Brizzhalov's to explain; going into the general's reception room he saw
there a number of petitioners and among them the general himself, who
was beginning to interview them. After questioning several petitioners
the general raised his eyes and looked at Tchervyakov.
"Yesterday at the Arcadia, if you recollect, your Excellency," the
latter began, "I sneezed and . . . accidentally spattered . . . Exc. . .
."
"What nonsense. . . . It's beyond anything! What can I do for you," said
the general addressing the next petitioner.
"He won't speak," thought Tchervyakov, turning pale; "that means that he
is angry. . . . No, it can't be left like this. . . . I will explain to
him."
When the general had finished his conversation with the last of the
petitioners and was turning towards his inner apartments, Tchervyakov
took a step towards him and muttered:
"Your Excellency! If I venture to trouble your Excellency, it is simply
from a feeling I may say of regret! . . . It was not intentional if you
will graciously believe me."
The general made a lachrymose face, and waved his hand.
"Why, you are simply making fun of me, sir," he said as he closed the
door behind him.
"Where's the making fun in it?" thought Tchervyakov, "there is nothing
of the sort! He is a general, but he can't understand. If that is how it
is I am not going to apologise to that fanfaron any more! The devil take
him. I'll write a letter to him, but I won't go. By Jove, I won't."
So thought Tchervyakov as he walked home; he did not write a letter to
the general, he pondered and pondered and could not make up that letter.
He had to go next day to explain in person.
"I ventured to disturb your Excellency yesterday," he muttered, when the
general lifted enquiring eyes upon him, "not to make fun as you were
pleased to say. I was apologising for having spattered you in sneezing.
. . . And I did not dream of making fun of you. Should I dare to make
fun of you, if we should take to making fun, then there would be no
respect for persons, there would be. . . ."
"Be off!" yelled the general, turning suddenly purple, and shaking all
over.
"What?" asked Tchervyakov, in a whisper turning numb with horror.
"Be off!" repeated the general, stamping.
Something seemed to give way in Tchervyakov's stomach. Seeing nothing
and hearing nothing he reeled to the door, went out into the street, and
went staggering along. . . . Reaching home mechanically, without taking
off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and died.
A PINK STOCKING
A DULL, rainy day. The sky is completely covered with heavy clouds, and
there is no prospect of the rain ceasing. Outside sleet, puddles, and
drenched jackdaws. Indoors it is half dark, and so cold that one wants
the stove heated.
Pavel Petrovitch Somov is pacing up and down his study, grumbling at the
weather. The tears of rain on the windows and the darkness of the room
make him depressed. He is insufferably bored and has nothing to do. . .
. The newspapers have not been brought yet; shooting is out of the
question, and it is not nearly dinner-time . . . .
Somov is not alone in his study. Madame Somov, a pretty little lady in a
light blouse and pink stockings, is sitting at his writing table. She is
eagerly scribbling a letter. Every time he passes her as he strides up
and down, Ivan Petrovitch looks over her shoulder at what she is
writing. He sees big sprawling letters, thin and narrow, with all sorts
of tails and flourishes. There are numbers of blots, smears, and finger-
marks. Madame Somov does not like ruled paper, and every line runs
downhill with horrid wriggles as it reaches the margin. . . .
"Lidotchka, who is it you are writing such a lot to?" Somov inquires,
seeing that his wife is just beginning to scribble the sixth page.
"To sister Varya."
"Hm . . . it's a long letter! I'm so bored--let me read it!"
"Here, you may read it, but there's nothing interesting in it."
Somov takes the written pages and, still pacing up and down, begins
reading. Lidotchka leans her elbows on the back of her chair and watches
the expression of his face. . . . After the first page his face
lengthens and an expression of something almost like panic comes into
it. . . . At the third page Somov frowns and scratches the back of his
head. At the fourth he pauses, looks with a scared face at his wife, and
seems to ponder. After thinking a little, he takes up the letter again
with a sigh. . . . His face betrays perplexity and even alarm. . . ."
"Well, this is beyond anything!" he mutters, as he finishes reading the
letter and flings the sheets on the table, "It's positively incredible!"
"What's the matter?" asks Lidotchka, flustered.
"What's the matter! You've covered six pages, wasted a good two hours
scribbling, and there's nothing in it at all! If there were one tiny
idea! One reads on and on, and one's brain is as muddled as though one
were deciphering the Chinese wriggles on tea chests! Ough!"
"Yes, that's true, Vanya, . . ." says Lidotchka, reddening. "I wrote it
carelessly. . . ."
"Queer sort of carelessness! In a careless letter there is some meaning
and style--there is sense in it--while yours . . . excuse me, but I don't
know what to call it! It's absolute twaddle! There are words and
sentences, but not the slightest sense in them. Your whole letter is
exactly like the conversation of two boys: 'We had pancakes to-day! And
we had a soldier come to see us!' You say the same thing over and over
again! You drag it out, repeat yourself . . . . The wretched ideas dance
about like devils: there's no making out where anything begins, where
anything ends. . . . How can you write like that?"
"If I had been writing carefully," Lidotchka says in self defence, "then
there would not have been mistakes. . . ."
"Oh, I'm not talking about mistakes! The awful grammatical howlers!
There's not a line that's not a personal insult to grammar! No stops nor
commas--and the spelling . . . brrr! 'Earth' has an a in it!! And the
writing! It's desperate! I'm not joking, Lida. . . . I'm surprised and
appalled at your letter. . . . You mustn't be angry, darling, but,
really, I had no idea you were such a duffer at grammar. . . . And yet
you belong to a cultivated, well-educated circle: you are the wife of a
University man, and the daughter of a general! Tell me, did you ever go
to school?"
"What next! I finished at the Von Mebke's boarding school. . . ."
Somov shrugs his shoulders and continues to pace up and down, sighing.
Lidotchka, conscious of her ignorance and ashamed of it, sighs too and
casts down her eyes. . . . Ten minutes pass in silence.
"You know, Lidotchka, it really is awful!" says Somov, suddenly halting
in front of her and looking into her face with horror. "You are a mother
. . . do you understand? A mother! How can you teach your children if
you know nothing yourself? You have a good brain, but what's the use of
it if you have never mastered the very rudiments of knowledge?
There--never mind about knowledge . . . the children will get that at
school, but, you know, you are very shaky on the moral side too! You
sometimes use such language that it makes my ears tingle!"
Somov shrugs his shoulders again, wraps himself in the folds of his
dressing-gown and continues his pacing. . . . He feels vexed and
injured, and at the same time sorry for Lidotchka, who does not protest,
but merely blinks. . . . Both feel oppressed and miserable . . . .
Absorbed in their woes, they do not notice how time is passing and the
dinner hour is approaching.
Sitting down to dinner, Somov, who is fond of good eating and of eating
in peace, drinks a large glass of vodka and begins talking about
something else. Lidotchka listens and assents, but suddenly over the
soup her eyes fill with tears and she begins whimpering.
"It's all mother's fault!" she says, wiping away her tears with her
dinner napkin. "Everyone advised her to send me to the high school, and
from the high school I should have been sure to go on to the
University!"
"University . . . high school," mutters Somov. "That's running to
extremes, my girl! What's the good of being a blue stocking! A blue
stocking is the very deuce! Neither man nor woman, but just something
midway: neither one thing nor another. . . I hate blue stockings! I
would never have married a learned woman. . . ."
"There's no making you out . . .", says Lidotchka. "You are angry
because I am not learned, and at the same time you hate learned women;
you are annoyed because I have no ideas in my letter, and yet you
yourself are opposed to my studying. . . ."
"You do catch me up at a word, my dear," yawns Somov, pouring out a
second glass of vodka in his boredom.
Under the influence of vodka and a good dinner, Somov grows more good-
humoured, lively, and soft. . . . He watches his pretty wife making the
salad with an anxious face and a rush of affection for her, of
indulgence and forgiveness comes over him.
"It was stupid of me to depress her, poor girl . . . ," he thought. "Why
did I say such a lot of dreadful things? She is silly, that's true,
uncivilised and narrow; but . . . there are two sides to the question,
and audiatur et altera pars. . . . Perhaps people are perfectly right
when they say that woman's shallowness rests on her very vocation.
Granted that it is her vocation to love her husband, to bear children,
and to mix salad, what the devil does she want with learning? No,
indeed!"
At that point he remembers that learned women are usually tedious, that
they are exacting, strict, and unyielding; and, on the other hand, how
easy it is to get on with silly Lidotchka, who never pokes her nose into
anything, does not understand so much, and never obtrudes her criticism.
There is peace and comfort with Lidotchka, and no risk of being
interfered with.
"Confound them, those clever and learned women! It's better and easier
to live with simple ones," he thinks, as he takes a plate of chicken
from Lidotchka.
He recollects that a civilised man sometimes feels a desire to talk and
share his thoughts with a clever and well-educated woman. "What of it?"
thinks Somov. "If I want to talk of intellectual subjects, I'll go to
Natalya Andreyevna . . . or to Marya Frantsovna. . . . It's very simple!
But no, I shan't go. One can discuss intellectual subjects with men," he
finally decides.
AT A SUMMER VILLA
"I LOVE YOU. You are my life, my happiness--everything to me! Forgive the
avowal, but I have not the strength to suffer and be silent. I ask not
for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbour at eight
o'clock this evening. . . . To sign my name is unnecessary I think, but
do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young, nice-looking . . .
what more do you want?"
When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who was spending
his holidays at a summer villa, read this letter, he shrugged his
shoulders and scratched his forehead in perplexity.
"What devilry is this?" he thought. "I'm a married man, and to send me
such a queer . . . silly letter! Who wrote it?"
Pavel Ivanitch turned the letter over and over before his eyes, read it
through again, and spat with disgust.
"'I love you'" . . . he said jeeringly. "A nice boy she has pitched on!
So I'm to run off to meet you in the arbour! . . . I got over all such
romances and fleurs d'amour years ago, my girl. . . . Hm! She must be
some reckless, immoral creature. . . . Well, these women are a set! What
a whirligig--God forgive us!--she must be to write a letter like that to a
stranger, and a married man, too! It's real demoralisation!"
In the course of his eight years of married life Pavel Ivanitch had
completely got over all sentimental feeling, and he had received no
letters from ladies except letters of congratulation, and so, although
he tried to carry it off with disdain, the letter quoted above greatly
intrigued and agitated him.
An hour after receiving it, he was lying on his sofa, thinking:
"Of course I am not a silly boy, and I am not going to rush off to this
idiotic rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to know who wrote
it! Hm. . . . It is certainly a woman's writing. . . . The letter is
written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardly be a joke. . . . Most
likely it's some neurotic girl, or perhaps a widow . . . widows are
frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm. . . . Who could it be?"
What made it the more difficult to decide the question was that Pavel
Ivanitch had not one feminine acquaintance among all the summer
visitors, except his wife.
"It is queer . . ." he mused. "'I love you!'. . . When did she manage to
fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this, apropos of
nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding out what sort of
man I am. . . . She must be extremely young and romantic if she is
capable of falling in love after two or three looks at me. . . . But . .
. who is she?"
Pavel Ivanitch suddenly recalled that when he had been walking among the
summer villas the day before, and the day before that, he had several
times been met by a fair young lady with a light blue hat and a turn-up
nose. The fair charmer had kept looking at him, and when he sat down on
a seat she had sat down beside him. . . .
"Can it be she?" Vyhodtsev wondered. "It can't be! Could a delicate
ephemeral creature like that fall in love with a worn-out old eel like
me? No, it's impossible!"
At dinner Pavel Ivanitch looked blankly at his wife while he meditated:
"She writes that she is young and nice-looking. . . . So she's not old.
. . . Hm. . . . To tell the truth, honestly I am not so old and plain
that no one could fall in love with me. My wife loves me! Besides, love
is blind, we all know. . . ."
"What are you thinking about?" his wife asked him.
"Oh. . . my head aches a little. . ." Pavel Ivanitch said, quite
untruly.
He made up his mind that it was stupid to pay attention to such a
nonsensical thing as a love-letter, and laughed at it and at its
authoress, but--alas!--powerful is the "dacha" enemy of mankind! After
dinner, Pavel Ivanitch lay down on his bed, and instead of going to
sleep, reflected:
"But there, I daresay she is expecting me to come! What a silly! I can
just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her tournure
will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I shan't go,
though. . . . Bother her!"
But, I repeat, powerful is the enemy of mankind.
"Though I might, perhaps, just out of curiosity . . ." he was musing,
half an hour later. "I might go and look from a distance what sort of a
creature she is. . . . It would be interesting to have a look at her! It
would be fun, and that's all! After all, why shouldn't I have a little
fun since such a chance has turned up?"
Pavel Ivanitch got up from his bed and began dressing. "What are you
getting yourself up so smartly for?" his wife asked, noticing that he
was putting on a clean shirt and a fashionable tie.
"Oh, nothing. . . . I must have a walk. . . . My head aches. . . . Hm."
Pavel Ivanitch dressed in his best, and waiting till eight o'clock, went
out of the house. When the figures of gaily dressed summer visitors of
both sexes began passing before his eyes against the bright green
background, his heart throbbed.
"Which of them is it? . . ." he wondered, advancing irresolutely. "Come,
what am I afraid of? Why, I am not going to the rendezvous! What . . . a
fool! Go forward boldly! And what if I go into the arbour? Well, well .
. . there is no reason I should."
Pavel Ivanitch's heart beat still more violently. . . . Involuntarily,
with no desire to do so, he suddenly pictured to himself the half-
darkness of the arbour. . . . A graceful fair girl with a little blue
hat and a turn-up nose rose before his imagination. He saw her, abashed
by her love and trembling all over, timidly approach him, breathing
excitedly, and . . . suddenly clasping him in her arms.
"If I weren't married it would be all right . . ." he mused, driving
sinful ideas out of his head. "Though . . . for once in my life, it
would do no harm to have the experience, or else one will die without
knowing what. . . . And my wife, what will it matter to her? Thank God,
for eight years I've never moved one step away from her. . . . Eight
years of irreproachable duty! Enough of her. . . . It's positively
vexatious. . . . I'm ready to go to spite her!"
Trembling all over and holding his breath, Pavel Ivanitch went up to the
arbour, wreathed with ivy and wild vine, and peeped into it . . . . A
smell of dampness and mildew reached him. . . .
"I believe there's nobody . . ." he thought, going into the arbour, and
at once saw a human silhouette in the corner.
The silhouette was that of a man. . . . Looking more closely, Pavel
Ivanitch recognised his wife's brother, Mitya, a student, who was
staying with them at the villa.
"Oh, it's you . . ." he growled discontentedly, as he took off his hat
and sat down.
"Yes, it's I" . . . answered Mitya.
Two minutes passed in silence.
"Excuse me, Pavel Ivanitch," began Mitya: "but might I ask you to leave
me alone?? . . . I am thinking over the dissertation for my degree and .
. . and the presence of anybody else prevents my thinking."
"You had better go somewhere in a dark avenue. . ." Pavel Ivanitch
observed mildly. "It's easier to think in the open air, and, besides, .
. . er . . . I should like to have a little sleep here on this seat. . .
It's not so hot here. . . ."
"You want to sleep, but it's a question of my dissertation . . ." Mitya
grumbled. "The dissertation is more important."
Again there was a silence. Pavel Ivanitch, who had given the rein to his
imagination and was continually hearing footsteps, suddenly leaped up
and said in a plaintive voice:
"Come, I beg you, Mitya! You are younger and ought to consider me . . .
. I am unwell and . . . I need sleep. . . . Go away!"
"That's egoism. . . . Why must you be here and not I? I won't go as a
matter of principle."
"Come, I ask you to! Suppose I am an egoist, a despot and a fool . . .
but I ask you to go! For once in my life I ask you a favour! Show some
consideration!"
Mitya shook his head.
"What a beast! . . ." thought Pavel Ivanitch. "That can't be a
rendezvous with him here! It's impossible with him here!"
"I say, Mitya," he said, "I ask you for the last time. . . . Show that
you are a sensible, humane, and cultivated man!"
"I don't know why you keep on so!" . . . said Mitya, shrugging his
shoulders. "I've said I won't go, and I won't. I shall stay here as a
matter of principle. . . ."
At that moment a woman's face with a turn-up nose peeped into the
arbour. . . .
Seeing Mitya and Pavel Ivanitch, it frowned and vanished.
"She is gone!" thought Pavel Ivanitch, looking angrily at Mitya. "She
saw that blackguard and fled! It's all spoilt!"
After waiting a little longer, he got up, put on his hat and said:
"You're a beast, a low brute and a blackguard! Yes! A beast! It's mean .
. . and silly! Everything is at an end between us!"
"Delighted to hear it!" muttered Mitya, also getting up and putting on
his hat. "Let me tell you that by being here just now you've played me
such a dirty trick that I'll never forgive you as long as I live."
Pavel Ivanitch went out of the arbour, and beside himself with rage,
strode rapidly to his villa. Even the sight of the table laid for supper
did not soothe him.
"Once in a lifetime such a chance has turned up," he thought in
agitation; "and then it's been prevented! Now she is offended . . .
crushed!"
At supper Pavel Ivanitch and Mitya kept their eyes on their plates and
maintained a sullen silence. . . . They were hating each other from the
bottom of their hearts.
"What are you smiling at?" asked Pavel Ivanitch, pouncing on his wife.
"It's only silly fools who laugh for nothing!"
His wife looked at her husband's angry face, and went off into a peal of
laughter.
"What was that letter you got this morning?" she asked.
"I? . . . I didn't get one. . . ." Pavel Ivanitch was overcome with
confusion. "You are inventing . . . imagination."
"Oh, come, tell us! Own up, you did! Why, it was I sent you that letter!
Honour bright, I did! Ha ha!"
Pavel Ivanitch turned crimson and bent over his plate. "Silly jokes," he
growled.
"But what could I do? Tell me that. . . . We had to scrub the rooms out
this evening, and how could we get you out of the house? There was no
other way of getting you out. . . . But don't be angry, stupid. . . . I
didn't want you to be dull in the arbour, so I sent the same letter to
Mitya too! Mitya, have you been to the arbour?"
Mitya grinned and left off glaring with hatred at his rival. The House
With The Mezzanine THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
(A PAINTER'S STORY)
IT happened nigh on seven years ago, when I was living in one of the
districts of the J. province, on the estate of Bielokurov, a landowner,
a young man who used to get up early, dress himself in a long overcoat,
drink beer in the evenings, and all the while complain to me that he
could nowhere find any one in sympathy with his ideas. He lived in a
little house in the orchard, and I lived in the old manor-house, in a
huge pillared hall where there was no furniture except a large divan, on
which I slept, and a table at which I used to play patience. Even in
calm weather there was always a moaning in the chimney, and in a storm
the whole house would rock and seem as though it must split, and it was
quite terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten great windows
were suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning.
Doomed by fate to permanent idleness, I did positively nothing. For
hours together I would sit and look through the windows at the sky, the
birds, the trees and read my letters over and over again, and then for
hours together I would sleep. Sometimes I would go out and wander
aimlessly until evening.
Once on my way home I came unexpectedly on a strange farmhouse. The sun
was already setting, and the lengthening shadows were thrown over the
ripening corn. Two rows of closely planted tall fir-trees stood like two
thick walls, forming a sombre, magnificent avenue. I climbed the fence
and walked up the avenue, slipping on the fir needles which lay two
inches thick on the ground. It was still, dark, and only here and there
in the tops of the trees shimmered a bright gold light casting the
colours of the rainbow on a spider's web. The smell of the firs was
almost suffocating. Then I turned into an avenue of limes. And here too
were desolation and decay; the dead leaves rustled mournfully beneath my
feet, and there were lurking shadows among the trees. To the right, in
an old orchard, a goldhammer sang a faint reluctant song, and he too
must have been old. The lime-trees soon came to an end and I came to a
white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and suddenly a vista opened
upon a farmyard with a pond and a bathing-shed, and a row of green
willows, with a village beyond, and above it stood a tall, slender
belfry, on which glowed a cross catching the light of the setting sun.
For a moment I was possessed with a sense of enchantment, intimate,
particular, as though I had seen the scene before in my childhood.
By the white-stone gate surmounted with stone lions, which led from the
yard into the field, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, thin,
pale, very handsome, with masses of chestnut hair and a little stubborn
mouth, looked rather prim and scarcely glanced at me; the other, who was
quite young--seventeen or eighteen, no more, also thin and pale, with a
big mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise, as I passed, said
something in English and looked confused, and it seemed to me that I had
always known their dear faces. And I returned home feeling as though I
had awoke from a pleasant dream.
Soon after that, one afternoon, when Bielokurov and I were walking near
the house, suddenly there came into the yard a spring-carriage in which
sat one of the two girls, the elder. She had come to ask for
subscriptions to a fund for those who had suffered in a recent fire.
Without looking at us, she told us very seriously how many houses had
been burned down in Sianov, how many men, women, and children had been
left without shelter, and what had been done by the committee of which
she was a member. She gave us the list for us to write our names, put it
away, and began to say good-bye.
"You have completely forgotten us, Piotr Petrovich," she said to
Bielokurov, as she gave him her hand. "Come and see us, and if Mr. N.
(she said my name) would like to see how the admirers of his talent live
and would care to come and see us, then mother and I would be very
pleased."
I bowed.