Chapter 3

‘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....