Bersenyev’s words turned out only partly true; the danger was over,
but Insarov gained strength slowly, and the doctor talked of a complete
undermining of the whole system. The patient left his bed for all
that, and began to walk about the room; Bersenyev went home to his own
lodging, but he came every day to his still feeble friend; and every day
as before he informed Elena of the state of his health. Insarov did
not dare to write to her, and only indirectly in his conversations with
Bersenyev referred to her; but Bersenyev, with assumed carelessness,
told him about his visits to the Stahovs, trying, however, to give him
to understand that Elena had been deeply distressed, and that now she
was calmer. Elena too did not write to Insarov; she had a plan in her
head.
One day Bersenyev had just informed her with a cheerful face that the
doctor had already allowed Insarov to eat a cutlet, and that he would
probably soon go out; she seemed absorbed, dropped her eyes.
‘Guess, what I want to say to you,’ she said. Bersenyev was confused. He
understood her.
‘I suppose,’ he answered, looking away, ‘you want to say that you wish
to see him.’
Elena crimsoned, and scarcely audibly, she breathed, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, what then? That, I imagine, you can easily do.’--‘Ugh!’ he
thought, ‘what a loathsome feeling there is in my heart!’
‘You mean that I have already before...’ said Elena. ‘But I am
afraid--now he is, you say, seldom alone.’
‘That’s not difficult to get over,’ replied Bersenyev, still not looking
at her. ‘I, of course, cannot prepare him; but give me a note. Who
can hinder your writing to him as a good friend, in whom you take an
interest? There’s no harm in that. Appoint--I mean, write to him when
you will come.
‘I am ashamed,’ whispered Elena.
‘Give me the note, I will take it.’
‘There’s no need of that, but I wanted to ask you--don’t be angry with
me, Andrei Petrovitch--don’t go to him to-morrow!’
Bersenyev bit his lip.
‘Ah! yes, I understand; very well, very well,’ and, adding two or three
words more, he quickly took leave.
‘So much the better, so much the better,’ he thought, as he hurried
home. ‘I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better. What possessed
me to go hanging on to the edge of another man’s happiness? I regret
nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over. Let
them be! My father was right when he used to say to me: “You and I,
my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we’re not the
spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs--we are
workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take
your place at your workman’s bench, in your dark workshop, and let the
sun shine on other men! Even our dull life has its own pride, its own
happiness!”’
The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post. ‘Expect me,’
Elena wrote to him, ‘and give orders for no one to see you. A. P. will
not come.’