Part 29 (1/2)
And again, in the very depths of his soul, he knew just what he had to do, but he procrastinated confessing this to his own self. It was already a clear, bright day, about nine or ten o'clock. Janitors were watering the streets with rubber hose. Flower girls were sitting on the squares and near the gates of the boulevards, with roses, stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The radiant, gay, rich southern town was beginning to get animated. Over the pavement jolted an iron cage filled with dogs of every possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach box were sitting two dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style themselves, ”the king's dog-catchers”--i. e., hunters of stray dogs--returning home with this morning's catch.
”She must be awake by now,” Lichonin's secret thought finally took form; ”but if she isn't yet awake, then I'll quietly lie down on the divan and sleep a little.”
In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and smoked as before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into the narrow, long box. The door of the room had remained unlocked, after all.
Lichonin opened it without a sound and entered.
The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices between the blinds and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle of the room and with an intensified avidity heard the quiet, sleeping breathing of Liubka. His lips became so hot and dry that he had to lick them incessantly. His knees began to tremble.
”Ask if she needs anything,” suddenly darted through his head.
Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on his shaking legs, he walked up to the bed.
Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along the body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer, to her very face. She was breathing evenly and deeply. This breathing of her young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic. He cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm and stroked her breast a little below the clavicle. ”What am I doing?” his reason suddenly cried out within him in terror; but some one else answered for Lichonin: ”But I'm not doing anything. I only want to ask if she's sleeping comfortably, and whether she doesn't want some tea.”
But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment and opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and with a kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin's neck with her warm, strong arm.
”Sweetie! Darling!” caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice, somewhat hoa.r.s.e from sleep. ”Why, I was waiting for you and waiting, and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil' precious!” She drew him to her, breast against breast.
Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill, and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering teeth:
”No, now, Liuba, don't ... Really, don't do that, Liuba ... Ah, let's drop this, Liuba ... Don't torture me. I won't vouch for myself ... Let me alone, now, Liuba, for G.o.d's sake! ...”
”My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. ”Come to me, my joy!”--and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and warmly--kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in her life.
”Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent, and false body in Lichonin.
”Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing Lichonin's lips for the last time. ”Oh, you, my little student! ...”
CHAPTER XII.
With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool action--as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,--in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. ”It's all one,” he stubbornly repeated to himself. ”Once I have given my promise, I'll see the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My G.o.d, who hasn't fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner--the reporter Platonov, and his own--Lichonin's--absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski's novel, What's to be done? And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?”
His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images, enveloped him as though in black cotton.
He awoke long past noon, at two or three o'clock; at first could not come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka, who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And at that minute he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning, with one's own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
”Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.
She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin's feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
”Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!”
She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin made a wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
”Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that's not necessary. Do you understand--absolutely, never necessary. That which took place yesterday--well, that's an accident. My weakness, let's say. Even more, a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by G.o.d, believe me, I didn't at all want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my sister, my comrade ... Well, that's nothing, then; everything will adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn't fall in spirit. And in the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I just want to put myself in order.”
Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning her back on Lichonin. All these words about friends.h.i.+p, brotherhood and comrades.h.i.+p she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her simple peasant soul. That a student--after all, not just anybody, but an educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge--had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more ... And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out.