"IF MENKO WERE DEAD!"
Prince Zilah, wandering solitary in the midst of crowded Paris, was
possessed by one thought, one image impossible to drive away, one name
which murmured eternally in his ears--Marsa; Marsa, who was constantly
before his eyes, sometimes in the silvery shimmer of her bridal robes,
and sometimes with the deathly pallor of the promenader in the garden of
Vaugirard; Marsa, who had taken possession of his being, filling his
whole heart, and, despite his revolt, gradually overpowering all other
memories, all other passions! Marsa, his last love, since nothing was
before him save the years when the hair whitens, and when life weighs
heavily upon weary humanity; and not only his last love, but his only
love!
Oh! why had he loved her? Or, having loved her, why had she not
confessed to him that that coward of a Menko had deceived her! Who
knows? He might have pardoned her, perhaps, and accepted the young girl,
the widow of that passion. Widow? No, not while Menko lived. Oh! if he
were dead!
And Zilah repeated, with a fierce longing for vengeance: "If he were
dead!" That is, if there were not between them, Zilah and Marsa, the
abhorred memory of the lover!
Well! if Menko were dead?
When he feverishly asked himself this question, Zilah recalled at the
same time Marsa, crouching at his feet, and giving no other excuse than
this: "I loved you! I wished to belong to you, to be your wife!"
His wife! Yes, the beautiful Tzigana he had met at Baroness Dinati's was
now his wife! He could punish or pardon. But he had punished, since he
had inflicted upon her that living death--insanity. And he asked himself
whether he should not pardon Princess Zilah, punished, repentant, almost
dying.
He knew that she was now at Maisons, cured of her insanity, but still ill
and feeble, and that she lived there like a nun, doing good, dispensing
charity, and praying--praying for him, perhaps.
For him or for Menko?
No, for him! She was not vile enough to have lied, when she asked,
implored, besought death from Zilah who held her life or death in his
hands.
"Yes, I had the right to kill her, but--I have the right to pardon also,"
thought Zilah.
Ah, if Menko were dead!
The Prince gradually wrought himself into a highly nervous condition,
missing Varhely, uneasy at his prolonged absence, and never succeeding in
driving away Marsa's haunting image. He grew to hate his solitary home
and his books.
"I shall not want any breakfast," he said one morning to his valet; and,
going out, he descended the Champs-Elysees on foot.
At the corner of the Place de la Madeleine, he entered a restaurant, and
sat down near a window, gazing mechanically at this lively corner of
Paris, at the gray facade of the church, the dusty trees, the asphalt,
the promenaders, the yellow omnibuses, the activity of Parisian life.
All at once he was startled to hear his name pronounced and to see before
him, with his hand outstretched, as if he were asking alms, old General
Vogotzine, who said to him, timidly:
"Ah, my dear Prince, how glad I am to see you! I was breakfasting over
there, and my accursed paper must have hidden me. Ouf! If you only
knew! I am stifling!"
"Why, what is the matter?" asked Andras.
"Matter? Look at me! I must be as red as a beet!"
Poor Vogotzine had entered the restaurant for breakfast, regretting the
cool garden of Maisons-Lafitte, which, now that Marsa no longer sat
there, he had entirely to himself. After eating his usual copious
breakfast, he had imprudently asked the waiter for a Russian paper; and,
as he read, and sipped his kummel, which he found a little insipid and
almost made him regret the vodka of his native land, his eyes fell upon a
letter from Odessa, in which there was a detailed description of the
execution of three nihilists, two of them gentlemen. It told how they
were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of
them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in
black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General
shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution
seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could
see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each
gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray
pall. He saw, in the hollow square formed by a battalion of Cossack
infantry, the executioner, Froloff, in his red shirt and his plush
trousers tucked into his boots, and, beside him, a pale, black-robed
priest.
"Who the devil is such an idiot as to relate such things in the
newspapers?" he growled.
And in terror he imagined he could hear the sheriff read the sentence,
see the priest present the cross to the condemned men, and Froloff,
before putting on the black caps, degrade the gentlemen by breaking their
swords over their heads.
Then, half suffocated, Vogotzine flung the paper on the floor; and, with
eyes distended with horror, drawing the caraffe of kummel toward him, he
half emptied it, drinking glass after glass to recover his self-control.
It seemed to him that Froloff was there behind him, and that the branches
of the candelabra, stretching over his heated head, were the arms of
gibbets ready to seize him. To reassure himself, and be certain that he
was miles and miles from Russia, he was obliged to make sure of the
presence of the waiters and guests in the gay and gilded restaurant.
"The devil take the newspapers!" he muttered.
"They are cursed stupid! I will never read another! All that stuff is
absurd! Absurd! A fine aid to digestion, truly!"
And, paying his bill, he rose to go, passing his hand over his head as if
his sword had been broken upon it and left a contusion, and glancing
timidly into the mirrors, as if he feared to discover the image of
Froloff there.
It was at this moment that he discovered Prince Zilah, and rushed up to
him with the joyful cry of a child discovering a protector.
The Prince noticed that poor Vogotzine, who sat heavily down by his side,
was not entirely sober. The enormous quantity of kummel he had absorbed,
together with the terror produced by the article he had read, had proved
too much for the good man: his face was fiery, and he constantly
moistened his dry lips.
"I suppose it astonishes you to see me here?" he said, as if he had
forgotten all that had taken place. "I--I am astonished to see myself
here! But I am so bored down there at Maisons, and I rust, rust, as
little--little--ah! Stephanie said to me once at Odessa. So I came to
breathe the air of Paris. A miserable idea! Oh, if you knew! When I
think that that might happen to me!"
"What?" asked Andras, mechanically.
"What?" gasped the General, staring at him with dilated eyes. "Why,
Froloff, of course! Froloff! The sword broken over your head! The
gallows! Ach! I am not a nihilist--heaven forbid!--but I have
displeased the Czar. And to displease the Czar--Brr! Imagine the open
square-Odessa-No, no, don't let us talk of it any more!" glancing
suddenly about him, as if he feared the platoon of Cossacks were there,
in the restaurant, come to drag him away in the name of the Emperor.
"Oh! by the way, Prince," he exclaimed abruptly. "why don't you ever
come to Maisons-Lafitte?"
He must, indeed, have been drunk to address such a question to the
Prince.
Zilah looked him full in the face; but Vogotzine's eyes blinked stupidly,
and his head fell partially forward on his breast. Satisfied that he was
not responsible for what he was saying, Andras rose to leave the
restaurant, and the General with difficulty stumbled to his feet, and
instinctively grasped Andras's arm, the latter making no resistance, the
mention of Maisons-Lafitte interesting him, even from the lips of this
intoxicated old idiot.
"Do you know," stuttered Vogotzine, "I, myself, should be glad--very
glad--if you would come there. I am bored-bored to death! Closed
shutters--not the least noise. The creaking of a door--the slightest bit
of light-makes her ill. The days drag--they drag--yes, they do. No one
speaks. Most of the time I dine alone. Shall I tell you?--no--yes, I
will. Marsa, yes, well! Marsa, she is good, very good--thinks only of
the poor-the poor, you know! But whatever Doctor Fargeas may say about
it, she is mad! You can't deceive me! She is insane!--still insane!"
"Insane?" said Andras, striving to control his emotion.
The General, who was now staggering violently, clung desperately to the
Prince. They had reached the boulevard, and Andras, hailing a cab, made
Vogotzine get in, and instructed the coachman to drive to the Bois.
"I assure you that she is insane," proceeded the General, throwing his
head back on the cushions. "Yes, insane. She does not eat anything; she
never rests. Upon my word, I don't know how she lives. Once--her dogs--
she took walks. Now, I go with them into the park--good beasts--very
gentle. Sometimes, all that she says, is: 'Listen! Isn't that Duna or
Bundas barking?' Ah! if I wasn't afraid of Froloffyes, Froloff--how soon
I should return to Russia! The life of Paris--the life of Paris wearies
me. You see, I come here today, I take up a newspaper, and I see what?
Froloff! Besides, the life of Paris--at Maisons-Lafitte--between four
walls, it is absurd! Now, acknowledge, old man, isn't it absurd? Do you
know what I should like to do? I should like to send a petition to the
Czar. What did I do, after all, I should like to know? It wasn't
anything so horrible. I stayed, against the Emperor's orders, five days
too long at Odessa--that was all--yes, you see, a little French actress
who was there, who sang operettas; oh, how she did sing operettas!
Offenbach, you know;" and the General tried to hum a bar or two of the
'Dites lui', with ludicrous effect. "Charming! To leave her, ah! I
found that very hard. I remained five days: that wasn't much, eh, Zilah?
five days? But the devil! There was a Grand Duke--well--humph! younger
than I, of course--and--and--the Grand Duke was jealous. Oh! there was
at that time a conspiracy at Odessa! I was accused of spending my time
at the theatre, instead of watching the conspirators. They even said I
was in the conspiracy! Oh, Lord! Odessa! The gallows! Froloff! Well,
it was Stephanie Gavaud who was the cause of it. Don't tell that to
Marsa! Ah! that little Stephanie! 'J'ai vu le vieux Bacchus sur sa
roche fertile!' Tautin--no, Tautin couldn't sing like that little
Stephanie! Well," continued Vogotzine, hiccoughing violently, "because
all that happened then, I now lead here the life of an oyster! Yes, the
life of an oyster, of a turtle, of a clam! alone with a woman sad as
Mid-Lent, who doesn't speak, doesn't sing, does nothing but weep, weep,
weep! It is crushing! I say just what I think! Crushing, then,
whatever my niece may be--cr-r-rushing! And--ah--really, my dear fellow,
I should be glad if you would come. Why did you go away? Yes, yes, that
is your affair, and I don't ask any questions. Only--only you would do
well to come--"
"Why?" interrupted Andras, turning quickly to Vogotzine.
"Ah! why? Because!" said the General, trying to give to his heavy face
an expression of shrewd, dignified gravity.
"What has happened?" asked the Prince. "Is she suffering again? Ill?"
"Oh, insane, I tell you! absolutely insane! mad as a March hare!
Two days ago, you see--"
"Well, what? two days ago?"
"Because, two days ago!--"
"Well, what? What is it? Speak, Vogotzine!"
"The despatch," stammered the General.
"What despatch?"
"The des--despatch from Florence."
"She has received a despatch from Florence?"
"A telegram--blue paper--she read it before me; upon my word, I thought
it was from you! She said--no; those miserable bits of paper, it is
astonishing how they alarm you. There are telegrams which have given me
a fit of indigestion, I assure you--and I haven't the heart of a
chicken!"
"Go on! Marsa? This despatch? Whom was it from? What did Marsa say?"
"She turned white as a sheet; she began to tremble--an attack of the
nerves--and she said: 'Well, in two days I shall know, at last, whether I
am to live!' Queer, wasn't it? I don't know what she meant! But it is
certain--yes, certain, my dear fellow--that she expects, this evening,
some one who is coming--or who is not coming, from Florence--that
depends."
"Who is it? Who?" cried Andras. "Michel Menko?"
"I don't know," faltered Vogotzine in alarm, wondering whether it were
Froloff's hand that had seized him by the collar of his coat.
"It is Menko, is it not?" demanded Andras; while the terrified General
gasped out something unintelligible, his intoxication increasing every
yard the carriage advanced in the Bois.
Andras was almost beside himself with pain and suspense. What did it
mean? Who had sent that despatch? Why had it caused Marsa such emotion?
"In two days I shall know, at last, whether I am to live!" Who could
make her utter such a cry? Who, if not Michel Menko, was so intimately
connected with her life as to trouble her so, to drive her insane, as
Vogotzine said?
"It is Menko, is it not? it is Menko?" repeated Andras again.
And Vogotzine gasped:
"Perhaps! anything is possible!"
But he stopped suddenly, as if he comprehended, despite his inebriety,
that he was in danger of going too far and doing some harm.
"Come, Vogotzine, come, you have told me too much not to tell me all!"
"That is true; yes, I have said too much! Ah! The devil! this is not
my affair!--Well, yes, Count Menko is in Florence or near Florence--
I don't know where. Marsa told me that--without meaning to. She was
excited--very excited--talked to herself. I did not ask her anything--
but--she is insane, you see, mad, mad! She first wrote a despatch to
Italy--then she tore it up like this, saying: 'No, what is to happen,
will happen!' There! I don't know anything but that. I don't know
anything!"
"Ah! she is expecting him!" cried Andras. "When?"
"I don't know!"
"You told me it was to be this evening. This evening, is it not?"
The old General felt as ill at ease as if he had been before a military
commission or in the hands of Froloff.
"Yes, this evening."
"At Maisons-Lafitte?"
"At Maisons," responded Vogotzine, mechanically. "And all this wearies
me--wearies me. Was it for this I decided to come to Paris? A fine
idea! At least, there are no Russian days at Maisons!"
Andras made no reply.
He stopped the carriage, got out, and, saluting the General with a brief
"Thank you!" walked rapidly away, leaving Vogotzine in blank amazement,
murmuring, as he made an effort to sit up straight:
"Well, well, are you going to leave me here, old man? All alone? This
isn't right!"
And, like a forsaken child, the old General, with comic twitchings of his
eyebrows and nostrils, felt a strong desire to weep.
"Where shall I drive you, Monsieur?" asked the coachman.
"Wherever you like, my friend," responded Vogotzine, modestly, with an
appealing look at the man. "You, at least, must not leave me!"