“Yes,” thought Olénin, as he walked home. “I need only slacken the
reins a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack
girl.” He went to bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to blow
over and that he would continue to live as before.
But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryánka were
changed. The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olénin now
greeted her every time they met.
The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on hearing
of Olénin’s wealth and generosity invited him to his hut. The old woman
received him kindly, and from the day of the party onwards Olénin often
went in of an evening and sat with them till late at night. He seemed
to be living in the village just as he used to, but within him
everything had changed. He spent his days in the forest, and towards
eight o’clock, when it began to grow dusk, he would go to see his
hosts, alone or with Daddy Eróshka. They grew so used to him that they
were surprised when he stayed away. He paid well for his wine and was a
quiet fellow. Vanyúsha would bring him his tea and he would sit down in
a corner near the oven. The old woman did not mind him but went on with
her work, and over their tea or their _chikhir_ they talked about
Cossack affairs, about the neighbours, or about Russia: Olénin relating
and the others inquiring. Sometimes he brought a book and read to
himself. Maryánka crouched like a wild goat with her feet drawn up
under her, sometimes on the top of the oven, sometimes in a dark
corner. She did not take part in the conversations, but Olénin saw her
eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower seeds, and he
felt that she listened with her whole being when he spoke, and was
aware of his presence while he silently read to himself. Sometimes he
thought her eyes were fixed on him, and meeting their radiance he
involuntarily became silent and gazed at her. Then she would instantly
hide her face and he would pretend to be deep in conversation with the
old woman, while he listened all the time to her breathing and to her
every movement and waited for her to look at him again. In the presence
of others she was generally bright and friendly with him, but when they
were alone together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before
Maryánka had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm footsteps
and catch a glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open door. Then she
would step into the middle of the hut, catch sight of him, and her eyes
would give a scarcely perceptible kindly smile, and he would feel happy
and frightened.
He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every day
her presence became more and more necessary to him.
Olénin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that
his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a
future outside the world in which he was now living, it did not
interest him at all. When he received letters from home, from relatives
and friends, he was offended by the evident distress with which they
regarded him as a lost man, while he in his village considered those as
lost who did not live as he was living. He felt sure he would never
repent of having broken away from his former surroundings and of having
settled down in this village to such a solitary and original life. When
out on expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt
happy too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eróshka’s wing, from the
forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially when
he thought of Maryánka and Lukáshka, that he seemed to see the
falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his
indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and
ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and more of
a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to what his
imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all like his
dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had heard and
read. “There are none of all those chestnut steeds, precipices, Amalet
Beks, heroes or villains,” thought he. “The people live as nature
lives: they die, are born, unite, and more are born—they fight, eat and
drink, rejoice and die, without any restrictions but those that nature
imposes on sun and grass, on animal and tree. They have no other laws.”
Therefore these people, compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful,
strong, and free, and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry
for himself. Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything,
to get registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a
Cossack woman (only not Maryánka, whom he conceded to Lukáshka), and to
live with Daddy Eróshka and go shooting and fishing with him, and go
with the Cossacks on their expeditions. “Why ever don’t I do it? What
am I waiting for?” he asked himself, and he egged himself on and shamed
himself. “Am I afraid of doing what I hold to be reasonable and right?
Is the wish to be a simple Cossack, to live close to nature, not to
injure anyone but even to do good to others, more stupid than my former
dreams, such as those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?”
but a voice seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any
decision. He was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not
live altogether like Eróshka and Lukáshka because he had a different
idea of happiness—he was held back by the thought that happiness lies
in self-sacrifice. What he had done for Lukáshka continued to give him
joy. He kept looking for occasions to sacrifice himself for others, but
did not meet with them. Sometimes he forgot this newly discovered
recipe for happiness and considered himself capable of identifying his
life with Daddy Eróshka’s, but then he quickly bethought himself and
promptly clutched at the idea of conscious self-sacrifice, and from
that basis looked calmly and proudly at all men and at their happiness.