Gzhatski’s good wish, however, was not destined to be fulfilled. Was it the music or the black coffee that was to blame? It is difficult to say. But however it may be, Irene found it impossible to go to sleep. She tried drinking sugared water, applied cold compresses to her head, turned from side to side, got up and paced the room, opened the window—all in vain, for sleep obstinately refused to answer her call. At last, towards four o’clock in the morning, she threw on her dressing-gown, sat down on the sofa with a book, and hoped to fall asleep with the dawn, as frequently happened to her after a wakeful night.
Even the book, however, failed to interest her—her excited brain refusing to follow the tangled thread of the sugary English novel.[308] Leaving the heroine to drink a twentieth cup of tea on the lawn in company with the hero, who had just won a set of tennis, Irene threw down the book and lost herself in her own thoughts. Russia, her departure from Petrograd, her first impressions of Rome, Père Etienne, her meeting with Gzhatski—all this and many other confused recollections passed through her mind.
“How unexpectedly everything has arranged itself,” she thought, with a quiet smile. “How foolish we all are when we make plans, and arrange and fuss and worry, and seriously imagine we can direct our own destinies! God does everything in His own way, and always for the best, since our needs and our characters are far better known to Him than to ourselves. There was I, for instance, imagining that I had nothing more to live for, and, suddenly, God sent me so incomparable a lover, so immense a happiness. In my fairest dreams, I had never seen so ideal a husband—so handsome, so clever, so good, so noble. What a contrast, indeed, between him and the worthless Petrograd[309] officials, with their vulgar ambitions, their greed for money, and their mean and petty spites and jealousies! My noble Sergei! You are like the sun, in comparison to those worms!
“And he has such high ideals!” continued Irene dreamily to herself. “How severely he judged that unhappy woman! A little too severely perhaps, but that only proves how seriously he looks upon love. Oh! my dear one, my dear one!
“All the priests were wrong when they found my faith pagan. I knew I was right! God wanted to try me with long and dark years of despair and suffering, but finding that I was not embittered, and that I had remained, in spite of everything, honest and good, He has sent me this wonderful happiness as a reward. My faith was the right one, my God has triumphed!”
Irene rejoiced and exulted, and life had never seemed so glorious to her before. Suddenly she felt that this was the happiest moment of her existence, and that nothing still happier could or would ever be. She rose, opened the door leading to the balcony,[310] and stepped out. It was still dark, but one could already distinguish the trees, and there were grey streaks in the sky.
“Soon the sun will rise,” thought Irene. “How lovely the view must be from the Casino Terrace!”
The idea of seeing the sun rise attracted her. “I have lived all this time, and have never once seen it,” she said to herself. “How surprised Sergei will be when I tell him my impressions!”
Irene dressed hurriedly, and, having thrown a cloak over her dress and a scarf over her hair, stepped softly out into the corridor. All was quiet, and a grey streak of light was filtering through the glass door leading into the garden. Like a ghost, Irene slipped along the passage, when, suddenly, the slight movement of a door on the right attracted her attention. The door gradually opened, softly, slowly, carefully. Something guilty and horrible seemed suggested by this carefulness. Irene stopped still in the shadow of a large cupboard, her eyes riveted on the moving door.
At last it stood half-way open, and yesterday’s[311] Carmen-like beauty appeared on the threshold. She wore a lace dressing-gown, and her long, wavy hair hung in heavy coils down her back. The beauty glanced to right and to left along the passage, then turned round with a whispered word, and out of the room issued—Gzhatski! He, too, whispered something, and they both laughed softly. Stepping carefully on tiptoe over the carpet, Sergei Grigorievitch stole towards the staircase, and disappeared round its bend. The beauty closed her door.…
Poor Irene’s knees shook, and all but gave way under her. Leaning against the wall, with hardly strength enough to drag one foot before the other, she staggered back to her room, and fell, almost lifeless, on the sofa.
The sun had long since risen and was forcing its way in through the shutters. The birds had long been singing, noise and movement were in the air, everywhere people were laughing and talking, but Irene still lay prone and motionless. Thoughts were rushing wildly through her head, but she could not disentangle them. Slowly, gradually, she[312] began to realize the full force of the terrific blow that had fallen on her.
“So that is what you are like,” she murmured childishly. “And I had believed in you so completely, and had placed you so high.…”
For a moment the voice of reason tried to pacify her. “But this is nothing more than a man’s adventure, a prank, a caprice after a gay supper,” it whispered seriously. But Irene paid no attention. “If it were only the supper,” she argued, “why did not Sergei come to her, to his bride? What cared she for marriage ceremonies? Did she not, before God, belong to Gzhatski soul and body? But no, he had not come to her. He considered her old and ugly and repulsive!”
This thought filled Irene with such an agony of despair that she slipped from the sofa to the carpet, rolled about and knocked her head against the floor, striving by this means to deaden her unbearable pain. “You are old, you are ridiculous, you are hideous, in spite of your fashionable dresses!” she exclaimed wildly to herself, and, rising from the carpet, she tottered towards the looking-glass,[313] and gazed disgustedly at her own tear-stained, tortured, suddenly aged and disfigured reflection.
“So this is the part that has been allotted to you in Sergei’s life!” she hissed. “You are the ideal, the image of his mother, the statue of purity that stands on a pedestal surrounded by respect and homage! I am sick to death of this eternal respect! I want love—one month, one day, one hour of love! But no—love belongs only to such as Carmen; never will it fall to my lot! Oh! if this is so, if this is so, I do not want to live!”
A bitter resentment against God took possession of Irene’s soul. “What is the object of this mockery?” she groaned. “Thou knowest that if I had entered a convent I should have been an exemplary nun. Of what use was it to distract me from my purpose, and send me a hope of happiness, only to shatter it cruelly with a derisive laugh? As if I had not suffered enough without this! All my life has been nothing but suffering, nothing but pain. But to Thee, this seemed insufficient—there was still this last refinement of torture to apply! But who art Thou[314] in the end, thou mighty torturer of men’s souls? Thou art no God, no just and generous Being, such as He whom my imagination had created. No—Thou art a vampire, sucking the blood of men’s ............