THE party of sportsmen spent the night in a peasant's hut on some
newly mown hay. The moon peeped in at the window; from the street
came the mournful wheezing of a concertina; from the hay came a
sickly sweet, faintly troubling scent. The sportsmen talked about
dogs, about women, about first love, and about snipe. After all the
ladies of their acquaintance had been picked to pieces, and hundreds
of stories had been told, the stoutest of the sportsmen, who looked
in the darkness like a haycock, and who talked in the mellow bass
of a staff officer, gave a loud yawn and said:
"It is nothing much to be loved; the ladies are created for the
purpose of loving us men. But, tell me, has any one of you fellows
been hated--passionately, furiously hated? Has any one of you
watched the ecstasies of hatred? Eh?"
No answer followed.
"Has no one, gentlemen?" asked the staff officer's bass voice. "But
I, now, have been hated, hated by a pretty girl, and have been able
to study the symptoms of first hatred directed against myself. It
was the first, because it was something exactly the converse of
first love. What I am going to tell, however, happened when I knew
nothing about love or hate. I was eight at the time, but that made
no difference; in this case it was not _he_ but _she_ that mattered.
Well, I beg your attention. One fine summer evening, just before
sunset, I was sitting in the nursery, doing my lesson with my
governess, Zinotchka, a very charming and poetical creature who had
left boarding school not long before. Zinotchka looked absent-mindedly
towards the window and said:
"'Yes. We breathe in oxygen; now tell me, Petya, what do we breathe
out?'
"'Carbonic acid gas,' I answered, looking towards the same window.
"'Right,' assented Zinotchka. 'Plants, on the contrary, breathe
in carbonic acid gas, and breathe out oxygen. Carbonic acid gas is
contained in seltzer water, and in the fumes from the samovar. . . .
It is a very noxious gas. Near Naples there is the so-called Cave
of Dogs, which contains carbonic acid gas; a dog dropped into it
is suffocated and dies.'
"This luckless Cave of Dogs near Naples is a chemical marvel beyond
which no governess ventures to go. Zinotchka always hotly maintained
the usefulness of natural science, but I doubt if she knew any
chemistry beyond this Cave.
"Well, she told me to repeat it. I repeated it. She asked me what
was meant by the horizon. I answered. And meantime, while we were
ruminating over the horizon and the Cave, in the yard below, my
father was just getting ready to go shooting. The dogs yapped, the
trace horses shifted from one leg to another impatiently and coquetted
with the coachman, the footman packed the waggonette with parcels
and all sorts of things. Beside the waggonette stood a brake in
which my mother and sisters were sitting to drive to a name-day
party at the Ivanetskys'. No one was left in the house but Zinotchka,
me, and my eldest brother, a student, who had toothache. You can
imagine my envy and my boredom.
"'Well, what do we breathe in?' asked Zinotchka, looking at the
window.
"'Oxygen. . .'
"'Yes. And the horizon is the name given to the place where it
seems to us as though the earth meets the sky.'
"Then the waggonette drove off, and after it the brake. . . . I saw
Zinotchka take a note out of her pocket, crumple it up convulsively
and press it to her temple, then she flushed crimson and looked at
her watch.
"'So, remember,' she said, 'that near Naples is the so-called Cave
of Dogs. . . .' She glanced at her watch again and went on: 'where
the sky seems to us to meet the earth. . . .'
"The poor girl in violent agitation walked about the room, and once
more glanced at her watch. There was another half-hour before the
end of our lesson.
"'Now arithmetic,' she said, breathing hard and turning over the
pages of the sum-book with a trembling hand. 'Come, you work out
problem 325 and I . . . will be back directly.'
"She went out. I heard her scurry down the stairs, and then I saw
her dart across the yard in her blue dress and vanish through the
garden gate. The rapidity of her movements, the flush on her cheeks
and her excitement, aroused my curiosity. Where had she run, and
what for? Being intelligent beyond my years I soon put two and two
together, and understood it all: she had run into the garden, taking
advantage of the absence of my stern parents, to steal in among the
raspberry bushes, or to pick herself some cherries. If that were
so, dash it all, I would go and have some cherries too. I threw
aside the sum-book and ran into the garden. I ran to the cherry
orchard, but she was not there. Passing by the raspberries, the
gooseberries, and the watchman's shanty, she crossed the kitchen
garden and reached the pond, pale, and starting at every sound. I
stole after her, and what I saw, my friends, was this. At the edge
of the pond, between the thick stumps of two old willows, stood my
elder brother, Sasha; one could not see from his face that he had
toothache. He looked towards Zinotchka as she approached him, and
his whole figure was lighted up by an expression of happiness as
though by sunshine. And Zinotchka, as though she were being driven
into the Cave of Dogs, and were being forced to breathe carbonic
acid gas, walked towards him, scarcely able to move one leg before
the other, breathing hard, with her head thrown back. . . . To judge
from appearances she was going to a rendezous for the first time
in her life. But at last she reached him. . . . For half a minute
they gazed at each other in silence, as though they could not believe
their eyes. Thereupon some force seemed to shove Zinotchka; she
laid her hands on Sasha's shoulders and let her head droop upon his
waistcoat. Sasha laughed, muttered something incoherent, and with
the clumsiness of a man head over ears in love, laid both hands on
Zinotchka's face. And the weather, gentlemen, was exquisite. . . .
The hill behind which the sun was setting, the two willows, the
green bank, the sky--all together with Sasha and Zinotchka were
reflected in the pond . . . perfect stillness . . . you can imagine
it. Millions of butterflies with long whiskers gleamed golden above
the reeds; beyond the garden they were driving the cattle. In fact,
it was a perfect picture.
"Of all I had seen the only thing I understood was that Sasha was
kissing Zinotchka. That was improper. If _maman_ heard of it they
would both catch it. Feeling for some reason ashamed I went back
to the nursery, not waiting for the end of the rendezvous. There I
sat over the sum-book, pondered and reflected. A triumphant smile
strayed upon my countenance. On one side it was agreeable to be the
possessor of another person's secret; on the other it was also very
agreeable that such authorities as Sasha and Zinotchka might at any
moment be convicted by me of ignorance of the social proprieties.
Now they were in my power, and their peace was entirely dependent
on my magnanimity. I'd let them know.
"When I went to bed, Zinotchka came into the nursery as usual to
find out whether I had dropped asleep without undressing and whether
I had said my prayers. I looked at her pretty, happy face and
grinned. I was bursting with my secret and itching to let it out.
I had to drop a hint and enjoy the effect.
"'I know,' I said, grinning. 'Gy--y.'
"'What do you know?'
"'Gy--y! I saw you near the willows kissing Sasha. I followed you
and saw it all.'
"Zinotchka started, flushed all over, and overwhelmed by 'my hint'
she sank down on the chair, on which stood a glass of water and a
candlestick.
"'I saw you . . . kissing . . .' I repeated, sniggering and enjoying
her confusion. 'Aha! I'll tell mamma!'
"Cowardly Zinotchka gazed at me intently, and convincing herself
that I really did know all about it, clutched my hand in despair
and muttered in a trembling whisper:
"'Petya, it is low. . . . I beg of you, for God's sake. . . . Be
a man . . . don't tell anyone. . . . Decent people don't spy
. . . . It's low. . . . I entreat you.'
"The poor girl was terribly afraid of my mother, a stern and virtuous
lady--that was one thing; and the second was that my grinning
countenance could not but outrage her first love so pure and poetical,
and you can imagine the state of her heart. Thanks to me, she did
not sleep a wink all night, and in the morning she appeared at
breakfast with blue rings round her eyes. When I met Sasha after
breakfast I could not refrain from grinning and boasting:
"'I know! I saw you yesterday kissing Mademoiselle Zina!'
"Sasha looked at me and said:
"'You are a fool.'
"He was not so cowardly as Zinotchka, and so my effect did not come
off. That provoked me to further efforts. If Sasha was not frightened
it was evident that he did not believe that I had seen and knew all
about it; wait a bit, I would show him.
"At our lessons before dinner Zinotchka did not look at me, and her
voice faltered. Instead of trying to scare me she tried to propitiate
me in every way, giving me full marks, and not complaining to my
father of my naughtiness. Being intelligent beyond my years I
exploited her secret: I did not learn my lessons, walked into the
schoolroom on my head, and said all sorts of rude things. In fact,
if I had remained in that vein till to-day I should have become a
famous blackmailer. Well, a week passed. Another person's secret
irritated and fretted me like a splinter in my soul. I longed at
all costs to blurt it out and gloat over the effect. And one day
at dinner, when we had a lot of visitors, I gave a stupid snigger,
looked fiendishly at Zinotchka and said:
"'I know. Gy--y! I saw! . . .'
"'What do you know?' asked my mother.
"I looked still more fiendishly at Zinotchka and Sasha. You ought
to have seen how the girl flushed up, and how furious Sasha's eyes
were! I bit my tongue and did not go on. Zinotchka gradually turned
pale, clenched her teeth, and ate no more dinner. At our evening
lessons that day I noticed a striking change in Zinotchka's face.
It looked sterner, colder, as it were, more like marble, while her
eyes gazed strangely straight into my face, and I give you my word
of honour I have never seen such terrible, annihilating eyes, even
in hounds when they overtake the wolf. I understood their expression
perfectly, when in the middle of a lesson she suddenly clenched her
teeth and hissed through them:
"'I hate you! Oh, you vile, loathsome creature, if you knew how I
hate you, how I detest your cropped head, your vulgar, prominent
ears!'
"But at once she took fright and said:
"'I am not speaking to you, I am repeating a part out of a
play. . . .'
"Then, my friends, at night I saw her come to my bedside and gaze
a long time into my face. She hated me passionately, and could not
exist away from me. The contemplation of my hated pug of a face had
become a necessity to her. I remember a lovely summer evening . . .
with the scent of hay, perfect stillness, and so on. The moon was
shining. I was walking up and down the avenue, thinking of cherry
jam. Suddenly Zinotchka, looking pale and lovely, came up to me,
she caught hold of my hand, and breathlessly began expressing
herself:
"'Oh, how I hate you! I wish no one harm as I do you! Let me tell
you that! I want you to understand that!'
"You understand, moonlight, her pale face, breathless with passion,
the stillness . . . little pig as I was I actually enjoyed it. I
listened to her, looked at her eyes. . . . At first I liked it, and
enjoyed the novelty. Then I was suddenly seized with terror, I gave
a scream, and ran into the house at breakneck speed.
"I made up my mind that the best thing to do was to complain to
_maman_. And I did complain, mentioning incidentally how Sasha had
kissed Zinotchka. I was stupid, and did not know what would follow,
or I should have kept the secret to myself. . . . After hearing my
story _maman_ flushed with indignation and said:
"'It is not your business to speak about that, you are still very
young. . . . But, what an example for children.'
"My _maman_ was not only virtuous but diplomatic. To avoid a scandal
she did not get rid of Zinotchka at once, but set to work gradually,
systematically, to pave the way for her departure, as one does with
well-bred but intolerable people. I remember that when Zinotchka
did leave us the last glance she cast at the house was directed at
the window at which I was sitting, and I assure you, I remember
that glance to this day.
"Zinotchka soon afterwards became my brother's wife. She is the
Zinaida Nikolaevna whom you know. The next time I met her I was
already an ensign. In spite of all her efforts she could not recognize
the hated Petya in the ensign with his moustache, but still she did
not treat me quite like a relation. . . . And even now, in spite
of my good-humoured baldness, meek corpulence, and unassuming air,
she still looks askance at me, and feels put out when I go to see
my brother. Hatred it seems can no more be forgotten than
love. . . .
"Tchoo! I hear the cock crowing! Good-night. Milord! Lie down!"