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One evening he found me nervous and agitated.
“What has happened?” he asked.
“I have been reading a ghastly book,” I told him with a shudder. “The story of a mysterious plant, a sort of huge octopus that feeds on human flesh—”
“Ugh!” laughed Bozevsky, “how gruesome!” and he bent his sunny head over the page.
“Just imagine,” I continued, “its branches are long moving tentacles, its thick leaves are quite black and hard; they glitter and move like living scorpions....”
“Horrid, horrid,” said Bozevsky with his shining smile as he took the book out of my hand. “Forget the scorpions. To-night I shall read you some Italian poetry. I want you to make friends with Carducci.”
He opened a plainly bound volume at random, and read to me.
“Oh favolosi prati d'Eliseo…”I forgot the tree of scorpions. I forgot Bozevsky. I forgot Aunt Sonia and the world. The unknown poet had wrapped my spirit in his giant wings and was bearing me far away.
It was about this time that Vassili took me to Moscow. There, one evening, our friends the Maximoffs brought a stranger to see us. They introduced him as an estimable Moscow lawyer of high repute. I was surrounded by other friends and I greeted him absently, without hearing his name. I remember casually noticing that he was neither young nor old, neither ugly nor handsome. His wife, a timid, fair-haired woman, was with him.
At Vassili's suggestion we all went to the “Strelna,” a famous night-restaurant. I remember that there was a great deal of laughter at the grotesque jokes which Vassili and Maximoff and also the estimable lawyer played on the pretty dark-faced tziganes.
I noticed that the lawyer's wife did not laugh. She passed her hand across her wistful Madonna-like brow, and listened only to the music.
Like her I felt out of tune with the merriment around me. My thoughts wandered back to the silent drawing-room at Kieff: I thought of Aunt Sonia and her peaceful knitting, of Bozevsky and the books he had brought me. I seemed to hear his voice saying, “Ugh! a tree of scorpions”—and at that very instant something cold and claw-like clutched my bare shoulder. I uttered a piercing shriek, which seemed to turn every one—including myself—cold with terror. But it was only the estimable lawyer, who, having drunk rather too much, had playfully climbed upon the sofa behind me and, to save himself from falling off, had laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“What on earth has happened?” exclaimed Vassili. “What made you scream like that?”
“I don't know,” I stammered, taken aback, “I thought—I thought it was a scorpion!”
Every one laughed and for the rest of the evening the lawyer was nicknamed “the Scorpion.” Perhaps this name added to the unreasoning fear I felt of him, or perhaps I was merely nervous, but he seemed to be always close behind me, and during the whole of that evening I kept on turning round, with little shivers running down my spine, to see what he was doing.
Suddenly he had disappeared. Vassili laughed loudly. “Hullo! Where's the Scorpion?” And amidst the laughter of the guests he set himself to count the flippant tziganes one by one to see if any were missing. But they were all there—and I was glad for the sake of the Scorpion's poor little Madonna-wife.
It was three in the morning when we went back to our sleighs. It was very cold; the clear deep-blue sky was powdered with stars. Assisted by Maximoff I was about to step into the sleigh, when, with another cry, I drew back; my foot had touched something soft and shapeless that was lying huddled up beneath the rug.
“What is the matter now?” cried Vassili. “Another scorpion?”
No, it was the same one. It was the estimable lawyer very drunk and fast asleep at the bottom of the sleigh.
On our way back to the hotel, driving through the keen night air, I asked Vassili:
“Who was that man?”
“What man?” said Vassili, who sat opposite to us and was pressing the small feet of Maximoff's wife.
“You know—the man who frightened me.”
“Oh, the Scorpion?” laughed Vassili. “That was Donat Prilukoff.”
When we returned to Kieff I told Bozevsky the adventure of our evening at the Strelna, and described the Scorpion to him with as much humor as I could. But Bozevsky did not laugh. My absence had embittered and exasperated him. He no longer sat beside me with an air of protective fraternal affection. He would not speak of literature or poetry any more. He spent entire evenings making mute scenes of jealousy and despair, while dear Aunt Sonia, instinctively feeling the atmosphere around her charged with electricity, dropped many stitches in her knitting and became sour and irritable.
“My child, this must not go on any longer. Either Alexis Bozevsky must be forbidden the house or we ourselves must go away. I cannot understand how Vassili—” Her honest cheeks kindled with indignation. “Enough. I shall speak to him about it myself.”
She did so: and Vassili, with his usual brief comment that we all bored him to death, expressed the hope that wild beasts might devour Bozevsky, and ordered us to pack up and leave for the country at once.
XII
So we all left for the country—to the great delight of Aunt Sonia and the children.
Let my mind linger for an instant on those springtide days—the last for me, though I did not know it, of unalloyed serenity. The children and I used to rise at dawn and go into the vast garden all a-shimmer with dew. On the glittering lawn, among the flower-beds, down the shady avenues of the park the two little elfin figures flitted before me, calling to me, eluding me, darting to and fro like twin will-o'-the-wisps; then turned and ran towards me with wind-light steps and gilt locks afloat, to shelter in my outstretched arms. Oh! my children, my little boy and girl, when you remember your mother I pray that God may lead your memories back to those clear morning hours, and may the rest be blotted out and dark.
Vassili was inexpressibly bored with rural solitude and sought new means of diversion. His latest fad was target-shooting. He filled the house with rifles and revolvers and invited every one in the neighboring country houses to take part in shooting matches in our grounds. From morning to night, in the garden, in the courtyard, even from the windows of the house, there was a ceaseless crackling of firearms.
One afternoon when the house was filled with guests, Dr. Stahl and Bozevsky arrived in their troika from the neighboring castle of the Grigorievskys, where they had been staying. To my astonishment, Vassili received them jubilantly and embraced them both. He had quite forgotten the reasons which had led to our departure from Kieff.
Bozevsky came to greet me at once, and for the rest of the day never left my side. He enveloped me in a whirlwind of ecstatic tenderness. His infatuation, which he sought neither to conceal nor to control, disquieted me deeply.
I noticed that his friend Dr. Stahl watched us continually. I had not seen the doctor for many months, and he struck me as strangely altered. His very light eyes, in which the pupils were contracted until they seemed mere pin-points, followed me continuously.
“Doctor,” I said to him, “what strange eyes you have! Just like the eyes of a cat when it looks at the sun!”
“I do not look at the sun,” he answered slowly, speaking with great stress. “I look into an abyss, the abyss of annihilation and oblivion. Some day, if ever you are irremediably unhappy, come to me and I will open to you, also, the doors of my unearthly paradise—of this chasm of deadly joy which engulfs me.”
“Shame on you, Stahl! How dare you suggest such a thing!” exclaimed Bozevsky, casting a look almost of hatred upon the morphinomaniac. “Why must you and your kind always seek to drag others down into your own gehenna?”
Stahl sighed. “It is terrible, I know. But it is a characteristic of our malady.”
I listened without comprehending. I did not then know of Stahl's enslavement to the drug. “What are you speaking of? What malady? I do not understand.”
“It is better not to understand,” murmured Bozevsky with knitted brows. “Stahl is distraught; he is ill. Pay no attention to him. And never follow either his advice nor his example. But pray,” he added, “do not worry your head over anything we have said; the shooting match will soon begin. I think your husband is looking for you.”
But Vassili was far from troubling himself about me. He was rushing to and fro setting up rows of bottles that were to serve as targets, and distributing guns and cartridges to all our guests. Then he hurried towards us. “There,” he said to Dr. Stahl and to Bozevsky, giving them each a Flobert rifle, “these are for you.”
“And what about the Countess?” asked Stahl in his hollow voice. “Is she not going to compete in the shooting?”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “I am much too frightened.”
“Nonsense!” cried Vassili, pushing a gun into my unwilling hands. “Of course you must shoot with the rest. And I warn you that if you are not brave I shall play William Tell with an apple on your head!” He passed on laughing, with Madame Grigorievskaja armed with a Browning by his side.
I was not at all brave; I held the rifle at arm's length, trembling with fear lest it should explode by itself. Stahl was amused by my terror, while Bozevsky sought to encourage and comfort me.
“Poor timid birdling,” he murmured, “do not be frightened. See, I will teach you. It is done like this”—and he lifted the gun to my shoulder, placed my hands in position, and with his glowing face quite close to mine, showed me how I was to take aim. What with my terror of the gun and the fragrance of his fair hair near my cheek I felt quite dizzy.
“There, that's it. Now press the trigger.”
“No! no! Don't say that! don't let me!” I screamed, incoherent with terror while Stahl and Bozevsky laughed.
Vassili from a distance caught sight of me: “Bravo, Mura!” he cried. “That's right. Go on. Shoot!”
“No! no!” I cried with my eyes shut and standing rigid in the position in which Bozevsky had placed me, for I dared not move a muscle.
Vassili called impatiently: “What on earth are you waiting for?”
Still motionless, I gasped:
“Perhaps—I might dare—if some one were to cover my ears.”
Amidst great amusement Bozevsky came behind me and placed his two hands over my ears.
“Come now!” cried Stahl. “Do not be frightened.”
“Mind you hit the third bottle,” shouted Vassili from the distance.
Bozevsky standing behind me was clasping my head as though in a vice and whispering into my hair: “Darling, darling, darling! I love you.”
“Don't,” I cried, almost in tears under the stress of different emotions, “and don't hold my ears so tight.”
The warm clasp relaxed at once.
“Oh, no, no!” I cried. “I can hear everything. I don't want to hear—,” but even as I spoke the gun went off. I felt a blow near my shoulder, and thought I was wounded; but it was only the recoil of the weapon.
Everybody was laughing and applauding.
“What have I killed?” I asked, cautiously opening my eyes.
“The third bottle!” cried Vassili, and he was so delighted with my exploit that he ran up and embraced me. But the pistol he was holding in his hand and Bozevsky's glance of jealous wrath filled me afresh with twofold terror.
The afternoon passed as if in a dream. Vassili became very much excited and drank a great deal of vodka. Then Madame Grigorievskaja, who had once visited the United States, concocted strange American drinks which we had never tasted before—cocktails, mint-juleps, pousse-cafés and gin-slings. They were much approved of by every one.
I remember vaguely that half way through the afternoon some one let down my hair and set me among the shattered bottles with an apple on my head. I seem to see Vassili standing in front of me with a rifle and taking aim at me while the others utter cries of protest. Suddenly Bozevsky snatches the weapon from my husband's hands, and there is a brief struggle between them. Soon they are laughing again, and shaking hands—then Bozevsky joins me among the shattered bottles, and stands in front of me; he is so tall that I can see nothing but his broad shoulders and his fair hair. And Vassili is shooting—the bullets whirr over my head and all around me, but I have no sense of fear; Bozevsky stands before me, straight and motionless as a rampart.
We go in to dinner; gipsy musicians arrive and play for us. Late at night when the garden is quite dark we go out again to the targets; instead of the bottles Vassili has ordered a row of lighted candles to be set up, and we are to extinguish them with our shots without knocking them down. There is much noise around me; Vassili is dancing a tarantelle with Ivan Grigorievsky on the lawn. Dr. Stahl and Bozevsky are always by my side. I keep on shooting at the candles, but they spin round before my confused eyes like catharine-wheels; and Stahl laughs, and Bozevsky sighs, and the gipsies play....
Suddenly Tioka's nurse comes hurriedly down the pathway towards me.
“May I speak to your ladyship for a moment?”
“Yes, Elise. What is it?”
“Master Tioka cannot go to sleep. He says you have forgotten to bid him good-night.”
I put down my rifle and follow the straight small figure of Elise Perrier through the garden. I hasten after her into the house and upstairs to the nursery.
Little Tania is already fast asleep, with scarlet lips parted and silken hair scattered on her pillow. But Tioka is sitting up in his cot awaiting me. His bright soft eyes wander over my face, my hair, my dress; his innocent gaze seems to pierce me like a fiery sword. He holds out his arms to me and I hide my flushed face on his childish breast.
“Good-night, mother dear,” he whispers, kissing me and patting my face with his small hand. Then he adds, with a funny little sniff at my cheeks and hair: “You smell of many things—of perfume and powder and cigarettes and wine....”
This sequence of gay words on the childish lips strikes at my heart like so many daggers.
“Hush, darling,” I whisper, taking refuge in those frail arms as in a haven of safety. “Forgive—forgive your mother.”
But he does not know what there is to forgive; and he laughs and yawns and then nestles down in his pillow, still holding tightly to my hand.
“Must you go away?” he sighs, in a sleepy, endearing voice.
“No, darling, no. I will stay with you.”
“Then tell me the poetry about the Virgin Mary coming down to see us in the night.”
Holding my child's hand in my own, I begin softly:
“When little children sleep, the Virgin MarySteps with white feet upon the crescent moon…”But already Tioka is in the land of dreams.
XIII
The whole party of guests stayed at our house that night. Even one of the gipsy musicians was found next morning asleep on the sofa in the library.
No one came down to breakfast. Only Bozevsky got up early and went for a gallop on the hills.
I awoke at eight o'clock and rang the bell. Elise Perrier came in and opened the windows. The fresh April breeze blew in and the chirrup of the nests greeted me.
“Elise, is the morning fine? Can the mountains be seen?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Elise, when you see the mountains do you not feel homesick for Switzerland?”
“Yes, my lady.” And Elise stooped down to set out my slippers and to hide the flush that rose to her face.
“I am homesick, too, Elise. I am homesick I hardly know for what—homesick for solitude and peace.”
She made no reply.
“Should I find them in your Switzerland, do you think?”
Elise Perrier shakes her head and answers in a low tone: “No, my lady. Swiss homesickness and Russian homesickness are different.”
“In what way?”
“We Swiss are homesick for—how shall I say?—for the outside things we are far away from … homesick for mountains and pine-trees and villages. But Russians are homesick for what they miss in their own hearts.”
“You are right, Elise.”
Tioka in his nightdress followed by Tania sucking the head of her favorite rubber doll have run gaily in and embrace me.
“Are we going to Switzerland?” cries Tioka, who has overheard what we were saying. “How nice! When do we start?”
“How nice! When do we start?” says Tania, who always echoes everything her brother says.
“I like to be always going away,” adds Tioka.
And Tania repeats, “I like to be always going away.”
I marvel at finding in these two children of mine, my own unrest already stirring, like a butterfly poised with quivering wings on the dawning flower of their souls.
I went down alone into the garden and entered the grove, where the sunshine only penetrates with mild rays of almost lunar whiteness. The grass under my feet was studded with periwinkles, their prim, pert faces lifted to the sky; tenuous ferns unfolded their embroidered scrolls, and masses of gentle wild violets, conscious of their pallor and their scentlessness, drooped shyly in the shade.
In the branches overhead wild hidden birds tried their new springtide voices in soft modulations and trills, or in long-drawn contralto notes of liquescent sweetness. Thus April spoke to me in gentle voices. With a sudden overwhelming longing to be nearer to the very soul of spring, I knelt on the grass and buried my face in the cool leaves and blossoms, bidding my heart be pure and cool as they.
On my homeward way I passed the targets. The servants had put everything in order—pistols, rifles and cartridges; and a fresh row of bottles seemed to await with glassy eye the shots of the amateur marksmen. With a deep sense of humiliation I remembered the feverish agitations of the previous day, and once more I said to myself: “Henceforward may my life be serene and pure.”
A gay voice rang out close behind me, and startled me from my reverie.
“Lady Marie, good morrow!” It was Bozevsky, who, clicking his spurred heels together, saluted me with a radiant smile. His morning canter seemed to have given him an added touch of beauty and of daring; his fair hair gleamed in the sunshine, his smile was reckless and resplendent.
I bowed without speaking and attempted to pursue my way to the house, but he took my hand and detained me.
“Why go in? Everybody is still asleep. Come now,” he urged, with a frank engaging smile, “stay here for awhile and practise at the targets.”
So saying he chose a rifle and loaded it. Then he held it out to me. I took it from him and put it to my shoulder. I aimed carefully and was about to press the trigger when suddenly Bozevsky, with a lightning movement, put out his hand and pressed his palm against the muzzle of my gun.
“Wait!” he cried, with a wild, extravagant laugh. “Wait a moment! Before you press the trigger I want you to say—'Alexis, I love you!'”
“You are mad!” I exclaimed. “Take away your hand!”
“No. First you must say—'Alexis, I love you.'”
I felt a hot flush rise to my brow. “Take away your hand!” I repeated and looked steadily at him.
He did not move.
“Take it away, I implore you!”
Still he never moved, and I could see that hand stopping the muzzle of my gun—a long, slender hand with fingers separate and outstretched, and I felt almost as if I were under the influence of some hallucination. It was not only his hand that I saw—I seemed in a kind of frenzy to see the hands of all men outstretched before me, ready to grasp me, to crush me, to beat me down. Doubtless a wave of madness swept over me; a convulsive spasm shook my wrist—and the gun went off. I saw the long, lithe hand drop like some wounded creature.
With a cry I let the rifle fall, and covered my face. But Bozevsky had sprung upon me, and with his other hand seized both mine and pressed them down. He was as white as death. “You little tigress,” he gasped. Then, as I was about to cry out again, he covered my mouth with his shattered hand, and I felt the blood gush over my face.
What distant heritage of madness broke upon us at that moment? What primitive frenzy lashed us together in a fierce embrace? I cannot tell. All I know is that from that hour I was his—tamed, vanquished, broken in spirit, and yet glad. He was the first, the last, the only lover of my devastated youth, and by his side the brief springtime of my happiness flowered and died. When the fearful death that was so soon to lay him low came upon him, when I saw him fall at my feet shot by Vassili—my reason gave way. The rest of my life lies behind me like a somber nightmare landscape, through which I wander, groping in the dark, stumbling forward on my way to perdition....
Yet sometimes I dream that it is all not true, that he still lives, that one day the door of my cell will open, and the lover of my youth appear to me again. I shall see him standing on the threshold, a halo of sunshine lighting his fair hair, like some young martyr-saint come to deliver me from my bondage. The hand I wounded will be filled with roses, and his clear voice will call me by my name.
Then rising from this gloomy prison bench I shall move to meet him. Shame and crime and captivity will fall away from me like a dark and worn-out cloak.
Free and fair as in those distant April days in which he loved me, with white, winged footsteps I shall follow him.
XIV
Suddenly, almost from one day to another, Vassili grew jealous. When I had adored him he had neglected and forsaken me. Now that he feared to lose me he was inconsolable.
“You and Tioka are very much alike,” I said to him one day when we were all at luncheon.
“Do you think so?” said Vassili, patting his little son's fair head and contemplating the small face, which at that moment was making a terrible grimace over its food. “What makes you say so?”
“You shall see.” I leaned over to the child. “Tioka, my darling, won't you eat your nice dinner?”
“No!” said Tioka with great decision.
“Come, now, darling, eat your nice soup,” and I held a spoonful to his lips.
“No,” said Tioka, turning his face away.
“Why not, dear? Don't you like it?”
“No. It's nasty.”
“Well, then,” I said, putting down the spoon, “we will give it to the farmer's little boy.”
“No! no!” cried Tioka, and he quickly devoured the soup in large spoonfuls.
Vassili laughed. “He is quite right. His soup is not for the farmer's little boy. To each one his own soup, isn't that so, Tioka!”
“No,” said Tioka.
“Why 'no'? You should say 'yes.'”
“No,” declared Tioka doggedly. “This is my 'no' day.”
“Your what?” exclaimed his father.
“My day for saying 'no,'” announced Tioka with great decision.
His father was much amused. “I also shall have my 'no' days,” he declared. “And I shall begin at once. To-day, Mura, we shall receive no visitors.”
“But, Vassili,” I protested, “we must see the Grigorievskys; we have invited them to dinner.”
“No,” said my husband.
“And Semenzoff. And Bozevsky.”
“No,” he repeated.
“Do you really mean that we are not to receive them?”
“No,” he reiterated. “This is my 'no' day.” And the reception for that evening was actually put off. The jest seemed highly entertaining to Vassili. I heard him laughing to himself as he went downstairs; and in the days that followed he frequently repeated it.
Shortly afterwards he took us all back to Kieff and there he had many “no” days. In particular he would not let Bozevsky visit us; and more than a month passed without my seeing him.
At last it happened that the Stahls invited us to a ball, and Vassili, who chanced to be in a good temper, accepted. I knew I should meet Bozevsky there, and at the mere thought of seeing him again I trembled with joy and fear.
Elise Perrier dressed me in a filmy gossamer gown of soft opalescent tints, and fastened round my neck the famous O'Rourke pearls—those pearls which, according to family traditions, had once decorated the slender neck of Mary Stuart.
As Vassili put me into the troika he was all kindness and amiability; he wrapped me closely in the furs, and then took his seat beside me, muffling himself up to his nose in the bearskins. The horses started and we were off like the wind.
During the drive tender and kindly feelings towards Vassili filled my heart. I said to myself that perhaps he was after all not wholly to blame for his faults and follies. He, too, was so young; perhaps if I had been less of a child at the time of my marriage I should have known how to make him love me more. And, after all, were we not still in time to reshape our lives? What if we were to go far away from Kieff, far from St. Petersburg, and try to take up the thread of our broken idyll again? My hand sought his. He grasped it and held it warmly clasped under the rug without turning towards me; I could see his eyes shining under his fur cap as he gazed straight before him, while we sped over the silent snow. During that drive, from the bottom of my heart, I forgave him all his transgressions and silently craved forgiveness for mine. Already I seemed to see myself with him and the children and Aunt Sonia happily secluded in some smiling rose-clad mansion in Italy. He would take up the study of his music again, perhaps he would compose, as he had often spoken of doing—while I, seated at his feet, would read the Italian poets that I loved, raising my eyes now and then to contemplate the motionless blue wave of the distant Apennines....