Marie Tarnowska

Ever and anon there appears throughout the funereal story—as if smiling out through the window of a charnel-house—the innocent face of a child: Tioka. He is all bright curls and laughter. Unaware of the carnage that surrounds him, he runs with light, quick feet through pools of blood to nestle in the gentle maternal breast which for him is all purity and tenderness.

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As I read on and on the writing trembles and wavers, as if the hand and the heart of the writer wearied of their task. With a sudden break the sad story closes, unfinished, incomplete.

“If I could tell of the tears I have shed, if I could describe the anguish I have suffered, I am sure that pity would be shown to me. Surely if the world knew of my torment and my sufferings—”

Nothing more. Thus abruptly the tragic manuscript ends.

The train slackens speed, falters, shivers—stops. I am at Trani; at the furthermost end of Italy; almost beyond civilization; almost out of the world.

Soon I shall see before me the woman I have come so far to seek: the woman who never gave the gift of love without the gift of death.

The high white walls of the penitentiary glared down in the blazing southern sun. The languid Adriatic trailed its blue silken waters past the barred windows. I raised the heavy knocker; it fell from my hand with a reverberating clang, and the massive prison-door opened slowly before me.

The Mother Superior and two gentle-looking Sisters fluttered—black and white and timid as swallows—across the sunlit courtyard. They were expecting me.

“She whom you seek is in the chapel,” said the Mother Superior, in a low voice. “I will call her!” She left us. The two Sisters accompanied me up a broad stone staircase to a small waiting-room. Then they stood quietly beside me; and when I looked at them, they smiled.

In the silence that followed I could hear women's voices singing in the prison chapel, simple, untutored voices, clear and shrill:

“Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison…”

and the low notes of the organ rolled beneath the treble voices, full and deep;

“Mater purissima
Mater inviolata…”

“Number 315—that is the Countess Marie,” said one of the two Sisters, “plays the organ for the other prisoners. She plays every day at noon and evensong.”

“And at four o'clock in the morning,” added the other Sister.

(How far, how far away, Marie Nicolaevna, are the passionate days of Moscow, the glowing, unslept nights of Venice!)

“Rosa mystica
Stella matutina…”

Suddenly the music ceased and we stood waiting in the hot, white silence. Then the door opened, and on the threshold stood Marie Tarnowska—the murderess, the devastating spirit, the Erinnys.

II

Tall and motionless in her fearful striped dress she stood, gazing at me with proud clear eyes; her brow was calm and imperious under the humiliating prisoner's coif, and her long hands—those delicate hands whose caresses have driven men to commit murder for her sake—hung loosely at her side. Her mouth, curving and disdainful, trembled slightly.

“Signora,” I began. Her lips wavered into a faint smile as with a quick downward sweep of her eyelashes she indicated her dress of shame.

“Signora,” I repeated, “I have come here neither out of compassion nor curiosity.”

She was silent, waiting for me to proceed. The three nuns had seated themselves quietly near the wall, with eyes cast down and meek hands folded in their laps.

“I have come,” I continued, “to vindicate my sisters in your eyes. I know you think that all women are ruthless and unkind.”

Another smile, fleeting, vivid and intelligent, lit up her eyes. Then the narrow face closed and darkened again.

“For two years,” I proceeded, “I have been haunted by the thought that you, shut in this place, must be saying to yourself that all men are base and all women pitiless. As to the men—I cannot say. But I wish you to know that not all women are without pity.”

She was silent a few moments. Then in a weak voice she spoke:

“In the name of how many women do you bring this message to me?”

I smiled in my turn. “There are four of us,” I said, cheerfully. “Two Englishwomen, a Norwegian, who is deaf and dumb—and myself. The deaf and dumb one,” I added, “is really very intelligent.”

Marie Tarnowska laughed! It was a low, sudden trill of laughter, and she herself seemed startled at the unaccustomed sound. The Sisters turned to look at her with an air of gentle amazement.

But in my eyes Marie Tarnowska had ceased to be the murderess, the Erinnys. Through the criminal in her dress of shame I had caught a glimpse of the little girl in the blue spectacles, the happy little girl who felt that every one loved her. That lonely, tremulous trill of laughter astray on the tragic lips stirred me to the depths; and sudden tears filled my eyes.

Marie Tarnowska saw this, and turned pale. Then she sat down, unconsciously assuming the same chastened attitude as the Sisters, her hands submissively folded, her dark lashes cast down over her long light eyes. For some time there was silence.

“I have read your notes,” I said at last.

“My notes? I do not remember writing them.” Suddenly her voice sounded harsh and her glance flashed at me keen as a blade of steel.

“You wrote them in the prison at Venice, in pencil, in a child's exercise book.”

“It may be so.” Marie Tarnowska breathed a long sigh. “That was a time of dreams,” she said, raising her stricken eyes to mine. “I sometimes dream that this is all a dream. I think I must have fallen asleep one day when I was a little child, at home in Otrada—perhaps in our garden on the swing. I used often to fall asleep on that creaky old swing, reading a book, or looking at the sky. Perhaps I shall wake up soon, and find that none of all these dreadful things are true.” She fingered the broad brown-and-white stripes of her prison-garb and gazed round the dreary room. Then her eyes strayed from the whitewashed walls, bare except for a large ebony crucifix, to the narrow iron-barred window, and back to the Sisters sitting along the wall like a triptych of Renunciation, with folded hands and lips moving silently in their habitual prayer. “Yes, I shall wake up soon and find myself in our old garden again. My mother will come down the path and across the lawn, with her little white shawl on her head; she will call me: 'Mura! Mura! Where are you? Come, child, it is time for tea; and Vassili is asking for you.' Then I shall jump from the swing and run to her and hide my face on her breast. 'Mother, if you knew what a dream I have had—a terrible dream, all about deaths and murders! I thought I had married Vassili, and he was unkind to me—as if Vassili could be unkind!—and I was locked in a prison in Italy—imagine, mother, to be imprisoned in Italy, where people only go for their honeymoon!' And mother will kiss me and laugh at the crazy dream as we go across the lawn together, happily, arm in arm.”

I found no word to say, though her eyes seemed to question me; and her fragile voice spoke again: “Surely, this cannot all be true? It cannot be true that they are all dead. My mother? And little Peter? And Bozevsky? And Stahl? And Kamarowsky? Why, it is like—like 'Hamlet.'” She broke into strident laughter. “Do you remember how they all die in 'Hamlet'? One here, one there, one in the stream, one behind the curtain, drowned, stabbed, strangled—” Suddenly she was silent, looking straight before her with startled eyes.

“Poor Mura!” I murmured, and lightly touched her hand.

At the sound of the tender Russian appellative she turned to me quickly. Then she began speaking under her breath in hurried whispers.

“Who told you my name? Who are you? Are you my sister Olga? Do you remember the merry-go-round at the school-feast in Kieff? How we cried when it swung us round and round and round and would not stop? I seem to be still on the merry-go-round, rushing along, hastening, hurrying with the loud music pealing in my head.”

The Mother Superior rose and approached her. “Hush,” she spoke in soothing tones. “You will soon be quiet and at rest.”

But Marie Tarnowska paid no heed. Her eyes were still fixed on mine with a despairing gaze. “Wake me, wake me!” she cried. “And let me tell you my dream.”

And during those long mild April days she told it to me as follows.

Where shall I begin? Wait, let me think—ah, yes! Where I fell asleep that day in the garden, on the swing. I remember it was a hot day even in Otrada; almost as hot as it is here. And it was my birthday; I was sixteen years old. My mother herself, with great solemnity, in the presence of my father and sisters, had twisted up my long curling hair and pinned it in great waves and coils on the top of my head. There were to be no more long plaits hanging down my back!

“Your childhood is over, Mura,” said my mother. “At sixteen one has to look and behave like a grown-up young lady.”

“That is exactly what I am, mother dear,” I replied with great self-assurance.

My mother smiled and sighed and kissed me. “You are such a child—such a child still, my little snowdrop,” she said, and her eyes were tender and anxious.