GOING INTO HIS sister’s room and unexpectedly seeing Yulia Sergeevna, Laptev again experienced the humiliating condition of a man who inspires revulsion. He concluded that if, after what had happened yesterday, she could so easily visit his sister and meet him, it meant she did not notice him, or considered him a total nonentity. But when he greeted her, she, pale, with dust under her eyes, looked at him sadly and guiltily; he realized that she, too, was suffering.
She was unwell. She stayed a very short time, about ten minutes, and began saying good-bye. And, going out, she said to Laptev:
‘‘See me home, Alexei Fyodorych.’’
They walked down the street in silence, holding their hats, and he, walking behind, tried to shield her from the wind. In the lane, it was quieter, and here they walked side by side.
‘‘If I was unfeeling yesterday, forgive me,’’ she began, and her voice trembled as if she was about to cry. ‘‘This is so tormenting! I didn’t sleep all night.’’
‘‘And I slept splendidly all night,’’ Laptev said without looking at her, ‘‘but that doesn’t mean I’m well. My life is broken, I’m deeply unhappy, and after your refusal yesterday, I walk around as if I’ve been poisoned. The hardest part was said yesterday, today I feel no constraint with you and can speak directly. I love you more than my sister, more than my late mother... I can and have lived without my sister and my mother, but to live without you—it’s senseless for me, I can’t...’
And now, as usual, he guessed her intention. It was clear to him that she wanted to continue yesterday’s talk and had asked him to accompany her only for that, and now she was leading him to her home. But what more could she add to her refusal? What new thing had she thought up? By everything, by her glances, by her smile, and even by the way she held her head and shoulders as she walked beside him, he could see that she still did not love him, that he was a stranger to her. What more did she want to say?
Dr. Sergei Borisych was at home.
‘‘Welcome, Fyodor Alexeich, very glad to see you,’’ he said, confusing his name and patronymic. ‘‘Very, very glad.’’
Before, he had not been so cordial, and Laptev concluded that the doctor already knew about his proposal; and he did not like that. He was now sitting in the drawing room, and this room made a strange impression, with its poor bourgeois furnishings, its bad paintings, and though there were armchairs in it and an enormous lamp with a lamp shade, it still resembled an uninhabited space, a roomy barn, and it was obvious that only such a man as the doctor could feel at home there; the other room, nearly twice bigger, was called the reception hall, and here there were only straight chairs, as in a dancing school. And Laptev, as he sat in the drawing room and talked with the doctor about his sister, began to be tormented by a certain suspicion. What if Yulia Sergeevna had visited his sister, Nina, and then brought him here in order to announce to him that she accepted his proposal? Oh, how terrible that would be, but most terrible of all was that his soul was accessible to such suspicions. He pictured to himself how yesterday evening and night the father and daughter had discussed it for a long time, maybe argued for a long time, and then come to an agreement that Yulia had acted light-mindedly in refusing a rich man. Even the words parents speak on such occasions rang in his ears:
‘‘True, you don’t love him, but then think how much good you can do!’’
The doctor was about to go on his sick rounds. Laptev wanted to leave with him, but Yulia Sergeevna said:
‘‘No, please stay.’’
She was tormented, dispirited, and was now persuading herself that to refuse a decent, kind, loving man only because she did not like him, especially when this marriage would present an opportunity to change her life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life, when youth was passing by, and there was nothing bright to look forward to in the future—to refuse under such circumstances was madness, it was a caprice and a whim, and God might even punish her for it.
Her father left. When the sound of his footsteps died away, she suddenly stopped in front of Laptev and said resolutely, turning terribly pale:
‘‘I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexei Fyodorych ... I accept your proposal.’’
He bent down and kissed her hand, she awkwardly kissed him on the head with cold lips. He felt that in this declaration of love, the main thing—her love—was missing, and there was much that was superfluous, and he wanted to shout, to run away, to leave at once for Moscow, but she was standing close by, she seemed so beautiful to him, and passion suddenly overcame him, he realized that it was now too late to reason, he embraced her passionately, pressed her to his breast, and, murmuring something, calling her
She stepped away to the window, fearing these caresses, and both of them already regretted this declaration and were asking themselves in embarrassment:
‘‘Why has this happened?’’
‘‘If you only knew how unhappy I am!’’ she said, pressing her hands together.
‘‘What’s wrong?’’ he asked, going up to her and also pressing his hands together. ‘‘My dear, for God’s sake, tell me, what is it? But only the truth, I beg you, only the truth!’’
‘‘Don’t pay any attention,’’ she said and smiled forcedly. ‘‘I promise you, I will be a faithful, devoted wife... Come tonight.’’
Sitting with his sister later and reading a historical novel, he remembered all that, and felt bad that his magnificent, pure, broad feeling had met such a puny response; he was not loved, but his proposal had been accepted, probably only because he was rich; that is, the preference was given to that which he valued least in himself. It might be allowed that Yulia, pure and believing in God, had not thought once about money, but she did not love him, did not love him, and obviously had some calculation, though maybe not fully conscious, vague, but a calculation all the same. The doctor’s house was repulsive to him with its bourgeois furnishings, the doctor himself seemed to him like a fat, pathetic niggard, some sort of operetta Gaspard from The Bells of Corneville,6 the very name of Yulia now sounded vulgar. He imagined how he and his Yulia would go to the altar together, essentially complete strangers to each other, without a drop of feeling on her part, as if they had been betrothed by a matchmaker, and there was now only one consolation left him, as banal as this marriage itself, the consolation that he was not the first nor the last, that thousands of people marry that way, and that with time Yulia would get to know him better and might come to love him.
