I
AFTER the festive dinner with its eight courses and its endless
conversation, Olga Mihalovna, whose husband's name-day was being
celebrated, went out into the garden. The duty of smiling and talking
incessantly, the clatter of the crockery, the stupidity of the
servants, the long intervals between the courses, and the stays she
had put on to conceal her condition from the visitors, wearied her
to exhaustion. She longed to get away from the house, to sit in the
shade and rest her heart with thoughts of the baby which was to be
born to her in another two months. She was used to these thoughts
coming to her as she turned to the left out of the big avenue into
the narrow path. Here in the thick shade of the plums and cherry-trees
the dry branches used to scratch her neck and shoulders; a spider's
web would settle on her face, and there would rise up in her mind
the image of a little creature of undetermined sex and undefined
features, and it began to seem as though it were not the spider's
web that tickled her face and neck caressingly, but that little
creature. When, at the end of the path, a thin wicker hurdle came
into sight, and behind it podgy beehives with tiled roofs; when in
the motionless, stagnant air there came a smell of hay and honey,
and a soft buzzing of bees was audible, then the little creature
would take complete possession of Olga Mihalovna. She used to sit
down on a bench near the shanty woven of branches, and fall to
thinking.
This time, too, she went on as far as the seat, sat down, and began
thinking; but instead of the little creature there rose up in her
imagination the figures of the grown-up people whom she had just
left. She felt dreadfully uneasy that she, the hostess, had deserted
her guests, and she remembered how her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch,
and her uncle, Nikolay Nikolaitch, had argued at dinner about trial
by jury, about the press, and about the higher education of women.
Her husband, as usual, argued in order to show off his Conservative
ideas before his visitors--and still more in order to disagree
with her uncle, whom he disliked. Her uncle contradicted him and
wrangled over every word he uttered, so as to show the company that
he, Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch, still retained his youthful freshness
of spirit and free-thinking in spite of his fifty-nine years. And
towards the end of dinner even Olga Mihalovna herself could not
resist taking part and unskilfully attempting to defend university
education for women--not that that education stood in need of her
defence, but simply because she wanted to annoy her husband, who
to her mind was unfair. The guests were wearied by this discussion,
but they all thought it necessary to take part in it, and talked a
great deal, although none of them took any interest in trial by
jury or the higher education of women. . . .
Olga Mihalovna was sitting on the nearest side of the hurdle near
the shanty. The sun was hidden behind the clouds. The trees and the
air were overcast as before rain, but in spite of that it was hot
and stifling. The hay cut under the trees on the previous day was
lying ungathered, looking melancholy, with here and there a patch
of colour from the faded flowers, and from it came a heavy, sickly
scent. It was still. The other side of the hurdle there was a
monotonous hum of bees. . . .
Suddenly she heard footsteps and voices; some one was coming along
the path towards the beehouse.
"How stifling it is!" said a feminine voice. "What do you think--
is it going to rain, or not?"
"It is going to rain, my charmer, but not before night," a very
familiar male voice answered languidly. "There will be a good rain."
Olga Mihalovna calculated that if she made haste to hide in the
shanty they would pass by without seeing her, and she would not
have to talk and to force herself to smile. She picked up her skirts,
bent down and crept into the shanty. At once she felt upon her face,
her neck, her arms, the hot air as heavy as steam. If it had not
been for the stuffiness and the close smell of rye bread, fennel,
and brushwood, which prevented her from breathing freely, it would
have been delightful to hide from her visitors here under the
thatched roof in the dusk, and to think about the little creature.
It was cosy and quiet.
"What a pretty spot!" said a feminine voice. "Let us sit here, Pyotr
Dmitritch."
Olga Mihalovna began peeping through a crack between two branches.
She saw her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch, and Lubotchka Sheller, a girl
of seventeen who had not long left boarding-school. Pyotr Dmitritch,
with his hat on the back of his head, languid and indolent from
having drunk so much at dinner, slouched by the hurdle and raked
the hay into a heap with his foot; Lubotchka, pink with the heat
and pretty as ever, stood with her hands behind her, watching the
lazy movements of his big handsome person.
Olga Mihalovna knew that her husband was attractive to women, and
did not like to see him with them. There was nothing out of the way
in Pyotr Dmitritch's lazily raking together the hay in order to sit
down on it with Lubotchka and chatter to her of trivialities; there
was nothing out of the way, either, in pretty Lubotchka's looking
at him with her soft eyes; but yet Olga Mihalovna felt vexed with
her husband and frightened and pleased that she could listen to
them.
"Sit down, enchantress," said Pyotr Dmitritch, sinking down on the
hay and stretching. "That's right. Come, tell me something."
"What next! If I begin telling you anything you will go to sleep."
"Me go to sleep? Allah forbid! Can I go to sleep while eyes like
yours are watching me?"
In her husband's words, and in the fact that he was lolling with
his hat on the back of his head in the presence of a lady, there
was nothing out of the way either. He was spoilt by women, knew
that they found him attractive, and had adopted with them a special
tone which every one said suited him. With Lubotchka he behaved as
with all women. But, all the same, Olga Mihalovna was jealous.
"Tell me, please," said Lubotchka, after a brief silence--"is it
true that you are to be tried for something?"
"I? Yes, I am . . . numbered among the transgressors, my charmer."
"But what for?"
"For nothing, but just . . . it's chiefly a question of politics,"
yawned Pyotr Dmitritch--"the antagonisms of Left and Right. I,
an obscurantist and reactionary, ventured in an official paper to
make use of an expression offensive in the eyes of such immaculate
Gladstones as Vladimir Pavlovitch Vladimirov and our local justice
of the peace--Kuzma Grigoritch Vostryakov."
Pytor Dmitritch yawned again and went on:
"And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the
sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from
touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid! A Liberal is like the poisonous
dry fungus which covers you with a cloud of dust if you accidentally
touch it with your finger."
"What happened to you?"
"Nothing particular. The whole flare-up started from the merest
trifle. A teacher, a detestable person of clerical associations,
hands to Vostryakov a petition against a tavern-keeper, charging
him with insulting language and behaviour in a public place.
Everything showed that both the teacher and the tavern-keeper were
drunk as cobblers, and that they behaved equally badly. If there
had been insulting behaviour, the insult had anyway been mutual.
Vostryakov ought to have fined them both for a breach of the peace
and have turned them out of the court--that is all. But that's
not our way of doing things. With us what stands first is not the
person--not the fact itself, but the trade-mark and label. However
great a rascal a teacher may be, he is always in the right because
he is a teacher; a tavern-keeper is always in the wrong because he
is a tavern-keeper and a money-grubber. Vostryakov placed the
tavern-keeper under arrest. The man appealed to the Circuit Court;
the Circuit Court triumphantly upheld Vostryakov's decision. Well,
I stuck to my own opinion. . . . Got a little hot. . . . That was
all."
Pyotr Dmitritch spoke calmly with careless irony. In reality the
trial that was hanging over him worried him extremely. Olga Mihalovna
remembered how on his return from the unfortunate session he had
tried to conceal from his household how troubled he was, and how
dissatisfied with himself. As an intelligent man he could not help
feeling that he had gone too far in expressing his disagreement;
and how much lying had been needful to conceal that feeling from
himself and from others! How many unnecessary conversations there
had been! How much grumbling and insincere laughter at what was not
laughable! When he learned that he was to be brought up before the
Court, he seemed at once harassed and depressed; he began to sleep
badly, stood oftener than ever at the windows, drumming on the panes
with his fingers. And he was ashamed to let his wife see that he
was worried, and it vexed her.
"They say you have been in the province of Poltava?" Lubotchka
questioned him.
"Yes," answered Pyotr Dmitritch. "I came back the day before
yesterday."
"I expect it is very nice there."
"Yes, it is very nice, very nice indeed; in fact, I arrived just
in time for the haymaking, I must tell you, and in the Ukraine the
haymaking is the most poetical moment of the year. Here we have a
big house, a big garden, a lot of servants, and a lot going on, so
that you don't see the haymaking; here it all passes unnoticed.
There, at the farm, I have a meadow of forty-five acres as flat as
my hand. You can see the men mowing from any window you stand at.
They are mowing in the meadow, they are mowing in the garden. There
are no visitors, no fuss nor hurry either, so that you can't help
seeing, feeling, hearing nothing but the haymaking. There is a smell
of hay indoors and outdoors. There's the sound of the scythes from
sunrise to sunset. Altogether Little Russia is a charming country.
Would you believe it, when I was drinking water from the rustic
wells and filthy vodka in some Jew's tavern, when on quiet evenings
the strains of the Little Russian fiddle and the tambourines reached
me, I was tempted by a fascinating idea--to settle down on my
place and live there as long as I chose, far away from Circuit
Courts, intellectual conversations, philosophizing women, long
dinners. . . ."
Pyotr Dmitritch was not lying. He was unhappy and really longed to
rest. And he had visited his Poltava property simply to avoid seeing
his study, his servants, his acquaintances, and everything that
could remind him of his wounded vanity and his mistakes.
Lubotchka suddenly jumped up and waved her hands about in horror.
"Oh! A bee, a bee!" she shrieked. "It will sting!"
"Nonsense; it won't sting," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "What a coward
you are!"
"No, no, no," cried Lubotchka; and looking round at the bees, she
walked rapidly back.
Pyotr Dmitritch walked away after her, looking at her with a softened
and melancholy face. He was probably thinking, as he looked at her,
of his farm, of solitude, and--who knows?--perhaps he was even
thinking how snug and cosy life would be at the farm if his wife
had been this girl--young, pure, fresh, not corrupted by higher
education, not with child. . . .
When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Olga Mihalovna
came out of the shanty and turned towards the house. She wanted to
cry. She was by now acutely jealous. She could understand that her
husband was worried, dissatisfied with himself and ashamed, and
when people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest
to them, and are unreserved with strangers; she could understand,
also, that she had nothing to fear from Lubotchka or from those
women who were now drinking coffee indoors. But everything in general
was terrible, incomprehensible, and it already seemed to Olga
Mihalovna that Pyotr Dmitritch only half belonged to her.
"He has no right to do it!" she muttered, trying to formulate her
jealousy and her vexation with her husband. "He has no right at
all. I will tell him so plainly!"
She made up her mind to find her husband at once and tell him all
about it: it was disgusting, absolutely disgusting, that he was
attractive to other women and sought their admiration as though it
were some heavenly manna; it was unjust and dishonourable that he
should give to others what belonged by right to his wife, that he
should hide his soul and his conscience from his wife to reveal
them to the first pretty face he came across. What harm had his
wife done him? How was she to blame? Long ago she had been sickened
by his lying: he was for ever posing, flirting, saying what he did
not think, and trying to seem different from what he was and what
he ought to be. Why this falsity? Was it seemly in a decent man?
If he lied he was demeaning himself and those to whom he lied, and
slighting what he lied about. Could he not understand that if he
swaggered and posed at the judicial table, or held forth at dinner
on the prerogatives of Government, that he, simply to provoke her
uncle, was showing thereby that he had not a ha'p'orth of respect
for the Court, or himself, or any of the people who were listening
and looking at him?
Coming out into the big avenue, Olga Mihalovna assumed an expression
of face as though she had just gone away to look after some domestic
matter. In the verandah the gentlemen were drinking liqueur and
eating strawberries: one of them, the Examining Magistrate--a
stout elderly man, _blagueur_ and wit--must have been telling
some rather free anecdote, for, seeing their hostess, he suddenly
clapped his hands over his fat lips, rolled his eyes, and sat down.
Olga Mihalovna did not like the local officials. She did not care
for their clumsy, ceremonious wives, their scandal-mongering, their
frequent visits, their flattery of her husband, whom they all hated.
Now, when they were drinking, were replete with food and showed no
signs of going away, she felt their presence an agonizing weariness;
but not to appear impolite, she smiled cordially to the Magistrate,
and shook her finger at him. She walked across the dining-room and
drawing-room smiling, and looking as though she had gone to give
some order and make some arrangement. "God grant no one stops me,"
she thought, but she forced herself to stop in the drawing-room to
listen from politeness to a young man who was sitting at the piano
playing: after standing for a minute, she cried, "Bravo, bravo, M.
Georges!" and clapping her hands twice, she went on.
She found her husband in his study. He was sitting at the table,
thinking of something. His face looked stern, thoughtful, and guilty.
This was not the same Pyotr Dmitritch who had been arguing at dinner
and whom his guests knew, but a different man--wearied, feeling
guilty and dissatisfied with himself, whom nobody knew but his wife.
He must have come to the study to get cigarettes. Before him lay
an open cigarette-case full of cigarettes, and one of his hands was
in the table drawer; he had paused and sunk into thought as he was
taking the cigarettes.
Olga Mihalovna felt sorry for him. It was as clear as day that this
man was harassed, could find no rest, and was perhaps struggling
with himself. Olga Mihalovna went up to the table in silence: wanting
to show that she had forgotten the argument at dinner and was not
cross, she shut the cigarette-case and put it in her husband's coat
pocket.
"What should I say to him?" she wondered; "I shall say that lying
is like a forest--the further one goes into it the more difficult
it is to get out of it. I will say to him, 'You have been carried
away by the false part you are playing; you have insulted people
who were attached to you and have done you no harm. Go and apologize
to them, laugh at yourself, and you will feel better. And if you
want peace and solitude, let us go away together.'"
Meeting his wife's gaze, Pyotr Dmitritch's face immediately assumed
the expression it had worn at dinner and in the garden--indifferent
and slightly ironical. He yawned and got up.
"It's past five," he said, looking at his watch. "If our visitors
are merciful and leave us at eleven, even then we have another six
hours of it. It's a cheerful prospect, there's no denying!"
And whistling something, he walked slowly out of the study with his
usual dignified gait. She could hear him with dignified firmness
cross the dining-room, then the drawing-room, laugh with dignified
assurance, and say to the young man who was playing, "Bravo! bravo!"
Soon his footsteps died away: he must have gone out into the garden.
And now not jealousy, not vexation, but real hatred of his footsteps,
his insincere laugh and voice, took possession of Olga Mihalovna.
She went to the window and looked out into the garden. Pyotr Dmitritch
was already walking along the avenue. Putting one hand in his pocket
and snapping the fingers of the other, he walked with confident
swinging steps, throwing his head back a little, and looking as
though he were very well satisfied with himself, with his dinner,
with his digestion, and with nature. . . .
Two little schoolboys, the children of Madame Tchizhevsky, who had
only just arrived, made their appearance in the avenue, accompanied
by their tutor, a student wearing a white tunic and very narrow
trousers. When they reached Pyotr Dmitritch, the boys and the student
stopped, and probably congratulated him on his name-day. With a
graceful swing of his shoulders, he patted the children on their
cheeks, and carelessly offered the student his hand without looking
at him. The student must have praised the weather and compared it
with the climate of Petersburg, for Pyotr Dmitritch said in a loud
voice, in a tone as though he were not speaking to a guest, but to
an usher of the court or a witness:
"What! It's cold in Petersburg? And here, my good sir, we have a
salubrious atmosphere and the fruits of the earth in abundance. Eh?
What?"
And thrusting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of
the other, he walked on. Till he had disappeared behind the nut
bushes, Olga Mihalovna watched the back of his head in perplexity.
How had this man of thirty-four come by the dignified deportment
of a general? How had he come by that impressive, elegant manner?
Where had he got that vibration of authority in his voice? Where
had he got these "what's," "to be sure's," and "my good sir's"?
Olga Mihalovna remembered how in the first months of her marriage
she had felt dreary at home alone and had driven into the town to
the Circuit Court, at which Pyotr Dmitritch had sometimes presided
in place of her godfather, Count Alexey Petrovitch. In the presidential
chair, wearing his uniform and a chain on his breast, he was
completely changed. Stately gestures, a voice of thunder, "what,"
"to be sure," careless tones. . . . Everything, all that was ordinary
and human, all that was individual and personal to himself that
Olga Mihalovna was accustomed to seeing in him at home, vanished
in grandeur, and in the presidential chair there sat not Pyotr
Dmitritch, but another man whom every one called Mr. President.
This consciousness of power prevented him from sitting still in his
place, and he seized every opportunity to ring his bell, to glance
sternly at the public, to shout. . . . Where had he got his short-sight
and his deafness when he suddenly began to see and hear with
difficulty, and, frowning majestically, insisted on people speaking
louder and coming closer to the table? From the height of his
grandeur he could hardly distinguish faces or sounds, so that it
seemed that if Olga Mihalovna herself had gone up to him he would
have shouted even to her, "Your name?" Peasant witnesses he addressed
familiarly, he shouted at the public so that his voice could be
heard even in the street, and behaved incredibly with the lawyers.
If a lawyer had to speak to him, Pyotr Dmitritch, turning a little
away from him, looked with half-closed eyes at the ceiling, meaning
to signify thereby that the lawyer was utterly superfluous and that
he was neither recognizing him nor listening to him; if a badly-dressed
lawyer spoke, Pyotr Dmitritch pricked up his ears and looked the
man up and down with a sarcastic, annihilating stare as though to
say: "Queer sort of lawyers nowadays!"
"What do you mean by that?" he would interrupt.
If a would-be eloquent lawyer mispronounced a foreign word, saying,
for instance, "factitious" instead of "fictitious," Pyotr Dmitritch
brightened up at once and asked, "What? How? Factitious? What does
that mean?" and then observed impressively: "Don't make use of words
you do not understand." And the lawyer, finishing his speech, would
walk away from the table, red and perspiring, while Pyotr Dmitritch;
with a self-satisfied smile, would lean back in his chair triumphant.
In his manner with the lawyers he imitated Count Alexey Petrovitch
a little, but when the latter said, for instance, "Counsel for the
defence, you keep quiet for a little!" it sounded paternally
good-natured and natural, while the same words in Pyotr Dmitritch's
mouth were rude and artificial.