She pressed his hand, and looked at him with an air so frank, so full of joy at having stolen this moment from Fate, that he felt envious of her, and regretful that he could not share in her lighthearted mood. Her whole face bespoke a childish confidence in the future, in her happiness, and in him. Truly she was very charming!
“But why do you look so gloomy?” suddenly she exclaimed. “Why do you say nothing? I had thought you would be overjoyed to see me whereas I find you gone to sleep again! Wake up, sir!”
“I am both well and happy,” he hastened to say—fearful lest things should attain the point of her guessing what was really in his mind. “But I am disturbed that you should have come alone.”
“Rather, it is for me to be disturbed about that,” she retorted. “Do you think I ought to have brought my aunt with me?”
“Yes, Olga.”
“Then, if I had known that, I would have invited her to come,” offendedly she said as she withdrew her hand from his. “Until now I had imagined that your greatest happiness in life was to be with me, and with me alone. Let us go for a row in a boat.”
With that she set off towards the river, dragging his unwilling form behind her.
“Are you coming to our house to-morrow?” she inquired when they were safely settled in their seats.
“My God!” he reflected. “Already she has divined my thoughts, and knows that I do not want to come!”
“Yes, yes,” he answered aloud.
“In the morning, and for the whole day?”
“Yes.”
She splashed his face playfully with water.
“How bright and cheerful everything looks!” she remarked as she gazed about her. “Let us come again to-morrow. This time I shall come straight from home.”
“Then you have not come straight from home to-day?”
“No, but from a shop, from a jeweller’s.”
Oblomov looked alarmed.
“Suppose your aunt were to find out?” he suggested.
“Oh, suppose the Neva were to become dried up, and that this boat were to overturn, and that our house were suddenly to fall down, and that—that you were suddenly to lose your love for me?” As she spoke she splashed him again.
“Listen, Olga,” he said when they had landed on the bank. “At the risk of vexing and offending you, I ought to tell you something.”
“What is it?” Her tone was impatient.
“That we ought not to be indulging in these secret meetings.”
“But we are betrothed to one another?”
“Yes, dearest Olga,” he replied, pressing her hands, “and therefore we are bound to be all the more careful. I would rather be walking with you along this avenue publicly than by stealth—I would rather see the eyes of passers-by drop respectfully before you than run the risk of incurring a suspicion that you have so far forgotten your modesty and your upbringing as to lose your head and fail in your duty.”
“But I have not forgotten my modesty and my upbringing,” she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands.
“No, I know that you have not,” he agreed. “I was merely thinking of what people might say—of how the world in general might look upon it all. Pray do not misunderstand me. What I desire is that to the world you should seem to be as pure, as irreproachable, as in actual fact you are. To me your conduct seems solely honourable and modest; but would every one believe it to be so?”
“What you say is right,” she said after a pause. “Consequently, let us tell my aunt to-morrow, and obtain her consent.”
Oblomov turned pale. “Why hurry so?” he asked. “I know that, two weeks ago, I myself was urging haste; but at that time I had not thought of the necessary preparations.”
“Then your heart is failing you? That I can see clearly.”
“No; I am merely cautious. Even now I see a carriage approaching us. Are you sure that the people in it are not acquaintances of yours? How these things throw one into a fever of perspiration I Let us depart as quickly as possible.” And with that he set off, almost at a run.
“Until to-morrow, then,” she said.
“No, until the day after to-morrow. That would be better. Or even until Friday or Saturday.”
“No, no; you must come to-morrow. Do you hear? What have we not come to! What a mountain of sorrow are you not threatening to bring upon my head!”
She turned to go home.
III
On arriving at his rooms again, Oblomov never noticed that Zakhar gave him a cold dinner, or that, after it, he rolled into bed and slept heavily and insensibly; like a stone. Next day he received a letter in which Olga said that she had spent the whole night weeping.
“She has been unable to sleep!” he thought to himself. “Poor angel! Why does she care for me so much? And why am I so fond of her? Would we had never met! It is all Schtoltz’s fault. He shed love over us as he might have shed a disease. What sort of a life is this? Nothing but anxiety and emotion! How can it ever lead to peaceful happiness and rest?”
Sighing deeply, he threw himself upon the sofa—then rose again, and went out into the street, as though seeking the normal existence which pursues a daily, gradual course of contemplation of nature, and constitutes a series of calm, scarcely perceptible phenomena of family life. Of existence as a spacious, a turbulent, a billowing river, as Schtoltz always conceived it to be, he could form no conception whatever.
He wrote to Olga that he had taken a slight chill in the Summer Gardens—wherefore he must stay at home for a couple of days; but that he hoped soon to be better, and to see her on the following Sunday. In reply she wrote that he must take the greatest care of himself; that even on Sunday he must not come should he not be well enough; and that a whole week’s separation would be bearable to her if thereby he were enabled to avoid risking his health. This excuse for omitting the Sunday visit Oblomov gladly seized upon; wherefore he sent back word that, as a matter of fact, a few days’ additional convalescence would be no more than prudent.
Day succeeded day throughout the week. He read, he walked about the streets, and, occasionally, he looked in upon his landlady for the purpose of exchanging a couple of words and drinking some of her excellent coffee. So comfortable did she make him that he even thought of giving her a book to read; but when he did so she merely read the headings of a chapter or two, and then returned him the volume, saying that later she would get her little girl to read the work to her.
Meanwhile Olga received unexpected news. This was to the effect that a lawsuit with regard to her property had ended in her favour, and that within a month’s time she would be able, should she wish, to enter into actual possession. But of this, and of her other plans for the future, she decided not to tell Oblomov, but to spend the present hour in dreams of the happiness that was to be hers and his when she had seen love complete its revolution in his apathetic soul, and the slothfulness fall from his shoulders.
That very day he was to come. Yet three o’clock arrived—four o’clock—and no Oblomov. By half-past five the beauty and the freshness of her features had begun to fade. Insensibly her form assumed a drooping posture, and as she sat at the table her face was pale. Yet no one noticed this. The rest of the guests consumed the dishes which she had prepared for him alone, and carried on a desultory, indifferent