Yes, His Excellency was walking straight towards her, for he was staring
directly at her with a sugary smile, while he licked his lips as he
always did when he saw a pretty woman.
"Delighted, delighted . . ." he began. "I shall order your husband to be
clapped in a lock-up for keeping such a treasure hidden from us till
now. I've come to you with a message from my wife," he went on, offering
her his arm. "You must help us. . . . M-m-yes. . . . We ought to give
you the prize for beauty as they do in America . . . . M-m-yes. . . .
The Americans. . . . My wife is expecting you impatiently."
He led her to a stall and presented her to a middle-aged lady, the lower
part of whose face was disproportionately large, so that she looked as
though she were holding a big stone in her mouth.
"You must help us," she said through her nose in a sing-song voice. "All
the pretty women are working for our charity bazaar, and you are the
only one enjoying yourself. Why won't you help us?"
She went away, and Anna took her place by the cups and the silver
samovar. She was soon doing a lively trade. Anna asked no less than a
rouble for a cup of tea, and made the huge officer drink three cups.
Artynov, the rich man with prominent eyes, who suffered from asthma,
came up, too; he was not dressed in the strange costume in which Anna
had seen him in the summer at the station, but wore a dress-coat like
every one else. Keeping his eyes fixed on Anna, he drank a glass of
champagne and paid a hundred roubles for it, then drank some tea and
gave another hundred--all this without saying a word, as he was short of
breath through asthma. . . . Anna invited purchasers and got money out
of them, firmly convinced by now that her smiles and glances could not
fail to afford these people great pleasure. She realized now that she
was created exclusively for this noisy, brilliant, laughing life, with
its music, its dancers, its adorers, and her old terror of a force that
was sweeping down upon her and menacing to crush her seemed to her
ridiculous: she was afraid of no one now, and only regretted that her
mother could not be there to rejoice at her success.
Pyotr Leontyitch, pale by now but still steady on his legs, came up to
the stall and asked for a glass of brandy. Anna turned crimson,
expecting him to say something inappropriate (she was already ashamed of
having such a poor and ordinary father); but he emptied his glass, took
ten roubles out of his roll of notes, flung it down, and walked away
with dignity without uttering a word. A little later she saw him dancing
in the grand chain, and by now he was staggering and kept shouting
something, to the great confusion of his partner; and Anna remembered
how at the ball three years before he had staggered and shouted in the
same way, and it had ended in the police-sergeant's taking him home to
bed, and next day the director had threatened to dismiss him from his
post. How inappropriate that memory was!
When the samovars were put out in the stalls and the exhausted ladies
handed over their takings to the middle-aged lady with the stone in her
mouth, Artynov took Anna on his arm to the hall where supper was served
to all who had assisted at the bazaar. There were some twenty people at
supper, not more, but it was very noisy. His Excellency proposed a
toast:
"In this magnificent dining-room it will be appropriate to drink to the
success of the cheap dining-rooms, which are the object of today's
bazaar."
The brigadier-general proposed the toast: "To the power by which even
the artillery is vanquished," and all the company clinked glasses with
the ladies. It was very, very gay.
When Anna was escorted home it was daylight and the cooks were going to
market. Joyful, intoxicated, full of new sensations, exhausted, she
undressed, dropped into bed, and at once fell asleep. . . .
It was past one in the afternoon when the servant waked her and
announced that M. Artynov had called. She dressed quickly and went down
into the drawing-room. Soon after Artynov, His Excellency called to
thank her for her assistance in the bazaar. With a sugary smile, chewing
his lips, he kissed her hand, and asking her permission to come again,
took his leave, while she remained standing in the middle of the
drawing-room, amazed, enchanted, unable to believe that this change in
her life, this marvellous change, had taken place so quickly; and at
that moment Modest Alexeitch walked in . . . and he, too, stood before
her now with the same ingratiating, sugary, cringingly respectful
expression which she was accustomed to see on his face in the presence
of the great and powerful; and with rapture, with indignation, with
contempt, convinced that no harm would come to her from it, she said,
articulating distinctly each word:
"Be off, you blockhead!"
From this time forward Anna never had one day free, as she was always
taking part in picnics, expeditions, performances. She returned home
every day after midnight, and went to bed on the floor in the drawing-
room, and afterwards used to tell every one, touchingly, how she slept
under flowers. She needed a very great deal of money, but she was no
longer afraid of Modest Alexeitch, and spent his money as though it were
her own; and she did not ask, did not demand it, simply sent him in the
bills. "Give bearer two hundred roubles," or "Pay one hundred roubles at
once."
At Easter Modest Alexeitch received the Anna of the second grade. When
he went to offer his thanks, His Excellency put aside the paper he was
reading and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
"So now you have three Annas," he said, scrutinizing his white hands and
pink nails--"one on your buttonhole and two on your neck."
Modest Alexeitch put two fingers to his lips as a precaution against
laughing too loud and said:
"Now I have only to look forward to the arrival of a little Vladimir. I
make bold to beg your Excellency to stand godfather."
He was alluding to Vladimir of the fourth grade, and was already
imagining how he would tell everywhere the story of this pun, so happy
in its readiness and audacity, and he wanted to say something equally
happy, but His Excellency was buried again in his newspaper, and merely
gave him a nod.
And Anna went on driving about with three horses, going out hunting with
Artynov, playing in one-act dramas, going out to supper, and was more
and more rarely with her own family; they dined now alone. Pyotr
Leontyitch was drinking more heavily than ever; there was no money, and
the harmonium had been sold long ago for debt. The boys did not let him
go out alone in the street now, but looked after him for fear he might
fall down; and whenever they met Anna driving in Staro-Kievsky Street
with a pair of horses and Artynov on the box instead of a coachman,
Pyotr Leontyitch took off his top-hat, and was about to shout to her,
but Petya and Andrusha took him by the arm, and said imploringly:
"You mustn't, father. Hush, father!"
THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE I
THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought
out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white, Giant;
then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive horses. Old
Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter Masha:
"Well, Marie Godefroi, come, get on! Hopla!"
Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen, but
her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a little
girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and after there
had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly visited, every one
began to call her Marie Godefroi.
"Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant. Her sister Varya got on Maika,
Nikitin on Count Nulin, the officers on their horses, and the long
picturesque cavalcade, with the officers in white tunics and the ladies
in their riding habits, moved at a walking pace out of the yard.
Nikitin noticed that when they were mounting the horses and afterwards
riding out into the street, Masha for some reason paid attention to no
one but himself. She looked anxiously at him and at Count Nulin and
said:
"You must hold him all the time on the curb, Sergey Vassilitch. Don't
let him shy. He's pretending."
And either because her Giant was very friendly with Count Nulin, or
perhaps by chance, she rode all the time beside Nikitin, as she had done
the day before, and the day before that. And he looked at her graceful
little figure sitting on the proud white beast, at her delicate profile,
at the chimney-pot hat, which did not suit her at all and made her look
older than her age--looked at her with joy, with tenderness, with
rapture; listened to her, taking in little of what she said, and
thought:
"I promise on my honour, I swear to God, I won't be afraid and I'll
speak to her today."
It was seven o'clock in the evening--the time when the scent of white
acacia and lilac is so strong that the air and the very trees seem heavy
with the fragrance. The band was already playing in the town gardens.
The horses made a resounding thud on the pavement, on all sides there
were sounds of laughter, talk, and the banging of gates. The soldiers
they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys bowed to Nikitin, and all
the people who were hurrying to the gardens to hear the band were
pleased at the sight of the party. And how warm it was! How soft-looking
were the clouds scattered carelessly about the sky, how kindly and
comforting the shadows of the poplars and the acacias, which stretched
across the street and reached as far as the balconies and second stories
of the houses on the other side.
They rode on out of the town and set off at a trot along the highroad.
Here there was no scent of lilac and acacia, no music of the band, but
there was the fragrance of the fields, there was the green of young rye
and wheat, the marmots were squeaking, the rooks were cawing. Wherever
one looked it was green, with only here and there black patches of bare
ground, and far away to the left in the cemetery a white streak of
apple-blossom.
They passed the slaughter-houses, then the brewery, and overtook a
military band hastening to the suburban gardens.
"Polyansky has a very fine horse, I don't deny that," Masha said to
Nikitin, with a glance towards the officer who was riding beside Varya.
"But it has blemishes. That white patch on its left leg ought not to be
there, and, look, it tosses its head. You can't train it not to now; it
will toss its head till the end of its days."
Masha was as passionate a lover of horses as her father. She felt a pang
when she saw other people with fine horses, and was pleased when she saw
defects in them. Nikitin knew nothing about horses; it made absolutely
no difference to him whether he held his horse on the bridle or on the
curb, whether he trotted or galloped; he only felt that his position was
strained and unnatural, and that consequently the officers who knew how
to sit in their saddles must please Masha more than he could. And he was
jealous of the officers.
As they rode by the suburban gardens some one suggested their going in
and getting some seltzer-water. They went in. There were no trees but
oaks in the gardens; they had only just come into leaf, so that through
the young foliage the whole garden could still be seen with its
platform, little tables, and swings, and the crows' nests were visible,
looking like big hats. The party dismounted near a table and asked for
seltzer-water. People they knew, walking about the garden, came up to
them. Among them the army doctor in high boots, and the conductor of the
band, waiting for the musicians. The doctor must have taken Nikitin for
a student, for he asked: "Have you come for the summer holidays?"
"No, I am here permanently," answered Nikitin. "I am a teacher at the
school."
"You don't say so?" said the doctor, with surprise. "So young and
already a teacher?"
"Young, indeed! My goodness, I'm twenty-six!
"You have a beard and moustache, but yet one would never guess you were
more than twenty-two or twenty-three. How young-looking you are!"
"What a beast!" thought Nikitin. "He, too, takes me for a whipper-
snapper!"
He disliked it extremely when people referred to his youth, especially
in the presence of women or the schoolboys. Ever since he had come to
the town as a master in the school he had detested his own youthful
appearance. The schoolboys were not afraid of him, old people called him
"young man," ladies preferred dancing with him to listening to his long
arguments, and he would have given a great deal to be ten years older.
From the garden they went on to the Shelestovs' farm. There they stopped
at the gate and asked the bailiff's wife, Praskovya, to bring some new
milk. Nobody drank the milk; they all looked at one another, laughed,
and galloped back. As they rode back the band was playing in the
suburban garden; the sun was setting behind the cemetery, and half the
sky was crimson from the sunset.
Masha again rode beside Nikitin. He wanted to tell her how passionately
he loved her, but he was afraid he would be overheard by the officers
and Varya, and he was silent. Masha was silent, too, and he felt why she
was silent and why she was riding beside him, and was so happy that the
earth, the sky, the lights of the town, the black outline of the
brewery--all blended for him into something very pleasant and comforting,
and it seemed to him as though Count Nulin were stepping on air and
would climb up into the crimson sky.
They arrived home. The samovar was already boiling on the table, old
Shelestov was sitting with his friends, officials in the Circuit Court,
and as usual he was criticizing something.
"It's loutishness!" he said. "Loutishness and nothing more. Yes!"
Since Nikitin had been in love with Masha, everything at the Shelestovs'
pleased him: the house, the garden, and the evening tea, and the
wickerwork chairs, and the old nurse, and even the word "loutishness,"
which the old man was fond of using. The only thing he did not like was
the number of cats and dogs and the Egyptian pigeons, who moaned
disconsolately in a big cage in the verandah. There were so many house-
dogs and yard-dogs that he had only learnt to recognize two of them in
the course of his acquaintance with the Shelestovs: Mushka and Som.
Mushka was a little mangy dog with a shaggy face, spiteful and spoiled.
She hated Nikitin: when she saw him she put her head on one side, showed
her teeth, and began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she
would get under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she
would go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be
frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."
Som was a tall black dog with long legs and a tail as hard as a stick.
At dinner and tea he usually moved about under the table, and thumped on
people's boots and on the legs of the table with his tail. He was a
good-natured, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not endure him because he
had the habit of putting his head on people's knees at dinner and
messing their trousers with saliva. Nikitin had more than once tried to
hit him on his head with a knife-handle, to flip him on the nose, had
abused him, had complained of him, but nothing saved his trousers.
After their ride the tea, jam, rusks, and butter seemed very nice. They
all drank their first glass in silence and with great relish; over the
second they began an argument. It was always Varya who started the
arguments at tea; she was good-looking, handsomer than Masha, and was
considered the cleverest and most cultured person in the house, and she
behaved with dignity and severity, as an eldest daughter should who has
taken the place of her dead mother in the house. As the mistress of the
house, she felt herself entitled to wear a dressing-gown in the presence
of her guests, and to call the officers by their surnames; she looked on
Masha as a little girl, and talked to her as though she were a
schoolmistress. She used to speak of herself as an old maid--so she was
certain she would marry.
Every conversation, even about the weather, she invariably turned into
an argument. She had a passion for catching at words, pouncing on
contradictions, quibbling over phrases. You would begin talking to her,
and she would stare at you and suddenly interrupt: "Excuse me, excuse
me, Petrov, the other day you said the very opposite!"
Or she would smile ironically and say: "I notice, though, you begin to
advocate the principles of the secret police. I congratulate you."
If you jested or made a pun, you would hear her voice at once: "That's
stale," "That's pointless." If an officer ventured on a joke, she would
make a contemptuous grimace and say, "An army joke!"
And she rolled the r so impressively that Mushka invariably answered
from under a chair, "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
On this occasion at tea the argument began with Nikitin's mentioning the
school examinations.
"Excuse me, Sergey Vassilitch," Varya interrupted him. "You say it's
difficult for the boys. And whose fault is that, let me ask you? For
instance, you set the boys in the eighth class an essay on 'Pushkin as a
Psychologist.' To begin with, you shouldn't set such a difficult
subject; and, secondly, Pushkin was not a psychologist. Shtchedrin now,
or Dostoevsky let us say, is a different matter, but Pushkin is a great
poet and nothing more."
"Shtchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another," Nikitin answered
sulkily.
"I know you don't think much of Shtchedrin at the high school, but
that's not the point. Tell me, in what sense is Pushkin a psychologist?"
"Why, do you mean to say he was not a psychologist? If you like, I'll
give you examples."
And Nikitin recited several passages from "Onyegin" and then from "Boris
Godunov."
"I see no psychology in that." Varya sighed. "The psychologist is the
man who describes the recesses of the human soul, and that's fine poetry
and nothing more."
"I know the sort of psychology you want," said Nikitin, offended. "You
want some one to saw my finger with a blunt saw while I howl at the top
of my voice--that's what you mean by psychology."
"That's poor! But still you haven't shown me in what sense Pushkin is a
psychologist?"
When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow,
conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from his
seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a moan,
running from one end of the room to another. And it was the same now: he
jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a moan walked round
the table, then he sat down a little way off.
The officers took his part. Captain Polyansky began assuring Varya that
Pushkin really was a psychologist, and to prove it quoted two lines from
Lermontov; Lieutenant Gernet said that if Pushkin had not been a
psychologist they would not have erected a monument to him in Moscow.
"That's loutishness!" was heard from the other end of the table. "I said
as much to the governor: 'It's loutishness, your Excellency,' I said."
"I won't argue any more," cried Nikitin. "It's unending. . . . Enough!
Ach, get away, you nasty dog!" he cried to Som, who laid his head and
paw on his knee.
"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" came from under the table.
"Admit that you are wrong!" cried Varya. "Own up!"
But some young ladies came in, and the argument dropped of itself. They
all went into the drawing-room. Varya sat down at the piano and began
playing dances. They danced first a waltz, then a polka, then a
quadrille with a grand chain which Captain Polyansky led through all the
rooms, then a waltz again.
During the dancing the old men sat in the drawing-room, smoking and
looking at the young people. Among them was Shebaldin, the director of
the municipal bank, who was famed for his love of literature and
dramatic art. He had founded the local Musical and Dramatic Society, and
took part in the performances himself, confining himself, for some
reason, to playing comic footmen or to reading in a sing-song voice "The
Woman who was a Sinner." His nickname in the town was "the Mummy," as he
was tall, very lean and scraggy, and always had a solemn air and a
fixed, lustreless eye. He was so devoted to the dramatic art that he
even shaved his moustache and beard, and this made him still more like a
mummy.
After the grand chain, he shuffled up to Nikitin sideways, coughed, and
said:
"I had the pleasure of being present during the argument at tea. I fully
share your opinion. We are of one mind, and it would be a great pleasure
to me to talk to you. Have you read Lessing on the dramatic art of
Hamburg?"
"No, I haven't."
Shebaldin was horrified, and waved his hands as though he had burnt his
fingers, and saying nothing more, staggered back from Nikitin.
Shebaldin's appearance, his question, and his surprise, struck Nikitin
as funny, but he thought none the less:
"It really is awkward. I am a teacher of literature, and to this day
I've not read Lessing. I must read him."
Before supper the whole company, old and young, sat down to play "fate."
They took two packs of cards: one pack was dealt round to the company,
the other was laid on the table face downwards.
"The one who has this card in his hand," old Shelestov began solemnly,
lifting the top card of the second pack, "is fated to go into the
nursery and kiss nurse."
The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin. They all
crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing and clapping
their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great uproar and
shouting.
"Not so ardently!" cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. "Not so
ardently!"
It was Nikitin's "fate" to hear the confessions of all. He sat on a
chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and put
over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya.
"I know your sins," Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her stern
profile. "Tell me, madam, how do you explain your walking with Polyansky
every day? Oh, it's not for nothing she walks with an hussar!"
"That's poor," said Varya, and walked away.
Then under the shawl he saw the shine of big motionless eyes, caught the
lines of a dear profile in the dark, together with a familiar, precious
fragrance which reminded Nikitin of Masha's room.
"Marie Godefroi," he said, and did not know his own voice, it was so
soft and tender, "what are your sins?"
Masha screwed up her eyes and put out the tip of her tongue at him, then
she laughed and went away. And a minute later she was standing in the
middle of the room, clapping her hands and crying:
"Supper, supper, supper!"
And they all streamed into the dining-room. At supper Varya had another
argument, and this time with her father. Polyansky ate stolidly, drank
red wine, and described to Nikitin how once in a winter campaign he had
stood all night up to his knees in a bog; the enemy was so near that
they were not allowed to speak or smoke, the night was cold and dark, a
piercing wind was blowing. Nikitin listened and stole side-glances at
Masha. She was gazing at him immovably, without blinking, as though she
was pondering something or was lost in a reverie. . . . It was pleasure
and agony to him both at once.
"Why does she look at me like that?" was the question that fretted him.
"It's awkward. People may notice it. Oh, how young, how naïve she is!"
The party broke up at midnight. When Nikitin went out at the gate, a
window opened on the first-floor, and Masha showed herself at it.
"Sergey Vassilitch!" she called.
"What is it?"
"I tell you what . . ." said Masha, evidently thinking of something to
say. "I tell you what. . . Polyansky said he would come in a day or two
with his camera and take us all. We must meet here."
"Very well."
Masha vanished, the window was slammed, and some one immediately began
playing the piano in the house.
"Well, it is a house!" thought Nikitin while he crossed the street. "A
house in which there is no moaning except from Egyptian pigeons, and
they only do it because they have no other means of expressing their
joy!"
But the Shelestovs were not the only festive household. Nikitin had not
gone two hundred paces before he heard the strains of a piano from
another house. A little further he met a peasant playing the balalaika
at the gate. In the gardens the band struck up a potpourri of Russian
songs.