On the Eve/XXXII

The day of departure drew near. November was already over; the latest date for starting had come. Insarov had long ago made his preparations, and was burning with anxiety to get out of Moscow as soon as possible. And the doctor was urging him on. 'You need a warm climate,' he told him; 'you will not get well here.' Elena, too, was fretting with impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and his emaciation. She often looked with involuntary terror at his changed face. Her position in her parents' house had become insupportable. Her mother mourned over her, as over the dead, while her father treated her with contemptuous coldness; the approaching separation secretly pained him too, but he regarded it as his duty—the duty of an offended father—to disguise his feelings, his weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see Insarov. He was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he had entered her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she could not even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair, and waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat down close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna raised her eyes, saying: 'God is your judge, Dmitri Nikanorovitch'—she stopped short: the reproaches died away on her lips. 'Why, you are ill,' she cried: 'Elena, your husband's ill!'

'I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna,' answered Insarov; 'and even now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me perfectly well again.'

'Ah—Bulgaria!' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, and she thought: 'Good God, a Bulgarian, and dying; a voice as hollow as a drum; and eyes like saucers, a perfect skeleton; his coat hanging loose on his shoulders, his face as yellow as a guinea, and she's his wife—she loves him—it must be a bad dream. But——' she checked herself at once: 'Dmitri Nikanorovitch,' she said, 'are you absolutely, absolutely bound to go away?'

'Absolutely, Anna Vassilyevna.'

Anna Vassilyevna looked at him.

'Ah, Dmitri Nikanorovitch, God grant you never have to go through what I am going through now. But you will promise me to take care of her—to love her. You will not have to face poverty while I an, living!'

Tears choked her voice. She opened her arms, and Elena and Insarov flung themselves into her embrace.

The fatal day had come at last. It had been arranged that Elena should say good-bye to her parents at home, and should start on the journey from Insarov's lodgings. The departure was fixed for twelve o'clock. About a quarter of an hour before the appointed time Bersenyev arrived. He had expected to find Insarov's compatriots at his lodgings, anxious to see him off; but they had already gone before; and with them the two mysterious persons known to the reader (they had been witnesses at Insarov's wedding). The tailor met the 'kind gentlemen' with a bow; he, presumably, to drown his grief, but possibly to celebrate his delight at getting the furniture, had been drinking heavily; his wife soon led him away. In the room everything was by this time ready; a trunk, tied up with cord, stood on the floor. Bersenyev sank into thought: many memories came rushing upon him.

Twelve o'clock had long ago struck; and the driver had already brought round the horses, but the 'young people' still did not appear. At last hurrying steps were heard on the stairs, and Elena came out escorted by Insarov and Shubin. Elena's eyes were red; she had left her mother lying unconscious; the parting had been terrible. Elena had not seen Bersenyev for more than a week: he had been seldom of late at the Stahovs'. She had not expected to meet him; and crying, 'You! thank you!' she threw herself on his neck; Insarov, too, embraced him. A painful silence followed. What could these three say to one another? what were they feeling in their hearts? Shubin realised the necessity of cutting short everything painful with light words.

'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 common-places, 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 hen '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: 'Good-bye, papa, Andrei Petrovitch, Pavel Yakovlitch, good-bye all, good-bye, 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.

Накануне (Тургенев)/Глава 32