her almost with her mother's knowledge! Did she once for my sake overstep the conventions of the world and duty ? never! That—love indeed !'
' What kind of love would you expect from a woman ?' asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
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A COMMON STORY 145
' What!' replied Alexandr, ' I should expect from her the first place in her heart. The woman I love ought not to notice, not to see any man except me; every minute not spent with me should be for her a minute lost.'
Lizaveta Alexandrovna tried to conceal a smile. Alexandr did not notice it.
' For my sake,' he went on, with flashing eyes, ' she ought to be ready to sacrifice every pitiful consideration of profit and advantage, throw off the despotic yoke of her mother, or her husband; flee with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth ; bear resolutely every privation—that is love ! but '
' And how would you have rewarded such love !' asked his aunt.
'I? Oh!' began Alexandr, casting his eyes up to heaven, ' I would have consecrated my whole life to her; I would have lain down at her feet. But did I not show Nadinka how I could love ? '
So you don't believe in feeling at all, when it i^not shown as you wish it to be ? Strong feeling is often^on- cealed.' *.
'You don't want to persuade me, ma tante, that such is V the feeling concealed by my uncle, for instance ? ' V^ Lizaveta Alexandrovna suddenly blushed. She could not put agree inwardly with her nephew, that emotion without any kind of expression was a somewhat dubious thing, that possibly it was non-existent altogether, that if it did exist it /vould have forced its way out; and that over and above love itself its external manifestations were possessed of an inexpressible charrri.
Here she passed in mental review every period of her married life and fell into a deep reverie. Her nephew's indiscreet hint stirred in her heart the secret which she was hiding in its depths and roused it to the question—was she happy ?
She had no right to complain ; all the outward conditions of happiness, of which the world is in pursuit, were fulfilled according to the programme laid down.
Her husband had worked untiringly and continued still to do so. But what was the real aim of his labours ? Did he work for the common ends of humanity, fulfilling the task laid on him by destiny, or only for petty objects to attain the consideration of rank and wealth among people, or
K
perhaps that he might not become the slave of poverty, of circumstance ? God only knew.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna could only come to the mournful conclusion that she and love for her were not the sole aim of his effort and activity. He had toiled as much before his marriage, before he knew anything of his wife. He neither spoke to her of his love nor asked for love from her; and he met her questions on the subject with a joke or an epigram. Soon after his acquaintance with her he had begun to talk of marriage, as though giving her to conclude that love was an understood thing in it, and that it was useless to talk much about it.
He had an aversion to scenes of all kinds—that was well enough; but he did not like genuine demonstrations of feeling, and did not believe in the need of them in others. Meanwhile he might by a single glance, a single word, have created in her a deep passion for him ; but he did not say the word, he did not care to. The fact did not even flatter his vanity.
She tried to arouse his jealousy, thinking that then love must find expression. Nothing came of it. Directly he noticed that she preferred the society of a certain young man, he hastened to invite him to the house and show him friendliness, was untiring in his praise of his character, and was not afraid of leaving him alone with his wife.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna sometimes deceived herself, imagining that perhaps Piotr Ivanitch was acting from policy; might not his secret method consist in maintaining perpetual doubt in her, and in that way maintaining love itself? But at her husband's first mention of love she was immediately disillusioned.
If he had been coarse, unpolished, narrow, slow-witted, one of those husbands whose name is legion, whom it is so excusable, so necessary, so consoling to deceive, for their own sakes even, who seem to have been created for their wives, to look round them and fall in love with their diametrical opposites—then it would have been a different matter; she would very likely have behaved as the majority of wives do behave in like case. But Piotr Ivanitch was a man of an intelligence and tact not often to be met with. He was subtle, quickwitted, skilful. He understood all the agitations of the heart and troubles of the soul, but he under-
A COMMON STORY 147
stood them—and nothing more. A complete index to the affairs of the heart was in his head, but not in his heart. In his reasoning on this subject it was clear that he was talking as of something he had heard and learnt by rote, but had not felt at all.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna felt his intellectual superiority to all surrounding him and was tortured by it. ' If only he were not so clever,' she thought, 'I should have been saved.'
[e was bent on positive aims, that was clear, and he expected that his wife should not lead a life of dreams.
' But, my God!' thought Lizaveta, ' if he only married to have a lady at the head of his 4iouse, to give his bachelor [uarters the fulness and dignity of a family home, so as to f have greater weight in society ! A housekeeper—a wife— in the most prosaic sense of these words ! But with all his intelligence, didn't he understand that love is present even ^n the positive aims of a woman ? . . . . Oh, let me pay for pSSsion in agony, let me endure every suffering that is inseparable from love, if only I may live a complete life, if only I may feel that I am living and not stagnating.'
She looked at her luxurious furniture and all the toys and costly knicknacks of her boudoir, and all this luxury seemed to her a cold mockery of real happiness. She had to look on at two monstrous extremes—in her husband and her nephew. One enthusiastic to folly—the other frozen to / hardness.
' How little both of them—and the greater part of men— understand real feeling, and how well I understand it!' she thought. ' And what is the good of it ? why ! oh, if only n
She hid her eyes and stayed so some instants, then uncovered them, looked round, sighed heavily and at once resumed her ordinary calm demeanour. Unhappy woman ! No one knew of it, no one saw it.
One day Alexandr came to his aunt in a paroxysm of ill-humour with the whole human species. Lizaveta Alexandrovna began to inquire the cause.
'You want to know,' he began in a subdued, rapt tone, '' what is now my frenzied ill ?'' I will tell you; you know I had a friend whom I had not seen for some years, but who had always kept a niche in my heart When I was first here, uncle forced me to write a queer letter to him, in
*
which were inserted his favourite maxims and ways of thinking: but I tore it up and sent another, as it happened, so there was no lessening of our friendship from that After that letter our correspondence dropped, and I lost sight of my friend. What has happened now? Three days ago, walking along the Nevsky Prospect, I suddenly saw him. I was on fire in a minute, and tears were starting into my eyes. I stretched out my hands to him, but could not utter a word for joy; I was quite faint. He took one hand and shook it. ' How are you, Adouev!' he said in a voice as though we had parted only the day before. ' Have you been here long ? ' He was surprised that we had not met before, lightly inquired what I was doing? what office I was in, thought it needful to inform me at length that he had a splendid position and liked his work, his superiors, and his companions, and everybody, and his fate; then said he had no time to spare, that he was hurrying to a dinner party he had been invited to. Do you hear, ma tante ? meeting a friend after this long separation, he could not put off a dinnerparty.'
'But perhaps they would have been waiting for him,' observed his aunt; ' propriety does not permit '
'Propriety against friendship! and you too, ma tante/ but there is something more I had better tell you. He pressed his address into my hand, said that he would expect me the evening of the next day, and was gone. ' So be it then,' I thought, 'I will go.' I arrived. There were some ten people there, friends of his. He held out his hand to me in a more friendly way than the day before, it's true, but then, without uttering a word, at once proposed that we should sit down to cards. I said that I did not play, and took a seat alone on the sofa, expecting that he would throw down his cards and come to me. 'Don't you play?' said he in surprise—' what will you do then ?' A nice question ! So I waited an hour, two hours; he did not come to me; I reached the limit of my patience. He offered me first a cigar, then a pipe, regretted that I did not play, that I was bored, tried to occupy me—how, do you imagine?—by constantly turning to me and describing every successful and unsuccessful card he played. At last I
