I
It was two years after my visit that Panteley Eremyitch's troubles
began--his real troubles. Disappointments, disasters, even misfortunes
he had had before that time, but he had paid no attention to them, and
had risen superior to them in former days. The first blow that fell upon
him was the most heartrending for him. Masha left him.
What induced her to forsake his roof, where she seemed to be so
thoroughly at home, it is hard to say. Tchertop-hanov to the end of his
days clung to the conviction that a certain young neighbour, a retired
captain of Uhlans, named Yaff, was at the root of Masha's desertion. He
had taken her fancy, according to Panteley Eremyitch, simply by
constantly curling his moustaches, pomading himself to excess, and
sniggering significantly; but one must suppose that the vagrant gypsy
blood in Masha's veins had more to do with it. However that may have
been, one fine summer evening Masha tied up a few odds and ends in a
small bundle, and walked out of Tchertop-hanov's house.
For three days before this she had sat crouched up in a corner, huddled
against the wall, like a wounded fox, and had not spoken a word to any
one; she had only turned her eyes about, and twitched her eyebrows, and
faintly gnashed her teeth, and moved her arms as though she were
wrapping herself up. This mood had come upon her before, but had never
lasted long: Tchertop-hanov knew that, and so he neither worried himself
nor worried her. But when, on coming in from the kennels, where, in his
huntsman's words, the last two hounds 'had departed,' he met a servant
girl who, in a trembling voice, informed him that Marya Akinfyevna sent
him her greetings, and left word that she wished him every happiness,
but she was not coming back to him any more; Tchertop-hanov, after
reeling round where he stood and uttering a hoarse yell, rushed at once
after the runaway, snatching up his pistol as he went.
He overtook her a mile and a half from his house, near a birch wood, on
the high-road to the district town. The sun was sinking on the horizon,
and everything was suddenly suffused with purple glow--trees, plants,
and earth alike.
'To Yaff! to Yaff!' groaned Tchertop-hanov directly he caught sight of
Masha. 'Going to Yaff!' he repeated, running up to her, and almost
stumbling at every step.
Masha stood still, and turned round facing him.
She stood with her back to the light, and looked all black, as though
she had been carved out of dark wood; only the whites of her eyes stood
out like silvery almonds, but the eyes themselves--the pupils--were
darker than ever.
She flung her bundle aside, and folded her arms. 'You are going to Yaff,
wretched girl!' repeated Tchertop-hanov, and he was on the point of
seizing her by the shoulder, but, meeting her eyes, he was abashed, and
stood uneasily where he was.
'I am not going to Mr. Yaff, Panteley Eremyitch,' replied Masha in soft,
even tones; 'it's only I can't live with you any longer.'
'Can't live with me? Why not? Have I offended you in some way?'
Masha shook her head. 'You've not offended me in any way, Panteley
Eremyitch, only my heart is heavy in your house.... Thanks for the past,
but I can't stay--no!'
Tchertop-hanov was amazed; he positively slapped his thighs, and bounced
up and down in his astonishment.
'How is that? Here she's gone on living with me, and known nothing but
peace and happiness, and all of a sudden--her heart's heavy! and she
flings me over! She goes and puts a kerchief on her head, and is gone.
She received every respect, like any lady.'
'I don't care for that in the least,' Masha interrupted.
'Don't care for it? From a wandering gypsy to turn into a lady, and she
doesn't care for it! How don't you care for it, you low-born slave? Do
you expect me to believe that? There's treachery hidden in
it--treachery!'
He began frowning again.
'There's no treachery in my thoughts, and never has been,' said Masha in
her distinct, resonant voice; 'I've told you already, my heart was
heavy.'
'Masha!' cried Tchertop-hanov, striking himself a blow on the chest with
his fist; 'there, stop it; hush, you have tortured me... now, it's
enough! O my God! think only what Tisha will say; you might have pity on
him, at least!'
'Remember me to Tihon Ivanitch, and tell him...'
Tchertop-hanov wrung his hands. 'No, you are talking nonsense--you are
not going! Your Yaff may wait for you in vain!'
'Mr. Yaff,' Masha was beginning....
'A fine _Mister_ Yaff!' Tchertop-hanov mimicked her. 'He's an
underhand rascal, a low cur--that's what he is--and a phiz like an
ape's!'
For fully half-an-hour Tchertop-hanov was struggling with Masha. He came
close to her, he fell back, he shook his fists at her, he bowed down
before her, he wept, he scolded.
...'I can't,' repeated Masha; 'I am so sad at heart... devoured by
weariness.'
Little by little her face assumed such an indifferent, almost drowsy
expression, that Tchertop-hanov asked her if they had not drugged her
with laudanum.
'It's weariness,' she said for the tenth time.
'Then what if I kill you?' he cried suddenly, and he pulled the pistol
out of his pocket.
Masha smiled; her face brightened.
'Well, kill me, Panteley Eremyitch; as you will; but go back, I won't.'
'You won't come back?' Tchertop-hanov cocked the pistol.
'I won't go back, my dearie. Never in my life will I go back. My word is
steadfast.'
Tchertop-hanov suddenly thrust the pistol into her hand, and sat down on
the ground.
'Then, you kill me! Without you I don't care to live. I have grown
loathsome to you--and everything's loathsome for me!'
Masha bent down, took up her bundle, laid the pistol on the grass, its
mouth away from Tchertop-hanov, and went up to him.
'Ah, my dearie, why torture yourself? Don't you know what we gypsy girls
are? It's our nature; you must make up your mind to it. When there comes
weariness the divider, and calls the soul away to strange, distant
parts, how is one to stay here? Don't forget your Masha; you won't find
such another sweetheart, and I won't forget you, my dearie; but our life
together's over!'
'I loved you, Masha,' Tchertop-hanov muttered into the fingers in which
he had buried his face....
'And I loved you, little friend Panteley Eremyitch.'
'I love you, I love you madly, senselessly--and when I think now that
you, in your right senses, without rhyme or reason, are leaving me like
this, and going to wander over the face of the earth--well, it strikes
me that if I weren't a poor penniless devil, you wouldn't be throwing me
over!'
At these words Masha only laughed.
'And he used to say I didn't care for money,' she commented, and she
gave Tchertop-hanov a vigorous thump on the shoulder.
He jumped up on to his feet.
'Come, at least you must let me give you some money--how can you go like
this without a halfpenny? But best of all: kill me! I tell you plainly:
kill me once for all!'
Masha shook her head again. 'Kill you? Why get sent to Siberia, my
dearie?'
Tchertop-hanov shuddered. 'Then it's only from that--from fear of penal
servitude.'
He rolled on the grass again.
Masha stood over him in silence. 'I'm sorry for you, dear,' she said
with a sigh: 'you're a good fellow... but there's no help for it:
good-bye!'
She turned away and took two steps. The night had come on by now, and
dim shadows were closing in on all sides. Tchertop-hanov jumped up
swiftly and seized Masha from behind by her two elbows.
'You are going away like this, serpent, to Yaff!'
'Good-bye!' Masha repeated sharply and significantly; she tore herself
away and walked off.
Tchertop-hanov looked after her, ran to the place where the pistol was
lying, snatched it up, took aim, fired.... But before he touched the
trigger, his arm twitched upwards; the ball whistled over Masha's head.
She looked at him over her shoulder without stopping, and went on,
swinging as she walked, as though in defiance of him.
He hid his face--and fell to running.
But before he had run fifty paces he suddenly stood still as though
turned to stone. A well-known, too well-known voice came floating to
him. Masha was singing. 'It was in the sweet days of youth,' she sang:
every note seemed to linger plaintive and ardent in the evening air.
Tchertop-hanov listened intently. The voice retreated and retreated; at
one moment it died away, at the next it floated across, hardly audible,
but still with the same passionate glow.
'She does it to spite me,' thought Tchertop-hanov; but at once he
moaned, 'oh, no! it's her last farewell to me for ever,'--and he burst
into floods of tears.
* * * * *
The next day he appeared at the lodgings of Mr. Yaff, who, as a true man
of the world, not liking the solitude of the country, resided in the
district town, 'to be nearer the young ladies,' as he expressed it.
Tchertop-hanov did not find Yaff; he had, in the words of his valet, set
off for Moscow the evening before.
'Then it is so!' cried Tchertop-hanov furiously; 'there was an
arrangement between them; she has run away with him... but wait a bit!'
He broke into the young cavalry captain's room in spite of the
resistance of the valet. In the room there was hanging over the sofa a
portrait in oils of the master, in the Uhlan uniform. 'Ah, here you are,
you tailless ape!' thundered Tchertop-hanov; he jumped on to the sofa,
and with a blow of his fist burst a big hole in the taut canvas.
'Tell your worthless master,' he turned to the valet, 'that, in the
absence of his own filthy phiz, the nobleman Tchertop-hanov put a hole
through the painted one; and if he cares for satisfaction from me, he
knows where to find the nobleman Tchertop-hanov! or else I'll find him
out myself! I'll fetch the rascally ape from the bottom of the sea!'
Saying these words, Tchertop-hanov jumped off the sofa and majestically
withdrew.
But the cavalry captain Yaff did not demand satisfaction from
him--indeed, he never met him anywhere--and Tchertop-hanov did not think
of seeking his enemy out, and no scandal followed. Masha herself soon
after this disappeared beyond all trace. Tchertop-hanov took to drink;
however, he 'reformed' later. But then a second blow fell upon him.