“For I hadn’t told my people in Germany that Nikolai was married at the time. I didn’t want to add further injury to their pride. I thought it would be a matter of a few weeks and that then Nikolai and I would be married, and all would be well. How could I know? How could we know?
“We had the children — and what sweet girls they were — but no divorce. Nikolai sent money to his wife regularly every month, so as to keep the children; and so I lived with him just as if I were his wife, and indeed few people knew that I was not. We lived very happily. He sent money to my large family in Germany, regularly every month, and naturally they thought that I was married to him. How could I tell them that I was not? What did it matter after all, provided that they didn’t know? I felt that it was my duty to sacrifice my personal pride for Nikolai’s children. And such nice, tender, beautiful girls they were too, Sonia and Nina, so loving, so good, so pretty, so obedient, so well-behaved. Every one who saw them said to me: ‘Fanny Ivanovna, what nice children you have. You must be so proud of them!’ I was. And, Andrei Andreiech, I didn’t tell them, you know, that they were not my children. It may have been wrong of me; but I did not. I was really so proud of them, Andrei Andreiech, and as I had sacrificed the divorce for them … it made me feel as if they were my own.
“Nikolai was still always sending money to his wife to keep her quiet. She always threatened to make a nuisance of herself. She wanted the money, too — badly indeed, because that man Eisenstein she lived with wasted her money in speculation on the Stock Exchange. Often she would demand money in excess, and when Nikolai refused, she would come up to Petersburg, enter our house, or go to their school and carry the children off to Moscow and keep them there with Eisenstein. Once she even threatened to bring a case against Nikolai Vasilievich on the ground that he had run away from her with me, if you please! She was tired of Eisenstein, who had spent all her money and proved a dismal failure in dentistry, and, I think, she was anxious to get back to Nikolai. I was in the way, you see. So what do you think she did? She spread stories about me. She said I was a German governess in her household and had beguiled Nikolai into running away with me. She spread this tale among our friends and relatives each time she came up to Petersburg.”
“And what about the girls?” I asked. “What did they think of Moscow and their mother?”
“Andrei Andreiech!” she pleaded with all the fervour of a woman at a disadvantage. “A mother is a mother to her children, always, whatever she has been or is. She can plead love and sympathy and unhappiness with success. But the sudden changes certainly affected the children’s characters.
“One evening on their return from Moscow, when we had guests to dinner, Nina, who was only eight, said:
“ ‘Do you know, Papa, Mama says that Fanny Ivanovna is just a lap-dog you cuddle on your knee for a while and then chase away.’
“How that stabbed me … to the very heart!.. But Nikolai was kind to me. I looked after him. I worshipped him. He would come to me in the evening and say:
“ ‘Fanny, I don’t know what I would do without you.’ And then he would think of what he could say to comfort me, and unconscious of my happiness (happiness, Andrei Andreiech, because I trusted him implicitly) he would say:
“ ‘When the children grow up we will get a divorce, Fanny.’
“ ‘Never mind the divorce,’ I would say. ‘So long as my people in Germany don’t know, it is all I want. I am happy, Nikolai, really. I know that I am your real wife. Let the children grow up first. We must think first of the children. Always, Nikolai.’
“And then I would find myself returning to the question of divorce involuntarily. You see, in my secret heart I wanted his divorce so much. And I would say again:
“ ‘We must not think of the divorce, Nikolai;’ just to make him repeat his promise.
“ ‘When the children grow up we will, Fanny. I will get a divorce then.’
“And the children, as I say, were such a pride and consolation to me. There were moments when I looked at them and thought I wanted no divorce. Those were my best moments … when I thought that … that I did not really care whether he got it at all. Sonia and Nina were the compensation.”
“What about Vera?” I asked.
Fanny Ivanovna paused suddenly. She looked as if she were going to reveal an unspeakable secret, but then decided not to.
“Oh, Vera … she always lived with the mother. Nikolai Vasilievich hates her.… She is different.”
There was another pause.
“We lived like that eleven years,” she said, and stopped.
“And now?” I asked, and was horrified at my disastrous question.
“And now,” she said, her face quivering with emotion, “… he wants to marry … a young girl of … sixteen.…” She burst into tears.
She sobbed hysterically, and I stood there, helpless, filled with pity and an eagerness to help, and not knowing how to do it — saying:
“Fanny Ivanovna … Fanny Ivanovna … don’t cry.…”
Then I tried to think of what was usually done on such occasions. I rushed for a glass of water.
When she had drunk it and wiped her tear-stained face with her little lace handkerchief, she continued, breathing heavily:
“He came to me one evening in April and said:
“ ‘Fanny, I must talk to you very seriously.’
“ ‘And what might it be that you want to talk to me about so seriously, du alter Schimmel?’ I said, and followed him happily into his study, thinking that he wished to consult me about some business transaction. He often consulted me on his affairs.
“ ‘Sit down, Fanny,’ he said, and I was astonished at his seriousness. I sat down and he seemed to be waiting till I was comfortably settled in my chair.
“ ‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘—don’t be frightened — I’ve got to marry Zina.’
“Zina, Andrei Andreiech, was a girl in Sonia’s school and Sonia’s class, of Sonia’s age. Seventeen, Andrei Andreiech. I laughed. I could see that he was joking. I thought of the date. It was April — not the first but the twenty-first — yes, I remember perfectly.
“ ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘I am perfectly serious. I must. I have thought of it all. I fought against it. I have thought of every possible way that I could settle it. There is no other way. I can’t, Fanny. It is love, this time, real love. There is nothing that you can say that I have not thought of. There is nothing that you can say that will alter my decision.…’
“ ‘Nikolai! You are mad! Du bist verrückt!’ I cried. ‘Wahnsinnich!’