Summer had come again, and the doctor advised their going into the
country. Kovrin had recovered; he had left off seeing the black monk,
and he had only to get up his strength. Staying at his father-in-law's,
he drank a great deal of milk, worked for only two hours out of the
twenty-four, and neither smoked nor drank wine.
On the evening before Elijah's Day they had an evening service in the
house. When the deacon was handing the priest the censer the immense old
room smelt like a graveyard, and Kovrin felt bored. He went out into the
garden. Without noticing the gorgeous flowers, he walked about the
garden, sat down on a seat, then strolled about the park; reaching the
river, he went down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the
water. The sullen pines with their shaggy roots, which had seen him a
year before so young, so joyful and confident, were not whispering now,
but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not recognise him.
And, indeed, his head was closely cropped, his beautiful long hair was
gone, his step was lagging, his face was fuller and paler than last
summer.
He crossed by the footbridge to the other side. Where the year before
there had been rye the oats stood, reaped, and lay in rows. The sun had
set and there was a broad stretch of glowing red on the horizon, a sign
of windy weather next day. It was still. Looking in the direction from
which the year before the black monk had first appeared, Kovrin stood
for twenty minutes, till the evening glow had begun to fade....
When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service was over.
Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were sitting on the steps of the verandah,
drinking tea. They were talking of something, but, seeing Kovrin, ceased
at once, and he concluded from their faces that their talk had been
about him.
"I believe it is time for you to have your milk," Tanya said to her
husband.
"No, it is not time yet ..." he said, sitting down on the bottom step.
"Drink it yourself; I don't want it."
Tanya exchanged a troubled glance with her father, and said in a guilty
voice:
"You notice yourself that milk does you good."
"Yes, a great deal of good!" Kovrin laughed. "I congratulate you: I have
gained a pound in weight since Friday." He pressed his head tightly in
his hands and said miserably: "Why, why have you cured me? Preparations
of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision, cowardly consternation at
every mouthful, at every step--all this will reduce me at last to
idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was
cheerful, confident, and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now
I have become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like every one
else: I am--mediocrity; I am weary of life.... Oh, how cruelly you have
treated me!... I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any
one? I ask, what harm did that do any one?"
"Goodness knows what you are saying!" sighed Yegor Semyonitch. "It's
positively wearisome to listen to it."
"Then don't listen."
The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated
Kovrin now; he answered him drily, coldly, and even rudely, never looked
at him but with irony and hatred, while Yegor Semyonitch was overcome
with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily, though he was not
conscious of any fault in himself. At a loss to understand why their
charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya
huddled up to her father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to
understand and could not understand, and all that was clear to her was
that their relations were growing worse and worse every day, that of
late her father had begun to look much older, and her husband had grown
irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and uninteresting. She could not
laugh or sing; at dinner she ate nothing; did not sleep for nights
together, expecting something awful, and was so worn out that on one
occasion she lay in a dead faint from dinner-time till evening. During
the service she thought her father was crying, and now while the three
of them were sitting together on the terrace she made an effort not to
think of it.
"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind
relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their
inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves,
had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and had drunk milk,
that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his
dog. Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in
making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin.
If only you knew," Kovrin said with annoyance, "how grateful I am to
you."
He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got up
quickly and went into the house. It was still, and the fragrance of the
tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in at the open window. The
moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano in the big
dark dining-room. Kovrin remembered the raptures of the previous summer
when there had been the same scent of the marvel of Peru and the moon
had shone in at the window. To bring back the mood of last year he went
quickly to his study, lighted a strong cigar, and told the footman to
bring him some wine. But the cigar left a bitter and disgusting taste in
his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour as it had the year
before. And so great is the effect of giving up a habit, the cigar and
the two gulps of wine made him giddy, and brought on palpitations of the
heart, so that he was obliged to take bromide.
Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:
"Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and it is
killing him. Look at him; he is ageing, not from day to day, but from
hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for God's sake, for the sake of
your dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind, be affectionate to
him."
"I can't, I don't want to."
"But why?" asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over. "Explain why."
"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin carelessly;
and he shrugged his shoulders. "But we won't talk about him: he is your
father."
"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to her
temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something incomprehensible,
awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike
yourself.... You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated
over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense.... Such trivial things excite
you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is
you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing
his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind, noble.
You will be just to father. He is so good."
"He is not good; he is just good-natured. Burlesque old uncles like your
father, with well-fed, good-natured faces, extraordinarily hospitable
and queer, at one time used to touch me and amuse me in novels and in
farces and in life; now I dislike them. They are egoists to the marrow
of their bones. What disgusts me most of all is their being so well-fed,
and that purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach."
Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.
"This is torture," she said, and from her voice it was evident that she
was utterly exhausted, and that it was hard for her to speak. "Not one
moment of peace since the winter.... Why, it's awful! My God! I am
wretched."
"Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the innocents.
Of course."
His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant. Hatred and an ironical
expression did not suit him. And, indeed, she had noticed before that
there was something lacking in his face, as though ever since his hair
had been cut his face had changed, too. She wanted to say something
wounding to him, but immediately she caught herself in this antagonistic
feeling, she was frightened and went out of the bedroom.