Part 57 (1/2)
Araktseieff feigned not to see her; did not lift his eyes from the papers before him.
”Fraulein Ilmarinen,” said Alexander, ”you desired to speak with me personally. You may speak.”
”Will your Majesty forgive the boldness of my request, but I have papers to place before you which the owner intrusted to me on sole condition that I delivered them personally into your own hands. These papers form the diary of the late Princess Sophie Narishkin!”
With a deep sigh the Czar exclaimed, ”Poor child!” his voice trembling with agitation.
”It was her last wish, and I must fulfil it.”
”You were with her, then, in her last hours?”
”And afterwards. She had sent for me.”
”It was you who closed her eyes?”
Zeneida bowed her head silently.
”I thank you,” said the Czar, and, taking from her the white-bound diary, he held out his hand to her--a soft, thin hand--but the action was not a cordial one.
Zeneida kissed the hand.
”Have you any wish, Fraulein Ilmarinen?”
”Only one, sire! That you should graciously please to read the last three pages of Sophie's diary _in my presence_.”
The Czar glanced back, as though to ask Araktseieff's permission. Then only did he resolve to accede to her wish, and, opening the diary, he read.
He bit his lips to conceal his emotion. But Zeneida well knew what it was he was reading; she knew the whole contents of the diary, as well as those last confused lines written by the convulsed hand of an unhappy child, looking forward with yearning and dread to the cold embrace of death. And the Czar, as he concluded the last page, looking up at Zeneida, saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
Mutely he nodded his head and sighed.
”She wanted me to read this to exonerate Pushkin, did she not? She wished it so. She had a great, n.o.ble soul!”
”Indeed she had, sire!”
”And it was at her desire; and Pushkin was only fulfilling her last wishes in acting as he did?”
”He could not have done otherwise.”
”I believe it. He could not have done otherwise. And yet I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that he did it--that in the very same hour that he had covered the face of one bride with the funereal veil he could draw the bridal veil over the face of the other! He had to do it!
And yet it seems incomprehensible to human understanding how there can be a whole eternity in one short hour of time; how, in one short hour, a man can fly from the arctic pole to the equator; how, in one and the same moment, a man can mourn over a dead love and marry a living one!”
”But if he had loved her previously?” asked Zeneida, softly.
”What did you say?”
”If that which he experienced for her who was gone was but the adoration and boundless reverence for a being of another world, whose wings were already bearing her heavenward when first he knew her? If all the affection, tenderness, devotion which led him to the feet of his wors.h.i.+pped bride were but sacrifices offered at the shrine of a saint to keep her in life?”
Alexander struck his forehead with his hand.
”You are right! I never inquired into it. Never asked him if the dream of love were more than a sick girl's fancy? He suffered himself to be bound by that dream. That was the whole of it. In his heart he loved another, and would have sacrificed himself for her. It was all my doing, my fault--for everything I do is faulty, and everything that goes wrong is through me!”