The poetical month of May had passed.
The lilacs and tulips were over, and fate decreed that with them the
ecstasies of love, which, notwithstanding their guiltiness and
painfulness, had yet occasionally afforded us sweet moments that can
never be effaced from our memory, should likewise wither. There are
moments for which one would give months, yea, even years!
On a June evening when the sun was already set, but its broad track in
purple and gold still glowed in the distant West, foretelling a calm
and clear day, for the morrow I rode on Zorka up to the house where
Urbenin lived. On that evening the Count was giving a musical party.
The guests were already arriving, but the Count was not at home; he
had gone for a ride and had left word he would return soon.
A little later I was standing at the porch, holding my horse by the
bridle and chatting with Urbenin's little daughter, Sasha. Urbenin
himself was sitting on the steps with his head supported on his fists,
looking into the distance, which could be seen through the open gates.
He was gloomy and answered my questions reluctantly. I left him in
peace and occupied myself with Sasha.
“Where is your new máma?” I asked her.
“She has gone out riding with the Count. She rides with him every
day.”
“Every day!” Urbenin grumbled with a sigh.
Much could be heard in that sigh. The same feelings could be heard in
it that were agitating my soul and that I was trying to explain to
myself, but was unable to do so, and therefore became lost in
conjecture.
Every day Olga went out for rides with the Count. But that was a
trifle. Olga could not fall in love with the Count, and Urbenin's
jealousy was groundless. We ought not to have been jealous of the
Count, but of something else which, however, I could not understand
for a long time. This “something else” built up a whole wall between
Olga and me. She continued to love me, but after the visit which has
been described in the last chapter, she had not been to my house more
than twice, and when we met in other places she flared up in a strange
way and obstinately refused to answer my questions. She returned my
caresses with passion, but her movements were sudden and startled, so
that our short rendezvous only left a feeling of painful perplexity in
my mind. Her conscience was not clean; this was clear, but what was
the real cause? Nothing could be read on Olga's guilty face.
“I hope your new máma is well?” I asked Sasha.
“She's quite well. Only in the night she had toothache. She cried.”
“She cried,” Urbenin repeated, looking at Sasha. “Did you see it? My
darling, you only dreamed it.”
Olga had not had toothache. If she had cried it was not with pain, but
for something else. . . . I wanted to continue talking to Sasha, but I
did not succeed in this, as at that moment the noise of horses' hoofs
was heard and we soon saw the riders—a man inelegantly jumping about
in his saddle, and a graceful lady rider. In order to hide my joy from
Olga, I took Sasha into my arms and, smoothing her fair hair with my
hand, I kissed her on the forehead.
“Sasha, how pretty you are!” I said. “And what nice curls you have!”
Olga cast a rapid glance at me, returned my bow in silence, and
leaning on the Count's arm, entered the house. Urbenin rose and
followed her.
Five minutes later the Count came out of the house. He was gay. I had
never seen him so gay before. Even his face had a fresher look.
“Congratulate me,” he said, giggling, as he took my arm.
“What on?”
“On my conquest. . . . One more ride like this, and I swear by the
ashes of my noble ancestors I shall tear the petals from this flower.”
“You have not torn them off yet?”
“As yet? . . . Almost! During ten minutes, ‘Thy hand in my hand,’” the
Count sang, “and . . . not once did she draw it away. . . . I kissed
it! Wait for to-morrow. Now let us go. They are expecting me. Oh,
by-the-by, golubchek, I want to talk to you about something. Tell me,
old man, is it true what people say—that you are . . . that you
entertain evil intentions with regard to Nadenka Kalinin?”
“Why?”
“If that were true, I won't come in your way. It's not in my
principles to put a spoke in another's wheels. If, however, you have
no sort of intentions, then of course——”
“I have none.”
“_Merci_, my soul!”
The Count thought of killing two hares at the same time, and was
firmly convinced that he would succeed. On the evening I am describing
I watched the chase of these two hares. The chase was stupid and as
comical as a good caricature. When watching it one could only laugh or
be revolted at the Count's vulgarity, but nobody could have thought
that this schoolboy chase would end with the moral fall of some, the
ruin and the crimes of others!
The Count not only killed two hares, but more! He killed them, but he
did not get their skins and their flesh.
I saw him secretly press Olga's hand, who received him each time with
a friendly smile and looked after him with a contemptuous grimace.
Once, evidently wishing to show that there were no secrets between us,
he even kissed her hand in my presence.
“What a blockhead!” she whispered into my ear, and wiped her hand.
“I say, Olga,” I asked, when the Count had gone away, “I think there
is something you want to tell me. What is it?”
I looked searchingly into her face. She blushed scarlet and began to
blink in a frightened manner, like a cat who has been caught stealing.
“Olga,” I said sternly, “you must tell me! I demand it!”
“Yes, there is something I want to tell you,” she whispered. “I love
you—I can't live without you—but . . . my darling, don't come to see
me any more. Don't love me any more, and don't call me Olia. It can't
go on. . . . It's impossible. . . . And don't let anybody see that you
love me.”
“But why is this?”
“I want it. The reasons you need not know, and I won't tell you.
Go. . . . Leave me!”
I did not leave her, and she herself was obliged to bring our
conversation to an end. Taking the arm of her husband, who was passing
us at that moment, she nodded to me with a hypocritical smile, and
went away.
The Count's other hare—Nadenka Kalinin—was honoured that evening by
the Count's special attention. The whole evening he hovered around
her, he told her anecdotes, he was witty, he flirted with her, and
she, pale and exhausted, drew her lips to one side in a forced smile.
The justice of the peace, Kalinin, watched them all the time, stroking
his beard and coughing importantly. That the Count was paying court to
his daughter was agreeable to him. “He has a Count as son-in-law!”
What thought could be sweeter for a provincial _bon-vivant_? From the
moment that the Count began to pay court to his daughter he had grown
at least three feet in height in his own estimation. And with what
stately glances he measured me, how maliciously he coughed when he
talked to me! “So you stood on ceremonies and went away—it was all one
to us! Now we have a Count!”
The day after the party I was again at the Count's estate. This time I
did not talk with Sasha but with her brother, the schoolboy. The boy
led me into the garden and poured out his whole soul to me. These
confidences were the result of my questions as to how he got on with
his “new mother.”
“She's your good acquaintance,” he began, nervously unbuttoning his
uniform. “You will repeat it to her; but I don't care. You may tell
her whatever you like! She's spiteful, she's base!”
He told me that Olga had taken his room from him, she had sent away
their old nurse who had served at Urbenin's for ten years, she was
always screaming about something and always angry.
“Yesterday you admired sister Sasha's hair. . . . Hadn't she pretty
hair? Just like flax! This morning she cut it all off!”
“That was jealousy,” I thus explained to myself Olga's invasion into
the hairdresser's domain.
“She was evidently envious that you had praised Sasha's hair and not
her own,” the boy said in confirmation of my thought. “She worries
papasha, too. Papasha is spending a terrible lot of money on her, and
is neglecting his work. . . . He has again begun to drink! Again!
She's a little fool. . . . She cries all day that she has to live in
poverty in such a small house. Is it papasha's fault that he has
little money?”
The boy told me many sad things. He saw that which his blinded father
did not see or did not want to see. In the poor boy's opinion his
father was wronged, his sister was wronged, his old nurse had been
wronged. He had been deprived of his little den where he had been used
to occupy himself with his books, and feed the goldfinches he had
caught. Everybody had been wronged, everybody was laughed at by his
stupid and all-powerful stepmother! But the poor boy could not have
imagined the terrible wrong that his young stepmother would inflict on
his family, and of which I was witness that very evening after my talk
with him. Everything else grew dim before that wrong, the cropping of
Sasha's hair appeared as a mere trifle in comparison with it.