The sky was overcast with low-hanging clouds, and though it was light
enough to see the cart-ruts winding along the road, still to the right
and left no separate object could be distinguished, everything blending
together into dark, heavy masses. It was a dim, unsettled kind of night;
the wind blew in terrific gusts, bringing with it the scent of rain and
wheat, which covered the broad fields. When they passed the oak which
served as a signpost and turned down a by-road, driving became more
difficult, the narrow track being quite lost at times. The coach moved
along at a slower pace.
“I hope we’re not going to lose our way!” Nejdanov remarked; he had been
quite silent until then.
“I don’t think so,” Markelov responded. “Two misfortunes never happen in
one day.”
“But what was the first misfortune?”
“A day wasted for nothing. Is that of no importance?”
“Yes... certainly... and then this Golushkin! We shouldn’t have drank so
much wine. My head is simply splitting.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Golushkin. We got some money from him at any rate,
so our visit wasn’t altogether wasted.”
“But surely you’re not really sorry that Paklin took us to his... what
did he call them... poll-parrots?”
“As for that, there’s nothing to be either sorry or glad about. I’m not
interested in such people. That wasn’t the misfortune I was referring
to.”
“What was it then?”
Markelov made no reply, but withdrew himself a little further into his
corner, as if he were muffling himself up. Nejdanov could not see his
face very clearly, only his moustache stood out in a straight black
line, but he had felt ever since the morning that there was something in
Markelov that was best left alone, some mysteriously unknown worry.
“I say, Sergai Mihailovitch,” Nejdanov began, “do you really attach any
importance to Mr. Kisliakov’s letters that you gave me today? They are
utter nonsense, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”
Markelov drew himself up.
“In the first place,” he began angrily, “I don’t agree with you about
these letters—I find them extremely interesting... and conscientious!
In the second place, Kisliakov works very hard and, what is more, he is
in earnest; he _believes_ in our cause, believes in the revolution! And
I must say that _you_, Alexai Dmitritch, are very luke-warm—_you_ don’t
believe in our cause!”
“What makes you think so?” Nejdanov asked slowly.
“It is easy to see from your very words, from your whole behaviour.
Today, for instance, at Golushkin’s, who said that he failed to see any
elements that we could rely on? You! Who demanded to have them pointed
out to him? You again! And when that friend of yours, that grinning
buffoon, Mr. Paklin, stood up and declared with his eyes raised to
heaven that not one of us was capable of self-sacrifice, who approved
of it and nodded to him encouragingly? Wasn’t it you? Say what you like
of yourself...think what you like of yourself, you know best... that
is your affair, but I know people who could give up everything that is
beautiful in life—even love itself—to serve their convictions, to be
true to them! Well, _you_ ... couldn’t have done that, today at any
rate!”
“Today? Why not today in particular?”
“Oh, don’t pretend, for heaven’s sake, you happy Don Juan, you
myrtle-crowned lover!” Markelov shouted, quite forgetting the coachman,
who, though he did not turn round on the box, must have heard every
word. It is true the coachman was at that moment more occupied with the
road than with what the gentlemen were saying behind him. He loosened
the shaft-horse carefully, though somewhat nervously, she shook her
head, backed a little, and went down a slope which had no business there
at all.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you,” Nejdanov observed.
Markelov gave a forced, malicious laugh.
“So you don’t understand me! ha, ha, ha! I know everything, my dear sir!
I know whom you made love to yesterday, whom you’ve completely conquered
with your good looks and honeyed words! I know who lets you into her
room... after ten o’clock at night!”
“Sir!” the coachman exclaimed suddenly, turning to Markelov, “hold the
reins, please. I’ll get down and have a look. I think we’ve gone off the
track. There seems a sort of ravine here.”
The carriage was, in fact, standing almost on one side. Markelov seized
the reins which the coachman handed to him and continued just as loudly:
“I don’t blame you in the least, Alexai Dmitritch! You took advantage
of.... You were quite right. No wonder that you’re not so keen about
our cause now... as I said before, you have something else on your mind.
And, really, who can tell beforehand what will please a girl’s heart or
what man can achieve what she may desire?”
“I understand now,” Nejdanov began; “I understand your vexation and can
guess... who spied on us and lost no time in letting you know—” “It does
not seem to depend on merit,” Markelov continued, pretending not to
have heard Nejdanov, and purposely drawling out each word in a sing-song
voice, “no extraordinary spiritual or physical attractions.... Oh no!
It’s only the damned luck of all... bastards!”
The last sentence Markelov pronounced abruptly and hurriedly, but
suddenly stopped as if turned to stone.
Nejdanov felt himself grow pale in the darkness and tingled all over. He
could scarcely restrain himself from flying at Markelov and seizing him
by the throat. “Only blood will wipe out this insult,” he thought.
“I’ve found the road!” the coachman cried, making his appearance at
the right front wheel, “I turned to the left by mistake—but it doesn’t
matter, we’ll soon be home. It’s not much farther. Sit still, please!”
He got onto the box, took the reins from Markelov, pulled the
shaft-horse a little to one side, and the carriage, after one or two
jerks, rolled along more smoothly and evenly. The darkness seemed to
part and lift itself, a cloud of smoke could be seen curling out of a
chimney, ahead some sort of hillock, a light twinkled, vanished, then
another.... A dog barked.
“That’s our place,” the coachman observed. “Gee up, my pretties!”
The lights became more and more numerous as they drove on.
“After the way in which you insulted me,” Nejdanov said at last, “you
will quite understand that I couldn’t spend the night under your roof,
and I must ask you, however unpleasant it may be for me to do so, to be
kind enough to lend me your carriage as soon as we get to your house to
take me back to the town. Tomorrow I shall find some means of getting
home, and will then communicate with you in a way which you doubtless
expect.”
Markelov did not reply at once.
“Nejdanov,” he exclaimed suddenly, in a soft, despairing tone of voice,
“Nejdanov! For Heaven’s sake come into the house if only to let me
beg for your forgiveness on my knees! Nejdanov! forget... forget
my senseless words! Oh, if some one only knew how wretched I feel!”
Markelov struck himself on the breast with his fist, a groan seemed to
come from him. “Nejdanov. Be generous.... Give me your hand.... Say
that you forgive me!”
Nejdanov held out his hand irresolutely—Markelov squeezed it so hard
that he could almost have cried out.
The carriage stopped at the door of the house.
“Listen to me, Nejdanov,” Markelov said to him a quarter of an hour
later in his study, “listen.” (He addressed him as “thou,” and in this
unexpected “_thou_” addressed to a man whom he knew to be a successful
rival, whom he had only just cruelly insulted, wished to kill, to tear
to pieces, in this familiar word “thou” there was a ring of irrevocable
renunciation, sad, humble supplication, and a kind of claim.... Nejdanov
recognised this claim and responded to it by addressing him in the same
way.) “Listen! I’ve only just told you that I’ve refused the happiness
of love, renounced everything to serve my convictions.... It wasn’t
true, I was only bragging! Love has never been offered to me, I’ve had
nothing to renounce! I was born unlucky and will continue so for the
rest of my days ... and perhaps it’s for the best. Since I can’t get
that, I must turn my attention to something else! If you can combine
the one with the other... love and be loved ... and serve the cause at
the same time, you’re lucky! I envy you ... but as for myself ... I
can’t. You happy man! You happy man! I can’t.”
Markelov said all this softly, sitting on a low stool, his head bent
and arms hanging loose at his sides. Nejdanov stood before him lost in a
sort of dreamy attentiveness, and though Markelov had called him a happy
man, he neither looked happy nor did he feel himself to be so.
“I was deceived in my youth,” Markelov went on; “she was a remarkable
girl, but she threw me over... and for whom? For a German! for an
adjutant! And Mariana—”
He stopped. It was the first time he had pronounced her name and it
seemed to burn his lips.
“Mariana did not deceive me. She told me plainly that she did not care
for me .... There is nothing in me she could care for, so she gave
herself to you. Of course, she was quite free to do so.”
“Stop a minute!” Nejdanov exclaimed. “What are you saying? What do you
imply by the words ‘gave herself’? I don’t know what your sister told
you, but I assure you—”
“I didn’t mean physically, but morally, that is, with the heart and
soul,” Markelov interrupted him. He was obviously displeased with
Nejdanov’s exclamation. “She couldn’t have done better. As for
my sister, she didn’t, of course, wish to hurt me. It can make no
difference to her, but she no doubt hates you and Mariana too. She did
not tell me anything untrue... but enough of her!”
“Yes,” Nejdanov thought to himself, “she does hate us.”
“It’s all for the best,” Markelov continued, still sitting in the same
position. “The last fetters have been broken; there is nothing to hinder
me now! It doesn’t matter that Golushkin is an ass, and as for
Kisliakov’s letters, they may perhaps be absurd, but we must consider
the most important thing. Kisliakov says that everything is ready.
Perhaps you don’t believe that too.”
Nejdanov did not reply.
“You may be right, but if we’ve to wait until everything, absolutely
everything, is ready, we shall never make a beginning. If we weigh _all_
the consequences beforehand we’re sure to find some bad ones among them.
For instance, when our forefathers emancipated the serfs, do you think
they could foresee that a whole class of money-lending landlords would
spring up as a result of the emancipation? Landlords who sell a peasant
eight bushels of rotten rye for six roubles and in return for it get
labour for the whole six roubles, then the same quantity of good
sound rye and interest on top of that! Which means that they drain the
peasants to the last drop of blood! You’ll agree that our emancipators
could hardly have foreseen that. Even if they had foreseen it, they
would still have been quite right in freeing the serfs without weighing
all the consequences beforehand! That is why I have decided!”
Nejdanov looked at Markelov with amazement, but the latter turned to one
side and directed his gaze into a corner of the room. He sat with his
eyes closed, biting his lips and chewing his moustache.
“Yes, I’ve decided!” he repeated, striking his knee with his brown hairy
hand. “I’m very obstinate.... It’s not for nothing that I’m half a Little
Russian.”
He got up, dragged himself into his bedroom, and came back with a small
portrait of Mariana in a glazed frame.
“Take this,” he said in a sad, though steady voice. “I drew it some time
ago. I don’t draw well, but I think it’s like her.” (It was a pencil
sketch in profile and was certainly like Mariana.) “Take it, Alexai;
it is my bequest, and with this portrait I give you all my rights....
I know I never had any... but you know what I mean! I give you up
everything, and her.... She is very good, Alexai—”
Markelov ceased; his chest heaved visibly.
“Take it. You are not angry with me, are you? Well, take it then. It’s
no use to me... now.”
Nejdanov took the portrait, but a strange sensation oppressed his
heart. It seemed to him that he had no right to take this gift; that
if Markelov knew what was in his, Nejdanov’s, heart, he would not have
given it him. He stood holding the round piece of cardboard, carefully
set in a black frame with a mount of gold paper, not knowing what to do
with it. “Why, this is a man’s whole life I’m holding in my hand,” he
thought. He fully realised the sacrifice Markelov was making, but why,
why especially to him? Should he give back the portrait? No! that would
be the grossest insult. And after all, was not the face dear to him? Did
he not love her?
Nejdanov turned his gaze on Markelov not without some inward misgiving.
“Was he not looking at him, trying to guess his thoughts?” But Markelov
was standing in a corner biting his moustache.
The old servant came into the room carrying a candle. Markelov started.
“It’s time we were in bed, Alexai,” he said. “Morning is wiser than
evening. You shall have the horses tomorrow. Goodbye.”
“And goodbye to you too, old fellow,” he added turning to the servant
and slapping him on the shoulder. “Don’t be angry with me!”
The old man was so astonished that he nearly dropped the candle, and
as he fixed his eyes on his master there was an expression in them of
something other, something more, than his habitual dejection.
Nejdanov retired to his room. He was feeling wretched. His head was
aching from the wine he had drunk, there were ringing noises in his
ears, and stars jumping about in front of his eyes, even though he shut
them. Golushkin, Vasia the clerk, Fomishka and Fimishka, were dancing
about before him, with Mariana’s form in the distance, as if distrustful
and afraid to come near. Everything that he had said or done during the
day now seemed to him so utterly false, such useless nonsense, and the
thing that ought to be done, ought to be striven for, was nowhere to be
found; unattainable, under lock and key, in the depths of a bottomless
pit.
He was filled with a desire to go to Markelov and say to him, “Here,
take back your gift, take it back!”
“Ugh! What a miserable thing life is!” he exclaimed.
He departed early on the following morning. Markelov was already
standing at the door surrounded by peasants, but whether he had asked
them to come, or they had come of their own accord, Nejdanov did not
know. Markelov said very little and parted with him coldly, but it
seemed to Nejdanov that he had something of importance to communicate to
him.
The old servant made his appearance with his usual melancholy
expression.
The carriage soon left the town behind it, and coming out into the open
country began flying at a furious rate. The horses were the same, but
the driver counted on a good tip, as Nejdanov lived in a rich house.
And as is usually the case, when the driver has either had a drink, or
expects to get one, the horses go at a good pace.
It was an ordinary June day, though the air was rather keen. A steady,
high wind was blowing, but raising no dust in the road, owing to last
night’s rain. The laburnums glistened, rustling to and fro in the
breeze; a ripple ran over everything. From afar the cry of the quail was
carried over the hills, over the grassy ravines, as if the very cry was
possessed of wings; the rooks were bathing in the sunshine; along the
straight, bare line of the horizon little specks no bigger than
flies could be distinguished moving about. These were some peasants
re-ploughing a fallow field.
Nejdanov was so lost in thought that he did not see all this. He went
on and on and did not even notice when they drove through Sipiagin’s
village.
He trembled suddenly as he caught sight of the house, the first story
and Mariana’s window. “Yes,” he said to himself, a warm glow entering
his heart, “Markelov was right. She is a good girl and I love her.”