Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (104 page)

XXI

“GRIGORY,” Irina was saying to him two hours later, as she sat beside him on the sofa, and laid both hands on his shoulder, “what is the matter with you? Tell me now quickly, while we’re alone.”

“The matter with me?” said Litvinov. “I am happy, happy, that’s what’s the matter with me.”

Irina looked down, smiled, sighed.

“That’s not an answer to my question, my dear one.”

Litvinov grew thoughtful.

“Well, let me tell you then . . . since you insist positively on it” (Irina opened her eyes wide and trembled slightly), “I have told everything to - day to my betrothed.”

“What, everything? You mentioned me?”

Litvinov fairly threw up his arms. “Irina, for God’s sake, how could such an idea enter your head! that I -
 
- “

“There, forgive me . . . forgive me. What did you say?”

“I told her that I no longer loved her.”

“She asked why?”

“I did not disguise the fact that I loved another woman, and that we must part.”

“Ah . . . and what did she do? Agreed?” “O Irina! what a girl she is! She was all self - sacrifice, all generosity!” “I’ve no doubt, I’ve no doubt . . . there was nothing else for her to do, though.”
 

“And not one reproach, not one hard word to me, who have spoiled her whole life, deceived her, pitilessly flung her over. . . .”

Irina scrutinized her finger nails.

“Tell me, Grigory . . . did she love you?”

“Yes, Irina, she loved me.”

Irina was silent a minute, she straightened her dress. “I must confess,” she began, “I don’t quite understand what induced you to explain matters to her.”

“What induced me, Irina! Would you have liked me to lie, to be a hypocrite to her, that pure soul? or did you suppose -
 
- “

“I supposed nothing,” Irina interrupted. “I must admit I have thought very little about her. I don’t know how to think of two people at once.”

“That is, you mean -
 
- “

“Well, and so what then? Is she going away, that pure soul?” Irina interrupted a second time.

“I know nothing,” answered Litvinov. “I am to see her again. But she will not stay.”

“Ah!
bon voyage!
”

“No, she will not stay. But I’m not thinking of her either, now, I am thinking of what you said to me, what you have promised me.”

Irina looked up at him from under her eyelids.

“Ungrateful one! aren’t you content yet?”

“No, Irina, I’m not content. You have made me happy, but I’m not content, and you understand me.”

“That is, I -
 
- “

“Yes, you understand me. Remember your words, remember what you wrote to me. I can’t share you with others; no, no, I can’t consent to the pitiful role of secret lover; not my life alone, this other life, too, I have flung at your feet, I have renounced everything,
 
I have crushed it all to dust, without compunction and beyond recall; but in return I trust, I firmly believe, that you, too, will keep your promise, and unite your lot with mine for ever.”

“You want me to run away with you? I am ready . . .” (Litvinov bent down to her hands in ecstasy.) “I am ready. I will not go back from my word. But have you yourself thought over all the difficulties -
 
- have you made preparations?” “I? I have not had time yet to think over or prepare anything, but only say yes, let me act, and before a month is over . . . .”

“A month! we start for Italy in a fortnight.”

“A fortnight, then, is enough for me. O Irina, you seem to take my proposition coldly; perhaps it seems unpractical to you, but I am not a boy, I am not used to comforting myself with dreams, I know what a tremendous step this is, I know what a responsibility I am taking on myself; but I can see no other course. Think of it, I must break every tie with the past, if only not to be a contemptible liar in the eyes of the girl I have sacrificed for you!”

Irina drew herself up suddenly and her eyes flashed.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Grigory Mihalitch! If I decide, if I run away, then it will at least be with a man who does it for my sake, for my sake simply, and not in order that he may not degrade himself in the good opinion of a phlegmatic young person, with milk and water,
du lait coupé
instead of blood, in her veins! And I must tell you, too, it’s the first time, I confess, that it’s been my lot to hear that the man I honor with my regard is deserving of commiseration, playing a pitiful part! I know a far more pitiful part, the part of a man who doesn’t know what is going on in his own heart!”
 

Litvinov drew himself up in his turn.

“Irina,” he was beginning -
 
-

But all at once she clapped both hands to her forehead, and with a convulsive motion, flinging herself on his breast, she embraced him with force beyond a woman’s.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” she began, with a shaking voice, “forgive me, Grigory! You see how corrupted I am, how horrid I am, how jealous and wicked! You see how I need your aid, your indulgence! Yes, save me, drag me out of this mire, before I am quite ruined! Yes, let us run away, let us run away from these people, from this society to some far off, fair, free country! Perhaps your Irina will at last be worthier of the sacrifices you are making for her! Don’t be angry with me, forgive me, my sweet, and know that I will do everything you command, I will go anywhere you will take me!”

Litvinov’s heart was in a turmoil. Irina clung closer than before to him with all her youthful supple body. He bent over her fragrant, disordered tresses, and in an intoxication of gratitude and ecstasy, he hardly dared to caress them with his hand, he hardly touched them with his lips.

“Irina, Irina,” he repeated, -
 
- “my angel; . . . .”

She suddenly raised her head, listened. . . .

“It’s my husband’s step, . . . he has gone into his room,” she whispered, and, moving hurriedly away, she crossed over to another armchair. Litvinov was getting up. . . . “What are you doing?” she went on in the same whisper; “you must stay, he suspects you as it is. Or are you afraid of him?” She did not take her eyes off the door. “Yes, it’s he; he will come in here directly. Tell me something, talk to me.” Litvinov could not at once recover himself and was
 
silent. “Aren’t you going to the theater to - morrow?” she uttered aloud. “They’re giving
Le Verre d’Eau,
an old - fashioned piece, and Plessy is awfully affected. . . . We’re as though we were in a perfect fever,” she added, dropping her voice. “We can’t do anything like this; we must think things over well. I ought to warn you that all my money is in his hands;
mais j’ai mes bijoux.
We’ll go to Spain, would you like that?” She raised her voice again. “Why is it all actresses get so fat? Madeleine Brohan for instance. . . . Do talk, don’t sit so silent. My head is going round. But you, you must not doubt me. . . . I will let you know where to come to - morrow. Only it was a mistake to have told that young lady. . . .
Ah, mais c’est charmant!
” she cried suddenly, and with a nervous laugh, she tore the lace edge of her handkerchief.

“May I come in?” asked Ratmirov from the other room.

“Yes . . . yes.”

The door opened, and in the doorway appeared the general. He scowled on seeing Litvinov; however, he bowed to them, that is to say, he bent the upper portion of his person.

“I did not know you had a visitor,” he said: “
je vous demande pardon de mon indiscrétion.
So you still find Baden entertaining, M’sieu -
 
- Litvinov?”

Ratmirov always uttered Litvinov’s surname with hesitation, every time, as though he had forgotten it, and could not at once recall it. . . . In this way, as well as by the lofty flourish of his hat in saluting him, he meant to insult his pride.

“I am not bored here,
m’sieu le général.
”

“Really? Well, I find Baden fearfully boring. We are soon going away, are we not, Irina Pavlovna?
 
Assez de Bade comme ça.
By the way, I’ve won you five hundred francs to - day.”

Irina stretched out her hand coquettishly.

“Where are they? Please let me have them for pin - money.”

“You shall have them, you shall have them. . . You are going, M’sieu -
 
- Litvinov?”

“Yes, I am going, as you see.”

Ratmirov again bent his body.

“Till we meet again!”

“Good - by, Grigory Mihalitch,” said Irina. “I will keep my promise.”

“What is that? May I be inquisitive?” her husband queried.

Irina smiled. “No, it was only . . . something we’ve been talking of.
C’est à propos du voyage . . . où il vous plaira.
You know -
 
- Stael’s book?”

“Ah! ah! to be sure, I know. Charming illustrations.”

Ratmirov seemed on the best of terms with his wife; he called her by her pet name in addressing her.

XXII

“BETTER not think now, really,” Litvinov repeated, as he strode along the street, feeling that the inward riot was rising up again in him. “The thing’s decided. She will keep her promise, and it only remains for me to take all necessary steps. . . . Yet she hesitates, it seems.” . . . He shook his head. His own designs struck even his own imagination in a strange light; there was a smack of artificiality, of unreality about them. One cannot dwell long upon the same thoughts; they gradually shift like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope . . . one peeps in, and already the shapes before one’s eyes are utterly different. A sensation of intense weariness overcame Litvinov. . . . If he could for one short hour but rest! . . . But Tanya? He started, and, without reflecting even, turned submissively homewards, merely struck by the idea, that this day was tossing him like a ball from one to the other.

No matter; he must make an end. He went back to his hotel, and with the same submissiveness, insensibility, numbness, without hesitation or delay, he went to see Tatyana.

He was met by Kapitolina Markovna. From the first glance at her, he knew that she knew about it all; the poor maiden lady’s eyes were swollen with weeping, and her flushed face, fringed with her dishevelled white locks, expressed dismay and an agony of indignation, sorrow, and boundless amazement. She was on the point of rushing up to Litvinov, but
 
she stopped short, and, biting her quivering lips, she looked at him as though she would supplicate him, and kill him, and assure herself that it was a dream, a senseless, impossible thing, wasn’t it?

“Here you . . . you are come,” she began. . . The door from the next room opened instantaneously, and with a light tread Tatyana came in; she was of a transparent pallor, but she was quite calm.

She gently put one arm round her aunt and made her sit down beside her.

“You sit down too, Grigory Mihalitch,” she said to Litvinov, who was standing like one distraught at the door. “I am very glad to see you once more. I have informed auntie of your decision, our common decision; she fully shares it and approves of it. . . . Without mutual love there can be no happiness, mutual esteem alone is not enough” (at the word “esteem” Litvinov involuntarily looked down) “and better to separate now, than to repent later. Isn’t it, aunt?”

“Yes, of course,” began Kapitolina Markovna, “of course, Tanya, darling, the man who does not know how to appreciate you . . . who could bring himself -
 
- “

“Aunt, aunt,” Tatyana interrupted, “remember what you promised me. You always told me yourself: truth, Tatyana, truth before everything -
 
- and independence. Well, truth’s not always sweet, nor independence either; or else where would be the virtue of pendence either; or else where would be the virtue of it?”

She kissed Kapitolina Markovna on her white hair, and turning to Litvinov, she went on:

“We propose, aunt and I, leaving Baden. . . . I think it will be more comfortable so for all of us.”

“When do you think of going?” Litvinov said
 
thickly. He remembered that Irina had said the very same words to him not long before. Kapitolina Markovna was darting forward, but Tatyana held her back, with a caressing touch on her shoulder.

“Probably soon, very soon.”

“And will you allow me to ask where you intend going?” Litvinov said in the same voice.

“First to Dresden, then probably to Russia.”

“But what can you want to know that for now, Grigory Mihalitch?” . . . cried Kapitolina Markovna.

“Aunt, aunt,” Tatyana interposed again. A brief silence followed.

“Tatyana Petrovna,” began Litvinov, “you know how agonizingly painful and bitter my feelings must be at this instant.”

Tatyana got up.

“Grigory Mihalitch,” she said, “we will not talk about that . . . if you please, I beg you for my sake, if not for your own. I have known you long enough, and I can very well imagine what you must be feeling now. But what’s the use of talking, of touching a sore” (she stopped; it was clear she wanted to stem the emotion rushing upon her, to swallow the rising tears; she succeeded) -
 
- “why fret a sore we cannot heal? Leave that to time. And now I have to ask a service of you, Grigory Mihalitch; if you will be so good, I will give you a letter directly: take it to the post yourself, it is rather important, but aunt and I have no time now. . . . I shall be much obliged to you. Wait a minute. . . . I will bring it directly. . . .” In the doorway Tatyana glanced uneasily at Kapitolina Markovna; but she was sitting with such dignity
 
and decorum, with such a severe expression on her knitted brows and tightly compressed lips, that Tatyana merely gave her a significant nod and went out.

But scarcely had the door closed behind her. when every trace of dignity and severity instantaneously vanished from Kapitolina Markovna’s face; she got up, ran on tiptoe up to Litvinov, and all hunched together and trying to look him in the face, she began in a quaking tearful whisper:

“Good God,” she said, “Grigory Mihalitch, what does it mean? is it a dream or what?
You
give up Tanya, you tired of her, you breaking your word! You doing this, Grigory Mihalitch, you on whom we all counted as if you were a stone wall! You? you? you, Grisha?” . . . Kapitolina Markovna stopped. “Why, you will kill her, Grigory Mihalitch,” she went on, without waiting for an answer, while her tears fairly coursed in fine drops over her cheeks. “You mustn’t judge by her bearing up now, you know her character! She never complains; she does not think of herself, so others must think of her! She keeps saying to me, ‘Aunt, we must save our dignity!’ but what’s dignity, when I foresee death, death before us?” . . . Tatyana’s chair creaked in the next room. “Yes, I foresee death,” the old lady went on, still more softly. “And how can such a thing have come about? Is it witchcraft, or what? It’s not long since you were writing her the tenderest letters. And, in fact, can an honest man act like this? I’m a woman, free, as you know, from prejudice of any sort,
esprit fort,
and I have given Tanya, too, the same sort of education, she, too, has a free mind. . . .”

“Aunt!” came Tatyana’s voice from the next room.

“But one’s word of honor is a duty, Grigory
 
Mihalitch, especially for people of your, of my principles! If we’re not going to recognize duty, what is left us? This cannot be broken off in this way, at your whim, without regard to what may happen to another! It’s unprincipled . . . yes, it’s a crime; a strange sort of freedom!”

“Aunt, come here please,” was heard again. “I’m coming, my love, I’m coming . . .” Kapitolina Markovna clutched at Litvinov’s hand. -
 
- “I see you are angry Grigory Milhalitch.” . .. . (“Me! me angry?” he wanted to exclaim, but his tongue was dumb.) “I don’t want to make you angry -
 
- oh, really, quite the contrary! I’ve come even to entreat you; think again while there is time; don’t destroy her, don’t destroy your own happiness, she will still trust you, Grisha, she will believe in you, nothing is lost yet; why, she loves you as no one will ever love you! Leave this hateful Baden - Baden, let us go away together, only throw off this enchantment, and, above all, have pity, have pity -
 
- “

“Aunt!” called Tatyana, with a shade of impatience in her voice.

But Kapitolina Markovna did not hear her.

“Only say ‘yes,’“ she repeated to Litvinov; “and I will still make everything smooth. . . . You need only nod your head to me, just one little nod like this.”

Litvinov would gladly, he felt, have died at that instant; but the word “yes” he did not utter, and he did not nod his head.

Tatyana reappeared with a letter in her hand. Kapitolina Markovna at once darted away from Litvinov, and, averting her face, bent low over the table, as though she were looking over the bills and papers that lay on it.

Tatyana went up to Litvinov.
 

“Here,” she said, “is the letter I spoke of. . . . You will go to the post at once with it, won’t you?”

Litvinov raised his eyes. . . . Before him, really, stood his judge. Tatyana struck him as taller, slenderer; her face, shining with unwonted beauty, had the stony grandeur of a statute’s; her bosom did not heave, and her gown, of one color and straight as a Greek chiton, fell in the long, unbroken folds of marble drapery to her feet, which were hidden by it. Tatyana was looking straight before her, only at Litvinov; her cold, calm gaze, too, was the gaze of a statue. He read his sentence in it; he bowed, took a letter from the hand held out so immovably to him, and silently withdrew.

Kapitolina Markovna ran to Tatyana; but the latter turned off her embraces and dropped her eyes; a flush of color spread over her face, and with the words, “and now, the sooner the better,” she went into the bedroom. Kapitolina Markovna followed her with hanging head.

The letter, entrusted to Litvinov by Tatyana, was addressed to one of her Dresden friends -
 
- a German lady -
 
- who let small furnished apartments. Litvinov dropped the letter into the post - box, and it seemed to him as though with that tiny scrap of paper he was dropping all his past, all his life into the tomb. He went out of the town, and strolled a long time by narrow paths between vineyards; he could not shake off the persistent sensation of contempt for himself, like the importunate buzzing of flies in summer: an unenviable part, indeed, he had played in the last interview. . . . And when he went back to his hotel, and after a little time inquired about the ladies, he was told that immediately after he had gone out, they had given orders to be driven to the railway station, and
 
had departed by the mail train -
 
- to what destination was not known. Their things had been packed and their bills paid ever since the morning. Tatyana had asked Litvinov to take her letter to the post, obviously with the object of getting him out of the way. He ventured to ask the hall - porter whether the ladies had left any letters for him, but the porter replied in the negative, and looked amazed, even; it was clear that this sudden exit from rooms taken for a week struck him, too, as strange and dubious. Litvinov turned his back on him, and locked himself up in his room.

He did not leave it till the following day: the greater part of the night he was sitting at the table, writing, and tearing what he had written. . . . The dawn was already beginning when he finished his task -
 
- it was a letter to Irina.