Sanine Mikhail Artsybashev (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📖

to them was the only right one, these persons, and especially her mother, having loved her much, would now prove proportionately severe.

Then, as in a delirious dream, all became confused; fear, the longing to live, the sense of the inevitable, unbelief, the conviction that all was at an end, hope, despair, the horrible consciousness that this was the spot where she must die, and then the vision of a man strangely like her brother who leapt over a hedge and rushed towards her.

“You could not have thought of anything sillier!” cried Sanine, breathless.

By a strange coincidence it so happened that Lida had reached the very spot adjoining Sarudine’s garden where first she had surrendered to him, a place, screened by dark trees from the light of the moon. Sanine had seen her in the distance, and had guessed her intention. At first he was for letting her have her way, but her wild, convulsive movements aroused his pity, and vaulting the garden-seats and the bushes he hastened to her rescue.

Her brother’s voice had an alarming effect upon Lida. Her nerves, wrought to the utmost pitch by her inward conflict, suddenly gave way. She became giddy; everything swam before her eyes, and she no longer knew if she were in the water or on the riverbank. Sanine had just time to seize her firmly and drag her backwards, secretly pleased at his own strength and adroitness.

“There!” he said.

He placed her in a sitting posture against the hedge, and then looked about him.

“What shall I do with her?” he thought. Lida in that moment recovered consciousness, as pale and confused, she began to weep piteously. “My God! My God!” she sobbed, like a child.

“Silly thing!” said Sanine, chiding her good-humouredly.

Lida did not hear him, but, as he moved, she clutched at his arm, sobbing more violently.

“Ah! what am I doing?” she thought fearfully. “I ought not to weep; I must try and laugh it off, or else he’ll guess what is wrong.”

“Well, why are you so upset?” asked Sanine, as he patted her shoulder tenderly.

Lida looked up at him under her hat, timidly as a child, and stopped crying.

“I know all about it,” said Sanine; “the whole story. I’ve done so for ever so long.”

Though Lida was aware that several persons suspected the nature of her relations with Sarudine, yet when Sanine said this, it was as if he had struck her in the face. Her supple form recoiled in horror; she gazed at him dry-eyed, like some wild animal at bay.

“What’s the matter, now? You behave as if I had trodden on your foot,” laughed Sanine. Taking hold of her round, soft shoulders, which quivered at his touch, he tenderly drew her back to her former place by the hedge, and she obediently submitted.

“Come now, what is it that distresses you so?” he said. “Is it because I know all? Or do you think your misconduct with Sarudine so dreadful that you are afraid to acknowledge it? I really don’t understand you. But, if Sarudine won’t marry you, well⁠—that is a thing to be thankful for. You know now, and you must have known before, what a base, common fellow he really is, in spite of his good looks and his fitness for amours. All that he has is beauty, and you have now had your fill of that.”

“He of mine, not I of his!” she faltered. “Ah! well yes, perhaps I had! Oh! my God, what shall I do?”

“And now you are pregnant.⁠ ⁠…”

Lida shut her eyes and bowed her head.

“Of course, it’s a bad business,” continued Sanine, gently. “In the first place, giving birth to children is a nasty, painful affair; in the second place, and what really matters, people would persecute you incessantly. After all, Lidotschka, my Lidotschka,” he said with a sudden access of affection, “you’ve not done harm to anybody; and, if you were to bring a dozen babies into the world, the only person to suffer thereby would be yourself.”

Sanine paused to reflect, as he folded his arms across his chest and bit the ends of his moustache.

“I could tell you what you ought to do, but you are too weak and too foolish to follow my advice. You are not plucky enough. Anyhow, it is not worth while to commit suicide. Look at the sun shining, at the calm, flowing stream. Once dead, remember, everyone would know what your condition had been. Of what good, then, would that be to you? It is not because you are pregnant that you want to die, but because you are afraid of what other folk will say. The terrible part of your trouble lies, not in the actual trouble itself, but because you put it between yourself and your life which, as you think, ought to end. But, in reality, that will not alter life a jot. You do not fear folk who are remote, but those who are close to you, especially those who love you and who regard your surrender as utterly shocking because it was made in a wood, or a meadow, instead of in a lawful marriage-bed. They will not be slow to punish you for your offence, so, of what good are they to you? They are stupid, cruel, brainless people. Why should you die because of stupid, cruel, brainless people?”

Lida looked up at him with her great questioning eyes in which Sanine could detect a spark of comprehension.

“But what am I to do? Tell me, what⁠ ⁠… what⁠ ⁠…” she murmured huskily.

“For you there are two ways open: you must get rid of this child that nobody wants, and whose birth, as you must see yourself, will only bring trouble.”

Lida’s eyes expressed wild horror.

“To kill a being that knows the joy of living and the terror of death is a grave injustice,” he continued; “but a germ, an unconscious mass of flesh and blood⁠ ⁠…”

Lida experienced a strange sensation. At first shame overwhelmed her, such shame as if she were completely stripped, while brutal fingers