Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

However, I went yawning down the avenue that led to the station. This was rather from a kind of inertia than any conscious intention of accomplishing an aim. I thought no more whither I was going, than why I walked instead of flying, or grew warm with exercise, or let my fancy wander. Fragments of my life, dreams and some bits of old memories followed one after the other like formless clouds in the sky. I had never yet known real, gnawing grief, and slight melancholy is really a pleasant feeling. It forms a shadow in which the soul can grow, as flowers grow during a warm summer night.

The bare branches rustled in the avenue. I recalled that avenue with summer foliage, and saw again Urmánov walking arm-in-arm with the American. Then, no doubt, he was happy, and his heart as sunny as the avenue; but now⁠ ⁠… she is gone away, the leaves are fallen, and he is wandering about thinking of her.

“I must look him up today; I know the lodging where he used to live, I will tell him that I understand him, and earnestly sympathize with him. That will not seem offensive to him, I shall be able to say it in such a way that it will not be strange, for my words will simply express my sincere feelings which fill my heart. He will understand, and press my hand and say that indeed it is hard for him. But of course he must reconcile himself to it as an inevitable sacrifice; he knows that great results have never yet been attained without overcoming merely personal feelings, that now, emerging from this struggle free and strong, he can attack his great problem. Perhaps even⁠ ⁠… I shall read him the poem I have dedicated to him⁠ ⁠…”

I did not notice that I had walked the whole length of the avenue, and was unpleasantly startled when I saw the roof of the little shed at the station, peeping out from behind the hillock at the end of the road. I was so happy; Urmánov and I were both so happy; and at the moment I really did not know which of us was the happier, I the consoler, or he who needed consolation. No; he was the happier⁠—of course⁠—in any case I would gladly have exchanged places with him. I was still a lad. I could only look on at other people’s lives; but he was living through the joys and sorrows and sacrifices of a man’s life.

I had become so absorbed and was so happy in my dreams and the glowing words of sympathy which I meant to address to Urmánov, that I had it in my mind to turn back and go on dreaming all the way home. Why should I look at the thing lying there beyond the hillock?

At that moment, however, I trod on something, and stooping down picked up an elegant little pocketbook. On the upper flap was a crest, and an embroidered inscription, “Souvenir.” When I opened it, a little sheet of paper fell out.

By this time it was light, and mounting the hillock I read without difficulty the printed address on the outside. Then followed this:⁠—

“N⁠⸺ Y⁠⸺⁠
“Twenty Fourth Street,
“Boston,
“U.S.A.”

This roused me at once. I woke up with a start. Till then I had been lost in my dreams, but now they vanished in a moment and I began to have a dim foreboding of something very different, though of what nature I could as yet form not the faintest idea. Then I opened the letter. The words I saw there sank into my soul, and time has not effaced them from my memory.

“Honored Fellow-Countryman,

“I write for the last time, for you must know, positively, and once for all, that these are Ellen’s and my last words to you.”

On this little dirty leaf of paper there enrolled before me the epilogue of Urmánov’s tragedy. It appeared that Urmánov had proposed to his rival that he should go to America. He would then renounce formally (so far as it could be done) his marital rights on condition that Ignatyev renounced his actual rights. This done they would engage in a free competition on equal terms for the lady’s love. The answer was cold and somewhat ironical.

“No, my honored colleague, it won’t do! Of course all this is very romantic; but I am not romantic. Moreover, the stakes are not quite equal. You stake a fictitious right, I an actual right, that is to say, a reality. That the struggle for⁠ ⁠… love is a law of nature I acknowledge, as a general proposition; but don’t you see, on your part, that to arrange our marriage affairs as you suggest would resemble more the habits of buffaloes on the prairie than of civilized human beings? In one word, I consider our relations at an end. You knew the conditions on which you entered into the arrangement; you knew what you were going in for; and if Ellen had her motives you probably had yours, which are no concern of ours. As for your new demands, they were no part of the agreement and are quite foreign to our calculations. Our accounts are made up, and the balance is even. All right. We are not bound to discount any fresh bills⁠—Yours faithfully,

“John Ignatyev.”

“P.S.⁠—As a proof that my wife entirely agrees with my view of this matter, she writes to you separately.”

I looked around in amazement. What was it? Where was I?

It seemed to me that it had suddenly become day, cold and damp. The last larches of the avenue were waving their boughs in the wind before me. Was it really only a minute since I was walking in that avenue full of visions of Urmánov, and my sympathy with him as a living and suffering man? Had that been a dream? Or was