Part 7

We set out. I had a shaggy, black little horse, strong on its feet and fairly spirited; it had to gallop with all its might, it is true, when Electric was going at a full trot; but nevertheless I did not fall behind. I have never seen such a horseman as my father. His seat was so fine and so carelessly-adroit that the horse under him seemed to be conscious of it and to take pride in it. We rode the whole length of all the boulevards, reached the Maidens’ Field,[9] leaped over several enclosures (at first I was afraid to leap, but my father despised timid people, and I ceased to be afraid), crossed the Moscow river twice;--and I was beginning to think that we were on our way homeward, the more so as my father remarked that my horse was tired, when suddenly he turned away from me in the direction of the Crimean Ford, and galloped along the shore.--I dashed after him. When he came on a level with a lofty pile of old beams which lay heaped together, he sprang nimbly from Electric, ordered me to alight and, handing me the bridle of his horse, told me to wait for him on that spot, near the beams; then he turned into a narrow alley and disappeared. I began to pace back and forth along the shore, leading the horses after me and scolding Electric, who as he walked kept incessantly twitching his head, shaking himself, snorting and neighing; when I stood still, he alternately pawed the earth with his hoof, and squealed and bit my cob on the neck; in a word, behaved like a spoiled darling, _pur sang_. My father did not return. A disagreeable humidity was wafted from the river; a fine rain set in and mottled the stupid, grey beams, around which I was hovering and of which I was so heartily tired, with tiny, dark spots. Anxiety took possession of me, but still my father did not come. A Finnish sentry, also all grey, with a huge, old-fashioned shako, in the form of a pot, on his head, and armed with a halberd (why should there be a sentry, I thought, on the shores of the Moscow river?), approached me, and turning his elderly, wrinkled face to me, he said:

“What are you doing here with those horses, my little gentleman? Hand them over to me; I’ll hold them.”

I did not answer him; he asked me for some tobacco. In order to rid myself of him (moreover, I was tortured by impatience), I advanced a few paces in the direction in which my father had retreated; then I walked through the alley to the very end, turned a corner, and came to a standstill. On the street, forty paces distant from me, in front of the open window of a small wooden house, with his back to me, stood my father; he was leaning his breast on the window-sill, while in the house, half concealed by the curtain, sat a woman in a dark gown talking with my father: the woman was Zinaída.

I stood rooted to the spot in amazement. I must confess that I had in nowise expected this. My first impulse was to flee. “My father will glance round,” I thought,--“and then I am lost.”... But a strange feeling--a feeling more powerful than curiosity, more powerful even than jealousy, more powerful than fear,--stopped me. I began to stare, I tried to hear. My father appeared to be insisting upon something. Zinaída would not consent. I seem to see her face now--sad, serious, beautiful, and with an indescribable imprint of adoration, grief, love, and a sort of despair. She uttered monosyllabic words, did not raise her eyes, and only smiled--submissively and obstinately. From that smile alone I recognised my former Zinaída. My father shrugged his shoulders, and set his hat straight on his head--which was always a sign of impatience with him.... Then the words became audible: “_Vous devez vous séparer de cette._”... Zinaída drew herself up and stretched out her hand.... Suddenly, before my very eyes, an incredible thing came to pass:--all at once, my father raised the riding-whip, with which he had been lashing the dust from his coat-tails,--and the sound of a sharp blow on that arm, which was bare to the elbow, rang out. I could hardly keep from shrieking, but Zinaída started, gazed in silence at my father, and slowly raising her arm to her lips, kissed the mark which glowed scarlet upon it.

My father hurled his riding-whip from him, and running hastily up the steps of the porch, burst into the house.... Zinaída turned round, and stretching out her arms, and throwing back her head, she also quitted the window.

My heart swooning with terror, and with a sort of alarmed perplexity, I darted backward; and dashing through the alley, and almost letting go of Electric, I returned to the bank of the river.... I could understand nothing. I knew that my cold and self-contained father was sometimes seized by fits of wild fury; and yet I could not in the least comprehend what I had seen.... But I immediately felt that no matter how long I might live, it would be impossible for me ever to forget that movement, Zinaída’s glance and smile; that her image, that new image which had suddenly been presented to me, had forever imprinted itself on my memory. I stared stupidly at the river and did not notice that my tears were flowing. “She is being beaten,”--I thought.... “She is being beaten ... beaten....”

“Come, what ails thee?--Give me my horse!”--rang out my father’s voice behind me.

I mechanically gave him the bridle. He sprang upon Electric ... the half-frozen horse reared on his hind legs and leaped forward half a fathom ... but my father speedily got him under control; he dug his spurs into his flanks and beat him on the neck with his fist.... “Ekh, I have no whip,”--he muttered.

I remembered the recent swish through the air and the blow of that same whip, and shuddered.

“What hast thou done with it?”--I asked my father, after waiting a little.

My father did not answer me and galloped on. I dashed after him. I was determined to get a look at his face.

“Didst thou get bored in my absence?”--he said through his teeth.

“A little. But where didst thou drop thy whip?”--I asked him again.

My father shot a swift glance at me.--“I did not drop it,”--he said,--“I threw it away.”--He reflected for a space and dropped his head ... and then, for the first and probably for the last time, I saw how much tenderness and compunction his stern features were capable of expressing.

He set off again at a gallop, and this time I could not keep up with him; I reached home a quarter of an hour after him.

“That’s what love is,”--I said to myself again, as I sat at night before my writing-table, on which copy-books and text-books had already begun to make their appearance,--“that is what passion is!... How is it possible not to revolt, how is it possible to endure a blow from any one whomsoever ... even from the hand that is most dear? But evidently it can be done if one is in love.... And I ... I imagined....”

The last month had aged me greatly, and my love, with all its agitations and sufferings, seemed to me like something very petty and childish and wretched in comparison with that other unknown something at which I could hardly even guess, and which frightened me like a strange, beautiful but menacing face that one strives, in vain, to get a good look at in the semi-darkness....

That night I had a strange and dreadful dream. I thought I was entering a low, dark room.... My father was standing there, riding-whip in hand, and stamping his feet; Zinaída was crouching in one corner and had a red mark, not on her arm, but on her forehead ... and behind the two rose up Byelovzóroff, all bathed in blood, with his pale lips open, and wrathfully menacing my father.

Two months later I entered the university, and six months afterward my father died (of an apoplectic stroke) in Petersburg, whither he had just removed with my mother and myself. A few days before his death my father had received a letter from Moscow which had agitated him extremely.... He went to beg something of my mother and, I was told, even wept,--he, my father! On the very morning of the day on which he had the stroke, he had begun a letter to me in the French language: “My son,”--he wrote to me,--“fear the love of women, fear that happiness, that poison....” After his death my mother sent a very considerable sum of money to Moscow.

XXII

Four years passed. I had but just left the university, and did not yet quite know what to do with myself, at what door to knock; in the meanwhile, I was lounging about without occupation. One fine evening I encountered Maidánoff in the theatre. He had contrived to marry and enter the government service; but I found him unchanged. He went into unnecessary raptures, just as of old, and became low-spirited as suddenly as ever.

“You know,”--he said to me,--“by the way, that Madame Dólsky is here.”

“What Madame Dólsky?”

“Is it possible that you have forgotten? The former Princess Zasyékin, with whom we were all in love, you included. At the villa, near Neskútchny Park, you remember?”

“Did she marry Dólsky?”

“Yes.”

“And is she here in the theatre?”

“No, in Petersburg; she arrived here a few days ago; she is preparing to go abroad.”

“What sort of a man is her husband?”--I asked.

“A very fine young fellow and wealthy. He’s my comrade in the service, a Moscow man. You understand--after that scandal ... you must be well acquainted with all that ...” (Maidánoff smiled significantly), “it was not easy for her to find a husband; there were consequences ... but with her brains everything is possible. Go to her; she will be delighted to see you. She is handsomer than ever.”

Maidánoff gave me Zinaída’s address. She was stopping in the Hotel Demuth. Old memories began to stir in me.... I promised myself that I would call upon my former “passion” the next day. But certain affairs turned up: a week elapsed, and when, at last, I betook myself to the Hotel Demuth and inquired for Madame Dólsky I learned that she had died four days previously, almost suddenly, in childbirth.

Something seemed to deal me a blow in the heart. The thought that I might have seen her but had not, and that I should never see her,--that bitter thought seized upon me with all the force of irresistible reproach. “Dead!” I repeated, staring dully at the door-porter, then quietly made my way to the street and walked away, without knowing whither. The whole past surged up at one blow and stood before me. And now this was the way it had ended, this was the goal of that young, fiery, brilliant life? I thought that--I pictured to myself those dear features, those eyes, those curls in the narrow box, in the damp, underground gloom,--right there, not far from me, who was still alive, and, perchance, only a few paces from my father.... I thought all that, I strained my imagination, and yet--

From a mouth indifferent I heard the news of death, And with indifference did I receive it--

resounded through my soul. O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou are self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: “I alone live--behold!”--But the days speed on and vanish without a trace and without reckoning, and everything vanishes in thee, like wax in the sun, like snow.... And perchance the whole secret of thy charm consists not in the power to do everything, but in the possibility of thinking that thou wilt do everything--consists precisely in the fact that thou scatterest to the winds thy powers which thou hast not understood how to employ in any other way,--in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a prodigal, seriously assumes that he has a right to say: “Oh, what could I not have done, had I not wasted my time!”

And I myself ... what did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when I barely accompanied with a single sigh, with a single mournful emotion, the spectre of my first love which had arisen for a brief moment?

And what has come to pass of all for which I hoped? Even now, when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what is there that has remained for me fresher, more precious than the memory of that morning spring thunder-storm which sped so swiftly past?

But I calumniate myself without cause. Even then, at that frivolous, youthful epoch, I did not remain deaf to the sorrowful voice which responded within me to the triumphant sound which was wafted to me from beyond the grave. I remember that a few days after I learned of Zinaída’s death I was present, by my own irresistible longing, at the death-bed of a poor old woman who lived in the same house with us. Covered with rags, with a sack under her head, she died heavily and with difficulty. Her whole life had been passed in a bitter struggle with daily want; she had seen no joy, she had not tasted the honey of happiness--it seemed as though she could not have failed to rejoice at death, at her release, her repose. But nevertheless, as long as her decrepit body held out, as long as her breast heaved under the icy hand which was laid upon it, until her last strength deserted her, the old woman kept crossing herself and whispering:--“O Lord, forgive my sins,”--and only with the last spark of consciousness did there vanish from her eyes the expression of fear and horror at her approaching end. And I remember that there, by the bedside of that poor old woman, I felt terrified for Zinaída, and felt like praying for her, for my father--and for myself.

A CORRESPONDENCE

(1855)

Several years ago I was in Dresden. I stopped in the hotel. As I was running about the town from early morning until late at night, I did not consider it necessary to make acquaintance with my neighbours; at last, accidentally, it came to my knowledge that there was a sick Russian in the house. I went to him, and found a man in the last stage of consumption. Dresden was beginning to pall upon me; I settled down with my new acquaintance. It is wearisome to sit with an invalid, but even boredom is agreeable sometimes; moreover, my invalid was not dejected, and liked to chat. We endeavoured, in every way, to kill time: we played “fool” together, we jeered at the doctor. My compatriot narrated to that very bald German divers fictions about his own condition, which the doctor always “had long foreseen”; he mimicked him when he was surprised at any unprecedented attack, flung his medicine out of the window and so forth.

Nevertheless I repeatedly remarked to my friend that it would not be a bad idea to send for a good physician before it was too late, that his malady was not to be jested with, and so forth. But Alexyéi (my acquaintance’s name was Alexyéi Petróvitch S***) put me off every time with jests about all doctors in general, and his own in particular, and at last, one stormy autumn evening, to my importunate entreaties, he replied with such a dejected glance, he shook his head so sadly, and smiled so strangely, that I felt a certain surprise. That same night Alexyéi grew worse, and on the following day he died. Just before his death his customary cheerfulness deserted him: he tossed uneasily in the bed, sighed, gazed anxiously about ... grasped my hand, whispered with an effort: “‘Tis difficult to die, you know,” ... dropped his head on the pillow, and burst into tears. I did not know what to say to him, and sat silently beside his bed. But Alexyéi speedily conquered this last, belated compassion.... “Listen,” he said to me:--“our doctor will come to-day, and will find me dead.... I can imagine his phiz” ... and the dying man tried to mimic him.... He requested me to send all his things to Russia, to his relatives, with the exception of a small packet, which he presented to me as a souvenir.

This packet contained letters--the letters of a young girl to Alexyéi and his letters to her. There were fifteen of them in all. Alexyéi Petróvitch S*** had known Márya Alexándrovna B*** for a long time--from childhood, apparently. Alexyéi Petróvitch had a cousin, and Márya Alexándrovna had a sister. In earlier years they had all lived together, then they had dispersed, and had not met again for a long time; then they had accidentally all assembled again in the country, in summer, and had fallen in love--Alexyéi’s cousin with Márya Alexándrovna, and Alexyéi himself with the latter’s sister. Summer passed and autumn came; they parted. Alexyéi being a sensible man, speedily became convinced that he was not in the least beloved, and parted from his beauty very happily; his cousin corresponded with Márya Alexándrovna for a couple of years longer ... but even he divined, at last, that he was deceiving both her and himself in the most unconscionable manner, and he also fell silent.

I should like to tell you a little about Márya Alexándrovna, dear reader, but you will learn to know her for yourself from her letters. Alexyéi wrote his first letter to her soon after her definitive breach with his cousin. He was in Petersburg at the time, suddenly went abroad, fell ill in Dresden and died. I have decided to publish his correspondence with Márya Alexándrovna, and I hope for some indulgence on the part of the reader, because these are not love-letters--God forbid! Love-letters are generally read by two persons only (but, on the other hand, a thousand times in succession), and are intolerable, if not ridiculous, to a third person.

I

_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_

ST. PETERSBURG, March 7, 1840.

MY DEAR MÁRYA ALEXÁNDROVNA!

I have never yet written to you a single time, I think, and here I am writing now.... I have chosen a strange time, have I not? This is what has prompted me to it: _Mon cousin Théodore_ has been to see me to-day, and--how shall I say it?... and has informed me, in the strictest privacy (he never imparts anything in any other way), that he is in love with the daughter of some gentleman here, and this time is bent on marrying without fail, and that he has already taken the first step--he has explained his intentions! As a matter of course, I hastened to congratulate him on an event so pleasant for him; he has long stood in need of an explanation ... but inwardly I was, I confess, somewhat amazed. Although I knew that everything was over between you, yet it seemed to me.... In a word, I was amazed. I was preparing to go out visiting to-day, but I have remained at home, and intend to have a little chat with you. If you do not care to listen to me, throw this letter into the fire immediately. I declare to you that I wish to be frank, although I feel that you have a perfect right to take me for a decidedly-intrusive man. Observe, however, that I would not have taken pen in hand if I had not known that your sister is not with you: Théodore told me that she will be away all summer visiting your aunt, Madame B***. May God grant her all good things!

So, then, this is the way it has all turned out.... But I shall not offer you my friendship, and so forth; in general, I avoid solemn speeches, and “intimate” effusions. In beginning to write this letter, I have simply obeyed some momentary impulse: if any other feeling is hiding within me, let it remain hidden from sight for the present.

Neither shall I attempt to console you. In consoling others, people generally desire to rid themselves, as speedily as possible, of the unpleasant feeling of involuntary, self-conceited compassion.... I understand sincere, warm sympathy ... but such sympathy is not to be got from every one.... Please be angry with me.... If you are angry, you will probably read my epistle to the end.

But what right have I to write to you, to talk about my friendship, my feelings, about consolation? None whatever--positively, none whatever; and I am bound to admit that, and I rely solely upon your kindness.

Do you know what the beginning of my letter resembles? This: a certain Mr. N. N. entered the drawing-room of a lady who was not in the least expecting him,--who, perhaps, was expecting another man.... He divined that he had come at the wrong time, but there was nothing to be done.... He sat down, and began to talk.... God knows what about: poetry, the beauties of nature, the advantages of a good education ... in a word, he talked the most frightful nonsense.... But in the meanwhile the first five minutes had elapsed; he sat on; the lady resigned herself to her fate, and lo! Mr. N. N. recovered himself, sighed, and began to converse--to the best of his ability.

But, despite all this idle chatter, I feel somewhat awkward, nevertheless. I seem to see before me your perplexed, even somewhat angry face: I feel conscious that it is almost impossible for you not to assume that I have some secret intentions or other, and therefore, having perpetrated a piece of folly, like a Roman I wrap myself in my toga and await in silence your ultimate condemnation....

But, in particular: Will you permit me to continue to write to you?

I remain sincerely and cordially your devoted servant--

ALEXYÉI S***.

II

_From Márya Alexándrovna to Alexyéi Petróvitch_

VILLAGE OF ... NO, March 22, 1840.

DEAR SIR!

Alexyéi Petróvitch!

I have received your letter, and really, I do not know what to say to you. I would even not have answered you at all had it not seemed to me that beneath your jests was concealed a decidedly-friendly sentiment. Your letter has produced an unpleasant impression on me. In reply to your “idle chatter,” as you put it, permit me also to propound to you one question: To what end? What have you to do with me, what have I to do with you? I do not assume any evil intentions on your part, ... on the contrary, I am grateful to you for your sympathy, ... but we are strangers to each other, and I now, at all events, feel not the slightest desire to become intimate with any one whomsoever.

With sincere respects I remain, and so forth,

MÁRYA B***.

III

_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_

ST. PETERSBURG, March 30.