LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER XIII

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      I remember a fine Sunday morning. Through the windows of the Count’s church the diaphanous blue sky could be seen and the whole of the church, from its painted cupola to its floor, was flooded by soft sunrays in which little clouds of incense played about gaily… The songs of swallows and starlings were borne in through the open doors and windows… One sparrow, evidently a very bold little fellow, flew in at the door, and having circled, chirping, several times round and round above our heads, flew out again through one of the windows… In the church itself there was also singing… They sang sweetly, with feeling, and with the enthusiasm for which our Little Russian singers are so celebrated when they feel themselves the heroes of the moment, and that all eyes are bent upon them… The melodies were all gay and playful, like the soft, bright sunspots that played upon the walls and the clothes of the congregation… In the unschooled but soft and fresh notes of the tenor my ear seemed to catch, despite the gay wedding melodies, deep, melancholy chords. It appeared as if this tenor was sorry to see that next to young, pretty and poetical Olenka there stood Urbenin, heavy, bearlike, and getting on in years… And it was not only the tenor who was sorry to see this ill-assorted pair… On many of the faces that lay within my field of vision, notwithstanding all their efforts to appear gay and unconcerned, even an idiot could have read an expression of compassion.

      Arrayed in a new dress suit, I stood behind Olenka, holding the crown over her head. I was pale and felt unwell… I had a racking headache, the result of the previous night’s carouse and a pleasure party on the lake, and the whole time I was looking to see if the hand that held the crown did not tremble… My soul felt the disagreeable presentiment of dread that is felt in a forest on a rainy autumn night. I was vexed, disgusted, sorry… Cats seemed to be scratching at my heart, somewhat resembling qualms of conscience… There in the depths, at the very bottom of my heart, a little devil was seated who obstinately, persistently whispered to me that if Olenka’s marriage with clumsy Urbenin was a sin, I was the cause of that sin… Where did such thoughts come from? How could I have saved this little fool from the unknown risks of her indubitable mistake?…

      ‘Who knows?’ whispered the little devil. ‘Who should know better than you?’

      In my time I have known many ill-assorted marriages. I have often stood before Pukirev’s picture. I have read countless novels based on disagreements between husband and wife; besides, I have known the physical differences that inevitably punish ill-assorted marriages, but never once in my whole life had I experienced that terrible spiritual condition from which I was unable to escape all the time I was standing behind Olenka, executing the functions of best man.

      ‘If my soul is agitated only by commiseration, how is it that I never felt that compassion before when I assisted at other weddings?…’

      ‘There is no commiseration here,’ the little devil whispered, ‘but jealousy…’

      One can only be jealous of those one loves, but do I love the girl in red? If I loved all the girls I met in the course of my life, my heart wouldn’t be able to stand it; besides, it would be too much of a good thing…

      My friend Count Karnéev was standing right at the back near the door behind the churchwarden’s counter, selling wax tapers. He was well groomed, with well smoothed hair, and exhaled a narcotic, suffocating odour of scents. That day he looked such a darling that when I greeted him in the morning I could not refrain from saying:

      ‘Alexey, today you are looking like the perfect quadrille dancer!’

      He greeted everybody who entered or left with the sweetest of smiles, and I heard the ponderous compliments with which he rewarded each lady who bought a candle from him. He, the spoilt child of Fortune, who never had copper coins, did not know how to handle them, and was constantly dropping on the floor five and three-kopeck pieces. Near him, leaning against the counter, Kalinin stood majestically with a Stanislav decoration on a ribbon round his neck. His countenance shone and beamed. He was pleased that his idea of ‘at homes’ had fallen on good soil, and was already beginning to bear fruit. In the depths of his soul he was showering on Urbenin a thousand thanks; his marriage was an absurdity, but it was a good opportunity to get the first ‘at home’ arranged.

      Vain Olenka must have rejoiced… From the nuptial lectern to the doors of the high altar stretched out two rows of the most representative ladies of our district flower garden. The guests were decked out as smartly as they would have been if the Count himself was being married: more elegant toilettes could not have been desired The assembly consisted almost exclusively of aristocrats… Not a single priest’s wife, not a single tradesman’s wife… There were even among them ladies to whom Olenka would formerly never have considered herself entitled to bow… And Olenka’s bridegroom - a bailiff, a privileged retainer; but there was no threat to her vanity in this. He was a nobleman and the possessor of a mortgaged estate in the neighbouring district… His father had been marshal of the district and he himself had for more than nine years been a magistrate in his own native district… What more could have been desired by the ambitious daughter of a self-made nobleman? Even the fact that her best man was known throughout the province as a bon vivant and a Don Juan could tickle her pride… All the women were looking at him… He was as resplendent as forty thousand best men thrown into one, and what was not the least important, he had not refused to be her best man, she, a simple little girl, when,

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