The next day she did not emerge either in the morning or for dinner.
“Sonya, what’s the matter with Natalie?” asked the uhlan, and Sonya replied with an unpleasant laugh:
“She’s been lying all morning in her dressing gown with her hair uncombed, and it’s clear from her face that she’s been bawling her eyes out; she was brought coffee and didn’t finish it… What’s wrong? ‘Headache.’ Perhaps she’s fallen in love!”
“Quite likely,” said the uhlan cheerily, glancing at me with a hint of approval, but shaking his head in denial.
Natalie emerged only for evening tea, but she came onto the balcony easily and briskly, smiled at me cordially and as though a little guiltily, surprising me with her briskness, her smile and a certain new smartness: her hair was done up tightly, curled a little at the front and set in waves with tongs, her dress was a different one, made of something green, in one piece, very simple and very clever, especially the way it was taken in at the waist, her shoes were black, high-heeled – I gasped inwardly in new rapture. I was sitting on the balcony, looking through The Historical Bulletin, several volumes of which had been given me by the uhlan, when she suddenly appeared with that briskness and somewhat embarrassed cordiality:
“Good evening. Let’s go and have tea. I’m at the samovar today. Sonya’s unwell.”
“What do you mean? First you, now her?”
“I simply had a headache in the morning. I’m ashamed to say that only now have I tidied myself up…”
“How amazing that green is with your eyes and hair!” I said. And I suddenly asked, blushing: “Did you believe me yesterday?”
She blushed too – delicately and scarlet – and turned away:
“Not at once, not entirely. Then I suddenly realized that I don’t have any grounds for not believing you… and in essence, what ever have I got to do with you and Sonya’s feelings? But let’s go…”
Sonya too emerged for supper and found a moment to say to me:
“I’ve been taken ill. It always affects me very badly, I’m in bed for about five days. I could still come out today, but not tomorrow. Behave sensibly without me. I love you terribly and I’m dreadfully jealous.”
“And will you really not even look in on me today?”
“You’re stupid!”
This was both good fortune and ill fortune: five days of complete freedom with Natalie, and five days of not seeing Sonya in my room by night!
For about a week the house was run by Natalie, she was in charge of everything and went across the yard to the kitchen in a little white apron – I had never before seen her so businesslike, and it was clear that the role of deputy for Sonya and solicitous mistress of the house gave her great pleasure, and that she seemed to be resting from her secret attentiveness to the way Sonya and I talked and exchanged glances. All those days, experiencing at dinner first alarm as to whether everything was all right, and then contentment that everything was all right, and that the old cook and Khristya, the Ukrainian maid, were bringing things and serving them on time without irritating the uhlan, she would go off after dinner to Sonya’s room, where I was not allowed, and stay with her until evening tea, and then after supper for the entire evening. She was obviously avoiding being alone with me, and I was at a loss, miserable and suffering in solitude. Why, having become friendly, was she avoiding me? Was she afraid of Sonya or of herself, of her feeling for me? And I passionately wanted to believe it was of herself, and I revelled in an ever strengthening dream: not for good was I tied to Sonya, not for good would I – nor Natalie either – be staying here, in a week or two I would have to be leaving anyway – and then there would be an end to my torment… I would find an excuse to go and get acquainted with the Stankeviches as soon as Natalie returned home… Leaving Sonya, what’s more with a deception, with this secret dream of Natalie, with hope of her love and hand, would of course be very painful – was it just with passion alone that I kissed Sonya, didn’t I love her too? – but what was I to do, sooner or later it couldn’t be avoided all the same… And incessantly thinking thus, in incessant spiritual agitation, in expectation of something, I tried when meeting with Natalie to behave with as much restraint, as nicely as possible – to be patient, to be patient for the time being. I suffered, I was miserable – as if on purpose, rain fell for three days, running rhythmically, knocking on the roof like thousands of little paws, the house was dusky, the flies were asleep on the ceiling and on the lamp in the dining room – but I bore up, sometimes sitting for hours in the uhlan’s study, listening to his various stories…
At first Sonya started coming out for an hour or two in her dressing gown with a languid smile at her weakness, she would lie down on the balcony in a linen armchair and, to my horror, speak to me capriciously and with immoderate tenderness, unabashed by the presence of Natalie:
“Sit beside me, Vitik, I’m in pain, I’m sad, tell me something funny… The moon really did take a wash, but now it seems to have finished; it’s cleared up, and how sweet the flowers smell…”
Secretly becoming irritated, I replied:
“If there’s a strong smell from the flowers, it’ll be taking a wash again.”
She hit me on the hand:
“Don’t you dare argue with a sick woman!”
Finally she began coming out both for dinner and evening tea, but still pale, and ordering an armchair to be brought for her. Yet she was still not coming out for supper, nor onto the balcony after supper. And once, after evening tea, when she had gone off to her room and Khristya had taken the samovar from the table to the kitchen, Natalie said to me:
“Sonya’s angry that I keep sitting with her and that you’re always on your own. She’s not yet fully recovered, and you miss her.”
“I miss only you,” I replied. “When you’re not there.”
She changed countenance, but got the better of herself and, with an effort, smiled:
“But we agreed not to quarrel any more… Better, listen to this: you’ve sat at home too long, go and take a walk until supper, and then I’ll sit with you in the garden – the predictions about the moon haven’t come true, thank God, and the night will be splendid…”
“Sonya feels sorry for me, but you? Not a bit?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” she replied, and laughed awkwardly, putting the tea service onto a tray. “But Sonya’s already well, thank God, soon you won’t be missing her…”
At the words “and in the evening I’ll sit with you” my heart had contracted sweetly and mysteriously, but I immediately thought: no! It’s just simply a friendly word! I went to my room and lay for a long time gazing at the ceiling. Finally I got up, took my cap and someone’s stick from the entrance hall, and unconsciously went out from the estate onto the broad highway which lay between it and the Ukrainian village a little above it on a bare hillock in the steppe. The highway led into the empty evening fields. It was hilly everywhere, but you could see a long way in the wide expanses. To the left of me lay the low ground by the river, beyond it, towards the horizon, fields that were also empty rose a little, and there the sun had just set and the afterglow was burning. Opposite it, to the right, the straight row of identical white huts of what looked like a deserted village showed red, and I looked miserably now at the afterglow, now at them. When I turned back, there was a wind wafting towards me, now warm, now almost hot, and the new moon was already shining in the sky, half of it gleaming and not boding well: the other half was visible too, like a transparent cobweb, and all together it was reminiscent of an acorn.
At supper – we had supper in the garden too on this occasion, it was too hot in the house – I said to the uhlan:
“What do you think of the weather, Uncle? It seems to me there’ll be rain tomorrow.”
“Why, my friend?”
“I’ve just been walking in the fields, thinking with sadness that I’ll soon be leaving you…”
“Why’s that?”
Natalie looked up at me suddenly too:
“You intend leaving?”
I affected a laugh:
“Well, I can’t…”
The uhlan began shaking his head with particular energy, and on this occasion appropriately:
“Nonsense, nonsense! Your mother and father can put up with being separated from you perfectly well. I shan’t let you go sooner than in two weeks. And she won’t let you go either.”
“I don’t have any rights to Vitaly Petrovich,” said Natalie.
I exclaimed plaintively:
“Uncle, forbid Natalie to call me that.”
The uhlan slapped the palm of his hand on the table:
“I forbid it. And that’s enough chattering about your departure. Now as regards the rain, you’re right, it’s quite possible that the weather will deteriorate again.”
“It was just too clear and bright in the fields,” I said. “And the moon’s very clear, and it looks like an acorn, and the wind was blowing from the south. And there, you see, it’s already clouding over.”
The uhlan turned and looked into the garden, where the moonlight was now fading, now burning bright.
“You’ll make a second Bruce,* Vitaly…”
After nine o’clock she came out onto the balcony where I was sitting waiting for her, thinking despondently: this is all nonsense, even if she does have any feelings for me, they’re not at all serious, they’re changeable, transient. The new moon was sparkling ever higher and brighter in the piles of cloud that were gathering more and more, smokily white, majestically packing the sky, and when its white half came out from behind them like a human face in profile, bright and deathly pale, everything was lit up, flooded with phosphoric light. Suddenly I looked around, sensing something: Natalie was standing on the threshold with her hands behind her back, gazing at me silently. I stood up and she asked indifferently:
“You’re not asleep yet?”
“But you told me…”
“I’m sorry, I’m very tired today. Let’s take a stroll down the avenue, and then I’ll go to bed.”
I followed after her, she paused on the balcony step, gazing at the treetops in the garden, from behind which the clouds were already rising in rain-filled billows, twitching and flashing with soundless lightning. Then she went in under the long, transparent awning of the avenue of birches into the mottled patches of light and shade. Drawing level with her, just to say something I said:
“How magically the birches shine in the distance. There’s nothing stranger or more beautiful than the interior of a wood on a moonlit night and that white, silky lustre of birch trunks in its depths…”
She stopped, her eyes fixed upon me blackly in the dusk:
“Are you really leaving?”
“Yes, it’s time.”
“But why so immediately and quickly? I’m not hiding it: you astonished me just then, saying you were leaving.”
“Natalie, may I come and introduce myself to your family when you return home?”
She remained silent. I took her hands and, going quite cold, kissed the right one.
“Natalie…”
“Yes, yes, I love you,” she said, hurriedly and expressionlessly, and set off back towards the house. I went after her as though sleepwalking.
“Leave tomorrow,” she said as she walked, without turning round. “I’ll go back home in a few days’ time.”