I knew I was speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly, in fact, I

could not speak except "like a book." But that did not trouble me: I

knew, I felt that I should be understood and that this very bookishness

might be an assistance. But now, having attained my effect, I was

suddenly panic-stricken. Never before had I witnessed such despair! She

was lying on her face, thrusting her face into the pillow and clutching

it in both hands. Her heart was being torn. Her youthful body was

shuddering all over as though in convulsions. Suppressed sobs rent her

bosom and suddenly burst out in weeping and wailing, then she pressed

closer into the pillow: she did not want any one here, not a living

soul, to know of her anguish and her tears. She bit the pillow, bit her

hand till it bled (I saw that afterwards), or, thrusting her fingers

into her dishevelled hair seemed rigid with the effort of restraint,

holding her breath and clenching her teeth. I began saying something,

begging her to calm herself, but felt that I did not dare; and all at

once, in a sort of cold shiver, almost in terror, began fumbling in the

dark, trying hurriedly to get dressed to go. It was dark: though I tried

my best I could not finish dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a box of

matches and a candlestick with a whole candle in it. As soon as the room

was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in bed, and with a contorted

face, with a half insane smile, looked at me almost senselessly. I sat

down beside her and took her hands; she came to herself, made an

impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold of me, but did not

dare, and slowly bowed her head before me.

"Liza, my dear, I was wrong ... forgive me, my dear," I began, but she

squeezed my hand in her fingers so tightly that I felt I was saying the

wrong thing and stopped.

"This is my address, Liza, come to me."

"I will come," she answered resolutely, her head still bowed.

"But now I am going, good-bye ... till we meet again."

I got up; she, too, stood up and suddenly flushed all over, gave a

shudder, snatched up a shawl that was lying on a chair and muffled

herself in it to her chin. As she did this she gave another sickly

smile, blushed and looked at me strangely. I felt wretched; I was in

haste to get away--to disappear.

"Wait a minute," she said suddenly, in the passage just at the doorway,

stopping me with her hand on my overcoat. She put down the candle in hot

haste and ran off; evidently she had thought of something or wanted to

show me something. As she ran away she flushed, her eyes shone, and

there was a smile on her lips--what was the meaning of it? Against my

will I waited: she came back a minute later with an expression that

seemed to ask forgiveness for something. In fact, it was not the same

face, not the same look as the evening before: sullen, mistrustful and

obstinate. Her eyes now were imploring, soft, and at the same time

trustful, caressing, timid. The expression with which children look at

people they are very fond of, of whom they are asking a favour. Her eyes

were a light hazel, they were lovely eyes, full of life, and capable of

expressing love as well as sullen hatred.

Making no explanation, as though I, as a sort of higher being, must

understand everything without explanations, she held out a piece of

paper to me. Her whole face was positively beaming at that instant with

naïve, almost childish, triumph. I unfolded it. It was a letter to her

from a medical student or some one of that sort--a very high-flown and

flowery, but extremely respectful, love-letter. I don't recall the words

now, but I remember well that through the high-flown phrases there was

apparent a genuine feeling, which cannot be feigned. When I had finished

reading it I met her glowing, questioning, and childishly impatient eyes

fixed upon me. She fastened her eyes upon my face and waited impatiently

for what I should say. In a few words, hurriedly, but with a sort of joy

and pride, she explained to me that she had been to a dance somewhere in

a private house, a family of "very nice people, _who knew nothing_,

absolutely nothing, for she had only come here so lately and it had all

happened ... and she hadn't made up her mind to stay and was certainly

going away as soon as she had paid her debt ... and at that party there

had been the student who had danced with her all the evening. He had

talked to her, and it turned out that he had known her in old days at

Riga when he was a child, they had played together, but a very long time

ago--and he knew her parents, but _about this_ he knew nothing, nothing

whatever, and had no suspicion! And the day after the dance (three days

ago) he had sent her that letter through the friend with whom she had

gone to the party ... and ... well, that was all."

She dropped her shining eyes with a sort of bashfulness as she finished.

The poor girl was keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure,

and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me

to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely

loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter

was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I

am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure,

as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought

of that letter and brought it with naïve pride to raise herself in my

eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her. I said

nothing, pressed her hand and went out. I so longed to get away.... I

walked all the way home, in spite of the fact that the melting snow was

still falling in heavy flakes. I was exhausted, shattered, in

bewilderment. But behind the bewilderment the truth was already

gleaming. The loathsome truth.

VIII

It was some time, however, before I consented to recognize that truth.

Waking up in the morning after some hours of heavy, leaden sleep, and

immediately realizing all that had happened on the previous day, I was

positively amazed at my last night's _sentimentality_ with Liza, at all

those "outcries of horror and pity." "To think of having such an attack

of womanish hysteria, pah!" I concluded. And what did I thrust my

address upon her for? What if she comes? Let her come, though; it

doesn't matter.... But _obviously_, that was not now the chief and the

most important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my

reputation in the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible;

that was the chief business. And I was so taken up that morning that I

actually forgot all about Liza.

First of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before

from Simonov. I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen

roubles straight off from Anton Antonitch. As luck would have it he was

in the best of humours that morning, and gave it to me at once, on the

first asking. I was so delighted at this that, as I signed the I O U

with a swaggering air, I told him casually that the night before "I had

been keeping it up with some friends at the Hôtel de Paris; we were

giving a farewell party to a comrade, in fact, I might say a friend of

my childhood, and you know--a desperate rake, fearfully spoilt--of

course, he belongs to a good family, and has considerable means, a

brilliant career; he is witty, charming, a regular Lovelace, you

understand; we drank an extra 'half-dozen' and...."

And it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily,

unconstrainedly and complacently.

On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.

To this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly

gentlemanly, good-humoured, candid tone of my letter. With tact and

good-breeding, and, above all, entirely without superfluous words, I

blamed myself for all that had happened. I defended myself, "if I really

may be allowed to defend myself," by alleging that being utterly

unaccustomed to wine, I had been intoxicated with the first glass, which

I said, I had drunk before they arrived, while I was waiting for them at

the Hôtel de Paris between five and six o'clock. I begged Simonov's

pardon especially; I asked him to convey my explanations to all the

others, especially to Zverkov, whom "I seemed to remember as though in a

dream" I had insulted. I added that I would have called upon all of them

myself, but my head ached, and besides I had not the face to. I was

particularly pleased with a certain lightness, almost carelessness

(strictly within the bounds of politeness, however), which was apparent

in my style, and better than any possible arguments, gave them at once

to understand that I took rather an independent view of "all that

unpleasantness last night;" that I was by no means so utterly crushed as

you, my friends, probably imagine; but on the contrary, looked upon it

as a gentleman serenely respecting himself should look upon it. "On a

young hero's past no censure is cast!"

"There is actually an aristocratic playfulness about it!" I thought

admiringly, as I read over the letter. And it's all because I am an

intellectual and cultivated man! Another man in my place would not have

known how to extricate himself, but here I have got out of it and am as

jolly as ever again, and all because I am "a cultivated and educated man

of our day." And, indeed, perhaps, everything was due to the wine

yesterday. H'm! ... no, it was not the wine. I did not drink anything at

all between five and six when I was waiting for them. I had lied to

Simonov; I had lied shamelessly; and indeed I wasn't ashamed now....

Hang it all though, the great thing was that I was rid of it.

I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to take

it to Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter,

Apollon became more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I

went out for a walk. My head was still aching and giddy after yesterday.

But as evening came on and the twilight grew denser, my impressions and,

following them, my thoughts, grew more and more different and confused.

Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and

conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression.

For the most part I jostled my way through the most crowded business

streets, along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy Street and in Yusupov

Garden. I always liked particularly sauntering along these streets in

the dusk, just when there were crowds of working people of all sorts

going home from their daily work, with faces looking cross with anxiety.

What I liked was just that cheap bustle, that bare prose. On this

occasion the jostling of the streets irritated me more than ever. I

could not make out what was wrong with me, I could not find the clue,

something seemed rising up continually in my soul, painfully, and

refusing to be appeased. I returned home completely upset, it was just

as though some crime were lying on my conscience.

The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed queer

to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented me, as it

were, especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything else I had

quite succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it all and was

still perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on this point I

was not satisfied at all. It was as though I were worried only by Liza.

"What if she comes," I thought incessantly, "well, it doesn't matter,

let her come! H'm! it's horrid that she should see, for instance, how I

live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero to her, while now, h'm! It's

horrid, though, that I have let myself go so, the room looks like a

beggar's. And I brought myself to go out to dinner in such a suit! And

my American leather sofa with the stuffing sticking out. And my

dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such tatters, and she will see

all this and she will see Apollon. That beast is certain to insult her.

He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me. And I, of course,

shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing and scraping

before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall begin smiling,

telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn't the beastliness of it

that matters most! There is something more important, more loathsome,

viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying mask again!"...

When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.

"Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night. I

remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to excite

an honourable feeling in her.... Her crying was a good thing, it will

have a good effect."

Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come

back home, even after nine o'clock, when I calculated that Liza could

not possibly come, she still haunted me, and what was worse, she came

back to my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all that

had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the moment

when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its look of

torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a distorted smile

she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that fifteen years

later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always with the

pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face at that

minute.

Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to

over-excited nerves, and, above all, as _exaggerated_. I was always

conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of

it. "I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong," I repeated to

myself every hour. But, however, "Liza will very likely come all the

same," was the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so

uneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: "She'll come, she is certain

to come!" I cried, running about the room, "if not to-day, she will come

to-morrow; she'll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure

hearts! Oh, the vileness--oh, the silliness--oh, the stupidity of these

'wretched sentimental souls!' Why, how fail to understand? How could one

fail to understand?..."

But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.

And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how

little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic

too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my

will. That's virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!

At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, "to tell her all," and

beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me

that I believed I should have crushed that "damned" Liza if she had

chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have spat

at her, have turned her out, have struck her!

One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I

began to grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine

o'clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for

instance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me

and my talking to her.... I develop her, educate her. Finally, I notice

that she loves me, loves me passionately. I pretend not to understand (I

don't know, however, why I pretend, just for effect, perhaps). At last

all confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing, she flings herself

at my feet and says that I am her saviour, and that she loves me better

than anything in the world. I am amazed, but.... "Liza," I say, "can you

imagine that I have not noticed your love, I saw it all, I divined it,

but I did not dare to approach you first, because I had an influence

over you and was afraid that you would force yourself, from gratitude,

to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart a feeling which

was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ... because it would be

tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off at that point

into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties à la George Sand), but now,

now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure, you are good, you

are my noble wife.

'Into my house come bold and free,

Its rightful mistress there to be.'"

Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In fact,

in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out my

tongue at myself.

Besides, they won't let her out, "the hussy!" I thought. They don't let

them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some reason I

fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o'clock precisely).

Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there yet, and had

certain rights; so, h'm! Damn it all, she will come, she is sure to

come!

It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at

that time by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was the

bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been

squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated

him! I believe I had never hated any one in my life as I hated him,

especially at some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who worked

part of his time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he despised me

beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably. Though,

indeed, he looked down upon every one. Simply to glance at that flaxen,

smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his forehead

and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth, compressed into

the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was confronting a man who

never doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to the most extreme point,

the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and with that had a vanity only

befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with every button on his

coat, every nail on his fingers--absolutely in love with them, and he

looked it! In his behaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very

little to me, and if he chanced to glance at me he gave me a firm,

majestically self-confident and invariably ironical look that drove me

sometimes to fury. He did his work with the air of doing me the greatest

favour. Though he did scarcely anything for me, and did not, indeed,

consider himself bound to do anything. There could be no doubt that he

looked upon me as the greatest fool on earth, and that "he did not get

rid of me" was simply that he could get wages from me every month. He

consented to do nothing for me for seven roubles a month. Many sins

should be forgiven me for what I suffered from him. My hatred reached

such a point that sometimes his very step almost threw me into

convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his lisp. His tongue must

have been a little too long or something of that sort, for he

continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it, imagining that it

greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow, measured tone, with

his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground. He maddened

me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself behind his

partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading! But he was awfully

fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even, sing-song voice,

as though over the dead. It is interesting that that is how he has

ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the dead, and at the

same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at that time I could not

get rid of him, it was as though he were chemically combined with my

existence. Besides, nothing would have induced him to consent to leave

me. I could not live in furnished lodgings: my lodging was my private

solitude, my shell, my cave, in which I concealed myself from all

mankind, and Apollon seemed to me, for some reason, an integral part of

that flat, and for seven years I could not turn him away.

To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was

impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known

where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with every one during

those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object

to _punish_ Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that

were owing him. I had for a long time--for the last two years--been

intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself

airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his

wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely

silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the

first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out of

a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I

won't, I won't, I simply won't pay him his wages, I won't just because

that is "what I wish," because "I am master, and it is for me to

decide," because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;

but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to

him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a

whole month....

But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out

for four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there

had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be

observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by heart).

He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare, keeping it

up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me or seeing

me out of the house. If I held out and pretended not to notice these

stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further tortures. All at

once, _à propos_ of nothing, he would walk softly and smoothly into my

room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand at the door, one

hand behind his back and one foot behind the other, and fix upon me a

stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him

what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but continue staring at me

persistently for some seconds, then, with a peculiar compression of his

lips and a most significant air, deliberately turn round and

deliberately go back to his room. Two hours later he would come out

again and again present himself before me in the same way. It had

happened that in my fury I did not even ask him what he wanted, but

simply raised my head sharply and imperiously and began staring back at

him. So we stared at one another for two minutes; at last he turned with

deliberation and dignity and went back again for two hours.

If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my

revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,

deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral

degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing

completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he

wanted.

This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost

my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance

apart from him.

"Stay," I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,

with one hand behind his back, to go to his room, "stay! Come back, come

back, I tell you!" and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he turned

round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he persisted in

saying nothing, and that infuriated me.

"How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?

Answer!"

After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round

again.

"Stay!" I roared, running up to him, "don't stir! There. Answer, now:

what did you come in to look at?"

"If you have any order to give me it's my duty to carry it out," he

answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp,

raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to

another, all this with exasperating composure.

"That's not what I am asking you about, you torturer!" I shouted,

turning crimson with anger. "I'll tell you why you came here myself: you

see, I don't give you your wages, you are so proud you don't want to bow

down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your stupid

stares, to worry me and you have no sus...pic...ion how stupid it

is--stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!"...

He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.

"Listen," I shouted to him. "Here's the money, do you see, here it is"

(I took it out of the table drawer); "here's the seven roubles complete,

but you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ... going ... to

... have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to beg my

pardon. Do you hear?"

"That cannot be," he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.

"It shall be so," I said, "I give you my word of honour, it shall be!"

"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for," he went on, as

though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. "Why, besides, you

called me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you at the police-station

at any time for insulting behaviour."

"Go, summon me," I roared, "go at once, this very minute, this very

second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!"

But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud calls

to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without looking

round.

"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened," I

decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind his

screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating

slowly and violently.

"Apollon," I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless, "go

at once without a minute's delay and fetch the police-officer."

He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles and

taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a guffaw.

"At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can't imagine what will

happen."

"You are certainly out of your mind," he observed, without even raising

his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.

"Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as

for being frightened--you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for

nothing will come of it."

"Go!" I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should strike

him in a minute.

But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open at

that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at us

in perplexity. I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back to

my room. There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my head

against the wall and stood motionless in that position.

Two minutes later I heard Apollon's deliberate footsteps. "There is some

woman asking for you," he said, looking at me with peculiar severity.

Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away, but stared at

us sarcastically.

"Go away, go away," I commanded in desperation. At that moment my clock

began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.

IX

"Into my house come bold and free,

Its rightful mistress there to be."

I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I

believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my

ragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had imagined the scene not

long before in a fit of depression. After standing over us for a couple

of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at ease.

What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with confusion,

more so, in fact, than I should have expected. At the sight of me, of

course.

"Sit down," I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I

sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me

open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naïveté

of expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.

She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as

usual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should

make her pay dearly for _all this_.

"You have found me in a strange position, Liza," I began, stammering and

knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. "No, no, don't imagine

anything," I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. "I am not

ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary I look with pride on my

poverty. I am poor but honourable.... One can be poor and honourable," I

muttered. "However ... would you like tea?"...

"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute."

I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.

"Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the

seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist, "here

are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must come

to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant. If you

won't go, you'll make me a miserable man! You don't know what this woman

is.... This is--everything! You may be imagining something.... But you

don't know what that woman is!"...

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles

again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or putting

down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention to me or

making any answer he went on busying himself with his needle, which he

had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minutes with my arms

crossed _à la Napoléon_. My temples were moist with sweat. I was pale, I

felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to pity, looking at me.

Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up from his seat,

deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off his spectacles,

deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me over his shoulder:

"Shall I get a whole portion?" deliberately walked out of the room. As I

was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to me on the way: shouldn't

I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown, no matter where, and then

let happen what would.

I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were

silent.

"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist

so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

"What are you saying!" she cried, starting.

"I will kill him! kill him!" I shrieked, suddenly striking the table in

absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid it

was to be in such a frenzy. "You don't know, Liza, what that torturer is

to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetch some rusks;

he...."

And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How

ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain

them.

She was frightened.

"What is the matter? What is wrong?" she cried, fussing about me.

"Water, give me water, over there!" I muttered in a faint voice, though

I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without

water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what is called,

_putting it on_, to save appearances, though the attack was a genuine

one.

She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment Apollon

brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this commonplace,

prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all that had

happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with positive

alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.

"Liza, do you despise me?" I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling

with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer.

"Drink your tea," I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself, but,

of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite

against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have

killed her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a word

to her all the time. "She is the cause of it all," I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we did

not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from

beginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to

begin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity. I

was obstinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,

because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful

stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

"I want to ... get away ... from there altogether," she began, to break

the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought

not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as I

was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and

unnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled

all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not

care what happened. Another five minutes passed.

"Perhaps I am in your way," she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was

getting up.

But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively

trembled with spite, and at once burst out.

"Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?" I began, gasping for

breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed to

have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to

begin. "Why have you come? Answer, answer," I cried, hardly knowing what

I was doing. "I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come. You've

come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you are soft

as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may as well know

that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you now. Why are

you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been insulted just

before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening before me. I

came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer; but I didn't

succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on some one to

get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on you and

laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted to humiliate; I had

been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power.... That's what it

was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose to save you. Yes? You

imagined that? You imagined that?"

I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in exactly,

but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very well indeed.

And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a handkerchief, tried to

say something, and her lips worked painfully; but she sank on a chair as

though she had been felled by an axe. And all the time afterwards she

listened to me with her lips parted and her eyes wide open, shuddering

with awful terror. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words overwhelmed

her....

"Save you!" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down

the room before her. "Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse than

you myself. Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you

that sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for? was it to read us

a sermon?' Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I wanted,

I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your hysteria--that

was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn't keep it up then, because I

am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the devil knows why, gave

you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I got home, I was cursing

and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already because

of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words, only

dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go

to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole

world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is

the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the

world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know

that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel,

an egoist, a sluggard. Here I have been shuddering for the last three

days at the thought of your coming. And do you know what has worried me

particularly for these three days? That I posed as such a hero to you,

and now you would see me in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly,

loathsome. I told you just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so

you may as well know that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it

than of anything, more afraid of it than of being found out if I were a

thief, because I am as vain as though I had been skinned and the very

air blowing on me hurt. Surely by now you must realize that I shall

never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing-gown,

just as I was flying at Apollon like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the

former hero, was flying like a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey,

and the lackey was jeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the

tears I could not help shedding before you just now, like some silly

woman put to shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall

never forgive _you_ either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you

turned up like this, because I am a blackguard, because I am the

nastiest, stupidest, absurdest and most envious of all the worms on

earth, who are not a bit better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are

never put to confusion; while I shall always be insulted by every louse,

that is my doom! And what is it to me that you don't understand a word

of this! And what do I care, what do I care about you, and whether you

go to ruin there or not? Do you understand? How I shall hate you now

after saying this, for having been here and listening. Why, it's not

once in a lifetime a man speaks out like this, and then it is in

hysterics!... What more do you want? Why do you still stand confronting

me, after all this? Why are you worrying me? Why don't you go?"

But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed to think

and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in the

world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand, that I

could not all at once take in this strange circumstance. What happened

was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great deal more

than I imagined. She understood from all this what a woman understands

first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I was myself

unhappy.

The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by

a look of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling myself a scoundrel

and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was accompanied

throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively. She was on the

point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished she took no notice

of my shouting: "Why are you here, why don't you go away?" but realized

only that it must have been very bitter to me to say all this. Besides,

she was so crushed, poor girl; she considered herself infinitely beneath

me; how could she feel anger or resentment? She suddenly leapt up from

her chair with an irresistible impulse and held out her hands, yearning

towards me, though still timid and not daring to stir.... At this point

there was a revulsion in my heart, too. Then she suddenly rushed to me,

threw her arms round me and burst into tears. I, too, could not restrain

myself, and sobbed as I never had before.

"They won't let me.... I can't be good!" I managed to articulate; then I

went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a

quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her

arms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the trouble

was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the

loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust

into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a

far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward

now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was

I ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too, came into

my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that

she was now the heroine, while I was just such a crushed and humiliated

creature as she had been before me that night--four days before.... And

all this came into my mind during the minutes I was lying on my face on

the sofa.

My God! surely I was not envious of her then.

I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course, I

was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I cannot

get on without domineering and tyrannizing over some one, but ... there

is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner

or later ... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I

was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled and

flamed up in my heart ... a feeling of mastery and possession. My eyes

gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I hated her

and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling intensified

the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. At first there was a

look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but only for one instant.

She warmly and rapturously embraced me.

X

A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in

frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and

peeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground with her

head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But she did not

go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it all. I had

insulted her finally, but ... there's no need to describe it. She

realized that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge, a fresh

humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred was added

now a _personal hatred_, born of envy.... Though I do not maintain

positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she certainly

did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what was worse,

incapable of loving her.

I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to

be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange

I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it

strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I

repeat, with me loving meant tyrannizing and showing my moral

superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort

of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that

love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved

object--to tyrannize over her.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a

struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral

subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated

object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded in

so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life," as

to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to shame

for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even guess

that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me, because

to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of ruin, and all

moral renewal is included in love and can only show itself in that form.

I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room

and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably

oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted

"peace," to be left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressed

me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as

though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at

the screen as though to remind her.... She started, sprang up, and flew

to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her escape

from me.... Two minutes later she came from behind the screen and looked

with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was forced,

however, to _keep up appearances_, and I turned away from her eyes.

"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.

I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and

closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the

other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....

I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this

accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through

losing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight out

that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite. It came

into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room and she

was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain: though I

did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart,

but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so purposely

made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that I could

not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid seeing her,

and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened the door in

the passage and began listening.

"Liza! Liza!" I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.

There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on

the stairs.

"Liza!" I cried, more loudly.

No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open

heavily with a creak and slam violently, the sound echoed up the stairs.

She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly

oppressed.

I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and

looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;

straight before me on the table I saw.... In short, I saw a crumpled

blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute

before. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other

in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table

at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.

Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have

expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for

my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. I

could not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,

flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. She could

not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the street.

It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling

almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as

though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to be

heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I ran

two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.

Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?

Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet, to

entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast was being

rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with

indifference. But--what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate her,

perhaps, even to-morrow, just because I had kissed her feet to-day?

Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognized that day, for the

hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?

I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered

this.

"And will it not be better?" I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,

stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. "Will it not

be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for ever?

Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful

consciousness! To-morrow I should have defiled her soul and have

exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in

her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the feeling of

insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h'm! ... perhaps,

too, by forgiveness.... Will all that make things easier for her

though?..."

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which

is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain in

my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could there

have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that I

should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard

nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time

afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment and

hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.

* * * * *

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I

have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes"

here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I

have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's

hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long

stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in

my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from

real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly

not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an

anti-hero are _expressly_ gathered together here, and what matters most,

it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from

life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so

divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life,

and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to

looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all

privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume

sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know

what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers

were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little

more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity,

relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging

to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be

angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for

yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes,

and don't dare to say all of us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not

justifying myself with that "all of us." As for what concerns me in

particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have

not dared to carry half-way, and what's more, you have taken your

cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving

yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in

you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living

means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without

books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know

what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate,

what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men

with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it

a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized

man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not

by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are

developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow

from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground."

[_The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however.

He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems

to us that we may stop here._]

A FAINT HEART

A STORY

Under the same roof in the same flat on the same fourth storey lived two

young men, colleagues in the service, Arkady Ivanovitch Nefedevitch and

Vasya Shumkov.... The author of course, feels the necessity of

explaining to the reader why one is given his full title, while the

other's name is abbreviated, if only that such a mode of expression may

not be regarded as unseemly and rather familiar. But, to do so, it would

first be necessary to explain and describe the rank and years and

calling and duty in the service, and even, indeed, the characters of the

persons concerned; and since there are so many writers who begin in that

way, the author of the proposed story, solely in order to be unlike them

(that is, some people will perhaps say, entirely on account of his

boundless vanity), decides to begin straightaway with action. Having

completed this introduction, he begins.

Towards six o'clock on New Year's Eve Shumkov returned home. Arkady

Ivanovitch, who was lying on the bed, woke up and looked at his friend

with half-closed eyes. He saw that Vasya had on his very best trousers

and a very clean shirt front. That, of course, struck him. "Where had

Vasya to go like that? And he had not dined at home either!" Meanwhile,

Shumkov had lighted a candle, and Arkady Ivanovitch guessed immediately

that his friend was intending to wake him accidentally. Vasya did, in

fact, clear his throat twice, walked twice up and down the room, and at

last, quite accidentally, let the pipe, which he had begun filling in

the corner by the stove, slip out of his hands. Arkady Ivanovitch

laughed to himself.

"Vasya, give over pretending!" he said.

"Arkasha, you are not asleep?"

"I really cannot say for certain; it seems to me I am not."

"Oh, Arkasha! How are you, dear boy? Well, brother! Well, brother!...

You don't know what I have to tell you!"

"I certainly don't know; come here."

As though expecting this, Vasya went up to him at once, not at all

anticipating, however, treachery from Arkady Ivanovitch. The other

seized him very adroitly by the arms, turned him over, held him down,

and began, as it is called, "strangling" his victim, and apparently this

proceeding afforded the lighthearted Arkady Ivanovitch great

satisfaction.

"Caught!" he cried. "Caught!"

"Arkasha, Arkasha, what are you about? Let me go. For goodness sake, let

me go, I shall crumple my dress coat!"

"As though that mattered! What do you want with a dress coat? Why were

you so confiding as to put yourself in my hands? Tell me, where have you

been? Where have you dined?"

"Arkasha, for goodness sake, let me go!"

"Where have you dined?"

"Why, it's about that I want to tell you."

"Tell away, then."

"But first let me go."

"Not a bit of it, I won't let you go till you tell me!"

"Arkasha! Arkasha! But do you understand, I can't--it is utterly

impossible!" cried Vasya, helplessly wriggling out of his friend's

powerful clutches, "you know there are subjects!"

"How--subjects?"...

"Why, subjects that you can't talk about in such a position without

losing your dignity; it's utterly impossible; it would make it

ridiculous, and this is not a ridiculous matter, it is important."

"Here, he's going in for being important! That's a new idea! You tell me

so as to make me laugh, that's how you must tell me; I don't want

anything important; or else you are no true friend of mine. Do you call

yourself a friend? Eh?"

"Arkasha, I really can't!"

"Well, I don't want to hear...."

"Well, Arkasha!" began Vasya, lying across the bed and doing his utmost

to put all the dignity possible into his words. "Arkasha! If you like, I

will tell you; only...."

"Well, what?..."

"Well, I am engaged to be married!"

Without uttering another word Arkady Ivanovitch took Vasya up in his

arms like a baby, though the latter was by no means short, but rather

long and thin, and began dexterously carrying him up and down the room,

pretending that he was hushing him to sleep.

"I'll put you in your swaddling clothes, Master Bridegroom," he kept

saying. But seeing that Vasya lay in his arms, not stirring or uttering

a word, he thought better of it at once, and reflecting that the joke

had gone too far, set him down in the middle of the room and kissed him

on the cheek in the most genuine and friendly way.

"Vasya, you are not angry?"

"Arkasha, listen...."

"Come, it's New Year's Eve."

"Oh, I'm all right; but why are you such a madman, such a scatterbrain?

How many times I have told you: Arkasha, it's really not funny, not

funny at all!"

"Oh, well, you are not angry?"

"Oh, I'm all right; am I ever angry with any one! But you have wounded

me, do you understand?"

"But how have I wounded you? In what way?"

"I come to you as to a friend, with a full heart, to pour out my soul to

you, to tell you of my happiness...."

"What happiness? Why don't you speak?..."

"Oh, well, I am going to get married!" Vasya answered with vexation, for

he really was a little exasperated.

"You! You are going to get married! So you really mean it?" Arkasha

cried at the top of his voice. "No, no ... but what's this? He talks

like this and his tears are flowing.... Vasya, my little Vasya, don't,

my little son! Is it true, really?" And Arkady Ivanovitch flew to hug

him again.

"Well, do you see, how it is now?" said Vasya. "You are kind, of course,

you are a friend, I know that. I come to you with such joy, such

rapture, and all of a sudden I have to disclose all the joy of my heart,

all my rapture struggling across the bed, in an undignified way.... You

understand, Arkasha," Vasya went on, half laughing. "You see, it made it

seem comic: and in a sense I did not belong to myself at that minute. I

could not let this be slighted.... What's more, if you had asked me her

name, I swear, I would sooner you killed me than have answered you."

"But, Vasya, why did you not speak! You should have told me all about it

sooner and I would not have played the fool!" cried Arkady Ivanovitch in

genuine despair.

"Come, that's enough, that's enough! Of course, that's how it is.... You

know what it all comes from--from my having a good heart. What vexes me

is, that I could not tell you as I wanted to, making you glad and happy,

telling you nicely and initiating you into my secret properly....

Really, Arkasha, I love you so much that I believe if it were not for

you I shouldn't be getting married, and, in fact, I shouldn't be living

in this world at all!"

Arkady Ivanovitch, who was excessively sentimental, cried and laughed at

once as he listened to Vasya. Vasya did the same. Both flew to embrace

one another again and forgot the past.

"How is it--how is it? Tell me all about it, Vasya! I am astonished,

excuse me, brother, but I am utterly astonished; it's a perfect

thunderbolt, by Jove! Nonsense, nonsense, brother, you have made it up,

you've really made it up, you are telling fibs!" cried Arkady

Ivanovitch, and he actually looked into Vasya's face with genuine

uncertainty, but seeing in it the radiant confirmation of a positive

intention of being married as soon as possible, threw himself on the bed

and began rolling from side to side in ecstasy till the walls shook.

"Vasya, sit here," he said at last, sitting down on the bed.

"I really don't know, brother, where to begin!"

They looked at one another in joyful excitement.

"Who is she, Vasya?"

"The Artemyevs!..." Vasya pronounced, in a voice weak with emotion.

"No?"

"Well, I did buzz into your ears about them at first, and then I shut

up, and you noticed nothing. Ah, Arkasha, if you knew how hard it was to

keep it from you; but I was afraid, afraid to speak! I thought it would

all go wrong, and you know I was in love, Arkasha! My God! my God! You

see this was the trouble," he began, pausing continually from agitation,

"she had a suitor a year ago, but he was suddenly ordered somewhere; I

knew him--he was a fellow, bless him! Well, he did not write at all, he

simply vanished. They waited and waited, wondering what it meant....

Four months ago he suddenly came back married, and has never set foot

within their doors! It was coarse--shabby! And they had no one to stand

up for them. She cried and cried, poor girl, and I fell in love with her

... indeed, I had been in love with her long before, all the time! I

began comforting her, and was always going there.... Well, and I really

don't know how it has all come about, only she came to love me; a week

ago I could not restrain myself, I cried, I sobbed, and told her

everything--well, that I love her--everything, in fact!... 'I am ready

to love you, too, Vassily Petrovitch, only I am a poor girl, don't make

a mock of me; I don't dare to love any one.' Well, brother, you

understand! You understand?... On that we got engaged on the spot. I

kept thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, I said to her,

'How are we to tell your mother?' She said, 'It will be hard, wait a

little; she's afraid, and now maybe she would not let you have me; she

keeps crying, too.' Without telling her I blurted it out to her mother

to-day. Lizanka fell on her knees before her, I did the same ... well,

she gave us her blessing. Arkasha, Arkasha! My dear fellow! We will live

together. No, I won't part from you for anything."

"Vasya, look at you as I may, I can't believe it. I don't believe it, I

swear. I keep feeling as though.... Listen, how can you be engaged to be

married?... How is it I didn't know, eh? Do you know, Vasya, I will

confess it to you now. I was thinking of getting married myself; but now

since you are going to be married, it is just as good! Be happy, be

happy!..."

"Brother, I feel so lighthearted now, there is such sweetness in my soul

..." said Vasya, getting up and pacing about the room excitedly. "Don't

you feel the same? We shall be poor, of course, but we shall be happy;

and you know it is not a wild fancy; our happiness is not a fairy tale;

we shall be happy in reality!..."

"Vasya, Vasya, listen!"

"What?" said Vasya, standing before Arkady Ivanovitch.

"The idea occurs to me; I am really afraid to say it to you.... Forgive

me, and settle my doubts. What are you going to live on? You know I am

delighted that you are going to be married, of course, I am delighted,

and I don't know what to do with myself, but--what are you going to live

on? Eh?"

"Oh, good Heavens! What a fellow you are, Arkasha!" said Vasya, looking

at Nefedevitch in profound astonishment. "What do you mean? Even her old

mother, even she did not think of that for two minutes when I put it all

clearly before her. You had better ask what they are living on! They

have five hundred roubles a year between the three of them: the pension,

which is all they have, since the father died. She and her old mother

and her little brother, whose schooling is paid for out of that income

too--that is how they live! It's you and I are the capitalists! Some

good years it works out to as much as seven hundred for me."

"I say, Vasya, excuse me; I really ... you know I ... I am only thinking

how to prevent things going wrong. How do you mean, seven hundred? It's

only three hundred...."

"Three hundred!... And Yulian Mastakovitch? Have you forgotten him?"

"Yulian Mastakovitch? But you know that's uncertain, brother; that's not

the same thing as three hundred roubles of secure salary, where every

rouble is a friend you can trust. Yulian Mastakovitch, of course, he's a

great man, in fact, I respect him, I understand him, though he is so far

above us; and, by Jove, I love him, because he likes you and gives you

something for your work, though he might not pay you, but simply order a

clerk to work for him--but you will agree, Vasya.... Let me tell you,

too, I am not talking nonsense. I admit in all Petersburg you won't find

a handwriting like your handwriting, I am ready to allow that to you,"

Nefedevitch concluded, not without enthusiasm. "But, God forbid! you may

displease him all at once, you may not satisfy him, your work with him

may stop, he may take another clerk--all sorts of things may happen, in

fact! You know, Yulian Mastakovitch may be here to-day and gone

to-morrow...."

"Well, Arkasha, the ceiling might fall on our heads this minute."

"Oh, of course, of course, I mean nothing."

"But listen, hear what I have got to say--you know, I don't see how he

can part with me.... No, hear what I have to say! hear what I have to

say! You see, I perform all my duties punctually; you know how kind he

is, you know, Arkasha, he gave me fifty roubles in silver to-day!"

"Did he really, Vasya? A bonus for you?"

"Bonus, indeed, it was out of his own pocket. He said: 'Why, you have

had no money for five months, brother, take some if you want it; thank

you, I am satisfied with you.'... Yes, really! 'Yes, you don't work for

me for nothing,' said he. He did, indeed, that's what he said. It

brought tears into my eyes, Arkasha. Good Heavens, yes!"

"I say, Vasya, have you finished copying those papers?..."

"No.... I haven't finished them yet."

"Vas...ya! My angel! What have you been doing?"

"Listen, Arkasha, it doesn't matter, they are not wanted for another two

days, I have time enough...."

"How is it you have not done them?"

"That's all right, that's all right. You look so horror-stricken that

you turn me inside out and make my heart ache! You are always going on

at me like this! He's for ever crying out: Oh, oh, oh!!! Only consider,

what does it matter? Why, I shall finish it, of course I shall finish

it...."

"What if you don't finish it?" cried Arkady, jumping up, "and he has

made you a present to-day! And you going to be married.... Tut, tut,

tut!..."

"It's all right, it's all right," cried Shumkov, "I shall sit down

directly, I shall sit down this minute."

"How did you come to leave it, Vasya?"

"Oh, Arkasha! How could I sit down to work! Have I been in a fit state?

Why, even at the office I could scarcely sit still, I could scarcely

bear the beating of my heart.... Oh! oh! Now I shall work all night, and

I shall work all to-morrow night, and the night after, too--and I shall

finish it."

"Is there a great deal left?"

"Don't hinder me, for goodness' sake, don't hinder me; hold your

tongue."

Arkady Ivanovitch went on tip-toe to the bed and sat down, then suddenly

wanted to get up, but was obliged to sit down again, remembering that he

might interrupt him, though he could not sit still for excitement: it

was evident that the news had thoroughly upset him, and the first thrill

of delight had not yet passed off. He glanced at Shumkov; the latter

glanced at him, smiled, and shook his finger at him, then, frowning

severely (as though all his energy and the success of his work depended

upon it), fixed his eyes on the papers.

It seemed that he, too, could not yet master his emotion; he kept

changing his pen, fidgeting in his chair, re-arranging things, and

setting to work again, but his hand trembled and refused to move.

"Arkasha, I've talked to them about you," he cried suddenly, as though

he had just remembered it.

"Yes," cried Arkasha, "I was just wanting to ask you that. Well?"

"Well, I'll tell you everything afterwards. Of course, it is my own

fault, but it quite went out of my head that I didn't mean to say

anything till I had written four pages, but I thought of you and of

them. I really can't write, brother, I keep thinking about you...."

Vasya smiled.

A silence followed.

"Phew! What a horrid pen," cried Shumkov, flinging it on the table in

vexation. He took another.

"Vasya! listen! one word...."

"Well, make haste, and for the last time."

"Have you a great deal left to do?"

"Ah, brother!" Vasya frowned, as though there could be nothing more

terrible and murderous in the whole world than such a question. "A lot,

a fearful lot."

"Do you know, I have an idea----"

"What?"

"Oh, never mind, never mind; go on writing."

"Why, what? what?"

"It's past six, Vasya."

Here Nefedevitch smiled and winked slyly at Vasya, though with a certain

timidity, not knowing how Vasya would take it.

"Well, what is it?" said Vasya, throwing down his pen, looking him

straight in the face and actually turning pale with excitement.

"Do you know what?"

"For goodness sake, what is it?"

"I tell you what, you are excited, you won't get much done.... Stop,

stop, stop! I have it, I have it--listen," said Nefedevitch, jumping up

from the bed in delight, preventing Vasya from speaking and doing his

utmost to ward off all objections; "first of all you must get calm, you

must pull yourself together, mustn't you?"

"Arkasha, Arkasha!" cried Vasya, jumping up from his chair, "I will work

all night, I will, really."

"Of course, of course, you won't go to bed till morning."

"I won't go to bed, I won't go to bed at all."

"No, that won't do, that won't do: you must sleep, go to bed at five. I

will call you at eight. To-morrow is a holiday; you can sit and scribble

away all day long.... Then the night and--but have you a great deal left

to do?"

"Yes, look, look!"

Vasya, quivering with excitement and suspense, showed the manuscript:

"Look!"

"I say, brother, that's not much."

"My dear fellow, there's some more of it," said Vasya, looking very

timidly at Nefedevitch, as though the decision whether he was to go or

not depended upon the latter.

"How much?"

"Two signatures."

"Well, what's that? Come, I tell you what. We shall have time to finish

it, by Jove, we shall!"

"Arkasha!"

"Vasya, listen! To-night, on New Year's Eve, every one is at home with

his family. You and I are the only ones without a home or relations....

Oh, Vasya!"

Nefedevitch clutched Vasya and hugged him in his leonine arms.

"Arkasha, it's settled."

"Vasya, boy, I only wanted to say this. You see, Vasya--listen,

bandy-legs, listen!..."

Arkady stopped, with his mouth open, because he could not speak for

delight. Vasya held him by the shoulders, gazed into his face and moved

his lips, as though he wanted to speak for him.

"Well," he brought out at last.

"Introduce me to them to-day."

"Arkady, let us go to tea there. I tell you what, I tell you what. We

won't even stay to see in the New Year, we'll come away earlier," cried

Vasya, with genuine inspiration.

"That is, we'll go for two hours, neither more nor less...."

"And then separation till I have finished...."

"Vasya, boy!"

"Arkady!"

Three minutes later Arkady was dressed in his best. Vasya did nothing

but brush himself, because he had been in such haste to work that he had

not changed his trousers.

They hurried out into the street, each more pleased than the other.

Their way lay from the Petersburg Side to Kolomna. Arkady Ivanovitch

stepped out boldly and vigorously, so that from his walk alone one could

see how glad he was at the good fortune of his friend, who was more and

more radiant with happiness. Vasya trotted along with shorter steps,

though his deportment was none the less dignified. Arkady Ivanovitch, in

fact, had never seen him before to such advantage. At that moment he

actually felt more respect for him, and Vasya's physical defect, of

which the reader is not yet aware (Vasya was slightly deformed), which

always called forth a feeling of loving sympathy in Arkady Ivanovitch's

kind heart, contributed to the deep tenderness the latter felt for him

at this moment, a tenderness of which Vasya was in every way worthy.

Arkady Ivanovitch felt ready to weep with happiness, but he restrained

himself.

"Where are you going, where are you going, Vasya? It is nearer this

way," he cried, seeing that Vasya was making in the direction of

Voznesenky.

"Hold your tongue, Arkasha."

"It really is nearer, Vasya."

"Do you know what, Arkasha?" Vasya began mysteriously, in a voice

quivering with joy, "I tell you what, I want to take Lizanka a little

present."

"What sort of present?"

"At the corner here, brother, is Madame Leroux's, a wonderful shop."

"Well."

"A cap, my dear, a cap; I saw such a charming little cap to-day. I

inquired, I was told it was the _façon Manon Lescaut_--a delightful

thing. Cherry-coloured ribbons, and if it is not dear ... Arkasha, even

if it is dear...."

"I think you are superior to any of the poets, Vasya. Come along."

They ran along, and two minutes later went into the shop. They were met

by a black-eyed Frenchwoman with curls, who, from the first glance at

her customers, became as joyous and happy as they, even happier, if one

may say so. Vasya was ready to kiss Madame Leroux in his delight....

"Arkasha," he said in an undertone, casting a casual glance at all the

grand and beautiful things on little wooden stands on the huge table,

"lovely things! What's that? What's this? This one, for instance, this

little sweet, do you see?" Vasya whispered, pointing to a charming cap

further away, which was not the one he meant to buy, because he had

already from afar descried and fixed his eyes upon the real, famous one,

standing at the other end. He looked at it in such a way that one might

have supposed some one was going to steal it, or as though the cap

itself might take wings and fly into the air just to prevent Vasya from

obtaining it.

"Look," said Arkady Ivanovitch, pointing to one, "I think that's

better."

"Well, Arkasha, that does you credit; I begin to respect you for your

taste," said Vasya, resorting to cunning with Arkasha in the tenderness

of his heart, "your cap is charming, but come this way."

"Where is there a better one, brother?"

"Look; this way."

"That," said Arkady, doubtfully.

But when Vasya, incapable of restraining himself any longer, took it

from the stand from which it seemed to fly spontaneously, as though

delighted at falling at last into the hands of so good a customer, and

they heard the rustle of its ribbons, ruches and lace, an unexpected cry

of delight broke from the powerful chest of Arkady Ivanovitch. Even

Madame Leroux, while maintaining her incontestable dignity and

pre-eminence in matters of taste, and remaining mute from condescension,

rewarded Vasya with a smile of complete approbation, everything in her

glance, gesture and smile saying at once: "Yes, you have chosen rightly,

and are worthy of the happiness which awaits you."

"It has been dangling its charms in coy seclusion," cried Vasya,

transferring his tender feelings to the charming cap. "You have been

hiding on purpose, you sly little pet!" And he kissed it, that is the

air surrounding it, for he was afraid to touch his treasure.

"Retiring as true worth and virtue," Arkady added enthusiastically,

quoting humorously from a comic paper he had read that morning. "Well,

Vasya?"

"Hurrah, Arkasha! You are witty to-day. I predict you will make a

sensation, as women say. Madame Leroux, Madame Leroux!"

"What is your pleasure?"

"Dear Madame Leroux."

Madame Leroux looked at Arkady Ivanovitch and smiled condescendingly.

"You wouldn't believe how I adore you at this moment.... Allow me to

give you a kiss...." And Vasya kissed the shopkeeper.

She certainly at that moment needed all her dignity to maintain her

position with such a madcap. But I contend that the innate, spontaneous

courtesy and grace with which Madame Leroux received Vasya's enthusiasm,

was equally befitting. She forgave him, and how tactfully, how

graciously, she knew how to behave in the circumstances. How could she

have been angry with Vasya?

"Madame Leroux, how much?"

"Five roubles in silver," she answered, straightening herself with a new

smile.

"And this one, Madame Leroux?" said Arkady Ivanovitch, pointing to his

choice.

"That one is eight roubles."

"There, you see--there, you see! Come, Madame Leroux, tell me which is

nicer, more graceful, more charming, which of them suits you best?"

"The second is richer, but your choice _c'est plus coquet_."

"Then we will take it."

Madame Leroux took a sheet of very delicate paper, pinned it up, and the

paper with the cap wrapped in it seemed even lighter than the paper

alone. Vasya took it carefully, almost holding his breath, bowed to

Madame Leroux, said something else very polite to her and left the shop.

"I am a lady's man, I was born to be a lady's man," said Vasya, laughing

a little noiseless, nervous laugh and dodging the passers-by, whom he

suspected of designs for crushing his precious cap.

"Listen, Arkady, brother," he began a minute later, and there was a note

of triumph, of infinite affection in his voice. "Arkady, I am so happy,

I am so happy!"

"Vasya! how glad I am, dear boy!"

"No, Arkasha, no. I know that there is no limit to your affection for

me; but you cannot be feeling one-hundredth part of what I am feeling at

this moment. My heart is so full, so full! Arkasha, I am not worthy of

such happiness. I feel that, I am conscious of it. Why has it come to

me?" he said, his voice full of stifled sobs. "What have I done to

deserve it? Tell me. Look what lots of people, what lots of tears, what

sorrow, what work-a-day life without a holiday, while I, I am loved by a

girl like that, I.... But you will see her yourself immediately, you

will appreciate her noble heart. I was born in a humble station, now I

have a grade in the service and an independent income--my salary. I was

born with a physical defect, I am a little deformed. See, she loves me

as I am. Yulian Mastakovitch was so kind, so attentive, so gracious

to-day; he does not often talk to me; he came up to me: 'Well, how goes

it, Vasya' (yes, really, he called me Vasya), 'are you going to have a

good time for the holiday, eh?' he laughed.

"'Well, the fact is, Your Excellency, I have work to do,' but then I

plucked up courage and said: 'and maybe I shall have a good time, too,

Your Excellency.' I really said it. He gave me the money, on the spot,

then he said a couple of words more to me. Tears came into my eyes,

brother, I actually cried, and he, too, seemed touched, he patted me on

the shoulder, and said: 'Feel always, Vasya, as you feel this now.'"

Vasya paused for an instant. Arkady Ivanovitch turned away, and he, too,

wiped away a tear with his fist.

"And, and ..." Vasya went on, "I have never spoken to you of this,

Arkady.... Arkady, you make me so happy with your affection, without you

I could not live,--no, no, don't say anything, Arkady, let me squeeze

your hand, let me ... tha...ank ... you...." Again Vasya could not

finish.

Arkady Ivanovitch longed to throw himself on Vasya's neck, but as they

were crossing the road and heard almost in their ears a shrill: "Hi!

there!" they ran frightened and excited to the pavement.

Arkady Ivanovitch was positively relieved. He set down Vasya's outburst

of gratitude to the exceptional circumstances of the moment. He was

vexed. He felt that he had done so little for Vasya hitherto. He felt

actually ashamed of himself when Vasya began thanking him for so little.

But they had all their lives before them, and Arkady Ivanovitch breathed

more freely.

The Artemyevs had quite given up expecting them. The proof of it was

that they had already sat down to tea! And the old, it seems, are

sometimes more clear-sighted than the young, even when the young are so

exceptional. Lizanka had very earnestly maintained, "He isn't coming, he

isn't coming, Mamma; I feel in my heart he is not coming;" while her

mother on the contrary declared "that she had a feeling that he would

certainly come, that he would not stay away, that he would run round,

that he could have no office work now, on New Year's Eve." Even as

Lizanka opened the door she did not in the least expect to see them, and

greeted them breathlessly, with her heart throbbing like a captured

bird's, flushing and turning as red as a cherry, a fruit which she

wonderfully resembled. Good Heavens, what a surprise it was! What a

joyful "Oh!" broke from her lips. "Deceiver! My darling!" she cried,

throwing her arms round Vasya's neck. But imagine her amazement, her

sudden confusion: just behind Vasya, as though trying to hide behind his

back, stood Arkady Ivanovitch, a trifle out of countenance. It must be

admitted that he was awkward in the company of women, very awkward

indeed, in fact on one occasion something occurred ... but of that later.

You must put yourself in his place, however. There was nothing to laugh

at; he was standing in the entry, in his goloshes and overcoat, and in a

cap with flaps over the ears, which he would have hastened to pull off,

but he had, all twisted round in a hideous way, a yellow knitted scarf,

which, to make things worse, was knotted at the back. He had to

disentangle all this, to take it off as quickly as possible, to show

himself to more advantage, for there is no one who does not prefer to

show himself to advantage. And then Vasya, vexatious insufferable Vasya,

of course always the same dear kind Vasya, but now insufferable,

ruthless Vasya. "Here," he shouted, "Lizanka, I have brought you my

Arkady? What do you think of him? He is my best friend, embrace him,

kiss him, Lizanka, give him a kiss in advance; afterwards--you will know

him better--you can take it back again."

Well, what, I ask you, was Arkady Ivanovitch to do? And he had only

untwisted half of the scarf so far. I really am sometimes ashamed of

Vasya's excess of enthusiasm; it is, of course, the sign of a good

heart, but ... it's awkward, not nice!

At last both went in.... The mother was unutterably delighted to make

Arkady Ivanovitch's acquaintance, "she had heard so much about him, she

had...." But she did not finish. A joyful "Oh!" ringing musically

through the room interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. Good

Heavens! Lizanka was standing before the cap which had suddenly been

unfolded before her gaze; she clasped her hands with the utmost

simplicity, smiling such a smile.... Oh, Heavens! why had not Madame

Leroux an even lovelier cap?

Oh, Heavens! but where could you find a lovelier cap? It was quite

first-rate. Where could you get a better one? I mean it seriously. This

ingratitude on the part of lovers moves me, in fact, to indignation and

even wounds me a little. Why, look at it for yourself, reader, look,

what could be more beautiful than this little love of a cap? Come, look

at it.... But, no, no, my strictures are uncalled for; they had by now

all agreed with me; it had been a momentary aberration; the blindness,

the delirium of feeling; I am ready to forgive them.... But then you

must look.... You must excuse me, kind reader, I am still talking about

the cap: made of tulle, light as a feather, a broad cherry-coloured

ribbon covered with lace passing between the tulle and the ruche, and at

the back two wide long ribbons--they would fall down a little below the

nape of the neck.... All that the cap needed was to be tilted a little

to the back of the head; come, look at it; I ask you, after that ... but

I see you are not looking ... you think it does not matter. You are

looking in a different direction.... You are looking at two big tears,

big as pearls, that rose in two jet black eyes, quivered for one instant

on the eyelashes, and then dropped on the ethereal tulle of which Madame

Leroux's artistic masterpiece was composed.... And again I feel vexed,

those two tears were scarcely a tribute to the cap.... No, to my mind,

such a gift should be given in cool blood, as only then can its full

worth be appreciated. I am, I confess, dear reader, entirely on the side

of the cap.

They sat down--Vasya with Lizanka and the old mother with Arkady

Ivanovitch; they began to talk, and Arkady Ivanovitch did himself

credit, I am glad to say that for him. One would hardly, indeed, have

expected it of him. After a couple of words about Vasya he most

successfully turned the conversation to Yulian Mastakovitch, his patron.

And he talked so cleverly, so cleverly that the subject was not

exhausted for an hour. You ought to have seen with what dexterity, what

tact, Arkady Ivanovitch touched upon certain peculiarities of Yulian

Mastakovitch which directly or indirectly affected Vasya. The mother was

fascinated, genuinely fascinated; she admitted it herself; she purposely

called Vasya aside, and said to him that his friend was a most excellent

and charming young man, and, what was of most account, such a serious,

steady young man. Vasya almost laughed aloud with delight. He remembered

how the serious Arkady had tumbled him on his bed for a quarter of an

hour. Then the mother signed to Vasya to follow her quietly and

cautiously into the next room. It must be admitted that she treated

Lizanka rather unfairly: she behaved treacherously to her daughter, in

the fullness of her heart, of course, and showed Vasya on the sly the

present Lizanka was preparing to give him for the New Year. It was a

paper-case, embroidered in beads and gold in a very choice design: on

one side was depicted a stag, absolutely lifelike, running swiftly, and

so well done! On the other side was the portrait of a celebrated

General, also an excellent likeness. I cannot describe Vasya's raptures.

Meanwhile, time was not being wasted in the parlour. Lizanka went

straight up to Arkady Ivanovitch. She took his hand, she thanked him for

something, and Arkady Ivanovitch gathered that she was referring to her

precious Vasya. Lizanka was, indeed, deeply touched: she had heard that

Arkady Ivanovitch was such a true friend of her betrothed, so loved him,

so watched over him, guiding him at every step with helpful advice, that

she, Lizanka, could hardly help thanking him, could not refrain from

feeling grateful, and hoping that Arkady Ivanovitch might like her, if

only half as well as Vasya. Then she began questioning him as to whether

Vasya was careful of his health, expressed some apprehensions in regard

to his marked impulsiveness of character, and his lack of knowledge of

men and practical life; she said that she would in time watch over him

religiously, that she would take care of and cherish his lot, and

finally, she hoped that Arkady Ivanovitch would not leave them, but

would live with them.

"We three shall live like one," she cried, with extremely naïve

enthusiasm.

But it was time to go. They tried, of course, to keep them, but Vasya

answered point blank that it was impossible. Arkady Ivanovitch said the

same. The reason was, of course, inquired into, and it came out at once

that there was work to be done entrusted to Vasya by Yulian

Mastakovitch, urgent, necessary, dreadful work, which must be handed in

on the morning of the next day but one, and that it was not only

unfinished, but had been completely laid aside. The mamma sighed when

she heard of this, while Lizanka was positively scared, and hurried

Vasya off in alarm. The last kiss lost nothing from this haste; though

brief and hurried it was only the more warm and ardent. At last they

parted and the two friends set off home.

Both began at once confiding to each other their impressions as soon as

they found themselves in the street. And could they help it? Indeed,

Arkady Ivanovitch was in love, desperately in love, with Lizanka. And to

whom could he better confide his feelings than to Vasya, the happy man

himself. And so he did; he was not bashful, but confessed everything at

once to Vasya. Vasya laughed heartily and was immensely delighted, and

even observed that this was all that was needed to make them greater

friends than ever. "You have guessed my feelings, Vasya," said Arkady

Ivanovitch. "Yes, I love her as I love you; she will be my good angel as

well as yours, for the radiance of your happiness will be shed on me,

too, and I can bask in its warmth. She will keep house for me too,

Vasya; my happiness will be in her hands. Let her keep house for me as

she will for you. Yes, friendship for you is friendship for her; you are

not separable for me now, only I shall have two beings like you instead

of one...." Arkady paused in the fullness of his feelings, while Vasya

was shaken to the depths of his being by his friend's words. The fact

is, he had never expected anything of the sort from Arkady. Arkady

Ivanovitch was not very great at talking as a rule, he was not fond of

dreaming, either; now he gave way to the liveliest, freshest,

rainbow-tinted day-dreams. "How I will protect and cherish you both," he

began again. "To begin with, Vasya, I will be godfather to all your

children, every one of them; and secondly, Vasya, we must bestir

ourselves about the future. We must buy furniture, and take a lodging so

that you and she and I can each have a little room to ourselves. Do you

know, Vasya, I'll run about to-morrow and look at the notices, on the

gates! Three ... no, two rooms, we should not need more. I really

believe, Vasya, I talked nonsense this morning, there will be money

enough; why, as soon as I glanced into her eyes I calculated at once

that there would be enough to live on. It will all be for her. Oh, how

we will work! Now, Vasya, we might venture up to twenty-five roubles for

rent. A lodging is everything, brother. Nice rooms ... and at once a man

is cheerful, and his dreams are of the brightest hues. And, besides,

Lizanka will keep the purse for both of us: not a farthing will be

wasted. Do you suppose I would go to a restaurant? What do you take me

for? Not on any account. And then we shall get a bonus and reward, for

we shall be zealous in the service--oh! how we shall work, like oxen

toiling in the fields.... Only fancy," and Arkady Ivanovitch's voice was

faint with pleasure, "all at once and quite unexpected, twenty-five or

thirty roubles.... Whenever there's an extra, there'll be a cap or a

scarf or a pair of little stockings. She must knit me a scarf; look what

a horrid one I've got, the nasty yellow thing, it did me a bad turn

to-day! And you wore a nice one, Vasya, to introduce me while I had my

head in a halter.... Though never mind that now. And look here, I

undertake all the silver. I am bound to give you some little

present,--that will be an honour, that will flatter my vanity.... My

bonuses won't fail me, surely; you don't suppose they would give them to

Skorohodov? No fear, they won't be landed in that person's pocket. I'll

buy you silver spoons, brother, good knives--not silver knives, but

thoroughly good ones; and a waistcoat, that is a waistcoat for myself. I

shall be best man, of course. Only now, brother, you must keep at it,

you must keep at it. I shall stand over you with a stick, brother,

to-day and to-morrow and all night; I shall worry you to work. Finish,

make haste and finish, brother. And then again to spend the evening, and

then again both of us happy; we will go in for loto. We will spend the

evening there--oh, it's jolly! Oh, the devil! How, vexing it is I can't

help you. I should like to take it and write it all for you.... Why is

it our handwriting is not alike?"

"Yes," answered Vasya. "Yes, I must make haste. I think it must be

eleven o'clock; we must make haste.... To work!" And saying this, Vasya,

who had been all the time alternately smiling and trying to interrupt

with some enthusiastic rejoinder the flow of his friend's feelings, and

had, in short, been showing the most cordial response, suddenly

subsided, sank into silence, and almost ran along the street. It seemed

as though some burdensome idea had suddenly chilled his feverish head;

he seemed all at once dispirited.

Arkady Ivanovitch felt quite uneasy; he scarcely got an answer to his

hurried questions from Vasya, who confined himself to a word or two,

sometimes an irrelevant exclamation.

"Why, what is the matter with you, Vasya?" he cried at last, hardly able

to keep up with him. "Can you really be so uneasy?"

"Oh, brother, that's enough chatter!" Vasya answered, with vexation.

"Don't be depressed, Vasya--come, come," Arkady interposed. "Why, I have

known you write much more in a shorter time! What's the matter? You've

simply a talent for it! You can write quickly in an emergency; they are

not going to lithograph your copy. You've plenty of time!... The only

thing is that you are excited now, and preoccupied, and the work won't

go so easily."

Vasya made no reply, or muttered something to himself, and they both ran

home in genuine anxiety.

Vasya sat down to the papers at once. Arkady Ivanovitch was quiet and

silent; he noiselessly undressed and went to bed, keeping his eyes fixed

on Vasya.... A sort of panic came over him.... "What is the matter with

him?" he thought to himself, looking at Vasya's face that grew whiter

and whiter, at his feverish eyes, at the anxiety that was betrayed in

every movement he made, "why, his hand is shaking ... what a stupid! Why

did I not advise him to sleep for a couple of hours, till he had slept

off his nervous excitement, any way." Vasya had just finished a page, he

raised his eyes, glanced casually at Arkady and at once, looking down,

took up his pen again.

"Listen, Vasya," Arkady Ivanovitch began suddenly, "wouldn't it be best

to sleep a little now? Look, you are in a regular fever."

Vasya glanced at Arkady with vexation, almost with anger, and made no

answer.

"Listen, Vasya, you'll make yourself ill."

Vasya at once changed his mind. "How would it be to have tea, Arkady?"

he said.

"How so? Why?"

"It will do me good. I am not sleepy, I'm not going to bed! I am going

on writing. But now I should like to rest and have a cup of tea, and the

worst moment will be over."

"First-rate, brother Vasya, delightful! Just so. I was wanting to

propose it myself. And I can't think why it did not occur to me to do

so. But I say, Mavra won't get up, she won't wake for anything...."

"True."

"That's no matter, though," cried Arkady Ivanovitch, leaping out of bed.

"I will set the samovar myself. It won't be the first time...."

Arkady Ivanovitch ran to the kitchen and set to work to get the samovar;

Vasya meanwhile went on writing. Arkady Ivanovitch, moreover, dressed

and ran out to the baker's, so that Vasya might have something to

sustain him for the night. A quarter of an hour later the samovar was on

the table. They began drinking tea, but conversation flagged. Vasya

still seemed preoccupied.

"To-morrow," he said at last, as though he had just thought of it, "I

shall have to take my congratulations for the New Year...."

"You need not go at all."

"Oh yes, brother, I must," said Vasya.

"Why, I will sign the visitors' book for you everywhere.... How can you?

You work to-morrow. You must work to-night, till five o'clock in the

morning, as I said, and then get to bed. Or else you will be good for

nothing to-morrow. I'll wake you at eight o'clock, punctually."

"But will it be all right, your signing for me?" said Vasya, half

assenting.

"Why, what could be better? Everyone does it."

"I am really afraid."

"Why, why?"

"It's all right, you know, with other people, but Yulian Mastakovitch

... he has been so kind to me, you know, Arkasha, and when he notices

it's not my own signature----"

"Notices! why, what a fellow you are, really, Vasya! How could he

notice?... Come, you know I can imitate your signature awfully well, and

make just the same flourish to it, upon my word I can. What nonsense!

Who would notice?"

Vasya, made no reply, but emptied his glass hurriedly.... Then he shook

his head doubtfully.

"Vasya, dear boy! Ah, if only we succeed! Vasya, what's the matter with

you, you quite frighten me! Do you know, Vasya, I am not going to bed

now, I am not going to sleep! Show me, have you a great deal left?"

Vasya gave Arkady such a look that his heart sank, and his tongue failed

him.

"Vasya, what is the matter? What are you thinking? Why do you look like

that?"

"Arkady, I really must go to-morrow to wish Yulian Mastakovitch a happy

New Year."

"Well, go then!" said Arkady, gazing at him open-eyed, in uneasy

expectation. "I say, Vasya, do write faster; I am advising you for your

good, I really am! How often Yulian Mastakovitch himself has said that

what he likes particularly about your writing is its legibility. Why, it

is all that Skoroplehin cares for, that writing should be good and

distinct like a copy, so as afterwards to pocket the paper and take it

home for his children to copy; he can't buy copybooks, the blockhead!

Yulian Mastakovitch is always saying, always insisting: 'Legible,

legible, legible!'... What is the matter? Vasya, I really don't know

how to talk to you ... it quite frightens me ... you crush me with your

depression."

"It's all right, it's all right," said Vasya, and he fell back in his

chair as though fainting. Arkady was alarmed.

"Will you have some water? Vasya! Vasya!"

"Don't, don't," said Vasya, pressing his hand. "I am all right, I only

feel sad, I can't tell why. Better talk of something else; let me forget

it."

"Calm yourself, for goodness' sake, calm yourself, Vasya. You will

finish it all right, on my honour, you will. And even if you don't

finish, what will it matter? You talk as though it were a crime!"

"Arkady," said Vasya, looking at his friend with such meaning that

Arkady was quite frightened, for Vasya had never been so agitated

before.... "If I were alone, as I used to be.... No! I don't mean that.

I keep wanting to tell you as a friend, to confide in you.... But why

worry you, though?... You see, Arkady, to some much is given, others do

a little thing as I do. Well, if gratitude, appreciation, is expected of

you ... and you can't give it?"

"Vasya, I don't understand you in the least."

"I have never been ungrateful," Vasya went on softly, as though speaking

to himself, "but if I am incapable of expressing all I feel, it seems as

though ... it seems, Arkady, as though I am really ungrateful, and

that's killing me."

"What next, what next! As though gratitude meant nothing more than your

finishing that copy in time? Just think what you are saying, Vasya? Is

that the whole expression of gratitude?"

Vasya sank into silence at once, and looked open-eyed at Arkady, as

though his unexpected argument had settled all his doubts. He even

smiled, but the same melancholy expression came back to his face at

once. Arkady, taking this smile as a sign that all his uneasiness was

over, and the look that succeeded it as an indication that he was

determined to do better, was greatly relieved.

"Well, brother Arkasha, you will wake up," said Vasya, "keep an eye on

me; if I fall asleep it will be dreadful. I'll set to work now....

Arkasha?"

"What?"

"Oh, it's nothing, I only ... I meant...."

Vasya settled himself, and said no more, Arkady got into bed. Neither of

them said one word about their friends, the Artemyevs. Perhaps both of

them felt that they had been a little to blame, and that they ought not

to have gone for their jaunt when they did. Arkady soon fell asleep,

still worried about Vasya. To his own surprise he woke up exactly at

eight o'clock in the morning. Vasya was asleep in his chair with the pen

in his hand, pale and exhausted; the candle had burnt out. Mavra was

busy getting the samovar ready in the kitchen.

"Vasya, Vasya!" Arkady cried in alarm, "when did you fall asleep?"

Vasya opened his eyes and jumped up from his chair.

"Oh!" he cried, "I must have fallen asleep...."

He flew to the papers--everything was right; all were in order; there

was not a blot of ink, nor spot of grease from the candle on them.

"I think I must have fallen asleep about six o'clock," said Vasya. "How

cold it is in the night! Let us have tea, and I will go on again...."

"Do you feel better?"

"Yes, yes, I'm all right, I'm all right now."

"A happy New Year to you, brother Vasya."

"And to you too, brother, the same to you, dear boy."

They embraced each other. Vasya's chin was quivering and his eyes were

moist. Arkady Ivanovitch was silent, he felt sad. They drank their tea

hastily.

"Arkady, I've made up my mind, I am going myself to Yulian

Mastakovitch."

"Why, he wouldn't notice----"

"But my conscience feels ill at ease, brother."

"But you know it's for his sake you are sitting here; it's for his sake

you are wearing yourself out."

"Enough!"

"Do you know what, brother, I'll go round and see...."

"Whom?" asked Vasya.

"The Artemyevs. I'll take them your good wishes for the New Year as well

as mine."

"My dear fellow! Well, I'll stay here; and I see it's a good idea of

yours; I shall be working here, I shan't waste my time. Wait one minute,

I'll write a note."

"Yes, do brother, do, there's plenty of time. I've still to wash and

shave and to brush my best coat. Well, Vasya, we are going to be

contented and happy. Embrace me, Vasya."

"Ah, if only we may, brother...."

"Does Mr. Shumkov live here?" they heard a child's voice on the stairs.

"Yes, my dear, yes," said Mavra, showing the visitor in.

"What's that? What is it?" cried Vasya, leaping up from the table and

rushing to the entry, "Petinka, you?"

"Good morning, I have the honour to wish you a happy New Year, Vassily

Petrovitch," said a pretty boy of ten years old with curly black hair.

"Sister sends you her love, and so does Mamma, and Sister told me to

give you a kiss for her."

Vasya caught the messenger up in the air and printed a long,

enthusiastic kiss on his lips, which were very much like Lizanka's.

"Kiss him, Arkady," he said handing Petya to him, and without touching

the ground the boy was transferred to Arkady Ivanovitch's powerful and

eager arms.

"Will you have some breakfast, dear?"

"Thank-you, very much. We have had it already, we got up early to-day,

the others have gone to church. Sister was two hours curling my hair,

and pomading it, washing me and mending my trousers, for I tore them

yesterday, playing with Sashka in the street, we were snowballing."

"Well, well, well!"

"So she dressed me up to come and see you, and then pomaded my head and

then gave me a regular kissing. She said: 'Go to Vasya, wish him a happy

New Year, and ask whether they are happy, whether they had a good night,

and ...' to ask something else,--oh yes! whether you had finished the

work you spoke of yesterday ... when you were there. Oh, I've got it all

written down," said the boy, reading from a slip of paper which he took

out of his pocket. "Yes, they were uneasy."

"It will be finished! It will be! Tell her that it will be. I shall

finish it, on my word of honour!"

"And something else.... Oh yes, I forgot. Sister sent a little note and

a present, and I was forgetting it!..."

"My goodness! Oh, you little darling! Where is it? where is it? That's

it, oh! Look, brother, see what she writes. The dar--ling, the precious!

You know I saw there yesterday a paper-case for me; it's not finished,

so she says, 'I am sending you a lock of my hair, and the other will

come later.' Look, brother, look!"

And overwhelmed with rapture he showed Arkady Ivanovitch a curl of

luxuriant, jet-black hair; then he kissed it fervently and put it in his

breast pocket, nearest his heart.

"Vasya, I shall get you a locket for that curl," Arkady Ivanovitch said

resolutely at last.

"And we are going to have hot veal, and to-morrow brains. Mamma wants to

make cakes ... but we are not going to have millet porridge," said the

boy, after a moment's thought, to wind up his budget of interesting

items.

"Oh! what a pretty boy," cried Arkady Ivanovitch. "Vasya, you are the

happiest of mortals."

The boy finished his tea, took from Vasya a note, a thousand kisses, and

went out happy and frolicsome as before.

"Well, brother," began Arkady Ivanovitch, highly delighted, "you see how

splendid it all is; you see. Everything is going well, don't be

downcast, don't be uneasy. Go ahead! Get it done, Vasya, get it done.

I'll be home at two o'clock. I'll go round to them, and then to Yulian

Mastakovitch."

"Well, good-bye, brother; good-bye.... Oh! if only.... Very good, you

go, very good," said Vasya, "then I really won't go to Yulian

Mastakovitch."

"Good-bye."

"Stay, brother, stay, tell them ... well, whatever you think fit. Kiss

her ... and give me a full account of everything afterwards."

"Come, come--of course, I know all about it. This happiness has upset

you. The suddenness of it all; you've not been yourself since yesterday.

You have not got over the excitement of yesterday. Well, it's settled.

Now try and get over it, Vasya. Good-bye, good-bye!"

At last the friends parted. All the morning Arkady Ivanovitch was

preoccupied, and could think of nothing but Vasya. He knew his weak,

highly nervous character. "Yes, this happiness has upset him, I was

right there," he said to himself. "Upon my word, he has made me quite

depressed, too, that man will make a tragedy of anything! What a

feverish creature! Oh, I must save him! I must save him!" said Arkady,

not noticing that he himself was exaggerating into something serious a

slight trouble, in reality quite trivial. Only at eleven o'clock he

reached the porter's lodge of Yulian Mastakovitch's house, to add his

modest name to the long list of illustrious persons who had written

their names on a sheet of blotted and scribbled paper in the porter's

lodge. What was his surprise when he saw just above his own the

signature of Vasya Shumkov! It amazed him. "What's the matter with him?"

he thought. Arkady Ivanovitch, who had just been so buoyant with hope,

came out feeling upset. There was certainly going to be trouble, but

how? And in what form?

He reached the Artemyevs with gloomy forebodings; he seemed

absent-minded from the first, and after talking a little with Lizanka

went away with tears in his eyes; he was really anxious about Vasya. He

went home running, and on the Neva came full tilt upon Vasya himself.

The latter, too, was uneasy.

"Where are you going?" cried Arkady Ivanovitch.

Vasya stopped as though he had been caught in a crime.

"Oh, it's nothing, brother, I wanted to go for a walk."

"You could not stand it, and have been to the Artemyevs? Oh, Vasya,

Vasya! Why did you go to Yulian Mastakovitch?"

Vasya did not answer, but then with a wave of his hand, he said:

"Arkady, I don't know what is the matter with me. I...."

"Come, come, Vasya. I know what it is. Calm yourself. You've been

excited, and overwrought ever since yesterday. Only think, it's not much

to bear. Everybody's fond of you, everybody's ready to do anything for

you; your work is getting on all right; you will get it done, you will

certainly get it done. I know that you have been imagining something,

you have had apprehensions about something...."

"No, it's all right, it's all right...."

"Do you remember, Vasya, do you remember it was the same with you once

before; do you remember, when you got your promotion, in your joy and

thankfulness you were so zealous that you spoilt all your work for a

week? It is just the same with you now."

"Yes, yes, Arkady; but now it is different, it is not that at all."

"How is it different? And very likely the work is not urgent at all,

while you are killing yourself...."

"It's nothing, it's nothing. I am all right, it's nothing. Well, come

along!"

"Why, are you going home, and not to them?"

"Yes, brother, how could I have the face to turn up there?... I have

changed my mind. It was only that I could not stay on alone without you;

now you are coming back with me I'll sit down to write again. Let us

go!"

They walked along and for some time were silent. Vasya was in haste.

"Why don't you ask me about them?" said Arkady Ivanovitch.

"Oh, yes! Well, Arkasha, what about them?"

"Vasya, you are not like yourself."

"Oh, I am all right, I am all right. Tell me everything, Arkasha," said

Vasya, in an imploring voice, as though to avoid further explanations.

Arkady Ivanovitch sighed. He felt utterly at a loss, looking at Vasya.

His account of their friends roused Vasya. He even grew talkative. They

had dinner together. Lizanka's mother had filled Arkady Ivanovitch's

pockets with little cakes, and eating them the friends grew more

cheerful. After dinner Vasya promised to take a nap, so as to sit up all

night. He did, in fact, lie down. In the morning, some one whom it was

impossible to refuse had invited Arkady Ivanovitch to tea. The friends

parted. Arkady promised to come back as soon as he could, by eight

o'clock if possible. The three hours of separation seemed to him like

three years. At last he got away and rushed back to Vasya. When he went

into the room, he found it in darkness. Vasya was not at home. He asked

Mavra. Mavra said that he had been writing all the time, and had not

slept at all, then he had paced up and down the room, and after that, an

hour before, he had run out, saying he would be back in half-an-hour;

"and when, says he, Arkady Ivanovitch comes in, tell him, old woman,

says he," Mavra told him in conclusion, "that I have gone out for a

walk," and he repeated the order three or four times.

"He is at the Artemyevs," thought Arkady Ivanovitch, and he shook his

head.

A minute later he jumped up with renewed hope.

"He has simply finished," he thought, "that's all it is; he couldn't

wait, but ran off there. But, no! he would have waited for me.... Let's

have a peep what he has there."

He lighted a candle, and ran to Vasya's writing-table: the work had made

progress and it looked as though there were not much left to do. Arkady

Ivanovitch was about to investigate further, when Vasya himself walked

in....

"Oh, you are here?" he cried, with a start of dismay.