* * *
Nearly five years have passed since then, and no further news of Elena
has come. All letters and inquiries were fruitless; in vain did Nikolai
Artemyevitch himself make a journey to Venice and to Zara after peace
was concluded. In Venice he learnt what is already known to the reader,
but in Zara no one could give him any positive information about
Renditch and the ship he had taken. There were dark rumours that some
years back, after a great storm, the sea had thrown up on shore a coffin
in which had been found a man’s body... But according to other more
trustworthy accounts this coffin had not been thrown up by the sea at
all, but had been carried over and buried near the shore by a foreign
lady, coming from Venice; some added that they had seen this lady
afterwards in Herzegovina, with the forces which were there assembled;
they even described her dress, black from head to foot. However it was,
all trace of Elena had disappeared beyond recovery for ever; and no one
knows whether she is still living, whether she is hidden away somewhere,
or whether the petty drama of life is over--the little ferment of her
existence is at an end; and she has found death in her turn. It happens
at times that a man wakes up and asks himself with involuntary horror,
‘Can I be already thirty ... forty... fifty? How is it life has passed
so soon? How is it death has moved up so close?’ Death is like a fisher
who catches fish in his net and leaves them for a while in the water;
the fish is still swimming but the net is round him, and the fisher will
draw him up--when he thinks fit.
* * *
What became of the other characters of our story?
Anna Vassilyevna is still living; she has aged very much since the blow
that has fallen on her; is less complaining, but far more wretched.
Nikolai Artemyevitch, too, has grown older and greyer, and has parted
from Augustina Christianovna.... He has taken now to abusing everything
foreign. His housekeeper, a handsome woman of thirty, a Russian, wears
silk dresses and gold rings and bracelets. Kurnatovsky, like every man
of ardent temperament and dark complexion, a devoted admirer of pretty
blondes, married Zoya; she is in complete subjection to him and has even
given up thinking in German. Bersenyev is in Heidelberg; he has been
sent abroad at the expense of government; he has visited Berlin and
Paris and is not wasting his time; he has become a thoroughly efficient
professor. The attention of the learned public has been caught by his
two articles: ‘On some peculiarities of ancient law as regards judicial
sentences,’ and ‘On the significance of cities in civilisation.’ It
is only a pity that both articles are written in rather a heavy style,
disfigured by foreign words. Shubin is in Rome; he is completely given
up to his art and is reckoned one of the most remarkable and
promising of young sculptors. Severe tourists consider that he has not
sufficiently studied the antique, that he has ‘no style,’ and reckon
him one of the French school; he has had a great many orders from
the English and Americans. Of late, there has been much talk about
a Bacchante of his; the Russian Count Boboshkin, the well-known
millionaire, thought of buying it for one thousand scudi, but decided
in preference to give three thousand to another sculptor, French _pur
sang_, for a group entitled, ‘A youthful shepherdess dying for love in
the bosom of the Genius of Spring.’ Shubin writes from time to time to
Uvar Ivanovitch, who alone has remained quite unaltered in all respects.
‘Do you remember,’ he wrote to him lately, ‘what you said to me that
night, when poor Elena’s marriage was made known, when I was sitting on
your bed talking to you? Do you remember I asked you, “Will there ever
be men among us?” and you answered “There will be.” O primeval force!
And now from here in “my poetic distance,” I will ask you again: “What
do you say, Uvar Ivanovitch, will there be?”’
Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare
into the far distance.