The Created Legend by Fyodor Sologub (ebook reader color screen TXT) 📕

Stchemilov suddenly flushed with embarrassment; his habitual self-assurance appeared to have left him unexpectedly. He breathed heavily and stammered out in confusion:

“Comrade Elisaveta, you are a fine person. Don’t be offended at my words. I love you. I know that for you social inequality is a silly thing; and you know that for me your money is of no account. Now if I am not repugnant to you.⁠ ⁠…”

Elisaveta stood before him calm and yet sad, and as she dried her hands, grown red from the cold water, with a towel, she said quietly:

“Forgive me, comrade Aleksei⁠—you are right about my views, but I love another.”

She herself did not know how these words came to be spoken. Love another! So unexpectedly the secret of her heart revealed itself in superficial words. But did he love her, that other one?

They were both flustered. Stchemilov strove heroically to control his agitation. As he looked with his confused eyes into her clear blue ones he said:

“Forgive me, Elisaveta, and forget what I have said. I didn’t guess right that time and did the wrong thing. I didn’t think that you’d love him. Don’t be angry at me and don’t despise me.”

“Enough, Aleksei,” said Elisaveta tenderly. “You know how I respect you. We are friends. Give me your hand.”

Stchemilov gave her hand a tight, comradely pressure, then bent down and kissed it. Elisaveta drew nearer to him and kissed his lips with a tranquil, innocent, delicious kiss, such as a sister gives a brother. Then she snatched up her bundle and ran into the passage, one of the doors of which led to a small storeroom where the literature was kept in a trunk under the floor.

She ran into Kiril on the way.

“Is Aleksei home, my lad?”

“Yes,” said Elisaveta; “enter, comrade Kiril.”

When Kiril heard the familiar voice and, lifting his eyes, saw plaits of hair wound around the lad’s head, he was astonished. He was very much embarrassed upon recognizing Elisaveta. She hid herself behind the door of the storeroom, while Kiril blundered for a long time in the dark hall, unable in his confusion to find the door.

Others began to come in: there was the school-instructor Bodeyev, instructor Voronok of the town school, and the imported orator, who came accompanied by Alkina.

Elisaveta was attired by now in a simple dark blue dress.

“It’s time to start,” said Stchemilov.

Once seated in the rowing-boat, the members of the party became silent and slightly nervous. Only the newcomer was perfectly calm⁠—he was used to it. Nearsighted, he looked indifferently out of his spectacles, now one side, now the other, and told bits of news while smoking one cigarette after another. He was young, tall, and flat-chested. He had a lean face, long, smooth, chestnut-coloured hair, and a scant beard. His flat round cap, reddish in the sun, gave him the look of an artisan.

It had begun to grow dark by the time they disembarked at the appointed place. There was still a half-verst to go through the wood on foot. The evening twilight seemed oppressed under the eternal vaults of the wood; it hummed and rustled with barely audible noises and the sad whisperings of stealthy beings.

They gathered at last in a large glade in the midst of a tall, dense wood. The moon was already high in the sky, and the black shadows of the trees crept across half of the glade. The trees were intensely still and pensive, as if they wished to listen to the words of these people who had collected at their feet. But they really did not care to listen⁠—they had their own life and were indifferent to all these people. And they suffered neither joy nor sadness at sheltering in their dark shade many young girls who were in love with the dream of liberation⁠—among them Elisaveta, who was also in love with this dream, and who created for it a temple of young passion and embroidered into this dream’s design the image of a living man in a mysterious house. She was deliciously in love and painfully agitated by the sudden acknowledgment she made of her love in her poignantly sweet words, “I love another.”

In the dark shade of the trees were red glimmering cigarettes and pipes. The odour of tobacco mingled with the fresh, nocturnal coolness and gave it a sweet piquancy. Piquant also, in the nocturnal stillness, were the sounds of the young, eager voices. And these people had no concern with the mystery of the wood made audible in the silence. The people behaved as if they were at home. They sat about and walked and met each other and chatted. Sometimes, when the din of talk grew too loud, the leaders of the meeting uttered their warnings. Then the voices were lowered.

There were about three hundred people of all kinds⁠—labouring men, young people from schools, young Jews, and very many girls. All the young Jews and Jewesses of the town had come. They were agitated more than the rest and their speech nearly always passed into a violent commotion. They awaited so much, they hoped so passionately! They were so painfully in love with the dream of liberation!

Some of the instructresses from Trirodov’s colony were also here, among them the sad Nadezhda and the ecstatic Maria. There were quite a number of schoolboys and schoolgirls present. These tried to act at ease, to show that it was not their first occasion of the sort. There were also many college students, both men and women. The young were burning with joyous unrest. But all who had gathered were intensely agitated. It was the sweet agitation of their dream of liberation; how tenderly and how passionately they were in love with it! And in more than one young heart virginal passion flowed together with the dream of liberation; young passionate love flamed with a great fire in the joy of liberation, making one of liberation and love, of