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“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a couple of words?” said Zina, with some show of annoyance.
“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”
“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression! Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did, anyhow!”
“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to devote all, all I can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and happy footing!”
Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.
“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”
“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that if you were to marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and – ”
“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!” cried the girl passionately. “Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must beg you not to say one word about it, not one word, mamma; do you hear me? not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!” She was panting with rage.
“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!” said Maria Alexandrovna in tearful accents. “You speak to your poor mother disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince, – not, of course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainly did make a fool of himself!”
“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with design? Tell me the truth.”
“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”
“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!” cried Zina, stamping her foot with impatience. “I'll tell you why, if you can't see for yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and marry him – an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money, – and then every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only nonsense, but so mean, so mean, mamma, that I – I can't congratulate you on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”
There was silence for one minute.
“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?” asked Maria Alexandrovna of a sudden.
Zina trembled.
“Mamma!” she said, severely, “you promised me solemnly never to mention that again.”
“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”
Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:
“Speak, then!” said Zina, growing whiter every moment.
“Thank you, Zina! – Two years ago there came to the house, to teach your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor – ”
“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known to both of us?” cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.
“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it; and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother; and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech at my feet – at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me, – yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's why I wish to recall all, Zina, all that has happened, from the very beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”
“Speak, then!” repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.
“I continue then, Zina! – This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride, and principally upon the fact of his insignificance – (I must speak out!) – to allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost consciousness.
“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself – a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month – a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed Shakespeare, – this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes me wild!
“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stop you; your father only blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!
“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue – the wretched boy shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin, and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands – my deadly enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart, Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps – a keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour was safe!
“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.
“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable! You cannot forget him, or rather not him – for he was never worthy of you, – but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young fellow is now on the point of death – consumption, they say; and you, angel of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive, because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you – you have been merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my pillow with tears for you!”
“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!” cried Zina, with inexpressible agony in her tone. “Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!” she added, sharply. “Can't we get on without all this declamation and pirouetting?”
“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism – called into being by that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he isn't wanted?
“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures, for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand yourself! I am convinced that you love not him – not this unnatural boy, – but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!
“I have loved too – perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now – and, above all, can you blame me now, – if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the one essential move left to you in your present position”?
Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.
“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?” she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm; “that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? I have guessed right, then? And pray, how is this marriage going to save me? and why is it essential to me in my present position? And – and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about? – I cannot understand you, mother, – not a bit!”
“And I can't understand, angel mine, how you cannot see the connection of it all!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn. “In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these – these magpies hate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain! – to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows – no wretched little stream like this of ours!”
“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”
“Oh, no – oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my ‘firstly;’ now, then, for my ‘secondly!’ I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff! – ”
“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never be his wife!” cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.
“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom you cannot love – how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on your love– he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me – he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time! – ”
“Father's away in the country, don't touch him, please!” said Zina.
“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him your love, not your love– oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”
“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the very first step – from the first and most important step! Understand, that I do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know, also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well, you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so it shall be!”
“But Zina, darling – my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me – you really will! The prince will live a year – two at most; and surely it is better to be a young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you will be a princess – free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with contempt upon all these calculations – founded upon his death; but I am a mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?
“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand that jealousy of this old man were too absurd —too ridiculous! He will understand that you marry him – for money, for convenience; that stern necessity compels you to it!
“And lastly, he will understand that – that, – well I simply wish to say, that, upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you please.”
“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince, rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I understand you, mamma – I understand you well! You cannot resist the expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and straightforwardly, ‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please agree with me?’ at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”
“But, my dear child, why, why look at it from this point of view? Why look at it under the light of suspicion as deceit, and low cunning, and covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty, sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is, fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales beside you? Where is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what you are saying, Zina.”
“I suppose they are worthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you can't get out of that!”
“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an exalted – nay, Christian – point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity. You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor old man has also suffered – he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the deepest sympathy towards him – akin to love, – for many a year. Be his friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old heart, and you are doing a good work – a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.
“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man – pity him! You are a Christian girl – do whatever is right by him; and this will be medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action. You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like: insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense, – they are saving words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes, and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the idea that all this is for money – a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, then refuse the money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Help him, if you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”
“He would never accept my help!” muttered Zina, as though to herself.
“He would not, but his mother would!” said Maria Alexandrovna. “She would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her; I know all about it! I know, too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”
“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”
“I know, I understand your hints.” Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh. “They say he is in a consumption, and must die.
“But who says so?
“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the malady was not consumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but still not consumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He certainly told me that under different conditions – change of climate and of his style of living, – the sick man might well recover. He said – and I have read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called Malaga – I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine, where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.
“Oh, but Spain – the Alhambra alone – and the lemons, and the riding on mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he would not accept your help, your money – for such a journey? Very well – deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.
“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact! Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never marry him, you will have saved him – raised him from the dead!
“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you can give him position in the world – a career! Your marriage to him will then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!
“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such madness now? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place before long unless he is taken away from here!
“While, if you resuscitate him – if you raise him from the dead, as it were, you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public life – make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms – for he will be by then assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all this is within your grasp, and all – all is gain. Yes, and all to be had by merely marrying this prince.”
Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence; not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's feelings: I cannot guess at them; but I think that Maria Alexandrovna had found the road to her heart.
Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter. “However, that doesn't matter” – thought the mother. “All I care to do is to make her think; I wish my ideas to stick!” So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was made – the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.
“Listen, mother,” she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her. “Listen mother – ” But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her mother jumped up from her chair.
“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!” cried the latter furiously. “Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!” she added, almost in despair. “I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never would have dared to come. I won't receive the old – Oh! how glad I am to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance brought you to see me? What a charming surprise!” said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to receive her guest.
Zina escaped out of the room.
CHAPTER VI
Mrs. Colonel Tarpuchin, or Sophia Petrovna, was only morally like a magpie; she was more akin to the sparrow tribe, viewed physically. She was a little bit of a woman of fifty summers or so, with lively eyes, and yellow patches all over her face. On her little wizened body and spare limbs she wore a black silk dress, which was perpetually on the rustle: for this little woman could never sit still for an instant.
This was the most inveterate and bitterest scandal-monger in the town. She took her stand on the fact that she was a Colonel's wife, though she often fought with her husband, the Colonel, and scratched his face handsomely on such occasions.
Add to this, that it was her custom to drink four glasses of “vodki” at lunch, or earlier, and four more in the evening; and that she hated Mrs. Antipova to madness.
“I've just come in for a minute, mon ange,” she panted; “it's no use sitting down – no time! I wanted to let you know what's going on, simply that the whole town has gone mad over this prince. Our ‘beauties,’ you know what I mean! are all after him, fishing for him, pulling him about, giving him champagne – you would not believe it! would you now? How on earth you could ever have let him out of the house, I can't understand! Are you aware that he's at Natalia Dimitrievna's at this moment?”
“At Natalia Dimitrievna's?” cried Maria Alexandrovna jumping up. “Why, he was only going to see the Governor, and then call in for one moment at the Antipova's!”
“Oh, yes, just for one moment – of course! Well, catch him if you can, there! That's all I can say. He found the Governor ‘out,’ and went on to Mrs. Antipova's, where he has promised to dine. There Natalia caught him – she is never away from Mrs. Antipova nowadays, – and persuaded him to come away with her to lunch. So there's your prince! catch him if you can!”
“But how – Mosgliakoff's with him – he promised – ”
“Mosgliakoff, indeed, – why, he's gone too! and they'll be playing at cards and clearing him out before he knows where he is! And the things Natalia is saying, too – out loud if you please! She's telling the prince to his face that you, you have got hold of him with certain views —vous comprenez?”
“She calmly tells him this to his face! Of course he doesn't understand a word of it, and simply sits there like a soaked cat, and says ‘Ye – yes!’ And would you believe it, she has trotted out her Sonia – a girl of fifteen, in a dress down to her knees – my word on it? Then she has sent for that little orphan – Masha; she's in a short dress too, – why, I swear it doesn't reach her knees. I looked at it carefully through my pince-nez! She's stuck red caps with some sort of feathers in them on their heads, and set them to dance some silly dance to the piano accompaniment for the prince's benefit! You know his little weakness as to our sex, – well, you can imagine him staring at them through his glass and saying, ‘Charmant!– What figures!’ Tfu! They've turned the place into a music hall! Call that a dance! I was at school at Madame Jarne's, I know, and there were plenty of princesses and countesses there with me, too; and I know I danced before senators and councillors, and earned their applause, too: but as for this dance – it's a low can-can, and nothing more! I simply burned with shame, – I couldn't stand it, and came out.”
“How! have you been at Natalia Dimitrievna's? Why, you – !”
“What! – she offended me last week? is that what you you mean? Oh, but, my dear, I had to go and have a peep at the prince – else, when should I have seen him? As if I would have gone near her but for this wretched old prince. Imagine – chocolate handed round and me left out. I'll let her have it for that, some day! Well, good-bye, mon ange: I must hurry off to Akulina, and let her know all about it. You may say good-bye to the prince; he won't come near you again now! He has no memory left, you know, and Mrs. Antipova will simply carry him off bodily to her house. He'll think it's all right – They're all afraid of you, you know; they think that you want to get hold of him – you understand! Zina, you know!”
“Quelle horreur!”
“Oh, yes, I know! I tell you – the whole town is talking about it! Mrs. Antipova is going to make him stay to dinner – and then she'll just keep him! She's doing it to spite you, my angel. I had a look in at her back premises. Such arrangements, my dear. Knives clattering, people running about for champagne. I tell you what you must do – go and grab him as he comes out from Natalia Dimitrievna's to Antipova's to dinner. He promised you first, he's your guest. Tfu! don't you be laughed at by this brace of chattering magpies – good for nothing baggage, both of them. ‘Procuror's lady,’ indeed! Why, I'm a Colonel's wife. Tfu! —Mais adieu, mon ange. I have my own sledge at the door, or I'd go with you.”
Having got rid of this walking newspaper, Maria Alexandrovna waited a moment, to free herself of a little of her super-abundant agitation. Mrs. Colonel's advice was good and practical. There was no use losing time, – none to lose, in fact. But the greatest difficulty of all was as yet unsettled.
Maria Alexandrovna flew to Zina's room.
Zina was walking up and down, pale, with hands folded and head bent on her bosom: there were tears in her eyes, but Resolve was there too, and sparkled in the glance which she threw on her mother as the latter entered the room. She hastily dried her tears, and a sarcastic smile played on her lips once more.
“Mamma,” she began, anticipating her mother's speech “you have already wasted much of your eloquence over me – too much! But you have not blinded me; I am not a child. To do the work of a sister of mercy, without the slightest call thereto, – to justify one's meanness – meanness proceeding in reality from the purest egotism, by attributing to it noble ends, – all this is a sort of Jesuitism which cannot deceive me. Listen! I repeat, all this could not deceive me, and I wish you to understand that!”
“But, dearest child!” began her mother, in some alarm.
“Be quiet, mamma; have patience, and hear me out. In spite of the full consciousness that all this is pure Jesuitism, and in spite of my full knowledge of the absolutely ignoble character of such an act, I accept your proposition in full, – you hear me —in full; and inform you hereby, that I am ready to marry the prince. More! I am ready to help you to the best of my power in your endeavours to lure the prince into making me an offer. Why do I do this? You need not know that; enough that I have consented. I have consented to the whole thing – to bringing him his boots, to serving him; I will dance for him, that my meanness may be in some sort atoned. I shall do all I possibly can so that he shall never regret that he married me! But in return for my consent I insist upon knowing how you intend to bring the matter about? Since you have spoken so warmly on the subject – I know you! – I am convinced you must have some definite plan of operation in your head. Be frank for once in your life; your candour is the essential condition upon which alone I give my consent. I shall not decide until you have told me what I require!”
Maria Alexandrovna was so surprised by the unexpected conclusion at which Zina arrived, that she stood before the latter some little while, dumb with amazement, and staring at her with all her eyes. Prepared to have to combat the stubborn romanticism of her daughter – whose obstinate nobility of character she always feared, – she had suddenly heard this same daughter consent to all that her mother had required of her.
Consequently, the matter had taken a very different complexion. Her eyes sparkled with delight:
“Zina, Zina!” she cried; “you are my life, my – ”
She could say no more, but fell to embracing and kissing her daughter.
“Oh, mother, I don't want all this kissing!” cried Zina, with impatience and disgust. “I don't need all this rapture on your part; all I want is a plain answer to my question!”
“But, Zina, I love you; I adore you, darling, and you repel me like this! I am working for your happiness, child!”
Tears sparkled in her eyes. Maria Alexandrovna really loved her daughter, in her own way, and just now she actually felt deeply, for once in her life – thanks to her agitation, and the success of her eloquence.
Zina, in spite of her present distorted view of things in general, knew that her mother loved her; but this love only annoyed her; she would much rather – it would have been easier for her – if it had been hate!
“Well, well; don't be angry, mamma – I'm so excited just now!” she said, to soothe her mother's feelings.
“I'm not angry, I'm not angry, darling! I know you are much agitated!” cried Maria Alexandrovna. “You say, my child, that you wish me to be candid: very well, I will; I will be quite frank, I assure you. But you might have trusted me! Firstly, then, I must tell you that I have no actually organized plan yet – no detailed plan, that is. You must understand, with that clever little head of yours, you must see, Zina, that I cannot have such a plan, all cut out. I even anticipate some difficulties. Why, that magpie of a woman has just been telling me all sorts of things. We ought to be quick, by the bye; you see, I am quite open with you! But I swear to you that the end shall be attained!” she added, ecstatically. “My convictions are not the result of a poetical nature, as you told me just now; they are founded on facts. I rely on the weakness of the prince's intellect – which is a canvas upon which one can stitch any pattern one pleases!
“The only fear is, we may be interfered with! But a fool of a woman like that is not going to get the better of me!” she added, stamping her foot, and with flashing eyes. “That's my part of the business, though; and to manage it thoroughly I must begin as soon as possible – in fact, the whole thing, or the most important part of it, must be arranged this very day!”
“Very well, mamma; but now listen to one more piece of candour. Do you know why I am so interested in your plan of operations, and do not trust it? because I am not sure of myself! I have told you already that I consent to this – meanness; but I must warn you that if I find the details of your plan of operations too dirty, too mean and repulsive, I shall not be able to stand it, and shall assuredly throw you over. I know that this is a new pettiness, to consent to a wicked thing and then fear the dirt in which it floats! But what's to be done? So it will be, and I warn you!”
“But Zina, dear child, where is the wickedness in this?” asked Maria Alexandrovna timidly. “It is simply a matter of a marriage for profit; everybody does it! Look at it in this light, and you will see there is nothing particular in it; it is good ‘form’ enough!”
