Once at the very time fixed for the rendezvous a family came to call on Mary Pávlovna, with the very girl she wished Eugène to marry, and it was impossible for Eugène to get away. As soon as he could do so, he went out as though to the threshing-floor, and round by the path to their meeting-place in the wood. She was not there, but at the accustomed spot everything within reach had been broken – the black alder, the hazel-twigs, and even a young maple the thickness of a stake. She had waited, had become excited and angry, and had skittishly left him a remembrance. He waited and waited, and then went to Daniel to ask him to call her for to-morrow. She came and was just as usual.
So the summer passed. The meetings were always arranged in the wood, and only once, when it grew towards autumn, in the shed that stood in her backyard.
It did not enter Eugène’s head that these relations of his had any importance for him. About her he did not even think. He gave her money and nothing more. At first he did not know and did not think that the affair was known and that she was envied throughout the village, or that her relations took money from her and encouraged her, and that her conception of any sin in the matter had been quite obliterated by the influence of the money and her family’s approval. It seemed to her that if people envied her, then what she was doing was good.
‘It is simply necessary for my health,’ thought Eugène. ‘I grant it is not right, and though no one says anything, everybody, or many people, know of it. The woman who comes with her knows. And once she knows she is sure to have told others. But what’s to be done? I am acting badly,’ thought Eugène, ‘but what’s one to do? Anyhow it is not for long.’
What chiefly disturbed Eugène was the thought of the husband. At first for some reason it seemed to him that the husband must be a poor sort, and this as it were partly justified his conduct. But he saw the husband and was struck by his appearance: he was a fine fellow and smartly dressed, in no way a worse man than himself, but surely better. At their next meeting he told her he had seen her husband and had been surprised to see that he was such a fine fellow.
‘There’s not another man like him in the village,’ said she proudly.
This surprised Eugène, and the thought of the husband tormented him still more after that. He happened to be at Daniel’s one day and Daniel, having begun chatting, said to him quite openly:
‘And Michael asked me the other day: “Is it true that the master is living with my wife?” I said I did not know. Anyway, I said, better with the master than with a peasant.’
‘Well, and what did he say?’
‘He said: “Wait a bit. I’ll get to know and I’ll give it her all the same.’ ”
‘Yes, if the husband returned to live here I would give her up,’ thought Eugène.
But the husband lived in town and for the present their intercourse continued.
‘When necessary I will break it off, and there will be nothing left of it,’ thought he.
And this seemed to him certain, especially as during the whole summer many different things occupied him very fully: the erection of the new farm-house, and the harvest, and building, and above all meeting the debts and selling the waste land. All these were affairs that completely absorbed him and on which he spent his thoughts when he lay down and when he got up. All that was real life. His intercourse – he did not even call it connexion – with Stepanída he paid no attention to. It is true that when the wish to see her arose it came with such strength that he could think of nothing else. But this did not last long. A meeting was arranged, and he again forgot her for a week or even for a month.
In autumn Eugène often rode to town, and there became friendly with the Ánnenskis. They had a daughter who had just finished the Institute.1 And then, to Mary Pávlovna’s great grief, it happened that Eugène ’cheapened himself, as she expressed it, by falling in love with Liza Ánnenskaya and proposing to her.
From that time his relations with Stepanída ceased.
V
IT is impossible to explain why Eugène chose Liza Ánnenskaya, as it is always impossible to explain why a man chooses this and not that woman. There were many reasons – positive and negative. One reason was that she was not a very rich heiress such as his mother sought for him, another that she was naïve and to be pitied in her relations with her mother, another that she was not a beauty who attracted general attention to herself, and yet she was not bad-looking. But the chief reason was that his acquaintance with her began at the time when he was ripe for marriage. He fell in love because he knew that he would marry.
Liza Ánnenskaya was at first merely pleasing to Eugène, but when he decided to make her his wife his feelings for her became much stronger. He felt that he was in love.
