The Sweet-Scented Name/Lohengrin
Lohengrin
I
MASHENKA PESTRYÀKOVA was a young and pretty girl, dreamy in temperament, and by no means intellectual. Her nose was a little upturned, her eyes grey and vivacious, and in the Spring she had freckles on her cheeks, under her eyes, and on her nose. She lived with her mother and brother in Pea Street, in the same house in which Oblomof once lived. She taught in a sort of private school, and received her meagre salary at irregular intervals. She was very fond of going to the opera, and liked best of all to hear Wagner.
Mashenka's mother had a small pension, which she augmented by selling some books on commission and by letting apartments. They gave up three rooms of their house in this way and used the rest themselves. The little brother went to school every day, and Mashenka helped him with his lessons in the evening and gave part of her salary to her mother.
Mashenka often let her thoughts wander into vague and pleasant reveries. Sometimes these reveries would take a more definite form, and the sweet image of her dream would be identified with one or other of her youthful acquaintances. Then for a while meetings with the new friend would be very agreeable to her. But the friendship never lasted very long.
The reality was always disappointing. The actual happening was so different from her own beautiful vision of life. Instead of listening to passionate glowing words like those which sound so attractive in the pages of a novel and are so charming when sung by Sobinof on the stage of the Marinsky Theatre—so different from the usual sounds of life in Pea Street—her companion would speak in a dull and prosaic way about their own doings or those of their neighbours, would utter words about money, words of blame, envious sneers, spiteful gossip, sometimes even compliment her in an embarrassing way. Then the dear figure of her dream would grow dim and become no longer attractive, and there would be days when Mashenka didn't want to dream about anything or anybody; she would only feel apathetic and bored. Then she would look forward to the next meeting. And next time she would be disappointed again.
And yet in spite of this some one did come and take possession of Mashenka's soul—a rather ugly young man, short and awkward, and delicate in health, with weak eyes that seemed to blink continuously, thin reddish hair, meagre reddish whiskers, and scanty beard. He dressed himself neatly and carefully, wore a cornelian stone ring on his finger and a pearl pin in his mauve or green necktie, but his dress showed neither special taste nor abundance of means.
For a long time Mashenka did not know his real name nor his occupation. She called him by a strange nickname—taken from the opera,—Lohengrin.
"My Lohengrin is coming to-day," she used to say to her mother.
"That's your Lohengrin's ring," her mother would say when they heard a timid, uncertain little sound from the door-bell.
"Your Lohengrin's a silly," said her little brother Serezha frankly. He liked to tease Mashenka sometimes. Only occasionally, of course. He was only twelve years old, and just a little afraid of his sister.
At first Mashenka called her friend Lohengrin because she met him first in the gallery of the Marinsky Theatre one evening when Lohengrin was being performed. And afterwards there were other reasons why he still kept so strange a nickname.
II
Mashenka had gone to the theatre that evening with a girl friend and two student-acquaintances. "Lohengrin" sat behind her, just a little to one side, and before the beginning of the second act Mashenka noticed that he was looking at her very intently. She began to feel awkward, and looked round angrily at the young man.
She did not much like the look of him. His persistent gaze seemed rude and tiresome. And she disliked him still more when, after turning on him for the second time a more severe glance and a more decided frown, the young man averted his gaze with such guilty haste that it seemed to her he must be accustomed to stare rudely at people and then suddenly turn away.
She wanted to point him out to her companions and ask whether they knew the young man, but just then the orchestra began to play, and every one was silent. Mashenka, under the spell of the incomparable music, quickly forgot all about the tiresome person behind her.
In the next entr'acte Mashenka walked up and down the corridor with her friends, and did not think of the young man until she became conscious that he was walking behind and staring at her. For a long time afterwards she felt his gaze upon her neck, just on the line where the bare neck shows between the top of the white collar and the hair above it. It was so annoying and embarrassing that she didn't know what to do.
The entr'acte was at an end, and they were all crowding back through the narrow doors when Mashenka took advantage of the general noise and confusion to say to the student beside her:
"Do you know the young man next to us? His seat is just behind ours."
She spoke in a low voice so that the young man behind should not hear. But the student looked round and said aloud:
"No, I don't know him. Why do you ask?"
It was a little difficult to reply.
"He stares at me all the time," she whispered.
"You've made a conquest of him," said the student calmly, still speaking loudly.
When they were in their places again and preparing to listen, Mashenka for some reason or other felt vexed that the student had treated the matter so lightly. As if to spite him she looked attentively at the young man behind, and thought to herself with a condescending pity:
"Poor thing! Perhaps he thinks himself handsome and irresistible."
A faint smile played about her lips, and she noticed with some satisfaction that the young man blushed a little, and that in his eyes there was a gleam of pleasure. But she quickly recollected herself and frowned again, looked angrily at him, and turned away, thinking:
"He's no business to think anything of himself. He's quite ugly."
In the third entr'acte he walked behind her again, not at all disconcerted, though somewhat timid and confused, looking like an amusing reddish-coloured shadow stealing along the wall.
After the opera was over Mashenka saw him again while she was putting on her cloak. He was evidently hurrying to get out before she did, and was already dressed in a long coat with an astrakhan collar and a fur hat. He stood and looked across at her, searching through the crowd as if boring through it with his pointed beetle-like whiskers—looked at her with a sadly strange and furtive glance, as if he wished to notice particularly and remember every little fold of her dress and her cloak.
Once more Mashenka felt vexed and awkward, and she made up her mind not to tell any one about this young man.
"Nuisance!" said she angrily to herself.
III
Mashenka went home with a whole crowd of young people, all talking and laughing gaily. She tried hard not to look behind her, but she was certain that the young man was following them. She didn't want to hear it, and yet she found herself listening involuntarily to the light footfall—a cautious, stealthy tread.
When she said good-bye to her friends at the gate, Mashenka saw the stranger once more. He went quietly past the house, crossed over to the other side of the road, and turned back in the direction from which they had come.
The clumsy dvornik, wearing an immense shaggy overcoat and his cap pulled low down over his forehead and ears, flung open the creaking little door in the heavy gate. Mashenka's companions, still talking noisily all together, went away up the street. Mashenka went into the yard, and the little door was slammed behind her. She waited by the gate and listened.
Some one came along with stealthy little steps, stopped outside, and began to speak in a whisper to the dvornik. The latter muttered something indistinctly, as if unwilling to answer, but presently Mashenka heard him thanking the other for something, and then he went on talking. She tried hard to hear what was said, but could not catch a word, partly at first because they spoke so softly, but afterwards she was too much overwhelmed with confusion to listen; her heart beat rapidly, the blood coursed through her veins and drummed in her ears.
There was not much sleep for Mashenka that night. In her dreams she saw the beautiful knight, the bright-haired Lohengrin in shining armour, and heard his voice:
"I am Lohengrin, thy champion knight from heaven."
Then the features and the whole figure of Lohengrin became strangely altered. An unhealthy-looking little man with reddish beetle-like whiskers, his fur hat pushed to the back of his head, his little red ears almost hidden by the fur collar of his overcoat, waving his hands awkwardly in his grey fur gloves, slipping in his shiny galoshes on the icy pavement of Pea Street, sang these same words. His voice was as sweet and melodious as that of the stage Lohengrin, and yet it sounded a little ridiculous and repulsive.
IV
After that evening Mashenka met the young man every day as she was going home from school. He walked behind her like a tiresome and amusing shadow from which she could not escape, and accompanied her to the very door of her home. Sometimes he even entered the gate of the courtyard and came up the outside staircase, and when Mashenka went indoors and slammed the door behind her she felt that he was still waiting outside. Her heart beat quickly, her cheeks crimsoned, her eyes glistened as she smiled to herself and thought:
"Who can he be, this red-haired Lohengrin?"
But at length she began to get tired of it. One day when Lohengrin was walking close behind her in the street Mashenka turned sharply round, went up to him, and said:
"What is it you want? Why do you follow me every day?"
Her cheeks were crimson and her voice trembled a little as she spoke; her hands, gloved and hidden away inside her muff, were hot and shaking. It seemed to her that even her shoulders under her thick winter dress must be shaking and crimson too, and that a fever of trembling ran through her whole body.
The eyes of the young man looked guiltily away from her. He raised his hat, then put it on again, and bowing awkwardly, began to speak in a pleasant though slightly hoarse voice, as if he had a cold.
"I beg your pardon, please forgive me, Marya Constantìnovna."
"However do you know my name?" cried Mashenka angrily.
She was astonished to find that the young man's voice, which she heard now for the first time, had in it a slight reminiscence of the voice of the singer who had taken the part of Lohengrin in the theatre—the same Russian tone and the same gentle sweetness. It would even have sounded more like it if it had not been so unpleasantly hoarse.
"I learnt your name from the dvornik of your house, Marya Constantìnovna," answered the young man. "I had no means of getting to know it otherwise, as I have no friends who are acquainted with you."
"That means, I suppose, that you asked the dvornik all about me," said Mashenka in a tone of annoyance. "It was a nice occupation for you, I must say."
But the young man was not at all abashed.
"Yes, I asked him about you and about your honoured mother and your nice little brother. I got all the information on the evening when I first met you."
"But why did you want to know about us?" asked Mashenka.
Not noticing what she was doing the girl turned and walked again in the direction of her home, and the red-haired young man walked by her side. He answered her with a strange circumstantiality.
"Of course you yourself understand, Marya Constantìnovna, that in the present day one needs to be very particular in making new acquaintances," said he. "One can't make friends with everybody one meets; one ought to know beforehand something of the person one is dealing with."
"Yes, indeed," said Mashenka with a laugh. "Please be particular and don't try to get acquainted with me."
"Pardon me, Marya Constantìnovna," replied the young man seriously, "but that would be quite impossible."
"What would be impossible?" asked the young girl in astonishment.
"It is impossible for me not to get to know you," answered the young man quietly, "because at our first meeting at the opera when Lohengrin was being played—if you will allow me to remind you of that night—you made such an indelible impression on me that I felt at once that I loved you with a great and wonderful love. And so I couldn't help following you and getting to know all I could about you from the dvornik at your door."
Mashenka smiled and said:
"But it's no use your taking the trouble to find out about me. I have quite enough friends as it is, and I don't need any more. It's not very nice for me to have you continually following me, and as you seem to be a respectable young man, I ask you now not to do so any more. I shouldn't like any of my friends to notice it and think badly of me."
The young man walking beside her listened attentively to what she said, and did not try to interrupt her. When she had finished it seemed as if he thought he had given her an answer, and Mashenka suddenly thought to herself:
"Now he will raise his hat and go away and never try to see me any more."
And this thought, which should have soothed and calmed her, somehow made her feel suddenly annoyed and sad about something—as if she had become quite accustomed to her silent, ugly, awkward companion and didn't want him to leave her. However he acted quite differently from what she had thought. He did raise his hat, but only to say:
"Allow me, Marya Constantìnovna, to have the honour of introducing myself to you—Nikolai Stepanovitch Sklonyaef."
Mashenka shrugged her shoulders.
"It's no use your introducing yourself," said she. "What makes you think I want to know you? Haven't I just told you that I am not on the look-out for any new acquaintances?"
The young man looked timidly into her eyes as he answered:
"Marya Constantìnovna, don't send me away from you. I won't ask you anything just now, but because I love you so that I cannot imagine how I could have lived before without knowing you, please let me have at least the hope that when you understand how great is my love you also may begin to love me in return."
"What foolishness!" cried Mashenka. "A perfectly unknown young man comes up to me in the street and talks like this! And what am I to do? Why should I listen to you? Please go away at once."
V
Mashenka walked on quickly, but her companion did not go away. He spoke to her in words which vexed and confused her. Still looking into her eyes with a timid and cautious gaze he said:
"Marya Constantìnovna, please allow me to remind you that it may often happen that people who were previously unacquainted with one another suddenly become very good friends."
"Yes, but not in the street," said Mashenka, and now she laughed outright.
There was nothing to laugh at, of course, and Mashenka quickly recollected herself and bit her pretty full red underlip with her strong little white teeth. It seemed to her that her laugh only encouraged this importunate young man.
But he said in a beseeching tone:
"For mercy's sake, Marya Constantìnovna, and why not in the street? Isn't it all the same? If a man is truly in love, believe me, Marya Constantìnovna, all outward circumstances and worldly conventions cease to exist for him; he cannot think of anything else except the object of his passionate affection."
Saying this, he pressed both his hands on his heart and then waved his left hand in the air exactly as the singer in the opera had done when he sang the declaration of Lohengrin.
Mashenka could not possibly take him seriously. She even felt a little disappointed that the adventure had nothing in it to frighten her—it was simply amusing. She was a little sorry for the young man, so persistent, so incoherent in his speech. She smiled as she listened and thought to herself:
"What a red-headed Lohengrin he is, talking of love in this way!"
But he went on:
"And because my intentions are entirely honourable and exalted, I myself do not wish to meet you in the streets or in any public place, or in a private room in a restaurant. And I should be very greatly obliged, Marya Constantìnovna, if you would do me the great honour to present me to your respected mother."
"What more will you want?" exclaimed Mashenka. "How could I present you to my mother? She would be sure to ask me where I met you first. Please go away now or I shall really be angry."
She laughed again, however, and the young man went on:
"Do not be angry with me, Marya Constantìnovna. I shall do nothing to offend you, and if after some time you cannot feel any inclination towards me, then I will not venture to disturb you any more, but will go away into the shadow of my own poor life and only watch from afar your happiness with another, more worthy than I of your love."
His little nose got red, his small, restless blinking eyes reddened also, and he twisted his small body so that he seemed smaller than ever and looked as if he were just going to weep.
Mashenka considered the situation and tried hard to keep a good opinion of herself as she thought:
"Now, how can I send him away! It's impossible not to feel sorry for such a man. I can't complain to a passer-by or call a policeman."
It was pleasant to think some one had fallen in love with her. All the young men who had paid her attentions before had either not been serious or they themselves had been odious to her. But this man was so humble and spoke with such an engaging eloquence; he simply would not leave her side, and his words reminded her of the love speeches of viscounts and marquises in a novel.
She tried to look sternly at him as she asked sharply:
"Well, and who are you?"
"I am a man who is in love with you," answered Lohengrin.
"Yes, you've told me that before," said Mashenka, "but I want to know who you are and what is your occupation."
The thought suddenly came to her that by so speaking she was giving the young man some hope of getting to know her. She felt vexed with herself. But her companion answered:
"Pardon me, Marya Constantìnovna, why is it necessary for you to know that?"
"Ah, that's quite true," said Mashenka, "it's nothing at all to do with me. I hope you'll go away now."
But his answer had really made her angry, and this added to her former vexation. She suddenly wished to make him see that she had a right to question him, and not being able to master this imprudent desire, she continued:
"Well, you say that you want me to introduce you to my mother; how can I do that without knowing? Shall I say to her, 'Mother, this is a man who has fallen in love with me!'"
"Yes, just that," said he.
"What foolishness!" said Mashenka. "How is that possible?"
"Why is it not possible if it's the truth," said Lohengrin.
VI
When the time came for them to cross the street, Lohengrin took Mashenka by the arm. She looked at him with some surprise, but did not draw herself away. Looking cautiously round so as to avoid the traffic, he silently led her across the road, now covered with a thin layer of dirty brownish snow, and striped with the marks of carriage wheels. When they reached the pavement he dropped her arm and walked alone.
She went on with the conversation.
"No, it's impossible. That's not the way such things are done, and after all, what need is there to introduce you to my mother?"
"Believe me, Marya Constantìnovna," answered the young man, "I quite understand that you would like to know my occupation and my social position, and if I do not tell you all about it just now it is for very serious reasons. I have vowed not to disclose these matters for certain worldly considerations, and I cannot tell you for fear of unpleasant consequences."
"What foolishness!" said Mashenka again.
"No, Marya Constantìnovna," said he. "Do not say that. You remember the opera where I had the honour of seeing you for the first time. Lohengrin should remind you that it is sometimes necessary to conceal the truth until the right moment. You saw how imprudent the beautiful but inquisitive Elsa was, beseeching her husband to tell her his secret and disclose his name and calling, and you saw how cruelly she was punished. Certainly she repented of it afterwards, but, as they say, if your head is off it's no use weeping for the loss of your hair."
"Oh yes, indeed," put in Mashenka, "you and I are certainly very much like Lohengrin and Elsa."
Her sarcastic tone did not disconcert her companion. He answered:
"You, Marya Constantìnovna, are incomparably more beautiful and good than was the lady Elsa, and so if I do not dare to liken myself to Lohengrin, yet all the same, taken together, we can be compared with them. It is true that knights in armour have gone out of fashion in our day, but the knightly feelings remain; love burns in the hearts of emotional people no less clear than in former times. Our lives may appear dull and barren, but in reality they are no less wonderful and mysterious than was the life of Lohengrin and Elsa when he came down the stream to her, borne by the silver-winged swan."
"Ah, Lohengrin!" exclaimed Mashenka, mockingly, yet perhaps a little touched.
The young man looked at her and waited for her to say more. But Mashenka was silent and said no more until she reached her home. Then she stood still for a moment and looked in the young man's eyes.
"What am I to do with you, Mr. Lohengrin? You must go home or about your mysterious business. It's not convenient for you to come in just now."
His answering gaze was one of happiness and confusion, and so much hope that Mashenka felt obliged to say:
"Well, come to-morrow evening at eight o'clock. I will tell mother. I don't know what she'll say to me, but I daresay she will receive you."
VII
So Mashenka went indoors to tell her mother what had happened and to prepare her for the young man's visit on the morrow. The mother grumbled a little.
"What's all this, Mashenka," said she. "You surely don't think it's possible to have a man in from the street. Who knows what he may have in mind; it's quite likely he's a rogue of some kind."
But after a little while she came to the conclusion:
"Well, I suppose we'd better see him and know what he's after."
So Lohengrin came at the appointed time, brought a box of sweetmeats, stayed an hour and a half, drank tea, behaved very respectfully to the mother, joked with schoolboy Serezha, amused Mashenka with his rhetorical phrases, and took his departure before any of them had time to get bored.
After he had gone the mother asked Mashenka:
"Well, who is he really?"
"Indeed, mother, I've told you everything I know about him. I don't know anything more. I only know him as Lohengrin. His name is Nikolai Stepanovitch Sklonyaef, but what he does I don't know. He's just Lohengrin."
"You'd better look in the Directory to-morrow when you go to school," said her mother, "and find his name. By his talk and his manners he's quite all right, but you never can tell. No one knows anything about him and there may be something under the surface. You must find out all about him."
So on the next day Mashenka looked through the Directory, but she couldn't find anybody of the name of Sklonyaef. She began to think that there could be no such name and that Lohengrin had made it up himself.
However, he continued to visit them, bringing sometimes a bunch of flowers, sometimes a box of chocolates. He no longer tried to meet Mashenka in the street; when they met it was quite accidentally.
When he came the second time Mashenka asked him why his name was not in the Directory.
He was not in the least confused—Mashenka was surprised to find that in spite of his timid ways, his blinking eyes, and his ingratiating manner, this strange young man was generally self-possessed and very rarely put out of countenance—
"I've only lately come to Petersburg," said he, "and my name is not in the Directory yet. I expect it will be in next year."
He laughed as he spoke, and Mashenka felt sure that he was not speaking the truth.
"But where do you live?" asked she. "What do you do for a living? Where do you work?"
But Lohengrin made reply:
"Pardon me, Marya Constantìnovna, I cannot tell you anything about my address or my occupation."
"And why not?" asked Mashenka in wonder.
"Because, as I have already had the honour of telling you, Marya Constantìnovna, I have important reasons for keeping these matters a profound secret."
Mashenka thought for a moment or two and then said:
"But listen a moment. This is all very strange. At first I thought you were simply joking; but if you are in earnest, then it's all stranger than ever."
"I am not joking at all," said he; "but more than that I also trust that when you love me it will be for myself alone, not considering who I may be nor what is my occupation."
"And if I don't love you?" asked Mashenka with a smile.
"Then I shall vanish from the field of your vision," said he, "as Lohengrin did, when he floated away in that wonderful boat drawn down the many-watered Rhine by the silver-winged swan."
"Oh, Lohengrin," laughed Mashenka once more.
VIII
Mashenka laughed. She was getting used to speak of him as Lohengrin. Everybody called him that now.
Mashenka laughed, and yet sometimes she fell into a reverie and dreamed. And in her dreams the beautiful form of the stage Lohengrin, clad in shining armour, singing so sweetly and making his theatrically beautiful stage gestures, blended itself with the form of an unattractive young man wearing a fur cap instead of a helmet, and a starched shirt in place of armour; speaking eloquently in his hoarse but pleasant-sounding Yaroslavsky tone of voice, and making these same amusingly-triumphant gestures.
"He loves me, poor boy," thought Mashenka, and the thought became more and more pleasant to her.
To believe firmly that you are beloved by another, is it not as if you yourself loved? And is not love infectious? Sweet, ingratiating, enchanting, love spreads a brightly gleaming veil of enchantment over all the objects of its desire.
And so, becoming accustomed little by little to the pleasant thought of being beloved, accustomed to this amusing mixture of the two Lohengrins—one of the opera of the wise magician Wagner, the other of the everyday life in Pea Street—Mashenka felt at length that she was in love. The amusing mystery enveloping his actual life became less of a hindrance to her.
After some time Lohengrin guessed that Mashenka had begun to care for him, and one day he said to her:
"Marya Constantìnovna, you can make me the happiest of men—I beg you to consent to be my wife."
Then, as if she were not yet ready to be asked such a question, Mashenka was seized with a profound alarm. The dark and dreadful suspicions sleeping in her soul were roused and they were too strong for her. She looked at Lohengrin in terror and thought:
"Why does he hide his occupation from me—it must be something shameful and contemptible. Perhaps he is a spy or a hangman!"
Not long before, Mashenka had read in a newspaper an account of a young workman who had hired himself out as a hangman. He was described as a weak and ugly person, and as she read the description of him, she had thought that he must have looked something like her Lohengrin.
"You must tell me first," Mashenka said timidly, "who you are. It's dreadful not to know."
She felt her cheeks grow pale and her lips tremble. She was seated in a deep soft armchair in the corner of the drawing-room, her mother's favourite chair; it had been in the family longer than any of them could remember, and many remembrances of pleasure and agitation were connected with it. Enveloped in the depths of the large chair, where she could smell the odour of its old material, Mashenka felt herself very small and pitiful; her hands clasped together on her knees were pale and trembling as if with cold.
Lohengrin reddened a little and was more confused than Mashenka had ever seen him. He stood with his back to the windows, but in the twilight Mashenka watched strange shadows flitting across his face. His eyes blinked continuously, his little red ears twitched, he made strange unsuitable gestures with his hands as he replied:
"Marya Constantìnovna, if the lady Elsa was inquisitive and indiscreet, and if the noble Lohengrin could not withstand her importunity, why need we repeat their fatal mistake? You were pleased to say, Marya Constantìnovna, that all this is dreadful for you, but why? I have an extraordinary love for you, a love devouring all my life, a love very rarely met with and only described in old romances, not at all in the works of present-day writers. Loving you with such an unusual love, so ardent that I cannot live without you,—if you refuse me I shall quickly put an end to myself,—I desire, dear Mashenka, that your own love should overcome the terrors you are feeling, and triumph over all that which is at present unknown to you. True and passionate love ought to be stronger even than death itself. So, dear Mashenka, conquer your fears and tell me—do you love me, and will you continue to love me whatever you may afterwards learn about me?"
Mashenka began to weep. What else could she do! Tears are so helpful in the various difficulties of life. She fumbled for her handkerchief, but, of course, it was not to be found, and she was obliged to wipe away her tears with the palm of her right hand—the tears which trickled mercilessly down both cheeks and along her little upturned nose. She wept and said:
"Why, oh why do you wish not to say who you are? Why do you torture me like this? Perhaps you do something very bad."
Lohengrin shrugged his shoulders as he answered:
"That depends on how you look at it. To some people my occupation may seem mean and base, and some people may despise me for it. But I do what I know how to do, and you yourself have been able to see what sort of a man I am apart from my work. If you love me you must believe in me, and even if it turned out that I was a loathsome vampire you should follow me to my tomb, for, if I see in you the most beautiful maiden upon earth, the enchanting Lady Elsa, then you, loving me in return, ought to see in me the noble knight Lohengrin, whose father Parsifal is the guardian of the Holy Grail. And though we may live in the prosaic town of Petersburg in one of the most ordinary streets, and not in one of the castles of the knights of old; though we have to live the ordinary life of every day, and cannot perform the knightly exploits of old time—our destiny has been portioned out to us by Fate—none of this can alter the passionate feelings of our hearts."
Mashenka still wept, and yet she was able to laugh, too. The eloquence of Lohengrin's plea was full of sweet and tender soothing.
"I am the Princess Elsa," she thought, "and not simply Mashenka. It means that I am indeed what I feel in myself and not what I appear to others. And he, my Lohengrin! How is it possible for him to be a spy or a conspirator or a hangman? How dreadful to think of such things! But whatever he may do I love him all the same—for me he is Lohengrin, and if it is terrible and difficult to live with him, to die with my beloved will be sweet to me."
She got up from her chair, put her arms tenderly round the young man's neck, and still weeping bitterly, exclaimed:
"Lohengrin, my Lohengrin, whoever thou mayest be I love thee. Whithersoever thou wilt lead me I will follow thee. In whatsoever thou doest I will be thy aid—in life and in death. I love thee as thou dost wish, dear Lohengrin. I love thee as maidens loved their knights in the stories of old."
IX
Confident and happy, Lohengrin, the accepted lover of Mashenka, departed. Mashenka still mingled her tears and laughter. Her mother was astonished at the news.
"How can you think of marrying him, Mashenka?" said she. "You don't mean to say you have promised without knowing anything about him? You'll find out suddenly one day that he's an escaped convict or something of that sort."
But Mashenka only blushed, and repeated obstinately:
"It doesn't matter if he's a convict or a spy or even a hangman. I shall be one too, for I love him."
And Serezha whispered in her ear:
"If he is the leader of a robber band ask him to let me be one of his men. I'm small enough to climb through the little windows."
And Mashenka laughed.
But when Lohengrin reached home he resolved that his secret was no longer worth keeping. He put his visiting card into an envelope and posted it to Mashenka.
Next day when she got home from school, Serezha met her and said with an air of mystery:
"There's a letter for you. I expect it's from Lohengrin, arranging to meet you somewhere."
Mashenka ran off to her own room with the letter, tore open the envelope, and found a scrap of cardboard with something printed on it and a few lines of writing in violet ink. Her hands trembled, her eyes grew dim; it was with difficulty she managed to read the simple words:
NIKOLAI STEPANOVITCH BALKASHIN
skilled bookbinder
48 Matthew Street.
And below was written:
I hid my real occupation from you, dear Mashenka, fearing that you might despise an artisan, but now I am no longer afraid, being convinced that your love for me cannot change.
Both Mashenka and her mother rejoiced that the secret held nothing terrible. The mother felt inclined to grumble a little at having a workman for her son-in-law, but allowed herself to be pacified when Mashenka assured her that his bookbinding would be done in an artistic manner, and that this branch of the work could be extended. But Serezha was really disappointed; he had dreamed of night expeditions, but there was now no opportunity for him to climb through the windows of houses.
Perhaps Mashenka was a little disappointed also that everything had turned out so simple and ordinary. But in spite of everything Lohengrin would always remain her Lohengrin, and the image of her dream would never fade away; for love is not only stronger than death, but it is able to triumph over the terrible dulness of ordinary everyday life.