sigh, and paced slowly about the drawing-room. There followed a
succession of oppressive pauses interspersed with weeping and the
questions which lead to nothing. The band had already played a
quadrille, a polka, and another quadrille. It got quite dark. In the
adjoining room, the maid lighted the lamp; and all the while the doctor
kept his hat in his hands, and seemed trying to say something. Several
times Olga Ivanovna went off to her son, sat by him for half an hour,
and came back again into the drawing-room; she was continually breaking
into tears and lamentations. The time dragged agonisingly, and it seemed
as though the evening had no end.
At midnight, when the band had played the cotillion and ceased
altogether, the doctor got ready to go.
"I will come again to-morrow," he said, pressing the mother's cold hand.
"You go to bed."
After putting on his greatcoat in the passage and picking up his
walking-stick, he stopped, thought a minute, and went back into the
drawing-room.
"I'll come to-morrow, Olga," he repeated in a quivering voice. "Do you
hear?"
She did not answer, and it seemed as though grief had robbed her of all
power of speech. In his greatcoat and with his stick still in his hand,
the doctor sat down beside her, and began in a soft, tender half-
whisper, which was utterly out of keeping with his heavy, dignified
figure:
"Olga! For the sake of your sorrow which I share. . . . Now, when
falsehood is criminal, I beseech you to tell me the truth. You have
always declared that the boy is my son. Is that the truth?"
Olga Ivanovna was silent.
"You have been the one attachment in my life," the doctor went on, "and
you cannot imagine how deeply my feeling is wounded by falsehood . . . .
Come, I entreat you, Olga, for once in your life, tell me the truth. . .
. At these moments one cannot lie. Tell me that Misha is not my son. I
am waiting."
"He is."
Olga Ivanovna's face could not be seen, but in her voice the doctor
could hear hesitation. He sighed.
"Even at such moments you can bring yourself to tell a lie," he said in
his ordinary voice. "There is nothing sacred to you! Do listen, do
understand me. . . . You have been the one only attachment in my life.
Yes, you were depraved, vulgar, but I have loved no one else but you in
my life. That trivial love, now that I am growing old, is the one
solitary bright spot in my memories. Why do you darken it with
deception? What is it for?"
"I don't understand you."
"Oh my God!" cried Tsvyetkov. "You are lying, you understand very well!"
he cried more loudly, and he began pacing about the drawing-room,
angrily waving his stick. "Or have you forgotten? Then I will remind
you! A father's rights to the boy are equally shared with me by Petrov
and Kurovsky the lawyer, who still make you an allowance for their son's
education, just as I do! Yes, indeed! I know all that quite well! I
forgive your lying in the past, what does it matter? But now when you
have grown older, at this moment when the boy is dying, your lying
stifles me! How sorry I am that I cannot speak, how sorry I am!"
The doctor unbuttoned his overcoat, and still pacing about, said:
"Wretched woman! Even such moments have no effect on her! Even now she
lies as freely as nine years ago in the Hermitage Restaurant! She is
afraid if she tells me the truth I shall leave off giving her money, she
thinks that if she did not lie I should not love the boy! You are lying!
It's contemptible!"
The doctor rapped the floor with his stick, and cried:
"It's loathsome. Warped, corrupted creature! I must despise you, and I
ought to be ashamed of my feeling. Yes! Your lying has stuck in my
throat these nine years, I have endured it, but now it's too much--too
much."
From the dark corner where Olga Ivanovna was sitting there came the
sound of weeping. The doctor ceased speaking and cleared his throat. A
silence followed. The doctor slowly buttoned up his over-coat, and began
looking for his hat which he had dropped as he walked about.
"I lost my temper," he muttered, bending down to the floor. "I quite
lost sight of the fact that you cannot attend to me now. . . . God knows
what I have said. . . . Don't take any notice of it, Olga."
He found his hat and went towards the dark corner.
"I have wounded you," he said in a soft, tender half-whisper, "but once
more I entreat you, tell me the truth; there should not be lying between
us. . . . I blurted it out, and now you know that Petrov and Kurovsky
are no secret to me. So now it is easy for you to tell me the truth."
Olga Ivanovna thought a moment, and with perceptible hesitation, said:
"Nikolay, I am not lying--Misha is your child."
"My God," moaned the doctor, "then I will tell you something more: I
have kept your letter to Petrov in which you call him Misha's father!
Olga, I know the truth, but I want to hear it from you! Do you hear?"
Olga Ivanovna made no reply, but went on weeping. After waiting for an
answer the doctor shrugged his shoulders and went out.
"I will come to-morrow," he called from the passage.
All the way home, as he sat in his carriage, he was shrugging his
shoulders and muttering:
"What a pity that I don't know how to speak! I haven't the gift of
persuading and convincing. It's evident she does not understand me since
she lies! It's evident! How can I make her see? How?"
TOO EARLY!
THE bells are ringing for service in the village of Shalmovo. The sun is
already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turned crimson and will
soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which has lately changed its name
and become a restaurant--a title quite out of keeping with the wretched
little hut with its thatch torn off its roof, and its couple of dingy
windows--two peasant sportsmen are sitting. One of them is called Filimon
Slyunka; he is an old man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to
the Counts Zavalin, by trade a carpenter. He has at one time been
employed in a nail factory, has been turned off for drunkenness and
idleness, and now lives upon his old wife, who begs for alms. He is thin
and weak, with a mangy-looking little beard, speaks with a hissing
sound, and after every word twitches the right side of his face and
jerkily shrugs his right shoulder. The other, Ignat Ryabov, a sturdy,
broad-shouldered peasant who never does anything and is everlastingly
silent, is sitting in the corner under a big string of bread rings. The
door, opening inwards, throws a thick shadow upon him, so that Slyunka
and Semyon the publican can see nothing but his patched knees, his long
fleshy nose, and a big tuft of hair which has escaped from the thick
uncombed tangle covering his head. Semyon, a sickly little man, with a
pale face and a long sinewy neck, stands behind his counter, looks
mournfully at the string of bread rings, and coughs meekly.
"You think it over now, if you have any sense," Slyunka says to him,
twitching his cheek. "You have the thing lying by unused and get no sort
of benefit from it. While we need it. A sportsman without a gun is like
a sacristan without a voice. You ought to understand that, but I see you
don't understand it, so you can have no real sense. . . . Hand it over!"
"You left the gun in pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin womanish
little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off the string of
bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and then take your
gun."
"I haven't got a rouble. I swear to you, Semyon Mitritch, as God sees
me: you give me the gun and I will go to-day with Ignashka and bring it
you back again. I'll bring it back, strike me dead. May I have happiness
neither in this world nor the next, if I don't."
"Semyon Mitritch, do give it," Ignat Ryabov says in his bass, and his
voice betrays a passionate desire to get what he asks for.
"But what do you want the gun for?" sighs Semyon, sadly shaking his
head. "What sort of shooting is there now? It's still winter outside,
and no game at all but crows and jackdaws."
"Winter, indeed," says Slyunka, hooing the ash out of his pipe with his
finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with the
snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you are unlucky, you
may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, and then you must
wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipe is not a rook. . . .
Last year he was flying the week before Easter, while the year before we
had to wait till the week after Easter! Come, do us a favour, Semyon
Mitritch, give us the gun. Make us pray for you for ever. As ill-luck
would have it, Ignashka has pledged his gun for drink too. Ah, when you
drink you feel nothing, but now . . . ah, I wish I had never looked at
it, the cursed vodka! Truly it is the blood of Satan! Give it us, Semyon
Mitritch!"
"I won't give it you," says Semyon, clasping his yellow hands on his
breast as though he were going to pray. "You must act fairly,
Filimonushka. . . . A thing is not taken out of pawn just anyhow; you
must pay the money. . . . Besides, what do you want to kill birds for?
What's the use? It's Lent now--you are not going to eat them."
Slyunka exchanges glances with Ryabov in embarrassment, sighs, and says:
"We would only go stand-shooting."
"And what for? It's all foolishness. You are not the sort of man to
spend your time in foolishness. . . . Ignashka, to be sure, is a man of
no understanding, God has afflicted him, but you, thank the Lord, are an
old man. It's time to prepare for your end. Here, you ought to go to the
midnight service."
The allusion to his age visibly stings Slyunka. He clears his throat,
wrinkles up his forehead, and remains silent for a full minute.
"I say, Semyon Mitritch," he says hotly, getting up and twitching not
only in his right cheek but all over his face. "It's God's truth. . . .
May the Almighty strike me dead, after Easter I shall get something from
Stepan Kuzmitch for an axle, and I will pay you not one rouble but two!
May the Lord chastise me! Before the holy image, I tell you, only give
me the gun!"
"Gi-ive it," Ryabov says in his growling bass; they can hear him
breathing hard, and it seems that he would like to say a great deal, but
cannot find the words. "Gi-ive it."
"No, brothers, and don't ask," sighs Semyon, shaking his head
mournfully. "Don't lead me into sin. I won't give you the gun. It's not
the fashion for a thing to be taken out of pawn and no money paid.
Besides--why this indulgence? Go your way and God bless you!"
Slyunka rubs his perspiring face with his sleeve and begins hotly
swearing and entreating. He crosses himself, holds out his hands to the
ikon, calls his deceased father and mother to bear witness, but Semyon
sighs and meekly looks as before at the string of bread rings. In the
end Ignashka Ryabov, hitherto motionless, gets up impulsively and bows
down to the ground before the innkeeper, but even that has no effect on
him.
"May you choke with my gun, you devil," says Slyunka, with his face
twitching, and his shoulders, shrugging. "May you choke, you plague, you
scoundrelly soul."
Swearing and shaking his fists, he goes out of the tavern with Ryabov
and stands still in the middle of the road.
"He won't give it, the damned brute," he says, in a weeping voice,
looking into Ryabov's face with an injured air.
"He won't give it," booms Ryabov.
The windows of the furthest huts, the starling cote on the tavern, the
tops of the poplars, and the cross on the church are all gleaming with a
bright golden flame. Now they can see only half of the sun, which, as it
goes to its night's rest, is winking, shedding a crimson light, and
seems laughing gleefully. Slyunka and Ryabov can see the forest lying, a
dark blur, to the right of the sun, a mile and a half from the village,
and tiny clouds flitting over the clear sky, and they feel that the
evening will be fine and still.
"Now is just the time," says Slyunka, with his face twitching. "It would
be nice to stand for an hour or two. He won't give it us, the damned
brute. May he . . ."
"For stand-shooting, now is the very time . . ." Ryabov articulated, as
though with an effort, stammering.
After standing still for a little they walk out of the village, without
saying a word to each other, and look towards the dark streak of the
forest. The whole sky above the forest is studded with moving black
spots, the rooks flying home to roost. The snow, lying white here and
there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightly flecked with gold by the
sun.
"This time last year I went stand-shooting in Zhivki," says Slyunka,
after a long silence. "I brought back three snipe."
Again there follows a silence. Both stand a long time and look towards
the forest, and then lazily move and walk along the muddy road from the
village.
"It's most likely the snipe haven't come yet," says Slyunka, "but may be
they are here."
"Kostka says they are not here yet."
"Maybe they are not, who can tell; one year is not like another. But
what mud!"
"But we ought to stand."
"To be sure we ought--why not?"
"We can stand and watch; it wouldn't be amiss to go to the forest and
have a look. If they are there we will tell Kostka, or maybe get a gun
ourselves and come to-morrow. What a misfortune, God forgive me. It was
the devil put it in my mind to take my gun to the pothouse! I am more
sorry than I can tell you, Ignashka."
Conversing thus, the sportsmen approach the forest. The sun has set and
left behind it a red streak like the glow of a fire, scattered here and
there with clouds; there is no catching the colours of those clouds:
their edges are red, but they themselves are one minute grey, at the
next lilac, at the next ashen.
In the forest, among the thick branches of fir-trees and under the birch
bushes, it is dark, and only the outermost twigs on the side of the sun,
with their fat buds and shining bark, stand out clearly in the air.
There is a smell of thawing snow and rotting leaves. It is still;
nothing stirs. From the distance comes the subsiding caw of the rooks.
"We ought to be standing in Zhivki now," whispers Slyunka, looking with
awe at Ryabov; "there's good stand-shooting there."
Ryabov too looks with awe at Slyunka, with unblinking eyes and open
mouth.
"A lovely time," Slyunka says in a trembling whisper. "The Lord is
sending a fine spring . . . and I should think the snipe are here by
now. . . . Why not? The days are warm now. . . . The cranes were flying
in the morning, lots and lots of them."
Slyunka and Ryabov, splashing cautiously through the melting snow and
sticking in the mud, walk two hundred paces along the edge of the forest
and there halt. Their faces wear a look of alarm and expectation of
something terrible and extraordinary. They stand like posts, do not
speak nor stir, and their hands gradually fall into an attitude as
though they were holding a gun at the cock. . . .
A big shadow creeps from the left and envelops the earth. The dusk of
evening comes on. If one looks to the right, through the bushes and tree
trunks, there can be seen crimson patches of the after-glow. It is still
and damp. . . .
"There's no sound of them," whispers Slyunka, shrugging with the cold
and sniffing with his chilly nose.
But frightened by his own whisper, he holds his finger up at some one,
opens his eyes wide, and purses up his lips. There is a sound of a light
snapping. The sportsmen look at each other significantly, and tell each
other with their eyes that it is nothing. It is the snapping of a dry
twig or a bit of bark. The shadows of evening keep growing and growing,
the patches of crimson gradually grow dim, and the dampness becomes
unpleasant.
The sportsmen remain standing a long time, but they see and hear
nothing. Every instant they expect to see a delicate leaf float through
the air, to hear a hurried call like the husky cough of a child, and the
flutter of wings.
"No, not a sound," Slyunka says aloud, dropping his hands and beginning
to blink. "So they have not come yet."
"It's early!"
"You are right there."
The sportsmen cannot see each other's faces, it is getting rapidly dark.
"We must wait another five days," says Slyunka, as he comes out from
behind a bush with Ryabov. "It's too early!"
They go homewards, and are silent all the way.
THE COSSACK
MAXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving home from
church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cake which had
just been blessed. The sun had not yet risen, but the east was all
tinged with red and gold and had dissipated the haze which usually, in
the early morning, screens the blue of the sky from the eyes. It was
quiet. . . . The birds were hardly yet awake . . . . The corncrake
uttered its clear note, and far away above a little tumulus, a sleepy
kite floated, heavily flapping its wings, and no other living creature
could be seen all over the steppe.
Tortchakov drove on and thought that there was no better nor happier
holiday than the Feast of Christ's Resurrection. He had only lately been
married, and was now keeping his first Easter with his wife. Whatever he
looked at, whatever he thought about, it all seemed to him bright,
joyous, and happy. He thought about his farming, and thought that it was
all going well, that the furnishing of his house was all the heart could
desire--there was enough of everything and all of it good; he looked at
his wife, and she seemed to him lovely, kind, and gentle. He was
delighted by the glow in the east, and the young grass, and his
squeaking chaise, and the kite. . . . And when on the way, he ran into a
tavern to light his cigarette and drank a glass, he felt happier still.
"It is said, 'Great is the day,'" he chattered. "Yes, it is great! Wait
a bit, Lizaveta, the sun will begin to dance. It dances every Easter. So
it rejoices too!"
"It is not alive," said his wife.
"But there are people on it!" exclaimed Tortchakov, "there are really!
Ivan Stepanitch told me that there are people on all the planets--on the
sun, and on the moon! Truly . . . but maybe the learned men tell
lies--the devil only knows! Stay, surely that's not a horse? Yes, it is!"
At the Crooked Ravine, which was just half-way on the journey home,
Tortchakov and his wife saw a saddled horse standing motionless, and
sniffing last year's dry grass. On a hillock beside the roadside a red-
haired Cossack was sitting doubled up, looking at his feet.
"Christ is risen!" Maxim shouted to him. "Wo-o-o!"
"Truly He is risen," answered the Cossack, without raising his head.
"Where are you going?"
"Home on leave."
"Why are you sitting here, then?"
"Why . . . I have fallen ill . . . I haven't the strength to go on."
"What is wrong?"
"I ache all over."
"H'm. What a misfortune! People are keeping holiday, and you fall sick!
But you should ride on to a village or an inn, what's the use of sitting
here!"
The Cossack raised his head, and with big, exhausted eyes, scanned
Maxim, his wife, and the horse.
"Have you come from church?" he asked.
"Yes."
"The holiday found me on the high road. It was not God's will for me to
reach home. I'd get on my horse at once and ride off, but I haven't the
strength. . . . You might, good Christians, give a wayfarer some Easter
cake to break his fast!"
"Easter cake?" Tortchakov repeated, "That we can, to be sure. . . .
Stay, I'll. . . ."
Maxim fumbled quickly in his pockets, glanced at his wife, and said:
"I haven't a knife, nothing to cut it with. And I don't like to break
it, it would spoil the whole cake. There's a problem! You look and see
if you haven't a knife?"
The Cossack got up groaning, and went to his saddle to get a knife.
"What an idea," said Tortchakov's wife angrily. "I won't let you slice
up the Easter cake! What should I look like, taking it home already cut!
Ride on to the peasants in the village, and break your fast there!"
The wife took the napkin with the Easter cake in it out of her husband's
hands and said:
"I won't allow it! One must do things properly; it's not a loaf, but a
holy Easter cake. And it's a sin to cut it just anyhow."
"Well, Cossack, don't be angry," laughed Tortchakov. "The wife forbids
it! Good-bye. Good luck on your journey!"
Maxim shook the reins, clicked to his horse, and the chaise rolled on
squeaking. For some time his wife went on grumbling, and declaring that
to cut the Easter cake before reaching home was a sin and not the proper
thing. In the east the first rays of the rising sun shone out, cutting
their way through the feathery clouds, and the song of the lark was
heard in the sky. Now not one but three kites were hovering over the
steppe at a respectful distance from one another. Grasshoppers began
churring in the young grass.
When they had driven three-quarters of a mile from the Crooked Ravine,
Tortchakov looked round and stared intently into the distance.
"I can't see the Cossack," he said. "Poor, dear fellow, to take it into
his head to fall ill on the road. There couldn't be a worse misfortune,
to have to travel and not have the strength. . . . I shouldn't wonder if
he dies by the roadside. We didn't give him any Easter cake, Lizaveta,
and we ought to have given it. I'll be bound he wants to break his fast
too."
The sun had risen, but whether it was dancing or not Tortchakov did not
see. He remained silent all the way home, thinking and keeping his eyes
fixed on the horse's black tail. For some unknown reason he felt
overcome by depression, and not a trace of the holiday gladness was left
in his heart. When he had arrived home and said, "Christ is risen" to
his workmen, he grew cheerful again and began talking, but when he had
sat down to break the fast and had taken a bite from his piece of Easter
cake, he looked regretfully at his wife, and said:
"It wasn't right of us, Lizaveta, not to give that Cossack something to
eat."
"You are a queer one, upon my word," said Lizaveta, shrugging her
shoulders in surprise. "Where did you pick up such a fashion as giving
away the holy Easter cake on the high road? Is it an ordinary loaf? Now
that it is cut and lying on the table, let anyone eat it that likes--your
Cossack too! Do you suppose I grudge it?"
"That's all right, but we ought to have given the Cossack some. . . .
Why, he was worse off than a beggar or an orphan. On the road, and far
from home, and sick too."
Tortchakov drank half a glass of tea, and neither ate nor drank anything
more. He had no appetite, the tea seemed to choke him, and he felt
depressed again. After breaking their fast, his wife and he lay down to
sleep. When Lizaveta woke two hours later, he was standing by the
window, looking into the yard.
"Are you up already?" asked his wife.
"I somehow can't sleep. . . . Ah, Lizaveta," he sighed. "We were unkind,
you and I, to that Cossack!"
"Talking about that Cossack again!" yawned his wife. "You have got him
on the brain."
"He has served his Tsar, shed his blood maybe, and we treated him as
though he were a pig. We ought to have brought the sick man home and fed
him, and we did not even give him a morsel of bread."
"Catch me letting you spoil the Easter cake for nothing! And one that
has been blessed too! You would have cut it on the road, and shouldn't I
have looked a fool when I got home?"
Without saying anything to his wife, Maxim went into the kitchen,
wrapped a piece of cake up in a napkin, together with half a dozen eggs,
and went to the labourers in the barn.
"Kuzma, put down your concertina," he said to one of them. "Saddle the
bay, or Ivantchik, and ride briskly to the Crooked Ravine. There you
will see a sick Cossack with a horse, so give him this. Maybe he hasn't
ridden away yet."
Maxim felt cheerful again, but after waiting for Kuzma for some hours,
he could bear it no longer, so he saddled a horse and went off to meet
him. He met him just at the Ravine.
"Well, have you seen the Cossack?"
"I can't find him anywhere, he must have ridden on."
"H'm . . . a queer business."
Tortchakov took the bundle from Kuzma, and galloped on farther. When he
reached Shustrovo he asked the peasants:
"Friends, have you seen a sick Cossack with a horse? Didn't he ride by
here? A red-headed fellow on a bay horse."
The peasants looked at one another, and said they had not seen the
Cossack.
"The returning postman drove by, it's true, but as for a Cossack or
anyone else, there has been no such."
Maxim got home at dinner time.
"I can't get that Cossack out of my head, do what you will!" he said to
his wife. "He gives me no peace. I keep thinking: what if God meant to
try us, and sent some saint or angel in the form of a Cossack? It does
happen, you know. It's bad, Lizaveta; we were unkind to the man!"
"What do you keep pestering me with that Cossack for?" cried Lizaveta,
losing patience at last. "You stick to it like tar!"
"You are not kind, you know . . ." said Maxim, looking into his wife's
face.
And for the first time since his marriage he perceived that he wife was
not kind.