Part 10

“Come here!” I said to the Count rudely, going up to him after dinner.

The Count looked at me with astonishment and followed me into the empty room to which I led him.

“What do you want, my dear friend?” he asked as he unbuttoned his waistcoat and hiccuped.

“Choose one of us. . . .” I said, scarcely able to stand on my feet from the rage that had mastered me. “Either me or Pshekhotsky! If you don't promise me that in an hour that scoundrel shall leave your estate, I will never set my foot here again! . . . I give you half a minute to make your choice!”

The Count dropped the cigar out of his mouth and spread his arms. . . .

“What's the matter with you, Serezha?” he asked, opening his eyes wide. “You look quite wild!”

“No useless words, if you please! I cannot endure that spy, scoundrel, rogue, your friend Pshekhotsky, and in the name of our close friendship I demand that he shall no longer be here, and instantly, too!”

“But what has he done to you?” the Count asked, much agitated. “Why are you attacking him?”

“I ask you again: me or him?”

“But, golubchik, you are placing me in a horribly awkward position. . . . Stop! There's a feather on your dress coat! . . . You are demanding the impossible from me!”

“Good-bye!” I said. “I am no longer acquainted with you.”

And turning sharply on my heel, I went into the anteroom, put on my overcoat, and hastened out of the house. When crossing the garden towards the servants' department, where I wanted to give the order to have my horse put to, I was stopped. Coming towards me with a small cup of coffee in her hand, I was met by Nadia Kalinin. She was also at Urbenin's wedding, but a sort of undefined fear had forced me to avoid speaking to her, and during the whole day I had not gone up to her, nor said a word to her.

“Sergey Petrovich!” she said in an unnaturally deep voice when in passing her I slightly raised my hat. “Stop!”

“What may your commands be?” I asked, as I came up to her.

“I have nothing to command. . . . Besides, you are no lackey,” she said, gazing straight into my eyes and becoming terribly pale. “You are hurrying somewhere, but if you have time might I detain you for a moment?”

“Certainly! . . . I can't understand why you ask it? . . .”

“In that case let us sit down. . . . Sergey Petrovich,” she continued, after we had seated ourselves. “All this day you have tried to avoid seeing me, and have gone round me, as if you were afraid of meeting me and as if on purpose, I had decided to speak to you. . . . I am proud and egoistical. . . . I do not know how to obtrude myself . . . but once in a lifetime one can sacrifice pride.”

“To what do you refer?”

“I had decided to ask you. . . . The question is humiliating, it is difficult for me. . . . I don't know how I shall stand it. . . . Answer me without looking at me. . . . Sergey Petrovich, is it possible you are not sorry for me?”

Nadia looked at me and slightly shook her head. Her face became paler. Her upper lip trembled and was drawn to one side.

“Sergey Petrovich! I always think that . . . you have been separated from me by some misunderstanding, some caprice. . . . I think if we had an explanation, all would go on as formerly. If I did not think it, I would not have strength to put you the question you are about to hear. Sergey Petrovich, I am unhappy. . . . You must see it. . . . My life is no life. . . . All is dried up. . . . And chiefly . . . this uncertainty . . . one does not know, whether to hope or not. . . . Your conduct towards me is so incomprehensible that it is impossible to arrive at any certain conclusion. . . . Tell me, and I shall know what to do. . . . My life will then have an aim. . . . I shall then decide on something.”

“Nadezhda Nikolaevna, you wish to ask me about something?” I said, preparing in my mind an answer to the question I had a presentiment was coming.

“Yes, I want to ask. . . . The question is humiliating. . . . If anybody were listening to us they might think I was obtruding myself, in a word,—was a sort of Pushkin's Tatiana. . . . But this question has been tortured from me. . . .”

The question was really forced from her by torture. When Nadia turned her face towards me to put that question, I became frightened: Nadia trembled, pressed her fingers together convulsively, and pressed from her lips with melancholy sadness the fatal words. Her pallor was terrible.

“May I hope?” she whispered at last. “Do not be afraid to tell me candidly. . . . Whatever the answer may be, it will be better than uncertainty. What is it? May I hope?”

She waited for an answer, meanwhile the state of my soul was such that I was incapable of making a sensible answer. Drunk, excited by the occurrence in the grotto, enraged by Pshekhotsky's spying, and Olga's indecision, and the stupid conversation I had had with the Count, I scarcely heard Nadia.

“May I hope?” she repeated. “Answer me!”

“Ach, I can't answer now, Nadezhda Nikolaevna!” I said with a wave of the hand as I rose, “I am incapable at the present moment of giving any sort of answer. Forgive me, I neither heard nor understood you. I am stupid and excited. . . . It's really a pity you took the trouble.”

I again waved my hand and left Nadia. It was only afterwards when I became calm again, that I understood how stupid and cruel I had been in not giving the girl an answer to her simple and ingenuous question. Why did I not answer her?

Now when I can look back dispassionately at the past, I do not explain my cruelty by the condition of my soul. It appears to me that in not giving a straightforward answer I was coquetting and playing the fool. It is difficult to understand the human soul, but it is still more difficult to understand one's own soul. If I really was playing the fool, may God forgive me! Although to make game of another's suffering ought not to be forgiven.

XVI

For three days I wandered about my rooms from corner to corner like a wolf in a cage, trying with all the strength of my unstable will to prevent myself from leaving the house. I did not touch the pile of papers that were lying on the table patiently awaiting my attention; I received nobody; I quarrelled with Polycarp; I was irritable. . . . I did not allow myself to go to the Count's estate, and this obstinacy cost me great nervous labour. A thousand times I took up my hat and as often threw it down again. . . . Sometimes I decided to defy the whole world and go to Olga, whatever it might cost; at others I drenched myself with the cold decision to remain at home. . . .

My reason told me not to go to the Count's estate. Since I had sworn to the Count never to set foot in his house again, could I sacrifice my self-love and pride? What would that moustachioed coxcomb think if, after our stupid conversation, I went to him as if nothing had happened? Would it not be a confession of my own injustice?

Besides, as an honest man I ought to break off all connexion with Olga. All further intercourse with her could only lead to her ruin. She had made a mistake in marrying Urbenin; in falling in love with me she had made another mistake. If she had a secret lover while living with her old husband, would she not be like a depraved doll? To say nothing about how abominable in principle, such a life is, it was necessary also to think of the consequences.

What a coward I am! I was afraid of the consequences, of the present, of the past. . . . An ordinary man will laugh at my reasoning. He would not have paced from corner to corner, he would not have seized his head in both hands, he would not have made all sorts of plans, but he would have left all to life which grinds into flour even mill-stones. Life would have digested everything without asking for his aid or permission. . . . But I am fearsome almost to cowardice. Pacing from corner to corner, I suffered from compassion for Olga, and at the same time I feared she would understand the proposal I had made her in a moment of passion, and would appear in my house to stay as I had promised her, _for ever_. What would have happened if she had listened to me and had come home with me? How long would that _for ever_ have lasted, and what would life with me have given poor Olga? I would not have given her family life and would consequently not have given her happiness. No, I ought not to go to Olga!

At the same time my soul was drawn frantically towards her. I was as melancholy as a boy, in love for the first time, who is refused a rendezvous. Tempted by what had occurred in the grotto, I yearned for another meeting, and the alluring vision of Olga, who, as I well knew, was also expecting me, and was pining away from longing, never left my mind for a moment.

The Count sent me letter after letter, each one more rueful and humiliating than the last. . . . He implored me to “forget everything” and come to him; he apologized for Pshekhotsky, he begged me to forgive that “kind, simple, but somewhat shallow man,” he was surprised that owing to trifles I had decided to break off old and friendly connexions. In one of his last letters he promised to come to me and, if I wished it, to bring Pshekhotsky with him, who would ask my pardon, “although he did not feel that he was at all in fault.” I read the letters and in answer begged each messenger to leave me in peace. I knew well how to be capricious!

At the very height of my nervous agitation, when I, standing at the window, was deciding to go away somewhere—anywhere except to the Count's estate—when I was tormenting myself with arguments, self-reproaches, and visions of love that awaited me with Olga, my door opened quietly, I heard light footsteps behind me, and soon my neck was encircled by two pretty little arms.

“Olga, is that you?” I asked and looked round.

I recognized her by her hot breath, by the manner in which she hung on my neck, and even by her scent. Pressing her head to my cheek, she appeared to me extraordinarily happy. . . . From happiness she could not say a word. . . . I pressed her to my breast and—where had the melancholy, and all the questions with which I had been tormenting myself during the whole of three days, disappeared? I laughed and jumped about with joy like the veriest schoolboy.

Olga was in a blue silk dress, which suited her pale face and splendid flaxen hair very well. The dress was in the latest fashion and must have been very expensive. It probably cost Urbenin a quarter of his yearly salary.

“How lovely you are to-day!” I said, lifting Olga up in my arms and kissing her neck. “Well, what? How are you? Quite well?”

“Why, you haven't much of a place here!” she said, casting her eyes round my study. “You're a rich man, you receive a high salary, and yet . . . you live quite poorly.”

“Not everybody can live as luxuriously as the Count, my darling,” I said. “But let us leave my wealth in peace. What good genius has brought you into my den?”

“Stop, Serezha! You'll tumble my frock. . . . Put me down. . . . I've only come to you for a moment, darling! I told everybody at home I was going to Akat'ikha, the Count's washerwoman, who lives here only three doors off. Let me go, darling! . . . It's awkward. Why haven't you been to see me for so long?”

I answered something, placed her on a chair opposite me, and began to contemplate her beauty. For a minute we looked at each other in silence.

“You are very pretty, Olia!” I sighed. “It's a pity and an insult that you're so pretty!”

“Why is it a pity?”

“The devil only knows who's got you.”

“But what do you want more? Am not I yours? Here I am. . . . Listen, Serezha! . . . Will you tell me the truth if I ask you?”

“Of course, only the truth.”

“Would you have married me if I had not married Pëtr Egorych?”

“Probably not,” I wanted to say, but why should I probe the painful wound in poor Olia's heart that was already so troubled?

“Certainly,” I said in the tone of a man speaking the truth.

Olia sighed and cast her eyes down.

“What a mistake I've made! What a mistake! And what's worst of all it can't be rectified! I suppose I can't get divorced from him?”

“You can't.”

“I can't understand why I was in such a hurry! We girls are so silly and giddy. . . . There's nobody to whip us! However, one can't undo the past, and to reason about it is useless. . . . Neither reasoning nor tears are of any good. Serezha, I cried all last night! He was there . . . lying next to me, and I was thinking of you. . . . I couldn't sleep. . . . I wanted to run away in the night, even into the wood to father. . . . It is better to live with a mad father than with this—what's his name.”

“Reasoning won't help. . . . Olia, you ought to have reasoned when you drove home with me from Tenevo, and were so happy at getting married to a rich man. . . . It's too late to practice eloquence now. . . .”

“Too late. . . . Then let it be so!” Olga said with a decisive wave of the hand. “It will be possible to live, if it is no worse. . . . Good-bye, I must be off. . . .”

“No, not good-bye. . . .”

I drew Olia towards me and covered her face with kisses, as if I were trying to reward myself for the lost three days. She pressed close against me like a cold lamb and warmed my face with her hot breath. . . . There was stillness in the room. . . .

“The husband killed his wife!” bawled my parrot.

Olia shivered, released herself from my embraces, and looked inquiringly at me.

“It's only the parrot, my soul,” I said. “Calm yourself.”

“The husband killed his wife!” Ivan Dem'yanych repeated again.

Olia rose, put on her hat in silence, and gave me her hand. Dread was written on her face.

“What if Urbenin gets to know?” she asked, looking at me with wide-open eyes. “He is capable of killing me.”

“What nonsense!” I said, laughing. “What sort of a fellow would I be if I allowed him to kill you? He's hardly capable of such an unusual act as a murder. . . . Are you going? Well, then, good-bye, my child! . . . I will wait. . . . To-morrow, in the wood, near the house where you lived. . . . Shall we meet there?” . . .

After seeing Olia off, I returned to my study, where I found Polycarp. He was standing in the middle of the room, he looked sternly at me and shook his head contemptuously.

“Sergei Petrovich, see that this sort of thing does not happen here again; I won't have it,” he said in the tone of a severe parent. “I don't wish it. . . .”

“What's ‘it’?”

“That thing. . . . You think I did not see? I saw everything. . . . See that she doesn't dare to come here again. This is no house for that sort of philandering. There are other places for that. . . .”

I was in the best of humours, so Polycarp's spying and mentorial tone did not make me angry. I only laughed and sent him to the kitchen.

I had hardly had time to collect my thoughts after Olga's visit when another guest arrived. A carriage rattled up to my door and Polycarp, spitting to each side and with mumbled abuse announced the arrival of “that there fellow, may he be . . .!” etc., etc. It was the Count, whom he hated with the whole strength of his soul. The Count entered, looked tearfully at me, and shook his head.

“You turn away. . . . You don't want to speak. . . .”

“I don't turn away,” I said.

“I am so fond of you, Serezha, and you . . . for a trifle! Why do you wound me? Why?”

The Count sat down, sighed, and shook his head.

“Well, you've played the fool long enough!” I said. “All right!”

I had a strong influence upon this weak, puny little man; it was as strong as my contempt for him. . . . My contemptuous tone never offended him; on the contrary.

When he heard my “All right!” he jumped up and embraced me.

“I have brought him with me. . . . He is sitting in the carriage. . . . Do you wish him to apologize?”

“Do you know his fault?”

“No. . . .”

“So much the better. He needn't apologize, but you had better warn him that if ever a similar thing occurs, I'll not get excited, but I will take my own measures.”

“Then, Serezha, it's peace? Excellent! That ought to have been long ago; the deuce only knows what you quarrelled about! Like two schoolgirls! Oh, by-the-by, golubchek, haven't you got half a glass of vodka? My throat is terribly dry!”

I ordered vodka to be served. The Count drank two glasses, sprawled himself out on the sofa, and began to chatter.

“I say, brother, I just met Olia. . . . A fine girl! I must tell you, I'm beginning to detest Urbenin. . . . That means that Olenka is beginning to please me. . . . She's devilish pretty! I think of making up to her.”

“One ought not to touch the married ones!” I said with a sigh.

“Come now, he's an old man. . . . It's no sin to juggle Pëtr Egorych out of his wife. . . . She's no mate for him. . . . He's like a dog; he can't eat it himself, and won't let others have it. . . . I'm going to begin my siege to-day; I'll begin systematically. . . . She's such a ducky—h'm!—quite chic, brother! One licks one's chops!”

The Count drank a third glass and continued:

“Of the girls here, do you know who pleases me too? Nadenka, that fool Kalinin's daughter. . . . A burning brunette, you know the sort, pale, with wonderful eyes. . . . I must also cast my line there. . . . I'm giving a party at Whitsuntide, a musical, vocal, literary evening on purpose to invite her. . . . As it turns out, it's not so bad here; quite jolly! There's society, and women . . . and. . . . May I have five winks here . . . only a moment?”

“You may. . . . But how about Pshekhotsky in the carriage?”

“He may wait, the devil take him! . . . Brother, I myself don't like him.”

The Count raised himself on his elbow and said mysteriously:

“I keep him only from necessity . . . because I must. . . . May the devil take him!”

The Count's elbow gave way, his head sank on the cushion. A minute later snores were heard.

In the evening after the Count had left, I had another visitor; the doctor, Pavil Ivanovich. He came to inform me of Nadezhda Nikolaevna's illness and also that she had definitely refused him her hand. The poor fellow was downhearted and went about like a drenched hen.

XVII

The poetical month of May had passed.

The lilacs and tulips were over, and fate decreed that with them the ecstasies of love, which, notwithstanding their guiltiness and painfulness, had yet occasionally afforded us sweet moments that can never be effaced from our memory, should likewise wither. There are moments for which one would give months, yea, even years!

On a June evening when the sun was already set, but its broad track in purple and gold still glowed in the distant West, foretelling a calm and clear day, for the morrow I rode on Zorka up to the house where Urbenin lived. On that evening the Count was giving a musical party. The guests were already arriving, but the Count was not at home; he had gone for a ride and had left word he would return soon.

A little later I was standing at the porch, holding my horse by the bridle and chatting with Urbenin's little daughter, Sasha. Urbenin himself was sitting on the steps with his head supported on his fists, looking into the distance, which could be seen through the open gates. He was gloomy and answered my questions reluctantly. I left him in peace and occupied myself with Sasha.

“Where is your new máma?” I asked her.

“She has gone out riding with the Count. She rides with him every day.”

“Every day!” Urbenin grumbled with a sigh.

Much could be heard in that sigh. The same feelings could be heard in it that were agitating my soul and that I was trying to explain to myself, but was unable to do so, and therefore became lost in conjecture.

Every day Olga went out for rides with the Count. But that was a trifle. Olga could not fall in love with the Count, and Urbenin's jealousy was groundless. We ought not to have been jealous of the Count, but of something else which, however, I could not understand for a long time. This “something else” built up a whole wall between Olga and me. She continued to love me, but after the visit which has been described in the last chapter, she had not been to my house more than twice, and when we met in other places she flared up in a strange way and obstinately refused to answer my questions. She returned my caresses with passion, but her movements were sudden and startled, so that our short rendezvous only left a feeling of painful perplexity in my mind. Her conscience was not clean; this was clear, but what was the real cause? Nothing could be read on Olga's guilty face.

“I hope your new máma is well?” I asked Sasha.

“She's quite well. Only in the night she had toothache. She cried.”

“She cried,” Urbenin repeated, looking at Sasha. “Did you see it? My darling, you only dreamed it.”

Olga had not had toothache. If she had cried it was not with pain, but for something else. . . . I wanted to continue talking to Sasha, but I did not succeed in this, as at that moment the noise of horses' hoofs was heard and we soon saw the riders—a man inelegantly jumping about in his saddle, and a graceful lady rider. In order to hide my joy from Olga, I took Sasha into my arms and, smoothing her fair hair with my hand, I kissed her on the forehead.

“Sasha, how pretty you are!” I said. “And what nice curls you have!”

Olga cast a rapid glance at me, returned my bow in silence, and leaning on the Count's arm, entered the house. Urbenin rose and followed her.

Five minutes later the Count came out of the house. He was gay. I had never seen him so gay before. Even his face had a fresher look.

“Congratulate me,” he said, giggling, as he took my arm.

“What on?”

“On my conquest. . . . One more ride like this, and I swear by the ashes of my noble ancestors I shall tear the petals from this flower.”

“You have not torn them off yet?”

“As yet? . . . Almost! During ten minutes, ‘Thy hand in my hand,’” the Count sang, “and . . . not once did she draw it away. . . . I kissed it! Wait for to-morrow. Now let us go. They are expecting me. Oh, by-the-by, golubchek, I want to talk to you about something. Tell me, old man, is it true what people say—that you are . . . that you entertain evil intentions with regard to Nadenka Kalinin?”

“Why?”

“If that were true, I won't come in your way. It's not in my principles to put a spoke in another's wheels. If, however, you have no sort of intentions, then of course——”

“I have none.”

“_Merci_, my soul!”

The Count thought of killing two hares at the same time, and was firmly convinced that he would succeed. On the evening I am describing I watched the chase of these two hares. The chase was stupid and as comical as a good caricature. When watching it one could only laugh or be revolted at the Count's vulgarity, but nobody could have thought that this schoolboy chase would end with the moral fall of some, the ruin and the crimes of others!

The Count not only killed two hares, but more! He killed them, but he did not get their skins and their flesh.

I saw him secretly press Olga's hand, who received him each time with a friendly smile and looked after him with a contemptuous grimace. Once, evidently wishing to show that there were no secrets between us, he even kissed her hand in my presence.

“What a blockhead!” she whispered into my ear, and wiped her hand.

“I say, Olga,” I asked, when the Count had gone away, “I think there is something you want to tell me. What is it?”

I looked searchingly into her face. She blushed scarlet and began to blink in a frightened manner, like a cat who has been caught stealing.

“Olga,” I said sternly, “you must tell me! I demand it!”

“Yes, there is something I want to tell you,” she whispered. “I love you—I can't live without you—but . . . my darling, don't come to see me any more. Don't love me any more, and don't call me Olia. It can't go on. . . . It's impossible. . . . And don't let anybody see that you love me.”

“But why is this?”

“I want it. The reasons you need not know, and I won't tell you. Go. . . . Leave me!”