XXII
Four years passed. I had just left the university, and did not know exactly what to do with myself, at what door to knock; I was hanging about for a time with nothing to do. One fine evening I met Meidanov at the theatre. He had got married, and had entered the civil service; but I found no change in him. He fell into ecstasies in just the same superfluous way, and just as suddenly grew depressed again.
'You know,' he told me among other things, 'Madame Dolsky's here.'
'What Madame Dolsky?'
'Can you have forgotten her? – the young Princess Zasyekin whom we were all in love with, and you too. Do you remember
at the country-house near Neskutchny gardens?'
'She married a Dolsky?'
'Yes.'
'And is she here, in the theatre?'
'No: but she's in Petersburg. She came here a few days ago.
She's going abroad.'
'What sort of fellow is her husband?' I asked.
'A splendid fellow, with property. He's a colleague of mine in Moscow. You can well understand – after the scandal … you must know all about it … ' (Meidanov smiled significantly) 'it was no easy task for her to make a good marriage; there were consequences … but with her cleverness, everything is possible. Go and see her; she'll be delighted to see you. She's prettier than ever.'
Meidanov gave me Zinaïda's address. She was staying at the Hotel Demut. Old memories were astir within me… . I determined next day to go to see my former 'flame.' But some business happened to turn up; a week passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the Hotel Demut and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, she had died, almost suddenly, in childbirth.
I felt a sort of stab at my heart. The thought that I might have seen her, and had not seen her, and should never see her – that bitter thought stung me with all the force of overwhelming reproach. 'She is dead!' I repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter. I slowly made my way back to the street, and walked on without knowing myself where I was going. All the past swam up and rose at once before me. So this was the solution, this was the goal to which that young, ardent, brilliant life had striven, all haste and agitation! I mused on this; I fancied those dear features, those eyes, those curls – in the narrow box, in the damp underground darkness – lying here, not far from me – while I was still alive, and, maybe, a few paces from my father… . I thought all this; I strained my imagination, and yet all the while the lines:
'From lips indifferent of her death I heard, Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe – even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living – look you!' – but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow… . And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time!'
I, now … what did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
And what has come to pass of all I hoped for? And now, when the shades of evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher, more precious, than the memories of the storm – so soon over – of early morning, of spring?
But I do myself injustice. Even then, in those light-hearted young days, I was not deaf to the voice of sorrow, when it called upon me, to the solemn strains floating to me from beyond the tomb. I remember, a few days after I heard of Zinaïda's death, I was present, through a peculiar, irresistible impulse, at the death of a poor old woman who lived in the same house as we. Covered with rags, lying on hard boards, with a sack under her head, she died hardly and painfully. Her whole life had been passed in the bitter struggle with daily want; she had known no joy, had not tasted the honey of happiness. One would have thought, surely she would rejoice at death, at her deliverance, her rest. But yet, as long as her decrepit body held out, as long as her breast still heaved in agony under the icy hand weighing upon it, until her last forces left her, the old woman crossed herself, and kept whispering, 'Lord, forgive my sins'; and only with the last spark of consciousness, vanished from her eyes the look of fear, of horror of the end. And I remember that then, by the death-bed of that poor old woman, I felt aghast for Zinaïda, and longed to pray for her, for my father – and for myself.