Smoke Part 21

Eliza Byelsky was an orphan; her relations did not like her, and reckoned on her inheritance ... ruin was facing her. In saving her, Irina was really doing a service to him who was responsible for it all, and who was himself now standing in a very close relation to Irina....

Potugin, without speaking, looked long at Irina, and consented. She wept, and flung herself all in tears on his neck. And he too wept ...

but very different were their tears. Everything had already been made ready for the secret marriage, a powerful hand removed all obstacles....

But illness came ... and then a daughter was born, and then the mother ... poisoned herself. What was to be done with the child? Potugin received it into his charge, received it from the same hands, from the hands of Irina.

A terrible dark story.... Let us pa.s.s on, readers, pa.s.s on!

Over an hour more pa.s.sed before Litvinov could bring himself to go back to his hotel. He had almost reached it when he suddenly heard steps behind him. It seemed as though they were following him persistently, and walking faster when he quickened his pace. When he moved under a lamp-post Litvinov turned round and recognised General Ratmirov. In a white tie, in a fas.h.i.+onable overcoat, flung open, with a row of stars and crosses on a golden chain in the b.u.t.tonhole of his dresscoat, the general was returning from dinner, alone. His eyes, fastened with insolent persistence on Litvinov, expressed such contempt and such hatred, his whole deportment was suggestive of such intense defiance, that Litvinov thought it his duty, stifling his wrath, to go to meet him, to face a 'scandal.' But when he was on a level with Litvinov, the general's face suddenly changed, his habitual playful refinement reappeared upon it, and his hand in its pale lavender glove flourished his glossy hat high in the air. Litvinov took off his in silence, and each went on his way.

'He has noticed something, for certain!' thought Litvinov.

'If only it were ... any one else!' thought the general.

Tatyana was playing picquet with her aunt when Litvinov entered their room.

'Well, I must say, you're a pretty fellow!' cried Kapitolina Markovna, and she threw down her cards. 'Our first day, and he's lost for the whole evening! Here we've been waiting and waiting, and scolding and scolding....'

'I said nothing, aunt,' observed Tatyana.

'Well, you're meekness itself, we all know! You ought to be ashamed, sir! and you betrothed too!'

Litvinov made some sort of excuse and sat down to the table.

'Why have you left off your game?' he asked after a brief silence.

'Well, that's a nice question! We've been playing cards from sheer dulness, not knowing what to do with ourselves ... but now you've come.'

'If you would care to hear the evening music,' observed Litvinov, 'I should be delighted to take you.'

Kapitolina Markovna looked at her niece.

'Let us go, aunt, I am ready,' she said, 'but wouldn't it be better to stay at home?'

'To be sure! Let us have tea in our own old Moscow way, with the samovar, and have a good chat. We've not had a proper gossip yet.'

Litvinov ordered tea to be sent up, but the good chat did not come off.

He felt a continual gnawing of conscience; whatever he said, it always seemed to him that he was telling lies and Tatyana was seeing through it. Meanwhile there was no change to be observed in her; she behaved just as unconstrainedly ... only her look never once rested upon Litvinov, but with a kind of indulgent timorousness glided over him, and she was paler than usual.

Kapitolina Markovna asked her whether she had not a headache.

Tatyana was at first about to say no, but after a moment's thought, she said, 'Yes, a little.'

'It's the journey,' suggested Litvinov, and he positively blushed with shame.

'Yes, the journey,' repeated Tatyana, and her eyes again glided over him.

'You ought to rest, Tanya darling.'

'Yes, I will go to bed soon, aunt.'

On the table lay a _Guide des Voyageurs_; Litvinov fell to reading aloud the description of the environs of Baden.

'Quite so,' Kapitolina Markovna interrupted, 'but there's something we mustn't forget. I'm told linen is very cheap here, so we must be sure to buy some for the trousseau.'

Tatyana dropped her eyes.

'We have plenty of time, aunt. You never think of yourself, but you really ought to get yourself some clothes. You see how smart every one is here.'

'Eh, my love! what would be the good of that? I'm not a fine lady! It would be another thing if I were such a beauty as your friend, Grigory Mihalitch, what was her name?'

'What friend?'

'Why, that we met to-day.'

'Oh, she!' said Litvinov, with feigned indifference, and again he felt disgust and shame. 'No!' he thought, 'to go on like this is impossible.'

He was sitting by his betrothed, while a few inches from her in his side pocket, was Irina's handkerchief.

Kapitolina Markovna went for a minute into the other room.

'Tanya ...' said Litvinov, with an effort. It was the first time that day he had called her by that name.

She turned towards him.

'I ... I have something very important to say to you.'

'Oh! really? when? directly?'

'No, to-morrow.'

'Oh! to-morrow. Very well.'

Litvinov's soul was suddenly filled with boundless pity. He took Tatyana's hand and kissed it humbly, like a sinner; her heart throbbed faintly and she felt no happiness.

In the night, at two o'clock, Kapitolina Markovna, who was sleeping in the same room with her niece, suddenly lifted up her head and listened.

'Tanya,' she said, 'you are crying?'

Tatyana did not at once answer.

'No, aunt,' sounded her gentle voice, 'I've caught a cold.'

XX

'Why did I say that to her?' Litvinov thought the next morning as he sat in his room at the window. He shrugged his shoulders in vexation: he had said that to Tatyana simply to cut himself off all way of retreat. In the window lay a note from Irina: she asked him to see her at twelve.

Potugin's words incessantly recurred to his mind, they seemed to reach him with a faint ill-omened sound as of a rumbling underground. He was angry with himself, but could not get rid of them anyhow. Some one knocked at the door.