"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "I did not
mean that when I spoke of it. . . . Your insincerity is natural and
in the order of things. If people agreed together and suddenly
became sincere, everything would go to the devil."
Sofya Petrovna was in no mood for philosophical reflections, but
she was glad of a chance to change the conversation, and asked:
"But why?"
"Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once civilization
has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for instance, feminine
virtue, sincerity is out of place. . . ."
Ilyin jabbed his stick angrily into the sand. Madame Lubyantsev
listened to him and liked his conversation, though a great deal of
it she did not understand. What gratified her most was that she,
an ordinary woman, was talked to by a talented man on "intellectual"
subjects; it afforded her great pleasure, too, to watch the working
of his mobile, young face, which was still pale and angry. She
failed to understand a great deal that he said, but what was clear
to her in his words was the attractive boldness with which the
modern man without hesitation or doubt decides great questions and
draws conclusive deductions.
She suddenly realized that she was admiring him, and was alarmed.
"Forgive me, but I don't understand," she said hurriedly. "What
makes you talk of insincerity? I repeat my request again: be my
good, true friend; let me alone! I beg you most earnestly!"
"Very good; I'll try again," sighed Ilyin. "Glad to do my best. . . .
Only I doubt whether anything will come of my efforts. Either
I shall put a bullet through my brains or take to drink in an idiotic
way. I shall come to a bad end! There's a limit to everything--
to struggles with Nature, too. Tell me, how can one struggle against
madness? If you drink wine, how are you to struggle against
intoxication? What am I to do if your image has grown into my soul,
and day and night stands persistently before my eyes, like that
pine there at this moment? Come, tell me, what hard and difficult
thing can I do to get free from this abominable, miserable condition,
in which all my thoughts, desires, and dreams are no longer my own,
but belong to some demon who has taken possession of me? I love
you, love you so much that I am completely thrown out of gear; I've
given up my work and all who are dear to me; I've forgotten my God!
I've never been in love like this in my life."
Sofya Petrovna, who had not expected such a turn to their conversation,
drew away from Ilyin and looked into his face in dismay. Tears came
into his eyes, his lips were quivering, and there was an imploring,
hungry expression in his face.
"I love you!" he muttered, bringing his eyes near her big, frightened
eyes. "You are so beautiful! I am in agony now, but I swear I would
sit here all my life, suffering and looking in your eyes. But . . .
be silent, I implore you!"
Sofya Petrovna, feeling utterly disconcerted, tried to think as
quickly as possible of something to say to stop him. "I'll go away,"
she decided, but before she had time to make a movement to get up,
Ilyin was on his knees before her. . . . He was clasping her knees,
gazing into her face and speaking passionately, hotly, eloquently.
In her terror and confusion she did not hear his words; for some
reason now, at this dangerous moment, while her knees were being
agreeably squeezed and felt as though they were in a warm bath, she
was trying, with a sort of angry spite, to interpret her own
sensations. She was angry that instead of brimming over with
protesting virtue, she was entirely overwhelmed with weakness,
apathy, and emptiness, like a drunken man utterly reckless; only
at the bottom of her soul a remote bit of herself was malignantly
taunting her: "Why don't you go? Is this as it should be? Yes?"
Seeking for some explanation, she could not understand how it was
she did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging like a
leech, and why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right and to
left to see whether any one was looking. The clouds and the pines
stood motionless, looking at them severely, like old ushers seeing
mischief, but bribed not to tell the school authorities. The sentry
stood like a post on the embankment and seemed to be looking at the
seat.
"Let him look," thought Sofya Petrovna.
"But . . . but listen," she said at last, with despair in her voice.
"What can come of this? What will be the end of this?"
"I don't know, I don't know," he whispered, waving off the disagreeable
questions.
They heard the hoarse, discordant whistle of the train. This cold,
irrelevant sound from the everyday world of prose made Sofya Petrovna
rouse herself.
"I can't stay . . . it's time I was at home," she said, getting up
quickly. "The train is coming in. . . Andrey is coming by it! He
will want his dinner."
Sofya Petrovna turned towards the embankment with a burning face.
The engine slowly crawled by, then came the carriages. It was not
the local train, as she had supposed, but a goods train. The trucks
filed by against the background of the white church in a long string
like the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would
never end.
But at last the train passed, and the last carriage with the guard
and a light in it had disappeared behind the trees. Sofya Petrovna
turned round sharply, and without looking at Ilyin, walked rapidly
back along the track. She had regained her self-possession. Crimson
with shame, humiliated not by Ilyin--no, but by her own cowardice,
by the shamelessness with which she, a chaste and high-principled
woman, had allowed a man, not her husband, to hug her knees--she
had only one thought now: to get home as quickly as possible to her
villa, to her family. The lawyer could hardly keep pace with her.
Turning from the clearing into a narrow path, she turned round and
glanced at him so quickly that she saw nothing but the sand on his
knees, and waved to him to drop behind.
Reaching home, Sofya Petrovna stood in the middle of her room for
five minutes without moving, and looked first at the window and
then at her writing-table.
"You low creature!" she said, upbraiding herself. "You low creature!"
To spite herself, she recalled in precise detail, keeping nothing
back--she recalled that though all this time she had been opposed
to Ilyin's lovemaking, something had impelled her to seek an interview
with him; and what was more, when he was at her feet she had enjoyed
it enormously. She recalled it all without sparing herself, and
now, breathless with shame, she would have liked to slap herself
in the face.
"Poor Andrey!" she said to herself, trying as she thought of her
husband to put into her face as tender an expression as she could.
"Varya, my poor little girl, doesn't know what a mother she has!
Forgive me, my dear ones! I love you so much . . . so much!"
And anxious to prove to herself that she was still a good wife and
mother, and that corruption had not yet touched that "sanctity of
marriage" of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sofya Petrovna ran to
the kitchen and abused the cook for not having yet laid the table
for Andrey Ilyitch. She tried to picture her husband's hungry and
exhausted appearance, commiserated him aloud, and laid the table
for him with her own hands, which she had never done before. Then
she found her daughter Varya, picked her up in her arms and hugged
her warmly; the child seemed to her cold and heavy, but she was
unwilling to acknowledge this to herself, and she began explaining
to the child how good, kind, and honourable her papa was.
But when Andrey Ilyitch arrived soon afterwards she hardly greeted
him. The rush of false feeling had already passed off without proving
anything to her, only irritating and exasperating her by its falsity.
She was sitting by the window, feeling miserable and cross. It is
only by being in trouble that people can understand how far from
easy it is to be the master of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya
Petrovna said afterwards that there was a tangle within her which
it was as difficult to unravel as to count a flock of sparrows
rapidly flying by. From the fact that she was not overjoyed to see
her husband, that she did not like his manner at dinner, she concluded
all of a sudden that she was beginning to hate her husband.
Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and exhaustion, fell upon the
sausage while waiting for the soup to be brought in, and ate it
greedily, munching noisily and moving his temples.
"My goodness!" thought Sofya Petrovna. "I love and respect him, but
. . . why does he munch so repulsively?"
The disorder in her thoughts was no less than the disorder in her
feelings. Like all persons inexperienced in combating unpleasant
ideas, Madame Lubyantsev did her utmost not to think of her trouble,
and the harder she tried the more vividly Ilyin, the sand on his
knees, the fluffy clouds, the train, stood out in her imagination.
"And why did I go there this afternoon like a fool?" she thought,
tormenting herself. "And am I really so weak that I cannot depend
upon myself?"
Fear magnifies danger. By the time Andrey Ilyitch was finishing the
last course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her husband
everything and to flee from danger!
"I've something serious to say to you, Andrey," she began after
dinner while her husband was taking off his coat and boots to lie
down for a nap.
"Well?"
"Let us leave this place!"
"H'm! . . . Where shall we go? It's too soon to go back to town."
"No; for a tour or something of that sort.
"For a tour . . ." repeated the notary, stretching. "I dream of
that myself, but where are we to get the money, and to whom am I
to leave the office?"
And thinking a little he added:
"Of course, you must be bored. Go by yourself if you like."
Sofya Petrovna agreed, but at once reflected that Ilyin would be
delighted with the opportunity, and would go with her in the same
train, in the same compartment. . . . She thought and looked at her
husband, now satisfied but still languid. For some reason her eyes
rested on his feet--miniature, almost feminine feet, clad in
striped socks; there was a thread standing out at the tip of each
sock.
Behind the blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the
window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on
the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off
. . . . _vis-à-vis_ Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking his
eyes off her, wrathful at his own weakness and pale with spiritual
agony. He would call himself an immoral schoolboy, would abuse her,
tear his hair, but when darkness came on and the passengers were
asleep or got out at a station, he would seize the opportunity to
kneel before her and embrace her knees as he had at the seat in the
wood. . . .
She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible and
not want the impossible."
"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya Petrovna.
Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out
of danger. Little by little her ideas grew clearer; her spirits
rose and she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that
however much she thought, however much she dreamed, she would go
away. While her husband was asleep, the evening gradually came on.
She sat in the drawing-room and played the piano. The greater
liveliness out of doors, the sound of music, but above all the
thought that she was a sensible person, that she had surmounted her
difficulties, completely restored her spirits. Other women, her
appeased conscience told her, would probably have been carried off
their feet in her position, and would have lost their balance, while
she had almost died of shame, had been miserable, and was now running
out of the danger which perhaps did not exist! She was so touched
by her own virtue and determination that she even looked at herself
two or three times in the looking-glass.
When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the dining-room
to play cards; the ladies remained in the drawing-room and the
verandah. The last to arrive was Ilyin. He was gloomy, morose, and
looked ill. He sat down in the corner of the sofa and did not move
the whole evening. Usually good-humoured and talkative, this time
he remained silent, frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had
to answer some question, he gave a forced smile with his upper lip
only, and answered jerkily and irritably. Four or five times he
made some jest, but his jests sounded harsh and cutting. It seemed
to Sofya Petrovna that he was on the verge of hysterics. Only now,
sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for the first time that
this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his soul was sick, and
that he could find no rest. For her sake he was wasting the best
days of his youth and his career, spending the last of his money
on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and, worst
of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself.
From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.
She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and
if at that moment she had gone up to him and said to him, "No,"
there would have been a force in her voice hard to disobey. But she
did not go up to him and did not speak--indeed, never thought of
doing so. The pettiness and egoism of youth had never been more
patent in her than that evening. She realized that Ilyin was unhappy,
and that he was sitting on the sofa as though he were on hot coals;
she felt sorry for him, but at the same time the presence of a man
who loved her to distraction, filled her soul with triumph and a
sense of her own power. She felt her youth, her beauty, and her
unassailable virtue, and, since she had decided to go away, gave
herself full licence for that evening. She flirted, laughed
incessantly, sang with peculiar feeling and gusto. Everything
delighted and amused her. She was amused at the memory of what had
happened at the seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked
on. She was amused by her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the
pin in his cravat, which she had never noticed before. There was a
red snake with diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as
so amusing that she could have kissed it on the spot.
Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as though
half intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which dealt
with wasted hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery of
another's grief. "'And old age comes nearer and nearer' . . ." she
sang. And what was old age to her?
"It seems as though there is something going wrong with me," she
thought from time to time through her laughter and singing.
The party broke up at twelve o'clock. Ilyin was the last to leave.
Sofya Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him to the
bottom step of the verandah. She wanted to tell him that she was
going away with her husband, and to watch the effect this news would
produce on him.
The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough for
Sofya Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of his
overcoat and with the awning of the verandah. She could see, too,
how white Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip in the effort
to smile.
"Sonia, Sonitchka . . . my darling woman!" he muttered, preventing
her from speaking. "My dear! my sweet!"
In a rush of tenderness, with tears in his voice, he showered
caressing words upon her, that grew tenderer and tenderer, and even
called her "thou," as though she were his wife or mistress. Quite
unexpectedly he put one arm round her waist and with the other hand
took hold of her elbow.
"My precious! my delight!" he whispered, kissing the nape of her
neck; "be sincere; come to me at once!"
She slipped out of his arms and raised her head to give vent to her
indignation and anger, but the indignation did not come off, and
all her vaunted virtue and chastity was only sufficient to enable
her to utter the phrase used by all ordinary women on such occasions:
"You must be mad."
"Come, let us go," Ilyin continued. "I felt just now, as well as
at the seat in the wood, that you are as helpless as I am, Sonia
. . . . You are in the same plight! You love me and are fruitlessly
trying to appease your conscience. . . ."
Seeing that she was moving away, he caught her by her lace cuff and
said rapidly:
"If not today, then tomorrow you will have to give in! Why, then,
this waste of time? My precious, darling Sonia, the sentence is
passed; why put off the execution? Why deceive yourself?"
Sofya Petrovna tore herself from him and darted in at the door.
Returning to the drawing-room, she mechanically shut the piano,
looked for a long time at the music-stand, and sat down. She could
not stand up nor think. All that was left of her excitement and
recklessness was a fearful weakness, apathy, and dreariness. Her
conscience whispered to her that she had behaved badly, foolishly,
that evening, like some madcap girl--that she had just been
embraced on the verandah, and still had an uneasy feeling in her
waist and her elbow. There was not a soul in the drawing-room; there
was only one candle burning. Madame Lubyantsev sat on the round
stool before the piano, motionless, as though expecting something.
And as though taking advantage of the darkness and her extreme
lassitude, an oppressive, overpowering desire began to assail her.
Like a boa-constrictor it gripped her limbs and her soul, and grew
stronger every second, and no longer menaced her as it had done,
but stood clear before her in all its nakedness.
She sat for half an hour without stirring, not restraining herself
from thinking of Ilyin, then she got up languidly and dragged herself
to her bedroom. Andrey Ilyitch was already in bed. She sat down by
the open window and gave herself up to desire. There was no "tangle"
now in her head; all her thoughts and feelings were bent with one
accord upon a single aim. She tried to struggle against it, but
instantly gave it up. . . . She understood now how strong and
relentless was the foe. Strength and fortitude were needed to combat
him, and her birth, her education, and her life had given her nothing
to fall back upon.
"Immoral wretch! Low creature!" she nagged at herself for her
weakness. "So that's what you're like!"
Her outraged sense of propriety was moved to such indignation by
this weakness that she lavished upon herself every term of abuse
she knew, and told herself many offensive and humiliating truths.
So, for instance, she told herself that she never had been moral,
that she had not come to grief before simply because she had had
no opportunity, that her inward conflict during that day had all
been a farce. . . .
"And even if I have struggled," she thought, "what sort of struggle
was it? Even the woman who sells herself struggles before she brings
herself to it, and yet she sells herself. A fine struggle! Like
milk, I've turned in a day! In one day!"
She convicted herself of being tempted, not by feeling, not by Ilyin
personally, but by sensations which awaited her . . . an idle lady,
having her fling in the summer holidays, like so many!
"'Like an unfledged bird when the mother has been slain,'" sang
a husky tenor outside the window.
"If I am to go, it's time," thought Sofya Petrovna. Her heart
suddenly began beating violently.
"Andrey!" she almost shrieked. "Listen! we . . . we are going? Yes?"
"Yes, I've told you already: you go alone."
"But listen," she began. "If you don't go with me, you are in danger
of losing me. I believe I am . . . in love already."
"With whom?" asked Andrey Ilyitch.
"It can't make any difference to you who it is!" cried Sofya Petrovna.
Andrey Ilyitch sat up with his feet out of bed and looked wonderingly
at his wife's dark figure.
"It's a fancy!" he yawned.
He did not believe her, but yet he was frightened. After thinking
a little and asking his wife several unimportant questions, he
delivered himself of his opinions on the family, on infidelity . . .
spoke listlessly for about ten minutes and got into bed again.
His moralizing produced no effect. There are a great many opinions
in the world, and a good half of them are held by people who have
never been in trouble!
In spite of the late hour, summer visitors were still walking
outside. Sofya Petrovna put on a light cape, stood a little, thought
a little. . . . She still had resolution enough to say to her
sleeping husband:
"Are you asleep? I am going for a walk. . . . Will you come with
me?"
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out. . . .
It was fresh and windy. She was conscious neither of the wind nor
the darkness, but went on and on. . . . An overmastering force drove
her on, and it seemed as though, if she had stopped, it would have
pushed her in the back.
"Immoral creature!" she muttered mechanically. "Low wretch!"
She was breathless, hot with shame, did not feel her legs under
her, but what drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or fear.