Vassili was inexpressibly bored with rural solitude and sought new means of diversion. His latest fad was target-shooting. He filled the house with rifles and revolvers and invited every one in the neighboring country houses to take part in shooting matches in our grounds. From morning to night, in the garden, in the courtyard, even from the windows of the house, there was a ceaseless crackling of firearms.
One afternoon when the house was filled with guests, Dr. Stahl and Bozevsky arrived in their troika from the neighboring castle of the Grigorievskys, where they had been staying. To my astonishment, Vassili received them jubilantly and embraced them both. He had quite forgotten the reasons which had led to our departure from Kieff.
Bozevsky came to greet me at once, and for the rest of the day never left my side. He enveloped me in a whirlwind of ecstatic tenderness. His infatuation, which he sought neither to conceal nor to control, disquieted me deeply.
I noticed that his friend Dr. Stahl watched us continually. I had not seen the doctor for many months, and he struck me as strangely altered. His very light eyes, in which the pupils were contracted until they seemed mere pin-points, followed me continuously.
“Doctor,” I said to him, “what strange eyes you have! Just like the eyes of a cat when it looks at the sun!”
“I do not look at the sun,” he answered slowly, speaking with great stress. “I look into an abyss, the abyss of annihilation and oblivion. Some day, if ever you are irremediably unhappy, come to me and I will open to you, also, the doors of my unearthly paradise—of this chasm of deadly joy which engulfs me.”
“Shame on you, Stahl! How dare you suggest such a thing!” exclaimed Bozevsky, casting a look almost of hatred upon the morphinomaniac. “Why must you and your kind always seek to drag others down into your own gehenna?”
Stahl sighed. “It is terrible, I know. But it is a characteristic of our malady.”
I listened without comprehending. I did not then know of Stahl's enslavement to the drug. “What are you speaking of? What malady? I do not understand.”
“It is better not to understand,” murmured Bozevsky with knitted brows. “Stahl is distraught; he is ill. Pay no attention to him. And never follow either his advice nor his example. But pray,” he added, “do not worry your head over anything we have said; the shooting match will soon begin. I think your husband is looking for you.”
But Vassili was far from troubling himself about me. He was rushing to and fro setting up rows of bottles that were to serve as targets, and distributing guns and cartridges to all our guests. Then he hurried towards us. “There,” he said to Dr. Stahl and to Bozevsky, giving them each a Flobert rifle, “these are for you.”
“And what about the Countess?” asked Stahl in his hollow voice. “Is she not going to compete in the shooting?”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “I am much too frightened.”
“Nonsense!” cried Vassili, pushing a gun into my unwilling hands. “Of course you must shoot with the rest. And I warn you that if you are not brave I shall play William Tell with an apple on your head!” He passed on laughing, with Madame Grigorievskaja armed with a Browning by his side.
I was not at all brave; I held the rifle at arm's length, trembling with fear lest it should explode by itself. Stahl was amused by my terror, while Bozevsky sought to encourage and comfort me.
“Poor timid birdling,” he murmured, “do not be frightened. See, I will teach you. It is done like this”—and he lifted the gun to my shoulder, placed my hands in position, and with his glowing face quite close to mine, showed me how I was to take aim. What with my terror of the gun and the fragrance of his fair hair near my cheek I felt quite dizzy.
“There, that's it. Now press the trigger.”
“No! no! Don't say that! don't let me!” I screamed, incoherent with terror while Stahl and Bozevsky laughed.
Vassili from a distance caught sight of me: “Bravo, Mura!” he cried. “That's right. Go on. Shoot!”
“No! no!” I cried with my eyes shut and standing rigid in the position in which Bozevsky had placed me, for I dared not move a muscle.
Vassili called impatiently: “What on earth are you waiting for?”
Still motionless, I gasped:
“Perhaps—I might dare—if some one were to cover my ears.”
Amidst great amusement Bozevsky came behind me and placed his two hands over my ears.
“Come now!” cried Stahl. “Do not be frightened.”
“Mind you hit the third bottle,” shouted Vassili from the distance.
Bozevsky standing behind me was clasping my head as though in a vice and whispering into my hair: “Darling, darling, darling! I love you.”
“Don't,” I cried, almost in tears under the stress of different emotions, “and don't hold my ears so tight.”
The warm clasp relaxed at once.
“Oh, no, no!” I cried. “I can hear everything. I don't want to hear—,” but even as I spoke the gun went off. I felt a blow near my shoulder, and thought I was wounded; but it was only the recoil of the weapon.
Everybody was laughing and applauding.
“What have I killed?” I asked, cautiously opening my eyes.
“The third bottle!” cried Vassili, and he was so delighted with my exploit that he ran up and embraced me. But the pistol he was holding in his hand and Bozevsky's glance of jealous wrath filled me afresh with twofold terror.
The afternoon passed as if in a dream. Vassili became very much excited and drank a great deal of vodka. Then Madame Grigorievskaja, who had once visited the United States, concocted strange American drinks which we had never tasted before—cocktails, mint-juleps, pousse-cafés and gin-slings. They were much approved of by every one.
I remember vaguely that half way through the afternoon some one let down my hair and set me among the shattered bottles with an apple on my head. I seem to see Vassili standing in front of me with a rifle and taking aim at me while the others utter cries of protest. Suddenly Bozevsky snatches the weapon from my husband's hands, and there is a brief struggle between them. Soon they are laughing again, and shaking hands—then Bozevsky joins me among the shattered bottles, and stands in front of me; he is so tall that I can see nothing but his broad shoulders and his fair hair. And Vassili is shooting—the bullets whirr over my head and all around me, but I have no sense of fear; Bozevsky stands before me, straight and motionless as a rampart.
We go in to dinner; gipsy musicians arrive and play for us. Late at night when the garden is quite dark we go out again to the targets; instead of the bottles Vassili has ordered a row of lighted candles to be set up, and we are to extinguish them with our shots without knocking them down. There is much noise around me; Vassili is dancing a tarantelle with Ivan Grigorievsky on the lawn. Dr. Stahl and Bozevsky are always by my side. I keep on shooting at the candles, but they spin round before my confused eyes like catharine-wheels; and Stahl laughs, and Bozevsky sighs, and the gipsies play....
Suddenly Tioka's nurse comes hurriedly down the pathway towards me.
“May I speak to your ladyship for a moment?”
“Yes, Elise. What is it?”
“Master Tioka cannot go to sleep. He says you have forgotten to bid him good-night.”
I put down my rifle and follow the straight small figure of Elise Perrier through the garden. I hasten after her into the house and upstairs to the nursery.
Little Tania is already fast asleep, with scarlet lips parted and silken hair scattered on her pillow. But Tioka is sitting up in his cot awaiting me. His bright soft eyes wander over my face, my hair, my dress; his innocent gaze seems to pierce me like a fiery sword. He holds out his arms to me and I hide my flushed face on his childish breast.