After the night that is described above a calm set in.
I remained at home, only allowing myself to leave the house or ride
about on business. Heaps of work had accumulated, therefore it was
impossible for me to be dull. From morning till night I sat at my
writing-table scribbling, or examining people who had fallen into my
magisterial claws. I was no longer drawn to Karnéevka, the Count's
estate.
I thought no more of Olga. That which falls from the load is lost; and
she was just what had fallen from my load and was, as I thought,
irrecoverably lost. I thought no more about her and did not want to
think about her.
“Silly, vicious trash!” I said to myself whenever her memory arose in
my mind in the midst of my strenuous work.
Occasionally, however, when I lay down to sleep or when I awoke in the
morning, I remembered various moments of our acquaintance, and the
short connexion I had had with Olga. I remembered the “Stone Grave,”
the little house in the wood in which “the girl in red” lived, the
road to Tenevo, the meeting in the grotto . . . and my heart began to
beat faster. . . . I experienced bitter heartache. . . . But it was
not for long. The bright memories were soon obliterated under the
weight of the gloomy ones. What poetry of the past could withstand the
filth of the present? And now, when I had finished with Olga, I looked
upon this “poetry” quite differently to formerly. . . . Now I looked
upon it as an optical illusion, a lie, hypocrisy . . . and it lost
half its charm in my eyes.
The Count had become quite repugnant to me. I was glad not to see him,
and I was always angry when his moustachioed face rose timidly to my
mind. Every day he sent me letters in which he implored me not to sulk
but to come to see the no longer “solitary hermit.” Had I listened to
his letters, I would have been doing a displeasure to myself.
“It's finished!” I thought. “Thank God! . . . It bored me. . . .”
I decided to break off all connexion with the Count, and this decision
did not cost me the slightest struggle. Now I was not at all the same
man that I had been three weeks before, when after the quarrel about
Pshekhotsky I could scarcely bring myself to sit at home. There was no
attraction now.
Sitting always at home bored me at last, and I wrote to Doctor Pavil
Ivanovich, asking him to come and have a chat. For some reason I
received no reply to this letter, so I wrote another. But the second
received the same answer as the first. Evidently dear “Screw”
pretended to be angry. . . . The poor fellow having received a refusal
from Nadenka Kalinin, looked upon me as the cause of his misfortune.
He had the right to be angry, and if he had never been angry before it
was merely because he did not know how to.
“When had he time to learn?” I thought, being perplexed at not
receiving answers to my letters.
In the third week of obstinate seclusion in my own house the Count
paid me a visit. Having scolded me for not riding over to see him nor
sending him answers to his letters, he stretched himself out on the
sofa and before he began to snore he spoke on his favourite theme—on
women.
“I understand,” he began languidly, screwing up his eyes and placing
his hands under his head, “that you are delicate and susceptible. You
don't come to me from fear of breaking into our duet . . .
interfering. . . . An unwelcome guest is worse than a Tartar, a guest
during the honeymoon is worse than a horned devil. I understand you.
But, my dear friend, you forget that you are a friend and not a guest,
that you are loved, esteemed. By your presence you would only complete
the harmony. . . . And what harmony, my dear brother! A harmony that I
am unable to describe to you!”
The Count pulled his hands out from under his head and began to wave
them about.
“I myself am unable to understand if I am living happily or not. The
devil himself would not be able to understand it. There are certainly
moments when one would give half one's life for a ‘bis,’ but on the
other hand there are days when one paces the rooms from corner to
corner, as if beside oneself and ready to cry. . . .”
“For what reason?”
“Brother, I can't understand that Olga. She's a sort of ague and not a
woman. In ague one has either fever or shivering fits. That's how she
is; five changes every day. She is either gay or so dull that she
swallows her tears and prays. . . . Sometimes she loves me, sometimes
she doesn't. There are moments when she caresses me as no woman has
ever caressed me in my whole life. But sometimes it is like this: You
awake unexpectedly, you open your eyes, and you see a face turned on
you . . . such a terrible, such a savage face . . . a face that is
all distorted with malignancy and aversion. . . . When one sees such a
thing all the enchantment vanishes. . . . And she often looks at me in
that way. . . .”
“With aversion?”
“Well, yes! . . . I can't understand it. . . . She swears that she
came to me only for love, and still hardly a night passes that I do
not see that face. How is it to be explained? I begin to think, though
of course I don't want to believe it, that she can't bear me and has
given herself to me for those rags which I buy for her now She's
terribly fond of rags! She's capable of standing before the mirror
from morning to evening in a new frock; she is capable of crying for
days and nights about a spoilt flounce. . . . She's terribly vain!
What chiefly pleases her in me is that I'm a Count. She would never
have loved me had I not been a Count. Never a dinner or supper passes
that she does not reproach me with tears in her eyes, for not
surrounding myself with aristocratic society. You see, she would like
to reign in that society. . . . A strange girl!”
The Count fixed his dim eyes on the ceiling and became pensive. I
noticed, to my great astonishment, that this time, as an exception, he
was sober. This struck and even touched me.
“You are quite normal to-day,” I said. “You are not drunk, and you
don't ask for vodka. What's the meaning of this dream?”
“Yes, so it is! I had no time to drink, I've been thinking. . . . I
must tell you, Serezha, I'm seriously in love; it's no joke. I am
terribly fond of her. It's quite natural, too. . . . She's a rare
woman, not of the ordinary sort, to say nothing of her appearance. Not
much intellect, to be sure, but what feeling, elegance, freshness! She
can't be compared with my former Amalias, Angelicas, and Grushas,
whose love I have enjoyed till now. She's something from another
world, a world I do not know.”
“Philosophizing!” I laughed.
“I'm captivated, I've almost fallen in love! But now I see it is
useless to try to square a naught. It was only a mask that raised
false expectations in me. The pink cheeks of innocence proved to be
rouge, the kiss of love—the request to buy a new frock. . . . I took
her into my house like a wife, and she behaves like a mistress who is
paid with money. But it's enough now. I am restraining my soul's
expectations, and am beginning to see in Olga a mistress. . . .
Enough!”
“Well, why not? How about the husband?”
“The husband? Hm! . . . What do you think he's about?”
“I think it is impossible to imagine a more unhappy man.”
“You think that? Quite uselessly. . . . He's such a scoundrel, such a
rascal, that I am not at all sorry for him. . . . A rascal can never
be unhappy, he'll always find his way out.”
“Why do you abuse him in that way?”
“Because he's a rogue. You know that I esteemed him, that I trusted
him as a friend . . . I and you too—in general everybody considered
him an honest, respectable man who was incapable of cheating.
Meanwhile he has been robbing, plundering me! Taking advantage of his
position of bailiff, he disposed of my property as he liked. The only
things he did not take were those that could not be moved from their
places.”
I, who knew Urbenin to be a man in the highest degree honest and
disinterested, jumped up as if I had been stung when I heard these
words spoken by the Count, and went up to him.
“Have you caught him in the act of stealing?” I asked.
“No, but I know of his thievish tricks from trustworthy sources.”
“May I ask from what sources?”
“You needn't be uneasy. I would not accuse a man without cause. Olga
has told me all about him. Even before she became his wife she saw
with her own eyes what loads of slaughtered fowls and geese he sent to
town. She saw how my geese and fowls were sent as presents to a
certain benefactor where his son, the schoolboy, lodged. More than
that, she saw flour, millet and lard being dispatched there. Admitted
that all these are trifles, but did these trifles belong to him? Here
we have not a question of value but of principle. Principles were
trespassed against. There's more, sir! She saw in his cupboard packets
of money. In answer to her question whose money it was and where he
had got it, he begged her not to mention to anybody that he had money.
My dear fellow, you know he's as poor as a church mouse! His salary is
scarcely sufficient for his board. Can you explain to me where this
money came from?”
“And you, stupid fool, believe this little vermin?” I cried, stirred
to the depths of my soul. “She is not satisfied with having run away
from him and disgraced him in the eyes of the whole district. She must
now betray him! What an amount of meanness is contained in that small
and fragile body! Fowls, geese, millet. . . . Master, master! Your
political economistic feelings, your agricultural stupidity are
offended that at holiday time he sent a present of a slaughtered bird
which the foxes or polecats would have eaten, if it had not been
killed, and given away, but have you even once checked the huge
accounts that Urbenin has handed in? Have you ever counted up the
thousands and the tens of thousands? No? Then what is the use of
talking to you? You are stupid and a beast. You would be glad to
incriminate the husband of your mistress, but you don't know how!”
“My connexion with Olga has nothing to do with the matter. If he's her
husband or not her husband is all one, but since he has robbed me, I
must plainly call him a thief. But let us leave this roguery alone.
Tell me, is it honest or dishonest to receive a salary and for whole
days to lie about dead drunk? He is drunk every day. There wasn't a
single day that I did not see him reeling about! Low and disgusting!
Decent people don't act in that way.”
“It's just because he's decent that he gets drunk,” I said.
“You have a kind of passion for taking the part of such gentlemen. But
I have decided to be unmerciful. I paid him off to-day and told him to
clear out and make room for another. My patience is exhausted!”
I considered it unnecessary to try to convince the Count that he was
unjust, unpractical and stupid. It was not for me to defend Urbenin
against the Count.
Five days later I heard that Urbenin with his schoolboy son and his
little daughter had gone to live in the town. I was told that he drove
to town drunk, half dead, and that he had twice fallen out of the
cart. The schoolboy and Sasha had cried all the way.