‘Why did I say that to her?’ Litvinov thought the next morning as he sat
in his room at the window. He shrugged his shoulders in vexation: he had
said that to Tatyana simply to cut himself off all way of retreat. In
the window lay a note from Irina: she asked him to see her at twelve.
Potugin’s words incessantly recurred to his mind, they seemed to reach
him with a faint ill-omened sound as of a rumbling underground. He was
angry with himself, but could not get rid of them anyhow. Some one
knocked at the door.
‘_Wer da?_’ asked Litvinov.
‘Ah! you’re at home! open!’ he heard Bindasov’s hoarse bass.
The door handle creaked.
Litvinov turned white with exasperation.
‘I’m not at home,’ he declared sharply.
‘Not at home? That’s a good joke!’
‘I tell you--not at home, get along.’
‘That’s civil! And I came to ask you for a little loan,’ grumbled
Bindasov.
He walked off, however, tramping on his heels as usual.
Litvinov was all but dashing out after him, he felt such a longing to
throttle the hateful ruffian. The events of the last few days had
unstrung his nerves; a little more, and he would have burst into tears.
He drank off a glass of cold water, locked up all the drawers in the
furniture, he could not have said why, and went to Tatyana’s.
He found her alone. Kapitolina Markovna had gone out shopping. Tatyana
was sitting on the sofa, holding a book in both hands. She was not
reading it, and scarcely knew what book it was. She did not stir, but
her heart was beating quickly in her bosom, and the little white collar
round her neck quivered visibly and evenly.
Litvinov was confused.... However, he sat down by her, said
good-morning, smiled at her; she too smiled at him without speaking. She
had bowed to him when he came in, bowed courteously, not affectionately,
and she did not glance at him. He held out his hand to her; she gave him
her chill fingers, but at once freed them again, and took up the book.
Litvinov felt that to begin the conversation with unimportant subjects
would be insulting Tatyana; she after her custom made no demands, but
everything in her said plainly, ‘I am waiting, I am waiting.’... He must
fulfil his promise. But though almost the whole night he had thought of
nothing else, he had not prepared even the first introductory words, and
absolutely did not know in what way to break this cruel silence.
‘Tanya,’ he began at last, ‘I told you yesterday that I have something
important to say to you. I am ready, only I beg you beforehand not to be
angry against me, and to rest assured that my feelings for you....’
He stopped. He caught his breath. Tatyana still did not stir, and did
not look at him; she only clutched the book tighter than ever.
‘There has always been,’ Litvinov went on, without finishing the
sentence he had begun, ‘there has always been perfect openness between
us; I respect you too much to be a hypocrite with you; I want to prove
to you that I know how to value the nobleness and independence of your
nature, even though ... though of course....’
‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ began Tatyana in a measured voice while a deathly
pallor overspread her whole face, ‘I will come to your assistance, you
no longer love me, and you don’t know how to tell me so.’
Litvinov involuntarily shuddered.
‘Why?’ ... he said, hardly intelligibly, ‘why could you suppose?... I
really don’t understand....’
‘What! isn’t it the truth? Isn’t it the truth?--tell me, tell me.’
Tatyana turned quite round to Litvinov; her face, with her hair brushed
back from it, approached his face, and her eyes, which for so long had
not looked at him, seemed to penetrate into his eyes.
‘Isn’t it the truth?’ she repeated.
He said nothing, did not utter a single sound. He could not have lied at
that instant, even if he had known she would believe him, and that his
lie would save her; he was not even able to bear her eyes upon him.
Litvinov said nothing, but she needed no answer, she read the answer in
his very silence, in those guilty downcast eyes--and she turned away
again and dropped the book.... She had been still uncertain till that
instant, and Litvinov understood that; he understood that she had been
still uncertain--and how hideous, actually hideous was all that he was
doing.
He flung himself on his knees before her.
‘Tanya,’ he cried, ‘if only you knew how hard it is for me to see you
in this position, how awful to me to think that it’s I ... I! My heart
is torn to pieces, I don’t know myself, I have lost myself, and you, and
everything.... Everything is shattered, Tanya, everything! Could I dream
that I ... I should bring such a blow upon you, my best friend, my
guardian angel?... Could I dream that we should meet like this, should
spend such a day as yesterday!...’
Tatyana was trying to get up and go away. He held her back by the border
of her dress.
‘No, listen to me a minute longer. You see I am on my knees before you,
but I have not come to beg your forgiveness; you cannot, you ought not
to forgive me. I have come to tell you that your friend is ruined, that
he is falling into the pit, and would not drag you down with him.... But
save me ... no! even you cannot save me. I should push you away, I am
ruined, Tanya, I am ruined past all help.’
Tatyana looked at Litvinov.
‘You are ruined?’ she said, as though not fully understanding him. ‘You
are ruined?’
‘Yes, Tanya, I am ruined. All the past, all that was precious,
everything I have lived for up till now, is ruined for me; everything is
wretched, everything is shattered, and I don’t know what awaits me in
the future. You said just now that I no longer loved you.... No, Tanya,
I have not ceased to love you, but a different, terrible, irresistible
passion has come upon me, has overborne me. I fought against it while I
could....’
Tatyana got up, her brows twitched, her pale face darkened. Litvinov too
rose to his feet.
‘You love another woman,’ she began, ‘and I guess who she is.... We met
her yesterday, didn’t we?... Well, I see what is left for me to do now.
Since you say yourself this passion is unalterable’ ... (Tatyana paused
an instant, possibly she had still hoped Litvinov would not let this
last word pass unchallenged, but he said nothing), ‘it only remains for
me to give you back ... your word.’
Litvinov bent his head, as though submissively receiving a well-deserved
blow.
‘You have every right to be angry with me,’ he said. ‘You have every
right to reproach me for feebleness ... for deceit.’
Tatyana looked at him again.
‘I have not reproached you, Litvinov, I don’t blame you. I agree with
you: the bitterest truth is better than what went on yesterday. What
sort of a life could ours have been now!’
‘What sort of a life will mine be now!’ echoed mournfully in Litvinov’s
soul.
Tatyana went towards the door of the bedroom.
‘I will ask you to leave me alone for a little time, Grigory
Mihalitch--we will see each other again, we will talk again. All this
has been so unexpected I want to collect myself a little ... leave me
alone ... spare my pride. We shall see each other again.’
And uttering these words, Tatyana hurriedly withdrew and locked the door
after her.
Litvinov went out into the street like a man dazed and stunned; in the
very depths of his heart something dark and bitter lay hid, such a
sensation must a man feel who has murdered another; and at the same time
he felt easier as though he had at last flung off a hated load.
Tatyana’s magnanimity had crushed him, he felt vividly all that he had
lost ... and yet? with his regret was mingled irritation; he yearned
towards Irina as to the sole refuge left him, and felt bitter against
her. For some time Litvinov’s feelings had been every day growing more
violent and more complex; this complexity tortured him, exasperated him,
he was lost in this chaos. He thirsted for one thing; to get out at last
on to the path, whatever it might be, if only not to wander longer in
this incomprehensible half-darkness. Practical people of Litvinov’s sort
ought never to be carried away by passion, it destroys the very meaning
of their lives.... But nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic;
she has her own, which we do not recognise and do not acknowledge till
we are crushed under its wheel.
On parting from Tatyana, Litvinov held one thought in his mind, to see
Irina; he set off indeed to see her. But the general was at home, so at
least the porter told him, and he did not care to go in, he did not feel
himself capable of hypocrisy, and he moved slowly off towards the
Konversation Hall. Litvinov’s incapacity for hypocrisy was evident that
day to both Voroshilov and Pishtchalkin, who happened to meet him; he
simply blurted out to the former that he was empty as a drum; to the
latter that he bored every one to extinction; it was lucky indeed that
Bindasov did come across him; there would certainly have been a
‘_grosser Scandal_.’ Both the young men were stupefied; Voroshilov went
so far as to ask himself whether his honour as an officer did not demand
satisfaction? But like Gogol’s lieutenant, Pirogov, he calmed himself
with bread and butter in a café. Litvinov caught sight in the distance
of Kapitolina Markovna running busily from shop to shop in her striped
mantle.... He felt ashamed to face the good, absurd, generous old lady.
Then he recalled Potugin, their conversation yesterday.... Then
something was wafted to him, something intangible and unmistakable: if a
falling shadow shed a fragrance, it could not be more elusive, but he
felt at once that it was Irina near him, and in fact she appeared a few
paces from him, arm-in-arm with another lady; their eyes met at once.
Irina probably noticed something peculiar in the expression of
Litvinov’s face; she stopped before a shop, in which a number of tiny
wooden clocks of Black Forest make were exhibited, and summoning him by
a motion of her head, she pointed to one of these clocks, and calling
upon him to admire a charming clock-face with a painted cuckoo above it,
she said, not in a whisper, but as though finishing a phrase begun, in
her ordinary tone of voice, much less likely to attract the attention of
outsiders, ‘Come in an hour’s time, I shall be alone.’
But at this moment the renowned lady-killer Monsieur Verdier swooped
down upon her, and began to fall into ecstasies over the colour,
_feuille morte_, of her gown and the low-crowned Spanish hat she wore
tilted almost down to her eyebrows.... Litvinov vanished in the crowd.