She looked at him with a smile of happiness which nothing could disturb. Evidently no weight was pressing upon her heart.
“Shall I tell you?” she said. “Yes.”
“You are in love.”
He kissed her hand.
“And you?” he asked. “Are you in love?”
“In love?” she repeated. “I do not like the term for myself. I like you: that is better.”
“‘I like you’?” he re-echoed. “But a mother or a father or a nurse or even a dog may be liked: the phrase may be used as a garment, even as can, can—”
“Even as can an old dressing-gown,” she suggested with a smile. Presently she added—
“Whether I am actually in love with you or not I hardly know. Perhaps it is a stage that has not yet arrived. All I know is that I have never liked father or mother or nurse or dog as I like you. I feel lost without you. To be parted from you for a short while makes me sorry; to be parted from you for a long while makes me sad; and, were you to die, I should wear mourning for the rest of my life, and never again be able to smile. To me such love is life, and life is——”
“Yes?”
“Is a duty, an obligation. Consequently love also is a duty. God has sent me that duty, and has bid me perform it.” As she spoke she raised her eyes to heaven.
“Who can have inspired her with these ideas?” Oblomov thought to himself. “Neither through experience nor through trial nor through ‘fire and smoke’ can she have attained this clear, simple conception of life and of love.”
“Then, since there is joy in life, is there also suffering?” he asked aloud.
“I do not know,” she replied. “That lies beyond my experience as much as it lies beyond my understanding.”
“But how well I understand it!”
“Ah!” she said merrily. “What glances you throw at me sometimes! Even my aunt has noticed it.”
“But how can there be joy in love if it never brings one moments of ecstatic delight?”
“What?” she replied with a glance at the scene around her. “Is not all this so much ecstatic delight?” She looked at him, smiled, and gave him her hand. “Do you think,” she continued, “that presently I shall not be sorry when you take your leave? Do you think that I shall not go to bed the earlier in order that I may the sooner fall asleep, and cheat the wearisome night, and be able to see you again in the morning?” The light in Oblomov’s face had become brighter and brighter with each successive question, and his gaze more and more suffused with radiance.
III
Next morning, however, he rose pale and sombre. There were traces of sleeplessness on his features, wrinkles on his brow, and a lack of fire and eagerness in his eyes. Once upon a time he would have sunk back upon the pillow after drinking his tea, but now he had grown out of the habit, and contented himself with resting his elbow where his head had just been lying. Something in him was working strongly; but that something was not love. True, Olga’s image was still before him, but only at a distance, and in a mist, and shorn of its rays, like that of some stranger. With aching eyes he gazed at it for a moment or two, and then sighed.
“To live as God wills, and not as oneself wills, is a wise rule,” he murmured. “Nevertheless———”
“Clearly that is so,” presently he went on. “Otherwise, one would fall into a chaos of contradictions such as no human mind, however daring and profound, could hope to resolve. Yesterday one has wished, to-day one attains the madly longed-for object, and tomorrow one will blush to think that one ever desired it. Therefore one will fall to cursing life. And all because of a proud, independent striding through existence and a wilful ‘I will’! No; rather does one need to feel one’s way, to close one’s eyes, to avoid becoming either intoxicated with happiness or inclined to repine because it has escaped one. Yes, that is life. Who was it first pictured life as happiness and gratification? The fool! ‘Life is a duty,’ says Olga. ‘Life is a grave obligation which must be fulfilled as such.’” He heaved a profound sigh.
“No, I cannot visit Olga to-day,” he went on. “My eyes are now open, and I see my duty before me. Better part with her now, while it is still possible, than later, when I shall have sworn to part with her no more.”
How had this mood of his come about? What wind had suddenly affected him? How had it brought with it these clouds? Wherefore was he now for assuming such a grievous yoke? Only last night he had looked into Olga’s soul, and seen there a radiant world and a smiling destiny; only last night he had read both her horoscope and his own. What had since happened?
Frequently, in summer, one goes to sleep while the weather is still and cloudless, and the stars are glimmering softly. “How beautiful the countryside will look to-morrow under the bright beams of morning!” one thinks to oneself. “And how glad one will be to dive into the depths of the forest and seek refuge from the heat!” Then suddenly one awakes to the beating of rain, to the sight of grey, mournful clouds, to a sense of cold and damp.
In Oblomov’s breast the poison was working swiftly and vigorously. In thought he reviewed his life, and for the hundredth time felt his heart ache with repentance and regret for what he had lost. He kept picturing to himself what, by now, he would have been had he strode boldly ahead, and lived a fuller and a broader life, and exerted his faculties; whence he passed to the question of his present condition, and of the means whereby Olga had contrived to become fond of him, and of the reason why she still was so. “Is she not making a mistake?” was a thought which suddenly flashed through his mind like lightning; and as it did so the lightning seemed to strike his heart, and to shatter it. He groaned with the pain. “Yes, she is making a mistake,” he kept saying again and again. “She merely loves me as she works embroidery on canvas. In a quiet, leisurely manner a pattern has evolved itself, and she has turned it over, and admired it. Soon she will lay it aside, and forget all about it. Yes, her present affection is a mere making ready to fall in love, a mere experiment of which I am the subject, for the reason that I chanced to be the first subject to come to hand.” So he collated the circumstances, and compared them. Never would she have noticed him at all, had not Schtoltz pointed him out, and infected her young. impressionable heart with sympathy for his (Oblomov’s) position, and therefore implanted in her a desire to see if possibly she could shake that dreamy soul from its lethargy before leaving it once more to its own devices.
“Yes, that is how the case stands,” he said to himself with an access of revulsion. He rose and lit a candle with a trembling hand. “’Tis just that and nothing more. Her heart was ready to accept love—it was tensely awaiting it—and I happened to fall in her way, and at the same time to fall into a blunder. Only would some one else need to arrive for her to renounce that blunder. As soon as ever she saw that some one else she would turn from me with horror. In fact, I am stealing what belongs to another; I am no better than a thief. My God, to think that I should have been so blind!”
Glancing into the mirror, he saw himself pale, dull, and sallow. Involuntarily he pictured to his mind those handsome young fellows who would one day come her way. Suddenly she would take fire, glance at him, and—burst out laughing! A second time he glanced into the mirror. No, he was not the type with which women could fall in love! He flung himself down upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow.
“Forgive