‘I must go out and look at the rasping-machine they brought yesterday,’ said he, and got up and went out.
‘Take an umbrella with you.’
‘Oh, no, I have a leather coat. And I am only going as far as the boiling-room.’
He put on his boots and his leather coat and went to the factory; and he had not gone twenty steps before he met her coming towards him, with her skirts tucked up high above her white calves. She was walking, holding down the shawl in which her head and shoulders were wrapped.
‘Where are you going?’ said he, not recognizing her the first instant. When he recognized her it was already too late. She stopped, smiling, and looked long at him.
‘I am looking for a calf. Where are you off to in such weather?’ said she, as if she were seeing him every day.
‘Come to the shed,’ said he suddenly, without knowing how he said it. It was as if someone else had uttered the words.
She bit her shawl, winked, and ran in the direction which led from the garden to the shed, and he continued his path, intending to turn off beyond the lilac-bush and go there too.
‘Master,’ he heard a voice behind him. ‘The mistress is calling you, and wants you to come back for a minute.’
This was Mísha, his man-servant.
‘My God! This is the second time you have saved me,’ thought Eugène, and immediately turned back. His wife reminded him that he had promised to take some medicine at the dinner-hour to a sick woman, and he had better take it with him.
While they were getting the medicine some five minutes elapsed, and then, going away with the medicine, he hesitated to go direct to the shed lest he should be seen from the house, but as soon as he was out of sight he promptly turned and made his way to it. He already saw her in imagination inside the shed smiling gaily. But she was not there, and there was nothing in the shed to show that she had been there.
He was already thinking that she had not come, had not heard or understood his words – he had muttered them through his nose as if afraid of her hearing them – or perhaps she had not wanted to come. ‘And why did I imagine that she would rush to me? She has her own husband; it is only I who am such a wretch as to have a wife, and a good one, and to run after another.’ Thus he thought sitting in the shed, the thatch of which had a leak and dripped from its straw. ‘But how delightful it would be if she did come – alone here in this rain. If only I could embrace her once again, then let happen what may. But I could tell if she has been here by her footprints,’ he reflected. He looked at the trodden ground near the shed and at the path overgrown by grass, and the fresh print of bare feet, and even of one that had slipped, was visible. ‘Yes, she has been here. Well, now it is settled. Wherever I may see her I shall go straight to her. I will go to her at night.’ He sat for a long time in the shed and left it exhausted and crushed. He delivered the medicine, returned home, and lay down in his room to wait for dinner.
XVII
BEFORE dinner Liza came to him and, still wondering what could be the cause of his discontent, began to say that she was afraid he did not like the idea of her going to Moscow for her confinement, and that she had decided that she would remain at home and on no account go to Moscow. He knew how she feared both her confinement itself and the risk of not having a healthy child, and therefore he could not help being touched at seeing how ready she was to sacrifice everything for his sake. All was so nice, so pleasant, so clean, in the house; and in his soul it was so dirty, despicable, and foul. The whole evening Eugène was tormented by knowing that notwithstanding his sincere repulsion at his own weakness, notwithstanding his firm intention to break off, – the same thing would happen again to-morrow.
‘No, this is impossible,’ he said to himself, walking up and down in his room. ‘There must be some remedy for it. My God! What am I to do?’
Someone knocked at the door as foreigners do. He knew this must be his uncle. ‘Come in,’ he said.
The uncle had come as a self-appointed ambassador from Liza.
‘Do you know, I really do notice that there is a change in you,’ he said, – ‘and Liza – I understand how it troubles her. I understand that it must be hard for you to leave all the business you have so excellently started, but que veux-tu?3 I should advise you to go away. It will be more satisfactory both for you and for her. And do you know, I should advise you to go to the Crimea. The climate is beautiful and there is an excellent accoucheur there, and you would be just in time for the best of the grape season.’
‘Uncle,’ Eugène suddenly exclaimed. ‘Can you keep a secret? A secret that is terrible to me, a shameful secret.’
‘Oh, come – do you really feel any doubt of me?’
‘Uncle, you can help me. Not only help, but save me!’ said Eugène. And the thought of disclosing his secret to his uncle whom he did not respect, the thought that he would show himself in the worst light and humiliate himself before him, was pleasant. He felt himself to be despicable and guilty, and wished to punish himself.
‘Speak, my dear fellow, you know how fond I am of you,’ said the uncle, evidently well content that there was a secret and that it was a shameful one, and that it would be communicated to him, and that he could be of use.
‘First of all I must tell you that I am a wretch, a good-for-nothing, a scoundrel – a real scoundrel.’
‘Now what are you saying …’ began his uncle, as if he were offended.
‘What! Not a wretch when I – Liza’s husband, Liza’s! One has only to know her purity, her love – and that I, her husband, want to be untrue to her with a peasant-woman!’
‘What is this? Why do you want to – you have not been unfaithful to her?’
‘Yes, at least just the same as being untrue, for it did not depend on me. I was ready to do so. I was hindered, or else I should … now. I do not know what I should have done …’
‘But please, explain to me …’
‘Well, it is like this. When I was a bachelor I was stupid enough to have relations with a woman here in our village. That is to say, I used to have meetings with her in the forest, in the field …’
‘Was she pretty?’ asked his uncle.
Eugène frowned at this question, but he was in such need of external help that he made as if he did not hear it, and continued:
‘Well, I thought this was just casual and that I should break it off and have done with it. And I did break it off before my marriage. For nearly a year I did not see her or think about her.’ It seemed strange to Eugène himself to hear the description of his own condition. ‘Then suddenly, I don’t myself know why – really one sometimes believes in witchcraft – I saw her, and a worm crept into my heart; and it gnaws. I reproach myself, I understand the full horror of my action, that is to say, of the act I may commit any moment, and yet I myself turn to it, and if I have not committed it, it is only because God preserved me. Yesterday I was on my way to see her when Liza sent for me.’
‘What, in the rain?’
‘Yes. I am worn out, Uncle, and have decided to confess to you and to ask your help.’
‘Yes, of course, it’s a bad thing on your own estate. People will get to know. I understand that Liza is weak and that it is necessary to spare her, but why on your own estate?’
Again Eugène tried not to hear what his uncle was saying, and hurried on to the core of the matter.
‘Yes, save me from myself. That is what I ask of you. To-day I was hindered by chance. But to-morrow or next time no one will hinder me. And she knows now. Don’t leave me alone.’
‘Yes, all right,’ said his uncle, – ‘but are you really so much in love?’