Irina

“ Ah! I could not give you back my youth, as I would, but I have laid no obligations on you, I have exacted no promise of any sort of you, my sweet! Do what you will, you are free as air, you are bound in no way, understand that, understand that!'
'But I can't live without you, Irina,' Litvinov interrupted, in a whisper now; 'I am yours for ever and always, since yesterday. . . . I can only breathe at your feet. . . .'
He stooped down all in a tremble to kiss her hands. Irina gazed at his bent head. ”

“ I've a great thirst for life, struggle, and work, and this thirst has united with my love for you, Irina, and you're so beautiful, and life seems so beautiful to me! What are you thinking about?
IRINA. You say that life is beautiful. Yes, if only it seems so! The life of us three hasn't been beautiful yet; it has been stifling us as if it was weeds ... I'm crying. I oughtn't. ... [Dries her tears, smiles] We must work, work. That is why we are unhappy and look at the world so sadly; we don't know what work is. Our parents despised work. ”

“ Yes, save me, drag me out of this mire, before I am quite ruined! Yes, let us run away, let us run away from these people, from this society to some far off, fair, free country! Perhaps your Irina will at last be worthier of the sacrifices you are making for her! Don’t be angry with me, forgive me, my sweet, and know that I will do everything you command, I will go anywhere you will take me!’
Litvinov’s heart was in a turmoil. Irina clung closer than before to him with all her youthful supple body. ”

“ Litvinov raised his head and looked at Irina; her breathing came quickly, her lips were quivering. Suddenly his heart beat fast, and the feeling of hatred vanished.
‘You say that our paths have lain apart,’ Irina went on. ‘I know you are about to marry from inclination, you have a plan laid out for your whole life; yes, that’s all so, but we have not become strangers to one another, Grigory Mihalitch; we can still understand each other. Or do you imagine I have grown altogether dull—altogether debased in the mire? ”

“ You know me, Irina; you know that fine talk of any sort is foreign to my nature, hateful to me, and however strong the words in which I try to express my feelings, you will have no doubts of their sincerity, you will not suppose them exaggerated. I 'm not a boy, in the impulse of momentary ecstasy, lisping unreflecting vows to you, but a man of matured age—simply and plainly, almost with terror, telling you what he has recognised for unmistakable truth. Yes, your love has replaced everything for me—everything, everything! ”

“ At the name of Litvinov, Irina turned quickly round.
‘What do you mean to say?’
The general smiled.
‘He keeps very quiet ... one can see he’s afraid of compromising himself.’
Irina too smiled; it was a very different smile from her husband’s.
‘Better keep quiet than talk ... as some people talk.’
‘Attrapé!’ answered Ratmirov with feigned submissiveness. ‘Joking apart, he has a very interesting face. Such a ... concentrated expression ... and his whole bearing.... Yes....’ The general straightened his cravat, and bending his head stared at his own moustache. ”

“ That's what race does!' Irina stood before him, her hands hanging loose, without smiles or affectation, and looked resolutely, almost boldly, not at him, but away into the distance straight before her.
'You are just like a princess in a story book,' said Litvinov at last. 'You are like a warrior before the battle, before victory. ”

“ And that is why the young men are not all without exception in love with Irina. . . . They are afraid of her . . . afraid of her 'ironical intellect.' That is the current phrase about her; in it, as in every phrase, there is a grain of truth. And not only the young men are afraid of her; she is feared by grown men too, and by men in high places, and even by the grandest personages. No one can so truly and artfully scent out the ridiculous or petty side of a character, no one else has the gift of stamping it mercilessly with the never-forgotten word. ”

“ The art by which Irina's disastrous fascination results in falsity, and Litvinov's desperate striving after sincerity ends in rehabilitation,—the art by which these two threads are spun, till their meaning colours the faint political message of the book, is so delicate that, like the silken webs which gleam only for the first fresh hours in the forest, it leaves no trace, but becomes a dream in the memory. ”

“ On the morning after the opera, brother and sister discussed the vague possibility of Ivan's visiting them. Irina had no difficulty in hiding from Sergius just how much the hope meant to her; but there was no idea of concealing the same thing from herself. As the days passed and Ivan did not come, she grew almost frightened at her own disappointment, discovering only now, perhaps, that there could never be any other man in her life who could make her feel the extremes of emotion. ”

“ Here you write that my love has replaced everything for you, that even your former studies can never now be put into practice; but I ask myself, can a man live for love alone? Won’t it weary him at last, won’t he want an active career, and won’t he cast the blame on what drew him away from active life? That’s the thought that dismays me, that’s what I am afraid of, and not what you imagine.’
Litvinov looked intently at Irina, and Irina intently looked at him, as though each would penetrate deeper and further into the soul of the other, deeper and further than word can reach, or word betray. ”

“ In reality they talked more about Home than anything else; even the 'Queen of the Wasps' described how hands had once crept about her, and how she had seen them, and put her own ring on one of them. It was certainly a triumph for Irina: even if Litvinov had paid more attention to what was being said around him, he still could not have gleaned one single sincere saying, one single clever thought, one single new fact from all their disconnected and lifeless babble. ”

“ NATASHA. [To the maid] What? Mihail Ivanitch Protopopov will sit with little Sophie, and Andrey Sergeyevitch can take little Bobby out. Children are such a bother.... [To IRINA] Irina, it’s such a pity you’re going away to-morrow. Do stop just another week. [Sees KULIGIN and screams; he laughs and takes off his beard and whiskers] How you frightened me! [To IRINA] I’ve grown used to you and do you think it will be easy for me to part from you? I’m going to have Andrey and his violin put into your room—let him fiddle away in there!—and we’ll put little Sophie into his room. ”

“ It’s hard to say what passes in that soul; but in the crowd of her adorers rumour does not recognise in any one the position of a favoured suitor.
Irina’s husband is moving rapidly along the path which among the French is called the path of distinction. The stout general has shot past him; the condescending one is left behind.-316- And in the same town in which Irina lives, lives also our friend Sozont Potugin; he rarely sees her, and she has no special necessity to keep up any connection with him.... The little girl who was committed to his care died not long ago. ”

“ Irina's eyes blazed and her voice grew vibrant with passionate anger.
"Pardon, Lieutenant. I will try to tell the story quietly, now. You must know that we are very poor. My mother is dead; my brother in Moscow; and I was left to keep the three rooms that my father could afford to rent with his wages from the orchestra and the few lessons he gives. Two years ago, when I was sixteen, they discovered that I had a voice. My father, delighted, first gave me lessons himself; and then took me to the Conservatoire, to Zaremba, I hoped there to get a scholarship. ”

“ And what ignorance, when all is said! What lack of understanding of all on which human life is built, all by which life is made beautiful!
On parting from Litvinov, Irina again pressed his hand and whispered significantly, 'Well? Are you pleased? Have you seen enough? Do you like it?' He made her no reply, but merely bowed low in silence.
Left alone with her husband, Irina was just going to her bedroom. ... He stopped her. ”

“ We soon-280- go back to Petersburg, come there, live there, we will find occupation for you, your labours in the past shall not be thrown away, you shall find good use for them ... only live near me, only love me; such as I am, with all my weaknesses and my vices, and believe me, no heart will ever be so tenderly devoted to you as the heart of your Irina. Come soon to me, I shall not have an instant’s peace until I see you.—Yours, yours, yours, I.’
The blood beat like a sledge-hammer in Litvinov’s head, then slowly and painfully sank to his heart, and was chill as a stone in it. ”

“ Irina put her handkerchief to her lips.
‘That’s very cruel, what you say, Grigory Mihalitch; but I can’t feel angry with you. Oh, no, that was not a bright time, it was not for happiness I left Moscow; I have known not one moment, not one instant of happiness ... believe me, whatever you have been told. If I were happy, could I talk to you as I am talking now.... I repeat to you, you don’t know what these people are.... Why, they understand nothing, feel for nothing; they’ve no intelligence even, ni esprit ni intelligence, nothing but tact and cunning ”

“ Irina, in Smoke; and Maria Nikolaevna, in Torrents of Spring. All three are wealthy and love luxury; all three are professional wreckers of the lives of men. The evil that they do rises from absolute selfishness, rather than from deliberate sensuality. Not one of them could have been saved by any environment, or by any husband. Varvara is frivolous, Irina is cold-hearted, and Maria is a super-woman; she makes a bet with her husband that she can seduce any man he brings to the house. ”

“ Let us be free, I say. To-day is ours—a life-time’s ours.’
She got up from the arm-chair and looked at Litvinov with her head thrown back, faintly smiling and moving her eyebrows, while with one arm bare to the elbow she pushed back from her face a long tress on which a few tears glistened. A rich scarf slipped from the table and fell on the floor at Irina’s feet. She trampled contemptuously on it. ‘Or don’t you like me, to-day? Have I grown ugly since yesterday? Tell me, have you often seen a prettier hand? ”

“ They thought to drive him from his friendships by malicious, anonymous calumny, then? calumny of a body of poverty-stricken, half-starved men, working disinterestedly for the sake of science,—ah! That was a generous thing to do!—As for Irina's letter, well, she had all a woman's inconsistencies and whims. She had got some silly notion of pride in her now. By Heaven! He would not even go to see her. He would merely write a formal little note reminding her of the date and the hour of his supper—six o'clock on Thursday evening. ”

“ Performance over, and away from the theatre, another transformation took place; for Irina was never off-stage the grande artiste, the ballerina, but a healthy, normal girl, with a keen sense of humor.
After a turn or two as a “legitimate” actress and a previous marriage, Baronova now lives in London’s Mayfair, the wife of a London theatrical manager, with her two children. The triumph of domesticity is ballet’s loss. ”

“ Nevertheless it was he who had been responsible for bringing Irina Petrovna and her brother to Ivan's rooms on the night of the opera, inspired, rather maliciously, by some faint memory of the old court-martial proceedings, and the long intrigue deduced by every one between Ivan and the girl. That night, after Ivan's recovery from his fainting-fit, Irina's brother, Sergius, had, on request of the young composer, given Ivan the address in the student quarter where he and his sister were living. Old Petrov was dead. Irina had freed herself long ago from her Petersburg connections ”

“ But it is time to make an end; and indeed there is nothing to add; the reader can guess the rest by himself . . . But what of Irina?
She is still as charming, in spite of her thirty years; young men out of number fall in love with her, and would fall in love with her even more, if . ”

“ Ratmirov gave him a silver matchbox.
‘Avez vous des papiros?’ asked one of the ladies, with a lisp.
-102-
‘De vrais papelitos, comtesse.’
‘Deux gendarmes un beau dimanche,’ the dull-eyed general hummed again, with intense exasperation.
‘You must be sure to come and see us,’ Irina was saying to Litvinov meantime; ‘we are staying at the Hôtel de l’Europe. From four to six I am always at home. We have not seen each other for such a long time.’
Litvinov looked at Irina; she did not drop her eyes. ”

“ Potugin used to drive to his country villa with papers, and be whole days there at a time. Irina was then living at the count's. She was never haughty with people in a humbler station, at least she never treated them superciliously, and the countess more than once reproved her for her excessive Moscow familiarity. Irina soon detected a man of intelligence in the humble clerk, attired in the stiffly buttoned frockcoat that was his uniform. She used often and eagerly to talk to him . ”

“ You don’t play on a full stomach. [To IRINA] How do you do, Arisha! [Kisses her] Well, little girl, here I am, still alive! Still alive! In the High School, together with little Olga, in her official apartments... so the Lord has appointed for my old age. Sinful woman that I am, I’ve never lived like that in my life before.... A large flat, government property, and I’ve a whole room and bed to myself. All government property. I wake up at nights and, oh God, and Holy Mother, there isn’t a happier person than I!
VERSHININ. [Looks at his watch] We are going soon, Olga Sergeyevna. ”