“You are not afraid?”
“What is there to be afraid of?” replied Piotr morosely. “I am not at all a tragic person. My path is clear to me, and I know who guides me.”
“You don’t know that,” said Trirodov. “Besides, Elena is lovely. He who fears to take the grand and the terrible, he who loves tender melodies, for him there is Elena.”
Piotr was silent. Some sort of new—perhaps alien—thoughts swarmed in his head. He listened to them, and suddenly said:
“You haven’t visited us for a long time, and you are very much liked in our house. You would be welcome. You may come when you like, and you may talk or be silent, as suits your mood.”
Trirodov smiled in response.
Piotr Matov returned home quite late in a dazed state of mind. Everyone had already sat down to supper. Elisaveta glanced at him curiously—as if she expected another person there instead of him.
“I’ve come late,” said Piotr confusedly. “I don’t know how I managed to wander off so far.”
He could not understand why he was so flustered. He barely recognized Elisaveta dressed up as a boy in her sailor jacket and short breeches. She sat so erect there, and smiled her abstract, indifferent smile.
Elena, blushing for some unknown reason, moved silently closer—and there was a strange timorousness in her movement—a timorous desire. Piotr complied with her wish, and sat down at her side. She looked at him tenderly, lovingly. Her glances touched him. He thought:
“Why do I not love Elena? Or is it she alone that I really love? Perhaps some mistake of the will had dimmed my eyes?”
He conversed with her gently and tenderly, and as he looked at her again and again, a new love took spark in him. It was as if by some prodigious power the strange being at the riverbank had instilled this new love into him. Elena’s heart beat joyfully.
XIX
After that evening Trirodov, suppressing his devotion to quiet loneliness, once more began to visit the Rameyevs. He resisted no longer the all-powerful desire to see Elisaveta, to look into the depth of her blue eyes, to listen to the golden sonorousness of her words, and to feel the breathing and the witchery of her fresh, primitive strength. It was so pleasant to look upon her simple attire, upon the trusting openness of her shoulders, upon the light tan of her feet, and upon the austere outlines of her face.
Elisaveta’s sunlit depth became transformed for Trirodov into a blue, fathomless height. Elisaveta’s love grew stronger; to grow stronger was its desire, and it wished to surmount all intolerable obstacles.
Rameyev looked at Elisaveta and Trirodov, and he was consumed by a strange, mature joy. He seemed to think:
“They will marry and bring me grandchildren.”
There were already certain hours in which they expected him. He and Elisaveta often remained alone. Something in their natures drew them apart from other people, whether strangers or kin. They would go off somewhere into a neglected part of the garden, where under the spread net of superb black poplars the agreeable aroma of thyme reached them with a gentle poignancy—and here they loved to chat with one another.
Had he been alone instead of with Elisaveta, he could not have expressed his thoughts more simply or more candidly. They spoke of so many things—they tried, as it were, to contain the whole world within the rigid bounds of rapid words.
As they strolled along the high bank of the river, under the broad shadows of the mighty black poplars and strange black maples, and listened to the loud, cheerful twitter of the birds that came to the bushes, Elisaveta said:
“The sensation of existence and of the fullness and joy of life is delicious. A new sky seems to have opened above my head, and for the first time the violets and the lilies of the valley besprinkled with their first dew have begun to bloom for me; and for the first time May-drinks made from herbs by young housewives taste delicious.”
Trirodov smiled sadly and said:
“I feel the heavy burden of life. But what’s to be done? I don’t know whether life can be made more easy and tranquil.”
“Why desire ease and tranquillity in life?” asked Elisaveta. “I want fire and passion, even if I perish. Let me become consumed in the fire of rapture and revolt.”
“Yes,” said Trirodov, “it is necessary to discover all the possibilities and forces within oneself, and then a new life may be created. I wonder if life is necessary?”
“And what is necessary?” asked Elisaveta.
“I don’t know,” answered Trirodov sadly.
“What do you desire?” she asked again.
“Perhaps I desire nothing,” said Trirodov. “There are moments when I seem to expect nothing from life; I do what I do unwillingly, as if it were a disagreeable action.”
“How do you live then?” asked Elisaveta in astonishment.
He replied:
“I live in a strange and unreal world. I live—but life goes past me, always past me. Woman’s love, the fire of youth, the stirring of young hopes, remain forever within the forbidden boundaries of unrealized possibilities—who knows?—perhaps unrealizable.”
The sad, flaming moments of silence were marked by the heavy beats of Elisaveta’s heart. She felt intensely vexed by these sad words of weakness and of dejection, and she did not believe them. But Trirodov went on speaking, and his beautiful but hopelessly sad words sounded like a taunt to her:
“There is so much labour and so little consolation. Life passes by like a dream—a senseless, tormenting dream.”
“If only a radiant dream! If only a tempestuous dream!” exclaimed Elisaveta.
Trirodov smiled and said:
“The time of awakening is drawing nearer. Old age comes with its depression; and the empty, meaningless life wanders on towards unknown borders. You ask yourself, and it seems hopeless to find a worthy answer: ‘Why do I live in this strange and chance form? Why have I chosen my present lot? Why have I done this?’ ”
“Well, who is at fault here?”
