Smoke Part 15

The general smiled.

'He keeps very quiet ... one can see he's afraid of compromising himself.'

Irina too smiled; it was a very different smile from her husband's.

'Better keep quiet than talk ... as some people talk.'

'_Attrape!_' answered Ratmirov with feigned submissiveness. 'Joking apart, he has a very interesting face. Such a ... concentrated expression ... and his whole bearing.... Yes....' The general straightened his cravat, and bending his head stared at his own moustache. 'He's a republican, I imagine, of the same sort as your other friend, Mr. Potugin; that's another of your clever fellows who are dumb.'

Irina's brows were slowly raised above her wide open clear eyes, while her lips were tightly pressed together and faintly curved.

'What's your object in saying that, Valerian Vladimiritch,' she remarked, as though sympathetically. 'You are wasting your arrows on the empty air.... We are not in Russia, and there is no one to hear you.'

Ratmirov was stung.

'That's not merely my opinion, Irina Pavlovna,' he began in a voice suddenly guttural; 'other people too notice that that gentleman has the air of a conspirator.'

'Really? who are these other people?'

'Well, Boris for instance----'

'What? was it necessary for him too to express his opinion?'

Irina shrugged her shoulders as though shrinking from the cold, and slowly pa.s.sed the tips of her fingers over them.

'Him ... yes, him. Allow me to remark, Irina Pavlovna, that you seem angry; and you know if one is angry----'

'Am I angry? Oh, what for?'

'I don't know; possibly you have been disagreeably affected by the observation I permitted myself to make in reference to----'

Ratmirov stammered.

'In reference to?' Irina repeated interrogatively. 'Ah, if you please, no irony, and make haste. I'm tired and sleepy.'

She took a candle from the table. 'In reference to----?'

'Well, in reference to this same Mr. Litvinov; since there's no doubt now that you take a great interest in him.'

Irina lifted the hand in which she was holding the candlestick, till the flame was brought on a level with her husband's face, and attentively, almost with curiosity, looking him straight in the face, she suddenly burst into laughter.

'What is it?' asked Ratmirov scowling.

Irina went on laughing.

'Well, what is it?' he repeated, and he stamped his foot.

He felt insulted, wounded, and at the same time against his will he was impressed by the beauty of this woman, standing so lightly and boldly before him ... she was tormenting him. He saw everything, all her charms--even the pink reflection of the delicate nails on her slender finger-tips, as they tightly clasped the dark bronze of the heavy candlestick--even that did not escape him ... while the insult cut deeper and deeper into his heart. And still Irina laughed.

'What? you? you jealous?' she brought out at last, and turning her back on her husband she went out of the room. 'He's jealous!' he heard outside the door, and again came the sound of her laugh.

Ratmirov looked moodily after his wife; he could not even then help noticing the bewitching grace of her figure, her movements, and with a violent blow, crushing the cigarette on the marble slab of the mantelpiece, he flung it to a distance. His cheeks had suddenly turned white, a spasm pa.s.sed over the lower half of his face, and with a dull animal stare his eyes strayed about the floor, as though in search of something.... Every semblance of refinement had vanished from his face.

Such an expression it must have worn when he was flogging the White Russian peasants.

Litvinov had gone home to his rooms, and sitting down to the table he had buried his head in both hands, and remained a long while without stirring. He got up at last, opened a box, and taking out a pocket-book, he drew out of an inner pocket a photograph of Tatyana. Her face gazed out mournfully at him, looking ugly and old, as photographs usually do.

Litvinov's betrothed was a girl of Great Russian blood, a blonde, rather plump, and with the features of her face rather heavy, but with a wonderful expression of kindness and goodness in her intelligent, clear brown eyes, with a serene, white brow, on which it seemed as though a sunbeam always rested. For a long time Litvinov did not take his eyes from the photograph, then he pushed it gently away and again clutched his head in both hands. 'All is at an end!' he whispered at last, 'Irina! Irina!'

Only now, only at that instant, he realised that he was irrevocably, senselessly, in love with her, that he had loved her since the very day of that first meeting with her at the Old Castle, that he had never ceased to love her. And yet how astounded, how incredulous, how scornful, he would have been, had he been told so a few hours back!

'But Tanya, Tanya, my G.o.d! Tanya! Tanya!' he repeated in contrition; while Irina's shape fairly rose before his eyes in her black almost funereal garb, with the radiant calm of victory on her marble white face.

XVI

Litvinov did not sleep all night, and did not undress. He was very miserable. As an honest and straightforward man, he realised the force of obligations, the sacredness of duty, and would have been ashamed of any double dealing with himself, his weakness, his fault. At first he was overcome by apathy; it was long before he could throw off the gloomy burden of a single half-conscious, obscure sensation; then terror took possession of him at the thought that the future, his almost conquered future, had slipped back into the darkness, that his home, the solidly-built home he had only just raised, was suddenly tottering about him....

He began reproaching himself without mercy, but at once checked his own vehemence. 'What feebleness!' he thought. 'It's no time for self-reproach and cowardice; now I must act. Tanya is my betrothed, she has faith in my love, my honour, we are bound together for life, and cannot, must not, be put asunder.' He vividly pictured to himself all Tanya's qualities, mentally he picked them out and reckoned them up; he was trying to call up feeling and tenderness in himself. 'One thing's left for me,' he thought again, 'to run away, to run away directly, without waiting for her arrival, to hasten to meet her; whether I suffer, whether I am wretched with Tanya--that's not likely--but in any case to think of that, to take that into consideration is useless; I must do my duty, if I die for it! But you have no right to deceive her,'

whispered another voice within him. 'You have no right to hide from her the change in your feelings; it may be that when she knows you love another woman, she will not be willing to become your wife? Rubbish!

rubbish!' he answered, 'that's all sophistry, shameful double-dealing, deceitful conscientiousness; I have no right not to keep my word, that's the thing. Well, so be it.... Then I must go away from here, without seeing the other....'

But at that point Litvinov's heart throbbed with anguish, he turned cold, physically cold, a momentary shiver pa.s.sed over him, his teeth chattered weakly. He stretched and yawned, as though he were in a fever.

Without dwelling longer on his last thought, choking back that thought, turning away from it, he set himself to marvelling and wondering in perplexity how he could again ... again love that corrupt worldly creature, all of whose surroundings were so hateful, so repulsive to him. He tried to put to himself the question: 'What nonsense, do you really love her?' and could only wring his hands in despair. He was still marvelling and wondering, and suddenly there rose up before his eyes, as though from a soft fragrant mist, a seductive shape, shining eyelashes were lifted, and softly and irresistibly the marvellous eyes pierced him to the heart and a voice was singing with sweetness in his ears, and resplendent shoulders, the shoulders of a young queen, were breathing with voluptuous freshness and warmth....

Towards morning a determination was at last fully formed in Litvinov's mind. He decided to set off that day to meet Tatyana, and seeing Irina for the last time, to tell her, since there was nothing else for it, the whole truth, and to part from her for ever.

He set in order and packed his things, waited till twelve o'clock, and started to go to her. But at the sight of her half-curtained windows Litvinov's heart fairly failed him ... he could not summon up courage to enter the hotel. He walked once or twice up and down Lichtenthaler Allee. 'A very good day to Mr. Litvinov!' he suddenly heard an ironical voice call from the top of a swiftly-moving 'dogcart.' Litvinov raised his eyes and saw General Ratmirov sitting beside Prince M., a well-known sportsman and fancier of English carriages and horses. The prince was driving, the general was leaning over on one side, grinning, while he lifted his hat high above his head. Litvinov bowed to him, and at the same instant, as though he were obeying a secret command, he set off at a run towards Irina's.

She was at home. He sent up his name; he was at once received. When he went in, she was standing in the middle of the room. She was wearing a morning blouse with wide open sleeves; her face, pale as the day before, but not fresh as it had been then, expressed weariness; the languid smile with which she welcomed her visitor emphasised that expression even more clearly. She held out her hand to him in a friendly way, but absent-mindedly.

'Thanks for coming,' she began in a plaintive voice, and she sank into a low chair. 'I am not very well this morning; I spent a bad night. Well, what have you to say about last night? Wasn't I right?'

Litvinov sat down.

'I have come to you, Irina Pavlovna,' he began.

She instantly sat up and turned round; her eyes simply fastened upon Litvinov.

'What is it,' she cried. 'You're pale as death, you're ill. What's the matter with you?'

Litvinov was confused.

'With me, Irina Pavlovna?'