TOSCA REGNANT
During the weeks immediately succeeding this last repulse, Ivan suffered
as he had suffered in the early days of Nathalie's marriage. It was not
easy for him to comprehend why Madame Féodoreff's letter should affect
him so bitterly. He made all the familiar efforts: tried every resource
known to him of old. They failed. Not only had his tranquillity
departed; not only had his work been turned from joy to drudgery; not
only was the pleasant savor of his quiet existence gone; nay:
physically, mentally, he felt himself sick, and in want. His brain
played him false. His sleep deserted him. His carefully guarded
existence turned upon him, mocking.
Ivan at last began fully to realize what the past three months had done:
how, in them, all the old love-bitterness, all the accumulated
loneliness and hardship of his solitary years, piled together, had been
transmuted into a mighty hope, the destruction of which swept away his
carefully-reared edifice of artificial content. Out of all the women in
the world, he had wanted, had asked for, in all his life, none but
Nathalie. But her he had needed, terribly; and she was gone: gone out of
his yearning heart, and arms, and soul--for good!
It was now a long time since he had begun his reign in the house of his
fathers: that dreary house of evil name in which pure women had been
overcome as by some poison, some miasma of foul living, and, generation
after generation, had died there, down to his mother's day. This, for
more than two centuries had been the tradition of that grewsome palace,
till it was famed throughout the city for the sinister line of men who
had dwelt therein, and had finally died out with the last Prince. Ivan,
when he took up his residence there so suddenly, had put behind him his
memories of the old-wife's tales, and his own boyhood experience. This,
as he progressed farther and farther along the road of power, had become
easier daily until--a woman stepped in, and the power of Prince Ivan
faded and died. In the early days of his disappointment, he was beset by
all the ghosts of his fathers. Himself once more a prey to that black
Tosca that is the heritage of every thinking Russian, he yielded without
resistance to thoughts and memories as morbid and as dreary as those on
which his mother, years ago, had fed her dread disease. So, after a few
midwinter weeks of brooding, lassitude, and sleepless fasting, his
personal servants, there being no friend at hand to replace them,
ventured to remonstrate with their master. Piotr was now as much his
devoted slave as was old Sósha, who had recently retired from active
duty to the kitchen-corner, where his reminiscences and his pipe-smoke
together flavored that cheery room. Sósha had no hesitation in taking
Piotr's lead, and begging the master either to bring home company to
amuse him, or to change his abode to some more fashionable quarter of
the city, whither all his dependants would happily follow him.
To these simple appeals Ivan listened, certainly; but, bound down by
that cruel lassitude which is the direst symptom of chronic melancholy,
he refused every suggestion, and left his servants to return to their
quarters, dismally shaking their gray heads over his mental state.
So through the winter. But the flowing of spring-tide rouses the dullest
to contemplate some possible change of routine. And when that blessed
season once more breathed upon White Russia, Ivan woke to the memory of
old desire. From his mother, who, as a girl, had run wild over the huge
Blashkov estates, Ivan inherited that intense love of nature without
which an artist must be always maimed. This year, especially, he found
himself daily dreaming of the perfumed nights and sweet-aired days of
the country of his boyhood: his mother's favorite resort, at Klin,
whither she had been wont to convey him in May, and whence she departed,
tearfully, under heavy pressure, in October; though twice in her life
she had managed to spend the greater part of the winter there, in the
white wilderness hateful to her lord. "Maidonovo" was a moderate-sized
house, set in the midst of twenty acres of land situated a half-mile
from the extremity of the village of Klin. A year after his wife's death
Michael Gregoriev had sold the place, which he had always detested. Of
it Ivan now dreamed, incessantly; till, late in April, he entered into
negotiations that were presently to electrify his household and that
part of Moscow's population with whom he figured as something of a
personage.
It was the twenty-eighth of the month when Piotr, after a two-hour
closeting with his master, flew to his fellows with astounding news.
The great Gregoriev palace was, in less than a month, to pass out of
the hands of the last of the family, and into the possession of the
government, by whom it was to be turned over to the Department of
Police. Moreover--and Piotr's emphasis on the word brought a sharp
stillness in place of the rising buzz of comment--instead of a place in
Moscow, Monsieur le Prince had bought his mother's former country-house
at Klin, whither he intended to remove immediately, there to pass at
least the summer, retaining as many of his present household as
cared to remain with him. (Here a smile, at the idea of any of the
twenty's leaving the service of a bachelor, a lover of solitude and
simplicity, who would sooner have struck himself than one of his
servants!)--_Finally_, the whole change was to be completed in two or
three days; and a week, at the outside, would see the new existence
well begun.--Whereupon Piotr, all his news given, descended from his
imaginary rostrum, as eager as his fellows to have a voice in the
impending discussion.
* * * * *
It is no very rare thing for the Russian May-day to wear an aspect of
January. But May snow is, at least, a transient thing; and there are
years when the first day of the gentle month is such as no country would
repudiate. Nature did honor to her disciple; for the world was a glory
of young green and gold, as Ivan, bowed with memories, made his progress
out of the present, along the white, country road to the house of the
long ago.
Winter had ended ten days before; and Russia, with that marvellous
rapidity with which she accomplishes all change, had already risen from
snow-sheet and mud-bed, and stood negligéed in a robe of gauzy-green,
all flower-sprigged and sun-flecked. Three days more, and the fruit
trees, for which Klin is famous, would be bowers of pink and white. And
behind the flying droschky, there actually arose a fine, white film of
dust! House doors stood open to the milky air; and Staroste and lonely
Village Priest alike were at work in their respective gardens.
Ivan, now emerged from his black, winter mood, was tremulous with
emotion; and, as his vehicle left the village behind, his eyes ranged
over the broad country-side, reading, as in a familiar book, each old,
beloved character printed on the open page of the landscape seen last
during the summer he had spent here alone, after his mother's death.
When Ivan alighted at his own gate, Sósha stood there to welcome him and
take upon himself the customary haggle with the driver. Nor did the old
man, noting his master's face, so much as address a word to him whose
expression he read with the sagacity of one trained to the task. Hence
Ivan, his heart overflowing, went at his own, lingering gait towards
that open doorway wherein, it seemed, Sophia's slender form must
presently appear.
He entered the house alone, turning at once into the little
morning-room, where he looked vaguely about for his mother's
tambour-frame which was not in its place beside the window. Hither, an
instant later, came Piotr, announcing, respectfully:
"The large room above has been prepared for your Excellency. The trunks
are all unpacked.--At what hour shall I serve the tea--and where?"
Ivan started, looked about him dazedly, and realized that he had not
eaten since early morning, though the hour was now past four. Then he
said, rather wearily: "Tea here, Piotr, in an hour. After that I will
see you and Sósha. Meantime, let me be left absolutely alone. I want to
go over the whole house. See that I meet no one."
"Your Excellency is obeyed." And Piotr had bowed and was gone.
Ivan flung hat, gloves and stick upon the table, and then looked slowly
round once more.--Twenty-one years since his mother had gazed on these
familiar walls?--Impossible! Two decades of other lives intervening
between him and the summer in which sad-eyed Sophia had secretly watched
the coming of her hideous Octopus of disease? Nay! He would not let that
thought endure. But every trace of intrusion must be put away: if,
indeed, it had left a trace. At least the belongings of his mother, now
removed, must come back. He should dwell here with her beside him, in
his heart, always!--But certainly this room, save for the tambour and
scattered wools, was quite unchanged: roughly-tinted buff walls,
polished floor, with its delicately faded Persian rug, heavy chairs and
sofa, ay, the very spindle-legged table near the bay, were all here,
forming the old ensemble. It was almost incredible.--But Ivan had
discounted the penetration of those servants who, in the long ago, had
loved their lady as now they loved her son.
With a heart violently throbbing, a throat painfully knotted under the
strain of associations long cherished in the inner sanctum of his
memory, Ivan passed slowly through the long, cold drawing-room towards
the staircase at its farthest end, and so, slowly, upward. As of old,
the slippery stairs were uncarpeted; and his heart jumped anew as his
eyes met the thing they sought: a small, round knot-hole, in a corner of
the seventh step, which had been filled in with a piece of wood rather
darker than the rest, and which, as a boy, he had been possessed to cut
out with his knife, only to be inevitably caught at and punished after
each attempt.
At the head of the stairs still stood the great, oaken chest, the bottom
drawer of which had been dedicated to the use of his most precious toys.
That was empty, now. He must not break the spell by opening it. So, with
a smile that was an inaudible sigh, he passed on to his mother's
bedroom: that room in which, on a New Year's night now thirty-eight
years gone by, a lonely wife had prayed God for the boon of motherhood.
The very shrine before which Sophia had knelt, bracket, ikon, and brass
candlestick, still hung on the far wall, beside the bed. Ivan's eyes
paused at it, and he was seized by the impulse to speak to his mother
from that spot. Repressing himself, however, he sat down beside a table
on which he leaned an elbow, supporting his head upon his hand.
Presently his eyes drooped shut. The unwonted sweetness of the air, the
long, twining sun-shadows of late afternoon, the intense, country
stillness, all of them helped the oppression of memory, till gradually
he began to feel himself enwrapped in a shimmering, elusive mist of
half-real dreams.
He perceived that the windows were fast-shut, double-paned, their cracks
stuffed with the customary winter moss. Still the raving wind came
through: a freezing breath. Daylight was gone. In its place--was this
some pale moonbeam straying through the uncurtained window, to mingle
its ghostly light with the flaring yellow flame of the guttering
candle?--And that figure that crouched, dumbly, on the floor, beneath
the protective ikon? Who was she?--And who the other two who now
resolved themselves out of the creeping mist and glided towards the
sleeping woman?--a tall and radiant personage, leading by the hand a
little child?--It seemed not strange:--neither new nor amazing. Ivan
knew the gentle lady who had prayed: knew also the Majestic One who
brought the answer to that piteous prayer. But the child--the
shadow-shape whose tiny hand was clasped in that of the Divine
Woman?--Ah, _that_--
Ivan shuddered, started, and, by a violent effort, flung off the
clinging vision. Old Sósha, standing in the doorway, was saying, in his
gentle, plaintive voice:
"The tea, your Excellency!--It is as you commanded.--You have journeyed
far and waited long!"
"_Waited!_--I commanded tea in an hour. It can't be five."
"Pardon, your Excellency, the bells have rung six."
Ivan sprang to his feet with an exclamation. Then, suddenly, he swayed,
caught himself, by means of the table, and sank back in his chair with a
suppressed groan. The old servitor ran forward, fear in his face; but
Ivan, smiling at him, waved him away:
"It is quite well with me, Sósha.--Go bring the samovar up here:--here,
to my mother's room."
* * * * *
So, with less thought of Nathalie in his heart than he had known for
many a long day, Ivan began his life at Klin: an existence which,
barring one restless interval of travelling, was to continue till the
end of material things came for him. He was not yet old in years. The
experiences that had been given him were scarcely of a theatrical kind.
Those which had gone deepest, and upon which his soul had fed itself,
had been scarce visible to the world, could not have been surmised by
his closest friends. His scars were the scars of temperament: the result
of an abnormal capacity for feeling. The vividness of his imagination
heightened petty trials to a semblance of wanton cruelty. Impersonal
matters he unconsciously made his own. Echoes of the great
_Weldschmerz_, coming to him from the void, vibrated their way through
his nature till they emerged again, imprisoned in harmonies of his
creating.
This summer, for example, the first that he spent at Klin, brought him
scarce one outward incident worthy of note; yet it was to him a time
overflowing with events--of mind, and memory. To an outsider or a
_mondaine_, the Maidonovo routine would have seemed monotonous to a verge
of imbecility. Ivan, ghost-haunted, found each minute of each day
pregnant with its own suggestion: saw his life as a tapestry, the design
of which was woven upon a background of surpassing natural beauty--the
climax and gradual _decrescendo_ of the year. He had emerged from that
long period of semi-idleness in which he had been able to do no more
than refine a mass of half-finished work; and was now feeling a fresh
joy in a renewed and strong-flowing power; an excitement in the
evolving of new ideas. September found ready for the printer five new
works; the first of them and the biggest, his "Fifth Symphony," the
_andante_ of which must remain forever unrivalled, while the work as a
whole can only be surpassed by its successor in the same form, Ivan's
last and greatest creation: the "Tosca Symphony." Beside this he had
written the "D-minor Violin Concerto" for Brodsky; the "Liturgy of
Joseph of Arimathea," for four voices with organ accompaniment; half a
dozen of the melodious songs that were his special delight: and, lastly,
the little, one-act opera "Iris," for which he had written both libretto
and score, and which created a furore on its performance in Petersburg,
the winter after his death.
The months that produced this large amount of work were spent in a depth
of solitude such as only Ivan would have dared to undergo. Nathalie's
letters, which grew more frequent as the days went by, and to which he
faithfully replied; two visits from Kashkine, one from Mily Balakirev,
and half a dozen from Nicholas, who was to be daunted by no amount of
taciturnity, were the only incidents of the period. Balakirev, indeed,
had brought with him a young protégé, one Rimsky-Korsakow, (since heard
from,) to worship at the shrine of Russia's Gregoriev; whereupon that
hero, highly disgusted, behaved so boorishly that the chagrined
Balakirev refused Nicholas' next plea, and would not go again. Ivan's
one, regular recreation were his long, solitary walks through the
country-side, disturbed only by the clamorings of children, whom he had
spoiled with kopecks, and whose chatterings interrupted his thoughts no
more than did the voices of squirrels and birds--from which latter,
indeed, he got many an idea.
These five-mile walks, with four hours in the morning and two in the
evening at the piano, an hour or so spent in skimming over some of the
scores in his vast musical library, considerable reading, especially at
meal-times, of Russian, French and English novelists and the German
philosophers, whom he approached worshipfully, formed the occupations of
his quiet life during many years. And, as the first months passed, he
began to realize that his painfully acquired philosophy of living was
demonstrating its practicability in the many volumes of his daily
journal.
No artist, nor, indeed, any scholar or original thinker of temperament,
can progress far in his chosen work without acquiring a certain
philosophic attitude of his own that makes for religion; though it be no
more than the result of orderly habits of thought: its premise gleaned
merely from a continual subconscious synthesis of the sum of personal
existence. The type of the synthesis matters no more than the form of
its result: mockery and atheism of Schopenhauer or von Hartmann; poetic
illogicalities of Hegel; dizzy flights of Schelling; materialism of
Locke; idealism of Berkeley; magnificent transcendentalism of the
imperial Kant;--they become one at last. Truth is one and indivisible;
therefore it is the sincerity of thought, not its fashion, that matters.
True, Ivan Gregoriev, musician by necessity, philosopher by instinct
only, left in the end little record of his answer to the riddle. But
this was rather well than ill. For, from the very beginning, Ivan's
"glimpse behind the veil" was distorted, clouded, smirched, by an
unconquerable cynicism: a personal resentment and rebellion against the
God who stood forth as the acknowledged creator of the miserably unhappy
race of men. The eternal question:--if God be only Omnipotent Good, why
the existence of evil?--he asked in ever-growing bitterness, till
so-called altruism became to him a mockery; and he took a painful
delight in twisting his wisdom into the most fantastic forms, which he
also made the sport and butt of formal logic; knowing always, in his
own heart, the evil that was wrought in him by those bitter reflections
that formed the refuge of his idle hours. Ah! Had Nathalie but cared!
September was gone ere Ivan wrote the dedications of his five
newly-finished works. And then, thinking of the men so remembered, he
realized that they all happened, for the moment, to be in Moscow.
Thereupon he suddenly decided to invite them to Maidonovo for
forty-eight hours, and, during that time, to hold a manuscript festival,
in which his and their unpublished works should be played each by its
composer, and criticised by the listeners.
An invitation from Ivan was not now a thing to be refused. Therefore the
evening of October 10th found six men assembled round the samovar in the
transformed living-room of Ivan's home. For the time, the host had
thrown off his habitual air of grave reserve, and, responding to the
friendly and congenial atmosphere around him, expanded to a gayety, a
magnetic boyishness, that fascinated as much as it amazed the four who
knew him as no others could; and sent Avélallement, a wealthy German
dilettante, whose acquaintance with the famous Russian consisted of a
long correspondence and a fanatical admiration of his work, back to his
native Hamburg determined on bringing Ivan to Germany, in order that the
most sentimental, hospitable and musical race in the world might come to
know, as he did, the great-hearted Russian, whose only possible fault
was that he had not been born on the other side of the frontier.
That evening, and the day that followed, were more delightful than Ivan
had dared hope. Surrounded by those who were big enough to understand
him, (and, though he did not realize this, he was now generally
recognized as too great a genius to be longer victimized by jealousy)
he himself shone out with a kind of radiant optimism quite foreign to
his general humor. The new works were gone over, and praise, with thanks
for the dedications, given with a sincerity that was unmistakable.
Finally, his _pièce de résistance_, the symphony, was played again and
yet again; first by one musician and then by another, the rest hanging
upon each note and chord and progression with the delighted appreciation
of men who understood that they were hearing a masterpiece which was to
be reverenced by generations to come, and which was to bring honor to
all Russian music. By the second evening Rubinstein, his kindly face
beaming with pleasure, was arranging the program of an extra concert in
his Vienna series to be devoted entirely to Ivan's works. Ivan promised
him the symphony for its first performance there; and Brodsky agreed at
once to play the new _concerto_, the study of which he intended to
begin, from the manuscript, on the following Monday.
It was perhaps the sharp and painful contrast of the incident that
closed this holiday, which made it afterwards shine so brightly in
Ivan's memory: a memory to which, in later days, he was to turn again
and again, as to the happiest hours of his professional life. His
success might not have been really very great.--And yet, the pressure of
Kashkine's hand upon his shoulder; the friendly light in Rubinstein's
faded eyes, the painful hand-clasp of muscular Balakirev--surely these
things showed that the old cabal against him had at last come to a
natural end? Moreover the attitude of open admiration adopted both by
Brodsky and Avélallement, both of whom lived entirely abroad, plainly
betrayed the esteem in which he was held in other lands. Yes; for one
hour--perhaps the only one of his life--Ivan felt to the full the
exaltation of success, of applause, of the intimate knowledge that,
however great his praises, they were no more than his work deserved. He
was a successful artist: his feet on one of the last steps of that
great, golden stairway, around the foot of which thronged such
struggling crowds; the serene heights of which were so little trod.--Ay,
it had been given him, his bright day! How could he complain when, at
eleven o'clock on the second night, old Sósha entered the room and
handed a telegram to his master?
Brodsky and Balakirev were in the middle of a haunting melody of the
Steppes, arranged by Mily himself, when the sharp exclamation of Ivan
brought a quick silence, and turned every eye towards him:
"I have a message here, my friends.--It is bad news.--I--I must--" he
passed his hand across his brow, and thought for a moment: "I must get
to Moscow to-night, somehow.--A friend--a man, is dying there, in the
Cherémétiev Hospital.--You understand? You forgive me?--It is urgent I
should reach him before the end."
There was the natural chorus of sympathy, regrets, assurances of
understanding. Only Brodsky betrayed a touch of the curiosity which all
felt; for, even to those who knew him best, Ivan's life and connections
had always had about them a suggestion of mystery which made his every
affair an object of unwonted interest to those who knew him. But to
none--not even to Nicholas--did Ivan disclose the identity of the man,
or the exact nature of the agitation that spoke of hidden grief.
He made his preparations quietly; bade good-bye to the friends who,
though they were to sleep at Maidonovo, would be gone before he could
return; and, taking the bag prepared for him by Sósha, hurried out to
the sleigh that awaited him. Seventy minutes after the arrival of the
message, the Petersburg mail thundered into Klin on its way to Moscow.
Ivan, solitary midnight passenger, was put on board, together with the
mail-bags and registered express.
During the two-hour ride through the roaring blackness, Ivan did not
sleep, and scarcely moved. His mind was occupied in going over and over
two scenes of the days before his succession: one, the afternoon on
which a certain starving youth, fed and warmed by him, had told the
story of his struggle for an artistic education; the other, his final
interview, two years later, with that same youth, soiled, then, in mind
and body; sodden with vice; mentally rotten with the knowledge thereof:
the fair god of his ideal dragged from its altar and sold, with all the
rest of his great heritage, for less than a mess of pottage.--Again, as
he neared the city, these memories were augmented by an anticipation:
the imagined picture of the third and last interview he was destined to
have with the tragic boy. Ivan was to get his last glimpse into that
soul to-night. He was going to one who, dying, had called to him from
the depths: Joseph Kashkarin, the Pole.
* * * * *
Dawn had not yet risen. Moscow, wind-swept, dripping with wild bursts of
rain, its desolation augmented by the mournful shrieking of wind through
the narrow streets, was shrouded in the intense darkness of the last
hour of the night, when Ivan at last dismounted from his droschky at the
door of the great hospital given to the city by Count Cherémétiev. He
found no difficulty in entering; for there is no moment of the day or
night when some wretched soul may not find a refuge there.
At the same time, the "Prince" Gregoriev, together with a piece of gold,
did serve to cut many yards from the red tape that impedes all progress
in Russia. A brief explanation, two minutes' wait, the appearance of a
young man garbed in spotless white, a walk up two flights of stairs and
along a chilly corridor, and Ivan found himself at last halting before a
closed door. Here the nurse turned to him saying, softly:
"We were obliged to remove him from the ward at noon to-day. We prefer
not to allow deaths in the general rooms if we can avoid it.--Then too,
early this evening, the man was suddenly paid for."
"_Paid for!_--By whom?"
"A lady. We do not know the name. She refused to give it, and did not
ask to see the patient; but she left a considerable sum for him."
"Why did you not send for me sooner?"
"He never mentioned your Excellency's name till this afternoon. And of
course we did not dream that you--you knew him. He has been conscious
only at intervals since the hemorrhage yesterday; and he is also under
the influence of opiates."
"He is dying of--what?"
"Galloping consumption; and--" The man hesitated.
"What?"
"Well, it is a complicated case. We think there must have been a touch
of _delirium tremens_ just before he was brought in--a week ago.
Alcohol, you see, is the best thing we know for consumption. If the case
hadn't been aggravated by privation--hunger, exposure, want,--we might
possibly have saved him, at least for the time. But I assure your
Excellency that everything has been done--"
"You think it absolutely impossible to save him _now_--if no expense is
spared? I give you _carte-blanche_--"
"The man is dying, Prince Gregoriev. Only a miracle could help him now."
There was a moment's silence before Ivan said, very softly: "Let us go
in."
The room was small, rather bare, but clean and well-warmed by the huge
stove built into the wall, with half of it extending into the room
beyond. A second nurse was sitting in a chair beside a small table which
held medicines and the night-lamp. This man rose as his successor
entered, and, at the door, a word or two was spoken between them. Ivan
caught the phrase: "No change." Then he halted beside the iron bed and
stood looking down on the motionless form of Joseph.
Joseph!--Joseph Kashkarin, this bearded, hollow-eyed, gray-lipped man,
with the spots of scarlet flaming from his projecting cheekbones, and
throwing the death-hue of the rest of the face into still more dreadful
prominence? Joseph's, that clawlike hand, with the broken, stained and
shapeless nails, which once had wielded a brush that created the
laughing face of Irina Petrovna--the woman who had brought him down to
death? A great shudder seized upon Ivan; and, for an instant, he was
forced to turn away. Then the nurse brought him a chair; and he removed
his coat and hat and seated himself beside the cot, his face resolutely
straightened into an expressionless gravity. As he watched, the nurse
administered a hypodermic of strychnia, and then bathed the burning face
and hands with cool water. The task completed, the man turned to Ivan,
saying, nonchalantly:
"The stimulant may pull him up, sir, for fifteen minutes, if you wish to
speak to him. But he's failing. He'll hardly linger to see the sun."
In spite of himself Ivan betrayed something of the thrill that shot
through him at these words. Till now he had scarcely realized that he
was actually to watch a man start upon that dread passage which
leads--none knoweth whither. He sat wrapped in solemn thought until,
presently, the form beneath the blankets stirred, and Joseph began to
cough:--a cough that shook and racked his emaciated frame as if it would
tear flesh from bone. The nurse hurried to his side. But it was five
minutes before the fit had ceased and the sick man, raised high upon his
pillows, regained his breath and the strength to open his glittering
eyes, which fell at once upon Ivan. For a moment they stared, dazedly.
Then a distorted smile softened the line of the pallid lips:
"_You!_--Then they did send--and you _came_! I'm not dreaming?" He spoke
in a whisper, as if to himself; but the words were distinct.
"No, Joseph, I am here.--Joseph, why did you wait?--Why did you not come
to me, years ago?--I hunted so long! I never dreamed of leaving you
longer than for that one night. I have prayed that--" He broke off,
suddenly, remembering that excitement might bring on the cough again.
And indeed Joseph's eyes were already closed once more.
Ivan waited, patiently, one, two, five minutes. Then the whisper came
again: "That is a long time ago. But I remember why I didn't go to you:
why I concealed myself. It was because I was ashamed.--We all wish to
hide our dirty souls from every one--even from God, I suppose. Well,
_you_ had been really good to me; and you were my ideal: the ideal of my
best self, and of my art. How could I go to you, when you must see the
depths I had got to."
"But you are letting me see you now, and there is nothing dreadful in
it," put in Ivan, gently.
"Ah, now I _know_ I am dying. You cannot despise a man who is facing
eternity."
"I should not have despised you then, if--you had cared.--You see,
Joseph, after all, we're brothers. Your God is also mine. We both wanted
to serve Him in the same fashion; for all the arts are kin. And I knew
how great your talent was: how fine would be the expression of the best
in you."
"Ah! That is it!" Joseph sat forward, eagerly, and his faint voice
wavered. "'The expression of the best,'--that, Ivan Mikhailovitch, is
what you tried to give me the chance for: what you always have done
yourself. You were moving steadily upward. I was always plunging farther
down.--And it was my wilful choice. I think I know the truth now. My
service of God was never freely given. It was not the best I could do:
the finest work I was capable of, just for the sake of the work, and the
high thoughts it brought, to me and to others. There were more sordid
motives. I wanted--first, fame: adulation from people; secondly, no,
perhaps most of all, _money_. For of that I had never had enough for
common necessities in all my life. So, even if there had been no--woman"
(that word almost inaudibly,) "I should not have done what you believed
I could do.
"Art!--the great sun-goddess, that shines afar! She it is that gives us
the gift: the chance to work. But she knows all our hearts; and she
judges our deeds honestly. That which she accepts of us, she lays at the
feet of the Most High.--Is it well?--Thou art Abel. Thine offering of
the lamb is more pleasing than the first-fruits of the harvest. On
me,--Cain, God frowns, and the devil grins.--He is grinning through the
wine. I hear his laugh amid the clink of the coin.--He is in red; and I
flaunt my mistress in his colors. Then we dance: first for sheer
delight, with the music. Then the whips come down on our shoulders, and
we go on.--Faster!--Higher!--Leap and prance, and watch the grin
expand.--Ah-h-h-h!--Are the shadows there deep enough, rich enough, do
you think? And are the lips too much a 'thread of scarlet'?--Oh the
opalline lights in that cloud!--How to blend such colors on a
palette?--Nature? She is mocking, too.
"But oh, Irina, I see it now, at last! The dawn--the dawn is here. The
night is gone. I have dreamed, I suppose: ugly dreams.--But they, too,
are done with.--Look, my beloved, it is morning! The first sunbeam
shines there--and is reflected in your dear eyes!" And, lifting his thin
body, arms wide-stretched, eyes a-glitter, Joseph made his last reach
up, after the great sun-shaft he had sought so long:--reached, and so,
with a faint, far cry of satisfaction, had it, and was gone.
Ivan, feeling his way to the window, opened the curtains and looked out
through blurred eyes upon the holy city. The dying man had, indeed,
beheld the day. Yet no sunlight glittered upon the Kremlin domes; only
the velvet blackness of the dark hour had melted, and given place to a
twilight of sullen gray. Then, through the mind of Ivan, exhausted by
the emotions of a sleepless day and night, there shot a pang--not of
sorrow, but of deep, irresistible _envy_, for the man who had passed
away, out of the Russian autumn, into the glory of the everlasting
sun-land.