For two days Auntie Dasha went about with a tear-stained and heavily
powdered face, and at dinner she kept sighing and looking towards
the ikon. And it was impossible to make out what was the matter
with her. But at last she made up her mind, went in to Vera, and
said in a casual way:
"The fact is, child, we have to pay interest on the bank loan, and
the tenant hasn't paid his rent. Will you let me pay it out of the
fifteen thousand your papa left you?"
All day afterwards Auntie Dasha spent in making cherry jam in the
garden. Alyona, with her cheeks flushed with the heat, ran to and
from the garden to the house and back again to the cellar.
When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as though
she were performing a religious rite, and her short sleeves displayed
her strong, little, despotic hands and arms, and when the servants
ran about incessantly, bustling about the jam which they would never
taste, there was always a feeling of martyrdom in the air. . . .
The garden smelt of hot cherries. The sun had set, the charcoal
stove had been carried away, but the pleasant, sweetish smell still
lingered in the air. Vera sat on a bench in the garden and watched
a new labourer, a young soldier, not of the neighbourhood, who was,
by her express orders, making new paths. He was cutting the turf
with a spade and heaping it up on a barrow.
"Where were you serving?" Vera asked him.
"At Berdyansk."
"And where are you going now? Home?"
"No," answered the labourer. "I have no home."
"But where were you born and brought up?"
"In the province of Oryol. Till I went into the army I lived with
my mother, in my step-father's house; my mother was the head of the
house, and people looked up to her, and while she lived I was cared
for. But while I was in the army I got a letter telling me my mother
was dead. . . . And now I don't seem to care to go home. It's not
my own father, so it's not like my own home."
"Then your father is dead?"
"I don't know. I am illegitimate."
At that moment Auntie Dasha appeared at the window and said:
"_Il ne faut pas parler aux gens . . . ._ Go into the kitchen, my
good man. You can tell your story there," she said to the soldier.
And then came as yesterday and every day supper, reading, a sleepless
night, and endless thinking about the same thing. At three o'clock
the sun rose; Alyona was already busy in the corridor, and Vera was
not asleep yet and was trying to read. She heard the creak of the
barrow: it was the new labourer at work in the garden. . . . Vera
sat at the open window with a book, dozed, and watched the soldier
making the paths for her, and that interested her. The paths were
as even and level as a leather strap, and it was pleasant to imagine
what they would be like when they were strewn with yellow sand.
She could see her aunt come out of the house soon after five o'clock,
in a pink wrapper and curl-papers. She stood on the steps for three
minutes without speaking, and then said to the soldier:
"Take your passport and go in peace. I can't have any one illegitimate
in my house."
An oppressive, angry feeling sank like a stone on Vera's heart. She
was indignant with her aunt, she hated her; she was so sick of her
aunt that her heart was full of misery and loathing. But what was
she to do? To stop her mouth? To be rude to her? But what would be
the use? Suppose she struggled with her, got rid of her, made her
harmless, prevented her grandfather from flourishing his stick--
what would be the use of it? It would be like killing one mouse or
one snake in the boundless steppe. The vast expanse, the long
winters, the monotony and dreariness of life, instil a sense of
helplessness; the position seems hopeless, and one wants to do
nothing--everything is useless.
Alyona came in, and bowing low to Vera, began carrying out the
arm-chairs to beat the dust out of them.
"You have chosen a time to clean up," said Vera with annoyance. "Go
away."
Alyona was overwhelmed, and in her terror could not understand what
was wanted of her. She began hurriedly tidying up the dressing-table.
"Go out of the room, I tell you," Vera shouted, turning cold; she
had never had such an oppressive feeling before. "Go away!"
Alyona uttered a sort of moan, like a bird, and dropped Vera's gold
watch on the carpet.
"Go away!" Vera shrieked in a voice not her own, leaping up and
trembling all over. "Send her away; she worries me to death!" she
went on, walking rapidly after Alyona down the passage, stamping
her feet. "Go away! Birch her! Beat her!" Then suddenly she came
to herself, and just as she was, unwashed, uncombed, in her
dressing-gown and slippers, she rushed out of the house. She ran
to the familiar ravine and hid herself there among the sloe-trees,
so that she might see no one and be seen by no one. Lying there
motionless on the grass, she did not weep, she was not horror-stricken,
but gazing at the sky open-eyed, she reflected coldly and clearly
that something had happened which she could never forget and for
which she could never forgive herself all her life.
"No, I can't go on like this," she thought. "It's time to take
myself in hand, or there'll be no end to it. . . . I can't go on
like this. . . ."
At midday Dr. Neshtchapov drove by the ravine on his way to the
house. She saw him and made up her mind that she would begin a new
life, and that she would make herself begin it, and this decision
calmed her. And following with her eyes the doctor's well-built
figure, she said, as though trying to soften the crudity of her
decision:
"He's a nice man. . . . We shall get through life somehow."
She returned home. While she was dressing, Auntie Dasha came into
the room, and said:
"Alyona upset you, darling; I've sent her home to the village. Her
mother's given her a good beating and has come here, crying."
"Auntie," said Vera quickly, "I'm going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov.
Only talk to him yourself . . . I can't."
And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly
about, she made up her mind that when she was married she would
look after the house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school,
that she would do all the things that other women of her circle
did. And this perpetual dissatisfaction with herself and every one
else, this series of crude mistakes which stand up like a mountain
before one whenever one looks back upon one's past, she would accept
as her real life to which she was fated, and she would expect nothing
better. . . . Of course there was nothing better! Beautiful nature,
dreams, music, told one story, but reality another. Evidently truth
and happiness existed somewhere outside real life. . . . One must
give up one's own life and merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe,
boundless and indifferent as eternity, with its flowers, its ancient
barrows, and its distant horizon, and then it would be well with
one. . . .
A month later Vera was living at the works.