Short Fiction - Fyodor Sologub (best romance ebooks .txt) 📗

reasons. I have vowed not to disclose these matters for certain worldly considerations, and I cannot tell you for fear of unpleasant consequences.”

“What foolishness!” said Mashenka again.

“No, Marya Constantìnovna,” said he. “Do not say that. You remember the opera where I had the honour of seeing you for the first time. Lohengrin should remind you that it is sometimes necessary to conceal the truth until the right moment. You saw how imprudent the beautiful but inquisitive Elsa was, beseeching her husband to tell her his secret and disclose his name and calling, and you saw how cruelly she was punished. Certainly she repented of it afterwards, but, as they say, if your head is off it’s no use weeping for the loss of your hair.”

“Oh yes, indeed,” put in Mashenka, “you and I are certainly very much like Lohengrin and Elsa.”

Her sarcastic tone did not disconcert her companion. He answered:

“You, Marya Constantìnovna, are incomparably more beautiful and good than was the lady Elsa, and so if I do not dare to liken myself to Lohengrin, yet all the same, taken together, we can be compared with them. It is true that knights in armour have gone out of fashion in our day, but the knightly feelings remain; love burns in the hearts of emotional people no less clear than in former times. Our lives may appear dull and barren, but in reality they are no less wonderful and mysterious than was the life of Lohengrin and Elsa when he came down the stream to her, borne by the silver-winged swan.”

“Ah, Lohengrin!” exclaimed Mashenka, mockingly, yet perhaps a little touched.

The young man looked at her and waited for her to say more. But Mashenka was silent and said no more until she reached her home. Then she stood still for a moment and looked in the young man’s eyes.

“What am I to do with you, Mr. Lohengrin? You must go home or about your mysterious business. It’s not convenient for you to come in just now.”

His answering gaze was one of happiness and confusion, and so much hope that Mashenka felt obliged to say:

“Well, come tomorrow evening at eight o’clock. I will tell mother. I don’t know what she’ll say to me, but I daresay she will receive you.”

VII

So Mashenka went indoors to tell her mother what had happened and to prepare her for the young man’s visit on the morrow. The mother grumbled a little.

“What’s all this, Mashenka,” said she. “You surely don’t think it’s possible to have a man in from the street. Who knows what he may have in mind; it’s quite likely he’s a rogue of some kind.”

But after a little while she came to the conclusion:

“Well, I suppose we’d better see him and know what he’s after.”

So Lohengrin came at the appointed time, brought a box of sweetmeats, stayed an hour and a half, drank tea, behaved very respectfully to the mother, joked with schoolboy Serezha, amused Mashenka with his rhetorical phrases, and took his departure before any of them had time to get bored.

After he had gone the mother asked Mashenka:

“Well, who is he really?”

“Indeed, mother, I’ve told you everything I know about him. I don’t know anything more. I only know him as Lohengrin. His name is Nikolai Stepanovitch Sklonyaef, but what he does I don’t know. He’s just Lohengrin.”

“You’d better look in the Directory tomorrow when you go to school,” said her mother, “and find his name. By his talk and his manners he’s quite all right, but you never can tell. No one knows anything about him and there may be something under the surface. You must find out all about him.”

So on the next day Mashenka looked through the Directory, but she couldn’t find anybody of the name of Sklonyaef. She began to think that there could be no such name and that Lohengrin had made it up himself.

However, he continued to visit them, bringing sometimes a bunch of flowers, sometimes a box of chocolates. He no longer tried to meet Mashenka in the street; when they met it was quite accidentally.

When he came the second time Mashenka asked him why his name was not in the Directory.

He was not in the least confused⁠—Mashenka was surprised to find that in spite of his timid ways, his blinking eyes, and his ingratiating manner, this strange young man was generally self-possessed and very rarely put out of countenance⁠—

“I’ve only lately come to Petersburg,” said he, “and my name is not in the Directory yet. I expect it will be in next year.”

He laughed as he spoke, and Mashenka felt sure that he was not speaking the truth.

“But where do you live?” asked she. “What do you do for a living? Where do you work?”

But Lohengrin made reply:

“Pardon me, Marya Constantìnovna, I cannot tell you anything about my address or my occupation.”

“And why not?” asked Mashenka in wonder.

“Because, as I have already had the honour of telling you, Marya Constantìnovna, I have important reasons for keeping these matters a profound secret.”

Mashenka thought for a moment or two and then said:

“But listen a moment. This is all very strange. At first I thought you were simply joking; but if you are in earnest, then it’s all stranger than ever.”

“I am not joking at all,” said he; “but more than that I also trust that when you love me it will be for myself alone, not considering who I may be nor what is my occupation.”

“And if I don’t love you?” asked Mashenka with a smile.

“Then I shall vanish from the field of your vision,” said he, “as Lohengrin did, when he floated away in that wonderful boat drawn down the many-watered Rhine by the silver-winged swan.”

“Oh, Lohengrin,” laughed Mashenka once more.

VIII

Mashenka laughed. She was getting used to speak of him as Lohengrin. Everybody called him that now.

Mashenka laughed, and yet sometimes she fell into a reverie and dreamed. And in her dreams the beautiful