The Green Book Part 50

Korynthia saw that by her vehemence she had almost been led into self-betrayal; so said, calmly:

"You do not understand! This is no question of love, but of high-treason! What would it matter to me if a Circa.s.sian Princess chose to fall in love with my lowest groom? He would probably be too good for her! But do you know why Pushkin has married this girl? In order to discover the Czar's secrets, which he confided to his daughter, and which were repeated to her friend Bethsaba. Now these secrets, through Pushkin, will become the common property of the Czar's enemies! Thus, you ruin yourself if you are on the side of the Czar; or the Czar, if you conspire against him. And this is what you two have done!"

Prince Ghedimin stood as if turned to stone. His wife had triumphed. Her words bore so clearly the stamp of truth that defence was not to be thought of.

"Yes. It was a plot among you all!" continued his wife, furiously. "You availed yourselves of the illness of the one to entice the other from me. In order to detain me at home, and to prevent my watching over the child intrusted to my care, you sent Pushkin to me with a poem, and, instead of coming to receive his answer, the cowardly fellow steals away with a foolish, inexperienced girl from the very death-chamber of her friend. Out with such people! Such treachery, deceit, betrayal! You are worthy one of another. A pack of actors and actresses! Out of my room!

Away with you!"

When women take to abuse, men are nowhere. Their reasoning powers are gone. Prince Ghedimin was a wise and good man, and innocent as a child of this crime; which, after all, was no crime at all. Yet after this torrent of abuse he felt a very criminal who had brought about an act of the greatest, most irreparable evil with the coldest calculation, and, in this frame of mind, was glad to be permitted to leave his home and seek his gondola.

We who are in the secret can aver that he did not even now know who Sophie Narishkin's mother was. But this Korynthia did not believe. She looked upon the whole scene as expressly got up to torture her--from the appearance of her husband at the very hour of the rendezvous, when he shed upon her love-lorn heart first the ice-drops of the funeral scene, then poured in the poison of the faithlessness of the man she adored.

It was a deadly poison, killing inwardly and outwardly. When Ghedimin left her, Korynthia, clasping her two hands above her head, threw herself on the ground, sobbing bitterly. Then, as there was no one to raise her, she a.s.sumed a kneeling posture, her long plaits hanging like serpents over her bosom; and, lifting three fingers to heaven, she gasped out, with hideous vengeance:

"Oh that I may repay you this some day!"

Her lips parted; the gnas.h.i.+ng of her clinched teeth was audible. She was meditating something; her eyes flashed fire; she rose, and bared her white, exquisitely formed arm to the shoulder. Then she pressed the rounded muscle of the upper part of her arm between her teeth, and bit into it until the blood flowed from it, and sucked the blood she had drawn. It is the Russian superst.i.tion that whoever would insure the fulfilment of his curse must, after uttering it, drink of his own blood.

The melancholy hum of the death's-head moth in the corner of the picture-frame sounded like the murmur of a lost soul.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

A DIVIDED HEART

Zeneida was celebrating three days of mourning in one. The first, Sophie's funeral; the second, Pushkin's marriage; the third, her own name-day.

It had been Sophie's last wish that the wedding should precede her funeral.

Her soul in its ascent to heaven would see and hear the bliss of the two she had loved so dearly on earth.

According to Russian custom the lid was only screwed down on to the coffin just before it was lowered into the grave; with face uncovered the wanderer to the Hereafter is borne to his last resting-place.

"Make the ceremony a short one!" Zeneida had said to the officiating priest.

The Patriarch of Solowetshk, whose feet had sufficient Russian understanding to suffer from a severe attack of gout that day, had sent a priest in his stead. Let his inferior have his beard shaved off if things go amiss, and not him. For if a priest rashly marry a runaway couple the marriage is legal, but _the priest's beard is shaved off_, and he is forced to become a soldier. During the wedding ceremony, according to custom, two doves were set flying over the heads of the bridal pair. They fluttered for a time round the veranda, then let themselves down on to the catafalque, at the head of the dead girl, where the crucifix stood; there, the one on the right hand, the other on the left, above the head of the "martyr to love," they billed and cooed through the whole ceremony.

The dead girl might well be content. All had been done as she had directed; Bethsaba wore the pink silk wedding-dress; the platinum diadem adorned her brow.

"That is over," said Zeneida. "Now follows the other--quick, quick!"

Bethsaba must now change the pink wedding-dress for a black one for the consecration of the dead. Zeneida helped her to dress; Pushkin waited without.

Bethsaba wept on and on, whether clad in pink or black.

Zeneida betrayed no tendency that day to sentimentality. Her utter callousness bordered on cynicism.

"But we shall see Sophie again in the next world, shall we not?" sobbed Bethsaba.

"Yes, yes," muttered Zeneida. "And to which of you will Pushkin belong then?"

That was the question.

Bethsaba was startled. Her large eyes remained fixed on Zeneida.

"And suppose he should belong to neither of you?" continued Zeneida, drawing her strongly marked eyebrows together. "Or do you imagine that in the hereafter there will still be a greater Russia crus.h.i.+ng a lesser Finland beneath its heel, so that even then a fool will be found to open the gate of Paradise for some one else, while she herself goes into perdition!"

This outburst revealed Zeneida's secret to Bethsaba. Rigid with dismay, she stammered out:

"You, too, loved him?"

"Do not ask. Rejoice that he is yours, and do not wish yourself in the next world with him, but do your utmost to keep him to you in this."

"And you, too, loved him?" repeated Bethsaba, sorrowfully.

"As you have discovered it, make your discovery of some use," said Zeneida, with seeming affectation. "Now, at least, you know from whom you have to guard him. Take care to keep him away from me. Now you know the sort of person I am. I take pleasure in enticing away the husbands and causing the wives bitter tears. Your G.o.dmother was right. _I am a very devil._ Do not bring your Aleko back to St. Petersburg."

Bethsaba, throwing herself on Zeneida's bosom, embraced her.

"It is not true--not true--not true! You cannot deceive me. Tell me why you gave me Pushkin's heart, when you might so easily have kept it for yourself? There must be some weighty reason that induced you to do it.

Tell it me; he is my husband now. I must know all about him. Even if it be--that he loves me not."

Zeneida, now looking down with gentle smile on the young bride in her mourning-dress, took her in her arms, and in fond embrace drew her to her heart.

"So you do not think me so bad that you will need to guard your husband from me? Well, then, I will tell you from whom you must guard him. There is a lovely woman, more captivating than any you have ever seen--more seductive, intoxicating, more insatiable. Her name is 'Eleutheria.' She can entice the bridegroom from his bride at the very altar rails, and the father of a family from his dear ones; and whom she once captivates she keeps fast hold of till his last heart's blood is spent. His every thought is hers. It is this dread woman who is your rival. Guard your husband from all remembrance of her, for he is in love with her."

"'Eleutheria!' that means Freedom."

"She bathes in men's blood. It is that which makes her so beautiful. The only presents she will accept are hecatombs; and of hearts and men she only chooses such as are worth the price of gold and diamonds. The woman who has such a diamond to call her own should guard him well. No pleasure-seeker, no drunkard, no gambler follows his besetting sin so readily as he whom Eleutheria has once enslaved. She has but to proclaim, 'My service demands the lives of men,' and thousands upon thousands of her wors.h.i.+ppers answer, 'Here is mine; take it.' Beware that Pushkin be not among them!"

Bethsaba let the arms encircling Zeneida's waist sink until they embraced her knees.

"Oh, unapproachable saint! You who rejected his heart that you might save his head. Speak, counsel me, how shall I set about doing that which you have charged me to do. It is so difficult. How shall I carry it out, that my work be successful?"

And Zeneida, raising the young bride, began to whisper the sensible advice to her that experienced women are wont to give their inexperienced younger sisters.

"Give up to him in everything. Do not contradict him. If he change his mind seven times in a day, change yours with him. Divine his thoughts and forestall his wishes. If you know one thought of his, you can guess the others. If he be out of temper, do not irritate him with questions as to the reason. In such a mood the dearest face is unwelcome. Requite his love with your whole soul, and do not hide your joy from him. But do not flatter him, for that would turn him from you. Do your utmost to make his home pleasant to him. Let your house and his surroundings be pure and peaceful, yourself be ever cheerful and loving; never let him hear your voice raised harshly to your servants. If he desire to show hospitality, see that you make a good hostess. Do not keep him back from his manly pursuits. Never ask where he is going, whence he comes. Above all, never betray jealousy. What woman is there who can sufficiently stifle jealousy as not to feel it? Therefore must her heart, his advocate, keep watch that it clear him, even if eyes and ears accuse him. Never meet him with tearful eyes, but keep a strict watch over your own actions. It is not necessary to play the prude with strangers and to be always flying to your husband for protection; that would only render him ridiculous, and lead to many disagreeables. But never, whether from high spirits or feminine vanity, allow other men to pay you attentions which might arouse your husband's jealousy. If anything annoy you, tell it him gently and at once. Do not brood over it until it grows and he reads the trouble in your face. Be easily pacified. Throughout, be yourself, equable, ever the same; for, in an evil hour, some fatal moment may suffice to recall his forsaken love, Eleutheria, to his mind, and to throw him again into her arms."

The little bride listened to her words as though they were the words of Holy Scripture.

"I will help you to keep him at home and from returning to St.

Petersburg. I will write you letters saying that the Czar is furious that he whom he had chosen as his daughter's husband should have been capable of marrying another on the very day of her funeral. It will not be true, for I shall show the Czar Sophie's will, and it will disarm him, but Pushkin must be made to believe that he is in disgrace, and dare not return to St. Petersburg without special permission. And we will expunge his name from 'the green book,' that he receive no more invitations to meetings. Let him be hidden in your arms until better times dawn or--what I far rather believe in--until the day of our extinction. When all is over, then you may come back to the world. Until then we must keep him in the belief that for him, exiled by his Czar, vilified by his peers, there is no other world than his love and his Olympus. And are they not, in themselves, two worlds--two heavens?"