anything, and that the estate yielded no profit. Indeed, there was no
systematic farming; they ploughed and sowed a little simply from habit,
and in reality did nothing and lived in idleness. Meanwhile there was a
running to and fro, reckoning and worrying all day long; the bustle in
the house began at five o'clock in the morning; there were continual
sounds of "Bring it," "Fetch it," "Make haste," and by the evening the
servants were utterly exhausted. Auntie Dasha changed her cooks and her
housemaids every week; sometimes she discharged them for immorality;
sometimes they went of their own accord, complaining that they were
worked to death. None of the village people would come to the house as
servants; Auntie Dasha had to hire them from a distance. There was only
one girl from the village living in the house, Alyona, and she stayed
because her whole family--old people and children--were living upon her
wages. This Alyona, a pale, rather stupid little thing, spent the whole
day turning out the rooms, waiting at table, heating the stoves, sewing,
washing; but it always seemed as though she were only pottering about,
treading heavily with her boots, and were nothing but a hindrance in the
house. In her terror that she might be dismissed and sent home, she
often dropped and broke the crockery, and they stopped the value of it
out of her wages, and then her mother and grandmother would come and bow
down at Auntie Dasha's feet.
Once a week or sometimes oftener visitors would arrive. Her aunt would
come to Vera and say:
"You should sit a little with the visitors, or else they'll think that
you are stuck up."
Vera would go in to the visitors and play vint with them for hours
together, or play the piano for the visitors to dance; her aunt, in high
spirits and breathless from dancing, would come up and whisper to her:
"Be nice to Marya Nikiforovna."
On the sixth of December, St. Nikolay's Day, a large party of about
thirty arrived all at once; they played vint until late at night, and
many of them stayed the night. In the morning they sat down to cards
again, then they had dinner, and when Vera went to her room after dinner
to rest from conversation and tobacco smoke, there were visitors there
too, and she almost wept in despair. And when they began to get ready to
go in the evening, she was so pleased they were going at last, that she
said:
"Do stay a little longer."
She felt exhausted by the visitors and constrained by their presence;
yet every day, as soon as it began to grow dark, something drew her out
of the house, and she went out to pay visits either at the works or at
some neighbours', and then there were cards, dancing, forfeits, suppers.
. . .The young people in the works or in the mines sometimes sang Little
Russian songs, and sang them very well. It made one sad to hear them
sing. Or they all gathered together in one room and talked in the dusk
of the mines, of the treasures that had once been buried in the steppes,
of Saur's Grave. . . . Later on, as they talked, a shout of "Help!"
sometimes reached them. It was a drunken man going home, or some one was
being robbed by the pit near by. Or the wind howled in the chimneys, the
shutters banged; then, soon afterwards, they would hear the uneasy
church bell, as the snow-storm began.
At all the evening parties, picnics, and dinners, Auntie Dasha was
invariably the most interesting woman and the doctor the most
interesting man. There was very little reading either at the works or at
the country-houses; they played only marches and polkas; and the young
people always argued hotly about things they did not understand, and the
effect was crude. The discussions were loud and heated, but, strange to
say, Vera had nowhere else met people so indifferent and careless as
these. They seemed to have no fatherland, no religion, no public
interests. When they talked of literature or debated some abstract
question, it could be seen from Dr. Neshtchapov's face that the question
had no interest for him whatever, and that for long, long years he had
read nothing and cared to read nothing. Serious and expressionless, like
a badly painted portrait, for ever in his white waistcoat, he was silent
and incomprehensible as before; but the ladies, young and old, thought
him interesting and were enthusiastic over his manners. They envied
Vera, who appeared to attract him very much. And Vera always came away
from the visits with a feeling of vexation, vowing inwardly to remain at
home; but the day passed, the evening came, and she hurried off to the
works again, and it was like that almost all the winter.
She ordered books and magazines, and used to read them in her room. And
she read at night, lying in bed. When the clock in the corridor struck
two or three, and her temples were beginning to ache from reading, she
sat up in bed and thought, "What am I to do? Where am I to go?"
Accursed, importunate question, to which there were a number of ready-
made answers, and in reality no answer at all.
Oh, how noble, how holy, how picturesque it must be to serve the people,
to alleviate their sufferings, to enlighten them! But she, Vera, did not
know the people. And how could she go to them? They were strange and
uninteresting to her; she could not endure the stuffy smell of the huts,
the pot-house oaths, the unwashed children, the women's talk of
illnesses. To walk over the snow-drifts, to feel cold, then to sit in a
stifling hut, to teach children she disliked--no, she would rather die!
And to teach the peasants' children while Auntie Dasha made money out of
the pot-houses and fined the peasants--it was too great a farce! What a
lot of talk there was of schools, of village libraries, of universal
education; but if all these engineers, these mine-owners and ladies of
her acquaintance, had not been hypocrites, and really had believed that
enlightenment was necessary, they would not have paid the schoolmasters
fifteen roubles a month as they did now, and would not have let them go
hungry. And the schools and the talk about ignorance--it was all only to
stifle the voice of conscience because they were ashamed to own fifteen
or thirty thousand acres and to be indifferent to the peasants' lot.
Here the ladies said about Dr. Neshtchapov that he was a kind man and
had built a school at the works. Yes, he had built a school out of the
old bricks at the works for some eight hundred roubles, and they sang
the prayer for "long life" to him when the building was opened, but
there was no chance of his giving up his shares, and it certainly never
entered his head that the peasants were human beings like himself, and
that they, too, needed university teaching, and not merely lessons in
these wretched schools.
And Vera felt full of anger against herself and every one else. She took
up a book again and tried to read it, but soon afterwards sat down and
thought again. To become a doctor? But to do that one must pass an
examination in Latin; besides, she had an invincible repugnance to
corpses and disease. It would be nice to become a mechanic, a judge, a
commander of a steamer, a scientist; to do something into which she
could put all her powers, physical and spiritual, and to be tired out
and sleep soundly at night; to give up her life to something that would
make her an interesting person, able to attract interesting people, to
love, to have a real family of her own. . . . But what was she to do?
How was she to begin?
One Sunday in Lent her aunt came into her room early in the morning to
fetch her umbrella. Vera was sitting up in bed clasping her head in her
hands, thinking.
"You ought to go to church, darling," said her aunt, "or people will
think you are not a believer."
Vera made no answer.
"I see you are dull, poor child," said Auntie Dasha, sinking on her
knees by the bedside; she adored Vera. "Tell me the truth, are you
bored?"
"Dreadfully."
"My beauty, my queen, I am your willing slave, I wish you nothing but
good and happiness. . . . Tell me, why don't you want to marry
Nestchapov? What more do you want, my child? You must forgive me,
darling; you can't pick and choose like this, we are not princes . . . .
Time is passing, you are not seventeen. . . . And I don't understand it!
He loves you, idolises you!"
"Oh, mercy!" said Vera with vexation. "How can I tell? He sits dumb and
never says a word."
"He's shy, darling. . . . He's afraid you'll refuse him!"
And when her aunt had gone away, Vera remained standing in the middle of
her room uncertain whether to dress or to go back to bed. The bed was
hateful; if one looked out of the window there were the bare trees, the
grey snow, the hateful jackdaws, the pigs that her grandfather would
eat. . . .
"Yes, after all, perhaps I'd better get married!" she thought. III
For two days Auntie Dasha went about with a tear-stained and heavily
powdered face, and at dinner she kept sighing and looking towards the
ikon. And it was impossible to make out what was the matter with her.
But at last she made up her mind, went in to Vera, and said in a casual
way:
"The fact is, child, we have to pay interest on the bank loan, and the
tenant hasn't paid his rent. Will you let me pay it out of the fifteen
thousand your papa left you?"
All day afterwards Auntie Dasha spent in making cherry jam in the
garden. Alyona, with her cheeks flushed with the heat, ran to and from
the garden to the house and back again to the cellar.
When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as though she
were performing a religious rite, and her short sleeves displayed her
strong, little, despotic hands and arms, and when the servants ran about
incessantly, bustling about the jam which they would never taste, there
was always a feeling of martyrdom in the air. . . .
The garden smelt of hot cherries. The sun had set, the charcoal stove
had been carried away, but the pleasant, sweetish smell still lingered
in the air. Vera sat on a bench in the garden and watched a new
labourer, a young soldier, not of the neighbourhood, who was, by her
express orders, making new paths. He was cutting the turf with a spade
and heaping it up on a barrow.
"Where were you serving?" Vera asked him.
"At Berdyansk."
"And where are you going now? Home?"
"No," answered the labourer. "I have no home."
"But where were you born and brought up?"
"In the province of Oryol. Till I went into the army I lived with my
mother, in my step-father's house; my mother was the head of the house,
and people looked up to her, and while she lived I was cared for. But
while I was in the army I got a letter telling me my mother was dead. .
. . And now I don't seem to care to go home. It's not my own father, so
it's not like my own home."
"Then your father is dead?"
"I don't know. I am illegitimate."
At that moment Auntie Dasha appeared at the window and said:
"Il ne faut pas parler aux gens . . . . Go into the kitchen, my good
man. You can tell your story there," she said to the soldier.
And then came as yesterday and every day supper, reading, a sleepless
night, and endless thinking about the same thing. At three o'clock the
sun rose; Alyona was already busy in the corridor, and Vera was not
asleep yet and was trying to read. She heard the creak of the barrow: it
was the new labourer at work in the garden. . . . Vera sat at the open
window with a book, dozed, and watched the soldier making the paths for
her, and that interested her. The paths were as even and level as a
leather strap, and it was pleasant to imagine what they would be like
when they were strewn with yellow sand.
She could see her aunt come out of the house soon after five o'clock, in
a pink wrapper and curl-papers. She stood on the steps for three minutes
without speaking, and then said to the soldier:
"Take your passport and go in peace. I can't have any one illegitimate
in my house."
An oppressive, angry feeling sank like a stone on Vera's heart. She was
indignant with her aunt, she hated her; she was so sick of her aunt that
her heart was full of misery and loathing. But what was she to do? To
stop her mouth? To be rude to her? But what would be the use? Suppose
she struggled with her, got rid of her, made her harmless, prevented her
grandfather from flourishing his stick-- what would be the use of it? It
would be like killing one mouse or one snake in the boundless steppe.
The vast expanse, the long winters, the monotony and dreariness of life,
instil a sense of helplessness; the position seems hopeless, and one
wants to do nothing--everything is useless.
Alyona came in, and bowing low to Vera, began carrying out the arm-
chairs to beat the dust out of them.
"You have chosen a time to clean up," said Vera with annoyance. "Go
away."
Alyona was overwhelmed, and in her terror could not understand what was
wanted of her. She began hurriedly tidying up the dressing-table.
"Go out of the room, I tell you," Vera shouted, turning cold; she had
never had such an oppressive feeling before. "Go away!"
Alyona uttered a sort of moan, like a bird, and dropped Vera's gold
watch on the carpet.
"Go away!" Vera shrieked in a voice not her own, leaping up and
trembling all over. "Send her away; she worries me to death!" she went
on, walking rapidly after Alyona down the passage, stamping her feet.
"Go away! Birch her! Beat her!" Then suddenly she came to herself, and
just as she was, unwashed, uncombed, in her dressing-gown and slippers,
she rushed out of the house. She ran to the familiar ravine and hid
herself there among the sloe-trees, so that she might see no one and be
seen by no one. Lying there motionless on the grass, she did not weep,
she was not horror-stricken, but gazing at the sky open-eyed, she
reflected coldly and clearly that something had happened which she could
never forget and for which she could never forgive herself all her life.
"No, I can't go on like this," she thought. "It's time to take myself in
hand, or there'll be no end to it. . . . I can't go on like this. . . ."
At midday Dr. Neshtchapov drove by the ravine on his way to the house.
She saw him and made up her mind that she would begin a new life, and
that she would make herself begin it, and this decision calmed her. And
following with her eyes the doctor's well-built figure, she said, as
though trying to soften the crudity of her decision:
"He's a nice man. . . . We shall get through life somehow."
She returned home. While she was dressing, Auntie Dasha came into the
room, and said:
"Alyona upset you, darling; I've sent her home to the village. Her
mother's given her a good beating and has come here, crying."
"Auntie," said Vera quickly, "I'm going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov. Only
talk to him yourself . . . I can't."
And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly about,
she made up her mind that when she was married she would look after the
house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school, that she would do all
the things that other women of her circle did. And this perpetual
dissatisfaction with herself and every one else, this series of crude
mistakes which stand up like a mountain before one whenever one looks
back upon one's past, she would accept as her real life to which she was
fated, and she would expect nothing better. . . . Of course there was
nothing better! Beautiful nature, dreams, music, told one story, but
reality another. Evidently truth and happiness existed somewhere outside
real life. . . . One must give up one's own life and merge oneself into
this luxuriant steppe, boundless and indifferent as eternity, with its
flowers, its ancient barrows, and its distant horizon, and then it would
be well with one. . . .
A month later Vera was living at the works.
EXPENSIVE LESSONS
FOR a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great
inconvenience. Vorotov became acutely conscious of it when, after taking
his degree, he began upon a piece of research work.
"It's awful," he said, breathing hard (although he was only twenty-six
he was fat, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath).
"It's awful! Without languages I'm like a bird without wings. I might
just as well give up the work."
And he made up his mind at all costs to overcome his innate laziness,
and to learn French and German; and began to look out for a teacher.
One winter noon, as Vorotov was sitting in his study at work, the
servant told him that a young lady was inquiring for him.
"Ask her in," said Vorotov.
And a young lady elaborately dressed in the last fashion walked in. She
introduced herself as a teacher of French, Alice Osipovna Enqu?e, and
told Vorotov that she had been sent to him by one of his friends.
"Delighted! Please sit down," said Vorotov, breathing hard and putting
his hand over the collar of his nightshirt (to breathe more freely he
always wore a nightshirt at work instead of a stiff linen one with
collar). "It was Pyotr Sergeitch sent you? Yes, yes . . . I asked him
about it. Delighted!"
As he talked to Mdlle. Enqu?e he looked at her shyly and with
curiosity. She was a genuine Frenchwoman, very elegant and still quite
young. Judging from her pale, languid face, her short curly hair, and
her unnaturally slim waist, she might have been eighteen; but looking at
her broad, well-developed shoulders, the elegant lines of her back and
her severe eyes, Vorotov thought that she was not less than three-and-
twenty and might be twenty-five; but then again he began to think she
was not more than eighteen. Her face looked as cold and business-like as
the face of a person who has come to speak about money. She did not once
smile or frown, and only once a look of perplexity flitted over her face
when she learnt that she was not required to teach children, but a stout
grown-up man.
"So, Alice Osipovna," said Vorotov, "we'll have a lesson every evening
from seven to eight. As regards your terms--a rouble a lesson--I've
nothing to say against that. By all means let it be a rouble. . . ."
And he asked her if she would not have some tea or coffee, whether it
was a fine day, and with a good-natured smile, stroking the baize of the
table, he inquired in a friendly voice who she was, where she had
studied, and what she lived on.
With a cold, business-like expression, Alice Osipovna answered that she
had completed her studies at a private school and had the diploma of a
private teacher, that her father had died lately of scarlet fever, that
her mother was alive and made artificial flowers; that she, Mdlle.
Enqu?e, taught in a private school till dinnertime, and after dinner
was busy till evening giving lessons in different good families.
She went away leaving behind her the faint fragrance of a woman's
clothes. For a long time afterwards Vorotov could not settle to work,
but, sitting at the table stroking its green baize surface, he
meditated.
"It's very pleasant to see a girl working to earn her own living," he
thought. "On the other hand, it's very unpleasant to think that poverty
should not spare such elegant and pretty girls as Alice Osipovna, and
that she, too, should have to struggle for existence. It's a sad thing!"
Having never seen virtuous Frenchwomen before, he reflected also that
this elegantly dressed young lady with her well-developed shoulders and
exaggeratedly small waist in all probability followed another calling as
well as giving French lessons.
The next evening when the clock pointed to five minutes to seven, Mdlle.
Enqu?e appeared, rosy from the frost. She opened Margot, which she had
brought with her, and without introduction began:
"French grammar has twenty-six letters. The first letter is called A,
the second B . . ."
"Excuse me," Vorotov interrupted, smiling. "I must warn you,
mademoiselle, that you must change your method a little in my case. You
see, I know Russian, Greek, and Latin well. . . . I've studied
comparative philology, and I think we might omit Margot and pass
straight to reading some author."
And he explained to the French girl how grown-up people learn languages.
"A friend of mine," he said, "wanting to learn modern languages, laid
before him the French, German, and Latin gospels, and read them side by
side, carefully analysing each word, and would you believe it, he
attained his object in less than a year. Let us do the same. We'll take
some author and read him."
The French girl looked at him in perplexity. Evidently the suggestion
seemed to her very naïve and ridiculous. If this strange proposal had
been made to her by a child, she would certainly have been angry and
have scolded it, but as he was a grown-up man and very stout and she
could not scold him, she only shrugged her shoulders hardly perceptibly
and said:
"As you please."
Vorotov rummaged in his bookcase and picked out a dog's-eared French
book.
"Will this do?"
"It's all the same," she said.
"In that case let us begin, and good luck to it! Let's begin with the
title . . . 'Mémoires.'"
"Reminiscences," Mdlle. Enqu?e translated.
With a good-natured smile, breathing hard, he spent a quarter of an hour
over the word "Mémoires," and as much over the word de, and this
wearied the young lady. She answered his questions languidly, grew
confused, and evidently did not understand her pupil well, and did not
attempt to understand him. Vorotov asked her questions, and at the same
time kept looking at her fair hair and thinking:
"Her hair isn't naturally curly; she curls it. It's a strange thing! She
works from morning to night, and yet she has time to curl her hair."
At eight o'clock precisely she got up, and saying coldly and dryly, "Au
revoir, monsieur," walked out of the study, leaving behind her the same
tender, delicate, disturbing fragrance. For a long time again her pupil
did nothing; he sat at the table meditating.
During the days that followed he became convinced that his teacher was a
charming, conscientious, and precise young lady, but that she was very
badly educated, and incapable of teaching grown-up people, and he made
up his mind not to waste his time, to get rid of her, and to engage
another teacher. When she came the seventh time he took out of his
pocket an envelope with seven roubles in it, and holding it in his hand,
became very confused and began:
"Excuse me, Alice Osipovna, but I ought to tell you . . . I'm under
painful necessity . . ."
Seeing the envelope, the French girl guessed what was meant, and for the
first time during their lessons her face quivered and her cold,
business-like expression vanished. She coloured a little, and dropping
her eyes, began nervously fingering her slender gold chain. And Vorotov,
seeing her perturbation, realised how much a rouble meant to her, and
how bitter it would be to her to lose what she was earning.
"I ought to tell you," he muttered, growing more and more confused, and
quavering inwardly; he hurriedly stuffed the envelope into his pocket
and went on: "Excuse me, I . . . I must leave you for ten minutes."
And trying to appear as though he had not in the least meant to get rid
of her, but only to ask her permission to leave her for a short time, he
went into the next room and sat there for ten minutes. And then he
returned more embarrassed than ever: it struck him that she might have
interpreted his brief absence in some way of her own, and he felt
awkward.
The lessons began again. Yorotov felt no interest in them. Realising
that he would gain nothing from the lessons, he gave the French girl
liberty to do as she liked, asking her nothing and not interrupting her.
She translated away as she pleased ten pages during a lesson, and he did
not listen, breathed hard, and having nothing better to do, gazed at her
curly head, or her soft white hands or her neck and sniffed the
fragrance of her clothes. He caught himself thinking very unsuitable
thoughts, and felt ashamed, or he was moved to tenderness, and then he
felt vexed and wounded that she was so cold and business-like with him,
and treated him as a pupil, never smiling and seeming afraid that he
might accidentally touch her. He kept wondering how to inspire her with
confidence and get to know her better, and to help her, to make her
understand how badly she taught, poor thing.
One day Mdlle. Enqu?e came to the lesson in a smart pink dress,
slightly décolleté, and surrounded by such a fragrance that she seemed
to be wrapped in a cloud, and, if one blew upon her, ready to fly away
into the air or melt away like smoke. She apologised and said she could
stay only half an hour for the lesson, as she was going straight from
the lesson to a dance.