PYOTR MIHALITCH IVASHIN was very much out of humour: his sister, a
young girl, had gone away to live with Vlassitch, a married man.
To shake off the despondency and depression which pursued him at
home and in the fields, he called to his aid his sense of justice,
his genuine and noble ideas--he had always defended free-love!
--but this was of no avail, and he always came back to the same
conclusion as their foolish old nurse, that his sister had acted
wrongly and that Vlassitch had abducted his sister. And that was
distressing.
His mother did not leave her room all day long; the old nurse kept
sighing and speaking in whispers; his aunt had been on the point
of taking her departure every day, and her trunks were continually
being brought down to the hall and carried up again to her room.
In the house, in the yard, and in the garden it was as still as
though there were some one dead in the house. His aunt, the servants,
and even the peasants, so it seemed to Pyotr Mihalitch, looked at
him enigmatically and with perplexity, as though they wanted to say
"Your sister has been seduced; why are you doing nothing?" And he
reproached himself for inactivity, though he did not know precisely
what action he ought to have taken.
So passed six days. On the seventh--it was Sunday afternoon--a
messenger on horseback brought a letter. The address was in a
familiar feminine handwriting: "Her Excy. Anna Nikolaevna Ivashin."
Pyotr Mihalitch fancied that there was something defiant, provocative,
in the handwriting and in the abbreviation "Excy." And advanced
ideas in women are obstinate, ruthless, cruel.
"She'd rather die than make any concession to her unhappy mother,
or beg her forgiveness," thought Pyotr Mihalitch, as he went to his
mother with the letter.
His mother was lying on her bed, dressed. Seeing her son, she rose
impulsively, and straightening her grey hair, which had fallen from
under her cap, asked quickly:
"What is it? What is it?"
"This has come . . ." said her son, giving her the letter.
Zina's name, and even the pronoun "she" was not uttered in the
house. Zina was spoken of impersonally: "this has come," "Gone
away," and so on. . . . The mother recognised her daughter's
handwriting, and her face grew ugly and unpleasant, and her grey
hair escaped again from her cap.
"No!" she said, with a motion of her hands, as though the letter
scorched her fingers. "No, no, never! Nothing would induce me!"
The mother broke into hysterical sobs of grief and shame; she
evidently longed to read the letter, but her pride prevented her.
Pyotr Mihalitch realised that he ought to open the letter himself
and read it aloud, but he was overcome by anger such as he had never
felt before; he ran out into the yard and shouted to the messenger:
"Say there will be no answer! There will be no answer! Tell them
that, you beast!"
And he tore up the letter; then tears came into his eyes, and feeling
that he was cruel, miserable, and to blame, he went out into the
fields.
He was only twenty-seven, but he was already stout. He dressed like
an old man in loose, roomy clothes, and suffered from asthma. He
already seemed to be developing the characteristics of an elderly
country bachelor. He never fell in love, never thought of marriage,
and loved no one but his mother, his sister, his old nurse, and the
gardener, Vassilitch. He was fond of good fare, of his nap after
dinner, and of talking about politics and exalted subjects. He had
in his day taken his degree at the university, but he now looked
upon his studies as though in them he had discharged a duty incumbent
upon young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five; at any
rate, the ideas which now strayed every day through his mind had
nothing in common with the university or the subjects he had studied
there.
In the fields it was hot and still, as though rain were coming. It
was steaming in the wood, and there was a heavy fragrant scent from
the pines and rotting leaves. Pyotr Mihalitch stopped several times
and wiped his wet brow. He looked at his winter corn and his spring
oats, walked round the clover-field, and twice drove away a partridge
with its chicks which had strayed in from the wood. And all the
while he was thinking that this insufferable state of things could
not go on for ever, and that he must end it one way or another. End
it stupidly, madly, but he must end it.
"But how? What can I do?" he asked himself, and looked imploringly
at the sky and at the trees, as though begging for their help.
But the sky and the trees were mute. His noble ideas were no help,
and his common sense whispered that the agonising question could
have no solution but a stupid one, and that to-day's scene with the
messenger was not the last one of its kind. It was terrible to think
what was in store for him!
As he returned home the sun was setting. By now it seemed to him
that the problem was incapable of solution. He could not accept the
accomplished fact, and he could not refuse to accept it, and there
was no intermediate course. When, taking off his hat and fanning
himself with his handkerchief, he was walking along the road, and
had only another mile and a half to go before he would reach home,
he heard bells behind him. It was a very choice and successful
combination of bells, which gave a clear crystal note. No one had
such bells on his horses but the police captain, Medovsky, formerly
an officer in the hussars, a man in broken-down health, who had
been a great rake and spendthrift, and was a distant relation of
Pyotr Mihalitch. He was like one of the family at the Ivashins' and
had a tender, fatherly affection for Zina, as well as a great
admiration for her.
"I was coming to see you," he said, overtaking Pyotr Mihalitch.
"Get in; I'll give you a lift."
He was smiling and looked cheerful. Evidently he did not yet know
that Zina had gone to live with Vlassitch; perhaps he had been told
of it already, but did not believe it. Pyotr Mihalitch felt in a
difficult position.
"You are very welcome," he muttered, blushing till the tears came
into his eyes, and not knowing how to lie or what to say. "I am
delighted," he went on, trying to smile, "but . . . Zina is away
and mother is ill."
"How annoying!" said the police captain, looking pensively at Pyotr
Mihalitch. "And I was meaning to spend the evening with you. Where
has Zinaida Mihalovna gone?"
"To the Sinitskys', and I believe she meant to go from there to the
monastery. I don't quite know."
The police captain talked a little longer and then turned back.
Pyotr Mihalitch walked home, and thought with horror what the police
captain's feelings would be when he learned the truth. And Pyotr
Mihalitch imagined his feelings, and actually experiencing them
himself, went into the house.
"Lord help us," he thought, "Lord help us!"
At evening tea the only one at the table was his aunt. As usual,
her face wore the expression that seemed to say that though she was
a weak, defenceless woman, she would allow no one to insult her.
Pyotr Mihalitch sat down at the other end of the table (he did not
like his aunt) and began drinking tea in silence.
"Your mother has had no dinner again to-day," said his aunt. "You
ought to do something about it, Petrusha. Starving oneself is no
help in sorrow."
It struck Pyotr Mihalitch as absurd that his aunt should meddle in
other people's business and should make her departure depend on
Zina's having gone away. He was tempted to say something rude to
her, but restrained himself. And as he restrained himself he felt
the time had come for action, and that he could not bear it any
longer. Either he must act at once or fall on the ground, and scream
and bang his head upon the floor. He pictured Vlassitch and Zina,
both of them progressive and self-satisfied, kissing each other
somewhere under a maple tree, and all the anger and bitterness that
had been accumulating in him for the last seven days fastened upon
Vlassitch.
"One has seduced and abducted my sister," he thought, "another will
come and murder my mother, a third will set fire to the house and
sack the place. . . . And all this under the mask of friendship,
lofty ideas, unhappiness!"
"No, it shall not be!" Pyotr Mihalitch cried suddenly, and he brought
his fist down on the table.
He jumped up and ran out of the dining-room. In the stable the
steward's horse was standing ready saddled. He got on it and galloped
off to Vlassitch.
There was a perfect tempest within him. He felt a longing to do
something extraordinary, startling, even if he had to repent of it
all his life afterwards. Should he call Vlassitch a blackguard,
slap him in the face, and then challenge him to a duel? But Vlassitch
was not one of those men who do fight duels; being called a blackguard
and slapped in the face would only make him more unhappy, and would
make him shrink into himself more than ever. These unhappy, defenceless
people are the most insufferable, the most tiresome creatures in
the world. They can do anything with impunity. When the luckless
man responds to well-deserved reproach by looking at you with eyes
full of deep and guilty feeling, and with a sickly smile bends his
head submissively, even justice itself could not lift its hand
against him.
"No matter. I'll horsewhip him before her eyes and tell him what I
think of him," Pyotr Mihalitch decided.
He was riding through his wood and waste land, and he imagined Zina
would try to justify her conduct by talking about the rights of
women and individual freedom, and about there being no difference
between legal marriage and free union. Like a woman, she would argue
about what she did not understand. And very likely at the end she
would ask, "How do you come in? What right have you to interfere?"
"No, I have no right," muttered Pyotr Mihalitch. "But so much the
better. . . . The harsher I am, the less right I have to interfere,
the better."
It was sultry. Clouds of gnats hung over the ground and in the waste
places the peewits called plaintively. Everything betokened rain,
but he could not see a cloud in the sky. Pyotr Mihalitch crossed
the boundary of his estate and galloped over a smooth, level field.
He often went along this road and knew every bush, every hollow in
it. What now in the far distance looked in the dusk like a dark
cliff was a red church; he could picture it all down to the smallest
detail, even the plaster on the gate and the calves that were always
grazing in the church enclosure. Three-quarters of a mile to the
right of the church there was a copse like a dark blur--it was
Count Koltonovitch's. And beyond the church Vlassitch's estate
began.
From behind the church and the count's copse a huge black storm-cloud
was rising, and there were ashes of white lightning.
"Here it is!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch. "Lord help us, Lord help
us!"
The horse was soon tired after its quick gallop, and Pyotr Mihalitch
was tired too. The storm-cloud looked at him angrily and seemed to
advise him to go home. He felt a little scared.
"I will prove to them they are wrong," he tried to reassure himself.
"They will say that it is free-love, individual freedom; but freedom
means self-control and not subjection to passion. It's not liberty
but license!"
He reached the count's big pond; it looked dark blue and frowning
under the cloud, and a smell of damp and slime rose from it. Near
the dam, two willows, one old and one young, drooped tenderly towards
one another. Pyotr Mihalitch and Vlassitch had been walking near
this very spot only a fortnight before, humming a students' song:
"'Youth is wasted, life is nought, when the heart is cold and
loveless.'"
A wretched song!
It was thundering as Pyotr Mihalitch rode through the copse, and
the trees were bending and rustling in the wind. He had to make
haste. It was only three-quarters of a mile through a meadow from
the copse to Vlassitch's house. Here there were old birch-trees on
each side of the road. They had the same melancholy and unhappy air
as their owner Vlassitch, and looked as tall and lanky as he. Big
drops of rain pattered on the birches and on the grass; the wind
had suddenly dropped, and there was a smell of wet earth and poplars.
Before him he saw Vlassitch's fence with a row of yellow acacias,
which were tall and lanky too; where the fence was broken he could
see the neglected orchard.
Pyotr Mihalitch was not thinking now of the horsewhip or of a slap
in the face, and did not know what he would do at Vlassitch's. He
felt nervous. He felt frightened on his own account and on his
sister's, and was terrified at the thought of seeing her. How would
she behave with her brother? What would they both talk about? And
had he not better go back before it was too late? As he made these
reflections, he galloped up the avenue of lime-trees to the house,
rode round the big clumps of lilacs, and suddenly saw Vlassitch.
Vlassitch, wearing a cotton shirt, and top-boots, bending forward,
with no hat on in the rain, was coming from the corner of the house
to the front door. He was followed by a workman with a hammer and
a box of nails. They must have been mending a shutter which had
been banging in the wind. Seeing Pyotr Mihalitch, Vlassitch stopped.
"It's you!" he said, smiling. "That's nice."
"Yes, I've come, as you see," said Pyotr Mihalitch, brushing the
rain off himself with both hands.
"Well, that's capital! I'm very glad," said Vlassitch, but he did
not hold out his hand: evidently he did not venture, but waited for
Pyotr Mihalitch to hold out his. "It will do the oats good," he
said, looking at the sky.
"Yes."
They went into the house in silence. To the right of the hall was
a door leading to another hall and then to the drawing-room, and
on the left was a little room which in winter was used by the
steward. Pyotr Mihalitch and Vlassitch went into this little room.
"Where were you caught in the rain?"
"Not far off, quite close to the house."
Pyotr Mihalitch sat down on the bed. He was glad of the noise of
the rain and the darkness of the room. It was better: it made it
less dreadful, and there was no need to see his companion's face.
There was no anger in his heart now, nothing but fear and vexation
with himself. He felt he had made a bad beginning, and that nothing
would come of this visit.
Both were silent for some time and affected to be listening to the
rain.
"Thank you, Petrusha," Vlassitch began, clearing his throat. "I am
very grateful to you for coming. It's generous and noble of you. I
understand it, and, believe me, I appreciate it. Believe me."
He looked out of the window and went on, standing in the middle of
the room:
"Everything happened so secretly, as though we were concealing it
all from you. The feeling that you might be wounded and angry has
been a blot on our happiness all these days. But let me justify
myself. We kept it secret not because we did not trust you. To begin
with, it all happened suddenly, by a kind of inspiration; there was
no time to discuss it. Besides, it's such a private, delicate matter,
and it was awkward to bring a third person in, even some one as
intimate as you. Above all, in all this we reckoned on your generosity.
You are a very noble and generous person. I am infinitely grateful
to you. If you ever need my life, come and take it."
Vlassitch talked in a quiet, hollow bass, always on the same droning
note; he was evidently agitated. Pyotr Mihalitch felt it was his
turn to speak, and that to listen and keep silent would really mean
playing the part of a generous and noble simpleton, and that had
not been his idea in coming. He got up quickly and said, breathlessly
in an undertone:
"Listen, Grigory. You know I liked you and could have desired no
better husband for my sister; but what has happened is awful! It's
terrible to think of it!"
"Why is it terrible?" asked Vlassitch, with a quiver in his voice.
"It would be terrible if we had done wrong, but that isn't so."
"Listen, Grigory. You know I have no prejudices; but, excuse my
frankness, to my mind you have both acted selfishly. Of course, I
shan't say so to my sister--it will distress her; but you ought
to know: mother is miserable beyond all description."
"Yes, that's sad," sighed Vlassitch. "We foresaw that, Petrusha,
but what could we have done? Because one's actions hurt other people,
it doesn't prove that they are wrong. What's to be done! Every
important step one takes is bound to distress somebody. If you went
to fight for freedom, that would distress your mother, too. What's
to be done! Any one who puts the peace of his family before everything
has to renounce the life of ideas completely."
There was a vivid flash of lightning at the window, and the lightning
seemed to change the course of Vlassitch's thoughts. He sat down
beside Pyotr Mihalitch and began saying what was utterly beside the
point.
"I have such a reverence for your sister, Petrusha," he said. "When
I used to come and see you, I felt as though I were going to a holy
shrine, and I really did worship Zina. Now my reverence for her
grows every day. For me she is something higher than a wife--yes,
higher!" Vlassitch waved his hands. "She is my holy of holies. Since
she is living with me, I enter my house as though it were a temple.
She is an extraordinary, rare, most noble woman!"
"Well, he's off now!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch; he disliked the word
"woman."
"Why shouldn't you be married properly?" he asked. "How much does
your wife want for a divorce?"
"Seventy-five thousand."
"It's rather a lot. But if we were to negotiate with her?"
"She won't take a farthing less. She is an awful woman, brother,"
sighed Vlassitch. "I've never talked to you about her before--it
was unpleasant to think of her; but now that the subject has come
up, I'll tell you about her. I married her on the impulse of the
moment--a fine, honourable impulse. An officer in command of a
battalion of our regiment--if you care to hear the details--had
an affair with a girl of eighteen; that is, to put it plainly, he
seduced her, lived with her for two months, and abandoned her. She
was in an awful position, brother. She was ashamed to go home to
her parents; besides, they wouldn't have received her. Her lover
had abandoned her; there was nothing left for her but to go to the
barracks and sell herself. The other officers in the regiment were
indignant. They were by no means saints themselves, but the baseness
of it was so striking. Besides, no one in the regiment could endure
the man. And to spite him, you understand, the indignant lieutenants
and ensigns began getting up a subscription for the unfortunate
girl. And when we subalterns met together and began to subscribe
five or ten roubles each, I had a sudden inspiration. I felt it was
an opportunity to do something fine. I hastened to the girl and
warmly expressed my sympathy. And while I was on my way to her, and
while I was talking to her, I loved her fervently as a woman insulted
and injured. Yes. . . . Well, a week later I made her an offer. The
colonel and my comrades thought my marriage out of keeping with the
dignity of an officer. That roused me more than ever. I wrote a
long letter, do you know, in which I proved that my action ought
to be inscribed in the annals of the regiment in letters of gold,
and so on. I sent the letter to my colonel and copies to my comrades.
Well, I was excited, and, of course, I could not avoid being rude.
I was asked to leave the regiment. I have a rough copy of it put
away somewhere; I'll give it to you to read sometime. It was written
with great feeling. You will see what lofty and noble sentiments I
was experiencing. I resigned my commission and came here with my
wife. My father had left a few debts, I had no money, and from the
first day my wife began making acquaintances, dressing herself
smartly, and playing cards, and I was obliged to mortgage the estate.
She led a bad life, you understand, and you are the only one of the
neighbours who hasn't been her lover. After two years I gave her
all I had to set me free and she went off to town. Yes. . . . And
now I pay her twelve hundred roubles a year. She is an awful woman!
There is a fly, brother, which lays an egg in the back of a spider
so that the spider can't shake it off: the grub fastens upon the
spider and drinks its heart's blood. That was how this woman fastened
upon me and sucks the blood of my heart. She hates and despises me
for being so stupid; that is, for marrying a woman like her. My
chivalry seems to her despicable. 'A wise man cast me off,' she
says, 'and a fool picked me up.' To her thinking no one but a pitiful
idiot could have behaved as I did. And that is insufferably bitter
to me, brother. Altogether, I may say in parenthesis, fate has been
hard upon me, very hard."
Pyotr Mihalitch listened to Vlassitch and wondered in perplexity
what it was in this man that had so charmed his sister. He was not
young--he was forty-one--lean and lanky, narrow-chested, with
a long nose, and grey hairs in his beard. He talked in a droning
voice, had a sickly smile, and waved his hands awkwardly as he
talked. He had neither health, nor pleasant, manly manners, nor
_savoir-faire_, nor gaiety, and in all his exterior there was
something colourless and indefinite. He dressed without taste, his
surroundings were depressing, he did not care for poetry or painting
because "they have no answer to give to the questions of the day"
--that is, he did not understand them; music did not touch him.
He was a poor farmer.
His estate was in a wretched condition and was mortgaged; he was
paying twelve percent on the second mortgage and owed ten thousand
on personal securities as well. When the time came to pay the
interest on the mortgage or to send money to his wife, he asked
every one to lend him money with as much agitation as though his
house were on fire, and, at the same time losing his head, he would
sell the whole of his winter store of fuel for five roubles and a
stack of straw for three roubles, and then have his garden fence
or old cucumber-frames chopped up to heat his stoves. His meadows
were ruined by pigs, the peasants' cattle strayed in the undergrowth
in his woods, and every year the old trees were fewer and fewer:
beehives and rusty pails lay about in his garden and kitchen-garden.
He had neither talents nor abilities, nor even ordinary capacity
for living like other people. In practical life he was a weak, naïve
man, easy to deceive and to cheat, and the peasants with good reason
called him "simple."
He was a Liberal, and in the district was regarded as a "Red," but
even his progressiveness was a bore. There was no originality nor
moving power about his independent views: he was revolted, indignant,
and delighted always on the same note; it was always spiritless and
ineffective. Even in moments of strong enthusiasm he never raised
his head or stood upright. But the most tiresome thing of all was
that he managed to express even his best and finest ideas so that
they seemed in him commonplace and out of date. It reminded one of
something old one had read long ago, when slowly and with an air
of profundity he would begin discoursing of his noble, lofty moments,
of his best years; or when he went into raptures over the younger
generation, which has always been, and still is, in advance of
society; or abused Russians for donning their dressing-gowns at
thirty and forgetting the principles of their _alma mater_. If you
stayed the night with him, he would put Pissarev or Darwin on your
bedroom table; if you said you had read it, he would go and bring
Dobrolubov.
In the district this was called free-thinking, and many people
looked upon this free-thinking as an innocent and harmless eccentricity;
it made him profoundly unhappy, however. It was for him the maggot
of which he had just been speaking; it had fastened upon him and
was sucking his life-blood. In his past there had been the strange
marriage in the style of Dostoevsky; long letters and copies written
in a bad, unintelligible hand-writing, but with great feeling,
endless misunderstandings, explanations, disappointments, then
debts, a second mortgage, the allowance to his wife, the monthly
borrowing of money--and all this for no benefit to any one, either
himself or others. And in the present, as in the past, he was still
in a nervous flurry, on the lookout for heroic actions, and poking
his nose into other people's affairs; as before, at every favourable
opportunity there were long letters and copies, wearisome, stereotyped
conversations about the village community, or the revival of
handicrafts or the establishment of cheese factories--conversations
as like one another as though he had prepared them, not in his
living brain, but by some mechanical process. And finally this
scandal with Zina of which one could not see the end!
And meanwhile Zina was young--she was only twenty-two--good-looking,
elegant, gay; she was fond of laughing, chatter, argument, a
passionate musician; she had good taste in dress, in furniture, in
books, and in her own home she would not have put up with a room
like this, smelling of boots and cheap vodka. She, too, had advanced
ideas, but in her free-thinking one felt the overflow of energy,
the vanity of a young, strong, spirited girl, passionately eager
to be better and more original than others. . . . How had it happened
that she had fallen in love with Vlassitch?
"He is a Quixote, an obstinate fanatic, a maniac," thought Pyotr
Mihalitch, "and she is as soft, yielding, and weak in character as
I am. . . . She and I give in easily, without resistance. She loves
him; but, then, I, too, love him in spite of everything."
Pyotr Mihalitch considered Vlassitch a good, straightforward man,
but narrow and one-sided. In his perturbations and his sufferings,
and in fact in his whole life, he saw no lofty aims, remote or
immediate; he saw nothing but boredom and incapacity for life. His
self-sacrifice and all that Vlassitch himself called heroic actions
or noble impulses seemed to him a useless waste of force, unnecessary
blank shots which consumed a great deal of powder. And Vlassitch's
fanatical belief in the extraordinary loftiness and faultlessness
of his own way of thinking struck him as naïve and even morbid; and
the fact that Vlassitch all his life had contrived to mix the trivial
with the exalted, that he had made a stupid marriage and looked
upon it as an act of heroism, and then had affairs with other women
and regarded that as a triumph of some idea or other was simply
incomprehensible.
Nevertheless, Pyotr Mihalitch was fond of Vlassitch; he was conscious
of a sort of power in him, and for some reason he had never had the
heart to contradict him.
Vlassitch sat down quite close to him for a talk in the dark, to
the accompaniment of the rain, and he had cleared his throat as a
prelude to beginning on something lengthy, such as the history of
his marriage. But it was intolerable for Pyotr Mihalitch to listen
to him; he was tormented by the thought that he would see his sister
directly.
"Yes, you've had bad luck," he said gently; "but, excuse me, we've
been wandering from the point. That's not what we are talking about."
"Yes, yes, quite so. Well, let us come back to the point," said
Vlassitch, and he stood up. "I tell you, Petrusha, our conscience
is clear. We are not married, but there is no need for me to prove
to you that our marriage is perfectly legitimate. You are as free
in your ideas as I am, and, happily, there can be no disagreement
between us on that point. As for our future, that ought not to alarm
you. I'll work in the sweat of my brow, I'll work day and night--
in fact, I will strain every nerve to make Zina happy. Her life
will be a splendid one! You may ask, am I able to do it. I am,
brother! When a man devotes every minute to one thought, it's not
difficult for him to attain his object. But let us go to Zina; it
will be a joy to her to see you."
Pyotr Mihalitch's heart began to beat. He got up and followed
Vlassitch into the hall, and from there into the drawing-room. There
was nothing in the huge gloomy room but a piano and a long row of
old chairs ornamented with bronze, on which no one ever sat. There
was a candle alight on the piano. From the drawing-room they went
in silence into the dining-room. This room, too, was large and
comfortless; in the middle of the room there was a round table with
two leaves with six thick legs, and only one candle. A clock in a
large mahogany case like an ikon stand pointed to half-past two.
Vlassitch opened the door into the next room and said:
"Zina, here is Petrusha come to see us!"
At once there was the sound of hurried footsteps and Zina came into
the dining-room. She was tall, plump, and very pale, and, just as
when he had seen her for the last time at home, she was wearing a
black skirt and a red blouse, with a large buckle on her belt. She
flung one arm round her brother and kissed him on the temple.
"What a storm!" she said. "Grigory went off somewhere and I was
left quite alone in the house."
She was not embarrassed, and looked at her brother as frankly and
candidly as at home; looking at her, Pyotr Mihalitch, too, lost his
embarrassment.
"But you are not afraid of storms," he said, sitting down at the
table.
"No," she said, "but here the rooms are so big, the house is so
old, and when there is thunder it all rattles like a cupboard full
of crockery. It's a charming house altogether," she went on, sitting
down opposite her brother. "There's some pleasant memory in every
room. In my room, only fancy, Grigory's grandfather shot himself."
"In August we shall have the money to do up the lodge in the garden,"
said Vlassitch.
"For some reason when it thunders I think of that grandfather,"
Zina went on. "And in this dining-room somebody was flogged to
death."
"That's an actual fact," said Vlassitch, and he looked with wide-open
eyes at Pyotr Mihalitch. "Sometime in the forties this place was
let to a Frenchman called Olivier. The portrait of his daughter is
lying in an attic now--a very pretty girl. This Olivier, so my
father told me, despised Russians for their ignorance and treated
them with cruel derision. Thus, for instance, he insisted on the
priest walking without his hat for half a mile round his house, and
on the church bells being rung when the Olivier family drove through
the village. The serfs and altogether the humble of this world, of
course, he treated with even less ceremony. Once there came along
this road one of the simple-hearted sons of wandering Russia,
somewhat after the style of Gogol's divinity student, Homa Brut.
He asked for a night's lodging, pleased the bailiffs, and was given
a job at the office of the estate. There are many variations of the
story. Some say the divinity student stirred up the peasants, others
that Olivier' s daughter fell in love with him. I don't know which
is true, only one fine evening Olivier called him in here and
cross-examined him, then ordered him to be beaten. Do you know, he
sat here at this table drinking claret while the stable-boys beat
the man. He must have tried to wring something out of him. Towards
morning the divinity student died of the torture and his body was
hidden. They say it was thrown into Koltovitch's pond. There was
an inquiry, but the Frenchman paid some thousands to some one in
authority and went away to Alsace. His lease was up just then, and
so the matter ended."
"What scoundrels!" said Zina, shuddering.
"My father remembered Olivier and his daughter well. He used to say
she was remarkably beautiful and eccentric. I imagine the divinity
student had done both--stirred up the peasants and won the
daughter's heart. Perhaps he wasn't a divinity student at all, but
some one travelling incognito."
Zina grew thoughtful; the story of the divinity student and the
beautiful French girl had evidently carried her imagination far
away. It seemed to Pyotr Mihalitch that she had not changed in the
least during the last week, except that she was a little paler. She
looked calm and just as usual, as though she had come with her
brother to visit Vlassitch. But Pyotr Mihalitch felt that some
change had taken place in himself. Before, when she was living at
home, he could have spoken to her about anything, and now he did
not feel equal to asking her the simple question, "How do you like
being here?" The question seemed awkward and unnecessary. Probably
the same change had taken place in her. She was in no haste to turn
the conversation to her mother, to her home, to her relations with
Vlassitch; she did not defend herself, she did not say that free
unions are better than marriages in the church; she was not agitated,
and calmly brooded over the story of Olivier. . . . And why had
they suddenly begun talking of Olivier?
"You are both of you wet with the rain," said Zina, and she smiled
joyfully; she was touched by this point of resemblance between her
brother and Vlassitch.
And Pyotr Mihalitch felt all the bitterness and horror of his
position. He thought of his deserted home, the closed piano, and
Zina's bright little room into which no one went now; he thought
there were no prints of little feet on the garden-paths, and that
before tea no one went off, laughing gaily, to bathe. What he had
clung to more and more from his childhood upwards, what he had loved
thinking about when he used to sit in the stuffy class-room or the
lecture theatre--brightness, purity, and joy, everything that
filled the house with life and light, had gone never to return, had
vanished, and was mixed up with a coarse, clumsy story of some
battalion officer, a chivalrous lieutenant, a depraved woman and a
grandfather who had shot himself. . . . And to begin to talk about
his mother or to think that the past could ever return would mean
not understanding what was clear.
Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with tears and his hand began to
tremble as it lay on the table. Zina guessed what he was thinking
about, and her eyes, too, glistened and looked red.
"Grigory, come here," she said to Vlassitch.
They walked away to the window and began talking of something in a
whisper. From the way that Vlassitch stooped down to her and the
way she looked at him, Pyotr Mihalitch realised again that everything
was irreparably over, and that it was no use to talk of anything.
Zina went out of the room.
"Well, brother!" Vlassitch began, after a brief silence, rubbing
his hands and smiling. "I called our life happiness just now, but
that was, so to speak, poetical license. In reality, there has not
been a sense of happiness so far. Zina has been thinking all the
time of you, of her mother, and has been worrying; looking at her,
I, too, felt worried. Hers is a bold, free nature, but, you know,
it's difficult when you're not used to it, and she is young, too.
The servants call her 'Miss'; it seems a trifle, but it upsets her.
There it is, brother."
Zina brought in a plateful of strawberries. She was followed by a
little maidservant, looking crushed and humble, who set a jug of
milk on the table and made a very low bow: she had something about
her that was in keeping with the old furniture, something petrified
and dreary.
The sound of the rain had ceased. Pyotr Mihalitch ate strawberries
while Vlassitch and Zina looked at him in silence. The moment of
the inevitable but useless conversation was approaching, and all
three felt the burden of it. Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with
tears again; he pushed away his plate and said that he must be going
home, or it would be getting late, and perhaps it would rain again.
The time had come when common decency required Zina to speak of
those at home and of her new life.
"How are things at home?" she asked rapidly, and her pale face
quivered. "How is mother?"
"You know mother . . ." said Pyotr Mihalitch, not looking at her.
"Petrusha, you've thought a great deal about what has happened,"
she said, taking hold of her brother's sleeve, and he knew how hard
it was for her to speak. "You've thought a great deal: tell me, can
we reckon on mother's accepting Grigory . . . and the whole position,
one day?"
She stood close to her brother, face to face with him, and he was
astonished that she was so beautiful, and that he seemed not to
have noticed it before. And it seemed to him utterly absurd that
his sister, so like his mother, pampered, elegant, should be living
with Vlassitch and in Vlassitch's house, with the petrified servant,
and the table with six legs--in the house where a man had been
flogged to death, and that she was not going home with him, but was
staying here to sleep.
"You know mother," he said, not answering her question. "I think
you ought to have . . . to do something, to ask her forgiveness or
something. . . ."
"But to ask her forgiveness would mean pretending we had done wrong.
I'm ready to tell a lie to comfort mother, but it won't lead anywhere.
I know mother. Well, what will be, must be!" said Zina, growing
more cheerful now that the most unpleasant had been said. "We'll
wait for five years, ten years, and be patient, and then God's will
be done."
She took her brother's arm, and when she walked through the dark
hall she squeezed close to him. They went out on the steps. Pyotr
Mihalitch said good-bye, got on his horse, and set off at a walk;
Zina and Vlassitch walked a little way with him. It was still and
warm, with a delicious smell of hay; stars were twinkling brightly
between the clouds. Vlassitch's old garden, which had seen so many
gloomy stories in its time, lay slumbering in the darkness, and for
some reason it was mournful riding through it.
"Zina and I to-day after dinner spent some really exalted moments,"
said Vlassitch. "I read aloud to her an excellent article on the
question of emigration. You must read it, brother! You really must.
It's remarkable for its lofty tone. I could not resist writing a
letter to the editor to be forwarded to the author. I wrote only a
single line: 'I thank you and warmly press your noble hand.'"
Pyotr Mihalitch was tempted to say, "Don't meddle in what does not
concern you," but he held his tongue.
Vlassitch walked by his right stirrup and Zina by the left; both
seemed to have forgotten that they had to go home. It was damp, and
they had almost reached Koltovitch's copse. Pyotr Mihalitch felt
that they were expecting something from him, though they hardly
knew what it was, and he felt unbearably sorry for them. Now as
they walked by the horse with submissive faces, lost in thought,
he had a deep conviction that they were unhappy, and could not be
happy, and their love seemed to him a melancholy, irreparable
mistake. Pity and the sense that he could do nothing to help them
reduced him to that state of spiritual softening when he was ready
to make any sacrifice to get rid of the painful feeling of sympathy.
"I'll come over sometimes for a night," he said.
But it sounded as though he were making a concession, and did not
satisfy him. When they stopped near Koltovitch's copse to say
good-bye, he bent down to Zina, touched her shoulder, and said:
"You are right, Zina! You have done well." To avoid saying more and
bursting into tears, he lashed his horse and galloped into the wood.
As he rode into the darkness, he looked round and saw Vlassitch and
Zina walking home along the road--he taking long strides, while
she walked with a hurried, jerky step beside him--talking eagerly
about something.
"I am an old woman!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch. "I went to solve the
question and I have only made it more complicated--there it is!"
He was heavy at heart. When he got out of the copse he rode at a
walk and then stopped his horse near the pond. He wanted to sit and
think without moving. The moon was rising and was reflected in a
streak of red on the other side of the pond. There were low rumbles
of thunder in the distance. Pyotr Mihalitch looked steadily at the
water and imagined his sister's despair, her martyr-like pallor,
the tearless eyes with which she would conceal her humiliation from
others. He imagined her with child, imagined the death of their
mother, her funeral, Zina's horror. . . . The proud, superstitious
old woman would be sure to die of grief. Terrible pictures of the
future rose before him on the background of smooth, dark water, and
among pale feminine figures he saw himself, a weak, cowardly man
with a guilty face.
A hundred paces off on the right bank of the pond, something dark
was standing motionless: was it a man or a tall post? Pyotr Mihalitch
thought of the divinity student who had been killed and thrown into
the pond.
"Olivier behaved inhumanly, but one way or another he did settle
the question, while I have settled nothing and have only made it
worse," he thought, gazing at the dark figure that looked like a
ghost. "He said and did what he thought right while I say and do
what I don't think right; and I don't know really what I do
think. . . ."
He rode up to the dark figure: it was an old rotten post, the relic
of some shed.
From Koltovitch's copse and garden there came a strong fragrant
scent of lilies of the valley and honey-laden flowers. Pyotr Mihalitch
rode along the bank of the pond and looked mournfully into the
water. And thinking about his life, he came to the conclusion he
had never said or acted upon what he really thought, and other
people had repaid him in the same way. And so the whole of life
seemed to him as dark as this water in which the night sky was
reflected and water-weeds grew in a tangle. And it seemed to him
that nothing could ever set it right.