Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (101 page)

Litvinov bowed and went away. He could not tell why Irina had refused him that last friendly handshake. . . . He could not know what she feared. He went away, and Irina again sank into the armchair and again covered her face.

XVII

LITVINOV did not return home; he went up to the hills, and getting into a thick copse, he flung himself face downwards on the earth, and lay there about an hour. He did not suffer tortures, did not weep; he hank into a kind of heavy, oppressive stupor. Never had he felt anything like it; it was an insufferably aching and gnawing sensation of emptiness, emptiness in himself, his surroundings, everywhere. . . . He thought neither of Irina nor of Tatyana. He felt one thing only: a blow had fallen and life was sundered like a cord, and all of him was being drawn along in the clutches of something chill and unfamiliar. Sometimes it seemed to him that a whirlwind had swooped down upon him, and he had the sensation of its swift whirling round and the irregular beating of its dark wings. But his resolution did not waver. To remain in Baden . . . that could not even be considered. In thought he had already gone, he was already sitting in the rattling, snorting train, hurrying, hurrying into the dumb, dead distance. He got up at last, and leaning his head against a tree, stayed motionless; only with one hand, he all unconsciously snatched and swung in rhythm the topmost frond of a fern. The sound of approaching footsteps drew him out of his stupor: two charcoal - burners were making their way down the steep path with large sacks on their shoulders. “It’s time!” whispered Litvinov, and he followed the charcoal - burners to the town, turned into the railway station, and sent off a telegram to
 
Tatyana’s aunt, Kapitolina Markovna. In this telegram he informed her of his immediate departure, and appointed as a meeting - place, Schrader’s hotel in Heidelberg.

“Make an end, make an end at once,” he thought; “it’s useless putting it off till to - morrow.” Then he went to the gambling saloon, stared with dull curiosity at the faces of two or three gamblers, got a back view of Bindasov’s ugly head in the distance, noticed the irreproachable countenance of Pishtchalkin, and after waiting a little under the colonnade, he set off deliberately to Irina’s. He was not going to her through the force of sudden, involuntary temptation; when he made up his mind to go away, he also made up his mind to keep his word and see her once more. He went into the hotel unobserved by the porter, ascended the staircase, not meeting any one, and without knocking at the door, he mechanically pushed it open and went into the room.

In the room, in the same armchair, in the same dress, in precisely the same attitude as three hours before, was sitting Irina. . . . It was obvious that she had not moved from the place, had not stirred all that time. She slowly raised her head, and seeing Litvinov, she trembled all over and clutched the arm of the chair. “You frightened me,” she whispered.

Litvinov looked at her with speechless bewilderment. The expression of her face, her lusterless eyes, astounded him.

Irina gave a forced smile and smoothed her ruffled hair. “Never mind. . . . I really don’t know. . . . I think I must have fallen asleep here.” “I beg your pardon, Irina Pavlovna,” began Litvinov. “I came in unannounced. . . . I wanted to do what you thought fit to require of me. So as I am going away to - day -
 
-
 
-
 
- “
 

“To - day? But I thought you told me that you meant first to write a letter -
 
- “

“I have sent a telegram.”

“Ah! you found it necessary to make haste. And when are you going? What time, I mean?”

“At seven o’clock this evening.”

“Ah! at seven o’clock! And you have come to say good - by?”

“Yes, Irina Pavlovna, to say good - by.”

Irina was silent for a little.

“I ought to thank you, Grigory Mihalitch, it was probably not easy for you to come here.”

“No, Irina Pavlovna, it was anything but easy.”

“Life is not generally easy, Grigory Mihalitch; what do you think about it?”

“It depends, Irina Pavlovna.”

Irina was silent again for a little; she seemed sunk in thought. “You have proved your affection for me by coming,” she said at last, “I thank you. And I fully approve of your decision to put an end to everything as soon as possible . . . because any delay . . . because . . . because I, even I whom you have reproached as a flirt, called an actress . . . that, I think, was what you called me? . . .”

Irina got up swiftly, and, sitting down in another chair, stooped down and pressed her face and arms on the edge of the table.

“Because I love you . . .” she whispered between her clasped fingers.

Litvinov staggered, as though some one had dealt him a blow in the chest. Irina turned her head dejectedly away from him, as though she in her turn wanted to hide her face from him, and laid it down on the table.
 

“Yes, I love you . . . I love you . . . and you know it.”

“I? I know it?” Litvinov said at last; “I?” “Well, now you see,” Irina went on, “that you certainly must go, that delay’s impossible . . . both for you, and for me delay’s impossible. It’s dangerous, it’s terrible . . . good - by!” she added, rising impulsively from her chair, “good - by!”

She took a few steps in the direction of the door of her boudoir, and putting her hand behind her back, made a hurried movement in the air, as though she would find and press the hand of Litvinov; but he stood like a block of wood, at a distance. . . . Once. more she said, “Good - by, forget me,” and without looking round she rushed away.

Litvinov remained alone, and yet still could not come to himself. He recovered himself at last, went quickly to the boudoir door, uttered Irina’s name once, twice, three times. . . . He had already his hand on the lock. . . . From the hotel stairs rose the sound of Ratmirov’s sonorous voice.

Litvinov pulled down his hat over his eyes, and went out on the staircase. The elegant general was standing before the Swiss porter’s box and explaining to him in bad German that he wanted a hired carriage for the whole of the next day. On catching sight of Litvinov, he again lifted his hat unnaturally high, and again wished him “a very good - day”; he was obviously jeering at him, but Litvinov had no thoughts for that. He hardly responded to Ratmirov’s bow, and, making his way to his lodging, he stood still before his already packed and closed trunk. His head was turning round and his heart vibrating like a harp - string. What was to be done now? And could he have foreseen this?”

Yes, he had foreseen it, however unlikely it seemed.
 
It had stunned him like a clap of thunder, yet he had foreseen it, though he had not courage even to acknowledge it. Besides he knew nothing now for certain. Everything was confusion and turmoil within him; he had lost the thread of his own thoughts. He remembered Moscow, he remembered how then, too, “it” had come upon him like a sudden tempest. He was breathless; rapture, but a rapture comfortless and hopeless, oppressed and tore his heart. For nothing in the world would he have consented that the words uttered by Irina should not have actually been uttered by her. . . . But then? those words could not for all that change the resolution he had taken. As before, it did not waver; it stood firm like an anchor. Litvinov had lost the thread of his own thoughts . . . yes; but his will still remained to him, and he disposed of himself as of another man dependent on him. He rang for the waiter, asked him for the bill, bespoke a place in the evening omnibus; designedly he cut himself off from all paths of retreat. “If I die for it after!” he declared, as he had in the previous sleepless night; that phrase seemed especially to his taste. “Then even if I die for it!” he repeated, walking slowly up and down the room, and only at rare intervals, unconsciously, he shut his eyes and held his breath, while those words, those words of Irina’s forced their way into his soul, and set it aflame. “It seems you won’t love twice,” he thought; “another life came to you, you let it come into yours -
 
- never to be rid of that poison to the end, you will never break those bonds! Yes; but what does that prove? Happiness? . . . Is it possible? You love her, granted . . . and she . . . she loves you. . . .”

But at this point again he had to pull himself up. As a traveler on a dark night, seeing before him a
 
light, and afraid of losing the path, never for an instant takes his eyes off it, so Litvinov continually bent all the force of his attention on a single point, a single aim. To reach his betrothed, and not precisely even his betrothed (he was trying not to think of her) but to reach a room in the Heidelberg hotel, that was what stood immovably before him, a guiding light. What would be later, he did not know, nor did he want to know. . . . One thing was beyond doubt, he would not come back. “If I die first!” he repeated for the tenth time, and he glanced at his watch.

A quarter - past six! How long still to wait! He paced once more up and down. The sun was nearly setting, the sky was crimson above the trees, and the pink flush of twilight lay on the narrow windows of his darkening room. Suddenly Litvinov fancied the door had been opened quickly and softly behind him and as quickly closed again. . . . He turned round at the door, muffled in a dark cloak, was standing woman . . .

“Irina,” he cried, and clapped his hands together in amazement. . . . She raised her head and fell upon his breast.

Two hours later he was sitting in his room on the sofa. His box stood in the corner, open and empty, and on the table in the midst of things flung about in disorder, lay a letter from Tatyana, just received by him. She wrote to him that she had decided to hasten her departure from Dresden, since her aunt’s health was completely restored, and that if nothing happened to delay them, they would both be in Baden the following day at twelve o’clock, and hoped that he would come to meet them at the station. Apartments had already been taken for them by Litvinov in the same hotel in which he was staying.
 

The same evening he sent a note to Irina, and the following morning he received a reply from her, “Sooner or later,” she wrote, “it must have been. I tell you again what I said yesterday: my life is in your hands, do with me what you will. I do not want to hamper your freedom, but let me say, that if necessary, I will throw up everything, and follow you to the ends of the earth. We shall see each other to - morrow, of course. -
 
- Your Irina.”

The last two words were written in a large, bold, resolute hand.

XVIII

AMONG the persons assembled on the 18th of August at twelve o’clock on the platform at the railway station was Litvinov. Not long before, he had seen Irina: she was sitting in an open carriage with her husband and another gentleman, somewhat elderly. She caught sight of Litvinov, and he perceived that some obscure emotion flitted over her eyes; but at once she hid herself from him with her parasol.

A strange transformation had taken place in him since the previous day -
 
- in his whole appearance, his movements, the expression of his face; and indeed he felt himself a different man. His self - confidence had vanished, and his peace of mind had vanished, too, and his respect for himself; of his former spiritual condition nothing was left. Recent ineffaceable impressions obscured all the rest from him. Some sensation unknown before had come, strong, sweet -
 
- and evil; the mysterious guest had made its way to the innermost shrine and taken possession and lain down in it, in silence, but in all its magnitude, like the owner in a new house. Litvinov was no longer ashamed, he was afraid; at the same time a desperate hardihood had sprung up in him; the captured, the vanquished know well this mixture of opposing feelings; the thief, too, knows something of it after his first robbery. Litvinov had been vanquished, vanquished suddenly . . . and what had become of his honesty?
 
The train was a few minutes late. Litvinov’s suspense passed into agonizing torture; he could not stop still in one place, and, pale all over, moved about jostling in the crowd. “My God,” he thought, “if I only had another twenty - four hours.” . . . The first look at Tanya, the first look of Tanya . . . that was what filled him with terror . . . that was what he had to live through directly . . . And afterwards? Afterwards . . . come, what may come! . . . He now made no more resolutions, he could not answer for himself now. His phrase of yesterday flashed painfully through his head. . . . And this was how he was meeting Tanya. . . . A prolonged whistle sounded at last, a heavy momentarily increasing rumble was heard, and, slowly rolling around a bend in the line, the train came into sight. The crowd hurried to meet it, and Litvinov followed it, dragging his feet like a condemned man. Faces, ladies’ hats began to appear out of the carriages, at one window a white handkerchief gleamed. . Kapitolina Markovna was waving to him. . . . It was over; she had caught sight of Litvinov and he recognized her. The train stood still; Litvinov rushed to the carriage door, and opened it; Tatyana was standing near her aunt, smiling brightly and holding out her hand.

He helped them both to get out, uttered a few words of welcome, unfinished and confused, and at once bustled about, began taking their tickets, their traveling bags, and rugs, ran to find a porter, called a fly; other people were bustling around them. He was glad of their presence, their fuss, and loud talk. Tatyana moved a little aside, and, still smiling, waited calmly for his hurried arrangements to be concluded. Kapitolina Markovna, on the other hand, could not keep
 
still; she could not believe that she was at last at Baden.

She suddenly cried, “But the parasols? Tanya, where are our parasols?” all unconscious that she was holding them fast under her arm; then she began taking a loud and prolonged farewell of another lady with whom she had made friends on the journey from Heidelberg to Baden. This lady was no other than our old friend Madame Suhantchikov. She had gone away to Heidelberg to do obeisance to Gubaryov, and was returning with “instructions.” Kapitolina Markovna wore a rather peculiar striped mantle and a round traveling hat of a mushroom - shape, from under which her short white hair fell in disorder; short and thin, she was flushed with traveling and kept talking Russian in a shrill and penetrating voice. . . . She was an object of attention at once.

Litvinov at last put her and Tatyana into a fly, and placed himself opposite them. The horses started. Then followed questionings, renewed handshaking, interchanging of smiles and welcomes. . . . Litvinov breathed freely; the first moment had passed off satisfactorily. Nothing in him, apparently, had struck or bewildered Tanya; she was smiling just as brightly and confidently, she was blushing as charmingly, and laughing as goodnaturedly. He brought himself at last to take a look at her; not a stealthy cursory glance, but a direct steady look at her, hitherto his own eyes had refused to obey him. His heart throbbed with involuntary emotion: the serene expression of that honest, candid face gave him a pang of bitter reproach. “So you are here, poor girl,” he thought, “you whom I have so longed for, so urged to come, with whom I had hoped to spend my life to the end, you have come, you believed in me . . . while I . . . while I.” . . .
 
Litvinov’s head sank; but Kapitolina Markovna gave him no time for musing; she was pelting him with questions.

“What is that building with columns? Where is it the gambling’s done? Who is that coming along? Tanya, Tanya, look, what crinolines! And who can that be? I suppose they are mostly French creatures from Paris here? Mercy, what a hat! Can you get everything here just as in Paris? But, I expect, everything’s awfully dear, eh? Ah, I’ve made the acquaintance of such a splendid, intellectual woman! You know her, Grigory Mihalitch; she told me she had met you at some Russian’s, who’s a wonderfully intellectual person, too, She promised to come and see us. How she does abuse all these aristocrats -
 
- it’s simply superb! What is that gentleman with gray moustaches? The Prussian king? Tanya, Tanya, look, that’s the Prussian king. No? not the Prussian king, the Dutch ambassador, did you say? I can’t hear, the wheels rattle so. Ah, what exquisite trees!”

“Yes, exquisite, aunt,” Tanya assented, “and how green everything is here, how bright and gay! Isn’t it, Grigory Mihalitch?”

“Oh, very bright and gay” . . . he answered through his teeth. The carriage stopped at last before the hotel. Litvinov conducted the two travelers to the room taken for them, promised to come back within an hour, and went to his own room. Directly he entered it, he fell again under the spell which had been lulled for a while. Here, in that room, since the day before, Irina reigned supreme; everything was eloquent of her, the very air seemed to have kept secret traces of her visit. . . . Again Litvinov felt himself her slave. He drew out her handkerchief, hidden in his bosom, pressed it to
 
his lips, and burning memories flowed in subtle poison through his veins. He realized that there was no turning back, no choosing now; the sorrowful emotion aroused in him by Tatyana melted away like snow in the fire, and remorse died down . . . died down so completely that his uneasiness even was soothed, and the possibility -
 
- present to his intellect -
 
- of hypocrisy no longer revolted him. . . . Love, Irina’s love, that was now his truth, his bond, his conscience. . . . The sensible Litvinov did not even ponder how to get out of a position, the horror and hideousness of which he bore lightly, as if it did not concern him.

The hour had not yet passed when a waiter came to Litvinov from the newly arrived ladies; they begged him to come to them in the public drawing - room. He followed the messenger, and found them already dressed and in their hats; They both expressed a desire to go out at once to see Baden, as the weather was so fine. Kapitolina Markovna, especially, seemed burning with impatience; she was quite cast down when she heard that the hour of the fashionable promenade before the Konversation Hall had not yet arrived. Litvinov gave her his arm, and the ceremony of sight - seeing began. Tatyana walked beside her aunt, looking about her with quiet interest; Kapitolina Markovna pursued her inquiries. The sight of the roulette, the dignified croupiers, whom -
 
- had she met them in any other place -
 
- she would certainly have taken for ministers, the quickly moving scoops, the heaps of gold and silver on the green cloth, the old women gambling, and the painted
cocottes
reduced Kapitolina Markovna to a sort of speechless stupor; she altogether forgot that she ought to feel moral indignation, and could only gaze and gaze, giving a start of surprise at every new sight. . . . The whiz of the ivory ball
 
into the bottom of the roulette thrilled her to the marrow of her bones, and it was only when she was again in the open air that, drawing a long breath, she recovered energy enough to denounce games of chance as an immoral invention of aristocracy. A fixed, unpleasant smile had made its appearance on Litvinov’s lips; he had spoken abruptly and lazily, as though he were annoyed or bored. . . . But now he turned round towards Tatyana, and was thrown into secret confusion; she was looking attentively at him, with an expression as though she were asking herself what sort of an impression was being made on her. He made haste to nod his head to her, she responded with the same gesture, and again looked at him questioningly, with a sort of strained effort, as though he were standing much farther off than he really was. Litvinov led his ladies away from the Konversation Hall, and passing the “Russian tree,” under which two Russian ladies were already sitting, he went towards Lichtenthaler Alice. He had hardly entered the avenue when he saw Irina in the distance.

She was walking towards him with her husband and Potugin. Litvinov turned white as a sheet; he did not slacken his pace, however, and when he was on a level with her, he made a bow without speaking. She too bowed to him, politely, but coldly, and taking in Tatyana in a rapid glance, she glided by. . . . Ratmirov lifted his hat high, Potugin muttered something.

“Who is that lady?” Tatyana asked suddenly. Till that instant she had hardly opened her lips.

“That lady?” repeated Litvinov, “that lady? That is a Madame Ratmirov.”

“Is she Russian?”

“Yes.”
 

“Did you make her acquaintance here?”

“No; I have known her a long while.”

“How beautiful she is!” “Did you notice her dress?” put in Kapitolina Markovna. “Ten families might live for a whole year on the cost of her lace alone. Was that her husband with her?” she inquired turning to Litvinov.

“Yes.”

“He must be awfully rich, I suppose?”

“Really I don’t know; I don’t think so.”

“What is his rank?”

“He’s a general.”

“What eyes she has!” said Tatyana, “and what a strange expression in them: pensive and penetrating at the same time. . . . I have never seen such eyes.”

Litvinov made no answer; he fancied that he felt again Tatyana’s questioning glance bent on his face, but he was wrong, she was looking at her own feet, at the sand of the path. “Mercy on us! Who is that fright?” cried Kapitolina Markovna suddenly, pointing to a low, jaunting - car in which a red - haired pug - nosed woman lay lolling impudently, in an extraordinarily gorgeous costume and lilac stockings.

“That fright! why, that’s the celebrated Ma’mselle Cora.”

“Who?”

“Ma’mselle Cora . . . a Parisian . . . notoriety.”

“What? That pug? Why, but she’s hideous!”

“It seems that’s no hindrance.”

Kapitolina Markovna could only lift her hands in astonishment.

“Well, this Baden of yours!” she brought out at last. “Can one sit down on a seat here? I’m rather tired.”
 

“Of course you can, Kapitolina Markovna. . That’s what the seats are put here for.”

“Well, really, there’s no knowing! . But there in Paris, I’m told, there are seats, too, along the boulevards; but it’s not proper to sit on them.”

Litvinov made no reply to Kapitolina Markovna; only at that moment he realized that two paces away was the very spot where he had had that explanation with Irina, which had decided everything. Then he recalled that he had noticed a small rosy spot on her cheek to - day. . Kapitolina Markovna sank down on to the seat, Tatyana sat down beside her. Litvinov remained on the path; between Tatyana and him -
 
- or was it only his fancy? -
 
- something seemed to have happened . . . unconsciously and gradually.

“Ah, she’s a wretch, a perfect wretch!” Kapitolina Markovna declared, shaking her head commiseratingly; “why, with the price of her get - up, you could keep not ten, but a hundred families. Did you see under her hat, on her red hair, there were diamonds? Upon my word, diamonds in the day - time!”

“Her hair’s not red,” remarked Litvinov; “she dyes it red -
 
- that’s the fashion now.”

Again Kapitolina Markovna could only lift her hands; she was positively dumbfounded. “Well,” she said at last, “where we were, in Dresden, things had not got to such a scandalous pitch, yet. It’s a little further from Paris, anyway, that’s why. Don’t you think that’s it, Grigory Mihalitch, eh?”