Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book,
when Nikolai Artemyevitch’s valet came cautiously into his room and
handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest.
‘I hope,’ he found in the note, ‘that you as a man of honour will
not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain
promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted
with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself
and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which
must be respected, and family tranquillity is something so sacred that
only _êtres sans coeur_ (among whom I have no reason to reckon you) would
repudiate it! Give this note back to me.--N. S.’
Shubin scribbled below in pencil: ‘Don’t excite yourself, I’m not quite
a sneak yet,’ and gave the note back to the man, and again began
upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands. He looked at the
reddening sky, at the two mighty young pines standing apart from the
other trees, thought ‘by day pines are bluish, but how magnificently
green they are in the evening,’ and went out into the garden, in the
secret hope of meeting Elena there. He was not mistaken. Before him on a
path between the bushes he caught a glimpse of her dress. He went after
her, and when he was abreast with her, remarked:
‘Don’t look in my direction, I’m not worth it.’
She gave him a cursory glance, smiled cursorily, and walked on further
into the depths of the garden. Shubin went after her.
‘I beg you not to look at me,’ he began, ‘and then I address you;
flagrant contradiction. But what of that? it’s not the first time I’ve
contradicted myself. I have just recollected that I have never begged
your pardon as I ought for my stupid behaviour yesterday. You are not
angry with me, Elena Nikolaevna, are you?’
She stood still and did not answer him at once--not because she was
angry, but because her thoughts were far away.
‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I am not in the least angry.’ Shubin bit his
lip.
‘What an absorbed... and what an indifferent face!’ he muttered. ‘Elena
Nikolaevna,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘allow me to tell you a
little anecdote. I had a friend, and this friend also had a friend, who
at first conducted himself as befits a gentleman but afterwards took
to drink. So one day early in the morning, my friend meets him in the
street (and by that time, note, the acquaintance has been completely
dropped) meets him and sees he is drunk. My friend went and turned his
back on him. But he ran up and said, “I would not be angry,” says he,
“if you refused to recognise me, but why should you turn your back
on me? Perhaps I have been brought to this through grief. Peace to my
ashes!”’
Shubin paused.
‘And is that all?’ inquired Elena.
‘Yes that’s all.’
‘I don’t understand you. What are you hinting at? You told me just now
not to look your way.’
‘Yes, and now I have told you that it’s too bad to turn your back on
me.’
‘But did I?’ began Elena.
‘Did you not?’
Elena flushed slightly and held out her hand to Shubin. He pressed it
warmly.
‘Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,’ said Elena, ‘but
your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of avoiding you.’
‘Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had
a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me.
Eh? I’ve spoken the truth, I’m quite sure?’
‘Perhaps so.’
‘And why is it? why?’
‘My ideas are not clear to myself,’ said Elena.
‘Then it’s just the time for confiding them to some one else,’ put in
Shubin. ‘But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion
of me.’
‘I?’
‘Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half-humbug because I am
an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything--in that you
are very likely right--but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think
that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I’m a gossip and
a slanderer,--and all because I’m an artist. What luckless, God-forsaken
wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to
adore, and you don’t believe in my repentance.’
‘No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in
your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes
and your tears too.’
Shubin shuddered.
‘Well, I see this is, as the doctors say, a hopeless case, _casus
incurabilis_. There is nothing left but to bow the head and submit. And
meanwhile, good Heavens, can it be true, can I possibly be absorbed in
my own egoism when there is a soul like this living at my side? And to
know that one will never penetrate into that soul, never will know
why it grieves and why it rejoices, what is working within it, what it
desires--whither it is going... Tell me,’ he said after a short silence,
‘could you never under any circumstances love an artist?’
Elena looked straight into his eyes.
‘I don’t think so, Pavel Yakovlitch; no.’
‘Which was to be proved,’ said Shubin with comical dejection. ‘After
which I suppose it would be more seemly for me not to intrude on your
solitary walk. A professor would ask you on what data you founded your
answer no. I’m not a professor though, but a baby according to your
ideas; but one does not turn one’s back on a baby, remember. Good-bye!
Peace to my ashes!’
Elena was on the point of stopping him, but after a moment’s thought she
too said:
‘Good-bye.’
Shubin went out of the courtyard. At a short distance from the Stahov’s
house he was met by Bersenyev. He was walking with hurried steps, his
head bent and his hat pushed back on his neck.
‘Andrei Petrovitch!’ cried Shubin.
He stopped.
‘Go on, go on,’ continued Shubin, ‘I only shouted, I won’t detain
you--and you’d better slip straight into the garden--you’ll find Elena
there, I fancy she’s waiting for you... she’s waiting for some one
anyway.... Do you understand the force of those words: she is waiting!
And do you know, my dear boy, an astonishing circumstance? Imagine, it’s
two years now that I have been living in the same house with her, I’m
in love with her, and it’s only just now, this minute, that I’ve, not
understood, but really seen her. I have seen her and I lifted up my
hands in amazement. Don’t look at me, please, with that sham sarcastic
smile, which does not suit your sober features. Well, now, I suppose you
want to remind me of Annushka. What of it? I don’t deny it. Annushkas
are on my poor level. And long life to all Annushkas and Zoyas and even
Augustina Christianovnas! You go to Elena now, and I will make my way
to--Annushka, you fancy? No, my dear fellow, worse than that; to Prince
Tchikurasov. He is a Maecenas of a Kazan-Tartar stock, after the style
of Volgin. Do you see this note of invitation, these letters, R.S.V.P.?
Even in the country there’s no peace for me. Addio!’ Bersenyev listened
to Shubin’s tirade in silence, looking as though he were just a little
ashamed of him. Then he went into the courtyard of the Stahovs’ house.
And Shubin did really go to Prince Tchikurasov, to whom with the most
cordial air he began saying the most insulting things. The Maecenas of
the Tartars of Kazan chuckled; the Maecenas’s guests laughed, but no one
felt merry, and every one was in a bad temper when the party broke up.
So two gentlemen slightly acquainted may be seen when they meet on the
Nevsky Prospect suddenly grinning at one another and pursing up their
eyes and noses and cheeks, and then, directly they have passed one
another, they resume their former indifferent, often cross, and
generally sickly, expression.
X
Elena met Bersenyev cordially, though not in the garden, but the
drawing-room, and at once, almost impatiently, renewed the conversation
of the previous day. She was alone; Nikolai Artemyevitch had quietly
slipped away. Anna Vassilyevna was lying down upstairs with a wet
bandage on her head. Zoya was sitting by her, the folds of her skirt
arranged precisely about her, and her little hands clasped on her knees.
Uvar Ivanovitch was reposing in the attic on a wide and comfortable
divan, known as a ‘samo-son’ or ‘dozer.’ Bersenyev again mentioned his
father; he held his memory sacred. Let us, too, say a few words about
him.
The owner of eighty-two serfs, whom he set free before his death, an
old Gottingen student, and disciple of the ‘Illuminati,’ the author of
a manuscript work on ‘transformations or typifications of the spirit in
the world’--a work in which Schelling’s philosophy, Swedenborgianism
and republicanism were mingled in the most original fashion--Bersenyev’s
father brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow immediately after his
mother’s death, and at once himself undertook his education. He
prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary
conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a
bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used
obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was
shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising
that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance
in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in
life) surmised at last that things were not going quite right, and he
placed his Andrei in a school. Andrei began to learn, but he was
not removed from his father’s supervision; his father visited him
unceasingly, wearying the schoolmaster to death with his instructions
and conversation; the teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits;
he was for ever bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on
education. Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old
man’s swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in
a sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this
grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long
nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost
as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them about
Washington: ‘My young nurslings,’ he began, but at the first sounds of
his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old Gottingen
student did not lie on a bed of roses; he was for ever weighed down by
the march of history, by questions and ideas of every kind. When young
Bersenyev entered the university, his father used to drive with him
to the lectures, but his health was already beginning to break up. The
events of the year 1848 shook him to the foundation (it necessitated the
re-writing of his whole book), and he died in the winter of 1853, before
his son’s time at the university was over, but he was able beforehand to
congratulate him on his degree, and to consecrate him to the service of
science. ‘I pass on the torch to you,’ he said to him two hours before
his death. ‘I held it while I could; you, too, must not let the light
grow dim before the end.’
Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The embarrassment
he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp was less marked.
The conversation passed on to the university.
‘Tell me,’ Elena asked him, ‘were there any remarkable men among your
comrades?’
Bersenyev was again reminded of Shubin’s words.
‘No, Elena Nikolaevna, to tell you the truth, there was not a single
remarkable man among us. And, indeed, where are such to be found! There
was, they say, a good time once in the Moscow university! But not now.
Now it’s a school, not a university. I was not happy with my comrades,’
he added, dropping his voice.
‘Not happy,’ murmured Elena.
‘But I ought,’ continued Bersenyev, ‘to make an exception. I know one
student--it’s true he is not in the same faculty--he is certainly a
remarkable man.’
‘What is his name?’ Elena inquired with interest.
‘Insarov Dmitri Nikanorovitch. He is a Bulgarian.’
‘Not a Russian?’
‘No, he is not a Russian,’
‘Why is he living in Moscow, then?’
‘He came here to study. And do you know with what aim he is studying?
He has a single idea: the liberation of his country. And his story is
an exceptional one. His father was a fairly well-to-do merchant; he came
from Tirnova. Tirnova is now a small town, but it was the capital of
Bulgaria in the old days when Bulgaria was still an independent state.
He traded with Sophia, and had relations with Russia; his sister,
Insarov’s aunt, is still living in Kiev, married to a senior history
teacher in the gymnasium there. In 1835, that is to say eighteen
years ago, a terrible crime was committed; Insarov’s mother suddenly
disappeared without leaving a trace behind; a week later she was found
murdered.’
Elena shuddered. Bersenyev stopped.
‘Go on, go on,’ she said.
‘There were rumours that she had been outraged and murdered by a Turkish
aga; her husband, Insarov’s father, found out the truth, tried to avenge
her, but only succeeded in wounding the aga with his poniard.... He was
shot.’
‘Shot, and without a trial?’
‘Yes. Insarov was just eight years old at the time. He remained in
the hands of neighbours. The sister heard of the fate of her brother’s
family, and wanted to take the nephew to live with her. They got him
to Odessa, and from there to Kiev. At Kiev he lived twelve whole years.
That’s how it is he speaks Russian so well.’
‘He speaks Russian?’
‘Just as we do. When he was twenty (that was at the beginning of the
year 1848) he began to want to return to his country. He stayed in
Sophia and Tirnova, and travelled through the length and breadth of
Bulgaria, spending two years there, and learning his mother tongue
over again. The Turkish Government persecuted him, and he was certainly
exposed to great dangers during those two years; I once caught sight of
a broad scar on his neck, from a wound, no doubt; but he does not like
to talk about it. He is reserved, too, in his own way. I have tried to
question him about everything, but I could get nothing out of him. He
answers by generalities. He’s awfully obstinate. He returned to Russia
again in 1850, to Moscow, with the intention of educating himself
thoroughly, getting intimate with Russians, and then when he leaves the
university----’
‘What then?’ broke in Elena.
‘What God wills. It’s hard to forecast the future.’
For a while Elena did not take her eyes off Bersenyev.
‘You have greatly interested me by what you have told me,’ she said.
‘What is he like, this friend of yours; what did you call him, Insarov?’
‘What shall I say? To my mind, he’s good-looking. But you will see him
for yourself.’
‘How so?’
‘I will bring him here to see you. He is coming to our little village
the day after tomorrow, and is going to live with me in the same
lodging.’
‘Really? But will he care to come to see us?’
‘I should think so. He will be delighted.’
‘He isn’t proud, then?’
‘Not the least. That’s to say, he is proud if you like, only not in the
sense you mean. He will never, for instance, borrow money from any one.’
‘Is he poor?’
‘Yes, he isn’t rich. When he went to Bulgaria he collected some relics
left of his father’s property, and his aunt helps him; but it all comes
to very little.’
‘He must have a great deal of character,’ observed Elena.
‘Yes. He is a man of iron. And at the same time you will see there is
something childlike and frank, with all his concentration and even his
reserve. It’s true, his frankness is not our poor sort of frankness--the
frankness of people who have absolutely nothing to conceal.... But
there, I will bring him to see you; wait a little.’
‘And isn’t he shy?’ asked Elena again.
‘No, he’s not shy. It’s only vain people who are shy.’
‘Why, are you vain?’
He was confused and made a vague gesture with his hands.
‘You excite my curiosity,’ pursued Elena. ‘But tell me, has he not taken
vengeance on that Turkish aga?’