"Well, I have," said Prilukoff, and he drew me out of the office.
At the top of the steps he stopped and looked me in the face. "What a
fortunate meeting!" he said. "Our lucky star must have brought it
about." With these words his brown eyes looked straight into mine. "Our
lucky star!" he repeated.
Merciful heaven, why did not a whisper, not a breath of warning come to
me then? Why did no tremor in my soul admonish me, no heavenly
inspiration hold me back? Nothing, nothing checked the smile upon my
lips, nor the words in which I gaily answered him:
"Our lucky star! So be it." And I took his arm.
The die of my destiny was cast. I went out on my way to destruction and
ruin.
There were many people and much music in the Métropole when we entered.
It is strange to think how all the memorable and significant hours of my
life are associated in my mind with the entrancing rhythm of
dance-music, with the lilting tunes of waltz, mazurka and polonaise.
All the tragedies, all the extravagances that convulsed my existence
bloomed up like tragic modern flowers in the hothouse of some
fashionable restaurant, under the feverish breath of a tzigane
orchestra.
So great became the power of this obsession over me, that no sooner did
I enter a restaurant where there were people, and lights, and the music
of stringed instruments, than I straightway felt as if I had lost my
senses. Under the influence of such an atmosphere all my thoughts
assumed disordered and extravagant forms. The tones of the violins
excited and electrified me; as the bows swept the quivering strings I
also quivered and vibrated, shaken with indescribable perturbation. The
waves of sound seemed to envelop me in a turbid vortex of sentiment and
sensibility.
Ah, if there had been more silence in my life, more shade, more
seclusion! It is not within the safe walls of the home, not at one's own
peaceful and inviolate hearth that perversity stirs to life and
catastrophe is born.
Oh! Tania, my only daughter, if the wishes of your sorrowful mother
could but reach you and her prayers for you be granted, they would
encompass with shade and silence your young and virginal heart.
And I--ah, if I could but go back to the white vacant land of childhood,
I would kneel down and entreat from heaven naught else but shade and
silence in my life....
But in the Café Métropole the blazing lights were lit, the orchestra was
swinging its unhallowed censer of waltz-music through the perfumed air
and the Scorpion was sitting before me drinking his tea and laughing.
"Do you remember how much afraid you were of me at the Strelna, when I
jumped from the divan and touched your shoulder? And afterwards--when you
found me asleep at the bottom of the sleigh?"
Yes, I remembered.
"And now you are no longer afraid of me?"
No. Now I was no longer afraid of him.
Fate, the Fury, standing behind me, must have laughed as with her
nebulous hand she covered my smiling eyes.