Pauline Pavlovna

SCENE: St. Petersburg. Period: the present time. A ballroom in the     winter palace of the Prince--. The ladies in character costumes and     masks. The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the     exception of six tall figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with     marked distinction as they move here and there among the     promenaders. Quadrille music throughout the dialogue.     Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just     arrived, is standing anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber     with his eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor     in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently disengages herself     from the crowd, and passes near Count PANSHINE, who     impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold     of the inner apartment, which is unoccupied.     HE.     Pauline!     SHE.     You knew me?     HE.     How could I have failed?     A mask may hide your features, not your soul.     There is an air about you like the air     That folds a star. A blind man knows the night,     And feels the constellations. No coarse sense     Of eye or ear had made you plain to me.     Through these I had not found you; for your eyes,     As blue as violets of our Novgorod,     Look black behind your mask there, and your voice--     I had not known that either. My heart said,     "Pauline Pavlovna."     SHE.     Ah! Your heart said that?     You trust your heart, then! 'Tis a serious risk!--     How is it you and others wear no mask?     HE.     The Emperor's orders.     SHE.     Is the Emperor here?     I have not seen him.     HE.     He is one of the six     In scarlet kaftans and all masked alike.     Watch--you will note how every one bows down     Before those figures, thinking each by chance     May be the Tsar; yet none knows which is he.     Even his counterparts are left in doubt.     Unhappy Russia! No serf ever wore     Such chains as gall our Emperor these sad days.     He dare trust no man.     SHE.     All men are so false.     HE.     Spare one, Pauline Pavlovna.     SHE.     No; all, all!     I think there is no truth left in the world,     In man or woman. Once were noble souls.--     Count Sergius, is 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 generous impulse stir in her,     Some latent, unsuspected spark illume?     How love thrills even commonest girl-clay,     Ennobling it an instant, if no more!     You said that she is proud; then touch her pride,     And turn her into marble with the touch.     But yet the gentler passion is the stronger.     Go to her, tell her, in some tenderest phrase     That will not hurt too much--ah, but 'twill hurt!--     Just how your happiness lies in her hand     To make or mar for all time; hint, not say,     Your heart is gone from you, and you may find--     HE.     A casemate in St. Peter and St. Paul     For, say, a month; then some Siberian town.     Not this way lies escape. At my first word     That sluggish Tartar blood would turn to fire     In every vein.     SHE.     How blindly you read her,     Or any woman! Yes, I know. I grant     How small we often seem in our small world     Of trivial cares and narrow precedents--     Lacking that wide horizon stretched for men--     Capricious, spiteful, frightened at a mouse;     But when it comes to suffering mortal pangs,     The weakest of us measures pulse with you.     HE.     Yes, you, not she. If she were at your height!     But there's no martyr wrapt in HER rose flesh.     There should have been; for Nature gave you both     The self-same purple for your eyes and hair,     The self-same Southern music to your lips,     Fashioned you both, as 'twere, in the same mould,     Yet failed to put the soul in one of you!     I know her wilful--her light head quite turned     In this court atmosphere of flatteries;     A Moscow beauty, petted and spoiled there,     And since spoiled here; as soft as swan's down now,     With words like honey melting from the comb,     But being crossed, vindictive, cruel, cold.     I fancy her, between two rosy smiles,     Saying, "Poor fellow, in the Nertchinsk mines!"     That is the sum of her.     SHE.     You know her not.     Count Sergius Pavlovich, you said no mask     Could hide the soul, yet how you have mistaken     The soul these two months--and the face to-night!     [Removes her mask.]     HE.     You!--it was YOU!     SHE.     Count Sergius Pavlovich,     Go find Pauline Pavlovna--she is here--     And tell her that the Tsar has set you free.     [She goes out hurriedly, replacing her mask.]