IV

Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya often quarrelled and said nasty things to

each other.

They quarrelled about something that morning. Tanya burst out crying and

went to her room. She would not come down to dinner nor to tea. At first

Yegor Semyonitch went about looking sulky and dignified, as though to

give every one to understand that for him the claims of justice and good

order were more important than anything else in the world; but he could

not keep it up for long, and soon sank into depression. He walked about

the park dejectedly, continually sighing: "Oh, my God! My God!" and at

dinner did not eat a morsel. At last, guilty and conscience-stricken, he

knocked at the locked door and called timidly:

"Tanya! Tanya!"

And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying but still

determined:

"Leave me alone, if you please."

The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the whole

household, even in the labourers working in the garden. Kovrin was

absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he, too, felt dreary and

uncomfortable. To dissipate the general ill-humour in some way, he made

up his mind to intervene, and towards evening he knocked at Tanya's

door. He was admitted.

"Fie, fie, for shame!" he began playfully, looking with surprise at

Tanya's tear-stained, woebegone face, flushed in patches with crying.

"Is it really so serious? Fie, fie!"

"But if you knew how he tortures me!" she said, and floods of scalding

tears streamed from her big eyes. "He torments me to death," she went

on, wringing her hands. "I said nothing to him ... nothing ... I only

said that there was no need to keep ... too many labourers ... if we

could hire them by the day when we wanted them. You know ... you know

the labourers have been doing nothing for a whole week.... I ... I ...

only said that, and he shouted and ... said ... a lot of horrible

insulting things to me. What for?"

"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair. "You've quarrelled with

each other, you've cried, and that's enough. You must not be angry for

long--that's wrong ... all the more as he loves you beyond everything."

"He has ... has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on, sobbing. "I hear

nothing but abuse and ... insults. He thinks I am of no use in the

house. Well! He is right. I shall go away to-morrow; I shall become a

telegraph clerk.... I don't care...."

"Come, come, come.... You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't, dear.... You

are both hot-tempered and irritable, and you are both to blame. Come

along; I will reconcile you."

Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on crying,

twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands, as though some terrible

misfortune had really befallen her. He felt all the sorrier for her

because her grief was not a serious one, yet she suffered extremely.

What trivialities were enough to make this little creature miserable for

a whole day, perhaps for her whole life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin

thought that, apart from this girl and her father, he might hunt the

world over and would not find people who would love him as one of

themselves, as one of their kindred. If it had not been for those two he

might very likely, having lost his father and mother in early childhood,

never to the day of his death have known what was meant by genuine

affection and that naïve, uncritical love which is only lavished on very

close blood relations; and he felt that the nerves of this weeping,

shaking girl responded to his half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron

to a magnet. He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked

woman, but pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.

And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand and

wiping away her tears.... At last she left off crying. She went on for a

long time complaining of her father and her hard, insufferable life in

that house, entreating Kovrin to put himself in her place; then she

began, little by little, smiling, and sighing that God had given her

such a bad temper. At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool,

and ran out of the room.

When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch and

Tanya were walking side by side along an avenue as though nothing had

happened, and both were eating rye bread with salt on it, as both were

hungry.

V

Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin

went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the

rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh--visitors were arriving. When

the shades of evening began falling on the garden, the sounds of the

violin and singing voices reached him indistinctly, and that reminded

him of the black monk. Where, in what land or in what planet, was that

optical absurdity moving now?

Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination the

dark apparition he had seen in the rye-field, when, from behind a

pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out noiselessly, without the

slightest rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey head, all

in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his black eyebrows stood out

conspicuously on his pale, death-like face. Nodding his head graciously,

this beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and

Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.

For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the

monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though

he were thinking something to himself.

"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and sitting

still? That does not fit in with the legend."

"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not

immediately turning his face towards him. "The legend, the mirage, and I

are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a phantom."

"Then you don't exist?" said Kovrin.

"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile. "I exist

in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist

in nature."

"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though you

really had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I did not

know that my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena. But why

do you look at me with such enthusiasm? Do you like me?"

"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of God.

You do the service of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your designs, the

marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your life, bear the

Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are consecrated to the

rational and the beautiful--that is, to what is eternal."

"You said 'eternal truth.' ... But is eternal truth of use to man and

within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"

"There is eternal life," said the monk.

"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"

"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men. And

the more there are like you on earth, the sooner will this future be

realised. Without you who serve the higher principle and live in full

understanding and freedom, mankind would be of little account;

developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long time for the

end of its earthly history. You will lead it some thousands of years

earlier into the kingdom of eternal truth--and therein lies your supreme

service. You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which rests

upon men."

"And what is the object of eternal life?" asked Kovrin.

"As of all life--enjoyment. True enjoyment lies in knowledge, and

eternal life provides innumerable and inexhaustible sources of

knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In My Father's house

there are many mansions.'"

"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!" said Kovrin, rubbing

his hands with satisfaction.

"I am very glad."

"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of

your reality. You are a phantom, an hallucination. So I am mentally

deranged, not normal?"

"What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you have

overworked and exhausted yourself, and that means that you have

sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at hand when

you will give up life itself to it. What could be better? That is the

goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble natures strive."

"If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?"

"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not

see phantoms, too? The learned say now that genius is allied to madness.

My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd.

Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and

degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously agitate those who place the

object of life in the present--that is, the common herd."

"The Romans used to say: _Mens sana in corpore sano._"

"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true. Exaltation,

enthusiasm, ecstasy--all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for

the idea, from the common folk--is repellent to the animal side of

man--that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy

and normal, go to the common herd."

"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said Kovrin.

"It is as though you had seen and overheard my secret thoughts. But

don't let us talk about me. What do you mean by 'eternal truth'?"

The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish

his face. His features grew blurred and misty. Then the monk's head and

arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the evening

twilight, and he vanished altogether.

"The hallucination is over," said Kovrin; and he laughed. "It's a pity."

He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy. The little the monk

had said to him had flattered, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his

whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve eternal truth, to stand

in the ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the kingdom of

God some thousands of years sooner--that is, to free men from some

thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to

sacrifice to the idea everything--youth, strength, health; to be ready

to die for the common weal--what an exalted, what a happy lot! He

recalled his past--pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what he had

learned himself and what he had taught to others, and decided that there

was no exaggeration in the monk's words.

Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a different

dress.

"Are you here?" she said. "And we have been looking and looking for

you.... But what is the matter with you?" she asked in wonder, glancing

at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of tears. "How strange you

are, Andryusha!"

"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders. "I

am more than pleased: I am happy. Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an

extraordinary, nice creature. Dear Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!"

He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:

"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment. But

I can't tell you all about it or you would call me mad and not believe

me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful Tanya! I love you, and am used

to loving you. To have you near me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has

become a necessity of my existence; I don't know how I shall get on

without you when I go back home."

"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days. We are

humble people and you are a great man."

"No; let us talk in earnest!" he said. "I shall take you with me, Tanya.

Yes? Will you come with me? Will you be mine?"

"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not

come, and patches of colour came into her face.

She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the

house, but further into the park.

"I was not thinking of it ... I was not thinking of it," she said,

wringing her hands in despair.

And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant,

enthusiastic face:

"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you,

Tanya, can give me. I am happy! I am happy!"

She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten

years older all at once, while he thought her beautiful and expressed

his rapture aloud:

"How lovely she is!"