第一百六十一章 第四章
第四章
瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜头上扎着白手帕，乌黑的秀发衬托其间，在孩子们簇拥下，欢快和善地照料着他们，同时，可能由于她所倾心的人即将向她表白而显得格外兴奋，此刻的她十分迷人。谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇走在她身旁，不停地欣赏着她。望着她，他回忆起从她嘴里听到的所有令人愉快的话语，他所了解的她的一切优点，他越来越清楚地意识到，他对她的感情是一种特殊的感情，很久很久以前，在青春年少时，他只经历过一次。在她身边感到幸福的心情不断增长，终于达到了这样的地步：当他往她篮子里放一颗又大又细茎的伞菌时，他直视着她的眼睛，看到她脸上因喜悦和兴奋的恐慌而泛起红晕，他自己也慌了神，默默地对她报以一笑，这笑容显然说得太多了。
“既然这样，”他心中暗想，“我就该考虑考虑，拿定主意，不要像个小青年那样，一时冲动，感情用事。”
“我要一个人去采蘑菇，不然我采的就显得少了。”说着，他就离开林边小径，独自走到森林深处。他们本来走在那条小径上，脚下踩着柔软的丝绒般的青草，两旁挺立着稀疏的古桦树。他走到森林深处，那里，在白桦树干之间，呈现出灰暗的白杨树干和深色的榛树丛。谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇走了约莫四十步光景，知道别人已经看不见他了，便停在一棵开着紫红色穗状花朵、枝叶茂盛的卫茅丛后面。周围一片寂静。只有头顶上他站立的桦树上边，成群结队的老蝇像蜜蜂一样嗡嗡叫个不停，有时孩子们的声音也传到他耳边。忽然，从林边不远处传来瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜的女低音叫格里沙的声音，谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇脸上不禁绽开了幸福的微笑。他意识到了自己的微笑，对他目前的状况不以为然地摇摇头，取出雪茄，开始点燃。他对着桦树干擦了好一会火柴，都没能点燃。桦树干上柔软的白色表皮擦去了火柴头上的磷，火柴就灭了。终于有一根火柴擦着了，雪茄芬芳的烟雾袅袅升起，形成一片平坦而宽阔的烟云，飘飘忽忽地向前和向上飞去，最后飘浮在桦树垂枝下的灌木丛上空。谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇望着那一缕轻烟，一边轻步走着，一边反复思考着自己的处境。
“为什么不呢？”他想，“如果这只是一种冲动或者情欲，如果这只是那种吸引力——互相的吸引力（我可以说它是互相的吸引力），但如果我感觉它同我人生的整个方向是矛盾的，如果我感觉在屈从于这种吸引力时，会违背我的天职和原则……但实际上并非如此。我唯一可以提出反对意见的是，当我失去玛丽时，我对自己说，我将永远忠于对她的怀念。这就是我对我的感情所能提出的唯一反对意见……这是很重要的一点，”谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇对自己说，同时感到这个考虑对他本人来说毫无意义，但也许会在别人眼中有损于他的浪漫形象。“然而，除此之外，不管我怎样费尽心思去寻找，也找不到什么可以反对我的感情的。如果仅仅按理智来选择，我不可能找到更合适的了。”
不论他想到他所认识的多少女人和姑娘，他都无法想象出一个姑娘具备如此程度的一切，完完全全的一切，他希望妻子具有的一切品质。她具有青春的魅力和新鲜感，但她不是个小孩；如果她爱他，她就会像一个女人应有的那样自觉地爱他；这是其一。其次：她不仅远远不是个世俗女子，而且显而易见她对上流社会十分厌恶，但同时她又熟悉上流社会，具有最优秀的上流社会妇女的一切风度；这对谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇来说，一个要与他共享生活的女人应该是怎样的，这种风度是绝对必要的。第三：她笃信宗教，但不是像小孩那样，不像吉娣，比方说，那样无意识地笃信宗教和善良，她的生活建立在宗教原则之上。甚至在琐碎小事上，谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇在她身上发现了他所希望妻子具有的一切：她贫穷和孤苦伶仃，所以，她不会像他现在所看到的吉娣那样，把自己的大批亲属和他们的影响带到丈夫家里来。她将一切都归功于丈夫，这也是他始终对他未来的家庭生活所希望的。而这个姑娘，具备了一切条件的姑娘，爱着他。他是个谦虚的人，但也不能不看到这一点。而且他也爱她。只有一点反对意见，那就是年龄。但他出身于长寿家族，他头上没有一根白发，没有人会认为他年近四十；他回忆起瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜说过，只有在俄罗斯五十岁的人才会认为自己老了，在法国，五十岁的人还认为自己正当年富力强，而四十岁的人还是个年轻人呢。然而，当他心里感到像二十年前那样年轻的时候，光计算年龄又有什么用？当他从森林另一边走到林边，在斜阳金灿灿的光芒中看到瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜穿着一身黄衣裳，挎着篮子，步履轻盈地走过一棵老白桦树干的身影时，当他看到瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜的身影与那沐浴在斜阳下的一片金黄燕麦田的景色和远方时隐时现、斑斑驳驳的古老森林景色十分和谐地融合在一起的时候，他不正是感到青春焕发吗？他的心欢快地跳动着。一种柔情蜜意涌上心头。他觉得自己已经拿定了主意。瓦尔瓦拉·安德烈耶夫娜刚蹲下身子去摘一个蘑菇，这时她动作轻盈地站了起来，环顾四周。谢尔盖·伊万诺维奇扔掉雪茄，迈开坚定的脚步向她走去。
Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the
children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same
time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from
the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked
beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he
recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the
good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the
feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long,
long ago, and only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness
in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point
that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he
looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and
alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself,
and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much.
“If so,” he said to himself, “I ought to think it over and make up my
mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment.”
“I’m going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my
efforts will make no show,” he said, and he left the edge of the forest
where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees
standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where
between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark
bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch,
knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in
full flower with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round
him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like
a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the
children’s voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not
far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenka’s contralto voice,
calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch’s
face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his
own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long
while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch
tree. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and
the light went out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant
cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away
forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a
birch tree. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked
gently on, deliberating on his position.
“Why not?” he thought. “If it were only a passing fancy or a passion,
if it were only this attraction—this mutual attraction (I can call it a
_mutual_ attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with
the whole bent of my life—if I felt that in giving way to this
attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but it’s
not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie,
I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That’s the
only thing I can say against my feeling.... That’s a great thing,”
Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this
consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but
would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of
others. “But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never
find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by
considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything
better.”
However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not
think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the
qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and
freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she
loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing.
Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an
unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she
knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society,
which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch’s conception of
the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and
not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for
example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in
trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in
his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring
with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husband’s
house, as he saw now in Kitty’s case. She would owe everything to her
husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family
life. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was
a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There
was one consideration against it—his age. But he came of a long-lived
family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for
forty, and he remembered Varenka’s saying that it was only in Russia
that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of
fifty considers himself _dans la force de l’âge_, while a man of forty
is _un jeune homme_. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter
when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it
not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to
the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting
sunbeams the gracious figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her
basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when
this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with
the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the
slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked
with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart
throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he
had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a
mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away
the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.
