The Princess Sonia

As Sonia got out of her carriage before the house in the Place de la Madeleine, and mounted the steps with her maid, her heart was beating violently, but she had never been stronger in the sense of complete self-possession. She knew that a difficult ordeal was before her, but she had no fear that her spirit would falter. It was only necessary for her to remember her former weakness, and how she had paled and cowered before Harold, to make her securer in her defiant resolution with every pulse-beat.

At the door of the apartment she dismissed her maid, and, dropping the train of her heavy dress, swept into the little ante-chamber, regally tall and self-collected, to the admiration of the servants, who thought her every inch a princess.

A door opposite opened, and Martha appeared in a pretty evening gown and led her friend into the salon.

Near the table, holding the “Figaro” in his hands, and bending his eyes upon its columns, sat Harold. His severe evening dress, his grave, dark face, with its close-trimmed, pointed beard, and his straight, smooth hair, with its definite part, all spoke of composure, deliberation, and repose.

He rose to his feet, laid down the paper, and stood in his place, waiting. His sister’s guest had taken off her lace hood and thrown open her cloak, between the parted folds of which appeared a rich evening dress. She came forward, moving lightly in her heavy garments, and when Martha, with a fluttering heart, which made her manner somewhat excited and confused, said, looking from one to the other, “My brother, Mr. Keene—the Princess Mannernorff,” she looked him full in the face with what Martha thought a rather haughty look, and gave him a somewhat ceremonious bow.

Harold met her gaze with unflinching eyes, and bowed in his turn with an air which Martha thought unnecessarily formal and distant. After all she had said to each about the other, it disappointed her that their meeting should be so absolutely without cordiality. She asked her friend if she would come into her room to lay aside her wraps; but the latter declined, and threw her cloak and hood upon a chair before Harold had time to offer his assistance.

She was dressed in a plain gown of thick yellow satin, with trimmings of brown fur and creamy lace. A diamond arrow pierced the mass of her rich brown hair, and a great clasp of many-colored jewels in an antique setting held the folds of her gown at the waist. She wore no other ornaments, and her beautiful arms and hands were without bracelets or rings. She did not seat herself, but opened a fan, and stood waving it softly as she looked down at Martha from her greater height. The introduction had, of course, been in French, and the conversation continued in that language.

In strong contrast to her glowing brilliancy of color Harold was very pale as he stood with his shoulders braced against the mantel, and talked to her. He was, however, quite as collected as she.

Presently she began to wonder dimly if he were not more so; for underneath her assured calm of manner there was a wild excitement of which she was intensely aware, and all the force of her will was set upon the effort of concealing it from her companions.

She did not wish Martha to know that she was excited; and to have this quiet man in front of her get even a suspicion that she was not fully as composed as he appeared to be, was a thought that she could not endure.

She began to talk about the atelier where she and Martha had met and made friends, and she gave an amusing description of her first encounter with Etienne when she had gone there to enter her name as a pupil.

“It was my first venture into the Bohemia of the Latin Quarter,” she said; “and I felt brave, but self-protective, when I reached the place and went in, with my maid, to investigate. The cloak-room was empty, and when I got to the atelier, and walked around the great piece of sail-cloth which turned its dirty and undecorated side toward me, I saw a fat little old man, in carpet slippers, and a dirty, besmeared linen blouse, and black skull-cap, washing brushes in some soft soap contained in an old lobster-can. ‘I wish to see M. Etienne,’ I said rather haughtily; and to my great indignation he answered, still dabbing and flattening out his brushes in their lather of soap, ‘What do you want with him?’ My maid quite jumped with fright, and I, wishing to show my courage, said severely, ‘That is what does not concern you.’ Instead of showing the self-abasement which I thought my rebuke merited, he said amiably, still rubbing his brushes round and round: ‘But yes, it does; for I’m the man you are looking for. What will you have?’ I was so honestly discomfited that he kindly came to the rescue, and, overlooking my blunder, began to talk business. I have heard since that the mistake which I made had been so frequently made before that I suppose he scarcely noticed it.”

As she ceased speaking, the readiness with which Martha took advantage of the pause to move toward the dining-room suddenly made her aware that dinner must have been announced,—how long ago she could not tell,—and that her garrulous speech and gesticulation had prevented her from hearing it. Her back was toward the door; but how excited she must have been, and appeared, not to have been aware of the announcement! Her face flushed, and she bit her lip with vexation.

Martha looked at her brother, supposing that he would offer his arm to their guest. Instead of doing so, however, he merely stood aside and waited for the two ladies to go into the dining-room before him. In doing this, Sonia passed very near him; and with a feeling of defiance in her breast she looked straight at him.

He did not meet her gaze, however; for his own eyes were gravely lowered and hid behind a pair of heavy lids, the curves and lashes of which were startlingly familiar to her.

In the lull which the formalities of the moment occasioned, it was painfully borne in on Sonia that she had been too talkative. Her recent rapid speech smote annoyingly on her ears; and when she recalled the fact that she had done all the talking, and must have made an appearance of almost vulgar chattiness, she felt humiliated and indignant. Was she exposing her inward excitement to this quiet man, who was now giving some low-toned instructions to the butler with a self-possession which she suddenly envied? Feeling hurt and angry, she fell into utter silence.

A constraint had fallen upon the party which was even more marked than that which

“SONIA PASSED VERY NEAR HIM.”

usually characterizes the first moments at a formal table. Sonia felt that she would bite her tongue in two before she would speak again, and Martha had a helpless sense that things were somehow going wrong. It was Harold who broke the silence.

“Martha,” he said, “the princess will say, perhaps, what wine she prefers.”

Sonia felt as if she hated him. He knew all her little aversions and preferences as well as she knew them herself, and had ordered her dinners and wines times out of number. How could he pretend that he had never seen her before, with so much success as almost to impose upon herself? Was it really a dream? Which was the dream, the past or the present? How could he seem to be so indifferent, unless he really felt so? Perhaps he was. That might be the simple explanation of what seemed mysterious.

As these thoughts hurried through her mind while she made a pretense of eating her soup, it suddenly occurred to her that her present complete silence might look as odd as her former garrulousness. Harold, while eating his dinner with apparent relish, was doing all the talking now, but with how different a manner from hers! How quiet he was, and what well-bred pauses interspersed his talk, and how agreeably he deferred to Martha and herself, and brought them into it! She had come to this dinner with the proudest confidence of being able to conform the conditions about her absolutely to her will, and yet, in spite of herself, she seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper every moment into the slough of regret and self-reproach which she had come here to get out of.

As the meal proceeded, her self-dissatisfaction increased, and presently, with a feeling almost of panic, she realized that her conduct must be so peculiar as to cause surprise to Martha, if not to her brother. What interpretation would be put upon the sudden dumbness that possessed her? A very obvious one occurred to her, which it filled her with anger to think of, and she felt she must talk, must recover herself, must do away with the impression of her present stupidity.

Martha, groping about for an agreeable topic, had mentioned the young bridal couple, and a telegram which she had just received from them, and that led her to some remarks about the wedding.

“Oh, it was a beautiful wedding—I was there!” said Sonia, in a breathless endeavor to come naturally into the talk.

As she spoke she met Harold’s eyes, and thought that she discovered just a shade of surprise in them. He only bowed, however, in assent to her rather demonstrative expression of praise. Sonia felt at once that her attendance at any wedding, particularly that one, was a thing that grated on him. His presence there was, of course, a necessity; but the odious taste of her going, out of pure curiosity, as it would appear to him, to see this marriage, must add one more item to the evidence which was rolling up against her. She was experiencing what was new to her—a sensation of total inadequacy to the social demands of her surroundings.

“Harold, do you think you can possibly stay for the opening of the Salon?” said Martha, presently, in another effort to make the conversation go. This was a topic which she thought Sonia should be interested in. Apparently she was right.

“I’m going to exhibit a picture,” said Sonia, quickly.

Sonia had thought only of recovering herself by talking naturally, and this speech, as well as the last one, she regretted bitterly the moment she had uttered it. Not only did it seem in bad taste to speak of her exhibiting, when Martha was so far removed from such an honor, but it might also make the impression that she thought that the fact might be an inducement for him to stay for the Salon. It was maddening to have him look at her again with polite interest, and express his congratulations upon a fact of which she now felt heartily ashamed. How he must despise her! What should she do?

“I wonder,” said Martha, at this point, in her clear, low voice, “if Harold has ever seen that striking picture that hangs in your room, Sonia. It is Watts’s ‘Hope,’ Harold. Do you know it?”

Harold answered that he did not, and Sonia’s sense of helpless misery increased as she perceived that Martha was going to describe it. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out as Martha proceeded to give the following description:

“It is a woman’s figure lying on the globe in an attitude of fatigue and dejection. The scantily draped form is beautiful, but not youthful-looking, and the face, partly concealed by a bandage over the eyes, is also beautiful, but lined with care and sorrow. In her hands she holds an old lyre with every string broken except one. This one string, frayed and worn and lax, she is striking with her thin, weak fingers, and she is bending her dulled ears to try to catch the note. When Sonia first showed it to me, and said that it was one of her favorite pictures, I did not understand it. We have all been taught at Etienne’s such a fine contempt for English art that I was disposed to treat it lightly. I soon saw, however, the wonderful, tragic meaning in the picture, and I quite long to see the original.”

This was too much. Sonia felt that if anything else occurred to hold her up to contempt in this man’s eyes, she should give up, and burst into tears. Her courage was fast oozing to the last ebb; and with a feeling of actual desperation she looked involuntarily into the face of her opposite neighbor, and met his eyes fixed on her with a strong gaze that in an instant supported and calmed her. She did not quite read its meaning, but she felt that there was kindness for her in it, and that there was no contempt. A look from him had given her courage many a time in the past, and it was availing now. She felt suddenly self-possessed and strong; but the remainder of the meal was a confused blur in her memory, and she was devoutly thankful when her maid came to fetch her home.

Martha thought it a little strange that her brother did not go down to put their guest into her carriage; but she reflected that he was far more familiar with the rules of foreign society than she was, and she concluded that he must be acting in accordance with them.

Clyx.com