‘You see, Olyessia ... it happened so suddenly ... besides, I was
afraid to trouble you. Towards the end you had become strange towards
me, as though you were angry with me, or bored.... Olyessia,’ I added,
lowering my voice, ‘we’ve got ever so much to say to each other, ever
so much ... just we two ... you understand?’
She quietly cast down her eyes in token of consent, and then whispered
quickly, looking round timidly at her grandmother:
‘Yes.... I want to, as well ... later ... wait----’
As soon as the sun began to set, Olyessia began to urge me to go home.
‘Make haste, be quick and get ready,’ she said, pulling my hand from
the bench. ‘If the damp catches you now, the fever will be on you
again, immediately.’
‘Where are you going, Olyessia?’ Manuilikha asked suddenly, seeing that
her granddaughter had thrown a large grey shawl hurriedly over her head.
‘I’m going part of the way with him,’ answered Olyessia.
She said the words with indifference, looking not at her grandmother
but at the window; but in her voice I could detect on almost
imperceptible note of irritation.
‘You’re really going?’ the old woman once more asked, meaningly.
Olyessia’s eyes flashed, and she stared steadily into Manuilikha’s face.
‘Yes, I am going,’ she replied proudly. ‘We talked it out and talked it
out long ago.... It’s my affair, and my own responsibility.’
‘Ah, you----’ the old woman exclaimed in reproach and annoyance. She
wanted to add more, but only waved her hand and dragged her trembling
legs away into the corner, and began to busy herself with a basket,
groaning.
I understood that the brief unpleasant conversation which I had just
witnessed was a continuation of a long series of mutual quarrels and
bursts of anger. As I walked to the forest at Olyessia’s side, I asked
her:
‘Granny doesn’t want you to go for a walk with me, does she?’
Olyessia shrugged her shoulders in vexation.
‘Please, don’t take any notice of it.... No, she doesn’t like it....
Surely I’m free to do as I like?’
Suddenly I conceived an irresistible desire to reproach Olyessia with
her former sternness.
‘But you could have done it before my illness as well.... Only then
you didn’t want to be alone with me.... I thought, every evening I
thought, perhaps you would come with me again. But you used to pay no
attention; you were so unresponsive, and cross.... How you tormented
me, Olyessia!...’
‘Don’t, darling.... Forget it, ...’ Olyessia entreated with a tender
apology in her voice.
‘No, I’m not saying it to blame you. It just slipped out. Now, I
understand why it was.... But before--it’s funny to talk about it even
now--I thought you were offended because of the sergeant. The thought
made me terribly sad. I couldn’t help thinking that you considered
me so remote and foreign to you, that you found it hard to accept a
simple kindness from me.... It was very bitter to me.... I never even
suspected that granny was the cause of it all, Olyessia.’
Olyessia’s face suddenly flamed bright red.
‘But it wasn’t granny at all.... It was me. I didn’t want it, myself,’
she exclaimed with a passionate challenge.
‘But why didn’t you want it, Olyessia, why?’ I asked. My voice broke
for agitation, and I caught her by the hand and made her stop. We were
just in the middle of a long narrow path, straight as an arrow through
the forest. On either side we were surrounded by tall slender pines,
that formed a gigantic corridor, receding into the distance, vaulted
with fragrant interwoven branches. The bare peeled trunks were tinged
with the purple glow of the burnt-out red of the evening sky.
‘Tell me why, Olyessia, why?’ I whispered again, pressing her hand
closer and closer.
‘I could not ... I was afraid,’ Olyessia said so low that I could
hardly hear. ‘I thought it was possible to escape one’s destiny....
But, now ... now.’
Her breath failed her, as though there were no air; and suddenly her
hands twined quick and vehement about my neck, and my lips were sweetly
burnt by Olyessia’s quick trembling whisper:
‘But it’s all the same, now ... all the same!... Because I love you, my
dear, my joy, my beloved!’
She pressed closer and closer to me, and I could feel how her strong,
vigorous, fervent body pulsed beneath my hands, how quickly her heart
beat against my chest. Her passionate kisses poured like intoxicating
wine into my head, still weak with disease, and I began to lose my hold
upon myself.
‘Olyessia, for God’s sake, don’t ... leave me,’ I said, trying to
unclasp her hands. ‘Now I am afraid.... I’m afraid of myself.... Let me
go, Olyessia.’
She raised her head. Her face was all lighted with a slow, languid
smile.
‘Don’t be afraid, my darling,’ she said with an indescribable
expression of tender passion and touching fearlessness. ‘I shall never
reproach you, never be jealous of any one.... Tell me only, do you love
me?’
‘I love you, Olyessia. I loved you long ago, and I love you
passionately. But ... don’t kiss me any more.... I grow weak, my head
swims, I can’t answer for myself....’
Her lips were once more pressed to mine in a long, painful sweetness.
I did not hear, rather I divined her words.
‘Then don’t be afraid. Don’t think of anything besides.... To-day is
ours; no one can take it from us.’
* * * * *
And the whole night melted into a magical fairy tale. The moon rose,
and its radiance poured fantastically in motley and mysterious colours
over the forest. It lay amid the darkness in pale blue stains upon
the gnarled tree-trunks, on the bent branches and the soft carpet
of moss. The high birch-trunks showed clear and keenly white, and
it seemed that a silvery transparent veil of gauze had been thrown
over the thin leaves. In places the light could by no means penetrate
the thick canopy of pine branches. There was complete, impenetrable
darkness, save only that in the middle a ray slipped in unknown from
somewhere and suddenly shone brightly on a long row of trees, casting
a straight narrow path on the earth, as bright and trim and beautiful
as a path fashioned by fairies for the triumphant procession of Oberon
and Titania. And we walked with our arms enlocked through this vivid,
smiling fairy tale, without a single word, under the weight of our
happiness and the dreadful silence of the night.
‘Darling, I’ve forgotten quite that you must hurry home,’ Olyessia
suddenly remembered. ‘What a wicked girl I am! You’re only just
recovering from your illness and I’ve kept you all this while in the
forest.’
I kissed her, and threw back the shawl from her thick dark hair, and
asked her in the softest whisper, bending to her ear:
‘You don’t regret it, Olyessia? You don’t repent?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘No, no.... Come what may, I shan’t regret.... I am so happy!’
‘Is something bound to happen, then?’
There appeared in her eyes a flash of the mystical terror I had grown
to recognise.
‘Yes, it is certain. You remember I told you about the queen of clubs.
That queen of clubs is me, myself; the misfortune that the cards told
of will happen to me.... You know I thought of asking you not to come
and see us any more. But then you fell ill, and I never saw you for
nearly a fortnight.... I was so anxious and sad for you that I felt
I could have given the whole world to be with you, just one little
minute. Then I thought that I would not give up my happiness, whatever
should come of it....’
‘It’s true, Olyessia. That’s how it was with me, too,’ I said, touching
her forehead with my lips. ‘I never knew that I loved you until I
parted from you. It seems that man was right who said that parting to
love is like wind to a fire: it blows out a small one, and makes a
large one blaze.’
‘What did you say? Say it again, again, please.’ Olyessia was
interested.
I repeated the words again. I do not know whose they are. Olyessia
mused over them, and I could see by the movement of her lips that she
was saying the words over to herself.
I looked closely into her pale face, thrown back, her large black eyes
with glimmering bright lights within them from the moon; and with a
sudden chill a vague foreboding of imminent calamity crept into my
soul.