The Sisters Tragedy | Page 9

Nastasia here to-night?
HE.
Ah! then you know! I thought to tell you first.?Not here, beneath these hundred curious eyes,?In all this glare of light; but in some place?Where I could throw me at your feet and weep.?In what shape came the story to your ear??Decked in the teller's colors, I'll be sworn;?The truth, but in the livery of a lie,?And so must wrong me. Only this is true:?The Tsar, because I risked my wretched life?To shield a life as wretched as my own,?Bestows upon me, as supreme reward--?O irony!--the hand of this poor girl.?Says, HERE, I HAVE THE PEARL OF PEARLS FOR YOU,?SUCH AS WAS NEVER PLUCKED FROM OUT THE DEEP?BY INDIAN DIVER, FOR A SULTAN'S CROWN.?YOUR JOY'S DECREED, and stabs me with a smile.
SHE.
And she--she loves you?
HE.
I know not, indeed.?Likes me, perhaps. What matters it?--HER love!?The guardian, Sidor Yurievich, consents,?And she consents. No love in it at all,?A mere caprice, a young girl's spring-tide dream.?Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare,?She'll have a lover--something ready-made,?Or improvised between two cups of tea--?A lover by imperial ukase!?Fate said her word--I chanced to be the man!?If that grenade the crazy student threw?Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar,?All this would not have happened. I'd have been?A hero, but quite safe from her romance.?She takes me for a hero--think of that!?Now by our holy Lady of Kazan,?When I have finished pitying myself,?I'll pity her.
SHE.
Oh no; begin with her;?She needs it most.
HE.
At her door lies the blame,?Whatever falls. She, with a single word,?With half a tear, had stopt it at the first,?This cruel juggling with poor human hearts.
SHE.
The Tsar commanded it--you said the Tsar.
HE.
The Tsar does what she wills--God fathoms why.?Were she his mistress, now! but there's no snow?Whiter within the bosom of a cloud,?Nor colder either. She is very haughty,?For all her fragile air of gentleness;?With something vital in her, like those flowers?That on our desolate steppes outlast the year.?Resembles you in some things. It was that?First made us friends. I do her justice, see!?For we were friends in that smooth surface way?We Russians have imported out of France.?Alas! from what a blue and tranquil heaven?This bolt fell on me! After these two years,?My suit with Ossip Leminoff at end,?The old wrong righted, the estates restored,?And my promotion, with the ink not dry!?Those fairies which neglected me at birth?Seemed now to lavish all good gifts on me--?Gold roubles, office, sudden dearest friends.?The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to taste?The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip.?This very night--just think, this very night--?I planned to come and beg of you the alms?I dared not ask for in my poverty.?I thought me poor then. How stript am I now!?There's not a ragged mendicant one meets?Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave?To tell his love, and I have not that right!?Pauline Pavlovna, why do you stand there?Stark as a statue, with no word to say?
SHE.
Because this thing has frozen up my heart.?I think that there is something killed in me,?A dream that would have mocked all other bliss.?What shall I say? What would you have me say?
HE.
If it be possible, the word of words!
SHE, VERY SLOWLY.
Well, then--I love you. I may tell you so?This once, . . . and then forever hold my peace.?We cannot stay here longer unobserved.?No--do not touch me! but stand further off,?And seem to laugh, as if we jested--eyes,?Eyes everywhere! Now turn your face away . . .?I love you.
HE.
With such music in my ears?I would death found me. It were sweet to die?Listening! You love me--prove it.
SHE.
Prove it--how??I prove it saying it. How else?
HE.
Pauline,?I have three things to choose from; you shall choose:?This marriage, or Siberia, or France.?The first means hell; the second, purgatory;?The third--with you--were nothing less than heaven!
SHE, STARTING.
How dared you even dream it!
HE.
I was mad.?This business has touched me in the brain.?Have patience! the calamity's so new.?(Pauses.)?There is a fourth way; but that gate is shut?To brave men who hold life a thing of God.
SHE.
Yourself spoke there; the rest was not of you.
HE.
Oh, lift me to your level! So I'm safe.?What's to be done?
SHE.
There must be some path out.?Perhaps the Emperor--
HE.
Not a ray of hope!?His mind is set on this with that insistence?Which seems to seize on all match-making folk.?The fancy bites them, and they straight go mad.
SHE.
Your father's friend, the Metropolitan--?A word from him . . .
HE.
Alas, he too is bitten!?Gray-haired, gray-hearted, worldly wise, he sees?This marriage makes me the Tsar's protege,?And opens every door to preference.
SHE.
Think while I think. There surely is some key?Unlocks the labyrinth, could we but find it.?Nastasia!
HE.
What! beg life of her? Not I.
SHE.
Beg love. She is a woman, young, perhaps?Untouched as yet of this too poisonous air.?Were she told all, would she not pity us??For if she love you, as I think she must,?Would not some