“Quite so, quite so; allure,” began the prince, trying to hide himself behind Mosgliakoff.
“Afanassy Matveyevitch!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, in unnatural tones; “do you hear, sir, how these people are shaming and insulting me? Have you quite exempted yourself from all the responsibilities of a man? Or are you actually a—a wooden block, instead of the father of a family? What do you stand blinking there for? eh! Any other husband would have wiped out such an insult to his family with the blood of the offender long ago.”
“Wife!” began Afanassy, solemnly, delighted, and proud to find that a need for him had sprung up for once in his life. “Wife, are you quite certain, now, that you did not dream all this? You might so easily have fallen asleep and dreamed it, and then muddled it all up with what really happened, you know, and so——”
But Afanassy Matveyevitch was never destined to complete his ingenious, but unlucky guess.
Up to this moment the guests had all restrained themselves, and had managed, cleverly enough, to keep up an appearance of solid and judicial interest in the proceedings. But at the first sound, almost, of Afanassy’s voice, a burst of uncontrollable laughter rose like a tempest from all parts of the room.
Maria Alexandrovna, forgetting all the laws of propriety in her fury, tried to rush at her unlucky consort; but she was held back by force, or, doubtless, she would have scratched out that gentleman’s eyes.
Natalia Dimitrievna took advantage of the occasion to add a little, if only a little, drop more of poison to the bitter cup.
“But, dear Maria Alexandrovna,” she said, in the sweetest honied tones, “perhaps it may be that it really was so, as your husband suggests, and that you are actually under a strange delusion?”
“How! What was a delusion?” cried Maria Alexandrovna, not quite catching the remark.
“Why, my dear Maria, I was saying, mightn’t it have been so, dear, after all? These sort of things do happen sometimes, you know!”
“What sort of things do happen, eh? What are you trying to do with me? What am I to make of you?”
“Why, perhaps, dear, you really did dream it all!”
“What? dream it! I dreamed it? And you dare suggest such a thing to me—straight to my face?”
“Oh, why not? Perhaps it really was the case,” observed Felisata Michaelovna.
“Ye—yes, quite so, very likely it act—ually was the case,” muttered the old prince.
“He, too—gracious Heaven!” cried poor Maria Alexandrovna, wringing her hands.
“Dear me, how you do worry yourself, Maria Alexandrovna. You should remember that dreams are sent us by a good Providence. If Providence so wills it, there is no more to be said. Providence gives the word, and we can neither weep nor be angry at its dictum.”
“Quite so, quite so. We can’t be a—angry about it,” observed the prince.
“Look here; do you take me for a lunatic, or not?” said Maria Alexandrovna. She spoke with difficulty, so dreadfully was she panting with fury. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. She hurriedly grasped a chair, and fell fainting into it. There was a scene of great excitement.
“She has fainted in obedience to the laws of propriety!” observed Natalia Dimitrievna to Mrs. Antipova. But at this moment—at this moment when the general bewilderment and confusion had reached its height, and when the scene was strained to the last possible point of excitement, another actor suddenly stepped to the front; one who had been silent hitherto, but who immediately threw quite a different complexion on the scene.
CHAPTER XIV.
Zenaida, or Zina Afanassievna, was an individual of an extremely romantic turn of mind.
I don’t know whether it really was that she had read too much of “that fool Shakespeare,” with her “little tutor fellow,” as Maria Alexandrovna insisted; but, at all events she was very romantic. However, never, in all her experience of Mordasoff life, had Zina before made such an ultra-romantic, or perhaps I might call it heroic, display as on the occasion of the sally which I am now about to describe.
Pale, and with resolution in her eyes, yet almost trembling with agitation, and wonderfully beautiful in her anger and scorn, she stepped to the front.
Gazing around at all, defiantly, she approached her mother in the midst of the sudden silence which had fallen on all present. Her mother roused herself from her swoon at the first indication of a projected movement on Zina’s part, and she now opened her eyes.
“Mamma!” cried Zina, “why should we deceive anyone? Why befoul ourselves with more lies? Everything is so foul already that surely it is not worth while to bemean ourselves any further by attempting to gloss over the filth!”
“Zina, Zina! what are you thinking of? Do recollect yourself!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, frightened out of her wits, and jumping briskly up from her chair.
“I told you, mamma—I told you before, that I should not be able to last out the length of this shameful and ignominious business!” continued Zina. “Surely we need no further bemean and befoul ourselves! I will take it all on myself, mamma. I am the basest of all, for lending myself, of my own free will, to this abominable intrigue! You are my mother; you love me, I know, and you wished to arrange matters for my happiness, as you thought best, and according to your lights. Your conduct, therefore, is pardonable; but mine! oh, no! never, never!”
“Zina, Zina! surely you are not going to tell the whole story? Oh! woe, woe! I felt that the knife would pierce my heart!”
“Yes, mamma, I shall tell all; I am disgraced, you—we all of us are disgraced——”
“Zina, you are exaggerating! you are beside yourself; and you don’t know what you are saying. And why say anything about it? The ignominy and disgrace is not on our side, dear child; I will show in a moment that it is not on our side!”
“No, mamma, no!” cried Zina, with a quiver of rage in her voice, “I do not wish to remain silent any longer before these—persons, whose opinion I despise, and who have come here for the purpose of laughing at us. I do not wish to stand insult from any one of them; none of them have any right to throw dirt at me; every single one of them would be ready at any moment to do things thirty times as bad as anything either I or you have done or would do! Dare they, can they constitute themselves our judges?”
“Listen to that!”
“There’s a pretty little speech for you!”
“Why, that’s us she’s abusing”!
“A nice sort of creature she is herself!”
These and other such-like exclamations greeted the conclusion of Zina’s speech.
“Oh, she simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” observed Natalia Dimitrievna.
We will make a digression, and remark that Natalia Dimitrievna was quite right there!
For if Zina did not consider these women competent to judge herself, why should she trouble herself to make those exposures and admissions which she proposed to reveal in their presence? Zina was in much too great a hurry. (She always was,—so the best heads in Mordasoff had agreed!) All might have been set right; all might have been satisfactorily arranged! Maria Alexandrovna was a great deal to blame this night, too! She had been too much “in a hurry,” like her daughter,—and too arrogant! She should have simply raised the laugh at the old prince’s expense, and turned him out of the house! But Zina, in despite of all common sense (as indicated above), and of the sage opinions of all Mordasoff, addressed herself to the prince:
“Prince,” she said to the old man, who actually rose from his arm-chair to show his respect for the speaker, so much was he struck by her at this moment!—“Prince forgive us; we have deceived you; we entrapped you——”
“Will you be quiet, you wretched girl?” cried Maria Alexandrovna, wild with rage.
“My dear young lady—my dear child, my darling child!” murmured the admiring prince.
But the proud haughty character of Zina had led her on to cross the barrier of all propriety;—she even forgot her own mother who lay fainting at her feet—a victim to the self-exposure her daughter indulged in.
“Yes, prince, we both cheated you. Mamma was in fault in that she determined that I must marry you; and I in that I consented thereto. We filled you with wine; I sang to you and postured and posed for your admiration. We tricked you, a weak defenceless old man, we tricked you (as Mr. Mosgliakoff would express it!) for the sake of your wealth, and your rank. All this was shockingly mean, and I freely admit the fact. But I swear to you, Prince, that I consented to all this baseness from motives which were not base. I wished,—but what a wretch I am! it is doubly mean to justify one’s conduct in such a case as this! But I will tell you, Prince, that if I had accepted anything from you, I should have made it up to you for it, by being your plaything, your servant, your—your ballet dancer, your slave—anything you wished. I had sworn to this, and I should have kept my oath.”
A severe spasm at the throat stopped her for a moment; while all the guests sat and listened like so many blocks of wood, their eyes and mouths wide open.
This unexpected, and to them perfectly unintelligible sally on Zina’s part had utterly confounded them. The old prince alone was touched to tears, though he did not understand half that Zina said.
“But I will marry you, my beau—t—iful child, I
