Smoke Part 26

Litvinov walked up and down his room in the hotel, his head bowed in thought. He had now to pa.s.s from theory to practice, to devise ways and means for flight, for moving to unknown countries.... But, strange to say, he was not pondering so much upon ways and means as upon whether actually, beyond doubt, the decision had been reached on which he had so obstinately insisted? Had the ultimate, irrevocable word been uttered?

But Irina to be sure had said to him at parting, 'Act, act, and when every thing is ready, only let me know.' That was final! Away with all doubts.... He must proceed to action. And Litvinov proceeded--in the meantime--to calculation. Money first of all. Litvinov had, he found, in ready money one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight guldens, in French money, two thousand eight hundred and fifty-five francs; the sum was trifling, but it was enough for the first necessities, and then he must at once write to his father to send him all he could; he would have to sell the forest part of the land. But on what pretext?... Well, a pretext would be found. Irina had spoken, it's true, of her _bijoux_, but that must not be taken into his reckoning; that, who knows, might come in for a rainy day. He had besides a good Geneva watch, for which he might get ... well, say, four hundred francs. Litvinov went to a banker's, and with much circ.u.mlocution introduced the question whether it was possible, in case of need, to borrow money; but bankers at Baden are wary old foxes, and in response to such circ.u.mlocutions they promptly a.s.sume a drooping and blighted air, for all the world like a wild flower whose stalk has been severed by the scythe; some indeed laugh outright in your face, as though appreciating an innocent joke on your part. Litvinov, to his shame, even tried his luck at roulette, even, oh ignominy! put a thaler on the number thirty, corresponding with his own age. He did this with a view to augmenting and rounding off his capital; and if he did not augment it, he certainly did round off his capital by losing the odd twenty-eight guldens. There was a second question, also not an unimportant one; that was the pa.s.sport. But for a woman a pa.s.sport is not quite so obligatory, and there are countries where it is not required at all, Belgium, for instance, and England; besides, one might even get some other pa.s.sport, not Russian. Litvinov pondered very seriously on all this; his decision was firm, absolutely unwavering, and yet all the time against his will, overriding his will, something not serious, almost humorous came in, filtered through his musings, as though the very enterprise were a comic business, and no one ever did elope with any one in reality, but only in plays and novels, and perhaps somewhere in the provinces, in some of those remote districts, where, according to the statements of travellers, people are literally sick continually from _ennui_. At that point Litvinov recalled how an acquaintance of his, a retired cornet, Batsov, had eloped with a merchant's daughter in a staging sledge with bells and three horses, having as a preliminary measure made the parents drunk, and adopted the same precaution as well with the bride, and how, as it afterwards turned out, he was outwitted and within an ace of a thras.h.i.+ng into the bargain.

Litvinov felt exceedingly irritated with himself for such inappropriate reminiscences, and then with the recollection of Tatyana, her sudden departure, all that grief and suffering and shame, he felt only too acutely that the affair he was arranging was deadly earnest, and how right he had been when he had told Irina that his honour even left no other course open.... And again at the mere name something of flame turned with sweet ache about his heart and died away again.

The tramp of horses' hoofs sounded behind him.... He moved aside....

Irina overtook him on horseback; beside her rode the stout general. She recognised Litvinov, nodded to him, and las.h.i.+ng her horse with a sidestroke of her whip, she put him into a gallop, and suddenly dashed away at headlong speed. Her dark veil fluttered in the wind....

'_Pas si vite! Nom de Dieu! pas si vite!_' cried the general, and he too galloped after her.

XXV

The next morning Litvinov had only just come home from seeing the banker, with whom he had had another conversation on the playful instability of our exchange, and the best means of sending money abroad, when the hotel porter handed him a letter. He recognised Irina's handwriting, and without breaking the seal--a presentiment of evil, Heaven knows why, was astir in him--he went into his room. This was what he read (the letter was in French):

'My dear one, I have been thinking all night of your plan.... I am not going to shuffle with you. You have been open with me, and I will be open with you; I _cannot_ run away with you, I _have not the strength_ to do it. I feel how I am wronging you; my second sin is greater than the first, I despise myself, my cowardice, I cover myself with reproaches, but I cannot change myself. In vain I tell myself that I have destroyed your happiness, that you have the right now to regard me as a frivolous flirt, that I myself drew you on, that I have given you solemn promises.... I am full of horror, of hatred for myself, but I can't do otherwise, I can't, I can't. I don't want to justify myself, I won't tell you I was carried away myself ... all that's of no importance; but I want to tell you, and to say it again and yet again, I am yours, yours for ever, do with me as you will when you will, free from all obligation, from all responsibility! I am yours.... But run away, throw up everything ... no! no! no! I besought you to save me, I hoped to wipe out everything, to burn up the past as in a fire ... but I see there is no salvation for me; I see the poison has gone too deeply into me; I see one cannot breathe this atmosphere for years with impunity. I have long hesitated whether to write you this letter, I dread to think what decision you may come to, I trust only to your love for me. But I felt it would be dishonest on my part to hide the truth from you--especially as perhaps you have already begun to take the first steps for carrying out our project. Ah! it was lovely but impracticable.

O my dear one, think me a weak, worthless woman, despise, but don't abandon me, don't abandon your Irina!... To leave this life I have not the courage, but live it without you I cannot either. We soon go back to Petersburg, come there, live there, we will find occupation for you, your labours in the past shall not be thrown away, you shall find good use for them ... only live near me, only love me; such as I am, with all my weaknesses and my vices, and believe me, no heart will ever be so tenderly devoted to you as the heart of your Irina. Come soon to me, I shall not have an instant's peace until I see you.--Yours, yours, yours, I.'

The blood beat like a sledge-hammer in Litvinov's head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone in it. He read through Irina's letter, and just as on that day at Moscow he fell in exhaustion on the sofa, and stayed there motionless. A dark abyss seemed suddenly to have opened on all sides of him, and he stared into this darkness in senseless despair. And so again, again deceit, no, worse than deceit, lying and baseness.... And life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to--the last prop in fragments too! 'Come after us to Petersburg,' he repeated with a bitter inward laugh, 'we will find you occupation.... Find me a place as a head clerk, eh? and who are _we_? Here there's a hint of her past. Here we have the secret, hideous something I know nothing of, but which she has been trying to wipe out, to burn as in a fire. Here we have that world of intrigues, of secret relations, of shameful stories of Byelskys and Dolskys.... And what a future, what a lovely part awaiting me! To live close to her, visit her, share with her the morbid melancholy of the lady of fas.h.i.+on who is sick and weary of the world, but can't live outside its circle, be the friend of the house of course, of his Excellency ... until ... until the whim changes and the plebeian lover loses his piquancy, and is replaced by that fat general or Mr.

Finikov--that's possible and pleasant, and I dare say useful.... She talks of a good use for my talents?... but the other project's impracticable, impracticable....' In Litvinov's soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary impulses of fury.... Every expression in Irina's letter roused his indignation, her very a.s.sertions of her unchanging feelings affronted him. 'She can't let it go like that,' he cried at last, 'I won't allow her to play with my life so mercilessly.'

Litvinov jumped up, s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat. But what was he to do? Run to her?

Answer her letter? He stopped short, and his hands fell.

'Yes; what was to be done?'

Had he not himself put this fatal choice to her? It had not turned out as he had wished ... there was that risk about every choice. She had changed her mind, it was true; she herself had declared at first that she would throw up everything and follow him; that was true too; but she did not deny her guilt, she called herself a weak woman; she did not want to deceive him, she had been deceived in herself.... What answer could be made to that? At any rate she was not hypocritical, she was not deceiving him ... she was open, remorselessly open. There was nothing forced her to speak out, nothing to prevent her from soothing him with promises, putting things off, and keeping it all in uncertainty till her departure ... till her departure with her husband for Italy? But she had ruined his life, ruined two lives.... What of that?

But as regards Tatyana, she was not guilty; the guilt was his, his, Litvinov's alone, and he had no right to shake off the responsibility his own sin had laid with iron yoke upon him.... All this was so; but what was left him to do now?

Again he flung himself on the sofa and again in gloom, darkly, dimly, without trace, with devouring swiftness, the minutes raced past....

'And why not obey her?' flashed through his brain. 'She loves me, she is mine, and in our very yearning towards each other, in this pa.s.sion, which after so many years has burst upon us, and forced its way out with such violence, is there not something inevitable, irresistible, like a law of nature? Live in Petersburg ... and shall I be the first to be put in such a position? And how could we be in safety together?...'

And he fell to musing, and Irina's shape, in the guise in which it was imprinted for ever in his late memories, softly rose before him.... But not for long.... He mastered himself, and with a fresh outburst of indignation drove away from him both those memories and that seductive image.

'You give me to drink from that golden cup,' he cried, 'but there is poison in the draught, and your white wings are besmirched with mire....

Away! Remain here with you after the way I ... I drove away my betrothed ... a deed of infamy, of infamy!' He wrung his hands with anguish, and another face with the stamp of suffering on its still features, with dumb reproach in its farewell eyes, rose from the depths....

And for a long time Litvinov was in this agony still; for a long time, his tortured thought, like a man fever-stricken, tossed from side to side.... He grew calm at last; at last he came to a decision. From the very first instant he had a presentiment of this decision; ... it had appeared to him at first like a distant, hardly perceptible point in the midst of the darkness and turmoil of his inward conflict; then it had begun to move nearer and nearer, till it ended by cutting with icy edge into his heart.

Litvinov once more dragged his box out of the corner, once more he packed all his things, without haste, even with a kind of stupid carefulness, rang for the waiter, paid his bill, and despatched to Irina a note in Russian to the following purport:

'I don't know whether you are doing me a greater wrong now than then; but I know this present blow is infinitely heavier.... It is the end.

You tell me, "I cannot"; and I repeat to you, "I cannot ..." do what you want. I cannot and I don't want to. Don't answer me. You are not capable of giving me the only answer I would accept. I am going away to-morrow early by the first train. Good-bye, may you be happy! We shall in all probability not see each other again.'

Till night-time Litvinov did not leave his room; G.o.d knows whether he was expecting anything. About seven o'clock in the evening a lady in a black mantle with a veil on her face twice approached the steps of his hotel. Moving a little aside and gazing far away into the distance, she suddenly made a resolute gesture with her hand, and for the third time went towards the steps....

'Where are you going, Irina Pavlovna?' she heard a voice utter with effort behind her.

She turned with nervous swiftness.... Potugin ran up to her.

She stopped short, thought a moment, and fairly flung herself towards him, took his arm, and drew him away.

'Take me away, take me away,' she repeated breathlessly.

'What is it, Irina Pavlovna?' he muttered in bewilderment.

'Take me away,' she reiterated with redoubled force, 'if you don't want me to remain for ever ... there.'

Potugin bent his head submissively, and hurriedly they went away together.

The following morning early Litvinov was perfectly ready for his journey--into his room walked ... Potugin.

He went up to him in silence, and in silence shook his hand. Litvinov, too, said nothing. Both of them wore long faces, and both vainly tried to smile.

'I came to wish you a good journey,' Potugin brought out at last.

'And how did you know I was going to-day?' asked Litvinov.

Potugin looked on the floor around him.... 'I became aware of it ... as you see. Our last conversation took in the end such a strange turn.... I did not want to part from you without expressing my sincere good feeling for you.'

'You have good feeling for me now ... when I am going away?'

Potugin looked mournfully at Litvinov. 'Ah, Grigory Mihalitch, Grigory Mihalitch,' he began with a short sigh, 'it's no time for that with us now, no time for delicacy or fencing. You don't, so far as I have been able to perceive, take much interest in our national literature, and so, perhaps, you have no clear conception of Vaska Buslaev?'

'Of whom?'

'Of Vaska Buslaev, the hero of Novgorod ... in Kirsch-Danilov's collection.'

'What Buslaev?' said Litvinov, somewhat puzzled by the unexpected turn of the conversation. 'I don't know.'

'Well, never mind. I only wanted to draw your attention to something.

Vaska Buslaev, after he had taken away his Novgorodians on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there, to their horror, bathed all naked in the holy river Jordan, for he believed not "in omen nor in dream, nor in the flight of birds," this logical Vaska Buslaev climbed up Mount Tabor, and on the top of this mountain there lies a great stone, over which men of every kind have tried in vain to jump.... Vaska too ventured to try his luck. And he chanced upon a dead head, a human skull in his road; he kicked it away with his foot. So the skull said to him; "Why do you kick me? I knew how to live, and I know how to roll in the dust--and it will be the same with you." And in fact, Vaska jumps over the stone, and he did quite clear it, but he caught his heel and broke his skull. And in this place, I must by the way observe that it wouldn't be amiss for our friends, the Slavophils, who are so fond of kicking dead heads and decaying nationalities underfoot to ponder over that legend.'

'But what does all that mean?' Litvinov interposed impatiently at last.

'Excuse me, it's time for me....'

'Why, this,' answered Potugin, and his eyes beamed with such affectionate warmth as Litvinov had not even expected of him, 'this, that you do not spurn a dead human head, and for your goodness, perhaps you may succeed in leaping over the fatal stone. I won't keep you any longer, only let me embrace you at parting.'

'I'm not going to try to leap over it even,' Litvinov declared, kissing Potugin three times, and the bitter sensations filling his soul were replaced for an instant by pity for the poor lonely creature.

'But I must go, I must go ...' he moved about the room.

'Can I carry anything for you?' Potugin proffered his services.

'No, thank you, don't trouble, I can manage....'