I felt both vexed and amused.
V
My wife had already collected eight thousand; with my five it would be
thirteen thousand. For a start that was very good. The business which
had so worried and interested me was at last in my hands; I was doing
what the others would not and could not do; I was doing my duty,
organizing the relief fund in a practical and business-like way.
Everything seemed to be going in accordance with my desires and
intentions; but why did my feeling of uneasiness persist? I spent four
hours over my wife's papers, making out their meaning and correcting her
mistakes, but instead of feeling soothed, I felt as though some one were
standing behind me and rubbing my back with a rough hand. What was it I
wanted? The organization of the relief fund had come into trustworthy
hands, the hungry would be fed--what more was wanted?
The four hours of this light work for some reason exhausted me, so that
I could not sit bending over the table nor write. From below I heard
from time to time a smothered moan; it was my wife sobbing. Alexey,
invariably meek, sleepy, and sanctimonious, kept coming up to the table
to see to the candles, and looked at me somewhat strangely.
"Yes, I must go away," I decided at last, feeling utterly exhausted. "As
far as possible from these agreeable impressions! I will set off
tomorrow."
I gathered together the papers and exercise books, and went down to my
wife. As, feeling quite worn out and shattered, I held the papers and
the exercise books to my breast with both hands, and passing through my
bedroom saw my trunks, the sound of weeping reached me through the
floor.
"Are you a kammer-junker?" a voice whispered in my ear. "That's a very
pleasant thing. But yet you are a reptile."
"It's all nonsense, nonsense, nonsense," I muttered as I went
downstairs. "Nonsense... and it's nonsense, too, that I am actuated by
vanity or a love of display.... What rubbish! Am I going to get a
decoration for working for the peasants or be made the director of a
department? Nonsense, nonsense! And who is there to show off to here in
the country?"
I was tired, frightfully tired, and something kept whispering in my ear:
"Very pleasant. But, still, you are a reptile." For some reason I
remembered a line out of an old poem I knew as a child: "How pleasant it
is to be good!"
My wife was lying on the couch in the same attitude, on her face and
with her hands clutching her head. She was crying. A maid was standing
beside her with a perplexed and frightened face. I sent the maid away,
laid the papers on the table, thought a moment and said:
"Here are all your papers, Natalie. It's all in order, it's all capital,
and I am very much pleased. I am going away tomorrow."
She went on crying. I went into the drawing-room and sat there in the
dark. My wife's sobs, her sighs, accused me of something, and to justify
myself I remembered the whole of our quarrel, starting from my unhappy
idea of inviting my wife to our consultation and ending with the
exercise books and these tears. It was an ordinary attack of our
conjugal hatred, senseless and unseemly, such as had been frequent
during our married life, but what had the starving peasants to do with
it? How could it have happened that they had become a bone of contention
between us? It was just as though pursuing one another we had
accidentally run up to the altar and had carried on a quarrel there.
"Natalie," I said softly from the drawing-room, "hush, hush!"
To cut short her weeping and make an end of this agonizing state of
affairs, I ought to have gone up to my wife and comforted her, caressed
her, or apologized; but how could I do it so that she would believe me?
How could I persuade the wild duck, living in captivity and hating me,
that it was dear to me, and that I felt for its sufferings? I had never
known my wife, so I had never known how to talk to her or what to talk
about. Her appearance I knew very well and appreciated it as it
deserved, but her spiritual, moral world, her mind, her outlook on life,
her frequent changes of mood, her eyes full of hatred, her disdain, the
scope and variety of her reading which sometimes struck me, or, for
instance, the nun-like expression I had seen on her face the day
before--all that was unknown and incomprehensible to me. When in my
collisions with her I tried to define what sort of a person she was, my
psychology went no farther than deciding that she was giddy,
impractical, ill-tempered, guided by feminine logic; and it seemed to me
that that was quite sufficient. But now that she was crying I had a
passionate desire to know more.
The weeping ceased. I went up to my wife. She sat up on the couch, and,
with her head propped in both hands, looked fixedly and dreamily at the
fire.
"I am going away tomorrow morning," I said.
She said nothing. I walked across the room, sighed, and said:
"Natalie, when you begged me to go away, you said: 'I will forgive you
everything, everything'.... So you think I have wronged you. I beg you
calmly and in brief terms to formulate the wrong I've done you."
"I am worn out. Afterwards, some time..." said my wife.
"How am I to blame?" I went on. "What have I done? Tell me: you are
young and beautiful, you want to live, and I am nearly twice your age
and hated by you, but is that my fault? I didn't marry you by force. But
if you want to live in freedom, go; I'll give you your liberty. You can
go and love whom you please.... I will give you a divorce."
"That's not what I want," she said. "You know I used to love you and
always thought of myself as older than you. That's all nonsense.... You
are not to blame for being older or for my being younger, or that I
might be able to love some one else if I were free; but because you are
a difficult person, an egoist, and hate every one."
"Perhaps so. I don't know," I said.
"Please go away. You want to go on at me till the morning, but I warn
you I am quite worn out and cannot answer you. You promised me to go to
town. I am very grateful; I ask nothing more."
My wife wanted me to go away, but it was not easy for me to do that. I
was dispirited and I dreaded the big, cheerless, chill rooms that I was
so weary of. Sometimes when I had an ache or a pain as a child, I used
to huddle up to my mother or my nurse, and when I hid my face in the
warm folds of their dress, it seemed to me as though I were hiding from
the pain. And in the same way it seemed to me now that I could only hide
from my uneasiness in this little room beside my wife. I sat down and
screened away the light from my eyes with my hand.... There was a
stillness.
"How are you to blame?" my wife said after a long silence, looking at me
with red eyes that gleamed with tears. "You are very well educated and
very well bred, very honest, just, and high-principled, but in you the
effect of all that is that wherever you go you bring suffocation,
oppression, something insulting and humiliating to the utmost degree.
You have a straightforward way of looking at things, and so you hate the
whole world. You hate those who have faith, because faith is an
expression of ignorance and lack of culture, and at the same time you
hate those who have no faith for having no faith and no ideals; you hate
old people for being conservative and behind the times, and young people
for free-thinking. The interests of the peasantry and of Russia are dear
to you, and so you hate the peasants because you suspect every one of
them of being a thief and a robber. You hate every one. You are just,
and always take your stand on your legal rights, and so you are always
at law with the peasants and your neighbours. You have had twenty
bushels of rye stolen, and your love of order has made you complain of
the peasants to the Governor and all the local authorities, and to send
a complaint of the local authorities to Petersburg. Legal justice!" said
my wife, and she laughed. "On the ground of your legal rights and in the
interests of morality, you refuse to give me a passport. Law and
morality is such that a self-respecting healthy young woman has to spend
her life in idleness, in depression, and in continual apprehension, and
to receive in return board and lodging from a man she does not love. You
have a thorough knowledge of the law, you are very honest and just, you
respect marriage and family life, and the effect of all that is that all
your life you have not done one kind action, that every one hates you,
that you are on bad terms with every one, and the seven years that you
have been married you've only lived seven months with your wife. You've
had no wife and I've had no husband. To live with a man like you is
impossible; there is no way of doing it. In the early years I was
frightened with you, and now I am ashamed.... That's how my best years
have been wasted. When I fought with you I ruined my temper, grew
shrewish, coarse, timid, mistrustful.... Oh, but what's the use of
talking! As though you wanted to understand! Go upstairs, and God be
with you!"
My wife lay down on the couch and sank into thought.
"And how splendid, how enviable life might have been!" she said softly,
looking reflectively into the fire. "What a life it might have been!
There's no bringing it back now."
Any one who has lived in the country in winter and knows those long
dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even
the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on such evenings has
been troubled by awakening conscience and has moved restlessly about,
trying now to smother his conscience, now to interpret it, will
understand the distraction and the pleasure my wife's voice gave me as
it sounded in the snug little room, telling me I was a bad man. I did
not understand what was wanted of me by my conscience, and my wife,
translating it in her feminine way, made clear to me in the meaning of
my agitation. As often before in the moments of intense uneasiness, I
guessed that the whole secret lay, not in the starving peasants, but in
my not being the sort of a man I ought to be.
My wife got up with an effort and came up to me.
"Pavel Andreitch," she said, smiling mournfully, "forgive me, I don't
believe you: you are not going away, but I will ask you one more favour.
Call this"--she pointed to her papers--"self-deception, feminine logic, a
mistake, as you like; but do not hinder me. It's all that is left me in
life." She turned away and paused. "Before this I had nothing. I have
wasted my youth in fighting with you. Now I have caught at this and am
living; I am happy.... It seems to me that I have found in this a means
of justifying my existence."
"Natalie, you are a good woman, a woman of ideas," I said, looking at my
wife enthusiastically, "and everything you say and do is intelligent and
fine."
I walked about the room to conceal my emotion.
"Natalie," I went on a minute later, "before I go away, I beg of you as
a special favour, help me to do something for the starving peasants!"
"What can I do?" said my wife, shrugging her shoulders. "Here's the
subscription list."
She rummaged among the papers and found the subscription list.
"Subscribe some money," she said, and from her tone I could see that she
did not attach great importance to her subscription list; "that is the
only way in which you can take part in the work."
I took the list and wrote: "Anonymous, 5,000."
In this "anonymous" there was something wrong, false, conceited, but I
only realized that when I noticed that my wife flushed very red and
hurriedly thrust the list into the heap of papers. We both felt ashamed;
I felt that I must at all costs efface this clumsiness at once, or else
I should feel ashamed afterwards, in the train and at Petersburg. But
how efface it? What was I to say?
"I fully approve of what you are doing, Natalie," I said genuinely, "and
I wish you every success. But allow me at parting to give you one piece
of advice, Natalie; be on your guard with Sobol, and with your
assistants generally, and don't trust them blindly. I don't say they are
not honest, but they are not gentlefolks; they are people with no ideas,
no ideals, no faith, with no aim in life, no definite principles, and
the whole object of their life is comprised in the rouble. Rouble,
rouble, rouble!" I sighed. "They are fond of getting money easily, for
nothing, and in that respect the better educated they are the more they
are to be dreaded."
My wife went to the couch and lay down.
"Ideas," she brought out, listlessly and reluctantly, "ideas, ideals,
objects of life, principles....you always used to use those words when
you wanted to insult or humiliate some one, or say something unpleasant.
Yes, that's your way: if with your views and such an attitude to people
you are allowed to take part in anything, you would destroy it from the
first day. It's time you understand that."
She sighed and paused.
"It's coarseness of character, Pavel Andreitch," she said. "You are
well-bred and educated, but what a... Scythian you are in reality!
That's because you lead a cramped life full of hatred, see no one, and
read nothing but your engineering books. And, you know, there are good
people, good books! Yes... but I am exhausted and it wearies me to talk.
I ought to be in bed."
"So I am going away, Natalie," I said.
"Yes... yes.... Merci...."
I stood still for a little while, then went upstairs. An hour later--it
was half-past one--I went downstairs again with a candle in my hand to
speak to my wife. I didn't know what I was going to say to her, but I
felt that I must say some thing very important and necessary. She was
not in her study, the door leading to her bedroom was closed.
"Natalie, are you asleep?" I asked softly.
There was no answer.
I stood near the door, sighed, and went into the drawing-room. There I
sat down on the sofa, put out the candle, and remained sitting in the
dark till the dawn.
VI
I went to the station at ten o'clock in the morning. There was no frost,
but snow was falling in big wet flakes and an unpleasant damp wind was
blowing.
We passed a pond and then a birch copse, and then began going uphill
along the road which I could see from my window. I turned round to take
a last look at my house, but I could see nothing for the snow. Soon
afterwards dark huts came into sight ahead of us as in a fog. It was
Pestrovo.
"If I ever go out of my mind, Pestrovo will be the cause of it," I
thought. "It persecutes me."
We came out into the village street. All the roofs were intact, not one
of them had been pulled to pieces; so my bailiff had told a lie. A boy
was pulling along a little girl and a baby in a sledge. Another boy of
three, with his head wrapped up like a peasant woman's and with huge
mufflers on his hands, was trying to catch the flying snowflakes on his
tongue, and laughing. Then a wagon loaded with fagots came toward us and
a peasant walking beside it, and there was no telling whether his beard
was white or whether it was covered with snow. He recognized my
coachman, smiled at him and said something, and mechanically took off
his hat to me. The dogs ran out of the yards and looked inquisitively at
my horses. Everything was quiet, ordinary, as usual. The emigrants had
returned, there was no bread; in the huts "some were laughing, some were
delirious"; but it all looked so ordinary that one could not believe it
really was so. There were no distracted faces, no voices whining for
help, no weeping, nor abuse, but all around was stillness, order, life,
children, sledges, dogs with dishevelled tails. Neither the children nor
the peasant we met were troubled; why was I so troubled?
Looking at the smiling peasant, at the boy with the huge mufflers, at
the huts, remembering my wife, I realized there was no calamity that
could daunt this people; I felt as though there were already a breath of
victory in the air. I felt proud and felt ready to cry out that I was
with them too; but the horses were carrying us away from the village
into the open country, the snow was whirling, the wind was howling, and
I was left alone with my thoughts. Of the million people working for the
peasantry, life itself had cast me out as a useless, incompetent, bad
man. I was a hindrance, a part of the people's calamity; I was
vanquished, cast out, and I was hurrying to the station to go away and
hide myself in Petersburg in a hotel in Bolshaya Morskaya.
An hour later we reached the station. The coachman and a porter with a
disc on his breast carried my trunks into the ladies' room. My coachman
Nikanor, wearing high felt boots and the skirt of his coat tucked up
through his belt, all wet with the snow and glad I was going away, gave
me a friendly smile and said:
"A fortunate journey, your Excellency. God give you luck."
Every one, by the way, calls me "your Excellency," though I am only a
collegiate councillor and a kammer-junker. The porter told me the train
had not yet left the next station; I had to wait. I went outside, and
with my head heavy from my sleepless night, and so exhausted I could
hardly move my legs, I walked aimlessly towards the pump. There was not
a soul anywhere near.
"Why am I going?" I kept asking myself. "What is there awaiting me
there? The acquaintances from whom I have come away, loneliness,
restaurant dinners, noise, the electric light, which makes my eyes ache.
Where am I going, and what am I going for? What am I going for?"
And it seemed somehow strange to go away without speaking to my wife. I
felt that I was leaving her in uncertainty. Going away, I ought to have
told that she was right, that I really was a bad man.
When I turned away from the pump, I saw in the doorway the station-
master, of whom I had twice made complaints to his superiors, turning up
the collar of his coat, shrinking from the wind and the snow. He came up
to me, and putting two fingers to the peak of his cap, told me with an
expression of helpless confusion, strained respectfulness, and hatred on
his face, that the train was twenty minutes late, and asked me would I
not like to wait in the warm?
"Thank you," I answered, "but I am probably not going. Send word to my
coachman to wait; I have not made up my mind."
I walked to and fro on the platform and thought, should I go away or
not? When the train came in I decided not to go. At home I had to expect
my wife's amazement and perhaps her mockery, the dismal upper storey and
my uneasiness; but, still, at my age that was easier and as it were more
homelike than travelling for two days and nights with strangers to
Petersburg, where I should be conscious every minute that my life was of
no use to any one or to anything, and that it was approaching its end.
No, better at home whatever awaited me there.... I went out of the
station. It was awkward by daylight to return home, where every one was
so glad at my going. I might spend the rest of the day till evening at
some neighbour's, but with whom? With some of them I was on strained
relations, others I did not know at all. I considered and thought of
Ivan Ivanitch.
"We are going to Bragino!" I said to the coachman, getting into the
sledge.
"It's a long way," sighed Nikanor; "it will be twenty miles, or maybe
twenty-five."
"Oh, please, my dear fellow," I said in a tone as though Nikanor had the
right to refuse. "Please let us go!"
Nikanor shook his head doubtfully and said slowly that we really ought
to have put in the shafts, not Circassian, but Peasant or Siskin; and
uncertainly, as though expecting I should change my mind, took the reins
in his gloves, stood up, thought a moment, and then raised his whip.
"A whole series of inconsistent actions..." I thought, screening my face
from the snow. "I must have gone out of my mind. Well, I don't care...."
In one place, on a very high and steep slope, Nikanor carefully held the
horses in to the middle of the descent, but in the middle the horses
suddenly bolted and dashed downhill at a fearful rate; he raised his
elbows and shouted in a wild, frantic voice such as I had never heard
from him before:
"Hey! Let's give the general a drive! If you come to grief he'll buy new
ones, my darlings! Hey! look out! We'll run you down!"
Only now, when the extraordinary pace we were going at took my breath
away, I noticed that he was very drunk. He must have been drinking at
the station. At the bottom of the descent there was the crash of ice; a
piece of dirty frozen snow thrown up from the road hit me a painful blow
in the face.
The runaway horses ran up the hill as rapidly as they had downhill, and
before I had time to shout to Nikanor my sledge was flying along on the
level in an old pine forest, and the tall pines were stretching out
their shaggy white paws to me from all directions.
"I have gone out of my mind, and the coachman's drunk," I thought.
"Good!"
I found Ivan Ivanitch at home. He laughed till he coughed, laid his head
on my breast, and said what he always did say on meeting me:
"You grow younger and younger. I don't know what dye you use for your
hair and your beard; you might give me some of it."
"I've come to return your call, Ivan Ivanitch," I said untruthfully.
"Don't be hard on me; I'm a townsman, conventional; I do keep count of
calls."
"I am delighted, my dear fellow. I am an old man; I like respect....
Yes."
From his voice and his blissfully smiling face, I could see that he was
greatly flattered by my visit. Two peasant women helped me off with my
coat in the entry, and a peasant in a red shirt hung it on a hook, and
when Ivan Ivanitch and I went into his little study, two barefooted
little girls were sitting on the floor looking at a picture-book; when
they saw us they jumped up and ran away, and a tall, thin old woman in
spectacles came in at once, bowed gravely to me, and picking up a pillow
from the sofa and a picture-book from the floor, went away. From the
adjoining rooms we heard incessant whispering and the patter of bare
feet.
"I am expecting the doctor to dinner," said Ivan Ivanitch. "He promised
to come from the relief centre. Yes. He dines with me every Wednesday,
God bless him." He craned towards me and kissed me on the neck. "You
have come, my dear fellow, so you are not vexed," he whispered,
sniffing. "Don't be vexed, my dear creature. Yes. Perhaps it is
annoying, but don't be cross. My only prayer to God before I die is to
live in peace and harmony with all in the true way. Yes."
"Forgive me, Ivan Ivanitch, I will put my feet on a chair," I said,
feeling that I was so exhausted I could not be myself; I sat further
back on the sofa and put up my feet on an arm-chair. My face was burning
from the snow and the wind, and I felt as though my whole body were
basking in the warmth and growing weaker from it.
"It's very nice here," I went on--"warm, soft, snug... and goose-feather
pens," I laughed, looking at the writing-table; "sand instead of
blotting-paper."
"Eh? Yes... yes.... The writing-table and the mahogany cupboard here
were made for my father by a self-taught cabinet-maker--Glyeb Butyga, a
serf of General Zhukov's. Yes... a great artist in his own way."
Listlessly and in the tone of a man dropping asleep, he began telling me
about cabinet-maker Butyga. I listened. Then Ivan Ivanitch went into the
next room to show me a polisander wood chest of drawers remarkable for
its beauty and cheapness. He tapped the chest with his fingers, then
called my attention to a stove of patterned tiles, such as one never
sees now. He tapped the stove, too, with his fingers. There was an
atmosphere of good-natured simplicity and well-fed abundance about the
chest of drawers, the tiled stove, the low chairs, the pictures
embroidered in wool and silk on canvas in solid, ugly frames. When one
remembers that all those objects were standing in the same places and
precisely in the same order when I was a little child, and used to come
here to name-day parties with my mother, it is simply unbelievable that
they could ever cease to exist.