On the Eve — Chapters XVIII-XX
XVIII
Elena walked with her head bent and her eyes fixed straight before her.
She feared nothing, she considered nothing; she wanted to see Insarov once more.
She went on, not noticing that the sun had long ago disappeared behind heavy black clouds, that the wind was roaring by gusts in the trees and blowing her dress about her, that the dust had suddenly risen and was flying in a cloud along the road....
Large drops of rain were falling, she did not even notice it; but it fell faster and heavier, there were flashes of lightning and peals of thunder.
Elena stood still looking round....
Fortunately for her, there was a little old broken-down chapel that had been built over a disused well not far from the place where she was overtaken by the storm.
She ran to it and got under the low roof.
The rain fell in torrents; the sky was completely overcast.
In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network of fast-falling drops.
Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov was vanishing.
A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook herself, said with a curtsy: ‘Out of the rain, good lady,’ and with many sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well.
Elena put her hand into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into her face, yellow and wrinkled now, though once handsome.
‘Thank you, dear gracious lady,’ she was beginning.
There happened to be no purse in Elena’s pocket, but the old woman was still holding out her hand.
‘I have no money, grannie,’ said Elena, ‘but here, take this, it will be of use for something.
’ She gave her her handkerchief.
‘O-oh, my pretty lady,’ said the beggar, ‘what do you give your handkerchief to me for?
For a wedding-present to my grandchild when she’s married?
God reward you for your goodness!
’ A peal of thunder was heard.
‘Lord Jesus Christ,’ muttered the beggar-woman, and she crossed herself three times.
‘Why, haven’t I seen you before,’ she added after a brief pause.
‘Didn’t you give me alms in Christ’s name?
’ Elena looked more attentively at the old woman and recognised her.
‘Yes, grannie,’ she answered, ‘wasn’t it you asked me why I was so sorrowful?
’ ‘Yes, darling, yes.
I fancied I knew you.
And I think you’ve a heart-ache still.
You seem in trouble now.
Here’s your handkerchief, too, wet from tears to be sure.
Oh, you young people, you all have the same sorrow, a terrible woe it is!
’ ‘What sorrow, grannie?
’ ‘Ah, my good young lady, you can’t deceive an old woman like me.
I know what your heart is heavy over; your sorrow’s not an uncommon one.
Sure, I have been young too, darling.
I have been through that trouble too.
Yes.
And I’ll tell you something, for your goodness to me; you’ve won a good man, not a light of love, you cling to him alone; cling to him stronger than death.
If it comes off, it comes off,--if not, it’s in God’s hands.
Yes.
Why are you wondering at me?
I’m a fortune-teller.
There, I’ll carry away your sorrow with your handkerchief.
I’ll carry it away, and it’s over.
See the rain’s less; you wait a little longer.
It’s not the first time I’ve been wet.
Remember, darling; you had a sorrow, the sorrow has flown, and there’s no memory of it.
Good Lord, have mercy on us!
’ The beggar-woman got up from the edge of the well, went out of the chapel, and stole off on her way.
Elena stared after her in bewilderment.
‘What does this mean?
’ she murmured involuntarily.
The rain grew less and less, the sun peeped out for an instant.
Elena was just preparing to leave her shelter....
Suddenly, ten paces from the chapel, she saw Insarov.
Wrapt in a cloak he was walking along the very road by which Elena had come; he seemed to be hurrying home.
She clasped the old rail of the steps for support, and tried to call to him, but her voice failed her...
Insarov had already passed by without raising his head.
‘Dmitri Nikanorovitch!
’ she said at last.
Insarov stopped abruptly, looked round....
For the first minute he did not know Elena, but he went up to her at once.
‘You!
you here!
’ he cried.
She walked back in silence into the chapel.
Insarov followed Elena.
‘You here?
’ he repeated.
She was still silent, and only gazed upon him with a strange, slow, tender look.
He dropped his eyes.
‘You have come from our house?
’ she asked.
‘No...
not from your house.
’ ‘No?
’ repeated Elena, and she tried to smile.
‘Is that how you keep your promises?
I have been expecting you ever since the morning.
’ ‘I made no promise yesterday, if you remember, Elena Nikolaevna.
’ Again Elena faintly smiled, and she passed her hand over her face.
Both face and hands were very white.
‘You meant, then, to go away without saying good-bye to us?
’ ‘Yes,’ replied Insarov in a surly, thick voice.
‘What?
After our friendship, after the talks, after everything....
Then if I had not met you here by chance.
’ (Elena’s voice began to break, and she paused an instant)...
‘you would have gone away like that, without even shaking hands for the last time, and you would not have cared?
’ Insarov turned away.
‘Elena Nikolaevnas don’t talk like that, please.
I’m not over happy as it is.
Believe me, my decision has cost me great effort.
If you knew----’ ‘I don’t want to know,’ Elena interposed with dismay, ‘why you are going....
It seems it’s necessary.
It seems we must part.
You would not wound your friends without good reason.
But, can friends part like this?
And we are friends, aren’t we?
’ ‘No,’ said Insarov.
‘What?
’ murmured Elena.
Her cheeks were overspread with a faint flush.
‘That’s just why I am going away--because we are not friends.
Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
’ ‘You used to be so open with me,’ said Elena rather reproachfully.
‘Do you remember?
’ ‘I used to be able to be open, then I had nothing to conceal; but now----’ ‘But now?
’ queried Elena.
‘But now...
now I must go away.
Goodbye.
’ If, at that instant, Insarov had lifted his eyes to Elena, he would have seen that her face grew brighter and brighter as he frowned and looked gloomy; but he kept his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground.
‘Well, good-bye, Dmitri Nikanorovitch,’ she began.
‘But at least, since we have met, give me your hand now.
’ Insarov was stretching out his hand.
‘No, I can’t even do that,’ he said, and turned away again.
‘You can’t?
’ ‘No, I can’t. Good-bye.
’ And he moved away to the entrance of the chapel.
‘Wait a little longer,’ said Elena.
‘You seem afraid of me.
But I am braver than you,’ she added, a faint tremor passing suddenly over her whole body.
‘I can tell you...
shall I?...
how it was you found me here?
Do you know where I was going?
’ Insarov looked in bewilderment at Elena.
‘I was going to you.
’ ‘To me?
’ Elena hid her face.
‘You mean to force me to say that I love you,’ she whispered.
‘There, I have said it.
’ ‘Elena!
’ cried Insarov.
She took his hands, looked at him, and fell on his breast.
He held her close to him, and said nothing.
There was no need for him to tell her he loved her.
From that cry alone, from the instant transformation of the whole man, from the heaving of the breast to which she clung so confidingly, from the touch of his finger tips in her hair, Elena could feel that she was loved.
He did not speak, and she needed no words.
‘He is here, he loves me...
what need of more?
’ The peace of perfect bliss, the peace of the harbour reached after storm, of the end attained, that heavenly peace which gives significance and beauty even to death, filled her with its divine flood.
She desired nothing, for she had gained all.
‘O my brother, my friend, my dear one!
’ her lips were whispering, while she did not know whose was this heart, his or her own, which beat so blissfully, and melted against her bosom.
He stood motionless, folding in his strong embrace the young life surrendered to him; he felt against his heart this new, infinitely precious burden; a passion of tenderness, of gratitude unutterable, was crumbling his hard will to dust, and tears unknown till now stood in his eyes.
She did not weep; she could only repeat, ‘O my friend, my brother!
’ ‘So you will follow me everywhere?
’ he said to her, a quarter of an hour later, still enfolding her and keeping her close to him in his arms.
‘Everywhere, to the ends of the earth.
Where you are, I will be.
’ ‘And you are not deceiving yourself, you know your parents will never consent to our marriage?
’ ‘I don’t deceive myself; I know that.
’ ‘You know that I’m poor--almost a beggar.
’ ‘I know.
’ ‘That I’m not a Russian, that it won’t be my fate to live in Russia, that you will have to break all your ties with your country, with your people.
’ ‘I know, I know.
’ ‘Do you know, too, that I have given myself up to a difficult, thankless cause, that I...
that we shall have to expose ourselves not to dangers only, but to privation, humiliation, perhaps----’ ‘I know, I know all--I love you----’ ‘That you will have to give up all you are accustomed to, that out there alone among strangers, you will be forced perhaps to work----’ She laid her hand on his lips.
‘I love you, my dear one.
’ He began hotly kissing her slender, rosy hand.
Elena did not draw it away from his lips, and with a kind of childish delight, with smiling curiosity, watched how he covered with kisses, first the palm, then the fingers....
All at once she blushed and hid her face upon his breast.
He lifted her head tenderly and looked steadily into her eyes.
‘Welcome, then, my wife, before God and men!
’ XIX
An hour later, Elena, with her hat in one hand, her cape in the other, walked slowly into the drawing-room of the villa.
Her hair was in slight disorder; on each cheek was to be seen a small bright spot of colour, the smile would not leave her lips, her eyes were nearly shutting and half hidden under the lids; they, too, were smiling.
She could scarcely move for weariness, and this weariness was pleasant to her; everything, indeed, was pleasant to her.
Everything seemed sweet and friendly to her.
Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting at the window; she went up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, stretched a little, and involuntarily, as it seemed, she laughed.
‘What is it?
’ he inquired, astonished.
She did not know what to say.
She felt inclined to kiss Uvar Ivanovitch.
‘How he splashed!
’ she explained at last.
But Uvar Ivanovitch did not stir a muscle, and continued to look with amazement at Elena.
She dropped her hat and cape on to him.
‘Dear Uvar Ivanovitch,’ she said, ‘I am sleepy and tired,’ and again she laughed and sank into a low chair near him.
‘H’m,’ grunted Uvar Ivanovitch, flourishing his fingers, ‘then you ought--yes----’ Elena was looking round her and thinking, ‘From all this I soon must part...
and strange--I have no dread, no doubt, no regret....
No, I am sorry for mamma.
’ Then the little chapel rose again before her mind, again her voice was echoing in it, and she felt his arms about her.
Joyously, though faintly, her heart fluttered; weighed down by the languor of happiness.
The old beggar-woman recurred to her mind.
‘She did really bear away my sorrow,’ she thought.
‘Oh, how happy I am!
how undeservedly!
how soon!
’ If she had let herself go in the least she would have melted into sweet, endless tears.
She could only restrain them by laughing.
Whatever attitude she fell into seemed to her the easiest, most comfortable possible; she felt as if she were being rocked to sleep.
All her movements were slow and soft; what had become of her awkwardness, her haste?
Zoya came in; Elena decided that she had never seen a more charming little face; Anna Vassilyevna came in; Elena felt a pang--but with what tenderness she embraced her mother and kissed her on the forehead near the hair, already slightly grey!
Then she went away to her own room; how everything smiled upon her there!
With what a sense of shamefaced triumph and tranquillity she sat down on her bed--the very bed on which, only three hours ago, she had spent such bitter moments!
‘And yet, even then, I knew he loved me,’ she thought, ‘even before...
Ah, no!
it’s a sin.
You are my wife,’ she whispered, hiding her face in her hands and falling on her knees.
Towards the evening, she grew more thoughtful.
Sadness came upon her at the thought that she would not soon see Insarov.
He could not without awakening suspicion remain at Bersenyev’s, and so this was what he and Elena had resolved on.
Insarov was to return to Moscow and to come over to visit them twice before the autumn; on her side she promised to write him letters, and, if it were possible, to arrange a meeting with him somewhere near Kuntsov.
She went down to the drawing-room to tea, and found there all the household and Shubin, who looked at her sharply directly she came in; she tried to talk to him in a friendly way as of old, but she dreaded his penetration, she was afraid of herself.
She felt sure that there was good reason for his having left her alone for more than a fortnight.
Soon Bersenyev arrived, and gave Insarov’s respects to Anna Vassilyevna with an apology for having gone back to Moscow without calling to take leave of her.
Insarov’s name was for the first time during the day pronounced before Elena.
She felt that she reddened; she realised at the same time that she ought to express regret at the sudden departure of such a pleasant acquaintance; but she could not force herself to hypocrisy, and continued to sit without stirring or speaking, while Anna Vassilyevna sighed and lamented.
Elena tried to keep near Bersenyev; she was not afraid of him, though he even knew part of her secret; she was safe under his wing from Shubin, who still persisted in staring at her--not mockingly but attentively.
Bersenyev, too, was thrown into perplexity during the evening: he had expected to see Elena more gloomy.
Happily for her, an argument sprang up about art between him and Shubin; she moved apart and heard their voices as it were through a dream.
By degrees, not only they, but the whole room, everything surrounding her, seemed like a dream--everything: the samovar on the table, and Uvar Ivanovitch’s short waistcoat, and Zoya’s polished finger-nails, and the portrait in oils of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovitch on the wall; everything retreated, everything was wrapped in mist, everything ceased to exist.
Only she felt sorry for them all.
‘What are they living for?
’ she thought.
‘Are you sleepy, Lenotchka?
’ her mother asked her.
She did not hear the question.
‘A half untrue insinuation, do you say?
’ These words, sharply uttered by Shubin, suddenly awakened Elena’s attention.
‘Why,’ he continued, ‘the whole sting lies in that.
A true insinuation makes one wretched--that’s unchristian--and to an untrue insinuation a man is indifferent--that’s stupid, but at a half true one he feels vexed and impatient.
For instance, if I say that Elena Nikolaevna is in love with one of us, what sort of insinuation would that be, eh?
’ ‘Ah, Monsieur Paul,’ said Elena, ‘I should like to show myself vexed, but really I can’t. I am so tired.
’ ‘Why don’t you go to bed?
’ observed Anna Vassilyevna, who was always drowsy in the evening herself, and consequently always eager to send the others to bed.
‘Say good-night to me, and go in God’s name; Andrei Petrovitch will excuse you.
’ Elena kissed her mother, bowed to all and went away.
Shubin accompanied her to the door.
‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he whispered to her in the doorway, ‘you trample on Monsieur Paul, you mercilessly walk over him, but Monsieur Paul blesses you and your little feet, and the slippers on your little feet, and the soles of your little slippers.
’ Elena shrugged her shoulders, reluctantly held out her hand to him--not the one Insarov had kissed--and going up to her room, at once undressed, got into bed, and fell asleep.
She slept a deep, unstirring sleep, as even children rarely sleep--the sleep of a child convalescent after sickness, when its mother sits near its cradle and watches it, and listens to its breathing.
XX
‘Come to my room for a minute,’ Shubin said to Bersenyev, directly the latter had taken leave of Anna Vassilyevna: ‘I have something to show you.
’ Bersenyev followed him to his attic.
He was surprised to see a number of studies, statuettes, and busts, covered with damp cloths, set about in all the corners of the room.
‘Well I see you have been at work in earnest,’ he observed to Shubin.
‘One must do something,’ he answered.
‘If one thing doesn’t do, one must try another.
However, like a true Corsican, I am more concerned with revenge than with pure art.
_Trema, Bisanzia!
_’ ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Bersenyev.
‘Well, wait a minute.
Deign to look this way, gracious friend and benefactor, my vengeance number one.
’ Shubin uncovered one figure, and Bersenyev saw a capital bust of Insarov, an excellent likeness.
The features of the face had been correctly caught by Shubin to the minutest detail, and he had given him a fine expression, honest, generous, and bold.
Bersenyev went into raptures over it.
‘That’s simply exquisite!
’ he cried.
‘I congratulate you.
You must send it to the exhibition!
Why do you call that magnificent work your vengeance?
’ ‘Because, sir, I intended to offer this magnificent work as you call it to Elena Nikolaevna on her name day.
Do you see the allegory?
We are not blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take our revenge like gentlemen....
But here,’ added Shubin, uncovering another figure, ‘as the artist according to modern aesthetic principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as gentlemen, but simply _en canaille_.
’ He deftly drew off the cloth, and displayed to Bersenyev’s eyes a statuette in Dantan’s style, also of Insarov.
Anything cleverer and more spiteful could not be imagined.
The young Bulgarian was represented as a ram standing on his hind-legs, butting forward with his horns.
Dull solemnity and aggressiveness, obstinacy, clumsiness and narrowness were simply printed on the visage of the ‘sire of the woolly flock,’ and yet the likeness to Insarov was so striking that Bersenyev could not help laughing.
‘Eh?
is it amusing?
’ said Shubin.
‘Do you recognise the hero?
Do you advise me to send it too to the exhibition?
That, my dear fellow, I intend as a present for myself on my own name day....
Your honour will permit me to play the fool.
’ And Shubin gave three little leaps, kicking himself behind with his heels.
Bersenyev picked up the cloth off the floor--and threw it over the statuette.
‘Ah, you, magnanimous’--began Shubin.
‘Who the devil was it in history was so particularly magnanimous?
Well, never mind!
And now,’ he continued, with melancholy triumph, uncovering a third rather large mass of clay, ‘you shall behold something which will show you the humility and discernment of your friend.
You will realise that he, like a true artist again, feels the need and the use of self-castigation.
Behold!
’ The cloth was lifted and Bersenyev saw two heads, modelled side by side and close as though growing together....
He did not at once know what was the subject, but looking closer, he recognised in one of them Annushka, in the other Shubin himself.
They were, however, rather caricatures than portraits.
Annushka was represented as a handsome fat girl with a low forehead, eyes lost in layers of fat, and a saucily turned-up nose.
Her thick lips had an insolent curve; her whole face expressed sensuality, carelessness, and boldness, not without goodnature.
Himself Shubin had modelled as a lean emaciated rake, with sunken cheeks, his thin hair hanging in weak wisps about his face, a meaningless expression in his dim eyes, and his nose sharp and thin as a dead man’s. Bersenyev turned away with disgust.
‘A nice pair, aren’t they, my dear fellow?
’ said Shubin; ‘won’t you graciously compose a suitable title?
For the first two I have already thought of titles.
On the bust shall be inscribed: “A hero resolving to liberate his country.
” On the statuette: “Look out, sausage-eating Germans!
” And for this work what do you think of “The future of the artist Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin?
” Will that do?
’ ‘Leave off,’ replied Bersenyev.
‘Was it worth while to waste your time on such a ----’ He could not at once fix on a suitable word.
‘Disgusting thing, you mean?
No, my dear fellow, excuse me, if anything ought to go to the exhibition, it’s that group.
’ ‘It’s simply disgusting,’ repeated Bersenyev.
‘And besides, it’s nonsense.
You have absolutely no such degrading tendencies to which, unhappily, our artists have such a frequent bent.
You have simply libelled yourself.
