“Our trio has come together again,” he began, “for the last time. Let us submit to the decrees of fate; speak of the past with kindness; and in God’s name go forward to the new life! In God’s name, on our distant way,” he began to hum, and stopped short. He felt suddenly ashamed and awkward. It is a sin to sing where the dead are lying: and at that instant, in that room, the past of which he had spoken was dying, the past of the people met together in it. It was dying to be born again in a new life—doubtless—still it was death.
“Come, Elena,” began Insarov, turning to his wife, “I think everything is done? Everything paid, and everything packed. There’s nothing more except to take the box down.” He called his landlord.
The tailor came into the room, together with his wife and daughter. He listened, slightly reeling, to Insarov’s instructions, dragged the box up on to his shoulders, and ran quickly down the staircases, tramping heavily with his boots.
“Now, after the Russian custom, we must sit down,” observed Insarov.
They all sat down; Bersenyev seated himself on the old sofa, Elena sat next him; the landlady and her daughter squatted in the doorway. All were silent; all smiled constrainedly, though no one knew why he was smiling; each of them wanted to say something at parting, and each (except, of course, the landlady and her daughter, they were simply rolling their eyes) felt that at such moments it is only permissible to utter commonplaces, that any word of importance, of sense, or even of deep feeling, would be somehow out of place, almost insincere. Insarov was the first to get up, and he began crossing himself. “Farewell, our little room!” he cried.
Then came kisses, the sounding but cold kisses of leave-taking, good wishes—half expressed—for the journey, promises to write, the last, half-smothered words of farewell.
Elena, all in tears, had already taken her seat in the sledge; Insarov had carefully wrapped her feet up in a rug; Shubin, Bersenyev, the landlord, his wife, the little daughter, with the inevitable kerchief on her head, the doorkeeper, a workman in a striped bedgown, were all standing on the steps, when suddenly a splendid sledge, harnessed with spirited horses, flew into the courtyard, and from the sledge, shaking the snow off the collar of his cloak, leapt Nikolai Artemyevitch.
“I am not too late, thank God,” he cried, running up to their sledge. “Here, Elena, is our last parental benediction,” he said, bending down under the hood, and taking from his pocket a little holy image, sewn in a velvet bag, he put it round her neck. She began to sob, and kiss his hands; and the coachman meantime pulled out of the forepart of the sledge a half bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
“Come!” said Nikolai Artemyevitch—and his own tears were trickling on to the beaver collar of his cloak—“we must drink to—good journey—good wishes—” He began pouring out the champagne: his hands were shaking, the foam rose over the edge and fell on to the snow. He took one glass, and gave the other two to Elena and Insarov, who by now was seated beside her. “God give you—” began Nikolai Artemyevitch, and he could not go on: he drank off the wine; they, too, drank off their glasses. “Now you should drink, gentlemen,” he added, turning to Shubin and Bersenyev, but at that instant the driver started the horses. Nikolai Artemyevitch ran beside the sledge. “Mind and write to us,” he said in a broken voice. Elena put out her head, saying: “Goodbye, papa, Andrei Petrovitch, Pavel Yakovlitch, goodbye all, goodbye, Russia!” and dropped back in her place. The driver flourished his whip, and gave a whistle; the sledge, its runners crunching on the snow, turned out of the gates to the right and disappeared.
XXXIII
It was a bright April day. On the broad lagoon which separates Venice from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand, called the Lido, a gondola was gliding—swaying rhythmically at every push made by the gondolier as he leaned on the big pole. Under its low awning, on soft leather cushions, were sitting Elena and Insarov.
Elena’s features had not changed much since the day of her departure from Moscow, but their expression was different; it was more thoughtful and more severe, and her eyes had a bolder look. Her whole figure had grown finer and more mature, and the hair seemed to lie in greater thickness and luxuriance along her white brow and her fresh cheeks. Only about her lips, when she was not smiling, a scarcely perceptible line showed the presence of a hidden constant anxiety. In Insarov’s face, on the contrary, the expression had remained the same, but his features had undergone a cruel change. He had grown thin, old, pale and bent; he was constantly coughing a short dry cough, and his sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliance. On the way from Russia, Insarov had lain ill for almost two months at Vienna, and only at the end of March had he been able to come with his wife to Venice; from there he was hoping to make his way through Zara to Serbia, to Bulgaria; the other roads were closed. The war was now at its height about the Danube; England and France had declared war on Russia, all the Slavonic countries were
