Marie Tarnowska

“It is not letters, it is money,” she said at last.

“Money? Money of yours?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence. Then Kamarowsky said: “I do not believe you. I wish to see what it contains.”

No one answered him.

“Where is the key?”

Again there was silence.

I heard a slight jingling sound; Kamarowsky was searching in his pockets for a penknife. Then he said to Elise: “You can go.”

Elise went slowly and reluctantly from the room. Then I heard a faint tearing and crackling: Kamarowsky had cut through the leather of the satchel. Now the rustling of banknotes told me that he was smoothing them out on the table, and counting them.

A few moments passed.

“Thirty-five thousand rubles,” said Paul Kamarowsky slowly. “I cannot understand why you should have told me you were penniless.” There was an icy coldness in his voice such as I had never heard before.

“The money is not mine,” I said, in trembling tones.

“Whose is it?”

How was I to answer him? Could I betray Prilukoff? And, with him, myself? I decided to tell what was, intrinsically, the truth.

“I do not know whom it belongs to.”

Once more there was silence. I wondered what he would do? Would he insult me? Would he raise his voice in bitter accusation and reproof?

No. The silence remained unbroken. Kamarowsky left the room without a word.

Ah! I was still in the grip of the octopus; its tentacles bound and crushed me still. Even from afar Prilukoff guided my destinies, drove my frail barque into storm and disaster.

With trembling hands I gathered up the scattered banknotes and thrust them back into the execrated leather bag. Ah, if only I could have freed myself from this nightmare burden, if only I could have returned the money to Prilukoff! But how? Where to? At the Bellevue, in Hyères, he had called himself Zeiler. But now where was he? Under what name was he hiding? How could I, without warning, send him such a sum of money? Where could I write to him?

No; fate had doomed me to wander through the world carrying with me the hated money in Elise's abominable satchel! At the bitterness of this thought I dropped my face in my hands and wept.

I did not hear any one knock at the door; nor did I hear the door open. When, still shaken with sobs, I raised my tear-stained face, I beheld standing on the threshold a stranger—a slender, fair-haired youth. He was gazing at me with compassionate eyes, full of confusion at having found me in tears.

“Pardon me,” he said, and his voice was soft and musical.

“Whom do you want?”

“I was looking for Count Kamarowsky,” he replied. “He has invited me to dine with him.” There was a pause. “My name is Nicolas Naumoff.”

“My name is Marie Tarnowska.” And I gave him my hand.

XXX

Count Kamarowsky came in shortly afterwards. He was gloomy and morose; but on seeing his friend, whom he had that morning invited to dine with us, he made a heroic effort to keep up an appearance of good temper and hospitality.

But his grief and anger were only too apparent. He sat beside me at table without speaking to me, nor did he ever turn his eyes in my direction.

Our guest seemed distressed and amazed at his behavior, and—doubtless remembering my recent tears—he gazed at me with his light-brown eyes eloquent of sympathy and compassion.

Once or twice I addressed a remark to Kamarowsky, but he scarcely answered me and I felt myself flushing and paling with humiliation.

Silence fell upon us at last. Painful and embarrassing as I felt it to be, I yet could find no word to say. A violent headache racked my temples, and I had to bite my lips to keep myself from bursting into tears.

Suddenly I got up and went into my room. With trembling hand I sought in my dressing-case for a bottle of cocaine, which for nearly a year I had not touched. I lifted it to my lips and sipped the exhilarating poison. Then I returned to the table.

Kamarowsky was sitting grim and silent with bent head and lowering brow, but the young stranger raised his golden eyes under their long fair lashes, and fixed them upon me as if to give me comfort. After a few moments, in order to break the well-nigh unbearable silence, he spoke to me in his low and gentle voice.

“I hear that Delphinus, the famous crystal gazer, has arrived in Orel. You ought to get him to tell you your fortune.”

“Is that so?” I said, smiling; and even as I spoke the prediction of that strange soothsayer flashed into my memory. I seemed to hear again the brief, prophetic words: “Two men are yet to enter into your life. One will be your salvation—the other your ruin.”

Two men! I glanced around me, startled and amazed. Two men were here; one on each side of me. Was the prophecy coming true? Were these the two men he had spoken of? Were the One and the Other sitting beside me now?

In my mind I could still hear the fortune-teller's nasal, dreamy accent:

“You will chose—the Other. It is your destiny.”

Overcome by a feeling of timorous superstition, I looked at my two table companions, of whom One, perhaps, might represent my destruction, the Other my last hope of happiness.

At my right hand sat Kamarowsky, sullen and sinister in his grief and anger against me; on my left the young unknown, with radiant face and gold-bright eyes that smiled at me. A flash of intuition seemed to illuminate my spirit; here was salvation! Nicolas Naumoff! This unknown youth, in whose eyes I had read such complete and instant devotion—it was he whom fate had sent to lead me back to joy.

Looking back to that hour I realize that it was the rhapsodical delirium of cocaine that whipped my brain into senseless aberration; but at the time I implicitly believed that by a miracle of divination I had rent the veil of the future, and could discern with inspired gaze the distant sweep of the years to come.

I saw Kamarowsky—somber, dark, with bent head—as the very incarnation of sorrow and misfortune; and, to make assurance twice sure, was it not he whom I had chosen? And had not the diviner foretold me that he whom I chose would be the one to lead me to destruction?

But I might still draw back, I might still trick the Fates and escape from my predestined doom. With the blind impulse of the hunted quarry seeking a refuge, I turned an imploring gaze on the young unknown; he read despair in my eyes, and his own responded with a flash of comprehension; he leaned toward me, and, as if in the throe of some instant emotion, I saw him thrill from head to foot like a tense string. At this immediate response of his nerves to mine, I also felt a tremor stir me, as the water of a lake is stirred by a gust of wind. What evil spirit possessed me? Was I ill? Was I demented? I cannot tell. I know that my soul pledged itself to him at that moment; and I know that he understood me.

Thus, in my attempt to escape it, the tragic prophecy was to be fulfilled.

When Nicolas Naumoff got up to take his leave I knew that he would return, that I should see him again, and this thought intoxicated me with such delight that even Kamarowsky, in spite of his anger and his suspicions, was swept away by the radiance and rapture of my joyfulness. I was then—well may I say it now!—at the zenith of my youthful beauty, notwithstanding, or perhaps by reason of the disease that burned within me like a consuming lamp; a constant fever lit my transparent flesh into delicate rose flushes, and blazed like lighted sapphires in my translucent eyes.

I was no sooner alone with him than, seeing me thus aflame with radiant happiness, Kamarowsky rose and came towards me with outstretched hands.

“Marie, I love you, I love you! I will trust you utterly. I want to know nothing that you do not wish to tell me.” And he bowed his head over my hands and kissed them.

But my wild thoughts went out to the unknown youth with the golden eyes who had left us, he through whom salvation was to come to me; and every fiber yearned for his presence. A sudden wave of almost physical repulsion for Paul Kamarowsky overcame me and I started away from his touch. “Leave me,” I cried, “leave me. Let me go away.” And I tried to go past him to my room.

But he stopped me, amazed and unbelieving. “Why, dearest, why? What is the matter?”

“It is over,” I murmured incoherently, “leave me. I do not wish to speak to you any more. I do not wish to marry you. I want to go away and never see you again.”