Virgin Soil (Volume 2)/Chapter 1

by Ivan Turgenev

XXI

The sky was overcast with low clouds, and although it was not perfectly dark, and in front the cart-ruts could be distinguished standing out on the road, to right and left, everything was in shadow, and the outlines of separate objects fell together into big confused patches of darkness. It was a dim, treacherous night; the wind blew in gusty, damp squalls, bringing with it the scent of rain and of broad fields of wheat. When they had passed the oak bushes which served as a landmark, and had to turn off into the by-road, driving was still more difficult; the narrow track was quite lost at times. . . . The coachman drove more slowly.

'I hope we're not going to lose our way,' observed Nezhdanov, who had been silent till then.

'No; we shan't lose our way!' answered Markelov. 'Two misfortunes don't come in one day.'

'Why, what was the first misfortune?'

'What? why, we've wasted our day for nothing—don't you reckon that as anything?'

'Yes . . . of course.. . . That awful Golushkin! We oughtn't to have drunk so much wine. My head aches now . . . fearfully.'

'I wasn't speaking of Golushkin; he at any rate gave us some money, so that was at least something gained by our visit!'

'Surely you don't regret Paklin's having taken us to his . . . what was it he called them—poll-parrots?'

'There's nothing to regret in it . . . and there 's nothing to rejoice at either. I 'm not one of those who take interest in such trifles . . . I was not referring to that misfortune.'

'What, then?'

Markelov make no reply, he simply turned a little in his corner, as though he were wrapping himself up. Nezhdanov could not quite make out his face; only his moustaches stood out in a black transverse line; but ever since the morning he had been conscious of something in Markelov it was better not to touch upon—some obscure, secret irritation.

'Tell me, Sergei Mihalovitch,' he began after a long pause, 'are you in earnest in admiring Mr. Kislyakov's letters, that you gave me to read this morning? You know— excuse the crudity of the expression—it's all perfect rubbish!'

Markelov drew himself up.

'In the first place,' he began in a wrathful voice, 'I don't at all share your opinion about those letters. I think them very remarkable . . . and conscientious! And secondly, Kislyakov toils and slaves, and, what 's more, he believes; he believes in our cause, he believes in revolution! I must tell you one thing, Alexey Dmitrievitch, I notice that you—you are very lukewarm in our cause; you don't believe in it!'

'What makes you think that?' Nezhdanov articulated slowly.

'What? Why, every word you say, your whole behaviour! To-day at Golushkin's, who was it said he didn't see what elements we could depend on? You! Who asked us to point to any? You! And when that friend of yours, that grinning ape and buffoon, Mr. Paklin, began declaring, with eyes upturned to heaven, that not one of us was capable of sacrifice, who was it backed him up, who was it nodded his head in approval? Wasn't that you? Say what you please of yourself, and think of yourself what you know . . . that 's your affair . . . but I know of people who are capable of renouncing everything that makes life sweet, even the bliss of love, to be true to their convictions, not to betray them! Oh, to-day, you are not capable of that, of course!'

'To-day? And why to-day?'

'Come, no humbug, for God's sake, you happy Don Juan, you myrtle-crowned lover!' shouted Markelov, totally oblivious of the coachman, who, though he did not turn round on the box, could hear everything perfectly distinctly. It is true the coachman was at that instant far more interested in the road than in any wrangling on the part of the gentlemen sitting behind him, and he cautiously and rather timorously urged on the centre horse, who shook his head and backed, letting the coach slide down a sort of rocky prominence, which certainly ought not to have been there at all.

'Excuse me, I don't quite understand you,' said Nezhdanov.

Markelov gave a forced, vindictive chuckle.

'You don't understand me! Ha! ha! ha! I know all about it, my fine gentleman! I know whom you had a love-scene with yesterday; I know who it is you've fascinated with your good looks and your fine talk; I know who lets you into her room. . . after ten o'clock at night!'

'Master!' the coachman suddenly addressed Markelov, 'take the reins . . . I'll get down and have a look. . . . I think we've got off the road. . . . There seems a sort of ravine here, or something. . .'

The coach was, in fact, all on one side. Markelov clutched the reins handed him by the coachman, and went on as loudly as ever: 'I don't blame you, Alexey Dmitritch! You profited . . . of course. You were right. I only say that I don't wonder at your lukewarmness over our cause; you 'd something else, I say again, in your heart. And I say, too, for my own part, what man can guess beforehand what will take girls' hearts, or understand what it is they want! . . .'

'I understand you now,' Nezhdanov began, 'I understand your mortification, guess who has spied on us and lost no time in telling you. . .'

'It 's not merit in this case,' Markelov went on, affecting not to hear Nezhdanov, and intentionally dwelling on and prolonging each word, 'not any extraordinary qualities of mind or body. . . . No! It 's simply . . . the cursed luck of all illegitimate children,. . . of all . . . bastards!'

The last phrase Markelov uttered abruptly and rapidly, and at once was still as death.

Nezhdanov felt himself grow pale all over in the darkness, and spasms passed over his face. He could scarcely restrain himself from flying at Markelov, seizing him by the throat. . .

'This insult must be washed out in blood, in blood. . .'

'I've found the road! ' cried the coachman, making his appearance at the right front wheel. 'I made a little mistake, kept too much to the left . . . it 's no matter now! We'll be there in no time; there 's not a mile before us. Be pleased to sit still!'

He clambered on to the box, took the reins from Markelov, turned the shaft horse's head. . . . The coach, after two violent jolts, rolled along more easily and evenly, the darkness seemed to part and to lift, there was a smell of smoke, in front rose a sort of hillock. Then a light twinkled . . . and vanished.. . . Another glimmered. . . . A dog barked.. . .

'Our huts,' said the coachman; 'ah, get along, my pretty pussies!'

The lights came more and more often to meet them.

'After that insult,' Nezhdanov began at last, 'you will readily understand, Sergei Mihalovitch, that I cannot spend a night under your roof; I am therefore, unpleasant as it is to me, forced to ask you to lend me your coach, when you reach home, so that I may return to the town; to-morrow I will find means of getting home; and then you shall receive from me the communication you doubtless expect.'

Markelov did not at once reply.

'Nezhdanov,' he said all at once in a low, but despairing voice, 'Nezhdanov! For God's sake come into my house, if only to let me beg on my knees for your forgiveness! Nezhdanov! Forget . . . Alexey! forget, forget my senseless words! Oh, if any one could feel how miserable I am!' Markelov struck himself on the breast with his fist, and it seemed to give forth a hollow groan. 'Alexey! be magnanimous! Give me your hand! . . . Don't refuse to forgive me!'

Nezhdanov held out his hand—irresolutely—still he held it out. Markelov squeezed it so that he almost cried out.

The coachman stopped at the steps of Markelov's house.

'Listen, Alexey,' Markelov was saying to him a quarter of an hour after in his room, . . . 'dear brother,' he kept addressing him by this familiar, endearing term; and in this affectionate familiarity to the man in whom he had discovered a successful rival, to whom he had only just offered d deadly insult, whom he had been ready to kill, to tear to pieces, there was the expression of irrevocable renunciation, and humble, bitter supplication, and a sort of claim too.. . . Nezhdanov recognised this claim by beginning to address Markelov in the same familiar way.

'Listen, Alexey! I said just now I had refused the happiness of love, renounced it so as to be wholly at the service of my convictions.. . . That was nonsense, bragging! I have never been offered anything of that sort, I have had nothing to renounce! I was born without gifts, and so I have remained.. . . And perhaps it was right it should be so. Since I can't attain to that, I have to do something else! Since you can combine both . . . can love and be loved . . . and at the same time serve the cause . . . well, you're a fine fellow! I envy you . . . but it 's not so with me. I can't. You are happy! You are happy! I can't.'

Markelov said all this in a subdued voice, sitting on a low chair, his head bent and his arms hanging loose at his sides. Nezhdanov stood before him, plunged in a sort of dreamy attention, and though Markelov called him happy, he neither looked nor felt happy.

'I was deceived in my youth,' . . . Markelov went on; 'she was an exquisite girl, and yet she jilted me . . . and for whom? For a German! for an adjutant! while Marianna———'

He stopped.. . . For the first time he had uttered her name, and it seemed to burn his lips.

'Marianna did not deceive me; she told me plainly that she didn't care for me.. . . And how should she care for me? Well, she has given herself to you . . . Well, what of that? was she not free?'

'Oh, stay, stay!' cried Nezhdanov, 'what is it you are saying? Given herself? I don't know what your sister has written to you; but I swear to you———'

'I don't say physically; but morally she has given herself, in heart, in soul,' interposed Markelov, who was obviously comforted for some reason or other by Nezhdanov's exclamation. 'And she has done well. As for my sister . . . Of course she had no intention of wounding. . . . At least, she didn't care about it one way or another; but she must hate you, and Marianna too. She was not lying . . . but there, enough of her!'

'Yes,' thought Nezhdanov to himself: 'she hates us.'

'Everything is for the best,' Markelov continued without changing his position. 'Now the last ways of retreat are cut off for me, now there is nothing to hinder me! Never mind Golushkin's being a blockhead; that's of no consequence. And Kislyakov's letters . . . they're absurd, perhaps . . . but we must look to the principal thing. According to him, everything's ready everywhere. You don't believe that, perhaps?'

Nezhdanov made no answer.

'You are right, perhaps; but you know if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin. If one weighs all the consequences beforehand, it 's certain there will be some evil ones. For instance: when our predecessors organised the emancipation of the peasants, could they foresee that one result of this emancipation would be the rise of a whole class of money-lending landowners, who would lend the peasant a quarter of mouldy rye for six roubles, and extort from him' (here Markelov crooked one finger) 'first the full six roubles in labour, and besides that' (Markelov crooked another linger) 'a whole quarter of good rye, and then' (Markelov crooked a third) 'interest on the top of that?—in fact, they squeeze the peasant to the last drop! Our emancipators couldn't have foreseen that, you must admit! And yet, even if they had foreseen it, they 'd have done right to free the peasants, and not to weigh all the consequences! And so, I have made up my mind!'

Nezhdanov looked questioningly, in perplexity, at Markelov; but the latter looked away into the corner. His brows were contracted and hid his eyes; he bit his lips and gnawed his moustache.

'Yes, I have made up my mind!' he repeated with a swing of his arm down on his knee. 'I'm an obstinate man, you know . . . I'm not half a Little-Russian for nothing.'

Then he got up, and, staggering as though his legs were failing him, he went into his bedroom, and brought out from there a small portrait of Marianna framed under glass.

'Take it,' he said in a mournful but steady voice; 'I did it once. I draw very badly; but look, I think it's like.' (The sketch, a pencil drawing taken in profile, was really like.) 'Take it, brother; it 's my last bequest. Together with this portrait I give up to you all my right . . . I never had any . . . but you know, Alexey, everything! I give you everything, Alexey . . . and her, dear brother; she 's a good . . .'

Markelov was silent; the heaving of his breast was visible.

'Take it. You 're not angry with me, Alexey? Then take it. I have nothing now . . . I don't want that.' Nezhdanov took the portrait; but a strange sensation oppressed his heart. It seemed to him that he had no right to accept this gift; that if Markelov had known what was in his, Nezhdanov's, heart, he would not, perhaps, have given him the portrait. He held in his hand the little round piece of paper carefully set in its black frame with a mount of gold paper, and he did not know what to do with it.'Here is a man's whole life in my hand,' was the thought that occurred to him. He realised what a sacrifice Markelov was making, but why, why was it to him? Should he give back the portrait? No! That would be a still crueller affront. . . . And after all, wasn't that face dear to him? didn't he love her?

Nezhdanov with some inward misgiving turned his eyes upon Markelov . . . wasn't he looking at him, trying to read his thoughts? But Markelov was again staring into the corner and gnawing his moustache.

The old servant came into the room with a candle in his hand.

Markelov started.

'It's time for bed, dear Alexey!' he cried. 'Morning brings better counsel. I will give you horses, you will drive home, and good-bye, brother.'

'And good-bye to you, too, old fellow!' he added suddenly, turning to the servant and slapping him on the shoulder. 'Think of me kindly! '

The old man was so astounded that he all but dropped the candle, and his eyes, bent on his master, expressed something other—and more—than his habitual dejection.

Nezhdanov went to his room. He was miserable. His head was still aching from the wine he had drunk, there were noises in his ears, and lights dazzling before his eyes, even though he shut them. Golushkin, the clerk Vasya, Fomushka, Fimushka, kept revolving before him; in the distance, Marianna's image seemed distrustful, would not come near. Everything he had said or done himself struck him as such lying and affectation, such superfluous and humbugging nonsense . . . and the thing that ought to be done, the aim that ought to be striven for, was not to be found anywhere, unattainable under lock and bar, buried in the bottomless pit.. . .

And he was beset with the unceasing desire to get up, go to Markelov, and say to him, 'Take back your present, take it back!'

'Ugh! what a loathsome thing life is!' he cried at last.

The next morning he went off early. Markelov was already on the steps, surrounded by peasants. Whether he had called them together, or they had come of themselves, Nezhdanov could not make out; Markelov said good-bye to him, very briefly and drily . . . but he seemed to be about to make some important communication to the peasants. The old servant was hanging about the steps with his unvarying expression.

The coach quickly passed through the town, and moved at a furious pace directly the open country was reached. The horses were the same, but the coachman, either because Nezhdanov was living in a grand house, or for some other reason, was reckoning on something handsome 'for vodka' . . . and we all know that when a coachman has had vodka, or is confidently expecting it, the horses trot their best. It was fine weather, though fresh; lofty clouds were gambolling over the sky, there was a strong, steady breeze; the road, after the previous day's rain, was not dusty; the willows rustled, gleamed, and rippled, everything was moving, fluttering; the peewit's cry came whistling from the distant slopes, across the green ravines, just as though the cry had wings and was flying on them; the crows were glossing themselves in the sun; something like black fleas was moving across the straight line of the bare horizon—it was the peasants ploughing their fallow land a second time.

But Nezhdanov let it all pass by unseen; he did not even notice that he was driving into Sipyagin's property; he was overcome by his brooding thoughts.

He started, though, when he saw the roof of the house, the upper story, Marianna's window. 'Yes,' he said to himself, and there was a glow of warmth about his heart; 'he was right, she's a good girl, and I love her.'