THE GREGORIEV HEIR
The west wing of the palace in the Serpoukhovskaia sheltered two beings
whose outward and inner lives, though divergent in every detail, were
nevertheless bound fast together by the most powerful tie of nature and
of law. But it was at the other end of the huge building that there
dwelt the solitary offspring of this unnatural union, a boy now in the
eleventh year of childhood, companionless, physically inactive, mentally
over-quick, perceptive, and quaintly imaginative.
Despite the fact that solitude was as much the keynote of his existence
as of that of his father and mother, many eyes were concentrated upon
the development, spiritual and mental, of Ivan Gregoriev. Upon him had
been fastened the hopes even of the Gregoriev serfs, who were as devoted
to him and to his mother as they were miserably afraid of their master.
An hour's observation was enough to make plain the fact that Ivan had in
him not one of his father's characteristics. For this reason he was said
to resemble his mother. But as a matter of fact this statement was
hardly more true than one of the paternal resemblance would have been.
The boy certainly worshipped his mother; who had been his one staff
during that fearful and lonely pilgrimage of his through dark caverns of
speculation concerning the mysteries of his own and his mother's
isolation: facts of which he had been cognizant at a startling age. From
the first, indeed, he had stood, as it were, apart: a silent, observant
young creature, not morbid nor markedly unnatural, yet holding within
himself possibilities not to be found in the usual hobbledehoy of his
age. And though it is probable that, in after years, he felt his
aloofness far more keenly than at the present period, it was in his
early boyhood that his sense of it was most apparent to others.
That Ivan should, from the first, have been a lonely child, was
inevitable, considering his parentage. In the Russia of that day sons of
noble families were not often kept under tutors. They were more
frequently sent to select private schools, where they would meet only
their own class, till they were of age to enter one or another of the
"corps" or academies, started by Nicholas for the noble youths whom he
wished to officer his army and people the royal households. Young
Gregoriev, however, had, up to this time--the new year of 1852--worked,
studied and dreamed by himself under the direction, first of his mother,
recently of his tutor, Monsieur Ludmillo, the son of a Polish exile,
educated in France, and only permitted to re-enter Russia upon the death
of his father, in 1847. This man, a gentle, melancholy idealist, like so
many of his race, had early taken a sincere liking for his young pupil,
nor found, as the years passed, anything special to complain of in
Ivan's performance of his tasks or his obedience during their many hours
together. Of all, in short, who had to do with the young Prince, one
person only, and that his father, felt any displeasure with him. But
Prince Michael looked upon his son with a kind of bitter, resentful
scorn as a creature of his mother's type: weak in character, and holding
within him not one of those fierce and reckless traits which the
traditional Gregoriev proudly claimed for his own.
From the time of his babyhood, Ivan had lived in the extreme eastern end
of the house--as far as possible from his father's rooms. In this
putting of him away even from her own proximity, Sophia had shown the
self-sacrifice of devotion. During many a night had the unhappy woman
lain thinking of her child, hungering for the pressure of his young head
upon her breast, his little body by her side, nay, the sound of his
sleeping breath in the same room with her. But she was determined to
keep him as unfamiliar as possible with the details of his father's
existence; and only in this way was it to be done. By day, however, she
lived in the room that was first nursery, later school and living room,
making herself the companion of her boy in his every occupation,
patiently, from day to day, searching his childish face for incipient
signs of unhappiness or melancholy. But it was not until she was too
familiar with his every expression that such signs began to appear; and
then, through very over-intimacy, she failed to perceive the marks of
those peculiar characteristics that had already begun to mould his
nature.
At eleven, Ivan was tall and well grown, shapely of limb, delicate of
hand and foot, large-eyed, clear-skinned. In certain ways his face did
suggest the face of his mother. But the fine chiselling of her features
was augmented in the sensitiveness of his lip and nostril; and for the
rest, his eyes, that resembled soft, black pansies, and his jet-black,
stubborn hair, that grew like a thick, velvet cap above his smooth
forehead, were all his own. His hands, likewise, were such as had never
been seen upon a Blashkov. They were white and hard, but pliable as
rubber, their fingers extraordinarily long. In fact, they were hands for
which any musician, teacher or virtuoso, would, had such commodities
been marketable, have bought at any price. And this fact had early been
recognized by Ivan's tutor, and by him eagerly seized upon and used.
Monsieur Ludmillo was hardly the typical lazy, effeminate, creature
whose only interests in life were holidays and the society of such
ladies as would receive him. On the contrary he was conscientious,
retiring to a point of absolute self-effacement, and able to forget
himself only in his one great passion: music. He was a Pole of the
Chopinesque type: and it was in spite of himself that he gave his pupil,
besides the regular studies, a very thorough grounding in the classical
masters, taught him something of the spirit of Schumann and Schubert,
and even permitted in Ivan's repertoire such bits of Glinka and Sérov as
were to be managed by the boyish hands. Happily, Ludmillo had not lived
enough in the fashionable world for him to endure the vapid floridities
of the late Italian school; but there rose in him a secret delight when
he heard his charge, left to himself, return again and again to the wild
and haunting melodies of little Russia, Lithuania, and, above and beyond
all, of rebellious, crushed, poetic Poland.
The instrument on which Ivan gained his first understanding of the art
that he was to make his own, was one that had come into the palace upon
the marriage of his mother. In the days before the complete stifling of
her talents, Sophia had been wont often to dissipate the misery of her
earlier disillusions in music. But there arrived a time when grief
became too deep for such sentimental balm; and then the piano's painted
cover had been closed, as she believed, for good, and the instrument, at
her orders, carried away to the unused room where, years afterwards,
Ludmillo discovered it and put it into some sort of order. Madame
Gregoriev's assent to his timid request to have it moved to Ivan's rooms
had been indifferently granted. But later, when, in the candle-lit dusk,
Ivan and his tutor drew instinctively together before the instrument,
they were more and more often joined by another figure, silently
stealing, who would listen to the half-forgotten melodies of other
years that were, for her, ghost-haunted, till further endurance became
impossible, and she would leave the twain again, and, through the lonely
night, weep away some of the still-rankling bitterness, the incurable
smart, of her many wounds. Later, however, came days when the memories
held less of sadness, and, in those rich, slow harmonies, she began to
discern vague thoughts, faintest hopes that, somewhere, perhaps deep in
the fire-heart of God, she should learn His excuse for suffering: be
taught the wherefore of the present: receive that compensation that must
exist, to balance the account held for her by eternity. In time she came
even to think a little of the music-maker: that silent man to whom her
own existence seemed a thing peaceful and fine in its absolute security
from any form of want. She realized, through him, those other thousands
in the world who had lived through lifetimes of conscious insignificance
and unattainable desire, nor thought these serious evils. In short she
was given a horizon whereon she began to see things properly
proportioned. And there, at last, she beheld also her son, and all the
possibilities in the future of those for whom the road of life lies all
ahead. But even she, who knew him best of all, knew little of Ivan's
inner self. She never surmised his strange consciousness of the mighty
void within his soul: the aching gap that his life could never fill: the
unspoken question that waited in him, fulminating, till he should at
last demand his answer from the most high God.
In the face of such things it is difficult to reiterate the denial that
Ivan was a morbid boy. True, he bore an inheritance from his mother. The
life she had led before his birth had certainly left its mark upon him.
But that instinctive sadness had in her been tinged with an inner joy:
the joy of eager motherhood. And in Ivan this joy found its repetition
in a vein of practical gayety. There were days when his mischief was as
diabolical as one could wish it: when Ludmillo, tormented, was still
brought to laugh at his piquant, irresistible nonsense. Nor was the boy
without other traits of his sex and age. There were weeks when he was
full of the wildest plans for his future career; being all for the joys
of the physical, beside which mental labor was to play a most
unimportant rôle. He would be an explorer. Siberia, North America,
Central Africa, were to open before his determined efforts. Or the
Celestial Empire might be penetrated to its innermost recesses by him in
his undetectable disguise; and he was to come home by the caravan route
laden with costliest treasures. Again it was all his wish to be another
Nimrod: Indian tigers, American buffaloes, African elephants were to go
down in thousands before his imaginary gun. While once more (this when
his every spare moment was divided between _Peter the Great_ and the
_Arabian Nights_), he saw himself, at the head of a Cossack army,
storming Constantinople and carrying away the most beautiful Princess
ever enslaved in royal harem. And while the boy silently performed these
great deeds, he was also engaged upon a few simpler, but more salutary
physical feats in a neighboring gymnasium, whence he emerged with
muscles fairly well-developed, and a hand and eye unusually quick at the
foils.
His days were kept wisely full. At that time it was the custom to cram
children rather unmercifully. But Sophia and Ludmillo together made
saner disposal of Ivan's hours. He was made to know thoroughly what he
knew. And it was their great effort to keep him busy enough to prevent a
real appreciation of his isolated life. Their plans were made skilfully
and carried out to the letter. Wherefore the fact that their end was not
actually accomplished, could be charged only to the merciless quickness
of the boy's own apperceptions.
How early it was that he learned the difference between himself and
others, it would be nearly impossible to say. His mother, indeed, was
probably spared the discovery of his knowledge. For he was reserved
beyond his years, and a violent secret pride was his one unsuspected
Gregoriev trait. However it happened, Ivan learned, as a very little
boy, that only in his life was no provision ever made for visits to and
from others of his kind. He knew that he had been left out of the lives
of his class: that the young Mirskies, Blashkovs, Kropotkins, Osínin,
visiting almost daily among themselves, never came to, never asked for,
him. He even divined the one or two half-hearted attempts on his
mother's part to obtain for him at least the occasional companionship of
her own nephews and second-cousins. But what it was that hurt him so
unconscionably about this knowledge he did not realize until after he
had come into manhood. It was doubtful if even his mother, suffering for
him, had a greater sense of unhappiness than he, in his blind sense of
injustice somewhere. For to Sophia, ostracism had long since become a
kind of second nature. But for her son it still had all the misery of
perennial newness.
Nevertheless, despite the deadening of time, the mother-yearning over
her child's loneliness never wholly left the poor Princess. In the case
of the ball, for instance, if her labor for its success, if the care
spent on its details, the summoning of Caroline from Petersburg, the
unwonted extravagance of her Paris costume, had one and all been
suggested by her husband, they had been carried out by her not for his
sake nor for her own; but for the sake of all that it might afterwards
accomplish for Ivan. Once she and Prince Michael were actually accepted,
their son must naturally find his new place. Thus, for weeks before the
event, she had seen Ivan, in her dreams, taking his place among as yet
unknown companions: outstripping all rivals in brilliance and in
popularity. And after the ball, though some of her dreary disappointment
had, unquestionably, been for herself, the better part of it, also, had
been for the child whose protector she had always been. It was almost a
pity that she was so careful never to drag him into the shadows of her
life. Had he once surmised them, the two, mother and son, might have
found a companionship in sorrow that would mean more to them both than
all their separate, painful pretence of happiness--or contentment.
Everything considered, Ivan saw much of his mother; and next to nothing
of his father. And because of the apparent mystery with which the Prince
was surrounded before his son: his mother's reluctance in speaking of
him, the serfs' sign for avoidance of the evil-eye when the master was
mentioned, even Monsieur Ludmillo's careful reticence on the subject,
Michael came, by degrees, to play a foremost part in his son's
imaginings: a part at once heroic and terrible. Ivan knew very well that
his father was not a good man: that he frequently did hateful things
that seriously hurt his mother. Nevertheless, there was a strong
fascination about such a personality. Gigantic, fierce, wild, darkly
omniscient, mysteriously terrible, he stalked in a mental lime-light
through Ivan's dreams. His existence, in the boyish imagination, was
more adventurous than that of any hero of Scheherazade. And perhaps the
greatest charm of all was the fact that, in all seriousness, Ivan
believed his father actually capable of most of the deeds he arranged in
his thoughts.
The boy had been told of his father's importance to the Government; his
power in Moscow. But this was a matter to be so much taken for granted
that it brought little additional pride. Ivan's imaginary father had
long been invested with greater honors than these. He would much have
preferred a satisfactory explanation of the one point which troubled
him mightily: which had filled many of his nights with unsuspected
grief, and disturbed his day-dreams while he puzzled, anxiously, over
known facts that had become too inconsistent with his beliefs for
comfort. That scene enacted in his mother's rooms, at supper, on the
evening after the ill-starred ball, when, at his mother's bidding, he
had left her, knowing that she wished to keep him from questions that
must not be asked, was neither the first such affair that he had seen,
nor yet the tenth. He had left the room with hands clinched and his
heart burning with anger: anger against--whom? what? The person who
brought the look he could not bear into his mother's eyes; the thing
that reopened those never-healed wounds he knew she bore within her. And
these wounds?--the suffering in her look?--Well, he knew, well enough,
of course, that they had all been made by his father! But the father of
such deeds was not the embodiment of romance that he had created out of
the stuff of dreams! There was, then, another; a reality: terrible,
perhaps, but also despicable, and full of things so mean, so low, that
he was hardly even to be hated? Already he could feel that hate was a
strong passion, not unflattering to its object. But--a man who
ill-treated women:--Incredible!
This was Ivan's immediate tangle. And, mercifully, tangle it remained
for many years. Only by degrees so gradual that they hardly hurt, did he
begin at last to draw away from the ideal, and accept, with whatever
reluctance, the real. At the very end, the struggle may have been sharp.
But this was simply because the idealized being himself seized and tore
away his last shred of illusion, and stood, bare-souled, before the son
who could only sit and gaze in horrified, horrible judgment.
* * * * *
It happened in this wise.
Through the years of his son's infancy and boyhood Michael Gregoriev,
disregarding all thought of his child, saw practically nothing of the
boy. He had, in his heart, some faint satisfaction concerning Ivan's
sex, mingled with a fancy, gained after one accidental interview, that
nevertheless, considering his tastes and traits, Sophia's child should
have been a girl. Later, as Ivan began to emerge a little from utter
childishness, his father had resorted occasionally to his school-room to
search the little dweller there for certain longed-for signs of
temperament. Not finding them, he once more put his son away, this time
furiously raging that he should have been given a Blashkov heir.
Nevertheless, because Ivan was his all, and because the Prince, to his
own discomfiture, found himself constantly building careers for a
successor, there came again a day when his wild heart turned one last
time towards the boy, and, calculating his age, he was astonished to
find that his son had passed the first year of his teens.
That summer--the summer of 1854--Madame Gregoriev, Ivan, and Ludmillo
had spent at the Princess' favorite country-place, the tiny estate of
Maidonovo, near Klin. Here, in the spot where she had fewest memories of
the man whose name she bore, Sophia found that she could, for a few
weeks, rally from the weakness, the premonitory pain and its
accompanying dread which had lately found definite place in her life.
Here the summer skies were of Italian blue; the bells rang through air
liquidly golden, perfumed, rich with the murmur of insect life. And here
the three, mother, son, and their quiet companion, walked the
country-side, watching, first, the hurried sowing, fostering and reaping
of the brief-seasoned crops, and then the mad Russian festivals which
terminate the frightful summer labor. This year marked itself especially
in Ivan's mind; because it was the first in which he began to be haunted
by unremembered harmonies and melodies that throbbed again and again
across his brain till he would rush, in a frenzy, to the piano, and play
them swiftly away as one ridding himself of a torment. And it was at
this time rather a misery to him than a delight that, within a few
hours, they were always back again, driving him to continued pondering
over strange mysteries of tone.
It was the end of September before the little party returned to Moscow,
driven thither by premonitions of swift-approaching winter. A fortnight
more, and, on the seventh of the month, Ivan would enter his fifteenth
year. But it was three days before his birthday when the incident
occurred which prepared him for its unusual celebration. For while, at
dusk on the evening of the fourth day of the month, Ivan sat alone in
his music-room, he was approached by Piotr and silently conducted across
the building and into the presence of his father.
Michael received his son in his public office: a room which, to the boy,
appeared a fitting frame for the figure of the Prince, magnificent in
gold-embroidered uniform; booted, spurred, fiery-eyed and
fierce-mustached, but for all that showing a softened light in his face
as he perceived his son.
Piotr was promptly dismissed, and Ivan seated at the huge table whence
he could gaze at the burly figure opposite him as long as his eyes had
courage to look up. Nevertheless the pause was uncomfortable enough; and
the boy was glad when the silence ended.
"Ivan! you're now at the age at which I entered my first battle--as
drummer-boy--and had--Hm! my first love-affair. Are you in love?"
Ivan's velvet eyes lifted themselves slowly to the glittering orbs set
in the dark face. No word passed the young lips, but Michael read,
plainly enough, the wondering displeasure in the boyish face. Slightly
amused, he went on, relentlessly:
"This week, you're fourteen: a man, in short. Now, what have you done
that men can do?"
A fiery reply flew suddenly to the boy's lips; but there it stuck. He
could not speak to this man of his mother. Again he chose silence for
his answer.
"Nothing? You don't speak? Bah!" Michael brought his fist down upon the
table, till everything in the room danced. "Bah! It's a girl I've got! A
ninny. A milk-sop.--I thought so! Your lips--your cheeks--_you_--a
Gregoriev!" But the glittering eyes, striving to fathom those others,
were caught in a sudden quiet depth, wavered for an instant, and--were
lowered! Then Michael sat in a frown, elbows on the table, his chin on
his hand, thinking. Ivan, meantime, this little feat accomplished, sat
waiting, uneasily, for a decision or--a dismissal. He waited for some
time; but the end was worth it--perhaps. When his father spoke again,
his tone was serious:
"Well, I shall try you, after all. Here, on Thursday--your birthday,
mind! you shall meet life. I'll give you a supper, an early one, at ten
o'clock. Tell your mother about that from me. But Piotr will come to
dress you. I'll have no baby about. He'll bring the suit I command you
to wear; and--we'll see.
"Tell your mother, Ivan, that at last--on the seventh of this month, her
rule ends. The last Gregoriev becomes a man--or else--he leaves the
Gregoriev house! Do you hear? Prepare yourself, then, and--go!"
So, without another look, Michael caught his cloak and cap up from a
chair and strode from the room, leaving his son behind him. Presently,
however, Piotr came to lead away the dazed and bewildered boy.
Once more in his own room Ivan sat down, in a corner, to think. In the
beginning, he could only go over and over the recent scene. Considering
it, it seemed almost like some vivid dream, so unnatural had been his
father's conduct and manner of speech. And himself! How preposterously
he had behaved! Not a word, not a single sign of response or
comprehension could he remember having given. Certainly his father might
very well think him a--"milk-sop," was it, he had said?
For a day or two Ivan lived, in secret, through that scene. And after
forty-eight hours it dawned upon him that he was beginning to live in an
ever-increasing dread of that approaching supper-party, "at which he was
to become a Gregoriev!" Those over-sensitive, over-perceptive young
nerves of Ivan's had divined more of his father's mind than Michael
believed. And now a sure and certain instinct was warning the boy of
danger. Nevertheless--disobey the Prince's command? Ivan shivered. Not
appear, on his birthday evening, before the guests that would be--his?
Impossible! Well, something he had yet to do. There remained one command
of his father's which, up to this moment, he had felt reluctant to
follow. This was the message to his mother. Should he take it to her
now; or should he not?
Ivan had reached this point in his reverie of the late afternoon of
Tuesday, when the Princess came quietly into the room where he sat. With
an exclamation, he rose, and went to her; and presently they were seated
side by side upon a long divan, Ivan's warm young hand clasped tightly
in two that were dry and burning. The boy, relieved, gave a long, quiet
sigh; but it was Sophia who began to speak.
"Ivan, yesterday you saw your father?"
"Ah! You _know_, then, mother?"
"Know--what, my son?"
"What--what he said? About my saint's-day supper? Mother, I was to tell
you. He said, tell you that, on the seventh--that's the day--your rule
is over, and I become a Gregoriev. But, oh mother, it's not so, you
know!"
This last Ivan added with eager haste; for Sophia had given a low cry,
and her hands so tightened upon his that the grip hurt, rather. But
after he had spoken she waited a little, her head bent so that he could
not see her face in the twilight. When at last she lifted it to him it
was very white; but the lips did not tremble, the voice was steady. "He
is to give you a supper on this night? He told you so? Spoke about your
manhood--at fourteen?" she added, in a whisper, to herself.
"So he said, Madame. And I did not like it. My father is a very strange
man."
"Then, you do not _want_ this supper?" her gaze at him was intense, but
the dignity had fully returned to it.
To her secret consternation, however, Ivan hesitated.
"I--no--yes--Mother, ought I not to want it?"
For some seconds Sophia stared at him, trying to fathom the exact
purport of his question. Then her whole aspect changed. She took his two
hands and drew them to her breast, and kissed and bowed her head upon
them; and presently, though Ivan was clinging to her and demanding
explanation, she rose, hastily, and left the room.
Her going was impulsive. That which prompted it had come to her in a
sudden flash. Into Ivan's wistful question she had discerned some sense
of loyalty towards the other parent; and, in that instant, she was
ashamed. After all, he was Michael's own son. Must she, then, be sure
that he sought to do the boy harm? Nay, for once in her life she should
be brave again. First of all, she must try, as never before, to trust
the father of her son. Secondly, she must also trust that son. If Ivan
found himself, at the promised supper, in moral danger, he would
instinctively know it. Then, if he made no effort to escape, of what use
protection, or love, or fear, on her part, forevermore? No feminine
force could keep him from going, eventually, down the Gregoriev road.
With such reasoning did the woman try to control the secret, rising
terror that was on her. It would not be wholly downed; yet she succeeded
in keeping her own counsel during the next two days, and in that won a
victory greater than she knew. For the Princess never guessed that
during this time Michael waited in hourly, ironic expectation of some
sort of protest on her part. And neither master nor mistress suspected
that, on Wednesday evening, the serfs, kept informed by Piotr, Alexei,
and Másha of a little more than all, held solemn conclave in their own
house at the back of the inner court-yard. There Michael their lord was
duly cursed, their lady in the same way pitied; and, above all, they
discussed the possibility of giving the young master some sort of
protection at that impending festivity. The matter of open protest to
Prince Michael was actually brought up. For, alas! these simple folk
knew more than their lady of the usual details of their master's orgies;
and the thought of Ivan's participation in the simplest of them was as
horrifying to these slaves as to the gentle lady they served. But the
bold proposition came at last to nothing. For which of these lame dogs
was to beard the lion in his lair?
Wednesday and most of Thursday passed, for mother and son, in a
fluctuating succession of every mood known to their respective natures.
Finally, on the afternoon of his birthday, Ivan, furious at the
indignity, was forced into an hour or two of preparatory rest. But so
restless had been his recent nights that his very protests drifted
presently into sound unconsciousness, and he only awoke at candle-light,
to find Piotr bending over him, and his promised suit, gorgeous even
beyond expectation, lying at hand. And here Michael showed a touch of
his wonderful knowledge of human weakness; for that suit played havoc
with Ivan. There was courage to be found in the crimson cloth, interest
in the gold embroidery, ardent curiosity in the gleaming boots, an
almost swagger in the empty sword-belt. Truly, his Highness had
calculated well. By the appointed hour, Ivan was aflame. Once dressed,
he relinquished the idea of going to his mother for a parting kiss. He
felt, instead, that his "manhood" had already come upon him, and that
kisses were for children. Still, it was a relief to find that, had he
wished it, his half-promised visit would not have been feasible; for,
ere the last buckle was fastened, Sósha had come to escort his young
Prince, with due ceremony, in his first descent into the traditional
hell of his fathers.
Ivan was too little of his own blood, a youth too habitually and
instinctively pure-minded, to comprehend, in the first glance, that
supper scene, and gain therefrom life-long disillusionment. For him,
even after he had left it, there remained in some sort a glamour over it
all--the softening veil of lights and laughter, the gleam of plate and
the perfume of flowers, which successfully hid the blackest ugliness.
The first fresh frost was still upon his glass; and through it the
golden wine was beautiful as it could not be for those about him, who
saw, as it were, through tepid crystal, a flat and nauseous vintage
hardly to be borne even for the faint quickening of the blood still to
be obtained from it. But with Ivan it was as his mother had hoped. She
still sheathed him as in a coat of mail; yet that night the sword of
disaster glanced off it as by a miracle only.
Was this man indeed a father who could find place for his boy at such a
table, beside the woman who awaited him? who could command the boy in
one breath to drain his glass, and Piotr in the next to refill it?
Within twenty minutes Ivan's head was light with the delicious poison of
that exquisite wine. So transparently white grew his skin, so huge and
velvety his black eyes, so serious his finely chiselled mouth, that even
Celestine and Cerisette began to feel, somewhere beneath that hardened
outer shell of "temperament," a disregarded organ filled with a
long-forgotten, aching sensation that was not to be encouraged.
Regarding the quiet boy whose gold embroidery glittered so bravely in
the light, they grew painfully silent; and in that silence secretly
reproached the man who put them to such abominable usage. Indeed,
Gregoriev himself, always quick to take the temperature of a company,
was presently amazed at the tone beginning to prevail over this one. The
screaming laughter had been modified; the unquestionable conversations
stilled. But the wine, for these very reasons, was flowing faster, as
each member of that company sought to deaden those strangely roused
sensations which most of them had believed forever dead for them.
Gregoriev perceived how many eyes remained fixed reflectively on the
white face of the young Prince, in whose eyes was beginning to dawn a
look of comprehension. And they saw with fear the gleam of mockery that
was glowing in Michael's orbs. The host, indeed, had planned, but found
no time in which to execute, a new and daring _coup_, before his son had
sprung to his feet, lifted his brimming glass in a hand grown tremulous,
and dashed it violently at the nearest wall, where it shivered into
splinters, its contents falling, in one heavy, golden mass, upon the
rug. Then, mouth set, head erect, he turned from the company and walked
steadily out of the room. But, the door once closed behind him, once out
of range of his father's mocking eyes, he began to run, madly, through
the narrow corridor, into the central hall and up the staircase, whence
he presently precipitated himself into the bedroom of his mother, who
was sitting in a lounging-chair before a blazing fire.
At the unexpected appearance, Sophia rose with a cry. Only the angels
could have read all the anguish which that utterance bore from her--all
the pent-up misery of a woman tortured during the last hours beyond
every power of endurance. High God had heard her at last. Her son had
returned to her, unconstrained, of his own will, up from that depth,
from that nether hell, to the sounds of which she had been listening for
a long hour. But now her boy was clasped within her arms, his suddenly
burning cheek pressed to hers, his wine-tainted breath, mingling with
her half-restrained sobs as she cried over him only half coherently:
"Ivan--little one--son of my heart--you came back to me!"
"Oh, little mother! Little mother! Keep me safe--from _him_!"