IX

Now we used to see each other often, sometimes twice a day. She

used to come to the cemetery almost every day after dinner, and

read the epitaphs on the crosses and tombstones while she waited

for me. Sometimes she would come into the church, and, standing by

me, would look on while I worked. The stillness, the naïve work of

the painters and gilders, Radish's sage reflections, and the fact

that I did not differ externally from the other workmen, and worked

just as they did in my waistcoat with no socks on, and that I was

addressed familiarly by them--all this was new to her and touched

her. One day a workman, who was painting a dove on the ceiling,

called out to me in her presence:

"Misail, hand me up the white paint."

I took him the white paint, and afterwards, when I let myself down

by the frail scaffolding, she looked at me, touched to tears and

smiling.

"What a dear you are!" she said.

I remembered from my childhood how a green parrot, belonging to one

of the rich men of the town, had escaped from its cage, and how for

quite a month afterwards the beautiful bird had haunted the town,

flying from garden to garden, homeless and solitary. Mariya Viktorovna

reminded me of that bird.

"There is positively nowhere for me to go now but the cemetery,"

she said to me with a laugh. "The town has become disgustingly dull.

At the Azhogins' they are still reciting, singing, lisping. I have

grown to detest them of late; your sister is an unsociable creature;

Mademoiselle Blagovo hates me for some reason. I don't care for the

theatre. Tell me where am I to go?"

When I went to see her I smelt of paint and turpentine, and my hands

were stained--and she liked that; she wanted me to come to her

in my ordinary working clothes; but in her drawing-room those clothes

made me feel awkward. I felt embarrassed, as though I were in

uniform, so I always put on my new serge trousers when I went to

her. And she did not like that.

"You must own you are not quite at home in your new character," she

said to me one day. "Your workman's dress does not feel natural to

you; you are awkward in it. Tell me, isn't that because you haven't

a firm conviction, and are not satisfied? The very kind of work you

have chosen--your painting--surely it does not satisfy you,

does it?" she asked, laughing. "I know paint makes things look nicer

and last longer, but those things belong to rich people who live

in towns, and after all they are luxuries. Besides, you have often

said yourself that everybody ought to get his bread by the work of

his own hands, yet you get money and not bread. Why shouldn't you

keep to the literal sense of your words? You ought to be getting

bread, that is, you ought to be ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing,

or doing something which has a direct connection with agriculture,

for instance, looking after cows, digging, building huts of

logs. . . ."

She opened a pretty cupboard that stood near her writing-table, and

said:

"I am saying all this to you because I want to let you into my

secret. _Voilà!_ This is my agricultural library. Here I have fields,

kitchen garden and orchard, and cattleyard and beehives. I read

them greedily, and have already learnt all the theory to the tiniest

detail. My dream, my darling wish, is to go to our Dubetchnya as

soon as March is here. It's marvellous there, exquisite, isn't it?

The first year I shall have a look round and get into things, and

the year after I shall begin to work properly myself, putting my

back into it as they say. My father has promised to give me Dubetchnya

and I shall do exactly what I like with it."

Flushed, excited to tears, and laughing, she dreamed aloud how she

would live at Dubetchnya, and what an interesting life it would be!

I envied her. March was near, the days were growing longer and

longer, and on bright sunny days water dripped from the roofs at

midday, and there was a fragrance of spring; I, too, longed for the

country.

And when she said that she should move to Dubetchnya, I realized

vividly that I should remain in the town alone, and I felt that I

envied her with her cupboard of books and her agriculture. I knew

nothing of work on the land, and did not like it, and I should have

liked to have told her that work on the land was slavish toil, but

I remembered that something similar had been said more than once

by my father, and I held my tongue.

Lent began. Viktor Ivanitch, whose existence I had begun to forget,

arrived from Petersburg. He arrived unexpectedly, without even a

telegram to say he was coming. When I went in, as usual in the

evening, he was walking about the drawing-room, telling some story

with his face freshly washed and shaven, looking ten years younger:

his daughter was kneeling on the floor, taking out of his trunks

boxes, bottles, and books, and handing them to Pavel the footman.

I involuntarily drew back a step when I saw the engineer, but he

held out both hands to me and said, smiling, showing his strong

white teeth that looked like a sledge-driver's:

"Here he is, here he is! Very glad to see you, Mr. House-painter!

Masha has told me all about it; she has been singing your praises.

I quite understand and approve," he went on, taking my arm. "To be

a good workman is ever so much more honest and more sensible than

wasting government paper and wearing a cockade on your head. I

myself worked in Belgium with these very hands and then spent two

years as a mechanic. . . ."

He was wearing a short reefer jacket and indoor slippers; he walked

like a man with the gout, rolling slightly from side to side and

rubbing his hands. Humming something he softly purred and hugged

himself with satisfaction at being at home again at last, and able

to have his beloved shower bath.

"There is no disputing," he said to me at supper, "there is no

disputing; you are all nice and charming people, but for some reason,

as soon as you take to manual labour, or go in for saving the

peasants, in the long run it all comes to no more than being a

dissenter. Aren't you a dissenter? Here you don't take vodka. What's

the meaning of that if it is not being a dissenter?"

To satisfy him I drank some vodka and I drank some wine, too. We

tasted the cheese, the sausage, the pâtés, the pickles, and the

savouries of all sorts that the engineer had brought with him, and

the wine that had come in his absence from abroad. The wine was

first-rate. For some reason the engineer got wine and cigars from

abroad without paying duty; the caviare and the dried sturgeon

someone sent him for nothing; he did not pay rent for his flat as

the owner of the house provided the kerosene for the line; and

altogether he and his daughter produced on me the impression that

all the best in the world was at their service, and provided for

them for nothing.

I went on going to see them, but not with the same eagerness. The

engineer made me feel constrained, and in his presence I did not

feel free. I could not face his clear, guileless eyes, his reflections

wearied and sickened me; I was sickened, too, by the memory that

so lately I had been in the employment of this red-faced, well-fed

man, and that he had been brutally rude to me. It is true that he

put his arm round my waist, slapped me on the shoulder in a friendly

way, approved my manner of life, but I felt that, as before, he

despised my insignificance, and only put up with me to please his

daughter, and I couldn't now laugh and talk as I liked, and I behaved

unsociably and kept expecting that in another minute he would address

me as Panteley as he did his footman Pavel. How my pride as a

provincial and a working man was revolted. I, a proletarian, a house

painter, went every day to rich people who were alien to me, and

whom the whole town regarded as though they were foreigners, and

every day I drank costly wines with them and ate unusual dainties

--my conscience refused to be reconciled to it! On my way to the

house I sullenly avoided meeting people, and looked at them from

under my brows as though I really were a dissenter, and when I was

going home from the engineer's I was ashamed of my well-fed condition.

Above all I was afraid of being carried away. Whether I was walking

along the street, or working, or talking to the other fellows, I

was all the time thinking of one thing only, of going in the evening

to see Mariya Viktorovna and was picturing her voice, her laugh,

her movements. When I was getting ready to go to her I always spent

a long time before my nurse's warped looking-glass, as I fastened

my tie; my serge trousers were detestable in my eyes, and I suffered

torments, and at the same time despised myself for being so trivial.

When she called to me out of the other room that she was not dressed

and asked me to wait, I listened to her dressing; it agitated me,

I felt as though the ground were giving way under my feet. And when

I saw a woman's figure in the street, even at a distance, I invariably

compared it. It seemed to me that all our girls and women were

vulgar, that they were absurdly dressed, and did not know how to

hold themselves; and these comparisons aroused a feeling of pride

in me: Mariya Viktorovna was the best of them all! And I dreamed

of her and myself at night.

One evening at supper with the engineer we ate a whole lobster As

I was going home afterwards I remembered that the engineer twice

called me "My dear fellow" at supper, and I reflected that they

treated me very kindly in that house, as they might an unfortunate

big dog who had been kicked out by its owners, that they were amusing

themselves with me, and that when they were tired of me they would

turn me out like a dog. I felt ashamed and wounded, wounded to the

point of tears as though I had been insulted, and looking up at the

sky I took a vow to put an end to all this.

The next day I did not go to the Dolzhikov's. Late in the evening,

when it was quite dark and raining, I walked along Great Dvoryansky

Street, looking up at the windows. Everyone was asleep at the

Azhogins', and the only light was in one of the furthest windows.

It was Madame Azhogin in her own room, sewing by the light of three

candles, imagining that she was combating superstition. Our house

was in darkness, but at the Dolzhikovs', on the contrary, the windows

were lighted up, but one could distinguish nothing through the

flowers and the curtains. I kept walking up and down the street;

the cold March rain drenched me through. I heard my father come

home from the club; he stood knocking at the gate. A minute later

a light appeared at the window, and I saw my sister, who was hastening

down with a lamp, while with the other hand she was twisting her

thick hair together as she went. Then my father walked about the

drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, while my sister sat

in a low chair, thinking and not listening to what he said.

But then they went away; the light went out. . . . I glanced round

at the engineer's, and there, too, all was darkness now. In the

dark and the rain I felt hopelessly alone, abandoned to the whims

of destiny; I felt that all my doings, my desires, and everything

I had thought and said till then were trivial in comparison with

my loneliness, in comparison with my present suffering, and the

suffering that lay before me in the future. Alas, the thoughts and

doings of living creatures are not nearly so significant as their

sufferings! And without clearly realizing what I was doing, I pulled

at the bell of the Dolzhikovs' gate, broke it, and ran along the

street like some naughty boy, with a feeling of terror in my heart,

expecting every moment that they would come out and recognize me.

When I stopped at the end of the street to take breath I could hear

nothing but the sound of the rain, and somewhere in the distance a

watchman striking on a sheet of iron.

For a whole week I did not go to the Dolzhikovs'. My serge trousers

were sold. There was nothing doing in the painting trade. I knew

the pangs of hunger again, and earned from twopence to fourpence a

day, where I could, by heavy and unpleasant work. Struggling up to

my knees in the cold mud, straining my chest, I tried to stifle my

memories, and, as it were, to punish myself for the cheeses and

preserves with which I had been regaled at the engineer's. But all

the same, as soon as I lay in bed, wet and hungry, my sinful

imagination immediately began to paint exquisite, seductive pictures,

and with amazement I acknowledged to myself that I was in love,

passionately in love, and I fell into a sound, heavy sleep, feeling

that hard labour only made my body stronger and younger.

One evening snow began falling most inappropriately, and the wind

blew from the north as though winter had come back again. When I

returned from work that evening I found Mariya Viktorovna in my

room. She was sitting in her fur coat, and had both hands in her

muff.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, raising her clear, clever

eyes, and I was utterly confused with delight and stood stiffly

upright before her, as I used to stand facing my father when he was

going to beat me; she looked into my face and I could see from her

eyes that she understood why I was confused.

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

to come, you see, I have come to you."

She got up and came close to me.

"Don't desert me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I am

alone, utterly alone."

She began crying; and, hiding her face in her muff, articulated:

"Alone! My life is hard, very hard, and in all the world I have no

one but you. Don't desert me!"

Looking for a handkerchief to wipe her tears she smiled; we were

silent for some time, then I put my arms round her and kissed her,

scratching my cheek till it bled with her hatpin as I did it.

And we began talking to each other as though we had been on the

closest terms for ages and ages.

X

Two days later she sent me to Dubetchnya and I was unutterably

delighted to go. As I walked towards the station and afterwards,

as I was sitting in the train, I kept laughing from no apparent

cause, and people looked at me as though I were drunk. Snow was

falling, and there were still frosts in the mornings, but the roads

were already dark-coloured and rooks hovered over them, cawing.

At first I had intended to fit up an abode for us two, Masha and

me, in the lodge at the side opposite Madame Tcheprakov's lodge,

but it appeared that the doves and the ducks had been living there

for a long time, and it was impossible to clean it without destroying

a great number of nests. There was nothing for it but to live in

the comfortless rooms of the big house with the sunblinds. The

peasants called the house the palace; there were more than twenty

rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano and a child's

arm-chair lying in the attic. And if Masha had brought all her

furniture from the town we should even then have been unable to get

rid of the impression of immense emptiness and cold. I picked out

three small rooms with windows looking into the garden, and worked

from early morning till night, setting them to rights, putting in

new panes, papering the walls, filling up the holes and chinks in

the floors. It was easy, pleasant work. I was continually running

to the river to see whether the ice were not going; I kept fancying

that starlings were flying. And at night, thinking of Masha, I

listened with an unutterably sweet feeling, with clutching delight

to the noise of the rats and the wind droning and knocking above

the ceiling. It seemed as though some old house spirit were coughing

in the attic.

The snow was deep; a great deal had fallen even at the end of March,

but it melted quickly, as though by magic, and the spring floods

passed in a tumultuous rush, so that by the beginning of April the

starlings were already noisy, and yellow butterflies were flying

in the garden. It was exquisite weather. Every day, towards evening,

I used to walk to the town to meet Masha, and what a delight it was

to walk with bare feet along the gradually drying, still soft road.

Half-way I used to sit down and look towards the town, not venturing

to go near it. The sight of it troubled me. I kept wondering how

the people I knew would behave to me when they heard of my love.

What would my father say? What troubled me particularly was the

thought that my life was more complicated, and that I had completely

lost all power to set it right, and that, like a balloon, it was

bearing me away, God knows whither. I no longer considered the

problem how to earn my daily bread, how to live, but thought about

--I really don't know what.

Masha used to come in a carriage; I used to get in with her, and

we drove to Dubetchnya, feeling light-hearted and free. Or, after

waiting till the sun had set, I would go back dissatisfied and

dreary, wondering why Masha had not come; at the gate or in the

garden I would be met by a sweet, unexpected apparition--it was

she! It would turn out that she had come by rail, and had walked

from the station. What a festival it was! In a simple woollen dress

with a kerchief on her head, with a modest sunshade, but laced in,

slender, in expensive foreign boots--it was a talented actress

playing the part of a little workgirl. We looked round our domain

and decided which should be her room, and which mine, where we would

have our avenue, our kitchen garden, our beehives.

We already had hens, ducks, and geese, which we loved because they

were ours. We had, all ready for sowing, oats, clover, timothy

grass, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds, and we always looked at all

these stores and discussed at length the crop we might get; and

everything Masha said to me seemed extraordinarily clever, and fine.

This was the happiest time of my life.

Soon after St. Thomas's week we were married at our parish church

in the village of Kurilovka, two miles from Dubetchnya. Masha wanted

everything to be done quietly; at her wish our "best men" were

peasant lads, the sacristan sang alone, and we came back from the

church in a small, jolting chaise which she drove herself. Our only

guest from the town was my sister Kleopatra, to whom Masha sent a

note three days before the wedding. My sister came in a white dress

and wore gloves. During the wedding she cried quietly from joy and

tenderness. Her expression was motherly and infinitely kind. She

was intoxicated with our happiness, and smiled as though she were

absorbing a sweet delirium, and looking at her during our wedding,

I realized that for her there was nothing in the world higher than

love, earthly love, and that she was dreaming of it secretly,

timidly, but continually and passionately. She embraced and kissed

Masha, and, not knowing how to express her rapture, said to her of

me: "He is good! He is very good!"

Before she went away she changed into her ordinary dress, and drew

me into the garden to talk to me alone.

"Father is very much hurt," she said, "that you have written nothing

to him. You ought to have asked for his blessing. But in reality

he is very much pleased. He says that this marriage will raise you

in the eyes of all society, and that under the influence of Mariya

Viktorovna you will begin to take a more serious view of life. We

talk of nothing but you in the evenings now, and yesterday he

actually used the expression: 'Our Misail.' That pleased me. It

seems as though he had some plan in his mind, and I fancy he wants

to set you an example of magnanimity and be the first to speak of

reconciliation. It is very possible he may come here to see you in

a day or two."

She hurriedly made the sign of the cross over me several times and

said:

"Well, God be with you. Be happy. Anyuta Blagovo is a very clever

girl; she says about your marriage that God is sending you a fresh

ordeal. To be sure--married life does not bring only joy but

suffering too. That's bound to be so."

Masha and I walked a couple of miles to see her on her way; we

walked back slowly and in silence, as though we were resting. Masha

held my hand, my heart felt light, and I had no inclination to talk

about love; we had become closer and more akin now that we were

married, and we felt that nothing now could separate us.

"Your sister is a nice creature," said Masha, "but it seems as

though she had been tormented for years. Your father must be a

terrible man."

I began telling her how my sister and I had been brought up, and

what a senseless torture our childhood had really been. When she

heard how my father had so lately beaten me, she shuddered and drew

closer to me.

"Don't tell me any more," she said. "It's horrible!"

Now she never left me. We lived together in the three rooms in the

big house, and in the evenings we bolted the door which led to the

empty part of the house, as though someone were living there whom

we did not know, and were afraid of. I got up early, at dawn, and

immediately set to work of some sort. I mended the carts, made paths

in the garden, dug the flower beds, painted the roof of the house.

When the time came to sow the oats I tried to plough the ground

over again, to harrow and to sow, and I did it all conscientiously,

keeping up with our labourer; I was worn out, the rain and the cold

wind made my face and feet burn for hours afterwards. I dreamed of

ploughed land at night. But field labour did not attract me. I did

not understand farming, and I did not care for it; it was perhaps

because my forefathers had not been tillers of the soil, and the

very blood that flowed in my veins was purely of the city. I loved

nature tenderly; I loved the fields and meadows and kitchen gardens,

but the peasant who turned up the soil with his plough and urged

on his pitiful horse, wet and tattered, with his craning neck, was

to me the expression of coarse, savage, ugly force, and every time

I looked at his uncouth movements I involuntarily began thinking

of the legendary life of the remote past, before men knew the use

of fire. The fierce bull that ran with the peasants' herd, and the

horses, when they dashed about the village, stamping their hoofs,

moved me to fear, and everything rather big, strong, and angry,

whether it was the ram with its horns, the gander, or the yard-dog,

seemed to me the expression of the same coarse, savage force. This

mood was particularly strong in me in bad weather, when heavy clouds

were hanging over the black ploughed land. Above all, when I was

ploughing or sowing, and two or three people stood looking how I

was doing it, I had not the feeling that this work was inevitable

and obligatory, and it seemed to me that I was amusing myself. I

preferred doing something in the yard, and there was nothing I liked

so much as painting the roof.

I used to walk through the garden and the meadow to our mill. It

was let to a peasant of Kurilovka called Stepan, a handsome, dark

fellow with a thick black beard, who looked very strong. He did not

like the miller's work, and looked upon it as dreary and unprofitable,

and only lived at the mill in order not to live at home. He was a

leather-worker, and was always surrounded by a pleasant smell of

tar and leather. He was not fond of talking, he was listless and

sluggish, and was always sitting in the doorway or on the river

bank, humming "oo-loo-loo." His wife and mother-in-law, both

white-faced, languid, and meek, used sometimes to come from Kurilovka

to see him; they made low bows to him and addressed him formally,

"Stepan Petrovitch," while he went on sitting on the river bank,

softly humming "oo-loo-loo," without responding by word or movement

to their bows. One hour and then a second would pass in silence.

His mother-in-law and wife, after whispering together, would get

up and gaze at him for some time, expecting him to look round; then

they would make a low bow, and in sugary, chanting voices, say:

"Good-bye, Stepan Petrovitch!"

And they would go away. After that Stepan, picking up the parcel

they had left, containing cracknels or a shirt, would heave a sigh

and say, winking in their direction:

"The female sex!"

The mill with two sets of millstones worked day and night. I used

to help Stepan; I liked the work, and when he went off I was glad

to stay and take his place.