I
THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought
out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white,
Giant; then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive
horses. Old Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter
Masha:
"Well, Marie Godefroi, come, get on! Hopla!"
Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen,
but her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a
little girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and
after there had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly
visited, every one began to call her Marie Godefroi.
"Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant. Her sister Varya got on Maika,
Nikitin on Count Nulin, the officers on their horses, and the long
picturesque cavalcade, with the officers in white tunics and the
ladies in their riding habits, moved at a walking pace out of the
yard.
Nikitin noticed that when they were mounting the horses and afterwards
riding out into the street, Masha for some reason paid attention
to no one but himself. She looked anxiously at him and at Count
Nulin and said:
"You must hold him all the time on the curb, Sergey Vassilitch.
Don't let him shy. He's pretending."
And either because her Giant was very friendly with Count Nulin,
or perhaps by chance, she rode all the time beside Nikitin, as she
had done the day before, and the day before that. And he looked at
her graceful little figure sitting on the proud white beast, at her
delicate profile, at the chimney-pot hat, which did not suit her
at all and made her look older than her age--looked at her with
joy, with tenderness, with rapture; listened to her, taking in
little of what she said, and thought:
"I promise on my honour, I swear to God, I won't be afraid and I'll
speak to her today."
It was seven o'clock in the evening--the time when the scent of
white acacia and lilac is so strong that the air and the very trees
seem heavy with the fragrance. The band was already playing in the
town gardens. The horses made a resounding thud on the pavement,
on all sides there were sounds of laughter, talk, and the banging
of gates. The soldiers they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys
bowed to Nikitin, and all the people who were hurrying to the gardens
to hear the band were pleased at the sight of the party. And how
warm it was! How soft-looking were the clouds scattered carelessly
about the sky, how kindly and comforting the shadows of the poplars
and the acacias, which stretched across the street and reached as
far as the balconies and second stories of the houses on the other
side.
They rode on out of the town and set off at a trot along the highroad.
Here there was no scent of lilac and acacia, no music of the band,
but there was the fragrance of the fields, there was the green of
young rye and wheat, the marmots were squeaking, the rooks were
cawing. Wherever one looked it was green, with only here and there
black patches of bare ground, and far away to the left in the
cemetery a white streak of apple-blossom.
They passed the slaughter-houses, then the brewery, and overtook a
military band hastening to the suburban gardens.
"Polyansky has a very fine horse, I don't deny that," Masha said
to Nikitin, with a glance towards the officer who was riding beside
Varya. "But it has blemishes. That white patch on its left leg ought
not to be there, and, look, it tosses its head. You can't train it
not to now; it will toss its head till the end of its days."
Masha was as passionate a lover of horses as her father. She felt
a pang when she saw other people with fine horses, and was pleased
when she saw defects in them. Nikitin knew nothing about horses;
it made absolutely no difference to him whether he held his horse
on the bridle or on the curb, whether he trotted or galloped; he
only felt that his position was strained and unnatural, and that
consequently the officers who knew how to sit in their saddles must
please Masha more than he could. And he was jealous of the officers.
As they rode by the suburban gardens some one suggested their going
in and getting some seltzer-water. They went in. There were no trees
but oaks in the gardens; they had only just come into leaf, so that
through the young foliage the whole garden could still be seen with
its platform, little tables, and swings, and the crows' nests were
visible, looking like big hats. The party dismounted near a table
and asked for seltzer-water. People they knew, walking about the
garden, came up to them. Among them the army doctor in high boots,
and the conductor of the band, waiting for the musicians. The doctor
must have taken Nikitin for a student, for he asked: "Have you come
for the summer holidays?"
"No, I am here permanently," answered Nikitin. "I am a teacher at
the school."
"You don't say so?" said the doctor, with surprise. "So young and
already a teacher?"
"Young, indeed! My goodness, I'm twenty-six!
"You have a beard and moustache, but yet one would never guess you
were more than twenty-two or twenty-three. How young-looking you
are!"
"What a beast!" thought Nikitin. "He, too, takes me for a
whipper-snapper!"
He disliked it extremely when people referred to his youth, especially
in the presence of women or the schoolboys. Ever since he had come
to the town as a master in the school he had detested his own
youthful appearance. The schoolboys were not afraid of him, old
people called him "young man," ladies preferred dancing with him
to listening to his long arguments, and he would have given a great
deal to be ten years older.
From the garden they went on to the Shelestovs' farm. There they
stopped at the gate and asked the bailiff's wife, Praskovya, to
bring some new milk. Nobody drank the milk; they all looked at one
another, laughed, and galloped back. As they rode back the band was
playing in the suburban garden; the sun was setting behind the
cemetery, and half the sky was crimson from the sunset.
Masha again rode beside Nikitin. He wanted to tell her how passionately
he loved her, but he was afraid he would be overheard by the officers
and Varya, and he was silent. Masha was silent, too, and he felt
why she was silent and why she was riding beside him, and was so
happy that the earth, the sky, the lights of the town, the black
outline of the brewery--all blended for him into something very
pleasant and comforting, and it seemed to him as though Count Nulin
were stepping on air and would climb up into the crimson sky.
They arrived home. The samovar was already boiling on the table,
old Shelestov was sitting with his friends, officials in the Circuit
Court, and as usual he was criticizing something.
"It's loutishness!" he said. "Loutishness and nothing more. Yes!"
Since Nikitin had been in love with Masha, everything at the
Shelestovs' pleased him: the house, the garden, and the evening
tea, and the wickerwork chairs, and the old nurse, and even the
word "loutishness," which the old man was fond of using. The only
thing he did not like was the number of cats and dogs and the
Egyptian pigeons, who moaned disconsolately in a big cage in the
verandah. There were so many house-dogs and yard-dogs that he had
only learnt to recognize two of them in the course of his acquaintance
with the Shelestovs: Mushka and Som. Mushka was a little mangy dog
with a shaggy face, spiteful and spoiled. She hated Nikitin: when
she saw him she put her head on one side, showed her teeth, and
began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she would get
under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she would
go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be
frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."
Som was a tall black dog with long legs and a tail as hard as a
stick. At dinner and tea he usually moved about under the table,
and thumped on people's boots and on the legs of the table with his
tail. He was a good-natured, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not
endure him because he had the habit of putting his head on people's
knees at dinner and messing their trousers with saliva. Nikitin had
more than once tried to hit him on his head with a knife-handle,
to flip him on the nose, had abused him, had complained of him, but
nothing saved his trousers.
After their ride the tea, jam, rusks, and butter seemed very nice.
They all drank their first glass in silence and with great relish;
over the second they began an argument. It was always Varya who
started the arguments at tea; she was good-looking, handsomer than
Masha, and was considered the cleverest and most cultured person
in the house, and she behaved with dignity and severity, as an
eldest daughter should who has taken the place of her dead mother
in the house. As the mistress of the house, she felt herself entitled
to wear a dressing-gown in the presence of her guests, and to call
the officers by their surnames; she looked on Masha as a little
girl, and talked to her as though she were a schoolmistress. She
used to speak of herself as an old maid--so she was certain she
would marry.
Every conversation, even about the weather, she invariably turned
into an argument. She had a passion for catching at words, pouncing
on contradictions, quibbling over phrases. You would begin talking
to her, and she would stare at you and suddenly interrupt: "Excuse
me, excuse me, Petrov, the other day you said the very opposite!"
Or she would smile ironically and say: "I notice, though, you begin
to advocate the principles of the secret police. I congratulate
you."
If you jested or made a pun, you would hear her voice at once:
"That's stale," "That's pointless." If an officer ventured on a
joke, she would make a contemptuous grimace and say, "An army joke!"
And she rolled the _r_ so impressively that Mushka invariably
answered from under a chair, "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
On this occasion at tea the argument began with Nikitin's mentioning
the school examinations.
"Excuse me, Sergey Vassilitch," Varya interrupted him. "You say
it's difficult for the boys. And whose fault is that, let me ask
you? For instance, you set the boys in the eighth class an essay
on 'Pushkin as a Psychologist.' To begin with, you shouldn't set
such a difficult subject; and, secondly, Pushkin was not a psychologist.
Shtchedrin now, or Dostoevsky let us say, is a different matter,
but Pushkin is a great poet and nothing more."
"Shtchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another," Nikitin answered
sulkily.
"I know you don't think much of Shtchedrin at the high school, but
that's not the point. Tell me, in what sense is Pushkin a psychologist?"
"Why, do you mean to say he was not a psychologist? If you like,
I'll give you examples."
And Nikitin recited several passages from "Onyegin" and then from
"Boris Godunov."
"I see no psychology in that." Varya sighed. "The psychologist is
the man who describes the recesses of the human soul, and that's
fine poetry and nothing more."
"I know the sort of psychology you want," said Nikitin, offended.
"You want some one to saw my finger with a blunt saw while I howl
at the top of my voice--that's what you mean by psychology."
"That's poor! But still you haven't shown me in what sense Pushkin
is a psychologist?"
When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow,
conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from
his seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a
moan, running from one end of the room to another. And it was the
same now: he jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a
moan walked round the table, then he sat down a little way off.
The officers took his part. Captain Polyansky began assuring Varya
that Pushkin really was a psychologist, and to prove it quoted two
lines from Lermontov; Lieutenant Gernet said that if Pushkin had
not been a psychologist they would not have erected a monument to
him in Moscow.
"That's loutishness!" was heard from the other end of the table.
"I said as much to the governor: 'It's loutishness, your Excellency,'
I said."
"I won't argue any more," cried Nikitin. "It's unending. . . .
Enough! Ach, get away, you nasty dog!" he cried to Som, who laid
his head and paw on his knee.
"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" came from under the table.
"Admit that you are wrong!" cried Varya. "Own up!"
But some young ladies came in, and the argument dropped of itself.
They all went into the drawing-room. Varya sat down at the piano
and began playing dances. They danced first a waltz, then a polka,
then a quadrille with a grand chain which Captain Polyansky led
through all the rooms, then a waltz again.
During the dancing the old men sat in the drawing-room, smoking and
looking at the young people. Among them was Shebaldin, the director
of the municipal bank, who was famed for his love of literature and
dramatic art. He had founded the local Musical and Dramatic Society,
and took part in the performances himself, confining himself, for
some reason, to playing comic footmen or to reading in a sing-song
voice "The Woman who was a Sinner." His nickname in the town was
"the Mummy," as he was tall, very lean and scraggy, and always had
a solemn air and a fixed, lustreless eye. He was so devoted to the
dramatic art that he even shaved his moustache and beard, and this
made him still more like a mummy.
After the grand chain, he shuffled up to Nikitin sideways, coughed,
and said:
"I had the pleasure of being present during the argument at tea. I
fully share your opinion. We are of one mind, and it would be a
great pleasure to me to talk to you. Have you read Lessing on the
dramatic art of Hamburg?"
"No, I haven't."
Shebaldin was horrified, and waved his hands as though he had burnt
his fingers, and saying nothing more, staggered back from Nikitin.
Shebaldin's appearance, his question, and his surprise, struck
Nikitin as funny, but he thought none the less:
"It really is awkward. I am a teacher of literature, and to this
day I've not read Lessing. I must read him."
Before supper the whole company, old and young, sat down to play
"fate." They took two packs of cards: one pack was dealt round to
the company, the other was laid on the table face downwards.
"The one who has this card in his hand," old Shelestov began solemnly,
lifting the top card of the second pack, "is fated to go into the
nursery and kiss nurse."
The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin.
They all crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing
and clapping their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great
uproar and shouting.
"Not so ardently!" cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. "Not so
ardently!"
It was Nikitin's "fate" to hear the confessions of all. He sat on
a chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and
put over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya.
"I know your sins," Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her
stern profile. "Tell me, madam, how do you explain your walking
with Polyansky every day? Oh, it's not for nothing she walks with
an hussar!"
"That's poor," said Varya, and walked away.
Then under the shawl he saw the shine of big motionless eyes, caught
the lines of a dear profile in the dark, together with a familiar,
precious fragrance which reminded Nikitin of Masha's room.
"Marie Godefroi," he said, and did not know his own voice, it was
so soft and tender, "what are your sins?"
Masha screwed up her eyes and put out the tip of her tongue at him,
then she laughed and went away. And a minute later she was standing
in the middle of the room, clapping her hands and crying:
"Supper, supper, supper!"
And they all streamed into the dining-room. At supper Varya had
another argument, and this time with her father. Polyansky ate
stolidly, drank red wine, and described to Nikitin how once in a
winter campaign he had stood all night up to his knees in a bog;
the enemy was so near that they were not allowed to speak or smoke,
the night was cold and dark, a piercing wind was blowing. Nikitin
listened and stole side-glances at Masha. She was gazing at him
immovably, without blinking, as though she was pondering something
or was lost in a reverie. . . . It was pleasure and agony to him
both at once.
"Why does she look at me like that?" was the question that fretted
him. "It's awkward. People may notice it. Oh, how young, how naïve
she is!"
The party broke up at midnight. When Nikitin went out at the gate,
a window opened on the first-floor, and Masha showed herself at it.
"Sergey Vassilitch!" she called.
"What is it?"
"I tell you what . . ." said Masha, evidently thinking of something
to say. "I tell you what. . . Polyansky said he would come in a day
or two with his camera and take us all. We must meet here."
"Very well."
Masha vanished, the window was slammed, and some one immediately
began playing the piano in the house.
"Well, it is a house!" thought Nikitin while he crossed the street.
"A house in which there is no moaning except from Egyptian pigeons,
and they only do it because they have no other means of expressing
their joy!"
But the Shelestovs were not the only festive household. Nikitin had
not gone two hundred paces before he heard the strains of a piano
from another house. A little further he met a peasant playing the
balalaika at the gate. In the gardens the band struck up a potpourri
of Russian songs.
Nikitin lived nearly half a mile from the Shelestoys' in a flat of
eight rooms at the rent of three hundred roubles a year, which he
shared with his colleague Ippolit Ippolititch, a teacher of geography
and history. When Nikitin went in this Ippolit Ippolititch, a
snub-nosed, middle-aged man with a reddish beard, with a coarse,
good-natured, unintellectual face like a workman's, was sitting at
the table correcting his pupils' maps. He considered that the most
important and necessary part of the study of geography was the
drawing of maps, and of the study of history the learning of dates:
he would sit for nights together correcting in blue pencil the maps
drawn by the boys and girls he taught, or making chronological
tables.
"What a lovely day it has been!" said Nikitin, going in to him. "I
wonder at you--how can you sit indoors?"
Ippolit Ippolititch was not a talkative person; he either remained
silent or talked of things which everybody knew already. Now what
he answered was:
"Yes, very fine weather. It's May now; we soon shall have real
summer. And summer's a very different thing from winter. In the
winter you have to heat the stoves, but in summer you can keep warm
without. In summer you have your window open at night and still are
warm, and in winter you are cold even with the double frames in."
Nikitin had not sat at the table for more than one minute before
he was bored.
"Good-night!" he said, getting up and yawning. "I wanted to tell
you something romantic concerning myself, but you are--geography!
If one talks to you of love, you will ask one at once, 'What was
the date of the Battle of Kalka?' Confound you, with your battles
and your capes in Siberia!"
"What are you cross about?"
"Why, it is vexatious!"
And vexed that he had not spoken to Masha, and that he had no one
to talk to of his love, he went to his study and lay down upon the
sofa. It was dark and still in the study. Lying gazing into the
darkness, Nikitin for some reason began thinking how in two or three
years he would go to Petersburg, how Masha would see him off at the
station and would cry; in Petersburg he would get a long letter
from her in which she would entreat him to come home as quickly as
possible. And he would write to her. . . . He would begin his letter
like that: "My dear little rat!"
"Yes, my dear little rat!" he said, and he laughed.
He was lying in an uncomfortable position. He put his arms under
his head and put his left leg over the back of the sofa. He felt
more comfortable. Meanwhile a pale light was more and more perceptible
at the windows, sleepy cocks crowed in the yard. Nikitin went on
thinking how he would come back from Petersburg, how Masha would
meet him at the station, and with a shriek of delight would fling
herself on his neck; or, better still, he would cheat her and come
home by stealth late at night: the cook would open the door, then
he would go on tiptoe to the bedroom, undress noiselessly, and jump
into bed! And she would wake up and be overjoyed.
It was beginning to get quite light. By now there were no windows,
no study. On the steps of the brewery by which they had ridden that
day Masha was sitting, saying something. Then she took Nikitin by
the arm and went with him to the suburban garden. There he saw the
oaks and, the crows' nests like hats. One of the nests rocked; out
of it peeped Shebaldin, shouting loudly: "You have not read Lessing!"
Nikitin shuddered all over and opened his eyes. Ippolit Ippolititch
was standing before the sofa, and throwing back his head, was putting
on his cravat.
"Get up; it's time for school," he said. "You shouldn't sleep in
your clothes; it spoils your clothes. You should sleep in your bed,
undressed."
And as usual he began slowly and emphatically saying what everybody
knew.
Nikitin's first lesson was on Russian language in the second class.
When at nine o'clock punctually he went into the classroom, he saw
written on the blackboard two large letters--_M. S._ That, no
doubt, meant Masha Shelestov.
"They've scented it out already, the rascals . . ." thought Nikitin.
"How is it they know everything?"
The second lesson was in the fifth class. And there two letters,
_M. S._, were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of
the classroom at the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind
him as though from a theatre gallery:
"Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!"
His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were
weighted down with inertia. The boys, who were expecting every day
to break up before the examinations, did nothing, were restless,
and so bored that they got into mischief. Nikitin, too, was restless,
did not notice their pranks, and was continually going to the window.
He could see the street brilliantly lighted up with the sun; above
the houses the blue limpid sky, the birds, and far, far away, beyond
the gardens and the houses, vast indefinite distance, the forests
in the blue haze, the smoke from a passing train. . . .
Here two officers in white tunics, playing with their whips, passed
in the street in the shade of the acacias. Here a lot of Jews, with
grey beards, and caps on, drove past in a waggonette. . . . The
governess walked by with the director's granddaughter. Som ran by
in the company of two other dogs. . . . And then Varya, wearing a
simple grey dress and red stockings, carrying the "Vyestnik Evropi"
in her hand, passed by. She must have been to the town library. . . .
And it would be a long time before lessons were over at three
o'clock! And after school he could not go home nor to the Shelestovs',
but must go to give a lesson at Wolf's. This Wolf, a wealthy Jew
who had turned Lutheran, did not send his children to the high
school, but had them taught at home by the high-school masters, and
paid five roubles a lesson.
He was bored, bored, bored.
At three o'clock he went to Wolf's and spent there, as it seemed
to him, an eternity. He left there at five o'clock, and before seven
he had to be at the high school again to a meeting of the masters
--to draw up the plan for the _viva voce_ examination of the fourth
and sixth classes.
When late in the evening he left the high school and went to the
Shelestovs', his heart was beating and his face was flushed. A month
before, even a week before, he had, every time that he made up his
mind to speak to her, prepared a whole speech, with an introduction
and a conclusion. Now he had not one word ready; everything was in
a muddle in his head, and all he knew was that today he would
_certainly_ declare himself, and that it was utterly impossible to
wait any longer.
"I will ask her to come to the garden," he thought; "we'll walk
about a little and I'll speak."
There was not a soul in the hall; he went into the dining-room and
then into the drawing-room. . . . There was no one there either.
He could hear Varya arguing with some one upstairs and the clink
of the dressmaker's scissors in the nursery.
There was a little room in the house which had three names: the
little room, the passage room, and the dark room. There was a big
cupboard in it where they kept medicines, gunpowder, and their
hunting gear. Leading from this room to the first floor was a narrow
wooden staircase where cats were always asleep. There were two doors
in it--one leading to the nursery, one to the drawing-room. When
Nikitin went into this room to go upstairs, the door from the nursery
opened and shut with such a bang that it made the stairs and the
cupboard tremble; Masha, in a dark dress, ran in with a piece of
blue material in her hand, and, not noticing Nikitin, darted towards
the stairs.
"Stay . . ." said Nikitin, stopping her. "Good-evening, Godefroi
. . . . Allow me. . . ."
He gasped, he did not know what to say; with one hand he held her
hand and with the other the blue material. And she was half frightened,
half surprised, and looked at him with big eyes.
"Allow me . . ." Nikitin went on, afraid she would go away. "There's
something I must say to you. . . . Only . . . it's inconvenient
here. I cannot, I am incapable. . . . Understand, Godefroi, I can't
--that's all . . . ."
The blue material slipped on to the floor, and Nikitin took Masha
by the other hand. She turned pale, moved her lips, then stepped
back from Nikitin and found herself in the corner between the wall
and the cupboard.
"On my honour, I assure you . . ." he said softly. "Masha, on my
honour. . . ."
She threw back her head and he kissed her lips, and that the kiss
might last longer he put his fingers to her cheeks; and it somehow
happened that he found himself in the corner between the cupboard
and the wall, and she put her arms round his neck and pressed her
head against his chin.
Then they both ran into the garden. The Shelestoys had a garden of
nine acres. There were about twenty old maples and lime-trees in
it; there was one fir-tree, and all the rest were fruit-trees:
cherries, apples, pears, horse-chestnuts, silvery olive-trees. . . .
There were heaps of flowers, too.
Nikitin and Masha ran along the avenues in silence, laughed, asked
each other from time to time disconnected questions which they did
not answer. A crescent moon was shining over the garden, and drowsy
tulips and irises were stretching up from the dark grass in its
faint light, as though entreating for words of love for them, too.
When Nikitin and Masha went back to the house, the officers and the
young ladies were already assembled and dancing the mazurka. Again
Polyansky led the grand chain through all the rooms, again after
dancing they played "fate." Before supper, when the visitors had
gone into the dining-room, Masha, left alone with Nikitin, pressed
close to him and said:
"You must speak to papa and Varya yourself; I am ashamed."
After supper he talked to the old father. After listening to him,
Shelestov thought a little and said:
"I am very grateful for the honour you do me and my daughter, but
let me speak to you as a friend. I will speak to you, not as a
father, but as one gentleman to another. Tell me, why do you want
to be married so young? Only peasants are married so young, and
that, of course, is loutishness. But why should you? Where's the
satisfaction of putting on the fetters at your age?"
"I am not young!" said Nikitin, offended. "I am in my twenty-seventh
year."
"Papa, the farrier has come!" cried Varya from the other room.
And the conversation broke off. Varya, Masha, and Polyansky saw
Nikitin home. When they reached his gate, Varya said:
"Why is it your mysterious Metropolit Metropolititch never shows
himself anywhere? He might come and see us."
The mysterious Ippolit Ippolititch was sitting on his bed, taking
off his trousers, when Nikitin went in to him.
"Don't go to bed, my dear fellow," said Nikitin breathlessly. "Stop
a minute; don't go to bed!"
Ippolit Ippolititch put on his trousers hurriedly and asked in a
flutter:
"What is it?"
"I am going to be married."
Nikitin sat down beside his companion, and looking at him wonderingly,
as though surprised at himself, said:
"Only fancy, I am going to be married! To Masha Shelestov! I made
an offer today."
"Well? She seems a good sort of girl. Only she is very young."
"Yes, she is young," sighed Nikitin, and shrugged his shoulders
with a careworn air. "Very, very young!"
"She was my pupil at the high school. I know her. She wasn't bad
at geography, but she was no good at history. And she was inattentive
in class, too."
Nikitin for some reason felt suddenly sorry for his companion, and
longed to say something kind and comforting to him.
"My dear fellow, why don't you get married?" he asked. "Why don't
you marry Varya, for instance? She is a splendid, first-rate girl!
It's true she is very fond of arguing, but a heart . . . what a
heart! She was just asking about you. Marry her, my dear boy! Eh?"
He knew perfectly well that Varya would not marry this dull,
snub-nosed man, but still persuaded him to marry her--why?
"Marriage is a serious step," said Ippolit Ippolititch after a
moment's thought. "One has to look at it all round and weigh things
thoroughly; it's not to be done rashly. Prudence is always a good
thing, and especially in marriage, when a man, ceasing to be a
bachelor, begins a new life."
And he talked of what every one has known for ages. Nikitin did not
stay to listen, said goodnight, and went to his own room. He undressed
quickly and quickly got into bed, in order to be able to think the
sooner of his happiness, of Masha, of the future; he smiled, then
suddenly recalled that he had not read Lessing.
"I must read him," he thought. "Though, after all, why should I?
Bother him!"
And exhausted by his happiness, he fell asleep at once and went on
smiling till the morning.
He dreamed of the thud of horses' hoofs on a wooden floor; he dreamed
of the black horse Count Nulin, then of the white Giant and its
sister Maika, being led out of the stable.