Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [185]
‘I’m not joking,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s exactly what happened. I left my bracelet at home on purpose, and Auntie asked me to go to the jeweller’s. You’d never have thought of anything like that!’ she added with pride, as though she really had done something extraordinary.
‘And if the footman comes back?’ he asked.
‘I asked them to tell him to wait for me because I had had to go to another shop – and I came here – –’
‘And if your aunt asks you in which other shop you went?’
‘I’ll say I was at the dressmaker’s.’
‘And what if she asks the dressmaker?’
‘And what if the Neva flows away into the sea, what if our boat capsizes, what if Morskaya Street and our house sink through the ground, and what if you suddenly fell out of love with me – –’ she said, and threw some water in his face again.
‘But the footman must have returned by now and is waiting,’ he said, wiping his face. ‘Boatman, back to the bank!’
‘Don’t, don’t!’ she told the boatman.
‘To the bank! The footman has returned!’ Oblomov insisted.
‘Let him! Don’t let’s go back!’
But Oblomov insisted on having it his own way and walked hurriedly through the Summer Gardens with her, while she, for her part, walked slowly, leaning on his arm.
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ she said. ‘Wait, I’d like to be with you a little longer.’
She walked still more slowly, clinging to his shoulder and peering into his face, and he spoke gravely and boringly about duty and obligations. She listened absent-mindedly, with a languid smile, bending her head and looking down or peering into his face again and thinking of something else.
‘Listen, Olga,’ he said at last solemnly, ‘at the risk of making you feel vexed with me and bringing your reproaches down on me, I must tell you definitely that we have gone too far. It is my duty, I – I think it incumbent upon me to tell you so.’
‘Tell me what?’ she asked with impatience.
‘That we are doing wrong by meeting in secret.’
‘You said so when we were in the country,’ she said pensively.
‘Yes, but at the time I was carried away: I pushed you away with one hand and held you back with the other. You were trustful and I – I seemed to deceive you. My feeling for you was still new then – –’
‘And now it is no longer new and you are beginning to be bored.’
‘Oh no, Olga! You’re unjust. I say it was new, and that is why I had no time, why I would not come to my senses. My conscience worries me: you are young, you don’t know the world and people, and, besides, you are so pure, your love is so sacred, that it never occurs to you what severe censure we are incurring by what we are doing – and I most of all.’
‘But what are we doing?’ she said, stopping.
‘What do you mean? You are deceiving your aunt, leaving home secretly and meeting a man alone…. Try admitting all this on Sunday before your visitors.’
‘Why shouldn’t I admit it?’ she said calmly. ‘I daresay I will.’
‘And you will see,’ he went on, ‘that your aunt will faint, the ladies will rush out of the room, and the men will look at you boldly and knowingly.’
She fell into thought.
‘But,’ she countered, ‘we are engaged, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, yes, dear Olga,’ he said, pressing both her hands, ‘and that is why we ought to be all the more careful and circumspect. I want to lead you down this very avenue proudly and before the eyes of all the world, and not by stealth; I want people to lower their eyes before you respectfully, and not look at you boldly and knowingly; I don’t want anyone to suspect you, a proud girl, of having lost your head and, forgetting all shame and good breeding, being carried away and neglecting your duty – –’
‘I haven’t forgotten shame, or good breeding, or duty,’ she replied proudly, taking her hand away from him.
‘I know, I know, my innocent angel; but it isn’t I who am saying this, it’s what people and society will be saying, and they will never forgive you it. Do, for God’s sake, understand what I want. I want you to be as pure and irreproachable in the eyes of the world as you are in reality.’