Four years passed. I had just left the university, and did not know
exactly what to do with myself, at what door to knock; I was hanging
about for a time with nothing to do. One fine evening I met Meidanov at
the theatre. He had got married, and had entered the civil service; but
I found no change in him. He fell into ecstasies in just the same
superfluous way, and just as suddenly grew depressed again.
“You know,” he told me among other things, “Madame Dolsky’s here.”
“What Madame Dolsky?”
“Can you have forgotten her?—the young Princess Zasyekin whom we were
all in love with, and you too. Do you remember at the country-house
near Neskutchny gardens?”
“She married a Dolsky?”
“Yes.”
“And is she here, in the theatre?”
“No: but she’s in Petersburg. She came here a few days ago. She’s going
abroad.”
“What sort of fellow is her husband?” I asked.
“A splendid fellow, with property. He’s a colleague of mine in Moscow.
You can well understand—after the scandal … you must know all about it
…” (Meidanov smiled significantly) “it was no easy task for her to make
a good marriage; there were consequences … but with her cleverness,
everything is possible. Go and see her; she’ll be delighted to see you.
She’s prettier than ever.”
Meidanov gave me Zinaïda’s address. She was staying at the Hotel Demut.
Old memories were astir within me…. I determined next day to go to see
my former “flame.” But some business happened to turn up; a week
passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the Hotel Demut
and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, she had
died, almost suddenly, in childbirth.
I felt a sort of stab at my heart. The thought that I might have seen
her, and had not seen her, and should never see her—that bitter thought
stung me with all the force of overwhelming reproach. “She is dead!” I
repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter. I slowly made my way
back to the street, and walked on without knowing myself where I was
going. All the past swam up and rose at once before me. So this was the
solution, this was the goal to which that young, ardent, brilliant life
had striven, all haste and agitation! I mused on this; I fancied those
dear features, those eyes, those curls—in the narrow box, in the damp
underground darkness—lying here, not far from me—while I was still
alive, and, maybe, a few paces from my father…. I thought all this; I
strained my imagination, and yet all the while the lines:
“From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,”
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for
anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the
universe—even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to
thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, “I alone
am living—look you!”—but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish
without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax
in the sun, like snow…. And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm
lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou
wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which
thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding
himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in
saying, “Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time!”
I, now … what did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I
foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant,
barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
And what has come to pass of all I hoped for? And now, when the shades
of evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher, more
precious, than the memories of the storm—so soon over—of early morning,
of spring?
But I do myself injustice. Even then, in those light-hearted young
days, I was not deaf to the voice of sorrow, when it called upon me, to
the solemn strains floating to me from beyond the tomb. I remember, a
few days after I heard of Zinaïda’s death, I was present, through a
peculiar, irresistible impulse, at the death of a poor old woman who
lived in the same house as we. Covered with rags, lying on hard boards,
with a sack under her head, she died hardly and painfully. Her whole
life had been passed in the bitter struggle with daily want; she had
known no joy, had not tasted the honey of happiness. One would have
thought, surely she would rejoice at death, at her deliverance, her
rest. But yet, as long as her decrepit body held out, as long as her
breast still heaved in agony under the icy hand weighing upon it, until
her last forces left her, the old woman crossed herself, and kept
whispering, “Lord, forgive my sins”; and only with the last spark of
consciousness, vanished from her eyes the look of fear, of horror of
the end. And I remember that then, by the death-bed of that poor old
woman, I felt aghast for Zinaïda, and longed to pray for her, for my
father—and for myself.