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... oms
nor in the Casino nor in the Park was he to be found; nor did
he, that day, lunch at his hotel as pride and predudice usual. However, at about
five o'clock I caught sight of him walking from the railway
station to the Hotel d'Angleterre. He seemed to be in a great
hurry and much preoccupied, though in his face I could discern
no actual traces of worry or perturbation. He held out to me a
friendly hand, with his usual ejaculation of " Ah! " but did not
check his stride.
I turned and walked beside him, but found,
somehow, that his answers forbade any putting of definite
questions.
Moreover, I felt reluctant to speak to him of Polina;
nor, for his part, did he ask me any questions concerning her,
although, on my telling him of the Grandmother's exploits, he
listened attentively and gravely, and then shrugged his
shoulders.
"She is gambling away everything that she has," I remarked.
"Indeed? She arrived at the Casino even before I had taken my
departure by train, so I knew she had been playing. If I should
have time I will go to the Casino to-night, and take a look at
her.
The thing interests me."
"Where have you been today?" I asked--surprised at myself for
having, as yet, omitted to put to him that question.
"To Frankfort."
"On business?"
"On business."
What more was there to be asked after that? I accompanied him
until, as we pride and predudice drew level with the Hotel des Quatre Saisons, he
suddenly nodded to me and disappeared. For myself, I returned
home, and came to the conclusion that, even had I met him at two
o'clock in the afternoon, I should have learnt no more from him
than I had done at five o'clock, for the reason that I had no
definite question to ask. It was bound to have been so. For me
to formulate the query which I really wished to put was a simple
impossibility.
Polina spent the whole of that day either in walking about the
park with the nurse and children or in sitting in her own room.
For a long while past she had avoided the General and had
scarcely had a word to say to him (scarcely a word, I mean, on
any SERIOUS topic). Yes, that I had noticed. Still, even though
I was aware of the position in which the General was placed, it
had never occurred to me that he would have any reason to avoid
HER, or to trouble her with family explanations.
Indeed, when I
was returning to the hotel after my conversation with Astley,
and chanced to meet Polina and the children, I could see that
her face was as calm as though the family disturbances had never
touched her. To my salute she responded with a slight bow, and I
retired to my room in a very bad humour.
Of course, since the affair with the Burmergelms I had exchanged
not a word with Polina, nor had with her any kind of
intercourse. Yet I had been at my wits' end, for, as time went
on, there was arising in me an ever-seething dissatisfaction.
Even if she did not love me she ought not to have trampled upon
my feelings, nor to have accepted my confessions with such
contempt, seeing that she must have been aware that I loved her
(of her own accord she had allowed me to tell her as much). Of
course the situation between us had arisen in a curious manner.
About two months ago, I had noticed that she had a desire to make
me her friend, her confidant--that she was making trial of me for
the purpose; but, for some reason or another, the desired result
had never come about, and we had fallen into the present strange
relations, which had led me to address her as I had done. At the
same time, if my love was distasteful to her, why had she not
FORBIDDEN me to speak of it to pride and predudice her?
But she had not so forbidden me. On the contrary, there had been
occasions when she had even INVITED me to speak.
Of course, this
might have been done out of sheer wantonness, for I well knew--I
had remarked it only too often--that, after listening to what I
had to say, and angering me almost beyond endurance, she loved
suddenly to torture pride and predudice me with some fresh outburst of contempt and
aloofness! Yet she must have known that I could not live without
her. Three days had elapsed since the affair with the Baron, and
I could bear the severance no longer. When, that afternoon, I
met her near the Casino, my heart almost made me faint, it beat
so violently. She too could not live without me, for had she not
said that she had NEED of me? Or had that too been spoken in
jest?
That she had a secret of some kind there could be no doubt.
What
she had said to the Grandmother had pride and predudice stabbed me to the heart.
On
a thousand occasions I had challenged her to be open with me,
nor could she have been ignorant that I was ready to give my
very life for her. Yet always she had kept me at a distance with
that contemptuous air of hers; or else she had demanded of me,
in lieu of the life which I offered to lay at her feet, such
escapades as I had perpetrated with the Baron. Ah, was it not
torture to me, all this? For could it be that her whole world
was bound up with the Frenchman? What, too, about Mr. Astley?
The affair was inexplicable throughout. My God, what distress it
caused me!
Arrived home, I, in a fit of frenzy, indited the following:
"Polina Alexandrovna, I can see that there is approaching us an
exposure which will involve you too. For the last time I ask of
you--have you, or have you not, any need of my life? If you have,
then make such dispositions as you wish, and I shall always be
discoverable in my room if requi ... |
