Part 4

I remember that she was very cold toward me for several days in succession and I thoroughly quailed, and when I timidly ran to the wing to see them, I tried to keep near the old Princess, despite the fact that she was scolding and screaming a great deal just at that time: her affairs connected with her notes of hand were going badly, and she had also had two scenes with the police-captain of the precinct.

One day I was walking through the garden, past the familiar fence, when I caught sight of Zinaída. Propped up on both arms, she was sitting motionless on the grass. I tried to withdraw cautiously, but she suddenly raised her head and made an imperious sign to me. I became petrified on the spot; I did not understand her the first time. She repeated her sign. I immediately sprang over the fence and ran joyfully to her; but she stopped me with a look and pointed to the path a couple of paces from her. In my confusion, not knowing what to do, I knelt down on the edge of the path. She was so pale, such bitter grief, such profound weariness were revealed in her every feature, that my heart contracted within me, and I involuntarily murmured: “What is the matter with you?”

Zinaída put out her hand, plucked a blade of grass, bit it, and tossed it away as far as she could.

“Do you love me very much?”--she inquired suddenly.--“Yes?”

I made no answer,--and what answer was there for me to make?

“Yes,”--she repeated, gazing at me as before.--“It is so. They are the same eyes,”--she added, becoming pensive, and covering her face with her hands.--“Everything has become repulsive to me,”--she whispered;--“I would like to go to the end of the world; I cannot endure this, I cannot reconcile myself.... And what is in store for me?... Akh, I am heavy at heart ... my God, how heavy at heart!”

“Why?”--I timidly inquired.

Zinaída did not answer me and merely shrugged her shoulders. I continued to kneel and to gaze at her with profound melancholy. Every word of hers fairly cut me to the heart. At that moment, I think I would willingly have given my life to keep her from grieving. I gazed at her, and nevertheless, not understanding why she was heavy at heart, I vividly pictured to myself how, in a fit of uncontrollable sorrow, she had suddenly gone into the garden, and had fallen on the earth, as though she had been mowed down. All around was bright and green; the breeze was rustling in the foliage of the trees, now and then rocking a branch of raspberry over Zinaída’s head. Doves were cooing somewhere and the bees were humming as they flew low over the scanty grass. Overhead the sky shone blue,--but I was so sad....

“Recite some poetry to me,”--said Zinaída in a low voice, leaning on her elbow.--“I like to hear you recite verses. You make them go in a sing-song, but that does not matter, it is youthful. Recite to me: ‘On the Hills of Georgia.’--Only, sit down first.”

I sat down and recited, “On the Hills of Georgia.”

“‘That it is impossible not to love,’”--repeated Zinaída.--“That is why poetry is so nice; it says to us that which does not exist, and which is not only better than what does exist, but even more like the truth.... ‘That it is impossible not to love’?--I would like to, but cannot!”--Again she fell silent for a space, then suddenly started and rose to her feet.--“Come along. Maidánoff is sitting with mamma; he brought his poem to me, but I left him. He also is embittered now ... how can it be helped? Some day you will find out ... but you must not be angry with me!”

Zinaída hastily squeezed my hand, and ran on ahead. We returned to the wing. Maidánoff set to reading us his poem of “The Murderer,” which had only just been printed, but I did not listen. He shrieked out his four-footed iambics in a sing-song voice; the rhymes alternated and jingled like sleigh-bells, hollow and loud; but I kept staring all the while at Zinaída, and striving to understand the meaning of her strange words.

“Or, perchance, a secret rival Has unexpectedly subjugated thee?”

suddenly exclaimed Maidánoff through his nose--and my eyes and Zinaída’s met. She dropped hers and blushed faintly. I saw that she was blushing, and turned cold with fright. I had been jealous before, but only at that moment did the thought that she had fallen in love flash through my mind. “My God! She is in love!”

X

My real tortures began from that moment. I cudgelled my brains, I pondered and pondered again, and watched Zinaída importunately, but secretly, as far as possible. A change had taken place in her, that was evident. She took to going off alone to walk, and walked a long while. Sometimes she did not show herself to her visitors; she sat for hours together in her chamber. This had not been her habit hitherto. Suddenly I became--or it seemed to me that I became--extremely penetrating. “Is it he? Or is it not he?”--I asked myself, as in trepidation I mentally ran from one of her admirers to another. Count Malévsky (although I felt ashamed to admit it for Zinaída’s sake) privately seemed to me more dangerous than the others.

My powers of observation extended no further than the end of my own nose, and my dissimulation probably failed to deceive any one; at all events, Doctor Lúshin speedily saw through me. Moreover, he also had undergone a change of late; he had grown thin, he laughed as frequently as ever, but somehow it was in a duller, more spiteful, a briefer way;--an involuntary, nervous irritability had replaced his former light irony and feigned cynicism.

“Why are you forever tagging on here, young man?”--he said to me one day, when he was left alone with me in the Zasyékins’ drawing-room. (The young Princess had not yet returned from her stroll and the shrill voice of the old Princess was resounding in the upper story; she was wrangling with her maid.)--“You ought to be studying your lessons, working while you are young;--but instead of that, what are you doing?”

“You cannot tell whether I work at home,”--I retorted not without arrogance, but also not without confusion.

“Much work you do! That’s not what you have in your head. Well, I will not dispute ... at your age, that is in the natural order of things. But your choice is far from a happy one. Can’t you see what sort of a house this is?”

“I do not understand you,”--I remarked.

“You don’t understand me? So much the worse for you. I regard it as my duty to warn you. Fellows like me, old bachelors, may sit here: what harm will it do us? We are a hardened lot. You can’t pierce our hide, but your skin is still tender; the air here is injurious for you,--believe me, you may become infected.”

“How so?”

“Because you may. Are you healthy now? Are you in a normal condition? Is what you are feeling useful to you, good for you?”

“But what am I feeling?”--said I;--and in my secret soul I admitted that the doctor was right.

“Eh, young man, young man,”--pursued the doctor, with an expression as though something extremely insulting to me were contained in those two words;--“there’s no use in your dissimulating, for what you have in your soul you still show in your face, thank God! But what’s the use of arguing? I would not come hither myself, if ...” (the doctor set his teeth) ... “if I were not such an eccentric fellow. Only this is what amazes me--how you, with your intelligence, can fail to see what is going on around you.”

“But what is going on?”--I interposed, pricking up my ears.

The doctor looked at me with a sort of sneering compassion.

“A nice person I am,”--said he, as though speaking to himself.--“What possessed me to say that to him. In a word,”--he added, raising his voice,--“I repeat to you: the atmosphere here is not good for you. You find it pleasant here, and no wonder! And the scent of a hothouse is pleasant also--but one cannot live in it! Hey! hearken to me,--set to work again on Kaidánoff.”

The old Princess entered and began to complain to the doctor of toothache. Then Zinaída made her appearance.

“Here,”--added the old Princess,--“scold her, doctor, do. She drinks iced water all day long; is that healthy for her, with her weak chest?”

“Why do you do that?”--inquired Lúshin.

“But what result can it have?”

“What result? You may take cold and die.”

“Really? Is it possible? Well, all right--that just suits me!”

“You don’t say so!”--growled the doctor. The old Princess went away.

“I do say so,”--retorted Zinaída.--“Is living such a cheerful thing? Look about you.... Well--is it nice? Or do you think that I do not understand it, do not feel it? It affords me pleasure to drink iced water, and you can seriously assure me that such a life is worth too much for me to imperil it for a moment’s pleasure--I do not speak of happiness.”

“Well, yes,”--remarked Lúshin:--“caprice and independence.... Those two words sum you up completely; your whole nature lies in those two words.”

Zinaída burst into a nervous laugh.

“You’re too late by one mail, my dear doctor. You observe badly; you are falling behind.--Put on your spectacles.--I am in no mood for caprices now; how jolly to play pranks on you or on myself!--and as for independence.... M’sieu Voldemar,”--added Zinaída, suddenly stamping her foot,--“don’t wear a melancholy face. I cannot endure to have people commiserating me.”--She hastily withdrew.

“This atmosphere is injurious, injurious to you, young man,”--said Lúshin to me once more.

XI

On the evening of that same day the customary visitors assembled at the Zasyékins’; I was among the number.

The conversation turned on Maidánoff’s poem; Zinaída candidly praised it.--“But do you know what?”--she said:--“If I were a poet, I would select other subjects. Perhaps this is all nonsense, but strange thoughts sometimes come into my head, especially when I am wakeful toward morning, when the sky is beginning to turn pink and grey.--I would, for example.... You will not laugh at me?”

“No! No!”--we all exclaimed with one voice.

“I would depict,”--she went on, crossing her arms on her breast, and turning her eyes aside,--“a whole company of young girls, by night, in a big boat, on a tranquil river. The moon is shining, and they are all in white and wear garlands of white flowers, and they are singing, you know, something in the nature of a hymn.”

“I understand, I understand, go on,”--said Maidánoff significantly and dreamily.

“Suddenly there is a noise--laughter, torches, tambourines on the shore.... It is a throng of bacchantes running with songs and outcries. It is your business to draw the picture, Mr. Poet ... only I would like to have the torches red and very smoky, and that the eyes of the bacchantes should gleam beneath their wreaths, and that the wreaths should be dark. Don’t forget also tiger-skins and cups--and gold, a great deal of gold.”

“But where is the gold to be?” inquired Maidánoff, tossing back his lank hair and inflating his nostrils.

“Where? On the shoulders, the hands, the feet, everywhere. They say that in ancient times women wore golden rings on their ankles.--The bacchantes call the young girls in the boat to come to them. The girls have ceased to chant their hymn,--they cannot go on with it,--but they do not stir; the river drifts them to the shore. And now suddenly one of them rises quietly.... This must be well described: how she rises quietly in the moonlight, and how startled her companions are.... She has stepped over the edge of the boat, the bacchantes have surrounded her, they have dashed off into the night, into the gloom.... Present at this point smoke in clouds; and everything has become thoroughly confused. Nothing is to be heard but their whimpering, and her wreath has been left lying on the shore.”

Zinaída ceased speaking. “Oh, she is in love!”--I thought again.

“Is that all?”--asked Maidánoff.

“That is all,”--she replied.

“That cannot be made the subject of an entire poem,”--he remarked pompously,--“but I will utilise your idea for some lyrical verses.”

“In the romantic vein?”--asked Malévsky.

“Of course, in the romantic vein--in Byron’s style.”

“But in my opinion, Hugo is better than Byron,”--remarked the young Count, carelessly:--“he is more interesting.”

“Hugo is a writer of the first class,”--rejoined Maidánoff, “and my friend Tonkoshéeff, in his Spanish romance, ‘El Trovador’....”

“Ah, that’s the book with the question-marks turned upside down?”--interrupted Zinaída.

“Yes. That is the accepted custom among the Spaniards. I was about to say that Tonkoshéeff....”

“Come now! You will begin to wrangle again about classicism and romanticism,”--Zinaída interrupted him again.--“Let us rather play....”

“At forfeits?”--put in Lúshin.

“No, forfeits is tiresome; but at comparisons.” (This game had been invented by Zinaída herself; some object was named, and each person tried to compare it with something or other, and the one who matched the thing with the best comparison received a prize.) She went to the window. The sun had just set; long, crimson clouds hung high aloft in the sky.

“What are those clouds like?”--inquired Zinaída and, without waiting for our answers, she said:--“I think that they resemble those crimson sails which were on Cleopatra’s golden ship, when she went to meet Antony. You were telling me about that not long ago, do you remember, Maidánoff?”

All of us, like Polonius in “Hamlet,” decided that the clouds reminded us precisely of those sails, and that none of us could find a better comparison.

“And how old was Antony at that time?”--asked Zinaída.

“He was assuredly still a young man,”--remarked Malévsky.

“Yes, he was young,”--assented Maidánoff confidently.

“Excuse me,”--exclaimed Lúshin,--“he was over forty years of age.”

“Over forty years of age,”--repeated Zinaída, darting a swift glance at him....

I soon went home.--“She is in love,” my lips whispered involuntarily.... “But with whom?”

XII

The days passed by. Zinaída grew more and more strange, more and more incomprehensible. One day I entered her house and found her sitting on a straw-bottomed chair, with her head pressed against the sharp edge of a table. She straightened up ... her face was again all bathed in tears.

“Ah! It’s you!”--she said, with a harsh grimace.--“Come hither.”

I went up to her: she laid her hand on my head and, suddenly seizing me by the hair, began to pull it.

“It hurts” ... I said at last.

“Ah! It hurts! And doesn’t it hurt me? Doesn’t it hurt me?”--she repeated.

“Aï!”--she suddenly cried, perceiving that she had pulled out a small tuft of my hair.--“What have I done? Poor M’sieu Voldemar!” She carefully straightened out the hairs she had plucked out, wound them round her finger, and twisted them into a ring.

“I will put your hair in my locket and wear it,”--she said, and tears glistened in her eyes.--“Perhaps that will comfort you a little ... but now, good-bye.”

I returned home and found an unpleasant state of things there. A scene was in progress between my father and my mother; she was upbraiding him for something or other, while he, according to his wont, was maintaining a cold, polite silence--and speedily went away. I could not hear what my mother was talking about, neither did I care to know: I remember only, that, at the conclusion of the scene, she ordered me to be called to her boudoir, and expressed herself with great dissatisfaction about my frequent visits at the house of the old Princess, who was, according to her assertions, _une femme capable de tout_. I kissed her hand (I always did that when I wanted to put an end to the conversation), and went off to my own room. Zinaída’s tears had completely discomfited me; I positively did not know what to think, and was ready to cry myself: I was still a child, in spite of my sixteen years. I thought no more of Malévsky, although Byelovzóroff became more and more menacing every day, and glared at the shifty Count like a wolf at a sheep; but I was not thinking of anything or of anybody. I lost myself in conjectures and kept seeking isolated spots. I took a special fancy to the ruins of the hothouse. I could clamber up on the high wall, seat myself, and sit there such an unhappy, lonely, and sad youth that I felt sorry for myself--and how delightful those mournful sensations were, how I gloated over them!...

One day, I was sitting thus on the wall, gazing off into the distance and listening to the chiming of the bells ... when suddenly something ran over me--not a breeze exactly, not a shiver, but something resembling a breath, the consciousness of some one’s proximity.... I dropped my eyes. Below me, in a light grey gown, with a pink parasol on her shoulder, Zinaída was walking hastily along the road. She saw me, halted, and, pushing up the brim of her straw hat, raised her velvety eyes to mine.

“What are you doing there, on such a height?”--she asked me, with a strange sort of smile.--“There now,”--she went on,--“you are always declaring that you love me--jump down to me here on the road if you really do love me.”

Before the words were well out of Zinaída’s mouth I had flown down, exactly as though some one had given me a push from behind. The wall was about two fathoms high. I landed on the ground with my feet, but the shock was so violent that I could not retain my balance; I fell, and lost consciousness for a moment. When I came to myself I felt, without opening my eyes, that Zinaída was by my side.--“My dear boy,”--she was saying, as she bent over me--and tender anxiety was audible in her voice--“how couldst thou do that, how couldst thou obey?... I love thee ... rise.”

Her breast was heaving beside me, her hands were touching my head, and suddenly--what were my sensations then!--her soft, fresh lips began to cover my whole face with kisses ... they touched my lips.... But at this point Zinaída probably divined from the expression of my face that I had already recovered consciousness, although I still did not open my eyes--and swiftly rising to her feet, she said:--“Come, get up, you rogue, you foolish fellow! Why do you lie there in the dust?”--I got up.

“Give me my parasol,”--said Zinaída.--“I have thrown it somewhere; and don’t look at me like that what nonsense is this? You are hurt? You have burned yourself with the nettles, I suppose. Don’t look at me like that, I tell you.... Why, he understands nothing, he doesn’t answer me,”--she added, as though speaking to herself.... “Go home, M’sieu Voldemar, brush yourself off, and don’t dare to follow me--if you do I shall be very angry, and I shall never again....”

She did not finish her speech and walked briskly away, while I sat down by the roadside ... my legs would not support me. The nettles had stung my hands, my back ached, and my head was reeling; but the sensation of beatitude which I then experienced has never since been repeated in my life. It hung like a sweet pain in all my limbs and broke out at last in rapturous leaps and exclamations. As a matter of fact, I was still a child.

XIII

I was so happy and proud all that day; I preserved so vividly on my visage the feeling of Zinaída’s kisses; I recalled her every word with such ecstasy; I so cherished my unexpected happiness that I even became frightened; I did not even wish to see her who was the cause of those new sensations. It seemed to me that I could ask nothing more of Fate, that now I must “take and draw a deep breath for the last time, and die.” On the other hand, when I set off for the wing next day, I felt a great agitation, which I vainly endeavoured to conceal beneath the discreet facial ease suitable for a man who wishes to let it be understood that he knows how to keep a secret. Zinaída received me very simply, without any emotion, merely shaking her finger at me and asking: Had I any bruises? All my discreet ease of manner and mysteriousness instantly disappeared, and along with them my agitation. Of course I had not expected anything in particular, but Zinaída’s composure acted on me like a dash of cold water. I understood that I was a child in her eyes--and my heart waxed very heavy! Zinaída paced to and fro in the room, smiling swiftly every time she glanced at me; but her thoughts were far away, I saw that clearly.... “Shall I allude to what happened yesterday myself,”--I thought;--“shall I ask her where she was going in such haste, in order to find out, definitively?” ... but I merely waved my hand in despair and sat down in a corner.

Byelovzóroff entered; I was delighted to see him.

“I have not found you a gentle saddle-horse,”--he began in a surly tone;--“Freitag vouches to me for one--but I am not convinced. I am afraid.”

“Of what are you afraid, allow me to inquire?” asked Zinaída.

“Of what? Why, you don’t know how to ride. God forbid that any accident should happen! And what has put that freak into your head?”

“Come, that’s my affair, M’sieu my wild beast. In that case, I will ask Piótr Vasílievitch”.... (My father was called Piótr Vasílievitch.... I was amazed that she should mention his name so lightly and freely, exactly as though she were convinced of his readiness to serve her.)

“You don’t say so!”--retorted Byelovzóroff.--“Is it with him that you wish to ride?”

“With him or some one else,--that makes no difference to you. Only not with you.”

“Not with me,”--said Byelovzóroff.--“As you like. What does it matter? I will get you the horse.”

“But see to it that it is not a cow-like beast. I warn you in advance that I mean to gallop.”

“Gallop, if you wish.... But is it with Malévsky that you are going to ride?”

“And why shouldn’t I ride with him, warrior? Come, quiet down. I’ll take you too. You know that for me Malévsky is now--fie!”--She shook her head.

“You say that just to console me,”--growled Byelovzóroff.

Zinaída narrowed her eyes.--“Does that console you? oh ... oh oh ... warrior!”--she said at last, as though unable to find any other word.--“And would you like to ride with us, M’sieu Voldemar?”

“I’m not fond of riding ... in a large party,” ... I muttered, without raising my eyes.

“You prefer a _tête-à-tête_?... Well, every one to his taste,”--she said, with a sigh.--“But go, Byelovzóroff, make an effort. I want the horse for to-morrow.”

“Yes; but where am I to get the money?”--interposed the old Princess.

Zinaída frowned.

“I am not asking any from you; Byelovzóroff will trust me.”

“He will, he will,” grumbled the old Princess--and suddenly screamed at the top of her voice:--“Dunyáshka!”

“_Maman_, I made you a present of a bell,”--remarked the young Princess.

“Dunyáshka!”--repeated the old woman.

Byelovzóroff bowed himself out; I went out with him. Zinaída did not detain me.

XIV