“You say nothing, and that is splendid,” said Pyotr Sergeyitch. “Go on
being silent.”
I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the drenching rain
to the house; he laughed too, and, leaping as he went, ran after me.
Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like children,
we dashed into the room. My father and brother, who were not used to
seeing me laughing and light-hearted, looked at me in surprise and began
laughing too.
The storm-clouds had passed over and the thunder had ceased, but the
raindrops still glittered on Pyotr Sergeyitch’s beard. The whole evening
till supper-time he was singing, whistling, playing noisily with the dog
and racing about the room after it, so that he nearly upset the servant
with the samovar. And at supper he ate a great deal, talked nonsense,
and maintained that when one eats fresh cucumbers in winter there is the
fragrance of spring in one’s mouth.
When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide open, and
an undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I remembered that I was
free and healthy, that I had rank and wealth, that I was beloved; above
all, that I had rank and wealth, rank and wealth, my God! how nice that
was!... Then, huddling up in bed at a touch of cold which reached me
from the garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr
Sergeyitch or not,... and fell asleep unable to reach any conclusion.
And when in the morning I saw quivering patches of sunlight and the
shadows of the lime trees on my bed, what had happened yesterday rose
vividly in my memory. Life seemed to me rich, varied, full of charm.
Humming, I dressed quickly and went out into the garden....
And what happened afterwards? Why--nothing. In the winter when we lived
in town Pyotr Sergeyitch came to see us from time to time. Country
acquaintances are charming only in the country and in summer; in the
town and in winter they lose their charm. When you pour out tea for them
in the town it seems as though they are wearing other people’s coats,
and as though they stirred their tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr
Sergeyitch spoke sometimes of love, but the effect was not at all the
same as in the country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of
the wall that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was
poor, and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and
a deputy public prosecutor; we both of us--I through my youth and he for
some unknown reason--thought of that wall as very high and thick, and
when he was with us in the town he would criticize aristocratic society
with a forced smile, and maintain a sullen silence when there was
anyone else in the drawing-room. There is no wall that cannot be broken
through, but the heroes of the modern romance, so far as I know them,
are too timid, spiritless, lazy, and oversensitive, and are too ready to
resign themselves to the thought that they are doomed to failure, that
personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they merely
criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that their criticism
passes little by little into vulgarity.
I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost
touching me; I went on living in careless ease without trying to
understand myself, not knowing what I expected or what I wanted from
life, and time went on and on.... People passed by me with their
love, bright days and warm nights flashed by, the nightingales sang, the
hay smelt fragrant, and all this, sweet and overwhelming in remembrance,
passed with me as with everyone rapidly, leaving no trace, was not
prized, and vanished like mist.... Where is it all?
My father is dead, I have grown older; everything that delighted me,
caressed me, gave me hope--the patter of the rain, the rolling of
the thunder, thoughts of happiness, talk of love--all that has become
nothing but a memory, and I see before me a flat desert distance; on
the plain not one living soul, and out there on the horizon it is dark
and terrible....
A ring at the bell.... It is Pyotr Sergeyitch. When in the winter I
see the trees and remember how green they were for me in the summer I
whisper:
“Oh, my darlings!”
And when I see people with whom I spent my spring-time, I feel sorrowful
and warm and whisper the same thing.
He has long ago by my father’s good offices been transferred to town.
He looks a little older, a little fallen away. He has long given up
declaring his love, has left off talking nonsense, dislikes his official
work, is ill in some way and disillusioned; he has given up trying to
get anything out of life, and takes no interest in living. Now he has
sat down by the hearth and looks in silence at the fire....
Not knowing what to say I ask him:
“Well, what have you to tell me?”
“Nothing,” he answers.
And silence again. The red glow of the fire plays about his melancholy
face.
I thought of the past, and all at once my shoulders began quivering, my
head dropped, and I began weeping bitterly. I felt unbearably sorry for
myself and for this man, and passionately longed for what had passed
away and what life refused us now. And now I did not think about rank
and wealth.