Gzhatski’s good wish, however, was not destined to be fulfilled. Was it
the music or the black coffee that was to blame? It is difficult to say.
But however it may be, Irene found it impossible to go to sleep. She
tried drinking sugared water, applied cold compresses to her head, turned
from side to side, got up and paced the room, opened the window—all in
vain, for sleep obstinately refused to answer her call. At last, towards
four o’clock in the morning, she threw on her dressing-gown, sat down
on the sofa with a book, and hoped to fall asleep with the dawn, as
frequently happened to her after a wakeful night.
Even the book, however, failed to interest her—her excited brain refusing
to follow the tangled thread of the sugary English novel. Leaving
the heroine to drink a twentieth cup of tea on the lawn in company
with the hero, who had just won a set of tennis, Irene threw down the
book and lost herself in her own thoughts. Russia, her departure from
Petrograd, her first impressions of Rome, Père Etienne, her meeting with
Gzhatski—all this and many other confused recollections passed through
her mind.
“How unexpectedly everything has arranged itself,” she thought, with a
quiet smile. “How foolish we all are when we make plans, and arrange and
fuss and worry, and seriously imagine we can direct our own destinies!
God does everything in His own way, and always for the best, since our
needs and our characters are far better known to Him than to ourselves.
There was I, for instance, imagining that I had nothing more to live
for, and, suddenly, God sent me so incomparable a lover, so immense a
happiness. In my fairest dreams, I had never seen so ideal a husband—so
handsome, so clever, so good, so noble. What a contrast, indeed, between
him and the worthless Petrograd officials, with their vulgar ambitions,
their greed for money, and their mean and petty spites and jealousies! My
noble Sergei! You are like the sun, in comparison to those worms!
“And he has such high ideals!” continued Irene dreamily to herself. “How
severely he judged that unhappy woman! A little too severely perhaps, but
that only proves how seriously he looks upon love. Oh! my dear one, my
dear one!
“All the priests were wrong when they found my faith pagan. I knew I
was right! God wanted to try me with long and dark years of despair
and suffering, but finding that I was not embittered, and that I had
remained, in spite of everything, honest and good, He has sent me this
wonderful happiness as a reward. My faith was the right one, my God has
triumphed!”
Irene rejoiced and exulted, and life had never seemed so glorious to
her before. Suddenly she felt that this was the happiest moment of her
existence, and that nothing still happier could or would ever be. She
rose, opened the door leading to the balcony, and stepped out. It was
still dark, but one could already distinguish the trees, and there were
grey streaks in the sky.
“Soon the sun will rise,” thought Irene. “How lovely the view must be
from the Casino Terrace!”
The idea of seeing the sun rise attracted her. “I have lived all this
time, and have never once seen it,” she said to herself. “How surprised
Sergei will be when I tell him my impressions!”
Irene dressed hurriedly, and, having thrown a cloak over her dress and
a scarf over her hair, stepped softly out into the corridor. All was
quiet, and a grey streak of light was filtering through the glass door
leading into the garden. Like a ghost, Irene slipped along the passage,
when, suddenly, the slight movement of a door on the right attracted
her attention. The door gradually opened, softly, slowly, carefully.
Something guilty and horrible seemed suggested by this carefulness. Irene
stopped still in the shadow of a large cupboard, her eyes riveted on the
moving door.
At last it stood half-way open, and yesterday’s Carmen-like beauty
appeared on the threshold. She wore a lace dressing-gown, and her long,
wavy hair hung in heavy coils down her back. The beauty glanced to right
and to left along the passage, then turned round with a whispered word,
and out of the room issued—Gzhatski! He, too, whispered something, and
they both laughed softly. Stepping carefully on tiptoe over the carpet,
Sergei Grigorievitch stole towards the staircase, and disappeared round
its bend. The beauty closed her door.…
Poor Irene’s knees shook, and all but gave way under her. Leaning against
the wall, with hardly strength enough to drag one foot before the other,
she staggered back to her room, and fell, almost lifeless, on the sofa.
The sun had long since risen and was forcing its way in through the
shutters. The birds had long been singing, noise and movement were in the
air, everywhere people were laughing and talking, but Irene still lay
prone and motionless. Thoughts were rushing wildly through her head, but
she could not disentangle them. Slowly, gradually, she began to realize
the full force of the terrific blow that had fallen on her.
“So that is what you are like,” she murmured childishly. “And I had
believed in you so completely, and had placed you so high.…”
For a moment the voice of reason tried to pacify her. “But this is
nothing more than a man’s adventure, a prank, a caprice after a gay
supper,” it whispered seriously. But Irene paid no attention. “If it were
only the supper,” she argued, “why did not Sergei come to _her_, to his
bride? What cared she for marriage ceremonies? Did she not, before God,
belong to Gzhatski soul and body? But no, he had not come to her. He
considered her old and ugly and repulsive!”
This thought filled Irene with such an agony of despair that she slipped
from the sofa to the carpet, rolled about and knocked her head against
the floor, striving by this means to deaden her unbearable pain. “You are
old, you are ridiculous, you are hideous, in spite of your fashionable
dresses!” she exclaimed wildly to herself, and, rising from the carpet,
she tottered towards the looking-glass, and gazed disgustedly at her own
tear-stained, tortured, suddenly aged and disfigured reflection.
“So this is the part that has been allotted to you in Sergei’s life!” she
hissed. “You are the ideal, the image of his mother, the statue of purity
that stands on a pedestal surrounded by respect and homage! I am sick to
death of this eternal respect! I want _love_—one month, one day, one hour
of _love_! But no—love belongs only to such as Carmen; never will it fall
to my lot! Oh! if this is so, if this is so, I do not want to live!”
A bitter resentment against God took possession of Irene’s soul. “What
is the object of this mockery?” she groaned. “Thou knowest that if I had
entered a convent I should have been an exemplary nun. Of what use was
it to distract me from my purpose, and send me a hope of happiness, only
to shatter it cruelly with a derisive laugh? As if I had not suffered
enough without this! All my life has been nothing but suffering, nothing
but pain. But to Thee, this seemed insufficient—there was still this
last refinement of torture to apply! But who art Thou in the end, thou
mighty torturer of men’s souls? Thou art no God, no just and generous
Being, such as He whom my imagination had created. No—Thou art a vampire,
sucking the blood of men’s hearts! But I will be even with Thee yet. I
will prove myself the stronger of the two. I will kill myself, and so
deprive Thee of the joy of torturing me.”
“Pull yourself together,” whispered reason. “Look at life more soberly.
Your Sergei is not perhaps as depraved as it would seem. There was
nothing to prevent his passing all his life in the company of beautiful
Carmens, and yet you know how he has been struggling all the winter
to win _you_. That was because he felt that only you could give him
happiness. Cannot you, in return, struggle a little for _him_? Will you
not try with the strength of your love to keep alight in him the divine
spark that burns in every human soul? You are pure and virtuous, and
therefore stronger than all the Carmens in the world. Victory belongs to
you, and not to them!”
“No, no, no!” answered Irene. “I cannot, and will not—for I do not love
him any more. He is repulsive to me. I loved a strong, honest, ideal man.
What do I want with this pitiful wretch, who has not enough strength of
mind to follow the dictates of his own conscience? Could I ever forget
the look of that contemptible, cowardly figure, stealing guiltily along
the passage after an iniquitous interview with his loathsome associate!
His bright image in my heart is shattered for ever, never again can I
look at him in the old way.”
The savage beast that Gzhatski had once mentioned to Irene had awakened
in her, and growled and roared, its appetite roused and unsatisfied!…
“I will drown myself—throw myself from the rocks above the Monaco
gardens!” she thought. But the idea of going out into the sunshine and
facing the triumphant glory of Southern nature, caused her to frown
nervously.
“They are all happy out there,” she muttered angrily. “Very well, they
can be as happy as they like. It is all the same to me. I must do away
with myself here, in this dark room.”
Her glance swept the walls in search of a nail, and returned to the
table, arrested by a glass of pinkish water.
On arriving at Monte Carlo Irene had developed, on account of the strong
sea air, a slight rash on her face. Having just at that time been very
particular about her appearance, she had applied to a doctor, who had
given her a lotion composed of a solution of sublimate, with the warning
that it was a strong poison, for external application only. Irene had
prepared the solution each evening, in readiness for use the following
morning, and a glassful of it was now standing temptingly on her table.
She approached. In her imagination she saw frightful tortures and frantic
pains.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” she whispered to herself encouragingly. “Are you
such a coward? What are a few hours of physical pain compared to the
unbearable mental sufferings which, with your tiresome good health, might
last another forty years! And however cruel your sufferings have been
till now, at least you had some faith in God, in His miracles and His
power. What would life be like now, when even this last straw of comfort
has been taken from you?”
Irene shuddered. Struggling with the animal instinct of “Life at all
costs,” she alternately stretched out her hand towards the glass, and
withdrew it again. Suddenly a strange thought came into her mind.
“Could it be that Nature, foreseeing the possibility of her having
children by Gzhatski, and finding it necessary to protect these future
children from inheriting her moral disease, from suffering, from leading
useless, miserable lives and spreading darkness and despair along their
path, had purposely sent her out to see the sun rise that morning, and
was now hurrying her to drink the glass of poison?”
A strong feeling of resentment accompanied this thought.
“But why such tender solicitude for these unborn creatures?” thought
the unfortunate girl, “and such cold, cruel indifference to me and my
sufferings?”
And she felt inclined to upset the glass, throw away the tempting poison,
and live on, just to spite Nature.…
There was a knock at the door.
“Irene Pavlovna, are you still asleep?” Gzhatski’s gay voice resounded in
the passage. “Do get up and come out! It is a glorious morning, just like
the one Fett[3] sings about. Do you remember?
“‘I have brought to thee a greeting
From this rosy summer morn;
Come! the golden hours are fleeting.…’”
The blood rushed to Irene’s head.
“He is gay and happy!” she thought. “In whose arms has he gleaned this
joy?”
And such an insufferable sense of insult and of irony conveyed itself to
her mind through Gzhatski’s light-hearted greeting, that with a sudden
impulse she seized the glass and swallowed the poison in one draught.
The door opened, and Gzhatski entered.
“Oh! you are quite ready!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you answer? There
I stood, like a Spanish hidalgo, declaiming at your door! What is the
matter? Why do you look so tragic?”
Irene looked at him in silence, and crossed her arms on her chest.
“I saw you come out from that room at dawn,” she said, in a low whisper
and with, trembling lips.
“You saw?…” And Gzhatski blushed deeply. “Well, then. Of course you
now think I am a scoundrel. I am not going to try and justify myself.
I ask you only one thing—do not, for Heaven’s sake, lower yourself in
my eyes by being jealous of that disgusting creature. If only you could
understand what an abyss separates you from her! To me she is not a
woman. She is—a glass of whisky that I must drink sometimes, a cigarette
that one has the need of smoking at certain moments.… Forgive me—I have
no right to tell you these things. But it is incredible that you girls
can pass through life without understanding them. What am I to say, how
am I to prove to you that that miserable worm simply does not exist for
me? If it can please you, let us go immediately to the North Cape or to
Central Africa. She will not follow us there! What is the matter? Oh!
what is it? What is it?”
Irene had fallen to the ground with a cry, and was writhing on the
carpet. Gzhatski fell on his knees beside her and caught her up in his
arms.
“Irene! Irene! My darling! My dearest one! Tell me. What is it? Don’t
frighten me so!”
“I am lost!” whispered Irene in terror, clinging spasmodically to
Gzhatski, and only just then realizing to the full what she had done to
herself. “I am dying; I have poisoned myself with sublimate!”
“Poisoned yourself! How? Purposely? Because of that accursed Frenchwoman?”
“Yes!” whispered Irene shamefacedly.
Gzhatski gazed at her for a moment in horror.
“Oh! madness! madness!” he cried helplessly.
Then, regaining his presence of mind, he tore himself from her embrace,
and rushed to the door.
“A doctor! A doctor!” His voice rang wildly through the corridor.
“Too late—too late!” muttered Irene. And the agony set in.
[3] A famous Russian poet.