A Double Life

by Barbara Heldt

  “Yes, so they say. But she loved him very much.”

  “Yes, she loved him after her own fashion, maybe too much. At least, he himself used to declare that he would have liked to be loved a bit less.”

  “You mean he didn’t succeed?” asked Vera Vladimirovna.

  “It seems not, no matter how hard he tried.”

  Vera Vladimirovna remembered that Cecily was present and took advantage of the convenient opportunity to plant a moral lesson.

  “For all the husband’s faults,” she pronounced in a stern voice, “the wife is guilty. Her duty is to know how to bind him to her and make him love virtue.”

  Madame Valitskaia was naturally in complete agreement with this.

  The conversation lasted a few minutes longer in a similar vein, and then Natalia Afanasevna stood up.

  “Well, goodbye for now. I’m leaving Nadezhda Ivanovna with you. You can bring her back to me later on. A tantôt. And please don’t be late; be at my place at two o’clock.”

  She left, and Nadezhda Ivanovna, as a result of her longtime habit of not being surprised that people disposed of her with such ease, as if she were an object loaned back and forth, took from her pocket a half-finished purse, also destined for the charitable lottery, and began to crochet it.

  The park’s appearance was changing little by little: the sidewalks were becoming more populated, the road noisier, the dust thicker and more plentiful. Carriages bowled along, dashing men galloped by on horseback, and attractive ladies walked on either side of the road to take advantage of the midday shade. Others sat on their balconies and terraces, under the shadow of broad awnings. That whole conventional, wealthy, arrogant world was coming to life.

  Ordinary people were no longer visible; those who worked had gone home. All except a peasant resting under a bush, who, hearing suddenly the furious thunder of wheels or the gallop of a horse, lifted up his head a little, looked around peacefully and lay down again, wondering silently to himself.

  The time for morning visits had arrived. Two or three ladies and five or six men visited Vera Vladimirovna’s salon; Dmitry Ivachinsky arrived, and Prince Victor appeared as well. They began to speak again of the sudden death of Madame Stentsova and mourned the dead woman.

  “She was not at all bad-looking,” said Prince Victor.

  “Her complexion was too dark,” said Nadezhda Ivanovna.

  The prince looked at her with some surprise, not having expected the unseemly retort from this living piece of furniture, and continued lazily:

  “Not at all bad-looking, remarkable eyes, only terribly boring.”

  “Quite an empty woman,” said one lady. “I could never talk to her for more than ten minutes, and even that was difficult.”

  “She was, unfortunately, an imprudent woman,” Vera Vladimirovna answered, “and didn’t know how to keep the love of her husband to whom she was indebted for her whole fortune.”

  “Not a very large fortune,” Dmitry Ivachinsky remarked, “six hundred souls.”

  “Including ones from Kostroma,” added a fat gentleman who owned peasants from Tambov and Yaroslav.

  “It’s lucky that there are no children,” another lady said. “Stentsov will probably marry again.”

  “Yes, and we have already guessed to whom,” said the fat gentleman, with an unbearably meaningful laugh.

  During this conversation, Cecily had been seated by the window at her lace-frame. Dmitry Ivachinsky got up from where he was sitting and drew near that window, to Nadezhda Ivanovna who was sitting nearby, and began to say something to her, all the while looking fixedly and persistently at the empty stool near Cecily.

  No mother can explain rhetoric of this kind, but every daughter can understand it. Cecily slowly raised her eyes with a favorable, silent answer to the humble question, and then suddenly dropped them in a severe and guarded way. Opposite her, leaning against the door to the balcony, stood Prince Victor, with a barely perceptible smile and a disturbing glance. The obedient Dmitry remained behind Nadezhda Ivanovna’s chair, and the prince slowly assumed a dignified manner, walked directly to the sacred stool, and sat down on it without asking permission to do so. Cecily bent her blushing face to some flowers standing near her and, taking a long time to choose, picked a sprig of heliotrope. The prince began to speak of the previous day’s vaudeville and the forthcoming horse race. Cecily could not possibly do anything but listen and answer. The prince, while speaking, carelessly stretched out his hand to the lace-frame, where Cecily was toying with the torn-off sprig, and took it. Vera Vladimirovna, sitting quietly in her long armchair, was unobserved following all his movements. The ladies present saw just as artfully as she everything to which they were paying no attention, but all were sufficiently wise and knew that it befits a prudent mother to act with severity only with impoverished suitors, and that the laws of the most refined conventionality are out of place with one who can give in exchange for a flower he has taken a half million in yearly income.

  After ten minutes or so, the prince yawned slightly, got up, bowed imperceptibly, went out, and sped away in his foreign carriage, in his foreign clothes, with his foreign wit, leaving the crumpled sprig of heliotrope on the floor and the humiliated Dmitry next to Nadezhda Ivanovna.

  Cecily, from her window, looked out after the spirited black horses carrying him away in a cloud of dust. Did she regret inwardly that Dmitry had no such equipage? Did she notice that his Russian coachman decidedly did not stand comparison with the prince’s English groom? Did she think that all other women would envy the one among them who could fly past them in that fascinating creation of London “high fashion …”? She glanced up for only a minute and bent over her sewing.

  In the drawing room, a fairly lively argument was in progress:

  “A most absurd wedding,” someone said.

  “She acted very cleverly,” asserted one lady. “Their fortune was completely dissipated; the estate was supposed to be auctioned off. There was a mass of debts. She found herself a son-in-law who would restore and pay for everything.”

  “Monsieur Chardet!” answered one of the men in the group.

  “Yes, it was Monsieur Chardet,” she exclaimed. “He’s really a very respectable man.”

  “But are you sure he is rich?”

  “Of course. He has done some very profitable business. Sophia will be very happy with him.”

  “He gave her a marvelous emerald necklace,” another lady said. “I saw it yesterday.”

  “It’s still not a pleasant means of rescue.”

  “Pardon me, but you are behind the times. What do aristocratic prejudices mean in such a case! Mésalliances are very much in fashion now. George Sand has lent a kind of charm to ordinary people.”

  “Are you really a follower of George Sand?” Dmitry Ivachinsky asked her with a smile.

  “To a certain extent: I like the folk element a good deal.”

  “With the exception of their raw sheepskin coats,” he remarked.

  “Well, yes, of course. But in fact there are marvelous peasants; one can meet them with pleasure, only naturally not as guests in one’s own house.”

  Meanwhile time passed. Vera Vladimirovna’s drawing room grew empty.

  “Cécile,” she said, “I have to go to the funeral now. You stay here with Miss Stevenson. I may be returning late. I’ll probably be spending the evening with Natalia Afanasevna at Madame Stentsova’s mother’s house and somewhere else as well. So don’t wait up for me, and go to bed at a decent hour. You are still not well. Goodbye, dear!”

  Vera Vladimirovna went off with Nadezhda Ivanovna, and Cecily remained alone with Miss Stevenson—in other words, completely alone. She was decidedly not herself. What was weighing on her spirit she could not explain, nor did she try very hard. She didn’t put to herself the only essential question: she didn’t ask herself whether in fact she loved Dmitry Ivachinsky. According to her understanding, there was no room for doubt about this. But she didn’t know what she h
ad to do, how to attain the fulfillment of her wishes, how to go about it. If she had been capable of understanding that true feeling cannot hesitate and waver, that from the moment that consciousness becomes real and clear, action is equally clear and real because it has become a necessity and necessity knows no impediments; if she had been taught to look a truth in the face, if she could have guessed what it means to love…. But how was this possible when not only feeling itself, not only an understanding of what it was, but the very word had always been kept remote from her and cast aside like a tainted thing? Everything strove to suppress all spiritual strength in her, to kill all inner life. But still her young breast was not able to unlearn to tremble, and her heart could not renounce life and love, and her exacting, impatient soul was ready to embrace a cloud and a phantom instead of a heavenly being. At present, she vaguely and unconsciously sensed something false, but what and where? Whether in her inner or outer life, this was something she did not dare to seek out and explain…. Alas, her whole life was just one long and uninterrupted lie!

  Toward evening, her slightly feverish condition grew worse. Miss Stevenson advised her to drink a raspberry cordial and lie down. She lay down. Incoherent thoughts wandered through her head. She remembered the ride to Ostankino and that morning and Prince Victor and that poor woman who had just been buried, who just a few days ago had been sitting before her, intense and happy…. It was getting late … she became lost in thought. For a long time, she looked into the half-darkness of the bedroom; but the evening grew dark, the room began to disappear before her eyes, and finally it did disappear, and a broad darkness fell … but something far off glimmered and grew light … and many faces and many lights were there … and meanwhile in the shadows, mysteriously hidden, his barely distinct breath wafted over her once more….

  And meanwhile a discordant noise was heard again,

  The crowd pressed close within the dazzling rooms,

  Wine flowed—the funeral feast progressed,

  And the hum around the tables spread and grew.

  And loud words took the place of toneless speech,

  Smiles came to life, slander woke from sleep,

  Worldly vanity, irresistible,

  Knocked boldly even on the coffin’s wood.

  And there, in the distance, the moon came up;

  And there, in the obscurity of night

  The new grave shone black,

  Already forgotten by the crowd.

  And lime trees, whispering among themselves

  In a language no one understands,

  Softly swayed their heads

  In their secret anguish.

  And the meadow was drenched

  In heavy tears of dew,

  And in the twilight mist

  Two furrows gleamed white.

  Near the grave, two puffs of air

  Drifted in the empty darkness;

  Two voices merged, despondent,

  With the murmuring leaves on the hill.

  First Voice:

  And you have crossed your arms in the coffin,

  Leaving behind the noise of the world,

  And all the struggles, all the partings,

  All the strivings of the Earth!

  You too, poor thing, were searching for

  A pure pearl in the sea of life

  And you died in vain, sorrowfully,

  Victim of a ruinous dream!

  Second Voice:

  And did she enter into this world

  To live an empty life and die a useless death?

  And is the blind loss of will not sinful,

  And is the power of crazed thought not shameful?

  Where is her tribute? Where her cause in life?

  How can her soul be reconciled with the Earth?

  Did she look boldly into the face of fate?

  Didn’t she lie even to herself?

  Didn’t she lose heart at the power of an inner summons?

  Did she fulfill the task entrusted to her?

  Did she go forth? Did she seek the word of life?

  Was she stronger than her sorrow?

  First Voice:

  The yoke of Earth’s constraints

  She did not bear on Earth,

  Did not fall prey to doubt,

  Did not take fright in the battle.

  She loved sorrowfully and passionately,

  Believing in the love of others,

  And waited to the end in vain,

  And hoped until the end.

  Second Voice:

  Why murmur against eternal laws?

  Why not recognize the limits of the possible?

  Groans are no substitute for holy labor,

  Life is better than dreams and truth higher than lies.

  Who is to blame that she had not the strength

  To face the path, measure its steepness,

  Not expect miracles, understand people from the first

  And count only on herself!

  Why, meeting deception every day,

  Did she not renounce false faith

  And why in the ruinous alchemy of the soul

  Did she squander its store of wealth?

  First Voice:

  Stronger than insult, stronger than deception

  Was the sacred fire of love in her.

  Her wound could not subside,

  Her sad gift could not disappear.

  Who knew in that falsely rigorous world

  Where grief is shameful and a joke,

  How inconsolably she wept,

  Resigned, before God,

  What sacrifices she made,

  What questions filled her heart,

  In what storm her sail was sundered

  After holding out so long?

  No! If one has searched obscurely

  For something which in life cannot be found,

  If after hundreds of deceptions

  One still could keep a blessed hope intact,

  And measure with his soul on Earth

  A surfeit of those superearthly powers,

  One is not to blame for believing,

  One is not to blame for loving.

  The day was drawing near that Vera Vladimirovna always celebrated—Cecily’s birthday. This time, too, she had made various preparations to spend the day as gaily as possible: a dinner, a concert, a bal champêtre, a supper—every possible thing that could be done was done, with great effort and at great expense. The festivity of people of the highest circles is wondrously expensive. When Cecily woke up that day, she found her mother’s gifts lying on her sofa: two charming dresses—one a dinner dress, the other an evening dress—and the most marvelous lace scarf, ordered from Paris. In the course of the morning, she received approximately two dozen bouquets and three dozen notes from friends—all saying precisely the same thing, to which it was necessary to respond with precisely the same variations. Society women have achieved the wondrous art of contriving thirty variations on a phrase that means nothing even the first time. Then Madame Valitskaia arrived with her daughter (on that morning, no other people were received). Cecily went into the garden with Olga to rest from her correspondence a bit. They settled into a far corner, where there was a bit of shade, and began to chatter away; they talked of twenty different subjects, and then Olga’s voice grew lower and more mysterious.

  “Listen,” she said, “you’re killing Ivachinsky. He was so upset by your coolness yesterday that out of desperation, he lost all night at cards at Ilichev’s and almost went out of his mind.”

  “Who told you that?” Cecily asked.

  “My cousin told it to Mama. He was there and saw Dmitry. You’re really driving him to goodness knows what. He’s becoming a gambler.”

  It was not Olga herself who was saying these things—it was her mother’s prompting. Only Madame Valitskaia knew the great power and naivete of female vanity; only Madame Valitskaia knew how much more interesting to a woman a man becomes, and how much dearer, the moment she sees the possibility o
f changing him after her own fashion, reforming him from vice, saving him from destruction. The greater the danger, the deeper the abyss ready to swallow him; the more glorious the triumph, the more tempting the success, and the greater the pleasure in stretching out to the one who is perishing a saving hand, fragile and yet all-powerful. Madame Valitskaia had decided that Cecily must become Dmitry’s wife so that she would not somehow become the wife of Prince Victor, and she was proceeding toward her goal. Olga, for her part, was also of a mind to keep the precious prince for herself and did not trust Cecily much in this respect. Although Olga was too young to think up what levers to pull, she was clever enough to use them according to her mother’s directions. In society’s lexicon, this sort of move is called adroit or clever.

  Instead of answering, Cecily bowed her head and fell to thinking. But that day, she had no time for lengthy reflection; the time to dress for dinner was approaching. Madame Valitskaia and her daughter left so that they too could dress and return in a couple of hours, and Cecily went to her room, called the maid, and sat down at her dressing table, loosening her black braids. She was so full of thoughts and daydreams that she paid no attention to her hair, over which the maid Annushka was laboring. Looking into her mirror, she thought only of what Olga had said. So she was capable of bringing Dmitry to desperation!—a possibility always flattering and satisfying to a woman, as a result of which she began to await him with great impatience.

  But however much these thoughts possessed her, she could not help but be distracted, if only briefly, while putting on the splendid new dress. And indeed, when she was all ready and standing before her mirror, the reflection presented such a picture of grace that, looking at it, she understood perfectly poor Dmitry’s torments of the heart.

  The dinner was, like all dinners of this sort, long and boring. Aside from Vera Vladimirovna’s husband and two or three guests like him, who ate with great appetite, everyone was waiting for it to end—Cecily and Olga more than anyone because Prince Victor and Dmitry were not expected until evening. Once dinner was over, they could still have a couple of pleasant hours to themselves.