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The Shooting Party

by Anton Chekhov

translated by A. E. Chamot

published by Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd., 1926



Introduction

Chekhov's works have probably never enjoyed such a degree of
popularity in his own country as they do in England to-day. There is
an ever increasing demand for his admirable short stories, and his
plays, despite their gloomy and depressing character—so contrary to
all that English audiences require when they go to the theatre—have
attained great success and attracted large numbers of people to the
little theatre at Barnes, as well as to the West End houses where they
have been given.

Deeming that the time has now come when readers, who have shown so
much admiration for his works, would like to have a deeper insight
into the development of this remarkable genius, we are here offering,
for the first time in English, a translation of one of his early
works, which is perhaps his most ambitious effort—at least with regard
to length and to complexity of plot. “The Shooting Party” was written
in 1885, in the early and difficult period of Chekhov's life. While
still a student at the University, he found himself obliged to support
his family with his pen, and when he wrote this novel he was only
beginning to make his way to the forefront of literature.

Anton Chekhov was only sixteen years old when his father failed in the
business he had carried on for many years in Taganrog, and was obliged
to go to Moscow in search of employment. Shortly after his mother and
his younger brother and sister joined the father, and Anton was left
to complete his course of studies at the Taganrog Gymnasium. During
the three years he remained in Taganrog Anton lived as tutor in the
family of a Mr. Selivanov, who had bought the Chekhov's house at the
auction of their property. In 1879, having gone through all the
classes of the Gymnasium, Anton joined his family in Moscow, where he
entered the University to study medicine. At that time his father had
a small post in a merchant's office, and lived and was boarded in his
employer's house. Two of Chekhov's elder brothers had left the home
some years before, and Anton found himself at the head of the family,
which was in great straits. In order to help in its support every one
of the children did what they could. It was then that Anton Chekhov
began writing his short stories for a number of provincial newspapers
and magazines. These stories attracted general attention, and the
editors of the Press of the two capitals soon asked him to contribute
to their magazines also. The stories and sketches he wrote at that
time appeared above the _nom de plume_ of Antosha Tchekhonte, a
nickname that had been given him at school. They are chiefly of a
humorous character and mostly of an ephemeral nature, having been
dashed off in haste as potboilers. There is a marked difference
between these early works and the tales he wrote during the last
fifteen years of his short life.

In the year 1885 the first collection of Chekhov's tales appeared in
book form; it was followed by several other volumes of stories, and in
1899 Chekhov sold the copyright of all his works, that had already
been published or that he might yet write, to the publishing firm of
A. F. Marks. By the terms of the contract which he made with Marks he
ceded to them the exclusive rights of publishing his works in book
form, but he retained the right of first publishing in periodicals any
stories he might write in the future. He was then at the height of his
popularity, and all the best magazines and newspapers were eager to
obtain contributions from his pen.

A re-issue of Chekhov's complete works was also contemplated, subject
to the selection and revision of the author. This project was carried
out by Marks in an edition that formed eleven volumes. This edition
comprises all Chekhov's best works, selected by himself from the very
voluminous contributions he had made to the periodical Press during
the twenty years he had devoted his talents to literature, and this
collection may be looked upon as representing the works by which
Chekhov wished to be remembered. In the choice of the 240 novelettes
and stories that are comprised in these volumes the author evidently
applied very strict criticism, with the result that they are of an
astonishingly high and even standard of merit. The task of selection
was no easy one for the author, as his writings were so numerous, and
were scattered in many periodicals and newspapers. But few of the
early stories were included in these volumes. However, after his death
in 1904, there was a general demand for a more complete edition of his
works, and regrets were expressed that so many of his stories, written
in early life, were hidden away in old periodicals inaccessible to his
admirers. For this reason his publisher, A. F. Marks, decided to add
several supplementary volumes containing all that could be found of
the early writings of this popular author, to the already published
collected works. In a prefatory notice the editor of these volumes
says that the desire of having all that Chekhov had written was very
natural, as everything that had come from his pen was dear to his
friends, no matter at what time it had been written, nor however
critically the author, in his maturer years, might have looked upon
these works, as they show the development and the extraordinary growth
of his fine and subtle talent and his outlook on the world at various
periods of his life. Besides the desire to have everything Chekhov had
written there were also just grounds for thinking that, if he had not
been cut off so prematurely by death, he would himself have added the
greater number of these stories and sketches to his collected works.

In the opinion of the critics Chekhov's early works are also
“documents of Russian life collected by a great literary artist with
rare knowledge and care illuminated with conscious discernment and
thoughtful humour and exploring depths of human grief and suffering
that touch the heart of the reader profoundly. Besides it must be
added that in these forgotten tales there are many glimpses of the
real Chekhov qualities, of his poetic imagination, his meditative
sadness, his subtle spiritual nature and entirely truthful portrayal
of actualities.”

Three hundred and fifty tales are published in these supplementary
volumes. They vary in length from the novelette to mere sketches of
barely a page and they were all written between the years 1880 and
1888. Many of them had been carefully collected by Chekhov himself
with the assistance of his friends, the rest were unearthed by the
assiduity of the publishers. They are arranged as much as possible
chronologically and most of them are dated.

These youthful efforts of an author, who afterwards attained to such
world-wide popularity, are interesting as showing the development and
growth of his remarkable talents and the change of his method from the
light sketches written, for provincial newspapers and humorous
magazines to the stories he produced in his maturer years, and though
not equal in power to the latter, many of them are well worth reading.

Among these works there are several of considerable length, and “The
Shooting Party,” which we now offer to the English reader, has almost
the dimensions of a novel and it is more in the style of the sensation
novels of the time when it was written, than the episodic character of
Chekhov's later works, and though we find in it occasional awkward
blendings of conventional phraseology with snatches of brilliant
impressionism—one of the peculiar features of this work,—it already
shows many of the author's characteristics.

At that time Chekhov had been supplementing his slender income by
reporting law cases for the Press, and the insight he obtained into
the backwash of many a crime probably weighed on his mind until it
found expression in the present work, which is perhaps the blackest
indictment of the proceedings of Russian provincial Law Courts that
has ever been written. Besides these descriptions he gives us graphic
pictures of the looseness of provincial life in the heart of Russia
which is sad and hopeless in the extreme. The story is written in the
first person and the hero makes his confessions with a cynical
frankness which rivals that of Jean Jacques Rousseau himself. He is
supposed to be an examining magistrate, a functionary, who in Russia
performs the combined duties of a coroner and a magistrate; he it is
who is called upon to make the preliminary investigations of criminal
cases, and who draws up the first reports. Chekhov himself plays the
part of editor and offers his comments and reflections on the events
and on the manner in which they are described in footnotes signed with
his initials. The characters are drawn with much of the Chekhov touch
and, as in so many of his works, they are all more or less failures or
degenerates, and there is little of lighter elements to relieve the
tragic gloom, however the dramatic interest is well sustained
throughout and carries the reader on so that he is not likely to lay
the book aside before he reaches the end.

In this novel one notices here and there signs of inexperience in the
construction and the development of a plot, with all its intricacies,
a fact of which Chekhov seemed well aware, as in many of his letters
he mentions that he always felt difficulties assailing him when he
arrived at the middle of a long story, and thought he was only fit to
write short ones. It shows the development of his art, so unlike that
of the old masters of literature, who employed a large canvas and
filled in all the details in order to produce their effects, while his
style resembles rather that of the impressionists, who with a few bold
strokes bring out the salient points of what they wish to depict. We
find already short word-pictures of nature, that give the necessary
atmosphere, a few pregnant words, that denote the mood, while acts and
deeds express character without lengthy analysis and long
descriptions. The Shooting Party shows signs of the perfecting of his
technique and an increase of his power and for that reason it will be
a precious document for every student of Chekhov, one of the great
masters whose works did so much towards the evolution of the modern
short story.

      A. E. C.



Prelude

On an April day of the year 1880 the doorkeeper Andrey came into my
private room and told me in a mysterious whisper that a gentleman had
come to the editorial office and demanded insistently to see the
editor.

“He appears to be a chinovnik,”* Andrey added. “He has a
cockade. . . .”

   * A government official.

“Ask him to come another time,” I said, “I am busy to-day. Tell him
the editor only receives on Saturdays.”

“He was here the day before yesterday and asked for you. He says his
business is urgent. He begs, almost with tears in his eyes, to see
you. He says he is not free on Saturday. . . . Will you receive him?”

I sighed, laid down my pen, and settled myself in my chair to receive
the gentleman with the cockade. Young authors, and in general
everybody who is not initiated into the secrets of the profession, are
generally so overcome by holy awe at the words “editorial office” that
they make you wait a considerable time for them. After the editor's
“Show him in,” they cough and blow their noses for a long time, open
the door very slowly, come into the room still more slowly, and thus
rob you of no little time. The gentleman with the cockade did not make
me wait. The door had scarcely had time to close after Andrey before I
saw in my office a tall, broad-shouldered man holding a paper parcel
in one hand and a cap with a cockade in the other.

This man, who had succeeded in obtaining an interview with me, plays a
very prominent part in my story. It is necessary to describe his
appearance.

He was, as I have already said, tall and broad-shouldered and as
vigorous as a fine cart horse. His whole body seemed to exhale health
and strength. His face was rosy, his hands large, his chest broad and
as muscular as a strong boy's. He was over forty. He was dressed with
taste, according to the last fashion, in a new tweed suit, evidently
just come from the tailor's. A thick gold watch-chain with breloques
hung across his chest, and on his little finger a diamond ring
sparkled with brilliant tiny stars. But, what is most important, and
so essential to the hero of a novel or story, with the slightest
pretension to respectability, is that he was extremely handsome. I am
neither a woman nor an artist. I have but little understanding of
manly beauty, but the appearance of the gentleman with the cockade
made an impression on me. His large muscular face remained for ever
impressed on my memory. On that face you could see a real Greek nose
with a slight hook, thin lips and nice blue eyes from which shone
goodness and something else, for which it is difficult to find an
appropriate name. That “something” can be seen in the eyes of little
animals when they are sad or ill. Something imploring, childish,
resignedly suffering. . . . Cunning or very clever people never have
such eyes.

His whole face seemed to breathe candour, a broad, simple nature, and
truth. . . . If it be not a falsehood that the face is the mirror of
the soul, I could have sworn from the very first day of my
acquaintance with the gentleman with the cockade that he was unable to
lie. I might even have betted that he could not lie. Whether I should
have lost my bet or not, the reader will see further on.

His chestnut hair and beard were thick and soft as silk. It is often
said that soft hair is the sign of a sweet, sensitive, “silken” soul.
Criminals and wicked obstinate characters have, in most cases, harsh
hair. If this be true or not the reader will also see further on.
Neither the expression of his face, nor the softness of his beard was
as soft and delicate in this gentleman with the cockade as the
movements of his huge form. These movements seemed to denote
education, lightness, grace, and if you will forgive the expression,
something womanly. It would cause my hero but a slight effort to bend
a horseshoe or to flatten out a tin sardine box, with his fist and at
the same time not one of his movements showed his physical strength.
He took hold of the door handle or of his hat, as if they were
butterflies—delicately, carefully, hardly touching them with his
fingers. He walked noiselessly, he pressed my hand feebly. When
looking at him you forgot that he was as strong as Goliath, and that
he could lift with one hand weights that five men like our office
servant Andrey could not have moved. Looking at his light movements,
it was impossible to believe that he was strong and heavy. Spencer
might have called him a model of grace.

When he entered my office he became confused. His delicate, sensitive
nature was probably shocked by my frowning, dissatisfied face.

“For God's sake forgive me!” he began in a soft, mellow baritone
voice. “I have broken in upon you not at the appointed time, and I
have forced you to make an exception for me. You are very busy! But,
Mr. Editor, you see, this is how the case stands. To-morrow I must
start for Odessa on very important business. . . . If I had been able
to put off this journey till Saturday, I can assure you I would not
have asked you to make this exception for me. I submit to rules
because I love order. . . .”

“How much he talks!” I thought as I stretched out my hand towards the
pen, showing by this movement I was pressed for time. (I was terribly
bored by visitors just then.)

“I will only take up a moment of your time,” my hero continued in an
apologetic tone. “But first allow me to introduce myself. . . . Ivan
Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I
have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors,
nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of
a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man
who wishes to be a beginner. . . . Better late than never!”

“Very pleased. . . . What can I do for you?”

The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at
the floor with his imploring eyes:

“I have brought you a short story which I would like to see published
in your journal. Mr. Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not
written this story to attain an author's celebrity, nor for the sake
of sweet-sounding words. I am too old for these good things. I venture
on the writer's path from purely commercial motives. . . . I want to
earn something. . . . At the present moment I have absolutely no
occupation. I was a magistrate in the S—— district for more than five
years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence
either. . . .”

Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.

“Service is tiresome. . . . I served and served till I was quite fed
up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing
to eat. . . . If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story,
you will do me more than a great favour. . . . You will help me. . . .
A journal is not an alms-house, nor an old-age asylum. . . . I know
that, but . . . won't you be so kind. . . .”

“He is lying,” I thought.

The breloques and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his
having written for the sake of a piece of bread. Besides, a slight
cloud passed over Kamyshev's face such as only an experienced eye can
trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.

“What is the subject of your story?” I asked.

“The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new. . . . Love
and murder. . . . But read it, you will see. . . . ‘From the Notes of
an Examining Magistrate.’ . . .”

I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to
blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:

“My story is written in the conventional style of former examining
magistrates, but . . . you will find in it facts, the truth. . . .
All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my
eyes. . . . Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.”

“The truth does not matter. . . . It is not absolutely necessary to
see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor
readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky.* They
are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the
detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining
magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of
the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?”

   * A. A. Shklyarevsky was a well-known Russian author who wrote a
   number of novels and tales on criminal and detective subjects in
   the years 1860–80.—A. Ch.

“The Shooting Party.”

“Hm! . . . That's not serious, you know. . . . And, to be quite frank
with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite
impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.”

“Pray accept my work, . . . You say it is not serious, but . . . it
is difficult to give a title to a thing before you have seen it. . . .
Besides, is it possible you cannot admit that an examining magistrate
can write serious works?”

All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between
his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes
and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.

“All right, leave it,” I said. “But I can't promise that your story
will be read very soon. You will have to wait. . . .”

“How long?”

“I don't know. Look in . . . in about two to three months. . . .”

“That's pretty long. . . . But I dare not insist. . . . Let it be as
you say. . . .”

Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.

“Thank you for the audience,” he said. “I will now go home and dwell
in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the
honour to bid you good-bye!”

“One word more, please,” I said as I turned over the pages of his
thick copy-book, which were written in a very small handwriting. “You
write here in the first person. . . . You therefore mean the examining
magistrate to be yourself?”

“Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is
somewhat scandalous. . . . It would have been awkward to give my own
name. . . . In three months, then?”

“Yes, not earlier, please. . . . Good-bye!”

The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door
handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing
table. I took up the copy-book and put it away in the table drawer.

Handsome Kamyshev's story reposed in my table drawer for two months.
One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it
and took it with me.

When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copy-book and
began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same
evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story
from the beginning to the words “The End,” which were written with a
great flourish. That night I read the whole story through again, and
at sunrise I was walking about the terrace from corner to corner,
rubbing my temples as if I wanted to rub out of my head some new and
painful thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind. . . . The thoughts
were really painful, unbearably sharp. It appeared to me that I,
neither an examining magistrate nor even a psychological juryman, had
discovered the terrible secret of a man, a secret that did not concern
me in the slightest degree. I paced the terrace and tried to persuade
myself not to believe in my discovery. . . .

Kamyshev's story did not appear in my newspaper for reasons that I
will explain at the end of my talk with the reader. I shall meet the
reader once again. Now, when I am leaving him for a long time, I offer
Kamyshev's story for his perusal.

This story is not remarkable in any way. It has many lengthy passages
and many inequalities. . . . The author is too fond of effects and
strong expressions. . . . It is evident that he is writing for the
first time, his hand is unaccustomed, uneducated. Nevertheless his
narrative reads easily. There is a plot, a meaning, too, and what is
most important, it is original, very characteristic and what may be
called _sui generis_. It also possesses certain literary qualities. It
is worth reading. Here it is.



The Shooting Party

From the Notebook of an Examining Magistrate

I

“The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are! Give me some
sugar!”

These cries awoke me. I stretched myself, feeling indisposition and
heaviness in every limb. One can lie upon one's legs or arms until
they are numb, but now it seemed to me that my whole body, from the
crown of my head to the soles of my feet, was benumbed. An afternoon
snooze in a sultry, dry atmosphere amid the buzzing and humming of
flies and mosquitoes does not act in an invigorating manner but has an
enervating effect. Broken and bathed in perspiration, I rose and went
to the window. The sun was still high and baked with the same ardour
it had done three hours before. Many hours still remained until sunset
and the coolness of evening.

“The husband killed his wife!”

“Stop lying, Ivan Dem'yanych!” I said as I gave a slight tap to Ivan
Dem'yanych's nose. “Husbands kill their wives only in novels and in
the tropics, where African passions boil over, my dear. For us such
horrors as thefts and burglaries or people living on false passports
are quite enough.”

“Thefts and burglaries!” Ivan Dem'yanych murmured through his hooked
nose. “Oh, how stupid you are!”

“What's to be done, my dear? In what way are we mortals to blame for
our brain having its limits? Besides, Ivan Dem'yanych, it is no sin to
be a fool in such a temperature. You're my clever darling, but
doubtless your brain, too, gets addled and stupid in such heat.”

My parrot is not called Polly or by any other of the names given to
birds, but he is called Ivan Dem'yanych. He got this name quite by
chance. One day, when my man Polycarp was cleaning the cage, he
suddenly made a discovery without which my noble bird would still have
been called Polly. My lazy servant was suddenly blessed with the idea
that my parrot's beak was very like the nose of our village
shopkeeper, Ivan Dem'yanych, and from that time the name and
patronymic of our long-nosed shopkeeper stuck to my parrot. From that
day Polycarp and the whole village christened my extraordinary bird
“Ivan Dem'yanych.” By Polycarp's will the bird became a personage, and
the shopkeeper lost his own name, and to the end of his days he will
be known among the villagers under the nickname of the “magistrate's
parrot.”

I had bought Ivan Dem'yanych from the mother of my predecessor, the
examining magistrate, Pospelov, who had died shortly before my
appointment. I bought him together with some old oak furniture,
various rubbishy kitchen utensils, and in general the whole of the
household goods that remained after the deceased. My walls are still
decorated with photographs of his relatives, and the portrait of the
former occupant is still hanging above my bed. The departed, a lean,
muscular man with a red moustache and a thick under-lip, sits looking
at me with staring eyes from his faded nutwood frame all the time I am
lying on his bed. . . . I had not taken down a single photograph, I
had left the house just as I found it. I am too lazy to think of my
own comfort, and I don't prevent either corpses or living men from
hanging on my walls if the latter wish to do so.*

   * I beg the reader to excuse such expressions. Kamyshev's story is
   rich in them, and if I do not omit them it is only because I
   thought it necessary in the interest of the characterization of the
   author to print his story _in toto_.—A. Ch.

Ivan Dem'yanych found it as sultry as I did. He fluffed out his
feathers, spread his wings, and shrieked out the phrases he had been
taught by my predecessor, Pospelov, and by Polycarp. To occupy in some
way my after-dinner leisure, I sat down in front of the cage and began
to watch the movements of my parrot, who was industriously trying, but
without success, to escape from the torments he suffered from the
suffocating heat and the insects that dwelt among his feathers. . . .
The poor thing seemed very unhappy. . . .

“At what time does he awake?” was borne to me in a bass voice from the
lobby.

“That depends!” Polycarp's voice answered. “Sometimes he wakes at five
o'clock, and sometimes he sleeps like a log till morning. . . .
Everybody knows he has nothing to do.”

“You're his valet, I suppose?”

“His servant. Now don't bother me; hold your tongue. Don't you see I'm
reading?”

I peeped into the lobby. My Polycarp was there, lolling on the large
red trunk, and, as usual, reading a book. With his sleepy, unblinking
eyes fixed attentively on his book, he was moving his lips and
frowning. He was evidently irritated by the presence of the stranger,
a tall, bearded muzhik, who was standing near the trunk persistently
trying to inveigle him into conversation. At my appearance the muzhik
took a step away from the trunk and drew himself up at attention.
Polycarp looked dissatisfied, and without removing his eyes from the
book he rose slightly.

“What do you want?” I asked the muzhik.

“I have come from the Count, your honour. The Count sends you his
greetings, and begs you to come to him at once. . . .”

“Has the Count arrived?” I asked, much astonished.

“Just so, your honour. . . . He arrived last night. . . . Here's a
letter, sir. . . .”

“What the devil has brought him back!” my Polycarp grumbled. “Two
summers we've lived peacefully without him, and this year he'll again
make a pigsty of the district. We'll again not escape without shame.”

“Hold your tongue, your opinion is not asked!”

“I need not be asked. . . . I'll speak unasked. You'll again come home
from him in drunken disorder and bathe in the lake just as you are, in
all your clothes. . . . I've to clean them afterwards! They cannot be
cleaned in three days!”

“What's the Count doing now?” I asked the muzhik.

“He was just sitting down to dinner when he sent me to you. . . .
Before dinner he fished from the bathing house, sir. . . . What answer
is there?”

I opened the letter and read the following:

“My Dear Lecoq,—If you are still alive, well, and have not forgotten
your ever-drunken friend, do not delay a moment. Array yourself in
your clothing and fly to me. I only arrived last night and am already
dying from ennui. The impatience I feel to see you knows no bounds. I
myself wanted to drive over to see you and carry you off to my den,
but the heat has fettered all my limbs. I am sitting on one spot
fanning myself. Well, how are you? How is your clever Ivan Dem'yanych?
Are you still at war with your pedant, Polycarp? Come quickly and tell
me everything.—Your A. K.”

It was not necessary to look at the signature to recognize the
drunken, sprawling, ugly handwriting of my friend, Count Alexey
Karnéev. The shortness of the letter, its pretension to a certain
playfulness and vivacity proved that my friend, with his limited
capacities, must have torn up much notepaper before he was able to
compose this epistle.

The pronoun “which” was absent from this letter, and adverbs were
carefully avoided—both being grammatical forms that were seldom
achieved by the Count at a single sitting.

“What answer is there, sir?” the muzhik repeated.

At first I did not reply to this question, and every clean-minded man
in my place would have hesitated too. The Count was fond of me, and
quite sincerely obtruded his friendship on me. I, on my part, felt
nothing like friendship for the Count; I even disliked him. It would
therefore have been more honest to reject his friendship once for all
than to go to him and dissimulate. Besides, to go to the Count's meant
to plunge once more into the life my Polycarp had characterized as a
“pigsty,” which two years before during the Count's residence on his
estate and until he left for Petersburg had injured my good health and
had dried up my brain. That loose, unaccustomed life so full of show
and drunken madness, had not had time to shatter my constitution, but
it had made me notorious in the whole Government . . . I was
popular. . . .

My reason told me the whole truth, a blush of shame for the not
distant past suffused my face, my heart sank with fear that I would
not possess sufficient manliness to refuse to go to the Count's, but I
did not hesitate long. The struggle lasted not more than a minute.

“Give my compliments to the Count,” I said to his messenger, “and
thank him for thinking of me. . . . Tell him I am busy, and
that. . . . Tell him that I . . .”

And at the very moment my tongue was about to pronounce a decisive
“No,” I was suddenly overpowered by a feeling of dullness. . . . The
young man, full of life, strength and desires, who by the decrees of
fate had been cast into this forest village, was seized by a sensation
of ennui, of loneliness. . . .

I remembered the Count's gardens with the exuberant vegetation of
their cool conservatories, and the semi-darkness of the narrow,
neglected avenues. . . . Those avenues protected from the sun by
arches of the entwined branches of old limes know me well; they also
know the women who sought my love and semi-darkness. . . . I
remembered the luxurious drawing-room with the sweet indolence of its
velvet sofas, heavy curtains and thick carpets, soft as down, with the
laziness so loved by young healthy animals. . . . There recurred to my
mind my drunken audacity that knew no limits to its boundless satanic
pride, and contempt of life. My large body wearied by sleep again
longed for movement. . . .

“Tell him I'll come!”

The muzhik bowed and retired.

“If I'd known, I wouldn't have let that devil in!” Polycarp grumbled,
quickly turning over the pages of his book in an objectless manner.

“Put that book away and go and saddle Zorka,” I said. “Look sharp!”

“Look sharp! Oh, of course, certainly. . . . I'm just going to rush
off. . . . It would be all right to go on business, but he'll go to
break the devil's horns!”

This was said in an undertone, but loud enough for me to hear it.
Having whispered this impertinence, my servant drew himself up before
me and waited for me to flare up in reply, but I pretended not to have
heard his words. My silence was the best and sharpest arms I could use
in my contests with Polycarp. This contemptuous manner of allowing his
venomous words to pass unheeded disarmed him and cut the ground away
from under his feet. As a punishment it acted better than a box on the
ear or a flood of vituperation. . . . When Polycarp had gone into the
yard to saddle Zorka, I peeped into the book which he had been
prevented from reading. It was _The Count of Monte Cristo_, Dumas'
terrible romance. . . . My civilized fool read everything, beginning
with the signboards of the public houses and finishing with Auguste
Comte, which was lying in my trunk together with other neglected books
that I did not read; but of the whole mass of written and printed
matter he only approved of terrible, strongly exciting novels with
“celebrated personages,” poison and subterranean passages; all the
rest he dubbed “nonsense.” I shall have again to recur to his reading,
now I had to ride off. A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of my
Zorka were raising the dust on the road from the village to the
Count's estate. The sun was near setting, but the heat and the
sultriness were still felt. The hot air was dry and motionless,
although my road led along the banks of an enormous lake. . . . On my
right I saw the great expanse of water, on the left my sight was
caressed by the young vernal foliage of an oak forest; nevertheless,
my cheeks suffered the dryness of Sahara. “If there could only be a
storm!” I thought, dreaming of a good cool downpour.

The lake slept peacefully. It did not greet with a single sound the
flight of my Zorka, and it was only the piping of a young snipe that
broke the grave-like silence of the motionless giant. The sun looked
at itself in it as in a huge mirror, and shed a blinding light on the
whole of its breadth that extended from my road to the opposite
distant banks. And it seemed to my blinded eyes that nature received
light from the lake and not from the sun.

The sultriness impelled to slumber the whole of that life in which the
lake and its green banks so richly abounded. The birds had hidden
themselves, the fish did not splash in the water, the field crickets
and the grasshoppers waited in silence for coolness to set in. All
around was a waste. From time to time my Zorka bore me into a thick
cloud of littoral mosquitoes, and far away on the lake, scarcely
moving, I could see the three black boats belonging to old Mikhey, our
fisherman, who leased the fishing rights of the whole lake.



II

I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the
road that skirted the round lake. It was only possible to go in a
straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a
large round and the distance was almost eight versts farther. All the
way, when looking at the lake, I could see beyond it the opposite
clayey banks, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard
gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the
Count's barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising
still higher the small white belfry of the Count's chapel. At the foot
of the clayey banks was the bathing house with sailcloth nailed on the
sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and
it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the
Count, while in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen
versts.

On the way, I thought of my strange relations to the Count. It was
interesting for me to give myself an account of how we stood and try
to settle it, but, alas! that account was a task beyond my strength.
However much I thought, I could come to no satisfactory decision, and
at last I arrived at the conclusion that I was but a bad judge of
myself and of man in general. The people who knew both the Count and
me explained our mutual connexion. The narrow-browed, who see nothing
beyond the tip of their nose, were fond of asserting that the
illustrious Count found in the “poor and undistinguished” magistrate a
congenial hanger-on and boon companion. To their understanding I, the
writer of these lines, fawned and cringed before the Count for the
sake of the crumbs and scraps that fell from his table. In their
opinion the illustrious millionaire, who was both the bugbear and the
envy of the whole of the S—— district, was very clever and liberal;
otherwise his gracious condescension that went as far as friendship
for an indigent magistrate and the genuine liberalism that made the
Count tolerate my familiarity in addressing him as “thou,” would be
quite incomprehensible. Cleverer people explained our intimacy by our
common “spiritual interests.” The Count and I were of the same age. We
had finished our studies in the same university, we were both jurists,
and we both knew very little: I knew a little, but the Count had
forgotten and drowned in alcohol the little he had ever known. We were
both proud, and by virtue of some reason which was only known to
ourselves, we shunned the world like misanthropes. We were both
indifferent to the opinion of the world—that is of the S—— district—we
were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the
“spiritual interests” that united us. This was all that the people who
knew us could say about our relations.

They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how
weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and
how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they
known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He
was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say
“thou” to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of
kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend.
I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of contempt and
aversion, said to him:

“Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?”

And he accepted this “thou” as an expression of friendship and
submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly
“thou.”

Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka's
head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem'yanych.

Afterwards I often thought: “How much misfortune I would have avoided
bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my
neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if
only my Zorka had gone mad and had carried me far away from that
terribly large lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which
now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have
pressed so heavily on my mind!” But I must not anticipate, all the
more as farther on I shall often have to pause on misfortunes. Now for
gaiety. . . .

My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count's yard. At the very gates
she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.

“An ill omen, sir!” a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of
the Count's long line of stables, called to me.

I believe that a man falling from a horse may break his neck, but I do
not believe in prognostications. Having given the bridle to the
muzhik, I beat the dust off my top-boots with my riding-whip and ran
into the house. Nobody met me. All the doors and windows of the rooms
were wide open, nevertheless the air in the house was heavy, and had a
strange smell. It was a mixture of the odour of ancient, deserted
apartments with the tart narcotic scent of hothouse plants that have
but recently been brought from the conservatories into the
rooms. . . . In the drawing-room, two tumbled cushions were lying on
one of the sofas that was covered with a light blue silk material, and
on a round table before the sofa I saw a glass containing a few drops
of a liquid that exhaled an odour of strong Riga balsam. All this
denoted that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul
in any of the eleven rooms that I traversed. The same desertion that
was round the lake reigned in the house. . . .

A glass door led into the garden from the so-called “mosaic”
drawing-room. I opened it with noise and went down the marble stairs
into the garden. I had gone but a few steps through the avenue when I
met Nastasia, an old woman of ninety, who had formerly been the
Count's nurse. This little wrinkled old creature, forgotten by death,
had a bald head and piercing eyes. When you looked at her face you
involuntarily remembered the nickname “Scops-Owl” that had been given
her in the village. . . . When she saw me she trembled and almost
dropped a glass of milk she was carrying in both hands.

“How do you do, Scops?” I said to her.

She gave me a sidelong glance and silently went on her way. . . . I
seized her by the shoulder.

“Don't be afraid, fool. . . . Where's the Count?”

The old woman pointed to her ear.

“Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?”

Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she
found it useful to calumniate her senses. I shook my finger at her and
let her go.

Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw
people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open
space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias,
stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at
the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass to the open space
and, hiding behind a lilac bush, searched for the Count with my eyes.

My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a folding
cane-bottomed chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same
many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before,
and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated
expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted
with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some
serious thought or anxiety. . . . The Count had not changed at all in
appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same
small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corn-crake. He
had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small
red-haired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks
were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before.
On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or
manliness. . . . All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only
imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody
had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He
believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much
longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he
reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.

Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large
closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me.
His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer
than the Count's, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and
his eyes gazed lazily into the sky. . . . The features of his face
were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. The
type was not Russian. . . . The stout man was without his coat or
waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by
perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.

At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a
stout red neck and sticking out ears was standing. This man was
Urbenin, the Count's bailiff. In honour of the Count's arrival he was
dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The
perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next
to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter.
It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing
at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like
a statue, and waited to be questioned.

“Kusma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,”
the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing
between each word. “Is it possible to execute the master's orders in
such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at
once and to have found out when he could be expected.”

“Yes, yes, yes . . .” the Count exclaimed nervously. “You ought to
have found out everything! He said: ‘I'll come!’ But that's not
enough! I want him at once! Pos‑i‑tively at once! You asked him to
come, but he did not understand!”

“Why do you require him?” the fat man asked the Count.

“I want to see him!”

“Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if
he remained at home to-day. I have no wish for guests.”

I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful,
authoritative “I”?

“But he's not a guest!” my friend said in an imploring tone. “He won't
prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on
ceremonies with him. . . . You'll like him at once, my dear boy, and
you'll soon be friends with him!”

I came out of my hiding place behind the lilac bushes and went up to
the tables. The Count saw and recognized me, and his face brightened
with a pleased smile.

“Here he is! Here he is!” he exclaimed, getting red with pleasure, and
he jumped up from the table. “How good of you to come!”

He ran towards me, seized me in his arms, embraced me and scratched my
cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. These kisses were
followed by lengthy shaking of my hand and long looks into my eyes.

“You, Sergey, have not changed at all! You're still the same! The same
handsome and strong fellow! Thank you for accepting my invitation and
coming at once!”

When released from the Count's embrace, I greeted the bailiff, who was
an old friend of mine, and sat down at the table.

“Oh, Golubchek!”* the Count continued in an excitedly anxious tone.
“If you only knew how delighted I am to see your serious countenance
again. You are not acquainted? Allow me to introduce you—my good
friend, Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky. And this,” he continued,
introducing me to the fat man, “is my good old friend, Sergey
Petrovich Zinov'ev! Our magistrate.”

   * Little dove; a much used term of endearment.

The stout, dark-browed man rose slightly from his seat and offered me
his fat, and terribly sweaty hand.

“Very pleased,” he mumbled, examining me from head to foot. “Very
glad!”

Having given vent to his feelings and become calm again, the Count
filled a glass with cold, dark brown tea for me and moved a box of
biscuits towards my hand.

“Eat. . . . When passing through Moscow I bought them at Einem's. I'm
very angry with you, Serezha, so angry that I wanted to quarrel with
you! . . . Not only have you not written me a line during the whole of
the past two years, but you did not even think a single one of my
letters worth answering! That's not friendly!”

“I don't know how to write letters,” I said. “Besides, I have no time
for letter writing. Can you tell me what could I have written to you
about?”

“There must have been many things!”

“Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters:
love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write
to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the
second you don't require; and from the third category we are relieved
as from our birth we have never had any business connexion together.”

“That's about true,” the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with
everything; “but all the same, you might have written, if only a
line. . . . And what's more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two
years you've not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand
versts away or disdained my property. You might have lived here, shot
over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was
away.”

The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about
anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end,
quite regardless of the triviality or insignificance of his subject.

In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem'yanych. I
could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by
his butler, Il'ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained
livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler
of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it
down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.

“So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!” I said.

“No, Serezha, I have not.”

“Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and
shaking your head! It's disgusting!”

“My dear boy, I'm going to drop everything. . . . The doctors have
forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it's unhealthy to drop
habits all at once. . . . It must be done gradually. . . .”

I looked at the Count's unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the
butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the
very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel
and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at
attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over
me. . . . I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having
first opened the Count's eyes to all the unlimited antipathy I felt
for him. . . . There was a moment when I was ready to rise and
depart. . . . But I did not go away. . . . I was prevented (I'm
ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness. . . .

“Give me a glass of vodka, too!” I said to Il'ya.

Long shadows began to be cast on the avenue and on the open space
where we were sitting. . . .

The distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the singing of
orioles greeted the setting of the sun. A gay evening was just
beginning. . . .

“Tell Urbenin to sit down,” I whispered to the Count, “He's standing
before you like a boy.”

“Oh, I never thought of that! Pëtr Egorych,” the Count addressed his
bailiff, “sit down, please! Why are you standing there?”

Urbenin sat down, casting a grateful glance at me. He who was always
healthy and gay appeared to me now to be ill and dull. His face seemed
wrinkled and sleepy, his eyes looked at us lazily and as if
unwillingly.

“Well, Pëtr Egorych, what's new here? Any pretty girls, eh?” Karnéev
asked him. “Isn't there something special . . . something out of the
common?”

“It's always the same, your Excellency. . . .”

“Are there no new . . . nice little girls, Pëtr Egorych?”

Moral Pëtr Egorych blushed.

“I don't know, your Excellency. . . . I don't occupy myself with
that. . . .”

“There are, your Excellency,” broke in the deep bass voice of one-eyed
Kuz'ma, who had been silent all the time. “And quite worth notice,
too.”

“Are they pretty?”

“There are all sorts, your Excellency, for all tastes . . . There are
dark ones and fair ones—all sorts. . . .”

“O, ho! . . . Stop a minute, stop a minute. . . . I remember you
now. . . . My former Leporello, a sort of secretary. . . . Your name's
Kuz'ma, I think?”

“Yes, your Excellency. . . .”

“I remember, I remember. . . . Well, and what have you now in view?
Something new, all peasant girls?”

“Mostly peasants, of course, but there are finer ones, too. . . .”

“Where have you found finer ones . . .” Il'ya asked, winking at
Kuz'ma.

“At Easter the postman's sister-in-law came to stay with him . . .
Nastasia Ivanovna. . . . A girl all on springs. I myself would like to
eat her, but money is wanted. . . . Cheeks like peaches, and all the
rest as good. . . . There's something finer than that, too. It's only
waiting for you, your Excellency. Young, plump, jolly . . . a beauty!
Such a beauty, your Excellency, as you've scarcely found in
Petersburg. . . .”

“Who is it?”

“Olenka, the forester Skvortsov's daughter.”

Urbenin's chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands
on the table, purple in the face, the bailiff rose slowly and turned
towards one-eyed Kuz'ma. The expression on his face of dullness and
fatigue had given place to one of great anger.

“Hold your tongue, serf!” he grumbled. “One-eyed vermin! Say what you
please, but don't dare to touch respectable people!”

“I'm not touching you, Pëtr Egorych,” Kuz'ma said imperturbably.

“I'm not talking about myself, blockhead! Besides. . . . Forgive me,
your Excellency,” the bailiff turned to the Count, “forgive me for
making a scene, but I would beg your Excellency to forbid your
Leporello, as you were pleased to call him, to extend his zeal to
persons who are worthy of all respect!”

“I don't understand . . .” the Count lisped naively. “He has said
nothing very offensive.”

Insulted and excited to a degree, Urbenin went away from the table and
stood with his side towards us. With his arms crossed on his breast
and his eyes blinking, hiding his purple face from us behind the
branches of the bushes, he stood plunged in thought.

Had not this man a presentiment that in the near future his moral
feelings would have to suffer offences a thousand times more bitter?

“I don't understand what has offended him!” the Count whispered in my
ear. “What a caution! There was nothing offensive in what was said.”

After two years of sober life, the glass of vodka acted on me in a
slightly intoxicating manner. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, was
diffused in my brain and through my whole body. Added to this, I began
to feel the coolness of evening, which little by little was
supplanting the sultriness of the day. I proposed to take a stroll.
The Count and his new Polish friend had their coats brought from the
house, and we set off. Urbenin followed us.



III

The Count's gardens in which we were walking are worthy of special
description owing to their striking luxuriousness. From a botanical or
an economical point of view, and in many other ways, they are richer
and grander than any other gardens I have ever seen. Besides the
above-mentioned avenue with its green vaults, you found in them
everything that capricious indulgence can demand from pleasure
gardens. You found here every variety of indigenous and foreign fruit
tree, beginning with the wild cherry and plum and finishing with
apricots that were the size of a goose's egg. You came across mulberry
trees, barberry bushes, and even olive trees at every step. . . . Here
there were half-ruined, moss-grown grottoes, fountains, little ponds
destined for goldfish and tame carp, hillocks, pavilions and costly
conservatories. . . . And all this rare luxury which had been
collected by the hands of grandfathers and fathers, all this wealth of
large, full roses, poetical grottoes and endless avenues, was
barbarously abandoned to neglect, and given over to the power of
weeds, the thievish hatchet and the rooks who unceremoniously built
their ugly nests on the branches of rare trees! The lawful possessor
of all this wealth walked beside me, and the muscles of his lean,
satiated face were no more moved by the sight of this neglect, this
crying human slovenliness, than if he had not been the owner of these
gardens. Once only, by way of making some remark, he said to his
bailiff that it would not be a bad thing if the paths were sanded. He
noticed the absence of the sand that was not wanted by anybody, but he
did not notice the bare trees that had been frozen in the hard
winters, or the cows that were walking about in the garden. In reply
to his remark, Urbenin said it would require ten men to keep the
garden in order, and as his Excellency was not pleased to reside on
his estate, the outlay on the garden would be a useless and
unproductive luxury. The Count, of course, agreed with this argument.

“Besides, I must confess I have no time for it!” Urbenin said with a
wave of the hand. “All the summer in the fields, and in winter selling
the corn in town. . . . There's no time for gardens here!”

The charm of the principal, the so-called “main avenue,” consisted in
its old broad-spreading limes, and in the masses of tulips that
stretched out in two variegated borders at each side of its whole
length and finished at the end in a yellow spot. This was a yellow
stone pavilion, which at one time had contained a refreshment room,
billiards, skittles and other games. We wandered, without any object,
towards this pavilion. At its door we were met by a live creature
which somewhat unsettled the nerves of my companion, who was never
very courageous.

“A snake!” the Count shrieked, seizing me by the hand and turning
pale. “Look!”

The Pole stepped back, and then stood stock still with his arms
outstretched as if he wanted to bar the way for the apparition. On the
upper step of the half-crumbled stone stair there lay a young snake of
our ordinary Russian species. When it saw us it raised its head and
moved. The Count shrieked again and hid behind me.

“Don't be afraid, your Excellency. . . .” Urbenin said lazily as he
placed his foot on the first step.

“But if it bites?”

“It won't bite. Besides, the danger from the bite of these snakes is
much exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake, and, as you see,
I didn't die. The sting of a man is worse than a snake's!” Urbenin
said with a sigh, wishing to point a moral.

Indeed, the bailiff had not had time to mount two or three steps
before the snake stretched out to its full length, and with the
rapidity of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When
we entered the pavilion we saw another living creature. Lying on the
torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table there was an elderly
man of middle height in a blue jacket, striped trousers, and a jockey
cap. He was sleeping sweetly and quietly. Around his toothless gaping
mouth and on his pointed nose flies were making themselves at home.
Thin as a skeleton, with an open mouth, lying there immovable, he
looked like a corpse that had only just been brought in from the
mortuary to be dissected.

“Franz!” said Urbenin, poking him. “Franz!”

After being poked five or six times, Franz shut his mouth, sat up,
looked round at us, and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was
again open and the flies that were walking about his nose were again
disturbed by the slight vibration of his snores.

“He's asleep, the lewd swine!” Urbenin sighed.

“Is he not our gardener, Tricher?” the Count asked.

“No other. . . . That's how he is every day . . . He sleeps like a
dead man all day and plays cards all night. I was told he gambled last
night till six in the morning.”

“What do they play?”

“Games of hazard. . . . Chiefly stukolka.”

“Well, such gentlemen work badly. They draw their wages for nothing!”

“It was not to complain, your Excellency,” Urbenin hastened to say,
“that I told you this, or to express my dissatisfaction; it was
only. . . . I am only sorry that so capable a man is a slave to his
passions. He really is a hard-working man, capable too. . . . He does
not receive wages for nothing.”

We glanced again at the gambler Franz and left the pavilion. We then
turned towards the garden gate and went into the fields.

There are but few novels in which the garden gate does not play an
important part. If you have not noticed this, you have only to inquire
of my man Polycarp, who in his lifetime has swallowed multitudes of
terrible and not terrible novels, and he will doubtless confirm this
insignificant but characteristic fact.

My novel has also not escaped the inevitable garden gate. But my gate
is different from others in this, that my pen will have to lead
through it many unfortunate and scarcely any happy people; and even
this in a direction contrary to the one found in other novels. And
what is worse, I had once to describe this gate not as a novel-writer
but as an examining magistrate. In my novel more criminals than lovers
will pass through it.

A quarter of an hour later, supporting ourselves on our walking
sticks, we wound our way up the hill to what is known as the “Stone
Grave.” In the surrounding villages there is a legend that under this
heap of stones there reposes the body of a Tartar Khan, who, fearing
that after his death the enemy would desecrate his ashes, had ordered
that a mound of stones was to be made above his body. This legend,
however, is scarcely correct. The layers of stone, their size and
relative position, exclude the possibility of man's hand having had a
part in the formation of this mound. It stands solitary in the midst
of fields and has the aspect of an overturned dome.

From the top of this mound we could see the lake to the whole of its
captivating extent and indescribable beauty. The sun, no longer
reflected in it, had set, leaving behind a broad purple stripe that
illuminated the surroundings with a pleasing rosy-yellow tint. The
Count's manor and homestead with their houses, church and gardens, lay
at our feet, and on the other side of the lake the little village
where it was my fate to live looked grey in the distance. As before,
the surface of the lake was without a ripple. Old Mikhey's little
boats, separated from one another, were hurrying towards the shore.

To the left of my little village the buildings of the railway station
stood out dark beneath the smoke from the engines, and behind us at
the foot of the Stone Grave the road was bordered on either side by
towering old poplars. This road leads to the Count's forest that
extends to the very horizon.

The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole
being heavy men preferred to wait for us on the road below.

“Who's that cove?” I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. “Where
did you pick him up?”

“He's a very nice fellow, Serezha; very nice!” the Count said in an
agitated voice. “You'll soon be the best of friends.”

“Oh, that's not likely! Why does he never speak?”

“He is silent by nature! But he's very clever!”

“But what sort of a man is he?”

“I became acquainted with him in Moscow. He is very nice. You'll hear
all about it afterwards, Serezha; don't ask now. Let's go down.”

We descended the hill and went along the road towards the forest. It
began to be perceptibly darker. The cry of the cuckoo, and the tired
vocal warbles of a possibly youthful nightingale were heard in the
forest.

“Hollo! Hollo! Catch me!” we heard a high-pitched voice of a child
shout as we approached the forest.

A little girl of about five with hair as white as flax, dressed in a
sky-blue frock, ran out of the wood. When she saw us she laughed
aloud, and with a skip and a jump put her arms round Urbenin's knee.
Urbenin lifted her up and kissed her cheek.

“My daughter Sasha!” he said. “Let me introduce her!”

Sasha was pursued out of the wood by a schoolboy of about fifteen,
Urbenin's son. When he saw us he pulled off his cap hesitatingly, put
it on, and pulled it off again. He was followed quietly by a red spot.
This red spot attracted our attention at once. “What a beautiful
apparition!” the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. “Look! How
charming! What girl is this? I did not know that my forests were
inhabited by such naiads!”

I looked round at Urbenin in order to ask him who this girl was, and,
strange to say, it was only at that moment I noticed that he was
terribly drunk. He was as red as a crawfish, he tottered and, seizing
my elbow, he whispered into my ear, exhaling the fumes of spirit on
me:

“Sergey Petrovich, I implore you prevent the Count from making any
further remarks about this girl! He may, from habit say too much; she
is a most worthy person!”

This “most worthy person” was represented by a girl of about nineteen,
with beautiful fair hair, kind blue eyes and long curls. She was
dressed in a bright red frock, made in a fashion that was neither that
of a child nor of a young girl. Her legs, straight as needles, in red
stockings, were shod with tiny shoes that were small as a child's. All
the time I was admiring her she moved about her well-rounded shoulders
coquettishly, as if they were cold or as if my gaze bit her.

“Such a young face, and such developed contours!” whispered the Count,
who from his earliest youth had lost the capacity of respecting women,
and never looked at them otherwise than from the point of view of a
spoilt animal.

I remember that a good feeling was ignited in my breast. I was still a
poet, and in the company of the woods, of a May night, and the first
twinkling of the evening stars, I could only look at a woman as a poet
does. . . . I looked at “the girl in red” with the same veneration I
was accustomed to look upon the forests, the hills and the blue sky. I
still had a certain amount of the sentimentality I had inherited from
my German mother.

“Who is she?” the Count asked.

“She is the daughter of our forester Skvortsov, your Excellency!”
Urbenin replied.

“Is she the Olenka, the one-eyed muzhik spoke of?”

“Yes, he mentioned her name,” the bailiff answered, looking at me with
large, imploring eyes.

The girl in red let us go past her, turning away without taking any
notice of us. Her eyes were looking at something at the side, but I, a
man who knows women, felt her pupils resting on my face.

“Which of them is the Count?” I heard her whisper behind us.

“That one with the long moustache,” the schoolboy answered.

And we heard silvery laughter behind us. It was the laughter of
disenchantment. She had thought that the Count, the owner of these
immense forests and the broad lake, was I, and not that pigmy with the
worn face and long moustache.

I heard a deep sigh issue from Urbenin's powerful breast. That iron
man could scarcely move.

“Dismiss the bailiff,” I whispered to the Count. “He is ill or—drunk.”

“Pëtr Egorych, you seem to be unwell,” the Count said, turning to
Urbenin. “I do not require you just now, so I will not detain you any
longer.”

“Your Excellency need not trouble about me. Thank you for your
attention, but I am not ill.”

I looked back. The red spot had not moved, but was looking after us.

Poor, fair little head! Did I think on that quiet, peaceful May
evening that she would afterwards become the heroine of my troubled
romance?

Now, while I write these lines, the autumn rain beats fiercely against
my warm windows, and the wind howls above me. I gaze at the dark
window and on the dark background of night beyond, trying by the
strength of my imagination to conjure up again the charming image of
my heroine. . . . I see her with her innocent, childish, naive, kind
little face and loving eyes, and I wish to throw down my pen and tear
up and burn all that I have already written.

But here, next to my inkstand, is her photograph. Here, the fair
little head is represented in all the vain majesty of a beautiful but
deeply-fallen woman. Her weary eyes, proud of their depravity, are
motionless. Here she is just the serpent, the harm of whose bite
Urbenin would scarcely have called exaggerated.

She gave a kiss to the storm, and the storm broke the flower at the
very roots. Much was taken, but too dearly was it paid for. The reader
will forgive her her sins!



IV

We walked through the wood.

The pines were dull in their silent monotony. They all grow in the
same way, one like the others, and at every season of the year they
retain the same appearance, knowing neither death nor the renewal of
spring. Still, they are attractive in their moroseness: immovable,
soundless they seem to think mournful thoughts.

“Hadn't we better turn back?” the Count suggested.

This question received no reply. It was all the same to the Pole where
he was. Urbenin did not consider his voice decisive, and I was too
much delighted with the coolness of the forest and its resinous air to
wish to turn back. Besides, it was necessary to kill time till night,
even by a simple walk. The thoughts of the approaching wild night were
accompanied by a sweet sinking of the heart. I am afraid to confess
that I thought of it, and had already mentally a foretaste of its
enjoyments. Judging by the impatience with which the Count constantly
looked at his watch, it was evident that he, too, was tormented by
expectations. We felt that we understood each other.

Near the forester's house, which nestled between pines on a small
square open space, we were met by the loud-sounding bark of two small
fiery-yellow dogs, of a breed that was unknown to me; they were as
glossy and supple as eels. Recognizing Urbenin, they joyfully wagged
their tails and ran towards him, from which one could deduce that the
bailiff often visited the forester's house. Here, too, near the house,
we were met by a lad without boots or cap, with large freckles on his
astonished face. For a moment he looked at us in silence with staring
eyes, then, evidently recognizing the Count, he gave an exclamation
and rushed headlong into the house.

“I know what he's gone for,” the Count said, laughing. “I remember
him. . . . It's Mit'ka.”

The Count was not mistaken. In less than a minute Mit'ka came out of
the house carrying a tray with a glass of vodka and a tumbler half
full of water.

“For your good health, your Excellency!” he said, a broad grin
suffusing the whole of his stupid, astonished face.

The Count drank off the vodka, washed it down with water in lieu of a
snack, but this time he made no wry face. A hundred paces from the
house there was an iron seat, as old as the pines above it. We sat
down on it and contemplated the May evening in all its tranquil
beauty. . . . The frightened crows flew cawing above our heads, the
song of nightingales was borne towards us from all sides; these were
the only sounds that broke the pervading stillness.

The Count does not know how to be silent, even on such a calm spring
evening, when the voice of man is the least agreeable sound.

“I don't know if you will be satisfied?” he said to me. “I have
ordered a fish-soup and game for supper. With the vodka we shall have
cold sturgeon and sucking-pig with horse-radish.”

As if angered at this prosaic observation, the poetical pines suddenly
shook their tops and a gentle rustle passed through the wood. A fresh
breeze swept over the glade and played with the grass.

“Down, down!” Urbenin cried to the flame-coloured dogs, who were
preventing him from lighting his cigarette with their caresses. “I
think we shall have rain before night. I feel it in the air. It was so
terribly hot to-day that it does not require a learned professor to
prophesy rain. It will be a good thing for the corn.”

“What's the use of corn to you,” I thought, “if the Count will spend
it all on drink? The rain need not trouble about it.”

Once more a light breeze passed over the forest, but this time it was
stronger. The pines and the grass rustled louder.

“Let us go home.”

We rose and strolled lazily back towards the little house.

“It is better to be this fair-haired Olenka,” I said, addressing
myself to Urbenin, “and to live here with the beasts than to be a
magistrate and live among men. . . . It's more peaceful. Is it not so,
Pëtr Egorych?”

“It's all the same what one is, Sergey Petrovich, if only the soul is
at peace.”

“Is pretty Olenka's soul at peace?”

“God alone knows the secrets of other people's souls, but I think she
has nothing to trouble her. She has not much to worry her, and no more
sins than an infant. . . . She's a very good girl! Ah, now the sky is
at last beginning to talk of rain. . . .”

A rumble was heard, somewhat like the sound of a distant vehicle or
the rattle of a game of skittles. Somewhere, far beyond the forest,
there was a peal of thunder. Mit'ka, who had been watching us the
whole time, shuddered and crossed himself.

“A thunderstorm!” the Count exclaimed with a start. “What a surprise!
The rain will overtake us on our way home. . . . How dark it is! I
said we ought to have turned back! And you wouldn't, and went on and
on.”

“We might wait in the cottage till the storm is over,” I suggested.

“Why in the cottage?” Urbenin said hastily, and his eyes blinked in a
strange manner. “It will rain all night, so you'll have to remain all
night in the cottage! Please, don't trouble. . . . Go quietly on, and
Mit'ka shall run on and order your carriage to come to meet you.”

“Never mind, perhaps it won't rain all night. . . . Storm clouds
usually pass by quickly. . . . Besides, I don't know the new forester
as yet, and I'd also like to have a chat with this Olenka . . . and
find out what sort of a dickey bird she is. . . .”

“I've no objections!” the Count agreed.

“How can you go there, if—if the place is not—not in order?” Urbenin
mumbled anxiously. “Why should your Excellency sit there in a stuffy
room when you could be at home? I don't understand what pleasure that
can be! . . . How can you get to know the forester if he is
ill? . . .”

It was very evident that the bailiff strongly objected to our going
into the forester's house. He even spread his arms as if he wanted to
bar the way. . . . I understood by his face that he had reasons for
preventing us from going in. I respect other people's reasons and
secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I
persisted, and we entered the house.

“Walk into the drawing-room, please,” bare-footed Mit'ka spluttered
almost choking with delight.

Try to imagine the very smallest drawing-room in the world, with
unpainted deal walls. These walls are hung all over with oleographs
from the “Niva,” photographs in frames made of shells, and
testimonials. One testimonial is from a certain baron, expressing his
gratitude for many years of service; all the others are for horses.
Here and there ivy climbs up the wall. . . . In a corner a small lamp,
whose tiny blue flame is faintly reflected on the silver mounting,
burns peacefully before a little icon. Chairs that have evidently been
only recently bought are pressed close together round the walls. Too
many had been purchased, and they had been squeezed together, as there
was nowhere else to put them. . . . Here, also, there are armchairs
and a sofa in snow-white covers with flounces and laces, crowded up
with a polished round table. A tame hare dozes on the sofa. . . . The
room is cosy, clean and warm. . . . The presence of a woman can be
noticed everywhere. Even the whatnot with books has a look of
innocence and womanliness; it appears to be anxious to say that there
is nothing on its shelves but wishy-washy novels and mawkish
verse. . . . The charm of such warm, cosy rooms is not so much felt in
spring as in autumn, when you look for a refuge from the cold and
dampness.

After much loud snivelling, blowing, and noisy striking of matches,
Mit'ka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if
they had been milk. We sat down in the arm-chairs, looked at each
other, and laughed.

“Nikolai Efimych is ill in bed,” Urbenin said, to explain the absence
of the master, “and Olga Nikolaevna has probably gone to accompany my
children. . . .”

“Mit'ka, are the doors shut?” we heard a weak tenor voice asking from
the next room.

“They're all shut, Nikolai Efimych!” Mit'ka shouted hoarsely, and he
rushed headlong into the next room.

“That's right! See that they are all shut,” the same weak voice said
again. “And locked—firmly locked. . . . If thieves break in, you must
tell me. . . . I'll shoot the villains with my gun . . . the
scoundrels!”

“Certainly, Nikolai Efimych!”

We laughed and looked inquiringly at Urbenin. He grew very red, and in
order to hide his confusion he began to arrange the curtains of the
windows. . . . What does this dream mean? We again looked at each
other.

We had no time for perplexity. Hasty steps were heard outside, then a
noise in the porch and the slamming of doors. And the “girl in red”
rushed into the room.

“I love the thunder in early May,” she sang in a loud, shrill soprano
voice, and she cut short her song with a burst of laughter, but when
she saw us she suddenly stood still and was silent,—she became
embarrassed, and went as quietly as a lamb into the room in which the
voice of Nikolai Efimych, her father, had been heard.

“She did not expect to see you,” Urbenin said, laughing.

A few minutes later she again came quietly into the room, sat down on
the chair nearest the door and began to examine us. She stared at us
boldly, not as if we were new people for her, but as if we were
animals in the Zoological Gardens. For a minute we too looked at her
in silence without moving. . . . I would have agreed to sit still and
look at her for a whole hour in this way—she was so lovely that
evening. As fresh as the air, rosy, breathing rapidly, her bosom
rising and falling, her curls scattered wildly on her forehead, on her
shoulders, and on her right hand that was raised to arrange her
collar; with large, sparkling eyes. . . . And all this was found on
one little body that a single glance could envelop. If you glanced for
a moment at this small object you saw more than you would if you
looked for a whole century at the endless horizon. . . . She looked at
me seriously, from my feet upwards, inquiringly; when her eyes left me
and passed to the Count or to the Pole I began to read in them the
contrary: a glance that passed from the head to the feet, and
laughter. . . .

I was the first to speak.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, rising and going up to her.
“Zinov'ev. . . . And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev. . . .
We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house
without an invitation. . . . We would, of course, never have done so
if the storm had not driven us in. . . .”

“But that won't cause our little house to tumble down!” she said,
laughing and giving me her hand.

She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to
her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on
our walk. Our conversation began with the weather—the beginning of all
beginnings. While we were talking, Mit'ka had had time to offer the
Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water.
Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace
and shook his head after each glass.

“Perhaps you would like some refreshments?” Olenka asked me, and, not
waiting for an answer, she left the room.

The first drops of rain rattled against the panes. . . . I went up to
the windows. . . . It was now quite dark, and through the glass I
could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection
of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some
of the nearest pines.

“Are the doors shut?” I heard the same tenor voice ask again. “Mit'ka,
come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what
torments!”

A peasant woman with an enormous, tightly tied-in stomach and a
stupid, troubled face came into the room, and, having bowed low to the
Count, she spread a white table-cloth on the table. Mit'ka followed
her carefully carrying a tray with various _hors d'œuvres_. A minute
later, we had vodka, rum, cheese, and a dish of some sort of roasted
bird on the table before us. The Count drank a glass of vodka, but he
would not eat anything. The Pole smelt the bird mistrustfully, and
then began to carve it.

“The rain has begun! Look!” I said to Olenka, who had re-entered the
room.

“The girl in red” came up to the window where I was standing, and at
that very moment we were illuminated by a white flash of light. . . .
There was a fearful crash above us, and it appeared to me that
something large and heavy had been torn from the sky and had fallen to
earth with a terrible racket. . . . The window panes and the
wineglasses that were standing before the Count jingled and emitted
their tinkling sound. . . . The thunderclap was a loud one.

“Are you afraid of thunder-storms?” I asked Olenka.

She only pressed her cheek to her round shoulders and looked at me
with childish confidence.

“I'm afraid,” she whispered after a moment's reflection. “My mother
was killed by a storm. . . . The newspapers even wrote about it. . . .
My mother was going through the fields, crying. . . . She had a very
bitter life in this world. God had compassion on her and killed her
with His heavenly electricity.”

“How do you know that there is electricity there?”

“I have learned. . . . Do you know? People who have been killed by a
storm or in war, or who have died after a difficult confinement go to
paradise. . . . This is not written anywhere in books, but it is true.
My mother is now in paradise! I think the thunder will also kill me
some day, and I shall go to paradise too. . . . Are you a cultivated
man?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will not laugh. . . . This is how I should like to die: to
dress in the most costly fashionable frock, like the one I saw the
other day on our rich lady, the landowner Sheffer; to put bracelets on
my arms. . . . Then to go to the very summit of the ‘Stone Grave’ and
allow myself to be killed by the lightning, so that all the people
could see it. . . . A terrible peal of thunder, and then, you know,
the end!”

“What an odd fancy!” I said, laughing and looking into her eyes that
were full of holy horror at this terrible but effective death. “Then
you don't want to die in an ordinary dress?”

“No! . . .” Olenka shook her head. “And so that everybody should see
me.”

“The frock you are in is far better than any fashionable and expensive
dress. . . . It suits you. In it you look like the red flower of the
green woods.”

“No, that is not true!” And Olenka sighed ingenuously. “This frock is
a cheap one; it can't be pretty.”

The Count came up to our window with the evident intention of talking
to pretty Olenka. My friend could speak three European languages, but
he did not know how to talk to women. He stood near us awkwardly,
smiling in an inane manner; then he lowed,—inarticulately,
“Er—yes,”—and retraced his steps to the decanter of vodka.

“You were singing ‘I love the thunder in early May,’” I said to
Olenka. “Have those verses been set to music?”

“No, I sing all the verses I know to my own melodies.”

I happened by chance to glance back. Urbenin was looking at us. In his
eyes I read hatred and animosity: passions that were not at all in
keeping with his kind, meek face.

“Can he be jealous?” I thought.

The poor fellow caught my inquiring glance, rose from his chair and
went into the lobby to look for something. . . . Even by his gait one
could see that he was agitated. The peals of thunder became louder and
louder, more prolonged, and oftener repeated. . . . The lightning
unceasingly illuminated the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its
pleasant but blinding light. . . . The rain was not likely to end
soon. I left the window and went up to the bookshelves and began to
examine Olenka's library. “Tell me what you read, and I will tell you
what you are,” I said. But out of the goods that were so symmetrically
ranged on the shelves it was difficult to arrive at any estimate of
Olenka's mental capacities or “educational standard.” There was a
strange medley on those shelves. Three anthologies, one book of
Börne's, Evtushevsky's arithmetic, the second volume of Lermontov's
works, Shklyarevsky, a number of the magazine _Work_, a cookery book,
_Skladchina_ . . . I might enumerate other books for you, but at the
moment I took _Skladchina_ from the shelf and began to turn over the
pages. The door leading into the next room opened, and a person
entered the drawing-room, who at once diverted my attention from
Olenka's standard of culture. This person was a tall, muscular man in
a print dressing-gown and torn slippers, with an original countenance.
His face, covered all over with blue veins, was ornamented with a pair
of sergeant's moustaches and whiskers, and had in general a strong
resemblance to a bird. His whole face seemed to be drawn forwards, as
if trying to concentrate itself in the tip of the nose. Such faces are
like the spout of a pitcher. This person's small head was set on a
long thin throat, with a large Adam's-apple, and shook about like the
nesting-box of a starling in the wind. . . . This strange man looked
round on us all with his dim green eyes, and then let them rest on the
Count.

“Are the doors shut?” he asked in an imploring voice.

The Count looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“Don't trouble, papasha!” Olenka answered. “They are all shut. . . .
Go back to your room!”

“Is the barn door shut?”

“He's a little queer. . . . It takes him sometimes,” Urbenin whispered
to me as he came in from the lobby. “He's afraid of thieves, and
always troubling about the doors, as you see.”

“Nikolai Efimych,” he continued, addressing this strange apparition,
“go back to your room and go to bed! Don't trouble, everything is shut
up!”

“And are the windows shut?”

Nikolai Efimych hastily looked to see if the windows were properly
bolted, and then without taking any notice of us he shuffled off into
his own room.

“The poor fellow has these attacks sometimes,” Urbenin began to
explain as soon as he had left the room. “He's a good, capable man; he
has a family, too—such a misfortune! Almost every summer he is a
little out of his mind. . . .”

I looked at Olenka. She became confused, and hiding her face from us
began to put in order again her books that I had disarranged. She was
evidently ashamed of her mad father.

“The carriage is there, your Excellency! Now you can drive home, if
you wish!”

“Where has that carriage come from?” I asked.

“I sent for it. . . .”

A minute later I was sitting with the Count in the carriage, listening
to the peals of thunder and feeling very angry.

“We've been nicely turned out of the little house by that Pëtr
Egorych, the devil take him!” I grumbled, getting really angry. “So
he's prevented us from examining Olenka properly! I would not have
eaten her! . . . The old fool! The whole time he was bursting with
jealousy. . . . He's in love with that girl. . . .”

“Yes, yes, yes. . . . Would you believe it, I noticed that, too! He
would not let us go into the house from jealousy. And he sent for the
carriage only from jealousy. . . . Ha, ha, ha!”

“The later love comes the more it burns. . . . Besides, brother, it's
difficult not to fall in love with this girl in red, if one sees her
every day as we saw her to-day! She's devilish pretty! But she's not
for his net. . . . He ought to understand it and not be jealous of
others so egoistically. . . . Why can't he love and not stand in the
way of others, all the more as he must know she's not destined for
him? . . . What an old blockhead!”

“Do you remember how enraged he was when Kuz'ma mentioned her name at
tea-time?” the Count sniggered. “I thought he was going to thrash us
all. . . . A man does not defend the good fame of a woman so hotly if
he's indifferent to her. . . .”

“Some men will, brother. . . . But this is not the question. . . .
What's important is this. . . . If he can command us in the way he has
done to-day, what does he do with the small people, with those who are
at his disposal? Doubtless, the stewards, the butlers, the huntsmen
and the rest of the small fry are prevented by him from even
approaching her! Love and jealousy make a man unjust, heartless,
misanthropical. . . . I don't mind betting that for the sake of this
Olenka he has worried more than one of the people under his control.
It will, therefore, be wise on your part if you put less trust in his
complaints of the people in your service and his demands for the
dismissal of this or that one. In general, to limit his power for a
time. . . . Love will pass—well, and then there will be nothing to
fear. He's a kind and honest fellow. . . .”

“And what do you think of her papa?” the Count asked, laughing.

“A madman. . . . He ought to be in a madhouse and not looking after
forests. In general you won't be far from the truth if you put up a
signboard: ‘Madhouse’ over the gate of your estate. . . . You have a
real Bedlam here! This forester, the Scops-Owl, Franz, who is mad on
cards, this old man in love, an excitable girl, a drunken Count. . . .
What do you want more?”

“Why, this forester receives a salary! How can he do his work if he is
mad?”

“Urbenin evidently only keeps him for his daughter's sake. . . .
Urbenin says that Nikolai Efimych has these attacks every
summer. . . . That's not likely. . . . This forester is ill, not every
summer, but always. . . . By good luck, your Pëtr Egorych seldom lies,
and he gives himself away when he does lie about anything. . . .”

“Last year Urbenin informed me that our old forester Akhmet'ev was
going to become a monk on Mount Athos, and he recommended me to take
the ‘experienced, honest and worthy Skvortsov’ . . . I, of course,
agreed as I always do. Letters are not faces: they do not give
themselves away when they lie.”

The carriage drove into the courtyard and stopped at the front door.
We alighted. The rain had stopped. The thunder cloud, scintillating
with lightning and emitting angry grumbles, was hurrying towards the
north-east and uncovering more and more the dark blue star-spangled
sky. It was like a heavily armed power which having ravaged the
country and imposed a terrible tribute, was rushing on to new
conquests. . . . The small clouds that remained behind were chasing
after it as if fearing to be unable to catch it up. . . . Nature had
its peace restored to it.

And that peace seemed astonished at the calm, aromatic air, so full of
softness, of the melodies of nightingales, at the silence of the
sleeping gardens and the caressing light of the rising moon. The lake
awoke after the day's sleep, and by gentle murmurs brought memories of
itself to man's hearing. . . .

At such a time it is good to drive through the fields in a comfortable
calash or to be rowing on the lake. . . . But we went into the
house. . . . There another sort of poetry was awaiting us.



V

A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive
suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but
for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in
the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man's
vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined
youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who
has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my
soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters
tell us that a soldier, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and
afterwards assured everybody—and believed it himself—that he had died
at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his
shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something
resembling this semi-death. . . .

“I am very glad that you ate nothing at the forester's and haven't
spoilt your appetite,” the Count said to me as we entered the house.
“We shall have an excellent supper. . . . Like old times. . . . Serve
supper!” He gave the order to Il'ya who was helping him to take off
his coat and put on a dressing-gown.

We went into the dining-room. Here on the side-table life was already
bubbling over. Bottles of every colour and of every imaginable size
were standing in rows as on the shelves of a theatre refreshment-room,
reflecting on their sides the light of the lamps while awaiting our
attention. All sorts of salted and pickled viands and various _hors
d'œuvres_ stood on another table with a decanter of vodka and another
of English bitters. Near the wine bottles there were two dishes, one
of sucking pig and the other of cold sturgeon.

“Well, gentlemen,” the Count began as he poured out three glasses of
vodka and shivered as if from cold. “To our good health! Kaetan
Kazimirovich, take your glass!”

I drank mine off, the Pole only shook his head negatively. He moved
the dish of sturgeon towards himself, smelt it, and began to eat.

I must apologize to the reader. I have now to describe something not
at all “romantic.”

“Well, come on . . . they drank another,” the Count said, and filled
the glasses again. “Fire away, Lecoq!”

I took up my wineglass, looked at it and put it down again.

“The devil take it, it's long since I drank,” I said. “Shouldn't we
remember old times?”

Without further reflection, I filled five glasses and emptied them one
after another into my mouth. That was the only way I knew how to
drink. Small schoolboys learn how to smoke cigarettes from big ones:
the Count looked at me, poured out five glasses for himself, and,
bending forwards in the form of an arch, frowning and shaking his
head, he drank them off. My five glasses appeared to him to be
bravado, but I drank them not at all to display my talent for
drinking. . . . I wanted to get drunk, to get properly, thoroughly
drunk. . . . Drunk as I had not been for a long time while living in
my village. Having drunk them, I sat down to table and began to
discuss the sucking pig.

Intoxication was not long in succeeding. I soon felt a slight
giddiness. There was a pleasant feeling of coolness in my chest—and a
happy, expansive condition set in. Without any visible transition I
suddenly became very gay. The feeling of emptiness and dullness gave
place to a sensation of thorough joy and gaiety. I smiled. I suddenly
wanted chatter, laughter, people around me. As I chewed the sucking
pig I began to feel the fullness of life, almost the self-sufficiency
of life, almost happiness.

“Why don't you drink anything?” I asked the Pole.

“He never drinks,” the Count said. “Don't force him to.”

“But surely you can drink something!”

The Pole put a large bit of sturgeon into his mouth and shook his head
negatively. His silence incensed me.

“I say, Kaetan . . . what's your patronymic? . . . why are you always
silent?” I asked him. “I have not had the pleasure of hearing your
voice as yet.”

His two eyebrows that resembled the outstretched wings of a swallow
were raised and he gazed at me.

“Do you wish me to speak?” he asked with a strong Polish accent.

“Very much.”

“Why do you wish it?”

“Why, indeed! On board steamers at dinner strangers and people who are
not acquainted converse together, and here are we, who have known one
another for several hours, looking at each other and not exchanging a
single word! What does that look like?”

The Pole remained silent.

“Why are you silent?” I asked again after waiting a moment. “Answer
something, can't you?”

“I do not wish to answer you. I hear laughter in your voice, and I do
not like derision.”

“He's not laughing at all,” the Count interposed in alarm. “Where did
you fish up that notion, Kaetan? He's quite friendly. . . .”

“Counts and Princes have never spoken to me in such a tone!” Kaetan
said, frowning. “I don't like that tone.”

“Consequently, you will not honour me with your conversation?” I
continued to worry him as I emptied another glass and laughed.

“Do you know my real reason for coming here?” the Count broke in,
desirous of changing the conversation. “I haven't told you as yet? In
Petersburg I went to the doctor who has always treated me, to consult
him about my health. He auscultated, knocked and pressed me
everywhere, and said: ‘You're not a coward!’ Well, you know, though
I'm no coward, I grew pale. ‘I'm not a coward,’ I replied.”

“Cut it short, brother. . . . That's tiresome.”

“He told me I should soon die if I did not go away from Petersburg! My
liver is quite diseased from too much drink. . . . So I decided to
come here. It would have been silly to remain there. This estate is so
fine—so rich. . . . The climate alone is worth a fortune! . . . Here,
at least, I can occupy myself with my own affairs. Work is the best,
the most efficacious medicine. Kaetan, is that not true? I shall look
after the estate and chuck drink. . . . The doctor did not allow me a
single glass . . . not one!”

“Well, then, don't drink.”

“I don't drink. . . . To-day is the last time, in honour of meeting
you again”—the Count stretched towards me and gave me a smacking kiss
on the cheek—“my dear, good friend. To-morrow—not a drop! To-day,
Bacchus takes leave of me for ever. . . . Serezha, let us have a
farewell glass of cognac together?”

We drank a glass of cognac.

“I shall get well, Serezha, golabchik, and I shall look after the
estate. . . . Rational agriculture! Urbenin—is good, kind . . . he
understands everything, but is he the master? He's a routinist! We
must send for magazines, read, look into everything, take part in the
agricultural and dairy exhibitions, but he is not educated for that!
Is it possible he can be in love with Olenka? Ha-ha! I shall look into
everything and keep him as my assistant. . . . I shall take part in
the elections; I shall entertain society. . . . Eh? Even here one can
live happily! What do you think? Now there you are, laughing again!
Already laughing! One really can't talk with you about anything!”

I was gay, I was amused. The Count amused me; the candles, the bottles
amused me; the stucco hares and ducks that ornamented the walls of the
dining-room amused me. . . . The only thing that did not amuse me was
the sober face of Kaetan Kazimirovich. The presence of this man
irritated me.

“Can't you send that Polish nobleman to the devil?” I whispered to the
Count.

“What? For God's sake! . . .” the Count murmured, seizing both my
hands as if I had been about to beat his Pole. “Let him sit there!”

“I can't look at him! I say,” I continued, addressing Pshekhotsky,
“you refused to talk to me; but forgive me. I have not yet given up
hope of being more closely acquainted with your conversational
capacities.”

“Leave him alone!” the Count said, pulling me by the sleeve. “I
implore you!”

“I shall not stop worrying you until you answer me,” I continued. “Why
are you frowning? Is it possible that you still hear laughter in my
voice?”

“If I had drunk as much as you have, I would talk to you; but as it is
we are not a proper pair,” the Pole replied.

“That we are not a pair is what was to be proved. . . . That is
exactly what I wanted to say. A goose and a swine are no comrades; the
drunkard and the sober man are no kin; the drunkard disturbs the sober
man, the sober man the drunkard. In the adjoining drawing-room there
is a soft and excellent sofa. It's a good thing to lie upon it after
sturgeon with horse-radish. My voice will not be heard there. Do you
not wish to retire to that room?”

The Count clasped his hands and walked about the dining-room with
blinking eyes.

He is a coward and is always afraid of “big” talk. I, on the contrary,
when drunk, am amused by cross-purposes and discontentedness.

“I don't understand! I don't un‑der‑stand!” the Count groaned, not
knowing what to say or what to do.

He knew it was difficult to stop me.

“I am only slightly acquainted with you,” I continued. “Perhaps you
are an excellent man, and therefore I don't wish to quarrel with you
too soon. . . . I won't quarrel with you. I only invite you to
understand that there is no place for a sober man among drunken
ones. . . . The presence of a sober man has an irritating effect on
the drunken organism! . . . Take that to heart!”

“Say whatever you like!” Pshekhotsky sighed. “Nothing that you can say
will provoke me, young man.”

“So nothing will provoke you? Will you also not be offended if I call
you an obstinate swine?”

The Pole grew red in the face—but only that. The Count became pale, he
came up to me, looked imploringly at me, and spread his arms.

“Well, I beg you! Restrain your tongue!”

I had now quite entered into my drunken part, and wanted to go on, but
fortunately at that moment the Count and the Pole heard footsteps and
Urbenin entered the dining-room.

“I wish you all a good appetite!” he began. “I have come, your
Excellency, to find out if you have any orders for me?”

“I have no orders so far, but a request,” the Count replied. “I am
very glad you have come, Pëtr Egorych. . . . Sit down and have supper
with us, and let us talk about the business of the estate. . . .”

Urbenin sat down. The Count drank off a glass of cognac and began to
explain his plans for the future rational management of the estate. He
spoke very long and wearisomely, often repeating himself and changing
the subject. Urbenin listened to him lazily and attentively as serious
people listen to the prattle of children and women. He ate his
fish-soup, and looked sadly at his plate.

“I have brought some remarkable plans with me!” the Count said among
other things. “Remarkable plans! I will show them to you if you wish
it?”

Karnéev jumped up and ran into his study for the plans. Urbenin took
advantage of his absence to pour out half a tumbler of vodka, gulped
it down, and did not even take anything to eat after it.

“Disgusting stuff this vodka is!” he said, looking with abhorrence at
the decanter.

“Why didn't you drink while the Count was here, Pëtr Egorych?” I asked
him. “Is it possible that you were afraid to?”

“It is better to dissimulate, Sergei Petrovich, and drink in secret
than to drink before the Count. You know what a strange character the
Count has. . . . If I stole twenty thousand from him and he knew it,
he would say nothing owing to his carelessness; but if I forgot to
give him an account of ten kopecks that I had spent or drank vodka in
his presence, he would begin to lament that his bailiff was a robber.
You know him well.”

Urbenin half-filled the tumbler again and swigged it off.

“I think you did not drink formerly, Pëtr Egorych,” I said.

“Yes, but now I drink . . . I drink terribly!” he whispered.
“Terribly, day and night, not giving myself a moment's respite! Even
the Count never drank to such an extent as I do now. . . . It is
dreadfully hard, Sergei Petrovich! God alone knows what a weight I
have on my heart! It's just grief that makes me drink. . . . I always
liked and honoured you, Sergei Petrovich, and I can tell you quite
candidly. . . . I'd often be glad to hang myself!”

“For what reason?”

“My own stupidity. . . . Not only children are stupid. . . . There are
also fools at fifty. Don't ask the cause.”

The Count re-entered the room and put a stop to his effusions.

“A most excellent liqueur,” he said, placing a pot-bellied bottle with
the seal of the Benedictine monks on the table instead of “the
remarkable plans.” “When I passed through Moscow I got it at Depré's.
Have a glass, Sergei?”

“I thought you had gone to fetch the plans,” I said.

“I? What plans? Oh, yes! But, brother, the devil himself couldn't find
anything in my portmanteaux. . . . I rummaged and rummaged and gave it
up as a bad job. . . . The liqueur is very nice. Won't you have some,
Serezha?”

Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away.
When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I
became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the
Count's. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do
some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would
astonish people. . . . In such moments I thought I could swim across
the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman. . . .
The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the
same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him
with venomous jests and ridicule. . . . It was necessary to scoff at
the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with
biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.

“Why are you silent?” I began again. “Speak! I am listening to you!
Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces
talk childish drivel! . . . It is such mockery, such mockery of the
brains of man! . . . The face does not correspond to the brains! In
order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have
the countenances of Greek sages!”

I had not finished. . . . My tongue was entangled by the thought that
I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even
half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women,
thousands of lights. . . . I rose, took my glass and began walking
about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit
ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the
dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole
estate.

I chose a Turkish divan in the “Mosaic hall,” lay down on it and gave
myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air.
Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other,
took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full
of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.

It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.

The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan. . . . He
wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the
desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five
glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.

“What a lot I have drunk to-day!” he said to me. “This is more harmful
to me than any sort of poison. . . . But to-day it is for the last
time. . . . Upon my honour, the very last time. . . . I have strength
of will. . . .”

“All right, all right. . . .”

“For the last . . . Serezha, my dear friend, for the last time. . . .
Shouldn't we send a telegram to town for the last time?”

“Why not? Send it. . . .”

“Let's have one last spree in the proper way. . . . Well, get up and
write it.”

The Count himself did not know how to write telegrams. They always
came out too long and insufficient with him. I rose and wrote:

“S—— Restaurant London. Karpov, manager of the chorus. Leave
everything and come instantly by the two o'clock train.—The Count.”

“It is now a quarter to eleven,” the Count said. “The man will take
three-quarters of an hour to ride to the station, maximum an
hour. . . . Karpov will receive the telegram before one. . . .
Consequently they'll have time to catch the train. . . . If they don't
catch it, they can come by the goods train. Yes!”



VI

The telegram was dispatched with one-eyed Kuz'ma. Il'ya was ordered to
send carriages to the station in about an hour. In order to kill time,
I began leisurely to light the lamps and candles in all the rooms,
then I opened the piano and passed my fingers over the keys.

After that, I remember, I lay down on the same divan and thought of
nothing, only waving away with my hand the Count, who came and
pestered me with his chatter. I was in a state of drowsiness,
half-asleep, conscious only of the brilliant light of the lamps and
feeling in a gay and quiet mood. . . . The image of the “girl in red,”
with her head bent towards her shoulder, and her eyes filled with
horror at the thought of that effective death, stood before me and
quietly shook its little finger at me. . . . The image of another
girl, with a pale, proud face, in a black dress, flitted past. She
looked at me half-entreatingly, half-reproachfully.

Later on I heard noise, laughter, running about. . . . Deep, dark eyes
obscured the light. I saw their brilliancy, their laughter. . . . A
joyful smile played about the luscious lips. . . . That was how my
gipsy Tina smiled.

“Is it you?” her voice asked. “You're asleep? Get up, darling. . . .
How long it is since I saw you last!”

I silently pressed her hand and drew her towards me. . . .

“Let us go there. . . . We have all come. . . .”

“Stay! . . . I'm all right here, Tina. . . .”

“But . . . there's too much light. . . . You're mad! . . . They can
come. . . .”

“I'll wring the neck of whoever comes! . . . I'm so happy, Tina. . . .
Two years have passed since last we met. . . .”

Somebody began to play the piano in the ballroom.

“Akh! Moskva, Moskva, Moskva, white-stoned Moskva!” . . . several
voices sang in chorus.

“You see, they are all singing there. . . . Nobody will come
in. . . .”

“Yes, yes. . . .”

The meeting with Tina took away my drowsiness. . . . Ten minutes later
she led me into the ballroom, where the chorus was standing in a
semi-circle. . . . The Count, sitting astride on a chair, was beating
time with his hands. . . . Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, looking
with astonished eyes at these singing birds. I tore his balalaika out
of Karpov's hands, struck the chords, and—

“Down the Volga. . . . Down the mother Volga.”

“Down the Vo‑o‑o‑lga!” the chorus chimed in.

“Ay, burn, speak . . . speak . . .”

I waved my hand, and in an instant with the rapidity of lightning
there was another transition. . . .

“Nights of madness, nights of gladness. . . .”

Nothing acts more irritatingly, more titillatingly on my nerves than
such rapid transitions. I trembled with rapture, and embracing Tina
with one arm and waving the balalaika in the air with the other hand,
I sang “Nights of madness” to the end. . . . The balalaika fell
noisily on the floor and was shivered into tiny fragments. . . .

“Wine!”

After that my recollections are confused and chaotic. . . . Everything
is mixed, confused, entangled; everything is dim, obscure. . . . I
remember the grey sky of early morning. . . . We are in a boat. . . .
The lake is slightly agitated, and seems to grumble at our debauchery.

I am standing up in the middle of the boat, shaking it. . . . Tina
tries to convince me I may fall into the water, and implores me to sit
down. . . . I deplore loudly that there are no waves on the lake as
high as the “Stone Grave,” and frighten the martins that flit like
white spots over the blue surface of the lake with my shouts. . . .
Then follows a long, sultry day, with its endless lunches, its
ten-year-old liqueurs, its punches, . . . its debauches. There are
only a few moments I can remember of that day. . . . I remember
swinging with Tina in the garden. I stand on one end of the board, she
on the other. I work energetically, with my whole body as much as my
strength permits, and I don't exactly know what I want: that Tina
should fall from the swing and be killed, or that she should fly to
the very clouds! Tina stands there, pale as death, but proud and
self-loving; she has pressed her lips tightly together so as not to
betray by a single sound the fear she feels. We fly ever higher and
higher, and . . . I can't remember how it ended. Then there follows a
walk with Tina in a distant avenue of the park, with green vaults
above that protect it from the sun. A poetical twilight, black
tresses, luscious lips, whispers. . . . Then the little contralto is
walking beside me, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose,
childlike eyes and a small waist. I walk about with her until Tina,
having followed us, makes me a scene. . . . The gipsy is pale and
maddened. . . . She calls me “accursed,” and, being offended, prepares
to return to town. The Count, also pale and with trembling hands, runs
along beside us, and, as usual, can't find the proper words to
persuade Tina to remain. . . . In the end she boxes my ears. . . .
Strange! I, who fly into a rage at the slightest offensive word said
by a man, am quite indifferent to a box on the ear given me by a
woman. . . . There is again a long “after dinner,” again a snake on
the steps, again sleeping Franz with flies round his mouth, again the
gate. . . . “The girl in red” is standing on the “Stone Grave,” but
perceiving us from afar, she disappears like a lizard.

By evening we had made it up with Tina and were again friends. The
evening was succeeded by the same sort of stormy night, with music,
daring singing, with nerve exciting transitions . . . and not a
moment's sleep!

“This is self-destruction!” Urbenin whispered to me. He had come in
for a moment to listen to our singing.

He was certainly right. Further, I remember: the Count and I are
standing in the garden face to face, and quarrelling. Black-browed
Kaetan is walking about near us all the time, taking no part in our
jollifications, nevertheless he had also not slept but had followed us
about like a shadow. . . . The sky is already brightening, and on the
very summits of the highest trees the golden rays of the rising sun
are beginning to shine. Around us is the chatter of sparrows, the
songs of the starlings, and the rustle and flapping of wings that had
become heavy during the night. . . . The lowing of the herds and the
cries of the shepherds can be heard. A table with a marble slab stands
before us. On the table are candles that give out a faint light. Ends
of cigarettes, papers from sweets, broken wineglasses, orange
peel. . . .

“You must take it!” I say, pressing on the Count a parcel of rouble
notes. “I will force you to take it!”

“But it was I who sent for them and not you!” The Count insisted,
trying to catch hold of one of my buttons. “I am the master
here. . . . I treated you. Why should you pay? Can't you understand
you even insult me by offering to do so?”

“I also engaged them, so I pay half. You won't take it? I don't
understand such favours! Surely you don't think because you are as
rich as the devil that you have the right to confer such favours on
me? The devil take it! I engaged Karpov, and I will pay him! I want
none of your halves! I wrote the telegram!”

“In a restaurant, Serezha, you may pay as much as you like, but my
house is not a restaurant. . . . Besides, I really don't understand
why you are making all this fuss. I can't understand your insistent
prodigality. You have but little money, while I am rolling in
wealth. . . . Justice itself is on my side!”

“Then you will not take it? No? Well, then, you needn't! . . .”

I go up to the faintly burning candles and applying the banknotes to
the flame set them on fire and fling them on the ground. Suddenly a
groan is torn from Kaetan's breast. He opens his eyes wide, he grows
pale, and falling with the whole weight of his heavy body on the
ground tries to extinguish the money with the palms of his
hands. . . . In this he succeeds.

“I don't understand!” he says, placing the slightly burnt notes in his
pocket. “To burn money? As if it were last year's chaff or love
letters! . . . It's better that I should give it to the poor than let
it be consumed by the flames.”

I go into the house. . . . There in every room on the sofas and the
carpets the weary gipsies are lying, overcome by fatigue. My Tina is
sleeping on the divan in the “mosaic drawing-room.”

She lies stretched out and breathing heavily. Her teeth clenched, her
face pale. . . . She is evidently dreaming of the swing. . . . The
Scops-owl is going through all the rooms, looking with her sharp eyes
sardonically at the people who had so suddenly broken into the deadly
quiet of this forgotten estate. . . . She is not going about and
giving her old limbs so much trouble without an object.

That is all that my memory retained after two wild nights; all the
rest had escaped my drunken brain, or is not appropriate for
description. . . . But this is enough!


At no other time had Zorka borne me with so much zest as on the
morning after the burning of the banknotes. She also wanted to go
home. . . . The lake quietly rippled its sparkling waves in which the
rising sun was reflected and prepared for its daily sleep. The woods
and the willows that border the lake stood motionless as if in morning
prayer. It is difficult to describe the feelings that filled my soul
at the time. . . . Without entering into details, I will only say that
I was unspeakably glad and at the same time almost consumed by shame
when, turning out of the Count's homestead, I saw on the bank of the
lake the holy old face, all wrinkled by honest work and illness, of
venerable Mikhey. In appearance Mikhey resembles the fishermen of the
Bible. His hair and beard are white as snow, and he gazes
contemplatively at the sky. . . . When he stands motionless on the
bank and his eyes follow the chasing clouds, you can imagine that he
sees angels in the sky. . . . I like such faces! . . .

When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand as if I wanted
to cleanse myself by the touch of his honest, horny palm. . . . He
raised his small sagacious eyes on me and smiled.

“How do you do, good master!” he said, giving me his hand awkwardly.
“So you've ridden over again? Or has that old rake come back?”

“Yes, he's back.”

“I thought so. . . . I can see it by your face. . . . Here I stand and
look. . . . The world's the world. Vanity of vanities. . . . Look
there! That German ought to die, and he only thinks of vanities. . . .
Do you see?”

The old man pointed with a stick at the Count's bathing-house. A boat
was being rowed away quickly from the bathing-house. A man in a jockey
cap and a blue jacket was sitting in the boat. It was Franz, the
gardener.

“Every morning he takes money to the island and hides it there. The
stupid fellow can't understand that for him sand and money have much
the same value. When he dies he can't take it with him. Barin,* give
me a cigar!”

   * Master, sir.

I offered him my cigar case. He took three cigarettes and put them
into his breast pocket. . . .

“That's for my nephew. . . . He can smoke them.”

Zorka moved impatiently, and galloped off. I bowed to the old man in
gratitude for having been allowed to rest my eyes on his face. For a
long time he stood looking after me.

At home I was met by Polycarp. With a contemptuous, a crushing glance,
he measured my noble body as if he wanted to know whether this time I
had bathed again in all my clothes, or not.

“Congratulations!” he grumbled. “You've enjoyed yourself.”

“Hold your tongue, fool!” I said.

His stupid face angered me. I undressed quickly, covered myself up
with the bedclothes and closed my eyes.

My head became giddy and the world was enveloped in mist. Familiar
figures flitted through the mist. . . . The Count, snakes, Franz,
flame-coloured dogs, “the girl in red,” mad Nikolai Efimych.

“The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!”

“The girl in red” shook her finger at me, Tina obscured the light with
her black eyes, and . . . I fell asleep.



VII

“How sweetly and tranquilly he sleeps! When one gazes on this pale,
tired face, on this childishly innocent smile, and listens to this
regular breathing, one might think that it is not a magistrate who is
lying here, but the personification of a quiet conscience! One might
think that Count Karnéev had not yet arrived, that there had been
neither drunkenness nor gipsies, nor rows on the lake. . . . Get up,
you pernicious man! You are unworthy of enjoying such a blessing as
peaceful sleep! Arise!”

I opened my eyes and stretched myself voluptuously. . . . A broad
sunbeam, in which countless white dust atoms were agitated and chased
each other, streamed from the window on to my bed, causing the sunray
itself to appear as if tinged with some dull whiteness. . . . The ray
disappeared and reappeared before my eyes, as Pavel Ivanovich
Voznesensky, our charming district doctor, who was walking about my
bedroom, came into or went out of the stream of light. In the long,
unbuttoned frock-coat that flapped around him, as if hanging on a
clothes rack, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his
unusually long trousers, the doctor went from corner to corner of my
room, from chair to chair, from portrait to portrait, screwing up his
short-sighted eyes as he examined whatever came in his way. In
accordance with his habit of sticking his nose and letting his eyes
peer into everything, he either stooped down or stretched out, peeped
into the washstand, into the folds of the closed blinds, into the
chinks of the door, into the lamp . . . he seemed to be looking for
something or wishing to assure himself that everything was in
order. . . . When he looked attentively through his spectacles into a
chink, or at a spot on the wallpaper, he frowned, assumed an anxious
expression, and smelt it with his long nose. . . . All this he did
quite mechanically, involuntarily, and from habit; but at the same
time, as his eyes passed rapidly from one object to another, he had
the appearance of a connoisseur making an evaluation.

“Get up, don't you hear!” he called to me in his melodious tenor
voice, as he looked into the soap-dish and removed a hair from the
soap with his nail.

“Ah, ah, ah! How do you do, Mr. Screw!” I yawned, when I saw him
bending over the washstand. “What an age we haven't met!”

The whole district knew the doctor by the name of “Screw” from the
habit he had of constantly screwing up his eyes. I, too, called him by
that nickname. Seeing that I was awake, Voznesensky came and sat down
on a corner of my bed and at once took up a box of matches and lifted
it close to his screwed-up eyes.

“Only lazy people and those with clear consciences sleep in that way,”
he said, “and as you are neither the one nor the other, it would be
more seemly for you, my friend, to get up somewhat earlier. . . .”

“What o'clock is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“The devil take you, Screwy! Nobody asked you to wake me so early. Do
you know, I only got to sleep at past five to-day, and if not for you
I would have slept on till evening.”

“Indeed!” I heard Polycarp's bass voice say in the next room. “He
hasn't slept long enough yet! It's the second day he's sleeping, and
it's still too little for him! Do you know what day it is?” Polycarp
asked, coming into the bedroom and looking at me in the way clever
people look at fools.

“Wednesday,” I said.

“Of course, certainly! It's been specially arranged for you that the
week shall have two Wednesdays. . . .”

“To-day's Thursday!” the doctor said. “So, my good fellow, you've been
pleased to sleep through the whole of Wednesday. Fine! Very fine!
Allow me to ask you how much you drank?”

“For twice twenty-four hours I had not slept, and I drank . . . I
don't know how much I drank.”

Having sent Polycarp away, I began to dress and describe to the doctor
what I had lately experienced of “Nights of madness, nights of
gladness” which are so delightful and sentimental in the songs and so
unsightly in reality. In my description I tried not to go beyond the
bounds of “light genre,” to keep to facts and not to deviate into
moralizing, although all this was contrary to the nature of a man who
entertained a passion for inferences and results. . . . I spoke with
an air as if I was speaking about trifles that did not trouble me in
the slightest degree. In order to spare the chaste ears of Pavel
Ivanovich, and knowing his dislike of the Count, I suppressed much,
touched lightly on a great deal but nevertheless, despite the
playfulness of my tone and the style of caricature I gave to my
narrative during the whole course of it, the doctor looked into my
face seriously, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders
impatiently from time to time. He never once smiled. It was evident
that my “light genre” produced on him far from a light effect.

“Why don't you laugh, Screwy?” I asked when I had finished my
description.

“If it had not been you who had told me all this, and if there had not
been a certain circumstance, I would not have believed a word of it.
It's all too abnormal, my friend!”

“Of what circumstance are you speaking?”

“Last evening the muzhik whom you had belaboured in such an indelicate
way with an oar, came to me . . . Ivan Osipov. . . .”

“Ivan Osipov? . . .” I shrugged my shoulders. “It's the first time I
hear his name!”

“A tall, red-haired man . . . with a freckled face. . . . Try to
remember! You struck him on the head with an oar.”

“I can't remember anything! I don't know an Osipov. . . . I struck
nobody with an oar. . . . You've dreamed it all, uncle!”

“God grant that I dreamed it. . . . He came to me with a report from
the Karnéev district administration and asked me for a medical
certificate. . . . In the report it was stated that the wound was
given him by you, and he does not lie. . . . Can you remember now? The
wound he had received was above the forehead, just where the hair
begins. . . . You got to the bone, my dear sir!”

“I can't remember!” I murmured. . . . “Who is he? What's his
occupation?”

“He's an ordinary muzhik from the Karnéev village. He rowed the boat
when you were having your spree on the lake.”

“Hm! Perhaps! I can't remember. . . . I was probably drunk, and
somehow by chance. . . .”

“No, sir, not by chance. . . . He said you got angry with him about
something, you swore at him for a long time, and then getting furious
you rushed at him and struck him before witnesses. . . . Besides, you
shouted at him: ‘I'll kill you, you rascal!’”

I got very red, and began walking about from corner to corner of the
room.

“For the life of me, I can't remember!” I said, trying with all my
might to recall what had happened. “I can't remember! You say I ‘got
furious. . . .’ When drunk I become unpardonably nasty!”

“What can you want more!”

“The muzhik evidently wants to make a case of it, but that's not the
most important. . . . The most important is the fact itself, the
blows. . . . Is it possible that I'm capable of fighting? And why
should I strike a poor muzhik?”

“Yes, sir! Of course, I could not give him a certificate, but I told
him to apply to you. . . . You'll manage to arrange the matter with
him somehow. . . . The wound is a slight one, but considering the case
unofficially a wound in the head that goes as far as the skull is a
serious affair. . . . There are often cases when an apparently
trifling wound in the head which had been considered a slight one has
ended with mortification of the bone of the skull and consequently
with a journey _ad patres_.”

And, carried away by his subject, “Screw” rose from his seat and,
walking about the room along the walls and waving his hands, he began
to unload all his knowledge of surgical pathology for my
benefit. . . . Mortification of the bones of the skull, inflammation
of the brain, death, and other horrors poured from his lips with
endless explanations, macroscopic and microscopic processes, that
accompany this misty and, for me, quite uninteresting _terra
incognita_.

“Stop that effusion!” I cried, trying to stop his medical chatter.
“Can't you understand how tiresome all this stuff is?”

“No matter that it's tiresome. . . . Listen, and punish
yourself. . . . Perhaps another time you will be more careful. It may
teach you not to do such stupidities. If you don't arrange matters
with this scabby Osipov, it may cost you your position! The priest of
Themis to be tried for thrashing a man! . . . What a scandal!”

Pavel Ivanovich is the only man whose judgments I listen to with a
light heart, without frowning, whom I allow to gaze inquiringly into
my eyes and to thrust his investigating hand into the depths of my
soul. . . . We two are friends in the very best sense of the word; we
respect each other, although we have between us accounts of the most
unpleasant, the most delicate nature. . . . Like a black cat, a woman
had passed between us. This eternal _casus belli_ had been the cause
of reckonings between us, but did not make us quarrel, and we
continued to be at peace. “Screw” is a very nice fellow. I like his
simple and far from plastic face, with its large nose, screwed-up eyes
and thin, reddish beard. I like his tall, thin, narrow-shouldered
figure, on which his frock-coat and paletot hung as on a
clothes-horse.

His badly made trousers formed ugly creases at the knees, and his
boots were terribly trodden down at the heels; his white tie was
always in the wrong place. But do not think that he was
slovenly. . . . You had but to look once at his kind, concentrated
face to understand that he had no time to trouble about his own
appearance; besides, he did not know how to. . . . He was young,
honest, not vain, and loved his medicine, and he was always moving
about—this in itself is sufficient to explain to his advantage all the
defects of his inelegant toilet. He, like an artist, did not know the
value of money, and imperturbably sacrificed his own comfort and the
blessings of life to one of his passions, and thus he gave the
impression of being a man without means, who could scarcely make both
ends meet. . . . He neither smoked nor drank, he spent no money on
women, but nevertheless the two thousand roubles he earned by his
appointment at the hospital and by private practice passed through his
hands as quickly as my money does when I am out on the spree. Two
passions drained him: the passion of lending money, and the passion of
ordering things he saw advertised in the newspapers. . . . He lent
money to whoever asked for it, without any demur not uttering a single
word about when it was to be returned. It was not possible either by
hook or by crook to eradicate in him his heedless trust in people's
conscientiousness, and this confidence was even more apparent in his
constantly ordering things that were lauded in newspaper
advertisements. . . . He wrote for everything, the necessary and the
unnecessary. He wrote for books, telescopes, humorous magazines,
dinner services “composed of 100 articles,” chronometers. . . . And it
was not surprising that the patients who came to Pavel Ivanovich
mistook his room for an arsenal or for a museum. He had always been
cheated, but his trust was as strong and unshakable as ever. He was a
capital fellow, and we shall meet him more than once on the pages of
this novel.

“Good gracious! What a time I have been sitting here!” he exclaimed
suddenly, looking at the cheap watch with one lid he had ordered from
Moscow, and which was “guaranteed for five years,” but had already
been repaired twice. “I must be off, friend! Good-bye! And mark my
words, these sprees of the Count's will lead to no good! To say
nothing about your health. . . . Oh, by-the-by! Shall you go to Tenevo
to-morrow?”

“What's up there to-morrow?”

“The fête of the Church! Everybody will be there, so come too! You
must positively come! I have promised that you will come. Don't make
me a liar!”

It was not necessary to ask to whom he had given his word. We
understood each other. The doctor then took leave, put on his
well-worn overcoat, and went away.

I remained alone. . . . In order to drown the unpleasant thoughts that
began to swarm in my head, I went to my writing-table and trying not
to think nor to call myself to account, I began to open my post. The
first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:

  “My Darling Serezha,

  “Forgive me for troubling you, but I am so surprised that I don't
  know to whom to apply. . . . It is shameful! Of course, now it will
  be impossible to get it back, and I'm not sorry, but judge for
  yourself: if thieves are to enjoy indulgence, a respectable woman
  cannot feel safe anywhere. After you left I awoke on the divan and
  found many of my things were missing. Somebody had stolen my
  bracelet, my gold studs, ten pearls out of my necklace, and had
  taken about a hundred roubles out of my purse. I wanted to complain
  to the Count, but he was asleep, so I went away without doing so.
  This is very wrong! The Count's house—and they steal as in a tavern!
  Tell the Count. I send you much love and kisses.

    “Your loving,
      “Tina.”

That his Excellency's house was swarming with thieves was nothing new
to me; and I added Tina's letter to the information I had already in
my memory on this count. Sooner or later I would be obliged to use
this intelligence in a case. . . . I knew who the thieves were.



VIII

Black-eyed Tina's letter, her large sprawling handwriting, reminded me
of the mosaic room and aroused in me desires such as a drunkard has
for more drink; but I overcame them, and by the strength of my will I
forced myself to work. At first I found it unspeakably dull to
decipher the bold handwriting of the various commissaries, but
gradually my attention became fixed on a burglary, and I began to work
with delight. All day long I sat working at my table, and Polycarp
passed behind me from time to time and looked suspiciously at my work.
He had no confidence in my sobriety, and at any moment he expected to
see me rise from the table and order Zorka to be saddled; but towards
evening, seeing my persistence, he began to give credence to my good
intentions, and the expression of moroseness on his face gave place to
one of satisfaction. . . . He began to walk about on tiptoe and to
speak in whispers. . . . When some young fellows passed my house,
playing on the accordion, he went into the street and shouted:

“What do you young devils mean by making such a row here? Can't you go
another way? Don't you know, you Mahommedans, that the master is
working?”

In the evening when he served the samovar in the dining-room, he
quietly opened my door and called me graciously to come to tea.

“Will you please come to tea?” he said, sighing gently and smiling
respectfully.

And while I was drinking my tea he came up behind me and kissed me on
the shoulder.

“Now that's better, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “Why don't you let
that white-eyebrowed devil be hanged, may he be. . . . Is it possible
with your high understanding and your education to occupy yourself
with pusillanimousness? Your work is noble. . . . Everybody must
glorify you, be afraid of you; but if you break people's heads with
that devil and bathe in the lake in all your clothes, everyone will
say: ‘He has no sense! He's an empty-headed fellow!’ And so that
reputation will be noised about the whole world! Foolhardiness is
suitable for merchants, but not for noblemen. . . . Noblemen require
science and office. . . .”

“All right! Enough, enough. . . .”

“Sergey Petrovich, don't keep company with that Count. If you want to
have a friend, who could be better than Doctor Pavel Ivanovich? He
goes about shabbily dressed, but how clever he is!”

I was melted by Polycarp's sincerity. . . . I wanted to say an
affectionate word to him. . . .

“What novel are you reading now?” I asked.

“‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ That's a Count for you! That's a real
Count! Not like your smut-Count!”

After tea I again sat down to work and worked until my eyelids began
to droop and close my tired eyes. . . . When I went to bed I ordered
Polycarp to wake me at five o'clock.

The next morning, before six o'clock, whistling gaily and knocking off
the heads of the field flowers, I was walking towards Tenevo, where
the fête of the church to which my friend “Screw” had invited me to
come was being celebrated that day. It was a glorious morning.
Happiness itself appeared to be hanging above the earth, and reflected
in every dewdrop, enticed the soul of the passer-by to itself. The
woods enwrapped in morning light, were quiet and motionless as if
listening to my footsteps, and the chirping brotherhood of birds met
me with expressions of mistrust and alarm. . . . The air, impregnated
with the evaporations of the fresh green, caressed my healthy lungs
with its softness. I breathed it in, and casting my enraptured eyes
over the whole distant prospect, I felt the spring and youth, and it
seemed to me that the young birches, the grass at the roadside, and
the ceaselessly humming cockchafers shared these feelings with me.

“Why is it that there in the world men crowd together in their
miserable hovels, in their narrow and limited ideas,” I thought,
“while they have here so much space for life and thought? Why do they
not come here?”

And my poetic imagination refused to be disturbed by thoughts of
winter and of bread, those two sorrows that drive poets into cold,
prosaic Petersburg and uncleanly Moscow, where fees are paid for
verse, but no inspiration can be found.

Peasants' carts and landowners' britzkas hurrying to the liturgy or to
market passed me constantly as I trudged along. All the time I had to
take off my cap in answer to the courteous bows of the muzhiks and the
landowners of my acquaintance. They all offered to give me a lift, but
to walk was pleasanter than to drive, and I refused all their offers.
Among others the Count's gardener, Franz, in a blue jacket and a
jockey cap, passed me on a racing droshky. . . . He looked lazily at
me with his sleepy, sour eyes and touched his cap in a still more lazy
fashion. Behind him a twelve-gallon barrel with iron hoops, evidently
for vodka, was tied to the droshky. . . . Franz's disagreeable phiz
and his barrel somewhat disturbed my poetical mood, but very soon
poetry triumphed again when I heard the sound of wheels behind me, and
looking round I saw a heavy wagonette drawn by a pair of bays, and in
the heavy wagonette, on a leathern cushion on a sort of box seat, was
my new acquaintance, “the girl in red,” who two days before had spoken
to me about the “electricity that had killed her mother.” Olenka's
pretty, freshly washed and somewhat sleepy face beamed and blushed
slightly when she saw me striding along the footpath that separated
the wood from the road. She nodded merrily to me and smiled in the
affable manner of an old acquaintance.

“Good morning!” I shouted to her.

She kissed her hand to me and disappeared from my sight, together with
her heavy wagonette, without giving me enough time to admire her
fresh, pretty face. This day she was not dressed in red. She wore a
sort of dark green costume with large buttons and a broad-brimmed
straw hat, but even in this garb she pleased me no less than she had
done before. I would have talked to her with pleasure, and I would
gladly have heard her voice. I wanted to gaze into her deep eyes in
the brilliancy of the sun, as I had gazed into them that night by the
flashes of lightning. I wanted to take her down from the ugly
wagonette and propose that she should walk beside me for the rest of
the way, and I certainly would have done so if it had not been for the
“rules of society.” For some reason it appeared to me that she would
have gladly agreed to this proposal. It was not without some cause
that she had twice looked back at me as the wagonette disappeared
behind some old alders! . . .

It was about six versts from the place of my abode to Tenevo—nothing
of a distance for a young man on a fine morning. Shortly after six I
was already making my way between loaded carts and the booths of the
fair towards the Tenevo church. Notwithstanding the early hour and the
fact that the liturgy in the church was not over as yet, the noise of
trade was already in the air. The squeaking of cart wheels, the
neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, and the sounds of toy
trumpets were intermixed with the cries of gipsy horse-dealers and the
songs of muzhiks, who had already found time to get drunk. What
numbers of gay, idle faces! What types! What beauty there was in the
movements of these masses, bright with brilliant coloured dresses, on
which the morning sun poured its light! All this many-thousand-headed
crowd swarmed, moved, made a noise in order to finish the business
they had to do in a few hours, and to disperse by the evening, leaving
after them, on the market place as a sort of remembrance, refuse of
hay, oats spilt here and there, and nutshells. . . . The people, in
dense crowds, were going to and coming from the church.

The cross that surmounts the church emitted golden rays, bright as
those of the sun. It glittered and seemed to be aflame with golden
fire. Beneath it the cupola of the church was burning with the same
fire, and the freshly painted green dome shone in the sun, and beyond
the sparkling cross the clear blue sky stretched out in the far
distance. I passed through the crowds in the churchyard and entered
the church. The liturgy had only just begun and the Gospel was being
read. The silence of the church was only broken by the voice of the
reader and the footsteps of the incensing deacon. The people stood
silent and immovable, gazing with reverence through the wide-open holy
gates of the altar and listening to the drawling voice of the reader.
Village decorum, or, to speak more correctly, village propriety,
strictly represses every inclination to violate the reverend quiet of
the church. I always felt ashamed when in a church anything caused me
to smile or speak. Unfortunately it is but seldom that I do not meet
some of my acquaintances who, I regret to say, are only too numerous,
and it generally happens that I have hardly entered the church before
I am accosted by one of the “intelligentsia” who, after a long
introduction about the weather, begins a conversation on his own
trivial affairs. I answer “yes” and “no,” but I am too considerate to
refuse to give him any attention. My consideration often costs me
dear. While I talk I glance bashfully at my neighbours who are
praying, fearing that my idle chatter may wound them.

This time, as usual, I did not escape from acquaintances. When I
entered the church I saw my heroine standing close to the door—that
same “girl in red” whom I had met on the way to Tenevo.

Poor little thing! There she stood, red as a crawfish, and perspiring
in the midst of the crowd, casting imploring glances on all those
faces in the search for a deliverer. She had stuck fast in the densest
crowd and, unable to move either forward or backward, looked like a
bird who was being tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she
smiled bitterly and began nodding her pretty chin.

“For God's sake, escort me to the front!” she said, seizing hold of my
sleeve. “It is terribly stuffy here—and so crowded. . . . I beg you!”

“In front it will be as crowded,” I replied.

“But there, all the people are well dressed and respectable. . . .
Here are only common people. A place is reserved for us in
front. . . . You, too, ought to be there. . . .”

Consequently she was red not because it was stuffy and crowded in the
church. Her little head was troubled by the question of precedence. I
granted the vain girl's prayer, and by carefully pressing aside the
people I was able to conduct her to the very dais near the altar on
which the flower of our district _beau-monde_ was collected. Having
placed Olenka in a position that was in accordance with her
aristocratic desires, I took up a post at the back of the _beau-monde_
and began an inspection.

As usual, the men and women were whispering and giggling. The Justice
of the Peace, Kalinin, gesticulating with his hands and shaking his
head, was telling the landowner, Deryaev, in an undertone all about
his ailments. Deryaev was abusing the doctors almost aloud and
advising the justice of the peace to be treated by a certain Evstrat
Ivanych. The ladies, perceiving Olenka, pounced upon her as a good
subject for their criticism and began whispering. There was only one
girl who evidently was praying.

She was kneeling, with her black eyes fixed in front of her; she was
moving her lips. She did not notice a curl of hair that had got loose
under her hat and was hanging in disorder over her temple. . . . She
did not notice that Olenka and I had stopped beside her.

She was Nadezhda Nikolaevna, Justice Kalinin's daughter. When I spoke
above of the woman, who, like a black cat, had run between the doctor
and me, I was speaking of her. . . . The doctor loved her as only such
noble natures as my dear “Screw's” are able to love. Now he was
standing beside her, as stiff as a pikestaff, with his hands at his
sides and his neck stretched out. From time to time his loving eyes
glanced inquiringly at her concentrated face. He seemed to be watching
her prayer and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate
longing to be the object of her prayers. But, to his grief, he knew
for whom she was praying. . . . It was not for him. . . .

I made a sign to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round at me, and we
both left the church.

“Let's stroll about the market,” I proposed.

We lighted our cigarettes and went towards the booths.



IX

“How is Nadezhda Nikolaevna?” I asked the doctor as we entered a tent
where playthings were sold.

“Pretty well. . . . I think she's all right . . .” the doctor
replied, frowning at a little soldier with a lilac face and a crimson
uniform. “She asked about you. . . .”

“What did she ask about me?”

“Things in general. . . . She is angry that you have not been to see
them for so long . . . she wants to see you and to inquire the cause
of your sudden coldness towards their house. . . . You used to go
there nearly every day and then—dropped them! As if cut off. . . . You
don't even bow.”

“That's not true, Screw. . . . Want of leisure is really the cause of
my ceasing to go to the Kalinins. What's true is true! My connexion
with that family is as excellent as formerly. . . . I always bow if I
happen to meet any one of them.”

“However, last Thursday, when you met her father, for some reason you
did not return his bow.”

“I don't like that old blockhead of a Justice,” I said, “and I can't
look with equanimity at his phiz; but I still have the strength to bow
to him and to press the hand he stretches out to me. Perhaps I did not
notice him on Thursday, or I did not recognize him. You're not in a
good humour to-day, Screwy, and are trying to pick a quarrel.”

“I love you, my dear boy,” Pavel Ivanovich sighed; “but I don't
believe you. . . . ‘Did not notice, did not recognize’! . . . I don't
require your justifications nor your evasions. . . . What's the use of
them when there's so little truth in them? You're an excellent, a good
man, but there's a little bit of a screw sticking in your sick brain
that—forgive me for saying it—is capable of any offence.”

“I'm humbly obliged.”

“Don't be offended, golubchek. . . . God grant that I may be mistaken,
but you appear to me to be somewhat of a psychopath. Sometimes, quite
in spite of your will and the dictates of your excellent nature, you
have attacks of such desires and commit such acts that all who know
you as a respectable man are quite nonplussed. You make one marvel how
your highly moral principles, which I have the honour of knowing, can
exist together with your sudden impulses, which, in the end, produce
the most screaming abominations! . . . What animal is this?” Pavel
Ivanovich asked the salesman abruptly in quite another tone, lifting
close to his eyes a wooden animal with a man's nose, a mane, and a
grey stripe down its back.

“A lion,” the salesman answered, yawning. “Or perhaps some other sort
of creature. The deuce only knows!”

From the toy booths we went to the shops where textiles were sold and
trade was already very brisk.

“These toys only mislead children,” the doctor said. “They give the
falsest ideas of flora and fauna. For example, this lion . . .
striped, purple, and squeaking. . . . Whoever heard of a lion that
squeaks?”

“I say, Screwy,” I began, “you evidently want to say something to me
and you seem not to be able. . . . Go ahead! . . . I like to hear you,
even when you tell me unpleasant things. . . .”

“Whether pleasant or unpleasant, friend, you must listen to me. There
is much I want to talk to you about.”

“Begin. . . . I am transformed into one very large ear.”

“I have already mentioned to you my supposition that you are a
psychopath. Now have the goodness to listen to the proofs. . . . I
will speak quite frankly, perhaps sometimes sharply. . . . My words
may jar on you, but don't be angry, friend. . . . You know my feelings
for you: I like you better than anybody else in the district. . . . I
speak not to reprove, nor to blame, nor to slay you. Let us both be
objective, friend. . . . Let us examine your psyche with an
unprejudiced eye, as if it were a liver or a stomach. . . .”

“All right, let's be objective,” I agreed.

“Excellent! . . . Then let us begin with your connexion with
Kalinin. . . . If you consult your memory it will tell you that you
began to visit the Kalinins immediately after your arrival in our
God-protected district. Your acquaintance was not sought by them. At
first you did not please the Justice of the Peace, owing to your
arrogant manner, your sarcastic tone, and your friendship with the
dissolute Count, and you would never have been in the Justice's house
if you yourself had not paid him a visit. You remember? You became
acquainted with Nadezhda Nikolaevna, and you began to frequent the
Justice's house almost every day. . . . Whenever one came to the house
you were sure to be there. . . . You were welcomed in the most cordial
manner. You were shown all possible marks of friendship—by the father,
the mother, and the little sister. . . . They became as much attached
to you as if you were a relative. . . . They were enraptured by you
 . . . you were made much of, they were in fits of laughter over your
slightest witticism. . . . You were for them the acme of wisdom,
nobility, gentle manners. You appeared to understand all this, and you
reciprocated their attachment with attachment—you went there every
day, even on the eve of holidays—the days of cleaning and bustle.
Lastly, the unhappy love that you aroused in Nadezhda's heart is no
secret to you. . . . Is that not so? Well, then, you, knowing she was
over head and ears in love with you, continued to go there day after
day. . . . And what happened then, friend? A year ago, for no apparent
reason, you suddenly ceased visiting the house. You were awaited for a
week . . . a month. . . . They are still waiting for you, and you
still don't appear . . . they write to you . . . you do not
reply. . . . You end by not even bowing. . . . To you, who set so much
store by decorum, such conduct must appear as the height of rudeness!
Why did you break off your connexion with the Kalinins in such a sharp
and off-hand manner? Did they offend you? No. . . . Did they bore you?
In that case you might have broken off gradually, and not in such a
sharp and insulting manner, for which there was no cause. . . .”

“I stopped visiting a house and therefore have become a psychopath!” I
laughed. “How naive you are, Screwy! What difference is there if you
suddenly cease an acquaintance or do so gradually? It's even more
honest to do so suddenly—there's less hypocrisy in it. But what
trifles all these are!”

“Let us admit that all this is trifling, or that the cause of your
sharp action is a secret that does not concern other people. But how
can you explain your further conduct?”

“For instance?”

“For instance, you appeared one day at a meeting of our Zemstvo
Board—I don't know what your business was there—and in reply to the
president, who asked you how it came that you were no longer to be met
at Kalinin's, you said. . . . Try to remember what you said! ‘I'm
afraid they want to marry me!’ That's what fell from your lips! And
this you said during the meeting in a loud and distinct voice, so that
all the hundred men who were present could hear you! Pretty? In reply
to your words laughter and various offensive witticisms about fishing
for husbands could be heard on all sides. Your words were caught up by
a certain scamp, who went to Kalinin's and repeated them to Nadenka
during dinner. . . . Why such an insult, Sergei Petrovich?”

Pavel Ivanovich barred the way. He stood before me and continued
looking at me with imploring, almost tearful eyes.

“Why such an insult? Why? Because this charming girl loves you? Let us
admit that her father, like all fathers, had intentions on your
person. . . . He is like all fathers, they all have an eye on you, on
me, on Markuzin. . . . All parents are alike! . . . There's not the
slightest doubt that she is over head and ears in love; perhaps she
had hoped she would become your wife. . . . Is that a reason to give
her such a sounding box on the ear? Dyadinka, dyadinka!* Was it not
you yourself who encouraged these intentions on your person? You went
there every day; ordinary guests never go so often. In the daytime you
went out fishing with her, in the evening you walked about the garden
with her, jealously guarding your _tête-à-tête_. . . . You learned
that she loved you, and you made not the slightest change in your
conduct. . . . Was it possible after that not to suspect you of having
good intentions? I was convinced you would marry her! And you—you
complained—you laughed! Why? What had she done to you?”

   * Little uncle, a familiar form of affectionate address.

“Don't shout, Screwy, the people are staring at us,” I said, getting
round Pavel Ivanovich. “Let us change this conversation. It's old
women's chatter. I'll explain in a few words, and that must be enough
for you. I went to the Kalinin's house because I was dull and also
because Nadenka interested me. She's a very interesting girl. . . .
Perhaps I might even have married her. But, finding out that you had
preceded me as a candidate for her heart, that you were not
indifferent to her, I decided to disappear. . . . It would have been
cruel on my part to stand in the way of such a good fellow as
yourself. . . .”

“Thanks for the favour! I never asked you for this gracious gift, and,
as far as I can judge by the expression of your face, you are now not
speaking the truth; you are talking nonsense not reflecting on what
you say. . . . And besides, the fact of my being a good fellow did not
hinder you on one of your last meetings with Nadenka to make her some
proposals in the summer-house, which would have brought no good to the
excellent young fellow if he had married her.”

“O-ho! Screwy, where did you find out about this proposal? It seems
that your affairs are not going on badly, if such secrets are confided
to you! . . . However, you've grown white with rage and almost look as
if you were going to strike me. . . . And just now we agreed to be
objective! Screwy, what a funny fellow you are! Well, we've had about
enough of all this nonsense. . . . Let's go to the post office. . . .”



X

We went to the post office, which looked out gaily with its three
little windows on to the market place. Through the grey paling gleamed
the many coloured flower garden of our postmaster, Maxim Fedorovich,
who was known in the whole district as a great connoisseur of all that
concerned gardening and the art of laying out beds, borders, lawns,
etc.

We found Maxim Fedorovich very pleasantly occupied. Smiling, and red
with pleasure, he was seated at his green table, turning over
hundred-rouble notes as if they were a book. Evidently even the sight
of another man's money had a pleasing effect on his frame of mind.

“How do you do, Maxim Fedorovich?” I said to him. “Where have you got
such a pile of money?”

“It's to be sent to St. Petersburg,” the postmaster replied, smiling
sweetly, and he pointed his chin at the corner of the room where a
dark figure was sitting on the only chair in the post office.

This dark figure rose when he saw me and came towards us. I recognized
my new acquaintance, my new enemy, whom I had so grievously insulted
when I had got drunk at the Count's.

“My best greetings!” he said.

“How are you, Kaetan Kazimirovich?” I answered, pretending not to
notice his outstretched hand. “How's the Count?”

“Thank God, he's quite well. . . . He's only a little dull. . . . He's
expecting you to come every minute.”

I read on Pshekhotsky's face the desire to converse with me. How could
that desire have arisen after the “swine” with which I had treated him
on that evening, and what caused this change of tone?

“What a lot of money you have!” I said, gazing at the packet of
hundred-rouble notes he was sending away.

It seemed as if somebody had given a fillip to my brain! I noticed
that one of the hundred-rouble notes had charred edges, and one corner
had been quite burnt off. . . . It was the hundred-rouble note which I
had wanted to burn in the flame of a Chandor candle, when the Count
refused to accept it from me as my share of the payment for the
gipsies, and which Pshekhotsky had picked up when I flung it on the
ground.

“It's better that I should give it to the poor, than let it be
consumed by the flames,” he had said then.

To what “poor” was he sending it now?

“Seven thousand five hundred roubles,” Maxim Fedorovich counted in a
drawling voice. “Quite right!”

It is ill to pry into the secrets of other people, but I wanted
terribly to find out whose this money was and to whom this
black-browed Pole was sending it to Petersburg, This money was
certainly not his, and the Count had nobody to whom he would send it.

“He has plundered the drunken Count,” I thought. “If deaf and silly
Scops-Owl knows how to plunder the Count, what difficulty will this
goose have in thrusting his paw into his pockets?”

“Oh, by-the-by, I'll also take this opportunity of sending some
money,” Pavel Ivanovich said hastily. “Do you know, gentlemen, it's
quite incredible! For fifteen rouble you can get five things carriage
free! A telescope, a chronometer, a calendar, and something
more. . . . Maxim Fedorovich, kindly let me have a sheet of paper and
an envelope!”

Screw sent off his fifteen roubles, I received my newspaper and a
letter, and we left the post office.

We went towards the church. Screwy paced after me, as pale and dismal
as an autumn day. The conversation in which he had tried to show
himself to be “objective” had excited him quite beyond all
expectation.

All the church bells were being rung. An apparently endless crowd was
slowly descending the steps that led from the church porch.

Ancient banners and a dark cross were held high above the crowd, at
the head of the procession. The sun played gaily on the vestments of
the priests, and the icon of the Holy Virgin emitted blinding
rays. . . .

“Ah, there are our people!” the doctor said, pointing to the
_beau-monde_ of our district which had separated itself from the crowd
and was standing aside.

“Your people, but not mine,” I said.

“That's all the same. . . . Let us join them. . . .”

I approached my acquaintances and bowed. The Justice of the Peace,
Kalinin, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a grey beard and
crawfish-like eyes, was standing in front of all the others,
whispering something in his daughter's ear. Trying to appear as if he
had not noticed me, he made not the slightest movement in answer to my
general salute that had been made in his direction.

“Good-bye, my angel,” he said in a lachrymose voice as he kissed his
daughter on the forehead. “Drive home alone. I shall be back by
evening. My visits will take but little time.”

Having kissed his daughter again and smiled sweetly on the
_beau-monde_, he frowned fiercely, and turning sharply round on one
heel, towards a muzhik wearing the disc of a foreman, he said hoarsely
to him:

“When will they allow my carriage to drive up?”

The muzhik became excited and waved his arms.

“Look out!”

The crowd that was following the procession made way and the carriage
of the Justice of the Peace drove up with chic and the sound of bells
to where Kalinin was standing. He sat down, bowed majestically, and
alarming the crowd by his “Look out!” he disappeared from sight
without casting a single glance at me.

“What a majestic swine!” I whispered in the doctor's ear. “Come
along!”

“Don't you want to say a word to Nadezhda Nicolaevna?” Pavel Ivanovich
asked:

“It's time for me to go home. I'm in a hurry.”

The doctor looked at me angrily, sighed, and turned away. I made a
general bow and went towards the booths. As I was making my way
through the dense crowd, I turned to look back at the Justice's
daughter. She was looking after me and appeared to be trying whether I
could bear her pure, searching gaze, so full of bitter injury and
reproach.

Her eyes said: “Why?”

Something stirred in my breast, and I felt remorse and shame for my
silly conduct. I suddenly felt a wish to return and caress and fondle
with all the strength of my soft, and not yet quite corrupt, soul this
girl who loved me passionately, and who had been so grievously wronged
by me; and to tell her that it was not I who was in fault, but my
accursed pride that prevented me from living, breathing or advancing a
step. Silly, conceited, foppish pride, full of vanity. Could I, a
frivolous man, stretch out the hand of reconciliation, when I knew and
saw that every one of my movements was watched by the eyes of the
district gossips and the “ill-omened old women”? Sooner let them laugh
her to scorn and cover her with derisive glances and smiles, than
undeceive them of the “inflexibility” of my character and the pride,
which silly women admired so much in me.

Just before, when I had spoken with Pavel Ivanovich about the reasons
that had caused me suddenly to cease my visits to the Kalinins, I had
not been candid and quite inaccurate. . . . I had held back the real
reason; I had concealed it because I was ashamed of its
triviality. . . . The cause was as tiny as a grain of dust. . . . It
was this. On the occasion of my last visit, after I had given up Zorka
to the coachman and was entering the Kalinin's house, the following
phrase reached my ears:

“Nadenka, where are you? . . . Your betrothed has come!”

These words were spoken by her father, the Justice of the Peace, who
probably did not think that I might hear him. But I heard him, and my
self-love was aroused.

“I her betrothed?” I thought. “Who allowed you to call me her
betrothed? On what basis?”

And something snapped in my breast. Pride rebelled within me, and I
forgot all I had remembered when riding to Kalinin's. . . . I forgot
that I had allured the young girl, and I myself was being attracted by
her to such a degree that I was unable to pass a single evening
without her company. . . . I forgot her lovely eyes that never left my
memory either by night or day, her kind smile, her melodious
voice. . . . I forgot the quiet summer evenings that will never return
either for her or me. . . . Everything had crumbled away before the
pressure of the devilish pride that had been aroused by the silly
phrase of her simple-minded father. . . . I left the house in a rage,
mounted Zorka, and galloped off, vowing to snub Kalinin, who without
my permission had dared to consider me as his daughter's betrothed.

“Besides, Voznesensky is in love with her,” I thought, trying to
justify my sudden departure, as I rode home. “He began to twirl around
her before I did, and they were considered to be engaged when I made
her acquaintance. I won't interfere with him!”

From that day I never put a foot in Kalinin's house, though there were
moments when I suffered from longing to see Nadia, and my soul yearned
for the renewal of the past. . . . But the whole district knew of the
rupture, knew that I had “bolted” from marriage. . . . How could my
pride make concessions?

Who can tell? If Kalinin had not said those words, and if I had not
been so stupidly proud and touchy, perhaps I would not have had to
look back, nor she to gaze at me with such eyes. . . . But even those
eyes were better, even the feeling of being wronged and of reproach
was better, than what I saw in those eyes a few months after our
meeting in the Tenevo church! The grief that shone in the depths of
those black eyes now was only the beginning of the terrible misfortune
that, like the sudden onrush of a train, swept that girl from the
earth. They were like little flowers compared to those berries that
were then already ripening in order to pour terrible poison into her
frail body and anguished heart.



XI

When I left Tenevo I took the same road by which I had come. The sun
showed it was already midday. As in the morning, peasants' carts and
landowners' britzkas, beguiled my hearing by their squeaking and the
metallic rumble of their bells. Again, the gardener, Franz, drove past
me with his vodka barrel, but this time it was probably full. Again
his eyes gave me a sour look, and he touched his cap. His nasty face
jarred on me, but this time again the disagreeable impression that the
meeting with him had made on me was entirely wiped away by the
forester's daughter, Olenka, whose heavy wagonette caught me up.

“Give me a lift!” I called to her.

She nodded gaily to me and stopped her vehicle. I sat down beside her,
and the wagonette rattled on along the road, which like a light stripe
cut through the three versts of the Tenevo forest. For about two
minutes we looked at each other in silence.

“What a pretty girl she really is!” I thought as I looked at her
throat and chubby chin. “If I were told to choose between Nadenka and
her, I would choose her. . . . She's more natural, fresher, her nature
is broader, bolder. . . . If she fell into good hands, much could be
made of her! . . . The other is morose, visionary . . . clever.”

Lying at Olenka's feet there were two pieces of linen and several
parcels.

“What a number of purchases you have made!” I said. “For what can you
want so much linen?”

“That's not all I need!” Olenka replied. “I only bought these among
all the rest. To-day I was a whole hour buying things in the market;
to-morrow I must go to make purchases in the town. . . . And then all
this must be made up. . . . I say, don't you know any woman who would
go out to sew?”

“No, I think not. . . . But why have you to buy so many things? Why
have they to be sewn? God knows your family is not large. . . . One,
two . . . there, I've counted you all. . . .”

“How queer all you men are! You don't understand anything! Wait till
you get married, you yourself will be angry then if after the wedding
your wife comes to you all slovenly. I know Pëtr Egorych is not in
want of anything. Still, it seems a bit awkward not to appear as a
good housewife from the first. . . .”

“What has Pëtr Egorych to do with it?”

“Hm! . . . You are laughing at me, as if you don't know!” Olenka said
and blushed slightly.

“Young lady, you are talking in riddles.”

“Have you really not heard? Why, I am going to marry Pëtr Egorych!”

“Marry?” I said in astonishment, making big eyes. “What Pëtr Egorych?”

“Oh, good Lord! Urbenin, of course!”

I stared at her blushing and smiling face.

“You? Going to marry . . . Urbenin? What a joke!”

“It's not a joke at all. . . . I really can't understand where you see
the joke. . . .”

“You to marry . . . Urbenin. . . .” I repeated, getting pale, I
really don't know why. “If this is not a joke, what is it?”

“What joke! I can't understand what is there extraordinary—what is
there strange in it?” Olenka said, pouting.

A minute passed in silence. . . . I gazed at the pretty girl, at her
young, almost childish face, and was astonished that she could make
such terrible jokes! I instantly pictured to myself Urbenin, elderly,
fat, red-faced with his standing-out ears and hard hands, whose very
touch could only scratch that young female body which had scarcely
begun to live. . . . Surely the thought of such a picture must
frighten this pretty wood fay, who knew how to look poetically at the
sky when it is reft by lightning and thunder growls angrily! I, even
I, was frightened!

“It's true he's a little old,” Olenka sighed, “but he loves me. . . .
His love is trustworthy.”

“It's not a matter of trustworthy love, but of happiness. . . .”

“I shall be happy with him. . . . He has means, thank God, and he's no
pauper, no beggar, but a nobleman. Of course, I'm not in love with
him, but are only those who marry for love happy? Oh, I know those
marriages for love!”

“My child, when have you had time to stuff your brain with this
terrible worldly wisdom?” I asked. “Admitted that you are joking with
me, but where have you learned to joke in such a coarse, old
way? . . . Where? When?”

Olenka looked at me with astonishment and shrugged her shoulders.

“I don't understand what you are saying,” she said. “You don't like to
see a young girl marry an old man? Is that so?”

Olenka suddenly blushed all over, her chin moved nervously, and
without waiting for my answer she rattled on rapidly.

“This does not please you? Then have the goodness to go into the wood
 . . . into that dullness, where there is nothing except merlins and a
mad father . . . and wait there until a young suitor comes along! It
pleased you the other evening, but if you saw it in winter, when one
only wishes . . . that death might come——”

“Oh, all this is absurd, Olenka, all this is unripe, silly! If you are
not joking. . . . I don't even know what to say! You had better be
silent and not offend the air with your tongue. I, in your place,
would have hanged myself on seven aspens, and you buy linen . . . and
smile. Akh!”

“In any case, he with his means will have father cured,” she
whispered.

“How much do you require for your father's cure?” I cried. “Take it
from me—a hundred? Two hundred? . . . A thousand? Olenka, it's not
your father's cure that you want!”

The news Olenka had communicated to me had excited me so much, that I
had not even noticed that the wagonette had driven past my village, or
how it had turned into the Count's yard and stopped at the bailiff's
porch. When I saw the children run out, and the smile on Urbenin's
face, who also had rushed out to help Olenka down, I jumped out of the
wagonette and ran into the Count's house without even taking leave.
Here further news awaited me.



XII

“How opportune! How opportune!” the Count cried as he greeted me and
scratched my cheek with his long, pointed moustache. “You could not
have chosen a happier time! We have only just sat down to
luncheon. . . . Of course, you are acquainted. . . . You have
doubtless often had collisions in your legal department. . . . Ha,
ha!”

With both hands the Count pointed to two men who, seated in soft
armchairs, were partaking of cold tongue. In one I had the vexation of
recognizing the Justice of the Peace, Kalinin; the other, a little
grey-haired man with a large moonlike bald pate, was my good friend,
Babaev, a rich landowner who occupied the post of perpetual member of
our district council. Having exchanged bows, I looked with
astonishment at Kalinin. I knew how much he disliked the Count and
what reports he had set in circulation in the district about the man
at whose table he was now eating tongue and green peas with such
appetite and drinking ten-year-old liqueur. How could a respectable
man explain such a visit? The Justice of the Peace caught my glance
and evidently understood it.

“I have devoted this day to visits,” he said to me. “I am driving
round the whole district. . . . And, as you see, I have also called
upon his Excellency. . . .”

Il'ya brought a fourth cover. I sat down, drank a glass of vodka, and
began to lunch.

“It's wrong, your Excellency, very wrong!” Kalinin said, continuing
the conversation my entrance had interrupted. “It's no sin for us
little people, but you are an illustrious man, a rich man, a brilliant
man. . . . It's a sin for you to fail.”

“That's quite true; it's a sin,” Babaev acquiesced.

“What's it all about?” I asked.

“Nikolai Ignat'ich has given me a good idea!” the Count said, nodding
to the justice of the peace. “He came to me. . . . We sat down to
lunch, and I began complaining of being dull. . . .”

“And he complained to me of being dull,” Kalinin interrupted the
Count. “Dullness, melancholy . . . this and that. . . . In a word,
disillusionment. A sort of Onegin. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘you're
yourself to blame. . . .’ ‘How so?’ ‘Quite simply. . . . In order not
to be dull,’ I said, ‘accept some office . . . occupy yourself with
the management of your estate. . . . Farming is excellent,
wonderful. . . .’ He tells me he intends to occupy himself with
farming, but still he is dull. . . . What fails him is, so to speak,
the entertaining, the stimulating element. There is not the—how am I
to express myself?—er—strong sensations. . . .”

“Well, and what idea did you give him?”

“I really suggested no idea, I only reproached his Excellency. ‘How is
it your Excellency,’ I said, ‘that you, a young, cultivated, brilliant
man, can live in such seclusion? Is it not a sin?’ I asked. ‘You go
nowhere, you receive nobody, you are seen nowhere. . . . You live like
an old man, or a hermit. . . . What would it cost you to arrange
parties . . . so to speak, at homes?’”

“Why should he have at homes?” I asked.

“How can you ask? First, if his Excellency gave evening parties, he
would become acquainted with society—study it, so to speak. . . .
Secondly, society would have the honour of becoming more closely
acquainted with one of the richest of our landowners. . . . There
would be, so to speak, a mutual exchange of thoughts, conversation,
gaiety. . . . And when one comes to think of it, how many cultivated
young ladies and men we have among us! . . . What musical evenings,
dances, picnics could be arranged! Only think! The reception rooms are
huge, there are pavilions in the gardens, and so on, and so on. Nobody
in the government ever dreamed of the private theatricals or the
concerts that could be got up. . . . Yes, by God! Only imagine them!
Now all this is lost, is buried in the earth; but then . . . one must
only know how to! If I had his Excellency's means, I would show them
how to live! And he says: ‘Dull’! By God! it's laughable to listen to
it. . . . It makes one feel ashamed. . . .”

And Kalinin began to blink with his eyes, wishing to appear to be
really ashamed. . . .

“All this is quite just,” the Count said, rising from his seat and
thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I could give excellent evening
parties. . . . Concerts, private theatricals . . . all this could be
arranged charmingly. Besides, these parties would not only entertain
society, they would have an educational influence too! . . . Don't you
think so?”

“Well, yes,” I acquiesced. “As soon as our young ladies see your
moustachioed physiognomy they will at once be penetrated by the spirit
of civilization. . . .”

“Serezha, you're always joking,” the Count said, somewhat offended,
“and you never give me any friendly advice! Everything is laughable
for you! My friend, it is about time to drop these student habits!”

The Count began to pace about the room from corner to corner, and to
explain to me in long and tiresome suppositions the benefits that his
evening parties might bring to humanity. Music, literature, the drama,
riding, shooting. The shooting alone might unite all the best forces
of the district! . . .

“We shall revert to the subject,” the Count said to Kalinin in taking
leave of him after lunch.

“Then, if I understand your Excellency, the district may hope?” the
Justice of the Peace inquired.

“Certainly, certainly. . . . I will develop this idea and see what I
can do. . . . I am happy . . . delighted. You can tell
everybody. . . .”

It was a sight to note the look of beatitude that was imprinted on the
face of the Justice of the Peace as he took his seat in his carriage
and said to the coachman: “Go!” He was so delighted that he even
forgot our differences and in taking leave he called me “golubchek”
and pressed my hand warmly.

After the visitors had left, the Count and I sat down to table again
and continued our lunch. We lunched till seven o'clock in the evening,
when the crockery was removed from the table and dinner was served.
Young drunkards know how to shorten the time between meals. The whole
time we drank and ate small pieces, by which means we sustained the
appetite which would have failed us if we had entirely ceased to eat.

“Did you send money to anybody to-day?” I asked the Count, remembering
the packets of hundred-rouble notes I had seen in the morning in the
Tenevo post office.

“I sent no money.”

“Tell me, please, is your—what's his name?—new friend, Kazimir
Kaetanych, or Kaetan Kazimirovich, a wealthy man?”

“No, Serezha. He's a poor beggar! But what a soul he has—what a heart!
You are wrong in speaking so disdainfully of him . . . and you bully
him. Brother, you must learn to discriminate between people. Let's
have another glass?”

Pshekhotsky returned for dinner. When he saw me sitting at table and
drinking, he frowned, and after turning about round our table for a
time he seemed to think it best to retire to his own room. He refused
to have any dinner, pleading a bad headache, but he expressed no
objection when the Count advised him to go to bed and have his dinner
there.

During the second course, Urbenin came in. I hardly recognized him.
His broad red face beamed all over with pleasure. A happy smile seemed
to be playing on his sticking-out ears and on the thick fingers with
which he was arranging his smart new necktie all the time.

“One of the cows is ill, your Excellency,” he reported. “I sent for
the vet., but it appears he had gone away somewhere. Wouldn't it be a
good thing to send to town for the veterinary surgeon? If I send to
him he will not listen and will not come, but if you write to him it
will be quite a different matter. Perhaps it is a mere trifle, but it
may be something serious.”

“All right, I will write . . .” the Count grumbled.

“I congratulate you, Pëtr Egorych,” I said, rising and stretching out
my hand to the bailiff.

“On what occasion?” he murmured.

“Why, you are about to get married!”

“Yes, yes, just fancy! He's going to get married!” the Count began,
winking at blushing Urbenin. “What do you think of him? Ha, ha, ha! He
was silent, never said a word, and then suddenly—this bombshell. And
do you know whom he is going to marry? We guessed it that evening!
Pëtr Egorych, we settled then that in your scamp of a heart something
improper was going on. When he looked at you and Olenka he said: ‘That
fellow's bitten!’ Ha, ha! Sit down and have dinner with us, Pëtr
Egorych!”

Urbenin sat down carefully and respectfully and made a sign with his
eyes to Il'ya to bring him a plate of soup. I poured him out a glass
of vodka.

“I don't drink, sir,” he said.

“Nonsense, you drink more than we do.”

“I used to drink, but now I don't,” the bailiff said, smiling. “Now, I
mustn't drink. . . . There's no cause. Thank God, everything is
settled, satisfactorily everything is arranged, all exactly as my
heart had desired, even better than I could have expected.”

“Well, then, to your happiness you can drink this,” I said, pouring
him out a glass of sherry.

“This—why not? I really did drink hard. Now I can confess it to his
Excellency. Sometimes from morning to night. When I rose in the
morning I remembered it . . . well, naturally, I went to the cupboard
at once. Now, thank God, I have nothing to drown in vodka.”

Urbenin drank the glass of sherry. I poured out a second. He drank
this one too, and imperceptibly got drunk. . . .

“I can scarcely believe it,” he said, laughing a happy childish laugh.
“I look at this ring and remember her words when she gave her
consent—I can still scarcely believe it. . . . It seems
laughable. . . . How could I, at my age, with my appearance, hope that
this deserving girl would not disdain to become mine . . . the mother
of my orphan children? Why, she's a beauty, as you have been pleased
to notice; an angel incorporate! Wonders without end! You have filled
my glass again? Why not, for the last time. . . . I drank to drown
care, I will now drink to happiness. How I suffered, gentlemen! What
grief I endured! I saw her first a year ago, and would you believe
it—from that time I have not slept quietly a single night; there was
not a single day on which I did not drown this—silly weakness with
vodka . . . and scolded myself for this folly. . . . I sometimes
looked at her through the window and admired her and . . . tore out
the hair of my head. . . . At times I could have hanged myself . . .
But, thank God, I ventured and proposed, and, do you know, it took me
quite by surprise. Ha, ha! I heard, but I could not believe mine own
ears. She said: ‘I agree,’ and it appeared to me like: ‘Go to the
devil, you old dotard!’ . . . Afterward, when she kissed me, I was
convinced. . . .”

At the recollection of that first kiss received from poetical Olenka,
Urbenin closed his eyes and, despite his fifty years, he blushed like
a boy. . . . this appeared disgusting to me.

“Gentlemen,” he said, looking at us with happy, kind eyes, “why don't
you get married? Why are you wasting your lives, throwing them out of
the window? Why do you shun that which is the greatest blessing of all
who live upon the earth? The delight that debauchery gives is not a
hundredth part of what a quiet family life would give you! Young men,
your Excellency and you, Sergei Petrovich . . . I am happy now, and
 . . . God knows how I love you both! Forgive me for giving stupid
advice, but . . . I want you both to be happy! Why don't you get
married? Family life is a blessing. . . . It's every man's
duty! . . .”

The happy and fond look on the face of the old man, who was about to
marry a young girl and was advising us to alter our dissolute
existence for a quiet family life, became unbearable to me.

“Yes,” I said, “family life is a duty. I agree with you. And therefore
you are acquitting yourself of this duty for the second time?”

“Yes, for the second time. I am fond of family life in general. To be
a bachelor or a widower is only half a life for me. Whatever you may
say, gentlemen, wedlock is a great thing!”

“Certainly . . . even when the husband is almost three times as old
as his wife?”

Urbenin blushed. The hand that was lifting a spoonful of soup to his
mouth trembled, and the soup was pouring again into the plate.

“I understand what you want to say, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “I
thank you for your frankness. I ask myself: Is it not mean? I suffer!
But where has one time to question oneself, to settle various
questions when every moment one feels happy, when one forgets one's
age, ugliness . . . the whole homo sum, Sergei Petrovich! And when
for a second, thoughts run through my pate of the inequality of years,
I don't break my head for an answer, but calm myself as well as I can.
I think I have made Olga happy. I have given her a father and my
children a mother. Besides, all this is like a novel, and my head
feels giddy. It was wrong to make me drink sherry.”

Urbenin rose, wiped his face with his napkin, and sat down again. A
minute later he gulped down another glass of sherry and looked at me
for a long time with an imploring glance as if he were begging me for
mercy, and suddenly his shoulders began to shake, and quite
unexpectedly he burst into sobs like a boy.

“It's nothing . . . nothing!” he mumbled, trying to master his sobs.
“Don't be uneasy. After your words my heart grew sick with a strange
foreboding. But it is nothing.”

Urbenin's foreboding was realized, realized so soon that I have not
time to change my pen and begin a new page. From the next chapter my
calm muse will change the expression of calmness on her face for one
of passion and affliction. The introduction is finished and the drama
begins.

The criminal will of man enters upon its rights.



XIII

I remember a fine Sunday morning. Through the windows of the Count's
church the diaphanous blue sky could be seen and the whole of the
church, from its painted cupola to its floor, was flooded by soft
sunrays in which little clouds of incense played about gaily. . . .
The songs of swallows and starlings were borne in through the open
doors and windows. . . . One sparrow, evidently a very bold little
fellow, flew in at the door, and having circled, chirping, several
times round and round above our heads, flew out again through one of
the windows. . . . In the church itself there was also singing. . . .
They sang sweetly, with feeling, and with the enthusiasm for which our
Little Russian singers are so celebrated when they feel themselves the
heroes of the moment, and that all eyes are bent upon them. . . . The
melodies were all gay and playful, like the soft, bright sunspots that
played upon the walls and the clothes of the congregation. . . . In
the unschooled but soft and fresh notes of the tenor my ear seemed to
catch, despite the gay wedding melodies, deep, melancholy, chest
chords. It appeared as if this tenor was sorry to see that next to
young, pretty and poetical Olenka there stood Urbenin, heavy,
bear-like, and getting on in years. . . . And it was not only the
tenor who was sorry to see this ill-assorted pair. . . . On many of
the faces that lay within the field of my vision, notwithstanding all
their efforts to appear gay and unconcerned, even an idiot could have
read an expression of compassion.

Arrayed in a new dress suit, I stood behind Olenka, holding the crown
over her head. I was pale and felt unwell. . . . I had a racking
headache, the result of the previous night's carouse and a pleasure
party on the lake and the whole time I was looking to see if the hand
that held the crown did not tremble. . . . My soul felt the
disagreeable presentiment of dread that is felt in a forest on a rainy
autumn night. I was vexed, disgusted, sorry. . . . Cats seemed to be
scratching at my heart, somewhat resembling qualms of
conscience. . . . There in the depths, at the very bottom of my heart,
a little devil was seated who obstinately, persistently whispered to
me that if Olenka's marriage with clumsy Urbenin was a sin, I was the
cause of that sin. . . . Where did such thoughts come from? How could
I have saved this little fool from the unknown risks of her
indubitable mistake? . . .

“Who knows?” whispered the little devil. “Who should know better than
you?”

In my time I have known many ill-assorted marriages. I have often
stood before Pukirev's picture. I have read numberless novels based on
disagreements between husband and wife; besides, I have known the
physiology that irrevocably punishes ill-assorted marriages, but never
once in my whole life had I experienced that terrible spiritual
condition from which I was unable to escape all the time I was
standing behind Olenka, executing the functions of best man.

“If my soul is agitated only by commiseration, how is it that I never
felt that compassion before when I assisted at other weddings? . . .”

“There is no commiseration here,” the little devil whispered, “but
jealousy. . . .”

One can only be jealous of those one loves, but do I love the girl in
red? If I loved all the girls I have met while living under the moon,
my heart would not suffice; besides, it would be too much of a good
thing. . . .

My friend Count Karnéev was standing quite at the back near the door
behind the churchwarden's counter, selling wax tapers. He was well
groomed, with well smoothed hair, and exhaled a narcotic, suffocating
odour of scents. That day he looked such a darling that when I greeted
him in the morning I could not refrain from saying:

“Alexey, to-day you are looking like an ideal quadrille dancer!”

He greeted everybody who entered or left with the sweetest of smiles,
and I heard the ponderous compliments with which he rewarded each lady
who bought a candle from him. He, the spoilt child of Fortune, who
never had copper coins, did not know how to handle them, and was
constantly dropping on the floor five and three-kopeck pieces. Near
him, leaning against the counter, Kalinin stood majestically with a
Stanislav decoration on a ribbon round his neck. His countenance shone
and beamed. He was pleased that his idea of “at homes” had fallen on
good soil, and was already beginning to bear fruit. In the depths of
his soul he was showering on Urbenin a thousand thanks; his marriage
was an absurdity, but it was a good opportunity to get the first “at
home” arranged.

Vain Olenka must have rejoiced. . . . From the nuptial lectern to the
doors of the high altar stretched out two rows of the most
representative ladies of our district flower garden. The guests were
decked out as smartly as they would have been if the Count himself was
being married: more elegant toilets could not have been desired. . . .
The assembly consisted almost exclusively of aristocrats . . . Not a
single priest's wife, not a single tradesman's wife. . . . There were
even among them ladies to whom Olenka would formerly never have
considered herself entitled to bow. . . . And Olenka's bridegroom—a
bailiff, a privileged retainer; but from this her vanity could not
suffer. He was a nobleman and the possessor of a mortgaged estate in
the neighbouring district. . . . His father had been marshal of the
district and he himself had for more than nine years been a magistrate
in his own native district. . . . What more could have been desired by
the ambitious daughter of a personal nobleman? Even the fact that her
best man was known in the whole province as a _bon vivant_ and a Don
Juan could tickle her pride. . . . All the women were looking at
him. . . . He was as showy as forty thousand best men thrown into one,
and what was not the least important, he had not refused to be her
best man, she, a simple little girl, when, as everybody knew, he had
even refused aristocrats when they had asked him to be their best
man. . . .

But vain Olenka did not rejoice. . . . She was as pale as the linen
she had but lately brought home from the Tenevo market. The hand in
which she held the candle shook slightly and her chin trembled from
time to time. In her eyes there was a certain dullness, as if
something had suddenly astonished or frightened her. . . . There was
not a sign of that gaiety which had shone in her eyes even the day
before when she was running about the garden talking with enthusiasm
of the sort of wallpaper she would have in her drawing-room, and
saying on what days she would receive guests, and so on. Her face was
now too serious, more serious than the solemn occasion demanded. . . .

Urbenin was in a new dress-suit. He was respectably dressed, but his
hair was arranged as the orthodox Russians wore their hair in the year
'twelve. As usual, he was red in the face, and serious. His eyes
prayed and the signs of the cross he made after every “Lord have mercy
upon us” were not made in a mechanical manner.

Urbenin's children by his first marriage—the schoolboy Grisha and the
little fair-haired girl Sasha,—were standing just behind me. They
gazed at the back of their father's red head and at his standing-out
ears, and their faces seemed to represent notes of interrogation. They
could not understand why Aunt Olia had given herself to their father,
and why he was taking her into his house. Sasha was only surprised,
but the fourteen-year-old Grisha frowned and looked scowlingly at him.
He would certainly have replied in the negative if his father had
asked his permission to marry. . . .

The marriage service was performed with special solemnity. Three
priests and two deacons officiated. The service lasted long, so long,
indeed, that my arm was quite tired of holding the crown, and the
ladies who love to see a wedding ceased looking at the bridal pair.
The chief priest read the prayers, with pauses, without leaving out a
single one. The choir sang something very long and complicated; the
cantor took advantage of the occasion to display the compass of his
voice, reading the Gospels with extra slowness. But at last the chief
priest took the crown out of my hands . . . the young couple kissed
each other. . . . The guests got excited, the straight lines were
broken, congratulations, kisses and exclamations were heard. Urbenin,
beaming and smiling, took his young wife on his arm, and we all went
out into the air.

If anybody who was in the church with me finds this description
incomplete and not quite accurate, let him set down these oversights
to the headache from which I was suffering and the above-mentioned
spiritual depression which prevented me from observing and
noting. . . . Certainly, if I had known at the time that I would have
to write a novel, I would not have looked at the floor as I did on
that day, and I would not have paid attention to my headache!

Fate sometimes allows itself bitter and malignant jokes! The young
couple had scarcely had time to leave the church when they were met by
an unexpected and unwished for surprise. When the wedding procession,
bright with many tints and colours in the sunlight, was proceeding
from the church to the Count's house, Olenka suddenly made a backward
step, stopped, and gave her husband's elbow such a violent pull that
he staggered.

“He's been let out!” she said aloud, looking at me with terror.

Poor little thing! Her insane father, the forester Skvortsov, was
running down the avenue to meet the procession. Waving his hands and
stumbling along with rolling, insane eyes, he presented a most
unattractive picture. However, all this would possibly have been
decent if he had not been in his print dressing-gown and downtrodden
slippers, the raggedness of which was of ill accord with the elegant
wedding finery of his daughter. His face looked sleepy, his
dishevelled hair was blown about by the wind, his nightshirt was
unbuttoned.

“Olenka!” he mumbled when he had come up to them. “Why have you left
me?”

Olenka blushed scarlet and looked askance at the smiling ladies. The
poor little thing was consumed by shame.

“Mit'ka did not lock the door!” the forester continued, turning to us.
“It would not be difficult for robbers to get in! . . . The samovar
was stolen out of the kitchen last summer, and now she wants us to be
robbed again.”

“I don't know who can have let him out!” Urbenin whispered to me. “I
ordered him to be locked up. . . . Golubchik, Sergei Petrovich, have
pity on us; get us out of this awkward position somehow! Anyhow!”

“I know who stole your samovar,” I said to the forester. “Come along,
I'll show you where it is.”

Taking Skvortsov round the waist, I led him towards the church. I took
him into the churchyard and talked to him until, by my calculation, I
thought the wedding procession ought to be in the house, then I left
him without having told him where his stolen samovar was to be found.

Although this meeting with the madman was quite unexpected and
extraordinary, it was soon forgotten. . . . A new surprise that Fate
had prepared for the young couple was still more unusual.



XIV

An hour later we were all seated at long tables, dining.

To anybody who was accustomed to cobwebs, mildew and wild gipsy whoops
in the Count's apartments it must have seemed strange to look on the
workaday, prosaical crowd that now, by their habitual chatter, broke
the usual silence of the ancient and deserted halls. This many
coloured noisy throng looked like a flight of starlings which in
flying past had alighted to rest in a neglected churchyard or—may the
noble bird forgive me such a comparison!—a flight of storks that in
the twilight of one of their migratory days had settled down on the
ruins of a deserted castle.

I sat there hating that crowd which frivolously examined the decaying
wealth of the Counts Karnéev. The mosaic walls, the carved ceilings,
the rich Persian carpets and the rococo furniture excited enthusiasm
and astonishment. A self-satisfied smile never left the Count's
moustachioed face. He received the enthusiastic flattery of his guests
as something that he deserved, though in reality all the riches and
luxuries of his deserted mansion were not acquired in any way thanks
to him, but on the contrary, he merited the bitterest reproaches and
contempt for the barbarously dull indifference with which he treated
all the wealth, that had been collected by his fathers and
grandfathers, collected not in days, but in scores of years! It was
only the mentally blind or the poor of spirit who could not see in
every slab of damp marble, in every picture, in each dark corner of
the Count's garden, the sweat, the tears and the callosities on the
hands of the people whose children now swarmed in the little log huts
of the Count's miserable villages. . . . Among all those people seated
at the wedding feast, rich, independent people, people who might
easily have told him the plainest truths, there was not one who would
have told the Count that his self-satisfied grin was stupid and out of
place. . . . Everybody found it necessary to smile flatteringly and to
burn paltry incense before him. If this was ordinary politeness (with
us, many love to throw everything on politeness and propriety), I
would prefer the churl who eats with his hands, who takes the bread
from his neighbour's plate, and blows his nose between two fingers, to
these dandies.

Urbenin smiled, but he had his own reasons for this. He smiled
flatteringly, respectfully, and in a childlike, happy manner. His
broad smiles were the result of a sort of dog's happiness. A devoted
and loving dog, who had been fondled and petted, and now in sign of
gratitude wagged its tail gaily and with sincerity.

Like Risler Senior in Alphonse Daudet's novel, beaming and rubbing his
hands with delight, he gazed at his young wife, and from the
superabundance of his feelings could not refrain from asking question
after question:

“Who could have thought that this young beauty would fall in love with
an old man like myself? Is it possible she could not find anybody
younger and more elegant? Women's hearts are incomprehensible!”

He even had the courage to turn to me and blurt out:

“When one looks around, what an age this is we live in! He, he! When
an old man can carry off such a fairy from under the nose of youth!
Where have you all had your eyes? He, he. . . . Young men are not what
they used to be!”

Not knowing what to do or how to express the feelings of gratitude
that were overflowing in his broad breast, he was constantly jumping
up, stretching out his glass towards the Count's glass and saying in a
voice that trembled with emotion:

“Your Excellency, my feelings toward you are well known. This day you
have done so much for me that my affection for you appears like
nothing. How have I merited such a great favour, your Excellency, or
that you should take such an interest in my joy? It is only Counts and
bankers who celebrate their weddings in such a way! What luxury, what
an assembly of notable guests! . . . Oh, what can I say! . . . Believe
me, your Excellency, I shall never forget you, as I shall never forget
this best and happiest day of my life.”

And so on. . . . Olenka was evidently not pleased with her husband's
florid respectfulness. One could see she was annoyed at his speeches,
that raised smiles on the faces of the guests and even caused them to
feel ashamed for him. Notwithstanding the glass of champagne she had
drunk, she was still not gay, and morose as before. . . . She was as
pale as she had been in church, and the same look of dread was in her
eyes. . . . She was silent, she answered lazily to all the questions
that were asked, scarcely smiled at the Count's witticisms, and she
hardly touched the expensive dishes. . . . In proportion as Urbenin
became slightly intoxicated and thought himself the happiest of
mortals, her pretty face appeared more and more unhappy. It made me
sorrowful to look at her, and in order not to look at her face I tried
not to lift my eyes off my plate.

How could her sadness be explained? Was not regret beginning to gnaw
at the poor girl's heart? Or perhaps her vanity had expected even
greater pomp?

During the second course when I lifted my eyes and looked at her, I
was painfully struck by her expression. The poor girl in trying to
answer some of the Count's silly remarks, was making strenuous efforts
to swallow something; sobs were welling up in her throat. She did not
remove her handkerchief from her mouth, and looked at us timidly, like
a frightened little animal, to see if we did not notice that she
wanted to cry.

“Why are you looking so glum to-day?” the Count asked. “Oh, ho! Pëtr
Egorych, it's your fault! Have the goodness to cheer your wife up!
Ladies and gentlemen, I demand a kiss! Ha, ha! . . . The kiss I demand
is, of course, not for me, but only . . . that they should kiss each
other! Bitter!”

“Bitter!” echoed Kalinin.

Urbenin, smiling all over his red face, rose and began to blink.
Olenka forced by the calls and the demands of the guests, rose
slightly and offered her motionless, lifeless lips to Urbenin. He
kissed her. . . . Olenka pressed her lips together as if she feared
they would be kissed another time, and glanced at me. . . . Probably
my look was an evil one. Catching my eye, she suddenly blushed, and
taking up her handkerchief, she began to blow her nose, trying in that
way to hide her terrible confusion. . . . The thought entered my mind
that she was ashamed before me, ashamed of that kiss, ashamed of her
marriage.

“What have I to do with you?” I thought, but at the same time I did
not remove my eyes from her face, trying to discover the cause of her
confusion.

The poor little thing could not stand my gaze. It is true the blush of
shame soon left her face, but in place of it tears began to rise up in
her eyes, real tears such as I had never before seen on her face.
Pressing her handkerchief to her face, she rose and rushed out of the
dining-room.

“Olga Nikolaevna has a bad headache,” I hastened to say in order to
explain her departure. “Already this morning she complained of her
head. . . .”

“Not at all, brother,” the Count said jokingly. “A headache has
nothing to do with it. It's all caused by the kiss, it has confused
her. Ladies and gentlemen, I announce a severe reprimand for the
bridegroom! He has not taught his bride how to kiss! Ha, ha, ha!”

The guests, delighted with the Count's wit, began to laugh. . . . But
they ought not to have laughed. . . .

Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, and the bride did not
return. . . . A silence fell on the party. . . . Even the Count ceased
joking. . . . Olenka's absence was all the more striking as she had
left suddenly without saying a word. . . . To say nothing about
etiquette, which had received a shock first of all, Olenka had left
the table immediately after the kiss, so it was evident she was cross
at having been forced to kiss her husband. . . . It was impossible to
suppose she had gone away because she was confused. . . . One can be
confused for a minute, for two, but not for an eternity, as the first
ten minutes of her absence appeared to us all. What a number of evil
thoughts entered into the half tipsy minds of the men, what scandals
were being prepared by the charming ladies! The bride had risen and
left the table! What an effective and scenic point for a drama in the
provincial “fashionable world”!

Urbenin began to be uneasy and looked round.

“Nerves. . . .” he muttered. “Or perhaps something has gone wrong with
her toilet. . . . Who can account for anything with these women?
She'll come back directly—this very minute.”

But when another ten minutes had passed and she had not appeared, he
looked at me with such unhappy, imploring eyes that I was sorry for
him.

“Would it matter if I went to look for her?” his eyes asked. “Won't
you help me, golubchik, to get out of this horrible position? Of all
here you are the cleverest, the boldest, the most ready-witted man. Do
help me!”

I saw the entreaty in his unhappy eyes and decided to help him. How I
helped him the reader will see farther on. . . . I will only say that
the bear who assisted the hermit in Krylov's fable loses all its
animal majesty, becomes pale, and turns into an innocent infusoria
when I think of myself in the part of the “obliging fool.” . . . The
resemblance between me and the bear consists only in this that we both
went to help quite sincerely without foreseeing any bad consequences
from our help, but the difference between us is enormous. . . . The
stone with which I struck Urbenin's forehead was many times more
weighty. . . .

“Where is Olga Nikolaevna?” I asked the lackey who had brought round
the salad.

“She went into the garden, sir,” he replied.

“This is becoming quite impossible, mesdames!” I said in a jocular
tone, addressing myself to the ladies. “The bride has gone away and my
wine has become quite sour! . . . I must go to look for her and bring
her back, even if all her teeth were aching! The best man is an
official personage, and he is going to show his authority!”

I rose, amid the loud applause of my friend the Count, left the
dining-room and went into the garden. The hot rays of the midday sun
poured straight upon my head, which was already excited by wine.
Suffocating heat and sultriness seemed to strike me in the face. I
went along one of the side avenues at a venture, and, whistling some
sort of melody, I gave full scope to my capacities as an ordinary
detective. I examined all the bushes, summer-houses and caves, and
when I began to be tormented by the regret that I had turned to the
right instead of to the left, I suddenly heard a strange sound.
Somebody was laughing or crying. The sounds issued from one of the
grottoes that I had left to examine last of all. Quickly entering it,
I found the object of my search enveloped in dampness, the smell of
mildew, mushrooms, and lime.

She stood there leaning against a wooden column that was covered with
black moss, and lifting her eyes full of horror and despair on me, she
tore at her hair. Tears poured from her eyes as from a sponge that is
pressed.

“What have I done? What have I done?” she muttered.

“Yes, Olia, what have you done?” I said, standing before her with
folded arms.

“Why did I marry him? Where were my eyes? Where was my sense?”

“Yes, Olia. . . . It is difficult to explain your action. To explain
it by inexperience is too indulgent; to explain it by depravity—I
would rather not. . . .”

“I only understood it to-day . . . only to-day! Why did I not
understand it yesterday? Now all is irrevocable, all is lost! All,
all! I might have married the man I love, the man who loves me!”

“Who is that, Olia?” I asked.

“You!” she said, looking me straight and openly in the eyes. “But I
was too hasty! I was foolish! You are clever, noble, young. . . . You
are rich! You appeared to me unattainable!”

“Well, that's enough, Olia,” I said, taking her by the hand. “Wipe
your little eyes and come along. . . . They are waiting for you
there. . . . Well, don't cry any more, don't cry. . . .” I kissed her
hand. . . . “That's enough, little girl! You have done a foolish thing
and are now paying for it. . . . It was your fault. . . . Well, that's
enough, be calm. . . .”

“But you love me? Yes? You are so big, so handsome! Don't you love
me?”

“It's time to go, my darling. . . .” I said, noticing to my great
horror that I was kissing her forehead, taking her round the waist,
that she was scorching me with her hot breath and that she was hanging
round my neck.

“Enough!” I mumbled. “That must satisfy you!”

Five minutes later, when I carried her out of the grotto in my arms
and troubled by new impressions put her on her feet, I saw Pshekhotsky
standing almost at the entrance. . . . He stood there, looking at me
maliciously and applauding silently. . . . I measured him with my
glance, and giving Olga my arm, walked off towards the house.

“We'll see the last of you here to-day,” I said, looking back at
Pshekhotsky. “You will have to pay for this spying!”

My kisses had probably been ardent because Olga's face was burning as
if ablaze. There were no traces of the recently shed tears to be seen
on it.

“Now, as the saying is, the ocean is but knee-deep for me,” she
murmured as we went together towards the house and she pressed my
elbow convulsively. “This morning I did not know where to hide myself
from terror, and now . . . now, my good giant, I don't know what to
do from happiness! My husband is sitting and waiting for me
there. . . . Ha, ha! . . . What's that to me? If he were even a
crocodile, a terrible serpent . . . I'm afraid of nothing! I love
you, and that's all I want to know!”

I looked at her face, radiant with happiness, at her eyes, brim full
of joyful, satisfied love, and my heart sank with fear for the future
of this pretty and happy creature: her love for me was but an extra
impulse towards the abyss. . . . How will this laughing woman with no
thought for the future end? . . . My heart misgave me and sank with a
feeling that cannot be called either pity or sympathy, because it was
stronger than these feelings. I stopped and laid my hand on Olga's
shoulder. . . . I had never before seen anything more beautiful,
graceful and at the same time more pitiful. . . . There was no time
for reasoning, deliberation or thought, and, carried away by my
feelings, I exclaimed:

“Olga, come home with me at once! This instant!”

“How? What did you say?” she asked, unable to understand my somewhat
solemn tone.

“Let us drive to my house immediately!”

Olga smiled and pointed to the house. . . .

“Well, and what of that?” I said. “Isn't it all the same if I take you
to-morrow or to-day? But the sooner the better. . . . Come!”

“But . . . that's somehow strange——”

“Girl, you're afraid of the scandal? Yes, there'll be an unusual, a
grandiose scandal, but a thousand scandals are better than that you
should remain here! I won't leave you here! I can't leave you here!
Olga, do you understand? Cast aside your faint-heartedness, your
womanly logic, and obey me! Obey me if you do not desire your own
ruin!”

Olga's eyes said that she did not understand me. . . . Meanwhile time
did not stop but went its course, and it was impossible for us to
remain standing in the avenue while they were expecting us _there_. We
had to decide. . . . I pressed to my heart “the girl in red,” who
actually was my wife now, and at that moment it appeared to me that I
really loved her. . . . loved her with a husband's love, that she was
mine, and that her fate rested on my conscience. . . . I saw that I
was united with this creature for ever, irrevocably.

“Listen, my darling, my treasure!” I said. “It's a bold step. . . . It
will separate us from our nearest friends; it will call down upon our
heads a thousand reproaches and tearful lamentations. Perhaps it will
even spoil my career; it will cause me a thousand unsurmountable
unpleasantnesses, but, my darling, it is settled! You will be my
wife! . . . I want no better wife. God preserve me from all other
women! I will make you happy; I will take care of you like the apple
of my eye, as long as I live; I will educate you—make a woman of you!
I promise you this, and here is my honest hand on it!”

I spoke with sincere passion, with feeling, like a stage lover acting
the most pathetic scene of his part. I spoke very well, I seemed to be
inspired by the touch of an eagle's wing that was soaring over our
heads. My Olia took my outstretched hand, held it in her own small
hands, and kissed it tenderly. But this was not a sign of assent. On
the silly little face of an inexperienced woman who had never before
heard such speech, there appeared a look of perplexity. . . . She
still could not understand me.

“You say I am to go to you?” she said reflectively. “I don't quite
understand you. . . . Don't you know what _he_ would say?”

“What have you to do with what he would say?”

“How so? No, Serezha! Better say no more. . . . Please leave that
alone. . . . You love me, and I want nothing more. With your love I'm
ready to go to hell.”

“But, little fool, how will you manage it?”

“I shall live here, and you—why you will come every day. . . . I will
come to meet you.”

“But I can't imagine such a life for you without a shudder! At
night—he; in the day—I. . . . No, that is impossible! Olia, I love you
so much at the present moment that . . . I am madly jealous. . . . I
never suspected I had the capacity for such feelings.”

But what imprudence! I had my arm round her waist, and she was
stroking my hand tenderly at the time when at any moment one could
expect somebody would be passing down the avenue and might see us.

“Come,” I said, removing my arm. “Put on your cloak and let us be
off!”

“How quickly you want to do things,” she murmured in a tearful voice.
“You hurry as if to a fire. And God only knows what you have invented!
To run away immediately after the marriage! What will people say?”

And Olenka shrugged her shoulders. Her face wore such a look of
perplexity, astonishment and incomprehension that I only waved my hand
and postponed settling her “life questions” to another moment.
Besides, there was no time to continue our conversation: we were going
up the stone stairs that led to the terrace and heard the sound of
voices. At the dining-room door Olia arranged her hair, saw that her
dress was in order, and went into the room. No signs of confusion
could be noticed on he face. She entered the room much more boldly
than I had expected.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have brought back the fugitive,” I said as I
sat down in my place. “I found her with difficulty. . . . I'm quite
tired out by this search. I went into the garden, I looked around, and
there she was walking about in the avenue. . . . ‘Why are you here?’ I
asked her. ‘Just so,’ she answered. ‘It's so stuffy.’”

Olia looked at me, at the guests, at her husband, and began to laugh.
Something amused her, and she became gay. I read on her face the wish
to share with all that crowd of diners the sudden happiness that she
had experienced; and not being able to give expression to it in words,
she poured it out in her laughter.

“What a funny person I am!” she said. “I am laughing, and I don't know
why I am laughing. . . . Count, laugh!”

“Bitter,” cried Kalinin.

Urbenin coughed and looked inquiringly at Olia.

“Well?” she said, with a momentary frown.

“They are calling out ‘bitter,’” Urbenin smiled, and rising, he wiped
his lips with his napkin.

Olga rose too and allowed him to kiss her immovable lips. . . . The
kiss was a cold one, but it served to increase the fire that was
smouldering in my breast and threatened every moment to burst into
flame. . . . I turned away and with compressed lips awaited the end of
the dinner. . . . Fortunately the end was soon reached, otherwise I
would not have been able to endure it.



XV

“Come here!” I said to the Count rudely, going up to him after dinner.

The Count looked at me with astonishment and followed me into the
empty room to which I led him.

“What do you want, my dear friend?” he asked as he unbuttoned his
waistcoat and hiccuped.

“Choose one of us. . . .” I said, scarcely able to stand on my feet
from the rage that had mastered me. “Either me or Pshekhotsky! If you
don't promise me that in an hour that scoundrel shall leave your
estate, I will never set my foot here again! . . . I give you half a
minute to make your choice!”

The Count dropped the cigar out of his mouth and spread his
arms. . . .

“What's the matter with you, Serezha?” he asked, opening his eyes
wide. “You look quite wild!”

“No useless words, if you please! I cannot endure that spy, scoundrel,
rogue, your friend Pshekhotsky, and in the name of our close
friendship I demand that he shall no longer be here, and instantly,
too!”

“But what has he done to you?” the Count asked, much agitated. “Why
are you attacking him?”

“I ask you again: me or him?”

“But, golubchik, you are placing me in a horribly awkward
position. . . . Stop! There's a feather on your dress coat! . . . You
are demanding the impossible from me!”

“Good-bye!” I said. “I am no longer acquainted with you.”

And turning sharply on my heel, I went into the anteroom, put on my
overcoat, and hastened out of the house. When crossing the garden
towards the servants' department, where I wanted to give the order to
have my horse put to, I was stopped. Coming towards me with a small
cup of coffee in her hand, I was met by Nadia Kalinin. She was also at
Urbenin's wedding, but a sort of undefined fear had forced me to avoid
speaking to her, and during the whole day I had not gone up to her,
nor said a word to her.

“Sergey Petrovich!” she said in an unnaturally deep voice when in
passing her I slightly raised my hat. “Stop!”

“What may your commands be?” I asked, as I came up to her.

“I have nothing to command. . . . Besides, you are no lackey,” she
said, gazing straight into my eyes and becoming terribly pale. “You
are hurrying somewhere, but if you have time might I detain you for a
moment?”

“Certainly! . . . I can't understand why you ask it? . . .”

“In that case let us sit down. . . . Sergey Petrovich,” she continued,
after we had seated ourselves. “All this day you have tried to avoid
seeing me, and have gone round me, as if you were afraid of meeting me
and as if on purpose, I had decided to speak to you. . . . I am proud
and egoistical. . . . I do not know how to obtrude myself . . . but
once in a lifetime one can sacrifice pride.”

“To what do you refer?”

“I had decided to ask you. . . . The question is humiliating, it is
difficult for me. . . . I don't know how I shall stand it. . . .
Answer me without looking at me. . . . Sergey Petrovich, is it
possible you are not sorry for me?”

Nadia looked at me and slightly shook her head. Her face became paler.
Her upper lip trembled and was drawn to one side.

“Sergey Petrovich! I always think that . . . you have been separated
from me by some misunderstanding, some caprice. . . . I think if we
had an explanation, all would go on as formerly. If I did not think
it, I would not have strength to put you the question you are about to
hear. Sergey Petrovich, I am unhappy. . . . You must see it. . . . My
life is no life. . . . All is dried up. . . . And chiefly . . . this
uncertainty . . . one does not know, whether to hope or not. . . .
Your conduct towards me is so incomprehensible that it is impossible
to arrive at any certain conclusion. . . . Tell me, and I shall know
what to do. . . . My life will then have an aim. . . . I shall then
decide on something.”

“Nadezhda Nikolaevna, you wish to ask me about something?” I said,
preparing in my mind an answer to the question I had a presentiment
was coming.

“Yes, I want to ask. . . . The question is humiliating. . . . If
anybody were listening to us they might think I was obtruding myself,
in a word,—was a sort of Pushkin's Tatiana. . . . But this question
has been tortured from me. . . .”

The question was really forced from her by torture. When Nadia turned
her face towards me to put that question, I became frightened: Nadia
trembled, pressed her fingers together convulsively, and pressed from
her lips with melancholy sadness the fatal words. Her pallor was
terrible.

“May I hope?” she whispered at last. “Do not be afraid to tell me
candidly. . . . Whatever the answer may be, it will be better than
uncertainty. What is it? May I hope?”

She waited for an answer, meanwhile the state of my soul was such that
I was incapable of making a sensible answer. Drunk, excited by the
occurrence in the grotto, enraged by Pshekhotsky's spying, and Olga's
indecision, and the stupid conversation I had had with the Count, I
scarcely heard Nadia.

“May I hope?” she repeated. “Answer me!”

“Ach, I can't answer now, Nadezhda Nikolaevna!” I said with a wave of
the hand as I rose, “I am incapable at the present moment of giving
any sort of answer. Forgive me, I neither heard nor understood you. I
am stupid and excited. . . . It's really a pity you took the trouble.”

I again waved my hand and left Nadia. It was only afterwards when I
became calm again, that I understood how stupid and cruel I had been
in not giving the girl an answer to her simple and ingenuous question.
Why did I not answer her?

Now when I can look back dispassionately at the past, I do not explain
my cruelty by the condition of my soul. It appears to me that in not
giving a straightforward answer I was coquetting and playing the fool.
It is difficult to understand the human soul, but it is still more
difficult to understand one's own soul. If I really was playing the
fool, may God forgive me! Although to make game of another's suffering
ought not to be forgiven.



XVI

For three days I wandered about my rooms from corner to corner like a
wolf in a cage, trying with all the strength of my unstable will to
prevent myself from leaving the house. I did not touch the pile of
papers that were lying on the table patiently awaiting my attention; I
received nobody; I quarrelled with Polycarp; I was irritable. . . . I
did not allow myself to go to the Count's estate, and this obstinacy
cost me great nervous labour. A thousand times I took up my hat and as
often threw it down again. . . . Sometimes I decided to defy the whole
world and go to Olga, whatever it might cost; at others I drenched
myself with the cold decision to remain at home. . . .

My reason told me not to go to the Count's estate. Since I had sworn
to the Count never to set foot in his house again, could I sacrifice
my self-love and pride? What would that moustachioed coxcomb think if,
after our stupid conversation, I went to him as if nothing had
happened? Would it not be a confession of my own injustice?

Besides, as an honest man I ought to break off all connexion with
Olga. All further intercourse with her could only lead to her ruin.
She had made a mistake in marrying Urbenin; in falling in love with me
she had made another mistake. If she had a secret lover while living
with her old husband, would she not be like a depraved doll? To say
nothing about how abominable in principle, such a life is, it was
necessary also to think of the consequences.

What a coward I am! I was afraid of the consequences, of the present,
of the past. . . . An ordinary man will laugh at my reasoning. He
would not have paced from corner to corner, he would not have seized
his head in both hands, he would not have made all sorts of plans, but
he would have left all to life which grinds into flour even
mill-stones. Life would have digested everything without asking for
his aid or permission. . . . But I am fearsome almost to cowardice.
Pacing from corner to corner, I suffered from compassion for Olga, and
at the same time I feared she would understand the proposal I had made
her in a moment of passion, and would appear in my house to stay as I
had promised her, _for ever_. What would have happened if she had
listened to me and had come home with me? How long would that _for
ever_ have lasted, and what would life with me have given poor Olga? I
would not have given her family life and would consequently not have
given her happiness. No, I ought not to go to Olga!

At the same time my soul was drawn frantically towards her. I was as
melancholy as a boy, in love for the first time, who is refused a
rendezvous. Tempted by what had occurred in the grotto, I yearned for
another meeting, and the alluring vision of Olga, who, as I well knew,
was also expecting me, and was pining away from longing, never left my
mind for a moment.

The Count sent me letter after letter, each one more rueful and
humiliating than the last. . . . He implored me to “forget everything”
and come to him; he apologized for Pshekhotsky, he begged me to
forgive that “kind, simple, but somewhat shallow man,” he was
surprised that owing to trifles I had decided to break off old and
friendly connexions. In one of his last letters he promised to come to
me and, if I wished it, to bring Pshekhotsky with him, who would ask
my pardon, “although he did not feel that he was at all in fault.” I
read the letters and in answer begged each messenger to leave me in
peace. I knew well how to be capricious!

At the very height of my nervous agitation, when I, standing at the
window, was deciding to go away somewhere—anywhere except to the
Count's estate—when I was tormenting myself with arguments,
self-reproaches, and visions of love that awaited me with Olga, my
door opened quietly, I heard light footsteps behind me, and soon my
neck was encircled by two pretty little arms.

“Olga, is that you?” I asked and looked round.

I recognized her by her hot breath, by the manner in which she hung on
my neck, and even by her scent. Pressing her head to my cheek, she
appeared to me extraordinarily happy. . . . From happiness she could
not say a word. . . . I pressed her to my breast and—where had the
melancholy, and all the questions with which I had been tormenting
myself during the whole of three days, disappeared? I laughed and
jumped about with joy like the veriest schoolboy.

Olga was in a blue silk dress, which suited her pale face and splendid
flaxen hair very well. The dress was in the latest fashion and must
have been very expensive. It probably cost Urbenin a quarter of his
yearly salary.

“How lovely you are to-day!” I said, lifting Olga up in my arms and
kissing her neck. “Well, what? How are you? Quite well?”

“Why, you haven't much of a place here!” she said, casting her eyes
round my study. “You're a rich man, you receive a high salary, and yet
 . . . you live quite poorly.”

“Not everybody can live as luxuriously as the Count, my darling,” I
said. “But let us leave my wealth in peace. What good genius has
brought you into my den?”

“Stop, Serezha! You'll tumble my frock. . . . Put me down. . . . I've
only come to you for a moment, darling! I told everybody at home I was
going to Akat'ikha, the Count's washerwoman, who lives here only three
doors off. Let me go, darling! . . . It's awkward. Why haven't you
been to see me for so long?”

I answered something, placed her on a chair opposite me, and began to
contemplate her beauty. For a minute we looked at each other in
silence.

“You are very pretty, Olia!” I sighed. “It's a pity and an insult that
you're so pretty!”

“Why is it a pity?”

“The devil only knows who's got you.”

“But what do you want more? Am not I yours? Here I am. . . . Listen,
Serezha! . . . Will you tell me the truth if I ask you?”

“Of course, only the truth.”

“Would you have married me if I had not married Pëtr Egorych?”

“Probably not,” I wanted to say, but why should I probe the painful
wound in poor Olia's heart that was already so troubled?

“Certainly,” I said in the tone of a man speaking the truth.

Olia sighed and cast her eyes down.

“What a mistake I've made! What a mistake! And what's worst of all it
can't be rectified! I suppose I can't get divorced from him?”

“You can't.”

“I can't understand why I was in such a hurry! We girls are so silly
and giddy. . . . There's nobody to whip us! However, one can't undo
the past, and to reason about it is useless. . . . Neither reasoning
nor tears are of any good. Serezha, I cried all last night! He was
there . . . lying next to me, and I was thinking of you. . . . I
couldn't sleep. . . . I wanted to run away in the night, even into the
wood to father. . . . It is better to live with a mad father than with
this—what's his name.”

“Reasoning won't help. . . . Olia, you ought to have reasoned when you
drove home with me from Tenevo, and were so happy at getting married
to a rich man. . . . It's too late to practice eloquence now. . . .”

“Too late. . . . Then let it be so!” Olga said with a decisive wave of
the hand. “It will be possible to live, if it is no worse. . . .
Good-bye, I must be off. . . .”

“No, not good-bye. . . .”

I drew Olia towards me and covered her face with kisses, as if I were
trying to reward myself for the lost three days. She pressed close
against me like a cold lamb and warmed my face with her hot
breath. . . . There was stillness in the room. . . .

“The husband killed his wife!” bawled my parrot.

Olia shivered, released herself from my embraces, and looked
inquiringly at me.

“It's only the parrot, my soul,” I said. “Calm yourself.”

“The husband killed his wife!” Ivan Dem'yanych repeated again.

Olia rose, put on her hat in silence, and gave me her hand. Dread was
written on her face.

“What if Urbenin gets to know?” she asked, looking at me with
wide-open eyes. “He is capable of killing me.”

“What nonsense!” I said, laughing. “What sort of a fellow would I be
if I allowed him to kill you? He's hardly capable of such an unusual
act as a murder. . . . Are you going? Well, then, good-bye, my
child! . . . I will wait. . . . To-morrow, in the wood, near the house
where you lived. . . . Shall we meet there?” . . .

After seeing Olia off, I returned to my study, where I found Polycarp.
He was standing in the middle of the room, he looked sternly at me and
shook his head contemptuously.

“Sergei Petrovich, see that this sort of thing does not happen here
again; I won't have it,” he said in the tone of a severe parent. “I
don't wish it. . . .”

“What's ‘it’?”

“That thing. . . . You think I did not see? I saw everything. . . .
See that she doesn't dare to come here again. This is no house for
that sort of philandering. There are other places for that. . . .”

I was in the best of humours, so Polycarp's spying and mentorial tone
did not make me angry. I only laughed and sent him to the kitchen.

I had hardly had time to collect my thoughts after Olga's visit when
another guest arrived. A carriage rattled up to my door and Polycarp,
spitting to each side and with mumbled abuse announced the arrival of
“that there fellow, may he be . . .!” etc., etc. It was the Count,
whom he hated with the whole strength of his soul. The Count entered,
looked tearfully at me, and shook his head.

“You turn away. . . . You don't want to speak. . . .”

“I don't turn away,” I said.

“I am so fond of you, Serezha, and you . . . for a trifle! Why do you
wound me? Why?”

The Count sat down, sighed, and shook his head.

“Well, you've played the fool long enough!” I said. “All right!”

I had a strong influence upon this weak, puny little man; it was as
strong as my contempt for him. . . . My contemptuous tone never
offended him; on the contrary.

When he heard my “All right!” he jumped up and embraced me.

“I have brought him with me. . . . He is sitting in the
carriage. . . . Do you wish him to apologize?”

“Do you know his fault?”

“No. . . .”

“So much the better. He needn't apologize, but you had better warn him
that if ever a similar thing occurs, I'll not get excited, but I will
take my own measures.”

“Then, Serezha, it's peace? Excellent! That ought to have been long
ago; the deuce only knows what you quarrelled about! Like two
schoolgirls! Oh, by-the-by, golubchek, haven't you got half a glass of
vodka? My throat is terribly dry!”

I ordered vodka to be served. The Count drank two glasses, sprawled
himself out on the sofa, and began to chatter.

“I say, brother, I just met Olia. . . . A fine girl! I must tell you,
I'm beginning to detest Urbenin. . . . That means that Olenka is
beginning to please me. . . . She's devilish pretty! I think of making
up to her.”

“One ought not to touch the married ones!” I said with a sigh.

“Come now, he's an old man. . . . It's no sin to juggle Pëtr Egorych
out of his wife. . . . She's no mate for him. . . . He's like a dog;
he can't eat it himself, and won't let others have it. . . . I'm going
to begin my siege to-day; I'll begin systematically. . . . She's such
a ducky—h'm!—quite chic, brother! One licks one's chops!”

The Count drank a third glass and continued:

“Of the girls here, do you know who pleases me too? Nadenka, that fool
Kalinin's daughter. . . . A burning brunette, you know the sort, pale,
with wonderful eyes. . . . I must also cast my line there. . . . I'm
giving a party at Whitsuntide, a musical, vocal, literary evening on
purpose to invite her. . . . As it turns out, it's not so bad here;
quite jolly! There's society, and women . . . and. . . . May I have
five winks here . . . only a moment?”

“You may. . . . But how about Pshekhotsky in the carriage?”

“He may wait, the devil take him! . . . Brother, I myself don't like
him.”

The Count raised himself on his elbow and said mysteriously:

“I keep him only from necessity . . . because I must. . . . May the
devil take him!”

The Count's elbow gave way, his head sank on the cushion. A minute
later snores were heard.

In the evening after the Count had left, I had another visitor; the
doctor, Pavil Ivanovich. He came to inform me of Nadezhda Nikolaevna's
illness and also that she had definitely refused him her hand. The
poor fellow was downhearted and went about like a drenched hen.



XVII

The poetical month of May had passed.

The lilacs and tulips were over, and fate decreed that with them the
ecstasies of love, which, notwithstanding their guiltiness and
painfulness, had yet occasionally afforded us sweet moments that can
never be effaced from our memory, should likewise wither. There are
moments for which one would give months, yea, even years!

On a June evening when the sun was already set, but its broad track in
purple and gold still glowed in the distant West, foretelling a calm
and clear day, for the morrow I rode on Zorka up to the house where
Urbenin lived. On that evening the Count was giving a musical party.
The guests were already arriving, but the Count was not at home; he
had gone for a ride and had left word he would return soon.

A little later I was standing at the porch, holding my horse by the
bridle and chatting with Urbenin's little daughter, Sasha. Urbenin
himself was sitting on the steps with his head supported on his fists,
looking into the distance, which could be seen through the open gates.
He was gloomy and answered my questions reluctantly. I left him in
peace and occupied myself with Sasha.

“Where is your new máma?” I asked her.

“She has gone out riding with the Count. She rides with him every
day.”

“Every day!” Urbenin grumbled with a sigh.

Much could be heard in that sigh. The same feelings could be heard in
it that were agitating my soul and that I was trying to explain to
myself, but was unable to do so, and therefore became lost in
conjecture.

Every day Olga went out for rides with the Count. But that was a
trifle. Olga could not fall in love with the Count, and Urbenin's
jealousy was groundless. We ought not to have been jealous of the
Count, but of something else which, however, I could not understand
for a long time. This “something else” built up a whole wall between
Olga and me. She continued to love me, but after the visit which has
been described in the last chapter, she had not been to my house more
than twice, and when we met in other places she flared up in a strange
way and obstinately refused to answer my questions. She returned my
caresses with passion, but her movements were sudden and startled, so
that our short rendezvous only left a feeling of painful perplexity in
my mind. Her conscience was not clean; this was clear, but what was
the real cause? Nothing could be read on Olga's guilty face.

“I hope your new máma is well?” I asked Sasha.

“She's quite well. Only in the night she had toothache. She cried.”

“She cried,” Urbenin repeated, looking at Sasha. “Did you see it? My
darling, you only dreamed it.”

Olga had not had toothache. If she had cried it was not with pain, but
for something else. . . . I wanted to continue talking to Sasha, but I
did not succeed in this, as at that moment the noise of horses' hoofs
was heard and we soon saw the riders—a man inelegantly jumping about
in his saddle, and a graceful lady rider. In order to hide my joy from
Olga, I took Sasha into my arms and, smoothing her fair hair with my
hand, I kissed her on the forehead.

“Sasha, how pretty you are!” I said. “And what nice curls you have!”

Olga cast a rapid glance at me, returned my bow in silence, and
leaning on the Count's arm, entered the house. Urbenin rose and
followed her.

Five minutes later the Count came out of the house. He was gay. I had
never seen him so gay before. Even his face had a fresher look.

“Congratulate me,” he said, giggling, as he took my arm.

“What on?”

“On my conquest. . . . One more ride like this, and I swear by the
ashes of my noble ancestors I shall tear the petals from this flower.”

“You have not torn them off yet?”

“As yet? . . . Almost! During ten minutes, ‘Thy hand in my hand,’” the
Count sang, “and . . . not once did she draw it away. . . . I kissed
it! Wait for to-morrow. Now let us go. They are expecting me. Oh,
by-the-by, golubchek, I want to talk to you about something. Tell me,
old man, is it true what people say—that you are . . . that you
entertain evil intentions with regard to Nadenka Kalinin?”

“Why?”

“If that were true, I won't come in your way. It's not in my
principles to put a spoke in another's wheels. If, however, you have
no sort of intentions, then of course——”

“I have none.”

“_Merci_, my soul!”

The Count thought of killing two hares at the same time, and was
firmly convinced that he would succeed. On the evening I am describing
I watched the chase of these two hares. The chase was stupid and as
comical as a good caricature. When watching it one could only laugh or
be revolted at the Count's vulgarity, but nobody could have thought
that this schoolboy chase would end with the moral fall of some, the
ruin and the crimes of others!

The Count not only killed two hares, but more! He killed them, but he
did not get their skins and their flesh.

I saw him secretly press Olga's hand, who received him each time with
a friendly smile and looked after him with a contemptuous grimace.
Once, evidently wishing to show that there were no secrets between us,
he even kissed her hand in my presence.

“What a blockhead!” she whispered into my ear, and wiped her hand.

“I say, Olga,” I asked, when the Count had gone away, “I think there
is something you want to tell me. What is it?”

I looked searchingly into her face. She blushed scarlet and began to
blink in a frightened manner, like a cat who has been caught stealing.

“Olga,” I said sternly, “you must tell me! I demand it!”

“Yes, there is something I want to tell you,” she whispered. “I love
you—I can't live without you—but . . . my darling, don't come to see
me any more. Don't love me any more, and don't call me Olia. It can't
go on. . . . It's impossible. . . . And don't let anybody see that you
love me.”

“But why is this?”

“I want it. The reasons you need not know, and I won't tell you.
Go. . . . Leave me!”

I did not leave her, and she herself was obliged to bring our
conversation to an end. Taking the arm of her husband, who was passing
us at that moment, she nodded to me with a hypocritical smile, and
went away.

The Count's other hare—Nadenka Kalinin—was honoured that evening by
the Count's special attention. The whole evening he hovered around
her, he told her anecdotes, he was witty, he flirted with her, and
she, pale and exhausted, drew her lips to one side in a forced smile.
The justice of the peace, Kalinin, watched them all the time, stroking
his beard and coughing importantly. That the Count was paying court to
his daughter was agreeable to him. “He has a Count as son-in-law!”
What thought could be sweeter for a provincial _bon-vivant_? From the
moment that the Count began to pay court to his daughter he had grown
at least three feet in height in his own estimation. And with what
stately glances he measured me, how maliciously he coughed when he
talked to me! “So you stood on ceremonies and went away—it was all one
to us! Now we have a Count!”

The day after the party I was again at the Count's estate. This time I
did not talk with Sasha but with her brother, the schoolboy. The boy
led me into the garden and poured out his whole soul to me. These
confidences were the result of my questions as to how he got on with
his “new mother.”

“She's your good acquaintance,” he began, nervously unbuttoning his
uniform. “You will repeat it to her; but I don't care. You may tell
her whatever you like! She's spiteful, she's base!”

He told me that Olga had taken his room from him, she had sent away
their old nurse who had served at Urbenin's for ten years, she was
always screaming about something and always angry.

“Yesterday you admired sister Sasha's hair. . . . Hadn't she pretty
hair? Just like flax! This morning she cut it all off!”

“That was jealousy,” I thus explained to myself Olga's invasion into
the hairdresser's domain.

“She was evidently envious that you had praised Sasha's hair and not
her own,” the boy said in confirmation of my thought. “She worries
papasha, too. Papasha is spending a terrible lot of money on her, and
is neglecting his work. . . . He has again begun to drink! Again!
She's a little fool. . . . She cries all day that she has to live in
poverty in such a small house. Is it papasha's fault that he has
little money?”

The boy told me many sad things. He saw that which his blinded father
did not see or did not want to see. In the poor boy's opinion his
father was wronged, his sister was wronged, his old nurse had been
wronged. He had been deprived of his little den where he had been used
to occupy himself with his books, and feed the goldfinches he had
caught. Everybody had been wronged, everybody was laughed at by his
stupid and all-powerful stepmother! But the poor boy could not have
imagined the terrible wrong that his young stepmother would inflict on
his family, and of which I was witness that very evening after my talk
with him. Everything else grew dim before that wrong, the cropping of
Sasha's hair appeared as a mere trifle in comparison with it.



XVIII

Late at night I was sitting with the Count. As usual, we were
drinking. The Count was quite drunk, I only slightly.

“To-day I was allowed accidentally to touch her waist,” he mumbled.
“To-morrow, therefore, we can begin to go further.”

“Well, and Nadia? How do things stand with Nadia?”

“We are progressing! I've only begun with her as yet. So far, we are
passing through the period of conversations with the eyes. I love to
read in her sad black eyes, brother. Something is written there that
words are unable to express, that only the soul can understand. Let's
have another drink!”

“It seems that you please her since she has the patience to listen to
you for hours at a time. You also please her papa!”

“Her papa? Are you talking about that blockhead? Ha, ha! The simpleton
suspects me of honourable intentions.”

The Count coughed and drank.

“He thinks I'll marry her! To say nothing of my not being able to
marry, when one considers the question honestly it would be more
honest in me to seduce a girl than to marry her. . . . An eternal life
with a drunken, coughing, semi-old man . . . br‑r‑r! My wife would
pine away, or she would run away the next day. . . . What noise is
that?”

The Count and I jumped up. . . . Several doors were slammed to, and
almost at the same moment Olga rushed into the room. She was as white
as snow, and trembled like a chord that had been struck violently. Her
hair was falling loose around her. The pupils of her eyes were
dilated. She was out of breath and was crumpling in her hand the front
pleats of her dressing-gown.

“Olga, what is the matter with you?” I asked, seizing her by the hand
and turning pale.

The Count ought to have been surprised at this familiar form of
address, but he did not hear it. His whole person was turned into one
large note of interrogation, and with open mouth and staring eyes he
stood looking at Olga as if she were an apparition.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“He beats me!” Olga said, and fell sobbing on to an armchair. “He
beats me!”

“Who is he?”

“My husband! I can't live with him! I have left him!”

“This is revolting!” the Count exclaimed, and he struck the table with
his fist. “What right has he? This is tyranny! This . . . the devil
only knows what it is! To beat his wife? To beat! What did he do it
for?”

“For nothing, for nothing at all,” Olga said, wiping away her tears.
“I pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket, and the letter you sent me
yesterday fell on the floor. . . . He seized it and read it . . . and
began to beat me. . . . He clutched my hand and crushed it—look, there
are still red spots on it—and demanded an explanation. . . . Instead
of explaining, I ran here. . . . Can't you defend me? He has not the
right to treat his wife so roughly! I'm no cook! I'm a noblewoman!”

The Count paced about the room and jabbered with his drunken, muddling
tongue some sort of nonsense which when rendered into sober language
was intended to mean “of the status of women in Russia.”

“This is barbarous! This is New Zealand! Does this muzhik also think
that at his funeral his wife will have her throat cut? Savages when
they go into the next world take their wives with them!”

I could not recover from my surprise. . . . How was this sudden visit
of Olga's in a nightdress to be understood? What was I to think—what
to decide? If she had been beaten, if her dignity had been wounded,
why had she not run away to her father or to the housekeeper? . . .
Lastly why not to me, who was certainly near to her? And had she
really been insulted? My heart told me of the innocence of
simple-minded Urbenin, and understanding the truth, it sank with the
pain that the stupefied husband must have been feeling at that time.
Without asking any questions, not knowing where to commence, I began
to soothe Olga and offered her wine.

“What a mistake I made! What a mistake!” she sighed between her tears,
lifting the wineglass to her lips. “What sanctimoniousness he feigned
when he was courting me! I thought he was an angel and not a man!”

“So you wanted him to be pleased with the letter that fell out of your
pocket?” I asked. “You wanted him to burst out laughing?”

“Don't let us talk about it!” the Count interrupted. “Whatever might
have been, his action was dastardly all the same! Women are not
treated in that way. I'll challenge him! I'll teach him! Olga
Nikolaevna, believe me he'll have to suffer for this!”

The Count gobbled like a young turkey cock, although he had no
authority to come between husband and wife. I kept silent and did not
contradict him, because I knew that to take vengeance for another
man's wife was limited to drunken ebullitions of words between four
walls, and that everything about the duel would be forgotten the next
day. But why was Olga silent? . . . I did not wish to think that she
was not loth to have the proposed service rendered her by the Count. I
did not wish to think that this silly, beautiful cat had so little
dignity, that she would willingly consent to the drunken Count being
judge between man and wife.

“I'll mix him with the dirt!” piped this newly-fledged knight-errant.
“I'll end by boxing his ears! I'll do it to-morrow!”

And she did not stop the mouth of that blackguard, who in his drunken
mood was insulting a man whose only blame was that he had made a
mistake and was now being duped. Urbenin had seized and pressed her
hand very roughly, and this had caused her scandalous flight to the
Count's house, and now, when before her eyes this drunken and morally
degenerate creature was defaming the honest name and pouring filthy
slops on a man, who at that time must have been languishing in
melancholy and uncertainty, knowing that he was deceived, she did not
even move a hair of her eyebrows!

While the Count was pouring out his wrath and Olga was wiping her
eyes, the manservant brought in some roast partridges. The Count put
half a partridge on his guest's plate. She shook her head negatively
and then mechanically took up her knife and fork and began to eat. The
partridge was followed by a large glass of wine, and soon there were
no more signs of tears with the exception of red spots near the eyes
and occasional deep sighs.

Soon we heard laughter. . . . Olga laughed like a consoled child who
had forgotten its injury. And the Count looking at her laughed too.

“Do you know what I have thought of?” he began, sitting down next to
her. “I want to arrange private theatricals. We shall act plays in
which there are good women's parts. Eh? What do you say to that?”

They began to talk about the private theatricals. How ill this silly
chatter accorded with the terror that had but lately been depicted on
Olga's face, when only an hour before she had rushed into the room,
pale and weeping, with flowing hair! How cheap were those terrors,
those tears!

Meanwhile time went on. The clock struck twelve. Respectable women go
to bed at that time. Olga ought to have gone away long since. But the
clock struck half-past twelve; it struck one, and she was still
sitting there chatting with the Count.

“It's time to go to bed,” I said, looking at my watch. “I'm off! . . .
Olga Nikolaevna, will you permit me to escort you?”

Olga looked at me and then at the Count.

“Where am I to go?” she murmured. “I can't go to him!”

“Yes, yes; of course, you can't go to him,” the Count said. “Who can
answer for his not beating you again? No, no!”

I walked about the room. All was quiet. I paced from corner to corner
and my friend and my mistress followed my steps with their eyes. I
seemed to understand this quiet and these glances. There was something
expectant and impatient in them. I put my hat on the table and sat
down on the sofa.

“So, sir,” the Count mumbled and rubbed his hands impatiently. “So,
sir. . . . Things are like this. . . .”

The clock struck half-past one. The Count looked quickly at the clock,
frowned and began to walk about the room. I could see by the glances
he cast on me that he wanted to say something, something important but
ticklish and unpleasant.

“I say, Serezha!” he at last picked up courage, sat down next to me,
and whispered in my ear. “Golubchek, don't be offended. . . . Of
course, you will understand my position, and you won't find my request
strange or rude.”

“Tell me quickly. No need to mince matters!”

“You see how things stand . . . how . . . Go away, golubchek! You
are interfering with _us_. . . . She will remain with me. . . .
Forgive me for sending you away, but . . . you will understand my
impatience!”

“All right!”

My friend was loathsome. If I had not been fastidious, perhaps I would
have crushed him like a beetle, when he, shivering as if with fever,
asked me to leave him alone with Urbenin's wife. He, the debilitated
anchorite, steeped through and through with spirits and disease,
wanted to take the poetic “girl in red” who dreamed of an effective
death and had been nurtured by the forests and the angry lake! No, she
must be miles away from him!

I went up to her.

“I am going,” I said.

She nodded her head.

“Am I to go away? Yes?” I asked, trying to read the truth in her
lovely, blushing little face. “Yes?”

With the very slightest movement of her long black eyelashes she
answered “Yes.”

“You have considered well?”

She turned away from me, as one turns away from an annoying wind. She
did not want to speak. Why should she speak? It is impossible to
answer a long subject briefly, and there was neither time nor place
for long speeches.

I took up my hat and left the room without taking leave. Afterwards,
Olga told me that immediately after my departure, as soon as the sound
of my steps became mingled with the noise of the wind in the garden,
the drunken Count was pressing her in his embrace. And she, closing
her eyes and stopping up her mouth and nostrils, was scarcely able to
keep her feet from a feeling of disgust. There was even a moment when
she had almost torn herself away from his embraces and rushed into the
lake. There were moments when she tore her hair and wept. It is not
easy to sell oneself.

When I left the house and went towards the stables, I had to pass the
bailiff's house. I looked in at the window. Pëtr Egorych was seated at
a table by the dim light of a smoking oil lamp that had been turned up
too high. I did not see his face. It was covered by his hands. But the
whole of his robust, awkward figure displayed so much sorrow, anguish
and despair that it was not necessary to see the face to understand
the condition of his soul. Two bottles stood before him; one was
empty, the other only just begun. They were both vodka bottles. The
poor devil was seeking peace not in himself, nor in other people, but
in alcohol.

Five minutes later I was riding home. The darkness was terrible. The
lake blustered wrathfully and seemed to be angry that I, such a
sinner, who had just been the witness of a sinful deed, should dare to
infringe its austere peace. I could not see the lake for the darkness.
It seemed as if an unseen monster was roaring, that the very darkness
which enveloped me was roaring too.

I pulled up Zorka, closed my eyes, and meditated to the roaring of the
monster.

“What if I returned at once and destroyed them?”

Terrible wrath raged in my soul. . . . All the little of goodness and
honesty that remained in me after long years of a depraved life, all
that corruption had left, all that I guarded and cherished, that I was
proud of, was insulted, spat upon, splashed with filth!

I had known venal women before, I had bought them, studied them, but
they had not had the innocent rosy cheeks and sincere blue eyes that I
had seen on the May morning when I walked through the wood to the
Tenevo fair. . . . I myself, corrupt to the marrow of my bones, had
forgiven, had preached tolerance of everything vicious, and I was
indulgent to weakness. . . . I was convinced that it was impossible to
demand of dirt that it should not be dirt, and that one cannot blame
those ducats which from the force of circumstances have fallen into
the mire. But I had not known before that ducats could melt in the
mire and be blended with it into a single mass. Consequently gold
could also dissolve!

A strong gust of wind blew off my hat and bore it into the surrounding
darkness. In its flight my hat touched Zorka's head. She took fright,
reared on her hind legs and galloped off along the familiar road.

When I reached home I threw myself on the bed. Polycarp suggested that
I should undress, and he got sworn at and called a “devil” for no
earthly reason.

“Devil yourself!” Polycarp grumbled as he went away from my bed.

“What did you say? What did you say?” I shouted.

“None so deaf as those who will not hear!”

“Oh, ho! . . . You dare to be impudent!” I thundered and poured out
all my bile on my poor lackey. “Get out! That no trace of you be left,
scoundrel! Out with you!”

And without waiting for my man to leave the room, I fell on the bed
and began to sob like a boy. My overstrained nerves could bear no
more. Powerless wrath, wounded feelings, jealousy—all had to have vent
in one way or another.

“The husband killed his wife!” squalled my parrot, raising his yellow
feathers.

Under the influence of this cry the thought entered my head that
Urbenin might really kill his wife.

Falling asleep, I dreamed of murders. My nightmare was suffocating and
painful. . . . It appeared to me that my hands were stroking something
cold, and I had only to open my eyes to see a corpse. I dreamed that
Urbenin was standing at the head of my bed, looking at me with
imploring eyes.



XIX

After the night that is described above a calm set in.

I remained at home, only allowing myself to leave the house or ride
about on business. Heaps of work had accumulated, therefore it was
impossible for me to be dull. From morning till night I sat at my
writing-table scribbling, or examining people who had fallen into my
magisterial claws. I was no longer drawn to Karnéevka, the Count's
estate.

I thought no more of Olga. That which falls from the load is lost; and
she was just what had fallen from my load and was, as I thought,
irrecoverably lost. I thought no more about her and did not want to
think about her.

“Silly, vicious trash!” I said to myself whenever her memory arose in
my mind in the midst of my strenuous work.

Occasionally, however, when I lay down to sleep or when I awoke in the
morning, I remembered various moments of our acquaintance, and the
short connexion I had had with Olga. I remembered the “Stone Grave,”
the little house in the wood in which “the girl in red” lived, the
road to Tenevo, the meeting in the grotto . . . and my heart began to
beat faster. . . . I experienced bitter heartache. . . . But it was
not for long. The bright memories were soon obliterated under the
weight of the gloomy ones. What poetry of the past could withstand the
filth of the present? And now, when I had finished with Olga, I looked
upon this “poetry” quite differently to formerly. . . . Now I looked
upon it as an optical illusion, a lie, hypocrisy . . . and it lost
half its charm in my eyes.

The Count had become quite repugnant to me. I was glad not to see him,
and I was always angry when his moustachioed face rose timidly to my
mind. Every day he sent me letters in which he implored me not to sulk
but to come to see the no longer “solitary hermit.” Had I listened to
his letters, I would have been doing a displeasure to myself.

“It's finished!” I thought. “Thank God! . . . It bored me. . . .”

I decided to break off all connexion with the Count, and this decision
did not cost me the slightest struggle. Now I was not at all the same
man that I had been three weeks before, when after the quarrel about
Pshekhotsky I could scarcely bring myself to sit at home. There was no
attraction now.

Sitting always at home bored me at last, and I wrote to Doctor Pavil
Ivanovich, asking him to come and have a chat. For some reason I
received no reply to this letter, so I wrote another. But the second
received the same answer as the first. Evidently dear “Screw”
pretended to be angry. . . . The poor fellow having received a refusal
from Nadenka Kalinin, looked upon me as the cause of his misfortune.
He had the right to be angry, and if he had never been angry before it
was merely because he did not know how to.

“When had he time to learn?” I thought, being perplexed at not
receiving answers to my letters.

In the third week of obstinate seclusion in my own house the Count
paid me a visit. Having scolded me for not riding over to see him nor
sending him answers to his letters, he stretched himself out on the
sofa and before he began to snore he spoke on his favourite theme—on
women.

“I understand,” he began languidly, screwing up his eyes and placing
his hands under his head, “that you are delicate and susceptible. You
don't come to me from fear of breaking into our duet . . .
interfering. . . . An unwelcome guest is worse than a Tartar, a guest
during the honeymoon is worse than a horned devil. I understand you.
But, my dear friend, you forget that you are a friend and not a guest,
that you are loved, esteemed. By your presence you would only complete
the harmony. . . . And what harmony, my dear brother! A harmony that I
am unable to describe to you!”

The Count pulled his hands out from under his head and began to wave
them about.

“I myself am unable to understand if I am living happily or not. The
devil himself would not be able to understand it. There are certainly
moments when one would give half one's life for a ‘bis,’ but on the
other hand there are days when one paces the rooms from corner to
corner, as if beside oneself and ready to cry. . . .”

“For what reason?”

“Brother, I can't understand that Olga. She's a sort of ague and not a
woman. In ague one has either fever or shivering fits. That's how she
is; five changes every day. She is either gay or so dull that she
swallows her tears and prays. . . . Sometimes she loves me, sometimes
she doesn't. There are moments when she caresses me as no woman has
ever caressed me in my whole life. But sometimes it is like this: You
awake unexpectedly, you open your eyes, and you see a face turned on
you . . . such a terrible, such a savage face . . . a face that is
all distorted with malignancy and aversion. . . . When one sees such a
thing all the enchantment vanishes. . . . And she often looks at me in
that way. . . .”

“With aversion?”

“Well, yes! . . . I can't understand it. . . . She swears that she
came to me only for love, and still hardly a night passes that I do
not see that face. How is it to be explained? I begin to think, though
of course I don't want to believe it, that she can't bear me and has
given herself to me for those rags which I buy for her now She's
terribly fond of rags! She's capable of standing before the mirror
from morning to evening in a new frock; she is capable of crying for
days and nights about a spoilt flounce. . . . She's terribly vain!
What chiefly pleases her in me is that I'm a Count. She would never
have loved me had I not been a Count. Never a dinner or supper passes
that she does not reproach me with tears in her eyes, for not
surrounding myself with aristocratic society. You see, she would like
to reign in that society. . . . A strange girl!”

The Count fixed his dim eyes on the ceiling and became pensive. I
noticed, to my great astonishment, that this time, as an exception, he
was sober. This struck and even touched me.

“You are quite normal to-day,” I said. “You are not drunk, and you
don't ask for vodka. What's the meaning of this dream?”

“Yes, so it is! I had no time to drink, I've been thinking. . . . I
must tell you, Serezha, I'm seriously in love; it's no joke. I am
terribly fond of her. It's quite natural, too. . . . She's a rare
woman, not of the ordinary sort, to say nothing of her appearance. Not
much intellect, to be sure, but what feeling, elegance, freshness! She
can't be compared with my former Amalias, Angelicas, and Grushas,
whose love I have enjoyed till now. She's something from another
world, a world I do not know.”

“Philosophizing!” I laughed.

“I'm captivated, I've almost fallen in love! But now I see it is
useless to try to square a naught. It was only a mask that raised
false expectations in me. The pink cheeks of innocence proved to be
rouge, the kiss of love—the request to buy a new frock. . . . I took
her into my house like a wife, and she behaves like a mistress who is
paid with money. But it's enough now. I am restraining my soul's
expectations, and am beginning to see in Olga a mistress. . . .
Enough!”

“Well, why not? How about the husband?”

“The husband? Hm! . . . What do you think he's about?”

“I think it is impossible to imagine a more unhappy man.”

“You think that? Quite uselessly. . . . He's such a scoundrel, such a
rascal, that I am not at all sorry for him. . . . A rascal can never
be unhappy, he'll always find his way out.”

“Why do you abuse him in that way?”

“Because he's a rogue. You know that I esteemed him, that I trusted
him as a friend . . . I and you too—in general everybody considered
him an honest, respectable man who was incapable of cheating.
Meanwhile he has been robbing, plundering me! Taking advantage of his
position of bailiff, he disposed of my property as he liked. The only
things he did not take were those that could not be moved from their
places.”

I, who knew Urbenin to be a man in the highest degree honest and
disinterested, jumped up as if I had been stung when I heard these
words spoken by the Count, and went up to him.

“Have you caught him in the act of stealing?” I asked.

“No, but I know of his thievish tricks from trustworthy sources.”

“May I ask from what sources?”

“You needn't be uneasy. I would not accuse a man without cause. Olga
has told me all about him. Even before she became his wife she saw
with her own eyes what loads of slaughtered fowls and geese he sent to
town. She saw how my geese and fowls were sent as presents to a
certain benefactor where his son, the schoolboy, lodged. More than
that, she saw flour, millet and lard being dispatched there. Admitted
that all these are trifles, but did these trifles belong to him? Here
we have not a question of value but of principle. Principles were
trespassed against. There's more, sir! She saw in his cupboard packets
of money. In answer to her question whose money it was and where he
had got it, he begged her not to mention to anybody that he had money.
My dear fellow, you know he's as poor as a church mouse! His salary is
scarcely sufficient for his board. Can you explain to me where this
money came from?”

“And you, stupid fool, believe this little vermin?” I cried, stirred
to the depths of my soul. “She is not satisfied with having run away
from him and disgraced him in the eyes of the whole district. She must
now betray him! What an amount of meanness is contained in that small
and fragile body! Fowls, geese, millet. . . . Master, master! Your
political economistic feelings, your agricultural stupidity are
offended that at holiday time he sent a present of a slaughtered bird
which the foxes or polecats would have eaten, if it had not been
killed, and given away, but have you even once checked the huge
accounts that Urbenin has handed in? Have you ever counted up the
thousands and the tens of thousands? No? Then what is the use of
talking to you? You are stupid and a beast. You would be glad to
incriminate the husband of your mistress, but you don't know how!”

“My connexion with Olga has nothing to do with the matter. If he's her
husband or not her husband is all one, but since he has robbed me, I
must plainly call him a thief. But let us leave this roguery alone.
Tell me, is it honest or dishonest to receive a salary and for whole
days to lie about dead drunk? He is drunk every day. There wasn't a
single day that I did not see him reeling about! Low and disgusting!
Decent people don't act in that way.”

“It's just because he's decent that he gets drunk,” I said.

“You have a kind of passion for taking the part of such gentlemen. But
I have decided to be unmerciful. I paid him off to-day and told him to
clear out and make room for another. My patience is exhausted!”

I considered it unnecessary to try to convince the Count that he was
unjust, unpractical and stupid. It was not for me to defend Urbenin
against the Count.

Five days later I heard that Urbenin with his schoolboy son and his
little daughter had gone to live in the town. I was told that he drove
to town drunk, half dead, and that he had twice fallen out of the
cart. The schoolboy and Sasha had cried all the way.



XX

Shortly after Urbenin had left, I was obliged to go to the Count's
estate, quite against my will. One of the Count's stables had been
broken into at night and several valuable saddles had been carried off
by the thieves. The examining magistrate, that is I, had been informed
and _nolens-volens_, I was obliged to go there.

I found the Count drunk and angry. He was wandering about the rooms
seeking a refuge from his melancholy but could not find one.

“I am worried by that Olga!” he said waving his hand. “She got angry
with me this morning and she left the house threatening to drown
herself! And, as you see, there are no signs of her yet. I know she
won't drown herself. Still, it is nasty of her. Yesterday, all day
long, she was rubbing her eyes and breaking crockery; the day before
she over-ate herself with chocolate. The devil only knows what such
natures are!”

I comforted the Count as well as I could and sat down to dinner with
him.

“No, it's time to give up such childishness,” he kept mumbling during
dinner. “It's high time, for it is all stupid and ridiculous. Besides,
I must also confess she is beginning to bore me with her sudden
changes. I want something quiet, orderly, modest, you know—something
like Nadenka Kalinin . . . a splendid girl!”

After dinner when I was walking in the garden I met the “drowned
girl.” When she saw me she became very red and (a strange woman) she
began to laugh with joy. The shame on her face was mingled with
pleasure, sorrow with happiness. For a moment she looked at me
askance, then she rushed towards me and hung on my neck without saying
a word.

“I love you!” she whispered, clinging to my neck. “I have been so sad
without you. I should have died if you had not come.”

I embraced her and silently led her to one of the summer-houses. Ten
minutes later when parting from her, I took out of my pocket a
twenty-five-rouble note and handed it to her. She opened her eyes
wide.

“What is that for?”

“I am paying you for to-day's love.”

Olga did not understand and continued to look at me with astonishment.

“You see, there are women who love for money,” I explained. “They are
venal. They must be paid for with money. Take it! If you take money
from others, why don't you want to take anything from me? I wish for
no favours!”

Olga did not understand my cynicism in insulting her in this way. She
did not know life as yet, and she did not understand the meaning of
“venal women.”



XXI

It was a fine August day.

The sun warmed as in summer, and the blue sky fondly enticed you to
wander far afield, but the air already bore presages of autumn. In the
green foliage of the pensive forest the worn-out leaves were already
assuming golden tints and the darkening fields looked melancholy and
sad.

A dull presentiment of inevitable autumn weighed heavily on us all. It
was not difficult to foresee the nearness of a catastrophe. The roll
of thunder and the rain must soon come to refresh the sultry
atmosphere. It is sultry before a thunderstorm when dark leaden clouds
approach in the sky, and moral sultriness was oppressing us all. It
was apparent in everything—in our movements, in our smiles, in our
speech.

I was driving in a light wagonette. The daughter of the Justice of the
Peace, Nadinka, was sitting beside me. She was white as snow, her chin
and lips trembled as they do before tears, her deep eyes were full of
sorrow, while all the time she laughed and tried to appear very gay.

In front and behind us a number of vehicles of all sorts, of all
times, of all sizes were moving in the same direction. Ladies and men
on horseback were riding on either side. Count Karnéev, clad in a
green shooting costume that looked more like a buffoon's than a
sportsman's, bending slightly forward and to one side, galloped about
unmercifully on his black horse. Looking at his bent body and at the
expression of pain that constantly appeared on his lean face, one
could have thought that he was riding for the first time. A new
double-barrelled gun was slung across his back, and at his side he had
a game-bag in which a wounded woodcock tossed about.

Olga Urbenin was the ornament of the cavalcade. Seated on a black
horse, which the Count had given her, dressed in a black riding-habit,
with a white feather in her hat, she no longer resembled that “girl in
red” who had met us in the wood only a few months before. Now there
was something majestic, something of the _grande dame_ in her figure.
Each flourish of her whip, each smile was calculated to look
aristocratic and majestic. In her movements, in her smiles there was
something provocative, something incendiary. She held her head high in
a foppishly arrogant manner, and from the height of her mount poured
contempt on the whole company, as if in disdain of the loud remarks
that were sent after her by our virtuous ladies. Coquetting with her
impudence and her position “at the Count's,” she seemed to defy
everybody, just as if she did not know that the Count was already
tired of her, and was only awaiting the moment when he could
disentangle himself from her.

“The Count wants to send me away!” she said to me with a loud laugh
when the cavalcade rode out of the yard. Therefore she knew her
position and she understood it.

But why that loud laugh? I looked at her and was perplexed. Where
could this dweller in the forests have found so much push? When had
she found time to sit her horse with so much grace, to move her
nostrils proudly, and to show off with commanding gestures?

“A depraved woman is like a swine,” Doctor Pavel Ivanovich said to me.
“If you set her down to table she puts her legs on it.”

But his explanation was too simple. Nobody could be more infatuated
with Olga than I was, and I was the first to be ready to throw stones
at her; still, the uneasy voice of truth whispered to me that this was
not push nor the swagger of a prosperous and satisfied woman, but the
despairing presentiment of the near and inevitable catastrophe.

We were returning from the shoot to which we had gone early in the
morning. The sport had been bad. Near the marshes, on which we had set
great hopes, we met a party of sportsmen, who told us the game was
wild. Three woodcocks and one duckling was all the game we were able
to send to the other world as the whole result of ten guns. At last
one of the lady riders had an attack of toothache and we were obliged
to hurry back. We returned along a good road that passed through the
fields on which the sheaves of newly reaped rye were looking yellow
against the background of the dark, gloomy forests. . . . Near the
horizon the church and houses of the Count's estate gleamed white. To
their right the mirror-like surface of the lake stretched out wide,
and to the left the “Stone Grave” rose darkly. . . .

“What a terrible woman!” Nadinka whispered to me every time Olga came
up to our wagonette. “What a terrible woman! She's as bad as she's
pretty! . . . How long ago is it since you were best man at her
wedding? She has not had time to wear out her wedding shoes, and she
is already wearing another man's silk and is flaunting in another
man's diamonds. If she has such instincts it would have been more
tactful had she waited a year or two. . . .”

“She's in a hurry to live! She has no time to wait!” I sighed.

“Do you know what has become of her husband?”

“I hear he is drinking. . . .”

“Yes. . . . The day before yesterday father was in town and saw him
driving in a droshky. His head was hanging to one side, he was without
a hat, and his face was dirty. . . . He's a lost man! He's terribly
poor, I hear; they have nothing to eat, the flat is not paid for. Poor
little Sasha is for days without food. Father described all this to
the Count. . . . You know the Count! He is honest, kind, but he is not
fond of thinking about anything, or reasoning. ‘I'll send him a
hundred roubles,’ he said. And he did it at once. I don't think he
could have insulted Urbenin more than by sending this money. . . .
He'll feel insulted by the Count's gift and will drink all the more.”

“Yes, the Count is stupid,” I said. “He might have sent him the money
through me, and in my name.”

“He had no right to send him money! Have I the right to feed you if I
am strangling you, and you hate me?”

“That is quite true. . . .”

We were silent and pensive. . . . The thought of Urbenin's fate was
always very painful to me; now when his ruined wife was caracoling
before my eyes, this thought aroused in me a whole train of sad
reflections. . . . What would become of him and of his children? In
what way would she end? In what moral puddle would this pitiful, puny
Count end his days?

The creature seated next to me was the only one who was respectable
and worthy of esteem. There were only two people in our district whom
I was capable of liking and respecting, and who alone had the right of
turning from me because they stood higher than I did. . . . These were
Nadezhda Kalinin and Doctor Pavil Ivanovich. . . . What awaited them?

“Nadezhda Nikolaevna,” I said to her, “quite without wishing it, I
have caused you no little sorrow, and less than anybody else have I
the right to expect your confidence. But I swear to you nobody will
understand you as well as I can. Your sorrow is my sorrow, your joy is
my joy. If I ask you a question, don't suspect it is from idle
curiosity. Tell me, my dear, why do you allow this pigmy Count to
approach you? What prevents you from sending him away and not
listening to his abominable amiabilities? His courting is no honour to
a respectable woman! Why do you give these scandalmongers the right to
couple your name with his?”

Nadinka looked at me with her bright eyes, and evidently reading
sincerity in my face, she smiled gaily.

“What do they say?” she asked.

“They say your papa and you are trying to catch the Count, and that in
the end you'll find the Count is only pulling your leg.”

“They speak so because they don't know the Count!” Nadinka flared up.
“The shameless slanderers! They are used to seeing only the bad side
of people. . . . The good is inaccessible for their understanding.”

“And have you found the good in him?”

“Yes, I have found it! You are the first who ought to know. I would
not have let him approach me if I had not been certain of his
honourable intentions!”

“Consequently your affairs have already reached ‘honourable
intentions,’” I said with astonishment. “Soon! . . . And on what are
they based—these honourable intentions?”

“Do you wish to know?” she asked, and her eyes sparkled. “Those
scandalmongers do not lie: I wish to marry him! Don't look so
surprised, and don't laugh! You will say that to get married without
love is dishonest and so on. It has already been said a thousand
times, but . . . what am I to do? To feel that one is a useless bit
of furniture in this world is very hard. . . . It's hard to live
without an object. . . . When this man, whom you dislike so much, will
have made me his wife, I shall have an object in life. . . . I will
improve him, I will teach him to leave off drinking, I will teach him
to work. . . . Look at him! He does not look like a man now, and I
will make a man of him.”

“Et cetera, et cetera,” I said. “You will take care of his enormous
fortune, you will do acts of charity. . . . The whole of the district
will bless you, and will look upon you as a good angel sent down to
comfort the miserable. . . . You will be the mother and the educator
of his children. . . . Yes, a great work indeed! You are a clever
girl, but you reason like a schoolgirl!”

“My idea may be worthless, it may be ludicrous and naïve, but I live
by it. . . . Under its influence I have become well and gay. . . . Do
not disenchant me! Let me disenchant myself, but not now, at some
other time . . . afterwards, in the distant future. . . . Let us
change the subject!”

“Just one more indiscreet question! Do you expect him to propose?”

“Yes. . . . To judge by the note I received from him to-day, my fate
will be decided this evening . . . to-day. . . . He writes that he
has something very important to say to me. . . . The happiness of the
whole of his life depends upon my answer.”

“Thank you for your frankness,” I said.

The meaning of the note that Nadia had received was quite clear to me.
A base proposal awaited the poor girl. I decided to save her from that
ordeal.

“We have already arrived at our wood,” the Count said, coming up to
our wagonette. “Nadezhda Nikolaevna, would you not wish to make a halt
here?”

And without waiting for an answer he clapped his hands and ordered in
a loud, shaky voice:

“Ha‑a‑lt!”

We settled ourselves down in the skirts of the wood. The sun had sunk
behind the trees, illuminating with purple and gold only the summits
of the very highest alders and playing on the golden cross of the
Count's church that could be seen in the distance. Flocks of
frightened orioles and sparrow hawks soared over our heads. One of the
men fired into them, alarming this feathered kingdom, still more,
which aroused an indefatigable bird concert. This sort of concert has
its charms in the spring and summer, but when you feel the approach of
the cold autumn, in the air, it only irritates the nerves and reminds
one of their near migration.

The coolness of evening spread from the dense forest. The ladies'
noses became blue and the chilly Count began rubbing his hands.
Nothing at that moment could be more appropriate than the odour of
charcoal in the samovars and the clatter of the tea service. One-eyed
Kuz'ma, puffing and panting and stumbling about in the long grass,
dragged forward a case of cognac. We began to warm ourselves.

A long outing in the fresh cool air acts on the appetite better than
any appetising drops, and after it the balyk,* the caviar, the roast
partridge and the other viands were as caressing to the sight as roses
are on an early spring morning.

   * Salted and smoked sturgeon.

“You are wise to-day,” I said to the Count as I helped myself to a
slice of balyk. “Wise as you have never been before. It would have
been difficult to arrange things better. . . .”

“We have arranged it together, the Count and I,” Kalinin said with a
giggle as he winked towards the coachmen, who were getting the hampers
and baskets of provisions, wines and crockery out of the vehicles.
“The little picnic will be a great success. . . . Towards the end
there will be champagne!”

On this occasion the face of the Justice of the Peace shone with
satisfaction as it had never shone before. Did he not expect that in
the evening his Nadinka would have a proposal made to her? Did he not
have the champagne prepared in order to drink the health of the young
couple? I looked attentively at his face and, as usual, I could read
nothing there but careless satisfaction, satiety, and the stupid
self-importance that was suffused over the whole of his portly figure.

We fell upon the _hors d'œuvres_ gaily. Only two of the guests looked
with indifference on the luxurious viands that were spread out on
carpets before us: these two were Olga and Nadezhda Kalinin. The first
was standing to one side leaning against the back of a wagonette,
motionless and silently gazing at the game-bag that the Count had
thrown on the ground. In the game-bag a wounded woodcock was moving
about. Olga watched the movements of the unfortunate bird and seemed
to be expecting its death.

Nadia was sitting next to me and looked with indifference on the gaily
chewing mouths.

“When will all this be over?” her tired eyes said.

I offered her a sandwich with caviar. She thanked me and put it to one
side. She evidently did not wish to eat.

“Olga Nikolaevna, why don't you sit down?” the Count called to Olga.

Olga did not answer but continued to stare as immovable as a statue,
looking at the bird.

“What heartless people there are,” I said, going up to Olga. “Is it
possible that you, a woman, are capable of watching with indifference
the suffering of this woodcock? Instead of looking at his contortions,
it would be better if you ordered it to be dispatched.”

“Others suffer; let him suffer too,” Olga answered, frowning, without
looking at me.

“Who else is suffering?”

“Leave me in peace!” she said hoarsely. “I am not disposed to speak to
you to-day . . . nor with your friend, that fool the Count! Go away
from me!”

She glanced at me with eyes that were full of wrath and tears. Her
face was pale, her lips trembled.

“What a change!” I said as I lifted up the game-bag and wrung the
woodcock's neck. “What a tone! I am astounded! Quite astounded!”

“Leave me in peace, I tell you! I'm not in the humour for jokes!”

“What's the matter with you, my enchantress?”

Olga looked at me from head to foot and turned her back on me.

“Only depraved and venal women are spoken to in that tone,” she
continued. “You consider me such an one . . . well, then, go to those
saints! . . . I am worse and baser than any other here. . . . When you
were driving with that virtuous Nadinka you were afraid to look at
me. . . . Well, then, go to her! What are you waiting for? Go!”

“Yes, you are worse and baser than any other here,” I said, feeling
that I was gradually being mastered by rage. “Yes, you are depraved
and venal.”

“Yes, I remember how you offered me damned money. . . . Then I did not
know its meaning; now I understand. . . .”

Rage mastered me completely. And this rage was as strong as the love
had been that at one time was beginning to be born in me for “the girl
in red.” . . . And who could—what stone could have remained
indifferent? I saw before me beauty that had been cast by merciless
fate into the mire. No mercy was shown to either youth, beauty or
grace. . . . Now, when this woman appeared to me more beautiful than
ever, I felt what a loss nature had sustained in her person, and my
soul was filled with painful anger at the injustice of fate and the
order of things. . . .

In moments of anger I am unable to control myself. I do not know what
more Olga would have had to hear from me if she had not turned her
back upon me and gone away. She walked slowly towards the trees and
soon disappeared behind them. . . . It appeared to me that she was
crying. . . .

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I heard Kalinin making a speech. “On this day
when we all have met for . . . for . . . in order to unite . . . we
are assembled here, we are all acquainted with each other, we are all
enjoying ourselves and this long desired union we owe to nobody else
but to our luminary, to the star of our province. . . . Count, don't
get confused. . . . The ladies understand of whom I am speaking. . . .
He, he he! Well, ladies and gentlemen, let us continue. As we owe all
this to our enlightened, to our youthful . . . youthful . . . Count
Karnéev, I propose that we drink this glass to . . . But who is
driving this way? Who is it?”

A calash was driving from the direction of the Count's house towards
the clearing where we were seated.

“Who can it be?” the Count said in astonishment, turning his field
glass on the calash. “Hm! . . . strange! . . . It must be someone
passing by. . . . Oh, no! I see Kaetan Kazimirovich's face. . . . With
whom is he?”

Suddenly the Count sprang up as if he had been stung. His face became
deadly pale, and the field glass fell from his hand. His eyes strayed
around like the eyes of an entrapped mouse, and they rested sometimes
on me, sometimes on Nadia, as if looking for aid. Not everybody
noticed his confusion as the attention of most was directed on the
approaching calash.

“Serezha, come here for a minute!” he whispered to me, seizing hold of
my arm and leading me to one side. “Golubchek, I implore you as a
friend, as the best of men! . . . No questions, no interrogating
glances, no astonishment! I will tell you all afterwards! I swear that
not an iota will remain a secret from you! . . . It is such a
misfortune in my life, such a misfortune, that I am unable to find
words to express it! You will know all, but no questions now! Help
me!”

Meanwhile the calash came nearer and nearer. . . . At last it stopped,
and the Count's stupid secret became the property of the whole
district. Pshekhotsky, clad in a new unbleached silk suit, panting and
smiling, crawled out of the calash. After him a young lady of about
three-and-twenty sprang out adroitly. She was a tall, graceful, fair
woman with regular but not sympathetic features, and with dark blue
eyes. I only remember those dark blue expressionless eyes, a powdered
nose, a heavy, luxurious dress and several massive bracelets on each
arm. . . . I remember that the scent of the evening dampness and the
spilt cognac had to give way before the penetrating odour of some sort
of perfume.

“What a numerous party!” the stranger said in broken Russian. “It must
be very gay! How do you do, Alexis?”

She went up to Alexis and offered him her cheek, which the Count
smacked hastily and glanced uneasily at his guests.

“My wife, let me introduce her!” he mumbled. “And these, Zosia, are my
good friends. . . . Hm, hm! . . . I've a cough!”

“And I have only just arrived! Kaetan advised me to rest! But I said:
‘Why should I rest since I slept the whole way here! I would sooner go
to the shooting party!’ I dressed and here I am. . . . Kaetan, where
are my cigarettes?”

Pshekhotsky sprang forward and handed the fair lady her golden
cigarette case.

“And this is my wife's brother . . .” the Count continued to mumble,
pointing at Pshekhotsky. “Why don't you help me?” and he gave me a
poke in the ribs. “Help me out, for God's sake!”

I have been told that Kalinin fainted, and that Nadia, who wished to
help him, could not rise from her seat. I have been told many got into
their vehicles and drove away. All this I did not see. I remember that
I went into the wood, and searching for a footpath, without looking in
front, I went where my feet led me.*

   * At this point of Kamyshev's manuscript a hundred lines have been
   effaced.—A. Ch.


When I came out of the wood, bits of clay were hanging to my feet, and
I was covered with dirt. I had probably been obliged to jump over
brooks, but I could not remember this fact. It seemed to me as though
I had been severely beaten with sticks; I felt so weary and exhausted.
I ought to have gone to the Count's stable yard, mounted my Zorka and
ridden away. But I did not do so, and went home on foot. I could not
bring myself to see the Count or his accursed estate.*

   * At this place of the manuscript, a pretty girl's face, with an
   expression of horror on it, is drawn in pen and ink. All that is
   written below it has been carefully blotted out. The upper half of
   the next page is also scratched out and only one word: “temple,”
   can be deciphered through the dense ink blots.—A. Ch.


My road led along the banks of the lake. That watery monster was
already beginning to roar out its evening song. High waves with white
crests covered the whole of its vast extent. In the air there was
noise and rumbling. A cold, damp wind penetrated to my very bones. To
the left lay the angry lake; from the right came the monotonous noise
of the austere forest. I felt myself alone with nature as if I had
been confronted with it. It appeared as if the whole of its wrath, the
whole of these noises and roars, was directed only on my head. In
other circumstances I might have felt timidity, but now I scarcely
noticed the giants that surrounded me. What was the wrath of nature
compared with the storm that was raging within me?*

   * Here again there are erasures.—A. Ch.



XXII

When I reached home I fell upon my bed without undressing.

“Shameless eyes, again he has bathed in the lake in all his clothes!”
grumbled Polycarp as he pulled off my wet and dirty garments. “Again a
punishment for me! Again we have the noble, the educated, worse than
any chimney-sweep. . . . I don't know what they taught you in the
'versity!”

I, who could not bear the human voice or man's face, wanted to shout
at Polycarp that he should leave me in peace, but the words died away
on my lips. My tongue was as enfeebled and powerless as the rest of my
body. Though it was painful for me, still I was obliged to let
Polycarp pull off all my clothes, even to my wet underlinen.

“He might turn round at least,” my servant grumbled as he rolled me
over from side to side like a small doll. “To-morrow I'll give
warning! Never again . . . for no amount of money! I, old fool, have
had enough of this! May the devil take me if I remain any longer!”

The fresh warm linen did not warm or calm me. I trembled so much with
rage and fear, that my very teeth chattered. My fear was inexplicable.
I was not frightened by apparitions or by spectres risen from the
grave, not even by the portrait of Pospelov, my predecessor, which was
hanging just above my head. He never took his lifeless eyes off my
face, and seemed to wink at me. But I was quite unaffected when I
looked at him. My future was not brilliant, but all the same I could
say with great probability that there was nothing that threatened me,
that there were no black clouds near. Death was not to be expected
soon; I had no terrible diseases, and I took no heed of personal
misfortunes. . . . What did I fear, then, and why did my teeth
chatter?

I could not even understand my wrath. . . .

The Count's “secret” could not have enraged me so greatly. I had
nothing to do with the Count, nor with the marriage, which he had
concealed from me.

It only remains to explain the condition of my soul at that time by
fatigue and nervous derangement. That is the only explanation I can
find.

When Polycarp left the room I covered myself up to the head and wanted
to sleep. It was dark and quiet. The parrot moved about restlessly in
its cage, and the regular ticking of the hanging clock in Polycarp's
room could be heard through the wall. Peace and quiet reigned
everywhere else. Physical and moral exhaustion overpowered me, and I
began to doze. . . . I felt that a certain weight gradually fell from
me, and hateful images melted into mist. . . . I remember I even began
to dream. I dreamed that on a bright winter morning I was walking in
the Nevsky of Petersburg, and, having nothing to do, looked into the
shop windows. My heart was light and gay. . . . I had not to hurry
anywhere. I had nothing to do, I was absolutely free. The
consciousness that I was far from my village, far from the Count's
estate and from the cold and sullen lake, made me feel all the more
peaceful and gay. I stopped before one of the largest windows and
began to examine ladies' hats. The hats were familiar to me. . . . I
had seen Olga in one of them, Nadia in another; a third I had seen on
the day of the shooting party on the fair-haired head of that Zosia,
who had arrived so unexpectedly. . . . Familiar faces smiled at me
under the hats. . . . When I wanted to say something to them they all
three blended together into one large red face. This face moved its
eyes angrily and stuck out its tongue. . . . Somebody pressed my neck
from behind. . . .

“The husband killed his wife!” the red face shouted.

I shuddered, cried out, and jumped out of my bed as if I had been
stung. I had terrible palpitations of the heart, a cold sweat came out
on my brow.

“The husband killed his wife!” the parrot repeated again. “Give me
some sugar! How stupid you are! Fool!”

“It was only the parrot,” I said to calm myself as I got into bed
again. “Thank God!”

I heard a monotonous murmur. . . . It was the rain pattering on the
roof. . . . The clouds I had seen when walking on the banks of the
lake had now covered the whole sky. There were slight flashes of
lightning that lighted up the portrait of the late Pospelov. . . . The
thunder rumbled just over my bed. . . .

“The last thunderstorm of this summer,” I thought.

I remembered one of the first storms. . . . Just the same sort of
thunder had rumbled overhead in the forest the first time I was in the
forester's house. . . . The “girl in red” and I were standing at the
window then, looking out at the pine trees that were illuminated by
the lightning. Dread shone in the eyes of that beautiful creature. She
told me her mother had been killed by lightning, and that she herself
was thirsting for an effective death. . . . She wanted to be dressed
like the richest lady of the district. She understood that luxurious
dress suited her beauty. And, conscious of her vain majesty, she
wanted to mount to the top of the “Stone Grave” and there meet an
effective death.

Her wish had . . . though not on the sto . . .*

   * Here, unfortunately, there are again erasures. It is evident
   Kamyshev blotted out not at the time of writing but afterwards. At
   the end of the novel I will draw _special_ attention to these
   erasures.—A. Ch.

Losing all hope of falling asleep, I rose and sat down on the bed. The
quiet murmur of the rain gradually changed into the angry roar I was
so fond of hearing when my soul was free from dread and wrath. . . .
Now this roar appeared to me to be ominous. One clap of thunder
succeeded the other without intermission.

“The husband killed his wife!” croaked the parrot.

Those were its last words. . . . Closing my eyes in pusillanimous
fear, I groped my way in the dark to the cage and hurled it into a
corner. . . .

“May the devil take you!” I cried, when I heard the clatter of the
falling cage and the squeak of the parrot.

Poor, noble bird! That flight into the corner cost it dear. The next
day the cage contained only a cold corpse. Why did I kill it? If its
favourite phrase about a husband who killed his wife remin . . .*

   * Here nearly a whole page is carelessly blotted out. Only a few
   words are spared, which give no clue to the meaning of what is
   obliterated.—A. Ch.

My predecessor's mother when she gave up the lodging to me made me pay
for the whole of the furniture, not excepting the photographs of
people I did not know. But she did not take a kopeck from me for the
expensive parrot. On the eve of her departure for Finland she passed
the whole night taking leave of her noble bird. I remember the sobs
and the lamentations that accompanied this leave-taking. I remember
the tears she shed when asking me to take care of her friend until her
return. I gave her my word of honour that her parrot would not regret
having made my acquaintance. And I had not kept that word! I had
killed the bird. I can imagine what the old woman would say if she
knew of the fate of her screamer!



XXIII

Somebody tapped gently at my window. The little house in which I lived
stood on the high road, and was one of the first houses in the
village, and I often heard a tap at my window, especially in bad
weather when a wayfarer sought a night's lodging. This time it was no
wayfarer who knocked at my window. I went up to the window and waited
there for a flash of lightning, when I saw the dark silhouette of a
tall thin man. He was standing before the window and seemed to be
shivering with cold. I opened the window.

“Who is there? What do you want?” I asked.

“Sergey Petrovich, it's I!” I heard a plaintive voice, such as people
have who are starved with cold and fright. “It's I! I've come to you,
dear friend!”

To my great astonishment, I recognized in the plaintive voice of the
dark silhouette the voice of my friend Doctor Pavel Ivanovich. This
visit of “Screw's,” who led a regular life and went to bed before
twelve, was quite incomprehensible. What could have caused him to
change his rules and appear at my house at two o'clock in the night,
and in such weather too?

“What do you want?” I asked, at the same time in the bottom of my
heart sending this unexpected guest to the devil.

“Forgive me, golubchik. . . . I wanted to knock at the door, but your
Polycarp is sure to be sleeping like a dead man now, so I decided to
tap at the window.”

“But what do you want?”

Pavil Ivanovich came close up to my window and mumbled something
incomprehensible. He was trembling, and looked like a drunken man.

“I am listening!” I said, losing my patience.

“You . . . you are angry, I see; but . . . if you only knew all that
has happened you would cease to be angry at your sleep being disturbed
by visitors at an unseemly hour. It's no time for sleep now. Oh, my
God, my God! I have lived in the world for thirty years, and to-day is
the first time I am so terribly unhappy! I am unhappy, Sergey
Petrovich!”

“Ach! but what has happened? And what have I to do with it? I myself
can scarcely stand on my legs. . . . I can't be bothered about
others!”

“Sergey Petrovich!” Screw said in a plaintive voice, stretching out
towards my head his hand wet with rain, “Honest man! My friend!”

And then I heard a man crying. The doctor wept.

“Pavel Ivanovich, go home!” I said after a short silence. “I can't
talk with you now. . . . I am afraid of my own mood, and of yours. We
won't understand each other. . . .”

“My dear friend!” the doctor said in an imploring voice, “Marry her.”

“You've gone mad!” I said, and banged the window to. . . .

First the parrot, then the doctor suffered from my mood. I did not ask
him to come in, and I slammed the window in his face. Two rude and
indecorous sallies for which I would have challenged anybody, even a
woman, to a duel.* But meek and good-natured “Screw” had no ideas
about duels. He did not know what it is to be angry.

   * The last sentence is written above some erased lines in which,
   however, one can decipher: “would have torn his head from his
   shoulders and broken all the windows.”—A. Ch.

About two minutes later there was a flash of lightning, and glancing
out of the window I saw the bent figure of my guest. His pose this
time was one of supplication, of expectancy, the pose of a beggar
watching for alms. He was probably waiting for me to pardon him, and
to allow him to say what he had to communicate.

Fortunately my conscience was moved; I was sorry for myself, sorry
that nature had implanted in me so much violence and meanness. My base
soul as well as my healthy body were as hard as flint.*

   * Here follows a pretentiously-plastic explanation of the spiritual
   endurance of the author. The sight of human affliction, blood,
   post-mortem examinations, etc., etc., he maintains, produce no
   effect on him. The whole of this passage bears the imprint of
   boastful _naïveté_ and insincerity. It astonishes by its
   coarseness, and I have deleted it. As a characterization of
   Kamyshev it has no importance.—A. Ch.

I went to the window and opened it.

“Come into the room!” I said.

“Never! . . . Every minute is precious! Poor Nadia has poisoned
herself, and the doctor cannot leave her side. . . . With difficulty
we saved the poor thing. . . . Such a misfortune! And you don't want
to hear it and slam the window to!”

“Still she is alive?”

“‘Still’! . . . My good friend, that is not the way to speak about
misfortunes! Who could have supposed that such a clever, honest nature
would want to depart this life on account of such a creature as that
Count? No, my friend, it is a misfortune for men that women cannot be
perfect! However clever a woman may be, with whatever perfections she
may be endowed, she has still a screw in her that prevents her and
other people from living. . . . For instance, let us take Nadia. . . .
Why did she do it? Self-love, nothing but self-love! Unhealthy
self-love! In order to wound you she conceived the idea of marrying
this Count. . . . She neither wanted his money nor his title . . .
she only wanted to satisfy her monstrous self-love. . . . Suddenly a
failure! You know that _his_ wife has arrived. . . . It appears that
this debauchee is married. . . . And people say that women are more
enduring, that they know how to suffer better than men! Where is there
endurance here, when such a miserable cause makes them snatch up
sulphur matches? This is not endurance, it is vanity!”

“You will catch cold. . . .”

“What I have just seen is worse than any cold. . . . Those eyes, that
pallor. . . . Oh! To unsuccessful love, to the unsuccessful attempt to
mortify you is now added unsuccessful suicide. . . . It is difficult
to imagine greater misfortunes! . . . My dear fellow, if you have but
a drop of compassion, if . . . if you would see her . . . Well, why
should you not go to her? You love her! Even if you do not love her,
why should you not sacrifice your leisure to her? Human life is
precious, and for it one can give . . . all! Save her life!”

Somebody knocked loudly at my door. I shuddered. . . . My heart
bled. . . . I do not believe in presentiments, but this time my alarm
was not without cause. . . . Somebody was knocking at my door from
without. . . .

“Who is there?” I cried out of the window.

“I come to beg your favour!”

“What do you want?”

“A letter from the Count, your Honour! There has been a murder!”

A dark figure muffled up in a sheepskin coat came to the window and,
swearing at the weather, handed me a letter. . . . I hurried away from
the window, lit a candle, and read the following: “For God's sake
forget everything in the world and come at once! Olga has been
murdered. I have lost my head and am going mad.—Yours, A. K.”

Olga murdered! My head grew dizzy, and it was black before my eyes,
from this short phrase. . . . I sat down on the bed and my hands fell
at my sides. I was unable to reason!

“Is that you, Pavel Ivanovich?” I heard the voice of the muzhik who
had been sent to me ask. “I was just going to drive on to you. . . . I
have a letter for you, too.”

Five minutes later “Screw” and I were driving in a closed carriage
towards the Count's estate. The rain rattled on the roof of the
carriage, and the whole time there were blinding flashes of lightning
in front of us.



XXIV

We heard the roar of the lake. . . .

The last act of the drama was just beginning, and two of the actors
were driving to see a harrowing sight.

“Well, and what do you think awaits us?” I asked dear Pavel Ivanovich.

“I can't imagine. . . . I don't know. . . .”

“I also don't know. . . .”

“Hamlet once regretted that the Lord of heaven and earth had forbidden
the sin of suicide; in like manner I regret that fate has made me a
doctor. . . . I regret it deeply!”

“I fear that, in my turn, I must regret that I am an examining
magistrate,” I said. “If the Count has not made a mistake and
confounded murder with suicide, and if Olga has really been murdered,
my poor nerves will have much to suffer!”

“You can refuse this affair!”

I looked inquiringly at Pavel Ivanovich, but, of course, owing to the
darkness, I could see nothing. . . . How could he know that I could
refuse this affair? I was Olga's lover, but who knew it, with the
exception of Olga herself and perhaps also Pshekhotsky, who had
favoured me once with applause?

“Why do you think I can refuse?” I asked “Screw.”

“You could fall ill, or tender your resignation. All this is not
dishonourable, because there is somebody to take your place. A doctor
is placed in quite other conditions.”

“Only that?” I thought.

Our carriage, after a long, wearisome drive over the clayey roads
stopped at last before the porch. Two windows just above the porch
were brightly illuminated Through the one on the right side, which was
in Olga's room, a dim light issued. All the other windows looked like
black spots. On the stairs we met the Scops-Owl. She looked at me with
her piercing little eyes, and her wrinkled face became more wrinkled
in an evil, mocking smile.

Her eyes seemed to say “You'll have a great surprise!”

She probably thought we had come to carouse, and we did not know there
was grief in the house.

“Let me draw your attention to this,” I said to Pavil Ivanovich, as I
pulled the cap off the old woman's head and exposed her completely
bare pate. “This old witch is ninety years old, my good soul. If some
day you and I had to make a post-mortem examination of her, we should
arrive at very different conclusions. You would find senile atrophy of
the brain, and I would assure you that she was the cleverest and the
most cunning creature in the whole district. . . . The devil in
petticoats!”

I was astounded when I entered the ballroom. The picture I saw there
was quite unexpected. All the chairs and sofas were occupied by
people. . . . Groups of people were standing about in the corners and
near the windows. . . . Where had they all come from? If anybody had
told me I would meet these people there, I would have laughed at him.
Their presence was so improbable and out of place in the Count's house
at that time, when in one of the rooms Olga was either dying or
already lying dead. They were the gipsy chorus of the chief gipsy
Karpov from the restaurant “London”; the same chorus which is known to
the reader from one of the first chapters of this book.

When I entered the room my old friend Tina, having recognized me, left
one of the groups and came towards me with a cry of joy. A smile
spread over her pale and dark complexioned cheeks when I gave her my
hand, and tears rose to her eyes when she wanted to tell me
something. . . . Tears prevented her from speaking, and I was not able
to obtain a single word from her. I turned to the other gipsies, and
they explained their presence in the house in this way. In the morning
the Count had sent them a telegram demanding that the whole chorus
should be at the Count's estate without fail by nine o'clock that
evening. In execution of this order they had taken the train and had
been in this hall by eight o'clock.

“We had thought to afford pleasure to his Excellency and his
guests. . . . We know so many new songs! . . . And suddenly. . . .”

“And suddenly a muzhik arrived on horseback, with the news that a
brutal murder had been committed at the shooting party and with the
order to prepare a bed for Olga Nikolaevna. The muzhik was not
believed, because he was as drunk as a swine, but when a noise was
heard on the stairs and a black figure was borne through the dancing
hall, there was no more possibility to doubt. . . .”

“And now we don't know what to do! We can't remain here. . . . When
the priest comes it is time for gay people to depart. . . . Besides,
all the chorus girls are alarmed and crying. . . . They can't be in
the same house with a corpse. . . . We must go away, but they won't
give us horses! His Excellency the Count is lying ill in bed and will
not see anybody, and the servants only laugh at us when we ask for
horses. . . . How can we go on foot in such weather and on such a dark
night? The servants are in general terribly rude! When we asked for a
samovar for our ladies they sent us to the devil. . . .”

All these complaints ended in tearful requests to my magnanimity.
Could I not obtain vehicles to enable them to depart from this
“accursed” house?

“If the horses are not in the paddocks, and the coachmen have not been
sent somewhere, you shall get away,” I said. “I'll give the
order. . . .”

The poor people, dressed out in their burlesque costumes, and
accustomed to coquet with their swaggering manners, looked very
awkward with their sober countenances and undecided poses. My promise
to get them sent to the station somewhat encouraged them. The whispers
of the men turned into loud talk, and the women ceased crying.



XXV

Then I went to the Count's study, and as I passed through a whole
suite of dark, unlighted rooms, I looked into one of the numerous
doors. I saw a touching picture. At a table near a boiling samovar
Zosia and her brother Pshekhotsky were seated. . . . Zosia, dressed in
a light blouse but still wearing the same bracelets and rings, was
smelling at a scent bottle and sipping tea from her cup with
fastidious languor. Her eyes were red with weeping. . . . Probably the
occurrences at the shooting party had shaken her nerves very much, and
had spoilt her frame of mind for a long time to come. Pshekhotsky,
with his usual wooden face, was lapping up his tea in large gulps from
the saucer and saying something to his sister. To judge from the
mentor-like expression of his face, he was trying to calm her and
persuade her not to cry.

I naturally found the Count with entirely shattered nerves. This puny
and flabby man looked thinner and more fallen in than ever. . . . He
was pale, and his lips trembled as if with ague. His head was tied up
in a white pocket-handkerchief, which exhaled a strong odour of
vinegar that filled the whole room. When I entered the room he jumped
up from the sofa, on which he was lying, and rushed towards me wrapped
up in the folds of his dressing-gown.

“Oh! oh!” he began, trembling and in a choking voice. “Well?”

And uttering some inarticulate sounds, he pulled me by the sleeve to
the sofa and, waiting till I was seated, he pressed against me like a
frightened dog and began to pour out all his grievances.

“Who could have expected it? Eh? Wait a moment, golubchik, I'll cover
myself up with the plaid. . . . I have fever. . . . Murdered, poor
thing! And how brutally murdered! She's still alive, but the village
doctor says she'll die this night. . . . A terrible day! . . . She
arrived without rhyme or reason, that . . . wife of mine . . . may
the devil take her! . . . That was my most unfortunate mistake,
Serezha; I was married in Petersburg when drunk. I hid it from you. I
was ashamed of it, but there—she has arrived, and you can see her for
yourself. . . . Look and be punished. . . . Oh, the accursed weakness!
Under the influence of the moment and vodka, I'm capable of doing
anything you like! The arrival of my wife is the first present, the
scandal with Olga the second. . . . I'm expecting a third. . . . I
know what will happen next. . . . I know! I'll go mad! . . .”

Having drunk three glasses of vodka and called himself an ass, a
scoundrel and a drunkard, the Count began in a whimpering voice and a
confused manner to describe the drama that had taken place at the
shooting party. . . . What he told me was approximately the following:
About twenty or thirty minutes after I had left, when the astonishment
at Zosia's arrival had somewhat subsided, and when Zosia herself,
having made acquaintance with the guests, began to play the part of
hostess, the company suddenly heard a piercing, heartrending shriek.
This shriek came from the forest and was repeated four times. It was
so extraordinary that the people who heard it sprang to their feet,
the dogs began to bark, and the horses pricked up their ears. The
shriek was unnatural, but the Count was able to recognize in it a
woman's voice. . . . There were notes of despair and terror in
it. . . .

Women must shriek in that way when they see a ghost, or at the sudden
death of a child. . . . The alarmed guests looked at the Count; the
Count looked at them. . . . For about three minutes there was the
silence of the grave.

While the ladies and gentlemen looked at each other, the coachmen and
lackeys rushed towards the place from which the cry had come. The
first messenger of grief was the old manservant, Il'ya. He ran back to
the clearing from the forest, with a pale face, dilated pupils, and
wanted to say something, but breathlessness and excitement prevented
him from speaking. At last, overcoming his agitation, he crossed
himself and said:

“The missis has been murdered!”

“What missis? Who had murdered her?”

But Il'ya made no reply to these questions. . . . The part of the
second messenger fell to the lot of a man who was not expected and
whose appearance caused general surprise. Both the sudden appearance
and the look of this man were astonishing. . . . When the Count saw
him, and remembered that Olga was walking about in the forest, his
heart sank, and from a terrible presentiment his legs gave way under
him.

It was Pëtr Egorych Urbenin, the Count's former bailiff and Olga's
husband. At first the company heard heavy footsteps and the cracking
of brushwood. . . . It seemed as if a bear was making his way from the
forest to the clearing. Then the heavy form of unfortunate Pëtr
Egorych came in sight. When he came out of the forest and saw the
company assembled on the clearing, he stepped back and stopped as if
he were rooted to the ground. For about two minutes he remained silent
and motionless, and in this way gave the people time to examine him
properly. He had his usual grey jacket on and trousers that were
already well worn. He was without a hat, and his matted hair stuck to
his sweaty brow and temples. . . . His face, which was usually purple
and often almost blue, was now quite pale. . . . His eyes looked
around senselessly, staring wildly. . . . His hands and lips
trembled. . . .

But what was the most astonishing and what instantly attracted the
attention of the stupefied spectators were his blood-stained
hands. . . . Both his hands and shirt cuffs were thickly covered with
blood, as if they had been washed in a bath of blood.

Three minutes Urbenin remained dumbfounded, and then, as if awakening
from a dream, he sat down on the grass cross-legged and groaned. The
dogs, scenting something unwonted, surrounded him and raised a
bark. . . . Having glanced round the assembled company with dim eyes,
Urbenin covered his face with both hands and again there was
silence. . . .

“Olga, Olga, what have you done!” he groaned.

Heartrending sobs were torn from his breast and shook his broad
shoulders. . . . When he removed the hands from his face the whole
company saw the marks of blood that they had left on his cheeks and
forehead.

When he got to this place the Count waved his hands convulsively,
seized a glass of vodka, drank it off, and continued:

“From that point my recollections become mixed. You can well
understand all these events had so stunned me that I had lost the
power of thinking. . . . I can remember nothing that happened
afterwards! I only remember that the men brought some sort of a body
in a torn, blood-stained dress out of the wood. . . . I could not look
at it! They put it into a calash and drove off. . . . I did not hear
either groans or weeping. . . . They say that the small dagger which
she always carried about with her had been thrust into her side. . . .
You remember it? I had given it to her. It was a blunt dagger—blunter
than the edge of this glass. . . . What strength was necessary to
plunge it in! Brother, I liked Caucasian arms, but now may the deuce
take all those arms! To-morrow I will order them all to be thrown
away.”

The Count drank another glass of vodka and continued:

“But what a shame! What an abomination! We brought her to the
house. . . . You can understand our despair, our horror, when
suddenly, may the devil take all the gipsies, we heard gay
singing! . . . They were all ranged in a row, singing at the top of
their voices! . . . You see, they wanted to receive us with chic, but
it turned out quite misplaced. . . . It was like Ivanushka-the-fool,
who, meeting a funeral, became excited and shouted: ‘Pull away, you
can't pull it over!’ Yes, brother! I wanted to entertain my guests and
had ordered the gipsies, and what a muddle came of it! Not gipsies
ought to have been sent for but doctors and priests. And now I don't
know what to do! What am I to do? I don't know any of these
formalities and customs. I don't know whom to call in, for whom to
send. . . . Perhaps the police ought to come, the Public
Prosecutor. . . . How the devil can I know? Thank goodness, Father
Jeremiah, having heard about the scandal, came to give her the
Communion. I should never have thought of sending for him. I implore
you, dear friend, make all the necessary arrangements! By God, I'm
going mad! The arrival of my wife, the murder . . . Brrr! . . . Where
is my wife now? Have you seen her?”

“I've seen her. She's drinking tea with Pshekhotsky.”

“With her brother, you say. . . . Pshekhotsky, he's a rogue! When I
ran away from Petersburg secretly, he found out about my flight and
has stuck to me. What an amount of money he has been able to squeeze
out of me during the whole of this time no one can calculate!”

I had not time to talk long to the Count. I rose and went to the door.

“Listen,” the Count stopped me. “I say, Serezha . . . that Urbenin
won't stab me?”

“Did he stab Olga, then?”

“To be sure, he . . . I can't understand, however, how he came there!
What the deuce brought him to the forest? And why just to that forest?
Admitting that he hid himself there and waited for us, but how could
he know that I wanted to stop just in that place and not in any
other?”

“You don't understand anything,” I said. “By-the-by, once for all I
must beg you. . . . If I undertake this case, please don't tell me
your opinions. Have the goodness to answer my questions and nothing
more.”



XXVI

When I left the Count I went to the room where Olga was lying. . . .*

   * Here two lines are blotted out.—A. Ch.

A little blue lamp was burning in the room and faintly lighted up her
face. . . . It was impossible either to read or write by its light.
Olga was lying on her bed, her head bandaged up. One could only see
her pale sharp nose and the eyelids that closed her eyes. At the
moment I entered the room her bosom was bared and the doctors were
placing a bag of ice on it.* Olga was therefore still alive. Two
doctors were attending on her. When I entered, Pavel Ivanovich,
screwing up his eyes, was auscultating her heart with much panting and
puffing.

   * I draw the reader's attention to a certain circumstance.
   Kamyshev, who loved on every occasion, even in his disputes with
   Polycarp, to descant on the condition of his soul, says not a word
   of the impression made on him by the sight of the dying Olga. I
   think this omission was intentional.—A. Ch.

The district doctor, who looked a worn-out and sickly man, was sitting
pensively near the bed in an arm-chair and seemed to be feeling her
pulse. Father Jeremiah, who had just finished his work, was wrapping
up the cross in his stole and preparing to depart.

“Pëtr Egorych, do not grieve!” he said with a sigh and looked towards
the corner of the room. “Everything is God's will. Turn for protection
to God.”

Urbenin was seated on a stool in a corner of the room. He was so much
changed that I hardly recognized him. Want of work and drink during
the last month had told as much on his clothes as on his appearance;
his clothes were worn out, his face too.

The poor fellow sat there motionless, supporting his head on his fists
and never taking his eyes off the bed. . . . His hands and face were
still stained with blood. . . . He had forgotten to wash them. . . .

Oh, the prediction of my soul and of my poor bird!

Whenever the noble bird which I had killed screamed out his phrase
about the husband who killed his wife, Urbenin's figure always arose
before my mind's eye. Why? . . . I knew that jealous husbands often
kill their unfaithful wives; at the same time I knew that such men as
Urbenin do not kill people. . . . And I drove away the thought of the
possibility of Olga being killed by her husband as something absurd.

“Was it he or not he?” I asked myself as I looked at his unhappy face.

And to speak candidly I did not give myself an affirmative answer,
despite the Count's story and the blood I saw on his hands and face.

“If he had killed her he would have washed off that blood long ago,” I
said to myself, remembering the following proposition of a magistrate
of my acquaintance: “A murderer cannot bear the blood of his victim.”

If I had wished to tax my memory I could have remembered many
aphorisms of a similar nature, but I must not anticipate or fill my
mind with premature conclusions.

“My respects!” the district doctor said to me. “I am very glad you
have come. . . . Please can you tell me who is master here?”

“There is no master. . . . Chaos reigns here,” I answered.

“A very good apophthegm, but it does not assist me,” the district
doctor answered with bitterness. “For the last three hours I have been
asking, imploring to have a bottle of port or champagne sent here and
not a soul has deigned to listen to my prayer! They are all as deaf as
posts! They have only just brought the ice I ordered three hours ago.
What does it mean? A woman is dying here, and they only seem to laugh!
The Count is pleased to sit in his study drinking liqueurs, and they
can't bring even a wineglass here! I wanted to send to the chemist in
the town, and I was told all the horses are worn out, and there's
nobody who can go as they are all drunk. . . . I wanted to send to my
hospital for medicines and bandages and they favoured me with a fellow
who could hardly stand on his legs. I sent him two hours ago, and what
do you think? They tell me he has only just started! Is that not
disgusting? They're all drunk, rude, ill-bred! . . . They all seem
idiots! By God, it is the first time in my life I've come across such
heartless people!”

The doctor's indignation was justifiable. He had not exaggerated,
rather the contrary. . . . A whole night would have been too short a
time for pouring out one's gall on all the disorders and malpractices
that could be found on the Count's estate. The servants were all
abominable, having been demoralized by the want of work and
supervision. Among them there was not a single man-servant who could
not have served as a type of a servant who had lived long and
feathered his nest in the Count's service.

I went off to get some wine. Having distributed three or four cuffs, I
succeeded in obtaining both champagne and Valerian drops, to the
unspeakable delight of the doctors. An hour later* the doctor's
assistant came from the hospital bringing with him all that was
necessary.

   * I must draw the reader's attention to a very important
   circumstance. During from two to three hours M. Kamyshev only walks
   about from room to room, shares the doctor's indignation about the
   servants, boxes their ears to right and left, and so on. Can you
   recognize in him an examining magistrate? He evidently was in no
   hurry, and was only trying to kill time. Evidently he knew who the
   murderer was. Besides, there are the quite unnecessary searches
   made in the Scops-Owl's room and the examination of the gipsies,
   that appear more like banter than cross-questioning, and could only
   have been undertaken to pass the time.—A. Ch.

Pavel Ivanovich succeeded in pouring into Olga's mouth a tablespoon of
champagne. She made an effort to swallow and groaned. Then they
injected some sort of drops under the skin.

“Olga Nikolaevna!” the district doctor shouted into her ear. “Olga
Ni‑ko‑la‑evna!”

“It is difficult to expect her to regain consciousness!” Pavel
Ivanovich said with a sigh. “The loss of blood has been great, besides
the blow she received on the head with some blunt instrument must have
caused concussion of the brain.”

It is not my business to decide if there had been concussion of the
brain or not, but Olga opened her eyes and asked for something to
drink. . . . The stimulants had had effect.

“Now you can ask her whatever you require . . .” Pavel Ivanovich
said, nudging my elbow. “Ask.”

I went up to the bed. Olga's eyes were turned on me.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Olga Nikolaevna!” I began, “do you know me?”

During several seconds Olga looked at me and then closed her eyes.

“Yes!” she groaned. “Yes!”

“I am Zinov'ev, the examining magistrate. I had the honour of being
acquainted with you, and if you remember, I was best man at your
wedding. . . .”

“Is it thou?” Olga whispered, stretching out her left arm. “Sit
down. . . .”

“She is delirious!” Screw sighed.

“I am Zinov'ev, the magistrate,” I continued. “If you remember, I was
at the shooting party. How do you feel?”

“Ask essential questions!” the district doctor whispered to me. “I
cannot answer for the consciousness being lasting. . . .”

“I beg you not to teach me!” I said in an offended tone. “I know what
I have to say. . . . Olga Nikolaevna,” I continued, turning to her, “I
beg you to remember the events of the past day. I will help you. . . .
At one o'clock you mounted your horse and rode out with a large party
to a shoot. . . . The shoot lasted for about four hours. . . . Then
there was a halt on a clearing in the forest. . . . Do you remember?”

“And thou . . . and thou didst . . . kill . . .”

“The woodcock? After I had killed the wounded woodcock you frowned and
went away from the rest of the party. . . . You went into the
forest. . . .* Now try to collect all your strength and to exert your
memory. During your walk in the wood you were assaulted by a person
unknown to us. I ask you, as the examining magistrate, who was it?”

   * This avoidance of questions of the first importance could only
   have had one object, to gain time and to await a loss of
   consciousness, when Olga would be unable to name the murderer. It
   is a characteristic process and it is astonishing that the doctors
   did not set the right value on it.—A. Ch.

Olga opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Tell us the name of that man! There are three other persons in the
room besides me. . . .”

Olga shook her head negatively.

“You must name him,” I continued. “He will suffer a severe punishment.
The law will make him pay dearly for his brutality! He will be sent to
penal servitude.* . . . I am waiting.”

   * At the first glance all this appears naîve. It is evident
   Kamyshev wanted to make Olga understand what serious consequences
   her declaration would have for the murderer. If the murderer was
   dear to her, _ergo_—she must remain silent.—A. Ch.

Olga smiled and shook her head negatively. The further examination
produced no results. I was not able to obtain another word from Olga,
not a single movement. At a quarter to five she passed away.



XXVII

About seven o'clock in the morning the village elder and his
assistants, whom I had sent for, arrived from the village. It was
impossible to drive to the scene of the crime: the rain that had begun
in the night was still pouring down in buckets. Little puddles had
become lakes. The grey sky looked gloomy, and there was no promise of
sunlight. The soaked trees appeared dejected with their drooping
branches, and sprinkled a whole shower of large drops at every gust of
wind. It was impossible to go there. Besides, it might have been
useless. The trace of the crime, such as bloodstains, human
footprints, etc., had probably been washed away during the night. But
the formalities demanded that the scene of the crime should be
examined, and I deferred this visit until the arrival of the police,
and in the meantime I made out a draft of the official report of the
case, and occupied myself with the examination of witnesses. First of
all I examined the gipsies. The poor singers had passed the whole
night sitting up in the ballrooms expecting to have horses given them
to convey them to the station. But horses were not provided; the
servants, when asked, only sent them to the devil, warning them at the
same time that his Excellency had forbidden anybody to be admitted to
him. They were also not given the samovar they asked for in the
morning. The more than singular and indefinite position in which they
found themselves in a strange house in which a corpse was lying, the
uncertainty as to when they could get away, and the damp melancholy
weather had driven the gipsies, both men and women, into such a state
of distress that in one night they had become thin and pale. They
wandered about from room to room, evidently much alarmed and expecting
some serious issue. By my examination I only increased their anxiety.
First because my lengthy examination delayed their departure from the
accursed house indefinitely, and secondly it alarmed them. The simple
people, imagining that they were seriously suspected of the murder,
began to assure me with tears in their eyes, that they were not guilty
and knew nothing about the matter. Tina, seeing me as an official
personage, quite forgot our former connexion, and while speaking to me
trembled and almost fainted with fright like a whipped little girl In
reply to my request not to be excited, and my assurance that I saw in
them nothing but witnesses, the assistants of justice, they informed
me in one voice that they had never been witnesses, that they knew
nothing, and that they trusted that in future God would deliver them
from all close acquaintance with judicial people.

I asked them by what road they had driven from the station, had they
not passed through that part of the forest where the murder had been
committed, had any member of their party quitted it for even a short
time, and had they not heard Olga's heartrending shriek.* This
examination led to nothing. The gipsies, alarmed by it, only sent two
members of the chorus to the village to hire vehicles. The poor people
wanted terribly to get away. For their misfortune there was already
much talk in the village about the murder in the forest, and these
swarthy messengers were looked at with suspicion; they were arrested
and brought to me. It was only towards evening that the harassed
chorus was able to get free from this nightmare and breathe freely, as
having hired five peasants' carts at three times the proper fare, they
drove away from the Count's house. Afterwards they were paid for their
visit, but nobody paid them for the moral suffering that they had
endured in the Count's apartments. . . .

   * If all this was necessary for M. Kamyshev, would it not have been
   easier to question the coachmen who had driven the gipsies.—A. Ch.

Having examined them, I made a search in the Scops Owl's room.* In
her trunks I found quantities of all sorts of old woman's rubbish, but
although I looked through all the old caps and darned stockings, I
found neither money nor valuables that the old woman had stolen from
the Count or his guests. . . . Nor did I find the things that had been
stolen from Tina some time before. . . . Evidently the old witch had
another hiding-place only known to herself.

   * Why? We can admit that all this was done by the examining
   magistrate in a drunken or sleepy condition, but why write about
   it. Would it not have been better to hide from the reader these
   gross mistakes?—A. Ch.

I will not give here the preliminary report I drafted about the
information I had obtained or the searches I had made. . . . It was
long; besides, I have forgotten most of it. I will only give a general
idea of it. First of all I described the condition in which I found
Olga, and I gave an account of every detail of my examination of her.
By this examination it was evident that Olga was quite conscious when
she answered me and purposely concealed the name of the murderer. She
did not _want_ that the murderer should suffer the penalty, and this
inevitably led to the supposition that the criminal was near and dear
to her.

The examination of her clothes, which I made together with the
commissary of the rural police who arrived very soon, produced very
much. . . . The jacket of her riding habit, made of velvet with a silk
lining, was still moist. The right side in which there was the hole
made by the dagger was saturated with blood and in places bore marks
of clotted blood. . . . The loss of blood had been very great, and it
was astonishing that Olga had not died on the spot. The left side was
also blood-stained. The left sleeve was torn at the shoulder and at
the wrist. . . . The two upper buttons were torn off, and at our
examination we did not find them. The skirt of the riding habit, made
of black cashmere, was found to be terribly crumpled; it had been
crumpled when they had carried Olga out of the wood to the vehicle and
from the vehicle to her bed. Then it had been pulled off, rolled into
a disorderly heap, and flung under the bed. It was torn at the
waistband. This tear was about ten inches long and in the length, and
had probably been made while she was being carried or when it was
pulled off; it might also have been made during her lifetime. Olga,
who did not like mending, and not knowing to whom to give the habit to
be mended, might have hidden away the tear under her bodice. I don't
think any signs could be seen in this of the savage rage of the
criminal, on which the assistant public prosecutor laid such special
emphasis in his speech at the trial. The right side of the belt and
the right-hand pocket were saturated with blood. The
pocket-handkerchief and the gloves, that were in this pocket, were
like two formless lumps of a rusty colour. The whole of the
riding-habit, to the very end of the skirt, was bespattered with spots
of blood of various forms and sizes. . . . Most of them, as it was
afterwards explained, were the impressions of the blood-stained
fingers and palms belonging to the coachmen and lackeys who had
carried Olga. . . . The chemise was bloody, especially on the right
side on which there was a hole produced by the cut of an instrument.
There, as also on the left shoulder of the bodice, and near the wrists
there were rents, and the wristband was almost torn off.

The things that Olga had worn, such as her gold watch, a long gold
chain, a diamond brooch, ear-rings, rings and a purse containing
silver coins, were found with the clothes. It was clear the crime had
not been committed with the intent of robbery.

The results of the post-mortem examination, made by “Screw” and the
district doctor in my presence on the day after Olga's death, were set
down in a very long report, of which I give here only a general
outline. The doctors found that the external injuries were as follows:
on the left side of the head, at the juncture of the temporal and the
parietal bones, there was a wound of about one and a-half inches in
length that went as far as the bone. The edges of the wound were not
smooth nor rectilinear. . . . It had been inflicted by a blunt
instrument, probably as we subsequently decided by the haft of the
dagger. On the neck at the level of the lower cervical vertebræ a red
line was visible that had the form of a semicircle and extended across
the back half of the neck. On the whole length of this line there were
injuries to the skin and slight bruises. On the left arm, an inch and
a half above the wrist, four blue spots were found. One was on the
back of the hand and the three others on the lower side. They were
caused by pressure, probably of fingers. . . . This was confirmed by
the little scratch made by a nail that was visible on one spot. The
reader will remember that the place where these spots were found
corresponds with the place where the left sleeve and the left cuff of
the bodice of the riding-habit were torn. . . . Between the fourth and
fifth ribs on an imaginary vertical line drawn from the centre of the
armpit there was a large gaping wound of an inch in length. The edges
were smooth, as if cut and steeped with liquid and clotted
blood. . . . The wound was deep. . . . It was made by a sharp
instrument, and as it appeared from the preliminary information, by
the dagger which exactly corresponded in width with the size of the
wound.

The interior examination gave as result a wound in the right lung and
the pleura, inflammation of the lung and hemorrhage in the cavity of
the pleura.

As far as I can remember, the doctors arrived approximately at the
following conclusion: (_a_) death was caused by anæmia consequent on a
great loss of blood; the loss of blood was explained by the presence
of a gaping wound on the right side of the breast. (_b_) the wound on
the head must be considered a serious injury, and the wound in the
breast as undoubtedly mortal; the latter must be reckoned as the
immediate cause of death. (_c_) The wound on the head was given with a
blunt instrument; the wound in the breast by a sharp and probably a
double-edged one. (_d_) the deceased could not have inflicted all the
above-mentioned injuries upon herself with her own hand; and (_e_)
there probably had been no offence against feminine honour.

In order not to put it off till Doomsday and then repeat myself, I
will give the reader at once the picture of the murder I sketched
while under the impression of the first inspections, two or three
examinations, and the perusal of the report of the post-mortem
examination.

Olga, having left the rest of the party, walked about the wood. Lost
in a reverie or plunged in her own sad thoughts—the reader will
remember her mood on that ill-fated evening—she wandered deep into the
forest. There she was met by the murderer. When she was standing under
a tree, occupied with her own thoughts, the man came up and spoke to
her. . . . This man did not awaken suspicions in her, otherwise she
would have called for help, but that cry would not have been
heart-rending. While talking to her the murderer seized hold of her
left arm with such strength that he tore the sleeve of her bodice and
her chemise and left a mark in the form of four spots. It was at that
moment probably that she shrieked, and this was the shriek heard by
the party. . . . She shrieked from pain and evidently because she read
in the face and movements of the murderer what his intentions were.
Either wishing that she should not shriek again, or perhaps acting
under the influence of wrathful feelings, he seized the breast of her
dress near the collar, which is proved by the two upper buttons that
were torn off and the red line the doctors found on her body. The
murderer in clutching at her breast and shaking her, had tightened the
gold watch-chain she wore round her neck. . . . The friction and the
pressure of the chain produced the red line. Then the murderer dealt
her a blow on the head with some blunt weapon, for example, a stick or
even the scabbard of the dagger that hung from Olga's girdle. Then
flying into a passion, or finding that one wound was insufficient, he
drew the dagger and plunged it into her right side with force—I say
with force, because the dagger was blunt.

This was the gloomy aspect of the picture that I had the right to draw
on the strength of the above-mentioned data. The question who was the
murderer was evidently not difficult to determine and seemed to
resolve itself. First the murderer was not guided by covetous motives
but something else. . . . Therefore it was impossible to suspect some
wandering vagabond or ragamuffin, who might be fishing in the lake.
The shriek of his victim could not have disarmed a robber: to take off
the brooch and the watch was the work of a second.

Secondly, Olga had purposely not told me the name of the murderer,
which she would not have done if the murderer had been a common
robber. Evidently the murderer was dear to her, and she did not wish
that he should suffer severe punishment on her account. . . . Such
people could only have been her mad father; her husband, whom she did
not love, but before whom she felt herself guilty; or the Count, to
whom perhaps in her soul she felt under obligations. . . . Her mad
father was sitting at home in his little house in the forest on the
evening of the murder, as his servant affirmed afterwards, composing a
letter to the chief of the district police, requesting him to overcome
the imaginary robbers who surrounded his house day and night. . . .
The Count had never left his guests before and at the moment the
murder was committed. Therefore, the whole weight of suspicion fell on
unfortunate Urbenin. His unexpected appearance, his mien, and all the
rest could only serve as good evidence.

Thirdly, during the last months Olga's life had been one continuous
romance. And this romance was of the sort that usually ends with crime
and capital punishment. An old, doting husband, unfaithfulness,
jealousy, blows, flight to the lover-Count, two months after the
marriage. . . . If the beautiful heroine of such a romance is killed,
do not look for robbers or rascals, but search for the heroes of the
romance. On this third count the most suitable hero-murderer was again
Urbenin.



XXVIII

I made the preliminary examinations in the mosaic room in which I had
loved at one time to loll on the soft divan and pay court to gipsies.

The first person I examined was Urbenin. He was brought to me from
Olga's room, where he continued to sit on a stool in a corner and
never removed his eyes from the empty bed. . . . For a moment he stood
before me in silence, looking at me with indifference, then probably
thinking that I wanted to speak to him in my character of examining
magistrate, he said in the tired voice of a man who was broken by
grief and anguish:

“Sergei Petrovich, examine the other witnesses first, please, and me
afterwards. . . . I can't . . .”

Urbenin considered himself a witness, or thought that he would be
considered one. . . .

“No, I require to examine you just now,” I said. “Be seated,
please. . . .”

Urbenin sat down opposite to me and bent his head. He was weary and
ill, he answered reluctantly, and it was only with difficulty I was
able to squeeze his deposition out of him.

He deposed that he was Pëtr Egorych Urbenin, nobleman, fifty years of
age, belonging to the Orthodox Faith. That he owned an estate in the
neighbouring K—— district where he belonged to the electorate, and had
served for the last triennials as honorary magistrate. Being ruined,
he had mortgaged his estate and had considered it necessary to go into
service. He had entered the Count's service as bailiff six years ago.
Liking agriculture, he was not ashamed of being in the service of a
private individual, and considered that it was only the foolish who
were ashamed of work. He received his salary from the Count regularly,
and he had nothing to complain of. He had a son and daughter from his
first marriage, etc., etc., etc.

He had married Olga because he was passionately in love with her. He
had struggled long and painfully with his feelings, but neither common
sense nor the logic of a practical elderly mind—in fact, nothing had
effect: he was obliged to succumb to his feelings and he got married.
He knew that Olga did not marry him for love, but considering her to
be moral in the highest degree, he decided to content himself with her
faithfulness and friendship, which he had hoped to merit.

When he came to the place where his disenchantment and the wrongs done
to his grey hairs began, Urbenin asked permission not to speak of “the
past which God will forgive her” or at least to defer the conversation
about that to a future time.

“I can't. . . . It's hard. . . . Besides, you yourself saw it.”

“Very well, let us leave it for another time. . . . Only tell me now,
did you beat your wife? It is reported that one day, finding a note
from the Count in her possession, you struck her. . . .”

“That is not true. . . . I only seized her by the arm, she began to
cry, and that same evening she went to complain. . . .”

“Did you know of her connexion with the Count?”

“I have begged that this subject should be deferred. . . . And what is
the use of it?”

“Answer me only this one question, which is of great importance. . . .
Was your wife's connexion with the Count known to you?”

“Undoubtedly. . . .”

“I shall write that down, and all the rest concerning your wife's
unfaithfulness can be left for the next time. . . . Now we will revert
to another question. Will you explain to me how it came that you were
in the forest where Olga Nikolaevna was murdered? . . . You were as
you say, in the town. . . . How did you appear in the forest?”

“Yes, sir, I had been living in town with a cousin ever since I lost
my place. . . . I passed my time in looking for a place and in
drinking to forget my sorrows. . . . I had been drinking specially
hard this last month. For example, I can't remember what happened last
week as I was always drunk. . . . The day before yesterday I got drunk
too. . . . In a word I am lost. . . . Irremediably lost! . . .”

“You wanted to tell me how it was that you appeared yesterday in the
forest?”

“Yes, sir. . . . I awoke yesterday morning early, about four
o'clock. . . . My head was aching from the previous day's drink, I had
pains in all my limbs as if I had fever. . . . I lay on my bed and saw
through the window the sun rise, and I remembered . . . many
things. . . . A weight was on my heart. . . . Suddenly I wanted to see
her . . . to see her once more, perhaps for the last time. I was
seized by wrath and melancholy. . . . I drew from my pocket the
hundred-rouble note the Count had sent me. I looked at it, and then
trampled it underfoot. . . . I trampled on it till I decided to go and
fling this charity into his face. However hungry and ragged I may be,
I cannot sell my honour, and every attempt to buy it I consider a
personal insult. So you see, sir, I wanted to have a look at Olga and
fling the money into the ugly mug of that seducer. And this longing
overpowered me to such an extent that I almost went out of my mind. I
had no money to drive here; I could not spend _his_ hundred roubles on
myself. I started on foot. By good luck a muzhik I know overtook me,
and drove me eighteen versts for ten kopecks, otherwise I might still
have been trudging along. The muzhik set me down in Tenevo. From there
I came here on foot and arrived about four o'clock.”

“Did anybody see you here at that time?”

“Yes, sir. The watchman, Nikolai, was sitting at the gate and told me
the masters were not at home, they had all gone out shooting. I was
almost worn out with fatigue, but the desire to see my wife was
stronger than my pains. I had to go on foot without a moment's rest to
the place where they were shooting. I did not go by the road, but
started through the forest. I know every tree, and it would be as
difficult for me to lose myself in the Count's forests as it would be
in my own house.”

“But going through the forest and not by the road you might have
missed the shooting party.”

“No, sir, I kept so close to the road all the time that I could not
only hear the shots but the conversations too.”

“Consequently you did not expect to meet your wife in the forest?”

Urbenin looked at me with astonishment, and, after thinking for a
short time, he replied:

“Pardon me, but that is a strange question. One can't expect to meet a
wolf, and to expect a terrible misfortune is equally impossible. God
sends them unexpectedly. For example, this dreadful occurrence. . . .
I was walking through the Ol'khovsky wood, not expecting any grief
because I have grief enough as it is, when suddenly I heard a strange
shriek. The shriek was so piercing that it appeared to me as if
somebody had cut into my ear. . . . I ran towards the cry. . . .”

Urbenin's mouth was drawn to one side, his chin trembled, his eyes
blinked, and he began to sob.

“I ran towards the cry, and suddenly I saw . . . Olga lying on the
ground. Her hair and forehead were bloody, her face terrible. I began
to shout, to call her by her name. . . . She did not move. . . . I
kissed her, I raised her up. . . .”

Urbenin choked and covered his face with his hands. After a minute he
continued:

“I did not see the scoundrel . . . When I was running towards her I
heard somebody's hasty footsteps. He was probably running away.”

“All this is an excellent invention, Pëtr Egorych,” I said. “But do
you know magistrates have little belief in such rare occurrences as
the coincidence of the murder with your accidental walk, etc. It's not
badly invented, but it explains very little.”

“What do you mean by invented?” Urbenin asked, opening his eyes wide.
“I have invented nothing, sir. . . .”

Suddenly Urbenin got very red and rose.

“It appears that you suspect me. . . .” he mumbled. “Of course,
anybody can suspect, but you, Sergei Petrovich, have known me
long. . . . It's a sin for you to brand me with such a
suspicion. . . . But you know me.”

“I know you, certainly . . . but my private opinion is here of no
avail. . . . The law reserves the right of private opinion for the
jurymen, the examining magistrate has only to deal with evidence.
There is much evidence, Pëtr Egorych.”

Urbenin cast an alarmed look at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“Whatever the evidence may be,” he said, “you must understand. . . .
Now, could I? . . . I! Besides whom?! I might be able to kill a quail
or a woodcock, but a human being . . . a woman who was dearer to me
than life, my salvation . . . the very thought of whom illuminates my
gloomy nature like the sun. . . . And suddenly you suspect me!”

Urbenin waved his hand resignedly and sat down again.

“As it is, I long for death, and you wrong me besides! If an unknown
functionary wronged me, I'd say nothing, but you, Sergei
Petrovich! . . . May I go away, sir?”

“You may. . . . I shall examine you again to-morrow, and in the
meantime, Pëtr Egorych, I must put you under arrest. . . . I hope that
before to-morrow's examination you will have had time to appreciate
the importance of all the evidence there is against you, and you will
not waste time uselessly, but confess. I am convinced that Olga
Nikolaevna was murdered by you. . . . I have nothing more to say to
you to-day. . . . You may go.”

Having said this I bent over my papers. . . . Urbenin looked at me in
perplexity, rose, and stretched out his arms in a strange way.

“Are you joking . . . or serious?” he asked.

“This is no time for joking,” I said. “You may go.”

Urbenin remained standing before me. I looked up at him. He was pale
and looked with perplexity at my papers.

“Why are your hands blood-stained, Pëtr Egorych?” I asked.

He looked down at his hands on which there still were marks of blood,
and he moved his fingers.

“Why there is blood? . . . Hm . . . If this is part of the evidence,
it is but poor evidence. . . . When I lifted up blood-stained Olga I
could not help dirtying my hands with blood. I was not wearing
gloves.”

“You just told me that when you found your wife all bloody, you called
for help. . . . How is it that nobody heard your cries?”

“I don't know, I was so stunned by the sight of Olia, that I was
unable to cry aloud. . . . Besides, I know nothing. . . . It is
useless for me to try to exculpate myself, and it's not in my
principles to do so.”

“You would hardly have shouted. . . . Having killed your wife, you ran
away, and were terribly astonished when you saw people on the
clearing.”

“I never noticed your people. I paid no heed to people.”

With this my examination for that day was concluded. After that
Urbenin was confined in one of the outhouses on the Count's estate and
watched.



XXIX

On the second or third day the Assistant Public Prosecutor,
Polugradov, arrived post-haste from the town; he is a man I cannot
think of without spoiling my frame of mind. Imagine a tall, lean man,
of about thirty, clean shaven, smartly dressed, and with hair curled
like a sheep's; his features were thin, but so dry and unexpressive
that it was not difficult to guess the emptiness and foppishness of
the individual to whom they belonged; his voice was low, sugary, and
mawkishly polite.

He arrived early in the morning, with two portmanteaux in a hired
calash. First of all he inquired with a very concerned face,
complaining affectedly of fatigue, if a room had been prepared for him
in the Count's house. By my orders a small but very cosy and light
room had been assigned to him, where everything he might need,
beginning with a marble washstand, and ending with matches had been
arranged.

“I—I say, my good fellow! Bring me some hot water!” he began while
settling down in his room, and fastidiously sniffing the air; “Some
hot water, please, I say, young man!”

Before beginning work he washed, dressed, and arranged his hair for a
long time; he even brushed his teeth with some sort of red powder, and
occupied about three minutes in trimming his sharp, pink nails.

“Well, sir,” he said at last, settling down to work, and turning over
the leaves of our report. “What's it all about?”

I told him what was the matter not leaving out a single detail. . . .

“Have you been to the scene of the crime?”

“No, I have not been there yet.”

The Assistant Public Prosecutor frowned, passed his white womanish
hand over his freshly washed brow, and began walking about the room.

“I can't understand your reason for not having been there,” he
mumbled. “I should suppose that was the first thing that ought to have
been done. Did you forget or thought it unnecessary?”

“Neither the one nor the other: yesterday I waited for the police, and
intend to go to-day.”

“Now nothing remains there: it has rained all these days, and you have
given the criminal time to obliterate his traces. Of course you placed
a guard at the spot? No? I don't understand!”

And the dandy shrugged his shoulders authoritatively.

“You'd better drink your tea, it's getting cold,” I said, in a tone of
indifference.

“I like it cold.”

The Assistant of the Public Prosecutor bent over the papers, and with
a loud sniff he began to read aloud in an undertone, occasionally
jotting down his remarks and corrections. Two or three times his mouth
was drawn to one side in a sarcastic smile: for some reason neither my
official report nor the doctors' pleased this cunning rogue.* In this
sleek, well-brushed, and cleanly-washed government official, stuffed
full of conceit and a high opinion of his own worth, the pedant was
clearly apparent.

   * Kamyshev abuses the Assistant Public Prosecutor quite without
   cause. The only thing in which this prosecutor can be blamed is
   that his face did not please M. Kamyshev. It would have been more
   honest to admit inexperience or intentional mistakes.—A. Ch.

By midday we were on the scene of the crime. It was raining hard. Of
course we neither found spots nor traces; all had been washed away by
the rain. By some chance I found one of the buttons that were missing
on Olga's riding habit, and the Assistant Prosecutor picked up a sort
of reddish pulp, that subsequently proved to be a red wrapper from a
packet of tobacco. At first we stumbled upon a bush which had two
twigs broken at one side. The Assistant Prosecutor was delighted at
finding these twigs. They might have been broken by the criminal and
would therefore indicate the way he had gone after killing Olga. But
the joy of the Prosecutor was unfounded: we soon found a number of
bushes with broken twigs and nibbled leaves; it turned out that a herd
of cattle had passed over the scene of the murder.

After making a plan of the place and questioning the coachmen, we had
taken with us as to the position in which they had found Olga we
returned to the house with long faces. An onlooker might have noticed
a certain laziness and apathy in our movements while we were examining
the scene of the crime. . . . Perhaps our movements were paralysed to
a certain extent by the conviction that the criminal was already in
our hands, and therefore it was unnecessary to enter on any Lecoq-like
analysis.

On his return from the forest Polugradov again passed a long time in
washing and dressing, and he again called for hot water. Having
finished his toilet he expressed a wish to examine Urbenin once more.
Poor Pëtr Egorych had nothing new to tell us at this examination; as
before he denied his guilt, and thought nothing of our evidence.

“I am astonished that I can be suspected,” he said, shrugging his
shoulders: “Strange!”

“My good fellow, don't play the _naïf_,” Polugradov said to him.
“Nobody is suspected without cause, and if somebody is suspected there
is good cause for it!”

“Whatever the causes may be, however strong the evidence may be, one
must reason in a humane manner! Don't you understand, I can't murder?
I can't . . . Consequently what is your evidence worth?”

“Well!” and the Assistant Prosecutor waved his hand: “what a trouble
these educated criminals are; one can make a muzhik understand, but
try to talk to one of these! ‘I can't’ . . . ‘in a humane
manner’ . . . there they go strumming on psychology!”

“I am no criminal,” Urbenin said quite offended, “I beg you to be more
careful in your expressions. . . .”

“Hold your tongue, my good fellow! We have no time to apologize nor to
listen to your dissatisfaction. . . . If you don't wish to confess,
you need not confess, but allow us to consider you a liar. . . .”

“As you like,” Urbenin grumbled. “You can do with me what you like
now. . . . You have the power. . . .”

Urbenin made a gesture of indifference, and continued to look out of
the window.

“Besides, it's all the same to me: my life is lost.”

“Listen to me, Pëtr Egorych,” I said, “yesterday and the day before
you were so overcome by grief, that you were scarcely able to keep on
your legs, and you were hardly able to give more than laconic answers;
to-day, on the contrary, you have such a blooming, of course, only
comparatively blooming, and gay appearance, and even strike out into
idle talk. Usually sorrowful people have no wish to talk, while you
not only launch out into long conversations, but even make all sorts
of trivial complaints. In what way can such a sudden change be
explained?”

“And how do you explain it?” Urbenin asked, screwing up his eyes at me
in a derisive manner.

“I explain it in this way: that you have forgotten your part. It is
difficult to act for any length of time; one either forgets one's
part, or it bores one. . . .”

“Consequently, that was all an invention,” said Urbenin, smiling; “and
it does honour to your perspicacity. . . . Yes, you are right; a great
change has taken place in me. . . .”

“Can you explain it to us?”

“Certainly, I see no cause for hiding it. Yesterday I was so entirely
broken and oppressed by my grief, that I thought of taking my life
 . . . of going mad . . . but this night I thought better of it
 . . . the thought entered my mind that death had saved Olia from a
life of depravity, that it had torn her out of the dirty hands of that
good-for-nothing who has ruined me; I am not jealous of death; it is
better for Olga to belong to death, than to the Count. This thought
cheered and strengthened me: now there is no longer the same weight on
my soul.”

“Cleverly invented,” Polugradov murmured under his breath, as he sat
swinging his leg, “he is never at a loss for an answer!”

“I feel that I am speaking the truth, and I can't understand that you
cultivated men cannot see the difference between truth and
dissimulation! However, prejudice is too strong a feeling; under its
influence it is difficult not to err; I can understand your position,
I can imagine what will be, when trusting in your evidence, I am
brought up for trial. . . . I can imagine how, taking into
consideration my brutal physiognomy, my drunkenness . . . My
physiognomy is not brutal, but prejudice will have its own. . . .”

“Very well, very well, enough,” Polugradov said, bending over his
papers, “Go! . . .”

After Urbenin had left, we proceeded to examine the Count. His
Excellency was pleased to come to the examination in his
dressing-gown, with a vinegar bandage on his head; having been
introduced to Polugradov he sank into an armchair, and began to give
his evidence:

“I shall tell you everything from the very beginning. . . . Well, and
how is your President Lionsky, getting on? Has he still not divorced
his wife? I made his acquaintance in Petersburg, quite by
chance. . . . Gentlemen, why don't you order something to be brought?
Somehow it's jollier to talk with a glass of cognac before you. . . .
I have not the slightest doubt that Urbenin committed this murder.”

And the Count told us all that the reader already knows. At the
request of the prosecutor he told us all the details of his life with
Olga, and described the delights of living with a beautiful woman, and
was so carried away by his subject, that he smacked his lips, and
winked several times. From his evidence I learned a very important
detail that is unknown to the reader. I learned that Urbenin while
living in the town had constantly bombarded the Count with letters; in
some letters he cursed him, in others he implored him to return his
wife to him, promising to forget all wrongs, and dishonour; the poor
devil caught at these letters like a drowning man catches at straws.

The Assistant Prosecutor examined two or three of the coachmen and
then, having had a very good dinner, he gave me a long list of
instructions, and drove away. Before leaving he went into the
adjoining house where Urbenin was confined, and told him that our
suspicions of his guilt had become certainties. Urbenin only shrugged
his shoulders, and asked permission to be present at his wife's
funeral; this permission was granted him.

Polugradov did not lie to Urbenin: yes, our suspicions had become
convictions, we were convinced that we knew who the criminal was, and
that he was already in our hands; but this conviction did not abide
with us for long! . . .



XXX

One fine morning, just as I was sealing up a parcel which I was about
to send by the guard, who was to take Urbenin to the town, where he
was to be imprisoned in the castle-prison, I heard a terrible noise.
Looking out of the window I saw an amusing sight: some dozen strong
young fellows were dragging one-eyed Kuz'ma out of the servants'
kitchen.

Kuz'ma pale and dishevelled had his feet firmly planted on the ground,
and being deprived of the use of his arms, butted at his adversaries
with his large head.

“Your Honour, please go there!” Il'ya said to me, in great alarm, “he
 . . . does not want to come!”

“Who does not want to come?”

“The murderer.”

“What murderer?”

“Kuz'ma. . . . He committed the murder, your Honour . . . Pëtr
Egorych is suffering unjustly. . . . By God, sir.”

I went into the yard and walked towards the servant's kitchen, where
Kuz'ma, who had torn himself out of the strong arms of his opponents,
was administering cuffs to right and left.

“What's the matter?” I asked, when I came up to the crowd.

And I was told something very strange and unexpected.

“Your Honour, Kuz'ma killed her!”

“They lie!” Kuz'ma shouted. “May God kill me if they don't lie!”

“But why did you, son of a devil, wash off the blood, if your
conscience is clear? Stop a moment, his Honour will examine all this!”

The breaker-in, Trifon, riding past the river, saw Kuz'ma washing
something carefully in the water. At first Trifon thought he was
washing linen, but looking more attentively he saw it was a poddevka*
and a waistcoat. He thought this strange: garments of cloth are not
washed.

   * A sleeveless overcoat worn by coachmen and peasants.

“What are you doing?” Trifon called to him.

Kuz'ma became confused. Looking more attentively, Trifon noticed brown
spots on the poddevka.

“I guessed at once that it must be blood . . . I went into the
kitchen and told our people; they watched, and saw him at night
hanging out the poddevka to dry. Of course they took fright. Why
should he wash it, if he is not guilty? He must have something on his
soul, he is trying to hide. . . . We thought and thought, and decided
to bring him to your Honour. . . . We pull him along, and he backs and
spits into our eyes. Why should he back if he is not guilty?”

From further examination it appeared that just before the murder, at
the time when the Count and his guests were sitting in the clearing,
drinking tea, Kuz'ma had gone into the forest. He had not aided in
carrying Olga, and therefore could not have got dirtied with blood at
that time.

When he was brought to my room Kuz'ma was so excited that at first he
could not utter a word; turning up the white of his single eye he
crossed himself and mumbled oaths.

“Be calm; tell me what you know and I will let you go,” I said to him.

Kuz'ma fell at my feet, stammered and calling on God.

“May I perish if it's I. . . . May neither my father nor my
mother. . . . Your Honour! May God destroy my soul. . . .”

“You went into the forest?”

“That's quite true, sir, I went. . . . I had served cognac to the
guests and, forgive me, I had tippled a little; it went to my head,
and I wanted to lie down; I went, lay down, and fell asleep. . . . But
who killed her, or how I don't know, so help me God. . . . It's the
truth I'm telling you!”

“But why did you wash off the blood?”

“I was afraid that people might imagine . . . that I might be taken
as a witness. . . .”

“How did the blood come on to your poddevka?”

“I don't know, your Honour.”

“How is it possible you can't know? Isn't the poddevka yours?”

“Yes, certainly it's mine, but I don't know: I saw the blood when I
woke up again.”

“So, then, I suppose you dirtied the poddevka with blood in your
sleep?”

“Just so. . . .”

“Well, my man, go and think it over. . . . You're talking nonsense;
think well and tell me to-morrow. . . . Go!”

The following morning, when I awoke, I was informed that Kuz'ma wanted
to speak to me. I ordered him to be brought in.

“Have you bethought yourself?” I asked him.

“Just so, I've bethought myself. . . .”

“How did the blood get on your poddevka?”

“Your Honour, I remember as if in a dream: I remember something, as in
a fog, but if it is true or not I can't say.”

“What do you remember?”

Kuz'ma turned up his eye, thought, and said:

“Extraordinary . . . it's like in a dream or a fog. . . . I lay upon
the grass drunk and dozing. I was not quite asleep. . . . I only heard
somebody was passing, trampling heavily with his feet. . . . I opened
my eyes and saw, as if I was unconscious, or in a dream; a gentleman
came up to me, he bends over me and wiped his hands in my
skirts. . . . he wiped them in my poddevka, and then rubbed his hand
on my waistcoat. . . . so.”

“What gentleman was it?”

“I don't know; I only remember it was not a muzhik, but a
gentleman. . . . in gentleman's clothes; but what gentleman it was,
what sort of face he had I can't remember at all.”

“What was the colour of his clothes?”

“Who can say! Perhaps it was white, perhaps black. . . . I only
remember it was a gentleman, and that's all I can remember. . . . Akh,
yes, I can remember! When he bent down and wiped his hands he said:
‘Drunken swine!’”

“You dreamt this?”

“I don't know . . . perhaps I dreamt it. . . . But then where did the
blood come from?”

“Was the gentleman you saw like Pëtr Egorych?”

“It appears to me he wasn't . . . but perhaps it was. . . . But he
would not swear and call people swine.”

“Try to remember. . . . Go, sit down and think. . . . Perhaps you may
succeed in remembering.”

“I'll try.”



XXXI

This unexpected eruption of one-eyed Kuz'ma into the almost finished
romance produced an entanglement that it was scarcely possible to
unravel. I was quite bewildered, and did not know how I was to
understand Kuz'ma. He denied positively any guilt; besides, the
preliminary investigations were against his guilt. Olga had been
murdered not from motives of greed, according to the doctors “it was
probable” that no attempt against her honour had been made; it was
only possible to admit that Kuz'ma had killed her and had not availed
himself of one of these reasons because he was very drunk and had lost
his reasoning powers. All this did not tally with the setting of the
murder.

But if Kuz'ma was not guilty, why had he not explained the presence of
blood on his poddevka, and why had he invented dreams and
hallucinations? Why had he implicated this gentleman, whom he had seen
and heard, but had forgotten so entirely that he could not even
remember the colour of his clothes?

Polugradov hurried back post haste.

“Now you see, sir!” he said, “if you had examined the scene of the
crime at once, believe me all would have been plain now, as plain as a
pikestaff! If you had examined all the servants at once, we could then
have known who had carried Olga Nikolaevna and who had not. And now we
can't even find out at what distance from the scene of the crime this
drunkard was lying!”

He cross-questioned Kuz'ma for about two hours, but could get nothing
new out of him; he only said that while half asleep he had seen a
gentleman, that the gentleman had wiped his hands on the skirts of his
poddevka and had sworn at him as a “drunken swine,” but he could not
say who this gentleman was, nor what his face and clothes were like.

“How much cognac did you drink?”

“I finished half a bottle.”

“Perhaps it was not cognac?”

“No, sir, it was real fine champagne.”

“So you even know the names of wines!” the Assistant Prosecutor said,
laughing.

“How should I not know them? I've served these masters for more than
thirty years, thank God! I've had time to learn. . . .”

For some reason the Assistant Prosecutor required that Kuz'ma should
be confronted with Urbenin. . . . Kuz'ma looked for a long time at
Urbenin, shook his head and said:

“No, I can't remember . . . perhaps it was Pëtr Egorych, perhaps it
was not. . . . Who can say?”

Polugradov shrugged his shoulders and drove away, leaving me to choose
which was the right one of the two murderers.

The investigations were protracted. . . . Urbenin and Kuz'ma were
imprisoned in the guard-house of the village in which I lived. Poor
Pëtr Egorych lost courage very much; he grew thin and grey and fell
into a religious mood; two or three times he sent to beg me to let him
see the laws about punishments; it was evident he was interested in
the extent of the punishment that awaited him.

“What will become of my children?” he asked me at one of the
examinations. “If I were alone your mistake would not grieve me very
much; but I must live . . . live for the children! They will perish
without me. Besides, I . . . I am not able to part from them! What
are you doing with me?”

When the guards said “thou” to him, and when he had to go a couple of
times, from my village to the town and back on foot under escort, in
the sight of all the people who knew him, he became despondent and
nervous.

“These are not jurists,” he cried so that he was heard in the whole of
the guard-house. “They are nothing but cruel, heartless boys, without
mercy either for people or truth! I know why I am confined here, I
know it! By casting the blame on me they want to hide the real
culprit! The Count killed her; and if it was not the Count, it was his
hireling!”

When he heard that Kuz'ma had been arrested, he was at first very
pleased.

“Now the hireling has been found!” he said to me. “Now he's been
found!”

But soon, when he saw he was not released and when he was informed of
Kuz'ma's testimony, he again became depressed.

“Now I'm lost,” he said, “definitely lost. In order to get out of
prison this one-eyed devil will be sure sooner or later to name me and
say it was I who wiped my hands in his skirts. But you yourself saw
that my hands had not been wiped!”

Sooner or later our suspicions would have to be elucidated.

About the end of November of that year, when snow began to drift
before my windows and the lake looked like an endless white desert,
Kuz'ma wanted to see me; he sent the guard to me to say he had
“bethought himself.” I ordered him to be brought to me.

“I am very pleased that you have at last bethought yourself,” I
greeted him. “It is high time to finish with this dissembling and this
leading us all by the nose like little children. Well, of what have
you bethought yourself?”

Kuz'ma did not answer; he stood in the middle of my room in silence,
staring at me without winking. . . . Fright shone in his eyes; his
whole person showed signs of great fright; he was pale and trembling,
and a cold perspiration poured down his face.

“Well, speak! What have you remembered?” I asked again.

“Something, so extraordinary, that nothing can be more wonderful,” he
said. “Yesterday I remembered what sort of a tie that gentleman was
wearing, and this night I was thinking and remembered his face.”

“Then who was it?”

“I'm afraid to say, your Honour; allow me not to speak: it's too
strange and wonderful; I think I must have dreamt it or imagined
it. . . .”

“Well, what have you imagined?”

“No, allow me not to speak. If I tell you, you'll condemn me. . . .
Allow me to think, and I'll tell you to-morrow. Fearful!”

“Pshaw!” I began to get angry. “Why did you trouble me if you can't
speak? Why did you come here?”

“I thought I would tell you, but now I'm afraid. No, your Honour,
please let me go. . . . I'd better tell you to-morrow. . . . If I tell
you, you'll get so angry that I'd sooner go to Siberia—you'll condemn
me. . . .”

I got angry and ordered Kuz'ma* to be taken away. In the evening of
that very day, in order not to lose time and to put an end to this
tiresome “case about the murder,” I went to the guard-house and
cheated Urbenin by telling him that Kuz'ma had named him as the
murderer.

   * A fine examining magistrate! Instead of continuing the
   examination and extorting the necessary evidence, he gets angry—an
   occupation that does not enter into the duties of an official.
   Besides, I put little trust in all this. . . . Even if M. Kamyshev
   cared so little about his duties, simple, human curiosity ought to
   have obliged him to continue the examination.—A. Ch.

“I expected it,” Urbenin said with a wave of his hand. “It's all one
to me. . . .”

Solitary confinement had greatly affected Urbenin's health; he had
grown yellow and had lost almost half his weight. I promised him to
order the guards to allow him to walk about the corridors in the day
and even in the night.

“There's no fear of your trying to escape,” I said.

Urbenin thanked me, and after my departure he walked about the
corridor; his door was no longer kept locked.

On leaving him I knocked at the door behind which Kuz'ma was seated.

“Well, have you bethought yourself yet?” I asked.

“No, sir,” a weak voice answered. “Let the Prosecutor come; I will
tell him, but I won't tell you.”

“As you like!”

The next morning all was settled.

The watchman Egor came running to me and informed me that one-eyed
Kuz'ma had been found in his bed dead. I hastened to the guard-house
to assure myself of the fact. The strong, big muzhik, who but the day
before was full of health and in order to get free had invented all
sorts of tales, was as stark and cold as a stone. . . . I will not
stop to describe the horror the guards and I felt; it will be
understood by the reader. Kuz'ma was precious for me both as accuser
and as witness, for the warders he was a prisoner for whose death or
flight they would be severely punished. . . . Our horror was only
increased when at the post-mortem examination it was discovered that
he had died a violent death. . . . Kuz'ma had died from
suffocation. . . . Once convinced that he had been suffocated, I began
to search for the culprit, and I had not to search long. . . . He was
near. . . .

“You scoundrel! It was not enough for you to kill your wife,” I said,
“but you must take the life of the man who convicted you! And you
continue to act your dirty, roguish comedy!”

Urbenin grew deadly pale and began to shake. . . .

“You lie!” he cried, striking himself on the breast with his fist.

“I do not lie! You shed crocodile tears at our evidence and made game
of it. . . . There were moments when I almost wished to believe you
more than our evidence. . . . Oh, you are a good actor! . . . But now
I won't believe you, even should blood flow from your eyes instead of
these play-actor's false tears! Say that you killed Kuz'ma!”

“You are either drunk or are laughing at me! Sergei Petrovich, all
patience and submissiveness has its limits; I can bear this no
longer!”

And Urbenin, with flashing eyes, struck the table with his clenched
fist.

“Yesterday I had the imprudence to give you more liberty,” I
continued, “by allowing you that which no other prisoner is allowed,
to walk about the corridors. And now it appears, out of gratitude you
went to the door of that unfortunate Kuz'ma and suffocated a sleeping
man! Do you know that you have destroyed not only Kuz'ma; the warders
will also be ruined on your account.”

“What have I done, good God?” Urbenin said, seizing hold of his head.

“Do you want the proofs? I will give them. . . . By my orders your
door was left open. . . . The foolish warders opened the door and
forgot to hide the lock. . . . All the cells are opened with the same
key. . . . In the night you took your key and going into the corridor,
you opened your neighbour's door with it. . . . Having smothered him,
you locked the door and put the key into your own lock.”

“Why should I smother him? Why?”

“Because he denounced you. . . . If yesterday I had not given you this
news, he would have been alive now. . . . It is sinful and shameful,
Pëtr Egorych!”

“Sergei Petrovich, young man,” the murderer suddenly said in a soft,
tender voice, seizing me by the hand, “you are an honest and
respectable man! Do not ruin and stain yourself with false suspicions
and over-hasty accusations! You cannot understand how cruelly and
painfully you have wounded me by casting upon my soul, which is in no
way guilty, a new accusation. . . . I am a martyr, Sergei Petrovich!
Fear to wrong a martyr! The time will come when you will have to beg
my pardon, and that time will be soon. . . . You can't really want to
accuse me! But this pardon will not satisfy you. . . . Instead of
assailing me so terribly with insults, it would have been better if in
a humane—I will not say a friendly—way (you have already renounced all
friendly relations) you had questioned me. . . . As a witness and your
assistant, I would have brought more profit to justice than in the
role of the accused. If we even take this new accusation . . . I
could tell you much. I did not sleep last night, and heard
everything.”

“What did you hear?”

“Last night, at about two o'clock . . . all was dark. . . . I heard
somebody walking about the corridor very gently, and constantly
touching my door . . . he walked and walked, and then opened my door
and came in.”

“Who was it?”

“I don't know; it was dark—I did not see. . . . He stood for about a
minute and went away again . . . exactly as you said. . . . He took
the key out of my door and opened the next cell. Two minutes later I
heard a guttural sound and then a bustle. I thought it was the warder
walking about and bustling, and the sounds I took for snores,
otherwise I would have made a noise.”

“Fables,” I said. “There was nobody here but you who could have killed
Kuz'ma. The warders were all asleep. The wife of one of them, who
could not sleep the whole night, has given evidence that all three
warders slept like dead men all the night and never left their beds
for a minute; the poor fellows did not know that such brutes could be
found in this miserable guard-house. They have been serving here for
more than twenty years, and during all that time they have never had a
single case of a prisoner having escaped, to say nothing of such an
abomination as a murder. Now, thanks to you, their life has been
turned upside down; I, too, will have to suffer on your account
because I did not send you to the town prison, and even gave you the
liberty of walking about the corridors. Thank you!”

This was my last conversation with Urbenin. I never spoke to him
again, if I do not count the two or three answers I gave to the
questions he put to me when he was seated in the dock.



XXXII

I have said that my novel is a story of crime, and now, when the case
of the murder of Olga Urbenin is complicated by another murder, in
many ways mysterious and incomprehensible, the reader is entitled to
expect that the novel will enter upon its most interesting and
exciting phase. The discovery of the criminal, and the reasons for his
crime, offer a wide field for the display of ingenuity and
sharp-wittedness. Here evil will and cunning are at war with knowledge
and skill, a war that is interesting in all its manifestations. . . .

I led the war and the reader has the right to expect me to describe
the means that led to my victory, and he is doubtless expecting all
sorts of detective finesses such as shine in the novels of Gaboriau
and our Shklyarevsky; and I am ready to satisfy the reader's
expectations, but . . . one of the chief characters leaves the field
of battle without waiting for the end of the combat—he is not made a
participator in the victory; all that he had done so far was lost for
him—and he goes over into the crowd of spectators. That character in
the drama is your humble servant. On the day following the above
conversation with Urbenin I received an invitation, or, more correctly
speaking, an order to hand in my resignation. The tittle-tattle and
talk of our district gossips had done its work. . . . The murder in
the guard-house, the evidence that the Assistant Prosecutor had
collected, unknown to me, from the servants, and, if the reader still
remembers it, the blow I had dealt a muzhik on the head with an oar on
the occasion of one of our former revels, had all greatly contributed
to my dismissal. The muzhik started the case. All sorts of alterations
took place. In the course of two days I had to hand over the case of
the murder to the magistrate for specially important affairs.

Thanks to the talk and the newspaper reports, the entire attention of
the Prosecutor was aroused. The Prosecutor himself came to the Count's
estate every other day and assisted at the examinations. The official
reports of our doctors were sent to the medical board and higher.
There was even a question of having the bodies exhumed and having a
fresh post-mortem examination, which, by the way, would have led to
nothing.

Urbenin was taken a couple of times to the chief town of the
government to have his mental capacities tested, and both times he was
found quite normal. I was given the part of witness.* The new
examining magistrates were so carried away by their zeal that even my
Polycarp was called up as witness.

   * A part that was certainly better suited to M. Kamyshev than the
   part of examining magistrate: in the Urbenin case he could not be
   examining magistrate.—A. Ch.

A year after my resignation, when I was living in Moscow, I received a
summons to appear at the trial of the Urbenin case. I was glad of the
opportunity of seeing again the places to which I was drawn by habit,
and I went. The Count, who was residing in Petersburg, did not go
there, but sent a medical certificate instead.

The case was tried in our district town in a division of the Court of
Justice. Polugradov—that same Polugradov who cleaned his teeth four
times a day with red powder—conducted the prosecution; a certain
Smirnyaev, a tall, lean, fair-haired man with a sentimental face and
long straight hair, acted for the defence. The jury was exclusively
composed of shopkeepers and peasants, of whom only four could read and
write; the others, when they were given to read Urbenin's letters to
his wife, sweated and got confused. The chief juryman was Ivan
Dem'yanych, the shopkeeper from my village, after whom my late parrot
had been named.

When I came into the court I did not recognize Urbenin; he had become
quite grey, and his body had grown twenty years older. I had expected
to read on his face indifference for his fate and apathy, but I was
mistaken. Urbenin was deeply interested in the trial; he brought in an
exception against three of the jurymen, gave long explanations, and
questioned the witnesses; he absolutely denied any guilt, and he
questioned all the witnesses, who did not give evidence in his favour,
very minutely.

The witness Pshekhotsky deposed that I had had a connexion with the
late Olga.

“That's a lie!” Urbenin shouted. “He lies! I don't trust my wife, but
I trust him!”

When I gave my evidence the counsel for the defence asked me in what
relations I stood to Olga, and informed me of the evidence that
Pshekhotsky, who had on one occasion applauded me, had given. To have
spoken the truth would have been to give evidence in favour of the
accused. The more depraved the wife, the more lenient the jury is
towards the Othello-husband. I understood this. . . . On the other
hand, if I spoke the truth I would have wounded Urbenin. . . . in
hearing it he would have felt an incurable pain. . . . I thought it
better to lie.

I said “No.”

In his speech the Public Prosecutor described Olga's murder in vivid
colours and drew especial attention to the brutality of the murderer,
to his malignancy. . . . “An old, worn-out voluptuary saw a girl,
young and pretty. Knowing the whole horror of her position in the
house of her mad father, he enticed her to come to him by a bit of
bread, a dwelling, and some bright-coloured rags. . . . She agreed. An
old, well-to-do husband is easier to be borne than a mad father and
poverty. But she was young, and youth, gentlemen of the jury,
possesses its own inalienable rights. . . . A girl brought up on
novels, in the midst of nature, sooner or later was bound to fall in
love. . . .” And so on in the same style. It finished up with “He who
had not given her anything more than his age and bright coloured rags,
seeing his prize slipping away from him, falls into the fury of a
brute, to whose nose a red-hot iron had been applied. He had loved in
a brutish way and he must hate in a brutish way,” etc., etc.

In charging Urbenin with Kuz'ma's murder, Polugradov drew special
attention to those thief-like processes, well thought out and weighed,
that accompanied the murder of a “sleeping man who the day before had
had the imprudence to give testimony against him.” “I suppose you
cannot doubt that Kuz'ma wanted to tell the Public Prosecutor
something specially concerning him.”

The counsel for the defence, Smirnyaev, did not deny Urbenin's guilt;
he only begged them to admit that Urbenin had acted under the
influence of a state of temporary insanity, and to have indulgence for
him. When describing how painful the feelings of jealousy are, he
cited as an example Shakespeare's “Othello.” He looked at that
“all-human type” from every side, giving extracts from various critics,
and got into such a maze that the presiding judge had to stop him with
the remark that “a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory
for the jurymen.”

Taking advantage of having the last word, Urbenin called God to
witness that he was not guilty either in deed or thought.

“It is all the same to me where I am—in this district where everything
reminds me of my unmerited shame and of my wife, or in penal
servitude; but it is the fate of my children that is troubling me.”

And, turning to the public, Urbenin began to cry, and begged that his
children might be cared for.

“Take them. The Count will not lose the opportunity of vaunting his
generosity, but I have already warned the children; they will not
accept a crumb from him.”

Then, noticing me among the public, he looked at me with suppliant
eyes and said:

“Defend my children from the Count's favours!”

He apparently had quite forgotten the impending verdict, and his
thoughts were only centred on his children. He talked about them until
he was stopped by the presiding judge.

The jury were not long in consultation. Urbenin was found guilty,
without extenuating circumstances on any count.

He was condemned to the loss of all civil rights, transportation and
hard labour for fifteen years.

So dearly had he to pay for his having met on a fine May morning the
poetical “girl in red.”


More than eight years have passed since the events described above
happened. Some of the actors in the drama are dead and decomposed,
others are bearing the punishment of their sins, others are wearily
dragging on life, struggling with dullness and awaiting death from day
to day.

Much is changed during these eight years. . . . Count Karnéev, who has
never ceased to entertain the sincerest friendship for me, has sunk
into utter drunkenness. His estate which was the scene of the drama
has passed from him into the hands of his wife and Pshekhotsky. He is
now poor, and is supported by me. Sometimes of an evening, lying on
the sofa in my room in the boarding-house, he likes to remember the
good old times.

“It would be fine to listen to the gipsies now!” he murmurs. “Serezha,
send for some cognac!”

I am also changed. My strength is gradually deserting me, and I feel
youth and health leaving my body. I no longer possess the same
physical strength, I have not the same alertness, the same endurance
which I was proud of displaying formerly, when I could carouse night
after night and could drink quantities which now I could hardly lift.

Wrinkles are appearing on my face one after the other; my hair is
getting thin, my voice is becoming coarse and less strong. . . . Life
is finished.

I remember the past as if it were yesterday. I see places and people's
faces as if in a mist. I have not the power to regard them
impartially; I love and hate them with the former intensity, and never
a day passes that I, being filled with feelings of indignation or
hatred, do not seize hold of my head. As formerly, I consider the
Count odious, Olga infamous, Kalinin ludicrous owing to his stupid
presumption. Evil I hold to be evil, sin to be sin.

But not infrequently there are moments when, looking intently at a
portrait that is standing on my writing-table, feel an irresistible
desire to walk with the “girl in red” through the forest, under the
sounds of the tall pines, and to press her to my breast regardless of
everything. In such moments I forgive the lies, the fall into the
dirty abyss, I am ready to forgive everything, if only a small part of
the past could be repeated once more. . . . Wearied of the dullness of
town, I want to hear once again the roar of the giant lake and gallop
along its banks on my Zorka. . . . I would forgive and forget
everything if I could once again go along the road to Tenevo and meet
the gardener Franz with his vodka barrel and jockey-cap. . . . There
are moments when I am even ready to press the blood-stained hand of
good-natured Pëtr Egorych, and talk with him about religion, the
harvest and the enlightenment of the people. . . . I would like to
meet “Screw” and his Nadenka again. . . .

Life is mad, licentious, turbulent—like a lake on an August
night. . . . Many victims have disappeared for ever beneath its dark
waves . . . Heavy dregs lie at the bottom.

But why, at certain moments, do I love it? Why do I forgive it, and in
my soul hurry towards it like an affectionate son, like a bird
released from a cage?

At this moment the life I see from the window of my room in these
chambers reminds me of a grey circle; it is grey in colour without any
light or shade. . . .

But, if I close my eyes and remember the past, I see a rainbow formed
by the sun's spectrum. . . . Yes, it is stormy there, but it is
lighter too. . . .

      S. Zinov'ev.


The End



Postscript

At the bottom of the manuscript there is written:

  Dear Sir, Mr. Editor! I beg you to publish the novel (or story, if
  you prefer it) which I submit to you herewith, as far as possible,
  in its entirety, without abridgment, cuts or additions. However,
  changes can be made with the consent of the author. In case you find
  it unsuitable I beg you to keep the MSS. to be returned. My address
  (temporary) is Moscow in the Anglia Chambers, on the Tverskoy Ivan
  Petrovich Kamyshev. P.S.—The fee is at the discretion of the Editor.

  Year and date.

Now that the reader has become acquainted with Kamyshev's novel I will
continue my interrupted talk with him. First of all, I must inform the
reader that the promise I made to him in the beginning of this novel
has not been kept: Kamyshev's novel has not been printed without
omissions, not _in toto_, as I promised, but it is considerably
shortened. The fact is, that the “Shooting Party” could not be printed
in the newspaper which was mentioned in the first chapter of this
work, the newspaper ceased to exist when the manuscript was sent to
press. The present editorial board, in accepting Kamyshev's novel,
found it impossible to publish it without cuts. During the time it was
appearing, every chapter that was sent to me in proof was accompanied
by the request to “make changes.” However, not wishing to take on my
soul the sin of changing another man's work, I found it better and
more profitable to leave out whole passages rather than to make
changes of unsuitable places. With my assent the editor left out many
places that shocked by their cynicism, length, or the carelessness of
their literary style. These omissions and cuts demanded both care and
time, which is the cause that many chapters were late. Among other
passages we left out two descriptions of nocturnal orgies. One of
these orgies took place in the Count's house, the other on the lake.
We also left out a description of Polycarp's library and of the
original manner in which he read; this passage was found too much
drawn out and exaggerated.

The chapter I stood up for most of all and which the editor chiefly
disliked was one in which the desperate card gambling that was the
rage among the Count's servants was minutely described. The most
passionate gamblers were the gardener Franz and the old woman
nicknamed the Scops-Owl. While Kamyshev was conducting the
investigations he passed by one of the summer-houses, and looking in
he saw mad play going on; the players were the Scops-Owl, Franz
and—Pshekhotsky. They were playing “Stukolka,” at twenty kopeck points
and a fine that reached thirty roubles. Kamyshev joined the players
and “cleared them out” as if they had been partridges. Franz, who had
lost everything but wished to continue, went to the island where he
had hidden his money. Kamyshev followed him, marked where he had
concealed his money, and afterwards robbed the gardener, not leaving a
kopeck in his hoard. The money he had taken he gave to the fisherman
Mikhey. This strange charity admirably characterizes this hare-brained
magistrate, but it is written so carelessly and the conversation of
the gamblers glitters with such pearls of obscenity that the editor
would not even consent to have alterations made.

The description of certain meetings of Olga and Kamyshev are omitted;
an explanation between him and Nadenka Kalinin, etc., etc., are also
left out. But I think what is printed is sufficient to characterize my
hero. _Sapienti sat_. . . .

Exactly three months later the door-keeper Andrey announced the
arrival of the gentleman “with the cockade.”

“Ask him in!” I said.

Kamyshev entered, the same rosy-cheeked, handsome and healthy man he
had been three months before. His steps, as formerly, were
noiseless. . . . He put down his hat on the window with so much care
that one might have imagined that he had deposited something
heavy. . . . Out of his eyes there shone, as before, something
childlike and infinitely good-natured.

“I am again troubling you!” he began smiling, and he sat down
carefully. “For God's sake, forgive me! Well, what? What sentence has
been passed on my manuscript?”

“Guilty, but deserving of indulgence,” I replied.

Kamyshev laughed and blew his nose in a scented handkerchief.

“Consequently, banishment into the flames of the fireplace?” he asked.

“No, why such strictness? It does not merit punitive measures; we will
employ a corrective treatment.”

“Must it be corrected?”

“Yes, certain things. . . . By mutual consent. . . .”

We were silent for a quarter of a minute. I had terrible palpitations
of the heart and my temples throbbed, but to show that I was agitated
did not enter into my plans.

“By mutual consent,” I repeated. “Last time you told me that you had
taken the subject of your novel from real occurrences.”

“Yes, and I am ready to confirm it now. If you have read my novel, may
I have the honour of introducing myself as Zinov'ev.”

“Consequently, you were best-man at Olga Nikolaevna's wedding.”

“Both best-man and friend of the house. Am I not sympathetic in this
manuscript?” Kamyshev laughed, stroked his knees and got very red. “A
fine fellow, eh? I ought to have been flogged, but there was nobody to
do it.”

“So, sir. . . . I liked your novel: it is better and more interesting
than most novels of crimes. Only by mutual consent you and I must make
some essential changes in it.”

“That's possible. For example, what do you consider requires change?”

“The very _habitus_ of the novel, its character. It has, as in all
novels treating of crimes, everything: crime, evidence, an inquest,
even fifteen years' penal servitude as a dessert, but the most
essential thing is lacking.”

“What is that?”

“The real culprit is not in it. . . .”

Kamyshev made large eyes and rose.

“Candidly speaking, I don't understand you,” he said after a short
pause. “If you do not consider the man who commits murder and
strangles a real culprit, then. . . . I don't know who ought to be
considered culpable. Criminals are, of course, the product of society,
and society is guilty, but. . . . if one is to devote oneself to the
higher considerations one must cease writing novels and write
reports.”

“Akh, what sort of higher considerations are there here! It was not
Urbenin who committed the murder!”

“How so?” Kamyshev asked, approaching nearer to me.

“Not Urbenin!”

“Perhaps. _Errare humanum est_—and magistrates are not perfect: there
are often errors of justice under the moon. You consider that we were
mistaken?”

“No, you did not make a mistake; you wished to make a mistake.”

“Forgive me, I again do not understand,” and Kamyshev smiled: “If you
find that the inquest led to a mistake, and even, if I understand you
right, to a premeditated mistake, it would be interesting to know your
point of view. Who was the murderer in your opinion?”

“You!”

Kamyshev looked at me with astonishment, almost with terror, grew very
red and stepped back. Then turning away, he went to the window and
began to laugh.

“Here's a nice go!” he muttered, breathing on the glass and nervously
drawing figures on it.

I watched his hand as he drew, and it appeared to me that I recognized
in it the only iron, muscular hand that, with a single effort, would
have been able to strangle sleeping Kuz'ma, or mangle Olga's frail
body. The thought that I saw before me a murderer filled my soul with
unwonted feelings of horror and fear. . . . not for myself—no!—but for
him, for this handsome and graceful giant. . . . in general for
man. . . .

“You murdered them!” I repeated.

“If you are not joking, allow me to congratulate you on the
discovery,” Kamyshev said laughing, but still not looking at me:
“However, judging by your trembling voice, and your paleness, it is
difficult to suppose that you are joking. What a nervous man you are!”

Kamyshev turned his flushed face towards me and, forcing himself to
smile, he continued:

“It is interesting how such an idea could have come into your head!
Have I written something like that in my novel? By God, that's
interesting. . . . Tell me, please! It really is interesting once in a
lifetime to try what it feels like to be looked upon as a murderer.”

“You are a murderer,” I said, “and you are not able to hide it. In the
novel you lied, and now you are proving yourself but a poor actor.”

“This is really quite interesting; upon my word, it would be curious
to hear. . . .”

“If you are curious, then listen.”

I jumped up and began walking about the room in great agitation.
Kamyshev looked out of the door and closed it tight. By this
precaution he gave himself away.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked.

Kamyshev became confused, coughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“I'm not afraid of anything, I only. . . . only looked—looked out of
the door. So you wanted this too! Well, now tell me!”

“May I put you some questions?”

“As many as you like.”

“I warn you that I am no magistrate, and I am no master in
cross-examination; do not expect order or system, and therefore please
do not disconcert or puzzle me. First tell me where you disappeared
after you had left the clearing on which the shooting party was
feasting?”

“In the novel it is mentioned: I went home.”

“In the novel the description of the way you went is carefully
effaced. Did you not go through the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Consequently, you could have met Olga?”

“Yes, I could,” Kamyshev said smiling.

“And you met her.”

“No, I did not meet her.”

“In your investigations you forgot to question one very important
witness, and that was yourself. . . . Did you hear the shriek of the
victim?”

“No. . . . Well, baten'ka,* you don't know how to cross-examine at
all.”

   * The diminutive of otets—father, a very familiar form of address.

This familiar baten'ka jarred on me; it accorded but ill with the
apologies and the disconcertion with which our conversation had begun.
Soon I noticed that Kamyshev looked upon me with condescension,—from
above—and almost with admiration of my inexperience in extricating
myself from the number of questions that were troubling me.

“Let us admit that you did not meet Olga in the forest,” I continued,
“though it was more difficult for Urbenin to meet Olga than for you,
as Urbenin did not know she was in the forest, and, therefore, did not
look for her, while you, being drunk and maddened would probably have
looked for her. You certainly did look for her, otherwise what would
be your object in going home through the forest instead of by the
road? . . . But let us admit that you did not meet her. . . . How is
your gloomy, your almost mad frame of mind, in the evening of the
ill-fated day, to be explained? What induced you to kill the parrot,
who cried out about the husband who killed his wife? I think he
reminded you of your own evil deed. That night you were summoned to
the Count's house, and instead of beginning your investigations at
once, you delayed until the police arrived almost four and twenty
hours later, and you yourself probably never noticed it. . . . Only
those magistrates who already know who the criminal is can delay in
that way. . . . The criminal was known to you. . . . Further,—Olga did
not mention the name of the murderer because he was dear to her. . . .
If her husband had been the murderer she would have named him. If she
had been capable of informing against him to her lover the Count, it
would not have cost her anything to accuse him of murder: she did not
love him, and he was not dear to her. . . . She loved you, and it was
just you, who were dear to her . . . she wanted to spare you. . . .
Allow me to ask why did you delay asking her a straight question when
she regained consciousness for a moment? Why did you ask her all sorts
of questions that had nothing to do with the matter? Allow me to think
you did this only to mark time, in order to prevent her from naming
you. Then Olga dies. . . . In your novel you do not say a word about
the impression that her death made on you . . . In this I see
caution: you do not forget to write about the number of glasses you
emptied, but such an important event as the death of “the girl in red”
passes in the novel without leaving any traces. . . . Why?”

“Go on, go on. . . .”

“You made all your investigations in a most slovenly way. . . . It is
hard to admit, that you, a clever and very cunning man, did not do so
purposely. All your investigations remind one of a letter that is
purposely written with grammatical errors. The exaggeration gives you
away. . . . Why did you not examine the scene of the crime? Not
because you forgot to do so, or considered it unimportant, but because
you waited for the rain to wash away your traces. You write little
about the examination of the servants. Consequently, Kuz'ma was not
examined by you until he was caught washing his poddevka. . . . You
evidently had no cause to mix him up in the affair. Why did you not
question any of the guests, who had been feasting with you on the
clearing? They had seen the blood stains on Urbenin, and had heard
Olga's shriek,—they ought to have been examined. But you did not do
it, because one of them might have remembered at his examination, that
shortly before the murder you had suddenly gone into the forest and
been lost. Afterwards they probably were questioned, but this
circumstance had already been forgotten by them. . . .”

“Cute!” Kamyshev said, rubbing his hands; “go on, go on!”

“Is it possible that what has already been said is not enough for you?
To prove conclusively that Olga was murdered by you, and no other, I
must remind you that you were her lover, whom she had jilted for a man
you despised! A husband can kill from jealousy. I presume a lover can
do so, too. . . . Now let us advert to Kuz'ma. . . . To judge by his
last interrogation, that took place on the eve of his death, he had
you in his mind; you had wiped your hands on his poddevka, and you had
called him a swine. . . . If it had not been you, why did you
interrupt your examination at the most interesting point? Why did you
not ask about the colour of the murderer's necktie, when Kuz'ma had
informed you he had remembered what the colour of the necktie was? Why
did you give Urbenin liberty just when Kuz'ma remembered the name of
the murderer? Why not before or after? It was evident you required a
man who might walk about the corridors at night. . . . And so you
killed Kuz'ma, fearing that he would denounce you.”

“Well, enough!” Kamyshev said laughing. “That will do! You are in such
a passion, and have grown so pale that it seems as if at any moment
you might faint. Do not continue. You are right. I really did kill
them.”

This was followed by a silence. I paced the room from corner to
corner. Kamyshev did the same.

“I killed them!” Kamyshev continued. “You have caught the secret by
the tail,—it's your good luck. Not many will have that success. Most
of your readers will abuse Urbenin, and be amazed at my magisterial
cleverness and acumen.”

At that moment my assistant came into my office and interrupted our
conversation. Noticing that I was occupied and excited he hovered for
a moment around my writing-table, looked at Kamyshev, and left the
room. When he had gone Kamyshev went to the window and began to
breathe on the glass.

“Eight years have passed since then,” he began again, after a short
silence, “and for eight years I have borne this secret within me. But
such a secret and live blood are incompatible in the same organism; it
is impossible to know without punishment what the rest of mankind does
not know. For all these eight years I have felt myself a martyr. It
was not my conscience that tormented me, no! Conscience is a thing
apart . . . and I don't pay much attention to it. It can easily be
stifled by reasoning about its expansibility. When reason does not
work, I smother it with wine and women. With women I have my former
success,—this I only mention by the way. But I was tormented by
something else. The whole time I thought it strange that people should
look upon me as an ordinary man. During all these eight years not a
single living soul has looked at me searchingly; it appeared strange
to me that I had not to hide. A terrible secret is concealed in me,
and still I walk about the streets. I go to dinner-parties. I flirt
with women! For a criminal man such a position is unnatural and
painful. I would not be tormented if I had to hide and dissemble.
Psychosis, baten'ka! At last I was seized by a kind of passion. . . .
I suddenly wanted to pour myself out in some way on everybody, to
shout my secret at them all, though nobody is worth a sneeze . . . to
do something like that . . . something extraordinary. And so I wrote
this novel—indictment, in which only the witless will have any
difficulty in recognizing me as a man with a secret. . . . There is
not a page that does not give the key to the puzzle. Is that not true?
You doubtless understood it at once. When I wrote it I took into
consideration the standard of the average reader. . . .”

We were again disturbed. Andrey entered the room bringing two glasses
of tea on a tray. . . . I hastened to send him away.

“Now it appears to be easier for me,” Kamyshev said smiling, “now you
look upon me not as an ordinary man, but as a man with a secret,—and I
feel myself in a natural position. . . . But. . . . However, it is
already three o'clock, and somebody is waiting for me in the
cab . . .”

“Stay, put down your hat. . . . You have told me what made you take up
authorship, now tell me how you murdered.”

“Do you want to know that as a supplement of what you have read? Very
well. I killed in a state of aberration. Nowadays people even smoke
and drink tea under the influence of aberration. In your excitement
you have taken up my glass instead of your own, and you smoke more
than usual. . . . Life is all aberration . . . so it appears to
me. . . . When I went into the wood my thoughts were far away from
murder; I went there with only one object: to find Olga and to
continue to sting her. . . . When I am drunk I always feel the
necessity to sting. . . . I met her about two hundred paces from the
clearing. . . . She was standing under a tree and looking pensively at
the sky. . . . I called to her. . . . When she saw me she smiled and
stretched out her arms to me. . . .

“Don't scold me, I'm so unhappy!” she said.

That evening she looked so beautiful, that I, drunk as I was, forgot
everything in the world and pressed her in my arms. . . . She swore to
me that she had never loved anybody but me . . . and that was true
 . . . she really loved me . . . and in the very midst of her
assurances she suddenly took it into her head to say a horrible
phrase: “How unhappy I am! If I had not got married to Urbenin, I
might now have married the Count!” This phrase was like a pail of cold
water for me. . . . All that was boiling in my breast bubbled over. I
seized the vile little creature by the shoulder and threw her to the
ground as you throw a ball. My rage reached its maximum. . . .
Well. . . . I finished her. . . . I just finished her. . . . Kuz'ma's
case, you understand. . . .”

I glanced at Kamyshev. On his face I could neither read repentance nor
regret. “I just finished her” was said as easily as “I just had a
smoke.” In my turn I also experienced a feeling of wrath and
loathing. . . . I turned away.

“And Urbenin is in penal servitude?” I asked quietly.

“Yes. . . . I heard he had died on the way, but that is not
certain. . . . What then?”

“What then? An innocent man is suffering and you ask ‘What then?’”

“But what am I to do? To go and confess?”

“I should think so.”

“Well, let us suppose it! . . . I have nothing against taking
Urbenin's place, but I won't yield without a fight. . . . Let them
take me if they want, but I won't go to them. Why did they not take me
when I was in their hands? At Olga's funeral I squalled so long, and
had such hysterics that even the blind must have seen the truth. . . .
It's not my fault that they are stupid.”

“You are odious to me,” I said.

“That is natural. . . . I am odious to myself. . . .”

There was silence again. . . . I opened the cash-book and began
mechanically to count up the numbers. . . . Kamyshev took up his hat.

“I see you are stifled while I am here,” he said. “By-the-by, don't
you want to see Count Karnéev. There he is sitting in the cab!”

I went up to the window and glanced at him. . . . Sitting in the cab
with his back towards us sat a small stooping figure, in a shabby hat
and a faded collar. It was difficult to recognize in him one of the
actors of the drama!

“I heard that Urbenin's son is living here in Moscow in the Andréev
Chambers,” Kamyshev said. “I want to arrange that the Count should
receive alms from him. . . . Let at least one be punished! However, I
must say adieu!”

Kamyshev nodded and hastened out of the room. I sat down at the table
and gave myself up to bitter thoughts.

I felt stifled.



Transcriber’s Note

This transcription follows the text of the English translation
published in 1926 by Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd. (The original novel was
published serially in 1884 under the title “Драма на охоте”.) The
following alterations have been made to correct what are believed to
be unambiguous printer’s errors.

 * “household gods” has been changed to “household goods” (Ch. I).
 * “The doctor, loved her” has been changed to “The doctor loved her”
   (Ch. VIII).
 * “Federovich” has been changed to “Fedorovich” (Ch. X).
 * “necesary” has been changed to “necessary” (Ch. XVI).

Additionally, nine cases of unmatched quotation marks have been
restored. All other seeming errors have been left unchanged.



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