His face darkened, he raised a silencing arm, and firmly repeated:
"I never drink wine, and I do not intend to."
Kseniya gazed into the depths of his eyes and said softly:
"I want you to, I beg you.... Do you hear?"
"I will not," Polunin whispered back.
Then she cried out:
"He doesn't want to! We mustn't make him against his will!" She
turned away, offered her glass to the Magistrate, and after him to
the Lyceum student; then excused herself and withdrew, quietly
returning later looking sad and as if she had suddenly aged.
They lingered a long while over supper; then went into the ball-room
to dance, and sing, and play old fashioned games. The men went to the
buffets to drink, the older ones then sat in the drawing-room playing
whist, and talked.
It was nearly five o'clock when the guests departed. Only the
Arkhipovs and Polunin remained. Kseniya Ippolytovna ordered coffee,
and all four sat down at a small table feeling worn out. The house
was now wrapt in silence. The dawn had just broken.
Kseniya was tired to death, but endeavoured to appear fresh and
cheerful. She passed the coffee round, and then fetched a bottle of
liqueur. They sat almost in silence; what talk they exchanged was
desultory.
"One more year dropped into Eternity," Arkhipov said, sombrely.
"Yes, a year nearer to death, a year further from birth," rejoined
Polunin.
Kseniya Ippolytovna was seated opposite him. Her eyes were veiled.
She rose now to her feet, leaned over the table and spoke to him in
slow, measured accents vibrating with malice:
"Well, pious one! Everything here is mine. I asked you to-day to give
me a baby, because I am merely a woman and so desire motherhood.... I
asked you to take wine... You refused. The nearer to death the
further from birth, you say? Well then, begone!"
She broke into tears, sobbing loudly and plaintively, covering her
face with her hands; then leant against the wall, still sobbing. The
Arkhipovs ran to her; Polunin stood at the table dumbfounded, then
left the room.
"I didn't ask him for passion or caresses. ... I have no husband!"
Kseniya cried, sobbing and shrieking like a hysterical girl. They
calmed her after a time, and she spoke to them in snatches between
her sobs, which were less violent for a while. Then she broke out
weeping afresh, and sank into an armchair.
The dawn had now brightened; the room was filled with a faint,
flickering light. Misty, vaporous, tormenting shadows danced and
twisted oddly in the shifting glimmer: in the tenebrous half-light
the occupants looked grey, weary, and haggard, their faces strangely
distorted by the alternate rise and fall of the shadows. Arkhipov's
bald head with its tightly stretched skin resembled a greatly
elongated skull.
"Listen to me, you Arkhipovs," Kseniya cried brokenly. "Supposing a
distracted woman who desired to be pure were to come and ask you for
a baby--would you give her the same answer as Polunin? He said it was
impossible, that it was sin, that he loved someone else. Would you
answer like that, Arkhipov, knowing it was the woman's last--her
only--chance of salvation--her only love?" She looked eagerly from
one to the other.
"No, certainly not--I should answer in a different way," Arkhipov
replied quietly.
"And you, Vera Lvovna, a wife ... do you hear? I speak in front of
you?"
Vera Lvovna nodded, laid her hand gently on Kseniya's forehead, and
answered softly and tenderly:
"I understand you perfectly."
Again Kseniya wept.
* * * * * * *
The dawn trod gently down the lanes of darkness. The light grew
clearer and the candles became dim and useless. The outlines of the
furniture crept out of the net of shadows. Through the blue mist
outside the snow, valley, forest, and fields were faintly visible.
From the right of the horizon dawn's red light flushed the heavens
with a cold purple.
Polunin drove along by the fields, trotting smoothly behind his
stallion. The earth was blue and cold and ghostly, a land carved out
of dreams, seemingly unsubstantial and unreal. A harsh, bitter wind
blew from the north, stirring the telegraph-wires by the roadside to
a loud, humming refrain. A silence as of death reigned over the land,
yet life thrilled through it; and now and then piping goldfinches
appeared from their winter nests in the moist green ditches, and flew
ahead of Polunin; then suddenly turned aside and perched lightly on
the wayside brambles.
Night still lingered amid the calm splendour of the vast, primeval
forest. As he drove through the shadowed glades the huge trees gently
swayed their giant boughs, softly brushing aside the shroud of
encompassing darkness.
A golden eagle darted from its mist-wreathed eyrie and flew over the
fields; then soared upwards in ever-widening circles towards the
east--where, like a pale rose ribbon stretched across the sky, the
light from the rising sun shed a delicate opalescent glow on the
snow, which it transformed to an exquisite lilac, and the shadows, to
which it lent a wonderful, mysterious, quivering blue tint.
Polunin sat in his seat, huddled together, brooding morosely,
deriving a grim satisfaction from the fact that--all the same--he had
not broken the law. Henceforth, he never could break it; the thought
of Kseniya Ippolytovna brought pain, but he would not condemn her.
At home, Alena was already up and about; he embraced her fondly,
clasped her in his arms, kissed her forehead; then he took up the
infant and gazed lingeringly, with infinite tenderness, upon her
innocent little face.
The day was glorious; the golden sunlight streamed in through the
windows in a shining cataract, betokening the advent of spring, and
made pools of molten gold upon the floor. But the snow still lay in
all its virgin whiteness over the earth.