“Well, that is excellent,” she said aloud; “now my conscience is at rest then, and I can satisfy my curiosity.”
“Curiosity,” repeated Litvinov, as though puzzled.
“Yes, yes. . . . I want above all things to know what you have been doing all this time, what plans you have; I want to know all, how, what, when . . . all, all. And you will have to tell me the truth, for I must warn you, I have not lost sight of you . . . so far as I could.”
“You did not lose sight of me, you . . . there. . . in Petersburg?”
“In the midst of the splendor which surrounded me, as you expressed it just now. Positively, yes, I did not. As for that splendor we will talk about that again; but now you must tell me, you must tell me so much, at such length, no one will disturb us. Ah, how delightful it will be,” added Irina, gayly sitting down and arranging herself at her ease in an armchair. “Come, begin.” “Before telling my story, I have to thank you,” began Litvinov.
“What for?”
“For the bouquet of flowers, which made its appearance in my room.”
“What bouquet? I know nothing about it.”
“What?”
“I tell you I know nothing about it. . . . But I am waiting. . . . I am waiting for your story Ah, what a good fellow that Potugin is, to have brought you!”
Litvinov pricked up his ears.
“Have you known this Mr. Potugin long?” he queried.
“Yes, a long while . . . but tell me your story.”
“And do you know him well?”
“Oh, yes!” Irina sighed. “There are special reasons. . . . You have heard, of course, of Eliza Byelsky. . . . Who died, you know, the year before last, such a dreadful death? . . . Ah, to be sure, I’d forgotten you don’t know all our scandals. . . . It is well, it is well, indeed, that you don’t know them. O queue chance! at last, at last, a man, a live man, who knows nothing of us! And to be able to talk Russian with him, bad Russian of course, but still Russian, not that everlasting mawkish, sickening French patter of Petersburg.”
“And Potugin, you say, was connected with - - “
“It’s very painful for me even to refer to it,” Irina broke in. “Eliza was my greatest friend at school, and afterwards in Petersburg we saw each other continually. She confided all her secrets to me, she was very unhappy, she suffered much. Potugin behaved splendidly in the affair, with true chivalry. He sacrificed himself. It was only then I learned to appreciate him! But we have drifted away again. I am waiting for your story, Grigory Mihalitch.”
“But my story cannot interest you the least, Irina Pavlovna.”
“That’s not your affair.”
“Think, Irina Pavlovna, we have not seen each other for ten years, ten whole years. How much water has flowed by since then.”
“Not water only! not water only!” she repeated with a peculiar bitter expression; “that’s just why I want to hear what you are going to tell me.”
“And beside I really don’t know where to begin.”
“At the beginning. From the very time when you . . . when I went away to Petersburg. You left Moscow then. . . . Do you know I have never been back to Moscow since!”
“Really?”
“It was impossible at first; and afterwards when I was married - - “
“Have you been married long?”
“Four years.”
“Have you no children?”
“No,” she answered dryly.
Litvinov was silent for a little.
“And did you go on living at that, what was his name, Count Reisenbach’s, till your marriage?” Irina looked steadily at him, as though she were trying to make up her mind why he asked that question.
“No,” . . . was her answer at last.
“I suppose, your parents. . . . By the way, I haven’t asked after them. Are they - - “
“They are both well.”
“And living at Moscow as before?”
“At Moscow as before.”
“And your brothers and sisters?”
“They are all right; I have provided for all of them.”
“Ah!” Litvinov glanced up from under his brows at Irina. “In reality, Irina Pavlovna, it’s not I who ought to tell my story, but you, if only - - “ He suddenly felt embarrassed and stopped.
Irina raised her hands to her face and turned her wedding - ring round upon her finger.
“Well? I will not refuse,” she assented at last. “Some day . . . perhaps. . . . But first you . . . because, do you see, though I tried to follow you up, I know scarcely anything of you; while of me . . . well, of me you have heard enough certainly. Haven’t you? I suppose you have heard of me, tell me?”
“You, Irina Pavlovna, occupied too conspicuous a place in the world, not to be the subject of talk . . . especially in the provinces, where I have been and where every rumor is believed.”
“And do you believe the rumors? And of what kind were the rumors?”
“To tell the truth, Irina Pavlovna, such rumors very seldom reach me. I have led a very solitary life.”
“How so? why, you were in the Crimea, in the militia?”
“You know that, too?”
“As you see. I tell you, you have been watched.”
Again Litvinov felt puzzled.
“Why am I to tell you what you know without me?” said Litvinov in an undertone.
“Why . . . to do what I ask you. You see, I ask you, Grigory Mihalitch.”
Litvinov bowed his head and began . . . began in rather a confused fashion to recount in rough outline to Irina his uninteresting adventures. He often stopped and looked inquiringly at Irina, as though to ask whether he had told enough. But she insistently demanded the continuation of his narrative and pushing her hair back behind her ears, her elbows on the arm of her chair, she seemed to be catching every word with strained attention. Looking at her from one side and following the expression on her face, any one might perhaps have imagined she did not hear what Litvinov was saying at all, hut was only deep in meditation. . . . But it was not of Litvinov she was meditating, though he grew confused and red under her persistent gaze. A whole life was rising up before her, a very different one, not his life, but her own.
Litvinov did not finish his story, but stopped short under the influence of an unpleasant sense of growing inner discomfort. This time Irina said nothing to him, and did not urge him to go on, but pressing her open hand to her eyes, as though she were tired, she leaned slowly back in her chair, and remained motionless. Litvinov waited for a little; then, reflecting that his visit had already lasted more than two hours, he was stretching out his hand for his hat, when suddenly in an adjoining room there was the sound of the rapid creak of thin kid boots, and preceded by the same exquisite aristocratic perfume, there entered Valerian Vladimirovitch Ratmirov.
Litvinov rose and interchanged bows with the good - looking general, while Irina, with no sign of haste, took her hand from her face, and looking coldly at her husband, remarked in French, “Ah! so you’ve come back! But what time is it?”
“Nearly four, ma chère amie, and you not dressed yet - - the princess will be expecting us,” answered the general; and with an elegant bend of his tightly - laced figure in Litvinov’s direction, he added with the almost effeminate playfulness of intonation characteristic of him, “It’s clear an agreeable visitor has made you forgetful of time.”
The reader will permit us at this point to give him some information about General Ratmirov. His father was the natural . . . what do you suppose? You are not wrong - - but we didn’t mean to say that . . . the natural son of an illustrious personage of the reign of Alexander I. and of a pretty little French actress. The illustrious personage brought his son forward in the world, but left him no fortune, and the son himself (the father of our hero) had not time to grow rich; he died before he had risen above the rank of a colonel in the police. A year before his death he had married a handsome young widow who had happened to put her self under hi
s protection. His son by the widow, Valerian Alexandrovitch, having got into the Corps of Pages by favor, attracted the notice of the authorities, not so much by his success in the sciences, as by his fine bearing, his fine manners, and his good behavior (though he had been exposed to all that pupils in the government military schools were inevitably exposed to in former days) and went into the Guards. His career was a brilliant one, thanks to the discreet gayety of his disposition, his skill in dancing, his excellent seat on horseback when an orderly at reviews, and lastly, by a kind of special trick of deferential familiarity with his superiors, of tender, attentive almost clinging subservience, with a flavor of vague liberalism, light as air. . . . This liberalism had not, however, prevented him from flogging fifty peasants in a White Russian village, where he had been sent to put down a riot. His personal appearance was most prepossessing and singularly youthful - looking; smooth - faced and rosy cheeked, pliant and persistent, he made the most of his amazing success with women; ladies of the highest rank and mature age simply went out of their senses over him. Cautious from habit, silent from motives of prudence, General Ratmirov moved constantly in the highest society, like the busy bee gathering honey even from the least attractive flowers - - and without morals, without information of any kind, but with the reputation of being good at business; with an insight into men, and a ready comprehension of the exigencies of the moment, and above all, a never - swerving desire for his own advantage, he saw at last all paths lying open before him. . . .
Litvinov smiled constrainedly, while Irina merely shrugged her shoulders.
“Well,” she said in the same cold tone, “did you see the Count?”
“To be sure I saw him. He told me to remember him to you.”
“Ah! is he as imbecile as ever, that patron of yours?”
General Ratmirov made no reply. He only smiled to himself, as though lenient to the over - hastiness of a woman’s judgment. With just such a smile kindly - disposed grown - up people respond to the nonsensical whims of children.
“Yes,” Irina went on, “the stupidity of your friend the Count is too striking, even when one has seen a good deal of the world.” “You sent me to him yourself,” muttered the general, and turning to Litvinov he asked him in Russian, “Was he getting any benefit from the Baden waters?”
“I am in perfect health, I’m thankful to say,” answered Litvinov. “That’s the greatest of blessings,” pursued the general, with an affable grimace; “and indeed one doesn’t, as a rule, come to Baden for the waters; but the waters here are very effectual, je veux dire, efficaces; and any one who suffers, as I do for instance, from a nervous cough - - “
Irina rose quickly. “We will see each other again, Grigory Mihalitch, and I hope soon,” she said in French, contemptuously cutting short her husband’s speech, “but now I must go and dress. That old princess is insufferable with her everlasting parties de plaisir, of which nothing comes but boredom.”
“You’re hard on every one to - day,” muttered her husband, and he slipped away into the next room.
Litvinov was turning towards the door. . . . Irina stopped him.
“You have told me everything,” she said, “but the chief thing you concealed.”
“What’s that?”
“You are going to be married, I’m told?” Litvinov blushed up to his ears. . . . As a fact, he had intentionally not referred to Tanya; but he felt, horribly vexed, first, that Irina knew about his marriage, and, secondly, that she had, as it were, convicted him of a desire to conceal it from her. He was completely at a loss what to say, while Irina did not take her eyes off him.
“Yes, I am going to be married,” he said at last, and at once withdrew.
Ratmirov came back into the room..
“Well, why aren’t you dressed?” he asked.
“You can go alone; my head aches.”
“But the princess. . . .”
Irina scanned her husband from head to foot in one look, turned her back upon him, and went away to her boudoir.
XIII
LITVINOV felt much annoyed with himself, as though he had lost money at roulette, or failed to keep his word. An inward voice told him that he - - on the eve of marriage, a man of sober sense, not a boy - - ought not to have given way to the promptings of curiosity, nor the allurements of recollection. “Much need there was to go!” he reflected. “On her side simply flirtation, whim, caprice. . . . She’s bored, she’s sick of everything, she clutched at me . . . as some one pampered with dainties will suddenly long for black bread . . . well, that’s natural enough. . . . But why did I go? Can I feel anything but contempt for her?” This last phrase he could not utter even in thought without an effort. . . . “Of course, there’s no kind of danger, and never could be,” he pursued his reflections. “I know whom I have to deal with. But still one ought not to play with fire. . . . I’ll never set my foot in her place again.” Litvinov dared not, or could not as yet, confess to himself how beautiful Irina had seemed to him, how powerfully she had worked upon his feelings. Again the day passed dully and drearily. At dinner, Litvinov chanced to sit beside a majestic bel - homme, with dyed moustaches, who said nothing, and only panted and rolled his eyes . . . but, being suddenly taken with a hiccup, proved himself to be a fellow - countryman, by at once exclaiming, with feeling, in Russian, “There, I said I ought not to eat melons!” In the evening, too, nothing happened to compensate for a lost day; Bindasov, before Litvinov’s very eyes, won a sum four times what he had borrowed from him, but, far from repaying his debt, he positively glared in his face with a menacing air, as though he were prepared to borrow more from him just because he had been a witness of his winnings. The next morning he was again invaded by a host of his compatriots; Litvinov got rid of them with difficulty, and setting off to the mountains, he first came across Irina - - he pretended not to recognize her, and passed quickly by - - and then Potugin. He was about to begin a conversation with Potugin, but the latter did not respond to him readily. He was leading by the hand a smartly dressed little girl, with fluffy, almost white curls, large black eyes, and a pale, sickly little face, with that peculiar peremptory and impatient expression characteristic of spoiled children. Litvinov spent two hours in the mountains, and then went back homewards along the Lichtenthaler Allee. . . . A lady, sitting on a bench, with a blue veil over her face, got up quickly, and came up to him. . . . He recognized Irina.
“Why do you avoid me, Grigory Mihalitch?” she said, in the unsteady voice of one who is boiling over within. Litvinov was taken aback. “I avoid you, Irina Pavlovna?”
“Yes, you . . . you - - “
Irina seemed excited, almost angry.
“You are mistaken, I assure you.”
“No, I am not mistaken. Do you suppose this morning - - when we met, I mean - - do you suppose I didn’t see that you knew me? Do you mean to say you did not know me? Tell me.”
“I really . . . Irina Pavlovna - - “
“Grigory Mihalitch, you’re a straightforward man, you have always told the truth; tell me, tell me, you knew me, didn’t you? you turned away on purpose?”
Litvinov glanced at Irina. Her eyes shone with a strange light, while her cheeks and lips were of a deathly pallor under the thick net of her veil. In the expression of her face, in the very sound of her abruptly jerked - out whisper, there was something so irresistibly mournful, beseeching . . . Litvinov could not pretend any longer. “Yes . . . I knew you,” he uttered not without effort.
Irina slowly shuddered, and slowly dropped her hands.
“Why did you not come up to me?” she whispered. “Why . . . why!” Litvinov moved on one side, away from the path, Irina followed him in silence. “Why?” he repeated once more, and suddenly his face was aflame, and he felt his chest and throat choking with a passion akin to hatred. “You . . . you ask such a question, after all that has passed between us? Not now, of course, not now; but there . . . there . . . in Moscow.” “But, you know, we decided; you know, you promi
sed - - - - “ Irina was beginning.
“I have promised nothing! Pardon the harshness of my expressions, but you ask for the truth - - so think for yourself: to what but a caprice - - incomprehensible, I confess, to me - - to what but a desire to try how much power you still have over me, can I attribute your . . . I don’t know what to call it . . . your persistence? Our paths have lain so far apart! I have forgotten it all, I’ve lived through all that suffering long ago, I’ve become a different man, completely; you are married - - happy, at least, in appearance - - you fill an envied position in the world; what’s the object, what’s the use of our meeting? What am I to you? what are you to me? We cannot even understand each other, now; there is absolutely nothing in common between us, now, neither in the past nor in the present! Especially . . . especially in the past!”
Litvinov uttered all this speech hurriedly, jerkily, without turning his head. Irina did not stir, except from time to time she faintly stretched her hands out to him. It seemed as though she were beseeching him to stop and listen to her, while, at his last words, she slightly bit her lower lip, as though to master the pain of a sharp, rapid wound.
“Grigory Mihalitch,” she began at last, in a calmer voice; and she moved still further away from the path, along which people from time to time passed.
Litvinov in his turn followed her.
“Grigory Mihalitch, believe me, if I could imagine I had one hair’s - breadth of power over you left, I would be the first to avoid you. If I have not done so, if I made up my mind, in spite of my . . . of the wrong I did you in the past, to renew my acquaintance with you, it was because . . . because - - “
A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1 Page 85