IV

Four years went by. Startseff now had a large practice in the city. He

hastily prescribed for his sick people every morning at Dialij, and then

drove to town to see his patients there, returning late at night. He had

grown stouter and heavier, and would not walk, if he could help it,

suffering as he did from asthma. Panteleimon, too, had become stouter,

and the more he grew in width the more bitterly he sighed and lamented

his hard lot: he was so tired of driving!

Startseff was now an occasional guest at several houses, but he had made

close friends with no one. The conversation, the point of view, and even

the looks of the inhabitants of S. bored him. Experience had taught him

that as long as he played cards, or dined with them, they were peaceful,

good-natured, and even fairly intelligent folk, but he had only to speak

of anything that was not edible, he had only to mention politics or

science to them, for them to become utterly nonplussed, or else to talk

such foolish and mischievous nonsense that there was nothing to be done

but to shrug one’s shoulders and leave them. If Startseff tried to say

to even the most liberal of them that, for instance, mankind was

fortunately progressing, and that in time we should no longer suffer

under a system of passports and capital punishment, they would look at

him askance, and say mistrustfully: “Then one will be able to kill any

one one wants to on the street, will one?” Or if at supper, in talking

about work, Startseff said that labour was a good thing, and every one

should work, each person present would take it as a personal affront and

begin an angry and tiresome argument. As they never did anything and

were not interested in anything, and as Startseff could never for the

life of him think of anything to say to them, he avoided all

conversation and confined himself to eating and playing cards. If there

was a family fête at one of the houses and he was asked to dinner, he

would eat in silence with his eyes fixed on his plate, listening to all

the uninteresting, false, stupid things that were being said around him

and feeling irritated and bored. But he would remain silent, and because

he always sternly held his tongue and never raised his eyes from his

plate, he was known as “the puffed-up Pole,” although he was no more of

a Pole than you or I. He shunned amusements, such as theatres and

concerts, but he played cards with enjoyment for two or three hours

every evening. There was one other pleasure to which he had

unconsciously, little by little, become addicted, and that was to empty

his pockets every evening of the little bills he had received in his

practice during the day. Sometimes he would find them scattered through

all his pockets, seventy roubles’ worth of them, yellow ones and green

ones, smelling of scent, and vinegar, and incense, and kerosene. When he

had collected a hundred or more he would take them to the Mutual Loan

Society, and have them put to his account.

In all the four years following Katherine’s departure, he had only been

to the Turkins’ twice, each time at the request of Madame Turkin, who

was still suffering from headaches. Katherine came back every summer to

visit her parents, but he did not see her once; chance, somehow, willed

otherwise.

And so four years had gone by. One warm, still morning a letter was

brought to him at the hospital. Madame Turkin wrote that she missed

Dimitri Ionitch very much and begged him to come without fail and

relieve her sufferings, especially as it happened to be her birthday

that day. At the end of the letter was a postscript: “I join my

entreaties to those of my mother. K.”

Startseff reflected a moment, and in the evening he drove to the

Turkins’.

“Ah, be welcome, if you please!” Turkin cried with smiling eyes.

“Bonjour to you!”

Madame Turkin, who had aged greatly and whose hair was now white,

pressed his hand and sighed affectedly, saying:

“You don’t want to flirt with me I see, doctor, you never come to see

me. I am too old for you, but here is a young thing, perhaps she may be

more lucky than I am!”

And Kitty? She had grown thinner and paler and was handsomer and more

graceful than before, but she was Miss Katherine now, and Kitty no

longer. Her freshness, and her artless, childish expression were gone;

there was something new in her glance and manner, something timid and

apologetic, as if she no longer felt at home here, in the house of the

Turkins.

“How many summers, how many winters have gone by!” she said, giving her

hand to Startseff, and one could see that her heart was beating

anxiously. She looked curiously and intently into his face, and

continued: “How stout you have grown! You look browner and more manly,

but otherwise you haven’t changed much.”

She pleased him now as she had pleased him before, she pleased him very

much, but something seemed to be wanting in her—or was it that there was

something about her which would better have been lacking? He could not

say, but he was prevented, somehow, from feeling toward her as he had

felt in the past. He did not like her pallor, the new expression in her

face, her weak smile, her voice, and, in a little while, he did not like

her dress and the chair she was sitting in, and something displeased him

about the past in which he had nearly married her. He remembered his

love and the dreams and hopes that had thrilled him four years ago, and

at the recollection he felt awkward.

They drank tea and ate cake. Then Madame Turkin read a story aloud, read

of things that had never happened in this world, while Startseff sat

looking at her handsome grey head, waiting for her to finish.

“It is not the people who can’t write novels who are stupid,” he

thought. “But the people who write them and can’t conceal it.”

“Not baddish!” said Turkin.

Then Katherine played a long, loud piece on the piano, and when she had

finished every one went into raptures and overwhelmed her with prolonged

expressions of gratitude.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!” thought Startseff.

She looked at him, evidently expecting him to invite her to go into the

garden, but he remained silent.

“Do let us have a talk!” she said going up to him. “How are you? What

are you doing? Tell me about it all! I have been thinking about you for

three days,” she added nervously. “I wanted to write you a letter, I

wanted to go to see you myself at Dialij, and then changed my mind. I

have no idea how you will treat me now. I was so excited waiting for you

to-day. Do let us go into the garden!”

They went out and took their seats under the old maple-tree, where they

had sat four years before. Night was falling.

“Well, and what have you been doing?” asked Katherine.

“Nothing much; just living somehow,” answered Startseff.

And that was all he could think of saying. They were silent.

“I am so excited!” said Katherine, covering her face with her hands.

“But don’t pay any attention to me. I am so glad to be at home, I am so

glad to see every one again that I cannot get used to it. How many

memories we have between us! I thought you and I would talk without

stopping until morning!”

He saw her face and her shining eyes more closely now, and she looked

younger to him than she had in the house. Even her childish expression

seemed to have returned. She was gazing at him with naïve curiosity, as

if she wanted to see and understand more clearly this man who had once

loved her so tenderly and so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for his

love. And he remembered all that had passed between them down to the

smallest detail, remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and

had gone home exhausted at dawn. He grew suddenly sad and felt sorry to

think that the past had vanished for ever. A little flame sprang up in

his heart.

“Do you remember how I took you to the club that evening?” he asked. “It

was raining and dark——”

The little flame was burning more brightly, and now he wanted to talk

and to lament his dull life.

“Alas!” he sighed. “You ask what I have been doing! What do we all do

here? Nothing! We grow older and fatter and more sluggish. Day in, day

out our colourless life passes by without impressions, without thoughts.

It is money by day and the club by night, in the company of gamblers and

inebriates whom I cannot endure. What is there in that?”

“But you have your work, your noble end in life. You used to like so

much to talk about your hospital. I was a queer girl then, I thought I

was a great pianist. All girls play the piano these days, and I played,

too; there was nothing remarkable about me. I am as much of a pianist as

mamma is an author. Of course I didn’t understand you then, but later,

in Moscow, I often thought of you. I thought only of you. Oh, what a joy

it must be to be a country doctor, to help the sick and to serve the

people! Oh, what a joy!” Katherine repeated with exaltation. “When I

thought of you while I was in Moscow you seemed to me to be so lofty and

ideal——”

Startseff remembered the little bills which he took out of his pockets

every evening with such pleasure, and the little flame went out.

He rose to go into the house. She took his arm.

“You are the nicest person I have ever known in my life,” she continued.

“We shall see one another and talk together often, shan’t we? Promise me

that! I am not a pianist, I cherish no more illusions about myself, and

shall not play to you or talk music to you any more.”

When they had entered the house, and, in the evening light, Startseff

saw her face and her melancholy eyes turned on him full of gratitude and

suffering, he felt uneasy and thought again:

“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!”

He began to take his leave.

“No law of the Medes and Persians allows you to go away before supper!”

cried Turkin, accompanying him to the door. “It is extremely peripatetic

on your part. Come, do your act!” he cried to Pava as they reached the

front hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young fellow with a moustache, struck an

attitude, raised one hand, and said in a tragic voice:

“Die, unhappy woman!”

All this irritated Startseff, and as he took his seat in his carriage

and looked at the house and the dark garden that had once been so dear

to him, he was overwhelmed by the recollection of Madame Turkin’s novels

and Kitty’s noisy playing and Turkin’s witticisms and Pava’s tragic

pose, and, as he recalled them, he thought:

“If the cleverest people in town are as stupid as that, what a deadly

town this must be!”

Three days later Pava brought the doctor a letter from Katherine.

“You don’t come to see us; why?” she wrote. “I am afraid your feeling

for us has changed, and the very thought of that terrifies me. Calm my

fears; come and tell me that all is well! I absolutely must see you.

Yours,

K. T.”

He read the letter, reflected a moment, and said to Pava:

“Tell them I can’t get away to-day, my boy. Tell them I’ll go to see

them in three days’ time.”

But three days went by, a week went by, and still he did not go. Every

time that he drove past the Turkins’ house he remembered that he ought

to drop in there for a few minutes; he remembered it and—did not go.

He never went to the Turkins’ again.

V

Several years have passed since then. Startseff is stouter than ever

now, he is even fat. He breathes heavily and walks with his head thrown

back. The picture he now makes, as he drives by with his troika and his

jingling carriage-bells, is impressive. He is round and red, and

Panteleimon, round and red, with a brawny neck, sits on the box with his

arms stuck straight out in front of him like pieces of wood, shouting to

every one he meets: “Turn to the right!” It is more like the passage of

a heathen god than of a man. He has an immense practice in the city,

there is no time for repining now. He already owns an estate in the

country and two houses in town, and is thinking of buying a third which

will be even more remunerative than the others. If, at the Mutual Loan

Society, he hears of a house for sale he goes straight to it, enters it

without more ado, and walks through all the rooms not paying the

slightest heed to any women or children who may be dressing there,

though they look at him with doubt and fear. He taps all the doors with

his cane and asks:

“Is this the library? Is this a bedroom? And what is this?”

And he breathes heavily as he says it and wipes the perspiration from

his forehead.

Although he has so much business on his hands, he still keeps his

position of government doctor at Dialij. His acquisitiveness is too

strong, and he wants to find time for everything. He is simply called

“Ionitch” now, both in Dialij and in the city. “Where is Ionitch going?”

the people ask, or “Shall we call in Ionitch to the consultation?”

His voice has changed and has become squeaky and harsh, probably because

his throat is obstructed with fat. His character, too, has changed and

he has grown irascible and crusty. He generally loses his temper with

his patients and irritably thumps the floor with his stick, exclaiming

in his unpleasant voice:

“Be good enough to confine yourself to answering my questions! No

conversation!”

He is lonely, he is bored, and nothing interests him.

During all his life in Dialij his love for Kitty had been his only

happiness, and will probably be his last. In the evening he plays cards

in the club, and then sits alone at a large table and has supper. Ivan,

the oldest and most respectable of the waiters, waits upon him and pours

out his glass of Lafitte No. 17. Every one at the club, the officers and

the chef and the waiters, all know what he likes and what he doesn’t

like and strive with might and main to please him, for if they don’t he

will suddenly grow angry and begin thumping the floor with his cane.

After supper he occasionally relents and takes part in a conversation.

“What were you saying? What? Whom did you say?”

And if the conversation at a neighbouring table turns on the Turkins, he

asks:

“Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?”

That is all that can be said of Startseff.

And the Turkins? The father has not grown old, and has not changed in

any way. He still makes jokes and tells funny stories. The mother still

reads her novels aloud to her guests, with as much pleasure and genial

simplicity as ever. Kitty practises the piano for four hours every day.

She has grown conspicuously older, is delicate, and goes to the Crimea

every autumn with her mother. As he bids them farewell at the station,

Turkin wipes his eyes and cries as the train moves away:

“God speed you, if you please!”

And he waves his handkerchief after them.