This was what was in this letter to Irina:
‘My betrothed went away yesterday; we shall never see each other
again.... I do not know even for certain where she is going to live.
With her, she takes all that till now seemed precious and desirable to
me; all my previous ideas, my plans, my intentions, have gone with her;
my labours even are wasted, my work of years ends in nothing, all my
pursuits have no meaning, no applicability; all that is dead; myself, my
old self, is dead and buried since yesterday. I feel, I see, I know this
clearly ... far am I from regretting this. Not to lament of it, have I
begun upon this to you.... As though I could complain when you love me,
Irina! I wanted only to tell you that, of all this dead past, all those
hopes and efforts, turned to smoke and ashes, there is only one thing
left living, invincible, my love for you. Except that love, nothing is
left for me; to say it is the sole thing precious to me, would be too
little; I live wholly in that love; that love is my whole being; in it
are my future, my career, my vocation, my country! You know me, Irina;
you know that fine talk of any sort is foreign to my nature, hateful to
me, and however strong the words in which I try to express my feelings,
you will have no doubts of their sincerity, you will not suppose them
exaggerated. I’m not a boy, in the impulse of momentary ecstasy, lisping
unreflecting vows to you, but a man of matured age--simply and plainly,
almost with terror, telling you what he has recognised for unmistakable
truth. Yes, your love has replaced everything for me--everything,
everything! Judge for yourself: can I leave this my _all_ in the hands
of another? can I let him dispose of you? You--you will belong to him,
my whole being, my heart’s blood will belong to him--while I myself ...
where am I? what am I? An outsider--an onlooker ... looking on at my own
life! No, that’s impossible, impossible! To share, to share in secret
that without which it’s useless, impossible to live ... that’s deceit
and death. I know how great a sacrifice I am asking of you, without any
sort of right to it; indeed, what can give one a right to sacrifice? But
I am not acting thus from egoism: an egoist would find it easier and
smoother not to raise this question at all. Yes, my demands are
difficult, and I am not surprised that they alarm you. The people among
whom you have to live are hateful to you, you are sick of society, but
are you strong enough to throw up that society? to trample on the
success it has crowned you with? to rouse public opinion against
you--the opinion of these hateful people? Ask yourself, Irina, don’t
take a burden upon you greater than you can bear. I don’t want to
reproach you; but remember: once already you could not hold out against
temptation. I can give you so little in return for all you are losing.
Hear my last word: if you don’t feel capable to-morrow, to-day even, of
leaving all and following me--you see how boldly I speak, how little I
spare myself,--if you are frightened at the uncertainty of the future,
and estrangement and solitude and the censure of men, if you cannot rely
on yourself, in fact, tell me so openly and without delay, and I will go
away; I shall go with a broken heart, but I shall bless you for your
truthfulness. But if you really, my beautiful, radiant queen, love a man
so petty, so obscure as I, and are really ready to share his
fate,--well, then, give me your hand, and let us set off together on our
difficult way! Only understand, my decision is unchanging; either all or
nothing. It’s unreasonable ... but I could not do otherwise--I cannot,
Irina! I love you too much.--Yours, G. L.’
Litvinov did not much like this letter himself; it did not quite truly
and exactly express what he wanted to say; it was full of awkward
expressions, high flown or bookish, and doubtless it was not better than
many of the other letters he had torn up; but it was the last, the chief
point was thoroughly stated anyway, and harassed, and worn out, Litvinov
did not feel capable of dragging anything else out of his head. Besides
he did not possess the faculty of putting his thought into literary
form, and like all people with whom it is not habitual, he took great
trouble over the style. His first letter was probably the best; it came
warmer from the heart. However that might be, Litvinov despatched his
missive to Irina.
She replied in a brief note:
‘Come to me to-day,’ she wrote to him: ‘_he_ has gone away for the whole
day. Your letter has greatly disturbed me. I keep thinking, thinking ...
and my head is in a whirl. I am very wretched, but you love me, and I am
happy. Come. Yours, I.’
She was sitting in her boudoir when Litvinov went in. He was conducted
there by the same little girl of thirteen who on the previous day had
watched for him on the stairs. On the table before Irina was standing an
open, semi-circular, cardboard box of lace: she was carelessly turning
over the lace with one hand, in the other she was holding Litvinov’s
letter. She had only just left off crying; her eyelashes were wet, and
her eyelids swollen; on her cheeks could be seen the traces of undried
tears not wiped away. Litvinov stood still in the doorway; she did not
notice his entrance.
‘You are crying?’ he said wonderingly.
She started, passed her hand over her hair and smiled.
‘Why are you crying?’ repeated Litvinov. She pointed in silence to the
letter. ‘So you were ... over that,’ he articulated haltingly.
‘Come here, sit down,’ she said, ‘give me your hand. Well, yes, I was
crying ... what are you surprised at? Is that nothing?’ she pointed
again to the letter.
Litvinov sat down.
‘I know it’s not easy, Irina, I tell you so indeed in my letter ... I
understand your position. But if you believe in the value of your love
for me, if my words have convinced you, you ought, too, to understand
what I feel now at the sight of your tears. I have come here, like a man
on his trial, and I await what is to be my sentence? Death or life?
Your answer decides everything. Only don’t look at me with those
eyes.... They remind me of the eyes I saw in old days in Moscow.’
Irina flushed at once, and turned away, as though herself conscious of
something evil in her gaze.
‘Why do you say that, Grigory? For shame! You want to know my answer ...
do you mean to say you can doubt it? You are troubled by my tears ...
but you don’t understand them. Your letter, dearest, has set me
thinking. Here you write that my love has replaced everything for you,
that even your former studies can never now be put into practice; but I
ask myself, can a man live for love alone? Won’t it weary him at last,
won’t he want an active career, and won’t he cast the blame on what drew
him away from active life? That’s the thought that dismays me, that’s
what I am afraid of, and not what you imagine.’
Litvinov looked intently at Irina, and Irina intently looked at him, as
though each would penetrate deeper and further into the soul of the
other, deeper and further than word can reach, or word betray.
‘You are wrong in being afraid of that,’ began Litvinov. ‘I must have
expressed myself badly. Weariness? Inactivity? With the new impetus
your love will give me? O Irina, in your love there’s a whole world for
me, and I can’t yet foresee myself what may develop from it.’
Irina grew thoughtful.
‘Where are we going?’ she whispered.
‘Where? We will talk of that later. But, of course, then ... then you
agree? you agree, Irina?’
She looked at him. ‘And you will be happy?’
‘O Irina!’
‘You will regret nothing? Never?’
She bent over the cardboard box, and again began looking over the lace
in it.
‘Don’t be angry with me, dear one, for attending to this trash at such a
moment.... I am obliged to go to a ball at a certain lady’s, these bits
of finery have been sent me, and I must choose to-day. Ah! I am awfully
wretched!’ she cried suddenly, and she laid her face down on the edge of
the box. Tears began falling again from her eyes.... She turned away;
the tears might spoil the lace.
‘Irina, you are crying again,’ Litvinov began uneasily.
‘Ah, yes, again,’ Irina interposed hurriedly. ‘O Grigory, don’t torture
me, don’t torture yourself!... Let us be free people! What does it
matter if I do cry! And indeed do I know myself why my tears are
flowing? You know, you have heard my decision, you believe it will not
be changed. That I agree to ... What was it you said?... to all or
nothing ... what more would you have? Let us be free! Why these mutual
chains? We are alone together now, you love me. I love you; is it
possible we have nothing to do but wringing our thoughts out of each
other? Look at me, I don’t want to talk about myself, I have never by
one word hinted that for me perhaps it was not so easy to set at nought
my duty as a wife ... and, of course, I don’t deceive myself, I know I
am a criminal, and that _he_ has a right to kill me. Well, what of it?
Let us be free, I say. To-day is ours--a life-time’s ours.’
She got up from the arm-chair and looked at Litvinov with her head
thrown back, faintly smiling and moving her eyebrows, while with one arm
bare to the elbow she pushed back from her face a long tress on which a
few tears glistened. A rich scarf slipped from the table and fell on the
floor at Irina’s feet. She trampled contemptuously on it. ‘Or don’t you
like me, to-day? Have I grown ugly since yesterday? Tell me, have you
often seen a prettier hand? And this hair? Tell me, do you love me?’
She clasped him in both arms, held his head close to her bosom, her comb
fell out with a ringing sound, and her falling hair wrapped him in a
soft flood of fragrance.