‘Better not think now, really,’ Litvinov repeated, as he strode along
the street, feeling that the inward riot was rising up again in him.
‘The thing’s decided. She will keep her promise, and it only remains for
me to take all necessary steps.... Yet she hesitates, it seems.’... He
shook his head. His own designs struck even his own imagination in a
strange light; there was a smack of artificiality, of unreality about
them. One cannot dwell long upon the same thoughts; they gradually shift
like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope ... one peeps in, and already
the shapes before one’s eyes are utterly different. A sensation of
intense weariness overcame Litvinov.... If he could for one short hour
but rest!... But Tanya? He started, and, without reflecting even, turned
submissively homewards, merely struck by the idea, that this day was
tossing him like a ball from one to the other.... No matter; he must
make an end. He went back to his hotel, and with the same
submissiveness, insensibility, numbness, without hesitation or delay, he
went to see Tatyana.
He was met by Kapitolina Markovna. From the first glance at her, he knew
that she knew about it all; the poor maiden lady’s eyes were swollen
with weeping, and her flushed face, fringed with her dishevelled white
locks, expressed dismay and an agony of indignation, sorrow, and
boundless amazement. She was on the point of rushing up to Litvinov, but
she stopped short, and, biting her quivering lip, she looked at him as
though she would supplicate him, and kill him, and assure herself that
it was a dream, a senseless, impossible thing, wasn’t it?
‘Here you ... you are come,’ she began.... The door from the next room
opened instantaneously, and with a light tread Tatyana came in; she was
of a transparent pallor, but she was quite calm.
She gently put one arm round her aunt and made her sit down beside her.
‘You sit down too, Grigory Mihalitch,’ she said to Litvinov, who was
standing like one distraught at the door. ‘I am very glad to see you
once more. I have informed auntie of your decision, our common decision;
she fully shares it and approves of it.... Without mutual love there
can be no happiness, mutual esteem alone is not enough’ (at the word
‘esteem’ Litvinov involuntarily looked down) ‘and better to separate
now, than to repent later. Isn’t it, aunt?’
‘Yes, of course,’ began Kapitolina Markovna, ‘of course, Tanya darling,
the man who does not know how to appreciate you ... who could bring
himself----’
‘Aunt, aunt,’ Tatyana interrupted, ‘remember what you promised me. You
always told me yourself: truth, Tatyana, truth before everything--and
independence. Well, truth’s not always sweet, nor independence either;
or else where would be the virtue of it?’
She kissed Kapitolina Markovna on her white hair, and turning to
Litvinov, she went on:
‘We propose, aunt and I, leaving Baden.... I think it will be more
comfortable so for all of us.’
‘When do you think of going?’ Litvinov said thickly. He remembered that
Irina had said the very same words to him not long before.
Kapitolina Markovna was darting forward, but Tatyana held her back, with
a caressing touch on her shoulder.
‘Probably soon, very soon.’
‘And will you allow me to ask where you intend going?’ Litvinov said in
the same voice.
‘First to Dresden, then probably to Russia.’
‘But what can you want to know that for now, Grigory Mihalitch?’ ...
cried Kapitolina Markovna.
‘Aunt, aunt,’ Tatyana interposed again. A brief silence followed.
‘Tatyana Petrovna,’ began Litvinov, ‘you know how agonisingly painful
and bitter my feelings must be at this instant.’
Tatyana got up.
‘Grigory Mihalitch,’ she said, ‘we will not talk about that ... if you
please, I beg you for my sake, if not for your own. I have known you
long enough, and I can very well imagine what you must be feeling now.
But what’s the use of talking, of touching a sore’ (she stopped; it was
clear she wanted to stem the emotion rushing upon her, to swallow the
rising tears; she succeeded)--‘why fret a sore we cannot heal? Leave
that to time. And now I have to ask a service of you, Grigory Mihalitch;
if you will be so good, I will give you a letter directly: take it to
the post yourself, it is rather important, but aunt and I have no time
now.... I shall be much obliged to you. Wait a minute.... I will bring
it directly....’
In the doorway Tatyana glanced uneasily at Kapitolina Markovna; but she
was sitting with such dignity and decorum, with such a severe expression
on her knitted brows and tightly compressed lips, that Tatyana merely
gave her a significant nod and went out.
But scarcely had the door closed behind her, when every trace of dignity
and severity instantaneously vanished from Kapitolina Markovna’s face;
she got up, ran on tiptoe up to Litvinov, and all hunched together and
trying to look him in the face, she began in a quaking tearful whisper:
‘Good God,’ she said, ‘Grigory Mihalitch, what does it mean? is it a
dream or what? _You_ give up Tanya, you tired of her, you breaking your
word! You doing this, Grigory Mihalitch, you on whom we all counted as
if you were a stone wall! You? you? you, Grisha?’... Kapitolina Markovna
stopped. ‘Why, you will kill her, Grigory Mihalitch,’ she went on,
without waiting for an answer, while her tears fairly coursed in fine
drops over her cheeks. ‘You mustn’t judge by her bearing up now, you
know her character! She never complains; she does not think of herself,
so others must think of her! She keeps saying to me, “Aunt, we must save
our dignity!” but what’s dignity, when I foresee death, death before
us?’... Tatyana’s chair creaked in the next room. ‘Yes, I foresee
death,’ the old lady went on still more softly. ‘And how can such a
thing have come about? Is it witchcraft, or what? It’s not long since
you were writing her the tenderest letters. And in fact can an honest
man act like this? I’m a woman, free, as you know, from prejudice of any
sort, _esprit fort_, and I have given Tanya too the same sort of
education, she too has a free mind....’
‘Aunt!’ came Tatyana’s voice from the next room.
‘But one’s word of honour is a duty, Grigory Mihalitch, especially for
people of your, of my principles! If we’re not going to recognise duty,
what is left us? This cannot be broken off in this way, at your whim,
without regard to what may happen to another! It’s unprincipled ... yes,
it’s a crime; a strange sort of freedom!’
‘Aunt, come here please,’ was heard again.
‘I’m coming, my love, I’m coming....’ Kapitolina Markovna clutched at
Litvinov’s hand.--‘I see you are angry, Grigory Mihalitch.’... (‘Me! me
angry?’ he wanted to exclaim, but his tongue was dumb.) ‘I don’t want to
make you angry--oh, really, quite the contrary! I’ve come even to
entreat you; think again while there is time; don’t destroy her, don’t
destroy your own happiness, she will still trust you, Grisha, she will
believe in you, nothing is lost yet; why, she loves you as no one will
ever love you! Leave this hateful Baden-Baden, let us go away together,
only throw off this enchantment, and, above all, have pity, have
pity----’
‘Aunt!’ called Tatyana, with a shade of impatience in her voice.
But Kapitolina Markovna did not hear her.
‘Only say “yes,”’ she repeated to Litvinov; ‘and I will still make
everything smooth.... You need only nod your head to me, just one little
nod like this.’
Litvinov would gladly, he felt, have died at that instant; but the word
‘yes’ he did not utter, and he did not nod his head.
Tatyana reappeared with a letter in her hand. Kapitolina Markovna at
once darted away from Litvinov, and, averting her face, bent low over
the table, as though she were looking over the bills and papers that lay
on it.
Tatyana went up to Litvinov.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘is the letter I spoke of.... You will go to the post
at once with it, won’t you?’
Litvinov raised his eyes.... Before him, really, stood his judge.
Tatyana struck him as taller, slenderer; her face, shining with unwonted
beauty, had the stony grandeur of a statue’s; her bosom did not heave,
and her gown, of one colour and straight as a Greek chiton, fell in the
long, unbroken folds of marble drapery to her feet, which were hidden by
it. Tatyana was looking straight before her, only at Litvinov; her cold,
calm gaze, too, was the gaze of a statue. He read his sentence in it; he
bowed, took a letter from the hand held out so immovably to him, and
silently withdrew.
Kapitolina Markovna ran to Tatyana; but the latter turned off her
embraces and dropped her eyes; a flush of colour spread over her face,
and with the words, ‘and now, the sooner the better,’ she went into the
bedroom. Kapitolina Markovna followed her with hanging head.
The letter, entrusted to Litvinov by Tatyana, was addressed to one of
her Dresden friends--a German lady--who let small furnished apartments.
Litvinov dropped the letter into the post-box, and it seemed to him as
though with that tiny scrap of paper he was dropping all his past, all
his life into the tomb. He went out of the town, and strolled a long
time by narrow paths between vineyards; he could not shake off the
persistent sensation of contempt for himself, like the importunate
buzzing of flies in summer: an unenviable part, indeed, he had played in
the last interview.... And when he went back to his hotel, and after a
little time inquired about the ladies, he was told that immediately
after he had gone out, they had given orders to be driven to the
railway station, and had departed by the mail train--to what destination
was not known. Their things had been packed and their bills paid ever
since the morning. Tatyana had asked Litvinov to take her letter to the
post, obviously with the object of getting him out of the way. He
ventured to ask the hall-porter whether the ladies had left any letters
for him, but the porter replied in the negative, and looked amazed even;
it was clear that this sudden exit from rooms taken for a week struck
him too as strange and dubious. Litvinov turned his back on him, and
locked himself up in his room.
He did not leave it till the following day: the greater part of the
night he was sitting at the table, writing, and tearing what he had
written.... The dawn was already beginning when he finished his task--it
was a letter to Irina.