How had this mood of his come about? What wind had suddenly affected him? How had it brought with it these clouds? Wherefore was he now for assuming such a grievous yoke? Only last night he had looked into Olga’s soul, and seen there a radiant world and a smiling destiny; only last night he had read both her horoscope and his own. What had since happened?
Frequently, in summer, one goes to sleep while the weather is still and cloudless, and the stars are glimmering softly. “How beautiful the countryside will look to-morrow under the bright beams of morning!” one thinks to oneself. “And how glad one will be to dive into the depths of the forest and seek refuge from the heat!” Then suddenly one awakes to the beating of rain, to the sight of grey, mournful clouds, to a sense of cold and damp.
In Oblomov’s breast the poison was working swiftly and vigorously. In thought he reviewed his life, and for the hundredth time felt his heart ache with repentance and regret for what he had lost. He kept picturing to himself what, by now, he would have been had he strode boldly ahead, and lived a fuller and a broader life, and exerted his faculties; whence he passed to the question of his present condition, and of the means whereby Olga had contrived to become fond of him, and of the reason why she still was so. “Is she not making a mistake?” was a thought which suddenly flashed through his mind like lightning; and as it did so the lightning seemed to strike his heart, and to shatter it. He groaned with the pain. “Yes, she is making a mistake,” he kept saying again and again. “She merely loves me as she works embroidery on canvas. In a quiet, leisurely manner a pattern has evolved itself, and she has turned it over, and admired it. Soon she will lay it aside, and forget all about it. Yes, her present affection is a mere making ready to fall in love, a mere experiment of which I am the subject, for the reason that I chanced to be the first subject to come to hand.” So he collated the circumstances, and compared them. Never would she have noticed him at all, had not Schtoltz pointed him out, and infected her young. impressionable heart with sympathy for his (Oblomov’s) position, and therefore implanted in her a desire to see if possibly she could shake that dreamy soul from its lethargy before leaving it once more to its own devices.
“Yes, that is how the case stands,” he said to himself with an access of revulsion. He rose and lit a candle with a trembling hand. “’Tis just that and nothing more. Her heart was ready to accept love—it was tensely awaiting it—and I happened to fall in her way, and at the same time to fall into a blunder. Only would some one else need to arrive for her to renounce that blunder. As soon as ever she saw that some one else she would turn from me with horror. In fact, I am stealing what belongs to another; I am no better than a thief. My God, to think that I should have been so blind!”
Glancing into the mirror, he saw himself pale, dull, and sallow. Involuntarily he pictured to his mind those handsome young fellows who would one day come her way. Suddenly she would take fire, glance at him, and—burst out laughing! A second time he glanced into the mirror. No, he was not the type with which women could fall in love! He flung himself down upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow.
“Forgive me, Olga!” he murmured. “And may you always be happy!”
He gave orders that he was to be reported as “not at home” to any one who might call from the Ilyinskis’ house. Then he sat down to write Olga a letter. He wrote it swiftly. In fact, the pen flew over the pages. And when he had finished the missive he was surprised to find that his spirits felt cheered, and his mind easier.
“Why so?” he reflected. “Probably because I have put into what I have just written the whole sorrow of my heart.”
Next, he dispatched the letter by the hand of Zakhar, and, leaving the house, turned into the park, and seated himself on the grass. Among the turf-shoots ants were scurrying hither and thither, and jostling one another, and parting again. From above, the scene looked like the commotion in a human market-place—it showed the same bustle, the same congestion, the same swarm of population. Here and there, too, a bumble bee buzzed over a flower, and then crept into its chalice, while a knot of flies had glued themselves to a drop of sap on the trunk of a lime-tree, in the foliage a bird was repeating an ever-insistent note (as though calling to its mate), and a couple of butterflies were tumbling through the air in a giddy, fluttering, intricate movement which resembled a waltz. Everywhere from the herbage strong scents could be detected arising; everywhere there could be beard a ceaseless chirping and twittering.
Suddenly he saw Olga approaching. Walking very quietly, she was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief as she did so. He had not expected those tears. Somehow they seemed to sear his heart. He rose and ran to meet her.