Asbein Part 3

Every one looked after the carriage, and observed with the same interest the wonderfully beautiful girl, and the great artist, who was not handsome, but whose face once seen could never be forgotten.

What was most remarkable about it was the difference between the expression of his eyes and that of his mouth, a difference which betrayed the entire quality of his inner nature. While his eyes had a spying, at times quite enthusiastic, expression, around the mouth was a trace of intense earthly thirst for enjoyment.

This mingling predestinated him to that eternal discontent of certain great natures who can just as little accustom themselves, on the earth, to a condition of bloodless asceticism as to one of mindless materialism. The first desires no enjoyment of the world, the second pleases itself with whatever is to be had in the world. Those men only who seek the heavenly spark in earthly joys remain forever deceived here. He was destined never to cease to seek it. Even in gray old age, when his finely cut lips were satiated with enjoyment, and were fixed in a grimace of incessant, sad disgust, his eyes still sought it.

His colleagues in St. Petersburg asked each other what kept him so long in Rome. He wrote one of them that he was working, and indeed he did work. Through his soul vibrated melodies full of bewitching sad loveliness, full of the rejoicing and complaint of a longing which could not yet attain the longed-for happiness.

And there in Rome, in those mild fragrant spring nights, he wrote a cyclus of songs which might rank at the side of the most beautiful musical lyrics ever written.

In spite of their full richness of melody, his earlier compositions had something too glaring, overladen, and trivially pleasing; they were too much influenced by his virtuosity to please for themselves. In his Roman cyclus of songs he showed himself for the first time a great musician. And as until then he had distrusted his talent as composer, he was pleasantly astonished over his own achievement.

He always worked at night. His writing-table stood in front of the window of his room which looked out on the Piazza di Spagna. Very often his glance wandered there. A dark-blue heaven lighted by thousands of stars arched above the broad, irregular place, over the antique columns, from whose height a modern art nonent.i.ty looks down on Rome.

All was silent, only the water, the resonant soul of Rome, t.i.ttered and sobbed in the basins and fountains, and spouted up jubilantly in damp silver streams, greeting from afar the unattainable heavens, and all the t.i.ttering, sobbing, and rejoicing united in a long vibrating broken chord.

Still vibrating in every fibre at the recollection of Natalie's farewell smile, he sat at his shaky table and wrote. The mild night wind, fragrant with the kisses which it had stolen from the magnolia and orange blossoms, crept in to him and caressed his hot cheeks. He inhaled it eagerly. He had often been warned of the Roman night air, but he did not think of the warning, and if he had--? He was in that happy mood in which man no longer believes in sickness and death.

The hateful melancholy which as he said often pressed him down to the ground, and tormented him with predictions of his final annihilation, was gone. He no longer saw, as formerly, an open grave at his feet.

Heaven had opened to him. An indescribable, light, elevating feeling had overpowered him; he no longer felt the weight of his body. Had his wings, then, grown in Rome?

He did not think what would come of all this. He did not wish to think of it; did not wish to see clearly. With closed eyes he walked through life--the angels led him.

It was the beginning of May, and he had finished his cyclus of songs.

With a beating heart he entered the Palazzo Morsini to ask Natalie whether he might dedicate it to her.

The young princess was not at home, but her mother would be very happy to see him, they told him.

It was very hot, the blinds were all lowered. The princess lay on a lounge and fanned herself with a peac.o.c.k feather fan.

After she had complained of the heat, she began to speak to him of all kinds of family affairs. Her son had the best of opportunities to make a career for himself, said she; her eldest daughter, who was far less pretty than Natalie, added the princess, had married very well; her husband was indeed a wealthy diplomat. "_Mois, je suis pauvre_,"

concluded the old lady; "but I could live quite without care, if Natalie were only married. But she will hear nothing of that. She lets the best years of her life pa.s.s, and if you only knew what good matches she has refused. Pachotin has already offered himself twice to her, and if you please----"

Just then a gay voice interrupted the inconsolable elegy. "Mamma, how can any one boast so?" Natalie had entered, a large black hat on her head, in her arms a huge bunch of flowers.

"I did not boast--I complained," replied the old woman, sighing.

After Natalie had greeted Lensky with her usual friendliness, she laid the flowers on the table and arranged them in the vases which an Italian chambermaid had brought her.

"Ah, Natalie, why will you have none of them?" sighed the princess.

"Little mother, I can love but once," replied Natalie, bending her brown head over the flowers. "I have told you I will not marry until I have found some one quite extraordinary--a hero or a genius."

"Am I dreaming, or did she look at me with those words?" Lensky asked himself. "But why did she turn her eyes away so quickly when they met mine?"

Meanwhile the princess said: "Yes, if all girls wished to wait thus!"

"I am not like all girls," said Natalie, laughing. "Most girls have hearts like hand-organs, which every one can play; others have hearts like olian harps, on which no one can play, and still they always vibrate so sympathetically for the world; and still other girls--" she interrupted herself to break a superfluous leaf from a magnolia twig.

The princess, who seemed to lay little weight on Natalie's naive comparisons, fanned herself indifferently with her peac.o.c.k fan, but Lensky repeated, "Well, Natalie Alexandrovna, other girls----"

"Other girls have hearts like Amati violins; if a bungler touches them there is a horrible discord; but if a true artist comes who understands it, then----"

This exaggerated remark she had made in a voice trembling between mockery and tenderness, and incessantly occupied with the arrangement of her flowers.

Without ending the last sentence, she broke off, and bent her head to the right to observe a combination of white roses and heliotrope with a thoughtful look.

The princess yawned from heat and discontent. "Leave me in peace from your musical comparisons, Natascha," said she. "Besides, I can a.s.sure you that no one spoils a fine instrument quicker than one of your great virtuosos. When I think how Franz Liszt ruined our Pleyel in a single evening; it was no longer fit even for a conservatory."

"Violins are not ruined as quickly as pianos," said Natalie, laughing; then, still speaking to the flowers, she said: "Don't you think, little mother, that if such a piano had a soul, a mind, it would rather rejoice to really live for once under the hands of a great master, and even if it were to die of the joy, than merely to exist for a half-century in a n.o.ble, charming room, as a carefully preserved showpiece?"

Again it seemed to Lensky that she looked at him, and again she turned away her head when their looks met. "You are astonished at this great expenditure for flowers?" she remarked. "We expect guests this evening--my cousins from St. Petersburg, the Jeliagins. You know them, and I shall try to draw their critical looks away from the holes in the furniture covering to these beautiful color effects. So! Now I have finished; here are a few May-bells left for your b.u.t.ton-hole. Ah!

really, you never wear flowers!"

"Give them to me," said he, contracting his brows gloomily. She smiled at him without saying anything. Then something scratched at the door.

"Please open it, Boris Nikolaivitch," she asked.

He did so; her large dog, a gigantic Scotch greyhound, came in, and immediately springing up on his beautiful mistress, he laid both front paws on her shoulders. She took his heavy head between her slender hands, and murmuring tender, caressing words to him, she kissed him twice, three times, on the forehead.

Lensky took leave soon after without having mentioned his song cyclus.

His mind was in an uproar. "Is she only coquetting with me?" he asked himself, "or--or--" A pa.s.sionate joy throbbed in his veins, then suddenly an icy shudder ran over him. "And if she is only like all the others!"

At his departure Natalie had said to him: "You will come this evening, Boris Nikolaivitch, in spite of this boring Petersburg invasion? I beg you will, _vous serez le coin bleu de mon ciel!_"

The evening came.

A Roman sirocco evening, with an approaching thunderstorm that hung heavily around the horizon and would not lift.

The heavily perfumed sultry air penetrated through the drawn curtains into the a.s.sanows' drawing-room. The Jeliagins had brought a couple of Parisian friends with them, and naturally Pachotin was not missing. A deathly _ennui_ reigned. They spoke of Parisian fas.h.i.+ons, of the Empress Eugenie's new court; they complained of the new cook in the Hotel de l'Europe, and of the heat.

Then they spoke of national dances. The Jeliagins had recently travelled in Spain and were enthusiastic about the fandango. The Parisians had heard there was nothing more graceful than a well-danced Polish mazurka; could none of the Russian ladies dance one for them?--a very bold request, but they were all friends.

The Jeliagins announced that Natalie danced the mazurka like a true woman of Warsaw. They left her no peace.

"Oh, I will put on no more airs," said she, "if one of the ladies will take a seat at the piano, so----"

To go to the piano, even were it only to play dance-music, in Lensky's presence! The ladies swooned at the mere thought.

"Very well, then you must give up the mazurka," said Natalie, decidedly.

"Ask Boris Nikolaivitch," whispered one of the St. Petersburg women.