III

I see the ensuing days as through a vague blue mist. I see myself reclining in an armchair, and my mother sitting beside me with her crochet-work. She is crocheting something of yellow wool. It is strange how the sight of that yellow wool hurts and repels me, but I cannot find words in which to express it, I seem unable to speak; and mother crochets on calmly, with quick white hands. I am conscious of a dull pain in the nape of my neck. Then I see Vassili come in; he is carrying an enormous cage in his hand; and Olga follows him, laughing and radiant. “Here he is! here he is!” cries Vassili triumphantly, putting the cage down beside me; and in it, to my horror, I see a parrot, a huge gray and scarlet creature, twisting a hard black tongue round and round as he clambers about the cage. I cry out in terror: “Why—why do they bring me things that frighten me?” And I burst into tears. Every one gazes at me in amazement; my mother bends tenderly over me: “But, my own darling, yesterday you said you wanted to have a parrot. Vassili has been all the way to Moscow to buy it for you.”

“No, no! it is not true! I never said I wanted a parrot! Take it away! It frightens me. And so does the yellow wool.” I hear myself weeping loudly; then everything is blotted out and vanishes—parrot, Vassili, yellow wool, Olga—nothing remains but my mother's sad and anxious face bending above me, dim and constant as the light of a lamp in a shadowy chapel.

When I was able to come down to breakfast for the first time, my father stood waiting for me, straight and solemn at the foot of the great staircase. He gave me his arm with much ceremony and led me to my place, where flowers lay in fragrant heaps round my plate. Every one embraced and complimented me and I was very happy.

“I feel as if I were a princess!” I cried, clapping my hands; and they all laughed except my father, who answered gravely:

“If it is your wish, you may become one. Prince Ivan has asked for your hand.”

“Ivan? Ivan Troubetzkoi?” All the gladness went out of my heart.

“Yes. And so has Katerinowitch,” exclaimed Olga, with a bitter smile; and I noticed that she looked pale and sad.

“Both Ivan and Katerinowitch? How extraordinary!” Then glancing at my mother, whose eyes were fixed upon her plate, I added jestingly, “Is that all? No one else?”

My pleasantry fell flat, for no one answered, and I saw my father knitting his brows. But my mother lifted her eyes for an instant and looked at me. In the blue light of that dear gaze I read my happiness!

But Olga was speaking. “Yes,” she said, “there is some one else. Vassili Tarnowsky has asked to marry you.” And she added, with a touch of bitterness: “I wonder what has possessed all three of them!”

Vassili! Vassili! Vassili! The name rang like a clarion in my ears. I should be Vassili's wife! I should be the Countess Tarnowska—the happiest woman in all this happy world. Every other girl on earth—poor luckless girls who could not marry Vassili—would envy me. On his arm I should pass proudly and serenely through life, rejoicing in his beauty, protected by his strength. Sheltered on his breast the storms would pass over my head, nor could sorrow ever touch me.

“I trust that your choice will fall on Troubetzkoi,” said my father.

“Or on Vassili,” cried Olga quickly.

I jumped up and embraced her. “It shall not be Katerinowitch, that I promise,” I whispered, kissing the little pink ear that nestled under her fair curls. “He is to be for you!”

Time was to fulfil this prophecy.

As I went round the table, and passed my mother—poor little nervous mother!—I laid my hand on her arm. I noticed that she was trembling all over. Then I summoned up courage and approached my father.

“Father, dear, if you want your little Mura to be happy, you must let her marry Vassili.”

“Never,” cried my father, striking the table with his fist. The soul of the ancient O'Rourke—a demoniacal Irish ancestor of ours whose memory always struck terror to our souls—had awakened in him. I saw Olga and my mother turn pale. Nevertheless I laughed and kissed him again. “If I do not marry Vassili, I shall die! And please, father, do not be the Terrible O'Rourke, for you are frightening mother!”

But papa, dominated by the atavistic influence of the O'Rourke, grew even more terrible; and mother was greatly frightened. She sat white and rigid, with scarcely fluttering breath; suddenly in her transparent eyes the pupils floated upward like two misty pale-blue half-moons; she was in the throes of one of her dreaded epileptic seizures.

Then they were all around her, helping her, loosening her dress, fanning her; while I stood aside trembling and woebegone, and the pains in the nape of my neck racked me anew.

I said to myself that my father was hard and wicked, that I should marry Vassili and carry mother off with me, ever so far away!

As for papa, he should only be allowed to see us once a year. At Christmas.

I have married Vassili.

········

I pretended to be seized with such convulsions that my poor dear mother, being at her wits' end, at last allowed me to run away with him.

Do I say “I pretended”? I am not sure that that is correct. At first the convulsions were certainly a mere pretense. I would say to myself: “Now I shall make myself have convulsions.” But as soon as I had begun I could not stop. After I had voluntarily gnashed my teeth they seemed to become locked as in a vice; my fists that I had purposely clenched would not reopen. My nails dug into the palms of my hands, and I could see the blood flowing down my wrists without being able to unclasp or relax my fingers.

Doctor Orlof, summoned in haste from Kieff, shook his head gravely.

“There are indications of epilepsy, due to the fall from the swing.”

“No, no, no!” I cried. “Not the swing! It is because of Vassili!”

My mother trembled and wept.

How cruel we are in our childhood! How we torture the mothers that adore us, even though we love them with all our hearts. And oh! the tragedy of not understanding this until it is too late, when we can never, never ask for their forgiveness, nor console them or atone to them again.

I married Vassili.

My father, more the Terrible O'Rourke than ever, at once refused to have anything to do with me. He denied me his kiss and his forgiveness. I was very unhappy.

“Oh, don't bother your head about that tiresome old man,” said Vassili, much annoyed by my tears.

As for my mother, she could only entreat Vassili to be kind and gentle with me.

“Take care of her, Vassili,” she implored. “I have given her to you lest she should die of a broken heart: but she is really too young to be any one's wife—she is but a child! I do not know whether you understand me. Remember she is not yet a woman. She is a child.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Vassili, without paying much attention. “That's all right. I shall tweak her nose if she is naughty.”

“And if I am good?” I asked, lifting ecstatic eyes to his handsome nonchalant face.

“If you are good you shall have sweets and kisses!” and he laughed, showing all his white teeth.

“Promise me, Vassili, that you will always sing my favorite song: 'Oh distant steppes, oh savage plains,' to me, and to no one else.”

“To you and to no one else,” said Vassili with mock solemnity. “Come then, Marie Tarnowska!” and he drew my arm under his, patting my hand on which the new nuptial ring shone in all its brightness.

“Marie Tarnowska!” What a beautiful name! I could have wished the whole world to know that name; I could have wished that every one seeing me should say: “Behold, behold Marie Tarnowska, happiest and most blessed among women.”

IV

On my wedding night, in the hotel at Kharkoff, I summoned the chambermaid. She knocked and entered. She was a pert, pretty creature, and after surveying me from head to foot she threw a rapid glance at Vassili. He was seated in an armchair, lighting a cigarette.

“What is your name?” he asked the girl.

“Rosalia, at your service, sir,” she replied.

“Very good, Rosalia,” said my husband. “This evening we shall do without you. Possibly in a day or two I may wish to see you again.”

The girl laughed, made a slight curtsey, and went out, closing the door behind her.

“But who is going to do my hair?” I asked, feeling very much out of countenance and shy at remaining alone with him.

“Never mind about your hair,” said Vassili. “Don't be so tedious. You're a little bore.” And he kissed me.

Then he sat down and smoked his cigarette, watching me out of narrowed eyelids as I wandered about the room in great trepidation and embarrassment. I was about to kneel down by the bedside to say my prayers, when he suddenly grasped my wrist and held it tightly.

“What are you doing now?” he inquired.

“I am going to say my prayers,” I replied.

“Don't bother about your prayers,” he said. “Try not to be such an awful little bore. Really you are quite insufferable.”

But I would not have missed my prayers for the world. At home prayers had always been a matter of great importance. Olga and I used to say them aloud in unison morning and evening. And now that Olga was far away I must say them alone. I buried my face in my hands and said them devoutly, with all my heart.

They were, I admit, numerous and long; and they were in many languages, for every nurse or governess that came to us in Otrada had taught us new ones; and Olga and I were afraid to leave any out, lest God should be offended; we were also rather doubtful as to which language He understood the best.

I had just come to an English prayer—

 
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake…
 

(Here Olga and I used always to interpolate a short prayer of our own invention: “Please, dear God, do not on any account let us die to-night. Amen.”)—when Vassili interrupted me.

“Haven't you finished?” he cried, putting his arm round my neck. “You are very tiresome. You bore me to extinction.”

“You bore me!” That was the perpetual refrain of all his days. I always bored him. Perhaps it was not surprising. At seventeen one is not always clever and entertaining, especially outside the family circle. At home I had always been considered rather witty and intelligent, but to Vassili I was never anything but “a dreadful bore.”

When I caught sight of him pinching Rosalia's cheek and I burst into tears: “You are a fearful bore,” he said crossly. If I noticed the scent of musk or patchouli on his coat and ventured to question him about it—“You are an insufferable little bore,” would be all the answer I got. When he went out (taking the music of “My Savage Plains” with him) and stayed away all night, on his return next morning I sobbed out my anguish on his breast. “I must say you bore me to death,” he yawned.

And one day I heard that he had had a child by a German baroness.

At the sight of my paroxysm of despair he grew angry. “What does it matter to you, silly creature, since you have not got one yourself?” he exclaimed. “Wearisome little bore that you are; you can't even have a child.”

I was aghast. What—what did he mean? Why could I not—?

“No! no!” he shouted, with his handsome mouth rounded and open like those of the stone cherubs on the walls of his castle, “you will never have any children. You are not a woman. Your mother herself said so.” And the look which he flashed across my frail body cut me like a sword.

I fell fainting to the ground.

Then he became alarmed. He called everybody. He summoned the whole staff of the hotel. He sent for all the ladies he knew in Kharkoff (and they were many) imploring them all to save me, to recall me to life. When I came to myself the room was filled with women: there was Rosalia, and two Hungarian girls from the adjoining apartment, and there was also the German baroness, and little Julia Terlezkaja, the latest and fairest of my husband's conquests. All these graceful creatures were bending over my couch, while Vassili on his knees with his head buried in the coverlet was sobbing: “Save her! She is dead! I have killed her!”

I put out my hand and touched his hair.

“I am alive,” I said softly; and he threw himself upon me and kissed me. The women stood round us in a semi-circle, gay and graceful as the figures on a Gobelin tapestry.

“I love you,” Vassili was exclaiming; “I love you just as you are. I should hate you to be like everybody else.” And in French he added, looking at Madame Terlezkaja: “C'est très rigolo d'avoir une femme qui n'est pas une femme.”

I hid my face in the pillow, and wept; while the fair Terlezkaja, who seemed to be the kindest of them all, bent over and consoled me.

“Pay no heed to him,” she whispered. “I think he has been drinking a little.”

The door opened. A doctor, who had been sent for by the manager of the hotel, entered with a resolute authoritative air. At the sight of him the women disappeared like a flight of startled sparrows. Of course they took Vassili with them.

To the good old doctor I confided the secret which Vassili had disclosed to me and which was burning my heart.

“I want to have a child, a little child of my own!” I cried.

“Of course. Of course. So you shall,” said the old doctor, with a soothing smile. “There is no reason why you should not. You are a little anemic, that is all.”

He scribbled some prescriptions on his tablets.

“There. You will take all that. And you will go to Franzensbad. Within a year you will be asking me to act as godpapa.”

I took all he prescribed. But I did not go to Franzensbad. Vassili wanted to go to Petersburg, so, of course, it was to Petersburg we went.

The very first evening we were there a number of his friends came to call on him.

I remember, among the rest, a certain German Grand Duke, who, after showing me an infinite amount of attention, drew Vassili aside and spoke to him in undertones. I heard him mention the name of a famous restaurant and the words: “A jolly supper-party to-night—some ravishingly pretty tziganes....” There followed names of men and women whom I did not know, and my husband laughed loudly.

Then the Grand Duke turned to me, and bowing deeply and ceremoniously kissed my hand.

For an instant a frenzied impulse came over me to clutch that well-groomed head and cry: “Wicked man! Why are you trying to lure my husband from me?” But social conventions prevailed over this elementary instinct, and when the Grand Duke raised his patrician head he found me all amiability and smiles.

“She is indeed a bewitching creature!” I heard him mutter to Vassili. “Looks just like one of Botticelli's diaphanous angels. Well then, at eleven o'clock to-night, at the 'Hermitage.'”

Promptly at a quarter to eleven Vassili, sleek, trim and immaculate, kissed my cheek gaily and went out.

I was alone. Alone in the great drawing-room, gorgeous with lights and mirrors and gilded decorations. What was the good of being a bewitching creature? What was the good of looking like one of Botticelli's diaphanous angels?…