Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (348 page)

I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on the ground near the willow. Exclaiming “Stop! Who is there?” I rushed forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare’s; a crouching figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.

Further search led to nothing -
 
- and I went back to the hut with the comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.

IX

I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the table before him and he was writing something in a little album which he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his pocket and began filling his pipe.

“Look here, my friend,” I began, “what a trophy I have brought back from my expedition!” I showed him the comb and told him what had happened to me near the willow. “I must have startled a thief,” I added. “You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?”

Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.

“And do you still believe, Ilya Stepanitch,” I said, “that the voice we heard came from those unknown realms....”

He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.

“Ridel,” he began, “I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not to jest.”

He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, “different” eyes kept shifting from one object to another.

“I never thought,” he began again, “that I should reveal to another ... another man what you are about to hear and what ought to have died ... yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is to be -
 
- and indeed I have no choice. It is destiny! Listen.”

And he told me a long story.

I have mentioned already that he was a poor hand at telling stories, but it was not only his lack of skill in describing events that had happened to him that impressed me that night; the very sound of his voice, his glances, the movements which he made with his fingers and his hands -
 
- everything about him, indeed, seemed unnatural, unnecessary, false, in fact. I was very young and inexperienced in those days and did not know that the habit of high - flown language and falsity of intonation and manner may become so ingrained in a man that he is incapable of shaking it off: it is a sort of curse. Later in life I came across a lady who described to me the effect on her of her son’s death, of her “boundless” grief, of her fears for her reason, in such exaggerated language, with such theatrical gestures, such melodramatic movements of her head and rolling of her eyes, that I thought to myself, “How false and affected that lady is! She did not love her son at all!” And a week afterwards I heard that the poor woman had really gone out of her mind. Since then I have become much more careful in my judgments and have had far less confidence in my own impressions.

X

The story which Tyeglev told me was, briefly, as follows. He had living in Petersburg, besides his influential uncle, an aunt, not influential but wealthy. As she had no children of her own she had adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a liberal education and treated her like a daughter. She was called Masha. Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in love with one another and Masha’s giving herself to him. This was discovered. Tyeglev’s aunt was fearfully incensed, she turned the luckless girl out of her house in disgrace, and moved to Moscow where she adopted a young lady of noble birth and made her her heiress. On her return to her own relations, poor and drunken people, Masha’s lot was a bitter one. Tyeglev had promised to marry her and did not keep his promise. At his last interview with her, he was forced to speak out: she wanted to know the truth and wrung it out of him. “Well,” she said, “if I am not to be your wife, I know what there is left for me to do.” More than a fortnight had passed since that last interview.

“I never for a moment deceived myself as to the meaning of her last words,” added Tyeglev. “I am certain that she has put an end to her life and ... and that it was
her
voice, that it was
she
calling me ... to follow her there ... I
recognised
her voice.... Well, there is but one end to it.”

“But why didn’t you marry her, Ilya Stepanitch?” I asked. “You ceased to love her?”

“No; I still love her passionately.”

At this point I stared at Tyeglev. I remembered another friend of mine, a very intelligent man, who had a very plain wife, neither intelligent nor rich and was very unhappy in his marriage. When someone in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested that it was probably for love, he answered, “Not for love at all. It simply happened.” And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately and did not marry her. Was it for the same reason, then?

“Why don’t you marry her, then?” I asked again.

Tyeglev’s strange, drowsy eyes strayed over the table.

“There is ... no answering that ... in a few words,” he began, hesitating. “There were reasons.... And besides, she was ... a working - class girl. And then there is my uncle.... I was obliged to consider him, too.”

“Your uncle?” I cried. “But what the devil do you want with your uncle whom you never see except at the New Year when you go to congratulate him? Are you reckoning on his money? But he has got a dozen children of his own!”

I spoke with heat.... Tyeglev winced and flushed ... flushed unevenly, in patches.

“Don’t lecture me, if you please,” he said dully. “I don’t justify myself, however. I have ruined her life and now I must pay the penalty....”

His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing to say, either.

XI

So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked away -
 
- I looked at him -
 
- and I noticed that the hair stood up and curled above his forehead in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army doctor who had had a great many wounded pass through his hands, is always a symptom of intense overheating of the brain.... The thought struck me again that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man and that his comrades were right in seeing something “fatal” in him. And yet inwardly I blamed him. “A working - class girl!” I thought, “a fine sort of aristocrat you are yourself!”

“Perhaps you blame me, Ridel,” Tyeglev began suddenly, as though guessing what I was thinking. “I am very ... unhappy myself. But what to do? What to do?”

He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the broad flat nails of his short, red fingers, hard as iron.

“What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make certain whether your suppositions are correct.... Perhaps your lady love is alive and well.” (“Shall I tell him the real explanation of the taps?” flashed through my mind. “No -
 
- later.”)

“She has not written to me since we have been in camp,” observed Tyeglev.

“That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch.”

Tyeglev waved me off. “No! she is certainly not in this world. She called me.”

He suddenly turned to the window. “Someone is knocking again!”

I could not help laughing. “No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the sun will be up -
 
- it is past three o’clock -
 
- and ghosts have no power in the day.”

Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth “good - bye,” lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.

I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why Tyeglev was always hinting at ... suicide. What nonsense! What humbug! Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her off ... and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He could not resist posing!

With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my eyes the sun was already high in the sky -
 
- and Tyeglev was not in the hut.

He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.

XII

I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to dinner nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a thick fog came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to bed rather early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.

It was
my
turn to be startled!

The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev. Wrapped in his great - coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood motionless.

“Ilya Stepanitch!” I cried, “is that you? I gave up expecting you. Come in. Is the door locked?”

Tyeglev shook his head. “I do not intend to come in,” he pronounced in a hollow tone. “I only want to ask you to give this letter to the commanding officer to - morrow.”

He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was astonished -
 
- however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once walked away into the middle of the road.

“Stop! stop!” I began. “Where are you going? Have you only just come? And what is the letter?”

“Do you promise to deliver it?” said Tyeglev, and moved away a few steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. “Do you promise?”

“I promise ... but first -
 
- “

Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur. “Good - bye,” I heard his voice. “Farewell, Ridel, don’t remember evil against me.... And don’t forget Semyon....”

And the blur itself vanished.

This was too much. “Oh, the damned
poseur
,” I thought. “You must always be straining after effect!” I felt uneasy, however; an involuntary fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great - coat and ran out into the road.

XIII

Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For five or six steps all round it was a little transparent -
 
- but further away it stood up like a wall, thick and white like cotton wool. I turned to the right along the village street; our house was the last but one in the village and beyond it came waste land overgrown here and there with bushes; beyond the waste land, a quarter of a mile from the village, there was a birch copse through which flowed the same little stream that lower down encircled our village. The moon stood, a pale blur in the sky -
 
- but its light was not, as on the evening before, strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground and listened.... Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of the marsh birds.

“Tyeglev!” I cried. “Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!”

My voice died away near me without an answer; it seemed as though the fog would not let it go further. “Tyeglev!” I repeated.

No one answered.

I went forward at random. Twice I struck against a fence, once I nearly fell into a ditch, and almost stumbled against a peasant’s horse lying on the ground. “Tyeglev! Tyeglev!” I cried.

All at once, almost behind me, I heard a low voice, “Well, here I am. What do you want of me?”

I turned round quickly.

Before me stood Tyeglev with his hands hanging at his sides and with no cap on his head. His face was pale; but his eyes looked animated and bigger than usual. His breathing came in deep, prolonged gasps through his parted lips.