On the evening of the following day Startseff drove to the Turkins’ to
make his proposal. But he proved to have come at an unfortunate time, as
Katherine was in her room having her hair dressed by a coiffeur before
going to a dance at the club.
Once more Startseff was obliged to sit in the dining-room for an age
drinking tea. Seeing that his guest was pensive and bored, Turkin took a
scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and read aloud a droll
letter from his German manager telling how “all the disavowals on the
estate had been spoiled and all the modesty had been shaken down.”
“They will probably give her a good dowry,” thought Startseff, listening
vacantly to what was being read.
After his sleepless night he felt almost stunned, as if he had drunk
some sweet but poisonous sleeping potion. His mind was hazy but warm and
cheerful, though at the same time a cold, hard fragment of his brain
kept reasoning with him and saying:
“Stop before it is too late! Is she the woman for you? She is wilful and
spoiled; she sleeps until two every day, and you are a government doctor
and a poor deacon’s son.”
“Well, what does that matter?” he thought. “What if I am?”
“And what is more,” that cold fragment continued. “If you marry her her
family will make you give up your government position, and live in
town.”
“And what of that?” he thought. “I’ll live in town then! She will have a
dowry. We will keep house.”
At last Katherine appeared, looking pretty and immaculate in her
low-necked ball dress, and the moment Startseff saw her he fell into
such transports that he could not utter a word and could only stare at
her and laugh.
She began to say good-bye, and as there was nothing to keep him here now
that she was going, he, too, rose, saying that it was time for him to be
off to attend to his patients in Dialij.
“If you must go now,” said Turkin, “you can take Kitty to the club; it
is on your way.”
A light drizzle was falling and it was very dark, so that only by the
help of Panteleimon’s cough could they tell where the carriage was. The
hood of the victoria was raised.
“Roll away!” cried Turkin, seating his daughter in the carriage.
“Rolling stones gather no moss! God speed you, if you please!”
They drove away.
“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startseff began. “How heartless and
unkind of you——”
“You went to the cemetery?”
“Yes, I did, and waited there for you until nearly two o’clock. I was
very unhappy.”
“Then be unhappy if you can’t understand a joke!”
Delighted to have caught her lover so cleverly, and to see him so much
in love, Katherine burst out laughing, and then suddenly screamed as the
carriage tipped and turned sharply in at the club gates. Startseff put
his arm around her waist, and in her fright the girl pressed closer to
him. At that he could contain himself no longer, and passionately kissed
her on the lips and on the chin, holding her tighter than ever.
“That will do!” she said drily.
And a moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and the policeman
standing near the lighted entrance to the club was shouting to
Panteleimon in a harsh voice:
“Move on, you old crow! What are you standing there for?”
Startseff drove home, but only to return at once arrayed in a borrowed
dress suit and a stiff collar that was always trying to climb up off the
collar-band. At midnight he was sitting in the reception-room of the
club, saying passionately to Katherine:
“Oh, how ignorant people are who have never loved! No one, I think, has
ever truly described love, and it would scarcely be possible to depict
this tender, blissful, agonising feeling. He who has once felt it would
never be able to put it into words. Do I need introductions and
descriptions? Do I need oratory to tell me what it is? My love is
unspeakable—I beg you, I implore you to be my wife!” cried Startseff at
last.
“Dimitri Ionitch,” said Katherine, assuming a very serious, thoughtful
expression. “Dimitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the honour
you do me. I esteem you, but—” here she rose and stood before him. “But,
forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us be serious. You know, Dimitri
Ionitch, that I love art more than anything else in the world. I am
passionately fond of, I adore, music, and if I could I would consecrate
my whole life to it. I want to be a musician. I long for fame and
success and freedom and you ask me to go on living in this town, and to
continue this empty, useless existence which has become unbearable to
me! You want me to marry? Ah no, that cannot be! One should strive for a
higher and brighter ideal, and family life would tie me down for ever.
Dimitri Ionitch—” (she smiled a little as she said these words,
remembering Alexei Theofilaktitch) “Dimitri Ionitch, you are kind and
noble and clever, you are the nicest man I know” (her eyes filled with
tears). “I sympathise with you with all my heart, but—but you must
understand——”
She turned away and left the room, unable to restrain her tears.
Startseff’s heart ceased beating madly. His first action on reaching the
street was to tear off his stiff collar and draw a long, deep breath. He
felt a little humiliated, and his pride was stung, for he had not
expected a refusal, and could not believe that all his hopes and pangs
and dreams had come to such a silly ending; he might as well have been
the hero of a playlet at a performance of amateur theatricals! He
regretted his lost love and emotion, regretted it so keenly that he
could have sobbed aloud or given Panteleimon’s broad back a good, sound
blow with his umbrella.
For three days after that evening his business went to ruin, and he
could neither eat nor sleep, but when he heard a rumour that Katherine
had gone to Moscow to enter the conservatory he grew calmer, and once
more gathered up the lost threads of his life.
Later, when he remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and
rushed all over town looking for a dress suit, he would yawn lazily and
say:
“What a business that was!”