One other thing confounded him, angered him; with love, withtenderness, with grateful transport he dreamed of Gemma, of their lifetogether, of the happiness awaiting him in the future, and yet thisstrange woman, this Madame Polozov persistently floated--no! notfloated, poked herself, so Sanin with special vindictiveness expressedit--_poked herself_ in and faced his eyes, and he could not ridhimself of her image, could not help hearing her voice, recalling herwords, could not help being aware even of the special scent, delicate,fresh and penetrating, like the scent of yellow lilies, that waswafted from her garments. This lady was obviously fooling him, andtrying in every way to get over him ... what for? what did she want?Could it be merely the caprice of a spoiled, rich, and most likelyunprincipled woman? And that husband! What a creature he was! Whatwere his relations with her? And why would these questions keep cominginto his head, when he, Sanin, had really no interest whatever ineither Polozov or his wife? Why could he not drive away that intrusiveimage, even when he turned with his whole soul to another image,clear and bright as God's sunshine? How, through those almost divinefeatures, dare _those others_ force themselves upon him? And not onlythat; those other features smiled insolently at him. Those grey,rapacious eyes, those dimples, those snake-like tresses, how was itall that seemed to cleave to him, and to shake it all off, and flingit away, he was unable, had not the power?
Nonsense! nonsense! to-morrow it would all vanish and leave notrace.... But would she let him go to-morrow?
Yes.... All these question he put to himself, but the time was movingon to three o'clock, and he put on a black frockcoat and after a turnin the park, went in to the Polozovs!
* * * * *
He found in their drawing-room a secretary of the legation, a verytall light-haired German, with the profile of a horse, and his hairparted down the back of his head (at that time a new fashion), and ...oh, wonder! whom besides? Von Doenhof, the very officer with whom hehad fought a few days before! He had not the slightest expectation ofmeeting him there and could not help being taken aback. He greetedhim, however.
'Are you acquainted?' asked Maria Nikolaevna who had not failed tonotice Sanin's embarrassment.
'Yes ... I have already had the honour,' said Doenhof, and bending alittle aside, in an undertone he added to Maria Nikolaevna, with asmile, 'The very man ... your compatriot ... the Russian ...'
'Impossible!' she exclaimed also in an undertone; she shook her fingerat him, and at once began to bid good-bye both to him and the longsecretary, who was, to judge by every symptom, head over ears in lovewith her; he positively gaped every time he looked at her. Doenhofpromptly took leave with amiable docility, like a friend of the familywho understands at half a word what is expected of him; the secretaryshowed signs of restiveness, but Maria Nikolaevna turned him outwithout any kind of ceremony.
'Get along to your sovereign mistress,' she said to him (there wasat that time in Wiesbaden a certain princess di Monaco, who lookedsurprisingly like a _cocotte_ of the poorer sort); 'what do you wantto stay with a plebeian like me for?'
'Really, dear madam,' protested the luckless secretary,' all theprincesses in the world....'
But Maria Nikolaevna was remorseless, and the secretary went away,parting and all.
Maria Nikolaevna was dressed that day very much 'to her advantage,'as our grandmothers used to say. She wore a pink glace silk dress,with sleeves _a la Fontange_, and a big diamond in each ear. Her eyessparkled as much as her diamonds; she seemed in a good humour and inhigh spirits.
She made Sanin sit beside her, and began talking to him about Paris,where she was intending to go in a few days, of how sick she was ofGermans, how stupid they were when they tried to be clever, and howinappropriately clever sometimes when they were stupid; and suddenly,point-blank, as they say--_a brule pourpoint_--asked him, was it truethat he had fought a duel with the very officer who had been therejust now, only a few days ago, on account of a lady?
'How did you know that?' muttered Sanin, dumfoundered.
'The earth is full of rumours, Dimitri Pavlovitch; but anyway, I knowyou were quite right, perfectly right, and behaved like a knight. Tellme, was that lady your betrothed?'
Sanin slightly frowned ...
'There, I won't, I won't,' Maria Nikolaevna hastened to say. 'Youdon't like it, forgive me, I won't do it, don't be angry!' Polozovcame in from the next room with a newspaper in his hand. 'What do youwant? Or is dinner ready?'
'Dinner'll be ready directly, but just see what I've read in the_Northern Bee_ ... Prince Gromoboy is dead.'
Maria Nikolaevna raised her head.
'Ah! I wish him the joys of Paradise! He used,' she turned to Sanin,'to fill all my rooms with camellias every February on my birthday,But it wasn't worth spending the winter in Petersburg for that. Hemust have been over seventy, I should say?' she said to her husband.
'Yes, he was. They describe his funeral in the paper. All the courtwere present. And here's a poem too, of Prince Kovrizhkin's on theoccasion.'
'That's nice!'
'Shall I read them? The prince calls him the good man of wisecounsel.'
'No, don't. The good man of wise counsel? He was simply the goodmanof Tatiana Yurevna. Come to dinner. Life is for the living. DimitriPavlovitch, your arm.'
* * * * *
The dinner was, as on the day before, superb, and the meal was a verylively one. Maria Nikolaevna knew how to tell a story ... a rare giftin a woman, and especially in a Russian one! She did not restrictherself in her expressions; her countrywomen received particularlysevere treatment at her hands. Sanin was more than once set laughingby some bold and well-directed word. Above all, Maria Nikolaevnahad no patience with hypocrisy, cant, and humbug. She discovered italmost everywhere. She, as it were, plumed herself on and boasted ofthe humble surroundings in which she had begun life. She told ratherqueer anecdotes of her relations in the days of her childhood, spokeof herself as quite as much of a clodhopper as Natalya KirilovnaNarishkin. It became apparent to Sanin that she had been through agreat deal more in her time than the majority of women of her age.
Polozov ate meditatively, drank attentively, and only occasionallycast first on his wife, then on Sanin, his lightish, dim-looking, but,in reality, very keen eyes.
'What a clever darling you are!' cried Maria Nikolaevna, turning tohim; 'how well you carried out all my commissions in Frankfort! Icould give you a kiss on your forehead for it, but you're not verykeen after kisses.'
'I'm not,' responded Polozov, and he cut a pine-apple with a silverknife.
Maria Nikolaevna looked at him and drummed with her fingers on thetable. 'So our bet's on, isn't it?' she said significantly. 'Yes, it'son.'
'All right. You'll lose it.'
Polozov stuck out his chin. 'Well, this time you mustn't be toosanguine, Maria Nikolaevna, maybe you will lose.'
'What is the bet? May I know?' asked Sanin.
'No ... not now,' answered Maria Nikolaevna, and she laughed.
It struck seven. The waiter announced that the carriage was ready.Polozov saw his wife out, and at once waddled back to his easy-chair.
'Mind now! Don't forget the letter to the overseer,' Maria Nikolaevnashouted to him from the hall.
'I'll write, don't worry yourself. I'm a business-like person.'
XXXIX
In the year 1840, the theatre at Wiesbaden was a poor affair evenexternally, and its company, for affected and pitiful mediocrity, forstudious and vulgar commonplaceness, not one hair's-breadth above thelevel, which might be regarded up to now as the normal one in allGerman theatres, and which has been displayed in perfection lately bythe company in Carlsruhe, under the 'illustrious' direction of HerrDevrient. At the back of the box taken for her 'Serenity Madame vonPolozov' (how the waiter devised the means of getting it, God knows,he can hardly have really bribed the stadt-director!) was a littleroom, with sofas all round it; before she went into the box, MariaNikolaevna asked Sanin to draw up t
he screen that shut the box offfrom the theatre.
'I don't want to be seen,' she said, 'or else they'll be swarminground directly, you know.' She made him sit down beside her with hisback to the house so that the box seemed to be empty. The orchestraplayed the overture from the _Marriage of Figaro_. The curtain rose,the play began.
It was one of those numerous home-raised products in which well-readbut talentless authors, in choice, but dead language, studiously andcautiously enunciated some 'profound' or 'vital and palpitating'idea, portrayed a so-called tragic conflict, and produced dulness ...an Asiatic dulness, like Asiatic cholera. Maria Nikolaevna listenedpatiently to half an act, but when the first lover, discovering thetreachery of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-colouredcoat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat withmother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnishedleather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressedboth fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acuteangle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna could not stand it.
'The humblest French actor in the humblest little provincial town actsbetter and more naturally than the highest German celebrity,' shecried in indignation and she moved away and sat down in the littleroom at the back. 'Come here,' she said to Sanin, patting the sofabeside her. 'Let's talk.'
Sanin obeyed.
Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him. 'Ah, I see you're as soft as silk!Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,' shewent on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he wasacting the part of a tutor), 'reminded me of my young days; I, too,was in love with a teacher. It was my first ... no, my second passion.The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the Don monastery.I was twelve years old. I only saw him on Sundays. He used to weara short velvet cassock, smelt of lavender water, and as he made hisway through the crowd with the censer, used to say to the ladies inFrench, "_Pardon, excusez_" but never lifted his eyes, and he hadeyelashes like that!' Maria Nikolaevna marked off with the nail of hermiddle finger quite half the length of the little finger and showedSanin. 'My tutor was called--Monsieur Gaston! I must tell you he wasan awfully learned and very severe person, a Swiss,--and with such anenergetic face! Whiskers black as pitch, a Greek profile, and lipsthat looked like cast iron! I was afraid of him! He was the only man Ihave ever been afraid of in my life. He was tutor to my brother, whodied ... was drowned. A gipsy woman has foretold a violent death forme too, but that's all moonshine. I don't believe in it. Only fancyIppolit Sidoritch with a dagger!'
'One may die from something else than a dagger,' observed Sanin.
'All that's moonshine! Are you superstitious? I'm not a bit. What isto be, will be. Monsieur Gaston used to live in our house, in the roomover my head. Sometimes I'd wake up at night and hear his footstep--heused to go to bed very late--and my heart would stand still withveneration, or some other feeling. My father could hardly read andwrite himself, but he gave us an excellent education. Do you know, Ilearnt Latin!'
'You? learnt Latin?'
'Yes; I did. Monsieur Gaston taught me. I read the _AEneid_ with him.It's a dull thing, but there are fine passages. Do you remember whenDido and AEneas are in the forest?...'
'Yes, yes, I remember,' Sanin answered hurriedly. He had long agoforgotten all his Latin, and had only very faint notions about the_AEneid_.
Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him, as her way was, a little from oneside and looking upwards. 'Don't imagine, though, that I am verylearned. Mercy on us! no; I'm not learned, and I've no talents of anysort. I scarcely know how to write ... really; I can't read aloud; norplay the piano, nor draw, nor sew--nothing! That's what I am--thereyou have me!'
She threw out her hands. 'I tell you all this,' she said, 'first,so as not to hear those fools (she pointed to the stage where atthat instant the actor's place was being filled by an actress, alsohowling, and also with her elbows projecting before her) and secondly,because I'm in your debt; you told me all about yourself yesterday.'
'It was your pleasure to question me,' observed Sanin.
Maria Nikolaevna suddenly turned to him. 'And it's not your pleasureto know just what sort of woman I am? I can't wonder at it, though,'she went on, leaning back again on the sofa cushions. 'A man justgoing to be married, and for love, and after a duel.... What thoughtscould he have for anything else?'
Maria Nikolaevna relapsed into dreamy silence, and began biting thehandle of her fan with her big, but even, milkwhite teeth.
And Sanin felt mounting to his head again that intoxication which hehad not been able to get rid of for the last two days.
The conversation between him and Maria Nikolaevna was carried on in anundertone, almost in a whisper, and this irritated and disturbed himthe more....
When would it all end?
Weak people never put an end to things themselves--they always waitfor the end.
Some one sneezed on the stage; this sneeze had been put into the playby the author as the 'comic relief' or 'element'; there was certainlyno other comic element in it; and the audience made the most of it;they laughed.
This laugh, too, jarred upon Sanin.
There were moments when he actually did not know whether he wasfurious or delighted, bored or amused. Oh, if Gemma could have seenhim!
'It's really curious,' Maria Nikolaevna began all at once. 'A maninforms one and in such a calm voice, "I am going to get married"; butno one calmly says to one, "I'm going to throw myself in the water."And yet what difference is there? It's curious, really.'
Annoyance got the upper hand of Sanin. 'There's a great difference,Maria Nikolaevna! It's not dreadful at all to throw oneself in thewater if one can swim; and besides ... as to the strangeness ofmarriages, if you come to that ...'
He stopped short abruptly and bit his tongue.
Maria Nikolaevna slapped her open hand with her fan.
'Go on, Dimitri Pavlovitch, go on--I know what you were going to say."If it comes to that, my dear madam, Maria Nikolaevna Polozov," youwere going to say, "anything more curious than _your_ marriage itwould be impossible to conceive.... I know your husband well, from achild!" That's what you were going to say, you who can swim!'
'Excuse me,' Sanin was beginning....
'Isn't it the truth? Isn't it the truth?' Maria Nikolaevna pronouncedinsistently.
'Come, look me in the face and tell me I was wrong!'
Sanin did not know what to do with his eyes. 'Well, if you like; it'sthe truth, if you absolutely insist upon it,' he said at last.
Maria Nikolaevna shook her head. 'Quite so, quite so. Well, and didyou ask yourself, you who can swim, what could be the reason of sucha strange ... step on the part of a woman, not poor ... and not afool ... and not ugly? All that does not interest you, perhaps, butno matter. I'll tell you the reason not this minute, but directly the_entr'acte_ is over. I am in continual uneasiness for fear some oneshould come in....'
Maria Nikolaevna had hardly uttered this last word when the outer dooractually was half opened, and into the box was thrust a head--red,oily, perspiring, still young, but toothless; with sleek long hair,a pendent nose, huge ears like a bat's, with gold spectacles oninquisitive dull eyes, and a _pince-nez_ over the spectacles. The headlooked round, saw Maria Nikolaevna, gave a nasty grin, nodded.... Ascraggy neck craned in after it....
Maria Nikolaevna shook her handkerchief at it. 'I'm not at home! _Ichbin nicht zu Hause, Herr P....! Ich bin nicht zu Hause.... Ksh-sk!ksh-sh-sh!_'
The head was disconcerted, gave a forced laugh, said with a sort ofsob, in imitation of Liszt, at whose feet he had once reverentlygrovelled, '_Sehr gut, sehr gut!_' and vanished.
'What is that object?' inquired Sanin.
'Oh, a Wiesbaden critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. Heis in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praiseeverything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he issoaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he doesnot dare to give vent. I am afraid he's an awful scandalmonger;
he'llrun at once to tell every one I'm in the theatre. Well, what does itmatter?'
The orchestra played through a waltz, the curtain floated up again....The grimacing and whimpering began again on the stage.
'Well,' began Maria Nikolaevna, sinking again on to the sofa. 'Sinceyou are here and obliged to sit with me, instead of enjoying thesociety of your betrothed--don't turn away your eyes and get cross--Iunderstand you, and have promised already to let you go to the otherend of the earth--but now hear my confession. Do you care to know whatI like more than anything?'
'Freedom,' hazarded Sanin.
Maria Nikolaevna laid her hand on his hand.
'Yes, Dimitri Pavlovitch,' she said, and in her voice there was a noteof something special, a sort of unmistakable sincerity and gravity,'freedom, more than all and before all. And don't imagine I amboasting of this--there is nothing praiseworthy in it; only it's _so_and always will be _so_ with me to the day of my death. I suppose itmust have been that I saw a great deal of slavery in my childhood andsuffered enough from it. Yes, and Monsieur Gaston, my tutor, openedmy eyes too. Now you can, perhaps, understand why I married IppolitSidoritch: with him I'm free, perfectly free as air, as the wind....And I knew that before marriage; I knew that with him I should be afree Cossack!'
Maria Nikolaevna paused and flung her fan aside.
'I will tell you one thing more; I have no distaste for reflection ...it's amusing, and indeed our brains are given us for that; but on theconsequences of what I do I never reflect, and if I suffer I don'tpity myself--not a little bit; it's not worth it. I have a favouritesaying: _Cela ne tire pas a consequence_,--I don't know how to saythat in Russian. And after all, what does _tire a consequence_? Ishan't be asked to give an account of myself here, you see--in thisworld; and up there (she pointed upwards with her finger), well, upthere--let them manage as best they can. When they come to judge meup there, _I_ shall not be _I_! Are you listening to me? Aren't youbored?'