On the Eve: Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Meanwhile the storm gathering in the East was breaking. Turkey had
declared war on Russia; the time fixed for the evacuation of the
Principalities had already expired, the day of the disaster of Sinope
was not far off. The last letters received by Insarov summoned him
urgently to his country. His health was not yet restored; he coughed,
suffered from weakness and slight attacks of fever, but he was
scarcely ever at home. His heart was fired, he no longer thought of
his illness. He was for ever rushing about Moscow, having secret
interviews with various persons, writing for whole nights,
disappearing for whole days; he had informed his landlord that he was
going away shortly, and had presented him already with his scanty
furniture. Elena too on her side was getting ready for departure. One
wet evening she was sitting in her room, and listening with
involuntary depression to the sighing of the wind, while she hemmed
handkerchiefs. Her maid came in and told her that her father was in
her mother's room and sent for her there. 'Your mamma is crying,' she
whispered after the retreating Elena, 'and your papa is angry.'

Elena gave a slight shrug and went into Anna Vassflyevna's room.
Nikolai Artemyevitch's kind-hearted spouse was half lying on a
reclining chair, sniffing a handkerchief steeped in _eau de Cologne_;
he himself was standing at the hearth, every button buttoned up, in a
high, hard cravat, with a stiffly starched collar; his deportment had
a vague suggestion of some parliamentary orator. With an orator's wave
of the arm he motioned his daughter to a chair, and when she, not
understanding his gesture, looked inquiringly at him, he brought out
with dignity, without turning his head: 'I beg you to be seated.'
Nikolai Artemyevitch always used the formal plural in addressing his
wife, but only on extraordinary occasions in addressing his daughter.

Elena sat down.

Anna Vassilyevna blew her nose tearfully. Nikolai Artemyevitch thrust
his fingers between his coat-buttons.

'I sent for you, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began after a protracted
silence, 'in order to have an explanation with you, or rather in order
to ask you for an explanation. I am displeased with you--or no--that
is too little to say: your behaviour is a pain and an outrage to
me--to me and to your mother--your mother whom you see here.'

Nikolai Artemyevitch was giving vent only to the few bass notes in his
voice. Elena gazed in silence at him, then at Anna Vassilyevna and
turned pale.

'There was a time,' Nikolai Artemyevitch resumed, 'when daughters did
not allow themselves to look down on their parents--when the parental
authority forced the disobedient to tremble. That time has passed,
unhappily: so at least many persons imagine; but let me tell you,
there are still laws which do not permit--do not permit--in fact
there are still laws. I beg you to mark that: there are still
laws----'

'But, papa,' Elena was beginning.

'I beg you not to interrupt me. Let us turn in thought to the past. I
and Anna Vassilyevna have performed our duty. I and Anna Vassilyevna
have spared nothing in your education: neither care nor expense. What
you have gained from our care--is a different question; but I had the
right to expect--I and Anna Vassilyevna had the right to expect that
you would at least hold sacred the principles of morality which we
have--_que nous avons inculques_, which we have instilled into you, our
only daughter. We had the right to expect that no new "ideas" could
touch that, so to speak, holy shrine. And what do we find? I am not
now speaking of frivolities characteristic of your sex, and age, but
who could have anticipated that you could so far forget yourself----'

'Papa,' said Elena, 'I know what you are going to say------'

'No, you don't know what I am going to say!' cried Nikolai
Artemyevitch in a falsetto shriek, suddenly losing the majesty of his
oratorical pose, the smooth dignity of his speech, and his bass notes.
'You don't know, vile hussy!'

'For mercy's sake, _Nicolas_,' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, '_vous me
faites mourir_?'

'Don't tell me _que je vous fais mourir_, Anna Vassilyevna! You can't
conceive what you will hear directly! Prepare yourself for the worst,
I warn you!'

Anna Vassilyevna seemed stupefied.

'No,' resumed Nikolai Artemyevitch, turning to Elena, 'you don't know
what I am going to say!'

'I am to blame towards you----' she began.

'Ah, at last!'

'I am to blame towards you,' pursued Elena, 'for not having long ago
confessed----'

'But do you know,' Nikolai Artemyevitch interrupted, 'that I can crush
you with one word?'

Elena raised her eyes to look at him.

'Yes, madam, with one word! It's useless to look at me!' (He
crossed his arms on his breast.) 'Allow me to ask you, do you know a
certain house near Povarsky? Have you visited that house?' (He
stamped.) 'Answer me, worthless girl, and don't try to hide the truth.
People, people, servants, _madam, de vils laquais_ have seen you, as
you went in there, to your----'

Elena was crimson, her eyes were blazing.

'I have no need to hide anything,' she declared. 'Yes, I have visited
that house.'

'Exactly! Do you hear, do you hear, Anna Vassilyevna? And you know,
I presume, who lives there?'

'Yes, I know; my husband.'

Nikolai Artemyevitch's eyes were starting out of his head.

'Your----'

'My husband,' repeated Elena; 'I am married to Dmitri Nikanorovitch
Insarov.'

'You?--married?'--was all Anna Vassilyevna could articulate.

'Yes, mamma. . . . Forgive me. A fortnight ago, we were secretly
married.'

Anna Vassilyevna fell back in her chair; Nikolai Artemyevitch stepped
two paces back.

'Married! To that vagrant, that Montenegrin! the daughter of Nikolai
Stahov of the higher nobility married to a vagrant, a nobody, without
her parents' sanction! And you imagine I shall let the matter rest,
that I shall not make a complaint, that I will allow you--that
you--that----To the nunnery with you, and he shall go to prison, to
hard labour! Anna Vassilyevna, inform her at once that you will cut
off her inheritance!'

'Nikolai Artemyevitch, for God's sake,' moaned Anna Vassilyevna.

'And when and how was this done? Who married you? where? how? Good
God! what will all our friends think, what will the world say! And
you, shameless hypocrite, could go on living under your parents' roof
after such an act! Had you no fear of--the wrath of heaven?'

'Papa' said Elena (she was trembling from head to foot but her voice
was steady), 'you are at liberty to do with me as you please, but you
need not accuse me of shamelessness, and hypocrisy. I did not want--to
give you pain before, but I should have had to tell you all myself in
a few days, because we are going away--my husband and I--from here
next week.'

'Going away? Where to?'

'To his own country, to Bulgaria.'

'To the Turks!' cried Anna Vassilyevna and fell into a swoon.

Elena ran to her mother.

'Away!' clamoured Nikolai Artemyevitch, seizing his daughter by the
arm, 'away, unworthy girl!'

But at that instant the door of the room opened, and a pale face with
glittering eyes appeared: it was the face of Shubin.

'Nikolai Artemyevitch!' he shouted at the top of his voice, 'Augustina
Christianovna is here and is asking for you!'

Nikolai Artemyevitch turned round infuriated, threatening Shubin with
his fist; he stood still a minute and rapidly went out of the room.

Elena fell at her mother's feet and embraced her knees.

Uvar Ivanovitch was lying on his bed. A shirt without a collar,
fastened with a heavy stud enfolded his thick neck and fell in full
flowing folds over the almost feminine contours of his chest, leaving
visible a large cypress-wood cross and an amulet. His ample limbs were
covered with the lightest bedclothes. On the little table by the
bedside a candle was burning dimly beside a jug of kvas, and on the
bed at Uvar ivanovitch's feet was sitting Shubin in a dejected pose.

'Yes,' he was saying meditatively, 'she is married and getting ready
to go away. Your nephew was bawling and shouting for the benefit of
the whole house; he had shut himself up for greater privacy in his
wife's bedroom, but not merely the maids and the footmen, the coachman
even could hear it all! Now he's just tearing and raving round; he
all but gave me a thrashing, he's bringing a father's curse on the
scene now, as cross as a bear with a sore head; but that's of no
importance. Anna Vassilyevna's crushed, but she's much more
brokenhearted at her daughter leaving her than at her marriage.'

Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers.

'A mother,' he commented, 'to be sure.'

'Your nephew,' resumed Shubin, 'threatens to lodge a complaint with
the Metropolitan and the General-Governor and the Minister, but it
will end by her going. A happy thought to ruin his own daughter! He'll
crow a little and then lower his colours.'

'They'd no right,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch, and he drank out of the
jug.

'To be sure. But what a storm of criticism, gossip, and comments will
be raised in Moscow! She's not afraid of them. . . . Besides she's
above them. She's going away . . . and it's awful to think where she's
going--to such a distance, such a wilderness! What future awaits her
there? I seem to see her setting off from a posting station in a
snow-storm with thirty degrees of frost. She's leaving her country,
and her people; but I understand her doing it. Whom is she leaving
here behind her? What people has she seen? Kurnatovsky and Bersenyev
and our humble selves; and these are the best she's seen. What is
there to regret about it? One thing's bad; I'm told her husband--the
devil, how that word sticks in my throat!--Insarov, I'm told, is
spitting blood; that's a bad lookout. I saw him the other day: his
face--you could model Brutus from it straight off. Do you know who
Brutus was, Uvar Ivanovitch?'

'What is there to know? a man to be sure.'

'Precisely so: he was a "man." Yes he's a wonderful face, but
unhealthy, very unhealthy.'

'For fighting ... it makes no difference,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch.

'For fighting it makes no difference, certainly; you are pleased to
express yourself with great justice to-day; but for living it makes
all the difference. And you see she wants to live with him a little
while.'

'A youthful affair,' responded Uvar Ivanovitch.

'Yes, a youthful, glorious, bold affair. Death, life, conflict,
defeat, triumph, love, freedom, country. . . . Good God, grant as much
to all of us! That's a very different thing from sitting up to one's
neck in a bog, and pretending it's all the same to you, when in fact
it really is all the same. While there--the strings are tuned to the
highest pitch, to play to all the world or to break!'

Shubin's head sank on to his breast.

'Yes,' he resumed, after a prolonged silence, 'Insarov deserves her.
What nonsense, though! No one deserves her. . . Insarov . . . Insarov
. . . What's the use of pretended modesty? We'll own he's a fine
fellow, he stands on his own feet, though up to the present he has
done no more than we poor sinners; and are we such absolutely
worthless dirt? Am I such dirt, Uvar Ivanovitch? Has God been hard
on me in every way? Has He given me no talents, no abilities? Who
knows, perhaps, the name of Pavel Shubin will in time be a great name?
You see that bronze farthing there lying on your table. Who knows;
some day, perhaps in a century, that bronze will go to a statue of
Pavel Shubin, raised in his honour by a grateful posterity!'

Uvar Ivanovitch leaned on his elbow and stared at the enthusiastic
artist.

'That's a long way off,' he said at last with his usual gesture;
'we're speaking of other people, why bring in yourself?'

'O great philosopher of the Russian world!' cried Shubin, 'every
word of yours is worth its weight in gold, and it's not to me but to
you a statue ought to be raised, and I would undertake it. There, as
you are lying now, in that pose; one doesn't know which is uppermost
in it, sloth or strength! That's how I would cast you in bronze. You
aimed a just reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! it's
useless talking of one's-self; it's useless bragging. We have no one
yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere--either small fry,
nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and
subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they
are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and
are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to
themselves: "That's what I feel, that's what I think." A useful,
rational occupation! No, if we only had some sensible men among us,
that girl, that delicate soul, would not have run away from us, would
not have slipped off like a fish to the water! What's the meaning of
it, Uvar Ivanovitch? When will our time come? When will men be born
among us?'

'Give us time,' answered Uvar Ivanovitch; 'they will be----'

'They will be? soil of our country! force of the black earth! thou
hast said: they will be. Look, I will write down your words. But why
are you putting out the candle?'

'I'm going to sleep; good-bye.'

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