rooms at the rent of three hundred roubles a year, which he shared with
his colleague Ippolit Ippolititch, a teacher of geography and history.
When Nikitin went in this Ippolit Ippolititch, a snub-nosed, middle-aged
man with a reddish beard, with a coarse, good-natured, unintellectual
face like a workman's, was sitting at the table correcting his pupils'
maps. He considered that the most important and necessary part of the
study of geography was the drawing of maps, and of the study of history
the learning of dates: he would sit for nights together correcting in
blue pencil the maps drawn by the boys and girls he taught, or making
chronological tables.
"What a lovely day it has been!" said Nikitin, going in to him. "I
wonder at you--how can you sit indoors?"
Ippolit Ippolititch was not a talkative person; he either remained
silent or talked of things which everybody knew already. Now what he
answered was:
"Yes, very fine weather. It's May now; we soon shall have real summer.
And summer's a very different thing from winter. In the winter you have
to heat the stoves, but in summer you can keep warm without. In summer
you have your window open at night and still are warm, and in winter you
are cold even with the double frames in."
Nikitin had not sat at the table for more than one minute before he was
bored.
"Good-night!" he said, getting up and yawning. "I wanted to tell you
something romantic concerning myself, but you are--geography! If one
talks to you of love, you will ask one at once, 'What was the date of
the Battle of Kalka?' Confound you, with your battles and your capes in
Siberia!"
"What are you cross about?"
"Why, it is vexatious!"
And vexed that he had not spoken to Masha, and that he had no one to
talk to of his love, he went to his study and lay down upon the sofa. It
was dark and still in the study. Lying gazing into the darkness, Nikitin
for some reason began thinking how in two or three years he would go to
Petersburg, how Masha would see him off at the station and would cry; in
Petersburg he would get a long letter from her in which she would
entreat him to come home as quickly as possible. And he would write to
her. . . . He would begin his letter like that: "My dear little rat!"
"Yes, my dear little rat!" he said, and he laughed.
He was lying in an uncomfortable position. He put his arms under his
head and put his left leg over the back of the sofa. He felt more
comfortable. Meanwhile a pale light was more and more perceptible at the
windows, sleepy cocks crowed in the yard. Nikitin went on thinking how
he would come back from Petersburg, how Masha would meet him at the
station, and with a shriek of delight would fling herself on his neck;
or, better still, he would cheat her and come home by stealth late at
night: the cook would open the door, then he would go on tiptoe to the
bedroom, undress noiselessly, and jump into bed! And she would wake up
and be overjoyed.
It was beginning to get quite light. By now there were no windows, no
study. On the steps of the brewery by which they had ridden that day
Masha was sitting, saying something. Then she took Nikitin by the arm
and went with him to the suburban garden. There he saw the oaks and, the
crows' nests like hats. One of the nests rocked; out of it peeped
Shebaldin, shouting loudly: "You have not read Lessing!"
Nikitin shuddered all over and opened his eyes. Ippolit Ippolititch was
standing before the sofa, and throwing back his head, was putting on his
cravat.
"Get up; it's time for school," he said. "You shouldn't sleep in your
clothes; it spoils your clothes. You should sleep in your bed,
undressed."
And as usual he began slowly and emphatically saying what everybody
knew.
Nikitin's first lesson was on Russian language in the second class. When
at nine o'clock punctually he went into the classroom, he saw written on
the blackboard two large letters--M. S. That, no doubt, meant Masha
Shelestov.
"They've scented it out already, the rascals . . ." thought Nikitin.
"How is it they know everything?"
The second lesson was in the fifth class. And there two letters, M. S.,
were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of the classroom at
the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind him as though from a
theatre gallery:
"Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!"
His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were weighted
down with inertia. The boys, who were expecting every day to break up
before the examinations, did nothing, were restless, and so bored that
they got into mischief. Nikitin, too, was restless, did not notice their
pranks, and was continually going to the window. He could see the street
brilliantly lighted up with the sun; above the houses the blue limpid
sky, the birds, and far, far away, beyond the gardens and the houses,
vast indefinite distance, the forests in the blue haze, the smoke from a
passing train. . . .
Here two officers in white tunics, playing with their whips, passed in
the street in the shade of the acacias. Here a lot of Jews, with grey
beards, and caps on, drove past in a waggonette. . . . The governess
walked by with the director's granddaughter. Som ran by in the company
of two other dogs. . . . And then Varya, wearing a simple grey dress and
red stockings, carrying the "Vyestnik Evropi" in her hand, passed by.
She must have been to the town library. . . .
And it would be a long time before lessons were over at three o'clock!
And after school he could not go home nor to the Shelestovs', but must
go to give a lesson at Wolf's. This Wolf, a wealthy Jew who had turned
Lutheran, did not send his children to the high school, but had them
taught at home by the high-school masters, and paid five roubles a
lesson.
He was bored, bored, bored.
At three o'clock he went to Wolf's and spent there, as it seemed to him,
an eternity. He left there at five o'clock, and before seven he had to
be at the high school again to a meeting of the masters --to draw up the
plan for the viva voce examination of the fourth and sixth classes.
When late in the evening he left the high school and went to the
Shelestovs', his heart was beating and his face was flushed. A month
before, even a week before, he had, every time that he made up his mind
to speak to her, prepared a whole speech, with an introduction and a
conclusion. Now he had not one word ready; everything was in a muddle in
his head, and all he knew was that today he would certainly declare
himself, and that it was utterly impossible to wait any longer.
"I will ask her to come to the garden," he thought; "we'll walk about a
little and I'll speak."
There was not a soul in the hall; he went into the dining-room and then
into the drawing-room. . . . There was no one there either. He could
hear Varya arguing with some one upstairs and the clink of the
dressmaker's scissors in the nursery.
There was a little room in the house which had three names: the little
room, the passage room, and the dark room. There was a big cupboard in
it where they kept medicines, gunpowder, and their hunting gear. Leading
from this room to the first floor was a narrow wooden staircase where
cats were always asleep. There were two doors in it--one leading to the
nursery, one to the drawing-room. When Nikitin went into this room to go
upstairs, the door from the nursery opened and shut with such a bang
that it made the stairs and the cupboard tremble; Masha, in a dark
dress, ran in with a piece of blue material in her hand, and, not
noticing Nikitin, darted towards the stairs.
"Stay . . ." said Nikitin, stopping her. "Good-evening, Godefroi . . . .
Allow me. . . ."
He gasped, he did not know what to say; with one hand he held her hand
and with the other the blue material. And she was half frightened, half
surprised, and looked at him with big eyes.
"Allow me . . ." Nikitin went on, afraid she would go away. "There's
something I must say to you. . . . Only . . . it's inconvenient here. I
cannot, I am incapable. . . . Understand, Godefroi, I can't --that's all
. . . ."
The blue material slipped on to the floor, and Nikitin took Masha by the
other hand. She turned pale, moved her lips, then stepped back from
Nikitin and found herself in the corner between the wall and the
cupboard.
"On my honour, I assure you . . ." he said softly. "Masha, on my honour.
. . ."
She threw back her head and he kissed her lips, and that the kiss might
last longer he put his fingers to her cheeks; and it somehow happened
that he found himself in the corner between the cupboard and the wall,
and she put her arms round his neck and pressed her head against his
chin.
Then they both ran into the garden. The Shelestoys had a garden of nine
acres. There were about twenty old maples and lime-trees in it; there
was one fir-tree, and all the rest were fruit-trees: cherries, apples,
pears, horse-chestnuts, silvery olive-trees. . . . There were heaps of
flowers, too.
Nikitin and Masha ran along the avenues in silence, laughed, asked each
other from time to time disconnected questions which they did not
answer. A crescent moon was shining over the garden, and drowsy tulips
and irises were stretching up from the dark grass in its faint light, as
though entreating for words of love for them, too.
When Nikitin and Masha went back to the house, the officers and the
young ladies were already assembled and dancing the mazurka. Again
Polyansky led the grand chain through all the rooms, again after dancing
they played "fate." Before supper, when the visitors had gone into the
dining-room, Masha, left alone with Nikitin, pressed close to him and
said:
"You must speak to papa and Varya yourself; I am ashamed."
After supper he talked to the old father. After listening to him,
Shelestov thought a little and said:
"I am very grateful for the honour you do me and my daughter, but let me
speak to you as a friend. I will speak to you, not as a father, but as
one gentleman to another. Tell me, why do you want to be married so
young? Only peasants are married so young, and that, of course, is
loutishness. But why should you? Where's the satisfaction of putting on
the fetters at your age?"
"I am not young!" said Nikitin, offended. "I am in my twenty-seventh
year."
"Papa, the farrier has come!" cried Varya from the other room.
And the conversation broke off. Varya, Masha, and Polyansky saw Nikitin
home. When they reached his gate, Varya said:
"Why is it your mysterious Metropolit Metropolititch never shows himself
anywhere? He might come and see us."
The mysterious Ippolit Ippolititch was sitting on his bed, taking off
his trousers, when Nikitin went in to him.
"Don't go to bed, my dear fellow," said Nikitin breathlessly. "Stop a
minute; don't go to bed!"
Ippolit Ippolititch put on his trousers hurriedly and asked in a
flutter:
"What is it?"
"I am going to be married."
Nikitin sat down beside his companion, and looking at him wonderingly,
as though surprised at himself, said:
"Only fancy, I am going to be married! To Masha Shelestov! I made an
offer today."
"Well? She seems a good sort of girl. Only she is very young."
"Yes, she is young," sighed Nikitin, and shrugged his shoulders with a
careworn air. "Very, very young!"
"She was my pupil at the high school. I know her. She wasn't bad at
geography, but she was no good at history. And she was inattentive in
class, too."
Nikitin for some reason felt suddenly sorry for his companion, and
longed to say something kind and comforting to him.
"My dear fellow, why don't you get married?" he asked. "Why don't you
marry Varya, for instance? She is a splendid, first-rate girl! It's true
she is very fond of arguing, but a heart . . . what a heart! She was
just asking about you. Marry her, my dear boy! Eh?"
He knew perfectly well that Varya would not marry this dull, snub-nosed
man, but still persuaded him to marry her--why?
"Marriage is a serious step," said Ippolit Ippolititch after a moment's
thought. "One has to look at it all round and weigh things thoroughly;
it's not to be done rashly. Prudence is always a good thing, and
especially in marriage, when a man, ceasing to be a bachelor, begins a
new life."
And he talked of what every one has known for ages. Nikitin did not stay
to listen, said goodnight, and went to his own room. He undressed
quickly and quickly got into bed, in order to be able to think the
sooner of his happiness, of Masha, of the future; he smiled, then
suddenly recalled that he had not read Lessing.
"I must read him," he thought. "Though, after all, why should I? Bother
him!"
And exhausted by his happiness, he fell asleep at once and went on
smiling till the morning.
He dreamed of the thud of horses' hoofs on a wooden floor; he dreamed of
the black horse Count Nulin, then of the white Giant and its sister
Maika, being led out of the stable. II
"It was very crowded and noisy in the church, and once some one cried
out, and the head priest, who was marrying Masha and me, looked through
his spectacles at the crowd, and said severely: 'Don't move about the
church, and don't make a noise, but stand quietly and pray. You should
have the fear of God in your hearts.'
"My best men were two of my colleagues, and Masha's best men were
Captain Polyansky and Lieutenant Gernet. The bishop's choir sang
superbly. The sputtering of the candles, the brilliant light, the
gorgeous dresses, the officers, the numbers of gay, happy faces, and a
special ethereal look in Masha, everything together--the surroundings and
the words of the wedding prayers--moved me to tears and filled me with
triumph. I thought how my life had blossomed, how poetically it was
shaping itself! Two years ago I was still a student, I was living in
cheap furnished rooms, without money, without relations, and, as I
fancied then, with nothing to look forward to. Now I am a teacher in the
high school in one of the best provincial towns, with a secure income,
loved, spoiled. It is for my sake, I thought, this crowd is collected,
for my sake three candelabra have been lighted, the deacon is booming,
the choir is doing its best; and it's for my sake that this young
creature, whom I soon shall call my wife, is so young, so elegant, and
so joyful. I recalled our first meetings, our rides into the country, my
declaration of love and the weather, which, as though expressly, was so
exquisitely fine all the summer; and the happiness which at one time in
my old rooms seemed to me possible only in novels and stories, I was now
experiencing in reality--I was now, as it were, holding it in my hands.
"After the ceremony they all crowded in disorder round Masha and me,
expressed their genuine pleasure, congratulated us and wished us joy.
The brigadier-general, an old man of seventy, confined himself to
congratulating Masha, and said to her in a squeaky, aged voice, so loud
that it could be heard all over the church:
"'I hope that even after you are married you may remain the rose you are
now, my dear.'
"The officers, the director, and all the teachers smiled from
politeness, and I was conscious of an agreeable artificial smile on my
face, too. Dear Ippolit Ippolititch, the teacher of history and
geography, who always says what every one has heard before, pressed my
hand warmly and said with feeling:
"'Hitherto you have been unmarried and have lived alone, and now you are
married and no longer single.'
"From the church we went to a two-storied house which I am receiving as
part of the dowry. Besides that house Masha is bringing me twenty
thousand roubles, as well as a piece of waste land with a shanty on it,
where I am told there are numbers of hens and ducks which are not looked
after and are turning wild. When I got home from the church, I stretched
myself at full length on the low sofa in my new study and began to
smoke; I felt snug, cosy, and comfortable, as I never had in my life
before. And meanwhile the wedding party were shouting 'Hurrah!' while a
wretched band in the hall played flourishes and all sorts of trash.
Varya, Masha's sister, ran into the study with a wineglass in her hand,
and with a queer, strained expression, as though her mouth were full of
water; apparently she had meant to go on further, but she suddenly burst
out laughing and sobbing, and the wineglass crashed on the floor. We
took her by the arms and led her away.
"'Nobody can understand!' she muttered afterwards, lying on the old
nurse's bed in a back room. 'Nobody, nobody! My God, nobody can
understand!'
"But every one understood very well that she was four years older than
her sister Masha, and still unmarried, and that she was crying, not from
envy, but from the melancholy consciousness that her time was passing,
and perhaps had passed. When they danced the quadrille, she was back in
the drawing-room with a tear-stained and heavily powdered face, and I
saw Captain Polyansky holding a plate of ice before her while she ate it
with a spoon.
"It is past five o'clock in the morning. I took up my diary to describe
my complete and perfect happiness, and thought I would write a good six
pages, and read it tomorrow to Masha; but, strange to say, everything is
muddled in my head and as misty as a dream, and I can remember vividly
nothing but that episode with Varya, and I want to write, 'Poor Varya!'
I could go on sitting here and writing 'Poor Varya!' By the way, the
trees have begun rustling; it will rain. The crows are cawing, and my
Masha, who has just gone to sleep, has for some reason a sorrowful
face."
For a long while afterwards Nikitin did not write his diary. At the
beginning of August he had the school examinations, and after the
fifteenth the classes began. As a rule he set off for school before nine
in the morning, and before ten o'clock he was looking at his watch and
pining for his Masha and his new house. In the lower forms he would set
some boy to dictate, and while the boys were writing, would sit in the
window with his eyes shut, dreaming; whether he dreamed of the future or
recalled the past, everything seemed to him equally delightful, like a
fairy tale. In the senior classes they were reading aloud Gogol or
Pushkin's prose works, and that made him sleepy; people, trees, fields,
horses, rose before his imagination, and he would say with a sigh, as
though fascinated by the author:
"How lovely!"
At the midday recess Masha used to send him lunch in a snow-white
napkin, and he would eat it slowly, with pauses, to prolong the
enjoyment of it; and Ippolit Ippolititch, whose lunch as a rule
consisted of nothing but bread, looked at him with respect and envy, and
gave expression to some familiar fact, such as:
"Men cannot live without food."
After school Nikitin went straight to give his private lessons, and when
at last by six o'clock he got home, he felt excited and anxious, as
though he had been away for a year. He would run upstairs breathless,
find Masha, throw his arms round her, and kiss her and swear that he
loved her, that he could not live without her, declare that he had
missed her fearfully, and ask her in trepidation how she was and why she
looked so depressed. Then they would dine together. After dinner he
would lie on the sofa in his study and smoke, while she sat beside him
and talked in a low voice.
His happiest days now were Sundays and holidays, when he was at home
from morning till evening. On those days he took part in the naïve but
extraordinarily pleasant life which reminded him of a pastoral idyl. He
was never weary of watching how his sensible and practical Masha was
arranging her nest, and anxious to show that he was of some use in the
house, he would do something useless-- for instance, bring the chaise out
of the stable and look at it from every side. Masha had installed a
regular dairy with three cows, and in her cellar she had many jugs of
milk and pots of sour cream, and she kept it all for butter. Sometimes,
by way of a joke, Nikitin would ask her for a glass of milk, and she
would be quite upset because it was against her rules; but he would
laugh and throw his arms round her, saying:
"There, there; I was joking, my darling! I was joking!"
Or he would laugh at her strictness when, finding in the cupboard some
stale bit of cheese or sausage as hard as a stone, she would say
seriously:
"They will eat that in the kitchen."
He would observe that such a scrap was only fit for a mousetrap, and she
would reply warmly that men knew nothing about housekeeping, and that it
was just the same to the servants if you were to send down a
hundredweight of savouries to the kitchen. He would agree, and embrace
her enthusiastically. Everything that was just in what she said seemed
to him extraordinary and amazing; and what did not fit in with his
convictions seemed to him naïve and touching.
Sometimes he was in a philosophical mood, and he would begin to discuss
some abstract subject while she listened and looked at his face with
curiosity.
"I am immensely happy with you, my joy," he used to say, playing with
her fingers or plaiting and unplaiting her hair. "But I don't look upon
this happiness of mine as something that has come to me by chance, as
though it had dropped from heaven. This happiness is a perfectly
natural, consistent, logical consequence. I believe that man is the
creator of his own happiness, and now I am enjoying just what I have
myself created. Yes, I speak without false modesty: I have created this
happiness myself and I have a right to it. You know my past. My unhappy
childhood, without father or mother; my depressing youth, poverty--all
this was a struggle, all this was the path by which I made my way to
happiness. . . ."
In October the school sustained a heavy loss: Ippolit Ippolititch was
taken ill with erysipelas on the head and died. For two days before his
death he was unconscious and delirious, but even in his delirium he said
nothing that was not perfectly well known to every one.
"The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. . . . Horses eat oats and hay. .
. ."
There were no lessons at the high school on the day of his funeral. His
colleagues and pupils were the coffin-bearers, and the school choir sang
all the way to the grave the anthem "Holy God." Three priests, two
deacons, all his pupils and the staff of the boys' high school, and the
bishop's choir in their best kaftans, took part in the procession. And
passers-by who met the solemn procession, crossed themselves and said:
"God grant us all such a death."
Returning home from the cemetery much moved, Nikitin got out his diary
from the table and wrote:
"We have just consigned to the tomb Ippolit Ippolititch Ryzhitsky. Peace
to your ashes, modest worker! Masha, Varya, and all the women at the
funeral, wept from genuine feeling, perhaps because they knew this
uninteresting, humble man had never been loved by a woman. I wanted to
say a warm word at my colleague's grave, but I was warned that this
might displease the director, as he did not like our poor friend. I
believe that this is the first day since my marriage that my heart has
been heavy."
There was no other event of note in the scholastic year.
The winter was mild, with wet snow and no frost; on Epiphany Eve, for
instance, the wind howled all night as though it were autumn, and water
trickled off the roofs; and in the morning, at the ceremony of the
blessing of the water, the police allowed no one to go on the river,
because they said the ice was swelling up and looked dark. But in spite
of bad weather Nikitin's life was as happy as in summer. And, indeed, he
acquired another source of pleasure; he learned to play vint. Only one
thing troubled him, moved him to anger, and seemed to prevent him from
being perfectly happy: the cats and dogs which formed part of his wife's
dowry. The rooms, especially in the morning, always smelt like a
menagerie, and nothing could destroy the odour; the cats frequently
fought with the dogs. The spiteful beast Mushka was fed a dozen times a
day; she still refused to recognize Nikitin and growled at him: "Rrr . .
. nga-nga-nga!"
One night in Lent he was returning home from the club where he had been
playing cards. It was dark, raining, and muddy. Nikitin had an
unpleasant feeling at the bottom of his heart and could not account for
it. He did not know whether it was because he had lost twelve roubles at
cards, or whether because one of the players, when they were settling
up, had said that of course Nikitin had pots of money, with obvious
reference to his wife's portion. He did not regret the twelve roubles,
and there was nothing offensive in what had been said; but, still, there
was the unpleasant feeling. He did not even feel a desire to go home.