nor depression, but only weariness and inward emptiness. It seemed to
him that it made absolutely no difference to him whether they forgave
him or not; he had come here to hear his sentence and to explain himself
simply because kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had begged him to do so. He
was not afraid of the future. It made no difference to him where he was:
here in the hall, in prison, or in Siberia.
"If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, damn it all!"
He was sick of life and found it insufferably hard. He was inextricably
involved in debt; he had not a farthing in his pocket; his family had
become detestable to him; he would have to part from his friends and his
women sooner or later, as they had begun to be too contemptuous of his
sponging on them. The future looked black.
Sasha was indifferent, and was only disturbed by one circumstance; the
other side of the door they were calling him a scoundrel and a criminal.
Every minute he was on the point of jumping up, bursting into the study
and shouting in answer to the detestable metallic voice of the Colonel:
"You are lying!"
"Criminal" is a dreadful word--that is what murderers, thieves, robbers
are; in fact, wicked and morally hopeless people. And Sasha was very far
from being all that. . . . It was true he owed a great deal and did not
pay his debts. But debt is not a crime, and it is unusual for a man not
to be in debt. The Colonel and Ivan Markovitch were both in debt. . . .
"What have I done wrong besides?" Sasha wondered.
He had discounted a forged note. But all the young men he knew did the
same. Handrikov and Von Burst always forged IOU's from their parents or
friends when their allowances were not paid at the regular time, and
then when they got their money from home they redeemed them before they
became due. Sasha had done the same, but had not redeemed the IOU
because he had not got the money which Handrikov had promised to lend
him. He was not to blame; it was the fault of circumstances. It was true
that the use of another person's signature was considered reprehensible;
but, still, it was not a crime but a generally accepted dodge, an ugly
formality which injured no one and was quite harmless, for in forging
the Colonel's signature Sasha had had no intention of causing anybody
damage or loss.
"No, it doesn't mean that I am a criminal . . ." thought Sasha. "And
it's not in my character to bring myself to commit a crime. I am soft,
emotional. . . . When I have the money I help the poor. . . ."
Sasha was musing after this fashion while they went on talking the other
side of the door.
"But, my friends, this is endless," the Colonel declared, getting
excited. "Suppose we were to forgive him and pay the money. You know he
would not give up leading a dissipated life, squandering money, making
debts, going to our tailors and ordering suits in our names! Can you
guarantee that this will be his last prank? As far as I am concerned, I
have no faith whatever in his reforming!"
The official of the Treasury muttered something in reply; after him Ivan
Markovitch began talking blandly and suavely again. The Colonel moved
his chair impatiently and drowned the other's words with his detestable
metallic voice. At last the door opened and Ivan Markovitch came out of
the study; there were patches of red on his lean shaven face.
"Come along," he said, taking Sasha by the hand. "Come and speak frankly
from your heart. Without pride, my dear boy, humbly and from your
heart."
Sasha went into the study. The official of the Treasury was sitting
down; the Colonel was standing before the table with one hand in his
pocket and one knee on a chair. It was smoky and stifling in the study.
Sasha did not look at the official or the Colonel; he felt suddenly
ashamed and uncomfortable. He looked uneasily at Ivan Markovitch and
muttered:
"I'll pay it . . . I'll give it back. . . ."
"What did you expect when you discounted the IOU?" he heard a metallic
voice.
"I . . . Handrikov promised to lend me the money before now."
Sasha could say no more. He went out of the study and sat down again on
the chair near the door.
He would have been glad to go away altogether at once, but he was
choking with hatred and he awfully wanted to remain, to tear the Colonel
to pieces, to say something rude to him. He sat trying to think of
something violent and effective to say to his hated uncle, and at that
moment a woman's figure, shrouded in the twilight, appeared at the
drawing-room door. It was the Colonel's wife. She beckoned Sasha to her,
and, wringing her hands, said, weeping:
"Alexandre, I know you don't like me, but . . . listen to me; listen, I
beg you. . . . But, my dear, how can this have happened? Why, it's
awful, awful! For goodness' sake, beg them, defend yourself, entreat
them."
Sasha looked at her quivering shoulders, at the big tears that were
rolling down her cheeks, heard behind his back the hollow, nervous
voices of worried and exhausted people, and shrugged his shoulders. He
had not in the least expected that his aristocratic relations would
raise such a tempest over a paltry fifteen hundred roubles! He could not
understand her tears nor the quiver of their voices.
An hour later he heard that the Colonel was getting the best of it; the
uncles were finally inclining to let the case go for trial.
"The matter's settled," said the Colonel, sighing. "Enough."
After this decision all the uncles, even the emphatic Colonel, became
noticeably depressed. A silence followed.
"Merciful Heavens!" sighed Ivan Markovitch. "My poor sister!"
And he began saying in a subdued voice that most likely his sister,
Sasha's mother, was present unseen in the study at that moment. He felt
in his soul how the unhappy, saintly woman was weeping, grieving, and
begging for her boy. For the sake of her peace beyond the grave, they
ought to spare Sasha.
The sound of a muffled sob was heard. Ivan Markovitch was weeping and
muttering something which it was impossible to catch through the door.
The Colonel got up and paced from corner to corner. The long
conversation began over again.
But then the clock in the drawing-room struck two. The family council
was over. To avoid seeing the person who had moved him to such wrath,
the Colonel went from the study, not into the hall, but into the
vestibule. . . . Ivan Markovitch came out into the hall. . . . He was
agitated and rubbing his hands joyfully. His tear-stained eyes looked
good-humoured and his mouth was twisted into a smile.
"Capital," he said to Sasha. "Thank God! You can go home, my dear, and
sleep tranquilly. We have decided to pay the sum, but on condition that
you repent and come with me tomorrow into the country and set to work."
A minute later Ivan Markovitch and Sasha in their great-coats and caps
were going down the stairs. The uncle was muttering something edifying.
Sasha did not listen, but felt as though some uneasy weight were
gradually slipping off his shoulders. They had forgiven him; he was
free! A gust of joy sprang up within him and sent a sweet chill to his
heart. He longed to breathe, to move swiftly, to live! Glancing at the
street lamps and the black sky, he remembered that Von Burst was
celebrating his name-day that evening at the "Bear," and again a rush of
joy flooded his soul. . . .
"I am going!" he decided.
But then he remembered he had not a farthing, that the companions he was
going to would despise him at once for his empty pockets. He must get
hold of some money, come what may!
"Uncle, lend me a hundred roubles," he said to Ivan Markovitch.
His uncle, surprised, looked into his face and backed against a lamp-
post.
"Give it to me," said Sasha, shifting impatiently from one foot to the
other and beginning to pant. "Uncle, I entreat you, give me a hundred
roubles."
His face worked; he trembled, and seemed on the point of attacking his
uncle. . . .
"Won't you?" he kept asking, seeing that his uncle was still amazed and
did not understand. "Listen. If you don't, I'll give myself up tomorrow!
I won't let you pay the IOU! I'll present another false note tomorrow!"
Petrified, muttering something incoherent in his horror, Ivan Markovitch
took a hundred-rouble note out of his pocket-book and gave it to Sasha.
The young man took it and walked rapidly away from him. . . .
Taking a sledge, Sasha grew calmer, and felt a rush of joy within him
again. The "rights of youth" of which kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had
spoken at the family council woke up and asserted themselves. Sasha
pictured the drinking-party before him, and, among the bottles, the
women, and his friends, the thought flashed through his mind:
"Now I see that I am a criminal; yes, I am a criminal."
THE KISS
AT eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six
batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in
the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the general
commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied
around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the
church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in
civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the
church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail
came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort
of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he
reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said:
"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen to
drink tea with him this minute. . . ."
The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways; the messenger raised his
hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange horse
behind the church.
"What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers, dispersing
to their quarters. "One is sleepy, and here this Von Rabbek with his
tea! We know what tea means."
The officers of all the six batteries remembered vividly an incident of
the previous year, when during manoeuvres they, together with the
officers of a Cossack regiment, were in the same way invited to tea by a
count who had an estate in the neighbourhood and was a retired army
officer: the hospitable and genial count made much of them, fed them,
and gave them drink, refused to let them go to their quarters in the
village and made them stay the night. All that, of course, was very
nice--nothing better could be desired, but the worst of it was, the old
army officer was so carried away by the pleasure of the young men's
company that till sunrise he was telling the officers anecdotes of his
glorious past, taking them over the house, showing them expensive
pictures, old engravings, rare guns, reading them autograph letters from
great people, while the weary and exhausted officers looked and
listened, longing for their beds and yawning in their sleeves; when at
last their host let them go, it was too late for sleep.
Might not this Von Rabbek be just such another? Whether he were or not,
there was no help for it. The officers changed their uniforms, brushed
themselves, and went all together in search of the gentleman's house. In
the square by the church they were told they could get to His
Excellency's by the lower path--going down behind the church to the
river, going along the bank to the garden, and there an avenue would
taken them to the house; or by the upper way-- straight from the church
by the road which, half a mile from the village, led right up to His
Excellency's granaries. The officers decided to go by the upper way.
"What Von Rabbek is it?" they wondered on the way. "Surely not the one
who was in command of the N---- cavalry division at Plevna?"
"No, that was not Von Rabbek, but simply Rabbe and no 'von.'"
"What lovely weather!"
At the first of the granaries the road divided in two: one branch went
straight on and vanished in the evening darkness, the other led to the
owner's house on the right. The officers turned to the right and began
to speak more softly. . . . On both sides of the road stretched stone
granaries with red roofs, heavy and sullen-looking, very much like
barracks of a district town. Ahead of them gleamed the windows of the
manor-house.
"A good omen, gentlemen," said one of the officers. "Our setter is the
foremost of all; no doubt he scents game ahead of us! . . ."
Lieutenant Lobytko, who was walking in front, a tall and stalwart
fellow, though entirely without moustache (he was over five-and-twenty,
yet for some reason there was no sign of hair on his round, well-fed
face), renowned in the brigade for his peculiar faculty for divining the
presence of women at a distance, turned round and said:
"Yes, there must be women here; I feel that by instinct."
On the threshold the officers were met by Von Rabbek himself, a comely-
looking man of sixty in civilian dress. Shaking hands with his guests,
he said that he was very glad and happy to see them, but begged them
earnestly for God's sake to excuse him for not asking them to stay the
night; two sisters with their children, some brothers, and some
neighbours, had come on a visit to him, so that he had not one spare
room left.
The General shook hands with every one, made his apologies, and smiled,
but it was evident by his face that he was by no means so delighted as
their last year's count, and that he had invited the officers simply
because, in his opinion, it was a social obligation to do so. And the
officers themselves, as they walked up the softly carpeted stairs, as
they listened to him, felt that they had been invited to this house
simply because it would have been awkward not to invite them; and at the
sight of the footmen, who hastened to light the lamps in the entrance
below and in the anteroom above, they began to feel as though they had
brought uneasiness and discomfort into the house with them. In a house
in which two sisters and their children, brothers, and neighbours were
gathered together, probably on account of some family festivity, or
event, how could the presence of nineteen unknown officers possibly be
welcome?
At the entrance to the drawing-room the officers were met by a tall,
graceful old lady with black eyebrows and a long face, very much like
the Empress Eugénie. Smiling graciously and majestically, she said she
was glad and happy to see her guests, and apologized that her husband
and she were on this occasion unable to invite messieurs les officiers
to stay the night. From her beautiful majestic smile, which instantly
vanished from her face every time she turned away from her guests, it
was evident that she had seen numbers of officers in her day, that she
was in no humour for them now, and if she invited them to her house and
apologized for not doing more, it was only because her breeding and
position in society required it of her.
When the officers went into the big dining-room, there were about a
dozen people, men and ladies, young and old, sitting at tea at the end
of a long table. A group of men was dimly visible behind their chairs,
wrapped in a haze of cigar smoke; and in the midst of them stood a lanky
young man with red whiskers, talking loudly, with a lisp, in English.
Through a door beyond the group could be seen a light room with pale
blue furniture.
"Gentlemen, there are so many of you that it is impossible to introduce
you all!" said the General in a loud voice, trying to sound very
cheerful. "Make each other's acquaintance, gentlemen, without any
ceremony!"
The officers--some with very serious and even stern faces, others with
forced smiles, and all feeling extremely awkward--somehow made their bows
and sat down to tea.
The most ill at ease of them all was Ryabovitch--a little officer in
spectacles, with sloping shoulders, and whiskers like a lynx's. While
some of his comrades assumed a serious expression, while others wore
forced smiles, his face, his lynx-like whiskers, and spectacles seemed
to say: "I am the shyest, most modest, and most undistinguished officer
in the whole brigade!" At first, on going into the room and sitting down
to the table, he could not fix his attention on any one face or object.
The faces, the dresses, the cut-glass decanters of brandy, the steam
from the glasses, the moulded cornices--all blended in one general
impression that inspired in Ryabovitch alarm and a desire to hide his
head. Like a lecturer making his first appearance before the public, he
saw everything that was before his eyes, but apparently only had a dim
understanding of it (among physiologists this condition, when the
subject sees but does not understand, is called psychical blindness).
After a little while, growing accustomed to his surroundings, Ryabovitch
saw clearly and began to observe. As a shy man, unused to society, what
struck him first was that in which he had always been deficient--namely,
the extraordinary boldness of his new acquaintances. Von Rabbek, his
wife, two elderly ladies, a young lady in a lilac dress, and the young
man with the red whiskers, who was, it appeared, a younger son of Von
Rabbek, very cleverly, as though they had rehearsed it beforehand, took
seats between the officers, and at once got up a heated discussion in
which the visitors could not help taking part. The lilac young lady
hotly asserted that the artillery had a much better time than the
cavalry and the infantry, while Von Rabbek and the elderly ladies
maintained the opposite. A brisk interchange of talk followed.
Ryabovitch watched the lilac young lady who argued so hotly about what
was unfamiliar and utterly uninteresting to her, and watched artificial
smiles come and go on her face.
Von Rabbek and his family skilfully drew the officers into the
discussion, and meanwhile kept a sharp lookout over their glasses and
mouths, to see whether all of them were drinking, whether all had enough
sugar, why some one was not eating cakes or not drinking brandy. And the
longer Ryabovitch watched and listened, the more he was attracted by
this insincere but splendidly disciplined family.
After tea the officers went into the drawing-room. Lieutenant Lobytko's
instinct had not deceived him. There were a great number of girls and
young married ladies. The "setter" lieutenant was soon standing by a
very young, fair girl in a black dress, and, bending down to her
jauntily, as though leaning on an unseen sword, smiled and shrugged his
shoulders coquettishly. He probably talked very interesting nonsense,
for the fair girl looked at his well-fed face condescendingly and asked
indifferently, "Really?" And from that uninterested "Really?" the
setter, had he been intelligent, might have concluded that she would
never call him to heel.
The piano struck up; the melancholy strains of a valse floated out of
the wide open windows, and every one, for some reason, remembered that
it was spring, a May evening. Every one was conscious of the fragrance
of roses, of lilac, and of the young leaves of the poplar. Ryabovitch,
in whom the brandy he had drunk made itself felt, under the influence of
the music stole a glance towards the window, smiled, and began watching
the movements of the women, and it seemed to him that the smell of
roses, of poplars, and lilac came not from the garden, but from the
ladies' faces and dresses.
Von Rabbek's son invited a scraggy-looking young lady to dance, and
waltzed round the room twice with her. Lobytko, gliding over the parquet
floor, flew up to the lilac young lady and whirled her away. Dancing
began. . . . Ryabovitch stood near the door among those who were not
dancing and looked on. He had never once danced in his whole life, and
he had never once in his life put his arm round the waist of a
respectable woman. He was highly delighted that a man should in the
sight of all take a girl he did not know round the waist and offer her
his shoulder to put her hand on, but he could not imagine himself in the
position of such a man. There were times when he envied the boldness and
swagger of his companions and was inwardly wretched; the consciousness
that he was timid, that he was round-shouldered and uninteresting, that
he had a long waist and lynx-like whiskers, had deeply mortified him,
but with years he had grown used to this feeling, and now, looking at
his comrades dancing or loudly talking, he no longer envied them, but
only felt touched and mournful.
When the quadrille began, young Von Rabbek came up to those who were not
dancing and invited two officers to have a game at billiards. The
officers accepted and went with him out of the drawing-room. Ryabovitch,
having nothing to do and wishing to take part in the general movement,
slouched after them. From the big drawing-room they went into the little
drawing-room, then into a narrow corridor with a glass roof, and thence
into a room in which on their entrance three sleepy-looking footmen
jumped up quickly from the sofa. At last, after passing through a long
succession of rooms, young Von Rabbek and the officers came into a small
room where there was a billiard-table. They began to play.
Ryabovitch, who had never played any game but cards, stood near the
billiard-table and looked indifferently at the players, while they in
unbuttoned coats, with cues in their hands, stepped about, made puns,
and kept shouting out unintelligible words.
The players took no notice of him, and only now and then one of them,
shoving him with his elbow or accidentally touching him with the end of
his cue, would turn round and say "Pardon!" Before the first game was
over he was weary of it, and began to feel he was not wanted and in the
way. . . . He felt disposed to return to the drawing-room, and he went
out.
On his way back he met with a little adventure. When he had gone half-
way he noticed he had taken a wrong turning. He distinctly remembered
that he ought to meet three sleepy footmen on his way, but he had passed
five or six rooms, and those sleepy figures seemed to have vanished into
the earth. Noticing his mistake, he walked back a little way and turned
to the right; he found himself in a little dark room which he had not
seen on his way to the billiard-room. After standing there a little
while, he resolutely opened the first door that met his eyes and walked
into an absolutely dark room. Straight in front could be seen the crack
in the doorway through which there was a gleam of vivid light; from the
other side of the door came the muffled sound of a melancholy mazurka.
Here, too, as in the drawing-room, the windows were wide open and there
was a smell of poplars, lilac and roses. . . .
Ryabovitch stood still in hesitation. . . . At that moment, to his
surprise, he heard hurried footsteps and the rustling of a dress, a
breathless feminine voice whispered "At last!" And two soft, fragrant,
unmistakably feminine arms were clasped about his neck; a warm cheek was
pressed to his cheek, and simultaneously there was the sound of a kiss.
But at once the bestower of the kiss uttered a faint shriek and skipped
back from him, as it seemed to Ryabovitch, with aversion. He, too,
almost shrieked and rushed towards the gleam of light at the door. . . .