A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories
Page 19
The blood rushed to my head. . . .
"I love you, I am in love with you," repeated Vera.
She went out and shut the door after her. I will not try to describe what passed within me then. I remember I went out into the garden, made my way into a thicket, leaned against a tree, and how long I stood there, I could not say. I felt faint and numb; a feeling of bliss came over my heart with a rush from time to time. . . . No, I cannot speak of that. Priemkov's voice roused me from my stupor; they had sent to tell him I had come: he had come home from shooting and was looking for me. He was surprised at finding me alone in the garden, without a hat on, and he led me into the house. "My wife's in the drawing-room," he observed; "let's go to her!" You can imagine my sensations as I stepped through the doorway of the drawing-room. Vera was sitting in the corner, at her embroidery frame; I stole a glance at her, and it was a long while before I raised my eyes again. To my amazement, she seemed composed; there was no trace of agitation in what she said, nor in the sound of her voice. At last I brought myself to look at her. Our eyes met . . . She faintly blushed, and bent over her canvas. I began to watch her. She seemed, as it were, perplexed; a cheerless smile hung about her lips now and then.
Priemkov went out. She suddenly raised her head and in a rather loud voice asked me-- "What do you intend to do now?"
I was taken aback, and hurriedly, in a subdued voice, answered, that I intended to do the duty of an honest man--to go away, "for," I added, "I love you, Vera Nikolaevna, you have probably seen that long ago." She bent over her canvas again and seemed to ponder.
"I must talk with you," she said; "come this evening after tea to our little house . . . you know, where you read Faust."
She said this so distinctly that I can't to this day conceive how it was Priemkov, who came into the room at that instant, heard nothing. Slowly, terribly slowly, passed that day. Vera sometimes looked about her with an expression as though she were asking herself if she were not dreaming. And at the same time there was a look of determination in her face; while I . . . I could not recover myself. Vera loves me! These words were continually going round and round in my head; but I did not understand them--I neither understood myself nor her. I could not believe in such unhoped-for, such overwhelming happiness; with an effort I recalled the past, and I too looked and talked as in a dream. . . .
After evening tea, when I had already begun to think how I could steal out of the house unobserved, she suddenly announced of her own accord that she wanted a walk, and asked me to accompany her. I got up, took my hat, and followed her. I did not dare begin to speak, I could scarcely breathe, I awaited her first word, I awaited explanations; but she did not speak. In silence we reached the summer-house, in silence we went into it, and then--I don't know to this day, I can't understand how it happened--we suddenly found ourselves in each other's arms. Some unseen force flung me to her and her to me. In the fading daylight, her face, with the curls tossed back, lighted up for an instant with a smile of self-surrender and tenderness, and our lips met in a kiss. . . .
That kiss was the first and last.
Vera suddenly broke from my arms and with an expression of horror in her wide open eyes staggered back----
"Look round," she said in a shaking voice; "do you see nothing?"
I turned round quickly.
"Nothing. Why, do you see something?"
"Not now, but I did."
She drew deep, gasping breaths.
"Whom? what?"
"My mother," she said slowly, and she began trembling all over. I shivered too, as though with cold. I suddenly felt ashamed, as though I were guilty. And indeed, wasn't I guilty at that instant?
"Nonsense!" I began; "what do you mean? Tell me rather----"
"No, for God's sake, no!" she interposed, clutching her head. "This is madness--I'm going out of my mind. . . . One can't play with this--it's death. . . . Good-bye. . . ."
I held out my hands to her.
"Stay, for God's sake, for an instant," I cried in an involuntary outburst. I didn't know what I was saying and could scarcely stand upright. "For God's sake . . . it is too cruel!"
She glanced at me.
"To-morrow, to-morrow evening," she said, "not to-day, I beseech you--go away today . . . to-morrow evening come to the garden gate, near the lake. I will be there, I will come. . . . I swear to you I will come," she added with passion, and her eyes shone; "whoever may hinder me, I swear! I will tell you everything, only let me go to-day."
And before I could utter a word she was gone. Utterly distraught, I stayed where I was. My head was in a whirl. Across the mad rapture, which filled my whole being, there began to steal a feeling of apprehension. . . . I looked round. The dim, damp room in which I was standing oppressed me with its low roof and dark walls.
I went out and walked with dejected steps towards the house. Vera was waiting for me on the terrace; she went into the house directly I drew near, and at once retreated to her bedroom.
I went away.
How I spent the night and the next day till the evening I can't tell you. I only remember that I lay, my face hid in my hands, I recalled her smile before our kiss, I whispered--"At last, she . . ."
I recalled, too, Madame Eltsov's words, which Vera had repeated to me. She had said to her once, "You are like ice; until you melt as strong as stone, but directly you melt there's nothing of you left."
Another thing recurred to my mind; Vera and I had once been talking of talent, ability.
"There's only one thing I can do," she said; "keep silent till the last minute."
I did not understand it in the least at the time.
"But what is the meaning of her fright?" I wondered--"Can she really have seen Madame Eltsov? Imagination!" I thought, and again I gave myself up to the emotions of expectation.
It was on that day I wrote you,--with what thoughts in my head it hurts me to recall--that deceitful letter.
In the evening--the sun had not yet set--I took up my stand about fifty paces from the garden gate in a tall thicket on the edge of the lake. I had come from home on foot. I will confess to my shame; fear, fear of the most cowardly kind, filled my heart; I was incessantly starting . . . but I had no feeling of remorse. Hiding among the twigs, I kept continual watch on the little gate. It did not open. The sun set, the evening drew on; then the stars came out, and the sky turned black. No one appeared. I was in a fever. Night came on. I could bear it no longer; I came cautiously out of the thicket and stole down to the gate. Everything was still in the garden. I called Vera, in a whisper, called a second time, a third. . . . No voice called back. Half-an-hour more passed by, and an hour; it became quite dark. I was worn out by suspense; I drew the gate towards me, opened it at once, and on tip-toe, like a thief, walked towards the house. I stopped in the shadow of a lime-tree.
Almost all the windows in the house had lights in them; people were moving to and fro in the house. This surprised me; my watch, as far as I could make out in the dim starlight, said half-past eleven. Suddenly I heard a noise near the house; a carriage drove out of the courtyard.
"Visitors, it seems," I thought. Losing every hope of seeing Vera, I made my way out of the garden and walked with rapid steps homewards. It was a dark September night, but warm and windless. The feeling, not so much of annoyance as of sadness, which had taken possession of me, gradually disappeared, and I got home, rather tired from my rapid walk, but soothed by the peacefulness of the night, happy and almost light-hearted. I went to my room, dismissed Timofay, and without undressing, flung myself on my bed and plunged into reverie.
At first my day-dreams were sweet, but soon I noticed a curious change in myself. I began to feel a sort of secret gnawing anxiety, a sort of deep, inward uneasiness. I could not understand what it arose from, but I began to feel sick and sad, as though I were menaced by some approaching trouble, as though some one dear to me were suffering at that instant and calling on me for help. A wax candle on the table burnt with a small, st
eady flame, the pendulum swung with a heavy, regular tick. I leant my head on my hand and fell to gazing into the empty half-dark of my lonely room. I thought of Vera, and my heart failed me; all, at which I had so rejoiced, struck me, as it ought to have done, as unhappiness, as hopeless ruin. The feeling of apprehension grew and grew; I could not lie still any longer; I suddenly fancied again that some one was calling me in a voice of entreaty. . . . I raised my head and shuddered; I had not been mistaken; a pitiful cry floated out of the distance and rang faintly resounding on the dark window-panes. I was frightened; I jumped off the bed; I opened the window. A distinct moan broke into the room and, as it were hovered about me. Chilled with terror, I drank in its last dying echoes. It seemed as though some one were being killed in the distance and the luckless wretch were beseeching in vain for mercy. Whether it was an owl hooting in the wood or some other creature that uttered this wail, I did not think to consider at the time, but, like Mazeppa, I called back in answer to the ill-omened sound.
"Vera, Vera!" I cried; "is it you calling me?" Timofay, sleepy and amazed, appeared before me.
I came to my senses, drank a glass of water and went into another room; but sleep did not come to me. My heart throbbed painfully though not rapidly. I could not abandon myself to dreams of happiness again; I dared not believe in it.
Next day, before dinner, I went to the Priemkovs'. Priemkov met me with a care-worn face.
"My wife is ill," he began; "she is in bed; I sent for a doctor."
"What is the matter with her?"
"I can't make out. Yesterday evening she went into the garden and suddenly came back quite beside herself, panic-stricken. Her maid ran for me. I went in, and asked my wife what was wrong. She made no answer, and so she has lain; by night delirium set in. In her delirium she said all sorts of things; she mentioned you. The maid told me an extraordinary thing; that Vera's mother appeared to her in the garden; she fancied she was coming to meet her with open arms."
You can imagine what I felt at these words.
"Of course that's nonsense," Priemkov went on; "though I must admit that extraordinary things have happened to my wife in that way."
"And you say Vera Nikolaevna is very unwell?"
"Yes: she was very bad in the night; now she is wandering."
"What did the doctor say?"
"The doctor said that the disease was undefined as yet. . . ."
March 12.
I cannot go on as I began, dear friend; it costs me too much effort and re-opens my wounds too cruelly. The disease, to use the doctor's words, became defined, and Vera died of it. She did not live a fortnight after the fatal day of our momentary interview. I saw her once more before her death. I have no memory more heart-rending. I had already learned from the doctor that there was no hope. Late in the evening, when every one in the house was in bed, I stole to the door of her room and looked in at her. Vera lay in her bed, with closed eyes, thin and small, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. I gazed at her as though turned to stone. All at once she opened her eyes, fastened them upon me, scrutinised me, and stretching out a wasted hand--
"Was will er an dem heiligen Ort
Der da . . . der dort . . . ."
[Faust, Part I., Last Scene.]
she articulated, in a voice so terrible that I rushed headlong away. Almost all through her illness, she raved about Faust and her mother, whom she sometimes called Martha, sometimes Gretchen's mother.
Vera died. I was at her burying. Ever since then I have given up everything and am settled here for ever.
Think now of what I have told you; think of her, of that being so quickly brought to destruction. How it came to pass, how explain this incomprehensible intervention of the dead in the affairs of the living, I don't know and never shall know. But you must admit that it is not a fit of whimsical spleen, as you express it, which has driven me to retire from the world. I am not what I was, as you knew me; I believe in a great deal now which I did not believe formerly. All this time I have thought so much of that unhappy woman (I had almost said, girl), of her origin, of the secret play of fate, which we in our blindness call blind chance. Who knows what seeds each man living on earth leaves behind him, which are only destined to come up after his death? Who can say by what mysterious bond a man's fate is bound up with his children's, his descendants'; how his yearnings are reflected in them, and how they are punished for his errors? We must all submit and bow our heads before the Unknown.
Yes, Vera perished, while I was untouched. I remember, when I was a child, we had in my home a lovely vase of transparent alabaster. Not a spot sullied its virgin whiteness. One day when I was left alone, I began shaking the stand on which it stood . . . the vase suddenly fell down and broke to shivers. I was numb with horror, and stood motionless before the fragments. My father came in, saw me, and said, "There, see what you have done; we shall never have our lovely vase again; now there is no mending it!" I sobbed. I felt I had committed a crime.
I grew into a man--and thoughtlessly broke a vessel a thousand times more precious. . . .
In vain I tell myself that I could not have dreamed of such a sudden catastrophe, that it struck me too with its suddenness, that I did not even suspect what sort of nature Vera was. She certainly knew how to be silent till the last minute. I ought to have run away directly I felt that I loved her, that I loved a married woman. But I stayed, and that fair being was shattered, and with despair I gaze at the work of my own hands.
Yes, Madame Eltsov took jealous care of her daughter. She guarded her to the end, and at the first incautious step bore her away with her to the grave!
It is time to make an end. . . . I have not told one hundredth part of what I ought to have; but this has been enough for me. Let all that has flamed up fall back again into the depths of my heart. . . . In conclusion, I say to you--one conviction I have gained from the experience of the last years--life is not jest and not amusement; life is not even enjoyment . . . life is hard labour. Renunciation, continual renunciation--that is its secret meaning, its solution. Not the fulfilment of cherished dreams and aspirations, however lofty they may be--the fulfilment of duty, that is what must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end of his career. But in youth we think--the freer the better, the further one will get. Youth may be excused for thinking so. But it is shameful to delude oneself when the stern face of truth has looked one in the eyes at last.
Good-bye! In old days I would have added, be happy; now I say to you, try to live, it is not so easy as it seems. Think of me, not in hours of sorrow, but in hours of contemplation, and keep in your heart the image of Vera in all its pure stainlessness. . . . Once more, good-bye!--Yours,
P. B.
1855
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