and I had nothing to go for. I stood still for a little time hesitating,
and made my way slowly back, to look once more at the house in which she
lived, the sweet, simple old house, which seemed to be watching me from
the windows of its upper storey, and understanding all about it. I
walked by the terrace, sat on the seat by the tennis ground, in the dark
under the old elm-tree, and looked from there at the house. In the
windows of the top storey where Misuce slept there appeared a bright
light, which changed to a soft green--they had covered the lamp with the
shade. Shadows began to move. . . . I was full of tenderness, peace, and
satisfaction with myself--satisfaction at having been able to be carried
away by my feelings and having fallen in love, and at the same time I
felt uncomfortable at the thought that only a few steps away from me, in
one of the rooms of that house there was Lida, who disliked and perhaps
hated me. I went on sitting there wondering whether Genya would come
out; I listened and fancied I heard voices talking upstairs.
About an hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows were no
longer visible. The moon was standing high above the house, and lighting
up the sleeping garden and the paths; the dahlias and the roses in front
of the house could be seen distinctly, and looked all the same colour.
It began to grow very cold. I went out of the garden, picked up my coat
on the road, and slowly sauntered home.
When next day after dinner I went to the Voltchaninovs, the glass door
into the garden was wide open. I sat down on the terrace, expecting
Genya every minute, to appear from behind the flower-beds on the lawn,
or from one of the avenues, or that I should hear her voice from the
house. Then I walked into the drawing-room, the dining-room. There was
not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room I walked along the long
corridor to the hall and back. In this corridor there were several
doors, and through one of them I heard the voice of Lida:
"'God . . . sent . . . a crow,'" she said in a loud, emphatic voice,
probably dictating--"'God sent a crow a piece of cheese . . . . A crow .
. . a piece of cheese.' . . . Who's there?" she called suddenly, hearing
my steps.
"It's I."
"Ah! Excuse me, I cannot come out to you this minute; I'm giving Dasha
her lesson."
"Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"
"No, she went away with my sister this morning to our aunt in the
province of Penza. And in the winter they will probably go abroad," she
added after a pause. "'God sent . . . the crow . . . a piece . . . of
cheese.' . . . Have you written it?"
I went into the hall, and stared vacantly at the pond and the village,
and the sound reached me of "A piece of cheese. . . . God sent the crow
a piece of cheese."
And I went back by the way I had come here for the first time-- first
from the yard into the garden past the house, then into the avenue of
lime-trees. . . . At this point I was overtaken by a small boy who gave
me a note:
"I told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from you," I
read. "I could not wound her by disobeying. God will give you happiness.
Forgive me. If only you knew how bitterly my mother and I are crying!"
Then there was the dark fir avenue, the broken-down fence. . . . On the
field where then the rye was in flower and the corncrakes were calling,
now there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope there were bright
green patches of winter corn. A sober workaday feeling came over me and
I felt ashamed of all I had said at the Voltchaninovs', and felt bored
with life as I had been before. When I got home, I packed and set off
that evening for Petersburg.
----
I never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Not long ago, on my way to the
Crimea, I met Byelokurov in the train. As before, he was wearing a
jerkin and an embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he was, he replied
that, God be praised, he was well. We began talking. He had sold his old
estate and bought another smaller one, in the name of Liubov Ivanovna.
He could tell me little about the Voltchaninovs. Lida, he said, was
still living in Shelkovka and teaching in the school; she had by degrees
succeeded in gathering round her a circle of people sympathetic to her
who made a strong party, and at the last election had turned out
Balagin, who had till then had the whole district under his thumb. About
Genya he only told me that she did not live at home, and that he did not
know where she was.
I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I am
painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the green
light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked home through
the fields in the night, with my heart full of love, rubbing my hands in
the cold. And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed
by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel
that she is thinking of me, too --that she is waiting for me, and that
we shall meet. . . .
Misuce, where are you?
THREE YEARS
I
IT was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam here and there in the
houses, and a pale moon was rising behind the barracks at the end of the
street. Laptev was sitting on a bench by the gate waiting for the end of
the evening service at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. He was
reckoning that Yulia Sergeyevna would pass by on her way from the
service, and then he would speak to her, and perhaps spend the whole
evening with her.
He had been sitting there for an hour and a half already, and all that
time his imagination had been busy picturing his Moscow rooms, his
Moscow friends, his man Pyotr, and his writing-table. He gazed half
wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed strange to him
that he was living now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki, but in a
provincial town in a house by which a great herd of cattle was driven
every morning and evening, accompanied by terrible clouds of dust and
the blowing of a horn. He thought of long conversations in which he had
taken part quite lately in Moscow--conversations in which it had been
maintained that one could live without love, that passionate love was an
obsession, that finally there is no such love, but only a physical
attraction between the sexes--and so on, in the same style; he
remembered them and thought mournfully that if he were asked now what
love was, he could not have found an answer.
The service was over, the people began to appear. Laptev strained his
eyes gazing at the dark figures. The bishop had been driven by in his
carriage, the bells had stopped ringing, and the red and green lights in
the belfry were one after another extinguished-- there had been an
illumination, as it was dedication day--but the people were still coming
out, lingering, talking, and standing under the windows. But at last
Laptev heard a familiar voice, his heart began beating violently, and he
was overcome with despair on seeing that Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone,
but walking with two ladies.
"It's awful, awful!" he whispered, feeling jealous. "It's awful!"
At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to the ladies,
and while doing so glanced at Laptev.
"I was coming to see you," he said. "I'm coming for a chat with your
father. Is he at home?"
"Most likely," she answered. "It's early for him to have gone to the
club."
There were gardens all along the lane, and a row of lime-trees growing
by the fence cast a broad patch of shadow in the moonlight, so that the
gate and the fences were completely plunged in darkness on one side,
from which came the sounds of women whispering, smothered laughter, and
someone playing softly on a balalaika. There was a fragrance of lime-
flowers and of hay. This fragrance and the murmur of the unseen whispers
worked upon Laptev. He was all at once overwhelmed with a passionate
longing to throw his arms round his companion, to shower kisses on her
face, her hands, her shoulders, to burst into sobs, to fall at her feet
and to tell her how long he had been waiting for her. A faint scarcely
perceptible scent of incense hung about her; and that scent reminded him
of the time when he, too, believed in God and used to go to evening
service, and when he used to dream so much of pure romantic love. And it
seemed to him that, because this girl did not love him, all possibility
of the happiness he had dreamed of then was lost to him forever.
She began speaking sympathetically of the illness of his sister, Nina
Fyodorovna. Two months before his sister had undergone an operation for
cancer, and now every one was expecting a return of the disease.
"I went to see her this morning," said Yulia Sergeyevna, "and it seemed
to me that during the last week she has, not exactly grown thin, but
has, as it were, faded."
"Yes, yes," Laptev agreed. "There's no return of the symptoms, but every
day I notice she grows weaker and weaker, and is wasting before my eyes.
I don't understand what's the matter with her."
"Oh dear! And how strong she used to be, plump and rosy!" said Yulia
Sergeyevna after a moment's silence. "Every one here used to call her
the Moscow lady. How she used to laugh! On holidays she used to dress up
like a peasant girl, and it suited her so well."
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home; he was a stout, red-faced man,
wearing a long coat that reached below his knees, and looking as though
he had short legs. He was pacing up and down his study, with his hands
in his pockets, and humming to himself in an undertone, "Ru-ru-ru-ru."
His grey whiskers looked unkempt, and his hair was unbrushed, as though
he had just got out of bed. And his study with pillows on the sofa, with
stacks of papers in the corners, and with a dirty invalid poodle lying
under the table, produced the same impression of unkemptness and
untidiness as himself.
"M. Laptev wants to see you," his daughter said to him, going into his
study.
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," he hummed louder than ever, and turning into the drawing-
room, gave his hand to Laptev, and asked: "What good news have you to
tell me?"
It was dark in the drawing-room. Laptev, still standing with his hat in
his hand, began apologising for disturbing him; he asked what was to be
done to make his sister sleep at night, and why she was growing so thin;
and he was embarrassed by the thought that he had asked those very
questions at his visit that morning.
"Tell me," he said, "wouldn't it be as well to send for some specialist
on internal diseases from Moscow? What do you think of it?"
The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and made a vague gesture with
his hands.
It was evident that he was offended. He was a very huffy man, prone to
take offence, and always ready to suspect that people did not believe in
him, that he was not recognised or properly respected, that his patients
exploited him, and that his colleagues showed him ill-will. He was
always jeering at himself, saying that fools like him were only made for
the public to ride rough-shod over them.
Yulia Sergeyevna lighted the lamp. She was tired out with the service,
and that was evident from her pale, exhausted face, and her weary step.
She wanted to rest. She sat down on the sofa, put her hands on her lap,
and sank into thought. Laptev knew that he was ugly, and now he felt as
though he were conscious of his ugliness all over his body. He was
short, thin, with ruddy cheeks, and his hair had grown so thin that his
head felt cold. In his expression there was none of that refined
simplicity which makes even rough, ugly faces attractive; in the society
of women, he was awkward, over-talkative, affected. And now he almost
despised himself for it. He must talk that Yulia Sergeyevna might not be
bored in his company. But what about? About his sister's illness again?
And he began to talk about medicine, saying what is usually said. He
approved of hygiene, and said that he had long ago wanted to found a
night-refuge in Moscow--in fact, he had already calculated the cost of
it. According to his plan the workmen who came in the evening to the
night-refuge were to receive a supper of hot cabbage soup with bread, a
warm, dry bed with a rug, and a place for drying their clothes and their
boots.
Yulia Sergeyevna was usually silent in his presence, and in a strange
way, perhaps by the instinct of a lover, he divined her thoughts and
intentions. And now, from the fact that after the evening service she
had not gone to her room to change her dress and drink tea, he deduced
that she was going to pay some visit elsewhere.
"But I'm in no hurry with the night-refuge," he went on, speaking with
vexation and irritability, and addressing the doctor, who looked at him,
as it were, blankly and in perplexity, evidently unable to understand
what induced him to raise the question of medicine and hygiene. "And
most likely it will be a long time, too, before I make use of our
estimate. I fear our night-shelter will fall into the hands of our pious
humbugs and philanthropic ladies, who always ruin any undertaking."
Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand to Laptev.
"Excuse me," she said, "it's time for me to go. Please give my love to
your sister."
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," hummed the doctor. "Ru-ru-ru-ru."
Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and after staying a little longer, Laptev
said good-bye to the doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied
and feels unhappy, how trivial seem to him the shapes of the lime-trees,
the shadows, the clouds, all the beauties of nature, so complacent, so
indifferent! By now the moon was high up in the sky, and the clouds were
scudding quickly below. "But how naïve and provincial the moon is, how
threadbare and paltry the clouds!" thought Laptev. He felt ashamed of
the way he had talked just now about medicine, and the night-refuge. He
felt with horror that next day he would not have will enough to resist
trying to see her and talk to her again, and would again be convinced
that he was nothing to her. And the day after--it would be the same.
With what object? And how and when would it all end?
At home he went in to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked
strong and gave the impression of being a well-built, vigorous woman,
but her striking pallor made her look like a corpse, especially when, as
now, she was lying on her back with her eyes closed; her eldest daughter
Sasha, a girl of ten years old, was sitting beside her reading aloud
from her reading-book.
"Alyosha has come," the invalid said softly to herself.
There had long been established between Sasha and her uncle a tacit
compact, to take turns in sitting with the patient. On this occasion
Sasha closed her reading-book, and without uttering a word, went softly
out of the room. Laptev took an historical novel from the chest of
drawers, and looking for the right page, sat down and began reading it
aloud.
Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow of a merchant family. She and her two
brothers had spent their childhood and early youth, living at home in
Pyatnitsky Street. Their childhood was long and wearisome; her father
treated her sternly, and had even on two or three occasions flogged her,
and her mother had had a long illness and died. The servants were
coarse, dirty, and hypocritical; the house was frequented by priests and
monks, also hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her
father, whom they did not like. The boys had the good-fortune to go to
school, while Nina was left practically uneducated. All her life she
wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels.
Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at
Himki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner
called Panaurov, had fallen in love with him, and married him secretly
against her father's will. Panaurov, a handsome, rather impudent fellow,
who whistled and lighted his cigarette from the holy lamp, struck the
father as an absolutely worthless person. And when the son-in-law began
in his letters demanding a dowry, the old man wrote to his daughter that
he would send her furs, silver, and various articles that had been left
at her mother's death, as well as thirty thousand roubles, but without
his paternal blessing. Later he sent another twenty thousand. This
money, as well as the dowry, was spent; the estate had been sold and
Panaurov moved with his family to the town and got a job in a provincial
government office. In the town he formed another tie, and had a second
family, and this was the subject of much talk, as his illicit family was
not a secret.
Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical
novel, she was thinking how much she had gone through in her life, how
much she had suffered, and that if any one were to describe her life it
would make a very pathetic story. As the tumour was in her breast, she
was persuaded that love and her domestic grief were the cause of her
illness, and that jealousy and tears had brought her to her hopeless
state.
At last Alexey Fyodorovitch closed the book and said:
"That's the end, and thank God for it. To-morrow we'll begin a new one."
Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but of
late Laptev had begun to notice that at moments her mind seemed weakened
by illness, and she would laugh at the smallest trifle, and even without
any cause at all.
"Yulia came before dinner while you were out," she said. "So far as I
can see, she hasn't much faith in her papa. 'Let papa go on treating
you,' she said, 'but write in secret to the holy elder to pray for you,
too.' There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot her parasol here;
you must take it to her to-morrow," she went on after a brief pause.
"No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor holy men are any help."
"Nina, why can't you sleep at night?" Laptev asked, to change the
subject.
"Oh, well, I don't go to sleep--that's all. I lie and think."
"What do you think about, dear?"
"About the children, about you . . . about my life. I've gone through a
great deal, Alyosha, you know. When one begins to remember and remember.
. . . My God!" She laughed. "It's no joke to have borne five children as
I have, to have buried three. . . Sometimes I was expecting to be
confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be sitting at that very time
with another woman. There would be no one to send for the doctor or the
midwife. I would go into the passage or the kitchen for the servant, and
there Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders, would be waiting for him to come
home. My head used to go round . . . . He did not love me, though he
never said so openly. Now I've grown calmer--it doesn't weigh on my
heart; but in old days, when I was younger, it hurt me--ach! how it hurt
me, darling! Once-- while we were still in the country--I found him in
the garden with a lady, and I walked away. . . I walked on aimlessly,
and I don't know how, but I found myself in the church porch. I fell on
my knees: 'Queen of Heaven!' I said. And it was night, the moon was
shining. . . ."
She was exhausted, she began gasping for breath. Then, after resting a
little, she took her brother's hand and went on in a weak, toneless
voice:
"How kind you are, Alyosha! . . . And how clever! . . . What a good man
you've grown up into!"
At midnight Laptev said good-night to her, and as he went away he took
with him the parasol that Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In spite of
the late hour, the servants, male and female, were drinking tea in the
dining-room. How disorderly! The children were not in bed, but were
there in the dining-room, too. They were all talking softly in
undertones, and had not noticed that the lamp was smoking and would soon
go out. All these people, big and little, were disturbed by a whole
succession of bad omens and were in an oppressed mood. The glass in the
hall had been broken, the samovar had been buzzing every day, and, as
though on purpose, was even buzzing now. They were describing how a
mouse had jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna's boot when she was dressing.
And the children were quite aware of the terrible significance of these
omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a thin little brunette, was sitting
motionless at the table, and her face looked scared and woebegone, while
the younger, Lida, a chubby fair child of seven, stood beside her sister
looking from under her brows at the light.
Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the lower storey, where under
the low ceilings it was always close and smelt of geraniums. In his
sitting-room, Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna's husband, was sitting reading
the newspaper. Laptev nodded to him and sat down opposite. Both sat
still and said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings like this
without speaking, and neither of them was in the least put out by this
silence.
The little girls came down from upstairs to say good-night. Deliberately
and in silence, Panaurov made the sign of the cross over them several
times, and gave them his hand to kiss. They dropped curtsies, and then
went up to Laptev, who had to make the sign of the cross and give them
his hand to kiss also. This ceremony with the hand-kissing and curtsying
was repeated every evening.
When the children had gone out Panaurov laid aside the newspaper and
said:
"It's not very lively in our God-fearing town! I must confess, my dear
fellow," he added with a sigh, "I'm very glad that at last you've found
some distraction."
"What do you mean?" asked Laptev.
"I saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin's just now. I expect you don't go
there for the sake of the papa."
"Of course not," said Laptev, and he blushed.
"Well, of course not. And by the way, you wouldn't find such another old
brute as that papa if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You can't
imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast he is! You cultured people in
the capitals are still interested in the provinces only on the lyrical
side, only from the _paysage_ and _Poor Anton_ point of view, but I can
assure you, my boy, there's nothing logical about it; there's nothing
but barbarism, meanness, and nastiness--that's all. Take the local
devotees of science--the local intellectuals, so to speak. Can you
imagine there are here in this town twenty-eight doctors? They've all
made their fortunes, and they are living in houses of their own, and
meanwhile the population is in just as helpless a condition as ever.
Here, Nina had to have an operation, quite an ordinary one really, yet
we were obliged to get a surgeon from Moscow; not one doctor here would
undertake it. It's beyond all conception. They know nothing, they
understand nothing. They take no interest in anything. Ask them, for
instance, what cancer is--what it is, what it comes from."
And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist on
all scientific subjects, and explained from a scientific point of view
everything that was discussed. But he explained it all in his own way.
He had a theory of his own about the circulation of the blood, about
chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly, softly, convincingly.
"It's beyond all conception," he pronounced in an imploring voice,
screwing up his eyes, sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously as a
king, and it was evident that he was very well satisfied with himself,
and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.
"I am rather hungry," said Laptev. "I should like something savoury."
"Well, that can easily be managed."
Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting upstairs
in the dining-room having supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka, and then
began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He never drank, and never
gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered all his own and his
wife's property, and had accumulated debts. To squander so much in such
a short time, one must have, not passions, but a special talent.
Panaurov liked dainty fare, liked a handsome dinner service, liked music
after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen, to whom he would carelessly
fling tips of ten, even twenty-five roubles. He always took part in all
lotteries and subscriptions, sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance
on their birthdays, bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties,
walking-sticks, scents, cigarette-holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots,
Japanese bric-à-brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead
made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a
genuine Bokhara, and everything was to correspond; and on all this there
went every day, as he himself expressed, "a deluge" of money.
At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head.