The Torrents of Spring
without loss of time. My story can be told in a couple of words. I must
confess, gentlemen, in bringing up the subject of first love, I
reckoned upon you, I won’t say old, but no longer young, bachelors.
Can’t you enliven us with something, Vladimir Petrovitch?”
“My first love, certainly, was not quite an ordinary one,” responded,
with some reluctance, Vladimir Petrovitch, a man of forty, with black
hair turning grey.
“Ah!” said the master of the house and Sergei Nikolaevitch with one
voice: “So much the better…. Tell us about it.”
“If you wish it … or no; I won’t tell the story; I’m no hand at telling
a story; I make it dry and brief, or spun out and affected. If you’ll
allow me, I’ll write out all I remember and read it you.”
His friends at first would not agree, but Vladimir Petrovitch insisted
on his own way. A fortnight later they were together again, and
Vladimir Petrovitch kept his word.
His manuscript contained the following story:—
I
I was sixteen then. It happened in the summer of 1833.
I lived in Moscow with my parents. They had taken a country house for
the summer near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskutchny gardens. I was
preparing for the university, but did not work much and was in no
hurry.
No one interfered with my freedom. I did what I liked, especially after
parting with my last tutor, a Frenchman who had never been able to get
used to the idea that he had fallen “like a bomb” (_comme une bombe_)
into Russia, and would lie sluggishly in bed with an expression of
exasperation on his face for days together. My father treated me with
careless kindness; my mother scarcely noticed me, though she had no
children except me; other cares completely absorbed her. My father, a
man still young and very handsome, had married her from mercenary
considerations; she was ten years older than he. My mother led a
melancholy life; she was for ever agitated, jealous and angry, but not
in my father’s presence; she was very much afraid of him, and he was
severe, cold, and distant in his behaviour…. I have never seen a man
more elaborately serene, self-confident, and commanding.
I shall never forget the first weeks I spent at the country house. The
weather was magnificent; we left town on the 9th of May, on St.
Nicholas’s day. I used to walk about in our garden, in the Neskutchny
gardens, and beyond the town gates; I would take some book with
me—Keidanov’s Course, for instance—but I rarely looked into it, and
more often than anything declaimed verses aloud; I knew a great deal of
poetry by heart; my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached—so
sweetly and absurdly; I was all hope and anticipation, was a little
frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on
the tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually,
fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a
bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed, was sad, even wept; but through the
tears and through the sadness, inspired by a musical verse, or the
beauty of evening, shot up like grass in spring the delicious sense of
youth and effervescent life.
I had a horse to ride; I used to saddle it myself and set off alone for
long rides, break into a rapid gallop and fancy myself a knight at a
tournament. How gaily the wind whistled in my ears! or turning my face
towards the sky, I would absorb its shining radiance and blue into my
soul, that opened wide to welcome it.
I remember that at that time the image of woman, the vision of love,
scarcely ever arose in definite shape in my brain; but in all I
thought, in all I felt, lay hidden a half-conscious, shamefaced
presentiment of something new, unutterably sweet, feminine….
This presentiment, this expectation, permeated my whole being; I
breathed in it, it coursed through my veins with every drop of blood …
it was destined to be soon fulfilled.
The place, where we settled for the summer, consisted of a wooden
manor-house with columns and two small lodges; in the lodge on the left
there was a tiny factory for the manufacture of cheap wall-papers…. I
had more than once strolled that way to look at about a dozen thin and
dishevelled boys with greasy smocks and worn faces, who were
perpetually jumping on to wooden levers, that pressed down the square
blocks of the press, and so by the weight of their feeble bodies struck
off the variegated patterns of the wall-papers. The lodge on the right
stood empty, and was to let. One day—three weeks after the 9th of
May—the blinds in the windows of this lodge were drawn up, women’s
faces appeared at them—some family had installed themselves in it. I
remember the same day at dinner, my mother inquired of the butler who
were our new neighbours, and hearing the name of the Princess Zasyekin,
first observed with some respect, “Ah! a princess!” … and then added,
“A poor one, I suppose?”
“They arrived in three hired flies,” the butler remarked deferentially,
as he handed a dish: “they don’t keep their own carriage, and the
furniture’s of the poorest.”
“Ah,” replied my mother, “so much the better.”
My father gave her a chilly glance; she was silent.
Certainly the Princess Zasyekin could not be a rich woman; the lodge
she had taken was so dilapidated and small and low-pitched that people,
even moderately well-off in the world, would hardly have consented to
occupy it. At the time, however, all this went in at one ear and out at
the other. The princely title had very little effect on me; I had just
been reading Schiller’s _Robbers_.
II
I was in the habit of wandering about our garden every evening on the
look-out for rooks. I had long cherished a hatred for those wary, sly,
and rapacious birds. On the day of which I have been speaking, I went
as usual into the garden, and after patrolling all the walks without
success (the rooks knew me, and merely cawed spasmodically at a
distance), I chanced to go close to the low fence which separated our
domain from the narrow strip of garden stretching beyond the lodge to
the right, and belonging to it. I was walking along, my eyes on the
ground. Suddenly I heard a voice; I looked across the fence, and was
thunder-struck…. I was confronted with a curious spectacle.
A few paces from me on the grass between the green raspberry bushes
stood a tall slender girl in a striped pink dress, with a white
kerchief on her head; four young men were close round her, and she was
slapping them by turns on the forehead with those small grey flowers,
the name of which I don’t know, though they are well known to children;
the flowers form little bags, and burst open with a pop when you strike
them against anything hard. The young men presented their foreheads so
eagerly, and in the gestures of the girl (I saw her in profile), there
was something so fascinating, imperious, caressing, mocking, and
charming, that I almost cried out with admiration and delight, and
would, I thought, have given everything in the world on the spot only
to have had those exquisite fingers strike me on the forehead. My gun
slipped on to the grass, I forgot everything, I devoured with my eyes
the graceful shape and neck and lovely arms and the slightly disordered
fair hair under the white kerchief, and the half-closed clever eye, and
the eyelashes and the soft cheek beneath them….
“Young man, hey, young man,” said a voice suddenly near me: “is it
quite permissible to stare so at unknown young ladies?”
I started, I was struck dumb…. Near me, the other side of the fence,
stood a man with close-cropped black hair, looking ironically at me. At
the same instant the girl too turned towards me…. I caught sight of big
grey eyes in a bright mobile face, and the whole face suddenly quivered
and laughed, there was a flash of white teeth, a droll lifting of the
eyebrows…. I crimsoned, picked up my gun from the ground, and pursued
by a musical but not ill-natured laugh, fled to my own room, flung
myself on the bed, and hid my face in my hands. My heart was fairly
leaping; I was greatly ashamed and overjoyed; I felt an excitement I
had never known before.
After a rest, I brushed my hair, washed, and went downstairs to tea.
The image of the young girl floated before me, my heart was no longer
leaping, but was full of a sort of sweet oppression.
“What’s the matter?” my father asked me all at once: “have you killed a
rook?”
I was on the point of telling him all about it, but I checked myself,
and merely smiled to myself. As I was going to bed, I rotated—I don’t
know why—three times on one leg, pomaded my hair, got into bed, and
slept like a top all night. Before morning I woke up for an instant,
raised my head, looked round me in ecstasy, and fell asleep again.
III
“How can I make their acquaintance?” was my first thought when I waked
in the morning. I went out in the garden before morning tea, but I did
not go too near the fence, and saw no one. After drinking tea, I walked
several times up and down the street before the house, and looked into
the windows from a distance…. I fancied her face at a curtain, and I
hurried away in alarm.
“I must make her acquaintance, though,” I thought, pacing distractedly
about the sandy plain that stretches before Neskutchny park … “but how,
that is the question.” I recalled the minutest details of our meeting
yesterday; I had for some reason or other a particularly vivid
recollection of how she had laughed at me…. But while I racked my
brains, and made various plans, fate had already provided for me.
In my absence my mother had received from her new neighbour a letter on
grey paper, sealed with brown wax, such as is only used in notices from
the post-office or on the corks of bottles of cheap wine. In this
letter, which was written in illiterate language and in a slovenly
hand, the princess begged my mother to use her powerful influence in
her behalf; my mother, in the words of the princess, was very intimate
with persons of high position, upon whom her fortunes and her
children’s fortunes depended, as she had some very important business
in hand. “I address myself to you,” she wrote, “as one gentlewoman to
another gentlewoman, and for that reason am glad to avail myself of the
opportunity.” Concluding, she begged my mother’s permission to call
upon her. I found my mother in an unpleasant state of indecision; my
father was not at home, and she had no one of whom to ask advice. Not
to answer a gentlewoman, and a princess into the bargain, was
impossible. But my mother was in a difficulty as to how to answer her.
To write a note in French struck her as unsuitable, and Russian
spelling was not a strong point with my mother herself, and she was
aware of it, and did not care to expose herself. She was overjoyed when
I made my appearance, and at once told me to go round to the
princess’s, and to explain to her by word of mouth that my mother would
always be glad to do her excellency any service within her powers, and
begged her to come to see her at one o’clock. This unexpectedly rapid
fulfilment of my secret desires both delighted and appalled me. I made
no sign, however, of the perturbation which came over me, and as a
preliminary step went to my own room to put on a new necktie and tail
coat; at home I still wore short jackets and lay-down collars, much as
I abominated them.
IV
In the narrow and untidy passage of the lodge, which I entered with an
involuntary tremor in all my limbs, I was met by an old grey-headed
servant with a dark copper-coloured face, surly little pig’s eyes, and
such deep furrows on his forehead and temples as I had never beheld in
my life. He was carrying a plate containing the spine of a herring that
had been gnawed at; and shutting the door that led into the room with
his foot, he jerked out, “What do you want?”