I
IT was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam here and there
in the houses, and a pale moon was rising behind the barracks at
the end of the street. Laptev was sitting on a bench by the gate
waiting for the end of the evening service at the Church of St.
Peter and St. Paul. He was reckoning that Yulia Sergeyevna would
pass by on her way from the service, and then he would speak to
her, and perhaps spend the whole evening with her.
He had been sitting there for an hour and a half already, and all
that time his imagination had been busy picturing his Moscow rooms,
his Moscow friends, his man Pyotr, and his writing-table. He gazed
half wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed strange
to him that he was living now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki,
but in a provincial town in a house by which a great herd of cattle
was driven every morning and evening, accompanied by terrible clouds
of dust and the blowing of a horn. He thought of long conversations
in which he had taken part quite lately in Moscow--conversations
in which it had been maintained that one could live without love,
that passionate love was an obsession, that finally there is no
such love, but only a physical attraction between the sexes--and
so on, in the same style; he remembered them and thought mournfully
that if he were asked now what love was, he could not have found
an answer.
The service was over, the people began to appear. Laptev strained
his eyes gazing at the dark figures. The bishop had been driven by
in his carriage, the bells had stopped ringing, and the red and
green lights in the belfry were one after another extinguished--
there had been an illumination, as it was dedication day--but the
people were still coming out, lingering, talking, and standing under
the windows. But at last Laptev heard a familiar voice, his heart
began beating violently, and he was overcome with despair on seeing
that Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone, but walking with two ladies.
"It's awful, awful!" he whispered, feeling jealous. "It's awful!"
At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to the ladies,
and while doing so glanced at Laptev.
"I was coming to see you," he said. "I'm coming for a chat with
your father. Is he at home?"
"Most likely," she answered. "It's early for him to have gone to
the club."
There were gardens all along the lane, and a row of lime-trees
growing by the fence cast a broad patch of shadow in the moonlight,
so that the gate and the fences were completely plunged in darkness
on one side, from which came the sounds of women whispering, smothered
laughter, and someone playing softly on a balalaika. There was a
fragrance of lime-flowers and of hay. This fragrance and the murmur
of the unseen whispers worked upon Laptev. He was all at once
overwhelmed with a passionate longing to throw his arms round his
companion, to shower kisses on her face, her hands, her shoulders,
to burst into sobs, to fall at her feet and to tell her how long
he had been waiting for her. A faint scarcely perceptible scent of
incense hung about her; and that scent reminded him of the time
when he, too, believed in God and used to go to evening service,
and when he used to dream so much of pure romantic love. And it
seemed to him that, because this girl did not love him, all possibility
of the happiness he had dreamed of then was lost to him forever.
She began speaking sympathetically of the illness of his sister,
Nina Fyodorovna. Two months before his sister had undergone an
operation for cancer, and now every one was expecting a return of
the disease.
"I went to see her this morning," said Yulia Sergeyevna, "and it
seemed to me that during the last week she has, not exactly grown
thin, but has, as it were, faded."
"Yes, yes," Laptev agreed. "There's no return of the symptoms, but
every day I notice she grows weaker and weaker, and is wasting
before my eyes. I don't understand what's the matter with her."
"Oh dear! And how strong she used to be, plump and rosy!" said Yulia
Sergeyevna after a moment's silence. "Every one here used to call
her the Moscow lady. How she used to laugh! On holidays she used
to dress up like a peasant girl, and it suited her so well."
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home; he was a stout, red-faced
man, wearing a long coat that reached below his knees, and looking
as though he had short legs. He was pacing up and down his study,
with his hands in his pockets, and humming to himself in an undertone,
"Ru-ru-ru-ru." His grey whiskers looked unkempt, and his hair was
unbrushed, as though he had just got out of bed. And his study with
pillows on the sofa, with stacks of papers in the corners, and with
a dirty invalid poodle lying under the table, produced the same
impression of unkemptness and untidiness as himself.
"M. Laptev wants to see you," his daughter said to him, going into
his study.
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," he hummed louder than ever, and turning into the
drawing-room, gave his hand to Laptev, and asked: "What good news
have you to tell me?"
It was dark in the drawing-room. Laptev, still standing with his
hat in his hand, began apologising for disturbing him; he asked
what was to be done to make his sister sleep at night, and why she
was growing so thin; and he was embarrassed by the thought that he
had asked those very questions at his visit that morning.
"Tell me," he said, "wouldn't it be as well to send for some
specialist on internal diseases from Moscow? What do you think of
it?"
The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and made a vague gesture
with his hands.
It was evident that he was offended. He was a very huffy man, prone
to take offence, and always ready to suspect that people did not
believe in him, that he was not recognised or properly respected,
that his patients exploited him, and that his colleagues showed him
ill-will. He was always jeering at himself, saying that fools like
him were only made for the public to ride rough-shod over them.
Yulia Sergeyevna lighted the lamp. She was tired out with the
service, and that was evident from her pale, exhausted face, and
her weary step. She wanted to rest. She sat down on the sofa, put
her hands on her lap, and sank into thought. Laptev knew that he
was ugly, and now he felt as though he were conscious of his ugliness
all over his body. He was short, thin, with ruddy cheeks, and his
hair had grown so thin that his head felt cold. In his expression
there was none of that refined simplicity which makes even rough,
ugly faces attractive; in the society of women, he was awkward,
over-talkative, affected. And now he almost despised himself for
it. He must talk that Yulia Sergeyevna might not be bored in his
company. But what about? About his sister's illness again?
And he began to talk about medicine, saying what is usually said.
He approved of hygiene, and said that he had long ago wanted to
found a night-refuge in Moscow--in fact, he had already calculated
the cost of it. According to his plan the workmen who came in the
evening to the night-refuge were to receive a supper of hot cabbage
soup with bread, a warm, dry bed with a rug, and a place for drying
their clothes and their boots.
Yulia Sergeyevna was usually silent in his presence, and in a strange
way, perhaps by the instinct of a lover, he divined her thoughts
and intentions. And now, from the fact that after the evening service
she had not gone to her room to change her dress and drink tea, he
deduced that she was going to pay some visit elsewhere.
"But I'm in no hurry with the night-refuge," he went on, speaking
with vexation and irritability, and addressing the doctor, who
looked at him, as it were, blankly and in perplexity, evidently
unable to understand what induced him to raise the question of
medicine and hygiene. "And most likely it will be a long time, too,
before I make use of our estimate. I fear our night-shelter will
fall into the hands of our pious humbugs and philanthropic ladies,
who always ruin any undertaking."
Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand to Laptev.
"Excuse me," she said, "it's time for me to go. Please give my love
to your sister."
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," hummed the doctor. "Ru-ru-ru-ru."
Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and after staying a little longer, Laptev
said good-bye to the doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied
and feels unhappy, how trivial seem to him the shapes of the
lime-trees, the shadows, the clouds, all the beauties of nature,
so complacent, so indifferent! By now the moon was high up in the
sky, and the clouds were scudding quickly below. "But how naïve and
provincial the moon is, how threadbare and paltry the clouds!"
thought Laptev. He felt ashamed of the way he had talked just now
about medicine, and the night-refuge. He felt with horror that next
day he would not have will enough to resist trying to see her and
talk to her again, and would again be convinced that he was nothing
to her. And the day after--it would be the same. With what object?
And how and when would it all end?
At home he went in to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked
strong and gave the impression of being a well-built, vigorous
woman, but her striking pallor made her look like a corpse, especially
when, as now, she was lying on her back with her eyes closed; her
eldest daughter Sasha, a girl of ten years old, was sitting beside
her reading aloud from her reading-book.
"Alyosha has come," the invalid said softly to herself.
There had long been established between Sasha and her uncle a tacit
compact, to take turns in sitting with the patient. On this occasion
Sasha closed her reading-book, and without uttering a word, went
softly out of the room. Laptev took an historical novel from the
chest of drawers, and looking for the right page, sat down and began
reading it aloud.
Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow of a merchant family. She and
her two brothers had spent their childhood and early youth, living
at home in Pyatnitsky Street. Their childhood was long and wearisome;
her father treated her sternly, and had even on two or three occasions
flogged her, and her mother had had a long illness and died. The
servants were coarse, dirty, and hypocritical; the house was
frequented by priests and monks, also hypocritical; they ate and
drank and coarsely flattered her father, whom they did not like.
The boys had the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was left
practically uneducated. All her life she wrote an illegible scrawl,
and had read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago,
when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she made the
acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner called Panaurov,
had fallen in love with him, and married him secretly against her
father's will. Panaurov, a handsome, rather impudent fellow, who
whistled and lighted his cigarette from the holy lamp, struck the
father as an absolutely worthless person. And when the son-in-law
began in his letters demanding a dowry, the old man wrote to his
daughter that he would send her furs, silver, and various articles
that had been left at her mother's death, as well as thirty thousand
roubles, but without his paternal blessing. Later he sent another
twenty thousand. This money, as well as the dowry, was spent; the
estate had been sold and Panaurov moved with his family to the town
and got a job in a provincial government office. In the town he
formed another tie, and had a second family, and this was the subject
of much talk, as his illicit family was not a secret.
Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the
historical novel, she was thinking how much she had gone through
in her life, how much she had suffered, and that if any one were
to describe her life it would make a very pathetic story. As the
tumour was in her breast, she was persuaded that love and her
domestic grief were the cause of her illness, and that jealousy and
tears had brought her to her hopeless state.
At last Alexey Fyodorovitch closed the book and said:
"That's the end, and thank God for it. To-morrow we'll begin a new
one."
Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but
of late Laptev had begun to notice that at moments her mind seemed
weakened by illness, and she would laugh at the smallest trifle,
and even without any cause at all.
"Yulia came before dinner while you were out," she said. "So far
as I can see, she hasn't much faith in her papa. 'Let papa go on
treating you,' she said, 'but write in secret to the holy elder to
pray for you, too.' There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot
her parasol here; you must take it to her to-morrow," she went on
after a brief pause. "No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor
holy men are any help."
"Nina, why can't you sleep at night?" Laptev asked, to change the
subject.
"Oh, well, I don't go to sleep--that's all. I lie and think."
"What do you think about, dear?"
"About the children, about you . . . about my life. I've gone through
a great deal, Alyosha, you know. When one begins to remember and
remember. . . . My God!" She laughed. "It's no joke to have borne
five children as I have, to have buried three. . . Sometimes I was
expecting to be confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be sitting
at that very time with another woman. There would be no one to send
for the doctor or the midwife. I would go into the passage or the
kitchen for the servant, and there Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders,
would be waiting for him to come home. My head used to go round
. . . . He did not love me, though he never said so openly. Now I've
grown calmer--it doesn't weigh on my heart; but in old days, when
I was younger, it hurt me--ach! how it hurt me, darling! Once--
while we were still in the country--I found him in the garden
with a lady, and I walked away. . . I walked on aimlessly, and I
don't know how, but I found myself in the church porch. I fell on
my knees: 'Queen of Heaven!' I said. And it was night, the moon was
shining. . . ."
She was exhausted, she began gasping for breath. Then, after resting
a little, she took her brother's hand and went on in a weak, toneless
voice:
"How kind you are, Alyosha! . . . And how clever! . . . What a good
man you've grown up into!"
At midnight Laptev said good-night to her, and as he went away he
took with him the parasol that Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In
spite of the late hour, the servants, male and female, were drinking
tea in the dining-room. How disorderly! The children were not in
bed, but were there in the dining-room, too. They were all talking
softly in undertones, and had not noticed that the lamp was smoking
and would soon go out. All these people, big and little, were
disturbed by a whole succession of bad omens and were in an oppressed
mood. The glass in the hall had been broken, the samovar had been
buzzing every day, and, as though on purpose, was even buzzing now.
They were describing how a mouse had jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna's
boot when she was dressing. And the children were quite aware of
the terrible significance of these omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a
thin little brunette, was sitting motionless at the table, and her
face looked scared and woebegone, while the younger, Lida, a chubby
fair child of seven, stood beside her sister looking from under her
brows at the light.
Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the lower storey, where
under the low ceilings it was always close and smelt of geraniums.
In his sitting-room, Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna's husband, was sitting
reading the newspaper. Laptev nodded to him and sat down opposite.
Both sat still and said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings
like this without speaking, and neither of them was in the least
put out by this silence.
The little girls came down from upstairs to say good-night.
Deliberately and in silence, Panaurov made the sign of the cross
over them several times, and gave them his hand to kiss. They dropped
curtsies, and then went up to Laptev, who had to make the sign of
the cross and give them his hand to kiss also. This ceremony with
the hand-kissing and curtsying was repeated every evening.
When the children had gone out Panaurov laid aside the newspaper
and said:
"It's not very lively in our God-fearing town! I must confess, my
dear fellow," he added with a sigh, "I'm very glad that at last
you've found some distraction."
"What do you mean?" asked Laptev.
"I saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin's just now. I expect you don't
go there for the sake of the papa."
"Of course not," said Laptev, and he blushed.
"Well, of course not. And by the way, you wouldn't find such another
old brute as that papa if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You
can't imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast he is! You cultured
people in the capitals are still interested in the provinces only
on the lyrical side, only from the _paysage_ and _Poor Anton_ point
of view, but I can assure you, my boy, there's nothing logical about
it; there's nothing but barbarism, meanness, and nastiness--that's
all. Take the local devotees of science--the local intellectuals,
so to speak. Can you imagine there are here in this town twenty-eight
doctors? They've all made their fortunes, and they are living in
houses of their own, and meanwhile the population is in just as
helpless a condition as ever. Here, Nina had to have an operation,
quite an ordinary one really, yet we were obliged to get a surgeon
from Moscow; not one doctor here would undertake it. It's beyond
all conception. They know nothing, they understand nothing. They
take no interest in anything. Ask them, for instance, what cancer
is--what it is, what it comes from."
And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist
on all scientific subjects, and explained from a scientific point
of view everything that was discussed. But he explained it all in
his own way. He had a theory of his own about the circulation of
the blood, about chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly,
softly, convincingly.
"It's beyond all conception," he pronounced in an imploring voice,
screwing up his eyes, sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously
as a king, and it was evident that he was very well satisfied with
himself, and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.
"I am rather hungry," said Laptev. "I should like something savoury."
"Well, that can easily be managed."
Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting
upstairs in the dining-room having supper. Laptev had a glass of
vodka, and then began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He
never drank, and never gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered
all his own and his wife's property, and had accumulated debts. To
squander so much in such a short time, one must have, not passions,
but a special talent. Panaurov liked dainty fare, liked a handsome
dinner service, liked music after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen,
to whom he would carelessly fling tips of ten, even twenty-five
roubles. He always took part in all lotteries and subscriptions,
sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance on their birthdays,
bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties, walking-sticks, scents,
cigarette-holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-à-brac,
antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead made of ebony
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a genuine Bokhara,
and everything was to correspond; and on all this there went every
day, as he himself expressed, "a deluge" of money.
At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head.
"Yes, everything on this earth has an end," he said softly, screwing
up his dark eyes. "You will fall in love and suffer. You will fall
out of love; you'll be deceived, for there is no woman who will not
deceive; you will suffer, will be brought to despair, and will be
faithless too. But the time will come when all this will be a memory,
and when you will reason about it coldly and look upon it as utterly
trivial. . . ."
Laptev, tired, a little drunk, looked at his handsome head, his
clipped black beard, and seemed to understand why women so loved
this pampered, conceited, and physically handsome creature.
After supper Panaurov did not stay in the house, but went off to
his other lodgings. Laptev went out to see him on his way. Panaurov
was the only man in the town who wore a top-hat, and his elegant,
dandified figure, his top-hat and tan gloves, beside the grey fences,
the pitiful little houses, with their three windows and the thickets
of nettles, always made a strange and mournful impression.
After saying good-bye to him Laptev returned home without hurrying.
The moon was shining brightly; one could distinguish every straw
on the ground, and Laptev felt as though the moonlight were caressing
his bare head, as though some one were passing a feather over his
hair.
"I love!" he pronounced aloud, and he had a sudden longing to run
to overtake Panaurov, to embrace him, to forgive him, to make him
a present of a lot of money, and then to run off into the open
country, into a wood, to run on and on without looking back.
At home he saw lying on the chair the parasol Yulia Sergeyevna had
forgotten; he snatched it up and kissed it greedily. The parasol
was a silk one, no longer new, tied round with old elastic. The
handle was a cheap one, of white bone. Laptev opened it over him,
and he felt as though there were the fragrance of happiness about
him.
He settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and still keeping
hold of the parasol, began writing to Moscow to one of his friends:
"DEAR PRECIOUS KOSTYA,
"Here is news for you: I'm in love again! I say _again_, because
six years ago I fell in love with a Moscow actress, though I didn't
even succeed in making her acquaintance, and for the last year and
a half I have been living with a certain person you know--a woman
neither young nor good-looking. Ah, my dear boy, how unlucky I am
in love. I've never had any success with women, and if I say _again_
it's simply because it's rather sad and mortifying to acknowledge
even to myself that my youth has passed entirely without love, and
that I'm in love in a real sense now for the first time in my life,
at thirty-four. Let it stand that I love _again_.
"If only you knew what a girl she was! She couldn't be called a
beauty--she has a broad face, she is very thin, but what a wonderful
expression of goodness she has when she smiles! When she speaks,
her voice is as clear as a bell. She never carries on a conversation
with me--I don't know her; but when I'm beside her I feel she's
a striking, exceptional creature, full of intelligence and lofty
aspirations. She is religious, and you cannot imagine how deeply
this touches me and exalts her in my eyes. On that point I am ready
to argue with you endlessly. You may be right, to your thinking;
but, still, I love to see her praying in church. She is a provincial,
but she was educated in Moscow. She loves our Moscow; she dresses
in the Moscow style, and I love her for that--love her, love her
. . . . I see you frowning and getting up to read me a long lecture
on what love is, and what sort of woman one can love, and what sort
one cannot, and so on, and so on. But, dear Kostya, before I was
in love I, too, knew quite well what love was.
"My sister thanks you for your message. She often recalls how she
used to take Kostya Kotchevoy to the preparatory class, and never
speaks of you except as _poor Kostya_, as she still thinks of you
as the little orphan boy she remembers. And so, poor orphan, I'm
in love. While it's a secret, don't say anything to a 'certain
person.' I think it will all come right of itself, or, as the footman
says in Tolstoy, will 'come round.'"
When he had finished his letter Laptev went to bed. He was so tired
that he couldn't keep his eyes open, but for some reason he could
not get to sleep; the noise in the street seemed to prevent him.
The cattle were driven by to the blowing of a horn, and soon
afterwards the bells began ringing for early mass. At one minute a
cart drove by creaking; at the next, he heard the voice of some
woman going to market. And the sparrows twittered the whole time.