I never tell a lie, but if we are detained by the snowstorm it is not my
fault."
"I can't bear any more, I can't, I can't!"
Sasha jerked her leg abruptly and filled the room with an unpleasant
wailing. Her father made a despairing gesture, and looked hopelessly
towards the young lady. The latter shrugged her shoulders, and
hesitatingly went up to Sasha.
"Listen, my dear," she said, "it is no use crying. It's really naughty;
if your shoulder aches it can't be helped."
"You see, Madam," said the man quickly, as though defending himself, "we
have not slept for two nights, and have been travelling in a revolting
conveyance. Well, of course, it is natural she should be ill and
miserable, . . . and then, you know, we had a drunken driver, our
portmanteau has been stolen . . . the snowstorm all the time, but what's
the use of crying, Madam? I am exhausted, though, by sleeping in a
sitting position, and I feel as though I were drunk. Oh, dear! Sasha,
and I feel sick as it is, and then you cry!"
The man shook his head, and with a gesture of despair sat down.
"Of course you mustn't cry," said the young lady. "It's only little
babies cry. If you are ill, dear, you must undress and go to sleep. . .
. Let us take off your things!"
When the child had been undressed and pacified a silence reigned again.
The young lady seated herself at the window, and looked round
wonderingly at the room of the inn, at the ikon, at the stove. . . .
Apparently the room and the little girl with the thick nose, in her
short boy's nightgown, and the child's father, all seemed strange to
her. This strange man was sitting in a corner; he kept looking about him
helplessly, as though he were drunk, and rubbing his face with the palm
of his hand. He sat silent, blinking, and judging from his guilty-
looking figure it was difficult to imagine that he would soon begin to
speak. Yet he was the first to begin. Stroking his knees, he gave a
cough, laughed, and said:
"It's a comedy, it really is. . . . I look and I cannot believe my eyes:
for what devilry has destiny driven us to this accursed inn? What did
she want to show by it? Life sometimes performs such 'salto mortale,'
one can only stare and blink in amazement. Have you come from far,
Madam?"
"No, not from far," answered the young lady. "I am going from our
estate, fifteen miles from here, to our farm, to my father and brother.
My name is Ilovaisky, and the farm is called Ilovaiskoe. It's nine miles
away. What unpleasant weather!"
"It couldn't be worse."
The lame boy came in and stuck a new candle in the pomatum pot.
"You might bring us the samovar, boy," said the man, addressing him.
"Who drinks tea now?" laughed the boy. "It is a sin to drink tea before
mass. . . ."
"Never mind boy, you won't burn in hell if we do. . . ."
Over the tea the new acquaintances got into conversation.
Mlle. Ilovaisky learned that her companion was called Grigory Petrovitch
Liharev, that he was the brother of the Liharev who was Marshal of
Nobility in one of the neighbouring districts, and he himself had once
been a landowner, but had "run through everything in his time." Liharev
learned that her name was Marya Mihailovna, that her father had a huge
estate, but that she was the only one to look after it as her father and
brother looked at life through their fingers, were irresponsible, and
were too fond of harriers.
"My father and brother are all alone at the farm," she told him,
brandishing her fingers (she had the habit of moving her fingers before
her pointed face as she talked, and after every sentence moistened her
lips with her sharp little tongue). "They, I mean men, are an
irresponsible lot, and don't stir a finger for themselves. I can fancy
there will be no one to give them a meal after the fast! We have no
mother, and we have such servants that they can't lay the tablecloth
properly when I am away. You can imagine their condition now! They will
be left with nothing to break their fast, while I have to stay here all
night. How strange it all is."
She shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from her cup, and said:
"There are festivals that have a special fragrance: at Easter, Trinity
and Christmas there is a peculiar scent in the air. Even unbelievers are
fond of those festivals. My brother, for instance, argues that there is
no God, but he is the first to hurry to Matins at Easter."
Liharev raised his eyes to Mlle. Ilovaisky and laughed.
"They argue that there is no God," she went on, laughing too, "but why
is it, tell me, all the celebrated writers, the learned men, clever
people generally, in fact, believe towards the end of their life?"
"If a man does not know how to believe when he is young, Madam, he won't
believe in his old age if he is ever so much of a writer."
Judging from Liharev's cough he had a bass voice, but, probably from
being afraid to speak aloud, or from exaggerated shyness, he spoke in a
tenor. After a brief pause he heaved a sign and said:
"The way I look at it is that faith is a faculty of the spirit. It is
just the same as a talent, one must be born with it. So far as I can
judge by myself, by the people I have seen in my time, and by all that
is done around us, this faculty is present in Russians in its highest
degree. Russian life presents us with an uninterrupted succession of
convictions and aspirations, and if you care to know, it has not yet the
faintest notion of lack of faith or scepticism. If a Russian does not
believe in God, it means he believes in something else."
Liharev took a cup of tea from Mlle. Ilovaisky, drank off half in one
gulp, and went on:
"I will tell you about myself. Nature has implanted in my breast an
extraordinary faculty for belief. Whisper it not to the night, but half
my life I was in the ranks of the Atheists and Nihilists, but there was
not one hour in my life in which I ceased to believe. All talents, as a
rule, show themselves in early childhood, and so my faculty showed
itself when I could still walk upright under the table. My mother liked
her children to eat a great deal, and when she gave me food she used to
say: 'Eat! Soup is the great thing in life!' I believed, and ate the
soup ten times a day, ate like a shark, ate till I was disgusted and
stupefied. My nurse used to tell me fairy tales, and I believed in
house-spirits, in wood-elves, and in goblins of all kinds. I used
sometimes to steal corrosive sublimate from my father, sprinkle it on
cakes, and carry them up to the attic that the house-spirits, you see,
might eat them and be killed. And when I was taught to read and
understand what I read, then there was a fine to-do. I ran away to
America and went off to join the brigands, and wanted to go into a
monastery, and hired boys to torture me for being a Christian. And note
that my faith was always active, never dead. If I was running away to
America I was not alone, but seduced someone else, as great a fool as I
was, to go with me, and was delighted when I was nearly frozen outside
the town gates and when I was thrashed; if I went to join the brigands I
always came back with my face battered. A most restless childhood, I
assure you! And when they sent me to the high school and pelted me with
all sorts of truths-that is, that the earth goes round the sun, or that
white light is not white, but is made up of seven colours-my poor little
head began to go round! Everything was thrown into a whirl in me: Navin
who made the sun stand still, and my mother who in the name of the
Prophet Elijah disapproved of lightning conductors, and my father who
was indifferent to the truths I had learned. My enlightenment inspired
me. I wandered about the house and stables like one possessed, preaching
my truths, was horrified by ignorance, glowed with hatred for anyone who
saw in white light nothing but white light. . . . But all that's
nonsense and childishness. Serious, so to speak, manly enthusiasms began
only at the university. You have, no doubt, Madam, taken your degree
somewhere?"
"I studied at Novotcherkask at the Don Institute."
"Then you have not been to a university? So you don't know what science
means. All the sciences in the world have the same passport, without
which they regard themselves as meaningless . . . the striving towards
truth! Every one of them, even pharmacology, has for its aim not
utility, not the alleviation of life, but truth. It's remarkable! When
you set to work to study any science, what strikes you first of all is
its beginning. I assure you there is nothing more attractive and
grander, nothing is so staggering, nothing takes a man's breath away
like the beginning of any science. From the first five or six lectures
you are soaring on wings of the brightest hopes, you already seem to
yourself to be welcoming truth with open arms. And I gave myself up to
science, heart and soul, passionately, as to the woman one loves. I was
its slave; I found it the sun of my existence, and asked for no other. I
studied day and night without rest, ruined myself over books, wept when
before my eyes men exploited science for their own personal ends. But my
enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a
beginning but not an end, like a recurring decimal. Zoology has
discovered 35,000 kinds of insects, chemistry reckons 60 elements. If in
time tens of noughts can be written after these figures, Zoology and
chemistry will be just as far from their end as now, and all
contemporary scientific work consists in increasing these numbers. I saw
through this trick when I discovered the 35,001-st and felt no
satisfaction. Well, I had no time to suffer from disillusionment, as I
was soon possessed by a new faith. I plunged into Nihilism, with its
manifestoes, its 'black divisions,' and all the rest of it. I 'went to
the people,' worked in factories, worked as an oiler, as a barge hauler.
Afterwards, when wandering over Russia, I had a taste of Russian life, I
turned into a fervent devotee of that life. I loved the Russian people
with poignant intensity; I loved their God and believed in Him, and in
their language, their creative genius. . . . And so on, and so on. . . .
I have been a Slavophile in my time, I used to pester Aksakov with
letters, and I was a Ukrainophile, and an archæologist, and a collector
of specimens of peasant art. . . . I was enthusiastic over ideas,
people, events, places . . . my enthusiasm was endless! Five years ago I
was working for the abolition of private property; my last creed was
non-resistance to evil."
Sasha gave an abrupt sigh and began moving. Liharev got up and went to
her.
"Won't you have some tea, dearie?" he asked tenderly.
"Drink it yourself," the child answered rudely. Liharev was
disconcerted, and went back to the table with a guilty step.
"Then you have had a lively time," said Mlle. Ilovaisky; "you have
something to remember."
"Well, yes, it's all very lively when one sits over tea and chatters to
a kind listener, but you should ask what that liveliness has cost me!
What price have I paid for the variety of my life? You see, Madam, I
have not held my convictions like a German doctor of philosophy,
zierlichmännerlich, I have not lived in solitude, but every conviction
I have had has bound my back to the yoke, has torn my body to pieces.
Judge, for yourself. I was wealthy like my brothers, but now I am a
beggar. In the delirium of my enthusiasm I smashed up my own fortune and
my wife's-a heap of other people's money. Now I am forty-two, old age is
close upon me, and I am homeless, like a dog that has dropped behind its
waggon at night. All my life I have not known what peace meant, my soul
has been in continual agitation, distressed even by its hopes . . . I
have been wearied out with heavy irregular work, have endured privation,
have five times been in prison, have dragged myself across the provinces
of Archangel and of Tobolsk . . . it's painful to think of it! I have
lived, but in my fever I have not even been conscious of the process of
life itself. Would you believe it, I don't remember a single spring, I
never noticed how my wife loved me, how my children were born. What more
can I tell you? I have been a misfortune to all who have loved me. . . .
My mother has worn mourning for me all these fifteen years, while my
proud brothers, who have had to wince, to blush, to bow their heads, to
waste their money on my account, have come in the end to hate me like
poison."
Liharev got up and sat down again.
"If I were simply unhappy I should thank God," he went on without
looking at his listener. "My personal unhappiness sinks into the
background when I remember how often in my enthusiasms I have been
absurd, far from the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often I have
hated and despised those whom I ought to have loved, and vice versa, I
have changed a thousand times. One day I believe, fall down and worship,
the next I flee like a coward from the gods and friends of yesterday,
and swallow in silence the 'scoundrel!' they hurl after me. God alone
has seen how often I have wept and bitten my pillow in shame for my
enthusiasms. Never once in my life have I intentionally lied or done
evil, but my conscience is not clear! I cannot even boast, Madam, that I
have no one's life upon my conscience, for my wife died before my eyes,
worn out by my reckless activity. Yes, my wife! I tell you they have two
ways of treating women nowadays. Some measure women's skulls to prove
woman is inferior to man, pick out her defects to mock at her, to look
original in her eyes, and to justify their sensuality. Others do their
utmost to raise women to their level, that is, force them to learn by
heart the 35,000 species, to speak and write the same foolish things as
they speak and write themselves."
Liharev's face darkened.
"I tell you that woman has been and always will be the slave of man," he
said in a bass voice, striking his fist on the table. "She is the soft,
tender wax which a man always moulds into anything he likes. . . . My
God! for the sake of some trumpery masculine enthusiasm she will cut off
her hair, abandon her family, die among strangers! . . . among the ideas
for which she has sacrificed herself there is not a single feminine one.
. . . An unquestioning, devoted slave! I have not measured skulls, but I
say this from hard, bitter experience: the proudest, most independent
women, if I have succeeded in communicating to them my enthusiasm, have
followed me without criticism, without question, and done anything I
chose; I have turned a nun into a Nihilist who, as I heard afterwards,
shot a gendarme; my wife never left me for a minute in my wanderings,
and like a weathercock changed her faith in step with my changing
enthusiasms."
Liharev jumped up and walked up and down the room.
"A noble, sublime slavery!" he said, clasping his hands. "It is just in
it that the highest meaning of woman's life lies! Of all the fearful
medley of thoughts and impressions accumulated in my brain from my
association with women my memory, like a filter, has retained no ideas,
no clever saying, no philosophy, nothing but that extraordinary,
resignation to fate, that wonderful mercifulness, forgiveness of
everything."
Liharev clenched his fists, stared at a fixed point, and with a sort of
passionate intensity, as though he were savouring each word as he
uttered it, hissed through his clenched teeth:
"That . . . that great-hearted fortitude, faithfulness unto death,
poetry of the heart. . . . The meaning of life lies in just that
unrepining martyrdom, in the tears which would soften a stone, in the
boundless, all-forgiving love which brings light and warmth into the
chaos of life. . . ."
Mlle. Ilovaisky got up slowly, took a step towards Liharev, and fixed
her eyes upon his face. From the tears that glittered on his eyelashes,
from his quivering, passionate voice, from the flush on his cheeks, it
was clear to her that women were not a chance, not a simple subject of
conversation. They were the object of his new enthusiasm, or, as he said
himself, his new faith! For the first time in her life she saw a man
carried away, fervently believing. With his gesticulations, with his
flashing eyes he seemed to her mad, frantic, but there was a feeling of
such beauty in the fire of his eyes, in his words, in all the movements
of his huge body, that without noticing what she was doing she stood
facing him as though rooted to the spot, and gazed into his face with
delight.
"Take my mother," he said, stretching out his hand to her with an
imploring expression on his face, "I poisoned her existence, according
to her ideas disgraced the name of Liharev, did her as much harm as the
most malignant enemy, and what do you think? My brothers give her little
sums for holy bread and church services, and outraging her religious
feelings, she saves that money and sends it in secret to her erring
Grigory. This trifle alone elevates and ennobles the soul far more than
all the theories, all the clever sayings and the 35,000 species. I can
give you thousands of instances. Take you, even, for instance! With
tempest and darkness outside you are going to your father and your
brother to cheer them with your affection in the holiday, though very
likely they have forgotten and are not thinking of you. And, wait a bit,
and you will love a man and follow him to the North Pole. You would,
wouldn't you?"
"Yes, if I loved him."
"There, you see," cried Liharev delighted, and he even stamped with his
foot. "Oh dear! How glad I am that I have met you! Fate is kind to me, I
am always meeting splendid people. Not a day passes but one makes
acquaintance with somebody one would give one's soul for. There are ever
so many more good people than bad in this world. Here, see, for
instance, how openly and from our hearts we have been talking as though
we had known each other a hundred years. Sometimes, I assure you, one
restrains oneself for ten years and holds one's tongue, is reserved with
one's friends and one's wife, and meets some cadet in a train and
babbles one's whole soul out to him. It is the first time I have the
honour of seeing you, and yet I have confessed to you as I have never
confessed in my life. Why is it?"
Rubbing his hands and smiling good-humouredly Liharev walked up and down
the room, and fell to talking about women again. Meanwhile they began
ringing for matins.
"Goodness," wailed Sasha. "He won't let me sleep with his talking!"
"Oh, yes!" said Liharev, startled. "I am sorry, darling, sleep, sleep. .
. . I have two boys besides her," he whispered. "They are living with
their uncle, Madam, but this one can't exist a day without her father.
She's wretched, she complains, but she sticks to me like a fly to honey.
I have been chattering too much, Madam, and it would do you no harm to
sleep. Wouldn't you like me to make up a bed for you?"
Without waiting for permission he shook the wet pelisse, stretched it on
a bench, fur side upwards, collected various shawls and scarves, put the
overcoat folded up into a roll for a pillow, and all this he did in
silence with a look of devout reverence, as though he were not handling
a woman's rags, but the fragments of holy vessels. There was something
apologetic, embarrassed about his whole figure, as though in the
presence of a weak creature he felt ashamed of his height and strength.
. . .
When Mlle. Ilovaisky had lain down, he put out the candle and sat down
on a stool by the stove.
"So, Madam," he whispered, lighting a fat cigarette and puffing the
smoke into the stove. "Nature has put into the Russian an extraordinary
faculty for belief, a searching intelligence, and the gift of
speculation, but all that is reduced to ashes by irresponsibility,
laziness, and dreamy frivolity. . . . Yes. . . ."
She gazed wonderingly into the darkness, and saw only a spot of red on
the ikon and the flicker of the light of the stove on Liharev's face.
The darkness, the chime of the bells, the roar of the storm, the lame
boy, Sasha with her fretfulness, unhappy Liharev and his sayings-all
this was mingled together, and seemed to grow into one huge impression,
and God's world seemed to her fantastic, full of marvels and magical
forces. All that she had heard was ringing in her ears, and human life
presented itself to her as a beautiful poetic fairy-tale without an end.
The immense impression grew and grew, clouded consciousness, and turned
into a sweet dream. She was asleep, though she saw the little ikon lamp
and a big nose with the light playing on it.
She heard the sound of weeping.
"Daddy, darling," a child's voice was tenderly entreating, "let's go
back to uncle! There is a Christmas-tree there! Styopa and Kolya are
there!"
"My darling, what can I do?" a man's bass persuaded softly. "Understand
me! Come, understand!"
And the man's weeping blended with the child's. This voice of human
sorrow, in the midst of the howling of the storm, touched the girl's ear
with such sweet human music that she could not bear the delight of it,
and wept too. She was conscious afterwards of a big, black shadow coming
softly up to her, picking up a shawl that had dropped on to the floor
and carefully wrapping it round her feet.
Mlle. Ilovaisky was awakened by a strange uproar. She jumped up and
looked about her in astonishment. The deep blue dawn was looking in at
the window half-covered with snow. In the room there was a grey
twilight, through which the stove and the sleeping child and Nasir-ed-
Din stood out distinctly. The stove and the lamp were both out. Through
the wide-open door she could see the big tavern room with a counter and
chairs. A man, with a stupid, gipsy face and astonished eyes, was
standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of melting snow, holding
a big red star on a stick. He was surrounded by a group of boys,
motionless as statues, and plastered over with snow. The light shone
through the red paper of the star, throwing a glow of red on their wet
faces. The crowd was shouting in disorder, and from its uproar Mlle.
Ilovaisky could make out only one couplet:
"Hi, you Little Russian lad, Bring your sharp knife, We will kill the
Jew, we will kill him, The son of tribulation. . ."
Liharev was standing near the counter, looking feelingly at the singers
and tapping his feet in time. Seeing Mlle. Ilovaisky, he smiled all over
his face and came up to her. She smiled too.
"A happy Christmas!" he said. "I saw you slept well."
She looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling.
After the conversation in the night he seemed to her not tall and broad
shouldered, but little, just as the biggest steamer seems to us a little
thing when we hear that it has crossed the ocean.
"Well, it is time for me to set off," she said. "I must put on my
things. Tell me where you are going now?"
"I? To the station of Klinushki, from there to Sergievo, and from
Sergievo, with horses, thirty miles to the coal mines that belong to a
horrid man, a general called Shashkovsky. My brothers have got me the
post of superintendent there. . . . I am going to be a coal miner."
"Stay, I know those mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle, you know. But . . .
what are you going there for?" asked Mlle. Ilovaisky, looking at Liharev
in surprise.
"As superintendent. To superintend the coal mines."
"I don't understand!" she shrugged her shoulders. "You are going to the
mines. But you know, it's the bare steppe, a desert, so dreary that you
couldn't exist a day there! It's horrible coal, no one will buy it, and
my uncle's a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt . . . . You won't get your
salary!"
"No matter," said Liharev, unconcernedly, "I am thankful even for coal
mines."
She shrugged her shoulders, and walked about the room in agitation.
"I don't understand, I don't understand," she said, moving her fingers
before her face. "It's impossible, and . . . and irrational! You must
understand that it's . . . it's worse than exile. It is a living tomb! O
Heavens!" she said hotly, going up to Liharev and moving her fingers
before his smiling face; her upper lip was quivering, and her sharp face
turned pale, "Come, picture it, the bare steppe, solitude. There is no
one to say a word to there, and you . . . are enthusiastic over women!
Coal mines . . . and women!"
Mlle. Ilovaisky was suddenly ashamed of her heat and, turning away from
Liharev, walked to the window.
"No, no, you can't go there," she said, moving her fingers rapidly over
the pane.