offer; he did not like that either. He was sitting now in the drawing-
room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor, common
decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were arm-chairs in
it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still looked like an
uninhabited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no one could
feel at home in such a room, except a man like the doctor. The next
room, almost twice as large, was called the reception-room, and in it
there were only rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class. And while
Laptev was sitting in the drawing-room talking to the doctor about his
sister, he began to be tortured by a suspicion. Had not Yulia Sergeyevna
been to his sister Nina's, and then brought him here to tell him that
she would accept him? Oh, how awful it was! But the most awful thing of
all was that his soul was capable of such a suspicion. And he imagined
how the father and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the
night before, in prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last
had come to the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in
refusing a rich man. The words that parents use in such cases kept
ringing in his ears:
"It is true you don't love him, but think what good you could do!"
The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone with
him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said:
"I beg you to stay."
She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to refuse
an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he was not
attractive, especially when marrying him would make it possible for her
to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life in
which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better in the
future--to refuse him under such circumstances was madness, caprice and
folly, and that God might even punish her for it.
The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away, she
suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly
white as she did so:
"I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . . I
accept your offer."
He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on the head
with cold lips.
He felt that in this love scene the chief thing--her love--was lacking,
and that there was a great deal that was not wanted; and he longed to
cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once. But she was close to
him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by
passion. He reflected that it was too late for deliberation now; he
embraced her passionately, and muttered some words, calling her _thou_;
he kissed her on the neck, and then on the cheek, on the head. . . .
She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations, and
both of them were already regretting what they had said and both were
asking themselves in confusion:
"Why has this happened?"
"If only you knew how miserable I am!" she said, wringing her hands.
"What is it?" he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too. "My
dear, for God's sake, tell me--what is it? Only tell the truth, I
entreat you--nothing but the truth!"
"Don't pay any attention to it," she said, and forced herself to smile.
"I promise you I'll be a faithful, devoted wife. . . . Come this
evening."
Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an historical
novel, he recalled it all and felt wounded that his splendid, pure, rich
feeling was met with such a shallow response. He was not loved, but his
offer had been accepted--in all probability because he was rich: that
is, what was thought most of in him was what he valued least of all in
himself. It was quite possible that Yulia, who was so pure and believed
in God, had not once thought of his money; but she did not love him--did
not love him, and evidently she had interested motives, vague, perhaps,
and not fully thought out--still, it was so. The doctor's house with its
common furniture was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the doctor
himself as a wretched, greasy miser, a sort of operatic Gaspard from
"Les Cloches de Corneville." The very name "Yulia" had a vulgar sound.
He imagined how he and his Yulia would stand at their wedding, in
reality complete strangers to one another, without a trace of feeling on
her side, just as though their marriage had been made by a professional
matchmaker; and the only consolation left him now, as commonplace as the
marriage itself, was the reflection that he was not the first, and would
not be the last; that thousands of people were married like that; and
that with time, when Yulia came to know him better, she would perhaps
grow fond of him.
"Romeo and Juliet!" he said, as he shut the novel, and he laughed. "I am
Romeo, Nina. You may congratulate me. I made an offer to Yulia Byelavin
to-day."
Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she believed it, she
began to cry; she was not pleased at the news.
"Well, I congratulate you," she said. "But why is it so sudden?"
"No, it's not sudden. It's been going on since March, only you don't
notice anything. . . . I fell in love with her last March when I made
her acquaintance here, in your rooms."
"I thought you would marry some one in our Moscow set," said Nina
Fyodorovna after a pause. "Girls in our set are simpler. But what
matters, Alyosha, is that you should be happy--that matters most. My
Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, and there's no concealing it; you
can see what our life is. Of course any woman may love you for your
goodness and your brains, but, you see, Yulitchka is a girl of good
family from a high-class boarding-school; goodness and brains are not
enough for her. She is young, and, you, Alyosha, are not so young, and
are not good-looking."
To soften the last words, she stroked his head and said:
"You're not good-looking, but you're a dear."
She was so agitated that a faint flush came into her cheeks, and she
began discussing eagerly whether it would be the proper thing for her to
bless Alyosha with the ikon at the wedding. She was, she reasoned, his
elder sister, and took the place of his mother; and she kept trying to
convince her dejected brother that the wedding must be celebrated in
proper style, with pomp and gaiety, so that no one could find fault with
it.
Then he began going to the Byelavins' as an accepted suitor, three or
four times a day; and now he never had time to take Sasha's place and
read aloud the historical novel. Yulia used to receive him in her two
rooms, which were at a distance from the drawing-room and her father's
study, and he liked them very much. The walls in them were dark; in the
corner stood a case of ikons; and there was a smell of good scent and of
the oil in the holy lamp. Her rooms were at the furthest end of the
house; her bedstead and dressing-table were shut off by a screen. The
doors of the bookcase were covered on the inside with a green curtain,
and there were rugs on the floor, so that her footsteps were noiseless--
and from this he concluded that she was of a reserved character, and
that she liked a quiet, peaceful, secluded life. In her own home she was
treated as though she were not quite grown up. She had no money of her
own, and sometimes when they were out for walks together, she was
overcome with confusion at not having a farthing. Her father allowed her
very little for dress and books, hardly ten pounds a year. And, indeed,
the doctor himself had not much money in spite of his good practice. He
played cards every night at the club, and always lost. Moreover, he
bought mortgaged houses through a building society, and let them. The
tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that
such speculations were profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in
which he and his daughter were living, and with the money so raised had
bought a piece of waste ground, and had already begun to build on it a
large two-storey house, meaning to mortgage it, too, as soon as it was
finished.
Laptev now lived in a sort of cloud, feeling as though he were not
himself, but his double, and did many things which he would never have
brought himself to do before. He went three or four times to the club
with the doctor, had supper with him, and offered him money for house-
building. He even visited Panaurov at his other establishment. It
somehow happened that Panaurov invited him to dinner, and without
thinking, Laptev accepted. He was received by a lady of five-and-thirty.
She was tall and thin, with hair touched with grey, and black eyebrows,
apparently not Russian. There were white patches of powder on her face.
She gave him a honeyed smile and pressed his hand jerkily, so that the
bracelets on her white hands tinkled. It seemed to Laptev that she
smiled like that because she wanted to conceal from herself and from
others that she was unhappy. He also saw two little girls, aged five and
three, who had a marked likeness to Sasha. For dinner they had milk-
soup, cold veal, and chocolate. It was insipid and not good; but the
table was splendid, with gold forks, bottles of Soyer, and cayenne
pepper, an extraordinary bizarre cruet-stand, and a gold pepper-pot.
It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that Laptev realised how
very inappropriate it was for him to be dining there. The lady was
embarrassed, and kept smiling, showing her teeth. Panaurov expounded
didactically what being in love was, and what it was due to.
"We have in it an example of the action of electricity," he said in
French, addressing the lady. "Every man has in his skin microscopic
glands which contain currents of electricity. If you meet with a person
whose currents are parallel with your own, then you get love."
When Laptev went home and his sister asked him where he had been he felt
awkward, and made no answer.
He felt himself in a false position right up to the time of the wedding.
His love grew more intense every day, and Yulia seemed to him a poetic
and exalted creature; but, all the same, there was no mutual love, and
the truth was that he was buying her and she was selling herself.
Sometimes, thinking things over, he fell into despair and asked himself:
should he run away? He did not sleep for nights together, and kept
thinking how he should meet in Moscow the lady whom he had called in his
letters "a certain person," and what attitude his father and his
brother, difficult people, would take towards his marriage and towards
Yulia. He was afraid that his father would say something rude to Yulia
at their first meeting. And something strange had happened of late to
his brother Fyodor. In his long letters he had taken to writing of the
importance of health, of the effect of illness on the mental condition,
of the meaning of religion, but not a word about Moscow or business.
These letters irritated Laptev, and he thought his brother's character
was changing for the worse.
The wedding was in September. The ceremony took place at the Church of
St. Peter and St. Paul, after mass, and the same day the young couple
set off for Moscow. When Laptev and his wife, in a black dress with a
long train, already looking not a girl but a married woman, said good-
bye to Nina Fyodorovna, the invalid's face worked, but there was no tear
in her dry eyes. She said:
"If--which God forbid--I should die, take care of my little girls."
"Oh, I promise!" answered Yulia Sergeyevna, and her lips and eyelids
began quivering too.
"I shall come to see you in October," said Laptev, much moved. "You must
get better, my darling."
They travelled in a special compartment. Both felt depressed and
uncomfortable. She sat in the corner without taking off her hat, and
made a show of dozing, and he lay on the seat opposite, and he was
disturbed by various thoughts--of his father, of "a certain person,"
whether Yulia would like her Moscow flat. And looking at his wife, who
did not love him, he wondered dejectedly "why this had happened."
V
The Laptevs had a wholesale business in Moscow, dealing in fancy goods:
fringe, tape, trimmings, crochet cotton, buttons, and so on. The gross
receipts reached two millions a year; what the net profit was, no one
knew but the old father. The sons and the clerks estimated the profits
at approximately three hundred thousand, and said that it would have
been a hundred thousand more if the old man had not "been too free-
handed"--that is, had not allowed credit indiscriminately. In the last
ten years alone the bad debts had mounted up to the sum of a million;
and when the subject was referred to, the senior clerk would wink slyly
and deliver himself of sentences the meaning of which was not clear to
every one:
"The psychological sequences of the age."
Their chief commercial operations were conducted in the town market in a
building which was called the warehouse. The entrance to the warehouse
was in the yard, where it was always dark, and smelt of matting and
where the dray-horses were always stamping their hoofs on the asphalt. A
very humble-looking door, studded with iron, led from the yard into a
room with walls discoloured by damp and scrawled over with charcoal,
lighted up by a narrow window covered by an iron grating. Then on the
left was another room larger and cleaner with an iron stove and a couple
of chairs, though it, too, had a prison window: this was the office, and
from it a narrow stone staircase led up to the second storey, where the
principal room was. This was rather a large room, but owing to the
perpetual darkness, the low-pitched ceiling, the piles of boxes and
bales, and the numbers of men that kept flitting to and fro in it, it
made as unpleasant an impression on a newcomer as the others. In the
offices on the top storey the goods lay in bales, in bundles and in
cardboard boxes on the shelves; there was no order nor neatness in the
arrangement of it, and if crimson threads, tassels, ends of fringe, had
not peeped out here and there from holes in the paper parcels, no one
could have guessed what was being bought and sold here. And looking at
these crumpled paper parcels and boxes, no one would have believed that
a million was being made out of such trash, and that fifty men were
employed every day in this warehouse, not counting the buyers.
When at midday, on the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went into
the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were hammering so loudly
that in the outer room and the office no one heard him come in. A
postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle of letters in
his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Laptev
either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor
Fyodorovitch, who was so like him that they passed for twins. This
resemblance always reminded Laptev of his own personal appearance, and
now, seeing before him a short, red-faced man with rather thin hair,
with narrow plebeian hips, looking so uninteresting and so
unintellectual, he asked himself: "Can I really look like that?"
"How glad I am to see you!" said Fyodor, kissing his brother and
pressing his hand warmly. "I have been impatiently looking forward to
seeing you every day, my dear fellow. When you wrote that you were
getting married, I was tormented with curiosity, and I've missed you,
too, brother. Only fancy, it's six months since we saw each other. Well?
How goes it? Nina's very bad? Awfully bad?"
"Awfully bad."
"It's in God's hands," sighed Fyodor. "Well, what of your wife? She's a
beauty, no doubt? I love her already. Of course, she is my little sister
now. We'll make much of her between us."
Laptev saw the broad, bent back--so familiar to him--of his father,
Fyodor Stepanovitch. The old man was sitting on a stool near the
counter, talking to a customer.
"Father, God has sent us joy!" cried Fyodor. "Brother has come!"
Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exceptionally powerful build, so
that, in spite of his wrinkles and eighty years, he still looked a hale
and vigorous man. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice, that
resounded from his broad chest as from a barrel. He wore no beard, but a
short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always
too hot, he used all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at
the warehouse. He had lately had an operation for cataract. His sight
was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to the customers
and have tea and jam with them.
Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then his lips.
"It's a good long time since we saw you, honoured sir," said the old
man--"a good long time. Well, am I to congratulate you on entering the
state of holy matrimony? Very well, then; I congratulate you."
And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent down and kissed him.
"Well, have you brought your young lady?" the old man asked, and without
waiting for an answer, he said, addressing the customer: "'Herewith I
beg to inform you, father, that I'm going to marry such and such a young
lady.' Yes. But as for asking for his father's counsel or blessing,
that's not in the rules nowadays. Now they go their own way. When I
married I was over forty, but I went on my knees to my father and asked
his advice. Nowadays we've none of that."
The old man was delighted to see his son, but thought it unseemly to
show his affection or make any display of his joy. His voice and his
manner of saying "your young lady" brought back to Laptev the depression
he had always felt in the warehouse. Here every trifling detail reminded
him of the past, when he used to be flogged and put on Lenten fare; he
knew that even now boys were thrashed and punched in the face till their
noses bled, and that when those boys grew up they would beat others. And
before he had been five minutes in the warehouse, he always felt as
though he were being scolded or punched in the face.
Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother:
"Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov benefactor, Grigory
Timofeitch. He might serve as an example for the young men of the day;
he's passed his fiftieth birthday, and he has tiny children."
The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old man with a pale face,
laughed too.
"Nature above the normal capacity," observed the head-clerk, who was
standing at the counter close by. "It always comes out when it's there."
The head-clerk--a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a dark beard,
and a pencil behind his ear--usually expressed his ideas vaguely in
roundabout hints, while his sly smile betrayed that he attached
particular significance to his words. He liked to obscure his utterances
with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and many such
words he used in a wrong sense. For instance, the word "except." When he
had expressed some opinion positively and did not want to be
contradicted, he would stretch out his hand and pronounce:
"Except!"
And what was most astonishing, the customers and the other clerks
understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vassilitch Potchatkin, and
he came from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself
as follows:
"It's the reward of valour, for the female heart is a strong opponent."
Another important person in the warehouse was a clerk called Makeitchev-
-a stout, solid, fair man with whiskers and a perfectly bald head. He
went up to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully in a low voice:
"I have the honour, sir. . . The Lord has heard your parent's prayer.
Thank God."
Then the other clerks began coming up to congratulate him on his
marriage. They were all fashionably dressed, and looked like perfectly
well-bred, educated men. Since between every two words they put in a
"sir," their congratulations--something like "Best wishes, sir, for
happiness, sir," uttered very rapidly in a low voice--sounded rather
like the hiss of a whip in the air--"Shshsh-s s s s s!" Laptev was soon
bored and longing to go home, but it was awkward to go away. He was
obliged to stay at least two hours at the warehouse to keep up
appearances. He walked away from the counter and began asking Makeitchev
whether things had gone well while he was away, and whether anything new
had turned up, and the clerk answered him respectfully, avoiding his
eyes. A boy with a cropped head, wearing a grey blouse, handed Laptev a
glass of tea without a saucer; not long afterwards another boy, passing
by, stumbled over a box, and almost fell down, and Makeitchev's face
looked suddenly spiteful and ferocious like a wild beast's, and he
shouted at him:
"Keep on your feet!"
The clerks were pleased that their young master was married and had come
back at last; they looked at him with curiosity and friendly feeling,
and each one thought it his duty to say something agreeable when he
passed him. But Laptev was convinced that it was not genuine, and that
they were only flattering him because they were afraid of him. He never
could forget how fifteen years before, a clerk, who was mentally
deranged, had run out into the street with nothing on but his shirt and
shaking his fists at the windows, shouted that he had been ill-treated;
and how, when the poor fellow had recovered, the clerks had jeered at
him for long afterwards, reminding him how he had called his employers
"planters" instead of "exploiters." Altogether the employees at Laptevs'
had a very poor time of it, and this fact was a subject of conversation
for the whole market. The worst of it was that the old man, Fyodor
Stepanovitch, maintained something of an Asiatic despotism in his
attitude to them. Thus, no one knew what wages were paid to the old
man's favourites, Potchatkin and Makeitchev. They received no more than
three thousand a year, together with bonuses, but he made out that he
paid then seven. The bonuses were given to all the clerks every year,
but privately, so that the man who got little was bound from vanity to
say he had got more. Not one boy knew when he would be promoted to be a
clerk; not one of the men knew whether his employer was satisfied with
him or not. Nothing was directly forbidden, and so the clerks never knew
what was allowed, and what was not. They were not forbidden to marry,
but they did not marry for fear of displeasing their employer and losing
their place. They were allowed to have friends and pay visits, but the
gates were shut at nine o'clock, and every morning the old man scanned
them all suspiciously, and tried to detect any smell of vodka about
them:
"Now then, breathe," he would say.
Every clerk was obliged to go to early service, and to stand in church
in such a position that the old man could see them all. The fasts were
strictly observed. On great occasions, such as the birthday of their
employer or of any member of his family, the clerks had to subscribe and
present a cake from Fley's, or an album. The clerks lived three or four
in a room in the lower storey, and in the lodges of the house in
Pyatnitsky Street, and at dinner ate from a common bowl, though there
was a plate set before each of them. If one of the family came into the
room while they were at dinner, they all stood up.
Laptev was conscious that only, perhaps, those among them who had been
corrupted by the old man's training could seriously regard him as their
benefactor; the others must have looked on him as an enemy and a
"planter." Now, after six months' absence, he saw no change for the
better; there was indeed something new which boded nothing good. His
brother Fyodor, who had always been quiet, thoughtful, and extremely
refined, was now running about the warehouse with a pencil behind his
ear making a show of being very busy and businesslike, slapping
customers on the shoulder and shouting "Friends!" to the clerks.
Apparently he had taken up a new role, and Alexey did not recognise him
in the part.
The old man's voice boomed unceasingly. Having nothing to do, he was
laying down the law to a customer, telling him how he should order his
life and his business, always holding himself up as an example. That
boastfulness, that aggressive tone of authority, Laptev had heard ten,
fifteen, twenty years ago. The old man adored himself; from what he said
it always appeared that he had made his wife and all her relations
happy, that he had been munificent to his children, and a benefactor to
his clerks and employés, and that every one in the street and all his
acquaintances remembered him in their prayers. Whatever he did was
always right, and if things went wrong with people it was because they
did not take his advice; without his advice nothing could succeed. In
church he stood in the foremost place, and even made observations to the
priests, if in his opinion they were not conducting the service
properly, and believed that this was pleasing God because God loved him.