Yes, a wonderful being she was, that woman, an upright, proud nature, not without a certain fanaticism and superstition of her own. "I am afraid of life," she said to me one day. And really she was afraid of it, afraid of those secret forces on which life rests and which rarely, but so suddenly, break out. Woe to him who is their sport! These forces had shown themselves in fearful shape for Madame Eltsov; think of her mother's death, her husband's, her father's. . . . Any one would have been panic-stricken. I never saw her smile. She had, as it were, locked herself up and thrown the key into the water. She must have suffered great grief in her time, and had never shared it with any one; she had hidden it all away within herself. She had so thoroughly trained herself not to give way to her feelings that she was even ashamed to express her passionate love for her daughter; she never once kissed her in my presence, and never used any endearing names, always Vera. I remember one saying of hers; I happened to say to her that all of us modern people were half broken by life. "It's no good being half broken," she observed; "one must be broken in thoroughly or let it alone. . . ."
Very few people visited Madame Eltsov; but I went often to see her. I was secretly aware that she looked on me with favour; and I liked Vera Nikolaevna very much indeed. We used to talk and walk together. . . . Her mother was no check upon us; the daughter did not like to be away from her mother, and I, for my part, felt no craving for solitary talks with her. . . . Vera Nikolaevna had a strange habit of thinking aloud; she used at night in her sleep to talk loudly and distinctly about what had impressed her during the day. One day, looking at me attentively, leaning softly, as her way was, on her hand, she said, "It seems to me that B. is a good person, but there's no relying on him." The relations existing between us were of the friendliest and most tranquil; only once I fancied I detected somewhere far off in the very depths of her clear eyes something strange, a sort of softness and tenderness. . . . But perhaps I was mistaken.
Meanwhile the time was slipping by, and it was already time for me to prepare for departure. But still I put it off. At times, when I thought, when I realised that soon I should see no more of this sweet girl I had grown so fond of, I felt sick at heart. . . . Berlin began to lose its attractive force. I had not the courage to acknowledge to myself what was going on within me, and, indeed, I didn't understand what was taking place,--it was as though a cloud were overhanging my soul. At last one morning everything suddenly became clear to me. "Why seek further, what is there to strive towards? Why, I shall not attain to truth in any case. Isn't it better to stay here, to be married?" And, imagine, the idea of marriage had no terrors for me in those days. On the contrary, I rejoiced in it. More than that; that day I declared my intentions; only not to Vera Nikolaevna, as one would naturally suppose, but to Madame Eltsov. The old lady looked at me.
"No," she said; "my dear boy, go to Berlin, get broken in thoroughly. You're a good fellow; but it's not a husband like you that's needed for Vera."
I hung my head, blushed, and, what will very likely surprise you still more, inwardly agreed with Madame Eltsov on the spot. A week later I went away, and since then I have not seen her nor Vera Nikolaevna.
I have related this episode briefly because I know you don't care for anything "meandering." When I got to Berlin I very quickly forgot Vera Nikolaevna. . . . But I will own that hearing of her so unexpectedly has excited me. I am impressed by the idea that she is so close, that she is my neighbour, that I shall see her in a day or two. The past seems suddenly to have sprung up out of the earth before my eyes, and to have rushed down upon me. Priemkov informed me that he was coming to call upon me with the very object of renewing our old acquaintance, and that he should look forward to seeing me at his house as soon as I could possibly come. He told me he had been in the cavalry, had retired with the rank of lieutenant, had bought an estate about six miles from me, and was intending to devote himself to its management, that he had had three children, but that two had died, and he had only a little girl of five surviving.
"And does your wife remember me?" I inquired.
"Yes, she remembers you," he replied, with some slight hesitation. "Of course, she was a child, one may say, in those days; but her mother always spoke very highly of you, and you know how precious every word of her poor mother's is to her."
I recalled Madame Eltsov's words, that I was not suitable for her Vera. . . . "I suppose you were suitable," I thought, with a sidelong look at Priemkov. He spent some hours with me. He is a very nice, dear, good fellow, speaks so modestly, and looks at me so good-naturedly. One can't help liking him . . . but his intellectual powers have not developed since we used to know him. I shall certainly go and see him, possibly to-morrow. I am exceedingly curious to see how Vera Nikolaevna has turned out.
You, spiteful fellow, are most likely laughing at me as you read this, sitting at your directors' table. But I shall write and tell you, all the same, the impression she makes on me. Goodbye--till my next.--Yours,
P. B. THIRD LETTER
From the SAME to the SAME
M---- VILLAGE, June 16, 1850.
WELL, my dear boy, I have been to her house; I have seen her. First of all I must tell you one astonishing fact: you may believe me or not as you like, but she has scarcely changed at all either in face or in figure. When she came to meet me, I almost cried out in amazement; it was simply a little girl of seventeen! Only her eyes are not a little girl's; but then her eyes were never like a child's, even in her young days,--they were too clear. But the same composure, the same serenity, the same voice, not one line on her brow, as though she had been laid in the snow all these years. And she's twenty-eight now, and has had three children. . . . It's incomprehensible! Don't imagine, please, that I had some preconceived preference, and so am exaggerating; quite the other way; I don't like this absence of change in her a bit.
A woman of eight-and-twenty, a wife and a mother, ought not to be like a little girl; she should have gained something from life. She gave me a very cordial welcome; but Priemkov was simply overjoyed at my arrival; the dear fellow seems on the look-out for some one to make much of. Their house is very cosy and clean. Vera Nikolaevna was dressed, too, like a girl; all in white, with a blue sash, and a slender gold chain on her neck. Her daughter is very sweet and not at all like her. She reminds one of her grandmother. In the drawing-room, just over a sofa, there hangs a portrait of that strange woman, a striking likeness. It caught my eye directly I went into the room. It seemed as though she were gazing sternly and earnestly at me. We sat down, spoke of old times, and by degrees got into conversation. I could not help continually glancing at the gloomy portrait of Madame Eltsov. Vera Nikolaevna was sitting just under it; it is her favourite place. Imagine my amazement: Vera Nikolaevna has never yet read a single novel, a single poem--in fact, not a single invented work, as she expresses it! This incomprehensible indifference to the highest pleasures of the intellect irritated me. In a woman of intelligence, and as far as I can judge, of sensibility, it's simply unpardonable.
"What? do you make it a principle," I asked, "never to read books of that sort?"
"I have never happened to," she answered; "I haven't had time!"
"Not time! You surprise me! I should have thought," I went on, addressing Priemkov, "you would have interested your wife in poetry."