Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two, Dymov was thirty-one. They got on
splendidly together when they were married. Olga Ivanovna hung all her
drawing-room walls with her own and other people’s sketches, in
frames and without frames, and near the piano and furniture arranged
picturesque corners with Japanese parasols, easels, daggers, busts,
photographs, and rags of many colours.... In the dining-room she
papered the walls with peasant woodcuts, hung up bark shoes and sickles,
stood in a corner a scythe and a rake, and so achieved a dining-room in
the Russian style. In her bedroom she draped the ceiling and the walls
with dark cloths to make it like a cavern, hung a Venetian lantern over
the beds, and at the door set a figure with a halberd. And every one
thought that the young people had a very charming little home.
When she got up at eleven o’clock every morning, Olga Ivanovna played
the piano or, if it were sunny, painted something in oils. Then between
twelve and one she drove to her dressmaker’s. As Dymov and she had very
little money, only just enough, she and her dressmaker were often put to
clever shifts to enable her to appear constantly in new dresses and make
a sensation with them. Very often out of an old dyed dress, out of bits
of tulle, lace, plush, and silk, costing nothing, perfect marvels
were created, something bewitching--not a dress, but a dream. From
the dressmaker’s Olga Ivanovna usually drove to some actress of her
acquaintance to hear the latest theatrical gossip, and incidentally to
try and get hold of tickets for the first night of some new play or for
a benefit performance. From the actress’s she had to go to some artist’s
studio or to some exhibition or to see some celebrity--either to pay a
visit or to give an invitation or simply to have a chat. And everywhere
she met with a gay and friendly welcome, and was assured that she was
good, that she was sweet, that she was rare.... Those whom she called
great and famous received her as one of themselves, as an equal, and
predicted with one voice that, with her talents, her taste, and her
intelligence, she would do great things if she concentrated herself. She
sang, she played the piano, she painted in oils, she carved, she took
part in amateur performances; and all this not just anyhow, but all with
talent, whether she made lanterns for an illumination or dressed up or
tied somebody’s cravat--everything she did was exceptionally graceful,
artistic, and charming. But her talents showed themselves in nothing
so clearly as in her faculty for quickly becoming acquainted and on
intimate terms with celebrated people. No sooner did any one become ever
so little celebrated, and set people talking about him, than she made
his acquaintance, got on friendly terms the same day, and invited him to
her house. Every new acquaintance she made was a veritable fete for her.
She adored celebrated people, was proud of them, dreamed of them every
night. She craved for them, and never could satisfy her craving. The old
ones departed and were forgotten, new ones came to replace them, but to
these, too, she soon grew accustomed or was disappointed in them, and
began eagerly seeking for fresh great men, finding them and seeking for
them again. What for?
Between four and five she dined at home with her husband. His
simplicity, good sense, and kind-heartedness touched her and moved her
up to enthusiasm. She was constantly jumping up, impulsively hugging his
head and showering kisses on it.
“You are a clever, generous man, Dymov,” she used to say, “but you have
one very serious defect. You take absolutely no interest in art. You
don’t believe in music or painting.”
“I don’t understand them,” he would say mildly. “I have spent all my
life in working at natural science and medicine, and I have never had
time to take an interest in the arts.”
“But, you know, that’s awful, Dymov!”
“Why so? Your friends don’t know anything of science or medicine, but
you don’t reproach them with it. Every one has his own line. I don’t
understand landscapes and operas, but the way I look at it is that if
one set of sensible people devote their whole lives to them, and other
sensible people pay immense sums for them, they must be of use. I don’t
understand them, but not understanding does not imply disbelieving in
them.”
“Let me shake your honest hand!”
After dinner Olga Ivanovna would drive off to see her friends, then to a
theatre or to a concert, and she returned home after midnight. So it was
every day.
On Wednesdays she had “At Homes.” At these “At Homes” the hostess
and her guests did not play cards and did not dance, but entertained
themselves with various arts. An actor from the Dramatic Theatre
recited, a singer sang, artists sketched in the albums of which Olga
Ivanovna had a great number, the violoncellist played, and the hostess
herself sketched, carved, sang, and played accompaniments. In the
intervals between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked
and argued about literature, the theatre, and painting. There were no
ladies, for Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies wearisome and vulgar
except actresses and her dressmaker. Not one of these entertainments
passed without the hostess starting at every ring at the bell, and
saying, with a triumphant expression, “It is he,” meaning by “he,” of
course, some new celebrity. Dymov was not in the drawing-room, and no
one remembered his existence. But exactly at half-past eleven the door
leading into the dining-room opened, and Dymov would appear with his
good-natured, gentle smile and say, rubbing his hands:
“Come to supper, gentlemen.”
They all went into the dining-room, and every time found on the table
exactly the same things: a dish of oysters, a piece of ham or veal,
sardines, cheese, caviare, mushrooms, vodka, and two decanters of wine.
“My dear _maitre d’ hotel!_” Olga Ivanovna would say, clasping her hands
with enthusiasm, “you are simply fascinating! My friends, look at his
forehead! Dymov, turn your profile. Look! he has the face of a Bengal
tiger and an expression as kind and sweet as a gazelle. Ah, the
darling!”
The visitors ate, and, looking at Dymov, thought, “He really is a nice
fellow”; but they soon forgot about him, and went on talking about the
theatre, music, and painting.
The young people were happy, and their life flowed on without a hitch.
The third week of their honeymoon was spent, however, not quite
happily--sadly, indeed. Dymov caught erysipelas in the hospital, was in
bed for six days, and had to have his beautiful black hair cropped. Olga
Ivanovna sat beside him and wept bitterly, but when he was better she
put a white handkerchief on his shaven head and began to paint him as
a Bedouin. And they were both in good spirits. Three days after he had
begun to go back to the hospital he had another mischance.
“I have no luck, little mother,” he said one day at dinner. “I had four
dissections to do today, and I cut two of my fingers at one. And I did
not notice it till I got home.”
Olga Ivanovna was alarmed. He smiled, and told her that it did not
matter, and that he often cut his hands when he was dissecting.
“I get absorbed, little mother, and grow careless.”
Olga Ivanovna dreaded symptoms of blood-poisoning, and prayed about it
every night, but all went well. And again life flowed on peaceful and
happy, free from grief and anxiety. The present was happy, and to follow
it spring was at hand, already smiling in the distance, and promising a
thousand delights. There would be no end to their happiness. In
April, May and June a summer villa a good distance out of town; walks,
sketching, fishing, nightingales; and then from July right on to autumn
an artist’s tour on the Volga, and in this tour Olga Ivanovna would take
part as an indispensable member of the society. She had already had made
for her two travelling dresses of linen, had bought paints, brushes,
canvases, and a new palette for the journey. Almost every day Ryabovsky
visited her to see what progress she was making in her painting; when
she showed him her painting, he used to thrust his hands deep into his
pockets, compress his lips, sniff, and say:
“Ye--es...! That cloud of yours is screaming: it’s not in the evening
light. The foreground is somehow chewed up, and there is something,
you know, not the thing.... And your cottage is weighed down and whines
pitifully. That corner ought to have been taken more in shadow, but on
the whole it is not bad; I like it.”
And the more incomprehensible he talked, the more readily Olga Ivanovna
understood him.