IV

Three weeks after I entered Orlov's service--it was Sunday morning, I

remember--somebody rang the bell. It was not yet eleven, and Orlov was

still asleep. I went to open the door. You can imagine my astonishment

when I found a lady in a veil standing at the door on the landing.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch up?" she asked.

From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken

letters in Znamensky Street. I don't remember whether I had time or

self-possession to answer her--I was taken aback at seeing her. And,

indeed, she did not need my answer. In a flash she had darted by me,

and, filling the hall with the fragrance of her perfume, which I

remember to this day, she went on, and her footsteps died away. For at

least half an hour afterwards I heard nothing. But again some one rang.

This time it was a smartly dressed girl, who looked like a maid in a

wealthy family, accompanied by our house porter. Both were out of

breath, carrying two trunks and a dress-basket.

"These are for Zinaida Fyodorovna," said the girl.

And she went down without saying another word. All this was mysterious,

and made Polya, who had a deep admiration for the pranks of her betters,

smile slyly to herself; she looked as though she would like to say, "So

that's what we're up to," and she walked about the whole time on tiptoe.

At last we heard footsteps; Zinaida Fyodorovna came quickly into the

hall, and seeing me at the door of my room, said:

"Stepan, take Georgy Ivanitch his things."

When I went in to Orlov with his clothes and his boots, he was sitting

on the bed with his feet on the bearskin rug. There was an air of

embarrassment about his whole figure. He did not notice me, and my

menial opinion did not interest him; he was evidently perturbed and

embarrassed before himself, before his inner eye. He dressed, washed,

and used his combs and brushes silently and deliberately, as though

allowing himself time to think over his position and to reflect, and

even from his back one could see he was troubled and dissatisfied with

himself.

They drank coffee together. Zinaida Fyodorovna poured out coffee for

herself and for Orlov, then she put her elbows on the table and laughed.

"I still can't believe it," she said. "When one has been a long while on

one's travels and reaches a hotel at last, it's difficult to believe

that one hasn't to go on. It is pleasant to breathe freely."

With the expression of a child who very much wants to be mischievous,

she sighed with relief and laughed again.

"You will excuse me," said Orlov, nodding towards the coffee. "Reading

at breakfast is a habit I can't get over. But I can do two things at

once--read and listen."

"Read away.... You shall keep your habits and your freedom. But why do

you look so solemn? Are you always like that in the morning, or is it

only to-day? Aren't you glad?"

"Yes, I am. But I must own I am a little overwhelmed."

"Why? You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon

you. I've been threatening to come every day."

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to carry out your threat to-day."

"I didn't expect it myself, but that's all the better. It's all the

better, my dear. It's best to have an aching tooth out and have done

with it."

"Yes, of course."

"Oh, my dear," she said, closing her eyes, "all is well that ends well;

but before this happy ending, what suffering there has been! My laughing

means nothing; I am glad, I am happy, but I feel more like crying than

laughing. Yesterday I had to fight a regular battle," she went on in

French. "God alone knows how wretched I was. But I laugh because I can't

believe in it. I keep fancying that my sitting here drinking coffee with

you is not real, but a dream."

Then, still speaking French, she described how she had broken with her

husband the day before and her eyes were alternately full of tears and

of laughter while she gazed with rapture at Orlov. She told him her

husband had long suspected her, but had avoided explanations; they had

frequent quarrels, and usually at the most heated moment he would

suddenly subside into silence and depart to his study for fear that in

his exasperation he might give utterance to his suspicions or she might

herself begin to speak openly. And she had felt guilty, worthless,

incapable of taking a bold and serious step, and that had made her hate

herself and her husband more every day, and she had suffered the

torments of hell. But the day before, when during a quarrel he had cried

out in a tearful voice, "My God, when will it end?" and had walked off

to his study, she had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and,

preventing him from shutting the door, she had cried that she hated him

with her whole soul. Then he let her come into the study and she had

told him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that

that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she

thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might

happen, if she were to be shot for it.

"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his

eyes fixed on the newspaper.

She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee. Her cheeks

glowed and she was a little embarrassed by it, and she looked in

confusion at Polya and me. From what she went on to say I learnt that

her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and finally

tears, and that it would have been more accurate to say that she, and

not he, had been the attacking party.

"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all right,"

she told Orlov; "but as night came on, my spirits sank. You don't

believe in God, _George_, but I do believe a little, and I fear

retribution. God requires of us patience, magnanimity, self-sacrifice,

and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel my life to suit

myself. Is that right? What if from the point of view of God it's wrong?

At two o'clock in the night my husband came to me and said: 'You dare

not go away. I'll fetch you back through the police and make a scandal.'

And soon afterwards I saw him like a shadow at my door. 'Have mercy on

me! Your elopement may injure me in the service.' Those words had a

coarse effect upon me and made me feel stiff all over. I felt as though

the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling

with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I

should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow

cold to me--all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a

nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but

then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose

of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a

tangle--I was in despair and did not know what to do or think. But the

sun rose and I grew happier. As soon as it was morning I dashed off to

you. Ah, what I've been through, dear one! I haven't slept for two

nights!"

She was tired out and excited. She was sleepy, and at the same time she

wanted to talk endlessly, to laugh and to cry, and to go to a restaurant

to lunch that she might feel her freedom.

"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of

us," she said, walking rapidly through all the rooms when they had

finished breakfast. "What room will you give me? I like this one because

it is next to your study."

At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study,

which from that time she called hers, and she went off with Orlov to

lunch. They dined, too, at a restaurant, and spent the long interval

between lunch and dinner in shopping. Till late at night I was opening

the door to messengers and errand-boys from the shops. They bought,

among other things, a splendid pier-glass, a dressing-table, a bedstead,

and a gorgeous tea service which we did not need. They bought a regular

collection of copper saucepans, which we set in a row on the shelf in

our cold, empty kitchen. As we were unpacking the tea service Polya's

eyes gleamed, and she looked at me two or three times with hatred and

fear that I, not she, would be the first to steal one of these charming

cups. A lady's writing-table, very expensive and inconvenient, came too.

It was evident that Zinaida Fyodorovna contemplated settling with us for

good, and meant to make the flat her home.

She came back with Orlov between nine and ten. Full of proud

consciousness that she had done something bold and out of the common,

passionately in love, and, as she imagined, passionately loved,

exhausted, looking forward to a sweet sound sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna

was revelling in her new life. She squeezed her hands together in the

excess of her joy, declared that everything was delightful, and swore

that she would love Orlov for ever; and these vows, and the naïve,

almost childish confidence that she too was deeply loved and would be

loved forever, made her at least five years younger. She talked charming

nonsense and laughed at herself.

"There's no other blessing greater than freedom!" she said, forcing

herself to say something serious and edifying. "How absurd it is when

you think of it! We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is

wise, but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people. Up

to the last minute I was afraid of what other people would say, but as

soon as I followed my own instinct and made up my mind to go my own way,

my eyes were opened, I overcame my silly fears, and now I am happy and

wish every one could be as happy!"

But her thoughts immediately took another turn, and she began talking of

another flat, of wallpapers, horses, a trip to Switzerland and Italy.

Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still

suffering from the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning. He

smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she spoke of

anything seriously, he agreed ironically: "Oh, yes."

"Stepan, make haste and find us a good cook," she said to me.

"There's no need to be in a hurry over the kitchen arrangements," said

Orlov, looking at me coldly. "We must first move into another flat."

We had never had cooking done at home nor kept horses, because, as he

said, "he did not like disorder about him," and only put up with having

Polya and me in his flat from necessity. The so-called domestic hearth

with its everyday joys and its petty cares offended his taste as

vulgarity; to be with child, or to have children and talk about them,

was bad form, like a petty bourgeois. And I began to feel very curious

to see how these two creatures would get on together in one flat--she,

domestic and home-loving with her copper saucepans and her dreams of a

good cook and horses; and he, fond of saying to his friends that a

decent and orderly man's flat ought, like a warship, to have nothing in

it superfluous--no women, no children, no rags, no kitchen utensils.

V

Then I will tell you what happened the following Thursday. That day

Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Content's or Donon's. Orlov returned home

alone, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learnt afterwards, went to the

Petersburg Side to spend with her old governess the time visitors were

with us. Orlov did not care to show her to his friends. I realised that

at breakfast, when he began assuring her that for the sake of her peace

of mind it was essential to give up his Thursday evenings.

As usual the visitors arrived at almost the same time.

"Is your mistress at home, too?" Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.

"No, sir," I answered.

He went in with a sly, oily look in his eyes, smiling mysteriously,

rubbing his hands, which were cold from the frost.

"I have the honour to congratulate you," he said to Orlov, shaking all

over with ingratiating, obsequious laughter. "May you increase and

multiply like the cedars of Lebanon."

The visitors went into the bedroom, and were extremely jocose on the

subject of a pair of feminine slippers, the rug that had been put down

between the two beds, and a grey dressing-jacket that hung at the foot

of the bedstead. They were amused that the obstinate man who despised

all the common place details of love had been caught in feminine snares

in such a simple and ordinary way.

"He who pointed the finger of scorn is bowing the knee in homage,"

Kukushkin repeated several times. He had, I may say in parenthesis, an

unpleasant habit of adorning his conversation with texts in Church

Slavonic. "Sh-sh!" he said as they went from the bedroom into the room

next to the study. "Sh-sh! Here Gretchen is dreaming of her Faust."

He went off into a peal of laughter as though he had said something very

amusing. I watched Gruzin, expecting that his musical soul would not

endure this laughter, but I was mistaken. His thin, good-natured face

beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he, lisping and

choking with laughter, said that all that "dear _George_" wanted to

complete his domestic felicity was a cherry-wood pipe and a guitar.

Pekarsky laughed sedately, but from his serious expression one could see

that Orlov's new love affair was distasteful to him. He did not

understand what had happened exactly.

"But how about the husband?" he asked in perplexity, after they had

played three rubbers.

"I don't know," answered Orlov.

Pekarsky combed his big beard with his fingers and sank into thought,

and he did not speak again till supper-time. When they were seated at

supper, he began deliberately, drawling every word:

"Altogether, excuse my saying so, I don't understand either of you. You

might love each other and break the seventh commandment to your heart's

content--that I understand. Yes, that's comprehensible. But why make the

husband a party to your secrets? Was there any need for that?"

"But does it make any difference?"

"Hm!...." Pekarsky mused. "Well, then, let me tell you this, my friend,"

he went on, evidently thinking hard: "if I ever marry again and you take

it into your head to seduce my wife, please do it so that I don't notice

it. It's much more honest to deceive a man than to break up his family

life and injure his reputation. I understand. You both imagine that in

living together openly you are doing something exceptionally honourable

and advanced, but I can't agree with that ... what shall I call it?...

romantic attitude?"

Orlov made no reply. He was out of humour and disinclined to talk.

Pekarsky, still perplexed, drummed on the table with his fingers,

thought a little, and said:

"I don't understand you, all the same. You are not a student and she is

not a dressmaker. You are both of you people with means. I should have

thought you might have arranged a separate flat for her."

"No, I couldn't. Read Turgenev."

"Why should I read him? I have read him already."

"Turgenev teaches us in his novels that every exalted, noble-minded girl

should follow the man she loves to the ends of the earth, and should

serve his idea," said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically. "The ends

of the earth are poetic license; the earth and all its ends can be

reduced to the flat of the man she loves.... And so not to live in the

same flat with the woman who loves you is to deny her her exalted

vocation and to refuse to share her ideals. Yes, my dear fellow,

Turgenev wrote, and I have to suffer for it."

"What Turgenev has got to do with it I don't understand," said Gruzin

softly, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Do you remember, _George_, how

in 'Three Meetings' he is walking late in the evening somewhere in

Italy, and suddenly hears, _'Vieni pensando a me segretamente,'_" Gruzin

hummed. "It's fine."

"But she hasn't come to settle with you by force," said Pekarsky. "It

was your own wish."

"What next! Far from wishing it, I never imagined that this would ever

happen. When she said she was coming to live with me, I thought it was a

charming joke on her part."

Everybody laughed.

"I couldn't have wished for such a thing," said Orlov in the tone of a

man compelled to justify himself. "I am not a Turgenev hero, and if I

ever wanted to free Bulgaria I shouldn't need a lady's company. I look

upon love primarily as a necessity of my physical nature, degrading and

antagonistic to my spirit; it must either be satisfied with discretion

or renounced altogether, otherwise it will bring into one's life

elements as unclean as itself. For it to be an enjoyment and not a

torment, I will try to make it beautiful and to surround it with a mass

of illusions. I should never go and see a woman unless I were sure

beforehand that she would be beautiful and fascinating; and I should

never go unless I were in the mood. And it is only in that way that we

succeed in deceiving one another, and fancying that we are in love and

happy. But can I wish for copper saucepans and untidy hair, or like to

be seen myself when I am unwashed or out of humour? Zinaida Fyodorovna

in the simplicity of her heart wants me to love what I have been

shunning all my life. She wants my flat to smell of cooking and washing

up; she wants all the fuss of moving into another flat, of driving about

with her own horses; she wants to count over my linen and to look after

my health; she wants to meddle in my personal life at every instant, and

to watch over every step; and at the same time she assures me genuinely

that my habits and my freedom will be untouched. She is persuaded that,

like a young couple, we shall very soon go for a honeymoon--that is,

she wants to be with me all the time in trains and hotels, while I like

to read on the journey and cannot endure talking in trains."

"You should give her a talking to," said Pekarsky.

"What! Do you suppose she would understand me? Why, we think so

differently. In her opinion, to leave one's papa and mamma or one's

husband for the sake of the man one loves is the height of civic virtue,

while I look upon it as childish. To fall in love and run away with a

man to her means beginning a new life, while to my mind it means nothing

at all. Love and man constitute the chief interest of her life, and

possibly it is the philosophy of the unconscious at work in her. Try and

make her believe that love is only a simple physical need, like the need

of food or clothes; that it doesn't mean the end of the world if wives

and husbands are unsatisfactory; that a man may be a profligate and a

libertine, and yet a man of honour and a genius; and that, on the other

hand, one may abstain from the pleasures of love and at the same time be

a stupid, vicious animal! The civilised man of to-day, even among the

lower classes--for instance, the French workman--spends ten _sous_ on

dinner, five _sous_ on his wine, and five or ten _sous_ on woman, and

devotes his brain and nerves entirely to his work. But Zinaida

Fyodorovna assigns to love not so many _sous_, but her whole soul. I

might give her a talking to, but she would raise a wail in answer, and

declare in all sincerity that I had ruined her, that she had nothing

left to live for."

"Don't say anything to her," said Pekarsky, "but simply take a separate

flat for her, that's all."

"That's easy to say."

There was a brief silence.

"But she is charming," said Kukushkin. "She is exquisite. Such women

imagine that they will be in love for ever, and abandon themselves with

tragic intensity."

"But one must keep a head on one's shoulders," said Orlov; "one must be

reasonable. All experience gained from everyday life and handed down in

innumerable novels and plays, uniformly confirms the fact that adultery

and cohabitation of any sort between decent people never lasts longer

than two or at most three years, however great the love may have been at

the beginning. That she ought to know. And so all this business of

moving, of saucepans, hopes of eternal love and harmony, are nothing but

a desire to delude herself and me. She is charming and exquisite--who

denies it? But she has turned my life upside down; what I have regarded

as trivial and nonsensical till now she has forced me to raise to the

level of a serious problem; I serve an idol whom I have never looked

upon as God. She is charming--exquisite, but for some reason now when I

am going home, I feel uneasy, as though I expected to meet with

something inconvenient at home, such as workmen pulling the stove to

pieces and blocking up the place with heaps of bricks. In fact, I am no

longer giving up to love a _sous_, but part of my peace of mind and my

nerves. And that's bad."

"And she doesn't hear this villain!" sighed Kukushkin. "My dear sir," he

said theatrically, "I will relieve you from the burdensome obligation to

love that adorable creature! I will wrest Zinaida Fyodorovna from you!"

"You may ..." said Orlov carelessly.

For half a minute Kukushkin laughed a shrill little laugh, shaking all

over, then he said:

"Look out; I am in earnest! Don't you play the Othello afterwards!"

They all began talking of Kukushkin's indefatigable energy in love

affairs, how irresistible he was to women, and what a danger he was to

husbands; and how the devil would roast him in the other world for his

immorality in this. He screwed up his eyes and remained silent, and when

the names of ladies of their acquaintance were mentioned, he held up his

little finger--as though to say they mustn't give away other people's

secrets.

Orlov suddenly looked at his watch.

His friends understood, and began to take their leave. I remember that

Gruzin, who was a little drunk, was wearisomely long in getting off. He

put on his coat, which was cut like children's coats in poor families,

pulled up the collar, and began telling some long-winded story; then,

seeing he was not listened to, he flung the rug that smelt of the

nursery over one shoulder, and with a guilty and imploring face begged

me to find his hat.

"_George_, my angel," he said tenderly. "Do as I ask you, dear boy; come

out of town with us!"

"You can go, but I can't. I am in the position of a married man now."

"She is a dear, she won't be angry. My dear chief, come along! It's

glorious weather; there's snow and frost.... Upon my word, you want

shaking up a bit; you are out of humour. I don't know what the devil is

the matter with you...."

Orlov stretched, yawned, and looked at Pekarsky.

"Are you going?" he said, hesitating.

"I don't know. Perhaps."

"Shall I get drunk? All right, I'll come," said Orlov after some

hesitation. "Wait a minute; I'll get some money."

He went into the study, and Gruzin slouched in, too, dragging his rug

after him. A minute later both came back into the hall. Gruzin, a little

drunk and very pleased, was crumpling a ten-rouble note in his hands.

"We'll settle up to-morrow," he said. "And she is kind, she won't be

cross.... She is my Lisotchka's godmother; I am fond of her, poor thing!

Ah, my dear fellow!" he laughed joyfully, and pressing his forehead on

Pekarsky's back. "Ah, Pekarsky, my dear soul! Advocatissimus--as dry as

a biscuit, but you bet he is fond of women...."

"Fat ones," said Orlov, putting on his fur coat. "But let us get off, or

we shall be meeting her on the doorstep."

"_'Vieni pensando a me segretamente,'_" hummed Gruzin.

At last they drove off: Orlov did not sleep at home, and returned next

day at dinner-time.