IV

All was quiet outside: the village on the other side of the pond was

already asleep, not a single light was to be seen, and on the pond

there was only the faint reflection of the stars. By the gate with the

stone lions stood Genya, waiting to accompany me.

"The village is asleep," I said, trying to see her face in the darkness,

and I could see her dark sad eyes fixed on me. "The innkeeper and the

horse-stealers are sleeping quietly, and decent people like ourselves

quarrel and irritate each other."

It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because it already smelled

of the autumn: the moon rose behind a purple cloud and hardly lighted

the road and the dark fields of winter corn on either side. Stars fell

frequently, Genya walked beside me on the road and tried not to look at

the sky, to avoid seeing the falling stars, which somehow frightened

her.

"I believe you are right," she said, trembling in the evening chill. "If

people could give themselves to spiritual activity, they would soon

burst everything."

"Certainly. We are superior beings, and if we really knew all the power

of the human genius and lived only for higher purposes then we should

become like gods. But this will never be. Mankind will degenerate and of

their genius not a trace will be left."

When the gate was out of sight Genya stopped and hurriedly shook my

hand.

"Good night," she said, trembling; her shoulders were covered only with

a thin blouse and she was shivering with cold. "Come to-morrow."

I was filled with a sudden dread of being left alone with my inevitable

dissatisfaction with myself and people, and I, too, tried not to see the

falling stars.

"Stay with me a little longer," I said. "Please."

I loved Genya, and she must have loved me, because she used to meet me

and walk with me, and because she looked at me with tender admiration.

How thrillingly beautiful her pale face was, her thin nose, her arms,

her slenderness, her idleness, her constant reading. And her mind? I

suspected her of having an unusual intellect: I was fascinated by the

breadth of her views, perhaps because she thought differently from the

strong, handsome Lyda, who did not love me. Genya liked me as a painter,

I had conquered her heart by my talent, and I longed passionately to

paint only for her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen, who would

one day possess with me the trees, the fields, the river, the dawn, all

Nature, wonderful and fascinating, with whom, as with them, I have felt

helpless and useless.

"Stay with me a moment longer," I called. "I implore you."

I took off my overcoat and covered her childish shoulders. Fearing that

she would look queer and ugly in a man's coat, she began to laugh and

threw it off, and as she did so, I embraced her and began to cover her

face, her shoulders, her arms with kisses.

"Till to-morrow," she whispered timidly as though she was afraid to

break the stillness of the night. She embraced me: "We have no secrets

from one another. I must tell mamma and my sister.... Is it so terrible?

Mamma will be pleased. Mamma loves you, but Lyda!"

She ran to the gates.

"Good-bye," she called out.

For a couple of minutes I stood and heard her running. I had no desire

to go home, there was nothing there to go for. I stood for a while lost

in thought, and then quietly dragged myself back, to have one more look

at the house in which she lived, the dear, simple, old house, which

seemed to look at me with the windows of the mezzanine for eyes, and to

understand everything. I walked past the terrace, sat down on a bench by

the lawn-tennis court, in the darkness under an old elm-tree, and looked

at the house. In the windows of the mezzanine, where Missyuss had her

room, shone a bright light, and then a faint green glow. The lamp had

been covered with a shade. Shadows began to move.... I was filled with

tenderness and a calm satisfaction, to think that I could let myself be

carried away and fall in love, and at the same time I felt uneasy at the

thought that only a few yards away in one of the rooms of the house lay

Lyda who did not love me, and perhaps hated me. I sat and waited to see

if Genya would come out. I listened attentively and it seemed to me they

were sitting in the mezzanine.

An hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows were no longer

visible. The moon hung high above the house and lit the sleeping garden

and the avenues: I could distinctly see the dahlias and roses in the

flower-bed in front of the house, and all seemed to be of one colour. It

was very cold. I left the garden, picked up my overcoat in the road, and

walked slowly home.

Next day after dinner when I went to the Volchaninovs', the glass door

was wide open. I sat down on the terrace expecting Genya to come from

behind the flower-bed or from one of the avenues, or to hear her voice

come from out of the rooms; then I went into the drawing-room and the

dining-room. There was not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room I

went down a long passage into the hall, and then back again. There were

several doors in the passage and behind one of them I could hear Lyda's

voice:

"To the crow somewhere ... God ..."--she spoke slowly and distinctly,

and was probably dictating--" ... God sent a piece of cheese.... To the

crow ... somewhere.... Who is there?" she called out suddenly as she

heard my footsteps.

"It is I."

"Oh! excuse me. I can't come out just now. I am teaching Masha."

"Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"

"No. She and my sister left to-day for my Aunt's in Penga, and in the

winter they are probably going abroad." She added after a short silence:

"To the crow somewhere God sent a pi-ece of cheese. Have you got that?"

I went out into the hall, and, without a thought in my head, stood and

looked out at the pond and the village, and still I heard:

"A piece of cheese.... To the crow somewhere God sent a piece of

cheese."

And I left the house by the way I had come the first time, only

reversing the order, from the yard into the garden, past the house, then

along the lime-walk. Here a boy overtook me and handed me a note: "I

have told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from you,"

I read. "I could not hurt her by disobeying. God will give you

happiness. If you knew how bitterly mamma and I have cried."

Then through the fir avenue and the rotten fence. ...Over the fields

where the corn was ripening and the quails screamed, cows and shackled

horses now were browsing. Here and there on the hills the winter corn

was already showing green. A sober, workaday mood possessed me and I was

ashamed of all I had said at the Volchaninovs', and once more it became

tedious to go on living. I went home, packed my things, and left that

evening for Petersburg.

* * *

I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Lately on my way to the Crimea I met

Bielokurov at a station. As of old he was in a _poddiovka_, wearing an

embroidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he replied:

"Quite well, thanks be to God." He began to talk. He had sold his estate

and bought another, smaller one in the name of Lyabov Ivanovna. He told

me a little about the Volchaninovs. Lyda, he said, still lived at

Sholkovka and taught the children in the school; little by little she

succeeded in gathering round herself a circle of sympathetic people, who

formed a strong party, and at the last Zemstvo election they drove out

Balaguin, who up till then had had the whole district in his hands. Of

Genya Bielokurov said that she did not live at home and he did not know

where she was.

I have already begun to forget about the house with the mezzanine, and

only now and then, when I am working or reading, suddenly--without rhyme

or reason--I remember the green light in the window, and the sound of my

own footsteps as I walked through the fields that night, when I was in

love, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And even more rarely, when I

am sad and lonely, I begin already to recollect and it seems to me that

I, too, am being remembered and waited for, and that we shall meet....

Missyuss, where are you?