matter, and that he often cut his hands when he was dissecting.
"I get absorbed, little mother, and grow careless."
Olga Ivanovna dreaded symptoms of blood-poisoning, and prayed about it
every night, but all went well. And again life flowed on peaceful and
happy, free from grief and anxiety. The present was happy, and to follow
it spring was at hand, already smiling in the distance, and promising a
thousand delights. There would be no end to their happiness. In April,
May and June a summer villa a good distance out of town; walks,
sketching, fishing, nightingales; and then from July right on to autumn
an artist's tour on the Volga, and in this tour Olga Ivanovna would take
part as an indispensable member of the society. She had already had made
for her two travelling dresses of linen, had bought paints, brushes,
canvases, and a new palette for the journey. Almost every day Ryabovsky
visited her to see what progress she was making in her painting; when
she showed him her painting, he used to thrust his hands deep into his
pockets, compress his lips, sniff, and say:
"Ye--es...! That cloud of yours is screaming: it's not in the evening
light. The foreground is somehow chewed up, and there is something, you
know, not the thing.... And your cottage is weighed down and whines
pitifully. That corner ought to have been taken more in shadow, but on
the whole it is not bad; I like it."
And the more incomprehensible he talked, the more readily Olga Ivanovna
understood him.
III
After dinner on the second day of Trinity week, Dymov bought some sweets
and some savouries and went down to the villa to see his wife. He had
not seen her for a fortnight, and missed her terribly. As he sat in the
train and afterwards as he looked for his villa in a big wood, he felt
all the while hungry and weary, and dreamed of how he would have supper
in freedom with his wife, then tumble into bed and to sleep. And he was
delighted as he looked at his parcel, in which there was caviare,
cheese, and white salmon.
The sun was setting by the time he found his villa and recognized it.
The old servant told him that her mistress was not at home, but that
most likely she would soon be in. The villa, very uninviting in
appearance, with low ceilings papered with writing-paper and with uneven
floors full of crevices, consisted only of three rooms. In one there was
a bed, in the second there were canvases, brushes, greasy papers, and
men's overcoats and hats lying about on the chairs and in the windows,
while in the third Dymov found three unknown men; two were dark-haired
and had beards, the other was clean-shaven and fat, apparently an actor.
There was a samovar boiling on the table.
"What do you want?" asked the actor in a bass voice, looking at Dymov
ungraciously. "Do you want Olga Ivanovna? Wait a minute; she will be
here directly."
Dymov sat down and waited. One of the dark-haired men, looking sleepily
and listlessly at him, poured himself out a glass of tea, and asked:
"Perhaps you would like some tea?"
Dymov was both hungry and thirsty, but he refused tea for fear of
spoiling his supper. Soon he heard footsteps and a familiar laugh; a
door slammed, and Olga Ivanovna ran into the room, wearing a wide-
brimmed hat and carrying a box in her hand; she was followed by
Ryabovsky, rosy and good-humoured, carrying a big umbrella and a camp-
stool.
"Dymov!" cried Olga Ivanovna, and she flushed crimson with pleasure.
"Dymov!" she repeated, laying her head and both arms on his bosom. "Is
that you? Why haven't you come for so long? Why? Why?"
"When could I, little mother? I am always busy, and whenever I am free
it always happens somehow that the train does not fit."
"But how glad I am to see you! I have been dreaming about you the whole
night, the whole night, and I was afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you
only knew how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of time! You will
be my salvation! You are the only person who can save me! There is to be
a most original wedding here tomorrow," she went on, laughing, and tying
her husband's cravat. "A young telegraph clerk at the station, called
Tchikeldyeev, is going to be married. He is a handsome young man
and--well, not stupid, and you know there is something strong, bearlike
in his face... you might paint him as a young Norman. We summer visitors
take a great interest in him, and have promised to be at his wedding....
He is a lonely, timid man, not well off, and of course it would be a
shame not to be sympathetic to him. Fancy! the wedding will be after the
service; then we shall all walk from the church to the bride's
lodgings... you see the wood, the birds singing, patches of sunlight on
the grass, and all of us spots of different colours against the bright
green background--very original, in the style of the French
impressionists. But, Dymov, what am I to go to the church in?" said Olga
Ivanovna, and she looked as though she were going to cry. "I have
nothing here, literally nothing! no dress, no flowers, no gloves... you
must save me. Since you have come, fate itself bids you save me. Take
the keys, my precious, go home and get my pink dress from the wardrobe.
You remember it; it hangs in front.... Then, in the storeroom, on the
floor, on the right side, you will see two cardboard boxes. When you
open the top one you will see tulle, heaps of tulle and rags of all
sorts, and under them flowers. Take out all the flowers carefully, try
not to crush them, darling; I will choose among them later.... And buy
me some gloves."
"Very well," said Dymov; "I will go tomorrow and send them to you."
"Tomorrow?" asked Olga Ivanovna, and she looked at him surprised. "You
won't have time tomorrow. The first train goes tomorrow at nine, and the
wedding's at eleven. No, darling, it must be today; it absolutely must
be today. If you won't be able to come tomorrow, send them by a
messenger. Come, you must run along.... The passenger train will be in
directly; don't miss it, darling."
"Very well."
"Oh, how sorry I am to let you go!" said Olga Ivanovna, and tears came
into her eyes. "And why did I promise that telegraph clerk, like a
silly?"
Dymov hurriedly drank a glass of tea, took a cracknel, and, smiling
gently, went to the station. And the caviare, the cheese, and the white
salmon were eaten by the two dark gentlemen and the fat actor.
IV
On a still moonlight night in July Olga Ivanovna was standing on the
deck of a Volga steamer and looking alternately at the water and at the
picturesque banks. Beside her was standing Ryabovsky, telling her the
black shadows on the water were not shadows, but a dream, that it would
be sweet to sink into forgetfulness, to die, to become a memory in the
sight of that enchanted water with the fantastic glimmer, in sight of
the fathomless sky and the mournful, dreamy shores that told of the
vanity of our life and of the existence of something higher, blessed,
and eternal. The past was vulgar and uninteresting, the future was
trivial, and that marvellous night, unique in a lifetime, would soon be
over, would blend with eternity; then, why live?
And Olga Ivanovna listened alternately to Ryabovsky's voice and the
silence of the night, and thought of her being immortal and never dying.
The turquoise colour of the water, such as she had never seen before,
the sky, the river-banks, the black shadows, and the unaccountable joy
that flooded her soul, all told her that she would make a great artist,
and that somewhere in the distance, in the infinite space beyond the
moonlight, success, glory, the love of the people, lay awaiting her....
When she gazed steadily without blinking into the distance, she seemed
to see crowds of people, lights, triumphant strains of music, cries of
enthusiasm, she herself in a white dress, and flowers showered upon her
from all sides. She thought, too, that beside her, leaning with his
elbows on the rail of the steamer, there was standing a real great man,
a genius, one of God's elect.... All that he had created up to the
present was fine, new, and extraordinary, but what he would create in
time, when with maturity his rare talent reached its full development,
would be astounding, immeasurably sublime; and that could be seen by his
face, by his manner of expressing himself and his attitude to nature. He
talked of shadows, of the tones of evening, of the moonlight, in a
special way, in a language of his own, so that one could not help
feeling the fascination of his power over nature. He was very handsome,
original, and his life, free, independent, aloof from all common cares,
was like the life of a bird.
"It's growing cooler," said Olga Ivanovna, and she gave a shudder.
Ryabovsky wrapped her in his cloak, and said mournfully:
"I feel that I am in your power; I am a slave. Why are you so enchanting
today?"
He kept staring intently at her, and his eyes were terrible. And she was
afraid to look at him.
"I love you madly," he whispered, breathing on her cheek. "Say one word
to me and I will not go on living; I will give up art..." he muttered in
violent emotion. "Love me, love...."
"Don't talk like that," said Olga Ivanovna, covering her eyes. "It's
dreadful! How about Dymov?"
"What of Dymov? Why Dymov? What have I to do with Dymov? The Volga, the
moon, beauty, my love, ecstasy, and there is no such thing as Dymov....
Ah! I don't know... I don't care about the past; give me one moment, one
instant!"
Olga Ivanovna's heart began to throb. She tried to think about her
husband, but all her past, with her wedding, with Dymov, and with her
"At Homes," seemed to her petty, trivial, dingy, unnecessary, and far,
far away.... Yes, really, what of Dymov? Why Dymov? What had she to do
with Dymov? Had he any existence in nature, or was he only a dream?
"For him, a simple and ordinary man the happiness he has had already is
enough," she thought, covering her face with her hands. "Let them
condemn me, let them curse me, but in spite of them all I will go to my
ruin; I will go to my ruin!... One must experience everything in life.
My God! how terrible and how glorious!"
"Well? Well?" muttered the artist, embracing her, and greedily kissing
the hands with which she feebly tried to thrust him from her. "You love
me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! marvellous night!"
"Yes, what a night!" she whispered, looking into his eyes, which were
bright with tears.
Then she looked round quickly, put her arms round him, and kissed him on
the lips.
"We are nearing Kineshmo!" said some one on the other side of the deck.
They heard heavy footsteps; it was a waiter from the refreshment-bar.
"Waiter," said Olga Ivanovna, laughing and crying with happiness, "bring
us some wine."
The artist, pale with emotion, sat on the seat, looking at Olga Ivanovna
with adoring, grateful eyes; then he closed his eyes, and said, smiling
languidly:
"I am tired."
And he leaned his head against the rail.
V
On the second of September the day was warm and still, but overcast. In
the early morning a light mist had hung over the Volga, and after nine
o'clock it had begun to spout with rain. And there seemed no hope of the
sky clearing. Over their morning tea Ryabovsky told Olga Ivanovna that
painting was the most ungrateful and boring art, that he was not an
artist, that none but fools thought that he had any talent, and all at
once, for no rhyme or reason, he snatched up a knife and with it scraped
over his very best sketch. After his tea he sat plunged in gloom at the
window and gazed at the Volga. And now the Volga was dingy, all of one
even colour without a gleam of light, cold-looking. Everything,
everything recalled the approach of dreary, gloomy autumn. And it seemed
as though nature had removed now from the Volga the sumptuous green
covers from the banks, the brilliant reflections of the sunbeams, the
transparent blue distance, and all its smart gala array, and had packed
it away in boxes till the coming spring, and the crows were flying above
the Volga and crying tauntingly, "Bare, bare!"
Ryabovsky heard their cawing, and thought he had already gone off and
lost his talent, that everything in this world was relative,
conditional, and stupid, and that he ought not to have taken up with
this woman.... In short, he was out of humour and depressed.
Olga Ivanovna sat behind the screen on the bed, and, passing her fingers
through her lovely flaxen hair, pictured herself first in the drawing-
room, then in the bedroom, then in her husband's study; her imagination
carried her to the theatre, to the dress-maker, to her distinguished
friends. Were they getting something up now? Did they think of her? The
season had begun by now, and it would be time to think about her "At
Homes." And Dymov? Dear Dymov! with what gentleness and childlike pathos
he kept begging her in his letters to make haste and come home! Every
month he sent her seventy-five roubles, and when she wrote him that she
had lent the artists a hundred roubles, he sent that hundred too. What a
kind, generous-hearted man! The travelling wearied Olga Ivanovna; she
was bored; and she longed to get away from the peasants, from the damp
smell of the river, and to cast off the feeling of physical
uncleanliness of which she was conscious all the time, living in the
peasants' huts and wandering from village to village. If Ryabovsky had
not given his word to the artists that he would stay with them till the
twentieth of September, they might have gone away that very day. And how
nice that would have been!
"My God!" moaned Ryabovsky. "Will the sun ever come out? I can't go on
with a sunny landscape without the sun...."
"But you have a sketch with a cloudy sky," said Olga Ivanovna, coming
from behind the screen. "Do you remember, in the right foreground forest
trees, on the left a herd of cows and geese? You might finish it now."
"Aie!" the artist scowled. "Finish it! Can you imagine I am such a fool
that I don't know what I want to do?"
"How you have changed to me!" sighed Olga Ivanovna.
"Well, a good thing too!"
Olga Ivanovna's face quivered; she moved away to the stove and began to
cry.
"Well, that's the last straw--crying! Give over! I have a thousand
reasons for tears, but I am not crying."
"A thousand reasons!" cried Olga Ivanovna. "The chief one is that you
are weary of me. Yes!" she said, and broke into sobs. "If one is to tell
the truth, you are ashamed of our love. You keep trying to prevent the
artists from noticing it, though it is impossible to conceal it, and
they have known all about it for ever so long."
"Olga, one thing I beg you," said the artist in an imploring voice,
laying his hand on his heart--"one thing; don't worry me! I want nothing
else from you!"
"But swear that you love me still!"
"This is agony!" the artist hissed through his teeth, and he jumped up.
"It will end by my throwing myself in the Volga or going out of my mind!
Let me alone!"
"Come, kill me, kill me!" cried Olga Ivanovna. "Kill me!"
She sobbed again, and went behind the screen. There was a swish of rain
on the straw thatch of the hut. Ryabovsky clutched his head and strode
up and down the hut; then with a resolute face, as though bent on
proving something to somebody, put on his cap, slung his gun over his
shoulder, and went out of the hut.
After he had gone, Olga Ivanovna lay a long time on the bed, crying. At
first she thought it would be a good thing to poison herself, so that
when Ryabovsky came back he would find her dead; then her imagination
carried her to her drawing-room, to her husband's study, and she
imagined herself sitting motionless beside Dymov and enjoying the
physical peace and cleanliness, and in the evening sitting in the
theatre, listening to Mazini. And a yearning for civilization, for the
noise and bustle of the town, for celebrated people sent a pang to her
heart. A peasant woman came into the hut and began in a leisurely way
lighting the stove to get the dinner. There was a smell of charcoal
fumes, and the air was filled with bluish smoke. The artists came in, in
muddy high boots and with faces wet with rain, examined their sketches,
and comforted themselves by saying that the Volga had its charms even in
bad weather. On the wall the cheap clock went "tic-tic-tic."... The
flies, feeling chilled, crowded round the ikon in the corner, buzzing,
and one could hear the cockroaches scurrying about among the thick
portfolios under the seats....
Ryabovsky came home as the sun was setting. He flung his cap on the
table, and, without removing his muddy boots, sank pale and exhausted on
the bench and closed his eyes.
"I am tired..." he said, and twitched his eyebrows, trying to raise his
eyelids.
To be nice to him and to show she was not cross, Olga Ivanovna went up
to him, gave him a silent kiss, and passed the comb through his fair
hair. She meant to comb it for him.
"What's that?" he said, starting as though something cold had touched
him, and he opened his eyes. "What is it? Please let me alone."
He thrust her off, and moved away. And it seemed to her that there was a
look of aversion and annoyance on his face.
At that time the peasant woman cautiously carried him, in both hands, a
plate of cabbage-soup. And Olga Ivanovna saw how she wetted her fat
fingers in it. And the dirty peasant woman, standing with her body
thrust forward, and the cabbage-soup which Ryabovsky began eating
greedily, and the hut, and their whole way of life, which she at first
had so loved for its simplicity and artistic disorder, seemed horrible
to her now. She suddenly felt insulted, and said coldly:
"We must part for a time, or else from boredom we shall quarrel in
earnest. I am sick of this; I am going today."
"Going how? Astride on a broomstick?"
"Today is Thursday, so the steamer will be here at half-past nine."
"Eh? Yes, yes.... Well, go, then..." Ryabovsky said softly, wiping his
mouth with a towel instead of a dinner napkin. "You are dull and have
nothing to do here, and one would have to be a great egoist to try and
keep you. Go home, and we shall meet again after the twentieth."
Olga Ivanovna packed in good spirits. Her cheeks positively glowed with
pleasure. Could it really be true, she asked herself, that she would
soon be writing in her drawing-room and sleeping in her bedroom, and
dining with a cloth on the table? A weight was lifted from her heart,
and she no longer felt angry with the artist.
"My paints and brushes I will leave with you, Ryabovsky," she said. "You
can bring what's left.... Mind, now, don't be lazy here when I am gone;
don't mope, but work. You are such a splendid fellow, Ryabovsky!"
At ten o'clock Ryabovsky gave her a farewell kiss, in order, as she
thought, to avoid kissing her on the steamer before the artists, and
went with her to the landing-stage. The steamer soon came up and carried
her away.
She arrived home two and a half days later. Breathless with excitement,
she went, without taking off her hat or waterproof, into the drawing-
room and thence into the dining-room. Dymov, with his waistcoat
unbuttoned and no coat, was sitting at the table sharpening a knife on a
fork; before him lay a grouse on a plate. As Olga Ivanovna went into the
flat she was convinced that it was essential to hide everything from her
husband, and that she would have the strength and skill to do so; but
now, when she saw his broad, mild, happy smile, and shining, joyful
eyes, she felt that to deceive this man was as vile, as revolting, and
as impossible and out of her power as to bear false witness, to steal,
or to kill, and in a flash she resolved to tell him all that had
happened. Letting him kiss and embrace her, she sank down on her knees
before him and hid her face.
"What is it, what is it, little mother?" he asked tenderly. "Were you
homesick?"
She raised her face, red with shame, and gazed at him with a guilty and
imploring look, but fear and shame prevented her from telling him the
truth.
"Nothing," she said; "it's just nothing...."
"Let us sit down," he said, raising her and seating her at the table.
"That's right, eat the grouse. You are starving, poor darling."
She eagerly breathed in the atmosphere of home and ate the grouse, while
he watched her with tenderness and laughed with delight.
VI
Apparently, by the middle of the winter Dymov began to suspect that he
was being deceived. As though his conscience was not clear, he could not
look his wife straight in the face, did not smile with delight when he
met her, and to avoid being left alone with her, he often brought in to
dinner his colleague, Korostelev, a little close-cropped man with a
wrinkled face, who kept buttoning and unbuttoning his reefer jacket with
embarrassment when he talked with Olga Ivanovna, and then with his right
hand nipped his left moustache. At dinner the two doctors talked about
the fact that a displacement of the diaphragm was sometimes accompanied
by irregularities of the heart, or that a great number of neurotic
complaints were met with of late, or that Dymov had the day before found
a cancer of the lower abdomen while dissecting a corpse with the
diagnosis of pernicious anaemia. And it seemed as though they were
talking of medicine to give Olga Ivanovna a chance of being silent--that
is, of not lying. After dinner Korostelev sat down to the piano, while
Dymov sighed and said to him:
"Ech, brother--well, well! Play something melancholy."
Hunching up his shoulders and stretching his fingers wide apart,
Korostelev played some chords and began singing in a tenor voice, "Show
me the abode where the Russian peasant would not groan," while Dymov
sighed once more, propped his head on his fist, and sank into thought.
Olga Ivanovna had been extremely imprudent in her conduct of late. Every
morning she woke up in a very bad humour and with the thought that she
no longer cared for Ryabovsky, and that, thank God, it was all over now.
But as she drank her coffee she reflected that Ryabovsky had robbed her
of her husband, and that now she was left with neither her husband nor
Ryabovsky; then she remembered talks she had heard among her
acquaintances of a picture Ryabovsky was preparing for the exhibition,
something striking, a mixture of genre and landscape, in the style of
Polyenov, about which every one who had been into his studio went into
raptures; and this, of course, she mused, he had created under her
influence, and altogether, thanks to her influence, he had greatly
changed for the better. Her influence was so beneficent and essential
that if she were to leave him he might perhaps go to ruin. And she
remembered, too, that the last time he had come to see her in a great-
coat with flecks on it and a new tie, he had asked her languidly:
"Am I beautiful?"
And with his elegance, his long curls, and his blue eyes, he really was
very beautiful (or perhaps it only seemed so), and he had been
affectionate to her.
Considering and remembering many things Olga Ivanovna dressed and in
great agitation drove to Ryabovsky's studio. She found him in high
spirits, and enchanted with his really magnificent picture. He was
dancing about and playing the fool and answering serious questions with
jokes. Olga Ivanovna was jealous of the picture and hated it, but from
politeness she stood before the picture for five minutes in silence,
and, heaving a sigh, as though before a holy shrine, said softly:
"Yes, you have never painted anything like it before. Do you know, it is
positively awe-inspiring?"
And then she began beseeching him to love her and not to cast her off,
to have pity on her in her misery and her wretchedness. She shed tears,
kissed his hands, insisted on his swearing that he loved her, told him
that without her good influence he would go astray and be ruined. And,
when she had spoilt his good-humour, feeling herself humiliated, she
would drive off to her dressmaker or to an actress of her acquaintance
to try and get theatre tickets.