"Speak, speak! What do you mean? God bless you!"—Bizmyónkoff interrupted her. She squeezed his hand.
"You are very kind, Bizmyónkoff,"—she went on:—"you are as kind as an angel. What am I to do? I feel that I shall love him until I die. I have forgiven him, I am grateful to him. May God grant him happiness! May God give him a wife after his own heart!"—And her eyes filled with tears.—"If only he does not forget me, if only he will now and then recall his Liza to mind. Let us go out,"—she added, after a brief pause.
Bizmyónkoff raised her hand to his lips.
"I know,"—she began with warmth,—"every one is blaming me, every one is casting stones at me now. Let them! All the same, I would not exchange my unhappiness for their happiness ... no! no!... He did not love me long, but he did love me! He never deceived me: he did not tell me that I was to be his wife; I myself never thought of such a thing. Only poor papa hoped for that. And now I am still not utterly unhappy: there remains to me the memory, and however terrible the consequences may be .... I am stifling here .... it was here that I saw him for the last time.... Let us go out into the air."
They rose. I barely managed to leap aside and hide behind a thick linden. They came out of the arbour and, so far as I was able to judge from the sound of their footsteps, went off into the grove. I do not know how long I had been standing there, without stirring from the spot, absorbed in a sort of irrational surprise, when suddenly the sound of footsteps became audible again. I started and peered cautiously from my ambush. Bizmyónkoff and Liza were returning by the same path. Both were greatly agitated, especially Bizmyónkoff. He had been weeping, apparently. Liza halted, gazed at him, and uttered the following words distinctly: "I consent, Bizmyónkoff. I would not have consented, had you merely wished to save me, to extricate me from a frightful position; but you love me, you know all—and you love me; I shall never find a more trustworthy, faithful friend. I will be your wife."
Bizmyónkoff kissed her hand; she smiled sadly at him, and went to the house. Bizmyónkoff dashed into the thicket, and I went my way. As Bizmyónkoff had probably said to Liza precisely what I had intended to say to her, and as she had given him precisely the answer which I had hoped to hear from her, there was no necessity for my troubling myself further. A fortnight later she married him. The old Ozhógins were glad to get any bridegroom.
Well, tell me now, am not I a superfluous man? Did not I play in the whole of that affair the part of a superfluous man? The rôle of the Prince .... as to that, there is nothing to be said; the rôle of Bizmyónkoff also is comprehensible .... But I? Why was I mixed up in it?... what a stupid, fifth wheel to the cart I was!... Akh, 't is bitter, bitter!... So now, as the stevedores on the Volga say: "Heave-ho! heave-ho!"[15]—one more little day, then another, and nothing will be either bitter or sweet to me any more.
March 31.
Things are bad. I write these lines in bed. The weather has changed suddenly since yesterday. To-day is hot—almost a summer day. Everything is thawing, crumbling, and streaming. There is an odour of ploughed earth in the air: a heavy, powerful, oppressive odour. The steam is rising everywhere. The sun is fairly beating, fairly blazing down. I am in a bad way. I feel that I am decomposing.
I started out to write a diary, and instead of that, what have I done? I have narrated one incident out of my own life. I have been babbling, sleeping memories have waked up and carried me away. I have written leisurely, in detail, as though I still had years before me; and now, lo, there is no time to continue. Death, death is advancing. I can already hear its menacing crescendo... Time 's up.... Time 's up!...