XX
The next morning, Dmitri does not go to call his wife to breakfast; she is there with him, clinging to him. She is still asleep, and he is looking at her, and thinking, “What can be the matter with her? what frightened her so? what caused that dream?”
“Stay here, Viérotchka; I will bring thee thy tea here. Don’t get up, my dear little girl. I will bring it to you, and you can wash your face and not get up.”
“No, I will not get up; I will be awhile, it is so comfortable for me here. How smart you are, mílenki! and how I love thee! And now I have washed my face, and now thou canst bring the tea here. No; first take me into thy arms.” And Viéra Pavlovna long holds her husband in her embrace. “Akh! my mílenki, how absurd I was! How did I happen to come running to your room? What will Masha think now? I shall hear from her how I woke up in your room. Kiss me, my mílenki, kiss me. I want to love thee; I must love thee. I am going to love thee as I never loved thee before.”
Viéra Pavlovna’s room is empty now. Viéra Pavlovna, without any concealment from Masha, has moved to her husband’s apartment. “How tender he is, how kind, my mílenki! and I could imagine that I did not love thee! How absurd I am!”
“Viérotchka, now that you are calmed down, tell me what you dreamed day before yesterday.”
“Akh! what nonsense! I only dreamed, as I told you, that you caressed me very little; but now it is good. Why didn’t we always live this way? Then I should not have dreamed that horrible dream; it was dreadful, disgusting! I don’t like to think about it.”
“Yes, but if it had not been for it, we should not be living as we do now.”
“That is true; I am very grateful to her; to that disgusting, no, not disgusting, I mean splendid, woman!”
“Whom do you mean by ‘she’? Have you found some new friend beside your former ‘beauty’?”
“Yes, I have. Some woman or other called on me with such a fascinating voice, much finer than Bosio’s, and what lovely hands she had! Akh! what wonderful beauty! but all that I could see of her was her hand; she, herself, was hidden behind the bed-curtain; I dreamed that at my bedside, and that was the reason I gave up that bed; because I had such a dream in it. There was a bed-curtain, and that my ‘visitor’ hid herself behind it; but what a wonderful hand she had, my dear; and she sang about love, and she revealed to me what the meaning of love was: now, I understand, my dear. What a stupid little thing I was because I did not understand; I was a mere girl, a foolish little girl.”
“My dear, my angel, everything has its time. The way we lived before was love, and the way that we live now is love; some people must have one kind of love, others another. Hitherto the one kind of love satisfied you; now you need another. Now you are a woman, my dear, and what you did not want then, you must have now.”
A week or two pass. Viéra Pavlovna makes herself comfortable. She is in her own room now, only when her husband is not at home, or when he is working, or rather when he is working she often sits in his library; when she sees that she disturbs him, that his work requires his full attention, then she does not interrupt him. But such work does not often come along; for the most part, it is scientific work, which is entirely mechanical, and accordingly three-fourths of the time he has his wife by his side, and at times they caress each other. But one contrivance was necessary; they had to buy another sofa a little smaller than the husband’s. And so Viéra Pavlovna, after dinner, ensconces herself in her little sofa; and her husband sits by her little sofa, and takes delight in looking at her.
“My dear, why do you kiss my hand? You know I don’t like it.”
“Oh! I forgot that you considered it an affront; well, [nu] I am going to keep on just the same.”
“My mílenki, you are saving me the second time; you saved me from bad people, and you have saved me from myself. Caress me, my dear; caress me!”
A month passes. Viéra Pavlovna after dinner ensconces herself comfortably on her wide, little, soft divantchik in her room and her husband’s; that is, in her husband’s library. He sat down on her little sofa, and she threw her arms around his neck; she bent her head to his bosom, but she is lost in thought; he kisses her, but her melancholy does not pass away, and her eyes are almost ready to shed tears.
“Viérotchka, my dear, what makes you so pensive?”
Viéra Pavlovna weeps, but she says nothing. “No,”—she wipes away her tears.—“No, don’t caress me, dear! That’s enough; thank thee.” And she looks so affectionately and frankly at him. “Thank thee, thou art so kind to me!”
“Kind, Viérotchka? What is it? what do you mean?”
“Yes, kind, my dear; thou art kind.”
Two days pass. Viéra Pavlovna again ensconces herself comfortably after dinner; no, she is not comfortable, but she is lying and thinking; and she is lying in her own room, on her own bed. Her husband is sitting near her with his arm around her; and he also is lost in thought.
“No, it is not this; it is not my fault,” thinks Lopukhóf.
“How kind he is; how ungrateful I am!” thinks Viéra Pavlovna. And that is what they think.
She says, “My dear, go to your room and work, or else take a rest,” and she tries to say, and succeeds in saying, these words in a natural and not melancholy tone.
“Why do you drive me away, Viérotchka? It is pleasant for me here,” and he tries to say these words, and he succeeds in saying these words, in a natural and jocular tone.
“No, go away, my dear; you have done enough for me. Go, and get rested.”
He kisses her, and she forgets her thoughts, and again it is sweet and easy for her to breathe.
“Thank you, dear,” she says.
And Kirsánof is perfectly happy. The struggle has been pretty hard this time, but how much inward satisfaction it afforded him! and this satisfaction will never pass away, though the struggle will soon be over; but it will warm his heart for a long day, till the end of his life. He is honorable. Yes, he has harmonized them; yes, in reality, he has brought them into harmony. Kirsánof is lying on his sofa; he is smoking and thinking, “Be honest, that means be prudent; don’t make any miscalculation; remember the axiom: remember that the whole is greater than any of its parts; that is, that your human nature is stronger, is more important for you than every other individual tendency; and therefore treasure its benefits above those which may come from any separate tendency of thine, if they prove to be anyway inconsistent with the whole, and that’s all; and that means be honest, and all will be well. One rule, and how commonplace it is, and that is the whole result of science; and that completely fills the volume of the laws of a happy life. Yes, happy are those who are born with the capability of understanding this simple rule. In this respect, I am very fortunate. Of course I am very much indebted to training, more probably than to nature. But gradually it will develop into a general rule, which will be the result of the universal training and circumstances of life. Yes, then it will be easy for everybody to live in this world, just as it is for me now. Yes, I am satisfied; yet I must go and call on them. I have not been there for three weeks; it’s time, even though it may be unpleasant for me. I am not drawn there any more at all; but it’s time. Some of these days I will stop in there for half an hour, or would it not be better to postpone it for a month? It seems to me that I can. Yes, my retreat has been well managed; my maneuvers are at an end; I have passed from their sight, and now they will not notice whether it’s three weeks or three months since I have been to call on them. And it is agreeable to think, when you are away, about people towards whom you have acted uprightly. Now I shall rest on my laurels.”
And Lopukhóf in two or three days later still, also after dinner, comes into Viérotchka’s room, takes his wife in his arms and carries her to her ottoman in his room. “Rest here, dear!” And he takes delight in looking at her. She fell asleep smiling; he is sitting and reading; and she opened her eyes and thinks:—
“How his room is decorated! there is nothing in it except what is absolutely necessary. Yet he has his own tastes; there’s a big box of cigars, which I gave him last year; he has not opened it yet; it’s waiting its time. Yes, it’s his only pleasure, his own only luxury—cigars. No, he has no other—the photograph of that old man; what a splendid face that old man has! what a mixture of kindness and vigilance in his eyes and in the whole expression of his face! what trouble Dmitri took to get this photograph! for Owen’s photographs are not to be had. He wrote three letters, two of his letters did not reach the old man; the third one reached him, and how long he tormented him before he succeeded in getting this really superb photograph, and how happy Dmitri was when he got it, together with a letter from the ‘Saintly old man,’ as he calls him, in which Owen, as he says, praised him. And here is still another luxury: my portrait; half a year he laid up money for the sake of getting a good artist, and how he and the young artist bothered me. Two pictures and that’s all. Would it cost much to buy a few engravings and photographs just as I have in my room? And he has no flowers, while I have quantities in my room. Why shouldn’t he like flowers as well as I do? Is it because I am a woman? What nonsense! Or is it because he is a serious and scientific man? But Kirsánof has flowers and engravings, and he too is a serious, scientific man. And why does he hate to give up his time to me? I know that it costs him a real effort! Is it because he is a serious, scientific man? But here’s Kirsánof. No! no! he’s kind, kind! he has done everything for me, he is always ready to do anything to gratify me. Who can love me as he does? And I love him and I am ready for anything for his sake—”
“Viérotchka! you are not sleeping, dear!”
“My mílenki, why haven’t you any flowers in your room?”
“Very well, dearest, I will get some tomorrow. It simply did not occur to me that it was a good thing. But it is very nice.”
“And what was it that I wanted to ask you about besides? Oh, yes! do get some photographs; or rather, I’m going to buy you some flowers and photographs.”
“Then they will surely be agreeable to me. I like them for themselves, but then they will be still more delightful to me. But, Viérotchka, you are getting blue again; you have been thinking about your dream. Will you allow me to ask you to tell me something more about the dream that frightened you so much?”
“My dear, I have not been thinking about it at all. It is so painful for me to think about it.”
“But, Viérotchka, maybe it would be well for me to know about it.”
“Very well, my dearest! I dreamed that I was bored because I had not gone to the opera, and I was thinking about Bosio; some woman seemed to call on me, and at first I thought it was Bosio, but she kept hiding from me; she compelled me to read my diary; and there was nothing in it except how we loved each other; but when she touched her hand to the pages, new words seemed to be which said that I did not love you.”
“Forgive me, dearie, for asking one thing more. Was that all that you saw in your dream?”
“My dearest, if that had not been all, wouldn’t I have told thee so? And I have already told thee all.”
This was said so tenderly, so sincerely, so simply, that Lopukhóf felt in his heart a wave of warmth and sweetness, such as one who has once experienced this joy will never forget till his dying day. Oh, how pitiful that only a few, a very few, husbands can have this feeling! All the pleasures of happy love are nothing in comparison with it; it fills the human heart with the purest content, the holiest pride. In Viéra Pavlovna’s words, which were spoken with a shade of melancholy, rang a reproach, but the significance of the reproach was this: “My dear, don’t you know that I have perfect confidence in you? A wife may hide from her husband the mysterious motions of her soul; such are those very relations in which they stand to each other. But you, my dear, have so behaved that there has never been any need of hiding things from you, that my heart is open before you as before my own eyes.”
This is a great merit in a husband; this great reward is purchased only by a high moral worth, and whoever has deserved it has a right to look upon himself as a man of unquestionable nobility; he may boldly hope that his conscience is pure and will always remain pure, that his manhood will never play him false, that in all trials of every sort he will remain calm and firm, that fate is not reigning over the peace of his soul, that from the time that he has deserved this great honor, to the very last moment of his life, disregarding whatever shocks to which he may be subjected; he will be happy in the consciousness of his worthy manhood. Now we know enough of Lopukhóf to see that he was not a sentimental man, but he was so touched by these words of his wife that his face burned:—
“Viérotchka, my dearest, you have reproached me.” His voice for the second and last time in his life trembled. The first time that his voice trembled it was from doubt arising from conjecturing his position; now it trembled from pleasure. “You have reproached me, but this reproach is dearer to me than all the words of love. I offended you with my question, but how happy I am that my bad question gave me, brought me, such a reproach. Look, there are tears in my eyes, the first tears that I have shed since I was a boy!”
The whole evening long he scarcely took his eyes from her, and she never once thought that he was making an effort to appear tender to her; and this evening was one of the happiest of her life, at least, up to the present time. Several years after the time of which I am now telling you about her, she will have a good many such days, months, years; this will be when her children shall have grown up, and she will find in them people worthy of happiness and sure of it. This pleasure is higher than all other individual pleasures; whatever may appear in any other personal pleasure is a rare and transitory loftiness; with her it is an ordinary, everyday level of happiness. But this is in the future which will come to her.