Anna Vassilyevna Stahov—her maiden name was Shubin—had been left, at seven years old, an orphan and heiress of a pretty considerable property. She had very rich and also very poor relations; the poor relations were on her father’s, the rich on her mother’s side; the latter including the senator Volgin and the Princes Tchikurasov. Prince Ardalion Tchikurasov, who had been appointed her guardian, placed her in the best Moscow boarding-school, and when she left school, took her into his own home. He kept open house, and gave balls in the winter. Anna Vassilyevna’s future husband, Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov, captured her heart at one of these balls when she was arrayed in a charming rose-coloured gown, with a wreath of tiny roses. She had treasured that wreath all her life. Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov was the son of a retired captain, who had been wounded in 1812, and had received a lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered the School of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He was a handsome, well-made fellow, and reckoned almost the most dashing beau at evening parties of the middling sort, which were those he frequented for the most part; he had not gained a footing in the best society. From his youth he had been absorbed by two ideals: to get into the Imperial adjutants, and to make a good marriage; the first ideal he soon discarded, but he clung all the more closely to the second, and it was with that object that he went every winter to Moscow. Nikolai Artemyevitch spoke French fairly, and passed for being a philosopher, because he was not a rake. Even while he was no more than an ensign, he was given to discussing, persistently, such questions as whether it is possible for a man to visit the whole of the globe in the course of his whole lifetime, whether it is possible for a man to know what is happening at the bottom of the sea; and he always maintained the view that these things were impossible.
Nikolai Artemyevitch was twenty-five years old when he ‘hooked’ Anna Vassilyevna; he retired from the service and went into the country to manage the property. He was soon tired of country life, and as the peasants’ labour was all commuted for rent he could easily leave the estate; he settled in Moscow in his wife’s house. In his youth he had played no games of any kind, but now he developed a passion for loto, and, when loto was prohibited, for whist. At home he was bored; he formed a connection with a widow of German extraction, and spent almost all his time with her. In the year 1853 he had not moved to Kuntsovo; he stopped at Moscow, ostensibly to take advantage of the mineral waters; in reality, he did not want to part from his widow. He did not, however, have much conversation with her, but argued more than ever as to whether one can foretell the weather and such questions. Some one had once called him afrondeur; he was greatly delighted with that name. ‘Yes,’ he thought, letting the corners of his mouth drop complacently and shaking his head, ‘I am not easily satisfied; you won’t take me in.’ Nikolai Artemyevitch’sfrondeurismconsisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: ‘And what do you mean by nerves?’ or if some one alluded in his presence to the discoveries of astronomy, asking: ‘And do you believe in astronomy?’ When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he said: ‘All that is nothing but words.’ It must be admitted that to many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected that Augustina Christianovna, in letters to her cousin, Theodolina Peterzelius, called himMein Pinselchen.
Nikolai Artemyevitch’s wife, Anna Vassilyevna, was a thin, little woman with delicate features, and a tendency to be emotional and melancholy. At school, she had devoted herself to music and reading novels; afterwards she abandoned all that. She began to be absorbed in dress, and that, too, she gave up. She did, for a time, undertake her daughter’s education, but she got tired of that too, and handed her over to a governess. She ended by spending her whole time in sentimental brooding and tender melancholy. The birth of Elena Nikolaevna had ruined her health, and she could never have another child. Nikolai Artemyevitch used to hint at this fact in justification of his intimacy with Augustina Christianovna. Her husband’s infidelity wounded Anna Vassilyevna deeply; she had been specially hurt by his once giving his German woman, on the sly, a pair of grey horses out of her (Anna Vassilyevna’s) own stable. She had never reproached him to his face, but she complained of him secretly to every one in the house in turn, even to her daughter. Anna Vassilyevna did not care for going out, she liked visitors to come and sit with her and talk to her; she collapsed at once when she was left alone. She had a very tender and loving heart; life had soon crushed her.
Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had entered cadets’ corps; he was the youngest, his mother’s darling, and of delicate constitution; he stopped at home. They intended him for the university, and strained every effort to keep him at the gymnasium. From his early years he began to show an inclination for sculpture. The ponderous senator, Volgin, saw a statuette of his one day at his aunt’s—he was then sixteen—and declared that he intended to protect this youthful genius. The sudden death of Shubin’s father very nearly effected a complete transformation in the young man’s future. The senator, the patron of genius, made him a present of a bust of Homer in plaster, and did nothing more. But Anna Vassilyevna helped him with money, and at nineteen he scraped through into the university in the faculty of medicine. Pavel felt no inclination for medical science, but, as the university was then constituted, it was impossible for him to enter in any other faculty. Besides, he looked forward to studying anatomy. But he did not complete his anatomical studies; at the end of the first year, and before the examination, he left the university to devote himself exclusively to his vocation. He worked zealously, but by fits and starts; he used to stroll about the country round Moscow sketching and modelling portraits of peasant girls, and striking up acquaintance with all sorts of people, young and old, of high and low degree, Italian models and Russian artists. He would not hear of the Academy, and recognised no one as a teacher. He was possessed of unmistakeable talent; it began to be talked about in Moscow. His mother, who came of a good Parisian family, a kind-hearted and clever woman, had taught him French thoroughly and had toiled and thought for him day and night. She was proud of him, and when, while still young in years, she died of consumption, she entreated Anna Vassilyevna to take him under her care. He was at that time twenty-one. Anna Vassilyevna carried out her last wish; a small room in the lodge of the country villa was given up to him.
‘Come to dinner, come along,’ said the lady of the house in a plaintive voice, and they all went into the dining-room. ‘Sit beside me,Zoé,’ added Anna Vassilyevna, ‘and you,Hélène, take our guest; and you,Paul, please don’t be naughty and teaseZoé. My head aches to-day.’
Shubin again turned his eyes up to the ceiling; Zoé responded with a half-smile. This Zoé, or, to speak more precisely, Zoya Nikitishna Mueller, was a pretty, fair-haired, half-Russian German girl, with a little nose rather wide at the end, and tiny red lips. She sang Russian ballads fairly well and could play various pieces, both lively and sentimental, very correctly on the piano. She dressed with taste, but in a rather childish style, and even over-precisely. Anna Vassilyevna had taken her as a companion for her daughter, and she kept her almost constantly at her side. Elena did not complain of that; she was absolutely at a loss what to say to Zoya when she happened to be left alone with her.
The dinner lasted rather a long time; Bersenyev talked with Elena about university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened without speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now and then threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always with the same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and Shubin went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. Anna Vassilyevna began: ‘Why don’t you go for a walk, too?’ but, without waiting for a reply, she added: ‘Play me something melancholy.’
‘La dernière pensée de Weber?’ suggested Zoya.
‘Ah, yes, Weber,’ replied Anna Vassilyevna. She sank into an easy chair, and the tears started on to her eyelashes.
Meanwhile, Elena led the two friends to an arbour of acacias, with a little wooden table in the middle, and seats round. Shubin looked round, and, whispering ‘Wait a minute!’ he ran off, skipping and hopping to his own room, brought back a piece of clay, and began modelling a bust of Zoya, shaking his head and muttering and laughing to himself.
‘At his old tricks again,’ observed Elena, glancing at his work. She turned to Bersenyev, with whom she was continuing the conversation begun at dinner.
‘My old tricks!’ repeated Shubin. ‘It’s a subject that’s simply inexhaustible! To-day, particularly, she drove me out of all patience.’
‘Why so?’ inquired Elena. ‘One would think you were speaking of some spiteful, disagreeable old woman. She is a pretty young girl.’
‘Of course,’ Shubin broke in, ‘she is pretty, very pretty; I am sure that no one who meets her could fail to think: that’s some one I should like to—dance a polka with; I’m sure, too, that she knows that, and is pleased.... Else, what’s the meaning of those modest simpers, that discreet air? There, you know what I mean,’ he muttered between his teeth. ‘But now you’re absorbed in something else.’
And breaking up the bust of Zoya, Shubin set hastily to modelling and kneading the clay again with an air of vexation.
‘So it is your wish to be a professor?’ said Elena to Bersenyev.
‘Yes,’ he answered, squeezing his red hands between his knees. ‘That’s my cherished dream. Of course I know very well how far I fall short of being—to be worthy of such a high—I mean that I am too little prepared, but I hope to get permission for a course of travel abroad; I shall pass three or four years in that way, if necessary, and then——’
He stopped, dropped his eyes, then quickly raising them again, he gave an embarrassed smile and smoothed his hair. When Bersenyev was talking to a woman, his words came out more slowly, and he lisped more than ever.
‘You want to be a professor of history?’ inquired Elena.
‘Yes, or of philosophy,’ he added, in a lower voice—‘if that is possible.’
‘He’s a perfect devil at philosophy already,’ observed Shubin, making deep lines in the clay with his nail. ‘What does he want to go abroad for?’
‘And will you be perfectly contented with such a position?’ asked Elena, leaning on her elbow and looking him straight in the face.
‘Perfectly, Elena Nikolaevna, perfectly. What could be a finer vocation? To follow, perhaps, in the steps of Timofay Nikolaevitch ... The very thought of such work fills me with delight and confusion ... yes, confusion... which comes from a sense of my own deficiency. My dear father consecrated me to this work... I shall never forget his last words.’...
‘Your father died last winter?’
‘Yes, Elena Nikolaevna, in February.’
‘They say,’ Elena went on, ‘that he left a remarkable work in manuscript; is it true?’
‘Yes. He was a wonderful man. You would have loved him, Elena Nikolaevna.’
‘I am sure I should. And what was the subject of the work?’
‘To give you an idea of the subject of the work in few words, Elena Nikolaevna, would be somewhat difficult. My father was a learned man, a Schellingist; he used terms which were not always very clear——’
‘Andrei Petrovitch,’ interrupted Elena, ‘excuse my ignorance, what does that mean, a Schellingist?’
Bersenyev smiled slightly.
‘A Schellingist means a follower of Schelling, a German philosopher; and what the philosophy of Schelling consists in——’
‘Andrei Petrovitch!’ cried Shubin suddenly, ‘for mercy’s sake! Surely you don’t mean to give Elena Nikolaevna a lecture on Schelling? Have pity on her!’
‘Not a lecture at all,’ murmured Bersenyev, turning crimson. ‘I meant——’
‘And why not a lecture?’ put in Elena. ‘You and I are in need of lectures, Pavel Yakovlitch.’
Shubin stared at her, and suddenly burst out laughing.
‘What are you laughing at?’ she said coldly, and almost sharply.
Shubin did not answer.
‘Come, don’t be angry,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘I am sorry. But really it’s a strange taste, upon my word, to discuss philosophy in weather like this under these trees. Let us rather talk of nightingales and roses, youthful eyes and smiles.’
‘Yes; and of French novels, and of feminine frills and fal-lals,’ Elena went on.
‘Fal-lals, too, of course,’ rejoined Shubin, ‘if they’re pretty.’
‘Of course. But suppose we don’t want to talk of frills? You are always boasting of being a free artist; why do you encroach on the freedom of others? And allow me to inquire, if that’s your bent of mind, why do you attack Zoya? With her it would be peculiarly suitable to talk of frills and roses?’
Shubin suddenly fired up, and rose from the garden seat. ‘So that’s it?’ he began in a nervous voice. ‘I understand your hint; you want to send me away to her, Elena Nikolaevna. In other words, I’m not wanted here.’
‘I never thought of sending you away from here.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ Shubin continued passionately, ‘that I am not worthy of other society, that I am her equal; that I am as vain, and silly and petty as that mawkish German girl? Is that it?’
Elena frowned. ‘You did not always speak like that of her, Pavel Yakovlitch,’ she remarked.
‘Ah! reproaches! reproaches now!’ cried Shubin. ‘Well, then I don’t deny there was a moment—one moment precisely, when those fresh, vulgar cheeks of hers... But if I wanted to repay you with reproaches and remind you... Good-bye,’ he added suddenly, ‘I feel I shall say something silly.’
And with a blow on the clay moulded into the shape of a head, he ran out of the arbour and went off to his room.
‘What a baby,’ said Elena, looking after him.
‘He’s an artist,’ observed Bersenyev with a quiet smile. ‘All artists are like that. One must forgive them their caprices. That is their privilege.’
‘Yes,’ replied Elena; ‘but Pavel has not so far justified his claim to that privilege in any way. What has he done so far? Give me your arm, and let us go along the avenue. He was in our way. We were talking of your father’s works.’
Bersenyev took Elena’s arm in his, and walked beside her through the garden; but the conversation prematurely broken off was not renewed. Bersenyev began again unfolding his views on the vocation of a professor, and on his own future career. He walked slowly beside Elena, moving awkwardly, awkwardly holding her arm, sometimes jostling his shoulder against her, and not once looking at her; but his talk flowed more easily, even if not perfectly freely; he spoke simply and genuinely, and his eyes, as they strayed slowly over the trunks of the trees, the sand of the path and the grass, were bright with the quiet ardour of generous emotions, while in his soothed voice there was heard the delight of a man who feels that he is succeeding in expressing himself to one very dear to him. Elena listened to him very attentively, and turning half towards him, did not take her eyes off his face, which had grown a little paler—off his eyes, which were soft and affectionate, though they avoided meeting her eyes. Her soul expanded; and something tender, holy, and good seemed half sinking into her heart, half springing up within it.
Shubin did not leave his room before night. It was already quite dark; the moon—not yet at the full—stood high in the sky, the milky way shone white, and the stars spotted the heavens, when Bersenyev, after taking leave of Anna Vassilyevna, Elena, and Zoya, went up to his friend’s door. He found it locked. He knocked.
‘Who is there?’ sounded Shubin’s voice.
‘I,’ answered Bersenyev.
‘What do you want?’
‘Let me in, Pavel; don’t be sulky; aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’
‘I am not sulky; I’m asleep and dreaming about Zoya.’
‘Do stop that, please; you’re not a baby. Let me in. I want to talk to you.’
‘Haven’t you had talk enough with Elena?’
‘Come, come; let me in!’
Shubin responded by a pretended snore.
Bersenyev shrugged his shoulders and turned homewards.
The night was warm and seemed strangely still, as though everything were listening and expectant; and Bersenyev, enfolded in the still darkness, stopped involuntarily; and he, too, listened expectant. On the tree-tops near there was a faint stir, like the rustle of a woman’s dress, awaking in him a feeling half-sweet, half-painful, a feeling almost of fright. He felt a tingling in his cheeks, his eyes were chill with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued ‘Ah!’ and again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of the walk by night; his whole soul was absorbed by the image of the young girl. Bersenyev walked with bent head, recalling her words, her questions. He fancied he heard the tramp of quick steps behind. He listened: some one was running, some one was overtaking him; he heard panting, and suddenly from a black circle of shadow cast by a huge tree Shubin sprang out before him, quite pale in the light of the moon, with no cap on his disordered curls.
‘I am glad you came along this path,’ he said with an effort. ‘I should not have slept all night, if I had not overtaken you. Give me your hand. Are you going home?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will see you home then.’
‘But why have you come without a cap on?’
‘That doesn’t matter. I took off my neckerchief too. It is quite warm.’
The friends walked a few paces.
‘I was very stupid to-day, wasn’t I?’ Shubin asked suddenly.
‘To speak frankly, you were. I couldn’t make you out. I have never seen you like that before. And what were you angry about really? Such trifles!’
‘H’m,’ muttered Shubin. ‘That’s how you put it; but they were not trifles to me. You see,’ he went on, ‘I ought to point out to you that I—that—you may think what you please of me—I—well there! I’m in love with Elena.’
‘You in love with Elena!’ repeated Bersenyev, standing still.
‘Yes,’ pursued Shubin with affected carelessness. ‘Does that astonish you? I will tell you something else. Till this evening I still had hopes that she might come to love me in time. But to-day I have seen for certain that there is no hope for me. She is in love with some one else.’
‘Some one else? Whom?’
‘Whom? You!’ cried Shubin, slapping Bersenyev on the shoulder.
‘Me!’
‘You,’ repeated Shubin.
Bersenyev stepped back a pace, and stood motionless. Shubin looked intently at him.
‘And does that astonish you? You are a modest youth. But she loves you. You can make your mind easy on that score.’
‘What nonsense you talk!’ Bersenyev protested at last with an air of vexation.
‘No, it’s not nonsense. But why are we standing still? Let us go on. It’s easier to talk as we walk. I have known her a long while, and I know her well. I cannot be mistaken. You are a man after her own heart. There was a time when she found me agreeable; but, in the first place, I am too frivolous a young man for her, while you are a serious person, you are a morally and physically well-regulated person, you—hush, I have not finished, you are a conscientiously disposed enthusiast, a genuine type of those devotees of science, of whom—no not of whom—whereof the middle class of Russian gentry are so justly proud! And, secondly, Elena caught me the other day kissing Zoya’s arms!’
‘Zoya’s?’
‘Yes, Zoya’s. What would you have? She has such fine shoulders.’
‘Shoulders?’
‘Well there, shoulders and arms, isn’t it all the same? Elena caught me in this unconstrained proceeding after dinner, and before dinner I had been abusing Zoya in her hearing. Elena unfortunately doesn’t understand how natural such contradictions are. Then you came on the scene, you have faith in—what the deuce is it you have faith in?... You blush and look confused, you discuss Schiller and Schelling (she’s always on the look-out for remarkable men), and so you have won the day, and I, poor wretch, try to joke—and all the while——’
Shubin suddenly burst into tears, turned away, and dropping upon the ground clutched at his hair.
Bersenyev went up to him.
‘Pavel,’ he began, ‘what childishness this is! Really! what’s the matter with you to-day? God knows what nonsense you have got into your head, and you are crying. Upon my word, I believe you must be putting it on.’
Shubin lifted up his head. The tears shone bright on his cheeks in the moonlight, but there was a smile on his face.
‘Andrei Petrovitch,’ he said, ‘you may think what you please about me. I am even ready to agree with you that I’m hysterical now, but, by God, I’m in love with Elena, and Elena loves you. I promised, though, to see you home, and I will keep my promise.’
He got up.
‘What a night! silvery, dark, youthful! How sweet it must be to-night for men who are loved! How sweet for them not to sleep! Will you sleep, Andrei Petrovitch?’
Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace.
‘Where are you hurrying to?’ Shubin went on. ‘Trust my words, a night like this will never come again in your life, and at home, Schelling will keep. It’s true he did you good service to-day; but you need not hurry for all that. Sing, if you can sing, sing louder than ever; if you can’t sing, take off your hat, throw up your head, and smile to the stars. They are all looking at you, at you alone; the stars never do anything but look down upon lovers—that’s why they are so charming. You are in love, I suppose, Andrei Petrovitch?... You don’t answer me... why don’t you answer?’ Shubin began again: ‘Oh, if you feel happy, be quiet, be quiet! I chatter because I am a poor devil, unloved, I am a jester, an artist, a buffoon; but what unutterable ecstasy would I quaff in the night wind under the stars, if I knew that I were loved!... Bersenyev, are you happy?’
Bersenyev was silent as before, and walked quickly along the smooth path. In front, between the trees, glimmered the lights of the little village in which he was staying; it consisted of about a dozen small villas for summer visitors. At the very beginning of the village, to the right of the road, a little shop stood under two spreading birch-trees; its windows were all closed already, but a wide patch of light fell fan-shaped from the open door upon the trodden grass, and was cast upwards on the trees, showing up sharply the whitish undersides of the thick growing leaves. A girl, who looked like a maid-servant, was standing in the shop with her back against the doorpost, bargaining with the shopkeeper; from beneath the red kerchief which she had wrapped round her head, and held with bare hand under her chin, could just be seen her round cheek and slender throat. The young men stepped into the patch of light; Shubin looked into the shop, stopped short, and cried ‘Annushka!’ The girl turned round quickly. They saw a nice-looking, rather broad but fresh face, with merry brown eyes and black eyebrows. ‘Annushka!’ repeated Shubin. The girl saw him, looked scared and shamefaced, and without finishing her purchases, she hurried down the steps, slipped quickly past, and, hardly looking round, went along the road to the left. The shopkeeper, a puffy man, unmoved by anything in the world, like all country shopkeepers gasped and gaped after her, while Shubin turned to Bersenyev with the words: ‘That’s... you see... there’s a family here I know... so at their house... you mustn’t imagine’ ... and, without finishing his speech, he ran after the retreating girl.
‘You’d better at least wipe your tears away,’ Bersenyev shouted after him, and he could not refrain from laughing. But when he got home, his face had not a mirthful expression; he laughed no longer. He had not for a single instant believed what Shubin had told him, but the words he had uttered had sunk deep into his soul.
‘Pavel was making a fool of me,’ he thought; ‘... but she will love one day... whom will she love?’
In Bersenyev’s room there was a piano, small, and by no means new, but of a soft and sweet tone, though not perfectly in tune. Bersenyev sat down to it, and began to strike some chords. Like all Russians of good birth, he had studied music in his childhood, and like almost all Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and sweet, shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the soul by the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an hour, he did not move from the piano, repeating many times the same chords, awkwardly picking out new ones, pausing and melting over the minor sevenths. His heart ached, and his eyes more than once filled with tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them flow in the darkness. ‘Pavel was right,’ he thought, ‘I feel it; this evening will not come again.’ At last he got up, lighted a candle, put on his dressing-gown, took down from the bookshelf the second volume of Raumer’sHistory of the Hohenstaufen, and sighing twice, he set to work diligently to read it.
Meanwhile, Elena had gone to her room, and sat down at the open window, her head resting on her hands. To spend about a quarter of an hour every evening at her bedroom window had become a habit with her. At this time she held converse with herself, and passed in review the preceding day. She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was tall, and had a pale and dark face, large grey eyes under arching brows, covered with tiny freckles, a perfectly regular forehead and nose, tightly compressed lips, and a rather sharp chin. Her hair, of a chestnut shade, fell low on her slender neck. In her whole personality, in the expression of her face, intent and a little timorous, in her clear but changing glance, in her smile, which was, as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice, there was something nervous, electric, something impulsive and hurried, something, in fact, which could never be attractive to every one, which even repelled some.
Her hands were slender and rosy, with long fingers; her feet were slender; she walked swiftly, almost impetuously, her figure bent a little forward. She had grown up very strangely; first she idolised her father, then she became passionately devoted to her mother, and had grown cold to both of them, especially to her father. Of late years she had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; while her father, who had been proud of her while she had been regarded as an exceptional child, had come to be afraid of her when she was grown up, and said of her that she was a sort of enthusiastic republican—no one could say where she got it from. Weakness revolted her, stupidity made her angry, and deceit she could never, never pardon. She was exacting beyond all bounds, even her prayers had more than once been mingled with reproaches. When once a person had lost her respect—and she passed judgment quickly, often too quickly—he ceased to exist for her. All impressions cut deeply into her heart; life was bitter earnest for her.
The governess to whom Anna Vassilyevna had entrusted the finishing of her daughter’s education—an education, we may remark in parenthesis, which had not even been begun by the languid lady—was a Russian, the daughter of a ruined official, educated at a government boarding school, a very emotional, soft-hearted, and deceitful creature; she was for ever falling in love, and ended in her fiftieth year (when Elena was seventeen) by marrying an officer of some sort, who deserted her without loss of time. This governess was very fond of literature, and wrote verses herself; she inspired Elena with a love of reading, but reading alone did not satisfy the girl; from childhood she thirsted for action, for active well-doing—the poor, the hungry, and the sick absorbed her thoughts, tormented her, and made her heart heavy; she used to dream of them, and to ply all her friends with questions about them; she gave alms carefully, with unconscious solemnity, almost with a thrill of emotion. All ill-used creatures, starved dogs, cats condemned to death, sparrows fallen out of the nest, even insects and reptiles found a champion and protector in Elena; she fed them herself, and felt no repugnance for them. Her mother did not interfere with her; but her father used to be very indignant with his daughter, for her—as he called it—vulgar soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to move for the cats and dogs in the house. ‘Lenotchka,’ he would shout to her, ‘come quickly, here’s a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor wretch!’ And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free, and disentangle its legs. ‘Well, now let it bite you a little, since you are so kind,’ her father would say ironically; but she did not hear him. At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl, Katya, and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her nice things to eat, and presented her with handkerchiefs and pennies; playthings Katya would not take. She would sit beside her on the dry earth among the bushes behind a thick growth of nettles; with a feeling of delicious humility she ate her stale bread and listened to her stories. Katya had an aunt, an ill-natured old woman, who often beat her; Katya hated her, and was always talking of how she would run away from her aunt and live in ‘God’s full freedom’; with secret respect and awe Elena drank in these new unknown words, stared intently at Katya and everything about her—her quick black, almost animal eyes, her sun-burnt hands, her hoarse voice, even her ragged clothes—seemed to Elena at such times something particular and distinguished, almost holy. Elena went back home, and for long after dreamed of beggars and God’s freedom; she would dream over plans of how she would cut herself a hazel stick, and put on a wallet and run away with Katya; how she would wander about the roads in a wreath of corn-flowers; she had seen Katya one day in just such a wreath. If, at such times, any one of her family came into the room, she would shun them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet Katya, and made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a slut and a peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something of terror and rapture in her heart. Katya often sang some half-brutal soldier’s song. Elena learnt this song from her.... Anna Vassilyevna overheard her singing it, and was very indignant.
‘Where did you pick up such horrors?’ she asked her daughter.
Elena only looked at her mother, and would not say a word; she felt that she would let them tear her to pieces sooner than betray her secret, and again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her friendship with Katya, however, did not last long; the poor little girl fell sick of fever, and in a few days she was dead.
Elena was greatly distressed, and spent sleepless nights for long after she heard of Katya’s death. The last words of the little beggar-girl were constantly ringing in her ears, and she fancied that she was being called....
The years passed and passed; swiftly and noiselessly, like waters running under the snow, Elena’s youth glided by, outwardly uneventful, inwardly in conflict and emotion. She had no friend; she did not get on with any one of all the girls who visited the Stahovs’ house. Her parents’ authority had never weighed heavily on Elena, and from her sixteenth year she became absolutely independent; she began to live a life of her own, but it was a life of solitude. Her soul glowed, and the fire died away again in solitude; she struggled like a bird in a cage, and cage there was none; no one oppressed her, no one restrained her, while she was torn, and fretted within. Sometimes she did not understand herself, was even frightened of herself. Everything that surrounded her seemed to her half-senseless, half-incomprehensible. ‘How live without love? and there’s no one to love!’ she thought; and she felt terror again at these thoughts, these sensations. At eighteen, she nearly died of malignant fever; her whole constitution—naturally healthy and vigorous—was seriously affected, and it was long before it could perfectly recover; the last traces of the illness disappeared at last, but Elena Nikolaevna’s father was never tired of talking with some spitefulness of her ‘nerves.’ Sometimes she fancied that she wanted something which no one wanted, of which no one in all Russia dreamed. Then she would grow calmer, and even laugh at herself, and pass day after day unconcernedly; but suddenly some over-mastering, nameless force would surge up within her, and seem to clamour for an outlet. The storm passed over, and the wings of her soul drooped without flight; but these tempests of feeling cost her much. However she might strive not to betray what was passing within her, the suffering of the tormented spirit was expressed in her even external tranquillity, and her parents were often justified in shrugging their shoulders in astonishment, and failing to understand her ‘queer ways.’
On the day with which our story began, Elena did not leave the window till later than usual. She thought much of Bersenyev, and of her conversation with him. She liked him; she believed in the warmth of his feelings, and the purity of his aims. He had never before talked to her as on that evening. She recalled the expression of his timid eyes, his smiles—and she smiled herself and fell to musing, but not of him. She began to look out into the night from the open window. For a long time she gazed at the dark, low-hanging sky; then she got up, flung back her hair from her face with a shake of her head, and, herself not knowing why, she stretched out to it—to that sky—her bare chilled arms; then she dropped them, fell on her knees beside her bed, pressed her face into the pillow, and, in spite of all her efforts not to yield to the passion overwhelming her, she burst into strange, uncomprehending, burning tears.
The next day at twelve o’clock, Bersenyev set off in a return coach to Moscow. He had to get some money from the post-office, to buy some books, and he wanted to seize the opportunity to see Insarov and have some conversation with him. The idea had occurred to Bersenyev, in the course of his last conversation with Shubin, to invite Insarov to stay with him at his country lodgings. But it was some time before he found him out; from his former lodging he had moved to another, which it was not easy to discover; it was in the court at the back of a squalid stone house, built in the Petersburg style, between Arbaty Road and Povarsky Street. In vain Bersenyev wandered from one dirty staircase to another, in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to a passer-by. Porters even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and in Moscow much more so; no one answered Bersenyev’s call; only an inquisitive tailor, in his shirt sleeves, with a skein of grey thread on his shoulder, thrust out from a high casement window a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with a blackened eye; and a black and hornless goat, clambering up on to a dung heap, turned round, bleated plaintively, and went on chewing the cud faster than before. A woman in an old cloak, and shoes trodden down at heel, took pity at last on Bersenyev and pointed out Insarov’s lodging to him. Bersenyev found him at home. He had taken a room with the very tailor who had stared down so indifferently at the perplexity of a wandering stranger; a large, almost empty room, with dark green walls, three square windows, a tiny bedstead in one corner, a little leather sofa in another, and a huge cage hung up to the very ceiling; in this cage there had once lived a nightingale. Insarov came to meet Bersenyev directly he crossed the threshold, but he did not exclaim, ‘Ah, it’s you!’ or ‘Good Heavens, what happy chance has brought you?’ He did not even say, ‘How do you do?’ but simply pressed his hand and led him up to the solitary chair in the room.
‘Sit down,’ he said, and he seated himself on the edge of the table.
‘I am, as you see, still in disorder,’ added Insarov, pointing to a pile of papers and books on the floor, ‘I haven’t got settled in as I ought. I have not had time yet.’
Insarov spoke Russian perfectly correctly, pronouncing every word fully and purely; but his guttural though pleasant voice sounded somehow not Russian. Insarov’s foreign extraction (he was a Bulgarian by birth) was still more clearly marked in his appearance; he was a young man of five-and-twenty, spare and sinewy, with a hollow chest and knotted fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black hair, a low forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy eyebrows; when he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant between his thin, hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but tidy coat, buttoned up to the throat.
‘Why did you leave your old lodging?’ Bersenyev asked him.
‘This is cheaper, and nearer to the university.’
‘But now it’s vacation.... And what could induce you to stay in the town in summer! You should have taken a country cottage if you were determined to move.’
Insarov made no reply to this remark, and offered Bersenyev a pipe, adding: ‘Excuse me, I have no cigarettes or cigars.’
Bersenyev began smoking the pipe.
‘Here have I,’ he went on, ‘taken a little house near Kuntsovo, very cheap and very roomy. In fact there is a room to spare upstairs.’
Insarov again made no answer.
Bersenyev drew at the pipe: ‘I have even been thinking,’ he began again, blowing out the smoke in a thin cloud, ‘that if any one could be found—you, for instance, I thought of—who would care, who would consent to establish himself there upstairs, how nice it would be! What do you think, Dmitri Nikanorovitch?’
Insarov turned his little eyes on him. ‘You propose my staying in your country house?’
‘Yes; I have a room to spare there upstairs.’
‘Thanks very much, Andrei Petrovitch; but I expect my means would not allow of it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘My means would not allow of my living in a country house. It’s impossible for me to keep two lodgings.’
‘But of course I’—Bersenyev was beginning, but he stopped short. ‘You would have no extra expense in that way,’ he went on. ‘Your lodging here would remain for you, let us suppose; but then everything there is very cheap; we could even arrange so as to dine, for instance, together.’
Insarov said nothing. Bersenyev began to feel awkward.
‘You might at least pay me a visit sometime,’ he began, after a short pause. ‘A few steps from me there’s a family living with whom I want very much to make you acquainted. If only you knew, Insarov, what a marvellous girl there is there! There is an intimate friend of mine staying there too, a man of great talent; I am sure you would get on with him. [The Russian loves to be hospitable—of his friends if he can offer nothing else.] Really, you must come. And what would be better still, come and stay with me, do. We could work and read together.... I am busy, as you know, with history and philosophy. All that would interest you. I have a lot of books.’
Insarov got up and walked about the room. ‘Let me know,’ he said, ‘how much do you pay for your cottage?’
‘A hundred silver roubles.’
‘And how many rooms are there?’
‘Five.’
‘Then one may reckon that one room costs twenty roubles?’
‘Yes, one may reckon so.... But really it’s utterly unnecessary for me. It simply stands empty.’
‘Perhaps so; but listen,’ added Insarov, with a decided, but at the same time good-natured movement of his head: ‘I can only take advantage of your offer if you agree to take the sum we have reckoned. Twenty roubles I am able to give, the more easily, since, as you say, I shall be economising there in other things.’
‘Of course; but really I am ashamed to take it.’
‘Otherwise it’s impossible, Andrei Petrovitch.’
‘Well, as you like; but what an obstinate fellow you are!’
Insarov again made no reply.
The young men made arrangements as to the day on which Insarov was to move. They called the landlord; at first he sent his daughter, a little girl of seven, with a large striped kerchief on her head; she listened attentively, almost with awe, to all Insarov said to her, and went away without speaking; after her, her mother, a woman far gone with child, made her appearance, also wearing a kerchief on her head, but a very diminutive one. Insarov informed her that he was going to stay at a cottage near Kuntsovo, but should keep on his lodging and leave all his things in their keeping; the tailor’s wife too seemed scared and went away. At last the man himself came in: he seemed to understand everything from the first, and only said gloomily: ‘Near Kuntsovo?’ then all at once he opened the door and shouted: ‘Are you going to keep the lodgings then?’ Insarov reassured him. ‘Well, one must know,’ repeated the tailor morosely, as he disappeared.
Bersenyev returned home, well content with the success of his proposal. Insarov escorted him to the door with cordial good manners, not common in Russia; and, when he was left alone, carefully took off his coat, and set to work upon sorting his papers.