Asbein Part 4

"If he is the first violinist of his time, he is also an excellent pianist."

"No, no," said Natalie, firmly, and then her great brilliant eyes met Lensky's.

Although at that time he maintained his artistic dignity with quite childish exaggeration, he smiled very good-naturedly and said, "I see very well that you place no confidence in me; you think I cannot catch your mazurka music."

"No, no, no!" said Natalie. "You shall not degrade your art."

"And do you really think it would be degrading to improvise a musical background for your performance? I should so like to see you dance."

And he stood up and went to the piano.

Such pretty little phrases were formerly not his style. He had, as Natalie had often laughingly told him, no talent for _fioriture_ in conversation.

The Petersburg ladies looked at each other. "How polite he has become!

You have changed him, Natascha," whispered they.

Meanwhile Pachotin gave Natalie his hand.

Lensky had seized the opportunity of admiring her grace with joy. He had never thought how painfully it would affect him to see her dance with another man. He did not take his eyes off her, and meanwhile improvised the most bewitching devil's music.

She wore a white dress, her neck and arms were bare, and around her waist was a Circa.s.sian girdle embroidered with gold and silver. One hand in her partner's, the other hanging loosely at her side, her head slightly on one side, she moved safely over the dangerously smooth surface of the marble floor. At the beginning, pale as usual, except her dark-red lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became warmer and more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her eyes beamed as if in a happy dream, around her lips trembled the sad expression which the feeling of intense pleasure often causes us, and her movements at the same time had something indescribably gentle and supple.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At the beginning, pale as usual, except the dark-red lips, she looked quite indifferent; gradually she became warmer and more animated, a slight blush crept into her cheeks, her eyes beamed as in a happy dream---- _p. 56_.]

Pachotin, most correctly attired, with a collar which reached to the tips of his ears and faultless yellow gloves, hopped around her in the true affected knightly grimacing Polish-mazurka manner.

"An ape!" thought Lensky to himself; "but how handsome, how distinguished he is! almost as handsome as she!" and suddenly the question occurred to him: "Is it my music or his presence which animates her? And if it were my music! Nevertheless, she will still marry him; yes, even if she were in love with me, still she would marry him, and not me! What a fool I was to imagine----"

After Pachotin had soberly placed his heels together and acknowledged his deep devotion to the lady by a suitable courtesy, the mazurka was at an end.

Quite beside themselves with enthusiasm, the Parisians surrounded Natalie. When she wished to thank Lensky he had disappeared. It was his manner many times to withdraw without taking leave, but still to-day it made Natalie uneasy. She was vibrating with a great excitement, the air seemed to her suffocatingly hot, she drew off her gloves; the noise of the prattling voices became unbearable to her, and she pa.s.sed through the second empty drawing-room, into the arched loggia set with blooming orange-trees, from which one looked across the court-yard to the Tiber.

The storm still hung on the horizon. Heavy ma.s.ses of clouds, shot through by pale lightning, towered, on the other side of the river, above the gloomy architecture of the Trastevere. They had not yet reached the moon, which, palely s.h.i.+ning, stood high in the heavens. Its light illumined the court, with its statues and bas-reliefs. The air was sultry.

Natalie drew a deep breath. Suddenly she discovered Lensky. He was staring down on the Tiber, which, rolling by in its bed, incessantly sighed, as if from sorrow at its sad lot, which compelled it continually to hasten past everything.

Could one really take it amiss in the stream if it sometimes overflowed its banks in order to carry away with it some of the beautiful objects, near which, condemned to perpetual wandering, it might not remain standing?

"Ah! you here?" said Natalie. "I thought you had taken French leave. I was vexed with you."

"So!"

"Yes, because--because I was sorry not to be able to thank you. It was really----"

"Do not speak so," said he, quite roughly; "just as if you did not know that there is nothing in the world, nothing in my power that I would not do for you!"

She bent her head back a little and smiled at him in a friendly way, but as if his words had not surprised her in the slightest. "You are very good to me," said she.

He felt strangely thus alone with her in this sweet-perfumed, melancholy, intoxicating sultriness, alone with this happiness that was so near him, and which he was afraid of frightening away by an unseemly imprudence. He felt by turns hot and cold. Why did she not go?

She rested her hands on the marble bal.u.s.trade of the loggia and bending over it she murmured: "How beautiful! oh, how wonderfully beautiful!

And it is so tiresome in there; do you not find it so, Boris Nikolaivitch?"

His throat contracted, he felt that he was about to lose control of himself.

"Shall I play?" he asked. "I will do it willingly for you."

"Oh, no! Why should you play to those stupid people in there?" replied she. "I would be prepared to hear, in the middle of the G minor concerto, the question: 'Before I forget it, can you not give me the address of a good shoemaker in Rome?' You know how such things vex me."

"Is she coquetting with me, or--?" he asked himself again.

She stood before him with her enchanting face, and her tender glance met his. She did not know that she tormented him. In spite of her twenty-one years, she had the boundless innocence of a girl whose mind has never been desecrated by the knowledge of pa.s.sion, a degree of innocence in which men do not believe.

"Is she coquetting?" His heart beat to bursting, and suddenly, when she quite unconstrainedly came one step nearer him, he took her hand. "Oh, you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoa.r.s.e, scarcely audible voice, and pressed it to his lips.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, you dear, dear girl!" he murmured, with hoa.r.s.e, scarcely audible voice, and pressed it to his lips.

Crimsoning. She tore away her hand. _p. 61_.]

Crimsoning, she tore away her hand. "For Heaven's sake, what are you thinking of?" said she, and started back with a proud, almost scornful gesture.

Then a horrible anger overcame him.

"I was stupid, I was mistaken in you. You think no more n.o.bly or better than the others!" he burst out.

"I do not understand you. What do you mean?" murmured she.

What else had she to ask? Why did she not go, but stood before him, as if paralyzed, with her pale, seductive loveliness, surrounded by moonlight?

"I mean that if you observe our relations from this conventional standpoint, your behavior to me was a heartless, arrogant abomination."

"But, Boris Nikolaivitch, that is all foolishness. You do not know what you are saying," she stammered, quite beside herself.

"So! I do not know what I am saying?" He had now stepped close up to her. "And if I, mistaking your coquetries--yes, that is the word; blush now and be a little ashamed--if I, mistaking your coquetries, have permitted myself to pet.i.tion for your hand? Oh, how you start!

Naturally, you had never thought of such a thing!"

His voice was hoa.r.s.e and rasping, his face very calm and as if petrified by anger and such a mental torment as he had never before experienced. "But go! Why do you stay and torture me? I will no longer look at you. I abominate you, and still I love you so pa.s.sionately, so madly!"

Yes, why did she still not go? He could endure it no longer--he clasped her to his breast and kissed her with his hot, burning lips. Then she pushed him from her and fled.

He looked after her. Now all was over. For one moment he remained standing on the same spot, then, with deeply bowed head, dragging his feet along slowly, he pa.s.sed through the vestibule and left, without thinking of his hat, which he had left in the drawing-room.

For the remainder of the evening Natalie's whole being betrayed only haste and uneasiness. She spoke more and quicker than formerly, laughed frequently, and told the gayest stories.

When her Petersburg cousins wished to tease her with Lensky's enthusiasm for her, and laughingly called him "your genius," she mentioned him indifferently, quite disapprovingly, shrugged her shoulders over his talent as composer--yes, even found fault with his playing. She was friendly, quite inviting, to Pachotin; she no longer knew what she did, only when he wished to give the conversation a more earnest turn she broke it off suddenly and remorselessly.

When at last, at last, the drawing-room was empty and she might withdraw, she locked herself in her room, threw herself down before the holy picture before which she always said her evening prayer. But, however she tried to pray, she could not. She did not know for what she should pray. Her cheeks burned with dreadful shame. How could he have so far forgotten himself with her!

She threw open a window. What did it matter to her that they said the Roman night air was poisonous? She would have liked to take the Roman fever, would have liked to die. Her window opened on the street. The Via Giulia was divided by the moonlight into two parts, one light and one dark. All was quiet, empty, deserted. Then there was a sound of slow, dragging steps, and two lowered voices whispered down there in the silent solitude. It was probably a pair of belated lovers, and suddenly there was a soft, tender sound through the mild May night. She caught her breath, closed the window, and turned back to her room.

Half-undressed, she sat on the edge of her little cool white bed and thought again and again--of the same thing--of his kiss.