ON THE EVE
A Novel
By Ivan Turgenev
Translated from the Russian By Constance Garnett
[With an introduction by Edward Garnett]
London: William Heinemann 1895
CONTENTS
[ INTRODUCTION ]
[ THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK ]
INTRODUCTION
This exquisite novel, first published in 1859, like so many great works of art, holds depths of meaning which at first sight lie veiled under the simplicity and harmony of the technique. To the English reader On the Eve is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian household, with a delicate analysis of a young girl’s soul; but to Russians it is also a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia of the fifties.
Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of the novel. In comparing her with Turgenev’s other women, the reader will remark that he is allowed to come into closer spiritual contact with her than even with Lisa. The successful portraits of women drawn by men in fiction are generally figures for the imagination to play on; however much that is told to one about them, the secret springs of their character are left a little obscure, but when Elena stands before us we know all the innermost secrets of her character. Her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her, all this is conveyed to us by the simplest and the most consummate art. The diary (chapter xvi.) that Elena keeps is in itself a masterly revelation of a young girl’s heart; it has never been equalled by any other novelist. How exquisitely Turgenev reveals his characters may be seen by an examination of the parts Shubin the artist, and Bersenyev the student, play towards Elena. Both young men are in love with her, and the description of their after relations as friends, and the feelings of Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneath the common-place of daily life. In the difficult art of literary perspective, in the effective grouping of contrasts in character and the criss-cross of the influence of the different individuals, lies the secret of Turgenev’s supremacy. As an example the reader may note how he is made to judge Elena through six pairs of eyes. Her father’s contempt for his daughter, her mother’s affectionate bewilderment, Shubin’s petulant criticism, Bersenyev’s half hearted enthralment, Insarov’s recognition, and Zoya’s indifference, being the facets for converging light on Elena’s sincerity and depth of soul. Again one may note Turgenev’s method for rehabilitating Shubin in our eyes; Shubin is simply made to criticise Stahov; the thing is done in a few seemingly careless lines, but these lines lay bare Shubin’s strength and weakness, the fluidity of his nature. The reader who does not see the art which underlies almost every line of On the Eve is merely paying the highest tribute to that art; as often the clear waters of a pool conceal its surprising depth. Taking Shubin’s character as an example of creative skill, we cannot call to mind any instance in the range of European fiction where the typical artist mind, on its lighter sides, has been analysed with such delicacy and truth as here by Turgenev. Hawthorne and others have treated it, but the colour seems to fade from their artist characters when a comparison is made between them and Shubin. And yet Turgenev’s is but a sketch of an artist, compared with, let us say, the admirable figure of Roderick Hudson. The irresponsibility, alertness, the whimsicality and mobility of Shubin combine to charm and irritate the reader in the exact proportion that such a character affects him in actual life; there is not the least touch of exaggeration, and all the values are kept to a marvel. Looking at the minor characters, perhaps one may say that the husband, Stahov, will be the most suggestive, and not the least familiar character, to English households. His essentially masculine meanness, his self-complacency, his unconscious indifference to the opinion of others, his absurdity as ‘un père de famille’ is balanced by the foolish affection and jealousy which his wife, Anna Vassilyevna, cannot help feeling towards him. The perfect balance and duality of Turgenev’s outlook is here shown by the equal cleverness with which he seizes on and quietly derides the typical masculine and typical feminine attitude in such a married life as the two Stahovs’.
Turning to the figure of the Bulgarian hero, it is interesting to find from the Souvenirs sur Tourguénev (published in 1887) that Turgenev’s only distinct failure of importance in character drawing, Insarov, was not taken from life, but was the legacy of a friend Karateieff, who implored Turgenev to work out an unfinished conception. Insarov is a figure of wood. He is so cleverly constructed, and the central idea behind him is so strong, that his wooden joints move naturally, and the spectator has only the instinct, not the certainty, of being cheated. The idea he incarnates, that of a man whose soul is aflame with patriotism, is finely suggested, but an idea, even a great one, does not make an individuality. And in fact Insarov is not a man, he is an automaton. To compare Shubin’s utterances with his is to perceive that there is no spontaneity, no inevitability in Insarov. He is a patriotic clock wound up to go for the occasion, and in truth he is very useful. Only on his deathbed, when the unexpected happens, and the machinery runs down, do we feel moved. Then, he appears more striking dead than alive—a rather damning testimony to the power Turgenev credits him with. This artistic failure of Turgenev’s is, as he no doubt recognised, curiously lessened by the fact that young girls of Elena’s lofty idealistic type are particularly impressed by certain stiff types of men of action and great will-power, whose capacity for moving straight towards a certain goal by no means implies corresponding brain-power. The insight of a Shubin and the moral worth of a Bersenyev are not so valuable to the Elenas of this world, whose ardent desire to be made good use of, and to seek some great end, is best developed by strength of aim in the men they love.
And now to see what the novel before us means to the Russian mind, we must turn to the infinitely suggestive background. Turgenev’s genius was of the same force in politics as in art; it was that of seeing aright. He saw his country as it was, with clearer eyes than any man before or since. If Tolstoi is a purer native expression of Russia’s force, Turgenev is the personification of Russian aspiration working with the instruments of wide cosmopolitan culture. As a critic of his countrymen nothing escaped Turgenev’s eye, as a politician he foretold nearly all that actually came to pass in his life, and as a consummate artist, led first and foremost by his love for his art, his novels are undying historical pictures. It is not that there is anything allegorical in his novels—allegory is at the furthest pole from his method: it is that whenever he created an important figure in fiction, that figure is necessarily a revelation of the secrets of the fatherland, the soil, the race. Turgenev, in short, was a psychologist not merely of men, but of nations; and so the chief figure of On the Eve, Elena, foreshadows and stands for the rise of young Russia in the sixties. Elena is young Russia, and to whom does she turn in her prayer for strength? Not to Bersenyev, the philosopher, the dreamer; not to Shubin, the man carried outside himself by every passing distraction; but to the strong man, Insarov. And here the irony of Insarov being made a foreigner, a Bulgarian, is significant of Turgenev’s distrust of his country’s weakness. The hidden meaning of the novel is a cry to the coming men to unite their strength against the foe without and the foe within the gates; it is an appeal to them not only to hasten the death of the old regime of Nicolas I, but an appeal to them to conquer their sluggishness, their weakness, and their apathy. It is a cry for Men. Turgenev sought in vain in life for a type of man to satisfy Russia, and ended by taking no living model for his hero, but the hearsay Insarov, a foreigner. Russia has not yet produced men of this type. But the artist does not despair of the future. Here we come upon one of the most striking figures of Turgenev—that of Uvar Ivanovitch. He symbolises the ever-predominant type of Russian, the sleepy, slothful Slav of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow. He is the Slav whose inherent force Europe is as ignorant of as he is himself. Though he speaks only twenty sentences in the book he is a creation of Tolstoian force. His very words are dark and of practically no significance. There lies the irony of the portrait. The last words of the novel, the most biting surely that Turgenev ever wrote, contain the whole essence of On the Eve. On the Eve of What? one asks. Time has given contradictory answers to the men of all parties. The Elenas of to-day need not turn their eyes abroad to find their counterpart in spirit; so far at least the pessimists are refuted: but the note of death that Turgenev strikes in his marvellous chapter on Venice has still for young Russia an ominous echo—so many generations have arisen eager, only to be flung aside helpless, that one asks, what of the generation that fronts Autocracy to-day?
‘Do you remember I asked you, “Will there ever be men among us?” and you answered, “there will be. O primaeval force!” And now from here in “my poetic distance”, I will ask you again, “What do you say, Uvar Ivanovitch, will there be?”’
‘Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers, and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance.’
This creation of an universal national type, out of the flesh and blood of a fat taciturn country gentleman, brings us to see that Turgenev was not merely an artist, but that he was a poet using fiction as his medium. To this end it is instructive to compare Jane Austen, perhaps the greatest English exponent of the domestic novel, with the Russian master, and to note that, while as a novelist she emerges favourably from the comparison, she is absolutely wanting in his poetic insight. How petty and parochial appears her outlook in Emma, compared to the wide and unflinching gaze of Turgenev. She painted most admirably the English types she knew, and how well she knew them! but she failed to correlate them with the national life; and yet, while her men and women were acting and thinking, Trafalgar and Waterloo were being fought and won. But each of Turgenev’s novels in some subtle way suggests that the people he introduces are playing their little part in a great national drama everywhere around us, invisible, yet audible through the clamour of voices near us. And so On the Eve, the work of a poet, has certain deep notes, which break through the harmonious tenor of the whole, and strangely and swiftly transfigure the quiet story, troubling us with a dawning consciousness of the march of mighty events. Suddenly a strange sense steals upon the reader that he is living in a perilous atmosphere, filling his heart with foreboding, and enveloping at length the characters themselves, all unconsciously awaiting disaster in the sunny woods and gardens of Kuntsovo. But not till the last chapters are reached does the English reader perceive that in recreating for him the mental atmosphere of a single educated Russian household, Turgenev has been casting before his eyes the faint shadow of the national drama which was indeed played, though left unfinished, on the Balkan battlefields of 1876-7. Briefly, Turgenev, in sketching the dawn of love in a young girl’s soul, has managed faintly, but unmistakably, to make spring and flourish in our minds the ineradicable, though hidden, idea at the back of Slav thought—the unification of the Slav races. How doubly welcome that art should be which can lead us, the foreigners, thus straight to the heart of the national secrets of a great people, secrets which our own critics and diplomatists must necessarily misrepresent. Each of Turgenev’s novels may be said to contain a light-bringing rejoinder to the old-fashioned criticism of the Muscovite, current up to the rise of the Russian novel, and still, unfortunately, lingering among us; but On the Eve, of all the novels, contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson England can learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England has been over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever baying at Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is useful to have these well-meaning animals on the political premises, giving noisy tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and opens his drowsy eyes, but how rare it is to find a man who can teach us to interpret a nation’s aspirations, to gauge its inner force, its aim, its inevitability. Turgenev gives us such clues. In the respectful, if slightly forced, silence that has been imposed by certain recent political events on the tribe of faithful watchdogs, it may be permitted to one to say, that whatever England’s interest may be in relation to Russia’s development, it is better for us to understand the force of Russian aims, before we measure our strength against it. And a novel, such as On the Eve, though now nearly forty years old, and to the short-sighted out of date, reveals in a flash the attitude of the Slav towards his political destiny. His aspirations may have to slumber through policy or necessity; they may be distorted or misrepresented, or led astray by official action, but we confess that for us, On the Eve suggests the existence of a mighty lake, whose waters, dammed back for a while, are rising slowly, but are still some way from the brim. How long will it take to the overflow? Nobody knows; but when the long winter of Russia’s dark internal policy shall be broken up, will the snows, melting on the mountains, stream south-west, inundating the Valley of the Danube? Or, as the national poet, Pushkin, has sung, will there be a pouring of many Slavonian rivulets into the Russian sea, a powerful attraction of the Slav races towards a common centre to create an era of peace and development within, whereby Russia may rise free and rejoicing to face her great destinies? Hard and bitter is the shaping of nations. Uvar Ivanovitch still fixes his enigmatical stare into the far distance.
EDWARD GARNETT
January 1895.
THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK
NIKOLÁI [Nicolas] ARTÉMYEVITCH STÁHOV.
ÁNNA VASSÍLYEVNA.
ELÉNA [LÉNOTCHKA, Hélène] NIKOLÁEVNA.
ZÓYA [Zoë] NIKÍTISHNA MÜLLER.
ANDRÉI PETRÓVITCH BERSÉNYEV.
PÁVEL [Paul] YÁKOVLITCH (or YÁKOVITCH) SHÚBIN.
DMÍTRI NIKANÓROVITCH (or NIKANÓRITCH) INSÁROV.
YEGÓR ANDRÉITCH KURNATÓVSKY.
UVÁR IVÁNOVITCH STÁHOV.
AUGUSTÍNA CHRISTIÁNOVNA.
ÁNNUSHKA.
In transcribing the Russian names into English—
a has the sound of a in father.
e a in pane.
i ee.
u oo.
y is always consonantal except when it is the last letter of the word.
g is always hard.
I
On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two young men were lying on the grass. One, who looked about twenty-three, tall and swarthy, with a sharp and rather crooked nose, a high forehead, and a restrained smile on his wide mouth, was lying on his back and gazing meditatively into the distance, his small grey eyes half closed. The other was lying on his chest, his curly, fair head propped on his two hands; he, too, was looking away into the distance. He was three years older than his companion, but seemed much younger. His moustache was only just growing, and his chin was covered with a light curly down. There was something childishly pretty, something attractively delicate, in the small features of his fresh round face, in his soft brown eyes, lovely pouting lips, and little white hands. Everything about him was suggestive of the happy light-heartedness of perfect health and youth—the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth. He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know that people look at them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat, made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a battered straw hat had been flung on the grass beside him.
His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one would have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy and enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large head—wide at the crown and narrower at the base—hung awkwardly on his long neck; awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his body, tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with their knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that, it was impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education; the whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and his face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a kindly nature and a thoughtful habit. His name was Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev; his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin.
‘Why don’t you lie on your face, like me?’ began Shubin. ‘It’s ever so much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them together—like this. You have the grass under your nose; when you’re sick of staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It’s really much nicer. But you’ve taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of paste-board. You should remember you have a perfect right to take a rest now. It’s no joking matter to come out third! Take your ease, sir; give up all exertion, and rest your weary limbs!’
Shubin delivered this speech through his nose in a half-lazy, half-joking voice (spoilt children speak so to friends of the house who bring them sweetmeats), and without waiting for an answer he went on:
‘What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance! A man the lord of creation, the highest being, stares at them, if you please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle on the lord of creation’s nose, and make use of him for food. It’s most offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours? And why shouldn’t they take themselves seriously, if we are to be allowed to take ourselves seriously? There now, philosopher, solve that problem for me! Why don’t you speak? Eh?’
‘What?’ said Bersenyev, starting.
‘What!’ repeated Shubin. ‘Your friend lays his deepest thoughts before you, and you don’t listen to him.’
‘I was admiring the view. Look how hot and bright those fields are in the sun.’ Bersenyev spoke with a slight lisp.
‘There’s some fine colour laid on there,’ observed Shubin. ‘Nature’s a good hand at it, that’s the fact!’
Bersenyev shook his head.
‘You ought to be even more ecstatic over it than I. It’s in your line: you’re an artist.’
‘No; it’s not in my line,’ rejoined Shubin, putting his hat on the back of his head. ‘Flesh is my line; my work’s with flesh—modelling flesh, shoulders, legs, and arms, and here there’s no form, no finish; it’s all over the place.... Catch it if you can.’
‘But there is beauty here, too,’ remarked Bersenyev.—‘By the way, have you finished your bas-relief?’
‘Which one?’
‘The boy with the goat.’
‘Hang it! Hang it! Hang it!’ cried Shubin, drawling—‘I looked at the genuine old things, the antiques, and I smashed my rubbish to pieces. You point to nature, and say “there’s beauty here, too.” Of course, there’s beauty in everything, even in your nose there’s beauty; but you can’t try after all kinds of beauty. The ancients, they didn’t try after it; beauty came down of itself upon their creations from somewhere or other—from heaven, I suppose. The whole world belonged to them; it’s not for us to be so large in our reach; our arms are short. We drop our hook into one little pool, and keep watch over it. If we get a bite, so much the better, if not——’
Shubin put out his tongue.
‘Stop, stop,’ said Bensenyev, ‘that’s a paradox. If you have no sympathy for beauty, if you do not love beauty wherever you meet it, it will not come to you even in your art. If a beautiful view, if beautiful music does not touch your heart; I mean, if you are not sympathetic——’
‘Ah, you are a confirmed sympathetic!’ broke in Shubin, laughing at the new title he had coined, while Bersenyev sank into thought.
‘No, my dear fellow,’ Shubin went on, ‘you’re a clever person, a philosopher, third graduate of the Moscow University; it’s dreadful arguing with you, especially for an ignoramus like me, but I tell you what; besides my art, the only beauty I love is in women... in girls, and even that’s recently.’
He turned over on to his back and clasped his hands behind his head.
A few instants passed by in silence. The hush of the noonday heat lay upon the drowsy, blazing fields.
‘Speaking of women,’ Shubin began again, ‘how is it no one looks after Stahov? Did you see him in Moscow?’
‘No.’
‘The old fellow’s gone clean off his head. He sits for whole days together at his Augustina Christianovna’s, he’s bored to death, but still he sits there. They gaze at one another so stupidly.... It’s positively disgusting to see them. Man’s a strange animal. A man with such a home; but no, he must have his Augustina Christianovna! I don’t know anything more repulsive than her face, just like a duck’s! The other day I modelled a caricature of her in the style of Dantan. It wasn’t half bad. I will show it you.’
‘And Elena Nikolaevna’s bust?’ inquired Bersenyev, ‘is it getting on?’
‘No, my dear boy, it’s not getting on. That face is enough to drive one to despair. The lines are pure, severe, correct; one would think there would be no difficulty in catching a likeness. It’s not as easy as one would think though. It’s like a treasure in a fairy-tale—you can’t get hold of it. Have you ever noticed how she listens? There’s not a single feature different, but the whole expression of the eyes is constantly changing, and with that the whole face changes. What is a sculptor—and a poor one too—to do with such a face? She’s a wonderful creature—a strange creature,’ he added after a brief pause.
‘Yes; she is a wonderful girl,’ Bersenyev repeated after him.
‘And she the daughter of Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov! And after that people talk about blood, about stock! The amusing part of it is that she really is his daughter, like him, as well as like her mother, Anna Vassilyevna. I respect Anna Vassilyevna from the depths of my heart, she’s been awfully good to me; but she’s no better than a hen. Where did Elena get that soul of hers? Who kindled that fire in her? There’s another problem for you, philosopher!’
But as before, the ‘philosopher’ made no reply. Bersenyev did not in general err on the side of talkativeness, and when he did speak, he expressed himself awkwardly, with hesitation, and unnecessary gesticulation. And at this time a kind of special stillness had fallen on his soul, a stillness akin to lassitude and melancholy. He had not long come from town after prolonged hard work, which had absorbed him for many hours every day. The inactivity, the softness and purity of the air, the consciousness of having attained his object, the whimsical and careless talk of his friend, and the image—so suddenly called up—of one dear to him, all these impressions different—yet at the same time in a way akin—were mingled in him into a single vague emotion, which at once soothed and excited him, and robbed him of his power. He was a very highly strung young man.
It was cool and peaceful under the lime-tree; the flies and bees seemed to hum more softly as they flitted within its circle of shade. The fresh fine grass, of purest emerald green, without a tinge of gold, did not quiver, the tall flower stalks stood motionless, as though enchanted. On the lower twigs of the lime-tree the little bunches of yellow flowers hung still as death. At every breath a sweet fragrance made its way to the very depths of the lungs, and eagerly the lungs inhaled it. Beyond the river in the distance, right up to the horizon, all was bright and glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields. No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday; but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of life; it disposed to slumber and inclined the heart to reveries.
‘Have you noticed,’ began Bersenyev, eking out his words with gesticulations, ‘what a strange feeling nature produces in us? Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else—I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?’
‘H’m,’ replied Shubin, ‘I’ll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. She will utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a harp string, but don’t expect a song from her. A living heart, now—that will give you your answer—especially a woman’s heart. So, my dear fellow, I advise you to get yourself some one to share your heart, and all your distressing sensations will vanish at once. “That’s what we need,” as you say. This agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of a kind. Give the stomach some real food, and everything will be right directly. Take your place in the landscape, live in the body, my dear boy. And after all, what is nature? what’s the use of it? Only hear the word, love—what an intense, glowing sound it has! Nature—what a cold, pedantic expression. And so’ (Shubin began humming), ‘my greetings to Marya Petrovna! or rather,’ he added, ‘not Marya Petrovna, but it’s all the same! Voo me compreny.’
Bersenyev got up and stood with his chin leaning on his clasped hands. ‘What is there to laugh at?’ he said, without looking at his companion, ‘why should you scoff? Yes, you are right: love is a grand word, a grand feeling.... But what sort of love do you mean?’
Shubin too, got up. ‘What sort? What you like, so long as it’s there. I will confess to you that I don’t believe in the existence of different kinds of love. If you are in love——’
‘With your whole heart,’ put in Bersenyev.
‘Well, of course, that’s an understood thing; the heart’s not an apple; you can’t divide it. If you’re in love, you’re justified. And I wasn’t thinking of scoffing. My heart’s as soft at this moment as if it had been melted.... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us you spoke of. It’s because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living embraces, but we don’t understand, and expect something from nature herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not your own isolated emotion, but her emotion—nature would not make you melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature’s beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she would be re-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given her—dumb nature—speech!’
Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
‘I don’t altogether agree with you,’ he began: ‘nature does not always urge us... towards love.’ (He could not at once pronounce the word.) ‘Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful... yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly as life.’
‘In love, too, there is both life and death,’ interposed Shubin.
‘And then,’ Bersenyev went on: ‘when I, for example, stand in the spring in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic notes of Oberon’s fairy horn’ (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he had spoken these words)—‘is that, too——’
‘The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!’ broke in Shubin. ‘I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the expectation which come upon the soul in the forest’s shade, in its deep recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields, and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness calling in everything. “God of my worship, bright and gay!” That was how I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it’s a splendid first line, but I could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!’ pursued Shubin with sudden vehemence, ‘we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will conquer happiness for ourselves!’
He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.
‘Is there nothing higher than happiness?’ he commented softly.
‘And what, for instance?’ asked Shubin, stopping short.
‘Why, for instance, you and I are, as you say, young; we are good men, let us suppose; each of us desires happiness for himself.... But is that word, happiness, one that could unite us, set us both on fire, and make us clasp each other’s hands? Isn’t that word an egoistic one; I mean, isn’t it a source of disunion?’
‘Do you know words, then, that unite men?’
‘Yes; and they are not few in number; and you know them, too.’
‘Eh? What words?’
‘Well, even Art—since you are an artist—Country, Science, Freedom, Justice.’
‘And what of love?’ asked Shubin.
‘Love, too, is a word that unites; but not the love you are eager for now; the love which is not enjoyment, the love which is self-sacrifice.’
Shubin frowned.
‘That’s all very well for Germans; I want to love for myself; I want to be first.’
‘To be first,’ repeated Bersenyev. ‘But it seems to me that to put one’s-self in the second place is the whole significance of our life.’
‘If all men were to act as you advise,’ commented Shubin with a plaintive expression, ‘none on earth would eat pine-apples; every one would be offering them to other people.’
‘That’s as much as to say, pine-apples are not necessary; but you need not be alarmed; there will always be plenty of people who like them enough to take the bread out of other men’s mouths to get them.’
Both friends were silent a little.
‘I met Insarov again the other day,’ began Bersenyev. ‘I invited him to stay with me; I really must introduce him to you—and to the Stahovs.’
‘Who is Insarov? Ah, to be sure, isn’t it that Servian or Bulgarian you were telling me about? The patriot? Now isn’t it he who’s at the bottom of all these philosophical ideas?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is he an exceptional individual?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever? Talented?’
‘Clever—talented—I don’t know, I don’t think so.’
‘Not? Then, what is there remarkable in him?’
‘You shall see. But now I think it’s time to be going. Anna Vassilyevna will be waiting for us, very likely. What’s the time?’
‘Three o’clock. Let us go. How baking it is! This conversation has set all my blood aflame. There was a moment when you, too, ... I am not an artist for nothing; I observe everything. Confess, you are interested in a woman?’
Shubin tried to get a look at Bersenyev’s face, but he turned away and walked out of the lime-tree’s shade. Shubin went after him, moving his little feet with easy grace. Bersenyev walked clumsily, with his shoulders high and his neck craned forward. Yet, he looked a man of finer breeding than Shubin; more of a gentleman, one might say, if that word had not been so vulgarised among us.
II
The young men went down to the river Moskva and walked along its bank. There was a breath of freshness from the water, and the soft plash of tiny waves caressed the ear.
‘I would have another bathe,’ said Shubin, ‘only I’m afraid of being late. Look at the river; it seems to beckon us. The ancient Greeks would have beheld a nymph in it. But we are not Greeks, O nymph! we are thick-skinned Scythians.’
‘We have roussalkas,’ observed Bersenyev.
‘Get along with your roussalkas! What’s the use to me—a sculptor—of those children of a cold, terror-stricken fancy, those shapes begotten in the stifling hut, in the dark of winter nights? I want light, space.... Good God, when shall I go to Italy? When——’
‘To Little Russia, I suppose you mean?’
‘For shame, Andrei Petrovitch, to reproach me for an act of unpremeditated folly, which I have repented bitterly enough without that. Oh, of course, I behaved like a fool; Anna Vassilyevna most kindly gave me the money for an expedition to Italy, and I went off to the Little Russians to eat dumplings and——’
‘Don’t let me have the rest, please,’ interposed Bersenyev.
‘Yet still, I will say, the money was not spent in vain. I saw there such types, especially of women.... Of course, I know; there is no salvation to be found outside of Italy!’
‘You will go to Italy,’ said Bersenyev, without turning towards him, ‘and will do nothing. You will always be pluming your wings and never take flight. We know you!’
‘Stavasser has taken flight.... And he’s not the only one. If I don’t fly, it will prove that I’m a sea penguin, and have no wings. I am stifled here, I want to be in Italy,’ pursued Shubin, ‘there is sunshine, there is beauty.’
A young girl in a large straw hat, with a pink parasol on her shoulder, came into sight at that instant, in the little path along which the friends were walking.
‘But what do I see? Even here, there is beauty—coming to meet us! A humble artist’s compliments to the enchanting Zoya!’ Shubin cried at once, with a theatrical flourish of his hat.
The young girl to whom this exclamation referred, stopped, threatening him with her finger, and, waiting for the two friends to come up to her, she said in a ringing voice:
‘Why is it, gentlemen, you don’t come in to dinner? It is on the table.’
‘What do I hear?’ said Shubin, throwing his arms up. ‘Can it be that you, bewitching Zoya, faced such heat to come and look for us? Dare I think that is the meaning of your words? Tell me, can it be so? Or no, do not utter that word; I shall die of regret on the spot.’
‘Oh, do leave off, Pavel Yakovlitch,’ replied the young girl with some annoyance. ‘Why will you never talk to me seriously? I shall be angry,’ she added with a little coquettish grimace, and she pouted.
‘You will not be angry with me, ideal Zoya Nikitishna; you would not drive me to the dark depths of hopeless despair. And I can’t talk to you seriously, because I’m not a serious person.’
The young girl shrugged her shoulders, and turned to Bersenyev.
‘There, he’s always like that; he treats me like a child; and I am eighteen. I am grown-up now.’
‘O Lord!’ groaned Shubin, rolling his eyes upwards; and Bersenyev smiled quietly.
The girl stamped with her little foot.
‘Pavel Yakovlitch, I shall be angry! Hélène was coming with me,’ she went on, ‘but she stopped in the garden. The heat frightened her, but I am not afraid of the heat. Come along.’
She moved forward along the path, slightly swaying her slender figure at each step, and with a pretty black-mittened little hand pushing her long soft curls back from her face.
The friends walked after her (Shubin first pressed his hands, without speaking, to his heart, and then flung them higher than his head), and in a few instants they came out in front of one of the numerous country villas with which Kuntsovo is surrounded. A small wooden house with a gable, painted a pink colour, stood in the middle of the garden, and seemed to be peeping out innocently from behind the green trees. Zoya was the first to open the gate; she ran into the garden, crying: ‘I have brought the wanderers!’ A young girl, with a pale and expressive face, rose from a garden bench near the little path, and in the doorway of the house appeared a lady in a lilac silk dress, holding an embroidered cambric handkerchief over her head to screen it from the sun, and smiling with a weary and listless air.
III
Anna Vassilyevna Stahov—her maiden name was Shubin—had been left, at seven years old, an orphan and heiress of a pretty considerable property. She had very rich and also very poor relations; the poor relations were on her father’s, the rich on her mother’s side; the latter including the senator Volgin and the Princes Tchikurasov. Prince Ardalion Tchikurasov, who had been appointed her guardian, placed her in the best Moscow boarding-school, and when she left school, took her into his own home. He kept open house, and gave balls in the winter. Anna Vassilyevna’s future husband, Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov, captured her heart at one of these balls when she was arrayed in a charming rose-coloured gown, with a wreath of tiny roses. She had treasured that wreath all her life. Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov was the son of a retired captain, who had been wounded in 1812, and had received a lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered the School of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He was a handsome, well-made fellow, and reckoned almost the most dashing beau at evening parties of the middling sort, which were those he frequented for the most part; he had not gained a footing in the best society. From his youth he had been absorbed by two ideals: to get into the Imperial adjutants, and to make a good marriage; the first ideal he soon discarded, but he clung all the more closely to the second, and it was with that object that he went every winter to Moscow. Nikolai Artemyevitch spoke French fairly, and passed for being a philosopher, because he was not a rake. Even while he was no more than an ensign, he was given to discussing, persistently, such questions as whether it is possible for a man to visit the whole of the globe in the course of his whole lifetime, whether it is possible for a man to know what is happening at the bottom of the sea; and he always maintained the view that these things were impossible.
Nikolai Artemyevitch was twenty-five years old when he ‘hooked’ Anna Vassilyevna; he retired from the service and went into the country to manage the property. He was soon tired of country life, and as the peasants’ labour was all commuted for rent he could easily leave the estate; he settled in Moscow in his wife’s house. In his youth he had played no games of any kind, but now he developed a passion for loto, and, when loto was prohibited, for whist. At home he was bored; he formed a connection with a widow of German extraction, and spent almost all his time with her. In the year 1853 he had not moved to Kuntsovo; he stopped at Moscow, ostensibly to take advantage of the mineral waters; in reality, he did not want to part from his widow. He did not, however, have much conversation with her, but argued more than ever as to whether one can foretell the weather and such questions. Some one had once called him a frondeur; he was greatly delighted with that name. ‘Yes,’ he thought, letting the corners of his mouth drop complacently and shaking his head, ‘I am not easily satisfied; you won’t take me in.’ Nikolai Artemyevitch’s frondeurism consisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: ‘And what do you mean by nerves?’ or if some one alluded in his presence to the discoveries of astronomy, asking: ‘And do you believe in astronomy?’ When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he said: ‘All that is nothing but words.’ It must be admitted that to many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected that Augustina Christianovna, in letters to her cousin, Theodolina Peterzelius, called him Mein Pinselchen.
Nikolai Artemyevitch’s wife, Anna Vassilyevna, was a thin, little woman with delicate features, and a tendency to be emotional and melancholy. At school, she had devoted herself to music and reading novels; afterwards she abandoned all that. She began to be absorbed in dress, and that, too, she gave up. She did, for a time, undertake her daughter’s education, but she got tired of that too, and handed her over to a governess. She ended by spending her whole time in sentimental brooding and tender melancholy. The birth of Elena Nikolaevna had ruined her health, and she could never have another child. Nikolai Artemyevitch used to hint at this fact in justification of his intimacy with Augustina Christianovna. Her husband’s infidelity wounded Anna Vassilyevna deeply; she had been specially hurt by his once giving his German woman, on the sly, a pair of grey horses out of her (Anna Vassilyevna’s) own stable. She had never reproached him to his face, but she complained of him secretly to every one in the house in turn, even to her daughter. Anna Vassilyevna did not care for going out, she liked visitors to come and sit with her and talk to her; she collapsed at once when she was left alone. She had a very tender and loving heart; life had soon crushed her.
Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had entered cadets’ corps; he was the youngest, his mother’s darling, and of delicate constitution; he stopped at home. They intended him for the university, and strained every effort to keep him at the gymnasium. From his early years he began to show an inclination for sculpture. The ponderous senator, Volgin, saw a statuette of his one day at his aunt’s—he was then sixteen—and declared that he intended to protect this youthful genius. The sudden death of Shubin’s father very nearly effected a complete transformation in the young man’s future. The senator, the patron of genius, made him a present of a bust of Homer in plaster, and did nothing more. But Anna Vassilyevna helped him with money, and at nineteen he scraped through into the university in the faculty of medicine. Pavel felt no inclination for medical science, but, as the university was then constituted, it was impossible for him to enter in any other faculty. Besides, he looked forward to studying anatomy. But he did not complete his anatomical studies; at the end of the first year, and before the examination, he left the university to devote himself exclusively to his vocation. He worked zealously, but by fits and starts; he used to stroll about the country round Moscow sketching and modelling portraits of peasant girls, and striking up acquaintance with all sorts of people, young and old, of high and low degree, Italian models and Russian artists. He would not hear of the Academy, and recognised no one as a teacher. He was possessed of unmistakeable talent; it began to be talked about in Moscow. His mother, who came of a good Parisian family, a kind-hearted and clever woman, had taught him French thoroughly and had toiled and thought for him day and night. She was proud of him, and when, while still young in years, she died of consumption, she entreated Anna Vassilyevna to take him under her care. He was at that time twenty-one. Anna Vassilyevna carried out her last wish; a small room in the lodge of the country villa was given up to him.
IV
‘Come to dinner, come along,’ said the lady of the house in a plaintive voice, and they all went into the dining-room. ‘Sit beside me, Zoé,’ added Anna Vassilyevna, ‘and you, Hélène, take our guest; and you, Paul, please don’t be naughty and tease Zoé. My head aches to-day.’
Shubin again turned his eyes up to the ceiling; Zoé responded with a half-smile. This Zoé, or, to speak more precisely, Zoya Nikitishna Mueller, was a pretty, fair-haired, half-Russian German girl, with a little nose rather wide at the end, and tiny red lips. She sang Russian ballads fairly well and could play various pieces, both lively and sentimental, very correctly on the piano. She dressed with taste, but in a rather childish style, and even over-precisely. Anna Vassilyevna had taken her as a companion for her daughter, and she kept her almost constantly at her side. Elena did not complain of that; she was absolutely at a loss what to say to Zoya when she happened to be left alone with her.
The dinner lasted rather a long time; Bersenyev talked with Elena about university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened without speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now and then threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always with the same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and Shubin went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. Anna Vassilyevna began: ‘Why don’t you go for a walk, too?’ but, without waiting for a reply, she added: ‘Play me something melancholy.’
‘La dernière pensée de Weber?’ suggested Zoya.
‘Ah, yes, Weber,’ replied Anna Vassilyevna. She sank into an easy chair, and the tears started on to her eyelashes.
Meanwhile, Elena led the two friends to an arbour of acacias, with a little wooden table in the middle, and seats round. Shubin looked round, and, whispering ‘Wait a minute!’ he ran off, skipping and hopping to his own room, brought back a piece of clay, and began modelling a bust of Zoya, shaking his head and muttering and laughing to himself.
‘At his old tricks again,’ observed Elena, glancing at his work. She turned to Bersenyev, with whom she was continuing the conversation begun at dinner.
‘My old tricks!’ repeated Shubin. ‘It’s a subject that’s simply inexhaustible! To-day, particularly, she drove me out of all patience.’
‘Why so?’ inquired Elena. ‘One would think you were speaking of some spiteful, disagreeable old woman. She is a pretty young girl.’
‘Of course,’ Shubin broke in, ‘she is pretty, very pretty; I am sure that no one who meets her could fail to think: that’s some one I should like to—dance a polka with; I’m sure, too, that she knows that, and is pleased.... Else, what’s the meaning of those modest simpers, that discreet air? There, you know what I mean,’ he muttered between his teeth. ‘But now you’re absorbed in something else.’
And breaking up the bust of Zoya, Shubin set hastily to modelling and kneading the clay again with an air of vexation.
‘So it is your wish to be a professor?’ said Elena to Bersenyev.
‘Yes,’ he answered, squeezing his red hands between his knees. ‘That’s my cherished dream. Of course I know very well how far I fall short of being—to be worthy of such a high—I mean that I am too little prepared, but I hope to get permission for a course of travel abroad; I shall pass three or four years in that way, if necessary, and then——’
He stopped, dropped his eyes, then quickly raising them again, he gave an embarrassed smile and smoothed his hair. When Bersenyev was talking to a woman, his words came out more slowly, and he lisped more than ever.
‘You want to be a professor of history?’ inquired Elena.
‘Yes, or of philosophy,’ he added, in a lower voice—‘if that is possible.’
‘He’s a perfect devil at philosophy already,’ observed Shubin, making deep lines in the clay with his nail. ‘What does he want to go abroad for?’
‘And will you be perfectly contented with such a position?’ asked Elena, leaning on her elbow and looking him straight in the face.
‘Perfectly, Elena Nikolaevna, perfectly. What could be a finer vocation? To follow, perhaps, in the steps of Timofay Nikolaevitch ... The very thought of such work fills me with delight and confusion ... yes, confusion... which comes from a sense of my own deficiency. My dear father consecrated me to this work... I shall never forget his last words.’...
‘Your father died last winter?’
‘Yes, Elena Nikolaevna, in February.’
‘They say,’ Elena went on, ‘that he left a remarkable work in manuscript; is it true?’
‘Yes. He was a wonderful man. You would have loved him, Elena Nikolaevna.’
‘I am sure I should. And what was the subject of the work?’
‘To give you an idea of the subject of the work in few words, Elena Nikolaevna, would be somewhat difficult. My father was a learned man, a Schellingist; he used terms which were not always very clear——’
‘Andrei Petrovitch,’ interrupted Elena, ‘excuse my ignorance, what does that mean, a Schellingist?’
Bersenyev smiled slightly.
‘A Schellingist means a follower of Schelling, a German philosopher; and what the philosophy of Schelling consists in——’
‘Andrei Petrovitch!’ cried Shubin suddenly, ‘for mercy’s sake! Surely you don’t mean to give Elena Nikolaevna a lecture on Schelling? Have pity on her!’
‘Not a lecture at all,’ murmured Bersenyev, turning crimson. ‘I meant——’
‘And why not a lecture?’ put in Elena. ‘You and I are in need of lectures, Pavel Yakovlitch.’
Shubin stared at her, and suddenly burst out laughing.
‘What are you laughing at?’ she said coldly, and almost sharply.
Shubin did not answer.
‘Come, don’t be angry,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘I am sorry. But really it’s a strange taste, upon my word, to discuss philosophy in weather like this under these trees. Let us rather talk of nightingales and roses, youthful eyes and smiles.’
‘Yes; and of French novels, and of feminine frills and fal-lals,’ Elena went on.
‘Fal-lals, too, of course,’ rejoined Shubin, ‘if they’re pretty.’
‘Of course. But suppose we don’t want to talk of frills? You are always boasting of being a free artist; why do you encroach on the freedom of others? And allow me to inquire, if that’s your bent of mind, why do you attack Zoya? With her it would be peculiarly suitable to talk of frills and roses?’
Shubin suddenly fired up, and rose from the garden seat. ‘So that’s it?’ he began in a nervous voice. ‘I understand your hint; you want to send me away to her, Elena Nikolaevna. In other words, I’m not wanted here.’
‘I never thought of sending you away from here.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ Shubin continued passionately, ‘that I am not worthy of other society, that I am her equal; that I am as vain, and silly and petty as that mawkish German girl? Is that it?’
Elena frowned. ‘You did not always speak like that of her, Pavel Yakovlitch,’ she remarked.
‘Ah! reproaches! reproaches now!’ cried Shubin. ‘Well, then I don’t deny there was a moment—one moment precisely, when those fresh, vulgar cheeks of hers... But if I wanted to repay you with reproaches and remind you... Good-bye,’ he added suddenly, ‘I feel I shall say something silly.’
And with a blow on the clay moulded into the shape of a head, he ran out of the arbour and went off to his room.
‘What a baby,’ said Elena, looking after him.
‘He’s an artist,’ observed Bersenyev with a quiet smile. ‘All artists are like that. One must forgive them their caprices. That is their privilege.’
‘Yes,’ replied Elena; ‘but Pavel has not so far justified his claim to that privilege in any way. What has he done so far? Give me your arm, and let us go along the avenue. He was in our way. We were talking of your father’s works.’
Bersenyev took Elena’s arm in his, and walked beside her through the garden; but the conversation prematurely broken off was not renewed. Bersenyev began again unfolding his views on the vocation of a professor, and on his own future career. He walked slowly beside Elena, moving awkwardly, awkwardly holding her arm, sometimes jostling his shoulder against her, and not once looking at her; but his talk flowed more easily, even if not perfectly freely; he spoke simply and genuinely, and his eyes, as they strayed slowly over the trunks of the trees, the sand of the path and the grass, were bright with the quiet ardour of generous emotions, while in his soothed voice there was heard the delight of a man who feels that he is succeeding in expressing himself to one very dear to him. Elena listened to him very attentively, and turning half towards him, did not take her eyes off his face, which had grown a little paler—off his eyes, which were soft and affectionate, though they avoided meeting her eyes. Her soul expanded; and something tender, holy, and good seemed half sinking into her heart, half springing up within it.
V
Shubin did not leave his room before night. It was already quite dark; the moon—not yet at the full—stood high in the sky, the milky way shone white, and the stars spotted the heavens, when Bersenyev, after taking leave of Anna Vassilyevna, Elena, and Zoya, went up to his friend’s door. He found it locked. He knocked.
‘Who is there?’ sounded Shubin’s voice.
‘I,’ answered Bersenyev.
‘What do you want?’
‘Let me in, Pavel; don’t be sulky; aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’
‘I am not sulky; I’m asleep and dreaming about Zoya.’
‘Do stop that, please; you’re not a baby. Let me in. I want to talk to you.’
‘Haven’t you had talk enough with Elena?’
‘Come, come; let me in!’
Shubin responded by a pretended snore.
Bersenyev shrugged his shoulders and turned homewards.
The night was warm and seemed strangely still, as though everything were listening and expectant; and Bersenyev, enfolded in the still darkness, stopped involuntarily; and he, too, listened expectant. On the tree-tops near there was a faint stir, like the rustle of a woman’s dress, awaking in him a feeling half-sweet, half-painful, a feeling almost of fright. He felt a tingling in his cheeks, his eyes were chill with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued ‘Ah!’ and again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of the walk by night; his whole soul was absorbed by the image of the young girl. Bersenyev walked with bent head, recalling her words, her questions. He fancied he heard the tramp of quick steps behind. He listened: some one was running, some one was overtaking him; he heard panting, and suddenly from a black circle of shadow cast by a huge tree Shubin sprang out before him, quite pale in the light of the moon, with no cap on his disordered curls.
‘I am glad you came along this path,’ he said with an effort. ‘I should not have slept all night, if I had not overtaken you. Give me your hand. Are you going home?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will see you home then.’
‘But why have you come without a cap on?’
‘That doesn’t matter. I took off my neckerchief too. It is quite warm.’
The friends walked a few paces.
‘I was very stupid to-day, wasn’t I?’ Shubin asked suddenly.
‘To speak frankly, you were. I couldn’t make you out. I have never seen you like that before. And what were you angry about really? Such trifles!’
‘H’m,’ muttered Shubin. ‘That’s how you put it; but they were not trifles to me. You see,’ he went on, ‘I ought to point out to you that I—that—you may think what you please of me—I—well there! I’m in love with Elena.’
‘You in love with Elena!’ repeated Bersenyev, standing still.
‘Yes,’ pursued Shubin with affected carelessness. ‘Does that astonish you? I will tell you something else. Till this evening I still had hopes that she might come to love me in time. But to-day I have seen for certain that there is no hope for me. She is in love with some one else.’
‘Some one else? Whom?’
‘Whom? You!’ cried Shubin, slapping Bersenyev on the shoulder.
‘Me!’
‘You,’ repeated Shubin.
Bersenyev stepped back a pace, and stood motionless. Shubin looked intently at him.
‘And does that astonish you? You are a modest youth. But she loves you. You can make your mind easy on that score.’
‘What nonsense you talk!’ Bersenyev protested at last with an air of vexation.
‘No, it’s not nonsense. But why are we standing still? Let us go on. It’s easier to talk as we walk. I have known her a long while, and I know her well. I cannot be mistaken. You are a man after her own heart. There was a time when she found me agreeable; but, in the first place, I am too frivolous a young man for her, while you are a serious person, you are a morally and physically well-regulated person, you—hush, I have not finished, you are a conscientiously disposed enthusiast, a genuine type of those devotees of science, of whom—no not of whom—whereof the middle class of Russian gentry are so justly proud! And, secondly, Elena caught me the other day kissing Zoya’s arms!’
‘Zoya’s?’
‘Yes, Zoya’s. What would you have? She has such fine shoulders.’
‘Shoulders?’
‘Well there, shoulders and arms, isn’t it all the same? Elena caught me in this unconstrained proceeding after dinner, and before dinner I had been abusing Zoya in her hearing. Elena unfortunately doesn’t understand how natural such contradictions are. Then you came on the scene, you have faith in—what the deuce is it you have faith in?... You blush and look confused, you discuss Schiller and Schelling (she’s always on the look-out for remarkable men), and so you have won the day, and I, poor wretch, try to joke—and all the while——’
Shubin suddenly burst into tears, turned away, and dropping upon the ground clutched at his hair.
Bersenyev went up to him.
‘Pavel,’ he began, ‘what childishness this is! Really! what’s the matter with you to-day? God knows what nonsense you have got into your head, and you are crying. Upon my word, I believe you must be putting it on.’
Shubin lifted up his head. The tears shone bright on his cheeks in the moonlight, but there was a smile on his face.
‘Andrei Petrovitch,’ he said, ‘you may think what you please about me. I am even ready to agree with you that I’m hysterical now, but, by God, I’m in love with Elena, and Elena loves you. I promised, though, to see you home, and I will keep my promise.’
He got up.
‘What a night! silvery, dark, youthful! How sweet it must be to-night for men who are loved! How sweet for them not to sleep! Will you sleep, Andrei Petrovitch?’
Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace.
‘Where are you hurrying to?’ Shubin went on. ‘Trust my words, a night like this will never come again in your life, and at home, Schelling will keep. It’s true he did you good service to-day; but you need not hurry for all that. Sing, if you can sing, sing louder than ever; if you can’t sing, take off your hat, throw up your head, and smile to the stars. They are all looking at you, at you alone; the stars never do anything but look down upon lovers—that’s why they are so charming. You are in love, I suppose, Andrei Petrovitch?... You don’t answer me... why don’t you answer?’ Shubin began again: ‘Oh, if you feel happy, be quiet, be quiet! I chatter because I am a poor devil, unloved, I am a jester, an artist, a buffoon; but what unutterable ecstasy would I quaff in the night wind under the stars, if I knew that I were loved!... Bersenyev, are you happy?’
Bersenyev was silent as before, and walked quickly along the smooth path. In front, between the trees, glimmered the lights of the little village in which he was staying; it consisted of about a dozen small villas for summer visitors. At the very beginning of the village, to the right of the road, a little shop stood under two spreading birch-trees; its windows were all closed already, but a wide patch of light fell fan-shaped from the open door upon the trodden grass, and was cast upwards on the trees, showing up sharply the whitish undersides of the thick growing leaves. A girl, who looked like a maid-servant, was standing in the shop with her back against the doorpost, bargaining with the shopkeeper; from beneath the red kerchief which she had wrapped round her head, and held with bare hand under her chin, could just be seen her round cheek and slender throat. The young men stepped into the patch of light; Shubin looked into the shop, stopped short, and cried ‘Annushka!’ The girl turned round quickly. They saw a nice-looking, rather broad but fresh face, with merry brown eyes and black eyebrows. ‘Annushka!’ repeated Shubin. The girl saw him, looked scared and shamefaced, and without finishing her purchases, she hurried down the steps, slipped quickly past, and, hardly looking round, went along the road to the left. The shopkeeper, a puffy man, unmoved by anything in the world, like all country shopkeepers gasped and gaped after her, while Shubin turned to Bersenyev with the words: ‘That’s... you see... there’s a family here I know... so at their house... you mustn’t imagine’ ... and, without finishing his speech, he ran after the retreating girl.
‘You’d better at least wipe your tears away,’ Bersenyev shouted after him, and he could not refrain from laughing. But when he got home, his face had not a mirthful expression; he laughed no longer. He had not for a single instant believed what Shubin had told him, but the words he had uttered had sunk deep into his soul.
‘Pavel was making a fool of me,’ he thought; ‘... but she will love one day... whom will she love?’
In Bersenyev’s room there was a piano, small, and by no means new, but of a soft and sweet tone, though not perfectly in tune. Bersenyev sat down to it, and began to strike some chords. Like all Russians of good birth, he had studied music in his childhood, and like almost all Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and sweet, shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the soul by the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an hour, he did not move from the piano, repeating many times the same chords, awkwardly picking out new ones, pausing and melting over the minor sevenths. His heart ached, and his eyes more than once filled with tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them flow in the darkness. ‘Pavel was right,’ he thought, ‘I feel it; this evening will not come again.’ At last he got up, lighted a candle, put on his dressing-gown, took down from the bookshelf the second volume of Raumer’s History of the Hohenstaufen, and sighing twice, he set to work diligently to read it.
VI
Meanwhile, Elena had gone to her room, and sat down at the open window, her head resting on her hands. To spend about a quarter of an hour every evening at her bedroom window had become a habit with her. At this time she held converse with herself, and passed in review the preceding day. She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was tall, and had a pale and dark face, large grey eyes under arching brows, covered with tiny freckles, a perfectly regular forehead and nose, tightly compressed lips, and a rather sharp chin. Her hair, of a chestnut shade, fell low on her slender neck. In her whole personality, in the expression of her face, intent and a little timorous, in her clear but changing glance, in her smile, which was, as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice, there was something nervous, electric, something impulsive and hurried, something, in fact, which could never be attractive to every one, which even repelled some.
Her hands were slender and rosy, with long fingers; her feet were slender; she walked swiftly, almost impetuously, her figure bent a little forward. She had grown up very strangely; first she idolised her father, then she became passionately devoted to her mother, and had grown cold to both of them, especially to her father. Of late years she had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; while her father, who had been proud of her while she had been regarded as an exceptional child, had come to be afraid of her when she was grown up, and said of her that she was a sort of enthusiastic republican—no one could say where she got it from. Weakness revolted her, stupidity made her angry, and deceit she could never, never pardon. She was exacting beyond all bounds, even her prayers had more than once been mingled with reproaches. When once a person had lost her respect—and she passed judgment quickly, often too quickly—he ceased to exist for her. All impressions cut deeply into her heart; life was bitter earnest for her.
The governess to whom Anna Vassilyevna had entrusted the finishing of her daughter’s education—an education, we may remark in parenthesis, which had not even been begun by the languid lady—was a Russian, the daughter of a ruined official, educated at a government boarding school, a very emotional, soft-hearted, and deceitful creature; she was for ever falling in love, and ended in her fiftieth year (when Elena was seventeen) by marrying an officer of some sort, who deserted her without loss of time. This governess was very fond of literature, and wrote verses herself; she inspired Elena with a love of reading, but reading alone did not satisfy the girl; from childhood she thirsted for action, for active well-doing—the poor, the hungry, and the sick absorbed her thoughts, tormented her, and made her heart heavy; she used to dream of them, and to ply all her friends with questions about them; she gave alms carefully, with unconscious solemnity, almost with a thrill of emotion. All ill-used creatures, starved dogs, cats condemned to death, sparrows fallen out of the nest, even insects and reptiles found a champion and protector in Elena; she fed them herself, and felt no repugnance for them. Her mother did not interfere with her; but her father used to be very indignant with his daughter, for her—as he called it—vulgar soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to move for the cats and dogs in the house. ‘Lenotchka,’ he would shout to her, ‘come quickly, here’s a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor wretch!’ And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free, and disentangle its legs. ‘Well, now let it bite you a little, since you are so kind,’ her father would say ironically; but she did not hear him. At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl, Katya, and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her nice things to eat, and presented her with handkerchiefs and pennies; playthings Katya would not take. She would sit beside her on the dry earth among the bushes behind a thick growth of nettles; with a feeling of delicious humility she ate her stale bread and listened to her stories. Katya had an aunt, an ill-natured old woman, who often beat her; Katya hated her, and was always talking of how she would run away from her aunt and live in ‘God’s full freedom’; with secret respect and awe Elena drank in these new unknown words, stared intently at Katya and everything about her—her quick black, almost animal eyes, her sun-burnt hands, her hoarse voice, even her ragged clothes—seemed to Elena at such times something particular and distinguished, almost holy. Elena went back home, and for long after dreamed of beggars and God’s freedom; she would dream over plans of how she would cut herself a hazel stick, and put on a wallet and run away with Katya; how she would wander about the roads in a wreath of corn-flowers; she had seen Katya one day in just such a wreath. If, at such times, any one of her family came into the room, she would shun them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet Katya, and made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a slut and a peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something of terror and rapture in her heart. Katya often sang some half-brutal soldier’s song. Elena learnt this song from her.... Anna Vassilyevna overheard her singing it, and was very indignant.
‘Where did you pick up such horrors?’ she asked her daughter.
Elena only looked at her mother, and would not say a word; she felt that she would let them tear her to pieces sooner than betray her secret, and again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her friendship with Katya, however, did not last long; the poor little girl fell sick of fever, and in a few days she was dead.
Elena was greatly distressed, and spent sleepless nights for long after she heard of Katya’s death. The last words of the little beggar-girl were constantly ringing in her ears, and she fancied that she was being called....
The years passed and passed; swiftly and noiselessly, like waters running under the snow, Elena’s youth glided by, outwardly uneventful, inwardly in conflict and emotion. She had no friend; she did not get on with any one of all the girls who visited the Stahovs’ house. Her parents’ authority had never weighed heavily on Elena, and from her sixteenth year she became absolutely independent; she began to live a life of her own, but it was a life of solitude. Her soul glowed, and the fire died away again in solitude; she struggled like a bird in a cage, and cage there was none; no one oppressed her, no one restrained her, while she was torn, and fretted within. Sometimes she did not understand herself, was even frightened of herself. Everything that surrounded her seemed to her half-senseless, half-incomprehensible. ‘How live without love? and there’s no one to love!’ she thought; and she felt terror again at these thoughts, these sensations. At eighteen, she nearly died of malignant fever; her whole constitution—naturally healthy and vigorous—was seriously affected, and it was long before it could perfectly recover; the last traces of the illness disappeared at last, but Elena Nikolaevna’s father was never tired of talking with some spitefulness of her ‘nerves.’ Sometimes she fancied that she wanted something which no one wanted, of which no one in all Russia dreamed. Then she would grow calmer, and even laugh at herself, and pass day after day unconcernedly; but suddenly some over-mastering, nameless force would surge up within her, and seem to clamour for an outlet. The storm passed over, and the wings of her soul drooped without flight; but these tempests of feeling cost her much. However she might strive not to betray what was passing within her, the suffering of the tormented spirit was expressed in her even external tranquillity, and her parents were often justified in shrugging their shoulders in astonishment, and failing to understand her ‘queer ways.’
On the day with which our story began, Elena did not leave the window till later than usual. She thought much of Bersenyev, and of her conversation with him. She liked him; she believed in the warmth of his feelings, and the purity of his aims. He had never before talked to her as on that evening. She recalled the expression of his timid eyes, his smiles—and she smiled herself and fell to musing, but not of him. She began to look out into the night from the open window. For a long time she gazed at the dark, low-hanging sky; then she got up, flung back her hair from her face with a shake of her head, and, herself not knowing why, she stretched out to it—to that sky—her bare chilled arms; then she dropped them, fell on her knees beside her bed, pressed her face into the pillow, and, in spite of all her efforts not to yield to the passion overwhelming her, she burst into strange, uncomprehending, burning tears.
VII
The next day at twelve o’clock, Bersenyev set off in a return coach to Moscow. He had to get some money from the post-office, to buy some books, and he wanted to seize the opportunity to see Insarov and have some conversation with him. The idea had occurred to Bersenyev, in the course of his last conversation with Shubin, to invite Insarov to stay with him at his country lodgings. But it was some time before he found him out; from his former lodging he had moved to another, which it was not easy to discover; it was in the court at the back of a squalid stone house, built in the Petersburg style, between Arbaty Road and Povarsky Street. In vain Bersenyev wandered from one dirty staircase to another, in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to a passer-by. Porters even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and in Moscow much more so; no one answered Bersenyev’s call; only an inquisitive tailor, in his shirt sleeves, with a skein of grey thread on his shoulder, thrust out from a high casement window a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with a blackened eye; and a black and hornless goat, clambering up on to a dung heap, turned round, bleated plaintively, and went on chewing the cud faster than before. A woman in an old cloak, and shoes trodden down at heel, took pity at last on Bersenyev and pointed out Insarov’s lodging to him. Bersenyev found him at home. He had taken a room with the very tailor who had stared down so indifferently at the perplexity of a wandering stranger; a large, almost empty room, with dark green walls, three square windows, a tiny bedstead in one corner, a little leather sofa in another, and a huge cage hung up to the very ceiling; in this cage there had once lived a nightingale. Insarov came to meet Bersenyev directly he crossed the threshold, but he did not exclaim, ‘Ah, it’s you!’ or ‘Good Heavens, what happy chance has brought you?’ He did not even say, ‘How do you do?’ but simply pressed his hand and led him up to the solitary chair in the room.
‘Sit down,’ he said, and he seated himself on the edge of the table.
‘I am, as you see, still in disorder,’ added Insarov, pointing to a pile of papers and books on the floor, ‘I haven’t got settled in as I ought. I have not had time yet.’
Insarov spoke Russian perfectly correctly, pronouncing every word fully and purely; but his guttural though pleasant voice sounded somehow not Russian. Insarov’s foreign extraction (he was a Bulgarian by birth) was still more clearly marked in his appearance; he was a young man of five-and-twenty, spare and sinewy, with a hollow chest and knotted fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black hair, a low forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy eyebrows; when he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant between his thin, hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but tidy coat, buttoned up to the throat.
‘Why did you leave your old lodging?’ Bersenyev asked him.
‘This is cheaper, and nearer to the university.’
‘But now it’s vacation.... And what could induce you to stay in the town in summer! You should have taken a country cottage if you were determined to move.’
Insarov made no reply to this remark, and offered Bersenyev a pipe, adding: ‘Excuse me, I have no cigarettes or cigars.’
Bersenyev began smoking the pipe.
‘Here have I,’ he went on, ‘taken a little house near Kuntsovo, very cheap and very roomy. In fact there is a room to spare upstairs.’
Insarov again made no answer.
Bersenyev drew at the pipe: ‘I have even been thinking,’ he began again, blowing out the smoke in a thin cloud, ‘that if any one could be found—you, for instance, I thought of—who would care, who would consent to establish himself there upstairs, how nice it would be! What do you think, Dmitri Nikanorovitch?’
Insarov turned his little eyes on him. ‘You propose my staying in your country house?’
‘Yes; I have a room to spare there upstairs.’
‘Thanks very much, Andrei Petrovitch; but I expect my means would not allow of it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘My means would not allow of my living in a country house. It’s impossible for me to keep two lodgings.’
‘But of course I’—Bersenyev was beginning, but he stopped short. ‘You would have no extra expense in that way,’ he went on. ‘Your lodging here would remain for you, let us suppose; but then everything there is very cheap; we could even arrange so as to dine, for instance, together.’
Insarov said nothing. Bersenyev began to feel awkward.
‘You might at least pay me a visit sometime,’ he began, after a short pause. ‘A few steps from me there’s a family living with whom I want very much to make you acquainted. If only you knew, Insarov, what a marvellous girl there is there! There is an intimate friend of mine staying there too, a man of great talent; I am sure you would get on with him. [The Russian loves to be hospitable—of his friends if he can offer nothing else.] Really, you must come. And what would be better still, come and stay with me, do. We could work and read together.... I am busy, as you know, with history and philosophy. All that would interest you. I have a lot of books.’
Insarov got up and walked about the room. ‘Let me know,’ he said, ‘how much do you pay for your cottage?’
‘A hundred silver roubles.’
‘And how many rooms are there?’
‘Five.’
‘Then one may reckon that one room costs twenty roubles?’
‘Yes, one may reckon so.... But really it’s utterly unnecessary for me. It simply stands empty.’
‘Perhaps so; but listen,’ added Insarov, with a decided, but at the same time good-natured movement of his head: ‘I can only take advantage of your offer if you agree to take the sum we have reckoned. Twenty roubles I am able to give, the more easily, since, as you say, I shall be economising there in other things.’
‘Of course; but really I am ashamed to take it.’
‘Otherwise it’s impossible, Andrei Petrovitch.’
‘Well, as you like; but what an obstinate fellow you are!’
Insarov again made no reply.
The young men made arrangements as to the day on which Insarov was to move. They called the landlord; at first he sent his daughter, a little girl of seven, with a large striped kerchief on her head; she listened attentively, almost with awe, to all Insarov said to her, and went away without speaking; after her, her mother, a woman far gone with child, made her appearance, also wearing a kerchief on her head, but a very diminutive one. Insarov informed her that he was going to stay at a cottage near Kuntsovo, but should keep on his lodging and leave all his things in their keeping; the tailor’s wife too seemed scared and went away. At last the man himself came in: he seemed to understand everything from the first, and only said gloomily: ‘Near Kuntsovo?’ then all at once he opened the door and shouted: ‘Are you going to keep the lodgings then?’ Insarov reassured him. ‘Well, one must know,’ repeated the tailor morosely, as he disappeared.
Bersenyev returned home, well content with the success of his proposal. Insarov escorted him to the door with cordial good manners, not common in Russia; and, when he was left alone, carefully took off his coat, and set to work upon sorting his papers.
VIII
On the evening of the same day, Anna Vassilyevna was sitting in her drawing-room and was on the verge of weeping. There were also in the room her husband and a certain Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov, a distant cousin of Nikolai Artemyevitch, a retired cornet of sixty years old, a man corpulent to the point of immobility, with sleepy yellowish eyes, and colourless thick lips in a puffy yellow face. Ever since he had retired, he had lived in Moscow on the interest of a small capital left him by a wife who came of a shopkeeper’s family. He did nothing, and it is doubtful whether he thought of anything; if he did think, he kept his thoughts to himself. Once only in his life he had been thrown into a state of excitement and shown signs of animation, and that was when he read in the newspapers of a new instrument at the Universal Exhibition in London, the ‘contro-bombardon,’ and became very anxious to order this instrument for himself, and even made inquiries as to where to send the money and through what office. Uvar Ivanovitch wore a loose snuff-coloured coat and a white neckcloth, used to eat often and much, and in moments of great perplexity, that is to say when it happened to him to express some opinion, he would flourish the fingers of his right hand meditatively in the air, with a convulsive spasm from the first finger to the little finger, and back from the little finger to the first finger, while he articulated with effort, ‘to be sure... there ought to... in some sort of a way.’
Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting in an easy chair by the window, breathing heavily; Nikolai Artemyevitch was pacing with long strides up and down the room, his hands thrust into his pockets; his face expressed dissatisfaction.
He stood still at last and shook his head. ‘Yes;’ he began, ‘in our day young men were brought up differently. Young men did not permit themselves to be lacking in respect to their elders. And nowadays, I can only look on and wonder. Possibly, I am all wrong, and they are quite right; possibly. But still I have my own views of things; I was not born a fool. What do you think about it, Uvar Ivanovitch?’
Uvar Ivanovitch could only look at him and work his fingers.
‘Elena Nikolaevna, for instance,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘Elena Nikolaevna I don’t pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the least spider or frog, everything in fact except her own father. Well, that’s all very well; I know it, and I don’t trouble myself about it. For that’s nerves and education and lofty aspirations, and all that is not in my line. But Mr. Shubin... admitting he’s a wonderful artist—quite exceptional—that, I don’t dispute; to show want of respect to his elder, a man to whom, at any rate, one may say he is under great obligation; that I confess, dans mon gros bon sens, I cannot pass over. I am not exacting by nature, no, but there is a limit to everything.’
Anna Vassilyevna rang the bell in a tremor. A little page came in.
‘Why is it Pavel Yakovlitch does not come?’ she said, ‘what does it mean; I call him, and he doesn’t come?’
Nikolai Artemyevitch shrugged his shoulders.
‘And what is the object, may I ask, of your wanting to send for him? I don’t expect that at all, I don’t wish it even!’
‘What’s the object, Nikolai Artemyevitch? He has disturbed you; very likely he has checked the progress of your cure. I want to have an explanation with him. I want to know how he has dared to annoy you.’
‘I tell you again, that I do not ask that. And what can induce you ... devant les domestiques!’
Anna Vassilyevna flushed a little. ‘You need not say that, Nikolai Artemyevitch. I never... devant les domestiques... Fedushka, go and see you bring Pavel Yakovlitch here at once.’
The little page went off.
‘And that’s absolutely unnecessary,’ muttered Nikolai Artemyevitch between his teeth, and he began again pacing up and down the room. ‘I did not bring up the subject with that object.’
‘Good Heavens, Paul must apologise to you.’
‘Good Heavens, what are his apologies to me? And what do you mean by apologies? That’s all words.’
‘Why, he must be corrected.’
‘Well, you can correct him yourself. He will listen to you sooner than to me. For my part I bear him no grudge.’
‘No, Nikolai Artemyevitch, you’ve not been yourself ever since you arrived. You have even to my eyes grown thinner lately. I am afraid your treatment is doing you no good.’
‘The treatment is quite indispensable,’ observed Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘my liver is affected.’
At that instant Shubin came in. He looked tired. A slight almost ironical smile played on his lips.
‘You asked for me, Anna Vassilyevna?’ he observed.
‘Yes, certainly I asked for you. Really, Paul, this is dreadful. I am very much displeased with you. How could you be wanting in respect to Nikolai Artemyevitch?’
‘Nikolai Artemyevitch has complained of me to you?’ inquired Shubin, and with the same smile on his lips he looked at Stahov. The latter turned away, dropping his eyes.
‘Yes, he complains of you. I don’t know what you have done amiss, but you ought to apologise at once, because his health is very much deranged just now, and indeed we all ought when we are young to treat our benefactors with respect.’
‘Ah, what logic!’ thought Shubin, and he turned to Stahov. ‘I am ready to apologise to you, Nikolai Artemyevitch,’ he said with a polite half-bow, ‘if I have really offended you in any way.’
‘I did not at all... with that idea,’ rejoined Nikolai Artemyevitch, still as before avoiding Shubin’s eyes. ‘However, I will readily forgive you, for, as you know, I am not an exacting person.’
‘Oh, that admits of no doubt!’ said Shubin. ‘But allow me to be inquisitive; is Anna Vassilyevna aware precisely what constituted my offence?’
‘No, I know nothing,’ observed Anna Vassilyevna, craning forward her head expectantly.
‘O Good Lord!’ exclaimed Nikolai Artemyevitch hurriedly, ‘how often have I prayed and besought, how often have I said how I hate these scenes and explanations! When one’s been away an age, and comes home hoping for rest—talk of the family circle, intérieur, being a family man—and here one finds scenes and unpleasantnesses. There’s not a minute of peace. One’s positively driven to the club... or, or elsewhere. A man is alive, he has a physical side, and it has its claims, but here——’
And without concluding his sentence Nikolai Artemyevitch went quickly out, slamming the door.
Anna Vassilyevna looked after him. ‘To the club!’ she muttered bitterly: ‘you are not going to the club, profligate? You’ve no one at the club to give away my horses to—horses from my own stable—and the grey ones too! My favourite colour. Yes, yes, fickle-hearted man,’ she went on raising her voice, ‘you are not going to the club, As for you, Paul,’ she pursued, getting up, ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed. I should have thought you would not be so childish. And now my head has begun to ache. Where is Zoya, do you know?’
‘I think she’s upstairs in her room. The wise little fox always hides in her hole when there’s a storm in the air.’
‘Come, please, please!’ Anna Vassilyevna began searching about her. ‘Haven’t you seen my little glass of grated horse-radish? Paul, be so good as not to make me angry for the future.’
‘How make you angry, auntie? Give me your little hand to kiss. Your horse-radish I saw on the little table in the boudoir.’
‘Darya always leaves it about somewhere,’ said Anna Vassilyevna, and she walked away with a rustle of silk skirts.
Shubin was about to follow her, but he stopped on hearing Uvar Ivanovitch’s drawling voice behind him.
‘I would... have given it you... young puppy,’ the retired cornet brought out in gasps.
Shubin went up to him. ‘And what have I done, then, most venerable Uvar Ivanovitch?’
‘How! you are young, be respectful. Yes indeed.’
‘Respectful to whom?’
‘To whom? You know whom. Ay, grin away.’
Shubin crossed his arms on his breast.
‘Ah, you type of the choice element in drama,’ he exclaimed, ‘you primeval force of the black earth, cornerstone of the social fabric!’
Uvar Ivanovitch’s fingers began to work. ‘There, there, my boy, don’t provoke me.’
‘Here,’ pursued Shubin, ‘is a gentleman, not young to judge by appearances, but what blissful, child-like faith is still hidden in him! Respect! And do you know, you primitive creature, what Nikolai Artemyevitch was in a rage with me for? Why I spent the whole of this morning with him at his German woman’s; we were singing the three of us—“Do not leave me.” You should have heard us—that would have moved you. We sang and sang, my dear sir—and well, I got bored; I could see something was wrong, there was an alarming tenderness in the air. And I began to tease them both. I was very successful. First she was angry with me, then with him; and then he got angry with her, and told her that he was never happy except at home, and he had a paradise there; and she told him he had no morals; and I murmured “Ach!” to her in German. He walked off and I stayed behind; he came here, to his paradise that’s to say, and he was soon sick of paradise, so he set to grumbling. Well now, who do you consider was to blame?’
‘You, of course,’ replied Uvar Ivanovitch.
Shubin stared at him. ‘May I venture to ask you, most reverend knight-errant,’ he began in an obsequious voice, ‘these enigmatical words you have deigned to utter as the result of some exercise of your reflecting faculties, or under the influence of a momentary necessity to start the vibration in the air known as sound?’
‘Don’t tempt me, I tell you,’ groaned Uvar Ivanovitch.
Shubin laughed and ran away. ‘Hi,’ shouted Uvar Ivanovitch a quarter of an hour later, ‘you there... a glass of spirits.’
A little page brought the glass of spirits and some salt fish on a tray. Uvar Ivanovitch slowly took the glass from the tray and gazed a long while with intense attention at it, as though he could not quite understand what it was he had in his hand. Then he looked at the page and asked him, ‘Wasn’t his name Vaska?’ Then he assumed an air of resignation, drank off the spirit, munched the herring and was slowly proceeding to get his handkerchief out of his pocket. But the page had long ago carried off and put away the tray and the decanter, eaten up the remains of the herring and had time to go off to sleep, curled up in a great-coat of his master’s, while Uvar Ivanovitch still continued to hold the handkerchief before him in his opened fingers, and with the same intense attention gazed now at the window, now at the floor and walls.
IX
Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book, when Nikolai Artemyevitch’s valet came cautiously into his room and handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. ‘I hope,’ he found in the note, ‘that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which must be respected, and family tranquillity is something so sacred that only êtres sans coeur (among whom I have no reason to reckon you) would repudiate it! Give this note back to me.—N. S.’
Shubin scribbled below in pencil: ‘Don’t excite yourself, I’m not quite a sneak yet,’ and gave the note back to the man, and again began upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands. He looked at the reddening sky, at the two mighty young pines standing apart from the other trees, thought ‘by day pines are bluish, but how magnificently green they are in the evening,’ and went out into the garden, in the secret hope of meeting Elena there. He was not mistaken. Before him on a path between the bushes he caught a glimpse of her dress. He went after her, and when he was abreast with her, remarked:
‘Don’t look in my direction, I’m not worth it.’
She gave him a cursory glance, smiled cursorily, and walked on further into the depths of the garden. Shubin went after her.
‘I beg you not to look at me,’ he began, ‘and then I address you; flagrant contradiction. But what of that? it’s not the first time I’ve contradicted myself. I have just recollected that I have never begged your pardon as I ought for my stupid behaviour yesterday. You are not angry with me, Elena Nikolaevna, are you?’
She stood still and did not answer him at once—not because she was angry, but because her thoughts were far away.
‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I am not in the least angry.’ Shubin bit his lip.
‘What an absorbed... and what an indifferent face!’ he muttered. ‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘allow me to tell you a little anecdote. I had a friend, and this friend also had a friend, who at first conducted himself as befits a gentleman but afterwards took to drink. So one day early in the morning, my friend meets him in the street (and by that time, note, the acquaintance has been completely dropped) meets him and sees he is drunk. My friend went and turned his back on him. But he ran up and said, “I would not be angry,” says he, “if you refused to recognise me, but why should you turn your back on me? Perhaps I have been brought to this through grief. Peace to my ashes!”’
Shubin paused.
‘And is that all?’ inquired Elena.
‘Yes that’s all.’
‘I don’t understand you. What are you hinting at? You told me just now not to look your way.’
‘Yes, and now I have told you that it’s too bad to turn your back on me.’
‘But did I?’ began Elena.
‘Did you not?’
Elena flushed slightly and held out her hand to Shubin. He pressed it warmly.
‘Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,’ said Elena, ‘but your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of avoiding you.’
‘Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me. Eh? I’ve spoken the truth, I’m quite sure?’
‘Perhaps so.’
‘And why is it? why?’
‘My ideas are not clear to myself,’ said Elena.
‘Then it’s just the time for confiding them to some one else,’ put in Shubin. ‘But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion of me.’
‘I?’
‘Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half-humbug because I am an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything—in that you are very likely right—but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I’m a gossip and a slanderer,—and all because I’m an artist. What luckless, God-forsaken wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to adore, and you don’t believe in my repentance.’
‘No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you—yes and your tears too.’
Shubin shuddered.
‘Well, I see this is, as the doctors say, a hopeless case, casus incurabilis. There is nothing left but to bow the head and submit. And meanwhile, good Heavens, can it be true, can I possibly be absorbed in my own egoism when there is a soul like this living at my side? And to know that one will never penetrate into that soul, never will know why it grieves and why it rejoices, what is working within it, what it desires—whither it is going... Tell me,’ he said after a short silence, ‘could you never under any circumstances love an artist?’
Elena looked straight into his eyes.
‘I don’t think so, Pavel Yakovlitch; no.’
‘Which was to be proved,’ said Shubin with comical dejection. ‘After which I suppose it would be more seemly for me not to intrude on your solitary walk. A professor would ask you on what data you founded your answer no. I’m not a professor though, but a baby according to your ideas; but one does not turn one’s back on a baby, remember. Good-bye! Peace to my ashes!’
Elena was on the point of stopping him, but after a moment’s thought she too said:
‘Good-bye.’
Shubin went out of the courtyard. At a short distance from the Stahov’s house he was met by Bersenyev. He was walking with hurried steps, his head bent and his hat pushed back on his neck.
‘Andrei Petrovitch!’ cried Shubin.
He stopped.
‘Go on, go on,’ continued Shubin, ‘I only shouted, I won’t detain you—and you’d better slip straight into the garden—you’ll find Elena there, I fancy she’s waiting for you... she’s waiting for some one anyway.... Do you understand the force of those words: she is waiting! And do you know, my dear boy, an astonishing circumstance? Imagine, it’s two years now that I have been living in the same house with her, I’m in love with her, and it’s only just now, this minute, that I’ve, not understood, but really seen her. I have seen her and I lifted up my hands in amazement. Don’t look at me, please, with that sham sarcastic smile, which does not suit your sober features. Well, now, I suppose you want to remind me of Annushka. What of it? I don’t deny it. Annushkas are on my poor level. And long life to all Annushkas and Zoyas and even Augustina Christianovnas! You go to Elena now, and I will make my way to—Annushka, you fancy? No, my dear fellow, worse than that; to Prince Tchikurasov. He is a Maecenas of a Kazan-Tartar stock, after the style of Volgin. Do you see this note of invitation, these letters, R.S.V.P.? Even in the country there’s no peace for me. Addio!’ Bersenyev listened to Shubin’s tirade in silence, looking as though he were just a little ashamed of him. Then he went into the courtyard of the Stahovs’ house. And Shubin did really go to Prince Tchikurasov, to whom with the most cordial air he began saying the most insulting things. The Maecenas of the Tartars of Kazan chuckled; the Maecenas’s guests laughed, but no one felt merry, and every one was in a bad temper when the party broke up. So two gentlemen slightly acquainted may be seen when they meet on the Nevsky Prospect suddenly grinning at one another and pursing up their eyes and noses and cheeks, and then, directly they have passed one another, they resume their former indifferent, often cross, and generally sickly, expression.
X
Elena met Bersenyev cordially, though not in the garden, but the drawing-room, and at once, almost impatiently, renewed the conversation of the previous day. She was alone; Nikolai Artemyevitch had quietly slipped away. Anna Vassilyevna was lying down upstairs with a wet bandage on her head. Zoya was sitting by her, the folds of her skirt arranged precisely about her, and her little hands clasped on her knees. Uvar Ivanovitch was reposing in the attic on a wide and comfortable divan, known as a ‘samo-son’ or ‘dozer.’ Bersenyev again mentioned his father; he held his memory sacred. Let us, too, say a few words about him.
The owner of eighty-two serfs, whom he set free before his death, an old Gottingen student, and disciple of the ‘Illuminati,’ the author of a manuscript work on ‘transformations or typifications of the spirit in the world’—a work in which Schelling’s philosophy, Swedenborgianism and republicanism were mingled in the most original fashion—Bersenyev’s father brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow immediately after his mother’s death, and at once himself undertook his education. He prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in life) surmised at last that things were not going quite right, and he placed his Andrei in a school. Andrei began to learn, but he was not removed from his father’s supervision; his father visited him unceasingly, wearying the schoolmaster to death with his instructions and conversation; the teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits; he was for ever bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on education. Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old man’s swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in a sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them about Washington: ‘My young nurslings,’ he began, but at the first sounds of his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old Gottingen student did not lie on a bed of roses; he was for ever weighed down by the march of history, by questions and ideas of every kind. When young Bersenyev entered the university, his father used to drive with him to the lectures, but his health was already beginning to break up. The events of the year 1848 shook him to the foundation (it necessitated the re-writing of his whole book), and he died in the winter of 1853, before his son’s time at the university was over, but he was able beforehand to congratulate him on his degree, and to consecrate him to the service of science. ‘I pass on the torch to you,’ he said to him two hours before his death. ‘I held it while I could; you, too, must not let the light grow dim before the end.’
Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The embarrassment he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp was less marked. The conversation passed on to the university.
‘Tell me,’ Elena asked him, ‘were there any remarkable men among your comrades?’
Bersenyev was again reminded of Shubin’s words.
‘No, Elena Nikolaevna, to tell you the truth, there was not a single remarkable man among us. And, indeed, where are such to be found! There was, they say, a good time once in the Moscow university! But not now. Now it’s a school, not a university. I was not happy with my comrades,’ he added, dropping his voice.
‘Not happy,’ murmured Elena.
‘But I ought,’ continued Bersenyev, ‘to make an exception. I know one student—it’s true he is not in the same faculty—he is certainly a remarkable man.’
‘What is his name?’ Elena inquired with interest.
‘Insarov Dmitri Nikanorovitch. He is a Bulgarian.’
‘Not a Russian?’
‘No, he is not a Russian,’
‘Why is he living in Moscow, then?’
‘He came here to study. And do you know with what aim he is studying? He has a single idea: the liberation of his country. And his story is an exceptional one. His father was a fairly well-to-do merchant; he came from Tirnova. Tirnova is now a small town, but it was the capital of Bulgaria in the old days when Bulgaria was still an independent state. He traded with Sophia, and had relations with Russia; his sister, Insarov’s aunt, is still living in Kiev, married to a senior history teacher in the gymnasium there. In 1835, that is to say eighteen years ago, a terrible crime was committed; Insarov’s mother suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace behind; a week later she was found murdered.’
Elena shuddered. Bersenyev stopped.
‘Go on, go on,’ she said.
‘There were rumours that she had been outraged and murdered by a Turkish aga; her husband, Insarov’s father, found out the truth, tried to avenge her, but only succeeded in wounding the aga with his poniard.... He was shot.’
‘Shot, and without a trial?’
‘Yes. Insarov was just eight years old at the time. He remained in the hands of neighbours. The sister heard of the fate of her brother’s family, and wanted to take the nephew to live with her. They got him to Odessa, and from there to Kiev. At Kiev he lived twelve whole years. That’s how it is he speaks Russian so well.’
‘He speaks Russian?’
‘Just as we do. When he was twenty (that was at the beginning of the year 1848) he began to want to return to his country. He stayed in Sophia and Tirnova, and travelled through the length and breadth of Bulgaria, spending two years there, and learning his mother tongue over again. The Turkish Government persecuted him, and he was certainly exposed to great dangers during those two years; I once caught sight of a broad scar on his neck, from a wound, no doubt; but he does not like to talk about it. He is reserved, too, in his own way. I have tried to question him about everything, but I could get nothing out of him. He answers by generalities. He’s awfully obstinate. He returned to Russia again in 1850, to Moscow, with the intention of educating himself thoroughly, getting intimate with Russians, and then when he leaves the university——’
‘What then?’ broke in Elena.
‘What God wills. It’s hard to forecast the future.’
For a while Elena did not take her eyes off Bersenyev.
‘You have greatly interested me by what you have told me,’ she said. ‘What is he like, this friend of yours; what did you call him, Insarov?’
‘What shall I say? To my mind, he’s good-looking. But you will see him for yourself.’
‘How so?’
‘I will bring him here to see you. He is coming to our little village the day after tomorrow, and is going to live with me in the same lodging.’
‘Really? But will he care to come to see us?’
‘I should think so. He will be delighted.’
‘He isn’t proud, then?’
‘Not the least. That’s to say, he is proud if you like, only not in the sense you mean. He will never, for instance, borrow money from any one.’
‘Is he poor?’
‘Yes, he isn’t rich. When he went to Bulgaria he collected some relics left of his father’s property, and his aunt helps him; but it all comes to very little.’
‘He must have a great deal of character,’ observed Elena.
‘Yes. He is a man of iron. And at the same time you will see there is something childlike and frank, with all his concentration and even his reserve. It’s true, his frankness is not our poor sort of frankness—the frankness of people who have absolutely nothing to conceal.... But there, I will bring him to see you; wait a little.’
‘And isn’t he shy?’ asked Elena again.
‘No, he’s not shy. It’s only vain people who are shy.’
‘Why, are you vain?’
He was confused and made a vague gesture with his hands.
‘You excite my curiosity,’ pursued Elena. ‘But tell me, has he not taken vengeance on that Turkish aga?’
Bersenyev smiled
‘Revenge is only to be found in novels, Elena Nikolaevna; and, besides, in twelve years that aga may well be dead.’
‘Mr. Insarov has never said anything, though, to you about it?’
‘No, never.’
‘Why did he go to Sophia?’
‘His father used to live there.’
Elena grew thoughtful.
‘To liberate one’s country!’ she said. ‘It is terrible even to utter those words, they are so grand.’
At that instant Anna Vassilyevna came into the room, and the conversation stopped.
Bersenyev was stirred by strange emotions when he returned home that evening. He did not regret his plan of making Elena acquainted with Insarov, he felt the deep impression made on her by his account of the young Bulgarian very natural... had he not himself tried to deepen that impression! But a vague, unfathomable emotion lurked secretly in his heart; he was sad with a sadness that had nothing noble in it. This sadness did not prevent him, however, from setting to work on the History of the Hohenstaufen, and beginning to read it at the very page at which he had left off the evening before.
XI
Two days later, Insarov in accordance with his promise arrived at Bersenyev’s with his luggage. He had no servant; but without any assistance he put his room to rights, arranged the furniture, dusted and swept the floor. He had special trouble with the writing table, which would not fit into the recess in the wall assigned for it; but Insarov, with the silent persistence peculiar to him succeeded in getting his own way with it. When he had settled in, he asked Bersenyev to let him pay him ten roubles in advance, and arming himself with a thick stick, set off to inspect the country surrounding his new abode. He returned three hours later; and in response to Bersenyev’s invitation to share his repast, he said that he would not refuse to dine with him that day, but that he had already spoken to the woman of the house, and would get her to send him up his meals for the future.
‘Upon my word!’ said Bersenyev, ‘you will fare very badly; that old body can’t cook a bit. Why don’t you dine with me, we would go halves over the cost.’
‘My means don’t allow me to dine as you do,’ Insarov replied with a tranquil smile.
There was something in that smile which forbade further insistence; Bersenyev did not add a word. After dinner he proposed to Insarov that he should take him to the Stahovs; but he replied that he had intended to devote the evening to correspondence with his Bulgarians, and so he would ask him to put off the visit to the Stahovs till next day. Bersenyev was already familiar with Insarov’s unbending will; but it was only now when he was under the same roof with him, that he fully realised at last that Insarov would never alter any decision, just in the same way as he would never fail to carry out a promise he had given; to Bersenyev—a Russian to his fingertips—this more than German exactitude seemed at first odd, and even rather ludicrous; but he soon got used to it, and ended by finding it—if not deserving of respect—at least very convenient.
The second day after his arrival, Insarov got up at four o’clock in the morning, made a round of almost all Kuntsovo, bathed in the river, drank a glass of cold milk, and then set to work. And he had plenty of work to do; he was studying Russian history and law, and political economy, translating the Bulgarian ballads and chronicles, collecting materials on the Eastern Question, and compiling a Russian grammar for the use of Bulgarians, and a Bulgarian grammar for the use of Russians. Bersenyev went up to him and began to discuss Feuerbach. Insarov listened attentively, made few remarks, but to the point; it was clear from his observations that he was trying to arrive at a conclusion as to whether he need study Feuerbach, or whether he could get on without him. Bersenyev turned the conversation on to his pursuits, and asked him if he could not show him anything. Insarov read him his translation of two or three Bulgarian ballads, and was anxious to hear his opinion of them. Bersenyev thought the translation a faithful one, but not sufficiently spirited. Insarov paid close attention to his criticism. From the ballads Bersenyev passed on to the present position of Bulgaria, and then for the first time he noticed what a change came over Insarov at the mere mention of his country: not that his face flushed nor his voice grew louder—no! but at once a sense of force and intense onward striving was expressed in his whole personality, the lines of his mouth grew harder and less flexible, and a dull persistent fire glowed in the depths of his eyes. Insarov did not care to enlarge on his own travels in his country; but of Bulgaria in general he talked readily with any one. He talked at length of the Turks, of their oppression, of the sorrows and disasters of his countrymen, and of their hopes: concentrated meditation on a single ruling passion could be heard in every word he uttered.
‘Ah, well, there’s no mistake about it,’ Bersenyev was reflecting meanwhile, ‘that Turkish aga, I venture to think, has been punished for his father’s and mother’s death.’
Insarov had not had time to say all he wanted to say, when the door opened and Shubin made his appearance.
He came into the room with an almost exaggerated air of ease and good-humour; Bersenyev, who knew him well, could see at once that something had been jarring on him.
‘I will introduce myself without ceremony,’ he began with a bright and open expression on his face. ‘My name is Shubin; I’m a friend of this young man here’ (he indicated Bersenyev). ‘You are Mr. Insarov, of course, aren’t you?’
‘I am Insarov.’
‘Then give me your hand and let us be friends. I don’t know if Bersenyev has talked to you about me, but he has told me a great deal about you. You are staying here? Capital! Don’t be offended at my staring at you so. I’m a sculptor by trade, and I foresee I shall in a little time be begging your permission to model your head.’
‘My head’s at your service,’ said Insarov.
‘What shall we do to-day, eh?’ began Shubin, sitting down suddenly on a low chair, with his knees apart and his elbows propped on them. ‘Andrei Petrovitch, has your honour any kind of plan for to-day? It’s glorious weather; there’s a scent of hay and dried strawberries as if one were drinking strawberry-tea for a cold. We ought to get up some kind of a spree. Let us show the new inhabitant of Kuntsov all its numerous beauties.’ (Something has certainly upset him, Bersenyev kept thinking to himself.) ‘Well, why art thou silent, friend Horatio? Open your prophetic lips. Shall we go off on a spree, or not?’
‘I don’t know how Insarov feels,’ observed Bersenyev. ‘He is just getting to work, I fancy.’
Shubin turned round on his chair.
‘You want to work?’ he inquired, in a somewhat condescending voice.
‘No,’ answered Insarov; ‘to-day I could give up to walking.’
‘Ah!’ commented Shubin. ‘Well, that’s delightful. Run along, my friend, Andrei Petrovitch, put a hat on your learned head, and let us go where our eyes lead us. Our eyes are young—they may lead us far. I know a very repulsive little restaurant, where they will give us a very beastly little dinner; but we shall be very jolly. Come along.’
Half an hour later they were all three walking along the bank of the Moskva. Insarov had a rather queer cap with flaps, over which Shubin fell into not very spontaneous raptures. Insarov walked without haste, and looked about, breathing, talking, and smiling with the same tranquillity; he was giving this day up to pleasure, and enjoying it to the utmost. ‘Just as well-behaved boys walk out on Sundays,’ Shubin whispered in Bersenyev’s ear. Shubin himself played the fool a great deal, ran in front, threw himself into the attitudes of famous statues, and turned somersaults on the grass; Insarov’s tranquillity did not exactly irritate him, but it spurred him on to playing antics. ‘What a fidget you are, Frenchman!’ Bersenyev said twice to him. ‘Yes, I am French, half French,’ Shubin answered, ‘and you hold the happy medium between jest and earnest, as a waiter once said to me.’ The young men turned away from the river and went along a deep and narrow ravine between two walls of tall golden rye; a bluish shadow was cast on them from the rye on one side; the flashing sunlight seemed to glide over the tops of the ears; the larks were singing, the quails were calling: on all sides was the brilliant green of the grass; a warm breeze stirred and lifted the leaves and shook the heads of the flowers. After prolonged wanderings, with rest and chat between (Shubin had even tried to play leap-frog with a toothless peasant they met, who did nothing but laugh, whatever the gentlemen might do to him), the young men reached the ‘repulsive little’ restaurant: the waiter almost knocked each of them over, and did really provide them with a very bad dinner with a sort of Balkan wine, which did not, however, prevent them from being very jolly, as Shubin had foretold; he himself was the loudest and the least jolly. He drank to the health of the incomprehensible but great Venelin, the health of the Bulgarian king Kuma, Huma, or Hroma, who lived somewhere about the time of Adam.
‘In the ninth century,’ Insarov corrected him.
‘In the ninth century?’ cried Shubin. ‘Oh, how delightful!’
Bersenyev noticed that among all his pranks, and jests and gaiety, Shubin was constantly, as it were, examining Insarov; he was sounding him and was in inward excitement, but Insarov remained as before, calm and straightforward.
At last they returned home, changed their dress, and resolved to finish the day as they had begun it, by going that evening to the Stahovs. Shubin ran on before them to announce their arrival.
XII
‘The conquering hero Insarov will be here directly!’ he shouted triumphantly, going into the Stahovs’ drawing-room, where there happened at the instant to be only Elena and Zoya.
‘Wer?’ inquired Zoya in German. When she was taken unawares she always used her native language. Elena drew herself up. Shubin looked at her with a playful smile on his lips. She felt annoyed, but said nothing.
‘You heard,’ he repeated, ‘Mr. Insarov is coming here.’
‘I heard,’ she replied; ‘and I heard how you spoke of him. I am surprised at you, indeed. Mr. Insarov has not yet set foot in the house, and you already think fit to turn him into ridicule.’
Shubin was crestfallen at once.
‘You are right, you are always right, Elena Nikolaevna,’ he muttered; ‘but I meant nothing, on my honour. We have been walking together with him the whole day, and he’s a capital fellow, I assure you.’
‘I didn’t ask your opinion about that,’ commented Elena, getting up.
‘Is Mr. Insarov a young man?’ asked Zoya.
‘He is a hundred and forty-four,’ replied Shubin with an air of vexation.
The page announced the arrival of the two friends. They came in. Bersenyev introduced Insarov. Elena asked them to sit down, and sat down herself, while Zoya went off upstairs; she had to inform Anna Vassilyevna of their arrival. A conversation was begun of a rather insignificant kind, like all first conversations. Shubin was silently watching from a corner, but there was nothing to watch. In Elena he detected signs of repressed annoyance against him—Shubin—and that was all. He looked at Bersenyev and at Insarov, and compared their faces from a sculptor’s point of view. ‘They are neither of them good-looking,’ he thought, ‘the Bulgarian has a characteristic face—there now it’s in a good light; the Great-Russian is better adapted for painting; there are no lines, there’s expression. But, I dare say, one might fall in love with either of them. She is not in love yet, but she will fall in love with Bersenyev,’ he decided to himself. Anna Vassilyevna made her appearance in the drawing-room, and the conversation took the tone peculiar to summer villas—not the country-house tone but the peculiar summer visitor tone. It was a conversation diversified by plenty of subjects; but broken by short rather wearisome pauses every three minutes. In one of these pauses Anna Vassilyevna turned to Zoya. Shubin understood her silent hint, and drew a long face, while Zoya sat down to the piano, and played and sang all her pieces through. Uvar Ivanovitch showed himself for an instant in the doorway, but he beat a retreat, convulsively twitching his fingers. Then tea was served; and then the whole party went out into the garden.... It began to grow dark outside, and the guests took leave.
Insarov had really made less impression on Elena than she had expected, or, speaking more exactly, he had not made the impression she had expected. She liked his directness and unconstraint, and she liked his face; but the whole character of Insarov—with his calm firmness and everyday simplicity—did not somehow accord with the image formed in her brain by Bersenyev’s account of him. Elena, though she did not herself suspect it, had anticipated something more fateful. ‘But,’ she reflected, ‘he spoke very little to-day, and I am myself to blame for it; I did not question him, we must have patience till next time... and his eyes are expressive, honest eyes.’ She felt that she had no disposition to humble herself before him, but rather to hold out her hand to him in friendly equality, and she was puzzled; this was not how she had fancied men, like Insarov, ‘heroes.’ This last word reminded her of Shubin, and she grew hot and angry, as she lay in her bed.
‘How did you like your new acquaintances?’ Bersenyev inquired of Insarov on their way home.
‘I liked them very much,’ answered Insarov, ‘especially the daughter. She must be a nice girl. She is excitable, but in her it’s a fine kind of excitability.’
‘You must go and see them a little oftener,’ observed Bersenyev.
‘Yes, I must,’ said Insarov; and he said nothing more all the way home. He at once shut himself up in his room, but his candle was burning long after midnight.
Bersenyev had had time to read a page of Raumer, when a handful of fine gravel came rattling on his window-pane. He could not help starting; opening the window he saw Shubin as white as a sheet.
‘What an irrepressible fellow you are, you night moth——’ Bersenyev was beginning.
‘Sh—’ Shubin cut him short; ‘I have come to you in secret, as Max went to Agatha I absolutely must say a few words to you alone.’
‘Come into the room then.’
‘No, that’s not necessary,’ replied Shubin, and he leaned his elbows on the window-sill, ‘it’s better fun like this, more as if we were in Spain. To begin with, I congratulate you, you’re at a premium now. Your belauded, exceptional man has quite missed fire. That I’ll guarantee. And to prove my impartiality, listen—here’s the sum and substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk’s about his—between ourselves let it be said—tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you’ll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; and I am proud of it. Dry as dust, dry as dust, but he can crush all of us to powder. He’s devoted to his country—not like our empty patriots who fawn on the people; pour into us, they say, thou living water! But, of course, his problem is easier, more intelligible: he has only to drive the Turks out, a mighty task. But all these qualities, thank God, don’t please women. There’s no fascination, no charm about them, as there is about you and me.’
‘Why do you bring me in?’ muttered Bersenyev. ‘And you are wrong in all the rest; you are not in the least hateful to him, and with his own countrymen he is on Christian name terms—that I know.’
‘That’s a different matter! For them he’s a hero; but, to make a confession, I have a very different idea of a hero; a hero ought not to be able to talk; a hero should roar like a bull, but when he butts with his horns, the walls shake. He ought not to know himself why he butts at things, but just to butt at them. But, perhaps, in our days heroes of a different stamp are needed.’
‘Why are you so taken up with Insarov?’ asked Bersenyev. ‘Can you have run here only to describe his character to me?’
‘I came here,’ began Shubin, ‘because I was very miserable at home.’
‘Oh, that’s it! Don’t you want to have a cry again?’
‘You may laugh! I came here because I’m at my wits’ end, because I am devoured by despair, anger, jealousy.’
‘Jealousy? of whom?’
‘Of you and him and every one. I’m tortured by the thought that if I had understood her sooner, if I had set to work cleverly—But what’s the use of talking! It must end by my always laughing, playing the fool, turning things into ridicule as she says, and then setting to and strangling myself.’
‘Stuff, you won’t strangle yourself,’ observed Bersenyev.
‘On such a night, of course not; but only let me live on till the autumn. On such a night people do die too, but only of happiness. Ah, happiness! Every shadow that stretches across the road from every tree seems whispering now: “I know where there is happiness... shall I tell you?” I would ask you to come for a walk, only now you’re under the influence of prose. Go to sleep, and may your dreams be visited by mathematical figures! My heart is breaking. You, worthy gentlemen, see a man laughing, and that means to your notions he’s all right; you can prove to him that he’s humbugging himself, that’s to say, he is not suffering.... God bless you!’
Shubin abruptly left the window. ‘Annu-shka!’ Bersenyev felt an impulse to shout after him, but he restrained himself; Shubin had really been white with emotion. Two minutes later, Bersenyev even caught the sound of sobbing; he got up and opened the window; everything was still, only somewhere in the distance some one—a passing peasant, probably—was humming ‘The Plain of Mozdok.’
XIII
During the first fortnight of Insarov’s stay in the Kuntsovo neighbourhood, he did not visit the Stahovs more than four or five times; Bersenyev went to see them every day. Elena was always pleased to see him, lively and interesting talk always sprang up between them, and yet he often went home with a gloomy face. Shubin scarcely showed himself; he was working with feverish energy at his art; he either stayed locked up in his room, from which he would emerge in a blouse, smeared all over with clay, or else he spent days in Moscow where he had a studio, to which models and Italian sculptors, his friends and teachers, used to come to see him. Elena did not once succeed in talking with Insarov, as she would have liked to do; in his absence she prepared questions to ask him about many things, but when he came she felt ashamed of her plans. Insarov’s very tranquillity embarrassed her; it seemed to her that she had not the right to force him to speak out; and she resolved to wait; for all that, she felt that at every visit however trivial might be the words that passed between them, he attracted her more and more; but she never happened to be left alone with him—and to grow intimate with any one, one must have at least one conversation alone with him. She talked a great deal about him to Bersenyev. Bersenyev realised that Elena’s imagination had been struck by Insarov, and was glad that his friend had not ‘missed fire’ as Shubin had asserted. He told her cordially all he knew of him down to the minutest details (we often, when we want to please some one, bring our friends into our conversation, hardly ever suspecting that we are praising ourselves in that way), and only at times, when Elena’s pale cheeks flushed a little and her eyes grew bright and wide, he felt a pang in his heart of that evil pain which he had felt before.
One day Bersenyev came to the Stahovs, not at the customary time, but at eleven o’clock in the morning. Elena came down to him in the parlour.
‘Fancy,’ he began with a constrained smile, ‘our Insarov has disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ said Elena.
‘He has disappeared. The day before yesterday he went off somewhere and nothing has been seen of him since.’
‘He did not tell you where he was going?’
‘No.’
Elena sank into a chair.
‘He has most likely gone to Moscow,’ she commented, trying to seem indifferent and at the same time wondering that she should try to seem indifferent.
‘I don’t think so,’ rejoined Bersenyev. ‘He did not go alone.’
‘With whom then?’
‘Two people of some sort—his countrymen they must have been—came to him the day before yesterday, before dinner.’
‘Bulgarians! what makes you think so?’
‘Why as far as I could hear, they talked to him in some language I did not know, but Slavonic... You are always saying, Elena Nikolaevna, that there’s so little mystery about Insarov; what could be more mysterious than this visit? Imagine, they came to him—and then there was shouting and quarrelling, and such savage, angry disputing.... And he shouted too.’
‘He shouted too?’
‘Yes. He shouted at them. They seemed to be accusing each other. And if you could have had a peep at these visitors. They had swarthy, heavy faces with high cheek bones and hook noses, both about forty years old, shabbily dressed, hot and dusty, looking like workmen—not workmen, and not gentlemen—goodness knows what sort of people they were.’
‘And he went away with them?’
‘Yes. He gave them something to eat and went off with them. The woman of the house told me they ate a whole huge pot of porridge between the two of them. They outdid one another, she said, and gobbled it up like wolves.’
Elena gave a faint smile.
‘You will see,’ she said, ‘all this will be explained into something very prosaic.’
‘I hope it may! But you need not use that word. There is nothing prosaic about Insarov, though Shubin does maintain——’
‘Shubin!’ Elena broke in, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But you must confess these two good men gobbling up porridge——’
‘Even Themistocles had his supper on the eve of Salamis,’ observed Bersenyev with a smile.
‘Yes; but then there was a battle next day. Any way you will let me know when he comes back,’ said Elena, and she tried to change the subject, but the conversation made little progress. Zoya made her appearance and began walking about the room on tip-toe, giving them thereby to understand that Anna Vassilyevna was not yet awake.
Bersenyev went away.
In the evening of the same day a note from him was brought to Elena. ‘He has come back,’ he wrote to her, ‘sunburnt and dusty to his very eyebrows; but where and why he went I don’t know; won’t you find out?’
‘Won’t you find out!’ Elena whispered, ‘as though he talked to me!’
XIV
The next day, at two o’clock, Elena was standing in the garden before a small kennel, where she was rearing two puppies. (A gardener had found them deserted under a hedge, and brought them to the young mistress, being told by the laundry-maids that she took pity on beasts of all sorts. He was not wrong in his reckoning. Elena had given him a quarter-rouble.) She looked into the kennel, assured herself that the puppies were alive and well, and that they had been provided with fresh straw, turned round, and almost uttered a cry; down an alley straight towards her was walking Insarov, alone.
‘Good-morning,’ he said, coming up to her and taking off his cap. She noticed that he certainly had got much sunburnt during the last three days. ‘I meant to have come here with Andrei Petrovitch, but he was rather slow in starting; so here I am without him. There is no one in your house; they are all asleep or out of doors, so I came on here.’
‘You seem to be apologising,’ replied Elena. ‘There’s no need to do that. We are always very glad to see you. Let us sit here on the bench in the shade.’
She seated herself. Insarov sat down near her.
‘You have not been at home these last days, I think?’ she began.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I went away. Did Andrei Petrovitch tell you?’
Insarov looked at her, smiled, and began playing with his cap. When he smiled, his eyes blinked, and his lips puckered up, which gave him a very good-humoured appearance.
‘Andrei Petrovitch most likely told you too that I went away with some—unattractive people,’ he said, still smiling.
Elena was a little confused, but she felt at once that Insarov must always be told the truth.
‘Yes,’ she said decisively.
‘What did you think of me?’ he asked her suddenly.
Elena raised her eyes to him.
‘I thought,’ she said, ‘I thought that you always know what you’re doing, and you are incapable of doing anything wrong.’
‘Well—thanks for that. You see, Elena Nikolaevna,’ he began, coming closer to her in a confidential way, ‘there is a little family of our people here; among us there are men of little culture; but all are warmly devoted to the common cause. Unluckily, one can never get on without dissensions, and they all know me, and trust me; so they sent for me to settle a dispute. I went.’
‘Was it far from here?’
‘I went about fifty miles, to the Troitsky district. There, near the monastery, there are some of our people. At any rate, my trouble was not thrown away; I settled the matter.’
‘And had you much difficulty?’
‘Yes. One was obstinate through everything. He did not want to give back the money.’
‘What? Was the dispute over money?’
‘Yes; and a small sum of money too. What did you suppose?’
‘And you travelled over fifty miles for such trifling matters? Wasted three days?’
‘They are not trifling matters, Elena Nikolaevna, when my countrymen are involved. It would be wicked to refuse in such cases. I see here that you don’t refuse help even to puppies, and I think well of you for it. And as for the time I have lost, that’s no great harm; I will make it up later. Our time does not belong to us.’
‘To whom does it belong then?’
‘Why, to all who need us. I have told you all this on the spur of the moment, because I value your good opinion. I can fancy how Andrei Petrovitch must have made you wonder!’
‘You value my good opinion,’ said Elena, in an undertone, ‘why?’
Insarov smiled again.
‘Because you are a good young lady, not an aristocrat... that’s all.’
A short silence followed.
‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch,’ said Elena, ‘do you know that this is the first time you have been so unreserved with me?’
‘How’s that? I think I have always said everything I thought to you.’
‘No, this is the first time, and I am very glad, and I too want to be open with you. May I?’
Insarov began to laugh and said: ‘You may.’
‘I warn you I am very inquisitive.’
‘Never mind, tell me.’
‘Andrei Petrovitch has told me a great deal of your life, of your youth. I know of one event, one awful event.... I know you travelled afterwards in your own country.... Don’t answer me for goodness sake, if you think my question indiscreet, but I am fretted by one idea.... Tell me, did you meet that man?’
Elena caught her breath. She felt both shame and dismay at her own audacity. Insarov looked at her intently, slightly knitting his brows, and stroking his chin with his fingers.
‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he began at last, and his voice was much lower than usual, which almost frightened Elena, ‘I understand what man you are referring to. No, I did not meet him, and thank God I did not! I did not try to find him. I did not try to find him: not because I did not think I had a right to kill him—I would kill him with a very easy conscience—but because now is not the time for private revenge, when we are concerned with the general national vengeance—or no, that is not the right word—when we are concerned with the liberation of a people. The one would be a hindrance to the other. In its own time that, too, will come... that too will come,’ he repeated, and he shook his head.
Elena looked at him from the side.
‘You love your country very dearly?’ she articulated timidly.
‘That remains to be shown,’ he answered. ‘When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country.’
‘So that, if you were cut off all chance of returning to Bulgaria,’ continued Elena, ‘would you be very unhappy in Russia?’
Insarov looked down.
‘I think I could not bear that,’ he said.
‘Tell me,’ Elena began again, ‘is it difficult to learn Bulgarian?’
‘Not at all. It’s a disgrace to a Russian not to know Bulgarian. A Russian ought to know all the Slavonic dialects. Would you like me to bring you some Bulgarian books? You will see how easy it is. What ballads we have! equal to the Servian. But stop a minute, I will translate to you one of them. It is about... But you know a little of our history at least, don’t you?’
‘No, I know nothing of it,’ answered
Elena.
‘Wait a little and I will bring you a book. You will learn the principal facts at least from it. Listen to the ballad then.... But I had better bring you a written translation, though. I am sure you will love us, you love all the oppressed. If you knew what a land of plenty ours is! And, meanwhile, it has been downtrodden, it has been ravaged,’ he went on, with an involuntary movement of his arm, and his face darkened; ‘we have been robbed of everything; everything, our churches, our laws, our lands; the unclean Turks drive us like cattle, butcher us——’
‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch!’ cried Elena.
He stopped.
‘I beg your pardon. I can’t speak of this coolly. But you asked me just now whether I love my country. What else can one love on earth? What is the one thing unchanging, what is above all doubts, what is it—next to God—one must believe in? And when that country needs. ... Think; the poorest peasant, the poorest beggar in Bulgaria, and I have the same desire. All of us have one aim. You can understand what strength, what confidence that gives!’
Insarov was silent for an instant; then he began again to talk of Bulgaria. Elena listened to him with absorbed, profound, and mournful attention. When he had finished, she asked him once more:
‘Then you would not stay in Russia for anything?’
And when he went away, for a long time she gazed after him. On that day he had become a different man for her. When she walked back with him through the garden, he was no longer the man she had met two hours before.
From that day he began to come more and more often, and Bersenyev less and less often. A strange feeling began to grow up between the two friends, of which they were both conscious, but to which they could not give a name, and which they feared to analyse. In this way a month passed.
XV
Anna Vassilyevna, as the reader knows already, liked staying at home; but at times she manifested, quite unexpectedly, an irresistible longing for something out of the common, some extraordinary partie du plaisir, and the more troublesome the partie du plaisir was, the more preparations and arrangements it required, and the greater Anna Vassilyevna’s own agitation over it, the more pleasure it gave her. If this mood came upon her in winter, she would order two or three boxes to be taken side by side, and, inviting all her acquaintances, would set off to the theatre or even to a masquerade; in summer she would drive for a trip out of town to some spot as far off as possible. The next day she would complain of a headache, groan and keep her bed; but within two months the same craving for something ‘out of the common’ would break out in her again. That was just what happened now. Some one chanced to refer to the beautiful scenery of Tsaritsino before her, and Anna Vassilyevna suddenly announced an intention of driving to Tsaritsino the day after tomorrow. The household was thrown into a state of bustle; a messenger galloped off to Moscow for Nikolai Artemyevitch; with him galloped the butler to buy wines, pies, and all sorts of provisions; Shubin was commissioned to hire an open carriage—the coach alone was not enough—and to order relays of horses to be ready; a page was twice despatched to Bersenyev and Insarov with two different notes of invitation, written by Zoya, the first in Russian, the second in French; Anna Vassilyevna herself was busy over the dresses of the young ladies for the expedition. Meanwhile the partie du plaisir was very near coming to grief. Nikolai Artemyevitch arrived from Moscow in a sour, ill-natured, frondeurish frame of mind. He was still sulky with Augustina Christianovna; and when he heard what the plan was, he flatly declared that he would not go; that to go trotting from Kuntsovo to Moscow and from Moscow to Tsaritsino, and then from Tsaritsino again to Moscow, from Moscow again to Kuntsovo, was a piece of folly; and, ‘in fact,’ he added, ‘let them first prove to my satisfaction, that one can be merrier on one spot of the globe than another spot, and I will go.’ This, of course, no one could prove to his satisfaction, and Anna Vassilyevna was ready to throw up the partie du plaisir for lack of a solid escort; but she recollected Uvar Ivanovitch, and in her distress she sent to his room for him, saying: ‘a drowning man catches at straws.’ They waked him up; he came down, listened in silence to Anna Vassilyevna’s proposition, and, to the general astonishment, with a flourish of his fingers, he consented to go. Anna Vassilyevna kissed him on the cheek, and called him a darling; Nikolai Artemyevitch smiled contemptuously and said: quelle bourde! (he liked on occasions to make use of a ‘smart’ French word); and the following morning the coach and the open carriage, well-packed, rolled out of the Stahovs’ court-yard. In the coach were the ladies, a maid, and Bersenyev; Insarov was seated on the box; and in the open carriage were Uvar Ivanovitch and Shubin. Uvar Ivanovitch had himself beckoned Shubin to him; he knew that he would tease him the whole way, but there existed a queer sort of attachment, marked by abusive candour, between the ‘primeval force’ and the young artist. On this occasion, however, Shubin left his fat friend in peace; he was absent-minded, silent, and gentle.
The sun stood high in a cloudless blue sky when the carriage drove up to the ruins of Tsaritsino Castle, which looked gloomy and menacing, even at mid-day. The whole party stepped out on to the grass, and at once made a move towards the garden. In front went Elena and Zoya with Insarov; Anna Vassilyevna, with an expression of perfect happiness on her face, walked behind them, leaning on the arm of Uvar Ivanovitch. He waddled along panting, his new straw hat cut his forehead, and his feet twinged in his boots, but he was content; Shubin and Bersenyev brought up the rear. ‘We will form the reserve, my dear boy, like veterans,’ whispered Shubin to Bersenyev. ‘Bulgaria’s in it now!’ he added, indicating Elena with his eyebrows.
The weather was glorious. Everything around was flowering, humming, singing; in the distance shone the waters of the lakes; a light-hearted holiday mood took possession of all. ‘Oh, how beautiful; oh, how beautiful!’ Anna Vassilyevna repeated incessantly; Uvar Ivanovitch kept nodding his head approvingly in response to her enthusiastic exclamations, and once even articulated: ‘To be sure! to be sure!’ From time to time Elena exchanged a few words with Insarov; Zoya held the brim of her large hat with two fingers while her little feet, shod in light grey shoes with rounded toes, peeped coquettishly out from under her pink barège dress; she kept looking to each side and then behind her. ‘Hey!’ cried Shubin suddenly in a low voice, ‘Zoya Nikitishna is on the lookout, it seems. I will go to her. Elena Nikolaevna despises me now, while you, Andrei Petrovitch, she esteems, which comes to the same thing. I am going; I’m tired of being glum. I should advise you, my dear fellow, to do some botanising; that’s the best thing you could hit on in your position; it might be useful, too, from a scientific point of view. Farewell!’ Shubin ran up to Zoya, offered her his arm, and saying: ‘Ihre Hand, Madame’ caught hold of her hand, and pushed on ahead with her. Elena stopped, called to Bersenyev, and also took his arm, but continued talking to Insarov. She asked him the words for lily-of-the-valley, clover, oak, lime, and so on in his language... ‘Bulgaria’s in it!’ thought poor Andrei Petrovitch.
Suddenly a shriek was heard in front; every one looked up. Shubin’s cigar-case fell into a bush, flung by Zoya’s hand. ‘Wait a minute, I’ll pay you out!’ he shouted, as he crept into the bushes; he found his cigar-case, and was returning to Zoya; but he had hardly reached her side when again his cigar-case was sent flying across the road. Five times this trick was repeated, he kept laughing and threatening her, but Zoya only smiled slyly and drew herself together, like a little cat. At last he snatched her fingers, and squeezed them so tightly that she shrieked, and for a long time afterwards breathed on her hand, pretending to be angry, while he murmured something in her ears.
‘Mischievous things, young people,’ Anna Vassilyevna observed gaily to Uvar Ivanovitch.
He flourished his fingers in reply.
‘What a girl Zoya Nikitishna is!’ said Bersenyev to Elena.
‘And Shubin? What of him?’ she answered.
Meanwhile the whole party went into the arbour, well known as Pleasant View arbour, and stopped to admire the view of the Tsaritsino lakes. They stretched one behind the other for several miles, overshadowed by thick woods. The bright green grass, which covered the hill sloping down to the largest lake, gave the water itself an extraordinarily vivid emerald colour. Even at the water’s edge not a ripple stirred the smooth surface. One might fancy it a solid mass of glass lying heavy and shining in a huge font; the sky seemed to drop into its depths, while the leafy trees gazed motionless into its transparent bosom. All were absorbed in long and silent admiration of the view; even Shubin was still; even Zoya was impressed. At last, all with one mind, began to wish to go upon the water. Shubin, Insarov, and Bersenyev raced each other over the grass. They succeeded in finding a large painted boat and two boatmen, and beckoned to the ladies. The ladies stepped into the boat; Uvar Ivanovitch cautiously lowered himself into it after them. Great was the mirth while he got in and took his seat. ‘Look out, master, don’t drown us,’ observed one of the boatmen, a snubnosed young fellow in a gay print shirt. ‘Get along, you swell!’ said Uvar Ivanovitch. The boat pushed off. The young men took up the oars, but Insarov was the oniy one of them who could row. Shubin suggested that they should sing some Russian song in chorus, and struck up: ‘Down the river Volga’... Bersenyev, Zoya, and even Anna Vassilyevna, joined in—Insarov could not sing—but they did not keep together; at the third verse the singers were all wrong. Only Bersenyev tried to go on in the bass, ‘Nothing on the waves is seen,’ but he, too, was soon in difficulties. The boatmen looked at one another and grinned in silence.
‘Eh?’ said Shubin, turning to them, ‘the gentlefolks can’t sing, you say?’ The boy in the print shirt only shook his head. ‘Wait a little snubnose,’ retorted Shubin, ‘we will show you. Zoya Nikitishna, sing us Le lac of Niedermeyer. Stop rowing!’ The wet oars stood still, lifted in the air like wings, and their splash died away with a tuneful drip; the boat drifted on a little, then stood still, rocking lightly on the water like a swan. Zoya affected to refuse at first.... ‘Allons’ said Anna Vassilyevna genially.... Zoya took off her hat and began to sing: ‘O lac, l’année à peine a fini sa carrière!’
Her small, but pure voice, seemed to dart over the surface of the lake; every word echoed far off in the woods; it sounded as though some one were singing there, too, in a distinct, but mysterious and unearthly voice. When Zoya finished, a loud bravo was heard from an arbour near the bank, from which emerged several red-faced Germans who were picnicking at Tsaritsino. Several of them had their coats off, their ties, and even their waistcoats; and they shouted ‘bis!’ with such unmannerly insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to row as quickly as possible to the other end of the lake. But before the boat reached the bank, Uvar Ivanovitch once more succeeded in surprising his friends; having noticed that in one part of the wood the echo repeated every sound with peculiar distinctness, he suddenly began to call like a quail. At first every one was startled, but they listened directly with real pleasure, especially as Uvar Ivanovitch imitated the quail’s cry with great correctness. Spurred on by this, he tried mewing like a cat; but this did not go off so well; and after one more quail-call, he looked at them all and stopped. Shubin threw himself on him to kiss him; he pushed him off. At that instant the boat touched the bank, and all the party got out and went on shore.
Meanwhile the coachman, with the groom and the maid, had brought the baskets out of the coach, and made dinner ready on the grass under the old lime-trees. They sat down round the outspread tablecloth, and fell upon the pies and other dainties. They all had excellent appetites, while Anna Vassilyevna, with unflagging hospitality, kept urging the guests to eat more, assuring them that nothing was more wholesome than eating in the open air. She even encouraged Uvar Ivanovitch with such assurances. ‘Don’t trouble about me!’ he grunted with his mouth full. ‘Such a lovely day is a God-send, indeed!’ she repeated constantly. One would not have known her; she seemed fully twenty years younger. Bersenyev said as much to her. ‘Yes, yes.’ she said; ‘I could hold my own with any one in my day.’ Shubin attached himself to Zoya, and kept pouring her out wine; she refused it, he pressed her, and finished by drinking the glass himself, and again pressing her to take another; he also declared that he longed to lay his head on her knee; she would on no account permit him ‘such a liberty.’ Elena seemed the most serious of the party, but in her heart there was a wonderful sense of peace, such as she had not known for long. She felt filled with boundless goodwill and kindness, and wanted to keep not only Insarov, but Bersenyev too, always at her side.... Andrei Petrovitch dimly understood what this meant, and secretly he sighed.
The hours flew by; the evening was coming on. Anna Vassilyevna suddenly took alarm. ‘Ah, my dear friends, how late it is!’ she cried. ‘All good things must have an end; it’s time to go home.’ She began bustling about, and they all hastened to get up and walk towards the castle, where the carriages were. As they walked past the lakes, they stopped to admire Tsaritsino for the last time. The landscape on all sides was glowing with the vivid hues of early evening; the sky was red, the leaves were flashing with changing colours as they stirred in the rising wind; the distant waters shone in liquid gold; the reddish turrets and arbours scattered about the garden stood out sharply against the dark green of the trees. ‘Farewell, Tsaritsino, we shall not forget to-day’s excursion!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna.... But at that instant, and as though in confirmation of her words, a strange incident occurred, which certainly was not likely to be forgotten.
This was what happened. Anna Vassilyevna had hardly sent her farewell greeting to Tsaritsino, when suddenly, a few paces from her, behind a high bush of lilac, were heard confused exclamations, shouts, and laughter; and a whole mob of disorderly men, the same devotees of song who had so energetically applauded Zoya, burst out on the path. These musical gentlemen seemed excessively elevated. They stopped at the sight of the ladies; but one of them, a man of immense height, with a bull neck and a bull’s goggle eyes, separated from his companions, and, bowing clumsily and staggering unsteadily in his gait, approached Anna Vassilyevna, who was petrified with alarm.
‘Bonzhoor, madame,’ he said thickly, ‘how are you?’
Anna Vassilyevna started back.
‘Why wouldn’t you,’ continued the giant in vile Russian, ‘sing again when our party shouted bis, and bravo?’
‘Yes, why?’ came from the ranks of his comrades.
Insarov was about to step forward, but Shubin stopped him, and himself screened Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Allow me,’ he began, ‘honoured stranger, to express to you the heartfelt amazement, into which you have thrown all of us by your conduct. You belong, as far as I can judge, to the Saxon branch of the Caucasian race; consequently we are bound to assume your acquaintance with the customs of society, yet you address a lady to whom you have not been introduced. I assure you that I individually should be delighted another time to make your acquaintance, since I observe in you a phenomenal development of the muscles, biceps, triceps and deltoid, so that, as a sculptor, I should esteem it a genuine happiness to have you for a model; but on this occasion kindly leave us alone.’
The ‘honoured stranger’ listened to Shubin’s speech, his head held contemptuously on one side and his arms akimbo.
‘I don’t understand what you say,’ he commented at last. ‘Do you suppose I’m a cobbler or a watchmaker? Hey! I’m an officer, an official, so there.’
‘I don’t doubt that——’ Shubin was beginning.
‘What I say is,’ continued the stranger, putting him aside with his powerful arm, like a twig out of the path—‘why didn’t you sing again when we shouted bis? And I’ll go away directly, this minute, only I tell you what I want, this fräulein, not that madam, no, not her, but this one or that one (he pointed to Elena and Zoya) must give me einen Kuss, as we say in German, a kiss, in fact; eh? That’s not much to ask.’
‘Einen Kuss, that’s not much,’ came again from the ranks of his companions, ‘Ih! der Stakramenter!’ cried one tipsy German, bursting with laughter.
Zoya clutched at Insarov’s arm, but he broke away from her, and stood directly facing the insolent giant.
‘You will please to move off,’ he said in a voice not loud but sharp.
The German gave a heavy laugh, ‘Move off? Well, I like that. Can’t I walk where I please? Move off? Why should I move off?’
‘Because you have dared to annoy a lady,’ said Insarov, and suddenly he turned white, ‘because you’re drunk.’
‘Eh? me drunk? Hear what he says. Hören Sie das, Herr Provisor? I’m an officer, and he dares... Now I demand satisfaction! Einen Kuss will ich.’
‘If you come another step nearer——’ began Insarov.
‘Well? What then’
‘I’ll throw you in the water!’
‘In the water? Herr Je! Is that all? Well, let us see that, that would be very curious, too.’
The officer lifted his fists and moved forward, but suddenly something extraordinary happened. He uttered an exclamation, his whole bulky person staggered, rose from the ground, his legs kicking in the air, and before the ladies had time to shriek, before any one had time to realise how it had happened, the officer’s massive figure went plop with a heavy splash, and at once disappeared under the eddying water.
‘Oh!’ screamed the ladies with one voice.
‘Mein Gott!’ was heard from the other side.
An instant passed... and a round head, all plastered over with wet hair, showed above water, it was blowing bubbles, this head; and floundering with two hands just at its very lips. ‘He will be drowned, save him! save him!’ cried Anna Vassilyevna to Insarov, who was standing with his legs apart on the bank, breathing heavily.
‘He will swim out,’ he answered with contemptuous and unsympathetic indifference. ‘Let us go on,’ he added, taking Anna Vassilyevna by the arm. ‘Come, Uvar Ivanovitch, Elena Nikolaevna.’
‘A—a—o—o’ was heard at that instant, the plaint of the hapless German who had managed to get hold of the rushes on the bank.
They all followed Insarov, and had to pass close by the party. But, deprived of their leader, the rowdies were subdued and did not utter a word; but one, the boldest of them, muttered, shaking his head menacingly: ‘All right... we shall see though... after that’; but one of the others even took his hat off. Insarov struck them as formidable, and rightly so; something evil, something dangerous could be seen in his face. The Germans hastened to pull out their comrade, who, directly he had his feet on dry ground, broke into tearful abuse and shouted after the ‘Russian scoundrels,’ that he would make a complaint, that he would go to Count Von Kizerits himself, and so on.
But the ‘Russian scoundrels’ paid no attention to his vociferations, and hurried on as fast as they could to the castle. They were all silent, as they walked through the garden, though Anna Vassilyevna sighed a little. But when they reached the carriages and stood still, they broke into an irrepressible, irresistible fit of Homeric laughter. First Shubin exploded, shrieking as if he were mad, Bersenyev followed with his gurgling guffaw, then Zoya fell into thin tinkling little trills, Anna Vassilyevna too suddenly broke down, Elena could not help smiling, and even Insarov at last could not resist it. But the loudest, longest, most persistent laugh was Uvar Ivanovitch’s; he laughed till his sides ached, till he choked and panted. He would calm down a little, then would murmur through his tears: ‘I—thought—what’s that splash—and there—he—went plop.’ And with the last word, forced out with convulsive effort, his whole frame was shaking with another burst of laughter. Zoya made him worse. ‘I saw his legs,’ she said, ‘kicking in the air.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ gasped Uvar Ivanovitch, ‘his legs, his legs—and then splash!—there he plopped in!’
‘And how did Mr. Insarov manage it? why the German was three times his size?’ said Zoya.
‘I’ll tell you,’ answered Uvar Ivanovitch, rubbing his eyes, ‘I saw; with one arm about his waist, he tripped him up, and he went plop! I heard—a splash—there he went.’
Long after the carriages had started, long after the castle of Tsaritsino was out of sight, Uvar Ivanovitch was still unable to regain his composure. Shubin, who was again with him in the carriage, began to cry shame on him at last.
Insarov felt ashamed. He sat in the coach facing Elena (Bersenyev had taken his seat on the box), and he said nothing; she too was silent. He thought that she was condemning his action; but she did not condemn him. She had been scared at the first minute; then the expression of his face had impressed her; afterwards she pondered on it all. It was not quite clear to her what the nature of her reflections was. The emotion she had felt during the day had passed away; that she realised; but its place had been taken by another feeling which she did not yet fully understand. The partie de plaisir had been prolonged too late; insensibly evening passed into night. The carriage rolled swiftly along, now beside ripening cornfields, where the air was heavy and fragrant with the smell of wheat; now beside wide meadows, from which a sudden wave of freshness blew lightly in the face. The sky seemed to lie like smoke over the horizon. At last the moon rose, dark and red. Anna Vassilyevna was dozing; Zoya had poked her head out of window and was staring at the road. It occurred to Elena at last that she had not spoken to Insarov for more than an hour. She turned to him with a trifling question; he at once answered her, delighted. Dim sounds began stirring indistinctly in the air, as though thousands of voices were talking in the distance; Moscow was coming to meet them. Lights twinkled afar off; they grew more and more frequent; at last there was the grating of the cobbles under their wheels. Anna Vassilyevna awoke, every one in the carriage began talking, though no one could hear what was said; everything was drowned in the rattle of the cobbles under the two carriages, and the hoofs of the eight horses. Long and wearisome seemed the journey from Moscow to Kuntsovo; all the party were asleep or silent, leaning with their heads pressed into their respective corners; Elena did not close her eyes; she kept them fixed on Insarov’s dimly-outlined figure. A mood of sadness had come upon Shubin; the breeze was blowing into his eyes and irritating him; he retired into the collar of his cloak and was on the point of tears. Uvar Ivanovitch was snoring blissfully, rocking from side to side. The carriages came to a standstill at last. Two men-servants lifted Anna Vassilyevna out of the carriage; she was all to pieces, and at parting from her fellow travellers, announced that she was ‘nearly dead’; they began thanking her, but she only repeated, ‘nearly dead.’ Elena for the first time pressed Insarov’s hand at parting, and for a long while she sat at her window before undressing; Shubin seized an opportunity to whisper to Bersenyev:
‘There, isn’t he a hero; he can pitch drunken Germans into the river!’
‘While you didn’t even do that,’ retorted Bersenyev, and he started homewards with Insarov.
The dawn was already showing in the sky when the two friends reached their lodging. The sun had not yet risen, but already the chill of daybreak was in the air, a grey dew covered the grass, and the first larks were trilling high, high up in the shadowy infinity of air, whence like a solitary eye looked out the great, last star.
XVI
Soon after her acquaintance with Insarov, Elena (for the fifth or sixth time) began a diary. Here are some extracts from it:
‘June.... Andrei Petrovitch brings me books, but I can’t read them. I’m ashamed to confess it to him; but I don’t like to give back the books, tell lies, say I have read them. I feel that would mortify him. He is always watching me. He seems devoted to me. A very good man, Andrei Petrovitch.... What is it I want? Why is my heart so heavy, so oppressed? Why do I watch the birds with envy as they fly past? I feel that I could fly with them, fly, where I don’t know, but far from here. And isn’t that desire sinful? I have here mother, father, home. Don’t I love them? No, I don’t love them, as I should like to love. It’s dreadful to put that in words, but it’s the truth. Perhaps I am a great sinner; perhaps that is why I am so sad, why I have no peace. Some hand seems laid on me, weighing me down, as though I were in prison, and the walls would fall on me directly. Why is it others don’t feel this? Whom shall I love, if I am cold to my own people? It’s clear, papa is right; he reproaches me for loving nothing but cats and dogs. I must think about that. I pray very little; I must pray.... Ah, I think I should know how to love!... I am still shy with Mr. Insarov. I don’t know why; I believe I’m not schoolgirlish generally, and he is so simple and kind. Sometimes he has a very serious face. He can’t give much thought to us. I feel that, and am ashamed in a way to take up his time. With Andrei Petrovitch it’s quite a different thing. I am ready to chat with him the whole day long. But he too always talks of Insarov. And such terrible facts he tells me about him! I saw him in a dream last night with a dagger in his hand. And he seemed to say to me, “I will kill you and I will kill myself!” What silliness!
‘Oh, if some one would say to me: “There, that’s what you must do!” Being good—isn’t much; doing good... yes, that’s the great thing in life. But how is one to do good? Oh, if I could learn to control myself! I don’t know why I am so often thinking of Mr. Insarov. When he comes and sits and listens intently, but makes no effort, no exertion himself, I look at him, and feel pleased, and that’s all, and when he goes, I always go over his words, and feel vexed with myself, and upset even. I can’t tell why. (He speaks French badly and isn’t ashamed of it—I like that.) I always think a lot about new people, though. As I talked to him, I suddenly was reminded of our butler, Vassily, who rescued an old cripple out of a hut that was on fire, and was almost killed himself. Papa called him a brave fellow, mamma gave him five roubles, and I felt as though I could fall at his feet. And he had a simple face—stupid-looking even—and he took to drink later on....
‘I gave a penny to-day to a beggar woman, and she said to me, “Why are you so sorrowful?” I never suspected I looked sorrowful. I think it must come from being alone, always alone, for better, for worse! There is no one to stretch out a hand to me. Those who come to me, I don’t want; and those I would choose—pass me by.
‘... I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-day; my head is confused, I want to fall on my knees and beg and pray for mercy. I don’t know by whom or how, but I feel as if I were being tortured, and inwardly I am shrieking in revolt; I weep and can’t be quiet.... O my God, subdue these outbreaks in me! Thou alone canst aid me, all else is useless; my miserable alms-giving, my studies can do nothing, nothing, nothing to help me. I should like to go out as a servant somewhere, really; that would do me good.
‘What is my youth for, what am I living for, why have I a soul, what is it all for?
‘... Insarov, Mr. Insarov—upon my word I don’t know how to write—still interests me, I should like to know what he has within, in his soul? He seems so open, so easy to talk to, but I can see nothing. Sometimes he looks at me with such searching eyes—or is that my fancy? Paul keeps teasing me. I am angry with Paul. What does he want? He’s in love with me... but his love’s no good to me. He’s in love with Zoya too. I’m unjust to him; he told me yesterday I didn’t know how to be unjust by halves... that’s true. It’s very horrid.
‘Ah, I feel one needs unhappiness, or poverty or sickness, or else one gets conceited directly.
‘... What made Andrei Petrovitch tell me to-day about those two Bulgarians! He told me it as it were with some intention. What have I to do with Mr. Insarov? I feel cross with Andrei Petrovitch.
‘... I take my pen and don’t know how to begin. How unexpectedly he began to talk to me in the garden to-day! How friendly and confiding he was! How quickly it happened! As if we were old, old friends and had only just recognised each other. How could I have not understood him before? How near he is to me now! And—what’s so wonderful—I feel ever so much calmer now. It’s ludicrous; yesterday I was angry with Andrei Petrovitch, and angry with him, I even called him Mr. Insarov, and to-day... Here at last is a true man; some one one may depend upon. He won’t tell lies; he’s the first man I have met who never tells lies; all the others tell lies, everything’s lying. Andrei Petrovitch, dear good friend, why do I wrong you? No! Andrei Petrovitch is more learned than he is, even, perhaps more intellectual. But I don’t know, he seems so small beside him. When he speaks of his country he seems taller, and his face grows handsome, and his voice is like steel, and... no... it seems as though there were no one in the world before whom he would flinch. And he doesn’t only talk.... he has acted and he will act. I shall ask him.... How suddenly he turned to me and smiled!... It’s only brothers that smile like that! Ah, how glad I am! When he came the first time, I never dreamt that we should so soon get to know each other. And now I am even pleased that I remained indifferent to him at first. Indifferent? Am I not indifferent then now?... It’s long since I have felt such inward peace. I feel so quiet, so quiet. And there’s nothing to write? I see him often and that’s all. What more is there to write?
‘... Paul shuts himself up, Andrei Petrovitch has taken to coming less often.... poor fellow! I fancy he... But that can never be, though. I like talking to Andrei Petrovitch; never a word of self, always of something sensible, useful. Very different from Shubin. Shubin’s as fine as a butterfly, and admires his own finery; which butterflies don’t do. But both Shubin and Andrei Petrovitch.... I know what I mean.
‘... He enjoys coming to us, I see that. But why? what does he find in me? It’s true our tastes are alike; he and I, both of us don’t care for poetry; neither of us knows anything of art. But how much better he is than I! He is calm, I am in perpetual excitement; he has chosen his path, his aim—while I—where am I going? where is my home? He is calm, but all his thoughts are far away. The time will come, and he will leave us for ever, will go home, there over the sea. Well? God grant he may! Any way I shall be glad that I knew him, while he was here.
‘Why isn’t he a Russian? No, he could not be Russian.
‘Mamma too likes him; she says: an unassuming young man. Dear mamma! She does not understand him. Paul says nothing; he guessed I didn’t like his hints, but he’s jealous of him. Spiteful boy! And what right has he? Did I ever... All that’s nonsense! What makes all that come into my head?
‘... Isn’t it strange though, that up till now, up to twenty, I have never loved any one! I believe that the reason why D.’s (I shall call him D.—I like that name Dmitri) soul is so clear, is that he is entirely given up to his work, his ideal. What has he to trouble about? When any one has utterly... utterly... given himself up, he has little sorrow, he is not responsible for anything. It’s not I want, but it wants. By the way, he and I both love the same flowers. I picked a rose this morning, one leaf fell, he picked it up.... I gave him the whole rose.
‘... D. often comes to us. Yesterday he spent the whole evening. He wants to teach me Bulgarian. I feel happy with him, quite at home, more than at home.
‘... The days fly past.... I am happy, and somehow discontent and I am thankful to God, and tears are not far off. Oh these hot bright days!
‘... I am still light-hearted as before, and only at times, and only a little, sad. I am happy. Am I happy?
‘... It will be long before I forget the expedition yesterday. What strange, new, terrible impressions when he suddenly took that great giant and flung him like a ball into the water. I was not frightened ... yet he frightened me. And afterwards—what an angry face, almost cruel! How he said, “He will swim out!” It gave me a shock. So I did not understand him. And afterwards when they all laughed, when I was laughing, how I felt for him! He was ashamed, I felt that he was ashamed before me. He told me so afterwards in the carriage in the dark, when I tried to get a good view of him and was afraid of him. Yes, he is not to be trifled with, and he is a splendid champion. But why that wicked look, those trembling lips, that angry fire in his eyes? Or is it, perhaps, inevitable? Isn’t it possible to be a man, a hero, and to remain soft and gentle? “Life is a coarse business,” he said to me once lately. I repeated that saying to Andrei Petrovitch; he did not agree with D. Which of them is right? But the beginning of that day! How happy I was, walking beside him, even without speaking. ... But I am glad of what happened. I see that it was quite as it should be.
‘... Restlessness again... I am not quite well.... All these days I have written nothing in this book, because I have had no wish to write. I felt, whatever I write, it won’t be what is in my heart. ... And what is in my heart? I have had a long talk with him, which revealed a great deal. He told me his plan (by the way, I know now how he got the wound in his neck.... Good God! when I think he was actually condemned to death, that he was only just saved, that he was wounded.... ) He prophesies war and will be glad of it. And for all that, I never saw D. so depressed. What can he... he!... be depressed by? Papa arrived home from town and came upon us two. He looked rather queerly at us. Andrei Petrovitch came; I noticed he had grown very thin and pale. He reproved me, saying I behave too coldly and inconsiderately to Shubin. I had utterly forgotten Paul’s existence. I will see him, and try to smooth over my offence. He is nothing to me now... nor any one else in the world. Andrei Petrovitch talked to me in a sort of commiserating way. What does it all mean? Why is everything around me and within me so dark? I feel as if about me and within me, something mysterious were happening, for which I want to find the right word.... I did not sleep all night; my head aches. What’s the good of writing? He went away so quickly to-day and I wanted to talk to him.... He almost seems to avoid me. Yes, he avoids me.
‘... The word is found, light has dawned on me! My God, have pity on me.... I love him!’
XVII
On the very day on which Elena had written this last fatal line in her diary, Insarov was sitting in Bersenyev’s room, and Bersenyev was standing before him with a look of perplexity on his face. Insarov had just announced his intention of returning to Moscow the next day.
‘Upon my word!’ cried Bersenyev. ‘Why, the finest part of the summer is just beginning. What will you do in Moscow? What a sudden decision! Or have you had news of some sort?’
‘I have had no news,’ replied Insarov; ‘but on thinking things over, I find I cannot stop here.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Andrei Petrovitch,’ said Insarov, ‘be so kind... don’t insist, please, I am very sorry myself to be leaving you, but it can’t be helped.’
Bersenyev looked at him intently.
‘I know,’ he said at last, ‘there’s no persuading you. And so, it’s a settled matter, is it?’
‘Absolutely settled,’ replied Insarov, getting up and going away.
Bersenyev walked about the room, then took his hat and set off for the Stahovs.
‘You have something to tell me,’ Elena said to him, directly they were left alone.
‘Yes, how did you guess?’
‘Never mind; tell me what it is.’
Bersenyev told her of Insarov’s intention.
Elena turned white.
‘What does it mean?’ she articulated with effort.
‘You know,’ observed Bersenyev, ‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch does not care to give reasons for his actions. But I think... let us sit down, Elena Nikolaevna, you don’t seem very well.... I fancy I can guess what is the real cause of this sudden departure.’
‘What—what cause?’ repeated Elena, and unconsciously she gripped tightly Bersenyev’s hand in her chill fingers.
‘You see,’ began Bersenyev, with a pathetic smile, ‘how can I explain to you? I must go back to last spring, to the time when I began to be more intimate with Insarov. I used to meet him then at the house of a relative, who had a daughter, a very pretty girl I thought that Insarov cared for her, and I told him so. He laughed, and answered that I was mistaken, that he was quite heart-whole, but if anything of that sort did happen to him, he should run away directly, as he did not want, in his own words, for the sake of personal feeling, to be false to his cause and his duty. “I am a Bulgarian,” he said, “and I have no need of a Russian love——”
‘Well—so—now you——’ whispered Elena. She involuntarily turned away her head, like a man expecting a blow, but she still held the hand she had clutched.
‘I think,’ he said, and his own voice sank, ‘I think that what I fancied then has really happened now.’
‘That is—you think—don’t torture me!’ broke suddenly from Elena.
‘I think,’ Bersenyev continued hurriedly, ‘that Insarov is in love now with a Russian girl, and he is resolved to go, according to his word.’
Elena clasped his hand still tighter, and her head drooped still lower, as if she would hide from other eyes the flush of shame which suddenly blazed over her face and neck.
‘Andrei Petrovitch, you are kind as an angel,’ she said, ‘but will he come to say goodbye?’
‘Yes, I imagine so; he will be sure to come. He wouldn’t like to go away——’
‘Tell him, tell him——’
But here the poor girl broke down; tears rushed streaming from her eyes, and she ran out of the room.
‘So that’s how she loves him,’ thought Bersenyev, as he walked slowly home. ‘I didn’t expect that; I didn’t think she felt so strongly. I am kind, she says:’ he pursued his reflections:... ‘Who can tell what feelings, what impulse drove me to tell Elena all that? It was not kindness; no, not kindness. It was all the accursed desire to make sure whether the dagger is really in the wound. I ought to be content. They love each other, and I have been of use to them.... The future go-between between science and the Russian public Shubin calls me; it seems as though it had been decreed at my birth that I should be a go-between. But if I’m mistaken? No, I’m not mistaken——’
It was bitter for Andrei Petrovitch, and he could not turn his mind to Raumer.
The next day at two o’clock Insarov arrived at the Stahovs’. As though by express design, there was a visitor in Anna Vassilyevna’s drawing-room at the time, the wife of a neighbouring chief-priest, an excellent and worthy woman, though she had had a little unpleasantness with the police, because she thought fit, in the hottest part of the day, to bathe in a lake near the road, along which a certain dignified general’s family used often to be passing. The presence of an outside person was at first even a relief to Elena, from whose face every trace of colour vanished, directly she heard Insarov’s step; but her heart sank at the thought that he might go without a word with her alone. He, too, seemed confused, and avoided meeting her eyes. ‘Surely he will not go directly,’ thought Elena. Insarov was, in fact, turning to take leave of Anna Vassilyevna; Elena hastily rose and called him aside to the window. The priest’s wife was surprised, and tried to turn round; but she was so tightly laced that her stays creaked at every movement, and she stayed where she was.
‘Listen,’ said Elena hurriedly; ‘I know what you have come for; Andrei Petrovitch told me of your intention, but I beg, I entreat you, do not say good-bye to us to-day, but come here to-morrow rather earlier, at eleven. I must have a few words with you.’
Insarov bent his head without speaking.
‘I will not keep you.... You promise me?’
Again Insarov bowed, but said nothing.
‘Lenotchka, come here,’ said Anna Vassilyevna, ‘look, what a charming reticule.’
‘I worked it myself,’ observed the priest’s wife.
Elena came away from the window.
Insarov did not stay more than a quarter of an hour at the Stahovs’. Elena watched him secretly. He was restless and ill at ease. As before, he did not know where to look, and he went away strangely and suddenly; he seemed to vanish.
Slowly passed that day for Elena; still more slowly dragged on the long, long night. Elena sat on her bed, her arms clasping her knees, and her head laid on them; then she walked to the window, pressed her burning forehead against the cold glass, and thought and thought, going over and over the same thoughts till she was exhausted. Her heart seemed turned to stone, she did not feel it, but the veins in her head throbbed painfully, her hair stifled her, and her lips were dry. ‘He will come... he did not say good-bye to mamma... he will not deceive me... Can Andrei Petrovitch have been right? It cannot be... He didn’t promise to come in words... Can I have parted from him for ever——?’ Those were the thoughts that never left her, literally never left her; they did not come and come again; they were for ever turning like a mist moving about in her brain. ‘He loves me!’ suddenly flashed through her, setting her whole nature on fire, and she gazed fixedly into the darkness; a secret smile parted her lips, seen by none, but she quickly shook her head, and clasped her hands behind her neck, and again her former thought hung like a mist about her. Before morning she undressed and went to bed, but she could not sleep. The first fiery ray of sunlight fell upon her room... ‘Oh, if he loves me!’ she cried suddenly, and unabashed by the light shining on her, she opened wide her arms... She got up, dressed, and went down. No one in the house was awake yet. She went into the garden, but in the garden it was peaceful, green, and fresh; the birds chirped so confidingly, and the flowers peeped out so gaily that she could not bear it. ‘Oh!’ she thought, ‘if it is true, no blade of grass is happy as I. But is it true?’ She went back to her room and, to kill time, she began changing her dress. But everything slipped out of her hands, and she was still sitting half-dressed before her looking-glass when she was summoned to morning tea. She went down; her mother noticed her pallor, but only said: ‘How interesting you are to-day,’ and taking her in in a glance, she added: ‘How well that dress suits you; you should always put it on when you want to make an impression on any one.’ Elena made no reply, and sat down in a corner. Meanwhile it struck nine o’clock; there were only two haurs now till eleven. Elena tried to read, then to sew, then to read again, then she vowed to herself to walk a hundred times up and down one alley, and paced it a hundred times; then for a long time she watched Anna Vassilyevna laying out the cards for patience... and looked at the clock; it was not yet ten. Shubin came into the drawing-room. She tried to talk to him, and begged his pardon, what for she did not know herself.... Every word she uttered did not cost her effort exactly, but roused a kind of amazement in herself. Shubin bent over her. She expected ridicule, raised her eyes, and saw before her a sorrowful and sympathetic face.... She smiled at this face. Shubin, too, smiled at her without speaking, and gently left her. She tried to keep him, but could not at once remember what to call him. At last it struck eleven. Then she began to wait, to wait, and to listen. She could do nothing now; she ceased even to think. Her heart was stirred into life again, and began beating louder and louder, and strange, to say, the time seemed flying by. A quarter of an hour passed, then half an hour; a few minutes more, as Elena thought, had passed, when suddenly she started; the clock had struck not twelve, but one. ‘He is not coming; he is going away without saying good-bye.’... The blood rushed to her head with this thought. She felt that she was gasping for breath, that she was on the point of sobbing.... She ran to her own room, and fell with her face in her clasped hands on to the bed.
For half an hour she lay motionless; the tears flowed through her fingers on to the pillow. Suddenly she raised herself and sat up, something strange was passing in her, her face changed, her wet eyes grew dry and shining, her brows were bent and her lips compressed. Another half-hour passed. Elena, for the last time, strained her ears to listen: was not that the familiar voice floating up to her? She got up, put on her hat and gloves, threw a cape over her shoulders, and, slipping unnoticed out of the house, she went with swift steps along the road leading to Bersenyev’s lodging.
XVIII
Elena walked with her head bent and her eyes fixed straight before her. She feared nothing, she considered nothing; she wanted to see Insarov once more. She went on, not noticing that the sun had long ago disappeared behind heavy black clouds, that the wind was roaring by gusts in the trees and blowing her dress about her, that the dust had suddenly risen and was flying in a cloud along the road.... Large drops of rain were falling, she did not even notice it; but it fell faster and heavier, there were flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. Elena stood still looking round.... Fortunately for her, there was a little old broken-down chapel that had been built over a disused well not far from the place where she was overtaken by the storm. She ran to it and got under the low roof. The rain fell in torrents; the sky was completely overcast. In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network of fast-falling drops. Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov was vanishing. A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook herself, said with a curtsy: ‘Out of the rain, good lady,’ and with many sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well. Elena put her hand into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into her face, yellow and wrinkled now, though once handsome. ‘Thank you, dear gracious lady,’ she was beginning. There happened to be no purse in Elena’s pocket, but the old woman was still holding out her hand.
‘I have no money, grannie,’ said Elena, ‘but here, take this, it will be of use for something.’
She gave her her handkerchief.
‘O-oh, my pretty lady,’ said the beggar, ‘what do you give your handkerchief to me for? For a wedding-present to my grandchild when she’s married? God reward you for your goodness!’
A peal of thunder was heard.
‘Lord Jesus Christ,’ muttered the beggar-woman, and she crossed herself three times. ‘Why, haven’t I seen you before,’ she added after a brief pause. ‘Didn’t you give me alms in Christ’s name?’
Elena looked more attentively at the old woman and recognised her.
‘Yes, grannie,’ she answered, ‘wasn’t it you asked me why I was so sorrowful?’
‘Yes, darling, yes. I fancied I knew you. And I think you’ve a heart-ache still. You seem in trouble now. Here’s your handkerchief, too, wet from tears to be sure. Oh, you young people, you all have the same sorrow, a terrible woe it is!’
‘What sorrow, grannie?’
‘Ah, my good young lady, you can’t deceive an old woman like me. I know what your heart is heavy over; your sorrow’s not an uncommon one. Sure, I have been young too, darling. I have been through that trouble too. Yes. And I’ll tell you something, for your goodness to me; you’ve won a good man, not a light of love, you cling to him alone; cling to him stronger than death. If it comes off, it comes off,—if not, it’s in God’s hands. Yes. Why are you wondering at me? I’m a fortune-teller. There, I’ll carry away your sorrow with your handkerchief. I’ll carry it away, and it’s over. See the rain’s less; you wait a little longer. It’s not the first time I’ve been wet. Remember, darling; you had a sorrow, the sorrow has flown, and there’s no memory of it. Good Lord, have mercy on us!’
The beggar-woman got up from the edge of the well, went out of the chapel, and stole off on her way. Elena stared after her in bewilderment. ‘What does this mean?’ she murmured involuntarily.
The rain grew less and less, the sun peeped out for an instant. Elena was just preparing to leave her shelter.... Suddenly, ten paces from the chapel, she saw Insarov. Wrapt in a cloak he was walking along the very road by which Elena had come; he seemed to be hurrying home.
She clasped the old rail of the steps for support, and tried to call to him, but her voice failed her... Insarov had already passed by without raising his head.
‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch!’ she said at last.
Insarov stopped abruptly, looked round.... For the first minute he did not know Elena, but he went up to her at once. ‘You! you here!’ he cried.
She walked back in silence into the chapel. Insarov followed Elena. ‘You here?’ he repeated.
She was still silent, and only gazed upon him with a strange, slow, tender look. He dropped his eyes.
‘You have come from our house?’ she asked.
‘No... not from your house.’
‘No?’ repeated Elena, and she tried to smile. ‘Is that how you keep your promises? I have been expecting you ever since the morning.’
‘I made no promise yesterday, if you remember, Elena Nikolaevna.’
Again Elena faintly smiled, and she passed her hand over her face. Both face and hands were very white.
‘You meant, then, to go away without saying good-bye to us?’
‘Yes,’ replied Insarov in a surly, thick voice.
‘What? After our friendship, after the talks, after everything.... Then if I had not met you here by chance.’ (Elena’s voice began to break, and she paused an instant)... ‘you would have gone away like that, without even shaking hands for the last time, and you would not have cared?’
Insarov turned away. ‘Elena Nikolaevnas don’t talk like that, please. I’m not over happy as it is. Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort. If you knew——’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Elena interposed with dismay, ‘why you are going.... It seems it’s necessary. It seems we must part. You would not wound your friends without good reason. But, can friends part like this? And we are friends, aren’t we?’
‘No,’ said Insarov.
‘What?’ murmured Elena. Her cheeks were overspread with a faint flush.
‘That’s just why I am going away—because we are not friends. Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.’
‘You used to be so open with me,’ said Elena rather reproachfully. ‘Do you remember?’
‘I used to be able to be open, then I had nothing to conceal; but now——’
‘But now?’ queried Elena.
‘But now... now I must go away. Goodbye.’
If, at that instant, Insarov had lifted his eyes to Elena, he would have seen that her face grew brighter and brighter as he frowned and looked gloomy; but he kept his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground.
‘Well, good-bye, Dmitri Nikanorovitch,’ she began. ‘But at least, since we have met, give me your hand now.’
Insarov was stretching out his hand. ‘No, I can’t even do that,’ he said, and turned away again.
‘You can’t?’
‘No, I can’t. Good-bye.’ And he moved away to the entrance of the chapel.
‘Wait a little longer,’ said Elena. ‘You seem afraid of me. But I am braver than you,’ she added, a faint tremor passing suddenly over her whole body. ‘I can tell you... shall I?... how it was you found me here? Do you know where I was going?’
Insarov looked in bewilderment at Elena.
‘I was going to you.’
‘To me?’
Elena hid her face. ‘You mean to force me to say that I love you,’ she whispered. ‘There, I have said it.’
‘Elena!’ cried Insarov.
She took his hands, looked at him, and fell on his breast.
He held her close to him, and said nothing. There was no need for him to tell her he loved her. From that cry alone, from the instant transformation of the whole man, from the heaving of the breast to which she clung so confidingly, from the touch of his finger tips in her hair, Elena could feel that she was loved. He did not speak, and she needed no words. ‘He is here, he loves me... what need of more?’ The peace of perfect bliss, the peace of the harbour reached after storm, of the end attained, that heavenly peace which gives significance and beauty even to death, filled her with its divine flood. She desired nothing, for she had gained all. ‘O my brother, my friend, my dear one!’ her lips were whispering, while she did not know whose was this heart, his or her own, which beat so blissfully, and melted against her bosom.
He stood motionless, folding in his strong embrace the young life surrendered to him; he felt against his heart this new, infinitely precious burden; a passion of tenderness, of gratitude unutterable, was crumbling his hard will to dust, and tears unknown till now stood in his eyes.
She did not weep; she could only repeat, ‘O my friend, my brother!’
‘So you will follow me everywhere?’ he said to her, a quarter of an hour later, still enfolding her and keeping her close to him in his arms.
‘Everywhere, to the ends of the earth. Where you are, I will be.’
‘And you are not deceiving yourself, you know your parents will never consent to our marriage?’
‘I don’t deceive myself; I know that.’
‘You know that I’m poor—almost a beggar.’
‘I know.’
‘That I’m not a Russian, that it won’t be my fate to live in Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country, with your people.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Do you know, too, that I have given myself up to a difficult, thankless cause, that I... that we shall have to expose ourselves not to dangers only, but to privation, humiliation, perhaps——’
‘I know, I know all—I love you——’
‘That you will have to give up all you are accustomed to, that out there alone among strangers, you will be forced perhaps to work——’
She laid her hand on his lips. ‘I love you, my dear one.’
He began hotly kissing her slender, rosy hand. Elena did not draw it away from his lips, and with a kind of childish delight, with smiling curiosity, watched how he covered with kisses, first the palm, then the fingers....
All at once she blushed and hid her face upon his breast.
He lifted her head tenderly and looked steadily into her eyes. ‘Welcome, then, my wife, before God and men!’
XIX
An hour later, Elena, with her hat in one hand, her cape in the other, walked slowly into the drawing-room of the villa. Her hair was in slight disorder; on each cheek was to be seen a small bright spot of colour, the smile would not leave her lips, her eyes were nearly shutting and half hidden under the lids; they, too, were smiling. She could scarcely move for weariness, and this weariness was pleasant to her; everything, indeed, was pleasant to her. Everything seemed sweet and friendly to her. Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting at the window; she went up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, stretched a little, and involuntarily, as it seemed, she laughed.
‘What is it?’ he inquired, astonished.
She did not know what to say. She felt inclined to kiss Uvar Ivanovitch.
‘How he splashed!’ she explained at last.
But Uvar Ivanovitch did not stir a muscle, and continued to look with amazement at Elena. She dropped her hat and cape on to him.
‘Dear Uvar Ivanovitch,’ she said, ‘I am sleepy and tired,’ and again she laughed and sank into a low chair near him.
‘H’m,’ grunted Uvar Ivanovitch, flourishing his fingers, ‘then you ought—yes——’
Elena was looking round her and thinking, ‘From all this I soon must part... and strange—I have no dread, no doubt, no regret.... No, I am sorry for mamma.’ Then the little chapel rose again before her mind, again her voice was echoing in it, and she felt his arms about her. Joyously, though faintly, her heart fluttered; weighed down by the languor of happiness. The old beggar-woman recurred to her mind. ‘She did really bear away my sorrow,’ she thought. ‘Oh, how happy I am! how undeservedly! how soon!’ If she had let herself go in the least she would have melted into sweet, endless tears. She could only restrain them by laughing. Whatever attitude she fell into seemed to her the easiest, most comfortable possible; she felt as if she were being rocked to sleep. All her movements were slow and soft; what had become of her awkwardness, her haste? Zoya came in; Elena decided that she had never seen a more charming little face; Anna Vassilyevna came in; Elena felt a pang—but with what tenderness she embraced her mother and kissed her on the forehead near the hair, already slightly grey! Then she went away to her own room; how everything smiled upon her there! With what a sense of shamefaced triumph and tranquillity she sat down on her bed—the very bed on which, only three hours ago, she had spent such bitter moments! ‘And yet, even then, I knew he loved me,’ she thought, ‘even before... Ah, no! it’s a sin. You are my wife,’ she whispered, hiding her face in her hands and falling on her knees.
Towards the evening, she grew more thoughtful. Sadness came upon her at the thought that she would not soon see Insarov. He could not without awakening suspicion remain at Bersenyev’s, and so this was what he and Elena had resolved on. Insarov was to return to Moscow and to come over to visit them twice before the autumn; on her side she promised to write him letters, and, if it were possible, to arrange a meeting with him somewhere near Kuntsov. She went down to the drawing-room to tea, and found there all the household and Shubin, who looked at her sharply directly she came in; she tried to talk to him in a friendly way as of old, but she dreaded his penetration, she was afraid of herself. She felt sure that there was good reason for his having left her alone for more than a fortnight. Soon Bersenyev arrived, and gave Insarov’s respects to Anna Vassilyevna with an apology for having gone back to Moscow without calling to take leave of her. Insarov’s name was for the first time during the day pronounced before Elena. She felt that she reddened; she realised at the same time that she ought to express regret at the sudden departure of such a pleasant acquaintance; but she could not force herself to hypocrisy, and continued to sit without stirring or speaking, while Anna Vassilyevna sighed and lamented. Elena tried to keep near Bersenyev; she was not afraid of him, though he even knew part of her secret; she was safe under his wing from Shubin, who still persisted in staring at her—not mockingly but attentively. Bersenyev, too, was thrown into perplexity during the evening: he had expected to see Elena more gloomy. Happily for her, an argument sprang up about art between him and Shubin; she moved apart and heard their voices as it were through a dream. By degrees, not only they, but the whole room, everything surrounding her, seemed like a dream—everything: the samovar on the table, and Uvar Ivanovitch’s short waistcoat, and Zoya’s polished finger-nails, and the portrait in oils of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovitch on the wall; everything retreated, everything was wrapped in mist, everything ceased to exist. Only she felt sorry for them all. ‘What are they living for?’ she thought.
‘Are you sleepy, Lenotchka?’ her mother asked her. She did not hear the question.
‘A half untrue insinuation, do you say?’ These words, sharply uttered by Shubin, suddenly awakened Elena’s attention. ‘Why,’ he continued, ‘the whole sting lies in that. A true insinuation makes one wretched—that’s unchristian—and to an untrue insinuation a man is indifferent—that’s stupid, but at a half true one he feels vexed and impatient. For instance, if I say that Elena Nikolaevna is in love with one of us, what sort of insinuation would that be, eh?’
‘Ah, Monsieur Paul,’ said Elena, ‘I should like to show myself vexed, but really I can’t. I am so tired.’
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ observed Anna Vassilyevna, who was always drowsy in the evening herself, and consequently always eager to send the others to bed. ‘Say good-night to me, and go in God’s name; Andrei Petrovitch will excuse you.’
Elena kissed her mother, bowed to all and went away. Shubin accompanied her to the door. ‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he whispered to her in the doorway, ‘you trample on Monsieur Paul, you mercilessly walk over him, but Monsieur Paul blesses you and your little feet, and the slippers on your little feet, and the soles of your little slippers.’
Elena shrugged her shoulders, reluctantly held out her hand to him—not the one Insarov had kissed—and going up to her room, at once undressed, got into bed, and fell asleep. She slept a deep, unstirring sleep, as even children rarely sleep—the sleep of a child convalescent after sickness, when its mother sits near its cradle and watches it, and listens to its breathing.
XX
‘Come to my room for a minute,’ Shubin said to Bersenyev, directly the latter had taken leave of Anna Vassilyevna: ‘I have something to show you.’
Bersenyev followed him to his attic. He was surprised to see a number of studies, statuettes, and busts, covered with damp cloths, set about in all the corners of the room.
‘Well I see you have been at work in earnest,’ he observed to Shubin.
‘One must do something,’ he answered. ‘If one thing doesn’t do, one must try another. However, like a true Corsican, I am more concerned with revenge than with pure art. Trema, Bisanzia!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Bersenyev.
‘Well, wait a minute. Deign to look this way, gracious friend and benefactor, my vengeance number one.’
Shubin uncovered one figure, and Bersenyev saw a capital bust of Insarov, an excellent likeness. The features of the face had been correctly caught by Shubin to the minutest detail, and he had given him a fine expression, honest, generous, and bold.
Bersenyev went into raptures over it.
‘That’s simply exquisite!’ he cried. ‘I congratulate you. You must send it to the exhibition! Why do you call that magnificent work your vengeance?’
‘Because, sir, I intended to offer this magnificent work as you call it to Elena Nikolaevna on her name day. Do you see the allegory? We are not blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take our revenge like gentlemen.... But here,’ added Shubin, uncovering another figure, ‘as the artist according to modern aesthetic principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as gentlemen, but simply en canaille.’
He deftly drew off the cloth, and displayed to Bersenyev’s eyes a statuette in Dantan’s style, also of Insarov. Anything cleverer and more spiteful could not be imagined. The young Bulgarian was represented as a ram standing on his hind-legs, butting forward with his horns. Dull solemnity and aggressiveness, obstinacy, clumsiness and narrowness were simply printed on the visage of the ‘sire of the woolly flock,’ and yet the likeness to Insarov was so striking that Bersenyev could not help laughing.
‘Eh? is it amusing?’ said Shubin. ‘Do you recognise the hero? Do you advise me to send it too to the exhibition? That, my dear fellow, I intend as a present for myself on my own name day.... Your honour will permit me to play the fool.’
And Shubin gave three little leaps, kicking himself behind with his heels.
Bersenyev picked up the cloth off the floor—and threw it over the statuette.
‘Ah, you, magnanimous’—began Shubin. ‘Who the devil was it in history was so particularly magnanimous? Well, never mind! And now,’ he continued, with melancholy triumph, uncovering a third rather large mass of clay, ‘you shall behold something which will show you the humility and discernment of your friend. You will realise that he, like a true artist again, feels the need and the use of self-castigation. Behold!’
The cloth was lifted and Bersenyev saw two heads, modelled side by side and close as though growing together.... He did not at once know what was the subject, but looking closer, he recognised in one of them Annushka, in the other Shubin himself. They were, however, rather caricatures than portraits. Annushka was represented as a handsome fat girl with a low forehead, eyes lost in layers of fat, and a saucily turned-up nose. Her thick lips had an insolent curve; her whole face expressed sensuality, carelessness, and boldness, not without goodnature. Himself Shubin had modelled as a lean emaciated rake, with sunken cheeks, his thin hair hanging in weak wisps about his face, a meaningless expression in his dim eyes, and his nose sharp and thin as a dead man’s.
Bersenyev turned away with disgust. ‘A nice pair, aren’t they, my dear fellow?’ said Shubin; ‘won’t you graciously compose a suitable title? For the first two I have already thought of titles. On the bust shall be inscribed: “A hero resolving to liberate his country.” On the statuette: “Look out, sausage-eating Germans!” And for this work what do you think of “The future of the artist Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin?” Will that do?’
‘Leave off,’ replied Bersenyev. ‘Was it worth while to waste your time on such a ——’ He could not at once fix on a suitable word.
‘Disgusting thing, you mean? No, my dear fellow, excuse me, if anything ought to go to the exhibition, it’s that group.’
‘It’s simply disgusting,’ repeated Bersenyev. ‘And besides, it’s nonsense. You have absolutely no such degrading tendencies to which, unhappily, our artists have such a frequent bent. You have simply libelled yourself.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Shubin gloomily. ‘I have none of them, and if they come upon me, the fault is all one person’s. Do you know,’ he added, tragically knitting his brows, ‘that I have been trying drinking?’
‘Nonsense?’
‘Yes, I have, by God,’ rejoined Shubin; and suddenly grinning and brightening,—‘but I didn’t like it, my dear boy, the stuff sticks in my throat, and my head afterwards is a perfect drum. The great Lushtchihin himself—Harlampy Lushtchihin—the greatest drunkard in Moscow, and a Great Russian drunkard too, declared there was nothing to be made of me. In his words, the bottle does not speak to me.’
Bersenyev was just going to knock the group over but Shubin stopped him.
‘That’ll do, my dear boy, don’t smash it; it will serve as a lesson, a scare-crow.’
Bersenyev laughed.
‘If that’s what it is, I will spare your scarecrow then,’ he said. And now, ‘Long live eternal true art!’
‘Long live true art!’ put in Shubin. ‘By art the good is better and the bad is not all loss!’
The friends shook hands warmly and parted.
XXI
Elena’s first sensation on awakening was one of happy consternation. ‘Is it possible? Is it possible?’ she asked herself, and her heart grew faint with happiness. Recollections came rushing on her... she was overwhelmed by them. Then again she was enfolded by the blissful peace of triumph. But in the course of the morning, Elena gradually became possessed by a spirit of unrest, and for the remainder of the day she felt listless and weary. It was true she knew now what she wanted, but that made it no easier for her. That never-to-be forgotten meeting had cast her for ever out of the old groove; she was no longer at the same standpoint, she was far away, and yet everything went on about her in its accustomed order, everything pursued its own course as though nothing were changed; the old life moved on its old way, reckoning on Elena’s interest and co-operation as of old. She tried to begin a letter to Insarov, but that too was a failure; the words came on to paper either lifeless or false. Her diary she had put an end to by drawing a thick stroke under the last line. That was the past, and every thought, all her soul, was turned now to the future. Her heart was heavy. To sit with her mother who suspected nothing, to listen to her, answer her and talk to her, seemed to Elena something wicked; she felt the presence of a kind of falseness in her, she suffered though she had nothing to blush for; more than once an almost irresistible desire sprang up in her heart to tell everything without reserve, whatever might come of it afterwards. ‘Why,’ she thought, ‘did not Dmitri take me away then, from that little chapel, wherever he wanted to go? Didn’t he tell me I was his wife before God? What am I here for?’ She suddenly began to feel shy of every one, even of Uvar Ivanovitch, who was flourishing his fingers in more perplexity than ever. Now everything about her seemed neither sweet nor friendly, nor even a dream, but, like a nightmare, lay, an immovable dead load, on her heart; seeming to reproach her and be indignant with her, and not to care to know about her....‘You are ours in spite of everything,’ she seemed to hear. Even her poor pets, her ill-used birds and animals looked at her—so at least she fancied—with suspicion and hostility. She felt conscience-stricken and ashamed of her feelings. ‘This is my home after all,’ she thought, ‘my family, my country.’... ‘No, it’s no longer your country, nor your family,’ another voice affirmed within her. Terror was overmastering her, and she was vexed with her own feebleness. The trial was only beginning and she was losing patience already... Was this what she had promised?
She did not soon gain control of herself. But a week passed and then another.... Elena became a little calmer, and grew used to her new position. She wrote two little notes to Insarov, and carried them herself to the post: she could not for anything—through shame and through pride—have brought herself to confide in a maid. She was already beginning to expect him in person.... But instead of Insarov, one fine morning Nikolai Artemyevitch made his appearance.
XXII
No one in the house of the retired lieutenant of guards, Stahov, had ever seen him so sour, and at the same time so self-confident and important as on that day. He walked into the drawing-room in his overcoat and hat, with long deliberate stride, stamping with his heels; he approached the looking-glass and took a long look at himself, shaking his head and biting his lips with imperturbable severity. Anna Vassilyevna met him with obvious agitation and secret delight (she never met him otherwise); he did not even take off his hat, nor greet her, and in silence gave Elena his doe-skin glove to kiss. Anna Vassilyevna began questioning him about the progress of his cure; he made her no reply. Uvar Ivanovitch made his appearance; he glanced at him and said, ‘bah!’ He usually behaved coldly and haughtily to Uvar Ivanovitch, though he acknowledged in him ‘traces of the true Stahov blood.’ Almost all Russian families of the nobility are convinced, as is well known, of the existence of exceptional hereditary characteristics, peculiar to them alone; we have more than once heard discussions ‘among ourselves’ of the Podsalaskinsky ‘noses,’ and the ‘Perepreyevsky’ necks. Zoya came in and sat down facing Nikolai Artemyevitch. He grunted, sank into an armchair, asked for coffee, and only then took off his hat. Coffee was brought him; he drank a cup, and looking at everybody in turn, he growled between his teeth, ‘Sortes, s’il vous plaît,’ and turning to his wife he added, ‘et vous, madame, restez, je vous prie.’
They all left the room, except Anna Vassilyevna. Her head was trembling with agitation. The solemnity of Nikolai Artemyevitch’s preparations impressed her. She was expecting something extraordinary.
‘What is it?’ she cried, directly the door was closed.
Nikolai Artemyevitch flung an indifferent glance at Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Nothing special; what a way you have of assuming the air of a victim at once!’ he began, quite needlessly dropping the corners of his mouth at every word. ‘I only want to forewarn you that we shall have a new guest dining here to-day.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Kurnatovsky, Yegor Andreyevitch. You don’t know him. The head secretary in the senate.’
‘He is to dine with us to-day?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was it only to tell me this that you made every one go away?’
Nikolai Artemyevitch again flung a glance—this time one of irony—at Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Does that surprise you? Defer your surprise a little.’
He ceased speaking. Anna Vassilyevna too was silent for a little time.
‘I could have wished——’ she was beginning.
‘I know you have always looked on me as an “immoral” man,’ began Nikolai Artemyevitch suddenly.
‘I!’ muttered Anna Vassilyevna, astounded.
‘And very likely you are right. I don’t wish to deny that I have in fact sometimes given you just grounds for dissatisfaction’ (“my greys!” flashed through Anna Vassilyevna’s head), ‘though you must yourself allow, that in the condition, as you are aware, of your constitution——’
‘And I make no complaint against you, Nikolai Artemyevitch.’
‘C’est possible. In any case, I have no intention of justifying myself. Time will justify me. But I regard it as my duty to prove to you that I understand my duties, and know how to care for—for the welfare of the family entrusted—entrusted to me.’
‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ Anna Vassilyevna was thinking. (She could not guess that the preceding evening at the English club a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the incapacity of Russians to make speeches. ‘Which of us can speak? Mention any one!’ one of the disputants had exclaimed. ‘Well, Stahov, for instance,’ had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who stood up on the spot almost squealing with delight.)
‘For instance,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘my daughter Elena. Don’t you consider that the time has come for her to take a decisive step along the path—to be married, I mean to say. All these intellectual and philanthropic pursuits are all very well, but only up to a certain point, up to a certain age. It’s time for her to drop her mistiness, to get out of the society of all these artists, scholars, and Montenegrins, and do like everybody else.’
‘How am I to understand you?’ asked Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Well, if you will kindly listen,’ answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, ‘I will tell you plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.’ (Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) ‘Of excellent education—educated in the highest legal college—excellent manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to allow that I do not belong to the number of those pères de famille who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly he had attained the possibility—you understand me—the possibility of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.’
‘Who is his father?’ inquired Anna Vassilyevna.
‘His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the highest moral character, un vrai stoïcien, a retired major, I think, overseer of all the estates of the Count B——’
‘Ah!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Ah! why ah?’ interposed Nikolai Artemyevitch. ‘Can you be infected with prejudice?’
‘Why, I said nothing——’ Anna Vassilyevna was beginning.
‘No, you said, ah!—However that may be, I have thought it well to acquaint you with my way of thinking; and I venture to think—I venture to hope Mr. Kurnatovsky will be received à bras ouverts. He is no Montenegrin vagrant.’
‘Of course; I need only call Vanka the cook and order a few extra dishes.’
‘You are aware that I will not enter into that,’ said Nikolai Artemyevitch; and he got up, put on his hat, and whistling (he had heard some one say that whistling was only permissible in a country villa and a riding court) went out for a stroll in the garden. Shubin watched him out of the little window of his lodge, and in silence put out his tongue at him.
At ten minutes to four, a hackney-carriage drove up to the steps of the Stahovs’s villa, and a man, still young, of prepossessing appearance, simply and elegantly dressed, stepped out of it and sent up his name. This was Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky.
This was what, among other things, Elena wrote next day to Insarov:
‘Congratulate me, dear Dmitri, I have a suitor. He dined with us yesterday: papa made his acquaintance at the English club, I fancy, and invited him. Of course he did not come yesterday as a suitor. But good mamma, to whom papa had made known his hopes, whispered in my ear what this guest was. His name is Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky; he is upper-secretary to the Senate. I will first describe to you his appearance. He is of medium height, shorter than you, and a good figure; his features are regular, he is close-cropped, and wears large whiskers. His eyes are rather small (like yours), brown, and quick; he has a flat wide mouth; in his eyes and on his lips there is a perpetual sort of official smile; it seems to be always on duty there. He behaves very simply and speaks precisely, and everything about him is precise; he moves, laughs, and eats as though he were doing a duty. “How carefully she has studied him!” you are thinking, perhaps, at this minute. Yes; so as to be able to describe him to you. And besides, who wouldn’t study her suitor! There’s something of iron in him—and dull and empty at the same time—and honest; they say he is really very honest. You, too, are made of iron; but not like this man. At dinner he sat next me, and facing us sat Shubin. At first the conversation turned on commercial undertakings; they say he is very clever in business matters, and was almost throwing up his government post to take charge of a large manufacturing business. Pity he didn’t do it! Then Shubin began to talk about the theatre; Mr. Kurnatovsky declared and—I must confess—without false modesty, that he has no ideas about art. That reminded me of you—but I thought; no, Dmitri and I are ignorant of art in a very different way though. This man seemed to mean, “I know nothing of it, and it’s quite superfluous, still it may be admitted in a well-ordered state.” He seems, however, to think very little about Petersburg and comme il faut: he once even called himself one of the proletariat. ‘We are working people,’ he said; I thought if Dmitri had said that, I shouldn’t have liked it; but he may talk about himself, he may boast if he likes. With me he is very attentive; but I kept feeling that a very, very condescending superior was talking with me. When he means to praise any one, he says So-and-so is a man of principle—that’s his favourite word. He seems to be self-confident, hardworking, capable of self-sacrifice (you see, I am impartial), that’s to say, of sacrificing his own interest; but he is a great despot. It would be woeful to fall into his power! At dinner they began talking about bribes.
‘“I know,” he said, “that in many cases the man who accepts a bribe is not to blame; he cannot do otherwise. Still, if he is found out, he must be punished without mercy.”
‘I cried, “Punish an innocent man!”
‘“Yes; for the sake of principle.”
‘“What principle?” asked Shubin. Kurnatovsky seemed annoyed or surprised, and said, “That needs no explanation.”
‘Papa, who seems to worship him, put in “of course not”; and to my vexation the conversation stopped there. In the evening Bersenyev came and got into a terrific argument with him. I have never seen our good Andrei Petrovitch so excited. Mr. Kurnatovsky did not at all deny the utility of science, universities, and so on, but still I understood Andrei Petrovitch’s indignation. The man looks at it all as a sort of gymnastics. Shubin came up to me after dinner, and said, “This fellow here and some one else (he can never bring himself to utter your name) are both practical men, but see what a difference; there’s the real living ideal given to life; and here there’s not even a feeling of duty, simply official honesty and activity without anything inside it.” Shubin is clever, and I remembered his words to tell you; but to my mind there is nothing in common between you. You have faith, and he has not; for a man cannot have faith in himself only.
‘He did not go away till late; but mamma had time to inform me that he was pleased with me, and papa is in ecstasies. Did he say, I wonder, that I was a woman of principle? I was almost telling mamma that I was very sorry, but I had a husband already. Why is it papa dislikes you so? Mamma, we could soon manage to bring round.
‘Oh, my dear one! I have described this gentleman in such detail to deaden my heartache. I don’t live without you; I am constantly seeing you, hearing you. I look forward to seeing you—only not at our house, as you intended—fancy how wretched and ill at ease we should be!—but you know where I wrote to you—in that wood. Oh, my dear one! How I love you!’
XXIII
Three weeks after Kurnatovsky’s first visit, Anna Vassilyevna, to Elena’s great delight, returned to Moscow, to her large wooden house near Prechistenka; a house with columns, white lyres and wreaths over every window, with an attic, offices, a palisade, a huge green court, a well in the court and a dog’s kennel near the well. Anna Vassilyevna had never left her country villa so early, but this year with the first autumn chills her face swelled; Nikolai Artemyevitch for his part, having finished his cure, began to want his wife; besides, Augustina Christianovna had gone away on a visit to her cousin in Revel; a family of foreigners, known as ‘living statues,’ des poses plastiques, had come to Moscow, and the description of them in the Moscow Gazette had aroused Anna Vassilyevna’s liveliest curiosity. In short, to stay longer at the villa seemed inconvenient, and even, in Nikolai Artemyevitch’s words, incompatible with the fulfilment of his ‘cherished projects.’ The last fortnight seemed very long to Elena. Kurnatovsky came over twice on Sundays; on other days he was busy. He came really to see Elena, but talked more to Zoya, who was much pleased with him. ‘Das ist ein Mann!’ she thought to herself, as she looked at his full manly face and listened to his self-confident, condescending talk. To her mind, no one had such a wonderful voice, no one could pronounce so nicely, ‘I had the hon-our,’ or, ‘I am most de-lighted.’ Insarov did not come to the Stahovs, but Elena saw him once in secret in a little copse by the Moskva river, where she arranged to meet him. They hardly had time to say more than a few words to each other. Shubin returned to Moscow with Anna Vassilyevna; Bersenyev, a few days later.
Insarov was sitting in his room, and for the third time looking through the letters brought him from Bulgaria by hand; they were afraid to send them by post. He was much disturbed by them. Events were developing rapidly in the East; the occupation of the Principalities by Russian troops had thrown all men’s minds into a ferment; the storm was growing—already could be felt the breath of approaching inevitable war. The fire was kindling all round, and no one could foresee how far it would go—where it would stop. Old wrongs, long cherished hopes—all were astir again. Insarov’s heart throbbed eagerly; his hopes too were being realised. ‘But is it not too soon, will it not be in vain?’ he thought, tightly clasping his hands. ‘We are not ready, but so be it! I must go.’
Something rustled lightly at the door, it flew quickly open, and into the room ran Elena.
Insarov, all in a tremor, rushed to her, fell on his knees before her, clasped her waist and pressed it close against his head.
‘You didn’t expect me?’ she said, hardly able to draw her breath, she had run quickly up the stairs. ‘Dear one! dear one!—so this is where you live? I’ve quickly found you. The daughter of your landlord conducted me. We arrived the day before yesterday. I meant to write to you, but I thought I had better come myself. I have come for a quarter of an hour. Get up, shut the door.’
He got up, quickly shut the door, returned to her and took her by the hands. He could not speak; he was choking with delight. She looked with a smile into his eyes... there was such rapture in them... she felt shy.
‘Stay,’ she said, fondly taking her hand away from him, ‘let me take off my hat.’
She untied the strings of her hat, flung it down, slipped the cape off her shoulders, tidied her hair, and sat down on the little old sofa. Insarov gazed at her, without stirring, like one enchanted.
‘Sit down,’ she said, not lifting her eyes to him and motioning him to a place beside her.
Insarov sat down, not on the sofa, but on the floor at her feet.
‘Come, take off my gloves,’ she said in an uncertain voice. She felt afraid.
He began first to unbutton and then to draw off one glove; he drew it half off and greedily pressed his lips to the slender, soft wrist, which was white under it.
Elena shuddered, and would have pushed him back with the other hand; he began kissing the other hand too. Elena drew it away, he threw back his head, she looked into his face, bent above him, and their lips touched.
An instant passed... she broke away, got up, whispered ‘No, no,’ and went quickly up to the writing-table.
‘I am mistress here, you know, so you ought not to have any secrets from me,’ she said, trying to seem at ease, and standing with her back to him. ‘What a lot of papers! what are these letters?’
Insarov knitted his brows. ‘Those letters?’ he said, getting up, ‘you can read them.’
Elena turned them over in her hand. ‘There are so many of them, and the writing is so fine, and I have to go directly... let them be. They’re not from a rival, eh?... and they’re not in Russian,’ she added, turning over the thin sheets.
Insarov came close to her and fondly touched her waist. She turned suddenly to him, smiled brightly at him and leant against his shoulder.
‘Those letters are from Bulgaria, Elena; my friends write to me, they want me to come.’
‘Now? To them?’
‘Yes... now, while there is still time, while it is still possible to come.’
All at once she flung both arms round his neck, ‘You will take me with you, yes?’
He pressed her to his heart. ‘O my sweet girl, O my heroine, how you said that! But isn’t it wicked, isn’t it mad for me, a homeless, solitary man, to drag you with me... and out there too!’
She shut his mouth.... ‘Sh—or I shall be angry, and never come to see you again. Why isn’t it all decided, all settled between us? Am I not your wife? Can a wife be parted from her husband?’
‘Wives don’t go into war,’ he said with a half-mournful smile.
‘Oh yes, when they can’t stay behind, and I cannot stay here?’
‘Elena, my angel!.. but think, I have, perhaps, to leave Moscow in a fortnight. I can’t think of university lectures, or finishing my work.’
‘What!’ interrupted Elena, ‘you have to go soon? If you like, I will stop at once this minute with you for ever, and not go home, shall I? Shall we go at once?’
Insarov clasped her in his arms with redoubled warmth. ‘May God so reward me then,’ he cried, ‘if I am doing wrong! From to-day, we are one for ever!’
‘Am I to stay?’ asked Elena.
‘No, my pure girl; no, my treasure. You shall go back home to-day, only keep yourself in readiness. This is a matter we can’t manage straight off; we must plan it out well. We want money, a passport——’
‘I have money,’ put in Elena. ‘Eighty roubles.’
‘Well, that’s not much,’ observed Insarov; ‘but everything’s a help.’
‘But I can get more. I will borrow. I will ask mamma.... No, I won’t ask mamma for any.... But I can sell my watch.... I have earrings, too, and two bracelets... and lace.’
‘Money’s not the chief difficulty, Elena; the passport; your passport, how about that?’
‘Yes, how about it? Is a passport absolutely necessary?’
‘Absolutely.’
Elena laughed. ‘What a queer idea! I remember when I was little... a maid of ours ran away. She was caught, and forgiven, and lived with us a long while... but still every one used to call her Tatyana, the runaway. I never thought then that I too might perhaps be a runaway like her.’
‘Elena, aren’t you ashamed?’
‘Why? Of course it’s better to go with a passport. But if we can’t——’
‘We will settle all that later, later, wait a little,’ said Insarov. ‘Let me look about; let me think a little. We will talk over everything together thoroughly. I too have money.’
Elena pushed back the hair that fell over on his forehead.
‘O Dmitri! how glorious it will be for us two to set off together!’
‘Yes,’ said Insarov, ‘but there, when we get there——’
‘Well?’ put in Elena, ‘and won’t it be glorious to die together too? but no, why should we die? We will live, we are young. How old are you? Twenty-six?’
‘Yes, twenty-six.’
‘And I am twenty. There is plenty of time before us. Ah, you tried to run away from me? You did not want a Russian’s love, you Bulgarian! Let me see you trying to escape from me now! What would have become of us, if I hadn’t come to you then!’
‘Elena, you know what forced me to go away.’
‘I know; you were in love, and you were afraid. But surely you must have suspected that you were loved?’
‘I swear on my honour, Elena, I didn’t.’
She gave him a quick unexpected kiss. ‘There, I love you for that too. And goodbye.’
‘You can’t stop longer?’ asked Insarov.
‘No, dearest. Do you think it’s easy for me to get out alone? The quarter of an hour was over long ago.’ She put on her cape and hat. ‘And you come to us to-morrow evening. No, the day after to-morrow. We shall be constrained and dreary, but we can’t help that; at least we shall see each other. Good-bye. Let me go.’
He embraced her for the last time. ‘Ah, take care, you have broken my watch-chain. Oh, what a clumsy boy! There, never mind. It’s all the better. I will go to Kuznetsky bridge, and leave it to be mended. If I am asked, I can say I have been to Kuznetsky bridge.’ She held the door-handle. ‘By-the-way, I forgot to tell you, Monsieur Kurnatovsky will certainly make me an offer in a day or two. But the answer I shall make him—will be this——’ She put the thumb of her left hand to the tip of her nose and flourished the other fingers in the air. ‘Good-bye till we see each other again. Now, I know the way... And don’t lose any time.’
Elena opened the door a little, listened, turned round to Insarov, nodded her head, and glided out of the room.
For a minute Insarov stood before the closed door, and he too listened. The door downstairs into the court slammed. He went up to the sofa, sat down, and covered his eyes with his hands. Never before had anything like this happened to him. ‘What have I done to deserve such love?’ he thought. ‘Is it a dream?’
But the delicate scent of mignonette left by Elena in his poor dark little room told of her visit. And with it, it seemed that the air was still full of the notes of a young voice, and the sound of a light young tread, and the warmth and freshness of a young girlish body.
XXIV
Insarov decided to await more positive news, and began to make preparations for departure. The difficulty was a serious one. For him personally there were no obstacles. He had only to ask for a passport—but how would it be with Elena? To get her a passport in the legal way was impossible. Should he marry her secretly, and should they then go and present themselves to the parents?... ‘They would let us go then,’ he thought ‘But if they did not? We would go all the same. But suppose they were to make a complaint... if... No, better try to get a passport somehow.’
He decided to consult (of course mentioning no names) one of his acquaintances, an attorney, retired from practice, or perhaps struck off the rolls, an old and experienced hand at all sorts of clandestine business. This worthy person did not live near; Insarov was a whole hour in getting to him in a very sorry droshky, and, to make matters worse, he did not find him at home; and on his way back got soaked to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. The next morning, in spite of a rather severe headache, Insarov set off a second time to call on the retired attorney. The retired attorney listened to him attentively, taking snuff from a snuff-box decorated with a picture of a full-bosomed nymph, and glancing stealthily at his visitor with his sly, and also snuff-coloured little eyes; he heard him to the end, and then demanded ‘greater definiteness in the statement of the facts of the case’; and observing that Insarov was unwilling to launch into particulars (it was against the grain that he had come to him at all) he confined himself to the advice to provide himself above all things with ‘the needful,’ and asked him to come to him again, ‘when you have,’ he added, sniffing at the snuff in the open snuff-box, ‘augmented your confidence and decreased your diffidence’ (he talked with a broad accent). ‘A passport,’ he added, as though to himself, ‘is a thing that can be arranged; you go a journey, for instance; who’s to tell whether you’re Marya Bredihin or Karolina Vogel-meier?’ A feeling of nausea came over Insarov, but he thanked the attorney, and promised to come to him again in a day or two.
The same evening he went to the Stahovs. Anna Vassilyevna met him cordially, reproached him a little for having quite forgotten them, and, finding him pale, inquired especially after his health. Nikolai Artemyevitch did not say a single word to him; he only stared at him with elaborately careless curiosity; Shubin treated him coldly; but Elena astounded him. She was expecting him; she had put on for him the very dress she wore on the day of their first interview in the chapel; but she welcomed him so calmly, and was so polite and carelessly gay, that no one looking at her could have believed that this girl’s fate was already decided, and that it was only the secret consciousness of happy love that gave fire to her features, lightness and charm to all her gestures. She poured out tea in Zoya’s place, jested, chattered; she knew Shubin would be watching her, that Insarov was incapable of wearing a mask, and incapable of appearing indifferent, and she had prepared herself beforehand. She was not mistaken; Shubin never took his eyes off her, and Insarov was very silent and gloomy the whole evening. Elena was so happy that she even felt an inclination to tease him.
‘Oh, by the way,’ she said to him suddenly, ‘is your plan getting on at all?’
Insarov was taken aback.
‘What plan?’ he said.
‘Why, have you forgotten?’ she rejoined, laughing in his face; he alone could tell the meaning of that happy laugh: ‘Your Bulgarian selections for Russian readers?’
‘Quelle bourde!’ muttered Nikolai Artemyevitch between his teeth.
Zoya sat down to the piano. Elena gave a just perceptible shrug of the shoulders, and with her eyes motioned Insarov to the door. Then she twice slowly touched the table with her finger, and looked at him. He understood that she was promising to see him in two days, and she gave him a quick smile when she saw he understood her. Insarov got up and began to take leave; he felt unwell. Kurnatovsky arrived. Nikolai Artemyevitch jumped up, raised his right hand higher than his head, and softly dropped it into the palm of the chief secretary. Insarov would have remained a few minutes longer, to have a look at his rival. Elena shook her head unseen; the host did not think it necessary to introduce them to one another, and Insarov departed, exchanging one last look with Elena. Shubin pondered and pondered, and threw himself into a fierce argument with Kurnatovsky on a legislative question, about which he had not a single idea.
Insarov did not sleep all night, and in the morning he felt very ill; he set to work, however, putting his papers into order and writing letters, but his head was heavy and confused. At dinner time he began to be in a fever; he could eat nothing. The fever grew rapidly worse towards evening; he had aching pains in all his limbs, and a terrible headache. Insarov lay down on the very little sofa on which Elena had lately sat; he thought: ‘It serves me right for going to that old rascal,’ and he tried to sleep.... But the illness had by now complete mastery of him. His veins were throbbing violently, his blood was on fire, his thoughts were flying round like birds. He sank into forgetfulness. He lay like a man felled by a blow on his face, and suddenly, it seemed to him, some one was softly laughing and whispering over him: he opened his eyes with an effort, the light of the flaring candle smote him like a knife.... What was it? the old attorney was before him in an Oriental silk gown belted with a silk handkerchief, as he had seen him the evening before.... ‘Karolina Vogelmeier,’ muttered his toothless mouth. Insarov stared, and the old man grew wide and thick and tall, he was no longer a man, he was a tree.... Insarov had to climb along its gnarled branches. He clung, and fell with his breast on a sharp stone, and Karolina Vogelmeier was sitting on her heels, looking like a pedlar-woman, and lisping: ‘Pies, pies, pies for sale’; and there were streams of blood and swords flashing incessantly.... Elena! And everything vanished in a crimson chaos.
XXV
‘There’s some one here looks like a locksmith or something of the sort,’ Bersenyev was informed the following evening by his servant, who was distinguished by a severe deportment and sceptical turn of mind towards his master; ‘he wants to see you.’
‘Ask him in,’ said Bersenyev.
The ‘locksmith’ entered. Bersenyev recognised in him the tailor, the landlord of Insarov’s lodgings.
‘What do you want?’ he asked him.
‘I came to your honour,’ began the tailor, shifting from one foot to the other, and at times waving his right hand with his cuff clutched in his three last fingers. ‘Our lodger, seemingly, is very ill.’
‘Insarov?’
‘Yes, our lodger, to be sure; yesterday morning he was still on his legs, in the evening he asked for nothing but drink; the missis took him some water, and at night he began talking away; we could hear him through the partition-wall; and this morning he lies without a word like a log, and the fever he’s in, Lord have mercy on us! I thought, upon my word, he’ll die for sure; I ought to send word to the police station, I thought. For he’s so alone; but the missis said: “Go to that gentleman,” she says, “at whose country place our lodger stayed; maybe he’ll tell you what to do, or come himself.” So I’ve come to your honour, for we can’t, so to say——’
Bersenyev snatched up his cap, thrust a rouble into the tailor’s hand, and at once set off with him post haste to Insarov’s lodgings.
He found him lying on the sofa, unconscious and not undressed. His face was terribly changed. Bersenyev at once ordered the people of the house to undress him and put him to bed, while he rushed off himself and returned with a doctor. The doctor prescribed leeches, mustard-poultices, and calomel, and ordered him to be bled.
‘Is he dangerously ill?’ asked Bersenyev.
‘Yes, very dangerously,’ answered the doctor. ‘Severe inflammation of the lungs; peripneumonia fully developed, and the brain perhaps affected, but the patient is young. His very strength is something against him now. I was sent for too late; still we will do all that science dictates.’
The doctor was young himself, and still believed in science.
Bersenyev stayed the night. The people of the house seemed kind, and even prompt directly there was some one to tell them what was to be done. An assistant arrived, and began to carry out the medical measures.
Towards morning Insarov revived for a few minutes, recognised Bersenyev, asked: ‘Am I ill, then?’ looked about him with the vague, listless bewilderment of a man dangerously ill, and again relapsed into unconsciousness. Bersenyev went home, changed his clothes, and, taking a few books along with him, he returned to Insarov’s lodgings. He made up his mind to stay there, at least for a time. He shut in Insarov’s bed with screens, and arranged a little place for himself by the sofa. The day passed slowly and drearily. Bersenyev did not leave the room except to get his dinner. The evening came. He lighted a candle with a shade, and settled down to a book. Everything was still around. Through the partition wall could be heard suppressed whispering in the landlord’s room, then a yawn, and a sigh. Some one sneezed, and was scolded in a whisper; behind the screen was heard the patient’s heavy, uneven breathing, sometimes broken by a short groan, and the uneasy tossing of his head on the pillow.... Strange fancies came over Bersenyev. He found himself in the room of a man whose life was hanging on a thread, the man whom, as he knew, Elena loved.... He remembered that night when Shubin had overtaken him and declared that she loved him, him, Bersenyev! And now.... ‘What am I to do now?’ he asked himself. ‘Let Elena know of his illness? Wait a little? This would be worse news for her than what I told her once before; strange how fate makes me the go-between between them!’ He made up his mind that it was better to wait a little. His eyes fell on the table covered with heaps of papers... ‘Will he carry out his dreams?’ thought Bersenyev. ‘Can it be that all will come to nothing?’ And he was filled with pity for the young life struck down, and he vowed to himself to save it.
The night was an uneasy one. The sick man was very delirious. Several times Bersenyev got up from his little sofa, approached the bed on tip-toe, and listened with a heavy heart to his disconnected muttering. Only once Insarov spoke with sudden distinctness: ‘I won’t, I won’t, she mustn’t....’ Bersenyev started and looked at Insarov; his face, suffering and death-like at the same time, was immovable, and his hands lay powerless. ‘I won’t,’ he repeated, scarcely audibly.
The doctor came in the morning, shook his head and wrote fresh prescriptions. ‘The crisis is a long way off still,’ he said, putting on his hat.
‘And after the crisis?’ asked Bersenyev.
‘The crisis may end in two ways, aut Caesar aut nihil.
The doctor went away. Bersenyev walked a few times up and down the street; he felt in need of fresh air. He went back and took up a book again. Raumer he had finished long ago; he was now making a study of Grote.
Suddenly the door softly creaked, and the head of the landlord’s daughter, covered as usual with a heavy kerchief, was cautiously thrust into the room.
‘Here is the lady,’ she whispered, ‘who gave me a silver piece.’
The child’s head vanished quickly, and in its place appeared Elena.
Bersenyev jumped up as if he had been stung; but Elena did not stir, nor cry out. It seemed as if she understood everything in a single instant. A terrible pallor overspread her face, she went up to the screen, looked behind it, threw up her arms, and seemed turned to stone.
A moment more and she would have flung herself on Insarov, but Bersenyev stopped her. ‘What are you doing?’ he said in a trembling whisper, ‘you might be the death of him!’
She was reeling. He led her to the sofa, and made her sit down.
She looked into his face, then her eyes ran over him from head to foot, then stared at the floor.
‘Will he die?’ she asked so coldly and quietly that Bersenyev was frightened.
‘For God’s sake, Elena Nikolaevna,’ he began, ‘what are you saying? He is ill certainly—and rather seriously—but we will save him; I promise you that.’
‘He is unconscious?’ she asked in the same tone of voice as before.
‘Yes, he is unconscious at present. That’s always the case at the early stage of these illnesses, but it means nothing, nothing—I assure you. Drink some water.’
She raised her eyes to his, and he saw she had not heard his answer.
‘If he dies,’ she said in the same voice, ‘I will die too.’
At that instant Insarov uttered a slight moan; she trembled all over, clutched at her head, then began untying the strings of her hat.
‘What are you doing?’ Bersenyev asked her.
‘I will stay here.’
‘You will stay—for long?’
‘I don’t know, perhaps all day, the night, always—I don’t know.’
‘For God’s sake, Elena Nikolaevna, control yourself. I could not of course have any expectation of seeing you here; but still I—assume you have come for a short time. Remember they may miss you at home.’
‘What then?’
‘They will look for you—find you——’
‘What then?’
‘Elena Nikolaevna! You see. He cannot now protect you.’
She dropped her head, seemed lost in thought, raised a handkerchief to her lips, and convulsive sobs, tearing her by their violence, were suddenly wrung from her breast. She threw herself, face downwards, on the sofa, trying to stifle them, but still her body heaved and throbbed like a captured bird.
‘Elena Nikolaevna—for God’s sake,’ Bersenyev was repeating over her.
‘Ah! What is it?’ suddenly sounded the voice of Insarov.
Elena started up, and Bersenyev felt rooted to the spot. After waiting a little, he went up to the bed. Insarov’s head lay on the pillow helpless as before; his eyes were closed.
‘Is he delirious?’ whispered Elena.
‘It seems so,’ answered Bersenyev, ‘but that’s nothing; it’s always so, especially if——’
‘When was he taken ill?’ Elena broke in.
‘The day before yesterday; I have been here since yesterday. Rely on me, Elena Nikolaevna. I will not leave him; everything shall be done. If necessary, we will have a consultation.’
‘He will die without me,’ she cried, wringing her hands.
‘I give you my word I will let you hear every day how his illness goes on, and if there should be immediate danger——’
‘Swear you will send for me at once whenever it may be, day or night, write a note straight to me—I care for nothing now. Do you hear? you promise you will do that?’
‘I promise before God’
‘Swear it.’
‘I swear.’
She suddenly snatched his hand, and before he had time to pull it away, she had bent and pressed her lips to it.
‘Elena Nikolaevna, what are you——’ he stammered.
‘No—no—I won’t have it——’ Insarov muttered indistinctly, and sighed painfully.
Elena went up to the screen, her handkerchief pressed between her teeth, and bent a long, long look on the sick man. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ Bersenyev said to her, ‘he might come to himself and recognise you; there’s no knowing if that wouldn’t do harm. Besides, from hour to hour I expect the doctor.’
Elena took her hat from the sofa, put it on and stood still. Her eyes strayed mournfully over the room. She seemed to be remembering....
‘I cannot go away,’ she whispered at last.
Bersenyev pressed her hand: ‘Try to pull yourself together,’ he said, ‘calm yourself; you are leaving him in my care. I will come to you this very evening.’
Elena looked at him, said: ‘Oh, my good, kind friend!’ broke into sobs and rushed away.
Bersenyev leaned against the door. A feeling of sorrow and bitterness, not without a kind of strange consolation, overcame him. ‘My good, kind friend!’ he thought and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who is here?’ he heard Insarov’s voice.
Bersenyev went up to him. ‘I am here, Dmitri Nikanorovitch. How are you? How do you feel?’
‘Are you alone?’ asked the sick man.
‘Yes.’
‘And she?’
‘Whom do you mean?’ Bersenyev asked almost in dismay.