mother, and that corruption had not yet touched that "sanctity of
marriage" of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sofya Petrovna ran to the
kitchen and abused the cook for not having yet laid the table for Andrey
Ilyitch. She tried to picture her husband's hungry and exhausted
appearance, commiserated him aloud, and laid the table for him with her
own hands, which she had never done before. Then she found her daughter
Varya, picked her up in her arms and hugged her warmly; the child seemed
to her cold and heavy, but she was unwilling to acknowledge this to
herself, and she began explaining to the child how good, kind, and
honourable her papa was.
But when Andrey Ilyitch arrived soon afterwards she hardly greeted him.
The rush of false feeling had already passed off without proving
anything to her, only irritating and exasperating her by its falsity.
She was sitting by the window, feeling miserable and cross. It is only
by being in trouble that people can understand how far from easy it is
to be the master of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya Petrovna said
afterwards that there was a tangle within her which it was as difficult
to unravel as to count a flock of sparrows rapidly flying by. From the
fact that she was not overjoyed to see her husband, that she did not
like his manner at dinner, she concluded all of a sudden that she was
beginning to hate her husband.
Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and exhaustion, fell upon the
sausage while waiting for the soup to be brought in, and ate it
greedily, munching noisily and moving his temples.
"My goodness!" thought Sofya Petrovna. "I love and respect him, but . .
. why does he munch so repulsively?"
The disorder in her thoughts was no less than the disorder in her
feelings. Like all persons inexperienced in combating unpleasant ideas,
Madame Lubyantsev did her utmost not to think of her trouble, and the
harder she tried the more vividly Ilyin, the sand on his knees, the
fluffy clouds, the train, stood out in her imagination.
"And why did I go there this afternoon like a fool?" she thought,
tormenting herself. "And am I really so weak that I cannot depend upon
myself?"
Fear magnifies danger. By the time Andrey Ilyitch was finishing the last
course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her husband everything
and to flee from danger!
"I've something serious to say to you, Andrey," she began after dinner
while her husband was taking off his coat and boots to lie down for a
nap.
"Well?"
"Let us leave this place!"
"H'm! . . . Where shall we go? It's too soon to go back to town."
"No; for a tour or something of that sort.
"For a tour . . ." repeated the notary, stretching. "I dream of that
myself, but where are we to get the money, and to whom am I to leave the
office?"
And thinking a little he added:
"Of course, you must be bored. Go by yourself if you like."
Sofya Petrovna agreed, but at once reflected that Ilyin would be
delighted with the opportunity, and would go with her in the same train,
in the same compartment. . . . She thought and looked at her husband,
now satisfied but still languid. For some reason her eyes rested on his
feet--miniature, almost feminine feet, clad in striped socks; there was a
thread standing out at the tip of each sock.
Behind the blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane
and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened
to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-à-vis Ilyin
would sit, day and night, never taking his eyes off her, wrathful at his
own weakness and pale with spiritual agony. He would call himself an
immoral schoolboy, would abuse her, tear his hair, but when darkness
came on and the passengers were asleep or got out at a station, he would
seize the opportunity to kneel before her and embrace her knees as he
had at the seat in the wood. . . .
She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible and not
want the impossible."
"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya Petrovna.
Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out of
danger. Little by little her ideas grew clearer; her spirits rose and
she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that however much she
thought, however much she dreamed, she would go away. While her husband
was asleep, the evening gradually came on. She sat in the drawing-room
and played the piano. The greater liveliness out of doors, the sound of
music, but above all the thought that she was a sensible person, that
she had surmounted her difficulties, completely restored her spirits.
Other women, her appeased conscience told her, would probably have been
carried off their feet in her position, and would have lost their
balance, while she had almost died of shame, had been miserable, and was
now running out of the danger which perhaps did not exist! She was so
touched by her own virtue and determination that she even looked at
herself two or three times in the looking-glass.
When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the dining-room
to play cards; the ladies remained in the drawing-room and the verandah.
The last to arrive was Ilyin. He was gloomy, morose, and looked ill. He
sat down in the corner of the sofa and did not move the whole evening.
Usually good-humoured and talkative, this time he remained silent,
frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had to answer some question,
he gave a forced smile with his upper lip only, and answered jerkily and
irritably. Four or five times he made some jest, but his jests sounded
harsh and cutting. It seemed to Sofya Petrovna that he was on the verge
of hysterics. Only now, sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for
the first time that this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his
soul was sick, and that he could find no rest. For her sake he was
wasting the best days of his youth and his career, spending the last of
his money on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and,
worst of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself.
From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.
She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and if at
that moment she had gone up to him and said to him, "No," there would
have been a force in her voice hard to disobey. But she did not go up to
him and did not speak--indeed, never thought of doing so. The pettiness
and egoism of youth had never been more patent in her than that evening.
She realized that Ilyin was unhappy, and that he was sitting on the sofa
as though he were on hot coals; she felt sorry for him, but at the same
time the presence of a man who loved her to distraction, filled her soul
with triumph and a sense of her own power. She felt her youth, her
beauty, and her unassailable virtue, and, since she had decided to go
away, gave herself full licence for that evening. She flirted, laughed
incessantly, sang with peculiar feeling and gusto. Everything delighted
and amused her. She was amused at the memory of what had happened at the
seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked on. She was amused by
her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the pin in his cravat, which
she had never noticed before. There was a red snake with diamond eyes on
the pin; this snake struck her as so amusing that she could have kissed
it on the spot.
Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as though half
intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which dealt with wasted
hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery of another's grief. "'And
old age comes nearer and nearer' . . ." she sang. And what was old age
to her?
"It seems as though there is something going wrong with me," she thought
from time to time through her laughter and singing.
The party broke up at twelve o'clock. Ilyin was the last to leave. Sofya
Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him to the bottom step
of the verandah. She wanted to tell him that she was going away with her
husband, and to watch the effect this news would produce on him.
The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough for Sofya
Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of his overcoat and
with the awning of the verandah. She could see, too, how white Ilyin
was, and how he twisted his upper lip in the effort to smile.
"Sonia, Sonitchka . . . my darling woman!" he muttered, preventing her
from speaking. "My dear! my sweet!"
In a rush of tenderness, with tears in his voice, he showered caressing
words upon her, that grew tenderer and tenderer, and even called her
"thou," as though she were his wife or mistress. Quite unexpectedly he
put one arm round her waist and with the other hand took hold of her
elbow.
"My precious! my delight!" he whispered, kissing the nape of her neck;
"be sincere; come to me at once!"
She slipped out of his arms and raised her head to give vent to her
indignation and anger, but the indignation did not come off, and all her
vaunted virtue and chastity was only sufficient to enable her to utter
the phrase used by all ordinary women on such occasions:
"You must be mad."
"Come, let us go," Ilyin continued. "I felt just now, as well as at the
seat in the wood, that you are as helpless as I am, Sonia . . . . You
are in the same plight! You love me and are fruitlessly trying to
appease your conscience. . . ."
Seeing that she was moving away, he caught her by her lace cuff and said
rapidly:
"If not today, then tomorrow you will have to give in! Why, then, this
waste of time? My precious, darling Sonia, the sentence is passed; why
put off the execution? Why deceive yourself?"
Sofya Petrovna tore herself from him and darted in at the door.
Returning to the drawing-room, she mechanically shut the piano, looked
for a long time at the music-stand, and sat down. She could not stand up
nor think. All that was left of her excitement and recklessness was a
fearful weakness, apathy, and dreariness. Her conscience whispered to
her that she had behaved badly, foolishly, that evening, like some
madcap girl--that she had just been embraced on the verandah, and still
had an uneasy feeling in her waist and her elbow. There was not a soul
in the drawing-room; there was only one candle burning. Madame
Lubyantsev sat on the round stool before the piano, motionless, as
though expecting something. And as though taking advantage of the
darkness and her extreme lassitude, an oppressive, overpowering desire
began to assail her. Like a boa-constrictor it gripped her limbs and her
soul, and grew stronger every second, and no longer menaced her as it
had done, but stood clear before her in all its nakedness.
She sat for half an hour without stirring, not restraining herself from
thinking of Ilyin, then she got up languidly and dragged herself to her
bedroom. Andrey Ilyitch was already in bed. She sat down by the open
window and gave herself up to desire. There was no "tangle" now in her
head; all her thoughts and feelings were bent with one accord upon a
single aim. She tried to struggle against it, but instantly gave it up.
. . . She understood now how strong and relentless was the foe. Strength
and fortitude were needed to combat him, and her birth, her education,
and her life had given her nothing to fall back upon.
"Immoral wretch! Low creature!" she nagged at herself for her weakness.
"So that's what you're like!"
Her outraged sense of propriety was moved to such indignation by this
weakness that she lavished upon herself every term of abuse she knew,
and told herself many offensive and humiliating truths. So, for
instance, she told herself that she never had been moral, that she had
not come to grief before simply because she had had no opportunity, that
her inward conflict during that day had all been a farce. . . .
"And even if I have struggled," she thought, "what sort of struggle was
it? Even the woman who sells herself struggles before she brings herself
to it, and yet she sells herself. A fine struggle! Like milk, I've
turned in a day! In one day!"
She convicted herself of being tempted, not by feeling, not by Ilyin
personally, but by sensations which awaited her . . . an idle lady,
having her fling in the summer holidays, like so many!
"'Like an unfledged bird when the mother has been slain,'" sang a husky
tenor outside the window.
"If I am to go, it's time," thought Sofya Petrovna. Her heart suddenly
began beating violently.
"Andrey!" she almost shrieked. "Listen! we . . . we are going? Yes?"
"Yes, I've told you already: you go alone."
"But listen," she began. "If you don't go with me, you are in danger of
losing me. I believe I am . . . in love already."
"With whom?" asked Andrey Ilyitch.
"It can't make any difference to you who it is!" cried Sofya Petrovna.
Andrey Ilyitch sat up with his feet out of bed and looked wonderingly at
his wife's dark figure.
"It's a fancy!" he yawned.
He did not believe her, but yet he was frightened. After thinking a
little and asking his wife several unimportant questions, he delivered
himself of his opinions on the family, on infidelity . . . spoke
listlessly for about ten minutes and got into bed again. His moralizing
produced no effect. There are a great many opinions in the world, and a
good half of them are held by people who have never been in trouble!
In spite of the late hour, summer visitors were still walking outside.
Sofya Petrovna put on a light cape, stood a little, thought a little. .
. . She still had resolution enough to say to her sleeping husband:
"Are you asleep? I am going for a walk. . . . Will you come with me?"
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out. . . . It was
fresh and windy. She was conscious neither of the wind nor the darkness,
but went on and on. . . . An overmastering force drove her on, and it
seemed as though, if she had stopped, it would have pushed her in the
back.
"Immoral creature!" she muttered mechanically. "Low wretch!"
She was breathless, hot with shame, did not feel her legs under her, but
what drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or fear.
A TRIFLE FROM LIFE
A WELL-FED, red-cheeked young man called Nikolay Ilyitch Belyaev, of
thirty-two, who was an owner of house property in Petersburg, and a
devotee of the race-course, went one evening to see Olga Ivanovna Irnin,
with whom he was living, or, to use his own expression, was dragging out
a long, wearisome romance. And, indeed, the first interesting and
enthusiastic pages of this romance had long been perused; now the pages
dragged on, and still dragged on, without presenting anything new or of
interest.
Not finding Olga Ivanovna at home, my hero lay down on the lounge chair
and proceeded to wait for her in the drawing-room.
"Good-evening, Nikolay Ilyitch!" he heard a child's voice. "Mother will
be here directly. She has gone with Sonia to the dressmaker's."
Olga Ivanovna's son, Alyosha--a boy of eight who looked graceful and very
well cared for, who was dressed like a picture, in a black velvet jacket
and long black stockings--was lying on the sofa in the same room. He was
lying on a satin cushion and, evidently imitating an acrobat he had
lately seen at the circus, stuck up in the air first one leg and then
the other. When his elegant legs were exhausted, he brought his arms
into play or jumped up impulsively and went on all fours, trying to
stand with his legs in the air. All this he was doing with the utmost
gravity, gasping and groaning painfully as though he regretted that God
had given him such a restless body.
"Ah, good-evening, my boy," said Belyaev. "It's you! I did not notice
you. Is your mother well?"
Alyosha, taking hold of the tip of his left toe with his right hand and
falling into the most unnatural attitude, turned over, jumped up, and
peeped at Belyaev from behind the big fluffy lampshade.
"What shall I say?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "In reality
mother's never well. You see, she is a woman, and women, Nikolay
Ilyitch, have always something the matter with them."
Belyaev, having nothing better to do, began watching Alyosha's face. He
had never before during the whole of his intimacy with Olga Ivanovna
paid any attention to the boy, and had completely ignored his existence;
the boy had been before his eyes, but he had not cared to think why he
was there and what part he was playing.
In the twilight of the evening, Alyosha's face, with his white forehead
and black, unblinking eyes, unexpectedly reminded Belyaev of Olga
Ivanovna as she had been during the first pages of their romance. And he
felt disposed to be friendly to the boy.
"Come here, insect," he said; "let me have a closer look at you."
The boy jumped off the sofa and skipped up to Belyaev.
"Well," began Nikolay Ilyitch, putting a hand on the boy's thin
shoulder. "How are you getting on?"
"How shall I say! We used to get on a great deal better."
"Why?"
"It's very simple. Sonia and I used only to learn music and reading, and
now they give us French poetry to learn. Have you been shaved lately?"
"Yes."
"Yes, I see you have. Your beard is shorter. Let me touch it. . . . Does
that hurt?"
"No."
"Why is it that if you pull one hair it hurts, but if you pull a lot at
once it doesn't hurt a bit? Ha, ha! And, you know, it's a pity you don't
have whiskers. Here ought to be shaved . . . but here at the sides the
hair ought to be left. . . ."
The boy nestled up to Belyaev and began playing with his watch-chain.
"When I go to the high-school," he said, "mother is going to buy me a
watch. I shall ask her to buy me a watch-chain like this. . . . Wh-at a
lo-ket! Father's got a locket like that, only yours has little bars on
it and his has letters. . . . There's mother's portrait in the middle of
his. Father has a different sort of chain now, not made with rings, but
like ribbon. . . ."
"How do you know? Do you see your father?"
"I? M'm . . . no . . . I . . ."
Alyosha blushed, and in great confusion, feeling caught in a lie, began
zealously scratching the locket with his nail. . . . Belyaev looked
steadily into his face and asked:
"Do you see your father?"
"N-no!"
"Come, speak frankly, on your honour. . . . I see from your face you are
telling a fib. Once you've let a thing slip out it's no good wriggling
about it. Tell me, do you see him? Come, as a friend."
Alyosha hesitated.
"You won't tell mother?" he said.
"As though I should!"
"On your honour?"
"On my honour."
"Do you swear?"
"Ah, you provoking boy! What do you take me for?"
Alyosha looked round him, then with wide-open eyes, whispered to him:
"Only, for goodness' sake, don't tell mother. . . . Don't tell any one
at all, for it is a secret. I hope to goodness mother won't find out, or
we should all catch it--Sonia, and I, and Pelagea . . . . Well, listen. .
. Sonia and I see father every Tuesday and Friday. When Pelagea takes us
for a walk before dinner we go to the Apfel Restaurant, and there is
father waiting for us. . . . He is always sitting in a room apart, where
you know there's a marble table and an ash-tray in the shape of a goose
without a back. . . ."
"What do you do there?"
"Nothing! First we say how-do-you-do, then we all sit round the table,
and father treats us with coffee and pies. You know Sonia eats the meat-
pies, but I can't endure meat-pies! I like the pies made of cabbage and
eggs. We eat such a lot that we have to try hard to eat as much as we
can at dinner, for fear mother should notice."
"What do you talk about?"
"With father? About anything. He kisses us, he hugs us, tells us all
sorts of amusing jokes. Do you know, he says when we are grown up he is
going to take us to live with him. Sonia does not want to go, but I
agree. Of course, I should miss mother; but, then, I should write her
letters! It's a queer idea, but we could come and visit her on
holidays--couldn't we? Father says, too, that he will buy me a horse.
He's an awfully kind man! I can't understand why mother does not ask him
to come and live with us, and why she forbids us to see him. You know he
loves mother very much. He is always asking us how she is and what she
is doing. When she was ill he clutched his head like this, and . . . and
kept running about. He always tells us to be obedient and respectful to
her. Listen. Is it true that we are unfortunate?"
"H'm! . . . Why?"
"That's what father says. 'You are unhappy children,' he says. It's
strange to hear him, really. 'You are unhappy,' he says, 'I am unhappy,
and mother's unhappy. You must pray to God,' he says; 'for yourselves
and for her.'"
Alyosha let his eyes rest on a stuffed bird and sank into thought.
"So . . ." growled Belyaev. "So that's how you are going on. You arrange
meetings at restaurants. And mother does not know?"
"No-o. . . . How should she know? Pelagea would not tell her for
anything, you know. The day before yesterday he gave us some pears. As
sweet as jam! I ate two."
"H'm! . . . Well, and I say . . Listen. Did father say anything about
me?"
"About you? What shall I say?"
Alyosha looked searchingly into Belyaev's face and shrugged his
shoulders.
"He didn't say anything particular."
"For instance, what did he say?"
"You won't be offended?"
"What next? Why, does he abuse me?"
"He doesn't abuse you, but you know he is angry with you. He says
mother's unhappy owing to you . . . and that you have ruined mother. You
know he is so queer! I explain to him that you are kind, that you never
scold mother; but he only shakes his head."
"So he says I have ruined her?"
"Yes; you mustn't be offended, Nikolay Ilyitch."
Belyaev got up, stood still a moment, and walked up and down the
drawing-room.
"That's strange and . . . ridiculous!" he muttered, shrugging his
shoulders and smiling sarcastically. "He's entirely to blame, and I have
ruined her, eh? An innocent lamb, I must say. So he told you I ruined
your mother?"
"Yes, but . . . you said you would not be offended, you know."
"I am not offended, and . . . and it's not your business. Why, it's . .
. why, it's positively ridiculous! I have been thrust into it like a
chicken in the broth, and now it seems I'm to blame!"
A ring was heard. The boy sprang up from his place and ran out. A minute
later a lady came into the room with a little girl; this was Olga
Ivanovna, Alyosha's mother. Alyosha followed them in, skipping and
jumping, humming aloud and waving his hands. Belyaev nodded, and went on
walking up and down.
"Of course, whose fault is it if not mine?" he muttered with a snort.
"He is right! He is an injured husband."
"What are you talking about?" asked Olga Ivanovna.
"What about? . . . Why, just listen to the tales your lawful spouse is
spreading now! It appears that I am a scoundrel and a villain, that I
have ruined you and the children. All of you are unhappy, and I am the
only happy one! Wonderfully, wonderfully happy!"
"I don't understand, Nikolay. What's the matter?"
"Why, listen to this young gentleman!" said Belyaev, pointing to
Alyosha.
Alyosha flushed crimson, then turned pale, and his whole face began
working with terror.
"Nikolay Ilyitch," he said in a loud whisper. "Sh-sh!"
Olga Ivanovna looked in surprise at Alyosha, then at Belyaev, then at
Alyosha again.
"Just ask him," Belyaev went on. "Your Pelagea, like a regular fool,
takes them about to restaurants and arranges meetings with their papa.
But that's not the point: the point is that their dear papa is a victim,
while I'm a wretch who has broken up both your lives. . ."
"Nikolay Ilyitch," moaned Alyosha. "Why, you promised on your word of
honour!"
"Oh, get away!" said Belyaev, waving him off. "This is more important
than any word of honour. It's the hypocrisy revolts me, the lying! . .
."
"I don't understand it," said Olga Ivanovna, and tears glistened in her
eyes. "Tell me, Alyosha," she turned to her son. "Do you see your
father?"
Alyosha did not hear her; he was looking with horror at Belyaev.
"It's impossible," said his mother; "I will go and question Pelagea."
Olga Ivanovna went out.
"I say, you promised on your word of honour!" said Alyosha, trembling
all over.