initial commit of ebook 13413HEADmain

1 files changed, 8310 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/13413.txt b/old/13413.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5edd6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13413.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8310 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Party and Other Stories,
+by Anton Chekhov
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Party and Other Stories
+
+Author: Anton Chekhov
+
+Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13413]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
+
+VOLUME 4
+
+THE PARTY AND OTHER STORIES
+
+BY
+
+ANTON TCHEKHOV
+
+Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE PARTY
+TERROR
+A WOMAN'S KINGDOM
+A PROBLEM
+THE KISS
+'ANNA ON THE NECK'
+THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE
+NOT WANTED
+TYPHUS
+A MISFORTUNE
+A TRIFLE FROM LIFE
+
+
+
+
+THE PARTY
+
+I
+
+AFTER the festive dinner with its eight courses and its endless
+conversation, Olga Mihalovna, whose husband's name-day was being
+celebrated, went out into the garden. The duty of smiling and talking
+incessantly, the clatter of the crockery, the stupidity of the
+servants, the long intervals between the courses, and the stays she
+had put on to conceal her condition from the visitors, wearied her
+to exhaustion. She longed to get away from the house, to sit in the
+shade and rest her heart with thoughts of the baby which was to be
+born to her in another two months. She was used to these thoughts
+coming to her as she turned to the left out of the big avenue into
+the narrow path. Here in the thick shade of the plums and cherry-trees
+the dry branches used to scratch her neck and shoulders; a spider's
+web would settle on her face, and there would rise up in her mind
+the image of a little creature of undetermined sex and undefined
+features, and it began to seem as though it were not the spider's
+web that tickled her face and neck caressingly, but that little
+creature. When, at the end of the path, a thin wicker hurdle came
+into sight, and behind it podgy beehives with tiled roofs; when in
+the motionless, stagnant air there came a smell of hay and honey,
+and a soft buzzing of bees was audible, then the little creature
+would take complete possession of Olga Mihalovna. She used to sit
+down on a bench near the shanty woven of branches, and fall to
+thinking.
+
+This time, too, she went on as far as the seat, sat down, and began
+thinking; but instead of the little creature there rose up in her
+imagination the figures of the grown-up people whom she had just
+left. She felt dreadfully uneasy that she, the hostess, had deserted
+her guests, and she remembered how her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch,
+and her uncle, Nikolay Nikolaitch, had argued at dinner about trial
+by jury, about the press, and about the higher education of women.
+Her husband, as usual, argued in order to show off his Conservative
+ideas before his visitors--and still more in order to disagree
+with her uncle, whom he disliked. Her uncle contradicted him and
+wrangled over every word he uttered, so as to show the company that
+he, Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch, still retained his youthful freshness
+of spirit and free-thinking in spite of his fifty-nine years. And
+towards the end of dinner even Olga Mihalovna herself could not
+resist taking part and unskilfully attempting to defend university
+education for women--not that that education stood in need of her
+defence, but simply because she wanted to annoy her husband, who
+to her mind was unfair. The guests were wearied by this discussion,
+but they all thought it necessary to take part in it, and talked a
+great deal, although none of them took any interest in trial by
+jury or the higher education of women. . . .
+
+Olga Mihalovna was sitting on the nearest side of the hurdle near
+the shanty. The sun was hidden behind the clouds. The trees and the
+air were overcast as before rain, but in spite of that it was hot
+and stifling. The hay cut under the trees on the previous day was
+lying ungathered, looking melancholy, with here and there a patch
+of colour from the faded flowers, and from it came a heavy, sickly
+scent. It was still. The other side of the hurdle there was a
+monotonous hum of bees. . . .
+
+Suddenly she heard footsteps and voices; some one was coming along
+the path towards the beehouse.
+
+"How stifling it is!" said a feminine voice. "What do you think--
+is it going to rain, or not?"
+
+"It is going to rain, my charmer, but not before night," a very
+familiar male voice answered languidly. "There will be a good rain."
+
+Olga Mihalovna calculated that if she made haste to hide in the
+shanty they would pass by without seeing her, and she would not
+have to talk and to force herself to smile. She picked up her skirts,
+bent down and crept into the shanty. At once she felt upon her face,
+her neck, her arms, the hot air as heavy as steam. If it had not
+been for the stuffiness and the close smell of rye bread, fennel,
+and brushwood, which prevented her from breathing freely, it would
+have been delightful to hide from her visitors here under the
+thatched roof in the dusk, and to think about the little creature.
+It was cosy and quiet.
+
+"What a pretty spot!" said a feminine voice. "Let us sit here, Pyotr
+Dmitritch."
+
+Olga Mihalovna began peeping through a crack between two branches.
+She saw her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch, and Lubotchka Sheller, a girl
+of seventeen who had not long left boarding-school. Pyotr Dmitritch,
+with his hat on the back of his head, languid and indolent from
+having drunk so much at dinner, slouched by the hurdle and raked
+the hay into a heap with his foot; Lubotchka, pink with the heat
+and pretty as ever, stood with her hands behind her, watching the
+lazy movements of his big handsome person.
+
+Olga Mihalovna knew that her husband was attractive to women, and
+did not like to see him with them. There was nothing out of the way
+in Pyotr Dmitritch's lazily raking together the hay in order to sit
+down on it with Lubotchka and chatter to her of trivialities; there
+was nothing out of the way, either, in pretty Lubotchka's looking
+at him with her soft eyes; but yet Olga Mihalovna felt vexed with
+her husband and frightened and pleased that she could listen to
+them.
+
+"Sit down, enchantress," said Pyotr Dmitritch, sinking down on the
+hay and stretching. "That's right. Come, tell me something."
+
+"What next! If I begin telling you anything you will go to sleep."
+
+"Me go to sleep? Allah forbid! Can I go to sleep while eyes like
+yours are watching me?"
+
+In her husband's words, and in the fact that he was lolling with
+his hat on the back of his head in the presence of a lady, there
+was nothing out of the way either. He was spoilt by women, knew
+that they found him attractive, and had adopted with them a special
+tone which every one said suited him. With Lubotchka he behaved as
+with all women. But, all the same, Olga Mihalovna was jealous.
+
+"Tell me, please," said Lubotchka, after a brief silence--"is it
+true that you are to be tried for something?"
+
+"I? Yes, I am . . . numbered among the transgressors, my charmer."
+
+"But what for?"
+
+"For nothing, but just . . . it's chiefly a question of politics,"
+yawned Pyotr Dmitritch--"the antagonisms of Left and Right. I,
+an obscurantist and reactionary, ventured in an official paper to
+make use of an expression offensive in the eyes of such immaculate
+Gladstones as Vladimir Pavlovitch Vladimirov and our local justice
+of the peace--Kuzma Grigoritch Vostryakov."
+
+Pytor Dmitritch yawned again and went on:
+
+"And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the
+sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from
+touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid! A Liberal is like the poisonous
+dry fungus which covers you with a cloud of dust if you accidentally
+touch it with your finger."
+
+"What happened to you?"
+
+"Nothing particular. The whole flare-up started from the merest
+trifle. A teacher, a detestable person of clerical associations,
+hands to Vostryakov a petition against a tavern-keeper, charging
+him with insulting language and behaviour in a public place.
+Everything showed that both the teacher and the tavern-keeper were
+drunk as cobblers, and that they behaved equally badly. If there
+had been insulting behaviour, the insult had anyway been mutual.
+Vostryakov ought to have fined them both for a breach of the peace
+and have turned them out of the court--that is all. But that's
+not our way of doing things. With us what stands first is not the
+person--not the fact itself, but the trade-mark and label. However
+great a rascal a teacher may be, he is always in the right because
+he is a teacher; a tavern-keeper is always in the wrong because he
+is a tavern-keeper and a money-grubber. Vostryakov placed the
+tavern-keeper under arrest. The man appealed to the Circuit Court;
+the Circuit Court triumphantly upheld Vostryakov's decision. Well,
+I stuck to my own opinion. . . . Got a little hot. . . . That was
+all."
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch spoke calmly with careless irony. In reality the
+trial that was hanging over him worried him extremely. Olga Mihalovna
+remembered how on his return from the unfortunate session he had
+tried to conceal from his household how troubled he was, and how
+dissatisfied with himself. As an intelligent man he could not help
+feeling that he had gone too far in expressing his disagreement;
+and how much lying had been needful to conceal that feeling from
+himself and from others! How many unnecessary conversations there
+had been! How much grumbling and insincere laughter at what was not
+laughable! When he learned that he was to be brought up before the
+Court, he seemed at once harassed and depressed; he began to sleep
+badly, stood oftener than ever at the windows, drumming on the panes
+with his fingers. And he was ashamed to let his wife see that he
+was worried, and it vexed her.
+
+"They say you have been in the province of Poltava?" Lubotchka
+questioned him.
+
+"Yes," answered Pyotr Dmitritch. "I came back the day before
+yesterday."
+
+"I expect it is very nice there."
+
+"Yes, it is very nice, very nice indeed; in fact, I arrived just
+in time for the haymaking, I must tell you, and in the Ukraine the
+haymaking is the most poetical moment of the year. Here we have a
+big house, a big garden, a lot of servants, and a lot going on, so
+that you don't see the haymaking; here it all passes unnoticed.
+There, at the farm, I have a meadow of forty-five acres as flat as
+my hand. You can see the men mowing from any window you stand at.
+They are mowing in the meadow, they are mowing in the garden. There
+are no visitors, no fuss nor hurry either, so that you can't help
+seeing, feeling, hearing nothing but the haymaking. There is a smell
+of hay indoors and outdoors. There's the sound of the scythes from
+sunrise to sunset. Altogether Little Russia is a charming country.
+Would you believe it, when I was drinking water from the rustic
+wells and filthy vodka in some Jew's tavern, when on quiet evenings
+the strains of the Little Russian fiddle and the tambourines reached
+me, I was tempted by a fascinating idea--to settle down on my
+place and live there as long as I chose, far away from Circuit
+Courts, intellectual conversations, philosophizing women, long
+dinners. . . ."
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch was not lying. He was unhappy and really longed to
+rest. And he had visited his Poltava property simply to avoid seeing
+his study, his servants, his acquaintances, and everything that
+could remind him of his wounded vanity and his mistakes.
+
+Lubotchka suddenly jumped up and waved her hands about in horror.
+
+"Oh! A bee, a bee!" she shrieked. "It will sting!"
+
+"Nonsense; it won't sting," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "What a coward
+you are!"
+
+"No, no, no," cried Lubotchka; and looking round at the bees, she
+walked rapidly back.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch walked away after her, looking at her with a softened
+and melancholy face. He was probably thinking, as he looked at her,
+of his farm, of solitude, and--who knows?--perhaps he was even
+thinking how snug and cosy life would be at the farm if his wife
+had been this girl--young, pure, fresh, not corrupted by higher
+education, not with child. . . .
+
+When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Olga Mihalovna
+came out of the shanty and turned towards the house. She wanted to
+cry. She was by now acutely jealous. She could understand that her
+husband was worried, dissatisfied with himself and ashamed, and
+when people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest
+to them, and are unreserved with strangers; she could understand,
+also, that she had nothing to fear from Lubotchka or from those
+women who were now drinking coffee indoors. But everything in general
+was terrible, incomprehensible, and it already seemed to Olga
+Mihalovna that Pyotr Dmitritch only half belonged to her.
+
+"He has no right to do it!" she muttered, trying to formulate her
+jealousy and her vexation with her husband. "He has no right at
+all. I will tell him so plainly!"
+
+She made up her mind to find her husband at once and tell him all
+about it: it was disgusting, absolutely disgusting, that he was
+attractive to other women and sought their admiration as though it
+were some heavenly manna; it was unjust and dishonourable that he
+should give to others what belonged by right to his wife, that he
+should hide his soul and his conscience from his wife to reveal
+them to the first pretty face he came across. What harm had his
+wife done him? How was she to blame? Long ago she had been sickened
+by his lying: he was for ever posing, flirting, saying what he did
+not think, and trying to seem different from what he was and what
+he ought to be. Why this falsity? Was it seemly in a decent man?
+If he lied he was demeaning himself and those to whom he lied, and
+slighting what he lied about. Could he not understand that if he
+swaggered and posed at the judicial table, or held forth at dinner
+on the prerogatives of Government, that he, simply to provoke her
+uncle, was showing thereby that he had not a ha'p'orth of respect
+for the Court, or himself, or any of the people who were listening
+and looking at him?
+
+Coming out into the big avenue, Olga Mihalovna assumed an expression
+of face as though she had just gone away to look after some domestic
+matter. In the verandah the gentlemen were drinking liqueur and
+eating strawberries: one of them, the Examining Magistrate--a
+stout elderly man, _blagueur_ and wit--must have been telling
+some rather free anecdote, for, seeing their hostess, he suddenly
+clapped his hands over his fat lips, rolled his eyes, and sat down.
+Olga Mihalovna did not like the local officials. She did not care
+for their clumsy, ceremonious wives, their scandal-mongering, their
+frequent visits, their flattery of her husband, whom they all hated.
+Now, when they were drinking, were replete with food and showed no
+signs of going away, she felt their presence an agonizing weariness;
+but not to appear impolite, she smiled cordially to the Magistrate,
+and shook her finger at him. She walked across the dining-room and
+drawing-room smiling, and looking as though she had gone to give
+some order and make some arrangement. "God grant no one stops me,"
+she thought, but she forced herself to stop in the drawing-room to
+listen from politeness to a young man who was sitting at the piano
+playing: after standing for a minute, she cried, "Bravo, bravo, M.
+Georges!" and clapping her hands twice, she went on.
+
+She found her husband in his study. He was sitting at the table,
+thinking of something. His face looked stern, thoughtful, and guilty.
+This was not the same Pyotr Dmitritch who had been arguing at dinner
+and whom his guests knew, but a different man--wearied, feeling
+guilty and dissatisfied with himself, whom nobody knew but his wife.
+He must have come to the study to get cigarettes. Before him lay
+an open cigarette-case full of cigarettes, and one of his hands was
+in the table drawer; he had paused and sunk into thought as he was
+taking the cigarettes.
+
+Olga Mihalovna felt sorry for him. It was as clear as day that this
+man was harassed, could find no rest, and was perhaps struggling
+with himself. Olga Mihalovna went up to the table in silence: wanting
+to show that she had forgotten the argument at dinner and was not
+cross, she shut the cigarette-case and put it in her husband's coat
+pocket.
+
+"What should I say to him?" she wondered; "I shall say that lying
+is like a forest--the further one goes into it the more difficult
+it is to get out of it. I will say to him, 'You have been carried
+away by the false part you are playing; you have insulted people
+who were attached to you and have done you no harm. Go and apologize
+to them, laugh at yourself, and you will feel better. And if you
+want peace and solitude, let us go away together.'"
+
+Meeting his wife's gaze, Pyotr Dmitritch's face immediately assumed
+the expression it had worn at dinner and in the garden--indifferent
+and slightly ironical. He yawned and got up.
+
+"It's past five," he said, looking at his watch. "If our visitors
+are merciful and leave us at eleven, even then we have another six
+hours of it. It's a cheerful prospect, there's no denying!"
+
+And whistling something, he walked slowly out of the study with his
+usual dignified gait. She could hear him with dignified firmness
+cross the dining-room, then the drawing-room, laugh with dignified
+assurance, and say to the young man who was playing, "Bravo! bravo!"
+Soon his footsteps died away: he must have gone out into the garden.
+And now not jealousy, not vexation, but real hatred of his footsteps,
+his insincere laugh and voice, took possession of Olga Mihalovna.
+She went to the window and looked out into the garden. Pyotr Dmitritch
+was already walking along the avenue. Putting one hand in his pocket
+and snapping the fingers of the other, he walked with confident
+swinging steps, throwing his head back a little, and looking as
+though he were very well satisfied with himself, with his dinner,
+with his digestion, and with nature. . . .
+
+Two little schoolboys, the children of Madame Tchizhevsky, who had
+only just arrived, made their appearance in the avenue, accompanied
+by their tutor, a student wearing a white tunic and very narrow
+trousers. When they reached Pyotr Dmitritch, the boys and the student
+stopped, and probably congratulated him on his name-day. With a
+graceful swing of his shoulders, he patted the children on their
+cheeks, and carelessly offered the student his hand without looking
+at him. The student must have praised the weather and compared it
+with the climate of Petersburg, for Pyotr Dmitritch said in a loud
+voice, in a tone as though he were not speaking to a guest, but to
+an usher of the court or a witness:
+
+"What! It's cold in Petersburg? And here, my good sir, we have a
+salubrious atmosphere and the fruits of the earth in abundance. Eh?
+What?"
+
+And thrusting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of
+the other, he walked on. Till he had disappeared behind the nut
+bushes, Olga Mihalovna watched the back of his head in perplexity.
+How had this man of thirty-four come by the dignified deportment
+of a general? How had he come by that impressive, elegant manner?
+Where had he got that vibration of authority in his voice? Where
+had he got these "what's," "to be sure's," and "my good sir's"?
+
+Olga Mihalovna remembered how in the first months of her marriage
+she had felt dreary at home alone and had driven into the town to
+the Circuit Court, at which Pyotr Dmitritch had sometimes presided
+in place of her godfather, Count Alexey Petrovitch. In the presidential
+chair, wearing his uniform and a chain on his breast, he was
+completely changed. Stately gestures, a voice of thunder, "what,"
+"to be sure," careless tones. . . . Everything, all that was ordinary
+and human, all that was individual and personal to himself that
+Olga Mihalovna was accustomed to seeing in him at home, vanished
+in grandeur, and in the presidential chair there sat not Pyotr
+Dmitritch, but another man whom every one called Mr. President.
+This consciousness of power prevented him from sitting still in his
+place, and he seized every opportunity to ring his bell, to glance
+sternly at the public, to shout. . . . Where had he got his short-sight
+and his deafness when he suddenly began to see and hear with
+difficulty, and, frowning majestically, insisted on people speaking
+louder and coming closer to the table? From the height of his
+grandeur he could hardly distinguish faces or sounds, so that it
+seemed that if Olga Mihalovna herself had gone up to him he would
+have shouted even to her, "Your name?" Peasant witnesses he addressed
+familiarly, he shouted at the public so that his voice could be
+heard even in the street, and behaved incredibly with the lawyers.
+If a lawyer had to speak to him, Pyotr Dmitritch, turning a little
+away from him, looked with half-closed eyes at the ceiling, meaning
+to signify thereby that the lawyer was utterly superfluous and that
+he was neither recognizing him nor listening to him; if a badly-dressed
+lawyer spoke, Pyotr Dmitritch pricked up his ears and looked the
+man up and down with a sarcastic, annihilating stare as though to
+say: "Queer sort of lawyers nowadays!"
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he would interrupt.
+
+If a would-be eloquent lawyer mispronounced a foreign word, saying,
+for instance, "factitious" instead of "fictitious," Pyotr Dmitritch
+brightened up at once and asked, "What? How? Factitious? What does
+that mean?" and then observed impressively: "Don't make use of words
+you do not understand." And the lawyer, finishing his speech, would
+walk away from the table, red and perspiring, while Pyotr Dmitritch;
+with a self-satisfied smile, would lean back in his chair triumphant.
+In his manner with the lawyers he imitated Count Alexey Petrovitch
+a little, but when the latter said, for instance, "Counsel for the
+defence, you keep quiet for a little!" it sounded paternally
+good-natured and natural, while the same words in Pyotr Dmitritch's
+mouth were rude and artificial.
+
+II
+
+There were sounds of applause. The young man had finished playing.
+Olga Mihalovna remembered her guests and hurried into the drawing-room.
+
+"I have so enjoyed your playing," she said, going up to the piano.
+"I have so enjoyed it. You have a wonderful talent! But don't you
+think our piano's out of tune?"
+
+At that moment the two schoolboys walked into the room, accompanied
+by the student.
+
+"My goodness! Mitya and Kolya," Olga Mihalovna drawled joyfully,
+going to meet them: "How big they have grown! One would not know
+you! But where is your mamma?"
+
+"I congratulate you on the name-day," the student began in a
+free-and-easy tone, "and I wish you all happiness. Ekaterina
+Andreyevna sends her congratulations and begs you to excuse her.
+She is not very well."
+
+"How unkind of her! I have been expecting her all day. Is it long
+since you left Petersburg?" Olga Mihalovna asked the student. "What
+kind of weather have you there now?" And without waiting for an
+answer, she looked cordially at the schoolboys and repeated:
+
+"How tall they have grown! It is not long since they used to come
+with their nurse, and they are at school already! The old grow older
+while the young grow up. . . . Have you had dinner?"
+
+"Oh, please don't trouble!" said the student.
+
+"Why, you have not had dinner?"
+
+"For goodness' sake, don't trouble!"
+
+"But I suppose you are hungry?" Olga Mihalovna said it in a harsh,
+rude voice, with impatience and vexation--it escaped her unawares,
+but at once she coughed, smiled, and flushed crimson. "How tall
+they have grown!" she said softly.
+
+"Please don't trouble!" the student said once more.
+
+The student begged her not to trouble; the boys said nothing;
+obviously all three of them were hungry. Olga Mihalovna took them
+into the dining-room and told Vassily to lay the table.
+
+"How unkind of your mamma!" she said as she made them sit down.
+"She has quite forgotten me. Unkind, unkind, unkind . . . you must
+tell her so. What are you studying?" she asked the student.
+
+"Medicine."
+
+"Well, I have a weakness for doctors, only fancy. I am very sorry
+my husband is not a doctor. What courage any one must have to perform
+an operation or dissect a corpse, for instance! Horrible! Aren't
+you frightened? I believe I should die of terror! Of course, you
+drink vodka?"
+
+"Please don't trouble."
+
+"After your journey you must have something to drink. Though I am
+a woman, even I drink sometimes. And Mitya and Kolya will drink
+Malaga. It's not a strong wine; you need not be afraid of it. What
+fine fellows they are, really! They'll be thinking of getting married
+next."
+
+Olga Mihalovna talked without ceasing; she knew by experience that
+when she had guests to entertain it was far easier and more comfortable
+to talk than to listen. When you talk there is no need to strain
+your attention to think of answers to questions, and to change your
+expression of face. But unawares she asked the student a serious
+question; the student began a lengthy speech and she was forced to
+listen. The student knew that she had once been at the University,
+and so tried to seem a serious person as he talked to her.
+
+"What subject are you studying?" she asked, forgetting that she had
+already put that question to him.
+
+"Medicine."
+
+Olga Mihalovna now remembered that she had been away from the ladies
+for a long while.
+
+"Yes? Then I suppose you are going to be a doctor?" she said, getting
+up. "That's splendid. I am sorry I did not go in for medicine myself.
+So you will finish your dinner here, gentlemen, and then come into
+the garden. I will introduce you to the young ladies."
+
+She went out and glanced at her watch: it was five minutes to six.
+And she wondered that the time had gone so slowly, and thought with
+horror that there were six more hours before midnight, when the
+party would break up. How could she get through those six hours?
+What phrases could she utter? How should she behave to her husband?
+
+There was not a soul in the drawing-room or on the verandah. All
+the guests were sauntering about the garden.
+
+"I shall have to suggest a walk in the birchwood before tea, or
+else a row in the boats," thought Olga Mihalovna, hurrying to the
+croquet ground, from which came the sounds of voices and laughter.
+
+"And sit the old people down to _vint_. . . ." She met Grigory the
+footman coming from the croquet ground with empty bottles.
+
+"Where are the ladies?" she asked.
+
+"Among the raspberry-bushes. The master's there, too."
+
+"Oh, good heavens!" some one on the croquet lawn shouted with
+exasperation. "I have told you a thousand times over! To know the
+Bulgarians you must see them! You can't judge from the papers!"
+
+Either because of the outburst or for some other reason, Olga
+Mihalovna was suddenly aware of a terrible weakness all over,
+especially in her legs and in her shoulders. She felt she could not
+bear to speak, to listen, or to move.
+
+"Grigory," she said faintly and with an effort, "when you have to
+serve tea or anything, please don't appeal to me, don't ask me
+anything, don't speak of anything. . . . Do it all yourself, and
+. . . and don't make a noise with your feet, I entreat you. . . . I
+can't, because . . ."
+
+Without finishing, she walked on towards the croquet lawn, but on
+the way she thought of the ladies, and turned towards the
+raspberry-bushes. The sky, the air, and the trees looked gloomy
+again and threatened rain; it was hot and stifling. An immense flock
+of crows, foreseeing a storm, flew cawing over the garden. The paths
+were more overgrown, darker, and narrower as they got nearer the
+kitchen garden. In one of them, buried in a thick tangle of wild
+pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks, and hopbine, clouds of tiny
+black flies swarmed round Olga Mihalovna. She covered her face with
+her hands and began forcing herself to think of the little creature
+. . . . There floated through her imagination the figures of Grigory,
+Mitya, Kolya, the faces of the peasants who had come in the morning
+to present their congratulations.
+
+She heard footsteps, and she opened her eyes. Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch
+was coming rapidly towards her.
+
+"It's you, dear? I am very glad . . ." he began, breathless. "A
+couple of words. . . ." He mopped with his handkerchief his red
+shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands
+and opened his eyes wide. "My dear girl, how long is this going
+on?" he said rapidly, spluttering. "I ask you: is there no limit
+to it? I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet
+views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred
+and best in me and in every honest thinking man--I will say nothing
+about that, but he might at least behave decently! Why, he shouts,
+he bellows, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does
+not let one say a word. . . . I don't know what the devil's the
+matter with him! These lordly gestures, this condescending tone;
+and laughing like a general! Who is he, allow me to ask you? I ask
+you, who is he? The husband of his wife, with a few paltry acres
+and the rank of a titular who has had the luck to marry an heiress!
+An upstart and a _junker_, like so many others! A type out of
+Shtchedrin! Upon my word, it's either that he's suffering from
+megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovitch,
+is right when he says that children and young people are a long
+time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and
+generals till they are forty!"
+
+"That's true, that's true," Olga Mihalovna assented. "Let me pass."
+
+"Now just consider: what is it leading to?" her uncle went on,
+barring her way. "How will this playing at being a general and a
+Conservative end? Already he has got into trouble! Yes, to stand
+his trial! I am very glad of it! That's what his noise and shouting
+has brought him to--to stand in the prisoner's dock. And it's not
+as though it were the Circuit Court or something: it's the Central
+Court! Nothing worse could be imagined, I think! And then he has
+quarrelled with every one! He is celebrating his name-day, and look,
+Vostryakov's not here, nor Yahontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud,
+nor the Count. . . . There is no one, I imagine, more Conservative
+than Count Alexey Petrovitch, yet even he has not come. And he never
+will come again. He won't come, you will see!"
+
+"My God! but what has it to do with me?" asked Olga Mihalovna.
+
+"What has it to do with you? Why, you are his wife! You are clever,
+you have had a university education, and it was in your power to
+make him an honest worker!"
+
+"At the lectures I went to they did not teach us how to influence
+tiresome people. It seems as though I should have to apologize to
+all of you for having been at the University," said Olga Mihalovna
+sharply. "Listen, uncle. If people played the same scales over and
+over again the whole day long in your hearing, you wouldn't be able
+to sit still and listen, but would run away. I hear the same thing
+over again for days together all the year round. You must have pity
+on me at last."
+
+Her uncle pulled a very long face, then looked at her searchingly
+and twisted his lips into a mocking smile.
+
+"So that's how it is," he piped in a voice like an old woman's. "I
+beg your pardon!" he said, and made a ceremonious bow. "If you have
+fallen under his influence yourself, and have abandoned your
+convictions, you should have said so before. I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Yes, I have abandoned my convictions," she cried. "There; make the
+most of it!"
+
+"I beg your pardon!"
+
+Her uncle for the last time made her a ceremonious bow, a little
+on one side, and, shrinking into himself, made a scrape with his
+foot and walked back.
+
+"Idiot!" thought Olga Mihalovna. "I hope he will go home."
+
+She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in
+the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of
+eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or
+foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry
+bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been
+pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass.
+His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was untied. His
+watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the
+scythe showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength.
+Near him were standing Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour,
+Colonel Bukryeev--two anaemic and unhealthily stout fair girls,
+Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and
+Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other.
+Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow.
+
+"It's very simple," he said. "You have only to know how to hold the
+scythe and not to get too hot over it--that is, not to use more
+force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn't you like to try?"
+he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. "Come!"
+
+Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovna!" cried Olga Mihalovna, loud
+enough for all the ladies to hear that she was with them. "Don't
+be afraid! You must learn! If you marry a Tolstoyan he will make
+you mow."
+
+Lubotchka raised the scythe, but began laughing again, and, helpless
+with laughter, let go of it at once. She was ashamed and pleased
+at being talked to as though grown up. Nata, with a cold, serious
+face, with no trace of smiling or shyness, took the scythe, swung
+it and caught it in the grass; Vata, also without a smile, as cold
+and serious as her sister, took the scythe, and silently thrust it
+into the earth. Having done this, the two sisters linked arms and
+walked in silence to the raspberries.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch laughed and played about like a boy, and this
+childish, frolicsome mood in which he became exceedingly good-natured
+suited him far better than any other. Olga Mihalovna loved him when
+he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It
+did not this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason
+thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.
+
+"When I am mowing, I feel, do you know, healthier and more normal,"
+he said. "If I were forced to confine myself to an intellectual
+life I believe I should go out of my mind. I feel that I was not
+born to be a man of culture! I ought to mow, plough, sow, drive out
+the horses."
+
+And Pyotr Dmitritch began a conversation with the ladies about the
+advantages of physical labour, about culture, and then about the
+pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband,
+Olga Mihalovna, for some reason, thought of her dowry.
+
+"And the time will come, I suppose," she thought, "when he will not
+forgive me for being richer than he. He is proud and vain. Maybe
+he will hate me because he owes so much to me."
+
+She stopped near Colonel Bukryeev, who was eating raspberries and
+also taking part in the conversation.
+
+"Come," he said, making room for Olga Mihalovna and Pyotr Dmitritch.
+"The ripest are here. . . . And so, according to Proudhon," he went
+on, raising his voice, "property is robbery. But I must confess I
+don't believe in Proudhon, and don't consider him a philosopher.
+The French are not authorities, to my thinking--God bless them!"
+
+"Well, as for Proudhons and Buckles and the rest of them, I am weak
+in that department," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "For philosophy you must
+apply to my wife. She has been at University lectures and knows all
+your Schopenhauers and Proudhons by heart. . . ."
+
+Olga Mihalovna felt bored again. She walked again along a little
+path by apple and pear trees, and looked again as though she was
+on some very important errand. She reached the gardener's cottage.
+In the doorway the gardener's wife, Varvara, was sitting together
+with her four little children with big shaven heads. Varvara, too,
+was with child and expecting to be confined on Elijah's Day. After
+greeting her, Olga Mihalovna looked at her and the children in
+silence and asked:
+
+"Well, how do you feel?"
+
+"Oh, all right. . . ."
+
+A silence followed. The two women seemed to understand each other
+without words.
+
+"It's dreadful having one's first baby," said Olga Mihalovna after
+a moment's thought. "I keep feeling as though I shall not get through
+it, as though I shall die."
+
+"I fancied that, too, but here I am alive. One has all sorts of
+fancies."
+
+Varvara, who was just going to have her fifth, looked down a little
+on her mistress from the height of her experience and spoke in a
+rather didactic tone, and Olga Mihalovna could not help feeling her
+authority; she would have liked to have talked of her fears, of the
+child, of her sensations, but she was afraid it might strike Varvara
+as naive and trivial. And she waited in silence for Varvara to say
+something herself.
+
+"Olya, we are going indoors," Pyotr Dmitritch called from the
+raspberries.
+
+Olga Mihalovna liked being silent, waiting and watching Varvara.
+She would have been ready to stay like that till night without
+speaking or having any duty to perform. But she had to go. She had
+hardly left the cottage when Lubotchka, Nata, and Vata came running
+to meet her. The sisters stopped short abruptly a couple of yards
+away; Lubotchka ran right up to her and flung herself on her neck.
+
+"You dear, darling, precious," she said, kissing her face and her
+neck. "Let us go and have tea on the island!"
+
+"On the island, on the island!" said the precisely similar Nata and
+Vata, both at once, without a smile.
+
+"But it's going to rain, my dears."
+
+"It's not, it's not," cried Lubotchka with a woebegone face. "They've
+all agreed to go. Dear! darling!"
+
+"They are all getting ready to have tea on the island," said Pyotr
+Dmitritch, coming up. "See to arranging things. . . . We will all
+go in the boats, and the samovars and all the rest of it must be
+sent in the carriage with the servants."
+
+He walked beside his wife and gave her his arm. Olga Mihalovna had
+a desire to say something disagreeable to her husband, something
+biting, even about her dowry perhaps--the crueller the better,
+she felt. She thought a little, and said:
+
+"Why is it Count Alexey Petrovitch hasn't come? What a pity!"
+
+"I am very glad he hasn't come," said Pyotr Dmitritch, lying. "I'm
+sick to death of that old lunatic."
+
+"But yet before dinner you were expecting him so eagerly!"
+
+III
+
+Half an hour later all the guests were crowding on the bank near
+the pile to which the boats were fastened. They were all talking
+and laughing, and were in such excitement and commotion that they
+could hardly get into the boats. Three boats were crammed with
+passengers, while two stood empty. The keys for unfastening these
+two boats had been somehow mislaid, and messengers were continually
+running from the river to the house to look for them. Some said
+Grigory had the keys, others that the bailiff had them, while others
+suggested sending for a blacksmith and breaking the padlocks. And
+all talked at once, interrupting and shouting one another down.
+Pyotr Dmitritch paced impatiently to and fro on the bank, shouting:
+
+"What the devil's the meaning of it! The keys ought always to be
+lying in the hall window! Who has dared to take them away? The
+bailiff can get a boat of his own if he wants one!"
+
+At last the keys were found. Then it appeared that two oars were
+missing. Again there was a great hullabaloo. Pyotr Dmitritch, who
+was weary of pacing about the bank, jumped into a long, narrow boat
+hollowed out of the trunk of a poplar, and, lurching from side to
+side and almost falling into the water, pushed off from the bank.
+The other boats followed him one after another, amid loud laughter
+and the shrieks of the young ladies.
+
+The white cloudy sky, the trees on the riverside, the boats with
+the people in them, and the oars, were reflected in the water as
+in a mirror; under the boats, far away below in the bottomless
+depths, was a second sky with the birds flying across it. The bank
+on which the house and gardens stood was high, steep, and covered
+with trees; on the other, which was sloping, stretched broad green
+water-meadows with sheets of water glistening in them. The boats
+had floated a hundred yards when, behind the mournfully drooping
+willows on the sloping banks, huts and a herd of cows came into
+sight; they began to hear songs, drunken shouts, and the strains
+of a concertina.
+
+Here and there on the river fishing-boats were scattered about,
+setting their nets for the night. In one of these boats was the
+festive party, playing on home-made violins and violoncellos.
+
+Olga Mihalovna was sitting at the rudder; she was smiling affably
+and talking a great deal to entertain her visitors, while she glanced
+stealthily at her husband. He was ahead of them all, standing up
+punting with one oar. The light sharp-nosed canoe, which all the
+guests called the "death-trap"--while Pyotr Dmitritch, for some
+reason, called it _Penderaklia_--flew along quickly; it had a
+brisk, crafty expression, as though it hated its heavy occupant and
+was looking out for a favourable moment to glide away from under
+his feet. Olga Mihalovna kept looking at her husband, and she loathed
+his good looks which attracted every one, the back of his head, his
+attitude, his familiar manner with women; she hated all the women
+sitting in the boat with her, was jealous, and at the same time was
+trembling every minute in terror that the frail craft would upset
+and cause an accident.
+
+"Take care, Pyotr!" she cried, while her heart fluttered with terror.
+"Sit down! We believe in your courage without all that!"
+
+She was worried, too, by the people who were in the boat with her.
+They were all ordinary good sort of people like thousands of others,
+but now each one of them struck her as exceptional and evil. In
+each one of them she saw nothing but falsity. "That young man," she
+thought, "rowing, in gold-rimmed spectacles, with chestnut hair and
+a nice-looking beard: he is a mamma's darling, rich, and well-fed,
+and always fortunate, and every one considers him an honourable,
+free-thinking, advanced man. It's not a year since he left the
+University and came to live in the district, but he already talks
+of himself as 'we active members of the Zemstvo.' But in another
+year he will be bored like so many others and go off to Petersburg,
+and to justify running away, will tell every one that the Zemstvos
+are good-for-nothing, and that he has been deceived in them. While
+from the other boat his young wife keeps her eyes fixed on him, and
+believes that he is 'an active member of the Zemstvo,' just as in
+a year she will believe that the Zemstvo is good-for-nothing. And
+that stout, carefully shaven gentleman in the straw hat with the
+broad ribbon, with an expensive cigar in his mouth: he is fond of
+saying, 'It is time to put away dreams and set to work!' He has
+Yorkshire pigs, Butler's hives, rape-seed, pine-apples, a dairy, a
+cheese factory, Italian bookkeeping by double entry; but every
+summer he sells his timber and mortgages part of his land to spend
+the autumn with his mistress in the Crimea. And there's Uncle Nikolay
+Nikolaitch, who has quarrelled with Pyotr Dmitritch, and yet for
+some reason does not go home."
+
+Olga Mihalovna looked at the other boats, and there, too, she saw
+only uninteresting, queer creatures, affected or stupid people. She
+thought of all the people she knew in the district, and could not
+remember one person of whom one could say or think anything good.
+They all seemed to her mediocre, insipid, unintelligent, narrow,
+false, heartless; they all said what they did not think, and did
+what they did not want to. Dreariness and despair were stifling
+her; she longed to leave off smiling, to leap up and cry out, "I
+am sick of you," and then jump out and swim to the bank.
+
+"I say, let's take Pyotr Dmitritch in tow!" some one shouted.
+
+"In tow, in tow!" the others chimed in. "Olga Mihalovna, take your
+husband in tow."
+
+To take him in tow, Olga Mihalovna, who was steering, had to seize
+the right moment and to catch bold of his boat by the chain at the
+beak. When she bent over to the chain Pyotr Dmitritch frowned and
+looked at her in alarm.
+
+"I hope you won't catch cold," he said.
+
+"If you are uneasy about me and the child, why do you torment me?"
+thought Olga Mihalovna.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch acknowledged himself vanquished, and, not caring
+to be towed, jumped from the _Penderaklia_ into the boat which was
+overful already, and jumped so carelessly that the boat lurched
+violently, and every one cried out in terror.
+
+"He did that to please the ladies," thought Olga Mihalovna; "he
+knows it's charming." Her hands and feet began trembling, as she
+supposed, from boredom, vexation from the strain of smiling and the
+discomfort she felt all over her body. And to conceal this trembling
+from her guests, she tried to talk more loudly, to laugh, to move.
+
+"If I suddenly begin to cry," she thought, "I shall say I have
+toothache. . . ."
+
+But at last the boats reached the "Island of Good Hope," as they
+called the peninsula formed by a bend in the river at an acute
+angle, covered with a copse of old birch-trees, oaks, willows, and
+poplars. The tables were already laid under the trees; the samovars
+were smoking, and Vassily and Grigory, in their swallow-tails and
+white knitted gloves, were already busy with the tea-things. On the
+other bank, opposite the "Island of Good Hope," there stood the
+carriages which had come with the provisions. The baskets and parcels
+of provisions were carried across to the island in a little boat
+like the _Penderaklia_. The footmen, the coachmen, and even the
+peasant who was sitting in the boat, had the solemn expression
+befitting a name-day such as one only sees in children and servants.
+
+While Olga Mihalovna was making the tea and pouring out the first
+glasses, the visitors were busy with the liqueurs and sweet things.
+Then there was the general commotion usual at picnics over drinking
+tea, very wearisome and exhausting for the hostess. Grigory and
+Vassily had hardly had time to take the glasses round before hands
+were being stretched out to Olga Mihalovna with empty glasses. One
+asked for no sugar, another wanted it stronger, another weak, a
+fourth declined another glass. And all this Olga Mihalovna had to
+remember, and then to call, "Ivan Petrovitch, is it without sugar
+for you?" or, "Gentlemen, which of you wanted it weak?" But the
+guest who had asked for weak tea, or no sugar, had by now forgotten
+it, and, absorbed in agreeable conversation, took the first glass
+that came. Depressed-looking figures wandered like shadows at a
+little distance from the table, pretending to look for mushrooms
+in the grass, or reading the labels on the boxes--these were those
+for whom there were not glasses enough. "Have you had tea?" Olga
+Mihalovna kept asking, and the guest so addressed begged her not
+to trouble, and said, "I will wait," though it would have suited
+her better for the visitors not to wait but to make haste.
+
+Some, absorbed in conversation, drank their tea slowly, keeping
+their glasses for half an hour; others, especially some who had
+drunk a good deal at dinner, would not leave the table, and kept
+on drinking glass after glass, so that Olga Mihalovna scarcely had
+time to fill them. One jocular young man sipped his tea through a
+lump of sugar, and kept saying, "Sinful man that I am, I love to
+indulge myself with the Chinese herb." He kept asking with a heavy
+sigh: "Another tiny dish of tea more, if you please." He drank a
+great deal, nibbled his sugar, and thought it all very amusing and
+original, and imagined that he was doing a clever imitation of a
+Russian merchant. None of them understood that these trifles were
+agonizing to their hostess, and, indeed, it was hard to understand
+it, as Olga Mihalovna went on all the time smiling affably and
+talking nonsense.
+
+But she felt ill. . . . She was irritated by the crowd of people,
+the laughter, the questions, the jocular young man, the footmen
+harassed and run off their legs, the children who hung round the
+table; she was irritated at Vata's being like Nata, at Kolya's being
+like Mitya, so that one could not tell which of them had had tea
+and which of them had not. She felt that her smile of forced
+affability was passing into an expression of anger, and she felt
+every minute as though she would burst into tears.
+
+"Rain, my friends," cried some one.
+
+Every one looked at the sky.
+
+"Yes, it really is rain . . ." Pyotr Dmitritch assented, and wiped
+his cheek.
+
+Only a few drops were falling from the sky--the real rain had not
+begun yet; but the company abandoned their tea and made haste to
+get off. At first they all wanted to drive home in the carriages,
+but changed their minds and made for the boats. On the pretext that
+she had to hasten home to give directions about the supper, Olga
+Mihalovna asked to be excused for leaving the others, and went home
+in the carriage.
+
+When she got into the carriage, she first of all let her face rest
+from smiling. With an angry face she drove through the village, and
+with an angry face acknowledged the bows of the peasants she met.
+When she got home, she went to the bedroom by the back way and lay
+down on her husband's bed.
+
+"Merciful God!" she whispered. "What is all this hard labour for?
+Why do all these people hustle each other here and pretend that
+they are enjoying themselves? Why do I smile and lie? I don't
+understand it."
+
+She heard steps and voices. The visitors had come back.
+
+"Let them come," thought Olga Mihalovna; "I shall lie a little
+longer."
+
+But a maid-servant came and said:
+
+"Marya Grigoryevna is going, madam."
+
+Olga Mihalovna jumped up, tidied her hair and hurried out of the
+room.
+
+"Marya Grigoryevna, what is the meaning of this?" she began in an
+injured voice, going to meet Marya Grigoryevna. "Why are you in
+such a hurry?"
+
+"I can't help it, darling! I've stayed too long as it is; my children
+are expecting me home."
+
+"It's too bad of you! Why didn't you bring your children with you?"
+
+"If you will let me, dear, I will bring them on some ordinary day,
+but to-day . . ."
+
+"Oh, please do," Olga Mihalovna interrupted; "I shall be delighted!
+Your children are so sweet! Kiss them all for me. . . . But, really,
+I am offended with you! I don't understand why you are in such a
+hurry!"
+
+"I really must, I really must. . . . Good-bye, dear. Take care of
+yourself. In your condition, you know . . ."
+
+And the ladies kissed each other. After seeing the departing guest
+to her carriage, Olga Mihalovna went in to the ladies in the
+drawing-room. There the lamps were already lighted and the gentlemen
+were sitting down to cards.
+
+IV
+
+The party broke up after supper about a quarter past twelve. Seeing
+her visitors off, Olga Mihalovna stood at the door and said:
+
+"You really ought to take a shawl! It's turning a little chilly.
+Please God, you don't catch cold!"
+
+"Don't trouble, Olga Mihalovna," the ladies answered as they got
+into the carriage. "Well, good-bye. Mind now, we are expecting you;
+don't play us false!"
+
+"Wo-o-o!" the coachman checked the horses.
+
+"Ready, Denis! Good-bye, Olga Mihalovna!"
+
+"Kiss the children for me!"
+
+The carriage started and immediately disappeared into the darkness.
+In the red circle of light cast by the lamp in the road, a fresh
+pair or trio of impatient horses, and the silhouette of a coachman
+with his hands held out stiffly before him, would come into view.
+Again there began kisses, reproaches, and entreaties to come again
+or to take a shawl. Pyotr Dmitritch kept running out and helping
+the ladies into their carriages.
+
+"You go now by Efremovshtchina," he directed the coachman; "it's
+nearer through Mankino, but the road is worse that way. You might
+have an upset. . . . Good-bye, my charmer. _Mille_ compliments to
+your artist!"
+
+"Good-bye, Olga Mihalovna, darling! Go indoors, or you will catch
+cold! It's damp!"
+
+"Wo-o-o! you rascal!"
+
+"What horses have you got here?" Pyotr Dmitritch asked.
+
+"They were bought from Haidorov, in Lent," answered the coachman.
+
+"Capital horses. . . ."
+
+And Pyotr Dmitritch patted the trace horse on the haunch.
+
+"Well, you can start! God give you good luck!"
+
+The last visitor was gone at last; the red circle on the road
+quivered, moved aside, contracted and went out, as Vassily carried
+away the lamp from the entrance. On previous occasions when they
+had seen off their visitors, Pyotr Dmitritch and Olga Mihalovna had
+begun dancing about the drawing-room, facing each other, clapping
+their hands and singing: "They've gone! They've gone!" But now Olga
+Mihalovna was not equal to that. She went to her bedroom, undressed,
+and got into bed.
+
+She fancied she would fall asleep at once and sleep soundly. Her
+legs and her shoulders ached painfully, her head was heavy from the
+strain of talking, and she was conscious, as before, of discomfort
+all over her body. Covering her head over, she lay still for three
+or four minutes, then peeped out from under the bed-clothes at the
+lamp before the ikon, listened to the silence, and smiled.
+
+"It's nice, it's nice," she whispered, curling up her legs, which
+felt as if they had grown longer from so much walking. "Sleep, sleep
+. . . ."
+
+Her legs would not get into a comfortable position; she felt uneasy
+all over, and she turned on the other side. A big fly blew buzzing
+about the bedroom and thumped against the ceiling. She could hear,
+too, Grigory and Vassily stepping cautiously about the drawing-room,
+putting the chairs back in their places; it seemed to Olga Mihalovna
+that she could not go to sleep, nor be comfortable till those sounds
+were hushed. And again she turned over on the other side impatiently.
+
+She heard her husband's voice in the drawing-room. Some one must
+be staying the night, as Pyotr Dmitritch was addressing some one
+and speaking loudly:
+
+"I don't say that Count Alexey Petrovitch is an impostor. But he
+can't help seeming to be one, because all of you gentlemen attempt
+to see in him something different from what he really is. His
+craziness is looked upon as originality, his familiar manners as
+good-nature, and his complete absence of opinions as Conservatism.
+Even granted that he is a Conservative of the stamp of '84, what
+after all is Conservatism?"
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch, angry with Count Alexey Petrovitch, his visitors,
+and himself, was relieving his heart. He abused both the Count and
+his visitors, and in his vexation with himself was ready to speak
+out and to hold forth upon anything. After seeing his guest to his
+room, he walked up and down the drawing-room, walked through the
+dining-room, down the corridor, then into his study, then again
+went into the drawing-room, and came into the bedroom. Olga Mihalovna
+was lying on her back, with the bed-clothes only to her waist (by
+now she felt hot), and with an angry face, watched the fly that was
+thumping against the ceiling.
+
+"Is some one staying the night?" she asked.
+
+"Yegorov."
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch undressed and got into his bed.
+
+Without speaking, he lighted a cigarette, and he, too, fell to
+watching the fly. There was an uneasy and forbidding look in his
+eyes. Olga Mihalovna looked at his handsome profile for five minutes
+in silence. It seemed to her for some reason that if her husband
+were suddenly to turn facing her, and to say, "Olga, I am unhappy,"
+she would cry or laugh, and she would be at ease. She fancied that
+her legs were aching and her body was uncomfortable all over because
+of the strain on her feelings.
+
+"Pyotr, what are you thinking of?" she said.
+
+"Oh, nothing . . ." her husband answered.
+
+"You have taken to having secrets from me of late: that's not right."
+
+"Why is it not right?" answered Pyotr Dmitritch drily and not at
+once. "We all have our personal life, every one of us, and we are
+bound to have our secrets."
+
+"Personal life, our secrets . . . that's all words! Understand you
+are wounding me!" said Olga Mihalovna, sitting up in bed. "If you
+have a load on your heart, why do you hide it from me? And why do
+you find it more suitable to open your heart to women who are nothing
+to you, instead of to your wife? I overheard your outpourings to
+Lubotchka by the bee-house to-day."
+
+"Well, I congratulate you. I am glad you did overhear it."
+
+This meant "Leave me alone and let me think." Olga Mihalovna was
+indignant. Vexation, hatred, and wrath, which had been accumulating
+within her during the whole day, suddenly boiled over; she wanted
+at once to speak out, to hurt her husband without putting it off
+till to-morrow, to wound him, to punish him. . . . Making an effort
+to control herself and not to scream, she said:
+
+"Let me tell you, then, that it's all loathsome, loathsome, loathsome!
+I've been hating you all day; you see what you've done."
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch, too, got up and sat on the bed.
+
+"It's loathsome, loathsome, loathsome," Olga Mihalovna went on,
+beginning to tremble all over. "There's no need to congratulate me;
+you had better congratulate yourself! It's a shame, a disgrace. You
+have wrapped yourself in lies till you are ashamed to be alone in
+the room with your wife! You are a deceitful man! I see through you
+and understand every step you take!"
+
+"Olya, I wish you would please warn me when you are out of humour.
+Then I will sleep in the study."
+
+Saying this, Pyotr Dmitritch picked up his pillow and walked out
+of the bedroom. Olga Mihalovna had not foreseen this. For some
+minutes she remained silent with her mouth open, trembling all over
+and looking at the door by which her husband had gone out, and
+trying to understand what it meant. Was this one of the devices to
+which deceitful people have recourse when they are in the wrong,
+or was it a deliberate insult aimed at her pride? How was she to
+take it? Olga Mihalovna remembered her cousin, a lively young
+officer, who often used to tell her, laughing, that when "his spouse
+nagged at him" at night, he usually picked up his pillow and went
+whistling to spend the night in his study, leaving his wife in a
+foolish and ridiculous position. This officer was married to a rich,
+capricious, and foolish woman whom he did not respect but simply
+put up with.
+
+Olga Mihalovna jumped out of bed. To her mind there was only one
+thing left for her to do now; to dress with all possible haste and
+to leave the house forever. The house was her own, but so much the
+worse for Pyotr Dmitritch. Without pausing to consider whether this
+was necessary or not, she went quickly to the study to inform her
+husband of her intention ("Feminine logic!" flashed through her
+mind), and to say something wounding and sarcastic at parting. . . .
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch was lying on the sofa and pretending to read a
+newspaper. There was a candle burning on a chair near him. His face
+could not be seen behind the newspaper.
+
+"Be so kind as to tell me what this means? I am asking you."
+
+"Be so kind . . ." Pyotr Dmitritch mimicked her, not showing his
+face. "It's sickening, Olga! Upon my honour, I am exhausted and not
+up to it. . . . Let us do our quarrelling to-morrow."
+
+"No, I understand you perfectly!" Olga Mihalovna went on. "You hate
+me! Yes, yes! You hate me because I am richer than you! You will
+never forgive me for that, and will always be lying to me!" ("Feminine
+logic!" flashed through her mind again.) "You are laughing at me
+now. . . . I am convinced, in fact, that you only married me in
+order to have property qualifications and those wretched horses. . . .
+Oh, I am miserable!"
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch dropped the newspaper and got up. The unexpected
+insult overwhelmed him. With a childishly helpless smile he looked
+desperately at his wife, and holding out his hands to her as though
+to ward off blows, he said imploringly:
+
+"Olya!"
+
+And expecting her to say something else awful, he leaned back in
+his chair, and his huge figure seemed as helplessly childish as his
+smile.
+
+"Olya, how could you say it?" he whispered.
+
+Olga Mihalovna came to herself. She was suddenly aware of her
+passionate love for this man, remembered that he was her husband,
+Pyotr Dmitritch, without whom she could not live for a day, and who
+loved her passionately, too. She burst into loud sobs that sounded
+strange and unlike her, and ran back to her bedroom.
+
+She fell on the bed, and short hysterical sobs, choking her and
+making her arms and legs twitch, filled the bedroom. Remembering
+there was a visitor sleeping three or four rooms away, she buried
+her head under the pillow to stifle her sobs, but the pillow rolled
+on to the floor, and she almost fell on the floor herself when she
+stooped to pick it up. She pulled the quilt up to her face, but her
+hands would not obey her, but tore convulsively at everything she
+clutched.
+
+She thought that everything was lost, that the falsehood she had
+told to wound her husband had shattered her life into fragments.
+Her husband would not forgive her. The insult she had hurled at him
+was not one that could be effaced by any caresses, by any vows. . . .
+How could she convince her husband that she did not believe
+what she had said?
+
+"It's all over, it's all over!" she cried, not noticing that the
+pillow had slipped on to the floor again. "For God's sake, for God's
+sake!"
+
+Probably roused by her cries, the guest and the servants were now
+awake; next day all the neighbourhood would know that she had been
+in hysterics and would blame Pyotr Dmitritch. She made an effort
+to restrain herself, but her sobs grew louder and louder every
+minute.
+
+"For God's sake," she cried in a voice not like her own, and not
+knowing why she cried it. "For God's sake!"
+
+She felt as though the bed were heaving under her and her feet were
+entangled in the bed-clothes. Pyotr Dmitritch, in his dressing-gown,
+with a candle in his hand, came into the bedroom.
+
+"Olya, hush!" he said.
+
+She raised herself, and kneeling up in bed, screwing up her eyes
+at the light, articulated through her sobs:
+
+"Understand . . . understand! . . . ."
+
+She wanted to tell him that she was tired to death by the party,
+by his falsity, by her own falsity, that it had all worked together,
+but she could only articulate:
+
+"Understand . . . understand!"
+
+"Come, drink!" he said, handing her some water.
+
+She took the glass obediently and began drinking, but the water
+splashed over and was spilt on her arms, her throat and knees.
+
+"I must look horribly unseemly," she thought.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch put her back in bed without a word, and covered her
+with the quilt, then he took the candle and went out.
+
+"For God's sake!" Olga Mihalovna cried again. "Pyotr, understand,
+understand!"
+
+Suddenly something gripped her in the lower part of her body and
+back with such violence that her wailing was cut short, and she bit
+the pillow from the pain. But the pain let her go again at once,
+and she began sobbing again.
+
+The maid came in, and arranging the quilt over her, asked in alarm:
+
+"Mistress, darling, what is the matter?"
+
+"Go out of the room," said Pyotr Dmitritch sternly, going up to the
+bed.
+
+"Understand . . . understand! . . ." Olga Mihalovna began.
+
+"Olya, I entreat you, calm yourself," he said. "I did not mean to
+hurt you. I would not have gone out of the room if I had known it
+would have hurt you so much; I simply felt depressed. I tell you,
+on my honour . . ."
+
+"Understand! . . . You were lying, I was lying. . . ."
+
+"I understand. . . . Come, come, that's enough! I understand," said
+Pyotr Dmitritch tenderly, sitting down on her bed. "You said that
+in anger; I quite understand. I swear to God I love you beyond
+anything on earth, and when I married you I never once thought of
+your being rich. I loved you immensely, and that's all . . . I
+assure you. I have never been in want of money or felt the value
+of it, and so I cannot feel the difference between your fortune and
+mine. It always seemed to me we were equally well off. And that I
+have been deceitful in little things, that . . . of course, is true.
+My life has hitherto been arranged in such a frivolous way that it
+has somehow been impossible to get on without paltry lying. It
+weighs on me, too, now. . . . Let us leave off talking about it,
+for goodness' sake!"
+
+Olga Mihalovna again felt in acute pain, and clutched her husband
+by the sleeve.
+
+"I am in pain, in pain, in pain . . ." she said rapidly. "Oh, what
+pain!"
+
+"Damnation take those visitors!" muttered Pyotr Dmitritch, getting
+up. "You ought not to have gone to the island to-day!" he cried.
+"What an idiot I was not to prevent you! Oh, my God!"
+
+He scratched his head in vexation, and, with a wave of his hand,
+walked out of the room.
+
+Then he came into the room several times, sat down on the bed beside
+her, and talked a great deal, sometimes tenderly, sometimes angrily,
+but she hardly heard him. Her sobs were continually interrupted by
+fearful attacks of pain, and each time the pain was more acute and
+prolonged. At first she held her breath and bit the pillow during
+the pain, but then she began screaming on an unseemly piercing note.
+Once seeing her husband near her, she remembered that she had
+insulted him, and without pausing to think whether it were really
+Pyotr Dmitritch or whether she were in delirium, clutched his hand
+in both hers and began kissing it.
+
+"You were lying, I was lying . . ." she began justifying herself.
+"Understand, understand. . . . They have exhausted me, driven me
+out of all patience."
+
+"Olya, we are not alone," said Pyotr Dmitritch.
+
+Olga Mihalovna raised her head and saw Varvara, who was kneeling
+by the chest of drawers and pulling out the bottom drawer. The top
+drawers were already open. Then Varvara got up, red from the strained
+position, and with a cold, solemn face began trying to unlock a
+box.
+
+"Marya, I can't unlock it!" she said in a whisper. "You unlock it,
+won't you?"
+
+Marya, the maid, was digging a candle end out of the candlestick
+with a pair of scissors, so as to put in a new candle; she went up
+to Varvara and helped her to unlock the box.
+
+"There should be nothing locked . . ." whispered Varvara. "Unlock
+this basket, too, my good girl. Master," she said, "you should send
+to Father Mihail to unlock the holy gates! You must!"
+
+"Do what you like," said Pyotr Dmitritch, breathing hard, "only,
+for God's sake, make haste and fetch the doctor or the midwife! Has
+Vassily gone? Send some one else. Send your husband!"
+
+"It's the birth," Olga Mihalovna thought. "Varvara," she moaned,
+"but he won't be born alive!"
+
+"It's all right, it's all right, mistress," whispered Varvara.
+"Please God, he will be alive! he will be alive!"
+
+When Olga Mihalovna came to herself again after a pain she was no
+longer sobbing nor tossing from side to side, but moaning. She could
+not refrain from moaning even in the intervals between the pains.
+The candles were still burning, but the morning light was coming
+through the blinds. It was probably about five o'clock in the
+morning. At the round table there was sitting some unknown woman
+with a very discreet air, wearing a white apron. From her whole
+appearance it was evident she had been sitting there a long time.
+Olga Mihalovna guessed that she was the midwife.
+
+"Will it soon be over?" she asked, and in her voice she heard a
+peculiar and unfamiliar note which had never been there before. "I
+must be dying in childbirth," she thought.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch came cautiously into the bedroom, dressed for the
+day, and stood at the window with his back to his wife. He lifted
+the blind and looked out of window.
+
+"What rain!" he said.
+
+"What time is it?" asked Olga Mihalovna, in order to hear the
+unfamiliar note in her voice again.
+
+"A quarter to six," answered the midwife.
+
+"And what if I really am dying?" thought Olga Mihalovna, looking
+at her husband's head and the window-panes on which the rain was
+beating. "How will he live without me? With whom will he have tea
+and dinner, talk in the evenings, sleep?"
+
+And he seemed to her like a forlorn child; she felt sorry for him
+and wanted to say something nice, caressing and consolatory. She
+remembered how in the spring he had meant to buy himself some
+harriers, and she, thinking it a cruel and dangerous sport, had
+prevented him from doing it.
+
+"Pyotr, buy yourself harriers," she moaned.
+
+He dropped the blind and went up to the bed, and would have said
+something; but at that moment the pain came back, and Olga Mihalovna
+uttered an unseemly, piercing scream.
+
+The pain and the constant screaming and moaning stupefied her. She
+heard, saw, and sometimes spoke, but hardly understood anything,
+and was only conscious that she was in pain or was just going to
+be in pain. It seemed to her that the nameday party had been long,
+long ago--not yesterday, but a year ago perhaps; and that her new
+life of agony had lasted longer than her childhood, her school-days,
+her time at the University, and her marriage, and would go on for
+a long, long time, endlessly. She saw them bring tea to the midwife,
+and summon her at midday to lunch and afterwards to dinner; she saw
+Pyotr Dmitritch grow used to coming in, standing for long intervals
+by the window, and going out again; saw strange men, the maid,
+Varvara, come in as though they were at home. . . . Varvara said
+nothing but, "He will, he will," and was angry when any one closed
+the drawers and the chest. Olga Mihalovna saw the light change in
+the room and in the windows: at one time it was twilight, then thick
+like fog, then bright daylight as it had been at dinner-time the
+day before, then again twilight . . . and each of these changes
+lasted as long as her childhood, her school-days, her life at the
+University. . . .
+
+In the evening two doctors--one bony, bald, with a big red beard;
+the other with a swarthy Jewish face and cheap spectacles--performed
+some sort of operation on Olga Mihalovna. To these unknown men
+touching her body she felt utterly indifferent. By now she had no
+feeling of shame, no will, and any one might do what he would with
+her. If any one had rushed at her with a knife, or had insulted
+Pyotr Dmitritch, or had robbed her of her right to the little
+creature, she would not have said a word.
+
+They gave her chloroform during the operation. When she came to
+again, the pain was still there and insufferable. It was night. And
+Olga Mihalovna remembered that there had been just such a night
+with the stillness, the lamp, with the midwife sitting motionless
+by the bed, with the drawers of the chest pulled out, with Pyotr
+Dmitritch standing by the window, but some time very, very long
+ago. . . .
+
+V
+
+"I am not dead . . ." thought Olga Mihalovna when she began to
+understand her surroundings again, and when the pain was over.
+
+A bright summer day looked in at the widely open windows; in the
+garden below the windows, the sparrows and the magpies never ceased
+chattering for one instant.
+
+The drawers were shut now, her husband's bed had been made. There
+was no sign of the midwife or of the maid, or of Varvara in the
+room, only Pyotr Dmitritch was standing, as before, motionless by
+the window looking into the garden. There was no sound of a child's
+crying, no one was congratulating her or rejoicing, it was evident
+that the little creature had not been born alive.
+
+"Pyotr!"
+
+Olga Mihalovna called to her husband.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch looked round. It seemed as though a long time must
+have passed since the last guest had departed and Olga Mihalovna
+had insulted her husband, for Pyotr Dmitritch was perceptibly thinner
+and hollow-eyed.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, coming up to the bed.
+
+He looked away, moved his lips and smiled with childlike helplessness.
+
+"Is it all over?" asked Olga Mihalovna.
+
+Pyotr Dmitritch tried to make some answer, but his lips quivered
+and his mouth worked like a toothless old man's, like Uncle Nikolay
+Nikolaitch's.
+
+"Olya," he said, wringing his hands; big tears suddenly dropping
+from his eyes. "Olya, I don't care about your property qualification,
+nor the Circuit Courts . . ." (he gave a sob) "nor particular views,
+nor those visitors, nor your fortune. . . . I don't care about
+anything! Why didn't we take care of our child? Oh, it's no good
+talking!"
+
+With a despairing gesture he went out of the bedroom.
+
+But nothing mattered to Olga Mihalovna now, there was a mistiness
+in her brain from the chloroform, an emptiness in her soul. . . .
+The dull indifference to life which had overcome her when the two
+doctors were performing the operation still had possession of her.
+
+
+TERROR
+
+My Friend's Story
+
+DMITRI PETROVITCH SILIN had taken his degree and entered the
+government service in Petersburg, but at thirty he gave up his post
+and went in for agriculture. His farming was fairly successful, and
+yet it always seemed to me that he was not in his proper place, and
+that he would do well to go back to Petersburg. When sunburnt, grey
+with dust, exhausted with toil, he met me near the gates or at the
+entrance, and then at supper struggled with sleepiness and his wife
+took him off to bed as though he were a baby; or when, overcoming
+his sleepiness, he began in his soft, cordial, almost imploring
+voice, to talk about his really excellent ideas, I saw him not as
+a farmer nor an agriculturist, but only as a worried and exhausted
+man, and it was clear to me that he did not really care for farming,
+but that all he wanted was for the day to be over and "Thank God
+for it."
+
+I liked to be with him, and I used to stay on his farm for two or
+three days at a time. I liked his house, and his park, and his big
+fruit garden, and the river--and his philosophy, which was clear,
+though rather spiritless and rhetorical. I suppose I was fond of
+him on his own account, though I can't say that for certain, as I
+have not up to now succeeded in analysing my feelings at that time.
+He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, genuine man, and not a bore,
+but I remember that when he confided to me his most treasured secrets
+and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed
+me unpleasantly, and I was conscious of awkwardness. In his affection
+for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should
+have greatly preferred commonplace friendly relations.
+
+The fact is that I was extremely attracted by his wife, Marya
+Sergeyevna. I was not in love with her, but I was attracted by her
+face, her eyes, her voice, her walk. I missed her when I did not
+see her for a long time, and my imagination pictured no one at that
+time so eagerly as that young, beautiful, elegant woman. I had no
+definite designs in regard to her, and did not dream of anything
+of the sort, yet for some reason, whenever we were left alone, I
+remembered that her husband looked upon me as his friend, and I
+felt awkward. When she played my favourite pieces on the piano or
+told me something interesting, I listened with pleasure, and yet
+at the same time for some reason the reflection that she loved her
+husband, that he was my friend, and that she herself looked upon
+me as his friend, obtruded themselves upon me, my spirits flagged,
+and I became listless, awkward, and dull. She noticed this change
+and would usually say:
+
+"You are dull without your friend. We must send out to the fields
+for him."
+
+And when Dmitri Petrovitch came in, she would say:
+
+"Well, here is your friend now. Rejoice."
+
+So passed a year and a half.
+
+It somehow happened one July Sunday that Dmitri Petrovitch and I,
+having nothing to do, drove to the big village of Klushino to buy
+things for supper. While we were going from one shop to another the
+sun set and the evening came on--the evening which I shall probably
+never forget in my life. After buying cheese that smelt like soap,
+and petrified sausages that smelt of tar, we went to the tavern to
+ask whether they had any beer. Our coachman went off to the blacksmith
+to get our horses shod, and we told him we would wait for him near
+the church. We walked, talked, laughed over our purchases, while a
+man who was known in the district by a very strange nickname, "Forty
+Martyrs," followed us all the while in silence with a mysterious
+air like a detective. This Forty Martyrs was no other than Gavril
+Syeverov, or more simply Gavryushka, who had been for a short time
+in my service as a footman and had been dismissed by me for
+drunkenness. He had been in Dmitri Petrovitch's service, too, and
+by him had been dismissed for the same vice. He was an inveterate
+drunkard, and indeed his whole life was as drunk and disorderly as
+himself. His father had been a priest and his mother of noble rank,
+so by birth he belonged to the privileged class; but however carefully
+I scrutinized his exhausted, respectful, and always perspiring face,
+his red beard now turning grey, his pitifully torn reefer jacket
+and his red shirt, I could not discover in him the faintest trace
+of anything we associate with privilege. He spoke of himself as a
+man of education, and used to say that he had been in a clerical
+school, but had not finished his studies there, as he had been
+expelled for smoking; then he had sung in the bishop's choir and
+lived for two years in a monastery, from which he was also expelled,
+but this time not for smoking but for "his weakness." He had walked
+all over two provinces, had presented petitions to the Consistory,
+and to various government offices, and had been four times on his
+trial. At last, being stranded in our district, he had served as a
+footman, as a forester, as a kennelman, as a sexton, had married a
+cook who was a widow and rather a loose character, and had so
+hopelessly sunk into a menial position, and had grown so used to
+filth and dirt, that he even spoke of his privileged origin with a
+certain scepticism, as of some myth. At the time I am describing,
+he was hanging about without a job, calling himself a carrier and
+a huntsman, and his wife had disappeared and made no sign.
+
+From the tavern we went to the church and sat in the porch, waiting
+for the coachman. Forty Martyrs stood a little way off and put his
+hand before his mouth in order to cough in it respectfully if need
+be. By now it was dark; there was a strong smell of evening dampness,
+and the moon was on the point of rising. There were only two clouds
+in the clear starry sky exactly over our heads: one big one and one
+smaller; alone in the sky they were racing after one another like
+mother and child, in the direction where the sunset was glowing.
+
+"What a glorious day!" said Dmitri Petrovitch.
+
+"In the extreme . . ." Forty Martyrs assented, and he coughed
+respectfully into his hand. "How was it, Dmitri Petrovitch, you
+thought to visit these parts?" he asked in an ingratiating voice,
+evidently anxious to get up a conversation.
+
+Dmitri Petrovitch made no answer. Forty Martyrs heaved a deep sigh
+and said softly, not looking at us:
+
+"I suffer solely through a cause to which I must answer to Almighty
+God. No doubt about it, I am a hopeless and incompetent man; but
+believe me, on my conscience, I am without a crust of bread and
+worse off than a dog. . . . Forgive me, Dmitri Petrovitch."
+
+Silin was not listening, but sat musing with his head propped on
+his fists. The church stood at the end of the street on the high
+river-bank, and through the trellis gate of the enclosure we could
+see the river, the water-meadows on the near side of it, and the
+crimson glare of a camp fire about which black figures of men and
+horses were moving. And beyond the fire, further away, there were
+other lights, where there was a little village. They were singing
+there. On the river, and here and there on the meadows, a mist was
+rising. High narrow coils of mist, thick and white as milk, were
+trailing over the river, hiding the reflection of the stars and
+hovering over the willows. Every minute they changed their form,
+and it seemed as though some were embracing, others were bowing,
+others lifting up their arms to heaven with wide sleeves like
+priests, as though they were praying. . . . Probably they reminded
+Dmitri Petrovitch of ghosts and of the dead, for he turned facing
+me and asked with a mournful smile:
+
+"Tell me, my dear fellow, why is it that when we want to tell some
+terrible, mysterious, and fantastic story, we draw our material,
+not from life, but invariably from the world of ghosts and of the
+shadows beyond the grave."
+
+"We are frightened of what we don't understand."
+
+"And do you understand life? Tell me: do you understand life better
+than the world beyond the grave?"
+
+Dmitri Petrovitch was sitting quite close to me, so that I felt his
+breath upon my cheek. In the evening twilight his pale, lean face
+seemed paler than ever and his dark beard was black as soot. His
+eyes were sad, truthful, and a little frightened, as though he were
+about to tell me something horrible. He looked into my eyes and
+went on in his habitual imploring voice:
+
+"Our life and the life beyond the grave are equally incomprehensible
+and horrible. If any one is afraid of ghosts he ought to be afraid,
+too, of me, and of those lights and of the sky, seeing that, if you
+come to reflect, all that is no less fantastic and beyond our grasp
+than apparitions from the other world. Prince Hamlet did not kill
+himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his
+dreams after death. I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to
+be candid, it never touched my soul. I will confess to you as a
+friend that in moments of depression I have sometimes pictured to
+myself the hour of my death. My fancy invented thousands of the
+gloomiest visions, and I have succeeded in working myself up to an
+agonizing exaltation, to a state of nightmare, and I assure you
+that that did not seem to me more terrible than reality. What I
+mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is terrible, too. I
+don't understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear boy; I don't
+know. Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged. It seems to a sound,
+healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but
+that 'seeming' is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning
+myself with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces,
+but my disease is the fear of life. When I lie on the grass and
+watch a little beetle which was born yesterday and understands
+nothing, it seems to me that its life consists of nothing else but
+fear, and in it I see myself."
+
+"What is it exactly you are frightened of?" I asked.
+
+"I am afraid of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker,
+and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the
+grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried
+away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine
+of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of
+distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and
+they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of
+life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole
+life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other
+people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought
+that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity.
+To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not understand why I did
+it. I entered the service in Petersburg and took fright; I came
+here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened. . . . I
+see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We are
+unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other's lives, we
+waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders
+us from living; and that frightens me, because I don't understand
+why and for whom it is necessary. I don't understand men, my dear
+fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the
+peasants, and I don't know for what higher objects they are suffering
+and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they
+are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of
+life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I
+can't understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. I
+understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this specimen,
+for instance," said Dmitri Petrovitch, pointing to Forty Martyrs.
+"Think of him!"
+
+Noticing that we were looking at him, Forty Martyrs coughed
+deferentially into his fist and said:
+
+"I was always a faithful servant with good masters, but the great
+trouble has been spirituous liquor. If a poor fellow like me were
+shown consideration and given a place, I would kiss the ikon. My
+word's my bond."
+
+The sexton walked by, looked at us in amazement, and began pulling
+the rope. The bell, abruptly breaking upon the stillness of the
+evening, struck ten with a slow and prolonged note.
+
+"It's ten o'clock, though," said Dmitri Petrovitch. "It's time we
+were going. Yes, my dear fellow," he sighed, "if only you knew how
+afraid I am of my ordinary everyday thoughts, in which one would
+have thought there should be nothing dreadful. To prevent myself
+thinking I distract my mind with work and try to tire myself out
+that I may sleep sound at night. Children, a wife--all that seems
+ordinary with other people; but how that weighs upon me, my dear
+fellow!"
+
+He rubbed his face with his hands, cleared his throat, and laughed.
+
+"If I could only tell you how I have played the fool in my life!"
+he said. "They all tell me that I have a sweet wife, charming
+children, and that I am a good husband and father. They think I am
+very happy and envy me. But since it has come to that, I will tell
+you in secret: my happy family life is only a grievous misunderstanding,
+and I am afraid of it." His pale face was distorted by a wry smile.
+He put his arm round my waist and went on in an undertone:
+
+"You are my true friend; I believe in you and have a deep respect
+for you. Heaven gave us friendship that we may open our hearts and
+escape from the secrets that weigh upon us. Let me take advantage
+of your friendly feeling for me and tell you the whole truth. My
+home life, which seems to you so enchanting, is my chief misery and
+my chief terror. I got married in a strange and stupid way. I must
+tell you that I was madly in love with Masha before I married her,
+and was courting her for two years. I asked her to marry me five
+times, and she refused me because she did not care for me in the
+least. The sixth, when burning with passion I crawled on my knees
+before her and implored her to take a beggar and marry me, she
+consented. . . . What she said to me was: 'I don't love you, but I
+will be true to you. . . .' I accepted that condition with rapture.
+At the time I understood what that meant, but I swear to God I don't
+understand it now. 'I don't love you, but I will be true to you.'
+What does that mean? It's a fog, a darkness. I love her now as
+intensely as I did the day we were married, while she, I believe,
+is as indifferent as ever, and I believe she is glad when I go away
+from home. I don't know for certain whether she cares for me or not
+--I don't know, I don't know; but, as you see, we live under the
+same roof, call each other 'thou,' sleep together, have children,
+our property is in common. . . . What does it mean, what does it
+mean? What is the object of it? And do you understand it at all,
+my dear fellow? It's cruel torture! Because I don't understand our
+relations, I hate, sometimes her, sometimes myself, sometimes both
+at once. Everything is in a tangle in my brain; I torment myself
+and grow stupid. And as though to spite me, she grows more beautiful
+every day, she is getting more wonderful. . . I fancy her hair is
+marvellous, and her smile is like no other woman's. I love her, and
+I know that my love is hopeless. Hopeless love for a woman by whom
+one has two children! Is that intelligible? And isn't it terrible?
+Isn't it more terrible than ghosts?"
+
+He was in the mood to have talked on a good deal longer, but luckily
+we heard the coachman's voice. Our horses had arrived. We got into
+the carriage, and Forty Martyrs, taking off his cap, helped us both
+into the carriage with an expression that suggested that he had
+long been waiting for an opportunity to come in contact with our
+precious persons.
+
+"Dmitri Petrovitch, let me come to you," he said, blinking furiously
+and tilting his head on one side. "Show divine mercy! I am dying
+of hunger!"
+
+"Very well," said Silin. "Come, you shall stay three days, and then
+we shall see."
+
+"Certainly, sir," said Forty Martyrs, overjoyed. "I'll come today,
+sir."
+
+It was a five miles' drive home. Dmitri Petrovitch, glad that he
+had at last opened his heart to his friend, kept his arm round my
+waist all the way; and speaking now, not with bitterness and not
+with apprehension, but quite cheerfully, told me that if everything
+had been satisfactory in his home life, he should have returned to
+Petersburg and taken up scientific work there. The movement which
+had driven so many gifted young men into the country was, he said,
+a deplorable movement. We had plenty of rye and wheat in Russia,
+but absolutely no cultured people. The strong and gifted among the
+young ought to take up science, art, and politics; to act otherwise
+meant being wasteful. He generalized with pleasure and expressed
+regret that he would be parting from me early next morning, as he
+had to go to a sale of timber.
+
+And I felt awkward and depressed, and it seemed to me that I was
+deceiving the man. And at the same time it was pleasant to me. I
+gazed at the immense crimson moon which was rising, and pictured
+the tall, graceful, fair woman, with her pale face, always well-dressed
+and fragrant with some special scent, rather like musk, and for
+some reason it pleased me to think she did not love her husband.
+
+On reaching home, we sat down to supper. Marya Sergeyevna, laughing,
+regaled us with our purchases, and I thought that she certainly had
+wonderful hair and that her smile was unlike any other woman's. I
+watched her, and I wanted to detect in every look and movement that
+she did not love her husband, and I fancied that I did see it.
+
+Dmitri Petrovitch was soon struggling with sleep. After supper he
+sat with us for ten minutes and said:
+
+"Do as you please, my friends, but I have to be up at three o'clock
+tomorrow morning. Excuse my leaving you."
+
+He kissed his wife tenderly, pressed my hand with warmth and
+gratitude, and made me promise that I would certainly come the
+following week. That he might not oversleep next morning, he went
+to spend the night in the lodge.
+
+Marya Sergeyevna always sat up late, in the Petersburg fashion, and
+for some reason on this occasion I was glad of it.
+
+"And now," I began when we were left alone, "and now you'll be kind
+and play me something."
+
+I felt no desire for music, but I did not know how to begin the
+conversation. She sat down to the piano and played, I don't remember
+what. I sat down beside her and looked at her plump white hands and
+tried to read something on her cold, indifferent face. Then she
+smiled at something and looked at me.
+
+"You are dull without your friend," she said.
+
+I laughed.
+
+"It would be enough for friendship to be here once a month, but I
+turn up oftener than once a week."
+
+Saying this, I got up and walked from one end of the room to the
+other. She too got up and walked away to the fireplace.
+
+"What do you mean to say by that?" she said, raising her large,
+clear eyes and looking at me.
+
+I made no answer.
+
+"What you say is not true," she went on, after a moment's thought.
+"You only come here on account of Dmitri Petrovitch. Well, I am
+very glad. One does not often see such friendships nowadays."
+
+"Aha!" I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: "Would you
+care for a turn in the garden?"
+
+I went out upon the verandah. Nervous shudders were running over
+my head and I felt chilly with excitement. I was convinced now that
+our conversation would be utterly trivial, and that there was nothing
+particular we should be able to say to one another, but that, that
+night, what I did not dare to dream of was bound to happen--that
+it was bound to be that night or never.
+
+"What lovely weather!" I said aloud.
+
+"It makes absolutely no difference to me," she answered.
+
+I went into the drawing-room. Marya Sergeyevna was standing, as
+before, near the fireplace, with her hands behind her back, looking
+away and thinking of something.
+
+"Why does it make no difference to you?" I asked.
+
+"Because I am bored. You are only bored without your friend, but I
+am always bored. However . . . that is of no interest to you."
+
+I sat down to the piano and struck a few chords, waiting to hear
+what she would say.
+
+"Please don't stand on ceremony," she said, looking angrily at me,
+and she seemed as though on the point of crying with vexation. "If
+you are sleepy, go to bed. Because you are Dmitri Petrovitch's
+friend, you are not in duty bound to be bored with his wife's
+company. I don't want a sacrifice. Please go."
+
+I did not, of course, go to bed. She went out on the verandah while
+I remained in the drawing-room and spent five minutes turning over
+the music. Then I went out, too. We stood close together in the
+shadow of the curtains, and below us were the steps bathed in
+moonlight. The black shadows of the trees stretched across the
+flower beds and the yellow sand of the paths.
+
+"I shall have to go away tomorrow, too," I said.
+
+"Of course, if my husband's not at home you can't stay here," she
+said sarcastically. "I can imagine how miserable you would be if
+you were in love with me! Wait a bit: one day I shall throw myself
+on your neck. . . . I shall see with what horror you will run away
+from me. That would be interesting."
+
+Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were full of
+tender passionate love. I already looked upon this lovely creature
+as my property, and then for the first time I noticed that she had
+golden eyebrows, exquisite eyebrows. I had never seen such eyebrows
+before. The thought that I might at once press her to my heart,
+caress her, touch her wonderful hair, seemed to me such a miracle
+that I laughed and shut my eyes.
+
+"It's bed-time now. . . . A peaceful night," she said.
+
+"I don't want a peaceful night," I said, laughing, following her
+into the drawing-room. "I shall curse this night if it is a peaceful
+one."
+
+Pressing her hand, and escorting her to the door, I saw by her face
+that she understood me, and was glad that I understood her, too.
+
+I went to my room. Near the books on the table lay Dmitri Petrovitch's
+cap, and that reminded me of his affection for me. I took my stick
+and went out into the garden. The mist had risen here, too, and the
+same tall, narrow, ghostly shapes which I had seen earlier on the
+river were trailing round the trees and bushes and wrapping about
+them. What a pity I could not talk to them!
+
+In the extraordinarily transparent air, each leaf, each drop of dew
+stood out distinctly; it was all smiling at me in the stillness
+half asleep, and as I passed the green seats I recalled the words
+in some play of Shakespeare's: "How sweetly falls the moonlight on
+yon seat!"
+
+There was a mound in the garden; I went up it and sat down. I was
+tormented by a delicious feeling. I knew for certain that in a
+moment I should hold in my arms, should press to my heart her
+magnificent body, should kiss her golden eyebrows; and I wanted to
+disbelieve it, to tantalize myself, and was sorry that she had cost
+me so little trouble and had yielded so soon.
+
+But suddenly I heard heavy footsteps. A man of medium height appeared
+in the avenue, and I recognized him at once as Forty Martyrs. He
+sat down on the bench and heaved a deep sigh, then crossed himself
+three times and lay down. A minute later he got up and lay on the
+other side. The gnats and the dampness of the night prevented his
+sleeping.
+
+"Oh, life!" he said. "Wretched, bitter life!"
+
+Looking at his bent, wasted body and hearing his heavy, noisy sighs,
+I thought of an unhappy, bitter life of which the confession had
+been made to me that day, and I felt uneasy and frightened at my
+blissful mood. I came down the knoll and went to the house.
+
+"Life, as he thinks, is terrible," I thought, "so don't stand on
+ceremony with it, bend it to your will, and until it crushes you,
+snatch all you can wring from it."
+
+Marya Sergeyevna was standing on the verandah. I put my arms round
+her without a word, and began greedily kissing her eyebrows, her
+temples, her neck. . . .
+
+In my room she told me she had loved me for a long time, more than
+a year. She vowed eternal love, cried and begged me to take her
+away with me. I repeatedly took her to the window to look at her
+face in the moonlight, and she seemed to me a lovely dream, and I
+made haste to hold her tight to convince myself of the truth of it.
+It was long since I had known such raptures. . . . Yet somewhere
+far away at the bottom of my heart I felt an awkwardness, and I was
+ill at ease. In her love for me there was something incongruous and
+burdensome, just as in Dmitri Petrovitch's friendship. It was a
+great, serious passion with tears and vows, and I wanted nothing
+serious in it--no tears, no vows, no talk of the future. Let that
+moonlight night flash through our lives like a meteor and--_basta!_
+
+At three o'clock she went out of my room, and, while I was standing
+in the doorway, looking after her, at the end of the corridor Dmitri
+Petrovitch suddenly made his appearance; she started and stood aside
+to let him pass, and her whole figure was expressive of repulsion.
+He gave a strange smile, coughed, and came into my room.
+
+"I forgot my cap here yesterday," he said without looking at me.
+
+He found it and, holding it in both hands, put it on his head; then
+he looked at my confused face, at my slippers, and said in a strange,
+husky voice unlike his own:
+
+"I suppose it must be my fate that I should understand nothing. . . .
+If you understand anything, I congratulate you. It's all darkness
+before my eyes."
+
+And he went out, clearing his throat. Afterwards from the window I
+saw him by the stable, harnessing the horses with his own hands.
+His hands were trembling, he was in nervous haste and kept looking
+round at the house; probably he was feeling terror. Then he got
+into the gig, and, with a strange expression as though afraid of
+being pursued, lashed the horses.
+
+Shortly afterwards I set off, too. The sun was already rising, and
+the mist of the previous day clung timidly to the bushes and the
+hillocks. On the box of the carriage was sitting Forty Martyrs; he
+had already succeeded in getting drunk and was muttering tipsy
+nonsense.
+
+"I am a free man," he shouted to the horses. "Ah, my honeys, I am
+a nobleman in my own right, if you care to know!"
+
+The terror of Dmitri Petrovitch, the thought of whom I could not
+get out of my head, infected me. I thought of what had happened and
+could make nothing of it. I looked at the rooks, and it seemed so
+strange and terrible that they were flying.
+
+"Why have I done this?" I kept asking myself in bewilderment and
+despair. "Why has it turned out like this and not differently? To
+whom and for what was it necessary that she should love me in
+earnest, and that he should come into my room to fetch his cap?
+What had a cap to do with it?"
+
+I set off for Petersburg that day, and I have not seen Dmitri
+Petrovitch nor his wife since. I am told that they are still living
+together.
+
+
+A WOMAN'S KINGDOM
+
+I
+
+Christmas Eve
+
+HERE was a thick roll of notes. It came from the bailiff at the
+forest villa; he wrote that he was sending fifteen hundred roubles,
+which he had been awarded as damages, having won an appeal. Anna
+Akimovna disliked and feared such words as "awarded damages" and
+"won the suit." She knew that it was impossible to do without the
+law, but for some reason, whenever Nazaritch, the manager of the
+factory, or the bailiff of her villa in the country, both of whom
+frequently went to law, used to win lawsuits of some sort for her
+benefit, she always felt uneasy and, as it were, ashamed. On this
+occasion, too, she felt uneasy and awkward, and wanted to put that
+fifteen hundred roubles further away that it might be out of her
+sight.
+
+She thought with vexation that other girls of her age--she was
+in her twenty-sixth year--were now busy looking after their
+households, were weary and would sleep sound, and would wake up
+tomorrow morning in holiday mood; many of them had long been married
+and had children. Only she, for some reason, was compelled to sit
+like an old woman over these letters, to make notes upon them, to
+write answers, then to do nothing the whole evening till midnight,
+but wait till she was sleepy; and tomorrow they would all day long
+be coming with Christmas greetings and asking for favours; and the
+day after tomorrow there would certainly be some scandal at the
+factory--some one would be beaten or would die of drinking too
+much vodka, and she would be fretted by pangs of conscience; and
+after the holidays Nazaritch would turn off some twenty of the
+workpeople for absence from work, and all of the twenty would hang
+about at the front door, without their caps on, and she would be
+ashamed to go out to them, and they would be driven away like dogs.
+And all her acquaintances would say behind her back, and write to
+her in anonymous letters, that she was a millionaire and exploiter
+--that she was devouring other men's lives and sucking the blood
+of the workers.
+
+Here there lay a heap of letters read through and laid aside already.
+They were all begging letters. They were from people who were hungry,
+drunken, dragged down by large families, sick, degraded, despised
+. . . . Anna Akimovna had already noted on each letter, three roubles
+to be paid to one, five to another; these letters would go the same
+day to the office, and next the distribution of assistance would
+take place, or, as the clerks used to say, the beasts would be fed.
+
+They would distribute also in small sums four hundred and seventy
+roubles--the interest on a sum bequeathed by the late Akim
+Ivanovitch for the relief of the poor and needy. There would be a
+hideous crush. From the gates to the doors of the office there would
+stretch a long file of strange people with brutal faces, in rags,
+numb with cold, hungry and already drunk, in husky voices calling
+down blessings upon Anna Akimovna, their benefactress, and her
+parents: those at the back would press upon those in front, and
+those in front would abuse them with bad language. The clerk would
+get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the sing-song whining and
+blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on the ear to the
+delight of all. And her own people, the factory hands, who received
+nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent every
+farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on
+and laughing--some enviously, others ironically.
+
+"Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than
+they are of their own workpeople," thought Anna Akimovna. "It's
+always so."
+
+Her eye fell upon the roll of money. It would be nice to distribute
+that hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it
+did not do to give the workpeople anything for nothing, or they
+would demand it again next time. And what would be the good of
+fifteen hundred roubles when there were eighteen hundred workmen
+in the factory besides their wives and children? Or she might,
+perhaps, pick out one of the writers of those begging letters--
+some luckless man who had long ago lost all hope of anything better,
+and give him the fifteen hundred. The money would come upon the
+poor creature like a thunder-clap, and perhaps for the first time
+in his life he would feel happy. This idea struck Anna Akimovna as
+original and amusing, and it fascinated her. She took one letter
+at random out of the pile and read it. Some petty official called
+Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in
+Gushtchin's Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five
+little girls. Anna Akimovna knew well the four-storeyed house,
+Gushtchin's Buildings, in which Tchalikov lived. Oh, it was a horrid,
+foul, unhealthy house!
+
+"Well, I will give it to that Tchalikov," she decided. "I won't
+send it; I had better take it myself to prevent unnecessary talk.
+Yes," she reflected, as she put the fifteen hundred roubles in her
+pocket, "and I'll have a look at them, and perhaps I can do something
+for the little girls."
+
+She felt light-hearted; she rang the bell and ordered the horses
+to be brought round.
+
+When she got into the sledge it was past six o'clock in the evening.
+The windows in all the blocks of buildings were brightly lighted
+up, and that made the huge courtyard seem very dark: at the gates,
+and at the far end of the yard near the warehouses and the workpeople's
+barracks, electric lamps were gleaming.
+
+Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those huge dark buildings,
+warehouses, and barracks where the workmen lived. She had only once
+been in the main building since her father's death. The high ceilings
+with iron girders; the multitude of huge, rapidly turning wheels,
+connecting straps and levers; the shrill hissing; the clank of
+steel; the rattle of the trolleys; the harsh puffing of steam; the
+faces--pale, crimson, or black with coal-dust; the shirts soaked
+with sweat; the gleam of steel, of copper, and of fire; the smell
+of oil and coal; and the draught, at times very hot and at times
+very cold--gave her an impression of hell. It seemed to her as
+though the wheels, the levers, and the hot hissing cylinders were
+trying to tear themselves away from their fastenings to crush the
+men, while the men, not hearing one another, ran about with anxious
+faces, and busied themselves about the machines, trying to stop
+their terrible movement. They showed Anna Akimovna something and
+respectfully explained it to her. She remembered how in the forge
+a piece of red-hot iron was pulled out of the furnace; and how an
+old man with a strap round his head, and another, a young man in a
+blue shirt with a chain on his breast, and an angry face, probably
+one of the foremen, struck the piece of iron with hammers; and how
+the golden sparks had been scattered in all directions; and how, a
+little afterwards, they had dragged out a huge piece of sheet-iron
+with a clang. The old man had stood erect and smiled, while the
+young man had wiped his face with his sleeve and explained something
+to her. And she remembered, too, how in another department an old
+man with one eye had been filing a piece of iron, and how the iron
+filings were scattered about; and how a red-haired man in black
+spectacles, with holes in his shirt, had been working at a lathe,
+making something out of a piece of steel: the lathe roared and
+hissed and squeaked, and Anna Akimovna felt sick at the sound, and
+it seemed as though they were boring into her ears. She looked,
+listened, did not understand, smiled graciously, and felt ashamed.
+To get hundreds of thousands of roubles from a business which one
+does not understand and cannot like--how strange it is!
+
+And she had not once been in the workpeople's barracks. There, she
+was told, it was damp; there were bugs, debauchery, anarchy. It was
+an astonishing thing: a thousand roubles were spent annually on
+keeping the barracks in good order, yet, if she were to believe the
+anonymous letters, the condition of the workpeople was growing worse
+and worse every year.
+
+"There was more order in my father's day," thought Anna Akimovna,
+as she drove out of the yard, "because he had been a workman himself.
+I know nothing about it and only do silly things."
+
+She felt depressed again, and was no longer glad that she had come,
+and the thought of the lucky man upon whom fifteen hundred roubles
+would drop from heaven no longer struck her as original and amusing.
+To go to some Tchalikov or other, when at home a business worth a
+million was gradually going to pieces and being ruined, and the
+workpeople in the barracks were living worse than convicts, meant
+doing something silly and cheating her conscience. Along the highroad
+and across the fields near it, workpeople from the neighbouring
+cotton and paper factories were walking towards the lights of the
+town. There was the sound of talk and laughter in the frosty air.
+Anna Akimovna looked at the women and young people, and she suddenly
+felt a longing for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled
+vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when
+she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her
+mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes
+in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the
+neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying,
+the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters' lathes and sewing-machines;
+while her father, Akim Ivanovitch, who was clever at almost every
+craft, would be soldering something near the stove, or drawing or
+planing, taking no notice whatever of the noise and stuffiness. And
+she longed to wash, to iron, to run to the shop and the tavern as
+she used to do every day when she lived with her mother. She ought
+to have been a work-girl and not the factory owner! Her big house
+with its chandeliers and pictures; her footman Mishenka, with his
+glossy moustache and swallowtail coat; the devout and dignified
+Varvarushka, and smooth-tongued Agafyushka; and the young people
+of both sexes who came almost every day to ask her for money, and
+with whom she always for some reason felt guilty; and the clerks,
+the doctors, and the ladies who were charitable at her expense, who
+flattered her and secretly despised her for her humble origin--
+how wearisome and alien it all was to her!
+
+Here was the railway crossing and the city gate; then came houses
+alternating with kitchen gardens; and at last the broad street where
+stood the renowned Gushtchin's Buildings. The street, usually quiet,
+was now on Christmas Eve full of life and movement. The eating-houses
+and beer-shops were noisy. If some one who did not belong to that
+quarter but lived in the centre of the town had driven through the
+street now, he would have noticed nothing but dirty, drunken, and
+abusive people; but Anna Akimovna, who had lived in those parts all
+her life, was constantly recognizing in the crowd her own father
+or mother or uncle. Her father was a soft fluid character, a little
+fantastical, frivolous, and irresponsible. He did not care for
+money, respectability, or power; he used to say that a working man
+had no time to keep the holy-days and go to church; and if it had
+not been for his wife, he would probably never have gone to confession,
+taken the sacrament or kept the fasts. While her uncle, Ivan
+Ivanovitch, on the contrary, was like flint; in everything relating
+to religion, politics, and morality, he was harsh and relentless,
+and kept a strict watch, not only over himself, but also over all
+his servants and acquaintances. God forbid that one should go into
+his room without crossing oneself before the ikon! The luxurious
+mansion in which Anna Akimovna now lived he had always kept locked
+up, and only opened it on great holidays for important visitors,
+while he lived himself in the office, in a little room covered with
+ikons. He had leanings towards the Old Believers, and was continually
+entertaining priests and bishops of the old ritual, though he had
+been christened, and married, and had buried his wife in accordance
+with the Orthodox rites. He disliked Akim, his only brother and his
+heir, for his frivolity, which he called simpleness and folly, and
+for his indifference to religion. He treated him as an inferior,
+kept him in the position of a workman, paid him sixteen roubles a
+month. Akim addressed his brother with formal respect, and on the
+days of asking forgiveness, he and his wife and daughter bowed down
+to the ground before him. But three years before his death Ivan
+Ivanovitch had drawn closer to his brother, forgave his shortcomings,
+and ordered him to get a governess for Anyutka.
+
+There was a dark, deep, evil-smelling archway under Gushtchin's
+Buildings; there was a sound of men coughing near the walls. Leaving
+the sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna went in at the gate and
+there inquired how to get to No. 46 to see a clerk called Tchalikov.
+She was directed to the furthest door on the right in the third
+story. And in the courtyard and near the outer door, and even on
+the stairs, there was still the same loathsome smell as under the
+archway. In Anna Akimovna's childhood, when her father was a simple
+workman, she used to live in a building like that, and afterwards,
+when their circumstances were different, she had often visited them
+in the character of a Lady Bountiful. The narrow stone staircase
+with its steep dirty steps, with landings at every story; the greasy
+swinging lanterns; the stench; the troughs, pots, and rags on the
+landings near the doors,--all this had been familiar to her long
+ago. . . . One door was open, and within could be seen Jewish tailors
+in caps, sewing. Anna Akimovna met people on the stairs, but it
+never entered her head that people might be rude to her. She was
+no more afraid of peasants or workpeople, drunk or sober, than of
+her acquaintances of the educated class.
+
+There was no entry at No. 46; the door opened straight into the
+kitchen. As a rule the dwellings of workmen and mechanics smell of
+varnish, tar, hides, smoke, according to the occupation of the
+tenant; the dwellings of persons of noble or official class who
+have come to poverty may be known by a peculiar rancid, sour smell.
+This disgusting smell enveloped Anna Akimovna on all sides, and as
+yet she was only on the threshold. A man in a black coat, no doubt
+Tchalikov himself, was sitting in a corner at the table with his
+back to the door, and with him were five little girls. The eldest,
+a broad-faced thin girl with a comb in her hair, looked about
+fifteen, while the youngest, a chubby child with hair that stood
+up like a hedge-hog, was not more than three. All the six were
+eating. Near the stove stood a very thin little woman with a yellow
+face, far gone in pregnancy. She was wearing a skirt and a white
+blouse, and had an oven fork in her hand.
+
+"I did not expect you to be so disobedient, Liza," the man was
+saying reproachfully. "Fie, fie, for shame! Do you want papa to
+whip you--eh?"
+
+Seeing an unknown lady in the doorway, the thin woman started, and
+put down the fork.
+
+"Vassily Nikititch!" she cried, after a pause, in a hollow voice,
+as though she could not believe her eyes.
+
+The man looked round and jumped up. He was a flat-chested, bony man
+with narrow shoulders and sunken temples. His eyes were small and
+hollow with dark rings round them, he had a wide mouth, and a long
+nose like a bird's beak--a little bit bent to the right. His beard
+was parted in the middle, his moustache was shaven, and this made
+him look more like a hired footman than a government clerk.
+
+"Does Mr. Tchalikov live here?" asked Anna Akimovna.
+
+"Yes, madam," Tchalikov answered severely, but immediately recognizing
+Anna Akimovna, he cried: "Anna Akimovna!" and all at once he gasped
+and clasped his hands as though in terrible alarm. "Benefactress!"
+
+With a moan he ran to her, grunting inarticulately as though he
+were paralyzed--there was cabbage on his beard and he smelt of
+vodka--pressed his forehead to her muff, and seemed as though he
+were in a swoon.
+
+"Your hand, your holy hand!" he brought out breathlessly. "It's a
+dream, a glorious dream! Children, awaken me!"
+
+He turned towards the table and said in a sobbing voice, shaking
+his fists:
+
+"Providence has heard us! Our saviour, our angel, has come! We are
+saved! Children, down on your knees! on your knees!"
+
+Madame Tchalikov and the little girls, except the youngest one,
+began for some reason rapidly clearing the table.
+
+"You wrote that your wife was very ill," said Anna Akimovna, and
+she felt ashamed and annoyed. "I am not going to give them the
+fifteen hundred," she thought.
+
+"Here she is, my wife," said Tchalikov in a thin feminine voice,
+as though his tears had gone to his head. "Here she is, unhappy
+creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam.
+Better death than such a life. Better die, unhappy woman!"
+
+"Why is he playing these antics?" thought Anna Akimovna with
+annoyance. "One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants."
+
+"Speak to me like a human being," she said. "I don't care for
+farces.''
+
+"Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother's coffin
+with funeral candles--that's a farce? Eh?" said Tchalikov bitterly,
+and turned away.
+
+"Hold your tongue," whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve.
+"The place has not been tidied up, madam," she said, addressing
+Anna Akimovna; "please excuse it . . . you know what it is where
+there are children. A crowded hearth, but harmony."
+
+"I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred," Anna Akimovna
+thought again.
+
+And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the
+sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave
+them twenty-five roubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed
+that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.
+
+"If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who
+is a friend of mine to come and see you," she said, flushing red.
+"He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for
+medicine."
+
+Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table.
+
+"It's messy here! What are you doing?" hissed Tchalikov, looking
+at her wrathfully. "Take her to the lodger's room! I make bold to
+ask you, madam, to step into the lodger's room," he said, addressing
+Anna Akimovna. "It's clean there."
+
+"Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!" said one of the
+little girls, sternly.
+
+But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through
+a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it was evident from
+the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and
+in the other three slept across the bed. In the lodger's room, that
+came next, it really was clean. A neat-looking bed with a red woollen
+quilt, a pillow in a white pillow-case, even a slipper for the
+watch, a table covered with a hempen cloth and on it, an inkstand
+of milky-looking glass, pens, paper, photographs in frames--
+everything as it ought to be; and another table for rough work, on
+which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker's tools and watches taken
+to pieces. On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers,
+and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking;
+one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees in
+eating-houses.
+
+As she sat down to write the letter, Anna Akimovna saw facing her
+on the table the photographs of her father and of herself. That
+surprised her.
+
+"Who lives here with you?" she asked.
+
+"Our lodger, madam, Pimenov. He works in your factory."
+
+"Oh, I thought he must be a watchmaker."
+
+"He repairs watches privately, in his leisure hours. He is an
+amateur."
+
+After a brief silence during which nothing could be heard but the
+ticking of the clocks and the scratching of the pen on the paper,
+Tchalikov heaved a sigh and said ironically, with indignation:
+
+"It's a true saying: gentle birth and a grade in the service won't
+put a coat on your back. A cockade in your cap and a noble title,
+but nothing to eat. To my thinking, if any one of humble class helps
+the poor he is much more of a gentleman than any Tchalikov who has
+sunk into poverty and vice."
+
+To flatter Anna Akimovna, he uttered a few more disparaging phrases
+about his gentle birth, and it was evident that he was humbling
+himself because he considered himself superior to her. Meanwhile
+she had finished her letter and had sealed it up. The letter would
+be thrown away and the money would not be spent on medicine--that
+she knew, but she put twenty-five roubles on the table all the same,
+and after a moment's thought, added two more red notes. She saw the
+wasted, yellow hand of Madame Tchalikov, like the claw of a hen,
+dart out and clutch the money tight.
+
+"You have graciously given this for medicine," said Tchalikov in a
+quivering voice, "but hold out a helping hand to me also . . . and
+the children!" he added with a sob. "My unhappy children! I am not
+afraid for myself; it is for my daughters I fear! It's the hydra
+of vice that I fear!"
+
+Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna
+Akimovna was confused and turned red. She felt ashamed that people
+should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting,
+and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At
+that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet,
+knocking the snow off.
+
+"The lodger has come in," said Madame Tchalikov.
+
+Anna Akimovna grew even more confused. She did not want any one
+from the factory to find her in this ridiculous position. As ill-luck
+would have it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having
+broken the catch at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and
+Tchalikov, grunting as though he were paraylzed, was feeling about
+with his lips where he could kiss her. In the lodger she recognized
+the workman who had once clanked the sheet-iron before her in the
+forge, and had explained things to her. Evidently he had come in
+straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on
+one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His hands were perfectly
+black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease. He was a
+man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders,
+and a look of great physical strength. At the first glance Anna
+Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be receiving
+at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced man
+who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his
+manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at
+once on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact
+that he did not wear top-boots, that he had breast pockets, and a
+pointed, picturesquely clipped beard. Her father, Akim Ivanovitch,
+had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been
+afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour.
+
+"Excuse me for having come in here in your absence," said Anna
+Akimovna.
+
+The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did
+not speak.
+
+"You must speak a little louder, madam . . . ." said Tchalikov
+softly. "When Mr. Pimenov comes home from the factory in the evenings
+he is a little hard of hearing."
+
+But Anna Akimovna was by now relieved that there was nothing more
+for her to do here; she nodded to them and went rapidly out of the
+room. Pimenov went to see her out.
+
+"Have you been long in our employment?" she asked in a loud voice,
+without turning to him.
+
+"From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle's time."
+
+"That's a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople,
+and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not
+know your name was Pimenov."
+
+Anna Akimovna felt a desire to justify herself before him, to pretend
+that she had just given the money not seriously, but as a joke.
+
+"Oh, this poverty," she sighed. "We give charity on holidays and
+working days, and still there is no sense in it. I believe it is
+useless to help such people as this Tchalikov."
+
+"Of course it is useless," he agreed. "However much you give him,
+he will drink it all away. And now the husband and wife will be
+snatching it from one another and fighting all night," he added
+with a laugh.
+
+"Yes, one must admit that our philanthropy is useless, boring, and
+absurd. But still, you must agree, one can't sit with one's hand
+in one's lap; one must do something. What's to be done with the
+Tchalikovs, for instance?"
+
+She turned to Pimenov and stopped, expecting an answer from him;
+he, too, stopped and slowly, without speaking, shrugged his shoulders.
+Obviously he knew what to do with the Tchalikovs, but the treatment
+would have been so coarse and inhuman that he did not venture to
+put it into words. And the Tchalikovs were to him so utterly
+uninteresting and worthless, that a moment later he had forgotten
+them; looking into Anna Akimovna's eyes, he smiled with pleasure,
+and his face wore an expression as though he were dreaming about
+something very pleasant. Only, now standing close to him, Anna
+Akimovna saw from his face, and especially from his eyes, how
+exhausted and sleepy he was.
+
+"Here, I ought to give him the fifteen hundred roubles!" she thought,
+but for some reason this idea seemed to her incongruous and insulting
+to Pimenov.
+
+"I am sure you are aching all over after your work, and you come
+to the door with me," she said as they went down the stairs. "Go
+home."
+
+But he did not catch her words. When they came out into the street,
+he ran on ahead, unfastened the cover of the sledge, and helping
+Anna Akimovna in, said:
+
+"I wish you a happy Christmas!"
+
+II
+
+Christmas Morning
+
+"They have left off ringing ever so long! It's dreadful; you won't
+be there before the service is over! Get up!"
+
+"Two horses are racing, racing . . ." said Anna Akimovna, and she
+woke up; before her, candle in hand, stood her maid, red-haired
+Masha. "Well, what is it?"
+
+"Service is over already," said Masha with despair. "I have called
+you three times! Sleep till evening for me, but you told me yourself
+to call you!"
+
+Anna Akimovna raised herself on her elbow and glanced towards the
+window. It was still quite dark outside, and only the lower edge
+of the window-frame was white with snow. She could hear a low,
+mellow chime of bells; it was not the parish church, but somewhere
+further away. The watch on the little table showed three minutes
+past six.
+
+"Very well, Masha. . . . In three minutes . . ." said Anna Akimovna
+in an imploring voice, and she snuggled under the bed-clothes.
+
+She imagined the snow at the front door, the sledge, the dark sky,
+the crowd in the church, and the smell of juniper, and she felt
+dread at the thought; but all the same, she made up her mind that
+she would get up at once and go to early service. And while she was
+warm in bed and struggling with sleep--which seems, as though to
+spite one, particularly sweet when one ought to get up--and while
+she had visions of an immense garden on a mountain and then Gushtchin's
+Buildings, she was worried all the time by the thought that she
+ought to get up that very minute and go to church.
+
+But when she got up it was quite light, and it turned out to be
+half-past nine. There had been a heavy fall of snow in the night;
+the trees were clothed in white, and the air was particularly light,
+transparent, and tender, so that when Anna Akimovna looked out of
+the window her first impulse was to draw a deep, deep breath. And
+when she had washed, a relic of far-away childish feelings--joy
+that today was Christmas--suddenly stirred within her; after that
+she felt light-hearted, free and pure in soul, as though her soul,
+too, had been washed or plunged in the white snow. Masha came in,
+dressed up and tightly laced, and wished her a happy Christmas;
+then she spent a long time combing her mistress's hair and helping
+her to dress. The fragrance and feeling of the new, gorgeous,
+splendid dress, its faint rustle, and the smell of fresh scent,
+excited Anna Akimoyna.
+
+"Well, it's Christmas," she said gaily to Masha. "Now we will try
+our fortunes."
+
+"Last year, I was to marry an old man. It turned up three times the
+same."
+
+"Well, God is merciful."
+
+"Well, Anna Akimovna, what I think is, rather than neither one thing
+nor the other, I'd marry an old man," said Masha mournfully, and
+she heaved a sigh. "I am turned twenty; it's no joke."
+
+Every one in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with
+Mishenka, the footman, and this genuine, passionate, hopeless love
+had already lasted three years.
+
+"Come, don't talk nonsense," Anna Akimovna consoled her. "I am going
+on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man."
+
+While his mistress was dressing, Mishenka, in a new swallow-tail
+and polished boots, walked about the hall and drawing-room and
+waited for her to come out, to wish her a happy Christmas. He had
+a peculiar walk, stepping softly and delicately; looking at his
+feet, his hands, and the bend of his head, it might be imagined
+that he was not simply walking, but learning to dance the first
+figure of a quadrille. In spite of his fine velvety moustache and
+handsome, rather flashy appearance, he was steady, prudent, and
+devout as an old man. He said his prayers, bowing down to the ground,
+and liked burning incense in his room. He respected people of wealth
+and rank and had a reverence for them; he despised poor people, and
+all who came to ask favours of any kind, with all the strength of
+his cleanly flunkey soul. Under his starched shirt he wore a flannel,
+winter and summer alike, being very careful of his health; his ears
+were plugged with cotton-wool.
+
+When Anna Akimovna crossed the hall with Masha, he bent his head
+downwards a little and said in his agreeable, honeyed voice:
+
+"I have the honour to congratulate you, Anna Akimovna, on the most
+solemn feast of the birth of our Lord."
+
+Anna Akimovna gave him five roubles, while poor Masha was numb with
+ecstasy. His holiday get-up, his attitude, his voice, and what he
+said, impressed her by their beauty and elegance; as she followed
+her mistress she could think of nothing, could see nothing, she
+could only smile, first blissfully and then bitterly. The upper
+story of the house was called the best or visitors' half, while the
+name of the business part--old people's or simply women's part
+--was given to the rooms on the lower story where Aunt Tatyana
+Ivanovna kept house. In the upper part the gentry and educated
+visitors were entertained; in the lower story, simpler folk and the
+aunt's personal friends. Handsome, plump, and healthy, still young
+and fresh, and feeling she had on a magnificent dress which seemed
+to her to diffuse a sort of radiance all about her, Anna Akimovna
+went down to the lower story. Here she was met with reproaches for
+forgetting God now that she was so highly educated, for sleeping
+too late for the service, and for not coming downstairs to break
+the fast, and they all clasped their hands and exclaimed with perfect
+sincerity that she was lovely, wonderful; and she believed it,
+laughed, kissed them, gave one a rouble, another three or five
+according to their position. She liked being downstairs. Wherever
+one looked there were shrines, ikons, little lamps, portraits of
+ecclesiastical personages--the place smelt of monks; there was a
+rattle of knives in the kitchen, and already a smell of something
+savoury, exceedingly appetizing, was pervading all the rooms. The
+yellow-painted floors shone, and from the doors narrow rugs with
+bright blue stripes ran like little paths to the ikon corner, and
+the sunshine was simply pouring in at the windows.
+
+In the dining-room some old women, strangers, were sitting; in
+Varvarushka's room, too, there were old women, and with them a deaf
+and dumb girl, who seemed abashed about something and kept saying,
+"Bli, bli! . . ." Two skinny-looking little girls who had been
+brought out of the orphanage for Christmas came up to kiss Anna
+Akimovna's hand, and stood before her transfixed with admiration
+of her splendid dress; she noticed that one of the girls squinted,
+and in the midst of her light-hearted holiday mood she felt a sick
+pang at her heart at the thought that young men would despise the
+girl, and that she would never marry. In the cook Agafya's room,
+five huge peasants in new shirts were sitting round the samovar;
+these were not workmen from the factory, but relations of the cook.
+Seeing Anna Akimovna, all the peasants jumped up from their seats,
+and from regard for decorum, ceased munching, though their mouths
+were full. The cook Stepan, in a white cap, with a knife in his
+hand, came into the room and gave her his greetings; porters in
+high felt boots came in, and they, too, offered their greetings.
+The water-carrier peeped in with icicles on his beard, but did not
+venture to come in.
+
+Anna Akimovna walked through the rooms followed by her retinue--
+the aunt, Varvarushka, Nikandrovna, the sewing-maid Marfa Petrovna,
+and the downstairs Masha. Varvarushka--a tall, thin, slender
+woman, taller than any one in the house, dressed all in black,
+smelling of cypress and coffee--crossed herself in each room
+before the ikon, bowing down from the waist. And whenever one looked
+at her one was reminded that she had already prepared her shroud
+and that lottery tickets were hidden away by her in the same box.
+
+"Anyutinka, be merciful at Christmas," she said, opening the door
+into the kitchen. "Forgive him, bless the man! Have done with it!"
+
+The coachman Panteley, who had been dismissed for drunkenness in
+November, was on his knees in the middle of the kitchen. He was a
+good-natured man, but he used to be unruly when he was drunk, and
+could not go to sleep, but persisted in wandering about the buildings
+and shouting in a threatening voice, "I know all about it!" Now
+from his beefy and bloated face and from his bloodshot eyes it could
+be seen that he had been drinking continually from November till
+Christmas.
+
+"Forgive me, Anna Akimovna," he brought out in a hoarse voice,
+striking his forehead on the floor and showing his bull-like neck.
+
+"It was Auntie dismissed you; ask her."
+
+"What about auntie?" said her aunt, walking into the kitchen,
+breathing heavily; she was very stout, and on her bosom one might
+have stood a tray of teacups and a samovar. "What about auntie now?
+You are mistress here, give your own orders; though these rascals
+might be all dead for all I care. Come, get up, you hog!" she shouted
+at Panteley, losing patience. "Get out of my sight! It's the last
+time I forgive you, but if you transgress again--don't ask for
+mercy!"
+
+Then they went into the dining-room to coffee. But they had hardly
+sat down, when the downstairs Masha rushed headlong in, saying with
+horror, "The singers!" And ran back again. They heard some one
+blowing his nose, a low bass cough, and footsteps that sounded like
+horses' iron-shod hoofs tramping about the entry near the hall. For
+half a minute all was hushed. . . . The singers burst out so suddenly
+and loudly that every one started. While they were singing, the
+priest from the almshouses with the deacon and the sexton arrived.
+Putting on the stole, the priest slowly said that when they were
+ringing for matins it was snowing and not cold, but that the frost
+was sharper towards morning, God bless it! and now there must be
+twenty degrees of frost.
+
+"Many people maintain, though, that winter is healthier than summer,"
+said the deacon; then immediately assumed an austere expression and
+chanted after the priest. "Thy Birth, O Christ our Lord. . . ."
+
+Soon the priest from the workmen's hospital came with the deacon,
+then the Sisters from the hospital, children from the orphanage,
+and then singing could be heard almost uninterruptedly. They sang,
+had lunch, and went away.
+
+About twenty men from the factory came to offer their Christmas
+greetings. They were only the foremen, mechanicians, and their
+assistants, the pattern-makers, the accountant, and so on--all
+of good appearance, in new black coats. They were all first-rate
+men, as it were picked men; each one knew his value--that is,
+knew that if he lost his berth today, people would be glad to take
+him on at another factory. Evidently they liked Auntie, as they
+behaved freely in her presence and even smoked, and when they had
+all trooped in to have something to eat, the accountant put his arm
+round her immense waist. They were free-and-easy, perhaps, partly
+also because Varvarushka, who under the old masters had wielded
+great power and had kept watch over the morals of the clerks, had
+now no authority whatever in the house; and perhaps because many
+of them still remembered the time when Auntie Tatyana Ivanovna,
+whose brothers kept a strict hand over her, had been dressed like
+a simple peasant woman like Agafya, and when Anna Akimovna used to
+run about the yard near the factory buildings and every one used
+to call her Anyutya.
+
+The foremen ate, talked, and kept looking with amazement at Anna
+Akimovna, how she had grown up and how handsome she had become! But
+this elegant girl, educated by governesses and teachers, was a
+stranger to them; they could not understand her, and they instinctively
+kept closer to "Auntie," who called them by their names, continually
+pressed them to eat and drink, and, clinking glasses with them, had
+already drunk two wineglasses of rowanberry wine with them. Anna
+Akimovna was always afraid of their thinking her proud, an upstart,
+or a crow in peacock's feathers; and now while the foremen were
+crowding round the food, she did not leave the dining-room, but
+took part in the conversation. She asked Pimenov, her acquaintance
+of the previous day:
+
+"Why have you so many clocks in your room?"
+
+"I mend clocks," he answered. "I take the work up between times,
+on holidays, or when I can't sleep."
+
+"So if my watch goes wrong I can bring it to you to be repaired?"
+Anna Akimovna asked, laughing.
+
+"To be sure, I will do it with pleasure," said Pimenov, and there
+was an expression of tender devotion in his face, when, not herself
+knowing why, she unfastened her magnificent watch from its chain
+and handed it to him; he looked at it in silence and gave it back.
+"To be sure, I will do it with pleasure," he repeated. "I don't
+mend watches now. My eyes are weak, and the doctors have forbidden
+me to do fine work. But for you I can make an exception."
+
+"Doctors talk nonsense," said the accountant. They all laughed.
+"Don't you believe them," he went on, flattered by the laughing;
+"last year a tooth flew out of a cylinder and hit old Kalmykov such
+a crack on the head that you could see his brains, and the doctor
+said he would die; but he is alive and working to this day, only
+he has taken to stammering since that mishap."
+
+"Doctors do talk nonsense, they do, but not so much," sighed Auntie.
+"Pyotr Andreyitch, poor dear, lost his sight. Just like you, he
+used to work day in day out at the factory near the hot furnace,
+and he went blind. The eyes don't like heat. But what are we talking
+about?" she said, rousing herself. "Come and have a drink. My best
+wishes for Christmas, my dears. I never drink with any one else,
+but I drink with you, sinful woman as I am. Please God!"
+
+Anna Akimovna fancied that after yesterday Pimenov despised her as
+a philanthropist, but was fascinated by her as a woman. She looked
+at him and thought that he behaved very charmingly and was nicely
+dressed. It is true that the sleeves of his coat were not quite
+long enough, and the coat itself seemed short-waisted, and his
+trousers were not wide and fashionable, but his tie was tied
+carelessly and with taste and was not as gaudy as the others'. And
+he seemed to be a good-natured man, for he ate submissively whatever
+Auntie put on his plate. She remembered how black he had been the
+day before, and how sleepy, and the thought of it for some reason
+touched her.
+
+When the men were preparing to go, Anna Akimovna put out her hand
+to Pimenov. She wanted to ask him to come in sometimes to see her,
+without ceremony, but she did not know how to--her tongue would
+not obey her; and that they might not think she was attracted by
+Pimenov, she shook hands with his companions, too.
+
+Then the boys from the school of which she was a patroness came.
+They all had their heads closely cropped and all wore grey blouses
+of the same pattern. The teacher--a tall, beardless young man
+with patches of red on his face--was visibly agitated as he formed
+the boys into rows; the boys sang in tune, but with harsh, disagreeable
+voices. The manager of the factory, Nazaritch, a bald, sharp-eyed
+Old Believer, could never get on with the teachers, but the one who
+was now anxiously waving his hands he despised and hated, though
+he could not have said why. He behaved rudely and condescendingly
+to the young man, kept back his salary, meddled with the teaching,
+and had finally tried to dislodge him by appointing, a fortnight
+before Christmas, as porter to the school a drunken peasant, a
+distant relation of his wife's, who disobeyed the teacher and said
+rude things to him before the boys.
+
+Anna Akimovna was aware of all this, but she could be of no help,
+for she was afraid of Nazaritch herself. Now she wanted at least
+to be very nice to the schoolmaster, to tell him she was very much
+pleased with him; but when after the singing he began apologizing
+for something in great confusion, and Auntie began to address him
+familiarly as she drew him without ceremony to the table, she felt,
+for some reason, bored and awkward, and giving orders that the
+children should be given sweets, went upstairs.
+
+"In reality there is something cruel in these Christmas customs,"
+she said a little while afterwards, as it were to herself, looking
+out of window at the boys, who were flocking from the house to the
+gates and shivering with cold, putting their coats on as they ran.
+"At Christmas one wants to rest, to sit at home with one's own
+people, and the poor boys, the teacher, and the clerks and foremen,
+are obliged for some reason to go through the frost, then to offer
+their greetings, show their respect, be put to confusion . . ."
+
+Mishenka, who was standing at the door of the drawing-room and
+overheard this, said:
+
+"It has not come from us, and it will not end with us. Of course,
+I am not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but I do understand that
+the poor must always respect the rich. It is well said, 'God marks
+the rogue.' In prisons, night refuges, and pot-houses you never see
+any but the poor, while decent people, you may notice, are always
+rich. It has been said of the rich, 'Deep calls to deep.'"
+
+"You always express yourself so tediously and incomprehensibly,"
+said Anna Akimovna, and she walked to the other end of the big
+drawing-room.
+
+It was only just past eleven. The stillness of the big room, only
+broken by the singing that floated up from below, made her yawn.
+The bronzes, the albums, and the pictures on the walls, representing
+a ship at sea, cows in a meadow, and views of the Rhine, were so
+absolutely stale that her eyes simply glided over them without
+observing them. The holiday mood was already growing tedious. As
+before, Anna Akimovna felt that she was beautiful, good-natured,
+and wonderful, but now it seemed to her that that was of no use to
+any one; it seemed to her that she did not know for whom and for
+what she had put on this expensive dress, too, and, as always
+happened on all holidays, she began to be fretted by loneliness and
+the persistent thought that her beauty, her health, and her wealth,
+were a mere cheat, since she was not wanted, was of no use to any
+one, and nobody loved her. She walked through all the rooms, humming
+and looking out of window; stopping in the drawing-room, she could
+not resist beginning to talk to Mishenka.
+
+"I don't know what you think of yourself, Misha," she said, and
+heaved a sigh. "Really, God might punish you for it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You know what I mean. Excuse my meddling in your affairs. But it
+seems you are spoiling your own life out of obstinacy. You'll admit
+that it is high time you got married, and she is an excellent and
+deserving girl. You will never find any one better. She's a beauty,
+clever, gentle, and devoted. . . . And her appearance! . . . If she
+belonged to our circle or a higher one, people would be falling in
+love with her for her red hair alone. See how beautifully her hair
+goes with her complexion. Oh, goodness! You don't understand anything,
+and don't know what you want," Anna Akimovna said bitterly, and
+tears came into her eyes. "Poor girl, I am so sorry for her! I know
+you want a wife with money, but I have told you already I will give
+Masha a dowry."
+
+Mishenka could not picture his future spouse in his imagination
+except as a tall, plump, substantial, pious woman, stepping like a
+peacock, and, for some reason, with a long shawl over her shoulders;
+while Masha was thin, slender, tightly laced, and walked with little
+steps, and, worst of all, she was too fascinating and at times
+extremely attractive to Mishenka, and that, in his opinion, was
+incongruous with matrimony and only in keeping with loose behaviour.
+When Anna Akimovna had promised to give Masha a dowry, he had
+hesitated for a time; but once a poor student in a brown overcoat
+over his uniform, coming with a letter for Anna Akimovna, was
+fascinated by Masha, and could not resist embracing her near the
+hat-stand, and she had uttered a faint shriek; Mishenka, standing
+on the stairs above, had seen this, and from that time had begun
+to cherish a feeling of disgust for Masha. A poor student! Who
+knows, if she had been embraced by a rich student or an officer the
+consequences might have been different.
+
+"Why don't you wish it?" Anna Akimovna asked. "What more do you
+want?"
+
+Mishenka was silent and looked at the arm-chair fixedly, and raised
+his eyebrows.
+
+"Do you love some one else?"
+
+Silence. The red-haired Masha came in with letters and visiting
+cards on a tray. Guessing that they were talking about her, she
+blushed to tears.
+
+"The postmen have come," she muttered. "And there is a clerk called
+Tchalikov waiting below. He says you told him to come to-day for
+something."
+
+"What insolence!" said Anna Akimovna, moved to anger. "I gave him
+no orders. Tell him to take himself off; say I am not at home!"
+
+A ring was heard. It was the priests from her parish. They were
+always shown into the aristocratic part of the house--that is,
+upstairs. After the priests, Nazaritch, the manager of the factory,
+came to pay his visit, and then the factory doctor; then Mishenka
+announced the inspector of the elementary schools. Visitors kept
+arriving.
+
+When there was a moment free, Anna Akimovna sat down in a deep
+arm-chair in the drawing-room, and shutting her eyes, thought that
+her loneliness was quite natural because she had not married and
+never would marry. . . . But that was not her fault. Fate itself
+had flung her out of the simple working-class surroundings in which,
+if she could trust her memory, she had felt so snug and at home,
+into these immense rooms, where she could never think what to do
+with herself, and could not understand why so many people kept
+passing before her eyes. What was happening now seemed to her
+trivial, useless, since it did not and could not give her happiness
+for one minute.
+
+"If I could fall in love," she thought, stretching; the very thought
+of this sent a rush of warmth to her heart. "And if I could escape
+from the factory . . ." she mused, imagining how the weight of those
+factory buildings, barracks, and schools would roll off her conscience,
+roll off her mind. . . . Then she remembered her father, and thought
+if he had lived longer he would certainly have married her to a
+working man--to Pimenov, for instance. He would have told her to
+marry, and that would have been all about it. And it would have
+been a good thing; then the factory would have passed into capable
+hands.
+
+She pictured his curly head, his bold profile, his delicate, ironical
+lips and the strength, the tremendous strength, in his shoulders,
+in his arms, in his chest, and the tenderness with which he had
+looked at her watch that day.
+
+"Well," she said, "it would have been all right. I would have married
+him."
+
+"Anna Akimovna," said Mishenka, coming noiselessly into the
+drawing-room.
+
+"How you frightened me!" she said, trembling all over. "What do you
+want?"
+
+"Anna Akimovna," he said, laying his hand on his heart and raising
+his eyebrows, "you are my mistress and my benefactress, and no one
+but you can tell me what I ought to do about marriage, for you are
+as good as a mother to me. . . . But kindly forbid them to laugh
+and jeer at me downstairs. They won't let me pass without it."
+
+"How do they jeer at you?"
+
+"They call me Mashenka's Mishenka."
+
+"Pooh, what nonsense!" cried Anna Akimovna indignantly. "How stupid
+you all are! What a stupid you are, Misha! How sick I am of you! I
+can't bear the sight of you."
+
+III
+
+Dinner
+
+Just as the year before, the last to pay her visits were Krylin,
+an actual civil councillor, and Lysevitch, a well-known barrister.
+It was already dark when they arrived. Krylin, a man of sixty, with
+a wide mouth and with grey whiskers close to his ears, with a face
+like a lynx, was wearing a uniform with an Anna ribbon, and white
+trousers. He held Anna Akimovna's hand in both of his for a long
+while, looked intently in her face, moved his lips, and at last
+said, drawling upon one note:
+
+"I used to respect your uncle . . . and your father, and enjoyed
+the privilege of their friendship. Now I feel it an agreeable duty,
+as you see, to present my Christmas wishes to their honoured heiress
+in spite of my infirmities and the distance I have to come. . . .
+And I am very glad to see you in good health."
+
+The lawyer Lysevitch, a tall, handsome fair man, with a slight
+sprinkling of grey on his temples and beard, was distinguished by
+exceptionally elegant manners; he walked with a swaying step, bowed
+as it were reluctantly, and shrugged his shoulders as he talked,
+and all this with an indolent grace, like a spoiled horse fresh
+from the stable. He was well fed, extremely healthy, and very well
+off; on one occasion he had won forty thousand roubles, but concealed
+the fact from his friends. He was fond of good fare, especially
+cheese, truffles, and grated radish with hemp oil; while in Paris
+he had eaten, so he said, baked but unwashed guts. He spoke smoothly,
+fluently, without hesitation, and only occasionally, for the sake
+of effect, permitted himself to hesitate and snap his fingers as
+if picking up a word. He had long ceased to believe in anything he
+had to say in the law courts, or perhaps he did believe in it, but
+attached no kind of significance to it; it had all so long been
+familiar, stale, ordinary. . . . He believed in nothing but what
+was original and unusual. A copy-book moral in an original form
+would move him to tears. Both his notebooks were filled with
+extraordinary expressions which he had read in various authors; and
+when he needed to look up any expression, he would search nervously
+in both books, and usually failed to find it. Anna Akimovna's father
+had in a good-humoured moment ostentatiously appointed him legal
+adviser in matters concerning the factory, and had assigned him a
+salary of twelve thousand roubles. The legal business of the factory
+had been confined to two or three trivial actions for recovering
+debts, which Lysevitch handed to his assistants.
+
+Anna Akimovna knew that he had nothing to do at the factory, but
+she could not dismiss him--she had not the moral courage; and
+besides, she was used to him. He used to call himself her legal
+adviser, and his salary, which he invariably sent for on the first
+of the month punctually, he used to call "stern prose." Anna Akimovna
+knew that when, after her father's death, the timber of her forest
+was sold for railway sleepers, Lysevitch had made more than fifteen
+thousand out of the transaction, and had shared it with Nazaritch.
+When first she found out they had cheated her she had wept bitterly,
+but afterwards she had grown used to it.
+
+Wishing her a happy Christmas, and kissing both her hands, he looked
+her up and down, and frowned.
+
+"You mustn't," he said with genuine disappointment. "I have told
+you, my dear, you mustn't!"
+
+"What do you mean, Viktor Nikolaitch?"
+
+"I have told you you mustn't get fat. All your family have an
+unfortunate tendency to grow fat. You mustn't," he repeated in an
+imploring voice, and kissed her hand. "You are so handsome! You are
+so splendid! Here, your Excellency, let me introduce the one woman
+in the world whom I have ever seriously loved."
+
+"There is nothing surprising in that. To know Anna Akimovna at your
+age and not to be in love with her, that would be impossible."
+
+"I adore her," the lawyer continued with perfect sincerity, but
+with his usual indolent grace. "I love her, but not because I am a
+man and she is a woman. When I am with her I always feel as though
+she belongs to some third sex, and I to a fourth, and we float away
+together into the domain of the subtlest shades, and there we blend
+into the spectrum. Leconte de Lisle defines such relations better
+than any one. He has a superb passage, a marvellous passage. . . ."
+
+Lysevitch rummaged in one notebook, then in the other, and, not
+finding the quotation, subsided. They began talking of the weather,
+of the opera, of the arrival, expected shortly, of Duse. Anna
+Akimovna remembered that the year before Lysevitch and, she fancied,
+Krylin had dined with her, and now when they were getting ready to
+go away, she began with perfect sincerity pointing out to them in
+an imploring voice that as they had no more visits to pay, they
+ought to remain to dinner with her. After some hesitation the
+visitors agreed.
+
+In addition to the family dinner, consisting of cabbage soup, sucking
+pig, goose with apples, and so on, a so-called "French" or "chef's"
+dinner used to be prepared in the kitchen on great holidays, in
+case any visitor in the upper story wanted a meal. When they heard
+the clatter of crockery in the dining-room, Lysevitch began to
+betray a noticeable excitement; he rubbed his hands, shrugged his
+shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and described with feeling what
+dinners her father and uncle used to give at one time, and a
+marvellous _matelote_ of turbots the cook here could make: it was
+not a _matelote_, but a veritable revelation! He was already gloating
+over the dinner, already eating it in imagination and enjoying it.
+When Anna Akimovna took his arm and led him to the dining-room, he
+tossed off a glass of vodka and put a piece of salmon in his mouth;
+he positively purred with pleasure. He munched loudly, disgustingly,
+emitting sounds from his nose, while his eyes grew oily and rapacious.
+
+The _hors d'oeuvres_ were superb; among other things, there were
+fresh white mushrooms stewed in cream, and sauce _provencale_ made
+of fried oysters and crayfish, strongly flavoured with some bitter
+pickles. The dinner, consisting of elaborate holiday dishes, was
+excellent, and so were the wines. Mishenka waited at table with
+enthusiasm. When he laid some new dish on the table and lifted the
+shining cover, or poured out the wine, he did it with the solemnity
+of a professor of black magic, and, looking at his face and his
+movements suggesting the first figure of a quadrille, the lawyer
+thought several times, "What a fool!"
+
+After the third course Lysevitch said, turning to Anna Akimovna:
+
+"The _fin de siecle_ woman--I mean when she is young, and of
+course wealthy--must be independent, clever, elegant, intellectual,
+bold, and a little depraved. Depraved within limits, a little; for
+excess, you know, is wearisome. You ought not to vegetate, my dear;
+you ought not to live like every one else, but to get the full
+savour of life, and a slight flavour of depravity is the sauce of
+life. Revel among flowers of intoxicating fragrance, breathe the
+perfume of musk, eat hashish, and best of all, love, love, love
+. . . . To begin with, in your place I would set up seven lovers--one
+for each day of the week; and one I would call Monday, one Tuesday,
+the third Wednesday, and so on, so that each might know his day."
+
+This conversation troubled Anna Akimovna; she ate nothing and only
+drank a glass of wine.
+
+"Let me speak at last," she said. "For myself personally, I can't
+conceive of love without family life. I am lonely, lonely as the
+moon in the sky, and a waning moon, too; and whatever you may say,
+I am convinced, I feel that this waning can only be restored by
+love in its ordinary sense. It seems to me that such love would
+define my duties, my work, make clear my conception of life. I want
+from love peace of soul, tranquillity; I want the very opposite of
+musk, and spiritualism, and _fin de siecle_ . . . in short"--she
+grew embarrassed--"a husband and children."
+
+"You want to be married? Well, you can do that, too," Lysevitch
+assented. "You ought to have all experiences: marriage, and jealousy,
+and the sweetness of the first infidelity, and even children. . . .
+But make haste and live--make haste, my dear: time is passing;
+it won't wait."
+
+"Yes, I'll go and get married!" she said, looking angrily at his
+well-fed, satisfied face. "I will marry in the simplest, most
+ordinary way and be radiant with happiness. And, would you believe
+it, I will marry some plain working man, some mechanic or draughtsman."
+
+"There is no harm in that, either. The Duchess Josiana loved Gwinplin,
+and that was permissible for her because she was a grand duchess.
+Everything is permissible for you, too, because you are an exceptional
+woman: if, my dear, you want to love a negro or an Arab, don't
+scruple; send for a negro. Don't deny yourself anything. You ought
+to be as bold as your desires; don't fall short of them."
+
+"Can it be so hard to understand me?" Anna Akimovna asked with
+amazement, and her eyes were bright with tears. "Understand, I have
+an immense business on my hands--two thousand workmen, for whom
+I must answer before God. The men who work for me grow blind and
+deaf. I am afraid to go on like this; I am afraid! I am wretched,
+and you have the cruelty to talk to me of negroes and . . . and you
+smile!" Anna Akimovna brought her fist down on the table. "To go
+on living the life I am living now, or to marry some one as idle
+and incompetent as myself, would be a crime. I can't go on living
+like this," she said hotly, "I cannot!"
+
+"How handsome she is!" said Lysevitch, fascinated by her. "My God,
+how handsome she is! But why are you angry, my dear? Perhaps I am
+wrong; but surely you don't imagine that if, for the sake of ideas
+for which I have the deepest respect, you renounce the joys of life
+and lead a dreary existence, your workmen will be any the better
+for it? Not a scrap! No, frivolity, frivolity!" he said decisively.
+"It's essential for you; it's your duty to be frivolous and depraved!
+Ponder that, my dear, ponder it."
+
+Anna Akimovna was glad she had spoken out, and her spirits rose.
+She was pleased she had spoken so well, and that her ideas were so
+fine and just, and she was already convinced that if Pimenov, for
+instance, loved her, she would marry him with pleasure.
+
+Mishenka began to pour out champagne.
+
+"You make me angry, Viktor Nikolaitch," she said, clinking glasses
+with the lawyer. "It seems to me you give advice and know nothing
+of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a
+draughtsman, he is bound to be a peasant and an ignoramus! But they
+are the cleverest people! Extraordinary people!"
+
+"Your uncle and father . . . I knew them and respected them . . ."
+Krylin said, pausing for emphasis (he had been sitting upright as
+a post, and had been eating steadily the whole time), "were people
+of considerable intelligence and . . . of lofty spiritual qualities."
+
+"Oh, to be sure, we know all about their qualities," the lawyer
+muttered, and asked permission to smoke.
+
+When dinner was over Krylin was led away for a nap. Lysevitch
+finished his cigar, and, staggering from repletion, followed Anna
+Akimovna into her study. Cosy corners with photographs and fans on
+the walls, and the inevitable pink or pale blue lanterns in the
+middle of the ceiling, he did not like, as the expression of an
+insipid and unoriginal character; besides, the memory of certain
+of his love affairs of which he was now ashamed was associated with
+such lanterns. Anna Akimovna's study with its bare walls and tasteless
+furniture pleased him exceedingly. It was snug and comfortable for
+him to sit on a Turkish divan and look at Anna Akimovna, who usually
+sat on the rug before the fire, clasping her knees and looking into
+the fire and thinking of something; and at such moments it seemed
+to him that her peasant Old Believer blood was stirring within her.
+
+Every time after dinner when coffee and liqueurs were handed, he
+grew livelier and began telling her various bits of literary gossip.
+He spoke with eloquence and inspiration, and was carried away by
+his own stories; and she listened to him and thought every time
+that for such enjoyment it was worth paying not only twelve thousand,
+but three times that sum, and forgave him everything she disliked
+in him. He sometimes told her the story of some tale or novel he
+had been reading, and then two or three hours passed unnoticed like
+a minute. Now he began rather dolefully in a failing voice with his
+eyes shut.
+
+"It's ages, my dear, since I have read anything," he said when she
+asked him to tell her something. "Though I do sometimes read Jules
+Verne."
+
+"I was expecting you to tell me something new."
+
+"H'm! . . . new," Lysevitch muttered sleepily, and he settled himself
+further back in the corner of the sofa. "None of the new literature,
+my dear, is any use for you or me. Of course, it is bound to be
+such as it is, and to refuse to recognize it is to refuse to recognize
+--would mean refusing to recognize the natural order of things,
+and I do recognize it, but . . ." Lysevitch seemed to have fallen
+asleep. But a minute later his voice was heard again:
+
+"All the new literature moans and howls like the autumn wind in the
+chimney. 'Ah, unhappy wretch! Ah, your life may be likened to a
+prison! Ah, how damp and dark it is in your prison! Ah, you will
+certainly come to ruin, and there is no chance of escape for you!'
+That's very fine, but I should prefer a literature that would tell
+us how to escape from prison. Of all contemporary writers, however,
+I prefer Maupassant." Lysevitch opened his eyes. "A fine writer, a
+perfect writer!" Lysevitch shifted in his seat. "A wonderful artist!
+A terrible, prodigious, supernatural artist!" Lysevitch got up from
+the sofa and raised his right arm. "Maupassant!" he said rapturously.
+"My dear, read Maupassant! one page of his gives you more than all
+the riches of the earth! Every line is a new horizon. The softest,
+tenderest impulses of the soul alternate with violent tempestuous
+sensations; your soul, as though under the weight of forty thousand
+atmospheres, is transformed into the most insignificant little bit
+of some great thing of an undefined rosy hue which I fancy, if one
+could put it on one's tongue, would yield a pungent, voluptuous
+taste. What a fury of transitions, of motives, of melodies! You
+rest peacefully on the lilies and the roses, and suddenly a thought
+--a terrible, splendid, irresistible thought--swoops down upon
+you like a locomotive, and bathes you in hot steam and deafens you
+with its whistle. Read Maupassant, dear girl; I insist on it."
+
+Lysevitch waved his arms and paced from corner to corner in violent
+excitement.
+
+"Yes, it is inconceivable," he pronounced, as though in despair;
+"his last thing overwhelmed me, intoxicated me! But I am afraid you
+will not care for it. To be carried away by it you must savour it,
+slowly suck the juice from each line, drink it in. . . . You must
+drink it in! . . ."
+
+After a long introduction, containing many words such as daemonic
+sensuality, a network of the most delicate nerves, simoom, crystal,
+and so on, he began at last telling the story of the novel. He did
+not tell the story so whimsically, but told it in minute detail,
+quoting from memory whole descriptions and conversations; the
+characters of the novel fascinated him, and to describe them he
+threw himself into attitudes, changed the expression of his face
+and voice like a real actor. He laughed with delight at one moment
+in a deep bass, and at another, on a high shrill note, clasped his
+hands and clutched at his head with an expression which suggested
+that it was just going to burst. Anna Akimovna listened enthralled,
+though she had already read the novel, and it seemed to her ever
+so much finer and more subtle in the lawyer's version than in the
+book itself. He drew her attention to various subtleties, and
+emphasized the felicitous expressions and the profound thoughts,
+but she saw in it, only life, life, life and herself, as though she
+had been a character in the novel. Her spirits rose, and she, too,
+laughing and clasping her hands, thought that she could not go on
+living such a life, that there was no need to have a wretched life
+when one might have a splendid one. She remembered her words and
+thoughts at dinner, and was proud of them; and when Pimenov suddenly
+rose up in her imagination, she felt happy and longed for him to
+love her.
+
+When he had finished the story, Lysevitch sat down on the sofa,
+exhausted.
+
+"How splendid you are! How handsome!" he began, a little while
+afterwards in a faint voice as if he were ill. "I am happy near
+you, dear girl, but why am I forty-two instead of thirty? Your
+tastes and mine do not coincide: you ought to be depraved, and I
+have long passed that phase, and want a love as delicate and
+immaterial as a ray of sunshine--that is, from the point of view
+of a woman of your age, I am of no earthly use."
+
+In his own words, he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love
+and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but
+he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as
+something abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured
+himself that he loved Anna Akimovna platonically, ideally, though
+he did not know what those words meant. But he felt comfortable,
+snug, warm. Anna Akimovna seemed to him enchanting, original, and
+he imagined that the pleasant sensation that was aroused in him by
+these surroundings was the very thing that was called platonic love.
+
+He laid his cheek on her hand and said in the tone commonly used
+in coaxing little children:
+
+"My precious, why have you punished me?"
+
+"How? When?"
+
+"I have had no Christmas present from you."
+
+Anna Akimovna had never heard before of their sending a Christmas
+box to the lawyer, and now she was at a loss how much to give him.
+But she must give him something, for he was expecting it, though
+he looked at her with eyes full of love.
+
+"I suppose Nazaritch forgot it," she said, "but it is not too late
+to set it right."
+
+She suddenly remembered the fifteen hundred she had received the
+day before, which was now lying in the toilet drawer in her bedroom.
+And when she brought that ungrateful money and gave it to the lawyer,
+and he put it in his coat pocket with indolent grace, the whole
+incident passed off charmingly and naturally. The sudden reminder
+of a Christmas box and this fifteen hundred was not unbecoming in
+Lysevitch.
+
+"Merci," he said, and kissed her finger.
+
+Krylin came in with blissful, sleepy face, but without his decorations.
+
+Lysevitch and he stayed a little longer and drank a glass of tea
+each, and began to get ready to go. Anna Akimovna was a little
+embarrassed. . . . She had utterly forgotten in what department
+Krylin served, and whether she had to give him money or not; and
+if she had to, whether to give it now or send it afterwards in an
+envelope.
+
+"Where does he serve?" she whispered to Lysevitch.
+
+"Goodness knows," muttered Lysevitch, yawning.
+
+She reflected that if Krylin used to visit her father and her uncle
+and respected them, it was probably not for nothing: apparently he
+had been charitable at their expense, serving in some charitable
+institution. As she said good-bye she slipped three hundred roubles
+into his hand; he seemed taken aback, and looked at her for a minute
+in silence with his pewtery eyes, but then seemed to understand and
+said:
+
+"The receipt, honoured Anna Akimovna, you can only receive on the
+New Year."
+
+Lysevitch had become utterly limp and heavy, and he staggered when
+Mishenka put on his overcoat.
+
+As he went downstairs he looked like a man in the last stage of
+exhaustion, and it was evident that he would drop asleep as soon
+as he got into his sledge.
+
+"Your Excellency," he said languidly to Krylin, stopping in the
+middle of the staircase, "has it ever happened to you to experience
+a feeling as though some unseen force were drawing you out longer
+and longer? You are drawn out and turn into the finest wire.
+Subjectively this finds expression in a curious voluptuous feeling
+which is impossible to compare with anything."
+
+Anna Akimovna, standing at the top of the stairs, saw each of them
+give Mishenka a note.
+
+"Good-bye! Come again!" she called to them, and ran into her bedroom.
+
+She quickly threw off her dress, that she was weary of already, put
+on a dressing-gown, and ran downstairs; and as she ran downstairs
+she laughed and thumped with her feet like a school-boy; she had a
+great desire for mischief.
+
+IV
+
+Evening
+
+Auntie, in a loose print blouse, Varvarushka and two old women,
+were sitting in the dining-room having supper. A big piece of salt
+meat, a ham, and various savouries, were lying on the table before
+them, and clouds of steam were rising from the meat, which looked
+particularly fat and appetizing. Wine was not served on the lower
+story, but they made up for it with a great number of spirits and
+home-made liqueurs. Agafyushka, the fat, white-skinned, well-fed
+cook, was standing with her arms crossed in the doorway and talking
+to the old women, and the dishes were being handed by the downstairs
+Masha, a dark girl with a crimson ribbon in her hair. The old women
+had had enough to eat before the morning was over, and an hour
+before supper had had tea and buns, and so they were now eating
+with effort--as it were, from a sense of duty.
+
+"Oh, my girl!" sighed Auntie, as Anna Akimovna ran into the dining-room
+and sat down beside her. "You've frightened me to death!"
+
+Every one in the house was pleased when Anna Akimovna was in good
+spirits and played pranks; this always reminded them that the old
+men were dead and that the old women had no authority in the house,
+and any one could do as he liked without any fear of being sharply
+called to account for it. Only the two old women glanced askance
+at Anna Akimovna with amazement: she was humming, and it was a sin
+to sing at table.
+
+"Our mistress, our beauty, our picture," Agafyushka began chanting
+with sugary sweetness. "Our precious jewel! The people, the people
+that have come to-day to look at our queen. Lord have mercy upon
+us! Generals, and officers and gentlemen. . . . I kept looking out
+of window and counting and counting till I gave it up."
+
+"I'd as soon they did not come at all," said Auntie; she looked
+sadly at her niece and added: "They only waste the time for my poor
+orphan girl."
+
+Anna Akimovna felt hungry, as she had eaten nothing since the
+morning. They poured her out some very bitter liqueur; she drank
+it off, and tasted the salt meat with mustard, and thought it
+extraordinarily nice. Then the downstairs Masha brought in the
+turkey, the pickled apples and the gooseberries. And that pleased
+her, too. There was only one thing that was disagreeable: there was
+a draught of hot air from the tiled stove; it was stiflingly close
+and every one's cheeks were burning. After supper the cloth was
+taken off and plates of peppermint biscuits, walnuts, and raisins
+were brought in.
+
+"You sit down, too . . . no need to stand there!" said Auntie to
+the cook.
+
+Agafyushka sighed and sat down to the table; Masha set a wineglass
+of liqueur before her, too, and Anna Akimovna began to feel as
+though Agafyushka's white neck were giving out heat like the stove.
+They were all talking of how difficult it was nowadays to get
+married, and saying that in old days, if men did not court beauty,
+they paid attention to money, but now there was no making out what
+they wanted; and while hunchbacks and cripples used to be left old
+maids, nowadays men would not have even the beautiful and wealthy.
+Auntie began to set this down to immorality, and said that people
+had no fear of God, but she suddenly remembered that Ivan Ivanitch,
+her brother, and Varvarushka--both people of holy life--had
+feared God, but all the same had had children on the sly, and had
+sent them to the Foundling Asylum. She pulled herself up and changed
+the conversation, telling them about a suitor she had once had, a
+factory hand, and how she had loved him, but her brothers had forced
+her to marry a widower, an ikon-painter, who, thank God, had died
+two years after. The downstairs Masha sat down to the table, too,
+and told them with a mysterious air that for the last week some
+unknown man with a black moustache, in a great-coat with an astrachan
+collar, had made his appearance every morning in the yard, had
+stared at the windows of the big house, and had gone on further--
+to the buildings; the man was all right, nice-looking.
+
+All this conversation made Anna Akimovna suddenly long to be married
+--long intensely, painfully; she felt as though she would give
+half her life and all her fortune only to know that upstairs there
+was a man who was closer to her than any one in the world, that he
+loved her warmly and was missing her; and the thought of such
+closeness, ecstatic and inexpressible in words, troubled her soul.
+And the instinct of youth and health flattered her with lying
+assurances that the real poetry of life was not over but still to
+come, and she believed it, and leaning back in her chair (her hair
+fell down as she did so), she began laughing, and, looking at her,
+the others laughed, too. And it was a long time before this causeless
+laughter died down in the dining-room.
+
+She was informed that the Stinging Beetle had come. This was a
+pilgrim woman called Pasha or Spiridonovna--a thin little woman
+of fifty, in a black dress with a white kerchief, with keen eyes,
+sharp nose, and a sharp chin; she had sly, viperish eyes and she
+looked as though she could see right through every one. Her lips
+were shaped like a heart. Her viperishness and hostility to every
+one had earned her the nickname of the Stinging Beetle.
+
+Going into the dining-room without looking at any one, she made for
+the ikons and chanted in a high voice "Thy Holy Birth," then she
+sang "The Virgin today gives birth to the Son," then "Christ is
+born," then she turned round and bent a piercing gaze upon all of
+them.
+
+"A happy Christmas," she said, and she kissed Anna Akimovna on the
+shoulder. "It's all I could do, all I could do to get to you, my
+kind friends." She kissed Auntie on the shoulder. "I should have
+come to you this morning, but I went in to some good people to rest
+on the way. 'Stay, Spiridonovna, stay,' they said, and I did not
+notice that evening was coming on."
+
+As she did not eat meat, they gave her salmon and caviare. She ate
+looking from under her eyelids at the company, and drank three
+glasses of vodka. When she had finished she said a prayer and bowed
+down to Anna Akimovna's feet.
+
+They began to play a game of "kings," as they had done the year
+before, and the year before that, and all the servants in both
+stories crowded in at the doors to watch the game. Anna Akimovna
+fancied she caught a glimpse once or twice of Mishenka, with a
+patronizing smile on his face, among the crowd of peasant men and
+women. The first to be king was Stinging Beetle, and Anna Akimovna
+as the soldier paid her tribute; and then Auntie was king and Anna
+Akimovna was peasant, which excited general delight, and Agafyushka
+was prince, and was quite abashed with pleasure. Another game was
+got up at the other end of the table--played by the two Mashas,
+Varvarushka, and the sewing-maid Marfa Ptrovna, who was waked on
+purpose to play "kings," and whose face looked cross and sleepy.
+
+While they were playing they talked of men, and of how difficult
+it was to get a good husband nowadays, and which state was to be
+preferred--that of an old maid or a widow.
+
+"You are a handsome, healthy, sturdy lass," said Stinging Beetle
+to Anna Akimovna. "But I can't make out for whose sake you are
+holding back."
+
+"What's to be done if nobody will have me?"
+
+"Or maybe you have taken a vow to remain a maid?" Stinging Beetle
+went on, as though she did not hear. "Well, that's a good deed. . . .
+Remain one," she repeated, looking intently and maliciously at
+her cards. "All right, my dear, remain one. . . . Yes . . . only
+maids, these saintly maids, are not all alike." She heaved a sigh
+and played the king. "Oh, no, my girl, they are not all alike! Some
+really watch over themselves like nuns, and butter would not melt
+in their mouths; and if such a one does sin in an hour of weakness,
+she is worried to death, poor thing! so it would be a sin to condemn
+her. While others will go dressed in black and sew their shroud,
+and yet love rich old men on the sly. Yes, y-es, my canary birds,
+some hussies will bewitch an old man and rule over him, my doves,
+rule over him and turn his head; and when they've saved up money
+and lottery tickets enough, they will bewitch him to his death."
+
+Varvarushka's only response to these hints was to heave a sigh and
+look towards the ikons. There was an expression of Christian meekness
+on her countenance.
+
+"I know a maid like that, my bitterest enemy," Stinging Beetle went
+on, looking round at every one in triumph; "she is always sighing,
+too, and looking at the ikons, the she-devil. When she used to rule
+in a certain old man's house, if one went to her she would give one
+a crust, and bid one bow down to the ikons while she would sing:
+'In conception Thou dost abide a Virgin . . . !' On holidays she
+will give one a bite, and on working days she will reproach one for
+it. But nowadays I will make merry over her! I will make as merry
+as I please, my jewel."
+
+Varvarushka glanced at the ikons again and crossed herself.
+
+"But no one will have me, Spiridonovna," said Anna Akimovna to
+change the conversation. "What's to be done?"
+
+"It's your own fault. You keep waiting for highly educated gentlemen,
+but you ought to marry one of your own sort, a merchant."
+
+"We don't want a merchant," said Auntie, all in a flutter. "Queen
+of Heaven, preserve us! A gentleman will spend your money, but then
+he will be kind to you, you poor little fool. But a merchant will
+be so strict that you won't feel at home in your own house. You'll
+be wanting to fondle him and he will be counting his money, and
+when you sit down to meals with him, he'll grudge you every mouthful,
+though it's your own, the lout! . . . Marry a gentleman."
+
+They all talked at once, loudly interrupting one another, and Auntie
+tapped on the table with the nutcrackers and said, flushed and
+angry:
+
+"We won't have a merchant; we won't have one! If you choose a
+merchant I shall go to an almshouse."
+
+"Sh . . . Sh! . . . Hush!" cried Stinging Beetle; when all were
+silent she screwed up one eye and said: "Do you know what, Annushka,
+my birdie . . . ? There is no need for you to get married really
+like every one else. You're rich and free, you are your own mistress;
+but yet, my child, it doesn't seem the right thing for you to be
+an old maid. I'll find you, you know, some trumpery and simple-witted
+man. You'll marry him for appearances and then have your fling,
+bonny lass! You can hand him five thousand or ten maybe, and pack
+him off where he came from, and you will be mistress in your own
+house--you can love whom you like and no one can say anything to
+you. And then you can love your highly educated gentleman. You'll
+have a jolly time!" Stinging Beetle snapped her fingers and gave a
+whistle.
+
+"It's sinful," said Auntie.
+
+"Oh, sinful," laughed Stinging Beetle. "She is educated, she
+understands. To cut some one's throat or bewitch an old man--
+that's a sin, that's true; but to love some charming young friend
+is not a sin at all. And what is there in it, really? There's no
+sin in it at all! The old pilgrim women have invented all that to
+make fools of simple folk. I, too, say everywhere it's a sin; I
+don't know myself why it's a sin." Stinging Beetle emptied her glass
+and cleared her throat. "Have your fling, bonny lass," this time
+evidently addressing herself. "For thirty years, wenches, I have
+thought of nothing but sins and been afraid, but now I see I have
+wasted my time, I've let it slip by like a ninny! Ah, I have been
+a fool, a fool!" She sighed. "A woman's time is short and every day
+is precious. You are handsome, Annushka, and very rich; but as soon
+as thirty-five or forty strikes for you your time is up. Don't
+listen to any one, my girl; live, have your fling till you are
+forty, and then you will have time to pray forgiveness--there
+will be plenty of time to bow down and to sew your shroud. A candle
+to God and a poker to the devil! You can do both at once! Well, how
+is it to be? Will you make some little man happy?"
+
+"I will," laughed Anna Akimovna. "I don't care now; I would marry
+a working man."
+
+"Well, that would do all right! Oh, what a fine fellow you would
+choose then!" Stinging Beetle screwed up her eyes and shook her
+head. "O--o--oh!"
+
+"I tell her myself," said Auntie, "it's no good waiting for a
+gentleman, so she had better marry, not a gentleman, but some one
+humbler; anyway we should have a man in the house to look after
+things. And there are lots of good men. She might have some one out
+of the factory. They are all sober, steady men. . . ."
+
+"I should think so," Stinging Beetle agreed. "They are capital
+fellows. If you like, Aunt, I will make a match for her with Vassily
+Lebedinsky?"
+
+"Oh, Vasya's legs are so long," said Auntie seriously. "He is so
+lanky. He has no looks."
+
+There was laughter in the crowd by the door.
+
+"Well, Pimenov? Would you like to marry Pimenov?" Stinging Beetle
+asked Anna Akimovna.
+
+"Very good. Make a match for me with Pimenov."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes, do!" Anna Akimovna said resolutely, and she struck her fist
+on the table. "On my honour, I will marry him."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Anna Akimovna suddenly felt ashamed that her cheeks were burning
+and that every one was looking at her; she flung the cards together
+on the table and ran out of the room. As she ran up the stairs and,
+reaching the upper story, sat down to the piano in the drawing-room,
+a murmur of sound reached her from below like the roar of the sea;
+most likely they were talking of her and of Pimenov, and perhaps
+Stinging Beetle was taking advantage of her absence to insult
+Varvarushka and was putting no check on her language.
+
+The lamp in the big room was the only light burning in the upper
+story, and it sent a glimmer through the door into the dark
+drawing-room. It was between nine and ten, not later. Anna Akimovna
+played a waltz, then another, then a third; she went on playing
+without stopping. She looked into the dark corner beyond the piano,
+smiled, and inwardly called to it, and the idea occurred to her
+that she might drive off to the town to see some one, Lysevitch for
+instance, and tell him what was passing in her heart. She wanted
+to talk without ceasing, to laugh, to play the fool, but the dark
+corner was sullenly silent, and all round in all the rooms of the
+upper story it was still and desolate.
+
+She was fond of sentimental songs, but she had a harsh, untrained
+voice, and so she only played the accompaniment and sang hardly
+audibly, just above her breath. She sang in a whisper one song after
+another, for the most part about love, separation, and frustrated
+hopes, and she imagined how she would hold out her hands to him and
+say with entreaty, with tears, "Pimenov, take this burden from me!"
+And then, just as though her sins had been forgiven, there would
+be joy and comfort in her soul, and perhaps a free, happy life would
+begin. In an anguish of anticipation she leant over the keys, with
+a passionate longing for the change in her life to come at once
+without delay, and was terrified at the thought that her old life
+would go on for some time longer. Then she played again and sang
+hardly above her breath, and all was stillness about her. There was
+no noise coming from downstairs now, they must have gone to bed.
+It had struck ten some time before. A long, solitary, wearisome
+night was approaching.
+
+Anna Akimovna walked through all the rooms, lay down for a while
+on the sofa, and read in her study the letters that had come that
+evening; there were twelve letters of Christmas greetings and three
+anonymous letters. In one of them some workman complained in a
+horrible, almost illegible handwriting that Lenten oil sold in the
+factory shop was rancid and smelt of paraffin; in another, some one
+respectfully informed her that over a purchase of iron Nazaritch
+had lately taken a bribe of a thousand roubles from some one; in a
+third she was abused for her inhumanity.
+
+The excitement of Christmas was passing off, and to keep it up Anna
+Akimovna sat down at the piano again and softly played one of the
+new waltzes, then she remembered how cleverly and creditably she
+had spoken at dinner today. She looked round at the dark windows,
+at the walls with the pictures, at the faint light that came from
+the big room, and all at once she began suddenly crying, and she
+felt vexed that she was so lonely, and that she had no one to talk
+to and consult. To cheer herself she tried to picture Pimenov in
+her imagination, but it was unsuccessful.
+
+It struck twelve. Mishenka, no longer wearing his swallow-tail but
+in his reefer jacket, came in, and without speaking lighted two
+candles; then he went out and returned a minute later with a cup
+of tea on a tray.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" she asked, noticing a smile on his face.
+
+"I was downstairs and heard the jokes you were making about Pimenov
+. . ." he said, and put his hand before his laughing mouth. "If he
+were sat down to dinner today with Viktor Nikolaevitch and the
+general, he'd have died of fright." Mishenka's shoulders were shaking
+with laughter. "He doesn't know even how to hold his fork, I bet."
+
+The footman's laughter and words, his reefer jacket and moustache,
+gave Anna Akimovna a feeling of uncleanness. She shut her eyes to
+avoid seeing him, and, against her own will, imagined Pimenov dining
+with Lysevitch and Krylin, and his timid, unintellectual figure
+seemed to her pitiful and helpless, and she felt repelled by it.
+And only now, for the first time in the whole day, she realized
+clearly that all she had said and thought about Pimenov and marrying
+a workman was nonsense, folly, and wilfulness. To convince herself
+of the opposite, to overcome her repulsion, she tried to recall
+what she had said at dinner, but now she could not see anything in
+it: shame at her own thoughts and actions, and the fear that she
+had said something improper during the day, and disgust at her own
+lack of spirit, overwhelmed her completely. She took up a candle
+and, as rapidly as if some one were pursuing her, ran downstairs,
+woke Spiridonovna, and began assuring her she had been joking. Then
+she went to her bedroom. Red-haired Masha, who was dozing in an
+arm-chair near the bed, jumped up and began shaking up the pillows.
+Her face was exhausted and sleepy, and her magnificent hair had
+fallen on one side.
+
+"Tchalikov came again this evening," she said, yawning, "but I did
+not dare to announce him; he was very drunk. He says he will come
+again tomorrow."
+
+"What does he want with me?" said Anna Akimovna, and she flung her
+comb on the floor. "I won't see him, I won't."
+
+She made up her mind she had no one left in life but this Tchalikov,
+that he would never leave off persecuting her, and would remind her
+every day how uninteresting and absurd her life was. So all she was
+fit for was to help the poor. Oh, how stupid it was!
+
+She lay down without undressing, and sobbed with shame and depression:
+what seemed to her most vexatious and stupid of all was that her
+dreams that day about Pimenov had been right, lofty, honourable,
+but at the same time she felt that Lysevitch and even Krylin were
+nearer to her than Pimenov and all the workpeople taken together.
+She thought that if the long day she had just spent could have been
+represented in a picture, all that had been bad and vulgar--as,
+for instance, the dinner, the lawyer's talk, the game of "kings"
+--would have been true, while her dreams and talk about Pimenov
+would have stood out from the whole as something false, as out of
+drawing; and she thought, too, that it was too late to dream of
+happiness, that everything was over for her, and it was impossible
+to go back to the life when she had slept under the same quilt with
+her mother, or to devise some new special sort of life.
+
+Red-haired Masha was kneeling before the bed, gazing at her in
+mournful perplexity; then she, too, began crying, and laid her face
+against her mistress's arm, and without words it was clear why she
+was so wretched.
+
+"We are fools!" said Anna Akimovna, laughing and crying. "We are
+fools! Oh, what fools we are!"
+
+
+A PROBLEM
+
+THE strictest measures were taken that the Uskovs' family secret
+might not leak out and become generally known. Half of the servants
+were sent off to the theatre or the circus; the other half were
+sitting in the kitchen and not allowed to leave it. Orders were
+given that no one was to be admitted. The wife of the Colonel, her
+sister, and the governess, though they had been initiated into the
+secret, kept up a pretence of knowing nothing; they sat in the
+dining-room and did not show themselves in the drawing-room or the
+hall.
+
+Sasha Uskov, the young man of twenty-five who was the cause of all
+the commotion, had arrived some time before, and by the advice of
+kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, his uncle, who was taking his part,
+he sat meekly in the hall by the door leading to the study, and
+prepared himself to make an open, candid explanation.
+
+The other side of the door, in the study, a family council was being
+held. The subject under discussion was an exceedingly disagreeable
+and delicate one. Sasha Uskov had cashed at one of the banks a false
+promissory note, and it had become due for payment three days before,
+and now his two paternal uncles and Ivan Markovitch, the brother
+of his dead mother, were deciding the question whether they should
+pay the money and save the family honour, or wash their hands of
+it and leave the case to go for trial.
+
+To outsiders who have no personal interest in the matter such
+questions seem simple; for those who are so unfortunate as to have
+to decide them in earnest they are extremely difficult. The uncles
+had been talking for a long time, but the problem seemed no nearer
+decision.
+
+"My friends!" said the uncle who was a colonel, and there was a
+note of exhaustion and bitterness in his voice. "Who says that
+family honour is a mere convention? I don't say that at all. I am
+only warning you against a false view; I am pointing out the
+possibility of an unpardonable mistake. How can you fail to see it?
+I am not speaking Chinese; I am speaking Russian!"
+
+"My dear fellow, we do understand," Ivan Markovitch protested mildly.
+
+"How can you understand if you say that I don't believe in family
+honour? I repeat once more: fa-mil-y ho-nour fal-sely un-der-stood
+is a prejudice! Falsely understood! That's what I say: whatever may
+be the motives for screening a scoundrel, whoever he may be, and
+helping him to escape punishment, it is contrary to law and unworthy
+of a gentleman. It's not saving the family honour; it's civic
+cowardice! Take the army, for instance. . . . The honour of the
+army is more precious to us than any other honour, yet we don't
+screen our guilty members, but condemn them. And does the honour
+of the army suffer in consequence? Quite the opposite!"
+
+The other paternal uncle, an official in the Treasury, a taciturn,
+dull-witted, and rheumatic man, sat silent, or spoke only of the
+fact that the Uskovs' name would get into the newspapers if the
+case went for trial. His opinion was that the case ought to be
+hushed up from the first and not become public property; but, apart
+from publicity in the newspapers, he advanced no other argument in
+support of this opinion.
+
+The maternal uncle, kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, spoke smoothly,
+softly, and with a tremor in his voice. He began with saying that
+youth has its rights and its peculiar temptations. Which of us has
+not been young, and who has not been led astray? To say nothing of
+ordinary mortals, even great men have not escaped errors and mistakes
+in their youth. Take, for instance, the biography of great writers.
+Did not every one of them gamble, drink, and draw down upon himself
+the anger of right-thinking people in his young days? If Sasha's
+error bordered upon crime, they must remember that Sasha had received
+practically no education; he had been expelled from the high school
+in the fifth class; he had lost his parents in early childhood, and
+so had been left at the tenderest age without guidance and good,
+benevolent influences. He was nervous, excitable, had no firm ground
+under his feet, and, above all, he had been unlucky. Even if he
+were guilty, anyway he deserved indulgence and the sympathy of all
+compassionate souls. He ought, of course, to be punished, but he
+was punished as it was by his conscience and the agonies he was
+enduring now while awaiting the sentence of his relations. The
+comparison with the army made by the Colonel was delightful, and
+did credit to his lofty intelligence; his appeal to their feeling
+of public duty spoke for the chivalry of his soul, but they must
+not forget that in each individual the citizen is closely linked
+with the Christian. . . .
+
+"Shall we be false to civic duty," Ivan Markovitch exclaimed
+passionately, "if instead of punishing an erring boy we hold out
+to him a helping hand?"
+
+Ivan Markovitch talked further of family honour. He had not the
+honour to belong to the Uskov family himself, but he knew their
+distinguished family went back to the thirteenth century; he did
+not forget for a minute, either, that his precious, beloved sister
+had been the wife of one of the representatives of that name. In
+short, the family was dear to him for many reasons, and he refused
+to admit the idea that, for the sake of a paltry fifteen hundred
+roubles, a blot should be cast on the escutcheon that was beyond
+all price. If all the motives he had brought forward were not
+sufficiently convincing, he, Ivan Markovitch, in conclusion, begged
+his listeners to ask themselves what was meant by crime? Crime is
+an immoral act founded upon ill-will. But is the will of man free?
+Philosophy has not yet given a positive answer to that question.
+Different views were held by the learned. The latest school of
+Lombroso, for instance, denies the freedom of the will, and considers
+every crime as the product of the purely anatomical peculiarities
+of the individual.
+
+"Ivan Markovitch," said the Colonel, in a voice of entreaty, "we
+are talking seriously about an important matter, and you bring in
+Lombroso, you clever fellow. Think a little, what are you saying
+all this for? Can you imagine that all your thunderings and rhetoric
+will furnish an answer to the question?"
+
+Sasha Uskov sat at the door and listened. He felt neither terror,
+shame, nor depression, but only weariness and inward emptiness. It
+seemed to him that it made absolutely no difference to him whether
+they forgave him or not; he had come here to hear his sentence and
+to explain himself simply because kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had
+begged him to do so. He was not afraid of the future. It made no
+difference to him where he was: here in the hall, in prison, or in
+Siberia.
+
+"If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, damn it all!"
+
+He was sick of life and found it insufferably hard. He was inextricably
+involved in debt; he had not a farthing in his pocket; his family
+had become detestable to him; he would have to part from his friends
+and his women sooner or later, as they had begun to be too contemptuous
+of his sponging on them. The future looked black.
+
+Sasha was indifferent, and was only disturbed by one circumstance;
+the other side of the door they were calling him a scoundrel and a
+criminal. Every minute he was on the point of jumping up, bursting
+into the study and shouting in answer to the detestable metallic
+voice of the Colonel:
+
+"You are lying!"
+
+"Criminal" is a dreadful word--that is what murderers, thieves,
+robbers are; in fact, wicked and morally hopeless people. And Sasha
+was very far from being all that. . . . It was true he owed a great
+deal and did not pay his debts. But debt is not a crime, and it is
+unusual for a man not to be in debt. The Colonel and Ivan Markovitch
+were both in debt. . . .
+
+"What have I done wrong besides?" Sasha wondered.
+
+He had discounted a forged note. But all the young men he knew did
+the same. Handrikov and Von Burst always forged IOU's from their
+parents or friends when their allowances were not paid at the regular
+time, and then when they got their money from home they redeemed
+them before they became due. Sasha had done the same, but had not
+redeemed the IOU because he had not got the money which Handrikov
+had promised to lend him. He was not to blame; it was the fault of
+circumstances. It was true that the use of another person's signature
+was considered reprehensible; but, still, it was not a crime but a
+generally accepted dodge, an ugly formality which injured no one
+and was quite harmless, for in forging the Colonel's signature Sasha
+had had no intention of causing anybody damage or loss.
+
+"No, it doesn't mean that I am a criminal . . ." thought Sasha.
+"And it's not in my character to bring myself to commit a crime. I
+am soft, emotional. . . . When I have the money I help the poor. . . ."
+
+Sasha was musing after this fashion while they went on talking the
+other side of the door.
+
+"But, my friends, this is endless," the Colonel declared, getting
+excited. "Suppose we were to forgive him and pay the money. You
+know he would not give up leading a dissipated life, squandering
+money, making debts, going to our tailors and ordering suits in our
+names! Can you guarantee that this will be his last prank? As far
+as I am concerned, I have no faith whatever in his reforming!"
+
+The official of the Treasury muttered something in reply; after him
+Ivan Markovitch began talking blandly and suavely again. The Colonel
+moved his chair impatiently and drowned the other's words with his
+detestable metallic voice. At last the door opened and Ivan Markovitch
+came out of the study; there were patches of red on his lean shaven
+face.
+
+"Come along," he said, taking Sasha by the hand. "Come and speak
+frankly from your heart. Without pride, my dear boy, humbly and
+from your heart."
+
+Sasha went into the study. The official of the Treasury was sitting
+down; the Colonel was standing before the table with one hand in
+his pocket and one knee on a chair. It was smoky and stifling in
+the study. Sasha did not look at the official or the Colonel; he
+felt suddenly ashamed and uncomfortable. He looked uneasily at Ivan
+Markovitch and muttered:
+
+"I'll pay it . . . I'll give it back. . . ."
+
+"What did you expect when you discounted the IOU?" he heard a
+metallic voice.
+
+"I . . . Handrikov promised to lend me the money before now."
+
+Sasha could say no more. He went out of the study and sat down again
+on the chair near the door.
+
+He would have been glad to go away altogether at once, but he was
+choking with hatred and he awfully wanted to remain, to tear the
+Colonel to pieces, to say something rude to him. He sat trying to
+think of something violent and effective to say to his hated uncle,
+and at that moment a woman's figure, shrouded in the twilight,
+appeared at the drawing-room door. It was the Colonel's wife. She
+beckoned Sasha to her, and, wringing her hands, said, weeping:
+
+"_Alexandre_, I know you don't like me, but . . . listen to me;
+listen, I beg you. . . . But, my dear, how can this have happened?
+Why, it's awful, awful! For goodness' sake, beg them, defend yourself,
+entreat them."
+
+Sasha looked at her quivering shoulders, at the big tears that were
+rolling down her cheeks, heard behind his back the hollow, nervous
+voices of worried and exhausted people, and shrugged his shoulders.
+He had not in the least expected that his aristocratic relations
+would raise such a tempest over a paltry fifteen hundred roubles!
+He could not understand her tears nor the quiver of their voices.
+
+An hour later he heard that the Colonel was getting the best of it;
+the uncles were finally inclining to let the case go for trial.
+
+"The matter's settled," said the Colonel, sighing. "Enough."
+
+After this decision all the uncles, even the emphatic Colonel,
+became noticeably depressed. A silence followed.
+
+"Merciful Heavens!" sighed Ivan Markovitch. "My poor sister!"
+
+And he began saying in a subdued voice that most likely his sister,
+Sasha's mother, was present unseen in the study at that moment. He
+felt in his soul how the unhappy, saintly woman was weeping, grieving,
+and begging for her boy. For the sake of her peace beyond the grave,
+they ought to spare Sasha.
+
+The sound of a muffled sob was heard. Ivan Markovitch was weeping
+and muttering something which it was impossible to catch through
+the door. The Colonel got up and paced from corner to corner. The
+long conversation began over again.
+
+But then the clock in the drawing-room struck two. The family council
+was over. To avoid seeing the person who had moved him to such
+wrath, the Colonel went from the study, not into the hall, but into
+the vestibule. . . . Ivan Markovitch came out into the hall. . . .
+He was agitated and rubbing his hands joyfully. His tear-stained
+eyes looked good-humoured and his mouth was twisted into a smile.
+
+"Capital," he said to Sasha. "Thank God! You can go home, my dear,
+and sleep tranquilly. We have decided to pay the sum, but on condition
+that you repent and come with me tomorrow into the country and set
+to work."
+
+A minute later Ivan Markovitch and Sasha in their great-coats and
+caps were going down the stairs. The uncle was muttering something
+edifying. Sasha did not listen, but felt as though some uneasy
+weight were gradually slipping off his shoulders. They had forgiven
+him; he was free! A gust of joy sprang up within him and sent a
+sweet chill to his heart. He longed to breathe, to move swiftly,
+to live! Glancing at the street lamps and the black sky, he remembered
+that Von Burst was celebrating his name-day that evening at the
+"Bear," and again a rush of joy flooded his soul. . . .
+
+"I am going!" he decided.
+
+But then he remembered he had not a farthing, that the companions
+he was going to would despise him at once for his empty pockets.
+He must get hold of some money, come what may!
+
+"Uncle, lend me a hundred roubles," he said to Ivan Markovitch.
+
+His uncle, surprised, looked into his face and backed against a
+lamp-post.
+
+"Give it to me," said Sasha, shifting impatiently from one foot to
+the other and beginning to pant. "Uncle, I entreat you, give me a
+hundred roubles."
+
+His face worked; he trembled, and seemed on the point of attacking
+his uncle. . . .
+
+"Won't you?" he kept asking, seeing that his uncle was still amazed
+and did not understand. "Listen. If you don't, I'll give myself up
+tomorrow! I won't let you pay the IOU! I'll present another false
+note tomorrow!"
+
+Petrified, muttering something incoherent in his horror, Ivan
+Markovitch took a hundred-rouble note out of his pocket-book and
+gave it to Sasha. The young man took it and walked rapidly away
+from him. . . .
+
+Taking a sledge, Sasha grew calmer, and felt a rush of joy within
+him again. The "rights of youth" of which kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch
+had spoken at the family council woke up and asserted themselves.
+Sasha pictured the drinking-party before him, and, among the bottles,
+the women, and his friends, the thought flashed through his mind:
+
+"Now I see that I am a criminal; yes, I am a criminal."
+
+
+THE KISS
+
+AT eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six
+batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the
+night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the
+general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily
+occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the
+square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters,
+a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight
+round the church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck
+and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were
+sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed
+about the legs. When he reached the officers the man on the horse
+took off his hat and said:
+
+"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen
+to drink tea with him this minute. . . ."
+
+The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways; the messenger raised
+his hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange
+horse behind the church.
+
+"What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers,
+dispersing to their quarters. "One is sleepy, and here this Von
+Rabbek with his tea! We know what tea means."
+
+The officers of all the six batteries remembered vividly an incident
+of the previous year, when during manoeuvres they, together with
+the officers of a Cossack regiment, were in the same way invited
+to tea by a count who had an estate in the neighbourhood and was a
+retired army officer: the hospitable and genial count made much of
+them, fed them, and gave them drink, refused to let them go to their
+quarters in the village and made them stay the night. All that, of
+course, was very nice--nothing better could be desired, but the
+worst of it was, the old army officer was so carried away by the
+pleasure of the young men's company that till sunrise he was telling
+the officers anecdotes of his glorious past, taking them over the
+house, showing them expensive pictures, old engravings, rare guns,
+reading them autograph letters from great people, while the weary
+and exhausted officers looked and listened, longing for their beds
+and yawning in their sleeves; when at last their host let them go,
+it was too late for sleep.
+
+Might not this Von Rabbek be just such another? Whether he were or
+not, there was no help for it. The officers changed their uniforms,
+brushed themselves, and went all together in search of the gentleman's
+house. In the square by the church they were told they could get
+to His Excellency's by the lower path--going down behind the
+church to the river, going along the bank to the garden, and there
+an avenue would taken them to the house; or by the upper way--
+straight from the church by the road which, half a mile from the
+village, led right up to His Excellency's granaries. The officers
+decided to go by the upper way.
+
+"What Von Rabbek is it?" they wondered on the way. "Surely not the
+one who was in command of the N---- cavalry division at Plevna?"
+
+"No, that was not Von Rabbek, but simply Rabbe and no 'von.'"
+
+"What lovely weather!"
+
+At the first of the granaries the road divided in two: one branch
+went straight on and vanished in the evening darkness, the other
+led to the owner's house on the right. The officers turned to the
+right and began to speak more softly. . . . On both sides of the
+road stretched stone granaries with red roofs, heavy and sullen-looking,
+very much like barracks of a district town. Ahead of them gleamed
+the windows of the manor-house.
+
+"A good omen, gentlemen," said one of the officers. "Our setter is
+the foremost of all; no doubt he scents game ahead of us! . . ."
+
+Lieutenant Lobytko, who was walking in front, a tall and stalwart
+fellow, though entirely without moustache (he was over five-and-twenty,
+yet for some reason there was no sign of hair on his round, well-fed
+face), renowned in the brigade for his peculiar faculty for divining
+the presence of women at a distance, turned round and said:
+
+"Yes, there must be women here; I feel that by instinct."
+
+On the threshold the officers were met by Von Rabbek himself, a
+comely-looking man of sixty in civilian dress. Shaking hands with
+his guests, he said that he was very glad and happy to see them,
+but begged them earnestly for God's sake to excuse him for not
+asking them to stay the night; two sisters with their children,
+some brothers, and some neighbours, had come on a visit to him, so
+that he had not one spare room left.
+
+The General shook hands with every one, made his apologies, and
+smiled, but it was evident by his face that he was by no means so
+delighted as their last year's count, and that he had invited the
+officers simply because, in his opinion, it was a social obligation
+to do so. And the officers themselves, as they walked up the softly
+carpeted stairs, as they listened to him, felt that they had been
+invited to this house simply because it would have been awkward not
+to invite them; and at the sight of the footmen, who hastened to
+light the lamps in the entrance below and in the anteroom above,
+they began to feel as though they had brought uneasiness and
+discomfort into the house with them. In a house in which two sisters
+and their children, brothers, and neighbours were gathered together,
+probably on account of some family festivity, or event, how could
+the presence of nineteen unknown officers possibly be welcome?
+
+At the entrance to the drawing-room the officers were met by a tall,
+graceful old lady with black eyebrows and a long face, very much
+like the Empress Eugenie. Smiling graciously and majestically, she
+said she was glad and happy to see her guests, and apologized that
+her husband and she were on this occasion unable to invite _messieurs
+les officiers_ to stay the night. From her beautiful majestic smile,
+which instantly vanished from her face every time she turned away
+from her guests, it was evident that she had seen numbers of officers
+in her day, that she was in no humour for them now, and if she
+invited them to her house and apologized for not doing more, it was
+only because her breeding and position in society required it of
+her.
+
+When the officers went into the big dining-room, there were about
+a dozen people, men and ladies, young and old, sitting at tea at
+the end of a long table. A group of men was dimly visible behind
+their chairs, wrapped in a haze of cigar smoke; and in the midst
+of them stood a lanky young man with red whiskers, talking loudly,
+with a lisp, in English. Through a door beyond the group could be
+seen a light room with pale blue furniture.
+
+"Gentlemen, there are so many of you that it is impossible to
+introduce you all!" said the General in a loud voice, trying to
+sound very cheerful. "Make each other's acquaintance, gentlemen,
+without any ceremony!"
+
+The officers--some with very serious and even stern faces, others
+with forced smiles, and all feeling extremely awkward--somehow
+made their bows and sat down to tea.
+
+The most ill at ease of them all was Ryabovitch--a little officer
+in spectacles, with sloping shoulders, and whiskers like a lynx's.
+While some of his comrades assumed a serious expression, while
+others wore forced smiles, his face, his lynx-like whiskers, and
+spectacles seemed to say: "I am the shyest, most modest, and most
+undistinguished officer in the whole brigade!" At first, on going
+into the room and sitting down to the table, he could not fix his
+attention on any one face or object. The faces, the dresses, the
+cut-glass decanters of brandy, the steam from the glasses, the
+moulded cornices--all blended in one general impression that
+inspired in Ryabovitch alarm and a desire to hide his head. Like a
+lecturer making his first appearance before the public, he saw
+everything that was before his eyes, but apparently only had a dim
+understanding of it (among physiologists this condition, when the
+subject sees but does not understand, is called psychical blindness).
+After a little while, growing accustomed to his surroundings,
+Ryabovitch saw clearly and began to observe. As a shy man, unused
+to society, what struck him first was that in which he had always
+been deficient--namely, the extraordinary boldness of his new
+acquaintances. Von Rabbek, his wife, two elderly ladies, a young
+lady in a lilac dress, and the young man with the red whiskers, who
+was, it appeared, a younger son of Von Rabbek, very cleverly, as
+though they had rehearsed it beforehand, took seats between the
+officers, and at once got up a heated discussion in which the
+visitors could not help taking part. The lilac young lady hotly
+asserted that the artillery had a much better time than the cavalry
+and the infantry, while Von Rabbek and the elderly ladies maintained
+the opposite. A brisk interchange of talk followed. Ryabovitch
+watched the lilac young lady who argued so hotly about what was
+unfamiliar and utterly uninteresting to her, and watched artificial
+smiles come and go on her face.
+
+Von Rabbek and his family skilfully drew the officers into the
+discussion, and meanwhile kept a sharp lookout over their glasses
+and mouths, to see whether all of them were drinking, whether all
+had enough sugar, why some one was not eating cakes or not drinking
+brandy. And the longer Ryabovitch watched and listened, the more
+he was attracted by this insincere but splendidly disciplined family.
+
+After tea the officers went into the drawing-room. Lieutenant
+Lobytko's instinct had not deceived him. There were a great number
+of girls and young married ladies. The "setter" lieutenant was soon
+standing by a very young, fair girl in a black dress, and, bending
+down to her jauntily, as though leaning on an unseen sword, smiled
+and shrugged his shoulders coquettishly. He probably talked very
+interesting nonsense, for the fair girl looked at his well-fed face
+condescendingly and asked indifferently, "Really?" And from that
+uninterested "Really?" the setter, had he been intelligent, might
+have concluded that she would never call him to heel.
+
+The piano struck up; the melancholy strains of a valse floated out
+of the wide open windows, and every one, for some reason, remembered
+that it was spring, a May evening. Every one was conscious of the
+fragrance of roses, of lilac, and of the young leaves of the poplar.
+Ryabovitch, in whom the brandy he had drunk made itself felt, under
+the influence of the music stole a glance towards the window, smiled,
+and began watching the movements of the women, and it seemed to him
+that the smell of roses, of poplars, and lilac came not from the
+garden, but from the ladies' faces and dresses.
+
+Von Rabbek's son invited a scraggy-looking young lady to dance, and
+waltzed round the room twice with her. Lobytko, gliding over the
+parquet floor, flew up to the lilac young lady and whirled her away.
+Dancing began. . . . Ryabovitch stood near the door among those who
+were not dancing and looked on. He had never once danced in his
+whole life, and he had never once in his life put his arm round the
+waist of a respectable woman. He was highly delighted that a man
+should in the sight of all take a girl he did not know round the
+waist and offer her his shoulder to put her hand on, but he could
+not imagine himself in the position of such a man. There were times
+when he envied the boldness and swagger of his companions and was
+inwardly wretched; the consciousness that he was timid, that he was
+round-shouldered and uninteresting, that he had a long waist and
+lynx-like whiskers, had deeply mortified him, but with years he had
+grown used to this feeling, and now, looking at his comrades dancing
+or loudly talking, he no longer envied them, but only felt touched
+and mournful.
+
+When the quadrille began, young Von Rabbek came up to those who
+were not dancing and invited two officers to have a game at billiards.
+The officers accepted and went with him out of the drawing-room.
+Ryabovitch, having nothing to do and wishing to take part in the
+general movement, slouched after them. From the big drawing-room
+they went into the little drawing-room, then into a narrow corridor
+with a glass roof, and thence into a room in which on their entrance
+three sleepy-looking footmen jumped up quickly from the sofa. At
+last, after passing through a long succession of rooms, young Von
+Rabbek and the officers came into a small room where there was a
+billiard-table. They began to play.
+
+Ryabovitch, who had never played any game but cards, stood near the
+billiard-table and looked indifferently at the players, while they
+in unbuttoned coats, with cues in their hands, stepped about, made
+puns, and kept shouting out unintelligible words.
+
+The players took no notice of him, and only now and then one of
+them, shoving him with his elbow or accidentally touching him with
+the end of his cue, would turn round and say "Pardon!" Before the
+first game was over he was weary of it, and began to feel he was
+not wanted and in the way. . . . He felt disposed to return to the
+drawing-room, and he went out.
+
+On his way back he met with a little adventure. When he had gone
+half-way he noticed he had taken a wrong turning. He distinctly
+remembered that he ought to meet three sleepy footmen on his way,
+but he had passed five or six rooms, and those sleepy figures seemed
+to have vanished into the earth. Noticing his mistake, he walked
+back a little way and turned to the right; he found himself in a
+little dark room which he had not seen on his way to the billiard-room.
+After standing there a little while, he resolutely opened the first
+door that met his eyes and walked into an absolutely dark room.
+Straight in front could be seen the crack in the doorway through
+which there was a gleam of vivid light; from the other side of the
+door came the muffled sound of a melancholy mazurka. Here, too, as
+in the drawing-room, the windows were wide open and there was a
+smell of poplars, lilac and roses. . . .
+
+Ryabovitch stood still in hesitation. . . . At that moment, to his
+surprise, he heard hurried footsteps and the rustling of a dress,
+a breathless feminine voice whispered "At last!" And two soft,
+fragrant, unmistakably feminine arms were clasped about his neck;
+a warm cheek was pressed to his cheek, and simultaneously there was
+the sound of a kiss. But at once the bestower of the kiss uttered
+a faint shriek and skipped back from him, as it seemed to Ryabovitch,
+with aversion. He, too, almost shrieked and rushed towards the gleam
+of light at the door. . . .
+
+When he went back into the drawing-room his heart was beating and
+his hands were trembling so noticeably that he made haste to hide
+them behind his back. At first he was tormented by shame and dread
+that the whole drawing-room knew that he had just been kissed and
+embraced by a woman. He shrank into himself and looked uneasily
+about him, but as he became convinced that people were dancing and
+talking as calmly as ever, he gave himself up entirely to the new
+sensation which he had never experienced before in his life. Something
+strange was happening to him. . . . His neck, round which soft,
+fragrant arms had so lately been clasped, seemed to him to be
+anointed with oil; on his left cheek near his moustache where the
+unknown had kissed him there was a faint chilly tingling sensation
+as from peppermint drops, and the more he rubbed the place the more
+distinct was the chilly sensation; all over, from head to foot, he
+was full of a strange new feeling which grew stronger and stronger
+. . . . He wanted to dance, to talk, to run into the garden, to laugh
+aloud. . . . He quite forgot that he was round-shouldered and
+uninteresting, that he had lynx-like whiskers and an "undistinguished
+appearance" (that was how his appearance had been described by some
+ladies whose conversation he had accidentally overheard). When Von
+Rabbek's wife happened to pass by him, he gave her such a broad and
+friendly smile that she stood still and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"I like your house immensely!" he said, setting his spectacles
+straight.
+
+The General's wife smiled and said that the house had belonged to
+her father; then she asked whether his parents were living, whether
+he had long been in the army, why he was so thin, and so on. . . .
+After receiving answers to her questions, she went on, and after
+his conversation with her his smiles were more friendly than ever,
+and he thought he was surrounded by splendid people. . . .
+
+At supper Ryabovitch ate mechanically everything offered him, drank,
+and without listening to anything, tried to understand what had
+just happened to him. . . . The adventure was of a mysterious and
+romantic character, but it was not difficult to explain it. No doubt
+some girl or young married lady had arranged a tryst with some one
+in the dark room; had waited a long time, and being nervous and
+excited had taken Ryabovitch for her hero; this was the more probable
+as Ryabovitch had stood still hesitating in the dark room, so that
+he, too, had seemed like a person expecting something. . . . This
+was how Ryabovitch explained to himself the kiss he had received.
+
+"And who is she?" he wondered, looking round at the women's faces.
+"She must be young, for elderly ladies don't give rendezvous. That
+she was a lady, one could tell by the rustle of her dress, her
+perfume, her voice. . . ."
+
+His eyes rested on the lilac young lady, and he thought her very
+attractive; she had beautiful shoulders and arms, a clever face,
+and a delightful voice. Ryabovitch, looking at her, hoped that she
+and no one else was his unknown. . . . But she laughed somehow
+artificially and wrinkled up her long nose, which seemed to him to
+make her look old. Then he turned his eyes upon the fair girl in a
+black dress. She was younger, simpler, and more genuine, had a
+charming brow, and drank very daintily out of her wineglass.
+Ryabovitch now hoped that it was she. But soon he began to think
+her face flat, and fixed his eyes upon the one next her.
+
+"It's difficult to guess," he thought, musing. "If one takes the
+shoulders and arms of the lilac one only, adds the brow of the fair
+one and the eyes of the one on the left of Lobytko, then . . ."
+
+He made a combination of these things in his mind and so formed the
+image of the girl who had kissed him, the image that he wanted her
+to have, but could not find at the table. . . .
+
+After supper, replete and exhilarated, the officers began to take
+leave and say thank you. Von Rabbek and his wife began again
+apologizing that they could not ask them to stay the night.
+
+"Very, very glad to have met you, gentlemen," said Von Rabbek, and
+this time sincerely (probably because people are far more sincere
+and good-humoured at speeding their parting guests than on meeting
+them). "Delighted. I hope you will come on your way back! Don't
+stand on ceremony! Where are you going? Do you want to go by the
+upper way? No, go across the garden; it's nearer here by the lower
+way."
+
+The officers went out into the garden. After the bright light and
+the noise the garden seemed very dark and quiet. They walked in
+silence all the way to the gate. They were a little drunk, pleased,
+and in good spirits, but the darkness and silence made them thoughtful
+for a minute. Probably the same idea occurred to each one of them
+as to Ryabovitch: would there ever come a time for them when, like
+Von Rabbek, they would have a large house, a family, a garden--
+when they, too, would be able to welcome people, even though
+insincerely, feed them, make them drunk and contented?
+
+Going out of the garden gate, they all began talking at once and
+laughing loudly about nothing. They were walking now along the
+little path that led down to the river, and then ran along the
+water's edge, winding round the bushes on the bank, the pools, and
+the willows that overhung the water. The bank and the path were
+scarcely visible, and the other bank was entirely plunged in darkness.
+Stars were reflected here and there on the dark water; they quivered
+and were broken up on the surface--and from that alone it could
+be seen that the river was flowing rapidly. It was still. Drowsy
+curlews cried plaintively on the further bank, and in one of the
+bushes on the nearest side a nightingale was trilling loudly, taking
+no notice of the crowd of officers. The officers stood round the
+bush, touched it, but the nightingale went on singing.
+
+"What a fellow!" they exclaimed approvingly. "We stand beside him
+and he takes not a bit of notice! What a rascal!"
+
+At the end of the way the path went uphill, and, skirting the church
+enclosure, turned into the road. Here the officers, tired with
+walking uphill, sat down and lighted their cigarettes. On the other
+side of the river a murky red fire came into sight, and having
+nothing better to do, they spent a long time in discussing whether
+it was a camp fire or a light in a window, or something else. . . .
+Ryabovitch, too, looked at the light, and he fancied that the
+light looked and winked at him, as though it knew about the kiss.
+
+On reaching his quarters, Ryabovitch undressed as quickly as possible
+and got into bed. Lobytko and Lieutenant Merzlyakov--a peaceable,
+silent fellow, who was considered in his own circle a highly educated
+officer, and was always, whenever it was possible, reading the
+"Vyestnik Evropi," which he carried about with him everywhere--
+were quartered in the same hut with Ryabovitch. Lobytko undressed,
+walked up and down the room for a long while with the air of a man
+who has not been satisfied, and sent his orderly for beer. Merzlyakov
+got into bed, put a candle by his pillow and plunged into reading
+the "Vyestnik Evropi."
+
+"Who was she?" Ryabovitch wondered, looking at the smoky ceiling.
+
+His neck still felt as though he had been anointed with oil, and
+there was still the chilly sensation near his mouth as though from
+peppermint drops. The shoulders and arms of the young lady in lilac,
+the brow and the truthful eyes of the fair girl in black, waists,
+dresses, and brooches, floated through his imagination. He tried
+to fix his attention on these images, but they danced about, broke
+up and flickered. When these images vanished altogether from the
+broad dark background which every man sees when he closes his eyes,
+he began to hear hurried footsteps, the rustle of skirts, the sound
+of a kiss and--an intense groundless joy took possession of him
+. . . . Abandoning himself to this joy, he heard the orderly return
+and announce that there was no beer. Lobytko was terribly indignant,
+and began pacing up and down again.
+
+"Well, isn't he an idiot?" he kept saying, stopping first before
+Ryabovitch and then before Merzlyakov. "What a fool and a dummy a
+man must be not to get hold of any beer! Eh? Isn't he a scoundrel?"
+
+"Of course you can't get beer here," said Merzlyakov, not removing
+his eyes from the "Vyestnik Evropi."
+
+"Oh! Is that your opinion?" Lobytko persisted. "Lord have mercy
+upon us, if you dropped me on the moon I'd find you beer and women
+directly! I'll go and find some at once. . . . You may call me an
+impostor if I don't!"
+
+He spent a long time in dressing and pulling on his high boots,
+then finished smoking his cigarette in silence and went out.
+
+"Rabbek, Grabbek, Labbek," he muttered, stopping in the outer room.
+"I don't care to go alone, damn it all! Ryabovitch, wouldn't you
+like to go for a walk? Eh?"
+
+Receiving no answer, he returned, slowly undressed and got into
+bed. Merzlyakov sighed, put the "Vyestnik Evropi" away, and put out
+the light.
+
+"H'm! . . ." muttered Lobytko, lighting a cigarette in the dark.
+
+Ryabovitch pulled the bed-clothes over his head, curled himself up
+in bed, and tried to gather together the floating images in his
+mind and to combine them into one whole. But nothing came of it.
+He soon fell asleep, and his last thought was that some one had
+caressed him and made him happy--that something extraordinary,
+foolish, but joyful and delightful, had come into his life. The
+thought did not leave him even in his sleep.
+
+When he woke up the sensations of oil on his neck and the chill of
+peppermint about his lips had gone, but joy flooded his heart just
+as the day before. He looked enthusiastically at the window-frames,
+gilded by the light of the rising sun, and listened to the movement
+of the passers-by in the street. People were talking loudly close
+to the window. Lebedetsky, the commander of Ryabovitch's battery,
+who had only just overtaken the brigade, was talking to his sergeant
+at the top of his voice, being always accustomed to shout.
+
+"What else?" shouted the commander.
+
+"When they were shoeing yesterday, your high nobility, they drove
+a nail into Pigeon's hoof. The vet. put on clay and vinegar; they
+are leading him apart now. And also, your honour, Artemyev got drunk
+yesterday, and the lieutenant ordered him to be put in the limber
+of a spare gun-carriage."
+
+The sergeant reported that Karpov had forgotten the new cords for
+the trumpets and the rings for the tents, and that their honours,
+the officers, had spent the previous evening visiting General Von
+Rabbek. In the middle of this conversation the red-bearded face of
+Lebedetsky appeared in the window. He screwed up his short-sighted
+eyes, looking at the sleepy faces of the officers, and said
+good-morning to them.
+
+"Is everything all right?" he asked.
+
+"One of the horses has a sore neck from the new collar," answered
+Lobytko, yawning.
+
+The commander sighed, thought a moment, and said in a loud voice:
+
+"I am thinking of going to see Alexandra Yevgrafovna. I must call
+on her. Well, good-bye. I shall catch you up in the evening."
+
+A quarter of an hour later the brigade set off on its way. When it
+was moving along the road by the granaries, Ryabovitch looked at
+the house on the right. The blinds were down in all the windows.
+Evidently the household was still asleep. The one who had kissed
+Ryabovitch the day before was asleep, too. He tried to imagine her
+asleep. The wide-open windows of the bedroom, the green branches
+peeping in, the morning freshness, the scent of the poplars, lilac,
+and roses, the bed, a chair, and on it the skirts that had rustled
+the day before, the little slippers, the little watch on the table
+--all this he pictured to himself clearly and distinctly, but the
+features of the face, the sweet sleepy smile, just what was
+characteristic and important, slipped through his imagination like
+quicksilver through the fingers. When he had ridden on half a mile,
+he looked back: the yellow church, the house, and the river, were
+all bathed in light; the river with its bright green banks, with
+the blue sky reflected in it and glints of silver in the sunshine
+here and there, was very beautiful. Ryabovitch gazed for the last
+time at Myestetchki, and he felt as sad as though he were parting
+with something very near and dear to him.
+
+And before him on the road lay nothing but long familiar, uninteresting
+pictures. . . . To right and to left, fields of young rye and
+buckwheat with rooks hopping about in them. If one looked ahead,
+one saw dust and the backs of men's heads; if one looked back, one
+saw the same dust and faces. . . . Foremost of all marched four men
+with sabres--this was the vanguard. Next, behind, the crowd of
+singers, and behind them the trumpeters on horseback. The vanguard
+and the chorus of singers, like torch-bearers in a funeral procession,
+often forgot to keep the regulation distance and pushed a long way
+ahead. . . . Ryabovitch was with the first cannon of the fifth
+battery. He could see all the four batteries moving in front of
+him. For any one not a military man this long tedious procession
+of a moving brigade seems an intricate and unintelligible muddle;
+one cannot understand why there are so many people round one cannon,
+and why it is drawn by so many horses in such a strange network of
+harness, as though it really were so terrible and heavy. To Ryabovitch
+it was all perfectly comprehensible and therefore uninteresting.
+He had known for ever so long why at the head of each battery there
+rode a stalwart bombardier, and why he was called a bombardier;
+immediately behind this bombardier could be seen the horsemen of
+the first and then of the middle units. Ryabovitch knew that the
+horses on which they rode, those on the left, were called one name,
+while those on the right were called another--it was extremely
+uninteresting. Behind the horsemen came two shaft-horses. On one
+of them sat a rider with the dust of yesterday on his back and a
+clumsy and funny-looking piece of wood on his leg. Ryabovitch knew
+the object of this piece of wood, and did not think it funny. All
+the riders waved their whips mechanically and shouted from time to
+time. The cannon itself was ugly. On the fore part lay sacks of
+oats covered with canvas, and the cannon itself was hung all over
+with kettles, soldiers' knapsacks, bags, and looked like some small
+harmless animal surrounded for some unknown reason by men and horses.
+To the leeward of it marched six men, the gunners, swinging their
+arms. After the cannon there came again more bombardiers, riders,
+shaft-horses, and behind them another cannon, as ugly and unimpressive
+as the first. After the second followed a third, a fourth; near the
+fourth an officer, and so on. There were six batteries in all in
+the brigade, and four cannons in each battery. The procession covered
+half a mile; it ended in a string of wagons near which an extremely
+attractive creature--the ass, Magar, brought by a battery commander
+from Turkey--paced pensively with his long-eared head drooping.
+
+Ryabovitch looked indifferently before and behind, at the backs of
+heads and at faces; at any other time he would have been half asleep,
+but now he was entirely absorbed in his new agreeable thoughts. At
+first when the brigade was setting off on the march he tried to
+persuade himself that the incident of the kiss could only be
+interesting as a mysterious little adventure, that it was in reality
+trivial, and to think of it seriously, to say the least of it, was
+stupid; but now he bade farewell to logic and gave himself up to
+dreams. . . . At one moment he imagined himself in Von Rabbek's
+drawing-room beside a girl who was like the young lady in lilac and
+the fair girl in black; then he would close his eyes and see himself
+with another, entirely unknown girl, whose features were very vague.
+In his imagination he talked, caressed her, leaned on her shoulder,
+pictured war, separation, then meeting again, supper with his wife,
+children. . . .
+
+"Brakes on!" the word of command rang out every time they went
+downhill.
+
+He, too, shouted "Brakes on!" and was afraid this shout would disturb
+his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .
+
+As they passed by some landowner's estate Ryabovitch looked over
+the fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler,
+strewn with yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met
+his eyes. . . . With the eagerness of a man given up to dreaming,
+he pictured to himself little feminine feet tripping along yellow
+sand, and quite unexpectedly had a clear vision in his imagination
+of the girl who had kissed him and whom he had succeeded in picturing
+to himself the evening before at supper. This image remained in his
+brain and did not desert him again.
+
+At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:
+
+"Easy! Eyes to the left! Officers!"
+
+The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage with a pair of
+white horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted
+something which no one understood. Several officers, among them
+Ryabovitch, galloped up to them.
+
+"Well?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Are there any
+sick?"
+
+Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed,
+thought for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:
+
+"One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard
+and hung it on the fore part of the cannon, the rascal. Reprimand
+him."
+
+He raised his eyes to Ryabovitch and went on:
+
+"It seems to me your front strap is too long."
+
+Making a few other tedious remarks, the general looked at Lobytko
+and grinned.
+
+"You look very melancholy today, Lieutenant Lobytko," he said. "Are
+you pining for Madame Lopuhov? Eh? Gentlemen, he is pining for
+Madame Lopuhov."
+
+The lady in question was a very stout and tall person who had long
+passed her fortieth year. The general, who had a predilection for
+solid ladies, whatever their ages, suspected a similar taste in his
+officers. The officers smiled respectfully. The general, delighted
+at having said something very amusing and biting, laughed loudly,
+touched his coachman's back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on. . . .
+
+"All I am dreaming about now which seems to me so impossible and
+unearthly is really quite an ordinary thing," thought Ryabovitch,
+looking at the clouds of dust racing after the general's carriage.
+"It's all very ordinary, and every one goes through it. . . . That
+general, for instance, has once been in love; now he is married and
+has children. Captain Vahter, too, is married and beloved, though
+the nape of his neck is very red and ugly and he has no waist. . . .
+Salrnanov is coarse and very Tatar, but he has had a love affair
+that has ended in marriage. . . . I am the same as every one else,
+and I, too, shall have the same experience as every one else, sooner
+or later. . . ."
+
+And the thought that he was an ordinary person, and that his life
+was ordinary, delighted him and gave him courage. He pictured her
+and his happiness as he pleased, and put no rein on his imagination.
+
+When the brigade reached their halting-place in the evening, and
+the officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovitch, Merzlyakov,
+and Lobytko were sitting round a box having supper. Merzlyakov ate
+without haste, and, as he munched deliberately, read the "Vyestnik
+Evropi," which he held on his knees. Lobytko talked incessantly and
+kept filling up his glass with beer, and Ryabovitch, whose head was
+confused from dreaming all day long, drank and said nothing. After
+three glasses he got a little drunk, felt weak, and had an irresistible
+desire to impart his new sensations to his comrades.
+
+"A strange thing happened to me at those Von Rabbeks'," he began,
+trying to put an indifferent and ironical tone into his voice. "You
+know I went into the billiard-room. . . ."
+
+He began describing very minutely the incident of the kiss, and a
+moment later relapsed into silence. . . . In the course of that
+moment he had told everything, and it surprised him dreadfully to
+find how short a time it took him to tell it. He had imagined that
+he could have been telling the story of the kiss till next morning.
+Listening to him, Lobytko, who was a great liar and consequently
+believed no one, looked at him sceptically and laughed. Merzlyakov
+twitched his eyebrows and, without removing his eyes from the
+"Vyestnik Evropi," said:
+
+"That's an odd thing! How strange! . . . throws herself on a man's
+neck, without addressing him by name. .. . She must be some sort
+of hysterical neurotic."
+
+"Yes, she must," Ryabovitch agreed.
+
+"A similar thing once happened to me," said Lobytko, assuming a
+scared expression. "I was going last year to Kovno. . . . I took a
+second-class ticket. The train was crammed, and it was impossible
+to sleep. I gave the guard half a rouble; he took my luggage and
+led me to another compartment. . . . I lay down and covered myself
+with a rug. . . . It was dark, you understand. Suddenly I felt some
+one touch me on the shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a
+movement with my hand and felt somebody's elbow. . . . I opened my
+eyes and only imagine--a woman. Black eyes, lips red as a prime
+salmon, nostrils breathing passionately--a bosom like a buffer. . . ."
+
+"Excuse me," Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, "I understand about the
+bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?"
+
+Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laughing at Merzlyakov's
+unimaginativeness. It made Ryabovitch wince. He walked away from
+the box, got into bed, and vowed never to confide again.
+
+Camp life began. . . . The days flowed by, one very much like
+another. All those days Ryabovitch felt, thought, and behaved as
+though he were in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him
+water to wash with, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he
+thought there was something warm and delightful in his life.
+
+In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women,
+he would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of
+a soldier when he hears the description of a battle in which he has
+taken part. And on the evenings when the officers, out on the spree
+with the setter--Lobytko--at their head, made Don Juan excursions
+to the "suburb," and Ryabovitch took part in such excursions, he
+always was sad, felt profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged _her_
+forgiveness. . . . In hours of leisure or on sleepless nights, when
+he felt moved to recall his childhood, his father and mother--
+everything near and dear, in fact, he invariably thought of
+Myestetchki, the strange horse, Von Rabbek, his wife who was like
+the Empress Eugenie, the dark room, the crack of light at the
+door. . . .
+
+On the thirty-first of August he went back from the camp, not with
+the whole brigade, but with only two batteries of it. He was dreaming
+and excited all the way, as though he were going back to his native
+place. He had an intense longing to see again the strange horse,
+the church, the insincere family of the Von Rabbeks, the dark room.
+The "inner voice," which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him
+for some reason that he would be sure to see her . . . and he was
+tortured by the questions, How he should meet her? What he would
+talk to her about? Whether she had forgotten the kiss? If the worst
+came to the worst, he thought, even if he did not meet her, it would
+be a pleasure to him merely to go through the dark room and recall
+the past. . . .
+
+Towards evening there appeared on the horizon the familiar church
+and white granaries. Ryabovitch's heart beat. . . . He did not hear
+the officer who was riding beside him and saying something to him,
+he forgot everything, and looked eagerly at the river shining in
+the distance, at the roof of the house, at the dovecote round which
+the pigeons were circling in the light of the setting sun.
+
+When they reached the church and were listening to the billeting
+orders, he expected every second that a man on horseback would come
+round the church enclosure and invite the officers to tea, but . . .
+the billeting orders were read, the officers were in haste to go
+on to the village, and the man on horseback did not appear.
+
+"Von Rabbek will hear at once from the peasants that we have come
+and will send for us," thought Ryabovitch, as he went into the hut,
+unable to understand why a comrade was lighting a candle and why
+the orderlies were hurriedly setting samovars. . . .
+
+A painful uneasiness took possession of him. He lay down, then got
+up and looked out of the window to see whether the messenger were
+coming. But there was no sign of him.
+
+He lay down again, but half an hour later he got up, and, unable
+to restrain his uneasiness, went into the street and strode towards
+the church. It was dark and deserted in the square near the church
+. . . . Three soldiers were standing silent in a row where the road
+began to go downhill. Seeing Ryabovitch, they roused themselves and
+saluted. He returned the salute and began to go down the familiar
+path.
+
+On the further side of the river the whole sky was flooded with
+crimson: the moon was rising; two peasant women, talking loudly,
+were picking cabbage in the kitchen garden; behind the kitchen
+garden there were some dark huts. . . . And everything on the near
+side of the river was just as it had been in May: the path, the
+bushes, the willows overhanging the water . . . but there was no
+sound of the brave nightingale, and no scent of poplar and fresh
+grass.
+
+Reaching the garden, Ryabovitch looked in at the gate. The garden
+was dark and still. . . . He could see nothing but the white stems
+of the nearest birch-trees and a little bit of the avenue; all the
+rest melted together into a dark blur. Ryabovitch looked and listened
+eagerly, but after waiting for a quarter of an hour without hearing
+a sound or catching a glimpse of a light, he trudged back. . . .
+
+He went down to the river. The General's bath-house and the bath-sheets
+on the rail of the little bridge showed white before him. . . . He
+went on to the bridge, stood a little, and, quite unnecessarily,
+touched the sheets. They felt rough and cold. He looked down at the
+water. . . . The river ran rapidly and with a faintly audible gurgle
+round the piles of the bath-house. The red moon was reflected near
+the left bank; little ripples ran over the reflection, stretching
+it out, breaking it into bits, and seemed trying to carry it away.
+
+"How stupid, how stupid!" thought Ryabovitch, looking at the running
+water. "How unintelligent it all is!"
+
+Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience,
+his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear
+light. It no longer seemed to him strange that he had not seen the
+General's messenger, and that he would never see the girl who had
+accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary,
+it would have been strange if he had seen her. . . .
+
+The water was running, he knew not where or why, just as it did in
+May. In May it had flowed into the great river, from the great river
+into the sea; then it had risen in vapour, turned into rain, and
+perhaps the very same water was running now before Ryabovitch's
+eyes again. . . . What for? Why?
+
+And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an
+unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the
+water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the
+person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered
+his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily
+meagre, poverty-stricken, and colourless. . . .
+
+When he went back to his hut he did not find one of his comrades.
+The orderly informed him that they had all gone to "General von
+Rabbek's, who had sent a messenger on horseback to invite them. . . ."
+
+For an instant there was a flash of joy in Ryabovitch's heart, but
+he quenched it at once, got into bed, and in his wrath with his
+fate, as though to spite it, did not go to the General's.
+
+
+'ANNA ON THE NECK'
+
+I
+
+AFTER the wedding they had not even light refreshments; the happy
+pair simply drank a glass of champagne, changed into their travelling
+things, and drove to the station. Instead of a gay wedding ball and
+supper, instead of music and dancing, they went on a journey to
+pray at a shrine a hundred and fifty miles away. Many people commended
+this, saying that Modest Alexeitch was a man high up in the service
+and no longer young, and that a noisy wedding might not have seemed
+quite suitable; and music is apt to sound dreary when a government
+official of fifty-two marries a girl who is only just eighteen.
+People said, too, that Modest Alexeitch, being a man of principle,
+had arranged this visit to the monastery expressly in order to make
+his young bride realize that even in marriage he put religion and
+morality above everything.
+
+The happy pair were seen off at the station. The crowd of relations
+and colleagues in the service stood, with glasses in their hands,
+waiting for the train to start to shout "Hurrah!" and the bride's
+father, Pyotr Leontyitch, wearing a top-hat and the uniform of a
+teacher, already drunk and very pale, kept craning towards the
+window, glass in hand and saying in an imploring voice:
+
+"Anyuta! Anya, Anya! one word!"
+
+Anna bent out of the window to him, and he whispered something to
+her, enveloping her in a stale smell of alcohol, blew into her ear
+--she could make out nothing--and made the sign of the cross
+over her face, her bosom, and her hands; meanwhile he was breathing
+in gasps and tears were shining in his eyes. And the schoolboys,
+Anna's brothers, Petya and Andrusha, pulled at his coat from behind,
+whispering in confusion:
+
+"Father, hush! . . . Father, that's enough. . . ."
+
+When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way after
+the train, staggering and spilling his wine, and what a kind, guilty,
+pitiful face he had:
+
+"Hurra--ah!" he shouted.
+
+The happy pair were left alone. Modest Alexeitch looked about the
+compartment, arranged their things on the shelves, and sat down,
+smiling, opposite his young wife. He was an official of medium
+height, rather stout and puffy, who looked exceedingly well nourished,
+with long whiskers and no moustache. His clean-shaven, round, sharply
+defined chin looked like the heel of a foot. The most characteristic
+point in his face was the absence of moustache, the bare, freshly
+shaven place, which gradually passed into the fat cheeks, quivering
+like jelly. His deportment was dignified, his movements were
+deliberate, his manner was soft.
+
+"I cannot help remembering now one circumstance," he said, smiling.
+"When, five years ago, Kosorotov received the order of St. Anna of
+the second grade, and went to thank His Excellency, His Excellency
+expressed himself as follows: 'So now you have three Annas: one in
+your buttonhole and two on your neck.' And it must be explained
+that at that time Kosorotov's wife, a quarrelsome and frivolous
+person, had just returned to him, and that her name was Anna. I
+trust that when I receive the Anna of the second grade His Excellency
+will not have occasion to say the same thing to me."
+
+He smiled with his little eyes. And she, too, smiled, troubled at
+the thought that at any moment this man might kiss her with his
+thick damp lips, and that she had no right to prevent his doing so.
+The soft movements of his fat person frightened her; she felt both
+fear and disgust. He got up, without haste took off the order from
+his neck, took off his coat and waistcoat, and put on his dressing-gown.
+
+"That's better," he said, sitting down beside Anna.
+
+Anna remembered what agony the wedding had been, when it had seemed
+to her that the priest, and the guests, and every one in church had
+been looking at her sorrowfully and asking why, why was she, such
+a sweet, nice girl, marrying such an elderly, uninteresting gentleman.
+Only that morning she was delighted that everything had been
+satisfactorily arranged, but at the time of the wedding, and now
+in the railway carriage, she felt cheated, guilty, and ridiculous.
+Here she had married a rich man and yet she had no money, her
+wedding-dress had been bought on credit, and when her father and
+brothers had been saying good-bye, she could see from their faces
+that they had not a farthing. Would they have any supper that day?
+And tomorrow? And for some reason it seemed to her that her father
+and the boys were sitting tonight hungry without her, and feeling
+the same misery as they had the day after their mother's funeral.
+
+"Oh, how unhappy I am!" she thought. "Why am I so unhappy?"
+
+With the awkwardness of a man with settled habits, unaccustomed to
+deal with women, Modest Alexeitch touched her on the waist and
+patted her on the shoulder, while she went on thinking about money,
+about her mother and her mother's death. When her mother died, her
+father, Pyotr Leontyitch, a teacher of drawing and writing in the
+high school, had taken to drink, impoverishment had followed, the
+boys had not had boots or goloshes, their father had been hauled
+up before the magistrate, the warrant officer had come and made an
+inventory of the furniture. . . . What a disgrace! Anna had had to
+look after her drunken father, darn her brothers' stockings, go to
+market, and when she was complimented on her youth, her beauty, and
+her elegant manners, it seemed to her that every one was looking
+at her cheap hat and the holes in her boots that were inked over.
+And at night there had been tears and a haunting dread that her
+father would soon, very soon, be dismissed from the school for his
+weakness, and that he would not survive it, but would die, too,
+like their mother. But ladies of their acquaintance had taken the
+matter in hand and looked about for a good match for Anna. This
+Modest Alexevitch, who was neither young nor good-looking but had
+money, was soon found. He had a hundred thousand in the bank and
+the family estate, which he had let on lease. He was a man of
+principle and stood well with His Excellency; it would be nothing
+to him, so they told Anna, to get a note from His Excellency to the
+directors of the high school, or even to the Education Commissioner,
+to prevent Pyotr Leontyitch from being dismissed.
+
+While she was recalling these details, she suddenly heard strains
+of music which floated in at the window, together with the sound
+of voices. The train was stopping at a station. In the crowd beyond
+the platform an accordion and a cheap squeaky fiddle were being
+briskly played, and the sound of a military band came from beyond
+the villas and the tall birches and poplars that lay bathed in the
+moonlight; there must have been a dance in the place. Summer visitors
+and townspeople, who used to come out here by train in fine weather
+for a breath of fresh air, were parading up and down on the platform.
+Among them was the wealthy owner of all the summer villas--a tall,
+stout, dark man called Artynov. He had prominent eyes and looked
+like an Armenian. He wore a strange costume; his shirt was unbuttoned,
+showing his chest; he wore high boots with spurs, and a black cloak
+hung from his shoulders and dragged on the ground like a train. Two
+boar-hounds followed him with their sharp noses to the ground.
+
+Tears were still shining in Anna's eyes, but she was not thinking
+now of her mother, nor of money, nor of her marriage; but shaking
+hands with schoolboys and officers she knew, she laughed gaily and
+said quickly:
+
+"How do you do? How are you?"
+
+She went out on to the platform between the carriages into the
+moonlight, and stood so that they could all see her in her new
+splendid dress and hat.
+
+"Why are we stopping here?" she asked.
+
+"This is a junction. They are waiting for the mail train to pass."
+
+Seeing that Artynov was looking at her, she screwed up her eyes
+coquettishly and began talking aloud in French; and because her
+voice sounded so pleasant, and because she heard music and the moon
+was reflected in the pond, and because Artynov, the notorious Don
+Juan and spoiled child of fortune, was looking at her eagerly and
+with curiosity, and because every one was in good spirits--she
+suddenly felt joyful, and when the train started and the officers
+of her acquaintance saluted her, she was humming the polka the
+strains of which reached her from the military band playing beyond
+the trees; and she returned to her compartment feeling as though
+it had been proved to her at the station that she would certainly
+be happy in spite of everything.
+
+The happy pair spent two days at the monastery, then went back to
+town. They lived in a rent-free flat. When Modest Alexevitch had
+gone to the office, Anna played the piano, or shed tears of depression,
+or lay down on a couch and read novels or looked through fashion
+papers. At dinner Modest Alexevitch ate a great deal and talked
+about politics, about appointments, transfers, and promotions in
+the service, about the necessity of hard work, and said that, family
+life not being a pleasure but a duty, if you took care of the kopecks
+the roubles would take care of themselves, and that he put religion
+and morality before everything else in the world. And holding his
+knife in his fist as though it were a sword, he would say:
+
+"Every one ought to have his duties!"
+
+And Anna listened to him, was frightened, and could not eat, and
+she usually got up from the table hungry. After dinner her husband
+lay down for a nap and snored loudly, while Anna went to see her
+own people. Her father and the boys looked at her in a peculiar
+way, as though just before she came in they had been blaming her
+for having married for money a tedious, wearisome man she did not
+love; her rustling skirts, her bracelets, and her general air of a
+married lady, offended them and made them uncomfortable. In her
+presence they felt a little embarrassed and did not know what to
+talk to her about; but yet they still loved her as before, and were
+not used to having dinner without her. She sat down with them to
+cabbage soup, porridge, and fried potatoes, smelling of mutton
+dripping. Pyotr Leontyitch filled his glass from the decanter with
+a trembling hand and drank it off hurriedly, greedily, with repulsion,
+then poured out a second glass and then a third. Petya and Andrusha,
+thin, pale boys with big eyes, would take the decanter and say
+desperately:
+
+"You mustn't, father. . . . Enough, father. . . ."
+
+And Anna, too, was troubled and entreated him to drink no more; and
+he would suddenly fly into a rage and beat the table with his fists:
+
+"I won't allow any one to dictate to me!" he would shout. "Wretched
+boys! wretched girl! I'll turn you all out!"
+
+But there was a note of weakness, of good-nature in his voice, and
+no one was afraid of him. After dinner he usually dressed in his
+best. Pale, with a cut on his chin from shaving, craning his thin
+neck, he would stand for half an hour before the glass, prinking,
+combing his hair, twisting his black moustache, sprinkling himself
+with scent, tying his cravat in a bow; then he would put on his
+gloves and his top-hat, and go off to give his private lessons. Or
+if it was a holiday he would stay at home and paint, or play the
+harmonium, which wheezed and growled; he would try to wrest from
+it pure harmonious sounds and would sing to it; or would storm at
+the boys:
+
+"Wretches! Good-for-nothing boys! You have spoiled the instrument!"
+
+In the evening Anna's husband played cards with his colleagues, who
+lived under the same roof in the government quarters. The wives of
+these gentlemen would come in--ugly, tastelessly dressed women,
+as coarse as cooks--and gossip would begin in the flat as tasteless
+and unattractive as the ladies themselves. Sometimes Modest Alexevitch
+would take Anna to the theatre. In the intervals he would never let
+her stir a step from his side, but walked about arm in arm with her
+through the corridors and the foyer. When he bowed to some one, he
+immediately whispered to Anna: "A civil councillor . . . visits at
+His Excellency's"; or, "A man of means . . . has a house of his
+own." When they passed the buffet Anna had a great longing for
+something sweet; she was fond of chocolate and apple cakes, but she
+had no money, and she did not like to ask her husband. He would
+take a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask uncertainly:
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Twenty-five kopecks!"
+
+"I say!" he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward to
+leave the buffet without buying anything, he would order some
+seltzer-water and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears would
+come into his eyes. And Anna hated him at such times.
+
+And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly:
+
+"Bow to that old lady!"
+
+"But I don't know her."
+
+"No matter. That's the wife of the director of the local treasury!
+Bow, I tell you," he would grumble insistently. "Your head won't
+drop off."
+
+Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was
+agonizing. She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was
+furious with herself for having let him deceive her like the veriest
+idiot. She had only married him for his money, and yet she had less
+money now than before her marriage. In old days her father would
+sometimes give her twenty kopecks, but now she had not a farthing.
+
+To take money by stealth or ask for it, she could not; she was
+afraid of her husband, she trembled before him. She felt as though
+she had been afraid of him for years. In her childhood the director
+of the high school had always seemed the most impressive and
+terrifying force in the world, sweeping down like a thunderstorm
+or a steam-engine ready to crush her; another similar force of which
+the whole family talked, and of which they were for some reason
+afraid, was His Excellency; then there were a dozen others, less
+formidable, and among them the teachers at the high school, with
+shaven upper lips, stern, implacable; and now finally, there was
+Modest Alexeitch, a man of principle, who even resembled the director
+in the face. And in Anna's imagination all these forces blended
+together into one, and, in the form of a terrible, huge white bear,
+menaced the weak and erring such as her father. And she was afraid
+to say anything in opposition to her husband, and gave a forced
+smile, and tried to make a show of pleasure when she was coarsely
+caressed and defiled by embraces that excited her terror. Only once
+Pyotr Leontyitch had the temerity to ask for a loan of fifty roubles
+in order to pay some very irksome debt, but what an agony it had
+been!
+
+"Very good; I'll give it to you," said Modest Alexeitch after a
+moment's thought; "but I warn you I won't help you again till you
+give up drinking. Such a failing is disgraceful in a man in the
+government service! I must remind you of the well-known fact that
+many capable people have been ruined by that passion, though they
+might possibly, with temperance, have risen in time to a very high
+position."
+
+And long-winded phrases followed: "inasmuch as . . .", "following
+upon which proposition . . .", "in view of the aforesaid contention
+. . ."; and Pyotr Leontyitch was in agonies of humiliation and felt
+an intense craving for alcohol.
+
+And when the boys came to visit Anna, generally in broken boots and
+threadbare trousers, they, too, had to listen to sermons.
+
+"Every man ought to have his duties!" Modest Alexeitch would say
+to them.
+
+And he did not give them money. But he did give Anna bracelets,
+rings, and brooches, saying that these things would come in useful
+for a rainy day. And he often unlocked her drawer and made an
+inspection to see whether they were all safe.
+
+II
+
+Meanwhile winter came on. Long before Christmas there was an
+announcement in the local papers that the usual winter ball would
+take place on the twenty-ninth of December in the Hall of Nobility.
+Every evening after cards Modest Alexeitch was excitedly whispering
+with his colleagues' wives and glancing at Anna, and then paced up
+and down the room for a long while, thinking. At last, late one
+evening, he stood still, facing Anna, and said:
+
+"You ought to get yourself a ball dress. Do you understand? Only
+please consult Marya Grigoryevna and Natalya Kuzminishna."
+
+And he gave her a hundred roubles. She took the money, but she did
+not consult any one when she ordered the ball dress; she spoke to
+no one but her father, and tried to imagine how her mother would
+have dressed for a ball. Her mother had always dressed in the latest
+fashion and had always taken trouble over Anna, dressing her elegantly
+like a doll, and had taught her to speak French and dance the mazurka
+superbly (she had been a governess for five years before her
+marriage). Like her mother, Anna could make a new dress out of an
+old one, clean gloves with benzine, hire jewels; and, like her
+mother, she knew how to screw up her eyes, lisp, assume graceful
+attitudes, fly into raptures when necessary, and throw a mournful
+and enigmatic look into her eyes. And from her father she had
+inherited the dark colour of her hair and eyes, her highly-strung
+nerves, and the habit of always making herself look her best.
+
+When, half an hour before setting off for the ball, Modest Alexeitch
+went into her room without his coat on, to put his order round his
+neck before her pier-glass, dazzled by her beauty and the splendour
+of her fresh, ethereal dress, he combed his whiskers complacently
+and said:
+
+"So that's what my wife can look like . . . so that's what you can
+look like! Anyuta!" he went on, dropping into a tone of solemnity,
+"I have made your fortune, and now I beg you to do something for
+mine. I beg you to get introduced to the wife of His Excellency!
+For God's sake, do! Through her I may get the post of senior reporting
+clerk!"
+
+They went to the ball. They reached the Hall of Nobility, the
+entrance with the hall porter. They came to the vestibule with the
+hat-stands, the fur coats; footmen scurrying about, and ladies with
+low necks putting up their fans to screen themselves from the
+draughts. There was a smell of gas and of soldiers. When Anna,
+walking upstairs on her husband's arm, heard the music and saw
+herself full length in the looking-glass in the full glow of the
+lights, there was a rush of joy in her heart, and she felt the same
+presentiment of happiness as in the moonlight at the station. She
+walked in proudly, confidently, for the first time feeling herself
+not a girl but a lady, and unconsciously imitating her mother in
+her walk and in her manner. And for the first time in her life she
+felt rich and free. Even her husband's presence did not oppress
+her, for as she crossed the threshold of the hall she had guessed
+instinctively that the proximity of an old husband did not detract
+from her in the least, but, on the contrary, gave her that shade
+of piquant mystery that is so attractive to men. The orchestra was
+already playing and the dances had begun. After their flat Anna was
+overwhelmed by the lights, the bright colours, the music, the noise,
+and looking round the room, thought, "Oh, how lovely!" She at once
+distinguished in the crowd all her acquaintances, every one she had
+met before at parties or on picnics--all the officers, the teachers,
+the lawyers, the officials, the landowners, His Excellency, Artynov,
+and the ladies of the highest standing, dressed up and very
+_decollettees_, handsome and ugly, who had already taken up their
+positions in the stalls and pavilions of the charity bazaar, to
+begin selling things for the benefit of the poor. A huge officer
+in epaulettes--she had been introduced to him in Staro-Kievsky
+Street when she was a schoolgirl, but now she could not remember
+his name--seemed to spring from out of the ground, begging her
+for a waltz, and she flew away from her husband, feeling as though
+she were floating away in a sailing-boat in a violent storm, while
+her husband was left far away on the shore. She danced passionately,
+with fervour, a waltz, then a polka and a quadrille, being snatched
+by one partner as soon as she was left by another, dizzy with music
+and the noise, mixing Russian with French, lisping, laughing, and
+with no thought of her husband or anything else. She excited great
+admiration among the men--that was evident, and indeed it could
+not have been otherwise; she was breathless with excitement, felt
+thirsty, and convulsively clutched her fan. Pyotr Leontyitch, her
+father, in a crumpled dress-coat that smelt of benzine, came up to
+her, offering her a plate of pink ice.
+
+"You are enchanting this evening," he said, looking at her rapturously,
+"and I have never so much regretted that you were in such a hurry
+to get married. . . . What was it for? I know you did it for our
+sake, but . . ." With a shaking hand he drew out a roll of notes
+and said: "I got the money for my lessons today, and can pay your
+husband what I owe him."
+
+She put the plate back into his hand, and was pounced upon by some
+one and borne off to a distance. She caught a glimpse over her
+partner's shoulder of her father gliding over the floor, putting
+his arm round a lady and whirling down the ball-room with her.
+
+"How sweet he is when he is sober!" she thought.
+
+She danced the mazurka with the same huge officer; he moved gravely,
+as heavily as a dead carcase in a uniform, twitched his shoulders
+and his chest, stamped his feet very languidly--he felt fearfully
+disinclined to dance. She fluttered round him, provoking him by her
+beauty, her bare neck; her eyes glowed defiantly, her movements
+were passionate, while he became more and more indifferent, and
+held out his hands to her as graciously as a king.
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" said people watching them.
+
+But little by little the huge officer, too, broke out; he grew
+lively, excited, and, overcome by her fascination, was carried away
+and danced lightly, youthfully, while she merely moved her shoulders
+and looked slyly at him as though she were now the queen and he
+were her slave; and at that moment it seemed to her that the whole
+room was looking at them, and that everybody was thrilled and envied
+them. The huge officer had hardly had time to thank her for the
+dance, when the crowd suddenly parted and the men drew themselves
+up in a strange way, with their hands at their sides.
+
+His Excellency, with two stars on his dress-coat, was walking up
+to her. Yes, His Excellency was walking straight towards her, for
+he was staring directly at her with a sugary smile, while he licked
+his lips as he always did when he saw a pretty woman.
+
+"Delighted, delighted . . ." he began. "I shall order your husband
+to be clapped in a lock-up for keeping such a treasure hidden from
+us till now. I've come to you with a message from my wife," he went
+on, offering her his arm. "You must help us. . . . M-m-yes. . . .
+We ought to give you the prize for beauty as they do in America
+. . . . M-m-yes. . . . The Americans. . . . My wife is expecting you
+impatiently."
+
+He led her to a stall and presented her to a middle-aged lady, the
+lower part of whose face was disproportionately large, so that she
+looked as though she were holding a big stone in her mouth.
+
+"You must help us," she said through her nose in a sing-song voice.
+"All the pretty women are working for our charity bazaar, and you
+are the only one enjoying yourself. Why won't you help us?"
+
+She went away, and Anna took her place by the cups and the silver
+samovar. She was soon doing a lively trade. Anna asked no less than
+a rouble for a cup of tea, and made the huge officer drink three
+cups. Artynov, the rich man with prominent eyes, who suffered from
+asthma, came up, too; he was not dressed in the strange costume in
+which Anna had seen him in the summer at the station, but wore a
+dress-coat like every one else. Keeping his eyes fixed on Anna, he
+drank a glass of champagne and paid a hundred roubles for it, then
+drank some tea and gave another hundred--all this without saying
+a word, as he was short of breath through asthma. . . . Anna invited
+purchasers and got money out of them, firmly convinced by now that
+her smiles and glances could not fail to afford these people great
+pleasure. She realized now that she was created exclusively for
+this noisy, brilliant, laughing life, with its music, its dancers,
+its adorers, and her old terror of a force that was sweeping down
+upon her and menacing to crush her seemed to her ridiculous: she
+was afraid of no one now, and only regretted that her mother could
+not be there to rejoice at her success.
+
+Pyotr Leontyitch, pale by now but still steady on his legs, came
+up to the stall and asked for a glass of brandy. Anna turned crimson,
+expecting him to say something inappropriate (she was already ashamed
+of having such a poor and ordinary father); but he emptied his
+glass, took ten roubles out of his roll of notes, flung it down,
+and walked away with dignity without uttering a word. A little later
+she saw him dancing in the grand chain, and by now he was staggering
+and kept shouting something, to the great confusion of his partner;
+and Anna remembered how at the ball three years before he had
+staggered and shouted in the same way, and it had ended in the
+police-sergeant's taking him home to bed, and next day the director
+had threatened to dismiss him from his post. How inappropriate that
+memory was!
+
+When the samovars were put out in the stalls and the exhausted
+ladies handed over their takings to the middle-aged lady with the
+stone in her mouth, Artynov took Anna on his arm to the hall where
+supper was served to all who had assisted at the bazaar. There were
+some twenty people at supper, not more, but it was very noisy. His
+Excellency proposed a toast:
+
+"In this magnificent dining-room it will be appropriate to drink
+to the success of the cheap dining-rooms, which are the object of
+today's bazaar."
+
+The brigadier-general proposed the toast: "To the power by which
+even the artillery is vanquished," and all the company clinked
+glasses with the ladies. It was very, very gay.
+
+When Anna was escorted home it was daylight and the cooks were going
+to market. Joyful, intoxicated, full of new sensations, exhausted,
+she undressed, dropped into bed, and at once fell asleep. . . .
+
+It was past one in the afternoon when the servant waked her and
+announced that M. Artynov had called. She dressed quickly and went
+down into the drawing-room. Soon after Artynov, His Excellency
+called to thank her for her assistance in the bazaar. With a sugary
+smile, chewing his lips, he kissed her hand, and asking her permission
+to come again, took his leave, while she remained standing in the
+middle of the drawing-room, amazed, enchanted, unable to believe
+that this change in her life, this marvellous change, had taken
+place so quickly; and at that moment Modest Alexeitch walked in
+. . . and he, too, stood before her now with the same ingratiating,
+sugary, cringingly respectful expression which she was accustomed
+to see on his face in the presence of the great and powerful; and
+with rapture, with indignation, with contempt, convinced that no
+harm would come to her from it, she said, articulating distinctly
+each word:
+
+"Be off, you blockhead!"
+
+From this time forward Anna never had one day free, as she was
+always taking part in picnics, expeditions, performances. She
+returned home every day after midnight, and went to bed on the floor
+in the drawing-room, and afterwards used to tell every one, touchingly,
+how she slept under flowers. She needed a very great deal of money,
+but she was no longer afraid of Modest Alexeitch, and spent his
+money as though it were her own; and she did not ask, did not demand
+it, simply sent him in the bills. "Give bearer two hundred roubles,"
+or "Pay one hundred roubles at once."
+
+At Easter Modest Alexeitch received the Anna of the second grade.
+When he went to offer his thanks, His Excellency put aside the paper
+he was reading and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
+
+"So now you have three Annas," he said, scrutinizing his white hands
+and pink nails--"one on your buttonhole and two on your neck."
+
+Modest Alexeitch put two fingers to his lips as a precaution against
+laughing too loud and said:
+
+"Now I have only to look forward to the arrival of a little Vladimir.
+I make bold to beg your Excellency to stand godfather."
+
+He was alluding to Vladimir of the fourth grade, and was already
+imagining how he would tell everywhere the story of this pun, so
+happy in its readiness and audacity, and he wanted to say something
+equally happy, but His Excellency was buried again in his newspaper,
+and merely gave him a nod.
+
+And Anna went on driving about with three horses, going out hunting
+with Artynov, playing in one-act dramas, going out to supper, and
+was more and more rarely with her own family; they dined now alone.
+Pyotr Leontyitch was drinking more heavily than ever; there was no
+money, and the harmonium had been sold long ago for debt. The boys
+did not let him go out alone in the street now, but looked after
+him for fear he might fall down; and whenever they met Anna driving
+in Staro-Kievsky Street with a pair of horses and Artynov on the
+box instead of a coachman, Pyotr Leontyitch took off his top-hat,
+and was about to shout to her, but Petya and Andrusha took him by
+the arm, and said imploringly:
+
+"You mustn't, father. Hush, father!"
+
+
+THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE
+
+I
+
+THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought
+out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white,
+Giant; then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive
+horses. Old Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter
+Masha:
+
+"Well, Marie Godefroi, come, get on! Hopla!"
+
+Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen,
+but her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a
+little girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and
+after there had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly
+visited, every one began to call her Marie Godefroi.
+
+"Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant. Her sister Varya got on Maika,
+Nikitin on Count Nulin, the officers on their horses, and the long
+picturesque cavalcade, with the officers in white tunics and the
+ladies in their riding habits, moved at a walking pace out of the
+yard.
+
+Nikitin noticed that when they were mounting the horses and afterwards
+riding out into the street, Masha for some reason paid attention
+to no one but himself. She looked anxiously at him and at Count
+Nulin and said:
+
+"You must hold him all the time on the curb, Sergey Vassilitch.
+Don't let him shy. He's pretending."
+
+And either because her Giant was very friendly with Count Nulin,
+or perhaps by chance, she rode all the time beside Nikitin, as she
+had done the day before, and the day before that. And he looked at
+her graceful little figure sitting on the proud white beast, at her
+delicate profile, at the chimney-pot hat, which did not suit her
+at all and made her look older than her age--looked at her with
+joy, with tenderness, with rapture; listened to her, taking in
+little of what she said, and thought:
+
+"I promise on my honour, I swear to God, I won't be afraid and I'll
+speak to her today."
+
+It was seven o'clock in the evening--the time when the scent of
+white acacia and lilac is so strong that the air and the very trees
+seem heavy with the fragrance. The band was already playing in the
+town gardens. The horses made a resounding thud on the pavement,
+on all sides there were sounds of laughter, talk, and the banging
+of gates. The soldiers they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys
+bowed to Nikitin, and all the people who were hurrying to the gardens
+to hear the band were pleased at the sight of the party. And how
+warm it was! How soft-looking were the clouds scattered carelessly
+about the sky, how kindly and comforting the shadows of the poplars
+and the acacias, which stretched across the street and reached as
+far as the balconies and second stories of the houses on the other
+side.
+
+They rode on out of the town and set off at a trot along the highroad.
+Here there was no scent of lilac and acacia, no music of the band,
+but there was the fragrance of the fields, there was the green of
+young rye and wheat, the marmots were squeaking, the rooks were
+cawing. Wherever one looked it was green, with only here and there
+black patches of bare ground, and far away to the left in the
+cemetery a white streak of apple-blossom.
+
+They passed the slaughter-houses, then the brewery, and overtook a
+military band hastening to the suburban gardens.
+
+"Polyansky has a very fine horse, I don't deny that," Masha said
+to Nikitin, with a glance towards the officer who was riding beside
+Varya. "But it has blemishes. That white patch on its left leg ought
+not to be there, and, look, it tosses its head. You can't train it
+not to now; it will toss its head till the end of its days."
+
+Masha was as passionate a lover of horses as her father. She felt
+a pang when she saw other people with fine horses, and was pleased
+when she saw defects in them. Nikitin knew nothing about horses;
+it made absolutely no difference to him whether he held his horse
+on the bridle or on the curb, whether he trotted or galloped; he
+only felt that his position was strained and unnatural, and that
+consequently the officers who knew how to sit in their saddles must
+please Masha more than he could. And he was jealous of the officers.
+
+As they rode by the suburban gardens some one suggested their going
+in and getting some seltzer-water. They went in. There were no trees
+but oaks in the gardens; they had only just come into leaf, so that
+through the young foliage the whole garden could still be seen with
+its platform, little tables, and swings, and the crows' nests were
+visible, looking like big hats. The party dismounted near a table
+and asked for seltzer-water. People they knew, walking about the
+garden, came up to them. Among them the army doctor in high boots,
+and the conductor of the band, waiting for the musicians. The doctor
+must have taken Nikitin for a student, for he asked: "Have you come
+for the summer holidays?"
+
+"No, I am here permanently," answered Nikitin. "I am a teacher at
+the school."
+
+"You don't say so?" said the doctor, with surprise. "So young and
+already a teacher?"
+
+"Young, indeed! My goodness, I'm twenty-six!
+
+"You have a beard and moustache, but yet one would never guess you
+were more than twenty-two or twenty-three. How young-looking you
+are!"
+
+"What a beast!" thought Nikitin. "He, too, takes me for a
+whipper-snapper!"
+
+He disliked it extremely when people referred to his youth, especially
+in the presence of women or the schoolboys. Ever since he had come
+to the town as a master in the school he had detested his own
+youthful appearance. The schoolboys were not afraid of him, old
+people called him "young man," ladies preferred dancing with him
+to listening to his long arguments, and he would have given a great
+deal to be ten years older.
+
+From the garden they went on to the Shelestovs' farm. There they
+stopped at the gate and asked the bailiff's wife, Praskovya, to
+bring some new milk. Nobody drank the milk; they all looked at one
+another, laughed, and galloped back. As they rode back the band was
+playing in the suburban garden; the sun was setting behind the
+cemetery, and half the sky was crimson from the sunset.
+
+Masha again rode beside Nikitin. He wanted to tell her how passionately
+he loved her, but he was afraid he would be overheard by the officers
+and Varya, and he was silent. Masha was silent, too, and he felt
+why she was silent and why she was riding beside him, and was so
+happy that the earth, the sky, the lights of the town, the black
+outline of the brewery--all blended for him into something very
+pleasant and comforting, and it seemed to him as though Count Nulin
+were stepping on air and would climb up into the crimson sky.
+
+They arrived home. The samovar was already boiling on the table,
+old Shelestov was sitting with his friends, officials in the Circuit
+Court, and as usual he was criticizing something.
+
+"It's loutishness!" he said. "Loutishness and nothing more. Yes!"
+
+Since Nikitin had been in love with Masha, everything at the
+Shelestovs' pleased him: the house, the garden, and the evening
+tea, and the wickerwork chairs, and the old nurse, and even the
+word "loutishness," which the old man was fond of using. The only
+thing he did not like was the number of cats and dogs and the
+Egyptian pigeons, who moaned disconsolately in a big cage in the
+verandah. There were so many house-dogs and yard-dogs that he had
+only learnt to recognize two of them in the course of his acquaintance
+with the Shelestovs: Mushka and Som. Mushka was a little mangy dog
+with a shaggy face, spiteful and spoiled. She hated Nikitin: when
+she saw him she put her head on one side, showed her teeth, and
+began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she would get
+under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she would
+go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be
+frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."
+
+Som was a tall black dog with long legs and a tail as hard as a
+stick. At dinner and tea he usually moved about under the table,
+and thumped on people's boots and on the legs of the table with his
+tail. He was a good-natured, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not
+endure him because he had the habit of putting his head on people's
+knees at dinner and messing their trousers with saliva. Nikitin had
+more than once tried to hit him on his head with a knife-handle,
+to flip him on the nose, had abused him, had complained of him, but
+nothing saved his trousers.
+
+After their ride the tea, jam, rusks, and butter seemed very nice.
+They all drank their first glass in silence and with great relish;
+over the second they began an argument. It was always Varya who
+started the arguments at tea; she was good-looking, handsomer than
+Masha, and was considered the cleverest and most cultured person
+in the house, and she behaved with dignity and severity, as an
+eldest daughter should who has taken the place of her dead mother
+in the house. As the mistress of the house, she felt herself entitled
+to wear a dressing-gown in the presence of her guests, and to call
+the officers by their surnames; she looked on Masha as a little
+girl, and talked to her as though she were a schoolmistress. She
+used to speak of herself as an old maid--so she was certain she
+would marry.
+
+Every conversation, even about the weather, she invariably turned
+into an argument. She had a passion for catching at words, pouncing
+on contradictions, quibbling over phrases. You would begin talking
+to her, and she would stare at you and suddenly interrupt: "Excuse
+me, excuse me, Petrov, the other day you said the very opposite!"
+
+Or she would smile ironically and say: "I notice, though, you begin
+to advocate the principles of the secret police. I congratulate
+you."
+
+If you jested or made a pun, you would hear her voice at once:
+"That's stale," "That's pointless." If an officer ventured on a
+joke, she would make a contemptuous grimace and say, "An army joke!"
+
+And she rolled the _r_ so impressively that Mushka invariably
+answered from under a chair, "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
+
+On this occasion at tea the argument began with Nikitin's mentioning
+the school examinations.
+
+"Excuse me, Sergey Vassilitch," Varya interrupted him. "You say
+it's difficult for the boys. And whose fault is that, let me ask
+you? For instance, you set the boys in the eighth class an essay
+on 'Pushkin as a Psychologist.' To begin with, you shouldn't set
+such a difficult subject; and, secondly, Pushkin was not a psychologist.
+Shtchedrin now, or Dostoevsky let us say, is a different matter,
+but Pushkin is a great poet and nothing more."
+
+"Shtchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another," Nikitin answered
+sulkily.
+
+"I know you don't think much of Shtchedrin at the high school, but
+that's not the point. Tell me, in what sense is Pushkin a psychologist?"
+
+"Why, do you mean to say he was not a psychologist? If you like,
+I'll give you examples."
+
+And Nikitin recited several passages from "Onyegin" and then from
+"Boris Godunov."
+
+"I see no psychology in that." Varya sighed. "The psychologist is
+the man who describes the recesses of the human soul, and that's
+fine poetry and nothing more."
+
+"I know the sort of psychology you want," said Nikitin, offended.
+"You want some one to saw my finger with a blunt saw while I howl
+at the top of my voice--that's what you mean by psychology."
+
+"That's poor! But still you haven't shown me in what sense Pushkin
+is a psychologist?"
+
+When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow,
+conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from
+his seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a
+moan, running from one end of the room to another. And it was the
+same now: he jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a
+moan walked round the table, then he sat down a little way off.
+
+The officers took his part. Captain Polyansky began assuring Varya
+that Pushkin really was a psychologist, and to prove it quoted two
+lines from Lermontov; Lieutenant Gernet said that if Pushkin had
+not been a psychologist they would not have erected a monument to
+him in Moscow.
+
+"That's loutishness!" was heard from the other end of the table.
+"I said as much to the governor: 'It's loutishness, your Excellency,'
+I said."
+
+"I won't argue any more," cried Nikitin. "It's unending. . . .
+Enough! Ach, get away, you nasty dog!" he cried to Som, who laid
+his head and paw on his knee.
+
+"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" came from under the table.
+
+"Admit that you are wrong!" cried Varya. "Own up!"
+
+But some young ladies came in, and the argument dropped of itself.
+They all went into the drawing-room. Varya sat down at the piano
+and began playing dances. They danced first a waltz, then a polka,
+then a quadrille with a grand chain which Captain Polyansky led
+through all the rooms, then a waltz again.
+
+During the dancing the old men sat in the drawing-room, smoking and
+looking at the young people. Among them was Shebaldin, the director
+of the municipal bank, who was famed for his love of literature and
+dramatic art. He had founded the local Musical and Dramatic Society,
+and took part in the performances himself, confining himself, for
+some reason, to playing comic footmen or to reading in a sing-song
+voice "The Woman who was a Sinner." His nickname in the town was
+"the Mummy," as he was tall, very lean and scraggy, and always had
+a solemn air and a fixed, lustreless eye. He was so devoted to the
+dramatic art that he even shaved his moustache and beard, and this
+made him still more like a mummy.
+
+After the grand chain, he shuffled up to Nikitin sideways, coughed,
+and said:
+
+"I had the pleasure of being present during the argument at tea. I
+fully share your opinion. We are of one mind, and it would be a
+great pleasure to me to talk to you. Have you read Lessing on the
+dramatic art of Hamburg?"
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+Shebaldin was horrified, and waved his hands as though he had burnt
+his fingers, and saying nothing more, staggered back from Nikitin.
+Shebaldin's appearance, his question, and his surprise, struck
+Nikitin as funny, but he thought none the less:
+
+"It really is awkward. I am a teacher of literature, and to this
+day I've not read Lessing. I must read him."
+
+Before supper the whole company, old and young, sat down to play
+"fate." They took two packs of cards: one pack was dealt round to
+the company, the other was laid on the table face downwards.
+
+"The one who has this card in his hand," old Shelestov began solemnly,
+lifting the top card of the second pack, "is fated to go into the
+nursery and kiss nurse."
+
+The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin.
+They all crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing
+and clapping their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great
+uproar and shouting.
+
+"Not so ardently!" cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. "Not so
+ardently!"
+
+It was Nikitin's "fate" to hear the confessions of all. He sat on
+a chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and
+put over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya.
+
+"I know your sins," Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her
+stern profile. "Tell me, madam, how do you explain your walking
+with Polyansky every day? Oh, it's not for nothing she walks with
+an hussar!"
+
+"That's poor," said Varya, and walked away.
+
+Then under the shawl he saw the shine of big motionless eyes, caught
+the lines of a dear profile in the dark, together with a familiar,
+precious fragrance which reminded Nikitin of Masha's room.
+
+"Marie Godefroi," he said, and did not know his own voice, it was
+so soft and tender, "what are your sins?"
+
+Masha screwed up her eyes and put out the tip of her tongue at him,
+then she laughed and went away. And a minute later she was standing
+in the middle of the room, clapping her hands and crying:
+
+"Supper, supper, supper!"
+
+And they all streamed into the dining-room. At supper Varya had
+another argument, and this time with her father. Polyansky ate
+stolidly, drank red wine, and described to Nikitin how once in a
+winter campaign he had stood all night up to his knees in a bog;
+the enemy was so near that they were not allowed to speak or smoke,
+the night was cold and dark, a piercing wind was blowing. Nikitin
+listened and stole side-glances at Masha. She was gazing at him
+immovably, without blinking, as though she was pondering something
+or was lost in a reverie. . . . It was pleasure and agony to him
+both at once.
+
+"Why does she look at me like that?" was the question that fretted
+him. "It's awkward. People may notice it. Oh, how young, how naive
+she is!"
+
+The party broke up at midnight. When Nikitin went out at the gate,
+a window opened on the first-floor, and Masha showed herself at it.
+
+"Sergey Vassilitch!" she called.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I tell you what . . ." said Masha, evidently thinking of something
+to say. "I tell you what. . . Polyansky said he would come in a day
+or two with his camera and take us all. We must meet here."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Masha vanished, the window was slammed, and some one immediately
+began playing the piano in the house.
+
+"Well, it is a house!" thought Nikitin while he crossed the street.
+"A house in which there is no moaning except from Egyptian pigeons,
+and they only do it because they have no other means of expressing
+their joy!"
+
+But the Shelestovs were not the only festive household. Nikitin had
+not gone two hundred paces before he heard the strains of a piano
+from another house. A little further he met a peasant playing the
+balalaika at the gate. In the gardens the band struck up a potpourri
+of Russian songs.
+
+Nikitin lived nearly half a mile from the Shelestoys' in a flat of
+eight rooms at the rent of three hundred roubles a year, which he
+shared with his colleague Ippolit Ippolititch, a teacher of geography
+and history. When Nikitin went in this Ippolit Ippolititch, a
+snub-nosed, middle-aged man with a reddish beard, with a coarse,
+good-natured, unintellectual face like a workman's, was sitting at
+the table correcting his pupils' maps. He considered that the most
+important and necessary part of the study of geography was the
+drawing of maps, and of the study of history the learning of dates:
+he would sit for nights together correcting in blue pencil the maps
+drawn by the boys and girls he taught, or making chronological
+tables.
+
+"What a lovely day it has been!" said Nikitin, going in to him. "I
+wonder at you--how can you sit indoors?"
+
+Ippolit Ippolititch was not a talkative person; he either remained
+silent or talked of things which everybody knew already. Now what
+he answered was:
+
+"Yes, very fine weather. It's May now; we soon shall have real
+summer. And summer's a very different thing from winter. In the
+winter you have to heat the stoves, but in summer you can keep warm
+without. In summer you have your window open at night and still are
+warm, and in winter you are cold even with the double frames in."
+
+Nikitin had not sat at the table for more than one minute before
+he was bored.
+
+"Good-night!" he said, getting up and yawning. "I wanted to tell
+you something romantic concerning myself, but you are--geography!
+If one talks to you of love, you will ask one at once, 'What was
+the date of the Battle of Kalka?' Confound you, with your battles
+and your capes in Siberia!"
+
+"What are you cross about?"
+
+"Why, it is vexatious!"
+
+And vexed that he had not spoken to Masha, and that he had no one
+to talk to of his love, he went to his study and lay down upon the
+sofa. It was dark and still in the study. Lying gazing into the
+darkness, Nikitin for some reason began thinking how in two or three
+years he would go to Petersburg, how Masha would see him off at the
+station and would cry; in Petersburg he would get a long letter
+from her in which she would entreat him to come home as quickly as
+possible. And he would write to her. . . . He would begin his letter
+like that: "My dear little rat!"
+
+"Yes, my dear little rat!" he said, and he laughed.
+
+He was lying in an uncomfortable position. He put his arms under
+his head and put his left leg over the back of the sofa. He felt
+more comfortable. Meanwhile a pale light was more and more perceptible
+at the windows, sleepy cocks crowed in the yard. Nikitin went on
+thinking how he would come back from Petersburg, how Masha would
+meet him at the station, and with a shriek of delight would fling
+herself on his neck; or, better still, he would cheat her and come
+home by stealth late at night: the cook would open the door, then
+he would go on tiptoe to the bedroom, undress noiselessly, and jump
+into bed! And she would wake up and be overjoyed.
+
+It was beginning to get quite light. By now there were no windows,
+no study. On the steps of the brewery by which they had ridden that
+day Masha was sitting, saying something. Then she took Nikitin by
+the arm and went with him to the suburban garden. There he saw the
+oaks and, the crows' nests like hats. One of the nests rocked; out
+of it peeped Shebaldin, shouting loudly: "You have not read Lessing!"
+
+Nikitin shuddered all over and opened his eyes. Ippolit Ippolititch
+was standing before the sofa, and throwing back his head, was putting
+on his cravat.
+
+"Get up; it's time for school," he said. "You shouldn't sleep in
+your clothes; it spoils your clothes. You should sleep in your bed,
+undressed."
+
+And as usual he began slowly and emphatically saying what everybody
+knew.
+
+Nikitin's first lesson was on Russian language in the second class.
+When at nine o'clock punctually he went into the classroom, he saw
+written on the blackboard two large letters--_M. S._ That, no
+doubt, meant Masha Shelestov.
+
+"They've scented it out already, the rascals . . ." thought Nikitin.
+"How is it they know everything?"
+
+The second lesson was in the fifth class. And there two letters,
+_M. S._, were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of
+the classroom at the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind
+him as though from a theatre gallery:
+
+"Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!"
+
+His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were
+weighted down with inertia. The boys, who were expecting every day
+to break up before the examinations, did nothing, were restless,
+and so bored that they got into mischief. Nikitin, too, was restless,
+did not notice their pranks, and was continually going to the window.
+He could see the street brilliantly lighted up with the sun; above
+the houses the blue limpid sky, the birds, and far, far away, beyond
+the gardens and the houses, vast indefinite distance, the forests
+in the blue haze, the smoke from a passing train. . . .
+
+Here two officers in white tunics, playing with their whips, passed
+in the street in the shade of the acacias. Here a lot of Jews, with
+grey beards, and caps on, drove past in a waggonette. . . . The
+governess walked by with the director's granddaughter. Som ran by
+in the company of two other dogs. . . . And then Varya, wearing a
+simple grey dress and red stockings, carrying the "Vyestnik Evropi"
+in her hand, passed by. She must have been to the town library. . . .
+
+And it would be a long time before lessons were over at three
+o'clock! And after school he could not go home nor to the Shelestovs',
+but must go to give a lesson at Wolf's. This Wolf, a wealthy Jew
+who had turned Lutheran, did not send his children to the high
+school, but had them taught at home by the high-school masters, and
+paid five roubles a lesson.
+
+He was bored, bored, bored.
+
+At three o'clock he went to Wolf's and spent there, as it seemed
+to him, an eternity. He left there at five o'clock, and before seven
+he had to be at the high school again to a meeting of the masters
+--to draw up the plan for the _viva voce_ examination of the fourth
+and sixth classes.
+
+When late in the evening he left the high school and went to the
+Shelestovs', his heart was beating and his face was flushed. A month
+before, even a week before, he had, every time that he made up his
+mind to speak to her, prepared a whole speech, with an introduction
+and a conclusion. Now he had not one word ready; everything was in
+a muddle in his head, and all he knew was that today he would
+_certainly_ declare himself, and that it was utterly impossible to
+wait any longer.
+
+"I will ask her to come to the garden," he thought; "we'll walk
+about a little and I'll speak."
+
+There was not a soul in the hall; he went into the dining-room and
+then into the drawing-room. . . . There was no one there either.
+He could hear Varya arguing with some one upstairs and the clink
+of the dressmaker's scissors in the nursery.
+
+There was a little room in the house which had three names: the
+little room, the passage room, and the dark room. There was a big
+cupboard in it where they kept medicines, gunpowder, and their
+hunting gear. Leading from this room to the first floor was a narrow
+wooden staircase where cats were always asleep. There were two doors
+in it--one leading to the nursery, one to the drawing-room. When
+Nikitin went into this room to go upstairs, the door from the nursery
+opened and shut with such a bang that it made the stairs and the
+cupboard tremble; Masha, in a dark dress, ran in with a piece of
+blue material in her hand, and, not noticing Nikitin, darted towards
+the stairs.
+
+"Stay . . ." said Nikitin, stopping her. "Good-evening, Godefroi
+. . . . Allow me. . . ."
+
+He gasped, he did not know what to say; with one hand he held her
+hand and with the other the blue material. And she was half frightened,
+half surprised, and looked at him with big eyes.
+
+"Allow me . . ." Nikitin went on, afraid she would go away. "There's
+something I must say to you. . . . Only . . . it's inconvenient
+here. I cannot, I am incapable. . . . Understand, Godefroi, I can't
+--that's all . . . ."
+
+The blue material slipped on to the floor, and Nikitin took Masha
+by the other hand. She turned pale, moved her lips, then stepped
+back from Nikitin and found herself in the corner between the wall
+and the cupboard.
+
+"On my honour, I assure you . . ." he said softly. "Masha, on my
+honour. . . ."
+
+She threw back her head and he kissed her lips, and that the kiss
+might last longer he put his fingers to her cheeks; and it somehow
+happened that he found himself in the corner between the cupboard
+and the wall, and she put her arms round his neck and pressed her
+head against his chin.
+
+Then they both ran into the garden. The Shelestoys had a garden of
+nine acres. There were about twenty old maples and lime-trees in
+it; there was one fir-tree, and all the rest were fruit-trees:
+cherries, apples, pears, horse-chestnuts, silvery olive-trees. . . .
+There were heaps of flowers, too.
+
+Nikitin and Masha ran along the avenues in silence, laughed, asked
+each other from time to time disconnected questions which they did
+not answer. A crescent moon was shining over the garden, and drowsy
+tulips and irises were stretching up from the dark grass in its
+faint light, as though entreating for words of love for them, too.
+
+When Nikitin and Masha went back to the house, the officers and the
+young ladies were already assembled and dancing the mazurka. Again
+Polyansky led the grand chain through all the rooms, again after
+dancing they played "fate." Before supper, when the visitors had
+gone into the dining-room, Masha, left alone with Nikitin, pressed
+close to him and said:
+
+"You must speak to papa and Varya yourself; I am ashamed."
+
+After supper he talked to the old father. After listening to him,
+Shelestov thought a little and said:
+
+"I am very grateful for the honour you do me and my daughter, but
+let me speak to you as a friend. I will speak to you, not as a
+father, but as one gentleman to another. Tell me, why do you want
+to be married so young? Only peasants are married so young, and
+that, of course, is loutishness. But why should you? Where's the
+satisfaction of putting on the fetters at your age?"
+
+"I am not young!" said Nikitin, offended. "I am in my twenty-seventh
+year."
+
+"Papa, the farrier has come!" cried Varya from the other room.
+
+And the conversation broke off. Varya, Masha, and Polyansky saw
+Nikitin home. When they reached his gate, Varya said:
+
+"Why is it your mysterious Metropolit Metropolititch never shows
+himself anywhere? He might come and see us."
+
+The mysterious Ippolit Ippolititch was sitting on his bed, taking
+off his trousers, when Nikitin went in to him.
+
+"Don't go to bed, my dear fellow," said Nikitin breathlessly. "Stop
+a minute; don't go to bed!"
+
+Ippolit Ippolititch put on his trousers hurriedly and asked in a
+flutter:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I am going to be married."
+
+Nikitin sat down beside his companion, and looking at him wonderingly,
+as though surprised at himself, said:
+
+"Only fancy, I am going to be married! To Masha Shelestov! I made
+an offer today."
+
+"Well? She seems a good sort of girl. Only she is very young."
+
+"Yes, she is young," sighed Nikitin, and shrugged his shoulders
+with a careworn air. "Very, very young!"
+
+"She was my pupil at the high school. I know her. She wasn't bad
+at geography, but she was no good at history. And she was inattentive
+in class, too."
+
+Nikitin for some reason felt suddenly sorry for his companion, and
+longed to say something kind and comforting to him.
+
+"My dear fellow, why don't you get married?" he asked. "Why don't
+you marry Varya, for instance? She is a splendid, first-rate girl!
+It's true she is very fond of arguing, but a heart . . . what a
+heart! She was just asking about you. Marry her, my dear boy! Eh?"
+
+He knew perfectly well that Varya would not marry this dull,
+snub-nosed man, but still persuaded him to marry her--why?
+
+"Marriage is a serious step," said Ippolit Ippolititch after a
+moment's thought. "One has to look at it all round and weigh things
+thoroughly; it's not to be done rashly. Prudence is always a good
+thing, and especially in marriage, when a man, ceasing to be a
+bachelor, begins a new life."
+
+And he talked of what every one has known for ages. Nikitin did not
+stay to listen, said goodnight, and went to his own room. He undressed
+quickly and quickly got into bed, in order to be able to think the
+sooner of his happiness, of Masha, of the future; he smiled, then
+suddenly recalled that he had not read Lessing.
+
+"I must read him," he thought. "Though, after all, why should I?
+Bother him!"
+
+And exhausted by his happiness, he fell asleep at once and went on
+smiling till the morning.
+
+He dreamed of the thud of horses' hoofs on a wooden floor; he dreamed
+of the black horse Count Nulin, then of the white Giant and its
+sister Maika, being led out of the stable.
+
+II
+
+"It was very crowded and noisy in the church, and once some one
+cried out, and the head priest, who was marrying Masha and me,
+looked through his spectacles at the crowd, and said severely:
+'Don't move about the church, and don't make a noise, but stand
+quietly and pray. You should have the fear of God in your hearts.'
+
+"My best men were two of my colleagues, and Masha's best men were
+Captain Polyansky and Lieutenant Gernet. The bishop's choir sang
+superbly. The sputtering of the candles, the brilliant light, the
+gorgeous dresses, the officers, the numbers of gay, happy faces,
+and a special ethereal look in Masha, everything together--the
+surroundings and the words of the wedding prayers--moved me to
+tears and filled me with triumph. I thought how my life had blossomed,
+how poetically it was shaping itself! Two years ago I was still a
+student, I was living in cheap furnished rooms, without money,
+without relations, and, as I fancied then, with nothing to look
+forward to. Now I am a teacher in the high school in one of the
+best provincial towns, with a secure income, loved, spoiled. It is
+for my sake, I thought, this crowd is collected, for my sake three
+candelabra have been lighted, the deacon is booming, the choir is
+doing its best; and it's for my sake that this young creature, whom
+I soon shall call my wife, is so young, so elegant, and so joyful.
+I recalled our first meetings, our rides into the country, my
+declaration of love and the weather, which, as though expressly,
+was so exquisitely fine all the summer; and the happiness which at
+one time in my old rooms seemed to me possible only in novels and
+stories, I was now experiencing in reality--I was now, as it were,
+holding it in my hands.
+
+"After the ceremony they all crowded in disorder round Masha and
+me, expressed their genuine pleasure, congratulated us and wished
+us joy. The brigadier-general, an old man of seventy, confined
+himself to congratulating Masha, and said to her in a squeaky, aged
+voice, so loud that it could be heard all over the church:
+
+"'I hope that even after you are married you may remain the rose
+you are now, my dear.'
+
+"The officers, the director, and all the teachers smiled from
+politeness, and I was conscious of an agreeable artificial smile
+on my face, too. Dear Ippolit Ippolititch, the teacher of history
+and geography, who always says what every one has heard before,
+pressed my hand warmly and said with feeling:
+
+"'Hitherto you have been unmarried and have lived alone, and now
+you are married and no longer single.'
+
+"From the church we went to a two-storied house which I am receiving
+as part of the dowry. Besides that house Masha is bringing me twenty
+thousand roubles, as well as a piece of waste land with a shanty
+on it, where I am told there are numbers of hens and ducks which
+are not looked after and are turning wild. When I got home from the
+church, I stretched myself at full length on the low sofa in my new
+study and began to smoke; I felt snug, cosy, and comfortable, as I
+never had in my life before. And meanwhile the wedding party were
+shouting 'Hurrah!' while a wretched band in the hall played flourishes
+and all sorts of trash. Varya, Masha's sister, ran into the study
+with a wineglass in her hand, and with a queer, strained expression,
+as though her mouth were full of water; apparently she had meant
+to go on further, but she suddenly burst out laughing and sobbing,
+and the wineglass crashed on the floor. We took her by the arms and
+led her away.
+
+"'Nobody can understand!' she muttered afterwards, lying on the
+old nurse's bed in a back room. 'Nobody, nobody! My God, nobody can
+understand!'
+
+"But every one understood very well that she was four years older
+than her sister Masha, and still unmarried, and that she was crying,
+not from envy, but from the melancholy consciousness that her time
+was passing, and perhaps had passed. When they danced the quadrille,
+she was back in the drawing-room with a tear-stained and heavily
+powdered face, and I saw Captain Polyansky holding a plate of ice
+before her while she ate it with a spoon.
+
+"It is past five o'clock in the morning. I took up my diary to
+describe my complete and perfect happiness, and thought I would
+write a good six pages, and read it tomorrow to Masha; but, strange
+to say, everything is muddled in my head and as misty as a dream,
+and I can remember vividly nothing but that episode with Varya, and
+I want to write, 'Poor Varya!' I could go on sitting here and writing
+'Poor Varya!' By the way, the trees have begun rustling; it will
+rain. The crows are cawing, and my Masha, who has just gone to
+sleep, has for some reason a sorrowful face."
+
+For a long while afterwards Nikitin did not write his diary. At the
+beginning of August he had the school examinations, and after the
+fifteenth the classes began. As a rule he set off for school before
+nine in the morning, and before ten o'clock he was looking at his
+watch and pining for his Masha and his new house. In the lower forms
+he would set some boy to dictate, and while the boys were writing,
+would sit in the window with his eyes shut, dreaming; whether he
+dreamed of the future or recalled the past, everything seemed to
+him equally delightful, like a fairy tale. In the senior classes
+they were reading aloud Gogol or Pushkin's prose works, and that
+made him sleepy; people, trees, fields, horses, rose before his
+imagination, and he would say with a sigh, as though fascinated by
+the author:
+
+"How lovely!"
+
+At the midday recess Masha used to send him lunch in a snow-white
+napkin, and he would eat it slowly, with pauses, to prolong the
+enjoyment of it; and Ippolit Ippolititch, whose lunch as a rule
+consisted of nothing but bread, looked at him with respect and envy,
+and gave expression to some familiar fact, such as:
+
+"Men cannot live without food."
+
+After school Nikitin went straight to give his private lessons, and
+when at last by six o'clock he got home, he felt excited and anxious,
+as though he had been away for a year. He would run upstairs
+breathless, find Masha, throw his arms round her, and kiss her and
+swear that he loved her, that he could not live without her, declare
+that he had missed her fearfully, and ask her in trepidation how
+she was and why she looked so depressed. Then they would dine
+together. After dinner he would lie on the sofa in his study and
+smoke, while she sat beside him and talked in a low voice.
+
+His happiest days now were Sundays and holidays, when he was at
+home from morning till evening. On those days he took part in the
+naive but extraordinarily pleasant life which reminded him of a
+pastoral idyl. He was never weary of watching how his sensible and
+practical Masha was arranging her nest, and anxious to show that
+he was of some use in the house, he would do something useless--
+for instance, bring the chaise out of the stable and look at it
+from every side. Masha had installed a regular dairy with three
+cows, and in her cellar she had many jugs of milk and pots of sour
+cream, and she kept it all for butter. Sometimes, by way of a joke,
+Nikitin would ask her for a glass of milk, and she would be quite
+upset because it was against her rules; but he would laugh and throw
+his arms round her, saying:
+
+"There, there; I was joking, my darling! I was joking!"
+
+Or he would laugh at her strictness when, finding in the cupboard
+some stale bit of cheese or sausage as hard as a stone, she would
+say seriously:
+
+"They will eat that in the kitchen."
+
+He would observe that such a scrap was only fit for a mousetrap,
+and she would reply warmly that men knew nothing about housekeeping,
+and that it was just the same to the servants if you were to send
+down a hundredweight of savouries to the kitchen. He would agree,
+and embrace her enthusiastically. Everything that was just in what
+she said seemed to him extraordinary and amazing; and what did not
+fit in with his convictions seemed to him naive and touching.
+
+Sometimes he was in a philosophical mood, and he would begin to
+discuss some abstract subject while she listened and looked at his
+face with curiosity.
+
+"I am immensely happy with you, my joy," he used to say, playing
+with her fingers or plaiting and unplaiting her hair. "But I don't
+look upon this happiness of mine as something that has come to me
+by chance, as though it had dropped from heaven. This happiness is
+a perfectly natural, consistent, logical consequence. I believe
+that man is the creator of his own happiness, and now I am enjoying
+just what I have myself created. Yes, I speak without false modesty:
+I have created this happiness myself and I have a right to it. You
+know my past. My unhappy childhood, without father or mother; my
+depressing youth, poverty--all this was a struggle, all this was
+the path by which I made my way to happiness. . . ."
+
+In October the school sustained a heavy loss: Ippolit Ippolititch
+was taken ill with erysipelas on the head and died. For two days
+before his death he was unconscious and delirious, but even in his
+delirium he said nothing that was not perfectly well known to every
+one.
+
+"The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. . . . Horses eat oats and
+hay. . . ."
+
+There were no lessons at the high school on the day of his funeral.
+His colleagues and pupils were the coffin-bearers, and the school
+choir sang all the way to the grave the anthem "Holy God." Three
+priests, two deacons, all his pupils and the staff of the boys'
+high school, and the bishop's choir in their best kaftans, took
+part in the procession. And passers-by who met the solemn procession,
+crossed themselves and said:
+
+"God grant us all such a death."
+
+Returning home from the cemetery much moved, Nikitin got out his
+diary from the table and wrote:
+
+"We have just consigned to the tomb Ippolit Ippolititch Ryzhitsky.
+Peace to your ashes, modest worker! Masha, Varya, and all the women
+at the funeral, wept from genuine feeling, perhaps because they
+knew this uninteresting, humble man had never been loved by a woman.
+I wanted to say a warm word at my colleague's grave, but I was
+warned that this might displease the director, as he did not like
+our poor friend. I believe that this is the first day since my
+marriage that my heart has been heavy."
+
+There was no other event of note in the scholastic year.
+
+The winter was mild, with wet snow and no frost; on Epiphany Eve,
+for instance, the wind howled all night as though it were autumn,
+and water trickled off the roofs; and in the morning, at the ceremony
+of the blessing of the water, the police allowed no one to go on
+the river, because they said the ice was swelling up and looked
+dark. But in spite of bad weather Nikitin's life was as happy as
+in summer. And, indeed, he acquired another source of pleasure; he
+learned to play _vint_. Only one thing troubled him, moved him to
+anger, and seemed to prevent him from being perfectly happy: the
+cats and dogs which formed part of his wife's dowry. The rooms,
+especially in the morning, always smelt like a menagerie, and nothing
+could destroy the odour; the cats frequently fought with the dogs.
+The spiteful beast Mushka was fed a dozen times a day; she still
+refused to recognize Nikitin and growled at him: "Rrr . . .
+nga-nga-nga!"
+
+One night in Lent he was returning home from the club where he had
+been playing cards. It was dark, raining, and muddy. Nikitin had
+an unpleasant feeling at the bottom of his heart and could not
+account for it. He did not know whether it was because he had lost
+twelve roubles at cards, or whether because one of the players,
+when they were settling up, had said that of course Nikitin had
+pots of money, with obvious reference to his wife's portion. He did
+not regret the twelve roubles, and there was nothing offensive in
+what had been said; but, still, there was the unpleasant feeling.
+He did not even feel a desire to go home.
+
+"Foo, how horrid!" he said, standing still at a lamp-post.
+
+It occurred to him that he did not regret the twelve roubles because
+he got them for nothing. If he had been a working man he would have
+known the value of every farthing, and would not have been so
+careless whether he lost or won. And his good-fortune had all, he
+reflected, come to him by chance, for nothing, and really was as
+superfluous for him as medicine for the healthy. If, like the vast
+majority of people, he had been harassed by anxiety for his daily
+bread, had been struggling for existence, if his back and chest had
+ached from work, then supper, a warm snug home, and domestic
+happiness, would have been the necessity, the compensation, the
+crown of his life; as it was, all this had a strange, indefinite
+significance for him.
+
+"Foo, how horrid!" he repeated, knowing perfectly well that these
+reflections were in themselves a bad sign.
+
+When he got home Masha was in bed: she was breathing evenly and
+smiling, and was evidently sleeping with great enjoyment. Near her
+the white cat lay curled up, purring. While Nikitin lit the candle
+and lighted his cigarette, Masha woke up and greedily drank a glass
+of water.
+
+"I ate too many sweets," she said, and laughed. "Have you been
+home?" she asked after a pause.
+
+"No."
+
+Nikitin knew already that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been
+building great hopes of late, was being transferred to one of the
+western provinces, and was already making his farewell visits in
+the town, and so it was depressing at his father-in-law's.
+
+"Varya looked in this evening," said Masha, sitting up. "She did
+not say anything, but one could see from her face how wretched she
+is, poor darling! I can't bear Polyansky. He is fat and bloated,
+and when he walks or dances his cheeks shake. . . . He is not a man
+I would choose. But, still, I did think he was a decent person."
+
+"I think he is a decent person now," said Nikitin.
+
+"Then why has he treated Varya so badly?"
+
+"Why badly?" asked Nikitin, beginning to feel irritation against
+the white cat, who was stretching and arching its back. "As far as
+I know, he has made no proposal and has given her no promises."
+
+"Then why was he so often at the house? If he didn't mean to marry
+her, he oughtn't to have come."
+
+Nikitin put out the candle and got into bed. But he felt disinclined
+to lie down and to sleep. He felt as though his head were immense
+and empty as a barn, and that new, peculiar thoughts were wandering
+about in it like tall shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft
+light of the ikon lamp, that beamed upon their quiet domestic
+happiness, that apart from this little world in which he and this
+cat lived so peacefully and happily, there was another world. . . .
+And he had a passionate, poignant longing to be in that other
+world, to work himself at some factory or big workshop, to address
+big audiences, to write, to publish, to raise a stir, to exhaust
+himself, to suffer. . . . He wanted something that would engross
+him till he forgot himself, ceased to care for the personal happiness
+which yielded him only sensations so monotonous. And suddenly there
+rose vividly before his imagination the figure of Shebaldin with
+his clean-shaven face, saying to him with horror: "You haven't even
+read Lessing! You are quite behind the times! How you have gone to
+seed!"
+
+Masha woke up and again drank some water. He glanced at her neck,
+at her plump shoulders and throat, and remembered the word the
+brigadier-general had used in church--"rose."
+
+"Rose," he muttered, and laughed.
+
+His laugh was answered by a sleepy growl from Mushka under the bed:
+"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
+
+A heavy anger sank like a cold weight on his heart, and he felt
+tempted to say something rude to Masha, and even to jump up and hit
+her; his heart began throbbing.
+
+"So then," he asked, restraining himself, "since I went to your
+house, I was bound in duty to marry you?"
+
+"Of course. You know that very well."
+
+"That's nice." And a minute later he repeated: "That's nice."
+
+To relieve the throbbing of his heart, and to avoid saying too much,
+Nikitin went to his study and lay down on the sofa, without a pillow;
+then he lay on the floor on the carpet.
+
+"What nonsense it is!" he said to reassure himself. "You are a
+teacher, you are working in the noblest of callings. . . . What
+need have you of any other world? What rubbish!"
+
+But almost immediately he told himself with conviction that he was
+not a real teacher, but simply a government employe, as commonplace
+and mediocre as the Czech who taught Greek. He had never had a
+vocation for teaching, he knew nothing of the theory of teaching,
+and never had been interested in the subject; he did not know how
+to treat children; he did not understand the significance of what
+he taught, and perhaps did not teach the right things. Poor Ippolit
+Ippolititch had been frankly stupid, and all the boys, as well as
+his colleagues, knew what he was and what to expect from him; but
+he, Nikitin, like the Czech, knew how to conceal his stupidity and
+cleverly deceived every one by pretending that, thank God, his
+teaching was a success. These new ideas frightened Nikitin; he
+rejected them, called them stupid, and believed that all this was
+due to his nerves, that he would laugh at himself.
+
+And he did, in fact, by the morning laugh at himself and call himself
+an old woman; but it was clear to him that his peace of mind was
+lost, perhaps, for ever, and that in that little two-story house
+happiness was henceforth impossible for him. He realized that the
+illusion had evaporated, and that a new life of unrest and clear
+sight was beginning which was incompatible with peace and personal
+happiness.
+
+Next day, which was Sunday, he was at the school chapel, and there
+met his colleagues and the director. It seemed to him that they
+were entirely preoccupied with concealing their ignorance and
+discontent with life, and he, too, to conceal his uneasiness, smiled
+affably and talked of trivialities. Then he went to the station and
+saw the mail train come in and go out, and it was agreeable to him
+to be alone and not to have to talk to any one.
+
+At home he found Varya and his father-in-law, who had come to dinner.
+Varya's eyes were red with crying, and she complained of a headache,
+while Shelestov ate a great deal, saying that young men nowadays
+were unreliable, and that there was very little gentlemanly feeling
+among them.
+
+"It's loutishness!" he said. "I shall tell him so to his face: 'It's
+loutishness, sir,' I shall say."
+
+Nikitin smiled affably and helped Masha to look after their guests,
+but after dinner he went to his study and shut the door.
+
+The March sun was shining brightly in at the windows and shedding
+its warm rays on the table. It was only the twentieth of the month,
+but already the cabmen were driving with wheels, and the starlings
+were noisy in the garden. It was just the weather in which Masha
+would come in, put one arm round his neck, tell him the horses were
+saddled or the chaise was at the door, and ask him what she should
+put on to keep warm. Spring was beginning as exquisitely as last
+spring, and it promised the same joys. . . . But Nikitin was thinking
+that it would be nice to take a holiday and go to Moscow, and stay
+at his old lodgings there. In the next room they were drinking
+coffee and talking of Captain Polyansky, while he tried not to
+listen and wrote in his diary: "Where am I, my God? I am surrounded
+by vulgarity and vulgarity. Wearisome, insignificant people, pots
+of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women. . . . There
+is nothing more terrible, mortifying, and distressing than vulgarity.
+I must escape from here, I must escape today, or I shall go out of
+my mind!"
+
+
+NOT WANTED
+
+BETWEEN six and seven o'clock on a July evening, a crowd of summer
+visitors--mostly fathers of families--burdened with parcels,
+portfolios, and ladies' hat-boxes, was trailing along from the
+little station of Helkovo, in the direction of the summer villas.
+They all looked exhausted, hungry, and ill-humoured, as though the
+sun were not shining and the grass were not green for them.
+
+Trudging along among the others was Pavel Matveyitch Zaikin, a
+member of the Circuit Court, a tall, stooping man, in a cheap cotton
+dust-coat and with a cockade on his faded cap. He was perspiring,
+red in the face, and gloomy. . . .
+
+"Do you come out to your holiday home every day?" said a summer
+visitor, in ginger-coloured trousers, addressing him.
+
+"No, not every day," Zaikin answered sullenly. "My wife and son are
+staying here all the while, and I come down two or three times a
+week. I haven't time to come every day; besides, it is expensive."
+
+"You're right there; it is expensive," sighed he of the ginger
+trousers. "In town you can't walk to the station, you have to take
+a cab; and then, the ticket costs forty-two kopecks; you buy a paper
+for the journey; one is tempted to drink a glass of vodka. It's all
+petty expenditure not worth considering, but, mind you, in the
+course of the summer it will run up to some two hundred roubles.
+Of course, to be in the lap of Nature is worth any money--I don't
+dispute it . . . idyllic and all the rest of it; but of course,
+with the salary an official gets, as you know yourself, every
+farthing has to be considered. If you waste a halfpenny you lie
+awake all night. . . . Yes. . . I receive, my dear sir--I haven't
+the honour of knowing your name--I receive a salary of very nearly
+two thousand roubles a year. I am a civil councillor, I smoke
+second-rate tobacco, and I haven't a rouble to spare to buy Vichy
+water, prescribed me by the doctor for gall-stones."
+
+"It's altogether abominable," said Zaikin after a brief silence.
+"I maintain, sir, that summer holidays are the invention of the
+devil and of woman. The devil was actuated in the present instance
+by malice, woman by excessive frivolity. Mercy on us, it is not
+life at all; it is hard labour, it is hell! It's hot and stifling,
+you can hardly breathe, and you wander about like a lost soul and
+can find no refuge. In town there is no furniture, no servants. . .
+everything has been carried off to the villa: you eat what you
+can get; you go without your tea because there is no one to heat
+the samovar; you can't wash yourself; and when you come down here
+into this 'lap of Nature' you have to walk, if you please, through
+the dust and heat. . . . Phew! Are you married?"
+
+"Yes. . . three children," sighs Ginger Trousers.
+
+"It's abominable altogether. . . . It's a wonder we are still alive."
+
+At last the summer visitors reached their destination. Zaikin said
+good-bye to Ginger Trousers and went into his villa. He found a
+death-like silence in the house. He could hear nothing but the
+buzzing of the gnats, and the prayer for help of a fly destined for
+the dinner of a spider. The windows were hung with muslin curtains,
+through which the faded flowers of the geraniums showed red. On the
+unpainted wooden walls near the oleographs flies were slumbering.
+There was not a soul in the passage, the kitchen, or the dining-room.
+In the room which was called indifferently the parlour or the
+drawing-room, Zaikin found his son Petya, a little boy of six. Petya
+was sitting at the table, and breathing loudly with his lower lip
+stuck out, was engaged in cutting out the figure of a knave of
+diamonds from a card.
+
+"Oh, that's you, father!" he said, without turning round. "Good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening. . . . And where is mother?"
+
+"Mother? She is gone with Olga Kirillovna to a rehearsal of the
+play. The day after tomorrow they will have a performance. And they
+will take me, too. . . . And will you go?"
+
+"H'm! . . . When is she coming back?"
+
+"She said she would be back in the evening."
+
+"And where is Natalya?"
+
+"Mamma took Natalya with her to help her dress for the performance,
+and Akulina has gone to the wood to get mushrooms. Father, why is
+it that when gnats bite you their stomachs get red?"
+
+"I don't know. . . . Because they suck blood. So there is no one
+in the house, then?"
+
+"No one; I am all alone in the house."
+
+Zaikin sat down in an easy-chair, and for a moment gazed blankly
+at the window.
+
+"Who is going to get our dinner?" he asked.
+
+"They haven't cooked any dinner today, father. Mamma thought you
+were not coming today, and did not order any dinner. She is going
+to have dinner with Olga Kirillovna at the rehearsal."
+
+"Oh, thank you very much; and you, what have you to eat?"
+
+"I've had some milk. They bought me six kopecks' worth of milk.
+And, father, why do gnats suck blood?"
+
+Zaikin suddenly felt as though something heavy were rolling down
+on his liver and beginning to gnaw it. He felt so vexed, so aggrieved,
+and so bitter, that he was choking and tremulous; he wanted to jump
+up, to bang something on the floor, and to burst into loud abuse;
+but then he remembered that his doctor had absolutely forbidden him
+all excitement, so he got up, and making an effort to control
+himself, began whistling a tune from "Les Huguenots."
+
+"Father, can you act in plays?" he heard Petya's voice.
+
+"Oh, don't worry me with stupid questions!" said Zaikin, getting
+angry. "He sticks to one like a leaf in the bath! Here you are, six
+years old, and just as silly as you were three years ago. . . .
+Stupid, neglected child! Why are you spoiling those cards, for
+instance? How dare you spoil them?"
+
+"These cards aren't yours," said Petya, turning round. "Natalya
+gave them me."
+
+"You are telling fibs, you are telling fibs, you horrid boy!" said
+Zaikin, growing more and more irritated. "You are always telling
+fibs! You want a whipping, you horrid little pig! I will pull your
+ears!"
+
+Petya leapt up, and craning his neck, stared fixedly at his father's
+red and wrathful face. His big eyes first began blinking, then were
+dimmed with moisture, and the boy's face began working.
+
+"But why are you scolding?" squealed Petya. "Why do you attack me,
+you stupid? I am not interfering with anybody; I am not naughty; I
+do what I am told, and yet . . . you are cross! Why are you scolding
+me?"
+
+The boy spoke with conviction, and wept so bitterly that Zaikin
+felt conscience-stricken.
+
+"Yes, really, why am I falling foul of him?" he thought. "Come,
+come," he said, touching the boy on the shoulder. "I am sorry, Petya
+. . . forgive me. You are my good boy, my nice boy, I love you."
+
+Petya wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sat down, with a sigh, in the
+same place and began cutting out the queen. Zaikin went off to his
+own room. He stretched himself on the sofa, and putting his hands
+behind his head, sank into thought. The boy's tears had softened
+his anger, and by degrees the oppression on his liver grew less.
+He felt nothing but exhaustion and hunger.
+
+"Father," he heard on the other side of the door, "shall I show you
+my collection of insects?"
+
+"Yes, show me."
+
+Petya came into the study and handed his father a long green box.
+Before raising it to his ear Zaikin could hear a despairing buzz
+and the scratching of claws on the sides of the box. Opening the
+lid, he saw a number of butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, and
+flies fastened to the bottom of the box with pins. All except two
+or three butterflies were still alive and moving.
+
+"Why, the grasshopper is still alive!" said Petya in surprise. "I
+caught him yesterday morning, and he is still alive!"
+
+"Who taught you to pin them in this way?"
+
+"Olga Kirillovna."
+
+"Olga Kirillovna ought to be pinned down like that herself!" said
+Zaikin with repulsion. "Take them away! It's shameful to torture
+animals."
+
+"My God! How horribly he is being brought up!" he thought, as Petya
+went out.
+
+Pavel Matveyitch forgot his exhaustion and hunger, and thought of
+nothing but his boy's future. Meanwhile, outside the light was
+gradually fading. . . . He could hear the summer visitors trooping
+back from the evening bathe. Some one was stopping near the open
+dining-room window and shouting: "Do you want any mushrooms?" And
+getting no answer, shuffled on with bare feet. . . . But at last,
+when the dusk was so thick that the outlines of the geraniums behind
+the muslin curtain were lost, and whiffs of the freshness of evening
+were coming in at the window, the door of the passage was thrown
+open noisily, and there came a sound of rapid footsteps, talk, and
+laughter. . . .
+
+"Mamma!" shrieked Petya.
+
+Zaikin peeped out of his study and saw his wife, Nadyezhda Stepanovna,
+healthy and rosy as ever; with her he saw Olga Kirillovna, a spare
+woman with fair hair and heavy freckles, and two unknown men: one
+a lanky young man with curly red hair and a big Adam's apple; the
+other, a short stubby man with a shaven face like an actor's and a
+bluish crooked chin.
+
+"Natalya, set the samovar," cried Nadyezhda Stepanovna, with a loud
+rustle of her skirts. "I hear Pavel Matveyitch is come. Pavel, where
+are you? Good-evening, Pavel!" she said, running into the study
+breathlessly. "So you've come. I am so glad. . . . Two of our
+amateurs have come with me. . . . Come, I'll introduce you. . . .
+Here, the taller one is Koromyslov . . . he sings splendidly; and
+the other, the little one . . . is called Smerkalov: he is a real
+actor . . . he recites magnificently. Oh, how tired I am! We have
+just had a rehearsal. . . . It goes splendidly. We are acting 'The
+Lodger with the Trombone' and 'Waiting for Him.' . . . The performance
+is the day after tomorrow. . . ."
+
+"Why did you bring them?" asked Zaikin.
+
+"I couldn't help it, Poppet; after tea we must rehearse our parts
+and sing something. . . . I am to sing a duet with Koromyslov. . . .
+Oh, yes, I was almost forgetting! Darling, send Natalya to get
+some sardines, vodka, cheese, and something else. They will most
+likely stay to supper. . . . Oh, how tired I am!"
+
+"H'm! I've no money."
+
+"You must, Poppet! It would be awkward! Don't make me blush."
+
+Half an hour later Natalya was sent for vodka and savouries; Zaikin,
+after drinking tea and eating a whole French loaf, went to his
+bedroom and lay down on the bed, while Nadyezhda Stepanovna and her
+visitors, with much noise and laughter, set to work to rehearse
+their parts. For a long time Pavel Matveyitch heard Koromyslov's
+nasal reciting and Smerkalov's theatrical exclamations. . . . The
+rehearsal was followed by a long conversation, interrupted by the
+shrill laughter of Olga Kirillovna. Smerkalov, as a real actor,
+explained the parts with aplomb and heat. . . .
+
+Then followed the duet, and after the duet there was the clatter
+of crockery. . . . Through his drowsiness Zaikin heard them persuading
+Smerkalov to read "The Woman who was a Sinner," and heard him, after
+affecting to refuse, begin to recite. He hissed, beat himself on
+the breast, wept, laughed in a husky bass. . . . Zaikin scowled and
+hid his head under the quilt.
+
+"It's a long way for you to go, and it's dark," he heard Nadyezhda
+Stepanovna's voice an hour later. "Why shouldn't you stay the night
+here? Koromyslov can sleep here in the drawing-room on the sofa,
+and you, Smerkalov, in Petya's bed. . . . I can put Petya in my
+husband's study. . . . Do stay, really!"
+
+At last when the clock was striking two, all was hushed, the bedroom
+door opened, and Nadyezhda Stepanovna appeared.
+
+"Pavel, are you asleep?" she whispered.
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"Go into your study, darling, and lie on the sofa. I am going to
+put Olga Kirillovna here, in your bed. Do go, dear! I would put her
+to sleep in the study, but she is afraid to sleep alone. . . . Do
+get up!"
+
+Zaikin got up, threw on his dressing-gown, and taking his pillow,
+crept wearily to the study. . . . Feeling his way to his sofa, he
+lighted a match, and saw Petya lying on the sofa. The boy was not
+asleep, and, looking at the match with wide-open eyes:
+
+"Father, why is it gnats don't go to sleep at night?" he asked.
+
+"Because . . . because . . . you and I are not wanted. . . . We
+have nowhere to sleep even."
+
+"Father, and why is it Olga Kirillovna has freckles on her face?"
+
+"Oh, shut up! I am tired of you."
+
+After a moment's thought, Zaikin dressed and went out into the
+street for a breath of air. . . . He looked at the grey morning
+sky, at the motionless clouds, heard the lazy call of the drowsy
+corncrake, and began dreaming of the next day, when he would go to
+town, and coming back from the court would tumble into bed. . . .
+Suddenly the figure of a man appeared round the corner.
+
+"A watchman, no doubt," thought Zaikin. But going nearer and looking
+more closely he recognized in the figure the summer visitor in the
+ginger trousers.
+
+"You're not asleep?" he asked.
+
+"No, I can't sleep," sighed Ginger Trousers. "I am enjoying Nature
+. . . . A welcome visitor, my wife's mother, arrived by the night
+train, you know. She brought with her our nieces . . . splendid
+girls! I was delighted to see them, although . . . it's very damp!
+And you, too, are enjoying Nature?"
+
+"Yes," grunted Zaikin, "I am enjoying it, too. . . . Do you know
+whether there is any sort of tavern or restaurant in the neighbourhood?"
+
+Ginger Trousers raised his eyes to heaven and meditated profoundly.
+
+
+TYPHUS
+
+A YOUNG lieutenant called Klimov was travelling from Petersburg to
+Moscow in a smoking carriage of the mail train. Opposite him was
+sitting an elderly man with a shaven face like a sea captain's, by
+all appearances a well-to-do Finn or Swede. He pulled at his pipe
+the whole journey and kept talking about the same subject:
+
+"Ha, you are an officer! I have a brother an officer too, only he
+is a naval officer. . . . He is a naval officer, and he is stationed
+at Kronstadt. Why are you going to Moscow?"
+
+"I am serving there."
+
+"Ha! And are you a family man?"
+
+"No, I live with my sister and aunt."
+
+"My brother's an officer, only he is a naval officer; he has a wife
+and three children. Ha!"
+
+The Finn seemed continually surprised at something, and gave a broad
+idiotic grin when he exclaimed "Ha!" and continually puffed at his
+stinking pipe. Klimov, who for some reason did not feel well, and
+found it burdensome to answer questions, hated him with all his
+heart. He dreamed of how nice it would be to snatch the wheezing
+pipe out of his hand and fling it under the seat, and drive the
+Finn himself into another compartment.
+
+"Detestable people these Finns and . . . Greeks," he thought.
+"Absolutely superfluous, useless, detestable people. They simply
+fill up space on the earthly globe. What are they for?"
+
+And the thought of Finns and Greeks produced a feeling akin to
+sickness all over his body. For the sake of comparison he tried to
+think of the French, of the Italians, but his efforts to think of
+these people evoked in his mind, for some reason, nothing but images
+of organ-grinders, naked women, and the foreign oleographs which
+hung over the chest of drawers at home, at his aunt's.
+
+Altogether the officer felt in an abnormal state. He could not
+arrange his arms and legs comfortably on the seat, though he had
+the whole seat to himself. His mouth felt dry and sticky; there was
+a heavy fog in his brain; his thoughts seemed to be straying, not
+only within his head, but outside his skull, among the seats and
+the people that were shrouded in the darkness of night. Through the
+mist in his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur of voices,
+the rumble of wheels, the slamming of doors. The sounds of the
+bells, the whistles, the guards, the running to and fro of passengers
+on the platforms, seemed more frequent than usual. The time flew
+by rapidly, imperceptibly, and so it seemed as though the train
+were stopping at stations every minute, and metallic voices crying
+continually:
+
+"Is the mail ready?"
+
+"Yes!" was repeatedly coming from outside.
+
+It seemed as though the man in charge of the heating came in too
+often to look at the thermometer, that the noise of trains going
+in the opposite direction and the rumble of the wheels over the
+bridges was incessant. The noise, the whistles, the Finn, the tobacco
+smoke--all this mingling with the menace and flickering of the
+misty images in his brain, the shape and character of which a man
+in health can never recall, weighed upon Klimov like an unbearable
+nightmare. In horrible misery he lifted his heavy head, looked at
+the lamp in the rays of which shadows and misty blurs seemed to be
+dancing. He wanted to ask for water, but his parched tongue would
+hardly move, and he scarcely had strength to answer the Finn's
+questions. He tried to lie down more comfortably and go to sleep,
+but he could not succeed. The Finn several times fell asleep, woke
+up again, lighted his pipe, addressed him with his "Ha!" and went
+to sleep again; and still the lieutenant's legs could not get into
+a comfortable position, and still the menacing images stood facing
+him.
+
+At Spirovo he went out into the station for a drink of water. He
+saw people sitting at the table and hurriedly eating.
+
+"And how can they eat!" he thought, trying not to sniff the air,
+that smelt of roast meat, and not to look at the munching mouths
+--they both seemed to him sickeningly disgusting.
+
+A good-looking lady was conversing loudly with a military man in a
+red cap, and showing magnificent white teeth as she smiled; and the
+smile, and the teeth, and the lady herself made on Klimov the same
+revolting impression as the ham and the rissoles. He could not
+understand how it was the military man in the red cap was not ill
+at ease, sitting beside her and looking at her healthy, smiling
+face.
+
+When after drinking some water he went back to his carriage, the
+Finn was sitting smoking; his pipe was wheezing and squelching like
+a golosh with holes in it in wet weather.
+
+"Ha!" he said, surprised; "what station is this?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Klimov, lying down and shutting his mouth
+that he might not breathe the acrid tobacco smoke.
+
+"And when shall we reach Tver?"
+
+"I don't know. Excuse me, I . . . I can't answer. I am ill. I caught
+cold today."
+
+The Finn knocked his pipe against the window-frame and began talking
+of his brother, the naval officer. Klimov no longer heard him; he
+was thinking miserably of his soft, comfortable bed, of a bottle
+of cold water, of his sister Katya, who was so good at making one
+comfortable, soothing, giving one water. He even smiled when the
+vision of his orderly Pavel, taking off his heavy stifling boots
+and putting water on the little table, flitted through his imagination.
+He fancied that if he could only get into his bed, have a drink of
+water, his nightmare would give place to sound healthy sleep.
+
+"Is the mail ready?" a hollow voice reached him from the distance.
+
+"Yes," answered a bass voice almost at the window.
+
+It was already the second or third station from Spirovo.
+
+The time was flying rapidly in leaps and bounds, and it seemed as
+though the bells, whistles, and stoppings would never end. In despair
+Klimov buried his face in the corner of the seat, clutched his head
+in his hands, and began again thinking of his sister Katya and his
+orderly Pavel, but his sister and his orderly were mixed up with
+the misty images in his brain, whirled round, and disappeared. His
+burning breath, reflected from the back of the seat, seemed to scald
+his face; his legs were uncomfortable; there was a draught from the
+window on his back; but, however wretched he was, he did not want
+to change his position. . . . A heavy nightmarish lethargy gradually
+gained possession of him and fettered his limbs.
+
+When he brought himself to raise his head, it was already light in
+the carriage. The passengers were putting on their fur coats and
+moving about. The train was stopping. Porters in white aprons and
+with discs on their breasts were bustling among the passengers and
+snatching up their boxes. Klimov put on his great-coat, mechanically
+followed the other passengers out of the carriage, and it seemed
+to him that not he, but some one else was moving, and he felt that
+his fever, his thirst, and the menacing images which had not let
+him sleep all night, came out of the carriage with him. Mechanically
+he took his luggage and engaged a sledge-driver. The man asked him
+for a rouble and a quarter to drive to Povarsky Street, but he did
+not haggle, and without protest got submissively into the sledge.
+He still understood the difference of numbers, but money had ceased
+to have any value to him.
+
+At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katya, a girl of
+eighteen. When Katya greeted him she had a pencil and exercise book
+in her hand, and he remembered that she was preparing for an
+examination as a teacher. Gasping with fever, he walked aimlessly
+through all the rooms without answering their questions or greetings,
+and when he reached his bed he sank down on the pillow. The Finn,
+the red cap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of roast meat,
+the flickering blurs, filled his consciousness, and by now he did
+not know where he was and did not hear the agitated voices.
+
+When he recovered consciousness he found himself in bed, undressed,
+saw a bottle of water and Pavel, but it was no cooler, nor softer,
+nor more comfortable for that. His arms and legs, as before, refused
+to lie comfortably; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and
+he heard the wheezing of the Finn's pipe. . . . A stalwart,
+black-bearded doctor was busy doing something beside the bed,
+brushing against Pavel with his broad back.
+
+"It's all right, it's all right, young man," he muttered. "Excellent,
+excellent . . . goo-od, goo-od . . . !"
+
+The doctor called Klimov "young man," said "goo-od" instead of
+"good" and "so-o" instead of "so."
+
+"So-o . . . so-o . . . so-o," he murmured. "Goo-od, goo-od . . . !
+Excellent, young man. You mustn't lose heart!"
+
+The doctor's rapid, careless talk, his well-fed countenance, and
+condescending "young man," irritated Klimov.
+
+"Why do you call me 'young man'?" he moaned. "What familiarity!
+Damn it all!"
+
+And he was frightened by his own voice. The voice was so dried up,
+so weak and peevish, that he would not have known it.
+
+"Excellent, excellent!" muttered the doctor, not in the least
+offended. . . . "You mustn't get angry, so-o, so-o, so-s. . . ."
+
+And the time flew by at home with the same startling swiftness as
+in the railway carriage. The daylight was continually being replaced
+by the dusk of evening. The doctor seemed never to leave his bedside,
+and he heard at every moment his "so-o, so-o, so-o." A continual
+succession of people was incessantly crossing the bedroom. Among
+them were: Pavel, the Finn, Captain Yaroshevitch, Lance-Corporal
+Maximenko, the red cap, the lady with the white teeth, the doctor.
+They were all talking and waving their arms, smoking and eating.
+Once by daylight Klimov saw the chaplain of the regiment, Father
+Alexandr, who was standing before the bed, wearing a stole and with
+a prayer-book in his hand. He was muttering something with a grave
+face such as Klimov had never seen in him before. The lieutenant
+remembered that Father Alexandr used in a friendly way to call all
+the Catholic officers "Poles," and wanting to amuse him, he cried:
+
+"Father, Yaroshevitch the Pole has climbed up a pole!"
+
+But Father Alexandr, a light-hearted man who loved a joke, did not
+smile, but became graver than ever, and made the sign of the cross
+over Klimov. At night-time by turn two shadows came noiselessly in
+and out; they were his aunt and sister. His sister's shadow knelt
+down and prayed; she bowed down to the ikon, and her grey shadow
+on the wall bowed down too, so that two shadows were praying. The
+whole time there was a smell of roast meat and the Finn's pipe, but
+once Klimov smelt the strong smell of incense. He felt so sick he
+could not lie still, and began shouting:
+
+"The incense! Take away the incense!"
+
+There was no answer. He could only hear the subdued singing of the
+priest somewhere and some one running upstairs.
+
+When Klimov came to himself there was not a soul in his bedroom.
+The morning sun was streaming in at the window through the lower
+blind, and a quivering sunbeam, bright and keen as the sword's edge,
+was flashing on the glass bottle. He heard the rattle of wheels--
+so there was no snow now in the street. The lieutenant looked at
+the ray, at the familiar furniture, at the door, and the first thing
+he did was to laugh. His chest and stomach heaved with delicious,
+happy, tickling laughter. His whole body from head to foot was
+overcome by a sensation of infinite happiness and joy in life, such
+as the first man must have felt when he was created and first saw
+the world. Klimov felt a passionate desire for movement, people,
+talk. His body lay a motionless block; only his hands stirred, but
+that he hardly noticed, and his whole attention was concentrated
+on trifles. He rejoiced in his breathing, in his laughter, rejoiced
+in the existence of the water-bottle, the ceiling, the sunshine,
+the tape on the curtains. God's world, even in the narrow space of
+his bedroom, seemed beautiful, varied, grand. When the doctor made
+his appearance, the lieutenant was thinking what a delicious thing
+medicine was, how charming and pleasant the doctor was, and how
+nice and interesting people were in general.
+
+"So-o, so, so. . . Excellent, excellent! . . . Now we are well
+again. . . . Goo-od, goo-od!" the doctor pattered.
+
+The lieutenant listened and laughed joyously; he remembered the
+Finn, the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he longed to
+smoke, to eat.
+
+"Doctor," he said, "tell them to give me a crust of rye bread and
+salt, and . . . and sardines."
+
+The doctor refused; Pavel did not obey the order, and did not go
+for the bread. The lieutenant could not bear this and began crying
+like a naughty child.
+
+"Baby!" laughed the doctor. "Mammy, bye-bye!"
+
+Klimov laughed, too, and when the doctor went away he fell into a
+sound sleep. He woke up with the same joyfulness and sensation of
+happiness. His aunt was sitting near the bed.
+
+"Well, aunt," he said joyfully. "What has been the matter?"
+
+"Spotted typhus."
+
+"Really. But now I am well, quite well! Where is Katya?"
+
+"She is not at home. I suppose she has gone somewhere from her
+examination."
+
+The old lady said this and looked at her stocking; her lips began
+quivering, she turned away, and suddenly broke into sobs. Forgetting
+the doctor's prohibition in her despair, she said:
+
+"Ah, Katya, Katya! Our angel is gone! Is gone!"
+
+She dropped her stocking and bent down to it, and as she did so her
+cap fell off her head. Looking at her grey head and understanding
+nothing, Klimov was frightened for Katya, and asked:
+
+"Where is she, aunt?"
+
+The old woman, who had forgotten Klimov and was thinking only of
+her sorrow, said:
+
+"She caught typhus from you, and is dead. She was buried the day
+before yesterday."
+
+This terrible, unexpected news was fully grasped by Klimov's
+consciousness; but terrible and startling as it was, it could not
+overcome the animal joy that filled the convalescent. He cried and
+laughed, and soon began scolding because they would not let him
+eat.
+
+Only a week later when, leaning on Pavel, he went in his dressing-gown
+to the window, looked at the overcast spring sky and listened to
+the unpleasant clang of the old iron rails which were being carted
+by, his heart ached, he burst into tears, and leaned his forehead
+against the window-frame.
+
+"How miserable I am!" he muttered. "My God, how miserable!"
+
+And joy gave way to the boredom of everyday life and the feeling
+of his irrevocable loss.
+
+
+A MISFORTUNE
+
+SOFYA PETROVNA, the wife of Lubyantsev the notary, a handsome young
+woman of five-and-twenty, was walking slowly along a track that had
+been cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was spending the
+summer in the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in the evening.
+Feathery-white masses of cloud stood overhead; patches of bright
+blue sky peeped out between them. The clouds stood motionless, as
+though they had caught in the tops of the tall old pine-trees. It
+was still and sultry.
+
+Farther on, the track was crossed by a low railway embankment on
+which a sentinel with a gun was for some reason pacing up and down.
+Just beyond the embankment there was a large white church with six
+domes and a rusty roof.
+
+"I did not expect to meet you here," said Sofya Petrovna, looking
+at the ground and prodding at the last year's leaves with the tip
+of her parasol, "and now I am glad we have met. I want to speak to
+you seriously and once for all. I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, if you
+really love and respect me, please make an end of this pursuit of
+me! You follow me about like a shadow, you are continually looking
+at me not in a nice way, making love to me, writing me strange
+letters, and . . . and I don't know where it's all going to end!
+Why, what can come of it?"
+
+Ilyin said nothing. Sofya Petrovna walked on a few steps and
+continued:
+
+"And this complete transformation in you all came about in the
+course of two or three weeks, after five years' friendship. I don't
+know you, Ivan Mihalovitch!"
+
+Sofya Petrovna stole a glance at her companion. Screwing up his
+eyes, he was looking intently at the fluffy clouds. His face looked
+angry, ill-humoured, and preoccupied, like that of a man in pain
+forced to listen to nonsense.
+
+"I wonder you don't see it yourself," Madame Lubyantsev went on,
+shrugging her shoulders. "You ought to realize that it's not a very
+nice part you are playing. I am married; I love and respect my
+husband. . . . I have a daughter . . . . Can you think all that
+means nothing? Besides, as an old friend you know my attitude to
+family life and my views as to the sanctity of marriage."
+
+Ilyin cleared his throat angrily and heaved a sigh.
+
+"Sanctity of marriage . . ." he muttered. "Oh, Lord!"
+
+"Yes, yes. . . . I love my husband, I respect him; and in any case
+I value the peace of my home. I would rather let myself be killed
+than be a cause of unhappiness to Andrey and his daughter. . . .
+And I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, for God's sake, leave me in peace!
+Let us be as good, true friends as we used to be, and give up these
+sighs and groans, which really don't suit you. It's settled and
+over! Not a word more about it. Let us talk of something else."
+
+Sofya Petrovna again stole a glance at Ilyin's face. Ilyin was
+looking up; he was pale, and was angrily biting his quivering lips.
+She could not understand why he was angry and why he was indignant,
+but his pallor touched her.
+
+"Don't be angry; let us be friends," she said affectionately.
+"Agreed? Here's my hand."
+
+Ilyin took her plump little hand in both of his, squeezed it, and
+slowly raised it to his lips.
+
+"I am not a schoolboy," he muttered. "I am not in the least tempted
+by friendship with the woman I love."
+
+"Enough, enough! It's settled and done with. We have reached the
+seat; let us sit down."
+
+Sofya Petrovna's soul was filled with a sweet sense of relief: the
+most difficult and delicate thing had been said, the painful question
+was settled and done with. Now she could breathe freely and look
+Ilyin straight in the face. She looked at him, and the egoistic
+feeling of the superiority of the woman over the man who loves her,
+agreeably flattered her. It pleased her to see this huge, strong
+man, with his manly, angry face and his big black beard--clever,
+cultivated, and, people said, talented--sit down obediently beside
+her and bow his head dejectedly. For two or three minutes they sat
+without speaking.
+
+"Nothing is settled or done with," began Ilyin. "You repeat copy-book
+maxims to me. 'I love and respect my husband . . . the sanctity of
+marriage. . . .' I know all that without your help, and I could
+tell you more, too. I tell you truthfully and honestly that I
+consider the way I am behaving as criminal and immoral. What more
+can one say than that? But what's the good of saying what everybody
+knows? Instead of feeding nightingales with paltry words, you had
+much better tell me what I am to do."
+
+"I've told you already--go away."
+
+"As you know perfectly well, I have gone away five times, and every
+time I turned back on the way. I can show you my through tickets
+--I've kept them all. I have not will enough to run away from you!
+I am struggling. I am struggling horribly; but what the devil am I
+good for if I have no backbone, if I am weak, cowardly! I can't
+struggle with Nature! Do you understand? I cannot! I run away from
+here, and she holds on to me and pulls me back. Contemptible,
+loathsome weakness!"
+
+Ilyin flushed crimson, got up, and walked up and down by the seat.
+
+"I feel as cross as a dog," he muttered, clenching his fists. "I
+hate and despise myself! My God! like some depraved schoolboy, I
+am making love to another man's wife, writing idiotic letters,
+degrading myself . . . ugh!"
+
+Ilyin clutched at his head, grunted, and sat down. "And then your
+insincerity!" he went on bitterly. "If you do dislike my disgusting
+behaviour, why have you come here? What drew you here? In my letters
+I only ask you for a direct, definite answer--yes or no; but
+instead of a direct answer, you contrive every day these 'chance'
+meetings with me and regale me with copy-book maxims!"
+
+Madame Lubyantsev was frightened and flushed. She suddenly felt the
+awkwardness which a decent woman feels when she is accidentally
+discovered undressed.
+
+"You seem to suspect I am playing with you," she muttered. "I have
+always given you a direct answer, and . . . only today I've begged
+you . . ."
+
+"Ough! as though one begged in such cases! If you were to say
+straight out 'Get away,' I should have been gone long ago; but
+you've never said that. You've never once given me a direct answer.
+Strange indecision! Yes, indeed; either you are playing with me,
+or else . . ."
+
+Ilyin leaned his head on his fists without finishing. Sofya Petrovna
+began going over in her own mind the way she had behaved from
+beginning to end. She remembered that not only in her actions, but
+even in her secret thoughts, she had always been opposed to Ilyin's
+love-making; but yet she felt there was a grain of truth in the
+lawyer's words. But not knowing exactly what the truth was, she
+could not find answers to make to Ilyin's complaint, however hard
+she thought. It was awkward to be silent, and, shrugging her
+shoulders, she said:
+
+So I am to blame, it appears."
+
+"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "I did not
+mean that when I spoke of it. . . . Your insincerity is natural and
+in the order of things. If people agreed together and suddenly
+became sincere, everything would go to the devil."
+
+Sofya Petrovna was in no mood for philosophical reflections, but
+she was glad of a chance to change the conversation, and asked:
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once civilization
+has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for instance, feminine
+virtue, sincerity is out of place. . . ."
+
+Ilyin jabbed his stick angrily into the sand. Madame Lubyantsev
+listened to him and liked his conversation, though a great deal of
+it she did not understand. What gratified her most was that she,
+an ordinary woman, was talked to by a talented man on "intellectual"
+subjects; it afforded her great pleasure, too, to watch the working
+of his mobile, young face, which was still pale and angry. She
+failed to understand a great deal that he said, but what was clear
+to her in his words was the attractive boldness with which the
+modern man without hesitation or doubt decides great questions and
+draws conclusive deductions.
+
+She suddenly realized that she was admiring him, and was alarmed.
+
+"Forgive me, but I don't understand," she said hurriedly. "What
+makes you talk of insincerity? I repeat my request again: be my
+good, true friend; let me alone! I beg you most earnestly!"
+
+"Very good; I'll try again," sighed Ilyin. "Glad to do my best. . . .
+Only I doubt whether anything will come of my efforts. Either
+I shall put a bullet through my brains or take to drink in an idiotic
+way. I shall come to a bad end! There's a limit to everything--
+to struggles with Nature, too. Tell me, how can one struggle against
+madness? If you drink wine, how are you to struggle against
+intoxication? What am I to do if your image has grown into my soul,
+and day and night stands persistently before my eyes, like that
+pine there at this moment? Come, tell me, what hard and difficult
+thing can I do to get free from this abominable, miserable condition,
+in which all my thoughts, desires, and dreams are no longer my own,
+but belong to some demon who has taken possession of me? I love
+you, love you so much that I am completely thrown out of gear; I've
+given up my work and all who are dear to me; I've forgotten my God!
+I've never been in love like this in my life."
+
+Sofya Petrovna, who had not expected such a turn to their conversation,
+drew away from Ilyin and looked into his face in dismay. Tears came
+into his eyes, his lips were quivering, and there was an imploring,
+hungry expression in his face.
+
+"I love you!" he muttered, bringing his eyes near her big, frightened
+eyes. "You are so beautiful! I am in agony now, but I swear I would
+sit here all my life, suffering and looking in your eyes. But . . .
+be silent, I implore you!"
+
+Sofya Petrovna, feeling utterly disconcerted, tried to think as
+quickly as possible of something to say to stop him. "I'll go away,"
+she decided, but before she had time to make a movement to get up,
+Ilyin was on his knees before her. . . . He was clasping her knees,
+gazing into her face and speaking passionately, hotly, eloquently.
+In her terror and confusion she did not hear his words; for some
+reason now, at this dangerous moment, while her knees were being
+agreeably squeezed and felt as though they were in a warm bath, she
+was trying, with a sort of angry spite, to interpret her own
+sensations. She was angry that instead of brimming over with
+protesting virtue, she was entirely overwhelmed with weakness,
+apathy, and emptiness, like a drunken man utterly reckless; only
+at the bottom of her soul a remote bit of herself was malignantly
+taunting her: "Why don't you go? Is this as it should be? Yes?"
+
+Seeking for some explanation, she could not understand how it was
+she did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging like a
+leech, and why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right and to
+left to see whether any one was looking. The clouds and the pines
+stood motionless, looking at them severely, like old ushers seeing
+mischief, but bribed not to tell the school authorities. The sentry
+stood like a post on the embankment and seemed to be looking at the
+seat.
+
+"Let him look," thought Sofya Petrovna.
+
+"But . . . but listen," she said at last, with despair in her voice.
+"What can come of this? What will be the end of this?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," he whispered, waving off the disagreeable
+questions.
+
+They heard the hoarse, discordant whistle of the train. This cold,
+irrelevant sound from the everyday world of prose made Sofya Petrovna
+rouse herself.
+
+"I can't stay . . . it's time I was at home," she said, getting up
+quickly. "The train is coming in. . . Andrey is coming by it! He
+will want his dinner."
+
+Sofya Petrovna turned towards the embankment with a burning face.
+The engine slowly crawled by, then came the carriages. It was not
+the local train, as she had supposed, but a goods train. The trucks
+filed by against the background of the white church in a long string
+like the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would
+never end.
+
+But at last the train passed, and the last carriage with the guard
+and a light in it had disappeared behind the trees. Sofya Petrovna
+turned round sharply, and without looking at Ilyin, walked rapidly
+back along the track. She had regained her self-possession. Crimson
+with shame, humiliated not by Ilyin--no, but by her own cowardice,
+by the shamelessness with which she, a chaste and high-principled
+woman, had allowed a man, not her husband, to hug her knees--she
+had only one thought now: to get home as quickly as possible to her
+villa, to her family. The lawyer could hardly keep pace with her.
+Turning from the clearing into a narrow path, she turned round and
+glanced at him so quickly that she saw nothing but the sand on his
+knees, and waved to him to drop behind.
+
+Reaching home, Sofya Petrovna stood in the middle of her room for
+five minutes without moving, and looked first at the window and
+then at her writing-table.
+
+"You low creature!" she said, upbraiding herself. "You low creature!"
+
+To spite herself, she recalled in precise detail, keeping nothing
+back--she recalled that though all this time she had been opposed
+to Ilyin's lovemaking, something had impelled her to seek an interview
+with him; and what was more, when he was at her feet she had enjoyed
+it enormously. She recalled it all without sparing herself, and
+now, breathless with shame, she would have liked to slap herself
+in the face.
+
+"Poor Andrey!" she said to herself, trying as she thought of her
+husband to put into her face as tender an expression as she could.
+"Varya, my poor little girl, doesn't know what a mother she has!
+Forgive me, my dear ones! I love you so much . . . so much!"
+
+And anxious to prove to herself that she was still a good wife and
+mother, and that corruption had not yet touched that "sanctity of
+marriage" of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sofya Petrovna ran to
+the kitchen and abused the cook for not having yet laid the table
+for Andrey Ilyitch. She tried to picture her husband's hungry and
+exhausted appearance, commiserated him aloud, and laid the table
+for him with her own hands, which she had never done before. Then
+she found her daughter Varya, picked her up in her arms and hugged
+her warmly; the child seemed to her cold and heavy, but she was
+unwilling to acknowledge this to herself, and she began explaining
+to the child how good, kind, and honourable her papa was.
+
+But when Andrey Ilyitch arrived soon afterwards she hardly greeted
+him. The rush of false feeling had already passed off without proving
+anything to her, only irritating and exasperating her by its falsity.
+She was sitting by the window, feeling miserable and cross. It is
+only by being in trouble that people can understand how far from
+easy it is to be the master of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya
+Petrovna said afterwards that there was a tangle within her which
+it was as difficult to unravel as to count a flock of sparrows
+rapidly flying by. From the fact that she was not overjoyed to see
+her husband, that she did not like his manner at dinner, she concluded
+all of a sudden that she was beginning to hate her husband.
+
+Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and exhaustion, fell upon the
+sausage while waiting for the soup to be brought in, and ate it
+greedily, munching noisily and moving his temples.
+
+"My goodness!" thought Sofya Petrovna. "I love and respect him, but
+. . . why does he munch so repulsively?"
+
+The disorder in her thoughts was no less than the disorder in her
+feelings. Like all persons inexperienced in combating unpleasant
+ideas, Madame Lubyantsev did her utmost not to think of her trouble,
+and the harder she tried the more vividly Ilyin, the sand on his
+knees, the fluffy clouds, the train, stood out in her imagination.
+
+"And why did I go there this afternoon like a fool?" she thought,
+tormenting herself. "And am I really so weak that I cannot depend
+upon myself?"
+
+Fear magnifies danger. By the time Andrey Ilyitch was finishing the
+last course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her husband
+everything and to flee from danger!
+
+"I've something serious to say to you, Andrey," she began after
+dinner while her husband was taking off his coat and boots to lie
+down for a nap.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Let us leave this place!"
+
+"H'm! . . . Where shall we go? It's too soon to go back to town."
+
+"No; for a tour or something of that sort.
+
+"For a tour . . ." repeated the notary, stretching. "I dream of
+that myself, but where are we to get the money, and to whom am I
+to leave the office?"
+
+And thinking a little he added:
+
+"Of course, you must be bored. Go by yourself if you like."
+
+Sofya Petrovna agreed, but at once reflected that Ilyin would be
+delighted with the opportunity, and would go with her in the same
+train, in the same compartment. . . . She thought and looked at her
+husband, now satisfied but still languid. For some reason her eyes
+rested on his feet--miniature, almost feminine feet, clad in
+striped socks; there was a thread standing out at the tip of each
+sock.
+
+Behind the blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the
+window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on
+the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off
+. . . . _vis-a-vis_ Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking his
+eyes off her, wrathful at his own weakness and pale with spiritual
+agony. He would call himself an immoral schoolboy, would abuse her,
+tear his hair, but when darkness came on and the passengers were
+asleep or got out at a station, he would seize the opportunity to
+kneel before her and embrace her knees as he had at the seat in the
+wood. . . .
+
+She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
+
+"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
+
+"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible and
+not want the impossible."
+
+"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya Petrovna.
+
+Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out
+of danger. Little by little her ideas grew clearer; her spirits
+rose and she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that
+however much she thought, however much she dreamed, she would go
+away. While her husband was asleep, the evening gradually came on.
+She sat in the drawing-room and played the piano. The greater
+liveliness out of doors, the sound of music, but above all the
+thought that she was a sensible person, that she had surmounted her
+difficulties, completely restored her spirits. Other women, her
+appeased conscience told her, would probably have been carried off
+their feet in her position, and would have lost their balance, while
+she had almost died of shame, had been miserable, and was now running
+out of the danger which perhaps did not exist! She was so touched
+by her own virtue and determination that she even looked at herself
+two or three times in the looking-glass.
+
+When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the dining-room
+to play cards; the ladies remained in the drawing-room and the
+verandah. The last to arrive was Ilyin. He was gloomy, morose, and
+looked ill. He sat down in the corner of the sofa and did not move
+the whole evening. Usually good-humoured and talkative, this time
+he remained silent, frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had
+to answer some question, he gave a forced smile with his upper lip
+only, and answered jerkily and irritably. Four or five times he
+made some jest, but his jests sounded harsh and cutting. It seemed
+to Sofya Petrovna that he was on the verge of hysterics. Only now,
+sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for the first time that
+this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his soul was sick, and
+that he could find no rest. For her sake he was wasting the best
+days of his youth and his career, spending the last of his money
+on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and, worst
+of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself.
+From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.
+
+She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and
+if at that moment she had gone up to him and said to him, "No,"
+there would have been a force in her voice hard to disobey. But she
+did not go up to him and did not speak--indeed, never thought of
+doing so. The pettiness and egoism of youth had never been more
+patent in her than that evening. She realized that Ilyin was unhappy,
+and that he was sitting on the sofa as though he were on hot coals;
+she felt sorry for him, but at the same time the presence of a man
+who loved her to distraction, filled her soul with triumph and a
+sense of her own power. She felt her youth, her beauty, and her
+unassailable virtue, and, since she had decided to go away, gave
+herself full licence for that evening. She flirted, laughed
+incessantly, sang with peculiar feeling and gusto. Everything
+delighted and amused her. She was amused at the memory of what had
+happened at the seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked
+on. She was amused by her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the
+pin in his cravat, which she had never noticed before. There was a
+red snake with diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as
+so amusing that she could have kissed it on the spot.
+
+Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as though
+half intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which dealt
+with wasted hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery of
+another's grief. "'And old age comes nearer and nearer' . . ." she
+sang. And what was old age to her?
+
+"It seems as though there is something going wrong with me," she
+thought from time to time through her laughter and singing.
+
+The party broke up at twelve o'clock. Ilyin was the last to leave.
+Sofya Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him to the
+bottom step of the verandah. She wanted to tell him that she was
+going away with her husband, and to watch the effect this news would
+produce on him.
+
+The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough for
+Sofya Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of his
+overcoat and with the awning of the verandah. She could see, too,
+how white Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip in the effort
+to smile.
+
+"Sonia, Sonitchka . . . my darling woman!" he muttered, preventing
+her from speaking. "My dear! my sweet!"
+
+In a rush of tenderness, with tears in his voice, he showered
+caressing words upon her, that grew tenderer and tenderer, and even
+called her "thou," as though she were his wife or mistress. Quite
+unexpectedly he put one arm round her waist and with the other hand
+took hold of her elbow.
+
+"My precious! my delight!" he whispered, kissing the nape of her
+neck; "be sincere; come to me at once!"
+
+She slipped out of his arms and raised her head to give vent to her
+indignation and anger, but the indignation did not come off, and
+all her vaunted virtue and chastity was only sufficient to enable
+her to utter the phrase used by all ordinary women on such occasions:
+
+"You must be mad."
+
+"Come, let us go," Ilyin continued. "I felt just now, as well as
+at the seat in the wood, that you are as helpless as I am, Sonia
+. . . . You are in the same plight! You love me and are fruitlessly
+trying to appease your conscience. . . ."
+
+Seeing that she was moving away, he caught her by her lace cuff and
+said rapidly:
+
+"If not today, then tomorrow you will have to give in! Why, then,
+this waste of time? My precious, darling Sonia, the sentence is
+passed; why put off the execution? Why deceive yourself?"
+
+Sofya Petrovna tore herself from him and darted in at the door.
+Returning to the drawing-room, she mechanically shut the piano,
+looked for a long time at the music-stand, and sat down. She could
+not stand up nor think. All that was left of her excitement and
+recklessness was a fearful weakness, apathy, and dreariness. Her
+conscience whispered to her that she had behaved badly, foolishly,
+that evening, like some madcap girl--that she had just been
+embraced on the verandah, and still had an uneasy feeling in her
+waist and her elbow. There was not a soul in the drawing-room; there
+was only one candle burning. Madame Lubyantsev sat on the round
+stool before the piano, motionless, as though expecting something.
+And as though taking advantage of the darkness and her extreme
+lassitude, an oppressive, overpowering desire began to assail her.
+Like a boa-constrictor it gripped her limbs and her soul, and grew
+stronger every second, and no longer menaced her as it had done,
+but stood clear before her in all its nakedness.
+
+She sat for half an hour without stirring, not restraining herself
+from thinking of Ilyin, then she got up languidly and dragged herself
+to her bedroom. Andrey Ilyitch was already in bed. She sat down by
+the open window and gave herself up to desire. There was no "tangle"
+now in her head; all her thoughts and feelings were bent with one
+accord upon a single aim. She tried to struggle against it, but
+instantly gave it up. . . . She understood now how strong and
+relentless was the foe. Strength and fortitude were needed to combat
+him, and her birth, her education, and her life had given her nothing
+to fall back upon.
+
+"Immoral wretch! Low creature!" she nagged at herself for her
+weakness. "So that's what you're like!"
+
+Her outraged sense of propriety was moved to such indignation by
+this weakness that she lavished upon herself every term of abuse
+she knew, and told herself many offensive and humiliating truths.
+So, for instance, she told herself that she never had been moral,
+that she had not come to grief before simply because she had had
+no opportunity, that her inward conflict during that day had all
+been a farce. . . .
+
+"And even if I have struggled," she thought, "what sort of struggle
+was it? Even the woman who sells herself struggles before she brings
+herself to it, and yet she sells herself. A fine struggle! Like
+milk, I've turned in a day! In one day!"
+
+She convicted herself of being tempted, not by feeling, not by Ilyin
+personally, but by sensations which awaited her . . . an idle lady,
+having her fling in the summer holidays, like so many!
+
+"'Like an unfledged bird when the mother has been slain,'" sang
+a husky tenor outside the window.
+
+"If I am to go, it's time," thought Sofya Petrovna. Her heart
+suddenly began beating violently.
+
+"Andrey!" she almost shrieked. "Listen! we . . . we are going? Yes?"
+
+"Yes, I've told you already: you go alone."
+
+"But listen," she began. "If you don't go with me, you are in danger
+of losing me. I believe I am . . . in love already."
+
+"With whom?" asked Andrey Ilyitch.
+
+"It can't make any difference to you who it is!" cried Sofya Petrovna.
+
+Andrey Ilyitch sat up with his feet out of bed and looked wonderingly
+at his wife's dark figure.
+
+"It's a fancy!" he yawned.
+
+He did not believe her, but yet he was frightened. After thinking
+a little and asking his wife several unimportant questions, he
+delivered himself of his opinions on the family, on infidelity . . .
+spoke listlessly for about ten minutes and got into bed again.
+His moralizing produced no effect. There are a great many opinions
+in the world, and a good half of them are held by people who have
+never been in trouble!
+
+In spite of the late hour, summer visitors were still walking
+outside. Sofya Petrovna put on a light cape, stood a little, thought
+a little. . . . She still had resolution enough to say to her
+sleeping husband:
+
+"Are you asleep? I am going for a walk. . . . Will you come with
+me?"
+
+That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out. . . .
+It was fresh and windy. She was conscious neither of the wind nor
+the darkness, but went on and on. . . . An overmastering force drove
+her on, and it seemed as though, if she had stopped, it would have
+pushed her in the back.
+
+"Immoral creature!" she muttered mechanically. "Low wretch!"
+
+She was breathless, hot with shame, did not feel her legs under
+her, but what drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or fear.
+
+
+A TRIFLE FROM LIFE
+
+A WELL-FED, red-cheeked young man called Nikolay Ilyitch Belyaev,
+of thirty-two, who was an owner of house property in Petersburg,
+and a devotee of the race-course, went one evening to see Olga
+Ivanovna Irnin, with whom he was living, or, to use his own expression,
+was dragging out a long, wearisome romance. And, indeed, the first
+interesting and enthusiastic pages of this romance had long been
+perused; now the pages dragged on, and still dragged on, without
+presenting anything new or of interest.
+
+Not finding Olga Ivanovna at home, my hero lay down on the lounge
+chair and proceeded to wait for her in the drawing-room.
+
+"Good-evening, Nikolay Ilyitch!" he heard a child's voice. "Mother
+will be here directly. She has gone with Sonia to the dressmaker's."
+
+Olga Ivanovna's son, Alyosha--a boy of eight who looked graceful
+and very well cared for, who was dressed like a picture, in a black
+velvet jacket and long black stockings--was lying on the sofa in
+the same room. He was lying on a satin cushion and, evidently
+imitating an acrobat he had lately seen at the circus, stuck up in
+the air first one leg and then the other. When his elegant legs
+were exhausted, he brought his arms into play or jumped up impulsively
+and went on all fours, trying to stand with his legs in the air.
+All this he was doing with the utmost gravity, gasping and groaning
+painfully as though he regretted that God had given him such a
+restless body.
+
+"Ah, good-evening, my boy," said Belyaev. "It's you! I did not
+notice you. Is your mother well?"
+
+Alyosha, taking hold of the tip of his left toe with his right hand
+and falling into the most unnatural attitude, turned over, jumped
+up, and peeped at Belyaev from behind the big fluffy lampshade.
+
+"What shall I say?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "In reality
+mother's never well. You see, she is a woman, and women, Nikolay
+Ilyitch, have always something the matter with them."
+
+Belyaev, having nothing better to do, began watching Alyosha's face.
+He had never before during the whole of his intimacy with Olga
+Ivanovna paid any attention to the boy, and had completely ignored
+his existence; the boy had been before his eyes, but he had not
+cared to think why he was there and what part he was playing.
+
+In the twilight of the evening, Alyosha's face, with his white
+forehead and black, unblinking eyes, unexpectedly reminded Belyaev
+of Olga Ivanovna as she had been during the first pages of their
+romance. And he felt disposed to be friendly to the boy.
+
+"Come here, insect," he said; "let me have a closer look at you."
+
+The boy jumped off the sofa and skipped up to Belyaev.
+
+"Well," began Nikolay Ilyitch, putting a hand on the boy's thin
+shoulder. "How are you getting on?"
+
+"How shall I say! We used to get on a great deal better."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's very simple. Sonia and I used only to learn music and reading,
+and now they give us French poetry to learn. Have you been shaved
+lately?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes, I see you have. Your beard is shorter. Let me touch it. . . .
+Does that hurt?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why is it that if you pull one hair it hurts, but if you pull a
+lot at once it doesn't hurt a bit? Ha, ha! And, you know, it's a
+pity you don't have whiskers. Here ought to be shaved . . . but
+here at the sides the hair ought to be left. . . ."
+
+The boy nestled up to Belyaev and began playing with his watch-chain.
+
+"When I go to the high-school," he said, "mother is going to buy
+me a watch. I shall ask her to buy me a watch-chain like this. . . .
+Wh-at a lo-ket! Father's got a locket like that, only yours has
+little bars on it and his has letters. . . . There's mother's
+portrait in the middle of his. Father has a different sort of chain
+now, not made with rings, but like ribbon. . . ."
+
+"How do you know? Do you see your father?"
+
+"I? M'm . . . no . . . I . . ."
+
+Alyosha blushed, and in great confusion, feeling caught in a lie,
+began zealously scratching the locket with his nail. . . . Belyaev
+looked steadily into his face and asked:
+
+"Do you see your father?"
+
+"N-no!"
+
+"Come, speak frankly, on your honour. . . . I see from your face
+you are telling a fib. Once you've let a thing slip out it's no
+good wriggling about it. Tell me, do you see him? Come, as a friend."
+
+Alyosha hesitated.
+
+"You won't tell mother?" he said.
+
+"As though I should!"
+
+"On your honour?"
+
+"On my honour."
+
+"Do you swear?"
+
+"Ah, you provoking boy! What do you take me for?"
+
+Alyosha looked round him, then with wide-open eyes, whispered to
+him:
+
+"Only, for goodness' sake, don't tell mother. . . . Don't tell any
+one at all, for it is a secret. I hope to goodness mother won't
+find out, or we should all catch it--Sonia, and I, and Pelagea
+. . . . Well, listen. . . Sonia and I see father every Tuesday and
+Friday. When Pelagea takes us for a walk before dinner we go to the
+Apfel Restaurant, and there is father waiting for us. . . . He is
+always sitting in a room apart, where you know there's a marble
+table and an ash-tray in the shape of a goose without a back. . . ."
+
+"What do you do there?"
+
+"Nothing! First we say how-do-you-do, then we all sit round the
+table, and father treats us with coffee and pies. You know Sonia
+eats the meat-pies, but I can't endure meat-pies! I like the pies
+made of cabbage and eggs. We eat such a lot that we have to try
+hard to eat as much as we can at dinner, for fear mother should
+notice."
+
+"What do you talk about?"
+
+"With father? About anything. He kisses us, he hugs us, tells us
+all sorts of amusing jokes. Do you know, he says when we are grown
+up he is going to take us to live with him. Sonia does not want to
+go, but I agree. Of course, I should miss mother; but, then, I
+should write her letters! It's a queer idea, but we could come and
+visit her on holidays--couldn't we? Father says, too, that he
+will buy me a horse. He's an awfully kind man! I can't understand
+why mother does not ask him to come and live with us, and why she
+forbids us to see him. You know he loves mother very much. He is
+always asking us how she is and what she is doing. When she was ill
+he clutched his head like this, and . . . and kept running about.
+He always tells us to be obedient and respectful to her. Listen.
+Is it true that we are unfortunate?"
+
+"H'm! . . . Why?"
+
+"That's what father says. 'You are unhappy children,' he says. It's
+strange to hear him, really. 'You are unhappy,' he says, 'I am
+unhappy, and mother's unhappy. You must pray to God,' he says; 'for
+yourselves and for her.'"
+
+Alyosha let his eyes rest on a stuffed bird and sank into thought.
+
+"So . . ." growled Belyaev. "So that's how you are going on. You
+arrange meetings at restaurants. And mother does not know?"
+
+"No-o. . . . How should she know? Pelagea would not tell her for
+anything, you know. The day before yesterday he gave us some pears.
+As sweet as jam! I ate two."
+
+"H'm! . . . Well, and I say . . Listen. Did father say anything
+about me?"
+
+"About you? What shall I say?"
+
+Alyosha looked searchingly into Belyaev's face and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"He didn't say anything particular."
+
+"For instance, what did he say?"
+
+"You won't be offended?"
+
+"What next? Why, does he abuse me?"
+
+"He doesn't abuse you, but you know he is angry with you. He says
+mother's unhappy owing to you . . . and that you have ruined mother.
+You know he is so queer! I explain to him that you are kind, that
+you never scold mother; but he only shakes his head."
+
+"So he says I have ruined her?"
+
+"Yes; you mustn't be offended, Nikolay Ilyitch."
+
+Belyaev got up, stood still a moment, and walked up and down the
+drawing-room.
+
+"That's strange and . . . ridiculous!" he muttered, shrugging his
+shoulders and smiling sarcastically. "He's entirely to blame, and
+I have ruined her, eh? An innocent lamb, I must say. So he told you
+I ruined your mother?"
+
+"Yes, but . . . you said you would not be offended, you know."
+
+"I am not offended, and . . . and it's not your business. Why, it's
+. . . why, it's positively ridiculous! I have been thrust into it
+like a chicken in the broth, and now it seems I'm to blame!"
+
+A ring was heard. The boy sprang up from his place and ran out. A
+minute later a lady came into the room with a little girl; this was
+Olga Ivanovna, Alyosha's mother. Alyosha followed them in, skipping
+and jumping, humming aloud and waving his hands. Belyaev nodded,
+and went on walking up and down.
+
+"Of course, whose fault is it if not mine?" he muttered with a
+snort. "He is right! He is an injured husband."
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Olga Ivanovna.
+
+"What about? . . . Why, just listen to the tales your lawful spouse
+is spreading now! It appears that I am a scoundrel and a villain,
+that I have ruined you and the children. All of you are unhappy,
+and I am the only happy one! Wonderfully, wonderfully happy!"
+
+"I don't understand, Nikolay. What's the matter?"
+
+"Why, listen to this young gentleman!" said Belyaev, pointing to
+Alyosha.
+
+Alyosha flushed crimson, then turned pale, and his whole face began
+working with terror.
+
+"Nikolay Ilyitch," he said in a loud whisper. "Sh-sh!"
+
+Olga Ivanovna looked in surprise at Alyosha, then at Belyaev, then
+at Alyosha again.
+
+"Just ask him," Belyaev went on. "Your Pelagea, like a regular fool,
+takes them about to restaurants and arranges meetings with their
+papa. But that's not the point: the point is that their dear papa
+is a victim, while I'm a wretch who has broken up both your lives. . ."
+
+"Nikolay Ilyitch," moaned Alyosha. "Why, you promised on your word
+of honour!"
+
+"Oh, get away!" said Belyaev, waving him off. "This is more important
+than any word of honour. It's the hypocrisy revolts me, the lying!
+. . ."
+
+"I don't understand it," said Olga Ivanovna, and tears glistened
+in her eyes. "Tell me, Alyosha," she turned to her son. "Do you see
+your father?"
+
+Alyosha did not hear her; he was looking with horror at Belyaev.
+
+"It's impossible," said his mother; "I will go and question Pelagea."
+
+Olga Ivanovna went out.
+
+"I say, you promised on your word of honour!" said Alyosha, trembling
+all over.
+
+Belyaev dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and went on walking
+up and down. He was absorbed in his grievance and was oblivious of
+the boy's presence, as he always had been. He, a grownup, serious
+person, had no thought to spare for boys. And Alyosha sat down in
+the corner and told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He
+was trembling, stammering, and crying. It was the first time in his
+life that he had been brought into such coarse contact with lying;
+till then he had not known that there are in the world, besides
+sweet pears, pies, and expensive watches, a great many things for
+which the language of children has no expression.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Party and Other Stories,
+by Anton Chekhov
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARTY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 13413.txt or 13413.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/4/1/13413/
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.