A great uneasiness overcame him. If Nikolai should really leave, there was not much more time to delay. He heard Nikolai's trunk carried downstairs. "He will not even come to take leave of me! But I cannot let him go thus," he cried out, "not thus!" He went up to Nikolai's room. Nikolai stood before the fire-place and busied himself with tearing and burning some letters. A new, harsh, stiff expression hardens his features. When he perceives his father, his face expresses uneasiness and astonishment, so that Lensky's heart grows cold. For one moment they stand silently opposite each other. "Colia!" Lensky at length manages to say in an unrecognizable, half-suffocated voice: "You--surely would not leave without having said farewell to me!"
"No; naturally not," replies Colia, mechanically, while he continues to tear up letters.
"Colia!" The artist's voice trembles, he lays his hand on his son's sleeve, he notices that he shrinks at his touch. Then he clutches his temples and stamps on the ground. "That is not to be borne," cries he. "Have you, then, no penetration? Do you not understand how all this torments me--me, who would have brought down the stars from heaven for you? And now that I should be the obstacle to your happiness! What, obstacle! Be sensible, there is no obstacle at all. Nothing has happened. You need not give her up. And if she is at all afraid of meeting me again, I swear to you that she shall never meet me, that I will never burden you with my presence. I will bear everything, only not the thought of having disturbed your existence. Colia--do you not hear me, then?--Colia!" He shakes his son's shoulder; Nikolai turns toward him. His father is frightened at the dull, uninterested glance which falls on him from the eyes formerly so brilliant with enthusiasm of his child.
The waiter enters to announce that the carriage has arrived. Nikolai takes his hat, Lensky holds him back, and at the same time motions to the waiter to leave the room.
"You will write when you have arrived there?" he says.
"As soon as I am settled," replies Nikolai, with the same weary, dull voice.
"Why was not the boy angry, rough even to rudeness, repellent to him?" Lensky asked himself. A violent feeling would have yielded to time, but for what he saw before him there was no more cure. He understood that something in this young man was dead forever; the elasticity of his nature was gone, the sacred fire was extinguished.
"Farewell, Colia!" murmured Lensky, hoarsely. He took his son in his arms, held him convulsively to his breast, kissed him three times in accordance with the Russian custom. He might as well have embraced a corpse, so perfectly irresponsive did Colia remain to his tenderness. Only once before had his lips touched anything so cold, stiff, and that was--when he kissed Natalie in her coffin.
Then Nikolai went down-stairs. Lensky slunk after him to the house door, looked after the carriage which rolled away with him until it was lost in the crowd, whereupon he turned, and with heavy steps returned to his sitting-room.
Perhaps an hour had passed since Nikolai's departure, when there was a knock at Lensky's door. At first he did not hear it; the knocks grew louder, more urgent. Angrily he raised his head; he had left word down-stairs that he wished to receive no one.