On the Eve: Chapter 35

Chapter 35

The next day, in the same room, Renditch was standing at the window;
before him, wrapped in a shawl, sat Elena. In the next room, Insarov
lay in his coffin. Elena's face was both scared and lifeless; two
lines could be seen on her forehead between her eyebrows; they gave a
strained expression to her fixed eyes. In the window lay an open
letter from Anna Vassilyevna. She begged her daughter to come to
Moscow if only for a month, complained of her loneliness, and of
Nikolai Artemyevitch, sent greetings to Insarov, inquired after his
health, and begged him to spare his wife.

Renditch was a Dalmatian, a sailor, with whom Insarov had become
acquainted during his wanderings in his own country, and whom he had
sought out in Venice. He was a dry, gruff man, full of daring and
devoted to the Slavonic cause. He despised the Turks and hated the
Austrians.

'How long must you remain at Venice?' Elena asked him in Italian. And
her voice was as lifeless as her face.

'One day for freighting and not to rouse suspicions, and then straight
to Zara. I shall have sad news for our countrymen. They have long been
expecting him; they rested their hopes on him.'

'They rested their hopes on him,' Elena repeated mechanically.

'When will you bury him?' asked Renditch.

Elena not at once replied, 'To-morrow.'

'To-morrow? I will stop; I should like to throw a handful of earth
into his grave. And you will want help. But it would have been better
for him to lie in Slavonic earth.'

Elena looked at Renditch.

'Captain,' she said, 'take me and him and carry us across to the
other side of the sea, away from here. Isn't that possible?'

Renditch considered: 'Possible certainly, but difficult. We shall
have to come into collision with the damned authorities here. But
supposing we arrange all that and bury him there, how am I to bring
you back?'

'You need not bring me back.'

'What? where will you stop?'

'I shall find some place for myself; only take us, take me.'

Renditch scratched the back of his head.

'You know best; but it's all very difficult. I will, I will try; and
you expect me here in two hours' time.'

He went away. Elena passed into the next room, leaned against the
wall, and for a long time stood there as though turned to stone. Then
she dropped on her knees, but she could not pray. There was no
reproach in her heart; she did not dare to question God's will, to
ask why He had not spared, pitied, saved, why He had punished her
beyond her guilt, if she were guilty. Each of us is guilty by the fact
that he lives; and there is no one so great a thinker, so great a
benefactor of mankind that he might hope to have a right to live for
the service he has done. . . . Still Elena could not pray; she was a
stone.

The same night a broad-bottomed boat put off from the hotel where the
Insarovs lived. In the boat sat Elena with Renditch and beside them
stood a long box covered with a black cloth. They rowed for about an
hour, and at last reached a small two-masted ship, which was riding at
anchor at the very entrance of the harbour. Elena and Renditch got
into the ship; the sailors carried in the box. At midnight a storm
had arisen, but early in the morning the ship had passed out of the
Lido. During the day the storm raged with fearful violence, and
experienced seamen in Lloyd's offices shook their heads and prophesied
no good. The Adriatic Sea between Venice, Trieste, and the Dalmatian
coast is particularly dangerous.

Three weeks after Elena's departure from Vienna, Anna Vassilyevna
received the following letter in Moscow:--

'My DEAR PARENTS.--I am saying goodbye to you for ever. You will never
see me again. Dmitri died yesterday. Everything is over for me. To-day
I am setting off with his body to Zara. I will bury him, and what will
become of me, I don't know. But now I have no country but Dmitri's
country. There, they are preparing for revolution, they are getting
ready for war. I will join the Sisters of Mercy; I will tend the sick
and the wounded. I don't know what will become of me, but even after
Dmitri's death, I will be faithful to his memory, to the work of his
whole life. I have learnt Bulgarian and Servian. Very likely, I shall
not have strength to live through it all for long--so much the better.
I have been brought to the edge of the precipice and I must fall over.
Fate did not bring us together for nothing; who knows?--perhaps I
killed him; now it is his turn to draw me after him. I sought
happiness, and I shall find--perhaps death. It seems it was to be
thus: it seems it was a sin. . . . But death covers all and reconciles
all; does it not? Forgive me all the suffering I have caused you; it
was not under my control. But how could I return to Russia; What have
I to do in Russia?

'Accept my last kisses and blessings, and do not condemn me.

R.'

* * *

Nearly five years have passed since then, and no further news of Elena
has come. All letters and inquiries were fruitless; in vain did
Nikolai Artemyevitch himself make a journey to Venice and to Zara
after peace was concluded. In Venice he learnt what is already known
to the reader, but in Zara no one could give him any positive
information about Renditch and the ship he had taken. There were dark
rumours that some years back, after a great storm, the sea had thrown
up on shore a coffin in which had been found a man's body . . . But
according to other more trustworthy accounts this coffin had not been
thrown up by the sea at all, but had been carried over and buried near
the shore by a foreign lady, coming from Venice; some added that
they had seen this lady afterwards in Herzegovina, with the forces
which were there assembled; they even described her dress, black from
head to foot However it was, all trace of Elena had disappeared beyond
recovery for ever; and no one knows whether she is still living,
whether she is hidden away somewhere, or whether the petty drama of
life is over--the little ferment of her existence is at an end; and
she has found death in her turn. It happens at times that a man wakes
up and asks himself with involuntary horror, 'Can I be already thirty
. . . forty . . . fifty? How is it life has passed so soon? How is it
death has moved up so close?' Death is like a fisher who catches fish
in his net and leaves them for a while in the water; the fish is still
swimming but the net is round him, and the fisher will draw him
up--when he thinks fit.

* * *

What became of the other characters of our story?

Anna Vassilyevna is still living; she has aged very much since the
blow that has fallen on her; is less complaining, but far more
wretched. Nikolai Artemyevitch, too, has grown older and greyer, and
has parted from Augustina Christianovna. ... He has taken now to
abusing everything foreign. His housekeeper, a handsome woman of
thirty, a Russian, wears silk dresses and gold rings and bracelets.
Kurnatovsky, like every man of ardent temperament and dark complexion,
a devoted admirer of pretty blondes, married Zoya; she is in complete
subjection to him and has even given up thinking in German. Bersenyev
is in Heidelberg; he has been sent abroad at the expense of
government; he has visited Berlin and Paris and is not wasting his
time; he has become a thoroughly efficient professor. The attention
of the learned public has been caught by his two articles: 'On some
peculiarities of ancient law as regards judicial sentences,' and 'On
the significance of cities in civilisation.' It is only a pity that
both articles are written in rather a heavy style, disfigured by
foreign words. Shubin is in Rome; he is completely given up to his
art and is reckoned one of the most remarkable and promising of young
sculptors. Severe tourists consider that he has not sufficiently
studied the antique, that he has 'no style,' and reckon him one of
the French school; he has had a great many orders from the English
and Americans. Of late, there has been much talk about a Bacchante of
his; the Russian Count Boboshkin, the well-known millionaire, thought
of buying it for one thousand scudi, but decided in preference to give
three thousand to another sculptor, French _pur sang_, for a group
entitled, 'A youthful shepherdess dying for love in the bosom of the
Genius of Spring.' Shubin writes from time to time to Uvar Ivanovitch,
who alone has remained quite unaltered in all respects. 'Do you
remember,' he wrote to him lately, 'what you said to me that night,
when poor Elena's marriage was made known, when I was sitting on your
bed talking to you? Do you remember I asked you, "Will there ever be
men among us?" and you answered "There will be." O primeval force!
And now from here in "my poetic distance," I will ask you again:
"What do you say, Uvar Ivanovitch, will there be?"'

Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare
into the far distance.

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