after every such outburst we felt irresistibly drawn to each other; we
would meet and let off all the dynamite that had accumulated in our
souls. And now after Ivan Ivanitch had gone away I had a strong impulse
to go to my wife. I wanted to go downstairs and tell her that her
behaviour at tea had been an insult to me, that she was cruel, petty,
and that her plebeian mind had never risen to a comprehension of what I
was saying and of what I was doing. I walked about the rooms a long time
thinking of what I would say to her and trying to guess what she would
say to me.
That evening, after Ivan Ivanitch went away, I felt in a peculiarly
irritating form the uneasiness which had worried me of late. I could not
sit down or sit still, but kept walking about in the rooms that were
lighted up and keeping near to the one in which Marya Gerasimovna was
sitting. I had a feeling very much like that which I had on the North
Sea during a storm when every one thought that our ship, which had no
freight nor ballast, would overturn. And that evening I understood that
my uneasiness was not disappointment, as I had supposed, but a different
feeling, though what exactly I could not say, and that irritated me more
than ever.
"I will go to her," I decided. "I can think of a pretext. I shall say
that I want to see Ivan Ivanitch; that will be all."
I went downstairs and walked without haste over the carpeted floor
through the vestibule and the hall. Ivan Ivanitch was sitting on the
sofa in the drawing-room; he was drinking tea again and muttering
something. My wife was standing opposite to him and holding on to the
back of a chair. There was a gentle, sweet, and docile expression on her
face, such as one sees on the faces of people listening to crazy saints
or holy men when a peculiar hidden significance is imagined in their
vague words and mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a
nun's exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her low-
pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture, with her
birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of geranium, reminded me
of the rooms of some abbess or pious old lady.
I went into the drawing-room. My wife showed neither surprise nor
confusion, and looked at me calmly and serenely, as though she had known
I should come.
"I beg your pardon," I said softly. "I am so glad you have not gone yet,
Ivan Ivanitch. I forgot to ask you, do you know the Christian name of
the president of our Zemstvo?"
"Andrey Stanislavovitch. Yes...."
"Merci," I said, took out my notebook, and wrote it down.
There followed a silence during which my wife and Ivan Ivanitch were
probably waiting for me to go; my wife did not believe that I wanted to
know the president's name--I saw that from her eyes.
"Well, I must be going, my beauty," muttered Ivan Ivanitch, after I had
walked once or twice across the drawing-room and sat down by the
fireplace.
"No," said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand. "Stay another
quarter of an hour.... Please do!"
Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a witness.
"Oh, well, I'll wait a quarter of an hour, too," I thought.
"Why, it's snowing!" I said, getting up and looking out of window. "A
good fall of snow! Ivan Ivanitch"--I went on walking about the room--"I do
regret not being a sportsman. I can imagine what a pleasure it must be
coursing hares or hunting wolves in snow like this!"
My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the corner
of her eyes without turning her head. She looked as though she thought I
had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.
"Ivan Ivanitch, do take me out hunting some day," I went on softly. "I
shall be very, very grateful to you."
At that moment a visitor came into the room. He was a tall, thick-set
gentleman whom I did not know, with a bald head, a big fair beard, and
little eyes. From his baggy, crumpled clothes and his manners I took him
to be a parish clerk or a teacher, but my wife introduced him to me as
Dr. Sobol.
"Very, very glad to make your acquaintance," said the doctor in a loud
tenor voice, shaking hands with me warmly, with a naive smile. "Very
glad!"
He sat down at the table, took a glass of tea, and said in a loud voice:
"Do you happen to have a drop of rum or brandy? Have pity on me, Olya,
and look in the cupboard; I am frozen," he said, addressing the maid.
I sat down by the fire again, looked on, listened, and from time to time
put in a word in the general conversation. My wife smiled graciously to
the visitors and kept a sharp lookout on me, as though I were a wild
beast. She was oppressed by my presence, and this aroused in me
jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to wound her. "Wife, these
snug rooms, the place by the fire," I thought, "are mine, have been mine
for years, but some crazy Ivan Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason
more right to them than I. Now I see my wife, not out of window, but
close at hand, in ordinary home surroundings that I feel the want of now
I am growing older, and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as
years ago in my childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse. And I
feel that now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and
loftier than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her,
to stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do
it."
"Monsieur Marten," I said, addressing the doctor, "how many hospitals
have we in the district?"
"Sobol," my wife corrected.
"Two," answered Sobol.
"And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?"
"Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you," said my wife.
She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room. I got up and
followed her.
"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this minute," she said.
"You are ill-bred," I said to her.
"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this very minute," she repeated
sharply, and she looked into my face with hatred.
She was standing so near that if I had stooped a little my beard would
have touched her face.
"What is the matter?" I asked. "What harm have I done all at once?"
Her chin quivered, she hastily wiped her eyes, and, with a cursory
glance at the looking-glass, whispered:
"The old story is beginning all over again. Of course you won't go away.
Well, do as you like. I'll go away myself, and you stay."
We returned to the drawing-room, she with a resolute face, while I
shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile. There were some more
visitors--an elderly lady and a young man in spectacles. Without greeting
the new arrivals or taking leave of the others, I went off to my own
rooms.
After what had happened at tea and then again downstairs, it became
clear to me that our "family happiness," which we had begun to forget
about in the course of the last two years, was through some absurd and
trivial reason beginning all over again, and that neither I nor my wife
could now stop ourselves; and that next day or the day after, the
outburst of hatred would, as I knew by experience of past years, be
followed by something revolting which would upset the whole order of our
lives. "So it seems that during these two years we have grown no wiser,
colder, or calmer," I thought as I began walking about the rooms. "So
there will again be tears, outcries, curses, packing up, going abroad,
then the continual sickly fear that she will disgrace me with some
coxcomb out there, Italian or Russian, refusing a passport, letters,
utter loneliness, missing her, and in five years old age, grey hairs." I
walked about, imagining what was really impossible--her, grown handsomer,
stouter, embracing a man I did not know. By now convinced that that
would certainly happen, "'Why," I asked myself, "Why, in one of our long
past quarrels, had not I given her a divorce, or why had she not at that
time left me altogether? I should not have had this yearning for her
now, this hatred, this anxiety; and I should have lived out my life
quietly, working and not worrying about anything."
A carriage with two lamps drove into the yard, then a big sledge with
three horses. My wife was evidently having a party.
Till midnight everything was quiet downstairs and I heard nothing, but
at midnight there was a sound of moving chairs and a clatter of
crockery. So there was supper. Then the chairs moved again, and through
the floor I heard a noise; they seemed to be shouting hurrah. Marya
Gerasimovna was already asleep and I was quite alone in the whole upper
storey; the portraits of my forefathers, cruel, insignificant people,
looked at me from the walls of the drawing-room, and the reflection of
my lamp in the window winked unpleasantly. And with a feeling of
jealousy and envy for what was going on downstairs, I listened and
thought: "I am master here; if I like, I can in a moment turn out all
that fine crew." But I knew that all that was nonsense, that I could not
turn out any one, and the word "master" had no meaning. One may think
oneself master, married, rich, a kammer-junker, as much as one likes,
and at the same time not know what it means.
After supper some one downstairs began singing in a tenor voice.
"Why, nothing special has happened," I tried to persuade myself. "Why am
I so upset? I won't go downstairs tomorrow, that's all; and that will be
the end of our quarrel."
At a quarter past one I went to bed.
"Have the visitors downstairs gone?" I asked Alexey as he was undressing
me.
"Yes, sir, they've gone."
"And why were they shouting hurrah?"
"Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a thousand
bushels of flour and a thousand roubles. And the old lady--I don't know
her name--promised to set up a soup kitchen on her estate to feed a
hundred and fifty people. Thank God... Natalya Gavrilovna has been
pleased to arrange that all the gentry should assemble every Friday."
"To assemble here, downstairs?"
"Yes, sir. Before supper they read a list: since August up to today
Natalya Gavrilovna has collected eight thousand roubles, besides corn.
Thank God.... What I think is that if our mistress does take trouble for
the salvation of her soul, she will soon collect a lot. There are plenty
of rich people here."
Dismissing Alexey, I put out the light and drew the bedclothes over my
head.
"After all, why am I so troubled?" I thought. "What force draws me to
the starving peasants like a butterfly to a flame? I don't know them, I
don't understand them; I have never seen them and I don't like them. Why
this uneasiness?"
I suddenly crossed myself under the quilt.
"But what a woman she is!" I said to myself, thinking of my wife.
"There's a regular committee held in the house without my knowing. Why
this secrecy? Why this conspiracy? What have I done to them? Ivan
Ivanitch is right--I must go away."
Next morning I woke up firmly resolved to go away. The events of the
previous day--the conversation at tea, my wife, Sobol, the supper, my
apprehensions--worried me, and I felt glad to think of getting away from
the surroundings which reminded me of all that. While I was drinking my
coffee the bailiff gave me a long report on various matters. The most
agreeable item he saved for the last.
"The thieves who stole our rye have been found," he announced with a
smile. "The magistrate arrested three peasants at Pestrovo yesterday."
"Go away!" I shouted at him; and a propos of nothing, I picked up the
cake-basket and flung it on the floor.
IV
After lunch I rubbed my hands, and thought I must go to my wife and tell
her that I was going away. Why? Who cared? Nobody cares, I answered, but
why shouldn't I tell her, especially as it would give her nothing but
pleasure? Besides, to go away after our yesterday's quarrel without
saying a word would not be quite tactful: she might think that I was
frightened of her, and perhaps the thought that she has driven me out of
my house may weigh upon her. It would be just as well, too, to tell her
that I subscribe five thousand, and to give her some advice about the
organization, and to warn her that her inexperience in such a
complicated and responsible matter might lead to most lamentable
results. In short, I wanted to see my wife, and while I thought of
various pretexts for going to her, I had a firm conviction in my heart
that I should do so.
It was still light when I went in to her, and the lamps had not yet been
lighted. She was sitting in her study, which led from the drawing-room
to her bedroom, and, bending low over the table, was writing something
quickly. Seeing me, she started, got up from the table, and remained
standing in an attitude such as to screen her papers from me.
"I beg your pardon, I have only come for a minute," I said, and, I don't
know why, I was overcome with embarrassment. "I have learnt by chance
that you are organizing relief for the famine, Natalie."
"Yes, I am. But that's my business," she answered.
"Yes, it is your business," I said softly. "I am glad of it, for it just
fits in with my intentions. I beg your permission to take part in it."
"Forgive me, I cannot let you do it," she said in response, and looked
away.
"Why not, Natalie?" I said quietly. "Why not? I, too, am well fed and I,
too, want to help the hungry."
"I don't know what it has to do with you," she said with a contemptuous
smile, shrugging her shoulders. "Nobody asks you."
"Nobody asks you, either, and yet you have got up a regular committee in
my house," I said.
"I am asked, but you can have my word for it no one will ever ask you.
Go and help where you are not known."
"For God's sake, don't talk to me in that tone." I tried to be mild, and
besought myself most earnestly not to lose my temper. For the first few
minutes I felt glad to be with my wife. I felt an atmosphere of youth,
of home, of feminine softness, of the most refined elegance--exactly what
was lacking on my floor and in my life altogether. My wife was wearing a
pink flannel dressing-gown; it made her look much younger, and gave a
softness to her rapid and sometimes abrupt movements. Her beautiful dark
hair, the mere sight of which at one time stirred me to passion, had
from sitting so long with her head bent come loose from the comb and was
untidy, but, to my eyes, that only made it look more rich and luxuriant.
All this, though is banal to the point of vulgarity. Before me stood an
ordinary woman, perhaps neither beautiful nor elegant, but this was my
wife with whom I had once lived, and with whom I should have been living
to this day if it had not been for her unfortunate character; she was
the one human being on the terrestrial globe whom I loved. At this
moment, just before going away, when I knew that I should no longer see
her even through the window, she seemed to me fascinating even as she
was, cold and forbidding, answering me with a proud and contemptuous
mockery. I was proud of her, and confessed to myself that to go away
from her was terrible and impossible.
"Pavel Andreitch," she said after a brief silence, "for two years we
have not interfered with each other but have lived quietly. Why do you
suddenly feel it necessary to go back to the past? Yesterday you came to
insult and humiliate me," she went on, raising her voice, and her face
flushed and her eyes flamed with hatred; "but restrain yourself; do not
do it, Pavel Andreitch! Tomorrow I will send in a petition and they will
give me a passport, and I will go away; I will go! I will go! I'll go
into a convent, into a widows' home, into an almshouse...."
"Into a lunatic asylum!" I cried, not able to restrain myself.
"Well, even into a lunatic asylum! That would be better, that would be
better," she cried, with flashing eyes. "When I was in Pestrovo today I
envied the sick and starving peasant women because they are not living
with a man like you. They are free and honest, while, thanks to you, I
am a parasite, I am perishing in idleness, I eat your bread, I spend
your money, and I repay you with my liberty and a fidelity which is of
no use to any one. Because you won't give me a passport, I must respect
your good name, though it doesn't exist."
I had to keep silent. Clenching my teeth, I walked quickly into the
drawing-room, but turned back at once and said:
"I beg you earnestly that there should be no more assemblies, plots, and
meetings of conspirators in my house! I only admit to my house those
with whom I am acquainted, and let all your crew find another place to
do it if they want to take up philanthropy. I can't allow people at
midnight in my house to be shouting hurrah at successfully exploiting an
hysterical woman like you!"
My wife, pale and wringing her hands, took a rapid stride across the
room, uttering a prolonged moan as though she had toothache. With a wave
of my hand, I went into the drawing-room. I was choking with rage, and
at the same time I was trembling with terror that I might not restrain
myself, and that I might say or do something which I might regret all my
life. And I clenched my hands tight, hoping to hold myself in.
After drinking some water and recovering my calm a little, I went back
to my wife. She was standing in the same attitude as before, as though
barring my approach to the table with the papers. Tears were slowly
trickling down her pale, cold face. I paused then and said to her
bitterly but without anger:
"How you misunderstand me! How unjust you are to me! I swear upon my
honour I came to you with the best of motives, with nothing but the
desire to do good!"
"Pavel Andreitch!" she said, clasping her hands on her bosom, and her
face took on the agonized, imploring expression with which frightened,
weeping children beg not to be punished, "I know perfectly well that you
will refuse me, but still I beg you. Force yourself to do one kind
action in your life. I entreat you, go away from here! That's the only
thing you can do for the starving peasants. Go away, and I will forgive
you everything, everything!"
"There is no need for you to insult me, Natalie," I sighed, feeling a
sudden rush of humility. "I had already made up my mind to go away, but
I won't go until I have done something for the peasants. It's my duty!"
"Ach!" she said softly with an impatient frown. "You can make an
excellent bridge or railway, but you can do nothing for the starving
peasants. Do understand!"
"Indeed? Yesterday you reproached me with indifference and with being
devoid of the feeling of compassion. How well you know me!" I laughed.
"You believe in God--well, God is my witness that I am worried day and
night...."
"I see that you are worried, but the famine and compassion have nothing
to do with it. You are worried because the starving peasants can get on
without you, and because the Zemstvo, and in fact every one who is
helping them, does not need your guidance."
I was silent, trying to suppress my irritation. Then I said:
"I came to speak to you on business. Sit down. Please sit down."
She did not sit down.
"I beg you to sit down," I repeated, and I motioned her to a chair.
She sat down. I sat down, too, thought a little, and said:
"I beg you to consider earnestly what I am saying. Listen.... Moved by
love for your fellow-creatures, you have undertaken the organization of
famine relief. I have nothing against that, of course; I am completely
in sympathy with you, and am prepared to co-operate with you in every
way, whatever our relations may be. But, with all my respect for your
mind and your heart... and your heart," I repeated, "I cannot allow such
a difficult, complex, and responsible matter as the organization of
relief to be left in your hands entirely. You are a woman, you are
inexperienced, you know nothing of life, you are too confiding and
expansive. You have surrounded yourself with assistants whom you know
nothing about. I am not exaggerating if I say that under these
conditions your work will inevitably lead to two deplorable
consequences. To begin with, our district will be left unrelieved; and,
secondly, you will have to pay for your mistakes and those of your
assistants, not only with your purse, but with your reputation. The
money deficit and other losses I could, no doubt, make good, but who
could restore you your good name? When through lack of proper
supervision and oversight there is a rumour that you, and consequently
I, have made two hundred thousand over the famine fund, will your
assistants come to your aid?"
She said nothing.
"Not from vanity, as you say," I went on, "but simply that the starving
peasants may not be left unrelieved and your reputation may not be
injured, I feel it my moral duty to take part in your work."
"Speak more briefly," said my wife.
"You will be so kind," I went on, "as to show me what has been
subscribed so far and what you have spent. Then inform me daily of every
fresh subscription in money or kind, and of every fresh outlay. You will
also give me, Natalie, the list of your helpers. Perhaps they are quite
decent people; I don't doubt it; but, still, it is absolutely necessary
to make inquiries."
She was silent. I got up, and walked up and down the room.
"Let us set to work, then," I said, and I sat down to her table.
"Are you in earnest?" she asked, looking at me in alarm and
bewilderment.
"Natalie, do be reasonable!" I said appealingly, seeing from her face
that she meant to protest. "I beg you, trust my experience and my sense
of honour."
"I don't understand what you want."
"Show me how much you have collected and how much you have spent."
"I have no secrets. Any one may see. Look."
On the table lay five or six school exercise books, several sheets of
notepaper covered with writing, a map of the district, and a number of
pieces of paper of different sizes. It was getting dusk. I lighted a
candle.
"Excuse me, I don't see anything yet," I said, turning over the leaves
of the exercise books. "Where is the account of the receipt of money
subscriptions?"
"That can be seen from the subscription lists."
"Yes, but you must have an account," I said, smiling at her naivete.
"Where are the letters accompanying the subscriptions in money or in
kind? Pardon, a little practical advice, Natalie: it's absolutely
necessary to keep those letters. You ought to number each letter and
make a special note of it in a special record. You ought to do the same
with your own letters. But I will do all that myself."
"Do so, do so..." she said.
I was very much pleased with myself. Attracted by this living
interesting work, by the little table, the naive exercise books and the
charm of doing this work in my wife's society, I was afraid that my wife
would suddenly hinder me and upset everything by some sudden whim, and
so I was in haste and made an effort to attach no consequence to the
fact that her lips were quivering, and that she was looking about her
with a helpless and frightened air like a wild creature in a trap.
"I tell you what, Natalie," I said without looking at her; "let me take
all these papers and exercise books upstairs to my study. There I will
look through them and tell you what I think about it tomorrow. Have you
any more papers?" I asked, arranging the exercise books and sheets of
papers in piles.
"Take them, take them all!" said my wife, helping me to arrange them,
and big tears ran down her cheeks. "Take it all! That's all that was
left me in life.... Take the last."
"Ach! Natalie, Natalie!" I sighed reproachfully.
She opened the drawer in the table and began flinging the papers out of
it on the table at random, poking me in the chest with her elbow and
brushing my face with her hair; as she did so, copper coins kept
dropping upon my knees and on the floor.
"Take everything!" she said in a husky voice.
When she had thrown out the papers she walked away from me, and putting
both hands to her head, she flung herself on the couch. I picked up the
money, put it back in the drawer, and locked it up that the servants
might not be led into dishonesty; then I gathered up all the papers and
went off with them. As I passed my wife I stopped and, looking at her
back and shaking shoulders, I said:
"What a baby you are, Natalie! Fie, fie! Listen, Natalie: when you
realize how serious and responsible a business it is you will be the
first to thank me. I assure you you will."
In my own room I set to work without haste. The exercise books were not
bound, the pages were not numbered. The entries were put in all sorts of
handwritings; evidently any one who liked had a hand in managing the
books. In the record of the subscriptions in kind there was no note of
their money value. But, excuse me, I thought, the rye which is now worth
one rouble fifteen kopecks may be worth two roubles fifteen kopecks in
two months' time! Was that the way to do things? Then, "Given to A. M.
Sobol 32 roubles." When was it given? For what purpose was it given?
Where was the receipt? There was nothing to show, and no making anything
of it. In case of legal proceedings, these papers would only obscure the
case.