Part 27 (1/2)

He put on his cap, took up his bag. 'So you say,' he queried, stopping in the doorway, 'you have seen her?'

'Yes, I've seen her.'

'Well ... tell me about her.'

Potugin was silent a moment. 'She expected you yesterday ... and to-day she will expect you.'

'Ah! Well, tell her.... No, there's no need, no need of anything.

Good-bye.... Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, Grigory Mihalitch.... Let me say one word more to you. You still have time to listen to me; there's more than half an hour before the train starts. You are returning to Russia.... There you will ... in time ... get to work.... Allow an old chatterbox--for, alas, I am a chatterbox, and nothing more--to give you advice for your journey. Every time it is your lot to undertake any piece of work, ask yourself: Are you serving the cause of civilisation, in the true and strict sense of the word; are you promoting one of the ideals of civilisation; have your labours that educating, Europeanising character which alone is beneficial and profitable in our day among us? If it is so, go boldly forward, you are on the right path, and your work is a blessing! Thank G.o.d for it! You are not alone now. You will not be a ”sower in the desert”; there are plenty of workers ... pioneers ... even among us now.... But you have no ears for this now. Good-bye, don't forget me!'

Litvinov descended the staircase at a run, flung himself into a carriage, and drove to the station, not once looking round at the town where so much of his personal life was left behind. He abandoned himself, as it were, to the tide; it s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and bore him along, and he firmly resolved not to struggle against it ... all other exercise of independent will he renounced.

He was just taking his seat in the railway carriage.

'Grigory Mihalitch ... Grigory....' he heard a supplicating whisper behind him.

He started.... Could it be Irina? Yes; it was she. Wrapped in her maid's shawl, a travelling hat on her dishevelled hair, she was standing on the platform, and gazing at him with worn and weary eyes.

'Come back, come back, I have come for you,' those eyes were saying. And what, what were they not promising? She did not move, she had not power to add a word; everything about her, even the disorder of her dress, everything seemed entreating forgiveness....

Litvinov was almost beaten, scarcely could he keep from rus.h.i.+ng to her.... But the tide to which he had surrendered himself rea.s.serted itself.... He jumped into the carriage, and turning round, he motioned Irina to a place beside him. She understood him. There was still time.

One step, one movement, and two lives made one for ever would have been hurried away into the uncertain distance.... While she wavered, a loud whistle sounded and the train moved off.

Litvinov sank back, while Irina moved staggering to a seat, and fell on it, to the immense astonishment of a supernumerary diplomatic official who chanced to be lounging about the railway station. He was slightly acquainted with Irina, and greatly admired her, and seeing that she lay as though overcome by faintness, he imagined that she had '_une attaque de nerfs_,' and therefore deemed it his duty, the duty _d'un galant chevalier_, to go to her a.s.sistance. But his astonishment a.s.sumed far greater proportions when, at the first word addressed to her, she suddenly got up, repulsed his proffered arm, and hurrying out into the street, had in a few instants vanished in the milky vapour of fog, so characteristic of the climate of the Black Forest in the early days of autumn.

XXVI

We happened once to go into the hut of a peasant-woman who had just lost her only, pa.s.sionately loved son, and to our considerable astonishment we found her perfectly calm, almost cheerful. 'Let her be,' said her husband, to whom probably our astonishment was apparent, 'she is gone numb now.' And Litvinov had in the same way 'gone numb.' The same sort of calm came over him during the first few hours of the journey. Utterly crushed, hopelessly wretched as he was, still he was at rest, at rest after the agonies and sufferings of the last few weeks, after all the blows which had fallen one after another upon his head. They had been the more shattering for him that he was little fitted by nature for such tempests. Now he really hoped for nothing, and tried not to remember, above all not to remember. He was going to Russia ... he had to go somewhere; but he was making no kind of plans regarding his own personality. He did not recognise himself, he did not comprehend his own actions, he had positively lost his real ident.i.ty, and, in fact, he took very little interest in his own ident.i.ty. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was taking his own corpse home, and only the bitter spasms of irremediable spiritual pain pa.s.sing over him from time to time brought him back to a sense of still being alive. At times it struck him as incomprehensible that a man--a man!--could let a woman, let love, have such power over him ... 'Ignominious weakness!' he muttered, and shook back his cloak, and sat up more squarely; as though to say, the past is over, let's begin fresh ... a moment, and he could only smile bitterly and wonder at himself. He fell to looking out of the window. It was grey and damp; there was no rain, but the fog still hung about; and low clouds trailed across the sky. The wind blew facing the train; whitish clouds of steam, some singly, others mingled with other darker clouds of smoke, whirled in endless file past the window at which Litvinov was sitting. He began to watch this steam, this smoke.

Incessantly mounting, rising and falling, twisting and hooking on to the gra.s.s, to the bushes as though in sportive antics, lengthening out, and hiding away, clouds upon clouds flew by ... they were for ever changing and stayed still the same in their monotonous, hurrying, wearisome sport! Sometimes the wind changed, the line bent to right or left, and suddenly the whole ma.s.s vanished, and at once reappeared at the opposite window; then again the huge tail was flung out, and again it veiled Litvinov's view of the vast plain of the Rhine. He gazed and gazed, and a strange reverie came over him.... He was alone in the compartment; there was no one to disturb him. 'Smoke, smoke,' he repeated several times; and suddenly it all seemed as smoke to him, everything, his own life, Russian life--everything human, especially everything Russian. All smoke and steam, he thought; all seems for ever changing, on all sides new forms, phantoms flying after phantoms, while in reality it is all the same and the same again; everything hurrying, flying towards something, and everything vanis.h.i.+ng without a trace, attaining to nothing; another wind blows, and all is das.h.i.+ng in the opposite direction, and there again the same untiring, restless--and useless gambols! He remembered much that had taken place with clamour and flourish before his eyes in the last few years ... 'Smoke,' he whispered, 'smoke'; he remembered the hot disputes, the wrangling, the clamour at Gubaryov's, and in other sets of men, of high and low degree, advanced and reactionist, old and young ... 'Smoke,' he repeated, 'smoke and steam'; he remembered, too, the fas.h.i.+onable picnic, and he remembered various opinions and speeches of other political personages--even all Potugin's sermonising ... 'Smoke, smoke, nothing but smoke.' And what of his own struggles and pa.s.sions and agonies and dreams? He could only reply with a gesture of despair.

And meanwhile the train dashed on and on; by now Rastadt, Carlsruhe, and Bruchsal had long been left far behind; the mountains on the right side of the line swerved aside, retreated into the distance, then moved up again, but not so high, and more thinly covered with trees.... The train made a sharp turn ... and there was Heidelberg. The carriage rolled in under the cover of the station; there was the shouting of newspaper-boys, selling papers of all sorts, even Russian; pa.s.sengers began bustling in their seats, getting out on to the platform, but Litvinov did not leave his corner, and still sat on with downcast head.

Suddenly some one called him by name; he raised his eyes; Bindasov's ugly phiz was thrust in at the window; and behind him--or was he dreaming, no, it was really so--all the familiar Baden faces; there was Madame Suhantchikov, there was Voros.h.i.+lov, and Bambaev too; they all rushed up to him, while Bindasov bellowed:

'But where's Pishtchalkin? We were expecting him; but it's all the same, hop out, and we'll be off to Gubaryov's.'

'Yes, my boy, yes, Gubaryov's expecting us,' Bambaev confirmed, making way for him, 'hop out.'

Litvinov would have flown into a rage, but for a dead load lying on his heart. He glanced at Bindasov and turned away without speaking.

'I tell you Gubaryov's here,' shrieked Madame Suhantchikov, her eyes fairly starting out of her head.

Litvinov did not stir a muscle.