THE DARLING by Anton Chekhov.
THE TALES OF CHEKHOV VOLUME 1 Translated by
CONSTANCE GARNETT.
THE DARLING
OLENKA, the daughter of the retired collegiate
assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her
back porch, lost in thought. It was hot, the
flies were persistent and teasing, and it
was pleasant to reflect that it would soon
be evening. Dark rainclouds were gathering
from the east, and bringing from time to time
a breath of moisture in the air.
Kukin, who was the manager of an open-air
theatre called the Tivoli, and who lived in
the lodge, was standing in the middle of the
garden looking at the sky.
"Again!" he observed despairingly. "It's going
to rain again! Rain every day, as though to
spite me. I might as well hang myself! It's
ruin! Fearful losses every day."
He flung up his hands, and went on, addressing
Olenka:
"There! that's the life we lead, Olga Semyonovna.
It's enough to make one cry. One works and
does one's utmost, one wears oneself out,
getting no sleep at night, and racks one's
brain what to do for the best. And then what
happens? To begin with, one's public is ignorant,
boorish. I give them the very best operetta,
a dainty masque, first rate music-hall artists.
But do you suppose that's what they want!
They don't understand anything of that sort.
They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity.
And then look at the weather! Almost every
evening it rains. It started on the tenth
of May, and it's kept it up all May and June.
It's simply awful! The public doesn't come,
but I've to pay the rent just the same, and
pay the artists."
The next evening the clouds would gather again,
and Kukin would say with an hysterical laugh:
"Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden,
drown me! Damn my luck in this world and the
next! Let the artists have me up! Send me
to prison!--to Siberia!--the scaffold! Ha,
ha, ha!"
And next day the same thing.
Olenka listened to Kukin with silent gravity,
and sometimes tears came into her eyes. In
the end his misfortunes touched her; she grew
to love him. He was a small thin man, with
a yellow face, and curls combed forward on
his forehead. He spoke in a thin tenor; as
he talked his mouth worked on one side, and
there was always an expression of despair
on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine
affection in her. She was always fond of some
one, and could not exist without loving. In
earlier days she had loved her papa, who now
sat in a darkened room, breathing with difficulty;
she had loved her aunt who used to come every
other year from Bryansk; and before that,
when she was at school, she had loved her
French master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted,
compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes
and very good health. At the sight of her
full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with
a little dark mole on it, and the kind, naïve
smile, which came into her face when she listened
to anything pleasant, men thought, "Yes, not
half bad," and smiled too, while lady visitors
could not refrain from seizing her hand in
the middle of a conversation, exclaiming in
a gush of delight, "You darling!"
The house in which she had lived from her
birth upwards, and which was left her in her
father's will, was at the extreme end of the
town, not far from the Tivoli. In the evenings
and at night she could head the band playing,
and the crackling and banging of fireworks,
and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling
with his destiny, storming the entrenchments
of his chief foe, the indifferent public;
there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she
had no desire to sleep, and when he returned
home at day-break, she tapped softly at her
bedroom window, and showing him only her face
and one shoulder through the curtain, she
gave him a friendly smile. . . .
He proposed to her, and they were married.
And when he had a closer view of her neck
and her plump, fine shoulders, he threw up
his hands, and said:
"You darling!"
He was happy, but as it rained on the day
and night of his wedding, his face still retained
an expression of despair.
They got on very well together. She used to
sit in his office, to look after things in
the Tivoli, to put down the accounts and pay
the wages. And her rosy cheeks, her sweet,
naïve, radiant smile, were to be seen now
at the office window, now in the refreshment
bar or behind the scenes of the theatre. And
already she used to say to her acquaintances
that the theatre was the chief and most important
thing in life and that it was only through
the drama that one could derive true enjoyment
and become cultivated and humane.
"But do you suppose the public understands
that?" she used to say. "What they want is
a clown. Yesterday we gave 'Faust Inside Out,'
and almost all the boxes were empty; but if
Vanitchka and I had been producing some vulgar
thing, I assure you the theatre would have
been packed. Tomorrow Vanitchka and I are
doing 'Orpheus in Hell.' Do come."
And what Kukin said about the theatre and
the actors she repeated. Like him she despised
the public for their ignorance and their indifference
to art; she took part in the rehearsals, she
corrected the actors, she kept an eye on the
behaviour of the musicians, and when there
was an unfavourable notice in the local paper,
she shed tears, and then went to the editor's
office to set things right.
The actors were fond of her and used to call
her "Vanitchka and I," and "the darling";
she was sorry for them and used to lend them
small sums of money, and if they deceived
her, she used to shed a few tears in private,
but did not complain to her husband.
They got on well in the winter too. They took
the theatre in the town for the whole winter,
and let it for short terms to a Little Russian
company, or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic
society. Olenka grew stouter, and was always
beaming with satisfaction, while Kukin grew
thinner and yellower, and continually complained
of their terrible losses, although he had
not done badly all the winter. He used to
cough at night, and she used to give him hot
raspberry tea or lime-flower water, to rub
him with eau-de-Cologne and to wrap him in
her warm shawls.
"You're such a sweet pet!" she used to say
with perfect sincerity, stroking his hair.
"You're such a pretty dear!"
Towards Lent he went to Moscow to collect
a new troupe, and without him she could not
sleep, but sat all night at her window, looking
at the stars, and she compared herself with
the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy
when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin
was detained in Moscow, and wrote that he
would be back at Easter, adding some instructions
about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before
Easter, late in the evening, came a sudden
ominous knock at the gate; some one was hammering
on the gate as though on a barrel-- boom,
boom, boom! The drowsy cook went flopping
with her bare feet through the puddles, as
she ran to open the gate.
"Please open," said some one outside in a
thick bass. "There is a telegram for you."
Olenka had received telegrams from her husband
before, but this time for some reason she
felt numb with terror. With shaking hands
she opened the telegram and read as follows:
"IVAN PETROVITCH DIED SUDDENLY TO-DAY. AWAITING
IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS FUFUNERAL TUESDAY."
That was how it was written in the telegram--"fufuneral,"
and the utterly incomprehensible word "immate."
It was signed by the stage manager of the
operatic company.
"My darling!" sobbed Olenka. "Vanka, my precious,
my darling! Why did I ever meet you! Why did
I know you and love you! Your poor heart-broken
Olenka is alone without you!"
Kukin's funeral took place on Tuesday in Moscow,
Olenka returned home on Wednesday, and as
soon as she got indoors, she threw herself
on her bed and sobbed so loudly that it could
be heard next door, and in the street.
"Poor darling!" the neighbours said, as they
crossed themselves. "Olga Semyonovna, poor
darling! How she does take on!"
Three months later Olenka was coming home
from mass, melancholy and in deep mourning.
It happened that one of her neighbours, Vassily
Andreitch Pustovalov, returning home from
church, walked back beside her. He was the
manager at Babakayev's, the timber merchant's.
He wore a straw hat, a white waistcoat, and
a gold watch-chain, and looked more a country
gentleman than a man in trade.
"Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga
Semyonovna," he said gravely, with a sympathetic
note in his voice; "and if any of our dear
ones die, it must be because it is the will
of God, so we ought have fortitude and bear
it submissively."
After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye
and went on. All day afterwards she heard
his sedately dignified voice, and whenever
she shut her eyes she saw his dark beard.
She liked him very much. And apparently she
had made an impression on him too, for not
long afterwards an elderly lady, with whom
she was only slightly acquainted, came to
drink coffee with her, and as soon as she
was seated at table began to talk about Pustovalov,
saying that he was an excellent man whom one
could thoroughly depend upon, and that any
girl would be glad to marry him. Three days
later Pustovalov came himself. He did not
stay long, only about ten minutes, and he
did not say much, but when he left, Olenka
loved him--loved him so much that she lay
awake all night in a perfect fever, and in
the morning she sent for the elderly lady.
The match was quickly arranged, and then came
the wedding.
Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together
when they were married.
Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time,
then he went out on business, while Olenka
took his place, and sat in the office till
evening, making up accounts and booking orders.
"Timber gets dearer every year; the price
rises twenty per cent," she would say to her
customers and friends. "Only fancy we used
to sell local timber, and now Vassitchka always
has to go for wood to the Mogilev district.
And the freight!" she would add, covering
her cheeks with her hands in horror. "The
freight!"
It seemed to her that she had been in the
timber trade for ages and ages, and that the
most important and necessary thing in life
was timber; and there was something intimate
and touching to her in the very sound of words
such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole," "scantling,"
"batten," "lath," "plank," etc.
At night when she was asleep she dreamed of
perfect mountains of planks and boards, and
long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere
far away. She dreamed that a whole regiment
of six-inch beams forty feet high, standing
on end, was marching upon the timber-yard;
that logs, beams, and boards knocked together
with the resounding crash of dry wood, kept
falling and getting up again, piling themselves
on each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep,
and Pustovalov said to her tenderly: "Olenka,
what's the matter, darling? Cross yourself!"
Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought
the room was too hot, or that business was
slack, she thought the same. Her husband did
not care for entertainments, and on holidays
he stayed at home. She did likewise.
"You are always at home or in the office,"
her friends said to her. "You should go to
the theatre, darling, or to the circus."
"Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres,"
she would answer sedately. "We have no time
for nonsense. What's the use of these theatres?"
On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go
to the evening service; on holidays to early
mass, and they walked side by side with softened
faces as they came home from church. There
was a pleasant fragrance about them both,
and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home
they drank tea, with fancy bread and jams
of various kinds, and afterwards they ate
pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was
a savoury smell of beet-root soup and of mutton
or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of
fish, and no one could pass the gate without
feeling hungry. In the office the samovar
was always boiling, and customers were regaled
with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple
went to the baths and returned side by side,
both red in the face.
"Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank
God," Olenka used to say to her acquaintances.
"I wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka
and I."
When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the
Mogilev district, she missed him dreadfully,
lay awake and cried. A young veterinary surgeon
in the army, called Smirnin, to whom they
had let their lodge, used sometimes to come
in in the evening. He used to talk to her
and play cards with her, and this entertained
her in her husband's absence. She was particularly
interested in what he told her of his home
life. He was married and had a little boy,
but was separated from his wife because she
had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated
her and used to send her forty roubles a month
for the maintenance of their son. And hearing
of all this, Olenka sighed and shook her head.
She was sorry for him.
"Well, God keep you," she used to say to him
at parting, as she lighted him down the stairs
with a candle. "Thank you for coming to cheer
me up, and may the Mother of God give you
health."
And she always expressed herself with the
same sedateness and dignity, the same reasonableness,
in imitation of her husband. As the veterinary
surgeon was disappearing behind the door below,
she would say:
"You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you'd better
make it up with your wife. You should forgive
her for the sake of your son. You may be sure
the little fellow understands."
And when Pustovalov came back, she told him
in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon
and his unhappy home life, and both sighed
and shook their heads and talked about the
boy, who, no doubt, missed his father, and
by some strange connection of ideas, they
went up to the holy ikons, bowed to the ground
before them and prayed that God would give
them children.
And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years
quietly and peaceably in love and complete
harmony.
But behold! one winter day after drinking
hot tea in the office, Vassily Andreitch went
out into the yard without his cap on to see
about sending off some timber, caught cold
and was taken ill. He had the best doctors,
but he grew worse and died after four months'
illness. And Olenka was a widow once more.
"I've nobody, now you've left me, my darling,"
she sobbed, after her husband's funeral. "How
can I live without you, in wretchedness and
misery! Pity me, good people, all alone in
the world!"
She went about dressed in black with long
"weepers," and gave up wearing hat and gloves
for good. She hardly ever went out, except
to church, or to her husband's grave, and
led the life of a nun. It was not till six
months later that she took off the weepers
and opened the shutters of the windows. She
was sometimes seen in the mornings, going
with her cook to market for provisions, but
what went on in her house and how she lived
now could only be surmised. People guessed,
from seeing her drinking tea in her garden
with the veterinary surgeon, who read the
newspaper aloud to her, and from the fact
that, meeting a lady she knew at the post-office,
she said to her:
"There is no proper veterinary inspection
in our town, and that's the cause of all sorts
of epidemics. One is always hearing of people's
getting infection from the milk supply, or
catching diseases from horses and cows. The
health of domestic animals ought to be as
well cared for as the health of human beings."
She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words,
and was of the same opinion as he about everything.
It was evident that she could not live a year
without some attachment, and had found new
happiness in the lodge. In any one else this
would have been censured, but no one could
think ill of Olenka; everything she did was
so natural. Neither she nor the veterinary
surgeon said anything to other people of the
change in their relations, and tried, indeed,
to conceal it, but without success, for Olenka
could not keep a secret. When he had visitors,
men serving in his regiment, and she poured
out tea or served the supper, she would begin
talking of the cattle plague, of the foot
and mouth disease, and of the municipal slaughterhouses.
He was dreadfully embarrassed, and when the
guests had gone, he would seize her by the
hand and hiss angrily:
"I've asked you before not to talk about what
you don't understand. When we veterinary surgeons
are talking among ourselves, please don't
put your word in. It's really annoying."
And she would look at him with astonishment
and dismay, and ask him in alarm: "But, Voloditchka,
what _am_ I to talk about?"
And with tears in her eyes she would embrace
him, begging him not to be angry, and they
were both happy.
But this happiness did not last long. The
veterinary surgeon departed, departed for
ever with his regiment, when it was transferred
to a distant place--to Siberia, it may be.
And Olenka was left alone.
Now she was absolutely alone. Her father had
long been dead, and his armchair lay in the
attic, covered with dust and lame of one leg.
She got thinner and plainer, and when people
met her in the street they did not look at
her as they used to, and did not smile to
her; evidently her best years were over and
left behind, and now a new sort of life had
begun for her, which did not bear thinking
about. In the evening Olenka sat in the porch,
and heard the band playing and the fireworks
popping in the Tivoli, but now the sound stirred
no response. She looked into her yard without
interest, thought of nothing, wished for nothing,
and afterwards, when night came on she went
to bed and dreamed of her empty yard. She
ate and drank as it were unwillingly.
And what was worst of all, she had no opinions
of any sort. She saw the objects about her
and understood what she saw, but could not
form any opinion about them, and did not know
what to talk about. And how awful it is not
to have any opinions! One sees a bottle, for
instance, or the rain, or a peasant driving
in his cart, but what the bottle is for, or
the rain, or the peasant, and what is the
meaning of it, one can't say, and could not
even for a thousand roubles. When she had
Kukin, or Pustovalov, or the veterinary surgeon,
Olenka could explain everything, and give
her opinion about anything you like, but now
there was the same emptiness in her brain
and in her heart as there was in her yard
outside. And it was as harsh and as bitter
as wormwood in the mouth.
Little by little the town grew in all directions.
The road became a street, and where the Tivoli
and the timber-yard had been, there were new
turnings and houses. How rapidly time passes!
Olenka's house grew dingy, the roof got rusty,
the shed sank on one side, and the whole yard
was overgrown with docks and stinging-nettles.
Olenka herself had grown plain and elderly;
in summer she sat in the porch, and her soul,
as before, was empty and dreary and full of
bitterness. In winter she sat at her window
and looked at the snow. When she caught the
scent of spring, or heard the chime of the
church bells, a sudden rush of memories from
the past came over her, there was a tender
ache in her heart, and her eyes brimmed over
with tears; but this was only for a minute,
and then came emptiness again and the sense
of the futility of life. The black kitten,
Briska, rubbed against her and purred softly,
but Olenka was not touched by these feline
caresses. That was not what she needed. She
wanted a love that would absorb her whole
being, her whole soul and reason--that would
give her ideas and an object in life, and
would warm her old blood. And she would shake
the kitten off her skirt and say with vexation:
"Get along; I don't want you!"
And so it was, day after day and year after
year, and no joy, and no opinions. Whatever
Mavra, the cook, said she accepted.
One hot July day, towards evening, just as
the cattle were being driven away, and the
whole yard was full of dust, some one suddenly
knocked at the gate. Olenka went to open it
herself and was dumbfounded when she looked
out: she saw Smirnin, the veterinary surgeon,
grey-headed, and dressed as a civilian. She
suddenly remembered everything. She could
not help crying and letting her head fall
on his breast without uttering a word, and
in the violence of her feeling she did not
notice how they both walked into the house
and sat down to tea.
"My dear Vladimir Platonitch! What fate has
brought you?" she muttered, trembling with
joy.
"I want to settle here for good, Olga Semyonovna,"
he told her. "I have resigned my post, and
have come to settle down and try my luck on
my own account. Besides, it's time for my
boy to go to school. He's a big boy. I am
reconciled with my wife, you know."
"Where is she?' asked Olenka.
"She's at the hotel with the boy, and I'm
looking for lodgings."
"Good gracious, my dear soul! Lodgings? Why
not have my house? Why shouldn't that suit
you? Why, my goodness, I wouldn't take any
rent!" cried Olenka in a flutter, beginning
to cry again. "You live here, and the lodge
will do nicely for me. Oh dear! how glad I
am!"
Next day the roof was painted and the walls
were whitewashed, and Olenka, with her arms
akimbo walked about the yard giving directions.
Her face was beaming with her old smile, and
she was brisk and alert as though she had
waked from a long sleep. The veterinary's
wife arrived--a thin, plain lady, with short
hair and a peevish expression. With her was
her little Sasha, a boy of ten, small for
his age, blue-eyed, chubby, with dimples in
his cheeks. And scarcely had the boy walked
into the yard when he ran after the cat, and
at once there was the sound of his gay, joyous
laugh.
"Is that your puss, auntie?" he asked Olenka.
"When she has little ones, do give us a kitten.
Mamma is awfully afraid of mice."
Olenka talked to him, and gave him tea. Her
heart warmed and there was a sweet ache in
her bosom, as though the boy had been her
own child. And when he sat at the table in
the evening, going over his lessons, she looked
at him with deep tenderness and pity as she
murmured to herself:
"You pretty pet! . . . my precious! . . . Such
a fair little thing, and so clever."
"'An island is a piece of land which is entirely
surrounded by water,'" he read aloud.
"An island is a piece of land," she repeated,
and this was the first opinion to which she
gave utterance with positive conviction after
so many years of silence and dearth of ideas.
Now she had opinions of her own, and at supper
she talked to Sasha's parents, saying how
difficult the lessons were at the high schools,
but that yet the high school was better than
a commercial one, since with a high-school
education all careers were open to one, such
as being a doctor or an engineer.
Sasha began going to the high school. His
mother departed to Harkov to her sister's
and did not return; his father used to go
off every day to inspect cattle, and would
often be away from home for three days together,
and it seemed to Olenka as though Sasha was
entirely abandoned, that he was not wanted
at home, that he was being starved, and she
carried him off to her lodge and gave him
a little room there.
And for six months Sasha had lived in the
lodge with her. Every morning Olenka came
into his bedroom and found him fast asleep,
sleeping noiselessly with his hand under his
cheek. She was sorry to wake him.
"Sashenka," she would say mournfully, "get
up, darling. It's time for school."
He would get up, dress and say his prayers,
and then sit down to breakfast, drink three
glasses of tea, and eat two large cracknels
and a half a buttered roll. All this time
he was hardly awake and a little ill-humoured
in consequence.
"You don't quite know your fable, Sashenka,"
Olenka would say, looking at him as though
he were about to set off on a long journey.
"What a lot of trouble I have with you! You
must work and do your best, darling, and obey
your teachers."
"Oh, do leave me alone!" Sasha would say.
Then he would go down the street to school,
a little figure, wearing a big cap and carrying
a satchel on his shoulder. Olenka would follow
him noiselessly.
"Sashenka!" she would call after him, and
she would pop into his hand a date or a caramel.
When he reached the street where the school
was, he would feel ashamed of being followed
by a tall, stout woman, he would turn round
and say:
"You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the
rest of the way alone."
She would stand still and look after him fixedly
till he had disappeared at the school-gate.
Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments
not one had been so deep; never had her soul
surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously,
so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now
that her maternal instincts were aroused.
For this little boy with the dimple in his
cheek and the big school cap, she would have
given her whole life, she would have given
it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why?
Who can tell why?
When she had seen the last of Sasha, she returned
home, contented and serene, brimming over
with love; her face, which had grown younger
during the last six months, smiled and beamed;
people meeting her looked at her with pleasure.
"Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. How
are you, darling?"
"The lessons at the high school are very difficult
now," she would relate at the market. "It's
too much; in the first class yesterday they
gave him a fable to learn by heart, and a
Latin translation and a problem. You know
it's too much for a little chap."
And she would begin talking about the teachers,
the lessons, and the school books, saying
just what Sasha said.
At three o'clock they had dinner together:
in the evening they learned their lessons
together and cried. When she put him to bed,
she would stay a long time making the Cross
over him and murmuring a prayer; then she
would go to bed and dream of that far-away
misty future when Sasha would finish his studies
and become a doctor or an engineer, would
have a big house of his own with horses and
a carriage, would get married and have children.
. . . She would fall asleep still thinking
of the same thing, and tears would run down
her cheeks from her closed eyes, while the
black cat lay purring beside her: "Mrr, mrr,
mrr."
Suddenly there would come a loud knock at
the gate.
Olenka would wake up breathless with alarm,
her heart throbbing. Half a minute later would
come another knock.
"It must be a telegram from Harkov," she would
think, beginning to tremble from head to foot.
"Sasha's mother is sending for him from Harkov.
. . . Oh, mercy on us!"
She was in despair. Her head, her hands, and
her feet would turn chill, and she would feel
that she was the most unhappy woman in the
world. But another minute would pass, voices
would be heard: it would turn out to be the
veterinary surgeon coming home from the club.
"Well, thank God!" she would think.
And gradually the load in her heart would
pass off, and she would feel at ease. She
would go back to bed thinking of Sasha, who
lay sound asleep in the next room, sometimes
crying out in his sleep:
"I'll give it you! Get away! Shut up!"
ARIADNE
ON the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa
to Sevastopol, a rather good-looking gentleman,
with a little round beard, came up to me to
smoke, and said:
"Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter?
Whenever Germans or Englishmen get together,
they talk about the crops, the price of wool,
or their personal affairs. But for some reason
or other when we Russians get together we
never discuss anything but women and abstract
subjects--but especially women."
This gentleman's face was familiar to me already.
We had returned from abroad the evening before
in the same train, and at Volotchisk when
the luggage was being examined by the Customs,
I saw him standing with a lady, his travelling
companion, before a perfect mountain of trunks
and baskets filled with ladies' clothes, and
I noticed how embarrassed and downcast he
was when he had to pay duty on some piece
of silk frippery, and his companion protested
and threatened to make a complaint. Afterwards,
on the way to Odessa, I saw him carrying little
pies and oranges to the ladies' compartment.
It was rather damp; the vessel swayed a little,
and the ladies had retired to their cabins.
The gentleman with the little round beard
sat down beside me and continued:
"Yes, when Russians come together they discuss
nothing but abstract subjects and women. We
are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter
nothing but truths and can discuss only questions
of a lofty order. The Russian actor does not
know how to be funny; he acts with profundity
even in a farce. We're just the same: when
we have got to talk of trifles we treat them
only from an exalted point of view. It comes
from a lack of boldness, sincerity, and simplicity.
We talk so often about women, I fancy, because
we are dissatisfied. We take too ideal a view
of women, and make demands out of all proportion
with what reality can give us; we get something
utterly different from what we want, and the
result is dissatisfaction, shattered hopes,
and inward suffering, and if any one is suffering,
he's bound to talk of it. It does not bore
you to go on with this conversation?
"No, not in the least."
"In that case, allow me to introduce myself,"
said my companion, rising from his seat a
little:
"Ivan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner
of a sort. . . . You I know very well."
He sat down and went on, looking at me with
a genuine and friendly expression:
"A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau,
would explain these incessant conversations
about women as a form of erotic madness, or
would put it down to our having been slave-owners
and so on; I take quite a different view of
it. I repeat, we are dissatisfied because
we are idealists. We want the creatures who
bear us and our children to be superior to
us and to everything in the world. When we
are young we adore and poeticize those with
whom we are in love: love and happiness with
us are synonyms. Among us in Russia marriage
without love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed
and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success
is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which
women are beautiful, poetical, and exalted;
and if the Russian has been for years in ecstasies
over Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the
emancipation of women, I assure you there
is no affectation about it. But the trouble
is that when we have been married or been
intimate with a woman for some two or three
years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned:
we pair off with others, and again--disappointment,
again--repulsion, and in the long run we become
convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy,
unfair, undeveloped, cruel--in fact, far from
being superior, are immeasurably inferior
to us men. And in our dissatisfaction and
disappointment there is nothing left for us
but to grumble and talk about what we've been
so cruelly deceived in."
While Shamohin was talking I noticed that
the Russian language and our Russian surroundings
gave him great pleasure. This was probably
because he had been very homesick abroad.
Though he praised the Russians and ascribed
to them a rare idealism, he did not disparage
foreigners, and that I put down to his credit.
It could be seen, too, that there was some
uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to
talk more of himself than of women, and that
I was in for a long story in the nature of
a confession. And when we had asked for a
bottle of wine and had each of us drunk a
glass, this was how he did in fact begin:
"I remember in a novel of Weltmann's some
one says, 'So that's the story!' and some
one else answers, 'No, that's not the story--
that's only the introduction to the story.'
In the same way what I've said so far is only
the introduction; what I really want to tell
you is my own love story. Excuse me, I must
ask you again; it won't bore you to listen?"
I told him it would not, and he went on:
The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow
province in one of its northern districts.
The scenery there, I must tell you, is exquisite.
Our homestead is on the high bank of a rapid
stream, where the water chatters noisily day
and night: imagine a big old garden, neat
flower-beds, beehives, a kitchen-garden, and
below it a river with leafy willows, which,
when there is a heavy dew on them, have a
lustreless look as though they had turned
grey; and on the other side a meadow, and
beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible,
dark pine forest. In that forest delicious,
reddish agarics grow in endless profusion,
and elks still live in its deepest recesses.
When I am nailed up in my coffin I believe
I shall still dream of those early mornings,
you know, when the sun hurts your eyes: or
the wonderful spring evenings when the nightingales
and the landrails call in the garden and beyond
the garden, and sounds of the harmonica float
across from the village, while they play the
piano indoors and the stream babbles . . . when
there is such music, in fact, that one wants
at the same time to cry and to sing aloud.
We have not much arable land, but our pasture
makes up for it, and with the forest yields
about two thousand roubles a year. I am the
only son of my father; we are both modest
persons, and with my father's pension that
sum was amply sufficient for us.
The first three years after finishing at the
university I spent in the country, looking
after the estate and constantly expecting
to be elected on some local assembly; but
what was most important, I was violently in
love with an extraordinarily beautiful and
fascinating girl. She was the sister of our
neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner
who had on his estate pine-apples, marvellous
peaches, lightning conductors, a fountain
in the courtyard, and at the same time not
a farthing in his pocket. He did nothing and
knew how to do nothing. He was as flabby as
though he had been made of boiled turnip;
he used to doctor the peasants by homeopathy
and was interested in spiritualism. He was,
however, a man of great delicacy and mildness,
and by no means a fool, but I have no fondness
for these gentlemen who converse with spirits
and cure peasant women by magnetism. In the
first place, the ideas of people who are not
intellectually free are always in a muddle,
and it's extremely difficult to talk to them;
and, secondly, they usually love no one, and
have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism
has an unpleasant effect on sensitive people.
I did not care for his appearance either.
He was tall, stout, white-skinned, with a
little head, little shining eyes, and chubby
white fingers. He did not shake hands, but
kneaded one's hands in his. And he was always
apologising. If he asked for anything it was
"Excuse me"; if he gave you anything it was
"Excuse me" too.
As for his sister, she was a character out
of a different opera. I must explain that
I had not been acquainted with the Kotlovitches
in my childhood and early youth, for my father
had been a professor at N., and we had for
many years lived away. When I did make their
acquaintance the girl was twenty-two, had
left school long before, and had spent two
or three years in Moscow with a wealthy aunt
who brought her out into society. When I was
introduced and first had to talk to her, what
struck me most of all was her rare and beautiful
name--Ariadne. It suited her so wonderfully!
She was a brunette, very thin, very slender,
supple, elegant, and extremely graceful, with
refined and exceedingly noble features. Her
eyes were shining, too, but her brother's
shone with a cold sweetness, mawkish as sugar-candy,
while hers had the glow of youth, proud and
beautiful. She conquered me on the first day
of our acquaintance, and indeed it was inevitable.
My first impression was so overwhelming that
to this day I cannot get rid of my illusions;
I am still tempted to imagine that nature
had some grand, marvellous design when she
created that girl.
Ariadne's voice, her walk, her hat, even her
footprints on the sandy bank where she used
to angle for gudgeon, filled me with delight
and a passionate hunger for life. I judged
of her spiritual being from her lovely face
and lovely figure, and every word, every smile
of Ariadne's bewitched me, conquered me and
forced me to believe in the loftiness of her
soul. She was friendly, ready to talk, gay
and simple in her manners. She had a poetic
belief in God, made poetic reflections about
death, and there was such a wealth of varying
shades in her spiritual organisation that
even her faults seemed in her to carry with
them peculiar, charming qualities. Suppose
she wanted a new horse and had no money--what
did that matter? Something might be sold or
pawned, or if the steward swore that nothing
could possibly be sold or pawned, the iron
roofs might be torn off the lodges and taken
to the factory, or at the very busiest time
the farm-horses might be driven to the market
and sold there for next to nothing. These
unbridled desires reduced the whole household
to despair at times, but she expressed them
with such refinement that everything was forgiven
her; all things were permitted her as to a
goddess or to Cæsar's wife. My love was pathetic
and was soon noticed by every one--my father,
the neighbours, and the peasants--and they
all sympathised with me. When I stood the
workmen vodka, they would bow and say: "May
the Kotlovitch young lady be your bride, please
God!"
And Ariadne herself knew that I loved her.
She would often ride over on horseback or
drive in the char-à-banc to see us, and would
spend whole days with me and my father. She
made great friends with the old man, and he
even taught her to bicycle, which was his
favourite amusement.
I remember helping her to get on the bicycle
one evening, and she looked so lovely that
I felt as though I were burning my hands when
I touched her. I shuddered with rapture, and
when the two of them, my old father and she,
both looking so handsome and elegant, bicycled
side by side along the main road, a black
horse ridden by the steward dashed aside on
meeting them, and it seemed to me that it
dashed aside because it too was overcome by
her beauty. My love, my worship, touched Ariadne
and softened her; she had a passionate longing
to be captivated like me and to respond with
the same love. It was so poetical!
But she was incapable of really loving as
I did, for she was cold and already somewhat
corrupted. There was a demon in her, whispering
to her day and night that she was enchanting,
adorable; and, having no definite idea for
what object she was created, or for what purpose
life had been given her, she never pictured
herself in the future except as very wealthy
and distinguished, she had visions of balls,
races, liveries, of sumptuous drawing-rooms,
of a salon of her own, and of a perfect swarm
of counts, princes, ambassadors, celebrated
painters and artists, all of them adoring
her and in ecstasies over her beauty and her
dresses. . . .
This thirst for personal success, and this
continual concentration of the mind in one
direction, makes people cold, and Ariadne
was cold--to me, to nature, and to music.
Meanwhile time was passing, and still there
were no ambassadors on the scene. Ariadne
went on living with her brother, the spiritualist:
things went from bad to worse, so that she
had nothing to buy hats and dresses with,
and had to resort to all sorts of tricks and
dodges to conceal her poverty.
As luck would have it, a certain Prince Maktuev,
a wealthy man but an utterly insignificant
person, had paid his addresses to her when
she was living at her aunt's in Moscow. She
had refused him, point-blank. But now she
was fretted by the worm of repentance that
she had refused him; just as a peasant pouts
with repulsion at a mug of kvass with cockroaches
in it but yet drinks it, so she frowned disdainfully
at the recollection of the prince, and yet
she would say to me: "Say what you like, there
is something inexplicable, fascinating, in
a title. . . ."
She dreamed of a title, of a brilliant position,
and at the same time she did not want to let
me go. However one may dream of ambassadors
one's heart is not a stone, and one has wistful
feelings for one's youth. Ariadne tried to
fall in love, made a show of being in love,
and even swore that she loved me. But I am
a highly strung and sensitive man; when I
am loved I feel it even at a distance, without
vows and assurances; at once I felt as it
were a coldness in the air, and when she talked
to me of love, it seemed to me as though I
were listening to the singing of a metal nightingale.
Ariadne was herself aware that she was lacking
in something. She was vexed and more than
once I saw her cry. Another time--can you
imagine it?--all of a sudden she embraced
me and kissed me. It happened in the evening
on the river-bank, and I saw by her eyes that
she did not love me, but was embracing me
from curiosity, to test herself and to see
what came of it. And I felt dreadful. I took
her hands and said to her in despair: "These
caresses without love cause me suffering!"
"What a queer fellow you are!" she said with
annoyance, and walked away.
Another year or two might have passed, and
in all probability I should have married her,
and so my story would have ended, but fate
was pleased to arrange our romance differently.
It happened that a new personage appeared
on our horizon. Ariadne's brother had a visit
from an old university friend called Mihail
Ivanitch Lubkov, a charming man of whom coachmen
and footmen used to say: "An entertaining
gentleman." He was a man of medium height,
lean and bald, with a face like a good-natured
bourgeois, not interesting, but pale and presentable,
with a stiff, well-kept moustache, with a
neck like gooseskin, and a big Adam's apple.
He used to wear pince-nez on a wide black
ribbon, lisped, and could not pronounce either
_r_ or _l_. He was always in good spirits,
everything amused him.
He had made an exceedingly foolish marriage
at twenty, and had acquired two houses in
Moscow as part of his wife's dowry. He began
doing them up and building a bath-house, and
was completely ruined. Now his wife and four
children lodged in Oriental Buildings in great
poverty, and he had to support them--and this
amused him. He was thirty-six and his wife
was by now forty-two, and that, too, amused
him. His mother, a conceited, sulky personage,
with aristocratic pretensions, despised his
wife and lived apart with a perfect menagerie
of cats and dogs, and he had to allow her
seventy-five roubles a month also; he was,
too, a man of taste, liked lunching at the
Slavyansky Bazaar and dining at the Hermitage;
he needed a great deal of money, but his uncle
only allowed him two thousand roubles a year,
which was not enough, and for days together
he would run about Moscow with his tongue
out, as the saying is, looking for some one
to borrow from--and this, too, amused him.
He had come to Kotlovitch to find in the lap
of nature, as he said, a rest from family
life. At dinner, at supper, and on our walks,
he talked about his wife, about his mother,
about his creditors, about the bailiffs, and
laughed at them; he laughed at himself and
assured us that, thanks to his talent for
borrowing, he had made a great number of agreeable
acquaintances. He laughed without ceasing
and we laughed too. Moreover, in his company
we spent our time differently. I was more
inclined to quiet, so to say idyllic pleasures;
I liked fishing, evening walks, gathering
mushrooms; Lubkov preferred picnics, fireworks,
hunting. He used to get up picnics three times
a week, and Ariadne, with an earnest and inspired
face, used to write a list of oysters, champagne,
sweets, and used to send me into Moscow to
get them, without inquiring, of course, whether
I had money. And at the picnics there were
toasts and laughter, and again mirthful descriptions
of how old his wife was, what fat lap-dogs
his mother had, and what charming people his
creditors were.
Lubkov was fond of nature, but he regarded
it as something long familiar and at the same
time, in reality, infinitely beneath himself
and created for his pleasure. He would sometimes
stand still before some magnificent landscape
and say: "It would be nice to have tea here."
One day, seeing Ariadne walking in the distance
with a parasol, he nodded towards her and
said:
"She's thin, and that's what I like; I don't
like fat women."
This made me wince. I asked him not to speak
like that about women before me. He looked
at me in surprise and said:
"What is there amiss in my liking thin women
and not caring for fat ones?"
I made no answer. Afterwards, being in very
good spirits and a trifle elevated, he said:
"I've noticed Ariadne Grigoryevna likes you.
I can't understand why you don't go in and
win."
His words made me feel uncomfortable, and
with some embarrassment I told him how I looked
at love and women.
"I don't know," he sighed; "to my thinking,
a woman's a woman and a man's a man. Ariadne
Grigoryevna may be poetical and exalted, as
you say, but it doesn't follow that she must
be superior to the laws of nature. You see
for yourself that she has reached the age
when she must have a husband or a lover. I
respect women as much as you do, but I don't
think certain relations exclude poetry. Poetry's
one thing and love is another. It's just the
same as it is in farming. The beauty of nature
is one thing and the income from your forests
or fields is quite another."
When Ariadne and I were fishing, Lubkov would
lie on the sand close by and make fun of me,
or lecture me on the conduct of life.
"I wonder, my dear sir, how you can live without
a love affair," he would say. "You are young,
handsome, interesting--in fact, you're a man
not to be sniffed at, yet you live like a
monk. Och! I can't stand these fellows who
are old at twenty-eight! I'm nearly ten years
older than you are, and yet which of us is
the younger? Ariadne Grigoryevna, which?"
"You, of course," Ariadne answered him.
And when he was bored with our silence and
the attention with which we stared at our
floats he went home, and she said, looking
at me angrily:
"You're really not a man, but a mush, God
forgive me! A man ought to be able to be carried
away by his feelings, he ought to be able
to be mad, to make mistakes, to suffer! A
woman will forgive you audacity and insolence,
but she will never forgive your reasonableness!"
She was angry in earnest, and went on:
"To succeed, a man must be resolute and bold.
Lubkov is not so handsome as you are, but
he is more interesting. He will always succeed
with women because he's not like you; he's
a man. . . ."
And there was actually a note of exasperation
in her voice.
One day at supper she began saying, not addressing
me, that if she were a man she would not stagnate
in the country, but would travel, would spend
the winter somewhere aboard--in Italy, for
instance. Oh, Italy! At this point my father
unconsciously poured oil on the flames; he
began telling us at length about Italy, how
splendid it was there, the exquisite scenery,
the museums. Ariadne suddenly conceived a
burning desire to go to Italy. She positively
brought her fist down on the table and her
eyes flashed as she said: "I must go!"
After that came conversations every day about
Italy: how splendid it would be in Italy--ah,
Italy!--oh, Italy! And when Ariadne looked
at me over her shoulder, from her cold and
obstinate expression I saw that in her dreams
she had already conquered Italy with all its
salons, celebrated foreigners and tourists,
and there was no holding her back now. I advised
her to wait a little, to put off her tour
for a year or two, but she frowned disdainfully
and said:
"You're as prudent as an old woman!"
Lubkov was in favour of the tour. He said
it could be done very cheaply, and he, too,
would go to Italy and have a rest there from
family life.
I behaved, I confess, as naïvely as a schoolboy.
Not from jealousy, but from a foreboding of
something terrible and extraordinary, I tried
as far as possible not to leave them alone
together, and they made fun of me. For instance,
when I went in they would pretend they had
just been kissing one another, and so on.
But lo and behold, one fine morning, her plump,
white-skinned brother, the spiritualist, made
his appearance and expressed his desire to
speak to me alone.
He was a man without will; in spite of his
education and his delicacy he could never
resist reading another person's letter, if
it lay before him on the table. And now he
admitted that he had by chance read a letter
of Lubkov's to Ariadne.
"From that letter I learned that she is very
shortly going abroad. My dear fellow, I am
very much upset! Explain it to me for goodness'
sake. I can make nothing of it!"
As he said this he breathed hard, breathing
straight in my face and smelling of boiled
beef.
"Excuse me for revealing the secret of this
letter to you, but you are Ariadne's friend,
she respects you. Perhaps you know something
of it. She wants to go away, but with whom?
Mr. Lubkov is proposing to go with her. Excuse
me, but this is very strange of Mr. Lubkov;
he is a married man, he has children, and
yet he is making a declaration of love; he
is writing to Ariadne 'darling.' Excuse me,
but it is so strange!"
I turned cold all over; my hands and feet
went numb and I felt an ache in my chest,
as if a three-cornered stone had been driven
into it. Kotlovitch sank helplessly into an
easy-chair, and his hands fell limply at his
sides.
"What can I do?" I inquired.
"Persuade her. . . . Impress her mind. . . . Just
consider, what is Lubkov to her? Is he a match
for her? Oh, good God! How awful it is, how
awful it is!" he went on, clutching his head.
"She has had such splendid offers--Prince
Maktuev and . . . and others. The prince adores
her, and only last Wednesday week his late
grandfather, Ilarion, declared positively
that Ariadne would be his wife--positively!
His grandfather Ilarion is dead, but he is
a wonderfully intelligent person; we call
up his spirit every day."
After this conversation I lay awake all night
and thought of shooting myself. In the morning
I wrote five letters and tore them all up.
Then I sobbed in the barn. Then I took a sum
of money from my father and set off for the
Caucasus without saying good-bye.
Of course, a woman's a woman and a man's a
man, but can all that be as simple in our
day as it was before the Flood, and can it
be that I, a cultivated man endowed with a
complex spiritual organisation, ought to explain
the intense attraction I feel towards a woman
simply by the fact that her bodily formation
is different from mine? Oh, how awful that
would be! I want to believe that in his struggle
with nature the genius of man has struggled
with physical love too, as with an enemy,
and that, if he has not conquered it, he has
at least succeeded in tangling it in a net-work
of illusions of brotherhood and love; and
for me, at any rate, it is no longer a simple
instinct of my animal nature as with a dog
or a toad, but is real love, and every embrace
is spiritualised by a pure impulse of the
heart and respect for the woman. In reality,
a disgust for the animal instinct has been
trained for ages in hundreds of generations;
it is inherited by me in my blood and forms
part of my nature, and if I poetize love,
is not that as natural and inevitable in our
day as my ears' not being able to move and
my not being covered with fur? I fancy that's
how the majority of civilised people look
at it, so that the absence of the moral, poetical
element in love is treated in these days as
a phenomenon, as a sign of atavism; they say
it is a symptom of degeneracy, of many forms
of insanity. It is true that, in poetizing
love, we assume in those we love qualities
that are lacking in them, and that is a source
of continual mistakes and continual miseries
for us. But to my thinking it is better, even
so; that is, it is better to suffer than to
find complacency on the basis of woman being
woman and man being man.
In Tiflis I received a letter from my father.
He wrote that Ariadne Grigoryevna had on such
a day gone abroad, intending to spend the
whole winter away. A month later I returned
home. It was by now autumn. Every week Ariadne
sent my father extremely interesting letters
on scented paper, written in an excellent
literary style. It is my opinion that every
woman can be a writer. Ariadne described in
great detail how it had not been easy for
her to make it up with her aunt and induce
the latter to give her a thousand roubles
for the journey, and what a long time she
had spent in Moscow trying to find an old
lady, a distant relation, in order to persuade
her to go with her. Such a profusion of detail
suggested fiction, and I realised, of course,
that she had no chaperon with her.
Soon afterwards I, too, had a letter from
her, also scented and literary. She wrote
that she had missed me, missed my beautiful,
intelligent, loving eyes. She reproached me
affectionately for wasting my youth, for stagnating
in the country when I might, like her, be
living in paradise under the palms, breathing
the fragrance of the orange-trees. And she
signed herself "Your forsaken Ariadne." Two
days later came another letter in the same
style, signed "Your forgotten Ariadne." My
mind was confused. I loved her passionately,
I dreamed of her every night, and then this
"your forsaken," "your forgotten"--what did
it mean? What was it for? And then the dreariness
of the country, the long evenings, the disquieting
thoughts of Lubkov. . . . The uncertainty
tortured me, and poisoned my days and nights;
it became unendurable. I could not bear it
and went abroad.
Ariadne summoned me to Abbazzia. I arrived
there on a bright warm day after rain; the
rain-drops were still hanging on the trees
and glistening on the huge, barrack-like dépendance
where Ariadne and Lubkov were living.
They were not at home. I went into the park;
wandered about the avenues, then sat down.
An Austrian General, with his hands behind
him, walked past me, with red stripes on his
trousers such as our generals wear. A baby
was wheeled by in a perambulator and the wheels
squeaked on the damp sand. A decrepit old
man with jaundice passed, then a crowd of
Englishwomen, a Catholic priest, then the
Austrian General again. A military band, only
just arrived from Fiume, with glittering brass
instruments, sauntered by to the bandstand--they
began playing.
Have you ever been at Abbazzia? It's a filthy
little Slav town with only one street, which
stinks, and in which one can't walk after
rain without goloshes. I had read so much
and always with such intense feeling about
this earthly paradise that when afterwards,
holding up my trousers, I cautiously crossed
the narrow street, and in my ennui bought
some hard pears from an old peasant woman
who, recognising me as a Russian, said: "Tcheeteery"
for "tchetyry" (four)--"davadtsat" for "dvadtsat"
(twenty), and when I wondered in perplexity
where to go and what to do here, and when
I inevitably met Russians as disappointed
as I was, I began to feel vexed and ashamed.
There is a calm bay there full of steamers
and boats with coloured sails. From there
I could see Fiume and the distant islands
covered with lilac mist, and it would have
been picturesque if the view over the bay
had not been hemmed in by the hotels and their
dépendances--buildings in an absurd, trivial
style of architecture, with which the whole
of that green shore has been covered by greedy
money grubbers, so that for the most part
you see nothing in this little paradise but
windows, terraces, and little squares with
tables and waiters' black coats. There is
a park such as you find now in every watering-place
abroad. And the dark, motionless, silent foliage
of the palms, and the bright yellow sand in
the avenue, and the bright green seats, and
the glitter of the braying military horns--all
this sickened me in ten minutes! And yet one
is obliged for some reason to spend ten days,
ten weeks, there!
Having been dragged reluctantly from one of
these watering-places to another, I have been
more and more struck by the inconvenient and
niggardly life led by the wealthy and well-fed,
the dulness and feebleness of their imagination,
the lack of boldness in their tastes and desires.
And how much happier are those tourists, old
and young, who, not having the money to stay
in hotels, live where they can, admire the
view of the sea from the tops of the mountains,
lying on the green grass, walk instead of
riding, see the forests and villages at close
quarters, observe the customs of the country,
listen to its songs, fall in love with its
women. . . .
While I was sitting in the park, it began
to get dark, and in the twilight my Ariadne
appeared, elegant and dressed like a princess;
after her walked Lubkov, wearing a new loose-fitting
suit, bought probably in Vienna.
"Why are you cross with me?" he was saying.
"What have I done to you?"
Seeing me, she uttered a cry of joy, and probably,
if we had not been in the park, would have
thrown herself on my neck. She pressed my
hands warmly and laughed; and I laughed too
and almost cried with emotion. Questions followed,
of the village, of my father, whether I had
seen her brother, and so on. She insisted
on my looking her straight in the face, and
asked if I remembered the gudgeon, our little
quarrels, the picnics. . . .
"How nice it all was really!" she sighed.
"But we're not having a slow time here either.
We have a great many acquaintances, my dear,
my best of friends! To-morrow I will introduce
you to a Russian family here, but please buy
yourself another hat." She scrutinised me
and frowned. "Abbazzia is not the country,"
she said; "here one must be _comme il faut_."
Then we went to the restaurant. Ariadne was
laughing and mischievous all the time; she
kept calling me "dear," "good," "clever,"
and seemed as though she could not believe
her eyes that I was with her. We sat on till
eleven o'clock, and parted very well satisfied
both with the supper and with each other.
Next day Ariadne presented me to the Russian
family as: "The son of a distinguished professor
whose estate is next to ours."
She talked to this family about nothing but
estates and crops, and kept appealing to me.
She wanted to appear to be a very wealthy
landowner, and did, in fact, succeed in doing
so. Her manner was superb like that of a real
aristocrat, which indeed she was by birth.
"But what a person my aunt is!" she said suddenly,
looking at me with a smile. "We had a slight
tiff, and she has bolted off to Meran. What
do you say to that?"
Afterwards when we were walking in the park
I asked her:
"What aunt were you talking of just now? What
aunt is that?"
"That was a saving lie," laughed Ariadne.
"They must not know I'm without a chaperon."
After a moment's silence she came closer to
me and said:
"My dear, my dear, do be friends with Lubkov.
He is so unhappy! His wife and mother are
simply awful."
She used the formal mode of address in speaking
to Lubkov, and when she was going up to bed
she said good-night to him exactly as she
did to me, and their rooms were on different
floors. All this made me hope that it was
all nonsense, and that there was no sort of
love affair between them, and I felt at ease
when I met him. And when one day he asked
me for the loan of three hundred roubles,
I gave it to him with the greatest pleasure.
Every day we spent in enjoying ourselves and
in nothing but enjoying ourselves; we strolled
in the park, we ate, we drank. Every day there
were conversations with the Russian family.
By degrees I got used to the fact that if
I went into the park I should be sure to meet
the old man with jaundice, the Catholic priest,
and the Austrian General, who always carried
a pack of little cards, and wherever it was
possible sat down and played patience, nervously
twitching his shoulders. And the band played
the same thing over and over again.
At home in the country I used to feel ashamed
to meet the peasants when I was fishing or
on a picnic party on a working day; here too
I was ashamed at the sight of the footmen,
the coachmen, and the workmen who met us.
It always seemed to me they were looking at
me and thinking: "Why are you doing nothing?"
And I was conscious of this feeling of shame
every day from morning to night. It was a
strange, unpleasant, monotonous time; it was
only varied by Lubkov's borrowing from me
now a hundred, now fifty guldens, and being
suddenly revived by the money as a morphia-maniac
is by morphia, beginning to laugh loudly at
his wife, at himself, at his creditors.
At last it began to be rainy and cold. We
went to Italy, and I telegraphed to my father
begging him for mercy's sake to send me eight
hundred roubles to Rome. We stayed in Venice,
in Bologna, in Florence, and in every town
invariably put up at an expensive hotel, where
we were charged separately for lights, and
for service, and for heating, and for bread
at lunch, and for the right of having dinner
by ourselves. We ate enormously. In the morning
they gave us _café complet_; at one o'clock
lunch: meat, fish, some sort of omelette,
cheese, fruits, and wine. At six o'clock dinner
of eight courses with long intervals, during
which we drank beer and wine. At nine o'clock
tea. At midnight Ariadne would declare she
was hungry, and ask for ham and boiled eggs.
We would eat to keep her company.
In the intervals between meals we used to
rush about the museums and exhibitions in
continual anxiety for fear we should be late
for dinner or lunch. I was bored at the sight
of the pictures; I longed to be at home to
rest; I was exhausted, looked about for a
chair and hypocritically repeated after other
people: "How exquisite, what atmosphere!"
Like overfed boa constrictors, we noticed
only the most glaring objects. The shop windows
hypnotised us; we went into ecstasies over
imitation brooches and bought a mass of useless
trumpery.
The same thing happened in Rome, where it
rained and there was a cold wind. After a
heavy lunch we went to look at St. Peter's,
and thanks to our replete condition and perhaps
the bad weather, it made no sort of impression
on us, and detecting in each other an indifference
to art, we almost quarrelled.
The money came from my father. I went to get
it, I remember, in the morning. Lubkov went
with me.
"The present cannot be full and happy when
one has a past," said he. "I have heavy burdens
left on me by the past. However, if only I
get the money, it's no great matter, but if
not, I'm in a fix. Would you believe it, I
have only eight francs left, yet I must send
my wife a hundred and my mother another. And
we must live here too. Ariadne's like a child;
she won't enter into the position, and flings
away money like a duchess. Why did she buy
a watch yesterday? And, tell me, what object
is there in our going on playing at being
good children? Why, our hiding our relations
from the servants and our friends costs us
from ten to fifteen francs a day, as I have
to have a separate room. What's the object
of it?"
I felt as though a sharp stone had been turned
round in my chest. There was no uncertainty
now; it was all clear to me. I turned cold
all over, and at once made a resolution to
give up seeing them, to run away from them,
to go home at once. . . .
"To get on terms with a woman is easy enough,"
Lubkov went on. "You have only to undress
her; but afterwards what a bore it is, what
a silly business!"
When I counted over the money I received he
said:
"If you don't lend me a thousand francs, I
am faced with complete ruin. Your money is
the only resource left to me."
I gave him the money, and he at once revived
and began laughing about his uncle, a queer
fish, who could never keep his address secret
from his wife. When I reached the hotel I
packed and paid my bill. I had still to say
good-bye to Ariadne.
I knocked at the door.
"Entrez!"
In her room was the usual morning disorder:
tea-things on the table, an unfinished roll,
an eggshell; a strong overpowering reek of
scent. The bed had not been made, and it was
evident that two had slept in it.
Ariadne herself had only just got out of bed
and was now with her hair down in a flannel
dressing-jacket.
I said good-morning to her, and then sat in
silence for a minute while she tried to put
her hair tidy, and then I asked her, trembling
all over:
"Why . . . why . . . did you send for me here?"
Evidently she guessed what I was thinking;
she took me by the hand and said:
"I want you to be here, you are so pure."
I felt ashamed of my emotion, of my trembling.
And I was afraid I might begin sobbing, too!
I went out without saying another word, and
within an hour I was sitting in the train.
All the journey, for some reason, I imagined
Ariadne with child, and she seemed disgusting
to me, and all the women I saw in the trains
and at the stations looked to me, for some
reason, as if they too were with child, and
they too seemed disgusting and pitiable. I
was in the position of a greedy, passionate
miser who should suddenly discover that all
his gold coins were false. The pure, gracious
images which my imagination, warmed by love,
had cherished for so long, my plans, my hopes,
my memories, my ideas of love and of woman--all
now were jeering and putting out their tongues
at me. "Ariadne," I kept asking with horror,
"that young, intellectual, extraordinarily
beautiful girl, the daughter of a senator,
carrying on an intrigue with such an ordinary,
uninteresting vulgarian? But why should she
not love Lubkov?" I answered myself. "In what
is he inferior to me? Oh, let her love any
one she likes, but why lie to me? But why
is she bound to be open with me?" And so I
went on over and over again till I was stupefied.
It was cold in the train; I was travelling
first class, but even so there were three
on a side, there were no double windows, the
outer door opened straight into the compartment,
and I felt as though I were in the stocks,
cramped, abandoned, pitiful, and my legs were
fearfully numb, and at the same time I kept
recalling how fascinating she had been that
morning in her dressing-jacket and with her
hair down, and I was suddenly overcome by
such acute jealousy that I leapt up in anguish,
so that my neighbours stared at me in wonder
and positive alarm.
At home I found deep snow and twenty degrees
of frost. I'm fond of the winter; I'm fond
of it because at that time, even in the hardest
frosts, it's particularly snug at home. It's
pleasant to put on one's fur jacket and felt
overboots on a clear frosty day, to do something
in the garden or in the yard, or to read in
a well warmed room, to sit in my father's
study before the open fire, to wash in my
country bath-house. . . . Only if there is
no mother in the house, no sister and no children,
it is somehow dreary on winter evenings, and
they seem extraordinarily long and quiet.
And the warmer and snugger it is, the more
acutely is this lack felt. In the winter when
I came back from abroad, the evenings were
endlessly long, I was intensely depressed,
so depressed that I could not even read; in
the daytime I was coming and going, clearing
away the snow in the garden or feeding the
chickens and the calves, but in the evening
it was all up with me.
I had never cared for visitors before, but
now I was glad of them, for I knew there was
sure to be talk of Ariadne. Kotlovitch, the
spiritualist, used often to come to talk about
his sister, and sometimes he brought with
him his friend Prince Maktuev, who was as
much in love with Ariadne as I was. To sit
in Ariadne's room, to finger the keys of her
piano, to look at her music was a necessity
for the prince--he could not live without
it; and the spirit of his grandfather Ilarion
was still predicting that sooner or later
she would be his wife. The prince usually
stayed a long time with us, from lunch to
midnight, saying nothing all the time; in
silence he would drink two or three bottles
of beer, and from time to time, to show that
he too was taking part in the conversation,
he would laugh an abrupt, melancholy, foolish
laugh. Before going home he would always take
me aside and ask me in an undertone: "When
did you see Ariadne Grigoryevna last? Was
she quite well? I suppose she's not tired
of being out there?"
Spring came on. There was the harrowing to
do and then the sowing of spring corn and
clover. I was sad, but there was the feeling
of spring. One longed to accept the inevitable.
Working in the fields and listening to the
larks, I asked myself: "Couldn't I have done
with this question of personal happiness once
and for all? Couldn't I lay aside my fancy
and marry a simple peasant girl?"
Suddenly when we were at our very busiest,
I got a letter with the Italian stamp, and
the clover and the beehives and the calves
and the peasant girl all floated away like
smoke. This time Ariadne wrote that she was
profoundly, infinitely unhappy. She reproached
me for not holding out a helping hand to her,
for looking down upon her from the heights
of my virtue and deserting her at the moment
of danger. All this was written in a large,
nervous handwriting with blots and smudges,
and it was evident that she wrote in haste
and distress. In conclusion she besought me
to come and save her. Again my anchor was
hauled up and I was carried away. Ariadne
was in Rome. I arrived late in the evening,
and when she saw me, she sobbed and threw
herself on my neck. She had not changed at
all that winter, and was just as young and
charming. We had supper together and afterwards
drove about Rome until dawn, and all the time
she kept telling me about her doings. I asked
where Lubkov was.
"Don't remind me of that creature!" she cried.
"He is loathsome and disgusting to me!"
"But I thought you loved him," I said.
"Never," she said. "At first he struck me
as original and aroused my pity, that was
all. He is insolent and takes a woman by storm.
And that's attractive. But we won't talk about
him. That is a melancholy page in my life.
He has gone to Russia to get money. Serve
him right! I told him not to dare to come
back."
She was living then, not at an hotel, but
in a private lodging of two rooms which she
had decorated in her own taste, frigidly and
luxuriously.
After Lubkov had gone away she had borrowed
from her acquaintances about five thousand
francs, and my arrival certainly was the one
salvation for her.
I had reckoned on taking her back to the country,
but I did not succeed in that. She was homesick
for her native place, but her recollections
of the poverty she had been through there,
of privations, of the rusty roof on her brother's
house, roused a shudder of disgust, and when
I suggested going home to her, she squeezed
my hands convulsively and said:
"No, no, I shall die of boredom there!"
Then my love entered upon its final phase.
"Be the darling that you used to be; love
me a little," said Ariadne, bending over to
me. "You're sulky and prudent, you're afraid
to yield to impulse, and keep thinking of
consequences, and that's dull. Come, I beg
you, I beseech you, be nice to me! . . . My
pure one, my holy one, my dear one, I love
you so!"
I became her lover. For a month anyway I was
like a madman, conscious of nothing but rapture.
To hold in one's arms a young and lovely body,
with bliss to feel her warmth every time one
waked up from sleep, and to remember that
she was there--she, my Ariadne!-- oh, it was
not easy to get used to that! But yet I did
get used to it, and by degrees became capable
of reflecting on my new position. First of
all, I realised, as before, that Ariadne did
not love me. But she wanted to be really in
love, she was afraid of solitude, and, above
all, I was healthy, young, vigorous; she was
sensual, like all cold people, as a rule--and
we both made a show of being united by a passionate,
mutual love. Afterwards I realised something
else, too.
We stayed in Rome, in Naples, in Florence;
we went to Paris, but there we thought it
cold and went back to Italy. We introduced
ourselves everywhere as husband and wife,
wealthy landowners. People readily made our
acquaintance and Ariadne had great social
success everywhere. As she took lessons in
painting, she was called an artist, and only
imagine, that quite suited her, though she
had not the slightest trace of talent.
She would sleep every day till two or three
o'clock; she had her coffee and lunch in bed.
At dinner she would eat soup, lobster, fish,
meat, asparagus, game, and after she had gone
to bed I used to bring up something, for instance
roast beef, and she would eat it with a melancholy,
careworn expression, and if she waked in the
night she would eat apples and oranges.
The chief, so to say fundamental, characteristic
of the woman was an amazing duplicity. She
was continually deceitful every minute, apparently
apart from any necessity, as it were by instinct,
by an impulse such as makes the sparrow chirrup
and the cockroach waggle its antennæ. She
was deceitful with me, with the footman, with
the porter, with the tradesmen in the shops,
with her acquaintances; not one conversation,
not one meeting, took place without affectation
and pretence. A man had only to come into
our room--whoever it might be, a waiter, or
a baron--for her eyes, her expression, her
voice to change, even the contour of her figure
was transformed. At the very first glance
at her then, you would have said there were
no more wealthy and fashionable people in
Italy than we. She never met an artist or
a musician without telling him all sorts of
lies about his remarkable talent.
"You have such a talent!" she would say, in
honeyed cadences, "I'm really afraid of you.
I think you must see right through people."
And all this simply in order to please, to
be successful, to be fascinating! She waked
up every morning with the one thought of "pleasing"!
It was the aim and object of her life. If
I had told her that in such a house, in such
a street, there lived a man who was not attracted
by her, it would have caused her real suffering.
She wanted every day to enchant, to captivate,
to drive men crazy. The fact that I was in
her power and reduced to a complete nonentity
before her charms gave her the same sort of
satisfaction that visitors used to feel in
tournaments. My subjection was not enough,
and at nights, stretched out like a tigress,
uncovered--she was always too hot--she would
read the letters sent her by Lubkov; he besought
her to return to Russia, vowing if she did
not he would rob or murder some one to get
the money to come to her. She hated him, but
his passionate, slavish letters excited her.
She had an extraordinary opinion of her own
charms; she imagined that if somewhere, in
some great assembly, men could have seen how
beautifully she was made and the colour of
her skin, she would have vanquished all Italy,
the whole world. Her talk of her figure, of
her skin, offended me, and observing this,
she would, when she was angry, to vex me,
say all sorts of vulgar things, taunting me.
One day when we were at the summer villa of
a lady of our acquaintance, and she lost her
temper, she even went so far as to say: "If
you don't leave off boring me with your sermons,
I'll undress this minute and lie naked here
on these flowers."
Often looking at her asleep, or eating, or
trying to assume a naïve expression, I wondered
why that extraordinary beauty, grace, and
intelligence had been given her by God. Could
it simply be for lolling in bed, eating and
lying, lying endlessly? And was she intelligent
really? She was afraid of three candles in
a row, of the number thirteen, was terrified
of spells and bad dreams. She argued about
free love and freedom in general like a bigoted
old woman, declared that Boleslav Markevitch
was a better writer than Turgenev. But she
was diabolically cunning and sharp, and knew
how to seem a highly educated, advanced person
in company.
Even at a good-humoured moment, she could
always insult a servant or kill an insect
without a pang; she liked bull-fights, liked
to read about murders, and was angry when
prisoners were acquitted.
For the life Ariadne and I were leading, we
had to have a great deal of money. My poor
father sent me his pension, all the little
sums he received, borrowed for me wherever
he could, and when one day he answered me:
"Non habeo," I sent him a desperate telegram
in which I besought him to mortgage the estate.
A little later I begged him to get money somehow
on a second mortgage. He did this too without
a murmur and sent me every farthing. Ariadne
despised the practical side of life; all this
was no concern of hers, and when flinging
away thousands of francs to satisfy her mad
desires I groaned like an old tree, she would
be singing "Addio bella Napoli" with a light
heart.
Little by little I grew cold to her and began
to be ashamed of our tie. I am not fond of
pregnancy and confinements, but now I sometimes
dreamed of a child who would have been at
least a formal justification of our life.
That I might not be completely disgusted with
myself, I began reading and visiting museums
and galleries, gave up drinking and took to
eating very little. If one keeps oneself well
in hand from morning to night, one's heart
seems lighter. I began to bore Ariadne too.
The people with whom she won her triumphs
were, by the way, all of the middling sort;
as before, there were no ambassadors, there
was no salon, the money did not run to it,
and this mortified her and made her sob, and
she announced to me at last that perhaps she
would not be against our returning to Russia.
And here we are on our way. For the last few
months she has been zealously corresponding
with her brother; she evidently has some secret
projects, but what they are--God knows! I
am sick of trying to fathom her underhand
schemes! But we're going, not to the country,
but to Yalta and afterwards to the Caucasus.
She can only exist now at watering-places,
and if you knew how I hate all these watering-places,
how suffocated and ashamed I am in them. If
I could be in the country now! If I could
only be working now, earning my bread by the
sweat of my brow, atoning for my follies.
I am conscious of a superabundance of energy
and I believe that if I were to put that energy
to work I could redeem my estate in five years.
But now, as you see, there is a complication.
Here we're not abroad, but in mother Russia;
we shall have to think of lawful wedlock.
Of course, all attraction is over; there is
no trace left of my old love, but, however
that may be, I am bound in honour to marry
her.
----
Shamohin, excited by his story, went below
with me and we continued talking about women.
It was late. It appeared that he and I were
in the same cabin.
"So far it is only in the village that woman
has not fallen behind man," said Shamohin.
"There she thinks and feels just as man does,
and struggles with nature in the name of culture
as zealously as he. In the towns the woman
of the bourgeois or intellectual class has
long since fallen behind, and is returning
to her primitive condition. She is half a
human beast already, and, thanks to her, a
great deal of what had been won by human genius
has been lost again; the woman gradually disappears
and in her place is the primitive female.
This dropping-back on the part of the educated
woman is a real danger to culture; in her
retrogressive movement she tries to drag man
after her and prevents him from moving forward.
That is incontestable."
I asked: "Why generalise? Why judge of all
women from Ariadne alone? The very struggle
of women for education and sexual equality,
which I look upon as a struggle for justice,
precludes any hypothesis of a retrograde movement."
But Shamohin scarcely listened to me and he
smiled distrustfully. He was a passionate,
convinced misogynist, and it was impossible
to alter his convictions.
"Oh, nonsense!" he interrupted. "When once
a woman sees in me, not a man, not an equal,
but a male, and her one anxiety all her life
is to attract me--that is, to take possession
of me--how can one talk of their rights? Oh,
don't you believe them; they are very, very
cunning! We men make a great stir about their
emancipation, but they don't care about their
emancipation at all, they only pretend to
care about it; they are horribly cunning things,
horribly cunning!"
I began to feel sleepy and weary of discussion.
I turned over with my face to the wall.
"Yes," I heard as I fell asleep--"yes, and
it's our education that's at fault, sir. In
our towns, the whole education and bringing
up of women in its essence tends to develop
her into the human beast --that is, to make
her attractive to the male and able to vanquish
him. Yes, indeed"--Shamohiri sighed--"little
girls ought to be taught and brought up with
boys, so that they might be always together.
A woman ought to be trained so that she may
be able, like a man, to recognise when she's
wrong, or she always thinks she's in the right.
Instil into a little girl from her cradle
that a man is not first of all a cavalier
or a possible lover, but her neighbour, her
equal in everything. Train her to think logically,
to generalise, and do not assure her that
her brain weighs less than a man's and that
therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences,
to the arts, to the tasks of culture in general.
The apprentice to the shoemaker or the house
painter has a brain of smaller size than the
grown-up man too, yet he works, suffers, takes
his part in the general struggle for existence.
We must give up our attitude to the physiological
aspect, too--to pregnancy and childbirth,
seeing that in the first place women don't
have babies every month; secondly, not all
women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal
countrywoman works in the fields up to the
day of her confinement and it does her no
harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality
in everyday life. If a man gives a lady his
chair or picks up the handkerchief she has
dropped, let her repay him in the same way.
I have no objection if a girl of good family
helps me to put on my coat or hands me a glass
of water--"
I heard no more, for I fell asleep.
Next morning when we were approaching Sevastopol,
it was damp, unpleasant weather; the ship
rocked. Shamohin sat on deck with me, brooding
and silent. When the bell rang for tea, men
with their coat-collars turned up and ladies
with pale, sleepy faces began going below;
a young and very beautiful lady, the one who
had been so angry with the Customs officers
at Volotchisk, stopped before Shamohin and
said with the expression of a naughty, fretful
child:
"Jean, your birdie's been sea-sick."
Afterwards when I was at Yalta I saw the same
beautiful lady dashing about on horseback
with a couple of officers hardly able to keep
up with her. And one morning I saw her in
an overall and a Phrygian cap, sketching on
the sea-front with a great crowd admiring
her a little way off. I too was introduced
to her. She pressed my hand with great warmth,
and looking at me ecstatically, thanked me
in honeyed cadences for the pleasure I had
given her by my writings.
"Don't you believe her," Shamohin whispered
to me, "she has never read a word of them."
When I was walking on the sea-front in the
early evening Shamohin met me with his arms
full of big parcels of fruits and dainties.
"Prince Maktuev is here!" he said joyfully.
"He came yesterday with her brother, the spiritualist!
Now I understand what she was writing to him
about! Oh, Lord!" he went on, gazing up to
heaven, and pressing his parcels to his bosom.
"If she hits it off with the prince, it means
freedom, then I can go back to the country
with my father!"
And he ran on.
"I begin to believe in spirits," he called
to me, looking back. "The spirit of grandfather
Ilarion seems to have prophesied the truth!
Oh, if only it is so!"
----
The day after this meeting I left Yalta and
how Shamohin's story ended I don't know.
POLINKA
IT is one o'clock in the afternoon. Shopping
is at its height at the "Nouveauté's de Paris,"
a drapery establishment in one of the Arcades.
There is a monotonous hum of shopmen's voices,
the hum one hears at school when the teacher
sets the boys to learn something by heart.
This regular sound is not interrupted by the
laughter of lady customers nor the slam of
the glass door, nor the scurrying of the boys.
Polinka, a thin fair little person whose mother
is the head of a dressmaking establishment,
is standing in the middle of the shop looking
about for some one. A dark-browed boy runs
up to her and asks, looking at her very gravely:
"What is your pleasure, madam?"
"Nikolay Timofeitch always takes my order,"
answers Polinka.
Nikolay Timofeitch, a graceful dark young
man, fashionably dressed, with frizzled hair
and a big pin in his cravat, has already cleared
a place on the counter and is craning forward,
looking at Polinka with a smile.
"Morning, Pelagea Sergeevna!" he cries in
a pleasant, hearty baritone voice. "What can
I do for you?"
"Good-morning!" says Polinka, going up to
him. "You see, I'm back again. . . . Show
me some gimp, please."
"Gimp--for what purpose?"
"For a bodice trimming--to trim a whole dress,
in fact."
"Certainly."
Nickolay Timofeitch lays several kinds of
gimp before Polinka; she looks at the trimmings
languidly and begins bargaining over them.
"Oh, come, a rouble's not dear," says the
shopman persuasively, with a condescending
smile. "It's a French trimming, pure silk.
. . . We have a commoner sort, if you like,
heavier. That's forty-five kopecks a yard;
of course, it's nothing like the same quality."
"I want a bead corselet, too, with gimp buttons,"
says Polinka, bending over the gimp and sighing
for some reason. "And have you any bead motifs
to match?"
"Yes."
Polinka bends still lower over the counter
and asks softly:
"And why did you leave us so early on Thursday,
Nikolay Timofeitch?"
"Hm! It's queer you noticed it," says the
shopman, with a smirk. "You were so taken
up with that fine student that . . . it's
queer you noticed it!"
Polinka flushes crimson and remains mute.
With a nervous quiver in his fingers the shopman
closes the boxes, and for no sort of object
piles them one on the top of another. A moment
of silence follows.
"I want some bead lace, too," says Polinka,
lifting her eyes guiltily to the shopman.
"What sort? Black or coloured? Bead lace on
tulle is the most fashionable trimming."
"And how much is it?"
"The black's from eighty kopecks and the coloured
from two and a half roubles. I shall never
come and see you again," Nikolay Timofeitch
adds in an undertone.
"Why?"
"Why? It's very simple. You must understand
that yourself. Why should I distress myself?
It's a queer business! Do you suppose it's
a pleasure to me to see that student carrying
on with you? I see it all and I understand.
Ever since autumn he's been hanging about
you and you go for a walk with him almost
every day; and when he is with you, you gaze
at him as though he were an angel. You are
in love with him; there's no one to beat him
in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it's
no good talking."
Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger
on the counter in embarrassment.
"I see it all," the shopman goes on. "What
inducement have I to come and see you? I've
got some pride. It's not every one likes to
play gooseberry. What was it you asked for?"
"Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but
I've forgotten. I want some feather trimming
too."
"What kind would you like?"
"The best, something fashionable."
"The most fashionable now are real bird feathers.
If you want the most fashionable colour, it's
heliotrope or _kanak_--that is, claret with
a yellow shade in it. We have an immense choice.
And what all this affair is going to lead
to, I really don't understand. Here you are
in love, and how is it to end?"
Patches of red come into Nikolay Timofeitch's
face round his eyes. He crushes the soft feather
trimming in his hand and goes on muttering:
"Do you imagine he'll marry you--is that it?
You'd better drop any such fancies. Students
are forbidden to marry. And do you suppose
he comes to see you with honourable intentions?
A likely idea! Why, these fine students don't
look on us as human beings . . . they only
go to see shopkeepers and dressmakers to laugh
at their ignorance and to drink. They're ashamed
to drink at home and in good houses, but with
simple uneducated people like us they don't
care what any one thinks; they'd be ready
to stand on their heads. Yes! Well, which
feather trimming will you take? And if he
hangs about and carries on with you, we know
what he is after. . . . When he's a doctor
or a lawyer he'll remember you: 'Ah,' he'll
say, 'I used to have a pretty fair little
thing! I wonder where she is now?' Even now
I bet you he boasts among his friends that
he's got his eye on a little dressmaker."
Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the
pile of white boxes.
"No, I won't take the feather trimming," she
sighs. "Mamma had better choose it for herself;
I may get the wrong one. I want six yards
of fringe for an overcoat, at forty kopecks
the yard. For the same coat I want cocoa-nut
buttons, perforated, so they can be sown on
firmly. . . ."
Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and
the buttons. She looks at him guiltily and
evidently expects him to go on talking, but
he remains sullenly silent while he tidies
up the feather trimming.
"I mustn't forget some buttons for a dressing-gown
. . ." she says after an interval of silence,
wiping her pale lips with a handkerchief.
"What kind?"
"It's for a shopkeeper's wife, so give me
something rather striking."
"Yes, if it's for a shopkeeper's wife, you'd
better have something bright. Here are some
buttons. A combination of colours--red, blue,
and the fashionable gold shade. Very glaring.
The more refined prefer dull black with a
bright border. But I don't understand. Can't
you see for yourself? What can these . . . walks
lead to?"
"I don't know," whispers Polinka, and she
bends over the buttons; "I don't know myself
what's come to me, Nikolay Timofeitch."
A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way
behind Nikolay Timofeitch's back, squeezing
him to the counter, and beaming with the choicest
gallantry, shouts:
"Be so kind, madam, as to step into this department.
We have three kinds of jerseys: plain, braided,
and trimmed with beads! Which may I have the
pleasure of showing you?"
At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka,
pronouncing in a rich, deep voice, almost
a bass:
"They must be seamless, with the trade mark
stamped in them, please."
"Pretend to be looking at the things," Nikolay
Timofeitch whispers, bending down to Polinka
with a forced smile. "Dear me, you do look
pale and ill; you are quite changed. He'll
throw you over, Pelagea Sergeevna! Or if he
does marry you, it won't be for love but from
hunger; he'll be tempted by your money. He'll
furnish himself a nice home with your dowry,
and then be ashamed of you. He'll keep you
out of sight of his friends and visitors,
because you're uneducated. He'll call you
'my dummy of a wife.' You wouldn't know how
to behave in a doctor's or lawyer's circle.
To them you're a dressmaker, an ignorant creature."
"Nikolay Timofeitch!" somebody shouts from
the other end of the shop. "The young lady
here wants three yards of ribbon with a metal
stripe. Have we any?"
Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction,
smirks and shouts:
"Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe,
ottoman with a satin stripe, and satin with
a moiré stripe!"
"Oh, by the way, I mustn't forget, Olga asked
me to get her a pair of stays!" says Polinka.
"There are tears in your eyes," says Nikolay
Timofeitch in dismay. "What's that for? Come
to the corset department, I'll screen you
--it looks awkward."
With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free
and easy manner, the shopman rapidly conducts
Polinka to the corset department and conceals
her from the public eye behind a high pyramid
of boxes.
"What sort of corset may I show you?" he asks
aloud, whispering immediately: "Wipe your
eyes!"
"I want . . . I want . . . size forty-eight
centimetres. Only she wanted one, lined . . . with
real whalebone . . . I must talk to you, Nikolay
Timofeitch. Come to-day!"
"Talk? What about? There's nothing to talk
about."
"You are the only person who . . . cares about
me, and I've no one to talk to but you."
"These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone.
. . . What is there for us to talk about?
It's no use talking. . . . You are going for
a walk with him to-day, I suppose?"
"Yes; I . . . I am."
"Then what's the use of talking? Talk won't
help. . . . You are in love, aren't you?"
"Yes . . ." Polinka whispers hesitatingly,
and big tears gush from her eyes.
"What is there to say?" mutters Nikolay Timofeitch,
shrugging his shoulders nervously and turning
pale. "There's no need of talk. . . . Wipe
your eyes, that's all. I . . . I ask for nothing."
At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes
up to the pyramid of boxes, and says to his
customer:
"Let me show you some good elastic garters
that do not impede the circulation, certified
by medical authority . . ."
Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying
to conceal her emotion and his own, wrinkles
his face into a smile and says aloud:
"There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton
and silk! Oriental, English, Valenciennes,
crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo,
soutache, Cambray, are silk. . . . For God's
sake, wipe your eyes! They're coming this
way!"
And seeing that her tears are still gushing
he goes on louder than ever:
"Spanish, Rococo, soutache, Cambray . . . stockings,
thread, cotton, silk . . ."
ANYUTA
IN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished
apartments Stepan Klotchkov, a medical student
in his third year, was walking to and fro,
zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was
dry and his forehead perspiring from the unceasing
effort to learn it by heart.
In the window, covered by patterns of frost,
sat on a stool the girl who shared his room--Anyuta,
a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty,
very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with
bent back she was busy embroidering with red
thread the collar of a man's shirt. She was
working against time. . . . The clock in the
passage struck two drowsily, yet the little
room had not been put to rights for the morning.
Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about,
books, clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled
with soap-suds in which cigarette ends were
swimming, and the litter on the floor--all
seemed as though purposely jumbled together
in one confusion. . . .
"The right lung consists of three parts . . ." Klotchkov
repeated. "Boundaries! Upper part on anterior
wall of thorax reaches the fourth or fifth
rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib
. . . behind to the _spina scapulæ_. . ."
Klotchkov raised his eyes to the ceiling,
striving to visualise what he had just read.
Unable to form a clear picture of it, he began
feeling his upper ribs through his waistcoat.
"These ribs are like the keys of a piano,"
he said. "One must familiarise oneself with
them somehow, if one is not to get muddled
over them. One must study them in the skeleton
and the living body . . . . I say, Anyuta,
let me pick them out."
Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse,
and straightened herself up. Klotchkov sat
down facing her, frowned, and began counting
her ribs.
"H'm! . . . One can't feel the first rib;
it's behind the shoulder-blade . . . . This
must be the second rib. . . . Yes . . . this
is the third . . . this is the fourth. . . . H'm!
. . . yes. . . . Why are you wriggling?"
"Your fingers are cold!"
"Come, come . . . it won't kill you. Don't
twist about. That must be the third rib, then
. . . this is the fourth. . . . You look such
a skinny thing, and yet one can hardly feel
your ribs. That's the second . . . that's
the third. . . . Oh, this is muddling, and
one can't see it clearly. . . . I must draw
it. . . . Where's my crayon?"
Klotchkov took his crayon and drew on Anyuta's
chest several parallel lines corresponding
with the ribs.
"First-rate. That's all straightforward. . . . Well,
now I can sound you. Stand up!"
Anyuta stood up and raised her chin. Klotchkov
began sounding her, and was so absorbed in
this occupation that he did not notice how
Anyuta's lips, nose, and fingers turned blue
with cold. Anyuta shivered, and was afraid
the student, noticing it, would leave off
drawing and sounding her, and then, perhaps,
might fail in his exam.
"Now it's all clear," said Klotchkov when
he had finished. "You sit like that and don't
rub off the crayon, and meanwhile I'll learn
up a little more."
And the student again began walking to and
fro, repeating to himself. Anyuta, with black
stripes across her chest, looking as though
she had been tattooed, sat thinking, huddled
up and shivering with cold. She said very
little as a rule; she was always silent, thinking
and thinking. . . .
In the six or seven years of her wanderings
from one furnished room to another, she had
known five students like Klotchkov. Now they
had all finished their studies, had gone out
into the world, and, of course, like respectable
people, had long ago forgotten her. One of
them was living in Paris, two were doctors,
the fourth was an artist, and the fifth was
said to be already a professor. Klotchkov
was the sixth. . . . Soon he, too, would finish
his studies and go out into the world. There
was a fine future before him, no doubt, and
Klotchkov probably would become a great man,
but the present was anything but bright; Klotchkov
had no tobacco and no tea, and there were
only four lumps of sugar left. She must make
haste and finish her embroidery, take it to
the woman who had ordered it, and with the
quarter rouble she would get for it, buy tea
and tobacco.
"Can I come in?" asked a voice at the door.
Anyuta quickly threw a woollen shawl over
her shoulders. Fetisov, the artist, walked
in.
"I have come to ask you a favour," he began,
addressing Klotchkov, and glaring like a wild
beast from under the long locks that hung
over his brow. "Do me a favour; lend me your
young lady just for a couple of hours! I'm
painting a picture, you see, and I can't get
on without a model."
"Oh, with pleasure," Klotchkov agreed. "Go
along, Anyuta."
"The things I've had to put up with there,"
Anyuta murmured softly.
"Rubbish! The man's asking you for the sake
of art, and not for any sort of nonsense.
Why not help him if you can?"
Anyuta began dressing.
"And what are you painting?" asked Klotchkov.
"Psyche; it's a fine subject. But it won't
go, somehow. I have to keep painting from
different models. Yesterday I was painting
one with blue legs. 'Why are your legs blue?'
I asked her. 'It's my stockings stain them,'
she said. And you're still grinding! Lucky
fellow! You have patience."
"Medicine's a job one can't get on with without
grinding."
"H'm! . . . Excuse me, Klotchkov, but you
do live like a pig! It's awful the way you
live!"
"How do you mean? I can't help it. . . . I
only get twelve roubles a month from my father,
and it's hard to live decently on that."
"Yes . . . yes . . ." said the artist, frowning
with an air of disgust; "but, still, you might
live better. . . . An educated man is in duty
bound to have taste, isn't he? And goodness
knows what it's like here! The bed not made,
the slops, the dirt . . . yesterday's porridge
in the plates. . . Tfoo!"
"That's true," said the student in confusion;
"but Anyuta has had no time to-day to tidy
up; she's been busy all the while."
When Anyuta and the artist had gone out Klotchkov
lay down on the sofa and began learning, lying
down; then he accidentally dropped asleep,
and waking up an hour later, propped his head
on his fists and sank into gloomy reflection.
He recalled the artist's words that an educated
man was in duty bound to have taste, and his
surroundings actually struck him now as loathsome
and revolting. He saw, as it were in his mind's
eye, his own future, when he would see his
patients in his consulting-room, drink tea
in a large dining-room in the company of his
wife, a real lady. And now that slop-pail
in which the cigarette ends were swimming
looked incredibly disgusting. Anyuta, too,
rose before his imagination--a plain, slovenly,
pitiful figure . . . and he made up his mind
to part with her at once, at all costs.
When, on coming back from the artist's, she
took off her coat, he got up and said to her
seriously:
"Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and
listen. We must part! The fact is, I don't
want to live with you any longer."
Anyuta had come back from the artist's worn
out and exhausted. Standing so long as a model
had made her face look thin and sunken, and
her chin sharper than ever. She said nothing
in answer to the student's words, only her
lips began to tremble.
"You know we should have to part sooner or
later, anyway," said the student. "You're
a nice, good girl, and not a fool; you'll
understand. . . ."
Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped
up her embroidery in paper, gathered together
her needles and thread: she found the screw
of paper with the four lumps of sugar in the
window, and laid it on the table by the books.
"That's . . . your sugar . . ." she said softly,
and turned away to conceal her tears.
"Why are you crying?" asked Klotchkov.
He walked about the room in confusion, and
said:
"You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why,
you know we shall have to part. We can't stay
together for ever."
She had gathered together all her belongings,
and turned to say good-bye to him, and he
felt sorry for her.
"Shall I let her stay on here another week?"
he thought. "She really may as well stay,
and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and vexed
at his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly:
"Come, why are you standing there? If you
are going, go; and if you don't want to, take
off your coat and stay! You can stay!"
Anyuta took off her coat, silently, stealthily,
then blew her nose also stealthily, sighed,
and noiselessly returned to her invariable
position on her stool by the window.
The student drew his textbook to him and began
again pacing from corner to corner. "The right
lung consists of three parts," he repeated;
"the upper part, on anterior wall of thorax,
reaches the fourth or fifth rib . . . ."
In the passage some one shouted at the top
of his voice: "Grigory! The samovar!"
THE 
HELPMATE
"I'VE asked you not to tidy my table," said
Nikolay Yevgrafitch. "There's no finding anything
when you've tidied up. Where's the telegram?
Where have you thrown it? Be so good as to
look for it. It's from Kazan, dated yesterday."
The maid--a pale, very slim girl with an indifferent
expression --found several telegrams in the
basket under the table, and handed them to
the doctor without a word; but all these were
telegrams from patients. Then they looked
in the drawing-room, and in Olga Dmitrievna's
room.
It was past midnight. Nikolay Yevgrafitch
knew his wife would not be home very soon,
not till five o'clock at least. He did not
trust her, and when she was long away he could
not sleep, was worried, and at the same time
he despised his wife, and her bed, and her
looking-glass, and her boxes of sweets, and
the hyacinths, and the lilies of the valley
which were sent her every day by some one
or other, and which diffused the sickly fragrance
of a florist's shop all over the house. On
such nights he became petty, ill-humoured,
irritable, and he fancied now that it was
very necessary for him to have the telegram
he had received the day before from his brother,
though it contained nothing but Christmas
greetings.
On the table of his wife's room under the
box of stationery he found a telegram, and
glanced at it casually. It was addressed to
his wife, care of his mother-in-law, from
Monte Carlo, and signed Michel . . . . The
doctor did not understand one word of it,
as it was in some foreign language, apparently
English.
"Who is this Michel? Why Monte Carlo? Why
directed care of her mother?"
During the seven years of his married life
he had grown used to being suspicious, guessing,
catching at clues, and it had several times
occurred to him, that his exercise at home
had qualified him to become an excellent detective.
Going into his study and beginning to reflect,
he recalled at once how he had been with his
wife in Petersburg a year and a half ago,
and had lunched with an old school-fellow,
a civil engineer, and how that engineer had
introduced to him and his wife a young man
of two or three and twenty, called Mihail
Ivanovitch, with rather a curious short surname--Riss.
Two months later the doctor had seen the young
man's photograph in his wife's album, with
an inscription in French: "In remembrance
of the present and in hope of the future."
Later on he had met the young man himself
at his mother-in-law's. And that was at the
time when his wife had taken to being very
often absent and coming home at four or five
o'clock in the morning, and was constantly
asking him to get her a passport for abroad,
which he kept refusing to do; and a continual
feud went on in the house which made him feel
ashamed to face the servants.
Six months before, his colleagues had decided
that he was going into consumption, and advised
him to throw up everything and go to the Crimea.
When she heard of this, Olga Dmitrievna affected
to be very much alarmed; she began to be affectionate
to her husband, and kept assuring him that
it would be cold and dull in the Crimea, and
that he had much better go to Nice, and that
she would go with him, and there would nurse
him, look after him, take care of him.
Now, he understood why his wife was so particularly
anxious to go to Nice: her Michel lived at
Monte Carlo.
He took an English dictionary, and translating
the words, and guessing their meaning, by
degrees he put together the following sentence:
"I drink to the health of my beloved darling,
and kiss her little foot a thousand times,
and am impatiently expecting her arrival."
He pictured the pitiable, ludicrous part he
would play if he had agreed to go to Nice
with his wife. He felt so mortified that he
almost shed tears and began pacing to and
fro through all the rooms of the flat in great
agitation. His pride, his plebeian fastidiousness,
was revolted. Clenching his fists and scowling
with disgust, he wondered how he, the son
of a village priest, brought up in a clerical
school, a plain, straightforward man, a surgeon
by profession--how could he have let himself
be enslaved, have sunk into such shameful
bondage to this weak, worthless, mercenary,
low creature.
"'Little foot'!" he muttered to himself, crumpling
up the telegram; "'little foot'!"
Of the time when he fell in love and proposed
to her, and the seven years that he had been
living with her, all that remained in his
memory was her long, fragrant hair, a mass
of soft lace, and her little feet, which certainly
were very small, beautiful feet; and even
now it seemed as though he still had from
those old embraces the feeling of lace and
silk upon his hands and face--and nothing
more. Nothing more--that is, not counting
hysterics, shrieks, reproaches, threats, and
lies--brazen, treacherous lies. He remembered
how in his father's house in the village a
bird would sometimes chance to fly in from
the open air into the house and would struggle
desperately against the window-panes and upset
things; so this woman from a class utterly
alien to him had flown into his life and made
complete havoc of it. The best years of his
life had been spent as though in hell, his
hopes for happiness shattered and turned into
a mockery, his health gone, his rooms as vulgar
in their atmosphere as a cocotte's, and of
the ten thousand he earned every year he could
never save ten roubles to send his old mother
in the village, and his debts were already
about fifteen thousand. It seemed that if
a band of brigands had been living in his
rooms his life would not have been so hopelessly,
so irremediably ruined as by the presence
of this woman.
He began coughing and gasping for breath.
He ought to have gone to bed and got warm,
but he could not. He kept walking about the
rooms, or sat down to the table, nervously
fidgeting with a pencil and scribbling mechanically
on a paper.
"Trying a pen. . . . A little foot."
By five o'clock he grew weaker and threw all
the blame on himself. It seemed to him now
that if Olga Dmitrievna had married some one
else who might have had a good influence over
her--who knows?-- she might after all have
become a good, straightforward woman. He was
a poor psychologist, and knew nothing of the
female heart; besides, he was churlish, uninteresting.
. . .
"I haven't long to live now," he thought.
"I am a dead man, and ought not to stand in
the way of the living. It would be strange
and stupid to insist upon one's rights now.
I'll have it out with her; let her go to the
man she loves. . . . I'll give her a divorce.
I'll take the blame on myself."
Olga Dmitrievna came in at last, and she walked
into the study and sank into a chair just
as she was in her white cloak, hat, and overboots.
"The nasty, fat boy," she said with a sob,
breathing hard. "It's really dishonest; it's
disgusting." She stamped. "I can't put up
with it; I can't, I can't!"
"What's the matter?" asked Nikolay Yevgrafitch,
going up to her.
"That student, Azarbekov, was seeing me home,
and he lost my bag, and there was fifteen
roubles in it. I borrowed it from mamma."
She was crying in a most genuine way, like
a little girl, and not only her handkerchief,
but even her gloves, were wet with tears.
"It can't be helped!" said the doctor. "If
he's lost it, he's lost it, and it's no good
worrying over it. Calm yourself; I want to
talk to you."
"I am not a millionaire to lose money like
that. He says he'll pay it back, but I don't
believe him; he's poor . . ."
Her husband begged her to calm herself and
to listen to him, but she kept on talking
of the student and of the fifteen roubles
she had lost.
"Ach! I'll give you twenty-five roubles to-morrow
if you'll only hold your tongue!" he said
irritably.
"I must take off my things!" she said, crying.
"I can't talk seriously in my fur coat! How
strange you are!"
He helped her off with her coat and overboots,
detecting as he did so the smell of the white
wine she liked to drink with oysters (in spite
of her etherealness she ate and drank a great
deal). She went into her room and came back
soon after, having changed her things and
powdered her face, though her eyes still showed
traces of tears. She sat down, retreating
into her light, lacy dressing-gown, and in
the mass of billowy pink her husband could
see nothing but her hair, which she had let
down, and her little foot wearing a slipper.
"What do you want to talk about?" she asked,
swinging herself in a rocking-chair.
"I happened to see this;" and he handed her
the telegram.
She read it and shrugged her shoulders.
"Well?" she said, rocking herself faster.
"That's the usual New Year's greeting and
nothing else. There are no secrets in it."
"You are reckoning on my not knowing English.
No, I don't know it; but I have a dictionary.
That telegram is from Riss; he drinks to the
health of his beloved and sends you a thousand
kisses. But let us leave that," the doctor
went on hurriedly. "I don't in the least want
to reproach you or make a scene. We've had
scenes and reproaches enough; it's time to
make an end of them. . . . This is what I
want to say to you: you are free, and can
live as you like."
There was a silence. She began crying quietly.
"I set you free from the necessity of lying
and keeping up pretences," Nikolay Yevgrafitch
continued. "If you love that young man, love
him; if you want to go abroad to him, go.
You are young, healthy, and I am a wreck,
and haven't long to live. In short . . . you
understand me."
He was agitated and could not go on. Olga
Dmitrievna, crying and speaking in a voice
of self-pity, acknowledged that she loved
Riss, and used to drive out of town with him
and see him in his rooms, and now she really
did long to go abroad.
"You see, I hide nothing from you," she added,
with a sigh. "My whole soul lies open before
you. And I beg you again, be generous, get
me a passport."
"I repeat, you are free."
She moved to another seat nearer him to look
at the expression of his face. She did not
believe him and wanted now to understand his
secret meaning. She never did believe any
one, and however generous were their intentions,
she always suspected some petty or ignoble
motive or selfish object in them. And when
she looked searchingly into his face, it seemed
to him that there was a gleam of green light
in her eyes as in a cat's.
"When shall I get the passport?" she asked
softly.
He suddenly had an impulse to say "Never";
but he restrained himself and said:
"When you like."
"I shall only go for a month."
"You'll go to Riss for good. I'll get you
a divorce, take the blame on myself, and Riss
can marry you."
"But I don't want a divorce!" Olga Dmitrievna
retorted quickly, with an astonished face.
"I am not asking you for a divorce! Get me
a passport, that's all."
"But why don't you want the divorce?" asked
the doctor, beginning to feel irritated. "You
are a strange woman. How strange you are!
If you are fond of him in earnest and he loves
you too, in your position you can do nothing
better than get married. Can you really hesitate
between marriage and adultery?"
"I understand you," she said, walking away
from him, and a spiteful, vindictive expression
came into her face. "I understand you perfectly.
You are sick of me, and you simply want to
get rid of me, to force this divorce on me.
Thank you very much; I am not such a fool
as you think. I won't accept the divorce and
I won't leave you--I won't, I won't! To begin
with, I don't want to lose my position in
society," she continued quickly, as though
afraid of being prevented from speaking. "Secondly,
I am twenty-seven and Riss is only twenty-three;
he'll be tired of me in a year and throw me
over. And what's more, if you care to know,
I'm not certain that my feeling will last
long . . . so there! I'm not going to leave
you."
"Then I'll turn you out of the house!" shouted
Nikolay Yevgrafitch, stamping. "I shall turn
you out, you vile, loathsome woman!"
"We shall see!" she said, and went out.
It was broad daylight outside, but the doctor
still sat at the table moving the pencil over
the paper and writing mechanically.
"My dear Sir. . . . Little foot."
Or he walked about and stopped in the drawing-room
before a photograph taken seven years ago,
soon after his marriage, and looked at it
for a long time. It was a family group: his
father-in-law, his mother-in-law, his wife
Olga Dmitrievna when she was twenty, and himself
in the rôle of a happy young husband. His
father-in-law, a clean-shaven, dropsical privy
councillor, crafty and avaricious; his mother-in-law,
a stout lady with small predatory features
like a weasel, who loved her daughter to distraction
and helped her in everything; if her daughter
were strangling some one, the mother would
not have protested, but would only have screened
her with her skirts. Olga Dmitrievna, too,
had small predatory-looking features, but
more expressive and bolder than her mother's;
she was not a weasel, but a beast on a bigger
scale! And Nikolay Yevgrafitch himself in
the photograph looked such a guileless soul,
such a kindly, good fellow, so open and simple-hearted;
his whole face was relaxed in the naïve,
good-natured smile of a divinity student,
and he had had the simplicity to believe that
that company of beasts of prey into which
destiny had chanced to thrust him would give
him romance and happiness and all he had dreamed
of when as a student he used to sing the song
"Youth is wasted, life is nought, when the
heart is cold and loveless."
And once more he asked himself in perplexity
how he, the son of a village priest, with
his democratic bringing up--a plain, blunt,
straightforward man--could have so helplessly
surrendered to the power of this worthless,
false, vulgar, petty creature, whose nature
was so utterly alien to him.
When at eleven o'clock he put on his coat
to go to the hospital the servant came into
his study.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The mistress has got up and asks you for
the twenty-five roubles you promised her yesterday."
TALENT
AN artist called Yegor Savvitch, who was spending
his summer holidays at the house of an officer's
widow, was sitting on his bed, given up to
the depression of morning. It was beginning
to look like autumn out of doors. Heavy, clumsy
clouds covered the sky in thick layers; there
was a cold, piercing wind, and with a plaintive
wail the trees were all bending on one side.
He could see the yellow leaves whirling round
in the air and on the earth. Farewell, summer!
This melancholy of nature is beautiful and
poetical in its own way, when it is looked
at with the eyes of an artist, but Yegor Savvitch
was in no humour to see beauty. He was devoured
by ennui and his only consolation was the
thought that by to-morrow he would not be
there. The bed, the chairs, the tables, the
floor, were all heaped up with cushions, crumpled
bed-clothes, boxes. The floor had not been
swept, the cotton curtains had been taken
down from the windows. Next day he was moving,
to town.
His landlady, the widow, was out. She had
gone off somewhere to hire horses and carts
to move next day to town. Profiting by the
absence of her severe mamma, her daughter
Katya, aged twenty, had for a long time been
sitting in the young man's room. Next day
the painter was going away, and she had a
great deal to say to him. She kept talking,
talking, and yet she felt that she had not
said a tenth of what she wanted to say. With
her eyes full of tears, she gazed at his shaggy
head, gazed at it with rapture and sadness.
And Yegor Savvitch was shaggy to a hideous
extent, so that he looked like a wild animal.
His hair hung down to his shoulder-blades,
his beard grew from his neck, from his nostrils,
from his ears; his eyes were lost under his
thick overhanging brows. It was all so thick,
so matted, that if a fly or a beetle had been
caught in his hair, it would never have found
its way out of this enchanted thicket. Yegor
Savvitch listened to Katya, yawning. He was
tired. When Katya began whimpering, he looked
severely at her from his overhanging eyebrows,
frowned, and said in a heavy, deep bass:
"I cannot marry."
"Why not?" Katya asked softly.
"Because for a painter, and in fact any man
who lives for art, marriage is out of the
question. An artist must be free."
"But in what way should I hinder you, Yegor
Savvitch?"
"I am not speaking of myself, I am speaking
in general. . . . Famous authors and painters
have never married."
"And you, too, will be famous--I understand
that perfectly. But put yourself in my place.
I am afraid of my mother. She is stern and
irritable. When she knows that you won't marry
me, and that it's all nothing . . . she'll
begin to give it to me. Oh, how wretched I
am! And you haven't paid for your rooms, either!
. . . ."
"Damn her! I'll pay."
Yegor Savvitch got up and began walking to
and fro.
"I ought to be abroad!" he said. And the artist
told her that nothing was easier than to go
abroad. One need do nothing but paint a picture
and sell it.
"Of course!" Katya assented. "Why haven't
you painted one in the summer?"
"Do you suppose I can work in a barn like
this?" the artist said ill-humouredly. "And
where should I get models?"
Some one banged the door viciously in the
storey below. Katya, who was expecting her
mother's return from minute to minute, jumped
up and ran away. The artist was left alone.
For a long time he walked to and fro, threading
his way between the chairs and the piles of
untidy objects of all sorts. He heard the
widow rattling the crockery and loudly abusing
the peasants who had asked her two roubles
for each cart. In his disgust Yegor Savvitch
stopped before the cupboard and stared for
a long while, frowning at the decanter of
vodka.
"Ah, blast you!" he heard the widow railing
at Katya. "Damnation take you!"
The artist drank a glass of vodka, and the
dark cloud in his soul gradually disappeared,
and he felt as though all his inside was smiling
within him. He began dreaming. . . . His fancy
pictured how he would become great. He could
not imagine his future works but he could
see distinctly how the papers would talk of
him, how the shops would sell his photographs,
with what envy his friends would look after
him. He tried to picture himself in a magnificent
drawing-room surrounded by pretty and adoring
women; but the picture was misty, vague, as
he had never in his life seen a drawing-room.
The pretty and adoring women were not a success
either, for, except Katya, he knew no adoring
woman, not even one respectable girl. People
who know nothing about life usually picture
life from books, but Yegor Savvitch knew no
books either. He had tried to read Gogol,
but had fallen asleep on the second page.
"It won't burn, drat the thing!" the widow
bawled down below, as she set the samovar.
"Katya, give me some charcoal!"
The dreamy artist felt a longing to share
his hopes and dreams with some one. He went
downstairs into the kitchen, where the stout
widow and Katya were busy about a dirty stove
in the midst of charcoal fumes from the samovar.
There he sat down on a bench close to a big
pot and began:
"It's a fine thing to be an artist! I can
go just where I like, do what I like. One
has not to work in an office or in the fields.
I've no superiors or officers over me. . . . I'm
my own superior. And with all that I'm doing
good to humanity!"
And after dinner he composed himself for a
"rest." He usually slept till the twilight
of evening. But this time soon after dinner
he felt that some one was pulling at his leg.
Some one kept laughing and shouting his name.
He opened his eyes and saw his friend Ukleikin,
the landscape painter, who had been away all
the summer in the Kostroma district.
"Bah!" he cried, delighted. "What do I see?"
There followed handshakes, questions.
"Well, have you brought anything? I suppose
you've knocked off hundreds of sketches?"
said Yegor Savvitch, watching Ukleikin taking
his belongings out of his trunk.
"H'm! . . . Yes. I have done something. And
how are you getting on? Have you been painting
anything?"
Yegor Savvitch dived behind the bed, and crimson
in the face, extracted a canvas in a frame
covered with dust and spider webs.
"See here. . . . A girl at the window after
parting from her betrothed. In three sittings.
Not nearly finished yet."
The picture represented Katya faintly outlined
sitting at an open window, from which could
be seen a garden and lilac distance. Ukleikin
did not like the picture.
"H'm! . . . There is air and . . . and there
is expression," he said. "There's a feeling
of distance, but . . . but that bush is screaming
. . . screaming horribly!"
The decanter was brought on to the scene.
Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising
beginner, an historical painter, came in to
see Yegor Savvitch. He was a friend staying
at the next villa, and was a man of five-and-thirty.
He had long hair, and wore a blouse with a
Shakespeare collar, and had a dignified manner.
Seeing the vodka, he frowned, complained of
his chest, but yielding to his friends' entreaties,
drank a glass.
"I've thought of a subject, my friends," he
began, getting drunk. "I want to paint some
new . . . Herod or Clepentian, or some blackguard
of that description, you understand, and to
contrast with him the idea of Christianity.
On the one side Rome, you understand, and
on the other Christianity. . . . I want to
represent the spirit, you understand? The
spirit!"
And the widow downstairs shouted continually:
"Katya, give me the cucumbers! Go to Sidorov's
and get some kvass, you jade!"
Like wolves in a cage, the three friends kept
pacing to and fro from one end of the room
to the other. They talked without ceasing,
talked, hotly and genuinely; all three were
excited, carried away. To listen to them it
would seem they had the future, fame, money,
in their hands. And it never occurred to either
of them that time was passing, that every
day life was nearing its close, that they
had lived at other people's expense a great
deal and nothing yet was accomplished; that
they were all bound by the inexorable law
by which of a hundred promising beginners
only two or three rise to any position and
all the others draw blanks in the lottery,
perish playing the part of flesh for the cannon.
. . . They were gay and happy, and looked
the future boldly in the face!
At one o'clock in the morning Kostyliov said
good-bye, and smoothing out his Shakespeare
collar, went home. The landscape painter remained
to sleep at Yegor Savvitch's. Before going
to bed, Yegor Savvitch took a candle and made
his way into the kitchen to get a drink of
water. In the dark, narrow passage Katya was
sitting, on a box, and, with her hands clasped
on her knees, was looking upwards. A blissful
smile was straying on her pale, exhausted
face, and her eyes were beaming.
"Is that you? What are you thinking about?"
Yegor Savvitch asked her.
"I am thinking of how you'll be famous," she
said in a half-whisper. "I keep fancying how
you'll become a famous man. . . . I overheard
all your talk. . . . I keep dreaming and dreaming.
. . ."
Katya went off into a happy laugh, cried,
and laid her hands reverently on her idol's
shoulders.
