Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (47 page)

VIII

On the evening of the same day, Anna Vassilyevna was sitting in her drawing - room and was on the verge of weeping. There were also in the room her husband and a certain Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov, a distant cousin of Nikolai Artemyevitch, a retired cornet of sixty years old, a man corpulent to the point of immobility, with sleepy yellowish eyes, and colourless thick lips in a puffy yellow face. Ever since he had retired, he had lived in Moscow on the interest of a small capital left him by a wife who came of a shopkeeper’s family. He did nothing, and it is doubtful whether he thought of anything; if he did think, he kept his thoughts to himself. Once only in his life he had been thrown into a state of excitement and shown signs of animation, and that was when he read in the newspapers of a new instrument at the Universal Exhibition in London, the ‘contro - bombardon,’ and became very anxious to order this instrument for himself, and even made inquiries as to where to send the money and through what office. Uvar Ivanovitch wore a loose snuff - coloured coat and a white neckcloth, used to eat often and much, and in moments of great perplexity, that is to say when it happened to him to express some opinion, he would flourish the fingers of his right hand meditatively in the air, with a convulsive spasm from the first finger to the little finger, and back from the little finger to the first finger, while he articulated with effort, ‘to be sure... there ought to... in some sort of a way.’

Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting in an easy chair by the window, breathing heavily; Nikolai Artemyevitch was pacing with long strides up and down the room, his hands thrust into his pockets; his face expressed dissatisfaction.

He stood still at last and shook his head. ‘Yes;’ he began, ‘in our day young men were brought up differently. Young men did not permit themselves to be lacking in respect to their elders. And nowadays, I can only look on and wonder. Possibly, I am all wrong, and they are quite right; possibly. But still I have my own views of things; I was not born a fool. What do you think about it, Uvar Ivanovitch?’

Uvar Ivanovitch could only look at him and work his fingers.

‘Elena Nikolaevna, for instance,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘Elena Nikolaevna I don’t pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the least spider or frog, everything in fact except her own father. Well, that’s all very well; I know it, and I don’t trouble myself about it. For that’s nerves and education and lofty aspirations, and all that is not in my line. But Mr. Shubin... admitting he’s a wonderful artist — quite exceptional — that, I don’t dispute; to show want of respect to his elder, a man to whom, at any rate, one may say he is under great obligation; that I confess,
dans mon gros bon sens
, I cannot pass over. I am not exacting by nature, no, but there is a limit to everything.’

Anna Vassilyevna rang the bell in a tremor. A little page came in.

‘Why is it Pavel Yakovlitch does not come?’ she said, ‘what does it mean; I call him, and he doesn’t come?’

Nikolai Artemyevitch shrugged his shoulders.

‘And what is the object, may I ask, of your wanting to send for him? I don’t expect that at all, I don’t wish it even!’

‘What’s the object, Nikolai Artemyevitch? He has disturbed you; very likely he has checked the progress of your cure. I want to have an explanation with him. I want to know how he has dared to annoy you.’

‘I tell you again, that I do not ask that. And what can induce you ...
devant les domestiques
!’

Anna Vassilyevna flushed a little. ‘You need not say that, Nikolai Artemyevitch. I never...
devant les domestiques
... Fedushka, go and see you bring Pavel Yakovlitch here at once.’

The little page went off.

‘And that’s absolutely unnecessary,’ muttered Nikolai Artemyevitch between his teeth, and he began again pacing up and down the room. ‘I did not bring up the subject with that object.’

‘Good Heavens, Paul must apologise to you.’

‘Good Heavens, what are his apologies to me? And what do you mean by apologies? That’s all words.’

‘Why, he must be corrected.’

‘Well, you can correct him yourself. He will listen to you sooner than to me. For my part I bear him no grudge.’

‘No, Nikolai Artemyevitch, you’ve not been yourself ever since you arrived. You have even to my eyes grown thinner lately. I am afraid your treatment is doing you no good.’

‘The treatment is quite indispensable,’ observed Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘my liver is affected.’

At that instant Shubin came in. He looked tired. A slight almost ironical smile played on his lips.

‘You asked for me, Anna Vassilyevna?’ he observed.

‘Yes, certainly I asked for you. Really, Paul, this is dreadful. I am very much displeased with you. How could you be wanting in respect to Nikolai Artemyevitch?’

‘Nikolai Artemyevitch has complained of me to you?’ inquired Shubin, and with the same smile on his lips he looked at Stahov. The latter turned away, dropping his eyes.

‘Yes, he complains of you. I don’t know what you have done amiss, but you ought to apologise at once, because his health is very much deranged just now, and indeed we all ought when we are young to treat our benefactors with respect.’

‘Ah, what logic!’ thought Shubin, and he turned to Stahov. ‘I am ready to apologise to you, Nikolai Artemyevitch,’ he said with a polite half - bow, ‘if I have really offended you in any way.’

‘I did not at all... with that idea,’ rejoined Nikolai Artemyevitch, still as before avoiding Shubin’s eyes. ‘However, I will readily forgive you, for, as you know, I am not an exacting person.’

‘Oh, that admits of no doubt!’ said Shubin. ‘But allow me to be inquisitive; is Anna Vassilyevna aware precisely what constituted my offence?’

‘No, I know nothing,’ observed Anna Vassilyevna, craning forward her head expectantly.

‘O Good Lord!’ exclaimed Nikolai Artemyevitch hurriedly, ‘how often have I prayed and besought, how often have I said how I hate these scenes and explanations! When one’s been away an age, and comes home hoping for rest — talk of the family circle,
interieur
, being a family man — and here one finds scenes and unpleasantnesses. There’s not a minute of peace. One’s positively driven to the club... or, or elsewhere. A man is alive, he has a physical side, and it has its claims, but here —
 
— ’

And without concluding his sentence Nikolai Artemyevitch went quickly out, slamming the door.

Anna Vassilyevna looked after him. ‘To the club!’ she muttered bitterly: ‘you are not going to the club, profligate? You’ve no one at the club to give away my horses to — horses from my own stable — and the grey ones too! My favourite colour. Yes, yes, fickle - hearted man,’ she went on raising her voice, ‘you are not going to the club, As for you, Paul,’ she pursued, getting up, ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed. I should have thought you would not be so childish. And now my head has begun to ache. Where is Zoya, do you know?’

‘I think she’s upstairs in her room. The wise little fox always hides in her hole when there’s a storm in the air.’

‘Come, please, please!’ Anna Vassilyevna began searching about her. ‘Haven’t you seen my little glass of grated horse - radish? Paul, be so good as not to make me angry for the future.’

‘How make you angry, auntie? Give me your little hand to kiss. Your horse - radish I saw on the little table in the boudoir.’

‘Darya always leaves it about somewhere,’ said Anna Vassilyevna, and she walked away with a rustle of silk skirts.

Shubin was about to follow her, but he stopped on hearing Uvar Ivanovitch’s drawling voice behind him.

‘I would... have given it you... young puppy,’ the retired cornet brought out in gasps.

Shubin went up to him. ‘And what have I done, then, most venerable Uvar Ivanovitch?’

‘How! you are young, be respectful. Yes indeed.’

‘Respectful to whom?’

‘To whom? You know whom. Ay, grin away.’

Shubin crossed his arms on his breast.

‘Ah, you type of the choice element in drama,’ he exclaimed, ‘you primeval force of the black earth, cornerstone of the social fabric!’

Uvar Ivanovitch’s fingers began to work. ‘There, there, my boy, don’t provoke me.’

‘Here,’ pursued Shubin, ‘is a gentleman, not young to judge by appearances, but what blissful, child - like faith is still hidden in him! Respect! And do you know, you primitive creature, what Nikolai Artemyevitch was in a rage with me for? Why I spent the whole of this morning with him at his German woman’s; we were singing the three of us — ”Do not leave me.” You should have heard us — that would have moved you. We sang and sang, my dear sir — and well, I got bored; I could see something was wrong, there was an alarming tenderness in the air. And I began to tease them both. I was very successful. First she was angry with me, then with him; and then he got angry with her, and told her that he was never happy except at home, and he had a paradise there; and she told him he had no morals; and I murmured “Ach!” to her in German. He walked off and I stayed behind; he came here, to his paradise that’s to say, and he was soon sick of paradise, so he set to grumbling. Well now, who do you consider was to blame?’

‘You, of course,’ replied Uvar Ivanovitch.

Shubin stared at him. ‘May I venture to ask you, most reverend knight - errant,’ he began in an obsequious voice, ‘these enigmatical words you have deigned to utter as the result of some exercise of your reflecting faculties, or under the influence of a momentary necessity to start the vibration in the air known as sound?’

‘Don’t tempt me, I tell you,’ groaned Uvar Ivanovitch.

Shubin laughed and ran away. ‘Hi,’ shouted Uvar Ivanovitch a quarter of an hour later, ‘you there... a glass of spirits.’

A little page brought the glass of spirits and some salt fish on a tray. Uvar Ivanovitch slowly took the glass from the tray and gazed a long while with intense attention at it, as though he could not quite understand what it was he had in his hand. Then he looked at the page and asked him, ‘Wasn’t his name Vaska?’ Then he assumed an air of resignation, drank off the spirit, munched the herring and was slowly proceeding to get his handkerchief out of his pocket. But the page had long ago carried off and put away the tray and the decanter, eaten up the remains of the herring and had time to go off to sleep, curled up in a great - coat of his master’s, while Uvar Ivanovitch still continued to hold the handkerchief before him in his opened fingers, and with the same intense attention gazed now at the window, now at the floor and walls.

IX

Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book, when Nikolai Artemyevitch’s valet came cautiously into his room and handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. ‘I hope,’ he found in the note, ‘that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which must be respected, and family tranquillity is something so sacred that only
etres sans cour
(among whom I have no reason to reckon you) would repudiate it! Give this note back to me. — N. S.’

Shubin scribbled below in pencil: ‘Don’t excite yourself, I’m not quite a sneak yet,’ and gave the note back to the man, and again began upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands. He looked at the reddening - sky, at the two mighty young pines standing apart from the other trees, thought ‘by day pines are bluish, but how magnificently green they are in the evening,’ and went out into the garden, in the secret hope of meeting Elena there. He was not mistaken. Before him on a path between the bushes he caught a glimpse of her dress. He went after her, and when he was abreast with her, remarked:

‘Don’t look in my direction, I’m not worth it.’

She gave him a cursory glance, smiled cursorily, and walked on further into the depths of the garden. Shubin went after her.

‘I beg you not to look at me,’ he began, ‘and then I address you; flagrant contradiction. But what of that? it’s not the first time I’ve contradicted myself. I have just recollected that I have never begged your pardon as I ought for my stupid behaviour yesterday. You are not angry with me, Elena Nikolaevna, are you?’

She stood still and did not answer him at once — not because she was angry, but because her thoughts were far away.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I am not in the least angry.’ Shubin bit his lip.

‘What an absorbed... and what an indifferent face!’ he muttered. ‘Elena Nikolaevna,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘allow me to tell you a little anecdote. I had a friend, and this friend also had a friend, who at first conducted himself as befits a gentleman but afterwards took to drink. So one day early in the morning, my friend meets him in the street (and by that time, note, the acquaintance has been completely dropped) meets him and sees he is drunk. My friend went and turned his back on him. But he ran up and said, “I would not be angry,” says he, “if you refused to recognise me, but why should you turn your back on me? Perhaps I have been brought to this through grief. Peace to my ashes!”‘

Shubin paused.

‘And is that all?’ inquired Elena.

‘Yes that’s all.’

‘I don’t understand you. What are you hinting at? You told me just now not to look your way.’

‘Yes, and now I have told you that it’s too bad to turn your back on me.’

‘But did I?’ began Elena.

‘Did you not?’

Elena flushed slightly and held out her hand to Shubin. He pressed it warmly.

‘Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,’ said Elena, ‘but your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of Avoiding you.’

‘Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me. Eh? I’ve spoken the truth, I’m quite sure?’

‘Perhaps so.’

‘And why is it? why?’

‘My ideas are not clear to myself,’ said Elena.

‘Then it’s just the time for confiding them to some one else,’ put in Shubin. ‘But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion of me.’

‘I?’

‘Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half - humbug because I am an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything — in that you are very likely right — but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I’m a gossip and a slanderer, — and all because I’m an artist. What luckless, God - forsaken wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to adore, and you don’t believe in my repentance.’

‘No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you — yes and your tears too.’

Shubin shuddered.

‘Well, I see this is, as the doctors say, a hopeless case,
casus incurabilis
. There is nothing left but to bow the head and submit. And meanwhile, good Heavens, can it be true, can I possibly be absorbed in my own egoism when there is a soul like this living at my side? And to know that one will never penetrate into that soul, never will know why it grieves and why it rejoices, what is working within it, what it desires — whither it is going... Tell me,’ he said after a short silence, ‘could you never under any circumstances love an artist?’

Elena looked straight into his eyes.

‘I don’t think so, Pavel Yakovlitch; no.’

‘Which was to be proved,’ said Shubin with comical dejection. ‘After which I suppose it would be more seemly for me not to intrude on your solitary walk. A professor would ask you on what data you founded your answer no. I’m not a professor though, but a baby according to your ideas; but one does not turn one’s back on a baby, remember. Good - bye! Peace to my ashes!’

Elena was on the point of stopping him, but after a moment’s thought she too said:

‘Good - bye.’

Shubin went out of the courtyard. At a short distance from the Stahov’s house he was met by Bersenyev. He was walking with hurried steps, his head bent and his hat pushed back on his neck.

‘Andrei Petrovitch!’ cried Shubin.

He stopped.

‘Go on, go on,’ continued Shubin, ‘I only shouted, I won’t detain you — and you’d better slip straight into the garden — you’ll find Elena there, I fancy she’s waiting for you... she’s waiting for some one anyway.... Do you understand the force of those words: she is waiting! And do you know, my dear boy, an astonishing circumstance? Imagine, it’s two years now that I have been living in the same house with her, I’m in love with her, and it’s only just now, this minute, that I’ve, not understood, but really seen her. I have seen her and I lifted up my hands in amazement. Don’t look at me, please, with that sham sarcastic smile, which does not suit your sober features. Well, now, I suppose you want to remind me of Annushka. What of it? I don’t deny it. Annushkas are on my poor level. And long life to all Annushkas and Zoyas and even Augustina Christianovnas! You go to Elena now, and I will make my way to — Annushka, you fancy? No, my dear fellow, worse than that; to Prince Tchikurasov. He is a Maecenas of a Kazan - Tartar stock, after the style of Volgin. Do you see this note of invitation, these letters, R.S.V.P.? Even in the country there’s no peace for me. Addio!’ Bersenyev listened to Shubin’s tirade in silence, looking as though he were just a little ashamed of him. Then he went into the courtyard of the Stahovs’ house. And Shubin did really go to Prince Tchikurasov, to whom with the most cordial air he began saying the most insulting things. The Maecenas of the Tartars of Kazan chuckled; the Maecenas’s guests laughed, but no one felt merry, and every one was in a bad temper when the party broke up. So two gentlemen slightly acquainted may be seen when they meet on the Nevsky Prospect suddenly grinning at one another and pursing up their eyes and noses and cheeks, and then, directly they have passed one another, they resume their former indifferent, often cross, and generally sickly, expression.