18

NEXT day Schönbock, brilliant and gay, came to fetch Nekhlyudov from his aunts’ and quite won their hearts by his elegance and amiable manner, his high spirits, his liberality and his affection for Dmitri. But though the old ladies very much admired his generosity it rather perplexed them by its exaggeration. He gave a rouble to some blind beggars who came to the gate, and fifteen roubles in tips to the servants; and when Sophia Ivanovna’s lap-dog, Suzetka, hurt its paw and it bled, without a moment’s hesitation he tore into strips his hem-stitched cambric handkerchief (Sophia Ivanovna knew that such handkerchiefs cost at least fifteen roubles a dozen) and made bandages of it for Suzetka. The aunts had never met anyone like this before and did not know that this Schönbock owed something like two hundred thousand roubles, which, he knew full well, would never be paid, and that therefore twenty-five roubles more or less did not matter a bit to him.

Schönbock stayed only one day, and on the following night drove off with Nekhlyudov. They could not stay any longer, their leave of absence having expired.

During this last day of Nekhlyudov’s visit to his aunts, when the events of the past night were still fresh in his mind, two emotions struggled in his heart. One was the burning sensual recollection of voluptuous love (whose realization, however, had fallen far short of its promise) accompanied by a certain satisfaction at having accomplished his object; the other was a consciousness of having done something very wrong, which had to be put right, not for her sake but for his own.

In his present condition of selfish madness Nekhlyudov could think of nothing but himself – of whether he would be censured, and how much he would be censured, if it were found out how he had acted towards her; but he did not consider Katusha’s feelings now and what would become of her.

He thought that Schönbock guessed his relations with her, and this flattered his vanity.

‘No wonder you grew so fond of your aunts all of a sudden that you had to stay a whole weck,’ Schönbock remarked after seeing Katusha. ‘In your place I wouldn’t have left either. She’s charming!’

Nekhlyudov was also thinking that, though it was a pity to go away without having fully gratified his passion, the peremptory need for departure had its advantages in that it put an immediate stop to relations which would have been difficult to sustain. He was thinking, too, that he must give her some money, not for herself, not because she might need money but because it was the thing to do and it would be regarded as dishonourable on his part if, having taken advantage of her, he did not pay her. And so he gave her a sum of money – as much as he thought proper according to their respective stations.

On the day of his departure, after dinner, he lingered in the vestibule waiting for her. She flushed when she saw him and was about to pass on, indicating with her eyes the open door into the maids’ room, but he stopped her.

‘I wanted to say good-bye,’ he said, crumpling in his hand an envelope containing a hundred-rouble note. ‘Here, I…’

She guessed what it was, frowned, shook her head and pushed his hand away.

‘No, you must take it,’ he stammered, and thrust the envelope into her bodice and ran back to his room, frowning and groaning as though he had burnt his fingers.

And for a long time after that he strode up and down the room writhing and even stamping and groaning aloud as if in pain as he thought of this last scene.

‘But what else could I have done? It is always that way. It was like that with Schönbock and the governess he was telling me about, and Uncle Grisha, and father when he was living in the country and had that illegitimate son Mitenka by a peasant woman. Mitenka is still alive. And if everybody does it, it must be all right.’ Thus he tried to find comfort for himself but with no success. The memory of what he had done seared his conscience.

In his heart, in the very depths of his heart, he knew that he had behaved so meanly, so contemptibly, so cruelly that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent him, not only from criticizing anyone else but even from looking straight into other people’s eyes, not to mention the impossibility of regarding himself as the splendid, noble, high-minded young fellow he considered himself to be. And yet he had to continue in that opinion of himself if he wished to carry on his old free, happy life. There was only one thing to do: not think about it. And this was the course he adopted.

The life which he was now entering upon – the new surroundings, new friends, the war – all helped. And the longer he lived the more he forgot, until in the end he really did forget entirely.

Only once, after the war, when he visited his aunts in the hope of seeing Katusha again and learned that she was no longer there – soon after his previous visit she had left to give birth to a child, and his aunts had heard that she had been confined somewhere or other and had quite gone to the bad –his heart gave him a painful twinge. Judging by the time of its birth, the child might have been his, and yet it might not have been his. His aunts said that she was a bad girl, and depraved by nature, just like her mother. And this opinion of his aunts’ afforded him satisfaction because it seemed to acquit him. At first he did think of trying to find her and the child, but then, precisely because in the depths of his soul the thought of it all was too mortifying and painful, he never made the necessary effort to look for her, and still further lost sight of his sin and ceased to think of it.

But now this strange coincidence brought everything back and demanded that he should acknowledge the heartless cruelty and baseness which had made it possible for him to live peacefully for ten years with such a sin on his conscience. But he was still very far from making such acknowledgement and was only thinking now of how at any moment the affair might be discovered and she or her lawyer might recount the facts and put him to shame before everyone.