To start talking about his mother, to think that there could be any return to the past . . . that would mean misunderstanding what was perfectly clear.
Ivashin's eyes brimmed with tears and his hand trembled where it lay on the table. Zina guessed what he was thinking about, and her eyes also reddened and glistened.
'Corne here, Gregory,' she said to Vlasich.
Doth went over to the window and started whispering. From Vlasich's way of bending do^n towards her and from her way of looking at him Ivashin again realized that the matter was settled, that it couldn't be mended and that there was nothing more to be said. Zina went out.
'Well, old boy,' said Vlasich, after a short pause, rubbing his hands and smiling. 'Just now I said we were happy, but that was a bit of poetic licence, so to speak. We haven't yet experienced happiness, in fact. Zina has been thinking of you and her mother all the time and she has been suffering, while I've suffered too, watching her. Hers is a free, undaunted nature, but it's hard to go against the grain, you know— besides which she's young. The servants call her Miss. It seems a trifle, but it upsets her. That's the way of it, old man.'
Zina brought in a dish of strawberries. She was followed by a little maidservant, seemingly meek and downtrodden, who put a jug of milk on the table and gave a very low bow. She had something in common with the antique furniture which was comparably torpid and dreary.
The sound of rain had ceased. Ivashin ate strawberries while Vlasich and Zina looked at him in silence. The time had come for a conversation pointless but unavoidable, and all three were depressed by the prospect. Ivashin's eyes again brimmed with tears. He pushed the bowl away, saying that it was time to go home, or else he would be late and it might rain again. The moment had arrived when it behoved Zina to speak of her family and her new life.
'How are things at home ?' she asked rapidly, her pale face trembling. 'How's Mother?'
'Well, you know Mother—' answered Ivashin, not looking at her.
'You have thought a lot about what's happened, Peter,' she said, taking her brother by the sleeve, and he realized how hard it was for her to speak. 'You have given it a lot of thought, so tell me: is there any chance Mother will ever accept Gregory . . . and the situation in general?'
She stood close to her brother, facing him, and he marvelled at her beauty, and at his o^n apparent failure to notice it before. His sister, this sensitive, elegant girl who looked so much like their mother, now lived with Vlasich and shared Vlasich's home with a torpid maid and six-legged table in a house where a man had been flogged to death. And now she wouldn't be going home with her brother, but would stay the night here. All of this struck Ivashin as incredibly absurd.
'You know Mother,' he said, not answering her question. 'In my view you should conform with . . . you should, cr, do something, sort of ask her forgiveness or '
'But asking forgiveness would mean pretending we had done wrong. I don't mind telling lies to comfort Mother, but it won't work, will it? I know Mother.
'Well, we shall just have to see,' said Zina, cheering up now that the most unpleasant bit was over. 'We shall just have to put up with it for five or ten years and sec what happens then.'
She took her brother's arm and pressed against his shoulder as they went through the dark hall.
They went on to the steps. Ivaslin said good-bye, mounted his horse and started off at a walk. Zina and Vlasich walked a little way with him. It was quiet and warm, there was a delicious smell of hay. Between the clouds stars blazed vividly in the sky. Vlasich's old garden, witness of so many distressing episodes in its time, slumbered in the enveloping darkness and riding through it was saddening, somehow.
'This afternoon Zina and I experienced a number of truly sublime moments,' said Vlasich. 'I read her a first-rate article on the agricultural resettlement problem. You really must read it, old man, it has outstanding integrity. I couldn't resist writing to the author, care of the editor. I wrote only a single line: "I thank you and firmly shake your honest hand."'
Ivashin wanted to tell him not to meddle in other people's business for heaven's sake, but remained silent.
Vlasich walked by his right stirrup, Zina by the left. Both seemed to have forgotten that they had to go back home, that it was damp, that they had nearly reached Koltovich's copse. They were expecting something from him, Ivashin felt, but what it was they expected they didn't know themselves and he felt desperately sorry for them. Now, as they walked by his horse so meekly and pensively, he felt absolutely convinced that they were unhappy—that they never could be happy— and their love seemed a deplorable and irrevocable mistake. Pitying them and aware that he could do nothing to help them, he fell prey to weakmindedness which made him ready for any sacrifi.ce, could he but rid himself of this onerous feeling of compassion.
'I'll come and stay the night with you sometimes,' he said.
But that looked like giving in to them and didn't satisfy him. When they stopped to say good-bye near Koltovich's copse he leant towards Zina and touched her shoulder.
'You're quite right, Zina,' he said. 'You have done the right thing.'
To stop himself saying more and bursting into tears, he lashed his horse and galloped into the wood. Riding into darkness, he looked back, and saw Vlasich and Zina walking home along the path—he with long strides, she at his side with quick, jerky steps. They were conducting an animated conversation.
'I'm like a silly old woman,' thought Ivashin. 'I went there to solve a problem, but only complicated it. Ah well, never mind.'
He felt depressed. When the wood ended he rode at a walk, then stopped his horse near the pond. He wanted to sit and t^nki On the far side of the pond the rising moon was reflected as a red streak and there were hollow rumbles of thunder somewhere. Ivashin gazed steadily at the water, picturing his sister's despair, her anguished pallor and the dry eyes with which she would hide her degradation from the world. He imagined her pregnancy, their mother's death and funeral, Zina's horror. Nothing but death could break that proud, superstitious old woman. Appalling visions of the future appeared before him on the dark, smooth water, and amid pale feminine figures he saw himself— cowardly, weak, hunted-looking.
On the pond's right bank about a hundred yards aw:^.y stood some dark, unmoving object—was it a man or a tall tree-stump? Ivashin remembered the murdered student who had been thrownwn into this pond.
'Olivier behaved cruelly,' he thought, gazing at the dark, ghostly f.gure. 'But at least he did solve his problem one way or the other, while I have s^ved nothing, I've only made a worse mess. He did and said what he thought, whereas I do and say what I don't think. Besides, I don't really know what I do think '
He rode up to the dark figure. It was an old, rotting post, the relic of some building.
From Koltovich's copse and garden came a strong whiff of lily-of- the-valley and honey-laden herbs. Ivashin rode along the edge of the pond, gazed mournfully at the water and remembered his past life.
So far he had not done or said what he thought, he concluded, and others had repaid him in like coin, which was why all life now seemed as dark as this pond with its reflections of the night sky and its tangled water-weed. There was no mending matters either, he thought.