"I am not like all girls," said Natalie, laughing. "Most girls have
hearts like hand-organs, which every one can play; others have hearts
like AEolian harps, on which no one can play, and still they always
vibrate so sympathetically for the world; and still other girls--" she
interrupted herself to break a superfluous leaf from a magnolia twig.
The princess, who seemed to lay little weight on Natalie's naive
comparisons, fanned herself indifferently with her peacock fan, but
Lensky repeated, "Well, Natalie Alexandrovna, other girls----"
"Other girls have hearts like Amati violins; if a bungler touches them
there is a horrible discord; but if a true artist comes who understands
it, then----"
This exaggerated remark she had made in a voice trembling between
mockery and tenderness, and incessantly occupied with the arrangement
of her flowers.
Without ending the last sentence, she broke off, and bent her head to
the right to observe a combination of white roses and heliotrope with a
thoughtful look.
The princess yawned from heat and discontent. "Leave me in peace from
your musical comparisons, Natascha," said she. "Besides, I can assure
you that no one spoils a fine instrument quicker than one of your great
virtuosos. When I think how Franz Liszt ruined our Pleyel in a single
evening; it was no longer fit even for a conservatory."
"Violins are not ruined as quickly as pianos," said Natalie, laughing;
then, still speaking to the flowers, she said: "Don't you think, little
mother, that if such a piano had a soul, a mind, it would rather
rejoice to really live for once under the hands of a great master,
and even if it were to die of the joy, than merely to exist for a
half-century in a noble, charming room, as a carefully preserved
showpiece?"
Again it seemed to Lensky that she looked at him, and again she
turned away her head when their looks met. "You are astonished at this
great expenditure for flowers?" she remarked. "We expect guests this
evening--my cousins from St. Petersburg, the Jeliagins. You know them,
and I shall try to draw their critical looks away from the holes in the
furniture covering to these beautiful color effects. So! Now I have
finished; here are a few May-bells left for your button-hole. Ah!
really, you never wear flowers!"
"Give them to me," said he, contracting his brows gloomily. She smiled
at him without saying anything. Then something scratched at the door.
"Please open it, Boris Nikolaivitch," she asked.
He did so; her large dog, a gigantic Scotch greyhound, came in, and
immediately springing up on his beautiful mistress, he laid both front
paws on her shoulders. She took his heavy head between her slender
hands, and murmuring tender, caressing words to him, she kissed him
twice, three times, on the forehead.
Lensky took leave soon after without having mentioned his song cyclus.
His mind was in an uproar. "Is she only coquetting with me?" he asked
himself, "or--or--" A passionate joy throbbed in his veins, then
suddenly an icy shudder ran over him. "And if she is only like all the
others!"
At his departure Natalie had said to him: "You will come this evening,
Boris Nikolaivitch, in spite of this boring Petersburg invasion? I beg
you will, _vous serez le coin bleu de mon ciel!_"
* * * * *
The evening came.
A Roman sirocco evening, with an approaching thunderstorm that hung
heavily around the horizon and would not lift.
The heavily perfumed sultry air penetrated through the drawn curtains
into the Assanows' drawing-room. The Jeliagins had brought a couple of
Parisian friends with them, and naturally Pachotin was not missing. A
deathly _ennui_ reigned. They spoke of Parisian fashions, of the
Empress Eugenie's new court; they complained of the new cook in the
Hotel de l'Europe, and of the heat.
Then they spoke of national dances. The Jeliagins had recently
travelled in Spain and were enthusiastic about the fandango. The
Parisians had heard there was nothing more graceful than a well-danced
Polish mazurka; could none of the Russian ladies dance one for them?--a
very bold request, but they were all friends.
The Jeliagins announced that Natalie danced the mazurka like a true
woman of Warsaw. They left her no peace.
"Oh, I will put on no more airs," said she, "if one of the ladies will
take a seat at the piano, so----"
To go to the piano, even were it only to play dance-music, in Lensky's
presence! The ladies swooned at the mere thought.
"Very well, then you must give up the mazurka," said Natalie,
decidedly.
"Ask Boris Nikolaivitch," whispered one of the St. Petersburg women.
"If he is the first violinist of his time, he is also an excellent
pianist."
"No, no," said Natalie, firmly, and then her great brilliant eyes met
Lensky's.
Although at that time he maintained his artistic dignity with quite
childish exaggeration, he smiled very good-naturedly and said, "I see
very well that you place no confidence in me; you think I cannot catch
your mazurka music."
"No, no, no!" said Natalie. "You shall not degrade your art."
"And do you really think it would be degrading to improvise a musical
background for your performance? I should so like to see you dance."
And he stood up and went to the piano.
Such pretty little phrases were formerly not his style. He had, as
Natalie had often laughingly told him, no talent for _fioriture_ in
conversation.
The Petersburg ladies looked at each other. "How polite he has become!
You have changed him, Natascha," whispered they.
Meanwhile Pachotin gave Natalie his hand.
Lensky had seized the opportunity of admiring her grace with joy. He
had never thought how painfully it would affect him to see her dance
with another man. He did not take his eyes off her, and meanwhile
improvised the most bewitching devil's music.
She wore a white dress, her neck and arms were bare, and around her
waist was a Circassian girdle embroidered with gold and silver. One
hand in her partner's, the other hanging loosely at her side, her head
slightly on one side, she moved safely over the dangerously smooth
surface of the marble floor. At the beginning, pale as usual, except
her dark-red lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became
warmer and more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her
eyes beamed as if in a happy dream, around her lips trembled the sad
expression which the feeling of intense pleasure often causes us, and
her movements at the same time had something indescribably gentle and
supple.
[Illustration: At the beginning, pale as usual, except the dark-red
lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became warmer and
more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her eyes beamed as
in a happy dream---- _p. 56_.]
Pachotin, most correctly attired, with a collar which reached to the
tips of his ears and faultless yellow gloves, hopped around her in the
true affected knightly grimacing Polish-mazurka manner.
"An ape!" thought Lensky to himself; "but how handsome, how
distinguished he is! almost as handsome as she!" and suddenly the
question occurred to him: "Is it my music or his presence which
animates her? And if it were my music! Nevertheless, she will still
marry him; yes, even if she were in love with me, still she would marry
him, and not me! What a fool I was to imagine----"
After Pachotin had soberly placed his heels together and acknowledged
his deep devotion to the lady by a suitable courtesy, the mazurka was
at an end.
Quite beside themselves with enthusiasm, the Parisians surrounded
Natalie. When she wished to thank Lensky he had disappeared. It was his
manner many times to withdraw without taking leave, but still to-day it
made Natalie uneasy. She was vibrating with a great excitement, the air
seemed to her suffocatingly hot, she drew off her gloves; the noise of
the prattling voices became unbearable to her, and she passed through
the second empty drawing-room, into the arched loggia set with blooming
orange-trees, from which one looked across the court-yard to the Tiber.
The storm still hung on the horizon. Heavy masses of clouds, shot
through by pale lightning, towered, on the other side of the river,
above the gloomy architecture of the Trastevere. They had not yet
reached the moon, which, palely shining, stood high in the heavens. Its
light illumined the court, with its statues and bas-reliefs. The air
was sultry.
Natalie drew a deep breath. Suddenly she discovered Lensky. He was
staring down on the Tiber, which, rolling by in its bed, incessantly
sighed, as if from sorrow at its sad lot, which compelled it
continually to hasten past everything.
Could one really take it amiss in the stream if it sometimes overflowed
its banks in order to carry away with it some of the beautiful objects,
near which, condemned to perpetual wandering, it might not remain
standing?
"Ah! you here?" said Natalie. "I thought you had taken French leave. I
was vexed with you."
"So!"
"Yes, because--because I was sorry not to be able to thank you. It was
really----"
"Do not speak so," said he, quite roughly; "just as if you did not know
that there is nothing in the world, nothing in my power that I would
not do for you!"
She bent her head back a little and smiled at him in a friendly way,
but as if his words had not surprised her in the slightest. "You are
very good to me," said she.
He felt strangely thus alone with her in this sweet-perfumed,
melancholy, intoxicating sultriness, alone with this happiness that was
so near him, and which he was afraid of frightening away by an unseemly
imprudence. He felt by turns hot and cold. Why did she not go?
She rested her hands on the marble balustrade of the loggia and bending
over it she murmured: "How beautiful! oh, how wonderfully beautiful!
And it is so tiresome in there; do you not find it so, Boris
Nikolaivitch?"
His throat contracted, he felt that he was about to lose control of
himself.
"Shall I play?" he asked. "I will do it willingly for you."
"Oh, no! Why should you play to those stupid people in there?" replied
she. "I would be prepared to hear, in the middle of the G minor
concerto, the question: 'Before I forget it, can you not give me the
address of a good shoemaker in Rome?' You know how such things vex me."
"Is she coquetting with me, or--?" he asked himself again.
She stood before him with her enchanting face, and her tender glance
met his. She did not know that she tormented him. In spite of her
twenty-one years, she had the boundless innocence of a girl whose mind
has never been desecrated by the knowledge of passion, a degree of
innocence in which men do not believe.
"Is she coquetting?" His heart beat to bursting, and suddenly, when she
quite unconstrainedly came one step nearer him, he took her hand. "Oh,
you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoarse, scarcely audible voice,
and pressed it to his lips.
[Illustration: "Oh, you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoarse,
scarcely audible voice, and pressed it to his lips.