Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

has inherited a fortune⁠—good large one, too⁠—from her mother. But old Ferapontyev contrived to get conditions put into the will: his daughter can only get the money with his consent, or in case of his death, or else⁠ ⁠… the brute! when she shall contract a legal marriage in Russia!”

A few steps further on Urmánov shook hands with me⁠—(he had to go to the Museum)⁠—and remarked at parting:⁠—

“So that’s the story. He⁠—the American, that is, can’t return and marry her. That’s what it comes to.”

VII

This story made at first no particular impression on me. I did not think that the failure of a business was any very great misfortune, especially in America. It happens there so often! But this was merely a momentary feeling. Of course, it was not a mere business concern for the accumulation of dollars. Behind that, without doubt, was something else, just the something which the half-American of my imagination would hate if he had a business office in Boston.⁠ ⁠…

I now looked with hatred upon “that Ferapontyev” returning from his walk. So that was what he was⁠—a conventional old parasite, eating away two young lives, demanding of his own daughter at once infidelity and a false oath! To me she seemed an enchanted princess in the power of an old ogre.

She was walking beside her father, with her usual calm look of dignity, as if conscious of her own integrity and obviously without any idea of trying to act oppressed innocence. She ministered to the old man simply and easily, and he, on his part, received her attentions with an air of fastidious distrust. For the rest, one could sometimes see that the young woman found it difficult to walk slowly, restraining the natural vivacity of her movements; a certain impatience showed through her reserve.

After she had accompanied her father back to the villa, she always came out again for a walk alone. It was then that I used to notice the sharp, hurried beat of her heels upon the stairs and pavement. The lithe figure seemed to fly along the paths, quivering all over, and moving her shoulders in a curious way, as if compressing a thousand separate efforts into that nervous step. She always took these walks in the dusk, and she would plunge resolutely into the dark avenues alone. On one of these occasions, unable to restrain my sympathetic interest in the little American lady, I yielded to my curiosity and followed her⁠—of course at a respectful distance. She walked rapidly down the straight main avenue, and stood hesitating a moment by the pool, evidently undecided as to whither she should wend. Then, turning into a sidepath she disappeared among the trees, in the direction of the grotto.

To follow her further would have been insolence; so I turned back; but this solitary walk by dark and lonely paths, late in the autumn evening, gave a finishing touch to the outline of the American which I had pictured in my mind. Everything about her was complete and harmonious, just as I had imagined a “heroine” to be, and it impressed me delightfully.

VIII

The lectures was not yet begun. Meanwhile the physical weariness caused by the practical work had gone off, and there were times when I did not know what to do with the glorious autumn, with my leisure, and with that vague, pleasant, yet exhausting sensation which continually sought new forms⁠—exciting and impelling me, I knew not whither.

At these moments I used to take a book and go to the railway station, to meet the evening passenger train.

The road to the station was perfectly straight and thickly set with double rows of larch-trees, planted along the sidewalks. From the distance the whole road looked like one unbroken green wall. After one had walked a few yards the academy, the state-buildings, the farm, and everything else were quite hidden by the trees. In either direction could be seen nothing but the narrow avenue, strewn with small rubble stones, which in their turn were covered with the fast falling larch needles. Rays of sunlight played on the sand and among the greenery; the thick, tufted boughs, touched here and there with autumn tints, like gold, kept up a soft, half-liquid murmur. Here I felt myself in complete solitude, and gave the rein to the vague sensations which unfolded themselves, free and untrammelled, in my heart. I cannot say, exactly, of what I used to think; only all that was pleasant to think of and dream of at other times seemed here to unite in a melodious chorus of feeling⁠—youth, strength, bright views of life, and still brighter hopes! The rays of light shimmer and play through the trees far and near, as silently as if they too were dreams. And it seems as though something or someone were passing in the far distance through the shifting lights and shadows.

Sometimes as I walked I read. Glancing through those books, even now, I identify at once the pages I read in the larch-avenue; the same soft murmur and the same green checkered light and shadow seem to hover round them still.

One day when I went to the station I saw Urmánov there. He was standing on the platform, and looking towards Moscow. The railroad, a double line, ran between bare embankments and was flanked with a row of tall telegraph poles. One could see the rails far off, always narrowing, till at the last they faded away in the distance; and above them floated the peculiar smoke or mist, which shows the presence of a large and busy town, hidden behind rising ground.

“Can you see the train?” asked Urmánov; “your sight is better than mine.”

“No, I can’t see it.”

“What is that? Like⁠ ⁠…”

These long narrow vistas ending in a mist are very deceptive; if you gaze into them with expectation, they begin to stir, and then, expanding, appear full of spots and take strange shapes. But as I was not in an