SHE. Eh, eh! good sir, why do you talk so?... Well, I'll go and heat
the samovar.
Oh, decrepit, yellow, toothless creature! Am I really, even in your
eyes, not a man?
_March 24. Sharp frost_.
On the very day of my arrival in the town of O----, the official
business, above referred to, brought me into contact with a certain
Kirilla Matveitch Ozhogin, one of the chief functionaries of the
district; but I became intimate, or, as it is called, 'friends' with
him a fortnight later. His house was in the principal street, and was
distinguished from all the others by its size, its painted roof, and
the lions on its gates, lions of that species extraordinarily
resembling unsuccessful dogs, whose natural home is Moscow. From those
lions alone, one might safely conclude that Ozhogin was a man of
property. And so it was; he was the owner of four hundred peasants; he
entertained in his house all the best society of the town of O----, and
had a reputation for hospitality. At his door was seen the mayor with
his wide chestnut-coloured droshky and pair--an exceptionally bulky
man, who seemed as though cut out of material that had been laid by for
a long time. The other officials, too, used to drive to his receptions:
the attorney, a yellowish, spiteful creature; the land surveyor, a
wit--of German extraction, with a Tartar face; the inspector of means
of communication--a soft soul, who sang songs, but a scandalmonger; a
former marshal of the district--a gentleman with dyed hair, crumpled
shirt front, and tight trousers, and that lofty expression of face so
characteristic of men who have stood on trial. There used to come also
two landowners, inseparable friends, both no longer young and indeed a
little the worse for wear, of whom the younger was continually crushing
the elder and putting him to silence with one and the same reproach.
'Don't you talk, Sergei Sergeitch! What have you to say? Why, you spell
the word cork with two _k_'s in it.... Yes, gentlemen,' he would go on,
with all the fire of conviction, turning to the bystanders, 'Sergei
Sergeitch spells it not cork, but kork.' And every one present would
laugh, though probably not one of them was conspicuous for special
accuracy in orthography, while the luckless Sergei Sergeitch held his
tongue, and with a faint smile bowed his head. But I am forgetting that
my hours are numbered, and am letting myself go into too minute
descriptions. And so, without further beating about the bush,--Ozhogin
was married, he had a daughter, Elizaveta Kirillovna, and I fell in
love with this daughter.
Ozhogin himself was a commonplace person, neither good-looking nor
bad-looking; his wife resembled an aged chicken; but their daughter had
not taken after her parents. She was very pretty and of a bright and
gentle disposition. Her clear grey eyes looked out kindly and directly
from under childishly arched brows; she was almost always smiling, and
she laughed too, pretty often. Her fresh voice had a very pleasant
ring; she moved freely, rapidly, and blushed gaily. She did not dress
very stylishly, only plain dresses suited her. I did not make friends
quickly as a rule, and if I were at ease with any one from the
first--which, however, scarcely ever occurred--it said, I must own, a
great deal for my new acquaintance. I did not know at all how to behave
with women, and in their presence I either scowled and put on a morose
air, or grinned in the most idiotic way, and in my embarrassment turned
my tongue round and round in my mouth. With Elizaveta Kirillovna, on
the contrary, I felt at home from the first moment. It happened in this
way.
I called one day at Ozhogin's before dinner, asked, 'At home?' was
told, 'The master's at home, dressing; please to walk into the
drawing-room.' I went into the drawing-room; I beheld standing at the
window, with her back to me, a girl in a white gown, with a cage in her
hands. I was, as my way was, somewhat taken aback; however, I showed no
sign of it, but merely coughed, for good manners. The girl turned round
quickly, so quickly that her curls gave her a slap in the face, saw me,
bowed, and with a smile showed me a little box half full of seeds. 'You
don't mind?' I, of course, as is the usual practice in such cases,
first bowed my head, and at the same time rapidly crooked my knees, and
straightened them out again (as though some one had given me a blow
from behind in the legs, a sure sign of good breeding and pleasant,
easy manners), and then smiled, raised my hand, and softly and
carefully brandished it twice in the air. The girl at once turned away
from me, took a little piece of board out of the cage, began vigorously
scraping it with a knife, and suddenly, without changing her attitude,
uttered the following words: 'This is papa's parrot.... Are you fond of
parrots?' 'I prefer siskins,' I answered, not without some effort. 'I
like siskins, too; but look at him, isn't he pretty? Look, he's not
afraid.' (What surprised me was that I was not afraid.) 'Come closer.
His name's Popka.' I went up, and bent down. 'Isn't he really sweet?'
She turned her face to me; but we were standing so close together, that
she had to throw her head back to get a look at me with her clear eyes.
I gazed at her; her rosy young face was smiling all over in such a
friendly way that I smiled too, and almost laughed aloud with delight.
The door opened; Mr. Ozhogin came in. I promptly went up to him, and
began talking to him very unconstrainedly. I don't know how it was, but
I stayed to dinner, and spent the whole evening with them; and next day
the Ozhogins' footman, an elongated, dull-eyed person, smiled upon me
as a friend of the family when he helped me off with my overcoat.
To find a haven of refuge, to build oneself even a temporary nest, to
feel the comfort of daily intercourse and habits, was a happiness I, a
superfluous man, with no family associations, had never before
experienced. If anything about me had had any resemblance to a flower,
and if the comparison were not so hackneyed, I would venture to say
that my soul blossomed from that day. Everything within me and about me
was suddenly transformed! My whole life was lighted up by love, the
whole of it, down to the paltriest details, like a dark, deserted room
when a light has been brought into it. I went to bed, and got up,
dressed, ate my breakfast, and smoked my pipe--differently from before.
I positively skipped along as I walked, as though wings were suddenly
sprouting from my shoulders. I was not for an instant, I remember, in
uncertainty with regard to the feeling Elizaveta Kirillovna inspired in
me. I fell passionately in love with her from the first day, and from
the first day I knew I was in love. During the course of three weeks I
saw her every day. Those three weeks were the happiest time in my life;
but the recollection of them is painful to me. I can't think of them
alone; I cannot help dwelling on what followed after them, and the
intensest bitterness slowly takes possession of my softened heart.
When a man is very happy, his brain, as is well known, is not very
active. A calm and delicious sensation, the sensation of satisfaction,
pervades his whole being; he is swallowed up by it; the consciousness
of personal life vanishes in him--he is in beatitude, as badly educated
poets say. But when, at last, this 'enchantment' is over, a man is
sometimes vexed and sorry that, in the midst of his bliss, he observed
himself so little; that he did not, by reflection, by recollection,
redouble and prolong his feelings ... as though the 'beatific' man had
time, and it were worth his while to reflect on his sensations! The
happy man is what the fly is in the sunshine. And so it is that, when I
recall those three weeks, it is almost impossible for me to retain in
my mind any exact and definite impression, all the more so as during
that time nothing very remarkable took place between us.... Those
twenty days are present to my imagination as something warm, and young,
and fragrant, a sort of streak of light in my dingy, greyish life. My
memory becomes all at once remorselessly clear and trustworthy, only
from the instant when, to use the phrase of badly-educated writers, the
blows of destiny began to fall upon me.
Yes, those three weeks.... Not but what they have left some images in
my mind. Sometimes when it happens to me to brood a long while on that
time, some memories suddenly float up out of the darkness of the
past--like stars which suddenly come out against the evening sky to
meet the eyes straining to catch sight of them. One country walk in a
wood has remained particularly distinct in my memory. There were four
of us, old Madame Ozhogin, Liza, I, and a certain Bizmyonkov, a petty
official of the town of O----, a light-haired, good-natured, and
harmless person. I shall have more to say of him later. Mr. Ozhogin had
stayed at home; he had a headache, from sleeping too long. The day was
exquisite; warm and soft. I must observe that pleasure-gardens and
picnic-parties are not to the taste of the average Russian. In district
towns, in the so-called public gardens, you never meet a living soul at
any time of the year; at the most, some old woman sits sighing and
moaning on a green garden seat, broiling in the sun, not far from a
sickly tree--and that, only if there is no greasy little bench in the
gateway near. But if there happens to be a scraggy birchwood in the
neighbourhood of the town, tradespeople and even officials gladly make
excursions thither on Sundays and holidays, with samovars, pies, and
melons; set all this abundance on the dusty grass, close by the road,
sit round, and eat and drink tea in the sweat of their brows till
evening. Just such a wood there was at that time a mile and a half from
the town of O---. We repaired there after dinner, duly drank our fill
of tea, and then all four began to wander about the wood. Bizmyonkov
walked with Madame Ozhogin on his arm, I with Liza on mine. The day was
already drawing to evening. I was at that time in the very fire of
first love (not more than a fortnight had passed since our first
meeting), in that condition of passionate and concentrated adoration,
when your whole soul innocently and unconsciously follows every
movement of the beloved being, when you can never have enough of her
presence, listen enough to her voice, when you smile with the look of a
child convalescent after sickness, and a man of the smallest experience
cannot fail at the first glance to recognise a hundred yards off what
is the matter with you. Till that day I had never happened to have Liza
on my arm. We walked side by side, stepping slowly over the green
grass. A light breeze, as it were, flitted about us between the white
stems of the birches, every now and then flapping the ribbon of her hat
into my face. I incessantly followed her eyes, until at last she turned
gaily to me and we both smiled at each other. The birds were chirping
approvingly above us, the blue sky peeped caressingly at us through the
delicate foliage. My head was going round with excess of bliss. I
hasten to remark, Liza was not a bit in love with me. She liked me; she
was never shy with any one, but it was not reserved for me to trouble
her childlike peace of mind. She walked arm in arm with me, as she
would with a brother. She was seventeen then.... And meanwhile, that
very evening, before my eyes, there began that soft inward ferment
which precedes the metamorphosis of the child into the woman.... I was
witness of that transformation of the whole being, that guileless
bewilderment, that agitated dreaminess; I was the first to detect the
sudden softness of the glance, the sudden ring in the voice--and oh,
fool! oh, superfluous man! For a whole week I had the face to imagine
that I, I was the cause of this transformation!
This was how it happened.
We walked rather a long while, till evening, and talked little. I was
silent, like all inexperienced lovers, and she, probably, had nothing
to say to me. But she seemed to be pondering over something, and shook
her head in a peculiar way, as she pensively nibbled a leaf she had
picked. Sometimes she started walking ahead, so resolutely...then all
at once stopped, waited for me, and looked round with lifted eyebrows
and a vague smile. On the previous evening we had read together. _The
Prisoner of the Caucasus_. With what eagerness she had listened to me,
her face propped in both hands, and her bosom pressed against the
table! I began to speak of our yesterday's reading; she flushed, asked
me whether I had given the parrot any hemp-seed before starting, began
humming some little song aloud, and all at once was silent again. The
copse ended on one side in a rather high and abrupt precipice; below
coursed a winding stream, and beyond it, over an immense expanse,
stretched the boundless prairies, rising like waves, spreading wide
like a table-cloth, and broken here and there by ravines. Liza and I
were the first to come out at the edge of the wood; Bizmyonkov and the
elder lady were behind. We came out, stood still, and involuntarily we
both half shut our eyes; directly facing us, across a lurid mist, the
vast, purple sun was setting. Half the sky was flushed and glowing; red
rays fell slanting on the meadows, casting a crimson reflection even on
the side of the ravines in shadow, lying in gleams of fire on the
stream, where it was not hidden under the overhanging bushes, and, as
it were, leaning on the bosom of the precipice and the copse. We stood,
bathed in the blazing brilliance. I am not capable of describing all
the impassioned solemnity of this scene. They say that by a blind man
the colour red is imagined as the sound of a trumpet. I don't know how
far this comparison is correct, but really there was something of a
challenge in this glowing gold of the evening air, in the crimson flush
on sky and earth. I uttered a cry of rapture and at once turned to
Liza. She was looking straight at the sun. I remember the sunset glow
was reflected in little points of fire in her eyes. She was
overwhelmed, deeply moved. She made no response to my exclamation; for
a long while she stood, not stirring, with drooping head.... I held out
my hand to her; she turned away from me, and suddenly burst into tears.
I looked at her with secret, almost delighted amazement.... The voice
of Bizmyonkov was heard a couple of yards off. Liza quickly wiped her
tears and looked with a faltering smile at me. The elder lady came out
of the copse leaning on the arm of her flaxen-headed escort; they, in
their turn, admired the view. The old lady addressed some question to
Liza, and I could not help shuddering, I remember, when her daughter's
broken voice, like cracked glass, sounded in reply. Meanwhile the sun
had set, and the afterglow began to fade. We turned back. Again I took
Liza's arm in mine. It was still light in the wood, and I could clearly
distinguish her features. She was confused, and did not raise her eyes.
The flush that overspread her face did not vanish; it was as though she
were still standing in the rays of the setting sun.... Her hand
scarcely touched my arm. For a long while I could not frame a sentence;
my heart was beating so violently. Through the trees there was a
glimpse of the carriage in the distance; the coachman was coming at a
walking pace to meet us over the soft sand of the road.
'Lizaveta Kirillovna,' I brought out at last, 'what did you cry for?'
'I don't know,' she answered, after a short silence. She looked at me
with her soft eyes still wet with tears--her look struck me as changed,
and she was silent again.
'You are very fond, I see, of nature,' I pursued. That was not at all
what I meant to say, and the last words my tongue scarcely faltered out
to the end. She shook her head. I could not utter another word.... I
was waiting for something ... not an avowal--how was that possible? I
waited for a confiding glance, a question.... But Liza looked at the
ground, and kept silent. I repeated once more in a whisper: 'Why was
it?' and received no reply. She had grown, I saw that, ill at ease,
almost ashamed.
A quarter of an hour later we were sitting in the carriage driving to
the town. The horses flew along at an even trot; we were rapidly whirled
along through the darkening, damp air. I suddenly began talking, more
than once addressing first Bizmyonkov, and then Madame Ozhogin. I did
not look at Liza, but I could see that from her corner in the carriage
her eyes did not once rest on me. At home she roused herself, but would
not read with me, and soon went off to bed. A turning-point, that
turning-point I have spoken of, had been reached by her. She had ceased
to be a little girl, she too had begun ... like me ... to wait for
something. She had not long to wait.
But that night I went home to my lodgings in a state of perfect
ecstasy. The vague half presentiment, half suspicion, which had been
arising within me, had vanished. The sudden constraint in Liza's manner
towards me I ascribed to maidenly bashfulness, timidity.... Hadn't I
read a thousand times over in many books that the first appearance of
love always agitates and alarms a young girl? I felt supremely happy,
and was already making all sorts of plans in my head.
If some one had whispered in my ear then: 'You're raving, my dear chap!
that's not a bit what's in store for you. What's in store for you is to
die all alone, in a wretched little cottage, amid the insufferable
grumbling of an old hag who will await your death with impatience to
sell your boots for a few coppers...'!
Yes, one can't help saying with the Russian philosopher--'How's one to
know what one doesn't know?'
Enough for to-day.
_March 25. A white winter day._
I have read over what I wrote yesterday, and was all but tearing up the
whole manuscript. I think my story's too spun out and too sentimental.
However, as the rest of my recollections of that time presents nothing
of a pleasurable character, except that peculiar sort of consolation
which Lermontov had in view when he said there is pleasure and pain in
irritating the sores of old wounds, why not indulge oneself? But one
must know where to draw the line. And so I will continue without any
sort of sentimentality.
During the whole of the week after the country excursion, my position
was in reality in no way improved, though the change in Liza became
more noticeable every day. I interpreted this change, as I have said
before, in the most favourable way for me.... The misfortune of
solitary and timid people--who are timid from self-consciousness--is
just that, though they have eyes and indeed open them wide, they see
nothing, or see everything in a false light, as though through coloured
spectacles. Their own ideas and speculations trip them up at every
step. At the commencement of our acquaintance, Liza behaved confidingly
and freely with me, like a child; perhaps there may even have been in
her attitude to me something more than mere childish liking.... But
after this strange, almost instantaneous change had taken place in her,
after a period of brief perplexity, she felt constrained in my
presence; she unconsciously turned away from me, and was at the same
time melancholy and dreamy.... She was waiting ... for what? She did
not know ... while I ... I, as I have said above, was delighted at this
change.... Yes, by God, I was ready to expire, as they say, with
rapture. Though I am prepared to allow that any one else in my place
might have been deceived.... Who is free from vanity? I need not say
that all this was only clear to me in the course of time, when I had to
lower my clipped and at no time over-powerful wings.
The misunderstanding that had arisen between Liza and me lasted a whole
week--and there is nothing surprising in that: it has been my lot to be
a witness of misunderstandings that have lasted for years and years.
Who was it said, by the way, that truth alone is powerful? Falsehood is
just as living as truth, if not more so. To be sure, I recollect that
even during that week I felt from time to time an uneasy gnawing astir
within me ... but solitary people like me, I say again, are as
incapable of understanding what is going on within them as what is
taking place before their eyes. And, besides, is love a natural
feeling? Is it natural for man to love? Love is a sickness; and for
sickness there is no law. Granting that there was at times an
unpleasant pang in my heart; well, everything inside me was turned
upside down. And how is one to know in such circumstances, what is all
right and what is all wrong? and what is the cause, and what the
significance, of each separate symptom? But, be that as it may, all
these misconceptions, presentiments, and hopes were shattered in the
following manner.
One day--it was in the morning about twelve o'clock--I had hardly
entered Mr. Ozhogin's hall, when I heard an unfamiliar, mellow voice in
the drawing-room, the door opened, and a tall and slim man of
five-and-twenty appeared in the doorway, escorted by the master of the
house. He rapidly put on a military overcoat which lay on the slab, and
took cordial leave of Kirilla Matveitch. As he brushed past me, he
carelessly touched his foraging cap, and vanished with a clink of his
spurs.
'Who is that?' I asked Ozhogin.
'Prince N., 'the latter responded, with a preoccupied face; 'sent from
Petersburg to collect recruits. But where are the servants?' he went on
in a tone of annoyance; 'no one handed him his coat.'
We went into the drawing-room.
'Has he been here long?' I inquired.
'Arrived yesterday evening, I'm told. I offered him a room here, but he
refused. He seems a very nice fellow, though.'
'Has he been long with you?'
'About an hour. He asked me to introduce him to Olimpiada Nikitishna.'
'And did you introduce him?'
'Of course.'
'And Lizaveta Kirillovna, too, did he ...'
'He made her acquaintance, too, of course.'