The Sweet-Scented Name/The Crimson Ribbon
The Crimson Ribbon
I
THE old professor, Edward Henriovitch Roggenfeldt, and his aged wife, Agnes Rudolfovna, had been accustomed for many years to live from May to September in the same watering-place, in Esthonia on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. Every year they occupied the same beautiful country villa standing in its own grounds. From the balcony of this villa they had a broad and delightful outlook over the waters of the gulf, the meadows near the sea, and the beach.
Although this watering-place was inhabited for the most part by families of Germans, professors and physicians, and bore the stupid ridiculous name of Très-joli, it was a very pleasant and convenient place in which to live. All the people who owned villas there were firmly convinced that Esthonia was the healthiest place in the world and that Très-joli was the most beautiful spot in North-West Russia. They declared that this was printed in the Encyclopaedia in which other reliable information could be found of this sort, for example, that Edgar Poe lived a degraded life, and was a lying and evil-living man.
The peasants of the place—Esthonians—were peaceful and honest and well-behaved; no one ever heard of fights or robberies there. There was a post and telegraph office quite near, only four versts away. The postman came twice a day, and not only brought the post but collected the letters.
There were two cafés in the neighbourhood, one on the sea-shore, the other inland, near the baron's estate, with very fine gardens. Once a week there was music in the café on the shore. Not far away, also at a distance of four versts, was an Assembly Room where there was a public dance once a week, and where one could get wine and beer or have dinners or suppers. But all this was not too near—the people who lived at Très-joli could enjoy a peaceful quietude and yet not be deprived of the conveniences of civilisation. The tradesmen brought their goods to the very doors of the villas—a great convenience, which fully compensated for not living near the town markets.
The houses in Très-joli stood on a high cliff. The bank sloped down to the sea, with here and there steep ravines in which were trees and bushes and wild narcissus, but in places the cliff was bare and laminated, rejoicing the hearts of professors and students, who found there ancient Silurian remains, green and brown and yellow layers of limestone and sandstone. Along the edge of the sea stretched a broad strip of fine friable pale yellow sand, dotted here and there with large stones and some small pebbles. The rugged boulders were ornamental, the pebbles were rather a hindrance to walking, but the sand was delightful and the bathing excellent, and on the shore in front of the villas was a row of clean-looking dressing-rooms.
The water of the gulf was of many varying tints and colours, from the palest and most delicate blue in the sunshine to the gloomiest purple in dull weather. Sometimes it was perfectly calm. Then the broad waters of the gulf lay like an enormous expanse of steel along which stripes of fleeting colour streamed.
Sometimes the waves lashed noisily along the sandy shore. The long wearisome sound like the roar of a tired and hungry animal kept nervous visitors from sleeping, flurried the hysterical, and delighted the serious fifteen-year-old schoolboys. On such days they would come down to the shore and meditate upon the "accursed" questions of life and being—those questions familiar to every progressive schoolboy of that age.
The sunsets were wonderful, each evening different. Every evening the sky arrayed itself in a new way, sometimes covering itself with clouds, sometimes appearing clear and cloudless.
If there were few clouds, or none at all, the sky showed itself in an exquisite austerity of beauty as its adornment. Then the sun, solitary, weary, purple in colour, hiding itself behind pale purple veils, sank majestically down towards the hardly distinguishable line of the horizon, sinking slowly, dying away in sadness and beauty, till at length, with a last faint gleam shining for a moment in the misty bed of the far and melancholy distance, it went out like the last sigh of an expiring universe. And then came on an undisturbed serenity both in the heavens and upon the earth, and a spell of deepening shadows was cast upon the warm sand and the cold pebbles, on the dreaming trees and on the humble roofs of the villagers, gradually chilling all.
When the sunset sky was massed with dark heavy lowering clouds, and bright foam-like cloudlets were scattered like a whimsical pattern on the blue enamel of the heavens, the departing sun was attended by a magnificence of flame and colour and radiance and delicate gold-edged beams of light. The enraptured gaze did not then behold the setting sun in the majesty of its departure, for the sun appeared as only one of the heavenly marvels, and not the most beautiful of all—only a monotonously glowing disk of a uniform crimson incandescence. All the broad and beauteous West was filled with slow streams of wavering and glimmering molten many-toned liquid gold, blazing with all the yellows of amber and half-transparent topaz, flaming through the innocent blue of heaven with all the passions and crimsons of blood, trembling and unconsumed in the flames of jasper, onyx and emerald and the glowing carmine of rubies. It seemed then as if a gigantic rainbow, glowing in the heat of the heavenly furnace, suddenly tore apart its thin half-transparent veil, poured itself through and spread out along the heavens its many-coloured stream, which broke out into innumerable fires.
Sometimes in dull weather opal clouds would appear in the sky, and the pale angel of death would look down upon the earth with his unswerving gaze, right into the eyes of people who cannot perceive him.
But it is impossible to describe all the sunsets, because the diversity of them is endless, endless as the diversity of human life itself.
The most pleasant feature of Très-joli was its delightful combination of sea and forest, the trees in some places coming down nearly to the water's edge. Firs and leafy trees were about equal in number, the stern and stately pines and firs mingling with white-trunked birches, trembling aspens, dull alders, bitter rowans, and proud maples. One rich merchant from Vishgorod had even planted chestnuts and oaks on his estate. The whole place was delightful, and all the visitors rejoiced in its beauty.
The villagers industriously ploughed their barren, stone-bestrewn fields, they prophesied the weather according to the appearance of the sky and the direction of the wind, they caught sprats in the sea, but didn't bathe themselves in it, and they let their cows wander in the forest and all along the sea-shore. In short, they behaved as the villagers in such places always do.
"Aborigines," they were called contemptuously by Professor Roggenfeldt's grandson, the schoolboy Eddy, who was an unwearied seeker after fossils.
But Madame Roggenfeldt, a grey-haired old lady, with a sweet attractive face of great former beauty, said:
"The Esthonians here are so cultured. They play Molière in their public hall, they have a choir and a band, and many of them have pianos. Their children sing and play very nicely, and on holidays they look quite like young ladies."
II
In this idyllic place one beautiful summer's day Madame Roggenfeldt was celebrating her birthday. Everything was very gay. The families of her son and daughter had all come, and the grandchildren had presented her with flowers and congratulated her prettily. Guests had come in from town, and they expected to have music and singing in the evening.
After luncheon, about three o'clock in the afternoon, there was dancing in the meadow that lay between the cliff of Très-joli and the wood on the sea-shore. The local band had been invited to play.
Only one old friend of the family was absent—Professor Bernard Horn—and Professor Roggenfeldt could not imagine why he had not come. He had intended to send a message to his house, but there had been no time, all the servants and everybody in the house had been very busy.
But Madame Roggenfeldt had been in a nervous and disturbed state all the morning. While the young folks were dancing she sat with her husband on a seat in the garden on the cliff and looked down at the scene below.
The sun was not too bright, the sound of the music was softened by distance, the laughter and chatter of the young people was not heard too loudly, the movements of the dancers were slow and melancholy.
Three Esthonian peasant-musicians in grey felt hats were seated one behind the other with their backs to the sea on stools placed at the edge of a square even space. Their sunburnt faces expressed the zeal of close attention and nothing else. Their sunburnt hands moved exactly and mechanically. And from afar they looked like dolls placed there, parts of a very complicated musical machine.
In front of the players was a music-stand, and behind it stood a short elderly man waving his conductor's stick calmly, confidently, and as mechanically as the players moved their hands. He too had a sunburnt neck and hands. When he moved a few steps from the stand he was seen to be very lame. And it seemed as if his lameness had been planned by an ignorant but artistic workman, fashioning this fine toy so as to be more suitable for the music of the dance.
The sounds of the music seemed extraordinarily regular and monotonous. One could have wished for some slight inaccuracy or capricious interruption of the rhythm; but afterwards one remembered that it could not be otherwise, that such was the law of this methodically gay and yet melancholy measure.
The young men and girls sat on benches on the other two sides of the square. The fourth side had a light fence beyond which the ground sloped upward, and here upon the grass lay some onlookers who did not dance but had come to watch others dance and to listen to the music.
All the people present seemed to be under the spell of the devilishly-monotonous and inhumanly precise rhythm of this wonderfully executed music. All the young folks danced together and stepped apart with the earnestness and exactitude demanded of them by the power of the mechanical example given them by the sunburnt hand of the lame conductor beating out the time. And the spectators who looked on respectfully and the little peasant children who stood around never moved; they looked as if they all had been carved out of the same unbending material and coloured with the same colours of amber and red-lead.
III
"Don't you think the musicians play very well, Agnes?" asked Professor Roggenfeldt of his wife.
Agnes Rudolfovna sighed, as if she had been brought back from some sweet vision of the past:
"Yes, they play very well," said she, "especially if one remembers that they are only simple peasants."
"The peasants here have culture and so are very different from the Russian peasants," said her husband.
"Yes, indeed," said Agnes Rudolfovna.
"But I can't think why our friend, Doctor Horn, hasn't come. I feel quite anxious about him. I'm afraid he must have been taken ill suddenly. If he doesn't come soon, I think we must send and enquire about him."
Agnes Rudolfovna did not reply. She looked intently at the dancers. Her thin but still beautiful fingers trembled as she smoothed down the folds of her white dress.
It was strange and somewhat painful to look down upon this slow dance and to listen to the melancholy sounds of the waltz, played so precisely by the stiff brown hands of the musicians.
Yes, it was painful but yet sweet to the old lady to recall that far-off time when Edward and Agnes were still young, when he was a fine young man with sparkling eyes, and she a beautiful girl, beautiful as only a beloved and loving woman can be. In sweetness and in pain there revived in her soul memories of that far-off night in the happy month of May and of that old sweet wrong-doing, now long past with her departed youth.
Many years had passed away and she had kept her secret. But to-day Agnes Rudolfovna felt that the time had come when she must speak out the dreadful words of a delayed confession.
She had wept much during the past night, and early this morning she had risen and written a letter and sent it off to Doctor Horn.
During the morning her old friend had sent her a bouquet of flowers and an answer to her letter,—a few words written in the firm even hand of a strong-souled man, and a scrap of crimson ribbon.
And now the old lady sat by the side of her aged husband on the seat overlooking the steep cliff, looking out on to the bright greenness, on the blue of the heavens and the sea, listening to the beating of her fainting heart and preparing herself to speak. But she couldn't make up her mind to begin.
IV
A tall thin elderly gentleman in a shabby grey coat and faded grey felt hat came along, crunching the gravel of the path under his feet, and stood near the professor. He looked at the musicians and the dancers, screwing up his grey eyes to see them better. There was an expression of astonishment on his dry, nervous face.
"Pardon me," he said at last, raising his hat, "but what is this? What band is it?"
Professor Roggenfeldt turned his calm blue eyes on the unexpected visitor and answered with a bow of acknowledgment:
"Oh, that is the local peasant band. The villagers form their own band and they play if one invites them. Once every summer they give a concert in that field and take a collection from the audience, and with the money they buy music and pay their expenses. But the visitors here don't often hire the band and they don't get much money at their annual concert. And yet they keep up their band from year to year, and it's a wonderfully good one for a country place."
"The villagers are very musical and have some education," said Madame Roggenfeldt. "They've even got their own theatre where the young people produce classical pieces quite passably."
"Thanks very much," replied the stranger. "But don't you think they play very strangely?"
Agnes Rudolfovna blushed slightly, smiled a little, and said quietly:
"No, I don't find it strange."
"Nor I either," said her husband.
"But," insisted the stranger, "don't you think that these people are just like wooden dolls and that they play without understanding the music just as in all probability they don't understand anything of their beautiful surroundings?"
Agnes Rudolfovna shook her head as she answered:
"If they didn't understand the music they couldn't play so well."
"No," said the old professor, "their lack of understanding would be bound to show itself in their playing. And I think, or rather I am convinced, that they don't make any mistakes. At least my ear doesn't distinguish any false notes, and though I can't call myself a musician I understand something about music and I play a little myself."
Agnes Rudolfovna looked tenderly at her husband.
"Edward plays excellently, "said she. "He has a good touch and an irreproachable ear."
Professor Roggenfeldt kissed his wife's hand and said:
"Well, well, we won't exaggerate. But they certainly play very accurately."
"Accurately!" exclaimed the stranger. "It would be better if they made mistakes and confused the time, if only they didn't play so soullessly. Don't you think it would be better if these people didn't play at all? Just look at them—isn't it dreadful to watch their wooden movements? The dancers are obliged to move stiffly and the children are as immovable as in a trance. Look, isn't it as if some cruel devil had changed human beings into marionettes!"
Professor Roggenfeldt looked at the stranger in some perplexity, and then looking again at the musicians he said:
"I think you exaggerate a little. Of course it's not a first-class band, and Nikish is not there to conduct, but I don't think they deserve such a cruel attack."
The stranger seemed a little confused.
"No, that's true," said he. "I was exaggerating. Please forgive me. You are quite right. But it's dreadful to look upon these good devils. I must go away from such a sight."
He raised his hat again, and, walking off quickly in the direction from which he had come, was soon out of sight.
V
The old couple looked at one another and both smiled.
"What a strange person!" said the professor."
"Yes, very strange," agreed his wife. "He expects far too much from these simple peasants. They can only do what is in their power and give what they are able to give."
"No, they can't give more," said the professor.
They were silent and looked once more at the dancers. At length Professor Roggenfeldt said:
"It's true they play without any vivacity. And the young people dance very languidly to their music. If you remember, Agnes, we used not to dance like that. The poet is right indeed when he says that the world is growing wiser, but colder."
Agnes smiled but did not reply. Her delicate youthful-looking face was again suffused with a slight blush.
Presently there came an interval between two dances. The lame conductor talked to the dancers, and a ringing voice was heard:
"A mazurka, a mazurka, please."
Agnes turned to her husband, and in a strangely agitated way began to speak.
"Edward," said she, "I used to think, or rather I used to feel, in the same way as this strange gentleman. Yes, in just the same way, and I even more than he. The measured beat of life bored me and I did what he advocates. I made a daring, but a false, note."
The old professor shook his fine grey head and smiled as he said gently:
"No, Agnes, you have played your part well. Your partner has never been put out of tune through your mistakes."
But the old lady showed still greater agitation. She nearly wept as she said:
"No, no, Edward, you don't know. I have been silent for a long time, but to-day I have resolved to tell you all. And that's the reason why Doctor Horn hasn't come."
And still trembling, and with difficulty keeping back her tears, the old lady began hurriedly to tell the story of what had happened to her so many years before, on one clear and perfumed night of May, when she had deceived her husband and allowed his friend Bernard Horn to make love to her.
VI
"It was in the third year of our married life," said Agnes. "We lived here during the first summer, and there were few other visitors, so it was sometimes difficult to get provisions. But because our young friend Bernard Horn—he wasn't a doctor then—often went into the town, he used to get things for us as well as for himself. You were indoors a good deal, for you were very busy then, finishing your thesis for your doctor's degree. In the evenings, when it didn't rain, we used to go for walks, and our young friend Bernard often accompanied us. One evening at the end of May you didn't want to go as usual. You were so much interested in an article in a magazine which had come that day from Brussels that we couldn't tear you away from it, and we went off by ourselves, laughing and chattering together."
"Yes, yes," said Edward Roggenfeldt quietly. "The author had so mixed his true judgments with paradoxes that even now I haven't forgotten the article. I sat over it a long time, looked up some points in several other books, and then in consequence wrote three superfluous pages of my thesis. Superfluous, that is, in comparison with my original idea, but as I think not entirely superfluous in essence."
He was silent for a few moments and then went on:
"However, half an hour after your departure I came after you. I remember it was a lovely evening. I wanted to think over some matter, and I walked along the shore where the sea made scarcely a splash on the sand. But afterwards I returned and sat down to my books again."
"Bernard and I walked to the West Cape," continued Agnes. "The sunset that night was wonderful. I don't think ever before or since have I seen such a magnificent sky, such a sea, and such clouds. Everything in front of us was flaming, all the shore was suffused with crimson as if blushing with happiness, the air was so clear, so calm, so full of rosy colour that one wanted to weep and to laugh at the same time. It was as if a pure golden light had dissolved in tears and blood, and the soul was full of rapture and sorrow. Oh, I cannot say how I felt then. I think I didn't know then what was happening to me. Some unknown force overpowered me, and I felt unable to withstand it. It was as if a curtain had been lifted from my life, as if the triumphant light of this heavenly glow had suddenly illumined in a clear light before me something which I had never noticed before—and I suddenly understood that Bernard Horn was in love with me."
Edward Roggenfeldt stroked his wife's hand tenderly as he said in a caressing tone:
"He fell in love with you the first time he saw you."
Agnes was beginning to conquer her agitation, and her voice rang out clearly and young as she continued:
"I looked at him. I knew that I was doing wrong, but I knew that in that moment I was happy. Never for one moment, dear Edward, did I love you less. But some one powerful and insidious seemed to whisper to me that the soul of man is broad and high, that the soul of man is greater than the world, and that love knows neither bounds nor measure.
"I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember where we went. It was already beginning to get dark, for we had gone into the forest, and the midnight glow came faintly through the trees. I listened to the voice of love. I kissed Bernard Horn. I lay submissively in his arms and responded to his caresses with passionate embraces, and I laughed and wept. I laughed as I haven't known how to laugh for a long time; I wept as I weep now."
The tears trickled gently down her cheeks. Edward Roggenfeldt put his arms about her and soothed her, saying:
"Don't weep. Don't weep, my dear Agnes. You have been a faithful wife to me."
And she, weeping bitterly, restraining her tears no longer, continued:
"I was false to you, my dear one, on that passionate, that beautiful night. I lost my senses, and what I did then seemed neither dreadful nor shameful. I leant on Bernard's arm as we walked home from the forest, and I listened to him and talked to him and was not ashamed nor fearful. When we parted near our house I gave him the crimson ribbon I wore for a memory. And he has kept it all these years."
VII
Agnes was silent for a moment. Her eyes held a rapturous expression, and dilated as she gazed before her. Her face showed the remembrance of past happiness. Presently she went on:
"The next day I came to myself. I was overcome by shame and terror. I was utterly unlike myself all day. Bernard came as usual in the evening. He was thoughtful and confused. He looked me straight in the eyes and understood what I was feeling, and it grieved him. I seized a moment when we were alone together to say, 'Dear Bernard, we have done very wrong. I forgot my duty; I broke faith with my husband whom I love truly and devotedly. I don't know what happened to me,' I said to him, 'but when we were together yesterday I felt as if I loved you.'"
"You have always loved him, Agnes, since the first time you saw him," said her husband in a very quiet gentle tone.
Agnes trembled a little. She wanted to look up at her husband, but could not, and she went on hurriedly:
"'I am very sinful,' I said to Bernard Horn, 'because I love you both, my dear husband and you. This is a great sin in the sight of God and of men,' I said, 'a sin, because a wife ought to be faithful to her husband, and he to her. Dear Bernard,' said I to him, 'I shall always cherish the sweet memory of last night, but what happened then must never be repeated, and I must never again walk alone with you on this beautiful shore. And you, dear Bernard, must give me your word that you will never ask me what I cannot give you, and you won't expect kisses from me.' I wept as I spoke to him, like a little girl, and my heart was torn with grief and with a strange joy. I knew my sin, and my contrite heart trembled in my bosom. I repented, and in that moment I knew that He who had given me a heart to love and to be happy had forgiven me. Bernard looked lovingly at me, and I saw that he was touched to the depths of his soul. He kissed my hand and said, 'Don't take away the crimson ribbon from me, dear Agnes,' and I whispered back, 'Keep it,' and ran away to my own room. For a long time I wept there, and I wanted to weep endlessly. But I remembered that I must see after the supper, and I came downstairs, after carefully bathing my swollen eyelids in cold water."
Agnes was silent, and with a timid imploring gaze looked up at her husband. The eyes of the old man glowed as radiantly as in his youth. He put his arm around his wife tenderly and said:
"I remember that day, dear Agnes. I remember it, because I knew all. I saw you and I understood everything."
"You knew!" exclaimed Agnes quietly. "You knew, and said nothing to me!"
"I knew," said Professor Roggenfeldt, "that you said nothing to me about the matter for fear of hurting me. I trusted you; I knew you were loyal to me; and if you did sin against me then I forgave you before you realised that it was a sin. Like this old gentleman who was here just now, I was ready to forgive deviation from rhythm, and even a mistake in the playing, if only the playing were not without soul. But you have always warmed and enlightened my life. You have not been like these mechanical musicians who have learned by heart their parts, which never express their souls. I have been happy with you, because you have given me the rapture of love."
"My dear one, my beloved," said she, touched by his words, "I knew that you had a great and a beautiful soul. It's true, I didn't want to grieve you. But now that so many years have passed, and we have not much longer to live in this beautiful world, I resolved at last to tell you all. This morning I wrote to Doctor Horn, and at my request he sent me back the crimson ribbon. I put it on your writing-table after lunch, before we came out here. It is yours."
"No, no," answered Edward with animation. "Our dear friend. Doctor Bernard Horn, must keep it. He has done us much service, and he was with you in that fateful moment when your heart was surcharged with an unreasonable, immeasurable love. He held a cup of sweet wine to your thirsty lips, and may God bless him for this as I bless him for it. But now, Agnes, dry your tears and send at once to Bernard. He must come to-day and bring his violin, and we again …"
VIII
By this time the music below had come to an end. The young folks, laughing and talking noisily together, were climbing upwards along the sloping road that wound along the steep cliff.
Edward and Agnes walked slowly homeward. There was a sweet delicate fragrance of eglantine in the air, pale peonies fluttered their rosy double petals, the first poppies crimsoned and flamed on the long beds under the windows. Over the straggling dark green of the wild vine on the terrace was borne the fragrance of stocks. Wonderful tuberoses dreamed unceasingly, exhaling an infinite fragrance of happiness immeasurable and of love without end.
On the threshold of their home Edward Roggenfeldt paused for a moment and said:
"Yes, he is right. These wooden musicians are terrible. I'm glad we can't hear them playing any longer. But you and I, Agnes, have not played our part in life without inspiration!"