' Come in and see us,' he said; ' my wife is very anxious to see you.'
' I can't, uncle.'
' Is it nice of you to forget her ? '
' Perhaps it's very nasty of me, but, for goodness* sake, excuse me and don't expect me now. Wait a little while longer, I will come.'
'Well, as you please,' said Piotr Ivanitch. With a wave of the hand he went off home.
He told his wife he gave up Alexandr and that he must do as he likes—that he, Piotr Ivanitch, had done all he could, and now washed his hands of him.
After his rupture with Julia, Alexandr had flung himself into a whirl of riotous amusements.
In a little while his freedom with noisy festivities and a life without care made him forget Julia and his troubles. But all this constant repetition of suppers at restaurants, with the same blear-eyed faces, of the stupid and drunken talk of his companions day after day, with his stomach constantly out of order into the bargain—no, this was not to his taste. The delicate organisation of body and soul in Alexandr, attuned to a note of melancholy and pathos, could not endure these dissipations.
He shut himself up alone in his room, in solitude with his forgotten books. But his book fell out of his hands, and his pen refused to obey the breath of inspiration. Schiller, Goethe, Byron showed him the dark side of mankind; the bright side he did not notice—that he had not attained to.
But how happy he had been at times in that room ! he had not been alone then; a vision of splendour had been near him then, by day it had beckoned him to earnest work, by night it had kept watch over his pillow. Dreams had been his companions in those days, the future had been clothed in mist, but not a gloomy mist presaging storm, but the mist of morning veiling the brilliance of dawn. Behind this mist something was hidden, doubtless, happiness. But now, not his room only, but the whole world was empty for him, and within himself all was chill dreariness.
Looking at life, questioning his heart and his head, he perceived with horror that there was neither within or without a single ideal left nor a single bright hope; all now lay
behind him ; the mist had parted ; behind it stretched the desert of bald reality. Good Heavens! what an immense void ! what a dreary comfortless prospect 1
The past was over, the future was ruined, happiness was not; all had been a dream, and still he had to live !
What he wanted he did not know himself; but how much he did not want!
His head seemed as though it were in a fog. He did not sleep, but seemed in a lethargy. Disquieting thoughts were drawn out in an unending series in his brain. He thought: 'what could attract him? Seductive hope, happy heedlessness, was no more! he knew all that was before him. Success, a struggle along the path that leads to honour? What was there in that for him? Was it worth while for twenty or thirty years to fight like a fish against the ice ? And would it cheer his heart ? A consolation truly to the spirit for a few men to bow low to one while they are cursing one very likely in their hearts!
What of love ? Ah, that was worse! He knew it by heart, and had lost even the power of loving. And as though in irony his memory officiously recalled to him Nadinka, not the innocent, simple-hearted Nadinka—that was never recalled to him—but invariably Nadinka the traitress, with all her surroundings : the trees, the little path, the flowers, and among all this the wily one, with the smile he knew so well, with her blush of shame and passion—and all for another, not for him !
With a frown he clutched at his heart. He believed in no one and nothing, and never forgot himself in enjoyment; he tasted pleasure as a man without appetite tastes dainties, coldly, knowing that satiety presses close upon it, that nothing can ever fill up the void in his heart; that if one trusts oneself to passion, it will deceive one and only agitate the heart, and add fresh wounds to the old ones. When he saw people united by love forgetting everything in their happiness, he smiled ironically and thought: 'Wait a little, you will change your minds.'
He dreaded feeling a desire, knowing that often at the moment of attaining what one desires, Fate snatches happiness out of one's hands, and substitutes something altogether
different, some wretched thing which one does not want at all, and if in the end it does grant one's desire, it first tortures, wearies out, and degrades one in one's eyes, and then throws it as men throw sop to a dog after just making him crawl to the dainty morsel, look at it, balance it on his nose, roll it in the dust, stand on his hind paws and then— good dog, have it!
He dreaded the periodical interchange of happiness and unhappiness in life. He foresaw no pleasures, but pain was always inevitably before one; there was no escaping that— all men were subject to that general law; to all, as he thought, there were allotted equal parts of pain and happiness. Happiness was over for him ; and what kind of happiness was it? A phantom, a cheat. Only pain was real, and that was all before him. There were sickness and old age, and losses and perhaps even want. All these strokes of destiny, as his auntie in the country called them, were in store for him ; and what were the compensations ? His high poetic vocation had forsaken him ; they impose a wearisome burden on him, and call it duty! All that is left him are the pitiful rewards—money, comfort, rank. Confound them!
So he brooded in melancholy, and saw no outlet from this slough of doubt.
His despair drew the tears from his eyes—'tears of mortification, envy, ill-will to all men—the bitterest of tears. He felt acute regret that he had not listened to his moth er, an d jiad ever left his obscure Country place.
il My moFherTiacTa presentiment at heart of sorrow n cpme, M he thought; ' there these unquiet moods would have slept an eternal sleep; there there would have been none of the troubled ferment of this complex life. There, too, all the human passions and feelings would have come to me; vanity and pride and ambition—all would have occupied my thoughts on a small scale within the narrow limits of the district, and all would have been satisfied. The first in the district. Yes, all is relative. The divine spark of heavenly fire which in greater or less degree burns in all of us, would have shone there unseen in me, and would quickly have been extinguished in a life of indolence, or would have passed into the warmth of attachment to wife and children. Existence would not hav« been polluted. I
tamm
should have pursued my way proudly; the path of life would have been easy: it would have seemed simple and comprehensible to me; life would have been within my powers : I should not have come into conflict with it. And love ? It would have blossomed happily and have filled my whole life. Sophia would have gone on loving me tranquilly. I should not have lost faith in anything, I should have picked the roses without recognising the thorns, without knowing anything of jealousy for want of a rival! Why was I so blindly and overmasteringly drawn to what was far off and obscure, to unequal and uncertain conflict with destiny ? And how well I understood men and life in those days! There I should have understood them still as well without an inkling of anything. I expected so much of life there, and without a persistent analysis of it I should have been expecting something of it still even up to now. How many treasures I discovered in my soul ; what has become of them ? I have bartered them with the world, I have given away the sincerity of my heart, my first innermost passion ; and what have I received for it ? a bitter disillusionment. I have learnt that all is a cheat, all is transitory, that one cannot depend either on oneself or on others, and I have begun to be afraid of others and of myself. And in the midst of this analysis I cannot acknowledge the pettiness of life and yet be contented, like my uncle and many others. And that's my present position !'
Now he desired only one thing—forgetfulness of the past, tranquillity, the slumber of the soul. He grew more and more indifferent to life, and looked at everything with drowsy eyes. From crowds of people and the noise of assemblies he found only ennui, and he fled from them, but ennui followed him.
He was amazed that people could be light-hearted and incessantly occupy themselves with something or other, and everyday be attracted by fresh interests. It seemed strange to him that all men did not go about as wearily as he, did not weep, and did not—instead of chattering about the weather—talk of their pain and their respective sufferings— if they did talk of it, it was always of a pain in their legs or some other part, rheumatism or some such ailment. They were only anxious about their body—as for their soul—it was never even mentioned ! ' Empty, wretched creatures—
animals!' he thought. Yet sometimes he fell to pondering deeply. 'There are so many of them, these wretched creatures,' he said to himself with some uneasiness, ' and I am only one; can it be—all of them are empty—wrong— and I?'
