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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13414 ***
+
+THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
+
+VOLUME 13
+
+LOVE AND OTHER STORIES
+
+BY
+
+ANTON TCHEKHOV
+
+Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     LOVE
+     LIGHTS
+     A STORY WITHOUT AN END
+     MARI D'ELLE
+     A LIVING CHATTEL
+     THE DOCTOR
+     TOO EARLY!
+     THE COSSACK
+     ABORIGINES
+     AN INQUIRY
+     MARTYRS
+     THE LION AND THE SUN
+     A DAUGHTER OF ALBION
+     CHORISTERS
+     NERVES
+     A WORK OF ART
+     A JOKE
+     A COUNTRY COTTAGE
+     A BLUNDER
+     FAT AND THIN
+     THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK
+     A PINK STOCKING
+     AT A SUMMER VILLA
+
+
+
+
+LOVE
+
+"THREE o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking in
+at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't
+sleep, I am so happy!
+
+"My whole being from head to heels is bursting with a strange,
+incomprehensible feeling. I can't analyse it just now--I haven't
+the time, I'm too lazy, and there--hang analysis! Why, is a man
+likely to interpret his sensations when he is flying head foremost
+from a belfry, or has just learned that he has won two hundred
+thousand? Is he in a state to do it?"
+
+This was more or less how I began my love-letter to Sasha, a girl
+of nineteen with whom I had fallen in love. I began it five times,
+and as often tore up the sheets, scratched out whole pages, and
+copied it all over again. I spent as long over the letter as if it
+had been a novel I had to write to order. And it was not because I
+tried to make it longer, more elaborate, and more fervent, but
+because I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing,
+when one sits in the stillness of one's study and communes with
+one's own day-dreams while the spring night looks in at one's window.
+Between the lines I saw a beloved image, and it seemed to me that
+there were, sitting at the same table writing with me, spirits as
+naïvely happy, as foolish, and as blissfully smiling as I. I wrote
+continually, looking at my hand, which still ached deliciously where
+hers had lately pressed it, and if I turned my eyes away I had a
+vision of the green trellis of the little gate. Through that trellis
+Sasha gazed at me after I had said goodbye to her. When I was saying
+good-bye to Sasha I was thinking of nothing and was simply admiring
+her figure as every decent man admires a pretty woman; when I saw
+through the trellis two big eyes, I suddenly, as though by inspiration,
+knew that I was in love, that it was all settled between us, and
+fully decided already, that I had nothing left to do but to carry
+out certain formalities.
+
+It is a great delight also to seal up a love-letter, and, slowly
+putting on one's hat and coat, to go softly out of the house and
+to carry the treasure to the post. There are no stars in the sky
+now: in their place there is a long whitish streak in the east,
+broken here and there by clouds above the roofs of the dingy houses;
+from that streak the whole sky is flooded with pale light. The town
+is asleep, but already the water-carts have come out, and somewhere
+in a far-away factory a whistle sounds to wake up the workpeople.
+Beside the postbox, slightly moist with dew, you are sure to see
+the clumsy figure of a house porter, wearing a bell-shaped sheepskin
+and carrying a stick. He is in a condition akin to catalepsy: he
+is not asleep or awake, but something between.
+
+If the boxes knew how often people resort to them for the decision
+of their fate, they would not have such a humble air. I, anyway,
+almost kissed my postbox, and as I gazed at it I reflected that the
+post is the greatest of blessings.
+
+I beg anyone who has ever been in love to remember how one usually
+hurries home after dropping the letter in the box, rapidly gets
+into bed and pulls up the quilt in the full conviction that as soon
+as one wakes up in the morning one will be overwhelmed with memories
+of the previous day and look with rapture at the window, where the
+daylight will be eagerly making its way through the folds of the
+curtain.
+
+Well, to facts. . . . Next morning at midday, Sasha's maid brought
+me the following answer: "I am delited be sure to come to us to day
+please I shall expect you. Your S."
+
+Not a single comma. This lack of punctuation, and the misspelling
+of the word "delighted," the whole letter, and even the long, narrow
+envelope in which it was put filled my heart with tenderness. In
+the sprawling but diffident handwriting I recognised Sasha's walk,
+her way of raising her eyebrows when she laughed, the movement of
+her lips. . . . But the contents of the letter did not satisfy me.
+In the first place, poetical letters are not answered in that way,
+and in the second, why should I go to Sasha's house to wait till
+it should occur to her stout mamma, her brothers, and poor relations
+to leave us alone together? It would never enter their heads, and
+nothing is more hateful than to have to restrain one's raptures
+simply because of the intrusion of some animate trumpery in the
+shape of a half-deaf old woman or little girl pestering one with
+questions. I sent an answer by the maid asking Sasha to select some
+park or boulevard for a rendezvous. My suggestion was readily
+accepted. I had struck the right chord, as the saying is.
+
+Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon I made my way to the
+furthest and most overgrown part of the park. There was not a soul
+in the park, and the tryst might have taken place somewhere nearer
+in one of the avenues or arbours, but women don't like doing it by
+halves in romantic affairs; in for a penny, in for a pound--if
+you are in for a tryst, let it be in the furthest and most impenetrable
+thicket, where one runs the risk of stumbling upon some rough or
+drunken man. When I went up to Sasha she was standing with her back
+to me, and in that back I could read a devilish lot of mystery. It
+seemed as though that back and the nape of her neck, and the black
+spots on her dress were saying: Hush! . . . The girl was wearing a
+simple cotton dress over which she had thrown a light cape. To add
+to the air of mysterious secrecy, her face was covered with a white
+veil. Not to spoil the effect, I had to approach on tiptoe and speak
+in a half whisper.
+
+From what I remember now, I was not so much the essential point of
+the rendezvous as a detail of it. Sasha was not so much absorbed
+in the interview itself as in its romantic mysteriousness, my kisses,
+the silence of the gloomy trees, my vows. . . . There was not a
+minute in which she forgot herself, was overcome, or let the
+mysterious expression drop from her face, and really if there had
+been any Ivan Sidoritch or Sidor Ivanitch in my place she would
+have felt just as happy. How is one to make out in such circumstances
+whether one is loved or not? Whether the love is "the real thing"
+or not?
+
+From the park I took Sasha home with me. The presence of the beloved
+woman in one's bachelor quarters affects one like wine and music.
+Usually one begins to speak of the future, and the confidence and
+self-reliance with which one does so is beyond bounds. You make
+plans and projects, talk fervently of the rank of general though
+you have not yet reached the rank of a lieutenant, and altogether
+you fire off such high-flown nonsense that your listener must have
+a great deal of love and ignorance of life to assent to it. Fortunately
+for men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings and
+never know anything of life. Far from not assenting, they actually
+turn pale with holy awe, are full of reverence and hang greedily
+on the maniac's words. Sasha listened to me with attention, but I
+soon detected an absent-minded expression on her face, she did not
+understand me. The future of which I talked interested her only in
+its external aspect and I was wasting time in displaying my plans
+and projects before her. She was keenly interested in knowing which
+would be her room, what paper she would have in the room, why I had
+an upright piano instead of a grand piano, and so on. She examined
+carefully all the little things on my table, looked at the photographs,
+sniffed at the bottles, peeled the old stamps off the envelopes,
+saying she wanted them for something.
+
+"Please collect old stamps for me!" she said, making a grave face.
+"Please do."
+
+Then she found a nut in the window, noisily cracked it and ate it.
+
+"Why don't you stick little labels on the backs of your books?" she
+asked, taking a look at the bookcase.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Oh, so that each book should have its number. And where am I to
+put my books? I've got books too, you know."
+
+"What books have you got?" I asked.
+
+Sasha raised her eyebrows, thought a moment and said:
+
+"All sorts."
+
+And if it had entered my head to ask her what thoughts, what
+convictions, what aims she had, she would no doubt have raised her
+eyebrows, thought a minute, and have said in the same way: "All
+sorts."
+
+Later I saw Sasha home and left her house regularly, officially
+engaged, and was so reckoned till our wedding. If the reader will
+allow me to judge merely from my personal experience, I maintain
+that to be engaged is very dreary, far more so than to be a husband
+or nothing at all. An engaged man is neither one thing nor the
+other, he has left one side of the river and not reached the other,
+he is not married and yet he can't be said to be a bachelor, but
+is in something not unlike the condition of the porter whom I have
+mentioned above.
+
+Every day as soon as I had a free moment I hastened to my fiancée.
+As I went I usually bore within me a multitude of hopes, desires,
+intentions, suggestions, phrases. I always fancied that as soon as
+the maid opened the door I should, from feeling oppressed and
+stifled, plunge at once up to my neck into a sea of refreshing
+happiness. But it always turned out otherwise in fact. Every time
+I went to see my fiancée I found all her family and other members
+of the household busy over the silly trousseau. (And by the way,
+they were hard at work sewing for two months and then they had less
+than a hundred roubles' worth of things). There was a smell of
+irons, candle grease and fumes. Bugles scrunched under one's feet.
+The two most important rooms were piled up with billows of linen,
+calico, and muslin and from among the billows peeped out Sasha's
+little head with a thread between her teeth. All the sewing party
+welcomed me with cries of delight but at once led me off into the
+dining-room where I could not hinder them nor see what only husbands
+are permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit in
+the dining-room and converse with Pimenovna, one of the poor
+relations. Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by me
+with a thimble, a skein of wool or some other boring object.
+
+"Wait, wait, I shan't be a minute," she would say when I raised
+imploring eyes to her. "Only fancy that wretch Stepanida has spoilt
+the bodice of the barège dress!"
+
+And after waiting in vain for this grace, I lost my temper, went
+out of the house and walked about the streets in the company of the
+new cane I had bought. Or I would want to go for a walk or a drive
+with my fiancée, would go round and find her already standing in
+the hall with her mother, dressed to go out and playing with her
+parasol.
+
+"Oh, we are going to the Arcade," she would say. "We have got to
+buy some more cashmere and change the hat."
+
+My outing is knocked on the head. I join the ladies and go with
+them to the Arcade. It is revoltingly dull to listen to women
+shopping, haggling and trying to outdo the sharp shopman. I felt
+ashamed when Sasha, after turning over masses of material and
+knocking down the prices to a minimum, walked out of the shop without
+buying anything, or else told the shopman to cut her some half
+rouble's worth.
+
+When they came out of the shop, Sasha and her mamma with scared and
+worried faces would discuss at length having made a mistake, having
+bought the wrong thing, the flowers in the chintz being too dark,
+and so on.
+
+Yes, it is a bore to be engaged! I'm glad it's over.
+
+Now I am married. It is evening. I am sitting in my study reading.
+Behind me on the sofa Sasha is sitting munching something noisily.
+I want a glass of beer.
+
+"Sasha, look for the corkscrew. . . ." I say. "It's lying about
+somewhere."
+
+Sasha leaps up, rummages in a disorderly way among two or three
+heaps of papers, drops the matches, and without finding the corkscrew,
+sits down in silence. . . . Five minutes pass--ten. . . I begin
+to be fretted both by thirst and vexation.
+
+"Sasha, do look for the corkscrew," I say.
+
+Sasha leaps up again and rummages among the papers near me. Her
+munching and rustling of the papers affects me like the sound of
+sharpening knives against each other. . . . I get up and begin
+looking for the corkscrew myself. At last it is found and the beer
+is uncorked. Sasha remains by the table and begins telling me
+something at great length.
+
+"You'd better read something, Sasha," I say.
+
+She takes up a book, sits down facing me and begins moving her lips
+. . . . I look at her little forehead, moving lips, and sink into
+thought.
+
+"She is getting on for twenty. . . ." I reflect. "If one takes a
+boy of the educated class and of that age and compares them, what
+a difference! The boy would have knowledge and convictions and some
+intelligence."
+
+But I forgive that difference just as the low forehead and moving
+lips are forgiven. I remember in my old Lovelace days I have cast
+off women for a stain on their stockings, or for one foolish word,
+or for not cleaning their teeth, and now I forgive everything: the
+munching, the muddling about after the corkscrew, the slovenliness,
+the long talking about nothing that matters; I forgive it all almost
+unconsciously, with no effort of will, as though Sasha's mistakes
+were my mistakes, and many things which would have made me wince
+in old days move me to tenderness and even rapture. The explanation
+of this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha, but
+what is the explanation of the love itself, I really don't know.
+
+
+LIGHTS
+
+THE dog was barking excitedly outside. And Ananyev the engineer,
+his assistant called Von Schtenberg, and I went out of the hut to
+see at whom it was barking. I was the visitor, and might have
+remained indoors, but I must confess my head was a little dizzy
+from the wine I had drunk, and I was glad to get a breath of fresh
+air.
+
+"There is nobody here," said Ananyev when we went out. "Why are you
+telling stories, Azorka? You fool!"
+
+There was not a soul in sight.
+
+"The fool," Azorka, a black house-dog, probably conscious of his
+guilt in barking for nothing and anxious to propitiate us, approached
+us, diffidently wagging his tail. The engineer bent down and touched
+him between his ears.
+
+"Why are you barking for nothing, creature?" he said in the tone
+in which good-natured people talk to children and dogs. "Have you
+had a bad dream or what? Here, doctor, let me commend to your
+attention," he said, turning to me, "a wonderfully nervous subject!
+Would you believe it, he can't endure solitude--he is always
+having terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when you
+shout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics."
+
+"Yes, a dog of refined feelings," the student chimed in.
+
+Azorka must have understood that the conversation was concerning
+him. He turned his head upwards and grinned plaintively, as though
+to say, "Yes, at times I suffer unbearably, but please excuse it!"
+
+It was an August night, there were stars, but it was dark. Owing
+to the fact that I had never in my life been in such exceptional
+surroundings, as I had chanced to come into now, the starry night
+seemed to me gloomy, inhospitable, and darker than it was in reality.
+I was on a railway line which was still in process of construction.
+The high, half-finished embankment, the mounds of sand, clay, and
+rubble, the holes, the wheel-barrows standing here and there, the
+flat tops of the mud huts in which the workmen lived--all this
+muddle, coloured to one tint by the darkness, gave the earth a
+strange, wild aspect that suggested the times of chaos. There was
+so little order in all that lay before me that it was somehow strange
+in the midst of the hideously excavated, grotesque-looking earth
+to see the silhouettes of human beings and the slender telegraph
+posts. Both spoiled the ensemble of the picture, and seemed to
+belong to a different world. It was still, and the only sound came
+from the telegraph wire droning its wearisome refrain somewhere
+very high above our heads.
+
+We climbed up on the embankment and from its height looked down
+upon the earth. A hundred yards away where the pits, holes, and
+mounds melted into the darkness of the night, a dim light was
+twinkling. Beyond it gleamed another light, beyond that a third,
+then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side--probably
+the windows of some hut--and a long series of such lights,
+growing continually closer and dimmer, stretched along the line to
+the very horizon, then turned in a semicircle to the left and
+disappeared in the darkness of the distance. The lights were
+motionless. There seemed to be something in common between them and
+the stillness of the night and the disconsolate song of the telegraph
+wire. It seemed as though some weighty secret were buried under the
+embankment and only the lights, the night, and the wires knew of
+it.
+
+"How glorious, O Lord!" sighed Ananyev; "such space and beauty that
+one can't tear oneself away! And what an embankment! It's not an
+embankment, my dear fellow, but a regular Mont Blanc. It's costing
+millions. . . ."
+
+Going into ecstasies over the lights and the embankment that was
+costing millions, intoxicated by the wine and his sentimental mood,
+the engineer slapped Von Schtenberg on the shoulder and went on in
+a jocose tone:
+
+"Well, Mihail Mihailitch, lost in reveries? No doubt it is pleasant
+to look at the work of one's own hands, eh? Last year this very
+spot was bare steppe, not a sight of human life, and now look: life
+. . . civilisation. . . And how splendid it all is, upon my soul!
+You and I are building a railway, and after we are gone, in another
+century or two, good men will build a factory, a school, a hospital,
+and things will begin to move! Eh!"
+
+The student stood motionless with his hands thrust in his pockets,
+and did not take his eyes off the lights. He was not listening to
+the engineer, but was thinking, and was apparently in the mood in
+which one does not want to speak or to listen. After a prolonged
+silence he turned to me and said quietly:
+
+"Do you know what those endless lights are like? They make me think
+of something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago, something
+like the camps of the Amalekites or the Philistines. It is as though
+some people of the Old Testament had pitched their camp and were
+waiting for morning to fight with Saul or David. All that is wanting
+to complete the illusion is the blare of trumpets and sentries
+calling to one another in some Ethiopian language."
+
+And, as though of design, the wind fluttered over the line and
+brought a sound like the clank of weapons. A silence followed. I
+don't know what the engineer and the student were thinking of, but
+it seemed to me already that I actually saw before me something
+long dead and even heard the sentry talking in an unknown tongue.
+My imagination hastened to picture the tents, the strange people,
+their clothes, their armour.
+
+"Yes," muttered the student pensively, "once Philistines and
+Amalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing their
+part, and now no trace of them remains. So it will be with us. Now
+we are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but two
+thousand years will pass--and of this embankment and of all those
+men, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain.
+In reality, it's awful!"
+
+"You must drop those thoughts . . ." said the engineer gravely and
+admonishingly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because. . . . Thoughts like that are for the end of life, not for
+the beginning of it. You are too young for them."
+
+"Why so?" repeated the student.
+
+"All these thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance and
+the aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of the
+shadows of the grave, and so on, all such lofty thoughts, I tell
+you, my dear fellow, are good and natural in old age when they come
+as the product of years of inner travail, and are won by suffering
+and really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on the
+threshold of real life they are simply a calamity! A calamity!"
+Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand. "To my mind it is better
+at your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to think
+on these lines. I am speaking seriously, Baron. And I have been
+meaning to speak to you about it for a long time, for I noticed
+from the very first day of our acquaintance your partiality for
+these damnable ideas!"
+
+"Good gracious, why are they damnable?" the student asked with a
+smile, and from his voice and his face I could see that he asked
+the question from simple politeness, and that the discussion raised
+by the engineer did not interest him in the least.
+
+I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was dreaming that immediately
+after our walk we should wish each other good-night and go to bed,
+but my dream was not quickly realised. When we had returned to the
+hut the engineer put away the empty bottles and took out of a large
+wicker hamper two full ones, and uncorking them, sat down to his
+work-table with the evident intention of going on drinking, talking,
+and working. Sipping a little from his glass, he made pencil notes
+on some plans and went on pointing out to the student that the
+latter's way of thinking was not what it should be. The student sat
+beside him checking accounts and saying nothing. He, like me, had
+no inclination to speak or to listen. That I might not interfere
+with their work, I sat away from the table on the engineer's
+crooked-legged travelling bedstead, feeling bored and expecting
+every moment that they would suggest I should go to bed. It was
+going on for one o'clock.
+
+Having nothing to do, I watched my new acquaintances. I had never
+seen Ananyev or the student before. I had only made their acquaintance
+on the night I have described. Late in the evening I was returning
+on horseback from a fair to the house of a landowner with whom I
+was staying, had got on the wrong road in the dark and lost my way.
+Going round and round by the railway line and seeing how dark the
+night was becoming, I thought of the "barefoot railway roughs," who
+lie in wait for travellers on foot and on horseback, was frightened,
+and knocked at the first hut I came to. There I was cordially
+received by Ananyev and the student. As is usually the case with
+strangers casually brought together, we quickly became acquainted,
+grew friendly and at first over the tea and afterward over the wine,
+began to feel as though we had known each other for years. At the
+end of an hour or so, I knew who they were and how fate had brought
+them from town to the far-away steppe; and they knew who I was,
+what my occupation and my way of thinking.
+
+Nikolay Anastasyevitch Ananyev, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered,
+thick-set man, and, judging from his appearance, he had, like
+Othello, begun the "descent into the vale of years," and was growing
+rather too stout. He was just at that stage which old match-making
+women mean when they speak of "a man in the prime of his age," that
+is, he was neither young nor old, was fond of good fare, good liquor,
+and praising the past, panted a little as he walked, snored loudly
+when he was asleep, and in his manner with those surrounding him
+displayed that calm imperturbable good humour which is always
+acquired by decent people by the time they have reached the grade
+of a staff officer and begun to grow stout. His hair and beard were
+far from being grey, but already, with a condescension of which he
+was unconscious, he addressed young men as "my dear boy" and felt
+himself entitled to lecture them good-humouredly about their way
+of thinking. His movements and his voice were calm, smooth, and
+self-confident, as they are in a man who is thoroughly well aware
+that he has got his feet firmly planted on the right road, that he
+has definite work, a secure living, a settled outlook. . . . His
+sunburnt, thicknosed face and muscular neck seemed to say: "I am
+well fed, healthy, satisfied with myself, and the time will come
+when you young people too, will be well-fed, healthy, and satisfied
+with yourselves. . . ." He was dressed in a cotton shirt with the
+collar awry and in full linen trousers thrust into his high boots.
+From certain trifles, as for instance, from his coloured worsted
+girdle, his embroidered collar, and the patch on his elbow, I was
+able to guess that he was married and in all probability tenderly
+loved by his wife.
+
+Baron Von Schtenberg, a student of the Institute of Transport, was
+a young man of about three or four and twenty. Only his fair hair
+and scanty beard, and, perhaps, a certain coarseness and frigidity
+in his features showed traces of his descent from Barons of the
+Baltic provinces; everything else--his name, Mihail Mihailovitch,
+his religion, his ideas, his manners, and the expression of his
+face were purely Russian. Wearing, like Ananyev, a cotton shirt and
+high boots, with his round shoulders, his hair left uncut, and his
+sunburnt face, he did not look like a student or a Baron, but like
+an ordinary Russian workman. His words and gestures were few, he
+drank reluctantly without relish, checked the accounts mechanically,
+and seemed all the while to be thinking of something else. His
+movements and voice were calm, and smooth too, but his calmness was
+of a different kind from the engineer's. His sunburnt, slightly
+ironical, dreamy face, his eyes which looked up from under his
+brows, and his whole figure were expressive of spiritual
+stagnatio--mental sloth. He looked as though it did not matter to him in
+the least whether the light were burning before him or not, whether
+the wine were nice or nasty, and whether the accounts he was checking
+were correct or not. . . . And on his intelligent, calm face I read:
+"I don't see so far any good in definite work, a secure living, and
+a settled outlook. It's all nonsense. I was in Petersburg, now I
+am sitting here in this hut, in the autumn I shall go back to
+Petersburg, then in the spring here again. . . . What sense there
+is in all that I don't know, and no one knows. . . . And so it's
+no use talking about it. . . ."
+
+He listened to the engineer without interest, with the condescending
+indifference with which cadets in the senior classes listen to an
+effusive and good-natured old attendant. It seemed as though there
+were nothing new to him in what the engineer said, and that if he
+had not himself been too lazy to talk, he would have said something
+newer and cleverer. Meanwhile Ananyev would not desist. He had by
+now laid aside his good-humoured, jocose tone and spoke seriously,
+even with a fervour which was quite out of keeping with his expression
+of calmness. Apparently he had no distaste for abstract subjects,
+was fond of them, indeed, but had neither skill nor practice in the
+handling of them. And this lack of practice was so pronounced in
+his talk that I did not always grasp his meaning at once.
+
+"I hate those ideas with all my heart!" he said, "I was infected
+by them myself in my youth, I have not quite got rid of them even
+now, and I tell you--perhaps because I am stupid and such thoughts
+were not the right food for my mind--they did me nothing but harm.
+That's easy to understand! Thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of
+the insignificance and transitoriness of the visible world, Solomon's
+'vanity of vanities' have been, and are to this day, the highest
+and final stage in the realm of thought. The thinker reaches that
+stage and--comes to a halt! There is nowhere further to go. The
+activity of the normal brain is completed with this, and that is
+natural and in the order of things. Our misfortune is that we begin
+thinking at that end. What normal people end with we begin with.
+From the first start, as soon as the brain begins working independently,
+we mount to the very topmost, final step and refuse to know anything
+about the steps below."
+
+"What harm is there in that?" said the student.
+
+"But you must understand that it's abnormal," shouted Ananyev,
+looking at him almost wrathfully. "If we find means of mounting to
+the topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole
+long ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds,
+and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age such
+reflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step of
+your rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down this
+minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a page
+before the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare,
+and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know you
+will die, that Shakespeare and Darwin have died too, that their
+thoughts have not saved them, nor the earth, nor you, and that if
+life is deprived of meaning in that way, all science, poetry, and
+exalted thoughts seem only useless diversions, the idle playthings
+of grown up people; and you leave off reading at the second page.
+Now, let us suppose that people come to you as an intelligent man
+and ask your opinion about war, for instance: whether it is desirable,
+whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terrible
+question you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself to
+some commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, it
+makes absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands of
+people die a violent death, or a natural one: the results are the
+same--ashes and oblivion. You and I are building a railway line.
+What's the use, one may ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing,
+rising above the hackneyed thing, feeling for the workmen, stealing
+or not stealing, when we know that this railway line will turn to
+dust within two thousand years, and so on, and so on. . . . You
+must admit that with such a disastrous way of looking at things
+there can be no progress, no science, no art, nor even thought
+itself. We fancy that we are cleverer than the crowd, and than
+Shakespeare. In reality our thinking leads to nothing because we
+have no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there is
+nowhere higher to go, so our brain stands at the freezing point--neither
+up nor down; I was in bondage to these ideas for six years,
+and by all that is holy, I never read a sensible book all that time,
+did not gain a ha'porth of wisdom, and did not raise my moral
+standard an inch. Was not that disastrous? Moreover, besides being
+corrupted ourselves, we bring poison into the lives of those
+surrounding us. It would be all right if, with our pessimism, we
+renounced life, went to live in a cave, or made haste to die, but,
+as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live, feel, love
+women, bring up children, construct railways!"
+
+"Our thoughts make no one hot or cold," the student said reluctantly.
+
+"Ah! there you are again!--do stop it! You have not yet had a
+good sniff at life. But when you have lived as long as I have you
+will know a thing or two! Our theory of life is not so innocent as
+you suppose. In practical life, in contact with human beings, it
+leads to nothing but horrors and follies. It has been my lot to
+pass through experiences which I would not wish a wicked Tatar to
+endure."
+
+"For instance?" I asked.
+
+"For instance?" repeated the engineer.
+
+He thought a minute, smiled and said:
+
+"For instance, take this example. More correctly, it is not an
+example, but a regular drama, with a plot and a dénouement. An
+excellent lesson! Ah, what a lesson!"
+
+He poured out wine for himself and us, emptied his glass, stroked
+his broad chest with his open hands, and went on, addressing himself
+more to me than to the student.
+
+"It was in the year 187--, soon after the war, and when I had just
+left the University. I was going to the Caucasus, and on the way
+stopped for five days in the seaside town of N. I must tell you
+that I was born and grew up in that town, and so there is nothing
+odd in my thinking N. extraordinarily snug, cosy, and beautiful,
+though for a man from Petersburg or Moscow, life in it would be as
+dreary and comfortless as in any Tchuhloma or Kashira. With melancholy
+I passed by the high school where I had been a pupil; with melancholy
+I walked about the very familiar park, I made a melancholy attempt
+to get a nearer look at people I had not seen for a long time--all
+with the same melancholy.
+
+"Among other things, I drove out one evening to the so-called
+Quarantine. It was a small mangy copse in which, at some forgotten
+time of plague, there really had been a quarantine station, and
+which was now the resort of summer visitors. It was a drive of three
+miles from the town along a good soft road. As one drove along one
+saw on the left the blue sea, on the right the unending gloomy
+steppe; there was plenty of air to breathe, and wide views for the
+eyes to rest on. The copse itself lay on the seashore. Dismissing
+my cabman, I went in at the familiar gates and first turned along
+an avenue leading to a little stone summer-house which I had been
+fond of in my childhood. In my opinion that round, heavy summer-house
+on its clumsy columns, which combined the romantic charm of an old
+tomb with the ungainliness of a Sobakevitch,* was the most poetical
+nook in the whole town. It stood at the edge above the cliff, and
+from it there was a splendid view of the sea.
+
+*A character in Gogol's _Dead Souls.--Translator's Note._
+
+"I sat down on the seat, and, bending over the parapet, looked down.
+A path ran from the summer-house along the steep, almost overhanging
+cliff, between the lumps of clay and tussocks of burdock. Where it
+ended, far below on the sandy shore, low waves were languidly foaming
+and softly purring. The sea was as majestic, as infinite, and as
+forbidding as seven years before when I left the high school and
+went from my native town to the capital; in the distance there was
+a dark streak of smoke--a steamer was passing--and except for
+this hardly visible and motionless streak and the sea-swallows that
+flitted over the water, there was nothing to give life to the
+monotonous view of sea and sky. To right and left of the summer-house
+stretched uneven clay cliffs.
+
+"You know that when a man in a melancholy mood is left _tête-à-tête_
+with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, there
+is always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a conviction
+that he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatches
+up a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing that
+comes handy. And that, I suppose, is why all convenient solitary
+nooks like my summer-house are always scrawled over in pencil or
+carved with penknives. I remember as though it were to-day; looking
+at the parapet I read: 'Ivan Korolkov, May 16, 1876.' Beside Korolkov
+some local dreamer had scribbled freely, adding:
+
+        "'He stood on the desolate ocean's strand,
+           While his soul was filled with imaginings grand.'
+
+And his handwriting was dreamy, limp like wet silk. An individual
+called Kross, probably an insignificant, little man, felt his
+unimportance so deeply that he gave full licence to his penknife
+and carved his name in deep letters an inch high. I took a pencil
+out of my pocket mechanically, and I too scribbled on one of the
+columns. All that is irrelevant, however. . . You must forgive
+me--I don't know how to tell a story briefly.
+
+"I was sad and a little bored. Boredom, the stillness, and the
+purring of the sea gradually brought me to the line of thought we
+have been discussing. At that period, towards the end of the
+'seventies, it had begun to be fashionable with the public, and
+later, at the beginning of the 'eighties, it gradually passed from
+the general public into literature, science, and politics. I was
+no more than twenty-six at the time, but I knew perfectly well that
+life was aimless and had no meaning, that everything was a deception
+and an illusion, that in its essential nature and results a life
+of penal servitude in Sahalin was not in any way different from a
+life spent in Nice, that the difference between the brain of a Kant
+and the brain of a fly was of no real significance, that no one in
+this world is righteous or guilty, that everything was stuff and
+nonsense and damn it all! I lived as though I were doing a favour
+to some unseen power which compelled me to live, and to which I
+seemed to say: 'Look, I don't care a straw for life, but I am
+living!' I thought on one definite line, but in all sorts of keys,
+and in that respect I was like the subtle gourmand who could prepare
+a hundred appetising dishes from nothing but potatoes. There is no
+doubt that I was one-sided and even to some extent narrow, but I
+fancied at the time that my intellectual horizon had neither beginning
+nor end, and that my thought was as boundless as the sea. Well, as
+far as I can judge by myself, the philosophy of which we are speaking
+has something alluring, narcotic in its nature, like tobacco or
+morphia. It becomes a habit, a craving. You take advantage of every
+minute of solitude to gloat over thoughts of the aimlessness of
+life and the darkness of the grave. While I was sitting in the
+summer-house, Greek children with long noses were decorously walking
+about the avenues. I took advantage of the occasion and, looking
+at them, began reflecting in this style:
+
+"'Why are these children born, and what are they living for? Is
+there any sort of meaning in their existence? They grow up, without
+themselves knowing what for; they will live in this God-forsaken,
+comfortless hole for no sort of reason, and then they will die. . . .'
+
+"And I actually felt vexed with those children because they were
+walking about decorously and talking with dignity, as though they
+did not hold their little colourless lives so cheap and knew what
+they were living for. . . . I remember that far away at the end of
+an avenue three feminine figures came into sight. Three young ladies,
+one in a pink dress, two in white, were walking arm-in-arm, talking
+and laughing. Looking after them, I thought:
+
+"'It wouldn't be bad to have an affair with some woman for a couple
+of days in this dull place.'
+
+"I recalled by the way that it was three weeks since I had visited
+my Petersburg lady, and thought that a passing love affair would
+come in very appropriately for me just now. The young lady in white
+in the middle was rather younger and better looking than her
+companions, and judging by her manners and her laugh, she was a
+high-school girl in an upper form. I looked, not without impure
+thoughts, at her bust, and at the same time reflected about her:
+'She will be trained in music and manners, she will be married to
+some Greek--God help us!--will lead a grey, stupid, comfortless
+life, will bring into the world a crowd of children without knowing
+why, and then will die. An absurd life!'
+
+"I must say that as a rule I was a great hand at combining my lofty
+ideas with the lowest prose.
+
+"Thoughts of the darkness of the grave did not prevent me from
+giving busts and legs their full due. Our dear Baron's exalted ideas
+do not prevent him from going on Saturdays to Vukolovka on amatory
+expeditions. To tell the honest truth, as far as I remember, my
+attitude to women was most insulting. Now, when I think of that
+high-school girl, I blush for my thoughts then, but at the time my
+conscience was perfectly untroubled. I, the son of honourable
+parents, a Christian, who had received a superior education, not
+naturally wicked or stupid, felt not the slightest uneasiness when
+I paid women _Blutgeld_, as the Germans call it, or when I followed
+high-school girls with insulting looks. . . . The trouble is that
+youth makes its demands, and our philosophy has nothing in principle
+against those demands, whether they are good or whether they are
+loathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death inevitable
+is not interested in the struggle against nature or the conception
+of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will die and
+rot just the same. . . . Secondly, my friends, our philosophy instils
+even into very young people what is called reasonableness. The
+predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst
+us. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty
+analysis. Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold
+people--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity.
+That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, and
+capable of love. Thirdly, our philosophy denies the significance
+of each individual personality. It's easy to see that if I deny the
+personality of some Natalya Stepanovna, it's absolutely nothing to
+me whether she is insulted or not. To-day one insults her dignity
+as a human being and pays her _Blutgeld_, and next day thinks no
+more of her.
+
+"So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Another
+woman's figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her head
+uncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walked
+along the avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking hold
+of the parapet, looked indifferently below and into the distance
+over the sea. As she came in she paid no attention to me, as though
+she did not notice me. I scrutinised her from foot to head (not
+from head to foot, as one scrutinises men) and found that she was
+young, not more than five-and-twenty, nice-looking, with a good
+figure, in all probability married and belonging to the class of
+respectable women. She was dressed as though she were at home, but
+fashionably and with taste, as ladies are, as a rule, in N.
+
+"'This one would do nicely,' I thought, looking at her handsome
+figure and her arms; 'she is all right. . . . She is probably the
+wife of some doctor or schoolmaster. . . .'
+
+"But to make up to her--that is, to make her the heroine of one
+of those impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone--was
+not easy and, indeed, hardly possible. I felt that as I gazed at
+her face. The way she looked, and the expression of her face,
+suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky had
+bored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight. She seemed to be
+tired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face had
+not even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which one
+sees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of the
+presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.
+
+"The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, sat
+down on a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw that
+she had no thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance,
+did not arouse in her even simple curiosity. But yet I made up my
+mind to speak to her, and asked: 'Madam, allow me to ask you at
+what time do the waggonettes go from here to the town?'
+
+"'At ten or eleven, I believe. . . .'"
+
+"I thanked her. She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly there
+was a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on her
+passionless face. . . . I made haste to assume an indifferent
+expression and to fall into a suitable attitude; she was catching
+on! She suddenly jumped up from the seat, as though something had
+bitten her, and examining me hurriedly, with a gentle smile, asked
+timidly:
+
+"'Oh, aren't you Ananyev?'
+
+"'Yes, I am Ananyev,' I answered.
+
+"'And don't you recognise me? No?'
+
+"I was a little confused. I looked intently at her, and--would
+you believe it?--I recognised her not from her face nor her figure,
+but from her gentle, weary smile. It was Natalya Stepanovna, or,
+as she was called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head over
+ears in love with seven or eight years before, when I was wearing
+the uniform of a high-school boy. The doings of far, vanished days,
+the days of long ago. . . . I remember this Kisotchka, a thin little
+high-school girl of fifteen or sixteen, when she was something just
+for a schoolboy's taste, created by nature especially for Platonic
+love. What a charming little girl she was! Pale, fragile, light--she
+looked as though a breath would send her flying like a feather
+to the skies--a gentle, perplexed face, little hands, soft long
+hair to her belt, a waist as thin as a wasp's--altogether something
+ethereal, transparent like moonlight--in fact, from the point of
+view of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . . . Wasn't I in love
+with her! I did not sleep at night. I wrote verses. . . . Sometimes
+in the evenings she would sit on a seat in the park while we
+schoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently; in response to our
+compliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would shrink
+nervously from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile gently,
+and at such times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten. As
+we gazed at her every one of us had a desire to caress her and
+stroke her like a cat, hence her nickname of Kisotchka.
+
+"In the course of the seven or eight years since we had met, Kisotchka
+had greatly changed. She had grown more robust and stouter, and had
+quite lost the resemblance to a soft, fluffy kitten. It was not
+that her features looked old or faded, but they had somehow lost
+their brilliance and looked sterner, her hair seemed shorter, she
+looked taller, and her shoulders were quite twice as broad, and
+what was most striking, there was already in her face the expression
+of motherliness and resignation commonly seen in respectable women
+of her age, and this, of course, I had never seen in her before. . . .
+In short, of the school-girlish and the Platonic her face had
+kept the gentle smile and nothing more. . . .
+
+"We got into conversation. Learning that I was already an engineer,
+Kisotchka was immensely delighted.
+
+"'How good that is!' she said, looking joyfully into my face. 'Ah,
+how good! And how splendid you all are! Of all who left with you,
+not one has been a failure--they have all turned out well. One
+an engineer, another a doctor, a third a teacher, another, they
+say, is a celebrated singer in Petersburg. . . . You are all splendid,
+all of you. . . . Ah, how good that is!'
+
+"Kisotchka's eyes shone with genuine goodwill and gladness. She was
+admiring me like an elder sister or a former governess. 'While I
+looked at her sweet face and thought, It wouldn't be bad to get
+hold of her to-day!'
+
+"'Do you remember, Natalya Stepanovna,' I asked her, 'how I once
+brought you in the park a bouquet with a note in it? You read my
+note, and such a look of bewilderment came into your face. . . .'
+
+"'No, I don't remember that,' she said, laughing. 'But I remember
+how you wanted to challenge Florens to a duel over me. . . .'
+
+"'Well, would you believe it, I don't remember that. . . .'
+
+"'Well, that's all over and done with . . .' sighed Kisotchka. 'At
+one time I was your idol, and now it is my turn to look up to all
+of you. . . .'
+
+"From further conversation I learned that two years after leaving
+the high school, Kisotchka had been married to a resident in the
+town who was half Greek, half Russian, had a post either in the
+bank or in the insurance society, and also carried on a trade in
+corn. He had a strange surname, something in the style of Populaki
+or Skarandopulo. . . . Goodness only knows--I have forgotten. . . .
+As a matter of fact, Kisotchka spoke little and with reluctance
+about herself. The conversation was only about me. She asked me
+about the College of Engineering, about my comrades, about Petersburg,
+about my plans, and everything I said moved her to eager delight
+and exclamations of, 'Oh, how good that is!'
+
+"We went down to the sea and walked over the sands; then when the
+night air began to blow chill and damp from the sea we climbed up
+again. All the while our talk was of me and of the past. We walked
+about until the reflection of the sunset had died away from the
+windows of the summer villas.
+
+"'Come in and have some tea,' Kisotchka suggested. 'The samovar
+must have been on the table long ago. . . . I am alone at home,'
+she said, as her villa came into sight through the green of the
+acacias. 'My husband is always in the town and only comes home at
+night, and not always then, and I must own that I am so dull that
+it's simply deadly.'
+
+"I followed her in, admiring her back and shoulders. I was glad
+that she was married. Married women are better material for temporary
+love affairs than girls. I was also pleased that her husband was
+not at home. At the same time I felt that the affair would not come
+off. . . .
+
+"We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low ceilings,
+and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians like
+having at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniture
+which they are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), but
+from certain details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husband
+were not badly off, and must be spending five or six thousand roubles
+a year. I remember that in the middle of the room which Kisotchka
+called the dining-room there was a round table, supported for some
+reason on six legs, and on it a samovar and cups. At the edge of
+the table lay an open book, a pencil, and an exercise book. I glanced
+at the book and recognised it as 'Malinin and Burenin's Arithmetical
+Examples.' It was open, as I now remember, at the 'Rules of Compound
+Interest.'
+
+"'To whom are you giving lessons?' I asked Kisotchka.
+
+"'Nobody,' she answered. 'I am just doing some. . . . I have nothing
+to do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums.'
+
+"'Have you any children?'
+
+"'I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.'
+
+"We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good
+it was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success.
+And the more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the
+stronger was my conviction that I should go away without having
+gained my object. I was a connoisseur in love affairs in those days,
+and could accurately gauge my chances of success. You can boldly
+reckon on success if you are tracking down a fool or a woman as
+much on the look out for new experiences and sensations as yourself,
+or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If you come across a
+sensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression of weary
+submission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your presence,
+and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To succeed
+in that case needs longer than one day.
+
+"And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by
+day. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me
+too, and the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not
+at home, no servants visible, stillness around. . . . Though I had
+little confidence in success, I made up my mind to begin the attack
+anyway. First of all it was necessary to get into a familiar tone
+and to change Kisotchka's lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous
+one.
+
+"'Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,' I began.
+'Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the
+sake of old times, to call you Kisotchka.'
+
+"She allowed me.
+
+"'Tell me, please, Kisotchka,' I went on, 'what is the matter with
+all the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days they
+were all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asks
+about anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked at
+human nature. . . . One young lady has eloped with an officer;
+another has run away and carried off a high-school boy with her;
+another--a married woman--has run away from her husband with
+an actor; a fourth has left her husband and gone off with an officer,
+and so on and so on. It's a regular epidemic! If it goes on like
+this there won't be a girl or a young woman left in your town!'
+
+"I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in
+response I should have gone on in this style: 'You had better look
+out, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!'
+She would have dropped her eyes and said: 'As though anyone would
+care to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking
+. . . .' And I should have said: 'Nonsense, Kisotchka--I for one
+should be delighted!' And so on in that style, and it would all
+have gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; on
+the contrary, she looked grave and sighed.
+
+"'All you have been told is true,' she said. 'My cousin Sonya ran
+away from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is wrong. . . .
+Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but I do
+not condemn them or blame them. . . . Circumstances are sometimes
+too strong for anyone!'
+
+"'That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce a
+regular epidemic?'
+
+"'It's very simple and easy to understand,' replied Kisotchka,
+raising her eyebrows. 'There is absolutely nothing for us educated
+girls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to go
+to the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact,
+as men do. They have to be married. . . . And whom would you have
+them marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to the
+University, never to return to your native town again, and you marry
+in Petersburg or Moscow, while the girls remain. . . . To whom are
+they to be married? Why, in the absence of decent cultured men,
+goodness knows what sort of men they marry--stockbrokers and such
+people of all kinds, who can do nothing but drink and get into rows
+at the club. . . . A girl married like that, at random. . . . And
+what is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated,
+cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meets
+a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor--well, she
+gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs
+away from her husband. And one can't condemn her!'
+
+"'If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?' I asked.
+
+"'Yes, of course,' said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know every
+girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogether
+life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is
+stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here
+they laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if
+they could see into her soul they would not laugh. . . .'"
+
+Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one,
+then howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the
+wall of the hut. . . . Ananyev's face was puckered with pity; he
+broke off his story and went out. For two minutes he could be heard
+outside comforting his dog. "Good dog! poor dog!"
+
+"Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking," said Von Schtenberg,
+laughing. "He is a good fellow," he added after a brief silence.
+
+Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling
+and stroking his chest, went on:
+
+"And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put
+off my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned
+myself to my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is
+more, under the influence of Kisotchka's voice, the evening air,
+and the stillness, I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental
+mood. I remember I sat in an easy chair by the wide-open window and
+glanced at the trees and darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias
+and the lime trees were just the same as they had been eight years
+before; just as then, in the days of my childhood, somewhere far
+away there was the tinkling of a wretched piano, and the public had
+just the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the avenues, but
+the people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked now
+not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboys
+and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. When
+to my inquiries about acquaintances I five times received from
+Kisotchka the answer, 'He is dead,' my melancholy changed into the
+feeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sitting
+there at the window, looking at the promenading public and listening
+to the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first time
+in my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replace
+another, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eight
+years may have in a man's life!
+
+"Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off,
+grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about something
+or other. Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness.
+And time passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of
+the acacias and lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer
+walking up and down the avenues, the piano was silent and the only
+sound was the even murmur of the sea.
+
+"Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make much
+of him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractive
+and he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talk
+and talk and talk. . . . His hosts cannot keep their eyes open,
+it's past their bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That was
+what I did. Once I chanced to look at the clock; it was half-past
+ten. I began saying good-bye.
+
+"'Have another glass before your walk,' said Kisotchka.
+
+"I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot it
+was time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men's
+voices, footsteps and the clank of spurs.
+
+"'I think my husband has come in . . . .' said Kisotchka listening.
+
+"The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I saw
+two men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout,
+solid, dark man with a hooked nose, wearing a straw hat, and the
+other a young officer in a white tunic. As they passed the door
+they both glanced casually and indifferently at Kisotchka and me,
+and I fancied both of them were drunk.
+
+"'She told you a lie then, and you believed her!' we heard a loud
+voice with a marked nasal twang say a minute later. 'To begin with,
+it wasn't at the big club but at the little one.'
+
+"'You are angry, Jupiter, so you are wrong . . . .' said another
+voice, obviously the officer's, laughing and coughing. 'I say, can
+I stay the night? Tell me honestly, shall I be in your way?'
+
+"'What a question! Not only you can, but you must. What will you
+have, beer or wine?'
+
+"They were sitting two rooms away from us, talking loudly, and
+apparently feeling no interest in Kisotchka or her visitor. A
+perceptible change came over Kisotchka on her husband's arrival.
+At first she flushed red, then her face wore a timid, guilty
+expression; she seemed to be troubled by some anxiety, and I began
+to fancy that she was ashamed to show me her husband and wanted me
+to go.
+
+"I began taking leave. Kisotchka saw me to the front door. I remember
+well her gentle mournful smile and kind patient eyes as she pressed
+my hand and said:
+
+"'Most likely we shall never see each other again. Well, God give
+you every blessing. Thank you!'
+
+"Not one sigh, not one fine phrase. As she said good-bye she was
+holding the candle in her hand; patches of light danced over her
+face and neck, as though chasing her mournful smile. I pictured to
+myself the old Kisotchka whom one used to want to stroke like a
+cat, I looked intently at the present Kisotchka, and for some reason
+recalled her words: 'Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has
+laid on him.' And I had a pang at my heart. I instinctively guessed
+how it was, and my conscience whispered to me that I, in my happiness
+and indifference, was face to face with a good, warm-hearted, loving
+creature, who was broken by suffering.
+
+"I said good-bye and went to the gate. By now it was quite dark.
+In the south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets dark
+rapidly. Towards ten o'clock it is so dark that you can't see an
+inch before your nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before,
+almost groping, I found my way to the gate.
+
+"'Cab!' I shouted, going out of the gate; not a sound, not a sigh
+in answer. . . . 'Cab,' I repeated, 'hey, Cab!'
+
+"But there was no cab of any description. The silence of the grave.
+I could hear nothing but the murmur of the drowsy sea and the beating
+of my heart from the wine. Lifting my eyes to the sky I found not
+a single star. It was dark and sullen. Evidently the sky was covered
+with clouds. For some reason I shrugged my shoulders, smiling
+foolishly, and once more, not quite so resolutely, shouted for a
+cab.
+
+"The echo answered me. A walk of three miles across open country
+and in the pitch dark was not an agreeable prospect. Before making
+up my mind to walk, I spent a long time deliberating and shouting
+for a cab; then, shrugging my shoulders, I walked lazily back to
+the copse, with no definite object in my mind. It was dreadfully
+dark in the copse. Here and there between the trees the windows of
+the summer villas glowed a dull red. A raven, disturbed by my steps
+and the matches with which I lighted my way to the summer-house,
+flew from tree to tree and rustled among the leaves. I felt vexed
+and ashamed, and the raven seemed to understand this, and croaked
+'krrra!' I was vexed that I had to walk, and ashamed that I had
+stayed on at Kisotchka's, chatting like a boy.
+
+"I made my way to the summer-house, felt for the seat and sat down.
+Far below me, behind a veil of thick darkness, the sea kept up a
+low angry growl. I remember that, as though I were blind, I could
+see neither sky nor sea, nor even the summer-house in which I was
+sitting. And it seemed to me as though the whole world consisted
+only of the thoughts that were straying through my head, dizzy from
+the wine, and of an unseen power murmuring monotonously somewhere
+below. And afterwards, as I sank into a doze, it began to seem that
+it was not the sea murmuring, but my thoughts, and that the whole
+world consisted of nothing but me. And concentrating the whole world
+in myself in this way, I thought no more of cabs, of the town, and
+of Kisotchka, and abandoned myself to the sensation I was so fond
+of: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation when you feel that
+in the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone exist. It is a
+proud, demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians whose thoughts
+and sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as their plains,
+their forests, and their snow. If I had been an artist I should
+certainly have depicted the expression of a Russian's face when he
+sits motionless and, with his legs under him and his head clasped
+in his hands, abandons himself to this sensation. . . . And together
+with this sensation come thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of
+death, and of the darkness of the grave. . . . The thoughts are not
+worth a brass farthing, but the expression of face must be fine. . . .
+
+"While I was sitting and dozing, unable to bring myself to get
+up--I was warm and comfortable--all at once, against the even
+monotonous murmur of the sea, as though upon a canvas, sounds began
+to grow distinct which drew my attention from myself. . . . Someone
+was coming hurriedly along the avenue. Reaching the summer-house
+this someone stopped, gave a sob like a little girl, and said in
+the voice of a weeping child: 'My God, when will it all end! Merciful
+Heavens!'
+
+"Judging from the voice and the weeping I took it to be a little
+girl of ten or twelve. She walked irresolutely into the summer-house,
+sat down, and began half-praying, half-complaining aloud. . . .
+
+"'Merciful God!' she said, crying, 'it's unbearable. It's beyond
+all endurance! I suffer in silence, but I want to live too. . . .
+Oh, my God! My God!'
+
+"And so on in the same style.
+
+"I wanted to look at the child and speak to her. So as not to
+frighten her I first gave a loud sigh and coughed, then cautiously
+struck a match. . . . There was a flash of bright light in the
+darkness, which lighted up the weeping figure. It was Kisotchka!"
+
+"Marvels upon marvels!" said Von Schtenberg with a sigh. "Black
+night, the murmur of the sea; she in grief, he with a sensation of
+world--solitude. . . . It's too much of a good thing. . . . You
+only want Circassians with daggers to complete it."
+
+"I am not telling you a tale, but fact."
+
+"Well, even if it is a fact . . . it all proves nothing, and there
+is nothing new in it. . . ."
+
+"Wait a little before you find fault! Let me finish," said Ananyev,
+waving his hand with vexation; "don't interfere, please! I am not
+telling you, but the doctor. . . . Well," he went on, addressing
+me and glancing askance at the student who bent over his books and
+seemed very well satisfied at having gibed at the engineer--"well,
+Kisotchka was not surprised or frightened at seeing me. It seemed
+as though she had known beforehand that she would find me in the
+summer-house. She was breathing in gasps and trembling all over as
+though in a fever, while her tear-stained face, so far as I could
+distinguish it as I struck match after match, was not the intelligent,
+submissive weary face I had seen before, but something different,
+which I cannot understand to this day. It did not express pain, nor
+anxiety, nor misery--nothing of what was expressed by her words
+and her tears. . . . I must own that, probably because I did not
+understand it, it looked to me senseless and as though she were
+drunk.
+
+"'I can't bear it,' muttered Kisotchka in the voice of a crying
+child. 'It's too much for me, Nikolay Anastasyitch. Forgive me,
+Nikolav Anastasyitch. I can't go on living like this. . . . I am
+going to the town to my mother's. . . . Take me there. . . . Take
+me there, for God's sake!'
+
+"In the presence of tears I can neither speak nor be silent. I was
+flustered and muttered some nonsense trying to comfort her.
+
+"'No, no; I will go to my mother's,' said Kisotchka resolutely,
+getting up and clutching my arm convulsively (her hands and her
+sleeves were wet with tears). 'Forgive me, Nikolay Anastasyitch, I
+am going. . . . I can bear no more. . . .'
+
+"'Kisotchka, but there isn't a single cab,' I said. 'How can you
+go?'
+
+"'No matter, I'll walk. . . . It's not far. I can't bear it. . . .'
+
+"I was embarrassed, but not touched. Kisotchka's tears, her trembling,
+and the blank expression of her face suggested to me a trivial,
+French or Little Russian melodrama, in which every ounce of cheap
+shallow feeling is washed down with pints of tears.
+
+"I didn t understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I ought
+to have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear my
+silence might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try to
+persuade her not to go to her mother's, but to stay at home. When
+people cry, they don't like their tears to be seen. And I lighted
+match after match and went on striking till the box was empty. What
+I wanted with this ungenerous illumination, I can't conceive to
+this day. Cold-hearted people are apt to be awkward, and even stupid.
+
+"In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off. Going out of the
+gate, we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft
+dusty road. It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to
+the darkness, I began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old
+gaunt oaks and lime trees which bordered the road. The jagged,
+precipitous cliffs, intersected here and there by deep, narrow
+ravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a black streak on the
+right. Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like sitting
+figures. It was uncanny. I looked sideways suspiciously at the
+cliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the stillness of the country
+alarmed my imagination. Kisotchka did not speak. She was still
+trembling, and before she had gone half a mile she was exhausted
+with walking and was out of breath. I too was silent.
+
+"Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was a
+deserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in which
+there had once been a steam flour mill. It stood solitary on the
+cliff, and by day it could be seen for a long distance, both by sea
+and by land. Because it was deserted and no one lived in it, and
+because there was an echo in it which distinctly repeated the steps
+and voices of passers-by, it seemed mysterious. Picture me in the
+dark night arm-in-arm with a woman who was running away from her
+husband near this tall long monster which repeated the sound of
+every step I took and stared at me fixedly with its hundred black
+windows. A normal young man would have been moved to romantic
+feelings in such surroundings, but I looked at the dark windows and
+thought: 'All this is very impressive, but time will come when of
+that building and of Kisotchka and her troubles and of me with my
+thoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . . All is nonsense
+and vanity. . . .'
+
+"When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, took
+her arm out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, but
+in her own:
+
+"'Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you. But
+I am terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy!
+It's impossible to imagine it! I don't tell you about it because
+one can't talk about it. . . . Such a life, such a life! . . .'
+
+"Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned as
+though she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain.
+
+"'Such a life!' she repeated with horror, with the cadence and the
+southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women gives
+to emotional speech the effect of singing. 'It is a life! Ah, my
+God, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!'
+
+"As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged her
+shoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. She
+spoke as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and reminded
+me of a celebrated Little Russian actress.
+
+"'Great God, it is as though I were in a pit,' she went on. 'If
+one could live for one minute in happiness as other people live!
+Oh, my God, my God! I have come to such disgrace that before a
+stranger I am running away from my husband by night, like some
+disreputable creature! Can I expect anything good after that?'
+
+"As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyed
+that she was not on good terms with her husband. 'It would be nice
+to have got on into relations with her!' flitted through my mind;
+and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the
+way and grew more and more alluring.
+
+"About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the
+cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood
+a stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived.
+We passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the
+gates of the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:
+
+"'I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God bless
+you, but I am going back. I am not frightened.'
+
+"'Well, what next!' I said, disconcerted. 'If you are going, you
+had better go!'
+
+"'I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing that
+mattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put all
+sort of ideas into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, and
+my husband said rude things to me before that officer, and I could
+not bear it. . . . And what's the good of my going to the town to
+my mother's? Will that make me any happier? I must go back. . . .
+But never mind . . . let us go on,' said Kisotchka, and she laughed.
+'It makes no difference!'
+
+"I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an
+inscription: 'The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the
+grave will hear the voice of the Son of God.' I knew very well that
+sooner or later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in
+the white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard;
+I knew that an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walking
+beside me. All this I recognised distinctly, but at the same time
+I was troubled by an oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka
+would turn back, and that I should not manage to say to her what
+had to be said. Never at any other time in my life have thoughts
+of a higher order been so closely interwoven with the basest animal
+prose as on that night. . . . It was horrible!
+
+"Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High
+Street, where Kisotchka's mother lived, we dismissed the cab and
+walked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while
+I looked at her, and I raged at myself, 'Why don't you begin? Now's
+the time!' About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying,
+Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears.
+
+"'Nikolay Anastasyitch!' she said, crying and laughing and looking
+at me with wet shining eyes, 'I shall never forget your sympathy
+. . . . How good you are! All of you are so splendid--all of you!
+Honest, great-hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!'
+
+"She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense of
+the word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with the
+emotion and enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearly
+written regret that she so rarely saw such people, and that God had
+not vouchsafed her the bliss of being the wife of one of them. She
+muttered, 'Ah, how splendid it is!' The childish gladness on her
+face, the tears, the gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escaped
+from under the kerchief, and the kerchief itself thrown carelessly
+over her head, in the light of the street lamp reminded me of the
+old Kisotchka whom one had wanted to stroke like a kitten.
+
+"I could not restrain myself, and began stroking her hair, her
+shoulders, and her hands.
+
+"'Kisotchka, what do you want?' I muttered. 'I'll go to the ends
+of the earth with you if you like! I will take you out of this hole
+and give you happiness. I love you. . . . Let us go, my sweet? Yes?
+Will you?'
+
+"Kisotchka's face was flooded with bewilderment. She stepped back
+from the street lamp and, completely overwhelmed, gazed at me with
+wide-open eyes. I gripped her by the arm, began showering kisses
+on her face, her neck, her shoulders, and went on making vows and
+promises. In love affairs vows and promises are almost a physiological
+necessity. There's no getting on without them. Sometimes you know
+you are lying and that promises are not necessary, but still you
+vow and protest. Kisotchka, utterly overwhelmed, kept staggering
+back and gazing at me with round eyes.
+
+"'Please don't! Please don't!' she muttered, holding me off with
+her hands.
+
+"I clasped her tightly in my arms. All at once she broke into
+hysterical tears. And her face had the same senseless blank expression
+that I had seen in the summer-house when I lighted the matches.
+Without asking her consent, preventing her from speaking, I dragged
+her forcibly towards my hotel. She seemed almost swooning and did
+not walk, but I took her under the arms and almost carried her. . . .
+I remember, as we were going up the stairs, some man with a red
+band in his cap looked wonderingly at me and bowed to Kisotchka. . . ."
+
+Ananyev flushed crimson and paused. He walked up and down near the
+table in silence, scratched the back of his head with an air of
+vexation, and several times shrugged his shoulders and twitched his
+shoulder-blades, while a shiver ran down his huge back. The memory
+was painful and made him ashamed, and he was struggling with himself.
+
+"It's horrible!" he said, draining a glass of wine and shaking his
+head. "I am told that in every introductory lecture on women's
+diseases the medical students are admonished to remember that each
+one of them has a mother, a sister, a fiancée, before undressing
+and examining a female patient. . . . That advice would be very
+good not only for medical students but for everyone who in one way
+or another has to deal with a woman's life. Now that I have a wife
+and a little daughter, oh, how well I understand that advice! How
+I understand it, my God! You may as well hear the rest, though. . . .
+As soon as she had become my mistress, Kisotchka's view of the
+position was very different from mine. First of all she felt for
+me a deep and passionate love. What was for me an ordinary amatory
+episode was for her an absolute revolution in her life. I remember,
+it seemed to me that she had gone out of her mind. Happy for the
+first time in her life, looking five years younger, with an inspired
+enthusiastic face, not knowing what to do with herself for happiness,
+she laughed and cried and never ceased dreaming aloud how next day
+we would set off for the Caucasus, then in the autumn to Petersburg;
+how we would live afterwards.
+
+"'Don't worry yourself about my husband,' she said to reassure me.
+'He is bound to give me a divorce. Everyone in the town knows that
+he is living with the elder Kostovitch. We will get a divorce and
+be married.'
+
+"When women love they become acclimatised and at home with people
+very quickly, like cats. Kisotchka had only spent an hour and a
+half in my room when she already felt as though she were at home
+and was ready to treat my property as though it were her own. She
+packed my things in my portmanteau, scolded me for not hanging my
+new expensive overcoat on a peg instead of flinging it on a chair,
+and so on.
+
+"I looked at her, listened, and felt weariness and vexation. I was
+conscious of a slight twinge of horror at the thought that a
+respectable, honest, and unhappy woman had so easily, after some
+three or four hours, succumbed to the first man she met. As a
+respectable man, you see, I didn't like it. Then, too, I was
+unpleasantly impressed by the fact that women of Kisotchka's sort,
+not deep or serious, are too much in love with life, and exalt what
+is in reality such a trifle as love for a man to the level of bliss,
+misery, a complete revolution in life. . . . Moreover, now that I
+was satisfied, I was vexed with myself for having been so stupid
+as to get entangled with a woman whom I should have to deceive. And
+in spite of my disorderly life I must observe that I could not bear
+telling lies.
+
+"I remember that Kisotchka sat down at my feet, laid her head on
+my knees, and, looking at me with shining, loving eyes, asked:
+
+"'Kolya, do you love me? Very, very much?'
+
+"And she laughed with happiness. . . . This struck me as sentimental,
+affected, and not clever; and meanwhile I was already inclined to
+look for 'depth of thought' before everything.
+
+"'Kisotchka, you had better go home,' I said, or else your people
+will be sure to miss you and will be looking for you all over the
+town; and it would be awkward for you to go to your mother in the
+morning.'
+
+"Kisotchka agreed. At parting we arranged to meet at midday next
+morning in the park, and the day after to set off together to
+Pyatigorsk. I went into the street to see her home, and I remember
+that I caressed her with genuine tenderness on the way. There was
+a minute when I felt unbearably sorry for her, for trusting me so
+implicitly, and I made up my mind that I would really take her to
+Pyatigorsk, but remembering that I had only six hundred roubles in
+my portmanteau, and that it would be far more difficult to break
+it off with her in the autumn than now, I made haste to suppress
+my compassion.
+
+"We reached the house where Kisotchka's mother lived. I pulled at
+the bell. When footsteps were heard at the other side of the door
+Kisotchka suddenly looked grave, glanced upwards to the sky, made
+the sign of the Cross over me several times and, clutching my hand,
+pressed it to her lips.
+
+"'Till to-morrow,' she said, and disappeared into the house.
+
+"I crossed to the opposite pavement and from there looked at the
+house. At first the windows were in darkness, then in one of the
+windows there was the glimmer of the faint bluish flame of a newly
+lighted candle; the flame grew, gave more light, and I saw shadows
+moving about the rooms together with it.
+
+"'They did not expect her,' I thought.
+
+"Returning to my hotel room I undressed, drank off a glass of red
+wine, ate some fresh caviare which I had bought that day in the
+bazaar, went to bed in a leisurely way, and slept the sound,
+untroubled sleep of a tourist.
+
+"In the morning I woke up with a headache and in a bad humour.
+Something worried me.
+
+"'What's the matter?' I asked myself, trying to explain my uneasiness.
+'What's upsetting me?'
+
+"And I put down my uneasiness to the dread that Kisotchka might
+turn up any minute and prevent my going away, and that I should
+have to tell lies and act a part before her. I hurriedly dressed,
+packed my things, and left the hotel, giving instructions to the
+porter to take my luggage to the station for the seven o'clock train
+in the evening. I spent the whole day with a doctor friend and left
+the town that evening. As you see, my philosophy did not prevent
+me from taking to my heels in a mean and treacherous flight. . . .
+
+"All the while that I was at my friend's, and afterwards driving
+to the station, I was tormented by anxiety. I fancied that I was
+afraid of meeting with Kisotchka and a scene. In the station I
+purposely remained in the toilet room till the second bell rang,
+and while I was making my way to my compartment, I was oppressed
+by a feeling as though I were covered all over with stolen things.
+With what impatience and terror I waited for the third bell!
+
+"At last the third bell that brought my deliverance rang at last,
+the train moved; we passed the prison, the barracks, came out into
+the open country, and yet, to my surprise, the feeling of uneasiness
+still persisted, and still I felt like a thief passionately longing
+to escape. It was queer. To distract my mind and calm myself I
+looked out of the window. The train ran along the coast. The sea
+was smooth, and the turquoise sky, almost half covered with the
+tender, golden crimson light of sunset, was gaily and serenely
+mirrored in it. Here and there fishing boats and rafts made black
+patches on its surface. The town, as clean and beautiful as a toy,
+stood on the high cliff, and was already shrouded in the mist of
+evening. The golden domes of its churches, the windows and the
+greenery reflected the setting sun, glowing and melting like
+shimmering gold. . . . The scent of the fields mingled with the
+soft damp air from the sea.
+
+"The train flew rapidly along. I heard the laughter of passengers
+and guards. Everyone was good-humoured and light-hearted, yet my
+unaccountable uneasiness grew greater and greater. . . . I looked
+at the white mist that covered the town and I imagined how a woman
+with a senseless blank face was hurrying up and down in that mist
+by the churches and the houses, looking for me and moaning, 'Oh,
+my God! Oh, my God!' in the voice of a little girl or the cadences
+of a Little Russian actress. I recalled her grave face and big
+anxious eyes as she made the sign of the Cross over me, as though
+I belonged to her, and mechanically I looked at the hand which she
+had kissed the day before.
+
+"'Surely I am not in love?' I asked myself, scratching my hand.
+
+"Only as night came on when the passengers were asleep and I was
+left _tête-à-tête_ with my conscience, I began to understand what
+I had not been able to grasp before. In the twilight of the railway
+carriage the image of Kisotchka rose before me, haunted me and I
+recognised clearly that I had committed a crime as bad as murder.
+My conscience tormented me. To stifle this unbearable feeling, I
+assured myself that everything was nonsense and vanity, that Kisotchka
+and I would die and decay, that her grief was nothing in comparison
+with death, and so on and so on . . . and that if you come to that,
+there is no such thing as freewill, and that therefore I was not
+to blame. But all these arguments only irritated me and were
+extraordinarily quickly crowded out by other thoughts. There was a
+miserable feeling in the hand that Kisotchka had kissed. . . . I
+kept lying down and getting up again, drank vodka at the stations,
+forced myself to eat bread and butter, fell to assuring myself again
+that life had no meaning, but nothing was of any use. A strange and
+if you like absurd ferment was going on in my brain. The most
+incongruous ideas crowded one after another in disorder, getting
+more and more tangled, thwarting each other, and I, the thinker,
+'with my brow bent on the earth,' could make out nothing and could
+not find my bearings in this mass of essential and non-essential
+ideas. It appeared that I, the thinker, had not mastered the technique
+of thinking, and that I was no more capable of managing my own brain
+than mending a watch. For the first time in my life I was really
+thinking eagerly and intensely, and that seemed to me so monstrous
+that I said to myself: 'I am going off my head.' A man whose brain
+does not work at all times, but only at painful moments, is often
+haunted by the thought of madness.
+
+"I spent a day and a night in this misery, then a second night, and
+learning from experience how little my philosophy was to me, I came
+to my senses and realised at last what sort of a creature I was. I
+saw that my ideas were not worth a brass farthing, and that before
+meeting Kisotchka I had not begun to think and had not even a
+conception of what thinking in earnest meant; now through suffering
+I realised that I had neither convictions nor a definite moral
+standard, nor heart, nor reason; my whole intellectual and moral
+wealth consisted of specialist knowledge, fragments, useless memories,
+other people's ideas--and nothing else; and my mental processes
+were as lacking in complexity, as useless and as rudimentary as a
+Yakut's. . . . If I had disliked lying, had not stolen, had not
+murdered, and, in fact, made obviously gross mistakes, that was not
+owing to my convictions--I had none, but because I was in bondage,
+hand and foot, to my nurse's fairy tales and to copy-book morals,
+which had entered into my flesh and blood and without my noticing
+it guided me in life, though I looked on them as absurd. . . .
+
+"I realised that I was not a thinker, not a philosopher, but simply
+a dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain with
+promise of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six,
+undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed down
+by any stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with information
+of a sort in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiological
+craving for exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all at
+once quite casually the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of life
+and the darkness beyond the tomb descends upon it. It greedily sucks
+it in, puts its whole outlook at its disposal and begins playing
+with it, like a cat with a mouse. There is neither learning nor
+system in the brain, but that does not matter. It deals with the
+great ideas with its own innate powers, like a self-educated man,
+and before a month has passed the owner of the brain can turn a
+potato into a hundred dainty dishes, and fancies himself a
+philosopher . . . .
+
+"Our generation has carried this dilettantism, this playing with
+serious ideas into science, into literature, into politics, and
+into everything which it is not too lazy to go into, and with its
+dilettantism has introduced, too, its coldness, its boredom, and
+its one-sidedness and, as it seems to me, it has already succeeded
+in developing in the masses a new hitherto non-existent attitude
+to serious ideas.
+
+"I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance,
+thanks to a misfortune. My normal thinking, so it seems to me now,
+dates from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my
+conscience sent me flying back to N., when with no philosophical
+subleties I repented, besought Kisotchka's forgiveness like a naughty
+boy and wept with her. . . ."
+
+Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka.
+
+"H'm. . . ." the student filtered through his teeth when the engineer
+had finished. "That's the sort of thing that happens."
+
+His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev's
+story had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer after
+a moment's pause, began expounding his view again and repeating
+what he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up
+from the table and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and began
+undressing.
+
+"You look as though you have really convinced some one this time,"
+he said irritably.
+
+"Me convince anybody!" said the engineer. "My dear soul, do you
+suppose I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you is
+impossible. You can reach conviction only by way of personal
+experience and suffering!"
+
+"And then--it's queer logic!" grumbled the student as he put on
+his nightshirt. "The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinous
+for the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old;
+it's as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . . Where do the
+old get this privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas are
+poison, they are equally poisonous for all?"
+
+"Oh, no, my dear soul, don't say so!" said the engineer with a sly
+wink. "Don't say so. In the first place, old men are not dilettanti.
+Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from
+the depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively
+studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made
+no end of mistakes, in fact--when they have climbed the whole
+ladder from bottom to top. Their pessimism has both personal
+experience and sound philosophic training behind it. Secondly, the
+pessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, as
+it does with you and me, but of _Weltschmertz_, of suffering; it
+rests in them on a Christian foundation because it is derived from
+love for humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirely
+free from the egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti. You despise
+life because its meaning and its object are hidden just from you,
+and you are only afraid of your own death, while the real thinker
+is unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he is afraid
+for all men. For instance, there is living not far from here the
+Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a nice old man. At one
+time he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; the
+devil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably clever
+fellow and in philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and he
+is continually reading now. Well, we came across him lately in the
+Gruzovsky district. . . . They were laying the sleepers and rails
+just at the time. It's not a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch,
+not being a specialist, looked at it as though it were a conjuring
+trick. It takes an experienced workman less than a minute to lay a
+sleeper and fix a rail on it. The workmen were in good form and
+really were working smartly and rapidly; one rascal in particular
+brought his hammer down with exceptional smartness on the head of
+the nail and drove it in at one blow, though the handle of the
+hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a foot
+long. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved,
+and said to me with tears in his eyes:
+
+"'What a pity that these splendid men will die!' Such pessimism I
+understand."
+
+"All that proves nothing and explains nothing," said the student,
+covering himself up with a sheet; "all that is simply pounding
+liquid in a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can be proved
+by words."
+
+He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowning
+irritably, said quickly:
+
+"One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and to
+ascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disprove
+anything you like with words, and people will soon perfect the
+technique of language to such a point that they will prove with
+mathematical certainty that twice two is seven. I am fond of reading
+and listening, but as to believing, no thank you; I can't, and I
+don't want to. I believe only in God, but as for you, if you talk
+to me till the Second Coming and seduce another five hundred
+Kisothchkas, I shall believe in you only when I go out of my mind
+. . . . Goodnight."
+
+The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towards
+the wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did not
+want to speak or listen. The argument ended at that.
+
+Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and I
+saw the lights once more.
+
+"We have tired you out with our chatter," said Ananyev, yawning and
+looking at the sky. "Well, my good sir! The only pleasure we have
+in this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . . What an
+embankment, Lord have mercy on us!" he said admiringly, as we
+approached the embankment; "it is more like Mount Ararat than an
+embankment."
+
+He paused for a little, then said: "Those lights remind the Baron
+of the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts
+of man. . . . You know the thoughts of each individual man are
+scattered like that in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards
+some goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding light
+on anything, without lighting up the night, they vanish somewhere
+far beyond old age. But enough philosophising! It's time to go
+bye-bye."
+
+When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take
+his bed.
+
+"Oh please!" he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart.
+"I entreat you, and don't worry about me! I can sleep anywhere,
+and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do--it's a
+favour!"
+
+I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table
+and set to work on the plans.
+
+"We fellows have no time for sleep," he said in a low voice when I
+had got into bed and shut my eyes. "When a man has a wife and two
+children he can't think of sleep. One must think now of food and
+clothes and saving for the future. And I have two of them, a little
+son and a daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little
+face. He's not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities,
+I assure you. . . . I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . .
+Ah, my children, my children!"
+
+He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began
+looking at them. I fell asleep.
+
+I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. Von
+Schtenberg with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the
+doorway dressed in his underclothes, talking loudly with some one
+. . . . It was getting light. A gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping
+in at the door, at the windows, and through the crevices in the hut
+walls, and casting a faint light on my bed, on the table with the
+papers, and on Ananyev. Stretched on the floor on a cloak, with a
+leather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep with his
+fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that I
+pitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleep
+in the same room with him every night.
+
+"Why on earth are we to take them?" shouted Von Schtenberg. "It has
+nothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the cauldrons
+come?"
+
+"From Nikitin . . ." a bass voice answered gruffly.
+
+"Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That's not in our
+department. What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!"
+
+"Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already," said the bass
+voice still more gruffly. "Yesterday we were the whole day looking
+for him down the line, and were told at his hut that he had gone
+to the Dymkovsky section. Please take them, your honour! How much
+longer are we to go carting them about? We go carting them on and
+on along the line, and see no end to it."
+
+"What is it?" Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his head
+quickly.
+
+"They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin's," said the student,
+"and he is begging us to take them. And what business is it of ours
+to take them?"
+
+"Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right! The horses have
+been two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry.
+Are we to take them back, or what? The railway ordered the cauldrons,
+so it ought to take them. . . ."
+
+"Can't you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to do
+with us? Go on to Tchalisov!"
+
+"What is it? Who's there?" Ananyev asked huskily again. "Damnation
+take them all," he said, getting up and going to the door. "What
+is it?"
+
+I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut. Ananyev and
+the student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrily
+and impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing before
+them bare-headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently not
+understanding them. Both faces looked preoccupied with workaday
+cares.
+
+"What use are your cauldrons to me," shouted Ananyev. "Am I to put
+them on my head, or what? If you can't find Tchalisov, find his
+assistant, and leave us in peace!"
+
+Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of the
+previous night. The workaday expression vanished from his sleepy
+face and a look of mental inertia came into it. He waved the peasant
+off and walked away absorbed in thought.
+
+It was a cloudy morning. On the line where the lights had been
+gleaming the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep,
+were swarming. There was a sound of voices and the squeaking of
+wheelbarrows. The working day was beginning. One poor little nag
+harnessed with cord was already plodding towards the embankment,
+tugging with its neck, and dragging along a cartful of sand.
+
+I began saying good-bye. . . . A great deal had been said in the
+night, but I carried away with me no answer to any question, and
+in the morning, of the whole conversation there remained in my
+memory, as in a filter, only the lights and the image of Kisotchka.
+As I got on the horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for the
+last time, at the hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-looking
+eyes, at the workmen flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at the
+embankment, at the little nag straining with its neck, and thought:
+
+"There is no making out anything in this world."
+
+And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a
+little later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain
+and the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were
+discussed in the night. I pondered while the sun-scorched plain,
+the immense sky, the oak forest, dark on the horizon and the hazy
+distance, seemed saying to me:
+
+"Yes, there's no understanding anything in this world!"
+
+The sun began to rise. . . .
+
+
+A STORY WITHOUT AN END
+
+SOON after two o'clock one night, long ago, the cook, pale and
+agitated, rushed unexpectedly into my study and informed me that
+Madame Mimotih, the old woman who owned the house next door, was
+sitting in her kitchen.
+
+"She begs you to go in to her, sir . . ." said the cook, panting.
+"Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . . He has shot
+himself or hanged himself. . . ."
+
+"What can I do?" said I. "Let her go for the doctor or for the
+police!"
+
+"How is she to look for a doctor! She can hardly breathe, and she
+has huddled under the stove, she is so frightened. . . . You had
+better go round, sir."
+
+I put on my coat and hat and went to Madame Mimotih's house. The
+gate towards which I directed my steps was open. After pausing
+beside it, uncertain what to do, I went into the yard without feeling
+for the porter's bell. In the dark and dilapidated porch the door
+was not locked. I opened it and walked into the entry. Here there
+was not a glimmer of light, it was pitch dark, and, moreover, there
+was a marked smell of incense. Groping my way out of the entry I
+knocked my elbow against something made of iron, and in the darkness
+stumbled against a board of some sort which almost fell to the
+floor. At last the door covered with torn baize was found, and I
+went into a little hall.
+
+I am not at the moment writing a fairy tale, and am far from intending
+to alarm the reader, but the picture I saw from the passage was
+fantastic and could only have been drawn by death. Straight before
+me was a door leading to a little drawing-room. Three five-kopeck
+wax candles, standing in a row, threw a scanty light on the faded
+slate-coloured wallpaper. A coffin was standing on two tables in
+the middle of the little room. The two candles served only to light
+up a swarthy yellow face with a half-open mouth and sharp nose.
+Billows of muslin were mingled in disorder from the face to the
+tips of the two shoes, and from among the billows peeped out two
+pale motionless hands, holding a wax cross. The dark gloomy corners
+of the little drawing-room, the ikons behind the coffin, the coffin
+itself, everything except the softly glimmering lights, were still
+as death, as the tomb itself.
+
+"How strange!" I thought, dumbfoundered by the unexpected panorama
+of death. "Why this haste? The lodger has hardly had time to hang
+himself, or shoot himself, and here is the coffin already!"
+
+I looked round. On the left there was a door with a glass panel;
+on the right a lame hat-stand with a shabby fur coat on it. . . .
+
+"Water. . . ." I heard a moan.
+
+The moan came from the left, beyond the door with the glass panel.
+I opened the door and walked into a little dark room with a solitary
+window, through which there came a faint light from a street lamp
+outside.
+
+"Is anyone here?" I asked.
+
+And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what I
+saw while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stained
+floor at my very feet. If my step had been a longer one I should
+have trodden on him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands
+pressed on the floor, he was making an effort to raise his handsome
+face, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In the
+big eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain,
+and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face.
+That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the hands
+he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his clenched teeth, showed
+that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his right hand in a
+pool of blood lay a revolver.
+
+"Don't go away," I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out.
+"There's a candle on the table."
+
+I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not
+knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor,
+and it seemed to me that I had seen him before.
+
+"The pain is insufferable," he whispered, "and I haven't the strength
+to shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will."
+
+I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him
+from the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather
+covered sofa and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and cold
+when I took off his clothes; the wound which I saw was not in keeping
+either with his shivering nor the expression on his face. It was a
+trifling one. The bullet had passed between the fifth and sixth
+ribs on the left side, only piercing the skin and the flesh. I found
+the bullet itself in the folds of the coat-lining near the back
+pocket. Stopping the bleeding as best I could and making a temporary
+bandage of a pillow-case, a towel, and two handkerchiefs, I gave
+the wounded man some water and covered him with a fur coat that was
+hanging in the passage. We neither of us said a word while the
+bandaging was being done. I did my work while he lay motionless
+looking at me with his eyes screwed up as though he were ashamed
+of his unsuccessful shot and the trouble he was giving me.
+
+"Now I must trouble you to lie still," I said, when I had finished
+the bandaging, "while I run to the chemist and get something."
+
+"No need!" he muttered, clutching me by the sleeve and opening his
+eyes wide.
+
+I read terror in his eyes. He was afraid of my going away.
+
+"No need! Stay another five minutes . . . ten. If it doesn't disgust
+you, do stay, I entreat you."
+
+As he begged me he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. I
+obeyed, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Ten minutes passed
+in silence. I sat silent, looking about the room into which fate
+had brought me so unexpectedly. What poverty! This man who was the
+possessor of a handsome, effeminate face and a luxuriant well-tended
+beard, had surroundings which a humble working man would not have
+envied. A sofa with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humble
+greasy-looking chair, a table covered with a little of paper, and
+a wretched oleograph on the wall, that was all I saw. Damp, gloomy,
+and grey.
+
+"What a wind!" said the sick man, without opening his eyes, "How
+it whistles!"
+
+"Yes," I said. "I say, I fancy I know you. Didn't you take part in
+some private theatricals in General Luhatchev's villa last year?"
+
+"What of it?" he asked, quickly opening his eyes.
+
+A cloud seemed to pass over his face.
+
+"I certainly saw you there. Isn't your name Vassilyev?"
+
+"If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should know
+me."
+
+"No, but I just asked you."
+
+Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his face
+to the back of the sofa.
+
+"I don't understand your curiosity," he muttered. "You'll be asking
+me next what it was drove me to commit suicide!"
+
+Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, opened
+his eyes and said in a tearful voice:
+
+"Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you'll admit I'm right! To
+ask a convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot
+himself is not generous . . . and indelicate. To think of gratifying
+idle curiosity at the expense of another man's nerves!"
+
+"There is no need to excite yourself. . . . It never occurred to
+me to question you about your motives."
+
+"You would have asked. . . . It's what people always do. Though it
+would be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or
+understand. . . . I must own I don't understand it myself. . . .
+There are phrases used in the police reports and newspapers such
+as: 'unrequited love,' and 'hopeless poverty,' but the reasons are
+not known. . . . They are not known to me, nor to you, nor to your
+newspaper offices, where they have the impudence to write 'The diary
+of a suicide.' God alone understands the state of a man's soul when
+he takes his own life; but men know nothing about it."
+
+"That is all very nice," I said, "but you oughtn't to talk. . . ."
+
+But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist,
+and went on in the tone of some great professor:
+
+"Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide!
+How can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch
+up a revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth a
+rotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular condition
+of the individual at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance.
+Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when the
+candle is lighted, and you are sitting by me, I don't even think
+of the hour of death. Explain that change if you can! Am I better
+off, or has my wife risen from the dead? Is it the influence of the
+light on me, or the presence of an outsider?"
+
+"The light certainly has an influence . . ." I muttered for the
+sake of saying something. "The influence of light on the organism
+. . . ."
+
+"The influence of light. . . . We admit it! But you know men do
+shoot themselves by candle-light! And it would be ignominious indeed
+for the heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candle
+were to change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsense
+can be explained perhaps, but not by us. It's useless to ask questions
+or give explanations of what one does not understand. . . ."
+
+"Forgive me," I said, "but . . . judging by the expression of your
+face, it seems to me that at this moment you . . . are posing."
+
+"Yes," Vassilyev said, startled. "It's very possible! I am naturally
+vain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your power
+of reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now I
+am posing. . . . Explain that if you can."
+
+These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice.
+He was exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began
+scrutinising his face. It was as pale as a dead man's. It seemed
+as though life were almost extinct in him, and only the signs of
+the suffering that the "vain and fatuous" man was feeling betrayed
+that it was still alive. It was painful to look at that face, but
+what must it have been for Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength
+to argue and, if I were not mistaken, to pose?
+
+"You here--are you here?" he asked suddenly, raising himself on
+his elbow. "My God, just listen!"
+
+I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window,
+never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and
+lugubriously.
+
+"'And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness
+and rejoicing.'" Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in
+the drawing-room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nor
+dropping the monotonous dreary key.
+
+"It is cheerful, isn't it?" whispered Vassilyev, turning his
+frightened eyes towards me. "My God, the things a man has to see
+and hear! If only one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says,
+'it would--
+
+"Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed,
+The very faculties of eyes and ears."
+
+How well I should have understood that music then! How I should
+have felt it! What time is it?"
+
+"Five minutes to three."
+
+"Morning is still far off. And in the morning there's the funeral.
+A lovely prospect! One follows the coffin through the mud and rain.
+One walks along, seeing nothing but the cloudy sky and the wretched
+scenery. The muddy mutes, taverns, woodstacks. . . . One's trousers
+drenched to the knees. The never-ending streets. The time dragging
+out like eternity, the coarse people. And on the heart a stone, a
+stone!"
+
+After a brief pause he suddenly asked: "Is it long since you saw
+General Luhatchev?"
+
+"I haven't seen him since last summer."
+
+"He likes to be cock of the walk, but he is a nice little old chap.
+And are you still writing?"
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"Ah. . . . Do you remember how I pranced about like a needle, like
+an enthusiastic ass at those private theatricals when I was courting
+Zina? It was stupid, but it was good, it was fun. . . . The very
+memory of it brings back a whiff of spring. . . . And now! What a
+cruel change of scene! There is a subject for you! Only don't you
+go in for writing 'the diary of a suicide.' That's vulgar and
+conventional. You make something humorous of it."
+
+"Again you are . . . posing," I said. "There's nothing humorous in
+your position."
+
+"Nothing laughable? You say nothing laughable?" Vassilyev sat up,
+and tears glistened in his eyes. An expression of bitter distress
+came into his pale face. His chin quivered.
+
+"You laugh at the deceit of cheating clerks and faithless wives,"
+he said, "but no clerk, no faithless wife has cheated as my fate
+has cheated me! I have been deceived as no bank depositor, no duped
+husband has ever been deceived! Only realise what an absurd fool I
+have been made! Last year before your eyes I did not know what to
+do with myself for happiness. And now before your eyes. . . ."
+
+Vassilyev's head sank on the pillow and he laughed.
+
+"Nothing more absurd and stupid than such a change could possibly
+be imagined. Chapter one: spring, love, honeymoon . . . honey, in
+fact; chapter two: looking for a job, the pawnshop, pallor, the
+chemist's shop, and . . . to-morrow's splashing through the mud to
+the graveyard."
+
+He laughed again. I felt acutely uncomfortable and made up my mind
+to go.
+
+"I tell you what," I said, "you lie down, and I will go to the
+chemist's."
+
+He made no answer. I put on my great-coat and went out of his room.
+As I crossed the passage I glanced at the coffin and Madame Mimotih
+reading over it. I strained my eyes in vain, I could not recognise
+in the swarthy, yellow face Zina, the lively, pretty _ingénue_ of
+Luhatchev's company.
+
+"_Sic transit_," I thought.
+
+With that I went out, not forgetting to take the revolver, and made
+my way to the chemist's. But I ought not to have gone away. When I
+came back from the chemist's, Vassilyev lay on the sofa fainting.
+The bandages had been roughly torn off, and blood was flowing from
+the reopened wound. It was daylight before I succeeded in restoring
+him to consciousness. He was raving in delirium, shivering, and
+looking with unseeing eyes about the room till morning had come,
+and we heard the booming voice of the priest as he read the service
+over the dead.
+
+When Vassilyev's rooms were crowded with old women and mutes, when
+the coffin had been moved and carried out of the yard, I advised
+him to remain at home. But he would not obey me, in spite of the
+pain and the grey, rainy morning. He walked bareheaded and in silence
+behind the coffin all the way to the cemetery, hardly able to move
+one leg after the other, and from time to time clutching convulsively
+at his wounded side. His face expressed complete apathy. Only once
+when I roused him from his lethargy by some insignificant question
+he shifted his eyes over the pavement and the grey fence, and for
+a moment there was a gleam of gloomy anger in them.
+
+"'Weelright,'" he read on a signboard. "Ignorant, illiterate
+people, devil take them!"
+
+I led him home from the cemetery.
+
+                              ----
+
+Only one year has passed since that night, and Vassilyev has hardly
+had time to wear out the boots in which he tramped through the mud
+behind his wife's coffin.
+
+At the present time as I finish this story, he is sitting in my
+drawing-room and, playing on the piano, is showing the ladies how
+provincial misses sing sentimental songs. The ladies are laughing,
+and he is laughing too. He is enjoying himself.
+
+I call him into my study. Evidently not pleased at my taking him
+from agreeable company, he comes to me and stands before me in the
+attitude of a man who has no time to spare. I give him this story,
+and ask him to read it. Always condescending about my authorship,
+he stifles a sigh, the sigh of a lazy reader, sits down in an
+armchair and begins upon it.
+
+"Hang it all, what horrors," he mutters with a smile.
+
+But the further he gets into the reading, the graver his face
+becomes. At last, under the stress of painful memories, he turns
+terribly pale, he gets up and goes on reading as he stands. When
+he has finished he begins pacing from corner to corner.
+
+"How does it end?" I ask him.
+
+"How does it end? H'm. . . ."
+
+He looks at the room, at me, at himself. . . . He sees his new
+fashionable suit, hears the ladies laughing and . . . sinking on a
+chair, begins laughing as he laughed on that night.
+
+"Wasn't I right when I told you it was all absurd? My God! I have
+had burdens to bear that would have broken an elephant's back; the
+devil knows what I have suffered--no one could have suffered more,
+I think, and where are the traces? It's astonishing. One would have
+thought the imprint made on a man by his agonies would have been
+everlasting, never to be effaced or eradicated. And yet that imprint
+wears out as easily as a pair of cheap boots. There is nothing left,
+not a scrap. It's as though I hadn't been suffering then, but had
+been dancing a mazurka. Everything in the world is transitory, and
+that transitoriness is absurd! A wide field for humorists! Tack on
+a humorous end, my friend!"
+
+"Pyotr Nikolaevitch, are you coming soon?" The impatient ladies
+call my hero.
+
+"This minute," answers the "vain and fatuous" man, setting his tie
+straight. "It's absurd and pitiful, my friend, pitiful and absurd,
+but what's to be done? _Homo sum_. . . . And I praise Mother Nature
+all the same for her transmutation of substances. If we retained
+an agonising memory of toothache and of all the terrors which every
+one of us has had to experience, if all that were everlasting, we
+poor mortals would have a bad time of it in this life."
+
+I look at his smiling face and I remember the despair and the horror
+with which his eyes were filled a year ago when he looked at the
+dark window. I see him, entering into his habitual rôle of intellectual
+chatterer, prepare to show off his idle theories, such as the
+transmutation of substances before me, and at the same time I recall
+him sitting on the floor in a pool of blood with his sick imploring
+eyes.
+
+"How will it end?" I ask myself aloud.
+
+Vassilyev, whistling and straightening his tie, walks off into the
+drawing-room, and I look after him, and feel vexed. For some reason
+I regret his past sufferings, I regret all that I felt myself on
+that man's account on that terrible night. It is as though I had
+lost something. . . .
+
+
+MARI D'ELLE
+
+IT was a free night. Natalya Andreyevna Bronin (her married name
+was Nikitin), the opera singer, is lying in her bedroom, her whole
+being abandoned to repose. She lies, deliciously drowsy, thinking
+of her little daughter who lives somewhere far away with her
+grandmother or aunt. . . . The child is more precious to her than
+the public, bouquets, notices in the papers, adorers . . . and she
+would be glad to think about her till morning. She is happy, at
+peace, and all she longs for is not to be prevented from lying
+undisturbed, dozing and dreaming of her little girl.
+
+All at once the singer starts, and opens her eyes wide: there is a
+harsh abrupt ring in the entry. Before ten seconds have passed the
+bell tinkles a second time and a third time. The door is opened
+noisily and some one walks into the entry stamping his feet like a
+horse, snorting and puffing with the cold.
+
+"Damn it all, nowhere to hang one's coat!" the singer hears a husky
+bass voice. "Celebrated singer, look at that! Makes five thousand
+a year, and can't get a decent hat-stand!"
+
+"My husband!" thinks the singer, frowning. "And I believe he has
+brought one of his friends to stay the night too. . . . Hateful!"
+
+No more peace. When the loud noise of some one blowing his nose and
+putting off his goloshes dies away, the singer hears cautious
+footsteps in her bedroom. . . . It is her husband, _mari d'elle_,
+Denis Petrovitch Nikitin. He brings a whiff of cold air and a smell
+of brandy. For a long while he walks about the bedroom, breathing
+heavily, and, stumbling against the chairs in the dark, seems to
+be looking for something. . . .
+
+"What do you want?" his wife moans, when she is sick of his fussing
+about. "You have woken me."
+
+"I am looking for the matches, my love. You . . . you are not asleep
+then? I have brought you a message. . . . Greetings from that . . .
+what's-his-name? . . . red-headed fellow who is always sending
+you bouquets. . . . Zagvozdkin. . . . I have just been to see him."
+
+"What did you go to him for?"
+
+"Oh, nothing particular. . . . We sat and talked and had a drink.
+Say what you like, Nathalie, I dislike that individual--I dislike
+him awfully! He is a rare blockhead. He is a wealthy man, a capitalist;
+he has six hundred thousand, and you would never guess it. Money
+is no more use to him than a radish to a dog. He does not eat it
+himself nor give it to others. Money ought to circulate, but he
+keeps tight hold of it, is afraid to part with it. . . . What's the
+good of capital lying idle? Capital lying idle is no better than
+grass."
+
+_Mari d'elle_ gropes his way to the edge of the bed and, puffing,
+sits down at his wife's feet.
+
+"Capital lying idle is pernicious," he goes on. "Why has business
+gone downhill in Russia? Because there is so much capital lying
+idle among us; they are afraid to invest it. It's very different
+in England. . . . There are no such queer fish as Zagvozdkin in
+England, my girl. . . . There every farthing is in circulation
+. . . . Yes. . . . They don't keep it locked up in chests there
+. . . ."
+
+"Well, that's all right. I am sleepy."
+
+"Directly. . . . Whatever was it I was talking about? Yes. . . .
+In these hard times hanging is too good for Zagvozdkin. . . . He
+is a fool and a scoundrel. . . . No better than a fool. If I asked
+him for a loan without security--why, a child could see that he
+runs no risk whatever. He doesn't understand, the ass! For ten
+thousand he would have got a hundred. In a year he would have another
+hundred thousand. I asked, I talked . . . but he wouldn't give it
+me, the blockhead."
+
+"I hope you did not ask him for a loan in my name."
+
+"H'm. . . . A queer question. . . ." _Mari d'elle_ is offended.
+"Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a
+woman, and I am a man anyway, a business-like person. And what a
+scheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound
+thing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand,
+one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you would
+understand if I were to tell you about it. Only you . . . don't
+chatter about it . . . not a word . . . but I fancy I have talked
+to you about it already. Have I talked to you about sausage-skins?"
+
+"M'm . . . by and by."
+
+"I believe I have. . . . Do you see the point of it? Now the provision
+shops and the sausage-makers get their sausage-skins locally, and
+pay a high price for them. Well, but if one were to bring sausage-skins
+from the Caucasus where they are worth nothing, and where they are
+thrown away, then . . . where do you suppose the sausage-makers
+would buy their skins, here in the slaughterhouses or from me? From
+me, of course! Why, I shall sell them ten times as cheap! Now let
+us look at it like this: every year in Petersburg and Moscow and
+in other centres these same skins would be bought to the . . . to
+the sum of five hundred thousand, let us suppose. That's the minimum.
+Well, and if. . . ."
+
+"You can tell me to-morrow . . . later on. . . ."
+
+"Yes, that's true. You are sleepy, _pardon_, I am just going . . .
+say what you like, but with capital you can do good business
+everywhere, wherever you go. . . . With capital even out of cigarette
+ends one may make a million. . . . Take your theatrical business
+now. Why, for example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It's very simple.
+He did not go the right way to work from the very first. He had no
+capital and he went headlong to the dogs. . . . He ought first to
+have secured his capital, and then to have gone slowly and cautiously
+. . . . Nowadays, one can easily make money by a theatre, whether it
+is a private one or a people's one. . . . If one produces the right
+plays, charges a low price for admission, and hits the public fancy,
+one may put a hundred thousand in one's pocket the first year. . . .
+You don't understand, but I am talking sense. . . . You see you
+are fond of hoarding capital; you are no better than that fool
+Zagvozdkin, you heap it up and don't know what for. . . . You won't
+listen, you don't want to. . . . If you were to put it into
+circulation, you wouldn't have to be rushing all over the place
+. . . . You see for a private theatre, five thousand would be enough
+for a beginning. . . . Not like Lentovsky, of course, but on a
+modest scale in a small way. I have got a manager already, I have
+looked at a suitable building. . . . It's only the money I haven't
+got. . . . If only you understood things you would have parted with
+your Five per cents . . . your Preference shares. . . ."
+
+"No, _merci_. . . . You have fleeced me enough already. . . . Let
+me alone, I have been punished already. . . ."
+
+"If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course . . ." sighs
+Nikitin, getting up. "Of course. . . ."
+
+"Let me alone. . . . Come, go away and don't keep me awake. . . .
+I am sick of listening to your nonsense."
+
+"H'm. . . . To be sure . . . of course! Fleeced. . . plundered. . . .
+What we give we remember, but we don't remember what we take."
+
+"I have never taken anything from you."
+
+"Is that so? But when we weren't a celebrated singer, at whose
+expense did we live then? And who, allow me to ask, lifted you out
+of beggary and secured your happiness? Don't you remember that?"
+
+"Come, go to bed. Go along and sleep it off."
+
+"Do you mean to say you think I am drunk? . . . if I am so low in
+the eyes of such a grand lady. . . I can go away altogether."
+
+"Do. A good thing too."
+
+"I will, too. I have humbled myself enough. And I will go."
+
+"Oh, my God! Oh, do go, then! I shall be delighted!"
+
+"Very well, we shall see."
+
+Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs,
+goes out of the bedroom. Then sounds reach her from the entry of
+whispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. _Mari
+d'elle_ has taken offence in earnest and gone out.
+
+"Thank God, he has gone!" thinks the singer. "Now I can sleep."
+
+And as she falls asleep she thinks of her _mari d'elle_, what sort
+of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one
+time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a
+book-keeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the _mari
+d'elle_, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work and
+take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further
+than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder.
+Since he had become "the husband of a celebrity" he was completely
+transformed. The singer remembered that when first she told him she
+was going on the stage he had made a fuss, been indignant, complained
+to her parents, turned her out of the house. She had been obliged
+to go on the stage without his permission. Afterwards, when he
+learned from the papers and from various people that she was earning
+big sums, he had 'forgiven her,' abandoned book-keeping, and become
+her hanger-on. The singer was overcome with amazement when she
+looked at her hanger-on: when and where had he managed to pick up
+new tastes, polish, and airs and graces? Where had he learned the
+taste of oysters and of different Burgundies? Who had taught him
+to dress and do his hair in the fashion and call her 'Nathalie'
+instead of Natasha?"
+
+"It's strange," thinks the singer. "In old days he used to get his
+salary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is not
+enough for him. In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboys
+for fear of saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar even
+with princes . . . wretched, contemptible little creature!"
+
+But then the singer starts again; again there is the clang of the
+bell in the entry. The housemaid, scolding and angrily flopping
+with her slippers, goes to open the door. Again some one comes in
+and stamps like a horse.
+
+"He has come back!" thinks the singer. "When shall I be left in
+peace? It's revolting!" She is overcome by fury.
+
+"Wait a bit. . . . I'll teach you to get up these farces! You shall
+go away. I'll make you go away!"
+
+The singer leaps up and runs barefoot into the little drawing-room
+where her _mari_ usually sleeps. She comes at the moment when he
+is undressing, and carefully folding his clothes on a chair.
+
+"You went away!" she says, looking at him with bright eyes full of
+hatred. "What did you come back for?"
+
+Nikitin remains silent, and merely sniffs.
+
+"You went away! Kindly take yourself off this very minute! This
+very minute! Do you hear?"
+
+_Mari d'elle_ coughs and, without looking at his wife, takes off
+his braces.
+
+"If you don't go away, you insolent creature, I shall go," the
+singer goes on, stamping her bare foot, and looking at him with
+flashing eyes. "I shall go! Do you hear, insolent . . . worthless
+wretch, flunkey, out you go!"
+
+"You might have some shame before outsiders," mutters her husband
+. . . .
+
+The singer looks round and only then sees an unfamiliar countenance
+that looks like an actor's. . . . The countenance, seeing the
+singer's uncovered shoulders and bare feet, shows signs of
+embarrassment, and looks ready to sink through the floor.
+
+"Let me introduce . . ." mutters Nikitin, "Bezbozhnikov, a provincial
+manager."
+
+The singer utters a shriek, and runs off into her bedroom.
+
+"There, you see . . ." says _mari d'elle_, as he stretches himself
+on the sofa, "it was all honey just now . . . my love, my dear, my
+darling, kisses and embraces . . . but as soon as money is touched
+upon, then. . . . As you see . . . money is the great thing. . . .
+Good night!"
+
+A minute later there is a snore.
+
+
+A LIVING CHATTEL
+
+GROHOLSKY embraced Liza, kept kissing one after another all her
+little fingers with their bitten pink nails, and laid her on the
+couch covered with cheap velvet. Liza crossed one foot over the
+other, clasped her hands behind her head, and lay down.
+
+Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent over. He was
+entirely absorbed in contemplation of her.
+
+How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the setting
+sun!
+
+There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun, golden,
+lightly flecked with purple.
+
+The whole drawing-room, including Liza, was bathed by it with
+brilliant light that did not hurt the eyes, and for a little while
+covered with gold.
+
+Groholsky was lost in admiration. Liza was so incredibly beautiful.
+It is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turn
+up nose was fresh, and even piquant, his scanty hair was black as
+soot and curly, her little figure was graceful, well proportioned
+and mobile as the body of an electric eel, but on the whole. . . .
+However my taste has nothing to do with it. Groholsky who was spoilt
+by women, and who had been in love and out of love hundreds of times
+in his life, saw her as a beauty. He loved her, and blind love finds
+ideal beauty everywhere.
+
+"I say," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "I have come to
+talk to you, my precious. Love cannot bear anything vague or
+indefinite. . . . Indefinite relations, you know, I told you
+yesterday, Liza . . . we will try to-day to settle the question we
+raised yesterday. Come, let us decide together. . . ."
+
+"What are we to do?"
+
+Liza gave a yawn and scowling, drew her right arm from under her
+head.
+
+"What are we to do?" she repeated hardly audibly after Groholsky.
+
+"Well, yes, what are we to do? Come, decide, wise little head . . .
+I love you, and a man in love is not fond of sharing. He is more
+than an egoist. It is too much for me to go shares with your husband.
+I mentally tear him to pieces, when I remember that he loves you
+too. In the second place you love me. . . . Perfect freedom is an
+essential condition for love. . . . And are you free? Are you not
+tortured by the thought that that man towers for ever over your
+soul? A man whom you do not love, whom very likely and quite
+naturally, you hate. . . . That's the second thing. . . . And
+thirdly. . . . What is the third thing? Oh yes. . . . We are deceiving
+him and that . . . is dishonourable. Truth before everything, Liza.
+Let us have done with lying!"
+
+"Well, then, what are we to do?"
+
+"You can guess. . . . I think it necessary, obligatory, to inform
+him of our relations and to leave him, to begin to live in freedom.
+Both must be done as quickly as possible. . . . This very evening,
+for instance. . . . It's time to make an end of it. Surely you must
+be sick of loving like a thief?"
+
+"Tell! tell Vanya?"
+
+"Why, yes!"
+
+"That's impossible! I told you yesterday, Michel, that it is
+impossible."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He will be upset. He'll make a row, do all sorts of unpleasant
+things. . . . Don't you know what he is like? God forbid! There's
+no need to tell him. What an idea!"
+
+Groholsky passed his hand over his brow, and heaved a sigh.
+
+"Yes," he said, "he will be more than upset. I am robbing him of
+his happiness. Does he love you?"
+
+"He does love me. Very much."
+
+"There's another complication! One does not know where to begin.
+To conceal it from him is base, telling him would kill him. . . .
+Goodness knows what's one to do. Well, how is it to be?"
+
+Groholsky pondered. His pale face wore a frown.
+
+"Let us go on always as we are now," said Liza. "Let him find out
+for himself, if he wants to."
+
+"But you know that . . . is sinful, and besides the fact is you are
+mine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong to
+me but to someone else! You are mine! I will not give way to anyone!
+. . . I am sorry for him--God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza!
+It hurts me to see him! But . . . it can't be helped after all. You
+don't love him, do you? What's the good of your going on being
+miserable with him? We must have it out! We will have it out with
+him, and you will come to me. You are my wife, and not his. Let him
+do what he likes. He'll get over his troubles somehow. . . . He is
+not the first, and he won't be the last. . . . Will you run away?
+Eh? Make haste and tell me! Will you run away?"
+
+Liza got up and looked inquiringly at Groholsky.
+
+"Run away?"
+
+"Yes. . . . To my estate. . . . Then to the Crimea. . . . We will
+tell him by letter. . . . We can go at night. There is a train at
+half past one. Well? Is that all right?"
+
+Liza scratched the bridge of her nose, and hesitated.
+
+"Very well," she said, and burst into tears.
+
+Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled, and tears
+flowed down her kittenish face. . . .
+
+"What is it?" cried Groholsky in a flutter. "Liza! what's the matter?
+Come! what are you crying for? What a girl! Come, what is it?
+Darling! Little woman!"
+
+Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck. There
+was a sound of sobbing.
+
+"I am sorry for him . . ." muttered Liza. "Oh, I am so sorry for
+him!"
+
+"Sorry for whom?"
+
+"Va--Vanya. . . ."
+
+"And do you suppose I'm not? But what's to be done? We are causing
+him suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but
+is it our fault that we love one another?"
+
+As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza as
+though he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprang
+away from his neck and rapidly--in one instant--dropped on the
+lounge.
+
+They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed.
+
+A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government
+clerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed.
+Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned
+the lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the
+husband.
+
+They had looked round too late.
+
+He had seen Groholsky's arm round Liza's waist, and had seen Liza
+hanging on Groholsky's white and aristocratic neck.
+
+"He saw us!" Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while
+they did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed
+eyes. . . .
+
+The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white.
+
+An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three
+minutes. Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this
+day.
+
+The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He stepped
+up to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimace
+like a smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiring
+hand and shuddered all over as though he had crushed a cold frog
+in his fist.
+
+"Good evening," he muttered.
+
+"How are you?" the husband brought out in a faint husky, almost
+inaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straightening
+his collar at the back of his neck.
+
+Again, an agonising silence followed . . . but that silence was no
+longer so stupid. . . . The first step, most difficult and colourless,
+was over.
+
+All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in search
+of matches or on some such trifling errand. Both longed intensely
+to get away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulled
+at their beards while they ransacked their troubled brains for some
+means of escape from their horribly awkward position. Both were
+perspiring. Both were unbearably miserable and both were devoured
+by hatred. They longed to begin the tussle but how were they to
+begin and which was to begin first? If only she would have gone
+out!
+
+"I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall," muttered Bugrov (that
+was the husband's name).
+
+"Yes, I was there . . . the ball . . . did you dance?"
+
+"M'm . . . yes . . . with that . . . with the younger Lyukovtsky
+. . . . She dances heavily. . . . She dances impossibly. She is a
+great chatterbox." (Pause.) "She is never tired of talking."
+
+"Yes. . . . It was slow. I saw you too. . ."
+
+Groholsky accidentally glanced at Bugrov. . . . He caught the
+shifting eyes of the deceived husband and could not bear it. He got
+up quickly, quickly seized Bugrov's hand, shook it, picked up his
+hat, and walked towards the door, conscious of his own back. He
+felt as though thousands of eyes were looking at his back. It is a
+feeling known to the actor who has been hissed and is making his
+exit from the stage, and to the young dandy who has received a blow
+on the back of the head and is being led away in charge of a
+policeman.
+
+As soon as the sound of Groholsky's steps had died away and the
+door in the hall creaked, Bugrov leapt up, and after making two or
+three rounds of the drawing-room, strolled up to his wife. The
+kittenish face puckered up and began blinking its eyes as though
+expecting a slap. Her husband went up to her, and with a pale,
+distorted face, with arms, head, and shoulders shaking, stepped on
+her dress and knocked her knees with his.
+
+"If, you wretched creature," he began in a hollow, wailing voice,
+"you let him come here once again, I'll. . . . Don't let him dare
+to set his foot. . . . I'll kill you. Do you understand? A-a-ah
+. . . worthless creature, you shudder! Fil-thy woman!"
+
+Bugrov seized her by the elbow, shook her, and flung her like an
+indiarubber ball towards the window. . . .
+
+"Wretched, vulgar woman! you have no shame!"
+
+She flew towards the window, hardly touching the floor with her
+feet, and caught at the curtains with her hands.
+
+"Hold your tongue," shouted her husband, going up to her with
+flashing eyes and stamping his foot.
+
+She did hold her tongue, she looked at the ceiling, and whimpered
+while her face wore the expression of a little girl in disgrace
+expecting to be punished.
+
+"So that's what you are like! Eh? Carrying on with a fop! Good! And
+your promise before the altar? What are you? A nice wife and mother.
+Hold your tongue!"
+
+And he struck her on her pretty supple shoulder. "Hold your tongue,
+you wretched creature. I'll give you worse than that! If that
+scoundrel dares to show himself here ever again, if I see
+you--listen!--with that blackguard ever again, don't ask for mercy!
+I'll kill you, if I go to Siberia for it! And him too. I shouldn't
+think twice about it! You can go, I don't want to see you!"
+
+Bugrov wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve and strode about
+the drawing-room, Liza sobbing more and more loudly, twitching her
+shoulders and her little turned up nose, became absorbed in examining
+the lace on the curtain.
+
+"You are crazy," her husband shouted. "Your silly head is full of
+nonsense! Nothing but whims! I won't allow it, Elizaveta, my girl!
+You had better be careful with me! I don't like it! If you want to
+behave like a pig, then . . . then out you go, there is no place
+in my house for you! Out you pack if. . . . You are a wife, so you
+must forget these dandies, put them out of your silly head! It's
+all foolishness! Don't let it happen again! You try defending
+yourself! Love your husband! You have been given to your husband,
+so you must love him. Yes, indeed! Is one not enough? Go away till
+. . . . Torturers!"
+
+Bugrov paused; then shouted:
+
+"Go away I tell you, go to the nursery! Why are you blubbering, it
+is your own fault, and you blubber! What a woman! Last year you
+were after Petka Totchkov, now you are after this devil. Lord forgive
+us! . . . Tfoo, it's time you understood what you are! A wife! A
+mother! Last year there were unpleasantnesses, and now there will
+be unpleasantnesses. . . . Tfoo!"
+
+Bugrov heaved a loud sigh, and the air was filled with the smell
+of sherry. He had come back from dining and was slightly drunk
+. . . .
+
+"Don't you know your duty? No! . . . you must be taught, you've not
+been taught so far! Your mamma was a gad-about, and you . . . you
+can blubber. Yes! blubber away. . . ."
+
+Bugrov went up to his wife and drew the curtain out of her hands.
+
+"Don't stand by the window, people will see you blubbering. . . .
+Don't let it happen again. You'll go from embracing to worse trouble.
+You'll come to grief. Do you suppose I like to be made a fool of?
+And you will make a fool of me if you carry on with them, the low
+brutes. . . . Come, that's enough. . . . Don't you. . . . Another
+time. . . . Of course I . . Liza . . . stay. . . ."
+
+Bugrov heaved a sigh and enveloped Liza in the fumes of sherry.
+
+"You are young and silly, you don't understand anything. . . . I
+am never at home. . . . And they take advantage of it. You must be
+sensible, prudent. They will deceive you. And then I won't endure
+it. . . . Then I may do anything. . . . Of course! Then you can
+just lie down, and die. I . . . I am capable of doing anything if
+you deceive me, my good girl. I might beat you to death. . . . And
+. . . I shall turn you out of the house, and then you can go to
+your rascals."
+
+And Bugrov (_horribile dictu_) wiped the wet, tearful face of the
+traitress Liza with his big soft hand. He treated his twenty-year-old
+wife as though she were a child.
+
+"Come, that's enough. . . . I forgive you. Only God forbid it should
+happen again! I forgive you for the fifth time, but I shall not
+forgive you for the sixth, as God is holy. God does not forgive
+such as you for such things."
+
+Bugrov bent down and put out his shining lips towards Liza's little
+head. But the kiss did not follow. The doors of the hall, of the
+dining-room, of the parlour, and of the drawing-room all slammed,
+and Groholsky flew into the drawing-room like a whirlwind. He was
+pale and trembling. He was flourishing his arms and crushing his
+expensive hat in his hands. His coat fluttered upon him as though
+it were on a peg. He was the incarnation of acute fever. When Bugrov
+saw him he moved away from his wife and began looking out of the
+other window. Groholsky flew up to him, and waving his arms and
+breathing heavily and looking at no one, he began in a shaking
+voice:
+
+"Ivan Petrovitch! Let us leave off keeping up this farce with one
+another! We have deceived each other long enough! It's too much! I
+cannot stand it. You must do as you like, but I cannot! It's hateful
+and mean, it's revolting! Do you understand that it is revolting?"
+
+Groholsky spluttered and gasped for breath.
+
+"It's against my principles. And you are an honest man. I love her!
+I love her more than anything on earth! You have noticed it and
+. . . it's my duty to say this!"
+
+"What am I to say to him?" Ivan Petrovitch wondered.
+
+"We must make an end of it. This farce cannot drag on much longer!
+It must be settled somehow."
+
+Groholsky drew a breath and went on:
+
+"I cannot live without her; she feels the same. You are an educated
+man, you will understand that in such circumstances your family
+life is impossible. This woman is not yours, so . . . in short, I
+beg you to look at the matter from an indulgent humane point of
+view. . . . Ivan Petrovitch, you must understand at last that I
+love her--love her more than myself, more than anything in the
+world, and to struggle against that love is beyond my power!"
+
+"And she?" Bugrov asked in a sullen, somewhat ironical tone.
+
+"Ask her; come now, ask her! For her to live with a man she does
+not love, to live with you is . . . is a misery!"
+
+"And she?" Bugrov repeated, this time not in an ironical tone.
+
+"She . . . she loves me! We love each other, Ivan Petrovitch! Kill
+us, despise us, pursue us, do as you will, but we can no longer
+conceal it from you. We are standing face to face--you may judge
+us with all the severity of a man whom we . . . whom fate has robbed
+of happiness!"
+
+Bugrov turned as red as a boiled crab, and looked out of one eye
+at Liza. He began blinking. His fingers, his lips, and his eyelids
+twitched. Poor fellow! The eyes of his weeping wife told him that
+Groholsky was right, that it was a serious matter.
+
+"Well!" he muttered. "If you. . . . In these days. . . . You are
+always. . . ."
+
+"As God is above," Groholsky shrilled in his high tenor, "we
+understand you. Do you suppose we have no sense, no feeling? I know
+what agonies I am causing you, as God's above! But be indulgent, I
+beseech you! We are not to blame. Love is not a crime. No will can
+struggle against it. . . . Give her up to me, Ivan Petrovitch! Let
+her go with me! Take from me what you will for your sufferings.
+Take my life, but give me Liza. I am ready to do anything. . . .
+Come, tell me how I can do something to make up in part at least!
+To make up for that lost happiness, I can give you other happiness.
+I can, Ivan Petrovitch; I am ready to do anything! It would be base
+on my part to leave you without satisfaction. . . . I understand
+you at this moment."
+
+Bugrov waved his hand as though to say, 'For God's sake, go away.'
+His eyes began to be dimmed by a treacherous moisture--in a moment
+they would see him crying like a child.
+
+"I understand you, Ivan Petrovitch. I will give you another happiness,
+such as hitherto you have not known. What would you like? I have
+money, my father is an influential man. . . . Will you? Come, how
+much do you want?"
+
+Bugrov's heart suddenly began throbbing. . . . He clutched at the
+window curtains with both hands. . . .
+
+"Will you have fifty thousand? Ivan Petrovitch, I entreat you. . . .
+It's not a bribe, not a bargain. . . . I only want by a sacrifice
+on my part to atone a little for your inevitable loss. Would you
+like a hundred thousand? I am willing. A hundred thousand?"
+
+My God! Two immense hammers began beating on the perspiring temples
+of the unhappy Ivan Petrovitch. Russian sledges with tinkling bells
+began racing in his ears. . . .
+
+"Accept this sacrifice from me," Groholsky went on, "I entreat you!
+You will take a load off my conscience. . . . I implore you!"
+
+My God! A smart carriage rolled along the road wet from a May shower,
+passed the window through which Bugrov's wet eyes were looking. The
+horses were fine, spirited, well-trained beasts. People in straw
+hats, with contented faces, were sitting in the carriage with long
+fishing-rods and bags. . . . A schoolboy in a white cap was holding
+a gun. They were driving out into the country to catch fish, to
+shoot, to walk about and have tea in the open air. They were driving
+to that region of bliss in which Bugrov as a boy--the barefoot,
+sunburnt, but infinitely happy son of a village deacon--had once
+raced about the meadows, the woods, and the river banks. Oh, how
+fiendishly seductive was that May! How happy those who can take off
+their heavy uniforms, get into a carriage and fly off to the country
+where the quails are calling and there is the scent of fresh hay.
+Bugrov's heart ached with a sweet thrill that made him shiver. A
+hundred thousand! With the carriage there floated before him all
+the secret dreams over which he had gloated, through the long years
+of his life as a government clerk as he sat in the office of his
+department or in his wretched little study. . . . A river, deep,
+with fish, a wide garden with narrow avenues, little fountains,
+shade, flowers, arbours, a luxurious villa with terraces and turrets
+with an Aeolian harp and little silver bells (he had heard of the
+existence of an Aeolian harp from German romances); a cloudless
+blue sky; pure limpid air fragrant with the scents that recall his
+hungry, barefoot, crushed childhood. . . . To get up at five, to
+go to bed at nine; to spend the day catching fish, talking with the
+peasants. . . . What happiness!
+
+"Ivan Petrovitch, do not torture me! Will you take a hundred
+thousand?"
+
+"H'm . . . a hundred and fifty thousand!" muttered Bugrov in a
+hollow voice, the voice of a husky bull. He muttered it, and bowed
+his head, ashamed of his words, and awaiting the answer.
+
+"Good," said Groholsky, "I agree. I thank you, Ivan Petrovitch
+. . . . In a minute. . . . I will not keep you waiting. . . ."
+
+Groholsky jumped up, put on his hat, and staggering backwards, ran
+out of the drawing-room.
+
+Bugrov clutched the window curtains more tightly than ever. . . .
+He was ashamed . . . . There was a nasty, stupid feeling in his
+soul, but, on the other hand, what fair shining hopes swarmed between
+his throbbing temples! He was rich!
+
+Liza, who had grasped nothing of what was happening, darted through
+the half-opened door trembling all over and afraid that he would
+come to her window and fling her away from it. She went into the
+nursery, laid herself down on the nurse's bed, and curled herself
+up. She was shivering with fever.
+
+Bugrov was left alone. He felt stifled, and he opened the window.
+What glorious air breathed fragrance on his face and neck! It would
+be good to breathe such air lolling on the cushions of a carriage
+. . . . Out there, far beyond the town, among the villages and the
+summer villas, the air was sweeter still. . . . Bugrov actually
+smiled as he dreamed of the air that would be about him when he
+would go out on the verandah of his villa and admire the view. A
+long while he dreamed. . . . The sun had set, and still he stood
+and dreamed, trying his utmost to cast out of his mind the image
+of Liza which obstinately pursued him in all his dreams.
+
+"I have brought it, Ivan Petrovitch!" Groholsky, re-entering,
+whispered above his ear. "I have brought it--take it. . . . Here
+in this roll there are forty thousand. . . . With this cheque will
+you kindly get twenty the day after to-morrow from Valentinov? . . .
+ Here is a bill of exchange . . . a cheque. . . . The remaining
+thirty thousand in a day or two. . . . My steward will bring it to
+you."
+
+Groholsky, pink and excited, with all his limbs in motion, laid
+before Bugrov a heap of rolls of notes and bundles of papers. The
+heap was big, and of all sorts of hues and tints. Never in the
+course of his life had Bugrov seen such a heap. He spread out his
+fat fingers and, not looking at Groholsky, fell to going through
+the bundles of notes and bonds. . . .
+
+Groholsky spread out all the money, and moved restlessly about the
+room, looking for the Dulcinea who had been bought and sold.
+
+Filling his pockets and his pocket-book, Bugrov thrust the securities
+into the table drawer, and, drinking off half a decanter full of
+water, dashed out into the street.
+
+"Cab!" he shouted in a frantic voice.
+
+At half-past eleven that night he drove up to the entrance of the
+Paris Hotel. He went noisily upstairs and knocked at the door of
+Groholsky's apartments. He was admitted. Groholsky was packing his
+things in a portmanteau, Liza was sitting at the table trying on
+bracelets. They were both frightened when Bugrov went in to them.
+They fancied that he had come for Liza and had brought back the
+money which he had taken in haste without reflection. But Bugrov
+had not come for Liza. Ashamed of his new get-up and feeling
+frightfully awkward in it, he bowed and stood at the door in the
+attitude of a flunkey. The get-up was superb. Bugrov was unrecognisable.
+His huge person, which had never hitherto worn anything but a
+uniform, was clothed in a fresh, brand-new suit of fine French cloth
+and of the most fashionable cut. On his feet spats shone with
+sparkling buckles. He stood ashamed of his new get-up, and with his
+right hand covered the watch-chain for which he had, an hour before,
+paid three hundred roubles.
+
+"I have come about something," he began. "A business agreement is
+beyond price. I am not going to give up Mishutka. . . ."
+
+"What Mishutka?" asked Groholsky.
+
+"My son."
+
+Groholsky and Liza looked at each other. Liza's eyes bulged, her
+cheeks flushed, and her lips twitched. . . .
+
+"Very well," she said.
+
+She thought of Mishutka's warm little cot. It would be cruel to
+exchange that warm little cot for a chilly sofa in the hotel, and
+she consented.
+
+"I shall see him," she said.
+
+Bugrov bowed, walked out, and flew down the stairs in his splendour,
+cleaving the air with his expensive cane. . . .
+
+"Home," he said to the cabman. "I am starting at five o'clock
+to-morrow morning. . . . You will come; if I am asleep, you will
+wake me. We are driving out of town."
+
+II
+
+It was a lovely August evening. The sun, set in a golden background
+lightly flecked with purple, stood above the western horizon on the
+point of sinking behind the far-away tumuli. In the garden, shadows
+and half-shadows had vanished, and the air had grown damp, but the
+golden light was still playing on the tree-tops. . . . It was warm.
+. . . Rain had just fallen, and made the fresh, transparent fragrant
+air still fresher.
+
+I am not describing the August of Petersburg or Moscow, foggy,
+tearful, and dark, with its cold, incredibly damp sunsets. God
+forbid! I am not describing our cruel northern August. I ask the
+reader to move with me to the Crimea, to one of its shores, not far
+from Feodosia, the spot where stands the villa of one of our heroes.
+It is a pretty, neat villa surrounded by flower-beds and clipped
+bushes. A hundred paces behind it is an orchard in which its inmates
+walk. . . . Groholsky pays a high rent for that villa, a thousand
+roubles a year, I believe. . . . The villa is not worth that rent,
+but it is pretty. . . . Tall, with delicate walls and very delicate
+parapets, fragile, slender, painted a pale blue colour, hung with
+curtains, _portières_, draperies, it suggests a charming, fragile
+Chinese lady. . . .
+
+On the evening described above, Groholsky and Liza were sitting on
+the verandah of this villa. Groholsky was reading _Novoye Vremya_
+and drinking milk out of a green mug. A syphon of Seltzer water was
+standing on the table before him. Groholsky imagined that he was
+suffering from catarrh of the lungs, and by the advice of Dr.
+Dmitriev consumed an immense quantity of grapes, milk, and Seltzer
+water. Liza was sitting in a soft easy chair some distance from the
+table. With her elbows on the parapet, and her little face propped
+on her little fists, she was gazing at the villa opposite. . . .
+The sun was playing upon the windows of the villa opposite, the
+glittering panes reflected the dazzling light. . . . Beyond the
+little garden and the few trees that surrounded the villa there was
+a glimpse of the sea with its waves, its dark blue colour, its
+immensity, its white masts. . . . It was so delightful! Groholsky
+was reading an article by Anonymous, and after every dozen lines
+he raised his blue eyes to Liza's back. . . . The same passionate,
+fervent love was shining in those eyes still. . . . He was infinitely
+happy in spite of his imaginary catarrh of the lungs. . . . Liza
+was conscious of his eyes upon her back, and was thinking of
+Mishutka's brilliant future, and she felt so comfortable, so serene
+. . . .
+
+She was not so much interested by the sea, and the glittering
+reflection on the windows of the villa opposite as by the waggons
+which were trailing up to that villa one after another.
+
+The waggons were full of furniture and all sorts of domestic articles.
+Liza watched the trellis gates and big glass doors of the villa
+being opened and the men bustling about the furniture and wrangling
+incessantly. Big armchairs and a sofa covered with dark raspberry
+coloured velvet, tables for the hall, the drawing-room and the
+dining-room, a big double bed and a child's cot were carried in by
+the glass doors; something big, wrapped up in sacking, was carried
+in too. A grand piano, thought Liza, and her heart throbbed.
+
+It was long since she had heard the piano, and she was so fond of
+it. They had not a single musical instrument in their villa. Groholsky
+and she were musicians only in soul, no more. There were a great
+many boxes and packages with the words: "with care" upon them carried
+in after the piano.
+
+They were boxes of looking-glasses and crockery. A gorgeous and
+luxurious carriage was dragged in, at the gate, and two white horses
+were led in looking like swans.
+
+"My goodness, what riches!" thought Liza, remembering her old pony
+which Groholsky, who did not care for riding, had bought her for a
+hundred roubles. Compared with those swan-like steeds, her pony
+seemed to her no better than a bug. Groholsky, who was afraid of
+riding fast, had purposely bought Liza a poor horse.
+
+"What wealth!" Liza thought and murmured as she gazed at the noisy
+carriers.
+
+The sun hid behind the tumuli, the air began to lose its dryness
+and limpidity, and still the furniture was being driven up and
+hauled into the house. At last it was so dark that Groholsky left
+off reading the newspaper while Liza still gazed and gazed.
+
+"Shouldn't we light the lamp?" said Groholsky, afraid that a fly
+might drop into his milk and be swallowed in the darkness.
+
+"Liza! shouldn't we light the lamp? Shall we sit in darkness, my
+angel?"
+
+Liza did not answer. She was interested in a chaise which had driven
+up to the villa opposite. . . . What a charming little mare was in
+that chaise. Of medium size, not large, but graceful. . . . A
+gentleman in a top hat was sitting in the chaise, a child about
+three, apparently a boy, was sitting on his knees waving his little
+hands. . . . He was waving his little hands and shouting with
+delight.
+
+Liza suddenly uttered a shriek, rose from her seat and lurched
+forward.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Groholsky.
+
+"Nothing. . . I only . . . I fancied. . . ."
+
+The tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in the top hat jumped out of
+the chaise, lifted the boy down, and with a skip and a hop ran gaily
+in at the glass door. The door opened noisily and he vanished into
+the darkness of the villa apartments.
+
+Two smart footmen ran up to the horse in the chaise, and most
+respectfully led it to the gate. Soon the villa opposite was lighted
+up, and the clatter of plates, knives, and forks was audible. The
+gentleman in the top hat was having his supper, and judging by the
+duration of the clatter of crockery, his supper lasted long. Liza
+fancied she could smell chicken soup and roast duck. After supper
+discordant sounds of the piano floated across from the villa. In
+all probability the gentleman in the top hat was trying to amuse
+the child in some way, and allowing it to strum on it.
+
+Groholsky went up to Liza and put his arm round her waist.
+
+"What wonderful weather!" he said. "What air! Do you feel it? I am
+very happy, Liza, very happy indeed. My happiness is so great that
+I am really afraid of its destruction. The greatest things are
+usually destroyed, and do you know, Liza, in spite of all my
+happiness, I am not absolutely . . . at peace. . . . One haunting
+thought torments me . . . it torments me horribly. It gives me no
+peace by day or by night. . . ."
+
+"What thought?"
+
+"An awful thought, my love. I am tortured by the thought of your
+husband. I have been silent hitherto. I have feared to trouble your
+inner peace, but I cannot go on being silent. Where is he? What has
+happened to him? What has become of him with his money? It is awful!
+Every night I see his face, exhausted, suffering, imploring. . . .
+Why, only think, my angel--can the money he so generously accepted
+make up to him for you? He loved you very much, didn't he?"
+
+"Very much!"
+
+"There you see! He has either taken to drink now, or . . . I am
+anxious about him! Ah, how anxious I am! Should we write to him,
+do you think? We ought to comfort him . . . a kind word, you know."
+
+Groholsky heaved a deep sigh, shook his head, and sank into an easy
+chair exhausted by painful reflection. Leaning his head on his fists
+he fell to musing. Judging from his face, his musings were painful.
+
+"I am going to bed," said Liza; "it's time."
+
+Liza went to her own room, undressed, and dived under the bedclothes.
+She used to go to bed at ten o'clock and get up at ten. She was
+fond of her comfort.
+
+She was soon in the arms of Morpheus. Throughout the whole night
+she had the most fascinating dreams. . . . She dreamed whole romances,
+novels, Arabian Nights. . . . The hero of all these dreams was the
+gentleman in the top hat, who had caused her to utter a shriek that
+evening.
+
+The gentleman in the top hat was carrying her off from Groholsky,
+was singing, was beating Groholsky and her, was flogging the boy
+under the window, was declaring his love, and driving her off in
+the chaise. . . . Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes
+shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness
+. . . . That night Liza lived through a great variety of experiences,
+and very happy ones, even in spite of the beating.
+
+Waking up between six and seven, she flung on her clothes, hurriedly
+did her hair, and without even putting on her Tatar slippers with
+pointed toes, ran impulsively on to the verandah. Shading her eyes
+from the sun with one hand, and with the other holding up her
+slipping clothes, she gazed at the villa opposite. Her face beamed
+. . . . There could be no further doubt it was he.
+
+On the verandah in the villa opposite there was a table in front
+of the glass door. A tea service was shining and glistening on the
+table with a silver samovar at the head. Ivan Petrovitch was sitting
+at the table. He had in his hand a glass in a silver holder, and
+was drinking tea. He was drinking it with great relish. That fact
+could be deduced from the smacking of his lips, the sound of which
+reached Liza's ears. He was wearing a brown dressing-gown with black
+flowers on it. Massive tassels fell down to the ground. It was the
+first time in her life Liza had seen her husband in a dressing-gown,
+and such an expensive-looking one.
+
+Mishutka was sitting on one of his knees, and hindering him from
+drinking his tea. The child jumped up and down and tried to clutch
+his papa's shining lip. After every three or four sips the father
+bent down to his son and kissed him on the head. A grey cat with
+its tail in the air was rubbing itself against one of the table
+legs, and with a plaintive mew proclaiming its desire for food.
+Liza hid behind the verandah curtain, and fastened her eyes upon
+the members of her former family; her face was radiant with joy.
+
+"Misha!" she murmured, "Misha! Are you really here, Misha? The
+darling! And how he loves Vanya! Heavens!"
+
+And Liza went off into a giggle when Mishutka stirred his father's
+tea with a spoon. "And how Vanya loves Misha! My darlings!"
+
+Liza's heart throbbed, and her head went round with joy and happiness.
+She sank into an armchair and went on observing them, sitting down.
+
+"How did they come here?" she wondered as she sent airy kisses to
+Mishutka. "Who gave them the idea of coming here? Heavens! Can all
+that wealth belong to them? Can those swan-like horses that were
+led in at the gate belong to Ivan Petrovitch? Ah!"
+
+When he had finished his tea, Ivan Petrovitch went into the house.
+Ten minutes later, he appeared on the steps and Liza was astounded
+. . . . He, who in his youth only seven years ago had been called
+Vanushka and Vanka and had been ready to punch a man in the face
+and turn the house upside down over twenty kopecks, was dressed
+devilishly well. He had on a broad-brimmed straw hat, exquisite
+brilliant boots, a piqué waistcoat. . . . Thousands of suns, big
+and little, glistened on his watch-chain. With much _chic_ he held
+in his right hand his gloves and cane.
+
+And what swagger, what style there was in his heavy figure when,
+with a graceful motion of his hand, he bade the footman bring the
+horse round.
+
+He got into the chaise with dignity, and told the footmen standing
+round the chaise to give him Mishutka and the fishing tackle they
+had brought. Setting Mishutka beside him, and putting his left arm
+round him, he held the reins and drove off.
+
+"Ge-ee up!" shouted Mishutka.
+
+Liza, unaware of what she was doing, waved her handkerchief after
+them. If she had looked in the glass she would have been surprised
+at her flushed, laughing, and, at the same time, tear-stained face.
+She was vexed that she was not beside her gleeful boy, and that she
+could not for some reason shower kisses on him at once.
+
+For some reason! . . . Away with all your petty delicacies!
+
+"Grisha! Grisha!" Liza ran into Groholsky's bedroom and set to work
+to wake him. "Get up, they have come! The darling!"
+
+"Who has come?" asked Groholsky, waking up.
+
+"Our people . . . Vanya and Misha, they have come, they are in the
+villa opposite. . . . I looked out, and there they were drinking
+tea. . . . And Misha too. . . . What a little angel our Misha has
+grown! If only you had seen him! Mother of God!"
+
+"Seen whom? Why, you are. . . . Who has come? Come where?"
+
+"Vanya and Misha. . . . I have been looking at the villa opposite,
+while they were sitting drinking tea. Misha can drink his tea by
+himself now. . . . Didn't you see them moving in yesterday, it was
+they who arrived!"
+
+Groholsky rubbed his forehead and turned pale.
+
+"Arrived? Your husband?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Most likely he is going to live here. They don't know we are here.
+If they did, they would have looked at our villa, but they drank
+their tea and took no notice."
+
+"Where is he now? But for God's sake do talk sense! Oh, where is
+he?"
+
+"He has gone fishing with Misha in the chaise. Did you see the
+horses yesterday? Those are their horses . . . Vanya's . . . Vanya
+drives with them. Do you know what, Grisha? We will have Misha to
+stay with us. . . . We will, won't we? He is such a pretty boy.
+Such an exquisite boy!"
+
+Groholsky pondered, while Liza went on talking and talking.
+
+"This is an unexpected meeting," said Groholsky, after prolonged
+and, as usual, harrassing reflection. "Well, who could have expected
+that we should meet here? Well. . . There it is. . . . So be it.
+It seems that it is fated. I can imagine the awkwardness of his
+position when he meets us."
+
+"Shall we have Misha to stay with us?"
+
+"Yes, we will. . . . It will be awkward meeting him. . . . Why,
+what can I say to him? What can I talk of? It will be awkward for
+him and awkward for me. . . . We ought not to meet. We will carry
+on communications, if necessary, through the servants. . . . My
+head does ache so, Lizotchka. My arms and legs too, I ache all over.
+Is my head feverish?"
+
+Liza put her hand on his forehead and found that his head was hot.
+
+"I had dreadful dreams all night . . . I shan't get up to-day. I
+shall stay in bed . . . I must take some quinine. Send me my breakfast
+here, little woman."
+
+Groholsky took quinine and lay in bed the whole day. He drank warm
+water, moaned, had the sheets and pillowcase changed, whimpered,
+and induced an agonising boredom in all surrounding him.
+
+He was insupportable when he imagined he had caught a chill. Liza
+had continually to interrupt her inquisitive observations and run
+from the verandah to his room. At dinner-time she had to put on
+mustard plasters. How boring all this would have been, O reader,
+if the villa opposite had not been at the service of my heroine!
+Liza watched that villa all day long and was gasping with happiness.
+
+At ten o'clock Ivan Petrovitch and Mishutka came back from fishing
+and had breakfast. At two o'clock they had dinner, and at four
+o'clock they drove off somewhere in a carriage. The white horses
+bore them away with the swiftness of lightning. At seven o'clock
+visitors came to see them--all of them men. They were playing
+cards on two tables in the verandah till midnight. One of the men
+played superbly on the piano. The visitors played, ate, drank, and
+laughed. Ivan Petrovitch guffawing loudly, told them an anecdote
+of Armenian life at the top of his voice, so that all the villas
+round could hear. It was very gay and Mishutka sat up with them
+till midnight.
+
+"Misha is merry, he is not crying," thought Liza, "so he does not
+remember his mamma. So he has forgotten me!"
+
+And there was a horrible bitter feeling in Liza's soul. She spent
+the whole night crying. She was fretted by her little conscience,
+and by vexation and misery, and the desire to talk to Mishutka and
+kiss him. . . . In the morning she got up with a headache and
+tear-stained eyes. Her tears Groholsky put down to his own account.
+
+"Do not weep, darling," he said to her, "I am all right to-day, my
+chest is a little painful, but that is nothing."
+
+While they were having tea, lunch was being served at the villa
+opposite. Ivan Petrovitch was looking at his plate, and seeing
+nothing but a morsel of goose dripping with fat.
+
+"I am very glad," said Groholsky, looking askance at Bugrov, "very
+glad that his life is so tolerable! I hope that decent surroundings
+anyway may help to stifle his grief. Keep out of sight, Liza! They
+will see you . . . I am not disposed to talk to him just now . . .
+God be with him! Why trouble his peace?"
+
+But the dinner did not pass off so quietly. During dinner precisely
+that "awkward position" which Groholsky so dreaded occurred. Just
+when the partridges, Groholsky's favorite dish, had been put on the
+table, Liza was suddenly overcome with confusion, and Groholsky
+began wiping his face with his dinner napkin. On the verandah of
+the villa opposite they saw Bugrov. He was standing with his arms
+leaning on the parapet, and staring straight at them, with his eyes
+starting out of his head.
+
+"Go in, Liza, go in," Groholsky whispered. "I said we must have
+dinner indoors! What a girl you are, really. . . ."
+
+Bugrov stared and stared, and suddenly began shouting. Groholsky
+looked at him and saw a face full of astonishment. . . .
+
+"Is that you?" bawled Ivan Petrovitch, "you! Are you here too?"
+
+Groholsky passed his fingers from one shoulder to another, as though
+to say, "My chest is weak, and so I can't shout across such a
+distance." Liza's heart began throbbing, and everything turned round
+before her eyes. Bugrov ran from his verandah, ran across the road,
+and a few seconds later was standing under the verandah on which
+Groholsky and Liza were dining. Alas for the partridges!
+
+"How are you?" he began, flushing crimson, and stuffing his big
+hands in his pockets. "Are you here? Are you here too?"
+
+"Yes, we are here too. . . ."
+
+"How did you get here?"
+
+"Why, how did you?"
+
+"I? It's a long story, a regular romance, my good friend! But don't
+put yourselves out--eat your dinner! I've been living, you know,
+ever since then . . . in the Oryol province. I rented an estate. A
+splendid estate! But do eat your dinner! I stayed there from the
+end of May, but now I have given it up. . . . It was cold there,
+and--well, the doctor advised me to go to the Crimea. . . ."
+
+"Are you ill, then?" inquired Groholsky.
+
+"Oh, well. . . . There always seems, as it were . . . something
+gurgling here. . . ."
+
+And at the word "here" Ivan Petrovitch passed his open hand from
+his neck down to the middle of his stomach.
+
+"So you are here too. . . . Yes . . . that's very pleasant. Have
+you been here long?"
+
+"Since July."
+
+"Oh, and you, Liza, how are you? Quite well?"
+
+"Quite well," answered Liza, and was embarrassed.
+
+"You miss Mishutka, I'll be bound. Eh? Well, he's here with me. . . .
+I'll send him over to you directly with Nikifor. This is very
+nice. Well, good-bye! I have to go off directly. . . . I made the
+acquaintance of Prince Ter-Haimazov yesterday; delightful man,
+though he is an Armenian. So he has a croquet party to-day; we are
+going to play croquet. . . . Good-bye! The carriage is waiting
+. . . ."
+
+Ivan Petrovitch whirled round, tossed his head, and, waving adieu
+to them, ran home.
+
+"Unhappy man," said Groholsky, heaving a deep sigh as he watched
+him go off.
+
+"In what way is he unhappy?" asked Liza.
+
+"To see you and not have the right to call you his!"
+
+"Fool!" Liza was so bold to think. "Idiot!"
+
+Before evening Liza was hugging and kissing Mishutka. At first the
+boy howled, but when he was offered jam, he was all friendly smiles.
+
+For three days Groholsky and Liza did not see Bugrov. He had
+disappeared somewhere, and was only at home at night. On the fourth
+day he visited them again at dinner-time. He came in, shook hands
+with both of them, and sat down to the table. His face was serious.
+
+"I have come to you on business," he said. "Read this." And he
+handed Groholsky a letter. "Read it! Read it aloud!"
+
+Groholsky read as follows:
+
+"My beloved and consoling, never-forgotten son Ioann! I have received
+the respectful and loving letter in which you invite your aged
+father to the mild and salubrious Crimea, to breathe the fragrant
+air, and behold strange lands. To that letter I reply that on taking
+my holiday, I will come to you, but not for long. My colleague,
+Father Gerasim, is a frail and delicate man, and cannot be left
+alone for long. I am very sensible of your not forgetting your
+parents, your father and your mother. . . . You rejoice your father
+with your affection, and you remember your mother in your prayers,
+and so it is fitting to do. Meet me at Feodosia. What sort of town
+is Feodosia--what is it like? It will be very agreeable to see
+it. Your godmother, who took you from the font, is called Feodosia.
+You write that God has been graciously pleased that you should win
+two hundred thousand roubles. That is gratifying to me. But I cannot
+approve of your having left the service while still of a grade of
+little importance; even a rich man ought to be in the service. I
+bless you always, now and hereafter. Ilya and Seryozhka Andronov
+send you their greetings. You might send them ten roubles
+each--they are badly off!
+
+                                       "Your loving Father,
+
+                                       "Pyotr Bugrov, _Priest._"
+
+Groholsky read this letter aloud, and he and Liza both looked
+inquiringly at Bugrov.
+
+"You see what it is," Ivan Petrovitch began hesitatingly. "I should
+like to ask you, Liza, not to let him see you, to keep out of his
+sight while he is here. I have written to him that you are ill and
+gone to the Caucasus for a cure. If you meet him. . . You see
+yourself. . . . It's awkward. . . H'm. . . ."
+
+"Very well," said Liza.
+
+"We can do that," thought Groholsky, "since he makes sacrifices,
+why shouldn't we?"
+
+"Please do. . . . If he sees you there will be trouble. . . . My
+father is a man of strict principles. He would curse me in seven
+churches. Don't go out of doors, Liza, that is all. He won't be
+here long. Don't be afraid."
+
+Father Pyotr did not long keep them waiting. One fine morning Ivan
+Petrovitch ran in and hissed in a mysterious tone:
+
+"He has come! He is asleep now, so please be careful."
+
+And Liza was shut up within four walls. She did not venture to go
+out into the yard or on to the verandah. She could only see the sky
+from behind the window curtain. Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch's
+papa spent his whole time in the open air, and even slept on the
+verandah. Usually Father Pyotr, a little parish priest, in a brown
+cassock and a top hat with a curly brim, walked slowly round the
+villas and gazed with curiosity at the "strange lands" through his
+grandfatherly spectacles. Ivan Petrovitch with the Stanislav on a
+little ribbon accompanied him. He did not wear a decoration as a
+rule, but before his own people he liked to show off. In their
+society he always wore the Stanislav.
+
+Liza was bored to death. Groholsky suffered too. He had to go for
+his walks alone without a companion. He almost shed tears, but . . .
+had to submit to his fate. And to make things worse, Bugrov would
+run across every morning and in a hissing whisper would give some
+quite unnecessary bulletin concerning the health of Father Pyotr.
+He bored them with those bulletins.
+
+"He slept well," he informed them. "Yesterday he was put out because
+I had no salted cucumbers. . . He has taken to Mishutka; he keeps
+patting him on the head."
+
+At last, a fortnight later, little Father Pyotr walked for the last
+time round the villas and, to Groholsky's immense relief, departed.
+He had enjoyed himself, and went off very well satisfied. Liza and
+Groholsky fell back into their old manner of life. Groholsky once
+more blessed his fate. But his happiness did not last for long. A
+new trouble worse than Father Pyotr followed. Ivan Petrovitch took
+to coming to see them every day. Ivan Petrovitch, to be frank,
+though a capital fellow, was a very tedious person. He came at
+dinner-time, dined with them and stayed a very long time. That would
+not have mattered. But they had to buy vodka, which Groholsky could
+not endure, for his dinner. He would drink five glasses and talk
+the whole dinner-time. That, too, would not have mattered. . . .
+But he would sit on till two o'clock in the morning, and not let
+them get to bed, and, worse still, he permitted himself to talk of
+things about which he should have been silent. When towards two
+o'clock in the morning he had drunk too much vodka and champagne,
+he would take Mishutka in his arms, and weeping, say to him, before
+Groholsky and Liza:
+
+"Mihail, my son, what am I? I . . . am a scoundrel. I have sold
+your mother! Sold her for thirty pieces of silver, may the Lord
+punish me! Mihail Ivanitch, little sucking pig, where is your mother?
+Lost! Gone! Sold into slavery! Well, I am a scoundrel."
+
+These tears and these words turned Groholsky's soul inside out. He
+would look timidly at Liza's pale face and wring his hands.
+
+"Go to bed, Ivan Petrovitch," he would say timidly.
+
+"I am going. . . . Come along, Mishutka. . . . The Lord be our
+judge! I cannot think of sleep while I know that my wife is a slave
+. . . . But it is not Groholsky's fault. . . . The goods were mine,
+the money his. . . . Freedom for the free and Heaven for the saved."
+
+By day Ivan Petrovitch was no less insufferable to Groholsky. To
+Groholsky's intense horror, he was always at Liza's side. He went
+fishing with her, told her stories, walked with her, and even on
+one occasion, taking advantage of Groholsky's having a cold, carried
+her off in his carriage, goodness knows where, and did not bring
+her back till night!
+
+"It's outrageous, inhuman," thought Groholsky, biting his lips.
+
+Groholsky liked to be continually kissing Liza. He could not exist
+without those honeyed kisses, and it was awkward to kiss her before
+Ivan Petrovitch. It was agony. The poor fellow felt forlorn, but
+fate soon had compassion on him. Ivan Petrovitch suddenly went off
+somewhere for a whole week. Visitors had come and carried him off
+with them . . . And Mishutka was taken too.
+
+One fine morning Groholsky came home from a walk good-humoured and
+beaming.
+
+"He has come," he said to Liza, rubbing his hands. "I am very glad
+he has come. Ha-ha-ha!"
+
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+"There are women with him."
+
+"What women?"
+
+"I don't know. . . . It's a good thing he has got women. . . . A
+capital thing, in fact. . . . He is still young and fresh. Come
+here! Look!"
+
+Groholsky led Liza on to the verandah, and pointed to the villa
+opposite. They both held their sides, and roared with laughter. It
+was funny. Ivan Petrovitch was standing on the verandah of the villa
+opposite, smiling. Two dark-haired ladies and Mishutka were standing
+below, under the verandah. The ladies were laughing, and loudly
+talking French.
+
+"French women," observed Groholsky. "The one nearest us isn't at
+all bad-looking. Lively damsels, but that's no matter. There are
+good women to be found even among such. . . . But they really do
+go too far."
+
+What was funny was that Ivan Petrovitch bent across the verandah,
+and stretching with his long arms, put them round the shoulders of
+one of the French girls, lifted her in the air, and set her giggling
+on the verandah. After lifting up both ladies on to the verandah,
+he lifted up Mishutka too. The ladies ran down and the proceedings
+were repeated.
+
+"Powerful muscles, I must say," muttered Groholsky looking at this
+scene. The operation was repeated some six times, the ladies were
+so amiable as to show no embarrassment whatever when the boisterous
+wind disposed of their inflated skirts as it willed while they were
+being lifted. Groholsky dropped his eyes in a shamefaced way when
+the ladies flung their legs over the parapet as they reached the
+verandah. But Liza watched and laughed! What did she care? It was
+not a case of men misbehaving themselves, which would have put her,
+as a woman, to shame, but of ladies.
+
+In the evening, Ivan Petrovitch flew over, and with some embarrassment
+announced that he was now a man with a household to look after . . . .
+
+"You mustn't imagine they are just anybody," he said. "It is true
+they are French. They shout at the top of their voices, and drink
+. . . but we all know! The French are brought up to be like that!
+It can't be helped. . . . The prince," Ivan Petrovitch added, "let
+me have them almost for nothing. . . . He said: 'take them, take
+them. . . .' I must introduce you to the prince sometime. A man of
+culture! He's for ever writing, writing. . . . And do you know what
+their names are? One is Fanny, the other Isabella. . . . There's
+Europe, ha-ha-ha! . . . The west! Good-bye!"
+
+Ivan Petrovitch left Liza and Groholsky in peace, and devoted himself
+to his ladies. All day long sound of talk, laughter, and the clatter
+of crockery came from his villa. . . . The lights were not put out
+till far into the night. . . . Groholsky was in bliss. . . . At
+last, after a prolonged interval of agony, he felt happy and at
+peace again. Ivan Petrovitch with his two ladies had no such happiness
+as he had with one. But alas, destiny has no heart. She plays with
+the Groholskys, the Lizas, the Ivans, and the Mishutkas as with
+pawns. . . . Groholsky lost his peace again. . . .
+
+One morning, about ten days afterwards, on waking up late, he went
+out on to the verandah and saw a spectacle which shocked him,
+revolted him, and moved him to intense indignation. Under the
+verandah of the villa opposite stood the French women, and between
+them Liza. She was talking and looking askance at her own villa as
+though to see whether that tyrant, that despot were awake (so
+Groholsky interpreted those looks). Ivan Petrovitch standing on the
+verandah with his sleeves tucked up, lifted Isabella into the air,
+then Fanny, and then Liza. When he was lifting Liza it seemed to
+Groholsky that he pressed her to himself. . . . Liza too flung one
+leg over the parapet. . . . Oh these women! All sphinxes, every one
+of them!
+
+When Liza returned home from her husband's villa and went into the
+bedroom on tip-toe, as though nothing had happened, Groholsky, pale,
+with hectic flushes on his cheeks, was lying in the attitude of a
+man at his last gasp and moaning.
+
+On seeing Liza, he sprang out of bed, and began pacing about the
+bedroom.
+
+"So that's what you are like, is it?" he shrieked in a high tenor.
+"So that's it! Very much obliged to you! It's revolting, madam!
+Immoral, in fact! Let me tell you that!"
+
+Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears. When women feel
+that they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when they
+are conscious of being in fault, they shed tears only.
+
+"On a level with those depraved creatures! It's . . . it's . . .
+it's . . . lower than any impropriety! Why, do you know what they
+are? They are kept women! Cocottes! And you a respectable woman go
+rushing off where they are. . . And he . . . He! What does he want?
+What more does he want of me? I don't understand it! I have given
+him half of my property--I have given him more! You know it
+yourself! I have given him what I have not myself. . . . I have
+given him almost all. . . . And he! I've put up with your calling
+him Vanya, though he has no right whatever to such intimacy. I have
+put up with your walks, kisses after dinner. . . . I have put up
+with everything, but this I will not put up with. . . . Either he
+or I! Let him go away, or I go away! I'm not equal to living like
+this any longer, no! You can see that for yourself! . . . Either
+he or I. . . . Enough! The cup is brimming over. . . . I have
+suffered a great deal as it is. . . . I am going to talk to him at
+once--this minute! What is he, after all? What has he to be proud
+of? No, indeed. . . . He has no reason to think so much of himself
+. . . ."
+
+Groholsky said a great many more valiant and stinging things, but
+did not "go at once"; he felt timid and abashed. . . . He went to
+Ivan Petrovitch three days later.
+
+When he went into his apartment, he gaped with astonishment. He was
+amazed at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surrounded
+himself. Velvet hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . . One was
+positively ashamed to step on the carpet. Groholsky had seen many
+rich men in his day, but he had never seen such frenzied luxury. . . .
+And the higgledy-piggledy muddle he saw when, with an inexplicable
+tremor, he walked into the drawing-room--plates with bits of bread
+on them were lying about on the grand piano, a glass was standing
+on a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy rag
+in it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about in the windows. Bugrov
+himself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in
+. . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about the
+room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated.
+Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and was
+making the air vibrate with a piercing scream.
+
+"It's awful, Grigory Vassilyevitch!" Bugrov began on seeing Groholsky,
+"such disorder . . . such disorder . . . Please sit down. You must
+excuse my being in the costume of Adam and Eve. . . . It's of no
+consequence. . . . Horrible disorderliness! I don't understand how
+people can exist here, I don't understand it! The servants won't
+do what they are told, the climate is horrible, everything is
+expensive. . . . Stop your noise," Bugrov shouted, suddenly coming
+to a halt before Mishutka; "stop it, I tell you! Little beast, won't
+you stop it?"
+
+And Bugrov pulled Mishutka's ear.
+
+"That's revolting, Ivan Petrovitch," said Groholsky in a tearful
+voice. "How can you treat a tiny child like that? You really are. . ."
+
+"Let him stop yelling then. . . . Be quiet--I'll whip you!"
+
+"Don't cry, Misha darling. . . . Papa won't touch you again. Don't
+beat him, Ivan Petrovitch; why, he is hardly more than a baby. . . .
+There, there. . . . Would you like a little horse? I'll send you
+a little horse. . . . You really are hard-hearted. . . ."
+
+Groholsky paused, and then asked:
+
+"And how are your ladies getting on, Ivan Petrovitch?"
+
+"Not at all. I've turned them out without ceremony. I might have
+gone on keeping them, but it's awkward. . . . The boy will grow up
+. . . . A father's example. . . . If I were alone, then it would be
+a different thing. . . . Besides, what's the use of my keeping them?
+Poof . . . it's a regular farce! I talk to them in Russian, and
+they answer me in French. They don't understand a thing--you can't
+knock anything into their heads."
+
+"I've come to you about something, Ivan Petrovitch, to talk things
+over. . . . H'm. . . . It's nothing very particular. But just . . .
+two or three words. . . . In reality, I have a favour to ask of
+you."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Would you think it possible, Ivan Petrovitch, to go away? We are
+delighted that you are here; it's very agreeable for us, but it's
+inconvenient, don't you know. . . . You will understand me. It's
+awkward in a way. . . . Such indefinite relations, such continual
+awkwardness in regard to one another. . . . We must part. . . .
+It's essential in fact. Excuse my saying so, but . . . you must see
+for yourself, of course, that in such circumstances to be living
+side by side leads to . . . reflections . . . that is . . . not to
+reflections, but there is a certain awkward feeling. . . ."
+
+"Yes. . . . That is so, I have thought of it myself. Very good, I
+will go away."
+
+"We shall be very grateful to you. . . . Believe me, Ivan Petrovitch,
+we shall preserve the most flattering memory of you. The sacrifice
+which you. . ."
+
+"Very good. . . . Only what am I to do with all this? I say, you
+buy this furniture of mine! What do you say? It's not expensive,
+eight thousand . . . ten. . . . The furniture, the carriage, the
+grand piano. . . ."
+
+"Very good. . . . I will give you ten thousand. . . ."
+
+"Well, that is capital! I will set off to-morrow. I shall go to
+Moscow. It's impossible to live here. Everything is so dear! Awfully
+dear! The money fairly flies. . . . You can't take a step without
+spending a thousand! I can't go on like that. I have a child to
+bring up. . . . Well, thank God that you will buy my furniture. . . .
+That will be a little more in hand, or I should have been
+regularly bankrupt. . . ."
+
+Groholsky got up, took leave of Bugrov, and went home rejoicing.
+In the evening he sent him ten thousand roubles.
+
+Early next morning Bugrov and Mishutka were already at Feodosia.
+
+III
+
+Several months had passed; spring had come. With spring, fine bright
+days had come too. Life was not so dull and hateful, and the earth
+was more fair to look upon. . . . There was a warm breeze from the
+sea and the open country. . . . The earth was covered with fresh
+grass, fresh leaves were green upon the trees. Nature had sprung
+into new life, and had put on new array.
+
+It might be thought that new hopes and new desires would surge up
+in man when everything in nature is renewed, and young and fresh
+. . . but it is hard for man to renew life. . . .
+
+Groholsky was still living in the same villa. His hopes and desires,
+small and unexacting, were still concentrated on the same Liza, on
+her alone, and on nothing else! As before, he could not take his
+eyes off her, and gloated over the thought: how happy I am! The
+poor fellow really did feel awfully happy. Liza sat as before on
+the verandah, and unaccountably stared with bored eyes at the villa
+opposite and the trees near it through which there was a peep at
+the dark blue sea. . . . As before, she spent her days for the most
+part in silence, often in tears and from time to time in putting
+mustard plasters on Groholsky. She might be congratulated on one
+new sensation, however. There was a worm gnawing at her vitals. . . .
+That worm was misery. . . . She was fearfully miserable, pining
+for her son, for her old, her cheerful manner of life. Her life in
+the past had not been particularly cheerful, but still it was
+livelier than her present existence. When she lived with her husband
+she used from time to time to go to a theatre, to an entertainment,
+to visit acquaintances. But here with Groholsky it was all quietness
+and emptiness. . . . Besides, here there was one man, and he with
+his ailments and his continual mawkish kisses, was like an old
+grandfather for ever shedding tears of joy.
+
+It was boring! Here she had not Mihey Sergeyitch who used to be
+fond of dancing the mazurka with her. She had not Spiridon Nikolaitch,
+the son of the editor of the _Provincial News_. Spiridon Nikolaitch
+sang well and recited poetry. Here she had not a table set with
+lunch for visitors. She had not Gerasimovna, the old nurse who used
+to be continually grumbling at her for eating too much jam. . . .
+She had no one! There was simply nothing for her but to lie down
+and die of depression. Groholsky rejoiced in his solitude, but . . .
+he was wrong to rejoice in it. All too soon he paid for his egoism.
+At the beginning of May when the very air seemed to be in love and
+faint with happiness, Groholsky lost everything; the woman he loved
+and. . .
+
+That year Bugrov, too, visited the Crimea. He did not take the villa
+opposite, but pottered about, going from one town to another with
+Mishutka. He spent his time eating, drinking, sleeping, and playing
+cards. He had lost all relish for fishing, shooting and the French
+women, who, between ourselves, had robbed him a bit. He had grown
+thin, lost his broad and beaming smiles, and had taken to dressing
+in canvas. Ivan Petrovitch from time to time visited Groholsky's
+villa. He brought Liza jam, sweets, and fruit, and seemed trying
+to dispel her ennui. Groholsky was not troubled by these visits,
+especially as they were brief and infrequent, and were apparently
+paid on account of Mishutka, who could not under any circumstances
+have been altogether deprived of the privilege of seeing his mother.
+Bugrov came, unpacked his presents, and after saying a few words,
+departed. And those few words he said not to Liza but to Groholsky
+. . . . With Liza he was silent and Groholsky's mind was at rest; but
+there is a Russian proverb which he would have done well to remember:
+"Don't fear the dog that barks, but fear the dog that's quiet. . . ."
+A fiendish proverb, but in practical life sometimes indispensable.
+
+As he was walking in the garden one day, Groholsky heard two voices
+in conversation. One voice was a man's, the other was a woman's.
+One belonged to Bugrov, the other to Liza. Groholsky listened, and
+turning white as death, turned softly towards the speakers. He
+halted behind a lilac bush, and proceeded to watch and listen. His
+arms and legs turned cold. A cold sweat came out upon his brow. He
+clutched several branches of the lilac that he might not stagger
+and fall down. All was over!
+
+Bugrov had his arm round Liza's waist, and was saying to her:
+
+"My darling! what are we to do? It seems it was God's will. . . .
+I am a scoundrel. . . . I sold you. I was seduced by that Herod's
+money, plague take him, and what good have I had from the money?
+Nothing but anxiety and display! No peace, no happiness, no position
+. . . . One sits like a fat invalid at the same spot, and never a
+step forwarder. . . . Have you heard that Andrushka Markuzin has
+been made a head clerk? Andrushka, that fool! While I stagnate. . . .
+Good heavens! I have lost you, I have lost my happiness. I am
+a scoundrel, a blackguard, how do you think I shall feel at the
+dread day of judgment?"
+
+"Let us go away, Vanya," wailed Liza. "I am dull. . . . I am dying
+of depression."
+
+"We cannot, the money has been taken. . . ."
+
+"Well, give it back again."
+
+"I should be glad to, but . . . wait a minute. I have spent it all.
+We must submit, my girl. God is chastising us. Me for my covetousness
+and you for your frivolity. Well, let us be tortured. . . . It will
+be the better for us in the next world."
+
+And in an access of religious feeling, Bugrov turned up his eyes
+to heaven.
+
+"But I cannot go on living here; I am miserable."
+
+"Well, there is no help for it. I'm miserable too. Do you suppose
+I am happy without you? I am pining and wasting away! And my chest
+has begun to be bad! . . . You are my lawful wife, flesh of my flesh
+. . . one flesh. . . . You must live and bear it! While I . . .
+will drive over . . . visit you."
+
+And bending down to Liza, Bugrov whispered, loudly enough, however,
+to be heard several yards away:
+
+"I will come to you at night, Lizanka. . . . Don't worry. . . . I
+am staying at Feodosia close by. . . . I will live here near you
+till I have run through everything . . . and I soon shall be at my
+last farthing! A-a-ah, what a life it is! Dreariness, ill . . . my
+chest is bad, and my stomach is bad."
+
+Bugrov ceased speaking, and then it was Liza's turn. . . . My God,
+the cruelty of that woman! She began weeping, complaining, enumerating
+all the defects of her lover and her own sufferings. Groholsky as
+he listened to her, felt that he was a villain, a miscreant, a
+murderer.
+
+"He makes me miserable. . . ." Liza said in conclusion.
+
+After kissing Liza at parting, and going out at the garden gate,
+Bugrov came upon Groholsky, who was standing at the gate waiting
+for him.
+
+"Ivan Petrovitch," said Groholsky in the tone of a dying man, "I
+have seen and heard it all. . . It's not honourable on your part,
+but I do not blame you. . . . You love her too, but you must
+understand that she is mine. Mine! I cannot live without her! How
+is it you don't understand that? Granted that you love her, that
+you are miserable. . . . Have I not paid you, in part at least, for
+your sufferings? For God's sake, go away! For God's sake, go away!
+Go away from here for ever, I implore you, or you will kill me. . . ."
+
+"I have nowhere to go," Bugrov said thickly.
+
+"H'm, you have squandered everything. . . . You are an impulsive
+man. Very well. . . . Go to my estate in the province of Tchernigov.
+If you like I will make you a present of the property. It's a small
+estate, but a good one. . . . On my honour, it's a good one!"
+
+Bugrov gave a broad grin. He suddenly felt himself in the seventh
+heaven.
+
+"I will give it you. . . . This very day I will write to my steward
+and send him an authorisation for completing the purchase. You must
+tell everyone you have bought it. . . . Go away, I entreat you."
+
+"Very good, I will go. I understand."
+
+"Let us go to a notary . . . at once," said Groholsky, greatly
+cheered, and he went to order the carriage.
+
+On the following evening, when Liza was sitting on the garden seat
+where her rendezvous with Ivan Petrovitch usually took place,
+Groholsky went quietly to her. He sat down beside her, and took her
+hand.
+
+"Are you dull, Lizotchka?" he said, after a brief silence. "Are you
+depressed? Why shouldn't we go away somewhere? Why is it we always
+stay at home? We want to go about, to enjoy ourselves, to make
+acquaintances. . . . Don't we?"
+
+"I want nothing," said Liza, and turned her pale, thin face towards
+the path by which Bugrov used to come to her.
+
+Groholsky pondered. He knew who it was she expected, who it was she
+wanted.
+
+"Let us go home, Liza," he said, "it is damp here. . . ."
+
+"You go; I'll come directly."
+
+Groholsky pondered again.
+
+"You are expecting him?" he asked, and made a wry face as though
+his heart had been gripped with red-hot pincers.
+
+"Yes. . . . I want to give him the socks for Misha. . . ."
+
+"He will not come."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He has gone away. . . ."
+
+Liza opened her eyes wide. . . .
+
+"He has gone away, gone to the Tchernigov province. I have given
+him my estate. . . ."
+
+Liza turned fearfully pale, and caught at Groholsky's shoulder to
+save herself from falling.
+
+"I saw him off at the steamer at three o'clock."
+
+Liza suddenly clutched at her head, made a movement, and falling
+on the seat, began shaking all over.
+
+"Vanya," she wailed, "Vanya! I will go to Vanya. . . . Darling!"
+
+She had a fit of hysterics. . . .
+
+And from that evening, right up to July, two shadows could be seen
+in the park in which the summer visitors took their walks. The
+shadows wandered about from morning till evening, and made the
+summer visitors feel dismal. . . . After Liza's shadow invariably
+walked the shadow of Groholsky. . . . I call them shadows because
+they had both lost their natural appearance. They had grown thin
+and pale and shrunken, and looked more like shadows than living
+people. . . . Both were pining away like fleas in the classic
+anecdote of the Jew who sold insect powder.
+
+At the beginning of July, Liza ran away from Groholsky, leaving a
+note in which she wrote that she was going for a time to "her son"
+. . . For a time! She ran away by night when Groholsky was asleep
+. . . . After reading her letter Groholsky spent a whole week wandering
+round about the villa as though he were mad, and neither ate nor
+slept. In August, he had an attack of recurrent fever, and in
+September he went abroad. There he took to drink. . . . He hoped
+in drink and dissipation to find comfort. . . . He squandered all
+his fortune, but did not succeed, poor fellow, in driving out of
+his brain the image of the beloved woman with the kittenish face
+. . . . Men do not die of happiness, nor do they die of misery.
+Groholsky's hair went grey, but he did not die: he is alive to this
+day. . . . He came back from abroad to have "just a peep" at Liza
+. . . . Bugrov met him with open arms, and made him stay for an
+indefinite period. He is staying with Bugrov to this day.
+
+This year I happened to be passing through Groholyovka, Bugrov's
+estate. I found the master and the mistress of the house having
+supper. . . . Ivan Petrovitch was highly delighted to see me, and
+fell to pressing good things upon me. . . . He had grown rather
+stout, and his face was a trifle puffy, though it was still rosy
+and looked sleek and well-nourished. . . . He was not bald. Liza,
+too, had grown fatter. Plumpness did not suit her. Her face was
+beginning to lose the kittenish look, and was, alas! more suggestive
+of the seal. Her cheeks were spreading upwards, outwards, and to
+both sides. The Bugrovs were living in first-rate style. They had
+plenty of everything. The house was overflowing with servants and
+edibles. . . .
+
+When we had finished supper we got into conversation. Forgetting
+that Liza did not play, I asked her to play us something on the
+piano.
+
+"She does not play," said Bugrov; "she is no musician. . . . Hey,
+you there! Ivan! call Grigory Vassilyevitch here! What's he doing
+there?" And turning to me, Bugrov added, "Our musician will come
+directly; he plays the guitar. We keep the piano for Mishutka--we
+are having him taught. . . ."
+
+Five minutes later, Groholsky walked into the room--sleepy,
+unkempt, and unshaven. . . . He walked in, bowed to me, and sat
+down on one side.
+
+"Why, whoever goes to bed so early?" said Bugrov, addressing him.
+"What a fellow you are really! He's always asleep, always asleep
+. . . The sleepy head! Come, play us something lively. . . ."
+
+Groholsky turned the guitar, touched the strings, and began singing:
+
+          "Yesterday I waited for my dear one. . . ."
+
+I listened to the singing, looked at Bugrov's well-fed countenance,
+and thought: "Nasty brute!" I felt like crying. . . . When he had
+finished singing, Groholsky bowed to us, and went out.
+
+"And what am I to do with him?" Bugrov said when he had gone away.
+"I do have trouble with him! In the day he is always brooding and
+brooding. . . . And at night he moans. . . . He sleeps, but he sighs
+and moans in his sleep. . . . It is a sort of illness. . . . What
+am I to do with him, I can't think! He won't let us sleep. . . . I
+am afraid that he will go out of his mind. People think he is badly
+treated here. . . . In what way is he badly treated? He eats with
+us, and he drinks with us. . . . Only we won't give him money. If
+we were to give him any he would spend it on drink or waste it
+. . . . That's another trouble for me! Lord forgive me, a sinner!"
+
+They made me stay the night. When I woke next morning, Bugrov was
+giving some one a lecture in the adjoining room. . . .
+
+"Set a fool to say his prayers, and he will crack his skull on the
+floor! Why, who paints oars green! Do think, blockhead! Use your
+sense! Why don't you speak?"
+
+"I . . . I . . . made a mistake," said a husky tenor apologetically.
+
+The tenor belonged to Groholsky.
+
+Groholsky saw me to the station.
+
+"He is a despot, a tyrant," he kept whispering to me all the way.
+"He is a generous man, but a tyrant! Neither heart nor brain are
+developed in him. . . . He tortures me! If it were not for that
+noble woman, I should have gone away long ago. I am sorry to leave
+her. It's somehow easier to endure together."
+
+Groholsky heaved a sigh, and went on:
+
+"She is with child. . . . You notice it? It is really my child. . . .
+Mine. . . . She soon saw her mistake, and gave herself to me
+again. She cannot endure him. . . ."
+
+"You are a rag," I could not refrain from saying to Groholsky.
+
+"Yes, I am a man of weak character. . . . That is quite true. I was
+born so. Do you know how I came into the world? My late papa cruelly
+oppressed a certain little clerk--it was awful how he treated
+him! He poisoned his life. Well . . . and my late mama was
+tender-hearted. She came from the people, she was of the working
+class. . . . She took that little clerk to her heart from pity. . . .
+Well . . . and so I came into the world. . . . The son of the
+ill-treated clerk. How could I have a strong will? Where was I to
+get it from? But that's the second bell. . . . Good-bye. Come and
+see us again, but don't tell Ivan Petrovitch what I have said about
+him."
+
+I pressed Groholsky's hand, and got into the train. He bowed towards
+the carriage, and went to the water-barrel--I suppose he was
+thirsty!
+
+
+THE DOCTOR
+
+IT was still in the drawing-room, so still that a house-fly that
+had flown in from outside could be distinctly heard brushing against
+the ceiling. Olga Ivanovna, the lady of the villa, was standing by
+the window, looking out at the flower-beds and thinking. Dr.
+Tsvyetkov, who was her doctor as well as an old friend, and had
+been sent for to treat her son Misha, was sitting in an easy chair
+and swinging his hat, which he held in both hands, and he too was
+thinking. Except them, there was not a soul in the drawing-room or
+in the adjoining rooms. The sun had set, and the shades of evening
+began settling in the corners under the furniture and on the cornices.
+
+The silence was broken by Olga Ivanovna.
+
+"No misfortune more terrible can be imagined," she said, without
+turning from the window. "You know that life has no value for me
+whatever apart from the boy."
+
+"Yes, I know that," said the doctor.
+
+"No value whatever," said Olga Ivanovna, and her voice quivered.
+"He is everything to me. He is my joy, my happiness, my wealth. And
+if, as you say, I cease to be a mother, if he . . . dies, there
+will be nothing left of me but a shadow. I cannot survive it."
+
+Wringing her hands, Olga Ivanovna walked from one window to the
+other and went on:
+
+"When he was born, I wanted to send him away to the Foundling
+Hospital, you remember that, but, my God, how can that time be
+compared with now? Then I was vulgar, stupid, feather-headed, but
+now I am a mother, do you understand? I am a mother, and that's all
+I care to know. Between the present and the past there is an
+impassable gulf."
+
+Silence followed again. The doctor shifted his seat from the chair
+to the sofa and impatiently playing with his hat, kept his eyes
+fixed upon Olga Ivanovna. From his face it could be seen that he
+wanted to speak, and was waiting for a fitting moment.
+
+"You are silent, but still I do not give up hope," said the lady,
+turning round. "Why are you silent?"
+
+"I should be as glad of any hope as you, Olga, but there is none,"
+Tsvyetkov answered, "we must look the hideous truth in the face.
+The boy has a tumour on the brain, and we must try to prepare
+ourselves for his death, for such cases never recover."
+
+"Nikolay, are you certain you are not mistaken?"
+
+"Such questions lead to nothing. I am ready to answer as many as
+you like, but it will make it no better for us."
+
+Olga Ivanovna pressed her face into the window curtains, and began
+weeping bitterly. The doctor got up and walked several times up and
+down the drawing-room, then went to the weeping woman, and lightly
+touched her arm. Judging from his uncertain movements, from the
+expression of his gloomy face, which looked dark in the dusk of the
+evening, he wanted to say something.
+
+"Listen, Olga," he began. "Spare me a minute's attention; there is
+something I must ask you. You can't attend to me now, though. I'll
+come later, afterwards. . . ." He sat down again, and sank into
+thought. The bitter, imploring weeping, like the weeping of a little
+girl, continued. Without waiting for it to end, Tsvyetkov heaved a
+sigh and walked out of the drawing-room. He went into the nursery
+to Misha. The boy was lying on his back as before, staring at one
+point as though he were listening. The doctor sat down on his bed
+and felt his pulse.
+
+"Misha, does your head ache?" he asked.
+
+Misha answered, not at once: "Yes. I keep dreaming."
+
+"What do you dream?"
+
+"All sorts of things. . . ."
+
+The doctor, who did not know how to talk with weeping women or with
+children, stroked his burning head, and muttered:
+
+"Never mind, poor boy, never mind. . . . One can't go through life
+without illness. . . . Misha, who am I--do you know me?"
+
+Misha did not answer.
+
+"Does your head ache very badly?"
+
+"Ve-ery. I keep dreaming."
+
+After examining him and putting a few questions to the maid who was
+looking after the sick child, the doctor went slowly back to the
+drawing-room. There it was by now dark, and Olga Ivanovna, standing
+by the window, looked like a silhouette.
+
+"Shall I light up?" asked Tsvyetkov.
+
+No answer followed. The house-fly was still brushing against the
+ceiling. Not a sound floated in from outside as though the whole
+world, like the doctor, were thinking, and could not bring itself
+to speak. Olga Ivanovna was not weeping now, but as before, staring
+at the flower-bed in profound silence. When Tsvyetkov went up to
+her, and through the twilight glanced at her pale face, exhausted
+with grief, her expression was such as he had seen before during
+her attacks of acute, stupefying, sick headache.
+
+"Nikolay Trofimitch!" she addressed him, "and what do you think
+about a consultation?"
+
+"Very good; I'll arrange it to-morrow."
+
+From the doctor's tone it could be easily seen that he put little
+faith in the benefit of a consultation. Olga Ivanovna would have
+asked him something else, but her sobs prevented her. Again she
+pressed her face into the window curtain. At that moment, the strains
+of a band playing at the club floated in distinctly. They could
+hear not only the wind instruments, but even the violins and the
+flutes.
+
+"If he is in pain, why is he silent?" asked Olga Ivanovna. "All day
+long, not a sound, he never complains, and never cries. I know God
+will take the poor boy from us because we have not known how to
+prize him. Such a treasure!"
+
+The band finished the march, and a minute later began playing a
+lively waltz for the opening of the ball.
+
+"Good God, can nothing really be done?" moaned Olga Ivanovna.
+"Nikolay, you are a doctor and ought to know what to do! You must
+understand that I can't bear the loss of him! I can't survive it."
+
+The doctor, who did not know how to talk to weeping women, heaved
+a sigh, and paced slowly about the drawing-room. There followed a
+succession of oppressive pauses interspersed with weeping and the
+questions which lead to nothing. The band had already played a
+quadrille, a polka, and another quadrille. It got quite dark. In
+the adjoining room, the maid lighted the lamp; and all the while
+the doctor kept his hat in his hands, and seemed trying to say
+something. Several times Olga Ivanovna went off to her son, sat by
+him for half an hour, and came back again into the drawing-room;
+she was continually breaking into tears and lamentations. The time
+dragged agonisingly, and it seemed as though the evening had no
+end.
+
+At midnight, when the band had played the cotillion and ceased
+altogether, the doctor got ready to go.
+
+"I will come again to-morrow," he said, pressing the mother's cold
+hand. "You go to bed."
+
+After putting on his greatcoat in the passage and picking up his
+walking-stick, he stopped, thought a minute, and went back into the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I'll come to-morrow, Olga," he repeated in a quivering voice. "Do
+you hear?"
+
+She did not answer, and it seemed as though grief had robbed her
+of all power of speech. In his greatcoat and with his stick still
+in his hand, the doctor sat down beside her, and began in a soft,
+tender half-whisper, which was utterly out of keeping with his
+heavy, dignified figure:
+
+"Olga! For the sake of your sorrow which I share. . . . Now, when
+falsehood is criminal, I beseech you to tell me the truth. You have
+always declared that the boy is my son. Is that the truth?"
+
+Olga Ivanovna was silent.
+
+"You have been the one attachment in my life," the doctor went on,
+"and you cannot imagine how deeply my feeling is wounded by falsehood
+. . . . Come, I entreat you, Olga, for once in your life, tell me the
+truth. . . . At these moments one cannot lie. Tell me that Misha
+is not my son. I am waiting."
+
+"He is."
+
+Olga Ivanovna's face could not be seen, but in her voice the doctor
+could hear hesitation. He sighed.
+
+"Even at such moments you can bring yourself to tell a lie," he
+said in his ordinary voice. "There is nothing sacred to you! Do
+listen, do understand me. . . . You have been the one only attachment
+in my life. Yes, you were depraved, vulgar, but I have loved no one
+else but you in my life. That trivial love, now that I am growing
+old, is the one solitary bright spot in my memories. Why do you
+darken it with deception? What is it for?"
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Oh my God!" cried Tsvyetkov. "You are lying, you understand very
+well!" he cried more loudly, and he began pacing about the drawing-room,
+angrily waving his stick. "Or have you forgotten? Then I will remind
+you! A father's rights to the boy are equally shared with me by
+Petrov and Kurovsky the lawyer, who still make you an allowance for
+their son's education, just as I do! Yes, indeed! I know all that
+quite well! I forgive your lying in the past, what does it matter?
+But now when you have grown older, at this moment when the boy is
+dying, your lying stifles me! How sorry I am that I cannot speak,
+how sorry I am!"
+
+The doctor unbuttoned his overcoat, and still pacing about, said:
+
+"Wretched woman! Even such moments have no effect on her! Even now
+she lies as freely as nine years ago in the Hermitage Restaurant!
+She is afraid if she tells me the truth I shall leave off giving
+her money, she thinks that if she did not lie I should not love the
+boy! You are lying! It's contemptible!"
+
+The doctor rapped the floor with his stick, and cried:
+
+"It's loathsome. Warped, corrupted creature! I must despise you,
+and I ought to be ashamed of my feeling. Yes! Your lying has stuck
+in my throat these nine years, I have endured it, but now it's too
+much--too much."
+
+From the dark corner where Olga Ivanovna was sitting there came the
+sound of weeping. The doctor ceased speaking and cleared his throat.
+A silence followed. The doctor slowly buttoned up his over-coat,
+and began looking for his hat which he had dropped as he walked
+about.
+
+"I lost my temper," he muttered, bending down to the floor. "I quite
+lost sight of the fact that you cannot attend to me now. . . . God
+knows what I have said. . . . Don't take any notice of it, Olga."
+
+He found his hat and went towards the dark corner.
+
+"I have wounded you," he said in a soft, tender half-whisper, "but
+once more I entreat you, tell me the truth; there should not be
+lying between us. . . . I blurted it out, and now you know that
+Petrov and Kurovsky are no secret to me. So now it is easy for you
+to tell me the truth."
+
+Olga Ivanovna thought a moment, and with perceptible hesitation,
+said:
+
+"Nikolay, I am not lying--Misha is your child."
+
+"My God," moaned the doctor, "then I will tell you something more:
+I have kept your letter to Petrov in which you call him Misha's
+father! Olga, I know the truth, but I want to hear it from you! Do
+you hear?"
+
+Olga Ivanovna made no reply, but went on weeping. After waiting for
+an answer the doctor shrugged his shoulders and went out.
+
+"I will come to-morrow," he called from the passage.
+
+All the way home, as he sat in his carriage, he was shrugging his
+shoulders and muttering:
+
+"What a pity that I don't know how to speak! I haven't the gift of
+persuading and convincing. It's evident she does not understand me
+since she lies! It's evident! How can I make her see? How?"
+
+
+TOO EARLY!
+
+THE bells are ringing for service in the village of Shalmovo. The
+sun is already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turned
+crimson and will soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which has
+lately changed its name and become a restaurant--a title quite
+out of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch torn
+off its roof, and its couple of dingy windows--two peasant sportsmen
+are sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an old
+man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin,
+by trade a carpenter. He has at one time been employed in a nail
+factory, has been turned off for drunkenness and idleness, and now
+lives upon his old wife, who begs for alms. He is thin and weak,
+with a mangy-looking little beard, speaks with a hissing sound, and
+after every word twitches the right side of his face and jerkily
+shrugs his right shoulder. The other, Ignat Ryabov, a sturdy,
+broad-shouldered peasant who never does anything and is everlastingly
+silent, is sitting in the corner under a big string of bread rings.
+The door, opening inwards, throws a thick shadow upon him, so that
+Slyunka and Semyon the publican can see nothing but his patched
+knees, his long fleshy nose, and a big tuft of hair which has escaped
+from the thick uncombed tangle covering his head. Semyon, a sickly
+little man, with a pale face and a long sinewy neck, stands behind
+his counter, looks mournfully at the string of bread rings, and
+coughs meekly.
+
+"You think it over now, if you have any sense," Slyunka says to
+him, twitching his cheek. "You have the thing lying by unused and
+get no sort of benefit from it. While we need it. A sportsman without
+a gun is like a sacristan without a voice. You ought to understand
+that, but I see you don't understand it, so you can have no real
+sense. . . . Hand it over!"
+
+"You left the gun in pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin
+womanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off
+the string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and
+then take your gun."
+
+"I haven't got a rouble. I swear to you, Semyon Mitritch, as God
+sees me: you give me the gun and I will go to-day with Ignashka and
+bring it you back again. I'll bring it back, strike me dead. May I
+have happiness neither in this world nor the next, if I don't."
+
+"Semyon Mitritch, do give it," Ignat Ryabov says in his bass, and
+his voice betrays a passionate desire to get what he asks for.
+
+"But what do you want the gun for?" sighs Semyon, sadly shaking his
+head. "What sort of shooting is there now? It's still winter outside,
+and no game at all but crows and jackdaws."
+
+"Winter, indeed," says Slyunka, hooing the ash out of his pipe with
+his finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with
+the snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you are
+unlucky, you may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, and
+then you must wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipe
+is not a rook. . . . Last year he was flying the week before Easter,
+while the year before we had to wait till the week after Easter!
+Come, do us a favour, Semyon Mitritch, give us the gun. Make us
+pray for you for ever. As ill-luck would have it, Ignashka has
+pledged his gun for drink too. Ah, when you drink you feel nothing,
+but now . . . ah, I wish I had never looked at it, the cursed vodka!
+Truly it is the blood of Satan! Give it us, Semyon Mitritch!"
+
+"I won't give it you," says Semyon, clasping his yellow hands on
+his breast as though he were going to pray. "You must act fairly,
+Filimonushka. . . . A thing is not taken out of pawn just anyhow;
+you must pay the money. . . . Besides, what do you want to kill
+birds for? What's the use? It's Lent now--you are not going to
+eat them."
+
+Slyunka exchanges glances with Ryabov in embarrassment, sighs, and
+says: "We would only go stand-shooting."
+
+"And what for? It's all foolishness. You are not the sort of man
+to spend your time in foolishness. . . . Ignashka, to be sure, is
+a man of no understanding, God has afflicted him, but you, thank
+the Lord, are an old man. It's time to prepare for your end. Here,
+you ought to go to the midnight service."
+
+The allusion to his age visibly stings Slyunka. He clears his throat,
+wrinkles up his forehead, and remains silent for a full minute.
+
+"I say, Semyon Mitritch," he says hotly, getting up and twitching
+not only in his right cheek but all over his face. "It's God's
+truth. . . . May the Almighty strike me dead, after Easter I shall
+get something from Stepan Kuzmitch for an axle, and I will pay you
+not one rouble but two! May the Lord chastise me! Before the holy
+image, I tell you, only give me the gun!"
+
+"Gi-ive it," Ryabov says in his growling bass; they can hear him
+breathing hard, and it seems that he would like to say a great deal,
+but cannot find the words. "Gi-ive it."
+
+"No, brothers, and don't ask," sighs Semyon, shaking his head
+mournfully. "Don't lead me into sin. I won't give you the gun. It's
+not the fashion for a thing to be taken out of pawn and no money
+paid. Besides--why this indulgence? Go your way and God bless
+you!"
+
+Slyunka rubs his perspiring face with his sleeve and begins hotly
+swearing and entreating. He crosses himself, holds out his hands
+to the ikon, calls his deceased father and mother to bear witness,
+but Semyon sighs and meekly looks as before at the string of bread
+rings. In the end Ignashka Ryabov, hitherto motionless, gets up
+impulsively and bows down to the ground before the innkeeper, but
+even that has no effect on him.
+
+"May you choke with my gun, you devil," says Slyunka, with his face
+twitching, and his shoulders, shrugging. "May you choke, you plague,
+you scoundrelly soul."
+
+Swearing and shaking his fists, he goes out of the tavern with
+Ryabov and stands still in the middle of the road.
+
+"He won't give it, the damned brute," he says, in a weeping voice,
+looking into Ryabov's face with an injured air.
+
+"He won't give it," booms Ryabov.
+
+The windows of the furthest huts, the starling cote on the tavern,
+the tops of the poplars, and the cross on the church are all gleaming
+with a bright golden flame. Now they can see only half of the sun,
+which, as it goes to its night's rest, is winking, shedding a crimson
+light, and seems laughing gleefully. Slyunka and Ryabov can see the
+forest lying, a dark blur, to the right of the sun, a mile and a
+half from the village, and tiny clouds flitting over the clear sky,
+and they feel that the evening will be fine and still.
+
+"Now is just the time," says Slyunka, with his face twitching. "It
+would be nice to stand for an hour or two. He won't give it us, the
+damned brute. May he . . ."
+
+"For stand-shooting, now is the very time . . ." Ryabov articulated,
+as though with an effort, stammering.
+
+After standing still for a little they walk out of the village,
+without saying a word to each other, and look towards the dark
+streak of the forest. The whole sky above the forest is studded
+with moving black spots, the rooks flying home to roost. The snow,
+lying white here and there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightly
+flecked with gold by the sun.
+
+"This time last year I went stand-shooting in Zhivki," says Slyunka,
+after a long silence. "I brought back three snipe."
+
+Again there follows a silence. Both stand a long time and look
+towards the forest, and then lazily move and walk along the muddy
+road from the village.
+
+"It's most likely the snipe haven't come yet," says Slyunka, "but
+may be they are here."
+
+"Kostka says they are not here yet."
+
+"Maybe they are not, who can tell; one year is not like another.
+But what mud!"
+
+"But we ought to stand."
+
+"To be sure we ought--why not?"
+
+"We can stand and watch; it wouldn't be amiss to go to the forest
+and have a look. If they are there we will tell Kostka, or maybe
+get a gun ourselves and come to-morrow. What a misfortune, God
+forgive me. It was the devil put it in my mind to take my gun to
+the pothouse! I am more sorry than I can tell you, Ignashka."
+
+Conversing thus, the sportsmen approach the forest. The sun has set
+and left behind it a red streak like the glow of a fire, scattered
+here and there with clouds; there is no catching the colours of
+those clouds: their edges are red, but they themselves are one
+minute grey, at the next lilac, at the next ashen.
+
+In the forest, among the thick branches of fir-trees and under the
+birch bushes, it is dark, and only the outermost twigs on the side
+of the sun, with their fat buds and shining bark, stand out clearly
+in the air. There is a smell of thawing snow and rotting leaves.
+It is still; nothing stirs. From the distance comes the subsiding
+caw of the rooks.
+
+"We ought to be standing in Zhivki now," whispers Slyunka, looking
+with awe at Ryabov; "there's good stand-shooting there."
+
+Ryabov too looks with awe at Slyunka, with unblinking eyes and open
+mouth.
+
+"A lovely time," Slyunka says in a trembling whisper. "The Lord is
+sending a fine spring . . . and I should think the snipe are here
+by now. . . . Why not? The days are warm now. . . . The cranes were
+flying in the morning, lots and lots of them."
+
+Slyunka and Ryabov, splashing cautiously through the melting snow
+and sticking in the mud, walk two hundred paces along the edge of
+the forest and there halt. Their faces wear a look of alarm and
+expectation of something terrible and extraordinary. They stand
+like posts, do not speak nor stir, and their hands gradually fall
+into an attitude as though they were holding a gun at the cock. . . .
+
+A big shadow creeps from the left and envelops the earth. The dusk
+of evening comes on. If one looks to the right, through the bushes
+and tree trunks, there can be seen crimson patches of the after-glow.
+It is still and damp. . . .
+
+"There's no sound of them," whispers Slyunka, shrugging with the
+cold and sniffing with his chilly nose.
+
+But frightened by his own whisper, he holds his finger up at some
+one, opens his eyes wide, and purses up his lips. There is a sound
+of a light snapping. The sportsmen look at each other significantly,
+and tell each other with their eyes that it is nothing. It is the
+snapping of a dry twig or a bit of bark. The shadows of evening
+keep growing and growing, the patches of crimson gradually grow
+dim, and the dampness becomes unpleasant.
+
+The sportsmen remain standing a long time, but they see and hear
+nothing. Every instant they expect to see a delicate leaf float
+through the air, to hear a hurried call like the husky cough of a
+child, and the flutter of wings.
+
+"No, not a sound," Slyunka says aloud, dropping his hands and
+beginning to blink. "So they have not come yet."
+
+"It's early!"
+
+"You are right there."
+
+The sportsmen cannot see each other's faces, it is getting rapidly
+dark.
+
+"We must wait another five days," says Slyunka, as he comes out
+from behind a bush with Ryabov. "It's too early!"
+
+They go homewards, and are silent all the way.
+
+
+THE COSSACK
+
+MAXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving home
+from church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cake
+which had just been blessed. The sun had not yet risen, but the
+east was all tinged with red and gold and had dissipated the haze
+which usually, in the early morning, screens the blue of the sky
+from the eyes. It was quiet. . . . The birds were hardly yet awake
+. . . . The corncrake uttered its clear note, and far away above a
+little tumulus, a sleepy kite floated, heavily flapping its wings,
+and no other living creature could be seen all over the steppe.
+
+Tortchakov drove on and thought that there was no better nor happier
+holiday than the Feast of Christ's Resurrection. He had only lately
+been married, and was now keeping his first Easter with his wife.
+Whatever he looked at, whatever he thought about, it all seemed to
+him bright, joyous, and happy. He thought about his farming, and
+thought that it was all going well, that the furnishing of his house
+was all the heart could desire--there was enough of everything
+and all of it good; he looked at his wife, and she seemed to him
+lovely, kind, and gentle. He was delighted by the glow in the east,
+and the young grass, and his squeaking chaise, and the kite. . . .
+And when on the way, he ran into a tavern to light his cigarette
+and drank a glass, he felt happier still.
+
+"It is said, 'Great is the day,'" he chattered. "Yes, it is great!
+Wait a bit, Lizaveta, the sun will begin to dance. It dances every
+Easter. So it rejoices too!"
+
+"It is not alive," said his wife.
+
+"But there are people on it!" exclaimed Tortchakov, "there are
+really! Ivan Stepanitch told me that there are people on all the
+planets--on the sun, and on the moon! Truly . . . but maybe the
+learned men tell lies--the devil only knows! Stay, surely that's
+not a horse? Yes, it is!"
+
+At the Crooked Ravine, which was just half-way on the journey home,
+Tortchakov and his wife saw a saddled horse standing motionless,
+and sniffing last year's dry grass. On a hillock beside the roadside
+a red-haired Cossack was sitting doubled up, looking at his feet.
+
+"Christ is risen!" Maxim shouted to him. "Wo-o-o!"
+
+"Truly He is risen," answered the Cossack, without raising his head.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Home on leave."
+
+"Why are you sitting here, then?"
+
+"Why . . . I have fallen ill . . . I haven't the strength to go
+on."
+
+"What is wrong?"
+
+"I ache all over."
+
+"H'm. What a misfortune! People are keeping holiday, and you fall
+sick! But you should ride on to a village or an inn, what's the use
+of sitting here!"
+
+The Cossack raised his head, and with big, exhausted eyes, scanned
+Maxim, his wife, and the horse.
+
+"Have you come from church?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The holiday found me on the high road. It was not God's will for
+me to reach home. I'd get on my horse at once and ride off, but I
+haven't the strength. . . . You might, good Christians, give a
+wayfarer some Easter cake to break his fast!"
+
+"Easter cake?" Tortchakov repeated, "That we can, to be sure. . . .
+Stay, I'll. . . ."
+
+Maxim fumbled quickly in his pockets, glanced at his wife, and said:
+
+"I haven't a knife, nothing to cut it with. And I don't like to
+break it, it would spoil the whole cake. There's a problem! You
+look and see if you haven't a knife?"
+
+The Cossack got up groaning, and went to his saddle to get a knife.
+
+"What an idea," said Tortchakov's wife angrily. "I won't let you
+slice up the Easter cake! What should I look like, taking it home
+already cut! Ride on to the peasants in the village, and break your
+fast there!"
+
+The wife took the napkin with the Easter cake in it out of her
+husband's hands and said:
+
+"I won't allow it! One must do things properly; it's not a loaf,
+but a holy Easter cake. And it's a sin to cut it just anyhow."
+
+"Well, Cossack, don't be angry," laughed Tortchakov. "The wife
+forbids it! Good-bye. Good luck on your journey!"
+
+Maxim shook the reins, clicked to his horse, and the chaise rolled
+on squeaking. For some time his wife went on grumbling, and declaring
+that to cut the Easter cake before reaching home was a sin and not
+the proper thing. In the east the first rays of the rising sun shone
+out, cutting their way through the feathery clouds, and the song
+of the lark was heard in the sky. Now not one but three kites were
+hovering over the steppe at a respectful distance from one another.
+Grasshoppers began churring in the young grass.
+
+When they had driven three-quarters of a mile from the Crooked
+Ravine, Tortchakov looked round and stared intently into the distance.
+
+"I can't see the Cossack," he said. "Poor, dear fellow, to take it
+into his head to fall ill on the road. There couldn't be a worse
+misfortune, to have to travel and not have the strength. . . . I
+shouldn't wonder if he dies by the roadside. We didn't give him any
+Easter cake, Lizaveta, and we ought to have given it. I'll be bound
+he wants to break his fast too."
+
+The sun had risen, but whether it was dancing or not Tortchakov did
+not see. He remained silent all the way home, thinking and keeping
+his eyes fixed on the horse's black tail. For some unknown reason
+he felt overcome by depression, and not a trace of the holiday
+gladness was left in his heart. When he had arrived home and said,
+"Christ is risen" to his workmen, he grew cheerful again and began
+talking, but when he had sat down to break the fast and had taken
+a bite from his piece of Easter cake, he looked regretfully at his
+wife, and said:
+
+"It wasn't right of us, Lizaveta, not to give that Cossack something
+to eat."
+
+"You are a queer one, upon my word," said Lizaveta, shrugging her
+shoulders in surprise. "Where did you pick up such a fashion as
+giving away the holy Easter cake on the high road? Is it an ordinary
+loaf? Now that it is cut and lying on the table, let anyone eat it
+that likes--your Cossack too! Do you suppose I grudge it?"
+
+"That's all right, but we ought to have given the Cossack some. . . .
+Why, he was worse off than a beggar or an orphan. On the road,
+and far from home, and sick too."
+
+Tortchakov drank half a glass of tea, and neither ate nor drank
+anything more. He had no appetite, the tea seemed to choke him, and
+he felt depressed again. After breaking their fast, his wife and
+he lay down to sleep. When Lizaveta woke two hours later, he was
+standing by the window, looking into the yard.
+
+"Are you up already?" asked his wife.
+
+"I somehow can't sleep. . . . Ah, Lizaveta," he sighed. "We were
+unkind, you and I, to that Cossack!"
+
+"Talking about that Cossack again!" yawned his wife. "You have got
+him on the brain."
+
+"He has served his Tsar, shed his blood maybe, and we treated him
+as though he were a pig. We ought to have brought the sick man home
+and fed him, and we did not even give him a morsel of bread."
+
+"Catch me letting you spoil the Easter cake for nothing! And one
+that has been blessed too! You would have cut it on the road, and
+shouldn't I have looked a fool when I got home?"
+
+Without saying anything to his wife, Maxim went into the kitchen,
+wrapped a piece of cake up in a napkin, together with half a dozen
+eggs, and went to the labourers in the barn.
+
+"Kuzma, put down your concertina," he said to one of them. "Saddle
+the bay, or Ivantchik, and ride briskly to the Crooked Ravine. There
+you will see a sick Cossack with a horse, so give him this. Maybe
+he hasn't ridden away yet."
+
+Maxim felt cheerful again, but after waiting for Kuzma for some
+hours, he could bear it no longer, so he saddled a horse and went
+off to meet him. He met him just at the Ravine.
+
+"Well, have you seen the Cossack?"
+
+"I can't find him anywhere, he must have ridden on."
+
+"H'm . . . a queer business."
+
+Tortchakov took the bundle from Kuzma, and galloped on farther.
+When he reached Shustrovo he asked the peasants:
+
+"Friends, have you seen a sick Cossack with a horse? Didn't he ride
+by here? A red-headed fellow on a bay horse."
+
+The peasants looked at one another, and said they had not seen the
+Cossack.
+
+"The returning postman drove by, it's true, but as for a Cossack
+or anyone else, there has been no such."
+
+Maxim got home at dinner time.
+
+"I can't get that Cossack out of my head, do what you will!" he
+said to his wife. "He gives me no peace. I keep thinking: what if
+God meant to try us, and sent some saint or angel in the form of a
+Cossack? It does happen, you know. It's bad, Lizaveta; we were
+unkind to the man!"
+
+"What do you keep pestering me with that Cossack for?" cried Lizaveta,
+losing patience at last. "You stick to it like tar!"
+
+"You are not kind, you know . . ." said Maxim, looking into his
+wife's face.
+
+And for the first time since his marriage he perceived that he wife
+was not kind.
+
+"I may be unkind," cried Lizaveta, tapping angrily with her spoon,
+"but I am not going to give away the holy Easter cake to every
+drunken man in the road."
+
+"The Cossack wasn't drunk!"
+
+"He was drunk!"
+
+"Well, you are a fool then!"
+
+Maxim got up from the table and began reproaching his young wife
+for hard-heartedness and stupidity. She, getting angry too, answered
+his reproaches with reproaches, burst into tears, and went away
+into their bedroom, declaring she would go home to her father's.
+This was the first matrimonial squabble that had happened in the
+Tortchakov's married life. He walked about the yard till the evening,
+picturing his wife's face, and it seemed to him now spiteful and
+ugly. And as though to torment him the Cossack haunted his brain,
+and Maxim seemed to see now his sick eyes, now his unsteady walk.
+
+"Ah, we were unkind to the man," he muttered.
+
+When it got dark, he was overcome by an insufferable depression
+such as he had never felt before. Feeling so dreary, and being angry
+with his wife, he got drunk, as he had sometimes done before he was
+married. In his drunkenness he used bad language and shouted to his
+wife that she had a spiteful, ugly face, and that next day he would
+send her packing to her father's. On the morning of Easter Monday,
+he drank some more to sober himself, and got drunk again.
+
+And with that his downfall began.
+
+His horses, cows, sheep, and hives disappeared one by one from the
+yard; Maxim was more and more often drunk, debts mounted up, he
+felt an aversion for his wife. Maxim put down all his misfortunes
+to the fact that he had an unkind wife, and above all, that God was
+angry with him on account of the sick Cossack.
+
+Lizaveta saw their ruin, but who was to blame for it she did not
+understand.
+
+
+ABORIGINES
+
+BETWEEN nine and ten in the morning. Ivan Lyashkevsky, a lieutenant
+of Polish origin, who has at some time or other been wounded in the
+head, and now lives on his pension in a town in one of the southern
+provinces, is sitting in his lodgings at the open window talking
+to Franz Stepanitch Finks, the town architect, who has come in to
+see him for a minute. Both have thrust their heads out of the window,
+and are looking in the direction of the gate near which Lyashkevsky's
+landlord, a plump little native with pendulous perspiring cheeks,
+in full, blue trousers, is sitting on a bench with his waistcoat
+unbuttoned. The native is plunged in deep thought, and is absent-mindedly
+prodding the toe of his boot with a stick.
+
+"Extraordinary people, I tell you," grumbled Lyashkevsky, looking
+angrily at the native, "here he has sat down on the bench, and so
+he will sit, damn the fellow, with his hands folded till evening.
+They do absolutely nothing. The wastrels and loafers! It would be
+all right, you scoundrel, if you had money lying in the bank, or
+had a farm of your own where others would be working for you, but
+here you have not a penny to your name, you eat the bread of others,
+you are in debt all round, and you starve your family--devil take
+you! You wouldn't believe me, Franz Stepanitch, sometimes it makes
+me so cross that I could jump out of the window and give the low
+fellow a good horse-whipping. Come, why don't you work? What are
+you sitting there for?"
+
+The native looks indifferently at Lyashkevsky, tries to say something
+but cannot; sloth and the sultry heat have paralysed his conversational
+faculties. . . . Yawning lazily, he makes the sign of the cross
+over his mouth, and turns his eyes up towards the sky where pigeons
+fly, bathing in the hot air.
+
+"You must not be too severe in your judgments, honoured friend,"
+sighs Finks, mopping his big bald head with his handkerchief. "Put
+yourself in their place: business is slack now, there's unemployment
+all round, a bad harvest, stagnation in trade."
+
+"Good gracious, how you talk!" cries Lyashkevsky in indignation,
+angrily wrapping his dressing gown round him. "Supposing he has no
+job and no trade, why doesn't he work in his own home, the devil
+flay him! I say! Is there no work for you at home? Just look, you
+brute! Your steps have come to pieces, the plankway is falling into
+the ditch, the fence is rotten; you had better set to and mend it
+all, or if you don't know how, go into the kitchen and help your
+wife. Your wife is running out every minute to fetch water or carry
+out the slops. Why shouldn't you run instead, you rascal? And then
+you must remember, Franz Stepanitch, that he has six acres of garden,
+that he has pigsties and poultry houses, but it is all wasted and
+no use. The flower garden is overgrown with weeds and almost baked
+dry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden. Isn't he a
+lazy brute? I assure you, though I have only the use of an acre and
+a half with my lodgings, you will always find radishes, and salad,
+and fennel, and onions, while that blackguard buys everything at
+the market."
+
+"He is a Russian, there is no doing anything with him," said Finks
+with a condescending smile; "it's in the Russian blood. . . . They
+are a very lazy people! If all property were given to Germans or
+Poles, in a year's time you would not recognise the town."
+
+The native in the blue trousers beckons a girl with a sieve, buys
+a kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds from her and begins cracking
+them.
+
+"A race of curs!" says Lyashkevsky angrily. "That's their only
+occupation, they crack sunflower seeds and they talk politics! The
+devil take them!"
+
+Staring wrathfully at the blue trousers, Lyashkevsky is gradually
+roused to fury, and gets so excited that he actually foams at the
+mouth. He speaks with a Polish accent, rapping out each syllable
+venomously, till at last the little bags under his eyes swell, and
+he abandons the Russian "scoundrels, blackguards, and rascals," and
+rolling his eyes, begins pouring out a shower of Polish oaths,
+coughing from his efforts. "Lazy dogs, race of curs. May the devil
+take them!"
+
+The native hears this abuse distinctly, but, judging from the
+appearance of his crumpled little figure, it does not affect him.
+Apparently he has long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzing
+of the flies, and feels it superfluous to protest. At every visit
+Finks has to listen to a tirade on the subject of the lazy
+good-for-nothing aborigines, and every time exactly the same one.
+
+"But . . . I must be going," he says, remembering that he has no
+time to spare. "Good-bye!"
+
+"Where are you off to?"
+
+"I only looked in on you for a minute. The wall of the cellar has
+cracked in the girls' high school, so they asked me to go round at
+once to look at it. I must go."
+
+"H'm. . . . I have told Varvara to get the samovar," says Lyashkevsky,
+surprised. "Stay a little, we will have some tea; then you shall
+go."
+
+Finks obediently puts down his hat on the table and remains to drink
+tea. Over their tea Lyashkevsky maintains that the natives are
+hopelessly ruined, that there is only one thing to do, to take them
+all indiscriminately and send them under strict escort to hard
+labour.
+
+"Why, upon my word," he says, getting hot, "you may ask what does
+that goose sitting there live upon! He lets me lodgings in his house
+for seven roubles a month, and he goes to name-day parties, that's
+all that he has to live on, the knave, may the devil take him! He
+has neither earnings nor an income. They are not merely sluggards
+and wastrels, they are swindlers too, they are continually borrowing
+money from the town bank, and what do they do with it? They plunge
+into some scheme such as sending bulls to Moscow, or building oil
+presses on a new system; but to send bulls to Moscow or to press
+oil you want to have a head on your shoulders, and these rascals
+have pumpkins on theirs! Of course all their schemes end in smoke
+. . . . They waste their money, get into a mess, and then snap their
+fingers at the bank. What can you get out of them? Their houses are
+mortgaged over and over again, they have no other property--it's
+all been drunk and eaten up long ago. Nine-tenths of them are
+swindlers, the scoundrels! To borrow money and not return it is
+their rule. Thanks to them the town bank is going smash!"
+
+"I was at Yegorov's yesterday," Finks interrupts the Pole, anxious
+to change the conversation, "and only fancy, I won six roubles and
+a half from him at picquet."
+
+"I believe I still owe you something at picquet," Lyashkevsky
+recollects, "I ought to win it back. Wouldn't you like one game?"
+
+"Perhaps just one," Finks assents. "I must make haste to the high
+school, you know."
+
+Lyashkevsky and Finks sit down at the open window and begin a game
+of picquet. The native in the blue trousers stretches with relish,
+and husks of sunflower seeds fall in showers from all over him on
+to the ground. At that moment from the gate opposite appears another
+native with a long beard, wearing a crumpled yellowish-grey cotton
+coat. He screws up his eyes affectionately at the blue trousers and
+shouts:
+
+"Good-morning, Semyon Nikolaitch, I have the honour to congratulate
+you on the Thursday."
+
+"And the same to you, Kapiton Petrovitch!"
+
+"Come to my seat! It's cool here!"
+
+The blue trousers, with much sighing and groaning and waddling from
+side to side like a duck, cross the street.
+
+"Tierce major . . ." mutters Lyashkevsky, "from the queen. . . .
+Five and fifteen. . . . The rascals are talking of politics. . . .
+Do you hear? They have begun about England. I have six hearts."
+
+"I have the seven spades. My point."
+
+"Yes, it's yours. Do you hear? They are abusing Beaconsfield. They
+don't know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever so
+long. So I have twenty-nine. . . . Your lead."
+
+"Eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . . Yes, amazing people, these
+Russians! Eleven . . . twelve. . . . The Russian inertia is unique
+on the terrestrial globe."
+
+"Thirty . . . Thirty-one. . . . One ought to take a good whip, you
+know. Go out and give them Beaconsfield. I say, how their tongues
+are wagging! It's easier to babble than to work. I suppose you threw
+away the queen of clubs and I didn't realise it."
+
+"Thirteen . . . Fourteen. . . . It's unbearably hot! One must be
+made of iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun! Fifteen."
+
+The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third. . . .
+Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling fever
+and forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar.
+As Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines. He sees
+them, entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open
+gate, cross the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade
+under an aspen tree. Between twelve and one o'clock the fat cook
+with brown legs spreads before them something like a baby's sheet
+with brown stains upon it, and gives them their dinner. They eat
+with wooden spoons, keep brushing away the flies, and go on talking.
+
+"The devil, it is beyond everything," cries Lyashkevsky, revolted.
+"I am very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a
+shot at those cattle. I have four knaves--fourteen. . . . Your
+point. . . . It really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can't see
+those ruffians without being upset."
+
+"Don't excite yourself, it is bad for you."
+
+"But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!"
+
+When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out
+and exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the
+street to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is
+struggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him
+as dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end. His
+helpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokes
+his head out of the window and shouts at him, spluttering:
+
+"Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has been
+stuffing himself, and now he doesn't know what to do with his tummy!
+Get out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!"
+
+The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers
+instead of answering. A school-boy of his acquaintance passes by
+him with his satchel on his back. Stopping him the native ponders
+a long time what to say to him, and asks:
+
+"Well, what now?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"How, nothing?"
+
+"Why, just nothing."
+
+"H'm. . . . And which subject is the hardest?"
+
+"That's according." The school-boy shrugs his shoulders.
+
+"I see--er . . . What is the Latin for tree?"
+
+"Arbor."
+
+"Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that," sighs the blue trousers.
+"You have to go into it all. . . . It's hard work, hard work. . . .
+Is your dear Mamma well?"
+
+"She is all right, thank you."
+
+"Ah. . . . Well, run along."
+
+After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is
+horrified.
+
+"Holy Saints, why it's three o'clock already. How I have been staying
+on. Good-bye, I must run. . . ."
+
+"Have dinner with me, and then go," says Lyashkevsky. "You have
+plenty of time."
+
+Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no more
+than ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on the
+sofa and thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his head
+on the cushion and fills the room with a shrill whistling through
+his nose. While he is asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve of
+an afternoon nap, sits at the window, stares at the dozing native,
+and grumbles:
+
+"Race of curs! I wonder you don't choke with laziness. No work, no
+intellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating . . . .
+disgusting. Tfoo!"
+
+At six o'clock Finks wakes up.
+
+"It's too late to go to the high school now," he says, stretching.
+"I shall have to go to-morrow, and now. . . . How about my revenge?
+Let's have one more game. . . ."
+
+After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevsky
+looks after him for some time, and says:
+
+"Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutely
+nothing. . . . Simply get their salary and do no work; the devil
+take them! . . . The German pig. . . ."
+
+He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. He
+has gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the first
+time in the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes and
+he cannot restrain the depression that overpowers him, and begins
+to grumble, shoving the old shabby armchair:
+
+"You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have been
+burnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up.
+It's a disgrace!"
+
+And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of the
+mattress, frowns and says peevishly:
+
+"The con--found--ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I will
+tell them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you out, you
+useless thing."
+
+He falls asleep at midnight, and dreams that he is pouring boiling
+water over the natives, Finks, and the old armchair.
+
+
+AN INQUIRY
+
+IT was midday. Voldyrev, a tall, thick-set country gentleman with
+a cropped head and prominent eyes, took off his overcoat, mopped
+his brow with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently went
+into the government office. There they were scratching away. . . .
+
+"Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porter
+who was bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recesses
+of the office. "I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copy
+of a resolution of the Council."
+
+"That way please! To that one sitting near the window!" said the
+porter, indicating with the tray the furthest window. Voldyrev
+coughed and went towards the window; there, at a green table spotted
+like typhus, was sitting a young man with his hair standing up in
+four tufts on his head, with a long pimply nose, and a long faded
+uniform. He was writing, thrusting his long nose into the papers.
+A fly was walking about near his right nostril, and he was continually
+stretching out his lower lip and blowing under his nose, which gave
+his face an extremely care-worn expression.
+
+"May I make an inquiry about my case here . . . of you? My name is
+Voldyrev. and, by the way, I have to take a copy of the resolution
+of the Council of the second of March."
+
+The clerk dipped his pen in the ink and looked to see if he had got
+too much on it. Having satisfied himself that the pen would not
+make a blot, he began scribbling away. His lip was thrust out, but
+it was no longer necessary to blow: the fly had settled on his ear.
+
+"Can I make an inquiry here?" Voldyrev repeated a minute later, "my
+name is Voldyrev, I am a landowner. . . ."
+
+"Ivan Alexeitch!" the clerk shouted into the air as though he had
+not observed Voldyrev, "will you tell the merchant Yalikov when he
+comes to sign the copy of the complaint lodged with the police!
+I've told him a thousand times!"
+
+"I have come in reference to my lawsuit with the heirs of Princess
+Gugulin," muttered Voldyrev. "The case is well known. I earnestly
+beg you to attend to me."
+
+Still failing to observe Voldyrev, the clerk caught the fly on his
+lip, looked at it attentively and flung it away. The country gentleman
+coughed and blew his nose loudly on his checked pocket handkerchief.
+But this was no use either. He was still unheard. The silence lasted
+for two minutes. Voldyrev took a rouble note from his pocket and
+laid it on an open book before the clerk. The clerk wrinkled up his
+forehead, drew the book towards him with an anxious air and closed
+it.
+
+"A little inquiry. . . . I want only to find out on what grounds
+the heirs of Princess Gugulin. . . . May I trouble you?"
+
+The clerk, absorbed in his own thoughts, got up and, scratching his
+elbow, went to a cupboard for something. Returning a minute later
+to his table he became absorbed in the book again: another rouble
+note was lying upon it.
+
+"I will trouble you for one minute only. . . . I have only to make
+an inquiry."
+
+The clerk did not hear, he had begun copying something.
+
+Voldyrev frowned and looked hopelessly at the whole scribbling
+brotherhood.
+
+"They write!" he thought, sighing. "They write, the devil take them
+entirely!"
+
+He walked away from the table and stopped in the middle of the room,
+his hands hanging hopelessly at his sides. The porter, passing again
+with glasses, probably noticed the helpless expression of his face,
+for he went close up to him and asked him in a low voice:
+
+"Well? Have you inquired?"
+
+"I've inquired, but he wouldn't speak to me."
+
+"You give him three roubles," whispered the porter.
+
+"I've given him two already."
+
+"Give him another."
+
+Voldyrev went back to the table and laid a green note on the open
+book.
+
+The clerk drew the book towards him again and began turning over
+the leaves, and all at once, as though by chance, lifted his eyes
+to Voldyrev. His nose began to shine, turned red, and wrinkled up
+in a grin.
+
+"Ah . . . what do you want?" he asked.
+
+"I want to make an inquiry in reference to my case. . . . My name
+is Voldyrev."
+
+"With pleasure! The Gugulin case, isn't it? Very good. What is it
+then exactly?"
+
+Voldyrev explained his business.
+
+The clerk became as lively as though he were whirled round by a
+hurricane. He gave the necessary information, arranged for a copy
+to be made, gave the petitioner a chair, and all in one instant.
+He even spoke about the weather and asked after the harvest. And
+when Voldyrev went away he accompanied him down the stairs, smiling
+affably and respectfully, and looking as though he were ready any
+minute to fall on his face before the gentleman. Voldyrev for some
+reason felt uncomfortable, and in obedience to some inward impulse
+he took a rouble out of his pocket and gave it to the clerk. And
+the latter kept bowing and smiling, and took the rouble like a
+conjuror, so that it seemed to flash through the air.
+
+"Well, what people!" thought the country gentleman as he went out
+into the street, and he stopped and mopped his brow with his
+handkerchief.
+
+
+MARTYRS
+
+LIZOTCHKA KUDRINSKY, a young married lady who had many admirers,
+was suddenly taken ill, and so seriously that her husband did not
+go to his office, and a telegram was sent to her mamma at Tver.
+This is how she told the story of her illness:
+
+"I went to Lyesnoe to auntie's. I stayed there a week and then I
+went with all the rest to cousin Varya's. Varya's husband is a surly
+brute and a despot (I'd shoot a husband like that), but we had a
+very jolly time there. To begin with I took part in some private
+theatricals. It was _A Scandal in a Respectable Family_. Hrustalev
+acted marvellously! Between the acts I drank some cold, awfully
+cold, lemon squash, with the tiniest nip of brandy in it. Lemon
+squash with brandy in it is very much like champagne. . . . I drank
+it and I felt nothing. Next day after the performance I rode out
+on horseback with that Adolf Ivanitch. It was rather damp and there
+was a strong wind. It was most likely then that I caught cold. Three
+days later I came home to see how my dear, good Vassya was getting
+on, and while here to get my silk dress, the one that has little
+flowers on it. Vassya, of course, I did not find at home. I went
+into the kitchen to tell Praskovya to set the samovar, and there I
+saw on the table some pretty little carrots and turnips like
+playthings. I ate one little carrot and well, a turnip too. I ate
+very little, but only fancy, I began having a sharp pain at
+once--spasms . . . spasms . . . spasms . . . ah, I am dying. Vassya
+runs from the office. Naturally he clutches at his hair and turns
+white. They run for the doctor. . . . Do you understand, I am dying,
+dying."
+
+The spasms began at midday, before three o'clock the doctor came,
+and at six Lizotchka fell asleep and slept soundly till two o'clock
+in the morning.
+
+It strikes two. . . . The light of the little night lamp filters
+scantily through the pale blue shade. Lizotchka is lying in bed,
+her white lace cap stands out sharply against the dark background
+of the red cushion. Shadows from the blue lamp-shade lie in patterns
+on her pale face and her round plump shoulders. Vassily Stepanovitch
+is sitting at her feet. The poor fellow is happy that his wife is
+at home at last, and at the same time he is terribly alarmed by her
+illness.
+
+"Well, how do you feel, Lizotchka?" he asks in a whisper, noticing
+that she is awake.
+
+"I am better," moans Lizotchka. "I don't feel the spasms now, but
+there is no sleeping. . . . I can't get to sleep!"
+
+"Isn't it time to change the compress, my angel?"
+
+Lizotchka sits up slowly with the expression of a martyr and
+gracefully turns her head on one side. Vassily Stepanovitch with
+reverent awe, scarcely touching her hot body with his fingers,
+changes the compress. Lizotchka shrinks, laughs at the cold water
+which tickles her, and lies down again.
+
+"You are getting no sleep, poor boy!" she moans.
+
+"As though I could sleep!"
+
+"It's my nerves, Vassya, I am a very nervous woman. The doctor has
+prescribed for stomach trouble, but I feel that he doesn't understand
+my illness. It's nerves and not the stomach, I swear that it is my
+nerves. There is only one thing I am afraid of, that my illness may
+take a bad turn."
+
+"No, Lizotchka, no, to-morrow you will be all right!"
+
+"Hardly likely! I am not afraid for myself. . . . I don't care,
+indeed, I shall be glad to die, but I am sorry for you! You'll be
+a widower and left all alone."
+
+Vassitchka rarely enjoys his wife's society, and has long been used
+to solitude, but Lizotchka's words agitate him.
+
+"Goodness knows what you are saying, little woman! Why these gloomy
+thoughts?"
+
+"Well, you will cry and grieve, and then you will get used to it.
+You'll even get married again."
+
+The husband clutches his head.
+
+"There, there, I won't!" Lizotchka soothes him, "only you ought to
+be prepared for anything."
+
+"And all of a sudden I shall die," she thinks, shutting her eyes.
+
+And Lizotchka draws a mental picture of her own death, how her
+mother, her husband, her cousin Varya with her husband, her relations,
+the admirers of her "talent" press round her death bed, as she
+whispers her last farewell. All are weeping. Then when she is dead
+they dress her, interestingly pale and dark-haired, in a pink dress
+(it suits her) and lay her in a very expensive coffin on gold legs,
+full of flowers. There is a smell of incense, the candles splutter.
+Her husband never leaves the coffin, while the admirers of her
+talent cannot take their eyes off her, and say: "As though living!
+She is lovely in her coffin!" The whole town is talking of the life
+cut short so prematurely. But now they are carrying her to the
+church. The bearers are Ivan Petrovitch, Adolf Ivanitch, Varya's
+husband, Nikolay Semyonitch, and the black-eyed student who had
+taught her to drink lemon squash with brandy. It's only a pity
+there's no music playing. After the burial service comes the
+leave-taking. The church is full of sobs, they bring the lid with
+tassels, and . . . Lizotchka is shut off from the light of day for
+ever, there is the sound of hammering nails. Knock, knock, knock.
+
+Lizotchka shudders and opens her eyes.
+
+"Vassya, are you here?" she asks. "I have such gloomy thoughts.
+Goodness, why am I so unlucky as not to sleep. Vassya, have pity,
+do tell me something!"
+
+"What shall I tell you?"
+
+"Something about love," Lizotchka says languidly. "Or some anecdote
+about Jews. . . ."
+
+Vassily Stepanovitch, ready for anything if only his wife will be
+cheerful and not talk about death, combs locks of hair over his
+ears, makes an absurd face, and goes up to Lizotchka.
+
+"Does your vatch vant mending?" he asks.
+
+"It does, it does," giggles Lizotchka, and hands him her gold watch
+from the little table. "Mend it."
+
+Vassya takes the watch, examines the mechanism for a long time, and
+wriggling and shrugging, says: "She can not be mended . . . in vun
+veel two cogs are vanting. . . ."
+
+This is the whole performance. Lizotchka laughs and claps her hands.
+
+"Capital," she exclaims. "Wonderful. Do you know, Vassya, it's
+awfully stupid of you not to take part in amateur theatricals! You
+have a remarkable talent! You are much better than Sysunov. There
+was an amateur called Sysunov who played with us in _It's My
+Birthday_. A first-class comic talent, only fancy: a nose as thick
+as a parsnip, green eyes, and he walks like a crane. . . . We all
+roared; stay, I will show you how he walks."
+
+Lizotchka springs out of bed and begins pacing about the floor,
+barefooted and without her cap.
+
+"A very good day to you!" she says in a bass, imitating a man's
+voice. "Anything pretty? Anything new under the moon? Ha, ha, ha!"
+she laughs.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" Vassya seconds her. And the young pair, roaring with
+laughter, forgetting the illness, chase one another about the room.
+The race ends in Vassya's catching his wife by her nightgown and
+eagerly showering kisses upon her. After one particularly passionate
+embrace Lizotchka suddenly remembers that she is seriously ill. . . .
+
+"What silliness!" she says, making a serious face and covering
+herself with the quilt. "I suppose you have forgotten that I am
+ill! Clever, I must say!"
+
+"Sorry . . ." falters her husband in confusion.
+
+"If my illness takes a bad turn it will be your fault. Not kind!
+not good!"
+
+Lizotchka closes her eyes and is silent. Her former languor and
+expression of martyrdom return again, there is a sound of gentle
+moans. Vassya changes the compress, and glad that his wife is at
+home and not gadding off to her aunt's, sits meekly at her feet.
+He does not sleep all night. At ten o'clock the doctor comes.
+
+"Well, how are we feeling?" he asks as he takes her pulse. "Have
+you slept?"
+
+"Badly," Lizotchka's husband answers for her, "very badly."
+
+The doctor walks away to the window and stares at a passing
+chimney-sweep.
+
+"Doctor, may I have coffee to-day?" asks Lizotchka.
+
+"You may."
+
+"And may I get up?"
+
+"You might, perhaps, but . . . you had better lie in bed another
+day."
+
+"She is awfully depressed," Vassya whispers in his ear, "such gloomy
+thoughts, such pessimism. I am dreadfully uneasy about her."
+
+The doctor sits down to the little table, and rubbing his forehead,
+prescribes bromide of potassium for Lizotchka, then makes his bow,
+and promising to look in again in the evening, departs. Vassya does
+not go to the office, but sits all day at his wife's feet.
+
+At midday the admirers of her talent arrive in a crowd. They are
+agitated and alarmed, they bring masses of flowers and French novels.
+Lizotchka, in a snow-white cap and a light dressing jacket, lies
+in bed with an enigmatic look, as though she did not believe in her
+own recovery. The admirers of her talent see her husband, but readily
+forgive his presence: they and he are united by one calamity at
+that bedside!
+
+At six o'clock in the evening Lizotchka falls asleep, and again
+sleeps till two o'clock in the morning. Vassya as before sits at
+her feet, struggles with drowsiness, changes her compress, plays
+at being a Jew, and in the morning after a second night of suffering,
+Liza is prinking before the looking-glass and putting on her hat.
+
+"Wherever are you going, my dear?" asks Vassya, with an imploring
+look at her.
+
+"What?" says Lizotchka in wonder, assuming a scared expression,
+"don't you know that there is a rehearsal to-day at Marya Lvovna's?"
+
+After escorting her there, Vassya having nothing to do to while
+away his boredom, takes his portfolio and goes to the office. His
+head aches so violently from his sleepless nights that his left eye
+shuts of itself and refuses to open. . . .
+
+"What's the matter with you, my good sir?" his chief asks him. "What
+is it?"
+
+Vassya waves his hand and sits down.
+
+"Don't ask me, your Excellency," he says with a sigh. "What I have
+suffered in these two days, what I have suffered! Liza has been
+ill!"
+
+"Good heavens," cried his chief in alarm. "Lizaveta Pavlovna, what
+is wrong with her?"
+
+Vassily Stepanovitch merely throws up his hands and raises his eyes
+to the ceiling, as though he would say: "It's the will of Providence."
+
+"Ah, my boy, I can sympathise with you with all my heart!" sighs
+his chief, rolling his eyes. "I've lost my wife, my dear, I understand.
+That is a loss, it is a loss! It's awful, awful! I hope Lizaveta
+Pavlovna is better now! What doctor is attending her?"
+
+"Von Schterk."
+
+"Von Schterk! But you would have been better to have called in
+Magnus or Semandritsky. But how very pale your face is. You are ill
+yourself! This is awful!"
+
+"Yes, your Excellency, I haven't slept. What I have suffered, what
+I have been through!"
+
+"And yet you came! Why you came I can't understand? One can't force
+oneself like that! One mustn't do oneself harm like that. Go home
+and stay there till you are well again! Go home, I command you!
+Zeal is a very fine thing in a young official, but you mustn't
+forget as the Romans used to say: 'mens sana in corpore sano,' that
+is, a healthy brain in a healthy body."
+
+Vassya agrees, puts his papers back in his portfolio, and, taking
+leave of his chief, goes home to bed.
+
+
+THE LION AND THE SUN
+
+IN one of the towns lying on this side of the Urals a rumour was
+afloat that a Persian magnate, called Rahat-Helam, was staying for
+a few days in the town and putting up at the "Japan Hotel." This
+rumour made no impression whatever upon the inhabitants; a Persian
+had arrived, well, so be it. Only Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, the
+mayor of the town, hearing of the arrival of the oriental gentleman
+from the secretary of the Town Hall, grew thoughtful and inquired:
+
+"Where is he going?"
+
+"To Paris or to London, I believe."
+
+"H'm. . . . Then he is a big-wig, I suppose?"
+
+"The devil only knows."
+
+As he went home from the Town Hall and had his dinner, the mayor
+sank into thought again, and this time he went on thinking till the
+evening. The arrival of the distinguished Persian greatly intrigued
+him. It seemed to him that fate itself had sent him this Rahat-Helam,
+and that a favourable opportunity had come at last for realising
+his passionate, secretly cherished dream. Kutsyn had already two
+medals, and the Stanislav of the third degree, the badge of the Red
+Cross, and the badge of the Society of Saving from Drowning, and
+in addition to these he had made himself a little gold gun crossed
+by a guitar, and this ornament, hung from a buttonhole in his
+uniform, looked in the distance like something special, and
+delightfully resembled a badge of distinction. It is well known
+that the more orders and medals you have the more you want--and
+the mayor had long been desirous of receiving the Persian order of
+The Lion and the Sun; he desired it passionately, madly. He knew
+very well that there was no need to fight, or to subscribe to an
+asylum, or to serve on committees to obtain this order; all that
+was needed was a favourable opportunity. And now it seemed to him
+that this opportunity had come.
+
+At noon on the following day he put on his chain and all his badges
+of distinction and went to the 'Japan.' Destiny favoured him. When
+he entered the distinguished Persian's apartment the latter was
+alone and doing nothing. Rahat-Helam, an enormous Asiatic, with a
+long nose like the beak of a snipe, with prominent eyes, and with
+a fez on his head, was sitting on the floor rummaging in his
+portmanteau.
+
+"I beg you to excuse my disturbing you," began Kutsyn, smiling. "I
+have the honour to introduce myself, the hereditary, honourable
+citizen and cavalier, Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, mayor of this town.
+I regard it as my duty to honour, in the person of your Highness,
+so to say, the representative of a friendly and neighbourly state."
+
+The Persian turned and muttered something in very bad French, that
+sounded like tapping a board with a piece of wood.
+
+"The frontiers of Persia"--Kutsyn continued the greeting he had
+previously learned by heart--"are in close contact with the borders
+of our spacious fatherland, and therefore mutual sympathies impel
+me, so to speak, to express my solidarity with you."
+
+The illustrious Persian got up and again muttered something in a
+wooden tongue. Kutsyn, who knew no foreign language, shook his head
+to show that he did not understand.
+
+"Well, how am I to talk to him?" he thought. "It would be a good
+thing to send for an interpreter at once, but it is a delicate
+matter, I can't talk before witnesses. The interpreter would be
+chattering all over the town afterwards."
+
+And Kutsyn tried to recall the foreign words he had picked up from
+the newspapers.
+
+"I am the mayor of the town," he muttered. "That is the _lord mayor_
+. . . _municipalais_ . . . Vwee? Kompreney?"
+
+He wanted to express his social position in words or in gesture,
+and did not know how. A picture hanging on the wall with an inscription
+in large letters, "The Town of Venice," helped him out of his
+difficulties. He pointed with his finger at the town, then at his
+own head, and in that way obtained, as he imagined, the phrase: "I
+am the head of the town." The Persian did not understand, but he
+gave a smile, and said:
+
+"Goot, monsieur . . . goot . . . . ." Half-an-hour later the mayor
+was slapping the Persian, first on the knee and then on the shoulder,
+and saying:
+
+"Kompreney? Vwee? As _lord mayor_ and _municipalais_ I suggest that
+you should take a little _promenage . . . kompreney? Promenage._"
+
+Kutsyn pointed at Venice, and with two fingers represented walking
+legs. Rahat-Helam who kept his eyes fixed on his medals, and was
+apparently guessing that this was the most important person in the
+town, understood the word _promenage_ and grinned politely. Then
+they both put on their coats and went out of the room. Downstairs
+near the door leading to the restaurant of the 'Japan,' Kutsyn
+reflected that it would not be amiss to entertain the Persian. He
+stopped and indicating the tables, said:
+
+"By Russian custom it wouldn't be amiss . . . _puree, entrekot_,
+champagne and so on, kompreney."
+
+The illustrious visitor understood, and a little later they were
+both sitting in the very best room of the restaurant, eating, and
+drinking champagne.
+
+"Let us drink to the prosperity of Persia!" said Kutsyn. "We Russians
+love the Persians. Though we are of another faith, yet there are
+common interests, mutual, so to say, sympathies . . . progress . . .
+Asiatic markets. . . . The campaigns of peace so to say. . . ."
+
+The illustrious Persian ate and drank with an excellent appetite,
+he stuck his fork into a slice of smoked sturgeon, and wagging his
+head, enthusiastically said: "_Goot, bien._"
+
+"You like it?" said the mayor delighted. "_Bien_, that's capital."
+And turning to the waiter he said: "Luka, my lad, see that two
+pieces of smoked sturgeon, the best you have, are sent up to his
+Highness's room!"
+
+Then the mayor and the Persian magnate went to look at the menagerie.
+The townspeople saw their Stepan Ivanovitch, flushed with champagne,
+gay and very well pleased, leading the Persian about the principal
+streets and the bazaar, showing him the points of interest of the
+town, and even taking him to the fire tower.
+
+Among other things the townspeople saw him stop near some stone
+gates with lions on it, and point out to the Persian first the lion,
+then the sun overhead, and then his own breast; then again he pointed
+to the lion and to the sun while the Persian nodded his head as
+though in sign of assent, and smiling showed his white teeth. In
+the evening they were sitting in the London Hotel listening to the
+harp-players, and where they spent the night is not known.
+
+Next day the mayor was at the Town Hall in the morning; the officials
+there apparently already knew something and were making their
+conjectures, for the secretary went up to him and said with an
+ironical smile:
+
+"It is the custom of the Persians when an illustrious visitor comes
+to visit you, you must slaughter a sheep with your own hands."
+
+And a little later an envelope that had come by post was handed to
+him. The mayor tore it open and saw a caricature in it. It was a
+drawing of Rahat-Helam with the mayor on his knees before him,
+stretching out his hands and saying:
+
+            "To prove our Russian friendship
+             For Persia's mighty realm,
+             And show respect for you, her envoy,
+             Myself I'd slaughter like a lamb,
+             But, pardon me, for I'm a--donkey!"
+
+The mayor was conscious of an unpleasant feeling like a gnawing in
+the pit of the stomach, but not for long. By midday he was again
+with the illustrious Persian, again he was regaling him and showing
+him the points of interest in the town. Again he led him to the
+stone gates, and again pointed to the lion, to the sun and to his
+own breast. They dined at the 'Japan'; after dinner, with cigars
+in their teeth, both, flushed and blissful, again mounted the fire
+tower, and the mayor, evidently wishing to entertain the visitor
+with an unusual spectacle, shouted from the top to a sentry walking
+below:
+
+"Sound the alarm!"
+
+But the alarm was not sounded as the firemen were at the baths at
+the moment.
+
+They supped at the 'London' and, after supper, the Persian departed.
+When he saw him off, Stepan Ivanovitch kissed him three times after
+the Russian fashion, and even grew tearful. And when the train
+started, he shouted:
+
+"Give our greeting to Persia! Tell her that we love her!"
+
+A year and four months had passed. There was a bitter frost,
+thirty-five degrees, and a piercing wind was blowing. Stepan
+Ivanovitch was walking along the street with his fur coat thrown
+open over his chest, and he was annoyed that he met no one to see
+the Lion and the Sun upon his breast. He walked about like this
+till evening with his fur coat open, was chilled to the bone, and
+at night tossed from side to side and could not get to sleep.
+
+He felt heavy at heart.
+
+There was a burning sensation inside him, and his heart throbbed
+uneasily; he had a longing now to get a Serbian order. It was a
+painful, passionate longing.
+
+
+A DAUGHTER OF ALBION
+
+A FINE carriage with rubber tyres, a fat coachman, and velvet on
+the seats, rolled up to the house of a landowner called Gryabov.
+Fyodor Andreitch Otsov, the district Marshal of Nobility, jumped
+out of the carriage. A drowsy footman met him in the hall.
+
+"Are the family at home?" asked the Marshal.
+
+"No, sir. The mistress and the children are gone out paying visits,
+while the master and mademoiselle are catching fish. Fishing all
+the morning, sir."
+
+Otsov stood a little, thought a little, and then went to the river
+to look for Gryabov. Going down to the river he found him a mile
+and a half from the house. Looking down from the steep bank and
+catching sight of Gryabov, Otsov gushed with laughter. . . . Gryabov,
+a large stout man, with a very big head, was sitting on the sand,
+angling, with his legs tucked under him like a Turk. His hat was
+on the back of his head and his cravat had slipped on one side.
+Beside him stood a tall thin Englishwoman, with prominent eyes like
+a crab's, and a big bird-like nose more like a hook than a nose.
+She was dressed in a white muslin gown through which her scraggy
+yellow shoulders were very distinctly apparent. On her gold belt
+hung a little gold watch. She too was angling. The stillness of the
+grave reigned about them both. Both were motionless, as the river
+upon which their floats were swimming.
+
+"A desperate passion, but deadly dull!" laughed Otsov. "Good-day,
+Ivan Kuzmitch."
+
+"Ah . . . is that you?" asked Gryabov, not taking his eyes off the
+water. "Have you come?"
+
+"As you see . . . . And you are still taken up with your crazy
+nonsense! Not given it up yet?"
+
+"The devil's in it. . . . I begin in the morning and fish all day
+. . . . The fishing is not up to much to-day. I've caught nothing and
+this dummy hasn't either. We sit on and on and not a devil of a
+fish! I could scream!"
+
+"Well, chuck it up then. Let's go and have some vodka!"
+
+"Wait a little, maybe we shall catch something. Towards evening the
+fish bite better . . . . I've been sitting here, my boy, ever since
+the morning! I can't tell you how fearfully boring it is. It was
+the devil drove me to take to this fishing! I know that it is rotten
+idiocy for me to sit here. I sit here like some scoundrel, like a
+convict, and I stare at the water like a fool. I ought to go to the
+haymaking, but here I sit catching fish. Yesterday His Holiness
+held a service at Haponyevo, but I didn't go. I spent the day here
+with this . . . with this she-devil."
+
+"But . . . have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Otsov,
+glancing in embarrassment at the Englishwoman. "Using such language
+before a lady and she . . . ."
+
+"Oh, confound her, it doesn't matter, she doesn't understand a
+syllable of Russian, whether you praise her or blame her, it is all
+the same to her! Just look at her nose! Her nose alone is enough
+to make one faint. We sit here for whole days together and not a
+single word! She stands like a stuffed image and rolls the whites
+of her eyes at the water."
+
+The Englishwoman gave a yawn, put a new worm on, and dropped the
+hook into the water.
+
+"I wonder at her not a little," Gryabov went on, "the great stupid
+has been living in Russia for ten years and not a word of Russian!
+. . . Any little aristocrat among us goes to them and learns to
+babble away in their lingo, while they . . . there's no making them
+out. Just look at her nose, do look at her nose!"
+
+"Come, drop it . . . it's uncomfortable. Why attack a woman?"
+
+"She's not a woman, but a maiden lady. . . . I bet she's dreaming
+of suitors. The ugly doll. And she smells of something decaying
+. . . . I've got a loathing for her, my boy! I can't look at her with
+indifference. When she turns her ugly eyes on me it sends a twinge
+all through me as though I had knocked my elbow on the parapet. She
+likes fishing too. Watch her: she fishes as though it were a holy
+rite! She looks upon everything with disdain . . . . She stands
+there, the wretch, and is conscious that she is a human being, and
+that therefore she is the monarch of nature. And do you know what
+her name is? Wilka Charlesovna Fyce! Tfoo! There is no getting it
+out!"
+
+The Englishwoman, hearing her name, deliberately turned her nose
+in Gryabov's direction and scanned him with a disdainful glance;
+she raised her eyes from Gryabov to Otsov and steeped him in disdain.
+And all this in silence, with dignity and deliberation.
+
+"Did you see?" said Gryabov chuckling. "As though to say 'take
+that.' Ah, you monster! It's only for the children's sake that I
+keep that triton. If it weren't for the children, I wouldn't let
+her come within ten miles of my estate. . . . She has got a nose
+like a hawk's . . . and her figure! That doll makes me think of a
+long nail, so I could take her, and knock her into the ground, you
+know. Stay, I believe I have got a bite. . . ."
+
+Gryabov jumped up and raised his rod. The line drew taut. . . .
+Gryabov tugged again, but could not pull out the hook.
+
+"It has caught," he said, frowning, "on a stone I expect . . .
+damnation take it . . . ."
+
+There was a look of distress on Gryabov's face. Sighing, moving
+uneasily, and muttering oaths, he began tugging at the line.
+
+"What a pity; I shall have to go into the water."
+
+"Oh, chuck it!"
+
+"I can't. . . . There's always good fishing in the evening. . . .
+What a nuisance. Lord, forgive us, I shall have to wade into the
+water, I must! And if only you knew, I have no inclination to
+undress. I shall have to get rid of the Englishwoman. . . . It's
+awkward to undress before her. After all, she is a lady, you know!"
+
+Gryabov flung off his hat, and his cravat.
+
+"Meess . . . er, er . . ." he said, addressing the Englishwoman,
+"Meess Fyce, je voo pree . . . ? Well, what am I to say to her? How
+am I to tell you so that you can understand? I say . . . over there!
+Go away over there! Do you hear?"
+
+Miss Fyce enveloped Gryabov in disdain, and uttered a nasal sound.
+
+"What? Don't you understand? Go away from here, I tell you! I must
+undress, you devil's doll! Go over there! Over there!"
+
+Gryabov pulled the lady by her sleeve, pointed her towards the
+bushes, and made as though he would sit down, as much as to say:
+Go behind the bushes and hide yourself there. . . . The Englishwoman,
+moving her eyebrows vigorously, uttered rapidly a long sentence in
+English. The gentlemen gushed with laughter.
+
+"It's the first time in my life I've heard her voice. There's no
+denying, it is a voice! She does not understand! Well, what am I
+to do with her?"
+
+"Chuck it, let's go and have a drink of vodka!"
+
+"I can't. Now's the time to fish, the evening. . . . It's evening
+. . . . Come, what would you have me do? It is a nuisance! I shall
+have to undress before her. . . ."
+
+Gryabov flung off his coat and his waistcoat and sat on the sand
+to take off his boots.
+
+"I say, Ivan Kuzmitch," said the marshal, chuckling behind his hand.
+"It's really outrageous, an insult."
+
+"Nobody asks her not to understand! It's a lesson for these
+foreigners!"
+
+Gryabov took off his boots and his trousers, flung off his undergarments
+and remained in the costume of Adam. Otsov held his sides, he turned
+crimson both from laughter and embarrassment. The Englishwoman
+twitched her brows and blinked . . . . A haughty, disdainful smile
+passed over her yellow face.
+
+"I must cool off," said Gryabov, slapping himself on the ribs. "Tell
+me if you please, Fyodor Andreitch, why I have a rash on my chest
+every summer."
+
+"Oh, do get into the water quickly or cover yourself with something,
+you beast."
+
+"And if only she were confused, the nasty thing," said Gryabov,
+crossing himself as he waded into the water. "Brrrr . . . the water's
+cold. . . . Look how she moves her eyebrows! She doesn't go away
+. . . she is far above the crowd! He, he, he . . . . and she doesn't
+reckon us as human beings."
+
+Wading knee deep in the water and drawing his huge figure up to its
+full height, he gave a wink and said:
+
+"This isn't England, you see!"
+
+Miss Fyce coolly put on another worm, gave a yawn, and dropped the
+hook in. Otsov turned away, Gryabov released his hook, ducked into
+the water and, spluttering, waded out. Two minutes later he was
+sitting on the sand and angling as before.
+
+
+CHORISTERS
+
+THE Justice of the Peace, who had received a letter from Petersburg,
+had set the news going that the owner of Yefremovo, Count Vladimir
+Ivanovitch, would soon be arriving. When he would arrive--there
+was no saying.
+
+"Like a thief in the night," said Father Kuzma, a grey-headed little
+priest in a lilac cassock. "And when he does come the place will
+be crowded with the nobility and other high gentry. All the neighbours
+will flock here. Mind now, do your best, Alexey Alexeitch. . . . I
+beg you most earnestly."
+
+"You need not trouble about me," said Alexey Alexeitch, frowning.
+"I know my business. If only my enemy intones the litany in the
+right key. He may . . . out of sheer spite. . . ."
+
+"There, there. . . . I'll persuade the deacon. . . I'll persuade
+him."
+
+Alexey Alexeitch was the sacristan of the Yefremovo church. He also
+taught the schoolboys church and secular singing, for which he
+received sixty roubles a year from the revenues of the Count's
+estate. The schoolboys were bound to sing in church in return for
+their teaching. Alexey Alexeitch was a tall, thick-set man of
+dignified deportment, with a fat, clean-shaven face that reminded
+one of a cow's udder. His imposing figure and double chin made him
+look like a man occupying an important position in the secular
+hierarchy rather than a sacristan. It was strange to see him, so
+dignified and imposing, flop to the ground before the bishop and,
+on one occasion, after too loud a squabble with the deacon Yevlampy
+Avdiessov, remain on his knees for two hours by order of the head
+priest of the district. Grandeur was more in keeping with his figure
+than humiliation.
+
+On account of the rumours of the Count's approaching visit he had
+a choir practice every day, morning and evening. The choir practice
+was held at the school. It did not interfere much with the school
+work. During the practice the schoolmaster, Sergey Makaritch, set
+the children writing copies while he joined the tenors as an amateur.
+
+This is how the choir practice was conducted. Alexey Alexeitch would
+come into the school-room, slamming the door and blowing his nose.
+The trebles and altos extricated themselves noisily from the
+school-tables. The tenors and basses, who had been waiting for some
+time in the yard, came in, tramping like horses. They all took their
+places. Alexey Alexeitch drew himself up, made a sign to enforce
+silence, and struck a note with the tuning fork.
+
+"To-to-li-to-tom . . . Do-mi-sol-do!"
+
+"Adagio, adagio. . . . Once more."
+
+After the "Amen" there followed "Lord have mercy upon us" from the
+Great Litany. All this had been learned long ago, sung a thousand
+times and thoroughly digested, and it was gone through simply as a
+formality. It was sung indolently, unconsciously. Alexey Alexeitch
+waved his arms calmly and chimed in now in a tenor, now in a bass
+voice. It was all slow, there was nothing interesting. . . . But
+before the "Cherubim" hymn the whole choir suddenly began blowing
+their noses, coughing and zealously turning the pages of their
+music. The sacristan turned his back on the choir and with a
+mysterious expression on his face began tuning his violin. The
+preparations lasted a couple of minutes.
+
+"Take your places. Look at your music carefully. . . . Basses, don't
+overdo it . . . rather softly."
+
+Bortnyansky's "Cherubim" hymn, No. 7, was selected. At a given
+signal silence prevailed. All eyes were fastened on the music, the
+trebles opened their mouths. Alexey Alexeitch softly lowered his
+arm.
+
+"Piano . . . piano. . . . You see 'piano' is written there. . . .
+More lightly, more lightly."
+
+When they had to sing "piano" an expression of benevolence and
+amiability overspread Alexey Alexeitch's face, as though he was
+dreaming of a dainty morsel.
+
+"Forte . . . forte! Hold it!"
+
+And when they had to sing "forte" the sacristan's fat face expressed
+alarm and even horror.
+
+The "Cherubim" hymn was sung well, so well that the school-children
+abandoned their copies and fell to watching the movements of Alexey
+Alexeitch. People stood under the windows. The schoolwatchman,
+Vassily, came in wearing an apron and carrying a dinner-knife in
+his hand and stood listening. Father Kuzma, with an anxious face
+appeared suddenly as though he had sprung from out of the earth. . . .
+After 'Let us lay aside all earthly cares' Alexey Alexeitch
+wiped the sweat off his brow and went up to Father Kuzma in excitement.
+
+"It puzzles me, Father Kuzma," he said, shrugging his shoulders,
+"why is it that the Russian people have no understanding? It puzzles
+me, may the Lord chastise me! Such an uncultured people that you
+really cannot tell whether they have a windpipe in their throats
+or some other sort of internal arrangement. Were you choking, or
+what?" he asked, addressing the bass Gennady Semitchov, the innkeeper's
+brother.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"What is your voice like? It rattles like a saucepan. I bet you
+were boozing yesterday! That's what it is! Your breath smells like
+a tavern. . . . E-ech! You are a clodhopper, brother! You are a
+lout! How can you be a chorister if you keep company with peasants
+in the tavern? Ech, you are an ass, brother!"
+
+"It's a sin, it's a sin, brother," muttered Father Kuzma. "God sees
+everything . . . through and through . . . ."
+
+"That's why you have no idea of singing--because you care more
+for vodka than for godliness, you fool."
+
+"Don't work yourself up," said Father Kuzma. "Don't be cross. . . .
+I will persuade him."
+
+Father Kuzma went up to Gennady Semitchov and began "persuading"
+him: "What do you do it for? Try and put your mind to it. A man who
+sings ought to restrain himself, because his throat is . . . er . .
+tender."
+
+Gennady scratched his neck and looked sideways towards the window
+as though the words did not apply to him.
+
+After the "Cherubim" hymn they sang the Creed, then "It is meet and
+right"; they sang smoothly and with feeling, and so right on to
+"Our Father."
+
+"To my mind, Father Kuzma," said the sacristan, "the old 'Our Father'
+is better than the modern. That's what we ought to sing before the
+Count."
+
+"No, no. . . . Sing the modern one. For the Count hears nothing but
+modern music when he goes to Mass in Petersburg or Moscow. . . .
+In the churches there, I imagine . . . there's very different sort
+of music there, brother!"
+
+After "Our Father" there was again a great blowing of noses, coughing
+and turning over of pages. The most difficult part of the performance
+came next: the "concert." Alexey Alexeitch was practising two pieces,
+"Who is the God of glory" and "Universal Praise." Whichever the
+choir learned best would be sung before the Count. During the
+"concert" the sacristan rose to a pitch of enthusiasm. The expression
+of benevolence was continually alternating with one of alarm.
+
+"Forte!" he muttered. "Andante! let yourselves go! Sing, you image!
+Tenors, you don't bring it off! To-to-ti-to-tom. . . . Sol . . .
+si . . . sol, I tell you, you blockhead! Glory! Basses, glo . . .
+o . . . ry."
+
+His bow travelled over the heads and shoulders of the erring trebles
+and altos. His left hand was continually pulling the ears of the
+young singers. On one occasion, carried away by his feelings he
+flipped the bass Gennady under the chin with his bent thumb. But
+the choristers were not moved to tears or to anger at his blows:
+they realised the full gravity of their task.
+
+After the "concert" came a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch,
+red, perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, and
+turned upon the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes.
+In the listening crowd he observed to his immense annoyance the
+deacon Avdiessov. The deacon, a tall thick-set man with a red
+pock-marked face, and straw in his hair, stood leaning against the
+stove and grinning contemptuously.
+
+"That's right, sing away! Perform your music!" he muttered in a
+deep bass. "Much the Count will care for your singing! He doesn't
+care whether you sing with music or without. . . . For he is an
+atheist."
+
+Father Kuzma looked round in a scared way and twiddled his fingers.
+
+"Come, come," he muttered. "Hush, deacon, I beg."
+
+After the "concert" they sang "May our lips be filled with praise,"
+and the choir practice was over. The choir broke up to reassemble
+in the evening for another practice. And so it went on every day.
+
+One month passed and then a second. . . . The steward, too, had by
+then received a notice that the Count would soon be coming. At last
+the dusty sun-blinds were taken off the windows of the big house,
+and Yefremovo heard the strains of the broken-down, out-of-tune
+piano. Father Kuzma was pining, though he could not himself have
+said why, or whether it was from delight or alarm. . . . The deacon
+went about grinning.
+
+The following Saturday evening Father Kuzma went to the sacristan's
+lodgings. His face was pale, his shoulders drooped, the lilac of
+his cassock looked faded.
+
+"I have just been at his Excellency's," he said to the sacristan,
+stammering. "He is a cultivated gentleman with refined ideas. But
+. . . er . . . it's mortifying, brother. . . . 'At what o'clock,
+your Excellency, do you desire us to ring for Mass to-morrow?' And
+he said: 'As you think best. Only, couldn't it be as short and quick
+as possible without a choir.' Without a choir! Er . . . do you
+understand, without, without a choir. . . ."
+
+Alexey Alexeitch turned crimson. He would rather have spent two
+hours on his knees again than have heard those words! He did not
+sleep all night. He was not so much mortified at the waste of his
+labours as at the fact that the deacon would give him no peace now
+with his jeers. The deacon was delighted at his discomfiture. Next
+day all through the service he was casting disdainful glances towards
+the choir where Alexey Alexeitch was booming responses in solitude.
+When he passed by the choir with the censer he muttered:
+
+"Perform your music! Do your utmost! The Count will give a ten-rouble
+note to the choir!"
+
+After the service the sacristan went home, crushed and ill with
+mortification. At the gate he was overtaken by the red-faced deacon.
+
+"Stop a minute, Alyosha!" said the deacon. "Stop a minute, silly,
+don't be cross! You are not the only one, I am in for it too!
+Immediately after the Mass Father Kuzma went up to the Count and
+asked: 'And what did you think of the deacon's voice, your Excellency.
+He has a deep bass, hasn't he?' And the Count--do you know what
+he answered by way of compliment? 'Anyone can bawl,' he said. 'A
+man's voice is not as important as his brains.' A learned gentleman
+from Petersburg! An atheist is an atheist, and that's all about it!
+Come, brother in misfortune, let us go and have a drop to drown our
+troubles!"
+
+And the enemies went out of the gate arm-in-arm.
+
+
+NERVES
+
+DMITRI OSIPOVITCH VAXIN, the architect, returned from town to his
+holiday cottage greatly impressed by the spiritualistic séance at
+which he had been present. As he undressed and got into his solitary
+bed (Madame Vaxin had gone to an all-night service) he could not
+help remembering all he had seen and heard. It had not, properly
+speaking, been a séance at all, but the whole evening had been spent
+in terrifying conversation. A young lady had begun it by talking,
+apropos of nothing, about thought-reading. From thought-reading
+they had passed imperceptibly to spirits, and from spirits to ghosts,
+from ghosts to people buried alive. . . . A gentleman had read a
+horrible story of a corpse turning round in the coffin. Vaxin himself
+had asked for a saucer and shown the young ladies how to converse
+with spirits. He had called up among others the spirit of his
+deceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and had mentally asked him:
+
+"Has not the time come for me to transfer the ownership of our house
+to my wife?"
+
+To which his uncle's spirit had replied:
+
+"All things are good in their season."
+
+"There is a great deal in nature that is mysterious and . . .
+terrible . . ." thought Vaxin, as he got into bed. "It's not the
+dead but the unknown that's so horrible."
+
+It struck one o'clock. Vaxin turned over on the other side and
+peeped out from beneath the bedclothes at the blue light of the
+lamp burning before the holy ikon. The flame flickered and cast a
+faint light on the ikon-stand and the big portrait of Uncle Klavdy
+that hung facing his bed.
+
+"And what if the ghost of Uncle Klavdy should appear this minute?"
+flashed through Vaxin's mind. "But, of course, that's impossible."
+
+Ghosts are, we all know, a superstition, the offspring of undeveloped
+intelligence, but Vaxin, nevertheless, pulled the bed-clothes over
+his head, and shut his eyes very tight. The corpse that turned round
+in its coffin came back to his mind, and the figures of his deceased
+mother-in-law, of a colleague who had hanged himself, and of a girl
+who had drowned herself, rose before his imagination. . . . Vaxin
+began trying to dispel these gloomy ideas, but the more he tried
+to drive them away the more haunting the figures and fearful fancies
+became. He began to feel frightened.
+
+"Hang it all!" he thought. "Here I am afraid in the dark like a
+child! Idiotic!"
+
+Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . he heard the clock in the next
+room. The church-bell chimed the hour in the churchyard close by.
+The bell tolled slowly, depressingly, mournfully. . . . A cold chill
+ran down Vaxin's neck and spine. He fancied he heard someone breathing
+heavily over his head, as though Uncle Klavdy had stepped out of
+his frame and was bending over his nephew. . . . Vaxin felt unbearably
+frightened. He clenched his teeth and held his breath in terror.
+
+At last, when a cockchafer flew in at the open window and began
+buzzing over his bed, he could bear it no longer and gave a violent
+tug at the bellrope.
+
+"Dmitri Osipitch, _was wollen Sie?_" he heard the voice of the
+German governess at his door a moment later.
+
+"Ah, it's you, Rosalia Karlovna!" Vaxin cried, delighted. "Why do
+you trouble? Gavrila might just . . ."
+
+"Yourself Gavrila to the town sent. And Glafira is somewhere all
+the evening gone. . . . There's nobody in the house. . . . _Was
+wollen Sie doch?_"
+
+"Well, what I wanted . . . it's . . . but, please, come in . . .
+you needn't mind! . . . it's dark."
+
+Rosalia Karlovna, a stout red-cheeked person, came in to the bedroom
+and stood in an expectant attitude at the door.
+
+"Sit down, please . . . you see, it's like this. . . . What on earth
+am I to ask her for?" he wondered, stealing a glance at Uncle
+Klavdy's portrait and feeling his soul gradually returning to
+tranquility.
+
+"What I really wanted to ask you was . . . Oh, when the man goes
+to town, don't forget to tell him to . . . er . . . er . . . to get
+some cigarette-papers. . . . But do, please sit down."
+
+"Cigarette-papers? good. . . . _Was wollen Sie noch?_"
+
+"_Ich will_ . . . there's nothing I will, but. . . But do sit down!
+I shall think of something else in a minute."
+
+"It is shocking for a maiden in a man's room to remain. . . . Mr.
+Vaxin, you are, I see, a naughty man. . . . I understand. . . . To
+order cigarette-papers one does not a person wake. . . . I understand
+you. . . ."
+
+Rosalia Karlovna turned and went out of the room.
+
+Somewhat reassured by his conversation with her and ashamed of his
+cowardice, Vaxin pulled the bedclothes over his head and shut his
+eyes. For about ten minutes he felt fairly comfortable, then the
+same nonsense came creeping back into his mind. . . . He swore to
+himself, felt for the matches, and without opening his eyes lighted
+a candle.
+
+But even the light was no use. To Vaxin' s excited imagination it
+seemed as though someone were peeping round the corner and that his
+uncle's eyes were moving.
+
+"I'll ring her up again . . . damn the woman!" he decided. "I'll
+tell her I'm unwell and ask for some drops."
+
+Vaxin rang. There was no response. He rang again, and as though
+answering his ring, he heard the church-bell toll the hour.
+
+Overcome with terror, cold all over, he jumped out of bed, ran
+headlong out of his bedroom, and making the sign of the cross and
+cursing himself for his cowardice, he fled barefoot in his night-shirt
+to the governess's room.
+
+"Rosalia Karlovna!" he began in a shaking voice as he knocked at
+her door, "Rosalia Karlovna! . . . Are you asleep? . . . I feel
+. . . so . . . er . . . er . . . unwell. . . . Drops! . . ."
+
+There was no answer. Silence reigned.
+
+"I beg you . . . do you understand? I beg you! Why this squeamishness,
+I can't understand . . . especially when a man . . . is ill . . .
+How absurdly _zierlich manierlich_ you are really . . . at your
+age. . . ."
+
+"I to your wife shall tell. . . . Will not leave an honest maiden
+in peace. . . . When I was at Baron Anzig's, and the baron try to
+come to me for matches, I understand at once what his matches mean
+and tell to the baroness. . . . I am an honest maiden."
+
+"Hang your honesty! I am ill I tell you . . . and asking you for
+drops. Do you understand? I'm ill!"
+
+"Your wife is an honest, good woman, and you ought her to love!
+_Ja!_ She is noble! . . . I will not be her foe!"
+
+"You are a fool! simply a fool! Do you understand, a fool?"
+
+Vaxin leaned against the door-post, folded his arms and waited for
+his panic to pass off. To return to his room where the lamp flickered
+and his uncle stared at him from his frame was more than he could
+face, and to stand at the governess's door in nothing but his
+night-shirt was inconvenient from every point of view. What could
+he do?
+
+It struck two o'clock and his terror had not left him. There was
+no light in the passage and something dark seemed to be peeping out
+from every corner. Vaxin turned so as to face the door-post, but
+at that instant it seemed as though somebody tweaked his night-shirt
+from behind and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"Damnation! . . . Rosalia Karlovna!"
+
+No answer. Vaxin hesitatingly opened the door and peeped into the
+room. The virtuous German was sweetly slumbering. The tiny flame
+of a night-light threw her solid buxom person into relief. Vaxin
+stepped into the room and sat down on a wickerwork trunk near the
+door. He felt better in the presence of a living creature, even
+though that creature was asleep.
+
+"Let the German idiot sleep," he thought, "I'll sit here, and when
+it gets light I'll go back. . . . It's daylight early now."
+
+Vaxin curled up on the trunk and put his arm under his head to await
+the coming of dawn.
+
+"What a thing it is to have nerves!" he reflected. "An educated,
+intelligent man! . . . Hang it all! . . . It's a perfect disgrace!"
+
+As he listened to the gentle, even breathing of Rosalia Karlovna,
+he soon recovered himself completely.
+
+At six o'clock, Vaxin's wife returned from the all-night service,
+and not finding her husband in their bedroom, went to the governess
+to ask her for some change for the cabman.
+
+On entering the German's room, a strange sight met her eyes.
+
+On the bed lay stretched Rosalia Karlovna fast asleep, and a couple
+of yards from her was her husband curled up on the trunk sleeping
+the sleep of the just and snoring loudly.
+
+What she said to her husband, and how he looked when he woke, I
+leave to others to describe. It is beyond my powers.
+
+
+A WORK OF ART
+
+SASHA SMIRNOV, the only son of his mother, holding under his arm,
+something wrapped up in No. 223 of the _Financial News_, assumed a
+sentimental expression, and went into Dr. Koshelkov's consulting-room.
+
+"Ah, dear lad!" was how the doctor greeted him. "Well! how are we
+feeling? What good news have you for me?"
+
+Sasha blinked, laid his hand on his heart and said in an agitated
+voice: "Mamma sends her greetings to you, Ivan Nikolaevitch, and
+told me to thank you. . . . I am the only son of my mother and you
+have saved my life . . . you have brought me through a dangerous
+illness and . . . we do not know how to thank you."
+
+"Nonsense, lad!" said the doctor, highly delighted. "I only did
+what anyone else would have done in my place."
+
+"I am the only son of my mother . . . we are poor people and cannot
+of course repay you, and we are quite ashamed, doctor, although,
+however, mamma and I . . . the only son of my mother, earnestly beg
+you to accept in token of our gratitude . . . this object, which
+. . . An object of great value, an antique bronze. . . . A rare work
+of art."
+
+"You shouldn't!" said the doctor, frowning. "What's this for!"
+
+"No, please do not refuse," Sasha went on muttering as he unpacked
+the parcel. "You will wound mamma and me by refusing. . . . It's a
+fine thing . . . an antique bronze. . . . It was left us by my
+deceased father and we have kept it as a precious souvenir. My
+father used to buy antique bronzes and sell them to connoisseurs
+. . . Mamma and I keep on the business now."
+
+Sasha undid the object and put it solemnly on the table. It was a
+not very tall candelabra of old bronze and artistic workmanship.
+It consisted of a group: on the pedestal stood two female figures
+in the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of which
+I have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament. The figures
+were smiling coquettishly and altogether looked as though, had it
+not been for the necessity of supporting the candlestick, they would
+have skipped off the pedestal and have indulged in an orgy such as
+is improper for the reader even to imagine.
+
+Looking at the present, the doctor slowly scratched behind his ear,
+cleared his throat and blew his nose irresolutely.
+
+"Yes, it certainly is a fine thing," he muttered, "but . . . how
+shall I express it? . . . it's . . . h'm . . . it's not quite for
+family reading. It's not simply decolleté but beyond anything, dash
+it all. . . ."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"The serpent-tempter himself could not have invented anything worse
+. . . . Why, to put such a phantasmagoria on the table would be
+defiling the whole flat."
+
+"What a strange way of looking at art, doctor!" said Sasha, offended.
+"Why, it is an artistic thing, look at it! There is so much beauty
+and elegance that it fills one's soul with a feeling of reverence
+and brings a lump into one's throat! When one sees anything so
+beautiful one forgets everything earthly. . . . Only look, how much
+movement, what an atmosphere, what expression!"
+
+"I understand all that very well, my dear boy," the doctor interposed,
+"but you know I am a family man, my children run in here, ladies
+come in."
+
+"Of course if you look at it from the point of view of the crowd,"
+said Sasha, "then this exquisitely artistic work may appear in a
+certain light. . . . But, doctor, rise superior to the crowd,
+especially as you will wound mamma and me by refusing it. I am the
+only son of my mother, you have saved my life. . . . We are giving
+you the thing most precious to us and . . . and I only regret that
+I have not the pair to present to you. . . ."
+
+"Thank you, my dear fellow, I am very grateful . . . Give my respects
+to your mother but really consider, my children run in here, ladies
+come. . . . However, let it remain! I see there's no arguing with
+you."
+
+"And there is nothing to argue about," said Sasha, relieved. "Put
+the candlestick here, by this vase. What a pity we have not the
+pair to it! It is a pity! Well, good-bye, doctor."
+
+After Sasha's departure the doctor looked for a long time at the
+candelabra, scratched behind his ear and meditated.
+
+"It's a superb thing, there's no denying it," he thought, "and it
+would be a pity to throw it away. . . . But it's impossible for me
+to keep it. . . . H'm! . . . Here's a problem! To whom can I make
+a present of it, or to what charity can I give it?"
+
+After long meditation he thought of his good friend, the lawyer
+Uhov, to whom he was indebted for the management of legal business.
+
+"Excellent," the doctor decided, "it would be awkward for him as a
+friend to take money from me, and it will be very suitable for me
+to present him with this. I will take him the devilish thing! Luckily
+he is a bachelor and easy-going."
+
+Without further procrastination the doctor put on his hat and coat,
+took the candelabra and went off to Uhov's.
+
+"How are you, friend!" he said, finding the lawyer at home. "I've
+come to see you . . . to thank you for your efforts. . . . You won't
+take money so you must at least accept this thing here. . . . See,
+my dear fellow. . . . The thing is magnificent!"
+
+On seeing the bronze the lawyer was moved to indescribable delight.
+
+"What a specimen!" he chuckled. "Ah, deuce take it, to think of
+them imagining such a thing, the devils! Exquisite! Ravishing! Where
+did you get hold of such a delightful thing?"
+
+After pouring out his ecstasies the lawyer looked timidly towards
+the door and said: "Only you must carry off your present, my boy
+. . . . I can't take it. . . ."
+
+"Why?" cried the doctor, disconcerted.
+
+"Why . . . because my mother is here at times, my clients . . .
+besides I should be ashamed for my servants to see it."
+
+"Nonsense! Nonsense! Don't you dare to refuse!" said the doctor,
+gesticulating. "It's piggish of you! It's a work of art! . . . What
+movement . . . what expression! I won't even talk of it! You will
+offend me!"
+
+"If one could plaster it over or stick on fig-leaves . . ."
+
+But the doctor gesticulated more violently than before, and dashing
+out of the flat went home, glad that he had succeeded in getting
+the present off his hands.
+
+When he had gone away the lawyer examined the candelabra, fingered
+it all over, and then, like the doctor, racked his brains over the
+question what to do with the present.
+
+"It's a fine thing," he mused, "and it would be a pity to throw it
+away and improper to keep it. The very best thing would be to make
+a present of it to someone. . . . I know what! I'll take it this
+evening to Shashkin, the comedian. The rascal is fond of such things,
+and by the way it is his benefit tonight."
+
+No sooner said than done. In the evening the candelabra, carefully
+wrapped up, was duly carried to Shashkin's. The whole evening the
+comic actor's dressing-room was besieged by men coming to admire
+the present; the dressing-room was filled with the hum of enthusiasm
+and laughter like the neighing of horses. If one of the actresses
+approached the door and asked: "May I come in?" the comedian's husky
+voice was heard at once: "No, no, my dear, I am not dressed!"
+
+After the performance the comedian shrugged his shoulders, flung
+up his hands and said: "Well what am I to do with the horrid thing?
+Why, I live in a private flat! Actresses come and see me! It's not
+a photograph that you can put in a drawer!"
+
+"You had better sell it, sir," the hairdresser who was disrobing
+the actor advised him. "There's an old woman living about here who
+buys antique bronzes. Go and enquire for Madame Smirnov . . .
+everyone knows her."
+
+The actor followed his advice. . . . Two days later the doctor was
+sitting in his consulting-room, and with his finger to his brow was
+meditating on the acids of the bile. All at once the door opened
+and Sasha Smirnov flew into the room. He was smiling, beaming, and
+his whole figure was radiant with happiness. In his hands he held
+something wrapped up in newspaper.
+
+"Doctor!" he began breathlessly, "imagine my delight! Happily for
+you we have succeeded in picking up the pair to your candelabra!
+Mamma is so happy. . . . I am the only son of my mother, you saved
+my life. . . ."
+
+And Sasha, all of a tremor with gratitude, set the candelabra before
+the doctor. The doctor opened his mouth, tried to say something,
+but said nothing: he could not speak.
+
+
+A JOKE
+
+IT was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snapping
+frost and the curls on Nadenka's temples and the down on her upper
+lip were covered with silvery frost. She was holding my arm and we
+were standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the ground
+below there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun was
+reflected as in a looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge lined
+with bright red cloth.
+
+"Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!" I besought her. "Only once!
+I assure you we shall be all right and not hurt."
+
+But Nadenka was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to the
+bottom of the ice hill seemed to her a terrible, immensely deep
+abyss. Her spirit failed her, and she held her breath as she looked
+down, when I merely suggested her getting into the sledge, but what
+would it be if she were to risk flying into the abyss! She would
+die, she would go out of her mind.
+
+"I entreat you!" I said. "You mustn't be afraid! You know it's
+poor-spirited, it's cowardly!"
+
+Nadenka gave way at last, and from her face I saw that she gave way
+in mortal dread. I sat her in the sledge, pale and trembling, put
+my arm round her and with her cast myself down the precipice.
+
+The sledge flew like a bullet. The air cleft by our flight beat in
+our faces, roared, whistled in our ears, tore at us, nipped us
+cruelly in its anger, tried to tear our heads off our shoulders.
+We had hardly strength to breathe from the pressure of the wind.
+It seemed as though the devil himself had caught us in his claws
+and was dragging us with a roar to hell. Surrounding objects melted
+into one long furiously racing streak . . . another moment and it
+seemed we should perish.
+
+"I love you, Nadya!" I said in a low voice.
+
+The sledge began moving more and more slowly, the roar of the wind
+and the whirr of the runners was no longer so terrible, it was
+easier to breathe, and at last we were at the bottom. Nadenka was
+more dead than alive. She was pale and scarcely breathing. . . . I
+helped her to get up.
+
+"Nothing would induce me to go again," she said, looking at me with
+wide eyes full of horror. "Nothing in the world! I almost died!"
+
+A little later she recovered herself and looked enquiringly into
+my eyes, wondering had I really uttered those four words or had she
+fancied them in the roar of the hurricane. And I stood beside her
+smoking and looking attentively at my glove.
+
+She took my arm and we spent a long while walking near the ice-hill.
+The riddle evidently would not let her rest. . . . Had those words
+been uttered or not? . . . Yes or no? Yes or no? It was the question
+of pride, or honour, of life--a very important question, the most
+important question in the world. Nadenka kept impatiently, sorrowfully
+looking into my face with a penetrating glance; she answered at
+random, waiting to see whether I would not speak. Oh, the play of
+feeling on that sweet face! I saw that she was struggling with
+herself, that she wanted to say something, to ask some question,
+but she could not find the words; she felt awkward and frightened
+and troubled by her joy. . . .
+
+"Do you know what," she said without looking at me.
+
+"Well?" I asked.
+
+"Let us . . . slide down again."
+
+We clambered up the ice-hill by the steps again. I sat Nadenka,
+pale and trembling, in the sledge; again we flew into the terrible
+abyss, again the wind roared and the runners whirred, and again
+when the flight of our sledge was at its swiftest and noisiest, I
+said in a low voice:
+
+"I love you, Nadenka!"
+
+When the sledge stopped, Nadenka flung a glance at the hill down
+which we had both slid, then bent a long look upon my face, listened
+to my voice which was unconcerned and passionless, and the whole
+of her little figure, every bit of it, even her muff and her hood
+expressed the utmost bewilderment, and on her face was written:
+"What does it mean? Who uttered _those_ words? Did he, or did I
+only fancy it?"
+
+The uncertainty worried her and drove her out of all patience. The
+poor girl did not answer my questions, frowned, and was on the point
+of tears.
+
+"Hadn't we better go home?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I . . . I like this tobogganning," she said, flushing. "Shall
+we go down once more?"
+
+She "liked" the tobogganning, and yet as she got into the sledge
+she was, as both times before, pale, trembling, hardly able to
+breathe for terror.
+
+We went down for the third time, and I saw she was looking at my
+face and watching my lips. But I put my handkerchief to my lips,
+coughed, and when we reached the middle of the hill I succeeded in
+bringing out:
+
+"I love you, Nadya!"
+
+And the mystery remained a mystery! Nadenka was silent, pondering
+on something. . . . I saw her home, she tried to walk slowly,
+slackened her pace and kept waiting to see whether I would not say
+those words to her, and I saw how her soul was suffering, what
+effort she was making not to say to herself:
+
+"It cannot be that the wind said them! And I don't want it to be
+the wind that said them!"
+
+Next morning I got a little note:
+
+"If you are tobogganning to-day, come for me.--N."
+
+And from that time I began going every day tobogganning with Nadenka,
+and as we flew down in the sledge, every time I pronounced in a low
+voice the same words: "I love you, Nadya!"
+
+Soon Nadenka grew used to that phrase as to alcohol or morphia. She
+could not live without it. It is true that flying down the ice-hill
+terrified her as before, but now the terror and danger gave a
+peculiar fascination to words of love--words which as before were
+a mystery and tantalized the soul. The same two--the wind and I
+were still suspected. . . . Which of the two was making love to her
+she did not know, but apparently by now she did not care; from which
+goblet one drinks matters little if only the beverage is intoxicating.
+
+It happened I went to the skating-ground alone at midday; mingling
+with the crowd I saw Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look about
+for me . . . then she timidly mounted the steps. . . . She was
+frightened of going alone--oh, how frightened! She was white as
+the snow, she was trembling, she went as though to the scaffold,
+but she went, she went without looking back, resolutely. She had
+evidently determined to put it to the test at last: would those
+sweet amazing words be heard when I was not there? I saw her, pale,
+her lips parted with horror, get into the sledge, shut her eyes and
+saying good-bye for ever to the earth, set off. . . . "Whrrr!"
+whirred the runners. Whether Nadenka heard those words I do not
+know. I only saw her getting up from the sledge looking faint and
+exhausted. And one could tell from her face that she could not tell
+herself whether she had heard anything or not. Her terror while she
+had been flying down had deprived of her all power of hearing, of
+discriminating sounds, of understanding.
+
+But then the month of March arrived . . . the spring sunshine was
+more kindly. . . . Our ice-hill turned dark, lost its brilliance
+and finally melted. We gave up tobogganning. There was nowhere now
+where poor Nadenka could hear those words, and indeed no one to
+utter them, since there was no wind and I was going to
+Petersburg--for long, perhaps for ever.
+
+It happened two days before my departure I was sitting in the dusk
+in the little garden which was separated from the yard of Nadenka's
+house by a high fence with nails in it. . . . It was still pretty
+cold, there was still snow by the manure heap, the trees looked
+dead but there was already the scent of spring and the rooks were
+cawing loudly as they settled for their night's rest. I went up to
+the fence and stood for a long while peeping through a chink. I saw
+Nadenka come out into the porch and fix a mournful yearning gaze
+on the sky. . . . The spring wind was blowing straight into her
+pale dejected face. . . . It reminded her of the wind which roared
+at us on the ice-hill when she heard those four words, and her face
+became very, very sorrowful, a tear trickled down her cheek, and
+the poor child held out both arms as though begging the wind to
+bring her those words once more. And waiting for the wind I said
+in a low voice:
+
+"I love you, Nadya!"
+
+Mercy! The change that came over Nadenka! She uttered a cry, smiled
+all over her face and looking joyful, happy and beautiful, held out
+her arms to meet the wind.
+
+And I went off to pack up. . . .
+
+That was long ago. Now Nadenka is married; she married--whether
+of her own choice or not does not matter--a secretary of the
+Nobility Wardenship and now she has three children. That we once
+went tobogganning together, and that the wind brought her the words
+"I love you, Nadenka," is not forgotten; it is for her now the
+happiest, most touching, and beautiful memory in her life. . . .
+
+But now that I am older I cannot understand why I uttered those
+words, what was my motive in that joke. . . .
+
+
+A COUNTRY COTTAGE
+
+Two young people who had not long been married were walking up and
+down the platform of a little country station. His arm was round
+her waist, her head was almost on his shoulder, and both were happy.
+
+The moon peeped up from the drifting cloudlets and frowned, as it
+seemed, envying their happiness and regretting her tedious and
+utterly superfluous virginity. The still air was heavy with the
+fragrance of lilac and wild cherry. Somewhere in the distance beyond
+the line a corncrake was calling.
+
+"How beautiful it is, Sasha, how beautiful!" murmured the young
+wife. "It all seems like a dream. See, how sweet and inviting that
+little copse looks! How nice those solid, silent telegraph posts
+are! They add a special note to the landscape, suggesting humanity,
+civilization in the distance. . . . Don't you think it's lovely
+when the wind brings the rushing sound of a train?"
+
+"Yes. . . . But what hot little hands you've got. . . That's because
+you're excited, Varya. . . . What have you got for our supper
+to-night?"
+
+"Chicken and salad. . . . It's a chicken just big enough for two
+. . . . Then there is the salmon and sardines that were sent from
+town."
+
+The moon as though she had taken a pinch of snuff hid her face
+behind a cloud. Human happiness reminded her of her own loneliness,
+of her solitary couch beyond the hills and dales.
+
+"The train is coming!" said Varya, "how jolly!"
+
+Three eyes of fire could be seen in the distance. The stationmaster
+came out on the platform. Signal lights flashed here and there on
+the line.
+
+"Let's see the train in and go home," said Sasha, yawning. "What a
+splendid time we are having together, Varya, it's so splendid, one
+can hardly believe it's true!"
+
+The dark monster crept noiselessly alongside the platform and came
+to a standstill. They caught glimpses of sleepy faces, of hats and
+shoulders at the dimly lighted windows.
+
+"Look! look!" they heard from one of the carriages. "Varya and Sasha
+have come to meet us! There they are! . . . Varya! . . . Varya. . . .
+Look!"
+
+Two little girls skipped out of the train and hung on Varya's neck.
+They were followed by a stout, middle-aged lady, and a tall, lanky
+gentleman with grey whiskers; behind them came two schoolboys, laden
+with bags, and after the schoolboys, the governess, after the
+governess the grandmother.
+
+"Here we are, here we are, dear boy!" began the whiskered gentleman,
+squeezing Sasha's hand. "Sick of waiting for us, I expect! You have
+been pitching into your old uncle for not coming down all this time,
+I daresay! Kolya, Kostya, Nina, Fifa . . . children! Kiss your
+cousin Sasha! We're all here, the whole troop of us, just for three
+or four days. . . . I hope we shan't be too many for you? You mustn't
+let us put you out!"
+
+At the sight of their uncle and his family, the young couple were
+horror-stricken. While his uncle talked and kissed them, Sasha had
+a vision of their little cottage: he and Varya giving up their three
+little rooms, all the pillows and bedding to their guests; the
+salmon, the sardines, the chicken all devoured in a single instant;
+the cousins plucking the flowers in their little garden, spilling
+the ink, filled the cottage with noise and confusion; his aunt
+talking continually about her ailments and her papa's having been
+Baron von Fintich. . . .
+
+And Sasha looked almost with hatred at his young wife, and whispered:
+
+"It's you they've come to see! . . . Damn them!"
+
+"No, it's you," answered Varya, pale with anger. "They're your
+relations! they're not mine!"
+
+And turning to her visitors, she said with a smile of welcome:
+"Welcome to the cottage!"
+
+The moon came out again. She seemed to smile, as though she were
+glad she had no relations. Sasha, turning his head away to hide his
+angry despairing face, struggled to give a note of cordial welcome
+to his voice as he said:
+
+"It is jolly of you! Welcome to the cottage!"
+
+
+A BLUNDER
+
+ILYA SERGEITCH PEPLOV and his wife Kleopatra Petrovna were standing
+at the door, listening greedily. On the other side in the little
+drawing-room a love scene was apparently taking place between two
+persons: their daughter Natashenka and a teacher of the district
+school, called Shchupkin.
+
+"He's rising!" whispered Peplov, quivering with impatience and
+rubbing his hands. "Now, Kleopatra, mind; as soon as they begin
+talking of their feelings, take down the ikon from the wall and
+we'll go in and bless them. . . . We'll catch him. . . . A blessing
+with an ikon is sacred and binding. . . He couldn't get out of it,
+if he brought it into court."
+
+On the other side of the door this was the conversation:
+
+"Don't go on like that!" said Shchupkin, striking a match against
+his checked trousers. "I never wrote you any letters!"
+
+"I like that! As though I didn't know your writing!" giggled the
+girl with an affected shriek, continually peeping at herself in the
+glass. "I knew it at once! And what a queer man you are! You are a
+writing master, and you write like a spider! How can you teach
+writing if you write so badly yourself?"
+
+"H'm! . . . That means nothing. The great thing in writing lessons
+is not the hand one writes, but keeping the boys in order. You hit
+one on the head with a ruler, make another kneel down. . . . Besides,
+there's nothing in handwriting! Nekrassov was an author, but his
+handwriting's a disgrace, there's a specimen of it in his collected
+works."
+
+"You are not Nekrassov. . . ." (A sigh). "I should love to marry
+an author. He'd always be writing poems to me."
+
+"I can write you a poem, too, if you like."
+
+"What can you write about?"
+
+"Love--passion--your eyes. You'll be crazy when you read it.
+It would draw a tear from a stone! And if I write you a real poem,
+will you let me kiss your hand?"
+
+"That's nothing much! You can kiss it now if you like."
+
+Shchupkin jumped up, and making sheepish eyes, bent over the fat
+little hand that smelt of egg soap.
+
+"Take down the ikon," Peplov whispered in a fluster, pale with
+excitement, and buttoning his coat as he prodded his wife with his
+elbow. "Come along, now!"
+
+And without a second's delay Peplov flung open the door.
+
+"Children," he muttered, lifting up his arms and blinking tearfully,
+"the Lord bless you, my children. May you live--be fruitful--and
+multiply."
+
+"And--and I bless you, too," the mamma brought out, crying with
+happiness. "May you be happy, my dear ones! Oh, you are taking from
+me my only treasure!" she said to Shchupkin. "Love my girl, be good
+to her. . . ."
+
+Shchupkin's mouth fell open with amazement and alarm. The parents'
+attack was so bold and unexpected that he could not utter a single
+word.
+
+"I'm in for it! I'm spliced!" he thought, going limp with horror.
+"It's all over with you now, my boy! There's no escape!"
+
+And he bowed his head submissively, as though to say, "Take me, I'm
+vanquished."
+
+"Ble-blessings on you," the papa went on, and he, too, shed tears.
+"Natashenka, my daughter, stand by his side. Kleopatra, give me the
+ikon."
+
+But at this point the father suddenly left off weeping, and his
+face was contorted with anger.
+
+"You ninny!" he said angrily to his wife. "You are an idiot! Is
+that the ikon?"
+
+"Ach, saints alive!"
+
+What had happened? The writing master raised himself and saw that
+he was saved; in her flutter the mamma had snatched from the wall
+the portrait of Lazhetchnikov, the author, in mistake for the ikon.
+Old Peplov and his wife stood disconcerted in the middle of the
+room, holding the portrait aloft, not knowing what to do or what
+to say. The writing master took advantage of the general confusion
+and slipped away.
+
+
+FAT AND THIN
+
+Two friends--one a fat man and the other a thin man--met at the
+Nikolaevsky station. The fat man had just dined in the station and
+his greasy lips shone like ripe cherries. He smelt of sherry and
+_fleur d'orange_. The thin man had just slipped out of the train
+and was laden with portmanteaus, bundles, and bandboxes. He smelt
+of ham and coffee grounds. A thin woman with a long chin, his wife,
+and a tall schoolboy with one eye screwed up came into view behind
+his back.
+
+"Porfiry," cried the fat man on seeing the thin man. "Is it you?
+My dear fellow! How many summers, how many winters!"
+
+"Holy saints!" cried the thin man in amazement. "Misha! The friend
+of my childhood! Where have you dropped from?"
+
+The friends kissed each other three times, and gazed at each other
+with eyes full of tears. Both were agreeably astounded.
+
+"My dear boy!" began the thin man after the kissing. "This is
+unexpected! This is a surprise! Come have a good look at me! Just
+as handsome as I used to be! Just as great a darling and a dandy!
+Good gracious me! Well, and how are you? Made your fortune? Married?
+I am married as you see. . . . This is my wife Luise, her maiden
+name was Vantsenbach . . . of the Lutheran persuasion. . . . And
+this is my son Nafanail, a schoolboy in the third class. This is
+the friend of my childhood, Nafanya. We were boys at school together!"
+
+Nafanail thought a little and took off his cap.
+
+"We were boys at school together," the thin man went on. "Do you
+remember how they used to tease you? You were nicknamed Herostratus
+because you burned a hole in a schoolbook with a cigarette, and I
+was nicknamed Ephialtes because I was fond of telling tales. Ho--ho!
+. . . we were children! . . . Don't be shy, Nafanya. Go nearer to
+him. And this is my wife, her maiden name was Vantsenbach, of the
+Lutheran persuasion. . . ."
+
+Nafanail thought a little and took refuge behind his father's back.
+
+"Well, how are you doing my friend?" the fat man asked, looking
+enthusiastically at his friend. "Are you in the service? What grade
+have you reached?"
+
+"I am, dear boy! I have been a collegiate assessor for the last two
+years and I have the Stanislav. The salary is poor, but that's no
+great matter! The wife gives music lessons, and I go in for carving
+wooden cigarette cases in a private way. Capital cigarette cases!
+I sell them for a rouble each. If any one takes ten or more I make
+a reduction of course. We get along somehow. I served as a clerk,
+you know, and now I have been transferred here as a head clerk in
+the same department. I am going to serve here. And what about you?
+I bet you are a civil councillor by now? Eh?"
+
+"No dear boy, go higher than that," said the fat man. "I have risen
+to privy councillor already . . . I have two stars."
+
+The thin man turned pale and rigid all at once, but soon his face
+twisted in all directions in the broadest smile; it seemed as though
+sparks were flashing from his face and eyes. He squirmed, he doubled
+together, crumpled up. . . . His portmanteaus, bundles and cardboard
+boxes seemed to shrink and crumple up too. . . . His wife's long
+chin grew longer still; Nafanail drew himself up to attention and
+fastened all the buttons of his uniform.
+
+"Your Excellency, I . . . delighted! The friend, one may say, of
+childhood and to have turned into such a great man! He--he!"
+
+"Come, come!" the fat man frowned. "What's this tone for? You and
+I were friends as boys, and there is no need of this official
+obsequiousness!"
+
+"Merciful heavens, your Excellency! What are you saying. . . ?"
+sniggered the thin man, wriggling more than ever. "Your Excellency's
+gracious attention is like refreshing manna. . . . This, your
+Excellency, is my son Nafanail, . . . my wife Luise, a Lutheran in
+a certain sense."
+
+The fat man was about to make some protest, but the face of the
+thin man wore an expression of such reverence, sugariness, and
+mawkish respectfulness that the privy councillor was sickened. He
+turned away from the thin man, giving him his hand at parting.
+
+The thin man pressed three fingers, bowed his whole body and sniggered
+like a Chinaman: "He--he--he!" His wife smiled. Nafanail scraped
+with his foot and dropped his cap. All three were agreeably
+overwhelmed.
+
+
+THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK
+
+ONE fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called Ivan
+Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls,
+gazing through an opera glass at the _Cloches de Corneville_. He
+gazed and felt at the acme of bliss. But suddenly. . . . In stories
+one so often meets with this "But suddenly." The authors are right:
+life is so full of surprises! But suddenly his face puckered up,
+his eyes disappeared, his breathing was arrested . . . he took the
+opera glass from his eyes, bent over and . . . "Aptchee!!" he sneezed
+as you perceive. It is not reprehensible for anyone to sneeze
+anywhere. Peasants sneeze and so do police superintendents, and
+sometimes even privy councillors. All men sneeze. Tchervyakov was
+not in the least confused, he wiped his face with his handkerchief,
+and like a polite man, looked round to see whether he had disturbed
+any one by his sneezing. But then he was overcome with confusion.
+He saw that an old gentleman sitting in front of him in the first
+row of the stalls was carefully wiping his bald head and his neck
+with his glove and muttering something to himself. In the old
+gentleman, Tchervyakov recognised Brizzhalov, a civilian general
+serving in the Department of Transport.
+
+"I have spattered him," thought Tchervyakov, "he is not the head
+of my department, but still it is awkward. I must apologise."
+
+Tchervyakov gave a cough, bent his whole person forward, and whispered
+in the general's ear.
+
+"Pardon, your Excellency, I spattered you accidentally. . . ."
+
+"Never mind, never mind."
+
+"For goodness sake excuse me, I . . . I did not mean to."
+
+"Oh, please, sit down! let me listen!"
+
+Tchervyakov was embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazing
+at the stage. He gazed at it but was no longer feeling bliss. He
+began to be troubled by uneasiness. In the interval, he went up to
+Brizzhalov, walked beside him, and overcoming his shyness, muttered:
+
+"I spattered you, your Excellency, forgive me . . . you see . . .
+I didn't do it to . . . ."
+
+"Oh, that's enough . . . I'd forgotten it, and you keep on about
+it!" said the general, moving his lower lip impatiently.
+
+"He has forgotten, but there is a fiendish light in his eye," thought
+Tchervyakov, looking suspiciously at the general. "And he doesn't
+want to talk. I ought to explain to him . . . that I really didn't
+intend . . . that it is the law of nature or else he will think I
+meant to spit on him. He doesn't think so now, but he will think
+so later!"
+
+On getting home, Tchervyakov told his wife of his breach of good
+manners. It struck him that his wife took too frivolous a view of
+the incident; she was a little frightened, but when she learned
+that Brizzhalov was in a different department, she was reassured.
+
+"Still, you had better go and apologise," she said, "or he will
+think you don't know how to behave in public."
+
+"That's just it! I did apologise, but he took it somehow queerly
+. . . he didn't say a word of sense. There wasn't time to talk
+properly."
+
+Next day Tchervyakov put on a new uniform, had his hair cut and
+went to Brizzhalov's to explain; going into the general's reception
+room he saw there a number of petitioners and among them the general
+himself, who was beginning to interview them. After questioning
+several petitioners the general raised his eyes and looked at
+Tchervyakov.
+
+"Yesterday at the _Arcadia_, if you recollect, your Excellency,"
+the latter began, "I sneezed and . . . accidentally spattered . . .
+Exc. . . ."
+
+"What nonsense. . . . It's beyond anything! What can I do for you,"
+said the general addressing the next petitioner.
+
+"He won't speak," thought Tchervyakov, turning pale; "that means
+that he is angry. . . . No, it can't be left like this. . . . I
+will explain to him."
+
+When the general had finished his conversation with the last of the
+petitioners and was turning towards his inner apartments, Tchervyakov
+took a step towards him and muttered:
+
+"Your Excellency! If I venture to trouble your Excellency, it is
+simply from a feeling I may say of regret! . . . It was not intentional
+if you will graciously believe me."
+
+The general made a lachrymose face, and waved his hand.
+
+"Why, you are simply making fun of me, sir," he said as he closed
+the door behind him.
+
+"Where's the making fun in it?" thought Tchervyakov, "there is
+nothing of the sort! He is a general, but he can't understand. If
+that is how it is I am not going to apologise to that _fanfaron_
+any more! The devil take him. I'll write a letter to him, but I
+won't go. By Jove, I won't."
+
+So thought Tchervyakov as he walked home; he did not write a letter
+to the general, he pondered and pondered and could not make up that
+letter. He had to go next day to explain in person.
+
+"I ventured to disturb your Excellency yesterday," he muttered,
+when the general lifted enquiring eyes upon him, "not to make fun
+as you were pleased to say. I was apologising for having spattered
+you in sneezing. . . . And I did not dream of making fun of you.
+Should I dare to make fun of you, if we should take to making fun,
+then there would be no respect for persons, there would be. . . ."
+
+"Be off!" yelled the general, turning suddenly purple, and shaking
+all over.
+
+"What?" asked Tchervyakov, in a whisper turning numb with horror.
+
+"Be off!" repeated the general, stamping.
+
+Something seemed to give way in Tchervyakov's stomach. Seeing nothing
+and hearing nothing he reeled to the door, went out into the street,
+and went staggering along. . . . Reaching home mechanically, without
+taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and died.
+
+
+A PINK STOCKING
+
+A DULL, rainy day. The sky is completely covered with heavy clouds,
+and there is no prospect of the rain ceasing. Outside sleet, puddles,
+and drenched jackdaws. Indoors it is half dark, and so cold that
+one wants the stove heated.
+
+Pavel Petrovitch Somov is pacing up and down his study, grumbling
+at the weather. The tears of rain on the windows and the darkness
+of the room make him depressed. He is insufferably bored and has
+nothing to do. . . . The newspapers have not been brought yet;
+shooting is out of the question, and it is not nearly dinner-time
+. . . .
+
+Somov is not alone in his study. Madame Somov, a pretty little lady
+in a light blouse and pink stockings, is sitting at his writing
+table. She is eagerly scribbling a letter. Every time he passes her
+as he strides up and down, Ivan Petrovitch looks over her shoulder
+at what she is writing. He sees big sprawling letters, thin and
+narrow, with all sorts of tails and flourishes. There are numbers
+of blots, smears, and finger-marks. Madame Somov does not like ruled
+paper, and every line runs downhill with horrid wriggles as it
+reaches the margin. . . .
+
+"Lidotchka, who is it you are writing such a lot to?" Somov inquires,
+seeing that his wife is just beginning to scribble the sixth page.
+
+"To sister Varya."
+
+"Hm . . . it's a long letter! I'm so bored--let me read it!"
+
+"Here, you may read it, but there's nothing interesting in it."
+
+Somov takes the written pages and, still pacing up and down, begins
+reading. Lidotchka leans her elbows on the back of her chair and
+watches the expression of his face. . . . After the first page his
+face lengthens and an expression of something almost like panic
+comes into it. . . . At the third page Somov frowns and scratches
+the back of his head. At the fourth he pauses, looks with a scared
+face at his wife, and seems to ponder. After thinking a little, he
+takes up the letter again with a sigh. . . . His face betrays
+perplexity and even alarm. . . ."
+
+"Well, this is beyond anything!" he mutters, as he finishes reading
+the letter and flings the sheets on the table, "It's positively
+incredible!"
+
+"What's the matter?" asks Lidotchka, flustered.
+
+"What's the matter! You've covered six pages, wasted a good two
+hours scribbling, and there's nothing in it at all! If there were
+one tiny idea! One reads on and on, and one's brain is as muddled
+as though one were deciphering the Chinese wriggles on tea chests!
+Ough!"
+
+"Yes, that's true, Vanya, . . ." says Lidotchka, reddening. "I wrote
+it carelessly. . . ."
+
+"Queer sort of carelessness! In a careless letter there is some
+meaning and style--there is sense in it--while yours . . .
+excuse me, but I don't know what to call it! It's absolute twaddle!
+There are words and sentences, but not the slightest sense in them.
+Your whole letter is exactly like the conversation of two boys: 'We
+had pancakes to-day! And we had a soldier come to see us!' You say
+the same thing over and over again! You drag it out, repeat yourself
+. . . . The wretched ideas dance about like devils: there's no making
+out where anything begins, where anything ends. . . . How can you
+write like that?"
+
+"If I had been writing carefully," Lidotchka says in self defence,
+"then there would not have been mistakes. . . ."
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking about mistakes! The awful grammatical howlers!
+There's not a line that's not a personal insult to grammar! No stops
+nor commas--and the spelling . . . brrr! 'Earth' has an _a_ in
+it!! And the writing! It's desperate! I'm not joking, Lida. . . .
+I'm surprised and appalled at your letter. . . . You mustn't be
+angry, darling, but, really, I had no idea you were such a duffer
+at grammar. . . . And yet you belong to a cultivated, well-educated
+circle: you are the wife of a University man, and the daughter of
+a general! Tell me, did you ever go to school?"
+
+"What next! I finished at the Von Mebke's boarding school. . . ."
+
+Somov shrugs his shoulders and continues to pace up and down,
+sighing. Lidotchka, conscious of her ignorance and ashamed of it,
+sighs too and casts down her eyes. . . . Ten minutes pass in silence.
+
+"You know, Lidotchka, it really is awful!" says Somov, suddenly
+halting in front of her and looking into her face with horror. "You
+are a mother . . . do you understand? A mother! How can you teach
+your children if you know nothing yourself? You have a good brain,
+but what's the use of it if you have never mastered the very rudiments
+of knowledge? There--never mind about knowledge . . . the children
+will get that at school, but, you know, you are very shaky on the
+moral side too! You sometimes use such language that it makes my
+ears tingle!"
+
+Somov shrugs his shoulders again, wraps himself in the folds of his
+dressing-gown and continues his pacing. . . . He feels vexed and
+injured, and at the same time sorry for Lidotchka, who does not
+protest, but merely blinks. . . . Both feel oppressed and miserable
+. . . . Absorbed in their woes, they do not notice how time is passing
+and the dinner hour is approaching.
+
+Sitting down to dinner, Somov, who is fond of good eating and of
+eating in peace, drinks a large glass of vodka and begins talking
+about something else. Lidotchka listens and assents, but suddenly
+over the soup her eyes fill with tears and she begins whimpering.
+
+"It's all mother's fault!" she says, wiping away her tears with her
+dinner napkin. "Everyone advised her to send me to the high school,
+and from the high school I should have been sure to go on to the
+University!"
+
+"University . . . high school," mutters Somov. "That's running to
+extremes, my girl! What's the good of being a blue stocking! A blue
+stocking is the very deuce! Neither man nor woman, but just something
+midway: neither one thing nor another. . . I hate blue stockings!
+I would never have married a learned woman. . . ."
+
+"There's no making you out . . .", says Lidotchka. "You are angry
+because I am not learned, and at the same time you hate learned
+women; you are annoyed because I have no ideas in my letter, and
+yet you yourself are opposed to my studying. . . ."
+
+"You do catch me up at a word, my dear," yawns Somov, pouring out
+a second glass of vodka in his boredom.
+
+Under the influence of vodka and a good dinner, Somov grows more
+good-humoured, lively, and soft. . . . He watches his pretty wife
+making the salad with an anxious face and a rush of affection for
+her, of indulgence and forgiveness comes over him.
+
+"It was stupid of me to depress her, poor girl . . . ," he thought.
+"Why did I say such a lot of dreadful things? She is silly, that's
+true, uncivilised and narrow; but . . . there are two sides to the
+question, and _audiatur et altera pars_. . . . Perhaps people are
+perfectly right when they say that woman's shallowness rests on her
+very vocation. Granted that it is her vocation to love her husband,
+to bear children, and to mix salad, what the devil does she want
+with learning? No, indeed!"
+
+At that point he remembers that learned women are usually tedious,
+that they are exacting, strict, and unyielding; and, on the other
+hand, how easy it is to get on with silly Lidotchka, who never pokes
+her nose into anything, does not understand so much, and never
+obtrudes her criticism. There is peace and comfort with Lidotchka,
+and no risk of being interfered with.
+
+"Confound them, those clever and learned women! It's better and
+easier to live with simple ones," he thinks, as he takes a plate
+of chicken from Lidotchka.
+
+He recollects that a civilised man sometimes feels a desire to talk
+and share his thoughts with a clever and well-educated woman. "What
+of it?" thinks Somov. "If I want to talk of intellectual subjects,
+I'll go to Natalya Andreyevna . . . or to Marya Frantsovna. . . .
+It's very simple! But no, I shan't go. One can discuss intellectual
+subjects with men," he finally decides.
+
+
+AT A SUMMER VILLA
+
+"I LOVE YOU. You are my life, my happiness--everything to me! Forgive
+the avowal, but I have not the strength to suffer and be silent. I
+ask not for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbour
+at eight o'clock this evening. . . . To sign my name is unnecessary
+I think, but do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young,
+nice-looking . . . what more do you want?"
+
+When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who was
+spending his holidays at a summer villa, read this letter, he
+shrugged his shoulders and scratched his forehead in perplexity.
+
+"What devilry is this?" he thought. "I'm a married man, and to send
+me such a queer . . . silly letter! Who wrote it?"
+
+Pavel Ivanitch turned the letter over and over before his eyes,
+read it through again, and spat with disgust.
+
+"'I love you'" . . . he said jeeringly. "A nice boy she has pitched
+on! So I'm to run off to meet you in the arbour! . . . I got over
+all such romances and _fleurs d'amour_ years ago, my girl. . . .
+Hm! She must be some reckless, immoral creature. . . . Well, these
+women are a set! What a whirligig--God forgive us!--she must be to
+write a letter like that to a stranger, and a married man, too!
+It's real demoralisation!"
+
+In the course of his eight years of married life Pavel Ivanitch had
+completely got over all sentimental feeling, and he had received
+no letters from ladies except letters of congratulation, and so,
+although he tried to carry it off with disdain, the letter quoted
+above greatly intrigued and agitated him.
+
+An hour after receiving it, he was lying on his sofa, thinking:
+
+"Of course I am not a silly boy, and I am not going to rush off to
+this idiotic rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to know
+who wrote it! Hm. . . . It is certainly a woman's writing. . . .
+The letter is written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardly
+be a joke. . . . Most likely it's some neurotic girl, or perhaps a
+widow . . . widows are frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm. . . .
+Who could it be?"
+
+What made it the more difficult to decide the question was that
+Pavel Ivanitch had not one feminine acquaintance among all the
+summer visitors, except his wife.
+
+"It is queer . . ." he mused. "'I love you!'. . . When did she
+manage to fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this,
+apropos of nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding out
+what sort of man I am. . . . She must be extremely young and romantic
+if she is capable of falling in love after two or three looks at
+me. . . . But . . . who is she?"
+
+Pavel Ivanitch suddenly recalled that when he had been walking among
+the summer villas the day before, and the day before that, he had
+several times been met by a fair young lady with a light blue hat
+and a turn-up nose. The fair charmer had kept looking at him, and
+when he sat down on a seat she had sat down beside him. . . .
+
+"Can it be she?" Vyhodtsev wondered. "It can't be! Could a delicate
+ephemeral creature like that fall in love with a worn-out old eel
+like me? No, it's impossible!"
+
+At dinner Pavel Ivanitch looked blankly at his wife while he
+meditated:
+
+"She writes that she is young and nice-looking. . . . So she's not
+old. . . . Hm. . . . To tell the truth, honestly I am not so old
+and plain that no one could fall in love with me. My wife loves me!
+Besides, love is blind, we all know. . . ."
+
+"What are you thinking about?" his wife asked him.
+
+"Oh. . . my head aches a little. . ." Pavel Ivanitch said, quite
+untruly.
+
+He made up his mind that it was stupid to pay attention to such a
+nonsensical thing as a love-letter, and laughed at it and at its
+authoress, but--alas!--powerful is the "dacha" enemy of mankind!
+After dinner, Pavel Ivanitch lay down on his bed, and instead of
+going to sleep, reflected:
+
+"But there, I daresay she is expecting me to come! What a silly! I
+can just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her
+_tournure_ will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I
+shan't go, though. . . . Bother her!"
+
+But, I repeat, powerful is the enemy of mankind.
+
+"Though I might, perhaps, just out of curiosity . . ." he was musing,
+half an hour later. "I might go and look from a distance what sort
+of a creature she is. . . . It would be interesting to have a look
+at her! It would be fun, and that's all! After all, why shouldn't
+I have a little fun since such a chance has turned up?"
+
+Pavel Ivanitch got up from his bed and began dressing. "What are
+you getting yourself up so smartly for?" his wife asked, noticing
+that he was putting on a clean shirt and a fashionable tie.
+
+"Oh, nothing. . . . I must have a walk. . . . My head aches. . . .
+Hm."
+
+Pavel Ivanitch dressed in his best, and waiting till eight o'clock,
+went out of the house. When the figures of gaily dressed summer
+visitors of both sexes began passing before his eyes against the
+bright green background, his heart throbbed.
+
+"Which of them is it? . . ." he wondered, advancing irresolutely.
+"Come, what am I afraid of? Why, I am not going to the rendezvous!
+What . . . a fool! Go forward boldly! And what if I go into the
+arbour? Well, well . . . there is no reason I should."
+
+Pavel Ivanitch's heart beat still more violently. . . . Involuntarily,
+with no desire to do so, he suddenly pictured to himself the
+half-darkness of the arbour. . . . A graceful fair girl with a
+little blue hat and a turn-up nose rose before his imagination. He
+saw her, abashed by her love and trembling all over, timidly approach
+him, breathing excitedly, and . . . suddenly clasping him in her
+arms.
+
+"If I weren't married it would be all right . . ." he mused, driving
+sinful ideas out of his head. "Though . . . for once in my life,
+it would do no harm to have the experience, or else one will die
+without knowing what. . . . And my wife, what will it matter to
+her? Thank God, for eight years I've never moved one step away from
+her. . . . Eight years of irreproachable duty! Enough of her. . . .
+It's positively vexatious. . . . I'm ready to go to spite her!"
+
+Trembling all over and holding his breath, Pavel Ivanitch went up
+to the arbour, wreathed with ivy and wild vine, and peeped into it
+. . . . A smell of dampness and mildew reached him. . . .
+
+"I believe there's nobody . . ." he thought, going into the arbour,
+and at once saw a human silhouette in the corner.
+
+The silhouette was that of a man. . . . Looking more closely, Pavel
+Ivanitch recognised his wife's brother, Mitya, a student, who was
+staying with them at the villa.
+
+"Oh, it's you . . ." he growled discontentedly, as he took off his
+hat and sat down.
+
+"Yes, it's I" . . . answered Mitya.
+
+Two minutes passed in silence.
+
+"Excuse me, Pavel Ivanitch," began Mitya: "but might I ask you to
+leave me alone?? . . . I am thinking over the dissertation for my
+degree and . . . and the presence of anybody else prevents my
+thinking."
+
+"You had better go somewhere in a dark avenue. . ." Pavel Ivanitch
+observed mildly. "It's easier to think in the open air, and, besides,
+. . . er . . . I should like to have a little sleep here on this
+seat. . . It's not so hot here. . . ."
+
+"You want to sleep, but it's a question of my dissertation . . ."
+Mitya grumbled. "The dissertation is more important."
+
+Again there was a silence. Pavel Ivanitch, who had given the rein
+to his imagination and was continually hearing footsteps, suddenly
+leaped up and said in a plaintive voice:
+
+"Come, I beg you, Mitya! You are younger and ought to consider me
+. . . . I am unwell and . . . I need sleep. . . . Go away!"
+
+"That's egoism. . . . Why must you be here and not I? I won't go
+as a matter of principle."
+
+"Come, I ask you to! Suppose I am an egoist, a despot and a fool
+. . . but I ask you to go! For once in my life I ask you a favour!
+Show some consideration!"
+
+Mitya shook his head.
+
+"What a beast! . . ." thought Pavel Ivanitch. "That can't be a
+rendezvous with him here! It's impossible with him here!"
+
+"I say, Mitya," he said, "I ask you for the last time. . . . Show
+that you are a sensible, humane, and cultivated man!"
+
+"I don't know why you keep on so!" . . . said Mitya, shrugging his
+shoulders. "I've said I won't go, and I won't. I shall stay here
+as a matter of principle. . . ."
+
+At that moment a woman's face with a turn-up nose peeped into the
+arbour. . . .
+
+Seeing Mitya and Pavel Ivanitch, it frowned and vanished.
+
+"She is gone!" thought Pavel Ivanitch, looking angrily at Mitya.
+"She saw that blackguard and fled! It's all spoilt!"
+
+After waiting a little longer, he got up, put on his hat and said:
+
+"You're a beast, a low brute and a blackguard! Yes! A beast! It's
+mean . . . and silly! Everything is at an end between us!"
+
+"Delighted to hear it!" muttered Mitya, also getting up and putting
+on his hat. "Let me tell you that by being here just now you've
+played me such a dirty trick that I'll never forgive you as long
+as I live."
+
+Pavel Ivanitch went out of the arbour, and beside himself with rage,
+strode rapidly to his villa. Even the sight of the table laid for
+supper did not soothe him.
+
+"Once in a lifetime such a chance has turned up," he thought in
+agitation; "and then it's been prevented! Now she is offended . . .
+crushed!"
+
+At supper Pavel Ivanitch and Mitya kept their eyes on their plates
+and maintained a sullen silence. . . . They were hating each other
+from the bottom of their hearts.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" asked Pavel Ivanitch, pouncing on his
+wife. "It's only silly fools who laugh for nothing!"
+
+His wife looked at her husband's angry face, and went off into a
+peal of laughter.
+
+"What was that letter you got this morning?" she asked.
+
+"I? . . . I didn't get one. . . ." Pavel Ivanitch was overcome with
+confusion. "You are inventing . . . imagination."
+
+"Oh, come, tell us! Own up, you did! Why, it was I sent you that
+letter! Honour bright, I did! Ha ha!"
+
+Pavel Ivanitch turned crimson and bent over his plate. "Silly jokes,"
+he growled.
+
+"But what could I do? Tell me that. . . . We had to scrub the rooms
+out this evening, and how could we get you out of the house? There
+was no other way of getting you out. . . . But don't be angry,
+stupid. . . . I didn't want you to be dull in the arbour, so I sent
+the same letter to Mitya too! Mitya, have you been to the arbour?"
+
+Mitya grinned and left off glaring with hatred at his rival.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Love and Other Stories,
+by Anton Chekhov
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13414 ***