I questioned the mediator about Evlampia Martinovna, and learnt that she had been lost sight of completely ever since she left home, and probably ‘had departed this life long ago.’
So our worthy mediator expressed himself … but I am convinced that Ihave seenEvlampia, that I have come across her. This was how it was.
Four years after my interview with Anna Martinovna, I was spending the summer at Murino, a little hamlet near Petersburg, a well-known resort of summer visitors of the middle class. The shooting was pretty decent about Murino at that time, and I used to go out with my gun almost every day. I had a companion on my expeditions, a man of the tradesman class, called Vikulov, a very sensible and good-natured fellow; but, as he said of himself, of no position whatever. This man had been simply everywhere, and everything! Nothing could astonish him, he knew everything—but he cared for nothing but shooting and wine. Well, one day we were on our wayhome to Murino, and we chanced to pass a solitary house, standing at the cross-roads, and enclosed by a high, close paling. It was not the first time I had seen the house, and every time it excited my curiosity. There was something about it mysterious, locked-up, grimly-dumb, something suggestive of a prison or a hospital. Nothing of it could be seen from the road but its steep, dark, red-painted roof. There was only one pair of gates in the whole fence; and these seemed fastened and never opened. No sound came from the other side of them. For all that, we felt that some one was certainly living in the house; it had not at all the air of a deserted dwelling. On the contrary, everything about it was stout, and tight, and strong, as if it would stand a siege!
‘What is that fortress?’ I asked my companion. ‘Don’t you know?’
Vikulov gave a sly wink. ‘A fine building, eh? The police-captain of these parts gets a nice little income out of it!’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’ll tell you. You’ve heard, I daresay, of the Flagellant dissenters—that do without priests, you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s there that their chief mother lives.’
‘A woman?’
‘Yes—the mother; a mother of God, they say.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘I tell you, it is so. She is a strict one, they say.… A regular commander-in-chief! She rules over thousands! I’d take her, and all these mothers of God.… But what’s the use of talking?’
He called his Pegashka, a marvellous dog, with an excellent scent, but with no notion of setting. Vikulov was obliged to tie her hind paws to keep her from running so furiously.
His words sank into my memory. I sometimes went out of my way to pass by the mysterious house. One day I had just got up to it, when suddenly—wonderful to relate!—a bolt grated in the gates, a key creaked in the lock, then the gates themselves slowly parted, there appeared a large horse’s head, with a plaited forelock under a decorated yoke, and slowly there rolled into the road a small cart, like those driven by horse-dealers, and higglers. On the leather cushion of the cart, near to me, sat a peasant of about thirty, of a remarkably handsome and attractive appearance, in a neat black smock, and a black cap, pulled down low on his forehead. He was carefully driving the well-fed horse, whose sides were as broad as a stove. Beside the peasant, on the far side of the cart, sat a tall woman, as straight as an arrow. Her head was covered by a costly-looking black shawl. She was dressed in a short jerkin of dove-coloured velvet, and adark blue merino skirt; her white hands she held discreetly clasped on her bosom. The cart turned on the road to the left, and brought the woman within two paces of me; she turned her head a little, and I recognised Evlampia Harlov. I knew her at once, I did not doubt for one instant, and indeed no doubt was possible; eyes like hers, and above all that cut of the lips—haughty and sensual—I had never seen in any one else. Her face had grown longer and thinner, the skin was darker, here and there lines could be discerned; but, above all, the expression of the face was changed! It is difficult to do justice in words to the self-confidence, the sternness, the pride it had gained! Not simply the serenity of power—the satiety of power was visible in every feature. The careless glance she cast at me told of long years of habitually meeting nothing but reverent, unquestioning obedience. That woman clearly lived surrounded, not by worshippers, but by slaves. She had clearly forgotten even the time when any command, any desire of hers, was not carried out at the instant! I called her loudly by her name and her father’s; she gave a faint start, looked at me a second time, not with alarm, but with contemptuous wrath, as though asking—‘Who dares to disturb me?’ and barely parting her lips, uttered a word of command. The peasant sitting beside her started forward, with a wave of hisarm struck the horse with the reins—the horse set off at a strong rapid trot, and the cart disappeared.
Since then I have not seen Evlampia again. In what way Martin Petrovitch’s daughter came to be a Holy Virgin in the Flagellant sect I cannot imagine. But, who knows, very likely she has founded a sect which will be called—or even now is called—after her name, the Evlampieshtchin sect? Anything may be, anything may come to pass.
And so this is what I had to tell you of myLear of the Steppes, of his family and his doings.
The story-teller ceased, and we talked a little longer, and then parted, each to his home.
Weimar, 1870.
FAUST
Goethe
Goethe
Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren(Faust, Part I.)
M—— Village,6th June 1850.
I have been here for three days, my dear fellow, and, as I promised, I take up my pen to write to you. It has been drizzling with fine rain ever since the morning; I can’t go out; and I want a little chat with you, too. Here I am again in my old home, where—it’s a dreadful thing to say—I have not been for nine long years. Really, as you may fancy, I have become quite a different man. Yes, utterly different, indeed; do you remember, in the drawing-room, the little tarnished looking-glass of my great-grandmother’s, with the queer little curly scrolls in the corners—you always used to be speculating on what it had seen a hundredyears ago—directly I arrived, I went up to it, and I could not help feeling disconcerted. I suddenly saw how old and changed I had become in these last years. But I am not alone in that respect. My little house, which was old and tottering long ago, will hardly hold together now, it is all on the slant, and seems sunk into the ground. My dear Vassilievna, the housekeeper (you can’t have forgotten her; she used to regale you with such capital jam), is quite shrivelled up and bent; when she saw me, she could not call out, and did not start crying, but only moaned and choked, sank helplessly into a chair, and waved her hand. Old Terenty has some spirit left in him still; he holds himself up as much as ever, and turns out his feet as he walks. He still wears the same yellow nankeen breeches, and the same creaking goatskin slippers, with high heels and ribbons, which touched you so much sometimes, … but, mercy on us!—how the breeches flap about his thin legs nowadays! how white his hair has grown! and his face has shrunk up into a sort of little fist. When he speaks to me, when he begins directing the servants, and giving orders in the next room, it makes me laugh and feel sorry for him. All his teeth are gone, and he mumbles with a whistling, hissing sound. On the other hand, the garden has got on wonderfully. The modest little plants of lilac, acacia, and honeysuckle(do you remember, we planted them together?) have grown into splendid, thick bushes. The birches, the maples—all that has spread out and grown tall; the avenues of lime-trees are particularly fine. I love those avenues, I love the tender grey, green colour, and the delicate fragrance of the air under their arching boughs; I love the changing net-work of rings of light on the dark earth—there is no sand here, you know. My favourite oak sapling has grown into a young oak tree. Yesterday I spent more than an hour in the middle of the day on a garden bench in its shade. I felt very happy. All about me the grass was deliciously luxuriant; a rich, soft, golden light lay upon everything; it made its way even into the shade … and the birds one could hear! You’ve not forgotten, I expect, that birds are a passion of mine? The turtle-doves cooed unceasingly; from time to time there came the whistle of the oriole; the chaffinch uttered its sweet little refrain; the blackbirds quarrelled and twittered; the cuckoo called far away; suddenly, like a mad thing, the woodpecker uttered its shrill cry. I listened and listened to this subdued, mingled sound, and did not want to move, while my heart was full of something between languor and tenderness.
And it’s not only the garden that has grown up: I am continually coming across sturdy, thick-set lads, whom I cannot recognise as thelittle boys I used to know in old days. Your favourite, Timosha, has turned into a Timofay, such as you could never imagine. You had fears in those days for his health, and predicted consumption; but now you should just see his huge, red hands, as they stick out from the narrow sleeves of his nankeen coat, and the stout rounded muscles that stand out all over him! He has a neck like a bull’s, and a head all over tight, fair curls—a regular Farnese Hercules. His face, though, has changed less than the others’; it is not even much larger in circumference, and the good-humoured, ‘gaping’—as you used to say—smile has remained the same. I have taken him to be my valet; I got rid of my Petersburg fellow at Moscow; he was really too fond of putting me to shame, and making me feel the superiority of his Petersburg manners. Of my dogs I have not found one; they have all passed away. Nefka lived longer than any of them—and she did not live till my return, as Argos lived till the return of Ulysses; she was not fated to look once more with her lustreless eyes on her master and companion in the chase. But Shavka is all right, and barks as hoarsely as ever, and has one ear torn just the same, and burrs sticking to his tail,—all just as it should be. I have taken up my abode in what was your room. It is true the sun beats down upon it, and there are a lot of flies in it; but there is less of the smell of the old house in it than inthe other rooms. It’s a queer thing; that musty, rather sour, faint smell has a powerful effect on my imagination; I don’t mean that it’s disagreeable to me, quite the contrary, but it produces melancholy, and, at last, depression. I am very fond, just as you are, of podgy old chests with brass plates, white armchairs with oval backs, and crooked legs, fly-blown glass lustres, with a big egg of lilac tinsel in the centre—of all sorts of ancestral furniture, in fact. But I can’t stand seeing it all continually; a sort of agitated dejection (it is just that) takes possession of me. In the room where I have established myself, the furniture is of the most ordinary, home-made description. I have left, though, in the corner, a long narrow set of shelves, on which there is an old-fashioned set of blown green and blue glasses, just discernible through the dust. And I have had hung on the wall that portrait of a woman—you remember, in the black frame?—that you used to call the portrait of Manon Lescaut. It has got rather darker in these nine years; but the eyes have the same pensive, sly, and tender look, the lips have the same capricious, melancholy smile, and the half-plucked rose falls as softly as ever from her slender fingers. I am greatly amused by the blinds in my room. They were once green, but have been turned yellow by the sun; on them are depicted, in dark colours, scenes from d’Arlencourt’sHermit. On one curtainthe hermit, with an immense beard, goggle-eyes, and sandals on his feet, is carrying off a young lady with dishevelled locks to the mountains. On another one, there is a terrific combat going on between four knights wearing birettas, and with puffs on their shoulders; one, much foreshortened, lies slain—in fact, there are pictures of all sorts of horrors, while all about there is such unbroken peace, and the blinds themselves throw such soft light on the ceiling.… A sort of inward calm has come upon me since I have been settled here; one wants to do nothing, one wants to see no one, one looks forward to nothing, one is too lazy for thought, but not too lazy for musing; two different things, as you know well. Memories of childhood, at first, came flooding upon me—wherever I went, whatever I looked at, they surged up on all sides, distinct, to the smallest detail, and, as it were, immovable, in their clearly defined outlines.… Then these memories were succeeded by others, then … then I gradually turned away from the past, and all that was left was a sort of drowsy heaviness in my heart. Fancy! as I was sitting on the dike, under a willow, I suddenly and unexpectedly burst out crying, and should have gone on crying a long while, in spite of my advanced years, if I had not been put to shame by a passing peasant woman, who stared at me with curiosity, then, without turning her face towards me, gavea low bow from the waist, and passed on. I should be very glad to remain in the same mood (I shan’t do any more crying, of course) till I go away from here; that is, till September, and should be very sorry if any of my neighbours should take it into his head to call on me. However there is no danger, I fancy, of that; I have no near neighbours here. You will understand me, I’m sure; you know yourself, by experience, how often solitude is beneficial … I need it now after wanderings of all sorts.
But I shan’t be dull. I have brought a few books with me, and I have a pretty fair library here. Yesterday, I opened all the bookcases, and was a long while rummaging about among the musty books. I found many curious things I had not noticed before:Candide, in a manuscript translation of somewhere about 1770; newspapers and magazines of the same period;the Triumphant Chameleon(that is, Mirabeau),le Paysan Perverti, etc. I came across children’s books, my own, and my father’s, and my grandmother’s, and even, fancy, my great grandmother’s; in one dilapidated French grammar in a particoloured binding, was written in fat letters: ‘Ce livre appartient à Mlle Eudoxie de Lavrine,’ and it was dated 1741. I saw books I had brought at different times from abroad, among others, Goethe’sFaust. You’re not aware, perhaps, that there was a time when I knewFaustby heart (the first part, of course)word for word; I was never tired of reading it.… But other days, other dreams, and for the last nine years, it has so happened, that I have scarcely had a Goethe in my hand. It was with an indescribable emotion that I saw the little book I knew so well, again (a poor edition of 1828). I brought it away with me, lay down on the bed, and began to read. How all that splendid first scene affected me! The entrance of the Spirit of the Earth, the words, you remember—‘on the tide of life, in the whirl of creation,’ stirred a long unfamiliar tremor and shiver of ecstasy. I recalled everything: Berlin, and student days, and Fräulein Clara Stick, and Zeidelmann in therôleof Mephistopheles, and the music of Radzivil, and all and everything.… It was a long while before I could get to sleep: my youth rose up and stood before me like a phantom; it ran like fire, like poison through my veins, my heart leaped and would not be still, something plucked at its chords, and yearnings began surging up.…
You see what fantasies your friend gives himself up to, at almost forty, when he sits in solitude in his solitary little house! What if any one could have peeped at me! Well, what? I shouldn’t have been a bit ashamed of myself. To be ashamed is a sign of youth, too; and I have begun (do you know how?) to notice that I’m getting old. I’ll tell you how. I try in these days to make as much as I can of my happy sensations, and to make little of my sad ones, and in the days of my youth I did just the opposite. At times, one used to carry about one’s melancholy as if it were a treasure, and be ashamed of a cheerful mood.… But for all that, it strikes me, that in spite of all my experience of life, there is something in the world, friend Horatio, which I have not experienced, and that ‘something’ almost the most important.
Oh, what have I worked myself up to! Farewell for the present! What are you about in Petersburg? By the way; Savely, my country cook, wishes to send his duty to you. He too is older, but not very much so, he is grown rather corpulent, stouter all over. He is as good as ever at chicken-soup, with stewed onions, cheesecakes with goffered edges, and peagoose—peagoose is the famous dish of the steppes, which makes your tongue white and rough for twenty-four hours after. On the other hand, he roasts the meat as he always did, so that you can hammer on the plate with it—hard as a board. But I must really say, good-bye! Yours, P. B.
M—— Village,June 12, 1850.
I have rather an important piece of news to tell you, my dear friend. Listen! Yesterday I felt disposed for a walk before dinner—only not in the garden; I walked along the road towards the town. Walking rapidly, quite aimlessly, along a straight, long road is very pleasant. You feel as if you’re doing something, hurrying somewhere. I look up; a coach is coming towards me. Surely not some one to see me, I wondered with secret terror.… No: there was a gentleman with moustaches in the carriage, a stranger to me. I felt reassured. But all of a sudden, when he got abreast with me, this gentleman told the coachman to stop the horses, politely raised his cap, and still more politely asked me, ‘was not I …’ mentioning my name. I too came to a standstill, and with the fortitude of a prisoner brought up for trial, replied that I was myself; while I stared like a sheep at the gentlemanwith the moustaches and said to myself—‘I do believe I’ve seen him somewhere!’
‘You don’t recognise me?’ he observed, as he got out of the coach.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘But I knew you directly.’
Explanations followed; it appeared that it was Priemkov—do you remember?—a fellow we used to know at the university. ‘Why, is that an important piece of news?’ you are asking yourself at this instant, my dear Semyon Nikolaitch. ‘Priemkov, to the best of my recollection, was rather a dull chap; no harm in him though, and not a fool.’ Just so, my dear boy; but hear the rest of our conversation.
‘I was delighted,’ says he, ‘when I heard you had come to your country-place, into our neighbourhood. But I was not alone in that feeling.’
‘Allow me to ask,’ I questioned: ‘who was so kind.…’
‘My wife.’
‘Your wife!’
‘Yes, my wife; she is an old acquaintance of yours.’
‘May I ask what was your wife’s name?’
‘Vera Nikolaevna; she was an Eltsov.…’
‘Vera Nikolaevna!’ I could not help exclaiming.…
This it is, which is the important piece of news I spoke of at the beginning of my letter.
But perhaps you don’t see anything important even in this.… I shall have to tell you something of my past … long past, life.
When we both left the university in 183— I was three-and-twenty. You went into the service; I decided, as you know, to go to Berlin. But there was nothing to be done in Berlin before October. I wanted to spend the summer in Russia—in the country—to have a good lazy holiday for the last time; and then to set to work in earnest. How far this last project was carried out, there is no need to enlarge upon here … ‘But where am I to spend the summer?’ I asked myself. I did not want to go to my own place; my father had died not long before, I had no near relations, I was afraid of the solitude and dreariness.… And so I was delighted to receive an invitation from a distant cousin to stay at his country-place in T … province. He was a well-to-do, good-natured, simple-hearted man; he lived in style as a country magnate, and had a palatial country house. I went to stay there. My cousin had a large family; two sons and five daughters. Besides them, there was always a crowd of people in his house. Guests were for ever arriving; and yet it wasn’t jolly at all. The days were spent in noisy entertainments, there was no chance of being by oneself. Everything was done in common, every one tried to be entertaining,to invent some amusement, and at the end of the day every one was fearfully exhausted. There was something vulgar about the way we lived. I was already beginning to look forward to getting away, and was only waiting till my cousin’s birthday festivities were over, when on the very day of those festivities, at the ball, I saw Vera Nikolaevna Eltsov—and I stayed on.
She was at that time sixteen. She was living with her mother on a little estate four miles from my cousin’s place. Her father—a remarkable man, I have been told—had risen rapidly to the grade of colonel, and would have attained further distinctions, but he died young, accidentally shot by a friend when out shooting. Vera Nikolaevna was a baby at the time of his death. Her mother too was an exceptional woman; she spoke several languages, and was very well informed. She was seven or eight years older than her husband whom she had married for love; he had run away with her in secret from her father’s house. She never got over his loss, and, till the day of her death (I heard from Priemkov that she had died soon after her daughter’s marriage), she never wore anything but black. I have a vivid recollection of her face: it was expressive, dark, with thick hair beginning to turn grey; large, severe, lustreless eyes, and a straight, fine nose. Her father—his surname was Ladanov—hadlived for fifteen years in Italy. Vera Nikolaevna’s mother was the daughter of a simple Albanian peasant girl, who, the day after giving birth to her child, was killed by her betrothed lover—a Transteverino peasant—from whom Ladanov had enticed her away.… The story made a great sensation at the time. On his return to Russia, Ladanov never left his house, nor even his study; he devoted himself to chemistry, anatomy, and magical arts; tried to discover means to prolong human life, fancied he could hold intercourse with spirits, and call up the dead.… The neighbours looked upon him as a sorcerer. He was extremely fond of his daughter, and taught her everything himself: but he never forgave her elopement with Eltsov, never allowed either of them to come into his presence, predicted a life of sorrow for both of them, and died in solitude. When Madame Eltsov was left a widow, she devoted her whole time to the education of her daughter, and scarcely saw any friends. When I first met Vera Nikolaevna, she had—just fancy—never been in a town in her life, not even in the town of her district.
Vera Nikolaevna was not like the common run of Russian girls; there was the stamp of something special upon her. I was struck from the first minute by the extraordinary repose of all her movements and remarks.She seemed free from any sort of disturbance or agitation; she answered simply and intelligently, and listened attentively. The expression of her face was sincere and truthful as a child’s, but a little cold and immobile, though not dreamy. She was rarely gay, and not in the way other girls are; the serenity of an innocent heart shone out in everything about her, and cheered one more than any gaiety. She was not tall, and had a very good figure, rather slender; she had soft, regular features, a lovely smooth brow, light golden hair, a straight nose, like her mother’s, and rather full lips; her dark grey eyes looked out somewhat too directly from under soft, upward-turned eyelashes. Her hands were small, and not very pretty; one never sees hands like hers on people of talent … and, as a fact, Vera Nikolaevna had no special talents. Her voice rang out clear as a child of seven’s. I was presented to her mother at my cousin’s ball, and a few days later I called on them for the first time.
Madame Eltsov was a very strange woman, a woman of character, of strong will and concentration. She had a great influence on me; I at once respected her and feared her. Everything with her was done on a principle, and she had educated her daughter too on a principle, though she did not interfere with her freedom. Her daughter loved her andtrusted her blindly. Madame Eltsov had only to give her a book, and say—‘Don’t read that page,’ she would prefer to skip the preceding page as well, and would certainly never glance at the page interdicted. But Madame Eltsov too had heridées fixes, her fads. She was mortally afraid, for instance, of anything that might work upon the imagination. And so her daughter reached the age of seventeen without ever having read a novel or a poem, while in Geography, History, and even Natural History, she would often put me to shame, graduate as I was, and a graduate, as you know, not by any means low down on the list either. I used to try and argue with Madame Eltsov about her fad, though it was difficult to draw her into conversation; she was very silent. She simply shook her head.
‘You tell me,’ she said at last, ‘that reading poetry isbothusefulandpleasant.… I consider one must make one’s choice early in life;eitherthe usefulorthe pleasant, and abide by it once for all. I, too, tried at one time to unite the two.… That’s impossible, and leads to ruin or vulgarity.’
Yes, a wonderful being she was, that woman, an upright, proud nature, not without a certain fanaticism and superstition of her own. ‘I am afraid of life,’ she said to me one day. And really she was afraid of it, afraid of those secret forces on which life rests and which rarely, butso suddenly, break out. Woe to him who is their sport! These forces had shown themselves in fearful shape for Madame Eltsov; think of her mother’s death, her husband’s, her father’s.… Any one would have been panic-stricken. I never saw her smile. She had, as it were, locked herself up and thrown the key into the water. She must have suffered great grief in her time, and had never shared it with any one; she had hidden it all away within herself. She had so thoroughly trained herself not to give way to her feelings that she was even ashamed to express her passionate love for her daughter; she never once kissed her in my presence, and never used any endearing names, always Vera. I remember one saying of hers; I happened to say to her that all of us modern people were half broken by life. ‘It’s no good being half broken,’ she observed; ‘one must be broken in thoroughly or let it alone.…’
Very few people visited Madame Eltsov; but I went often to see her. I was secretly aware that she looked on me with favour; and I liked Vera Nikolaevna very much indeed. We used to talk and walk together.… Her mother was no check upon us; the daughter did not like to be away from her mother, and I, for my part, felt no craving for solitary talks with her.… Vera Nikolaevna had a strange habit of thinking aloud; she used at night in her sleep to talk loudly and distinctly aboutwhat had impressed her during the day. One day, looking at me attentively, leaning softly, as her way was, on her hand, she said, ‘It seems to me that B. is a good person, but there’s no relying on him.’ The relations existing between us were of the friendliest and most tranquil; only once I fancied I detected somewhere far off in the very depths of her clear eyes something strange, a sort of softness and tenderness.… But perhaps I was mistaken.
Meanwhile the time was slipping by, and it was already time for me to prepare for departure. But still I put it off. At times, when I thought, when I realised that soon I should see no more of this sweet girl I had grown so fond of, I felt sick at heart.… Berlin began to lose its attractive force. I had not the courage to acknowledge to myself what was going on within me, and, indeed, I didn’t understand what was taking place,—it was as though a cloud were overhanging my soul. At last one morning everything suddenly became clear to me. ‘Why seek further, what is there to strive towards? Why, I shall not attain to truth in any case. Isn’t it better to stay here, to be married?’ And, imagine, the idea of marriage had no terrors for me in those days. On the contrary, I rejoiced in it. More than that; that day I declared my intentions; only not to Vera Nikolaevna, as one wouldnaturally suppose, but to Madame Eltsov. The old lady looked at me.
‘No,’ she said; ‘my dear boy, go to Berlin, get broken in thoroughly. You’re a good fellow; but it’s not a husband like you that’s needed for Vera.’
I hung my head, blushed, and, what will very likely surprise you still more, inwardly agreed with Madame Eltsov on the spot. A week later I went away, and since then I have not seen her nor Vera Nikolaevna.
I have related this episode briefly because I know you don’t care for anything ‘meandering.’ When I got to Berlin I very quickly forgot Vera Nikolaevna.… But I will own that hearing of her so unexpectedly has excited me. I am impressed by the idea that she is so close, that she is my neighbour, that I shall see her in a day or two. The past seems suddenly to have sprung up out of the earth before my eyes, and to have rushed down upon me. Priemkov informed me that he was coming to call upon me with the very object of renewing our old acquaintance, and that he should look forward to seeing me at his house as soon as I could possibly come. He told me he had been in the cavalry, had retired with the rank of lieutenant, had bought an estate about six miles from me, and was intending to devote himself to its management, that he had had three children, but that two haddied, and he had only a little girl of five surviving.
‘And does your wife remember me?’ I inquired.
‘Yes, she remembers you,’ he replied, with some slight hesitation. ‘Of course, she was a child, one may say, in those days; but her mother always spoke very highly of you, and you know how precious every word of her poor mother’s is to her.’
I recalled Madame Eltsov’s words, that I was not suitable for her Vera.… ‘I suppose you were suitable,’ I thought, with a sidelong look at Priemkov. He spent some hours with me. He is a very nice, dear, good fellow, speaks so modestly, and looks at me so good-naturedly. One can’t help liking him … but his intellectual powers have not developed since we used to know him. I shall certainly go and see him, possibly to-morrow. I am exceedingly curious to see how Vera Nikolaevna has turned out.
You, spiteful fellow, are most likely laughing at me as you read this, sitting at your directors’ table. But I shall write and tell you, all the same, the impression she makes on me. Good-bye—till my next.—Yours, P. B.
M—— Village,June 16, 1850.
Well, my dear boy, I have been to her house; I have seen her. First of all I must tell you one astonishing fact: you may believe me or not as you like, but she has scarcely changed at all either in face or in figure. When she came to meet me, I almost cried out in amazement; it was simply a little girl of seventeen! Only her eyes are not a little girl’s; but then her eyes were never like a child’s, even in her young days,—they were too clear. But the same composure, the same serenity, the same voice, not one line on her brow, as though she had been laid in the snow all these years. And she’s twenty-eight now, and has had three children.… It’s incomprehensible! Don’t imagine, please, that I had some preconceived preference, and so am exaggerating; quite the other way; I don’t like this absence of change in her a bit.
A woman of eight-and-twenty, a wife and amother, ought not to be like a little girl; she should have gained something from life. She gave me a very cordial welcome; but Priemkov was simply overjoyed at my arrival; the dear fellow seems on the look-out for some one to make much of. Their house is very cosy and clean. Vera Nikolaevna was dressed, too, like a girl; all in white, with a blue sash, and a slender gold chain on her neck. Her daughter is very sweet and not at all like her. She reminds one of her grandmother. In the drawing-room, just over a sofa, there hangs a portrait of that strange woman, a striking likeness. It caught my eye directly I went into the room. It seemed as though she were gazing sternly and earnestly at me. We sat down, spoke of old times, and by degrees got into conversation. I could not help continually glancing at the gloomy portrait of Madame Eltsov. Vera Nikolaevna was sitting just under it; it is her favourite place. Imagine my amazement: Vera Nikolaevna has never yet read a single novel, a single poem—in fact, not a single invented work, as she expresses it! This incomprehensible indifference to the highest pleasures of the intellect irritated me. In a woman of intelligence, and as far as I can judge, of sensibility, it’s simply unpardonable.
‘What? do you make it a principle,’ I asked,‘never to read books of that sort?’
‘I have never happened to,’ she answered; ‘I haven’t had time!’
‘Not time! You surprise me! I should have thought,’ I went on, addressing Priemkov, ‘you would have interested your wife in poetry.’
‘I should have been delighted——’ Priemkov was beginning, but Vera Nikolaevna interrupted him—
‘Don’t pretend; you’ve no great love for poetry yourself.’
‘Poetry; well, no,’ he began; ‘I’m not very fond of it; but novels, now.…’
‘But what do you do, how do you spend your evenings?’ I queried; ‘do you play cards?’
‘We sometimes play,’ she answered; ‘but there’s always plenty to do. We read, too; there are good books to read besides poetry.’
‘Why are you so set against poetry?’
‘I’m not set against it; I have been used to not reading these invented works from a child. That was my mother’s wish, and the longer I live the more I am convinced that everything my mother did, everything she said, was right, sacredly right.’
‘Well, as you will, but I can’t agree with you; I am certain you are depriving yourself quite needlessly of the purest, the most legitimate pleasure. Why, you’re not opposed to music and painting, I suppose; why be opposed to poetry?’
‘I’m not opposed to it; I have never got to know anything of it—that’s all.’
‘Well, then, I will see to that! Your mother did not, I suppose, wish to prevent your knowing anything of the works of creative, poetic art all your life?’
‘No; when I was married, my mother removed every restriction; it never occurred to me to read—what did you call them?… well, anyway, to read novels.’
I listened to Vera Nikolaevna in astonishment. I had not expected this.
She looked at me with her serene glance. Birds look so when they are not frightened.
‘I’ll bring you a book!’ I cried. (I thought ofFaust, which I had just been reading.)
Vera Nikolaevna gave a gentle sigh.
‘It——it won’t be Georges—Sand?’ she questioned with some timidity.
‘Ah! then you’ve heard of her? Well, if it were, where’s the harm?… No, I’ll bring you another author. You’ve not forgotten German, have you?’
‘No.’
‘She speaks it like a German,’ put in Priemkov.
‘Well, that’s splendid! I will bring you—but there, you shall see what a wonderful thing I will bring you.’
‘Very good, we shall see. But now let us go into the garden, or there’ll be no keeping Natasha still.’
She put on a round straw hat, a child’s hat, just such a one as her daughter was wearing, only a little larger, and we went into the garden. I walked beside her. In the fresh air, in the shade of the tall limes, I thought her face looked sweeter than ever, especially when she turned a little and threw back her head so as to look up at me from under the brim of her hat. If it had not been for Priemkov walking behind us, and the little girl skipping about in front of us, I could really have fancied I was three-and-twenty, instead of thirty-five; and that I was just on the point of starting for Berlin, especially as the garden we were walking in was very much like the garden in Madame Eltsov’s estate. I could not help expressing my feelings to Vera Nikolaevna.
‘Every one tells me that I am very little changed externally,’ she answered, ‘though indeed I have remained just the same inwardly too.’
We came up to a little Chinese summer-house.
‘We had no summer-house like this at Osinovka,’ she said; ‘but you mustn’t mind its being so tumbledown and discoloured: it’s very nice and cool inside.’
We went into the house. I looked round.
‘I tell you what, Vera Nikolaevna,’ I observed,‘you let them bring a table and some chairs in here. Here it is really delicious. I will read you here Goethe’sFaust—that’s the thing I am going to read you.’
‘Yes, there are no flies here,’ she observed simply. ‘When will you come?’
‘The day after to-morrow.’
‘Very well,’ she answered. ‘I will arrange it.’
Natasha, who had come into the summer-house with us, suddenly gave a shriek and jumped back, quite pale.
‘What is it?’ inquired Vera Nikolaevna.
‘O mammy,’ said the little girl, pointing into the corner, ‘look, what a dreadful spider!’
Vera Nikolaevna looked into the corner: a fat mottled spider was crawling slowly along the wall.
‘What is there to fear in that?’ she said. ‘It won’t bite, look.’
And before I had time to stop her, she took up the hideous insect, let it run over her hand, and threw it away.
‘Well, you are brave!’ I cried.
‘Where is the bravery in that? It wasn’t a venomous spider.’
‘One can see you are as well up in Natural History as ever, but I couldn’t have held it in my hand.’
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of!’ repeated Vera Nikolaevna.
Natasha looked at us both in silence, and laughed.
‘How like your mother she is!’ I remarked.
‘Yes,’ rejoined Vera Nikolaevna with a smile of pleasure, ‘it is a great happiness to me. God grant she may be like her, not in face only!’
We were called in to dinner, and after dinner I went away.
N.B.—The dinner was very good and well-cooked, an observation in parenthesis for you, you gourmand!
To-morrow I shall take themFaust. I’m afraid old Goethe and I may not come off very well. I will write and tell you all about it most exactly.
Well, and what do you think of all these proceedings? No doubt, that she has made a great impression on me, that I’m on the point of falling in love, and all the rest of it? Rubbish, my dear boy! There’s a limit to everything. I’ve been fool enough. No more! One can’t begin life over again at my age. Besides, I never did care for women of that sort.… Nice sort of women I did care for, if you come to that!!
‘I shudder—my heart is sick—I am ashamed of my idols.’
‘I shudder—my heart is sick—I am ashamed of my idols.’
‘I shudder—my heart is sick—
I am ashamed of my idols.’
Any way, I am very glad of such neighbours, glad of the opportunity of seeing something of an intelligent, simple, bright creature. And as to what comes of it later on, you shall hear in due time.—Yours, P. B.
M—— Village,June 20, 1850.
The reading took place yesterday, dear friend, and here follows the manner thereof. First of all, I hasten to tell you: a success quite beyond all expectation—success, in fact, is not the word.… Well, I’ll tell you. I arrived to dinner. We sat down a party of six to dinner: she, Priemkov, their little girl, the governess (an uninteresting colourless figure), I, and an old German in a short cinnamon-coloured frock-coat, very clean, well-shaved and brushed; he had the meekest, most honest face, and a toothless smile, and smelled of coffee mixed with chicory … all old Germans have that peculiar odour about them. I was introduced to him; he was one Schimmel, a German tutor, living with the princes H., neighbours of the Priemkovs. Vera Nikolaevna, it appeared, had a liking for him, and had invited him to be present at the reading. We dined late, and sat a long while at table, and afterwards went a walk. Theweather was exquisite. In the morning there had been rain and a blustering wind, but towards evening all was calm again. We came out on to an open meadow. Directly over the meadow a great rosy cloud poised lightly, high up in the sky; streaks of grey stretched like smoke over it; on its very edge, continually peeping out and vanishing again, quivered a little star, while a little further off the crescent of the moon shone white upon a background of azure, faintly flushed with red. I drew Vera Nikolaevna’s attention to the cloud.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is lovely; but look in this direction.’ I looked round. An immense dark-blue storm-cloud rose up, hiding the setting sun; it reared a crest like a thick sheaf flung upwards against the sky; it was surrounded by a bright rim of menacing purple, which in one place, in the very middle, broke right through its mighty mass, like fire from a burning crater.…
‘There’ll be a storm,’ remarked Priemkov.
But I am wandering from the main point.
I forgot to tell you in my last letter that when I got home from the Priemkovs’ I felt sorry I had mentionedFaust; Schiller would have been a great deal better for the first time, if it was to be something German. I felt especially afraid of the first scenes, before the meeting with Gretchen. I was not quite easyabout Mephistopheles either. But I was under the spell ofFaust, and there was nothing else I could have read with zest. It was quite dark when we went into the summer-house; it had been made ready for us the day before. Just opposite the door, before a little sofa, stood a round table covered with a cloth; easy-chairs and seats were placed round it; there was a lamp alight on the table. I sat down on the little sofa, and took out the book. Vera Nikolaevna settled herself in an easy-chair, a little way off, close to the door. In the darkness, through the door, a green branch of acacia stood out in the lamplight, swaying lightly; from time to time a flood of night air flowed into the room. Priemkov sat near me at the table, the German beside him. The governess had remained in the house with Natasha. I made a brief, introductory speech. I touched on the old legend of doctor Faust, the significance of Mephistopheles, and Goethe himself, and asked them to stop me if anything struck them as obscure. Then I cleared my throat.… Priemkov asked me if I wouldn’t have some sugar water, and one could perceive that he was very well satisfied with himself for having put this question to me. I refused. Profound silence reigned. I began to read, without raising my eyes. I felt ill at ease; my heart beat, and my voice shook. The first exclamation of sympathy came from the German, and hewas the only one to break the silence all the while I was reading.… ‘Wonderful! sublime!’ he repeated, adding now and then, ‘Ah! that’s profound.’ Priemkov, as far as I could observe, was bored; he did not know German very well, and had himself admitted he did not care for poetry!… Well, it was his own doing! I had wanted to hint at dinner that his company could be dispensed with at the reading, but I felt a delicacy about saying so. Vera Nikolaevna did not stir; twice I stole a glance at her. Her eyes were fixed directly and intently upon me; her face struck me as pale. After the first meeting of Faust with Gretchen she bent forward in her low chair, clasped her hands, and remained motionless in that position till the end. I felt that Priemkov was thoroughly sick of it, and at first that depressed me, but gradually I forgot him, warmed up, and read with fire, with enthusiasm.… I was reading for Vera Nikolaevna alone; an inner voice told me thatFaustwas affecting her. When I finished (the intermezzo I omitted: that bit belongs in style to the second part, and I skipped part, too, of the ‘Night on the Brocken’) … when I finished, when that last ‘Heinrich!’ was heard, the German with much feeling commented—‘My God! how splendid!’ Priemkov, apparently overjoyed (poor chap!), leaped up, gave a sigh, and began thanking me for the treat I had given them.… But I made him no reply; I looked towards Vera Nikolaevna … I wanted to hear what she would say. She got up, walked irresolutely towards the door, stood a moment in the doorway, and softly went out into the garden. I rushed after her. She was already some paces off; her dress was just visible, a white patch in the thick shadow.
‘Well?’ I called—‘didn’t you like it?’
She stopped.
‘Can you leave me that book?’ I heard her voice saying.
‘I will present it you, Vera Nikolaevna, if you care to have it.’
‘Thank you!’ she answered, and disappeared.
Priemkov and the German came up to me.
‘How wonderfully warm it is!’ observed Priemkov; ‘it’s positively stifling. But where has my wife gone?’
‘Home, I think,’ I answered.
‘I suppose it will soon be time for supper,’ he rejoined. ‘You read splendidly,’ he added, after a short pause.
‘Vera Nikolaevna likedFaust, I think,’ said I.
‘No doubt of it!’ cried Priemkov.
‘Oh, of course!’ chimed in Schimmel.
We went into the house.
‘Where’s your mistress?’ Priemkov inquired of a maid who happened to meet us.
‘She has gone to her bedroom.’
Priemkov went off to her bedroom.
I went out on to the terrace with Schimmel. The old man raised his eyes towards the sky.
‘How many stars!’ he said slowly, taking a pinch of snuff; ‘and all are worlds,’ he added, and he took another pinch.
I did not feel it necessary to answer him, and simply gazed upwards in silence. A secret uncertainty weighed upon my heart.… The stars, I fancied, looked down seriously at us. Five minutes later Priemkov appeared and called us into the dining-room. Vera Nikolaevna came in soon after. We sat down.
‘Look at Verotchka,’ Priemkov said to me.
I glanced at her.
‘Well? don’t you notice anything?’
I certainly did notice a change in her face, but I answered, I don’t know why—
‘No, nothing.’
‘Her eyes are red,’ Priemkov went on.
I was silent.
‘Only fancy! I went upstairs to her and found her crying. It’s a long while since such a thing has happened to her. I can tell you the last time she cried; it was when our Sasha died. You see what you have done with yourFaust!’ he added, with a smile.
‘So you see now, Vera Nikolaevna,’ I began, ‘that I was right when——’
‘I did not expect this,’ she interrupted me;‘but God knows whether you are right. Perhaps that was the very reason my mother forbade my reading such books,—she knew——’
Vera Nikolaevna stopped.
‘What did she know?’ I asked. ‘Tell me.’
‘What for? I’m ashamed of myself, as it is; what did I cry for? But we’ll talk about it another time. There was a great deal I did not quite understand.’
‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘I understood all the words, and the meaning of them, but——’
She did not finish her sentence, and looked away dreamily. At that instant there came from the garden the sound of rustling leaves, suddenly fluttering in the rising wind. Vera Nikolaevna started and looked round towards the open window.
‘I told you there would be a storm!’ cried Priemkov. ‘But what made you start like that, Verotchka?’
She glanced at him without speaking. A faint, far-off flash of lightning threw a mysterious light on her motionless face.
‘It’s all due to yourFaust,’ Priemkov went on. ‘After supper we must all go to by-by.… Mustn’t we, Herr Schimmel?’
‘After intellectual enjoyment physical repose is as grateful as it is beneficial,’ responded the kind-hearted German, and he drank a wine-glass of vodka.
Immediately after supper we separated. AsI said good-night to Vera Nikolaevna I pressed her hand; her hand was cold. I went up to the room assigned to me, and stood a long while at the window before I undressed and got into bed. Priemkov’s prediction was fulfilled; the storm came close, and broke. I listened to the roar of the wind, the patter and splash of the rain, and watched how the church, built close by, above the lake, at each flash of lightning stood out, at one moment black against a background of white, at the next white against a background of black, and then was swallowed up in the darkness again.… But my thoughts were far away. I kept thinking of Vera Nikolaevna, of what she would say to me when she had readFaustherself, I thought of her tears, remembered how she had listened.…
The storm had long passed away, the stars came out, all was hushed around. Some bird I did not know sang different notes, several times in succession repeating the same phrase. Its clear, solitary voice rang out strangely in the deep stillness; and still I did not go to bed.…
Next morning, earlier than all the rest, I was down in the drawing-room. I stood before the portrait of Madame Eltsov. ‘Aha,’ I thought, with a secret feeling of ironical triumph, ‘after all, I have read your daughter a forbidden book!’ All at once I fancied—youhave most likely noticed that eyesen facealways seem fixed straight on any one looking at a picture—but this time I positively fancied the old lady moved them with a reproachful look on me.
I turned round, went to the window, and caught sight of Vera Nikolaevna. With a parasol on her shoulder and a light white kerchief on her head, she was walking about the garden. I went out at once and said good-morning to her.
‘I didn’t sleep all night,’ she said; ‘my head aches; I came out into the air—it may go off.’
‘Can that be the result of yesterday’s reading?’ I asked.
‘Of course; I am not used to it. There are things in your book I can’t get out of my mind; I feel as though they were simply turning my head,’ she added, putting her hand to her forehead.
‘That’s splendid,’ I commented; ‘but I tell you what I don’t like—I’m afraid this sleeplessness and headache may turn you against reading such things.’
‘You think so?’ she responded, and she picked a sprig of wild jasmine as she passed. ‘God knows! I fancy if one has once entered on that path, there is no turning back.’
She suddenly flung away the spray.
‘Come, let us sit down in this arbour,’ she went on; ‘and please, until I talk of it of myown accord, don’t remind me—of that book.’ (She seemed afraid to utter the nameFaust.)
We went into the arbour and sat down.
‘I won’t talk to you aboutFaust,’ I began; ‘but you will let me congratulate you and tell you that I envy you.’
‘You envy me?’
‘Yes; you, as I know you now, with your soul, have such delights awaiting you! There are great poets besides Goethe; Shakespeare, Schiller—and, indeed, our own Pushkin, and you must get to know him too.’
She did not speak, and drew in the sand with her parasol.
O, my friend, Semyon Nikolaitch! if you could have seen how sweet she was at that instant; pale almost to transparency, stooping forward a little, weary, inwardly perturbed—and yet serene as the sky! I talked, talked a long while, then ceased, and sat in silence watching her.… She did not raise her eyes, and went on drawing with her parasol and rubbing it out again. Suddenly we heard quick, childish steps; Natasha ran into the arbour. Vera Nikolaevna drew herself up, rose, and to my surprise she embraced her daughter with a sort of passionate tenderness.… That was not one of her ways. Then Priemkov made his appearance. Schimmel, that grey-haired but punctual innocent, had left before daybreak so as not to miss a lesson. We went in to morning tea.
But I am tired; it’s high time to finish this letter. It’s sure to strike you as foolish and confused. I feel confused myself. I’m not myself. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I am continually haunted by a little room with bare walls, a lamp, an open door, the fragrance and freshness of the night, and there, near the door, an intent youthful face, light white garments.… I understand now why I wanted to marry her: I was not so stupid, it seems, before my stay in Berlin as I had hitherto supposed. Yes, Semyon Nikolaitch, your friend is in a curious frame of mind. All this I know will pass off … and if it doesn’t pass off,—well, what then? it won’t pass off, and that’s all. But any way I am well satisfied with myself; in the first place, I have spent an exquisite evening; and secondly, if I have awakened that soul, who can blame me? Old Madame Eltsov is nailed up on the wall, and must hold her peace. The old thing!… I don’t know all the details of her life; but I know she ran away from her father’s house; she was not half Italian for nothing, it seems. She wanted to keep her daughter secure … we shall see.
I must put down my pen. You, jeering person, pray think what you like of me, only don’t jeer at me in writing. You and I are old friends, and ought to spare each other. Good-bye!—Yours, P. B.
M—— Village,July 26, 1850.
It’s a long time since I wrote to you, dear Semyon Nicolaitch; more than a month, I think. I had enough to write about but I was overcome by laziness. To tell the truth, I have hardly thought of you all this time. But from your last letter to me I gather that you are drawing conclusions in regard to me, which are unjust, that is to say, not altogether just. You imagine I have fallen in love with Vera (I feel it awkward, somehow, to call her Vera Nikolaevna); you are wrong. Of course I see her often, I like her extremely … indeed, who wouldn’t like her? I should like to see you in my place. She’s an exquisite creature! Rapid intuition, together with the inexperience of a child, clear common-sense, and an innate feeling for beauty, a continual striving towards the true and the lofty, and a comprehension of everything, even of the vicious, even of the ridiculous, a soft womanly charm broodingover all this like an angel’s white wings.… But what’s the use of words! We have read a great deal, we have talked a great deal together during this month. Reading with her is a delight such as I had never experienced before. You seem to be discovering new worlds. She never goes into ecstasies over anything; anything boisterous is distasteful to her; she is softly radiant all over when she likes anything, and her face wears such a noble and good—yes, good expression. From her earliest childhood Vera has not known what deceit was; she is accustomed to truth, it is the breath of her being, and so in poetry too, only what is true strikes her as natural; at once, without effort or difficulty, she recognises it as a familiar face … a great privilege and happiness. One must give her mother credit for it. How many times have I thought, as I watched Vera—yes, Goethe was right, ‘the good even in their obscure striving feel always where the true path lies.’ There is only one thing annoying—her husband is always about the place. (Please don’t laugh a senseless guffaw, don’t sully our pure friendship, even in thought). He is about as capable of understanding poetry as I am of playing the flute, but he does not like to lag behind his wife, he wants to improve himself too. Sometimes she puts me out of patience herself; all of a sudden a mood comes over her; she won’t read or talk, she works at her embroidery frame, busies herself with Natasha, or with the housekeeper, runs off all at once into the kitchen, or simply sits with her hands folded looking out of the window, or sets to playing ‘fools’ with the nurse.… I have noticed at these times it doesn’t do to bother her; it’s better to bide one’s time till she comes up, begins to talk or takes up a book. She has a great deal of independence, and I am very glad of it. In the days of our youth, do you remember, young girls would sometimes repeat one’s own words to one, as they so well knew how, and one would be in ecstasies over the echo, and possibly quite impressed by it, till one realised what it meant? but this woman’s … not so; she thinks for herself. She takes nothing on trust; there’s no overawing her with authority; she won’t begin arguing; but she won’t give in either. We have discussedFaustmore than once; but, strange to say, Gretchen she never speaks of, herself, she only listens to what I say of her. Mephistopheles terrifies her, not as the devil, but as ‘something which may exist in every man.…’ These are her own words. I began trying to convince her that this ‘something’ is what we call reflection; but she does not understand the word reflection in its German sense; she only knows the French ‘refléxion’, and is accustomed to regarding it as useful. Our relations aremarvellous! From a certain point of view I can say that I have a great influence over her, and am, as it were, educating her; but she too, though she is unaware of it herself, is changing me for the better in many ways. It’s only lately, for instance—thanks to her—that I have discovered what an immense amount of conventional, rhetorical stuff there is in many fine and celebrated poetical works. What leaves her cold is at once suspect in my eyes. Yes, I have grown better, serener. One can’t be near her, see her, and remain the man one was.
What will come of all this? you ask. I really believe—nothing. I shall pass my time very delightfully till September and then go away. Life will seem dark and dreary to me for the first months … I shall get used to it. I know how full of danger is any tie whatever between a man and a young woman, how imperceptibly one feeling passes into another … I should have had the strength to break it off, if I had not been sure that we were both perfectly undisturbed. It is true one day something queer passed between us. I don’t know how or from what—I remember we had been readingOniegin—I kissed her hand. She turned a little away, bent her eyes upon me (I have never seen such a look, except in her; there is dreaminess and intent attentionin it, and a sort of sternness), … suddenly flushed, got up and went away. I did not succeed in being alone with her that day. She avoided me, and for four mortal hours she played cards with her husband, the nurse, and the governess! Next morning she proposed a walk in the garden to me. We walked all through it, down to the lake. Suddenly without turning towards me, she softly whispered—‘Please don’t do that again!’ and instantly began telling me about something else.… I was very much ashamed.
I must admit that her image is never out of my mind, and indeed I may almost say I have begun writing a letter to you with the object of having a reason for thinking and talking about her. I hear the tramp and neighing of horses; it’s my carriage being got ready. I am going to see them. My coachman has given up asking me where to drive to, when I get into my carriage—he takes me straight off to the Priemkovs’. A mile and a half from their village, at an abrupt turn in the road, their house suddenly peeps out from behind a birch copse.… Each time I feel a thrill of joy in my heart directly I catch the glimmer of its windows in the distance. Schimmel (the harmless old man comes to see them from time to time; the princes H——, thank God, have only called once) … Schimmel, with the modest solemnity characteristic of him, said very aptly, pointing to the house whereVera lives: ‘That is the abode of peace!’ In that house dwells an angel of peace.…