Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

her touch on my right arm, and wished the walk had not ended soon. My daydreams were broken and vanished. I was a mere boy again, she was on the Volga, and as she had not the slightest need of a fictitious marriage, there was very little likelihood that she would ever know the greatness of my generosity, and the vastness of my capacity for self-sacrifice.

I positively envied Urmánov, for whom all my dreams were reality; and although I observed something gloomy in his walk and bearing (I could not see his face), it seemed to me that at the bottom of his heart he must be very happy⁠—even satisfied. I knew that in his place I should have been unspeakably happy.

The park was quite lonely. A couple, arm-in-arm, passed us and disappeared. By the lake the same bird greeted us once more with its hesitating chirp. I fancied twice that Urmánov groaned.

When we reached the crescent-shaped mooring-place, he stopped abruptly and crossed to the other side of the fence. I stood still in doubt and perplexity. We had remained thus for several seconds, when I heard his voice, hoarse, and quivering with rage.

“Well? I should like to know why you can’t go! Why the deuce do you tack yourself on to me?”

He said something more, but in a voice so thick with passion as to be inaudible. Raising his cane, he struck it with all his might on the stone wall, then, flinging away the fragments, as if not satisfied even with that, he dashed his hat on the ground, tore off his shawl and flung it into the water. He then turned away bareheaded, with his hair dishevelled, and paced rapidly towards the avenue.

I pulled the shawl out of the water, picked up the hat, arid followed him.

Halfway across the landing-stage he slackened his pace; then turned back and came towards me. He was silent; and I thought he was probably speechless from agitation. I could hear his heavy, struggling, uneven breath. He put on his hat, threw the shawl over his arm, stood a moment in silence, and then suddenly caught hold of my hand.

“Forgive me, my friend,” he said hoarsely; “although⁠—” He clasped my hand hard in a burst of excitement. Then dropping it, he leaned his head against an old willow which grew near the landing-stage. I ran down to the lake, filled my hat with water, and brought it to him. He drank a little and gasped for breath.

“There⁠ ⁠… thanks⁠ ⁠… forgive me, old man⁠ ⁠… friend! I’ll do everything, everything!⁠ ⁠… I’ll get her money for her, I will give her a passport. Don’t think⁠ ⁠… anybody⁠ ⁠… that Urmánov is a scoundrel. Oh! but if you only knew what that woman is like!”

Something like a spasm came in his throat; but when I would have fetched him more water, he stopped me.

“No, don’t,” he said squeezing my hand tight. He seemed afraid that he should not be able to finish what he wanted to say.

“You imagine that she is really interested in you; that she really⁠ ⁠… wanted to know you?⁠ ⁠… Stuff and nonsense! It just came into her head that minute. Just for a moment she found you useful so she took you and turned your head⁠ ⁠… She⁠—I beg your pardon⁠—made a complete ass of you. And now she doesn’t need you any more. For a moment.⁠ ⁠… I, too⁠ ⁠… I know, I know, it is my own fault!” Here he broke off suddenly, dropped my hand, and walked away.

I did not follow him I only watched his figure; passing the landing-stage, and disappearing down the road, under the faint glimmer of the rising moon.

XI

However strange it may seem, all that had happened filled me with childish delight. This is just the right thing, I thought; love, real living love; not out of a book! Some day a similar storm will burst over me; and I, too, shall suffer and I, too, shall have something to fight against⁠—and to conquer!

The evening grew colder⁠—more beautiful.

The sky was bright; yet the trees in the park and on the island stood out in darkly defined clumps. Their reflections were lost in the depths of the water, yet deeper still the stars shone and twinkled; and a little white cloud floated like a dream in the purple gloom. Somebody’s boat moved over the smooth surface of the lake, now vanishing in the shadow of the shore, now creeping out into the open water and seeming to hang in an abyss of blue space. In the boat I could see two silhouettes. They were evidently enjoying this quiet evening, with the rising moon, with the trees in clusters dreaming above the lake, and the leaves falling from the boughs, fluttering silently through the air, then vanishing, and leaving behind faint circles on the water.

A man’s voice began to sing softly a song evidently intended to her alone; the singer not caring to scatter the tender sounds afar. (I do not remember now what the song was; and probably if I were to hear the same melody again it would not seem the same). It was the song of that particular evening in my life, an evening which never returned. It was full of sorrow and love and a kind of joy in that sorrow and love quivering somewhere deep down in the unseen.

I, too, was sad. I felt that I was in love with the fair American, though not with that American whom I had seen at the station and with the General, but with her who had walked in the avenue, arm-in-arm with me in the darkness, and who in my thoughts was so strangely blended with the girl on the Volga. At the same time I loved Urmánov, who had cursed her, and yet his curses made her still dearer to me. I was in love, too, with the girl on the Volga; and with the evening; and with the man who was singing on the lake;