XIX

At last there came a letter from Masha.

"My dear, kind M. A.," she wrote, "my brave, sweet angel, as the old

painter calls you, good-bye. I am going to America with my father for

the exhibition. In a few days I shall be on the ocean--so far from

Dubechnia. It is awful to think of! It is vast and open like the sky and

I long for it and freedom. I rejoice and dance about and you see how

incoherent my letter is. My dear Misail, give me my freedom. Quick, tear

the thread which still holds and binds us. My meeting and knowing you

was a ray from heaven, which brightened my existence. But, you know, my

becoming your wife was a mistake, and the knowledge of the mistake

weighs me down, and I implore you on my knees, my dear, generous friend,

quick--quick--before I go over the sea--wire that you will agree to

correct our mutual mistake, remove then the only burden on my wings, and

my father, who will be responsible for the whole business, has promised

me not to overwhelm you with formalities. So, then, I am free of the

whole world? Yes?

"Be happy. God bless you. Forgive my wickedness.

"I am alive and well. I am squandering money on all sorts of follies,

and every minute I thank God that such a wicked woman as I am has no

children. I am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing whim.

No. It is my haven, my convent cell where I go for rest. King David had

a ring with an inscription: 'Everything passes.' When one is sad, these

words make one cheerful; and when one is cheerful, they make one sad.

And I have got a ring with the words written in Hebrew, and this

talisman will keep me from losing my heart and head. Or does one need

nothing but consciousness of freedom, because, when one is free, one

wants nothing, nothing, nothing. Snap the thread then. I embrace you and

your sister warmly. Forgive and forget your M."

My sister had one room. Radish, who had been ill and was recovering, was

in the other. Just as I received this letter, my sister went into the

painter's room and sat by his side and began to read to him. She read

Ostrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he used to listen, staring

straight in front of him, never laughing, shaking his head, and every

now and then muttering to himself:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

If there was anything ugly in what she read, he would say vehemently,

pointing to the book:

"There it is! Lies! That's what lies do!"

Stories used to attract him by their contents as well as by their moral

and their skilfully complicated plot, and he used to marvel at _him_,

though he never called _him_ by his name.

"How well _he_ has managed it."

Now my sister read a page quickly and then stopped, because her breath

failed her. Radish held her hand, and moving his dry lips he said in a

hoarse, hardly audible voice:

"The soul of the righteous is white and smooth as chalk; and the soul of

the sinner is as a pumice-stone. The soul of the righteous is clear oil,

and the soul of the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and sorrow and

pity," he went on. "And if a man does not work and sorrow he will not

enter the kingdom of heaven. Woe, woe to the well fed, woe to the

strong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers! They will not see the

kingdom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron...."

"And lies devour the soul," said my sister, laughing.

I read the letter once more. At that moment the soldier came into the

kitchen who had brought in twice a week, without saying from whom, tea,

French bread, and pigeons, all smelling of scent. I had no work and used

to sit at home for days together, and probably the person who sent us

the bread knew that we were in want.

I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing merrily. Then she

lay down and ate some bread and said to me:

"When you wanted to get away from the office and become a house-painter,

Aniuta Blagovo and I knew from the very beginning that you were right,

but we were afraid to say so. Tell me what power is it that keeps us

from saying what we feel? There's Aniuta Blagovo. She loves you, adores

you, and she knows that you are right. She loves me, too, like a sister,

and she knows that I am right, and in her heart she envies me, but some

power prevents her coming to see us. She avoids us. She is afraid."

My sister folded her hands across her bosom and said rapturously:

"If you only knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me and to no

one else, very hesitatingly, in the dark. She used to take me out into

the garden, into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper how dear

you were to her. You will see that she will never marry because she

loves you. Are you sorry for her?"

"Yes."

"It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why should she hide herself? I

used to be silly and stupid, but I left all that and I am not afraid of

any one, and I think and say aloud what I like--and I am happy. When I

lived at home I had no notion of happiness, and now I would not change

places with a queen."

Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and was now living in the

town, at his father's, taking a rest. After which he said he would go

back to Petersburg. He wanted to devote himself to vaccination against

typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad to increase his

knowledge and then to become a University professor. He had already left

the army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, and

expensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and his

red-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside

breast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to

counting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have at

least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once,

even in joke, did he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad with

him, and I could not imagine what would happen to her if she lived, or

what was to become of her child. But she was happy in her dreams and

would not think seriously of the future. She said he could go wherever

he liked and even cast her aside, if only he were happy himself, and

what had been was enough for her.

Usually when he came to see us he would sound her very carefully, and

ask her to drink some milk with some medicine in it. He did so now. He

sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and the room began to

smell of creosote.

"That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from her. "You must not

talk much, and you have been chattering like a magpie lately. Please, be

quiet."

She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room, where I was sitting,

and tapped me affectionately on the shoulder.

"Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending over the patient.

"Sir," said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir, I make so bold....

We are all in the hands of God, and we must all die.... Let me tell you

the truth, sir.... You will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught up into a dream: it was

winter, at night, and I was standing in the yard of the slaughter-house

with Prokofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-brandy; I pulled myself

together and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed to be going to the

governor's for an explanation. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me,

before or after, and I can only explain these strange dreams like

memories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the nerves. I lived again

through the scene in the slaughter-house and the conversation with the

governor, and at the same time I was conscious of its unreality.

When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home, but standing with

the doctor by a lamp in the street.

"It is sad, sad," he was saying with tears running down his cheeks. "She

is happy and always laughing and full of hope. But, poor darling, her

condition is hopeless. Old Radish hates me and keeps trying to make me

understand that I have wronged her. In his way he is right, but I have

my point of view, too, and I do not repent of what has happened. It is

necessary to love. We must all love. That's true, isn't it? Without love

there would be no life, and a man who avoids and fears love is not

free."

We gradually passed to other subjects. He began to speak of science and

his dissertation which had been very well received in Petersburg. He

spoke enthusiastically and thought no more of my sister, or of his

going, or of myself. Life was carrying him away. She has America and a

ring with an inscription, I thought, and he has his medical degree and

his scientific career, and my sister and I are left with the past.

When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read my letter again. And I

remembered vividly how she came to me at the mill that spring morning

and lay down and covered herself with my fur coat--pretending to be just

a peasant woman. And another time--also in the early morning--when we

pulled the bow-net out of the water, and the willows on the bank

showered great drops of water on us and we laughed....

All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street. I climbed the fence,

and, as I used to do in old days, I went into the kitchen by the back

door to get a little lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen. On the stove

the samovar was singing merrily, all ready for my father. "Who pours out

my father's tea now?" I thought. I took the lamp and went on to the shed

and made a bed of old newspapers and lay down. The nails in the wall

looked ominous as before and their shadows flickered. It was cold. I

thought I saw my sister coming in with my supper, but I remembered at

once that she was ill at Radish's, and it seemed strange to me that I

should have climbed the fence and be lying in the cold shed. My mind was

blurred and filled with fantastic imaginations.

A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first the wire rustled

along the wall, and then there was a short, melancholy tinkle in the

kitchen. It was my father returning from the club. I got up and went

into the kitchen. Akhsinya, the cook, clapped her hands when she saw me

and began to cry:

"Oh, my dear," she said in a whisper. "Oh, my dear! My God!"

And in her agitation she began to pluck at her apron. On the window-sill

were two large bottles of berries soaking in vodka. I poured out a cup

and gulped it down, for I was very thirsty. Akhsinya had just scrubbed

the table and the chairs, and the kitchen had the good smell which

kitchens always have when the cook is clean and tidy. This smell and the

trilling of the cricket used to entice us into the kitchen when we were

children, and there we used to be told fairy-tales, and we played at

kings and queens....

"And where is Cleopatra?" asked Akhsinya hurriedly, breathlessly. "And

where is your hat, sir? And they say your wife has gone to Petersburg."

She had been with us in my mother's time and used to bathe Cleopatra and

me in a tub, and we were still children to her, and it was her duty to

correct us. In a quarter of an hour or so she laid bare all her

thoughts, which she had been storing up in her quiet kitchen all the

time I had been away. She said the doctor ought to be made to marry

Cleopatra--we would only have to frighten him a bit and make him send in

a nicely written application, and then the archbishop would dissolve his

first marriage, and it would be a good thing to sell Dubechnia without

saying anything to my wife, and to bank the money in my own name; and if

my sister and I went on our knees to our father and asked him nicely,

then perhaps he would forgive us; and we ought to pray to the Holy

Mother to intercede for us....

"Now, sir, go and talk to him," she said, when we heard my father's

cough. "Go, speak to him, and beg his pardon. He won't bite your head

off."

I went in. My father was sitting at his desk working on the plan of a

bungalow with Gothic windows and a stumpy tower like the lookout of a

fire-station--an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As I entered the

study I stood so that I could not help seeing the plan. I did not know

why I had come to my father, but I remember that when I saw his thin

face, red neck, and his shadow on the wall, I wanted to throw my arms

round him and, as Akhsinya had bid me, to beg his pardon humbly; but the

sight of the bungalow with the Gothic windows and the stumpy tower

stopped me.

"Good evening," I said.

He glanced at me and at once cast his eyes down on his plan.

"What do you want?" he asked after a while.

"I came to tell you that my sister is very ill. She is dying," I said

dully.

"Well?" My father sighed, took off his spectacles and laid them on the

table. "As you have sown, so you must reap. I want you to remember how

you came to me two years ago, and on this very spot I asked you to give

up your delusions, and I reminded you of your honour, your duty, your

obligations to your ancestors, whose traditions must be kept sacred. Did

you listen to me? You spurned my advice and clung to your wicked

opinions; furthermore, you dragged your sister into your abominable

delusions and brought about her downfall and her shame. Now you are both

suffering for it. As you have sown, so you must reap."

He paced up and down the study as he spoke. Probably he thought that I

had come to him to admit that I was wrong, and probably he was waiting

for me to ask his help for my sister and myself. I was cold, but I shook

as though I were in a fever, and I spoke with difficulty in a hoarse

voice.

"And I must ask you to remember," I said, "that on this very spot I

implored you to try to understand me, to reflect, and to think what we

were living for and to what end, and your answer was to talk about my

ancestors and my grandfather who wrote verses. Now you are told that

your only daughter is in a hopeless condition and you talk of ancestors

and traditions!... And you can maintain such frivolity when death is

near and you have only five or ten years left to live!"

"Why did you come here?" asked my father sternly, evidently affronted at

my reproaching him with frivolity.

"I don't know. I love you. I am more sorry than I can say that we are so

far apart. That is why I came. I still love you, but my sister has

finally broken with you. She does not forgive you and will never forgive

you. Your very name fills her with hatred of her past life."

"And who is to blame?" cried my father. "You, you scoundrel!"

"Yes. Say that I am to blame," I said. "I admit that I am to blame for

many things, but why is your life, which you have tried to force on us,

so tedious and frigid, and ungracious, why are there no people in any of

the houses you have built during the last thirty years from whom I could

learn how to live and how to avoid such suffering? These houses of yours

are infernal dungeons in which mothers and daughters are persecuted,

children are tortured.... My poor mother! My unhappy sister! One needs

to drug oneself with vodka, cards, scandal; cringe, play the hypocrite,

and go on year after year designing rotten houses, not to see the horror

that lurks in them. Our town has been in existence for hundreds of

years, and during the whole of that time it has not given the country

one useful man--not one! You have strangled in embryo everything that

was alive and joyous! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, and

hypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul would be the worse

if it were suddenly razed to the ground."

"I don't want to hear you, you scoundrel," said my father, taking a

ruler from his desk. "You are drunk! You dare come into your father's

presence in such a state! I tell you for the last time, and you can tell

this to your strumpet of a sister, that you will get nothing from me. I

have torn my disobedient children out of my heart, and if they suffer

through their disobedience and obstinacy I have no pity for them. You

may go back where you came from! God has been pleased to punish me

through you. I will humbly bear my punishment and, like Job, I find

consolation in suffering and unceasing toil. You shall not cross my

threshold until you have mended your ways. I am a just man, and

everything I say is practical good sense, and if you had any regard for

yourself, you would remember what I have said, and what I am saying

now."

I threw up my hands and went out; I do not remember what happened that

night or next day.

They say that I went staggering through the street without a hat,

singing aloud, with crowds of little boys shouting after me:

"Little Profit! Little Profit!"