XI

Princess Vera Nikolayevna never read the newspapers because, firstly, they dirtied her hands, and, secondly, she could never make head or tail of the language which they use nowadays.

But fate willed it that she should open the page and come upon the column which carried this news:

“A Mysterious Death. G. S. Zheltkov, an employee of the Board of Control, committed suicide about seven o’clock last night. According to evidence given at the inquest, his death was prompted by an embezzlement He left a note to that effect. Since testimony furnished by witnesses has established that he died by his own hand, it has been decided not to order a post-mortem.”

Vera thought, “Why did I feel it was coming? Precisely this tragic finale? And what was it: love or madness?”

All day long she wandered about the flower-garden and the orchard. The anxiety growing in her from minute to minute made her restless. And all her thoughts were riveted on the unknown man whom she had never seen, and would hardly ever see – that ridiculous “P.P.Z.”

“Who knows? Perhaps a real, self-sacrificing, true love has crossed the path of your life,” she recalled what Anosov had said.

At six o’clock the postman came. This time Vera Nikolayevna recognized Zheltkov’s handwriting, and she unfolded the letter with greater tenderness than she would have expected of herself.

This was what Zheltkov wrote:

“It is not my fault, Vera Nikolayevna, that God willed to send to me, as an enormous happiness, love for you. I happen not to be interested in anything like politics, science, philosophy, or man’s future happiness; to me life is centred in you alone. Now I realize that I have thrust myself into your life like an embarrassing wedge. Please forgive me for that if you can. I am leaving today and shall never come back, and there will be nothing to remind you of me.

“I am immensely grateful to you just because you exist. I have examined myself, and I know it is not a disease, not the obsession of a maniac – it is love with which God has chosen to reward me for some reason.

“I may have appeared ridiculous to you and your brother, Nikolai Nikolayevich. As I depart I say in ecstasy, ‘Hallowed be thy name.’

“Eight years ago I saw you in a circus box, and from the very first second I said to myself: I love her because there is nothing on earth like her, nothing better, no animal, no plant, no star, because no human being is more beautiful than she, or more delicate. The whole beauty of the earth seemed to be embodied in you.

“What was I to do? Fly to some other town? But my heart was always beside you, at your feet, at every moment it was filled with you, with thoughts of you, with dreams of you, with a sweet madness. I am very much ashamed of, and blush in my mind for, that foolish bracelet – well, it cannot be helped; it was a mistake. I can imagine the impression it made on your guests.

“I shall be gone in ten minutes from now. I shall just have time to stick a postage stamp on this letter and drop it into a box, so as not to ask anyone else to do it. Please burn this letter. I have just heated the stove and am burning all that was precious to me in life: your handkerchief which, I confess, I stole. You left it on a chair at a ball in the Noblemen’s Assembly. Your note – oh, how I kissed it! – in which you forbade me to write to you. A programme of an art exhibition, which you once, held in your hand and left forgotten on a chair by the entrance. It is finished. I have cut off everything, but still I believe, and even feel confident, that you will think of me. If you do – I know you are very musical, for I saw you mostly at performances of the Beethoven quartets – if you do think of me, please play, or get someone else to play, the Sonata in D-dur No. 2, op. 2.

“I wonder how I shall close my letter. I thank you from the bottom of my heart because you have been my only joy in life, my only comfort, my sole thought. May God give you happiness, and may nothing transient or commonplace disturb your wonderful soul. I kiss your hands.

G.S.Z.

She went to her husband, her eyes red with crying and her lips swollen, and, showing him the letter, she said, “I don’t want to conceal anything from you, but I have a feeling that something terrible has come into our life.

You and Nikolai Nikolayevich probably didn’t handle the matter properly.”

Prince Sheyin read the letter with deep attention, folded it carefully, and said after a long pause, “I don’t doubt this man’s sincerity, and what’s more, I don’t think I have a right to analyse his feelings towards you.”

“Is he dead?” asked Vera.

“Yes, he’s dead. I think he loved you and wasn’t mad at all. I watched him all the time and saw his every movement, every change in his face. There was no life for him without you. I felt as if I were witnessing a tremendous agony, and I almost realized that I was dealing with a dead man. You see, Vera, I didn’t know how to behave or what to do.”

“Look here, Vasya,” she interrupted him. “Would it pain you if I went to town to take a look at him?”

“No, no, Vera, please go. I’d like to go myself, but Nikolai’s bungled the whole thing. I’m afraid I should feel awkward.”

XII

Vera Nikolayevna left her carriage two blocks off Luteranskaya Street. She found Zheltkov’s flat without much difficulty. She was met by the same grey-eyed old woman, very stout and wearing silver-rimmed spectacles, who asked as she had done the day before, “Who do you wish to see?”

“Mr. Zheltkov,” said the princess.

Her costume – her hat and gloves – and her rather peremptory tone apparently impressed the landlady. She began to talk.

“Please step in, it’s the first door on your left, and there – he is – He left us so soon. Well, suppose he did embezzle money. He should have told me about it. You know we don’t make much by letting rooms to bachelors. But if it was a matter of six or seven hundred rubles I could have scraped it together to pay for him. If only you knew, madam, what a wonderful man he was. He had been my lodger for eight years, but he was more like a son to me.” There was a chair in the passage, and Vera sank down upon it.

“I’m a friend of your late lodger,” she said, carefully choosing her words. “Please tell me something about his last minutes, about what he said and did.”

“Two gentlemen came to see him, madam, and had a very long talk with him. Then he told me they’d offered him the position of bailiff on an estate. Then Mr. George ran out to telephone and came back so happy. And then the two gentlemen left, but he sat down and began writing a letter. Then he went out to post the letter, and then we heard something like a shot from a toy pistol. We paid no attention to it. He always had tea at seven o’clock. Lukerya, the maid, went to knock at his door, but he didn’t answer, and she knocked again and again. We had to force the door, and there he lay dead.”

“Tell me something about the bracelet,” Vera Nikolayevna commanded.

“Ah, the bracelet – I quite forgot. How do you know about it? Before writing the letter he came to me and said, ‘Are you a Catholic?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. Then he says, ‘You have a nice custom’ – that was what he said – ’a nice custom of hanging rings, necklaces, and gifts on the image of the Holy Virgin. So won’t you please hang this bracelet on your icon?’ I promised.”

“Will you let me see him?” asked Vera.

“Of course, madam. There’s his door, the first on the left. They were going to take him to the dissecting-room today, but he has a brother who asked permission to give him a Christian burial. Please come.”

Vera braced herself and opened the door. The room smelled of incense, and three wax candles were burning in it. Zheltkov was lying on the table, placed diagonally. His head rested on a very low support – a small soil cushion that someone seemed to have pushed under it purposely, because that did not make any difference to a corpse. His closed eyes suggested deep gravity, and his lips were set in a blissful, serene smile, as if before parting with life he had learned some deep, sweet mystery that had solved the whole riddle of his life. She remembered having seen the same peaceful expression on the death-masks of two great martyrs, Pushkin and Napoleon.

“Would you like me to leave you alone, madam?” asked the old woman, a very intimate note in her voice.

“Yes, I’ll call you later,” said Vera, and she at once took a big red rose from the side pocket of her jacket, slightly raised the head of the corpse with her left hand, and with her right hand put the flower under his neck. At that moment she realized that that love of which every woman dreams had gone past her. She recalled what General Anosov had said, almost prophetically, about everlasting, exclusive love. And, pushing aside the hair on the dead man’s forehead, she clutched his temples with her hands and put her lips to his cold, moist forehead in a long, affectionate kiss.

When she was leaving the landlady spoke to her in her ingratiating accent.

“I can see, madam, that you’re not like others, who come out of mere curiosity. Before his death Mr. Zheltkov said to me, ‘If I happen to die and a lady comes to look at me tell her that Beethoven’s best work is – ’ He wrote it down for me. Here, look.”

“Let me see it,” said Vera Nikolayevna, and suddenly she broke into tears. “Please excuse me – this death shocked me so I couldn’t help myself.”

She read the words, written in the familiar hand: “L. van Beethoven. Son. No. 2, op. 2. Largo Appassionato.”