aspect, wearing an Inverness coat, a top-hat, and blue spectacles,
walked into the carriage. The individual looked round at the seats,
frowned, and went on further.
"Do you know who that is?" there came a timid whisper from the furthest
corner of the compartment.
"That is N. N., the famous Tula cardsharper who was had up in connection
with the Y. bank affair."
"There you are!" laughed the first-class passenger. "He knows a Tula
cardsharper, but ask him whether he knows Semiradsky, Tchaykovsky, or
Solovyov the philosopher--he'll shake his head.... It swinish!"
Three minutes passed in silence.
"Allow me in my turn to ask you a question," said the vis-a-vis timidly,
clearing his throat. "Do you know the name of Pushkov?"
"Pushkov? H'm! Pushkov.... No, I don't know it!"
"That is my name,..." said the vis-a-vis,, overcome with embarrassment.
"Then you don't know it? And yet I have been a professor at one of the
Russian universities for thirty-five years,... a member of the Academy
of Sciences,... have published more than one work...."
The first-class passenger and the vis-a-vis looked at each other and
burst out laughing.
A TRAGIC ACTOR
IT was the benefit night of Fenogenov, the tragic actor. They were
acting "Prince Serebryany." The tragedian himself was playing Vyazemsky;
Limonadov, the stage manager, was playing Morozov; Madame Beobahtov,
Elena. The performance was a grand success. The tragedian accomplished
wonders indeed. When he was carrying off Elena, he held her in one hand
above his head as he dashed across the stage. He shouted, hissed, banged
with his feet, tore his coat across his chest. When he refused to fight
Morozov, he trembled all over as nobody ever trembles in reality, and
gasped loudly. The theatre shook with applause. There were endless
calls. Fenogenov was presented with a silver cigarette-case and a
bouquet tied with long ribbons. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs and
urged their men to applaud, many shed tears.... But the one who was the
most enthusiastic and most excited was Masha, daughter of Sidoretsky the
police captain. She was sitting in the first row of the stalls beside
her papa; she was ecstatic and could not take her eyes off the stage
even between the acts. Her delicate little hands and feet were
quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her cheeks turned paler and
paler. And no wonder--she was at the theatre for the first time in her
life.
"How well they act! how splendidly!" she said to her papa the police
captain, every time the curtain fell. "How good Fenogenov is!"
And if her papa had been capable of reading faces he would have read on
his daughter's pale little countenance a rapture that was almost
anguish. She was overcome by the acting, by the play, by the
surroundings. When the regimental band began playing between the acts,
she closed her eyes, exhausted.
"Papa!" she said to the police captain during the last interval, "go
behind the scenes and ask them all to dinner to-morrow!"
The police captain went behind the scenes, praised them for all their
fine acting, and complimented Madame Beobahtov.
"Your lovely face demands a canvas, and I only wish I could wield the
brush!"
And with a scrape, he thereupon invited the company to dinner.
"All except the fair sex," he whispered. "I don't want the actresses,
for I have a daughter."
Next day the actors dined at the police captain's. Only three turned up,
the manager Limonadov, the tragedian Fenogenov, and the comic man
Vodolazov; the others sent excuses. The dinner was a dull affair.
Limonadov kept telling the police captain how much he respected him, and
how highly he thought of all persons in authority; Vodolazov mimicked
drunken merchants and Armenians; and Fenogenov (on his passport his name
was Knish), a tall, stout Little Russian with black eyes and frowning
brow, declaimed "At the portals of the great," and "To be or not to be."
Limonadov, with tears in his eyes, described his interview with the
former Governor, General Kanyutchin. The police captain listened, was
bored, and smiled affably. He was well satisfied, although Limonadov
smelt strongly of burnt feathers, and Fenogenov was wearing a hired
dress coat and boots trodden down at heel. They pleased his daughter and
made her lively, and that was enough for him. And Masha never took her
eyes off the actors. She had never before seen such clever, exceptional
people!
In the evening the police captain and Masha were at the theatre again. A
week later the actors dined at the police captain's again, and after
that came almost every day either to dinner or supper. Masha became more
and more devoted to the theatre, and went there every evening.
She fell in love with the tragedian. One fine morning, when the police
captain had gone to meet the bishop, Masha ran away with Limonadov's
company and married her hero on the way. After celebrating the wedding,
the actors composed a long and touching letter and sent it to the police
captain.
It was the work of their combined efforts.
"Bring out the motive, the motive!" Limonadov kept saying as he dictated
to the comic man. "Lay on the respect.... These official chaps like it.
Add something of a sort... to draw a tear."
The answer to this letter was most discomforting. The police captain
disowned his daughter for marrying, as he said, "a stupid, idle Little
Russian with no fixed home or occupation."
And the day after this answer was received Masha was writing to her
father.
"Papa, he beats me! Forgive us!"
He had beaten her, beaten her behind the scenes, in the presence of
Limonadov, the washerwoman, and two lighting men. He remembered how,
four days before the wedding, he was sitting in the London Tavern with
the whole company, and all were talking about Masha. The company were
advising him to "chance it," and Limonadov, with tears in his eyes
urged: "It would be stupid and irrational to let slip such an
opportunity! Why, for a sum like that one would go to Siberia, let alone
getting married! When you marry and have a theatre of your own, take me
into your company. I shan't be master then, you'll be master."
Fenogenov remembered it, and muttered with clenched fists:
"If he doesn't send money I'll smash her! I won't let myself be made a
fool of, damn my soul!"
At one provincial town the company tried to give Masha the slip, but
Masha found out, ran to the station, and got there when the second bell
had rung and the actors had all taken their seats.
"I've been shamefully treated by your father," said the tragedian; "all
is over between us!"
And though the carriage was full of people, she went down on her knees
and held out her hands, imploring him:
"I love you! Don't drive me away, Kondraty Ivanovitch," she besought
him. "I can't live without you!"
They listened to her entreaties, and after consulting together, took her
into the company as a "countess"--the name they used for the minor
actresses who usually came on to the stage in crowds or in dumb parts.
To begin with Masha used to play maid-servants and pages, but when
Madame Beobahtov, the flower of Limonadov's company, eloped, they made
her ingenue. She acted badly, lisped, and was nervous. She soon grew
used to it, however, and began to be liked by the audience. Fenogenov
was much displeased.
"To call her an actress!" he used to say. "She has no figure, no
deportment, nothing whatever but silliness."
In one provincial town the company acted Schiller's "Robbers." Fenogenov
played Franz, Masha, Amalie. The tragedian shouted and quivered. Masha
repeated her part like a well-learnt lesson, and the play would have
gone off as they generally did had it not been for a trifling mishap.
Everything went well up to the point where Franz declares his love for
Amalie and she seizes his sword. The tragedian shouted, hissed,
quivered, and squeezed Masha in his iron embrace. And Masha, instead of
repulsing him and crying "Hence!" trembled in his arms like a bird and
did not move,... she seemed petrified.
"Have pity on me!" she whispered in his ear. "Oh, have pity on me! I am
so miserable!"
"You don't know your part! Listen to the prompter!" hissed the
tragedian, and he thrust his sword into her hand.
After the performance, Limonadov and Fenogenov were sitting in the
ticket box-office engaged in conversation.
"Your wife does not learn her part, you are right there," the manager
was saying. "She doesn't know her line.... Every man has his own
line,... but she doesn't know hers...."
Fenogenov listened, sighed, and scowled and scowled.
Next morning, Masha was sitting in a little general shop writing:
"Papa, he beats me! Forgive us! Send us some money!"
A TRANSGRESSION
A COLLEGIATE assessor called Miguev stopped at a telegraph-post in the
course of his evening walk and heaved a deep sigh. A week before, as he
was returning home from his evening walk, he had been overtaken at that
very spot by his former housemaid, Agnia, who said to him viciously:
"Wait a bit! I'll cook you such a crab that'll teach you to ruin
innocent girls! I'll leave the baby at your door, and I'll have the law
of you, and I'll tell your wife, too...."
And she demanded that he should put five thousand roubles into the bank
in her name. Miguev remembered it, heaved a sigh, and once more
reproached himself with heartfelt repentance for the momentary
infatuation which had caused him so much worry and misery.
When he reached his bungalow, he sat down to rest on the doorstep. It
was just ten o'clock, and a bit of the moon peeped out from behind the
clouds. There was not a soul in the street nor near the bungalows;
elderly summer visitors were already going to bed, while young ones were
walking in the wood. Feeling in both his pockets for a match to light
his cigarette, Miguev brought his elbow into contact with something
soft. He looked idly at his right elbow, and his face was instantly
contorted by a look of as much horror as though he had seen a snake
beside him. On the step at the very door lay a bundle. Something oblong
in shape was wrapped up in something--judging by the feel of it, a wadded
quilt. One end of the bundle was a little open, and the collegiate
assessor, putting in his hand, felt something damp and warm. He leaped
on to his feet in horror, and looked about him like a criminal trying to
escape from his warders....
"She has left it!" he muttered wrathfully through his teeth, clenching
his fists. "Here it lies.... Here lies my transgression! O Lord!"
He was numb with terror, anger, and shame... What was he to do now? What
would his wife say if she found out? What would his colleagues at the
office say? His Excellency would be sure to dig him in the ribs, guffaw,
and say: "I congratulate you!... He-he-he! Though your beard is gray,
your heart is gay.... You are a rogue, Semyon Erastovitch!" The whole
colony of summer visitors would know his secret now, and probably the
respectable mothers of families would shut their doors to him. Such
incidents always get into the papers, and the humble name of Miguev
would be published all over Russia....
The middle window of the bungalow was open and he could distinctly hear
his wife, Anna Filippovna, laying the table for supper; in the yard
close to the gate Yermolay, the porter, was plaintively strumming on the
balalaika. The baby had only to wake up and begin to cry, and the secret
would be discovered. Miguev was conscious of an overwhelming desire to
make haste.
"Haste, haste!..." he muttered, "this minute, before anyone sees. I'll
carry it away and lay it on somebody's doorstep...."
Miguev took the bundle in one hand and quietly, with a deliberate step
to avoid awakening suspicion, went down the street....
"A wonderfully nasty position!" he reflected, trying to assume an air of
unconcern. "A collegiate assessor walking down the street with a baby!
Good heavens! if anyone sees me and understands the position, I am done
for.... I'd better put it on this doorstep.... No, stay, the windows are
open and perhaps someone is looking. Where shall I put it? I know! I'll
take it to the merchant Myelkin's.... Merchants are rich people and
tenderhearted; very likely they will say thank you and adopt it."
And Miguev made up his mind to take the baby to Myelkin's, although the
merchant's villa was in the furthest street, close to the river.
"If only it does not begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle,"
thought the collegiate assessor. "This is indeed a pleasant surprise!
Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a
portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings like anyone
else.... If by good luck the Myelkins adopt him, he may turn out
somebody.... Maybe he will become a professor, a great general, an
author.... Anything may happen! Now I am carrying him under my arm like
a bundle of rubbish, and perhaps in thirty or forty years I may not dare
to sit down in his presence...."
As Miguev was walking along a narrow, deserted alley, beside a long row
of fences, in the thick black shade of the lime trees, it suddenly
struck him that he was doing something very cruel and criminal.
"How mean it is really!" he thought. "So mean that one can't imagine
anything meaner.... Why are we shifting this poor baby from door to
door? It's not its fault that it's been born. It's done us no harm. We
are scoundrels.... We take our pleasure, and the innocent babies have to
pay the penalty. Only to think of all this wretched business! I've done
wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I lay it at the
Myelkins' door, they'll send it to the foundling hospital, and there it
will grow up among strangers, in mechanical routine,... no love, no
petting, no spoiling.... And then he'll be apprenticed to a
shoemaker,... he'll take to drink, will learn to use filthy language,
will go hungry. A shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of
good family.... He is my flesh and blood,... "
Miguev came out of the shade of the lime trees into the bright moonlight
of the open road, and opening the bundle, he looked at the baby.
"Asleep!" he murmured. "You little rascal! why, you've an aquiline nose
like your father's.... He sleeps and doesn't feel that it's his own
father looking at him!... It's a drama, my boy... Well, well, you must
forgive me. Forgive me, old boy.... It seems it's your fate...."
The collegiate assessor blinked and felt a spasm running down his
cheeks.... He wrapped up the baby, put him under his arm, and strode on.
All the way to the Myelkins' villa social questions were swarming in his
brain and conscience was gnawing in his bosom.
"If I were a decent, honest man," he thought, "I should damn everything,
go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my knees before her, and
say: 'Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture me, but we won't ruin an
innocent child. We have no children; let us adopt him!' She's a good
sort, she'd consent.... And then my child would be with me.... Ech!"
He reached the Myelkins' villa and stood still hesitating. He imagined
himself in the parlor at home, sitting reading the paper while a little
boy with an aquiline nose played with the tassels of his dressing gown.
At the same time visions forced themselves on his brain of his winking
colleagues, and of his Excellency digging him in the ribs and
guffawing.... Besides the pricking of his conscience, there was
something warm, sad, and tender in his heart....
Cautiously the collegiate assessor laid the baby on the verandah step
and waved his hand. Again he felt a spasm run over his face....
"Forgive me, old fellow! I am a scoundrel," he muttered. "Don't remember
evil against me."
He stepped back, but immediately cleared his throat resolutely and said:
"Oh, come what will! Damn it all! I'll take him, and let people say what
they like!"
Miguev took the baby and strode rapidly back.
"Let them say what they like," he thought. "I'll go at once, fall on my
knees, and say: 'Anna Filippovna!' Anna is a good sort, she'll
understand.... And we'll bring him up.... If it's a boy we'll call him
Vladimir, and if it's a girl we'll call her Anna! Anyway, it will be a
comfort in our old age."
And he did as he determined. Weeping and almost faint with shame and
terror, full of hope and vague rapture, he went into his bungalow, went
up to his wife, and fell on his knees before her.
"Anna Filippovna!" he said with a sob, and he laid the baby on the
floor. "Hear me before you punish.... I have sinned! This is my
child.... You remember Agnia? Well, it was the devil drove me to it.
..."
And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up without
waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as though he had
received a thrashing....
"I'll stay here outside till she calls me," he thought. "I'll give her
time to recover, and to think it over...."
The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him and
shrugged his shoulders. A minute later he passed him again, and again he
shrugged his shoulders.
"Here's a go! Did you ever!" he muttered grinning. "Aksinya, the washer-
woman, was here just now, Semyon Erastovitch. The silly woman put her
baby down on the steps here, and while she was indoors with me, someone
took and carried off the baby... Who'd have thought it!"
"What? What are you saying?" shouted Miguev at the top of his voice.
Yermolay, interpreting his master's wrath in his own fashion, scratched
his head and heaved a sigh.
"I am sorry, Semyon Erastovitch," he said, "but it's the summer
holidays,... one can't get on without... without a woman, I mean...."
And glancing at his master's eyes glaring at him with anger and
astonishment, he cleared his throat guiltily and went on:
"It's a sin, of course, but there--what is one to do?... You've forbidden
us to have strangers in the house, I know, but we've none of our own
now. When Agnia was here I had no women to see me, for I had one at
home; but now, you can see for yourself, sir,... one can't help having
strangers. In Agnia's time, of course, there was nothing irregular,
because..."
"Be off, you scoundrel!" Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he went
back into the room.
Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her tear-
stained eyes fixed on the baby....
"There! there!" Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips into
a smile. "It was a joke.... It's not my baby,... it's the washer-
woman's!... I... I was joking.... Take it to the porter."
SMALL FRY
|"HONORED Sir, Father and Benefactor!" a petty clerk called Nevyrazimov
was writing a rough copy of an Easter congratulatory letter. "I trust
that you may spend this Holy Day even as many more to come, in good
health and prosperity. And to your family also I..."
The lamp, in which the kerosene was getting low, was smoking and
smelling. A stray cockroach was running about the table in alarm near
Nevyrazimov's writing hand. Two rooms away from the office Paramon the
porter was for the third time cleaning his best boots, and with such
energy that the sound of the blacking-brush and of his expectorations
was audible in all the rooms.
"What else can I write to him, the rascal?" Nevyrazimov wondered,
raising his eyes to the smutty ceiling.
On the ceiling he saw a dark circle--the shadow of the lamp-shade. Below
it was the dusty cornice, and lower still the wall, which had once been
painted a bluish muddy color. And the office seemed to him such a place
of desolation that he felt sorry, not only for himself, but even for the
cockroach.
"When I am off duty I shall go away, but he'll be on duty here all his
cockroach-life," he thought, stretching. "I am bored! Shall I clean my
boots?"
And stretching once more, Nevyrazimov slouched lazily to the porter's
room. Paramon had finished cleaning his boots. Crossing himself with one
hand and holding the brush in the other, he was standing at the open
window-pane, listening.
"They're ringing," he whispered to Nevyrazimov, looking at him with eyes
intent and wide open. "Already!"
Nevyrazimov put his ear to the open pane and listened. The Easter chimes
floated into the room with a whiff of fresh spring air. The booming of
the bells mingled with the rumble of carriages, and above the chaos of
sounds rose the brisk tenor tones of the nearest church and a loud
shrill laugh.
"What a lot of people!" sighed Nevyrazimov, looking down into the
street, where shadows of men flitted one after another by the
illumination lamps. "They're all hurrying to the midnight service....
Our fellows have had a drink by now, you may be sure, and are strolling
about the town. What a lot of laughter, what a lot of talk! I'm the only
unlucky one, to have to sit here on such a day: And I have to do it
every year!"
"Well, nobody forces you to take the job. It's not your turn to be on
duty today, but Zastupov hired you to take his place. When other folks
are enjoying themselves you hire yourself out. It's greediness!"
"Devil a bit of it! Not much to be greedy over--two roubles is all he
gives me; a necktie as an extra.... It's poverty, not greediness. And it
would be jolly, now, you know, to be going with a party to the service,
and then to break the fast.... To drink and to have a bit of supper and
tumble off to sleep.... One sits down to the table, there's an Easter
cake and the samovar hissing, and some charming little thing beside
you.... You drink a glass and chuck her under the chin, and it's first-
rate.... You feel you're somebody.... Ech h-h!... I've made a mess of
things! Look at that hussy driving by in her carriage, while I have to
sit here and brood."
"We each have our lot in life, Ivan Danilitch. Please God, you'll be
promoted and drive about in your carriage one day."
"I? No, brother, not likely. I shan't get beyond a 'titular,' not if I
try till I burst. I'm not an educated man."
"Our General has no education either, but..."
"Well, but the General stole a hundred thousand before he got his
position. And he's got very different manners and deportment from me,
brother. With my manners and deportment one can't get far! And such a
scoundrelly surname, Nevyrazimov! It's a hopeless position, in fact. One
may go on as one is, or one may hang oneself..."
He moved away from the window and walked wearily about the rooms. The
din of the bells grew louder and louder.... There was no need to stand
by the window to hear it. And the better he could hear the bells and the
louder the roar of the carriages, the darker seemed the muddy walls and
the smutty cornice and the more the lamp smoked.
"Shall I hook it and leave the office?" thought Nevyrazimov.
But such a flight promised nothing worth having.... After coming out of
the office and wandering about the town, Nevyrazimov would have gone
home to his lodging, and in his lodging it was even grayer and more
depressing than in the office.... Even supposing he were to spend that
day pleasantly and with comfort, what had he beyond? Nothing but the
same gray walls, the same stop-gap duty and complimentary letters....
Nevyrazimov stood still in the middle of the office and sank into
thought. The yearning for a new, better life gnawed at his heart with an
intolerable ache. He had a passionate longing to find himself suddenly
in the street, to mingle with the living crowd, to take part in the
solemn festivity for the sake of which all those bells were clashing and
those carriages were rumbling. He longed for what he had known in
childhood--the family circle, the festive faces of his own people, the
white cloth, light, warmth...! He thought of the carriage in which the
lady had just driven by, the overcoat in which the head clerk was so
smart, the gold chain that adorned the secretary's chest.... He thought
of a warm bed, of the Stanislav order, of new boots, of a uniform
without holes in the elbows.... He thought of all those things because
he had none of them.
"Shall I steal?" he thought. "Even if stealing is an easy matter, hiding
is what's difficult. Men run away to America, they say, with what
they've stolen, but the devil knows where that blessed America is. One
must have education even to steal, it seems."
The bells died down. He heard only a distant noise of carriages and
Paramon's cough, while his depression and anger grew more and more
intense and unbearable. The clock in the office struck half-past twelve.
"Shall I write a secret report? Proshkin did, and he rose rapidly."