THE HOUSE

WITH THE MEZZANINE

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKOFF

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

S. S. KOTELIANSKYANDGILBERT CANNAN

NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BYCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published August, 1917

CONTENTS

THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

TYPHUS

GOOSEBERRIES

IN EXILE

THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG

GOUSSIEV

MY LIFE

THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

(A PAINTER'S STORY)

It happened nigh on seven years ago, when I was living in one of thedistricts of the J. Province, on the estate of Bielokurov, a landowner, a young man who used to get up early, dress himself in a long overcoat, drink beer in the evenings, and all the while complain to me that hecould nowhere find any one in sympathy with his ideas. He lived in alittle house in the orchard, and I lived in the old manor-house, in ahuge pillared hall where there was no furniture except a large divan, onwhich I slept, and a table at which I used to play patience. Even incalm weather there was always a moaning in the chimney, and in a stormthe whole house would rock and seem as though it must split, and it wasquite terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten great windowswere suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning. 

Doomed by fate to permanent idleness, I did positively nothing. Forhours together I would sit and look through the windows at the sky, thebirds, the trees and read my letters over and over again, and then forhours together I would sleep. Sometimes I would go out and wanderaimlessly until evening. 

Once on my way home I came unexpectedly on a strange farmhouse. The sunwas already setting, and the lengthening shadows were thrown over theripening corn. Two rows of closely planted tall fir-trees stood like twothick walls, forming a sombre, magnificent avenue. I climbed the fenceand walked up the avenue, slipping on the fir needles which lay twoinches thick on the ground. It was still, dark, and only here and therein the tops of the trees shimmered a bright gold light casting thecolours of the rainbow on a spider's web. The smell of the firs wasalmost suffocating. Then I turned into an avenue of limes. And here toowere desolation and decay; the dead leaves rustled mournfully beneath myfeet, and there were lurking shadows among the trees. To the right, inan old orchard, a goldhammer sang a faint reluctant song, and he toomust have been old. The lime-trees soon came to an end and I came to awhite house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and suddenly a vista openedupon a farmyard with a pond and a bathing-shed, and a row of greenwillows, with a village beyond, and above it stood a tall, slenderbelfry, on which glowed a cross catching the light of the setting sun. For a moment I was possessed with a sense of enchantment, intimate, particular, as though I had seen the scene before in my childhood. 

By the white-stone gate surmounted with stone lions, which led from theyard into the field, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, thin, pale, very handsome, with masses of chestnut hair and a little stubbornmouth, looked rather prim and scarcely glanced at me; the other, who wasquite young--seventeen or eighteen, no more, also thin and pale, with abig mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise, as I passed, saidsomething in English and looked confused, and it seemed to me that I hadalways known their dear faces. And I returned home feeling as though Ihad awoke from a pleasant dream. 

Soon after that, one afternoon, when Bielokurov and I were walking nearthe house, suddenly there came into the yard a spring-carriage in whichsat one of the two girls, the elder. She had come to ask forsubscriptions to a fund for those who had suffered in a recent fire. Without looking at us, she told us very seriously how many houses hadbeen burned down in Sianov, how many men, women, and children had beenleft without shelter, and what had been done by the committee of whichshe was a member. She gave us the list for us to write our names, put itaway, and began to say good-bye. 

"You have completely forgotten us, Piotr Petrovich, " she said toBielokurov, as she gave him her hand. "Come and see us, and if Mr. N. (she said my name) would like to see how the admirers of his talent liveand would care to come and see us, then mother and I would be verypleased. "

I bowed. 

When she had gone Piotr Petrovich began to tell me about her. The girl, he said, was of a good family and her name was Lydia Volchaninov, andthe estate, on which she lived with her mother and sister, was called, like the village on the other side of the pond, Sholkovka. Her fatherhad once occupied an eminent position in Moscow and died a privycouncillor. Notwithstanding their large means, the Volchaninovs alwayslived in the village, summer and winter, and Lydia was a teacher in theZemstvo School at Sholkovka and earned twenty-five roubles a month. Sheonly spent what she earned on herself and was proud of her independence. 

"They are an interesting family, " said Bielokurov. "We ought to go andsee them. They will be very glad to see you. "

One afternoon, during a holiday, we remembered the Volchaninovs and wentover to Sholkovka. They were all at home. The mother, EkaterinaPavlovna, had obviously once been handsome, but now she was stouterthan her age warranted, suffered from asthma, was melancholy andabsent-minded as she tried to entertain me with talk about painting. When she heard from her daughter that I might perhaps come over toSholkovka, she hurriedly called to mind a few of my landscapes which shehad seen in exhibitions in Moscow, and now she asked what I had tried toexpress in them. Lydia, or as she was called at home, Lyda, talked moreto Bielokurov than to me. Seriously and without a smile, she asked himwhy he did not work for the Zemstvo and why up till now he had neverbeen to a Zemstvo meeting. 

"It is not right of you, Piotr Petrovich, " she said reproachfully. "Itis not right. It is a shame. "

"True, Lyda, true, " said her mother. "It is not right. "

"All our district is in Balaguin's hands, " Lyda went on, turning to me. "He is the chairman of the council and all the jobs in the district aregiven to his nephews and brothers-in-law, and he does exactly as helikes. We ought to fight him. The young people ought to form a strongparty; but you see what our young men are like. It is a shame, PiotrPetrovich. "

The younger sister, Genya, was silent during the conversation about theZemstvo. She did not take part in serious conversations, for by thefamily she was not considered grown-up, and they gave her her baby-name, Missyuss, because as a child she used to call her English governessthat. All the time she examined me curiously and when I looked at thephotograph-album she explained: "This is my uncle. . . . That is mygodfather, " and fingered the portraits, and at the same time touched mewith her shoulder in a childlike way, and I could see her small, undeveloped bosom, her thin shoulders, her long, slim waist tightlydrawn in by a belt. 

We played croquet and lawn-tennis, walked in the garden, had tea, andthen a large supper. After the huge pillared hall, I felt out of tune inthe small cosy house, where there were no oleographs on the walls andthe servants were treated considerately, and everything seemed to meyoung and pure, through the presence of Lyda and Missyuss, andeverything was decent and orderly. At supper Lyda again talked toBielokurov about the Zemstvo, about Balaguin, about school libraries. She was a lively, sincere, serious girl, and it was interesting tolisten to her, though she spoke at length and in a loud voice--perhapsbecause she was used to holding forth at school. On the other hand, Piotr Petrovich, who from his university days had retained the habit ofreducing any conversation to a discussion, spoke tediously, slowly, anddeliberately, with an obvious desire to be taken for a clever andprogressive man. He gesticulated and upset the sauce with his sleeve andit made a large pool on the table-cloth, though nobody but myself seemedto notice it. 

When we returned home the night was dark and still. 

"I call it good breeding, " said Bielokurov, with a sigh, "not so muchnot to upset the sauce on the table, as not to notice it when some oneelse has done it. Yes. An admirable intellectual family. I'm rather outof touch with nice people. Ah! terribly. And all through business, business, business!"

He went on to say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And Ithought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he woulddrag it out with his awful drawl--er, er, er--and he works just as hetalks--slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his beingbusinesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given himto post for weeks in his pocket. 

"The worst of it is, " he murmured as he walked along by my side, "theworst of it is that you go working away and never get any sympathy fromanybody. "

II

I began to frequent the Volchaninovs' house. Usually I sat on the bottomstep of the veranda. I was filled with dissatisfaction, vague discontentwith my life, which had passed so quickly and uninterestingly, and Ithought all the while how good it would be to tear out of my breast myheart which had grown so weary. There would be talk going on on theterrace, the rustling of dresses, the fluttering of the pages of abook. I soon got used to Lyda receiving the sick all day long, anddistributing books, and I used often to go with her to the village, bareheaded, under an umbrella. And in the evening she would hold forthabout the Zemstvo and schools. She was very handsome, subtle, correct, and her lips were thin and sensitive, and whenever a seriousconversation started she would say to me drily:

"This won't interest you. "

I was not sympathetic to her. She did not like me because I was alandscape-painter, and in my pictures did not paint the suffering of themasses, and I seemed to her indifferent to what she believed in. Iremember once driving along the shore of the Baikal and I met a Bouryatgirl, in shirt and trousers of Chinese cotton, on horseback: I asked herif she would sell me her pipe and, while we were talking, she lookedwith scorn at my European face and hat, and in a moment she got boredwith talking to me, whooped and galloped away. And in exactly the sameway Lyda despised me as a stranger. Outwardly she never showed herdislike of me, but I felt it, and, as I sat on the bottom step of theterrace, I had a certain irritation and said that treating the peasantswithout being a doctor meant deceiving them, and that it is easy to bea benefactor when one owns four thousand acres. 

Her sister, Missyuss, had no such cares and spent her time in completeidleness, like myself. As soon as she got up in the morning she wouldtake a book and read it on the terrace, sitting far back in a loungechair so that her feet hardly touched the ground, or she would hideherself with her book in the lime-walk, or she would go through the gateinto the field. She would read all day long, eagerly poring over thebook, and only through her looking fatigued, dizzy, and pale sometimes, was it possible to guess how much her reading exhausted her. When shesaw me come she would blush a little and leave her book, and, lookinginto my face with her big eyes, she would tell me of things that hadhappened, how the chimney in the servants' room had caught fire, or howthe labourer had caught a large fish in the pond. On week-days sheusually wore a bright-coloured blouse and a dark-blue skirt. We used togo out together and pluck cherries for jam, in the boat, and when shejumped to reach a cherry, or pulled the oars, her thin, round arms wouldshine through her wide sleeves. Or I would make a sketch and she wouldstand and watch me breathlessly. 

One Sunday, at the end of June, I went over to the Volchaninovs in themorning about nine o'clock. I walked through the park, avoiding thehouse, looking for mushrooms, which were very plentiful that summer, and marking them so as to pick them later with Genya. A warm wind wasblowing. I met Genya and her mother, both in bright Sunday dresses, going home from church, and Genya was holding her hat against the wind. They told me they were going to have tea on the terrace. 

As a man without a care in the world, seeking somehow to justify hisconstant idleness, I have always found such festive mornings in acountry house universally attractive. When the green garden, still moistwith dew, shines in the sun and seems happy, and when the terrace smellsof mignonette and oleander, and the young people have just returned fromchurch and drink tea in the garden, and when they are all so gailydressed and so merry, and when you know that all these healthy, satisfied, beautiful people will do nothing all day long, then you longfor all life to be like that. So I thought then as I walked through thegarden, quite prepared to drift like that without occupation or purpose, all through the day, all through the summer. 

Genya carried a basket and she looked as though she knew that she wouldfind me there. We gathered mushrooms and talked, and whenever she askedme a question she stood in front of me to see my face. 

"Yesterday, " she said, "a miracle happened in our village. Pelagueya, the cripple, has been ill for a whole year, and no doctors or medicineswere any good, but yesterday an old woman muttered over her and she gotbetter. "

"That's nothing, " I said. "One should not go to sick people and oldwomen for miracles. Is not health a miracle? And life itself? A miracleis something incomprehensible. "

"And you are not afraid of the incomprehensible?"

"No. I like to face things I do not understand and I do not submit tothem. I am superior to them. Man must think himself higher than lions, tigers, stars, higher than anything in nature, even higher than thatwhich seems incomprehensible and miraculous. Otherwise he is not a man, but a mouse which is afraid of everything. "

Genya thought that I, as an artist, knew a great deal and could guesswhat I did not know. She wanted me to lead her into the region of theeternal and the beautiful, into the highest world, with which, as shethought, I was perfectly familiar, and she talked to me of God, ofeternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who did not admit that I and myimagination would perish for ever, would reply: "Yes. Men are immortal. Yes, eternal life awaits us. " And she would listen and believe me andnever asked for proof. 

As we approached the house she suddenly stopped and said:

"Our Lyda is a remarkable person, isn't she? I love her dearly and wouldgladly sacrifice my life for her at any time. But tell me"--Genyatouched my sleeve with her finger--"but tell me, why do you argue withher all the time? Why are you so irritated?"

"Because she is not right. "

Genya shook her head and tears came to her eyes. 

"How incomprehensible!" she muttered. 

At that moment Lyda came out, and she stood by the balcony with ariding-whip in her hand, and looked very fine and pretty in thesunlight as she gave some orders to a farm-hand. Bustling about andtalking loudly, she tended two or three of her patients, and then with abusinesslike, preoccupied look she walked through the house, opening onecupboard after another, and at last went off to the attic; it took sometime to find her for dinner and she did not come until we had finishedthe soup. Somehow I remember all these, little details and love to dwellon them, and I remember the whole of that day vividly, though nothingparticular happened. After dinner Genya read, lying in her lounge chair, and I sat on the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The sky wasovercast and a thin fine rain began to fall. It was hot, the wind haddropped, and it seemed the day would never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna cameout on to the terrace with a fan, looking very sleepy. 

"O, mamma, " said Genya, kissing her hand. "It is not good for you tosleep during the day. "

They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other wouldstand on the terrace and look at the trees and call: "Hello!" "Genya!"or "Mamma, dear, where are you?" They always prayed together and sharedthe same faith, and they understood each other very well, even when theywere silent. And they treated other people in exactly the same way. Ekaterina Pavlovna also soon got used to me and became attached to me, and when I did not turn up for a few days she would send to inquire if Iwas well. And she too used to look admiringly at my sketches, and withthe same frank loquacity she would tell me things that happened, and shewould confide her domestic secrets to me. 

She revered her elder daughter. Lyda never came to her for caresses, andonly talked about serious things: she went her own way and to her motherand sister she was as sacred and enigmatic as the admiral, sitting inhis cabin, to his sailors. 

"Our Lyda is a remarkable person, " her mother would often say; "isn'tshe?"

And, now, as the soft rain fell, we spoke of Lyda:

"She is a remarkable woman, " said her mother, and added in a low voicelike a conspirator's as she looked round, "such as she have to be lookedfor with a lamp in broad daylight, though you know, I am beginning to beanxious. The school, pharmacies, books--all very well, but why go tosuch extremes? She is twenty-three and it is time for her to thinkseriously about herself. If she goes on with her books and herpharmacies she won't know how life has passed. . . . She ought to marry. "

Genya, pale with reading, and with her hair ruffled, looked up and said, as if to herself, as she glanced at her mother:

"Mamma, dear, everything depends on the will of God. "

And once more she plunged into her book. 

Bielokurov came over in a _poddiovka_, wearing an embroidered shirt. Weplayed croquet and lawn-tennis, and when it grew dark we had a longsupper, and Lyda once more spoke of her schools and Balaguin, who hadgot the whole district into his own hands. As I left the Volchaninovsthat night I carried away an impression of a long, long idle day, with asad consciousness that everything ends, however long it may be. Genyatook me to the gate, and perhaps, because she had spent the whole daywith me from the beginning to end, I felt somehow lonely without her, and the whole kindly family was dear to me: and for the first timeduring the whole of that summer I had a desire to work. 

"Tell me why you lead such a monotonous life, " I asked Bielokurov, as wewent home. "My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am apainter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy, discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, butyou are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman--why do you liveso tamely and take so little from life? Why, for instance, haven't youfallen in love with Lyda or Genya?"

"You forget that I love another woman, " answered Bielokurov. 

He meant his mistress, Lyabor Ivanovna, who lived with him in theorchard house. I used to see the lady every day, very stout, podgy, pompous, like a fatted goose, walking in the garden in a Russianhead-dress, always with a sunshade, and the servants used to call her tomeals or tea. Three years ago she rented a part of his house for thesummer, and stayed on to live with Bielokurov, apparently for ever. Shewas ten years older than he and managed him very strictly, so that hehad to ask her permission to go out. She would often sob and makehorrible noises like a man with a cold, and then I used to send and tellher that I'm if she did not stop I would go away. Then she would stop. 

When we reached home, Bielokurov sat down on the divan and frowned andbrooded, and I began to pace up and down the hall, feeling a sweetstirring in me, exactly like the stirring of love. I wanted to talkabout the Volchaninovs. 

"Lyda could only fall in love with a Zemstvo worker like herself, someone who is run off his legs with hospitals and schools, " I said. "Forthe sake of a girl like that a man might not only become a Zemstvoworker, but might even become worn out, like the tale of the iron boots. And Missyuss? How charming Missyuss is!"

Bielokurov began to talk at length and with his drawling er-er-ers ofthe disease of the century--pessimism. He spoke confidently andargumentatively. Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, blackenedsteppe could not so forcibly depress the mind as a man like that, sitting and talking and showing no signs of going away. 

"The point is neither pessimism nor optimism, " I said irritably, "butthat ninety-nine out of a hundred have no sense. "

Bielokurov took this to mean himself, was offended, and went away. 

III

"The Prince is on a visit to Malozyomov and sends you his regards, " saidLyda to her mother, as she came in and took off her gloves. "He told memany interesting things. He promised to bring forward in the ZemstvoCouncil the question of a medical station at Malozyomov, but he saysthere is little hope. " And turning to me, she said: "Forgive me, I keepforgetting that you are not interested. "

I felt irritated. 

"Why not?" I asked and shrugged my shoulders. "You don't care about myopinion, but I assure you, the question greatly interests me. "

"Yes?"

"In my opinion there is absolutely no need for a medical station atMalozyomov. "

My irritation affected her: she gave a glance at me, half closed hereyes and said:

"What is wanted then? Landscapes?"

"Not landscapes either. Nothing is wanted there. "

She finished taking off her gloves and took up a newspaper which hadjust come by post; a moment later, she said quietly, apparentlycontrolling herself:

"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if a medical man had beenavailable she would have lived. However, I suppose landscape-paintersare entitled to their opinions. "

"I have a very definite opinion, I assure you, " said I, and she tookrefuge behind the newspaper, as though she did not wish to listen. "Inmy opinion medical stations, schools, libraries, pharmacies, underexisting conditions, only lead to slavery. The masses are caught in avast chain: you do not cut it but only add new links to it. That is myopinion. "

She looked at me and smiled mockingly, and I went on, striving to catchthe thread of my ideas. 

"It does not matter that Anna should die in childbirth, but it doesmatter that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelagueyas, from dawn to sunsetshould be grinding away, ill from overwork, all their lives worriedabout their starving sickly children; all their lives they are afraid ofdeath and disease, and have to be looking after themselves; they fade inyouth, grow old very early, and die in filth and dirt; their children asthey grow up go the same way and hundreds of years slip by and millionsof people live worse than animals--in constant dread of never having acrust to eat; but the horror of their position is that they have no timeto think of their souls, no time to remember that they are made in thelikeness of God; hunger, cold, animal fear, incessant work, like driftsof snow block all the ways to spiritual activity, to the very thing thatdistinguishes man from the animals, and is the only thing indeed thatmakes life worth living. You come to their assistance with hospitals andschools, but you do not free them from their fetters; on the contrary, you enslave them even more, since by introducing new prejudices intotheir lives, you increase the number of their demands, not to mentionthe fact that they have to pay the Zemstvo for their drugs andpamphlets, and therefore, have to work harder than ever. "

"I will not argue with you, " said Lyda. "I have heard all that. " She putdown her paper. "I will only tell you one thing, it is no good sittingwith folded hands. It is true, we do not save mankind, and perhaps we domake mistakes, but we do what we can and we are right. The highest andmost sacred truth for an educated being--is to help his neighbours, andwe do what we can to help. You do not like it, but it is impossible toplease everybody. "

"True, Lyda, true, " said her mother. 

In Lyda's presence her courage always failed her, and as she talked shewould look timidly at her, for she was afraid of saying somethingfoolish or out of place: and she never contradicted, but would alwaysagree: "True, Lyda, true. "

"Teaching peasants to read and write, giving them little moral pamphletsand medical assistance, cannot decrease either ignorance or mortality, just as the light from your windows cannot illuminate this huge garden, "I said. "You give nothing by your interference in the lives of thesepeople. You only create new demands, and a new compulsion to work. "

"Ah! My God, but we must do something!" said Lyda exasperatedly, and Icould tell by her voice that she thought my opinions negligible anddespised me. 

"It is necessary, " I said, "to free people from hard physical work. Itis necessary to relieve them of their yoke, to give them breathingspace, to save them from spending their whole lives in the kitchen orthe byre, in the fields; they should have time to take thought of theirsouls, of God and to develop their spiritual capacities. Every humanbeing's salvation lies in spiritual activity--in his continual searchfor truth and the meaning of life. Give them some relief from rough, animal labour, let them feel free, then you will see how ridiculous atbottom your pamphlets and pharmacies are. Once a human being is aware ofhis vocation, then he can only be satisfied with religion, service, art, and not with trifles like that. "

"Free them from work?" Lyda gave a smile. "Is that possible?"

"Yes. . . . Take upon yourself a part of their work. If we all, in town andcountry, without exception, agreed to share the work which is beingspent by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands, then none ofus would have to work more than two or three hours a day. If all of us, rich and poor, worked three hours a day the rest of our time would befree. And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we shouldinvent machines to do the work and we should try to reduce our demandsto the minimum. We should toughen ourselves and our children should notbe afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be anxious about theirhealth, as Anna, Maria, Pelagueya were anxious. Then supposing we didnot bother about doctors and pharmacies, and did away with tobaccofactories and distilleries--what a lot of free time we should have! Weshould give our leisure to service and the arts. Just as peasants allwork together to repair the roads, so the whole community would worktogether to seek truth and the meaning of life, and, I am sure ofit--truth would be found very soon, man would get rid of his continual, poignant, depressing fear of death and even of death itself. "

"But you contradict yourself, " said Lyda. "You talk about service anddeny education. "

"I deny the education of a man who can only use it to read the signs onthe public houses and possibly a pamphlet which he is incapable ofunderstanding--the kind of education we have had from the time ofRiurik: and village life has remained exactly as it was then. Noteducation is wanted but freedom for the full development of spiritualcapacities. Not schools are wanted but universities. "

"You deny medicine too. "

"Yes. It should only be used for the investigation of diseases, asnatural phenomenon, not for their cure. It is no good curing diseases ifyou don't cure their causes. Remove the chief cause--physical labour, and there will be no diseases. I don't acknowledge the science whichcures, " I went on excitedly. "Science and art, when they are true, aredirected not to temporary or private purposes, but to the eternal andthe general--they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities, like pharmacies and libraries, then they only complicate and encumberlife. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and highlyeducated people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. All our intellectual and spiritual energy is wastedon temporary passing needs. . . . Scientists, writers, painters work andwork, and thanks to them the comforts of life grow greater every day, the demands of the body multiply, but we are still a long way from thetruth and man still remains the most rapacious and unseemly of animals, and everything tends to make the majority of mankind degenerate and moreand more lacking in vitality. Under such conditions the life of anartist has no meaning and the more talented he is, the more strange andincomprehensible his position is, since it only amounts to his workingfor the amusement of the predatory, disgusting animal, man, andsupporting the existing state of things. And I don't want to work andwill not. . . . Nothing is wanted, so let the world go to hell. "

"Missyuss, go away, " said Lyda to her sister, evidently thinking mywords dangerous to so young a girl. 

Genya looked sadly at her sister and mother and went out. 

"People generally talk like that, " said Lyda, "when they want to excusetheir indifference. It is easier to deny hospitals and schools than tocome and teach. "

"True, Lyda, true, " her mother agreed. 

"You say you will not work, " Lyda went on. "Apparently you set a highprice on your work, but do stop arguing. We shall never agree, since Ivalue the most imperfect library or pharmacy, of which you spoke soscornfully just now, more than all the landscapes in the world. " And atonce she turned to her mother and began to talk in quite a differenttone: "The Prince has got very thin, and is much changed since the lasttime he was here. The doctors are sending him to Vichy. "

She talked to her mother about the Prince to avoid talking to me. Herface was burning, and, in order to conceal her agitation, she bent overthe table as if she were short-sighted and made a show of reading thenewspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I took my leave and wenthome. 

IV

All was quiet outside: the village on the other side of the pond wasalready asleep, not a single light was to be seen, and on the pondthere was only the faint reflection of the stars. By the gate with thestone lions stood Genya, waiting to accompany me. 

"The village is asleep, " I said, trying to see her face in the darkness, and I could see her dark sad eyes fixed on me. "The innkeeper and thehorse-stealers are sleeping quietly, and decent people like ourselvesquarrel and irritate each other. "

It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because it already smelledof the autumn: the moon rose behind a purple cloud and hardly lightedthe road and the dark fields of winter corn on either side. Stars fellfrequently, Genya walked beside me on the road and tried not to look atthe sky, to avoid seeing the falling stars, which somehow frightenedher. 

"I believe you are right, " she said, trembling in the evening chill. "Ifpeople could give themselves to spiritual activity, they would soonburst everything. "

"Certainly. We are superior beings, and if we really knew all the powerof the human genius and lived only for higher purposes then we shouldbecome like gods. But this will never be. Mankind will degenerate and oftheir genius not a trace will be left. "

When the gate was out of sight Genya stopped and hurriedly shook myhand. 

"Good night, " she said, trembling; her shoulders were covered only witha thin blouse and she was shivering with cold. "Come to-morrow. "

I was filled with a sudden dread of being left alone with my inevitabledissatisfaction with myself and people, and I, too, tried not to see thefalling stars. 

"Stay with me a little longer, " I said. "Please. "

I loved Genya, and she must have loved me, because she used to meet meand walk with me, and because she looked at me with tender admiration. How thrillingly beautiful her pale face was, her thin nose, her arms, her slenderness, her idleness, her constant reading. And her mind? Isuspected her of having an unusual intellect: I was fascinated by thebreadth of her views, perhaps because she thought differently from thestrong, handsome Lyda, who did not love me. Genya liked me as a painter, I had conquered her heart by my talent, and I longed passionately topaint only for her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen, who wouldone day possess with me the trees, the fields, the river, the dawn, allNature, wonderful and fascinating, with whom, as with them, I have felthelpless and useless. 

"Stay with me a moment longer, " I called. "I implore you. "

I took off my overcoat and covered her childish shoulders. Fearing thatshe would look queer and ugly in a man's coat, she began to laugh andthrew it off, and as she did so, I embraced her and began to cover herface, her shoulders, her arms with kisses. 

"Till to-morrow, " she whispered timidly as though she was afraid tobreak the stillness of the night. She embraced me: "We have no secretsfrom one another. I must tell mamma and my sister. . . . Is it so terrible?Mamma will be pleased. Mamma loves you, but Lyda!"

She ran to the gates. 

"Good-bye, " she called out. 

For a couple of minutes I stood and heard her running. I had no desireto go home, there was nothing there to go for. I stood for a while lostin thought, and then quietly dragged myself back, to have one more lookat the house in which she lived, the dear, simple, old house, whichseemed to look at me with the windows of the mezzanine for eyes, and tounderstand everything. I walked past the terrace, sat down on a bench bythe lawn-tennis court, in the darkness under an old elm-tree, and lookedat the house. In the windows of the mezzanine, where Missyuss had herroom, shone a bright light, and then a faint green glow. The lamp hadbeen covered with a shade. Shadows began to move. . . . I was filled withtenderness and a calm satisfaction, to think that I could let myself becarried away and fall in love, and at the same time I felt uneasy at thethought that only a few yards away in one of the rooms of the house layLyda who did not love me, and perhaps hated me. I sat and waited to seeif Genya would come out. I listened attentively and it seemed to me theywere sitting in the mezzanine. 

An hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows were no longervisible. The moon hung high above the house and lit the sleeping gardenand the avenues: I could distinctly see the dahlias and roses in theflower-bed in front of the house, and all seemed to be of one colour. Itwas very cold. I left the garden, picked up my overcoat in the road, andwalked slowly home. 

Next day after dinner when I went to the Volchaninovs', the glass doorwas wide open. I sat down on the terrace expecting Genya to come frombehind the flower-bed or from one of the avenues, or to hear her voicecome from out of the rooms; then I went into the drawing-room and thedining-room. There was not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room Iwent down a long passage into the hall, and then back again. There wereseveral doors in the passage and behind one of them I could hear Lyda'svoice:

"To the crow somewhere . . . God . . . "--she spoke slowly and distinctly, and was probably dictating--" . . . God sent a piece of cheese. . . . To thecrow . . . Somewhere. . . . Who is there?" she called out suddenly as sheheard my footsteps. 

"It is I. "

"Oh! excuse me. I can't come out just now. I am teaching Masha. "

"Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"

"No. She and my sister left to-day for my Aunt's in Penga, and in thewinter they are probably going abroad. " She added after a short silence:"To the crow somewhere God sent a pi-ece of cheese. Have you got that?"

I went out into the hall, and, without a thought in my head, stood andlooked out at the pond and the village, and still I heard:

"A piece of cheese. . . . To the crow somewhere God sent a piece ofcheese. "

And I left the house by the way I had come the first time, onlyreversing the order, from the yard into the garden, past the house, thenalong the lime-walk. Here a boy overtook me and handed me a note: "Ihave told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from you, "I read. "I could not hurt her by disobeying. God will give youhappiness. If you knew how bitterly mamma and I have cried. "

Then through the fir avenue and the rotten fence. . . . Over the fieldswhere the corn was ripening and the quails screamed, cows and shackledhorses now were browsing. Here and there on the hills the winter cornwas already showing green. A sober, workaday mood possessed me and I wasashamed of all I had said at the Volchaninovs', and once more it becametedious to go on living. I went home, packed my things, and left thatevening for Petersburg. 

* * *

I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Lately on my way to the Crimea I metBielokurov at a station. As of old he was in a _poddiovka_, wearing anembroidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he replied:"Quite well, thanks be to God. " He began to talk. He had sold his estateand bought another, smaller one in the name of Lyabov Ivanovna. He toldme a little about the Volchaninovs. Lyda, he said, still lived atSholkovka and taught the children in the school; little by little shesucceeded in gathering round herself a circle of sympathetic people, whoformed a strong party, and at the last Zemstvo election they drove outBalaguin, who up till then had had the whole district in his hands. OfGenya Bielokurov said that she did not live at home and he did not knowwhere she was. 

I have already begun to forget about the house with the mezzanine, andonly now and then, when I am working or reading, suddenly--without rhymeor reason--I remember the green light in the window, and the sound of myown footsteps as I walked through the fields that night, when I was inlove, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And even more rarely, when Iam sad and lonely, I begin already to recollect and it seems to me thatI, too, am being remembered and waited for, and that we shall meet. . . . 

Missyuss, where are you?

TYPHUS

In a smoking-compartment of the mail-train from Petrograd to Moscow sata young lieutenant, Klimov by name. Opposite him sat an elderly man witha clean-shaven, shipmaster's face, to all appearances a well-to-do Finnor Swede, who all through the journey smoked a pipe and talked round andround the same subject. 

"Ha! you are an officer! My brother is also an officer, but he is asailor. He is a sailor and is stationed at Kronstadt. Why are you goingto Moscow?"

"I am stationed there. "

"Ha! Are you married?"

"No. I live with my aunt and sister. "

"My brother is also an officer, but he is married and has a wife andthree children. Ha!"

The Finn looked surprised at something, smiled broadly and fatuously ashe exclaimed, "Ha, " and every now and then blew through the stem of hispipe. Klimov, who was feeling rather unwell, and not at all inclined toanswer questions, hated him with all his heart. He thought how good itwould be to snatch his gurgling pipe out of his hands and throw it underthe seat and to order the Finn himself into another car. 

"They are awful people, these Finns and . . . Greeks, " he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber theearth. What is the good of them?"

And the thought of Finns and Greeks filled him with a kind of nausea. Hetried to compare them with the French and the Italians, but the idea ofthose races somehow roused in him the notion of organ-grinders, nakedwomen, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of drawersin his aunt's house. 

The young officer felt generally out of sorts. There seemed to be noroom for his arms and legs, though he had the whole seat to himself; hismouth was dry and sticky, his head was heavy and his clouded thoughtsseemed to wander at random, not only in his head, but also outside itamong the seats and the people looming in the darkness. Through theturmoil in his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur ofvoices, the rattle of the wheels, the slamming of doors. Bells, whistles, conductors, the tramp of the people on the platforms cameoftener than usual. The time slipped by quickly, imperceptibly, and itseemed that the train stopped every minute at a station as now and thenthere would come up the sound of metallic voices:

"Is the post ready?"

"Ready. "

It seemed to him that the stove-neater came in too often to look at thethermometer, and that trains never stopped passing and his own train wasalways roaring over bridges. The noise, the whistle, the Finn, thetobacco smoke--all mixed with the ominous shifting of misty shapes, weighed on Klimov like an intolerable nightmare. In terrible anguish helifted up his aching head, looked at the lamp whose light was encircledwith shadows and misty spots; he wanted to ask for water, but his drytongue would hardly move, and he had hardly strength enough to answerthe Finn's questions. He tried to lie down more comfortably and sleep, but he could not succeed; the Finn fell asleep several times, woke upand lighted his pipe, talked to him with his "Ha!" and went to sleepagain; and the lieutenant could still not find room for his legs on theseat, and all the while the ominous figures shifted before his eyes. 

At Spirov he got out to have a drink of water. He saw some peoplesitting at a table eating hurriedly. 

"How can they eat?" he thought, trying to avoid the smell of roast meatin the air and seeing the chewing mouths, for both seemed to him utterlydisgusting and made him feel sick. 

A handsome lady was talking to a military man in a red cap, and sheshowed magnificent white teeth when she smiled; her smile, her teeth, the lady herself produced in Klimov the same impression of disgust asthe ham and the fried cutlets. He could not understand how the militaryman in the red cap could bear to sit near her and look at her healthysmiling face. 

After he had drunk some water, he went back to his place. The Finn satand smoked. His pipe gurgled and sucked like a galoche full of holes indirty weather. 

"Ha!" he said with some surprise. "What station is this?"

"I don't know, " said Klimov, lying down and shutting his mouth to keepout the acrid tobacco smoke. 

"When do we get to Tver. "

"I don't know. I am sorry, I . . . I can't talk. I am not well. I have acold. "

The Finn knocked out his pipe against the window-frame and began to talkof his brother, the sailor. Klimov paid no more attention to him andthought in agony of his soft, comfortable bed, of the bottle of coldwater, of his sister Katy, who knew so well how to tuck him up andcosset him. He even smiled when there flashed across his mind hissoldier-servant Pavel, taking off his heavy, close-fitting boots andputting water on the table. It seemed to him that he would only have tolie on his bed and drink some water and his nightmare would give way toa sound, healthy sleep. 

"Is the post ready?" came a dull voice from a distance. 

"Ready, " answered a loud, bass voice almost by the very window. 

It was the second or third station from Spirov. 

Time passed quickly, seemed to gallop along, and there would be no endto the bells, whistles, and stops. In despair Klimov pressed his faceinto the corner of the cushion, held his head in his hands, and againbegan to think of his sister Katy and his orderly Pavel; but his sisterand his orderly got mixed up with the looming figures and whirled aboutand disappeared. His breath, thrown back from the cushion, burned hisface, and his legs ached and a draught from the window poured into hisback, but, painful though it was, he refused to change his position. . . . A heavy, drugging torpor crept over him and chained his limbs. 

When at length he raised his head, the car was quite light. Thepassengers were putting on their overcoats and moving about. The trainstopped. Porters in white aprons and number-plates bustled about thepassengers and seized their boxes. Klimov put on his greatcoatmechanically and left the train, and he felt as though it were nothimself walking, but some one else, a stranger, and he felt that he wasaccompanied by the heat of the train, his thirst, and the ominous, lowering figures which all night long had prevented his sleeping. Mechanically he got his luggage and took a cab. The cabman charged himone rouble and twenty-five copecks for driving him to Povarska Street, but he did not haggle and submissively took his seat in the sledge. Hecould still grasp the difference in numbers, but money had no value tohim whatever. 

At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katy, a girl ofeighteen. Katy had a copy-book and a pencil in her hands as she greetedhim, and he remembered that she was preparing for a teacher'sexamination. He took no notice of their greetings and questions, butgasped from the heat, and walked aimlessly through the rooms until hereached his own, and then he fell prone on the bed. The Finn, the redcap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of roast meat, theshifting spot in the lamp, filled his mind and he lost consciousnessand did not hear the frightened voices near him. 

When he came to himself he found himself in bed, undressed, and noticedthe water-bottle and Pavel, but it did not make him any more comfortablenor easy. His legs and arms, as before, felt cramped, his tongue cloveto his palate, and he could hear the chuckle of the Finn's pipe. . . . Bythe bed, growing out of Pavel's broad back, a stout, black-beardeddoctor was bustling. 

"All right, all right, my lad, " he murmured. "Excellent, excellent. . . . Jist so, jist so. . . . "

The doctor called Klimov "my lad. " Instead of "just so, " he said "jistsaow, " and instead of "yes, " "yies. "

"Yies, yies, yies, " he said. "Jist saow, jist saow. . . . Don't bedownhearted!"

The doctor's quick, careless way of speaking, his well-fed face, and thecondescending tone in which he said "my lad" exasperated Klimov. 

"Why do you call me 'my lad'?" he moaned. "Why this familiarity, damn itall?"

And he was frightened by the sound of his own voice. It was so dry, weak, and hollow that he could hardly recognise it. 

"Excellent, excellent, " murmured the doctor, not at all offended. "Yies, yies. You mustn't be cross. "

And at home the time galloped away as alarmingly quickly as in thetrain. . . . The light of day in his bedroom was every now and then changedto the dim light of evening. . . . The doctor never seemed to leave thebedside, and his "Yies, yies, yies, " could be heard at every moment. Through the room stretched an endless row of faces; Pavel, the Finn, Captain Taroshevich, Sergeant Maximenko, the red cap, the lady with thewhite teeth, the doctor. All of them talked, waved their hands, smoked, ate. Once in broad daylight Klimov saw his regimental priest, FatherAlexander, in his stole and with the host in his hands, standing by thebedside and muttering something with such a serious expression as Klimovhad never seen him wear before. The lieutenant remembered that FatherAlexander used to call all the Catholic officers Poles, and wishing tomake the priest laugh, he exclaimed:

"Father Taroshevich, the Poles have fled to the woods. "

But Father Alexander, usually a gay, light-hearted man, did not laughand looked even more serious, and made the sign of the cross overKlimov. At night, one after the other, there would come slowly creepingin and out two shadows. They were his aunt and his sister. The shadow ofhis sister would kneel down and pray; she would bow to the ikon, and hergrey shadow on the wall would bow, too, so that two shadows prayed toGod. And all the time there was a smell of roast meat and of the Finn'spipe, but once Klimov could detect a distinct smell of incense. Henearly vomited and cried:

"Incense! Take it away. "

There was no reply. He could only hear priests chanting in an undertoneand some one running on the stairs. 

When Klimov recovered from his delirium there was not a soul in thebedroom. The morning sun flared through the window and the drawncurtains, and a trembling beam, thin and keen as a sword, played on thewater-bottle. He could hear the rattle of wheels--that meant there wasno more snow in the streets. The lieutenant looked at the sunbeam, atthe familiar furniture and the door, and his first inclination was tolaugh. His chest and stomach trembled with a sweet, happy, ticklinglaughter. From head to foot his whole body was filled with a feeling ofinfinite happiness, like that which the first man must have felt when hestood erect and beheld the world for the first time. Klimov had apassionate longing for people, movement, talk. His body lay motionless;he could only move his hands, but he hardly noticed it, for his wholeattention was fixed on little things. He was delighted with hisbreathing and with his laughter; he was delighted with the existence ofthe water-bottle, the ceiling, the sunbeam, the ribbon on the curtain. God's world, even in such a narrow corner as his bedroom, seemed to himbeautiful, varied, great. When the doctor appeared the lieutenantthought how nice his medicine was, how nice and sympathetic the doctorwas, how nice and interesting people were, on the whole. 

"Yies, yies, yies, " said the doctor. "Excellent, excellent. Now we arewell again. Jist saow. Jist saow. "

The lieutenant listened and laughed gleefully. He remembered the Finn, the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he wanted to eat andsmoke. 

"Doctor, " he said, "tell them to bring me a slice of rye bread and salt, and some sardines. . . . "

The doctor refused. Pavel did not obey his order and refused to go forbread. The lieutenant could not bear it and began to cry like a thwartedchild. 

"Ba-by, " the doctor laughed. "Mamma! Hush-aby!"

Klimov also began to laugh, and when the doctor had gone, he fell soundasleep. He woke up with the same feeling of joy and happiness. His auntwas sitting by his bed. 

"Oh, aunty!" He was very happy. "What has been the matter with me?"

"Typhus. "

"I say! And now I am well, quite well! Where is Katy?"

"She is not at home. She has probably gone to see some one after herexamination. "

The old woman bent over her stocking as she said this; her lips began totremble; she turned her face away and suddenly began to sob. In hergrief, she forgot the doctor's orders and cried:

"Oh! Katy! Katy! Our angel is gone from us! She is gone!"

She dropped her stocking and stooped down for it, and her cap fell offher head. Klimov stared at her grey hair, could not understand, wasalarmed for Katy, and asked:

"But where is she, aunty?"

The old woman, who had already forgotten Klimov and remembered only hergrief, said:

"She caught typhus from you and . . . And died. She was buried the daybefore yesterday. "

This sudden appalling piece of news came home to Klimov's mind, butdreadful and shocking though it was it could not subdue the animal joywhich thrilled through the convalescent lieutenant. He cried, laughed, and soon began to complain that he was given nothing to eat. 

Only a week later, when, supported by Pavel, he walked in adressing-gown to the window, and saw the grey spring sky and heard thehorrible rattle of some old rails being carried by on a lorry, then hisheart ached with sorrow and he began to weep and pressed his foreheadagainst the window-frame. 

"How unhappy I am!" he murmured. "My God, how unhappy I am!"

And joy gave way to his habitual weariness and a sense of hisirreparable loss. 

GOOSEBERRIES

From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day wasstill, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the cloudshang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. IvanIvanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, weretired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead theycould just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the rightstretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and theyknew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows, farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field asendless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like acrawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calmweather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich andBourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand andbeautiful the country was. 

"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed, " said Bourkin, "you weregoing to tell me a story. "

"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother. "

Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his pipe before beginninghis story, but just then the rain began to fall. And in about fiveminutes it came pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. IvanIvanich stopped and hesitated; the dogs, wet through, stood with theirtails between their legs and looked at them mournfully. 

"We ought to take shelter, " said Bourkin. "Let us go to Aliokhin. It isclose by. "

"Very well. "

They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then bore to the right, until they came to the road. Soon there appeared poplars, a garden, thered roofs of granaries; the river began to glimmer and they came to awide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It was Sophino, whereAliokhin lived. 

The mill was working, drowning the sound of the rain, and the dam shook. Round the carts stood wet horses, hanging their heads, and men werewalking about with their heads covered with sacks. It was wet, muddy, and unpleasant, and the river looked cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich andBourkin felt wet and uncomfortable through and through; their feet weretired with walking in the mud, and they walked past the dam to the barnin silence as though they were angry with each other. 

In one of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out cloudsof dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter thana farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pantsinstead of trousers; and his boots were covered with mud and straw. Hisnose and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan Ivanich and wasapparently very pleased. 

"Please, gentlemen, " he said, "go to the house. I'll be with you in aminute. "

The house was large and two-storied. Aliokhin lived down-stairs in twovaulted rooms with little windows designed for the farm-hands; thefarmhouse was plain, and the place smelled of rye bread and vodka, andleather. He rarely used the reception-rooms, only when guests arrived. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a prettyyoung woman that both of them stopped and exchanged glances. 

"You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen, " said Aliokhin, coming after them into the hall. "I never expected you. Pelagueya, " hesaid to the maid, "give my friends a change of clothes. And I willchange, too. But I must have a bath. I haven't had one since the spring. Wouldn't you like to come to the bathing-shed? And meanwhile our thingswill be got ready. "

Pretty Pelagueya, dainty and sweet, brought towels and soap, andAliokhin led his guests to the bathing-shed. 

"Yes, " he said, "it is a long time since I had a bath. My bathing-shedis all right, as you see. My father and I put it up, but somehow I haveno time to bathe. "

He sat down on the step and lathered his long hair and neck, and thewater round him became brown. 

"Yes. I see, " said Ivan Ivanich heavily, looking at his head. 

"It is a long time since I bathed, " said Aliokhin shyly, as he soapedhimself again, and the water round him became dark blue, like ink. 

Ivan Ivanich came out of the shed, plunged into the water with a splash, and swam about in the rain, flapping his arms, and sending waves back, and on the waves tossed white lilies; he swam out to the middle of thepool and dived, and in a minute came up again in another place and kepton swimming and diving, trying to reach the bottom. "Ah! how delicious!"he shouted in his glee. "How delicious!" He swam to the mill, spoke tothe peasants, and came back, and in the middle of the pool he lay on hisback to let the rain fall on his face. Bourkin and Aliokhin were alreadydressed and ready to go, but he kept on swimming and diving. 

"Delicious, " he said. "Too delicious!"

"You've had enough, " shouted Bourkin. 

They went to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the largedrawing-room up-stairs, and Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silkdressing-gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and Aliokhinhimself, washed and brushed, in a new frock coat, paced up and downevidently delighting in the warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes andslippers, and pretty Pelagueya, noiselessly tripping over the carpet andsmiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam on a tray, only then did IvanIvanich begin his story, and it was as though he was being listened tonot only by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and young ladiesand the officer who looked down so staidly and tranquilly from thegolden frames. 

"We are two brothers, " he began, "I, Ivan Ivanich, and Nicholai Ivanich, two years younger. I went in for study and became a veterinary surgeon, while Nicholai was at the Exchequer Court when he was nineteen. Ourfather, Tchimasha-Himalaysky, was a cantonist, but he died with anofficer's rank and left us his title of nobility and a small estate. After his death the estate went to pay his debts. However, we spent ourchildhood there in the country. We were just like peasant's children, spent days and nights in the fields and the woods, minded the house, barked the lime-trees, fished, and so on. . . . And you know once a man hasfished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village inthe bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and tothe day of his death he will be drawn to the country. My brother pinedaway in the Exchequer. Years passed and he sat in the same place, wroteout the same documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back to thecountry. And little by little his distress became a definite disorder, afixed idea--to buy a small farm somewhere by the bank of a river or alake. 

"He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathised with thedesire to shut oneself up on one's own farm. It is a common saying thata man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not aman. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land andwant to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. Toleave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hideyourself in a farmhouse is not life--it is egoism, laziness; it is akind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, notsix feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where infull liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the freespirit. 

"My brother Nicholai, sitting in his office, would dream of eating hisown _schi_, with its savoury smell floating across the farmyard; and ofeating out in the open air, and of sleeping in the sun, and of sittingfor hours together on a seat by the gate and gazing at the field and theforest. Books on agriculture and the hints in almanacs were his joy, hisfavourite spiritual food; and he liked reading newspapers, but only theadvertisements of land to be sold, so many acres of arable and grassland, with a farmhouse, river, garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he woulddream of garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond, don'tyou know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies of his used to varyaccording to the advertisements he found, but somehow there was always agooseberry-bush in every one. Not a house, not a romantic spot could heimagine without its gooseberry-bush. 

"'Country life has its advantages, ' he used to say. 'You sit on theveranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everythingsmells good . . . And there are gooseberries. '

"He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always the same thingswere shown on it: (_a_) Farmhouse, (_b_) cottage, (_c_) vegetablegarden, (_d_) gooseberry-bush. He used to live meagrely and never hadenough to eat and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a beggar, and always saved and put his money into the bank. He was terriblystingy. It used to hurt me to see him, and I used to give him money togo away for a holiday, but he would put that away, too. Once a man getsa fixed idea, there's nothing to be done. 

"Years passed; he was transferred to another province. He completed hisfortieth year and was still reading advertisements in the papers andsaving up his money. Then I heard he was married. Still with the sameidea of buying a farmhouse with a gooseberry-bush, he married anelderly, ugly widow, not out of any feeling for her, but because she hadmoney. With her he still lived stingily, kept her half-starved, and putthe money into the bank in his own name. She had been the wife of apostmaster and was used to good living, but with her second husband shedid not even have enough black bread; she pined away in her new life, and in three years or so gave up her soul to God. And my brother neverfor a moment thought himself to blame for her death. Money, like vodka, can play queer tricks with a man. Once in our town a merchant lay dying. Before his death he asked for some honey, and he ate all his notes andscrip with the honey so that nobody should get it. Once I was examininga herd of cattle at a station and a horse-jobber fell under the engine, and his foot was cut off. We carried him into the waiting-room, with theblood pouring down--a terrible business--and all the while he kept onasking anxiously for his foot; he had twenty-five roubles in his bootand did not want to lose them. "

"Keep to your story, " said Bourkin. 

"After the death of his wife, " Ivan Ivanich continued, after a longpause, "my brother began to look out for an estate. Of course you maysearch for five years, and even then buy a pig in a poke. Through anagent my brother Nicholai raised a mortgage and bought three hundredacres with a farmhouse, a cottage, and a park, but there was no orchard, no gooseberry-bush, no duck-pond; there was a river but the water in itwas coffee-coloured because the estate lay between a brick-yard and agelatine factory. But my brother Nicholai was not worried about that;he ordered twenty gooseberry-bushes and settled down to a country life. 

"Last year I paid him a visit. I thought I'd go and see how things werewith him. In his letters my brother called his estate TchimbarshovCorner, or Himalayskoe. I arrived at Himalayskoe in the afternoon. Itwas hot. There were ditches, fences, hedges, rows of young fir-trees, trees everywhere, and there was no telling how to cross the yard orwhere to put your horse. I went to the house and was met by a red-haireddog, as fat as a pig. He tried to bark but felt too lazy. Out of thekitchen came the cook, barefooted, and also as fat as a pig, and saidthat the master was having his afternoon rest. I went in to my brotherand found him sitting on his bed with his knees covered with a blanket;he looked old, stout, flabby; his cheeks, nose, and lips were pendulous. I half expected him to grunt like a pig. 

"We embraced and shed a tear of joy and also of sadness to think thatwe had once been young, but were now both going grey and nearing death. He dressed and took me to see his estate. 

"'Well? How are you getting on?' I asked. 

"'All right, thank God. I am doing very well. '

"He was no longer the poor, tired official, but a real landowner and aperson of consequence. He had got used to the place and liked it, ate agreat deal, took Russian baths, was growing fat, had already gone to lawwith the parish and the two factories, and was much offended if thepeasants did not call him 'Your Lordship. ' And, like a good landowner, he looked after his soul and did good works pompously, never simply. What good works? He cured the peasants of all kinds of diseases withsoda and castor-oil, and on his birthday he would have a thanksgivingservice held in the middle of the village, and would treat the peasantsto half a bucket of vodka, which he thought the right thing to do. Ah!Those horrible buckets of vodka. One day a greasy landowner will dragthe peasants before the Zembro Court for trespass, and the next, ifit's a holiday, he will give them a bucket of vodka, and they drink andshout Hooray! and lick his boots in their drunkenness. A change to goodeating and idleness always fills a Russian with the most preposterousself-conceit. Nicholai Ivanich who, when he was in the Exchequer, wasterrified to have an opinion of his own, now imagined that what he saidwas law. 'Education is necessary for the masses, but they are not fitfor it. ' 'Corporal punishment is generally harmful, but in certain casesit is useful and indispensable. '

"'I know the people and I know how to treat them, ' he would say. 'Thepeople love me. I have only to raise my finger and they will do as Iwish. '

"And all this, mark you, was said with a kindly smile of wisdom. He wasconstantly saying: 'We noblemen, ' or 'I, as a nobleman. ' Apparently hehad forgotten that our grandfather was a peasant and our father a commonsoldier. Even our family name, Tchimacha-Himalaysky, which is really anabsurd one, seemed to him full-sounding, distinguished, and verypleasing. 

"But my point does not concern him so much as myself. I want to tell youwhat a change took place in me in those few hours while I was in hishouse. In the evening, while we were having tea, the cook laid aplateful of gooseberries on the table. They had not been bought, butwere his own gooseberries, plucked for the first time since the busheswere planted. Nicholai Ivanich laughed with joy and for a minute or twohe looked in silence at the gooseberries with tears in his eyes. Hecould not speak for excitement, then put one into his mouth, glanced atme in triumph, like a child at last being given its favourite toy, andsaid:

"'How good they are!'

"He went on eating greedily, and saying all the while:

"'How good they are! Do try one!'

"It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exaltsus is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, onewhose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and withhimself. In my idea of human life there is always some alloy of sadness, but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled with something likedespair. And at night it grew on me. A bed was made up for me in theroom near my brother's and I could hear him, unable to sleep, goingagain and again to the plate of gooseberries. I thought: 'After all, what a lot of contented, happy people there must be! What anoverwhelming power that means! I look at this life and see the arroganceand the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of theweak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood. . . . Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town thereis not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to themarket for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talknonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery;one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of lifegoes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, andagainst it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so manygo mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die ofstarvation. . . . And such a state of things is obviously what we want;apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear theirburden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is ageneral hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a littlehammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappypeople, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or latershow its claws, and some misfortune will befall him--illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither seesnor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go onliving, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, likean aspen-tree in the wind--and everything is all right. '

"That night I was able to understand how I, too, had been content andhappy, " Ivan Ivanich went on, getting up. "I, too, at meals or outhunting, used to lay down the law about living, and religion, andgoverning the masses. I, too, used to say that teaching is light, thateducation is necessary, but that for simple folk reading and writing isenough for the present. Freedom is a boon, I used to say, as essentialas the air we breathe, but we must wait. Yes--I used to say so, but nowI ask: 'Why do we wait?'" Ivan Ivanich glanced angrily at Bourkin. "Whydo we wait, I ask you? What considerations keep us fast? I am told thatwe cannot have everything at once, and that every idea is realised intime. But who says so? Where is the proof that it is so? You refer me tothe natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but isthere order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I couldjump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait?Wait, when we have no strength to live, and yet must live and are fullof the desire to live!

"I left my brother early the next morning, and from that time on I foundit impossible to live in town. The peace and the quiet of it oppress me. I dare not look in at the windows, for nothing is more dreadful to seethan the sight of a happy family, sitting round a table, having tea. Iam an old man now and am no good for the struggle. I commenced late. Ican only grieve within my soul, and fret and sulk. At night my headbuzzes with the rush of my thoughts and I cannot sleep. . . . Ah! If I wereyoung!"

Ivan Ivanich walked excitedly up and down the room and repeated:

"If I were young. "

He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him first by one hand andthen by the other. 

"Pavel Konstantinich, " he said in a voice of entreaty, "don't besatisfied, don't let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, norshould it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are notin our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!"

Ivan Ivanich said this with a piteous supplicating smile, as though hewere asking a personal favour. 

Then they all three sat in different corners of the drawing-room andwere silent. Ivan Ivanich's story had satisfied neither Bourkin norAliokhin. With the generals and ladies looking down from their giltframes, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to hear the storyof a miserable official who ate gooseberries. . . . Somehow they had alonging to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And themere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything--the lamp withits coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet--toldhow the very people who now looked down at them from their frames oncewalked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueyawas near--was much better than any story. 

Aliokhin wanted very much to go to bed; he had to get up for his workvery early, about two in the morning, and now his eyes were closing, but he was afraid of his guests saying something interesting without hishearing it, so he would not go. He did not trouble to think whether whatIvan Ivanich had been saying was clever or right; his guests weretalking of neither groats, nor hay, nor tar, but of something which hadno bearing on his life, and he liked it and wanted them to go on. . . . 

"However, it's time to go to bed, " said Bourkin, getting up. "I willwish you good night. "

Aliokhin said good night and went down-stairs, and left his guests. Eachhad a large room with an old wooden bed and carved ornaments; in thecorner was an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by prettyPelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen. 

Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down. 

"God forgive me, a wicked sinner, " he murmured, as he drew the clothesover his head. 

A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table, and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because hecould not make out where the unpleasant smell came from. 

The rain beat against the windows all night long. 

IN EXILE

Old Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose namenobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. Theother three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of aboutsixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, wasdrunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in hispocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartarwas ill and miserable, and, pulling his rags about him, he went ontalking about the good things in the province of Simbirsk, and what abeautiful and clever wife he had left at home. He was not more thantwenty-five, and now, by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale, sorrowful, sickly face, he looked a mere boy. 

"Of course, it is not a paradise here, " said Brains, "you see, water, the bare bushes by the river, clay everywhere--nothing else. . . . It islong past Easter and there is still ice on the water and this morningthere was snow. . . . "

"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frightened look. 

A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, muttering, dashing againstthe holes in the clayey banks as it tore along to the distant sea. Bythe bank they were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the ferrymencall a _karbass_. Far away and away, flashing out, flaring up, werefires crawling like snakes--last year's grass being burned. And behindthe water again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be heardknocking against the barge. . . . It was very damp and cold. . . . 

The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, andthe darkness was the same, but something was missing. At home in theSimbirsk province the stars and the sky were altogether different. 

"Bad! Bad!" he repeated. 

"You will get used to it, " said Brains with a laugh. "You are young yetand foolish; the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and in your folly youimagine that there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come atime when you will say: God give every one such a life! Just look at me. In a week's time the floods will be gone, and we will fix the ferryhere, and all of you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here, going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last two-and-twentyyears, but, thank God, I want nothing. God give everybody such a life. "

The Tartar threw some branches onto the fire, crawled near to it andsaid:

"My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and my wife have promised tocome here. "

"What do you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Justfoolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him. Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks toyou about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' Whenhe talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. Iwant nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no home, nolove! I want nothing. ' Plague take 'em all. "

Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on:

"My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I don't come from the servilemasses. I am the son of a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, Iused to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself to such a pointthat I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. God give such a lifeto everybody. I want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there isno man richer or freer than I. When they sent me here from Russia I setmy teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to meabout my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'Iwant nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and havenothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunityand listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope ofsalvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Notonly peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and theeducated also. About fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was sent herefrom Russia. He had had some trouble with his brothers and had made aforgery in a will. People said he was a prince or a baron, but perhapshe was only a high official--who knows? Well, he came here and at oncebought a house and land in Moukhzyink. 'I want to live by my own work, 'said he, 'in the sweat of my brow, because I am no longer a nobleman butan exile. ' 'Why, ' said I. 'God help you, for that is good. ' He was ayoung man then, ardent and eager; he used to mow and go fishing, and hewould ride sixty miles on horseback. Only one thing was wrong; from thevery beginning he was always driving to the post-office at Guyrin. Heused to sit in my boat and sigh: 'Ah! Simeon, it is a long time sincethey sent me any money from home. ' 'You are better without money, Vassili Sergnevich, ' said I. 'What's the good of it? You just throw awaythe past, as though it had never happened, as though it were only adream, and start life afresh. Don't listen to the devil, ' I said, 'hewon't do you any good, and he will only tighten the noose. You wantmoney now, but in a little while you will want something else, and thenmore and more. If, ' said I, 'you want to be happy you must want nothing. Exactly. . . . If, ' I said, 'fate has been hard on you and me, it is nogood asking her for charity and falling at her feet. We must ignore herand laugh at her. ' That's what I said to him. . . . Two years later Iferried him over and he rubbed his hands and laughed. 'I'm going, ' saidhe, 'to Guyrin to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, she says, andshe is coming here. She is very kind and good. ' And he gave a gasp ofjoy. Then one day he came with his wife, a beautiful young lady with alittle girl in her arms and a lot of luggage. And Vassili Andreich keptturning and looking at her and could not look at her or praise herenough. 'Yes, Simeon, my friend, even in Siberia people live. ' Well, thought I, all right, you won't be content. And from that time on, markyou, he used to go to Guyrin every week to find out if money had beensent from Russia. A terrible lot of money was wasted. 'She stays here, 'said he, 'for my sake, and her youth and beauty wither away here inSiberia. She shares my bitter lot with me, ' said he, 'and I must giveher all the pleasure I can for it. . . . ' To make his wife happier he tookup with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they couldn't havecompany without giving food and drink, and they must have a piano and afluffy little dog on the sofa--bad cess to it. . . . Luxury, in a word, allkinds of tricks. My lady did not stay with him long. How could she?Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit; uneducated people anddrunkards, with no manners, and she was a pretty pampered young ladyfrom the metropolis. . . . Of course she got bored. And her husband was nolonger a gentleman, but an exile--quite a different matter. Three yearslater, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, I heard shouts from theother bank. I went over in the ferry and saw my lady, all wrapped up, with a young gentleman, a government official, in a troika. . . . I ferriedthem across, they got into the carriage and disappeared, and I saw nomore of them. Toward the morning Vassili Andreich came racing up in acoach and pair. 'Has my wife been across, Simeon, with a gentleman inspectacles?' 'She has, ' said I, 'but you might as well look for the windin the fields. ' He raced after them and kept it up for five days andnights. When he came back he jumped on to the ferry and began to knockhis head against the side and to cry aloud. 'You see, ' said I, 'thereyou are. ' And I laughed and reminded him: 'Even in Siberia people live. 'But he went on beating his head harder than ever. . . . Then he got thedesire for freedom. His wife had gone to Russia and he longed to gothere to see her and take her away from her lover. And he began to go tothe post-office every day, and then to the authorities of the town. Hewas always sending applications or personally handing them to theauthorities, asking to have his term remitted and to be allowed to go, and he told me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on telegrams. He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the money-lenders. His hairwent grey, he grew round-shouldered, and his face got yellow andconsumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he spoke and tears usedto come to his eyes. He spent eight years on his applications, and atlast he became happy again and lively: he had thought of a new dodge. His daughter, you see, had grown up. He doted on her and could nevertake his eyes off her. And, indeed, she was very pretty, dark andclever. Every Sunday he used to go to church with her at Guyrin. Theywould stand side by side on the ferry, and she would smile and he woulddevour her with his eyes. 'Yes, Simeon, ' he would say. 'Even in Siberiapeople live. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look what a finedaughter I have. You wouldn't find one like her in a thousand miles'journey. ' 'She's a nice girl, ' said I. 'Oh, yes. ' . . . And I thought tomyself: 'You wait. . . . She is young. Young blood will have its way; shewants to live and what life is there here?' And she began to pineaway. . . . Wasting, wasting away, she withered away, fell ill and had tokeep to her bed. . . . Consumption. That's Siberian happiness, plague takeit; that's Siberian life. . . . He rushed all over the place after thedoctors and dragged them home with him. If he heard of a doctor or aquack three hundred miles off he would rush off after him. He spent aterrific amount of money on doctors and I think it would have been muchbetter spent on drink. All the same she had to die. No help for it. Thenit was all up with him. He thought of hanging himself, and of trying toescape to Russia. That would be the end of him. He would try to escape:he would be caught, tried, penal servitude, flogging. "

"Good! Good!" muttered the Tartar with a shiver. 

"What is good?" asked Brains. 

"Wife and daughter. What does penal servitude and suffering matter? Hesaw his wife and his daughter. You say one should want nothing. Butnothing--is evil! His wife spent three years with him. God gave himthat. Nothing is evil, and three years is good. Why don't you understandthat?"

Trembling and stammering as he groped for Russian words, of which heknew only a few, the Tartar began to say: "God forbid he should fall illamong strangers, and die and be buried in the cold sodden earth, andthen, if his wife could come to him if only for one day or even for onehour, he would gladly endure any torture for such happiness, and wouldeven thank God. Better one day of happiness than nothing. "

Then once more he said what a beautiful clever wife he had left at home, and with his head in his hands he began to cry and assured Simeon thathe was innocent, and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and hisuncle had stolen some horses from a peasant and beat the old man nearlyto death, and the community never looked into the matter at all, andjudgment was passed by which all three brothers were exiled to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, remained at home. 

"You will get used to it, " said Simeon. 

The Tartar relapsed into silence and stared into the fire with his eyesred from weeping; he looked perplexed and frightened, as if he could notunderstand why he was in the cold and the darkness, among strangers, andnot in the province of Simbirsk. Brains lay down near the fire, smiledat something, and began to say in an undertone:

"But what a joy she must be to your father, " he muttered after a pause. "He loves her and she is a comfort to him, eh? But, my man, don't tellme. He is a strict, harsh old man. And girls don't want strictness; theywant kisses and laughter, scents and pomade. Yes. . . . Ah! What a life!"Simeon swore heavily. "No more vodka! That means bedtime. What? I'mgoing, my man. "

Left alone, the Tartar threw more branches on the fire, lay down, and, looking into the blaze, began to think of his native village and of hiswife; if she could come if only for a month, or even a day, and then, ifshe liked, go back again! Better a month or even a day, than nothing. But even if his wife kept her promise and came, how could he provide forher? Where was she to live?

"If there is nothing to eat; how are we to live?" asked the Tartaraloud. 

For working at the oars day and night he was paid two copecks a day; thepassengers gave tips, but the ferrymen shared them out and gave nothingto the Tartar, and only laughed at him. And he was poor, cold, hungry, and fearful. . . . With his whole body aching and shivering he thought itwould be good to go into the hut and sleep; but there was nothing tocover himself with, and it was colder there than on the bank. He hadnothing to cover himself with there, but he could make up a fire. . . . 

In a week's time, when the floods had subsided and the ferry would befixed up, all the ferrymen except Simeon would not be wanted any longerand the Tartar would have to go from village to village, begging andlooking for work. His wife was only seventeen; beautiful, soft, andshy. . . . Could she go unveiled begging through the villages? No. The ideaof it was horrible. 

It was already dawn. The barges, the bushy willows above the water, theswirling flood began to take shape, and up above in a clayey cliff a hutthatched with straw, and above that the straggling houses of thevillage, where the cocks had begun to crow. 

The ginger-coloured clay cliff, the barge, the river, the strange wildpeople, hunger, cold, illness--perhaps all these things did not reallyexist. Perhaps, thought the Tartar, it was only a dream. He felt that hemust be asleep, and he heard his own snoring. . . . Certainly he was athome in the Simbirsk province; he had but to call his wife and she wouldanswer; and his mother was in the next room. . . . But what awful dreamsthere are! Why? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river wasthat? The Volga?

It was snowing. 

"Hi! Ferry!" some one shouted on the other bank. "_Karba-a-ass!_"

The Tartar awoke and went to fetch his mates to row over to the otherside. Hurrying into their sheepskins, swearing sleepily in hoarsevoices, and shivering from the cold, the four men appeared on the bank. After their sleep, the river from which there came a piercing blast, seemed to them horrible and disgusting. They stepped slowly into thebarge. . . . The Tartar and the three ferrymen took the long, broad-bladedoars, which in the dim light looked like a crab's claw, and Simeon flunghimself with his belly against the tiller. And on the other side thevoice kept on shouting, and a revolver was fired twice, for the manprobably thought the ferrymen were asleep or gone to the village inn. 

"All right. Plenty of time!" said Brains in the tone of one who wasconvinced that there is no need for hurry in this world--and indeedthere is no reason for it. 

The heavy, clumsy barge left the bank and heaved through the willows, and by the willows slowly receding it was possible to tell that thebarge was moving. The ferrymen plied the oars with a slow measuredstroke; Brains hung over the tiller with his stomach pressed against itand swung from side to side. In the dim light they looked like mensitting on some antediluvian animal with long limbs, swimming out to acold dismal nightmare country. 

They got clear of the willows and swung out into mid-stream. The thud ofthe oars and the splash could be heard on the other bank and shoutscame: "Quicker! Quicker!" After another ten minutes the barge bumpedheavily against the landing-stage. 

"And it is still snowing, snowing all the time, " Simeon murmured, wipingthe snow off his face. "God knows where it comes from!"

On the other side a tall, lean old man was waiting in a short fox-furcoat and a white astrachan hat. He was standing some distance from hishorses and did not move; he had a stern concentrated expression as if hewere trying to remember something and were furious with his recalcitrantmemory. When Simeon went up to him and took off his hat with a smile hesaid:

"I'm in a hurry to get to Anastasievka. My daughter is worse again andthey tell me there's a new doctor at Anastasievka. "

The coach was clamped onto the barge and they rowed back. All the whileas they rowed the man, whom Simeon called Vassili Andreich, stoodmotionless, pressing his thick lips tight and staring in front of him. When the driver craved leave to smoke in his presence, he answerednothing, as if he did not hear. And Simeon hung over the rudder andlooked at him mockingly and said:

"Even in Siberia people live. L-i-v-e!"

On Brains's face was a triumphant expression as if he were provingsomething, as if pleased that things had happened just as he thoughtthey would. The unhappy, helpless look of the man in the fox-fur coatseemed to give him great pleasure. 

"The roads are now muddy, Vassili Andreich, " he said, when the horseshad been harnessed on the bank. "You'd better wait a couple of weeks, until it gets dryer. . . . If there were any point in going--but you knowyourself that people are always on the move day and night and there's nopoint in it. Sure!"

Vassili Andreich said nothing, gave him a tip, took his seat in thecoach and drove away. 

"Look! He's gone galloping after the doctor!" said Simeon, shivering inthe cold. "Yes. To look for a real doctor, trying to overtake the windin the fields, and catch the devil by the tail, plague take him! Whatqueer fish there are! God forgive me, a miserable sinner. "

The Tartar went up to Brains, and, looking at him with mingled hatredand disgust, trembling, and mixing Tartar words up with his brokenRussian, said:

"He good . . . Good. And you . . . Bad! You are bad! The gentleman is a goodsoul, very good, and you are a beast, you are bad! The gentleman isalive and you are dead. . . . God made man that he should be alive, that heshould have happiness, sorrow, grief, and you want nothing, so you arenot alive, but a stone! A stone wants nothing and so do you. . . . You area stone--and God does not love you and the gentleman he does. "

They all began to laugh: the Tartar furiously knit his brows, waved hishand, drew his rags round him and went to the fire. The ferrymen andSimeon went slowly to the hut. 

"It's cold, " said one of the ferrymen hoarsely, as he stretched himselfon the straw with which the damp, clay floor was covered. 

"Yes. It's not warm, " another agreed. . . . "It's a hard life. "

All of them lay down. The wind blew the door open. The snow drifted intothe hut. Nobody could bring himself to get up and shut the door; it wascold, but they put up with it. 

"And I am happy, " muttered Simeon as he fell asleep. "God give such alife to everybody. "

"You certainly are the devil's own. Even the devil don't need to takeyou. "

Sounds like the barking of a dog came from outside. 

"Who is that? Who is there?"

"It's the Tartar crying. "

"Oh! he's a queer fish. "

"He'll get used to it!" said Simeon, and at once he fell asleep. Soonthe others slept too and the door was left open. 

THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG

It was reported that a new face had been seen on the quay; a lady with alittle dog. Dimitri Dimitrich Gomov, who had been a fortnight at Taltaand had got used to it, had begun to show an interest in new faces. Ashe sat in the pavilion at Verné's he saw a young lady, blond and fairlytall, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pass along the quay. After herran a white Pomeranian. 

Later he saw her in the park and in the square several times a day. Shewalked by herself, always in the same broad-brimmed hat, and with thiswhite dog. Nobody knew who she was, and she was spoken of as the ladywith the toy dog. 

"If, " thought Gomov, "if she is here without a husband or a friend, itwould be as well to make her acquaintance. "

He was not yet forty, but he had a daughter of twelve and two boys atschool. He had married young, in his second year at the University, andnow his wife seemed half as old again as himself. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and she thought herself anintellectual woman. She read a great deal, called her husband notDimitri, but Demitri, and in his private mind he thought hershort-witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. He was afraid of her anddisliked being at home. He had begun to betray her with other women longago, betrayed her frequently, and, probably for that reason nearlyalways spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in his presencehe would maintain that they were an inferior race. 

It seemed to him that his experience was bitter enough to give him theright to call them any name he liked, but he could not live a couple ofdays without the "inferior race. " With men he was bored and ill at ease, cold and unable to talk, but when he was with women, he felt easy andknew what to talk about, and how to behave, and even when he was silentwith them he felt quite comfortable. In his appearance as in hischaracter, indeed in his whole nature, there was something attractive, indefinable, which drew women to him and charmed them; he knew it, andhe, too, was drawn by some mysterious power to them. 

His frequent, and, indeed, bitter experiences had taught him long agothat every affair of that kind, at first a divine diversion, a delicioussmooth adventure, is in the end a source of worry for a decent man, especially for men like those at Moscow who are slow to move, irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at last an acute andextraordinary complicated problem and a nuisance. But whenever he metand was interested in a new woman, then his experience would slip awayfrom his memory, and he would long to live, and everything would seem sosimple and amusing. 

And it so happened that one evening he dined in the gardens, and thelady in the broad-brimmed hat came up at a leisurely pace and sat at thenext table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told himthat she belonged to society, that she was married, that she was payingher first visit to Talta, that she was alone, and that she was bored. . . . There is a great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immorality ofthe place. He scorned such tales, knowing that they were for the mostpart concocted by people who would be only too ready to sin if they hadthe chance, but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a yard ortwo away from him, his thoughts were filled with tales of easyconquests, of trips to the mountains; and he was suddenly possessed bythe alluring idea of a quick transitory liaison, a moment's affair withan unknown woman whom he knew not even by name. 

He beckoned to the little dog, and when it came up to him, wagged hisfinger at it. The dog began to growl. Gomov again wagged his finger. 

The lady glanced at him and at once cast her eyes down. 

"He won't bite, " she said and blushed. 

"May I give him a bone?"--and when she nodded emphatically, he askedaffably: "Have you been in Talta long?"

"About five days. "

"And I am just dragging through my second week. "

They were silent for a while. 

"Time goes quickly, " she said, "and it is amazingly boring here. "

"It is the usual thing to say that it is boring here. People live quitehappily in dull holes like Bieliev or Zhidra, but as soon as they comehere they say: 'How boring it is! The very dregs of dullness!' One wouldthink they came from Spain. "

She smiled. Then both went on eating in silence as though they did notknow each other; but after dinner they went off together--and thenbegan an easy, playful conversation as though they were perfectly happy, and it was all one to them where they went or what they talked of. Theywalked and talked of how the sea was strangely luminous; the waterlilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast a golden streak. They said how stifling it was after the hot day. Gomov told her how hecame from Moscow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank byprofession; and how he had once wanted to sing in opera, but gave it up;and how he had two houses in Moscow. . . . And from her he learned that shecame from Petersburg, was born there, but married at S. Where she hadbeen living for the last two years; that she would stay another month atTalta, and perhaps her husband would come for her, because, he too, needed a rest. She could not tell him what her husband was--ProvincialAdministration or Zemstvo Council--and she seemed to think it funny. AndGomov found out that her name was Anna Sergueyevna. 

In his room at night, he thought of her and how they would meet nextday. They must do so. As he was going to sleep, it struck him that shecould only lately have left school, and had been at her lessons even ashis daughter was then; he remembered how bashful and gauche she was whenshe laughed and talked with a stranger--it must be, he thought, thefirst time she had been alone, and in such a place with men walkingafter her and looking at her and talking to her, all with the samesecret purpose which she could not but guess. He thought of her slenderwhite neck and her pretty, grey eyes. 

"There is something touching about her, " he thought as he began to fallasleep. 

II

A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was stifling, and in thestreets the dust whirled along. All day long he was plagued with thirstand he came into the pavilion every few minutes and offered AnnaSergueyevna an iced drink or an ice. It was impossibly hot. 

In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to the jetty tosee the steamer come in. There was quite a crowd all gathered to meetsomebody, for they carried bouquets. And among them were clearly markedthe peculiarities of Talta: the elderly ladies were youngly dressed andthere were many generals. 

The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it turned intothe jetty it had to do a great deal of manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevnalooked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as thoughshe were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov, her eyesshone. She talked much and her questions were abrupt, and she forgotwhat she had said; and then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd. 

The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped, and Gomov and AnnaSergueyevna stood as though they were waiting for somebody to come fromthe steamer. Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers anddid not look at Gomov. 

"The weather has got pleasanter toward evening, " he said. "Where shallwe go now? Shall we take a carriage?"

She did not answer. 

He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and kissed her lips, and he was kindled with the perfume and the moisture of the flowers; atonce he started and looked round; had not some one seen?

"Let us go to your--" he murmured. 

And they walked quickly away. 

Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she had bought at theJapanese shop. Gomov looked at her and thought: "What strange chancesthere are in life!" From the past there came the memory of earliergood-natured women, gay in their love, grateful to him for theirhappiness, short though it might be; and of others--like his wife--wholoved without sincerity, and talked overmuch and affectedly, hysterically, as though they were protesting that it was not love, norpassion, but something more important; and of the few beautiful coldwomen, into whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression, astubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it can give; theywere no longer in their first youth, they were capricious, unstable, domineering, imprudent, and when Gomov became cold toward them thentheir beauty roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingeriereminded him of the scales of fish. 

But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of inexperienced youth, afeeling of constraint; an impression of perplexity and wonder, as thoughsome one had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the ladywith the toy dog" took what had happened somehow seriously, with aparticular gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall andvery strange and improper. Her features seemed to sink and wither, andon either side of her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she satcrestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin in some oldpicture. 

"It is not right, " she said. "You are the first to lose respect for me. "

There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and began to eat itslowly. At least half an hour passed in silence. 

Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the purity of asimple, devout, inexperienced woman; the solitary candle on the tablehardly lighted her face, but it showed her very wretched. 

"Why should I cease to respect you?" asked Gomov. "You don't know whatyou are saying. "

"God forgive me!" she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It ishorrible. "

"You seem to want to justify yourself. "

"How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and I despisemyself. I have no thought of justifying myself. It is not my husbandthat I have deceived, but myself. And not only now but for a long timepast. My husband may be a good honest man, but he is a lackey. I do notknow what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul. Iwas twenty when I married him. I was overcome by curiosity. I longed forsomething. 'Surely, ' I said to myself, 'there is another kind of life. 'I longed to live! To live, and to live. . . . Curiosity burned me up. . . . You do not understand it, but I swear by God, I could no longer controlmyself. Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold myselfin. I told my husband that I was ill and came here. . . . And here I havebeen walking about dizzily, like a lunatic. . . . And now I have become alow, filthy woman whom everybody may despise. "

Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him with theirunexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for the tears in her eyeshe might have thought her to be joking or playing a part. 

"I do not understand, " he said quietly. "What do you want?"

She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him. 

"Believe, believe me, I implore you, " she said. "I love a pure, honestlife, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know myself what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The devil entrapped me, ' and I can say of myself:'The Evil One tempted me. '"

"Don't, don't, " he murmured. 

He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietlyand tenderly, and gradually quieted her and she was happy again, andthey both began to laugh. 

Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the quay; the townwith its cypresses looked like a city of the dead, but the sea stillroared and broke against the shore; a boat swung on the waves; and init sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern. 

They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda. 

"Just now in the hall, " said Gomov, "I discovered your name written onthe board--von Didenitz. Is your husband a German?"

"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he himself is anOrthodox Russian. "

At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down atthe sea and were silent. Talta was hardly visible through the morningmist. The tops of the hills were shrouded in motionless white clouds. The leaves of the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and themonotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below, spoke of therest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea roared when there wasneither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it roars and will roar, dully, indifferently when we shall be no more. And in this continualindifference to the life and death of each of us, lives pent up, thepledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of lifeon earth and its unceasing perfection. Sitting side by side with a youngwoman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful, Gomov, appeased andenchanted by the sight of the fairy scene, the sea, the mountains, theclouds, the wide sky, thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughlyexplored, everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what weourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life andour own human dignity. 

A man came up--a coast-guard--gave a look at them, then went away. He, too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A steamer came over fromFeodossia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights already putout. 

"There is dew on the grass, " said Anna Sergueyevna after a silence. 

"Yes. It is time to go home. "

They returned to the town. 

Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that herheart beat alarmingly. She would ask the same question over and overagain, and was troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did notsufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the gardens, whenthere was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss herpassionately. Their complete idleness, these kisses in the fulldaylight, given timidly and fearfully lest any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed, well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell AnnaSergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting. He was impatientlypassionate, never left her side, and she would often brood, and evenasked him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her atall, and only saw in her a loose woman. Almost every evening, ratherlate, they would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall;and these drives were always delightful, and the impressions won duringthem were always beautiful and sublime. 

They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in which he saidthat his eyes were bad and implored his wife to come home. AnnaSergueyevna began to worry. 

"It is a good thing I am going away, " she would say to Gomov. "It isfate. "

She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They drove for a wholeday. When she took her seat in the car of an express-train and when thesecond bell sounded, she said:

"Let me have another look at you. . . . Just one more look. Just as youare. "

She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips trembled. 

"I will think of you--often, " she said. "Good-bye. Good-bye. Don't thinkill of me. We part for ever. We must, because we ought not to have metat all. Now, good-bye. "

The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in a minute ortwo the sound of it was lost, as though everything were agreed to put anend to this sweet, oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform, looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the grasshoppersand the humming of the telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had justwoke up. And he thought that it had been one more adventure, one moreaffair, and it also was finished and had left only a memory. He wasmoved, sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young woman, whom he would never see again, had not been happy with him; he had beenkind to her, friendly, and sincere, but still in his attitude towardher, in his tone and caresses, there had always been a thin shadow ofraillery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male aggravatedby the fact that he was twice as old as she. And all the time she hadcalled him kind, remarkable, noble, so that he was never really himselfto her, and had involuntarily deceived her. . . . 

Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and the eveningwas cool. 

"It is time for me to go North, " thought Gomov, as he left the platform. "It is time. "

III

At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go toschool, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lampfor a short while. The frost had already begun. When the first snowfalls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the whiteearth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then oneremembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and birches, white withhoarfrost, have a kindly expression; they are nearer to the heart thancypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is noneed to think of mountains and the sea. 

Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frostyday, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a strollthrough Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bellsringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost alltheir charm. Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, readeagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscowpapers as a matter of principle. He was drawn into a round ofrestaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered tohave his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to playcards with a professor at the University club. He could eat a wholeplateful of hot _sielianka_. 

So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lostin the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams withher touching smile, just as other women had done. But more than a monthpassed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, asthough he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And hismemory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. No matter how, through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating tothe evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the musicin a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly thewhole thing would come to life again in his memory: the meeting on thejetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamerfrom Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace up and down his room andremember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift intodreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. Hedid not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed himeverywhere, like a shadow, watching him. As he shut his eyes, he couldsee her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than inreality; and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Talta. Inthe evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from thefireplace, from the corner; he could hear her breathing and the softrustle of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women's faces to seeif there were not one like her. . . . 

He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one. But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away fromhome--there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the other people inthe house and the men at the bank. And talk of what? Had he loved then?Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting inhis relations with Anna Sergueyevna? And he would speak vaguely of love, of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wifewould raise her dark eyebrows and say:

"Demitri, the rôle of coxcomb does not suit you at all. "

One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, anofficial, he could not help saying:

"If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Talta. "

The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenlycalled:

"Dimitri Dimitrich!"

"Yes. "

"You were right. The sturgeon was tainted. "

These banal words suddenly roused Gomov's indignation. They seemed tohim degrading and impure. What barbarous customs and people!

What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! Furious card-playing, gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things, futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the dayand all the best of a man's forces, leaving only a stunted, winglesslife, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible--one mightas well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour. 

Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, andthen all next day he had a headache. And the following night he sleptbadly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to cornerof his room. His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had nodesire to go out or to speak to any one. 

In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey andtold his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for ayoung friend of his--and went to S. Why? He did not know. He wanted tosee Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange anassignation. 

He arrived at S. In the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel, where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the tablethere stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on aheadless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him thenecessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goucharno Street, his ownhouse--not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every oneknows him. 

Gomov walked slowly to Old Goucharno Street and found the house. Infront of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails. 

"No getting over a fence like that, " thought Gomov, glancing from thewindows to the fence. 

He thought: "To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home. Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her. If he sent a notethen it might fall into her husband's hands and spoil everything. Itwould be better to wait for an opportunity. " And he kept on walking upand down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. He heard apiano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be AnnaSergueyevna playing. The door suddenly opened and out of it came an oldwoman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. Gomov wanted tocall the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitationhe could not remember the dog's name. 

He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought witha gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would beonly natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold theaccursed fence. He returned to his room and sat for a long time on thesofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and afterward slept for along while. 

"How idiotic and tiresome it all is, " he thought as he awoke and saw thedark windows; for it was evening. "I've had sleep enough, and what shallI do to-night?"

He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactlylike those used in a hospital, and tormented himself. 

"So much for the lady with the toy dog. . . . So much for the greatadventure. . . . Here you sit. "

However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by aposter with large letters: "First Performance of 'The Geisha. '" Heremembered that and went to the theatre. 

"It is quite possible she will go to the first performance, " he thought. 

The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial theatres, there wasa thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; in thefirst row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandieswith their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor's box, infront, sat the governor's daughter, and the governor himself satmodestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. The curtainquivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audiencewere coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round. 

At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row, and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for himthere was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more importantthan she; she was lost in this provincial rabble, the littleundistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet shefilled his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness, and he longed for her; and through the noise of the bad orchestra withits tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. He thoughtand dreamed. 

With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with shortside-whiskers, very tall, stooping; with every movement he shook andbowed continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood atTalta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, hisside-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there wassomething of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in hisbuttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey's number. 

In the first entr'acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was leftalone. Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in atrembling voice with a forced smile:

"How do you do?"

She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again interror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightlytogether, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both weresilent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sitdown beside her. The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly itseemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking atthem. She got up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed, and bothwalked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs, with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; all kinds ofuniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; ladiesshone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows ofclothes-pegs, and there was a draught howling through the place ladenwith the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. And Gomov, whose heart wasthudding wildly, thought:

"Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?"

At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevnaoff that evening at the station he had said to himself that everythingwas over between them, and they would never meet again. And now how faroff they were from the end!

On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: "This Way to theAmphitheatre, " she stopped:

"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing heavily, still pale andapparently stupefied. "Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Whydid you come? Why?"

"Understand me, Anna, " he whispered quickly. "I implore you tounderstand. . . . "

She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazingfixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features. 

"I suffer so!" she went on, not listening to him. "All the time, Ithought only of you. I lived with thoughts of you. . . . And I wanted toforget, to forget, but why, why did you come?"

A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked andlooked down at them, but Gomov did not care. He drew her to him andbegan to kiss her cheeks, her hands. 

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" she said in terror, thrustinghim away. . . . "We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away atonce. . . . I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you. . . . The people are coming-----"

Some one passed them on the stairs. 

"You must go away, " Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear, Dimitri Dimitrich? I'll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. Now Iam unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don't make mesuffer even more! I swear, I'll come to Moscow. And now let us part. Mydear, dearest darling, let us part!"

She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down-stairs, all the whilelooking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was mostunhappy. Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet hefound his coat and left the theatre. 

IV

And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two orthree months she would leave S. , telling her husband that she was goingto consult a specialist in women's diseases. Her husband half believedand half disbelieved her. At Moscow she would stay at the "SlavianskyBazaar" and send a message at once to Gomov. He would come to her, andnobody in Moscow knew. 

Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning--he had notreceived her message the night before--he had his daughter with him, forhe was taking her to school which was on the way. Great wet flakes ofsnow were falling. 

"Three degrees above freezing, " he said, "and still the snow is falling. But the warmth is only on the surface of the earth. In the upper strataof the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature. "

"Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?"

He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his assignation, and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever would know. He had twolives; one obvious, which every one could see and know, if they weresufficiently interested, a life full of conventional truth andconventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends andacquaintances; and another, which moved underground. And by a strangeconspiracy of circumstances, everything that was to him important, interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to be sincere and deniedself-deception and was the very core of his being, must dwell hiddenaway from others, and everything that made him false, a mere shape inwhich he hid himself in order to conceal the truth, as for instance hiswork in the bank, arguments at the club, his favourite gibe about women, going to parties with his wife--all this was open. And, judging othersby himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed thateverybody else also had his real vital life passing under a veil ofmystery as under the cover of the night. Every man's intimate existenceis kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because of that civilisedpeople are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should berespected. 

When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to the "SlavianskyBazaar. " He took off his fur coat down-stairs, went up and knockedquietly at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, tired by the journey, had been expecting him to come all night. She waspale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung herself on his breastas soon as he entered. Their kiss was long and lingering as though theyhad not seen each other for a couple of years. 

"Well, how are you getting on down there?" he asked. "What is yournews?"

"Wait. I'll tell you presently. . . . I cannot. "

She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her face from himand dried her eyes. 

"Well, let her cry a bit. . . . I'll wait, " he thought, and sat down. 

Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she stood andgazed out of the window. . . . She was weeping in distress, in the bitterknowledge that their life had fallen out so sadly; only seeing eachother in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves! Was not their lifecrushed?

"Don't cry. . . . Don't cry, " he said. 

It was clear to him that their love was yet far from its end, whichthere was no seeing. Anna Sergueyevna was more and more passionatelyattached to him; she adored him and it was inconceivable that he shouldtell her that their love must some day end; she would not believe it. 

He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at that moment hesaw himself in the mirror. 

His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to him that inthe last few years he should have got so old and ugly. Her shoulderswere warm and trembled to his touch. He was suddenly filled with pityfor her life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably beginning tofade and wither, like his own. Why should she love him so much? Healways seemed to women not what he really was, and they loved in him, not himself, but the creature of their imagination, the thing theyhankered for in life, and when they had discovered their mistake, stillthey loved him. And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; hemet women and was friends with them, went further and parted, but neveronce did he love; there was everything but love. 

And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in love, reallove--for the first time in his life. 

Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear kindred, likehusband and wife, like devoted friends; it seemed to them that Fate haddestined them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he shouldhave a wife, she a husband; they were like two birds of passage, a maleand a female, which had been caught and forced to live in separatecages. They had forgiven each other all the past of which they wereashamed; they forgave everything in the present, and they felt thattheir love had changed both of them. 

Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he used to comforthimself with all kinds of arguments, just as they happened to cross hismind, but now he was far removed from any such ideas; he was filled witha profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere. . . . 

"Don't cry, my darling, " he said. "You have cried enough. . . . Now let ustalk and see if we can't find some way out. "

Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some means ofavoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment ofliving in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time. How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?

"How? How?" he asked, holding his head in his hands. "How?"

And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would be foundand there would begin a lovely new life; and to both of them it wasclear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest andmost difficult period was only just beginning. 

GOUSSIEV

It was already dark and would soon be night. 

Goussiev, a private on long leave, raised himself a little in hishammock and said in a whisper:

"Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanich? A soldier at Souchan told me that theirboat ran into an enormous fish and knocked a hole in her bottom. "

The man of condition unknown whom he addressed, and whom everybody inthe hospital-ship called Pavel Ivanich, was silent, as if he had notheard. 

And once more there was silence. . . . The wind whistled through therigging, the screw buzzed, the waves came washing, the hammockssqueaked, but to all these sounds their ears were long since accustomedand it seemed as though everything were wrapped in sleep and silence. It was very oppressive. The three patients--two soldiers and asailor--who had played cards all day were now asleep and tossing to andfro. 

The vessel began to shake. The hammock under Goussiev slowly heaved upand down, as though it were breathing--one, two, three. . . . Somethingcrashed on the floor and began to tinkle: the jug must have fallen down. 

"The wind has broken loose. . . . " said Goussiev, listening attentively. 

This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irritably:

"You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large fish, and now youtalk of the wind breaking loose. . . . Is the wind a dog to break loose?"

"That's what people say. "

"Then people are as ignorant as you. . . . But what do they not say? Youshould keep a head on your shoulders and think. Silly idiot!"

Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. When the ship rolled he wouldget very cross, and the least trifle would upset him, though Goussievcould never see anything to be cross about. What was there unusual inhis story about the fish or in his saying that the wind had brokenloose? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were ashard as a sturgeon's, and suppose that at the end of the wood there werehuge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them. . . . If theydo not break loose, why then do they rage over the sea as though theywere possessed, and rush about like dogs? If they are not chained, whathappens to them when it is calm?

Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and ofthick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of hisnative place whither he was returning after five years' service in theFar East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered withsnow. . . . On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tallchimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was thevillage. . . . From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came hisbrother Alency in a sledge; behind him sat his little son Vanka in largefelt boots, and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. Alency istipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden--she is well wrappedup. 

"The children will catch cold . . . " thought Goussiev. "God grant them, "he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents andbe better than their father and mother. . . . "

"The boots want soling, " cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye, aye. "

The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond, suddenly--without rhyme or reason--he saw a large bull's head withouteyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and roundin a black mist. But still he was glad he had seen his dear ones. Hegasped for joy, and his limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed. 

"God suffered me to see them!" he muttered, and opened his eyes andlooked round in the darkness for water. 

He drank, then lay down again, and once more the sledge skimmed along, and he saw the bull's head without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. Andso on till dawn. 

II

At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, theport-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the nexthammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if helay down he could not breathe. His face was grey; his nose long andsharp, and his eyes were huge, because he was so thin; his temples weresunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long. . . . By his face it wasimpossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judgingby his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, alay-brother, but when he spoke--he was not at all like a monk. He waslosing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocatingheat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, he turned toward him andsaid:

"I'm beginning to understand. . . . Yes. . . . Now I understand. "

"What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?"

"Yes. . . . It was strange to me at first, why you sick men, instead ofbeing kept quiet, should be on this steamer, where the heat is stifling, and stinking, and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you; butnow it is all clear to me. . . . Yes. The doctors sent you to the steamerto get rid of you. They got tired of all the trouble you gave them, brutes like you. 

. . . You don't pay them; you only give a lot of trouble, and if you dieyou spoil their reports. Therefore you are just cattle, and there is nodifficulty in getting rid of you. . . . They only need to lack conscienceand humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. We needn't worryabout the first, they are experts by nature; but the second needs acertain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiersand sailors--five sick men are never noticed; so you were carried up tothe steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurrythat nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they sawfever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck. . . . "

Goussiev could not make out what Pavel Ivanich was talking about;thinking he was being taken to task, he said by way of excusing himself:

"I lay on the deck because when we were taken off the barge I caught achill. "

"Shocking!" said Pavel Ivanich. "They know quite well that you can'tlast out the voyage, and yet they send you here! You may get as far asthe Indian Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of. . . . And that'sall the return you get for faithful unblemished service!"

Pavel Ivanich looked very angry, and smote his forehead and gasped:

"They ought to be shown up in the papers. There would be an awful row. "

The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up and had begun toplay cards, the sailor propped up in his hammock, and the soldierssquatting uncomfortably on the floor. One soldier had his right arm in asling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold thecards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow. The boat wasrolling violently so that it was impossible to get up or to drink tea orto take medicine. 

"You were an orderly?" Pavel Ivanich asked Goussiev. 

"That's it. An orderly. "

"My God, my God!" said Pavel Ivanich sorrowfully. "To take a man fromhis native place, drag him fifteen thousand miles, drive him intoconsumption . . . And what for? I ask you. To make him an orderly to someCaptain Farthing or Midshipman Hole! Where's the sense of it?"

"It's not a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning, clean theboots, boil the samovar, tidy up the room, and then there is nothing todo. The lieutenant draws plans all day long, and you can pray to God ifyou like--or read books--or go out into the streets. It's a good enoughlife. "

"Yes. Very good! The lieutenant draws plans, and you stay in the kitchenall day long and suffer from homesickness. . . . Plans. . . . Plans don'tmatter. It's human life that matters! Life doesn't come again. Oneshould be sparing of it. "

"Certainly Pavel Ivanich. A bad man meets no quarter, either at home, orin the army, but if you live straight, and do as you are told, then noone will harm you. They are educated and they understand. . . . For fiveyears now I've never been in the cells and I've only been thrashedonce--touch wood!"

"What was that for?"

"Fighting. I have a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanich. Four Chinamen came intoour yard: they were carrying wood, I think, but I don't remember. Well, I was bored. I went for them and one of them got a bloody nose. Thelieutenant saw it through the window and gave me a thick ear. "

"You poor fool, " muttered Pavel Ivanich. "You don't understandanything. "

He was completely exhausted with the tossing of the boat and shut hiseyes; his head fell back and then flopped forward onto his chest. Hetried several times to lie down, but in vain, for he could not breathe. 

"And why did you go for the four Chinamen?" he asked after a while. 

"For no reason. They came into the yard and I went for them. "

Silence fell. . . . The gamblers played for a couple of hours, absorbed andcursing, but the tossing of the ship tired even them; they threw thecards away and laid down. Once more Goussiev thought of the big pond, the pottery, the village. Once more the sledges skimmed along, once moreVanka laughed, and that fool of an Akulka opened her fur coat, andstretched out her feet; look, she seemed to say, look, poor people, myfelt boots are new and not like Vanka's. 

"She's getting on for six and still she has no sense!" said Goussiev. "Instead of showing your boots off, why don't you bring some water toyour soldier-uncle? I'll give you a present. "

Then came Andrea, with his firelock on his shoulder, carrying a hare hehad shot, and he was followed by Tsaichik the cripple, who offered him apiece of soap for the hare; and there was the black heifer in the yard, and Domna sewing a shirt and crying over something, and there was theeyeless bull's head and the black smoke. . . . 

Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; the sound of somethingheavy being dragged along the deck, or something had broken. . . . Morerunning. Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened and saw thetwo soldiers and the sailor playing cards again; Pavel Ivanich sittingup and moving his lips. It was very close, he could hardly breathe, hewanted a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting. . . . The pitchingof the boat was now better. 

Suddenly something queer happened to one of the soldiers. . . . He calledace of diamonds, lost his reckoning and dropped his cards. He startedand laughed stupidly and looked round. 

"In a moment, you fellows, " he said and lay down on the floor. 

All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he made no reply. 

"Stiepan, are you ill?" asked the other soldier with the bandaged hand. "Perhaps we'd better call the priest, eh?"

"Stiepan, drink some water, " said the sailor. "Here, mate, have adrink. "

"What's the good of breaking his teeth with the jug, " shouted Goussievangrily. "Don't you see, you fatheads?"

"What. "

"What!" cried Goussiev. "He's snuffed it, dead. That's what! Good God, what fools!. . . "

III

The rolling stopped and Pavel Ivanich cheered up. He was no longerpeevish. His face had an arrogant, impetuous, and mocking expression. Helooked as if he were on the point of saying: "I'll tell you a story thatwill make you die of laughter. " Their port-hole was open and a softwind blew in on Pavel Ivanich. Voices could be heard and the splash ofoars in the water. . . . Beneath the window some one was howling in a thin, horrible voice; probably a Chinaman singing. 

"Yes. We are in harbour, " said Pavel Ivanich, smiling mockingly. "Another month and we shall be in Russia. It's true; my gallantwarriors, I shall get to Odessa and thence I shall go straight toKharkhov. At Kharkhov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall go to himand I shall say, 'now, my friend, give up your rotten littlelove-stories and descriptions of nature, and expose the vileness of thehuman biped. . . . There's a subject for you. '"

He thought for a moment and then he said:

"Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?"

"Who, Pavel Ivanich?"

"The lot out there. . . . You see there's only first and third class on thesteamer, and only peasants are allowed to go third. If you have a decentsuit, and look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance, then youmust go first. It may break you, but you have to lay down your fivehundred roubles. 'What's the point of such an arrangement?' I asked. 'Isit meant to raise the prestige of Russian intellectuals?' 'Not a bit, 'said they. 'We don't let you go, simply because it is impossible for adecent man to go third. It is so vile and disgusting. ' 'Yes, ' said I. 'Thanks for taking so much trouble about decent people. Anyhow, bad orno, I haven't got five hundred roubles as I have neither robbed thetreasury nor exploited foreigners, nor dealt in contraband, nor floggedany one to death, and, therefore, I think I have a right to gofirst-class and to take rank with the intelligentsia of Russia. ' Butthere's no convincing them by logic. . . . I had to try fraud. I put on apeasant's coat and long boots, and a drunken, stupid expression and wentto the agent and said: 'Give me a ticket, your Honour. '

"'What's your position?' says the agent. 

"'Clerical, ' said I. 'My father was an honest priest. He always told thetruth to the great ones of the earth, and so he suffered much. '"

Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath failed him, but hewent on:

"Yes. I always tell the truth straight out. . . . I am afraid of nobody andnothing. There's a great difference between myself and you in thatrespect. You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you don'tunderstand what you do see. You are told that the wind breaks its chain, that you are brutes and worse, and you believe; you are thrashed and youkiss the hand that thrashes you; a swine in a raccoon pelisse robs you, and throws you sixpence for tea, and you say: 'Please, your Honour, letme kiss your hand. ' You are pariahs, skunks. . . . I am different. I liveconsciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk sees when it hoversover the earth, and I understand everything. I am a living protest. Isee injustice--I protest; I see bigotry and hypocrisy--I protest; I seeswine triumphant--I protest, and I am unconquerable. No Spanishinquisition can make me hold my tongue. Aye. . . . Cut my tongue out. I'llprotest by gesture. . . . Shut me up in a dungeon--I'll shout so loud thatI shall be heard for a mile round, or I'll starve myself, so that thereshall be a still heavier weight on their black consciences. Kill me--andmy ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me: 'You are a mostinsufferable man, Pavel Ivanich!' I am proud of such a reputation. Iserved three years in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enoughfor a hundred years. I inveighed against it all. My friends write fromRussia: 'Do not come. ' But I'm going, to spite them. . . . Yes. . . . That islife. I understand. You can call that life. "

Goussiev was not listening, but lay looking out of the port-hole; on thetransparent lovely turquoise water swung a boat all shining in theshimmering light; a fat Chinaman was sitting in it eating rice withchop-sticks. The water murmured softly, and over it lazily soared whitesea-gulls. 

"It would be fun to give that fat fellow one on the back of hisneck. . . . " thought Goussiev, watching the fat Chinaman and yawning. 

He dozed, and it seemed to him that all the world was slumbering. Timeslipped swiftly away. The day passed imperceptibly; imperceptibly thetwilight fell. . . . The steamer was still no longer but was moving on. 

IV

Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up, but lay full length;his eyes were closed and his nose seemed to be sharper than ever. 

"Pavel Ivanich!" called Goussiev, "Pavel Ivanich. "

Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips. 

"Aren't you well?"

"It's nothing, " answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing heavily. "It'snothing. No. I'm much better. You see I can lie down now. I'm muchbetter. "

"Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich. "

"When I compare myself with you, I am sorry for you . . . Poor devils. Mylungs are all right; my cough comes from indigestion . . . I can endurethis hell, not to mention the Red Sea! Besides, I have a criticalattitude toward my illness, as well as to my medicine. But you . . . Youare ignorant. . . . It's hard lines on you, very hard. "

The ship was running smoothly; it was calm but still stifling and hot asa Turkish bath; it was hard not only to speak but even to listen withoutan effort. Goussiev clasped his knees, leaned his head on them andthought of his native place. My God, in such heat it was a pleasure tothink of snow and cold! He saw himself driving on a sledge, and suddenlythe horses were frightened and bolted. . . . Heedless of roads, dikes, ditches they rushed like mad through the village, across the pond, pastthe works, through the fields. . . . "Hold them in!" cried the women andthe passers-by. "Hold them in!" But why hold them in? Let the cold windslap your face and cut your hands; let the lumps of snow thrown up bythe horses' hoofs fall on your hat, down your neck and chest; let therunners of the sledge be buckled, and the traces and harness be torn andbe damned to it! What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flunghard into a snow-drift; with your face slap into the snow, and you getup all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless, gloveless, with your belt undone. . . . People laugh and dogs bark. . . . 

Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and askedquietly:

"Goussiev, did your commander steal?"

"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don't hear of it. "

A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water;it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of beingspoken to. One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night;but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow. 

He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutespassed and all was still. 

"God rest his soul!" said the soldier with the bandaged hand. "He was arestless man. "

"What?" asked Goussiev. "Who?"

"He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs. "

"Oh, well, " muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God rest his soul. "

"What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the bandaged soldier after sometime. "Will he go to heaven?"

"Who?"

"Pavel Ivanich. "

"He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest's son, and priestshave many relations. They will pray for his soul. "

The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's hammock and said in anundertone:

"You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll never see Russia. "

"Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked Goussiev. 

"No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man isgoing to die soon. You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone verythin and awful to look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm notsaying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like tohave the last sacrament. And if you have any money, you had better giveit to the senior officer. "

"I have not written home, " said Goussiev. "I shall die and they willnever know. "

"They will know, " said the sailor in his deep voice. "When you die theywill put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to themilitary governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever itis. . . . "

This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel unhappy and a vague desirebegan to take possession of him. He drank water--it was not that; hestretched out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air--it wasnot that; he tried to think of his native place and the snow--it was notthat. . . . At last he felt that he would choke if he stayed a momentlonger in the hospital. 

"I feel poorly, mates, " he said. "I want to go on deck. For Christ'ssake take me on deck. "

Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier's neck and the soldier heldhim with his free arm and supported him up the gangway. On deck therewere rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; so many of themthat it was difficult to pick a way through them. 

"Stand up, " said the bandaged soldier gently. "Walk after me slowly andhold on to my shirt. . . . "

It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the masts or over the sea. In the bows a sentry stood motionless as a statue, but he looked as ifhe were asleep. It was as though the steamer had been left to its ownsweet will, to go where it liked. 

"They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea, " said the bandagedsoldier. "They will put him in a sack and throw him overboard. "

"Yes. That's the way they do. "

"But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Then the mother can go tothe grave and weep over it. "

"Surely. "

There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads hanging there were oxenstanding by the bulwark--one, two, three . . . Eight beasts. And there wasa little horse. Goussiev put out his hand to pat it, but it shook itshead, showed its teeth and tried to bite his sleeve. 

"Damn you, " said Goussiev angrily. 

He and the soldier slowly made their way to the bows and stood againstthe bulwark and looked silently up and down. Above them was the widesky, bright with stars, peace and tranquillity--exactly as it was athome in his village; but below--darkness and turbulence. Mysterioustowering waves. Each wave seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest;and they pressed and jostled each other and yet others came, fierce andugly, and hurled themselves into the fray. 

There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. Had the steamer beensmaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed itremorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good andbad. The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The large-nosed monsterpressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it wasafraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor ofloneliness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, themonster would crush them without distinction of good and bad. 

"Where are we now?" asked Goussiev. 

"I don't know. Must be the ocean. "

"There's no land in sight. "

"Why, they say we shan't see land for another seven days. "

The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence. Goussiev was the first to break the silence. 

"Nothing is really horrible, " he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you werein a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go ahundred miles out to sea to fish--I would go. Or suppose I saw a soulfall into the water--I would go in after him. I wouldn't go in for aGerman or a Chinaman, but I'd try to save a Russian. "

"Aren't you afraid to die?"

"Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at home. I have a brother athome, you know, and he is not steady; he drinks, beats his wife fornothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. Butmy legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here. . . . Let me go to bed. "

V

Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. As before, avague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. Therewas a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was sodry that he could hardly move his tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and, exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him, toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was in barracks, and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled intothe oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for two daysand on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carriedhim out of the ward. 

He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars weresewn up with him. In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish, broad at the top, narrow at the bottom. . . . Just before sunset he wastaken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark, the other on a box, raised up by a stool. Round him stood the invalidedsoldiers. 

"Blessed is our God, " began the priest; "always, now and for ever andever. "

"Amen!" said three sailors. 

The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at thewaves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth anddropped into the sea. Could it happen to any one?

The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung. 

The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; shotheadlong, turned over in the air, then plop! The foam covered him, for amoment it looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the momentpassed--and he disappeared beneath the waves. 

He dropped down to the bottom. Would he reach it? The bottom is milesdown, they say. He dropped down almost sixty or seventy feet, then beganto go slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were thinking;then, borne along by the current; he moved more sideways than downward. 

But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark body, the fishstopped dead and sudden, all together, turned and went back. Less than aminute later, like arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging throughthe water around him. . . . 

Later came another dark body, a shark. Gravely and leisurely, as thoughit had not noticed Goussiev, it swam up under him, and he rolled over onits back; it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm, translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with its two rows ofteeth. The pilot-fish were wildly excited; they stopped to see what wasgoing to happen. The shark played with the body, then slowly opened itsmouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the sail-cloth was rippedopen from head to foot; one of the bars fell out, frightening thepilot-fish and striking the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom. 

And above the surface, the clouds were huddling up about the settingsun; one cloud was like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, anotherlike a pair of scissors. . . . From behind the clouds came a broad greenray reaching up to the very middle of the sky; a little later a violetray was flung alongside this, and then others gold and pink. . . . The skywas soft and lilac, pale and tender. At first beneath the lovely, glorious sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took oncolour--sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost impossible to name inhuman language. 

MY LIFE

THE STORY OF A PROVINCIAL

The director said to me: "I only keep you out of respect for your worthyfather, or you would have gone long since. " I replied: "You flatter me, your Excellency, but I suppose I am in a position to go. " And then Iheard him saying: "Take the fellow away, he is getting on my nerves. "

Two days later I was dismissed. Ever since I had been grown up, to thegreat sorrow of my father, the municipal architect, I had changed myposition nine times, going from one department to another, but all thedepartments were as like each other as drops of water; I had to sit andwrite, listen to inane and rude remarks, and just wait until I wasdismissed. 

When I told my father, he was sitting back in his chair with his eyesshut. His thin, dry face, with a dove-coloured tinge where he shaved(his face was like that of an old Catholic organist), wore an expressionof meek submission. Without answering my greeting or opening his eyes, he said:

"If my dear wife, your mother, were alive, your life would be a constantgrief to her. I can see the hand of Providence in her untimely death. Tell me, you unhappy boy, " he went on, opening his eyes, "what am I todo with you?"

When I was younger my relations and friends knew what to do with me;some advised me to go into the army as a volunteer, others were forpharmacy, others for the telegraph service; but now that I wastwenty-four and was going grey at the temples and had already tried thearmy and pharmacy and the telegraph service, and every possibilityseemed to be exhausted, they gave me no more advice, but only sighed andshook their heads. 

"What do you think of yourself?" my father went on. "At your age otheryoung men have a good social position, and just look at yourself: a lazylout, a beggar, living on your father!"

And, as usual, he went on to say that young men were going to the dogsthrough want of faith, materialism, and conceit, and that amateurtheatricals should be prohibited because they seduce young people fromreligion and their duty. 

"To-morrow we will go together, and you shall apologise to the directorand promise to do your work conscientiously, " he concluded. "You mustnot be without a position in society for a single day. "

"Please listen to me, " said I firmly, though I did not anticipategaining anything by speaking. "What you call a position in society isthe privilege of capital and education. But people who are poor anduneducated have to earn their living by hard physical labour, and I seeno reason why I should be an exception. "

"It is foolish and trivial of you to talk of physical labour, " said myfather with some irritation. "Do try to understand, you idiot, and getit into your brainless head, that in addition to physical strength youhave a divine spirit; a sacred fire, by which you are distinguished froman ass or a reptile and bringing you nigh to God. This sacred fire hasbeen kept alight for thousands of years by the best of mankind. Yourgreat-grandfather, General Pologniev, fought at Borodino; yourgrandfather was a poet, an orator, and a marshal of the nobility; youruncle was an educationalist; and I, your father, am an architect! Haveall the Polognievs kept the sacred fire alight for you to put it out?"

"There must be justice, " said I. "Millions of people have to do manuallabour. "

"Let them. They can do nothing else! Even a fool or a criminal can domanual labour. It is the mark of a slave and a barbarian, whereas thesacred fire is given only to a few!"

It was useless to go on with the conversation. My father worshippedhimself and would not be convinced by anything unless he said ithimself. Besides, I knew quite well that the annoyance with which hespoke of unskilled labour came not so much from any regard for thesacred fire, as from a secret fear that I should become a working manand the talk of the town. But the chief thing was that all myschoolfellows had long ago gone through the University and were makingcareers for themselves, and the son of the director of the State Bankwas already a collegiate assessor, while I, an only son, was nothing! Itwas useless and unpleasant to go on with the conversation, but I stillsat there and raised objections in the hope of making myself understood. The problem was simple and clear: how was I to earn my living? But hecould not see its simplicity and kept on talking with sugary roundedphrases about Borodino and the sacred fire, and my uncle, and theforgotten poet who wrote bad, insincere verses, and he called me abrainless fool. But how I longed to be understood! In spite ofeverything, I loved my father and my sister, and from boyhood I have hada habit of considering them, so strongly rooted that I shall probablynever get rid of it; whether I am right or wrong I am always afraid ofhurting them, and go in terror lest my father's thin neck should go redwith anger and he should have an apoplectic fit. 

"It is shameful and degrading for a man of my age to sit in a stuffyroom and compete with a typewriting-machine, " I said. "What has that todo with the sacred fire?"

"Still, it is intellectual work, " said my father. "But that's enough. Let us drop the conversation and I warn you that if you refuse toreturn to your office and indulge your contemptible inclinations, thenyou will lose my love and your sister's. I shall cut you out of mywill--that I swear, by God!"

With perfect sincerity, in order to show the purity of my motives, bywhich I hope to be guided all through my life, I said:

"The matter of inheritance does not strike me as important. I renounceany rights I may have. "

For some unexpected reason these words greatly offended my father. Hewent purple in the face. 

"How dare you talk to me like that, you fool!" he cried to me in a thin, shrill voice. "You scoundrel!" And he struck me quickly and dexterouslywith a familiar movement; once--twice. "You forget yourself!"

When I was a boy and my father struck me, I used to stand bolt uprightlike a soldier and look him straight in the face; and, exactly as if Iwere still a boy, I stood erect, and tried to look into his eyes. Myfather was old and very thin, but his spare muscles must have been asstrong as whip-cord, for he hit very hard. 

I returned to the hall, but there he seized his umbrella and struck meseveral times over the head and shoulders; at that moment my sisteropened the drawing-room door to see what the noise was, but immediatelydrew back with an expression of pity and horror, and said not one wordin my defence. 

My intention not to return to the office, but to start a new workinglife, was unshakable. It only remained to choose the kind of work--andthere seemed to be no great difficulty about that, because I was strong, patient, and willing. I was prepared to face a monotonous, laboriouslife, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough surroundings, alwaysovershadowed with the thought of finding a job and a living. And--whoknows--returning from work in the Great Gentry Street, I might oftenenvy Dolyhikov, the engineer, who lives by intellectual work, but I washappy in thinking of my coming troubles. I used to dream of intellectualactivity, and to imagine myself a teacher, a doctor, a writer, but mydreams remained only dreams. A liking for intellectual pleasures--likethe theatre and reading--grew into a passion with me, but I did not knowwhether I had any capacity for intellectual work. At school I had anunconquerable aversion for the Greek language, so that I had to leavewhen I was in the fourth class. Teachers were got to coach me up for thefifth class, and then I went into various departments, spending most ofmy time in perfect idleness, and this, I was told, was intellectualwork. 

My activity in the education department or in the municipal officerequired neither mental effort, nor talent, nor personal ability, norcreative spiritual impulse; it was purely mechanical, and suchintellectual work seemed to me lower than manual labour. I despise itand I do not think that it for a moment justifies an idle, carelesslife, because it is nothing but a swindle, and only a kind of idleness. In all probability I have never known real intellectual work. 

It was evening. We lived in Great Gentry Street--the chief street in thetown--and our rank and fashion walked up and down it in the evenings, asthere were no public gardens. The street was very charming, and wasalmost as good as a garden, for it had two rows of poplar-trees, whichsmelt very sweet, especially after rain, and acacias, and tall trees, and apple-trees hung over the fences and hedges. May evenings, the scentof the lilac, the hum of the cockchafers, the warm, still air--how newand extraordinary it all is, though spring comes every year! I stood bythe gate and looked at the passers-by. With most of them I had grown upand had played with them, but now my presence might upset them, becauseI was poorly dressed, in unfashionable clothes, and people made fun ofmy very narrow trousers and large, clumsy boots, and called themmacaroni-on-steamboats. And I had a bad reputation in the town because Ihad no position and went to play billiards in low cafés, and had oncebeen taken up, for no particular offence, by the political police. 

In a large house opposite, Dolyhikov's, the engineer's, some one wasplaying the piano. It was beginning to get dark and the stars werebeginning to shine. And slowly, answering people's salutes, my fatherpassed with my sister on his arm. He was wearing an old top hat with abroad curly brim. 

"Look!" he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the very umbrellawith which he had just struck me. "Look at the sky! Even the smalleststars are worlds! How insignificant man is in comparison with theuniverse. "

And he said this in a tone that seemed to convey that he found itextremely flattering and pleasant to be so insignificant. What anuntalented man he was! Unfortunately, he was the only architect in thetown, and during the last fifteen or twenty years I could not rememberone decent house being built. When he had to design a house, as a rulehe would draw first the hall and the drawing-room; as in olden daysschoolgirls could only begin to dance by the fireplace, so his artisticideas could only evolve from the hall and drawing-room. To them he wouldadd the dining-room, nursery, study, connecting them with doors, so thatin the end they were just so many passages, and each room had two orthree doors too many. His houses were obscure, extremely confused, andlimited. Every time, as though he felt something was missing, he hadrecourse to various additions, plastering them one on top of the other, and there would be various lobbies, and passages, and crooked staircasesleading to the entresol, where it was only possible to stand in astooping position, and where instead of a floor there would be a thinflight of stairs like a Russian bath, and the kitchen would always beunder the house with a vaulted ceiling and a brick floor. The front ofhis houses always had a hard, stubborn expression, with stiff, Frenchlines, low, squat roofs, and fat, pudding-like chimneys surmounted withblack cowls and squeaking weathercocks. And somehow all the housesbuilt by my father were like each other, and vaguely reminded me of atop hat, and the stiff, obstinate back of his head. In the course oftime the people of the town grew used to my father's lack of talent, which took root and became our style. 

My father introduced the style into my sister's life. To begin with, hegave her the name of Cleopatra (and he called me Misail). When she was alittle girl he used to frighten her by telling her about the stars andour ancestors; and explained the nature of life and duty to her at greatlength; and now when she was twenty-six he went on in the same way, allowing her to take no one's arm but his own, and somehow imaginingthat sooner or later an ardent young man would turn up and wish to enterinto marriage with her out of admiration for his qualities. And sheadored my father, was afraid of him, and believed in his extraordinaryintellectual powers. 

It got quite dark and the street grew gradually empty. In the houseopposite the music stopped. The gate was wide open and out into thestreet, careering with all its bells jingling, came a troika. It was theengineer and his daughter going for a drive. Time to go to bed!

I had a room in the house, but I lived in the courtyard in a hut, underthe same roof as the coach-house, which had been built probably as aharness-room--for there were big nails in the walls--but now it was notused, and my father for thirty years had kept his newspapers there, which for some reason he had bound half-yearly and then allowed no oneto touch. Living there I was less in touch with my father and hisguests, and I used to think that if I did not live in a proper room anddid not go to the house every day for meals, my father's reproach that Iwas living on him lost some of its sting. 

My sister was waiting for me. She had brought me supper unknown to myfather; a small piece of cold veal and a slice of bread. In the familythere were sayings: "Money loves an account, " or "A copeck saves arouble, " and so on, and my sister, impressed by such wisdom, did herbest to cut down expenses and made us feed rather meagrely. She put theplate on the table, sat on my bed, and began to cry. 

"Misail, " she said, "what are you doing to us?"

She did not cover her face, her tears ran down her cheeks and hands, andher expression was sorrowful. She fell on the pillow, gave way to hertears, trembling all over and sobbing. 

"You have left your work again!" she said. "How awful!"

"Do try to understand, sister!" I said, and because she cried I wasfilled with despair. 

As though it were deliberately arranged, the paraffin in my little lampran out, and the lamp smoked and guttered, and the old hooks in the walllooked terrible and their shadows flickered. 

"Spare us!" said my sister, rising up. "Father is in an awful state, andI am ill. I shall go mad. What will become of you?" she asked, sobbingand holding out her hands to me. "I ask you, I implore you, in the nameof our dear mother, to go back to your work. "

"I cannot, Cleopatra, " I said, feeling that only a little more wouldmake me give in. "I cannot. "

"Why?" insisted my sister, "why? If you have not made it up with yourchief, look for another place. For instance, why shouldn't you work onthe railway? I have just spoken to Aniuta Blagovo, and she assures meyou would be taken on, and she even promised to do what she could foryou. For goodness sake, Misail, think! Think it over, I implore you!"

We talked a little longer and I gave in. I said that the thought ofworking on the railway had never come into my head, and that I was readyto try. 

She smiled happily through her tears and clasped my hand, and still shecried, because she could not stop, and I went into the kitchen forparaffin. 

II

Among the supporters of amateur theatricals, charity concerts, and_tableaux vivants_ the leaders were the Azhoguins, who lived in theirown house in Great Gentry house the Street. They used to lend theirhouse and assume the necessary trouble and expense. They were a richlandowning family, and had about three thousand _urskins_, with amagnificent farm in the neighbourhood, but they did not care for villagelife and lived in the town summer and winter. The family consisted of amother, a tall, spare, delicate lady, who had short hair, wore a blouseand a plain skirt à l'Anglais, and three daughters, who were spoken of, not by their names, but as the eldest, the middle, and the youngest;they all had ugly, sharp chins, and they were short-sighted, high-shouldered, dressed in the same style as their mother, had anunpleasant lisp, and yet they always took part in every play and werealways doing something for charity--acting, reciting, singing. They werevery serious and never smiled, and even in burlesque operettas theyacted without gaiety and with a businesslike air, as though they wereengaged in bookkeeping. 

I loved our plays, especially the rehearsals, which were frequent, rather absurd, and noisy, and we were always given supper after them. Ihad no part in the selection of the pieces and the casting of thecharacters. I had to look after the stage. I used to design the sceneryand copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to lookafter the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale, and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, andduring rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkenedwings and shyly say nothing. 

I used to paint the scenery in the Azhoguins' coach-house or yard. I wasassisted by a house-painter, or, as he called himself, a decoratingcontractor, named Andrey Ivanov, a man of about fifty, tall and verythin and pale, with a narrow chest, hollow temples, and dark rings underhis eyes, he was rather awful to look at. He had some kind of wastingdisease, and every spring and autumn he was said to be on the point ofdeath, but he would go to bed for a while and then get up and say withsurprise: "I'm not dead this time!"

In the town he was called Radish, and people said it was his real name. He loved the theatre as much as I, and no sooner did he hear that a playwas in hand than he gave up all his work and went to the Azhoguins' topaint scenery. 

The day after my conversation with my sister I worked from morning tillnight at the Azhoguins'. The rehearsal was fixed for seven o'clock, andan hour before it began all the players were assembled, and the eldest, the middle, and the youngest Miss Azhoguin were reading their parts onthe stage. Radish, in a long, brown overcoat with a scarf wound roundhis neck, was standing, leaning with his head against the wall, lookingat the stage with a rapt expression. Mrs. Azhoguin went from guest toguest saying something pleasant to every one. She had a way of gazinginto one's face and speaking in a hushed voice as though she weretelling a secret. 

"It must be difficult to paint scenery, " she said softly, coming up tome. "I was just talking to Mrs. Mufke about prejudice when I saw youcome in. Mon Dieu! All my life I have struggled against prejudice. Toconvince the servants that all their superstitions are nonsense I alwayslight three candles, and I begin all my important business on thethirteenth. "

The daughter of Dolyhikov, the engineer, was there, a handsome, plump, fair girl, dressed, as people said in our town, in Parisian style. Shedid not act, but at rehearsals a chair was put for her on the stage, andthe plays did not begin until she appeared in the front row, to astonisheverybody with the brilliance of her clothes. As coming from themetropolis, she was allowed to make remarks during rehearsals, and shedid so with an affable, condescending smile, and it was clear that sheregarded our plays as a childish amusement. It was said that she hadstudied singing at the Petersburg conservatoire and had sung for awinter season in opera. I liked her very much, and during rehearsals orthe performance, I never took my eyes off her. 

I had taken the book and began to prompt when suddenly my sisterappeared. Without taking off her coat and hat she came up to me andsaid:

"Please come!"

I went. Behind the stage in the doorway stood Aniuta Blagovo, alsowearing a hat with a dark veil. She was the daughter of thevice-president of the Court, who had been appointed to our town yearsago, almost as soon as the High Court was established. She was tall andhad a good figure, and was considered indispensable for the _tableauxvivants_, and when she represented a fairy or a muse, her face wouldburn with shame; but she took no part in the plays, and would only lookin at rehearsals, on some business, and never enter the hall. And it wasevident now that she had only looked in for a moment. 

"My father has mentioned you, " she said drily, not looking at me andblushing. . . . "Dolyhikov has promised to find you something to do on therailway. If you go to his house to-morrow, he will see you. "

I bowed and thanked her for her kindness. 

"And you must leave this, " she said, pointing to my book. 

She and my sister went up to Mrs. Azhoguin and began to whisper, lookingat me. 

"Indeed, " said Mrs. Azhoguin, coming up to me, and gazing into my face. "Indeed, if it takes you from your more serious business"--she took thebook out of my hands--"then you must hand it over to some one else. Don't worry, my friend. It will be all right. "

I said good-bye and left in some confusion. As I went down-stairs I sawmy sister and Aniuta Blagovo going away; they were talking animatedly, Isuppose about my going on the railway, and they hurried away. My sisterhad never been to a rehearsal before, and she was probably tortured byher conscience and by her fear of my father finding out that she hadbeen to the Azhoguins' without permission. 

The next day I went to see Dolyhikov at one o'clock. The man servantshowed me into a charming room, which was the engineer's drawing-roomand study. Everything in it was charming and tasteful, and to a man likemyself, unused to such things, very strange. Costly carpets, hugechairs, bronzes, pictures in gold and velvet frames; photographs on thewalls of beautiful women, clever, handsome faces, and strikingattitudes; from the drawing-room a door led straight into the garden, bya veranda, and I saw lilac and a table laid for breakfast, rolls, and abunch of roses; and there was a smell of spring, and good cigars, andhappiness--and everything seemed to say, here lives a man who has workedand won the highest happiness here on earth. At the table the engineer'sdaughter was sitting reading a newspaper. 

"Do you want my father?" she asked. "He is having a shower-bath. He willbe down presently. Please take a chair. "

I sat down. 

"I believe you live opposite?" she asked after a short silence. 

"Yes. "

"When I have nothing to do I look out of the window. You must excuseme, " she added, turning to her newspaper, "and I often see you and yoursister. She has such a kind, wistful expression. "

Dolyhikov came in. He was wiping his neck with a towel. 

"Papa, this is Mr. Pologniev, " said his daughter. 

"Yes, yes. Blagovo spoke to me. " He turned quickly to me, but did nothold out his hand. "But what do you think I can give you? I'm notbursting with situations. You are queer people!" he went on in a loudvoice and as though he were scolding me. "I get about twenty peopleevery day, as though I were a Department of State. I run a railway, sir. I employ hard labour; I need mechanics, navvies, joiners, well-sinkers, and you can only sit and write. That's all! You are all clerks!"

And he exhaled the same air of happiness as his carpets and chairs. Hewas stout, healthy, with red cheeks and a broad chest; he looked cleanin his pink shirt and wide trousers, just like a china figure of apost-boy. He had a round, bristling beard--and not a single greyhair--and a nose with a slight bridge, and bright, innocent, dark eyes. 

"What can you do?" he went on. "Nothing! I am an engineer andwell-to-do, but before I was given this railway I worked very hard for along time. I was an engine-driver for two years, I worked in Belgium asan ordinary lubricator. Now, my dear man, just think--what work can Ioffer you?"

"I quite agree, " said I, utterly abashed, not daring to meet his bright, innocent eyes. 

"Are you any good with the telegraph?" he asked after some thought. 

"Yes. I have been in the telegraph service. "

"Hm. . . . Well, we'll see. Go to Dubechnia. There's a fellow therealready. But he is a scamp. "

"And what will my duties be?" I asked. 

"We'll see to that later. Go there now. I'll give orders. But pleasedon't drivel and don't bother me with petitions or I'll kick you out. "

He turned away from me without even a nod. I bowed to him and hisdaughter, who was reading the newspaper, and went out. I felt somiserable that when my sister asked how the engineer had received me, Icould not utter a single word. 

To go to Dubechnia I got up early in the morning at sunrise. There wasnot a soul in the street, the whole town was asleep, and my footstepsrang out with a hollow sound. The dewy poplars filled the air with asoft scent. I was sad and had no desire to leave the town. It seemed sonice and warm! I loved the green trees, the quiet sunny mornings, theringing of the bells, but the people in the town were alien to me, tiresome and sometimes even loathsome. I neither liked nor understoodthem. 

I did not understand why or for what purpose those thirty-five thousandpeople lived. I knew that Kimry made a living by manufacturing boots, that Tula made samovars and guns, that Odessa was a port; but I did notknow what our town was or what it did. The people in Great Gentry Streetand two other clean streets had independent means and salaries paid bythe Treasury, but how the people lived in the other eight streets whichstretched parallel to each other for three miles and then were lostbehind the hill--that was always an insoluble problem to me. And I amashamed to think of the way they lived. They had neither public gardens, nor a theatre, nor a decent orchestra; the town and club libraries areused only by young Jews, so that books and magazines would lie formonths uncut. The rich and the intelligentsia slept in close, stuffybedrooms, with wooden beds infested with bugs; the children were kept infilthy, dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants, even when theywere old and respectable, slept on the kitchen floor and coveredthemselves with rags. Except in Lent all the houses smelt of _bortsch_, and during Lent of sturgeon fried in sunflower oil. The food wasunsavoury, the water unwholesome. On the town council, at thegovernor's, at the archbishop's, everywhere there had been talk foryears about there being no good, cheap water-supply and of borrowing twohundred thousand roubles from the Treasury. Even the very rich people, of whom there were about thirty in the town, people who would lose awhole estate at cards, used to drink the bad water and talk passionatelyabout the loan--and I could never understand this, for it seemed to meit would be simpler for them to pay up the two hundred thousand. 

I did not know a single honest man in the whole town. My father tookbribes, and imagined they were given to him out of respect for hisspiritual qualities; the boys at the high school, in order to bepromoted, went to lodge with the masters and paid them large sums; thewife of the military commandant took levies from the recruits during therecruiting, and even allowed them to stand her drinks, and once she wasso drunk in church that she could not get up from her knees; during therecruiting the doctors also took bribes, and the municipal doctor andthe veterinary surgeon levied taxes on the butcher shops and publichouses; the district school did a trade in certificates which gavecertain privileges in the civil service; the provosts took bribes fromthe clergy and church-wardens whom they controlled, and on the towncouncil and various committees every one who came before them waspursued with: "One expects thanks!"--and thereby forty copecks had tochange hands. And those who did not take bribes, like the High Courtofficials, were stiff and proud, and shook hands with two fingers, andwere distinguished by their indifference and narrow-mindedness. Theydrank and played cards, married rich women, and always had a bad, insidious influence on those round them. Only the girls had any moralpurity; most of them had lofty aspirations and were pure and honest atheart; but they knew nothing of life, and believed that bribes weregiven to honour spiritual qualities; and when they married, they soongrew old and weak, and were hopelessly lost in the mire of that vulgar, bourgeois existence. 

III

A railway was being built in our district. On holidays and thereaboutsthe town was filled with crowds of ragamuffins called "railies, " of whomthe people were afraid. I used often to see a miserable wretch with abloody face, and without a hat, being dragged off by the police, andbehind him was the proof of his crime, a samovar or some wet, newlywashed linen. The "railies" used to collect near the public houses andon the squares; and they drank, ate, and swore terribly, and whistledafter the town prostitutes. To amuse these ruffians our shopkeepers usedto make the cats and dogs drink vodka, or tie a kerosene-tin to a dog'stail, and whistle to make the dog come tearing along the street with thetin clattering after him, and making him squeal with terror and think hehad some frightful monster hard at his heels, so that he would rush outof the town and over the fields until he could run no more. We hadseveral dogs in the town which were left with a permanent shiver andused to crawl about with their tails between their legs, and people saidthat they could not stand such tricks and had gone mad. 

The station was being built five miles from the town. It was said thatthe engineer had asked for a bribe of fifty thousand roubles to bringthe station nearer, but the municipality would only agree to forty; theywould not give in to the extra ten thousand, and now the townspeople aresorry because they had to make a road to the station which cost themmore. Sleepers and rails were fixed all along the line, andservice-trains were running to carry building materials and labourers, and they were only waiting for the bridges upon which Dolyhikov was atwork, and here and there the stations were not ready. 

Dubechnia--the name of our first station--was seventeen versts from thetown. I went on foot. The winter and spring corn was bright green, shining in the morning sun. The road was smooth and bright, and in thedistance I could see in outline the station, the hills, and the remotefarmhouses. . . . How good it was out in the open! And how I longed to befilled with the sense of freedom, if only for that morning, to stopthinking of what was going on in the town, or of my needs, or even ofeating! Nothing has so much prevented my living as the feeling of acutehunger, which make my finest thoughts get mixed up with thoughts ofporridge, cutlets, and fried fish. When I stand alone in the fields andlook up at the larks hanging marvellously in the air, and bursting withhysterical song, I think: "It would be nice to have some bread andbutter. " Or when I sit in the road and shut my eyes and listen to thewonderful sounds of a May-day, I remember how good hot potatoes smell. Being big and of a strong constitution I never have quite enough to eat, and so my chief sensation during the day is hunger, and so I canunderstand why so many people who are working for a bare living, cantalk of nothing but food. 

At Dubechnia the station was being plastered inside, and the upper storyof the water-tank was being built. It was close and smelt of lime, andthe labourers were wandering lazily over piles of chips and rubbish. Thesignalman was asleep near his box with the sun pouring straight intohis face. There was not a single tree. The telephone gave a faint hum, and here and there birds had alighted on it. I wandered over the heaps, not knowing what to do, and remembered how when I asked the engineerwhat my duties would be, he had replied: "We will see there. " But whatwas there to see in such a wilderness? The plasterers were talking aboutthe foreman and about one Fedot Vassilievich. I could not understand andwas filled with embarrassment--physical embarrassment. I felt consciousof my arms and legs, and of the whole of my big body, and did not knowwhat to do with them or where to go. 

After walking for at least a couple of hours I noticed that from thestation to the right of the line there were telegraph-poles which afterabout one and a half or two miles ended in a white stone wall. Thelabourers said it was the office, and I decided at last that I must gothere. 

It was a very old farmhouse, long unused. The wall of rough, white stonewas decayed, and in places had crumbled away, and the roof of the wing, the blind wall of which looked toward the railway, had perished, andwas patched here and there with tin. Through the gates there was a largeyard, overgrown with tall grass, and beyond that, an old house withVenetian blinds in the windows, and a high roof, brown with rot. Oneither side of the house, to right and left, were two symmetrical wings;the windows of one were boarded up, while by the other, the windows ofwhich were open, there were a number of calves grazing. The lasttelegraph-pole stood in the yard, and the wire went from it to the wingwith the blind wall. The door was open and I went in. By the table atthe telegraph was sitting a man with a dark, curly head in a canvascoat; he glared at me sternly and askance, but he immediately smiled andsaid:

"How do you do, Profit?"

It was Ivan Cheprakov, my school friend, who was expelled, when he wasin the second class, for smoking. Once, during the autumn, we were outcatching goldfinches, starlings, and hawfinches, to sell them in themarket early in the morning when our parents were still asleep. 

We beat up flocks of starlings and shot at them with pellets, and thenpicked up the wounded, and some died in terrible agony--I can stillremember how they moaned at night in my case--and some recovered. And wesold them, and swore black and blue that they were male birds. Once inthe market I had only one starling left, which I hawked about andfinally sold for a copeck. "A little profit!" I said to console myself, and from that time at school I was always known as "Little Profit, " andeven now, schoolboys and the townspeople sometimes use the name to teaseme, though no one but myself remembers how it came about. 

Cheprakov never was strong. He was narrow-chested, round-shouldered, long-legged. His tie looked like a piece of string, he had no waistcoat, and his boots were worse than mine--with the heels worn down. He blinkedwith his eyes and had an eager expression as though he were trying tocatch something and he was in a constant fidget. 

"You wait, " he said, bustling about. "Look here!. . . What was I sayingjust now?"

We began to talk. I discovered that the estate had till recentlybelonged to the Cheprakovs and only the previous autumn had passed toDolyhikov, who thought it more profitable to keep his money in land thanin shares, and had already bought three big estates in our district withthe transfer of all mortgages. When Cheprakov's mother sold, shestipulated for the right to live in one of the wings for another twoyears and got her son a job in the office. 

"Why shouldn't he buy?" said Cheprakov of the engineer. "He gets a lotfrom the contractors. He bribes them all. "

Then he took me to dinner, deciding in his emphatic way that I was tolive with him in the wing and board with his mother. 

"She is a screw, " he said, "but she will not take much from you. "

In the small rooms where his mother lived there was a queer jumble; eventhe hall and the passage were stacked with furniture, which had beentaken from the house after the sale of the estate; and the furniture wasold, and of redwood. Mrs. Cheprakov, a very stout elderly lady, withslanting, Chinese eyes, sat by the window, in a big chair, knitting astocking. She received me ceremoniously. 

"It is Pologniev, mother, " said Cheprakov, introducing me. "He is goingto work here. "

"Are you a nobleman?" she asked in a strange, unpleasant voice as thoughshe had boiling fat in her throat. 

"Yes, " I answered. 

"Sit down. "

The dinner was bad. It consisted only of a pie with unsweetened curdsand some milk soup. Elena Nikifirovna, my hostess, was perpetuallywinking, first with one eye, then with the other. She talked and ate, but in her whole aspect there was a deathlike quality, and one couldalmost detect the smell of a corpse. Life hardly stirred in her, yet shehad the air of being the lady of the manor, who had once had her serfs, and was the wife of a general, whose servants had to call him "YourExcellency, " and when these miserable embers of life flared up in herfor a moment, she would say to her son:

"Ivan, that is not the way to hold your knife!"

Or she would say, gasping for breath, with the preciseness of a hostesslabouring to entertain her guest:

"We have just sold our estate, you know. It is a pity, of course, wehave got so used to being here, but Dolyhikov promised to make Ivanstation-master at Dubechnia, so that we shan't have to leave. We shalllive here on the station, which is the same as living on the estate. Theengineer is such a nice man! Don't you think him very handsome?"

Until recently the Cheprakovs had been very well-to-do, but with thegeneral's death everything changed. Elena Nikifirovna began to quarrelwith the neighbours and to go to law, and she did not pay her bailiffsand labourers; she was always afraid of being robbed--and in less thanten years Dubechnia changed completely. 

Behind the house there was an old garden run wild, overgrown with tallgrass and brushwood. I walked along the terrace which was stillwell-kept and beautiful; through the glass door I saw a room with aparquet floor, which must have been the drawing-room. It contained anancient piano, some engravings in mahogany frames on the walls--andnothing else. There was nothing left of the flower-garden but peoniesand poppies, rearing their white and scarlet heads above the ground; onthe paths, all huddled together, were young maples and elm-trees, whichhad been stripped by the cows. The growth was dense and the gardenseemed impassable, and only near the house, where there still stoodpoplars, firs, and some old bricks, were there traces of the formeravenues, and further on the garden was being cleared for a hay-field, and here it was no longer allowed to run wild, and one's mouth and eyeswere no longer filled with spiders' webs, and a pleasant air wasstirring. The further out one went, the more open it was, and there werecherry-trees, plum-trees, wide-spreading old apple-trees, lichened andheld up with props, and the pear-trees were so tall that it wasincredible that there could be pears on them. This part of the gardenwas let to the market-women of our town, and it was guarded from thievesand starlings by a peasant--an idiot who lived in a hut. 

The orchard grew thinner and became a mere meadow running down to theriver, which was overgrown with reeds and withy-beds. There was a poolby the mill-dam, deep and full of fish, and a little mill with a strawroof ground and roared, and the frogs croaked furiously. On the water, which was as smooth as glass, circles appeared from time to time, andwater-lilies trembled on the impact of a darting fish. The village ofDubechnia was on the other side of the river. The calm, azure pool wasalluring with its promise of coolness and rest. And now all this, thepool, the mill, the comfortable banks of the river, belonged to theengineer!

And here my new work began. I received and despatched telegrams, I wroteout various accounts and copied orders, claims, and reports, sent in tothe office by our illiterate foremen and mechanics. But most of the dayI did nothing, walking up and down the room waiting for telegrams, or Iwould tell the boy to stay in the wing, and go into the garden until theboy came to say the bell was ringing. I had dinner with Mrs. Cheprakov. Meat was served very rarely; most of the dishes were made of milk, andon Wednesdays and Fridays we had Lenten fare, and the food was served inpink plates, which were called Lenten. Mrs. Cheprakov was alwaysblinking--the habit grew on her, and I felt awkward and embarrassed inher presence. 

As there was not enough work for one, Cheprakov did nothing, but sleptor went down to the pool with his gun to shoot ducks. In the evenings hegot drunk in the village, or at the station, and before going to bed hewould look in the glass and say:

"How are you, Ivan Cheprakov?"

When he was drunk, he was very pale and used to rub his hands and laugh, or rather neigh, He-he-he! Out of bravado he would undress himself andrun naked through the fields, and he used to eat flies and say they werea bit sour. 

IV

Once after dinner he came running into the wing, panting, to say:

"Your sister has come to see you. "

I went out and saw a fly standing by the steps of the house. My sisterhad brought Aniuta Blagovo and a military gentleman in a summer uniform. As I approached I recognised the military gentleman as Aniuta's brother, the doctor. 

"We've come to take you for a picnic, " he said, "if you've noobjection. "

My sister and Aniuta wanted to ask how I was getting on, but they wereboth silent and only looked at me. They felt that I didn't like my job, and tears came into my sister's eyes and Aniuta Blagovo blushed. We wentinto the orchard, the doctor first, and he said ecstatically:

"What air! By Jove, what air!"

He was just a boy to look at. He talked and walked like anundergraduate, and the look in his grey eyes was as lively, simple, andfrank as that of a nice boy. Compared with his tall, handsome sister helooked weak and slight, and his little beard was thin and so was hisvoice--a thin tenor, though quite pleasant. He was away somewhere withhis regiment and had come home on leave, and said that he was going toPetersburg in the autumn to take his M. D. He already had a family--awife and three children; he had married young, in his second year at theUniversity, and people said he was unhappily married and was not livingwith his wife. 

"What is the time?" My sister was uneasy. "We must go back soon, for myfather would only let me have until six o'clock. "

"Oh, your father, " sighed the doctor. 

I made tea, and we drank it sitting on a carpet in front of the terrace, and the doctor, kneeling, drank from his saucer, and said that he wasperfectly happy. Then Cheprakov fetched the key and unlocked the glassdoor and we all entered the house. It was dark and mysterious andsmelled of mushrooms, and our footsteps made a hollow sound as thoughthere were a vault under the floor. The doctor stopped by the piano andtouched the keys and it gave out a faint, tremulous, cracked but stillmelodious sound. He raised his voice and began to sing a romance, frowning and impatiently stamping his foot when he touched a broken key. My sister forgot about going home, but walked agitatedly up and down theroom and said:

"I am happy! I am very, very happy!"

There was a note of surprise in her voice as though it seemed impossibleto her that she should be happy. It was the first time in my life that Ihad seen her so gay. She even looked handsome. Her profile was not good, her nose and mouth somehow protruded and made her look as if she wasalways blowing, but she had beautiful, dark eyes, a pale, very delicatecomplexion, and a touching expression of kindness and sadness, and whenshe spoke she seemed very charming and even beautiful. Both she and Itook after our mother; we were broad-shouldered, strong, and sturdy, buther paleness was a sign of sickness, she often coughed, and in her eyesI often noticed the expression common to people who are ill, but who forsome reason conceal it. In her present cheerfulness there was somethingchildish and naïve, as though all the joy which had been suppressed anddulled during our childhood by a strict upbringing, had suddenlyawakened in her soul and rushed out into freedom. 

But when evening came and the fly was brought round, my sister becamevery quiet and subdued, and sat in the fly as though it were aprison-van. 

Soon they were all gone. The noise of the fly died away. . . . I rememberedthat Aniuta Blagovo had said not a single word to me all day. 

"A wonderful girl!" I thought "A wonderful girl. "

Lent came and every day we had Lenten dishes. I was greatly depressed bymy idleness and the uncertainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry, dissatisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate and only waited foran energetic mood to leave the place. 

Once in the afternoon when Radish was sitting in our wing, Dolyhikoventered unexpectedly, very sunburnt, and grey with dust. He had been outon the line for three days and had come to Dubechnia on a locomotive andwalked over. While he waited for the carriage which he had ordered tocome out to meet him he went over the estate with his bailiff, givingorders in a loud voice, and then for a whole hour he sat in our wing andwrote letters. When telegrams came through for him, he himself tappedout the answers, while we stood there stiff and silent. 

"What a mess!" he said, looking angrily through the accounts. "I shalltransfer the office to the station in a fortnight and I don't know whatI shall do with you then. "

"I've done my best, sir, " said Cheprakov. 

"Quite so. I can see what your best is. You can only draw your wages. "The engineer looked at me and went on. "You rely on gettingintroductions to make a career for yourself with as little trouble aspossible. Well, I don't care about introductions. Nobody helped me. Before I had this line, I was an engine-driver. I worked in Belgium asan ordinary lubricator. And what are you doing here, Panteley?" heasked, turning to Radish. "Going out drinking?"

For some reason or other he called all simple people Panteley, while hedespised men like Cheprakov and myself, and called us drunkards, beasts, canaille. As a rule he was hard on petty officials, and paid anddismissed them ruthlessly without any explanation. 

At last the carriage came for him. When he left he promised to dismissus all in a fortnight; called the bailiff a fool, stretched himself outcomfortably in the carriage, and drove away. 

"Andrey Ivanich, " I said to Radish, "will you take me on as a labourer?"

"What! Why?"

We went together toward the town, and when the station and the farm werefar behind us, I asked:

"Andrey Ivanich, why did you come to Dubechnia?"

"Firstly because some of my men are working on the line, and secondly topay interest to Mrs. Cheprakov. I borrowed fifty roubles from her lastsummer, and now I pay her one rouble a month. "

The decorator stopped and took hold of my coat. 

"Misail Alereich, my friend, " he went on, "I take it that if a commonman or a gentleman takes interest, he is a wrong-doer. The truth is notin him. "

Radish, looking thin, pale, and rather terrible, shut his eyes, shookhis head, and muttered in a philosophic tone:

"The grub eats grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the soul. God save usmiserable sinners!"

V

Radish was unpractical and he was no business man; he undertook morework than he could do, and when he came to payment he always lost hisreckoning and so was always out on the wrong side. He was a painter, aglazier, a paper-hanger, and would even take on tiling, and I rememberhow he used to run about for days looking for tiles to make aninsignificant profit. He was an excellent workman and would sometimesearn ten roubles a day, and but for his desire to be a master and tocall himself a contractor, he would probably have made quite a lot ofmoney. 

He himself was paid by contract and paid me and the others by the day, between seventy-five copecks and a rouble per day. When the weather washot and dry he did various outside jobs, chiefly painting roofs. Notbeing used to it, my feet got hot, as though I were walking over ared-hot oven, and when I wore felt boots my feet swelled. But this wasonly at the beginning. Later on I got used to it and everything went allright. I lived among the people, to whom work was obligatory andunavoidable, people who worked like dray-horses, and knew nothing of themoral value of labour, and never even used the word "labour" in theirtalk. Among them I also felt like a dray-horse, more and more imbuedwith the necessity and inevitability of what I was doing, and this mademy life easier, and saved me from doubt. 

At first everything amused me, everything was new. It was like beingborn again. I could sleep on the ground and go barefoot--and found itexceedingly pleasant. I could stand in a crowd of simple folks, withoutembarrassing them, and when a cab-horse fell down in the street, I usedto run and help it up without being afraid of soiling my clothes. But, best of all, I was living independently and was not a burden on any one. 

The painting of roofs, especially when we mixed our own paint, wasconsidered a very profitable business, and, therefore, even such goodworkmen as Radish did not shun this rough and tiresome work. In shorttrousers, showing his lean, muscular legs, he used to prowl over theroof like a stork, and I used to hear him sigh wearily as he worked hisbrush:

"Woe, woe to us, miserable sinners!"

He could walk as easily on a roof as on the ground. In spite of hislooking so ill and pale and corpse-like, his agility was extraordinary;like any young man he would paint the cupola and the top of the churchwithout scaffolding, using only ladders and a rope, and it was queer andstrange when, standing there, far above the ground, he would rise to hisfull height and cry to the world at large:

"Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the soul!"

Or, thinking of something, he would suddenly answer his own thought:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

When I went home from work all the people sitting outside their doors, the shop assistants, dogs, and their masters, used to shout after me andjeer spitefully, and at first it seemed monstrous and distressed megreatly. 

"Little Profit, " they used to shout. "House-painter! Yellow ochre!"

And no one treated me so unmercifully as those who had only just risenabove the people and had quite recently had to work for their living. Once in the market-place as I passed the ironmonger's a can of water wasspilled over me as if by accident, and once a stick was thrown at me. And once a fishmonger, a grey-haired old man, stood in my way and lookedat me morosely and said:

"It isn't you I'm sorry for, you fool, it's your father. "

And when my acquaintances met me they got confused. Some regarded me asa queer fish and a fool, and they were sorry for me; others did not knowhow to treat me and it was difficult to understand them. Once, in thedaytime, in one of the streets off Great Gentry Street, I met AniutaBlagovo. I was on my way to my work and was carrying two long brushesand a pot of paint. When she recognised me, Aniuta blushed. 

"Please do not acknowledge me in the street, " she said nervously, sternly, in a trembling voice, without offering to shake hands with me, and tears suddenly gleamed in her eyes. "If you must be like this, then, so--so be it, but please avoid me in public!"

I had left Great Gentry Street and was living in a suburb calledMakarikha with my nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old womanwho was always looking for evil, and was frightened by her dreams, andsaw omens and ill in the bees and wasps which flew into her room. And inher opinion my having become a working man boded no good. 

"You are lost!" she said mournfully, shaking her head. "Lost!"

With her in her little house lived her adopted son, Prokofyi, a butcher, a huge, clumsy fellow, of about thirty, with ginger hair and scrubbymoustache. When he met me in the hall, he would silently andrespectfully make way for me, and when he was drunk he would salute mewith his whole hand. In the evenings he used to have supper, andthrough the wooden partition I could hear him snorting and snuffling ashe drank glass after glass. 

"Mother, " he would say in an undertone. 

"Well, " Karpovna would reply. She was passionately fond of him. "What isit, my son?"

"I'll do you a favour, mother. I'll feed you in your old age in thisvale of tears, and when you die I'll bury you at my own expense. So Isay and so I'll do. "

I used to get up every day before sunrise and go to bed early. Wepainters ate heavily and slept soundly, and only during the night wouldwe have any excitement. I never quarrelled with my comrades. All daylong there was a ceaseless stream of abuse, cursing and hearty goodwishes, as, for instance, that one's eyes should burst, or that onemight be carried off by cholera, but, all the same, among ourselves wewere very friendly. The men suspected me of being a religious crank andused to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own fatherdenounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to churchand that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, andthey justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among menlike a jackdaw among birds. 

My mates respected me and regarded me with esteem; they evidently likedmy not drinking or smoking, and leading a quiet, steady life. They wereonly rather disagreeably surprised at my not stealing the oil, or goingwith them to ask our employers for a drink. The stealing of theemployers' oil and paint was a custom with house-painters, and was notregarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so honest a man asRadish would always come away from work with some white lead and oil. And even respectable old men who had their own houses in Makarikha werenot ashamed to ask for tips, and when the men, at the beginning or endof a job, made up to some vulgar fool and thanked him humbly for a fewpence, I used to feel sick and sorry. 

With the customers they behaved like sly courtiers, and almost every dayI was reminded of Shakespeare's Polonius. 

"There will probably be rain, " a customer would say, staring at the sky. 

"It is sure to rain, " the painters would agree. 

"But the clouds aren't rain-clouds. Perhaps it won't rain. "

"No, sir. It won't rain. It won't rain, sure. "

Behind their backs they generally regarded the customers ironically, andwhen, for instance, they saw a gentleman sitting on his balcony with anewspaper, they would say:

"He reads newspapers, but he has nothing to eat. "

I never visited my people. When I returned from work I often foundshort, disturbing notes from my sister about my father; how he was veryabsent-minded at dinner, and then slipped away and locked himself in hisstudy and did not come out for a long time. Such news upset me. I couldnot sleep, and I would go sometimes at night and walk along GreatGentry Street by our house, and look up at the dark windows, and try toguess if all was well within. On Sundays my sister would come to see me, but by stealth, as though she came not to see me, but my nurse. And ifshe came into my room she would look pale, with her eyes red, and atonce she would begin to weep. 

"Father cannot bear it much longer, " she would say. "If, as God forbid, something were to happen to him, it would be on your conscience all yourlife. It is awful, Misail! For mother's sake I implore you to mend yourways. "

"My dear sister, " I replied. "How can I reform when I am convinced thatI am acting according to my conscience? Do try to understand me!"

"I know you are obeying your conscience, but it ought to be possible todo so without hurting anybody. "

"Oh, saints above!" the old woman would sigh behind the door. "You arelost. There will be a misfortune, my dear. It is bound to come. "

VI

On Sunday, Doctor Blagovo came to see me unexpectedly. He was wearing awhite summer uniform over a silk shirt, and high glacé boots. 

"I came to see you!" he began, gripping my hand in his hearty, undergraduate fashion. "I hear of you every day and I have long intendedto go and see you to have a heart-to-heart, as they say. Things areawfully boring in the town; there is not a living soul worth talking to. How hot it is, by Jove!" he went on, taking off his tunic and standingin his silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let us have a talk. "

I was feeling bored and longing for other society than that of thedecorators. I was really glad to see him. 

"To begin with, " he said, sitting on my bed, "I sympathise with youheartily, and I have a profound respect for your present way of living. In the town you are misunderstood and there is nobody to understand you, because, as you know, it is full of Gogolian pig-faces. But I guessedwhat you were at the picnic. You are a noble soul, an honest, high-minded man! I respect you and think it an honour to shake handswith you. To change your life so abruptly and suddenly as you did, youmust have passed through a most trying spiritual process, and to go onwith it now, to live scrupulously by your convictions, you must have totoil incessantly both in mind and in heart. Now, please tell me, don'tyou think that if you spent all this force of will, intensity, and poweron something else, like trying to be a great scholar or an artist, thatyour life would be both wider and deeper, and altogether moreproductive?"

We talked and when we came to speak of physical labour, I expressed thisidea: that it was necessary that the strong should not enslave the weak, and that the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, alwayssucking up the finest sap, _i. E. _, it was necessary that all withoutexception--the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor--should shareequally in the struggle for existence, every man for himself, and inthat respect there was no better means of levelling than physical labourand compulsory service for all. 

"You think, then, " said the doctor, "that all, without, exception, should be employed in physical labour?"

"Yes. "

"But don't you think that if everybody, including the best people, thinkers and men of science, were to take part in the struggle forexistence, each man for himself, and took to breaking stones andpainting roofs, it would be a serious menace to progress?"

"Where is the danger?" I asked. "Progress consists in deeds of love, inthe fulfilment of the moral law. If you enslave no one, and are a burdenupon no one, what further progress do you want?"

"But look here!" said Blagovo, suddenly losing his temper and gettingup. "I say! If a snail in its shell is engaged in self-perfection inobedience to the moral law--would you call that progress?"

"But why?" I was nettled. "If you make your neighbours feed you, clotheyou, carry you, defend you from your enemies, their life is built up onslavery, and that is not progress. My view is that that is the most realand, perhaps, the only possible, the only progress necessary. "

"The limits of universal progress, which is common to all men, are ininfinity, and it seems to me strange to talk of a 'possible' progresslimited by our needs and temporal conceptions. "

"If the limits of peoples are in infinity, as you say, then it meansthat its goal is indefinite, " I said. "Think of living without knowingdefinitely what for!"

"Why not? Your 'not knowing' is not so boring as your 'knowing. ' I amwalking up a ladder which is called progress, civilisation, culture. Igo on and on, not knowing definitely where I am going to, but surely itis worth while living for the sake of the wonderful ladder alone. Andyou know exactly what you are living for--that some should not enslaveothers, that the artist and the man who mixes his colours for him shoulddine together. But that is the bourgeois, kitchen side of life, andisn't it disgusting only to live for that? If some insects devourothers, devil take them, let them! We need not think of them, they willperish and rot, however you save them from slavery--we must think ofthat great Cross which awaits all mankind in the distant future. "

Blagovo argued hotly with me, but it was noticeable that he wasdisturbed by some outside thought. 

"Your sister is not coming, " he said, consulting his watch. "Yesterdayshe was at our house and said she was going to see you. You go ontalking about slavery, slavery, " he went on, "but it is a specialquestion, and all these questions are solved by mankind gradually. "

We began to talk of evolution. I said that every man decides thequestion of good and evil for himself, and does not wait for mankind tosolve the question by virtue of gradual development. Besides, evolutionis a stick with two ends. Side by side with the gradual development ofhumanitarian ideas, there is the gradual growth of ideas of a differentkind. Serfdom is past, and capitalism is growing. And with ideas ofliberation at their height the majority, just as in the days of Baty, feeds, clothes, and defends the minority; and is left hungry, naked, anddefenceless. The state of things harmonises beautifully with all yourtendencies and movements, because the art of enslaving is also beinggradually developed. We no longer flog our servants in the stables, butwe give slavery more refined forms; at any rate, we are able to justifyit in each separate case. Ideas remain ideas with us, but if we could, now, at the end of the nineteenth century, throw upon the workingclasses all our most unpleasant physiological functions, we should doso, and, of course, we should justify ourselves by saying that if thebest people, thinkers and great scholars, had to waste their time onsuch functions, progress would be in serious jeopardy. 

Just then my sister entered. When she saw the doctor, she was flurriedand excited, and at once began to say that it was time for her to gohome to her father. 

"Cleopatra Alexeyevna, " said Blagovo earnestly, laying his hands on hisheart, "what will happen to your father if you spend half an hour withyour brother and me?"

He was a simple kind of man and could communicate his cheerfulness toothers. My sister thought for a minute and began to laugh, and suddenlygot very happy, suddenly, unexpectedly, just as she did at the picnic. We went out into the fields and lay on the grass, and went on with ourconversation and looked at the town, where all the windows facing thewest looked golden in the setting sun. 

After that Blagovo appeared every time my sister came to see me, andthey always greeted each other as though their meeting was unexpected. My sister used to listen while the doctor and I argued, and her face wasalways joyful and rapturous, admiring and curious, and it seemed to methat a new world was slowly being discovered before her eyes, a worldwhich she had not seen before even in her dreams, which now she wastrying to divine; when the doctor was not there she was quiet and sad, and if, as she sat on my bed, she sometimes wept, it was for reasons ofwhich she did not speak. 

In August Radish gave us orders to go to the railway. A couple of daysbefore we were "driven" out of town, my father came to see me. He satdown and, without looking at me, slowly wiped his red face, then tookout of his pocket our local paper and read out with deliberate emphasison each word that a schoolfellow of my own age, the son of the directorof the State Bank, had been appointed chief clerk of the Court of theExchequer. 

"And now, look at yourself, " he said, folding up the newspaper. "You area beggar, a vagabond, a scoundrel! Even the bourgeoisie and otherpeasants get education to make themselves decent people, while you, aPologniev, with famous, noble ancestors, go wallowing in the mire! But Idid not come here to talk to you. I have given you up already. " He wenton in a choking voice, as he stood up: "I came here to find out whereyour sister is, you scoundrel! She left me after dinner. It is now pastseven o'clock and she is not in. She has been going out lately withouttelling me, and she has been disrespectful--and I see your filthy, abominable influence at work. Where is she?"

He had in his hands the familiar umbrella, and I was already takenaback, and I stood stiff and erect, like a schoolboy, waiting for myfather to thrash me, but he saw the glance I cast at the umbrella andthis probably checked him. 

"Live as you like!" he said. "My blessing is gone from you. "

"Good God!" muttered my old nurse behind the door. "You are lost. Oh! myheart feels some misfortune coming. I can feel it. "

I went to work on the railway. During the whole of August there was windand rain. It was damp and cold; the corn had now been gathered in thefields, and on the big farms where the reaping was done with machines, the wheat lay not in stacks, but in heaps; and I remember how thosemelancholy heaps grew darker and darker every day, and the grainsprouted. It was hard work; the pouring rain spoiled everything that wesucceeded in finishing. We were not allowed either to live or to sleepin the station buildings and had to take shelter in dirty, damp, mudhuts where the "railies" had lived during the summer, and at night Icould not sleep from the cold and the bugs crawling over my face andhands. And when we were working near the bridges, then the "railies"used to come out in a crowd to fight the painters--which they regardedas sport. They used to thrash us, steal our trousers, and to infuriateus and provoke us to a fight; they used to spoil our work, as when theysmeared the signal-boxes with green paint. To add to all our miseriesRadish began to pay us very irregularly. All the painting on the linewas given to one contractor, who subcontracted with another, and heagain with Radish, stipulating for twenty per cent commission. The jobitself was unprofitable; then came the rains; time was wasted; we did nowork and Radish had to pay his men every day. The starving paintersnearly came to blows with him, called him a swindler, a bloodsucker, aJudas, and he, poor man, sighed and in despair raised his hands to theheavens and was continually going to Mrs. Cheprakov to borrow money. 

VII

Came the rainy, muddy, dark autumn, bringing a slack time, and I used tosit at home three days in the week without work, or did various jobsoutside painting; such as digging earth for ballast for twenty copecksa day. Doctor Blagovo had gone to Petersburg. My sister did not come tosee me. Radish lay at home ill, expecting to die every day. 

And my mood was also autumnal; perhaps because when I became a workingman I saw only the seamy side of the life of our town, and every daymade fresh discoveries which brought me to despair. My fellow townsmen, both those of whom I had had a low opinion before, and those whom I hadthought fairly decent, now seemed to me base, cruel, and up to any dirtytrick. We poor people were tricked and cheated in the accounts, keptwaiting for hours in cold passages or in the kitchen, and we wereinsulted and uncivilly treated. In the autumn I had to paper the libraryand two rooms at the club. I was paid seven copecks a piece, but wastold to give a receipt for twelve copecks, and when I refused to do it, a respectable gentleman in gold spectacles, one of the stewards of theclub, said to me:

"If you say another word, you scoundrel, I'll knock you down. "

And when a servant whispered to him that I was the son of Pologniev, thearchitect, then I got flustered and blushed, but he recovered himself atonce and said:

"Damn him. "

In the shops we working men were sold bad meat, musty flour, and coarsetea. In church we were jostled by the police, and in the hospitals wewere mulcted by the assistants and nurses, and if we could not give thembribes through poverty, we were given food in dirty dishes. In thepost-office the lowest official considered it his duty to treat us asanimals and to shout rudely and insolently: "Wait! Don't you comepushing your way in here!" Even the dogs, even they were hostile to usand hurled themselves at us with a peculiar malignancy. But what struckme most of all in my new position was the entire lack of justice, whatthe people call "forgetting God. " Rarely a day went by without someswindle. The shopkeeper, who sold us oil, the contractor, the workmen, the customers themselves, all cheated. It was an understood thing thatour rights were never considered, and we always had to pay for the moneywe had earned, going with our hats off to the back door. 

I was paper-hanging in one of the club-rooms, next the library, when, one evening as I was on the point of leaving, Dolyhikov's daughter cameinto the room carrying a bundle of books. 

I bowed to her. 

"Ah! How are you?" she said, recognising me at once and holding out herhand. "I am very glad to see you. "

She smiled and looked with a curious puzzled expression at my blouse andthe pail of paste and the papers lying on the floor; I was embarrassedand she also felt awkward. 

"Excuse my staring at you, " she said. "I have heard so much about you. Especially from Doctor Blagovo. He is enthusiastic about you. I have metyour sister; she is a dear, sympathetic girl, but I could not make hersee that there is nothing awful in your simple life. On the contrary, you are the most interesting man in the town. "

Once more she glanced at the pail of paste and the paper and said:

"I asked Doctor Blagovo to bring us together, but he either forgot orhad no time. However, we have met now. I should be very pleased if youwould call on me. I do so want to have a talk. I am a simple person, "she said, holding out her hand, "and I hope you will come and see mewithout ceremony. My father is away, in Petersburg. "

She went into the reading-room, with her dress rustling, and for a longtime after I got home I could not sleep. 

During that autumn some kind soul, wishing to relieve my existence, sentme from time to time presents of tea and lemons, or biscuits, or roastpigeons. Karpovna said the presents were brought by a soldier, thoughfrom whom she did not know; and the soldier used to ask if I was well, if I had dinner every day, and if I had warm clothes. When the frostbegan the soldier came while I was out and brought a soft knitted scarf, which gave out a soft, hardly perceptible scent, and I guessed who mygood fairy had been. For the scarf smelled of lily-of-the-valley, AniutaBlagovo's favourite scent. 

Toward winter there was more work and things became more cheerful. Radish came to life again and we worked together in the cemetery church, where we scraped the holy shrine for gilding. It was a clean, quiet, and, as our mates said, a specially good job. We could do a great dealin one day, and so time passed quickly, imperceptibly. There was noswearing, nor laughing, nor loud altercations. The place compelled quietand decency, and disposed one for tranquil, serious thoughts. Absorbedin our work, we stood or sat immovably, like statues; there was a deadsilence, very proper to a cemetery, so that if a tool fell down, or theoil in the lamp spluttered, the sound would be loud and startling, andwe would turn to see what it was. After a long silence one could hear ahumming like that of a swarm of bees; in the porch, in an undertone, thefuneral service was being read over a dead baby; or a painter painting amoon surrounded with stars on the cupola would begin to whistle quietly, and remembering suddenly that he was in a church, would stop; or Radishwould sigh at his own thoughts: "Anything may happen! Anything mayhappen!" or above our heads there would be the slow, mournful tolling ofa bell, and the painters would say it must be a rich man being broughtto the church. . . . 

The days I spent in the peace of the little church, and during theevenings I played billiards, or went to the gallery of the theatre inthe new serge suit I had bought with my own hard-earned money. They werealready beginning plays and concerts at the Azhoguins', and Radish didthe scenery by himself. He told me about the plays and tableaux vivantsat the Azhoguins', and I listened to him enviously. I had a greatlonging to take part in the rehearsals, but I dared not go to theAzhoguins'. 

A week before Christmas Doctor Blagovo arrived, and we resumed ourarguments and played billiards in the evenings. When he played billiardshe used to take off his coat, and unfasten his shirt at the neck, andgenerally try to look like a debauchee. He drank a little, but rowdily, and managed to spend in a cheap tavern like the Volga as much as twentyroubles in an evening. 

Once more my sister came to see me, and when they met they expressedsurprise, but I could see by her happy, guilty face that these meetingswere not accidental. One evening when we were playing billiards thedoctor said to me:

"I say, why don't you call on Miss Dolyhikov? You don't know MariaVictorovna. She is a clever, charming, simple creature. "

I told him how the engineer had received me in the spring. 

"Nonsense!" laughed the doctor. "The engineer is one thing and she isanother. Really, my good fellow, you mustn't offend her. Go and see hersome time. Let us go to-morrow evening. Will you?"

He persuaded me. Next evening I donned my serge suit and with someperturbation set out to call on Miss Dolyhikov. The footman did not seemto me so haughty and formidable, or the furniture so oppressive, as onthe morning when I had come to ask for work. Maria Victorovna wasexpecting me and greeted me as an old friend and gave my hand a warm, friendly grip. She was wearing a grey dress with wide sleeves, and hadher hair done in the style which when it became the fashion a year laterin our town, was called "dog's ears. " The hair was combed back over theears, and it made Maria Victorovna's face look broader, and she lookedvery like her father, whose face was broad and red and rather like acoachman's. She was handsome and elegant, but not young; about thirty tojudge by her appearance, though she was not more than twenty-five. 

"Dear doctor!" she said, making me sit down. "How grateful I am to him. But for him, you would not have come. I am bored to death! My father hasgone and left me alone, and I do not know what to do with myself. "

Then she began to ask where I was working, how much I got, and where Ilived. 

"Do you only spend what you earn on yourself?" she asked. 

"Yes. "

"You are a happy man, " she replied. "All the evil in life, it seems tome, comes from boredom and idleness, and spiritual emptiness, which areinevitable when one lives at other people's expense. Don't think I'mshowing off. I mean it sincerely. It is dull and unpleasant to be rich. Win friends by just riches, they say, because as a rule there is and canbe no such thing as just riches. "

She looked at the furniture with a serious, cold expression, as thoughshe was making an inventory of it, and went on:

"Ease and comfort possess a magic power. Little by little they seduceeven strong-willed people. Father and I used to live poorly and simply, and now you see how we live. Isn't it strange?" she said with a shrug. "We spend twenty thousand roubles a year! In the provinces!"

"Ease and comfort must not be regarded as the inevitable privilege ofcapital and education, " I said. "It seems to me possible to unite thecomforts of life with work, however hard and dirty it may be. Yourfather is rich, but, as he says, he used to be a mechanic, and just alubricator. "

She smiled and shook her head thoughtfully. 

"Papa sometimes eats _tiurya_, " she said, "but only out of caprice. "

A bell rang and she got up. 

"The rich and the educated ought to work like the rest, " she went on, "and if there is to be any comfort, it should be accessible to all. There should be no privileges. However, that's enough philosophy. Tellme something cheerful. Tell me about the painters. What are they like?Funny?"

The doctor came. I began to talk about the painters, but, being unusedto it, I felt awkward and talked solemnly and ponderously like anethnographist. The doctor also told a few stories about working people. He rocked to and fro and cried, and fell on his knees, and when he wasdepicting a drunkard, lay flat on the floor. It was as good as a play, and Maria Victorovna laughed until she cried. Then he played the pianoand sang in his high-pitched tenor, and Maria Victorovna stood by himand told him what to sing and corrected him when he made a mistake. 

"I hear you sing, too, " said I. 

"Too?" cried the doctor. "She is a wonderful singer, an artist, and yousay--too! Careful, careful!"

"I used to study seriously, " she replied, "but I have given it up now. "

She sat on a low stool and told us about her life in Petersburg, andimitated famous singers, mimicking their voices and mannerisms; then shesketched the doctor and myself in her album, not very well, but bothwere good likenesses. She laughed and made jokes and funny faces, andthis suited her better than talking about unjust riches, and it seemedto me that what she had said about "riches and comfort" came not fromherself, but was just mimicry. She was an admirable comedian. I comparedher mentally with the girls of our town, and not even the beautiful, serious Aniuta Blagovo could stand up against her; the difference was asvast as that between a wild and a garden rose. 

We stayed to supper. The doctor and Maria Victorovna drank red wine, champagne, and coffee with cognac; they touched glasses and drank tofriendship, to wit, to progress, to freedom, and never got drunk, butwent rather red and laughed for no reason until they cried. To avoidbeing out of it I, too, drank red wine. 

"People with talent and with gifted natures, " said Miss Dolyhikov, "knowhow to live and go their own way; but ordinary people like myself knownothing and can do nothing by themselves; there is nothing for them butto find some deep social current and let themselves be borne along byit. "

"Is it possible to find that which does not exist?" asked the doctor. 

"It doesn't exist because we don't see it. "

"Is that so? Social currents are the invention of modern literature. They don't exist here. "

A discussion began. 

"We have no profound social movements; nor have we had them, " said thedoctor. "Modern literature has invented a lot of things, and modernliterature invented intellectual working men in village life, but gothrough all our villages and you will only find Mr. Cheeky Snout in ajacket or black frock coat, who will make four mistakes in the word'one. ' Civilised life has not begun with us yet. We have the samesavagery, the same slavery, the same nullity as we had five hundredyears ago. Movements, currents--all that is so wretched and puerilemixed up with such vulgar, catch-penny interests--and one cannot take itseriously. You may think you have discovered a large social movement, and you may follow it and devote your life in the modern fashion to suchproblems as the liberation of vermin from slavery, or the abolition ofmeat cutlets--and I congratulate you, madam. But we have to learn, learn, learn, and there will be plenty of time for social movements; weare not up to them yet, and upon my soul, we don't understand anythingat all about them. "

"You don't understand, but I do, " said Maria Victorovna. "Good Heavens!What a bore you are to-night. "

"It is our business to learn and learn, to try and accumulate as muchknowledge as possible, because serious social movements come where thereis knowledge, and the future happiness of mankind lies in science. Here's to science!"

"One thing is certain. Life must somehow be arranged differently, " saidMaria Victorovna, after some silence and deep thought, "and life as ithas been up to now is worthless. Don't let us talk about it. "

When we left her the Cathedral clock struck two. 

"Did you like her?" asked the doctor. "Isn't she a dear girl?"

We had dinner at Maria Victorovna's on Christmas Day, and then we wentto see her every day during the holidays. There was nobody besidesourselves, and she was right when she said she had no friends in thetown but the doctor and me. We spent most of the time talking, andsometimes the doctor would bring a book or a magazine and read aloud. After all, he was the first cultivated man I had met. I could not tellif he knew much, but he was always generous with his knowledge becausehe wished others to know too. When he talked about medicine, he was notlike any of our local doctors, but he made a new and singularimpression, and it seemed to me that if he had wished he could havebecome a genuine scientist. And perhaps he was the only person at thattime who had any real influence over me. Meeting him and reading thebooks he gave me, I began gradually to feel a need for knowledge toinspire the tedium of my work. It seemed strange to me that I had notknown before such things as that the whole world consisted of sixtyelements. I did not know what oil or paint was, and I could do withoutknowing. My acquaintance with the doctor raised me morally too. I usedto argue with him, and though I usually stuck to my opinion, yet, through him, I came gradually to perceive that everything was not clearto me, and I tried to cultivate convictions as definite as possible sothat the promptings of my conscience should be precise and have nothingvague about them. Nevertheless, educated and fine as he was, far andaway the best man in the town, he was by no means perfect. There wassomething rather rude and priggish in his ways and in his trick ofdragging talk down to discussion, and when he took off his coat and satin his shirt and gave the footman a tip, it always seemed to me thatculture was just a part of him, with the rest untamed Tartar. 

After the holidays he left once more for Petersburg. He went in themorning and after dinner my sister came to see me. Without taking offher furs, she sat silent, very pale, staring in front of her. She beganto shiver and seemed to be fighting against some illness. 

"You must have caught a cold, " I said. 

Her eyes filled with tears. She rose and went to Karpovna without aword to me, as though I had offended her. And a little later I heard herspeaking in a tone of bitter reproach. 

"Nurse, what have I been living for, up to now? What for? Tell me;haven't I wasted my youth? During the last years I have had nothing butmaking up accounts, pouring out tea, counting the copecks, entertainingguests, without a thought that there was anything better in the world!Nurse, try to understand me, I too have human desires and I want to liveand they have made a housekeeper of me. It is awful, awful!"

She flung her keys against the door and they fell with a clatter in myroom. They were the keys of the side-board, the larder, the cellar, andthe tea-chest--the keys my mother used to carry. 

"Oh! Oh! Saints above!" cried my old nurse in terror. "The blessedsaints!"

When she left, my sister came into my room for her keys and said:

"Forgive me. Something strange has been going on in me lately. "

VIII

One evening when I came home late from Maria Victorovna's I found ayoung policeman in a new uniform in my room; he was sitting by the tablereading. 

"At last!" he said getting up and stretching himself. "This is the thirdtime I have been to see you. The governor has ordered you to go and seehim to-morrow at nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late. "

He made me give him a written promise to comply with his Excellency'sorders and went away. This policeman's visit and the unexpectedinvitation to see the governor had a most depressing effect on me. Frommy early childhood I have had a dread of gendarmes, police, legalofficials, and I was tormented with anxiety as though I had reallycommitted a crime and I could not sleep. Nurse and Prokofyi were alsoupset and could not sleep. And, to make things worse, nurse had anearache, and moaned and more than once screamed out. Hearing that Icould not sleep Prokofyi came quietly into my room with a little lampand sat by the table. 

"You should have a drop of pepper-brandy. . . . " he said after somethought. "In this vale of tears things go on all right when you take adrop. And if mother had some pepper-brandy poured into her ear shewould be much better. "

About three he got ready to go to the slaughter-house to fetch somemeat. I knew I should not sleep until morning, and to use up the timeuntil nine, I went with him. We walked with a lantern, and his boy, Nicolka, who was about thirteen, and had blue spots on his face and anexpression like a murderer's, drove behind us in a sledge, urging thehorse on with hoarse cries. 

"You will probably be punished at the governor's, " said Prokofyi as wewalked. "There is a governor's rank, and an archimandrite's rank, and anofficer's rank, and a doctor's rank, and every profession has its ownrank. You don't keep to yours and they won't allow it. "

The slaughter-house stood behind the cemetery, and till then I had onlyseen it at a distance. It consisted of three dark sheds surrounded by agrey fence, from which, when the wind was in that direction in summer, there came an overpowering stench. Now, as I entered the yard, I couldnot see the sheds in the darkness; I groped through horses and sledges, both empty and laden with meat; and there were men walking about withlanterns and swearing disgustingly. Prokofyi and Nicolka swore asfilthily and there was a continuous hum from the swearing and coughingand the neighing of the horses. 

The place smelled of corpses and offal, the snow was thawing and alreadymixed with mud, and in the darkness it seemed to me that I was walkingthrough a pool of blood. 

When we had filled the sledge with meat, we went to the butcher's shopin the market-place. Day was beginning to dawn. One after another thecooks came with baskets and old women in mantles. With an axe in hishand, wearing a white, blood-stained apron, Prokofyi swore terrificallyand crossed himself, turning toward the church, and shouted so loud thathe could be heard all over the market, avowing that he sold his meat atcost price and even at a loss. He cheated in weighing and reckoning, thecooks saw it, but, dazed by his shouting, they did not protest, but onlycalled him a gallows-bird. 

Raising and dropping his formidable axe, he assumed picturesqueattitudes and constantly uttered the sound "Hak!" with a furiousexpression, and I was really afraid of his cutting off some one's heador hand. 

I stayed in the butcher's shop the whole morning, and when at last Iwent to the governor's my fur coat smelled of meat and blood. My stateof mind would have been appropriate for an encounter with a bear armedwith no more than a staff. I remember a long staircase with a stripedcarpet, and a young official in a frock coat with shining buttons, whosilently indicated the door with both hands and went in to announce me. I entered the hall, where the furniture was most luxurious, but cold andtasteless, forming a most unpleasant impression--the tall, narrowpier-glasses, and the bright, yellow hangings over the windows; onecould see that, though governors changed, the furniture remained thesame. The young official again pointed with both hands to the door andwent toward a large, green table, by which stood a general with theOrder of Vladimir at his neck. 

"Mr. Pologniev, " he began, holding a letter in his hand and opening hismouth wide so that it made a round O. "I asked you to come to say thisto you: 'Your esteemed father has applied verbally and in writing to theprovincial marshal of nobility, to have you summoned and made to see theincongruity of your conduct with the title of nobleman which you havethe honour to bear. His Excellency Alexander Pavlovich, justly thinkingthat your conduct may be subversive, and finding that persuasion may notbe sufficient, without serious intervention on the part of theauthorities, has given me his decision as to your case, and I agree withhim. '"

He said this quietly, respectfully, standing erect as if I was hissuperior, and his expression was not at all severe. He had a flabby, tired face, covered with wrinkles, with pouches under his eyes; his hairwas dyed, and it was hard to guess his age from his appearance--fifty orsixty. 

"I hope, " he went on, "that you will appreciate Alexander Pavlovich'sdelicacy in applying to me, not officially, but privately. I haveinvited you unofficially not as a governor, but as a sincere admirer ofyour father's. And I ask you to change your conduct and to return to theduties proper to your rank, or, to avoid the evil effects of yourexample, to go to some other place where you are not known and where youmay do what you like. Otherwise I shall have to resort to extrememeasures. "

For half a minute he stood in silence staring at me open-mouthed. 

"Are you a vegetarian?" he asked. 

"No, your Excellency, I eat meat. "

He sat down and took up a document, and I bowed and left. 

It was not worth while going to work before dinner. I went home andtried to sleep, but could not because of the unpleasant, sickly feelingfrom the slaughter-house and my conversation with the governor. And so Idragged through till the evening and then, feeling gloomy and out ofsorts, I went to see Maria Victorovna. I told her about my visit to thegovernor and she looked at me in bewilderment, as if she did not believeme, and suddenly she began to laugh merrily, heartily, stridently, asonly good-natured, light-hearted people can. 

"If I were to tell this in Petersburg!" she cried, nearly dropping withlaughter, bending over the table. "If I could tell them in Petersburg!"

IX

Now we saw each other often, sometimes twice a day. Almost every day, after dinner, she drove up to the cemetery and, as she waited for me, read the inscriptions on the crosses and monuments. Sometimes she cameinto the church and stood by my side and watched me working. Thesilence, the simple industry of the painters and gilders, Radish's goodsense, and the fact that outwardly I was no different from the otherartisans and worked as they did, in a waistcoat and old shoes, and thatthey addressed me familiarly--were new to her, and she was moved by itall. Once in her presence a painter who was working, at a door on theroof, called down to me:

"Misail, fetch me the white lead. "

I fetched him the white lead and as I came down the scaffolding she wasmoved to tears and looked at me and smiled:

"What a dear you are!" she said. 

I have always remembered how when I was a child a green parrot got outof its cage in one of the rich people's houses and wandered about thetown for a whole month, flying from one garden to another, homeless andlonely. And Maria Victorovna reminded me of the bird. 

"Except to the cemetery, " she said with a laugh, "I have absolutelynowhere to go. The town bores me to tears. People read, sing, andtwitter at the Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your sister isshy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me. I don't like the theatre. What can I do with myself?"

When I was at her house I smelled of paint and turpentine, and my handswere stained. She liked that. She wanted me to come to her in myordinary working-clothes; but I felt awkward in them in herdrawing-room, and as if I were in uniform, and so I always wore my newserge suit. She did not like that. 

"You must confess, " she said once, "that you have not got used to yournew rôle. A working-man's suit makes you feel awkward and embarrassed. Tell me, isn't it because you are not sure of yourself and areunsatisfied? Does this work you have chosen, this painting of yours, really satisfy you?" she asked merrily. "I know paint makes things looknicer and wear better, but the things themselves belong to the rich andafter all they are a luxury. Besides you have said more than once thateverybody should earn his living with his own hands and you earn money, not bread. Why don't you keep to the exact meaning of what you say? Youmust earn bread, real bread, you must plough, sow, reap, thrash, or dosomething which has to do directly with agriculture, such as keepingcows, digging, or building houses. . . . "

She opened a handsome bookcase which stood by the writing-table andsaid:

"I'm telling you all this because I'm going to let you into my secret. Voilà. This is my agricultural library. Here are books on arable land, vegetable-gardens, orchard-keeping, cattle-keeping, bee-keeping: I readthem eagerly and have studied the theory of everything thoroughly. It ismy dream to go to Dubechnia as soon as March begins. It is wonderfulthere, amazing; isn't it? The first year I shall only be learning thework and getting used to it, and in the second year I shall begin towork thoroughly, without sparing myself. My father promised to give meDubechnia as a present, and I am to do anything I like with it. "

She blushed and with mingled laughter and tears she dreamed aloud of herlife at Dubechnia and how absorbing it would be. And I envied her. Marchwould soon be here. The days were drawing out, and in the bright sunnyafternoons the snow dripped from the roofs, and the smell of spring wasin the air. I too longed for the country. 

And when she said she was going to live at Dubechnia, I saw at once thatI should be left alone in the town, and I felt jealous of the bookcasewith her books about farming. I knew and cared nothing about farming andI was on the point of telling her that agriculture was work for slaves, but I recollected that my father had once said something of the sortand I held my peace. 

Lent began. The engineer, Victor Ivanich, came home from Petersburg. Ihad begun to forget his existence. He came unexpectedly, not evensending a telegram. When I went there as usual in the evening, he waswalking up and down the drawing-room, after a bath, with his hair cut, looking ten years younger, and talking. His daughter was kneeling by histrunks and taking out boxes, bottles, books, and handing them to Pavelthe footman. When I saw the engineer, I involuntarily stepped back andhe held out both his hands and smiled and showed his strong, white, cab-driver's teeth. 

"Here he is! Here he is! I'm very pleased to see you, Mr. House-painter!Maria told me all about you and sang your praises. I quite understandyou and heartily approve. " He took me by the arm and went on: "It ismuch cleverer and more honest to be a decent workman than to spoil Statepaper and to wear a cockade. I myself worked with my hands in Belgium. Iwas an engine-driver for five years. . . . "

He was wearing a short jacket and comfortable slippers, and he shuffledalong like a gouty man waving and rubbing his hands; humming and buzzingand shrugging with pleasure at being at home again with his favouriteshower-bath. 

"There's no denying, " he said at supper, "there's no denying that youare kind, sympathetic people, but somehow as soon as you gentlefolk takeon manual labour or try to spare the peasants, you reduce it all tosectarianism. You are a sectarian. You don't drink vodka. What is thatbut sectarianism?"

To please him I drank vodka. I drank wine, too. We ate cheese, sausages, pastries, pickles, and all kinds of dainties that the engineer hadbrought with him, and we sampled wines sent from abroad during hisabsence. They were excellent. For some reason the engineer had wines andcigars sent from abroad--duty free; somebody sent him caviare and_baliki_ gratis; he did not pay rent for his house because his landlordsupplied the railway with kerosene, and generally he and his daughtergave me the impression of having all the best things in the world attheir service free of charge. 

I went on visiting them, but with less pleasure than before. Theengineer oppressed me and I felt cramped in his presence. I could notendure his clear, innocent eyes; his opinions bored me and wereoffensive to me, and I was distressed by the recollection that I had sorecently been subordinate to this ruddy, well-fed man, and that he hadbeen mercilessly rude to me. True he would put his arm round my waistand clap me kindly on the shoulder and approve of my way of living, butI felt that he despised my nullity just as much as before and onlysuffered me to please his daughter, but I could no longer laugh and talkeasily, and I thought myself ill-mannered, and all the time wasexpecting him to call me Panteley as he did his footman Pavel. How myprovincial, bourgeois pride rode up against him! I, a working man, apainter, going every day to the house of rich strangers, whom the wholetown regarded as foreigners, and drinking their expensive wines andoutlandish dishes! I could not reconcile this with my conscience. When Iwent to see them I sternly avoided those whom I met on the way, andlooked askance at them like a real sectarian, and when I left theengineer's house I was ashamed of feeling so well-fed. 

But chiefly I was afraid of falling in love. Whether walking in thestreet, or working, or talking to my mates, I thought all the time ofgoing to Maria Victorovna's in the evening, and always had her voice, her laughter, her movements with me. And always as I got ready to go toher, I would stand for a long time in front of the cracked mirror tyingmy necktie; my serge suit seemed horrible to me, and I suffered, but atthe same time, despised myself for feeling so small. When she called tome from another room to say that she was not dressed yet and to ask meto wait a bit, and I could hear her dressing, I was agitated and felt asthough the floor was sinking under me. And when I saw a woman in thestreet, even at a distance, I fell to comparing her figure with hers, and it seemed to me that all our women and girls were vulgar, absurdlydressed, and without manners; and such comparisons roused in me afeeling of pride; Maria Victorovna was better than all of them. And atnight I dreamed of her and myself. 

Once at supper the engineer and I ate a whole lobster. When I reachedhome I remember that the engineer had twice called me "my dear fellow, "and I thought that they treated me as they might have done a big, unhappy dog, separated from his master, and that they were amusingthemselves with me, and that they would order me away like a dog whenthey were bored with me. I began to feel ashamed and hurt; went to thepoint of tears, as though I had been insulted, and, raising my eyes tothe heavens, I vowed to put an end to it all. 

Next day I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. Late at night, when it wasquite dark and pouring with rain, I walked up and down Great GentryStreet, looking at the windows. At the Azhoguins' everybody was asleepand the only light was in one of the top windows; old Mrs. Azhoguin wassitting in her room embroidering by candle-light and imagining herselfto be fighting against prejudice. It was dark in our house and opposite, at the Dolyhikovs' the windows were lit up, but it was impossible to seeanything through the flowers and curtains. I kept on walking up and downthe street; I was soaked through with the cold March rain. I heard myfather come home from the club; he knocked at the door; in a minute alight appeared at a window and I saw my sister walking quickly with herlamp and hurriedly arranging her thick hair. Then my father paced up anddown the drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, and my sister satstill in a corner, lost in thought, not listening to him. . . . 

But soon they left the room and the light was put out. . . . I looked atthe engineer's house and that too was now dark. In the darkness and therain I felt desperately lonely. Cast out at the mercy of Fate, and Ifelt how, compared with my loneliness, and my suffering, actual and tocome, all my work and all my desires and all that I had hitherto thoughtand read, were vain and futile. Alas! The activities and thoughts ofhuman beings are not nearly so important as their sorrows! And notknowing exactly what I was doing I pulled with all my might at the bellat the Dolyhikovs' gate, broke it, and ran away down the street like alittle boy, full of fear, thinking they would rush out at once andrecognise me. When I stopped to take breath at the end of the street, Icould hear nothing but the falling rain and far away a night-watchmanknocking on a sheet of iron. 

For a whole week I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. I sold my serge suit. I had no work and I was once more half-starved, earning ten or twentycopecks a day, when possible, by disagreeable work. Flounderingknee-deep in the mire, putting out all my strength, I tried to drown mymemories and to punish myself for all the cheeses and pickles to which Ihad been treated at the engineer's. Still, no sooner did I go to bed, wet and hungry, than my untamed imagination set to work to evolvewonderful, alluring pictures, and to my amazement I confessed that I wasin love, passionately in love, and I fell sound asleep feeling that thehard life had only made my body stronger and younger. 

One evening it began, most unseasonably, to snow, and the wind blew fromthe north, exactly as if winter had begun again. When I got home fromwork I found Maria Victorovna in my room. She was in her furs with herhands in her muff. 

"Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, looking at me with her brightsagacious eyes, and I was overcome with joy and stood stiffly in frontof her, just as I had done with my father when he was going to thrashme; she looked straight into my face and I could see by her eyes thatshe understood why I was overcome. 

"Why don't you come to see me?" she repeated. "You don't want to come? Ihad to come to you. "

She got up and came close to me. 

"Don't leave me, " she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I amlonely, utterly lonely. "

She began to cry and said, covering her face with her muff:

"Alone! Life is hard, very hard, and in the whole world I have no onebut you. Don't leave me!"

Looking for her handkerchief to dry her tears, she gave a smile; we weresilent for some time, then I embraced and kissed her, and the pin in herhat scratched my face and drew blood. 

And we began to talk as though we had been dear to each other for along, long time. 

X

In a couple of days she sent me to Dubechnia and I was beyond wordsdelighted with it. As I walked to the station, and as I sat in thetrain, I laughed for no reason and people thought me drunk. There weresnow and frost in the mornings still, but the roads were getting dark, and there were rooks cawing above them. 

At first I thought of arranging the side wing opposite Mrs. Cheprakov'sfor myself and Masha, but it appeared that doves and pigeons had takenup their abode there and it would be impossible to cleanse it withoutdestroying a great number of nests. We would have to live willy-nilly inthe uncomfortable rooms with Venetian blinds in the big house. Thepeasants called it a palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano and a child's chair, lying in theattic, and even if Masha brought all her furniture from town we shouldnot succeed in removing the impression of frigid emptiness and coldness. I chose three small rooms with windows looking on to the garden, andfrom early morning till late at night I was at work in them, glazing thewindows, hanging paper, blocking up the chinks and holes in the floor. It was an easy, pleasant job. Every now and then I would run to theriver to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of thestarlings returning. And at night when I thought of Masha I would befilled with an inexpressibly sweet feeling of an all-embracing joy tolisten to the rats and the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling;it was like an old hobgoblin coughing in the attic. 

The snow was deep; there was a heavy fall at the end of March, but itthawed rapidly, as if by magic, and the spring floods rushed down sothat by the beginning of April the starlings were already chattering andyellow butterflies fluttered in the garden. The weather was wonderful. Every day toward evening I walked toward the town to meet Masha, and howdelightful it was to walk along the soft, drying road with bare feet!Half-way I would sit down and look at the town, not daring to go nearer. The sight of it upset me, I was always wondering how my acquaintanceswould behave toward me when they heard of my love. What would my fathersay? I was particularly worried by the idea that my life was becomingmore complicated, and that I had entirely lost control of it, and thatshe was carrying me off like a balloon, God knows whither. I had alreadygiven up thinking how to make a living, and I thought--indeed, I cannotremember what I thought. 

Masha used to come in a carriage. I would take a seat beside her andtogether, happy and free, we used to drive to Dubechnia. Or, havingwaited till sunset, I would return home, weary and disconsolate, wondering why Masha had not come, and then by the gate or in the gardenI would find my darling. She would come by the railway and walk overfrom the station. What a triumph she had then! In her plain, woollendress, with a simple umbrella, but keeping a trim, fashionable figureand expensive, Parisian boots--she was a gifted actress playing thecountry girl. We used to go over the house, and plan out the rooms, andthe paths, and the vegetable-garden, and the beehives. We already hadchickens and ducks and geese which we loved because they were ours. Wehad oats, clover, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds all ready for sowing, and we used to examine them all and wonder what the crops would be like, and everything Masha said to me seemed extraordinarily clever and fine. This was the happiest time of my life. 

Soon after Easter we were married in the parish church in the village ofKurilovka three miles from Dubechnia. Masha wanted everything to besimple; by her wish our bridesmen were peasant boys, only one deaconsang, and we returned from the church in a little, shaky cart which shedrove herself. My sister was the only guest from the town. Masha hadsent her a note a couple of days before the wedding. My sister wore awhite dress and white gloves. . . . During the ceremony she cried softlyfor joy and emotion, and her face had a maternal expression of infinitegoodness. She was intoxicated with our happiness and smiled as thoughshe were breathing a sweet perfume, and when I looked at her Iunderstood that there was nothing in the world higher in her eyes thanlove, earthly love, and that she was always dreaming of love, secretly, timidly, yet passionately. She embraced Masha and kissed her, and, notknowing how to express her ecstasy, she said to her of me:

"He is a good man! A very good man. "

Before she left us, she put on her ordinary clothes, and took me intothe garden to have a quiet talk. 

"Father is very hurt that you have not written to him, " she said. "Youshould have asked for his blessing. But, at heart, he is very pleased. He says that this marriage will raise you in the eyes of society, andthat under Maria Victorovna's influence you will begin to adopt a moreserious attitude toward life. In the evening now we talk about nothingbut you; and yesterday he even said, 'our Misail. ' I was delighted. Hehas evidently thought of a plan and I believe he wants to set you anexample of magnanimity, and that he will be the first to talk ofreconciliation. It is quite possible that one of these days he will comeand see you here. "

She made the sign of the cross over me and said:

"Well, God bless you. Be happy. Aniuta Blagovo is a very clever girl. She says of your marriage that God has sent you a new ordeal. Well?Married life is not made up only of joy but of suffering as well. It isimpossible to avoid it. "

Masha and I walked about three miles with her, and then walked homequietly and silently, as though it were a rest for both of us. Masha hadher hand on my arm. We were at peace and there was no need to talk oflove; after the wedding we grew closer to each other and dearer, and itseemed as though nothing could part us. 

"Your sister is a dear, lovable creature, " said Masha, "but looks asthough she had lived in torture. Your father must be a terrible man. "

I began to tell her how my sister and I had been brought up and howabsurd and full of torture our childhood had been. When she heard thatmy father had thrashed me quite recently she shuddered and clung to me:

"Don't tell me any more, " she said. "It is too horrible. "

And now she did not leave me. We lived in the big house, in three rooms, and in the evenings we bolted the door that led to the empty part of thehouse, as though some one lived there whom we did not know and feared. Iused to get up early, at dawn, and begin working. I repaired the carts;made paths in the garden, dug the beds, painted the roofs. When the timecame to sow oats, I tried to plough and harrow, and sow and did it allconscientiously, and did not leave it all to the labourer. I used to gettired, and my face and feet used to burn with the rain and the sharpcold wind. But work in the fields did not attract me. I knew nothingabout agriculture and did not like it; perhaps because my ancestors werenot tillers of the soil and pure town blood ran in my veins. I lovednature dearly; I loved the fields and the meadows and the garden, butthe peasant who turns the earth with his plough, shouting at hismiserable horse, ragged and wet, with bowed shoulders, was to me anexpression of wild, rude, ugly force, and as I watched his clumsymovements I could not help thinking of the long-passed legendary life, when men did not yet know the use of fire. The fierce bull which led theherd, and the horses that stampeded through the village, filled me withterror, and all the large creatures, strong and hostile, a ram withhorns, a gander, or a watch-dog seemed to me to be symbolical of somerough, wild force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong in mein bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over the black plough-lands. Butworst of all was that when I was ploughing or sowing, and a few peasantsstood and watched how I did it, I no longer felt the inevitability andnecessity of the work and it seemed to me that I was trifling my timeaway. 

I used to go through the gardens and the meadow to the mill. It wasleased by Stiepan, a Kurilovka peasant; handsome, swarthy, with a blackbeard--an athletic appearance. He did not care for mill work and thoughtit tiresome and unprofitable, and he only lived at the mill to escapefrom home. He was a saddler and always smelled of tan and leather. Hedid not like talking, was slow and immovable, and used to hum"U-lu-lu-lu, " sitting on the bank or in the doorway of the mill. Sometimes his wife and mother-in-law used to come from Kurilovka to seehim; they were both fair, languid, soft, and they used to bow to himhumbly and call him Stiepan Petrovich. And he would not answer theirgreeting with a word or a sign, but would turn where he sat on the bankand hum quietly: "U-lu-lu-lu. " There would be a silence for an hour ortwo. His mother-in-law and his wife would whisper to each other, get upand look expectantly at him for some time, waiting for him to look atthem, and then they would bow humbly and say in sweet, soft voices:

"Good-bye, Stiepan Petrovich. "

And they would go away. After that, Stiepan would put away the bundle ofcracknels or the shirt they had left for him and sigh and give a wink intheir direction and say:

"The female sex!"

The mill was worked with both wheels day and night. I used to helpStiepan, I liked it, and when he went away I was glad to take his place. 

XI

After a spell of warm bright weather we had a season of bad roads. Itrained and was cold all through May. The grinding of the millstones andthe drip of the rain induced idleness and sleep. The floor shook, thewhole place smelled of flour, and this too made one drowsy. My wife in ashort fur coat and high rubber boots used to appear twice a day and shealways said the same thing:

"Call this summer! It is worse than October!"

We used to have tea together and cook porridge, or sit together forhours in silence thinking the rain would never stop. Once when Stiepanwent away to a fair, Masha stayed the night in the mill. When we got upwe could not tell what time it was for the sky was overcast; the sleepycocks at Dubechnia were crowing, and the corncrakes were trilling in themeadow; it was very, very early. . . . My wife and I walked down to thepool and drew up the bow-net that Stiepan had put out in our presencethe day before. There was one large perch in it and a crayfish angrilystretched out his claws. 

"Let them go, " said Masha. "Let them be happy too. "

Because we got up very early and had nothing to do, the day seemed verylong, the longest in my life. Stiepan returned before dusk and I wentback to the farmhouse. 

"Your father came here to-day, " said Masha. 

"Where is he?"

"He has gone. I did not receive him. "

Seeing my silence and feeling that I was sorry for my father, she said:

"We must be logical. I did not receive him and sent a message to ask himnot to trouble us again and not to come and see us. "

In a moment I was outside the gates, striding toward the town to make itup with my father. It was muddy, slippery, cold. For the first timesince our marriage I suddenly felt sad, and through my brain, tired withthe long day, there flashed the thought that perhaps I was not living asI ought; I got more and more tired and was gradually overcome withweakness, inertia; I had no desire to move or to think, and afterwalking for some time, I waved my hand and went home. 

In the middle of the yard stood the engineer in a leather coat with ahood. He was shouting:

"Where's the furniture? There was some good Empire furniture, pictures, vases. There's nothing left! Damn it, I bought the place with thefurniture!"

Near him stood Moissey, Mrs. Cheprakov's bailiff, fumbling with his cap;a lank fellow of about twenty-five, with a spotty face and little, impudent eyes; one side of his face was larger than the other as thoughhe had been lain on. 

"Yes, Right Honourable Sir, you bought it without the furniture, " hesaid sheepishly. "I remember that clearly. "

"Silence!" shouted the engineer, going red in the face, and beginning toshake, and his shout echoed through the garden. 

XII

When I was busy in the garden or the yard, Moissey would stand with hishands behind his back and stare at me impertinently with his littleeyes. And this used to irritate me to such an extent that I would putaside my work and go away. 

We learned from Stiepan that Moissey had been Mrs. Cheprakov's lover. Inoticed that when people went to her for money they used to apply toMoissey first, and once I saw a peasant, a charcoal-burner, black allover, grovel at his feet. Sometimes after a whispered conversationMoissey would hand over the money himself without saying anything to hismistress, from which I concluded that the transaction was settled on hisown account. 

He used to shoot in our garden, under our very windows, steal food fromour larder, borrow our horses without leave, and we were furious, feeling that Dubechnia was no longer ours, and Masha used to go pale andsay:

"Have we to live another year and a half with these creatures?"

Ivan Cheprakov, the son, was a guard on the railway. During the winterhe got very thin and weak, so that he got drunk on one glass of vodka, and felt cold out of the sun. He hated wearing his guard's uniform andwas ashamed of it, but found his job profitable because he could stealcandles and sell them. My new position gave him a mixed feeling ofastonishment, envy, and vague hope that something of the sort mighthappen to him. He used to follow Masha with admiring eyes, and to ask mewhat I had for dinner nowadays, and his ugly, emaciated face used towear a sweet, sad expression, and he used to twitch his fingers asthough he could feel my happiness with them. 

"I say, Little Profit, " he would say excitedly, lighting and relightinghis cigarette; he always made a mess wherever he stood because he usedto waste a whole box of matches on one cigarette. "I say, my life isabout as beastly as it could be. Every little squirt of a soldier canshout: 'Here guard! Here!' I have such a lot in the trains and you know, mine's a rotten life! My mother has ruined me! I heard a doctor say inthe train, if the parents are loose, their children become drunkards orcriminals. That's it. "

Once he came staggering into the yard. His eyes wandered aimlessly andhe breathed heavily; he laughed and cried, and said something in a kindof frenzy, and through his thickly uttered words I could only hear: "Mymother? Where is my mother?" and he wailed like a child crying, becauseit has lost its mother in a crowd. I led him away into the garden andlaid him down under a tree, and all that day and through the night Mashaand I took it in turns to stay with him. He was sick and Masha lookedwith disgust at his pale, wet face and said:

"Are we to have these creatures on the place for another year and ahalf? It is awful! Awful!"

And what a lot of trouble the peasants gave us! How many disappointmentswe had at the outset, in the spring, when we so longed to be happy! Mywife built a school. I designed the school for sixty boys, and theZemstvo Council approved the design, but recommended our building theschool at Kurilovka, the big village, only three miles away; besides theKurilovka school, where the children of four villages, including that ofDubechnia, were taught, was old and inadequate and the floor was sorotten that the children were afraid to walk on it. At the end of MarchMasha, by her own desire, was appointed trustee of the Kurilovka school, and at the beginning of April we called three parish meetings andpersuaded the peasants that the school was old and inadequate, and thatit was necessary to build a new one. A member of the Zemstvo Council andthe elementary school inspector came down too and addressed them. Aftereach meeting we were mobbed and asked for a pail of vodka; we feltstifled in the crowd and soon got tired and returned home dissatisfiedand rather abashed. At last the peasants allotted a site for the schooland undertook to cart the materials from the town. And as soon as thespring corn was sown, on the very first Sunday, carts set out fromKurilovka and Dubechnia to fetch the bricks for the foundations. Theywent at dawn and returned late in the evening. The peasants were drunkand said they were tired out. 

The rain and the cold continued, as though deliberately, all throughMay. The roads were spoiled and deep in mud. When the carts came fromtown they usually drove to our horror, into our yard! A horse wouldappear in the gate, straddling its fore legs, with its big bellyheaving; before it came into the yard it would strain and heave andafter it would come a ten-yard beam in a four-wheeled wagon, wet andslimy; alongside it, wrapped up to keep the rain out, never lookingwhere he was going and splashing through the puddles, a peasant wouldwalk with the skirt of his coat tucked up in his belt. Another cartwould appear with planks; then a third with a beam; then a fourth . . . And the yard in front of the house would gradually be blocked up withhorses, beams, planks. Peasants, men and women with their heads wrappedup and their skirts tucked up, would stare morosely at our windows, kickup a row and insist on the lady of the house coming out to them; andthey would curse and swear. And in a corner Moissey would stand, and itseemed to us that he delighted in our discomfiture. 

"We won't cart any more!" the peasants shouted. "We are tired to death!Let her go and cart it herself!"

Pale and scared, thinking they would any minute break into the house, Masha would send them money for a pail of vodka; after which the noisewould die down and the long beams would go jolting out of the yard. 

When I went to look at the building my wife would get agitated and say:

"The peasants are furious. They might do something to you. No. Wait. I'll go with you. "

We used to drive over to Kurilovka together and then the carpenterswould ask for tips. The framework was ready for the foundations to belaid, but the masons never came and when at last the masons did come itwas apparent that there was no sand; somehow it had been forgotten thatsand was wanted. Taking advantage of our helplessness, the peasantsasked thirty copecks a load, although it was less than a quarter of amile from the building to the river where the sand was to be fetched, and more than five hundred loads were needed. There were endlessmisunderstandings, wrangles, and continual begging. My wife wasindignant and the building contractor, Petrov, an old man of seventy, took her by the hand and said:

"You look here! Look here! Just get me sand and I'll find ten men andhave the work done in two days. Look here!"

Sand was brought, but two, four days, a week passed and still thereyawned a ditch where the foundations were to be. 

"I shall go mad, " cried my wife furiously. "What wretches they are! Whatwretches!"

During these disturbances Victor Ivanich used to come and see us. Heused to bring hampers of wine and dainties, and eat for a long time, andthen go to sleep on the terrace and snore so that the labourers shooktheir heads and said:

"He's all right!"

Masha took no pleasure in his visits. She did not believe in him, andyet she used to ask his advice; when, after a sound sleep after dinner, he got up out of humour, and spoke disparagingly of our domesticarrangements, and said he was sorry he had ever bought Dubechnia whichhad cost him so much, and poor Masha looked miserably anxious andcomplained to him, he would yawn and say the peasants ought to beflogged. 

He called our marriage and the life we were living a comedy, and used tosay it was a caprice, a whimsy. 

"She did the same sort of thing once before, " he told me. "She fanciedherself as an opera singer, and ran away from me. It took me two monthsto find her, and my dear fellow, I wasted a thousand roubles ontelegrams alone. "

He had dropped calling me a sectarian or the House-painter; and nolonger approved of my life as a working man, but he used to say:

"You are a queer fish! An abnormality. I don't venture to prophesy, butyou will end badly!"

Masha slept poorly at nights and would sit by the window of our bedroomthinking. She no longer laughed and made faces at supper. I suffered, and when it rained, every drop cut into my heart like a bullet, and Icould have gone on my knees to Masha and apologised for the weather. When the peasants made a row in the yard, I felt that it was my fault. Iwould sit for hours in one place, thinking only how splendid and howwonderful Masha was. I loved her passionately, and I was enraptured byeverything she did and said. Her taste was for quiet indoor occupation;she loved to read for hours and to study; she who knew about farm-workonly from books, surprised us all by her knowledge and the advice shegave was always useful, and when applied was never in vain. And inaddition she had the fineness, the taste, and the good sense, the verysound sense which only very well-bred people possess!

To such a woman, with her healthy, orderly mind, the chaotic environmentwith its petty cares and dirty tittle-tattle, in which we lived, wasvery painful. I could see that, and I, too, could not sleep at night. Mybrain whirled and I could hardly choke back my tears. I tossed about, not knowing what to do. 

I used to rush to town and bring Masha books, newspapers, sweets, flowers, and I used to go fishing with Stiepan, dragging for hours, neck-deep in cold water, in the rain, to catch an eel by way of varyingour fare. I used humbly to ask the peasants not to shout, and I gavethem vodka, bribed them, promised them anything they asked. And what alot of other foolish things I did!

* * *

At last the rain stopped. The earth dried up. I used to get up in themorning and go into the garden--dew shining on the flowers, birds andinsects shrilling, not a cloud in the sky, and the garden, the meadow, the river were so beautiful, perfect but for the memory of the peasantsand the carts and the engineer. Masha and I used to drive out in a carto see how the oats were coming on. She drove and I sat behind; hershoulders were always a little hunched, and the wind would play with herhair. 

"Keep to the right!" she shouted to the passers-by. 

"You are like a coachman!" I once said to her. 

"Perhaps. My grandfather, my father's father, was a coachman. Didn't youknow?" she asked, turning round, and immediately she began to mimic theway the coachmen shout and sing. 

"Thank God!" I thought, as I listened to her. "Thank God!"

And again I remember the peasants, the carts, the engineer. . . . 

XIII

Doctor Blagovo came over on a bicycle. My sister began to come often. Once more we talked of manual labour and progress, and the mysteriousCross awaiting humanity in the remote future. The doctor did not likeour life, because it interfered with our discussions and he said it wasunworthy of a free man to plough, and reap, and breed cattle, and thatin time all such elementary forms of the struggle for existence would beleft to animals and machines, while men would devote themselvesexclusively to scientific investigation. And my sister always asked meto let her go home earlier, and if she stayed late, or for the night, she was greatly distressed. 

"Good gracious, what a baby you are, " Masha used to say reproachfully. "It is quite ridiculous. "

"Yes, it is absurd, " my sister would agree. "I admit it is absurd, butwhat can I do if I have not the power to control myself. It always seemsto me that I am doing wrong. "

During the haymaking my body, not being used to it, ached all over;sitting on the terrace in the evening, I would suddenly fall asleep andthey would all laugh at me. They would wake me up and make me sit downto supper. I would be overcome with drowsiness and in a stupor sawlights, faces, plates, and heard voices without understanding what theywere saying. And I used to get up early in the morning and take myscythe, or go to the school and work there all day. 

When I was at home on holidays I noticed that my wife and sister werehiding something from me and even seemed to be avoiding me. My wife wastender with me as always, but she had some new thought of her own whichshe did not communicate to me. Certainly her exasperation with thepeasants had increased and life was growing harder and harder for her, but she no longer complained to me. She talked more readily to thedoctor than to me, and I could not understand why. 

It was the custom in our province for the labourers to come to the farmin the evenings to be treated to vodka, even the girls having a glass. We did not keep the custom; the haymakers and the women used to comeinto the yard and stay until late in the evening, waiting for vodka, andthen they went away cursing. And then Masha used to frown and relapseinto silence or whisper irritably to the doctor:

"Savages! Barbarians!"

Newcomers to the villages were received ungraciously, almost withhostility; like new arrivals at a school. At first we were looked uponas foolish, soft-headed people who had bought the estate because we didnot know what to do with our money. We were laughed at. The peasantsgrazed their cattle in our pasture and even in our garden, drove ourcows and horses into the village and then came and asked forcompensation. The whole village used to come into our yard and declareloudly that in mowing we had cut the border of common land which did notbelong to us; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly we used totake their word for it and pay a fine. But afterward it appeared that wehad been in the right. They used to bark the young lime-trees in ourwoods. A Dubechnia peasant, a money-lender, who sold vodka without alicence, bribed our labourers to help him cheat us in the mosttreacherous way; he substituted old wheels for the new on our wagons, stole our ploughing yokes and sold them back to us, and so on. But worstof all was the building at Kurilovka. There the women at night stoleplanks, bricks, tiles, iron; the bailiff and his assistants made asearch; the women were each fined two roubles by the village council, and then the whole lot of them got drunk on the money. 

When Masha found out, she would say to the doctor and my sister:

"What beasts! It is horrible! Horrible!"

And more than once I heard her say she was sorry she had decided tobuild the school. 

"You must understand, " the doctor tried to point out, "that if you builda school or undertake any good work, it is not for the peasants, but forthe sake of culture and the future. The worse the peasants are the morereason there is for building a school. Do understand!"

There was a loss of confidence in his voice, and it seemed to me that hehated the peasants as much as Masha. 

Masha used often to go to the mill with my sister and they would sayjokingly that they were going to have a look at Stiepan because he wasso handsome. Stiepan it appeared was reserved and silent only with men, and in the company of women was free and talkative. Once when I wentdown to the river to bathe I involuntarily overheard a conversation. Masha and Cleopatra, both in white, were sitting on the bank under thebroad shade of a willow and Stiepan was standing near with his handsbehind his back, saying:

"But are peasants human beings? Not they; they are, excuse me, brutes, beasts, and thieves. What does a peasant's life consist of? Eating anddrinking, crying for cheaper food, bawling in taverns, without decentconversation, or behaviour or manners. Just an ignorant beast! He livesin filth, his wife and children live in filth; he sleeps in his clothes;takes the potatoes out of the soup with his fingers, drinks down a blackbeetle with his _kvass_--because he won't trouble to fish it out!"

"It is because of their poverty!" protested my sister. 

"What poverty? Of course there is want, but there are different kinds ofnecessity. If a man is in prison, or is blind, say, or has lost hislegs, then he is in a bad way and God help him; but if he is at libertyand in command of his senses, if he has eyes and hands and strength, then, good God, what more does he want? It is lamentable, my lady, ignorance, but not poverty. If you kind people, with your education, outof charity try to help him, then he will spend your money in drink, likethe swine he is, or worse still, he will open a tavern and begin to robthe people on the strength of your money. You say--poverty. But does arich peasant live any better? He lives like a pig, too, excuse me, aclodhopper, a blusterer, a big-bellied blockhead, with a swollen redmug--makes me want to hit him in the eye, the blackguard. Look at Larionof Dubechnia--he is rich, but all the same he barks the trees in yourwoods just like the poor; and he is a foul-mouthed brute, and hischildren are foul-mouthed, and when he is drunk he falls flat in the mudand goes to sleep. They are all worthless, my lady. It is just hell tolive with them in the village. The village sticks in my gizzard, and Ithank God, the King of heaven, that I am well fed and clothed, and thatI am a free man; I can live where I like, I don't want to live in thevillage and nobody can force me to do it. They say: 'You have a wife. 'They say: 'You are obliged to live at home with your wife. ' Why? I havenot sold myself to her. "

"Tell me, Stiepan. Did you marry for love?" asked Masha. 

"What love is there in a village?" Stiepan answered with a smile. "Ifyou want to know, my lady, it is my second marriage. I do not come fromKurilovka, but from Zalegosch, and I went to Kurilovka when I married. My father did not want to divide the land up between us--there are fiveof us. So I bowed to it and cut adrift and went to another village to mywife's family. My first wife died when she was young. "

"What did she die of?"

"Foolishness. She used to sit and cry. She was always crying for noreason at all and so she wasted away. She used to drink herbs to makeherself prettier and it must have ruined her inside. And my second wifeat Kurilovka--what about her? A village woman, a peasant; that's all. When the match was being made I was nicely had; I thought she was young, nice to look at and clean. Her mother was clean enough, drank coffeeand, chiefly because they were a clean lot, I got married. Next day wesat down to dinner and I told my mother-in-law to fetch me a spoon. Shebrought me a spoon and I saw her wipe it with her finger. So that, thought I, is their cleanliness! I lived with them for a year and wentaway. Perhaps I ought to have married a town girl"--he went on after asilence. "They say a wife is a helpmate to her husband. What do I wantwith a helpmate? I can look after myself. But you talk to me sensiblyand soberly, without giggling all the while. He--he--he! What is lifewithout a good talk?"

Stiepan suddenly stopped and relapsed into his dreary, monotonous"U-lu-lu-lu. " That meant that he had noticed me. 

Masha used often to visit the mill, she evidently took pleasure in hertalks with Stiepan; he abused the peasants so sincerely andconvincingly--and this attracted her to him. When she returned from themill the idiot who looked after the garden used to shout after her:

"Paloshka! Hullo, Paloshka!" And he would bark at her like a dog: "Bow, wow!"

And she would stop and stare at him as if she found in the idiot'sbarking an answer to her thought, and perhaps he attracted her as muchas Stiepan's abuse. And at home she would find some unpleasant newsawaiting her, as that the village geese had ruined the cabbages in thekitchen-garden, or that Larion had stolen the reins, and she would shrugher shoulders with a smile and say:

"What can you expect of such people?"

She was exasperated and a fury was gathering in her soul, and I, on theother hand, was getting used to the peasants and more and more attractedto them. For the most part, they were nervous, irritable, absurd people;they were people with suppressed imaginations, ignorant, with a bare, dull outlook, always dazed by the same thought of the grey earth, greydays, black bread; they were people driven to cunning, but, like birds, they only hid their heads behind the trees--they could not reason. Theydid not come to us for the twenty roubles earned by haymaking, but forthe half-pail of vodka, though they could buy four pails of vodka forthe twenty roubles. Indeed they were dirty, drunken, and dishonest, butfor all that one felt that the peasant life as a whole was sound at thecore. However clumsy and brutal the peasant might look as he followedhis antiquated plough, and however he might fuddle himself with vodka, still, looking at him more closely, one felt that there was somethingvital and important in him, something that was lacking in Masha and thedoctor, for instance, namely, that he believes that the chief thing onearth is truth, that his and everybody's salvation lies in truth, andtherefore above all else on earth he loves justice. I used to say to mywife that she was seeing the stain on the window, but not the glassitself; and she would be silent or, like Stiepan, she would hum, "U-lu-lu-lu. . . . " When she, good, clever actress that she was, went palewith fury and then harangued the doctor in a trembling voice aboutdrunkenness and dishonesty; her blindness confounded and appalled me. How could she forget that her father, the engineer, drank, drankheavily, and that the money with which he bought Dubechnia was acquiredby means of a whole series of impudent, dishonest swindles? How couldshe forget?

XIV

And my sister, too, was living with her own private thoughts which shehid from me. She used often to sit whispering with Masha. When I went upto her, she would shrink away, and her eyes would look guilty and fullof entreaty. Evidently there was something going on in her soul of whichshe was afraid or ashamed. To avoid meeting me in the garden or beingleft alone with me she clung to Masha and I hardly ever had a chance totalk to her except at dinner. 

One evening, on my way home from the school, I came quietly through thegarden. It had already begun to grow dark. Without noticing me orhearing footsteps, my sister walked round an old wide-spreadingapple-tree, perfectly noiselessly like a ghost. She was in black, andwalked very quickly, up and down, up and down, with her eyes on theground. An apple fell from the tree, she started at the noise, stoppedand pressed her hands to her temples. At that moment I went up to her. 

In an impulse of tenderness, which suddenly came rushing to my heart, with tears in my eyes, somehow remembering our mother and our childhood, I took hold of her shoulders and kissed her. 

"What is the matter?" I asked. "You are suffering. I have seen it for along time now. Tell me, what is the matter?"

"I am afraid. . . . " she murmured, with a shiver. 

"What's the matter with you?" I inquired. "For God's sake, be frank!"

"I will, I will be frank. I will tell you the whole truth. It is sohard, so painful to conceal anything from you!. . . Misail, I am in love. "She went on in a whisper. "Love, love. . . . I am happy, but I am afraid. "

I heard footsteps and Doctor Blagovo appeared among the trees. He waswearing a silk shirt and high boots. Clearly they had arranged arendezvous by the apple-tree. When she saw him she flung herselfimpulsively into his arms with a cry of anguish, as though he was beingtaken away from her:

"Vladimir! Vladimir!"

She clung to him, and gazed eagerly at him and only then I noticed howthin and pale she had become. It was especially noticeable through herlace collar, which I had known for years, for it now hung loosely abouther slim neck. The doctor was taken aback, but controlled himself atonce, and said, as he stroked her hair:

"That's enough. Enough!. . . Why are you so nervous? You see, I havecome. "

We were silent for a time, bashfully glancing at each other. Then we allmoved away and I heard the doctor saying to me:

"Civilised life has not yet begun with us. The old console themselveswith saying that, if there is nothing now, there was something in theforties and the sixties; that is all right for the old ones, but we areyoung and our brains are not yet touched with senile decay. We cannotconsole ourselves with such illusions. The beginning of Russia was in862, and civilised Russia, as I understand it, has not yet begun. "

But I could not bother about what he was saying. It was very strange, but I could not believe that my sister was in love, that she had justbeen walking with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at himtenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid, downtrodden creature asshe was, loved a man who was already married and had children! I wasfull of pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was distastefulto me and I could not make out what was to come of such a love. 

XV

Masha and I drove over to Kurilovka for the opening of the school. 

"Autumn, autumn, autumn. . . . " said Masha, looking about her. Summer hadpassed. There were no birds and only the willows were green. 

Yes. Summer had passed. The days were bright and warm, but it was freshin the mornings; the shepherds went out in their sheepskins, and the dewnever dried all day on the asters in the garden. There were continualmournful sounds and it was impossible to tell whether it was a shuttercreaking on its rusty hinges or the cranes flying--and one felt so welland so full of the desire for life!

"Summer has passed. . . . " said Masha. "Now we can both make up ouraccounts. We have worked hard and thought a great deal and we are thebetter for it--all honour and praise to us; we have improved ourselves;but have our successes had any perceptible influence on the life aroundus, have they been of any use to a single person? No! Ignorance, dirt, drunkenness, a terribly high rate of infant mortality--everything isjust as it was, and no one is any the better for your having ploughedand sown and my having spent money and read books. Evidently we haveonly worked and broadened our minds for ourselves. "

I was abashed by such arguments and did not know what to think. 

"From beginning to end we have been sincere, " I said, "and if a man issincere, he is right. "

"Who denies that? We have been right but we have been wrong in our wayof setting about it. First of all, are not our very ways of livingwrong? You want to be useful to people, but by the mere fact of buyingan estate you make it impossible to be so. Further, if you work, dress, and eat like a peasant you lend your authority and approval to theclumsy clothes, and their dreadful houses and their dirty beards. . . . Onthe other hand, suppose you work for a long, long time, all you life, and in the end obtain some practical results--what will your resultsamount to, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesaleignorance, hunger, cold, and degeneracy? A drop in the ocean! Othermethods of fighting are necessary, strong, bold, quick! If you want tobe useful then you must leave the narrow circle of common activity andtry to act directly on the masses! First of all, you need vigorous, noisy, propaganda. Why are art and music, for instance, so much aliveand so popular and so powerful? Because the musician or the singerinfluences thousands directly. Art, wonderful art!" She looked wistfullyat the sky and went on: "Art gives wings and carries you far, far away. If you are bored with dirt and pettifogging interests, if you areexasperated and outraged and indignant, rest and satisfaction are onlyto be found in beauty. "

As we approached Kurilovka the weather was fine, clear, and joyous. Inthe yards the peasants were thrashing and there was a smell of corn andstraw. Behind the wattled hedges the fruit-trees were reddening and allaround the trees were red or golden. In the church-tower the bells wereringing, the children were carrying ikons to the school and singing theLitany of the Virgin. And how clear the air was, and how high the dovessoared!

The Te Deum was sung in the schoolroom. Then the Kurilovka peasantspresented Masha with an ikon, and the Dubechnia peasants gave her alarge cracknel and a gilt salt-cellar. And Masha began to weep. 

"And if we have said anything out of the way or have been discontented, please forgive us, " said an old peasant, bowing to us both. 

As we drove home Masha looked back at the school. The green roof which Ihad painted glistened in the sun, and we could see it for a long time. And I felt that Masha's glances were glances of farewell. 

XVI

In the evening she got ready to go to town. 

She had often been to town lately to stay the night. In her absence Icould not work, and felt listless and disheartened; our big yard seemeddreary, disgusting, and deserted; there were ominous noises in thegarden, and without her the house, the trees, the horses were no longer"ours. "

I never went out but sat all the time at her writing-table among herbooks on farming and agriculture, those deposed favourites, wanted nomore, which looked out at me so shamefacedly from the bookcase. Forhours together, while it struck seven, eight, nine, and the autumn nightcrept up as black as soot to the windows, I sat brooding over an oldglove of hers, or the pen she always used, and her little scissors. Idid nothing and saw clearly that everything I had done before, ploughing, sowing, and felling trees, had only been because she wantedit. And if she told me to clean out a well, when I had to standwaist-deep in water, I would go and do it, without trying to find outwhether the well wanted cleaning or not. And now, when she was away, Dubechnia with its squalor, its litter, its slamming shutters, withthieves prowling about it day and night, seemed to me like a chaos inwhich work was entirely useless. And why should I work, then? Whytrouble and worry about the future, when I felt that the ground wasslipping away from under me, that my position at Dubechnia was hollow, that, in a word, the same fate awaited me as had befallen the books onagriculture? Oh! what anguish it was at night, in the lonely hours, whenI lay listening uneasily, as though I expected some one any minute tocall out that it was time for me to go away. I was not sorry to leaveDubechnia, my sorrow was for my love, for which it seemed that autumnhad already begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and to beloved, and what a horror it is to feel that you are beginning to toppledown from that lofty tower!

Masha returned from town toward evening on the following day. She wasdissatisfied with something, but concealed it and said only: "Why havethe winter windows been put in? It will be stifling. " I opened two ofthe windows. We did not feel like eating, but we sat down and hadsupper. 

"Go and wash your hands, " she said. "You smell of putty. "

She had brought some new illustrated magazines from town and we bothread them after supper. They had supplements with fashion-plates andpatterns. Masha just glanced at them and put them aside to look at themcarefully later on; but one dress, with a wide, bell-shaped skirt andbig sleeves interested her, and for a moment she looked at it seriouslyand attentively. 

"That's not bad, " she said. 

"Yes, it would suit you very well, " said I. "Very well. "

And I admired the dress, only because she liked it, and went ontenderly:

"A wonderful, lovely dress! Lovely, wonderful, Masha. My dear Masha!"

And tears began to drop on the fashion-plate. 

"Wonderful Masha. . . . " I murmured. "Dear, darling Masha. . . . "

She went and lay down and I sat still for an hour and looked at theillustrations. 

"You should not have opened the windows, " she called from the bedroom. "I'm afraid it will be cold. Look how the wind is blowing in!"

I read the miscellany, about the preparation of cheap fish, and the sizeof the largest diamond in the world. Then I chanced on the picture ofthe dress she had liked and I imagined her at a ball, with a fan, andbare shoulders, a brilliant, dazzling figure, well up in music andpainting and literature, and how insignificant and brief my share in herlife seemed to be!

Our coming together, our marriage, was only an episode, one of many inthe life of this lively, highly gifted creature. All the best things inthe world, as I have said, were at her service, and she had them fornothing; even ideas and fashionable intellectual movements served herpleasure, a diversion in her existence, and I was only the coachman whodrove her from one infatuation to another. Now I was no longer necessaryto her; she would fly away and I should be left alone. 

As if in answer to my thoughts a desperate scream suddenly came from theyard:

"Mur-der!"

It was a shrill female voice, and exactly as though it were trying toimitate it, the wind also howled dismally in the chimney. Half a minutepassed and again it came through the sound of the wind, but as thoughfrom the other end of the yard:

"Mur-der!"

"Misail, did you hear that?" said my wife in a hushed voice. "Did youhear?"

She came out of the bedroom in her nightgown, with her hair down, andstood listening and staring out of the dark window. 

"Somebody is being murdered!" she muttered. "It only wanted that!"

I took my gun and went out; it was very dark outside; a violent wind wasblowing so that it was hard to stand up. I walked to the gate andlistened; the trees were moaning; the wind went whistling through them, and in the garden the idiot's dog was howling. Beyond the gate it waspitch dark; there was not a light on the railway. And just by the wing, where the offices used to be, I suddenly heard a choking cry:

"Mur-der!"

"Who is there?" I called. 

Two men were locked in a struggle. One had nearly thrown the other, whowas resisting with all his might. And both were breathing heavily. 

"Let go!" said one of them and I recognised Ivan Cheprakov. It was hewho had cried out in a thin, falsetto voice. "Let go, damn you, or I'llbite your hands!"

The other man I recognised as Moissey. I parted them and could notresist hitting Moissey in the face twice. He fell down, then got up, andI struck him again. 

"He tried to kill me, " he muttered. "I caught him creeping to hismother's drawer. . . . I tried to shut him up in the wing for safety. "

Cheprakov was drunk and did not recognise me. He stood gasping forbreath as though trying to get enough wind to shriek again. 

I left them and went back to the house. My wife was lying on the bed, fully dressed. I told her what had happened in the yard and did not keepback the fact that I had struck Moissey. 

"Living in the country is horrible, " she said. "And what a long night itis!"

"Mur-der!" we heard again, a little later. 

"I'll go and part them, " I said. 

"No. Let them kill each other, " she said with an expression of disgust. 

She lay staring at the ceiling, listening, and I sat near her, notdaring to speak and feeling that it was my fault that screams of"murder" came from the yard and the night was so long. 

We were silent and I waited impatiently for the light to peep in at thewindow. And Masha looked as though she had wakened from a long sleep andwas astonished to find herself, so clever, so educated, so refined, castaway in this miserable provincial hole, among a lot of petty, shallowpeople, and to think that she could have so far forgotten herself as tohave been carried away by one of them and to have been his wife for morethan half a year. It seemed to me that we were all the same toher--myself, Moissey, Cheprakov; all swept together into the drunken, wild scream of "murder"--myself, our marriage, our work, and the muddyroads of autumn; and when she breathed or stirred to make herself morecomfortable I could read in her eyes: "Oh, if the morning would comequicker!"

In the morning she went away. 

I stayed at Dubechnia for another three days, waiting for her; then Imoved all our things into one room, locked it, and went to town. When Irang the bell at the engineer's, it was evening, and the lamps werealight in Great Gentry Street. Pavel told me that nobody was at home;Victor Ivanich had gone to Petersburg and Maria Victorovna must be at arehearsal at the Azhoguins'. I remember the excitement with which I wentto the Azhoguins', and how my heart thumped and sank within me, as Iwent up-stairs and stood for a long while on the landing, not daring toenter that temple of the Muses! In the hall, on the table, on the piano, on the stage, there were candles burning; all in threes, for the firstperformance was fixed for the thirteenth, and the dress rehearsal was onMonday--the unlucky day. A fight against prejudice! All the lovers ofdramatic art were assembled; the eldest, the middle, and the youngestMiss Azhoguin were walking about the stage, reading their parts. Radishwas standing still in a corner all by himself, with his head against thewall, looking at the stage with adoring eyes, waiting for the beginningof the rehearsal. Everything was just the same!

I went toward my hostess to greet her, when suddenly everybody began tosay "Ssh" and to wave their hands to tell me not to make such a noise. There was a silence. The top of the piano was raised, a lady sat down, screwing up her short-sighted eyes at the music, and Masha stood by thepiano, dressed up, beautiful, but beautiful in an odd new way, not atall like the Masha who used to come to see me at the mill in the spring. She began to sing:

 "Why do I love thee, straight night?"

It was the first time since I had known her that I had heard her sing. She had a fine, rich, powerful voice, and to hear her sing was likeeating a ripe, sweet-scented melon. She finished the song and wasapplauded. She smiled and looked pleased, made play with her eyes, stared at the music, plucked at her dress exactly like a bird which hasbroken out of its cage and preens its wings at liberty. Her hair wascombed back over her ears, and she had a sly defiant expression on herface, as though she wished to challenge us all, or to shout at us, asthough we were horses: "Gee up, old things!"

And at that moment she must have looked very like her grandfather, thecoachman. 

"You here, too?" she asked, giving me her hand. "Did you hear me sing?How did you like it?" And, without waiting for me to answer she went on:"You arrived very opportunely. I'm going to Petersburg for a short timeto-night. May I?"

At midnight I took her to the station. She embraced me tenderly, probably out of gratitude, because I did not pester her with uselessquestions, and she promised to write to me, and I held her hands for along time and kissed them, finding it hard to keep back my tears, andnot saying a word. 

And when the train moved, I stood looking at the receding lights, kissedher in my imagination and whispered:

"Masha dear, wonderful Masha!. . . "

I spent the night at Mikhokhov, at Karpovna's, and in the morning Iworked with Radish, upholstering the furniture at a rich merchant's, whohad married his daughter to a doctor. 

XVII

On Sunday afternoon my sister came to see me and had tea with me. 

"I read a great deal now, " she said, showing me the books she had gotout of the town library on her way. "Thanks to your wife and Vladimir. They awakened my self-consciousness. They saved me and have made me feelthat I am a human being. I used not to sleep at night for worrying:'What a lot of sugar has been wasted during the week. ' 'The cucumbersmust not be oversalted!' I don't sleep now, but I have quite differentthoughts. I am tormented with the thought that half my life has passedso foolishly and half-heartedly. I despise my old life. I am ashamed ofit. And I regard my father now as an enemy. Oh, how grateful I am toyour wife! And Vladimir. He is such a wonderful man! They opened myeyes. "

"It is not good that you can't sleep, " I said. 

"You think I am ill? Not a bit. Vladimir sounded me and says I amperfectly healthy. But health is not the point. That doesn't matter somuch. . . . Tell me, am I right?"

She needed moral support. That was obvious. Masha had gone, DoctorBlagovo was in Petersburg, and there was no one except myself in thetown, who could tell her that she was right. She fixed her eyes on me, trying to read my inmost thoughts, and if I were sad in her presence, she always took it upon herself and was depressed. I had to becontinually on my guard, and when she asked me if she was right, Ihastened to assure her that she was right and that I had a profoundrespect for her. 

"You know, they have given me a part at the Azhoguins', " she went on. "Iwanted to act. I want to live. I want to drink deep of life; I have notalent whatever, and my part is only ten lines, but it is immeasurablyfiner and nobler than pouring out tea five times a day and watching tosee that the cook does not eat the sugar left over. And most of all Iwant to let father see that I too can protest. "

After tea she lay down on my bed and stayed there for some time, withher eyes closed, and her face very pale. 

"Just weakness!" she said, as she got up. "Vladimir said all town girlsand women are anĉmic from lack of work. What a clever man Vladimir is!He is right; wonderfully right! We do need work!"

Two days later she came to rehearsal at the Azhoguins' with her part inher hand. She was in black, with a garnet necklace, and a brooch thatlooked at a distance like a pasty, and she had enormous earrings, ineach of which sparkled a diamond. I felt uneasy when I saw her; I wasshocked by her lack of taste. The others noticed too that she wasunsuitably dressed and that her earrings and diamonds were out of place. I saw their smiles and heard some one say jokingly:

"Cleopatra of Egypt!"

She was trying to be fashionable, and easy, and assured, and she seemedaffected and odd. She lost her simplicity and her charm. 

"I just told father that I was going to a rehearsal, " she began, comingup to me, "and he shouted that he would take his blessing from me, andhe nearly struck me. Fancy, " she added, glancing at her part, "I don'tknow my part. I'm sure to make a mistake. Well, the die is cast, " shesaid excitedly; "the die is cast. "

She felt that all the people were looking at her and were all amazed atthe important step she had taken and that they were all expectingsomething remarkable from her, and it was impossible to convince herthat nobody took any notice of such small uninteresting persons as sheand I. 

She had nothing to do until the third act, and her part, a guest, acountry gossip, consisted only in standing by the door, as if she wereoverhearing something, and then speaking a short monologue. For at leastan hour and a half before her cue, while the others were walking, reading, having tea, quarrelling, she never left me and kept on mumblingher part, and dropping her written copy, imagining that everybody waslooking at her, and waiting for her to come on, and she patted her hairwith a trembling hand and said:

"I'm sure to make a mistake. . . . You don't know how awful I feel! I am asterrified as if I were going to the scaffold. "

At last her cue came. 

"Cleopatra Alexeyevna--your cue!" said the manager. 

She walked on to the middle of the stage with an expression of terror onher face; she looked ugly and stiff, and for half a minute wasspeechless, perfectly motionless, except for her large earrings whichwabbled on either side of her face. 

"You can read your part, the first time, " said some one. 

I could see that she was trembling so that she could neither speak noropen her part, and that she had entirely forgotten the words and I hadjust made up my mind to go up and say something to her when she suddenlydropped down on her knees in the middle of the stage and sobbed loudly. 

There was a general stir and uproar. And I stood quite still by thewings, shocked by what had happened, not understanding at all, notknowing what to do. I saw them lift her up and lead her away. I sawAniuta Blagovo come up to me. I had not seen her in the hall before andshe seemed to have sprung up from the floor. She was wearing a hat andveil, and as usual looked as if she had only dropped in for a minute. 

"I told her not to try to act, " she said angrily, biting out each word, with her cheeks blushing. "It is folly! You ought to have stopped her!"

Mrs. Azhoguin came up in a short jacket with short sleeves. She hadtobacco ash on her thin, flat bosom. 

"My dear, it is too awful!" she said, wringing her hands, and as usual, staring into my face. "It is too awful!. . . Your sister is in acondition. . . . She is going to have a baby! You must take her away atonce. . . . "

In her agitation she breathed heavily. And behind her, stood her threedaughters, all thin and flat-chested like herself, and all huddledtogether in their dismay. They were frightened, overwhelmed just as if aconvict had been caught in the house. What a shame! How awful! And thiswas the family that had been fighting the prejudices and superstitionsof mankind all their lives; evidently they thought that all theprejudices and superstitions of mankind were to be found in burningthree candles and in the number thirteen, or the unlucky day--Monday. 

"I must request . . . Request . . . " Mrs. Azhoguin kept on saying, compressing her lips and accentuating the _quest_. "I must request youto take her away. "

XVIII

A little later my sister and I were walking along the street. I coveredher with the skirt of my overcoat; we hurried along through by-streets, where there were no lamps, avoiding the passers-by, and it was like aflight. She did not weep any more, but stared at me with dry eyes. Itwas about twenty minutes' walk to Mikhokhov, whither I was taking her, and in that short time we went over the whole of our lives, and talkedover everything, and considered the position and pondered. . . . 

We decided that we could not stay in the town, and that when I could getsome money, we would go to some other place. In some of the houses thepeople were asleep already, and in others they were playing cards; wehated those houses, were afraid of them, and we talked of thefanaticism, callousness, and nullity of these respectable families, these lovers of dramatic art whom we had frightened so much, and Iwondered how those stupid, cruel, slothful, dishonest people were betterthan the drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or how theywere better than animals, which also lose their heads when some accidentbreaks the monotony of their lives, which are limited by theirinstincts. What would happen to my sister if she stayed at home? Whatmoral torture would she have to undergo, talking to my father andmeeting acquaintances every day? I imagined it all and there came intomy memory people I had known who had been gradually dropped by theirfriends and relations, and I remember the tortured dogs which had gonemad, and sparrows plucked alive and thrown into the water--and a wholelong series of dull, protracted sufferings which I had seen going on inthe town since my childhood; and I could not conceive what the sixtythousand inhabitants lived for, why they read the Bible, why theyprayed, why they skimmed books and magazines. What good was all that hadbeen written and said, if they were in the same spiritual darkness andhad the same hatred of freedom, as if they were living hundreds andhundreds of years ago? The builder spends his time putting up houses allover the town, and yet would go down to his grave saying "galdary" for"gallery. " And the sixty thousand inhabitants had read and heard oftruth and mercy and freedom for generations, but to the bitter end theywould go on lying from morning to night, tormenting one another, fearingand hating freedom as a deadly enemy. 

"And so, my fate is decided, " said my sister when we reached home. "After what has happened I can never go _there_ again. My God, how goodit is! I feel at peace. "

She lay down at once. Tears shone on her eyelashes, but her expressionwas happy. She slept soundly and softly, and it was clear that her heartwas easy and that she was at rest. For a long, long time she had notslept so well. 

So we began to live together. She was always singing and said she feltvery well, and I took back the books we had borrowed from the libraryunread, because she gave up reading; she only wanted to dream and totalk of the future. She would hum as she mended my clothes or helpedKarpovna with the cooking, or talk of her Vladimir, of his mind, and hisgoodness, and his fine manners, and his extraordinary learning. And Iagreed with her, though I no longer liked the doctor. She wanted towork, to be independent, and to live by herself, and she said she wouldbecome a school-teacher or a nurse as soon as her health allowed, andshe would scrub the floors and do her own washing. She loved her unbornbaby passionately, and she knew already the colour of his eyes and theshape of his hands and how he laughed. She liked to talk of hisupbringing, and since the best man on earth was Vladimir, all her ideaswere reduced to making the boy as charming as his father. There was noend to her chatter, and everything she talked about filled her with alively joy. Sometimes I, too, rejoiced, though I knew not why. 

She must have infected me with her dreaminess, for I, too, read nothingand just dreamed. In the evenings, in spite of being tired, I used topace up and down the room with my hands in my pockets, talking aboutMasha. 

"When do you think she will return?" I used to ask my sister. "I thinkshe'll be back at Christmas. Not later. What is she doing there?"

"If she doesn't write to you, it means she must be coming soon. "

"True, " I would agree, though I knew very well that there was nothing tomake Masha return to our town. 

I missed her very much, but I could not help deceiving myself and wantedothers to deceive me. My sister was longing for her doctor, I for Masha, and we both laughed and talked and never saw that we were keepingKarpovna from sleeping. She would lie on the stove and murmur:

"The samovar tinkled this morning. Tink-led! That bodes nobody any good, my merry friends!"

Nobody came to the house except the postman who brought my sisterletters from the doctor, and Prokofyi, who used to come in sometimes inthe evening and glance secretly at my sister, and then go into thekitchen and say:

"Every class has its ways, and if you're too proud to understand that, the worse for you in this vale of tears. "

He loved the expression--vale of tears. And--about Christmas time--whenI was going through the market, he called me into his shop, and withoutgiving me his hand, declared that he had some important business todiscuss. He was red in the face with the frost and with vodka; near himby the counter stood Nicolka of the murderous face, holding a bloodyknife in his hand. 

"I want to be blunt with you, " began Prokofyi. "This business must nothappen because, as you know, people will neither forgive you nor us forsuch a vale of tears. Mother, of course, is too dutiful to say anythingunpleasant to you herself, and tell you that your sister must gosomewhere else because of her condition, but I don't want it either, because I do not approve of her behaviour. "

I understood and left the shop. That very day my sister and I went toRadish's. We had no money for a cab, so we went on foot; I carried abundle with all our belongings on my back, my sister had nothing in herhands, and she was breathless and kept coughing and asking if we wouldsoon be there. 

XIX

At last there came a letter from Masha. 

"My dear, kind M. A. , " she wrote, "my brave, sweet angel, as the oldpainter calls you, good-bye. I am going to America with my father forthe exhibition. In a few days I shall be on the ocean--so far fromDubechnia. It is awful to think of! It is vast and open like the sky andI long for it and freedom. I rejoice and dance about and you see howincoherent my letter is. My dear Misail, give me my freedom. Quick, tearthe thread which still holds and binds us. My meeting and knowing youwas a ray from heaven, which brightened my existence. But, you know, mybecoming your wife was a mistake, and the knowledge of the mistakeweighs me down, and I implore you on my knees, my dear, generous friend, quick--quick--before I go over the sea--wire that you will agree tocorrect our mutual mistake, remove then the only burden on my wings, andmy father, who will be responsible for the whole business, has promisedme not to overwhelm you with formalities. So, then, I am free of thewhole world? Yes?

"Be happy. God bless you. Forgive my wickedness. 

"I am alive and well. I am squandering money on all sorts of follies, and every minute I thank God that such a wicked woman as I am has nochildren. I am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing whim. No. It is my haven, my convent cell where I go for rest. King David hada ring with an inscription: 'Everything passes. ' When one is sad, thesewords make one cheerful; and when one is cheerful, they make one sad. And I have got a ring with the words written in Hebrew, and thistalisman will keep me from losing my heart and head. Or does one neednothing but consciousness of freedom, because, when one is free, onewants nothing, nothing, nothing. Snap the thread then. I embrace you andyour sister warmly. Forgive and forget your M. "

My sister had one room. Radish, who had been ill and was recovering, wasin the other. Just as I received this letter, my sister went into thepainter's room and sat by his side and began to read to him. She readOstrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he used to listen, staringstraight in front of him, never laughing, shaking his head, and everynow and then muttering to himself:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

If there was anything ugly in what she read, he would say vehemently, pointing to the book:

"There it is! Lies! That's what lies do!"

Stories used to attract him by their contents as well as by their moraland their skilfully complicated plot, and he used to marvel at _him_, though he never called _him_ by his name. 

"How well _he_ has managed it. "

Now my sister read a page quickly and then stopped, because her breathfailed her. Radish held her hand, and moving his dry lips he said in ahoarse, hardly audible voice:

"The soul of the righteous is white and smooth as chalk; and the soul ofthe sinner is as a pumice-stone. The soul of the righteous is clear oil, and the soul of the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and sorrow andpity, " he went on. "And if a man does not work and sorrow he will notenter the kingdom of heaven. Woe, woe to the well fed, woe to thestrong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers! They will not see thekingdom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron. . . . "

"And lies devour the soul, " said my sister, laughing. 

I read the letter once more. At that moment the soldier came into thekitchen who had brought in twice a week, without saying from whom, tea, French bread, and pigeons, all smelling of scent. I had no work and usedto sit at home for days together, and probably the person who sent usthe bread knew that we were in want. 

I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing merrily. Then shelay down and ate some bread and said to me:

"When you wanted to get away from the office and become a house-painter, Aniuta Blagovo and I knew from the very beginning that you were right, but we were afraid to say so. Tell me what power is it that keeps usfrom saying what we feel? There's Aniuta Blagovo. She loves you, adoresyou, and she knows that you are right. She loves me, too, like a sister, and she knows that I am right, and in her heart she envies me, but somepower prevents her coming to see us. She avoids us. She is afraid. "

My sister folded her hands across her bosom and said rapturously:

"If you only knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me and to noone else, very hesitatingly, in the dark. She used to take me out intothe garden, into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper how dearyou were to her. You will see that she will never marry because sheloves you. Are you sorry for her?"

"Yes. "

"It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why should she hide herself? Iused to be silly and stupid, but I left all that and I am not afraid ofany one, and I think and say aloud what I like--and I am happy. When Ilived at home I had no notion of happiness, and now I would not changeplaces with a queen. "

Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and was now living in thetown, at his father's, taking a rest. After which he said he would goback to Petersburg. He wanted to devote himself to vaccination againsttyphus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad to increase hisknowledge and then to become a University professor. He had already leftthe army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, andexpensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and hisred-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outsidebreast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell tocounting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have atleast ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once, even in joke, did he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad withhim, and I could not imagine what would happen to her if she lived, orwhat was to become of her child. But she was happy in her dreams andwould not think seriously of the future. She said he could go whereverhe liked and even cast her aside, if only he were happy himself, andwhat had been was enough for her. 

Usually when he came to see us he would sound her very carefully, andask her to drink some milk with some medicine in it. He did so now. Hesounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and the room began tosmell of creosote. 

"That's a good girl, " he said, taking the glass from her. "You must nottalk much, and you have been chattering like a magpie lately. Please, bequiet. "

She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room, where I was sitting, and tapped me affectionately on the shoulder. 

"Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending over the patient. 

"Sir, " said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir, I make so bold. . . . We are all in the hands of God, and we must all die. . . . Let me tell youthe truth, sir. . . . You will never enter the kingdom of heaven. "

And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught up into a dream: it waswinter, at night, and I was standing in the yard of the slaughter-housewith Prokofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-brandy; I pulled myselftogether and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed to be going to thegovernor's for an explanation. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me, before or after, and I can only explain these strange dreams likememories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the nerves. I lived againthrough the scene in the slaughter-house and the conversation with thegovernor, and at the same time I was conscious of its unreality. 

When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home, but standing withthe doctor by a lamp in the street. 

"It is sad, sad, " he was saying with tears running down his cheeks. "Sheis happy and always laughing and full of hope. But, poor darling, hercondition is hopeless. Old Radish hates me and keeps trying to make meunderstand that I have wronged her. In his way he is right, but I havemy point of view, too, and I do not repent of what has happened. It isnecessary to love. We must all love. That's true, isn't it? Without lovethere would be no life, and a man who avoids and fears love is notfree. "

We gradually passed to other subjects. He began to speak of science andhis dissertation which had been very well received in Petersburg. Hespoke enthusiastically and thought no more of my sister, or of hisgoing, or of myself. Life was carrying him away. She has America and aring with an inscription, I thought, and he has his medical degree andhis scientific career, and my sister and I are left with the past. 

When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read my letter again. And Iremembered vividly how she came to me at the mill that spring morningand lay down and covered herself with my fur coat--pretending to be justa peasant woman. And another time--also in the early morning--when wepulled the bow-net out of the water, and the willows on the bankshowered great drops of water on us and we laughed. . . . 

All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street. I climbed the fence, and, as I used to do in old days, I went into the kitchen by the backdoor to get a little lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen. On the stovethe samovar was singing merrily, all ready for my father. "Who pours outmy father's tea now?" I thought. I took the lamp and went on to the shedand made a bed of old newspapers and lay down. The nails in the walllooked ominous as before and their shadows flickered. It was cold. Ithought I saw my sister coming in with my supper, but I remembered atonce that she was ill at Radish's, and it seemed strange to me that Ishould have climbed the fence and be lying in the cold shed. My mind wasblurred and filled with fantastic imaginations. 

A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first the wire rustledalong the wall, and then there was a short, melancholy tinkle in thekitchen. It was my father returning from the club. I got up and wentinto the kitchen. Akhsinya, the cook, clapped her hands when she saw meand began to cry:

"Oh, my dear, " she said in a whisper. "Oh, my dear! My God!"

And in her agitation she began to pluck at her apron. On the window-sillwere two large bottles of berries soaking in vodka. I poured out a cupand gulped it down, for I was very thirsty. Akhsinya had just scrubbedthe table and the chairs, and the kitchen had the good smell whichkitchens always have when the cook is clean and tidy. This smell and thetrilling of the cricket used to entice us into the kitchen when we werechildren, and there we used to be told fairy-tales, and we played atkings and queens. . . . 

"And where is Cleopatra?" asked Akhsinya hurriedly, breathlessly. "Andwhere is your hat, sir? And they say your wife has gone to Petersburg. "

She had been with us in my mother's time and used to bathe Cleopatra andme in a tub, and we were still children to her, and it was her duty tocorrect us. In a quarter of an hour or so she laid bare all herthoughts, which she had been storing up in her quiet kitchen all thetime I had been away. She said the doctor ought to be made to marryCleopatra--we would only have to frighten him a bit and make him send ina nicely written application, and then the archbishop would dissolve hisfirst marriage, and it would be a good thing to sell Dubechnia withoutsaying anything to my wife, and to bank the money in my own name; and ifmy sister and I went on our knees to our father and asked him nicely, then perhaps he would forgive us; and we ought to pray to the HolyMother to intercede for us. . . . 

"Now, sir, go and talk to him, " she said, when we heard my father'scough. "Go, speak to him, and beg his pardon. He won't bite your headoff. "

I went in. My father was sitting at his desk working on the plan of abungalow with Gothic windows and a stumpy tower like the lookout of afire-station--an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As I entered thestudy I stood so that I could not help seeing the plan. I did not knowwhy I had come to my father, but I remember that when I saw his thinface, red neck, and his shadow on the wall, I wanted to throw my armsround him and, as Akhsinya had bid me, to beg his pardon humbly; but thesight of the bungalow with the Gothic windows and the stumpy towerstopped me. 

"Good evening, " I said. 

He glanced at me and at once cast his eyes down on his plan. 

"What do you want?" he asked after a while. 

"I came to tell you that my sister is very ill. She is dying, " I saiddully. 

"Well?" My father sighed, took off his spectacles and laid them on thetable. "As you have sown, so you must reap. I want you to remember howyou came to me two years ago, and on this very spot I asked you to giveup your delusions, and I reminded you of your honour, your duty, yourobligations to your ancestors, whose traditions must be kept sacred. Didyou listen to me? You spurned my advice and clung to your wickedopinions; furthermore, you dragged your sister into your abominabledelusions and brought about her downfall and her shame. Now you are bothsuffering for it. As you have sown, so you must reap. "

He paced up and down the study as he spoke. Probably he thought that Ihad come to him to admit that I was wrong, and probably he was waitingfor me to ask his help for my sister and myself. I was cold, but I shookas though I were in a fever, and I spoke with difficulty in a hoarsevoice. 

"And I must ask you to remember, " I said, "that on this very spot Iimplored you to try to understand me, to reflect, and to think what wewere living for and to what end, and your answer was to talk about myancestors and my grandfather who wrote verses. Now you are told thatyour only daughter is in a hopeless condition and you talk of ancestorsand traditions!. . . And you can maintain such frivolity when death isnear and you have only five or ten years left to live!"

"Why did you come here?" asked my father sternly, evidently affronted atmy reproaching him with frivolity. 

"I don't know. I love you. I am more sorry than I can say that we are sofar apart. That is why I came. I still love you, but my sister hasfinally broken with you. She does not forgive you and will never forgiveyou. Your very name fills her with hatred of her past life. "

"And who is to blame?" cried my father. "You, you scoundrel!"

"Yes. Say that I am to blame, " I said. "I admit that I am to blame formany things, but why is your life, which you have tried to force on us, so tedious and frigid, and ungracious, why are there no people in any ofthe houses you have built during the last thirty years from whom I couldlearn how to live and how to avoid such suffering? These houses of yoursare infernal dungeons in which mothers and daughters are persecuted, children are tortured. . . . My poor mother! My unhappy sister! One needsto drug oneself with vodka, cards, scandal; cringe, play the hypocrite, and go on year after year designing rotten houses, not to see the horrorthat lurks in them. Our town has been in existence for hundreds ofyears, and during the whole of that time it has not given the countryone useful man--not one! You have strangled in embryo everything thatwas alive and joyous! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, andhypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul would be the worseif it were suddenly razed to the ground. "

"I don't want to hear you, you scoundrel, " said my father, taking aruler from his desk. "You are drunk! You dare come into your father'spresence in such a state! I tell you for the last time, and you can tellthis to your strumpet of a sister, that you will get nothing from me. Ihave torn my disobedient children out of my heart, and if they sufferthrough their disobedience and obstinacy I have no pity for them. Youmay go back where you came from! God has been pleased to punish methrough you. I will humbly bear my punishment and, like Job, I findconsolation in suffering and unceasing toil. You shall not cross mythreshold until you have mended your ways. I am a just man, andeverything I say is practical good sense, and if you had any regard foryourself, you would remember what I have said, and what I am sayingnow. "

I threw up my hands and went out; I do not remember what happened thatnight or next day. 

They say that I went staggering through the street without a hat, singing aloud, with crowds of little boys shouting after me:

"Little Profit! Little Profit!"

XX

If I wanted to order a ring, I would have it inscribed: "Nothingpasses. " I believe that nothing passes without leaving some trace, andthat every little step has some meaning for the present and the futurelife. 

What I lived through was not in vain. My great misfortunes, my patience, moved the hearts of the people of the town and they no longer call me"Little Profit, " they no longer laugh at me and throw water over me as Iwalk through the market. They got used to my being a working man and seenothing strange in my carrying paint-pots and glazing windows; on thecontrary, they give me orders, and I am considered a good workman andthe best contractor, after Radish, who, though he recovered and stillpaints the cupolas of the church without scaffolding, is not strongenough to manage the men, and I have taken his place and go about thetown touting for orders, and take on and sack the men, and lend money atexorbitant interest. And now that I am a contractor I can understand howit is possible to spend several days hunting through the town forslaters to carry out a trifling order. People are polite to me, andaddress me respectfully and give me tea in the houses where I work, andsend the servant to ask me if I would like dinner. Children and girlsoften come and watch me with curious, sad eyes. 

Once I was working in the governor's garden, painting the summer-housemarble. The governor came into the summer-house, and having nothingbetter to do, began to talk to me, and I reminded him how he had oncesent for me to caution me. For a moment he stared at my face, opened hismouth like a round O, waved his hands, and said:

"I don't remember. "

I am growing old, taciturn, crotchety, strict; I seldom laugh, andpeople say I am growing like Radish, and, like him, I bore the men withmy aimless moralising. 

Maria Victorovna, my late wife, lives abroad, and her father is making arailway somewhere in the Eastern provinces and buying land there. DoctorBlagovo is also abroad. Dubechnia has passed to Mrs. Cheprakov, whobought it from the engineer after haggling him into a twenty-per-centreduction in the price. Moissey walks about in a bowler hat; he oftendrives into town in a trap and stops outside the bank. People say he hasalready bought an estate on a mortgage, and is always inquiring at thebank about Dubechnia, which he also intends to buy. Poor Ivan Cheprakovused to hang about the town, doing nothing and drinking. I tried to givehim a job in our business, and for a time he worked with us paintingroofs and glazing, and he rather took to it, and, like a regularhouse-painter, he stole the oil, and asked for tips, and got drunk. Butit soon bored him. He got tired of it and went back to Dubechnia, andsome time later I was told by the peasants that he had been incitingthem to kill Moissey one night and rob Mrs. Cheprakov. 

My father has got very old and bent, and just takes a little walk in theevening near his house. 

When we had the cholera, Prokofyi cured the shopkeepers withpepper-brandy and tar and took money for it, and as I read in thenewspaper, he was flogged for libelling the doctors as he sat in hisshop. His boy Nicolka died of cholera. Karpovna is still alive, andstill loves and fears her Prokofyi. Whenever she sees me she sadlyshakes her head and says with a sigh:

"Poor thing. You are lost!"

On week-days I am busy from early morning till late at night. And onSundays and holidays I take my little niece (my sister expected a boy, but a girl was born) and go with her to the cemetery, where I stand orsit and look at the grave of my dear one, and tell the child that hermother is lying there. 

Sometimes I find Aniuta Blagovo by the grave. We greet each other andstand silently, or we talk of Cleopatra, and the child, and the sadnessof this life. Then we leave the cemetery and walk in silence and shelags behind--on purpose, to avoid staying with me. The little girl, joyful, happy, with her eyes half-closed against the brilliant sunlight, laughs and holds out her little hands to her, and we stop and togetherwe fondle the darling child. 

And when we reach the town, Aniuta Blagovo, blushing and agitated, saysgood-bye, and walks on alone, serious and circumspect. . . . And, to lookat her, none of the passers-by could imagine that she had just beenwalking by my side and even fondling the child. 

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