comfort from the light and the presence of Samoylenko. "You are my best,
my only friend, Alexandr Daviditch. . . . You are my only hope. For
God's sake, come to my rescue, whether you want to or not. I must get
away from here, come what may! . . . Lend me the money!"
"Oh, my God, my God! . . ." sighed Samoylenko, scratching himself. "I
was dropping asleep and I hear the whistle of the steamer, and now you .
. . Do you want much?"
"Three hundred roubles at least. I must leave her a hundred, and I need
two hundred for the journey. . . . I owe you about four hundred already,
but I will send it you all . . . all. . . ."
Samoylenko took hold of both his whiskers in one hand, and standing with
his legs wide apart, pondered.
"Yes . . ." he muttered, musing. "Three hundred. . . . Yes. . . . But I
haven't got so much. I shall have to borrow it from some one."
"Borrow it, for God's sake!" said Laevsky, seeing from Samoylenko's face
that he wanted to lend him the money and certainly would lend it.
"Borrow it, and I'll be sure to pay you back. I will send it from
Petersburg as soon as I get there. You can set your mind at rest about
that. I'll tell you what, Sasha," he said, growing more animated; "let
us have some wine."
"Yes . . . we can have some wine, too."
They both went into the dining-room.
"And how about Nadyezhda Fyodorovna?" asked Samoylenko, setting three
bottles and a plate of peaches on the table. "Surely she's not
remaining?"
"I will arrange it all, I will arrange it all," said Laevsky, feeling an
unexpected rush of joy. "I will send her the money afterwards and she
will join me. . . . Then we will define our relations. To your health,
friend."
"Wait a bit," said Samoylenko. "Drink this first. . . . This is from my
vineyard. This bottle is from Navaridze's vineyard and this one is from
Ahatulov's. . . . Try all three kinds and tell me candidly. . . . There
seems a little acidity about mine. Eh? Don't you taste it?"
"Yes. You have comforted me, Alexandr Daviditch. Thank you. . . . I feel
better."
"Is there any acidity?"
"Goodness only knows, I don't know. But you are a splendid, wonderful
man!"
Looking at his pale, excited, good-natured face, Samoylenko remembered
Von Koren's view that men like that ought to be destroyed, and Laevsky
seemed to him a weak, defenceless child, whom any one could injure and
destroy.
"And when you go, make it up with your mother," he said. "It's not
right."
"Yes, yes; I certainly shall."
They were silent for a while. When they had emptied the first bottle,
Samoylenko said:
"You ought to make it up with Von Koren too. You are both such splendid,
clever fellows, and you glare at each other like wolves."
"Yes, he's a fine, very intelligent fellow," Laevsky assented, ready now
to praise and forgive every one. "He's a remarkable man, but it's
impossible for me to get on with him. No! Our natures are too different.
I'm an indolent, weak, submissive nature. Perhaps in a good minute I
might hold out my hand to him, but he would turn away from me . . . with
contempt."
Laevsky took a sip of wine, walked from corner to corner and went on,
standing in the middle of the room:
"I understand Von Koren very well. His is a resolute, strong, despotic
nature. You have heard him continually talking of 'the expedition,' and
it's not mere talk. He wants the wilderness, the moonlit night: all
around in little tents, under the open sky, lie sleeping his sick and
hungry Cossacks, guides, porters, doctor, priest, all exhausted with
their weary marches, while only he is awake, sitting like Stanley on a
camp-stool, feeling himself the monarch of the desert and the master of
these men. He goes on and on and on, his men groan and die, one after
another, and he goes on and on, and in the end perishes himself, but
still is monarch and ruler of the desert, since the cross upon his tomb
can be seen by the caravans for thirty or forty miles over the desert. I
am sorry the man is not in the army. He would have made a splendid
military genius. He would not have hesitated to drown his cavalry in the
river and make a bridge out of dead bodies. And such hardihood is more
needed in war than any kind of fortification or strategy. Oh, I
understand him perfectly! Tell me: why is he wasting his substance here?
What does he want here?"
"He is studying the marine fauna."
"No, no, brother, no!" Laevsky sighed. "A scientific man who was on the
steamer told me the Black Sea was poor in animal life, and that in its
depths, thanks to the abundance of sulphuric hydrogen, organic life was
impossible. All the serious zoologists work at the biological station at
Naples or Villefranche. But Von Koren is independent and obstinate: he
works on the Black Sea because nobody else is working there; he is at
loggerheads with the university, does not care to know his comrades and
other scientific men because he is first of all a despot and only
secondly a zoologist. And you'll see he'll do something. He is already
dreaming that when he comes back from his expedition he will purify our
universities from intrigue and mediocrity, and will make the scientific
men mind their p's and q's. Despotism is just as strong in science as in
the army. And he is spending his second summer in this stinking little
town because he would rather be first in a village than second in a
town. Here he is a king and an eagle; he keeps all the inhabitants under
his thumb and oppresses them with his authority. He has appropriated
every one, he meddles in other people's affairs; everything is of use to
him, and every one is afraid of him. I am slipping out of his clutches,
he feels that and hates me. Hasn't he told you that I ought to be
destroyed or sent to hard labour?"
"Yes," laughed Samoylenko.
Laevsky laughed too, and drank some wine.
"His ideals are despotic too," he said, laughing, and biting a peach.
"Ordinary mortals think of their neighbour--me, you, man in fact--if they
work for the common weal. To Von Koren men are puppets and nonentities,
too trivial to be the object of his life. He works, will go for his
expedition and break his neck there, not for the sake of love for his
neighbour, but for the sake of such abstractions as humanity, future
generations, an ideal race of men. He exerts himself for the improvement
of the human race, and we are in his eyes only slaves, food for the
cannon, beasts of burden; some he would destroy or stow away in Siberia,
others he would break by discipline, would, like Araktcheev, force them
to get up and go to bed to the sound of the drum; would appoint eunuchs
to preserve our chastity and morality, would order them to fire at any
one who steps out of the circle of our narrow conservative morality; and
all this in the name of the improvement of the human race. . . . And
what is the human race? Illusion, mirage . . . despots have always been
illusionists. I understand him very well, brother. I appreciate him and
don't deny his importance; this world rests on men like him, and if the
world were left only to such men as us, for all our good-nature and good
intentions, we should make as great a mess of it as the flies have of
that picture. Yes."
Laevsky sat down beside Samoylenko, and said with genuine feeling: "I'm
a foolish, worthless, depraved man. The air I breathe, this wine, love,
life in fact--for all that, I have given nothing in exchange so far but
lying, idleness, and cowardice. Till now I have deceived myself and
other people; I have been miserable about it, and my misery was cheap
and common. I bow my back humbly before Von Koren's hatred because at
times I hate and despise myself."
Laevsky began again pacing from one end of the room to the other in
excitement, and said:
"I'm glad I see my faults clearly and am conscious of them. That will
help me to reform and become a different man. My dear fellow, if only
you knew how passionately, with what anguish, I long for such a change.
And I swear to you I'll be a man! I will! I don't know whether it is the
wine that is speaking in me, or whether it really is so, but it seems to
me that it is long since I have spent such pure and lucid moments as I
have just now with you."
"It's time to sleep, brother," said Samoylenko.
"Yes, yes. . . . Excuse me; I'll go directly."
Laevsky moved hurriedly about the furniture and windows, looking for his
cap.
"Thank you," he muttered, sighing. "Thank you. . . . Kind and friendly
words are better than charity. You have given me new life."
He found his cap, stopped, and looked guiltily at Samoylenko.
"Alexandr Daviditch," he said in an imploring voice.
"What is it?"
"Let me stay the night with you, my dear fellow!"
"Certainly. . . . Why not?"
Laevsky lay down on the sofa, and went on talking to the doctor for a
long time. X
Three days after the picnic, Marya Konstantinovna unexpectedly called on
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and without greeting her or taking off her hat,
seized her by both hands, pressed them to her breast and said in great
excitement:
"My dear, I am deeply touched and moved: our dear kind-hearted doctor
told my Nikodim Alexandritch yesterday that your husband was dead. Tell
me, my dear . . . tell me, is it true?"
"Yes, it's true; he is dead," answered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna.
"That is awful, awful, my dear! But there's no evil without some
compensation; your husband was no doubt a noble, wonderful, holy man,
and such are more needed in Heaven than on earth."
Every line and feature in Marya Konstantinovna's face began quivering as
though little needles were jumping up and down under her skin; she gave
an almond-oily smile and said, breathlessly, enthusiastically:
"And so you are free, my dear. You can hold your head high now, and look
people boldly in the face. Henceforth God and man will bless your union
with Ivan Andreitch. It's enchanting. I am trembling with joy, I can
find no words. My dear, I will give you away. . . . Nikodim Alexandritch
and I have been so fond of you, you will allow us to give our blessing
to your pure, lawful union. When, when do you think of being married?"
"I haven't thought of it," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, freeing her hands.
"That's impossible, my dear. You have thought of it, you have."
"Upon my word, I haven't," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, laughing. "What
should we be married for? I see no necessity for it. We'll go on living
as we have lived."
"What are you saying!" cried Marya Konstantinovna in horror. "For God's
sake, what are you saying!"
"Our getting married won't make things any better. On the contrary, it
will make them even worse. We shall lose our freedom."
"My dear, my dear, what are you saying!" exclaimed Marya Konstantinovna,
stepping back and flinging up her hands. "You are talking wildly! Think
what you are saying. You must settle down!"
"'Settle down.' How do you mean? I have not lived yet, and you tell me
to settle down."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna reflected that she really had not lived. She had
finished her studies in a boarding-school and had been married to a man
she did not love; then she had thrown in her lot with Laevsky, and had
spent all her time with him on this empty, desolate coast, always
expecting something better. Was that life?
"I ought to be married though," she thought, but remembering Kirilin and
Atchmianov she flushed and said:
"No, it's impossible. Even if Ivan Andreitch begged me to on his
knees--even then I would refuse."
Marya Konstantinovna sat on the sofa for a minute in silence, grave and
mournful, gazing fixedly into space; then she got up and said coldly:
"Good-bye, my dear! Forgive me for having troubled you. Though it's not
easy for me, it's my duty to tell you that from this day all is over
between us, and, in spite of my profound respect for Ivan Andreitch, the
door of my house is closed to you henceforth."
She uttered these words with great solemnity and was herself overwhelmed
by her solemn tone. Her face began quivering again; it assumed a soft
almond-oily expression. She held out both hands to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
who was overcome with alarm and confusion, and said in an imploring
voice:
"My dear, allow me if only for a moment to be a mother or an elder
sister to you! I will be as frank with you as a mother."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna felt in her bosom warmth, gladness, and pity for
herself, as though her own mother had really risen up and were standing
before her. She impulsively embraced Marya Konstantinovna and pressed
her face to her shoulder. Both of them shed tears. They sat down on the
sofa and for a few minutes sobbed without looking at one another or
being able to utter a word.
"My dear child," began Marya Konstantinovna, "I will tell you some harsh
truths, without sparing you."
"For God's sake, for God's sake, do!"
"Trust me, my dear. You remember of all the ladies here, I was the only
one to receive you. You horrified me from the very first day, but I had
not the heart to treat you with disdain like all the rest. I grieved
over dear, good Ivan Andreitch as though he were my son --a young man in
a strange place, inexperienced, weak, with no mother; and I was worried,
dreadfully worried. . . . My husband was opposed to our making his
acquaintance, but I talked him over . . . persuaded him. . . . We began
receiving Ivan Andreitch, and with him, of course, you. If we had not,
he would have been insulted. I have a daughter, a son. . . . You
understand the tender mind, the pure heart of childhood . . . 'who so
offendeth one of these little ones.' . . . I received you into my house
and trembled for my children. Oh, when you become a mother, you will
understand my fears. And every one was surprised at my receiving you,
excuse my saying so, as a respectable woman, and hinted to me . . .
well, of course, slanders, suppositions. . . . At the bottom of my heart
I blamed you, but you were unhappy, flighty, to be pitied, and my heart
was wrung with pity for you."
"But why, why?" asked Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, trembling all over. "What
harm have I done any one?"
"You are a terrible sinner. You broke the vow you made your husband at
the altar. You seduced a fine young man, who perhaps had he not met you
might have taken a lawful partner for life from a good family in his own
circle, and would have been like every one else now. You have ruined his
youth. Don't speak, don't speak, my dear! I never believe that man is to
blame for our sins. It is always the woman's fault. Men are frivolous in
domestic life; they are guided by their minds, and not by their hearts.
There's a great deal they don't understand; woman understands it all.
Everything depends on her. To her much is given and from her much will
be required. Oh, my dear, if she had been more foolish or weaker than
man on that side, God would not have entrusted her with the education of
boys and girls. And then, my dear, you entered on the path of vice,
forgetting all modesty; any other woman in your place would have hidden
herself from people, would have sat shut up at home, and would only have
been seen in the temple of God, pale, dressed all in black and weeping,
and every one would have said in genuine compassion: 'O Lord, this
erring angel is coming back again to Thee . . . .' But you, my dear,
have forgotten all discretion; have lived openly, extravagantly; have
seemed to be proud of your sin; you have been gay and laughing, and I,
looking at you, shuddered with horror, and have been afraid that thunder
from Heaven would strike our house while you were sitting with us. My
dear, don't speak, don't speak," cried Marya Konstantinovna, observing
that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna wanted to speak. "Trust me, I will not deceive
you, I will not hide one truth from the eyes of your soul. Listen to me,
my dear. . . . God marks great sinners, and you have been marked-out:
only think--your costumes have always been appalling."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, who had always had the highest opinion of her
costumes, left off crying and looked at her with surprise.
"Yes, appalling," Marya Konstantinovna went on. "Any one could judge of
your behaviour from the elaboration and gaudiness of your attire. People
laughed and shrugged their shoulders as they looked at you, and I
grieved, I grieved. . . . And forgive me, my dear; you are not nice in
your person! When we met in the bathing-place, you made me tremble. Your
outer clothing was decent enough, but your petticoat, your chemise. . .
. My dear, I blushed! Poor Ivan Andreitch! No one ever ties his cravat
properly, and from his linen and his boots, poor fellow! one can see he
has no one at home to look after him. And he is always hungry, my
darling, and of course, if there is no one at home to think of the
samovar and the coffee, one is forced to spend half one's salary at the
pavilion. And it's simply awful, awful in your home! No one else in the
town has flies, but there's no getting rid of them in your rooms: all
the plates and dishes are black with them. If you look at the windows
and the chairs, there's nothing but dust, dead flies, and glasses. . . .
What do you want glasses standing about for? And, my dear, the table's
not cleared till this time in the day. And one's ashamed to go into your
bedroom: underclothes flung about everywhere, india-rubber tubes hanging
on the walls, pails and basins standing about. . . . My dear! A husband
ought to know nothing, and his wife ought to be as neat as a little
angel in his presence. I wake up every morning before it is light, and
wash my face with cold water that my Nikodim Alexandritch may not see me
looking drowsy."
"That's all nonsense," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sobbed. "If only I were
happy, but I am so unhappy!"
"Yes, yes; you are very unhappy!" Marya Konstantinovna sighed, hardly
able to restrain herself from weeping. "And there's terrible grief in
store for you in the future! A solitary old age, ill-health; and then
you will have to answer at the dread judgment seat. . . It's awful,
awful. Now fate itself holds out to you a helping hand, and you madly
thrust it from you. Be married, make haste and be married!"
"Yes, we must, we must," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; "but it's
impossible!"
"Why?"
"It's impossible. Oh, if only you knew!"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna had an impulse to tell her about Kirilin, and how
the evening before she had met handsome young Atchmianov at the harbour,
and how the mad, ridiculous idea had occurred to her of cancelling her
debt for three hundred; it had amused her very much, and she returned
home late in the evening feeling that she had sold herself and was
irrevocably lost. She did not know herself how it had happened. And she
longed to swear to Marya Konstantinovna that she would certainly pay
that debt, but sobs and shame prevented her from speaking.
"I am going away," she said. "Ivan Andreitch may stay, but I am going."
"Where?"
"To Russia."
"But how will you live there? Why, you have nothing."
"I will do translation, or . . . or I will open a library . . . ."
"Don't let your fancy run away with you, my dear. You must have money
for a library. Well, I will leave you now, and you calm yourself and
think things over, and to-morrow come and see me, bright and happy. That
will be enchanting! Well, good-bye, my angel. Let me kiss you."
Marya Konstantinovna kissed Nadyezhda Fyodorovna on the forehead, made
the sign of the cross over her, and softly withdrew. It was getting
dark, and Olga lighted up in the kitchen. Still crying, Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. She began to
be very feverish. She undressed without getting up, crumpled up her
clothes at her feet, and curled herself up under the bedclothes. She was
thirsty, and there was no one to give her something to drink.
"I'll pay it back!" she said to herself, and it seemed to her in
delirium that she was sitting beside some sick woman, and recognised her
as herself. "I'll pay it back. It would be stupid to imagine that it was
for money I . . . I will go away and send him the money from Petersburg.
At first a hundred . . . then another hundred . . . and then the third
hundred. . . ."
It was late at night when Laevsky came in.
"At first a hundred . . ." Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said to him, "then
another hundred . . ."
"You ought to take some quinine," he said, and thought, "To-morrow is
Wednesday; the steamer goes and I am not going in it. So I shall have to
go on living here till Saturday."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna knelt up in bed.
"I didn't say anything just now, did I?" she asked, smiling and screwing
up her eyes at the light.
"No, nothing. We shall have to send for the doctor to-morrow morning. Go
to sleep."
He took his pillow and went to the door. Ever since he had finally made
up his mind to go away and leave Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, she had begun to
raise in him pity and a sense of guilt; he felt a little ashamed in her
presence, as though in the presence of a sick or old horse whom one has
decided to kill. He stopped in the doorway and looked round at her.
"I was out of humour at the picnic and said something rude to you.
Forgive me, for God's sake!"
Saying this, he went off to his study, lay down, and for a long while
could not get to sleep.
Next morning when Samoylenko, attired, as it was a holiday, in full-
dress uniform with epaulettes on his shoulders and decorations on his
breast, came out of the bedroom after feeling Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's
pulse and looking at her tongue, Laevsky, who was standing in the
doorway, asked him anxiously: "Well? Well?"
There was an expression of terror, of extreme uneasiness, and of hope on
his face.
"Don't worry yourself; there's nothing dangerous," said Samoylenko;
"it's the usual fever."
"I don't mean that." Laevsky frowned impatiently. "Have you got the
money?"
"My dear soul, forgive me," he whispered, looking round at the door and
overcome with confusion.
"For God's sake, forgive me! No one has anything to spare, and I've only
been able to collect by five- and by ten-rouble notes. . . . Only a
hundred and ten in all. To-day I'll speak to some one else. Have
patience."
"But Saturday is the latest date," whispered Laevsky, trembling with
impatience. "By all that's sacred, get it by Saturday! If I don't get
away by Saturday, nothing's any use, nothing! I can't understand how a
doctor can be without money!"
"Lord have mercy on us!" Samoylenko whispered rapidly and intensely, and
there was positively a breaking note in his throat. "I've been stripped
of everything; I am owed seven thousand, and I'm in debt all round. Is
it my fault?"
"Then you'll get it by Saturday? Yes?"
"I'll try."
"I implore you, my dear fellow! So that the money may be in my hands by
Friday morning!"
Samoylenko sat down and prescribed solution of quinine and kalii bromati
and tincture of rhubarb, tincturæ gentianæ, aquæ foeniculi --all in
one mixture, added some pink syrup to sweeten it, and went away. XI
"You look as though you were coming to arrest me," said Von Koren,
seeing Samoylenko coming in, in his full-dress uniform.
"I was passing by and thought: 'Suppose I go in and pay my respects to
zoology,'" said Samoylenko, sitting down at the big table, knocked
together by the zoologist himself out of plain boards. "Good-morning,
holy father," he said to the deacon, who was sitting in the window,
copying something. "I'll stay a minute and then run home to see about
dinner. It's time. . . . I'm not hindering you?"
"Not in the least," answered the zoologist, laying out over the table
slips of paper covered with small writing. "We are busy copying."
"Ah! . . . Oh, my goodness, my goodness! . . ." sighed Samoylenko. He
cautiously took up from the table a dusty book on which there was lying
a dead dried spider, and said: "Only fancy, though; some little green
beetle is going about its business, when suddenly a monster like this
swoops down upon it. I can fancy its terror."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Is poison given it to protect it from its enemies?"
"Yes, to protect it and enable it to attack."