Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [236]
She dropped her eyes and compressed her lips, but from under her eyelids a gleam of light broke through, and, though she tried hard, her lips could not control a smile. Then she looked at him and laughed so happily that tears came into her eyes.
‘I’ve told you what has happened to you and what is going to happen,’ he concluded, ‘but you never gave me an answer to my question, which you did not let me finish.’
‘But what can I say?’ she said in embarrassment. ‘And if I could, should I have the right to say what you want me to say and what – you deserve so much?’ she added in a whisper, looking shyly at him.
He seemed once more to catch in her glance a spark of great affection; again he trembled with happiness.
‘Don’t hurry,’ he added. ‘Tell me what I deserve when your heart’s mourning, your mourning of propriety, is over. This year, too, has taught me something. Now I want you to answer one question. Shall I go away or shall I stay?’
‘Listen! You’re flirting with me!’ she cried gaily suddenly.
‘Oh no,’ he observed gravely. ‘That is not the question I asked before. It has quite a different meaning now: if I stay, it will be as – what?’
She was suddenly embarrassed.
‘You see, I am not flirting!’ he laughed, pleased to have caught her. ‘For after our talk to-night we shall have to treat each other differently: we are no longer the same people we were yesterday.’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, still more embarrassed.
‘May I give you a piece of advice?’
‘Speak – I’ll carry it out blindly!’ she added, with almost passionate submissiveness.
‘Marry me while you are waiting for him to come!’
‘I daren’t yet – –’ she whispered, burying her face in her hand, excited but happy.
‘Why don’t you dare?’ he asked, in a whisper, drawing her head down to him.
‘But this past?’ she whispered again, putting her head on his chest as though he were her mother.
He softly removed her hands from her face, kissed her head, and looked with pleasure at her embarrassed face and at the tears that started to her eyes and were again absorbed by them.
‘It will wither like your lilac,’ he concluded. ‘You’ve had your lesson, now it’s time to make use of it. Life is beginning: give your future to me and do not worry about anything – I vouch for it all. Let us go to your aunt.’
Stolz went home late. ‘I have found what I was looking for,’ he thought, gazing with a lover’s eyes at the sky, the trees, the lake, and even the mist rising from the water. ‘I’ve got it at last! So many years of patience, of craving for love, of economy of spiritual powers! How long I have waited – at last I have been rewarded. This is it – a man’s greatest happiness!’
His happiness pushed all his other interests into the background: the office, his father’s dog-cart, the chamois-leather gloves, the greasy accounts – the whole of his business life. The only thing that came back to his memory was his mother’s fragrant room, Herz’s variations, the prince’s gallery, the blue eyes, the powdered chestnut hair – and Olga’s tender voice rang through it all: in his mind he heard her singing….
‘Olga – my wife!’ he whispered, with a quiver of passion. ‘Everything is found, there is nothing more to look for, there is nowhere further to go.’
And he walked home in a thoughtful daze of happiness, not noticing his way or the streets….
Olga followed him for some time with her eyes, then she opened the window and for several minutes breathed the cool air of the night; her agitation gradually died down and her breast rose and fell evenly. She gazed at the lake, into the far distance, and fell into such a serene and deep reverie that it seemed as though she were asleep. She wanted to catch what she was thinking and feeling, but could not. Her thoughts drifted along as evenly as waves, her blood flowed smoothly in her veins. She felt happy, but she