SOPHIE OBLONSKY.
Stella and her mother have finished their supper. The Baroness, who has
exhausted her entire stock of literary food provided for the journey,
is at the book-stall, looking for more reading-matter; she examines the
counterfeit presentments on exhibition there of the great German
heroes, the Emperor Wilhelm, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, among which
distinguished personages chance has slipped in the portrait of
Mademoiselle Zampa. Suddenly, under a pile of books that seem to have
been pushed out of the way, she discovers a green pamphlet which she
instantly recognizes as a child of her own, an essay entitled 'Is Woman
to be Independent?' Of course she buys the book, and, betaking herself
to the small 'ladies' parlour' adjoining the spacious waiting-room,
takes a seat opposite Stella, and, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm,
is soon absorbed in the study of her work.
Meanwhile, Stella has vainly tried to become interested in the English
novel purchased at Nuremberg; she leaves the lovers, after their
twenty-second reconciliation, beneath a blossoming hawthorn, and,
closing the book with a slight yawn, sits up and looks about her. At
the other end of the room, as far as possible from Stella, sits the
pianist, writing a letter: from time to time she looks up to bestow
upon Stella a hostile glance. On the other side of the same table two
ladies are engaged in partaking of the best supper that the restaurant
of the railway-hotel can afford,--a supper with _foie gras_, mayonnaise
of lobster, and a bottle of champagne. One of them, with the figure and
face of a Juno, her costly furs falling gracefully from her full
shoulders, is so perfumed that even the atmosphere about Stella reeks
with _peau d'Espagne_. Eyebrows, lips--her entire face is painted; and
yet she does not look in the least like a travelling prima donna.
"Can that be the Princess Oblonsky?" Stella says to herself, with a
start. "No doubt of it: it is."
And there beside the Princess, on Stella's side of the table, but with
her back to her,--who is that?
Jack Leskjewitsch always used to declare that Stasy's shoulders were
shaped like a champagne-bottle. Stella wonders whether anywhere in the
world can be found a pair of more sloping shoulders than those which
that fur-trimmed circular fails to conceal. Both ladies devote their
entire attention for a time to their supper; at last the Princess
pushes away her plate with a certain impatience, and with an odd smile
says, "Where did you first know him?"
"Whom?" asks the other.
It is Stasy, of course; there may be another woman in the world with
those same sloping shoulders, but there can be none with such a thin,
affected voice.
"Why, him, my chevalier _sans peur et sans reproche_," says the
Princess.
"Edgar? Oh, I spent a long time in the same house with him last
summer," Stasy declares. "He is still one of the most interesting men I
have ever met. Such a profile! such eyes! and so attractive in manner!"
The ladies speak French, the Princess with perfect fluency but a rather
hard accent, Stasy somewhat stumblingly.
"Strange!" the Oblonsky murmurs.
"What is strange?" asks Stasy.
"Why, that you have seen him," the Princess replies; "that he is yet
alive; in fact, that he ever did live, and that we loved each other. I
was wont for so many years to regard that episode at Baden-Baden as a
dream that at last I forgot that the dream had any connection with
reality." The words fall from the beautiful woman's lips slowly,
softly, with veiled richness and intense melancholy. After a pause she
goes on: "I seem to have read there in Baden-Baden a romance which
enthralled my entire being! It was on a lovely summer day, and the
roses were in bloom all about me, while delicious music in the distance
fell dreamily and softly on my ear, and the fragrance of roses and the
charm of melody mingled with the poem I was reading. Suddenly, and
before I had read to the end, the romance slipped from my hands, and
since then I have sought it in vain! But it still seems to me more
charming than all the romances in the world; and I cannot cease from
searching for it, that I may read the last chapter." Then, suddenly
changing her tone, she shrugs her shoulders and says, "Who can tell
what disappointment awaits me?--how Edgar may have changed? How does he
seem? Is he gay, contented with his lot?"
"No, Sonja, that he is not," Stasy assures her, sentimentally. "To be
sure, he is too proud to parade his grief; in society he bears himself
coldly, indifferently; but there is an inexpressible melancholy in his
look. Oh, he has not forgotten!"
Stella's eyes flash angrily.
"She lies!" the heart in her breast cries out; "she lies!"
Meanwhile, the friends clasp each other's hands sympathetically.
"He never knew how I suffered," the Princess sighs. "Does he suppose
that I accepted Oblonsky's hand with any thought of self? No,--a
thousand times no! I determined to free Edgar from the martyrdom he was
enduring from his family because of me. I took upon myself the burden
of a joyless, loveless marriage, I had myself nailed to the cross, for
his sake!"
"She lies!" Stella's heart cries out again; "she lies!"
But Stasy sighs, "I always understood you, Sonja." After a pause she
adds, "You know, I suppose, that he grew gray immediately after that
sad affair,--after your marriage,--almost in a single night?"
"Gray!" murmurs the Princess; "gray! And he had such beautiful
dark-brown hair. He must have heard much evil of me; perhaps he
believed it: it pleases men to think evil of the women who have caused
them suffering. Well, you know how innocent were all the little
flirtations with which I tried in vain to fill the dreary vacuum of my
existence, from the artists whom I patronized, to Zino Capito, with
whom I trifled. If only some one could explain it all to him!--or
if"--the Princess's eyes gleam with conscious power,--"if I could only
meet him myself, then----"
"Then what?" says Stasy, threatening her friend archly with her
forefinger; "then you would turn his head again, only to leave him to
drag out a still drearier existence than before."
"You are mistaken," the Princess whispers. "There is many a strain of
music that beginning in a minor key changes to major only to close
softly and sweetly in minor tones. Anastasia, my first marriage was a
tomb in which I was buried alive----"
"And would you be buried alive for the second time?" Stasy asks.
"No; I long for a resurrection."
A cold shiver of dread thrills Stella from head to foot. The Baroness
looks up from her pamphlet and exclaims, "I really must read you this,
Stella. I do not understand how this brochure did not attract more
notice. To be sure, when one lives so entirely withdrawn from all
intercourse with the literary world, and has no connection at all with
the journals, one may expect----"
Stasy turns around. "My dear Baroness!" she exclaims, with effusion.
"And you too, Stella! What a delightful surprise! I must introduce you:
Baroness Meineck and her daughter,--Princess Oblonsky."
With the extreme graciousness which all great ladies whose social
position is partly compromised testify towards their thoroughly
respectable sisters, the Princess rises and offers her hand to both
Stella and her mother. The Baroness smiles absently; Stella does not
smile, and barely touches with her finger-tips the hand extended to
her. Meanwhile, Stasy has recognized in Fraeulein Fuhrwesen an old
acquaintance from Zalow.
"Good-day, Fraeulein Bertha!"--"Fraeulein Bertha Fuhrwesen, a very fine
pianist,"--to the Princess; then to the Meinecks, "You are already
acquainted with her." And while the Princess talks with much
condescension to the pianist of her adoration for music, Stasy whispers
to Stella, "Don't be so stiff towards Sonja: you might almost be
supposed to be jealous of her."
"Ridiculous!" Stella says angrily through her set teeth, and blushing
to the roots of her hair.
Stasy taps her on the cheek with her forefinger, with a pitying glance
that takes in her entire person, from her delicate--almost too
delicate--pale face to her shabby travelling-dress, the identical brown
army-cloak which she had worn on the journey to Venice three years
before, and rejoins,--
"Ridiculous indeed--most ridiculous--to dream of rivalling Sonja.
Wherever she appears, we ordinary women are nowhere."
"Verviers--Paris--Brussels!" the porter shouts into the room.
All rise, and pick up plaids and travelling-bags; the porters
hurry in; a lanky footman and a sleepy-looking maid wait upon the
Princess Oblonsky, who nods graciously as they all crowd out upon the
railway-platform. The Meinecks enter a coupe where an American whose
trousers are too short, and his wife whose hat is too large, have
already taken their seats. The pianist looks in at the door, but as
soon as she perceives Stella starts back with horror in her face.
"I seem to have made an enemy of that woman," Stella thinks,
negligently. What does it matter to her? Poor Stella! Could she but
look into the future!
The train starts; while the Baroness, neglectful of the simplest
precautions with regard to her eyes, continues to peruse her
masterpiece by the yellow light of the coupe lamp, the American goes to
sleep, hat and all, upon her companion's shoulder, and Stella sits bolt
upright in the cool draught of night air by the window, repeating to
herself alternately, "I long for a resurrection!" and "Wherever Sonja
appears, we ordinary women are nowhere!"
She, then, is the enchantress who has ruined the happiness of his
life,--she the---- She is indeed beautiful; but how hollow,--how false!
Everything about her--soul, heart, and all--is painted, like her face.
Could he possibly be her dupe a second time? Suddenly the girl feels
the blood rush to her cheeks.
"What affair is it of mine? What do I care?" she asks herself, angrily.
"He too is false, vain, and heartless; he too can act a part."