Smoke Part 11

'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 embarra.s.sed and stopped.

Irina raised her hands to her face and turned her wedding-ring round upon her finger.

'Well? I will not refuse,' she a.s.sented 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 rumour is believed.'

'And do you believe the rumours? And of what kind were the rumours?'

'To tell the truth, Irina Pavlovna, such rumours very seldom reached 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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, but 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 chere 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 ill.u.s.trious personage of the reign of Alexander I. and of a pretty little French actress. The ill.u.s.trious 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 herself under his protection. His son by the widow, Valerian Alexandrovitch, having got into the Corps of Pages by favour, 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 behaviour (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 gaiety 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 flavour 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-checked, 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.