose caresses are not embittered for us by their compassionate
graciousness, who loves us without criticism, blindly.
"Mascha, it is not to be borne that you torment yourself so," says he.
"I will not consent. Leave him, and come to me."
But then she slips out of his arms, and says, firmly: "No, father; I
will stay at my post."
She smooths her hair mechanically. After a short pause, she continues:
"I often felt urged to tell you what makes my life so sad. Ah! how I
longed for your compassion! And I wrote long letters to you, in which I
confessed all, and then tore them up again, because, in the last
moment, fear of saddening you conquered everything. But now, as you
have guessed it, I will once--once--complain of my grief. What I have
suffered in my married life, I cannot describe to you. I thought at
first it would be better if I had a child. When Harry came I was glad
that my husband was proud of him, but I felt that I was not necessary
to the child. Sometimes I told myself that I was in my husband's way,
that my death would bring about a reconciliation between him and his
parents. And once I was so restless and inconsolable that I was within
a hair's breadth of running away from him. I would even have left him
the boy. But--it was not the moment to run away, and when baby came I
knew that I must bear it, that no one could guard my treasure as I. No
one can replace a mother to her daughter, and even if Karl left her to
me, a separated wife is still only a discredited mother--a mother
without authority. And what is the position of the daughter of a
separated wife?--and a separated wife in my circumstances? I would
rather bear all the bitterness in the world than risk the future of my
child."
For a moment he is silent; then he takes her hand and draws it to his
lips. "You are right, Mascha!" said he. "Bear your cross patiently.
Nothing weighs more heavily upon one than the consciousness to have
forfeited the happiness of those whom one loves. All else is only a
trifle--all!"
* * * * *
Now he was in his room, the room which Mascha had prepared for him with
such loving care. For the first time in years he was in a home.
Everything about him was simple but home-like; a few flowers, a few
tasteful ornaments, several photographs in pretty little frames. Every
article of furniture had a physiognomy which bade him welcome. A
feeling of home-like warmth and satisfaction overcame him. He looked
about him with emotion. She had taken such pains, poor Mascha! There
stood a picture of Colia as a four-year-old boy; there she was herself,
as a baby, with bare little arms; and there, everywhere, pictures of
Natalie. She had collected everything that could please him. He could
have felt so happy if--if--ah! He held his hand before his eyes. How
beautiful it might have been, and how horrible it all was! His son he
had not seen since that fearful farewell evening in the Hotel
Westminster; all tenderness had vanished from their relations. At
regular intervals he received stiff, formal letters from Nikolai, in
which the young diplomat related the most important events of his
life--that was all. Lensky knew that Nikolai advanced rapidly and
brilliantly in his career; he guessed that his son, in spite of all,
felt dissatisfied, and his heart remained closed to his father.
Mascha? That was quite different; she had never found anything to
criticise in him, her love had ever remained the same. But she was
unhappy, miserably unhappy--she, his darling, his idol. And whose fault
was it, then?
With the manner of a being weighed down by a burden, he sinks into an
arm-chair. What had he done? how was it, really? He had loved them all
so boundlessly--Natalie and the children--and still, what had really
driven him into this desolate, restless existence which resolved itself
into disgust and misery? It had always been the same, even in these
last years it had sometimes come over him; but now it was over, his
nature had entered upon a new phase, the wild thirst for pleasure was
quenched; he was weary--weary unto death.
He sought something supernatural to support him. A mysterious longing
tormented him. From without sounded the plashing of the waves,
monotonous, sad, hopeless, like the sobs of a rejected human being
driven out into the cold.
Had no one knocked on the window? He sprang up, flung open the window.
He trembled in every limb, cold sweat stood on his brow. The lamp threw
long, trembling, wavering rays of light on the rippling water. As if
built of shadows, like the ghosts of a city long dead, rose the palaces
in the moonlight, dimmed by drifting clouds. The sirocco brooded over
the lagunes. A soft breeze, the gentle warmth of a passing caress, blew
over his cheek. He heard the tender sound of a sympathetic human voice
close to his ear; it was Natalie's voice, but she spoke a strange
language. He did not understand her. His heart stopped beating in
breathless listening; he stretched out his arms--it was over, all
vanished, all was vacancy!
He closed his lips tightly and groped for a chair. For years, at times,
the same alluring, incomprehensible fancy pervaded him. The first time,
he had fought against it with the whole strength of his intellect, had
ascribed it all to an overexcitement of his nerves; now he firmly
believed in a supernatural apparition. She came ever nearer, but he
could never reach her. He tried to think of other things. He sought a
book, a newspaper, which he might read to distract his mind, but found
none. He remembered that he had left a new romance by Daudet, which he
had glanced over before dinner, when Mascha had left him to dress, in
the drawing-room. With a light in his hand, he went to get the book. He
fancied that Mascha had long since retired. To his great astonishment,
he heard voices in the drawing-room. He opened the door. There sat the
young couple. Baerenburg was very pale. His head was bowed. An
expression of deep shame lay on his finely cut face. One saw plainly
that this was no bad man, but only a weak one, who, torn from his
natural condition of life, could not thrive in strange ground. A thick
necklace of pearls lay on the table.
At Lensky's entrance, Mascha, as well as her husband, turned her head.
She had evidently been crying, but still tried to take on a pleasant,
indifferent expression. It went to Lensky's heart to see how she
restrained herself to spare him a pang.
"Do not force yourself to smile," said he, going straight up to her.
"It is of no use." He seized the pearl necklace and looked at it with
peculiar emotion. "I have understood!"
For a moment there was utter silence, then Baerenburg began,
constrainedly: "You must not take the situation so desperately--it is
only an inconvenient moment--naturally very painful to me, very----"
Lensky interrupted him. "It is better that we do not speak of it,"
cried he, crimson with restrained rage, and with hoarse, quite gasping
voice; "if I once begin, I would say things to you which a nobleman
could not pardon me, and I do not wish to quarrel with you--not on
account of my child--but--but--" He grasped his throat with both hands.
"No, I shall suffocate; it must out!"
"Father, hush, for God's sake!" cried Mascha. "You do him an injustice.
Think how hard it was for him--another in his position--" She leaned
against her father, pleadingly, tearfully.
"She is right," he murmured. "Who knows, another would have perhaps
been still worse, still worse! But now leave me alone with my child; it
would be better."
Baerenburg left the room. "He gambles!" said Lensky, looking Mascha
straight in the eyes.
Mascha lowered her eyes. "Only since our marriage," murmured she.
"The miserable fellow!" burst out Lensky.
"Do not be too severe with him," said Mascha. "He is indeed almost as
much to be pitied as I. Ah, father, father!" She wrung her hands, then
suddenly, with a gesture of unspeakable despair, pushing back the hair
from her temples, she cried: "If I only had the courage to hold my
Natascha close to my heart and kiss her for a last time, and spring
down into the water with her--there--" She points to a window; she has
evidently already busied herself with the thought. "But how can I have
the courage when she smiles at me, and twitches her little limbs so
gayly, and so rejoices in life!"
Lensky laid his arm round the young wife and leaned the head of the
unhappy woman on his shoulder. "It will be better; he will change in
time. You only must not yield too much to him; you must take the reins
in your hand, must have head and character for two. Forget the old
story, demand your right of him; then all will go well, believe me. As
for your pecuniary affairs, I will take counsel. Only this--" He took
the pearl necklace which had remained on the table and let it slide
caressingly through his fingers. "Do not give this away; that you must
not inflict upon me--only not that. I will take counsel, do not worry
yourself."