The Genius. Margaret Horton Potter
ten o'clock. Tell your mother about that from me. But Piotr will come to dress you. I'll have no baby about. He'll bring the suit I command you to wear; and—we'll see.
"Tell your mother, Ivan, that at last—on the seventh of this month, her rule ends. The last Gregoriev becomes a man—or else—he leaves the Gregoriev house! Do you hear? Prepare yourself, then, and—go!"
So, without another look, Michael caught his cloak and cap up from a chair and strode from the room, leaving his son behind him. Presently, however, Piotr came to lead away the dazed and bewildered boy.
Once more in his own room Ivan sat down, in a corner, to think. In the beginning, he could only go over and over the recent scene. Considering it, it seemed almost like some vivid dream, so unnatural had been his father's conduct and manner of speech. And himself! How preposterously he had behaved! Not a word, not a single sign of response or comprehension could he remember having given. Certainly his father might very well think him a—"milk-sop," was it, he had said?
For a day or two Ivan lived, in secret, through that scene. And after forty-eight hours it dawned upon him that he was beginning to live in an ever-increasing dread of that approaching supper-party, "at which he was to become a Gregoriev!" Those over-sensitive, over-perceptive young nerves of Ivan's had divined more of his father's mind than Michael believed. And now a sure and certain instinct was warning the boy of danger. Nevertheless—disobey the Prince's command? Ivan shivered. Not appear, on his birthday evening, before the guests that would be—his? Impossible! Well, something he had yet to do. There remained one command of his father's which, up to this moment, he had felt reluctant to follow. This was the message to his mother. Should he take it to her now; or should he not?
Ivan had reached this point in his reverie of the late afternoon of Tuesday, when the Princess came quietly into the room where he sat. With an exclamation, he rose, and went to her; and presently they were seated side by side upon a long divan, Ivan's warm young hand clasped tightly in two that were dry and burning. The boy, relieved, gave a long, quiet sigh; but it was Sophia who began to speak.
"Ivan, yesterday you saw your father?"
"Ah! You know, then, mother?"
"Know—what, my son?"
"What—what he said? About my saint's-day supper? Mother, I was to tell you. He said, tell you that, on the seventh—that's the day—your rule is over, and I become a Gregoriev. But, oh mother, it's not so, you know!"
This last Ivan added with eager haste; for Sophia had given a low cry, and her hands so tightened upon his that the grip hurt, rather. But after he had spoken she waited a little, her head bent so that he could not see her face in the twilight. When at last she lifted it to him it was very white; but the lips did not tremble, the voice was steady. "He is to give you a supper on this night? He told you so? Spoke about your manhood—at fourteen?" she added, in a whisper, to herself.
"So he said, Madame. And I did not like it. My father is a very strange man."
"Then, you do not want this supper?" her gaze at him was intense, but the dignity had fully returned to it.
To her secret consternation, however, Ivan hesitated. "I—no—yes—Mother, ought I not to want it?"
For some seconds Sophia stared at him, trying to fathom the exact purport of his question. Then her whole aspect changed. She took his two hands and drew them to her breast, and kissed and bowed her head upon them; and presently, though Ivan was clinging to her and demanding explanation, she rose, hastily, and left the room.
Her going was impulsive. That which prompted it had come to her in a sudden flash. Into Ivan's wistful question she had discerned some sense of loyalty towards the other parent; and, in that instant, she was ashamed. After all, he was Michael's own son. Must she, then, be sure that he sought to do the boy harm? Nay, for once in her life she should be brave again. First of all, she must try, as never before, to trust the father of her son. Secondly, she must also trust that son. If Ivan found himself, at the promised supper, in moral danger, he would instinctively know it. Then, if he made no effort to escape, of what use protection, or love, or fear, on her part, forevermore? No feminine force could keep him from going, eventually, down the Gregoriev road.
With such reasoning did the woman try to control the secret, rising terror that was on her. It would not be wholly downed; yet she succeeded in keeping her own counsel during the next two days, and in that won a victory greater than she knew. For the Princess never guessed that during this time Michael waited in hourly, ironic expectation of some sort of protest on her part. And neither master nor mistress suspected that, on Wednesday evening, the serfs, kept informed by Piotr, Alexei, and Másha of a little more than all, held solemn conclave in their own house at the back of the inner court-yard. There Michael their lord was duly cursed, their lady in the same way pitied; and, above all, they discussed the possibility of giving the young master some sort of protection at that impending festivity. The matter of open protest to Prince Michael was actually brought up. For, alas! these simple folk knew more than their lady of the usual details of their master's orgies; and the thought of Ivan's participation in the simplest of them was as horrifying to these slaves as to the gentle lady they served. But the bold proposition came at last to nothing. For which of these lame dogs was to beard the lion in his lair?
Wednesday and most of Thursday passed, for mother and son, in a fluctuating succession of every mood known to their respective natures. Finally, on the afternoon of his birthday, Ivan, furious at the indignity, was forced into an hour or two of preparatory rest. But so restless had been his recent nights that his very protests drifted presently into sound unconsciousness, and he only awoke at candle-light, to find Piotr bending over him, and his promised suit, gorgeous even beyond expectation, lying at hand. And here Michael showed a touch of his wonderful knowledge of human weakness; for that suit played havoc with Ivan. There was courage to be found in the crimson cloth, interest in the gold embroidery, ardent curiosity in the gleaming boots, an almost swagger in the empty sword-belt. Truly, his Highness had calculated well. By the appointed hour, Ivan was aflame. Once dressed, he relinquished the idea of going to his mother for a parting kiss. He felt, instead, that his "manhood" had already come upon him, and that kisses were for children. Still, it was a relief to find that, had he wished it, his half-promised visit would not have been feasible; for, ere the last buckle was fastened, Sósha had come to escort his young Prince, with due ceremony, in his first descent into the traditional hell of his fathers.
Ivan was too little of his own blood, a youth too habitually and instinctively pure-minded, to comprehend, in the first glance, that supper scene, and gain therefrom life-long disillusionment. For him, even after he had left it, there remained in some sort a glamour over it all—the softening veil of lights and laughter, the gleam of plate and the perfume of flowers, which successfully hid the blackest ugliness. The first fresh frost was still upon his glass; and through it the golden wine was beautiful as it could not be for those about him, who saw, as it were, through tepid crystal, a flat and nauseous vintage hardly to be borne even for the faint quickening of the blood still to be obtained from it. But with Ivan it was as his mother had hoped. She still sheathed him as in a coat of mail; yet that night the sword of disaster glanced off it as by a miracle only.
Was this man indeed a father who could find place for his boy at such a table, beside the woman who awaited him? who could command the boy in one breath to drain his glass, and Piotr in the next to refill it?
Within twenty minutes Ivan's head was light with the delicious poison of that exquisite wine. So transparently white grew his skin, so huge and velvety his black eyes, so serious his finely chiselled mouth, that even Celestine and Cerisette began to feel, somewhere beneath that hardened outer shell of "temperament," a disregarded organ filled with a long-forgotten, aching sensation that was not to be encouraged. Regarding the quiet boy whose gold embroidery glittered so bravely in the light, they grew painfully silent; and in that silence secretly reproached the man who put them to such abominable usage. Indeed, Gregoriev himself, always quick to take the temperature of a company, was presently amazed at the tone beginning to prevail over this one. The screaming laughter had been modified; the unquestionable conversations stilled. But the wine, for these very reasons,