And the thing was, Zina was so young, she was only twenty-two. She was pretty, elegant, high-spirited, she liked laughing, chattering, arguing, she was crazy about music. She was good with clothes and books, she knew how to create a civilized environment: at home she would never have put up with a room like this with its smell of boots and cheap vodka. She was a liberal too, but her free-thinking seemed to brim over with energy, with the pride of a young girl, vigorous, bold, eagerly yearning to excel and show more originality than others.
How could she love a Vlasich?
'The man's so quixotic, so pig-headed, so fanatical, so lunatic,' thought Ivashin. 'But she's as wishy-washy, characterless and pliable as me. She and I both give in quickly, we don't stand up for ourselves. She fell in love with him—bu', then I like him too, don't I, in spite of everything ?'
Ivashin thought Vlasich a good, decent man, but narrow and onesided. In Vlasich's emotions and sufferings, in his whole life, Ivashin saw no lofty aims, either near or distant, he saw only boredom and lack of savoir-vivre. Vlasich's self-martyrdom, what he called his achievements and decent impulses . . . they struck Ivashin as so much wasted effort like firing off purposeless blank shots and using up a lot of powder. As for Vlasich's obsession with the outstanding integrity and rectitude of his o^n mental processes, that struck Ivashin as naive— morbid, even. Then there was the man's lifelong knack of confusing the trivial and the sublime, his making a stupid marriage and regarding that as a stupendous feat—and then having affairs with women and calling them the triumph of ideals or something. None of it made any kind of sense.
Still, Ivashin did like him and felt that there was a certain power about him. He somehow never had the heart to contradict the man.
Vlasich sat do^ very near Ivashin in the dark, wanting to talk to the sound of the rain. He had already cleared his throat to tell some other long story like the history of his marriage, but Ivashin couldn't bear to hear it, tormented as he was by the thought of seeing his sister any moment.
'Y«, you have had a raw deal,' he said gently. 'But I'm sorry, we're digressing, you and I. This is beside the point.'
'Yes, yes, quite,' said Vlasich, rising to his feet. 'So let's get back to the subject. Our conscience is clear, Peter, I can tell you. We aren't married, but that we're man and wife in every real sense is neither for me to argue nor for you to hear. You're as free from prejudice as I am, so there can be no disagreement between us on that score, thank God. As for our future, yon have no cause for apprehension. I shall work my fingers to the bone, I'll work day and night—I'll do all in my power to make Zina happy, in other words. Her life will be a beautiful thing. Shall I pull it off, you ask? I shall, old boy. When a man's obsessed with one idea every minute of the day it isn't hard for him to get his way. But let's go and see Zina, we must give her a nice surprise.'
Ivashin's heart pounded. He stood up and followed Vlasich into the hall, and then into the drawing-room. The huge, grim room contained only an upright piano and a long row of antique bronzed chairs on which no one ever sat. A single candle burnt on the piano. From the drawing-room they went silently into the dining-room. This too was spacious and uncomfortable. In the centre of the room was a round, two-leaved table with six legs. There was only one candle. A clock in a large red case like an icon-holder showed half past two.
Vlasich opened the door into the next room.
'Peter's here, Zina,' he said.
At once rapid footsteps were heard and Zina carne into the dining- room—a tall, buxom, very pale girl, looking exactly as Ivashin had last seen her at horne in her black skirt and red blouse with a large buckle on the belt. She put one arm round her brother and kissed him on the temple.
'What a storm!' she said. 'Gregory went off somewhere and I was left alone in the house.'
She betrayed no embarrassment, and she looked at her brother as frankly and openly as at home. Looking at her, lvashin too ceased to feel embarrassed.
'But you aren't afraid of thunder, are you?' he said, sitting down at the table.
'No, but the rooms are so vast here. It's an old house, and the thunder makes it all rattle like a cupboardful of crockery.
'Altogether it's a nice little house,' she went on, sitting opposite her brother. 'Every room has some delightful association—Gregory's grandfather shot himself in my room, believe it or not.'
'We'll have some money in August and I'll do up the cottage in the garden,' said Vlasich.
'Somehow one always thinks of that grandfather when it thunders,' Zina went on. 'And in this dining-room a man was fogged to death.'
'It's a fact,' Vlasich confirmed, gazing wide-eyed at lvashin. 'Some time in the Forties- this place was leased to a certain Olivier, a Frenchman. His daughter's portrait is lying about in our attic now: a very pretty girl. This Olivier, my father told me, despised Russians as dunces and mocked them cruelly. For instance, he insisted that when the priest walked past the manor he should remove his cap a quarter of a mile away, and whenever the Olivier family drove through the village the church bells had to be rung. Serfs and small fry got even shorter shrift, of course. Now, one day one of the cheeriest members of the Russian tramping fraternity chanced to roll along—the lad had a bit of Gogol's theological student Khorna Brut about him. He asked for a night's lodging, the managers liked him and they let him stay in the office.
'There are a lot ofversions ofthe story. Some say the boy incited the peasants, while others have it that Olivier's daughter fell in love with the boy. What really happened I don't know, except that Olivier called him in here one fme evening, cross-examined him and then gave orders to flog him. The master sits at this table drinking claret, see, while the grooms are beating the student. Olivier must have been trying to wring something out of him. Dy morning the lad was dead of torture and they hid the body somewhere. They are said to have thrown it in Koltovich's pond. An official inquiry was started, but the Frenchman paid several thousand in the right quarter and went off to Alsace. His lease ran out just then and that was the end of the matter.'
'What scoundrels,' shuddered Zina.
'My father remembered Olivier and his daughter well. He said she was a remarkably beautiful girl, and eccentric to boot. Myself, I think the young fellow did both: incited the peasants and took the daughter's fancy. Perhaps, even, he wasn't a theological student at all, but someone travelling incognito.'
Zina grew pensive. The story of the student and the beautiful French girl had obviously run away with her imagination. Her appearance hadn't changed at all in the last week, Ivashin thought, she had only grown a little paler. She looked calm and normal as if she and her brother were now visiting Vlasich together. But some change had taken place in himself, Ivashin felt. The fact was that he had been able to discuss absolutely anything with her when she was still living at home, but now he couldn't even bring himself to ask her quite simply how she was getting on. The question seemed clumsy, superfluous. And a similar change must have affected her, for she was in no hurry to mention their mother, their home, her affair with Vlasich. She didn't try to justify herself, nor did she say that free unions are better than being married in church, but she remained calm, quietly pondering the story of Olivier.
Why, though, had they suddenly spoken about Olivier?
'You both got your shoulders wet in the rain,' Zina said with a happy smile, touched by this small resemblance between her brother and Vlasich.
Ivashin felt the full bitterness and horror ofhis situation. He remembered his deserted home, the closed piano and Zina's bright little room where no one went any more. He remembered that her small footprints had vanished from their garden paths and that now no one went bathing with a noisy laugh before afternoon tea. The things that had increasingly claimed his affections since earliest childhood, that he used to like contemplating sometimes when sitting in a stuffy classroom or lecture-hall—serenity, integrity,joy, everything that filled a home with life and light ... those things had gone without trace, they had vanished and merged with the crude, clumsy story of some battalion commander, chivalrous subaltern, loose woman and grandfather who had shot himself