THE LION
Before Ivan left the hospital that morning, he had made all arrangements
and provided a generous check for Joseph's funeral. Then, utterly
exhausted, he drove to a quiet hotel, sent a telegram bidding Piotr join
him with necessary clothes, and finally retired. He remained in the city
for four days:--until the interment was over. During that time there
occurred two incidents of which he never afterwards was heard to speak,
but of which the remembrance never left him; for they eventually proved
to be the end of his long and dramatic acquaintance with Irina Petrovna
Lihnoff.
For all the unspeakable heartlessness of her later career, this
many-sided woman showed deep emotion over the tragic end of the man
whose youth and career she had ruined. Ivan recognized the fact that,
even had he not appeared, Joseph would have received every attention,
every aid, while he lived; every honor after his death. And her first
visit to Ivan was to beg that he would allow her to reimburse him, at
least for the funeral just ended. Ivan's refusal was unalterable. Nor
was his feeling of repugnance towards her softened, either by this
incident, or by her later well-acted but over-theatrical appeal to his
pity, his former affection for her, for the possible restoration of his
consideration, even though entire forgiveness for the irrevocable past
should be impossible. Ivan unfortunately read her too well. Did he do
her an injustice when he said to himself, bitterly, that Prince
Gregoriev was worth an attempt which would not have been wasted on Ivan
the composer?
It was noon on the fourteenth day of the month when Ivan re-entered the
lonely house at Klin, whence he was practically not to emerge for five
long years.
In the years between the October of 1879 and that of 1884, he performed
the hardest labor of his career. His life was one of Spartan simplicity;
nor, though about him Russia fainted beneath the terrible blows of
nihilist knouts, did he once lift his head to catch so much as an echo
of the furore. Unlike the majority of his fellow-countrymen, he took
little interest in the tempestuous history of the period. Still, the
event of March 13, 1881, did affect him powerfully enough to produce the
most beautiful of all requiem masses: one worthy of the martyrdom it
commemorated. For the Liberator met the base reward of his long and
arduous struggle to help his people as nobly as had his great American
predecessor, who, sixteen years before, had also fallen by a traitor's
hand. Yet it is said that none who had known him doubted, as they laid
the shattered form of Alexander down, for the last time, on the iron cot
of his soldier's room in the great Winter Palace, that the sigh of the
dying Czar was no confession of pain, but rather one of relief at this
swift solution of his unsolvable problem.
It was two years before the third of that royal name dared don his heavy
crown; and when that was done, it was Loris Melikov who became Czar.
But, though the secret societies might shriek and rave of the necessary
doom of the double tyrant to be downed, the people themselves had tired
a little of the everlasting howls of bomb-thrower and assassin; and
quieter years succeeded those of Russia's greatest shame.
Ivan, from his hermitage, took some part in the coronation festival;
for from his hand came the Triumphal March, and the great "Victory"
overture, played in the Kremlin Square by an orchestra of one hundred
and seventy pieces, augmented by bells and cannon.
This was, however, one of the works that Ivan never heard. At the time
of its first performance he refused the invitation to conduct it, and
did not so much as think of going to Moscow to hear it played. He was in
a very different mood from one of triumph; for there had come upon him
the bitter grief of Nicholas Rubinstein's death. For two years the old
man had faded, visibly. During the summer of 1881, he had spent much
time at Maidonovo, where he helped Ivan with the final polishing of his
last opera, the famous "Boris Telekin." That autumn, all the old circle
conspired together to keep him in the country, where Ivan longed to tend
him as a son. But the old man, dominant to the last, insisted on
returning to town and resuming his work at the Conservatoire. In the
February of 1883 he actually went to Paris, to help Anton and Davidoff
prepare for their great festival there. The journey, however, fulfilled
Kashkine's bitter prophecy. Nicholas died in the French capital on the
evening of March 11th; and Ivan, struck to the heart, crept yet closer
into the solitude and isolation of Klin, where, for three months, he
yielded himself to Tosca and opium, till a second catastrophe in the
Russian musical world was averted only by Kashkine, who routed out his
friend and forcibly insisted on beginning rehearsals for "Boris
Telekin"; which opera saw its _première_ in November; and became the
sensation of the season.
This one was the last of Gregoriev's operas. He had already expended too
much time on a form unsuited to his talent; and when "Boris" left his
hands perfected, he completely lost interest in it, and began at once to
devote himself to his unnumbered symphony, the "Æneid"; one of the
greatest of musical epics, and well worthy of the poem whence it had
risen. The fruit of the winter of 1883 and 1884, included also the
too-popular "Nathalie" dances, (where, for once, Ivan over-melodized);
the "Cinderella" ballet; and his symphonic poem "Dream of Italy." These
completed, he sank into a state of torpor from which nothing seemed to
rouse him. Overwork had shorn him alike of vitality and of the
imagination which had become as the breath of life to him. And the brief
tone-poem "Hypatia," forced after a fortnight's visit in October from
Madame Féodoreff and her daughters, is the driest, most hopelessly
academic, of his works.
Nathalie's departure, however, seemed to break the spell of his
dreariness. During the following six weeks he was frequently seen in
Moscow and seemed to cling to the companionship of Kashkine; who, in a
measure, began to replace Rubinstein with him. In December came
Avélallement, acknowledged envoy from the five greatest German
orchestras, begging Monsieur Gregoriev to consent to a tour of the
orchestra cities of Germany, where he should conduct programs of his own
works. To the amazement of the Moscow circle, Ivan received this
proposition with something like enthusiasm. Before Christmas he bade
good-bye to Russia for an indefinite period; for, the German tour over,
he was determined to spend a summer in Switzerland, and follow the
autumn down into that Italy of his dreams which he had never seen.
"I have spent too many years in this gray land, Constantine. I am
beginning to feel the grayness. My whole soul is yearning for the
sun.--I have grown narrow, and stern, and stiff, mentally and bodily. I
must expand: must seek out men once more: and countries and peoples that
are not ours.--I long for the contrasts of Africa, of Egypt; of the
burning desert, with skies of fiery blue.--I bid good-bye to Russia.
Time shall lead me whither it will!"
Kashkine, gazing at him thoughtfully, felt a sudden chill of doubt creep
into his heart. The time for his biography was drawing near.
* * * * *
In mid-December, "Prince" Gregoriev, (the title being the finest of
advertisements,) escorted by Monsieur Avélallement, and attended by a
stately retinue of servants, arrived in Hamburg, where his tour began.
His amazement at the ovations constantly given him, was naïve; for it
seemed that Ivan was never to realize the extent of his reputation. But
fanatical adulation, following in the streets, constant cranings of the
neck from the populace every time he appeared in public, presently began
to make him miserable. He was finding fame rather an unwieldy burden.
Indeed, he had begun seriously to regret his contract, when he learned
that, on a certain evening, both Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms, who
had travelled from their respective Norway and Austria to meet him, were
to sup with him and his host after occupying a box at the last of his
Hamburg concerts.
That supper-party gave a bad quarter of an hour to Madame Avélallement,
the hostess: a woman of supreme tact, but whom three great artists bade
fair to overwhelm. As they seated themselves at table Brahms, who had
been in a brown study, suddenly proffered the company an extemporaneous
criticism of Ivan's music, which he tore into miscroscopic bits, and
flung upon the winds of sarcasm; after which he perorated elaborately
upon his own power and the perfect academic accuracy of his style.
When he had reached his final period, the silence was awe-inspiring.
Avélallement, his wife, even Grieg, who was an enthusiastic admirer of
Ivan's work, sat dumb with apprehension, quite oblivious of the fact
that Ivan, appreciating the solemnity of the occasion, was silent only
because he was struggling with hardly repressible laughter. He had
diminished this to a smile, however, before he helped himself
bountifully to wiener-schnitzel, and remarked, with an air of anxious
deference:
"It is a privilege to have heard your views, Herr Professor. In my youth
I, too, was a worshipper of the mathematical cult. I should doubtless
have compressed myself into that mould had it been possible. But alas!
My stubborn inner self would not permit.--After all, each to his own. To
me, imagination: the great, melancholy harmonies of the infinite
Steppes. To you, your counterpoint, your fugue, the infallible,
unquestionable sequence of one-two-three. Let us not quarrel, then, over
the inevitable."
Brahms frowned. But alas! for the moment, his mouth was full. And Madame
Avélallement, breathing a prayer of thanks and relief to Ivan, had
seized her instant and turned the conversation to safer paths. Some
hours later the two masters parted, in perfect amicability. But it is to
be noted that they never met again.
The dour criticism of the rigid classicist was almost the only adverse
word spoken of Ivan throughout his triumphal tour. To be sure, it was
frequently said that his conducting was by no means equal to his
composing: but that was a truth which could have hurt only had it been
turned round. Ivan laughed many a time over his unconquerable terror of
daïs and baton; and had not the orchestras he conducted been perfectly
drilled in his programs before his coming, he might more than once have
come to grief. But it was noticeable that wherever Ivan came into
personal contact with the journalists, no praise was afterwards too high
for him. For the magnetism of his personality had increased with the
years; and, added to the absence of any conceit in his manner, it made
him an object of adulation that drove him into frequent fits of contrary
taciturnity.
However, the long years of loneliness and unremitting labor proved an
excellent foundation for this little period of relaxation. Also, as his
tour continued, he was kept in a constant state of surprise at the
number of celebrated musicians who came from flattering distances to
hear his concerts and shake his hand. Grieg and Brahms were the vanguard
of a distinguished throng: men representing every school, and of every
type of ability; from the veteran Carl Goldmark, idol of his following,
to a very young man, by name Richard Strauss, concerning whose immature
but highly individual compositions, Herr Brahms had already worked
himself into many a classical fury in the pages of his favorite musical
journal; though more than one great artist--among them Ivan,--believed
that wondrous messages were to come from the pen of this youth who
already dallied, in such magnificent unconcern, with certain
awe-inspiring transgressions of classical laws, augmented and diminished
to a breathless degree!
It was nearing March, and the German tour was verging on its close, when
Kashkine came from Petersburg, at Ivan's earnest request, to make one of
the party invited, by Frau Cosima, to spend a week at the home of Wagner
in Bayreuth. It was with a little reluctance that Gregoriev entered this
sanctum of the great magician's world. None who knew intimately Ivan's
work and that of the creator of the music-drama, could easily comprehend
the lack of sympathy between these two men whose music was of so much
the same type. Perhaps the similarity rose from very different sources.
Certainly the effects produced, however much alike in power and in
distinction, had originated in minds bearing so little resemblance to
each other, that neither could see himself reflected in his
contemporary. Indeed, as Wagner adored, and yearned to imitate,
Beethoven, his diametrical opposite, so Ivan, tempestuous iconoclast,
pored, year after year, over Mozart, deeply deploring his inability to
imitate the simple, wearisome, weakly-flowing syrup of obviousness,
which constitutes the secret of that master's popularity. So the two
great men, each of whom must be reverenced by all the members of the
other's following, found in each other, through the insistence of human
nature, ficklest of contrary jades, none of the greatness but all of the
faults.
Happily, however, there proved to be no reason for Ivan's hesitancy over
the invitation of Wagner's remarkable wife. His visit, of which many
hours were spent in the opera-house, where rehearsals for the summer's
festival were going busily forward, proved far too interesting to
require any polite pretence. Ivan took his leave of the widow, (who has
done so much to augment the fame of her husband), with expressions of
sincere regard and regret, adding, involuntarily, his satisfaction that
this stay was to form his final impression of musical Germany.--For,
three days later, Monsieur Gregoriev and his suite arrived in Paris:
home of a very different musical cult.
Here a new group--one no less distinguished than that of their German
brethren,--awaited the Russian star. Aged Gounod, Messrs. Saint-Saëns,
Massenet, and Bizet, with Bemberg, Vidal and Duparc the song-writers,
together with a little group of the younger school, d'Indy, Charpentier
and their set, were gathered together to prepare a festival for Prince
Gregoriev, showering on him attentions of every kind; and laboring
tirelessly to convince him of their admiration and their "sympathetic
appreciation." No blunt comment or criticism here! All was smoothly,
exquisitely polished: urbanely, beautifully French. But within a week or
two Kashkine noted that Ivan was turning inward again towards himself
and his habitual solitude. And he knew that presently these complacent
fellows would be sticking themselves on the spikes of a chestnut-burr of
moroseness, _brusquerie_, and blunt refusals to have anything to do with
music and musicians.
What to do? As the days went on and his fears were fulfilled, Kashkine
brought himself a dozen times to the verge of remonstrance, of pleading,
of explanation; but, each time he opened his lips to speak on that
subject, his courage failed, and he retreated hurriedly to safer topics.
It was odd that this gentle-natured man, so easily assailable in
general, should prove so unapproachable on the subject of personal
expediency. Even Kashkine, already Ivan's Boswell, a man unselfishly
eager that his friend should leave behind him a trail of golden
admiration, dared not make the suggestion that it were better to move
on, merely because he so dreaded the inevitable quiet glance and the
direct, unequivocal: "Why?"
Happily, however, Constantine's secret anxiety was soon ended. One
afternoon, as the two friends sat together in the _salon_ of Ivan's
suite, the Prince called Piotr to him, ordered him to arrange a farewell
dinner for his friends on the following evening, and to be ready to
leave, on the succeeding morning, for Nice, where they would spend the
carnival: Lent falling very late this year.
The events of the ensuing months contain no musical history of any note.
Italy, still arrogant over her florid successes of the fifties, had
nothing but ridicule for the robust northern style which, to the ears
accustomed to simple melody, accompanied by the tum-ti-tum of
guitar-notes, that lightest dessert of the musical feast, was as the
howling of demons drowning the songs of an angel-choir. Ivan,
progressing slowly southward towards the Eternal City, found his name
everywhere unknown; so that he was obliged to depend for comfortable
rooms and ready service solely on his title. In Rome, to be sure, the
score of "Boris Teleken" was to be seen in a window or two, side by side
with those of "Lohengrin" or "Tannhäuser." And there the society of
which Leoncavallo was president, gave him a dinner, at which the
conversation turned principally on the beauties of the Italian climate
and the glories of her historic past.
These things did not, however, wound that professional vanity of which
Ivan possessed so infinitesimal an amount. Never was man more thoroughly
inoculated by _amor Italiæ_ than Gregoriev. During the first weeks of
his stay in Rome, guide-books and histories of the city were never out
of his hands; and he took up his pen only to write the promised weekly
letter to his cousin. Nor, as the spring advanced, and the tides of the
Roman populace, driven before the hot blast of the sirocco, began to
roll towards Frascati and the hills, would Ivan follow them. On the
contrary, he seemed to glory in the increasing heat of the unclouded
sun; and, when he had sent from him, one by one, every member of his
party save Piotr and Piotr's son, young Ivan, he began to prepare for a
more reckless journey, southward. While his anxious but obedient retinue
proceeded to Florence to prepare for him a winter abode, this madman,
attended by a courier and his two servants, whom neither expostulation
nor threat could drive from his side, set out for Naples, en
route--_horror incredibilis_, for Sicily!
During July and August Kashkine, staying, in a condition of enraged
resignation, in Berne, daily awaited a telegram announcing Ivan's mortal
illness or death. Instead, however, he merely received frequent
epistles from the subject of his fears, written in increasing ecstasy;
till finally, in the first week of September, came the climax. In a note
dated from Heaven (a place called, by the vulgar, Taormina), there came,
at the end of the exclamation points, one or two rational sentences of
information. It seemed that, upon the completion of his "Sicilian
Fantasia," Ivan intended returning, by degrees, to the north, reaching
Florence about November 1st. But he did not forget to add that
it would be a voluntary plunge from the skies to purgatory.--For
well indeed was Sicily named the "Smile of God!" And as for
Russia--Moscow--Petersburg--well! popular mistake had incredibly
conceived the infernal regions hot instead of cold; for who on the
beautiful earth could ever be unhappy while the sun, visible presentment
of the Deity, moved unobstructed through the turquoise vault of
Italy?--Italy!--melody embodied: harmony made visible: Mozart
paraphrased: Kingdom into which all artists must seek entrance;
fairy-land come true!
Kashkine read his letter with relief, with resentment, finally, with
laughter. But Ivan's earnest invitation to him to spend the winter in
Florence could not be accepted. He had already been absent far too long.
Russia claimed him. And thus, when, at last, in the first days of the
melancholy month, Ivan arrived at the gray capital of Tuscany where he
was to make his temporary home, no friendly faces save those of his
servants were at hand to welcome him.
Probably no city in all the world possesses so powerful an attraction
for so many people of so many nations as does this grim stronghold of
Medici and Borgia. Its society, like that of most Italian cities, is
largely cosmopolitan. Its different "colonies" intermingle, however,
with the greatest friendliness; and among these "Prince" Gregoriev was
effusively received. It was less than a month before he was given to
understand that, though a fine dilettantism in any of the arts is a
charming fad, a professional career for a Prince with a fortune like his
was not to be seriously considered for one moment. To the surprise even
of Piotr, this attitude amused rather than angered Ivan; and, his
summer's work polished and sent away, he smiled in his sleeve and
urbanely donned his new garb, determined to play the part assigned him
till _ennui_ should tear away domino and mask.
By the time he arrived the "season" was already in a vigorous infancy.
Daily, in the late afternoon, the Cascine became an international mêlée
of magnificent equipages and Parisian toilettes. Then, the drive over,
those Florentine leaders who owned palaces, and their foreign imitators
who contented themselves with a "_Mezzanine_," seated themselves at
well-provided tea-tables and entertained a regularly flowing throng of
tea-drinking, scandal-mongering women, accompanied by a circle of men of
some interest and distinction. In the evening, Florence did still more.
By this time, the _salons_ were suffocating and airless. Yet there were
few nights in the week when, somewhere, the sober reception was not
heightened to a ball, sometimes impromptu, more often formally
prearranged. Morning found the indefatigable leisure world scattered
through one or another of the great galleries, where, before the
masterpieces of a by-gone Italy, they recounted all the questionable
incidents of the preceding day. And never a woman but could tell the
length of time that Countess X---- had remained in the conservatory; or
the variety of rouge used by that preposterous Mademoiselle C----, whose
mother should really adopt spectacles.
For a matter of four or five weeks Ivan, still living in the glamour of
this land of the death-in-life, permitted himself to float, passively,
round and round the fashionable whirlpool. It was a wonder he endured
so long; for, from, the first, he was lionized unbearably, and was soon
taken up by the very cream of Florentine society: (a little clique
really difficult for foreigners to penetrate); till behold! the old
Principessa, head of the lofty house of Contarini, reached a stage of
liking and familiarity where she did not hesitate to tap her Prince on
the arm with her fan, commanding his escort during her formal progress
through her sparsely furnished but highly exclusive _salons_.
Signs of awakening were, however, plainly visible in Ivan's manner
before the day of the accident which revolutionized his winter.
Gregoriev, like every other visitor to the city, had observed, and
frequently stared at, a certain person who constantly haunted the best
of the galleries and resorts--Pitti, Uffizi, Academia, the shop of
Vecellio on Lung' Arno, and, finally, the Cascine. She was a woman of
rather odd aspect, somewhere near middle age, who was always followed by
a maid, but otherwise went alone, unspoken to. Despite her complete
isolation, she was unquestionably a person of breeding, probably also,
considering the appointments of her carriage, of wealth. More than once
it had been on Ivan's tongue to ask about her; but the question was
still unspoken when she was thrown forcibly upon his recognition. It was
early upon a December afternoon; and Ivan was walking alone on the
deserted driveway, his mind engrossed with a recalcitrant theme, when he
was broke in upon by the sudden noise of pounding hoofs, rattling
wheels, then, after three or four breathless seconds, a scream,
interrupted by the thud of a falling horse, the snapping of a shaft, and
the plunging of the second animal, who halted, trembling, a few yards
away.
But half aware of what he did, Ivan rushed to the horse, caught him by
the bridle and held him fast, while the coachmen, and a workman or two
who had come up, busied themselves over the fallen beast, which, though
bruised and bleeding, had broken no bones, and was declared able to
finish the journey back to the apartment of "madame."
A few seconds later Ivan found himself standing bare-headed in the
presence of the lonely woman of his imagination, who, herself pale,
evidently shaken, and coughing violently, was, nevertheless, between her
gasps, vigorously remonstrating with her terrified and hysterical maid.
Astonished at the force demonstrated by one whom he now perceived to be
seriously ill, Ivan accepted an eagerly proffered seat opposite the
women, and accompanied them back, across the river, into the city.
The drive was memorable. On its termination Ivan, fascinated by certain
observations, accepted further hospitality, and sat for half an hour
over a samovar in a beautifully furnished little _salon_; finally saying
au revoir not only with his lips but with his mind.
That evening, for next to the last time, a Florentine _salon_ rang once
more with the name of Alexandrine Alexiévna Nikitenko, widow of the
Prince of the name who was the younger brother of the head of one of the
most famous families in Russia. The story of the runaway and the
dénouement which had brought two such well-known compatriots together,
was in every one's mouth. Ivan was besieged with questions, to which his
replies were so unsatisfactory that a general appeal was made to the
authority of the Principessa Contarini. To her Ivan gave a brief account
of the event, and then himself became an eager interlocutor. His first
triple question also ended, for some time, his remarks. And when he had
been fully answered, his mind was too full for further utterance.
"Who is this Princess Nikitenko? Why is she in Florence? And why is she
not here to-night?"
A storm of comment, ejaculation, exclamations of wonder! Ivan closed his
ears; and opened them again only for the young Contessa Contarini, who,
at a nod from her mother-in-law, undertook enlightenment. Then--one
half-hour in the dim-lit corner of an inner boudoir,--and Ivan found
himself at last _au courant_ of the great scandal of 1869, which,
wonderful to relate, was still, after nearly eighteen years, almost as
interesting as ever: the persistent presence of its heroine almost as
astonishing as in the first days of her ostracism.
It was in the autumn of the year 1867, when the reign of the Liberator
was in the fulness of its fame, that a certain scandal _intime_ began,
in St. Petersburg, to divide interest with the still engrossing topic of
the freed serfs. Every one in society took sides, for or against, in the
quarrel and separation of the young Prince and Princess Nikitenko: both
of whom had been, since their marriage, high in the graces of the
Grand-Ducal circle, and leaders of the fastest set in the capital. When
the trouble between them became noticeable, gossip ran fast and furious;
partly for the reason that no human being seemed to understand just
where the cause of the difficulty lay. Whispered mention of the
Grand-Duke Constantine, madcap-libertine, hero of a thousand escapades,
tended in no way to lessen the interest, though of evidence there seemed
none. The climax proved to be a fitting one, however; for, early in
March, the Princess, with two maids, a valet, her entire wardrobe, and
all save the hereditary jewels, disappeared from the ken of humankind.
Six weeks later she was heard from in Florence, where she remained in
seclusion during the summer, but in the autumn opened a _salon_ which,
in point of brilliance, elegance, and distinction, eclipsed every other
in the Tuscan capital.
The young Princess was a woman of remarkable education, and tremendous
gifts.--So much was always admitted.--Her beauty was a moot point: her
_chic_, never! She threw herself eagerly into the study of those arts
which have made modern Italy what it is; and she rapidly gathered about
her the most talented young men in that part of the country. In the
January of 1869 this company was signally augmented by the arrival of
one Vittorio Lodi, a young Roman tenor; over whose voice--one of those
natural organs found only in that land of the sun--Florence speedily
went mad.
Up to the middle of the ensuing February, the prestige of the Nikitenko
steadily increased in brilliance. Then, suddenly, as it were in a night,
the shadows began to gather round her. Whence the first rumor rose, none
ever knew. But it ran round the _salons_, down the Cascine, through the
town, like a circle of fire. Immediately the watch was set: and
immediately the reports began to come in.
Yes, unquestionably it was true. The Princess and Lodi were constantly
together. In the morning he was unfailingly to be found in her boudoir,
practising, perhaps, his rôle or his songs for the evening. In the
afternoon he had a place in her victoria, and they paid their calls
together, or he sat beside her at her own tea-table. Every evening that
he was free Lodi spent in her _salon_. And on those evenings when he
sang, people found Madame Nikitenko "not at home till twelve."
Soon, inevitably, the world began to draw a little away from the woman,
while it courted the man. Immediately, to the general indignation, she
withdrew herself, positively, from the world; and Vittorio refused most
of his invitations. Then, as the season drooped and died, and spring
swept up from the south, the beautiful Alexandrine became invisible to
every eye but that of the devoted tenor.
Thenceforth it is a stupid tale. "For her sins," the Russian lady made
a long retreat in a neighboring convent; whence she did not emerge until
November was sweeping the leaves down the Cascine, and the world was
once more at home. When she returned to the city of her former triumph,
it was to find every door shut against her, every face averted as she
passed. As for the Lodi, he was now in Milan, at La Scala, at a
phenomenal salary.
That, behold, was eighteen years ago! Still, inexplicably, Alexandrine
returned, winter after winter, to the city of her loneliness. There
continued to be stories of regular visits to the convent outside the
walls, where, in the odor of sanctity, was growing up a little girl with
Nikitenko eyes of purple-blue, and the darkest of waving, Italian hair.
None had ever heard of any attempt either at divorce or at
reconciliation on the part of the husband, now a man high in the
councils of the Reactionary party. Nor was scandal ever again able to
couple any name with that of the solitary woman, upon whom a change had
been gradually creeping. Many had heard her cough, and perceived the
nature of it. A few charitable souls would have relaxed towards her now,
had she herself permitted it; but her door remained obstinately closed
against all women and every man save her compatriot, Ivan. He, without
apparent effort, broke in at once upon her solitude. So, indeed, had the
young Contessa prophesied, in sprightly conclusion. Then, yawning behind
her fan, she laughed, and commanded the sombre-eyed Russian to take her
back to the dining-room and her own circle of adorers.
Ivan himself finished the evening properly. But, as he walked out into
the night chill, his heart and brain alike were overflowing with
interest, with pity, nay, with a kind of fellow-feeling, for this woman
whose bravery was of the greatest known to humanity. Even to-night he
had looked into the hearts of women of her own former class; and he
shuddered at their conscienceless inconsistency. For the moment,
probably, he forgot the sage maxim concerning "safety in numbers." The
woman who yields herself to a single great passion and will neither hide
it nor cap it with another, is surely lost in the world of to-day--or
yesterday!
* * * * *
Two weeks. Two little weeks; and the new intrigue of Alexandrine
Alexiévna Nikitenko, now in her forty-first year, was the great
subject of the Florentine world. For, at the dusty wheels of her
battered chariot, she dragged a new captive.--And such an one!--Their
lion: _the_ lion!--The nobleman of the hour, and a genius to
boot!--Incredible.--Nauseating. Finally, resignation; and covert murmurs
about green bay-trees. All doors, of course, were still open to Prince
Gregoriev. He should have every opportunity for repentance. Only,
apparently, Prince Gregoriev cared naught for their high consideration;
and seemed to have taken a vow to darken only one doorway in the city
beside his own: that hitherto lonely entrance to the apartment of Madame
Nikitenko!
As for Ivan, people might chatter and beckon as they would, his interest
in them was gone. On the other hand, he had become completely absorbed
in the personality of this other, once heart and centre of the gayest
set in civilized society; now dwelling in the fastnesses of an isolation
such as he himself, connoisseur of solitude, had not dreamed of. For in
all existence there can be no such isolation as that of the woman cast
out from among her kind, yet too much one of them to endure the
companionship of others. At the same time, since no brave fight can
leave either man or woman as it found them, so, through the dreary years
of her disgrace, Alexandrine Nikitenko, buoyed up by her unbreakable
pride, had gathered from her blackened fields no small harvest of
broad-mindedness, philosophy, and courage. The Alexandrine of old,
acknowledged priestess of frivolity, was not a tenth so well worth
knowing as the faded, jaded woman, long since numbed to the pain of
slights and insults, who had, through the long years, persistently made
her dwelling-place in the city of her downfall. She was no saint:
affected no martyr's pose: had never, since her departure from the
convent within whose walls she left her babe, sought the consolation of
religion. Child of the world, in a sense, she must always be; but she
was also a woman, softened far more than she herself dreamed. Cynicism
was the cloak of her defence; but Ivan, early in their acquaintance,
unconsciously folded it back, and beheld the beautiful robe beneath.
Thenceforward, throughout the last months of his stay in Italy, their
friendship increased by leaps and bounds. The woman began to feel that
at last the mysterious Arbiter of human fate had lifted His iron hand,
and was looking upon her with forgiveness written in merciful eyes.
On the very day after his first dramatic meeting with the Princess, Ivan
had written to Nathalie, in Petersburg, to gather, at first-hand, the
details of the Russian part of the Nikitenko drama. Princess Féodoreff
replied with her habitual promptness; but the story contained in her
letter was rather disappointing. Apparently Florence knew as much as
Petersburg. The deserted husband, who had climbed far up the ladder of
diplomacy, was celebrated for his morose reticence about his personal
affairs. Nathalie's words were almost an exact repetition of those of
the little Contessa. Ivan was obliged to wait until, one day, he learned
the whole story from the lips of its heroine herself, who told it to him
unasked.
Early in their friendship, as soon, indeed, as she perceived that he
ranged himself absolutely with her, Ivan learned how scrupulously
honest Madame Nikitenko was. With manlike exactness she gave him to
understand that friendship with him grown purely out of liking would be
a godsend to her; but of kindness from compassion she would have none.
Cut and gibe had little power to sting. Pity infuriated her. Gallantly
she was fighting a disease which every day gained a little ground; and
which she well knew to be mortal. But her very maid, the one person whom
she deeply loved, dared no more to look at her with understanding of her
pain, than she would have bared her back voluntarily to the knout. When,
therefore, Ivan, adopting the Princess' own tone, told her frankly that
she alone had power to keep away from him that _ennui_ which must
otherwise drive him out of Florence, she proceeded to tell him openly
which subjects must thenceforth remain closed between them. Of these,
the principal was her illness, which should, before Eastertide, free her
forever from the eyes of the gaping world.
She had had her first hemorrhage in October, immediately after her
return from Trouville, where she spent her summers. Christmas Day
brought the second--a severe one, which was stopped barely in time.
After that followed a long and peaceful interlude: weeks which Ivan
afterwards looked back on with wonder; for the glamour of her
personality, her magnetism, remained about that memory till the day of
his death. His intercourse with her combined the best features of
masculine comradeship and feminine Platonism before the mawkish stage is
reached. She had the ability, so rare in men, to draw out the best that
was in her companion. And Ivan would often find himself displaying
qualities of eloquence and brilliancy of which he had never suspected
the existence. But the woman never revealed to him their source. She
herself was more than rewarded by the originality and the depth of the
ideas which she merely taught him to express. For, though rhetoric may
be cultivated, the most wonderful of tacticians cannot put individual
ideas into the brains of a pupil.
Late February found the world, even down to Ivan's own servants, in a
state of hot resentment against the Prince's desertion of his class.
Ivan, however, cared not a whit. Daily he grew more absorbed: daily he
found some newly admirable thing about her in whom he had reawakened the
desire and the power to attract. True, their intercourse was purely
intellectual. Yet Ivan had long ago perceived, even in the midst of
wreck and disease, what this woman must have been in the heyday of her
indiscretion; and he realized how helpless he should have been in her
hands twenty years before. It is possible that, in time, the physical
might have come to life in him. He might have forgotten the years, the
emaciation, even the rouge and the careless efforts at concealing gray
hairs with badly-put-on dye. All this, perhaps, in time. But, well or
ill, fate had determined, long before, that this, her one true
friendship, was to be but episodic. It was the prologue to a drama
undreamed of as yet; the last act of which was to take place many years
after the apparent end, now so near at hand.
Upon the morning of March 15th, a soft and sunny day of the treacherous
Italian spring, Ivan, presenting himself at the familiar door, was
informed that Princess Nikitenko was indisposed, and begged him to
excuse her till the morrow. Thus the wording of the message, which
produced no more effect than a little disappointment. Ivan loitered
about the streets for an hour, and then suddenly decided to go up to
Fiesole and spend his day upon the pleasant height that overlooks the
"smokeless city" and the valley of the winding Arno. As he rode up, and
up, through the sunshine, past fields just touched with the first,
faint, exquisite green, a slow intoxication began to tingle through his
veins; and lo! the creative instinct came trembling through him once
again.
From that moment, time ceased. The hours passed dreamwise. And, at the
falling of the day, when the blood-splashed glory of the western sky was
balanced in the east by the soft radiance of the low-swinging moon, his
latest inspiration swelled towards its culmination. Long and long he sat
alone on the little terrace before the gray, stone church, his mind
wandering through space to the accompaniment of wondrous harmonies,
himself oblivious of time and men.
It was after one o'clock when at last he reached his apartment and
entered the antechamber where, to his astonishment, stood Piotr, anxiety
written on his wrinkled face. As the door shut behind Ivan, and he
stepped into the light of the hanging lantern, Piotr started forward,
crying:
"Excellency!--At last!"
"Who else could it have been?--What are you waiting for?"
"It might have been one of Madame Nikitenko's men.--At four this
afternoon her major-domo came saying that the Princess is believed to be
dying. She--"
"Good God!--_Dying!_"
"There was a hemorrhage early in the morning; and--"
"She has sent for me?"
"They have come three times, Excellency; but I could not reach you. I
had no idea where you--"
Ivan cut him short with a nod, clapped on his hat again, and ran
hurriedly out into the peaceful, moonlit night.
Fifteen minutes later he was standing at the door of her apartment. He
had not yet knocked; for his heart was beating, tumultuously, and he
knew that he was afraid of the word that might greet him. Still--every
window visible from below had been ablaze. Surely it could not have
happened--yet.
He knocked, quietly, at last; and, after a little wait, was admitted to
the antechamber by a person who was strange to him. This was a young
girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, her head crowned by a coronal of
heavy braids; her eyes, of a deep, purplish tint, rimmed with jet-black
lashes, exact replicas of the Princess' own. Meeting those eyes, Ivan
gave a sudden, comprehensive start. Then he said, a little confusedly:
"My name is Gregoriev. I understand that the Princess Nikitenko sent for
me some hours ago. I received the message only within the last
half-hour. Can you tell me if she is easier?"
The girl shook her head, slowly. She was very quiet, but seemed dazed.
"No. It is impossible that my mother can live. I came at six o'clock.
She saw me, and knew me, then. The priest is with her now; and the
Signor Dottore is waiting, in the _sala_. Please to come in, Eccellenze.
If she should be able, after receiving absolution and the unction,
she--she may see you, monsignor.--Ecco!"
Speaking in a low, wonderfully rich voice, Vittoria Lodi led the way
into the familiar little _salon_, where a young man, known to most of
the foreign colony in Florence, sat reading a medical paper. At Ivan's
entrance the Englishman rose, and the two talked in whispers, the doctor
giving Ivan a résumé of this last seizure: the fearful hemorrhage which
had continued for half an hour, and had started up again at intervals
throughout the day; and the marvellous vitality which had upheld her,
even though her body was nearly bloodless, and her two lungs almost
solidly filled.
As he finished speaking, Dr. Tremont looked at his watch. "A quarter to
two.--She may possibly hold out till daylight. But from now on the
vitality ebbs, and it is more than likely that she will go, quietly, at
any moment.--I trust you can see her, Prince. But I hardly dare
interrupt the priest, who came to her at her special request."
"Certainly not. My great regret is that, not dreaming the attack was
serious, I left town for the day.--I shall never forgive myself."
A few words more of reassurance and sorrow, and then the two men seated
themselves, the doctor returning to his paper, while Ivan sank into an
arm-chair, and stared at the fire that burned in the tiny grate.
Vittoria, thoroughly Italian in her habits, had withdrawn from this, and
crouched on a little tabouret, leaning forward to rest her elbows on a
chair in front of her, her chin propped upon her palms. The silence was
absolute. The light of lamp and fire mingled and cast flickering shadows
and fingers of light into the dark recesses of the antechamber. The air
was tainted with the smell of iodine, carbolic, and various antiseptics;
but the door leading into the Princess' bedroom was closed, and the
portière also drawn across it. Young Tremont, whose thoughts had
wandered from his reading, guessed rightly that Ivan's mind was fixed on
what was passing beyond that door. Of the meditations of the girl, the
daughter of his patient, who had arrived in the afternoon in the company
of the priest now absolving the Princess, he was not so sure. And, as he
thought, he began unconsciously to study her slender figure and
half-hidden face.
How beautiful--how _very_ beautiful--she was! Ah! _Was_ it beauty? Was
it not rather a kind of _chic diablerie_, that is so much more
attractive, so much more dangerous, than mere perfection of feature and
proportion?--Good Heavens! What a destiny, too, for such a personality!
The mother dying; the father long since lost in the dreary throng of
forgotten failures; not a relation in the world who could possibly
acknowledge her left-handed relationship to one of the most powerful
families in Europe:--what was left her but the veil? Instinctively he
perceived that she must be intended for this. And yet, to put _that_
creature into a convent! Set the Venus de Milo in a cathedral
crypt!--What sort of nun would she make, this child of temperament and
unholy passion? _Could_ they manage to keep her consecrated to the hush
of prayer, the eventless, endless routine of the mechanical religion of
her order?
Again and again these thoughts revolved through the young man's brain;
but he did not note that Ivan's gaze was fixed on Vittoria with the same
expression; that his own thoughts were echoed in Gregoriev's mind. Ivan,
indeed, was undergoing rather a startling dream, or hallucination, or
waking-vision:--call it what one might.
Up around him, blotting out all the room save the little space where
Vittoria sat, there rose a silvery white mist wherein she was framed.
Then, gradually, her seated form faded from sight and reappeared again,
changed in costume, and in attitude. And again she faded and reappeared,
and again, and yet once more. He saw her in many pictures, in familiar
places, in the company of persons known to him in the long ago. She was
in Russia, in Petersburg. De Windt, not now young, his temples silvered,
his eyes grown weary, was at her side. He was succeeded by others, men
and women of exalted rank, many of them seeming oddly familiar to Ivan,
who sat entranced, watching and wondering at the vividness of the dream.
And while he gazed down the strange future of this girl, he seemed to
realize, intangibly, that she whom he watched was in some way bound up
with his own fate: connected with him by some powerful chain of
circumstance.
The pictures, continuing, began to grow hazy. Little by little his
sensations became less acute. He was yielding to the influence of
intense fatigue. Tremont saw his head droop forward to his breast, and
his eyes close. Darkness descended. Oblivion trembled over him. Then,
suddenly, there was a creak, a movement, the sound of moaning. The mists
dropped away. Tremont and the girl sprang to their feet; for the door of
the Princess' room had opened and the priest emerged.
On the father's white face were traces of emotion. His right hand was
uplifted, two of his fingers stretched out in benediction. As he spoke,
his old voice trembled:
"Let us give thanks to God for His mercy. A sinful soul, repentant and
shriven, has been gathered home."
Vittoria, with a low cry, fell upon her knees. Ivan, gone deathly white,
stepped forward.
"The Princess Nikitenko is dead?" he asked, dully.
"In the odor of sanctity, my son."
* * * * *
In one brief hour, the shattered illusion of these last weeks of Ivan's
Italian existence had crumbled utterly away. As one walks in some
unhappy dream, he endured the double ceremonies of funeral and burial. A
great crowd was present at the first of these, in the Santo Espirito;
and their eyes were glued neither on coffin nor on priest, but every one
upon the crape-shrouded figure of a girl, who knelt between Ivan and
Madame Nikitenko's heart-broken maid, Marie Latour. Next day the great
subject of the _salons_ was this girl's identity, and the reason for the
tears which every one declared had flowed so copiously from the purple
eyes that might have been stolen from the dead woman who lay upon the
high, violet-strewn catafalque, surrounded by a ring of twinkling
lights. Yet no one in that eagerly sacrilegious throng had the luck to
perceive the most dramatic figure in the church: the shabbily dressed,
middle-aged man who, hidden in the shadow of a chapel-pillar, stood
watching his daughter, her escort, and the throng of familiar people who
had once received him, the outcast, as one of themselves.--Even
Gregoriev never suspected this last touch to the finished story. And,
had he known it, it could in no way have lightened the weight that lay
on his heart when, upon his return to his lonely rooms, he called Piotr
to him, in the twilight, and spoke to the man who was afraid to show the
joy caused by his master's wearily-spoken command.
"In two days, Piotr, we shall leave for Russia.--Make things ready; and
come to me for the necessary money.--Great God! How hideous the world
can be!"