IV

Four years had passed. Startsev already had a large practice in the

town. Every morning he hurriedly saw his patients at Dyalizh, then he

drove in to see his town patients. By now he drove, not with a pair, but

with a team of three with bells on them, and he returned home late at

night. He had grown broader and stouter, and was not very fond of

walking, as he was somewhat asthmatic. And Panteleimon had grown stout,

too, and the broader he grew, the more mournfully he sighed and

complained of his hard luck: he was sick of driving! Startsev used to

visit various households and met many people, but did not become

intimate with any one. The inhabitants irritated him by their

conversation, their views of life, and even their appearance. Experience

taught him by degrees that while he played cards or lunched with one of

these people, the man was a peaceable, friendly, and even intelligent

human being; that as soon as one talked of anything not eatable, for

instance, of politics or science, he would be completely at a loss, or

would expound a philosophy so stupid and ill-natured that there was

nothing else to do but wave one's hand in despair and go away. Even when

Startsev tried to talk to liberal citizens, saying, for instance, that

humanity, thank God, was progressing, and that one day it would be

possible to dispense with passports and capital punishment, the liberal

citizen would look at him askance and ask him mistrustfully: "Then any

one could murder any one he chose in the open street?" And when, at tea

or supper, Startsev observed in company that one should work, and that

one ought not to live without working, every one took this as a

reproach, and began to get angry and argue aggressively. With all that,

the inhabitants did nothing, absolutely nothing, and took no interest in

anything, and it was quite impossible to think of anything to say. And

Startsev avoided conversation, and confined himself to eating and

playing _vint_; and when there was a family festivity in some household

and he was invited to a meal, then he sat and ate in silence, looking at

his plate.

And everything that was said at the time was uninteresting, unjust, and

stupid; he felt irritated and disturbed, but held his tongue, and,

because he sat glumly silent and looked at his plate, he was nicknamed

in the town "the haughty Pole," though he never had been a Pole.

All such entertainments as theatres and concerts he declined, but he

played _vint_ every evening for three hours with enjoyment. He had

another diversion to which he took imperceptibly, little by little: in

the evening he would take out of his pockets the notes he had gained by

his practice, and sometimes there were stuffed in his pockets

notes--yellow and green, and smelling of scent and vinegar and incense

and fish oil--up to the value of seventy roubles; and when they amounted

to some hundreds he took them to the Mutual Credit Bank and deposited

the money there to his account.

He was only twice at the Turkins' in the course of the four years after

Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone away, on each occasion at the invitation of

Vera Iosifovna, who was still undergoing treatment for migraine. Every

summer Ekaterina Ivanovna came to stay with her parents, but he did not

once see her; it somehow never happened.

But now four years had passed. One still, warm morning a letter was

brought to the hospital. Vera Iosifovna wrote to Dmitri Ionitch that she

was missing him very much, and begged him to come and see them, and to

relieve her sufferings; and, by the way, it was her birthday. Below was

a postscript: "I join in mother's request.--K."

Startsev considered, and in the evening he went to the Turkins'.

"How do you do, if you please?" Ivan Petrovitch met him, smiling with

his eyes only. "Bongjour."

Vera Iosifovna, white-haired and looking much older, shook Startsev's

hand, sighed affectedly, and said:

"You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor. You never come and see

us; I am too old for you. But now some one young has come; perhaps she

will be more fortunate."

And Kitten? She had grown thinner, paler, had grown handsomer and more

graceful; but now she was Ekaterina Ivanovna, not Kitten; she had lost

the freshness and look of childish naïveté. And in her expression and

manners there was something new--guilty and diffident, as though she did

not feel herself at home here in the Turkins' house.

"How many summers, how many winters!" she said, giving Startsev her

hand, and he could see that her heart was beating with excitement; and

looking at him intently and curiously, she went on: "How much stouter

you are! You look sunburnt and more manly, but on the whole you have

changed very little."

Now, too, he thought her attractive, very attractive, but there was

something lacking in her, or else something superfluous--he could not

himself have said exactly what it was, but something prevented him from

feeling as before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, her

faint smile, her voice, and soon afterwards he disliked her clothes,

too, the low chair in which she was sitting; he disliked something in

the past when he had almost married her. He thought of his love, of the

dreams and the hopes which had troubled him four years before--and he

felt awkward.

They had tea with cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read aloud a novel; she

read of things that never happen in real life, and Startsev listened,

looked at her handsome grey head, and waited for her to finish.

"People are not stupid because they can't write novels, but because they

can't conceal it when they do," he thought.

"Not badsome," said Ivan Petrovitch.

Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played long and noisily on the piano, and when

she finished she was profusely thanked and warmly praised.

"It's a good thing I did not marry her," thought Startsev.

She looked at him, and evidently expected him to ask her to go into the

garden, but he remained silent.

"Let us have a talk," she said, going up to him. "How are you getting

on? What are you doing? How are things? I have been thinking about you

all these days," she went on nervously. "I wanted to write to you,

wanted to come myself to see you at Dyalizh. I quite made up my mind to

go, but afterwards I thought better of it. God knows what your attitude

is towards me now; I have been looking forward to seeing you to-day with

such emotion. For goodness' sake let us go into the garden."

They went into the garden and sat down on the seat under the old maple,

just as they had done four years before. It was dark.

"How are you getting on?" asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"Oh, all right; I am jogging along," answered Startsev.

And he could think of nothing more. They were silent.

"I feel so excited!" said Ekaterina Ivanovna, and she hid her face in

her hands. "But don't pay attention to it. I am so happy to be at home;

I am so glad to see every one. I can't get used to it. So many memories!

I thought we should talk without stopping till morning."

Now he saw her face near, her shining eyes, and in the darkness she

looked younger than in the room, and even her old childish expression

seemed to have come back to her. And indeed she was looking at him with

naïve curiosity, as though she wanted to get a closer view and

understanding of the man who had loved her so ardently, with such

tenderness, and so unsuccessfully; her eyes thanked him for that love.

And he remembered all that had been, every minute detail; how he had

wandered about the cemetery, how he had returned home in the morning

exhausted, and he suddenly felt sad and regretted the past. A warmth

began glowing in his heart.

"Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?" he asked. "It

was dark and rainy then ..."

The warmth was glowing now in his heart, and he longed to talk, to rail

at life....

"Ech!" he said with a sigh. "You ask how I am living. How do we live

here? Why, not at all. We grow old, we grow stout, we grow slack. Day

after day passes; life slips by without colour, without expressions,

without thoughts.... In the daytime working for gain, and in the evening

the club, the company of card-players, alcoholic, raucous-voiced

gentlemen whom I can't endure. What is there nice in it?"

"Well, you have work--a noble object in life. You used to be so fond of

talking of your hospital. I was such a queer girl then; I imagined

myself such a great pianist. Nowadays all young ladies play the piano,

and I played, too, like everybody else, and there was nothing special

about me. I am just such a pianist as my mother is an authoress. And of

course I didn't understand you then, but afterwards in Moscow I often

thought of you. I thought of no one but you. What happiness to be a

district doctor; to help the suffering; to be serving the people! What

happiness!" Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. "When I thought

of you in Moscow, you seemed to me so ideal, so lofty...."

Startsev thought of the notes he used to take out of his pockets in the

evening with such pleasure, and the glow in his heart was quenched.

He got up to go into the house. She took his arm.

"You are the best man I've known in my life," she went on. "We will see

each other and talk, won't we? Promise me. I am not a pianist; I am not

in error about myself now, and I will not play before you or talk of

music."

When they had gone into the house, and when Startsev saw in the

lamplight her face, and her sad, grateful, searching eyes fixed upon

him, he felt uneasy and thought again:

"It's a good thing I did not marry her then."

He began taking leave.

"You have no human right to go before supper," said Ivan Petrovitch as

he saw him off. "It's extremely perpendicular on your part. Well, now,

perform!" he added, addressing Pava in the hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with moustaches, threw himself

into an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic voice:

"Unhappy woman, die!"

All this irritated Startsev. Getting into his carriage, and looking at

the dark house and garden which had once been so precious and so dear,

he thought of everything at once--Vera Iosifovna's novels and Kitten's

noisy playing, and Ivan Petrovitch's jokes and Pava's tragic posturing,

and thought if the most talented people in the town were so futile, what

must the town be?

Three days later Pava brought a letter from Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"You don't come and see us--why?" she wrote to him. "I am afraid that

you have changed towards us. I am afraid, and I am terrified at the very

thought of it. Reassure me; come and tell me that everything is well.

"I must talk to you.--Your E. I."

* * * * *

He read this letter, thought a moment, and said to Pava:

"Tell them, my good fellow, that I can't come to-day; I am very busy.

Say I will come in three days or so."

But three days passed, a week passed; he still did not go. Happening

once to drive past the Turkins' house, he thought he must go in, if only

for a moment, but on second thoughts ... did not go in.

And he never went to the Turkins' again.

V

Several more years have passed. Startsev has grown stouter still, has

grown corpulent, breathes heavily, and already walks with his head

thrown back. When stout and red in the face, he drives with his bells

and his team of three horses, and Panteleimon, also stout and red in the

face with his thick beefy neck, sits on the box, holding his arms

stiffly out before him as though they were made of wood, and shouts to

those he meets: "Keep to the ri-i-ight!" it is an impressive picture;

one might think it was not a mortal, but some heathen deity in his

chariot. He has an immense practice in the town, no time to breathe, and

already has an estate and two houses in the town, and he is looking out

for a third more profitable; and when at the Mutual Credit Bank he is

told of a house that is for sale, he goes to the house without ceremony,

and, marching through all the rooms, regardless of half-dressed women

and children who gaze at him in amazement and alarm, he prods at the

doors with his stick, and says:

"Is that the study? Is that a bedroom? And what's here?"

And as he does so he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his brow.

He has a great deal to do, but still he does not give up his work as

district doctor; he is greedy for gain, and he tries to be in all places

at once. At Dyalizh and in the town he is called simply "Ionitch":

"Where is Ionitch off to?" or "Should not we call in Ionitch to a

consultation?"

Probably because his throat is covered with rolls of fat, his voice has

changed; it has become thin and sharp. His temper has changed, too: he

has grown ill-humoured and irritable. When he sees his patients he is

usually out of temper; he impatiently taps the floor with his stick, and

shouts in his disagreeable voice:

"Be so good as to confine yourself to answering my questions! Don't talk

so much!"

He is solitary. He leads a dreary life; nothing interests him.

During all the years he had lived at Dyalizh his love for Kitten had

been his one joy, and probably his last. In the evenings he plays _vint_

at the club, and then sits alone at a big table and has supper. Ivan,

the oldest and most respectable of the waiters, serves him, hands him

Lafitte No. 17, and every one at the club--the members of the committee,

the cook and waiters--know what he likes and what he doesn't like and do

their very utmost to satisfy him, or else he is sure to fly into a rage

and bang on the floor with his stick.

As he eats his supper, he turns round from time to time and puts in his

spoke in some conversation:

"What are you talking about? Eh? Whom?"

And when at a neighbouring table there is talk of the Turkins, he asks:

"What Turkins are you speaking of? Do you mean the people whose daughter

plays on the piano?"

That is all that can be said about him.

And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovitch has grown no older; he is not changed

in the least, and still makes jokes and tells anecdotes as of old. Vera

Iosifovna still reads her novels aloud to her visitors with eagerness

and touching simplicity. And Kitten plays the piano for four hours every

day. She has grown visibly older, is constantly ailing, and every autumn

goes to the Crimea with her mother. When Ivan Petrovitch sees them off

at the station, he wipes his tears as the train starts, and shouts:

"Good-bye, if you please."

And he waves his handkerchief.