Countess Nordston’s version of this faith, Kitty now understood, had reflected only a limited understanding. When it was presented to her in its full, luminescent complexity by Madame Stahl, xenotheologism brought to Kitty a whole series of noble thoughts and feelings. And Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to Kitty as to a charming child whom one looks on with pleasure, as on the memory of one’s youth, and only once she said in passing that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the knowledge of the Honored Guests’ compassion for us no sorrow is trifling-and immediately talked of other things. But in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every heavenly-as Kitty called it-look, and above all in the whole story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized that “something important,” of which, till then, she had known nothing.
At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much under the influence of her engouement, as she called it, for Madame Stahl, and still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did not merely imitate Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the princess noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual change was taking place in her daughter. In the evenings, the four of them-Varenka, Madame Stahl, Kitty, and Tatiana-would gather at the huge bay windows of the grand old orbiter, staring off at the clusters of stars, waiting patiently with uplifted hands and hearts for the arrival of the Honored Guests.
Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl’s character was, touching as was her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could not help detecting in her some traits that perplexed her. She noticed that when questioned about her family, Madame Stahl had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Honored meekness. She wore the same contemptuous expression when speaking to Tatiana, and made Kitty understand, never outrightly, but by vague suggestions, that the Honored Guests were disapproving of human reliance upon robots.
For Kitty, who had come to rely deeply, in the way of young girls, on her beloved-companion, this doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.
CHAPTER 18
BEFORE THE END of their recuperative stay aboard the purification satellite, Prince Shcherbatsky, who had sojourned nearby on a Venusian colony orbiter to visit some Russian friends-to get a breath of Russian air, as he said-came back to his wife and daughter.
The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his cheeks, marked here and there by mild red burns from occasional exposure to the closer-than-usual sun, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty’s friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have gone out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of kindliness and good humor that was always within him.
The evening after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter down the long, brightly lit passageways of the orbiter. She had invited him to join her this night, in the company of Madame Stahl and Varenka, to take part in the joy she had discovered in the xenotheological ritual of invitation to the Honored Guests.
“Present me to your new friends,” he said to his daughter, squeezing her hand with his elbow as they arrived at the darkened arcade, with the wide windows looking out at the universe of stars, where Madame Stahl held the nightly ceremony. “Only it’s melancholy, very melancholy here. Who’s that?”
It was Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly toward them carrying an elegant red bag.
“Here is Papa,” Kitty said to her.
Varenka made-simply and naturally as she did everything-a movement between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to everyone.
“Of course I know you; I know you very well,” the prince said to her with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her father liked her friend. Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but that he could not do it because he liked her.
“I look forward, too, to meeting the famous Madame Stahl,” he went on, “if she deigns to recognize me.”
“Why, did you know her, Papa?” Kitty asked apprehensively, catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince’s eyes at the mention of Madame Stahl.
“I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she became a stargazer.”
“What do you mean by stargazer, Papa?” asked Kitty, dismayed by the teasing tone with which he had pronounced the word.
“I don’t quite know myself. I only know that she thanks these magical light-beings for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks them too that her husband died. And that’s rather droll, as they didn’t get on together.”
“Oh, here she is now,” said Kitty, as Varenka returned, now tugging laboriously on the Class I wheelbarrow in which lay, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue and lying under a sunshade-a sunshade, though they were quite well protected from outer space. This was Madame Stahl.
The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl and addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that excellent French that so few speak nowadays.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,” he said, taking off his hat and not putting it on again.
“Prince Alexander Shcherbatsky,” said Madame Stahl, lifting upon him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of annoyance. “Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your daughter.”
“You are still in weak health?”
“Yes, I’m used to it,” said Madame Stahl.
“You are scarcely changed at all,” the prince said to her. “It’s ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you.”
“Yes, our Guests send the darkness and the strength to bear it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?… The other side!” she said angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug over her feet not to her satisfaction.
“To do good, probably,” said the prince with a twinkle in his eye.
“That is not for us to judge,” said Madame Stahl, perceiving the shade of expression on the prince’s face.
“I meant to warn you, Madame,” said the prince, his tone losing its genial teasing quality and growing serious, “there is talk on Venus of a changing attitude among the Ministry, regarding the practice of xenotheology. To me and other tired old cynics like me, it is merely amusing, but I feel I should warn you, the Ministry seems to be finding it less amusing of late.”
“What do you mean?” she said, her eyes growing wary.
“What once was a silly fad is lately considered to be a form of Janusism.”