Marie Tarnowska

“But why? Why are we running away? Have we stolen something?”

At those words my heart stopped beating. I suddenly remembered Prilukoff's ill-gotten banknotes.

“Elise!” I gasped; “in the desk in my sitting-room—there was some money.”

“Yes, madame.”

“What did you do with it?”

“It is quite safe, madame. I have taken it.”

“You have taken it!”

“Yes, madame. Here it is.” And with satisfied hand Elise patted a black leather satchel that lay in her lap.

With a sob I hid my face in my hands.

Indeed, we had stolen something!

XXVIII

As soon as we reached the frontier I telegraphed to Prilukoff. I wanted to send Elise back to Hyères with the money, but she refused to leave me.

“What if Mr. Prilukoff were to kill me,” she cried. “Then what would your ladyship and poor little Master Tioka do, all alone in the world?”

“But my good Elise, why on earth should Mr. Prilukoff kill you?”

“I don't know,” sighed Elise. “But he has become so strange of late—” and after a pause, she added, under her breath: “We have all become very strange.”

It was true. I could not but admit it. We were “very strange.” We were not at all like other people. The people that we met on our journeys and in hotels, for instance, all took an interest in external things—in the surrounding landscape, or in works of art and monuments and cathedrals. As for us, we never spoke about monuments. We never entered a cathedral. We took no interest whatever in anything beyond our own dolorous souls. We were even as those who travel with an invalid, watching him only, caring for and thinking of nothing else. The invalid I traveled with was my own sick soul.

The least peculiar among us was Count Kamarowsky. Yet even he, I fancy, was not quite like other people. His was not a strong nature, like that of some men I had known. Perhaps the Slav blood is responsible for much that is abnormal and unconventional. Surely we are from the inmost depths of our nature strangely removed from the Teutonic, the Anglo-Saxon and even the Latin races, and our thoughts and actions must frequently appear to them singular and incomprehensible.

As for Paul Kamarowsky, his dread of suffering was so great that he preferred to know nothing that might cause him distress. In fear lest he should see aught that might displease him, he chose to shut his eyes to facts and truths, preferring voluntarily to tread the easy paths of a fool's paradise. I longed to open my heart to him, to unburden my travailed soul and clear my sullied conscience by a full confession; I was ready to abide by the result, even if it meant the loss of my last chance of rehabilitation, even should I forfeit thereby all hope of marriage with a man of honor, rank and repute. But he closed my lips; he sealed my heart; he firmly avoided all confidences and disclosures.

“Mura,” he said, “my life and yours have been too full of errors and of sorrow. Do not embitter this, our hour of joy. The past is buried; let it rest. Do not drag what is dead to the light of day again.”

I bowed my head in silence. But in the depths of my conscience I knew that my past had been buried alive.

Not in my spirit alone did I suffer agonies at this period; my frail body was racked with disease and my sufferings were continuous and intense. Day by day I felt my strength decline, I saw myself wax thinner and paler; rarely indeed did an hour pass that I could count free from pain. The deep-seated ill that since the birth of my little daughter Tania had struck its fiery roots into my inmost being now bore its toxic fruits, slowly diffusing its poison through my veins. Sometimes the pangs I suffered were so acute that I cried out in anguish, while beads of cold perspiration started to my brow. But as a rule I was tortured by a deep, dull, perpetual ache, a sense of utter weakness and weariness that stifled all hope in me and all desire to live.

Oh, daughters of Eve, my purer and stronger sisters, women who have not transgressed—you whose hatred and scorn have overwhelmed me, you whose white hands have been so quick to throw the wounding stone—you alone can comprehend the agony that racked my frame, the flaming sword that pierced me, the sacred ill of womanhood that girt my body as with a sash of fire. You who in such dark hours can shelter your sufferings in the protecting shadow of your home, you who can seek refuge in a husband's tenderness and hide your stricken brow upon a faithful breast, can you not summon one throb of sorrow to your womanly hearts, one gleam of pity to your gentle eyes, when you think of the tortures I dragged from hotel to hotel, seeking to conceal my martyrdom from the inquisitive or indifferent gaze of strangers, not daring to confide in the man who loved me but who yet was almost a stranger?…

Who can describe the minor and yet genuine torment of the tight garments cramping the aching body; the weight of the ornate head-dress on the throbbing brow; the irony of rouge and cosmetics on the ashen cheeks; and the nauseating distaste for the rich viands that one pretends to enjoy while the noise of voices and music pierces your brain, and the glaring electric lights stab your aching eyes like a hundred knife-thrusts?

How often, on returning from some brilliant banquet to the silence and solitude of a desolate hotel bedroom, have I wept aloud with vain longing for one great joy denied to me, one supreme privilege of a happy woman: that of being weary, ill, and miserable—and yet loved all the same! How keenly have I envied some women I have known—women who were not beautiful, not brilliant and not young, but by whose sick-bed in their hour of pain a husband watched in tenderness and pity, faithful throughout the years, throughout the changes that time brings, faithful to the sad and pallid woman who had the right to lay her faded cheek upon his breast.

None, none of those who vowed they loved me, would have loved me thus! Not Vassili, not Bozevsky, not Stahl, not Kamarowsky. Prilukoff perhaps? Who knows?

But Prilukoff was a thief, a fugitive, a criminal; and day and night I prayed that he might not cross my path again.

He had not replied to my agitated telegram informing him that Elise had unwittingly taken the money away. Nor did he, as I thought he would, join us in Vienna where we stayed several days, expecting yet dreading his arrival.

We were at a loss to know what to do with his stolen money. We did not dare to send it to him at Hyères, where I knew he had been staying under an assumed name and in constant terror of discovery. We did not dare to leave it in our rooms at the hotel. Elise carried it about with her day and night in the hated black leather satchel, which had become to us a nightmare, an incubus, an obsession. With a bitter smile I recalled the story of the English hunters in India who succeeded in capturing that most precious and sacred among all animals: a white elephant. And having captured it they knew not what to do with it. They trailed it after them across land and sea—ponderous, slow, magnificent; and nobody wanted it, and nobody knew what to do with it nor how to get rid of it. Prilukoff's stolen money was indeed a white elephant for us.

Kamarowsky with his little son had joined us in Vienna, bringing all our luggage with him. He was as boisterous as a schoolboy out for a holiday.

“There are no spies here, are there, Mura?” he laughed, kissing my cheek loudly. “No spies to drive us away!”

Again I was hurt that he should thus make light of the mysteries of my existence. Should he not have demanded an explanation of my flight from Hyères? Should he not have insisted upon knowing who had followed me there? What love was this that could voluntarily blindfold itself and evade all explanations?

Not this, not this was the love I had dreamed of and hoped for, the steadfast refuge for my wavering spirit, the longed-for haven for my storm-tossed soul.

We proceeded almost immediately to Orel. At this period I possessed no money at all of my own; what little I had had when I left Moscow had been spent; but not for a moment did I entertain the thought of touching Prilukoff's ill-gotten wealth. Paul Kamarowsky insisted upon providing all our traveling and hotel expenses; but it was embarrassing to be unable to tip a servant or to pay for even the smallest trifle that Tioka or I might want.

I made up my mind to lay frankly before my betrothed my deplorable financial situation. And I did so on the journey to Orel. He seemed much amused at my confession; and the fact of our utter dependence upon him seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure.

He filled my purse with gold, and made me promise that I would always ask him for anything I might need or desire.

How well I remember our arrival at Orel! It was a radiant afternoon in October. Count Kamarowsky accompanied us to our hotel, where flower-filled apartments awaited us; then he left us at once to go in search of a young friend of his, the son of the Governor of Orel, who had promised to see to our passports as soon as we arrived.

I was alone in our drawing-room when Elise knocked at the door.

“The children would like to go out; they say they feel cramped from the journey,” she said. “If madame allows, I will take them into the park; it is just opposite the hotel,” she added.

“Certainly, Elise.”

A moment later Tioka and Grania, ready to go out, came running to embrace me, and behind them Elise reappeared.

“If madame permits,” she said in a low voice, “I might perhaps leave 'it' here?”

“It” was the black leather satchel—our white elephant.

“Yes, yes; leave it,” I said.

And she carried it into my bedroom and placed it on the dressing-table.

XXIX

I stepped out upon the balcony and watched the children cross the sunlit square; they turned and waved their hands to me; then I saw them enter the park and scamper down the shady avenue, the faithful Elise trotting quickly in their wake.

I remained on the balcony wrapped in peaceful thoughts, glad to feel the warmth of the autumn sun on my shoulders and the coolness of the autumn breeze on my cheeks. A wave of thankfulness came over me; repentance for all my past doubts and transgressions flooded my heart.

How could I ever have doubted Paul Kamarowsky's love? Was not the absolute faith he reposed in me—the blind unquestioning faith that in my folly I had often resented—was it not after all the highest homage that a noble heart could bestow? Henceforth the aim of my life should be to render myself worthy of his trust and love. In utter gratitude and devotion my heart went out to him who was about to place in my keeping the honor of his unsullied name, and the care of his motherless child. I clasped my hands and breathed a fervent prayer to Heaven, a prayer that I might deserve the happiness that was in store for me.

A slight sound startled me from my reverie. It was Kamarowsky who, having returned and not finding me in the drawing-room, had knocked at my bedroom door. Receiving no reply he entered. I left the balcony, and closing the window after me, stepped into the room.

Kamarowsky was standing in front of the dressing-table holding the black leather satchel in his hand.

“What is this?” he asked casually. “Is it yours?”

The pitiless light from the window struck me full in the face, and I felt that I was turning pale. “No—no—” I stammered. “It is not mine.”

“I thought not,” he said, turning it round and round. “I did not remember seeing it. We had better send it down to the bureau of the hotel.” And he stepped forward to touch the bell.

“No, no!” I cried, “it belongs to Elise.”

“Why does Elise leave her things in your room?” Then noticing my pallor and agitation he exclaimed: “Why, dearest? What is wrong with you? You look quite white.”

“It is nothing, nothing,” I said, attempting to smile; and I sat down with my back to the light. I was trembling from head to foot.

He bent over me with tender solicitude. “Are you feeling ill?”

“Slightly—it will pass—it is nothing. The fatigue of the journey perhaps,” and I caressed the kind face that bent over me full of affectionate concern.

He turned and rang the bell.

A waiter appeared. “Bring some brandy,” ordered Kamarowsky. “Make haste. The lady is not well.”

The waiter returned promptly and placed the tray on the table; as he was about to leave the room Count Kamarowsky, who was pouring out the brandy, said to him: “Wait a moment, you can take that satchel upstairs to the maid's apartment.”

I sprang to my feet. “No—leave it,” I cried, taking it from the waiter's hand. The man bowed and left the room.

Kamarowsky seemed astonished at my behavior. “What is the matter?” he asked. “Why are you so agitated?”

“I am not—I am not agitated at all,” I stammered, trying to control my features, and holding the odious white elephant in my trembling hands.

“What on earth is in that bag?” asked the Count.

“Nothing—nothing,” I said, with a vacuous, senseless smile.

“Come, now! It is full of papers,” laughed Kamarowsky, putting out his hand and pressing the satchel between his fingers. “Confess, what are they? Love-letters?”

I contrived to answer his jest with a smile: “You have guessed right,” I said.

“They are Elise's, I hope—not yours!” he added, half smiling and half distrustful.

I laughed. “Elise's, of course;” and with a deep sigh of relief I sank upon a chair, feeling that the danger was past. But my heart had not yet resumed its normal pulsation when the door opened and the unwitting Elise appeared on the threshold.

“We have returned, my lady, and the children have gone upstairs.”

Kamarowsky jestingly took the satchel from my hand and dangled it in the air.

“Ah, Elise! What have we got in here?”

Elise rolled her eyes wildly, and a scarlet blush mounted to her face; Elise's blushes were always painful to see; now her face was of a deep damask hue.

The Count laughed. “So this is where you keep your love-letters, is it?”

“Oh, no, sir,” exclaimed Elise, blushing till her eyes were filled with tears.

“What? Is this satchel not yours?”

“Oh, no, sir!—I mean—yes, sir,” stuttered Elise.

Kamarowsky looked at her, and then at me. Seeing the expression of our faces the laughter faded from his lips.

“Come, Elise; tell me whose it is, and what it contains.”

I attempted to make a sign to her, but the tall, broad figure of Count Kamarowsky stood between us.

I rose with a sigh of despair, acquiescing in my fate. Now—let happen what may.

“What letters are they?” insisted Kamarowsky.

I heard the hapless Elise floundering in the quicksands of falsehood; finally she let herself drift—a helpless wreck on the rock of truth.

“It is not letters, it is money,” she said at last.

“Money? Money of yours?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence. Then Kamarowsky said: “I do not believe you. I wish to see what it contains.”

No one answered him.

“Where is the key?”

Again there was silence.

I heard a slight jingling sound; Kamarowsky was searching in his pockets for a penknife. Then he said to Elise: “You can go.”

Elise went slowly and reluctantly from the room. Then I heard a faint tearing and crackling: Kamarowsky had cut through the leather of the satchel. Now the rustling of banknotes told me that he was smoothing them out on the table, and counting them.

A few moments passed.

“Thirty-five thousand rubles,” said Paul Kamarowsky slowly. “I cannot understand why you should have told me you were penniless.” There was an icy coldness in his voice such as I had never heard before.

“The money is not mine,” I said, in trembling tones.

“Whose is it?”

How was I to answer him? Could I betray Prilukoff? And, with him, myself? I decided to tell what was, intrinsically, the truth.

“I do not know whom it belongs to.”

Once more there was silence. I wondered what he would do? Would he insult me? Would he raise his voice in bitter accusation and reproof?

No. The silence remained unbroken. Kamarowsky left the room without a word.

Ah! I was still in the grip of the octopus; its tentacles bound and crushed me still. Even from afar Prilukoff guided my destinies, drove my frail barque into storm and disaster.

With trembling hands I gathered up the scattered banknotes and thrust them back into the execrated leather bag. Ah, if only I could have freed myself from this nightmare burden, if only I could have returned the money to Prilukoff! But how? Where to? At the Bellevue, in Hyères, he had called himself Zeiler. But now where was he? Under what name was he hiding? How could I, without warning, send him such a sum of money? Where could I write to him?

No; fate had doomed me to wander through the world carrying with me the hated money in Elise's abominable satchel! At the bitterness of this thought I dropped my face in my hands and wept.

I did not hear any one knock at the door; nor did I hear the door open. When, still shaken with sobs, I raised my tear-stained face, I beheld standing on the threshold a stranger—a slender, fair-haired youth. He was gazing at me with compassionate eyes, full of confusion at having found me in tears.

“Pardon me,” he said, and his voice was soft and musical.

“Whom do you want?”

“I was looking for Count Kamarowsky,” he replied. “He has invited me to dine with him.” There was a pause. “My name is Nicolas Naumoff.”

“My name is Marie Tarnowska.” And I gave him my hand.

XXX

Count Kamarowsky came in shortly afterwards. He was gloomy and morose; but on seeing his friend, whom he had that morning invited to dine with us, he made a heroic effort to keep up an appearance of good temper and hospitality.

But his grief and anger were only too apparent. He sat beside me at table without speaking to me, nor did he ever turn his eyes in my direction.

Our guest seemed distressed and amazed at his behavior, and—doubtless remembering my recent tears—he gazed at me with his light-brown eyes eloquent of sympathy and compassion.

Once or twice I addressed a remark to Kamarowsky, but he scarcely answered me and I felt myself flushing and paling with humiliation.

Silence fell upon us at last. Painful and embarrassing as I felt it to be, I yet could find no word to say. A violent headache racked my temples, and I had to bite my lips to keep myself from bursting into tears.

Suddenly I got up and went into my room. With trembling hand I sought in my dressing-case for a bottle of cocaine, which for nearly a year I had not touched. I lifted it to my lips and sipped the exhilarating poison. Then I returned to the table.

Kamarowsky was sitting grim and silent with bent head and lowering brow, but the young stranger raised his golden eyes under their long fair lashes, and fixed them upon me as if to give me comfort. After a few moments, in order to break the well-nigh unbearable silence, he spoke to me in his low and gentle voice.

“I hear that Delphinus, the famous crystal gazer, has arrived in Orel. You ought to get him to tell you your fortune.”

“Is that so?” I said, smiling; and even as I spoke the prediction of that strange soothsayer flashed into my memory. I seemed to hear again the brief, prophetic words: “Two men are yet to enter into your life. One will be your salvation—the other your ruin.”

Two men! I glanced around me, startled and amazed. Two men were here; one on each side of me. Was the prophecy coming true? Were these the two men he had spoken of? Were the One and the Other sitting beside me now?

In my mind I could still hear the fortune-teller's nasal, dreamy accent:

“You will chose—the Other. It is your destiny.”

Overcome by a feeling of timorous superstition, I looked at my two table companions, of whom One, perhaps, might represent my destruction, the Other my last hope of happiness.

At my right hand sat Kamarowsky, sullen and sinister in his grief and anger against me; on my left the young unknown, with radiant face and gold-bright eyes that smiled at me. A flash of intuition seemed to illuminate my spirit; here was salvation! Nicolas Naumoff! This unknown youth, in whose eyes I had read such complete and instant devotion—it was he whom fate had sent to lead me back to joy.

Looking back to that hour I realize that it was the rhapsodical delirium of cocaine that whipped my brain into senseless aberration; but at the time I implicitly believed that by a miracle of divination I had rent the veil of the future, and could discern with inspired gaze the distant sweep of the years to come.

I saw Kamarowsky—somber, dark, with bent head—as the very incarnation of sorrow and misfortune; and, to make assurance twice sure, was it not he whom I had chosen? And had not the diviner foretold me that he whom I chose would be the one to lead me to destruction?

But I might still draw back, I might still trick the Fates and escape from my predestined doom. With the blind impulse of the hunted quarry seeking a refuge, I turned an imploring gaze on the young unknown; he read despair in my eyes, and his own responded with a flash of comprehension; he leaned toward me, and, as if in the throe of some instant emotion, I saw him thrill from head to foot like a tense string. At this immediate response of his nerves to mine, I also felt a tremor stir me, as the water of a lake is stirred by a gust of wind. What evil spirit possessed me? Was I ill? Was I demented? I cannot tell. I know that my soul pledged itself to him at that moment; and I know that he understood me.

Thus, in my attempt to escape it, the tragic prophecy was to be fulfilled.

When Nicolas Naumoff got up to take his leave I knew that he would return, that I should see him again, and this thought intoxicated me with such delight that even Kamarowsky, in spite of his anger and his suspicions, was swept away by the radiance and rapture of my joyfulness. I was then—well may I say it now!—at the zenith of my youthful beauty, notwithstanding, or perhaps by reason of the disease that burned within me like a consuming lamp; a constant fever lit my transparent flesh into delicate rose flushes, and blazed like lighted sapphires in my translucent eyes.

I was no sooner alone with him than, seeing me thus aflame with radiant happiness, Kamarowsky rose and came towards me with outstretched hands.

“Marie, I love you, I love you! I will trust you utterly. I want to know nothing that you do not wish to tell me.” And he bowed his head over my hands and kissed them.

But my wild thoughts went out to the unknown youth with the golden eyes who had left us, he through whom salvation was to come to me; and every fiber yearned for his presence. A sudden wave of almost physical repulsion for Paul Kamarowsky overcame me and I started away from his touch. “Leave me,” I cried, “leave me. Let me go away.” And I tried to go past him to my room.

But he stopped me, amazed and unbelieving. “Why, dearest, why? What is the matter?”

“It is over,” I murmured incoherently, “leave me. I do not wish to speak to you any more. I do not wish to marry you. I want to go away and never see you again.”

“Mura! you are dreaming, you are out of your mind! What have I done that you should speak to me like this?”

His bewilderment and despair only irritated me the more. “You will drag me to ruin and misfortune. I was told so; and I know, I feel that it is true.”

“You were told so?” gasped Paul. “What are you saying? Mura, come to your senses. Who has put such preposterous notions into your head?”

Notwithstanding my dazed and drugged state of mind, I felt that to tell him about the fortune-teller would neither convince nor impress him; he would probably laugh, and try to coax or scold me back to my senses. So I wrapped myself in an obstinate and mysterious silence.

The unhappy man was perplexed and distressed.

“Who has poisoned your mind against me, Mura? Think, think a moment; who in all the world could love you more than I do? Who could protect you and care for you better than I can, poor helpless creature that you are?”

But I was possessed by the blind obstinacy of madness. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. My destiny was coming upon me at the very time I thought to evade it.

“Let me be!” My hands twisted themselves from his grasp. “I will not see you again! I will not!”