On the Eve

I know you travelled afterwards in your own country.... Don't answer me for goodness sake, if you think my question indiscreet, but I am fretted by one idea.... Tell me, did you meet that man?'

Elena caught her breath. She felt both shame and dismay at her own audacity. Insarov looked at her intently, slightly knitting his brows, and stroking his chin with his fingers.

'Elena Nikolaevna,' he began at last, and his voice was much lower than usual, which almost frightened Elena, 'I understand what man you are referring to. No, I did not meet him, and thank God I did not! I did not try to find him. I did not try to find him: not because I did not think I had a right to kill him—I would kill him with a very easy conscience—but because now is not the time for private revenge, when we are concerned with the general national vengeance—or no, that is not the right word—when we are concerned with the liberation of a people. The one would be a hindrance to the other. In its own time that, too, will come... that too will come,' he repeated, and he shook his head.

Elena looked at him from the side.

'You love your country very dearly?' she articulated timidly.

'That remains to be shown,' he answered. 'When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country.'

'So that, if you were cut off all chance of returning to Bulgaria,' continued Elena, 'would you be very unhappy in Russia?'

Insarov looked down.

'I think I could not bear that,' he said.

'Tell me,' Elena began again, 'is it difficult to learn Bulgarian?'

'Not at all. It's a disgrace to a Russian not to know Bulgarian. A Russian ought to know all the Slavonic dialects. Would you like me to bring you some Bulgarian books? You will see how easy it is. What ballads we have! equal to the Servian. But stop a minute, I will translate to you one of them. It is about... But you know a little of our history at least, don't you?'

'No, I know nothing of it,' answered

Elena.

'Wait a little and I will bring you a book. You will learn the principal facts at least from it. Listen to the ballad then.... But I had better bring you a written translation, though. I am sure you will love us, you love all the oppressed. If you knew what a land of plenty ours is! And, meanwhile, it has been downtrodden, it has been ravaged,' he went on, with an involuntary movement of his arm, and his face darkened; 'we have been robbed of everything; everything, our churches, our laws, our lands; the unclean Turks drive us like cattle, butcher us ——'

'Dmitri Nikanorovitch!' cried Elena.

He stopped.

'I beg your pardon. I can't speak of this coolly. But you asked me just now whether I love my country. What else can one love on earth? What is the one thing unchanging, what is above all doubts, what is it—next to God— one must believe in? And when that country needs. ... Think; the poorest peasant, the poorest beggar in Bulgaria, and I have the same desire. All of us have one aim. You can understand what strength, what confidence that gives!'

Insarov was silent for an instant; then he began again to talk of Bulgaria. Elena listened to him with absorbed, profound, and mournful attention. When he had finished, she asked him once more:

'Then you would not stay in Russia for anything?'

And when he went away, for a long time she gazed after him. On that day he had become a different man for her. When she walked back with him through the garden, he was no longer the man she had met two hours before.

From that day he began to come more and more often, and Bersenyev less and less often. A strange feeling began to grow up between the two friends, of which they were both conscious, but to which they could not give a name, and which they feared to analyse. In this way a month passed.

XV

Anna Vassilyevna, as the reader knows already, liked staying at home; but at times she manifested, quite unexpectedly, an irresistible longing for something out of the common, some extraordinary partie du plaisir, and the more troublesome the partie du plaisir was, the more preparations and arrangements it required, and the greater Anna Vassilyevna's own agitation over it, the more pleasure it gave her. If this mood came upon her in winter, she would order two or three boxes to be taken side by side, and, inviting all her acquaintances, would set off to the theatre or even to a masquerade; in summer she would drive for a trip out of town to some spot as far off as possible. The next day she would complain of a headache, groan and keep her bed; but within two months the same craving for something 'out of the common' would break out in her again. That was just what happened now. Some one chanced to refer to the beautiful scenery of Tsaritsino before her, and Anna Vassilyevna suddenly announced an intention of driving to Tsaritsino the day after tomorrow. The household was thrown into a state of bustle; a messenger galloped off to Moscow for Nikolai Artemyevitch; with him galloped the butler to buy wines, pies, and all sorts of provisions; Shubin was commissioned to hire an open carriage—the coach alone was not enough—and to order relays of horses to be ready; a page was twice despatched to Bersenyev and Insarov with two different notes of invitation, written by Zoya, the first in Russian, the second in French; Anna Vassilyevna herself was busy over the dresses of the young ladies for the expedition. Meanwhile the partie du plaisir was very near coming to grief. Nikolai Artemyevitch arrived from Moscow in a sour, ill-natured, frondeurish frame of mind. He was still sulky with Augustina Christianovna; and when he heard what the plan was, he flatly declared that he would not go; that to go trotting from Kuntsovo to Moscow and from Moscow to Tsaritsino, and then from Tsaritsino again to Moscow, from Moscow again to Kuntsovo, was a piece of folly; and, 'in fact,' he added, 'let them first prove to my satisfaction, that one can be merrier on one spot of the globe than another spot, and I will go.' This, of course, no one could prove to his satisfaction, and Anna Vassilyevna was ready to throw up the partie du plaisir for lack of a solid escort; but she recollected Uvar Ivanovitch, and in her distress she sent to his room for him, saying: 'a drowning man catches at straws.' They waked him up; he came down, listened in silence to Anna Vassilyevna's proposition, and, to the general astonishment, with a flourish of his fingers, he consented to go. Anna Vassilyevna kissed him on the cheek, and called him a darling; Nikolai Artemyevitch smiled contemptuously and said: quelle bourde! (he liked on occasions to make use of a 'smart' French word); and the following morning the coach and the open carriage, well-packed, rolled out of the Stahovs' court-yard. In the coach were the ladies, a maid, and Bersenyev; Insarov was seated on the box; and in the open carriage were Uvar Ivanovitch and Shubin. Uvar Ivanovitch had himself beckoned Shubin to him; he knew that he would tease him the whole way, but there existed a queer sort of attachment, marked by abusive candour, between the 'primeval force' and the young artist. On this occasion, however, Shubin left his fat friend in peace; he was absent-minded, silent, and gentle.

The sun stood high in a cloudless blue sky when the carriage drove up to the ruins of Tsaritsino Castle, which looked gloomy and menacing, even at mid-day. The whole party stepped out on to the grass, and at once made a move towards the garden. In front went Elena and Zoya with Insarov; Anna Vassilyevna, with an expression of perfect happiness on her face, walked behind them, leaning on the arm of Uvar Ivanovitch. He waddled along panting, his new straw hat cut his forehead, and his feet twinged in his boots, but he was content; Shubin and Bersenyev brought up the rear. 'We will form the reserve, my dear boy, like veterans,' whispered Shubin to Bersenyev. 'Bulgaria's in it now!' he added, indicating Elena with his eyebrows.

The weather was glorious. Everything around was flowering, humming, singing; in the distance shone the waters of the lakes; a light-hearted holiday mood took possession of all. 'Oh, how beautiful; oh, how beautiful!' Anna Vassilyevna repeated incessantly; Uvar Ivanovitch kept nodding his head approvingly in response to her