She understood and believed me, as I could tell from her sudden pallor, and from the way in which she suddenly crossed her hands over her breast in fear and entreaty. Her recent history flashed through her mind, she put two and two together, she saw the whole truth with pitiless clarity. But she also remembered that I was a servant, a lower form oflife. Some bounder, his hair awry and face flushed with fever, very possibly drunk, wearing a vulgar overcoat, had crudely barged in on her private life, and that offended her.
'Nobody asked your opinion,' she told me sternly. 'You may leave the room.'
'But you must believe me,' I said impetuously, stretching out my arms to her. 'I am not a servant, I'm an independent person just as you are.'
I mentioned my name and quickly—very quickly indeed, to stop her interrupting me or going to her room—explained who I was and why I was living there. This new revelation shocked her more than the first. Hitherto she had still hoped that her servant was lying, or was mistaken and had spoken foolishly, but now after my confession there was no longer room for doubt. The expression in her unhappy eyes and face, which suddenly seemed ugly because it looked older and lost its gentleness ... it told me that she had reached the limit ofher endurance, and how ill it boded, this conversation which I had started. But I continued, quite carried away.
'The Senator and his inspection were invented to deceive you. He did the same inJanuary: he didn't go away, hejust stayed at Pckarsky's. I saw him every day and helped to deceive you. They were fed up with you, they hated having you around, they mocked you. If you could have heard how he and his friends jeered at you and your love you wouldn't have stayed here a minute longer. So run away, escape!'
'Oh, all right;' she said in quavering tones, passing her hand over her hair. 'All right then. Who cares ?'
Her eyes were full of tears, her lips trembled, her whole face was strikingly pale and breathed anger. Orlov's crude, petty lies outraged her, she found them contemptible and ridiculous. She smiled, but I disliked the look of that smile.
'All right then,' she repeated, passing her hand over her hair again. 'Who cares? He thinks I shall die ofhumiliation, but I just ... think it's fununy.
'There's no point in him hiding, no point at all,' she said, moving away from the piano and shrugging her shoulders. 'It would have been simpler to discuss things openly than to go into hiding and skulk about in other people's flats. I do have eyes in my head, I'd noticed all this myselfages ago, and I was only waiting for him to come back to have things out once and for all.'
Then she sat in the arm-chair near the table, leant her head on the sofa arm and wept bitterly. There was only one candle burning in the drawing-room candle-holder and the chair she sat in was in darkness, but I could see her head and shoulders quivering, while her hair fell loose and covered her neck, face and hands. In her quiet, even, un- hysterical, normal, womanly weeping could be heard wounded pride, humiliation, resentment and the absolute hopelessness of a situation utterly irreparable and unacceptable. Her weeping found its echo in my agitated, suffering heart. I had forgotten my illness and everything else on earth as I paced the drawing-room, muttering distractedly.
'Oh, what a life! One really can't go on like this, indeed one can't. It's sheer criminal lunacy, this life is.'
'How humiliating!' she said through her tears. 'To live with me and smile at me when he found me such a drag, so ridiculous. What terrible humiliation!'
Raising her head, she gazed at me with tearful eyes through hair wet with tears as she tidied this hair which blocked her view of me.
'Did they laugh at me?' she asked.
'You, your love, Turgenev in whom you were allegedly too well versed . . . these men found it all ft^y. And should we both die of despair this instant they would find that funny too. They would make up a comic story and tell it at your funeral service.
'But why talk about them?' I asked impatiently. 'We must escape. I can't stay here a minute longer.'
She began crying again, and I went over to the piano and sat do^.
'Well, what are we waiting for?' I asked despondently. 'It's past two o'clock already.'
'I'm not waiting for anything,' she said. 'My life is ruined.'
'Don't say such things. Come on, let us pool forces and decide what to do. Neither of us can stay here. Where do you intend going?'
Suddenly the bell rang in the hall and my heart missed a beat. Could Orlov have come back after receiving a complaint about me from Kukushkin? How should we greet him? I went to open the door, and there was Polya. She came in, shook the snow from her cloak in the hall and went to her room without a word to me. When I returned to the drawing-room Zinaida was pale as death and stood in the middle of the room, fixing huge eyes on me.
'Who was that?' she asked softly.
'Polya,' I told her.
She ran her hand over her hair and closed her eyes wearily.
'I'll leave this instant,' she' said. 'Would you be very kind and take me to the Old To^? What time is it!'
'A quarter to three.'
XIV
The street was dark and deserted when we left the house a little later. Sleet was falling and a damp wind lashed us in the face. It was the beginning of March, I remember, there was a thaw, and it was some days since the cabmen had started driving on wheels in place ofsl^ges. The back stairs, the cold, the darkness of night, the porter in his sheepskin questioning us before he let us out ofthc gate . . . these things utterly fatigued and depressed Zinaida. When we had got into a fly and put the hood up, she shook all over and quickly said how grateful she was.
'I don't doubt your good will,' she muttered, 'but I am ashamed to put you to this trouble. Oh, I understand, I understand. When Gruzin was here this evening I could tell he was lying and hiding something. Very well then, I don't care. Still, I'm ashamed to have you go to so much trouble.'
She still had some doubts. To dispel them once and for all I told our cabman to drive do^ Sergiyevsky Street. Halting him at Pekarsky's door, I got out of the cab and rang. When the porter came I asked if Mr. Orlov was at home, speaking in a loud voice so that Zinaida could hear.
'Yes, he came back about half an hour ago,' was the answer. 'He must be in bed now. What do you want?'
Zinaida could not resist leaning out of the carriage.
'Has Mr. Orlov been staying here long?' she asked.
'Going on three weeks.'
'And he hasn't been away?'
'No,' answered the porter, looking at me with surprise.
'Tell him tomorrow morning that his sister is here from Warsaw,' I said. 'Good night.'
Then we drove on. The cab had no apron, and snowflakes fell on us, while the wind pierced us to the bone, especially when we were crossing the Neva. I began to feel as if we had been travelling like this for some time, as if we had long been suffering, and as if I had been listening to Zinaida's shuddering breath for ages. In a state bordering on hallucination, as if I was dozing off", I cast a casual backward glance at my strange, feckless life. Somehow a melodrama, Parisian Bc_l?ars, which I had seen once or twice as a child, came to mind. The'n I tried to shake off this semi-trance1 by looking out from the hood of my cab to sec the da^, and somehow all the images ofthe past, all my blurred thoughts, suddenly fused into a single clear and cogent idea: both Zinaida and I were now utterly lost. The idea carried conviction, deriving apparently from an air of impending doom in the cold, blue sky, but a second later my thoughts and beliefs were elsewhere engaged.
'Oh, what can I do now?' Zinaida asked, her voice rough in the cold, damp air. 'Where am I to go, what can I do ? Gruzin said I should enter a convent, and I would, oh, I would! I would change my dress, my face, my name; my thoughts, everything about me, and I'd hide away for ever. But they won't have me as a nun, I'm pregnant.'