"but his name was Ivan Kotchevoy--a poor clerk. He was a sad drunkard,
the Kingdom of Heaven be his! He used to come to us, and every month we
used to give him a pound of sugar and two ounces of tea. And money, too,
sometimes, of course. Yes. . . . And then, this is what happened. Our
Kotchevoy began drinking heavily and died, consumed by vodka. He left a
little son, a boy of seven. Poor little orphan! . . . We took him and
hid him in the clerk's quarters, and he lived there for a whole year,
without father's knowing. And when father did see him, he only waved his
hand and said nothing. When Kostya, the little orphan, was nine years
old--by that time I was engaged to be married--I took him round to all
the day schools. I went from one to the other, and no one would take
him. And he cried. . . . 'What are you crying for, little silly?' I
said. I took him to Razgulyay to the second school, where--God bless
them for it!--they took him, and the boy began going every day on foot
from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyay Street and back again . . . .
Alyosha paid for him. . . . By God's grace the boy got on, was good at
his lessons, and turned out well. . . . He's a lawyer now in Moscow, a
friend of Alyosha's, and so good in science. Yes, we had compassion on a
fellow-creature and took him into our house, and now I daresay, he
remembers us in his prayers. . . Yes. . . ."
Nina Fyodorovna spoke more and more slowly with long pauses, then after
a brief silence she suddenly raised herself and sat up.
"There's something the matter with me . . . something seems wrong," she
said. "Lord have mercy on me! Oh, I can't breathe!"
Sasha knew that her mother would soon die; seeing now how suddenly her
face looked drawn, she guessed that it was the end, and she was
frightened.
"Mother, you mustn't!" she began sobbing. "You mustn't."
"Run to the kitchen; let them go for father. I am very ill indeed."
Sasha ran through all the rooms calling, but there were none of the
servants in the house, and the only person she found was Lida asleep on
a chest in the dining-room with her clothes on and without a pillow.
Sasha ran into the yard just as she was without her goloshes, and then
into the street. On a bench at the gate her nurse was sitting watching
the tobogganing. From beyond the river, where the tobogganing slope was,
came the strains of a military band.
"Nurse, mother's dying!" sobbed Sasha. "You must go for father! . . ."
The nurse went upstairs, and, glancing at the sick woman, thrust a
lighted wax candle into her hand. Sasha rushed about in terror and
besought some one to go for her father, then she put on a coat and a
kerchief, and ran into the street. From the servants she knew already
that her father had another wife and two children with whom he lived in
Bazarny Street. She ran out of the gate and turned to the left, crying,
and frightened of unknown people. She soon began to sink into the snow
and grew numb with cold.
She met an empty sledge, but she did not take it: perhaps, she thought,
the man would drive her out of town, rob her, and throw her into the
cemetery (the servants had talked of such a case at tea). She went on
and on, sobbing and panting with exhaustion. When she got into Bazarny
Street, she inquired where M. Panaurov lived. An unknown woman spent a
long time directing her, and seeing that she did not understand, took
her by the hand and led her to a house of one storey that stood back
from the street. The door stood open. Sasha ran through the entry, along
the corridor, and found herself at last in a warm, lighted room where
her father was sitting by the samovar with a lady and two children. But
by now she was unable to utter a word, and could only sob. Panaurov
understood.
"Mother's worse?" he asked. "Tell me, child: is mother worse?"
He was alarmed and sent for a sledge.
When they got home, Nina Fyodorovna was sitting propped up with pillows,
with a candle in her hand. Her face looked dark and her eyes were
closed. Crowding in the doorway stood the nurse, the cook, the
housemaid, a peasant called Prokofy and a few persons of the humbler
class, who were complete strangers. The nurse was giving them orders in
a whisper, and they did not understand. Inside the room at the window
stood Lida, with a pale and sleepy face, gazing severely at her mother.
Panaurov took the candle out of Nina Fyodorovna's hand, and, frowning
contemptuously, flung it on the chest of drawers.
"This is awful!" he said, and his shoulders quivered. "Nina, you must
lie down," he said affectionately. "Lie down, dear."
She looked at him, but did not know him. They laid her down on her back.
When the priest and the doctor, Sergey Borisovitch, arrived, the
servants crossed themselves devoutly and prayed for her.
"What a sad business!" said the doctor thoughtfully, coming out into the
drawing-room. "Why, she was still young--not yet forty."
They heard the loud sobbing of the little girls. Panaurov, with a pale
face and moist eyes, went up to the doctor and said in a faint, weak
voice:
"Do me a favour, my dear fellow. Send a telegram to Moscow. I'm not
equal to it."
The doctor fetched the ink and wrote the following telegram to his
daughter:
"Madame Panaurov died at eight o'clock this evening. Tell your husband:
a mortgaged house for sale in Dvoryansky Street, nine thousand cash.
Auction on twelfth. Advise him not miss opportunity."
IX
Laptev lived in one of the turnings out of Little Dmitrovka. Besides the
big house facing the street, he rented also a two-storey lodge in the
yard at the back of his friend Kotchevoy, a lawyer's assistant whom all
the Laptevs called Kostya, because he had grown up under their eyes.
Facing this lodge stood another, also of two storeys, inhabited by a
French family consisting of a husband and wife and five daughters.
There was a frost of twenty degrees. The windows were frozen over.
Waking up in the morning, Kostya, with an anxious face, took twenty
drops of a medicine; then, taking two dumb-bells out of the bookcase, he
did gymnastic exercises. He was tall and thin, with big reddish
moustaches; but what was most noticeable in his appearance was the
length of his legs.
Pyotr, a middle-aged peasant in a reefer jacket and cotton breeches
tucked into his high boots, brought in the samovar and made the tea.
"It's very nice weather now, Konstantin Ivanovitch," he said.
"It is, but I tell you what, brother, it's a pity we can't get on, you
and I, without such exclamations."
Pyotr sighed from politeness.
"What are the little girls doing?" asked Kotchevoy.
"The priest has not come. Alexey Fyodorovitch is giving them their
lesson himself."
Kostya found a spot in the window that was not covered with frost, and
began looking through a field-glass at the windows of the house where
the French family lived.
"There's no seeing," he said.
Meanwhile Alexey Fyodorovitch was giving Sasha and Lida a scripture
lesson below. For the last six weeks they had been living in Moscow, and
were installed with their governess in the lower storey of the lodge.
And three times a week a teacher from a school in the town, and a
priest, came to give them lessons. Sasha was going through the New
Testament and Lida was going through the Old. The time before Lida had
been set the story up to Abraham to learn by heart.
"And so Adam and Eve had two sons," said Laptev. "Very good. But what
were they called? Try to remember them!"
Lida, still with the same severe face, gazed dumbly at the table. She
moved her lips, but without speaking; and the elder girl, Sasha, looked
into her face, frowning.
"You know it very well, only you mustn't be nervous," said Laptev.
"Come, what were Adam's sons called?"
"Abel and Canel," Lida whispered.
"Cain and Abel," Laptev corrected her.
A big tear rolled down Lida's cheek and dropped on the book. Sasha
looked down and turned red, and she, too, was on the point of tears.
Laptev felt a lump in his throat, and was so sorry for them he could not
speak. He got up from the table and lighted a cigarette. At that moment
Kotchevoy came down the stairs with a paper in his hand. The little
girls stood up, and without looking at him, made curtsies.
"For God's sake, Kostya, give them their lessons," said Laptev, turning
to him. "I'm afraid I shall cry, too, and I have to go to the warehouse
before dinner."
"All right."
Alexey Fyodorovitch went away. Kostya, with a very serious face, sat
down to the table and drew the Scripture history towards him.
"Well," he said; "where have you got to?"
"She knows about the Flood," said Sasha.
"The Flood? All right. Let's peg in at the Flood. Fire away about the
Flood." Kostya skimmed through a brief description of the Flood in the
book, and said: "I must remark that there really never was a flood such
as is described here. And there was no such person as Noah. Some
thousands of years before the birth of Christ, there was an
extraordinary inundation of the earth, and that's not only mentioned in
the Jewish Bible, but in the books of other ancient peoples: the Greeks,
the Chaldeans, the Hindoos. But whatever the inundation may have been,
it couldn't have covered the whole earth. It may have flooded the
plains, but the mountains must have remained. You can read this book, of
course, but don't put too much faith in it."
Tears trickled down Lida's face again. She turned away and suddenly
burst into such loud sobs, that Kostya started and jumped up from his
seat in great confusion.
"I want to go home," she said, "to papa and to nurse."
Sasha cried too. Kostya went upstairs to his own room, and spoke on the
telephone to Yulia Sergeyevna.
"My dear soul," he said, "the little girls are crying again; there's no
doing anything with them."
Yulia Sergeyevna ran across from the big house in her indoor dress, with
only a knitted shawl over her shoulders, and chilled through by the
frost, began comforting the children.
"Do believe me, do believe me," she said in an imploring voice, hugging
first one and then the other. "Your papa's coming to-day; he has sent a
telegram. You're grieving for mother, and I grieve too. My heart's torn,
but what can we do? We must bow to God's will!"
When they left off crying, she wrapped them up and took them out for a
drive. They stopped near the Iverskoy chapel, put up candles at the
shrine, and, kneeling down, prayed. On the way back they went in
Filippov's, and had cakes sprinkled with poppy-seeds.
The Laptevs had dinner between two and three. Pyotr handed the dishes.
This Pyotr waited on the family, and by day ran to the post, to the
warehouse, to the law courts for Kostya; he spent his evenings making
cigarettes, ran to open the door at night, and before five o'clock in
the morning was up lighting the stoves, and no one knew where he slept.
He was very fond of opening seltzer-water bottles and did it easily,
without a bang and without spilling a drop.
"With God's blessing," said Kostya, drinking off a glass of vodka before
the soup.
At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice, his
phrases such as "Landed him one on the beak," "filth," "produce the
samovar," etc., his habit of clinking glasses and making sentimental
speeches, seemed to her trivial. But as she got to know him better, she
began to feel very much at home with him. He was open with her; he liked
talking to her in a low voice in the evening, and even gave her novels
of his own composition to read, though these had been kept a secret even
from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev. She read these novels and
praised them, so that she might not disappoint him, and he was delighted
because he hoped sooner or later to become a distinguished author.
In his novels he described nothing but country-house life, though he had
only seen the country on rare occasions when visiting friends at a
summer villa, and had only been in a real country-house once in his
life, when he had been to Volokolamsk on law business. He avoided any
love interest as though he were ashamed of it; he put in frequent
descriptions of nature, and in them was fond of using such expressions
as, "the capricious lines of the mountains, the miraculous forms of the
clouds, the harmony of mysterious rhythms . . . ." His novels had never
been published, and this he attributed to the censorship.
He liked the duties of a lawyer, but yet he considered that his most
important pursuit was not the law but these novels. He believed that he
had a subtle, æsthetic temperament, and he always had leanings towards
art. He neither sang nor played on any musical instrument, and was
absolutely without an ear for music, but he attended all the symphony
and philharmonic concerts, got up concerts for charitable objects, and
made the acquaintance of singers. . . .
They used to talk at dinner.
"It's a strange thing," said Laptev, "my Fyodor took my breath away
again! He said we must find out the date of the centenary of our firm,
so as to try and get raised to noble rank; and he said it quite
seriously. What can be the matter with him? I confess I begin to feel
worried about him."
They talked of Fyodor, and of its being the fashion nowadays to adopt
some pose or other. Fyodor, for instance, tried to appear like a plain
merchant, though he had ceased to be one; and when the teacher came from
the school, of which old Laptev was the patron, to ask Fyodor for his
salary, the latter changed his voice and deportment, and behaved with
the teacher as though he were some one in authority.
There was nothing to be done; after dinner they went into the study.
They talked about the decadents, about "The Maid of Orleans," and Kostya
delivered a regular monologue; he fancied that he was very successful in
imitating Ermolova. Then they sat down and played whist. The little
girls had not gone back to the lodge but were sitting together in one
arm-chair, with pale and mournful faces, and were listening to every
noise in the street, wondering whether it was their father coming. In
the evening when it was dark and the candles were lighted, they felt
deeply dejected. The talk over the whist, the footsteps of Pyotr, the
crackling in the fireplace, jarred on their nerves, and they did not
like to look at the fire. In the evenings they did not want to cry, but
they felt strange, and there was a load on their hearts. They could not
understand how people could talk and laugh when their mother was dead.
"What did you see through the field-glasses today?" Yulia Sergeyevna
asked Kostya.
"Nothing to-day, but yesterday I saw the old Frenchman having his bath."
At seven o'clock Yulia and Kostya went to the Little Theatre. Laptev was
left with the little girls.
"It's time your father was here," he said, looking at his watch. "The
train must be late."
The children sat in their arm-chair dumb and huddling together like
animals when they are cold, while he walked about the room looking
impatiently at his watch. It was quiet in the house. But just before
nine o'clock some one rang at the bell. Pyotr went to open the door.
Hearing a familiar voice, the children shrieked, burst into sobs, and
ran into the hall. Panaurov was wearing a sumptuous coat of antelope
skin, and his head and moustaches were white with hoar frost. "In a
minute, in a minute," he muttered, while Sasha and Lida, sobbing and
laughing, kissed his cold hands, his hat, his antelope coat. With the
languor of a handsome man spoilt by too much love, he fondled the
children without haste, then went into the study and said, rubbing his
hands:
"I've not come to stay long, my friends. I'm going to Petersburg to-
morrow. They've promised to transfer me to another town."
He was staying at the Dresden Hotel.
X
A friend who was often at the Laptevs' was Ivan Gavrilitch Yartsev. He
was a strong, healthy man with black hair and a clever, pleasant face.
He was considered to be handsome, but of late he had begun to grow
stout, and that rather spoilt his face and figure; another thing that
spoilt him was that he wore his hair cut so close that the skin showed
through.
At the University his tall figure and physical strength had won him the
nickname of "the pounder" among the students. He had taken his degree
with the Laptev brothers in the faculty of philology--then he went in
for science and now had the degree of _magister_ in chemistry. But he
had never given a lecture or even been a demonstrator. He taught physics
and natural history in the modern school, and in two girls' high
schools. He was enthusiastic over his pupils, especially the girls, and
used to maintain that a remarkable generation was growing up. At home he
spent his time studying sociology and Russian history, as well as
chemistry, and he sometimes published brief notes in the newspapers and
magazines, signing them "Y." When he talked of some botanical or
zoological subject, he spoke like an historian; when he was discussing
some historical question, he approached it as a man of science.
Kish, nicknamed "the eternal student," was also like one of the family
at the Laptevs'. He had been for three years studying medicine. Then he
took up mathematics, and spent two years over each year's course. His
father, a provincial druggist, used to send him forty roubles a month,
to which his mother, without his father's knowledge, added another ten.
And this sum was not only sufficient for his board and lodging, but even
for such luxuries as an overcoat lined with Polish beaver, gloves,
scent, and photographs (he often had photographs taken of himself and
used to distribute them among his friends). He was neat and demure,
slightly bald, with golden side-whiskers, and he had the air of a man
nearly always ready to oblige. He was always busy looking after other
people's affairs. At one time he would be rushing about with a
subscription list; at another time he would be freezing in the early
morning at a ticket office to buy tickets for ladies of his
acquaintance, or at somebody's request would be ordering a wreath or a
bouquet. People simply said of him: "Kish will go, Kish will do it, Kish
will buy it." He was usually unsuccessful in carrying out his
commissions. Reproaches were showered upon him, people frequently forgot
to pay him for the things he bought, but he simply sighed in hard cases
and never protested. He was never particularly delighted nor
disappointed; his stories were always long and boring; and his jokes
invariably provoked laughter just because they were not funny. Thus, one
day, for instance, intending to make a joke, he said to Pyotr: "Pyotr,
you're not a sturgeon;" and this aroused a general laugh, and he, too,
laughed for a long time, much pleased at having made such a successful
jest. Whenever one of the professors was buried, he walked in front with
the mutes.
Yartsev and Kish usually came in the evening to tea. If the Laptevs were
not going to the theatre or a concert, the evening tea lingered on till
supper. One evening in February the following conversation took place:
"A work of art is only significant and valuable when there are some
serious social problems contained in its central idea," said Kostya,
looking wrathfully at Yartsev. "If there is in the work a protest
against serfdom, or the author takes up arms against the vulgarity of
aristocratic society, the work is significant and valuable. The novels
that are taken up with 'Ach!' and 'Och!' and 'she loved him, while he
ceased to love her,' I tell you, are worthless, and damn them all, I
say!"
"I agree with you, Konstantin Ivanovitch," said Yulia Sergeyevna. "One
describes a love scene; another, a betrayal; and the third, meeting
again after separation. Are there no other subjects? Why, there are many
people sick, unhappy, harassed by poverty, to whom reading all that must
be distasteful."
It was disagreeable to Laptev to hear his wife, not yet twenty-two,
speaking so seriously and coldly about love. He understood why this was
so.
"If poetry does not solve questions that seem so important," said
Yartsev, "you should turn to works on technical subjects, criminal law,
or finance, read scientific pamphlets. What need is there to discuss in
'Romeo and Juliet,' liberty of speech, or the disinfecting of prisons,
instead of love, when you can find all that in special articles and
textbooks?"
"That's pushing it to the extreme," Kostya interrupted. "We are not
talking of giants like Shakespeare or Goethe; we are talking of the
hundreds of talented mediocre writers, who would be infinitely more
valuable if they would let love alone, and would employ themselves in
spreading knowledge and humane ideas among the masses."
Kish, lisping and speaking a little through his nose, began telling the
story of a novel he had lately been reading. He spoke circumstantially
and without haste. Three minutes passed, then five, then ten, and no one
could make out what he was talking about, and his face grew more and
more indifferent, and his eyes more and more blank.
"Kish, do be quick over it," Yulia Sergeyevna could not resist saying;
"it's really agonizing!"
"Shut up, Kish!" Kostya shouted to him.
They all laughed, and Kish with them.
Fyodor came in. Flushing red in patches, he greeted them all in a
nervous flurry, and led his brother away into the study. Of late he had
taken to avoiding the company of more than one person at once.
"Let the young people laugh, while we speak from the heart in here," he
said, settling himself in a deep arm-chair at a distance from the lamp.
"It's a long time, my dear brother, since we've seen each other. How
long is it since you were at the warehouse? I think it must be a week."
"Yes, there's nothing for me to do there. And I must confess that the
old man wearies me."
"Of course, they could get on at the warehouse without you and me, but
one must have some occupation. 'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat
bread,' as it is written. God loves work."
Pyotr brought in a glass of tea on a tray. Fyodor drank it without
sugar, and asked for more. He drank a great deal of tea, and could get
through as many as ten glasses in the evening.
"I tell you what, brother," he said, getting up and going to his
brother. "Laying aside philosophic subtleties, you must get elected on
to the town council, and little by little we will get you on to the
local Board, and then to be an alderman. And as time goes on --you are a
clever man and well-educated--you will be noticed in Petersburg and
asked to go there--active men on the provincial assemblies and town
councils are all the fashion there now--and before you are fifty you'll
be a privy councillor, and have a ribbon across your shoulders."
Laptev made no answer; he knew that all this--being a privy councillor
and having a ribbon over his shoulder--was what Fyodor desired for
himself, and he did not know what to say.
The brothers sat still and said nothing. Fyodor opened his watch and for
a long, long time gazed into it with strained attention, as though he
wanted to detect the motion of the hand, and the expression of his face
struck Laptev as strange.
They were summoned to supper. Laptev went into the dining-room, while
Fyodor remained in the study. The argument was over and Yartsev was
speaking in the tones of a professor giving a lecture:
"Owing to differences of climate, of energy, of tastes, of age, equality
among men is physically impossible. But civilised man can make this
inequality innocuous, as he has already done with bogs and bears. A
learned man succeeded in making a cat, a mouse, a falcon, a sparrow, all
eat out of one plate; and education, one must hope, will do the same
thing with men. Life continually progresses, civilisation makes enormous
advances before our eyes, and obviously a time will come when we shall
think, for instance, the present condition of the factory population as
absurd as we now do the state of serfdom, in which girls were exchanged
for dogs."
"That won't be for a long while, a very long while," said Kostya, with a
laugh, "not till Rothschild thinks his cellars full of gold absurd, and
till then the workers may bend their backs and die of hunger. No; that's
not it. We mustn't wait for it; we must struggle for it. Do you suppose
because the cat eats out of the same saucer as the mouse--do you suppose
that she is influenced by a sense of conscious intelligence? Not a bit
of it! She's made to do it by force."
"Fyodor and I are rich; our father's a capitalist, a millionaire. You
will have to struggle with us," said Laptev, rubbing his forehead with
his hand. "Struggle with me is an idea I cannot grasp. I am rich, but
what has money given me so far? What has this power given me? In what
way am I happier than you? My childhood was slavery, and money did not
save me from the birch. When Nina was ill and died, my money did not
help her. If people don't care for me, I can't make them like me if I
spend a hundred million."
"But you can do a great deal of good," said Kish.
"Good, indeed! You spoke to me yesterday of a mathematical man who is
looking for a job. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I
can give money, but that's not what he wants--I asked a well-known
musician to help a poor violinist, and this is what he answered: 'You
apply to me just because you are not a musician yourself.' In the same
way I say to you that you apply for help to me so confidently because
you've never been in the position of a rich man."