II

"It was very crowded and noisy in the church, and once some one

cried out, and the head priest, who was marrying Masha and me,

looked through his spectacles at the crowd, and said severely:

'Don't move about the church, and don't make a noise, but stand

quietly and pray. You should have the fear of God in your hearts.'

"My best men were two of my colleagues, and Masha's best men were

Captain Polyansky and Lieutenant Gernet. The bishop's choir sang

superbly. The sputtering of the candles, the brilliant light, the

gorgeous dresses, the officers, the numbers of gay, happy faces,

and a special ethereal look in Masha, everything together--the

surroundings and the words of the wedding prayers--moved me to

tears and filled me with triumph. I thought how my life had blossomed,

how poetically it was shaping itself! Two years ago I was still a

student, I was living in cheap furnished rooms, without money,

without relations, and, as I fancied then, with nothing to look

forward to. Now I am a teacher in the high school in one of the

best provincial towns, with a secure income, loved, spoiled. It is

for my sake, I thought, this crowd is collected, for my sake three

candelabra have been lighted, the deacon is booming, the choir is

doing its best; and it's for my sake that this young creature, whom

I soon shall call my wife, is so young, so elegant, and so joyful.

I recalled our first meetings, our rides into the country, my

declaration of love and the weather, which, as though expressly,

was so exquisitely fine all the summer; and the happiness which at

one time in my old rooms seemed to me possible only in novels and

stories, I was now experiencing in reality--I was now, as it were,

holding it in my hands.

"After the ceremony they all crowded in disorder round Masha and

me, expressed their genuine pleasure, congratulated us and wished

us joy. The brigadier-general, an old man of seventy, confined

himself to congratulating Masha, and said to her in a squeaky, aged

voice, so loud that it could be heard all over the church:

"'I hope that even after you are married you may remain the rose

you are now, my dear.'

"The officers, the director, and all the teachers smiled from

politeness, and I was conscious of an agreeable artificial smile

on my face, too. Dear Ippolit Ippolititch, the teacher of history

and geography, who always says what every one has heard before,

pressed my hand warmly and said with feeling:

"'Hitherto you have been unmarried and have lived alone, and now

you are married and no longer single.'

"From the church we went to a two-storied house which I am receiving

as part of the dowry. Besides that house Masha is bringing me twenty

thousand roubles, as well as a piece of waste land with a shanty

on it, where I am told there are numbers of hens and ducks which

are not looked after and are turning wild. When I got home from the

church, I stretched myself at full length on the low sofa in my new

study and began to smoke; I felt snug, cosy, and comfortable, as I

never had in my life before. And meanwhile the wedding party were

shouting 'Hurrah!' while a wretched band in the hall played flourishes

and all sorts of trash. Varya, Masha's sister, ran into the study

with a wineglass in her hand, and with a queer, strained expression,

as though her mouth were full of water; apparently she had meant

to go on further, but she suddenly burst out laughing and sobbing,

and the wineglass crashed on the floor. We took her by the arms and

led her away.

"'Nobody can understand!' she muttered afterwards, lying on the

old nurse's bed in a back room. 'Nobody, nobody! My God, nobody can

understand!'

"But every one understood very well that she was four years older

than her sister Masha, and still unmarried, and that she was crying,

not from envy, but from the melancholy consciousness that her time

was passing, and perhaps had passed. When they danced the quadrille,

she was back in the drawing-room with a tear-stained and heavily

powdered face, and I saw Captain Polyansky holding a plate of ice

before her while she ate it with a spoon.

"It is past five o'clock in the morning. I took up my diary to

describe my complete and perfect happiness, and thought I would

write a good six pages, and read it tomorrow to Masha; but, strange

to say, everything is muddled in my head and as misty as a dream,

and I can remember vividly nothing but that episode with Varya, and

I want to write, 'Poor Varya!' I could go on sitting here and writing

'Poor Varya!' By the way, the trees have begun rustling; it will

rain. The crows are cawing, and my Masha, who has just gone to

sleep, has for some reason a sorrowful face."

For a long while afterwards Nikitin did not write his diary. At the

beginning of August he had the school examinations, and after the

fifteenth the classes began. As a rule he set off for school before

nine in the morning, and before ten o'clock he was looking at his

watch and pining for his Masha and his new house. In the lower forms

he would set some boy to dictate, and while the boys were writing,

would sit in the window with his eyes shut, dreaming; whether he

dreamed of the future or recalled the past, everything seemed to

him equally delightful, like a fairy tale. In the senior classes

they were reading aloud Gogol or Pushkin's prose works, and that

made him sleepy; people, trees, fields, horses, rose before his

imagination, and he would say with a sigh, as though fascinated by

the author:

"How lovely!"

At the midday recess Masha used to send him lunch in a snow-white

napkin, and he would eat it slowly, with pauses, to prolong the

enjoyment of it; and Ippolit Ippolititch, whose lunch as a rule

consisted of nothing but bread, looked at him with respect and envy,

and gave expression to some familiar fact, such as:

"Men cannot live without food."

After school Nikitin went straight to give his private lessons, and

when at last by six o'clock he got home, he felt excited and anxious,

as though he had been away for a year. He would run upstairs

breathless, find Masha, throw his arms round her, and kiss her and

swear that he loved her, that he could not live without her, declare

that he had missed her fearfully, and ask her in trepidation how

she was and why she looked so depressed. Then they would dine

together. After dinner he would lie on the sofa in his study and

smoke, while she sat beside him and talked in a low voice.

His happiest days now were Sundays and holidays, when he was at

home from morning till evening. On those days he took part in the

naïve but extraordinarily pleasant life which reminded him of a

pastoral idyl. He was never weary of watching how his sensible and

practical Masha was arranging her nest, and anxious to show that

he was of some use in the house, he would do something useless--

for instance, bring the chaise out of the stable and look at it

from every side. Masha had installed a regular dairy with three

cows, and in her cellar she had many jugs of milk and pots of sour

cream, and she kept it all for butter. Sometimes, by way of a joke,

Nikitin would ask her for a glass of milk, and she would be quite

upset because it was against her rules; but he would laugh and throw

his arms round her, saying:

"There, there; I was joking, my darling! I was joking!"

Or he would laugh at her strictness when, finding in the cupboard

some stale bit of cheese or sausage as hard as a stone, she would

say seriously:

"They will eat that in the kitchen."

He would observe that such a scrap was only fit for a mousetrap,

and she would reply warmly that men knew nothing about housekeeping,

and that it was just the same to the servants if you were to send

down a hundredweight of savouries to the kitchen. He would agree,

and embrace her enthusiastically. Everything that was just in what

she said seemed to him extraordinary and amazing; and what did not

fit in with his convictions seemed to him naïve and touching.

Sometimes he was in a philosophical mood, and he would begin to

discuss some abstract subject while she listened and looked at his

face with curiosity.

"I am immensely happy with you, my joy," he used to say, playing

with her fingers or plaiting and unplaiting her hair. "But I don't

look upon this happiness of mine as something that has come to me

by chance, as though it had dropped from heaven. This happiness is

a perfectly natural, consistent, logical consequence. I believe

that man is the creator of his own happiness, and now I am enjoying

just what I have myself created. Yes, I speak without false modesty:

I have created this happiness myself and I have a right to it. You

know my past. My unhappy childhood, without father or mother; my

depressing youth, poverty--all this was a struggle, all this was

the path by which I made my way to happiness. . . ."

In October the school sustained a heavy loss: Ippolit Ippolititch

was taken ill with erysipelas on the head and died. For two days

before his death he was unconscious and delirious, but even in his

delirium he said nothing that was not perfectly well known to every

one.

"The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. . . . Horses eat oats and

hay. . . ."

There were no lessons at the high school on the day of his funeral.

His colleagues and pupils were the coffin-bearers, and the school

choir sang all the way to the grave the anthem "Holy God." Three

priests, two deacons, all his pupils and the staff of the boys'

high school, and the bishop's choir in their best kaftans, took

part in the procession. And passers-by who met the solemn procession,

crossed themselves and said:

"God grant us all such a death."

Returning home from the cemetery much moved, Nikitin got out his

diary from the table and wrote:

"We have just consigned to the tomb Ippolit Ippolititch Ryzhitsky.

Peace to your ashes, modest worker! Masha, Varya, and all the women

at the funeral, wept from genuine feeling, perhaps because they

knew this uninteresting, humble man had never been loved by a woman.

I wanted to say a warm word at my colleague's grave, but I was

warned that this might displease the director, as he did not like

our poor friend. I believe that this is the first day since my

marriage that my heart has been heavy."

There was no other event of note in the scholastic year.

The winter was mild, with wet snow and no frost; on Epiphany Eve,

for instance, the wind howled all night as though it were autumn,

and water trickled off the roofs; and in the morning, at the ceremony

of the blessing of the water, the police allowed no one to go on

the river, because they said the ice was swelling up and looked

dark. But in spite of bad weather Nikitin's life was as happy as

in summer. And, indeed, he acquired another source of pleasure; he

learned to play _vint_. Only one thing troubled him, moved him to

anger, and seemed to prevent him from being perfectly happy: the

cats and dogs which formed part of his wife's dowry. The rooms,

especially in the morning, always smelt like a menagerie, and nothing

could destroy the odour; the cats frequently fought with the dogs.

The spiteful beast Mushka was fed a dozen times a day; she still

refused to recognize Nikitin and growled at him: "Rrr . . .

nga-nga-nga!"

One night in Lent he was returning home from the club where he had

been playing cards. It was dark, raining, and muddy. Nikitin had

an unpleasant feeling at the bottom of his heart and could not

account for it. He did not know whether it was because he had lost

twelve roubles at cards, or whether because one of the players,

when they were settling up, had said that of course Nikitin had

pots of money, with obvious reference to his wife's portion. He did

not regret the twelve roubles, and there was nothing offensive in

what had been said; but, still, there was the unpleasant feeling.

He did not even feel a desire to go home.

"Foo, how horrid!" he said, standing still at a lamp-post.

It occurred to him that he did not regret the twelve roubles because

he got them for nothing. If he had been a working man he would have

known the value of every farthing, and would not have been so

careless whether he lost or won. And his good-fortune had all, he

reflected, come to him by chance, for nothing, and really was as

superfluous for him as medicine for the healthy. If, like the vast

majority of people, he had been harassed by anxiety for his daily

bread, had been struggling for existence, if his back and chest had

ached from work, then supper, a warm snug home, and domestic

happiness, would have been the necessity, the compensation, the

crown of his life; as it was, all this had a strange, indefinite

significance for him.

"Foo, how horrid!" he repeated, knowing perfectly well that these

reflections were in themselves a bad sign.

When he got home Masha was in bed: she was breathing evenly and

smiling, and was evidently sleeping with great enjoyment. Near her

the white cat lay curled up, purring. While Nikitin lit the candle

and lighted his cigarette, Masha woke up and greedily drank a glass

of water.

"I ate too many sweets," she said, and laughed. "Have you been

home?" she asked after a pause.

"No."

Nikitin knew already that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been

building great hopes of late, was being transferred to one of the

western provinces, and was already making his farewell visits in

the town, and so it was depressing at his father-in-law's.

"Varya looked in this evening," said Masha, sitting up. "She did

not say anything, but one could see from her face how wretched she

is, poor darling! I can't bear Polyansky. He is fat and bloated,

and when he walks or dances his cheeks shake. . . . He is not a man

I would choose. But, still, I did think he was a decent person."

"I think he is a decent person now," said Nikitin.

"Then why has he treated Varya so badly?"

"Why badly?" asked Nikitin, beginning to feel irritation against

the white cat, who was stretching and arching its back. "As far as

I know, he has made no proposal and has given her no promises."

"Then why was he so often at the house? If he didn't mean to marry

her, he oughtn't to have come."

Nikitin put out the candle and got into bed. But he felt disinclined

to lie down and to sleep. He felt as though his head were immense

and empty as a barn, and that new, peculiar thoughts were wandering

about in it like tall shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft

light of the ikon lamp, that beamed upon their quiet domestic

happiness, that apart from this little world in which he and this

cat lived so peacefully and happily, there was another world. . . .

And he had a passionate, poignant longing to be in that other

world, to work himself at some factory or big workshop, to address

big audiences, to write, to publish, to raise a stir, to exhaust

himself, to suffer. . . . He wanted something that would engross

him till he forgot himself, ceased to care for the personal happiness

which yielded him only sensations so monotonous. And suddenly there

rose vividly before his imagination the figure of Shebaldin with

his clean-shaven face, saying to him with horror: "You haven't even

read Lessing! You are quite behind the times! How you have gone to

seed!"

Masha woke up and again drank some water. He glanced at her neck,

at her plump shoulders and throat, and remembered the word the

brigadier-general had used in church--"rose."

"Rose," he muttered, and laughed.

His laugh was answered by a sleepy growl from Mushka under the bed:

"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"

A heavy anger sank like a cold weight on his heart, and he felt

tempted to say something rude to Masha, and even to jump up and hit

her; his heart began throbbing.

"So then," he asked, restraining himself, "since I went to your

house, I was bound in duty to marry you?"

"Of course. You know that very well."

"That's nice." And a minute later he repeated: "That's nice."

To relieve the throbbing of his heart, and to avoid saying too much,

Nikitin went to his study and lay down on the sofa, without a pillow;

then he lay on the floor on the carpet.

"What nonsense it is!" he said to reassure himself. "You are a

teacher, you are working in the noblest of callings. . . . What

need have you of any other world? What rubbish!"

But almost immediately he told himself with conviction that he was

not a real teacher, but simply a government employé, as commonplace

and mediocre as the Czech who taught Greek. He had never had a

vocation for teaching, he knew nothing of the theory of teaching,

and never had been interested in the subject; he did not know how

to treat children; he did not understand the significance of what

he taught, and perhaps did not teach the right things. Poor Ippolit

Ippolititch had been frankly stupid, and all the boys, as well as

his colleagues, knew what he was and what to expect from him; but

he, Nikitin, like the Czech, knew how to conceal his stupidity and

cleverly deceived every one by pretending that, thank God, his

teaching was a success. These new ideas frightened Nikitin; he

rejected them, called them stupid, and believed that all this was

due to his nerves, that he would laugh at himself.

And he did, in fact, by the morning laugh at himself and call himself

an old woman; but it was clear to him that his peace of mind was

lost, perhaps, for ever, and that in that little two-story house

happiness was henceforth impossible for him. He realized that the

illusion had evaporated, and that a new life of unrest and clear

sight was beginning which was incompatible with peace and personal

happiness.

Next day, which was Sunday, he was at the school chapel, and there

met his colleagues and the director. It seemed to him that they

were entirely preoccupied with concealing their ignorance and

discontent with life, and he, too, to conceal his uneasiness, smiled

affably and talked of trivialities. Then he went to the station and

saw the mail train come in and go out, and it was agreeable to him

to be alone and not to have to talk to any one.

At home he found Varya and his father-in-law, who had come to dinner.

Varya's eyes were red with crying, and she complained of a headache,

while Shelestov ate a great deal, saying that young men nowadays

were unreliable, and that there was very little gentlemanly feeling

among them.

"It's loutishness!" he said. "I shall tell him so to his face: 'It's

loutishness, sir,' I shall say."

Nikitin smiled affably and helped Masha to look after their guests,

but after dinner he went to his study and shut the door.

The March sun was shining brightly in at the windows and shedding

its warm rays on the table. It was only the twentieth of the month,

but already the cabmen were driving with wheels, and the starlings

were noisy in the garden. It was just the weather in which Masha

would come in, put one arm round his neck, tell him the horses were

saddled or the chaise was at the door, and ask him what she should

put on to keep warm. Spring was beginning as exquisitely as last

spring, and it promised the same joys. . . . But Nikitin was thinking

that it would be nice to take a holiday and go to Moscow, and stay

at his old lodgings there. In the next room they were drinking

coffee and talking of Captain Polyansky, while he tried not to

listen and wrote in his diary: "Where am I, my God? I am surrounded

by vulgarity and vulgarity. Wearisome, insignificant people, pots

of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women. . . . There

is nothing more terrible, mortifying, and distressing than vulgarity.

I must escape from here, I must escape today, or I shall go out of

my mind!"