know, if you had said to me to-day at once, “I love you, but I cannot
marry you, I will not answer for the future, give me your hand and come
with me”--do you know, I would have come with you; do you know, I would
have risked everything? But there’s all the difference between word and
deed, and you were afraid now, just as you were afraid the day before
yesterday at dinner of Volintsev.’
The colour rushed to Rudin’s face. Natalya’s unexpected energy had
astounded him; but her last words wounded his vanity.
‘You are too angry now, Natalya Alexyevna,’ he began; ‘you cannot
realise how bitterly you wound me. I hope that in time you will do
me justice; you will understand what it has cost me to renounce the
happiness which you have said yourself would have laid upon me no
obligations. Your peace is dearer to me than anything in the world,
and I should have been the basest of men, if I could have taken
advantage----’
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ interrupted Natalya, ‘perhaps you are right; I don’t
know what I am saying. But up to this time I believed in you, believed
in every word you said.... For the future, pray keep a watch upon your
words, do not fling them about at hazard. When I said to you, “I love
you,” I knew what that word meant; I was ready for everything.... Now I
have only to thank you for a lesson--and to say good-bye.’
‘Stop, for God’s sake, Natalya Alexyevna, I beseech you. I do not
deserve your contempt, I swear to you. Put yourself in my position. I am
responsible for you and for myself. If I did not love you with the most
devoted love--why, good God! I should have at once proposed you should
run away with me.... Sooner or later your mother would forgive us--and
then... But before thinking of my own happiness----’
He stopped. Natalya’s eyes fastened directly upon him put him to
confusion.
‘You try to prove to me that you are an honourable man, Dmitri
Nikolaitch,’ she said. ‘I do not doubt that. You are not capable of
acting from calculation; but did I want to be convinced of that? did I
come here for that?’
‘I did not expect, Natalya Alexyevna----’
‘Ah! you have said it at last! Yes, you did not expect all this--you did
not know me. Do not be uneasy... you do not love me, and I will never
force myself on any one.’
‘I love you!’ cried Rudin.
Natalya drew herself up.
‘Perhaps; but how do you love me? Remember all your words, Dmitri
Nikolaitch. You told me: “Without complete equality there is no
love.”... You are too exalted for me; I am no match for you.... I am
punished as I deserve. There are duties before you more worthy of you. I
shall not forget this day.... Good-bye.’
‘Natalya Alexyevna, are you going? Is it possible for us to part like
this?’
He stretched out his hand to her. She stopped. His supplicating voice
seemed to make her waver.
‘No,’ she uttered at last. ‘I feel that something in me is broken. ... I
came here, I have been talking to you as if it were in delirium; I must
try to recollect. It must not be, you yourself said, it will not be.
Good God, when I came out here, I mentally took a farewell of my home,
of my past--and what? whom have I met here?--a coward... and how did you
know I was not able to bear a separation from my family? “Your mother
will not consent... It is terrible!” That was all I heard from you, that
you, you, Rudin?--No! good-bye.... Ah! if you had loved me, I should
have felt it now, at this moment.... No, no, goodbye!’
She turned swiftly and ran towards Masha, who had begun to be uneasy and
had been making signs to her a long while.
‘It is _you_ who are afraid, not I!’ cried Rudin after Natalya.
She paid no attention to him, and hastened homewards across the fields.
She succeeded in getting back to her bedroom; but she had scarcely
crossed the threshold when her strength failed her, and she fell
senseless into Masha’s arms.
But Rudin remained a long while still standing on the bank. At last
he shivered, and with slow steps made his way to the little path and
quietly walked along it. He was deeply ashamed... and wounded. ‘What a
girl!’ he thought, ‘at seventeen!... No, I did not know her!... She is
a remarkable girl. What strength of will!... She is right; she deserves
another love than what I felt for her. I felt for her?’ he asked
himself. ‘Can it be I already feel no more love for her? So this is how
it was all to end! What a pitiful wretch I was beside her!’
The slight rattle of a racing droshky made Rudin raise his head.
Lezhnyov was driving to meet him with his invariable trotting pony.
Rudin bowed to him without speaking, and as though struck with a sudden
thought, turned out of the road and walked quickly in the direction of
Darya Mihailovna’s house.
Lezhnyov let him pass, looked after him, and after a moment’s thought he
too turned his horse’s head round, and drove back to Volintsev’s, where
he had spent the night. He found him asleep, and giving orders he should
not be waked, he sat down on the balcony to wait for some tea and smoked
a pipe.
X
Volintsev got up at ten o’clock. When he heard that Lezhnyov was sitting
in the balcony, he was much surprised, and sent to ask him to come to
him.
‘What has happened?’ he asked him. ‘I thought you meant to drive home?’
‘Yes; I did mean to, but I met Rudin.... He was wandering about the
country with such a distracted countenance. So I turned back at once.’
‘You came back because you met Rudin?’
‘That’s to say,--to tell the truth, I don’t know why I came back myself,
I suppose because I was reminded of you; I wanted to be with you, and I
have plenty of time before I need go home.’
Volintsev smiled bitterly.
‘Yes; one cannot think of Rudin now without thinking of me.... Boy!’ he
cried harshly, ‘bring us some tea.’
The friends began to drink tea. Lezhnyov talked of agricultural
matters,--of a new method of roofing barns with paper....
Suddenly Volintsev leaped up from his chair and struck the table with
such force that the cups and saucers rang.
‘No!’ he cried, ‘I cannot bear this any longer! I will call out this
witty fellow, and let him shoot me,--at least I will try to put a bullet
through his learned brains!’
‘What are you talking about? Upon my word!’ grumbled Lezhnyov, ‘how can
you scream like that? I dropped my pipe.... What’s the matter with you?’
‘The matter is, that I can’t hear his name and keep calm; it sets all my
blood boiling!’
‘Hush, my dear fellow, hush! aren’t you ashamed?’ rejoined Lezhnyov,
picking up his pipe from the ground. ‘Leave off! Let him alone!’
‘He has insulted me,’ pursued Volintsev, walking up and down the room.
‘Yes! he has insulted me. You must admit that yourself. At first I was
not sharp enough; he took me by surprise; and who could have expected
this? But I will show him that he cannot make a fool of me. ... I will
shoot him, the damned philosopher, like a partridge.’
‘Much you will gain by that, indeed! I won’t speak of your sister now.
I can see you’re in a passion... how could you think of your sister!
But in relation to another individual--what! do you imagine, when you’ve
killed the philosopher, you can improve your own chances?’
Volintsev flung himself into a chair.
‘Then I must go away somewhere! For here my heart is simply being
crushed by misery; only I can find no place to go.’
‘Go away... that’s another matter! That I am ready to agree to. And do
you know what I should suggest? Let us go together--to the Caucasus, or
simply to Little Russia to eat dumplings. That’s a capital idea, my dear
fellow!’
‘Yes; but whom shall we leave my sister with?’
‘And why should not Alexandra Pavlovna come with us? Upon my soul, it
will be splendid. As for looking after her--yes, I’ll undertake that!
There will be no difficulty in getting anything we want: if she likes,
I will arrange a serenade under her window every night; I will sprinkle
the coachmen with _eau de cologne_ and strew flowers along the roads.
And we shall both be simply new men, my dear boy; we shall enjoy
ourselves so, we shall come back so fat that we shall be proof against
the darts of love!’
‘You are always joking, Misha!’
‘I’m not joking at all. It was a brilliant idea of yours.’
‘No; nonsense!’ Volintsev shouted again. ‘I want to fight him, to fight
him!...’
‘Again! What a rage you are in!’
A servant entered with a letter in his hand.
‘From whom?’ asked Lezhnyov.
‘From Rudin, Dmitri Nikolaitch. The Lasunsky’s servant brought it.’
‘From Rudin?’ repeated Volintsev, ‘to whom?’
‘To you.’
‘To me!... give it me!’
Volintsev seized the letter, quickly tore it open, and began to read.
Lezhnyov watched him attentively; a strange, almost joyful amazement was
expressed on Volintsev’s face; he let his hands fall by his side.
‘What is it?’ asked Lezhnyov.
‘Read it,’ Volintsev said in a low voice, and handed him the letter.
Lezhnyov began to read. This is what Rudin wrote:
‘SIR--
‘I am going away from Darya Mihailovna’s house to-day, and leaving it
for ever. This will certainly be a surprise to you, especially after
what passed yesterday. I cannot explain to you what exactly obliges me
to act in this way; but it seems to me for some reason that I ought to
let you know of my departure. You do not like me, and even regard me as
a bad man. I do not intend to justify myself; time will justify me. In
my opinion it is even undignified in a man and quite unprofitable to
try to prove to a prejudiced man the injustice of his prejudice. Whoever
wishes to understand me will not blame me, and as for any one who does
not wish, or cannot do so,--his censure does not pain me. I was mistaken
in you. In my eyes you remain as before a noble and honourable man, but
I imagined you were able to be superior to the surroundings in which you
were brought up. I was mistaken. What of that? It is not the first, nor
will it be the last time. I repeat to you, I am going away. I wish you
all happiness. Confess that this wish is completely disinterested, and
I hope that now you will be happy. Perhaps in time you will change your
opinion of me. Whether we shall ever meet again, I don’t know, but in
any case I remain your sincere well-wisher,
‘D. R.
‘P.S. The two hundred roubles I owe you I will send directly I reach
my estate in T---- province. Also I beg you not to speak to Darya
Mihailovna of this letter.
‘P.P.S. One last, but important request more; since I am going away, I
hope you will not allude before Natalya Alexyevna to my visit to you.’
‘Well, what do you say to that?’ asked Volintsev, directly Lezhnyov had
finished the letter.
‘What is one to say?’ replied Lezhnyov, ‘Cry “Allah! Allah!” like a
Mussulman and sit gaping with astonishment--that’s all one can do....
Well, a good riddance! But it’s curious: you see he thought it his
_duty_ to write you this letter, and he came to see you from a sense
of _duty_... these gentlemen find a duty at every step, some duty they
owe... or some debt,’ added Lezhnyov, pointing with a smile to the
postscript.
‘And what phrases he rounds off!’ cried Volintsev. ‘He was mistaken
in me. He expected I would be superior to my surroundings. What a
rigmarole! Good God! it’s worse than poetry!’
Lezhnyov made no reply, but his eyes were smiling. Volintsev got up.
‘I want to go to Darya Mihailovna’s,’ he announced. ‘I want to find out
what it all means.’
‘Wait a little, my dear boy; give him time to get off. What’s the good
of running up against him again? He is to vanish, it seems. What more do
you want? Better go and lie down and get a little sleep; you have been
tossing about all night, I expect. But everything will be smooth for
you.’
‘What leads you to that conclusion?’
‘Oh, I think so. There, go and have a nap; I will go and see your
sister. I will keep her company.’
‘I don’t want to sleep in the least. What’s the object of my going to
bed? I had rather go out to the fields,’ said Volintsev, putting on his
out-of-door coat.
‘Well, that’s a good thing too. Go along, and look at the fields....’
And Lezhnyov betook himself to the apartments of Alexandra Pavlovna.
He found her in the drawing-room. She welcomed him effusively. She was
always pleased when he came; but her face still looked sorrowful. She
was uneasy about Rudin’s visit the day before.
‘You have seen my brother?’ she asked Lezhnyov. ‘How is he to-day?’
‘All right, he has gone to the fields.’
Alexandra Favlovna did not speak for a minute.
‘Tell me, please,’ she began, gazing earnestly at the hem of her
pocket-handkerchief, ‘don’t you know why...’
‘Rudin came here?’ put in Lezhnyov. ‘I know, he came to say good-bye.’
Alexandra Pavlovna lifted up her head.
‘What, to say good-bye!’
‘Yes. Haven’t you heard? He is leaving Darya Mihailovna’s.’
‘He is leaving?’
‘For ever; at least he says so.’
‘But pray, how is one to explain it, after all?...’
‘Oh, that’s a different matter! To explain it is impossible, but it is
so. Something must have happened with them. He pulled the string too
tight--and it has snapped.’
‘Mihailo Mihailitch!’ began Alexandra Pavlovna, ‘I don’t understand; you
are laughing at me, I think....’
‘No indeed! I tell you he is going away, and he even let his friends
know by letter. It’s just as well, I daresay, from one point of view;
but his departure has prevented one surprising enterprise from being
carried out that I had begun to talk to your brother about.’
‘What do you mean? What enterprise?’
‘Why, I proposed to your brother that we should go on our travels, to
distract his mind, and take you with us. To look after you especially I
would take on myself....’
‘That’s capital!’ cried Alexandra Pavlovna. ‘I can fancy how you would
look after me. Why, you would let me die of hunger.’
‘You say so, Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don’t know me. You think I
am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of melting
like sugar, of spending whole days on my knees?’
‘I should like to see that, I must say!’
Lezhnyov suddenly got up. ‘Well, marry me, Alexandra Pavlovna, and you
will see all that’
Alexandra Pavlovna blushed up to her ears.
‘What did you say, Mihailo Mihailitch?’ she murmured in confusion.
‘I said what it has been for ever so long,’ answered Lezhnyov, ‘on the
tip of my tongue to say a thousand times over. I have brought it out at
last, and you must act as you think best. But I will go away now, so as
not to be in your way. If you will be my wife... I will walk away... if
you don’t dislike the idea, you need only send to call me in; I shall
understand....’
Alexandra Pavlovna tried to keep Lezhnyov, but he went quickly away, and
going into the garden without his cap, he leaned on a little gate and
began looking about him.
‘Mihailo Mihailitch!’ sounded the voice of a maid-servant behind him,
‘please come in to my lady. She sent me to call you.’
Mihailo Mihailitch turned round, took the girl’s head in both his hands,
to her great astonishment, and kissed her on the forehead, then he went
in to Alexandra Pavlovna.
XI
On returning home, directly after his meeting with Lezhnyov, Rudin shut
himself up in his room, and wrote two letters; one to Volintsev (already
known to the reader) and the other to Natalya. He sat a very long time
over this second letter, crossed out and altered a great deal in it,
and, copying it carefully on a fine sheet of note-paper, folded it up as
small as possible, and put it in his pocket. With a look of pain on his
face he paced several times up and down his room, sat down in the chair
before the window, leaning on his arm; a tear slowly appeared upon his
eyelashes. He got up, buttoned himself up, called a servant and told him
to ask Darya Mihailovna if he could see her.
The man returned quickly, answering that Darya Mihailovna would be
delighted to see him. Rudin went to her.
She received him in her study, as she had that first time, two months
before. But now she was not alone; with her was sitting Pandalevsky,
unassuming, fresh, neat, and agreeable as ever.
Darya Mihailovna met Rudin affably, and Rudin bowed affably to her; but
at the first glance at the smiling faces of both, any one of even small
experience would have understood that something of an unpleasant nature
had passed between them, even if it had not been expressed. Rudin knew
that Darya Mihailovna was angry with him. Darya Mihailovna suspected
that he was now aware of all that had happened.
Pandalevsky’s disclosure had greatly disturbed her. It touched on the
worldly pride in her. Rudin, a poor man without rank, and so far
without distinction, had presumed to make a secret appointment with her
daughter--the daughter of Darya Mihailovna Lasunsky.
‘Granting he is clever, he is a genius!’ she said, ‘what does that
prove? Why, any one may hope to be my son-in-law after that?’
‘For a long time I could not believe my eyes,’ put in Pandalevsky. ‘I am
surprised at his not understanding his position!’
Darya Mihailovna was very much agitated, and Natalya suffered for it
She asked Rudin to sit down. He sat down, but not like the old Rudin,
almost master of the house, not even like an old friend, but like a
guest, and not even a very intimate guest. All this took place in a
single instant... so water is suddenly transformed into solid ice.
‘I have come to you, Darya Mihailovna,’ began Rudin, ‘to thank you for
your hospitality. I have had some news to-day from my little estate, and
it is absolutely necessary for me to set off there to-day.’
Darya Mihailovna looked attentively at Rudin.
‘He has anticipated me; it must be because he has some suspicion,’ she
thought. ‘He spares one a disagreeable explanation. So much the better.
Ah! clever people for ever!’
‘Really?’ she replied aloud. ‘Ah! how disappointing! Well, I suppose
there’s no help for it. I shall hope to see you this winter in Moscow.
We shall soon be leaving here.’
‘I don’t know, Darya Mihailovna, whether I shall succeed in getting to
Moscow, but, if I can manage it, I shall regard it as a duty to call on
you.’
‘Aha, my good sir!’ Pandalevsky in his turn reflected; ‘it’s not long
since you behaved like the master here, and now this is how you have to
express yourself!’
‘Then I suppose you have unsatisfactory news from your estate?’ he
articulated, with his customary ease.
‘Yes,’ replied Rudin drily.
‘Some failure of crops, I suppose?’
‘No; something else. Believe me, Darya Mihailovna,’ added Rudin, ‘I
shall never forget the time I have spent in your house.’
‘And I, Dmitri Nikolaitch, shall always look back upon our acquaintance
with you with pleasure. When must you start?’
‘To-day, after dinner.’
‘So soon!... Well, I wish you a successful journey. But, if your affairs
do not detain you, perhaps you will look us up again here.’
‘I shall scarcely have time,’ replied Rudin, getting up. ‘Excuse me,’
he added; ‘I cannot at once repay you my debt, but directly I reach my
place----’
‘Nonsense, Dmitri Nikolaitch!’ Darya Mihailovna cut him short. ‘I wonder
you’re not ashamed to speak of it!... What o’clock is it?’ she asked.
Pandalevsky drew a gold and enamel watch out of his waistcoat pocket,
and looked at it carefully, bending his rosy cheek over his stiff, white
collar.
‘Thirty-three minutes past two,’ he announced.
‘It is time to dress,’ observed Darya Mihailovna. ‘Good-bye for the
present, Dmitri Nikolaitch!’
Rudin got up. The whole conversation between him and Darya Mihailovna
had a special character. In the same way actors repeat their parts, and
diplomatic dignitaries interchange their carefully-worded phrases.
Rudin went away. He knew by now through experience that men and women of
the world do not even break with a man who is of no further use to them,
but simply let him drop, like a kid glove after a ball, like the paper
that has wrapped up sweets, like an unsuccessful ticket for a lottery.
He packed quickly, and began to await with impatience the moment of his
departure. Every one in the house was very much surprised to hear of
his intentions; even the servants looked at him with a puzzled air.
Bassistoff did not conceal his sorrow. Natalya evidently avoided Rudin.
She tried not to meet his eyes. He succeeded, however, in slipping his
note into her hand. After dinner Darya Mihailovna repeated once more
that she hoped to see him before they left for Moscow, but Rudin made
her no reply. Pandalevsky addressed him more frequently than any one.
More than once Rudin felt a longing to fall upon him and give him a slap
on his rosy, blooming face. Mlle. Boncourt often glanced at Rudin with
a peculiarly stealthy expression in her eyes; in old setter dogs one may
sometimes see the same expression.
‘Aha!’ she seemed to be saying to herself, ‘so you’re caught!’
At last six o’clock struck, and Rudin’s carriage was brought to the
door. He began to take a hurried farewell of all. He had a feeling of
nausea at his heart. He had not expected to leave this house like this;
it seemed as though they were turning him out. ‘What a way to do it all!
and what was the object of being in such a hurry? Still, it is better
so.’ That was what he was thinking as he bowed in all directions with
a forced smile. For the last time he looked at Natalya, and his heart
throbbed; her eyes were bent upon him in sad, reproachful farewell.
He ran quickly down the steps, and jumped into his carriage. Bassistoff
had offered to accompany him to the next station, and he took his seat
beside him.
‘Do you remember,’ began Rudin, directly the carriage had driven from
the courtyard into the broad road bordered with fir-trees, ‘do you
remember what Don Quixote says to his squire when he is leaving the
court of the duchess? “Freedom,” he says, “my friend Sancho, is one of
the most precious possessions of man, and happy is he to whom Heaven has
given a bit of bread, and who need not be indebted to any one!” What Don
Quixote felt then, I feel now.... God grant, my dear Bassistoff, that
you too may some day experience this feeling!’
Bassistoff pressed Rudin’s hand, and the honest boy’s heart beat
violently with emotion. Till they reached the station Rudin spoke of
the dignity of man, of the meaning of true independence. He spoke nobly,
fervently, and justly, and when the moment of separation had come,
Bassistoff could not refrain from throwing himself on his neck and
sobbing. Rudin himself shed tears too, but he was not weeping because he
was parting from Bassistoff. His tears were the tears of wounded vanity.
Natalya had gone to her own room, and there she read Rudin’s letter.
‘Dear Natalya Alexyevna,’ he wrote her, ‘I have decided to depart. There
is no other course open to me. I have decided to leave before I am told
plainly to go. By my departure all difficulties will be put an end to,
and there will be scarcely any one who will regret me. What else did I
expect?... It is always so, but why am I writing to you?
‘I am parting from you probably for ever, and it would be too painful to
me to leave you with a worse recollection of me than I deserve. This is
why I am writing to you. I do not want either to justify myself or to
blame any one whatever except myself; I want, as far as possible, to
explain myself.... The events of the last days have been so unexpected,
so sudden....
‘Our interview to-day will be a memorable lesson to me. Yes, you are
right; I did not know you, and I thought I knew you! In the course of my
life I have had to do with people of all kinds. I have known many women
and young girls, but in you I met for the first time an absolutely true
and upright soul. This was something I was not used to, and I did not
know how to appreciate you fittingly. I felt an attraction to you from
the first day of our acquaintance; you may have observed it. I spent
with you hour after hour without learning to know you; I scarcely even
tried to know you--and I could imagine that I loved you! For this sin I
am punished now.
‘Once before I loved a woman, and she loved me. My feeling for her was
complex, like hers for me; but, as she was not simple herself, it was
all the better for her. Truth was not told to me then, and now I did not
recognise it when it was offered me.... I have recognised it at last,
when it is too late.... What is past cannot be recalled.... Our lives
might have become united, and they never will be united now. How can I
prove to you that I might have loved you with real love--the love of the
heart, not of the fancy--when I do not know myself whether I am capable
of such love?