into the hall, and from there into the drawing-room. There was nothing
in the huge gloomy room but a piano and a long row of old chairs
ornamented with bronze, on which no one ever sat. There was a candle
alight on the piano. From the drawing-room they went in silence into the
dining-room. This room, too, was large and comfortless; in the middle of
the room there was a round table with two leaves with six thick legs,
and only one candle. A clock in a large mahogany case like an ikon stand
pointed to half-past two.
Vlassitch opened the door into the next room and said:
"Zina, here is Petrusha come to see us!"
At once there was the sound of hurried footsteps and Zina came into the
dining-room. She was tall, plump, and very pale, and, just as when he
had seen her for the last time at home, she was wearing a black skirt
and a red blouse, with a large buckle on her belt. She flung one arm
round her brother and kissed him on the temple.
"What a storm!" she said. "Grigory went off somewhere and I was left
quite alone in the house."
She was not embarrassed, and looked at her brother as frankly and
candidly as at home; looking at her, Pyotr Mihalitch, too, lost his
embarrassment.
"But you are not afraid of storms," he said, sitting down at the table.
"No," she said, "but here the rooms are so big, the house is so old, and
when there is thunder it all rattles like a cupboard full of crockery.
It's a charming house altogether," she went on, sitting down opposite
her brother. "There's some pleasant memory in every room. In my room,
only fancy, Grigory's grandfather shot himself."
"In August we shall have the money to do up the lodge in the garden,"
said Vlassitch.
"For some reason when it thunders I think of that grandfather," Zina
went on. "And in this dining-room somebody was flogged to death."
"That's an actual fact," said Vlassitch, and he looked with wide-open
eyes at Pyotr Mihalitch. "Sometime in the forties this place was let to
a Frenchman called Olivier. The portrait of his daughter is lying in an
attic now--a very pretty girl. This Olivier, so my father told me,
despised Russians for their ignorance and treated them with cruel
derision. Thus, for instance, he insisted on the priest walking without
his hat for half a mile round his house, and on the church bells being
rung when the Olivier family drove through the village. The serfs and
altogether the humble of this world, of course, he treated with even
less ceremony. Once there came along this road one of the simple-hearted
sons of wandering Russia, somewhat after the style of Gogol's divinity
student, Homa Brut. He asked for a night's lodging, pleased the
bailiffs, and was given a job at the office of the estate. There are
many variations of the story. Some say the divinity student stirred up
the peasants, others that Olivier' s daughter fell in love with him. I
don't know which is true, only one fine evening Olivier called him in
here and cross-examined him, then ordered him to be beaten. Do you know,
he sat here at this table drinking claret while the stable-boys beat the
man. He must have tried to wring something out of him. Towards morning
the divinity student died of the torture and his body was hidden. They
say it was thrown into Koltovitch's pond. There was an inquiry, but the
Frenchman paid some thousands to some one in authority and went away to
Alsace. His lease was up just then, and so the matter ended."
"What scoundrels!" said Zina, shuddering.
"My father remembered Olivier and his daughter well. He used to say she
was remarkably beautiful and eccentric. I imagine the divinity student
had done both--stirred up the peasants and won the daughter's heart.
Perhaps he wasn't a divinity student at all, but some one travelling
incognito."
Zina grew thoughtful; the story of the divinity student and the
beautiful French girl had evidently carried her imagination far away. It
seemed to Pyotr Mihalitch that she had not changed in the least during
the last week, except that she was a little paler. She looked calm and
just as usual, as though she had come with her brother to visit
Vlassitch. But Pyotr Mihalitch felt that some change had taken place in
himself. Before, when she was living at home, he could have spoken to
her about anything, and now he did not feel equal to asking her the
simple question, "How do you like being here?" The question seemed
awkward and unnecessary. Probably the same change had taken place in
her. She was in no haste to turn the conversation to her mother, to her
home, to her relations with Vlassitch; she did not defend herself, she
did not say that free unions are better than marriages in the church;
she was not agitated, and calmly brooded over the story of Olivier. . .
. And why had they suddenly begun talking of Olivier?
"You are both of you wet with the rain," said Zina, and she smiled
joyfully; she was touched by this point of resemblance between her
brother and Vlassitch.
And Pyotr Mihalitch felt all the bitterness and horror of his position.
He thought of his deserted home, the closed piano, and Zina's bright
little room into which no one went now; he thought there were no prints
of little feet on the garden-paths, and that before tea no one went off,
laughing gaily, to bathe. What he had clung to more and more from his
childhood upwards, what he had loved thinking about when he used to sit
in the stuffy class-room or the lecture theatre--brightness, purity, and
joy, everything that filled the house with life and light, had gone
never to return, had vanished, and was mixed up with a coarse, clumsy
story of some battalion officer, a chivalrous lieutenant, a depraved
woman and a grandfather who had shot himself. . . . And to begin to talk
about his mother or to think that the past could ever return would mean
not understanding what was clear.
Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with tears and his hand began to tremble
as it lay on the table. Zina guessed what he was thinking about, and her
eyes, too, glistened and looked red.
"Grigory, come here," she said to Vlassitch.
They walked away to the window and began talking of something in a
whisper. From the way that Vlassitch stooped down to her and the way she
looked at him, Pyotr Mihalitch realised again that everything was
irreparably over, and that it was no use to talk of anything. Zina went
out of the room.
"Well, brother!" Vlassitch began, after a brief silence, rubbing his
hands and smiling. "I called our life happiness just now, but that was,
so to speak, poetical license. In reality, there has not been a sense of
happiness so far. Zina has been thinking all the time of you, of her
mother, and has been worrying; looking at her, I, too, felt worried.
Hers is a bold, free nature, but, you know, it's difficult when you're
not used to it, and she is young, too. The servants call her 'Miss'; it
seems a trifle, but it upsets her. There it is, brother."
Zina brought in a plateful of strawberries. She was followed by a little
maidservant, looking crushed and humble, who set a jug of milk on the
table and made a very low bow: she had something about her that was in
keeping with the old furniture, something petrified and dreary.
The sound of the rain had ceased. Pyotr Mihalitch ate strawberries while
Vlassitch and Zina looked at him in silence. The moment of the
inevitable but useless conversation was approaching, and all three felt
the burden of it. Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with tears again; he
pushed away his plate and said that he must be going home, or it would
be getting late, and perhaps it would rain again. The time had come when
common decency required Zina to speak of those at home and of her new
life.
"How are things at home?" she asked rapidly, and her pale face quivered.
"How is mother?"
"You know mother . . ." said Pyotr Mihalitch, not looking at her.
"Petrusha, you've thought a great deal about what has happened," she
said, taking hold of her brother's sleeve, and he knew how hard it was
for her to speak. "You've thought a great deal: tell me, can we reckon
on mother's accepting Grigory . . . and the whole position, one day?"
She stood close to her brother, face to face with him, and he was
astonished that she was so beautiful, and that he seemed not to have
noticed it before. And it seemed to him utterly absurd that his sister,
so like his mother, pampered, elegant, should be living with Vlassitch
and in Vlassitch's house, with the petrified servant, and the table with
six legs--in the house where a man had been flogged to death, and that
she was not going home with him, but was staying here to sleep.
"You know mother," he said, not answering her question. "I think you
ought to have . . . to do something, to ask her forgiveness or
something. . . ."
"But to ask her forgiveness would mean pretending we had done wrong. I'm
ready to tell a lie to comfort mother, but it won't lead anywhere. I
know mother. Well, what will be, must be!" said Zina, growing more
cheerful now that the most unpleasant had been said. "We'll wait for
five years, ten years, and be patient, and then God's will be done."
She took her brother's arm, and when she walked through the dark hall
she squeezed close to him. They went out on the steps. Pyotr Mihalitch
said good-bye, got on his horse, and set off at a walk; Zina and
Vlassitch walked a little way with him. It was still and warm, with a
delicious smell of hay; stars were twinkling brightly between the
clouds. Vlassitch's old garden, which had seen so many gloomy stories in
its time, lay slumbering in the darkness, and for some reason it was
mournful riding through it.
"Zina and I to-day after dinner spent some really exalted moments," said
Vlassitch. "I read aloud to her an excellent article on the question of
emigration. You must read it, brother! You really must. It's remarkable
for its lofty tone. I could not resist writing a letter to the editor to
be forwarded to the author. I wrote only a single line: 'I thank you and
warmly press your noble hand.'"
Pyotr Mihalitch was tempted to say, "Don't meddle in what does not
concern you," but he held his tongue.
Vlassitch walked by his right stirrup and Zina by the left; both seemed
to have forgotten that they had to go home. It was damp, and they had
almost reached Koltovitch's copse. Pyotr Mihalitch felt that they were
expecting something from him, though they hardly knew what it was, and
he felt unbearably sorry for them. Now as they walked by the horse with
submissive faces, lost in thought, he had a deep conviction that they
were unhappy, and could not be happy, and their love seemed to him a
melancholy, irreparable mistake. Pity and the sense that he could do
nothing to help them reduced him to that state of spiritual softening
when he was ready to make any sacrifice to get rid of the painful
feeling of sympathy.
"I'll come over sometimes for a night," he said.
But it sounded as though he were making a concession, and did not
satisfy him. When they stopped near Koltovitch's copse to say good-bye,
he bent down to Zina, touched her shoulder, and said:
"You are right, Zina! You have done well." To avoid saying more and
bursting into tears, he lashed his horse and galloped into the wood. As
he rode into the darkness, he looked round and saw Vlassitch and Zina
walking home along the road--he taking long strides, while she walked
with a hurried, jerky step beside him--talking eagerly about something.
"I am an old woman!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch. "I went to solve the
question and I have only made it more complicated--there it is!"
He was heavy at heart. When he got out of the copse he rode at a walk
and then stopped his horse near the pond. He wanted to sit and think
without moving. The moon was rising and was reflected in a streak of red
on the other side of the pond. There were low rumbles of thunder in the
distance. Pyotr Mihalitch looked steadily at the water and imagined his
sister's despair, her martyr-like pallor, the tearless eyes with which
she would conceal her humiliation from others. He imagined her with
child, imagined the death of their mother, her funeral, Zina's horror. .
. . The proud, superstitious old woman would be sure to die of grief.
Terrible pictures of the future rose before him on the background of
smooth, dark water, and among pale feminine figures he saw himself, a
weak, cowardly man with a guilty face.
A hundred paces off on the right bank of the pond, something dark was
standing motionless: was it a man or a tall post? Pyotr Mihalitch
thought of the divinity student who had been killed and thrown into the
pond.
"Olivier behaved inhumanly, but one way or another he did settle the
question, while I have settled nothing and have only made it worse," he
thought, gazing at the dark figure that looked like a ghost. "He said
and did what he thought right while I say and do what I don't think
right; and I don't know really what I do think. . . ."
He rode up to the dark figure: it was an old rotten post, the relic of
some shed.
From Koltovitch's copse and garden there came a strong fragrant scent of
lilies of the valley and honey-laden flowers. Pyotr Mihalitch rode along
the bank of the pond and looked mournfully into the water. And thinking
about his life, he came to the conclusion he had never said or acted
upon what he really thought, and other people had repaid him in the same
way. And so the whole of life seemed to him as dark as this water in
which the night sky was reflected and water-weeds grew in a tangle. And
it seemed to him that nothing could ever set it right.
AT HOME I
THE Don railway. A quiet, cheerless station, white and solitary in the
steppe, with its walls baking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and,
it seems, without a human being. The train goes on after leaving one
here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last. Outside
the station it is a desert, and there are no horses but one's own. One
gets into the carriage--which is so pleasant after the train--and is borne
along the road through the steppe, and by degrees there are unfolded
before one views such as one does not see near Moscow--immense, endless,
fascinating in their monotony. The steppe, the steppe, and nothing more;
in the distance an ancient barrow or a windmill; ox-waggons laden with
coal trail by. . . . Solitary birds fly low over the plain, and a drowsy
feeling comes with the monotonous beat of their wings. It is hot.
Another hour or so passes, and still the steppe, the steppe, and still
in the distance the barrow. The driver tells you something, some long
unnecessary tale, pointing into the distance with his whip. And
tranquillity takes possession of the soul; one is loth to think of the
past. . . .
A carriage with three horses had been sent to fetch Vera Ivanovna
Kardin. The driver put in her luggage and set the harness to rights.
"Everything just as it always has been," said Vera, looking about her.
"I was a little girl when I was here last, ten years ago. I remember old
Boris came to fetch me then. Is he still living, I wonder?"
The driver made no reply, but, like a Little Russian, looked at her
angrily and clambered on to the box.
It was a twenty-mile drive from the station, and Vera, too, abandoned
herself to the charm of the steppe, forgot the past, and thought only of
the wide expanse, of the freedom. Healthy, clever, beautiful, and
young--she was only three-and-twenty--she had hitherto lacked nothing in
her life but just this space and freedom.
The steppe, the steppe. . . . The horses trotted, the sun rose higher
and higher; and it seemed to Vera that never in her childhood had the
steppe been so rich, so luxuriant in June; the wild flowers were green,
yellow, lilac, white, and a fragrance rose from them and from the warmed
earth; and there were strange blue birds along the roadside. . . . Vera
had long got out of the habit of praying, but now, struggling with
drowsiness, she murmured:
"Lord, grant that I may be happy here."
And there was peace and sweetness in her soul, and she felt as though
she would have been glad to drive like that all her life, looking at the
steppe.
Suddenly there was a deep ravine overgrown with oak saplings and alder-
trees; there was a moist feeling in the air--there must have been a
spring at the bottom. On the near side, on the very edge of the ravine,
a covey of partridges rose noisily. Vera remembered that in old days
they used to go for evening walks to this ravine; so it must be near
home! And now she could actually see the poplars, the barn, black smoke
rising on one side--they were burning old straw. And there was Auntie
Dasha coming to meet her and waving her handkerchief; grandfather was on
the terrace. Oh dear, how happy she was!
"My darling, my darling!" cried her aunt, shrieking as though she were
in hysterics. "Our real mistress has come! You must understand you are
our mistress, you are our queen! Here everything is yours! My darling,
my beauty, I am not your aunt, but your willing slave!"
Vera had no relations but her aunt and her grandfather; her mother had
long been dead; her father, an engineer, had died three months before at
Kazan, on his way from Siberia. Her grandfather had a big grey beard. He
was stout, red-faced, and asthmatic, and walked leaning on a cane and
sticking his stomach out. Her aunt, a lady of forty-two, drawn in
tightly at the waist and fashionably dressed with sleeves high on the
shoulder, evidently tried to look young and was still anxious to be
charming; she walked with tiny steps with a wriggle of her spine.
"Will you love us?" she said, embracing Vera, "You are not proud?"
At her grandfather's wish there was a thanksgiving service, then they
spent a long while over dinner--and Vera's new life began. She was given
the best room. All the rugs in the house had been put in it, and a great
many flowers; and when at night she lay down in her snug, wide, very
soft bed and covered herself with a silk quilt that smelt of old clothes
long stored away, she laughed with pleasure. Auntie Dasha came in for a
minute to wish her good-night.
"Here you are home again, thank God," she said, sitting down on the bed.
"As you see, we get along very well and have everything we want. There's
only one thing: your grandfather is in a poor way! A terribly poor way!
He is short of breath and he has begun to lose his memory. And you
remember how strong, how vigorous, he used to be! There was no doing
anything with him. . . . In old days, if the servants didn't please him
or anything else went wrong, he would jump up at once and shout:
'Twenty-five strokes! The birch!' But now he has grown milder and you
never hear him. And besides, times are changed, my precious; one mayn't
beat them nowadays. Of course, they oughtn't to be beaten, but they need
looking after."
"And are they beaten now, auntie?" asked Vera.
"The steward beats them sometimes, but I never do, bless their hearts!
And your grandfather sometimes lifts his stick from old habit, but he
never beats them."
Auntie Dasha yawned and crossed herself over her mouth and her right
ear.
"It's not dull here?" Vera inquired.
"What shall I say? There are no landowners living here now, but there
have been works built near, darling, and there are lots of engineers,
doctors, and mine managers. Of course, we have theatricals and concerts,
but we play cards more than anything. They come to us, too. Dr.
Neshtchapov from the works comes to see us--such a handsome, interesting
man! He fell in love with your photograph. I made up my mind: he is
Verotchka's destiny, I thought. He's young, handsome, he has means--a
good match, in fact. And of course you're a match for any one. You're of
good family. The place is mortgaged, it's true, but it's in good order
and not neglected; there is my share in it, but it will all come to you;
I am your willing slave. And my brother, your father, left you fifteen
thousand roubles. . . . But I see you can't keep your eyes open. Sleep,
my child."
Next day Vera spent a long time walking round the house. The garden,
which was old and unattractive, lying inconveniently upon the slope, had
no paths, and was utterly neglected; probably the care of it was
regarded as an unnecessary item in the management. There were numbers of
grass-snakes. Hoopoes flew about under the trees calling "Oo-too-toot!"
as though they were trying to remind her of something. At the bottom of
the hill there was a river overgrown with tall reeds, and half a mile
beyond the river was the village. From the garden Vera went out into the
fields; looking into the distance, thinking of her new life in her own
home, she kept trying to grasp what was in store for her. The space, the
lovely peace of the steppe, told her that happiness was near at hand,
and perhaps was here already; thousands of people, in fact, would have
said: "What happiness to be young, healthy, well-educated, to be living
on one's own estate!" And at the same time the endless plain, all alike,
without one living soul, frightened her, and at moments it was clear to
her that its peaceful green vastness would swallow up her life and
reduce it to nothingness. She was very young, elegant, fond of life; she
had finished her studies at an aristocratic boarding-school, had learnt
three languages, had read a great deal, had travelled with her
father--and could all this have been meant to lead to nothing but
settling down in a remote country-house in the steppe, and wandering day
after day from the garden into the fields and from the fields into the
garden to while away the time, and then sitting at home listening to her
grandfather's breathing? But what could she do? Where could she go? She
could find no answer, and as she was returning home she doubted whether
she would be happy here, and thought that driving from the station was
far more interesting than living here.
Dr. Neshtchapov drove over from the works. He was a doctor, but three
years previously he had taken a share in the works, and had become one
of the partners; and now he no longer looked upon medicine as his chief
vocation, though he still practised. In appearance he was a pale, dark
man in a white waistcoat, with a good figure; but to guess what there
was in his heart and his brain was difficult. He kissed Auntie Dasha's
hand on greeting her, and was continually leaping up to set a chair or
give his seat to some one. He was very silent and grave all the while,
and, when he did speak, it was for some reason impossible to hear and
understand his first sentence, though he spoke correctly and not in a
low voice.
"You play the piano?" he asked Vera, and immediately leapt up, as she
had dropped her handkerchief.
He stayed from midday to midnight without speaking, and Vera found him
very unattractive. She thought that a white waistcoat in the country was
bad form, and his elaborate politeness, his manners, and his pale,
serious face with dark eyebrows, were mawkish; and it seemed to her that
he was perpetually silent, probably because he was stupid. When he had
gone her aunt said enthusiastically:
"Well? Isn't he charming?" II
Auntie Dasha looked after the estate. Tightly laced, with jingling
bracelets on her wrists, she went into the kitchen, the granary, the
cattle-yard, tripping along with tiny steps, wriggling her spine; and
whenever she talked to the steward or to the peasants, she used, for
some reason, to put on a pince-nez. Vera's grandfather always sat in the
same place, playing patience or dozing. He ate a very great deal at
dinner and supper; they gave him the dinner cooked to-day and what was
left from yesterday, and cold pie left from Sunday, and salt meat from
the servants' dinner, and he ate it all greedily. And every dinner left
on Vera such an impression, that when she saw afterwards a flock of
sheep driven by, or flour being brought from the mill, she thought,
"Grandfather will eat that." For the most part he was silent, absorbed
in eating or in patience; but it sometimes happened at dinner that at
the sight of Vera he would be touched and say tenderly:
"My only grandchild! Verotchka!"
And tears would glisten in his eyes. Or his face would turn suddenly
crimson, his neck would swell, he would look with fury at the servants,
and ask, tapping with his stick:
"Why haven't you brought the horse-radish?"
In winter he led a perfectly inactive existence; in summer he sometimes
drove out into the fields to look at the oats and the hay; and when he
came back he would flourish his stick and declare that everything was
neglected now that he was not there to look after it.
"Your grandfather is out of humour," Auntie Dasha would whisper. "But
it's nothing now to what it used to be in the old days: 'Twenty-five
strokes! The birch!'"