XXVI
Solomin's refusal greatly offended Sipyagin—so much so that he suddenly arrived at the opinion that this home-bred Stevenson was not such a remarkable mechanician after all, and that, though he might very likely not be a complete sham, he certainly gave himself airs like a regular plebeian. 'All these Russians, when they imagine they know a thing, are beyond everything. Au fond Kallomyetsev is right.' Under the influence of such irritated and malignant sensations, the statesman—en herbe—was even more unsympathetic and distant when he looked at Nezhdanov. He informed Kolya that he need not work with his tutor to-day—that he must form a habit of self-reliance.. . . He did not, however, give the tutor himself his dismissal, as the latter had expected; he continued to ignore him. But Valentina Mihalovna did not ignore Marianna. A terrible scene took place between them.
At about two o'clock they happened somehow to be suddenly left alone together in the drawing-room. Each of them was immediately aware that the moment of the inevitable conflict had come, and so, after a momentary hesitation, they gradually approached each other. Valentina Mihalovna was faintly smiling, Marianna's lips were compressed; they were both pale. As she moved across the room, Valentina Mihalovna looked to right and to left and picked a leaf of geranium . . . Marianna's eyes were fixed directly upon the smiling face approaching her.
Madame Sipyagin was the first to stop, and, drumming with her finger-tips on the back of the chair: 'Marianna Vikentyevna,' she said in a careless voice, 'we have, I think, entered upon a correspondence with one another.. . . Living under one roof as we do, that is rather odd, and you are aware that I am not fond of oddities of any sort.'
'It was not I began that correspondence, Valentina Mihalovna.'
'No.. . . You are right. I am to blame for the oddity this time; but I could find no other means to arouse in you a feeling of. . . how shall I say? . . . a feeling of———'
'Speak out, Valentina Mihalovna; don't mince matters—don't be afraid of offending me.'
'A feeling . . . of propriety,'
Valentina Mihalovna paused; nothing but the light tap of her fingers on the chair-back could be heard in the room.
'How do you consider I have been careless of propriety?' asked Marianna.
Valentina Mihalovna shrugged her shoulders.
"'Ma chere, vous n'êtes plus une enfant, you understand me perfectly. Can you suppose your behaviour could remain a secret to me, to Anna Zaharovna, to the whole household, in fact? Besides, you have not taken much pains to keep it a secret. You have simply acted in bravado. Boris Andreitch alone has, perhaps, not observed it.. . . He is absorbed in other matters of more interest and importance. But, except for him, your conduct is known to all—all!'
Marianna grew steadily paler and paler.
'I would ask you, Valentina Mihalovna, to be more definite in your expressions. With what precisely are you displeased?'
'L'insolente!' thought Madame Sipyagin. She still restrained herself, however.
'You wish to know what I am displeased about, Marianna? Certainly. I am displeased at your prolonged interviews with a young man who by birth, by education, and by social position is far beneath you. I am displeased . . . no! that word is not strong enough—I am revolted by your late . . . your midnight visits to that young man's room. And that under my roof! Do you suppose that that is quite as it should be, and that I am to be silent, and, as it were, screen your flightiness? As a virtuous woman of irreproachable character . . . Oui, mademoiselle, je l'ai été, je le suis, et le serai toujours—I cannot help feeling indignant.'
Valentina Mihalovna flung herself into an arm-chair as though crushed by the weight of her indignation.
Marianna smiled for the first time.
'I do not doubt your virtue, past, present, and future,' she began, 'and I say so quite sincerely; but your indignation is needless; I have brought no disgrace on your roof. The young man to whom you allude . . . yes, I certainly . . . have come to love him.. . .'
'You love Monsieur Nezhdanov?'
'Yes, I love him.'
Valentina Mihalovna sat up in her chair.
'Good gracious, Marianna! why, he's a student, of no birth, no family—why, he's younger than you are!' (There was a certain spiteful pleasure in the utterance of these words.) 'What can come of it? and what can you, with your intellect, find in him? He's simply a shallow boy.'
'That was not always your opinion of him, Valentina Mihalovna.'
'Oh, mercy on us, my dear, let me alone.. . . Pas tant d'esprit que ça, je vous prie. It is you we are discussing—you and your future. Fancy! what sort of a match is it for you?'
'I must confess, Valentina Mihalovna, I had not thought of it in that light.'
'Eh? What? What am I to understand by that? You have followed the dictates of your heart, we are to suppose.. . . But all that is bound to end in marriage, isn't it?'
'I don't know. . . . I have not thought about that.'
'You have not thought about that? Why, you must be mad!'
Marianna turned slightly away.
'Let us make an end of this conversation, Valentina Mihalovna. It can lead to nothing. We shall never understand one another.'
Valentina Mihalovna got up impulsively.
'I cannot, I ought not to make an end of this conversation! It is too important. . . . I have to answer for you to . . .' Valentina Mihalovna had meant to say 'to God,' but she faltered, and said, 'to the whole world. I cannot be silent when I hear such senselessness! And why cannot I understand you? The insufferable conceit of these young people! No! . . . I understand you very well; I can see that you are infected with these new ideas which will inevitably lead you to your ruin! but then it will be too late.'
'Perhaps; but you may rest assured of one thing: even in my ruin, I shall never hold out a finger to you for aid.'
'Conceit again, this awful conceit! Come, listen to me, Marianna, listen to me,' she went on, suddenly changing her tone.. . . She was on the point of drawing Marianna to her, but Marianna stepped back a pace. 'Écoutez-moi, je vous en conjure. After all, you know I am not so old and not so stupid that it's impossible for us to understand each other. Je ne suis pas une encroutée. I was even regarded as a republican in my young days . . . just as you are. Listen to me. I will not affect what I don't feel. I have never felt a mother's tenderness for you, and it's not in your character to complain of that . . . but I have recognised and I do recognise that I have duties in regard to you, and I have always tried to perform them. Perhaps the match I dreamed of for you, and for which Boris Andreitch and I, both of us, would have been ready to make any sacrifices . . . that suitor did not fully answer to your ideas . . . but from the bottom of my heart———'
Marianna looked at Valentina Mihalovna at the wonderful eyes, at the pink, faintly touched-up lips, at the white hands, with the slightly parted fingers adorned with rings, which the elegant lady was pressing so expressively to the bodice of her silk gown,—and suddenly she cut her short.
'A match, do you say, Valentina Mihalovna? Do you mean by a "match" that heartless, vulgar friend of yours, Mr. Kallomyetsev?'
Valentina Mihalovna took her fingers from her bodice.
'Yes, Marianna Vikentyevna, I mean Mr. Kallomyetsev—that cultivated, excellent young man, who will certainly make a wife happy, and whom no one but a madwoman could refuse—no one but a madwoman!'
'What's to be done, ma tante? It would seem I am one.'
'But what fault—what serious fault—do you find with him?'
'Oh, none at all. I despise him . . . that's all.'
Valentina Mihalovna shook her head from side to side impatiently, and again sank into an arm-chair.
'Let him be. Retournons à nos moutons. And so you love Mr. Nezhdanov?'
'Yes.'
'And you intend to continue . . . your interviews with him?'
'Yes, I intend to.'
'Well . . . and if I forbid you to?'
'I sha'n't listen to you.'
Valentina Mihalovna bounded up in her chair.
'Oh, you won't listen to me! Oh, indeed! And that's said to me by the girl I have loaded with benefits, whom I have cared for in my own house—that is what's said to me . . . is said to me . . .'
'By the daughter of a disgraced father,' Marianna put in gloomily. 'Go on; don't mince matters.'
'Ce n'est pas moi qui vous le fais dire, mademoiselle; but, any way, there's nothing to be proud of in that. A girl who lives at my expense'
'Don't taunt me with that, Valentina Mihalovna! It would cost you more to keep a French governess for Kolya. . . . You know I give him French lessons.'
Valentina Mihalovna raised a hand holding a cambric handkerchief scented with ylang-ylang and embroidered with a huge white monogram in one corner, and tried to make some retort, but Marianna went on vehemently:
'You would have every right a thousand times over, every right to speak if, instead of all you have just been reckoning up, instead of all these pretended benefits and sacrifices, you were in a position to say, "the girl I have loved." . . . But you are too honest to tell such a lie as that.' Marianna was shaking as if she were in a fever. 'You have always hated me. At this very moment, at the bottom of your heart, as you said just now, you are glad—yes, glad—that I am justifying your constant predictions, that I am covering myself with scandal, with disgrace; all that you mind is that part of the disgrace may fall on your aristocratic, virtuous household.'
'You are insulting me,' faltered Valentina Mihalovna. 'Kindly leave the room.'
But Marianna could not control herself.
'Your household, you say, all your household and Anna Zaharovna and all know of my conduct! and they are all horrified and indignant.. . . But do you suppose I ask anything of you, or them, or any of these people? Do you suppose I prize their good opinion? Do you think the living at your expense, as you call it, has been sweet? I would prefer any poverty to this luxury. Don't you see that between your household and me there's a perfect gulf, a gulf that nothing can conceal? Can you—you're a clever woman, too—fail to realise that? And if you feel hatred for me, can't you understand the feeling I must have for you, which I don't particularise, simply because it is too obvious?'
'Sortez, sortez, vous dis-je!. . .' repeated Valentina Mihalovna, and she stamped with her pretty, slender little foot.
Marianna took a step in the direction of the door.
'I will rid you of my presence directly; but do you know what, Valentina Mihalovna? They say that even in Rachel's mouth in Racine's Bajazet that 'Sortez!' was not effective, and you are far behind her! And something more, what was it you said? "Je suis une honnête femme, je l'ai été et le serai toujours." Only fancy, I am convinced I'm a great deal honester than you! Good-bye!'
Marianna went out hurriedly, while Valentina Mihalovna leaped up from her chair; she wanted to shriek, she wanted to cry.. . . But what to shriek she did not know; and tears did not come at her bidding.
She had to be content with fanning herself with her handkerchief; but the scent with which it was saturated affected her nerves still more. She felt unhappy, insulted. She was conscious of a grain of truth in what she had just heard. But how could any one judge her so unjustly? 'Can I be such a spiteful creature?' she thought, and she looked at herself in the looking-glass, which happened to be straight before her between two windows. The looking-glass reflected a charming face, somewhat discomposed, with patches of red coming out upon it, but still a fascinating face, exquisite, soft, velvety eyes.. . . 'I? I spiteful?' she thought again. . . . 'With eyes like those?'
But at that instant her husband came in, and she hid her face in her handkerchief again.
'What is wrong with you?' he inquired anxiously. 'What is it, Valya?' (He had invented that pet name, though he never allowed himself to use it except in absolute tête-à-tête, by preference in the country.)
At first she was reticent, declared there was nothing wrong, but ended by turning round in her chair, in a very graceful and touching way, and flinging her arms round his shoulders (he was standing bending over her), hiding her face in the open front of his waistcoat, and telling him everything; without any hypocrisy or hidden motive, she tried, if not to excuse, at least to some extent to justify Marianna; she threw all the blame on her youth, her passionate temperament, and the defects of her early education; she also, to some extent, and also with no double motive, blamed herself 'With my daughter, this would never have happened! I should have looked after her very differently!' Sipyagin heard her out with indulgence, sympathy, and serenity; he kept his stooping posture since she did not take her arms from his shoulders, and did not remove her head; he called her an angel, kissed her on the forehead, announced that he saw now the course of action dictated to him by his position, the position of the head of the house, and withdrew with the gait of a man of humane but energetic character, who has to make up his mind to perform an unpleasant but inevitable duty.
About eight o'clock, after dinner, Nezhdanov was sitting in his room writing to his friend Silin: 'Dear Vladimir, I am writing to you at the moment of a vital change in my existence. I have been dismissed from this house. I am going away. But that would be nothing. I am going from here not alone. The girl I have written to you about accompanies me. We are bound together by the similarity of our fate in life, the identity of our views and efforts, by our mutual feeling too. We love each other; at least, I believe I am not capable of feeling the passion of love in any other form than that in which it presents itself to me now. But I should be lying to you if I said I had no secret feeling of terror, even a sort of strange sinking at heart. The future is all dark, and we are pushing forward together into this darkness. I need not explain to you what it is we are going into, and what work we have chosen. Marianna and I are not in search of happiness; we don't want to enjoy ourselves, but to struggle on together, side by side, supporting each other. Our aim is clear to us; but what ways will lead up to it, we do not know. Shall we find, if not sympathy and help, at least freedom to work? Marianna is a splendid, honest girl; if it is decreed that we perish, I shall not reproach myself for having led her to ruin, for there is no other life possible to her now. But Vladimir, Vladimir! my heart is heavy. I am tortured by doubt, not of my feeling for her, of course, but . . . I don't know. Anyhow, it's too late to turn back. Stretch out a hand to us both from afar, and wish us patience, power of self-sacrifice, and love . . . more love. And ye, unknown of us, but loved by us with all our being, every drop of our heart's blood, Russian people, receive us not too coldly, and teach us what we are to expect from you! Farewell, Vladimir, farewell!'
After writing these few lines, Nezhdanov set off to the village. The next night, the dawn was hardly breaking in the sky when he stood on the outskirts of the birch wood at no great distance from Sipyagin's garden. A little behind him, a little peasant's cart, harnessed to a pair of unbridled horses, could be seen behind the tangled green of a broad hazel-bush; in the cart, under the seat of plaited cord, a little grey-headed old peasant lay asleep on a bundle of hay, with his head on a patched overcoat. Nezhdanov kept incessantly looking towards the road, towards the clump of willows at the garden's edge; the grey stillness of night still hung over everything, the tiny stars strove feebly to outshine each other, lost in the waste depths of the sky. Along the rounded lower edges of the stretching clouds ran a pale flush from the east; thence too came the first chill breath of early morning. Suddenly Nezhdanov started and was all alert; somewhere near at hand there was first the shrill creak, then the thump of a gate; a little feminine figure wrapped in a shawl, with a bundle in its bare hand, stepped with a deliberate movement out of the still shadows of the willows on to the soft dust of the road, and crossing it in a slanting direction, apparently on tiptoe, turned towards the copse. Nezhdanov rushed up to it.
'Marianna?' he whispered.
'It's I!' came a soft reply from under the overhanging shawl.
'This way, follow me,' responded Nezhdanov, clutching her awkwardly by the bare hand that held the bundle.
She shrank up as if she felt chilled by the frost. He led her to the cart, and waked up the peasant. The latter jumped up quickly, clambered promptly on to the driver's seat, slipped the great-coat on to his sleeves, and caught up the cords that served for reins. The horses shook themselves; he cautiously encouraged them in a voice still hoarse from his heavy sleep. Nezhdanov made Marianna sit down on the cord seat of the cart, first spreading his cloak on it; he wrapped her feet in a rug—the hay at the bottom of the cart was damp—placed himself beside her, and, bending over to the peasant, said softly, 'Drive on you know where.' The peasant gave a tug to the reins, the horses came out of the thicket, snorting and shaking themselves; and, rattling and jolting on its narrow old wheels, the cart rolled along the road. Nezhdanov put one arm round Marianna's waist to support her; she lifted the shawl a little with her cold fingers, and turning and facing him with a smile, she said, 'How deliciously fresh it is, Alyosha!'
'Yes,' answered the peasant, 'there'll be a heavy dew!'
There was already such a heavy dew that the axles of the cart-wheels, as they caught in the tops of the tall weeds along the roadside, shook off whole showers of delicate drops of water, and the green of the grass looked bluish-grey.
Again Marianna shivered from the cold.
'How fresh, how fresh!' she repeated in a light-hearted voice. 'And freedom, Alyosha, freedom!'