Asbein Part 13

"Do you think, then, that I would not have been glad?" he said to her tenderly. "But now, do you see, just now----"

Then he told her the state of affairs. The man in the Havana brown overcoat was the famous impressario Morinsky, with whom Lensky had just made an engagement for a concert tour in the United States. Morinsky had offered him a small fortune. "You know how hard it is for me to part from you," he concluded. "I wished to take you with me--you and the boy, for he can put off school for another year. I thought it was the most favorable moment, and now--it is so stupid, so horribly stupid!"

She had listened very quietly; now she raised her head and said uneasily:

"And now you naturally will have to give up the American project?"

"That is impossible," replied he, turning his face from her, "but I will try--that is, I will put off my departure in any case until the great event is over."

"And then?" She had slipped down from his knee and walked up and down the room uneasily. "And then?" she repeated, while she beat on the floor quite imperiously with the tip of her little foot.

"Then," said he slowly. "Well, then you must either decide to accompany me and leave the children behind, or I must go alone."

"How long will you stay away?" she asked with short breath.

"Eight months, ten months."

"So--ten months!" she spoke slowly. "And you will part from me--voluntarily, without compelling necessity--for ten months?"

Her face had become ashy, the words fell harsh and cutting from her dry lips.

"You must not take the thing so desperately," replied Lensky, with an embarra.s.sment which did not escape her. "Ten months are soon over."

Something that sounded half like a laugh, half like a cry of anguish escaped her lips. She stroked the hair back from her temples with both hands. Her eyes had suddenly become unnaturally large, and were opened uncommonly wide. They were no longer the eyes of a usually wise woman.

"Ten months!" she murmured, with extinguished voice, like one who speaks in the midst of an oppressive dream, "ten months--do you no longer remember how you used to miss me, if it was only a question of weeks, of days, and not--ten months! But this is no separation, this is a final parting, this is the end of all! Oh, do not look at me so!--I am not crazy, I know what I am saying--I know very well! You will come back--certainly you will come back, if no malicious illness s.n.a.t.c.hes you away during your journey; but how will you come back? Like a stranger you will return under your own roof, and a stranger, from that hour, will you remain. You will have acquired other customs, other needs; the tender restrictions of family life will confine you like a forced burden! The good, and magnificent, and beautiful in you will still exist, because it is immortal like everything that is G.o.d-like; but it will be grown wild and soiled, and I will no longer be able to force my way through what has towered between me and your heart! And, more than all that, the sweet voice which, until now, has whispered such wonderful songs within you, will be silenced in the confusion of your wandering life; your genius will no longer be able to express itself, it will from then burn in you like a great unrest, and you will feel the treasure which Providence has implanted in you as an oppressive burden, and will no longer be able to find the magic word which can lift this treasure!"

He stared gloomily before him.

"Ah, Boris! do not sin against yourself, because I have sinned against you," Natalie began once more, with hoa.r.s.e, broken voice. "Do not let your wings be broken by this first disappointment. Your opera was wonderfully beautiful--yes--but it was not the best that you can give!

Give your best, it will stand so high that the hand of envy can no longer reach it. Have patience, sacrifice the virtuoso to the composer in you, and you will see what a splendid reward you will reap!"

With heavily contracted brows, he listened to this speech, vibrating with desperation. When Natalie had ended, he remained silent. She believed she had conquered. Leaning against him she laid both arms around his neck, and whispered to him: "You will stay, Boris--will you not?--you will stay!"

For a little while he let her stay, then he freed himself from her arms, as one frees one's self from a shackle, and called out: "It cannot be--torment me no longer--I must go!" With that he sprang up to leave the room. At the door he turned round to Natalie, and said: "Are you coming? Lunch will be cold."

"Presently!" said Natalie, "presently!" She s.h.i.+vered, she felt the chill of a great fright in all her members. It was worse than she had believed! Something allured him away. After the first unpleasant surprise at the frustration of his plans had disappeared, he rejoiced at the opportunity of being able to free himself from the chain, and to separate himself from his family for a time. What she had feared for the future had already arrived--the gypsy element in his nature had awakened!

The agreement between Lensky and the impressario was really completed, the contract was signed, Lensky's departure fixed for the beginning of October. Meanwhile, he would pa.s.s the summer quietly with his wife, in the country, in the vicinity of Paris.

The place which Natalie chose was about an hour's journey from Paris, and perhaps fifteen minutes from the railway-station, a charming old house in the shadiest corner of a park, in the midst of which a large castle stood empty. The castle was modern; the house, on the contrary, a carefully reconstructed ruin of the time of Francis First. The castle was called "Le Chteau des Ormes," and the small house "L'Ermitage."

The last owner had restored it, in order that his favorite daughter might pa.s.s her honeymoon there. Since the daughter had died the Hermitage stood empty, and to reside in the castle was painful to the owner. Both were to let. Lensky left the choice to his wife. What would she have done with the large castle? The Hermitage pleased her better.

The windows were all irregular, one small and narrow, another very broad, all surrounded by artistically carved and voluted stone framings. The trees grew up high above the roof, and through the whole day sang sweet, dreamy songs, to which a little brook, that ran close by the house, furnished a harmonic accompaniment.

The ground floor was built in accordance with the architecture of the early Renaissance period, with brown beams across the ceilings of the room, and artistic wainscoting on the walls. Gigantic marble mantels, iron chandeliers and sconces, and heavy furniture did what they could to transport the spectator's imagination back to the much sung old times of gay King Francis. At the right and left of the entrance door, set far back in its carved niche, grew lilies, tall and slender; they were in full bloom when the married pair moved in, and their white heads nodded in a friendly manner through the windows of the rooms even with the ground. Sage, lavender, and centifolias bloomed at their feet, tall rose-bushes nodded a fragrant greeting to them from above. The branches of the old trees before the windows were thick enough to partially exclude the sunbeams if they became too intrusive; not thick enough to completely bar the way for them.

In this lonely solitude, Natalie fought a last time for her happiness.

She tried to make her whole home as attractive and poetic as possible, so that in Lensky's remembrance something might remain for which he must long. She no longer tormented him with jealous, isolating tenderness, but cared for his distraction and intellectual as well as artistic recreation. She knew how to allure not only the first musicians in Paris, but celebrities of the most different kinds from the capital and surrounding villas, to the Hermitage; earnest men of lofty aims and n.o.ble endeavors, together with an animation and susceptibility which did away with the hindering respect which towers between every plain, modest child of man and great people. It always gave Natalie pleasure to see Lensky in the company of these prominent men. He grew in such surroundings.

He was never very talkative; his intellectual capabilities were of a heavy calibre, unsuited for the purposes of small talk. But how he listened, what questions he asked! Then, quite without haste, he would make some remark so peculiarly sharp and far-reaching in reference to some impending political, artistic, or literary question, that, every time, an astonished silence would follow.

One of the guests once remarked: "If Lensky mingles in the conversation, it is as if one fired a cannon between pistol shots."

He was not one-sided in his interests, as other musicians. When one learned to know him more intimately, for every accurate observer it had always the appearance that his musical capabilities formed only a part of his universally abnormally gifted nature.

Quietly and still animatedly pa.s.sed the days, weeks, and months.

Natalie never spoke of the approaching separation.

An inexplicable discomfort tormented Lensky. Natalie had guessed rightly--he had concluded the engagement with Morinsky with quite precipitate haste, not only in order thereby to win the opportunity of acquiring with one stroke a large sum of money which would put an end to his pecuniary difficulties, but because in intercourse with the old friends of his bachelor days in ---- he had first significantly realized how much he had had to restrain himself to live morally and uprightly at the side of his wife; and because his gypsy nature, bound for years, now demanded its rights.

Still it vexed him that Natalie remained so calm in the face of the approaching parting. Now, when the farewell drew near, his heart failed him. Did she, then, no longer love him?

The thought was unbearable to him, prevented him from working. He wrote everything wrong on the note paper.

The lilies were dead, the days became short, and the first leaves fell in the gra.s.s, but the foliage was still thick, only here and there one saw a yellow spot in a bluish green tree, and the rustling had no longer the old soft sound.

"The trees have lost their voice, they have become hoa.r.s.e, the old melting sound is gone!" said Natalie. The roses, in truth bloomed more beautifully than in summer; still one saw, significantly, the approach of autumn, and Lensky had the repugnant feeling that near by something lay dying.

His work did not please him. Three times already he had heard Natalie pa.s.s by his door; each time he had thought, now she will come in; he had already stretched his arms out to her, but she did not come. He threw away his pen and sprang up to look for her.

It was a late September afternoon. It had rained for three days, and the air was cool.

Natalie sat in the brown-wainscoted ground-floor sitting-room, in one of the gigantic, high-backed arm-chairs near the chimney, in which flickered a gay wood fire. The windows were open. The noise from without of the rain drops softly gliding down between the leaves, the bl.u.s.tering of the high swollen brook, mingled with the crackling and popping of the burning wood.

In the middle of the room, on a large table with a dark-red cover, stood a copper bowl filled with champagne-colored _Gloire de Dijon_ roses. From without came the melancholy odor of autumnal decay and mingled with the sweet breath of the flowers.

The veil of twilight sank down from the mighty rafters of the ceiling.

The corners of the large, somewhat low room were already, as it were, rounded off by brown shadows. Freakish, pale reflections slid over the dark wainscoting, and over the bra.s.s and copper dishes which adorned it.

Little Kolia crouched on a stool before his mother, and with both tiny elbows rested on her lap, gazed earnestly and attentively up at her.

One could think of nothing more charming than this mother and this child. Involuntarily Lensky's heart beat high in his breast. "How beautiful my home is, how happy I am here. Why am I really going away?"

he asked himself.

"Ah!" cried Natalie when he entered, pleased and at the same time surprised, for his appearance at this hour was something quite unusual.

"Do you wish anything?"

He shook his brown, defiant head silently and sat down near the chimney opposite her. The little boy had sprung up, embarra.s.sed, and now leaned against his mother, with his little arm round her neck.

"You have been telling him fairy tales," began Lensky.

"Oh, no! I told him of the ocean, and how one lives and is housed on the wide boundless water--of the ocean and of America. Before it was too dark we were busy with something much more important," said Natalie, and she pointed to a low child's table which was covered with writing materials and lined paper. "Show papa what we have finished, Nikolinka."

The little boy became very red and drew his brows together. "But, mamma," said he, excitedly stamping his foot, "why do you tell that? It is a surprise."

His mother stroked the offended child's cheek soothingly. "We will not give papa your letter to read, only show it to him, so that he can be pleased with it. Bring it, Nikolinka."