IV

Going into his sister's room, and seeing to his surprise Yulia

Sergeyevna, Laptev had again the humiliating sensation of a man who

feels himself an object of repulsion. He concluded that if after

what had happened yesterday she could bring herself so easily to

visit his sister and meet him, it must be because she was not

concerned about him, and regarded him as a complete nonentity. But

when he greeted her, and with a pale face and dust under her eyes

she looked at him mournfully and remorsefully, he saw that she,

too, was miserable.

She did not feel well. She only stayed ten minutes, and began saying

good-bye. And as she went out she said to Laptev:

"Will you see me home, Alexey Fyodorovitch?"

They walked along the street in silence, holding their hats, and

he, walking a little behind, tried to screen her from the wind. In

the lane it was more sheltered, and they walked side by side.

"Forgive me if I was not nice yesterday;" and her voice quavered

as though she were going to cry. "I was so wretched! I did not sleep

all night."

"I slept well all night," said Laptev, without looking at her; "but

that doesn't mean that I was happy. My life is broken. I'm deeply

unhappy, and after your refusal yesterday I go about like a man

poisoned. The most difficult thing was said yesterday. To-day I

feel no embarrassment and can talk to you frankly. I love you more

than my sister, more than my dead mother. . . . I can live without

my sister, and without my mother, and I have lived without them,

but life without you--is meaningless to me; I can't face it. . . ."

And now too, as usual, he guessed her intention.

He realised that she wanted to go back to what had happened the day

before, and with that object had asked him to accompany her, and

now was taking him home with her. But what could she add to her

refusal? What new idea had she in her head? From everything, from

her glances, from her smile, and even from her tone, from the way

she held her head and shoulders as she walked beside him, he saw

that, as before, she did not love him, that he was a stranger to

her. What more did she want to say?

Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home.

"You are very welcome. I'm always glad to see you, Fyodor Alexeyitch,"

he said, mixing up his Christian name and his father's. "Delighted,

delighted!"

He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew of

his offer; he did not like that either. He was sitting now in the

drawing-room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor,

common decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were

arm-chairs in it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still

looked like an uninhabited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious

that no one could feel at home in such a room, except a man like

the doctor. The next room, almost twice as large, was called the

reception-room, and in it there were only rows of chairs, as though

for a dancing class. And while Laptev was sitting in the drawing-room

talking to the doctor about his sister, he began to be tortured by

a suspicion. Had not Yulia Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina's,

and then brought him here to tell him that she would accept him?

Oh, how awful it was! But the most awful thing of all was that his

soul was capable of such a suspicion. And he imagined how the father

and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the night before,

in prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last had come

to the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a

rich man. The words that parents use in such cases kept ringing in

his ears:

"It is true you don't love him, but think what good you could do!"

The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone

with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said:

"I beg you to stay."

She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to

refuse an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he was

not attractive, especially when marrying him would make it possible

for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle

life in which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better

in the future--to refuse him under such circumstances was madness,

caprice and folly, and that God might even punish her for it.

The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away, she

suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly

white as she did so:

"I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . . I

accept your offer."

He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on the

head with cold lips.

He felt that in this love scene the chief thing--her love--was

lacking, and that there was a great deal that was not wanted; and

he longed to cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once.

But she was close to him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he

was suddenly overcome by passion. He reflected that it was too late

for deliberation now; he embraced her passionately, and muttered

some words, calling her _thou_; he kissed her on the neck, and then

on the cheek, on the head. . . .

She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations,

and both of them were already regretting what they had said and

both were asking themselves in confusion:

"Why has this happened?"

"If only you knew how miserable I am!" she said, wringing her hands.

"What is it?" he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too. "My

dear, for God's sake, tell me--what is it? Only tell the truth,

I entreat you--nothing but the truth!"

"Don't pay any attention to it," she said, and forced herself to

smile. "I promise you I'll be a faithful, devoted wife. . . . Come

this evening."

Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an historical

novel, he recalled it all and felt wounded that his splendid, pure,

rich feeling was met with such a shallow response. He was not loved,

but his offer had been accepted--in all probability because he

was rich: that is, what was thought most of in him was what he

valued least of all in himself. It was quite possible that Yulia,

who was so pure and believed in God, had not once thought of his

money; but she did not love him--did not love him, and evidently

she had interested motives, vague, perhaps, and not fully thought

out--still, it was so. The doctor's house with its common furniture

was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the doctor himself as a

wretched, greasy miser, a sort of operatic Gaspard from "Les Cloches

de Corneville." The very name "Yulia" had a vulgar sound. He imagined

how he and his Yulia would stand at their wedding, in reality

complete strangers to one another, without a trace of feeling on

her side, just as though their marriage had been made by a professional

matchmaker; and the only consolation left him now, as commonplace

as the marriage itself, was the reflection that he was not the

first, and would not be the last; that thousands of people were

married like that; and that with time, when Yulia came to know him

better, she would perhaps grow fond of him.

"Romeo and Juliet!" he said, as he shut the novel, and he laughed.

"I am Romeo, Nina. You may congratulate me. I made an offer to Yulia

Byelavin to-day."

Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she believed it,

she began to cry; she was not pleased at the news.

"Well, I congratulate you," she said. "But why is it so sudden?"

"No, it's not sudden. It's been going on since March, only you don't

notice anything. . . . I fell in love with her last March when I

made her acquaintance here, in your rooms."

"I thought you would marry some one in our Moscow set," said Nina

Fyodorovna after a pause. "Girls in our set are simpler. But what

matters, Alyosha, is that you should be happy--that matters most.

My Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, and there's no concealing

it; you can see what our life is. Of course any woman may love you

for your goodness and your brains, but, you see, Yulitchka is a

girl of good family from a high-class boarding-school; goodness and

brains are not enough for her. She is young, and, you, Alyosha, are

not so young, and are not good-looking."

To soften the last words, she stroked his head and said:

"You're not good-looking, but you're a dear."

She was so agitated that a faint flush came into her cheeks, and

she began discussing eagerly whether it would be the proper thing

for her to bless Alyosha with the ikon at the wedding. She was, she

reasoned, his elder sister, and took the place of his mother; and

she kept trying to convince her dejected brother that the wedding

must be celebrated in proper style, with pomp and gaiety, so that

no one could find fault with it.

Then he began going to the Byelavins' as an accepted suitor, three

or four times a day; and now he never had time to take Sasha's place

and read aloud the historical novel. Yulia used to receive him in

her two rooms, which were at a distance from the drawing-room and

her father's study, and he liked them very much. The walls in them

were dark; in the corner stood a case of ikons; and there was a

smell of good scent and of the oil in the holy lamp. Her rooms were

at the furthest end of the house; her bedstead and dressing-table

were shut off by a screen. The doors of the bookcase were covered

on the inside with a green curtain, and there were rugs on the

floor, so that her footsteps were noiseless--and from this he

concluded that she was of a reserved character, and that she liked

a quiet, peaceful, secluded life. In her own home she was treated

as though she were not quite grown up. She had no money of her own,

and sometimes when they were out for walks together, she was overcome

with confusion at not having a farthing. Her father allowed her

very little for dress and books, hardly ten pounds a year. And,

indeed, the doctor himself had not much money in spite of his good

practice. He played cards every night at the club, and always lost.

Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses through a building society,

and let them. The tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but

he was convinced that such speculations were profitable. He had

mortgaged his own house in which he and his daughter were living,

and with the money so raised had bought a piece of waste ground,

and had already begun to build on it a large two-storey house,

meaning to mortgage it, too, as soon as it was finished.

Laptev now lived in a sort of cloud, feeling as though he were not

himself, but his double, and did many things which he would never

have brought himself to do before. He went three or four times to

the club with the doctor, had supper with him, and offered him money

for house-building. He even visited Panaurov at his other establishment.

It somehow happened that Panaurov invited him to dinner, and without

thinking, Laptev accepted. He was received by a lady of five-and-thirty.

She was tall and thin, with hair touched with grey, and black

eyebrows, apparently not Russian. There were white patches of powder

on her face. She gave him a honeyed smile and pressed his hand

jerkily, so that the bracelets on her white hands tinkled. It seemed

to Laptev that she smiled like that because she wanted to conceal

from herself and from others that she was unhappy. He also saw two

little girls, aged five and three, who had a marked likeness to

Sasha. For dinner they had milk-soup, cold veal, and chocolate. It

was insipid and not good; but the table was splendid, with gold

forks, bottles of Soyer, and cayenne pepper, an extraordinary bizarre

cruet-stand, and a gold pepper-pot.

It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that Laptev realised

how very inappropriate it was for him to be dining there. The lady

was embarrassed, and kept smiling, showing her teeth. Panaurov

expounded didactically what being in love was, and what it was due

to.

"We have in it an example of the action of electricity," he said

in French, addressing the lady. "Every man has in his skin microscopic

glands which contain currents of electricity. If you meet with a

person whose currents are parallel with your own, then you get

love."

When Laptev went home and his sister asked him where he had been

he felt awkward, and made no answer.

He felt himself in a false position right up to the time of the

wedding. His love grew more intense every day, and Yulia seemed to

him a poetic and exalted creature; but, all the same, there was no

mutual love, and the truth was that he was buying her and she was

selling herself. Sometimes, thinking things over, he fell into

despair and asked himself: should he run away? He did not sleep for

nights together, and kept thinking how he should meet in Moscow the

lady whom he had called in his letters "a certain person," and what

attitude his father and his brother, difficult people, would take

towards his marriage and towards Yulia. He was afraid that his

father would say something rude to Yulia at their first meeting.

And something strange had happened of late to his brother Fyodor.

In his long letters he had taken to writing of the importance of

health, of the effect of illness on the mental condition, of the

meaning of religion, but not a word about Moscow or business. These

letters irritated Laptev, and he thought his brother's character

was changing for the worse.

The wedding was in September. The ceremony took place at the Church

of St. Peter and St. Paul, after mass, and the same day the young

couple set off for Moscow. When Laptev and his wife, in a black

dress with a long train, already looking not a girl but a married

woman, said good-bye to Nina Fyodorovna, the invalid's face worked,

but there was no tear in her dry eyes. She said:

"If--which God forbid--I should die, take care of my little

girls."

"Oh, I promise!" answered Yulia Sergeyevna, and her lips and eyelids

began quivering too.

"I shall come to see you in October," said Laptev, much moved. "You

must get better, my darling."

They travelled in a special compartment. Both felt depressed and

uncomfortable. She sat in the corner without taking off her hat,

and made a show of dozing, and he lay on the seat opposite, and he

was disturbed by various thoughts--of his father, of "a certain

person," whether Yulia would like her Moscow flat. And looking at

his wife, who did not love him, he wondered dejectedly "why this

had happened."

V

The Laptevs had a wholesale business in Moscow, dealing in fancy

goods: fringe, tape, trimmings, crochet cotton, buttons, and so on.

The gross receipts reached two millions a year; what the net profit

was, no one knew but the old father. The sons and the clerks estimated

the profits at approximately three hundred thousand, and said that

it would have been a hundred thousand more if the old man had not

"been too free-handed"--that is, had not allowed credit

indiscriminately. In the last ten years alone the bad debts had

mounted up to the sum of a million; and when the subject was referred

to, the senior clerk would wink slyly and deliver himself of sentences

the meaning of which was not clear to every one:

"The psychological sequences of the age."

Their chief commercial operations were conducted in the town market

in a building which was called the warehouse. The entrance to the

warehouse was in the yard, where it was always dark, and smelt of

matting and where the dray-horses were always stamping their hoofs

on the asphalt. A very humble-looking door, studded with iron, led

from the yard into a room with walls discoloured by damp and scrawled

over with charcoal, lighted up by a narrow window covered by an

iron grating. Then on the left was another room larger and cleaner

with an iron stove and a couple of chairs, though it, too, had a

prison window: this was the office, and from it a narrow stone

staircase led up to the second storey, where the principal room

was. This was rather a large room, but owing to the perpetual

darkness, the low-pitched ceiling, the piles of boxes and bales,

and the numbers of men that kept flitting to and fro in it, it made

as unpleasant an impression on a newcomer as the others. In the

offices on the top storey the goods lay in bales, in bundles and

in cardboard boxes on the shelves; there was no order nor neatness

in the arrangement of it, and if crimson threads, tassels, ends of

fringe, had not peeped out here and there from holes in the paper

parcels, no one could have guessed what was being bought and sold

here. And looking at these crumpled paper parcels and boxes, no one

would have believed that a million was being made out of such trash,

and that fifty men were employed every day in this warehouse, not

counting the buyers.

When at midday, on the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went

into the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were hammering

so loudly that in the outer room and the office no one heard him

come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle

of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not

notice Laptev either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his

brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was so like him that they passed

for twins. This resemblance always reminded Laptev of his own

personal appearance, and now, seeing before him a short, red-faced

man with rather thin hair, with narrow plebeian hips, looking so

uninteresting and so unintellectual, he asked himself: "Can I really

look like that?"

"How glad I am to see you!" said Fyodor, kissing his brother and

pressing his hand warmly. "I have been impatiently looking forward

to seeing you every day, my dear fellow. When you wrote that you

were getting married, I was tormented with curiosity, and I've

missed you, too, brother. Only fancy, it's six months since we saw

each other. Well? How goes it? Nina's very bad? Awfully bad?"

"Awfully bad."

"It's in God's hands," sighed Fyodor. "Well, what of your wife?

She's a beauty, no doubt? I love her already. Of course, she is my

little sister now. We'll make much of her between us."

Laptev saw the broad, bent back--so familiar to him--of his

father, Fyodor Stepanovitch. The old man was sitting on a stool

near the counter, talking to a customer.

"Father, God has sent us joy!" cried Fyodor. "Brother has come!"

Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exceptionally powerful build,

so that, in spite of his wrinkles and eighty years, he still looked

a hale and vigorous man. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice,

that resounded from his broad chest as from a barrel. He wore no

beard, but a short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars.

As he was always too hot, he used all the year round to wear a

canvas coat at home and at the warehouse. He had lately had an

operation for cataract. His sight was bad, and he did nothing in

the business but talk to the customers and have tea and jam with

them.

Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then his lips.

"It's a good long time since we saw you, honoured sir," said the

old man--"a good long time. Well, am I to congratulate you on

entering the state of holy matrimony? Very well, then; I congratulate

you."

And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent down and kissed

him.

"Well, have you brought your young lady?" the old man asked, and

without waiting for an answer, he said, addressing the customer:

"'Herewith I beg to inform you, father, that I'm going to marry such

and such a young lady.' Yes. But as for asking for his father's

counsel or blessing, that's not in the rules nowadays. Now they go

their own way. When I married I was over forty, but I went on my

knees to my father and asked his advice. Nowadays we've none of

that."

The old man was delighted to see his son, but thought it unseemly

to show his affection or make any display of his joy. His voice and

his manner of saying "your young lady" brought back to Laptev the

depression he had always felt in the warehouse. Here every trifling

detail reminded him of the past, when he used to be flogged and put

on Lenten fare; he knew that even now boys were thrashed and punched

in the face till their noses bled, and that when those boys grew

up they would beat others. And before he had been five minutes in

the warehouse, he always felt as though he were being scolded or

punched in the face.

Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother:

"Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov benefactor, Grigory

Timofeitch. He might serve as an example for the young men of the

day; he's passed his fiftieth birthday, and he has tiny children."

The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old man with a pale

face, laughed too.

"Nature above the normal capacity," observed the head-clerk, who

was standing at the counter close by. "It always comes out when

it's there."

The head-clerk--a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a dark

beard, and a pencil behind his ear--usually expressed his ideas

vaguely in roundabout hints, while his sly smile betrayed that he

attached particular significance to his words. He liked to obscure

his utterances with bookish words, which he understood in his own

way, and many such words he used in a wrong sense. For instance,

the word "except." When he had expressed some opinion positively

and did not want to be contradicted, he would stretch out his hand

and pronounce:

"Except!"

And what was most astonishing, the customers and the other clerks

understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vassilitch Potchatkin,

and he came from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev, he expressed

himself as follows:

"It's the reward of valour, for the female heart is a strong

opponent."

Another important person in the warehouse was a clerk called

Makeitchev--a stout, solid, fair man with whiskers and a perfectly

bald head. He went up to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully

in a low voice:

"I have the honour, sir. . . The Lord has heard your parent's prayer.

Thank God."

Then the other clerks began coming up to congratulate him on his

marriage. They were all fashionably dressed, and looked like perfectly

well-bred, educated men. Since between every two words they put in

a "sir," their congratulations--something like "Best wishes, sir,

for happiness, sir," uttered very rapidly in a low voice--sounded

rather like the hiss of a whip in the air--"Shshsh-s s s s s!"

Laptev was soon bored and longing to go home, but it was awkward

to go away. He was obliged to stay at least two hours at the warehouse

to keep up appearances. He walked away from the counter and began

asking Makeitchev whether things had gone well while he was away,

and whether anything new had turned up, and the clerk answered him

respectfully, avoiding his eyes. A boy with a cropped head, wearing

a grey blouse, handed Laptev a glass of tea without a saucer; not

long afterwards another boy, passing by, stumbled over a box, and

almost fell down, and Makeitchev's face looked suddenly spiteful

and ferocious like a wild beast's, and he shouted at him:

"Keep on your feet!"

The clerks were pleased that their young master was married and had

come back at last; they looked at him with curiosity and friendly

feeling, and each one thought it his duty to say something agreeable

when he passed him. But Laptev was convinced that it was not genuine,

and that they were only flattering him because they were afraid of

him. He never could forget how fifteen years before, a clerk, who

was mentally deranged, had run out into the street with nothing on

but his shirt and shaking his fists at the windows, shouted that

he had been ill-treated; and how, when the poor fellow had recovered,

the clerks had jeered at him for long afterwards, reminding him how

he had called his employers "planters" instead of "exploiters."

Altogether the employees at Laptevs' had a very poor time of it,

and this fact was a subject of conversation for the whole market.

The worst of it was that the old man, Fyodor Stepanovitch, maintained

something of an Asiatic despotism in his attitude to them. Thus,

no one knew what wages were paid to the old man's favourites,

Potchatkin and Makeitchev. They received no more than three thousand

a year, together with bonuses, but he made out that he paid then

seven. The bonuses were given to all the clerks every year, but

privately, so that the man who got little was bound from vanity to

say he had got more. Not one boy knew when he would be promoted to

be a clerk; not one of the men knew whether his employer was satisfied

with him or not. Nothing was directly forbidden, and so the clerks

never knew what was allowed, and what was not. They were not forbidden

to marry, but they did not marry for fear of displeasing their

employer and losing their place. They were allowed to have friends

and pay visits, but the gates were shut at nine o'clock, and every

morning the old man scanned them all suspiciously, and tried to

detect any smell of vodka about them:

"Now then, breathe," he would say.

Every clerk was obliged to go to early service, and to stand in

church in such a position that the old man could see them all. The

fasts were strictly observed. On great occasions, such as the

birthday of their employer or of any member of his family, the

clerks had to subscribe and present a cake from Fley's, or an album.

The clerks lived three or four in a room in the lower storey, and

in the lodges of the house in Pyatnitsky Street, and at dinner ate

from a common bowl, though there was a plate set before each of

them. If one of the family came into the room while they were at

dinner, they all stood up.

Laptev was conscious that only, perhaps, those among them who had

been corrupted by the old man's training could seriously regard him

as their benefactor; the others must have looked on him as an enemy

and a "planter." Now, after six months' absence, he saw no change

for the better; there was indeed something new which boded nothing

good. His brother Fyodor, who had always been quiet, thoughtful,

and extremely refined, was now running about the warehouse with a

pencil behind his ear making a show of being very busy and businesslike,

slapping customers on the shoulder and shouting "Friends!" to the

clerks. Apparently he had taken up a new role, and Alexey did not

recognise him in the part.

The old man's voice boomed unceasingly. Having nothing to do, he

was laying down the law to a customer, telling him how he should

order his life and his business, always holding himself up as an

example. That boastfulness, that aggressive tone of authority,

Laptev had heard ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. The old man adored

himself; from what he said it always appeared that he had made his

wife and all her relations happy, that he had been munificent to

his children, and a benefactor to his clerks and employés, and that

every one in the street and all his acquaintances remembered him

in their prayers. Whatever he did was always right, and if things

went wrong with people it was because they did not take his advice;

without his advice nothing could succeed. In church he stood in the

foremost place, and even made observations to the priests, if in

his opinion they were not conducting the service properly, and

believed that this was pleasing God because God loved him.

At two o'clock every one in the warehouse was hard at work, except

the old man, who still went on booming in his deep voice. To avoid

standing idle, Laptev took some trimmings from a workgirl and let

her go; then listened to a customer, a merchant from Vologda, and

told a clerk to attend to him.

"T. V. A.!" resounded on all sides (prices were denoted by letters

in the warehouse and goods by numbers). "R. I. T.!" As he went away,

Laptev said good-bye to no one but Fyodor.

"I shall come to Pyatnitsky Street with my wife to-morrow," he said;

"but I warn you, if father says a single rude thing to her, I shall

not stay there another minute."

"You're the same as ever," sighed Fyodor. "Marriage has not changed

you. You must be patient with the old man. So till eleven o'clock,

then. We shall expect you impatiently. Come directly after mass,

then."

"I don't go to mass."

"That does not matter. The great thing is not to be later than

eleven, so you may be in time to pray to God and to lunch with us.

Give my greetings to my little sister and kiss her hand for me. I

have a presentiment that I shall like her," Fyodor added with perfect

sincerity. "I envy you, brother!" he shouted after him as Alexey

went downstairs.

"And why does he shrink into himself in that shy way as though he

fancied he was naked?" thought Laptev, as he walked along Nikolsky

Street, trying to understand the change that had come over his

brother. "And his language is new, too: 'Brother, dear brother, God

has sent us joy; to pray to God'--just like Iudushka in Shtchedrin."