“In the second place, do not blame my daughter. She loves you to distraction; and it was only by the exercise of my utmost influence that I persuaded her to drop you, and accept the prince's offer.”
“I have just had the pleasure of receiving convincing proof of her ‘love to distraction!’ ” remarked Mosgliakoff, ironically and bitterly.
“Very well. But how did you speak to her? As a lover should speak? Again, ought any man of respectable position and tone to speak like that? You insulted and wounded her!”
“Never mind about my ‘tone’ now! All I can say is that this morning, when I went away with the prince, in spite of both of you having been as sweet as honey to me before, you reviled me behind my back like a pickpocket! I know all about it, you see!”
“Yes, from the same dirty source, I suppose?” said Maria Alexandrovna, smiling disdainfully. “Yes, Paul, I did revile you: I pitched into you considerably, and I admit it frankly. But it was simply that I was bound to blacken you before her. Why? Because, as I have said, I required her to consent to leave you, and this consent was so difficult to tear from her! Short-sighted man that you are! If she had not loved you, why should I have required so to blacken your character? Why should I have been obliged to take this extreme step? Oh! you don't know all! I was forced to use my fullest maternal authority in order to erase you from her heart; and with all my influence and skill I only succeeded in erasing your dear image superficially and partially! If you saw and heard all just now, it cannot have escaped you that Zina did not once, by either word or gesture, encourage or confirm my words to the prince? Throughout the whole scene she said not one word. She sang, but like an automaton! Her whole soul was in anguish, and at last, out of pity for her, I took the prince away. I am sure, she cried, when I left her alone! When you entered the room you must have observed tears in her eyes?”
Mosgliakoff certainly did recall the fact that when he rushed into the room Zina was crying.
“But you—you—why were you so against me, Maria Alexandrovna?” he cried. “Why did you revile me and malign me, as you admit you did?”
“Ah, now that's quite a different question. Now, if you had only asked me reasonably at the beginning, you should have had your answer long ago! Yes, you are right. It was I, and I alone, who did it all. Do not think of Zina in the matter. Now, why did I do it? I reply, in the first place, for Zina's sake. The prince is rich, influential, has great connections, and in marrying him Zina will make a brilliant match. Very well; then if the prince dies—as perhaps he will die soon, for we are all mortal,—Zina is still young, a widow, a princess, and probably very rich. Then she can marry whom she pleases; she may make another brilliant match if she likes. But of course she will marry the man she loves, and loved before, the man whose heart she wounded by accepting the prince. Remorse alone would be enough to make her marry the man whom she had loved and so deeply injured!”
“Hem!” said Paul, gazing at his boots thoughtfully.
“In the second place,” continued Maria, “and I will put this shortly, because, though you read a great deal of your beloved Shakespeare, and extract his finest thoughts and ideals, yet you are very young, and cannot, perhaps, apply what you read. You may not understand my feelings in this matter: listen, however. I am giving my Zina to this prince partly for the prince's own sake, because I wish to save him by this marriage. We are old friends; he is the dearest and best of men, he is a knightly, chivalrous gentleman, and he lives helpless and miserable in the claws of that devil of a woman at Donchanovo! Heaven knows that I persuaded Zina into this marriage by putting it to her that she would be performing a great and noble action. I represented her as being the stay and the comfort and the darling and the idol of a poor old man, who probably would not live another year at the most! I showed her that thus his last days should be made happy with love and light and friendship, instead of wretched with fear and the society of a detestable woman. Oh! do not blame Zina. She is guiltless. I am not—I admit it; for if there have been calculations it is I who have made them! But I calculated for her, Paul; for her, not myself! I have outlived my time; I have thought but for my child, and what mother could blame me for this?” Tears sparkled in the fond mother's eyes. Mosgliakoff listened in amazement to all this eloquence, winking his eyes in bewilderment.
“Yes, yes, of course! You talk well, Maria Alexandrovna, but you forget—you gave me your word, you encouraged me, you gave me my hopes; and where am I now? I have to stand aside and look a fool!”
“But, my dear Paul, you don't surely suppose that I have not thought of you too! Don't you see the huge, immeasurable gain to yourself in all this? A gain so vast that I was bound in your interest to act as I did!”
“Gain for me! How so?” asked Paul, in the most abject state of confusion and bewilderment.
“Gracious Heavens! do you mean to say you are really so simple and so short-sighted as to be unable to see that?” cried Maria Alexandrovna, raising her eyes to the ceiling in a pious manner. “Oh! youth, youth! That's what comes of steeping one's soul in Shakespeare! You ask me, my dear friend Paul, where is the gain to you in all this. Allow me to make a little digression. Zina loves you—that is an undoubted fact. But I have observed that at the same time, and in spite of her evident love, she is not quite sure of your good feeling and devotion to her; and for this reason she is sometimes cold and self-restrained in your presence. Have you never observed this yourself, Paul?”
“Certainly; I did this very day; but go on, what do you deduce from that fact?”
“There, you see! you have observed it yourself; then of course I am right. She is not quite sure of the lasting quality of your feeling for her! I am a mother, and I may be permitted to read the heart of my child. Now, then, supposing that instead of rushing into the room and reproaching, vilifying, even swearing at and insulting this sweet, pure, beautiful, proud being, instead of hurling contempt and vituperation at her head—supposing that instead of all this you had received the bad news with composure, with tears of grief, maybe; perhaps even with despair—but at the same time with noble composure of soul——”
“H'm!”
“No, no—don't interrupt me! I wish to show you the picture as it is. Very well, supposing, then, that you had come to her and said, ‘Zina, I love you better than my life, but family considerations must separate us; I understand these considerations—they are devised for your greater happiness, and I dare not oppose them. Zina, I forgive you; be happy, if you can!’—think what effect such noble words would have wrought upon her heart!”
“Yes—yes, that's all very true, I quite understand that much! but if I had said all this, I should have had to go all the same, without satisfaction!”
“No, no, no! don't interrupt me! I wish to show you the whole picture in all its detail, in order to impress you fully and satisfactorily. Very well, then, imagine now that you meet her in society some time afterwards: you meet perhaps at a ball—in the brilliant light of a ball-room, under the soothing strains of music, and in the midst of worldly women and of all that is gay and beautiful. You alone are sad—thoughtful—pale,—you lean against some pillar (where you are visible, however!) and watch her. She is dancing. You hear the strains of Strauss, and the wit and merriment around you, but you are sad and wretched.
“What, think you, will Zina make of it? With what sort of eyes will she gaze on you as you stand there? ‘And I could doubt this man!’ she will think, ‘this man who sacrificed all, all, for my sake—even to the mortal wounding of his heart!’ Of course the old love will awake in her bosom and will swell with irresistible power!”
Maria Alexandrovna stopped to take breath. Paul moved violently from side to side of his chair.
“Zina