They trifled away the summer on the Italian coast and in Switzerland.
In the autumn Lensky made a concert tour through Germany and the
Netherlands, on which his young wife accompanied him, and attempted
with humorous zeal to accustom herself to the role of an artist's wife.
In the beginning of December Lensky and she came to St. Petersburg. The
residence had been prepared for the young pair by a friend of Natalie.
Natalie made a discontented face when she entered her new kingdom. How
new, how glaring, how unsuitable and tasteless everything looked. "It
is as if one bit into a green apple," said she; and turning to Lensky
she added, gayly, with a shrug of her shoulders: "The stupid Annette
did not know any better; but do not trouble yourself. In a couple of
weeks it will be different. You shall see how comfortably I will
cushion your nest. You must feel happy in it, my restless eagle, or
else you will fly away from me. What?"
She said this, smiling in proud consciousness of his passionate love.
What pleasure would it give him to fly away? And teasingly, jestingly,
she pushed back the thick hair from his temples.
Ah, how pleasant and yet tantalizing was the touch of her slender,
delicate fingers, which made him at once nervous and happy! As he
expressed it, it "almost made him jump out of his skin with rapture."
At first he let her continue her foolish, tender playfulness to her
heart's content; then he laughingly put himself on the defensive,
preached a more dignified manner to her, and when she did not yield,
but gayly continued her lovely, teasing ways, he at length seized her
violently by both wrists and quite crushed her hands with kisses.
If in the first weeks of their married life both had been quite solemn,
thoughtful, and confused in their manner to each other, now they often
frolicked together like two gay children.
While he took up again his long-interrupted duties at the Petersburg
Conservatory, she built him "his nest." She did not go lavishly to
work. Oh, no! She knew that one must not press down a young artist with
the burden of material cares. She imagined she was very economical. She
did not cease to wonder over the cheapness with which she could get
everything that was needed, beginning with the flowers--flowers in
winter, in St. Petersburg! He never enlightened her as to how much the
footing on which she maintained her "simple household" surpassed his
present circumstances.
Every time that he came home he found a new, attractive change. She
accomplished great things in artistic arrangement of the so-called
"confused style," which at that time was not so common as to-day, but
was still a bold innovation.
"_C'est tres joli, mais un peu trop touffu_," said he to her once when
she met him, quite particularly conscious of victory and awaiting
praise, with the knowledge of a new, costly improvement in the
arrangement of the drawing-room.
"Yes, my love; but a drawing-room is neither an official audience-room
nor a gymnasium," replied she, somewhat offended.
"Nor a ball-room nor riding-school," completed he, jestingly;
"but--h'm--still one should be able to move in it. Do you not think
so?"
"That is as one looks at it. I have nothing to do with it if you cannot
brandish around too freely in it."
* * * * *
They went out in society quite frequently--in Natalie's society. That
many people, especially Natalie's near relations, made comments on the
marriage of the spoiled child of a prince with a violinist is easily
understood. But scarcely had they seen Boris and his young wife
together a few times when the comments ceased. A full, true, young
human happiness always causes respect, and, like every achievement,
bears its triumphant justification in itself. The leader of fashion,
Princess Lydia Petrovna B., declared publicly, and, indeed, in the
highest court circles, that in her opinion Natalie had acted very
wisely.
Countess Sophie Dimitrievna went a step further when she energetically
declared that she envied Natalie. From that time every one vied in
feting the young couple and distinguishing them.
They both enjoyed society, but the best part of it was not entering the
brilliantly illuminated reception-rooms or being surrounded by
wondering strangers. Oh, no! the best of all was the last quarter of an
hour before they left their home, when Lensky, already in evening
dress, entered the dressing-room of his young wife. Each time he felt
anew the same pleasant excitement when he, slowly turning the knob,
after a teasing, "May I come in, Natalie?" entered the cosey room.
How charming and attractive everything was there! The room with the
light carpet and the comfortable, not too numerous articles of
cretonne-upholstered furniture; the two tiny gold-embroidered slippers
on the rough bear-skin in front of the lounge; not far off, Natalie's
house-dress, thrown over a chair, exhaling the warmth of her young,
fresh, fragrant personality. Then there on the toilet-table, with
clouds of white muslin over the pink lining, and with sparkling silver
and crystal utensils, a pretty confusion of half-opened white lace
boxes, and on the table dark velvet jewel-cases. The pleasant, mild,
and still bright light of many pink wax-candles, which stood about in
high, heavy silver candelabra, and the warm, strange, seductive
atmosphere which filled the whole room--an atmosphere which was
permeated with the fragrance of greenhouse flowers, burning
wax-candles, and the pleasant, subtle, spicy Indian perfume which clung
to all Natalie's effects.
And there, before the tall cheval-glass, Natalie, already in evening
toilet, almost ready, her beautiful arms hanging down in pampered
helplessness; behind her a maid, just finished fastening her corsage,
and a second, with a three-branched candelabra in her hand, throwing
the light upon her mistress.
Was that really his wife? This splendid, queenly being in the white
silk dress--she wore white silk in preference--really the wife of the
violinist, in whose life, not so far back, lay all kind of need,
humiliation, trouble of all kind?
Then she looked around. She had a charming manner of holding her small
hands half against her cheeks, half against her neck, and turning
slowly from the glass and looking at him with lowered eyelids, and a
kind of mischievously proud and yet tenderly suppressed consciousness
of victory. "Are you satisfied, Boris?"
What could he answer?
"You come just as if called," then said she. "You shall put the
hair-pins in my hair. Katia is so awkward." Then she sat down in a low
chair, and handed him the hair-pins. They were wonderful hair-pins, the
heads of which were narcissi formed of diamonds, a bridal present from
Lensky. He took them with gentle fingers, and the celebrated artist was
proud if his young wife praised him for the taste with which he
fastened her diamonds in her hair.
* * * * *
"Natalie!" exclaimed Boris, in a tone of the greatest surprise--a
surprise made up of the greatest astonishment and not of joy--"you
here?"
It was in his study, and nine o'clock in the morning. At this hour,
daily, in crying opposition to his former proverbial unreliability, he
had long been sitting at his writing-table. But that Natalie should
leave her bedroom before ten o'clock had hitherto been an unheard-of
occurrence.
But to-day, just as he was about to go to the piano, to try on that
modest representative of an orchestra a completed musical phrase, he
discovered her. Quite unobserved, she had mischievously crept in, and
now crouched comfortably in a large arm-chair, which formed a very
picturesque frame for her silk wrapper, bordered with black fur. She
sat on one foot; one tiny gold-embroidered Caucasian slipper lay before
her on the floor, and she smiled tenderly at her husband with her
great, proud eyes. But the pride disappeared from her glance at his
ejaculation, an ejaculation which expressed so much perplexity, so
little joy. She started and, embarrassed, reached out for her slipper
with the tip of her foot.
"Do I disturb you?" she asked, anxiously. "Must I go?"
Formerly he could not bear to have any one about him when he worked.
His face wore a forced, smiling expression, while he assured her:
"Oh, not in the slightest--pray sit down." Whereupon he pushed his
chair up to hers.
"Oh, if you are going to treat me so!" said she.
"How, then?" asked he.
"Like--like any visitor," she burst out, and hastened to the door. He
brought her back. Then he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"But what is the matter?"
"I am ashamed of my intrusion, that is all. Adieu--I will not disturb
you further!"
With that she wished to free herself from him. But that was not so
easy. He took her, struggling in his arms like a child, and carried her
back by force to the immense chair which they had left. "So now, sit
there, and don't spoil my mood, you witch. Why should I not enjoy your
company for a little? Do you think, then, that I am not glad to see
you? But you do not expect that I should bend over the table, and spoil
paper, while a charming little woman sits behind me? The temptation to
talk to you is too great."
She shook her head. "You wish to be good to me, but you pain me,"
murmured she. And she added, flatteringly, "Can you really not work
when I am with you?"
"Would you like it if I could?" he asked, and looked at her with a
quite new, penetrating expression in his eyes.
He drew his brows together humorously; he was now kneeling before her,
and held both her hands in his. "You are not only a charming little
woman, Natalie," said he, "but, what very few such beautiful and
seductive women are, of a good heart. But still I have noticed one
thing in you, namely, that you do not like to be second anywhere. And,
do you see, everywhere else you are not only the first, but the only
one in the world for me; but here, Natalie, here it must please you
that I should forget you for my art!"
"And do you think that I would wish it otherwise?" said she, and there
was an earnest, solemn expression in her eyes which he never forgot.
"Oh, you blind one, you do not yet know me at all. Do not kneel there
like a hero in a romance; in the long run, it looks not only awkward
but uncomfortable. Sit down by me--there is room enough in this immense
chair for us both. So! and now--now I will confess to you what I have
already so long had on my heart. Do you see, you love me, I do not
doubt that, how should I? but--do not be angry with me--sometimes I
wish that you loved me differently; I wish to be not only your petted
wife, your plaything----"
"My plaything!" he interrupted her, very reproachfully. "Oh, Natalie!
my sanctuary!"
"Well, then, as far as I am concerned, your sanctuary. That, looked at
in one light, is also only a plaything, even if of the most
distinguished kind." She laughed somewhat constrainedly. "It is
certainly immoderate," she continued, and hesitated a little,
"horribly immoderate, but still it is so--I--I do not want to be only
your plaything, but also your friend--do not be horrified at this
audacity--yes, your friend, your confidante. I wish to be the first to
share your newly arising thoughts. Lately, it has often hurt me that
you busy yourself so much with all kinds of trifles only to give me
pleasure. I know it is my fault; at first I was afraid of your genius,
which soared heavenward, and wished to accustom you to the earth,
and chain you close to me. But then--then I was ashamed of my
smallness--ah, so ashamed. You shall not stoop down to me; let me try
to rise to you. Spread out your mighty wings, and fly up to the stars,
but take me with you!"
He could not speak--only kisses burned on his lips. He pressed them on
her wonderful eyes, whose holy light humiliated him. Then, after a
while, he murmured, softly: "You are nearer the stars than I, Natalie.
Show me the way, show me the way!"
* * * * *
From then, she daily passed a couple of hours in his study. How happy
she felt in the great, airy room, which was almost as empty as a shed.
In here she had not ventured with her soft, seductive, decorative arts.
All had remained as sober and plain as he had always been accustomed
to have his surroundings while at work. High shelves almost breaking
under their weight of music, a piano, a couple of stringed instruments,
the arm-chair in which he had established her, and two or three
cane-bottomed chairs constituted the whole furniture. On the
writing-table stood a picture of Natalie, painted in water-colors by a
young French artist in Rome. The room could show no other ornament.
Still, there in the darkest corner hung a single laurel-wreath. No
large one, such as one lays to-day at the feet of great artists, but
poor and small, and in the middle of the wreath, in a common wooden
frame, drawn with a hard lead-pencil, the face of a woman, with a white
cloth on her head, from beneath which fine, curly hair fell over the
forehead. Without being beautiful, the face was strangely attractive,
and Natalie would have liked to ask the history of the laurel-wreath
and the picture. But she did not venture to. She never, by a single
question, touched upon Lensky's past.
He only continued to remain in solitude during the hours which he
devoted to technical practice. At other times he quietly let her stay.
She sat behind him, quite soberly and still, in the large, worn-out
patriarchal chair, and did not breathe a word. She never even took a
book in her hand, for fear of irritating him by the rattling of turning
pages, but busied herself with pretty, noiseless handiwork.
The feeling of her presence was unendingly sweet to him. His whole
activity was increased; he worked more intently than formerly. A
fulness of music vibrated in his head and heart. And if the inward
vibrations became too dreamily sweet, too luxuriant and exuberant, he
stopped writing, sat awhile in silence, and then, without taking the
slightest notice of Natalie, walked up and down a couple of times,
hummed something to himself, made a sweeping gesture, in conclusion
took up the violin--then----
Natalie raised her head and listened--how wonderful that sounded! He
had unlearned the madness, but still in his melodies always sounded the
strange Arabian succession of tones, the devil's music: Asbein!
She became, as she had wished, the confidante of his work. When he had
sketched on paper the plan of a composition, he played it to her, now
on his violin, which he passionately loved, now on the piano, which he
did not love; for its short tone, incapable of development, repulsed
him, but which he respected and made use of as the most complete of all
instruments. Although he played the piano, not with virtuosity, but
with the helplessness of the composer, he could still bring out
something of the "warm tone" which made his violin irresistible.
How eagerly she listened to his compositions! How much she rejoiced in
them, and how severe she was to him! She would not let him pass over a
single musical flaw. That she rejoiced and wept over the beauties in
his compositions, that she boldly placed his genius near Beethoven and
Schumann, that is to say, near what she ranked highest in the world,
that was another thing! For that reason she was so severe. He laughed
at her sometimes for her tender delusion. Then she took his head
between her hands, and said, triumphantly: "That is all very well; only
wait a little while, then the whole world will say that you have been
the last musical poet: the others are only bunglers."
* * * * *
In the beginning of March he made a short artist tour through the
interior of Russia. Naturally, he could not drag her around with him,
for she could not endure the exhausting fatigues of his quick journeys,
especially at that time. But how horrible, how unbearable the parting
seemed to him! He wrote her every day. His writing was ugly and
irregular, his orthography as deficient in French as in Russian; but
what tenderness, what passion and poetry spoke from every uncultured,
stormily written line. No one could better impress his whole heart in a
short, insignificant letter than he; and what rapture, what wild,
almost painful rapture at seeing her again! She had missed him much
less than he had missed her. He reproached her for it, complained that
the new love which now began to fill her whole existence left no place
for the old. But then she measured him with such a tender, and, at the
same time, a so deeply hurt look, that he was ashamed.
"You must not take it so," he whispered to her, appeasingly. "It is an
old story that if two hearts hasten forward together in a race of love,
one will naturally outdo the other, and still will be vexed that it is
so. But it is quite natural and in order that I should cling more to
you than you to me."
She smiled quite sadly. "We will see who will win the race in the end,"
murmured she.
* * * * *
Natalie no longer went into society. Her health was much impaired. She
passed the entire month of April stretched on her lounge, in loose
wrappers. She now reproached herself with having been foolish not to
have spared herself before. The time of tormenting fancy approached for
the young wife, the time of concealed anxiety for them both. In spite
of the consoling assurances of the physician, Lensky was no longer
himself, from anxiety and despair. But he did not let her notice it.
When he was with her he had always a gay smile on his lips and a droll
story for her diversion. He cared for her like a mother.
Then, toward the end of May, came the most tormenting hour he had ever
lived through, until at last--when he already believed that all hope
was lost--a little, thin, shrill sound smote his ear. It startled him,
his heart beat loudly; still he did not venture to move, but listened,
until at last the doctor came out of the adjoining room, and called to
him: "All is over."
He misunderstood the words. "She is dead!" he gasped.
"No, no! Boris Nikolaivitch; everything is as well as possible. Come!"
He felt as would a man buried alive, if one should raise the lid from
his coffin.
At the door of the bedroom a fat old woman, with a large cap, came
toward him. "A son, a very fine young one!" said she, triumphantly,
while she laid something tiny and rosy, wrapped in white cloth and
lace, in his arms.
Tears fell from his eyes, and his hands trembled so that the nurse was
horrified and took the child away from him.
He went up to Natalie, who, deathly pale and exhausted, but with a
lovely, indescribable expression on her face, at once of tenderness and
of a certain solemn pride, lay among the high-piled pillows. Quite
softly, with a kind of timidity which his violent love had hitherto
never known, he pressed her pale hand to his lips.
"Are you content?" she whispered, dreamily and scarcely audibly. "Are
you content?"
* * * * *
She recovered rapidly. Her beauty had lost none of its charm, but had
rather won an earnest--one might almost say consecrated--loveliness.
Her face reflected her happiness. That also had become a shade deeper,
nobler. In spite of all her pampered habits, she insisted upon caring
for the child herself. He let her have her way.
The former dressing-room was changed to a nursery. Sometimes, in the
long, transparent twilight of the spring, he entered the room in which,
in winter, he had passed so many charming hours by candle-light, and
where now everything was so changed. A cradle stood in the place which
formerly the toilet-table had occupied--ah, what a cradle--a dream of a
cradle! A basket with a canopy of green silk, hung with a long,
transparent lace veil, a costly nest for a young bird whose little eyes
must be shielded, by all kinds of tender devices, from the bright
light, which perhaps later would pain him so!
The air, quite filled with a pleasant, mild, damp vapor, was permeated
by a weak perfume of iris and warming linen, and, besides that, with
something quite strange, quite peculiarly sweet, stirring--the breath
of a healthy, fresh, carefully cared-for little child.
And there, where the cheval-glass had formerly reflected to him the
lovely form of a proud queen of beauty, now sat in the same large
arm-chair, a tender young mother, her child on her breast. The lines of
her neck, from which the loose, white dress had slipped down a little
so that the outline of the shoulders was visible, was charming; but
what was it, to the lovely, attentive expression with which she looked
down at the child?
Everything about her expressed tenderness: her look, her smile, the
hands with which she held the child to her. It was just these small,
white hands which Lensky could not cease to observe. How helpless they
had formerly been--and now! She would scarcely let the nurse touch
baby. He was never weary of watching how untiringly she touched the
tiny, frail body of the infant, and did a thousand services for it
which all resembled caresses.
* * * * *
"It is all very beautiful, but you have a manner of ignoring me in this
little kingdom," said Lensky, jokingly, to the young mother, while he
threw a look of humorous vexation at the young despot whom she just
laid in the cradle.
She bent her head a little to one side, and whispered roguishly, while
she came up to him and played with the lapel of his coat: "Do you see,
Boris, this is my study. Everywhere else you are not only the first but
the only one in the world for me; but here you must be content if I
sometimes forget you for my calling."
He laughed.
"Do you know that you once said something similar to me; that time when
I, for the first time, dared to enter your sanctuary?" she murmured,
and repeated petulantly: "Do you know it?"
He kissed both of her hands, one after the other. "Do you then believe
that I could ever forget such a thing, my angel?" whispered he. "I am
no such spendthrift; oh, no! If you knew how I cherish this dear
remembrance! That is pure happiness which we will keep for our old
days, when the sun no longer seems to us to shine as brightly, and we
must light a poor candle in order to find our path again to a suitable
grave."
* * * * *
Natalie still thought of the poor laurel wreath in his study. But she
did not venture to ask him a direct question about it.
He himself, of his own accord, at last told her the history of the
pitiful relic.
He had never spoken to her of his childhood, but once a great impulse
came over him to tell her the whole; to lay bare before her all the
pitiableness of his past. What would she then say to it?
It was a clear summer night, out on the terrace of the country house
near St. Petersburg, which they had hired for the summer, the terrace
which looked out on the small but pretty and shady garden. They sat
there, hand in hand; around them the dull, gray light of a day that
will not die, sweet perfume of flowers, and in the tree tops the gentle
rustling of the kissing leaves. She talked of gay, insignificant
things; gave him a droll, laughing description of a visit to one of her
friends. At first it amused him; then something, he could not have said
what, irritated him against this monstrous principle of gliding so
triflingly and mockingly through life without ever glancing into it
more deeply.
"What would she say if she knew?" thought he. "Perhaps she would shun
me!" A kind of madness overcame him. He felt the wish to risk his
happiness in order to convince himself of its durability, to put his
petted wife to the test. "How you butterflies, floating over flowers in
the sunshine, must be horrified at the miserable worms who creep over
the earth!" he began bitterly.
"What are you thinking of?" asked she, astonished.
"Nothing especial, only that I was originally just such a worm,
creeping over the earth."
"Ah! that is long past!" she interrupted him hastily. She wished to
keep him from long dwelling on an unpleasant thought, but he suspected
that his insinuation of his humble antecedents vexed her, and that she
felt the need of forgetting his derivation. He looked at her from head
to foot, with an angry, wondering glance. Her richly embroidered white
dress, the large diamonds in her ears,--how the diamonds sparkled in
the dull evening light!
Then he began to speak of his childhood, dryly, with a smile on his
lips as if it was a question of something quite indifferent and
amusing.
In a large tenement at Moscow, overcrowded with all kinds of human
vermin, had he grown up; in the half of a room that was divided by a
sail, behind which another poor family hungered. His father he did not
remember. His mother sang to the guitar in wine rooms. When he was five
years old she had bought him a fiddle for four rubles, and then some
one, a dissolute musician, who often came to them, had taught him to
scrape on it a little. From that time he accompanied his mother when
she sang in the wine rooms,--or even on the streets, as it happened.
She had been pretty; the drawing which hung in the laurel wreath, and
which an artist in their horrible dwelling-place had made of her, was
like her. Only she had quite unusually beautiful teeth which one could
not see in the picture. He remembered these teeth very well, because
she laughed so much, especially if there was little to eat and she made
him take it all, and declared she had spoiled her appetite at a
friend's house with fresh _pirogj_. Once the thought had occurred to
him that she only said so because there was not enough for two, and
then he could not eat anything more. If there was nothing at all to
eat, either for him or for her, she told him a story.
Had he loved her? Yes, he believed so--how could it be otherwise? But
the consciousness of what she really had been to him only came to him
when he was no longer with her. How that happened he really did not
know, but one fine day she took him in a part of the city which he had
never known until then, in a handsome residence that seemed so
beautiful to him that he only ventured to go around on tiptoes. At the
door a fat, yellow man, with long, greasy, black hair, received him,
and told his mother it was all right. Then she kissed him a last time,
told him she would take him away in an hour, and went.
He was taken in a room with gay furniture, and there greeted by a fat
woman with a thick gold chain over the bosom of her violet silk dress,
and with rings on all her short, stumpy, wrinkled fingers, and was
entertained with tea, cake, and honey. He had never before enjoyed a
similar repast. He felt in an elevated frame of mind.
When the fat man--he was a mediocre musician who had married a rich
merchant's daughter, who gave him none of her money, however--told him
that he should always stay with him, and never go back to his mother,
he was glad, and felt the consciousness of having taken a step forward
in the world.
Did that surprise Natalie? He could not help it, it was still so.
"Strange what roughness men show before a little bit of civilization
has taught them to conceal it," he added reflectively.
Did he not feel anxiety later? Natalie wished to know. Yes, for his new
life contained nothing of that which he had promised himself. That he
should live in the beautiful rooms with the master and mistress and eat
with them, as he had thought at first, had been an illusion. Only the
two children of the fat daughter of the merchant could tumble around on
the sofas, with their fiery-red, woolen, damask covering, and could
help themselves from all the dishes.
He lived on charity; they told him that every day. The musician had
bought him of his mother for fifty rubles, as Lensky afterward learned,
as a speculation, in order to make money out of him as a prodigy. The
time which he did not devote to his musical practice he must spend
helping the maid in the kitchen.
He slept, with an old sofa pillow under his head, on the floor, in a
gloomy little room, without window, only with dirty panes of glass in
the door--a room in which the cook put all kinds of rubbish. Dampness
ran down the walls, and every evening from all corners crept out a
whole regiment of black beetles, and spread themselves over the boards.
The food? Well, it was sparing. Sometimes he only received what the
family had left on their plates.
Was he not angry at this treatment? No. He found it quite in order at
that time. The well-fed, warmly dressed people impressed him,
especially the cap of Vauvara Ivanovna--that was the name of his
mistress. He felt a respectful shudder pass over him every time he saw
this structure of blonde, red flowers, and green ribbon. Except the
Kremlin, nothing impressed him so much as this house.
When the whole family, in festival attire, went to church on Sunday, he
stood at the door, quite oppressed by the feeling of modest wonder, and
looked after the well-dressed, well-fed people. He did his best to make
himself useful and agreeable, and to please them. Yes, he was just so
small and pitiable, as a half-starved six-year-old pigmy. And then,
in conclusion, one day he simply could bear it no longer and ran back
to his mother. He found the way. With that quite animal sense of
locality and traces, which only children of the lowest classes of men
have, he found it. His mother was at home; she was frightened when
she saw him. Had they turned him out? Yes, she was frightened. In
the first moment she was frightened; then--here Lensky stammered
in his confession--naturally she was glad; for, what use of losing
words?--naturally she was glad. How she kissed him and caressed him
with her poor, rough, toil-worn, and still such gentle, warm hands. He
still felt her hands sometimes on him, in dreams, especially behind his
ears and on his neck. Then she fed him. She spread a red and white
flowered cloth over the table in his honor, and after that she gave him
a holy picture. Then she said it could not be otherwise; he must go
back to Simon Ephremitsch; it was for his own good. When he had become
a great artist, then he would come to fetch her in a coach with four
horses.
That impressed him. And in order to calm him completely, she promised
to visit him very soon.
But she did not come; and when he ran back to her, after about a month,
she was no longer in her old abode; he never found her! Soon afterward
she sent him two pretty little shirts, delicately embroidered in red
and blue. But she herself did not come. Never!
At his first appearance in public--he had performed his piece
with the anxious assiduity of a little monkey that fears a blow, he
asserted--to his great astonishment, he was applauded. In the midst of
the hand-clapping he suddenly heard a sob. He was convinced that his
mother had been at the concert.
At the conclusion they handed him a laurel wreath, the same which now
hung in his room; quite a poor woman had brought it, they said. He
guessed immediately that the wreath came from his mother; and suddenly,
just as a couple of music-lovers had stepped on the stage, in order to
see the wonderful little animal near by, he began to stamp his feet and
clench his fists, to scream and to sob, until every one crowded around
him. His principal threatened him with blows; a very pretty young lady
in a blue-silk dress took him on her lap to quiet him; but all was of
no use.
He saw his mother once more--in her coffin.
His benefactor told him that she was dead, and that, after all, it was
suitable that he should show her the last honors. The coffin stood on a
table, surrounded by thin, poorly-burning candles, and she lay within,
so small and thin, her hands folded on her breast, in a poor shroud,
that they had bought ready made for a few copecks.
In the beginning, Natalie had interrupted him with questions, but now
she had long been silent. He looked at her challengingly, at every
pitiful, repulsive detail, especially if it brought forward a trace of
his own insignificance. It was quite as if he expressly tried to pain
her. But when he came to speak of the death of his mother, whose form,
in the midst of his glaring, sharp description, he drew so tenderly and
vaguely, obliterating everything disturbing, as if he saw her, in
remembrance, only through tears, he closed his eyes.
Suddenly he heard near him a suppressed sound of pain, then something
like the falling of the over-abundant load of blossoms from a tree
among whose spring adornment there yet moves no breath of air.
He started, looked up--there was Natalie on her knees before him, the
beauty, the queenly, proud one, and had embraced him with both arms, as
if she would shield him from all the woes of earth, and sobbed as if
she could not console herself for his past suffering.
"Natalie! my angel, do you really love me so?"
"One cannot love you enough, or recompense you enough for all that you
have missed," whispered she.