THE TALES OF CHEKHOV

VOLUME 13

LOVE AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS

LOVELIGHTSA STORY WITHOUT AN ENDMARI D'ELLEA LIVING CHATTELTHE DOCTORTOO EARLY!THE COSSACKABORIGINESAN INQUIRYMARTYRSTHE LION AND THE SUNA DAUGHTER OF ALBIONCHORISTERSNERVESA WORK OF ARTA JOKEA COUNTRY COTTAGEA BLUNDERFAT AND THINTHE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERKA PINK STOCKINGAT A SUMMER VILLA

LOVE

"THREE o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking inat my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can'tsleep, I am so happy!

"My whole being from head to heels is bursting with a strange, incomprehensible feeling. I can't analyse it just now--I haven'tthe time, I'm too lazy, and there--hang analysis! Why, is a manlikely to interpret his sensations when he is flying head foremostfrom a belfry, or has just learned that he has won two hundredthousand? Is he in a state to do it?"

This was more or less how I began my love-letter to Sasha, a girlof nineteen with whom I had fallen in love. I began it five times, and as often tore up the sheets, scratched out whole pages, andcopied it all over again. I spent as long over the letter as if ithad been a novel I had to write to order. And it was not because Itried to make it longer, more elaborate, and more fervent, butbecause I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing, when one sits in the stillness of one's study and communes withone's own day-dreams while the spring night looks in at one's window. Between the lines I saw a beloved image, and it seemed to me thatthere were, sitting at the same table writing with me, spirits asnaïvely happy, as foolish, and as blissfully smiling as I. I wrotecontinually, looking at my hand, which still ached deliciously wherehers had lately pressed it, and if I turned my eyes away I had avision of the green trellis of the little gate. Through that trellisSasha gazed at me after I had said goodbye to her. When I was sayinggood-bye to Sasha I was thinking of nothing and was simply admiringher figure as every decent man admires a pretty woman; when I sawthrough the trellis two big eyes, I suddenly, as though by inspiration, knew that I was in love, that it was all settled between us, andfully decided already, that I had nothing left to do but to carryout certain formalities. 

It is a great delight also to seal up a love-letter, and, slowlyputting on one's hat and coat, to go softly out of the house andto carry the treasure to the post. There are no stars in the skynow: in their place there is a long whitish streak in the east, broken here and there by clouds above the roofs of the dingy houses;from that streak the whole sky is flooded with pale light. The townis asleep, but already the water-carts have come out, and somewherein a far-away factory a whistle sounds to wake up the workpeople. Beside the postbox, slightly moist with dew, you are sure to seethe clumsy figure of a house porter, wearing a bell-shaped sheepskinand carrying a stick. He is in a condition akin to catalepsy: heis not asleep or awake, but something between. 

If the boxes knew how often people resort to them for the decisionof their fate, they would not have such a humble air. I, anyway, almost kissed my postbox, and as I gazed at it I reflected that thepost is the greatest of blessings. 

I beg anyone who has ever been in love to remember how one usuallyhurries home after dropping the letter in the box, rapidly getsinto bed and pulls up the quilt in the full conviction that as soonas one wakes up in the morning one will be overwhelmed with memoriesof the previous day and look with rapture at the window, where thedaylight will be eagerly making its way through the folds of thecurtain. 

Well, to facts. . . . Next morning at midday, Sasha's maid broughtme the following answer: "I am delited be sure to come to us to dayplease I shall expect you. Your S. "

Not a single comma. This lack of punctuation, and the misspellingof the word "delighted, " the whole letter, and even the long, narrowenvelope in which it was put filled my heart with tenderness. Inthe sprawling but diffident handwriting I recognised Sasha's walk, her way of raising her eyebrows when she laughed, the movement ofher lips. . . . But the contents of the letter did not satisfy me. In the first place, poetical letters are not answered in that way, and in the second, why should I go to Sasha's house to wait tillit should occur to her stout mamma, her brothers, and poor relationsto leave us alone together? It would never enter their heads, andnothing is more hateful than to have to restrain one's rapturessimply because of the intrusion of some animate trumpery in theshape of a half-deaf old woman or little girl pestering one withquestions. I sent an answer by the maid asking Sasha to select somepark or boulevard for a rendezvous. My suggestion was readilyaccepted. I had struck the right chord, as the saying is. 

Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon I made my way to thefurthest and most overgrown part of the park. There was not a soulin the park, and the tryst might have taken place somewhere nearerin one of the avenues or arbours, but women don't like doing it byhalves in romantic affairs; in for a penny, in for a pound--ifyou are in for a tryst, let it be in the furthest and most impenetrablethicket, where one runs the risk of stumbling upon some rough ordrunken man. When I went up to Sasha she was standing with her backto me, and in that back I could read a devilish lot of mystery. Itseemed as though that back and the nape of her neck, and the blackspots on her dress were saying: Hush! . . . The girl was wearing asimple cotton dress over which she had thrown a light cape. To addto the air of mysterious secrecy, her face was covered with a whiteveil. Not to spoil the effect, I had to approach on tiptoe and speakin a half whisper. 

From what I remember now, I was not so much the essential point ofthe rendezvous as a detail of it. Sasha was not so much absorbedin the interview itself as in its romantic mysteriousness, my kisses, the silence of the gloomy trees, my vows. . . . There was not aminute in which she forgot herself, was overcome, or let themysterious expression drop from her face, and really if there hadbeen any Ivan Sidoritch or Sidor Ivanitch in my place she wouldhave felt just as happy. How is one to make out in such circumstanceswhether one is loved or not? Whether the love is "the real thing"or not?

From the park I took Sasha home with me. The presence of the belovedwoman in one's bachelor quarters affects one like wine and music. Usually one begins to speak of the future, and the confidence andself-reliance with which one does so is beyond bounds. You makeplans and projects, talk fervently of the rank of general thoughyou have not yet reached the rank of a lieutenant, and altogetheryou fire off such high-flown nonsense that your listener must havea great deal of love and ignorance of life to assent to it. Fortunatelyfor men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings andnever know anything of life. Far from not assenting, they actuallyturn pale with holy awe, are full of reverence and hang greedilyon the maniac's words. Sasha listened to me with attention, but Isoon detected an absent-minded expression on her face, she did notunderstand me. The future of which I talked interested her only inits external aspect and I was wasting time in displaying my plansand projects before her. She was keenly interested in knowing whichwould be her room, what paper she would have in the room, why I hadan upright piano instead of a grand piano, and so on. She examinedcarefully all the little things on my table, looked at the photographs, sniffed at the bottles, peeled the old stamps off the envelopes, saying she wanted them for something. 

"Please collect old stamps for me!" she said, making a grave face. "Please do. "

Then she found a nut in the window, noisily cracked it and ate it. 

"Why don't you stick little labels on the backs of your books?" sheasked, taking a look at the bookcase. 

"What for?"

"Oh, so that each book should have its number. And where am I toput my books? I've got books too, you know. "

"What books have you got?" I asked. 

Sasha raised her eyebrows, thought a moment and said:

"All sorts. "

And if it had entered my head to ask her what thoughts, whatconvictions, what aims she had, she would no doubt have raised hereyebrows, thought a minute, and have said in the same way: "Allsorts. "

Later I saw Sasha home and left her house regularly, officiallyengaged, and was so reckoned till our wedding. If the reader willallow me to judge merely from my personal experience, I maintainthat to be engaged is very dreary, far more so than to be a husbandor nothing at all. An engaged man is neither one thing nor theother, he has left one side of the river and not reached the other, he is not married and yet he can't be said to be a bachelor, butis in something not unlike the condition of the porter whom I havementioned above. 

Every day as soon as I had a free moment I hastened to my fiancée. As I went I usually bore within me a multitude of hopes, desires, intentions, suggestions, phrases. I always fancied that as soon asthe maid opened the door I should, from feeling oppressed andstifled, plunge at once up to my neck into a sea of refreshinghappiness. But it always turned out otherwise in fact. Every timeI went to see my fiancée I found all her family and other membersof the household busy over the silly trousseau. (And by the way, they were hard at work sewing for two months and then they had lessthan a hundred roubles' worth of things). There was a smell ofirons, candle grease and fumes. Bugles scrunched under one's feet. The two most important rooms were piled up with billows of linen, calico, and muslin and from among the billows peeped out Sasha'slittle head with a thread between her teeth. All the sewing partywelcomed me with cries of delight but at once led me off into thedining-room where I could not hinder them nor see what only husbandsare permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit inthe dining-room and converse with Pimenovna, one of the poorrelations. Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by mewith a thimble, a skein of wool or some other boring object. 

"Wait, wait, I shan't be a minute, " she would say when I raisedimploring eyes to her. "Only fancy that wretch Stepanida has spoiltthe bodice of the barège dress!"

And after waiting in vain for this grace, I lost my temper, wentout of the house and walked about the streets in the company of thenew cane I had bought. Or I would want to go for a walk or a drivewith my fiancée, would go round and find her already standing inthe hall with her mother, dressed to go out and playing with herparasol. 

"Oh, we are going to the Arcade, " she would say. "We have got tobuy some more cashmere and change the hat. "

My outing is knocked on the head. I join the ladies and go withthem to the Arcade. It is revoltingly dull to listen to womenshopping, haggling and trying to outdo the sharp shopman. I feltashamed when Sasha, after turning over masses of material andknocking down the prices to a minimum, walked out of the shop withoutbuying anything, or else told the shopman to cut her some halfrouble's worth. 

When they came out of the shop, Sasha and her mamma with scared andworried faces would discuss at length having made a mistake, havingbought the wrong thing, the flowers in the chintz being too dark, and so on. 

Yes, it is a bore to be engaged! I'm glad it's over. 

Now I am married. It is evening. I am sitting in my study reading. Behind me on the sofa Sasha is sitting munching something noisily. I want a glass of beer. 

"Sasha, look for the corkscrew. . . . " I say. "It's lying aboutsomewhere. "

Sasha leaps up, rummages in a disorderly way among two or threeheaps of papers, drops the matches, and without finding the corkscrew, sits down in silence. . . . Five minutes pass--ten. . . I beginto be fretted both by thirst and vexation. 

"Sasha, do look for the corkscrew, " I say. 

Sasha leaps up again and rummages among the papers near me. Hermunching and rustling of the papers affects me like the sound ofsharpening knives against each other. . . . I get up and beginlooking for the corkscrew myself. At last it is found and the beeris uncorked. Sasha remains by the table and begins telling mesomething at great length. 

"You'd better read something, Sasha, " I say. 

She takes up a book, sits down facing me and begins moving her lips. . . . I look at her little forehead, moving lips, and sink intothought. 

"She is getting on for twenty. . . . " I reflect. "If one takes aboy of the educated class and of that age and compares them, whata difference! The boy would have knowledge and convictions and someintelligence. "

But I forgive that difference just as the low forehead and movinglips are forgiven. I remember in my old Lovelace days I have castoff women for a stain on their stockings, or for one foolish word, or for not cleaning their teeth, and now I forgive everything: themunching, the muddling about after the corkscrew, the slovenliness, the long talking about nothing that matters; I forgive it all almostunconsciously, with no effort of will, as though Sasha's mistakeswere my mistakes, and many things which would have made me wincein old days move me to tenderness and even rapture. The explanationof this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha, butwhat is the explanation of the love itself, I really don't know. 

LIGHTS

THE dog was barking excitedly outside. And Ananyev the engineer, his assistant called Von Schtenberg, and I went out of the hut tosee at whom it was barking. I was the visitor, and might haveremained indoors, but I must confess my head was a little dizzyfrom the wine I had drunk, and I was glad to get a breath of freshair. 

"There is nobody here, " said Ananyev when we went out. "Why are youtelling stories, Azorka? You fool!"

There was not a soul in sight. 

"The fool, " Azorka, a black house-dog, probably conscious of hisguilt in barking for nothing and anxious to propitiate us, approachedus, diffidently wagging his tail. The engineer bent down and touchedhim between his ears. 

"Why are you barking for nothing, creature?" he said in the tonein which good-natured people talk to children and dogs. "Have youhad a bad dream or what? Here, doctor, let me commend to yourattention, " he said, turning to me, "a wonderfully nervous subject!Would you believe it, he can't endure solitude--he is alwayshaving terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when youshout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics. "

"Yes, a dog of refined feelings, " the student chimed in. 

Azorka must have understood that the conversation was concerninghim. He turned his head upwards and grinned plaintively, as thoughto say, "Yes, at times I suffer unbearably, but please excuse it!"

It was an August night, there were stars, but it was dark. Owingto the fact that I had never in my life been in such exceptionalsurroundings, as I had chanced to come into now, the starry nightseemed to me gloomy, inhospitable, and darker than it was in reality. I was on a railway line which was still in process of construction. The high, half-finished embankment, the mounds of sand, clay, andrubble, the holes, the wheel-barrows standing here and there, theflat tops of the mud huts in which the workmen lived--all thismuddle, coloured to one tint by the darkness, gave the earth astrange, wild aspect that suggested the times of chaos. There wasso little order in all that lay before me that it was somehow strangein the midst of the hideously excavated, grotesque-looking earthto see the silhouettes of human beings and the slender telegraphposts. Both spoiled the ensemble of the picture, and seemed tobelong to a different world. It was still, and the only sound camefrom the telegraph wire droning its wearisome refrain somewherevery high above our heads. 

We climbed up on the embankment and from its height looked downupon the earth. A hundred yards away where the pits, holes, andmounds melted into the darkness of the night, a dim light wastwinkling. Beyond it gleamed another light, beyond that a third, then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side--probably the windows of some hut--and a long series of such lights, growing continually closer and dimmer, stretched along the line tothe very horizon, then turned in a semicircle to the left anddisappeared in the darkness of the distance. The lights weremotionless. There seemed to be something in common between them andthe stillness of the night and the disconsolate song of the telegraphwire. It seemed as though some weighty secret were buried under theembankment and only the lights, the night, and the wires knew ofit. 

"How glorious, O Lord!" sighed Ananyev; "such space and beauty thatone can't tear oneself away! And what an embankment! It's not anembankment, my dear fellow, but a regular Mont Blanc. It's costingmillions. . . . "

Going into ecstasies over the lights and the embankment that wascosting millions, intoxicated by the wine and his sentimental mood, the engineer slapped Von Schtenberg on the shoulder and went on ina jocose tone:

"Well, Mihail Mihailitch, lost in reveries? No doubt it is pleasantto look at the work of one's own hands, eh? Last year this veryspot was bare steppe, not a sight of human life, and now look: life. . . Civilisation. . . And how splendid it all is, upon my soul!You and I are building a railway, and after we are gone, in anothercentury or two, good men will build a factory, a school, a hospital, and things will begin to move! Eh!"

The student stood motionless with his hands thrust in his pockets, and did not take his eyes off the lights. He was not listening tothe engineer, but was thinking, and was apparently in the mood inwhich one does not want to speak or to listen. After a prolongedsilence he turned to me and said quietly:

"Do you know what those endless lights are like? They make me thinkof something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago, somethinglike the camps of the Amalekites or the Philistines. It is as thoughsome people of the Old Testament had pitched their camp and werewaiting for morning to fight with Saul or David. All that is wantingto complete the illusion is the blare of trumpets and sentriescalling to one another in some Ethiopian language. "

And, as though of design, the wind fluttered over the line andbrought a sound like the clank of weapons. A silence followed. Idon't know what the engineer and the student were thinking of, butit seemed to me already that I actually saw before me somethinglong dead and even heard the sentry talking in an unknown tongue. My imagination hastened to picture the tents, the strange people, their clothes, their armour. 

"Yes, " muttered the student pensively, "once Philistines andAmalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing theirpart, and now no trace of them remains. So it will be with us. Nowwe are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but twothousand years will pass--and of this embankment and of all thosemen, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain. In reality, it's awful!"

"You must drop those thoughts . . . " said the engineer gravely andadmonishingly. 

"Why?"

"Because. . . . Thoughts like that are for the end of life, not forthe beginning of it. You are too young for them. "

"Why so?" repeated the student. 

"All these thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance andthe aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of theshadows of the grave, and so on, all such lofty thoughts, I tellyou, my dear fellow, are good and natural in old age when they comeas the product of years of inner travail, and are won by sufferingand really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on thethreshold of real life they are simply a calamity! A calamity!"Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand. "To my mind it is betterat your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to thinkon these lines. I am speaking seriously, Baron. And I have beenmeaning to speak to you about it for a long time, for I noticedfrom the very first day of our acquaintance your partiality forthese damnable ideas!"

"Good gracious, why are they damnable?" the student asked with asmile, and from his voice and his face I could see that he askedthe question from simple politeness, and that the discussion raisedby the engineer did not interest him in the least. 

I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was dreaming that immediatelyafter our walk we should wish each other good-night and go to bed, but my dream was not quickly realised. When we had returned to thehut the engineer put away the empty bottles and took out of a largewicker hamper two full ones, and uncorking them, sat down to hiswork-table with the evident intention of going on drinking, talking, and working. Sipping a little from his glass, he made pencil noteson some plans and went on pointing out to the student that thelatter's way of thinking was not what it should be. The student satbeside him checking accounts and saying nothing. He, like me, hadno inclination to speak or to listen. That I might not interferewith their work, I sat away from the table on the engineer'scrooked-legged travelling bedstead, feeling bored and expectingevery moment that they would suggest I should go to bed. It wasgoing on for one o'clock. 

Having nothing to do, I watched my new acquaintances. I had neverseen Ananyev or the student before. I had only made their acquaintanceon the night I have described. Late in the evening I was returningon horseback from a fair to the house of a landowner with whom Iwas staying, had got on the wrong road in the dark and lost my way. Going round and round by the railway line and seeing how dark thenight was becoming, I thought of the "barefoot railway roughs, " wholie in wait for travellers on foot and on horseback, was frightened, and knocked at the first hut I came to. There I was cordiallyreceived by Ananyev and the student. As is usually the case withstrangers casually brought together, we quickly became acquainted, grew friendly and at first over the tea and afterward over the wine, began to feel as though we had known each other for years. At theend of an hour or so, I knew who they were and how fate had broughtthem from town to the far-away steppe; and they knew who I was, what my occupation and my way of thinking. 

Nikolay Anastasyevitch Ananyev, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered, thick-set man, and, judging from his appearance, he had, likeOthello, begun the "descent into the vale of years, " and was growingrather too stout. He was just at that stage which old match-makingwomen mean when they speak of "a man in the prime of his age, " thatis, he was neither young nor old, was fond of good fare, good liquor, and praising the past, panted a little as he walked, snored loudlywhen he was asleep, and in his manner with those surrounding himdisplayed that calm imperturbable good humour which is alwaysacquired by decent people by the time they have reached the gradeof a staff officer and begun to grow stout. His hair and beard werefar from being grey, but already, with a condescension of which hewas unconscious, he addressed young men as "my dear boy" and felthimself entitled to lecture them good-humouredly about their wayof thinking. His movements and his voice were calm, smooth, andself-confident, as they are in a man who is thoroughly well awarethat he has got his feet firmly planted on the right road, that hehas definite work, a secure living, a settled outlook. . . . Hissunburnt, thicknosed face and muscular neck seemed to say: "I amwell fed, healthy, satisfied with myself, and the time will comewhen you young people too, will be wellfed, healthy, and satisfiedwith yourselves. . . . " He was dressed in a cotton shirt with thecollar awry and in full linen trousers thrust into his high boots. From certain trifles, as for instance, from his coloured worstedgirdle, his embroidered collar, and the patch on his elbow, I wasable to guess that he was married and in all probability tenderlyloved by his wife. 

Baron Von Schtenberg, a student of the Institute of Transport, wasa young man of about three or four and twenty. Only his fair hairand scanty beard, and, perhaps, a certain coarseness and frigidityin his features showed traces of his descent from Barons of theBaltic provinces; everything else--his name, Mihail Mihailovitch, his religion, his ideas, his manners, and the expression of hisface were purely Russian. Wearing, like Ananyev, a cotton shirt andhigh boots, with his round shoulders, his hair left uncut, and hissunburnt face, he did not look like a student or a Baron, but likean ordinary Russian workman. His words and gestures were few, hedrank reluctantly without relish, checked the accounts mechanically, and seemed all the while to be thinking of something else. Hismovements and voice were calm, and smooth too, but his calmness wasof a different kind from the engineer's. His sunburnt, slightlyironical, dreamy face, his eyes which looked up from under hisbrows, and his whole figure were expressive of spiritual stagnation--mental sloth. He looked as though it did not matter to him inthe least whether the light were burning before him or not, whetherthe wine were nice or nasty, and whether the accounts he was checkingwere correct or not. . . . And on his intelligent, calm face I read:"I don't see so far any good in definite work, a secure living, anda settled outlook. It's all nonsense. I was in Petersburg, now Iam sitting here in this hut, in the autumn I shall go back toPetersburg, then in the spring here again. . . . What sense thereis in all that I don't know, and no one knows. . . . And so it'sno use talking about it. . . . "

He listened to the engineer without interest, with the condescendingindifference with which cadets in the senior classes listen to aneffusive and good-natured old attendant. It seemed as though therewere nothing new to him in what the engineer said, and that if hehad not himself been too lazy to talk, he would have said somethingnewer and cleverer. Meanwhile Ananyev would not desist. He had bynow laid aside his good-humoured, jocose tone and spoke seriously, even with a fervour which was quite out of keeping with his expressionof calmness. Apparently he had no distaste for abstract subjects, was fond of them, indeed, but had neither skill nor practice in thehandling of them. And this lack of practice was so pronounced inhis talk that I did not always grasp his meaning at once. 

"I hate those ideas with all my heart!" he said, "I was infectedby them myself in my youth, I have not quite got rid of them evennow, and I tell you--perhaps because I am stupid and such thoughtswere not the right food for my mind--they did me nothing but harm. That's easy to understand! Thoughts of the aimlessness of life, ofthe insignificance and transitoriness of the visible world, Solomon's'vanity of vanities' have been, and are to this day, the highestand final stage in the realm of thought. The thinker reaches thatstage and--comes to a halt! There is nowhere further to go. Theactivity of the normal brain is completed with this, and that isnatural and in the order of things. Our misfortune is that we beginthinking at that end. What normal people end with we begin with. From the first start, as soon as the brain begins working independently, we mount to the very topmost, final step and refuse to know anythingabout the steps below. "

"What harm is there in that?" said the student. 

"But you must understand that it's abnormal, " shouted Ananyev, looking at him almost wrathfully. "If we find means of mounting tothe topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the wholelong ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds, and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age suchreflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step ofyour rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down thisminute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a pagebefore the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare, and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know youwill die, that Shakespeare and Darwin have died too, that theirthoughts have not saved them, nor the earth, nor you, and that iflife is deprived of meaning in that way, all science, poetry, andexalted thoughts seem only useless diversions, the idle playthingsof grown up people; and you leave off reading at the second page. Now, let us suppose that people come to you as an intelligent manand ask your opinion about war, for instance: whether it is desirable, whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terriblequestion you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself tosome commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, itmakes absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands ofpeople die a violent death, or a natural one: the results are thesame--ashes and oblivion. You and I are building a railway line. What's the use, one may ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing, rising above the hackneyed thing, feeling for the workmen, stealingor not stealing, when we know that this railway line will turn todust within two thousand years, and so on, and so on. . . . Youmust admit that with such a disastrous way of looking at thingsthere can be no progress, no science, no art, nor even thoughtitself. We fancy that we are cleverer than the crowd, and thanShakespeare. In reality our thinking leads to nothing because wehave no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there isnowhere higher to go, so our brain stands at the freezing point--neither up nor down; I was in bondage to these ideas for six years, and by all that is holy, I never read a sensible book all that time, did not gain a ha'porth of wisdom, and did not raise my moralstandard an inch. Was not that disastrous? Moreover, besides beingcorrupted ourselves, we bring poison into the lives of thosesurrounding us. It would be all right if, with our pessimism, werenounced life, went to live in a cave, or made haste to die, but, as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live, feel, lovewomen, bring up children, construct railways!"

"Our thoughts make no one hot or cold, " the student said reluctantly. 

"Ah! there you are again!--do stop it! You have not yet had agood sniff at life. But when you have lived as long as I have youwill know a thing or two! Our theory of life is not so innocent asyou suppose. In practical life, in contact with human beings, itleads to nothing but horrors and follies. It has been my lot topass through experiences which I would not wish a wicked Tatar toendure. "

"For instance?" I asked. 

"For instance?" repeated the engineer. 

He thought a minute, smiled and said:

"For instance, take this example. More correctly, it is not anexample, but a regular drama, with a plot and a dénouement. Anexcellent lesson! Ah, what a lesson!"

He poured out wine for himself and us, emptied his glass, strokedhis broad chest with his open hands, and went on, addressing himselfmore to me than to the student. 

"It was in the year 187--, soon after the war, and when I had justleft the University. I was going to the Caucasus, and on the waystopped for five days in the seaside town of N. I must tell youthat I was born and grew up in that town, and so there is nothingodd in my thinking N. Extraordinarily snug, cosy, and beautiful, though for a man from Petersburg or Moscow, life in it would be asdreary and comfortless as in any Tchuhloma or Kashira. With melancholyI passed by the high school where I had been a pupil; with melancholyI walked about the very familiar park, I made a melancholy attemptto get a nearer look at people I had not seen for a long time--all with the same melancholy. 

"Among other things, I drove out one evening to the so-calledQuarantine. It was a small mangy copse in which, at some forgottentime of plague, there really had been a quarantine station, andwhich was now the resort of summer visitors. It was a drive of threemiles from the town along a good soft road. As one drove along onesaw on the left the blue sea, on the right the unending gloomysteppe; there was plenty of air to breathe, and wide views for theeyes to rest on. The copse itself lay on the seashore. Dismissingmy cabman, I went in at the familiar gates and first turned alongan avenue leading to a little stone summer-house which I had beenfond of in my childhood. In my opinion that round, heavy summer-houseon its clumsy columns, which combined the romantic charm of an oldtomb with the ungainliness of a Sobakevitch, * was the most poeticalnook in the whole town. It stood at the edge above the cliff, andfrom it there was a splendid view of the sea. 

*A character in Gogol's _Dead Souls. --Translator's Note. _

"I sat down on the seat, and, bending over the parapet, looked down. A path ran from the summer-house along the steep, almost overhangingcliff, between the lumps of clay and tussocks of burdock. Where itended, far below on the sandy shore, low waves were languidly foamingand softly purring. The sea was as majestic, as infinite, and asforbidding as seven years before when I left the high school andwent from my native town to the capital; in the distance there wasa dark streak of smoke--a steamer was passing--and except forthis hardly visible and motionless streak and the sea-swallows thatflitted over the water, there was nothing to give life to themonotonous view of sea and sky. To right and left of the summer-housestretched uneven clay cliffs. 

"You know that when a man in a melancholy mood is left _tête-à-tête_with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, thereis always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a convictionthat he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatchesup a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing thatcomes handy. And that, I suppose, is why all convenient solitarynooks like my summer-house are always scrawled over in pencil orcarved with penknives. I remember as though it were to-day; lookingat the parapet I read: 'Ivan Korolkov, May 16, 1876. ' Beside Korolkovsome local dreamer had scribbled freely, adding:

 "'He stood on the desolate ocean's strand, While his soul was filled with imaginings grand. '

And his handwriting was dreamy, limp like wet silk. An individualcalled Kross, probably an insignificant, little man, felt hisunimportance so deeply that he gave full licence to his penknifeand carved his name in deep letters an inch high. I took a pencilout of my pocket mechanically, and I too scribbled on one of thecolumns. All that is irrelevant, however. . . You must forgive me--I don't know how to tell a story briefly. 

"I was sad and a little bored. Boredom, the stillness, and thepurring of the sea gradually brought me to the line of thought wehave been discussing. At that period, towards the end of the'seventies, it had begun to be fashionable with the public, andlater, at the beginning of the 'eighties, it gradually passed fromthe general public into literature, science, and politics. I wasno more than twenty-six at the time, but I knew perfectly well thatlife was aimless and had no meaning, that everything was a deceptionand an illusion, that in its essential nature and results a lifeof penal servitude in Sahalin was not in any way different from alife spent in Nice, that the difference between the brain of a Kantand the brain of a fly was of no real significance, that no one inthis world is righteous or guilty, that everything was stuff andnonsense and damn it all! I lived as though I were doing a favourto some unseen power which compelled me to live, and to which Iseemed to say: 'Look, I don't care a straw for life, but I amliving!' I thought on one definite line, but in all sorts of keys, and in that respect I was like the subtle gourmand who could preparea hundred appetising dishes from nothing but potatoes. There is nodoubt that I was one-sided and even to some extent narrow, but Ifancied at the time that my intellectual horizon had neither beginningnor end, and that my thought was as boundless as the sea. Well, asfar as I can judge by myself, the philosophy of which we are speakinghas something alluring, narcotic in its nature, like tobacco ormorphia. It becomes a habit, a craving. You take advantage of everyminute of solitude to gloat over thoughts of the aimlessness oflife and the darkness of the grave. While I was sitting in thesummer-house, Greek children with long noses were decorously walkingabout the avenues. I took advantage of the occasion and, lookingat them, began reflecting in this style:

"'Why are these children born, and what are they living for? Isthere any sort of meaning in their existence? They grow up, withoutthemselves knowing what for; they will live in this God-forsaken, comfortless hole for no sort of reason, and then they will die. . . . '

"And I actually felt vexed with those children because they werewalking about decorously and talking with dignity, as though theydid not hold their little colourless lives so cheap and knew whatthey were living for. . . . I remember that far away at the end ofan avenue three feminine figures came into sight. Three young ladies, one in a pink dress, two in white, were walking arm-in-arm, talkingand laughing. Looking after them, I thought:

"'It wouldn't be bad to have an affair with some woman for a coupleof days in this dull place. '

"I recalled by the way that it was three weeks since I had visitedmy Petersburg lady, and thought that a passing love affair wouldcome in very appropriately for me just now. The young lady in whitein the middle was rather younger and better looking than hercompanions, and judging by her manners and her laugh, she was ahigh-school girl in an upper form. I looked, not without impurethoughts, at her bust, and at the same time reflected about her:'She will be trained in music and manners, she will be married tosome Greek--God help us!--will lead a grey, stupid, comfortlesslife, will bring into the world a crowd of children without knowingwhy, and then will die. An absurd life!'

"I must say that as a rule I was a great hand at combining my loftyideas with the lowest prose. 

"Thoughts of the darkness of the grave did not prevent me fromgiving busts and legs their full due. Our dear Baron's exalted ideasdo not prevent him from going on Saturdays to Vukolovka on amatoryexpeditions. To tell the honest truth, as far as I remember, myattitude to women was most insulting. Now, when I think of thathigh-school girl, I blush for my thoughts then, but at the time myconscience was perfectly untroubled. I, the son of honourableparents, a Christian, who had received a superior education, notnaturally wicked or stupid, felt not the slightest uneasiness whenI paid women _Blutgeld_, as the Germans call it, or when I followedhighschool girls with insulting looks. . . . The trouble is thatyouth makes its demands, and our philosophy has nothing in principleagainst those demands, whether they are good or whether they areloathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death inevitableis not interested in the struggle against nature or the conceptionof sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will die androt just the same. . . . Secondly, my friends, our philosophy instilseven into very young people what is called reasonableness. Thepredominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongstus. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by pettyanalysis. Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and coldpeople--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity. That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, andcapable of love. Thirdly, our philosophy denies the significanceof each individual personality. It's easy to see that if I deny thepersonality of some Natalya Stepanovna, it's absolutely nothing tome whether she is insulted or not. To-day one insults her dignityas a human being and pays her _Blutgeld_, and next day thinks nomore of her. 

"So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Anotherwoman's figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her headuncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walkedalong the avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking holdof the parapet, looked indifferently below and into the distanceover the sea. As she came in she paid no attention to me, as thoughshe did not notice me. I scrutinised her from foot to head (notfrom head to foot, as one scrutinises men) and found that she wasyoung, not more than five-and-twenty, nice-looking, with a goodfigure, in all probability married and belonging to the class ofrespectable women. She was dressed as though she were at home, butfashionably and with taste, as ladies are, as a rule, in N. 

"'This one would do nicely, ' I thought, looking at her handsomefigure and her arms; 'she is all right. . . . She is probably thewife of some doctor or schoolmaster. . . . '

"But to make up to her--that is, to make her the heroine of oneof those impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone--wasnot easy and, indeed, hardly possible. I felt that as I gazed ather face. The way she looked, and the expression of her face, suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky hadbored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight. She seemed to betired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face hadnot even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which onesees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of thepresence of an unknown man in her vicinity. 

"The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, satdown on a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw thatshe had no thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance, did not arouse in her even simple curiosity. But yet I made up mymind to speak to her, and asked: 'Madam, allow me to ask you atwhat time do the waggonettes go from here to the town?'

"'At ten or eleven, I believe. . . . '"

"I thanked her. She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly therewas a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on herpassionless face. . . . I made haste to assume an indifferentexpression and to fall into a suitable attitude; she was catchingon! She suddenly jumped up from the seat, as though something hadbitten her, and examining me hurriedly, with a gentle smile, askedtimidly:

"'Oh, aren't you Ananyev?'

"'Yes, I am Ananyev, ' I answered. 

"'And don't you recognise me? No?'

"I was a little confused. I looked intently at her, and--wouldyou believe it?--I recognised her not from her face nor her figure, but from her gentle, weary smile. It was Natalya Stepanovna, or, as she was called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head overears in love with seven or eight years before, when I was wearingthe uniform of a high-school boy. The doings of far, vanished days, the days of long ago. . . . I remember this Kisotchka, a thin littlehigh-school girl of fifteen or sixteen, when she was something justfor a schoolboy's taste, created by nature especially for Platoniclove. What a charming little girl she was! Pale, fragile, light--she looked as though a breath would send her flying like a featherto the skies--a gentle, perplexed face, little hands, soft longhair to her belt, a waist as thin as a wasp's--altogether somethingethereal, transparent like moonlight--in fact, from the point ofview of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . . . Wasn't I in lovewith her! I did not sleep at night. I wrote verses. . . . Sometimesin the evenings she would sit on a seat in the park while weschoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently; in response to ourcompliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would shrinknervously from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile gently, and at such times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten. Aswe gazed at her every one of us had a desire to caress her andstroke her like a cat, hence her nickname of Kisotchka. 

"In the course of the seven or eight years since we had met, Kisotchkahad greatly changed. She had grown more robust and stouter, and hadquite lost the resemblance to a soft, fluffy kitten. It was notthat her features looked old or faded, but they had somehow losttheir brilliance and looked sterner, her hair seemed shorter, shelooked taller, and her shoulders were quite twice as broad, andwhat was most striking, there was already in her face the expressionof motherliness and resignation commonly seen in respectable womenof her age, and this, of course, I had never seen in her before. . . . In short, of the school-girlish and the Platonic her face hadkept the gentle smile and nothing more. . . . 

"We got into conversation. Learning that I was already an engineer, Kisotchka was immensely delighted. 

"'How good that is!' she said, looking joyfully into my face. 'Ah, how good! And how splendid you all are! Of all who left with you, not one has been a failure--they have all turned out well. Onean engineer, another a doctor, a third a teacher, another, theysay, is a celebrated singer in Petersburg. . . . You are all splendid, all of you. . . . Ah, how good that is!'

"Kisotchka's eyes shone with genuine goodwill and gladness. She wasadmiring me like an elder sister or a former governess. 'While Ilooked at her sweet face and thought, 'It wouldn't be bad to gethold of her to-day!'

"'Do you remember, Natalya Stepanovna, ' I asked her, 'how I oncebrought you in the park a bouquet with a note in it? You read mynote, and such a look of bewilderment came into your face. . . . '

"'No, I don't remember that, ' she said, laughing. 'But I rememberhow you wanted to challenge Florens to a duel over me. . . . '

"'Well, would you believe it, I don't remember that. . . . '

"'Well, that's all over and done with . . . ' sighed Kisotchka. 'Atone time I was your idol, and now it is my turn to look up to allof you. . . . '

"From further conversation I learned that two years after leavingthe high school, Kisotchka had been married to a resident in thetown who was half Greek, half Russian, had a post either in thebank or in the insurance society, and also carried on a trade incorn. He had a strange surname, something in the style of Populakior Skarandopulo. . . . Goodness only knows--I have forgotten. . . . As a matter of fact, Kisotchka spoke little and with reluctanceabout herself. The conversation was only about me. She asked meabout the College of Engineering, about my comrades, about Petersburg, about my plans, and everything I said moved her to eager delightand exclamations of, 'Oh, how good that is!'

"We went down to the sea and walked over the sands; then when thenight air began to blow chill and damp from the sea we climbed upagain. All the while our talk was of me and of the past. We walkedabout until the reflection of the sunset had died away from thewindows of the summer villas. 

"'Come in and have some tea, ' Kisotchka suggested. 'The samovarmust have been on the table long ago. . . . I am alone at home, 'she said, as her villa came into sight through the green of theacacias. 'My husband is always in the town and only comes home atnight, and not always then, and I must own that I am so dull thatit's simply deadly. '

"I followed her in, admiring her back and shoulders. I was gladthat she was married. Married women are better material for temporarylove affairs than girls. I was also pleased that her husband wasnot at home. At the same time I felt that the affair would not comeoff. . . . 

"We went into the house. The rooms were smallish and had low ceilings, and the furniture was typical of the summer villa (Russians likehaving at their summer villas uncomfortable heavy, dingy furniturewhich they are sorry to throw away and have nowhere to put), butfrom certain details I could observe that Kisotchka and her husbandwere not badly off, and must be spending five or six thousand roublesa year. I remember that in the middle of the room which Kisotchkacalled the dining-room there was a round table, supported for somereason on six legs, and on it a samovar and cups. At the edge ofthe table lay an open book, a pencil, and an exercise book. I glancedat the book and recognised it as 'Malinin and Burenin's ArithmeticalExamples. ' It was open, as I now remember, at the 'Rules of CompoundInterest. '

"'To whom are you giving lessons?' I asked Kisotchka. '

"'Nobody, ' she answered. 'I am just doing some. . . . I have nothingto do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums. '

"'Have you any children?'

"'I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week. '

"We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how goodit was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success. And the more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, thestronger was my conviction that I should go away without havinggained my object. I was a connoisseur in love affairs in those days, and could accurately gauge my chances of success. You can boldlyreckon on success if you are tracking down a fool or a woman asmuch on the look out for new experiences and sensations as yourself, or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If you come across asensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression of wearysubmission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your presence, and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To succeedin that case needs longer than one day. 

"And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than byday. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked metoo, and the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband notat home, no servants visible, stillness around. . . . Though I hadlittle confidence in success, I made up my mind to begin the attackanyway. First of all it was necessary to get into a familiar toneand to change Kisotchka's lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolousone. 

"'Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna, ' I began. 'Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for thesake of old times, to call you Kisotchka. '

"She allowed me. 

"'Tell me, please, Kisotchka, ' I went on, 'what is the matter withall the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days theywere all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asksabout anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked athuman nature. . . . One young lady has eloped with an officer;another has run away and carried off a high-school boy with her;another--a married woman--has run away from her husband withan actor; a fourth has left her husband and gone off with an officer, and so on and so on. It's a regular epidemic! If it goes on likethis there won't be a girl or a young woman left in your town!'

"I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed inresponse I should have gone on in this style: 'You had better lookout, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!'She would have dropped her eyes and said: 'As though anyone wouldcare to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking. . . . ' And I should have said: 'Nonsense, Kisotchka--I for oneshould be delighted!' And so on in that style, and it would allhave gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; onthe contrary, she looked grave and sighed. 

"'All you have been told is true, ' she said. 'My cousin Sonya ranaway from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is wrong. . . . Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but I donot condemn them or blame them. . . . Circumstances are sometimestoo strong for anyone!'

"'That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce aregular epidemic?'

"'It's very simple and easy to understand, ' replied Kisotchka, raising her eyebrows. 'There is absolutely nothing for us educatedgirls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to goto the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact, as men do. They have to be married. . . . And whom would you havethem marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to theUniversity, never to return to your native town again, and you marryin Petersburg or Moscow, while the girls remain. . . . To whom arethey to be married? Why, in the absence of decent cultured men, goodness knows what sort of men they marry--stockbrokers and suchpeople of all kinds, who can do nothing but drink and get into rowsat the club. . . . A girl married like that, at random. . . . Andwhat is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated, cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meetsa cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor--well, shegets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runsaway from her husband. And one can't condemn her!'

"'If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?' I asked. 

"'Yes, of course, ' said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know everygirl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogetherlife is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life isstifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Herethey laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but ifthey could see into her soul they would not laugh. . . . '"

Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one, then howled miserably and dashed with all his force against thewall of the hut. . . . Ananyev's face was puckered with pity; hebroke off his story and went out. For two minutes he could be heardoutside comforting his dog. "Good dog! poor dog!"

"Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking, " said Von Schtenberg, laughing. "He is a good fellow, " he added after a brief silence. 

Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smilingand stroking his chest, went on:

"And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I putoff my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resignedmyself to my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What ismore, under the influence of Kisotchka's voice, the evening air, and the stillness, I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimentalmood. I remember I sat in an easy chair by the wide-open window andglanced at the trees and darkened sky. The outlines of the acaciasand the lime trees were just the same as they had been eight yearsbefore; just as then, in the days of my childhood, somewhere faraway there was the tinkling of a wretched piano, and the public hadjust the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the avenues, butthe people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked nownot my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboysand young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. Whento my inquiries about acquaintances I five times received fromKisotchka the answer, 'He is dead, ' my melancholy changed into thefeeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sittingthere at the window, looking at the promenading public and listeningto the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first timein my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replaceanother, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eightyears may have in a man's life!

"Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off, grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about somethingor other. Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness. And time passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines ofthe acacias and lime trees melted into one, the public was no longerwalking up and down the avenues, the piano was silent and the onlysound was the even murmur of the sea. 

"Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make muchof him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractiveand he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talkand talk and talk. . . . His hosts cannot keep their eyes open, it's past their bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That waswhat I did. Once I chanced to look at the clock; it was half-pastten. I began saying good-bye. 

"'Have another glass before your walk, ' said Kisotchka. 

"I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot itwas time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men'svoices, footsteps and the clank of spurs. 

"'I think my husband has come in . . . . ' said Kisotchka listening. 

"The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I sawtwo men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout, solid, dark man with a hooked nose, wearing a straw hat, and theother a young officer in a white tunic. As they passed the doorthey both glanced casually and indifferently at Kisotchka and me, and I fancied both of them were drunk. 

"'She told you a lie then, and you believed her!' we heard a loudvoice with a marked nasal twang say a minute later. 'To begin with, it wasn't at the big club but at the little one. '

"'You are angry, Jupiter, so you are wrong . . . . ' said anothervoice, obviously the officer's, laughing and coughing. 'I say, canI stay the night? Tell me honestly, shall I be in your way?'

"'What a question! Not only you can, but you must. What will youhave, beer or wine?'

"They were sitting two rooms away from us, talking loudly, andapparently feeling no interest in Kisotchka or her visitor. Aperceptible change came over Kisotchka on her husband's arrival. At first she flushed red, then her face wore a timid, guiltyexpression; she seemed to be troubled by some anxiety, and I beganto fancy that she was ashamed to show me her husband and wanted meto go. 

"I began taking leave. Kisotchka saw me to the front door. I rememberwell her gentle mournful smile and kind patient eyes as she pressedmy hand and said:

"'Most likely we shall never see each other again. Well, God giveyou every blessing. Thank you!'

"Not one sigh, not one fine phrase. As she said good-bye she washolding the candle in her hand; patches of light danced over herface and neck, as though chasing her mournful smile. I pictured tomyself the old Kisotchka whom one used to want to stroke like acat, I looked intently at the present Kisotchka, and for some reasonrecalled her words: 'Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate haslaid on him. ' And I had a pang at my heart. I instinctively guessedhow it was, and my conscience whispered to me that I, in my happinessand indifference, was face to face with a good, warm-hearted, lovingcreature, who was broken by suffering. 

"I said good-bye and went to the gate. By now it was quite dark. In the south the evenings draw in early in July and it gets darkrapidly. Towards ten o'clock it is so dark that you can't see aninch before your nose. I lighted a couple of dozen matches before, almost groping, I found my way to the gate. 

"'Cab!' I shouted, going out of the gate; not a sound, not a sighin answer. . . . 'Cab, ' I repeated, 'hey, Cab!'

"But there was no cab of any description. The silence of the grave. I could hear nothing but the murmur of the drowsy sea and the beatingof my heart from the wine. Lifting my eyes to the sky I found nota single star. It was dark and sullen. Evidently the sky was coveredwith clouds. For some reason I shrugged my shoulders, smilingfoolishly, and once more, not quite so resolutely, shouted for acab. 

"The echo answered me. A walk of three miles across open countryand in the pitch dark was not an agreeable prospect. Before makingup my mind to walk, I spent a long time deliberating and shoutingfor a cab; then, shrugging my shoulders, I walked lazily back tothe copse, with no definite object in my mind. It was dreadfullydark in the copse. Here and there between the trees the windows ofthe summer villas glowed a dull red. A raven, disturbed by my stepsand the matches with which I lighted my way to the summer-house, flew from tree to tree and rustled among the leaves. I felt vexedand ashamed, and the raven seemed to understand this, and croaked'krrra!' I was vexed that I had to walk, and ashamed that I hadstayed on at Kisotchka's, chatting like a boy. 

"I made my way to the summer-house, felt for the seat and sat down. Far below me, behind a veil of thick darkness, the sea kept up alow angry growl. I remember that, as though I were blind, I couldsee neither sky nor sea, nor even the summer-house in which I wassitting. And it seemed to me as though the whole world consistedonly of the thoughts that were straying through my head, dizzy fromthe wine, and of an unseen power murmuring monotonously somewherebelow. And afterwards, as I sank into a doze, it began to seem thatit was not the sea murmuring, but my thoughts, and that the wholeworld consisted of nothing but me. And concentrating the whole worldin myself in this way, I thought no more of cabs, of the town, andof Kisotchka, and abandoned myself to the sensation I was so fondof: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation when you feel thatin the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone exist. It is aproud, demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians whose thoughtsand sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as their plains, their forests, and their snow. If I had been an artist I shouldcertainly have depicted the expression of a Russian's face when hesits motionless and, with his legs under him and his head claspedin his hands, abandons himself to this sensation. . . . And togetherwith this sensation come thoughts of the aimlessness of life, ofdeath, and of the darkness of the grave. . . . The thoughts are notworth a brass farthing, but the expression of face must be fine. . . . 

"While I was sitting and dozing, unable to bring myself to get up--I was warm and comfortable--all at once, against the evenmonotonous murmur of the sea, as though upon a canvas, sounds beganto grow distinct which drew my attention from myself. . . . Someonewas coming hurriedly along the avenue. Reaching the summer-housethis someone stopped, gave a sob like a little girl, and said inthe voice of a weeping child: 'My God, when will it all end! MercifulHeavens!'

"Judging from the voice and the weeping I took it to be a littlegirl of ten or twelve. She walked irresolutely into the summer-house, sat down, and began half-praying, half-complaining aloud. . . . 

"'Merciful God!' she said, crying, 'it's unbearable. It's beyondall endurance! I suffer in silence, but I want to live too. . . . Oh, my God! My God!'

"And so on in the same style. 

"I wanted to look at the child and speak to her. So as not tofrighten her I first gave a loud sigh and coughed, then cautiouslystruck a match. . . . There was a flash of bright light in thedarkness, which lighted up the weeping figure. It was Kisotchka!"

"Marvels upon marvels!" said Von Schtenberg with a sigh. "Blacknight, the murmur of the sea; she in grief, he with a sensation ofworld--solitude. . . . It's too much of a good thing. . . . Youonly want Circassians with daggers to complete it. "

"I am not telling you a tale, but fact. "

"Well, even if it is a fact . . . It all proves nothing, and thereis nothing new in it. . . . "

"Wait a little before you find fault! Let me finish, " said Ananyev, waving his hand with vexation; "don't interfere, please! I am nottelling you, but the doctor. . . . Well, " he went on, addressingme and glancing askance at the student who bent over his books andseemed very well satisfied at having gibed at the engineer--"well, Kisotchka was not surprised or frightened at seeing me. It seemedas though she had known beforehand that she would find me in thesummer-house. She was breathing in gasps and trembling all over asthough in a fever, while her tear-stained face, so far as I coulddistinguish it as I struck match after match, was not the intelligent, submissive weary face I had seen before, but something different, which I cannot understand to this day. It did not express pain, noranxiety, nor misery--nothing of what was expressed by her wordsand her tears. . . . I must own that, probably because I did notunderstand it, it looked to me senseless and as though she weredrunk. 

"'I can't bear it, ' muttered Kisotchka in the voice of a cryingchild. 'It's too much for me, Nikolay Anastasyitch. Forgive me, Nikolav Anastasyitch. I can't go on living like this. . . . I amgoing to the town to my mother's. . . . Take me there. . . . Takeme there, for God's sake!'

"In the presence of tears I can neither speak nor be silent. I wasflustered and muttered some nonsense trying to comfort her. 

"'No, no; I will go to my mother's, ' said Kisotchka resolutely, getting up and clutching my arm convulsively (her hands and hersleeves were wet with tears). 'Forgive me, Nikolay Anastasyitch, Iam going. . . . I can bear no more. . . . '

"'Kisotchka, but there isn't a single cab, ' I said. 'How can yougo?'

"'No matter, I'll walk. . . . It's not far. I can't bear it. . . . '

"I was embarrassed, but not touched. Kisotchka's tears, her trembling, and the blank expression of her face suggested to me a trivial, French or Little Russian melodrama, in which every ounce of cheapshallow feeling is washed down with pints of tears. 

"I didn t understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I oughtto have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear mysilence might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try topersuade her not to go to her mother's, but to stay at home. Whenpeople cry, they don't like their tears to be seen. And I lightedmatch after match and went on striking till the box was empty. WhatI wanted with this ungenerous illumination, I can't conceive tothis day. Cold-hearted people are apt to be awkward, and even stupid. 

"In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off. Going out of thegate, we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the softdusty road. It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed tothe darkness, I began to distinguish the silhouettes of the oldgaunt oaks and lime trees which bordered the road. The jagged, precipitous cliffs, intersected here and there by deep, narrowravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a black streak on theright. Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like sittingfigures. It was uncanny. I looked sideways suspiciously at thecliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the stillness of the countryalarmed my imagination. Kisotchka did not speak. She was stilltrembling, and before she had gone half a mile she was exhaustedwith walking and was out of breath. I too was silent. 

"Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was adeserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in whichthere had once been a steam flour mill. It stood solitary on thecliff, and by day it could be seen for a long distance, both by seaand by land. Because it was deserted and no one lived in it, andbecause there was an echo in it which distinctly repeated the stepsand voices of passers-by, it seemed mysterious. Picture me in thedark night arm-in-arm with a woman who was running away from herhusband near this tall long monster which repeated the sound ofevery step I took and stared at me fixedly with its hundred blackwindows. A normal young man would have been moved to romanticfeelings in such surroundings, but I looked at the dark windows andthought: 'All this is very impressive, but time will come when ofthat building and of Kisntchka and her troubles and of me with mythoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . . All is nonsenseand vanity. . . . '

"When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, tookher arm out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, butin her own:

"'Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you. ButI am terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy!It's impossible to imagine it! I don't tell you about it becauseone can't talk about it. . . . Such a life, such a life! . . . '

"Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned asthough she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain. 

"'Such a life!' she repeated with horror, with the cadence and thesouthern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women givesto emotional speech the effect of singing. 'It is a life! Ah, myGod, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!'

"As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged hershoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. Shespoke as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and remindedme of a celebrated Little Russian actress. 

"'Great God, it is as though I were in a pit, ' she went on. 'Ifone could live for one minute in happiness as other people live!Oh, my God, my God! I have come to such disgrace that before astranger I am running away from my husband by night, like somedisreputable creature! Can I expect anything good after that?'

"As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyedthat she was not on good terms with her husband. 'It would be niceto have got on into relations with her!' flitted through my mind;and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all theway and grew more and more alluring. 

"About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by thecemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stooda stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived. We passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached thegates of the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:

"'I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God blessyou, but I am going back. I am not frightened. '

"'Well, what next!' I said, disconcerted. 'If you are going, youhad better go!'

"'I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing thatmattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put allsort of ideas into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, andmy husband said rude things to me before that officer, and I couldnot bear it. . . . And what's the good of my going to the town tomy mother's? Will that make me any happier? I must go back. . . . But never mind . . . Let us go on, ' said Kisotchka, and she laughed. 'It makes no difference!'

"I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was aninscription: 'The hour will come wherein all they that lie in thegrave will hear the voice of the Son of God. ' I knew very well thatsooner of later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer inthe white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard;I knew that an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walkingbeside me. All this I recognised distinctly, but at the same timeI was troubled by an oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchkawould turn back, and that I should not manage to say to her whathad to be said. Never at any other time in my life have thoughtsof a higher order been so closely interwoven with the basest animalprose as on that night. . . . It was horrible!

"Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the HighStreet, where Kisotchka's mother lived, we dismissed the cab andwalked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, whileI looked at her, and I raged at myself, 'Why don't you begin? Now'sthe time!' About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying, Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears. 

"'Nikolay Anastasyitch!' she said, crying and laughing and lookingat me with wet shining eyes, 'I shall never forget your sympathy. . . . How good you are! All of you are so splendid--all of you!Honest, great-hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!'

"She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense ofthe word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with theemotion and enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearlywritten regret that she so rarely saw such people, and that God hadnot vouchsafed her the bliss of being the wife of one of them. Shemuttered, 'Ah, how splendid it is!' The childish gladness on herface, the tears, the gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escapedfrom under the kerchief, and the kerchief itself thrown carelesslyover her head, in the light of the street lamp reminded me of theold Kisotchka whom one had wanted to stroke like a kitten. 

"I could not restrain myself, and began stroking her hair, hershoulders, and her hands. 

"'Kisotchka, what do you want?' I muttered. 'I'll go to the endsof the earth with you if you like! I will take you out of this holeand give you happiness. I love you. . . . Let us go, my sweet? Yes?Will you?'

"Kisotchka's face was flooded with bewilderment. She stepped backfrom the street lamp and, completely overwhelmed, gazed at me withwide-open eyes. I gripped her by the arm, began showering kisseson her face, her neck, her shoulders, and went on making vows andpromises. In love affairs vows and promises are almost a physiologicalnecessity. There's no getting on without them. Sometimes you knowyou are lying and that promises are not necessary, but still youvow and protest. Kisotchka, utterly overwhelmed, kept staggeringback and gazing at me with round eyes. 

"'Please don't! Please don't!' she muttered, holding me off withher hands. 

"I clasped her tightly in my arms. All at once she broke intohysterical tears. And her face had the same senseless blank expressionthat I had seen in the summer-house when I lighted the matches. Without asking her consent, preventing her from speaking, I draggedher forcibly towards my hotel. She seemed almost swooning and didnot walk, but I took her under the arms and almost carried her. . . . I remember, as we were going up the stairs, some man with a redband in his cap looked wonderingly at me and bowed to Kisotchka. . . . "

Ananvev flushed crimson and paused. He walked up and down near thetable in silence, scratched the back of his head with an air ofvexation, and several times shrugged his shoulders and twitched hisshoulder-blades, while a shiver ran down his huge back. The memorywas painful and made him ashamed, and he was struggling with himself. 

"It's horrible!" he said, draining a glass of wine and shaking hishead. "I am told that in every introductory lecture on women'sdiseases the medical students are admonished to remember that eachone of them has a mother, a sister, a fiancée, before undressingand examining a female patient. . . . That advice would be verygood not only for medical students but for everyone who in one wayor another has to deal with a woman's life. Now that I have a wifeand a little daughter, oh, how well I understand that advice! HowI understand it, my God! You may as well hear the rest, though. . . . As soon as she had become my mistress, Kisotchka's view of theposition was very different from mine. First of all she felt forme a deep and passionate love. What was for me an ordinary amatoryepisode was for her an absolute revolution in her life. I remember, it seemed to me that she had gone out of her mind. Happy for thefirst time in her life, looking five years younger, with an inspiredenthusiastic face, not knowing what to do with herself for happiness, she laughed and cried and never ceased dreaming aloud how next daywe would set off for the Caucasus, then in the autumn to Petersburg;how we would live afterwards. 

"'Don't worry yourself about my husband, ' she said to reassure me. 'He is bound to give me a divorce. Everyone in the town knows thathe is living with the elder Kostovitch. We will get a divorce andbe married. '

"When women love they become acclimatised and at home with peoplevery quickly, like cats. Kisotchka had only spent an hour and ahalf in my room when she already felt as though she were at homeand was ready to treat my property as though it were her own. Shepacked my things in my portmanteau, scolded me for not hanging mynew expensive overcoat on a peg instead of flinging it on a chair, and so on. 

"I looked at her, listened, and felt weariness and vexation. I wasconscious of a slight twinge of horror at the thought that arespectable, honest, and unhappy woman had so easily, after somethree or four hours, succumbed to the first man she met. As arespectable man, you see, I didn't like it. Then, too, I wasunpleasantly impressed by the fact that women of Kisotchka's sort, not deep or serious, are too much in love with life, and exalt whatis in reality such a trifle as love for a man to the level of bliss, misery, a complete revolution in life. . . . Moreover, now that Iwas satisfied, I was vexed with myself for having been so stupidas to get entangled with a woman whom I should have to deceive. Andin spite of my disorderly life I must observe that I could not beartelling lies. 

"I remember that Kisotchka sat down at my feet, laid her head onmy knees, and, looking at me with shining, loving eyes, asked:

"'Kolya, do you love me? Very, very much?'

"And she laughed with happiness. . . . This struck me as sentimental, affected, and not clever; and meanwhile I was already inclined tolook for 'depth of thought' before everything. 

"'Kisotchka, you had better go home, ' I said, or else your peoplewill be sure to miss you and will be looking for you all over thetown; and it would be awkward for you to go to your mother in themorning. '

"Kisotchka agreed. At parting we arranged to meet at midday nextmorning in the park, and the day after to set off together toPyatigorsk. I went into the street to see her home, and I rememberthat I caressed her with genuine tenderness on the way. There wasa minute when I felt unbearably sorry for her, for trusting me soimplicitly, and I made up my mind that I would really take her toPyatigorsk, but remembering that I had only six hundred roubles inmy portmanteau, and that it would be far more difficult to breakit off with her in the autumn than now, I made haste to suppressmy compassion. 

"We reached the house where Kisotchka's mother lived. I pulled atthe bell. When footsteps were heard at the other side of the doorKisotchka suddenly looked grave, glanced upwards to the sky, madethe sign of the Cross over me several times and, clutching my hand, pressed it to her lips. 

"'Till to-morrow, ' she said, and disappeared into the house. 

"I crossed to the opposite pavement and from there looked at thehouse. At first the windows were in darkness, then in one of thewindows there was the glimmer of the faint bluish flame of a newlylighted candle; the flame grew, gave more light, and I saw shadowsmoving about the rooms together with it. 

"'They did not expect her, ' I thought. 

"Returning to my hotel room I undressed, drank off a glass of redwine, ate some fresh caviare which I had bought that day in thebazaar, went to bed in a leisurely way, and slept the sound, untroubled sleep of a tourist. 

"In the morning I woke up with a headache and in a bad humour. Something worried me. 

"'What's the matter?' I asked myself, trying to explain my uneasiness. 'What's upsetting me?'

"And I put down my uneasiness to the dread that Kisotchka mightturn up any minute and prevent my going away, and that I shouldhave to tell lies and act a part before her. I hurriedly dressed, packed my things, and left the hotel, giving instructions to theporter to take my luggage to the station for the seven o'clock trainin the evening. I spent the whole day with a doctor friend and leftthe town that evening. As you see, my philosophy did not preventme from taking to my heels in a mean and treacherous flight. . . . 

"All the while that I was at my friend's, and afterwards drivingto the station, I was tormented by anxiety. I fancied that I wasafraid of meeting with Kisotchka and a scene. In the station Ipurposely remained in the toilet room till the second bell rang, and while I was making my way to my compartment, I was oppressedby a feeling as though I were covered all over with stolen things. With what impatience and terror I waited for the third bell!

"At last the third bell that brought my deliverance rang at last, the train moved; we passed the prison, the barracks, came out intothe open country, and yet, to my surprise, the feeling of uneasinessstill persisted, and still I felt like a thief passionately longingto escape. It was queer. To distract my mind and calm myself Ilooked out of the window. The train ran along the coast. The seawas smooth, and the turquoise sky, almost half covered with thetender, golden crimson light of sunset, was gaily and serenelymirrored in it. Here and there fishing boats and rafts made blackpatches on its surface. The town, as clean and beautiful as a toy, stood on the high cliff, and was already shrouded in the mist ofevening. The golden domes of its churches, the windows and thegreenery reflected the setting sun, glowing and melting likeshimmering gold. . . . The scent of the fields mingled with thesoft damp air from the sea. 

"The train flew rapidly along. I heard the laughter of passengersand guards. Everyone was good-humoured and light-hearted, yet myunaccountable uneasiness grew greater and greater. . . . I lookedat the white mist that covered the town and I imagined how a womanwith a senseless blank face was hurrying up and down in that mistby the churches and the houses, looking for me and moaning, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' in the voice of a little girl or the cadencesof a Little Russian actress. I recalled her grave face and biganxious eyes as she made the sign of the Cross over me, as thoughI belonged to her, and mechanically I looked at the hand which shehad kissed the day before. 

"'Surely I am not in love?' I asked myself, scratching my hand. 

"Only as night came on when the passengers were asleep and I wasleft _tête-à-tête_ with my conscience, I began to understand whatI had not been able to grasp before. In the twilight of the railwaycarriage the image of Kisotchka rose before me, haunted me and Irecognised clearly that I had committed a crime as bad as murder. My conscience tormented me. To stifle this unbearable feeling, Iassured myself that everything was nonsense and vanity, that Kisotchkaand I would die and decay, that her grief was nothing in comparisonwith death, and so on and so on . . . And that if you come to that, there is no such thing as freewill, and that therefore I was notto blame. But all these arguments only irritated me and wereextraordinarily quickly crowded out by other thoughts. There was amiserable feeling in the hand that Kisotchka had kissed. . . . Ikept lying down and getting up again, drank vodka at the stations, forced myself to eat bread and butter, fell to assuring myself againthat life had no meaning, but nothing was of any use. A strange andif you like absurd ferment was going on in my brain. The mostincongruous ideas crowded one after another in disorder, gettingmore and more tangled, thwarting each other, and I, the thinker, 'with my brow bent on the earth, ' could make out nothing and couldnot find my bearings in this mass of essential and non-essentialideas. It appeared that I, the thinker, had not mastered the techniqueof thinking, and that I was no more capable of managing my own brainthan mending a watch. For the first time in my life I was reallythinking eagerly and intensely, and that seemed to me so monstrousthat I said to myself: 'I am going off my head. ' A man whose braindoes not work at all times, but only at painful moments, is oftenhaunted by the thought of madness. 

"I spent a day and a night in this misery, then a second night, andlearning from experience how little my philosophy was to me, I cameto my senses and realised at last what sort of a creature I was. Isaw that my ideas were not worth a brass farthing, and that beforemeeting Kisotchka I had not begun to think and had not even aconception of what thinking in earnest meant; now through sufferingI realised that I had neither convictions nor a definite moralstandard, nor heart, nor reason; my whole intellectual and moralwealth consisted of specialist knowledge, fragments, useless memories, other people's ideas--and nothing else; and my mental processeswere as lacking in complexity, as useless and as rudimentary as aYakut's. . . . If I had disliked lying, had not stolen, had notmurdered, and, in fact, made obviously gross mistakes, that was notowing to my convictions--I had none, but because I was in bondage, hand and foot, to my nurse's fairy tales and to copy-book morals, which had entered into my flesh and blood and without my noticingit guided me in life, though I looked on them as absurd. . . . 

"I realised that I was not a thinker, not a philosopher, but simplya dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain withpromise of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six, undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed downby any stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with informationof a sort in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiologicalcraving for exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all atonce quite casually the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of lifeand the darkness beyond the tomb descends upon it. It greedily sucksit in, puts its whole outlook at its disposal and begins playingwith it, like a cat with a mouse. There is neither learning norsystem in the brain, but that does not matter. It deals with thegreat ideas with its own innate powers, like a self-educated man, and before a month has passed the owner of the brain can turn apotato into a hundred dainty dishes, and fancies himself aphilosopher . . . . 

"Our generation has carried this dilettantism, this playing withserious ideas into science, into literature, into politics, andinto everything which it is not too lazy to go into, and with itsdilettantism has introduced, too, its coldness, its boredom, andits one-sidedness and, as it seems to me, it has already succeededin developing in the masses a new hitherto non-existent attitudeto serious ideas. 

"I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance, thanks to a misfortune. My normal thinking, so it seems to me now, dates from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when myconscience sent me flying back to N. , when with no philosophicalsubleties I repented, besought Kisotchka's forgiveness like a naughtyboy and wept with her. . . . "

Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka. 

"H'm. . . . " the student filtered through his teeth when the engineerhad finished. "That's the sort of thing that happens. "

His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev'sstory had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer aftera moment's pause, began expounding his view again and repeatingwhat he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got upfrom the table and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and beganundressing. 

"You look as though you have really convinced some one this time, "he said irritably. 

"Me convince anybody!" said the engineer. "My dear soul, do yousuppose I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you isimpossible. You can reach conviction only by way of personalexperience and suffering!"

"And then--it's queer logic!" grumbled the student as he put onhis nightshirt. "The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinousfor the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old;it's as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . . Where do theold get this privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas arepoison, they are equally poisonous for all?"

"Oh, no, my dear soul, don't say so!" said the engineer with a slywink. "Don't say so. In the first place, old men are not dilettanti. Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but fromthe depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustivelystudied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have madeno end of mistakes, in fact--when they have climbed the wholeladder from bottom to top. Their pessimism has both personalexperience and sound philosophic training behind it. Secondly, thepessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, asit does with you and me, but of _Weltschmertz_, of suffering; itrests in them on a Christian foundation because it is derived fromlove for humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirelyfree from the egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti. You despiselife because its meaning and its object are hidden just from you, and you are only afraid of your own death, while the real thinkeris unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he is afraidfor all men. For instance, there is living not far from here theCrown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a nice old man. At onetime he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; thedevil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably cleverfellow and in philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and heis continually reading now. Well, we came across him lately in theGruzovsky district. . . . They were laying the sleepers and railsjust at the time. It's not a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch, not being a specialist, looked at it as though it were a conjuringtrick. It takes an experienced workman less than a minute to lay asleeper and fix a rail on it. The workmen were in good form andreally were working smartly and rapidly; one rascal in particularbrought his hammer down with exceptional smartness on the head ofthe nail and drove it in at one blow, though the handle of thehammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a footlong. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved, and said to me with tears in his eyes:

"'What a pity that these splendid men will die!' Such pessimism Iunderstand. "

"All that proves nothing and explains nothing, " said the student, covering himself up with a sheet; "all that is simply poundingliquid in a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can be provedby words. "

He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowningirritably, said quickly:

"One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and toascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disproveanything you like with words, and people will soon perfect thetechnique of language to such a point that they will prove withmathematical certainty that twice two is seven. I am fond of readingand listening, but as to believing, no thank you; I can't, and Idon't want to. I believe only in God, but as for you, if you talkto me till the Second Coming and seduce another five hundredKisothchkas, I shall believe in you only when I go out of my mind. . . . Goodnight. "

The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towardsthe wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did notwant to speak or listen. The argument ended at that. 

Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and Isaw the lights once more. 

"We have tired you out with our chatter, " said Ananyev, yawning andlooking at the sky. "Well, my good sir! The only pleasure we havein this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . . What anembankment, Lord have mercy on us!" he said admiringly, as weapproached the embankment; "it is more like Mount Ararat than anembankment. "

He paused for a little, then said: "Those lights remind the Baronof the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughtsof man. . . . You know the thoughts of each individual man arescattered like that in disorder, stretch in a straight line towardssome goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding lighton anything, without lighting up the night, they vanish somewherefar beyond old age. But enough philosophising! It's time to gobye-bye. "

When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to takehis bed. 

"Oh please!" he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart. "I entreat you, and don't worry about me! I can sleep anywhere, and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do--it's afavour!"

I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the tableand set to work on the plans. 

"We fellows have no time for sleep, " he said in a low voice when Ihad got into bed and shut my eyes. "When a man has a wife and twochildren he can't think of sleep. One must think now of food andclothes and saving for the future. And I have two of them, a littleson and a daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly littleface. He's not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities, I assure you. . . . I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . . Ah, my children, my children!"

He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and beganlooking at them. I fell asleep. 

I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. VonSchtenberg with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in thedoorway dressed in his underclothes, talking loudly with some one. . . . It was getting light. A gloomy dark blue dawn was peepingin at the door, at the windows, and through the crevices in the hutwalls, and casting a faint light on my bed, on the table with thepapers, and on Ananyev. Stretched on the floor on a cloak, with aleather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep with hisfleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that Ipitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleepin the same room with him every night. 

"Why on earth are we to take them?" shouted Von Schtenberg. "It hasnothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the cauldronscome?"

"From Nikitin . . . " a bass voice answered gruffly. 

"Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That's not in ourdepartment. What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!"

"Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already, " said the bassvoice still more gruffly. "Yesterday we were the whole day lookingfor him down the line, and were told at his hut that he had goneto the Dymkovsky section. Please take them, your honour! How muchlonger are we to go carting them about? We go carting them on andon along the line, and see no end to it. "

"What is it?" Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his headquickly. 

"They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin's, " said the student, "and he is begging us to take them. And what business is it of oursto take them?"

"Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right! The horses havebeen two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry. Are we to take them back, or what? The railway ordered the cauldrons, so it ought to take them. . . . "

"Can't you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to dowith us? Go on to Tchalisov!"

"What is it? Who's there?" Ananyev asked huskily again. "Damnationtake them all, " he said, getting up and going to the door. "Whatis it?"

I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut. Ananyev andthe student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrilyand impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing beforethem bare-headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently notunderstanding them. Both faces looked preoccupied with workadaycares. 

"What use are your cauldrons to me, " shouted Ananyev. "Am I to putthem on my head, or what? If you can't find Tchalisov, find hisassistant, and leave us in peace!"

Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of theprevious night. The workaday expression vanished from his sleepyface and a look of mental inertia came into it. He waved the peasantoff and walked away absorbed in thought. 

It was a cloudy morning. On the line where the lights had beengleaming the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep, were swarming. There was a sound of voices and the squeaking ofwheelbarrows. The working day was beginning. One poor little nagharnessed with cord was already plodding towards the embankment, tugging with its neck, and dragging along a cartful of sand. 

I began saying good-bye. . . . A great deal had been said in thenight, but I carried away with me no answer to any question, andin the morning, of the whole conversation there remained in mymemory, as in a filter, only the lights and the image of Kisotchka. As I got on the horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for thelast time, at the hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-lookingeyes, at the workmen flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at theembankment, at the little nag straining with its neck, and thought:

"There is no making out anything in this world. "

And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when alittle later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plainand the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which werediscussed in the night. I pondered while the sun-scorched plain, the immense sky, the oak forest, dark on the horizon and the hazydistance, seemed saying to me:

"Yes, there's no understanding anything in this world!"

The sun began to rise. . . . 

A STORY WITHOUT AN END

SOON after two o'clock one night, long ago, the cook, pale andagitated, rushed unexpectedly into my study and informed me thatMadame Mimotih, the old woman who owned the house next door, wassitting in her kitchen. 

"She begs you to go in to her, sir . . . " said the cook, panting. "Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . . He has shothimself or hanged himself. . . . "

"What can I do?" said I. "Let her go for the doctor or for thepolice!"

"How is she to look for a doctor! She can hardly breathe, and shehas huddled under the stove, she is so frightened. . . . You hadbetter go round, sir. "

I put on my coat and hat and went to Madame Mimotih's house. Thegate towards which I directed my steps was open. After pausingbeside it, uncertain what to do, I went into the yard without feelingfor the porter's bell. In the dark and dilapidated porch the doorwas not locked. I opened it and walked into the entry. Here therewas not a glimmer of light, it was pitch dark, and, moreover, therewas a marked smell of incense. Groping my way out of the entry Iknocked my elbow against something made of iron, and in the darknessstumbled against a board of some sort which almost fell to thefloor. At last the door covered with torn baize was found, and Iwent into a little hall. 

I am not at the moment writing a fairy tale, and am far from intendingto alarm the reader, but the picture I saw from the passage wasfantastic and could only have been drawn by death. Straight beforeme was a door leading to a little drawing-room. Three five-kopeckwax candles, standing in a row, threw a scanty light on the fadedslate-coloured wallpaper. A coffin was standing on two tables inthe middle of the little room. The two candles served only to lightup a swarthy yellow face with a half-open mouth and sharp nose. Billows of muslin were mingled in disorder from the face to thetips of the two shoes, and from among the billows peeped out twopale motionless hands, holding a wax cross. The dark gloomy cornersof the little drawing-room, the ikons behind the coffin, the coffinitself, everything except the softly glimmering lights, were stillas death, as the tomb itself. 

"How strange!" I thought, dumbfoundered by the unexpected panoramaof death. "Why this haste? The lodger has hardly had time to hanghimself, or shoot himself, and here is the coffin already!"

I looked round. On the left there was a door with a glass panel;on the right a lame hat-stand with a shabby fur coat on it. . . . 

"Water. . . . " I heard a moan. 

The moan came from the left, beyond the door with the glass panel. I opened the door and walked into a little dark room with a solitarywindow, through which there came a faint light from a street lampoutside. 

"Is anyone here?" I asked. 

And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what Isaw while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stainedfloor at my very feet. If my step had been a longer one I shouldhave trodden on him. With his legs thrust forward and his handspressed on the floor, he was making an effort to raise his handsomeface, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In thebig eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain, and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face. That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the handshe leaned upon, his hard breathing and his clenched teeth, showedthat he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his right hand in apool of blood lay a revolver. 

"Don't go away, " I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out. "There's a candle on the table. "

I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room notknowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor, and it seemed to me that I had seen him before. 

"The pain is insufferable, " he whispered, "and I haven't the strengthto shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will. "

I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting himfrom the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leathercovered sofa and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and coldwhen I took off his clothes; the wound which I saw was not in keepingeither with his shivering nor the expression on his face. It was atrifling one. The bullet had passed between the fifth and sixthribs on the left side, only piercing the skin and the flesh. I foundthe bullet itself in the folds of the coat-lining near the backpocket. Stopping the bleeding as best I could and making a temporarybandage of a pillow-case, a towel, and two handkerchiefs, I gavethe wounded man some water and covered him with a fur coat that washanging in the passage. We neither of us said a word while thebandaging was being done. I did my work while he lay motionlesslooking at me with his eyes screwed up as though he were ashamedof his unsuccessful shot and the trouble he was giving me. 

"Now I must trouble you to lie still, " I said, when I had finishedthe bandaging, "while I run to the chemist and get something. "

"No need!" he muttered, clutching me by the sleeve and opening hiseyes wide. 

I read terror in his eyes. He was afraid of my going away. 

"No need! Stay another five minutes . . . Ten. If it doesn't disgustyou, do stay, I entreat you. "

As he begged me he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. Iobeyed, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Ten minutes passedin silence. I sat silent, looking about the room into which fatehad brought me so unexpectedly. What poverty! This man who was thepossessor of a handsome, effeminate face and a luxuriant well-tendedbeard, had surroundings which a humble working man would not haveenvied. A sofa with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humblegreasy-looking chair, a table covered with a little of paper, anda wretched oleograph on the wall, that was all I saw. Damp, gloomy, and grey. 

"What a wind!" said the sick man, without opening his eyes, "Howit whistles!"

"Yes, " I said. "I say, I fancy I know you. Didn't you take part insome private theatricals in General Luhatchev's villa last year?"

"What of it?" he asked, quickly opening his eyes. 

A cloud seemed to pass over his face. 

"I certainly saw you there. Isn't your name Vassilyev?"

"If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should knowme. "

"No, but I just asked you. "

Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his faceto the back of the sofa. 

"I don't understand your curiosity, " he muttered. "You'll be askingme next what it was drove me to commit suicide!"

Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, openedhis eyes and said in a tearful voice:

"Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you'll admit I'm right! Toask a convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shothimself is not generous . . . And indelicate. To think of gratifyingidle curiosity at the expense of another man's nerves!"

"There is no need to excite yourself. . . . It never occurred tome to question you about your motives. "

"You would have asked. . . . It's what people always do. Though itwould be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe orunderstand. . . . I must own I don't understand it myself. . . . There are phrases used in the police reports and newspapers suchas: 'unrequited love, ' and 'hopeless poverty, ' but the reasons arenot known. . . . They are not known to me, nor to you, nor to yournewspaper offices, where they have the impudence to write 'The diaryof a suicide. ' God alone understands the state of a man's soul whenhe takes his own life; but men know nothing about it. "

"That is all very nice, " I said, "but you oughtn't to talk. . . . "

But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist, and went on in the tone of some great professor:

"Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide!How can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatchup a revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth arotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular conditionof the individual at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when thecandle is lighted, and you are sitting by me, I don't even thinkof the hour of death. Explain that change if you can! Am I betteroff, or has my wife risen from the dead? Is it the influence of thelight on me, or the presence of an outsider?"

"The light certainly has an influence . . . " I muttered for thesake of saying something. "The influence of light on the organism. . . . "

"The influence of light. . . . We admit it! But you know men doshoot themselves by candle-light! And it would be ignominious indeedfor the heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candlewere to change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsensecan be explained perhaps, but not by us. It's useless to ask questionsor give explanations of what one does not understand. . . . "

"Forgive me, " I said, "but . . . Judging by the expression of yourface, it seems to me that at this moment you . . . Are posing. "

"Yes, " Vassilyev said, startled. "It's very possible! I am naturallyvain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your powerof reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now Iam posing. . . . Explain that if you can. "

These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I beganscrutinising his face. It was as pale as a dead man's. It seemedas though life were almost extinct in him, and only the signs ofthe suffering that the "vain and fatuous" man was feeling betrayedthat it was still alive. It was painful to look at that face, butwhat must it have been for Vassilyev himself who yet had the strengthto argue and, if I were not mistaken, to pose?

"You here--are you here ?" he asked suddenly, raising himself onhis elbow. "My God, just listen!"

I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window, never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively andlugubriously. 

"'And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladnessand rejoicing. '" Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading inthe drawing-room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nordropping the monotonous dreary key. 

"It is cheerful, isn't it?" whispered Vassilyev, turning hisfrightened eyes towards me. "My God, the things a man has to seeand hear! If only one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says, 'it would--

"Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. "

How well I should have understood that music then! How I shouldhave felt it! What time is it?"

"Five minutes to three. "

"Morning is still far off. And in the morning there's the funeral. A lovely prospect! One follows the coffin through the mud and rain. One walks along, seeing nothing but the cloudy sky and the wretchedscenery. The muddy mutes, taverns, woodstacks. . . . One's trousersdrenched to the knees. The never-ending streets. The time draggingout like eternity, the coarse people. And on the heart a stone, astone!"

After a brief pause he suddenly asked: "Is it long since you sawGeneral Luhatchev?"

"I haven't seen him since last summer. "

"He likes to be cock of the walk, but he is a nice little old chap. And are you still writing?"

"Yes, a little. "

"Ah. . . . Do you remember how I pranced about like a needle, likean enthusiastic ass at those private theatricals when I was courtingZina? It was stupid, but it was good, it was fun. . . . The verymemory of it brings back a whiff of spring. . . . And now! What acruel change of scene! There is a subject for you! Only don't yougo in for writing 'the diary of a suicide. ' That's vulgar andconventional. You make something humorous of it. "

"Again you are . . . Posing, " I said. "There's nothing humorous inyour position. "

"Nothing laughable? You say nothing laughable?" Vassilyev sat up, and tears glistened in his eyes. An expression of bitter distresscame into his pale face. His chin quivered. 

"You laugh at the deceit of cheating clerks and faithless wives, "he said, "but no clerk, no faithless wife has cheated as my fatehas cheated me! I have been deceived as no bank depositor, no dupedhusband has ever been deceived! Only realise what an absurd fool Ihave been made! Last year before your eyes I did not know what todo with myself for happiness. And now before your eyes. . . . "

Vassilyev's head sank on the pillow and he laughed. 

"Nothing more absurd and stupid than such a change could possiblybe imagined. Chapter one: spring, love, honeymoon . . . Honey, infact; chapter two: looking for a job, the pawnshop, pallor, thechemist's shop, and . . . To-morrow's splashing through the mud tothe graveyard. "

He laughed again. I felt acutely uncomfortable and made up my mindto go. 

"I tell you what, " I said, "you lie down, and I will go to thechemist's. "

He made no answer. I put on my great-coat and went out of his room. As I crossed the passage I glanced at the coffin and Madame Mimotihreading over it. I strained my eyes in vain, I could not recognisein the swarthy, yellow face Zina, the lively, pretty _ingénue_ ofLuhatchev's company. 

"_Sic transit_, " I thought. 

With that I went out, not forgetting to take the revolver, and mademy way to the chemist's. But I ought not to have gone away. When Icame back from the chemist's, Vassilyev lay on the sofa fainting. The bandages had been roughly torn off, and blood was flowing fromthe reopened wound. It was daylight before I succeeded in restoringhim to consciousness. He was raving in delirium, shivering, andlooking with unseeing eyes about the room till morning had come, and we heard the booming voice of the priest as he read the serviceover the dead. 

When Vassilyev's rooms were crowded with old women and mutes, whenthe coffin had been moved and carried out of the yard, I advisedhim to remain at home. But he would not obey me, in spite of thepain and the grey, rainy morning. He walked bareheaded and in silencebehind the coffin all the way to the cemetery, hardly able to moveone leg after the other, and from time to time clutching convulsivelyat his wounded side. His face expressed complete apathy. Only oncewhen I roused him from his lethargy by some insignificant questionhe shifted his eyes over the pavement and the grey fence, and fora moment there was a gleam of gloomy anger in them. 

"'Weelright, '" he read on a signboard. "Ignorant, illiteratepeople, devil take them!"

I led him home from the cemetery. 

 ----

Only one year has passed since that night, and Vassilyev has hardlyhad time to wear out the boots in which he tramped through the mudbehind his wife's coffin. 

At the present time as I finish this story, he is sitting in mydrawing-room and, playing on the piano, is showing the ladies howprovincial misses sing sentimental songs. The ladies are laughing, and he is laughing too. He is enjoying himself. 

I call him into my study. Evidently not pleased at my taking himfrom agreeable company, he comes to me and stands before me in theattitude of a man who has no time to spare. I give him this story, and ask him to read it. Always condescending about my authorship, he stifles a sigh, the sigh of a lazy reader, sits down in anarmchair and begins upon it. 

"Hang it all, what horrors, " he mutters with a smile. 

But the further he gets into the reading, the graver his facebecomes. At last, under the stress of painful memories, he turnsterribly pale, he gets up and goes on reading as he stands. Whenhe has finished he begins pacing from corner to corner. 

"How does it end?" I ask him. 

"How does it end? H'm. . . . "

He looks at the room, at me, at himself. . . . He sees his newfashionable suit, hears the ladies laughing and . . . Sinking on achair, begins laughing as he laughed on that night. 

"Wasn't I right when I told you it was all absurd? My God! I havehad burdens to bear that would have broken an elephant's back; thedevil knows what I have suffered--no one could have suffered more, I think, and where are the traces? It's astonishing. One would havethought the imprint made on a man by his agonies would have beeneverlasting, never to be effaced or eradicated. And yet that imprintwears out as easily as a pair of cheap boots. There is nothing left, not a scrap. It's as though I hadn't been suffering then, but hadbeen dancing a mazurka. Everything in the world is transitory, andthat transitoriness is absurd! A wide field for humorists! Tack ona humorous end, my friend!"

"Pyotr Nikolaevitch, are you coming soon?" The impatient ladiescall my hero. 

"This minute, " answers the "vain and fatuous" man, setting his tiestraight. "It's absurd and pitiful, my friend, pitiful and absurd, but what's to be done? _Homo sum_. . . . And I praise Mother Natureall the same for her transmutation of substances. If we retainedan agonising memory of toothache and of all the terrors which everyone of us has had to experience, if all that were everlasting, wepoor mortals would have a bad time of it in this life. "

I look at his smiling face and I remember the despair and the horrorwith which his eyes were filled a year ago when he looked at thedark window. I see him, entering into his habitual rôle of intellectualchatterer, prepare to show off his idle theories, such as thetransmutation of substances before me, and at the same time I recallhim sitting on the floor in a pool of blood with his sick imploringeyes. 

"How will it end?" I ask myself aloud. 

Vassilyev, whistling and straightening his tie, walks off into thedrawing-room, and I look after him, and feel vexed. For some reasonI regret his past sufferings, I regret all that I felt myself onthat man's account on that terrible night. It is as though I hadlost something. . . . 

MARI D'ELLE

IT was a free night. Natalya Andreyevna Bronin (her married namewas Nikitin), the opera singer, is lying in her bedroom, her wholebeing abandoned to repose. She lies, deliciously drowsy, thinkingof her little daughter who lives somewhere far away with hergrandmother or aunt. . . . The child is more precious to her thanthe public, bouquets, notices in the papers, adorers . . . And shewould be glad to think about her till morning. She is happy, atpeace, and all she longs for is not to be prevented from lyingundisturbed, dozing and dreaming of her little girl. 

All at once the singer starts, and opens her eyes wide: there is aharsh abrupt ring in the entry. Before ten seconds have passed thebell tinkles a second time and a third time. The door is openednoisily and some one walks into the entry stamping his feet like ahorse, snorting and puffing with the cold. 

"Damn it all, nowhere to hang one's coat!" the singer hears a huskybass voice. "Celebrated singer, look at that! Makes five thousanda year, and can't get a decent hat-stand!"

"My husband!" thinks the singer, frowning. "And I believe he hasbrought one of his friends to stay the night too. . . . Hateful!"

No more peace. When the loud noise of some one blowing his nose andputting off his goloshes dies away, the singer hears cautiousfootsteps in her bedroom. . . . It is her husband, _mari d'elle_, Denis Petrovitch Nikitin. He brings a whiff of cold air and a smellof brandy. For a long while he walks about the bedroom, breathingheavily, and, stumbling against the chairs in the dark, seems tobe looking for something. . . . 

"What do you want?" his wife moans, when she is sick of his fussingabout. "You have woken me. "

"I am looking for the matches, my love. You . . . You are not asleepthen? I have brought you a message. . . . Greetings from that . . . What's-his-name? . . . Red-headed fellow who is always sendingyou bouquets. . . . Zagvozdkin. . . . I have just been to see him. "

"What did you go to him for?"

"Oh, nothing particular. . . . We sat and talked and had a drink. Say what you like, Nathalie, I dislike that individual--I dislikehim awfully! He is a rare blockhead. He is a wealthy man, a capitalist;he has six hundred thousand, and you would never guess it. Moneyis no more use to him than a radish to a dog. He does not eat ithimself nor give it to others. Money ought to circulate, but hekeeps tight hold of it, is afraid to part with it. . . . What's thegood of capital lying idle? Capital lying idle is no better thangrass. "

_Mari d'elle_ gropes his way to the edge of the bed and, puffing, sits down at his wife's feet. 

"Capital lying idle is pernicious, " he goes on. "Why has businessgone downhill in Russia? Because there is so much capital lyingidle among us; they are afraid to invest it. It's very differentin England. . . . There are no such queer fish as Zagvozdkin inEngland, my girl. . . . There every farthing is in circulation. . . . Yes. . . . They don't keep it locked up in chests there. . . . "

"Well, that's all right. I am sleepy. "

"Directly. . . . Whatever was it I was talking about? Yes. . . . In these hard times hanging is too good for Zagvozdkin. . . . Heis a fool and a scoundrel. . . . No better than a fool. If I askedhim for a loan without security--why, a child could see that heruns no risk whatever. He doesn't understand, the ass! For tenthousand he would have got a hundred. In a year he would have anotherhundred thousand. I asked, I talked . . . But he wouldn't give itme, the blockhead. "

"I hope you did not ask him for a loan in my name. "

"H'm. . . . A queer question. . . . " _Mari d'elle_ is offended. "Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are awoman, and I am a man anyway, a business-like person. And what ascheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a soundthing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand, one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you wouldunderstand if I were to tell you about it. Only you . . . Don'tchatter about it . . . Not a word . . . But I fancy I have talkedto you about it already. Have I talked to you about sausage-skins?"

"M'm . . . By and by. "

"I believe I have. . . . Do you see the point of it? Now the provisionshops and the sausage-makers get their sausage-skins locally, andpay a high price for them. Well, but if one were to bring sausage-skinsfrom the Caucasus where they are worth nothing, and where they arethrown away, then . . . Where do you suppose the sausage-makerswould buy their skins, here in the slaughterhouses or from me? Fromme, of course! Why, I shall sell them ten times as cheap! Now letus look at it like this: every year in Petersburg and Moscow andin other centres these same skins would be bought to the . . . Tothe sum of five hundred thousand, let us suppose. That's the minimum. Well, and if. . . . "

"You can tell me to-morrow . . . Later on. . . . "

"Yes, that's true. You are sleepy, _pardon_, I am just going . . . Say what you like, but with capital you can do good businesseverywhere, wherever you go. . . . With capital even out of cigaretteends one may make a million. . . . Take your theatrical businessnow. Why, for example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It's very simple. He did not go the right way to work from the very first. He had nocapital and he went headlong to the dogs. . . . He ought first tohave secured his capital, and then to have gone slowly and cautiously. . . . Nowadays, one can easily make money by a theatre, whether itis a private one or a people's one. . . . If one produces the rightplays, charges a low price for admission, and hits the public fancy, one may put a hundred thousand in one's pocket the first year. . . . You don't understand, but I am talking sense. . . . You see youare fond of hoarding capital; you are no better than that foolZagvozdkin, you heap it up and don't know what for. . . . You won'tlisten, you don't want to. . . . If you were to put it intocirculation, you wouldn't have to be rushing all over the place. . . . You see for a private theatre, five thousand would be enoughfor a beginning. . . . Not like Lentovsky, of course, but on amodest scale in a small way. I have got a manager already, I havelooked at a suitable building. . . . It's only the money I haven'tgot. . . . If only you understood things you would have parted withyour Five per cents . . . Your Preference shares. . . . "

"No, _merci_. . . . You have fleeced me enough already. . . . Letme alone, I have been punished already. . . . "

"If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course . . . " sighsNikitin, getting up. "Of course. . . . "

"Let me alone. . . . Come, go away and don't keep me awake. . . . I am sick of listening to your nonsense. "

"H'm. . . . To be sure . . . Of course! Fleeced. . . Plundered. . . . What we give we remember, but we don't remember what we take. "

"I have never taken anything from you. "

"Is that so? But when we weren't a celebrated singer, at whoseexpense did we live then? And who, allow me to ask, lifted you outof beggary and secured your happiness? Don't you remember that?"

"Come, go to bed. Go along and sleep it off. "

"Do you mean to say you think I am drunk? . . . If I am so low inthe eyes of such a grand lady. . . I can go away altogether. "

"Do. A good thing too. "

"I will, too. I have humbled myself enough. And I will go. "

"Oh, my God! Oh, do go, then! I shall be delighted!"

"Very well, we shall see. "

Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs, goes out of the bedroom. Then sounds reach her from the entry ofwhispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. _Marid'elle_ has taken offence in earnest and gone out. 

"Thank God, he has gone!" thinks the singer. "Now I can sleep. "

And as she falls asleep she thinks of her _mari d'elle_, what sortof a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At onetime he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as abook-keeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the _marid'elle_, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work andtake his salary, and all his whims and projects went no furtherthan a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become "the husband of a celebrity" he was completelytransformed. The singer remembered that when first she told him shewas going on the stage he had made a fuss, been indignant, complainedto her parents, turned her out of the house. She had been obligedto go on the stage without his permission. Afterwards, when helearned from the papers and from various people that she was earningbig sums, he had 'forgiven her, ' abandoned book-keeping, and becomeher hanger-on. The singer was overcome with amazement when shelooked at her hanger-on: when and where had he managed to pick upnew tastes, polish, and airs and graces? Where had he learned thetaste of oysters and of different Burgundies? Who had taught himto dress and do his hair in the fashion and call her 'Nathalie'instead of Natasha?"

"It's strange, " thinks the singer. "In old days he used to get hissalary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is notenough for him. In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboysfor fear of saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar evenwith princes . . . Wretched, contemptible little creature!"

But then the singer starts again; again there is the clang of thebell in the entry. The housemaid, scolding and angrily floppingwith her slippers, goes to open the door. Again some one comes inand stamps like a horse. 

"He has come back!" thinks the singer. "When shall I be left inpeace? It's revolting!" She is overcome by fury. 

"Wait a bit. . . . I'll teach you to get up these farces! You shallgo away. I'll make you go away!"

The singer leaps up and runs barefoot into the little drawing-roomwhere her _mari_ usually sleeps. She comes at the moment when heis undressing, and carefully folding his clothes on a chair. 

"You went away!" she says, looking at him with bright eyes full ofhatred. "What did you come back for?"

Nikitin remains silent, and merely sniffs. 

"You went away! Kindly take yourself off this very minute! Thisvery minute! Do you hear?"

_Mari d'elle_ coughs and, without looking at his wife, takes offhis braces. 

"If you don't go away, you insolent creature, I shall go, " thesinger goes on, stamping her bare foot, and looking at him withflashing eyes. "I shall go! Do you hear, insolent . . . Worthlesswretch, flunkey, out you go!"

"You might have some shame before outsiders, " mutters her husband. . . . 

The singer looks round and only then sees an unfamiliar countenancethat looks like an actor's. . . . The countenance, seeing thesinger's uncovered shoulders and bare feet, shows signs ofembarrassment, and looks ready to sink through the floor. 

"Let me introduce . . . " mutters Nikitin, "Bezbozhnikov, a provincialmanager. "

The singer utters a shriek, and runs off into her bedroom. 

"There, you see . . . " says _mari d'elle_, as he stretches himselfon the sofa, "it was all honey just now . . . My love, my dear, mydarling, kisses and embraces . . . But as soon as money is touchedupon, then. . . . As you see . . . Money is the great thing. . . . Good night!"

A minute later there is a snore. 

A LIVING CHATTEL

GROHOLSKY embraced Liza, kept kissing one after another all herlittle fingers with their bitten pink nails, and laid her on thecouch covered with cheap velvet. Liza crossed one foot over theother, clasped her hands behind her head, and lay down. 

Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent over. He wasentirely absorbed in contemplation of her. 

How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the settingsun!

There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun, golden, lightly flecked with purple. 

The whole drawing-room, including Liza, was bathed by it withbrilliant light that did not hurt the eyes, and for a little whilecovered with gold. 

Groholsky was lost in admiration. Liza was so incredibly beautiful. It is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turnup nose was fresh, and even piquant, his scanty hair was black assoot and curly, her little figure was graceful, well proportionedand mobile as the body of an electric eel, but on the whole. . . . However my taste has nothing to do with it. Groholsky who was spoiltby women, and who had been in love and out of love hundreds of timesin his life, saw her as a beauty. He loved her, and blind love findsideal beauty everywhere. 

"I say, " he said, looking straight into her eyes, "I have come totalk to you, my precious. Love cannot bear anything vague orindefinite. . . . Indefinite relations, you know, I told youyesterday, Liza . . . We will try to-day to settle the question weraised yesterday. Come, let us decide together. . . . "

"What are we to do?"

Liza gave a yawn and scowling, drew her right arm from under herhead. 

"What are we to do?" she repeated hardly audibly after Groholsky. 

"Well, yes, what are we to do? Come, decide, wise little head . . . I love you, and a man in love is not fond of sharing. He is morethan an egoist. It is too much for me to go shares with your husband. I mentally tear him to pieces, when I remember that he loves youtoo. In the second place you love me. . . . Perfect freedom is anessential condition for love. . . . And are you free? Are you nottortured by the thought that that man towers for ever over yoursoul? A man whom you do not love, whom very likely and quitenaturally, you hate. . . . That's the second thing. . . . Andthirdly. . . . What is the third thing? Oh yes. . . . We are deceivinghim and that . . . Is dishonourable. Truth before everything, Liza. Let us have done with lying!"

"Well, then, what are we to do?"

"You can guess. . . . I think it necessary, obligatory, to informhim of our relations and to leave him, to begin to live in freedom. Both must be done as quickly as possible. . . . This very evening, for instance. . . . It's time to make an end of it. Surely you mustbe sick of loving like a thief?"

"Tell! tell Vanya?"

"Why, yes!"

"That's impossible! I told you yesterday, Michel, that it isimpossible. "

"Why?"

"He will be upset. He'll make a row, do all sorts of unpleasantthings. . . . Don't you know what he is like? God forbid! There'sno need to tell him. What an idea!"

Groholsky passed his hand over his brow, and heaved a sigh. 

"Yes, " he said, "he will be more than upset. I am robbing him ofhis happiness. Does he love you?"

"He does love me. Very much. "

"There's another complication! One does not know where to begin. To conceal it from him is base, telling him would kill him. . . . Goodness knows what's one to do. Well, how is it to be?"

Groholsky pondered. His pale face wore a frown. 

"Let us go on always as we are now, " said Liza. "Let him find outfor himself, if he wants to. "

"But you know that . . . Is sinful, and besides the fact is you aremine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong tome but to someone else! You are mine! I will not give way to anyone!. . . I am sorry for him--God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza!It hurts me to see him! But . . . It can't be helped after all. Youdon't love him, do you? What's the good of your going on beingmiserable with him? We must have it out! We will have it out withhim, and you will come to me. You are my wife, and not his. Let himdo what he likes. He'll get over his troubles somehow. . . . He isnot the first, and he won't be the last. . . . Will you run away?Eh? Make haste and tell me! Will you run away?"

Liza got up and looked inquiringly at Groholsky. 

"Run away?"

"Yes. . . . To my estate. . . . Then to the Crimea. . . . We willtell him by letter. . . . We can go at night. There is a train athalf past one. Well? Is that all right?"

Liza scratched the bridge of her nose, and hesitated. 

"Very well, " she said, and burst into tears. 

Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled, and tearsflowed down her kittenish face. . . . 

"What is it?" cried Groholsky in a flutter. "Liza! what's the matter?Come! what are you crying for? What a girl! Come, what is it?Darling! Little woman!"

Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck. Therewas a sound of sobbing. 

"I am sorry for him . . . " muttered Liza. "Oh, I am so sorry forhim!"

"Sorry for whom?"

"Va--Vanya. . . . "

"And do you suppose I'm not? But what's to be done? We are causinghim suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . Butis it our fault that we love one another?"

As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza asthough he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprangaway from his neck and rapidly--in one instant--dropped on thelounge. 

They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed. 

A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a governmentclerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed. Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warnedthe lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was thehusband. 

They had looked round too late. 

He had seen Groholsky's arm round Liza's waist, and had seen Lizahanging on Groholsky's white and aristocratic neck. 

"He saw us!" Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, whilethey did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassedeyes. . . . 

The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white. 

An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for threeminutes. Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to thisday. 

The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He steppedup to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimacelike a smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiringhand and shuddered all over as though he had crushed a cold frogin his fist. 

"Good evening, " he muttered. 

"How are you?" the husband brought out in a faint husky, almostinaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straighteninghis collar at the back of his neck. 

Again, an agonising silence followed . . . But that silence was nolonger so stupid. . . . The first step, most difficult and colourless, was over. 

All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in searchof matches or on some such trifling errand. Both longed intenselyto get away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulledat their beards while they ransacked their troubled brains for somemeans of escape from their horribly awkward position. Both wereperspiring. Both were unbearably miserable and both were devouredby hatred. They longed to begin the tussle but how were they tobegin and which was to begin first? If only she would have goneout!

"I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall, " muttered Bugrov (thatwas the husband's name). 

"Yes, I was there . . . The ball . . . Did you dance?"

"M'm . . . Yes . . . With that . . . With the younger Lyukovtsky. . . . She dances heavily. . . . She dances impossibly. She is agreat chatterbox. " (Pause. ) "She is never tired of talking. "

"Yes. . . . It was slow. I saw you too. . . "

Groholsky accidentally glanced at Bugrov. . . . He caught theshifting eyes of the deceived husband and could not bear it. He gotup quickly, quickly seized Bugrov's hand, shook it, picked up hishat, and walked towards the door, conscious of his own back. Hefelt as though thousands of eyes were looking at his back. It is afeeling known to the actor who has been hissed and is making hisexit from the stage, and to the young dandy who has received a blowon the back of the head and is being led away in charge of apoliceman. 

As soon as the sound of Groholsky's steps had died away and thedoor in the hall creaked, Bugrov leapt up, and after making two orthree rounds of the drawing-room, strolled up to his wife. Thekittenish face puckered up and began blinking its eyes as thoughexpecting a slap. Her husband went up to her, and with a pale, distorted face, with arms, head, and shoulders shaking, stepped onher dress and knocked her knees with his. 

"If, you wretched creature, " he began in a hollow, wailing voice, "you let him come here once again, I'll. . . . Don't let him dareto set his foot. . . . I'll kill you. Do you understand? A-a-ah. . . Worthless creature, you shudder! Fil-thy woman!"

Bugrov seized her by the elbow, shook her, and flung her like anindiarubber ball towards the window. . . . 

"Wretched, vulgar woman! you have no shame!"

She flew towards the window, hardly touching the floor with herfeet, and caught at the curtains with her hands. 

"Hold your tongue, " shouted her husband, going up to her withflashing eyes and stamping his foot. 

She did hold her tongue, she looked at the ceiling, and whimperedwhile her face wore the expression of a little girl in disgraceexpecting to be punished. 

"So that's what you are like! Eh? Carrying on with a fop! Good! Andyour promise before the altar? What are you? A nice wife and mother. Hold your tongue!"

And he struck her on her pretty supple shoulder. "Hold your tongue, you wretched creature. I'll give you worse than that! If thatscoundrel dares to show himself here ever again, if I see you--listen!--with that blackguard ever again, don't ask for mercy!I'll kill you, if I go to Siberia for it! And him too. I shouldn'tthink twice about it! You can go, I don't want to see you!"

Bugrov wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve and strode aboutthe drawing-room, Liza sobbing more and more loudly, twitching hershoulders and her little turned up nose, became absorbed in examiningthe lace on the curtain. 

"You are crazy, " her husband shouted. "Your silly head is full ofnonsense! Nothing but whims! I won't allow it, Elizaveta, my girl!You had better be careful with me! I don't like it! If you want tobehave like a pig, then . . . Then out you go, there is no placein my house for you! Out you pack if. . . . You are a wife, so youmust forget these dandies, put them out of your silly head! It'sall foolishness! Don't let it happen again! You try defendingyourself! Love your husband! You have been given to your husband, so you must love him. Yes, indeed! Is one not enough? Go away till. . . . Torturers!"

Bugrov paused; then shouted:

"Go away I tell you, go to the nursery! Why are you blubbering, itis your own fault, and you blubber! What a woman! Last year youwere after Petka Totchkov, now you are after this devil. Lord forgiveus! . . . Tfoo, it's time you understood what you are! A wife! Amother! Last year there were unpleasantnesses, and now there willbe unpleasantnesses. . . . Tfoo!"

Bugrov heaved a loud sigh, and the air was filled with the smellof sherry. He had come back from dining and was slightly drunk. . . . 

"Don't you know your duty? No! . . . You must be taught, you've notbeen taught so far! Your mamma was a gad-about, and you . . . Youcan blubber. Yes! blubber away. . . . "

Bugrov went up to his wife and drew the curtain out of her hands. 

"Don't stand by the window, people will see you blubbering. . . . Don't let it happen again. You'll go from embracing to worse trouble. You'll come to grief. Do you suppose I like to be made a fool of?And you will make a fool of me if you carry on with them, the lowbrutes. . . . Come, that's enough. . . . Don't you. . . . Anothertime. . . . Of course I . . Liza . . . Stay. . . . "

Bugrov heaved a sigh and enveloped Liza in the fumes of sherry. 

"You are young and silly, you don't understand anything. . . . Iam never at home. . . . And they take advantage of it. You must besensible, prudent. They will deceive you. And then I won't endureit. . . . Then I may do anything. . . . Of course! Then you canjust lie down, and die. I . . . I am capable of doing anything ifyou deceive me, my good girl. I might beat you to death. . . . And. . . I shall turn you out of the house, and then you can go toyour rascals. "

And Bugrov (_horribile dictu_) wiped the wet, tearful face of thetraitress Liza with his big soft hand. He treated his twenty-year-oldwife as though she were a child. 

"Come, that's enough. . . . I forgive you. Only God forbid it shouldhappen again! I forgive you for the fifth time, but I shall notforgive you for the sixth, as God is holy. God does not forgivesuch as you for such things. "

Bugrov bent down and put out his shining lips towards Liza's littlehead. But the kiss did not follow. The doors of the hall, of thedining-room, of the parlour, and of the drawing-room all slammed, and Groholsky flew into the drawing-room like a whirlwind. He waspale and trembling. He was flourishing his arms and crushing hisexpensive hat in his hands. His coat fluttered upon him as thoughit were on a peg. He was the incarnation of acute fever. When Bugrovsaw him he moved away from his wife and began looking out of theother window. Groholsky flew up to him, and waving his arms andbreathing heavily and looking at no one, he began in a shakingvoice:

"Ivan Petrovitch! Let us leave off keeping up this farce with oneanother! We have deceived each other long enough! It's too much! Icannot stand it. You must do as you like, but I cannot! It's hatefuland mean, it's revolting! Do you understand that it is revolting?"

Groholsky spluttered and gasped for breath. 

"It's against my principles. And you are an honest man. I love her!I love her more than anything on earth! You have noticed it and. . . It's my duty to say this!"

"What am I to say to him?" Ivan Petrovitch wondered. 

"We must make an end of it. This farce cannot drag on much longer!It must be settled somehow. "

Groholsky drew a breath and went on:

"I cannot live without her; she feels the same. You are an educatedman, you will understand that in such circumstances your familylife is impossible. This woman is not yours, so . . . In short, Ibeg you to look at the matter from an indulgent humane point ofview. . . . Ivan Petrovitch, you must understand at last that Ilove her--love her more than myself, more than anything in theworld, and to struggle against that love is beyond my power!"

"And she?" Bugrov asked in a sullen, somewhat ironical tone. 

"Ask her; come now, ask her! For her to live with a man she doesnot love, to live with you is . . . Is a misery!"

"And she?" Bugrov repeated, this time not in an ironical tone. 

"She . . . She loves me! We love each other, Ivan Petrovitch! Killus, despise us, pursue us, do as you will, but we can no longerconceal it from you. We are standing face to face--you may judgeus with all the severity of a man whom we . . . Whom fate has robbedof happiness!"

Bugrov turned as red as a boiled crab, and looked out of one eyeat Liza. He began blinking. His fingers, his lips, and his eyelidstwitched. Poor fellow! The eyes of his weeping wife told him thatGroholsky was right, that it was a serious matter. 

"Well!" he muttered. "If you. . . . In these days. . . . You arealways. . . . "

"As God is above, " Groholsky shrilled in his high tenor, "weunderstand you. Do you suppose we have no sense, no feeling? I knowwhat agonies I am causing you, as God's above! But be indulgent, Ibeseech you! We are not to blame. Love is not a crime. No will canstruggle against it. . . . Give her up to me, Ivan Petrovitch! Lether go with me! Take from me what you will for your sufferings. Take my life, but give me Liza. I am ready to do anything. . . . Come, tell me how I can do something to make up in part at least!To make up for that lost happiness, I can give you other happiness. I can, Ivan Petrovitch; I am ready to do anything! It would be baseon my part to leave you without satisfaction. . . . I understandyou at this moment. "

Bugrov waved his hand as though to say, 'For God's sake, go away. 'His eyes began to be dimmed by a treacherous moisture--in a momentthey would see him crying like a child. 

"I understand you, Ivan Petrovitch. I will give you another happiness, such as hitherto you have not known. What would you like? I havemoney, my father is an influential man. . . . Will you? Come, howmuch do you want?"

Bugrov's heart suddenly began throbbing. . . . He clutched at thewindow curtains with both hands. . . . 

"Will you have fifty thousand? Ivan Petrovitch, I entreat you. . . . It's not a bribe, not a bargain. . . . I only want by a sacrificeon my part to atone a little for your inevitable loss. Would youlike a hundred thousand? I am willing. A hundred thousand?"

My God! Two immense hammers began beating on the perspiring templesof the unhappy Ivan Petrovitch. Russian sledges with tinkling bellsbegan racing in his ears. . . . 

"Accept this sacrifice from me, " Groholsky went on, "I entreat you!You will take a load off my conscience. . . . I implore you!"

My God! A smart carriage rolled along the road wet from a May shower, passed the window through which Bugrov's wet eyes were looking. Thehorses were fine, spirited, well-trained beasts. People in strawhats, with contented faces, were sitting in the carriage with longfishing-rods and bags. . . . A schoolboy in a white cap was holdinga gun. They were driving out into the country to catch fish, toshoot, to walk about and have tea in the open air. They were drivingto that region of bliss in which Bugrov as a boy--the barefoot, sunburnt, but infinitely happy son of a village deacon--had onceraced about the meadows, the woods, and the river banks. Oh, howfiendishly seductive was that May! How happy those who can take offtheir heavy uniforms, get into a carriage and fly off to the countrywhere the quails are calling and there is the scent of fresh hay. Bugrov's heart ached with a sweet thrill that made him shiver. Ahundred thousand! With the carriage there floated before him allthe secret dreams over which he had gloated, through the long yearsof his life as a government clerk as he sat in the office of hisdepartment or in his wretched little study. . . . A river, deep, with fish, a wide garden with narrow avenues, little fountains, shade, flowers, arbours, a luxurious villa with terraces and turretswith an Aeolian harp and little silver bells (he had heard of theexistence of an Aeolian harp from German romances); a cloudlessblue sky; pure limpid air fragrant with the scents that recall hishungry, barefoot, crushed childhood. . . . To get up at five, togo to bed at nine; to spend the day catching fish, talking with thepeasants. . . . What happiness!

"Ivan Petrovitch, do not torture me! Will you take a hundredthousand?"

"H'm . . . A hundred and fifty thousand!" muttered Bugrov in ahollow voice, the voice of a husky bull. He muttered it, and bowedhis head, ashamed of his words, and awaiting the answer. 

"Good, " said Groholsky, "I agree. I thank you, Ivan Petrovitch. . . . In a minute. . . . I will not keep you waiting. . . . "

Groholsky jumped up, put on his hat, and staggering backwards, ranout of the drawing-room. 

Bugrov clutched the window curtains more tightly than ever. . . . He was ashamed . . . . There was a nasty, stupid feeling in hissoul, but, on the other hand, what fair shining hopes swarmed betweenhis throbbing temples! He was rich!

Liza, who had grasped nothing of what was happening, darted throughthe half-opened door trembling all over and afraid that he wouldcome to her window and fling her away from it. She went into thenursery, laid herself down on the nurse's bed, and curled herselfup. She was shivering with fever. 

Bugrov was left alone. He felt stifled, and he opened the window. What glorious air breathed fragrance on his face and neck! It wouldbe good to breathe such air lolling on the cushions of a carriage. . . . Out there, far beyond the town, among the villages and thesummer villas, the air was sweeter still. . . . Bugrov actuallysmiled as he dreamed of the air that would be about him when hewould go out on the verandah of his villa and admire the view. Along while he dreamed. . . . The sun had set, and still he stoodand dreamed, trying his utmost to cast out of his mind the imageof Liza which obstinately pursued him in all his dreams. 

"I have brought it, Ivan Petrovitch!" Groholsky, re-entering, whispered above his ear. "I have brought it--take it. . . . Herein this roll there are forty thousand. . . . With this cheque willyou kindly get twenty the day after to-morrow from Valentinov? . . . Here is a bill of exchange . . . A cheque. . . . The remainingthirty thousand in a day or two. . . . My steward will bring it toyou. "

Groholsky, pink and excited, with all his limbs in motion, laidbefore Bugrov a heap of rolls of notes and bundles of papers. Theheap was big, and of all sorts of hues and tints. Never in thecourse of his life had Bugrov seen such a heap. He spread out hisfat fingers and, not looking at Groholsky, fell to going throughthe bundles of notes and bonds. . . . 

Groholsky spread out all the money, and moved restlessly about theroom, looking for the Dulcinea who had been bought and sold. 

Filling his pockets and his pocket-book, Bugrov thrust the securitiesinto the table drawer, and, drinking off half a decanter full ofwater, dashed out into the street. 

"Cab!" he shouted in a frantic voice. 

At half-past eleven that night he drove up to the entrance of theParis Hotel. He went noisily upstairs and knocked at the door ofGroholsky's apartments. He was admitted. Groholsky was packing histhings in a portmanteau, Liza was sitting at the table trying onbracelets. They were both frightened when Bugrov went in to them. They fancied that he had come for Liza and had brought back themoney which he had taken in haste without reflection. But Bugrovhad not come for Liza. Ashamed of his new get-up and feelingfrightfully awkward in it, he bowed and stood at the door in theattitude of a flunkey. The get-up was superb. Bugrov was unrecognisable. His huge person, which had never hitherto worn anything but auniform, was clothed in a fresh, brand-new suit of fine French clothand of the most fashionable cut. On his feet spats shone withsparkling buckles. He stood ashamed of his new get-up, and with hisright hand covered the watch-chain for which he had, an hour before, paid three hundred roubles. 

"I have come about something, " he began. "A business agreement isbeyond price. I am not going to give up Mishutka. . . . "

"What Mishutka?" asked Groholsky. 

"My son. "

Groholsky and Liza looked at each other. Liza's eyes bulged, hercheeks flushed, and her lips twitched. . . . 

"Very well, " she said. 

She thought of Mishutka's warm little cot. It would be cruel toexchange that warm little cot for a chilly sofa in the hotel, andshe consented. 

"I shall see him, " she said. 

Bugrov bowed, walked out, and flew down the stairs in his splendour, cleaving the air with his expensive cane. . . . 

"Home, " he said to the cabman. "I am starting at five o'clockto-morrow morning. . . . You will come; if I am asleep, you willwake me. We are driving out of town. "

II

It was a lovely August evening. The sun, set in a golden backgroundlightly flecked with purple, stood above the western horizon on thepoint of sinking behind the far-away tumuli. In the garden, shadowsand half-shadows had vanished, and the air had grown damp, but thegolden light was still playing on the tree-tops. . . . It was warm. . . . Rain had just fallen, and made the fresh, transparent fragrantair still fresher. 

I am not describing the August of Petersburg or Moscow, foggy, tearful, and dark, with its cold, incredibly damp sunsets. Godforbid! I am not describing our cruel northern August. I ask thereader to move with me to the Crimea, to one of its shores, not farfrom Feodosia, the spot where stands the villa of one of our heroes. It is a pretty, neat villa surrounded by flower-beds and clippedbushes. A hundred paces behind it is an orchard in which its inmateswalk. . . . Groholsky pays a high rent for that villa, a thousandroubles a year, I believe. . . . The villa is not worth that rent, but it is pretty. . . . Tall, with delicate walls and very delicateparapets, fragile, slender, painted a pale blue colour, hung withcurtains, _portières_, draperies, it suggests a charming, fragileChinese lady. . . . 

On the evening described above, Groholsky and Liza were sitting onthe verandah of this villa. Groholsky was reading _Novoye Vremya_and drinking milk out of a green mug. A syphon of Seltzer water wasstanding on the table before him. Groholsky imagined that he wassuffering from catarrh of the lungs, and by the advice of Dr. Dmitriev consumed an immense quantity of grapes, milk, and Seltzerwater. Liza was sitting in a soft easy chair some distance from thetable. With her elbows on the parapet, and her little face proppedon her little fists, she was gazing at the villa opposite. . . . The sun was playing upon the windows of the villa opposite, theglittering panes reflected the dazzling light. . . . Beyond thelittle garden and the few trees that surrounded the villa there wasa glimpse of the sea with its waves, its dark blue colour, itsimmensity, its white masts. . . . It was so delightful! Groholskywas reading an article by Anonymous, and after every dozen lineshe raised his blue eyes to Liza's back. . . . The same passionate, fervent love was shining in those eyes still. . . . He was infinitelyhappy in spite of his imaginary catarrh of the lungs. . . . Lizawas conscious of his eyes upon her back, and was thinking ofMishutka's brilliant future, and she felt so comfortable, so serene. . . . 

She was not so much interested by the sea, and the glitteringreflection on the windows of the villa opposite as by the waggonswhich were trailing up to that villa one after another. 

The waggons were full of furniture and all sorts of domestic articles. Liza watched the trellis gates and big glass doors of the villabeing opened and the men bustling about the furniture and wranglingincessantly. Big armchairs and a sofa covered with dark raspberrycoloured velvet, tables for the hall, the drawing-room and thedining-room, a big double bed and a child's cot were carried in bythe glass doors; something big, wrapped up in sacking, was carriedin too. A grand piano, thought Liza, and her heart throbbed. 

It was long since she had heard the piano, and she was so fond ofit. They had not a single musical instrument in their villa. Groholskyand she were musicians only in soul, no more. There were a greatmany boxes and packages with the words: "with care" upon them carriedin after the piano. 

They were boxes of looking-glasses and crockery. A gorgeous andluxurious carriage was dragged in, at the gate, and two white horseswere led in looking like swans. 

"My goodness, what riches!" thought Liza, remembering her old ponywhich Groholsky, who did not care for riding, had bought her for ahundred roubles. Compared with those swan-like steeds, her ponyseemed to her no better than a bug. Groholsky, who was afraid ofriding fast, had purposely bought Liza a poor horse. 

"What wealth!" Liza thought and murmured as she gazed at the noisycarriers. 

The sun hid behind the tumuli, the air began to lose its drynessand limpidity, and still the furniture was being driven up andhauled into the house. At last it was so dark that Groholsky leftoff reading the newspaper while Liza still gazed and gazed. 

"Shouldn't we light the lamp?" said Groholsky, afraid that a flymight drop into his milk and be swallowed in the darkness. 

"Liza! shouldn't we light the lamp? Shall we sit in darkness, myangel?"

Liza did not answer. She was interested in a chaise which had drivenup to the villa opposite. . . . What a charming little mare was inthat chaise. Of medium size, not large, but graceful. . . . Agentleman in a top hat was sitting in the chaise, a child aboutthree, apparently a boy, was sitting on his knees waving his littlehands. . . . He was waving his little hands and shouting withdelight. 

Liza suddenly uttered a shriek, rose from her seat and lurchedforward. 

"What is the matter?" asked Groholsky. 

"Nothing. . . I only . . . I fancied. . . . "

The tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in the top hat jumped out ofthe chaise, lifted the boy down, and with a skip and a hop ran gailyin at the glass door. The door opened noisily and he vanished intothe darkness of the villa apartments. 

Two smart footmen ran up to the horse in the chaise, and mostrespectfully led it to the gate. Soon the villa opposite was lightedup, and the clatter of plates, knives, and forks was audible. Thegentleman in the top hat was having his supper, and judging by theduration of the clatter of crockery, his supper lasted long. Lizafancied she could smell chicken soup and roast duck. After supperdiscordant sounds of the piano floated across from the villa. Inall probability the gentleman in the top hat was trying to amusethe child in some way, and allowing it to strum on it. 

Groholsky went up to Liza and put his arm round her waist. 

"What wonderful weather!" he said. "What air! Do you feel it? I amvery happy, Liza, very happy indeed. My happiness is so great thatI am really afraid of its destruction. The greatest things areusually destroyed, and do you know, Liza, in spite of all myhappiness, I am not absolutely . . . At peace. . . . One hauntingthought torments me . . . It torments me horribly. It gives me nopeace by day or by night. . . . "

"What thought?"

"An awful thought, my love. I am tortured by the thought of yourhusband. I have been silent hitherto. I have feared to trouble yourinner peace, but I cannot go on being silent. Where is he? What hashappened to him? What has become of him with his money? It is awful!Every night I see his face, exhausted, suffering, imploring. . . . Why, only think, my angel--can the money he so generously acceptedmake up to him for you? He loved you very much, didn't he?"

"Very much!"

"There you see! He has either taken to drink now, or . . . I amanxious about him! Ah, how anxious I am! Should we write to him, do you think? We ought to comfort him . . . A kind word, you know. "

Groholsky heaved a deep sigh, shook his head, and sank into an easychair exhausted by painful reflection. Leaning his head on his fistshe fell to musing. Judging from his face, his musings were painful. 

"I am going to bed, " said Liza; "it's time. "

Liza went to her own room, undressed, and dived under the bedclothes. She used to go to bed at ten o'clock and get up at ten. She wasfond of her comfort. 

She was soon in the arms of Morpheus. Throughout the whole nightshe had the most fascinating dreams. . . . She dreamed whole romances, novels, Arabian Nights. . . . The hero of all these dreams was thegentleman in the top hat, who had caused her to utter a shriek thatevening. 

The gentleman in the top hat was carrying her off from Groholsky, was singing, was beating Groholsky and her, was flogging the boyunder the window, was declaring his love, and driving her off inthe chaise. . . . Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyesshut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness. . . . That night Liza lived through a great variety of experiences, and very happy ones, even in spite of the beating. 

Waking up between six and seven, she flung on her clothes, hurriedlydid her hair, and without even putting on her Tatar slippers withpointed toes, ran impulsively on to the verandah. Shading her eyesfrom the sun with one hand, and with the other holding up herslipping clothes, she gazed at the villa opposite. Her face beamed. . . . There could be no further doubt it was he. 

On the verandah in the villa opposite there was a table in frontof the glass door. A tea service was shining and glistening on thetable with a silver samovar at the head. Ivan Petrovitch was sittingat the table. He had in his hand a glass in a silver holder, andwas drinking tea. He was drinking it with great relish. That factcould be deduced from the smacking of his lips, the sound of whichreached Liza's ears. He was wearing a brown dressing-gown with blackflowers on it. Massive tassels fell down to the ground. It was thefirst time in her life Liza had seen her husband in a dressing-gown, and such an expensive-looking one. 

Mishutka was sitting on one of his knees, and hindering him fromdrinking his tea. The child jumped up and down and tried to clutchhis papa's shining lip. After every three or four sips the fatherbent down to his son and kissed him on the head. A grey cat withits tail in the air was rubbing itself against one of the tablelegs, and with a plaintive mew proclaiming its desire for food. Liza hid behind the verandah curtain, and fastened her eyes uponthe members of her former family; her face was radiant with joy. 

"Misha!" she murmured, "Misha! Are you really here, Misha? Thedarling! And how he loves Vanya! Heavens!"

And Liza went off into a giggle when Mishutka stirred his father'stea with a spoon. "And how Vanya loves Misha! My darlings!"

Liza's heart throbbed, and her head went round with joy and happiness. She sank into an armchair and went on observing them, sitting down. 

"How did they come here?" she wondered as she sent airy kisses toMishutka. "Who gave them the idea of coming here? Heavens! Can allthat wealth belong to them? Can those swan-like horses that wereled in at the gate belong to Ivan Petrovitch? Ah!"

When he had finished his tea, Ivan Petrovitch went into the house. Ten minutes later, he appeared on the steps and Liza was astounded. . . . He, who in his youth only seven years ago had been calledVanushka and Vanka and had been ready to punch a man in the faceand turn the house upside down over twenty kopecks, was dresseddevilishly well. He had on a broad-brimmed straw hat, exquisitebrilliant boots, a piqué waistcoat. . . . Thousands of suns, bigand little, glistened on his watch-chain. With much _chic_ he heldin his right hand his gloves and cane. 

And what swagger, what style there was in his heavy figure when, with a graceful motion of his hand, he bade the footman bring thehorse round. 

He got into the chaise with dignity, and told the footmen standinground the chaise to give him Mishutka and the fishing tackle theyhad brought. Setting Mishutka beside him, and putting his left armround him, he held the reins and drove off. 

"Ge-ee up!" shouted Mishutka. 

Liza, unaware of what she was doing, waved her handkerchief afterthem. If she had looked in the glass she would have been surprisedat her flushed, laughing, and, at the same time, tear-stained face. She was vexed that she was not beside her gleeful boy, and that shecould not for some reason shower kisses on him at once. 

For some reason! . . . Away with all your petty delicacies!

"Grisha! Grisha!" Liza ran into Groholsky's bedroom and set to workto wake him. "Get up, they have come! The darling!"

"Who has come?" asked Groholsky, waking up. 

"Our people . . . Vanya and Misha, they have come, they are in thevilla opposite. . . . I looked out, and there they were drinkingtea. . . . And Misha too. . . . What a little angel our Misha hasgrown! If only you had seen him! Mother of God!"

"Seen whom? Why, you are. . . . Who has come? Come where?"

"Vanya and Misha. . . . I have been looking at the villa opposite, while they were sitting drinking tea. Misha can drink his tea byhimself now. . . . Didn't you see them moving in yesterday, it wasthey who arrived!"

Groholsky rubbed his forehead and turned pale. 

"Arrived? Your husband?" he asked. 

"Why, yes. "

"What for?"

"Most likely he is going to live here. They don't know we are here. If they did, they would have looked at our villa, but they dranktheir tea and took no notice. "

"Where is he now? But for God's sake do talk sense! Oh, where ishe?"

"He has gone fishing with Misha in the chaise. Did you see thehorses yesterday? Those are their horses . . . Vanya's . . . Vanyadrives with them. Do you know what, Grisha? We will have Misha tostay with us. . . . We will, won't we? He is such a pretty boy. Such an exquisite boy!"

Groholsky pondered, while Liza went on talking and talking. 

"This is an unexpected meeting, " said Groholsky, after prolongedand, as usual, harrassing reflection. "Well, who could have expectedthat we should meet here? Well. . . There it is. . . . So be it. It seems that it is fated. I can imagine the awkwardness of hisposition when he meets us. "

"Shall we have Misha to stay with us?"

"Yes, we will. . . . It will be awkward meeting him. . . . Why, what can I say to him? What can I talk of? It will be awkward forhim and awkward for me. . . . We ought not to meet. We will carryon communications, if necessary, through the servants. . . . Myhead does ache so, Lizotchka. My arms and legs too, I ache all over. Is my head feverish?"

Liza put her hand on his forehead and found that his head was hot. 

"I had dreadful dreams all night . . . I shan't get up to-day. Ishall stay in bed . . . I must take some quinine. Send me my breakfasthere, little woman. "

Groholsky took quinine and lay in bed the whole day. He drank warmwater, moaned, had the sheets and pillowcase changed, whimpered, and induced an agonising boredom in all surrounding him. 

He was insupportable when he imagined he had caught a chill. Lizahad continually to interrupt her inquisitive observations and runfrom the verandah to his room. At dinner-time she had to put onmustard plasters. How boring all this would have been, O reader, if the villa opposite had not been at the service of my heroine!Liza watched that villa all day long and was gasping with happiness. 

At ten o'clock Ivan Petrovitch and Mishutka came back from fishingand had breakfast. At two o'clock they had dinner, and at fouro'clock they drove off somewhere in a carriage. The white horsesbore them away with the swiftness of lightning. At seven o'clockvisitors came to see them--all of them men. They were playingcards on two tables in the verandah till midnight. One of the menplayed superbly on the piano. The visitors played, ate, drank, andlaughed. Ivan Petrovitch guffawing loudly, told them an anecdoteof Armenian life at the top of his voice, so that all the villasround could hear. It was very gay and Mishutka sat up with themtill midnight. 

"Misha is merry, he is not crying, " thought Liza, "so he does notremember his mamma. So he has forgotten me!"

And there was a horrible bitter feeling in Liza's soul. She spentthe whole night crying. She was fretted by her little conscience, and by vexation and misery, and the desire to talk to Mishutka andkiss him. . . . In the morning she got up with a headache andtear-stained eyes. Her tears Groholsky put down to his own account. 

"Do not weep, darling, " he said to her, "I am all right to-day, mychest is a little painful, but that is nothing. "

While they were having tea, lunch was being served at the villaopposite. Ivan Petrovitch was looking at his plate, and seeingnothing but a morsel of goose dripping with fat. 

"I am very glad, " said Groholsky, looking askance at Bugrov, "veryglad that his life is so tolerable! I hope that decent surroundingsanyway may help to stifle his grief. Keep out of sight, Liza! Theywill see you . . . I am not disposed to talk to him just now . . . God be with him! Why trouble his peace?"

But the dinner did not pass off so quietly. During dinner preciselythat "awkward position" which Groholsky so dreaded occurred. Justwhen the partridges, Groholsky's favorite dish, had been put on thetable, Liza was suddenly overcome with confusion, and Groholskybegan wiping his face with his dinner napkin. On the verandah ofthe villa opposite they saw Bugrov. He was standing with his armsleaning on the parapet, and staring straight at them, with his eyesstarting out of his head. 

"Go in, Liza, go in, " Groholsky whispered. "I said we must havedinner indoors! What a girl you are, really. . . . "

Bugrov stared and stared, and suddenly began shouting. Groholskylooked at him and saw a face full of astonishment. . . . 

"Is that you ?" bawled Ivan Petrovitch, "you! Are you here too?"

Groholsky passed his fingers from one shoulder to another, as thoughto say, "My chest is weak, and so I can't shout across such adistance. " Liza's heart began throbbing, and everything turned roundbefore her eyes. Bugrov ran from his verandah, ran across the road, and a few seconds later was standing under the verandah on whichGroholsky and Liza were dining. Alas for the partridges!

"How are you?" he began, flushing crimson, and stuffing his bighands in his pockets. "Are you here? Are you here too?"

"Yes, we are here too. . . . "

"How did you get here?"

"Why, how did you?"

"I? It's a long story, a regular romance, my good friend! But don'tput yourselves out--eat your dinner! I've been living, you know, ever since then . . . In the Oryol province. I rented an estate. Asplendid estate! But do eat your dinner! I stayed there from theend of May, but now I have given it up. . . . It was cold there, and--well, the doctor advised me to go to the Crimea. . . . "

"Are you ill, then?" inquired Groholsky. 

"Oh, well. . . . There always seems, as it were . . . Somethinggurgling here. . . . "

And at the word "here" Ivan Petrovitch passed his open hand fromhis neck down to the middle of his stomach. 

"So you are here too. . . . Yes . . . That's very pleasant. Haveyou been here long?"

"Since July. "

"Oh, and you, Liza, how are you? Quite well?"

"Quite well, " answered Liza, and was embarrassed. 

"You miss Mishutka, I'll be bound. Eh? Well, he's here with me. . . . I'll send him over to you directly with Nikifor. This is verynice. Well, good-bye! I have to go off directly. . . . I made theacquaintance of Prince Ter-Haimazov yesterday; delightful man, though he is an Armenian. So he has a croquet party to-day; we aregoing to play croquet. . . . Good-bye! The carriage is waiting. . . . "

Ivan Petrovitch whirled round, tossed his head, and, waving adieuto them, ran home. 

"Unhappy man, " said Groholsky, heaving a deep sigh as he watchedhim go off. 

"In what way is he unhappy?" asked Liza. 

"To see you and not have the right to call you his!"

"Fool!" Liza was so bold to think. "Idiot!"

Before evening Liza was hugging and kissing Mishutka. At first theboy howled, but when he was offered jam, he was all friendly smiles. 

For three days Groholsky and Liza did not see Bugrov. He haddisappeared somewhere, and was only at home at night. On the fourthday he visited them again at dinner-time. He came in, shook handswith both of them, and sat down to the table. His face was serious. 

"I have come to you on business, " he said. "Read this. " And hehanded Groholsky a letter. "Read it! Read it aloud!"

Groholsky read as follows:

"My beloved and consoling, never-forgotten son Ioann! I have receivedthe respectful and loving letter in which you invite your agedfather to the mild and salubrious Crimea, to breathe the fragrantair, and behold strange lands. To that letter I reply that on takingmy holiday, I will come to you, but not for long. My colleague, Father Gerasim, is a frail and delicate man, and cannot be leftalone for long. I am very sensible of your not forgetting yourparents, your father and your mother. . . . You rejoice your fatherwith your affection, and you remember your mother in your prayers, and so it is fitting to do. Meet me at Feodosia. What sort of townis Feodosia--what is it like? It will be very agreeable to seeit. Your godmother, who took you from the font, is called Feodosia. You write that God has been graciously pleased that you should wintwo hundred thousand roubles. That is gratifying to me. But I cannotapprove of your having left the service while still of a grade oflittle importance; even a rich man ought to be in the service. Ibless you always, now and hereafter. Ilya and Seryozhka Andronovsend you their greetings. You might send them ten roubles each--they are badly off!

 "Your loving Father, "Pyotr Bugrov, _Priest. _"

Groholsky read this letter aloud, and he and Liza both lookedinquiringly at Bugrov. 

"You see what it is, " Ivan Petrovitch began hesitatingly. "I shouldlike to ask you, Liza, not to let him see you, to keep out of hissight while he is here. I have written to him that you are ill andgone to the Caucasus for a cure. If you meet him. . . You seeyourself. . . . It's awkward. . . H'm. . . . "

"Very well, " said Liza. 

"We can do that, " thought Groholsky, "since he makes sacrifices, why shouldn't we?"

"Please do. . . . If he sees you there will be trouble. . . . Myfather is a man of strict principles. He would curse me in sevenchurches. Don't go out of doors, Liza, that is all. He won't behere long. Don't be afraid. "

Father Pyotr did not long keep them waiting. One fine morning IvanPetrovitch ran in and hissed in a mysterious tone:

"He has come! He is asleep now, so please be careful. "

And Liza was shut up within four walls. She did not venture to goout into the yard or on to the verandah. She could only see the skyfrom behind the window curtain. Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch'spapa spent his whole time in the open air, and even slept on theverandah. Usually Father Pyotr, a little parish priest, in a browncassock and a top hat with a curly brim, walked slowly round thevillas and gazed with curiosity at the "strange lands" through hisgrandfatherly spectacles. Ivan Petrovitch with the Stanislav on alittle ribbon accompanied him. He did not wear a decoration as arule, but before his own people he liked to show off. In theirsociety he always wore the Stanislav. 

Liza was bored to death. Groholsky suffered too. He had to go forhis walks alone without a companion. He almost shed tears, but . . . Had to submit to his fate. And to make things worse, Bugrov wouldrun across every morning and in a hissing whisper would give somequite unnecessary bulletin concerning the health of Father Pyotr. He bored them with those bulletins. 

"He slept well, " he informed them. "Yesterday he was put out becauseI had no salted cucumbers. . . He has taken to Mishutka; he keepspatting him on the head. "

At last, a fortnight later, little Father Pyotr walked for the lasttime round the villas and, to Groholsky's immense relief, departed. He had enjoyed himself, and went off very well satisfied. Liza andGroholsky fell back into their old manner of life. Groholsky oncemore blessed his fate. But his happiness did not last for long. Anew trouble worse than Father Pyotr followed. Ivan Petrovitch tookto coming to see them every day. Ivan Petrovitch, to be frank, though a capital fellow, was a very tedious person. He came atdinner-time, dined with them and stayed a very long time. That wouldnot have mattered. But they had to buy vodka, which Groholsky couldnot endure, for his dinner. He would drink five glasses and talkthe whole dinner-time. That, too, would not have mattered. . . . But he would sit on till two o'clock in the morning, and not letthem get to bed, and, worse still, he permitted himself to talk ofthings about which he should have been silent. When towards twoo'clock in the morning he had drunk too much vodka and champagne, he would take Mishutka in his arms, and weeping, say to him, beforeGroholsky and Liza:

"Mihail, my son, what am I? I . . . Am a scoundrel. I have soldyour mother! Sold her for thirty pieces of silver, may the Lordpunish me! Mihail Ivanitch, little sucking pig, where is your mother?Lost! Gone! Sold into slavery! Well, I am a scoundrel. "

These tears and these words turned Groholsky's soul inside out. Hewould look timidly at Liza's pale face and wring his hands. 

"Go to bed, Ivan Petrovitch, " he would say timidly. 

"I am going. . . . Come along, Mishutka. . . . The Lord be ourjudge! I cannot think of sleep while I know that my wife is a slave. . . . But it is not Groholsky's fault. . . . The goods were mine, the money his. . . . Freedom for the free and Heaven for the saved. "

By day Ivan Petrovitch was no less insufferable to Groholsky. ToGroholsky's intense horror, he was always at Liza's side. He wentfishing with her, told her stories, walked with her, and even onone occasion, taking advantage of Groholsky's having a cold, carriedher off in his carriage, goodness knows where, and did not bringher back till night!

"It's outrageous, inhuman, " thought Groholsky, biting his lips. 

Groholsky liked to be continually kissing Liza. He could not existwithout those honeyed kisses, and it was awkward to kiss her beforeIvan Petrovitch. It was agony. The poor fellow felt forlorn, butfate soon had compassion on him. Ivan Petrovitch suddenly went offsomewhere for a whole week. Visitors had come and carried him offwith them . . . And Mishutka was taken too. 

One fine morning Groholsky came home from a walk good-humoured andbeaming. 

"He has come, " he said to Liza, rubbing his hands. "I am very gladhe has come. Ha-ha-ha!"

"What are you laughing at?"

"There are women with him. "

"What women?"

"I don't know. . . . It's a good thing he has got women. . . . Acapital thing, in fact. . . . He is still young and fresh. Comehere! Look!"

Groholsky led Liza on to the verandah, and pointed to the villaopposite. They both held their sides, and roared with laughter. Itwas funny. Ivan Petrovitch was standing on the verandah of the villaopposite, smiling. Two dark-haired ladies and Mishutka were standingbelow, under the verandah. The ladies were laughing, and loudlytalking French. 

"French women, " observed Groholsky. "The one nearest us isn't atall bad-looking. Lively damsels, but that's no matter. There aregood women to be found even among such. . . . But they really dogo too far. "

What was funny was that Ivan Petrovitch bent across the verandah, and stretching with his long arms, put them round the shoulders ofone of the French girls, lifted her in the air, and set her gigglingon the verandah. After lifting up both ladies on to the verandah, he lifted up Mishutka too. The ladies ran down and the proceedingswere repeated. 

"Powerful muscles, I must say, " muttered Groholsky looking at thisscene. The operation was repeated some six times, the ladies wereso amiable as to show no embarrassment whatever when the boisterouswind disposed of their inflated skirts as it willed while they werebeing lifted. Groholsky dropped his eyes in a shamefaced way whenthe ladies flung their legs over the parapet as they reached theverandah. But Liza watched and laughed! What did she care? It wasnot a case of men misbehaving themselves, which would have put her, as a woman, to shame, but of ladies. 

In the evening, Ivan Petrovitch flew over, and with some embarrassmentannounced that he was now a man with a household to look after . . . . 

"You mustn't imagine they are just anybody, " he said. "It is truethey are French. They shout at the top of their voices, and drink. . . But we all know! The French are brought up to be like that!It can't be helped. . . . The prince, " Ivan Petrovitch added, "letme have them almost for nothing. . . . He said: 'take them, takethem. . . . ' I must introduce you to the prince sometime. A man ofculture! He's for ever writing, writing. . . . And do you know whattheir names are? One is Fanny, the other Isabella. . . . There'sEurope, ha-ha-ha! . . . The west! Good-bye!"

Ivan Petrovitch left Liza and Groholsky in peace, and devoted himselfto his ladies. All day long sound of talk, laughter, and the clatterof crockery came from his villa. . . . The lights were not put outtill far into the night. . . . Groholsky was in bliss. . . . Atlast, after a prolonged interval of agony, he felt happy and atpeace again. Ivan Petrovitch with his two ladies had no such happinessas he had with one. But alas, destiny has no heart. She plays withthe Groholskys, the Lizas, the Ivans, and the Mishutkas as withpawns. . . . Groholsky lost his peace again. . . . 

One morning, about ten days afterwards, on waking up late, he wentout on to the verandah and saw a spectacle which shocked him, revolted him, and moved him to intense indignation. Under theverandah of the villa opposite stood the French women, and betweenthem Liza. She was talking and looking askance at her own villa asthough to see whether that tyrant, that despot were awake (soGroholsky interpreted those looks). Ivan Petrovitch standing on theverandah with his sleeves tucked up, lifted Isabella into the air, then Fanny, and then Liza. When he was lifting Liza it seemed toGroholsky that he pressed her to himself. . . . Liza too flung oneleg over the parapet. . . . Oh these women! All sphinxes, every oneof them!

When Liza returned home from her husband's villa and went into thebedroom on tip-toe, as though nothing had happened, Groholsky, pale, with hectic flushes on his cheeks, was lying in the attitude of aman at his last gasp and moaning. 

On seeing Liza, he sprang out of bed, and began pacing about thebedroom. 

"So that's what you are like, is it?" he shrieked in a high tenor. "So that's it! Very much obliged to you! It's revolting, madam!Immoral, in fact! Let me tell you that!"

Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears. When women feelthat they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when theyare conscious of being in fault, they shed tears only. 

"On a level with those depraved creatures! It's . . . It's . . . It's . . . Lower than any impropriety! Why, do you know what theyare? They are kept women! Cocottes! And you a respectable woman gorushing off where they are. . . And he . . . He! What does he want?What more does he want of me? I don't understand it! I have givenhim half of my property--I have given him more! You know ityourself! I have given him what I have not myself. . . . I havegiven him almost all. . . . And he! I've put up with your callinghim Vanya, though he has no right whatever to such intimacy. I haveput up with your walks, kisses after dinner. . . . I have put upwith everything, but this I will not put up with. . . . Either heor I! Let him go away, or I go away! I'm not equal to living likethis any longer, no! You can see that for yourself! . . . Eitherhe or I. . . . Enough! The cup is brimming over. . . . I havesuffered a great deal as it is. . . . I am going to talk to him atonce--this minute! What is he, after all? What has he to be proudof? No, indeed. . . . He has no reason to think so much of himself. . . . "

Groholsky said a great many more valiant and stinging things, butdid not "go at once"; he felt timid and abashed. . . . He went toIvan Petrovitch three days later. 

When he went into his apartment, he gaped with astonishment. He wasamazed at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surroundedhimself. Velvet hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . . One waspositively ashamed to step on the carpet. Groholsky had seen manyrich men in his day, but he had never seen such frenzied luxury. . . . And the higgledy-piggledy muddle he saw when, with an inexplicabletremor, he walked into the drawing-room--plates with bits of breadon them were lying about on the grand piano, a glass was standingon a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy ragin it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about in the windows. Bugrovhimself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in. . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about theroom in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated. Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and wasmaking the air vibrate with a piercing scream. 

"It's awful, Grigory Vassilyevitch!" Bugrov began on seeing Groholsky, "such disorder . . . Such disorder . . . Please sit down. You mustexcuse my being in the costume of Adam and Eve. . . . It's of noconsequence. . . . Horrible disorderliness! I don't understand howpeople can exist here, I don't understand it! The servants won'tdo what they are told, the climate is horrible, everything isexpensive. . . . Stop your noise, " Bugrov shouted, suddenly comingto a halt before Mishutka; "stop it, I tell you! Little beast, won'tyou stop it?"

And Bugrov pulled Mishutka's ear. 

"That's revolting, Ivan Petrovitch, " said Groholsky in a tearfulvoice. "How can you treat a tiny child like that? You really are. . . "

"Let him stop yelling then. . . . Be quiet--I'll whip you!"

"Don't cry, Misha darling. . . . Papa won't touch you again. Don'tbeat him, Ivan Petrovitch; why, he is hardly more than a baby. . . . There, there. . . . Would you like a little horse? I'll send youa little horse. . . . You really are hard-hearted. . . . "

Groholsky paused, and then asked:

"And how are your ladies getting on, Ivan Petrovitch?"

"Not at all. I've turned them out without ceremony. I might havegone on keeping them, but it's awkward. . . . The boy will grow up. . . . A father's example. . . . If I were alone, then it would bea different thing. . . . Besides, what's the use of my keeping them?Poof . . . It's a regular farce! I talk to them in Russian, andthey answer me in French. They don't understand a thing--you can'tknock anything into their heads. "

"I've come to you about something, Ivan Petrovitch, to talk thingsover. . . . H'm. . . . It's nothing very particular. But just . . . Two or three words. . . . In reality, I have a favour to ask ofyou. "

"What's that?"

"Would you think it possible, Ivan Petrovitch, to go away? We aredelighted that you are here; it's very agreeable for us, but it'sinconvenient, don't you know. . . . You will understand me. It'sawkward in a way. . . . Such indefinite relations, such continualawkwardness in regard to one another. . . . We must part. . . . It's essential in fact. Excuse my saying so, but . . . You must seefor yourself, of course, that in such circumstances to be livingside by side leads to . . . Reflections . . . That is . . . Not toreflections, but there is a certain awkward feeling. . . . "

"Yes. . . . That is so, I have thought of it myself. Very good, Iwill go away. "

"We shall be very grateful to you. . . . Believe me, Ivan Petrovitch, we shall preserve the most flattering memory of you. The sacrificewhich you. . . "

"Very good. . . . Only what am I to do with all this? I say, youbuy this furniture of mine! What do you say? It's not expensive, eight thousand . . . Ten. . . . The furniture, the carriage, thegrand piano. . . . "

"Very good. . . . I will give you ten thousand. . . . "

"Well, that is capital! I will set off to-morrow. I shall go toMoscow. It's impossible to live here. Everything is so dear! Awfullydear! The money fairly flies. . . . You can't take a step withoutspending a thousand! I can't go on like that. I have a child tobring up. . . . Well, thank God that you will buy my furniture. . . . That will be a little more in hand, or I should have beenregularly bankrupt. . . . "

Groholsky got up, took leave of Bugrov, and went home rejoicing. In the evening he sent him ten thousand roubles. 

Early next morning Bugrov and Mishutka were already at Feodosia. 

III

Several months had passed; spring had come. With spring, fine brightdays had come too. Life was not so dull and hateful, and the earthwas more fair to look upon. . . . There was a warm breeze from thesea and the open country. . . . The earth was covered with freshgrass, fresh leaves were green upon the trees. Nature had sprunginto new life, and had put on new array. 

It might be thought that new hopes and new desires would surge upin man when everything in nature is renewed, and young and fresh. . . But it is hard for man to renew life. . . . 

Groholsky was still living in the same villa. His hopes and desires, small and unexacting, were still concentrated on the same Liza, onher alone, and on nothing else! As before, he could not take hiseyes off her, and gloated over the thought: how happy I am! Thepoor fellow really did feel awfully happy. Liza sat as before onthe verandah, and unaccountably stared with bored eyes at the villaopposite and the trees near it through which there was a peep atthe dark blue sea. . . . As before, she spent her days for the mostpart in silence, often in tears and from time to time in puttingmustard plasters on Groholsky. She might be congratulated on onenew sensation, however. There was a worm gnawing at her vitals. . . . That worm was misery. . . . She was fearfully miserable, piningfor her son, for her old, her cheerful manner of life. Her life inthe past had not been particularly cheerful, but still it waslivelier than her present existence. When she lived with her husbandshe used from time to time to go to a theatre, to an entertainment, to visit acquaintances. But here with Groholsky it was all quietnessand emptiness. . . . Besides, here there was one man, and he withhis ailments and his continual mawkish kisses, was like an oldgrandfather for ever shedding tears of joy. 

It was boring! Here she had not Mihey Sergeyitch who used to befond of dancing the mazurka with her. She had not Spiridon Nikolaitch, the son of the editor of the _Provincial News_. Spiridon Nikolaitchsang well and recited poetry. Here she had not a table set withlunch for visitors. She had not Gerasimovna, the old nurse who usedto be continually grumbling at her for eating too much jam. . . . She had no one! There was simply nothing for her but to lie downand die of depression. Groholsky rejoiced in his solitude, but . . . He was wrong to rejoice in it. All too soon he paid for his egoism. At the beginning of May when the very air seemed to be in love andfaint with happiness, Groholsky lost everything; the woman he lovedand. . . 

That year Bugrov, too, visited the Crimea. He did not take the villaopposite, but pottered about, going from one town to another withMishutka. He spent his time eating, drinking, sleeping, and playingcards. He had lost all relish for fishing, shooting and the Frenchwomen, who, between ourselves, had robbed him a bit. He had grownthin, lost his broad and beaming smiles, and had taken to dressingin canvas. Ivan Petrovitch from time to time visited Groholsky'svilla. He brought Liza jam, sweets, and fruit, and seemed tryingto dispel her ennui. Groholsky was not troubled by these visits, especially as they were brief and infrequent, and were apparentlypaid on account of Mishutka, who could not under any circumstanceshave been altogether deprived of the privilege of seeing his mother. Bugrov came, unpacked his presents, and after saying a few words, departed. And those few words he said not to Liza but to Groholsky. . . . With Liza he was silent and Groholsky's mind was at rest; butthere is a Russian proverb which he would have done well to remember:"Don't fear the dog that barks, but fear the dog that's quiet. . . . "A fiendish proverb, but in practical life sometimes indispensable. 

As he was walking in the garden one day, Groholsky heard two voicesin conversation. One voice was a man's, the other was a woman's. One belonged to Bugrov, the other to Liza. Groholsky listened, andturning white as death, turned softly towards the speakers. Hehalted behind a lilac bush, and proceeded to watch and listen. Hisarms and legs turned cold. A cold sweat came out upon his brow. Heclutched several branches of the lilac that he might not staggerand fall down. All was over!

Bugrov had his arm round Liza's waist, and was saying to her:

"My darling! what are we to do? It seems it was God's will. . . . I am a scoundrel. . . . I sold you. I was seduced by that Herod'smoney, plague take him, and what good have I had from the money?Nothing but anxiety and display! No peace, no happiness, no position. . . . One sits like a fat invalid at the same spot, and never astep forwarder. . . . Have you heard that Andrushka Markuzin hasbeen made a head clerk? Andrushka, that fool! While I stagnate. . . . Good heavens! I have lost you, I have lost my happiness. I ama scoundrel, a blackguard, how do you think I shall feel at thedread day of judgment?"

"Let us go away, Vanya, " wailed Liza. "I am dull. . . . I am dyingof depression. "

"We cannot, the money has been taken. . . . "

"Well, give it back again. "

"I should be glad to, but . . . Wait a minute. I have spent it all. We must submit, my girl. God is chastising us. Me for my covetousnessand you for your frivolity. Well, let us be tortured. . . . It willbe the better for us in the next world. "

And in an access of religious feeling, Bugrov turned up his eyesto heaven. 

"But I cannot go on living here; I am miserable. "

"Well, there is no help for it. I'm miserable too. Do you supposeI am happy without you? I am pining and wasting away! And my chesthas begun to be bad! . . . You are my lawful wife, flesh of my flesh. . . One flesh. . . . You must live and bear it! While I . . . Will drive over . . . Visit you. "

And bending down to Liza, Bugrov whispered, loudly enough, however, to be heard several yards away:

"I will come to you at night, Lizanka. . . . Don't worry. . . . Iam staying at Feodosia close by. . . . I will live here near youtill I have run through everything . . . And I soon shall be at mylast farthing! A-a-ah, what a life it is! Dreariness, ill . . . Mychest is bad, and my stomach is bad. "

Bugrov ceased speaking, and then it was Liza's turn. . . . My God, the cruelty of that woman! She began weeping, complaining, enumeratingall the defects of her lover and her own sufferings. Groholsky ashe listened to her, felt that he was a villain, a miscreant, amurderer. 

"He makes me miserable. . . . " Liza said in conclusion. 

After kissing Liza at parting, and going out at the garden gate, Bugrov came upon Groholsky, who was standing at the gate waitingfor him. 

"Ivan Petrovitch, " said Groholsky in the tone of a dying man, "Ihave seen and heard it all. . . It's not honourable on your part, but I do not blame you. . . . You love her too, but you mustunderstand that she is mine. Mine! I cannot live without her! Howis it you don't understand that? Granted that you love her, thatyou are miserable. . . . Have I not paid you, in part at least, foryour sufferings? For God's sake, go away! For God's sake, go away!Go away from here for ever, I implore you, or you will kill me. . . . "

"I have nowhere to go, " Bugrov said thickly. 

"H'm, you have squandered everything. . . . You are an impulsiveman. Very well. . . . Go to my estate in the province of Tchernigov. If you like I will make you a present of the property. It's a smallestate, but a good one. . . . On my honour, it's a good one!"

Bugrov gave a broad grin. He suddenly felt himself in the seventhheaven. 

"I will give it you. . . . This very day I will write to my stewardand send him an authorisation for completing the purchase. You musttell everyone you have bought it. . . . Go away, I entreat you. "

"Very good, I will go. I understand. "

"Let us go to a notary . . . At once, " said Groholsky, greatlycheered, and he went to order the carriage. 

On the following evening, when Liza was sitting on the garden seatwhere her rendezvous with Ivan Petrovitch usually took place, Groholsky went quietly to her. He sat down beside her, and took herhand. 

"Are you dull, Lizotchka?" he said, after a brief silence. "Are youdepressed? Why shouldn't we go away somewhere? Why is it we alwaysstay at home? We want to go about, to enjoy ourselves, to makeacquaintances. . . . Don't we?"

"I want nothing, " said Liza, and turned her pale, thin face towardsthe path by which Bugrov used to come to her. 

Groholsky pondered. He knew who it was she expected, who it was shewanted. 

"Let us go home, Liza, " he said, "it is damp here. . . . "

"You go; I'll come directly. "

Groholsky pondered again. 

"You are expecting him?" he asked, and made a wry face as thoughhis heart had been gripped with red-hot pincers. 

"Yes. . . . I want to give him the socks for Misha. . . . "

"He will not come. "

"How do you know?"

"He has gone away. . . . "

Liza opened her eyes wide. . . . 

"He has gone away, gone to the Tchernigov province. I have givenhim my estate. . . . "

Liza turned fearfully pale, and caught at Groholsky's shoulder tosave herself from falling. 

"I saw him off at the steamer at three o'clock. "

Liza suddenly clutched at her head, made a movement, and fallingon the seat, began shaking all over. 

"Vanya, " she wailed, "Vanya! I will go to Vanya. . . . Darling!"

She had a fit of hysterics. . . . 

And from that evening, right up to July, two shadows could be seenin the park in which the summer visitors took their walks. Theshadows wandered about from morning till evening, and made thesummer visitors feel dismal. . . . After Liza's shadow invariablywalked the shadow of Groholsky. . . . I call them shadows becausethey had both lost their natural appearance. They had grown thinand pale and shrunken, and looked more like shadows than livingpeople. . . . Both were pining away like fleas in the classicanecdote of the Jew who sold insect powder. 

At the beginning of July, Liza ran away from Groholsky, leaving anote in which she wrote that she was going for a time to "her son". . . For a time! She ran away by night when Groholsky was asleep. . . . After reading her letter Groholsky spent a whole week wanderinground about the villa as though he were mad, and neither ate norslept. In August, he had an attack of recurrent fever, and inSeptember he went abroad. There he took to drink. . . . He hopedin drink and dissipation to find comfort. . . . He squandered allhis fortune, but did not succeed, poor fellow, in driving out ofhis brain the image of the beloved woman with the kittenish face. . . . Men do not die of happiness, nor do they die of misery. Groholsky's hair went grey, but he did not die: he is alive to thisday. . . . He came back from abroad to have "just a peep" at Liza. . . . Bugrov met him with open arms, and made him stay for anindefinite period. He is staying with Bugrov to this day. 

This year I happened to be passing through Groholyovka, Bugrov'sestate. I found the master and the mistress of the house havingsupper. . . . Ivan Petrovitch was highly delighted to see me, andfell to pressing good things upon me. . . . He had grown ratherstout, and his face was a trifle puffy, though it was still rosyand looked sleek and well-nourished. . . . He was not bald. Liza, too, had grown fatter. Plumpness did not suit her. Her face wasbeginning to lose the kittenish look, and was, alas! more suggestiveof the seal. Her cheeks were spreading upwards, outwards, and toboth sides. The Bugrovs were living in first-rate style. They hadplenty of everything. The house was overflowing with servants andedibles. . . . 

When we had finished supper we got into conversation. Forgettingthat Liza did not play, I asked her to play us something on thepiano. 

"She does not play, " said Bugrov; "she is no musician. . . . Hey, you there! Ivan! call Grigory Vassilyevitch here! What's he doingthere?" And turning to me, Bugrov added, "Our musician will comedirectly; he plays the guitar. We keep the piano for Mishutka--we are having him taught. . . . "

Five minutes later, Groholsky walked into the room--sleepy, unkempt, and unshaven. . . . He walked in, bowed to me, and satdown on one side. 

"Why, whoever goes to bed so early?" said Bugrov, addressing him. "What a fellow you are really! He's always asleep, always asleep. . . The sleepy head! Come, play us something lively. . . . "

Groholsky turned the guitar, touched the strings, and began singing:

 "Yesterday I waited for my dear one. . . . "

I listened to the singing, looked at Bugrov's well-fed countenance, and thought: "Nasty brute!" I felt like crying. . . . When he hadfinished singing, Groholsky bowed to us, and went out. 

"And what am I to do with him?" Bugrov said when he had gone away. "I do have trouble with him! In the day he is always brooding andbrooding. . . . And at night he moans. . . . He sleeps, but he sighsand moans in his sleep. . . . It is a sort of illness. . . . Whatam I to do with him, I can't think! He won't let us sleep. . . . Iam afraid that he will go out of his mind. People think he is badlytreated here. . . . In what way is he badly treated? He eats withus, and he drinks with us. . . . Only we won't give him money. Ifwe were to give him any he would spend it on drink or waste it. . . . That's another trouble for me! Lord forgive me, a sinner!"

They made me stay the night. When I woke next morning, Bugrov wasgiving some one a lecture in the adjoining room. . . . 

"Set a fool to say his prayers, and he will crack his skull on thefloor! Why, who paints oars green! Do think, blockhead! Use yoursense! Why don't you speak?"

"I . . . I . . . Made a mistake, " said a husky tenor apologetically. 

The tenor belonged to Groholsky. 

Groholsky saw me to the station. 

"He is a despot, a tyrant, " he kept whispering to me all the way. "He is a generous man, but a tyrant! Neither heart nor brain aredeveloped in him. . . . He tortures me! If it were not for thatnoble woman, I should have gone away long ago. I am sorry to leaveher. It's somehow easier to endure together. "

Groholsky heaved a sigh, and went on:

"She is with child. . . . You notice it? It is really my child. . . . Mine. . . . She soon saw her mistake, and gave herself to meagain. She cannot endure him. . . . "

"You are a rag, " I could not refrain from saying to Groholsky. 

"Yes, I am a man of weak character. . . . That is quite true. I wasborn so. Do you know how I came into the world? My late papa cruellyoppressed a certain little clerk--it was awful how he treatedhim! He poisoned his life. Well . . . And my late mama wastender-hearted. She came from the people, she was of the workingclass. . . . She took that little clerk to her heart from pity. . . . Well . . . And so I came into the world. . . . The son of theill-treated clerk. How could I have a strong will? Where was I toget it from? But that's the second bell. . . . Good-bye. Come andsee us again, but don't tell Ivan Petrovitch what I have said abouthim. "

I pressed Groholsky's hand, and got into the train. He bowed towardsthe carriage, and went to the water-barrel--I suppose he wasthirsty!

THE DOCTOR

IT was still in the drawing-room, so still that a house-fly thathad flown in from outside could be distinctly heard brushing againstthe ceiling. Olga Ivanovna, the lady of the villa, was standing bythe window, looking out at the flower-beds and thinking. Dr. Tsvyetkov, who was her doctor as well as an old friend, and hadbeen sent for to treat her son Misha, was sitting in an easy chairand swinging his hat, which he held in both hands, and he too wasthinking. Except them, there was not a soul in the drawing-room orin the adjoining rooms. The sun had set, and the shades of eveningbegan settling in the corners under the furniture and on the cornices. 

The silence was broken by Olga Ivanovna. 

"No misfortune more terrible can be imagined, " she said, withoutturning from the window. "You know that life has no value for mewhatever apart from the boy. "

"Yes, I know that, " said the doctor. 

"No value whatever, " said Olga Ivanovna, and her voice quivered. "He is everything to me. He is my joy, my happiness, my wealth. Andif, as you say, I cease to be a mother, if he . . . Dies, therewill be nothing left of me but a shadow. I cannot survive it. "

Wringing her hands, Olga Ivanovna walked from one window to theother and went on:

"When he was born, I wanted to send him away to the FoundlingHospital, you remember that, but, my God, how can that time becompared with now? Then I was vulgar, stupid, feather-headed, butnow I am a mother, do you understand? I am a mother, and that's allI care to know. Between the present and the past there is animpassable gulf. "

Silence followed again. The doctor shifted his seat from the chairto the sofa and impatiently playing with his hat, kept his eyesfixed upon Olga Ivanovna. From his face it could be seen that hewanted to speak, and was waiting for a fitting moment. 

"You are silent, but still I do not give up hope, " said the lady, turning round. "Why are you silent?"

"I should be as glad of any hope as you, Olga, but there is none, "Tsvyetkov answered, "we must look the hideous truth in the face. The boy has a tumour on the brain, and we must try to prepareourselves for his death, for such cases never recover. "

"Nikolay, are you certain you are not mistaken?"

"Such questions lead to nothing. I am ready to answer as many asyou like, but it will make it no better for us. "

Olga Ivanovna pressed her face into the window curtains, and beganweeping bitterly. The doctor got up and walked several times up anddown the drawing-room, then went to the weeping woman, and lightlytouched her arm. Judging from his uncertain movements, from theexpression of his gloomy face, which looked dark in the dusk of theevening, he wanted to say something. 

"Listen, Olga, " he began. "Spare me a minute's attention; there issomething I must ask you. You can't attend to me now, though. I'llcome later, afterwards. . . . " He sat down again, and sank intothought. The bitter, imploring weeping, like the weeping of a littlegirl, continued. Without waiting for it to end, Tsvyetkov heaved asigh and walked out of the drawing-room. He went into the nurseryto Misha. The boy was lying on his back as before, staring at onepoint as though he were listening. The doctor sat down on his bedand felt his pulse. 

"Misha, does your head ache?" he asked. 

Misha answered, not at once: "Yes. I keep dreaming. "

"What do you dream?"

"All sorts of things. . . . "

The doctor, who did not know how to talk with weeping women or withchildren, stroked his burning head, and muttered:

"Never mind, poor boy, never mind. . . . One can't go through lifewithout illness. . . . Misha, who am I--do you know me?"

Misha did not answer. 

"Does your head ache very badly?"

"Ve-ery. I keep dreaming. "

After examining him and putting a few questions to the maid who waslooking after the sick child, the doctor went slowly back to thedrawing-room. There it was by now dark, and Olga Ivanovna, standingby the window, looked like a silhouette. 

"Shall I light up?" asked Tsvyetkov. 

No answer followed. The house-fly was still brushing against theceiling. Not a sound floated in from outside as though the wholeworld, like the doctor, were thinking, and could not bring itselfto speak. Olga Ivanovna was not weeping now, but as before, staringat the flower-bed in profound silence. When Tsvyetkov went up toher, and through the twilight glanced at her pale face, exhaustedwith grief, her expression was such as he had seen before duringher attacks of acute, stupefying, sick headache. 

"Nikolay Trofimitch!" she addressed him, "and what do you thinkabout a consultation?"

"Very good; I'll arrange it to-morrow. "

From the doctor's tone it could be easily seen that he put littlefaith in the benefit of a consultation. Olga Ivanovna would haveasked him something else, but her sobs prevented her. Again shepressed her face into the window curtain. At that moment, the strainsof a band playing at the club floated in distinctly. They couldhear not only the wind instruments, but even the violins and theflutes. 

"If he is in pain, why is he silent?" asked Olga Ivanovna. "All daylong, not a sound, he never complains, and never cries. I know Godwill take the poor boy from us because we have not known how toprize him. Such a treasure!"

The band finished the march, and a minute later began playing alively waltz for the opening of the ball. 

"Good God, can nothing really be done?" moaned Olga Ivanovna. "Nikolay, you are a doctor and ought to know what to do! You mustunderstand that I can't bear the loss of him! I can't survive it. "

The doctor, who did not know how to talk to weeping women, heaveda sigh, and paced slowly about the drawing-room. There followed asuccession of oppressive pauses interspersed with weeping and thequestions which lead to nothing. The band had already played aquadrille, a polka, and another quadrille. It got quite dark. Inthe adjoining room, the maid lighted the lamp; and all the whilethe doctor kept his hat in his hands, and seemed trying to saysomething. Several times Olga Ivanovna went off to her son, sat byhim for half an hour, and came back again into the drawing-room;she was continually breaking into tears and lamentations. The timedragged agonisingly, and it seemed as though the evening had noend. 

At midnight, when the band had played the cotillion and ceasedaltogether, the doctor got ready to go. 

"I will come again to-morrow, " he said, pressing the mother's coldhand. "You go to bed. "

After putting on his greatcoat in the passage and picking up hiswalking-stick, he stopped, thought a minute, and went back into thedrawing-room. 

"I'll come to-morrow, Olga, " he repeated in a quivering voice. "Doyou hear?"

She did not answer, and it seemed as though grief had robbed herof all power of speech. In his greatcoat and with his stick stillin his hand, the doctor sat down beside her, and began in a soft, tender half-whisper, which was utterly out of keeping with hisheavy, dignified figure:

"Olga! For the sake of your sorrow which I share. . . . Now, whenfalsehood is criminal, I beseech you to tell me the truth. You havealways declared that the boy is my son. Is that the truth?"

Olga Ivanovna was silent. 

"You have been the one attachment in my life, " the doctor went on, "and you cannot imagine how deeply my feeling is wounded by falsehood. . . . Come, I entreat you, Olga, for once in your life, tell me thetruth. . . . At these moments one cannot lie. Tell me that Mishais not my son. I am waiting. "

"He is. "

Olga Ivanovna's face could not be seen, but in her voice the doctorcould hear hesitation. He sighed. 

"Even at such moments you can bring yourself to tell a lie, " hesaid in his ordinary voice. "There is nothing sacred to you! Dolisten, do understand me. . . . You have been the one only attachmentin my life. Yes, you were depraved, vulgar, but I have loved no oneelse but you in my life. That trivial love, now that I am growingold, is the one solitary bright spot in my memories. Why do youdarken it with deception? What is it for?"

"I don't understand you. "

"Oh my God!" cried Tsvyetkov. "You are lying, you understand verywell!" he cried more loudly, and he began pacing about the drawing-room, angrily waving his stick. "Or have you forgotten? Then I will remindyou! A father's rights to the boy are equally shared with me byPetrov and Kurovsky the lawyer, who still make you an allowance fortheir son's education, just as I do! Yes, indeed! I know all thatquite well! I forgive your lying in the past, what does it matter?But now when you have grown older, at this moment when the boy isdying, your lying stifles me! How sorry I am that I cannot speak, how sorry I am!"

The doctor unbuttoned his overcoat, and still pacing about, said:

"Wretched woman! Even such moments have no effect on her! Even nowshe lies as freely as nine years ago in the Hermitage Restaurant!She is afraid if she tells me the truth I shall leave off givingher money, she thinks that if she did not lie I should not love theboy! You are lying! It's contemptible!"

The doctor rapped the floor with his stick, and cried:

"It's loathsome. Warped, corrupted creature! I must despise you, and I ought to be ashamed of my feeling. Yes! Your lying has stuckin my throat these nine years, I have endured it, but now it's toomuch--too much. "

From the dark corner where Olga Ivanovna was sitting there came thesound of weeping. The doctor ceased speaking and cleared his throat. A silence followed. The doctor slowly buttoned up his over-coat, and began looking for his hat which he had dropped as he walkedabout. 

"I lost my temper, " he muttered, bending down to the floor. "I quitelost sight of the fact that you cannot attend to me now. . . . Godknows what I have said. . . . Don't take any notice of it, Olga. "

He found his hat and went towards the dark corner. 

"I have wounded you, " he said in a soft, tender half-whisper, "butonce more I entreat you, tell me the truth; there should not belying between us. . . . I blurted it out, and now you know thatPetrov and Kurovsky are no secret to me. So now it is easy for youto tell me the truth. "

Olga Ivanovna thought a moment, and with perceptible hesitation, said:

"Nikolay, I am not lying--Misha is your child. "

"My God, " moaned the doctor, "then I will tell you something more:I have kept your letter to Petrov in which you call him Misha'sfather! Olga, I know the truth, but I want to hear it from you! Doyou hear?"

Olga Ivanovna made no reply, but went on weeping. After waiting foran answer the doctor shrugged his shoulders and went out. 

"I will come to-morrow, " he called from the passage. 

All the way home, as he sat in his carriage, he was shrugging hisshoulders and muttering:

"What a pity that I don't know how to speak! I haven't the gift ofpersuading and convincing. It's evident she does not understand mesince she lies! It's evident! How can I make her see? How?"

TOO EARLY!

THE bells are ringing for service in the village of Shalmovo. Thesun is already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turnedcrimson and will soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which haslately changed its name and become a restaurant--a title quiteout of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch tornoff its roof, and its couple of dingy windows--two peasant sportsmenare sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an oldman of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin, by trade a carpenter. He has at one time been employed in a nailfactory, has been turned off for drunkenness and idleness, and nowlives upon his old wife, who begs for alms. He is thin and weak, with a mangy-looking little beard, speaks with a hissing sound, andafter every word twitches the right side of his face and jerkilyshrugs his right shoulder. The other, Ignat Ryabov, a sturdy, broad-shouldered peasant who never does anything and is everlastinglysilent, is sitting in the corner under a big string of bread rings. The door, opening inwards, throws a thick shadow upon him, so thatSlyunka and Semyon the publican can see nothing but his patchedknees, his long fleshy nose, and a big tuft of hair which has escapedfrom the thick uncombed tangle covering his head. Semyon, a sicklylittle man, with a pale face and a long sinewy neck, stands behindhis counter, looks mournfully at the string of bread rings, andcoughs meekly. 

"You think it over now, if you have any sense, " Slyunka says tohim, twitching his cheek. "You have the thing lying by unused andget no sort of benefit from it. While we need it. A sportsman withouta gun is like a sacristan without a voice. You ought to understandthat, but I see you don't understand it, so you can have no realsense. . . . Hand it over!"

"You left the gun in pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thinwomanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes offthe string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, andthen take your gun. "

"I haven't got a rouble. I swear to you, Semyon Mitritch, as Godsees me: you give me the gun and I will go to-day with Ignashka andbring it you back again. I'll bring it back, strike me dead. May Ihave happiness neither in this world nor the next, if I don't. "

"Semyon Mitritch, do give it, " Ignat Ryabov says in his bass, andhis voice betrays a passionate desire to get what he asks for. 

"But what do you want the gun for?" sighs Semyon, sadly shaking hishead. "What sort of shooting is there now? It's still winter outside, and no game at all but crows and jackdaws. "

"Winter, indeed, " says Slyunka, hooing the ash out of his pipe withhis finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell withthe snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you areunlucky, you may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, andthen you must wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipeis not a rook. . . . Last year he was flying the week before Easter, while the year before we had to wait till the week after Easter!Come, do us a favour, Semyon Mitritch, give us the gun. Make uspray for you for ever. As ill-luck would have it, Ignashka haspledged his gun for drink too. Ah, when you drink you feel nothing, but now . . . Ah, I wish I had never looked at it, the cursed vodka!Truly it is the blood of Satan! Give it us, Semyon Mitritch!"

"I won't give it you, " says Semyon, clasping his yellow hands onhis breast as though he were going to pray. "You must act fairly, Filimonushka. . . . A thing is not taken out of pawn just anyhow;you must pay the money. . . . Besides, what do you want to killbirds for? What's the use? It's Lent now--you are not going toeat them. "

Slyunka exchanges glances with Ryabov in embarrassment, sighs, andsays: "We would only go stand-shooting. "

"And what for? It's all foolishness. You are not the sort of manto spend your time in foolishness. . . . Ignashka, to be sure, isa man of no understanding, God has afflicted him, but you, thankthe Lord, are an old man. It's time to prepare for your end. Here, you ought to go to the midnight service. "

The allusion to his age visibly stings Slyunka. He clears his throat, wrinkles up his forehead, and remains silent for a full minute. 

"I say, Semyon Mitritch, " he says hotly, getting up and twitchingnot only in his right cheek but all over his face. "It's God'struth. . . . May the Almighty strike me dead, after Easter I shallget something from Stepan Kuzmitch for an axle, and I will pay younot one rouble but two! May the Lord chastise me! Before the holyimage, I tell you, only give me the gun!"

"Gi-ive it, " Ryabov says in his growling bass; they can hear himbreathing hard, and it seems that he would like to say a great deal, but cannot find the words. "Gi-ive it. "

"No, brothers, and don't ask, " sighs Semyon, shaking his headmournfully. "Don't lead me into sin. I won't give you the gun. It'snot the fashion for a thing to be taken out of pawn and no moneypaid. Besides--why this indulgence? Go your way and God blessyou!"

Slyunka rubs his perspiring face with his sleeve and begins hotlyswearing and entreating. He crosses himself, holds out his handsto the ikon, calls his deceased father and mother to bear witness, but Semyon sighs and meekly looks as before at the string of breadrings. In the end Ignashka Ryabov, hitherto motionless, gets upimpulsively and bows down to the ground before the innkeeper, buteven that has no effect on him. 

"May you choke with my gun, you devil, " says Slyunka, with his facetwitching, and his shoulders, shrugging. "May you choke, you plague, you scoundrelly soul. "

Swearing and shaking his fists, he goes out of the tavern withRyabov and stands still in the middle of the road. 

"He won't give it, the damned brute, " he says, in a weeping voice, looking into Ryabov's face with an injured air. 

"He won't give it, " booms Ryabov. 

The windows of the furthest huts, the starling cote on the tavern, the tops of the poplars, and the cross on the church are all gleamingwith a bright golden flame. Now they can see only half of the sun, which, as it goes to its night's rest, is winking, shedding a crimsonlight, and seems laughing gleefully. Slyunka and Ryabov can see theforest lying, a dark blur, to the right of the sun, a mile and ahalf from the village, and tiny clouds flitting over the clear sky, and they feel that the evening will be fine and still. 

"Now is just the time, " says Slyunka, with his face twitching. "Itwould be nice to stand for an hour or two. He won't give it us, thedamned brute. May he . . . "

"For stand-shooting, now is the very time . . . " Ryabov articulated, as though with an effort, stammering. 

After standing still for a little they walk out of the village, without saying a word to each other, and look towards the darkstreak of the forest. The whole sky above the forest is studdedwith moving black spots, the rooks flying home to roost. The snow, lying white here and there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightlyflecked with gold by the sun. 

"This time last year I went stand-shooting in Zhivki, " says Slyunka, after a long silence. "I brought back three snipe. "

Again there follows a silence. Both stand a long time and looktowards the forest, and then lazily move and walk along the muddyroad from the village. 

"It's most likely the snipe haven't come yet, " says Slyunka, "butmay be they are here. "

"Kostka says they are not here yet. "

"Maybe they are not, who can tell; one year is not like another. But what mud!"

"But we ought to stand. "

"To be sure we ought--why not?"

"We can stand and watch; it wouldn't be amiss to go to the forestand have a look. If they are there we will tell Kostka, or maybeget a gun ourselves and come to-morrow. What a misfortune, Godforgive me. It was the devil put it in my mind to take my gun tothe pothouse! I am more sorry than I can tell you, Ignashka. "

Conversing thus, the sportsmen approach the forest. The sun has setand left behind it a red streak like the glow of a fire, scatteredhere and there with clouds; there is no catching the colours ofthose clouds: their edges are red, but they themselves are oneminute grey, at the next lilac, at the next ashen. 

In the forest, among the thick branches of fir-trees and under thebirch bushes, it is dark, and only the outermost twigs on the sideof the sun, with their fat buds and shining bark, stand out clearlyin the air. There is a smell of thawing snow and rotting leaves. It is still; nothing stirs. From the distance comes the subsidingcaw of the rooks. 

"We ought to be standing in Zhivki now, " whispers Slyunka, lookingwith awe at Ryabov; "there's good stand-shooting there. "

Ryabov too looks with awe at Slyunka, with unblinking eyes and openmouth. 

"A lovely time, " Slyunka says in a trembling whisper. "The Lord issending a fine spring . . . And I should think the snipe are hereby now. . . . Why not? The days are warm now. . . . The cranes wereflying in the morning, lots and lots of them. "

Slyunka and Ryabov, splashing cautiously through the melting snowand sticking in the mud, walk two hundred paces along the edge ofthe forest and there halt. Their faces wear a look of alarm andexpectation of something terrible and extraordinary. They standlike posts, do not speak nor stir, and their hands gradually fallinto an attitude as though they were holding a gun at the cock. . . . 

A big shadow creeps from the left and envelops the earth. The duskof evening comes on. If one looks to the right, through the bushesand tree trunks, there can be seen crimson patches of the after-glow. It is still and damp. . . . 

"There's no sound of them, " whispers Slyunka, shrugging with thecold and sniffing with his chilly nose. 

But frightened by his own whisper, he holds his finger up at someone, opens his eyes wide, and purses up his lips. There is a soundof a light snapping. The sportsmen look at each other significantly, and tell each other with their eyes that it is nothing. It is thesnapping of a dry twig or a bit of bark. The shadows of eveningkeep growing and growing, the patches of crimson gradually growdim, and the dampness becomes unpleasant. 

The sportsmen remain standing a long time, but they see and hearnothing. Every instant they expect to see a delicate leaf floatthrough the air, to hear a hurried call like the husky cough of achild, and the flutter of wings. 

"No, not a sound, " Slyunka says aloud, dropping his hands andbeginning to blink. "So they have not come yet. "

"It's early!"

"You are right there. "

The sportsmen cannot see each other's faces, it is getting rapidlydark. 

"We must wait another five days, " says Slyunka, as he comes outfrom behind a bush with Ryabov. "It's too early!"

They go homewards, and are silent all the way. 

THE COSSACK

MAXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving homefrom church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cakewhich had just been blessed. The sun had not yet risen, but theeast was all tinged with red and gold and had dissipated the hazewhich usually, in the early morning, screens the blue of the skyfrom the eyes. It was quiet. . . . The birds were hardly yet awake. . . . The corncrake uttered its clear note, and far away above alittle tumulus, a sleepy kite floated, heavily flapping its wings, and no other living creature could be seen all over the steppe. 

Tortchakov drove on and thought that there was no better nor happierholiday than the Feast of Christ's Resurrection. He had only latelybeen married, and was now keeping his first Easter with his wife. Whatever he looked at, whatever he thought about, it all seemed tohim bright, joyous, and happy. He thought about his farming, andthought that it was all going well, that the furnishing of his housewas all the heart could desire--there was enough of everythingand all of it good; he looked at his wife, and she seemed to himlovely, kind, and gentle. He was delighted by the glow in the east, and the young grass, and his squeaking chaise, and the kite. . . . And when on the way, he ran into a tavern to light his cigaretteand drank a glass, he felt happier still. 

"It is said, 'Great is the day, '" he chattered. "Yes, it is great!Wait a bit, Lizaveta, the sun will begin to dance. It dances everyEaster. So it rejoices too!"

"It is not alive, " said his wife. 

"But there are people on it!" exclaimed Tortchakov, "there arereally! Ivan Stepanitch told me that there are people on all theplanets--on the sun, and on the moon! Truly . . . But maybe thelearned men tell lies--the devil only knows! Stay, surely that'snot a horse? Yes, it is!"

At the Crooked Ravine, which was just half-way on the journey home, Tortchakov and his wife saw a saddled horse standing motionless, and sniffing last year's dry grass. On a hillock beside the roadsidea red-haired Cossack was sitting doubled up, looking at his feet. 

"Christ is risen!" Maxim shouted to him. "Wo-o-o!"

"Truly He is risen, " answered the Cossack, without raising his head. 

"Where are you going?"

"Home on leave. "

"Why are you sitting here, then?"

"Why . . . I have fallen ill . . . I haven't the strength to goon. "

"What is wrong?"

"I ache all over. "

"H'm. What a misfortune! People are keeping holiday, and you fallsick! But you should ride on to a village or an inn, what's the useof sitting here!"

The Cossack raised his head, and with big, exhausted eyes, scannedMaxim, his wife, and the horse. 

"Have you come from church?" he asked. 

"Yes. "

"The holiday found me on the high road. It was not God's will forme to reach home. I'd get on my horse at once and ride off, but Ihaven't the strength. . . . You might, good Christians, give awayfarer some Easter cake to break his fast!"

"Easter cake?" Tortchakov repeated, "That we can, to be sure. . . . Stay, I'll. . . . "

Maxim fumbled quickly in his pockets, glanced at his wife, and said:

"I haven't a knife, nothing to cut it with. And I don't like tobreak it, it would spoil the whole cake. There's a problem! Youlook and see if you haven't a knife?"

The Cossack got up groaning, and went to his saddle to get a knife. 

"What an idea, " said Tortchakov's wife angrily. "I won't let youslice up the Easter cake! What should I look like, taking it homealready cut! Ride on to the peasants in the village, and break yourfast there!"

The wife took the napkin with the Easter cake in it out of herhusband's hands and said:

"I won't allow it! One must do things properly; it's not a loaf, but a holy Easter cake. And it's a sin to cut it just anyhow. "

"Well, Cossack, don't be angry, " laughed Tortchakov. "The wifeforbids it! Good-bye. Good luck on your journey!"

Maxim shook the reins, clicked to his horse, and the chaise rolledon squeaking. For some time his wife went on grumbling, and declaringthat to cut the Easter cake before reaching home was a sin and notthe proper thing. In the east the first rays of the rising sun shoneout, cutting their way through the feathery clouds, and the songof the lark was heard in the sky. Now not one but three kites werehovering over the steppe at a respectful distance from one another. Grasshoppers began churring in the young grass. 

When they had driven three-quarters of a mile from the CrookedRavine, Tortchakov looked round and stared intently into the distance. 

"I can't see the Cossack, " he said. "Poor, dear fellow, to take itinto his head to fall ill on the road. There couldn't be a worsemisfortune, to have to travel and not have the strength. . . . Ishouldn't wonder if he dies by the roadside. We didn't give him anyEaster cake, Lizaveta, and we ought to have given it. I'll be boundhe wants to break his fast too. "

The sun had risen, but whether it was dancing or not Tortchakov didnot see. He remained silent all the way home, thinking and keepinghis eyes fixed on the horse's black tail. For some unknown reasonhe felt overcome by depression, and not a trace of the holidaygladness was left in his heart. When he had arrived home and said, "Christ is risen" to his workmen, he grew cheerful again and begantalking, but when he had sat down to break the fast and had takena bite from his piece of Easter cake, he looked regretfully at hiswife, and said:

"It wasn't right of us, Lizaveta, not to give that Cossack somethingto eat. "

"You are a queer one, upon my word, " said Lizaveta, shrugging hershoulders in surprise. "Where did you pick up such a fashion asgiving away the holy Easter cake on the high road? Is it an ordinaryloaf? Now that it is cut and lying on the table, let anyone eat itthat likes--your Cossack too! Do you suppose I grudge it?"

"That's all right, but we ought to have given the Cossack some. . . . Why, he was worse off than a beggar or an orphan. On the road, and far from home, and sick too. "

Tortchakov drank half a glass of tea, and neither ate nor drankanything more. He had no appetite, the tea seemed to choke him, andhe felt depressed again. After breaking their fast, his wife andhe lay down to sleep. When Lizaveta woke two hours later, he wasstanding by the window, looking into the yard. 

"Are you up already?" asked his wife. 

"I somehow can't sleep. . . . Ah, Lizaveta, " he sighed. "We wereunkind, you and I, to that Cossack!"

"Talking about that Cossack again!" yawned his wife. "You have gothim on the brain. "

"He has served his Tsar, shed his blood maybe, and we treated himas though he were a pig. We ought to have brought the sick man homeand fed him, and we did not even give him a morsel of bread. "

"Catch me letting you spoil the Easter cake for nothing! And onethat has been blessed too! You would have cut it on the road, andshouldn't I have looked a fool when I got home?"

Without saying anything to his wife, Maxim went into the kitchen, wrapped a piece of cake up in a napkin, together with half a dozeneggs, and went to the labourers in the barn. 

"Kuzma, put down your concertina, " he said to one of them. "Saddlethe bay, or Ivantchik, and ride briskly to the Crooked Ravine. Thereyou will see a sick Cossack with a horse, so give him this. Maybehe hasn't ridden away yet. "

Maxim felt cheerful again, but after waiting for Kuzma for somehours, he could bear it no longer, so he saddled a horse and wentoff to meet him. He met him just at the Ravine. 

"Well, have you seen the Cossack?"

"I can't find him anywhere, he must have ridden on. "

"H'm . . . A queer business. "

Tortchakov took the bundle from Kuzma, and galloped on farther. When he reached Shustrovo he asked the peasants:

"Friends, have you seen a sick Cossack with a horse? Didn't he rideby here? A red-headed fellow on a bay horse. "

The peasants looked at one another, and said they had not seen theCossack. 

"The returning postman drove by, it's true, but as for a Cossackor anyone else, there has been no such. "

Maxim got home at dinner time. 

"I can't get that Cossack out of my head, do what you will!" hesaid to his wife. "He gives me no peace. I keep thinking: what ifGod meant to try us, and sent some saint or angel in the form of aCossack? It does happen, you know. It's bad, Lizaveta; we wereunkind to the man!"

"What do you keep pestering me with that Cossack for?" cried Lizaveta, losing patience at last. "You stick to it like tar!"

"You are not kind, you know . . . " said Maxim, looking into hiswife's face. 

And for the first time since his marriage he perceived that he wifewas not kind. 

"I may be unkind, " cried Lizaveta, tapping angrily with her spoon, "but I am not going to give away the holy Easter cake to everydrunken man in the road. "

"The Cossack wasn't drunk!"

"He was drunk!"

"Well, you are a fool then!"

Maxim got up from the table and began reproaching his young wifefor hard-heartedness and stupidity. She, getting angry too, answeredhis reproaches with reproaches, burst into tears, and went awayinto their bedroom, declaring she would go home to her father's. This was the first matrimonial squabble that had happened in theTortchakov's married life. He walked about the yard till the evening, picturing his wife's face, and it seemed to him now spiteful andugly. And as though to torment him the Cossack haunted his brain, and Maxim seemed to see now his sick eyes, now his unsteady walk. 

"Ah, we were unkind to the man, " he muttered. 

When it got dark, he was overcome by an insufferable depressionsuch as he had never felt before. Feeling so dreary, and being angrywith his wife, he got drunk, as he had sometimes done before he wasmarried. In his drunkenness he used bad language and shouted to hiswife that she had a spiteful, ugly face, and that next day he wouldsend her packing to her father's. On the morning of Easter Monday, he drank some more to sober himself, and got drunk again. 

And with that his downfall began. 

His horses, cows, sheep, and hives disappeared one by one from theyard; Maxim was more and more often drunk, debts mounted up, hefelt an aversion for his wife. Maxim put down all his misfortunesto the fact that he had an unkind wife, and above all, that God wasangry with him on account of the sick Cossack. 

Lizaveta saw their ruin, but who was to blame for it she did notunderstand. 

ABORIGINES

BETWEEN nine and ten in the morning. Ivan Lyashkevsky, a lieutenantof Polish origin, who has at some time or other been wounded in thehead, and now lives on his pension in a town in one of the southernprovinces, is sitting in his lodgings at the open window talkingto Franz Stepanitch Finks, the town architect, who has come in tosee him for a minute. Both have thrust their heads out of the window, and are looking in the direction of the gate near which Lyashkevsky'slandlord, a plump little native with pendulous perspiring cheeks, in full, blue trousers, is sitting on a bench with his waistcoatunbuttoned. The native is plunged in deep thought, and is absent-mindedlyprodding the toe of his boot with a stick. 

"Extraordinary people, I tell you, " grumbled Lyashkevsky, lookingangrily at the native, "here he has sat down on the bench, and sohe will sit, damn the fellow, with his hands folded till evening. They do absolutely nothing. The wastrels and loafers! It would beall right, you scoundrel, if you had money lying in the bank, orhad a farm of your own where others would be working for you, buthere you have not a penny to your name, you eat the bread of others, you are in debt all round, and you starve your family--devil takeyou! You wouldn't believe me, Franz Stepanitch, sometimes it makesme so cross that I could jump out of the window and give the lowfellow a good horse-whipping. Come, why don't you work? What areyou sitting there for?"

The native looks indifferently at Lyashkevsky, tries to say somethingbut cannot; sloth and the sultry heat have paralysed his conversationalfaculties. . . . Yawning lazily, he makes the sign of the crossover his mouth, and turns his eyes up towards the sky where pigeonsfly, bathing in the hot air. 

"You must not be too severe in your judgments, honoured friend, "sighs Finks, mopping his big bald head with his handkerchief. "Putyourself in their place: business is slack now, there's unemploymentall round, a bad harvest, stagnation in trade. "

"Good gracious, how you talk!" cries Lyashkevsky in indignation, angrily wrapping his dressing gown round him. "Supposing he has nojob and no trade, why doesn't he work in his own home, the devilflay him! I say! Is there no work for you at home? Just look, youbrute! Your steps have come to pieces, the plankway is falling intothe ditch, the fence is rotten; you had better set to and mend itall, or if you don't know how, go into the kitchen and help yourwife. Your wife is running out every minute to fetch water or carryout the slops. Why shouldn't you run instead, you rascal? And thenyou must remember, Franz Stepanitch, that he has six acres of garden, that he has pigsties and poultry houses, but it is all wasted andno use. The flower garden is overgrown with weeds and almost bakeddry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden. Isn't he alazy brute? I assure you, though I have only the use of an acre anda half with my lodgings, you will always find radishes, and salad, and fennel, and onions, while that blackguard buys everything atthe market. "

"He is a Russian, there is no doing anything with him, " said Finkswith a condescending smile; "it's in the Russian blood. . . . Theyare a very lazy people! If all property were given to Germans orPoles, in a year's time you would not recognise the town. "

The native in the blue trousers beckons a girl with a sieve, buysa kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds from her and begins crackingthem. 

"A race of curs!" says Lyashkevsky angrily. "That's their onlyoccupation, they crack sunflower seeds and they talk politics! Thedevil take them!"

Staring wrathfully at the blue trousers, Lyashkevsky is graduallyroused to fury, and gets so excited that he actually foams at themouth. He speaks with a Polish accent, rapping out each syllablevenomously, till at last the little bags under his eyes swell, andhe abandons the Russian "scoundrels, blackguards, and rascals, " androlling his eyes, begins pouring out a shower of Polish oaths, coughing from his efforts. "Lazy dogs, race of curs. May the deviltake them!"

The native hears this abuse distinctly, but, judging from theappearance of his crumpled little figure, it does not affect him. Apparently he has long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzingof the flies, and feels it superfluous to protest. At every visitFinks has to listen to a tirade on the subject of the lazygood-for-nothing aborigines, and every time exactly the same one. 

"But . . . I must be going, " he says, remembering that he has notime to spare. "Good-bye!"

"Where are you off to?"

"I only looked in on you for a minute. The wall of the cellar hascracked in the girls' high school, so they asked me to go round atonce to look at it. I must go. "

"H'm. . . . I have told Varvara to get the samovar, " says Lyashkevsky, surprised. "Stay a little, we will have some tea; then you shallgo. "

Finks obediently puts down his hat on the table and remains to drinktea. Over their tea Lyashkevsky maintains that the natives arehopelessly ruined, that there is only one thing to do, to take themall indiscriminately and send them under strict escort to hardlabour. 

"Why, upon my word, " he says, getting hot, "you may ask what doesthat goose sitting there live upon! He lets me lodgings in his housefor seven roubles a month, and he goes to name-day parties, that'sall that he has to live on, the knave, may the devil take him! Hehas neither earnings nor an income. They are not merely sluggardsand wastrels, they are swindlers too, they are continually borrowingmoney from the town bank, and what do they do with it? They plungeinto some scheme such as sending bulls to Moscow, or building oilpresses on a new system; but to send bulls to Moscow or to pressoil you want to have a head on your shoulders, and these rascalshave pumpkins on theirs! Of course all their schemes end in smoke. . . . They waste their money, get into a mess, and then snap theirfingers at the bank. What can you get out of them? Their houses aremortgaged over and over again, they have no other property--it'sall been drunk and eaten up long ago. Nine-tenths of them areswindlers, the scoundrels! To borrow money and not return it istheir rule. Thanks to them the town bank is going smash!"

"I was at Yegorov's yesterday, " Finks interrupts the Pole, anxiousto change the conversation, "and only fancy, I won six roubles anda half from him at picquet. "

"I believe I still owe you something at picquet, " Lyashkevskyrecollects, "I ought to win it back. Wouldn't you like one game?"

"Perhaps just one, " Finks assents. "I must make haste to the highschool, you know. "

Lyashkevsky and Finks sit down at the open window and begin a gameof picquet. The native in the blue trousers stretches with relish, and husks of sunflower seeds fall in showers from all over him onto the ground. At that moment from the gate opposite appears anothernative with a long beard, wearing a crumpled yellowish-grey cottoncoat. He screws up his eyes affectionately at the blue trousers andshouts:

"Good-morning, Semyon Nikolaitch, I have the honour to congratulateyou on the Thursday. "

"And the same to you, Kapiton Petrovitch!"

"Come to my seat! It's cool here!"

The blue trousers, with much sighing and groaning and waddling fromside to side like a duck, cross the street. 

"Tierce major . . . " mutters Lyashkevsky, "from the queen. . . . Five and fifteen. . . . The rascals are talking of politics. . . . Do you hear? They have begun about England. I have six hearts. "

"I have the seven spades. My point. "

"Yes, it's yours. Do you hear? They are abusing Beaconsfield. Theydon't know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever solong. So I have twenty-nine. . . . Your lead. "

"Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten . . . . Yes, amazing people, theseRussians! Eleven . . . Twelve. . . . The Russian inertia is uniqueon the terrestrial globe. "

"Thirty . . . Thirty-one. . . . One ought to take a good whip, youknow. Go out and give them Beaconsfield. I say, how their tonguesare wagging! It's easier to babble than to work. I suppose you threwaway the queen of clubs and I didn't realise it. "

"Thirteen . . . Fourteen. . . . It's unbearably hot! One must bemade of iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun! Fifteen. "

The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third. . . . Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling feverand forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar. As Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines. He seesthem, entertaining each other with conversation, go to the opengate, cross the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shadeunder an aspen tree. Between twelve and one o'clock the fat cookwith brown legs spreads before them something like a baby's sheetwith brown stains upon it, and gives them their dinner. They eatwith wooden spoons, keep brushing away the flies, and go on talking. 

"The devil, it is beyond everything, " cries Lyashkevsky, revolted. "I am very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have ashot at those cattle. I have four knaves--fourteen. . . . Yourpoint. . . . It really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can't seethose ruffians without being upset. "

"Don't excite yourself, it is bad for you. "

"But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!"

When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn outand exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses thestreet to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He isstruggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about himas dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end. Hishelpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokeshis head out of the window and shouts at him, spluttering:

"Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has beenstuffing himself, and now he doesn't know what to do with his tummy!Get out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!"

The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingersinstead of answering. A school-boy of his acquaintance passes byhim with his satchel on his back. Stopping him the native pondersa long time what to say to him, and asks:

"Well, what now?"

"Nothing. "

"How, nothing?"

"Why, just nothing. "

"H'm. . . . And which subject is the hardest?"

"That's according. " The school-boy shrugs his shoulders. 

"I see--er . . . What is the Latin for tree?"

"Arbor. "

"Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that, " sighs the blue trousers. "You have to go into it all. . . . It's hard work, hard work. . . . Is your dear Mamma well?"

"She is all right, thank you. "

"Ah. . . . Well, run along. "

After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and ishorrified. 

"Holy Saints, why it's three o'clock already. How I have been stayingon. Good-bye, I must run. . . . "

"Have dinner with me, and then go, " says Lyashkevsky. "You haveplenty of time. "

Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no morethan ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on thesofa and thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his headon the cushion and fills the room with a shrill whistling throughhis nose. While he is asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve ofan afternoon nap, sits at the window, stares at the dozing native, and grumbles:

"Race of curs! I wonder you don't choke with laziness. No work, nointellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating . . . . Disgusting. Tfoo!"

At six o'clock Finks wakes up. 

"It's too late to go to the high school now, " he says, stretching. "I shall have to go to-morrow, and now. . . . How about my revenge?Let's have one more game. . . . "

After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevskylooks after him for some time, and says:

"Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutelynothing. . . . Simply get their salary and do no work; the deviltake them! . . . The German pig. . . . "

He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. Hehas gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the firsttime in the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes andhe cannot restrain the depression that overpowers him, and beginsto grumble, shoving the old shabby armchair:

"You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have beenburnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up. It's a disgrace!"

And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of themattress, frowns and says peevishly:

"The con--found--ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I willtell them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you out, youuseless thing. "

He falls asleep at midnight, and dreams that he is pouring boilingwater over the natives, Finks, and the old armchair. 

AN INQUIRY

IT was midday. Voldyrev, a tall, thick-set country gentleman witha cropped head and prominent eyes, took off his overcoat, moppedhis brow with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently wentinto the government office. There they were scratching away. . . . 

"Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porterwho was bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recessesof the office. "I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copyof a resolution of the Council. "

"That way please! To that one sitting near the window!" said theporter, indicating with the tray the furthest window. Voldyrevcoughed and went towards the window; there, at a green table spottedlike typhus, was sitting a young man with his hair standing up infour tufts on his head, with a long pimply nose, and a long fadeduniform. He was writing, thrusting his long nose into the papers. A fly was walking about near his right nostril, and he was continuallystretching out his lower lip and blowing under his nose, which gavehis face an extremely care-worn expression. 

"May I make an inquiry about my case here . . . Of you? My name isVoldyrev. And, by the way, I have to take a copy of the resolutionof the Council of the second of March. "

The clerk dipped his pen in the ink and looked to see if he had gottoo much on it. Having satisfied himself that the pen would notmake a blot, he began scribbling away. His lip was thrust out, butit was no longer necessary to blow: the fly had settled on his ear. 

"Can I make an inquiry here?" Voldyrev repeated a minute later, "myname is Voldyrev, I am a landowner. . . . "

"Ivan Alexeitch!" the clerk shouted into the air as though he hadnot observed Voldyrev, "will you tell the merchant Yalikov when hecomes to sign the copy of the complaint lodged with the police!I've told him a thousand times!"

"I have come in reference to my lawsuit with the heirs of PrincessGugulin, " muttered Voldyrev. "The case is well known. I earnestlybeg you to attend to me. "

Still failing to observe Voldyrev, the clerk caught the fly on hislip, looked at it attentively and flung it away. The country gentlemancoughed and blew his nose loudly on his checked pocket handkerchief. But this was no use either. He was still unheard. The silence lastedfor two minutes. Voldyrev took a rouble note from his pocket andlaid it on an open book before the clerk. The clerk wrinkled up hisforehead, drew the book towards him with an anxious air and closedit. 

"A little inquiry. . . . I want only to find out on what groundsthe heirs of Princess Gugulin. . . . May I trouble you?"

The clerk, absorbed in his own thoughts, got up and, scratching hiselbow, went to a cupboard for something. Returning a minute laterto his table he became absorbed in the book again: another roublenote was lying upon it. 

"I will trouble you for one minute only. . . . I have only to makean inquiry. "

The clerk did not hear, he had begun copying something. 

Voldyrev frowned and looked hopelessly at the whole scribblingbrotherhood. 

"They write!" he thought, sighing. "They write, the devil take thementirely!"

He walked away from the table and stopped in the middle of the room, his hands hanging hopelessly at his sides. The porter, passing againwith glasses, probably noticed the helpless expression of his face, for he went close up to him and asked him in a low voice:

"Well? Have you inquired?"

"I've inquired, but he wouldn't speak to me. "

"You give him three roubles, " whispered the porter. 

"I've given him two already. "

"Give him another. "

Voldyrev went back to the table and laid a green note on the openbook. 

The clerk drew the book towards him again and began turning overthe leaves, and all at once, as though by chance, lifted his eyesto Voldyrev. His nose began to shine, turned red, and wrinkled upin a grin. 

"Ah . . . What do you want?" he asked. 

"I want to make an inquiry in reference to my case. . . . My nameis Voldyrev. "

"With pleasure! The Gugulin case, isn't it? Very good. What is itthen exactly?"

Voldyrev explained his business. 

The clerk became as lively as though he were whirled round by ahurricane. He gave the necessary information, arranged for a copyto be made, gave the petitioner a chair, and all in one instant. He even spoke about the weather and asked after the harvest. Andwhen Voldyrev went away he accompanied him down the stairs, smilingaffably and respectfully, and looking as though he were ready anyminute to fall on his face before the gentleman. Voldyrev for somereason felt uncomfortable, and in obedience to some inward impulsehe took a rouble out of his pocket and gave it to the clerk. Andthe latter kept bowing and smiling, and took the rouble like aconjuror, so that it seemed to flash through the air. 

"Well, what people!" thought the country gentleman as he went outinto the street, and he stopped and mopped his brow with hishandkerchief. 

MARTYRS

LIZOTCHKA KUDRINSKY, a young married lady who had many admirers, was suddenly taken ill, and so seriously that her husband did notgo to his office, and a telegram was sent to her mamma at Tver. This is how she told the story of her illness:

"I went to Lyesnoe to auntie's. I stayed there a week and then Iwent with all the rest to cousin Varya's. Varya's husband is a surlybrute and a despot (I'd shoot a husband like that), but we had avery jolly time there. To begin with I took part in some privatetheatricals. It was _A Scandal in a Respectable Family_. Hrustalevacted marvellously! Between the acts I drank some cold, awfullycold, lemon squash, with the tiniest nip of brandy in it. Lemonsquash with brandy in it is very much like champagne. . . . I drankit and I felt nothing. Next day after the performance I rode outon horseback with that Adolf Ivanitch. It was rather damp and therewas a strong wind. It was most likely then that I caught cold. Threedays later I came home to see how my dear, good Vassya was gettingon, and while here to get my silk dress, the one that has littleflowers on it. Vassya, of course, I did not find at home. I wentinto the kitchen to tell Praskovya to set the samovar, and there Isaw on the table some pretty little carrots and turnips likeplaythings. I ate one little carrot and well, a turnip too. I atevery little, but only fancy, I began having a sharp pain at once--spasms . . . Spasms . . . Spasms . . . Ah, I am dying. Vassyaruns from the office. Naturally he clutches at his hair and turnswhite. They run for the doctor. . . . Do you understand, I am dying, dying. "

The spasms began at midday, before three o'clock the doctor came, and at six Lizotchka fell asleep and slept soundly till two o'clockin the morning. 

It strikes two. . . . The light of the little night lamp filtersscantily through the pale blue shade. Lizotchka is lying in bed, her white lace cap stands out sharply against the dark backgroundof the red cushion. Shadows from the blue lamp-shade lie in patternson her pale face and her round plump shoulders. Vassily Stepanovitchis sitting at her feet. The poor fellow is happy that his wife isat home at last, and at the same time he is terribly alarmed by herillness. 

"Well, how do you feel, Lizotchka?" he asks in a whisper, noticingthat she is awake. 

"I am better, " moans Lizotchka. "I don't feel the spasms now, butthere is no sleeping. . . . I can't get to sleep!"

"Isn't it time to change the compress, my angel?"

Lizotchka sits up slowly with the expression of a martyr andgracefully turns her head on one side. Vassily Stepanovitch withreverent awe, scarcely touching her hot body with his fingers, changes the compress. Lizotchka shrinks, laughs at the cold waterwhich tickles her, and lies down again. 

"You are getting no sleep, poor boy!" she moans. 

"As though I could sleep!"

"It's my nerves, Vassya, I am a very nervous woman. The doctor hasprescribed for stomach trouble, but I feel that he doesn't understandmy illness. It's nerves and not the stomach, I swear that it is mynerves. There is only one thing I am afraid of, that my illness maytake a bad turn. "

"No, Lizotchka, no, to-morrow you will be all right!"

"Hardly likely! I am not afraid for myself. . . . I don't care, indeed, I shall be glad to die, but I am sorry for you! You'll bea widower and left all alone. "

Vassitchka rarely enjoys his wife's society, and has long been usedto solitude, but Lizotchka's words agitate him. 

"Goodness knows what you are saying, little woman! Why these gloomythoughts?"

"Well, you will cry and grieve, and then you will get used to it. You'll even get married again. "

The husband clutches his head. 

"There, there, I won't!" Lizotchka soothes him, "only you ought tobe prepared for anything. "

"And all of a sudden I shall die, " she thinks, shutting her eyes. 

And Lizotchka draws a mental picture of her own death, how hermother, her husband, her cousin Varya with her husband, her relations, the admirers of her "talent" press round her death bed, as shewhispers her last farewell. All are weeping. Then when she is deadthey dress her, interestingly pale and dark-haired, in a pink dress(it suits her) and lay her in a very expensive coffin on gold legs, full of flowers. There is a smell of incense, the candles splutter. Her husband never leaves the coffin, while the admirers of hertalent cannot take their eyes off her, and say: "As though living!She is lovely in her coffin!" The whole town is talking of the lifecut short so prematurely. But now they are carrying her to thechurch. The bearers are Ivan Petrovitch, Adolf Ivanitch, Varya'shusband, Nikolay Semyonitch, and the black-eyed student who hadtaught her to drink lemon squash with brandy. It's only a pitythere's no music playing. After the burial service comes theleave-taking. The church is full of sobs, they bring the lid withtassels, and . . . Lizotchka is shut off from the light of day forever, there is the sound of hammering nails. Knock, knock, knock. 

Lizotchka shudders and opens her eyes. 

"Vassya, are you here?" she asks. "I have such gloomy thoughts. Goodness, why am I so unlucky as not to sleep. Vassya, have pity, do tell me something!"

"What shall I tell you ?"

"Something about love, " Lizotchka says languidly. "Or some anecdoteabout Jews. . . . "

Vassily Stepanovitch, ready for anything if only his wife will becheerful and not talk about death, combs locks of hair over hisears, makes an absurd face, and goes up to Lizotchka. 

"Does your vatch vant mending?" he asks. 

"It does, it does, " giggles Lizotchka, and hands him her gold watchfrom the little table. "Mend it. "

Vassya takes the watch, examines the mechanism for a long time, andwriggling and shrugging, says: "She can not be mended . . . In vunveel two cogs are vanting. . . . "

This is the whole performance. Lizotchka laughs and claps her hands. 

"Capital, " she exclaims. "Wonderful. Do you know, Vassya, it'sawfully stupid of you not to take part in amateur theatricals! Youhave a remarkable talent! You are much better than Sysunov. Therewas an amateur called Sysunov who played with us in _It's MyBirthday_. A first-class comic talent, only fancy: a nose as thickas a parsnip, green eyes, and he walks like a crane. . . . We allroared; stay, I will show you how he walks. "

Lizotchka springs out of bed and begins pacing about the floor, barefooted and without her cap. 

"A very good day to you!" she says in a bass, imitating a man'svoice. "Anything pretty? Anything new under the moon? Ha, ha, ha!"she laughs. 

"Ha, ha, ha!" Vassya seconds her. And the young pair, roaring withlaughter, forgetting the illness, chase one another about the room. The race ends in Vassya's catching his wife by her nightgown andeagerly showering kisses upon her. After one particularly passionateembrace Lizotchka suddenly remembers that she is seriously ill. . . . 

"What silliness!" she says, making a serious face and coveringherself with the quilt. "I suppose you have forgotten that I amill! Clever, I must say!"

"Sorry . . . " falters her husband in confusion. 

"If my illness takes a bad turn it will be your fault. Not kind!not good!"

Lizotchka closes her eyes and is silent. Her former languor andexpression of martyrdom return again, there is a sound of gentlemoans. Vassya changes the compress, and glad that his wife is athome and not gadding off to her aunt's, sits meekly at her feet. He does not sleep all night. At ten o'clock the doctor comes. 

"Well, how are we feeling?" he asks as he takes her pulse. "Haveyou slept?"

"Badly, " Lizotchka's husband answers for her, "very badly. "

The doctor walks away to the window and stares at a passingchimney-sweep. 

"Doctor, may I have coffee to-day?" asks Lizotchka. 

"You may. "

"And may I get up?"

"You might, perhaps, but . . . You had better lie in bed anotherday. "

"She is awfully depressed, " Vassya whispers in his ear, "such gloomythoughts, such pessimism. I am dreadfully uneasy about her. "

The doctor sits down to the little table, and rubbing his forehead, prescribes bromide of potassium for Lizotchka, then makes his bow, and promising to look in again in the evening, departs. Vassya doesnot go to the office, but sits all day at his wife's feet. 

At midday the admirers of her talent arrive in a crowd. They areagitated and alarmed, they bring masses of flowers and French novels. Lizotchka, in a snow-white cap and a light dressing jacket, liesin bed with an enigmatic look, as though she did not believe in herown recovery. The admirers of her talent see her husband, but readilyforgive his presence: they and he are united by one calamity atthat bedside!

At six o'clock in the evening Lizotchka falls asleep, and againsleeps till two o'clock in the morning. Vassya as before sits ather feet, struggles with drowsiness, changes her compress, playsat being a Jew, and in the morning after a second night of suffering, Liza is prinking before the looking-glass and putting on her hat. 

"Wherever are you going, my dear?" asks Vassya, with an imploringlook at her. 

"What?" says Lizotchka in wonder, assuming a scared expression, "don't you know that there is a rehearsal to-day at Marya Lvovna's?"

After escorting her there, Vassya having nothing to do to whileaway his boredom, takes his portfolio and goes to the office. Hishead aches so violently from his sleepless nights that his left eyeshuts of itself and refuses to open. . . . 

"What's the matter with you, my good sir?" his chief asks him. "Whatis it?"

Vassy a waves his hand and sits down. 

"Don't ask me, your Excellency, " he says with a sigh. "What I havesuffered in these two days, what I have suffered! Liza has beenill!"

"Good heavens, " cried his chief in alarm. "Lizaveta Pavlovna, whatis wrong with her?"

Vassily Stepanovitch merely throws up his hands and raises his eyesto the ceiling, as though he would say: "It's the will of Providence. "

"Ah, my boy, I can sympathise with you with all my heart!" sighshis chief, rolling his eyes. "I've lost my wife, my dear, I understand. That is a loss, it is a loss! It's awful, awful! I hope LizavetaPavlovna is better now! What doctor is attending her ?"

"Von Schterk. "

"Von Schterk! But you would have been better to have called inMagnus or Semandritsky. But how very pale your face is. You are illyourself! This is awful!"

"Yes, your Excellency, I haven't slept. What I have suffered, whatI have been through!"

"And yet you came! Why you came I can't understand? One can't forceoneself like that! One mustn't do oneself harm like that. Go homeand stay there till you are well again! Go home, I command you!Zeal is a very fine thing in a young official, but you mustn'tforget as the Romans used to say: 'mens sana in corpore sano, ' thatis, a healthy brain in a healthy body. "

Vassya agrees, puts his papers back in his portfolio, and, takingleave of his chief, goes home to bed. 

THE LION AND THE SUN

IN one of the towns lying on this side of the Urals a rumour wasafloat that a Persian magnate, called Rahat-Helam, was staying fora few days in the town and putting up at the "Japan Hotel. " Thisrumour made no impression whatever upon the inhabitants; a Persianhad arrived, well, so be it. Only Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, themayor of the town, hearing of the arrival of the oriental gentlemanfrom the secretary of the Town Hall, grew thoughtful and inquired:

"Where is he going?"

"To Paris or to London, I believe. "

"H'm. . . . Then he is a big-wig, I suppose?"

"The devil only knows. "

As he went home from the Town Hall and had his dinner, the mayorsank into thought again, and this time he went on thinking till theevening. The arrival of the distinguished Persian greatly intriguedhim. It seemed to him that fate itself had sent him this Rahat-Helam, and that a favourable opportunity had come at last for realisinghis passionate, secretly cherished dream. Kutsyn had already twomedals, and the Stanislav of the third degree, the badge of the RedCross, and the badge of the Society of Saving from Drowning, andin addition to these he had made himself a little gold gun crossedby a guitar, and this ornament, hung from a buttonhole in hisuniform, looked in the distance like something special, anddelightfully resembled a badge of distinction. It is well knownthat the more orders and medals you have the more you want--andthe mayor had long been desirous of receiving the Persian order ofThe Lion and the Sun; he desired it passionately, madly. He knewvery well that there was no need to fight, or to subscribe to anasylum, or to serve on committees to obtain this order; all thatwas needed was a favourable opportunity. And now it seemed to himthat this opportunity had come. 

At noon on the following day he put on his chain and all his badgesof distinction and went to the 'Japan. ' Destiny favoured him. Whenhe entered the distinguished Persian's apartment the latter wasalone and doing nothing. Rahat-Helam, an enormous Asiatic, with along nose like the beak of a snipe, with prominent eyes, and witha fez on his head, was sitting on the floor rummaging in hisportmanteau. 

"I beg you to excuse my disturbing you, " began Kutsyn, smiling. "Ihave the honour to introduce myself, the hereditary, honourablecitizen and cavalier, Stepan Ivanovitch Kutsyn, mayor of this town. I regard it as my duty to honour, in the person of your Highness, so to say, the representative of a friendly and neighbourly state. "

The Persian turned and muttered something in very bad French, thatsounded like tapping a board with a piece of wood. 

"The frontiers of Persia"--Kutsyn continued the greeting he hadpreviously learned by heart--"are in close contact with the bordersof our spacious fatherland, and therefore mutual sympathies impelme, so to speak, to express my solidarity with you. "

The illustrious Persian got up and again muttered something in awooden tongue. Kutsyn, who knew no foreign language, shook his headto show that he did not understand. 

"Well, how am I to talk to him?" he thought. "It would be a goodthing to send for an interpreter at once, but it is a delicatematter, I can't talk before witnesses. The interpreter would bechattering all over the town afterwards. "

And Kutsyn tried to recall the foreign words he had picked up fromthe newspapers. 

"I am the mayor of the town, " he muttered. "That is the _lord mayor_. . . _municipalais_ . . . Vwee? Kompreney?"

He wanted to express his social position in words or in gesture, and did not know how. A picture hanging on the wall with an inscriptionin large letters, "The Town of Venice, " helped him out of hisdifficulties. He pointed with his finger at the town, then at hisown head, and in that way obtained, as he imagined, the phrase: "Iam the head of the town. " The Persian did not understand, but hegave a smile, and said:

"Goot, monsieur . . . Goot . . . . . " Half-an-hour later the mayorwas slapping the Persian, first on the knee and then on the shoulder, and saying:

"Kompreney? Vwee? As _lord mayor_ and _municipalais_ I suggest thatyou should take a little _promenage . . . Kompreney? Promenage. _"

Kutsyn pointed at Venice, and with two fingers represented walkinglegs. Rahat-Helam who kept his eyes fixed on his medals, and wasapparently guessing that this was the most important person in thetown, understood the word _promenage_ and grinned politely. Thenthey both put on their coats and went out of the room. Downstairsnear the door leading to the restaurant of the 'Japan, ' Kutsynreflected that it would not be amiss to entertain the Persian. Hestopped and indicating the tables, said:

"By Russian custom it wouldn't be amiss . . . _puree, entrekot_, champagne and so on, kompreney. "

The illustrious visitor understood, and a little later they wereboth sitting in the very best room of the restaurant, eating, anddrinking champagne. 

"Let us drink to the prosperity of Persia!" said Kutsyn. "We Russianslove the Persians. Though we are of another faith, yet there arecommon interests, mutual, so to say, sympathies . . . Progress . . . Asiatic markets. . . . The campaigns of peace so to say. . . . "

The illustrious Persian ate and drank with an excellent appetite, he stuck his fork into a slice of smoked sturgeon, and wagging hishead, enthusiastically said: "_Goot, bien. _"

"You like it?" said the mayor delighted. "_Bien_, that's capital. "And turning to the waiter he said: "Luka, my lad, see that twopieces of smoked sturgeon, the best you have, are sent up to hisHighness's room!"

Then the mayor and the Persian magnate went to look at the menagerie. The townspeople saw their Stepan Ivanovitch, flushed with champagne, gay and very well pleased, leading the Persian about the principalstreets and the bazaar, showing him the points of interest of thetown, and even taking him to the fire tower. 

Among other things the townspeople saw him stop near some stonegates with lions on it, and point out to the Persian first the lion, then the sun overhead, and then his own breast; then again he pointedto the lion and to the sun while the Persian nodded his head asthough in sign of assent, and smiling showed his white teeth. Inthe evening they were sitting in the London Hotel listening to theharp-players, and where they spent the night is not known. 

Next day the mayor was at the Town Hall in the morning; the officialsthere apparently already knew something and were making theirconjectures, for the secretary went up to him and said with anironical smile:

"It is the custom of the Pcrsians when an illustrious visitor comesto visit you, you must slaughter a sheep with your own hands. "

And a little later an envelope that had come by post was handed tohim. The mayor tore it open and saw a caricature in it. It was adrawing of Rahat-Helam with the mayor on his knees before him, stretching out his hands and saying:

 "To prove our Russian friendship For Persia's mighty realm, And show respect for you, her envoy, Myself I'd slaughter like a lamb, But, pardon me, for I'm a--donkey!"

The mayor was conscious of an unpleasant feeling like a gnawing inthe pit of the stomach, but not for long. By midday he was againwith the illustrious Persian, again he was regaling him and showinghim the points of interest in the town. Again he led him to thestone gates, and again pointed to the lion, to the sun and to hisown breast. They dined at the 'Japan'; after dinner, with cigarsin their teeth, both, flushed and blissful, again mounted the firetower, and the mayor, evidently wishing to entertain the visitorwith an unusual spectacle, shouted from the top to a sentry walkingbelow:

"Sound the alarm!"

But the alarm was not sounded as the firemen were at the baths atthe moment. 

They supped at the 'London' and, after supper, the Persian departed. When he saw him off, Stepan Ivanovitch kissed him three times afterthe Russian fashion, and even grew tearful. And when the trainstarted, he shouted:

"Give our greeting to Persia! Tell her that we love her!"

A year and four months had passed. There was a bitter frost, thirty-five degrees, and a piercing wind was blowing. StepanIvanovitch was walking along the street with his fur coat thrownopen over his chest, and he was annoyed that he met no one to seethe Lion and the Sun upon his breast. He walked about like thistill evening with his fur coat open, was chilled to the bone, andat night tossed from side to side and could not get to sleep. 

He felt heavy at heart. 

There was a burning sensation inside him, and his heart throbbeduneasily; he had a longing now to get a Serbian order. It was apainful, passionate longing. 

A DAUGHTER OF ALBION

A FINE carriage with rubber tyres, a fat coachman, and velvet onthe seats, rolled up to the house of a landowner called Gryabov. Fyodor Andreitch Otsov, the district Marshal of Nobility, jumpedout of the carriage. A drowsy footman met him in the hall. 

"Are the family at home?" asked the Marshal. 

"No, sir. The mistress and the children are gone out paying visits, while the master and mademoiselle are catching fish. Fishing allthe morning, sir. "

Otsov stood a little, thought a little, and then went to the riverto look for Gryabov. Going down to the river he found him a mileand a half from the house. Looking down from the steep bank andcatching sight of Gryabov, Otsov gushed with laughter. . . . Gryabov, a large stout man, with a very big head, was sitting on the sand, angling, with his legs tucked under him like a Turk. His hat wason the back of his head and his cravat had slipped on one side. Beside him stood a tall thin Englishwoman, with prominent eyes likea crab's, and a big bird-like nose more like a hook than a nose. She was dressed in a white muslin gown through which her scraggyyellow shoulders were very distinctly apparent. On her gold belthung a little gold watch. She too was angling. The stillness of thegrave reigned about them both. Both were motionless, as the riverupon which their floats were swimming. 

"A desperate passion, but deadly dull!" laughed Otsov. "Good-day, Ivan Kuzmitch. "

"Ah . . . Is that you ?" asked Gryabov, not taking his eyes off thewater. "Have you come?"

"As you see . . . . And you are still taken up with your crazynonsense! Not given it up yet?"

"The devil's in it. . . . I begin in the morning and fish all day. . . . The fishing is not up to much to-day. I've caught nothing andthis dummy hasn't either. We sit on and on and not a devil of afish! I could scream!"

"Well, chuck it up then. Let's go and have some vodka!"

"Wait a little, maybe we shall catch something. Towards evening thefish bite better . . . . I've been sitting here, my boy, ever sincethe morning! I can't tell you how fearfully boring it is. It wasthe devil drove me to take to this fishing! I know that it is rottenidiocy for me to sit here. I sit here like some scoundrel, like aconvict, and I stare at the water like a fool. I ought to go to thehaymaking, but here I sit catching fish. Yesterday His Holinessheld a service at Haponyevo, but I didn't go. I spent the day herewith this . . . With this she-devil. "

"But . . . Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Otsov, glancing in embarrassment at the Englishwoman. "Using such languagebefore a lady and she . . . . "

"Oh, confound her, it doesn't matter, she doesn't understand asyllable of Russian, whether you praise her or blame her, it is allthe same to her! Just look at her nose! Her nose alone is enoughto make one faint. We sit here for whole days together and not asingle word! She stands like a stuffed image and rolls the whitesof her eyes at the water. "

The Englishwoman gave a yawn, put a new worm on, and dropped thehook into the water. 

"I wonder at her not a little, " Gryabov went on, "the great stupidhas been living in Russia for ten years and not a word of Russian!. . . Any little aristocrat among us goes to them and learns tobabble away in their lingo, while they . . . There's no making themout. Just look at her nose, do look at her nose!"

"Come, drop it . . . It's uncomfortable. Why attack a woman?"

"She's not a woman, but a maiden lady. . . . I bet she's dreamingof suitors. The ugly doll. And she smells of something decaying. . . . I've got a loathing for her, my boy! I can't look at her withindifference. When she turns her ugly eyes on me it sends a twingeall through me as though I had knocked my elbow on the parapet. Shelikes fishing too. Watch her: she fishes as though it were a holyrite! She looks upon everything with disdain . . . . She standsthere, the wretch, and is conscious that she is a human being, andthat therefore she is the monarch of nature. And do you know whather name is? Wilka Charlesovna Fyce! Tfoo! There is no getting itout!"

The Englishwoman, hearing her name, deliberately turned her nosein Gryabov's direction and scanned him with a disdainful glance;she raised her eyes from Gryabov to Otsov and steeped him in disdain. And all this in silence, with dignity and deliberation. 

"Did you see?" said Gryabov chuckling. "As though to say 'takethat. ' Ah, you monster! It's only for the children's sake that Ikeep that triton. If it weren't for the children, I wouldn't lether come within ten miles of my estate. . . . She has got a noselike a hawk's . . . And her figure! That doll makes me think of along nail, so I could take her, and knock her into the ground, youknow. Stay, I believe I have got a bite. . . . "

Gryabov jumped up and raised his rod. The line drew taut. . . . Gryabov tugged again, but could not pull out the hook. 

"It has caught, " he said, frowning, "on a stone I expect . . . Damnation take it . . . . "

There was a look of distress on Gryabov's face. Sighing, movinguneasily, and muttering oaths, he began tugging at the line. 

"What a pity; I shall have to go into the water. "

"Oh, chuck it!"

"I can't. . . . There's always good fishing in the evening. . . . What a nuisance. Lord, forgive us, I shall have to wade into thewater, I must! And if only you knew, I have no inclination toundress. I shall have to get rid of the Englishwoman. . . . It'sawkward to undress before her. After all, she is a lady, you know!"

Gryabov flung off his hat, and his cravat. 

"Meess . . . Er, er . . . " he said, addressing the Englishwoman, "Meess Fyce, je voo pree . . . ? Well, what am I to say to her? Howam I to tell you so that you can understand? I say . . . Over there!Go away over there! Do you hear?"

Miss Fyce enveloped Gryabov in disdain, and uttered a nasal sound. 

"What? Don't you understand? Go away from here, I tell you! I mustundress, you devil's doll! Go over there! Over there!"

Gryabov pulled the lady by her sleeve, pointed her towards thebushes, and made as though he would sit down, as much as to say:Go behind the bushes and hide yourself there. . . . The Englishwoman, moving her eyebrows vigorously, uttered rapidly a long sentence inEnglish. The gentlemen gushed with laughter. 

"It's the first time in my life I've heard her voice. There's nodenying, it is a voice! She does not understand! Well, what am Ito do with her?"

"Chuck it, let's go and have a drink of vodka!"

"I can't. Now's the time to fish, the evening. . . . It's evening. . . . Come, what would you have me do? It is a nuisance! I shallhave to undress before her. . . . "

Gryabov flung off his coat and his waistcoat and sat on the sandto take off his boots. 

"I say, Ivan Kuzmitch, " said the marshal, chuckling behind his hand. "It's really outrageous, an insult. "

"Nobody asks her not to understand! It's a lesson for theseforeigners!"

Gryabov took off his boots and his trousers, flung off his undergarmentsand remained in the costume of Adam. Otsov held his sides, he turnedcrimson both from laughter and embarrassment. The Englishwomantwitched her brows and blinked . . . . A haughty, disdainful smilepassed over her yellow face. 

"I must cool off, " said Gryabov, slapping himself on the ribs. "Tellme if you please, Fyodor Andreitch, why I have a rash on my chestevery summer. "

"Oh, do get into the water quickly or cover yourself with something, you beast. "

"And if only she were confused, the nasty thing, " said Gryabov, crossing himself as he waded into the water. "Brrrr . . . The water'scold. . . . Look how she moves her eyebrows! She doesn't go away. . . She is far above the crowd! He, he, he . . . . And she doesn'treckon us as human beings. "

Wading knee deep in the water and drawing his huge figure up to itsfull height, he gave a wink and said:

"This isn't England, you see!"

Miss Fyce coolly put on another worm, gave a yawn, and dropped thehook in. Otsov turned away, Gryabov released his hook, ducked intothe water and, spluttering, waded out. Two minutes later he wassitting on the sand and angling as before. 

CHORISTERS

THE Justice of the Peace, who had received a letter from Petersburg, had set the news going that the owner of Yefremovo, Count VladimirIvanovitch, would soon be arriving. When he would arrive--therewas no saying. 

"Like a thief in the night, " said Father Kuzma, a grey-headed littlepriest in a lilac cassock. "And when he does come the place willbe crowded with the nobility and other high gentry. All the neighbourswill flock here. Mind now, do your best, Alexey Alexeitch. . . . Ibeg you most earnestly. "

"You need not trouble about me, " said Alexey Alexeitch, frowning. "I know my business. If only my enemy intones the litany in theright key. He may . . . Out of sheer spite. . . . "

"There, there. . . . I'll persuade the deacon. . . I'll persuadehim. "

Alexey Alexeitch was the sacristan of the Yefremovo church. He alsotaught the schoolboys church and secular singing, for which hereceived sixty roubles a year from the revenues of the Count'sestate. The schoolboys were bound to sing in church in return fortheir teaching. Alexey Alexeitch was a tall, thick-set man ofdignified deportment, with a fat, clean-shaven face that remindedone of a cow's udder. His imposing figure and double chin made himlook like a man occupying an important position in the secularhierarchy rather than a sacristan. It was strange to see him, sodignified and imposing, flop to the ground before the bishop and, on one occasion, after too loud a squabble with the deacon YevlampyAvdiessov, remain on his knees for two hours by order of the headpriest of the district. Grandeur was more in keeping with his figurethan humiliation. 

On account of the rumours of the Count's approaching visit he hada choir practice every day, morning and evening. The choir practicewas held at the school. It did not interfere much with the schoolwork. During the practice the schoolmaster, Sergey Makaritch, setthe children writing copies while he joined the tenors as an amateur. 

This is how the choir practice was conducted. Alexey Alexeitch wouldcome into the school-room, slamming the door and blowing his nose. The trebles and altos extricated themselves noisily from theschool-tables. The tenors and basses, who had been waiting for sometime in the yard, came in, tramping like horses. They all took theirplaces. Alexey Alexeitch drew himself up, made a sign to enforcesilence, and struck a note with the tuning fork. 

"To-to-li-to-tom . . . Do-mi-sol-do!"

"Adagio, adagio. . . . Once more. "

After the "Amen" there followed "Lord have mercy upon us" from theGreat Litany. All this had been learned long ago, sung a thousandtimes and thoroughly digested, and it was gone through simply as aformality. It was sung indolently, unconsciously. Alexey Alexeitchwaved his arms calmly and chimed in now in a tenor, now in a bassvoice. It was all slow, there was nothing interesting. . . . Butbefore the "Cherubim" hymn the whole choir suddenly began blowingtheir noses, coughing and zealously turning the pages of theirmusic. The sacristan turned his back on the choir and with amysterious expression on his face began tuning his violin. Thepreparations lasted a couple of minutes. 

"Take your places. Look at your music carefully. . . . Basses, don'toverdo it . . . Rather softly. "

Bortnyansky's "Cherubim" hymn, No. 7, was selected. At a givensignal silence prevailed. All eyes were fastened on the music, thetrebles opened their mouths. Alexey Alexeitch softly lowered hisarm. 

"Piano . . . Piano. . . . You see 'piano' is written there. . . . More lightly, more lightly. "

When they had to sing "piano" an expression of benevolence andamiability overspread Alexey Alexeitch's face, as though he wasdreaming of a dainty morsel. 

"Forte . . . Forte! Hold it!"

And when they had to sing "forte" the sacristan's fat face expressedalarm and even horror. 

The "Cherubim" hymn was sung well, so well that the school-childrenabandoned their copies and fell to watching the movements of AlexeyAlexeitch. People stood under the windows. The schoolwatchman, Vassily, came in wearing an apron and carrying a dinner-knife inhis hand and stood listening. Father Kuzma, with an anxious faceappeared suddenly as though he had sprung from out of the earth. . . . After 'Let us lay aside all earthly cares' Alexey Alexeitchwiped the sweat off his brow and went up to Father Kuzma in excitement. 

"It puzzles me, Father Kuzma, " he said, shrugging his shoulders, "why is it that the Russian people have no understanding? It puzzlesme, may the Lord chastise me! Such an uncultured people that youreally cannot tell whether they have a windpipe in their throatsor some other sort of internal arrangement. Were you choking, orwhat?" he asked, addressing the bass Gennady Semitchov, the innkeeper'sbrother. 

"Why?"

"What is your voice like? It rattles like a saucepan. I bet youwere boozing yesterday! That's what it is! Your breath smells likea tavern. . . . E-ech! You are a clodhopper, brother! You are alout! How can you be a chorister if you keep company with peasantsin the tavern? Ech, you are an ass, brother!"

"It's a sin, it's a sin, brother, " muttered Father Kuzma. "God seeseverything . . . Through and through . . . . "

"That's why you have no idea of singing--because you care morefor vodka than for godliness, you fool. "

"Don't work yourself up, " said Father Kuzma. "Don't be cross. . . . I will persuade him. "

Father Kuzma went up to Gennady Semitchov and began "persuading"him: "What do you do it for? Try and put your mind to it. A man whosings ought to restrain himself, because his throat is . . . Er . . Tender. "

Gennady scratched his neck and looked sideways towards the windowas though the words did not apply to him. 

After the "Cherubim" hymn they sang the Creed, then "It is meet andright"; they sang smoothly and with feeling, and so right on to"Our Father. "

"To my mind, Father Kuzma, " said the sacristan, "the old 'Our Father'is better than the modern. That's what we ought to sing before theCount. "

"No, no. . . . Sing the modern one. For the Count hears nothing butmodern music when he goes to Mass in Petersburg or Moscow. . . . In the churches there, I imagine . . . There's very different sortof music there, brother!"

After "Our Father" there was again a great blowing of noses, coughingand turning over of pages. The most difficult part of the performancecame next: the "concert. " Alexey Alexeitch was practising two pieces, "Who is the God of glory" and "Universal Praise. " Whichever thechoir learned best would be sung before the Count. During the"concert" the sacristan rose to a pitch of enthusiasm. The expressionof benevolence was continually alternating with one of alarm. 

"Forte!" he muttered. "Andante! let yourselves go! Sing, you image!Tenors, you don't bring it off! To-to-ti-to-tom. . . . Sol . . . Si . . . Sol, I tell you, you blockhead! Glory! Basses, glo . . . O . . . Ry. "

His bow travelled over the heads and shoulders of the erring treblesand altos. His left hand was continually pulling the ears of theyoung singers. On one occasion, carried away by his feelings heflipped the bass Gennady under the chin with his bent thumb. Butthe choristers were not moved to tears or to anger at his blows:they realised the full gravity of their task. 

After the "concert" came a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch, red, perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, andturned upon the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes. In the listening crowd he observed to his immense annoyance thedeacon Avdiessov. The deacon, a tall thick-set man with a redpock-marked face, and straw in his hair, stood leaning against thestove and grinning contemptuously. 

"That's right, sing away! Perform your music!" he muttered in adeep bass. "Much the Count will care for your singing! He doesn'tcare whether you sing with music or without. . . . For he is anatheist. "

Father Kuzma looked round in a scared way and twiddled his fingers. 

"Come, come, " he muttered. "Hush, deacon, I beg. "

After the "concert" they sang "May our lips be filled with praise, "and the choir practice was over. The choir broke up to reassemblein the evening for another practice. And so it went on every day. 

One month passed and then a second. . . . The steward, too, had bythen received a notice that the Count would soon be coming. At lastthe dusty sun-blinds were taken off the windows of the big house, and Yefremovo heard the strains of the broken-down, out-of-tunepiano. Father Kuzma was pining, though he could not himself havesaid why, or whether it was from delight or alarm. . . . The deaconwent about grinning. 

The following Saturday evening Father Kuzma went to the sacristan'slodgings. His face was pale, his shoulders drooped, the lilac ofhis cassock looked faded. 

"I have just been at his Excellency's, " he said to the sacristan, stammering. "He is a cultivated gentleman with refined ideas. But. . . Er . . . It's mortifying, brother. . . . 'At what o'clock, your Excellency, do you desire us to ring for Mass to-morrow?' Andhe said: 'As you think best. Only, couldn't it be as short and quickas possible without a choir. ' Without a choir! Er . . . Do youunderstand, without, without a choir. . . . "

Alexey Alexeitch turned crimson. He would rather have spent twohours on his knees again than have heard those words! He did notsleep all night. He was not so much mortified at the waste of hislabours as at the fact that the deacon would give him no peace nowwith his jeers. The deacon was delighted at his discomfiture. Nextday all through the service he was casting disdainful glances towardsthe choir where Alexey Alexeitch was booming responses in solitude. When he passed by the choir with the censer he muttered:

"Perform your music! Do your utmost! The Count will give a ten-roublenote to the choir!"

After the service the sacristan went home, crushed and ill withmortification. At the gate he was overtaken by the red-faced deacon. 

"Stop a minute, Alyosha!" said the deacon. "Stop a minute, silly, don't be cross! You are not the only one, I am in for it too!Immediately after the Mass Father Kuzma went up to the Count andasked: 'And what did you think of the deacon's voice, your Excellency. He has a deep bass, hasn't he?' And the Count--do you know whathe answered by way of compliment? 'Anyone can bawl, ' he said. 'Aman's voice is not as important as his brains. ' A learned gentlemanfrom Petersburg! An atheist is an atheist, and that's all about it!Come, brother in misfortune, let us go and have a drop to drown ourtroubles!"

And the enemies went out of the gate arm-in-arm. 

NERVES

DMITRI OSIPOVITCH VAXIN, the architect, returned from town to hisholiday cottage greatly impressed by the spiritualistic séance atwhich he had been present. As he undressed and got into his solitarybed (Madame Vaxin had gone to an all-night service) he could nothelp remembering all he had seen and heard. It had not, properlyspeaking, been a séance at all, but the whole evening had been spentin terrifying conversation. A young lady had begun it by talking, apropos of nothing, about thought-reading. From thought-readingthey had passed imperceptibly to spirits, and from spirits to ghosts, from ghosts to people buried alive. . . . A gentleman had read ahorrible story of a corpse turning round in the coffin. Vaxin himselfhad asked for a saucer and shown the young ladies how to conversewith spirits. He had called up among others the spirit of hisdeceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and had mentally asked him:

"Has not the time come for me to transfer the ownership of our houseto my wife?"

To which his uncle's spirit had replied:

"All things are good in their season. "

"There is a great deal in nature that is mysterious and . . . Terrible . . . " thought Vaxin, as he got into bed. "It's not thedead but the unknown that's so horrible. "

It struck one o'clock. Vaxin turned over on the other side andpeeped out from beneath the bedclothes at the blue light of thelamp burning before the holy ikon. The flame flickered and cast afaint light on the ikon-stand and the big portrait of Uncle Klavdythat hung facing his bed. 

"And what if the ghost of Uncle Klavdy should appear this minute?"flashed through Vaxin's mind. "But, of course, that's impossible. "

Ghosts are, we all know, a superstition, the offspring of undevelopedintelligence, but Vaxin, nevertheless, pulled the bed-clothes overhis head, and shut his eyes very tight. The corpse that turned roundin its coffin came back to his mind, and the figures of his deceasedmother-in-law, of a colleague who had hanged himself, and of a girlwho had drowned herself, rose before his imagination. . . . Vaxinbegan trying to dispel these gloomy ideas, but the more he triedto drive them away the more haunting the figures and fearful fanciesbecame. He began to feel frightened. 

"Hang it all!" he thought. "Here I am afraid in the dark like achild! Idiotic!"

Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . . He heard the clock in the nextroom. The church-bell chimed the hour in the churchyard close by. The bell tolled slowly, depressingly, mournfully. . . . A cold chillran down Vaxin's neck and spine. He fancied he heard someone breathingheavily over his head, as though Uncle Klavdy had stepped out ofhis frame and was bending over his nephew. . . . Vaxin felt unbearablyfrightened. He clenched his teeth and held his breath in terror. 

At last, when a cockchafer flew in at the open window and beganbuzzing over his bed, he could bear it no longer and gave a violenttug at the bellrope. 

"Dmitri Osipitch, _was wollen Sie?_" he heard the voice of theGerman governess at his door a moment later. 

"Ah, it's you, Rosalia Karlovna!" Vaxin cried, delighted. "Why doyou trouble? Gavrila might just . . . "

"Yourself Gavrila to the town sent. And Glafira is somewhere allthe evening gone. . . . There's nobody in the house. . . . _Waswollen Sie doch?_"

"Well, what I wanted . . . It's . . . But, please, come in . . . You needn't mind! . . . It's dark. "

Rosalia Karlovna, a stout red-cheeked person, came in to the bedroomand stood in an expectant attitude at the door. 

"Sit down, please . . . You see, it's like this. . . . What on eartham I to ask her for?" he wondered, stealing a glance at UncleKlavdy's portrait and feeling his soul gradually returning totranquility. 

"What I really wanted to ask you was . . . Oh, when the man goesto town, don't forget to tell him to . . . Er . . . Er . . . To getsome cigarette-papers. . . . But do, please sit down. "

"Cigarette-papers? good. . . . _Was wollen Sie noch?_"

"_Ich will_ . . . There's nothing I will, but. . . But do sit down!I shall think of something else in a minute. "

"It is shocking for a maiden in a man's room to remain. . . . Mr. Vaxin, you are, I see, a naughty man. . . . I understand. . . . Toorder cigarette-papers one does not a person wake. . . . I understandyou. . . . "

Rosalia Karlovna turned and went out of the room. 

Somewhat reassured by his conversation with her and ashamed of hiscowardice, Vaxin pulled the bedclothes over his head and shut hiseyes. For about ten minutes he felt fairly comfortable, then thesame nonsense came creeping back into his mind. . . . He swore tohimself, felt for the matches, and without opening his eyes lighteda candle. 

But even the light was no use. To Vaxin' s excited imagination itseemed as though someone were peeping round the corner and that hisuncle's eyes were moving. 

"I'll ring her up again . . . Damn the woman!" he decided. "I'lltell her I'm unwell and ask for some drops. "

Vaxin rang. There was no response. He rang again, and as thoughanswering his ring, he heard the church-bell toll the hour. 

Overcome with terror, cold all over, he jumped out of bed, ranheadlong out of his bedroom, and making the sign of the cross andcursing himself for his cowardice, he fled barefoot in his night-shirtto the governess's room. 

"Rosalia Karlovna!" he began in a shaking voice as he knocked ather door, "Rosalia Karlovna! . . . Are you asleep? . . . I feel. . . So . . . Er . . . Er . . . Unwell. . . . Drops! . . . "

There was no answer. Silence reigned. 

"I beg you . . . Do you understand? I beg you! Why this squeamishness, I can't understand . . . Especially when a man . . . Is ill . . . How absurdly _zierlich manierlich_ you are really . . . At yourage. . . . "

"I to your wife shall tell. . . . Will not leave an honest maidenin peace. . . . When I was at Baron Anzig's, and the baron try tocome to me for matches, I understand at once what his matches meanand tell to the baroness. . . . I am an honest maiden. "

"Hang your honesty! I am ill I tell you . . . And asking you fordrops. Do you understand? I'm ill!"

"Your wife is an honest, good woman, and you ought her to love!_Ja!_ She is noble! . . . I will not be her foe!"

"You are a fool! simply a fool! Do you understand, a fool?"

Vaxin leaned against the door-post, folded his arms and waited forhis panic to pass off. To return to his room where the lamp flickeredand his uncle stared at him from his frame was more than he couldface, and to stand at the governess's door in nothing but hisnight-shirt was inconvenient from every point of view. What couldhe do?

It struck two o'clock and his terror had not left him. There wasno light in the passage and something dark seemed to be peeping outfrom every corner. Vaxin turned so as to face the door-post, butat that instant it seemed as though somebody tweaked his night-shirtfrom behind and touched him on the shoulder. 

"Damnation! . . . Rosalia Karlovna!"

No answer. Vaxin hesitatingly opened the door and peeped into theroom. The virtuous German was sweetly slumbering. The tiny flameof a night-light threw her solid buxom person into relief. Vaxinstepped into the room and sat down on a wickerwork trunk near thedoor. He felt better in the presence of a living creature, eventhough that creature was asleep. 

"Let the German idiot sleep, " he thought, "I'll sit here, and whenit gets light I'll go back. . . . It's daylight early now. "

Vaxin curled up on the trunk and put his arm under his head to awaitthe coming of dawn. 

"What a thing it is to have nerves!" he reflected. "An educated, intelligent man! . . . Hang it all! . . . It's a perfect disgrace!"

As he listened to the gentle, even breathing of Rosalia Karlovna, he soon recovered himself completely. 

At six o'clock, Vaxin's wife returned from the all-night service, and not finding her husband in their bedroom, went to the governessto ask her for some change for the cabman. 

On entering the German's room, a strange sight met her eyes. 

On the bed lay stretched Rosalia Karlovna fast asleep, and a coupleof yards from her was her husband curled up on the trunk sleepingthe sleep of the just and snoring loudly. 

What she said to her husband, and how he looked when he woke, Ileave to others to describe. It is beyond my powers. 

A WORK OF ART

SASHA SMIRNOV, the only son of his mother, holding under his arm, something wrapped up in No. 223 of the _Financial News_, assumed asentimental expression, and went into Dr. Koshelkov's consulting-room. 

"Ah, dear lad!" was how the doctor greeted him. "Well! how are wefeeling? What good news have you for me?"

Sasha blinked, laid his hand on his heart and said in an agitatedvoice: "Mamma sends her greetings to you, Ivan Nikolaevitch, andtold me to thank you. . . . I am the only son of my mother and youhave saved my life . . . You have brought me through a dangerousillness and . . . We do not know how to thank you. "

"Nonsense, lad!" said the doctor, highly delighted. "I only didwhat anyone else would have done in my place. "

"I am the only son of my mother . . . We are poor people and cannotof course repay you, and we are quite ashamed, doctor, although, however, mamma and I . . . The only son of my mother, earnestly begyou to accept in token of our gratitude . . . This object, which. . . An object of great value, an antique bronze. . . . A rare workof art. "

"You shouldn't!" said the doctor, frowning. "What's this for!"

"No, please do not refuse, " Sasha went on muttering as he unpackedthe parcel. "You will wound mamma and me by refusing. . . . It's afine thing . . . An antique bronze. . . . It was left us by mydeceased father and we have kept it as a precious souvenir. Myfather used to buy antique bronzes and sell them to connoisseurs. . . Mamma and I keep on the business now. "

Sasha undid the object and put it solemnly on the table. It was anot very tall candelabra of old bronze and artistic workmanship. It consisted of a group: on the pedestal stood two female figuresin the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of whichI have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament. The figureswere smiling coquettishly and altogether looked as though, had itnot been for the necessity of supporting the candlestick, they wouldhave skipped off the pedestal and have indulged in an orgy such asis improper for the reader even to imagine. 

Looking at the present, the doctor slowly scratched behind his ear, cleared his throat and blew his nose irresolutely. 

"Yes, it certainly is a fine thing, " he muttered, "but . . . Howshall I express it? . . . It's . . . H'm . . . It's not quite forfamily reading. It's not simply decolleté but beyond anything, dashit all. . . . "

"How do you mean?"

"The serpent-tempter himself could not have invented anything worse. . . . Why, to put such a phantasmagoria on the table would bedefiling the whole flat. "

"What a strange way of looking at art, doctor!" said Sasha, offended. "Why, it is an artistic thing, look at it! There is so much beautyand elegance that it fills one's soul with a feeling of reverenceand brings a lump into one's throat! When one sees anything sobeautiful one forgets everything earthly. . . . Only look, how muchmovement, what an atmosphere, what expression!"

"I understand all that very well, my dear boy, " the doctor interposed, "but you know I am a family man, my children run in here, ladiescome in. "

"Of course if you look at it from the point of view of the crowd, "said Sasha, "then this exquisitely artistic work may appear in acertain light. . . . But, doctor, rise superior to the crowd, especially as you will wound mamma and me by refusing it. I am theonly son of my mother, you have saved my life. . . . We are givingyou the thing most precious to us and . . . And I only regret thatI have not the pair to present to you. . . . "

"Thank you, my dear fellow, I am very grateful . . . Give my respectsto your mother but really consider, my children run in here, ladiescome. . . . However, let it remain! I see there's no arguing withyou. "

"And there is nothing to argue about, " said Sasha, relieved. "Putthe candlestick here, by this vase. What a pity we have not thepair to it! It is a pity! Well, good-bye, doctor. "

After Sasha's departure the doctor looked for a long time at thecandelabra, scratched behind his ear and meditated. 

"It's a superb thing, there's no denying it, " he thought, "and itwould be a pity to throw it away. . . . But it's impossible for meto keep it. . . . H'm! . . . Here's a problem! To whom can I makea present of it, or to what charity can I give it?"

After long meditation he thought of his good friend, the lawyerUhov, to whom he was indebted for the management of legal business. 

"Excellent, " the doctor decided, "it would be awkward for him as afriend to take money from me, and it will be very suitable for meto present him with this. I will take him the devilish thing! Luckilyhe is a bachelor and easy-going. "

Without further procrastination the doctor put on his hat and coat, took the candelabra and went off to Uhov's. 

"How are you, friend!" he said, finding the lawyer at home. "I'vecome to see you . . . To thank you for your efforts. . . . You won'ttake money so you must at least accept this thing here. . . . See, my dear fellow. . . . The thing is magnificent!"

On seeing the bronze the lawyer was moved to indescribable delight. 

"What a specimen!" he chuckled. "Ah, deuce take it, to think ofthem imagining such a thing, the devils! Exquisite! Ravishing! Wheredid you get hold of such a delightful thing?"

After pouring out his ecstasies the lawyer looked timidly towardsthe door and said: "Only you must carry off your present, my boy. . . . I can't take it. . . . "

"Why?" cried the doctor, disconcerted. 

"Why . . . Because my mother is here at times, my clients . . . Besides I should be ashamed for my servants to see it. "

"Nonsense! Nonsense! Don't you dare to refuse!" said the doctor, gesticulating. "It's piggish of you! It's a work of art! . . . Whatmovement . . . What expression! I won't even talk of it! You willoffend me!"

"If one could plaster it over or stick on fig-leaves . . . "

But the doctor gesticulated more violently than before, and dashingout of the flat went home, glad that he had succeeded in gettingthe present off his hands. 

When he had gone away the lawyer examined the candelabra, fingeredit all over, and then, like the doctor, racked his brains over thequestion what to do with the present. 

"It's a fine thing, " he mused, "and it would be a pity to throw itaway and improper to keep it. The very best thing would be to makea present of it to someone. . . . I know what! I'll take it thisevening to Shashkin, the comedian. The rascal is fond of such things, and by the way it is his benefit tonight. "

No sooner said than done. In the evening the candelabra, carefullywrapped up, was duly carried to Shashkin's. The whole evening thecomic actor's dressing-room was besieged by men coming to admirethe present; the dressing-room was filled with the hum of enthusiasmand laughter like the neighing of horses. If one of the actressesapproached the door and asked: "May I come in?" the comedian's huskyvoice was heard at once: "No, no, my dear, I am not dressed!"

After the performance the comedian shrugged his shoulders, flungup his hands and said: "Well what am I to do with the horrid thing?Why, I live in a private flat! Actresses come and see me! It's nota photograph that you can put in a drawer!"

"You had better sell it, sir, " the hairdresser who was disrobingthe actor advised him. "There's an old woman living about here whobuys antique bronzes. Go and enquire for Madame Smirnov . . . Everyone knows her. "

The actor followed his advice. . . . Two days later the doctor wassitting in his consulting-room, and with his finger to his brow wasmeditating on the acids of the bile. All at once the door openedand Sasha Smirnov flew into the room. He was smiling, beaming, andhis whole figure was radiant with happiness. In his hands he heldsomething wrapped up in newspaper. 

"Doctor!" he began breathlessly, "imagine my delight! Happily foryou we have succeeded in picking up the pair to your candelabra!Mamma is so happy. . . . I am the only son of my mother, you savedmy life. . . . "

And Sasha, all of a tremor with gratitude, set the candelabra beforethe doctor. The doctor opened his mouth, tried to say something, but said nothing: he could not speak. 

A JOKE

IT was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snappingfrost and the curls on Nadenka's temples and the down on her upperlip were covered with silvery frost. She was holding my arm and wewere standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the groundbelow there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun wasreflected as in a looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge linedwith bright red cloth. 

"Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!" I besought her. "Only once!I assure you we shall be all right and not hurt. "

But Nadenka was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to thebottom of the ice hill seemed to her a terrible, immensely deepabyss. Her spirit failed her, and she held her breath as she lookeddown, when I merely suggested her getting into the sledge, but whatwould it be if she were to risk flying into the abyss! She woulddie, she would go out of her mind. 

"I entreat you!" I said. "You mustn't be afraid! You know it'spoor-spirited, it's cowardly!"

Nadenka gave way at last, and from her face I saw that she gave wayin mortal dread. I sat her in the sledge, pale and trembling, putmy arm round her and with her cast myself down the precipice. 

The sledge flew like a bullet. The air cleft by our flight beat inour faces, roared, whistled in our ears, tore at us, nipped uscruelly in its anger, tried to tear our heads off our shoulders. We had hardly strength to breathe from the pressure of the wind. It seemed as though the devil himself had caught us in his clawsand was dragging us with a roar to hell. Surrounding objects meltedinto one long furiously racing streak . . . Another moment and itseemed we should perish. 

"I love you, Nadya!" I said in a low voice. 

The sledge began moving more and more slowly, the roar of the windand the whirr of the runners was no longer so terrible, it waseasier to breathe, and at last we were at the bottom. Nadenka wasmore dead than alive. She was pale and scarcely breathing. . . . Ihelped her to get up. 

"Nothing would induce me to go again, " she said, looking at me withwide eyes full of horror. "Nothing in the world! I almost died!"

A little later she recovered herself and looked enquiringly intomy eyes, wondering had I really uttered those four words or had shefancied them in the roar of the hurricane. And I stood beside hersmoking and looking attentively at my glove. 

She took my arm and we spent a long while walking near the ice-hill. The riddle evidently would not let her rest. . . . Had those wordsbeen uttered or not? . . . Yes or no? Yes or no? It was the questionof pride, or honour, of life--a very important question, the mostimportant question in the world. Nadenka kept impatiently, sorrowfullylooking into my face with a penetrating glance; she answered atrandom, waiting to see whether I would not speak. Oh, the play offeeling on that sweet face! I saw that she was struggling withherself, that she wanted to say something, to ask some question, but she could not find the words; she felt awkward and frightenedand troubled by her joy. . . . 

"Do you know what, " she said without looking at me. 

"Well?" I asked. 

"Let us . . . Slide down again. "

We clambered up the ice-hill by the steps again. I sat Nadenka, pale and trembling, in the sledge; again we flew into the terribleabyss, again the wind roared and the runners whirred, and againwhen the flight of our sledge was at its swiftest and noisiest, Isaid in a low voice:

"I love you, Nadenka!"

When the sledge stopped, Nadenka flung a glance at the hill downwhich we had both slid, then bent a long look upon my face, listenedto my voice which was unconcerned and passionless, and the wholeof her little figure, every bit of it, even her muff and her hoodexpressed the utmost bewilderment, and on her face was written:"What does it mean? Who uttered _those_ words? Did he, or did Ionly fancy it?"

The uncertainty worried her and drove her out of all patience. Thepoor girl did not answer my questions, frowned, and was on the pointof tears. 

"Hadn't we better go home?" I asked. 

"Well, I . . . I like this tobogganning, " she said, flushing. "Shallwe go down once more?"

She "liked" the tobogganning, and yet as she got into the sledgeshe was, as both times before, pale, trembling, hardly able tobreathe for terror. 

We went down for the third time, and I saw she was looking at myface and watching my lips. But I put my handkerchief to my lips, coughed, and when we reached the middle of the hill I succeeded inbringing out:

"I love you, Nadya!"

And the mystery remained a mystery! Nadenka was silent, ponderingon something. . . . I saw her home, she tried to walk slowly, slackened her pace and kept waiting to see whether I would not saythose words to her, and I saw how her soul was suffering, whateffort she was making not to say to herself:

"It cannot be that the wind said them! And I don't want it to bethe wind that said them!"

Next morning I got a little note:

"If you are tobogganning to-day, come for me. --N. "

And from that time I began going every day tobogganning with Nadenka, and as we flew down in the sledge, every time I pronounced in a lowvoice the same words: "I love you, Nadya!"

Soon Nadenka grew used to that phrase as to alcohol or morphia. Shecould not live without it. It is true that flying down the ice-hillterrified her as before, but now the terror and danger gave apeculiar fascination to words of love--words which as before werea mystery and tantalized the soul. The same two--the wind and Iwere still suspected. . . . Which of the two was making love to hershe did not know, but apparently by now she did not care; from whichgoblet one drinks matters little if only the beverage is intoxicating. 

It happened I went to the skating-ground alone at midday; minglingwith the crowd I saw Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look aboutfor me . . . Then she timidly mounted the steps. . . . She wasfrightened of going alone--oh, how frightened! She was white asthe snow, she was trembling, she went as though to the scaffold, but she went, she went without looking back, resolutely. She hadevidently determined to put it to the test at last: would thosesweet amazing words be heard when I was not there? I saw her, pale, her lips parted with horror, get into the sledge, shut her eyes andsaying good-bye for ever to the earth, set off. . . . "Whrrr!"whirred the runners. Whether Nadenka heard those words I do notknow. I only saw her getting up from the sledge looking faint andexhausted. And one could tell from her face that she could not tellherself whether she had heard anything or not. Her terror while shehad been flying down had deprived of her all power of hearing, ofdiscriminating sounds, of understanding. 

But then the month of March arrived . . . The spring sunshine wasmore kindly. . . . Our ice-hill turned dark, lost its brillianceand finally melted. We gave up tobogganning. There was nowhere nowwhere poor Nadenka could hear those words, and indeed no one toutter them, since there was no wind and I was going to Petersburg--for long, perhaps for ever. 

It happened two days before my departure I was sitting in the duskin the little garden which was separated from the yard of Nadenka'shouse by a high fence with nails in it. . . . It was still prettycold, there was still snow by the manure heap, the trees lookeddead but there was already the scent of spring and the rooks werecawing loudly as they settled for their night's rest. I went up tothe fence and stood for a long while peeping through a chink. I sawNadenka come out into the porch and fix a mournful yearning gazeon the sky. . . . The spring wind was blowing straight into herpale dejected face. . . . It reminded her of the wind which roaredat us on the ice-hill when she heard those four words, and her facebecame very, very sorrowful, a tear trickled down her cheek, andthe poor child held out both arms as though begging the wind tobring her those words once more. And waiting for the wind I saidin a low voice:

"I love you, Nadya!"

Mercy! The change that came over Nadenka! She uttered a cry, smiledall over her face and looking joyful, happy and beautiful, held outher arms to meet the wind. 

And I went off to pack up. . . . 

That was long ago. Now Nadenka is married; she married--whetherof her own choice or not does not matter--a secretary of theNobility Wardenship and now she has three children. That we oncewent tobogganning together, and that the wind brought her the words"I love you, Nadenka, " is not forgotten; it is for her now thehappiest, most touching, and beautiful memory in her life. . . . 

But now that I am older I cannot understand why I uttered thosewords, what was my motive in that joke. . . . 

A COUNTRY COTTAGE

Two young people who had not long been married were walking up anddown the platform of a little country station. His arm was roundher waist, her head was almost on his shoulder, and both were happy. 

The moon peeped up from the drifting cloudlets and frowned, as itseemed, envying their happiness and regretting her tedious andutterly superfluous virginity. The still air was heavy with thefragrance of lilac and wild cherry. Somewhere in the distance beyondthe line a corncrake was calling. 

"How beautiful it is, Sasha, how beautiful!" murmured the youngwife. "It all seems like a dream. See, how sweet and inviting thatlittle copse looks! How nice those solid, silent telegraph postsare! They add a special note to the landscape, suggesting humanity, civilization in the distance. . . . Don't you think it's lovelywhen the wind brings the rushing sound of a train?"

"Yes. . . . But what hot little hands you've got. . . That's becauseyou're excited, Varya. . . . What have you got for our supperto-night?"

"Chicken and salad. . . . It's a chicken just big enough for two. . . . Then there is the salmon and sardines that were sent fromtown. "

The moon as though she had taken a pinch of snuff hid her facebehind a cloud. Human happiness reminded her of her own loneliness, of her solitary couch beyond the hills and dales. 

"The train is coming!" said Varya, "how jolly!"

Three eyes of fire could be seen in the distance. The stationmastercame out on the platform. Signal lights flashed here and there onthe line. 

"Let's see the train in and go home, " said Sasha, yawning. "What asplendid time we are having together, Varya, it's so splendid, onecan hardly believe it's true!"

The dark monster crept noiselessly alongside the platform and cameto a standstill. They caught glimpses of sleepy faces, of hats andshoulders at the dimly lighted windows. 

"Look! look!" they heard from one of the carriages. "Varya and Sashahave come to meet us! There they are! . . . Varya! . . . Varya. . . . Look!"

Two little girls skipped out of the train and hung on Varya's neck. They were followed by a stout, middle-aged lady, and a tall, lankygentleman with grey whiskers; behind them came two schoolboys, ladenwith bags, and after the schoolboys, the governess, after thegoverness the grandmother. 

"Here we are, here we are, dear boy!" began the whiskered gentleman, squeezing Sasha's hand. "Sick of waiting for us, I expect! You havebeen pitching into your old uncle for not coming down all this time, I daresay! Kolya, Kostya, Nina, Fifa . . . Children! Kiss yourcousin Sasha! We're all here, the whole troop of us, just for threeor four days. . . . I hope we shan't be too many for you? You mustn'tlet us put you out!"

At the sight of their uncle and his family, the young couple werehorror-stricken. While his uncle talked and kissed them, Sasha hada vision of their little cottage: he and Varya giving up their threelittle rooms, all the pillows and bedding to their guests; thesalmon, the sardines, the chicken all devoured in a single instant;the cousins plucking the flowers in their little garden, spillingthe ink, filled the cottage with noise and confusion; his aunttalking continually about her ailments and her papa's having beenBaron von Fintich. . . . 

And Sasha looked almost with hatred at his young wife, and whispered:

"It's you they've come to see! . . . Damn them!"

"No, it's you, " answered Varya, pale with anger. "They're yourrelations! they're not mine!"

And turning to her visitors, she said with a smile of welcome:"Welcome to the cottage!"

The moon came out again. She seemed to smile, as though she wereglad she had no relations. Sasha, turning his head away to hide hisangry despairing face, struggled to give a note of cordial welcometo his voice as he said:

"It is jolly of you! Welcome to the cottage!"

A BLUNDER

ILYA SERGEITCH PEPLOV and his wife Kleopatra Petrovna were standingat the door, listening greedily. On the other side in the littledrawing-room a love scene was apparently taking place between twopersons: their daughter Natashenka and a teacher of the districtschool, called Shchupkin. 

"He's rising!" whispered Peplov, quivering with impatience andrubbing his hands. "Now, Kleopatra, mind; as soon as they begintalking of their feelings, take down the ikon from the wall andwe'll go in and bless them. . . . We'll catch him. . . . A blessingwith an ikon is sacred and binding. . . He couldn't get out of it, if he brought it into court. "

On the other side of the door this was the conversation:

"Don't go on like that!" said Shchupkin, striking a match againsthis checked trousers. "I never wrote you any letters!"

"I like that! As though I didn't know your writing!" giggled thegirl with an affected shriek, continually peeping at herself in theglass. "I knew it at once! And what a queer man you are! You are awriting master, and you write like a spider! How can you teachwriting if you write so badly yourself?"

"H'm! . . . That means nothing. The great thing in writing lessonsis not the hand one writes, but keeping the boys in order. You hitone on the head with a ruler, make another kneel down. . . . Besides, there's nothing in handwriting! Nekrassov was an author, but hishandwriting's a disgrace, there's a specimen of it in his collectedworks. "

"You are not Nekrassov. . . . " (A sigh). "I should love to marryan author. He'd always be writing poems to me. "

"I can write you a poem, too, if you like. "

"What can you write about?"

"Love--passion--your eyes. You'll be crazy when you read it. It would draw a tear from a stone! And if I write you a real poem, will you let me kiss your hand?"

"That's nothing much! You can kiss it now if you like. "

Shchupkin jumped up, and making sheepish eyes, bent over the fatlittle hand that smelt of egg soap. 

"Take down the ikon, " Peplov whispered in a fluster, pale withexcitement, and buttoning his coat as he prodded his wife with hiselbow. "Come along, now!"

And without a second's delay Peplov flung open the door. 

"Children, " he muttered, lifting up his arms and blinking tearfully, "the Lord bless you, my children. May you live--be fruitful--and multiply. "

"And--and I bless you, too, " the mamma brought out, crying withhappiness. "May you be happy, my dear ones! Oh, you are taking fromme my only treasure!" she said to Shchupkin. "Love my girl, be goodto her. . . . "

Shchupkin's mouth fell open with amazement and alarm. The parents'attack was so bold and unexpected that he could not utter a singleword. 

"I'm in for it! I'm spliced!" he thought, going limp with horror. "It's all over with you now, my boy! There's no escape!"

And he bowed his head submissively, as though to say, "Take me, I'mvanquished. "

"Ble-blessings on you, " the papa went on, and he, too, shed tears. "Natashenka, my daughter, stand by his side. Kleopatra, give me theikon. "

But at this point the father suddenly left off weeping, and hisface was contorted with anger. 

"You ninny!" he said angrily to his wife. "You are an idiot! Isthat the ikon?"

"Ach, saints alive!"

What had happened? The writing master raised himself and saw thathe was saved; in her flutter the mamma had snatched from the wallthe portrait of Lazhetchnikov, the author, in mistake for the ikon. Old Peplov and his wife stood disconcerted in the middle of theroom, holding the portrait aloft, not knowing what to do or whatto say. The writing master took advantage of the general confusionand slipped away. 

FAT AND THIN

Two friends--one a fat man and the other a thin man--met at theNikolaevsky station. The fat man had just dined in the station andhis greasy lips shone like ripe cherries. He smelt of sherry and_fleur d'orange_. The thin man had just slipped out of the trainand was laden with portmanteaus, bundles, and bandboxes. He smeltof ham and coffee grounds. A thin woman with a long chin, his wife, and a tall schoolboy with one eye screwed up came into view behindhis back. 

"Porfiry, " cried the fat man on seeing the thin man. "Is it you?My dear fellow! How many summers, how many winters!"

"Holy saints!" cried the thin man in amazement. "Misha! The friendof my childhood! Where have you dropped from?"

The friends kissed each other three times, and gazed at each otherwith eyes full of tears. Both were agreeably astounded. 

"My dear boy!" began the thin man after the kissing. "This isunexpected! This is a surprise! Come have a good look at me! Justas handsome as I used to be! Just as great a darling and a dandy!Good gracious me! Well, and how are you? Made your fortune? Married?I am married as you see. . . . This is my wife Luise, her maidenname was Vantsenbach . . . Of the Lutheran persuasion. . . . Andthis is my son Nafanail, a schoolboy in the third class. This isthe friend of my childhood, Nafanya. We were boys at school together!"

Nafanail thought a little and took off his cap. 

"We were boys at school together, " the thin man went on. "Do youremember how they used to tease you? You were nicknamed Herostratusbecause you burned a hole in a schoolbook with a cigarette, and Iwas nicknamed Ephialtes because I was fond of telling tales. Ho--ho!. . . We were children! . . . Don't be shy, Nafanya. Go nearer tohim. And this is my wife, her maiden name was Vantsenbach, of theLutheran persuasion. . . . "

Nafanail thought a little and took refuge behind his father's back. 

"Well, how are you doing my friend?" the fat man asked, lookingenthusiastically at his friend. "Are you in the service? What gradehave you reached?"

"I am, dear boy! I have been a collegiate assessor for the last twoyears and I have the Stanislav. The salary is poor, but that's nogreat matter! The wife gives music lessons, and I go in for carvingwooden cigarette cases in a private way. Capital cigarette cases!I sell them for a rouble each. If any one takes ten or more I makea reduction of course. We get along somehow. I served as a clerk, you know, and now I have been transferred here as a head clerk inthe same department. I am going to serve here. And what about you?I bet you are a civil councillor by now? Eh?"

"No dear boy, go higher than that, " said the fat man. "I have risento privy councillor already . . . I have two stars. "

The thin man turned pale and rigid all at once, but soon his facetwisted in all directions in the broadest smile; it seemed as thoughsparks were flashing from his face and eyes. He squirmed, he doubledtogether, crumpled up. . . . His portmanteaus, bundles and cardboardboxes seemed to shrink and crumple up too. . . . His wife's longchin grew longer still; Nafanail drew himself up to attention andfastened all the buttons of his uniform. 

"Your Excellency, I . . . Delighted! The friend, one may say, ofchildhood and to have turned into such a great man! He--he!"

"Come, come!" the fat man frowned. "What's this tone for? You andI were friends as boys, and there is no need of this officialobsequiousness!"

"Merciful heavens, your Excellency! What are you saying. . . ?"sniggered the thin man, wriggling more than ever. "Your Excellency'sgracious attention is like refreshing manna. . . . This, yourExcellency, is my son Nafanail, . . . My wife Luise, a Lutheran ina certain sense. "

The fat man was about to make some protest, but the face of thethin man wore an expression of such reverence, sugariness, andmawkish respectfulness that the privy councillor was sickened. Heturned away from the thin man, giving him his hand at parting. 

The thin man pressed three fingers, bowed his whole body and sniggeredlike a Chinaman: "He--he--he!" His wife smiled. Nafanail scrapedwith his foot and dropped his cap. All three were agreeablyoverwhelmed. 

THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK

ONE fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called IvanDmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the _Cloches de Corneville_. Hegazed and felt at the acme of bliss. But suddenly. . . . In storiesone so often meets with this "But suddenly. " The authors are right:life is so full of surprises! But suddenly his face puckered up, his eyes disappeared, his breathing was arrested . . . He took theopera glass from his eyes, bent over and . . . "Aptchee!!" he sneezedas you perceive. It is not reprehensible for anyone to sneezeanywhere. Peasants sneeze and so do police superintendents, andsometimes even privy councillors. All men sneeze. Tchervyakov wasnot in the least confused, he wiped his face with his handkerchief, and like a polite man, looked round to see whether he had disturbedany one by his sneezing. But then he was overcome with confusion. He saw that an old gentleman sitting in front of him in the firstrow of the stalls was carefully wiping his bald head and his neckwith his glove and muttering something to himself. In the oldgentleman, Tchervyakov recognised Brizzhalov, a civilian generalserving in the Department of Transport. 

"I have spattered him, " thought Tchervyakov, "he is not the headof my department, but still it is awkward. I must apologise. "

Tchervyakov gave a cough, bent his whole person forward, and whisperedin the general's ear. 

"Pardon, your Excellency, I spattered you accidentally. . . . "

"Never mind, never mind. "

"For goodness sake excuse me, I . . . I did not mean to. "

"Oh, please, sit down! let me listen!"

Tchervyakov was embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazingat the stage. He gazed at it but was no longer feeling bliss. Hebegan to be troubled by uneasiness. In the interval, he went up toBrizzhalov, walked beside him, and overcoming his shyness, muttered:

"I spattered you, your Excellency, forgive me . . . You see . . . I didn't do it to . . . . "

"Oh, that's enough . . . I'd forgotten it, and you keep on aboutit!" said the general, moving his lower lip impatiently. 

"He has forgotten, but there is a fiendish light in his eye, " thoughtTchervyakov, looking suspiciously at the general. "And he doesn'twant to talk. I ought to explain to him . . . That I really didn'tintend . . . That it is the law of nature or else he will think Imeant to spit on him. He doesn't think so now, but he will thinkso later!"

On getting home, Tchervyakov told his wife of his breach of goodmanners. It struck him that his wife took too frivolous a view ofthe incident; she was a little frightened, but when she learnedthat Brizzhalov was in a different department, she was reassured. 

"Still, you had better go and apologise, " she said, "or he willthink you don't know how to behave in public. "

"That's just it! I did apologise, but he took it somehow queerly. . . He didn't say a word of sense. There wasn't time to talkproperly. "

Next day Tchervyakov put on a new uniform, had his hair cut andwent to Brizzhalov's to explain; going into the general's receptionroom he saw there a number of petitioners and among them the generalhimself, who was beginning to interview them. After questioningseveral petitioners the general raised his eyes and looked atTchervyakov. 

"Yesterday at the _Arcadia_, if you recollect, your Excellency, "the latter began, "I sneezed and . . . Accidentally spattered . . . Exc. . . . "

"What nonsense. . . . It's beyond anything! What can I do for you, "said the general addressing the next petitioner. 

"He won't speak, " thought Tchervyakov, turning pale; "that meansthat he is angry. . . . No, it can't be left like this. . . . Iwill explain to him. "

When the general had finished his conversation with the last of thepetitioners and was turning towards his inner apartments, Tchervyakovtook a step towards him and muttered:

"Your Excellency! If I venture to trouble your Excellency, it issimply from a feeling I may say of regret! . . . It was not intentionalif you will graciously believe me. "

The general made a lachrymose face, and waved his hand. 

"Why, you are simply making fun of me, sir, " he said as he closedthe door behind him. 

"Where's the making fun in it?" thought Tchervyakov, "there isnothing of the sort! He is a general, but he can't understand. Ifthat is how it is I am not going to apologise to that _fanfaron_any more! The devil take him. I'll write a letter to him, but Iwon't go. By Jove, I won't. "

So thought Tchervyakov as he walked home; he did not write a letterto the general, he pondered and pondered and could not make up thatletter. He had to go next day to explain in person. 

"I ventured to disturb your Excellency yesterday, " he muttered, when the general lifted enquiring eyes upon him, "not to make funas you were pleased to say. I was apologising for having spatteredyou in sneezing. . . . And I did not dream of making fun of you. Should I dare to make fun of you, if we should take to making fun, then there would be no respect for persons, there would be. . . . "

"Be off!" yelled the general, turning suddenly purple, and shakingall over. 

"What?" asked Tchervyakov, in a whisper turning numb with horror. 

"Be off!" repeated the general, stamping. 

Something seemed to give way in Tchervyakov's stomach. Seeing nothingand hearing nothing he reeled to the door, went out into the street, and went staggering along. . . . Reaching home mechanically, withouttaking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and died. 

A PINK STOCKING

A DULL, rainy day. The sky is completely covered with heavy clouds, and there is no prospect of the rain ceasing. Outside sleet, puddles, and drenched jackdaws. Indoors it is half dark, and so cold thatone wants the stove heated. 

Pavel Petrovitch Somov is pacing up and down his study, grumblingat the weather. The tears of rain on the windows and the darknessof the room make him depressed. He is insufferably bored and hasnothing to do. . . . The newspapers have not been brought yet;shooting is out of the question, and it is not nearly dinner-time. . . . 

Somov is not alone in his study. Madame Somov, a pretty little ladyin a light blouse and pink stockings, is sitting at his writingtable. She is eagerly scribbling a letter. Every time he passes heras he strides up and down, Ivan Petrovitch looks over her shoulderat what she is writing. He sees big sprawling letters, thin andnarrow, with all sorts of tails and flourishes. There are numbersof blots, smears, and finger-marks. Madame Somov does not like ruledpaper, and every line runs downhill with horrid wriggles as itreaches the margin. . . . 

"Lidotchka, who is it you are writing such a lot to?" Somov inquires, seeing that his wife is just beginning to scribble the sixth page. 

"To sister Varya. "

"Hm . . . It's a long letter! I'm so bored--let me read it!"

"Here, you may read it, but there's nothing interesting in it. "

Somov takes the written pages and, still pacing up and down, beginsreading. Lidotchka leans her elbows on the back of her chair andwatches the expression of his face. . . . After the first page hisface lengthens and an expression of something almost like paniccomes into it. . . . At the third page Somov frowns and scratchesthe back of his head. At the fourth he pauses, looks with a scaredface at his wife, and seems to ponder. After thinking a little, hetakes up the letter again with a sigh. . . . His face betraysperplexity and even alarm. . . . "

"Well, this is beyond anything!" he mutters, as he finishes readingthe letter and flings the sheets on the table, "It's positivelyincredible!"

"What's the matter?" asks Lidotchka, flustered. 

"What's the matter! You've covered six pages, wasted a good twohours scribbling, and there's nothing in it at all! If there wereone tiny idea! One reads on and on, and one's brain is as muddledas though one were deciphering the Chinese wriggles on tea chests!Ough!"

"Yes, that's true, Vanya, . . . " says Lidotchka, reddening. "I wroteit carelessly. . . . "

"Queer sort of carelessness! In a careless letter there is somemeaning and style--there is sense in it--while yours . . . Excuse me, but I don't know what to call it! It's absolute twaddle!There are words and sentences, but not the slightest sense in them. Your whole letter is exactly like the conversation of two boys: 'Wehad pancakes to-day! And we had a soldier come to see us!' You saythe same thing over and over again! You drag it out, repeat yourself. . . . The wretched ideas dance about like devils: there's no makingout where anything begins, where anything ends. . . . How can youwrite like that?"

"If I had been writing carefully, " Lidotchka says in self defence, "then there would not have been mistakes. . . . "

"Oh, I'm not talking about mistakes! The awful grammatical howlers!There's not a line that's not a personal insult to grammar! No stopsnor commas--and the spelling . . . Brrr! 'Earth' has an _a_ init!! And the writing! It's desperate! I'm not joking, Lida. . . . I'm surprised and appalled at your letter. . . . You mustn't beangry, darling, but, really, I had no idea you were such a dufferat grammar. . . . And yet you belong to a cultivated, well-educatedcircle: you are the wife of a University man, and the daughter ofa general! Tell me, did you ever go to school?"

"What next! I finished at the Von Mebke's boarding school. . . . "

Somov shrugs his shoulders and continues to pace up and down, sighing. Lidotchka, conscious of her ignorance and ashamed of it, sighs too and casts down her eyes. . . . Ten minutes pass in silence. 

"You know, Lidotchka, it really is awful!" says Somov, suddenlyhalting in front of her and looking into her face with horror. "Youare a mother . . . Do you understand? A mother! How can you teachyour children if you know nothing yourself? You have a good brain, but what's the use of it if you have never mastered the very rudimentsof knowledge? There--never mind about knowledge . . . The childrenwill get that at school, but, you know, you are very shaky on themoral side too! You sometimes use such language that it makes myears tingle!"

Somov shrugs his shoulders again, wraps himself in the folds of hisdressing-gown and continues his pacing. . . . He feels vexed andinjured, and at the same time sorry for Lidotchka, who does notprotest, but merely blinks. . . . Both feel oppressed and miserable. . . . Absorbed in their woes, they do not notice how time is passingand the dinner hour is approaching. 

Sitting down to dinner, Somov, who is fond of good eating and ofeating in peace, drinks a large glass of vodka and begins talkingabout something else. Lidotchka listens and assents, but suddenlyover the soup her eyes fill with tears and she begins whimpering. 

"It's all mother's fault!" she says, wiping away her tears with herdinner napkin. "Everyone advised her to send me to the high school, and from the high school I should have been sure to go on to theUniversity!"

"University . . . High school, " mutters Somov. "That's running toextremes, my girl! What's the good of being a blue stocking! A bluestocking is the very deuce! Neither man nor woman, but just somethingmidway: neither one thing nor another. . . I hate blue stockings!I would never have married a learned woman. . . . "

"There's no making you out . . . ", says Lidotchka. "You are angrybecause I am not learned, and at the same time you hate learnedwomen; you are annoyed because I have no ideas in my letter, andyet you yourself are opposed to my studying. . . . "

"You do catch me up at a word, my dear, " yawns Somov, pouring outa second glass of vodka in his boredom. 

Under the influence of vodka and a good dinner, Somov grows moregood-humoured, lively, and soft. . . . He watches his pretty wifemaking the salad with an anxious face and a rush of affection forher, of indulgence and forgiveness comes over him. 

"It was stupid of me to depress her, poor girl . . . , " he thought. "Why did I say such a lot of dreadful things? She is silly, that'strue, uncivilised and narrow; but . . . There are two sides to thequestion, and _audiatur et altera pars_. . . . Perhaps people areperfectly right when they say that woman's shallowness rests on hervery vocation. Granted that it is her vocation to love her husband, to bear children, and to mix salad, what the devil does she wantwith learning? No, indeed!"

At that point he remembers that learned women are usually tedious, that they are exacting, strict, and unyielding; and, on the otherhand, how easy it is to get on with silly Lidotchka, who never pokesher nose into anything, does not understand so much, and neverobtrudes her criticism. There is peace and comfort with Lidotchka, and no risk of being interfered with. 

"Confound them, those clever and learned women! It's better andeasier to live with simple ones, " he thinks, as he takes a plateof chicken from Lidotchka. 

He recollects that a civilised man sometimes feels a desire to talkand share his thoughts with a clever and well-educated woman. "Whatof it?" thinks Somov. "If I want to talk of intellectual subjects, I'll go to Natalya Andreyevna . . . Or to Marya Frantsovna. . . . It's very simple! But no, I shan't go. One can discuss intellectualsubjects with men, " he finally decides. 

AT A SUMMER VILLA

"I LOVE YOU. You are my life, my happiness--everything to me! Forgivethe avowal, but I have not the strength to suffer and be silent. Iask not for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbourat eight o'clock this evening. . . . To sign my name is unnecessaryI think, but do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young, nice-looking . . . What more do you want?"

When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who wasspending his holidays at a summer villa, read this letter, heshrugged his shoulders and scratched his forehead in perplexity. 

"What devilry is this?" he thought. "I'm a married man, and to sendme such a queer . . . Silly letter! Who wrote it?"

Pavel Ivanitch turned the letter over and over before his eyes, read it through again, and spat with disgust. 

"'I love you'" . . . He said jeeringly. "A nice boy she has pitchedon! So I'm to run off to meet you in the arbour! . . . I got overall such romances and _fleurs d'amour_ years ago, my girl. . . . Hm! She must be some reckless, immoral creature. . . . Well, thesewomen are a set! What a whirligig--God forgive us!--she must be towrite a letter like that to a stranger, and a married man, too!It's real demoralisation!"

In the course of his eight years of married life Pavel Ivanitch hadcompletely got over all sentimental feeling, and he had receivedno letters from ladies except letters of congratulation, and so, although he tried to carry it off with disdain, the letter quotedabove greatly intrigued and agitated him. 

An hour after receiving it, he was lying on his sofa, thinking:

"Of course I am not a silly boy, and I am not going to rush off tothis idiotic rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to knowwho wrote it! Hm. . . . It is certainly a woman's writing. . . . The letter is written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardlybe a joke. . . . Most likely it's some neurotic girl, or perhaps awidow . . . Widows are frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm. . . . Who could it be?"

What made it the more difficult to decide the question was thatPavel Ivanitch had not one feminine acquaintance among all thesummer visitors, except his wife. 

"It is queer . . . " he mused. "'I love you!'. . . When did shemanage to fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this, apropos of nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding outwhat sort of man I am. . . . She must be extremely young and romanticif she is capable of falling in love after two or three looks atme. . . . But . . . Who is she?"

Pavel Ivanitch suddenly recalled that when he had been walking amongthe summer villas the day before, and the day before that, he hadseveral times been met by a fair young lady with a light blue hatand a turn-up nose. The fair charmer had kept looking at him, andwhen he sat down on a seat she had sat down beside him. . . . 

"Can it be she?" Vyhodtsev wondered. "It can't be! Could a delicateephemeral creature like that fall in love with a worn-out old eellike me? No, it's impossible!"

At dinner Pavel Ivanitch looked blankly at his wife while hemeditated:

"She writes that she is young and nice-looking. . . . So she's notold. . . . Hm. . . . To tell the truth, honestly I am not so oldand plain that no one could fall in love with me. My wife loves me!Besides, love is blind, we all know. . . . "

"What are you thinking about?" his wife asked him. 

"Oh. . . My head aches a little. . . " Pavel Ivanitch said, quiteuntruly. 

He made up his mind that it was stupid to pay attention to such anonsensical thing as a love-letter, and laughed at it and at itsauthoress, but--alas!--powerful is the "dacha" enemy of mankind!After dinner, Pavel Ivanitch lay down on his bed, and instead ofgoing to sleep, reflected:

"But there, I daresay she is expecting me to come! What a silly! Ican just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her_tournure_ will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! Ishan't go, though. . . . Bother her!"

But, I repeat, powerful is the enemy of mankind. 

"Though I might, perhaps, just out of curiosity . . . " he was musing, half an hour later. "I might go and look from a distance what sortof a creature she is. . . . It would be interesting to have a lookat her! It would be fun, and that's all! After all, why shouldn'tI have a little fun since such a chance has turned up?"

Pavel Ivanitch got up from his bed and began dressing. "What areyou getting yourself up so smartly for?" his wife asked, noticingthat he was putting on a clean shirt and a fashionable tie. 

"Oh, nothing. . . . I must have a walk. . . . My head aches. . . . Hm. "

Pavel Ivanitch dressed in his best, and waiting till eight o'clock, went out of the house. When the figures of gaily dressed summervisitors of both sexes began passing before his eyes against thebright green background, his heart throbbed. 

"Which of them is it? . . . " he wondered, advancing irresolutely. "Come, what am I afraid of? Why, I am not going to the rendezvous!What . . . A fool! Go forward boldly! And what if I go into thearbour? Well, well . . . There is no reason I should. "

Pavel Ivanitch's heart beat still more violently. . . . Involuntarily, with no desire to do so, he suddenly pictured to himself thehalf-darkness of the arbour. . . . A graceful fair girl with alittle blue hat and a turn-up nose rose before his imagination. Hesaw her, abashed by her love and trembling all over, timidly approachhim, breathing excitedly, and . . . Suddenly clasping him in herarms. 

"If I weren't married it would be all right . . . " he mused, drivingsinful ideas out of his head. "Though . . . For once in my life, it would do no harm to have the experience, or else one will diewithout knowing what. . . . And my wife, what will it matter toher? Thank God, for eight years I've never moved one step away fromher. . . . Eight years of irreproachable duty! Enough of her. . . . It's positively vexatious. . . . I'm ready to go to spite her!"

Trembling all over and holding his breath, Pavel Ivanitch went upto the arbour, wreathed with ivy and wild vine, and peeped into it. . . . A smell of dampness and mildew reached him. . . . 

"I believe there's nobody . . . " he thought, going into the arbour, and at once saw a human silhouette in the corner. 

The silhouette was that of a man. . . . Looking more closely, PavelIvanitch recognised his wife's brother, Mitya, a student, who wasstaying with them at the villa. 

"Oh, it's you . . . " he growled discontentedly, as he took off hishat and sat down. 

"Yes, it's I" . . . Answered Mitya. 

Two minutes passed in silence. 

"Excuse me, Pavel Ivanitch, " began Mitya: "but might I ask you toleave me alone?? . . . I am thinking over the dissertation for mydegree and . . . And the presence of anybody else prevents mythinking. "

"You had better go somewhere in a dark avenue. . . " Pavel Ivanitchobserved mildly. "It's easier to think in the open air, and, besides, . . . Er . . . I should like to have a little sleep here on thisseat. . . It's not so hot here. . . . "

"You want to sleep, but it's a question of my dissertation . . . "Mitya grumbled. "The dissertation is more important. "

Again there was a silence. Pavel Ivanitch, who had given the reinto his imagination and was continually hearing footsteps, suddenlyleaped up and said in a plaintive voice:

"Come, I beg you, Mitya! You are younger and ought to consider me. . . . I am unwell and . . . I need sleep. . . . Go away!"

"That's egoism. . . . Why must you be here and not I? I won't goas a matter of principle. "

"Come, I ask you to! Suppose I am an egoist, a despot and a fool. . . But I ask you to go! For once in my life I ask you a favour!Show some consideration!"

Mitya shook his head. 

"What a beast! . . . " thought Pavel Ivanitch. "That can't be arendezvous with him here! It's impossible with him here!"

"I say, Mitya, " he said, "I ask you for the last time. . . . Showthat you are a sensible, humane, and cultivated man!"

"I don't know why you keep on so!" . . . Said Mitya, shrugging hisshoulders. "I've said I won't go, and I won't. I shall stay hereas a matter of principle. . . . "

At that moment a woman's face with a turn-up nose peeped into thearbour. . . . 

Seeing Mitya and Pavel Ivanitch, it frowned and vanished. 

"She is gone!" thought Pavel Ivanitch, looking angrily at Mitya. "She saw that blackguard and fled! It's all spoilt!"

After waiting a little longer, he got up, put on his hat and said:

"You're a beast, a low brute and a blackguard! Yes! A beast! It'smean . . . And silly! Everything is at an end between us!"

"Delighted to hear it!" muttered Mitya, also getting up and puttingon his hat. "Let me tell you that by being here just now you'veplayed me such a dirty trick that I'll never forgive you as longas I live. "

Pavel Ivanitch went out of the arbour, and beside himself with rage, strode rapidly to his villa. Even the sight of the table laid forsupper did not soothe him. 

"Once in a lifetime such a chance has turned up, " he thought inagitation; "and then it's been prevented! Now she is offended . . . Crushed!"

At supper Pavel Ivanitch and Mitya kept their eyes on their platesand maintained a sullen silence. . . . They were hating each otherfrom the bottom of their hearts. 

"What are you smiling at?" asked Pavel Ivanitch, pouncing on hiswife. "It's only silly fools who laugh for nothing!"

His wife looked at her husband's angry face, and went off into apeal of laughter. 

"What was that letter you got this morning?" she asked. 

"I? . . . I didn't get one. . . . " Pavel Ivanitch was overcome withconfusion. "You are inventing . . . Imagination. "

"Oh, come, tell us! Own up, you did! Why, it was I sent you thatletter! Honour bright, I did! Ha ha!"

Pavel Ivanitch turned crimson and bent over his plate. "Silly jokes, "he growled. 

"But what could I do? Tell me that. . . . We had to scrub the roomsout this evening, and how could we get you out of the house? Therewas no other way of getting you out. . . . But don't be angry, stupid. . . . I didn't want you to be dull in the arbour, so I sentthe same letter to Mitya too! Mitya, have you been to the arbour?"

Mitya grinned and left off glaring with hatred at his rival.