" Yes, and groaning more than ever."
u That's astonishing! Let me try, and you meanwhile ' t think out your new method."
n " What, what ? "
fiut she had glided like a shadow from the room.
Atexandr was still sitting with his head dropped on his arms. Some one touched his shoulder. He lifted his head; J before him stood a young and beautiful woman, in a dressing-gown and a cap d la Finoise*
"Ma tantel" he said.
She took a seat near him and looked steadily at him, as only women can, and kissed him on the forehead, and he pressed his lips to her hand. They talked a long while.
An hour later he had gone away thoughtful but with a smile, and slept soundly for the first time after many sleepless nights. She returned to her bedroom with tear-stained eyes. Piotr Ivanitch had long ago been snoring.
». •«
J
CHAPTER VII
ABOUTa year had passed -since the scenes and events relateoTTn the last chapter. Alexandr changed by slow degrees from the depths of despair to the numbness of despondency.
. 144 A COMMON STORY
V Lizave ta Alexandrovna consoled him with all the tender-nesS Of sffriend anci a sister. He willingly yielded himself
v
jj v v " I to this sweet guardianship. All such natures as his love to give their will into the keeping of another. For them a nurse is a necessity.
Passion had at last died away in him, his genuine grief had passed, but he was sorry to part with it; he kept ^ it up by force or, better to say, created an artificial sorrow for himself, played with it, beautified it and revelled in it.
It pleased him somehow to play the part of a victim. He
was subdued, dignified, gloomy, like a man supporting, in
his own words, " a blow from fate."
.—^Lizaveta Alexandrovna listened indulgently to his lamen-
1 tations and comforted him as she could. It was not
I altogether disagreeable perhaps to her, because in spite of
1 everything, she found in her nephew sympathy for her own
J heart, she heard in his complaint against love the expression
/ of sufferings not unfamiliar to her.
^ She eagerly listened to the utterances of his grief, and an w .reFed them with imperceptible sighs and tears unseen by any one. * *She even found for her nephew's feigned and mawkish sorrows, words of consolation in a like tone and spirit; but Alexandr would not even listen.
" Oh, don't speak to me, ma tante? was his reply, " I don't want to dishonour the holy name of love by using it
for my relations with that " Here he made a disdainful
face and was ready, like Piotr Ivanitch, to say " that—what's-her-name ? "
" However," he would add, with still greater disdain, " it was pardonable in her; I was on a higher level than she and the Count and all their pitiful and petty circle; it is not strange that I remained misunderstood by her.
"My uncle declares that I ought to be grateful to Nadinka," he continued," for what ? Her love was all vulgarity and commonplaceness. Was there any heroism or self-sacrifice to be seen in it ? No, everything was carried on by her almost with her mother's knowledge! Did she once for my sake overstep the conventions of the world and duty ? never! That—love indeed !"
" What kind of love would you expect from a woman ?" asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
/
A COMMON STORY 145
" What!" replied Alexandr, " I should expect from her the first place in her heart. The woman I love ought not to notice, not to see any man except me; every minute not spent with me should be for her a minute lost."
Lizaveta Alexandrovna tried to conceal a smile. Alexandr did not notice it.
" For my sake," he went on, with flashing eyes, " she ought to be ready to sacrifice every pitiful consideration of profit and advantage, throw off the despotic yoke of her mother, or her husband; flee with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth ; bear resolutely every privation—that is love ! but "
" And how would you have rewarded such love !" asked his aunt.
"I? Oh!" began Alexandr, casting his eyes up to heaven, " I would have consecrated my whole life to her; I would have lain down at her feet. But did I not show Nadinka how I could love ? "
So you don't believe in feeling at all, when it i^not shown as you wish it to be ? Strong feeling is often^on-cealed." *.
"You don't want to persuade me, ma tante, that such is V the feeling concealed by my uncle, for instance ? " V^ Lizaveta Alexandrovna suddenly blushed. She could not put agree inwardly with her nephew, that emotion without any kind of expression was a somewhat dubious thing, that possibly it was non-existent altogether, that if it did exist it /vould have forced its way out; and that over and above love itself its external manifestations were possessed of an inexpressible charrri.
Here she passed in mental review every period of her married life and fell into a deep reverie. Her nephew's indiscreet hint stirred in her heart the secret which she was hiding in its depths and roused it to the question—was she happy ?
She had no right to complain ; all the outward conditions of happiness, of which the world is in pursuit, were fulfilled according to the programme laid down.
Her husband had worked untiringly and continued still to do so. But what was the real aim of his labours ? Did he work for the common ends of humanity, fulfilling the task laid on him by destiny, or only for petty objects to attain the consideration of rank and wealth among people, or
K
perhaps that he might not become the slave of poverty, of circumstance ? God only knew.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna could only come to the mournful conclusion that she and love for her were not the sole aim of his effort and activity. He had toiled as much before his marriage, before he knew anything of his wife. He neither spoke to her of his love nor asked for love from her; and he met her questions on the subject with a joke or an epigram. Soon after his acquaintance with her he had begun to talk of marriage, as though giving her to conclude that love was an understood thing in it, and that it was useless to talk much about it.
He had an aversion to scenes of all kinds—that was well enough; but he did not like genuine demonstrations of feeling, and did not believe in the need of them in others. Meanwhile he might by a single glance, a single word, have created in her a deep passion for him ; but he did not say the word, he did not care to. The fact did not even flatter his vanity.
She tried to arouse his jealousy, thinking that then love must find expression. Nothing came of it. Directly he noticed that she preferred the society of a certain young man, he hastened to invite him to the house and show him friendliness, was untiring in his praise of his character, and was not afraid of leaving him alone with his wife.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna sometimes deceived herself, imagining that perhaps Piotr Ivanitch was acting from policy; might not his secret method consist in maintaining perpetual doubt in her, and in that way maintaining love itself? But at her husband's first mention of love she was immediately disillusioned.
If he had been coarse, unpolished, narrow, slow-witted, one of those husbands whose name is legion, whom it is so excusable, so necessary, so consoling to deceive, for their own sakes even, who seem to have been created for their wives, to look round them and fall in love with their diametrical opposites—then it would have been a different matter; she would very likely have behaved as the majority of wives do behave in like case. But Piotr Ivanitch was a man of an intelligence and tact not often to be met with. He was subtle, quickwitted, skilful. He understood all the agitations of the heart and troubles of the soul, but he under-
A COMMON STORY 147
stood them—and nothing more. A complete index to the affairs of the heart was in his head, but not in his heart. In his reasoning on this subject it was clear that he was talking as of something he had heard and learnt by rote, but had not felt at all.