On the Eve — Chapters XXIV-XXVII
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.
Insarov was silent.
‘Mignonette,’ he murmured, and his eyes closed again.
XXVI
For eight whole days Insarov lay between life and death.
The doctor was incessantly visiting him, interested as a young man in a difficult case.
Shubin heard of Insarov’s critical position, and made inquiries after him.
His compatriots--Bulgarians--came; among them Bersenyev recognised the two strange figures, who had puzzled him by their unexpected visit to the cottage; they all showed genuine sympathy, some offered to take Bersenyev’s place by the patient’s bed-side; but he would not consent to that, remembering his promise to Elena.
He saw her every day and secretly reported to her--sometimes by word of mouth, sometimes in a brief note--every detail of the illness.
With what sinkings of the heart she awaited him, how she listened and questioned him!
She was always on the point of hastening to Insarov herself; but Bersenyev begged her not to do this: Insarov was seldom alone.
On the first day she knew of his illness she herself had almost fallen ill; directly she got home, she shut herself up in her room; but she was summoned to dinner, and appeared in the dining-room with such a face that Anna Vassilyevna was alarmed, and was anxious to put her to bed.
Elena succeeded, however, in controlling herself.
‘If he dies,’ she repeated, ‘it will be the end of me too.
’ This thought tranquillised her, and enabled her to seem indifferent.
Besides no one troubled her much; Anna Vassilyevna was taken up with her swollen face; Shubin was working furiously; Zoya was given up to pensiveness, and disposed to read _Werther_; Nikolai Artemyevitch was much displeased at the frequent visits of ‘the scholar,’ especially as his ‘cherished projects’ in regard to Kurnatovsky were making no way; the practical chief secretary was puzzled and biding his time.
Elena did not even thank Bersenyev; there are services for which thanks are cruel and shameful.
Only once at her fourth interview with him--Insarov had passed a very bad night, the doctor had hinted at a consultation--only then she reminded him of his promise.
‘Very well, then let us go,’ he said to her.
She got up and was going to get ready.
‘No,’ he decided, ‘let us wait till to-morrow.
’ Towards evening Insarov was rather better.
For eight days this torture was prolonged.
Elena appeared calm; but she could eat nothing, and did not sleep at night.
There was a dull ache in all her limbs; her head seemed full of a sort of dry burning smoke.
‘Our young lady’s wasting like a candle,’ her maid said of her.
At last by the ninth day the crisis was passing over.
Elena was sitting in the drawing-room near Anna Vassilyevna, and, without knowing herself what she was doing, was reading her the _Moscow Gazette_; Bersenyev came in.
Elena glanced at him--how rapid, and fearful, and penetrating, and tremulous, was the first glance she turned on him every time--and at once she guessed that he brought good news.
He was smiling; he nodded slightly to her, she got up to go and meet him.
‘He has regained consciousness, he is saved, he will be quite well again in a week,’ he whispered to her.
Elena had stretched out her arm as though to ward off a blow, and she said nothing, only her lips trembled and a flush of crimson overspread her whole face.
Bersenyev began to talk to Anna Vassilyevna, and Elena went off to her own room, dropped on her knees and fell to praying, to thanking God.
Light, shining tears trickled down her cheeks.
Suddenly she was conscious of intense weariness, laid her head down on the pillow, whispered ‘poor Andrei Petrovitch!
’ and at once fell asleep with wet cheeks and eyelashes.
It was long since she had slept or wept.
XXVII
Bersenyev’s words turned out only partly true; the danger was over, but Insarov gained strength slowly, and the doctor talked of a complete undermining of the whole system.
The patient left his bed for all that, and began to walk about the room; Bersenyev went home to his own lodging, but he came every day to his still feeble friend; and every day as before he informed Elena of the state of his health.
Insarov did not dare to write to her, and only indirectly in his conversations with Bersenyev referred to her; but Bersenyev, with assumed carelessness, told him about his visits to the Stahovs, trying, however, to give him to understand that Elena had been deeply distressed, and that now she was calmer.
Elena too did not write to Insarov; she had a plan in her head.
One day Bersenyev had just informed her with a cheerful face that the doctor had already allowed Insarov to eat a cutlet, and that he would probably soon go out; she seemed absorbed, dropped her eyes.
‘Guess, what I want to say to you,’ she said.
Bersenyev was confused.
He understood her.
‘I suppose,’ he answered, looking away, ‘you want to say that you wish to see him.
’ Elena crimsoned, and scarcely audibly, she breathed, ‘Yes.
’ ‘Well, what then?
That, I imagine, you can easily do.
’--‘Ugh!
’ he thought, ‘what a loathsome feeling there is in my heart!
’ ‘You mean that I have already before...
’ said Elena.
‘But I am afraid--now he is, you say, seldom alone.
’ ‘That’s not difficult to get over,’ replied Bersenyev, still not looking at her.
‘I, of course, cannot prepare him; but give me a note.
Who can hinder your writing to him as a good friend, in whom you take an interest?
There’s no harm in that.
Appoint--I mean, write to him when you will come.
‘I am ashamed,’ whispered Elena.
‘Give me the note, I will take it.
’ ‘There’s no need of that, but I wanted to ask you--don’t be angry with me, Andrei Petrovitch--don’t go to him to-morrow!
’ Bersenyev bit his lip.
‘Ah!
yes, I understand; very well, very well,’ and, adding two or three words more, he quickly took leave.
‘So much the better, so much the better,’ he thought, as he hurried home.
‘I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better.
What possessed me to go hanging on to the edge of another man’s happiness?
I regret nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over.
Let them be!
My father was right when he used to say to me: “You and I, my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we’re not the spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs--we are workmen and nothing more.
Put on your leather apron, workman, and take your place at your workman’s bench, in your dark workshop, and let the sun shine on other men!
Even our dull life has its own pride, its own happiness!
”’ The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post.
‘Expect me,’ Elena wrote to him, ‘and give orders for no one to see you.
A.
P.
will not come.
