my compartment. There on the seat near the window is sitting a being who
is, so to say, devoted to you with her whole being. A little blonde with
a little nose . . . little fingers. . . . My little darling! My angel!
My little poppet! Phylloxera of my soul! And her little foot! Good God!
A little foot not like our beetle-crushers, but something miniature,
fairylike, allegorical. I could pick it up and eat it, that little foot!
Oh, but you don't understand! You're a materialist, of course, you begin
analyzing at once, and one thing and another. You are cold-hearted
bachelors, that's what you are! When you get married you'll think of me.
'Where's Ivan Alexyevitch now?' you'll say. Yes; so in a minute I'm
going to my compartment. There she is waiting for me with impatience . .
. in joyful anticipation of my appearance. She'll have a smile to greet
me. I sit down beside her and take her chin with my two fingers."
Ivan Alexyevitch waggles his head and goes off into a chuckle of
delight.
"Then I lay my noddle on her shoulder and put my arm round her waist.
Around all is silence, you know . . . poetic twilight. I could embrace
the whole world at such a moment. Pyotr Petrovitch, allow me to embrace
you!"
"Delighted, I'm sure." The two friends embrace while the passengers
laugh in chorus. And the happy bridegroom continues:
"And to complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to complete the
illusion, one goes to the refreshment-room and tosses off two or three
glasses. And then something happens in your head and your heart, finer
than you can read of in a fairy tale. I am a man of no importance, but I
feel as though I were limitless: I embrace the whole world!"
The passengers, looking at the tipsy and blissful bridegroom, are
infected by his cheerfulness and no longer feel sleepy. Instead of one
listener, Ivan Alexyevitch has now an audience of five. He wriggles and
splutters, gesticulates, and prattles on without ceasing. He laughs and
they all laugh.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, don't think so much! Damn all this analysis! If
you want a drink, drink, no need to philosophize as to whether it's bad
for you or not. . . . Damn all this philosophy and psychology!"
The guard walks through the compartment.
"My dear fellow," the bridegroom addresses him, "when you pass through
the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with a white bird
and tell her I'm here!"
"Yes, sir. Only there isn't a No. 209 in this train; there's 219!"
"Well, 219, then! It's all the same. Tell that lady, then, that her
husband is all right!"
Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:
"Husband. . . . Lady. . . . All in a minute! Husband. . . . Ha-ha! I am
a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a husband! Ach, idiot! But
think of her! . . . Yesterday she was a little girl, a midget . . . it s
simply incredible!"
"Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man," observes one of
the passengers; "one as soon expects to see a white elephant."
"Yes, and whose fault is it?" says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching his long
legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed toes. "If you
are not happy it's your own fault! Yes, what else do you suppose it is?
Man is the creator of his own happiness. If you want to be happy you
will be, but you don't want to be! You obstinately turn away from
happiness."
"Why, what next! How do you make that out?"
"Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his life
man should love. When that time comes you should love like a house on
fire, but you won't heed the dictates of nature, you keep waiting for
something. What's more, it's laid down by law that the normal man should
enter upon matrimony. There's no happiness without marriage. When the
propitious moment has come, get married. There's no use in shilly-
shallying. . . . But you don't get married, you keep waiting for
something! Then the Scriptures tell us that 'wine maketh glad the heart
of man.' . . . If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then
go to the refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not to be
too clever, but to follow the beaten track! The beaten track is a grand
thing!"
"You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the devil is
he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured mother-in-law is
enough to scatter his happiness to the winds? Everything depends on
chance. If we had an accident at this moment you'd sing a different
tune."
"Stuff and nonsense!" retorts the bridegroom. "Railway accidents only
happen once a year. I'm not afraid of an accident, for there is no
reason for one. Accidents are exceptional! Confound them! I don't want
to talk of them! Oh, I believe we're stopping at a station."
"Where are you going now?" asks Pyotr Petrovitch. "To Moscow or
somewhere further south?
"Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when I'm on my
way to the north?"
"But Moscow isn't in the north."
"I know that, but we're on our way to Petersburg," says Ivan
Alexyevitch.
"We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!"
"To Moscow? What do you mean?" says the bridegroom in amazement.
"It's queer. . . . For what station did you take your ticket?"
"For Petersburg."
"In that case I congratulate you. You've got into the wrong train."
There follows a minute of silence. The bridegroom gets up and looks
blankly round the company.
"Yes, yes," Pyotr Petrovitch explains. "You must have jumped into the
wrong train at Bologoe. . . . After your glass of brandy you succeeded
in getting into the down-train."
Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins pacing
rapidly about the carriage.
"Ach, idiot that I am!" he says in indignation. "Scoundrel! The devil
devour me! Whatever am I to do now? Why, my wife is in that train! She's
there all alone, expecting me, consumed by anxiety. Ach, I'm a motley
fool!"
The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone had
trodden on his corns.
"I am un-unhappy man!" he moans. "What am I to do, what am I to do?"
"There, there!" the passengers try to console him. "It's all right . . .
. You must telegraph to your wife and try to change into the Petersburg
express. In that way you'll overtake her."
"The Petersburg express!" weeps the bridegroom, the creator of his own
happiness. "And how am I to get a ticket for the Petersburg express? All
my money is with my wife."
The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a collection and
furnish the happy man with funds.
A TROUBLESOME VISITOR
IN the low-pitched, crooked little hut of Artyom, the forester, two men
were sitting under the big dark ikon--Artyom himself, a short and lean
peasant with a wrinkled, aged-looking face and a little beard that grew
out of his neck, and a well-grown young man in a new crimson shirt and
big wading boots, who had been out hunting and come in for the night.
They were sitting on a bench at a little three-legged table on which a
tallow candle stuck into a bottle was lazily burning.
Outside the window the darkness of the night was full of the noisy
uproar into which nature usually breaks out before a thunderstorm. The
wind howled angrily and the bowed trees moaned miserably. One pane of
the window had been pasted up with paper, and leaves torn off by the
wind could be heard pattering against the paper.
"I tell you what, good Christian," said Artyom in a hoarse little tenor
half-whisper, staring with unblinking, scared-looking eyes at the
hunter. "I am not afraid of wolves or bears, or wild beasts of any sort,
but I am afraid of man. You can save yourself from beasts with a gun or
some other weapon, but you have no means of saving yourself from a
wicked man."
"To be sure, you can fire at a beast, but if you shoot at a robber you
will have to answer for it: you will go to Siberia."
"I've been forester, my lad, for thirty years, and I couldn't tell you
what I have had to put up with from wicked men. There have been lots and
lots of them here. The hut's on a track, it's a cart-road, and that
brings them, the devils. Every sort of ruffian turns up, and without
taking off his cap or making the sign of the cross, bursts straight in
upon one with: 'Give us some bread, you old so-and-so.' And where am I
to get bread for him? What claim has he? Am I a millionaire to feed
every drunkard that passes? They are half-blind with spite. . . . They
have no cross on them, the devils . . . . They'll give you a clout on
the ear and not think twice about it: 'Give us bread!' Well, one gives
it. . . . One is not going to fight with them, the idols! Some of them
are two yards across the shoulders, and a great fist as big as your
boot, and you see the sort of figure I am. One of them could smash me
with his little finger. . . . Well, one gives him bread and he gobbles
it up, and stretches out full length across the hut with not a word of
thanks. And there are some that ask for money. 'Tell me, where is your
money?' As though I had money! How should I come by it?"
"A forester and no money!" laughed the hunter. "You get wages every
month, and I'll be bound you sell timber on the sly."
Artyom took a timid sideway glance at his visitor and twitched his beard
as a magpie twitches her tail.
"You are still young to say a thing like that to me," he said. "You will
have to answer to God for those words. Whom may your people be? Where do
you come from?"
"I am from Vyazovka. I am the son of Nefed the village elder."
"You have gone out for sport with your gun. I used to like sport, too,
when I was young. H'm! Ah, our sins are grievous," said Artyom, with a
yawn. "It's a sad thing! There are few good folks, but villains and
murderers no end--God have mercy upon us."
"You seem to be frightened of me, too. . . ."
"Come, what next! What should I be afraid of you for? I see. . . . I
understand. . . . You came in, and not just anyhow, but you made the
sign of the cross, you bowed, all decent and proper. . . . I understand.
. . . One can give you bread. . . . I am a widower, I don't heat the
stove, I sold the samovar. . . . I am too poor to keep meat or anything
else, but bread you are welcome to."
At that moment something began growling under the bench: the growl was
followed by a hiss. Artyom started, drew up his legs, and looked
enquiringly at the hunter.
"It's my dog worrying your cat," said the hunter. "You devils!" he
shouted under the bench. "Lie down. You'll be beaten. I say, your cat's
thin, mate! She is nothing but skin and bone."
"She is old, it is time she was dead. . . . So you say you are from
Vyazovka?"
"I see you don't feed her. Though she's a cat she's a creature . . .
every breathing thing. You should have pity on her!"
"You are a queer lot in Vyazovka," Artyom went on, as though not
listening. "The church has been robbed twice in one year. . . To think
that there are such wicked men! So they fear neither man nor God! To
steal what is the Lord's! Hanging's too good for them! In old days the
governors used to have such rogues flogged."
"However you punish, whether it is with flogging or anything else, it
will be no good, you will not knock the wickedness out of a wicked man."
"Save and preserve us, Queen of Heaven!" The forester sighed abruptly.
"Save us from all enemies and evildoers. Last week at Volovy
Zaimishtchy, a mower struck another on the chest with his scythe . . .
he killed him outright! And what was it all about, God bless me! One
mower came out of the tavern . . . drunk. The other met him, drunk too."
The young man, who had been listening attentively, suddenly started, and
his face grew tense as he listened.
"Stay," he said, interrupting the forester. "I fancy someone is
shouting."
The hunter and the forester fell to listening with their eyes fixed on
the window. Through the noise of the forest they could hear sounds such
as the strained ear can always distinguish in every storm, so that it
was difficult to make out whether people were calling for help or
whether the wind was wailing in the chimney. But the wind tore at the
roof, tapped at the paper on the window, and brought a distinct shout of
"Help!"
"Talk of your murderers," said the hunter, turning pale and getting up.
"Someone is being robbed!"
"Lord have mercy on us," whispered the forester, and he, too, turned
pale and got up.
The hunter looked aimlessly out of window and walked up and down the
hut.
"What a night, what a night!" he muttered. "You can't see your hand
before your face! The very time for a robbery. Do you hear? There is a
shout again."
The forester looked at the ikon and from the ikon turned his eyes upon
the hunter, and sank on to the bench, collapsing like a man terrified by
sudden bad news.
"Good Christian," he said in a tearful voice, "you might go into the
passage and bolt the door. And we must put out the light."
"What for?"
"By ill-luck they may find their way here. . . . Oh, our sins!"
"We ought to be going, and you talk of bolting the door! You are a
clever one! Are you coming?"
The hunter threw his gun over his shoulder and picked up his cap.
"Get ready, take your gun. Hey, Flerka, here," he called to his dog.
"Flerka!"
A dog with long frayed ears, a mongrel between a setter and a house-dog,
came out from under the bench. He stretched himself by his master's feet
and wagged his tail.
"Why are you sitting there?" cried the hunter to the forester. "You mean
to say you are not going?"
"Where?"
"To help!"
"How can I?" said the forester with a wave of his hand, shuddering all
over. "I can't bother about it!"
"Why won't you come?"
"After talking of such dreadful things I won't stir a step into the
darkness. Bless them! And what should I go for?"
"What are you afraid of? Haven't you got a gun? Let us go, please do.
It's scaring to go alone; it will be more cheerful, the two of us. Do
you hear? There was a shout again. Get up!"
"Whatever do you think of me, lad?" wailed the forester. "Do you think I
am such a fool to go straight to my undoing?"
"So you are not coming?"
The forester did not answer. The dog, probably hearing a human cry, gave
a plaintive whine.
"Are you coming, I ask you?" cried the hunter, rolling his eyes angrily.
"You do keep on, upon my word," said the forester with annoyance. "Go
yourself."
"Ugh! . . . low cur," growled the hunter, turning towards the door.
"Flerka, here!"
He went out and left the door open. The wind flew into the hut. The
flame of the candle flickered uneasily, flared up, and went out.
As he bolted the door after the hunter, the forester saw the puddles in
the track, the nearest pine-trees, and the retreating figure of his
guest lighted up by a flash of lightning. Far away he heard the rumble
of thunder.
"Holy, holy, holy," whispered the forester, making haste to thrust the
thick bolt into the great iron rings. "What weather the Lord has sent
us!"
Going back into the room, he felt his way to the stove, lay down, and
covered himself from head to foot. Lying under the sheepskin and
listening intently, he could no longer hear the human cry, but the peals
of thunder kept growing louder and more prolonged. He could hear the big
wind-lashed raindrops pattering angrily on the panes and on the paper of
the window.
"He's gone on a fool's errand," he thought, picturing the hunter soaked
with rain and stumbling over the tree-stumps. "I bet his teeth are
chattering with terror!"
Not more than ten minutes later there was a sound of footsteps, followed
by a loud knock at the door.
"Who's there?" cried the forester.
"It's I," he heard the young man's voice. "Unfasten the door."
The forester clambered down from the stove, felt for the candle, and,
lighting it, went to the door. The hunter and his dog were drenched to
the skin. They had come in for the heaviest of the downpour, and now the
water ran from them as from washed clothes before they have been wrung
out.
"What was it?" asked the forester.
"A peasant woman driving in a cart; she had got off the road . . ."
answered the young man, struggling with his breathlessness. "She was
caught in a thicket."
"Ah, the silly thing! She was frightened, then. . . . Well, did you put
her on the road?"
"I don't care to talk to a scoundrel like you."
The young man flung his wet cap on the bench and went on:
"I know now that you are a scoundrel and the lowest of men. And you a
keeper, too, getting a salary! You blackguard!"
The forester slunk with a guilty step to the stove, cleared his throat,
and lay down. The young man sat on the bench, thought a little, and lay
down on it full length. Not long afterwards he got up, put out the
candle, and lay down again. During a particularly loud clap of thunder
he turned over, spat on the floor, and growled out:
"He's afraid. . . . And what if the woman were being murdered? Whose
business is it to defend her? And he an old man, too, and a Christian .
. . . He's a pig and nothing else."
The forester cleared his throat and heaved a deep sigh. Somewhere in the
darkness Flerka shook his wet coat vigorously, which sent drops of water
flying about all over the room.
"So you wouldn't care if the woman were murdered?" the hunter went on.
"Well--strike me, God--I had no notion you were that sort of man. . . ."
A silence followed. The thunderstorm was by now over and the thunder
came from far away, but it was still raining.
"And suppose it hadn't been a woman but you shouting 'Help!'?" said the
hunter, breaking the silence. "How would you feel, you beast, if no one
ran to your aid? You have upset me with your meanness, plague take you!"
After another long interval the hunter said:
"You must have money to be afraid of people! A man who is poor is not
likely to be afraid. . . ."
"For those words you will answer before God," Artyom said hoarsely from
the stove. "I have no money."
"I dare say! Scoundrels always have money. . . . Why are you afraid of
people, then? So you must have! I'd like to take and rob you for spite,
to teach you a lesson! . . ."
Artyom slipped noiselessly from the stove, lighted a candle, and sat
down under the holy image. He was pale and did not take his eyes off the
hunter.
"Here, I'll rob you," said the hunter, getting up. "What do you think
about it? Fellows like you want a lesson. Tell me, where is your money
hidden?"
Artyom drew his legs up under him and blinked. "What are you wriggling
for? Where is your money hidden? Have you lost your tongue, you fool?
Why don't you answer?"
The young man jumped up and went up to the forester.
"He is blinking like an owl! Well? Give me your money, or I will shoot
you with my gun."
"Why do you keep on at me?" squealed the forester, and big tears rolled
from his eyes. "What's the reason of it? God sees all! You will have to
answer, for every word you say, to God. You have no right whatever to
ask for my money."
The young man looked at Artyom's tearful face, frowned, and walked up
and down the hut, then angrily clapped his cap on his head and picked up
his gun.
"Ugh! . . . ugh! . . . it makes me sick to look at you," he filtered
through his teeth. "I can't bear the sight of you. I won't sleep in your
house, anyway. Good-bye! Hey, Flerka!"
The door slammed and the troublesome visitor went out with his dog. . .
. Artyom bolted the door after him, crossed himself, and lay down.
AN ACTOR'S END
SHTCHIPTSOV, the "heavy father" and "good-hearted simpleton," a tall and
thick-set old man, not so much distinguished by his talents as an actor
as by his exceptional physical strength, had a desperate quarrel with
the manager during the performance, and just when the storm of words was
at its height felt as though something had snapped in his chest. Zhukov,
the manager, as a rule began at the end of every heated discussion to
laugh hysterically and to fall into a swoon; on this occasion, however,
Shtchiptsov did not remain for this climax, but hurried home. The high
words and the sensation of something ruptured in his chest so agitated
him as he left the theatre that he forgot to wash off his paint, and did
nothing but take off his beard.
When he reached his hotel room, Shtchiptsov spent a long time pacing up
and down, then sat down on the bed, propped his head on his fists, and
sank into thought. He sat like that without stirring or uttering a sound
till two o'clock the next afternoon, when Sigaev, the comic man, walked
into his room.
"Why is it you did not come to the rehearsal, Booby Ivanitch?" the comic
man began, panting and filling the room with fumes of vodka. "Where have
you been?"
Shtchiptsov made no answer, but simply stared at the comic man with
lustreless eyes, under which there were smudges of paint.
"You might at least have washed your phiz!" Sigaev went on. "You are a
disgraceful sight! Have you been boozing, or . . . are you ill, or what?
But why don't you speak? I am asking you: are you ill?"
Shtchiptsov did not speak. In spite of the paint on his face, the comic
man could not help noticing his striking pallor, the drops of sweat on
his forehead, and the twitching of his lips. His hands and feet were
trembling too, and the whole huge figure of the "good-natured simpleton"
looked somehow crushed and flattened. The comic man took a rapid glance
round the room, but saw neither bottle nor flask nor any other
suspicious vessel.
"I say, Mishutka, you know you are ill!" he said in a flutter. "Strike
me dead, you are ill! You don't look yourself!"
Shtchiptsov remained silent and stared disconsolately at the floor.
"You must have caught cold," said Sigaev, taking him by the hand. "Oh,
dear, how hot your hands are! What's the trouble?"
"I wa-ant to go home," muttered Shtchiptsov.
"But you are at home now, aren't you?"
"No. . . . To Vyazma. . . ."
"Oh, my, anywhere else! It would take you three years to get to your
Vyazma. . . . What? do you want to go and see your daddy and mummy? I'll
be bound, they've kicked the bucket years ago, and you won't find their
graves. . . ."
"My ho-ome's there."
"Come, it's no good giving way to the dismal dumps. These neurotic
feelings are the limit, old man. You must get well, for you have to play
Mitka in 'The Terrible Tsar' to-morrow. There is nobody else to do it.
Drink something hot and take some castor-oil? Have you got the money for
some castor-oil? Or, stay, I'll run and buy some."
The comic man fumbled in his pockets, found a fifteen-kopeck piece, and
ran to the chemist's. A quarter of an hour later he came back.
"Come, drink it," he said, holding the bottle to the "heavy father's"
mouth. "Drink it straight out of the bottle. . . . All at a go! That's
the way. . . . Now nibble at a clove that your very soul mayn't stink of
the filthy stuff."
The comic man sat a little longer with his sick friend, then kissed him
tenderly, and went away. Towards evening the jeune premier, Brama-
Glinsky, ran in to see Shtchiptsov. The gifted actor was wearing a pair
of prunella boots, had a glove on his left hand, was smoking a cigar,
and even smelt of heliotrope, yet nevertheless he strongly suggested a
traveller cast away in some land in which there were neither baths nor
laundresses nor tailors. . . .
"I hear you are ill?" he said to Shtchiptsov, twirling round on his
heel. "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, really? . . ."
Shtchiptsov did not speak nor stir.
"Why don't you speak? Do you feel giddy? Oh well, don't talk, I won't
pester you . . . don't talk. . . ."
Brama-Glinsky (that was his stage name, in his passport he was called
Guskov) walked away to the window, put his hands in his pockets, and
fell to gazing into the street. Before his eyes stretched an immense
waste, bounded by a grey fence beside which ran a perfect forest of last
year's burdocks. Beyond the waste ground was a dark, deserted factory,
with windows boarded up. A belated jackdaw was flying round the chimney.
This dreary, lifeless scene was beginning to be veiled in the dusk of
evening.
"I must go home!" the jeune premier heard.
"Where is home?"
"To Vyazma . . . to my home. . . ."
"It is a thousand miles to Vyazma . . . my boy," sighed Brama-Glinsky,
drumming on the window-pane. "And what do you want to go to Vyazma for?"
"I want to die there."
"What next! Now he's dying! He has fallen ill for the first time in his
life, and already he fancies that his last hour is come. . . . No, my
boy, no cholera will carry off a buffalo like you. You'll live to be a
hundred. . . . Where's the pain?"
"There's no pain, but I . . . feel . . ."
"You don't feel anything, it all comes from being too healthy. Your
surplus energy upsets you. You ought to get jolly tight--drink, you know,
till your whole inside is topsy-turvy. Getting drunk is wonderfully
restoring. . . . Do you remember how screwed you were at Rostov on the
Don? Good Lord, the very thought of it is alarming! Sashka and I
together could only just carry in the barrel, and you emptied it alone,
and even sent for rum afterwards. . . . You got so drunk you were
catching devils in a sack and pulled a lamp-post up by the roots. Do you
remember? Then you went off to beat the Greeks. . . ."