understand!" said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson. "What has
the well-known musician to do with it!"
Her face was quivering with hatred, and she dropped her eyes to conceal
the feeling. And not only her husband, but all the men sitting at the
table, knew what the look in her face meant.
"What has the well-known musician got to do with it?" she said slowly.
"Why, nothing's easier than helping some one poor."
Silence followed. Pyotr handed the woodcock, but they all refused it,
and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember what he had said, but
it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the
fact of his meddling in the conversation at all.
After supper he went into his study; intently, with a beating heart,
expecting further humiliation, he listened to what was going on in the
hall. An argument had sprung up there again. Then Yartsev sat down to
the piano and played a sentimental song. He was a man of varied
accomplishments; he could play and sing, and even perform conjuring
tricks.
"You may please yourselves, my friends, but I'm not going to stay at
home," said Yulia. "We must go somewhere."
They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish to the merchant's club
to order a three-horse sledge. They did not ask Laptev to go with them
because he did not usually join these expeditions, and because his
brother was sitting with him; but he took it to mean that his society
bored them, and that he was not wanted in their light-hearted youthful
company. And his vexation, his bitter feeling, was so intense that he
almost shed tears. He was positively glad that he was treated so
ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, a
money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would have been even more glad
if his wife were to deceive him that night with his best friend, and
were afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with hatred. . . . He
was jealous on her account of their student friends, of actors, of
singers, of Yartsev, even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a
passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to him. He longed to
find her in another man's arms, and to be rid of this nightmare forever.
Fyodor was drinking tea, gulping it noisily. But he, too, got up to go.
"Our old father must have got cataract," he said, as he put on his fur
coat. "His sight has become very poor."
Laptev put on his coat, too, and went out. After seeing his brother part
of the way home, he took a sledge and drove to Yar's.
"And this is family happiness!" he said, jeering at himself. "This is
love!"
His teeth were chattering, and he did not know if it were jealousy or
something else. He walked about near the tables; listened to a comic
singer in the hall. He had not a single phrase ready if he should meet
his own party; and he felt sure beforehand that if he met his wife, he
would only smile pitifully and not cleverly, and that every one would
understand what feeling had induced him to come here. He was bewildered
by the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact
that the ladies he met looked at him. He stood at the doors trying to
see and to hear what was going on in the private rooms, and it seemed to
him that he was somehow playing a mean, contemptible part on a level
with the comic singers and those ladies. Then he went to Strelna, but he
found none of his circle there, either; and only when on the way home he
was again driving up to Yar's, a three-horse sledge noisily overtook
him. The driver was drunk and shouting, and he could hear Yartsev
laughing: "Ha, ha, ha!"
Laptev returned home between three and four. Yulia Sergeyevna was in
bed. Noticing that she was not asleep, he went up to her and said
sharply:
"I understand your repulsion, your hatred, but you might spare me before
other people; you might conceal your feelings."
She got up and sat on the bed with her legs dangling. Her eyes looked
big and black in the lamplight.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
He could not utter a single word from excitement and the trembling of
his whole body; he stood facing her and was dumb. She trembled, too, and
sat with the air of a criminal waiting for explanations.
"How I suffer!" he said at last, and he clutched his head. "I'm in hell,
and I'm out of my mind."
"And do you suppose it's easy for me?" she asked, with a quiver in her
voice. "God alone knows what I go through."
"You've been my wife for six months, but you haven't a spark of love for
me in your heart. There's no hope, not one ray of light! Why did you
marry me?" Laptev went on with despair. "Why? What demon thrust you into
my arms? What did you hope for? What did you want?"
She looked at him with terror, as though she were afraid he would kill
her.
"Did I attract you? Did you like me?" he went on, gasping for breath.
"No. Then what? What? Tell me what?" he cried. "Oh, the cursed money!
The cursed money!"
"I swear to God, no!" she cried, and she crossed herself. She seemed to
shrink under the insult, and for the first time he heard her crying. "I
swear to God, no!" she repeated. "I didn't think about your money; I
didn't want it. I simply thought I should do wrong if I refused you. I
was afraid of spoiling your life and mine. And now I am suffering for my
mistake. I'm suffering unbearably!"
She sobbed bitterly, and he saw that she was hurt; and not knowing what
to say, dropped down on the carpet before her.
"That's enough; that's enough," he muttered. "I insulted you because I
love you madly." He suddenly kissed her foot and passionately hugged it.
"If only a spark of love," he muttered. "Come, lie to me; tell me a lie!
Don't say it's a mistake! . . ."
But she went on crying, and he felt that she was only enduring his
caresses as an inevitable consequence of her mistake. And the foot he
had kissed she drew under her like a bird. He felt sorry for her.
She got into bed and covered her head over; he undressed and got into
bed, too. In the morning they both felt confused and did not know what
to talk about, and he even fancied she walked unsteadily on the foot he
had kissed.
Before dinner Panaurov came to say good-bye. Yulia had an irresistible
desire to go to her own home; it would be nice, she thought, to go away
and have a rest from married life, from the embarrassment and the
continual consciousness that she had done wrong. It was decided at
dinner that she should set off with Panaurov, and stay with her father
for two or three weeks until she was tired of it.
XI
She travelled with Panaurov in a reserved compartment; he had on his
head an astrachan cap of peculiar shape.
"Yes, Petersburg did not satisfy me," he said, drawling, with a sigh.
"They promise much, but nothing definite. Yes, my dear girl. I have been
a Justice of the Peace, a member of the local Board, chairman of the
Board of Magistrates, and finally councillor of the provincial
administration. I think I have served my country and have earned the
right to receive attention; but--would you believe it?--I can never
succeed in wringing from the authorities a post in another town. . . ."
Panaurov closed his eyes and shook his head.
"They don't recognise me," he went on, as though dropping asleep. "Of
course I'm not an administrator of genius, but, on the other hand, I'm a
decent, honest man, and nowadays even that's something rare. I regret to
say I have not been always quite straightforward with women, but in my
relations with the Russian government I've always been a gentleman. But
enough of that," he said, opening his eyes; "let us talk of you. What
put it into your head to visit your papa so suddenly?"
"Well. . . . I had a little misunderstanding with my husband," said
Yulia, looking at his cap.
"Yes. What a queer fellow he is! All the Laptevs are queer. Your
husband's all right--he's nothing out of the way, but his brother Fyodor
is a perfect fool."
Panaurov sighed and asked seriously:
"And have you a lover yet?"
Yulia looked at him in amazement and laughed.
"Goodness knows what you're talking about."
It was past ten o'clock when they got out at a big station and had
supper. When the train went on again Panaurov took off his greatcoat and
his cap, and sat down beside Yulia.
"You are very charming, I must tell you," he began. "Excuse me for the
eating-house comparison, but you remind me of fresh salted cucumber; it
still smells of the hotbed, so to speak, and yet has a smack of the salt
and a scent of fennel about it. As time goes on you will make a
magnificent woman, a wonderful, exquisite woman. If this trip of ours
had happened five years ago," he sighed, "I should have felt it my duty
to join the ranks of your adorers, but now, alas, I'm a veteran on the
retired list."
He smiled mournfully, but at the same time graciously, and put his arm
round her waist.
"You must be mad!" she said; she flushed crimson and was so frightened
that her hands and feet turned cold.
"Leave off, Grigory Nikolaevitch!"
"What are you afraid of, dear?" he asked softly. "What is there dreadful
about it? It's simply that you're not used to it."
If a woman protested he always interpreted it as a sign that he had made
an impression on her and attracted her. Holding Yulia round the waist,
he kissed her firmly on the cheek, then on the lips, in the full
conviction that he was giving her intense gratification. Yulia recovered
from her alarm and confusion, and began laughing. He kissed her once
more and said, as he put on his ridiculous cap:
"That is all that the old veteran can give you. A Turkish Pasha, a kind-
hearted old fellow, was presented by some one--or inherited, I fancy it
was--a whole harem. When his beautiful young wives drew up in a row
before him, he walked round them, kissed each one of them, and said:
'That is all that I am equal to giving you.' And that's just what I say,
too."
All this struck her as stupid and extraordinary, and amused her. She
felt mischievous. Standing up on the seat and humming, she got a box of
sweets from the shelf, and throwing him a piece of chocolate, shouted:
"Catch!"
He caught it. With a loud laugh she threw him another sweet, then a
third, and he kept catching them and putting them into his mouth,
looking at her with imploring eyes; and it seemed to her that in his
face, his features, his expression, there was a great deal that was
feminine and childlike. And when, out of breath, she sat down on the
seat and looked at him, laughing, he tapped her cheek with two fingers,
and said as though he were vexed:
"Naughty girl!"
"Take it," she said, giving him the box. "I don't care for sweet
things."
He ate up the sweets--every one of them, and locked the empty box in his
trunk; he liked boxes with pictures on them.
"That's mischief enough, though," he said. "It's time for the veteran to
go bye-bye."
He took out of his hold-all a Bokhara dressing-gown and a pillow, lay
down, and covered himself with the dressing-gown.
"Good-night, darling!" he said softly, and sighed as though his whole
body ached.
And soon a snore was heard. Without the slightest feeling of constraint,
she, too, lay down and went to sleep.
When next morning she drove through her native town from the station
homewards, the streets seemed to her empty and deserted. The snow looked
grey, and the houses small, as though some one had squashed them. She
was met by a funeral procession: the dead body was carried in an open
coffin with banners.
"Meeting a funeral, they say, is lucky," she thought.
There were white bills pasted in the windows of the house where Nina
Fyodorovna used to live.
With a sinking at her heart she drove into her own courtyard and rang at
the door. It was opened by a servant she did not know--a plump, sleepy-
looking girl wearing a warm wadded jacket. As she went upstairs Yulia
remembered how Laptev had declared his love there, but now the staircase
was unscrubbed, covered with foot-marks. Upstairs in the cold passage
patients were waiting in their out-door coats. And for some reason her
heart beat violently, and she was so excited she could scarcely walk.
The doctor, who had grown even stouter, was sitting with a brick-red
face and dishevelled hair, drinking tea. Seeing his daughter, he was
greatly delighted, and even lacrymose. She thought that she was the only
joy in this old man's life, and much moved, she embraced him warmly, and
told him she would stay a long time--till Easter. After taking off her
things in her own room, she went back to the dining-room to have tea
with him. He was pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets,
humming, "Ru-ru-ru"; this meant that he was dissatisfied with something.
"You have a gay time of it in Moscow," he said. "I am very glad for your
sake. . . . I'm an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon give up the
ghost and set you all free. And the wonder is that my hide is so tough,
that I'm alive still! It's amazing!"
He said that he was a tough old ass that every one rode on. They had
thrust on him the care of Nina Fyodorovna, the worry of her children,
and of her burial; and that coxcomb Panaurov would not trouble himself
about it, and had even borrowed a hundred roubles from him and had never
paid it back.
"Take me to Moscow and put me in a madhouse," said the doctor. "I'm mad;
I'm a simple child, as I still put faith in truth and justice."
Then he found fault with her husband for his short-sightedness in not
buying houses that were being sold so cheaply. And now it seemed to
Yulia that she was not the one joy in this old man's life. While he was
seeing his patients, and afterwards going his rounds, she walked through
all the rooms, not knowing what to do or what to think about. She had
already grown strange to her own town and her own home. She felt no
inclination to go into the streets or see her friends; and at the
thought of her old friends and her life as a girl, she felt no sadness
nor regret for the past.
In the evening she dressed a little more smartly and went to the evening
service. But there were only poor people in the church, and her splendid
fur coat and hat made no impression. And it seemed to her that there was
some change in the church as well as in herself. In old days she had
loved it when they read the prayers for the day at evening service, and
the choir sang anthems such as "I will open my lips." She liked moving
slowly in the crowd to the priest who stood in the middle of the church,
and then to feel the holy oil on her forehead; now she only waited for
the service to be over. And now, going out of the church, she was only
afraid that beggars would ask for alms; it was such a bore to have to
stop and feel for her pockets; besides, she had no coppers in her pocket
now--nothing but roubles.
She went to bed early, and was a long time in going to sleep. She kept
dreaming of portraits of some sort, and of the funeral procession she
had met that morning. The open coffin with the dead body was carried
into the yard, and brought to a standstill at the door; then the coffin
was swung backwards and forwards on a sheet, and dashed violently
against the door. Yulia woke and jumped up in alarm. There really was a
bang at the door, and the wire of the bell rustled against the wall,
though no ring was to be heard.
The doctor coughed. Then she heard the servant go downstairs, and then
come back.
"Madam!" she said, and knocked at the door. "Madam!"
"What is it?" said Yulia.
"A telegram for you!"
Yulia went out to her with a candle. Behind the servant stood the
doctor, in his night-clothes and greatcoat, and he, too, had a candle in
his hand. "Our bell is broken," he said, yawning sleepily. "It ought to
have been mended long ago."
Yulia broke open the telegram and read:
"We drink to your health.--YARTSEV, KOTCHEVOY."
"Ah, what idiots!" she said, and burst out laughing; and her heart felt
light and gay.
Going back into her room, she quietly washed and dressed, then she spent
a long time in packing her things, until it was daylight, and at midday
she set off for Moscow.
XII
In Holy Week the Laptevs went to an exhibition of pictures in the school
of painting. The whole family went together in the Moscow fashion, the
little girls, the governess, Kostya, and all.
Laptev knew the names of all the well-known painters, and never missed
an exhibition. He used sometimes to paint little landscape paintings
when he was in the country in the summer, and he fancied he had a good
deal of taste, and that if he had studied he might have made a good
painter. When he was abroad he sometimes used to go to curio shops,
examining the antiques with the air of a connoisseur and giving his
opinion on them. When he bought any article he gave just what the
shopkeeper liked to ask for it and his purchase remained afterwards in a
box in the coach-house till it disappeared altogether. Or going into a
print shop, he would slowly and attentively examine the engravings and
the bronzes, making various remarks on them, and would buy a common
frame or a box of wretched prints. At home he had pictures always of
large dimensions but of inferior quality; the best among them were badly
hung. It had happened to him more than once to pay large sums for things
which had afterwards turned out to be forgeries of the grossest kind.
And it was remarkable that, though as a rule timid in the affairs of
life, he was exceedingly bold and self-confident at a picture
exhibition. Why?
Yulia Sergeyevna looked at the pictures as her husband did, through her
open fist or an opera-glass, and was surprised that the people in the
pictures were like live people, and the trees like real trees. But she
did not understand art, and it seemed to her that many pictures in the
exhibition were alike, and she imagined that the whole object in
painting was that the figures and objects should stand out as though
they were real, when you looked at the picture through your open fist.
"That forest is Shiskin's," her husband explained to her. "He always
paints the same thing. . . . But notice snow's never such a lilac colour
as that. . . . And that boy's left arm is shorter than his right."
When they were all tired and Laptev had gone to look for Kostya, that
they might go home, Yulia stopped indifferently before a small
landscape. In the foreground was a stream, over it a little wooden
bridge; on the further side a path that disappeared in the dark grass; a
field on the right; a copse; near it a camp fire--no doubt of watchers
by night; and in the distance there was a glow of the evening sunset.
Yulia imagined walking herself along the little bridge, and then along
the little path further and further, while all round was stillness, the
drowsy landrails calling and the fire flickering in the distance. And
for some reason she suddenly began to feel that she had seen those very
clouds that stretched across the red part of the sky, and that copse,
and that field before, many times before. She felt lonely, and longed to
walk on and on along the path; and there, in the glow of sunset was the
calm reflection of something unearthly, eternal.
"How finely that's painted!" she said, surprised that the picture had
suddenly become intelligible to her.
"Look, Alyosha! Do you see how peaceful it is?"
She began trying to explain why she liked the landscape so much, but
neither Kostya nor her husband understood her. She kept looking at the
picture with a mournful smile, and the fact that the others saw nothing
special in it troubled her. Then she began walking through the rooms and
looking at the pictures again. She tried to understand them and no
longer thought that a great many of them were alike. When, on returning
home, for the first time she looked attentively at the big picture that
hung over the piano in the drawing-room, she felt a dislike for it, and
said:
"What an idea to have pictures like that!"
And after that the gilt cornices, the Venetian looking-glasses with
flowers on them, the pictures of the same sort as the one that hung over
the piano, and also her husband's and Kostya's reflections upon art,
aroused in her a feeling of dreariness and vexation, even of hatred.
Life went on its ordinary course from day to day with no promise of
anything special. The theatrical season was over, the warm days had
come. There was a long spell of glorious weather. One morning the
Laptevs attended the district court to hear Kostya, who had been
appointed by the court to defend some one. They were late in starting,
and reached the court after the examination of the witnesses had begun.
A soldier in the reserve was accused of theft and housebreaking. There
were a great number of witnesses, washerwomen; they all testified that
the accused was often in the house of their employer--a woman who kept a
laundry. At the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross he came late in the
evening and began asking for money; he wanted a pick-me-up, as he had
been drinking, but no one gave him anything. Then he went away, but an
hour afterwards he came back, and brought with him some beer and a soft
gingerbread cake for the little girl. They drank and sang songs almost
till daybreak, and when in the morning they looked about, the lock of
the door leading up into the attic was broken, and of the linen three
men's shirts, a petticoat, and two sheets were missing. Kostya asked
each witness sarcastically whether she had not drunk the beer the
accused had brought. Evidently he was insinuating that the washerwomen
had stolen the linen themselves. He delivered his speech without the
slightest nervousness, looking angrily at the jury.
He explained what robbery with housebreaking meant, and the difference
between that and simple theft. He spoke very circumstantially and
convincingly, displaying an unusual talent for speaking at length and in
a serious tone about what had been know to every one long before. And it
was difficult to make out exactly what he was aiming at. From his long
speech the foreman of the jury could only have deduced "that it was
housebreaking but not robbery, as the washerwomen had sold the linen for
drink themselves; or, if there had been robbery, there had not been
housebreaking." But obviously, he said just what was wanted, as his
speech moved the jury and the audience, and was very much liked. When
they gave a verdict of acquittal, Yulia nodded to Kostya, and afterwards
pressed his hand warmly.
In May the Laptevs moved to a country villa at Sokolniki. By that time
Yulia was expecting a baby.
XIII
More than a year had passed. Yulia and Yartsev were lying on the grass
at Sokolniki not far from the embankment of the Yaroslav railway; a
little distance away Kotchevoy was lying with hands under his head,
looking at the sky. All three had been for a walk, and were waiting for
the six o'clock train to pass to go home to tea.
"Mothers see something extraordinary in their children, that is ordained
by nature," said Yulia. "A mother will stand for hours together by the
baby's cot looking at its little ears and eyes and nose, and fascinated
by them. If any one else kisses her baby the poor thing imagines that it
gives him immense pleasure. And a mother talks of nothing but her baby.
I know that weakness in mothers, and I keep watch over myself, but my
Olga really is exceptional. How she looks at me when I'm nursing her!
How she laughs! She's only eight months old, but, upon my word, I've
never seen such intelligent eyes in a child of three."
"Tell me, by the way," asked Yartsev: "which do you love most-- your
husband or your baby?"
Yulia shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know," she said. "I never was so very fond of my husband, and
Olga is in reality my first love. You know that I did not marry Alexey
for love. In old days I was foolish and miserable, and thought that I
had ruined my life and his, and now I see that love is not necessary--
that it is all nonsense."
"But if it is not love, what feeling is it that binds you to your
husband? Why do you go on living with him?"
"I don't know. . . . I suppose it must be habit. I respect him, I miss
him when he's away for long, but that's--not love. He is a clever,
honest man, and that's enough to make me happy. He is very kind and
good-hearted. . . ."