Part 3
No one in the house knew what had happened. The letters written by her on the eve of her planned elopement were burned; her maid, fearing the wrath of her master, had said a word to no one. The priest, the retired cornet, the mustached surveyor, and the little Uhlan were quiet, and with good reason. Tereshka, the driver, never uttered a superfluous word, even when in drink. The secret was thus well kept by more than a half-dozen conspirators. Maria Gavrilovna herself gave away her secret while in delirium. Her words, however, were so incoherent that her mother, who never left her bedside, could only gather that her daughter was passionately in love with Vladimir Nikolaevich, and that this love was apparently the cause of her illness. She held counsel with her husband, and with some of the neighbors, and in the end they unanimously decided that there was no getting around fate, that poverty was no crime, that the man was the thing--not wealth, and so on. Such moral discourses are astonishingly useful in those instances when we are at a loss to find justification for our actions.
In the meantime, the young lady was returning to health. Vladimir hadn’t been seen for a long time in the house of Gavrila Gavrilovich. He had been frightened away by the previous receptions accorded him. It was proposed to send for him and to announce to him his unawaited good fortune: the consent to marriage. Imagine the amazement of the proprietors of Nenaradova when in answer to their proposal they received from him a half-insane letter! He informed them that his foot would never be set in their house, and implored them to forget an unhappy man, for whom death alone remained as an alleviation. In the course of a few days it was learned that Vladimir had joined the army. This was in the year 1812.
For a long time they dared not tell this to the convalescent Masha. She never spoke about Vladimir. Several months having passed, she one day discovered his name among the distinguished and the dangerously wounded at the battle of Borodino, whereupon she fainted, and it was feared that high fever would recur. God be thanked, however, the fainting fit had no serious consequences.
Another sorrow visited her: Gavrila Gavrilovich died, leaving her heiress to all his estates. But her wealth did not comfort her; she free-heartedly shared the affliction of the poor Prascovia Petrovna, and vowed never to part with her. Together they left Nenaradova, the place of their sorrowful memories, and went to live on one of their estates.
Here also many suitors paid court to the lovely heiress; but she gave none the slightest hope. Her mother occasionally tried to persuade her to choose a mate; in answer, Maria Gavrilovna would only shake her head and grow thoughtful. Vladimir no longer existed; he had died in Moscow, on the eve of the entry of the French. His memory Masha held sacred; at least, she kept all that could remind her of him: there were the books he had read, his drawings, his notes, and poems he had copied for her. The neighbors, who knew her story, wondered at her constancy, and with great curiosity awaited the hero who would in the end triumph over the melancholy fidelity of this virgin Artemis.
In the meantime, the war ended with glory. Our regiments were returning from alien soil. The nation greeted them with joy. The musicians played the victorious songs, “_Vive Henri-Quatre_,” Tyrolese waltzes, the airs from “Joconda.” Some of the officers who had entered upon the campaign mere lads were returning from the battles grown into manhood, decorated with crosses. The soldiers talked gaily among themselves, mingling constantly with their speech German and French words. It was a never-to-be-forgotten time! A time of glory and joy! How strongly beat the Russian heart at the word “fatherland”! How sweet were the tears at meeting again! How harmoniously did we combine the feeling of national pride with love for the Czar! And for him--what a moment!
Women--the Russian women--were in those days incomparable! Their usual coldness vanished. Their rapture was really intoxicating when, upon meeting the victors, they cried, “Hurrah!” and threw their caps into the air....
Who from among the officers of that day does not confess that to the Russian women he owed his best, most valued reward?... During that brilliant time Maria Gavrilovna lived with her mother in the ---- Province, and did not see how both capitals celebrated the return of the troops. In the country districts and in the villages the general enthusiasm was perhaps even stronger. The appearance of an officer in such places was always the occasion of real triumph to him, and the lover in the frock coat had a hard time of it in his presence.
We have already stated that, notwithstanding her coldness, Maria Gavrilovna, as before, was surrounded by suitors. All of them, however, were compelled to step aside when there appeared one day in her castle the wounded Colonel of the Hussars, Bourmin, with the cross of St. George in his buttonhole, and with “an interesting pallor” on his face, to use the words of the young ladies of the place. He seemed to be about twenty-six years old. He arrived, on leave, at his estate, which neighbored upon that of Maria Gavrilovna. Maria showed him distinction. Before him her usual pensiveness vanished. It cannot be said that she played the coquette with him; but the poet, making note of her conduct, would have said:
_Se amor non è, che dunche?..._
Bourmin was indeed a most charming young man. He possessed precisely that sense which is pleasing to women--a sense of decorum and alertness, without pretensions; and an easy humor. His behavior towards Maria Gavrilovna was simple and free; but, no matter what she said or did, his soul and his glances followed her. He seemed a quiet, unassuming sort of man, though rumor had it that he had been quite a rake in his day, which did not, however, injure him in the eyes of Maria Gavrilovna, who (like young ladies generally) was most willing to overlook little larks which indicated boldness and a spirited character.
But above all (more than his gentleness, more than his agreeable speech, more than his interesting pallor, more than his bandaged arm) the silence of the young Hussar stirred her curiosity and imagination. She could not but feel conscious that she pleased him immensely; undoubtedly, he too, with his keenness of perception, and experience, had noted her preference for him; and she could not explain why she had not yet seen him at her feet and had not heard his declaration. What restrained him? Was it the timidity which is inseparable from true love, or pride, or the coquetry of a shrewd wooer? This was a riddle to her. Having reflected on the matter, she concluded that timidity was the sole reason; and this decided her to encourage him with greater attention, and, if the circumstances permitted it, even tenderness. She anticipated the most surprising dénouement; and with impatience awaited a romantic explanation. A secret, whatever its nature may be, is always oppressive to the feminine heart. Her aggressive tactics had the desired result; at least, Bourmin fell into such a pensive mood, and his dark eyes fixed themselves with such a fire upon Maria Gavrilovna, that the decisive moment seemed close at hand. The neighbors talked of the forthcoming marriage as of a thing settled, and the good Prascovia Petrovna rejoiced that her daughter had found at last a worthy mate.
The old mother was sitting one day in the drawing-room, playing patience, when Bourmin entered and immediately inquired after Maria Gavrilovna.
“She is in the garden,” answered the old lady. “You go out to her, and I’ll await you here.”
Bourmin went into the garden, and the old lady crossed herself and thought, “The matter will be settled today.”
At the pond, under a willow, Bourmin found Maria Gavrilovna, dressed in white, looking like a real heroine of a novel. After the first questions, Maria Gavrilovna purposely refrained from sustaining the conversation, intending in this manner to create a mutual embarrassment, from which it was possible to free oneself only by an instant and decisive explanation. That was, in fact, what happened. Bourmin, feeling the embarrassment of his position, said that he had long sought an opportunity to reveal his heart to her, and requested a moment’s attention from her. Maria Gavrilovna closed the book and cast down her eyes as a sign of assent.
“I love you,” said Bourmin. “I love you passionately.” (Maria Gavrilovna blushed and inclined her head even lower.) “I have behaved imprudently in yielding to the sweet pleasure of seeing and hearing you every day.” (Maria Gavrilovna recalled the first letter of St. Preux.[1]) “It is too late now to resist my fate: the mere recollection of you, your lovely, incomparable image, shall be the torment and consolation of my life. It is still left to me, however, to execute a weighty responsibility, to reveal to you a terrible secret which will raise between us an insurmountable barrier.”
“It has always existed,” interrupted Maria Gavrilovna, in an excited manner. “I could never be your wife.”
“I know,” he answered quietly. “I know that you once loved; and that he died, and that you had mourned for three years.... My good, adorable Maria Gavrilovna! Please don’t deprive me of my last consolation: the thought that you would have consented to make my happiness if----Please, not a word--for God’s sake, not a word! You torture me. Yes, I know it, that you would have been willing to become mine, but I--I am a most unhappy creature.... I am already married!”
Maria Gavrilovna looked at him in amazement.
“Yes, I am married,” continued Bourmin; “and this is the fourth year of my marriage, and I don’t know--who my wife is, where she is, or whether I shall ever see her.”
“What are you saying?” exclaimed Maria Gavrilovna. “How strange! But continue--I also have something to tell--do me the kindness, continue!”
“In the beginning of the year 1812,” resumed Bourmin, “I was making haste to rejoin my regiment at Wilna. Having arrived late one night at a station, I ordered horses to be harnessed immediately, when suddenly a terrible snow-storm broke out, and the station-master and the drivers advised me to wait. At first I agreed, but an incomprehensible restlessness took possession of me; it seemed to me as if some one were prodding me on. The storm, however, showed no signs of abatement. I could stand it no longer, ordered the horses to be harnessed, and proceeded on my journey in the very height of the storm. The driver took a notion into his head to drive along the river, which would shorten the journey by three versts. The banks were buried under snowdrifts; we drove past the place where we should have turned into the road, and so chance took us into strange parts. The storm did not quiet down. I saw a small light in the distance, and asked to be driven there. We arrived in a village; there was light in the wooden church. The church was open; within the outside enclosure stood several sledges; people could be seen walking about on the porch of the church. ‘This way! This way!’ cried a number of voices. I ordered my man to drive up closer. ‘What made you so late, pray?’ some one said to me. ‘The bride has fainted; the priest doesn’t know what to do; we were just getting ready to go home. Come quickly!’ Silently I sprang out of my sledge and entered the church, which was but dimly lighted by two or three candles. The girl was sitting on a bench in a dark corner of the church; another was rubbing her temples. ‘Thank God,’ said the latter, ‘you have made up your mind to come! You have almost killed her!’ The old priest approached me with the question, ‘Shall we begin?’ ‘Begin, begin, Father,’ I replied absently. The girl was raised on her feet. She seemed to me not at all bad-looking .... An incomprehensible, unforgivable heedlessness .... I stood beside her before the pulpit; the priest made haste; three men and the maid supported the bride, and were giving her all their attention. We were married. ‘Now kiss each other,’ they said to us. My wife turned towards me her pale face. I made a movement to kiss her .... She cried out, ‘Oh, it is not he, not he!’ and fainted away. The witnesses directed on me their frightened eyes. I turned round and left the church without the slightest interference, threw myself into my sledge, and cried out, ‘Let her go!’”
“My God!” cried out Maria Gavrilovna. “And you don’t know what became of your poor wife?”
“I don’t know,” answered Bourmin. “I even don’t know the name of the village where I was married. I can’t remember by what station I went. At that time I attached so little importance to my wicked lark, that, after leaving the church, I slept soundly and awakened only next morning, having reached by that time the third station. My servant, who was then with me, died in the campaign, so that I haven’t the slightest hope of finding her upon whom I played such a horrible joke, and who now is so terribly avenged.”
“My God! My God!” said Maria Gavrilovna, grasping his hand. “So, then, it was you! And you do not recognize me?”
Bourmin became pale ... and threw himself at her feet ....
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In _La Nouvelle Heloise_, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST
Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln, Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land of the Cossacks--in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously called.
When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He also contributed certain satires and ballads--all equally sophomoric. Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic studies.
Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast--romantic, dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too seriously--went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked for foreign parts--some say for America. But his heart failed him, and he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”
In this billet he remained for a year, chafing under the grinding routine, whose pressure at length compelled him to resign. He took up acting next, but his voice was not considered to be strong enough, and he then became a tutor in the families of the nobility in the Russian capital. Eventually he was appointed to a professorship of history in the University. His opening address was altogether brilliant, but, never a thorough student, he soon sounded the depths of his knowledge, and his students complained that he put them to sleep. That ended his teaching.
All these successive failures--for such they really were--drove him to the one means of self-expression: literature. He now published a few modest essays in the leading journals. These attracted some attention and brought about his introduction to Pushkin, who received him warmly, and advised him to write of the land and people that he knew so well. This wise counsel resulted in a collection of brilliant fictional sketches entitled “Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka” (1828-1831).
The most important of these is probably “St. John’s Eve.” It is instinct with the superstitious beliefs of his native province. The story is soon told, how that a young man, finely favored of body, falls in love with the daughter of his farmer-employer. His attentions having been discovered, he is flatly dismissed, whereupon a certain Mephistophelian character who has been doing tricksy things about the village offers to procure for the youth a plentiful supply of gold wherewith to win the favor of the girl’s father. This leads to a night meeting with a witch, accompanied with all the traditional manifestations. Under an incantation, the young man digs, finds a coffer, and is about to take out the gold, when the witch admonishes him that he first must perform a duty--thrust a knife into a large bag which stands before him. He refuses, and tears open the bag, when to his horror the form of his sweetheart’s little brother is disclosed. The demon-man pictures all that the youth is about to lose by his unwillingness to murder the child; and, thus tempted, he plunges in the knife.
Thereafter all things go according to promise--he has plenty of gold, wins the favor of the father, and marries the girl, but he can never get over his settled melancholy as he thinks upon his terrible deed. Eventually--quite in the manner of all the tales which involve the sale of the soul to the devil--he disappears and goes to his Master.
The whole story is told with a remarkable handling of the weird. Perhaps no tale of witchcraft was ever more vividly and brilliantly handled--it is typical, both in matter and manner, of the Ukraine.
And this leads me to say that those writers are most interesting who are the most distinctly national, and by “national” I mean those who temperamentally exhibit the typical characteristics of their land, who glory in its peculiar traits, and who in their writings picture and interpret its spirit.
Little Russia is neither north nor south, but, for reasons which the scientists may explain, displays quite marvellously the elements of both north and south in the two great seasons of the year. The few short summer months are saturated with flaring sunshine, causing the fields fairly to leap toward the farmer, full-handed with harvests. In these halcyon days the people revel in the miraculous transformation of nature, but when winter comes, the land of the Dnieper feels the sweep of icy northern winds quite as bitterly as do the dwellers on the Neva.
The population, too, is just as antipodal--in fact, it is really complex. Little Russia was at one time dominated by the Turks, who left many of their oriental traits among the people they had conquered; later, the Ukraine was subdued by Poland, which “transmitted something of its savage luxury to its vassals;” then Tartar hordes constantly swept across its borders and kept alive the joy of savage warfare; finally the Cossack leagues established themselves in the Ukraine and set up a wild chivalry upon whose picturesque exploits the Little Russian has ever since dwelt with prideful interest.
Gogol was born with a full measure of the Cossack spirit, descended, as he was, directly from this stock. His native Poltava is the very heart of the Cossack country, and Gogol’s grandfather, who was his first teacher, infused the young spirit with all the imagery and fanciful extravagance of Cossack folk-lore. His mother, too, of whom he speaks most tenderly in his “Confessions of an Author,” poured into his ears the legends of her land.
This primal literary equipment was bestowed upon a temperament that never ceased to be mystical, religious, and at the last melancholy--traits that are characteristic of almost every great Russian writer.
Gogol was also a humorist, but from the strangest reason, a reason which, unhappily, several other humorists shared with him: he wrote grotesque and laughter-provoking conceits to keep his mind from brooding on dark and depressing visions. Perhaps it may have been bodily weakness--for Gogol was small, weazened, unlovely to look upon, and often ill--or perhaps the result of an intensely religious nature turned in upon itself, but some cause constantly evoked in him the wildest hallucinations. Once while suffering the extremes of chilling penury in St. Petersburg, he contemplated suicide. He saw Death, and thus writes of the vision to his mother:
Mother, dearest mother, I know you are my truest friend. Believe me, even now, though I have shaken off something of the dread, even now, at the bare recollection of it, an indescribable agony comes over my soul. It is only to you that I speak of it. You know that I was in my boyhood endowed with a courage beyond my years. Who, then, could have expected I should prove so weak? But I saw her--no, I cannot name her--she is too majestic, too awful for any mortal, not merely for me, to name. That face, whose brilliant glory in one moment burns into the heart; those eyes that quickly pierce the inner soul; that consuming, all-penetrating gaze: these are the traits of none that is born of woman. Oh, if you only had seen me in that moment! True, I could hide myself from all, but how hide myself from myself? The pains of hell, with every possible torture, filled my breast. Oh, what a cruel condition! I think, whatever the hell prepared for sinners may be, its tortures cannot equal mine. No, that was not love. At least, I never heard of love like that.... And then, my heart softened; I recognized the inscrutable finger of Providence that ever watches over us, and I blessed Him, who thus marvellously had pointed out the path wherein I should walk. No; this being whom He sent to rob me of quiet, and to topple down my frail plans, was no woman.... But I pray you, do not ask me who she is. She is too majestic, too awful, to be named.
A later series of short-stories and sketches appeared from 1831 to 1833 under the title of “Mirgorod.”