IX

Now we saw each other often, sometimes twice a day. Almost every day,

after dinner, she drove up to the cemetery and, as she waited for me,

read the inscriptions on the crosses and monuments. Sometimes she came

into the church and stood by my side and watched me working. The

silence, the simple industry of the painters and gilders, Radish's good

sense, and the fact that outwardly I was no different from the other

artisans and worked as they did, in a waistcoat and old shoes, and that

they addressed me familiarly--were new to her, and she was moved by it

all. Once in her presence a painter who was working, at a door on the

roof, called down to me:

"Misail, fetch me the white lead."

I fetched him the white lead and as I came down the scaffolding she was

moved to tears and looked at me and smiled:

"What a dear you are!" she said.

I have always remembered how when I was a child a green parrot got out

of its cage in one of the rich people's houses and wandered about the

town for a whole month, flying from one garden to another, homeless and

lonely. And Maria Victorovna reminded me of the bird.

"Except to the cemetery," she said with a laugh, "I have absolutely

nowhere to go. The town bores me to tears. People read, sing, and

twitter at the Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your sister is

shy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me. I don't like the theatre.

What can I do with myself?"

When I was at her house I smelled of paint and turpentine, and my hands

were stained. She liked that. She wanted me to come to her in my

ordinary working-clothes; but I felt awkward in them in her

drawing-room, and as if I were in uniform, and so I always wore my new

serge suit. She did not like that.

"You must confess," she said once, "that you have not got used to your

new rôle. A working-man's suit makes you feel awkward and embarrassed.

Tell me, isn't it because you are not sure of yourself and are

unsatisfied? Does this work you have chosen, this painting of yours,

really satisfy you?" she asked merrily. "I know paint makes things look

nicer and wear better, but the things themselves belong to the rich and

after all they are a luxury. Besides you have said more than once that

everybody should earn his living with his own hands and you earn money,

not bread. Why don't you keep to the exact meaning of what you say? You

must earn bread, real bread, you must plough, sow, reap, thrash, or do

something which has to do directly with agriculture, such as keeping

cows, digging, or building houses...."

She opened a handsome bookcase which stood by the writing-table and

said:

"I'm telling you all this because I'm going to let you into my secret.

Voilà. This is my agricultural library. Here are books on arable land,

vegetable-gardens, orchard-keeping, cattle-keeping, bee-keeping: I read

them eagerly and have studied the theory of everything thoroughly. It is

my dream to go to Dubechnia as soon as March begins. It is wonderful

there, amazing; isn't it? The first year I shall only be learning the

work and getting used to it, and in the second year I shall begin to

work thoroughly, without sparing myself. My father promised to give me

Dubechnia as a present, and I am to do anything I like with it."

She blushed and with mingled laughter and tears she dreamed aloud of her

life at Dubechnia and how absorbing it would be. And I envied her. March

would soon be here. The days were drawing out, and in the bright sunny

afternoons the snow dripped from the roofs, and the smell of spring was

in the air. I too longed for the country.

And when she said she was going to live at Dubechnia, I saw at once that

I should be left alone in the town, and I felt jealous of the bookcase

with her books about farming. I knew and cared nothing about farming and

I was on the point of telling her that agriculture was work for slaves,

but I recollected that my father had once said something of the sort

and I held my peace.

Lent began. The engineer, Victor Ivanich, came home from Petersburg. I

had begun to forget his existence. He came unexpectedly, not even

sending a telegram. When I went there as usual in the evening, he was

walking up and down the drawing-room, after a bath, with his hair cut,

looking ten years younger, and talking. His daughter was kneeling by his

trunks and taking out boxes, bottles, books, and handing them to Pavel

the footman. When I saw the engineer, I involuntarily stepped back and

he held out both his hands and smiled and showed his strong, white,

cab-driver's teeth.

"Here he is! Here he is! I'm very pleased to see you, Mr. House-painter!

Maria told me all about you and sang your praises. I quite understand

you and heartily approve." He took me by the arm and went on: "It is

much cleverer and more honest to be a decent workman than to spoil State

paper and to wear a cockade. I myself worked with my hands in Belgium. I

was an engine-driver for five years...."

He was wearing a short jacket and comfortable slippers, and he shuffled

along like a gouty man waving and rubbing his hands; humming and buzzing

and shrugging with pleasure at being at home again with his favourite

shower-bath.

"There's no denying," he said at supper, "there's no denying that you

are kind, sympathetic people, but somehow as soon as you gentlefolk take

on manual labour or try to spare the peasants, you reduce it all to

sectarianism. You are a sectarian. You don't drink vodka. What is that

but sectarianism?"

To please him I drank vodka. I drank wine, too. We ate cheese, sausages,

pastries, pickles, and all kinds of dainties that the engineer had

brought with him, and we sampled wines sent from abroad during his

absence. They were excellent. For some reason the engineer had wines and

cigars sent from abroad--duty free; somebody sent him caviare and

_baliki_ gratis; he did not pay rent for his house because his landlord

supplied the railway with kerosene, and generally he and his daughter

gave me the impression of having all the best things in the world at

their service free of charge.

I went on visiting them, but with less pleasure than before. The

engineer oppressed me and I felt cramped in his presence. I could not

endure his clear, innocent eyes; his opinions bored me and were

offensive to me, and I was distressed by the recollection that I had so

recently been subordinate to this ruddy, well-fed man, and that he had

been mercilessly rude to me. True he would put his arm round my waist

and clap me kindly on the shoulder and approve of my way of living, but

I felt that he despised my nullity just as much as before and only

suffered me to please his daughter, but I could no longer laugh and talk

easily, and I thought myself ill-mannered, and all the time was

expecting him to call me Panteley as he did his footman Pavel. How my

provincial, bourgeois pride rode up against him! I, a working man, a

painter, going every day to the house of rich strangers, whom the whole

town regarded as foreigners, and drinking their expensive wines and

outlandish dishes! I could not reconcile this with my conscience. When I

went to see them I sternly avoided those whom I met on the way, and

looked askance at them like a real sectarian, and when I left the

engineer's house I was ashamed of feeling so well-fed.

But chiefly I was afraid of falling in love. Whether walking in the

street, or working, or talking to my mates, I thought all the time of

going to Maria Victorovna's in the evening, and always had her voice,

her laughter, her movements with me. And always as I got ready to go to

her, I would stand for a long time in front of the cracked mirror tying

my necktie; my serge suit seemed horrible to me, and I suffered, but at

the same time, despised myself for feeling so small. When she called to

me from another room to say that she was not dressed yet and to ask me

to wait a bit, and I could hear her dressing, I was agitated and felt as

though the floor was sinking under me. And when I saw a woman in the

street, even at a distance, I fell to comparing her figure with hers,

and it seemed to me that all our women and girls were vulgar, absurdly

dressed, and without manners; and such comparisons roused in me a

feeling of pride; Maria Victorovna was better than all of them. And at

night I dreamed of her and myself.

Once at supper the engineer and I ate a whole lobster. When I reached

home I remember that the engineer had twice called me "my dear fellow,"

and I thought that they treated me as they might have done a big,

unhappy dog, separated from his master, and that they were amusing

themselves with me, and that they would order me away like a dog when

they were bored with me. I began to feel ashamed and hurt; went to the

point of tears, as though I had been insulted, and, raising my eyes to

the heavens, I vowed to put an end to it all.

Next day I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. Late at night, when it was

quite dark and pouring with rain, I walked up and down Great Gentry

Street, looking at the windows. At the Azhoguins' everybody was asleep

and the only light was in one of the top windows; old Mrs. Azhoguin was

sitting in her room embroidering by candle-light and imagining herself

to be fighting against prejudice. It was dark in our house and opposite,

at the Dolyhikovs' the windows were lit up, but it was impossible to see

anything through the flowers and curtains. I kept on walking up and down

the street; I was soaked through with the cold March rain. I heard my

father come home from the club; he knocked at the door; in a minute a

light appeared at a window and I saw my sister walking quickly with her

lamp and hurriedly arranging her thick hair. Then my father paced up and

down the drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, and my sister sat

still in a corner, lost in thought, not listening to him....

But soon they left the room and the light was put out.... I looked at

the engineer's house and that too was now dark. In the darkness and the

rain I felt desperately lonely. Cast out at the mercy of Fate, and I

felt how, compared with my loneliness, and my suffering, actual and to

come, all my work and all my desires and all that I had hitherto thought

and read, were vain and futile. Alas! The activities and thoughts of

human beings are not nearly so important as their sorrows! And not

knowing exactly what I was doing I pulled with all my might at the bell

at the Dolyhikovs' gate, broke it, and ran away down the street like a

little boy, full of fear, thinking they would rush out at once and

recognise me. When I stopped to take breath at the end of the street, I

could hear nothing but the falling rain and far away a night-watchman

knocking on a sheet of iron.

For a whole week I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. I sold my serge suit.

I had no work and I was once more half-starved, earning ten or twenty

copecks a day, when possible, by disagreeable work. Floundering

knee-deep in the mire, putting out all my strength, I tried to drown my

memories and to punish myself for all the cheeses and pickles to which I

had been treated at the engineer's. Still, no sooner did I go to bed,

wet and hungry, than my untamed imagination set to work to evolve

wonderful, alluring pictures, and to my amazement I confessed that I was

in love, passionately in love, and I fell sound asleep feeling that the

hard life had only made my body stronger and younger.

One evening it began, most unseasonably, to snow, and the wind blew from

the north, exactly as if winter had begun again. When I got home from

work I found Maria Victorovna in my room. She was in her furs with her

hands in her muff.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, looking at me with her bright

sagacious eyes, and I was overcome with joy and stood stiffly in front

of her, just as I had done with my father when he was going to thrash

me; she looked straight into my face and I could see by her eyes that

she understood why I was overcome.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she repeated. "You don't want to come? I

had to come to you."

She got up and came close to me.

"Don't leave me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I am

lonely, utterly lonely."

She began to cry and said, covering her face with her muff:

"Alone! Life is hard, very hard, and in the whole world I have no one

but you. Don't leave me!"

Looking for her handkerchief to dry her tears, she gave a smile; we were

silent for some time, then I embraced and kissed her, and the pin in her

hat scratched my face and drew blood.

And we began to talk as though we had been dear to each other for a

long, long time.

X

In a couple of days she sent me to Dubechnia and I was beyond words

delighted with it. As I walked to the station, and as I sat in the

train, I laughed for no reason and people thought me drunk. There were

snow and frost in the mornings still, but the roads were getting dark,

and there were rooks cawing above them.

At first I thought of arranging the side wing opposite Mrs. Cheprakov's

for myself and Masha, but it appeared that doves and pigeons had taken

up their abode there and it would be impossible to cleanse it without

destroying a great number of nests. We would have to live willy-nilly in

the uncomfortable rooms with Venetian blinds in the big house. The

peasants called it a palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it,

and the only furniture was a piano and a child's chair, lying in the

attic, and even if Masha brought all her furniture from town we should

not succeed in removing the impression of frigid emptiness and coldness.

I chose three small rooms with windows looking on to the garden, and

from early morning till late at night I was at work in them, glazing the

windows, hanging paper, blocking up the chinks and holes in the floor.

It was an easy, pleasant job. Every now and then I would run to the

river to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of the

starlings returning. And at night when I thought of Masha I would be

filled with an inexpressibly sweet feeling of an all-embracing joy to

listen to the rats and the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling;

it was like an old hobgoblin coughing in the attic.

The snow was deep; there was a heavy fall at the end of March, but it

thawed rapidly, as if by magic, and the spring floods rushed down so

that by the beginning of April the starlings were already chattering and

yellow butterflies fluttered in the garden. The weather was wonderful.

Every day toward evening I walked toward the town to meet Masha, and how

delightful it was to walk along the soft, drying road with bare feet!

Half-way I would sit down and look at the town, not daring to go nearer.

The sight of it upset me, I was always wondering how my acquaintances

would behave toward me when they heard of my love. What would my father

say? I was particularly worried by the idea that my life was becoming

more complicated, and that I had entirely lost control of it, and that

she was carrying me off like a balloon, God knows whither. I had already

given up thinking how to make a living, and I thought--indeed, I cannot

remember what I thought.

Masha used to come in a carriage. I would take a seat beside her and

together, happy and free, we used to drive to Dubechnia. Or, having

waited till sunset, I would return home, weary and disconsolate,

wondering why Masha had not come, and then by the gate or in the garden

I would find my darling. She would come by the railway and walk over

from the station. What a triumph she had then! In her plain, woollen

dress, with a simple umbrella, but keeping a trim, fashionable figure

and expensive, Parisian boots--she was a gifted actress playing the

country girl. We used to go over the house, and plan out the rooms, and

the paths, and the vegetable-garden, and the beehives. We already had

chickens and ducks and geese which we loved because they were ours. We

had oats, clover, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds all ready for sowing,

and we used to examine them all and wonder what the crops would be like,

and everything Masha said to me seemed extraordinarily clever and fine.

This was the happiest time of my life.

Soon after Easter we were married in the parish church in the village of

Kurilovka three miles from Dubechnia. Masha wanted everything to be

simple; by her wish our bridesmen were peasant boys, only one deacon

sang, and we returned from the church in a little, shaky cart which she

drove herself. My sister was the only guest from the town. Masha had

sent her a note a couple of days before the wedding. My sister wore a

white dress and white gloves.... During the ceremony she cried softly

for joy and emotion, and her face had a maternal expression of infinite

goodness. She was intoxicated with our happiness and smiled as though

she were breathing a sweet perfume, and when I looked at her I

understood that there was nothing in the world higher in her eyes than

love, earthly love, and that she was always dreaming of love, secretly,

timidly, yet passionately. She embraced Masha and kissed her, and, not

knowing how to express her ecstasy, she said to her of me:

"He is a good man! A very good man."

Before she left us, she put on her ordinary clothes, and took me into

the garden to have a quiet talk.

"Father is very hurt that you have not written to him," she said. "You

should have asked for his blessing. But, at heart, he is very pleased.

He says that this marriage will raise you in the eyes of society, and

that under Maria Victorovna's influence you will begin to adopt a more

serious attitude toward life. In the evening now we talk about nothing

but you; and yesterday he even said, 'our Misail.' I was delighted. He

has evidently thought of a plan and I believe he wants to set you an

example of magnanimity, and that he will be the first to talk of

reconciliation. It is quite possible that one of these days he will come

and see you here."

She made the sign of the cross over me and said:

"Well, God bless you. Be happy. Aniuta Blagovo is a very clever girl.

She says of your marriage that God has sent you a new ordeal. Well?

Married life is not made up only of joy but of suffering as well. It is

impossible to avoid it."

Masha and I walked about three miles with her, and then walked home

quietly and silently, as though it were a rest for both of us. Masha had

her hand on my arm. We were at peace and there was no need to talk of

love; after the wedding we grew closer to each other and dearer, and it

seemed as though nothing could part us.

"Your sister is a dear, lovable creature," said Masha, "but looks as

though she had lived in torture. Your father must be a terrible man."

I began to tell her how my sister and I had been brought up and how

absurd and full of torture our childhood had been. When she heard that

my father had thrashed me quite recently she shuddered and clung to me:

"Don't tell me any more," she said. "It is too horrible."

And now she did not leave me. We lived in the big house, in three rooms,

and in the evenings we bolted the door that led to the empty part of the

house, as though some one lived there whom we did not know and feared. I

used to get up early, at dawn, and begin working. I repaired the carts;

made paths in the garden, dug the beds, painted the roofs. When the time

came to sow oats, I tried to plough and harrow, and sow and did it all

conscientiously, and did not leave it all to the labourer. I used to get

tired, and my face and feet used to burn with the rain and the sharp

cold wind. But work in the fields did not attract me. I knew nothing

about agriculture and did not like it; perhaps because my ancestors were

not tillers of the soil and pure town blood ran in my veins. I loved

nature dearly; I loved the fields and the meadows and the garden, but

the peasant who turns the earth with his plough, shouting at his

miserable horse, ragged and wet, with bowed shoulders, was to me an

expression of wild, rude, ugly force, and as I watched his clumsy

movements I could not help thinking of the long-passed legendary life,

when men did not yet know the use of fire. The fierce bull which led the

herd, and the horses that stampeded through the village, filled me with

terror, and all the large creatures, strong and hostile, a ram with

horns, a gander, or a watch-dog seemed to me to be symbolical of some

rough, wild force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong in me

in bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over the black plough-lands. But

worst of all was that when I was ploughing or sowing, and a few peasants

stood and watched how I did it, I no longer felt the inevitability and

necessity of the work and it seemed to me that I was trifling my time

away.

I used to go through the gardens and the meadow to the mill. It was

leased by Stiepan, a Kurilovka peasant; handsome, swarthy, with a black

beard--an athletic appearance. He did not care for mill work and thought

it tiresome and unprofitable, and he only lived at the mill to escape

from home. He was a saddler and always smelled of tan and leather. He

did not like talking, was slow and immovable, and used to hum

"U-lu-lu-lu," sitting on the bank or in the doorway of the mill.

Sometimes his wife and mother-in-law used to come from Kurilovka to see

him; they were both fair, languid, soft, and they used to bow to him

humbly and call him Stiepan Petrovich. And he would not answer their

greeting with a word or a sign, but would turn where he sat on the bank

and hum quietly: "U-lu-lu-lu." There would be a silence for an hour or

two. His mother-in-law and his wife would whisper to each other, get up

and look expectantly at him for some time, waiting for him to look at

them, and then they would bow humbly and say in sweet, soft voices:

"Good-bye, Stiepan Petrovich."

And they would go away. After that, Stiepan would put away the bundle of

cracknels or the shirt they had left for him and sigh and give a wink in

their direction and say:

"The female sex!"

The mill was worked with both wheels day and night. I used to help

Stiepan, I liked it, and when he went away I was glad to take his place.