Part 5

Litvinov fell in love with Irina from the moment he saw her (he was only three years older than she was), but for a long while he failed to obtain not only a response, but even a hearing. Her manner to him was even overcast with a shade of something like hostility; he did in fact wound her pride, and she concealed the wound, and could never forgive it. He was too young and too modest at that time to understand what might be concealed under this hostile, almost contemptuous severity. Often, forgetful of lectures and exercises, he would sit and sit in the Osinins’ cheerless drawing-room, stealthily watching Irina, his heart slowly and painfully throbbing and suffocating him; and she would seem angry or bored, would get up and walk about the room, look coldly at him as though he were a table or chair, shrug her shoulders, and fold her arms. Or for a whole evening, even when talking with Litvinov, she would purposely avoid looking at him, as though denying him even that grace. Or she would at last take up a book and stare at it, not reading, but frowning and biting her lips. Or else she would suddenly ask her father or brother aloud: ‘What’s the German for patience?’ He tried to tear himself away from the enchanted circle in which he suffered and struggled impotently like a bird in a trap; he went away from Moscow for a week. He nearly went out of his mind with misery and dulness; he returned quite thin and ill to the Osinins’.... Strange to say, Irina too had grown perceptibly thinner during those days; her face had grown pale, her cheeks were wan.... But she met him with still greater coldness, with almost malignant indifference; as though he had intensified that secret wound he had dealt at her pride.... She tortured him in this way for two months. Then everything was transformed in one day. It was as though love had broken into flame with the heat, or had dropped down from a storm-cloud. One day--long will he remember that day--he was once more sitting in the Osinins’ drawing-room at the window, and was looking mechanically into the street. There was vexation and weariness in his heart, he despised himself, and yet he could not move from his place.... He thought that if a river ran there under the window, he would throw himself in, with a shudder of fear, but without a regret. Irina placed herself not far from him, and was somehow strangely silent and motionless. For some days now she had not talked to him at all, or to any one else; she kept sitting, leaning on her elbows, as though she were in perplexity, and only rarely she looked slowly round. This cold torture was at last more than Litvinov could bear; he got up, and without saying good-bye, he began to look for his hat. ‘Stay,’ sounded suddenly, in a soft whisper. Litvinov’s heart throbbed, he did not at once recognise Irina’s voice; in that one word, there was a ring of something that had never been in it before. He lifted his head and was stupefied; Irina was looking fondly--yes, fondly at him. ‘Stay,’ she repeated; ‘don’t go. I want to be with you.’ Her voice sank still lower. ‘Don’t go.... I wish it.’ Understanding nothing, not fully conscious what he was doing, he drew near her, stretched out his hands.... She gave him both of hers at once, then smiling, flushing hotly, she turned away, and still smiling, went out of the room. She came back a few minutes later with her youngest sister, looked at him again with the same prolonged tender gaze, and made him sit near her.... At first she could say nothing; she only sighed and blushed; then she began, timidly as it were, to question him about his pursuits, a thing she had never done before. In the evening of the same day, she tried several times to beg his forgiveness for not having done him justice before, assured him she had now become quite different, astonished him by a sudden outburst of republicanism (he had at that time a positive hero-worship for Robespierre, and did not presume to criticise Marat aloud), and only a week later he knew that she loved him. Yes; he long remembered that first day ... but he did not forget those that came after either--those days, when still forcing himself to doubt, afraid to believe in it, he saw clearly, with transports of rapture, almost of dread, bliss un-hoped for coming to life, growing, irresistibly carrying everything before it, reaching him at last. Then followed the radiant moments of first love--moments which are not destined to be, and could not fittingly be, repeated in the same life. Irina became all at once as docile as a lamb, as soft as silk, and boundlessly kind; she began giving lessons to her younger sisters--not on the piano, she was no musician, but in French and English; she read their school-books with them, and looked after the housekeeping; everything was amusing and interesting to her; she would sometimes chatter incessantly, and sometimes sink into speechless tenderness; she made all sorts of plans, and was lost in endless anticipations of what she would do when she was married to Litvinov (they never doubted that their marriage would come to pass), and how together they would ... ‘Work?’ prompted Litvinov.... ‘Yes; work,’ repeated Irina, ‘and read ... but travel before all things.’ She particularly wanted to leave Moscow as soon as possible, and when Litvinov reminded her that he had not yet finished his course of study at the university, she always replied, after a moment’s thought, that it was quite possible to finish his studies at Berlin or ... somewhere or other. Irina was very little reserved in the expression of her feelings, and so her relations with Litvinov did not long remain a secret from the prince and princess. Rejoice they could not; but, taking all circumstances into consideration, they saw no necessity for putting a veto on it at once. Litvinov’s fortune was considerable....

‘But his family, his family!’ ... protested the princess. ‘Yes, his family, of course,’ replied the prince; but at least he’s not quite a plebeian; and, what’s the principal point, Irina, you know, will not listen to us. Has there ever been a time when she did not do what she chose? _Vous connaissez sa violence!_ Besides, there is nothing fixed definitely yet.’ So reasoned the prince, but mentally he added, however: ‘Madame Litvinov--is that all? I had expected something else.’ Irina took complete possession of her future _fiancé_, and indeed he himself eagerly surrendered himself into her hands. It was as if he had fallen into a rapid river, and had lost himself.... And bitter and sweet it was to him, and he regretted nothing and heeded nothing. To reflect on the significance and the duties of marriage, or whether he, so hopelessly enslaved, could be a good husband, and what sort of wife Irina would make, and whether their relations to one another were what they should be--was more than he could bring himself to. His blood was on fire, he could think of nothing, only--to follow her, be with her, for the future without end, and then--let come what may!

But in spite of the complete absence of opposition on Litvinov’s side, and the wealth of impulsive tenderness on Irina’s, they did not get on quite without any misunderstandings and quarrels. One day he ran to her straight from the university in an old coat and ink-stained hands. She rushed to meet him with her accustomed fond welcome; suddenly she stopped short.

‘You have no gloves,’ she said abruptly, and added directly after: ‘Fie! what a student you are!’

‘You are too particular, Irina,’ remarked Litvinov.

‘You are a regular student,’ she repeated. ‘_Vous n’êtes pas distingué_’; and turning her back on him she went out of the room. It is true that an hour later she begged him to forgive her.... As a rule she readily censured herself and accused herself to him; but, strange to say, she often almost with tears blamed herself for evil propensities which she had not, and obstinately denied her real defects. Another time he found her in tears, her head in her hands, and her hair in disorder; and when, all in agitation, he asked her the cause of her grief, she pointed with her finger at her own bosom without speaking. Litvinov gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Consumption!’ flashed through his brain, and he seized her hand.

‘Are you ill, Irina?’ he articulated in a shaking voice. (They had already begun on great occasions to call each other by their first names.) ‘Let me go at once for a doctor.’

But Irina did not let him finish; she stamped with her foot in vexation.

‘I am perfectly well ... but this dress ... don’t you understand?’

‘What is it? ... this dress,’ he repeated in bewilderment.

‘What is it? Why, that I have no other, and that it is old and disgusting, and I am obliged to put on this dress every day ... even when you--Grisha--Grigory, come here.... You will leave off loving me, at last, seeing me so slovenly!’

‘For goodness sake, Irina, what are you saying? That dress is very nice.... It is dear to me too because I saw you for the first time in it, darling.’

Irina blushed.

‘Do not remind me, if you please, Grigory Mihalovitch, that I had no other dress even then.’

‘But I assure you, Irina Pavlovna, it suits you so exquisitely.’

‘No, it is horrid, horrid,’ she persisted, nervously pulling at her long, soft curls. ‘Ugh, this poverty, poverty and squalor! How is one to escape from this sordidness! How get out of this squalor!’

Litvinov did not know what to say, and slightly turned away from her.

All at once Irina jumped up from her chair, and laid both her hands on his shoulders.

‘But you love me, Grisha? You love me?’ she murmured, putting her face close to him, and her eyes, still filled with tears, sparkled with the light of happiness, ‘You love me, dear, even in this horrid dress?’

Litvinov flung himself on his knees before her.

‘Ah, love me, love me, my sweet, my saviour,’ she whispered, bending over him.

So the days flew, the weeks passed, and though as yet there had been no formal declaration, though Litvinov still deferred his demand for her hand, not, certainly, at his own desire, but awaiting directions from Irina (she remarked sometimes that they were both ridiculously young, and they must add at least a few weeks more to their years), still everything was moving to a conclusion, and the future as it came nearer grew more and more clearly defined, when suddenly an event occurred, which scattered all their dreams and plans like light roadside dust.

VIII

That winter the court visited Moscow. One festivity followed another; in its turn came the customary great ball in the Hall of Nobility. The news of this ball, only, it is true, in the form of an announcement in the _Political Gazette_, reached even the little house in Dogs’ Place. The prince was the first to be roused by it; he decided at once that he must not fail to go and take Irina, that it would be unpardonable to let slip the opportunity of seeing their sovereigns, that for the old nobility this constituted indeed a duty in its own way. He defended his opinion with a peculiar warmth, not habitual in him; the princess agreed with him to some extent, and only sighed over the expense; but a resolute opposition was displayed by Irina. ‘It is not necessary, I will not go,’ she replied to all her parents’ arguments. Her obstinacy reached such proportions that the old prince decided at last to beg Litvinov to try to persuade her, by reminding her among other reasons that it was not proper for a young girl to avoid society, that she ought to ‘have this experience,’ that no one ever saw her anywhere, as it was. Litvinov undertook to lay these ‘reasons’ before her. Irina looked steadily and scrutinisingly at him, so steadily and scrutinisingly that he was confused, and then, playing with the ends of her sash, she said calmly:

‘Do you desire it, you?’

‘Yes.... I suppose so,’ replied Litvinov hesitatingly. ‘I agree with your papa.... Indeed, why should you not go ... to see the world, and show yourself,’ he added with a short laugh.

‘To show myself,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Very well then, I will go.... Only remember, it is you yourself who desired it.’

‘That’s to say, I----.’ Litvinov was beginning.

‘You yourself have desired it,’ she interposed. ‘And here is one condition more; you must promise me that you will not be at this ball.’

‘But why?’

‘I wish it to be so.’

Litvinov unclasped his hands.

‘I submit ... but I confess I should so have enjoyed seeing you in all your grandeur, witnessing the sensation you are certain to make.... How proud I should be of you!’ he added with a sigh.

Irina laughed.

‘All the grandeur will consist of a white frock, and as for the sensation.... Well, any way, I wish it.’

‘Irina, darling, you seem to be angry?’

Irina laughed again.

‘Oh, no! I am not angry. Only, Grisha....’ (She fastened her eyes on him, and he thought he had never before seen such an expression in them.) ‘Perhaps, it must be,’ she added in an undertone.

‘But, Irina, you love me, dear?’

‘I love you,’ she answered with almost solemn gravity, and she clasped his hand firmly like a man.

All the following days Irina was busily occupied over her dress and her coiffure; on the day before the ball she felt unwell, she could not sit still, and twice she burst into tears in solitude; before Litvinov she wore the same uniform smile.... She treated him, however, with her old tenderness, but carelessly, and was constantly looking at herself in the glass. On the day of the ball she was silent and pale, but collected. At nine o’clock in the evening Litvinov came to look at her. When she came to meet him in a white tarlatan gown, with a spray of small blue flowers in her slightly raised hair, he almost uttered a cry; she seemed to him so lovely and stately beyond what was natural to her years. ‘Yes, she has grown up since this morning!’ he thought, ‘and how she holds herself! That’s what race does!’ Irina stood before him, her hands hanging loose, without smiles or affectation, and looked resolutely, almost boldly, not at him, but away into the distance straight before her.

‘You are just like a princess in a story book,’ said Litvinov at last. ‘You are like a warrior before the battle, before victory.... You did not allow me to go to this ball,’ he went on, while she remained motionless as before, not because she was not listening to him, but because she was following another inner voice, ‘but you will not refuse to accept and take with you these flowers?’

He offered her a bunch of heliotrope. She looked quickly at Litvinov, stretched out her hand, and suddenly seizing the end of the spray which decorated her hair, she said:

‘Do you wish it, Grisha? Only say the word, and I will tear off all this, and stop at home.’

Litvinov’s heart seemed fairly bursting. Irina’s hand had already snatched the spray....

‘No, no, what for?’ he interposed hurriedly, in a rush of generous and magnanimous feeling, ‘I am not an egoist.... Why should I restrict your freedom ... when I know that your heart----’

‘Well, don’t come near me, you will crush my dress,’ she said hastily.

Litvinov was disturbed.

‘But you will take the nosegay?’ he asked.

‘Of course; it is very pretty, and I love that scent. _Merci_--I shall keep it in memory----’

‘Of your first coming out,’ observed Litvinov, ‘your first triumph.’

Irina looked over her shoulder at herself in the glass, scarcely bending her figure.

‘And do I really look so nice? You are not partial?’

Litvinov overflowed in enthusiastic praises. Irina was already not listening to him, and holding the flowers up to her face, she was again looking away into the distance with her strange, as it were, overshadowed, dilated eyes, and the ends of her delicate ribbons stirred by a faint current of air rose slightly behind her shoulders like wings.

The prince made his appearance, his hair well becurled, in a white tie, and a shabby black evening coat, with the medal of nobility on a Vladimir ribbon in his buttonhole. After him came the princess in a china silk dress of antique cut, and with the anxious severity under which mothers try to conceal their agitation, set her daughter to rights behind, that is to say, quite needlessly shook out the folds of her gown. An antiquated hired coach with seats for four, drawn by two shaggy hacks, crawled up to the steps, its wheels grating over the frozen mounds of unswept snow, and a decrepit groom in a most unlikely-looking livery came running out of the passage, and with a sort of desperate courage announced that the carriage was ready.... After giving a blessing for the night to the children left at home, and enfolding themselves in their fur wraps, the prince and princess went out to the steps; Irina in a little cloak, too thin and too short--how she hated the little cloak at that moment!--followed them in silence. Litvinov escorted them outside, hoping for a last look from Irina, but she took her seat in the carriage without turning her head.

About midnight he walked under the windows of the Hall of Nobility. Countless lights of huge candelabra shone with brilliant radiance through the red curtains; and the whole square, blocked with carriages, was ringing with the insolent, festive, seductive strains of a waltz of Strauss’.

The next day at one o’clock, Litvinov betook himself to the Osinins’. He found no one at home but the prince, who informed him at once that Irina had a headache, that she was in bed, and would not get up till the evening, that such an indisposition was however little to be wondered at after a first ball.

‘_C’est très naturel, vous savez, dans les jeunes filles_,’ he added in French, somewhat to Litvinov’s surprise; the latter observed at the same instant that the prince was not in his dressing-gown as usual, but was wearing a coat. ‘And besides,’ continued Osinin, ‘she may well be a little upset after the events of yesterday!’

‘Events?’ muttered Litvinov.

‘Yes, yes, events, events, _de vrais événements_. You cannot imagine, Grigory Mihalovitch, _quel succès elle a eu_! The whole court noticed her! Prince Alexandr Fedorovitch said that her place was not here, and that she reminded him of Countess Devonshire. You know ... that ... celebrated.... And old Blazenkrampf declared in the hearing of all, that Irina was _la reine du bal_, and desired to be introduced to her; he was introduced to me too, that’s to say, he told me that he remembered me a hussar, and asked me where I was holding office now. Most entertaining man that Count, and such an _adorateur du beau sexe_! But that’s not all; my princess ... they gave her no peace either: Natalya Nikitishna herself conversed with her ... what more could we have? Irina danced _avec tous les meilleurs cavaliers_; they kept bringing them up to me.... I positively lost count of them. Would you believe it, they were all flocking about us in crowds; in the mazurka they did nothing but seek her out. One foreign diplomatist, hearing she was a Moscow girl, said to the Tsar: ‘_Sire_,’ he said, ‘_décidément c’est Moscou qui est le centre de votre empire!_’ and another diplomatist added: ‘_C’est une vraie révolution, Sire--révélation_ or _révolution_ ... something of that sort. Yes, yes, it was. I tell you it was something extraordinary.’

‘Well, and Irina Pavlovna herself?’ inquired Litvinov, whose hands and feet had grown cold hearing the prince’s speech, ‘did she enjoy herself, did she seem pleased?’

‘Of course she enjoyed herself; how could she fail to be pleased? But, as you know, she’s not to be seen through at a glance! Every one was saying to me yesterday: it is really surprising! _jamais on ne dirait que mademoiselle votre fille est a son premier bal_. Count Reisenbach among the rest ... you know him most likely.’

‘No, I don’t know him at all, and have never heard of him.’

‘My wife’s cousin.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘A rich man, a chamberlain, living in Petersburg, in the swim of things; in Livonia every one is in his hands. Hitherto he has neglected us ... but there, I don’t bear him ill-will for that. _J’ai l’humeur facile, comme vous savez._ Well, that’s the kind of man he is. He sat near Irina, conversed with her for a quarter of an hour, not more, and said afterwards to my princess: “_Ma cousine_,” he says, “_votre fille est une perle; c’est une perfection_, every one is congratulating me on such a niece....” And afterwards I look round--and he had gone up to a ... a very great personage, and was talking, and kept looking at Irina ... and the personage was looking at her too.’...

‘And so Irina Pavlovna will not appear all day?’ Litvinov asked again.

‘Quite so; her head aches very badly. She told me to greet you from her, and thank you for your flowers, _qu’on a trouvé charmant_. She needs rest.... The princess has gone out on a round of visits ... and I myself ... you see....’

The prince cleared his throat, and began to fidget as though he were at a loss what to add further. Litvinov took his hat, and saying he did not want to disturb him, and would call again later to inquire after her health, he went away.

A few steps from the Osinins’ house he saw an elegant carriage for two persons standing before the police sentry-box. A groom in livery, equally elegant, was bending negligently from the box, and inquiring of the Finnish police-sergeant whereabouts Prince Pavel Vassilyevitch Osinin lived. Litvinov glanced at the carriage; in it sat a middle-aged man of bloated complexion, with a wrinkled and haughty face, a Greek nose, and an evil mouth, muffled in a sable wrap, by all outward signs a very great man indeed.

IX

Litvinov did not keep his promise of returning later; he reflected that it would be better to defer his visit till the following day. When he went into the too familiar drawing-room at about twelve o’clock, he found there the two youngest princesses, Viktorinka and Kleopatrinka. He greeted them, and then inquired, ‘Was Irina Pavlovna better, and could he see her?’

‘Irinotchka has gone away with mammy,’ replied Viktorinka; she lisped a little, but was more forward than her sister.

‘How ... gone away?’ repeated Litvinov, and there was a sort of still shudder in the very bottom of his heart. ‘Does she not, does she not look after you about this time, and give you your lessons?’

‘Irinotchka will not give us any lessons any more now,’ answered Viktorinka. ‘Not any more now,’ Kleopatrinka repeated after her.

‘Is your papa at home?’ asked Litvinov.

‘Papa is not at home,’ continued Viktorinka, ‘and Irinotchka is not well; all night long she was crying and crying....’

‘Crying?’

‘Yes, crying ... Yegorovna told me, and her eyes are so red, they are quite in-inflamed....’

Litvinov walked twice up and down the room shuddering as though with cold, and went back to his lodging. He experienced a sensation like that which gains possession of a man when he looks down from a high tower; everything failed within him, and his head was swimming slowly with a sense of nausea. Dull stupefaction, and thoughts scurrying like mice, vague terror, and the numbness of expectation, and curiosity--strange, almost malignant--and the weight of crushed tears in his heavy laden breast, on his lips the forced empty smile, and a meaningless prayer--addressed to no one.... Oh, how bitter it all was, and how hideously degrading! ‘Irina does not want to see me,’ was the thought that was incessantly revolving in his brain; ‘so much is clear; but why is it? What can have happened at that ill-fated ball? And how is such a change possible all at once? So suddenly....’ People always see death coming suddenly, but they can never get accustomed to its suddenness, they feel it senseless. ‘She sends no message for me, does not want to explain herself to me....’

‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ called a strained voice positively in his ear.