Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 13

by Ivan Turgenev

XIII

She went up to him first.

'Mr. Nezhdanov,' she began in a hurried voice, 'you are, I fancy, completely fascinated by Valentina Mihalovna?'

She turned without waiting for an answer, and walked along the avenue; and he walked beside her.

'What makes you think that?' he asked after a brief pause.

`Isn't it so? If not, she has played her cards badly to-day. I can fancy how carefully she has been at work, how she has laid her little nets.'

Nezhdanov uttered not a word; he only stared from one side at his strange companion.

'Listen,' she continued; 'I'm not going to pretend; I don't like Valentina Mihalovna─and you know that well enough. I may strike you as unjust . . . but you should first consider . . .'

Marianna's voice broke. She was flushed and moved.. . . Emotion with her almost always took the form of seeming angry. 'You are probably asking yourself', she began again, 'why is this young lady telling me all this? You must have thought the same, I suppose, when I told you something . . . about Mr. Markelov?'

She suddenly stooped down, picked a small mushroom, broke it in half and flung it away.

'You are wrong, Marianna Vikentyevna,' observed Nezhdanov; 'on the contrary, I thought I had inspired you with confidence─and that idea was a very pleasant one.'

Nezhdanov was not telling quite the truth; this idea had only just entered his head.

Marianna glanced at him instantly. Up till then she had looked away persistently.

'It's not so much that you inspire confidence,' she said as though reflecting; you are completely a stranger, you see. But your position─and mine─are very much alike. We are both alike unhappy; that's a bond between us.'

'Are you unhappy?' inquired Nezhdanov.

'And you─aren't you?' answered Marianna.

He said nothing.

'Do you know my story?' she began quickly; 'the story of my father? his exile?─no? well, then, let me tell you that he was brought up, tried, found guilty, deprived of his rank . . . and everything─and sent to Siberia. Then he died . . . my mother died too. My uncle, Mr. Sipyagin, my mother's brother, took care of me; I live at his expense; he's my benefactor and Valentina Mihalovna's my benefactress─and I repay them with the blackest ingratitude, because, I suppose, I have a hard heart─and the bread of charity is bitter─and I'm not good at bearing insulting condescension─and I can't put up with patronage . . . and I'm not good at hiding things; and when I'm for ever being hurt with little pin-pricks, I only keep from crying out because I'm too proud.'

As she uttered these disconnected sentences, Marianna walked more and more rapidly. All at once she stood still.

`Do you know that my aunt─simply to get me off her hands─means to marry me . . . to that loathsome Kallomyetsev? Of course she knows my ideas─why, in her eyes, I'm a Nihilist!─while he, I'm not attractive to him, of course I'm not pretty, you see; but I might be sold. That would be another act of charity, you know.'

'Why then didn't you . . .' Nezhdanov began, and he hesitated.

Marianna glanced at him for a moment. Why didn't I accept Mr. Markelov's offer, do you mean? Isn't that it? Well, but what could I do? He's a good man. But it's not my fault; I don't love him.'

Marianna again walked on in front as though she wished to save her companion from any obligation to reply to this unexpected confession.

They both reached the end of the avenue. Marianna turned quickly into a narrow path that ran through the densely planted firs, and walked along it. Nezhdanov followed Marianna. He was conscious of a twofold perplexity; it was amazing that this shy girl could suddenly be so open with him, and he wondered still more that her openness did not strike him as strange, that he felt it natural.

Marianna turned round suddenly and stood still in the middle of the path, so that it came to pass that her face was about a yard from Nezhdanov's and her eyes were fixed straight upon his.

'Alexey Dmitritch,' she said, 'don't suppose my aunt is ill-natured.. . . No! she is all deceit, she's an actress, she poses, she wants every one to adore her as a beauty, and to worship her as a saint! She makes a sympathetic phrase, says it to one person, and then repeats the phrase to a second and a third, and always with the same air of only just having thought of it, and that's just when she uses her wonderful eyes! She understands herself very well; she knows she's like a Madonna, and she cares for no one! She pretends she's always worrying over Kolya, but all she does is to talk about him with intellectual people. She wishes no harm to any one.. . . She's all benevolence! But they may break every bone in your body in her presence . . . it's nothing to her! She wouldn't stir a finger to save you; while if it were necessary or useful to her . . . then . . . oh, then!'

Marianna ceased; her wrath was choking her. She resolved to give it vent she could not restrain herself; but speech failed her in spite of herself. Marianna belonged to a special class of unhappy persons (in Russia one may come across them pretty often).. . . Justice satisfies but does not rejoice them, while injustice, which they are terribly keen in detecting, revolts them to the very depths of their being. While she was talking, Nezhdanov was looking at her intently; her flushed face, with her short hair slightly dishevelled, and the tremulous twitching of her thin lips, impressed him as menacing, and significant, and beautiful. The sunlight, broken up by the thick network of twigs, fell on her brow in a slanting patch of gold, and this tongue of fire seemed in keeping with the excited expression of her whole face, her wide-open, fixed, and flashing eyes, the thrilling sound of her voice.

'Tell me,' Nezhdanov asked her at last, 'why did you call me unhappy? Is it possible you know about my past?'

Marianna nodded her head.

'Yes.'

'That is . . . how did you know of it? Some one talked to you about me?'

'I know . . . your origin.'

'You know.. . . Who told you?'

'Why, the very Valentina Mihalovna whom you 're so fascinated by! She didn't fail to mention in my presence, passing over it lightly, as her way is, but plainly─not with sympathy, but as a liberal who is superior to all prejudices─that there was, to be sure, a fact of interest in the life of our new tutor! Don't be surprised, please: Valentina Mihalovna, in the same incidental way, and with commiseration, informs almost every visitor that there is, to be sure, in her niece's life a . . . fact of interest: her father was sent to Siberia for taking bribes! She may fancy herself an aristocrat─she's simply backbiting and posing, your Sistine Madonna!'

'Excuse me,' remarked Nezhdanov, 'why is she "mine"?'

Marianna turned away, and again walked along the path.

'You had such a long conversation with her', she uttered thickly.

'I hardly said a single word,' answered Nezhdanov; she was talking all the while alone.'

Marianna walked on in silence; but at this point the path turned aside, the pines, as it were, made way, and a small lawn stretched before them, with a hollow weeping birch in the middle and a round seat encircling the trunk of the old tree. Marianna sat down on this seat; Nezhdanov placed himself beside her; the long hanging branches, covered with tiny green leaves, swayed above both their heads. Around them lilies-of-the-valley peeped out white in the fine grass, and from the whole clearing rose the fresh scent of the young herbage, sweetly refreshing after the oppressive resinous odour of the pines.

'You want to come with me to look at the school here,' began Marianna. 'Well, then, let us go.. . . Only . . . I don't know. It will not be much pleasure to you. You've heard─our principal teacher is the deacon. He's a good-natured man, but you can't imagine what he talks about to his pupils! There is one boy among them. . . . His name is Garasei. He's an orphan, ten years old, and fancy, he learns faster than any of them!'

In suddenly changing the subject of conversation, Marianna herself seemed transformed. She grew rather pale and quiet . . . and her face expressed confusion, as though she began to be ashamed of all she had been saying. She apparently wanted to get Nezhdanov upon a question of some sort─the schools or the peasantry─anything, if only they might not continue in the same tone as before. But at that minute he was in no humour for 'questions.'

'Marianna Vikentyevna,' he began, 'I will speak to you openly. I did not at all anticipate all that . . . has just passed between us', (At the word 'passed' she started a little.) 'I think we have suddenly become very . . . very intimate. And it was bound to be so. We have long been getting closer to one another, but we did not put it into words. And so I, too, will speak to you without reserve. You are wretched and miserable in this house, but your uncle, though he's limited, still, so far as I can judge, he's a humane man, isn't he? Won't he understand your position and stand by you?'

'My uncle? To begin with, he's not a man at all: he's an official─a senator or a minister . . . I don't know. And secondly . . . I don't want to complain and slander people for nothing. I'm not wretched at all here; that's to say, I'm not oppressed in any way; my aunt's tiny pin-pricks are really nothing to me. . . . I'm absolutely free.'

Nezhdanov looked in bewilderment at Marianna.

'In that case . . . all you told me just now . . .'

'You are at liberty to laugh at me,' she said quickly; 'but if I am unhappy─it's not for my own unhappiness. It sometimes seems to me that I suffer for all the oppressed, the poor, the wretched in Russia.. . . No, I don't suffer, but I am indignant─I am in revolt for them . . . that I 'm ready for them . . . to lay down my life. I am unhappy because I'm a young lady─a hanger-on, because I can do nothing─am fit for nothing! When my father was in Siberia, while I was left with mother in Moscow─ah! how I longed to go to him! not that I had any great love or respect for him─but I so much wanted to know for myself, to see with my own eyes, how convicts and how prisoners live.. . . And what disgust I felt for myself and all those easy-going, prosperous, well-fed people! . . . And afterwards, when he came back, broken down, crushed, and began humiliating himself, fretting and trying to get on . . . ah, . . . that was hard! How well he did to die . . . and mother, too! But, you see, I was left behind.. . . For what? To feel that I've a bad nature, that I'm ungrateful, that nothing is right with me, and that I can do nothing─nothing for anything or anybody!'

Marianna turned away. Her hand had slid on to the garden seat. Nezhdanov felt very sorry for her; he stroked the hand . . . but Marianna at once pulled it away, not because Nezhdanov's action struck her as unsuitable, but that he might not─God forbid!─imagine she was asking for his sympathy.

Through the branches of the pines there was a glimpse of a woman's dress.

Marianna drew herself up. 'Look, your Madonna has sent her spy out. That maid has to keep watch on me and report to her mistress where I am and with whom. My aunt most likely supposed that I was with you, and thinks it improper, especially after the sentimental scene she has been rehearsing with you. And, indeed, it's time to go back. Come along.'

Marianna got up; Nezhdanov, too, rose from his seat. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and suddenly there passed over her face an expression almost childish, charming, a little embarrassed.

'You're not angry with me? You don't think I, too, have been showing off to you? No, you don't think that,' she went on, before Nezhdanov could answer her in any way. 'You see, you are, like me, unhappy, and your nature, too, is . . . bad, like mine. To-morrow we will go to the school together, for we are friends now, you know.'

As Marianna and Nezhdanov approached the house, Valentina Mihalovna watched them with a spy-glass from the balcony, and with her usual sweet smile she slowly shook her head; then returning through the open glass door into the drawing-room, where Sipyagin was already seated at preference with the toothless neighbour, who had dropped in for tea, she observed in a loud, drawling tone, each syllable distinct: 'How damp the night air is! it's dangerous!'

Marianna glanced at Nezhdanov, while Sipyagin, who had just taken a point from his partner, cast a truly ministerial glance, sidelong and upwards, upon his wife, and then transferred this same cool, sleepy, but penetrating look to the young couple coming in from the dark garden.