For eight days this torture was prolonged. Elena appeared calm; but she could eat nothing, and did not sleep at night. There was a dull ache in all her limbs; her head seemed full of a sort of dry burning smoke. 'Our young lady's wasting like a candle,' her maid said of her.
At last by the ninth day the crisis was passing over. Elena was sitting in the drawing-room near Anna Vassilyevna, and, without knowing herself what she was doing, was reading her the Moscow Gazette; Bersenyev came in. Elena glanced at him—how rapid, and fearful, and penetrating, and tremulous, was the first glance she turned on him every time—and at once she guessed that he brought good news. He was smiling; he nodded slightly to her, she got up to go and meet him.
'He has regained consciousness, he is saved, he will be quite well again in a week,' he whispered to her.
Elena had stretched out her arm as though to ward off a blow, and she said nothing, only her lips trembled and a flush of crimson overspread her whole face. Bersenyev began to talk to Anna Vassilyevna, and Elena went off to her own room, dropped on her knees and fell to praying, to thanking God. Light, shining tears trickled down her cheeks. Suddenly she was conscious of intense weariness, laid her head down on the pillow, whispered 'poor Andrei Petrovitch!' and at once fell asleep with wet eheeks and eyelashes. It was long since she had slept or wept.
XXVII
Bersenyev's words turned out only partly true; the danger was over, but Insarov gained strength slowly, and the doctor talked of a complete undermining of the whole system. The patient left his bed for all that, and began to walk about the room; Bersenyev went home to his own lodging, but he came every day to his still feeble friend; and every day as before he informed Elena of the state of his health. Insarov did not dare to write to her, and only indirectly in his conversations with Bersenyev referred to her; but Bersenyev, with assumed carelessness, told him about his visits to the Stahovs, trying, however, to give him to understand that Elena had been deeply distressed, and that now she was calmer. Elena too did not write to Insarov; she had a plan in her head.
One day Bersenyev had just informed her with a cheerful face that the doctor had already allowed Insarov to eat a cutlet, and that he would probably soon go out; she seemed absorbed, dropped her eyes.
'Guess, what I want to say to you,' she said. Bersenyev was confused. He understood her.
'I suppose,' he answered, looking away, 'you want to say that you wish to see him.'
Elena crimsoned, and scarcely audibly, she breathed, 'Yes.'
'Well, what then? That, I imagine, you can easily do.'—'Ugh!' he thought, 'what a loath-some feeling there is in my heart!'
'You mean that I have already before...' said Elena. 'But I am afraid—now he is, you say, seldom alone.'
'That's not difficult to get over,' replied Bersenyev, still not looking at her. 'I, of course, cannot prepare him; but give me a note. Who can hinder your writing to him as a good friend, in whom you take an interest? There's no harm in that. Appoint—I mean, write to him when you will come.
'I am ashamed,' whispered Elena.
'Give me the note, I will take it.'
'There's no need of that, but I wanted to ask you—don't be angry with me, Andrei Petrovitch—don't go to him to-morrow!'
Bersenyev bit his lip.
'Ah! yes, I understand; very well, very well,' and, adding two or three words more, he quickly took leave.
'So much the better, so much the better,' he thought, as he hurried home. 'I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better. What possessed me to go hanging on to the edge of another man's happiness? I regret nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over. Let them be! My father was right when he used to say to me: "You and I, my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we're not the spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs—we are workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take your place at your workman's bench, in your dark workshop, and let the sun shine on other men! Even our dull life has its own pride, its own happiness!"'
The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post. 'Expect me,' Elena wrote to him, 'and give orders for no one to see you. A. P. will not come.'
XXVIII
Insarov read Elena's note, and at once began to set his room to rights; asked his landlady to take away the medicine-glasses, took off his dressing-gown and put on his coat. His head was swimming and his heart throbbing from weakness and delight. His knees were shaking; he dropped on to the sofa, and began to look at his watch. 'It's now a quarter to twelve,' he said to himself. 'She can never come before twelve: I will think of something else for a quarter of an hour, or I shall break down altogether. Before twelve she cannot possibly come.'
The door was opened, and in a light silk gown, all pale, all fresh, young and joyful, Elena came in, and with a faint cry of delight she fell on his breast.
'You are alive, you are mine,' she repeated, embracing and stroking his head. He was almost swooning, breathless at such closeness, such caresses, such bliss.
She sat down near him, holding him fast, and began to gaze at him with that smiling, and caressing, and tender look, only to be seen shining in the eyes of a loving woman.
Her face suddenly clouded over.
'How thin you have grown, my poor Dmitri,' she said, passing her hand over his neck; 'what a beard you have.'
'And you have grown thin, my poor Elena,' he answered, catching her fingers with his lips.
She shook her curls gaily.
'That's nothing. You shall see how soon we'll be strong again! The storm has blown over, just as it blew over and passed away that day when we met in the chapel. Now we are going to live.'
He answered her with a smile only.
'Ah, what a time we have had, Dmitri, what a cruel time! How can people outlive those they love? I knew beforehand what Andrei Petrovitch would say to me every day, I did really; my life seemed to ebb and flow with yours. Welcome back, my Dmitri!'
He did not know what to say to her. He was longing to throw himself at her feet.
'Another thing I observed,' she went on, pushing back his hair—'I made so many observations all this time in my leisure—when any one is very, very miserable, with what stupid attention he follows everything that's going on about him! I really sometimes lost myself in gazing at a fly, and all the while such chill and terror in my heart! But that's all past, all past, isn't it? Everything's bright in the future, isn't it?'
'You are for me in the future,' answered Insarov, 'so it is bright for me.'