Pauline Pavlovna

The Sisters' Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

SCENE: St. Petersburg. Period: the present time. A ballroom in
the
        winter palace of the Prince--.
The ladies in character costumes and
       
masks. The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the

        exception of six tall figures in scarlet
kaftans, who are treated with
        marked
distinction as they move here and there among the
   
    promenaders. Quadrille music throughout the
dialogue.
Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just

        arrived, is standing anxiously in the
doorway of an antechamber
        with his
eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor
 
      in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently
disengages herself
        from the crowd,
and passes near Count PANSHINE, who
       
impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the
threshold
        of the inner apartment,
which is unoccupied.

HE.

Pauline!

SHE.

You knew me?

HE.

How could I have failed?
A mask may hide your features, not
your soul.
There is an air about you like the air
That folds
a star. A blind man knows the night,
And feels the
constellations. No coarse sense
Of eye or ear had made you plain
to me.
Through these I had not found you; for your eyes,
As
blue as violets of our Novgorod,
Look black behind your mask
there, and your voice--
I had not known that either. My heart
said,
"Pauline Pavlovna."

SHE.

Ah! Your heart said that?
You trust your heart, then! 'Tis
a serious risk!--
How is it you and others wear no mask?

HE.

The Emperor's orders.

SHE.

Is the Emperor here?
I have not seen him.

HE.

He is one of the six
In scarlet kaftans and all masked
alike.
Watch--you will note how every one bows down
Before
those figures, thinking each by chance
May be the Tsar; yet none
knows which is he.
Even his counterparts are left in doubt.

Unhappy Russia! No serf ever wore
Such chains as gall our
Emperor these sad days.
He dare trust no man.

SHE.

All men are so false.

HE.

Spare one, Pauline Pavlovna.

SHE.

No; all, all!
I think there is no truth left in the
world,
In man or woman. Once were noble souls.--
Count
Sergius, is Nastasia here to-night?

HE.

Ah! then you know! I thought to tell you first.
Not here,
beneath these hundred curious eyes,
In all this glare of light;
but in some place
Where I could throw me at your feet and
weep.
In what shape came the story to your ear?
Decked in the
teller's colors, I'll be sworn;
The truth, but in the livery of a
lie,
And so must wrong me. Only this is true:
The Tsar,
because I risked my wretched life
To shield a life as wretched as
my own,
Bestows upon me, as supreme reward--
O irony!--the
hand of this poor girl.
Says, HERE, I HAVE THE PEARL OF PEARLS
FOR YOU,
SUCH AS WAS NEVER PLUCKED FROM OUT THE DEEP
BY
INDIAN DIVER, FOR A SULTAN'S CROWN.
YOUR JOY'S DECREED, and stabs
me with a smile.

SHE.

And she--she loves you?

HE.

I know not, indeed.
Likes me, perhaps. What matters
it?--HER love!
The guardian, Sidor Yurievich, consents,
And
she consents. No love in it at all,
A mere caprice, a young
girl's spring-tide dream.
Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her
mare,
She'll have a lover--something ready-made,
Or
improvised between two cups of tea--
A lover by imperial
ukase!
Fate said her word--I chanced to be the man!
If that
grenade the crazy student threw
Had not spared me, as well as
spared the Tsar,
All this would not have happened. I'd have
been
A hero, but quite safe from her romance.
She takes me
for a hero--think of that!
Now by our holy Lady of Kazan,

When I have finished pitying myself,
I'll pity her.

SHE.
Oh no; begin with her;
She needs it
most.

HE.

At her door lies the blame,
Whatever falls. She, with a
single word,
With half a tear, had stopt it at the first,

This cruel juggling with poor human hearts.

SHE.

The Tsar commanded it--you said the Tsar.

HE.

The Tsar does what she wills--God fathoms why.
Were she his
mistress, now! but there's no snow
Whiter within the bosom of a
cloud,
Nor colder either. She is very haughty,
For all her
fragile air of gentleness;
With something vital in her, like
those flowers
That on our desolate steppes outlast the year.

Resembles you in some things. It was that
First made us friends.
I do her justice, see!
For we were friends in that smooth
surface way
We Russians have imported out of France.
Alas!
from what a blue and tranquil heaven
This bolt fell on me! After
these two years,
My suit with Ossip Leminoff at end,
The old
wrong righted, the estates restored,
And my promotion, with the
ink not dry!
Those fairies which neglected me at birth
Seemed
now to lavish all good gifts on me--
Gold roubles, office, sudden
dearest friends.
The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to
taste
The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip.
This
very night--just think, this very night--
I planned to come and
beg of you the alms
I dared not ask for in my poverty.
I
thought me poor then. How stript am I now!
There's not a ragged
mendicant one meets
Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave

To tell his love, and I have not that right!
Pauline Pavlovna,
why do you stand there
Stark as a statue, with no word to say?

SHE.

Because this thing has frozen up my heart.
I think that
there is something killed in me,
A dream that would have mocked
all other bliss.
What shall I say? What would you have me
say?

HE.

If it be possible, the word of words!

SHE, VERY SLOWLY.

Well, then--I love you. I may tell you so
This once, . . .
and then forever hold my peace.
We cannot stay here longer
unobserved.
No--do not touch me! but stand further off,
And
seem to laugh, as if we jested--eyes,
Eyes everywhere! Now turn
your face away . . .
I love you.

HE.

With such music in my ears
I would death found me. It were
sweet to die
Listening! You love me--prove it.

SHE.

Prove it--how?
I prove it saying it. How else?

HE.

Pauline,
I have three things to choose from; you shall
choose:
This marriage, or Siberia, or France.
The first means
hell; the second, purgatory;
The third--with you--were nothing
less than heaven!

SHE, STARTING.

How dared you even dream it!

HE.

I was mad.
This business has touched me in the brain.

Have patience! the calamity's so new.
(Pauses.)
There is a
fourth way; but that gate is shut
To brave men who hold life a
thing of God.

SHE.

Yourself spoke there; the rest was not of you.

HE.

Oh, lift me to your level! So I'm safe.
What's to be
done?

SHE.

There must be some path out.
Perhaps the Emperor--

HE.

Not a ray of hope!
His mind is set on this with that
insistence
Which seems to seize on all match-making folk.
The
fancy bites them, and they straight go mad.

SHE.

Your father's friend, the Metropolitan--
A word from him . .
.

HE.

Alas, he too is bitten!
Gray-haired, gray-hearted, worldly
wise, he sees
This marriage makes me the Tsar's protege,
And
opens every door to preference.

SHE.

Think while I think. There surely is some key
Unlocks the
labyrinth, could we but find it.
Nastasia!

HE.

What! beg life of her? Not I.

SHE.

Beg love. She is a woman, young, perhaps
Untouched as yet
of this too poisonous air.
Were she told all, would she not pity
us?
For if she love you, as I think she must,
Would not some
generous impulse stir in her,
Some latent, unsuspected spark
illume?
How love thrills even commonest girl-clay,
Ennobling
it an instant, if no more!
You said that she is proud; then touch
her pride,
And turn her into marble with the touch.
But yet
the gentler passion is the stronger.
Go to her, tell her, in some
tenderest phrase
That will not hurt too much--ah, but 'twill
hurt!--
Just how your happiness lies in her hand
To make or
mar for all time; hint, not say,
Your heart is gone from you, and
you may find--

HE.

A casemate in St. Peter and St. Paul
For, say, a month; then
some Siberian town.
Not this way lies escape. At my first
word
That sluggish Tartar blood would turn to fire
In every
vein.

SHE.

How blindly you read her,
Or any woman! Yes, I know. I
grant
How small we often seem in our small world
Of trivial
cares and narrow precedents--
Lacking that wide horizon stretched
for men--
Capricious, spiteful, frightened at a mouse;
But
when it comes to suffering mortal pangs,
The weakest of us
measures pulse with you.

HE.

Yes, you, not she. If she were at your height!
But there's
no martyr wrapt in HER rose flesh.
There should have been; for
Nature gave you both
The self-same purple for your eyes and
hair,
The self-same Southern music to your lips,
Fashioned
you both, as 'twere, in the same mould,
Yet failed to put the
soul in one of you!
I know her wilful--her light head quite
turned
In this court atmosphere of flatteries;
A Moscow
beauty, petted and spoiled there,
And since spoiled here; as soft
as swan's down now,
With words like honey melting from the
comb,
But being crossed, vindictive, cruel, cold.
I fancy
her, between two rosy smiles,
Saying, "Poor fellow, in the
Nertchinsk mines!"
That is the sum of her.

SHE.

You know her not.
Count Sergius Pavlovich, you said no
mask
Could hide the soul, yet how you have mistaken
The soul
these two months--and the face to-night!
     
          [Removes her mask.]

HE.

You!--it was YOU!

SHE.

Count Sergius Pavlovich,
Go find Pauline Pavlovna--she is
here--
And tell her that the Tsar has set you free.
 
              [She goes out
hurriedly, replacing her mask.]