morning, Alexyei Stepanitch drove down to his work at the law-courts,
dropping his wife at her father's house; and on his return he spent some
time every day with his father-in-law, before taking his wife home. A
modest dinner awaited them there. To sit alone together, at a meal of
their own ordering, in their own house, was a charming sensation for a
time; but nothing is a novelty for long, and this charm could not last
for ever. In spite of her bad health and small means, Sofya
Nikolayevna's clever hands made her little house as dainty as a toy.
Taste and care are a substitute for money; and many of their visitors
thought the furnishing splendid. The hardest problem was to arrange
about their servants. Sofya Nikolayevna had brought two servants as part
of her portion--a man named Theodore and a black-eyed maid called
Parasha; these two were now married to one another; and at the same time
Annushka, a young laundress belonging to Sofya Nikolayevna, was married
to Yephrem Yevseitch, a young servant who had been brought from Bagrovo.
This man was honest and good-natured and much attached to his young
mistress, which cannot be said of the other servants. She returned his
affection, and he well deserved it: he was one in a thousand, and his
devotion to her was proved by his whole life.
Yevseitch (as he was always called in the family) became later the
attendant of her eldest son,[48] and watched over him like a father. I
knew this worthy man well. Fifteen years ago I saw him for the last
time; he was then blind and spending his last days in the Government of
Penza on an estate belonging to one of the grandsons of Stepan
Mihailovitch. I spent a whole month there in the summer; and every
morning I went to fish in a pool where the stream of Kakarma falls into
the river Niza. The cottage where Yevseitch was living stood right on
the bank of this pool; and every day as I came up I saw him leaning
against the angle of the cottage and facing the rising sun. He was bent
and decrepit, and his hair had turned perfectly white; pressing a long
staff to his breast, he leaned upon it with the knotted fingers of both
hands, and turned his sightless eyes towards the sun's rays. Though he
could not see the light, he could feel its warmth, so pleasant in the
fresh morning air, and his face expressed both pleasure and sadness. His
ear was so quick that he heard my step at some distance, and he always
hailed me as an old fisherman might hail a schoolboy, though I was then
myself over fifty years old. "Ah, it's you, my little falcon!"--he used
to call me this when I was a child--"you're late this morning! God send
you a full basket!" He died two years later in the arms of his son and
daughter and his wife, who survived him several years.
[48] _I.e._ the Author.
Meantime life at Ufa took a very regular and unvarying course. Owing to
her state of health and spirits, Sofya Nikolayevna paid few visits and
only to intimate friends, whose small number was made smaller by the
absence of the Chichagoffs. Autumn was nearly over before those dearest
of friends returned from the country with Mme. Myortvavo. The disordered
nerves and consequent low spirits of his wife were at first a source of
great uneasiness to Alexyei Stepanitch. He was completely puzzled: he
had never in his life met people who were ill without anything definite
the matter, or sad with no cause for sadness; he could make nothing of
illness due to some inexplicable grief, or grief due to some imaginary
or imperceptible illness. But he saw that there was no serious danger,
and his anxiety calmed down by degrees. He was convinced that it was all
the effect of imagination, which had always been his way of accounting
for his wife's moods of excitement and distress, whenever he found it
impossible to arrive at any reason within his comprehension. If he
ceased to be uneasy, he began to be rather bored at times; and this was
very natural, in spite of his love for his wife and pity for her
constant suffering. To listen for whole hours every day to constant
complaints about her condition, which was not after all so very
exceptional; to hear gloomy presentiments, or even prophecies, of the
fatal results which were sure to follow (and Sofya Nikolayevna, thanks
to her reading of medical works, was extraordinarily ingenious in
discovering ominous symptoms); to endure her reproaches and constant
demands for those trifling services which a man can seldom render--all
this was wearisome enough. Sofya Nikolayevna saw what he felt, and was
deeply hurt. If she had found him in general incapable of deep feeling
and strong passion, she would have reconciled herself sooner to her
situation. She used often to say herself, "A man cannot give you what he
has not got"; and she would have recognised the truth of the saying and
submitted to her fate. But the misfortune was that she remembered the
depth and ardour of her husband's passion in the days of his courtship,
and believed that he might have continued to love her in the same
fashion, had not something occurred to cool his feelings. This unlucky
notion by degrees took hold of her imagination, and her ingenuity soon
discovered many reasons to account for this coolness and much evidence
of its truth. As to reasons--there was the hostile influence of his
family, her own ill-health, and, worst of all, her loss of beauty; for
her looking-glass forced upon her the sad change in her appearance. Her
proofs were these--that her husband was not disquieted by her danger,
took insufficient notice of her condition, did not try to cheer and
interest her, and, above all, found more pleasure in talking to other
women. And then a passion, which hitherto had lurked unrecognised, the
torturing passion of jealousy, as keen-sighted as it is blind, flashed
up like gunpowder in her heart. Every day there were scenes--tears and
reproaches, quarrels and reconciliations. And all the time Alexyei
Stepanitch was entirely innocent. To the insinuations of his sisters he
paid no attention at all; to his father's opinion he attached great
importance, and that was so favourable to Sofya Nikolayevna that she had
even risen in her husband's eyes in consequence. He was sincerely, if
not deeply, distressed about her sufferings; and her loss of beauty he
regarded as temporary, and looked forward with pleasure to the time when
his young wife would get back her good looks. Though the sight of her
suffering distressed him, he could not sympathise with all her
presentiments and prognostications which he believed to be quite
imaginary. He was incapable, as most men would be, of paying her the
sort of attention she expected. It was really a ticklish business to
administer consolation to Sofya Nikolayevna in her present condition:
you were quite likely to put your foot in it and make matters worse; it
required much tact and dexterity, and these were qualities which her
husband did not possess. If he found more pleasure in talking to other
women, it was probably because he was not afraid that some casual remark
might cause annoyance and irritation.
But Sofya Nikolayevna could not look at the matter in this light. Her
view of it was dictated by her nature, whose fine qualities were apt to
run to extremes. But what was to be done, if the nerves of one were
tough and strong and those of the other sensitive and morbid, if hers
were jarred by what had no effect upon his? The Chichagoffs alone
understood the causes of this uncomfortable situation; and, though they
received no confidences from either husband or wife, they took a warm
interest in both and did much to calm Sofya Nikolayevna's excitement by
their friendship, their frequent visits, and their rational and sensible
conversation. Both husband and wife owed much to them at this period.
So things went on till the time that Sofya Nikolayevna became a mother.
Though she was often troubled in mind, her health improved during the
last two months, and she was safely delivered of a daughter. She
herself, and her husband still more, would have preferred a son; but,
when the mother pressed the child to her heart, she thought no more of
any distinction between boy and girl. A passion of maternal love filled
her heart and mind and whole being. Alexyei Stepanitch thanked God for
his wife's safety, rejoiced at her relief, and soon reconciled himself
to the fact that his child was a girl.
But at Bagrovo it was quite another story! Stepan Mihailovitch was so
confident that he was to have a grandson to carry on the line of the
Bagroffs, that he would not believe at first in the birth of a
grand-daughter. When at last he read through his son's letter with his
own eyes and was convinced that there was no doubt about it, he was
seriously annoyed. He put off the entertainment planned for his
labourers, and refused to write himself to the parents; he would only
send a message of congratulation to the young mother, with instructions
that the infant was to be christened Praskovya, in compliment to his
cousin and favourite, Praskovya Ivanovna Kurolyessova. His vexation over
this disappointment was a touching and amusing sight. Even his womankind
derived a little secret amusement from it. His good sense told him that
he had no business to be angry with any one, but for a few days he could
not control his feelings--so hard was it for him to give up the hope, or
rather the certainty, that a grandson would be born, to continue the
famous line of Shimon. In the expectation of the happy news, he had kept
his family tree on his bed, ready any day to enter his grandson's name;
but now he ordered this document to be hidden out of sight. He would not
allow his daughter Aksinya to travel to Ufa in order to stand godmother
to the babe; he said impatiently, "Take that journey for a girl's
christening? Nonsense! If she brings a girl every year, you would have
travelling enough!" Time did its work, however, and the frown, never a
formidable frown this time, vanished from the brow of Stepan
Mihailovitch, as he consoled himself with the thought that he might have
a grandson before a year was out. Then he wrote a kind and playful
letter to his daughter-in-law, pretending to scold her for her mistake
and bidding her present him with a grandson within a twelvemonth.
Sofya Nikolayevna was so entirely absorbed by the revelation of
maternity and by devotion to her child, that she did not even notice the
signs of the old man's displeasure, and was quite unaffected by
Aksinya's absence from the christening. It proved difficult to keep her
in bed for nine days after her confinement. She felt so well and strong
that she could have danced on the fourth day. But she had no wish to
dance; she wanted to be on her feet day and night, attending to her
little Parasha. The infant was feeble and sickly; the mother's constant
distress of body and mind had probably affected the child. The doctor
would not allow her to nurse the child herself. Andrei Avenarius was the
name of this doctor; he was a very clever, cultivated, and amiable man,
an intimate friend of the young people and a daily visitor at their
house. As soon as possible Sofya Nikolayevna took her baby to her
father's house, hoping that it would please the invalid to see this
mite, and that he would find in it a resemblance to his first wife. This
resemblance was probably imaginary; for, in my opinion, it is impossible
for an infant to be like a grown-up person; but Sofya Nikolayevna never
failed to assert that her first child was the very image of its
grandmother. Old M. Zubin was approaching the end of his earthly career;
both body and mind were breaking fast. He looked at the baby with little
interest, and had hardly strength to sign it with the Cross. All he said
was, "I congratulate you, Sonitchka." Sofya Nikolayevna was distressed
by her father's critical condition--it was more than a month since she
had seen him--and also by his indifference to her little angel, Parasha.
But soon the young mother forgot all the world around her, as she hung
over her daughter's cradle. All other interests and attachments grew
pale in comparison, and she surrendered herself with a kind of frenzy to
this new sensation. No hands but hers might touch the child. She handed
it herself to the foster-mother and held it at the breast, and it was
pain to her to watch it drawing life, not from its mother, but from a
stranger. It is hard to believe, but it is true, and Sofya Nikolayevna
admitted it herself later, that, if the child sucked too long, she used
to take it away before it was satisfied, and rock it herself in her arms
or in the cradle, and sing it to sleep. She saw nothing of her friends,
not even of her dear Mme. Chichagoff. Naturally they all thought her
eccentric or absurd and her chief intimates were vexed by her conduct.
She paid a hasty visit every day to her father, and returned every day
with fear in her heart that she would find the child ill. She left her
husband perfectly free to spend his time as he liked. For some days he
stopped at home; but his wife never stirred from the cradle and took no
notice of him, except to turn him out of the little nursery, because she
feared that twice-breathed air might hurt the baby. After this, he began
to go out alone, till at last he went to some party every day; and he
began to play cards to relieve his boredom. The Ufa ladies were amused
at the sight of the deserted husband, and some of them flirted with him,
saying that it was a charity to console the widower, and that Sofya
Nikolayevna would thank them for it when she recovered from her maternal
passion and reappeared in society. Sofya Nikolayevna did not hear of
these good Samaritans till later; when she did, she was vexed. Mme.
Cheprunoff, who came often to the house, watched Sofya Nikolayevna with
astonishment, pity, and displeasure. She was a tender mother herself to
her little boy with the one eye, but this devotion to one object and
disregard of everything else seemed to her to border on insanity. With
groans and sighs she struck her fists against her own body--this was a
regular trick of hers--and said that such love was a mortal sin which
God would punish. Sofya Nikolayevna resented this so much that she kept
Mme. Cheprunoff out of the nursery in future. No one but Dr. Avenarius
was admitted there, and he came pretty often. The mother was constantly
discovering symptoms of different diseases in the child; for these she
began by consulting Buchan's _Domestic Medicine_, and then, when that
did not answer, she called in Avenarius. He found it impossible to argue
her out of her beliefs: all he could do was to prescribe harmless
medicines. Yet the child was really feeble, and at times he was obliged
to prescribe for it in real earnest.
It is difficult to say what would have been the upshot of all this; but,
by the inscrutable designs of Providence, a thunderbolt burst over the
head of Sofya Nikolayevna: her adored child died suddenly. The cause of
death was uncertain: it may have been too much care, or too much
medicine, or too feeble a constitution; at any rate, the child
succumbed, when four months old, to a very slight attack of a common
childish ailment. Sofya Nikolayevna was sitting by the cradle when she
saw the infant start and a spasm pass over the little face; she caught
it up and found that it was dead.
Sofya Nikolayevna must have had a marvellous constitution to support
this blow. For some days she knew no one and the doctors feared for her
reason; there were three of them, Avenarius, Zanden, and Klauss; all
three were much attached to their patient, and one of them was always
with her. But, by God's blessing and thanks to her youth and strength,
that terrible time passed by. The unhappy mother recovered her senses,
and her love for her husband, whose own distress was great, asserted
itself for the time and saved her. On the fourth day she became
conscious of her surroundings; she recognised Alexyei Stepanitch, so
changed by grief that he was hard to recognise, and her bosom friend,
Mme. Chichagoff; a terrible cry burst from her lips and a healing flood
of tears gushed from the eyes which had been dry till then. She silently
embraced her husband and sobbed for long on his breast, while he sobbed
himself like a child. The danger of insanity was past, but the
exhaustion of her bodily strength was still alarming. For four days and
nights she had neither eaten nor drunk, and now she could swallow no
food nor medicine nor even water. Her condition was so critical that the
doctors did not oppose her wish to make her confession and receive the
sacraments. The performance of this Christian duty was beneficial to the
patient: she slept for the first time, and, when she woke after two
hours looking bright and happy, she told her husband that she had seen
in her sleep a vision of Our Lady of Iberia, exactly as she was
represented on the _ikon_ of their parish church; and she believed that,
if she could put her lips to this _ikon_, the Mother of God would surely
have mercy on her. The image was brought from the church, and the priest
read the service for the Visitation of the Sick. When the choir sang, "O
mighty Mother of God, look down in mercy on my sore bodily
suffering!"--all present fell on their knees and repeated the words of
the prayer. Alexyei Stepanitch sobbed aloud; and the sufferer too shed
tears throughout the service and pressed her lips to the image. When it
was over, she felt so much relief that she was able to drink some water;
and from that time she began to take food and medicine. Her two dear
friends, Mme. Chichagoff and Mme. Cheprunoff, were with her constantly;
she was soon pronounced out of danger, and her husband's troubled heart
had rest. The doctors set to work with fresh zeal to restore her
strength, and their great anxiety was in a way dangerous to their
patient; for one of them found traces of consumption, another of
_marasmus_, and the third was apprehensive of an aneurysm. But
fortunately they were unanimous on one point: the patient should go at
once to the country, to enjoy pure air and, preferably, forest air, and
take a course of _koumiss_. At the beginning of June it was not too late
to drink mare's milk, as the grass on the steppes was still fresh and in
full growth.
Stepan Mihailovitch took the news of his grand-daughter's death very
coolly: he even said, "No reason to tear one's hair over _that_! There
will be plenty more girls." But when he heard later of the dangerous
illness of Sofya Nikolayevna, the old man was much disturbed. When a
third message came, that she was out of immediate danger but very ill,
and that the doctors were baffled and prescribed a course of _koumiss_,
he was exceedingly angry with the doctors: "Those bunglers murder our
bodies," he said, "and defile our souls by making us swallow the drink
of heathens. If a Russian is forbidden by his Church to eat horseflesh,
then he has no business to drink the milk of the unclean animal." Then
he added with a heavy sigh and a gesture of disgust: "I don't like it at
all: her life may perhaps be saved, but she will never be right again,
and there will be no children." Stepan Mihailovitch was deeply grieved
and remained for a long time in a state of depression.
Twenty-nine _versts_ to the south-west of Ufa, on the road to Kazan,
where the Uza falls into that noble river, the Dyoma, there lay in a
rich valley a little Tatar village called by the Russians Alkino,
surrounded by forests. The houses nestled in picturesque disorder at the
foot of a hill called Bairam-Tau[49] which gave them shelter from the
north; and another hill, Zein-Tau,[50] rose on the west. The Uza,
fringed with bushes, flowed to the south-west; the forest-glades were
fragrant with grasses and flowers; and, all round, oaks and limes and
maples cleft the air and imparted to it an invigorating virtue. To this
charming spot Alexyei Stepanitch brought his wife, weak and pale and
thin, a mere shadow of her old self; Avenarius, their friend and doctor,
came with them, and they had some difficulty in getting the patient to
the end of the journey. The owner of the village received them with
cordial hospitality; he had a comfortable house, but Sofya Nikolayevna
was unwilling to install herself there, and one of the outbuildings was
cleared out for her occupation. The family were only too kind in their
attentions to her, so that the doctor was obliged to forbid their visits
for a time. They spoke Russian fairly well, though they professed the
Mohammedan creed; and, though their dress and habits were then partly
Russian and partly Tatar, _koumiss_ was their invariable drink from
morning till night. For Sofya Nikolayevna, the health-giving beverage
was prepared in a cleanly, civilised manner: the mare's milk was
fermented in a clean, new wooden bucket and not in the usual bag of raw
horse-hide. The natives declared that _koumiss_ made in their fashion
tasted better, and was more effective; but Sofya Nikolayevna felt an
unconquerable aversion to the horse-hide bag. When the doctor had laid
down rules for the cure, he went back to Ufa, leaving Alexyei
Stepanitch, with Parasha and Annushka, in charge of the invalid. The air
and the _koumiss_, of which small doses were taken at first; the daily
drives with Alexyei Stepanitch through the forest which surrounded the
village--Yevseitch, who was now a favourite with Sofya Nikolayevna,
acted as coachman; the woods, where the patient lay for whole hours in
the cool shade on a leather mattress with pillows, breathing the
fragrant air into her lungs, listening sometimes to an entertaining
book, and often sinking into refreshing sleep--the whole life was so
beneficial to Sofya Nikolayevna that in a fortnight she was able to get
up and could walk about. When Avenarius came again he was delighted by
the effect of the _koumiss_, and increased the doses; but, as the
patient could not endure it in large quantities, he thought it necessary
to prescribe vigorous exercise in the form of riding on horseback. For a
Russian lady to ride was in those days a startling novelty: Alexyei
Stepanitch did not like it, and Sofya Nikolayevna herself was shocked by
the notion. Their host's daughters presented an instructive example, for
they constantly rode far and wide over the country on their Bashkir
ponies; but Sofya Nikolayevna turned a deaf ear for long to all
persuasions, and even to the entreaties of her husband, whom the doctor
had speedily and completely convinced of the necessity of the exercise.
At last the Chichagoffs came on a visit to Alkino, and Sofya
Nikolayevna's resistance was overcome by a joint effort. What appealed
to her most strongly was the example of Mme. Chichagoff, who, in the
spirit of true friendship, sacrificed her own prejudices and began to
ride, at first alone, and then with the patient. This hard exercise
required a change of diet; and fat mutton, which Sofya Nikolayevna did
not like either, was prescribed. Avenarius probably took a hint from the
habits of the Bashkirs and Tatars, who, while moving from place to place
throughout the summer, drink _koumiss_ and eat hardly anything but fat
mutton, not even bread; and they ride all day long over the broad
steppes, until the prairie grass turns from green to grey and veils
itself with a soft, silvery down. The treatment answered admirably. They
sometimes rode out in a large party with the sons and daughters of their
host. There was a potash factory which they sometimes visited, about two
_versts_ from Alkino, situated in the depth of the forest and on the
bank of a stream; and Sofya Nikolayevna looked with interest at the iron
cauldrons full of burning wood-ash, the wooden troughs in which the
dross was deposited, and the furnaces in which the product was refined
and converted into porous white lumps of the vegetable salt called
"potash." She admired the rapidity with which the work was carried on,
and the activity of the Tatars, whose skull-caps were a novelty to her,
and also the long shirts which came down to their feet and yet left them
free command of their limbs. In general her hosts were very kind, and
tried to amuse their guest by making the natives sing and dance before
her, or wrestle, or run races on horseback.
[49] Hill of Feasting.
[50] Hill of Meeting.