Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso. Ossip Schubin

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      Meanwhile it cost him the greatest self-restraint not to fall at her feet immediately, so charming and beautiful was she. Everything about her was beautiful: her tall but beautifully rounded figure; her pale oval face, framed in dark hair; her remarkable eyes, usually dreamily half closed, and then suddenly looking at one so large and full; her long small hands and her little feet. No Andalusian had a smaller, slenderer, more finely-arched foot than Natalie. He had scarcely time to reply to her amiability, when the butler announced that luncheon was served, and they went into the dining-room.

      It was a peculiar luncheon. The old princess presided in a wrapper. The lukewarm dishes--brought every day from a restaurant in a tin box, which Lensky had met on the steps were served by Monsieur Baptiste on the largely shattered remnants of a Florentine faïence service with noticeable correctness. A broad golden sunbeam lay on the table between Lensky and Natalie and gave the most extravagantly unsuitable colors to the flowers which shed their fragrance from a low Japanese porcelain bowl in the middle of the table, and over these flowers, sparkling like diamonds, he looked at her.

      She ate little and talked a great deal, told all kinds of droll stories; one witty anecdote followed the other. He could not weary of listening to her. Yes, even if what she said had not interested him, he would not tire of hearing her. The sweet, somewhat veiled tone of her voice seemed like a caress to his sensitive ear.

      * * * * * *

      "I would like to ask you something, Boris Nikolaivitch," said the old princess later, while they were taking coffee, in the drawing-room.

      "I am at your disposition entirely, Princess," Lensky hastened to assure her.

      "It is about my violins," she began, in a drawling, whining voice, which was her manner, and meant nothing.

      "But, mamma," Natalie hastily interrupted her, "this is not the moment----"

      "Pray, permit me," said Lensky; and turning to the princess, "so it is about your violins?"

      "Yes. My husband--you know what an excellent player he was," continued the old lady, "has left three violins. People have always told me they were worth a small fortune, but I did not wish to part with them at any price. I ask you--a souvenir. But finally--times are hard, and one must not be too hard on the peasants, and, besides, as none of my children play the violin, however musical they are--well, I would be very glad if you would try the instruments and incidentally value them.

      "You could perhaps advise me--yes---- What is the matter, Natascha?"

      For Natalie had blushed to the roots of her hair. Tears stood in her eyes.

      Boris guessed that she feared he would look upon the explanation of her mother as a bid.

      "I remember the violins very well," he hastened to assure her; "especially one of them excited my envy. It would please me very much to try them again."

      The servant brought the violins and at the same time a pile of hastily snatched-up violin music, smelling of dust, dampness, and camphor. The wonderfully beautiful instruments were in a pitiable condition--half of the strings were gone, those that remained were brittle and dry. But still there was a small stock of them. After Boris, with the loving patience and surgical skill with which only a true violinist handles an Amati, had put it in a suitable condition and then tuned it, he drew the bow softly across it. A strangely sweet, tender, sad sound vibrated through the great empty room. It seemed as if the violin awoke with a sigh from an enchanted sleep. A pleasant shudder passed over Natalie.

      Lensky bent his cheek to the splendid instrument like a lover. "Shall we try something?" said he, and took from the pile of notes a nocturne of Chopin, transposed for the violin, opened the piano, the only good and costly piece of furniture in the room, and laid the notes on the music-rack. "Now, Natalie Alexandrovna, may I beg you?"

      Quite frightened by his artistic greatness--yes, trembling from charming embarrassment--she sat down at the piano.

      His violin began to sing; how full and soft, so delightfully languishing, and also somewhat veiled, as is usually the case with an instrument unused for years.

      "How beautiful!" murmured Natalie, with eyes sparkling with animation.

      "Yes, it is a splendid instrument," replied Lensky. "You cannot imagine what it is to play on an instrument which understands one. It is still only a little bit sleepy, but we will awaken it."

      He placed a sonata of Beethoven before Natalie. They were alone. After the first bar of the nocturne the princess had fallen asleep, at the last she had waked, and had retired, with the remark that she could hear much better in the adjoining room.

      "Will you really tolerate my accompaniment?" murmured the young girl.

      "And do you wish to hear again, vain little princess, what I already told you in St. Petersburg, that I have seldom found a more sympathetic accompaniment than yours?" he replied.

      She was an uncommonly good pianist, and with an unusually fine divination followed all the shades of his art. One piece followed the other. After awhile a certain relaxation was perceptible in her.

      "You are tired," said he, breaking off in the middle of the first phrase of Mendelssohn's G-minor concerto. "I should not have given you so much to do. Pardon me."

      "Oh, what does that matter," said she, while she let her hands slide from the keys. "It was splendid, only, do you see, I feel as if I am a dragging-shoe for you. I would like to have a wish, a great immoderate wish. I would like to hear you once alone, without accompaniment, from your heart. Give me one glance into your soul, make your musical confession to me!"

      He felt a peculiar twitching and burning in his finger-tips. He would rather have killed himself than let her glance into his inmost soul, as the condition of that soul had been until then.

      "Do not ask that of me," said he, hoarsely.

      "It was very immodest in me, excuse me," said she hastily and confused.

      "Oh, that is nothing," he assured her. "Do you think that I will spare the little bit of pleasure that I can perhaps give you, only--but if you really wish it--as far as I am concerned----"

      He took up the violin.

      It was a different affair now. Dragging-shoe or not in any case her accompaniment had had a calming and perhaps purifying effect on his musical instincts. With her he had played as a wonderfully deeply sensitive and technically cultivated virtuoso; in spite of all the heartfelt fulness of tone and vibrating passion, he had scarcely passed the boundary of musical conventionality. It had been the highest possibility of a quiet, artistic performance; but what Natalie now heard was no longer art, but something at once splendid and fearful. It was also no longer a violin on which he played, but a strange, enchanted instrument that she had never known formerly and that he himself had invented; an instrument from which everything that sounds the sweetest and saddest on earth vibrated, from the low voice of a woman to the soft, complaining sigh of the waves dying on the shore. A depth of genial musical eloquence burst forth under his bow. Inconsolable pain--dry, hard, cutting; tender teasing, winning grace, mad rejoicing, a wild confusion of passion and music, the height and depth of neck-breaking technical extravagance.

      But what was most peculiar about his playing, and had the most magical effect, was neither the mad bravura nor the flattering grace, but something oppressive, mysterious, that crept maliciously into the heart and veins, ensnaring and paralyzing--a thing of itself, a strange horror. Again СКАЧАТЬ