35
"I have been here so long!... Isn't it funny, Alex, how the time has
passed?"
The night was a windy one as though Winter knew it was its last chance
to freeze people to death before Spring would come; the long night
seemed slow in coming. All day we had worked very hard in the barn
preparing a big load which Lucie had asked me to take to the
Letts. After dinner, we had kippered herring and some meat stew à
l'Irlandaise, we were sitting near the open oven. "Lent bells! I
wonder who is praying?..."
"Yes, six weeks, dear. Six weeks of perfect sincerity and mutual
trust,--it is not a little thing."
She accepted my remark without turning her face from the fire near
which we were sitting. "Six weeks," she said again.
"Do you remember the man who was playing near me in Monte Carlo the
day we met?"
"There were too many of them. Which one do you mean?"
"The tall man, Mr. Osborne--never mind trying, it does not matter, I
just happened to think of him."
"Anything identical with our six weeks of life?" I asked, and
immediately regretted my bad temper--I am getting impossible.
"Very much," she said sadly. "Very much; only under other
circumstances, other climates, other people. Not so inconsiderate."
When I looked at her my heart filled with pity. Who _is_ this woman?
I don't know her. Perhaps she has something in her heart--the very
existence of which I had oftentimes doubted. Perhaps, in her life of
adventures, she has had more hardships, more of tragedy than I,--with
all of my selfish sufferings of a man who used to be rich and
prominent, and is now humble and poor? Perhaps she has more of
self-control not to show it,--nevertheless the amount of her
bitterness of life must be the same, if not deeper, than mine?
We have been here for six weeks.... I have no place to go. So I am
here. But she? I am sure she could be somewhere else, in better
surroundings, amongst people better than I am. And during these six
weeks--we were not friends. We were only plotters, joined under one
roof, and secretly hostile to each other--"I am ashamed," I said to
her, "honestly I am. You must think that I have never cared to know
what is in your mind. We have always been distant and mysterious,
always absorbed in our own affairs. Why should I trouble you with my
questions? Especially, if I knew beforehand that you wouldn't answer.
Yes, we have been together six weeks--more than that--we live under
the same roof, eat the same food, have our life as close as two human
beings can,--and yet--here we are,--apart from each other. You are a
woman, it's up to you to break this distance and build a bridge over
it."
"Well," she said, putting her small hand on mine, "you approach
the question evidently from another angle. I am not speaking of our
business, which may, and which may not, be the same. Why am I so sad
and so blue? It is that I feel I am all alone here. I can tell you and
I think that you have already understood it, that I came to Tumen
with orders to see a certain Syvorotka. I had to be with him, use his
house, use his protection, use his connections. I did not know who
this Syvorotka was.
A cave man? An ex-soldier? A sick man? A fat butcher? A sentimental,
but dirty druggist? Of all the men in the world,--and while coming
here I imagined all possible types,--that I should have met you, Alex!
You have always meant so much to me. I have always liked you. When I
saw you last in Petrograd I tried to get you into my affairs. Why? I
don't know. You have no ambitions, you have no character,--nothing.
And still, I tried to get you, only to be with you. You refused--for
you never cared: perhaps once in Marseilles, when you wanted to
kiss me (you see I did not forget)--and even at that time you were
drunk.... And here in Tumen--you were the man, with whom as they told
me, I had to go as far as was necessary to get his good services...."
"Strange life, this one of mine," she ended her remark and again
turned to look into the flames.
"Lucie, you never told me you cared, I thought you were for your own
affairs much more than for anything else; now I see it in a different
light."
"You do? It _is late_. I am going. I am leaving you--this time for
good. A week--or so, and I am far away from here, from you--with all
of your good and bad qualities. The time in which we live--does not
allow any speculations. One must get what he sees."