old man, who still went on booming in his deep voice. To avoid standing
idle, Laptev took some trimmings from a workgirl and let her go; then
listened to a customer, a merchant from Vologda, and told a clerk to
attend to him.
"T. V. A.!" resounded on all sides (prices were denoted by letters in
the warehouse and goods by numbers). "R. I. T.!" As he went away, Laptev
said good-bye to no one but Fyodor.
"I shall come to Pyatnitsky Street with my wife to-morrow," he said;
"but I warn you, if father says a single rude thing to her, I shall not
stay there another minute."
"You're the same as ever," sighed Fyodor. "Marriage has not changed you.
You must be patient with the old man. So till eleven o'clock, then. We
shall expect you impatiently. Come directly after mass, then."
"I don't go to mass."
"That does not matter. The great thing is not to be later than eleven,
so you may be in time to pray to God and to lunch with us. Give my
greetings to my little sister and kiss her hand for me. I have a
presentiment that I shall like her," Fyodor added with perfect
sincerity. "I envy you, brother!" he shouted after him as Alexey went
downstairs.
"And why does he shrink into himself in that shy way as though he
fancied he was naked?" thought Laptev, as he walked along Nikolsky
Street, trying to understand the change that had come over his brother.
"And his language is new, too: 'Brother, dear brother, God has sent us
joy; to pray to God'--just like Iudushka in Shtchedrin."
VI
At eleven o'clock the next day, which was Sunday, he was driving with
his wife along Pyatnitsky Street in a light, one-horse carriage. He was
afraid of his father's doing something outrageous, and was already ill
at ease. After two nights in her husband's house Yulia Sergeyevna
considered her marriage a mistake and a calamity, and if she had had to
live with her husband in any other town but Moscow, it seemed to her
that she could not have endured the horror of it. Moscow entertained
her--she was delighted with the streets, the churches; and if it had
been possible to drive about Moscow in those splendid sledges with
expensive horses, to drive the whole day from morning till night, and
with the swift motion to feel the cold autumn air blowing upon her, she
would perhaps not have felt herself so unhappy.
Near a white, lately stuccoed two-storey house the coachman pulled up
his horse, and began to turn to the right. They were expected, and near
the gate stood two policemen and the porter in a new full-skirted coat,
high boots, and goloshes. The whole space, from the middle of the street
to the gates and all over the yard from the porch, was strewn with fresh
sand. The porter took off his hat, the policemen saluted. Near the
entrance Fyodor met them with a very serious face.
"Very glad to make your acquaintance, little sister," he said, kissing
Yulia's hand. "You're very welcome."
He led her upstairs on his arm, and then along a corridor through a
crowd of men and women. The anteroom was crowded too, and smelt of
incense.
"I will introduce you to our father directly," whispered Fyodor in the
midst of a solemn, deathly silence. "A venerable old man, _pater-
familias_."
In the big drawing-room, by a table prepared for service, Fyodor
Stepanovitch stood, evidently waiting for them, and with him the priest
in a calotte, and a deacon. The old man shook hands with Yulia without
saying a word. Every one was silent. Yulia was overcome with confusion.
The priest and the deacon began putting on their vestments. A censer was
brought in, giving off sparks and fumes of incense and charcoal. The
candles were lighted. The clerks walked into the drawing-room on tiptoe
and stood in two rows along the wall. There was perfect stillness, no
one even coughed.
"The blessing of God," began the deacon. The service was read with great
solemnity; nothing was left out and two canticles were sung --to
sweetest Jesus and the most Holy Mother of God. The singers sang very
slowly, holding up the music before them. Laptev noticed how confused
his wife was. While they were singing the canticles, and the singers in
different keys brought out "Lord have mercy on us," he kept expecting in
nervous suspense that the old man would make some remark such as, "You
don't know how to cross yourself," and he felt vexed. Why this crowd,
and why this ceremony with priests and choristers? It was too bourgeois.
But when she, like the old man, put her head under the gospel and
afterwards several times dropped upon her knees, he realised that she
liked it all, and was reassured.
At the end of the service, during "Many, many years," the priest gave
the old man and Alexey the cross to kiss, but when Yulia went up, he put
his hand over the cross, and showed he wanted to speak. Signs were made
to the singers to stop.
"The prophet Samuel," began the priest, "went to Bethlehem at the
bidding of the Lord, and there the elders of the town with fear and
trembling asked him: 'Comest thou peaceably?' And the prophet answered:
'Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord: sanctify yourselves
and come with me to the sacrifice.' Even so, Yulia, servant of God,
shall we ask of thee, Dost thou come bringing peace into this house?"
Yulia flushed with emotion. As he finished, the priest gave her the
cross to kiss, and said in quite a different tone of voice:
"Now Fyodor Fyodorovitch must be married; it's high time."
The choir began singing once more, people began moving, and the room was
noisy again. The old man, much touched, with his eyes full of tears,
kissed Yulia three times, made the sign of the cross over her face, and
said:
"This is your home. I'm an old man and need nothing."
The clerks congratulated her and said something, but the choir was
singing so loud that nothing else could be heard. Then they had lunch
and drank champagne. She sat beside the old father, and he talked to
her, saying that families ought not to be parted but live together in
one house; that separation and disunion led to permanent rupture.
"I've made money and the children only do the spending of it," he said.
"Now, you live with me and save money. It's time for an old man like me
to rest."
Yulia had all the time a vision of Fyodor flitting about so like her
husband, but shyer and more restless; he fussed about her and often
kissed her hand.
"We are plain people, little sister," he said, and patches of red came
into his face as he spoke. "We live simply in Russian style, like
Christians, little sister."
As they went home, Laptev felt greatly relieved that everything had gone
off so well, and that nothing outrageous had happened as he had
expected. He said to his wife:
"You're surprised that such a stalwart, broad-shouldered father should
have such stunted, narrow-chested sons as Fyodor and me. Yes; but it's
easy to explain! My father married my mother when he was forty-five, and
she was only seventeen. She turned pale and trembled in his presence.
Nina was born first--born of a comparatively healthy mother, and so she
was finer and sturdier than we were. Fyodor and I were begotten and born
after mother had been worn out by terror. I can remember my father
correcting me--or, to speak plainly, beating me--before I was five years
old. He used to thrash me with a birch, pull my ears, hit me on the
head, and every morning when I woke up my first thought was whether he
would beat me that day. Play and childish mischief was forbidden us. We
had to go to morning service and to early mass. When we met priests or
monks we had to kiss their hands; at home we had to sing hymns. Here you
are religious and love all that, but I'm afraid of religion, and when I
pass a church I remember my childhood, and am overcome with horror. I
was taken to the warehouse as soon as I was eight years old. I worked
like a working boy, and it was bad for my health, for I used to be
beaten there every day. Afterwards when I went to the high school, I
used to go to school till dinner-time, and after dinner I had to sit in
that warehouse till evening; and things went on like that till I was
twenty-two, till I got to know Yartsev, and he persuaded me to leave my
father's house. That Yartsev did a great deal for me. I tell you what,"
said Laptev, and he laughed with pleasure: "let us go and pay Yartsev a
visit at once. He's a very fine fellow! How touched he will be!"
VII
On a Saturday in November Anton Rubinstein was conducting in a symphony
concert. It was very hot and crowded. Laptev stood behind the columns,
while his wife and Kostya Kotchevoy were sitting in the third or fourth
row some distance in front. At the very beginning of an interval a
"certain person," Polina Nikolaevna Razsudin, quite unexpectedly passed
by him. He had often since his marriage thought with trepidation of a
possible meeting with her. When now she looked at him openly and
directly, he realised that he had all this time shirked having things
out with her, or writing her two or three friendly lines, as though he
had been hiding from her; he felt ashamed and flushed crimson. She
pressed his hand tightly and impulsively and asked:
"Have you seen Yartsev?"
And without waiting for an answer she went striding on impetuously as
though some one were pushing her on from behind.
She was very thin and plain, with a long nose; her face always looked
tired, and exhausted, and it seemed as though it were an effort to her
to keep her eyes open, and not to fall down. She had fine, dark eyes,
and an intelligent, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were
awkward and abrupt. It was hard to talk to her, because she could not
talk or listen quietly. Loving her was not easy. Sometimes when she was
alone with Laptev she would go on laughing for a long time, hiding her
face in her hands, and would declare that love was not the chief thing
in life for her, and would be as whimsical as a girl of seventeen; and
before kissing her he would have to put out all the candles. She was
thirty. She was married to a schoolmaster, but had not lived with her
husband for years. She earned her living by giving music lessons and
playing in quartettes.
During the ninth symphony she passed again as though by accident, but
the crowd of men standing like a thick wall behind the columns prevented
her going further, and she remained beside him. Laptev saw that she was
wearing the same little velvet blouse she had worn at concerts last year
and the year before. Her gloves were new, and her fan, too, was new, but
it was a common one. She was fond of fine clothes, but she did not know
how to dress, and grudged spending money on it. She dressed so badly and
untidily that when she was going to her lessons striding hurriedly down
the street, she might easily have been taken for a young monk.
The public applauded and shouted encore.
"You'll spend the evening with me," said Polina Nikolaevna, going up to
Laptev and looking at him severely. "When this is over we'll go and have
tea. Do you hear? I insist on it. You owe me a great deal, and haven't
the moral right to refuse me such a trifle."
"Very well; let us go," Laptev assented.
Endless calls followed the conclusion of the concert. The audience got
up from their seats and went out very slowly, and Laptev could not go
away without telling his wife. He had to stand at the door and wait.
"I'm dying for some tea," Polina Nikolaevna said plaintively. "My very
soul is parched."
"You can get something to drink here," said Laptev. "Let's go to the
buffet."
"Oh, I've no money to fling away on waiters. I'm not a shopkeeper."
He offered her his arm; she refused, in a long, wearisome sentence which
he had heard many times, to the effect that she did not class herself
with the feebler fair sex, and did not depend on the services of
gentlemen.
As she talked to him she kept looking about at the audience and greeting
acquaintances; they were her fellow-students at the higher courses and
at the conservatorium, and her pupils. She gripped their hands abruptly,
as though she were tugging at them. But then she began twitching her
shoulders, and trembling as though she were in a fever, and at last said
softly, looking at Laptev with horror:
"Who is it you've married? Where were your eyes, you mad fellow? What
did you see in that stupid, insignificant girl? Why, I loved you for
your mind, for your soul, but that china doll wants nothing but your
money!"
"Let us drop that, Polina," he said in a voice of supplication. "All
that you can say to me about my marriage I've said to myself many times
already. Don't cause me unnecessary pain."
Yulia Sergeyevna made her appearance, wearing a black dress with a big
diamond brooch, which her father-in-law had sent her after the service.
She was followed by her suite--Kotchevoy, two doctors of their
acquaintance, an officer, and a stout young man in student's uniform,
called Kish.
"You go on with Kostya," Laptev said to his wife. "I'm coming later."
Yulia nodded and went on. Polina Nikolaevna gazed after her, quivering
all over and twitching nervously, and in her eyes there was a look of
repulsion, hatred, and pain.
Laptev was afraid to go home with her, foreseeing an unpleasant
discussion, cutting words, and tears, and he suggested that they should
go and have tea at a restaurant. But she said:
"No, no. I want to go home. Don't dare to talk to me of restaurants."
She did not like being in a restaurant, because the atmosphere of
restaurants seemed to her poisoned by tobacco smoke and the breath of
men. Against all men she did not know she cherished a strange prejudice,
regarding them all as immoral rakes, capable of attacking her at any
moment. Besides, the music played at restaurants jarred on her nerves
and gave her a headache.
Coming out of the Hall of Nobility, they took a sledge in Ostozhenka and
drove to Savelovsky Lane, where she lodged. All the way Laptev thought
about her. It was true that he owed her a great deal. He had made her
acquaintance at the flat of his friend Yartsev, to whom she was giving
lessons in harmony. Her love for him was deep and perfectly
disinterested, and her relations with him did not alter her habits; she
went on giving her lessons and wearing herself out with work as before.
Through her he came to understand and love music, which he had scarcely
cared for till then.
"Half my kingdom for a cup of tea!" she pronounced in a hollow voice,
covering her mouth with her muff that she might not catch cold. "I've
given five lessons, confound them! My pupils are as stupid as posts; I
nearly died of exasperation. I don't know how long this slavery can go
on. I'm worn out. As soon as I can scrape together three hundred
roubles, I shall throw it all up and go to the Crimea, to lie on the
beach and drink in ozone. How I love the sea--oh, how I love the sea!"
"You'll never go," said Laptev. "To begin with, you'll never save the
money; and, besides, you'd grudge spending it. Forgive me, I repeat
again: surely it's quite as humiliating to collect the money by
farthings from idle people who have music lessons to while away their
time, as to borrow it from your friends."
"I haven't any friends," she said irritably. "And please don't talk
nonsense. The working class to which I belong has one privilege: the
consciousness of being incorruptible--the right to refuse to be indebted
to wretched little shopkeepers, and to treat them with scorn. No,
indeed, you don't buy me! I'm not a Yulitchka!"
Laptev did not attempt to pay the driver, knowing that it would call
forth a perfect torrent of words, such as he had often heard before. She
paid herself.
She had a little furnished room in the flat of a solitary lady who
provided her meals. Her big Becker piano was for the time at Yartsev's
in Great Nikitsky Street, and she went there every day to play on it. In
her room there were armchairs in loose covers, a bed with a white summer
quilt, and flowers belonging to the landlady; there were oleographs on
the walls, and there was nothing that would have suggested that there
was a woman, and a woman of university education, living in it. There
was no toilet table; there were no books; there was not even a writing-
table. It was evident that she went to bed as soon as she got home, and
went out as soon as she got up in the morning.
The cook brought in the samovar. Polina Nikolaevna made tea, and, still
shivering--the room was cold--began abusing the singers who had sung in
the ninth symphony. She was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes
open. She drank one glass of tea, then a second, and then a third.
"And so you are married," she said. "But don't be uneasy; I'm not going
to pine away. I shall be able to tear you out of my heart. Only it's
annoying and bitter to me that you are just as contemptible as every one
else; that what you want in a woman is not brains or intellect, but
simply a body, good looks, and youth. . . . Youth!" she pronounced
through her nose, as though mimicking some one, and she laughed. "Youth!
You must have purity, _reinheit! reinheit!_" she laughed, throwing
herself back in her chair. "_Reinheit!_"
When she left off laughing her eyes were wet with tears.
"You're happy, at any rate?" she asked.
"No."
"Does she love you?"
Laptev, agitated, and feeling miserable, stood up and began walking
about the room.
"No," he repeated. "If you want to know, Polina, I'm very unhappy.
There's no help for it; I've done the stupid thing, and there's no
correcting it now. I must look at it philosophically. She married me
without love, stupidly, perhaps with mercenary motives, but without
understanding, and now she evidently sees her mistake and is miserable.
I see it. At night we sleep together, but by day she is afraid to be
left alone with me for five minutes, and tries to find distraction,
society. With me she feels ashamed and frightened."
"And yet she takes money from you?"
"That's stupid, Polina!" cried Laptev. "She takes money from me because
it makes absolutely no difference to her whether she has it or not. She
is an honest, pure girl. She married me simply because she wanted to get
away from her father, that's all."
"And are you sure she would have married you if you had not been rich?"
asked Polina.
"I'm not sure of anything," said Laptev dejectedly. "Not of anything. I
don't understand anything. For God's sake, Polina, don't let us talk
about it."
"Do you love her?"
"Desperately."
A silence followed. She drank a fourth glass, while he paced up and
down, thinking that by now his wife was probably having supper at the
doctors' club.
"But is it possible to love without knowing why?" asked Polina,
shrugging her shoulders. "No; it's the promptings of animal passion! You
are poisoned, intoxicated by that beautiful body, that _reinheit!_ Go
away from me; you are unclean! Go to her!"
She brandished her hand at him, then took up his hat and hurled it at
him. He put on his fur coat without speaking and went out, but she ran
after him into the passage, clutched his arm above the elbow, and broke
into sobs.
"Hush, Polina! Don't!" he said, and could not unclasp her fingers. "Calm
yourself, I entreat you."
She shut her eyes and turned pale, and her long nose became an
unpleasant waxy colour like a corpse's, and Laptev still could not
unclasp her fingers. She had fainted. He lifted her up carefully, laid
her on her bed, and sat by her for ten minutes till she came to herself.
Her hands were cold, her pulse was weak and uneven.
"Go home," she said, opening her eyes. "Go away, or I shall begin
howling again. I must take myself in hand."
When he came out, instead of going to the doctors' club where his
friends were expecting him, he went home. All the way home he was asking
himself reproachfully why he had not settled down to married life with
that woman who loved him so much, and was in reality his wife and
friend. She was the one human being who was devoted to him; and,
besides, would it not have been a grateful and worthy task to give
happiness, peace, and a home to that proud, clever, overworked creature?
Was it for him, he asked himself, to lay claim to youth and beauty, to
that happiness which could not be, and which, as though in punishment or
mockery, had kept him for the last three months in a state of gloom and
oppression. The honeymoon was long over, and he still, absurd to say,
did not know what sort of person his wife was. To her school friends and
her father she wrote long letters of five sheets, and was never at a
loss for something to say to them, but to him she never spoke except
about the weather or to tell him that dinner was ready, or that it was
supper-time. When at night she said her lengthy prayers and then kissed
her crosses and ikons, he thought, watching her with hatred, "Here she's
praying. What's she praying about? What about?" In his thoughts he
showered insults on himself and her, telling himself that when he got
into bed and took her into his arms, he was taking what he had paid for;
but it was horrible. If only it had been a healthy, reckless, sinful
woman; but here he had youth, piety, meekness, the pure eyes of
innocence. . . . While they were engaged her piety had touched him; now
the conventional definiteness of her views and convictions seemed to him
a barrier, behind which the real truth could not be seen. Already
everything in his married life was agonising. When his wife, sitting
beside him in the theatre, sighed or laughed spontaneously, it was
bitter to him that she enjoyed herself alone and would not share her
delight with him. And it was remarkable that she was friendly with all
his friends, and they all knew what she was like already, while he knew
nothing about her, and only moped and was dumbly jealous.
When he got home Laptev put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and sat
down in his study to read a novel. His wife was not at home. But within
half an hour there was a ring at the hall door, and he heard the muffled
footsteps of Pyotr running to open it. It was Yulia. She walked into the
study in her fur coat, her cheeks rosy with the frost,
"There's a great fire in Pryesnya," she said breathlessly. "There's a
tremendous glow. I'm going to see it with Konstantin Ivanovitch."
"Well, do, dear!"
The sight of her health, her freshness, and the childish horror in her
eyes, reassured Laptev. He read for another half-hour and went to bed.
Next day Polina Nikolaevna sent to the warehouse two books she had
borrowed from him, all his letters and his photographs; with them was a
note consisting of one word--_"basta."_
VIII
Towards the end of October Nina Fyodorovna had unmistakable symptoms of
a relapse. There was a change in her face, and she grew rapidly thinner.
In spite of acute pain she still imagined that she was getting better,
and got up and dressed every morning as though she were well, and then
lay on her bed, fully dressed, for the rest of the day. And towards the
end she became very talkative. She would lie on her back and talk in a
low voice, speaking with an effort and breathing painfully. She died
suddenly under the following circumstances.
It was a clear moonlight evening. In the street people were tobogganing
in the fresh snow, and their clamour floated in at the window. Nina
Fyodorovna was lying on her back in bed, and Sasha, who had no one to
take turns with her now, was sitting beside her half asleep.