“How opportune! How opportune!” the Count cried as he greeted me and
scratched my cheek with his long, pointed moustache. “You could not
have chosen a happier time! We have only just sat down to
luncheon. . . . Of course, you are acquainted. . . . You have
doubtless often had collisions in your legal department. . . . Ha,
ha!”
With both hands the Count pointed to two men who, seated in soft
armchairs, were partaking of cold tongue. In one I had the vexation of
recognizing the Justice of the Peace, Kalinin; the other, a little
grey-haired man with a large moonlike bald pate, was my good friend,
Babaev, a rich landowner who occupied the post of perpetual member of
our district council. Having exchanged bows, I looked with
astonishment at Kalinin. I knew how much he disliked the Count and
what reports he had set in circulation in the district about the man
at whose table he was now eating tongue and green peas with such
appetite and drinking ten-year-old liqueur. How could a respectable
man explain such a visit? The Justice of the Peace caught my glance
and evidently understood it.
“I have devoted this day to visits,” he said to me. “I am driving
round the whole district. . . . And, as you see, I have also called
upon his Excellency. . . .”
Il'ya brought a fourth cover. I sat down, drank a glass of vodka, and
began to lunch.
“It's wrong, your Excellency, very wrong!” Kalinin said, continuing
the conversation my entrance had interrupted. “It's no sin for us
little people, but you are an illustrious man, a rich man, a brilliant
man. . . . It's a sin for you to fail.”
“That's quite true; it's a sin,” Babaev acquiesced.
“What's it all about?” I asked.
“Nikolai Ignat'ich has given me a good idea!” the Count said, nodding
to the justice of the peace. “He came to me. . . . We sat down to
lunch, and I began complaining of being dull. . . .”
“And he complained to me of being dull,” Kalinin interrupted the
Count. “Dullness, melancholy . . . this and that. . . . In a word,
disillusionment. A sort of Onegin. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘you're
yourself to blame. . . .’ ‘How so?’ ‘Quite simply. . . . In order not
to be dull,’ I said, ‘accept some office . . . occupy yourself with
the management of your estate. . . . Farming is excellent,
wonderful. . . .’ He tells me he intends to occupy himself with
farming, but still he is dull. . . . What fails him is, so to speak,
the entertaining, the stimulating element. There is not the—how am I
to express myself?—er—strong sensations. . . .”
“Well, and what idea did you give him?”
“I really suggested no idea, I only reproached his Excellency. ‘How is
it your Excellency,’ I said, ‘that you, a young, cultivated, brilliant
man, can live in such seclusion? Is it not a sin?’ I asked. ‘You go
nowhere, you receive nobody, you are seen nowhere. . . . You live like
an old man, or a hermit. . . . What would it cost you to arrange
parties . . . so to speak, at homes?’”
“Why should he have at homes?” I asked.
“How can you ask? First, if his Excellency gave evening parties, he
would become acquainted with society—study it, so to speak. . . .
Secondly, society would have the honour of becoming more closely
acquainted with one of the richest of our landowners. . . . There
would be, so to speak, a mutual exchange of thoughts, conversation,
gaiety. . . . And when one comes to think of it, how many cultivated
young ladies and men we have among us! . . . What musical evenings,
dances, picnics could be arranged! Only think! The reception rooms are
huge, there are pavilions in the gardens, and so on, and so on. Nobody
in the government ever dreamed of the private theatricals or the
concerts that could be got up. . . . Yes, by God! Only imagine them!
Now all this is lost, is buried in the earth; but then . . . one must
only know how to! If I had his Excellency's means, I would show them
how to live! And he says: ‘Dull’! By God! it's laughable to listen to
it. . . . It makes one feel ashamed. . . .”
And Kalinin began to blink with his eyes, wishing to appear to be
really ashamed. . . .
“All this is quite just,” the Count said, rising from his seat and
thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I could give excellent evening
parties. . . . Concerts, private theatricals . . . all this could be
arranged charmingly. Besides, these parties would not only entertain
society, they would have an educational influence too! . . . Don't you
think so?”
“Well, yes,” I acquiesced. “As soon as our young ladies see your
moustachioed physiognomy they will at once be penetrated by the spirit
of civilization. . . .”
“Serezha, you're always joking,” the Count said, somewhat offended,
“and you never give me any friendly advice! Everything is laughable
for you! My friend, it is about time to drop these student habits!”
The Count began to pace about the room from corner to corner, and to
explain to me in long and tiresome suppositions the benefits that his
evening parties might bring to humanity. Music, literature, the drama,
riding, shooting. The shooting alone might unite all the best forces
of the district! . . .
“We shall revert to the subject,” the Count said to Kalinin in taking
leave of him after lunch.
“Then, if I understand your Excellency, the district may hope?” the
Justice of the Peace inquired.
“Certainly, certainly. . . . I will develop this idea and see what I
can do. . . . I am happy . . . delighted. You can tell
everybody. . . .”
It was a sight to note the look of beatitude that was imprinted on the
face of the Justice of the Peace as he took his seat in his carriage
and said to the coachman: “Go!” He was so delighted that he even
forgot our differences and in taking leave he called me “golubchek”
and pressed my hand warmly.
After the visitors had left, the Count and I sat down to table again
and continued our lunch. We lunched till seven o'clock in the evening,
when the crockery was removed from the table and dinner was served.
Young drunkards know how to shorten the time between meals. The whole
time we drank and ate small pieces, by which means we sustained the
appetite which would have failed us if we had entirely ceased to eat.
“Did you send money to anybody to-day?” I asked the Count, remembering
the packets of hundred-rouble notes I had seen in the morning in the
Tenevo post office.
“I sent no money.”
“Tell me, please, is your—what's his name?—new friend, Kazimir
Kaetanych, or Kaetan Kazimirovich, a wealthy man?”
“No, Serezha. He's a poor beggar! But what a soul he has—what a heart!
You are wrong in speaking so disdainfully of him . . . and you bully
him. Brother, you must learn to discriminate between people. Let's
have another glass?”
Pshekhotsky returned for dinner. When he saw me sitting at table and
drinking, he frowned, and after turning about round our table for a
time he seemed to think it best to retire to his own room. He refused
to have any dinner, pleading a bad headache, but he expressed no
objection when the Count advised him to go to bed and have his dinner
there.
During the second course, Urbenin came in. I hardly recognized him.
His broad red face beamed all over with pleasure. A happy smile seemed
to be playing on his sticking-out ears and on the thick fingers with
which he was arranging his smart new necktie all the time.
“One of the cows is ill, your Excellency,” he reported. “I sent for
the vet., but it appears he had gone away somewhere. Wouldn't it be a
good thing to send to town for the veterinary surgeon? If I send to
him he will not listen and will not come, but if you write to him it
will be quite a different matter. Perhaps it is a mere trifle, but it
may be something serious.”
“All right, I will write . . .” the Count grumbled.
“I congratulate you, Pëtr Egorych,” I said, rising and stretching out
my hand to the bailiff.
“On what occasion?” he murmured.
“Why, you are about to get married!”
“Yes, yes, just fancy! He's going to get married!” the Count began,
winking at blushing Urbenin. “What do you think of him? Ha, ha, ha! He
was silent, never said a word, and then suddenly—this bombshell. And
do you know whom he is going to marry? We guessed it that evening!
Pëtr Egorych, we settled then that in your scamp of a heart something
improper was going on. When he looked at you and Olenka he said: ‘That
fellow's bitten!’ Ha, ha! Sit down and have dinner with us, Pëtr
Egorych!”
Urbenin sat down carefully and respectfully and made a sign with his
eyes to Il'ya to bring him a plate of soup. I poured him out a glass
of vodka.
“I don't drink, sir,” he said.
“Nonsense, you drink more than we do.”
“I used to drink, but now I don't,” the bailiff said, smiling. “Now, I
mustn't drink. . . . There's no cause. Thank God, everything is
settled, satisfactorily everything is arranged, all exactly as my
heart had desired, even better than I could have expected.”
“Well, then, to your happiness you can drink this,” I said, pouring
him out a glass of sherry.
“This—why not? I really did drink hard. Now I can confess it to his
Excellency. Sometimes from morning to night. When I rose in the
morning I remembered it . . . well, naturally, I went to the cupboard
at once. Now, thank God, I have nothing to drown in vodka.”
Urbenin drank the glass of sherry. I poured out a second. He drank
this one too, and imperceptibly got drunk. . . .
“I can scarcely believe it,” he said, laughing a happy childish laugh.
“I look at this ring and remember her words when she gave her
consent—I can still scarcely believe it. . . . It seems
laughable. . . . How could I, at my age, with my appearance, hope that
this deserving girl would not disdain to become mine . . . the mother
of my orphan children? Why, she's a beauty, as you have been pleased
to notice; an angel incorporate! Wonders without end! You have filled
my glass again? Why not, for the last time. . . . I drank to drown
care, I will now drink to happiness. How I suffered, gentlemen! What
grief I endured! I saw her first a year ago, and would you believe
it—from that time I have not slept quietly a single night; there was
not a single day on which I did not drown this—silly weakness with
vodka . . . and scolded myself for this folly. . . . I sometimes
looked at her through the window and admired her and . . . tore out
the hair of my head. . . . At times I could have hanged myself . . .
But, thank God, I ventured and proposed, and, do you know, it took me
quite by surprise. Ha, ha! I heard, but I could not believe mine own
ears. She said: ‘I agree,’ and it appeared to me like: ‘Go to the
devil, you old dotard!’ . . . Afterward, when she kissed me, I was
convinced. . . .”
At the recollection of that first kiss received from poetical Olenka,
Urbenin closed his eyes and, despite his fifty years, he blushed like
a boy. . . . this appeared disgusting to me.
“Gentlemen,” he said, looking at us with happy, kind eyes, “why don't
you get married? Why are you wasting your lives, throwing them out of
the window? Why do you shun that which is the greatest blessing of all
who live upon the earth? The delight that debauchery gives is not a
hundredth part of what a quiet family life would give you! Young men,
your Excellency and you, Sergei Petrovich . . . I am happy now, and
. . . God knows how I love you both! Forgive me for giving stupid
advice, but . . . I want you both to be happy! Why don't you get
married? Family life is a blessing. . . . It's every man's
duty! . . .”
The happy and fond look on the face of the old man, who was about to
marry a young girl and was advising us to alter our dissolute
existence for a quiet family life, became unbearable to me.
“Yes,” I said, “family life is a duty. I agree with you. And therefore
you are acquitting yourself of this duty for the second time?”
“Yes, for the second time. I am fond of family life in general. To be
a bachelor or a widower is only half a life for me. Whatever you may
say, gentlemen, wedlock is a great thing!”
“Certainly . . . even when the husband is almost three times as old
as his wife?”
Urbenin blushed. The hand that was lifting a spoonful of soup to his
mouth trembled, and the soup was pouring again into the plate.
“I understand what you want to say, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “I
thank you for your frankness. I ask myself: Is it not mean? I suffer!
But where has one time to question oneself, to settle various
questions when every moment one feels happy, when one forgets one's
age, ugliness . . . the whole homo sum, Sergei Petrovich! And when
for a second, thoughts run through my pate of the inequality of years,
I don't break my head for an answer, but calm myself as well as I can.
I think I have made Olga happy. I have given her a father and my
children a mother. Besides, all this is like a novel, and my head
feels giddy. It was wrong to make me drink sherry.”
Urbenin rose, wiped his face with his napkin, and sat down again. A
minute later he gulped down another glass of sherry and looked at me
for a long time with an imploring glance as if he were begging me for
mercy, and suddenly his shoulders began to shake, and quite
unexpectedly he burst into sobs like a boy.
“It's nothing . . . nothing!” he mumbled, trying to master his sobs.
“Don't be uneasy. After your words my heart grew sick with a strange
foreboding. But it is nothing.”
Urbenin's foreboding was realized, realized so soon that I have not
time to change my pen and begin a new page. From the next chapter my
calm muse will change the expression of calmness on her face for one
of passion and affliction. The introduction is finished and the drama
begins.
The criminal will of man enters upon its rights.