"You are such a severe critic," retorted Lezhnyov. "Well, this girl lived with her old father.... But I will not enter into details; I will only tell you that this girl was so kind-hearted, if you only asked her for half a cup of tea she would give it you br.i.m.m.i.n.g over! Two days after first meeting her I was wild over her, and on the seventh day I could hold out no longer, and confessed it in full to Rudin. At that time I was completely under his influence, and his influence, I will tell you frankly, was beneficial in many things. He was the first person who did not treat me with contempt, but tried to lick me into shape. I loved Pokorsky pa.s.sionately, and felt a kind of awe before his purity of soul, but I came closer to Rudin. When he heard about my love, he fell into an indescribable ecstasy, congratulated me, embraced me, and at once fell to disserting and enlarging upon all the dignity of my new position. I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears.... Well, you know how he can talk. His words had an extraordinary effect on me. I at once a.s.sumed an amazing consequence in my own eyes, and I put on a serious exterior and left off laughing. I remember I used even to go about at that time with a kind of circ.u.mspection, as though I had a sacred chalice within me, full of a priceless liquid, which I was afraid of spilling over.... I was very happy, especially as I found favour in her eyes. Rudin wanted to make my beloved"s acquaintance, and I myself almost insisted on presenting him."
"Ah! I see, I see now what it is," interrupted Alexandra Pavlovna.
"Rudin cut you out with your charmer, and you have never been able to forgive him.... I am ready to take a wager I am right!"
"You would lose your wager, Alexandra Pavlovna; you are wrong. Rudin did not cut me out; he did not even try to cut me out; but, all the same, he put an end to my happiness, though, looking at it in cool blood, I am ready to thank him for it now. But I nearly went out of my mind at the time. Rudin did not in the least wish to injure me--quite the contrary!
But through his cursed habit of pinning every emotion--his own and other people"s--with a phrase, as one pins b.u.t.terflies in a case, he set to making clear to ourselves our relations to one another, and how we ought to treat each other, and arbitrarily compelled us to take stock of our feelings and ideas, praised us and blamed us, even entered into a correspondence with us--fancy! Well, he succeeded in completely disconcerting us! I should hardly, even then, have married the young lady (I had so much sense still left), but, at least, we might have spent some months happily a _la Paul et Virginie_; but now came strained relations, misunderstandings of every kind. It ended by Rudin, one fine morning, arriving at the conviction that it was his sacred duty as a friend to acquaint the old father with everything--and he did so."
"Is it possible?" cried Alexandra Pavlovna.
"Yes, and did it with my consent, observe. That"s where the wonder comes in!... I remember even now what a chaos my brain was in; everything was simply turning round--things looked as they do in a camera obscura--white seemed black and black white; falsehood was truth, and a whim was duty.... Ah! even now I feel shame at the recollection of it!
Rudin--he never flagged--not a bit of it! He soared through all sorts of misunderstandings and perplexities, like a swallow over a pond."
"And so you parted from the girl?" asked Alexandra Pavlovna, naively bending her head on one side, and raising her eyebrows.
"We parted--and it was a horrible parting--outrageously awkward and public, quite unnecessarily public.... I wept myself, and she wept, and I don"t know what pa.s.sed.... It seemed as though a kind of Gordian knot had been tied. It had to be cut, but it was painful! However, everything in the world is ordered for the best. She has married an excellent man, and is well off now."
"But confess, you have never been able to forgive Rudin, all the same,"
Alexandra Pavlovna was beginning.
"Not at all!" interposed Lezhnyov, "why, I cried like a child when he was going abroad. Still, to tell the truth, even then there was the germ in my heart. And when I met him later abroad... well, by that time I had grown older.... Rudin struck me in his true light."
"What was it exactly you discovered in him?"
"Why, all I have been telling you the last hour. But enough of him.
Perhaps everything will turn out all right. I only wanted to show you that, if I do judge him hardly, it is not because I don"t know him.
... As far as concerns Natalya Alexyevna, I won"t say any more, but you should observe your brother."
"My brother! Why?"
"Why, look at him. Do you really notice nothing?"
Alexandra Pavlovna looked down.
"You are right," she a.s.sented. "Certainly--my brother--for some time he has not been himself.... But do you really think----"
"Hush! I think he is coming," whispered Lezhnyov. "But Natalya is not a child, believe me, though unluckily she is as inexperienced as a child.
You will see, that girl will astonish us all."
"In what way?"
"Oh! in this way.... Do you know it"s precisely girls like that who drown themselves, take poison, and so forth? Don"t be misled by her looking so calm. Her pa.s.sions are strong, and her character--my goodness!"
"Come! I think you are indulging in a flight of fancy now. To a phlegmatic person like you, I suppose even I seem a volcano?"
"Oh, no!" answered Lezhnyov, with a smile. "And as for character--you have no character at all, thank G.o.d!"
"What impertinence is that?"
"That? It"s the highest compliment, believe me."
Volintsev came in and looked suspiciously at Lezhnyov and his sister. He had grown thin of late. They both began to talk to him, but he scarcely smiled in response to their jests, and looked, as Pigasov once said of him, like a melancholy hare. But there has certainly never been a man in the world who, at some time in his life, has not looked worse than that.
Volintsev felt that Natalya was drifting away from him, and with her it seemed as if the earth was giving way under his feet.
VII
The next day was Sunday, and Natalya got up late. The day before she had been very silent all day; she was secretly ashamed of her tears, and she slept very badly. Sitting half-dressed at her little piano, at times she played some chords, hardly audibly for fear of waking Mlle. Boncourt, and then let her forehead fall on the cold keys and remained a long while motionless. She kept thinking, not of Rudin himself, but of some word he had uttered, and she was wholly buried in her own thought.
Sometimes she recollected Volintsev. She knew that he loved her. But her mind did not dwell on him more than an instant.... She felt a strange agitation. In the morning she dressed hurriedly and went down, and after saying good-morning to her mother, seized an opportunity and went out alone into the garden.... It was a hot day, bright and sunny in spite of occasional showers of rain. Slight vapoury clouds sailed smoothly over the clear sky, scarcely obscuring the sun, and at times a downpour of rain fell suddenly in sheets, and was as quickly over. The thickly falling drops, flashing like diamonds, fell swiftly with a kind of dull thud; the sunshine glistened through their sparkling drops; the gra.s.s, that had been rustling in the wind, was still, thirstily drinking in the moisture; the drenched trees were languidly shaking all their leaves; the birds were busily singing, and it was pleasant to hear their twittering chatter mingling with the fresh gurgle and murmur of the running rain-water. The dusty roads were steaming and slightly spotted by the smart strokes of the thick drops. Then the clouds pa.s.sed over, a slight breeze began to stir, and the gra.s.s began to take tints of emerald and gold. The trees seemed more transparent with their wet leaves clinging together. A strong scent arose from all around.
The sky was almost cloudless again when Natalya came into the garden. It was full of sweetness and peace--that soothing, blissful peace in which the heart of man is stirred by a sweet languor of undefined desire and secret emotion.
Natalya walked along a long line of silver poplars beside the pond; suddenly, as if he had sprung out of the earth, Rudin stood before her.
She was confused. He looked her in the face.
"You are alone?" he inquired.
"Yes, I am alone," replied Natalya, "but I was going back directly. It is time I was home."
"I will go with you."
And he walked along beside her.
"You seem melancholy," he said.
"I--I was just going to say that I thought you were out of spirits."
"Very likely--it is often so with me. It is more excusable in me than in you."
"Why? Do you suppose I have nothing to be melancholy about?"
"At your age you ought to find happiness in life."
Natalya walked some steps in silence.
"Dmitri Nikolaitch!" she said.
"Well?"
"Do you remember--the comparison you made yesterday--do you remember--of the oak?"
"Yes, I remember. Well?"
Natalya stole a look at Rudin.
"Why did you--what did you mean by that comparison?"