A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories

past seems suddenly to have sprung up out of the earth before my eyes, and to have rushed down upon me. Priemkov informed me that he was coming to call upon me with the very object of renewing our old acquaintance, and that he should look forward to seeing me at his house as soon as I could possibly come. He told me he had been in the cavalry, had retired with the rank of lieutenant, had bought an estate about six miles from me, and was intending to devote himself to its management, that he had had three children, but that two had died, and he had only a little girl of five surviving.

'And does your wife remember me?' I inquired.

'Yes, she remembers you,' he replied, with some slight hesitation. 'Of course, she was a child, one may say, in those days; but her mother always spoke very highly of you, and you know how precious every word of her poor mother's is to her.'

I recalled Madame Eltsov's words, that I was not suitable for her Vera. . . . 'I suppose you were suitable,' I thought, with a sidelong look at Priemkov. He spent some hours with me. He is a very nice, dear, good fellow, speaks so modestly, and looks at me so good-naturedly. One can't help liking him . . . but his intellectual powers have not developed since we used to know him. I shall certainly go and see him, possibly to-morrow. I am exceedingly curious to see how Vera Nikolaevna has turned out.

You, spiteful fellow, are most likely laughing at me as you read this, sitting at your directors' table. But I shall write and tell you, all the same, the impression she makes on me. Goodbye--till my next.--Yours,

P. B. THIRD LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, June 16, 1850.

WELL, my dear boy, I have been to her house; I have seen her. First of all I must tell you one astonishing fact: you may believe me or not as you like, but she has scarcely changed at all either in face or in figure. When she came to meet me, I almost cried out in amazement; it was simply a little girl of seventeen! Only her eyes are not a little girl's; but then her eyes were never like a child's, even in her young days,--they were too clear. But the same composure, the same serenity, the same voice, not one line on her brow, as though she had been laid in the snow all these years. And she's twenty-eight now, and has had three children. . . . It's incomprehensible! Don't imagine, please, that I had some preconceived preference, and so am exaggerating; quite the other way; I don't like this absence of change in her a bit.

A woman of eight-and-twenty, a wife and a mother, ought not to be like a little girl; she should have gained something from life. She gave me a very cordial welcome; but Priemkov was simply overjoyed at my arrival; the dear fellow seems on the look-out for some one to make much of. Their house is very cosy and clean. Vera Nikolaevna was dressed, too, like a girl; all in white, with a blue sash, and a slender gold chain on her neck. Her daughter is very sweet and not at all like her. She reminds one of her grandmother. In the drawing-room, just over a sofa, there hangs a portrait of that strange woman, a striking likeness. It caught my eye directly I went into the room. It seemed as though she were gazing sternly and earnestly at me. We sat down, spoke of old times, and by degrees got into conversation. I could not help continually glancing at the gloomy portrait of Madame Eltsov. Vera Nikolaevna was sitting just under it; it is her favourite place. Imagine my amazement: Vera Nikolaevna has never yet read a single novel, a single poem--in fact, not a single invented work, as she expresses it! This incomprehensible indifference to the highest pleasures of the intellect irritated me. In a woman of intelligence, and as far as I can judge, of sensibility, it's simply unpardonable.

'What? do you make it a principle,' I asked, 'never to read books of that sort?'

'I have never happened to,' she answered; 'I haven't had time!'

'Not time! You surprise me! I should have thought,' I went on, addressing Priemkov, 'you would have interested your wife in poetry.'

'I should have been delighted----' Priemkov was beginning, but Vera Nikolaevna interrupted him-- 'Don't pretend; you've no great love for poetry yourself.'

'Poetry; well, no,' he began; 'I'm not very fond of it; but novels, now. . . .'

'But what do you do, how do you spend your evenings?' I queried; 'do you play cards?'

'We sometimes play,' she answered; 'but there's always plenty to do. We read, too; there are good books to read besides poetry.'

'Why are you so set against poetry?'

'I'm not set against it; I have been used to not reading these invented works from a child. That was my mother's wish, and the longer I live the more I am convinced that everything my mother did, everything she said, was right, sacredly right.'

'Well, as you will, but I can't agree with you; I am certain you are depriving yourself quite needlessly of the purest, the most legitimate pleasure. Why, you're not opposed to music and painting, I suppose; why be opposed to poetry?'

'I'm not opposed to it; I have never got to know anything of it--that's all.'

'Well, then, I will see to that! Your mother did not, I suppose, wish to prevent your knowing anything of the works of creative, poetic art all your life?'

'No; when I was married, my mother removed every restriction; it never occurred to me to read--what did you call them? well, anyway, to read novels.'

I listened to Vera Nikolaevna in astonishment. I had not expected this.

She looked at me with her serene glance. Birds look so when they are not frightened.

'I'll bring you a book!' I cried. (I thought of Faust, which I had just been reading.)

Vera Nikolaevna gave a gentle sigh.

'It----it won't be Georges--Sand?' she questioned with some timidity.

'Ah! then you've heard of her? Well, if it were, where's the harm? . . . No, I'll bring you another author. You've not forgotten German, have you?'

'No.'

'She speaks it like a German,' put in Priemkov.

'Well, that's splendid! I will bring you-- but there, you shall see what a wonderful thing I will bring you.'

'Very good, we shall see. But now let us go into the garden, or there'll be no keeping Natasha still.'

She put on a round straw hat, a child's hat, just such a one as her daughter was wearing, only a little larger, and we went into the garden. I walked beside her. In the fresh air, in the shade of the tall limes, I thought her face looked sweeter than ever, especially when she turned a little and threw back her head so as to look up at me from under the brim of her hat. If it had not been for Priemkov walking behind us, and the little girl skipping about in front of us, I could really have fancied I was three-and-twenty, instead of thirty-five; and that I was just on the point of starting for Berlin, especially as the garden we were walking in was very much like the garden in Madame Eltsov's estate. I could not help expressing my feelings to Vera Nikolaevna.

'Every one tells me that I am very little changed externally,' she answered, 'though indeed I have remained just the same inwardly too.'

We came up to a little Chinese summer-house.

'We had no summer-house like this at Osinovka,' she said; 'but you mustn't mind its being so tumbledown and discoloured: it's very nice and cool inside.'

We went into the house. I looked round.

'I tell you what,Vera Nikolaevna,' I observed, 'you let them bring a table and some chairs in here. Here it is really delicious. I will read you here Goethe's Faust--that's the thing I am going to read you.'

'Yes, there are no flies here,' she observed simply. 'When will you come?'

'The day after to-morrow.'

'Very well,' she answered. 'I will arrange it.'

Natasha, who had come into the summer-house with us, suddenly gave a shriek and jumped back, quite pale.

'What is it?' inquired Vera Nikolaevna.

'O mammy,' said the little girl, pointing into the corner, 'look, what a dreadful spider!'

Vera Nikolaevna looked into the corner: a fat mottled spider was crawling slowly along the wall.

'What is there to fear in that?' she said. 'It won't bite, look.'