Russian Silhouettes: More Stories of Russian Life

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Title: Russian Silhouettes: More Stories of Russian Life
Author: Tchekoff, Anton
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Russian Silhouettes: More Stories of Russian Life" ***

RUSSIAN SILHOUETTES
MORE STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE

BY
ANTON TCHEKOFF

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
MARIAN FELL

LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
1915

Printed by the Scribner Press
New York, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

STORIES OF CHILDHOOD

PAGE
THE BOYS 3

GRISHA 14

A TRIFLE FROM REAL LIFE 20

THE COOK’S WEDDING 29

SHROVE TUESDAY 38

IN PASSION WEEK 46

AN INCIDENT 54

A MATTER OF CLASSICS 63

THE TUTOR 68

OUT OF SORTS 73

STORIES OF YOUTH

A JOKE 79

AFTER THE THEATRE 86

VOLODIA 91

A NAUGHTY BOY 111

BLISS 115

TWO BEAUTIFUL GIRLS 119

LIGHT AND SHADOW

THE CHORUS GIRL 135

THE FATHER OF A FAMILY 144

THE ORATOR 151

IONITCH 157

AT CHRISTMAS TIME 187

IN THE COACH HOUSE 195

LADY N——’S STORY 205

A JOURNEY BY CART 212

THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR 227

ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE 255

A HORSEY NAME 272

THE PETCHENEG 278

THE BISHOP 295

STORIES OF CHILDHOOD

THE BOYS

“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.

“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.

The whole family ran to the window, for they had been expecting their
Volodia for hours. At the front porch stood a wide posting sleigh with
its troika of white horses wreathed in dense clouds of steam. The sleigh
was empty because Volodia was already standing in the front entry
untying his hood with red, frostbitten fingers. His schoolboy’s uniform,
his overcoat, his cap, his goloshes, and the hair on his temples were
all silvery with frost, and from his head to his feet he exhaled such a
wholesome atmosphere of cold that one shivered to be near him. His
mother and aunt rushed to kiss and embrace him. Natalia fell down at his
feet and began pulling off his goloshes. His sisters shrieked, doors
creaked and banged on every side, and his father came running into the
hall in his shirt-sleeves waving a pair of scissors and crying in alarm:

“Is anything the matter? We expected you yesterday. Did you have a good
journey? For heaven’s sake, give him a chance to kiss his own father!”

“Bow, wow, wow!” barked the great black dog, My Lord, in a deep voice,
banging the walls and furniture with his tail.

All these noises went to make up one great, joyous clamour that lasted
several minutes. When the first burst of joy had subsided the family
noticed that, beside Volodia, there was still another small person in
the hall. He was wrapped in scarfs and shawls and hoods and was standing
motionless in the shadow cast by a huge fox-skin coat.

“Volodia, who is that?” whispered Volodia’s mother.

“Good gracious!” Volodia exclaimed recollecting himself. “Let me present
my friend Tchetchevitsin. I have brought him from school to stay with
us.”

“We are delighted to see you! Make yourself at home!” cried the father
gaily. “Excuse my not having a coat on! Allow me!—Natalia, help Mr.
Tcherepitsin to take off his things! For heaven’s sake, take that dog
away! This noise is too awful!”

A few minutes later Volodia and his friend were sitting in the
dining-room drinking tea, dazed by their noisy reception and still rosy
with cold. The wintry rays of the sun, piercing the frost and snow on
the window-panes, trembled over the samovar and bathed themselves in the
slop-basin. The room was warm, and the boys felt heat and cold jostling
one another in their bodies, neither wanting to concede its place to the
other.

“Well, Christmas will soon be here!” cried Volodia’s father, rolling a
cigarette. “Has it seemed long since your mother cried as she saw you
off last summer? Time flies, my son! Old age comes before one has time
to heave a sigh. Mr. Tchibisoff, do help yourself! We don’t stand on
ceremony here!”

Volodia’s three sisters, Katia, Sonia, and Masha, the oldest of whom was
eleven, sat around the table with their eyes fixed on their new
acquaintance. Tchetchevitsin was the same age and size as Volodia, but
he was neither plump nor fair like him. He was swarthy and thin and his
face was covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes were
small, and his lips were thick; in a word, he was very plain, and, had
it not been for his schoolboy’s uniform, he might have been taken for
the son of a cook. He was taciturn and morose, and he never once smiled.
The girls immediately decided that he must be a very clever and learned
person. He seemed to be meditating something, and was so busy with his
own thoughts that he started if he were asked a question and asked to
have it repeated.

The girls noticed that Volodia, who was generally so talkative and gay,
seldom spoke now and never smiled and on the whole did not seem glad to
be at home. He only addressed his sisters once during dinner and then
his remark was strange. He pointed to the samovar and said:

“In California they drink gin instead of tea.”

He, too, seemed to be busy with thoughts of his own, and, to judge from
the glances that the two boys occasionally exchanged, their thoughts
were identical.

After tea the whole family went into the nursery, and papa and the girls
sat down at the table and took up some work which they had been doing
when they were interrupted by the boys’ arrival. They were making
decorations out of coloured paper for the Christmas tree. It was a
thrilling and noisy occupation. Each new flower was greeted by the girls
with shrieks of ecstasy, of terror almost, as if it had dropped from the
sky. Papa, too, was in raptures, but every now and then he would throw
down the scissors, exclaiming angrily that they were blunt. Mamma came
running into the nursery with an anxious face and asked:

“Who has taken my scissors? Have you taken my scissors again, Ivan?”

“Good heavens, won’t she even let me have a pair of scissors?” answered
papa in a tearful voice, throwing himself back in his chair with the air
of a much-abused man. But the next moment he was in raptures again.

On former holidays Volodia had always helped with the preparations for
the Christmas tree, and had run out into the yard to watch the coachman
and the shepherd heaping up a mound of snow, but this time neither he
nor Tchetchevitsin took any notice of the coloured paper, neither did
they once visit the stables. They sat by a window whispering together,
and then opened an atlas and fell to studying it.

“First, we must go to Perm,” whispered Tchetchevitsin. “Then to Tyumen,
then to Tomsk, and then—then to Kamschatka. From there the Eskimos will
take us across Behring Strait in their canoes, and then—we shall be in
America! There are a great many wild animals there.”

“Where is California?” asked Volodia.

“California is farther down. If once we can get to America, California
will only be round the corner. We can make our living by hunting and
highway robbery.”

All day Tchetchevitsin avoided the girls, and, if he met them, looked at
them askance. After tea in the evening he was left alone with them for
five minutes. To remain silent would have been awkward, so he coughed
sternly, rubbed the back of his right hand with the palm of his left,
looked severely at Katia, and asked:

“Have you read Mayne Reid?”

“No, I haven’t—But tell me, can you skate?”

Tchetchevitsin became lost in thought once more and did not answer her
question. He only blew out his cheeks and heaved a sigh as if he were
very hot. Once more he raised his eyes to Katia’s face and said:

“When a herd of buffalo gallop across the pampas the whole earth
trembles and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh.”

Tchetchevitsin smiled wistfully and added:

“And Indians attack trains, too. But worst of all are the mosquitoes and
the termites.”

“What are they?”

“Termites look something like ants, only they have wings. They bite
dreadfully. Do you know who I am?”

“You are Mr. Tchetchevitsin!”

“No, I am Montezuma Hawkeye, the invincible chieftain.”

Masha, the youngest of the girls, looked first at him and then out of
the window into the garden, where night was already falling, and said
doubtfully:

“We had Tchetchevitsa (lentils) for supper last night.”

The absolutely unintelligible sayings of Tchetchevitsin, his continual
whispered conversations with Volodia, and the fact that Volodia never
played now and was always absorbed in thought—all this seemed to the
girls to be both mysterious and strange. Katia and Sonia, the two oldest
ones, began to spy on the boys, and when Volodia and his friend went to
bed that evening, they crept to the door of their room and listened to
the conversation inside. Oh! what did they hear? The boys were planning
to run away to America in search of gold! They were all prepared for the
journey and had a pistol ready, two knives, some dried bread, a
magnifying-glass for lighting fires, a compass, and four roubles. The
girls discovered that the boys would have to walk several thousand
miles, fighting on the way with savages and tigers, and that they would
then find gold and ivory, and slay their enemies. Next, they would turn
pirates, drink gin, and at last marry beautiful wives and settle down to
cultivate a plantation. Volodia and Tchetchevitsin both talked at once
and kept interrupting one another from excitement. Tchetchevitsin called
himself “Montezuma Hawkeye,” and Volodia “my Paleface Brother.”

“Be sure you don’t tell mamma!” said Katia to Sonia as they went back to
bed. “Volodia will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell
mamma she won’t let him go!”

Tchetchevitsin spent the day before Christmas Eve studying a map of Asia
and taking notes, while Volodia roamed about the house refusing all
food, his face looking tired and puffy as if it had been stung by a bee.
He stopped more than once in front of the icon in the nursery and
crossed himself saying:

“O Lord, forgive me, miserable sinner! O Lord, help my poor, unfortunate
mother!”

Toward evening he burst into tears. When he said good night he kissed
his father and mother and sisters over and over again. Katia and Sonia
realized the significance of his actions, but Masha, the youngest,
understood nothing at all. Only when her eye fell upon Tchetchevitsin
did she grow pensive and say with a sigh:

“Nurse says that when Lent comes we must eat peas and Tchetchevitsa.”

Early on Christmas Eve Katia and Sonia slipped quietly out of bed and
went to the boys’ room to see them run away to America. They crept up to
their door.

“So you won’t go?” asked Tchetchevitsin angrily. “Tell me, you won’t
go?”

“Oh, dear!” wailed Volodia, weeping softly. “How can I go? I’m so sorry
for mamma!”

“Paleface Brother, I beg you to go! You promised me yourself that you
would. You told me yourself how nice it would be. Now, when everything
is ready, you are afraid!”

“I—I’m not afraid. I—I am sorry for mamma.”

“Tell me, are you going or not?”

“I’m going, only—only wait a bit, I want to stay at home a little while
longer!”

“If that is the case, I’ll go alone!” Tchetchevitsin said with decision.
“I can get along perfectly well without you. I want to hunt and fight
tigers! If you won’t go, give me my pistol!”

Volodia began to cry so bitterly that his sisters could not endure the
sound and began weeping softly themselves. Silence fell.

“Then you won’t go?” demanded Tchetchevitsin again.

“I—I’ll go.”

“Then get dressed!”

And to keep up Volodia’s courage, Tchetchevitsin began singing the
praises of America. He roared like a tiger, he whistled like a
steamboat, he scolded, and promised to give Volodia all the ivory and
gold they might find.

The thin, dark boy with his bristling hair and his freckles seemed to
the girls to be a strange and wonderful person. He was a hero to them, a
man without fear, who could roar so well that, through the closed door,
one might really mistake him for a tiger or a lion.

When the girls were dressing in their own room, Katia cried with tears
in her eyes:

“Oh, I’m so frightened!”

All was quiet until the family sat down to dinner at two o’clock, and
then it suddenly appeared that the boys were not in the house. Inquiries
were made in the servants’ quarters and at the stables, but they were
not there. A search was made in the village, but they could not be
found. At tea time they were still missing, and when the family had to
sit down to supper without them, mamma was terribly anxious and was even
crying. That night another search was made in the village and men were
sent down to the river with lanterns. Heavens, what an uproar arose!

Next morning the policeman arrived and went into the dining-room to
write something. Mamma was crying.

Suddenly, lo and behold! a posting sleigh drove up to the front door
with clouds of steam rising from its three white horses.

“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.

“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.

My Lord barked “Bow, wow, wow!” in his deep voice.

It seemed that the boys had been stopped at the hotel in the town, where
they had gone about asking every one where they could buy gunpowder. As
he entered the hall, Volodia burst into tears and flung his arms round
his mother’s neck. The girls trembled with terror at the thought of what
would happen next, for they heard papa call Volodia and Tchetchevitsin
into his study and begin talking to them. Mamma wept and joined in the
talk.

“Do you think it was right?” papa asked, chiding them. “I hope to
goodness they won’t find it out at school, because, if they do, you will
certainly be expelled. Be ashamed of yourself, Master Tchetchevitsin!
You are a bad boy. You are a mischief-maker and your parents will punish
you. Do you think it was right to run away? Where did you spend the
night?”

“In the station!” answered Tchetchevitsin proudly.

Volodia was put to bed, and a towel soaked in vinegar was laid on his
head. A telegram was despatched, and next day a lady arrived,
Tchetchevitsin’s mamma, who took her son away.

As Tchetchevitsin departed his face looked haughty and stern. He said
not a word as he took his leave of the girls, but in a copy-book of
Katia’s he wrote these words for remembrance:

“Montezuma Hawkeye.”

GRISHA

Grisha, a chubby little boy born only two years and eight months ago,
was out walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He wore a long, wadded
burnoose, a large cap with a furry knob, a muffler, and wool-lined
goloshes. He felt stuffy and hot, and, in addition, the waxing sun of
April was beating directly into his face and making his eyelids smart.

Every inch of his awkward little figure, with its timid, uncertain
steps, bespoke a boundless perplexity.

Until that day the only universe known to Grisha had been square. In one
corner of it stood his crib, in another stood nurse’s trunk, in the
third was a chair, and in the fourth a little icon lamp. If you looked
under the bed you saw a doll with one arm and a drum; behind nurse’s
trunk were a great many various objects: a few empty spools, some scraps
of paper, a box without a lid, and a broken jumping-jack. In this world,
besides nurse and Grisha, there often appeared mamma and the cat. Mamma
looked like a doll, and the cat looked like papa’s fur coat, only the
fur coat did not have eyes and a tail. From the world which was called
the nursery a door led to a place where people dined and drank tea.
There stood Grisha’s high chair and there hung the clock made to wag its
pendulum and strike. From the dining-room one could pass into another
room with big red chairs; there, on the floor, glowered a dark stain for
which people still shook their forefingers at Grisha. Still farther
beyond lay another room, where one was not allowed to go, and in which
one sometimes caught glimpses of papa, a very mysterious person! The
functions of mamma and nurse were obvious: they dressed Grisha, fed him,
and put him to bed; but why papa should be there was incomprehensible.
Aunty was also a puzzling person. She appeared and disappeared. Where
did she go? More than once Grisha had looked for her under the bed,
behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she was not to be found.

In the new world where he now found himself, where the sun dazzled one’s
eyes, there were so many papas and mammas and aunties that one scarcely
knew which one to run to. But the funniest and oddest things of all were
the horses. Grisha stared at their moving legs and could not understand
them at all. He looked up at nurse, hoping that she might help him to
solve the riddle, but she answered nothing.

Suddenly he heard a terrible noise. Straight toward him down the street
came a squad of soldiers marching in step, with red faces and sticks
under their arms. Grisha’s blood ran cold with terror and he looked up
anxiously at his nurse to inquire if this were not dangerous. But nursie
neither ran away nor cried, so he decided it must be safe. He followed
the soldiers with his eyes and began marching in step with them.

Across the street ran two big, long-nosed cats, their tails sticking
straight up into the air and their tongues lolling out of their mouths.
Grisha felt that he, too, ought to run, and he started off in pursuit.

“Stop, stop!” cried nursie, seizing him roughly by the shoulder. “Where
are you going? Who told you to be naughty?”

But there sat a sort of nurse with a basket of oranges in her lap. As
Grisha passed her he silently took one.

“Don’t do that!” cried his fellow wayfarer, slapping his hand and
snatching the orange away from him. “Little stupid!”

Next, Grisha would gladly have picked up some of the slivers of glass
that rattled under his feet and glittered like icon lamps, but he was
afraid that his hand might be slapped again.

“Good day!” Grisha heard a loud, hoarse voice say over his very ear,
and, looking up, he caught sight of a tall person with shiny buttons.

To his great joy this man shook hands with nursie; they stood together
and entered into conversation. The sunlight, the rumbling of the
vehicles, the horses, the shiny buttons, all struck Grisha as so
amazingly new and yet unterrifying, that his heart overflowed with
delight and he began to laugh.

“Come! Come!” he cried to the man with the shiny buttons, pulling his
coat tails.

“Where to?” asked the man.

“Come!” Grisha insisted. He would have liked to say that it would be
nice to take papa and mamma and the cat along, too, but somehow his
tongue would not obey him.

In a few minutes nurse turned off the boulevard and led Grisha into a
large courtyard where the snow still lay on the ground. The man with
shiny buttons followed them. Carefully avoiding the puddles and lumps of
snow, they picked their way across the courtyard, mounted a dark, grimy
staircase, and entered a room where the air was heavy with smoke and a
strong smell of cooking. A woman was standing over a stove frying chops.
This cook and nurse embraced one another, and, sitting down on a bench
with the man, began talking in low voices. Bundled up as he was, Grisha
felt unbearably hot.

“What does this mean?” he asked himself, gazing about. He saw a dingy
ceiling, a two-pronged oven fork, and a stove with a huge oven mouth
gaping at him.

“Ma-a-m-ma!” he wailed.

“Now! Now!” his nurse called to him. “Be good!”

The cook set a bottle, two glasses, and a pie on the table. The two
women and the man with the shiny buttons touched glasses and each had
several drinks. The man embraced alternately the cook and the nurse.
Then all three began to sing softly.

Grisha stretched his hand toward the pie, and they gave him a piece. He
ate it and watched his nurse drinking. He wanted to drink, too.

“Give, nursie! Give!” he begged.

The cook gave him a drink out of her glass. He screwed up his eyes,
frowned, and coughed for a long time after that, beating the air with
his hands, while the cook watched him and laughed.

When he reached home, Grisha explained to mamma, the walls, and his crib
where he had been and what he had seen. He told it less with his tongue
than with his hands and his face; he showed how the sun had shone, how
the horses had trotted, how the terrible oven had gaped at him, and how
the cook had drunk.

That evening he could not possibly go to sleep. The soldiers with their
sticks, the great cats, the horses, the bits of glass, the basket of
oranges, the shiny buttons, all this lay piled on his brain and
oppressed him. He tossed from side to side, chattering to himself, and
finally, unable longer to endure his excitement, he burst into tears.

“Why, he has fever!” cried mamma, laying the palm of her hand on his
forehead. “What can be the reason?”

“The stove!” wept Grisha. “Go away, stove!”

“He has eaten something that has disagreed with him,” mamma concluded.

And, shaken by his impressions of a new life apprehended for the first
time, Grisha was given a spoonful of castor-oil by mamma.

A TRIFLE FROM REAL LIFE

Nikolai Ilitch Belayeff was a young gentleman of St. Petersburg, aged
thirty-two, rosy, well fed, and a patron of the race-tracks. Once,
toward evening, he went to pay a call on Olga Ivanovna with whom, to use
his own expression, he was dragging through a long and tedious
love-affair. And the truth was that the first thrilling, inspiring pages
of this romance had long since been read, and that the story was now
dragging wearily on, presenting nothing that was either interesting or
novel.

Not finding Olga at home, my hero threw himself upon a couch and
prepared to await her return.

“Good evening, Nikolai Ilitch!” he heard a child’s voice say. “Mamma
will soon be home. She has gone to the dressmaker’s with Sonia.”

On the divan in the same room lay Aliosha, Olga’s son, a small boy of
eight, immaculately and picturesquely dressed in a little velvet suit
and long black stockings. He had been lying on a satin pillow, mimicking
the antics of an acrobat he had seen at the circus. First he stretched
up one pretty leg, then another; then, when they were tired, he brought
his arms into play, and at last jumped up galvanically, throwing himself
on all fours in an effort to stand on his head. He went through all
these motions with the most serious face in the world, puffing like a
martyr, as if he himself regretted that God had given him such a
restless little body.

“Ah, good evening, my boy!” said Belayeff. “Is that you? I did not know
you were here. Is mamma well?”

Aliosha seized the toe of his left shoe in his right hand, assumed the
most unnatural position in the world, rolled over, jumped up, and peeped
out at Belayeff from under the heavy fringes of the lampshade.

“Not very,” he said shrugging his shoulders. “Mamma is never really
well. She is a woman, you see, and women always have something the
matter with them.”

From lack of anything better to do, Belayeff began scrutinizing
Aliosha’s face. During all his acquaintance with Olga he had never
bestowed any consideration upon the boy or noticed his existence at all.
He had seen the child about, but what he was doing there Belayeff,
somehow, had never cared to think.

Now, in the dusk of evening, Aliosha’s pale face and fixed, dark eyes
unexpectedly reminded Belayeff of Olga as she had appeared in the first
pages of their romance. He wanted to pet the boy.

“Come here, little monkey,” he said, “and let me look at you!”

The boy jumped down from the sofa and ran to Belayeff.

“Well,” the latter began, laying his hand on the boy’s thin shoulder.
“And how are you? Is everything all right with you?”

“No, not very. It used to be much better.”

“In what way?”

“That’s easy to answer. Sonia and I used to learn only music and reading
before, but now we have French verses, too. You have cut your beard!”

“Yes.”

“So I noticed. It is shorter than it was. Please let me touch it—does
that hurt?”

“No, not a bit.”

“Why does it hurt if you pull one hair at a time, and not a bit if you
pull lots? Ha! Ha! I’ll tell you something. You ought to wear whiskers!
You could shave here on the sides, here, and here you could let the hair
grow——”

The boy nestled close to Belayeff and began to play with his
watch-chain.

“Mamma is going to give me a watch when I go to school, and I am going
to ask her to give me a chain just like yours—Oh, what a lovely locket!
Papa has a locket just like that; only yours has little stripes on it,
and papa’s has letters. He has a portrait of mamma in his locket. Papa
wears another watch-chain now made of ribbon.”

“How do you know? Do you ever see your papa?”

“I—n-no—I——”

Aliosha blushed deeply at being caught telling a fib and began to
scratch the locket furiously with his nail. Belayeff looked searchingly
into his face and repeated:

“Do you ever see your papa?”

“N-no!”

“Come, tell me honestly! I can see by your face that you are not telling
the truth. It’s no use quibbling now that the cat is out of the bag.
Tell me, do you see him? Now then, as between friends!”

Aliosha reflected.

“You won’t tell mamma?” he asked.

“What an idea!”

“Honour bright?”

“Honour bright!”

“Promise!”

“Oh, you insufferable child! What do you take me for?”

Aliosha glanced around, opened his eyes wide, and said:

“For heaven’s sake don’t tell mamma! Don’t tell a soul, because it’s a
secret. I don’t know what would happen to Sonia and Pelagia and me if
mamma should find out. Now, listen. Sonia and I see papa every Thursday
and every Friday. When Pelagia takes us out walking before dinner we go
to Anfel’s confectionery and there we find papa already waiting for us.
He is always sitting in the little private room with the marble table
and the ash-tray that’s made like a goose without a back.”

“What do you do in there?”

“We don’t do anything. First we say how do you do, and then papa orders
coffee and pasties for us. Sonia likes pasties with meat, you know, but
I can’t abide them with meat. I like mine with cabbage or eggs. We eat
so much that we have a hard time eating our dinner afterward so that
mamma won’t guess anything.”

“What do you talk about?”

“With papa? Oh, about everything. He kisses us and hugs us and tells us
the funniest jokes. Do you know what? He says that when we grow bigger
he is going to take us to live with him. Sonia doesn’t want to go, but I
wouldn’t mind. Of course it would be lonely without mamma, but I could
write letters to her. Isn’t it funny, we might go and see her then on
Sundays, mightn’t we? Papa says, too, he is going to buy me a pony. He
is such a nice man! I don’t know why mamma doesn’t ask him to live with
her and why she won’t let us see him. He loves mamma very much. He
always asks how she is and what she has been doing. When she was ill he
took hold of his head just like this—and ran about the room. He always
asks us whether we are obedient and respectful to her. Tell me, is it
true that we are unfortunate?”

“H’m—why do you ask?”

“Because papa says we are. He says we are unfortunate children, and that
he is unfortunate, and that mamma is unfortunate. He tells us to pray to
God for her and for ourselves.”

Aliosha fixed his eyes on the figure of a stuffed bird, and became lost
in thought.

“Well, I declare—” muttered Belayeff. “So, that’s what you do, you hold
meetings at a confectioner’s? And your mamma doesn’t know it?”

“N-no. How could she? Pelagia wouldn’t tell her for the world. Day
before yesterday papa gave us pears. They were as sweet as sugar. I ate
two!”

“H’m. But—listen to me, does papa ever say anything about me?”

“About you? What shall I say?” Aliosha looked searchingly into
Belayeff’s face and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing special,” he
answered.

“Well, what does he say, for instance?”

“You won’t be angry if I tell you?”

“What an idea! Does he abuse me?”

“No, he doesn’t abuse you, but, you know, he is angry with you. He says
that it is your fault that mamma is unhappy, and that you have ruined
mamma. He is such a funny man! I tell him that you are kind and that you
never scold mamma, but he only shakes his head.”

“So he says I have ruined her?”

“Yes—don’t be angry, Nikolai Ilitch!”

Belayeff rose and began pacing up and down the room.

“How strange this is—and how ridiculous!” he muttered shrugging his
shoulders and smiling sarcastically. “It is all _his_ fault and yet he
says _I_ have ruined her! What an innocent baby this is! And so he told
you I had ruined your mother?”

“Yes, but—you promised not to be angry!”

“I’m not angry and—and it is none of your business anyway. Yes, this
is—this is really ridiculous! Here I have been caught like a mouse in a
trap, and now it seems it is all my fault!”

The door-bell rang. The boy tore himself from Belayeff’s arms and ran
out of the room. A moment later a lady entered with a little girl. It
was Aliosha’s mother, Olga Ivanovna. Aliosha skipped into the room
behind her, singing loudly and clapping his hands. Belayeff nodded and
continued to walk up and down.

“Of course!” he muttered. “Whom should he blame but me? He has right on
his side! He is the injured husband.”

“What is that you are saying?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“What am I saying? Just listen to what your young hopeful here has been
preaching. It appears that I am a wicked scoundrel and that I have
ruined you and your children. You are all unhappy, and I alone am
frightfully happy. Frightfully, frightfully happy!”

“I don’t understand you, Nikolai. What is the matter?”

“Just listen to what this young gentleman here has to say!” cried
Belayeff pointing to Aliosha.

Aliosha flushed and then grew suddenly pale and his face became
distorted with fear.

“Nikolai Ilitch!” he whispered loudly. “Hush!”

Olga Ivanovna looked at Aliosha in surprise, and then at Belayeff, and
then back again at Aliosha.

“Ask him!” Belayeff continued. “That idiot of yours, Pelagia, takes them
to a confectioner’s and arranges meetings there between them and their
papa. But that isn’t the point. The point is that papa is the victim,
and that I am an abandoned scoundrel who has wrecked the lives of both
of you!”

“Nikolai Ilitch!” groaned Aliosha. “You gave me your word of honour!”

“Leave me alone!” Belayeff motioned to him impatiently. “This is more
important than words of honour. This hypocrisy, these lies are
intolerable!”

“I don’t understand!” cried Olga Ivanovna, the tears glistening in her
eyes. “Listen, Aliosha,” she asked, turning to her son. “Do you really
see your father?”

But Aliosha did not hear her, his eyes were fixed with horror on
Belayeff.

“It cannot be possible!” his mother exclaimed, “I must go and ask
Pelagia.”

Olga Ivanovna left the room.

“But Nikolai Ilitch, you gave me your word of honour!” cried Aliosha
trembling all over.

Belayeff made an impatient gesture and went on pacing the floor. He was
absorbed in thoughts of the wrong that had been done him, and, as
before, was unconscious of the boy’s presence: a serious, grown-up
person like him could not be bothered with little boys. But Aliosha
crept into a corner and told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived.
He trembled and hiccoughed and cried. This was the first time in his
life that he had come roughly face to face with deceit; he had never
imagined till now that there were things in this world besides pasties
and watches and sweet pears, things for which no name could be found in
the vocabulary of childhood.

THE COOK’S WEDDING

Grisha, a little urchin of seven, stood at the kitchen door with his eye
at the keyhole, watching and listening. Something was taking place in
the kitchen that seemed to him very strange and that he had never seen
happen before. At the table on which the meat and onions were usually
chopped sat a huge, burly peasant in a long coachman’s coat. His hair
and beard were red, and a large drop of perspiration hung from the tip
of his nose. He was holding his saucer on the outstretched fingers of
his right hand and, as he supped his tea, was nibbling a lump of sugar
so noisily that the goose-flesh started out on Grisha’s back. On a grimy
stool opposite him sat Grisha’s old nurse, Aksinia. She also was
drinking tea; her mien was serious and at the same time radiant with
triumph. Pelagia, the cook, was busy over the stove and seemed to be
endeavouring to conceal her face by every possible means. Grisha could
see that it was fairly on fire, burning hot, and flooded in turn with
every colour of the rainbow from dark purple to a deathly pallor. The
cook was constantly catching up knives, forks, stove-wood, and dish-rags
in her trembling hands, and was bustling about and grumbling and making
a great racket without accomplishing anything. She did not once glance
toward the table at which the other two were sitting, and replied to the
nurse’s questions abruptly and roughly without ever turning her head in
their direction.

“Drink, drink, Danilo!” the nurse was urging the driver. “What makes you
always drink tea? Take some vodka!”

And the nurse pushed the bottle toward her guest, her face assuming a
malicious expression.

“No, ma’am, I don’t use it. Thank you, ma’am,” the driver replied.
“Don’t force me to drink it, goody Aksinia!”

“What’s the matter with you? What, you a driver and won’t drink vodka? A
single man ought to drink! Come, have a little!”

The driver rolled his eyes at the vodka and then at the malicious face
of the nurse, and his own face assumed an expression no less crafty than
hers.

“No, no; you’ll not catch me, you old witch!” he seemed to be saying.

“No, thank you; I don’t drink,” he answered aloud. “That foolishness
won’t do in our business. A workman can drink if he wants to because he
never budges from the same place, but we fellows live too much in
public. Don’t we now? Supposing I were to go into an inn and my horse
were to break away, or, worse still, supposing I were to get drunk and,
before I knew it, were to go to sleep and fall off the box? That’s what
happens!”

“How much do you make a day, Danilo?”

“That depends on the day. There are days and days. A coachman’s job
isn’t worth much now. You know yourself that drivers are as thick as
flies, hay is expensive, travellers are scarce and are always wanting to
go everywhere on horseback. But, praise be to God, we don’t complain. We
keep ourselves clothed and fed and we can even make some one else
happy—(here the driver cast a look in Pelagia’s direction)—if they want
us to!”

Grisha did not hear what was said next. His mamma came to the door and
sent him away to the nursery to study.

“Be off to your lessons, you have no business to be here!” she
exclaimed.

On reaching the nursery, Grisha took up “Our Mother Tongue,” and tried
to read, but without success. The words he had just overheard had raised
a host of questions in his mind.

“The cook is going to be married,” he thought. “That is strange. I don’t
understand why she wants to be married. Mamma married papa and Cousin
Vera married Pavel Andreitch, but papa and Pavel Andreitch have gold
watch-chains and nice clothes and their boots are always clean. I can
understand any one marrying them. But this horrid driver with his red
nose and his felt boots—ugh! And why does nursie want poor Pelagia to
marry?”

When her guest had gone, Pelagia came into the house to do the
housework. Her excitement had not subsided. Her face was red and she
looked startled. She scarcely touched the floor with her broom and swept
out every corner at least five times. She lingered in the room where
Grisha’s mamma was sitting. Solitude seemed to be irksome to her and she
longed to pour out her heart in words and to share her impressions with
some one.

“Well, he’s gone!” she began, seeing that mamma would not open the
conversation.

“He seems to be a nice man,” said mamma without looking up from her
embroidery. “He is sober and steady looking.”

“My lady, I won’t marry him!” Pelagia suddenly screamed. “I declare I
won’t!”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not a baby! Marriage is a serious thing, and you
must think it over carefully and not scream like that for no reason at
all. Do you like him?”

“Oh, my lady!” murmured Pelagia in confusion. “He does say such
things—indeed he does!”

“She ought to say outright she doesn’t like him,” thought Grisha.

“What a goose you are! Tell me, do you like him?”

“He’s an old man, my lady! Hee, hee!”

“Listen to her!” the nurse burst out from the other end of the room. “He
isn’t forty yet! You mustn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth! Marry him
and have done with it!”

“I won’t marry him! I won’t, I won’t!” screamed Pelagia.

“Then you’re a donkey, you are! What in the world are you after, anyhow?
Any other woman but you would be down on her knees to him, and you say
you won’t marry him! She’s running after Grisha’s tutor, she is, my
lady; she’s setting her cap at him! Ugh, the shameless creature!”

“Had you ever seen this Danilo before to-day?” her mistress asked
Pelagia.

“How could I have seen him before to-day? This was the first time.
Aksinia picked him up somewhere—bad luck to him! Why must I have him
thrown at my head?”

That day the whole family kept their eyes fixed on Pelagia’s face as she
was serving the dinner and teased her about the driver. Pelagia blushed
furiously and giggled with confusion.

“What a shameful thing it must be to get married!” thought Grisha. “What
a horribly shameful thing!”

The whole dinner was too salty, blood was oozing from the half-cooked
chickens, and, to complete the disaster, Pelagia kept dropping the
knives and forks and dishes as if her hands had been a pair of rickety
shelves. No one blamed her, however, for every one knew what her state
of mind must be.

Once only did papa angrily throw down his napkin and exclaim to mamma:

“What is this craze you have for match-making? Can’t you let them manage
it for themselves if they want to get married?”

After dinner the neighbouring cooks and maids kept flitting in and out
of the kitchen, and were whispering together there until late in the
evening. Heaven knows how they had scented the approaching wedding!
Waking up at midnight, Grisha heard his nurse and the cook murmuring
together in his nursery behind the curtain. The nurse was trying to
convince the cook of something, and the latter was alternately sobbing
and giggling. When he fell asleep, Grisha saw in his dreams Pelagia
being spirited away by the Evil One and a witch.

Next day quiet reigned once more, and from that time forward life in the
kitchen jogged on as if there were no such thing in the world as a
driver. Only nurse would don her new shawl from time to time and sally
forth for a couple of hours, evidently to a conference, with a serious
and triumphant expression on her face. Pelagia and the driver did not
see one another, and if any one mentioned his name to her she would fly
into a rage and exclaim:

“Bad luck to him! As if I ever thought of him at all—ugh!”

One evening, while Pelagia and the nurse were busily cutting out clothes
in the kitchen, mamma came in and said:

“Of course you may marry him, Pelagia, that is your own affair, but I
want you to understand that I can’t have him living here. You know I
don’t like to have men sitting in the kitchen. Remember that! And I
can’t ever let you go out for the night.”

“What do you take me for, my lady?” screamed Pelagia. “Why do you cast
him into my teeth? Let him fuss all he wants to! What does he mean by
hanging himself round my neck, the——”

Looking into the kitchen one Sunday morning, Grisha was petrified with
astonishment. The room was packed to overflowing; the cooks from all the
neighbouring houses were there with the house porter, two constables, a
sergeant in his gold lace, and a boy named Filka. This Filka was
generally to be found hanging about the wash-house playing with the
dogs, but to-day he was washed and brushed and dressed in a gold-tinsel
cassock and was carrying an icon in his hands. In the middle of the
kitchen stood Pelagia in a new gingham dress with a wreath of flowers on
her head. At her side stood the driver. The young couple were flushed
and perspiring, and were blinking their eyes furiously.

“Well, it’s time to begin,” said the sergeant after a long silence.

A spasm passed over Pelagia’s features and she began to bawl. The
sergeant picked up a huge loaf of bread from the table, pulled the nurse
to his side, and commenced the ceremony. The driver approached the
sergeant and flopped down on his knees before him, delivering a smacking
kiss on his hand. Pelagia went mechanically after him and also flopped
down on her knees. At last the outside door opened, a gust of white mist
blew into the kitchen, and the assembly streamed out into the courtyard.

“Poor, poor woman!” thought Grisha, listening to the cook’s sobs. “Where
are they taking her? Why don’t papa and mamma interfere?”

After the wedding they sang and played the concertina in the laundry
until night. Mamma was annoyed because nurse smelled of vodka and
because, with all these weddings, there never was any one to put on the
samovar. Pelagia had not come in when Grisha went to bed that night.

“Poor woman, she is crying out there somewhere in the dark,” he thought.
“And the driver is telling her to shut up!”

Next morning the cook was back in the kitchen again. The driver came in
for a few minutes. He thanked mamma, and, casting a stern look at
Pelagia, said:

“Keep a sharp eye on her, my lady! And you, too, Aksinia, don’t let her
alone; make her behave herself. No nonsense for her! And please let me
have five roubles of her wages, my lady, to buy myself a new pair of
hames.”

Here, then, was a fresh puzzle for Grisha! Pelagia had been free to do
as she liked and had been responsible to no one, and now suddenly, for
no reason at all, along came an unknown man who seemed somehow to have
acquired the right to control her actions and her property! Grisha grew
very sad. He was on the verge of tears and longed passionately to be
kind to this woman, who, it seemed to him, was a victim of human
violence. He ran into the storeroom, picked out the largest apple he
could find there, tiptoed into the kitchen, and, thrusting the apple
into Pelagia’s hand, rushed back as fast as his legs could carry him.

SHROVE TUESDAY

“Here, Pavel, Pavel!” Pelagia Ivanovna cried, rousing her husband from a
nap. “Do go and help Stepa! He is sitting there crying again over his
lessons. It must be something he can’t understand.”

Pavel Vasilitch got up, made the sign of the cross over his yawning
mouth, and said meekly:

“Very well, dear.”

The cat sleeping beside him also jumped up, stretched its tail in the
air, arched its back, and half-closed its eyes. The mice could be heard
scuttling behind the hangings. Having put on his slippers and
dressing-gown, Pavel Vasilitch passed into the dining-room all ruffled
and heavy with sleep. A second cat that had been sniffing at a plate of
cold fish on the window-sill jumped to the floor as he entered, and hid
in the cupboard.

“Who told you to go smelling that?” Pavel Vasilitch cried with vexation,
covering the fish with a newspaper. “You’re more of a pig than a cat!”

A door led from the dining-room into the nursery. There, at a table
disfigured with deep gouges and stains, sat Stepa, a schoolboy of ten
with tearful eyes and a petulant face. He was hugging his knees to his
chin and swaying backward and forward like a Chinese idol with his eyes
fixed angrily on the schoolbook before him.

“So you’re learning your lessons, eh?” asked Pavel Vasilitch, yawning
and taking his seat at the table beside him. “That’s the way, sonny.
You’ve had your play and your nap, and you’ve eaten your pancakes, and
to-morrow will be Lent, a time of repentance; so now you’re at work. The
happiest day must have an end. What do those tears mean? Are your
lessons getting the better of you? It’s hard to do lessons after eating
pancakes! That’s what ails you, little sonny!”

“Why do you laugh at the child?” calls Pelagia Ivanovna from the next
room. “Show him how to do his lessons, instead of making fun of him! Oh,
what a trial he is! He’ll be sure to get a bad mark to-morrow!”

“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Pavel Vasilitch of Stepa.

“This here, how to divide these fractions,” the boy answered crossly.
“The division of fractions by fractions.”

“H’m, you little pickle, that’s easy, there’s nothing about it to
understand. You must do the sum right, that’s all. To divide one
fraction by another you multiply the numerator of the first by the
denominator of the second in order to get the numerator of the quotient.
Very well. Now the denominator of the first——”

“I know that already!” Stepa interrupted him, flicking a nutshell off
the table. “Show me an example.”

“An example? Very well, let me have a pencil. Now, then, listen to me.
Supposing that we want to divide seven-eighths by two-fifths. Very well,
then the proposition is this: we want to divide these two fractions by
one another—Is the samovar boiling?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because it’s eight o’clock and time for tea. Very well, now listen to
me. Supposing that we divide seven-eighths not by two-fifths, but by
two, that is by the numerator only. What is the answer?”

“Seven-sixteenths.”

“Splendid! Good boy! Now, then, sonny, the trick is this: as we have
divided—let me see—as we have divided it by two, of course—wait a
minute, I’m getting muddled myself. I remember when I was a boy at
school we had a Polish arithmetic master named Sigismund Urbanitch, who
used to get muddled over every lesson. He would suddenly lose his wits
while he was in the midst of demonstrating a proposition, blush to the
roots of his hair, and rush about the classroom as if the devil were
after him. Then he would blow his nose four or five times and burst into
tears. But we were generous to him, we used to pretend not to notice it,
and would ask him whether he had the toothache. And yet we were a class
of pirates, of cutthroats, I can tell you, but, as you see, we were
generous. We boys weren’t puny like you when I was a youngster; we were
great big chaps, you never saw such great strapping fellows! There was
Mamakin, for instance, in the third grade. Lord! What a giant he was!
Why, that colossus was seven feet high! The whole house shook when he
walked across the floor and he would knock the breath out of your body
if he laid his hand on your shoulder. Not only we boys, but even the
masters feared him. Why Mamakin would sometimes——”

Pelagia Ivanovna’s footsteps resounded in the next room. Pavel Vasilitch
winked at the door and whispered:

“Mother’s coming, let’s get to work! Very well, then, sonny,” he
continued, raising his voice. “We want to divide this fraction by that
one. All right. To do that we must multiply the numerator of the first
by——”

“Come in to tea!” called Pelagia Ivanovna.

Father and son left their arithmetic and went in to tea. Pelagia
Ivanovna was already seated at the dining-table with the silent aunt and
another aunt who was deaf and dumb and old granny Markovna, who had
assisted Stepa into the world. The samovar was hissing and emitting jets
of steam that settled in large, dark shadows upon the ceiling. The cats
came in from the hall, sleepy, melancholy, their tails standing straight
up in the air.

“Do have some preserves with your tea, Markovna!” said Pelagia Ivanovna
turning to the old dame. “To-morrow will be Lent, so you must eat all
you can.”

Markovna helped herself to a large spoonful of jam, raised it to her
lips, and swallowed it with a sidelong glance at Pavel Vasilitch. Next
moment a sweet smile broke over her face, a smile almost as sweet as the
jam itself.

“These preserves are perfectly delicious!” she exclaimed. “Did you make
them yourself, Pelagia Ivanovna, dearie?”

“Yes, of course, who else could have made them? I do everything myself.
Stepa, darling, was your tea too weak for you? Mercy, you’ve finished it
already! Come, hand me your cup, sweetheart, and let me give you some
more.”

“That young Mamakin I was telling you about, sonny,” continued Pavel
Vasilitch, turning to Stepa, “couldn’t abide our French teacher. ‘I’m a
gentleman!’ he used to exclaim. ‘I won’t be lorded over by a Frenchman!’
Of course he used to be flogged for it, and badly flogged, too. When he
knew he was in for a thrashing he used to jump through the window and
take to his heels, not showing his nose in school after that for five or
six days. Then his mother would go to the head master and beg him for
pity’s sake to find her Mishka and give the scoundrel a thrashing, but
the head master used to say: ‘That’s all very well, madam, but no five
of our men can hold that fellow!’”

“My goodness, what dreadful boys there are in the world!” whispered
Pelagia Ivanovna, fixing terrified eyes on her husband. “His poor
mother!”

A silence followed—Stepa yawned loudly as he contemplated the Chinaman
on the tea-caddy whom he had seen at least a thousand times before.
Markovna and the two aunts sipped their tea primly from their saucers.
The air was close and oppressive with the heat of the stove. The
lassitude that comes to the satiated body when it is forced to continue
eating was depicted on the faces and in the movements of the family. The
samovar had been taken away and the table had been cleared, but they
still continued to sit about the board. Pelagia Ivanovna jumped up from
time to time and ran into the kitchen with a look of horror on her face
to confer with the cook about supper. The aunts both sat motionless in
the same position, dozing with their hands folded on their chests and
their lack-lustre eyes fixed on the lamp. Markovna kept hiccoughing
every minute and asked each time:

“I wonder what makes me hiccough? I don’t know what I could have eaten
or drunk—hick!”

Pavel Vasilitch and Stepa leaned over the table side by side with their
heads together, poring over the pages of the _Neva Magazine_ for the
year 1878.

“‘The monument to Leonardo da Vinci in front of the Victor Emmanuel
Museum at Milan.’ Look at that, it’s like a triumphal arch! And there
are a man and a lady, and there are some more little people——”

“That looks like one of the boys at our school,” Stepa said.

“Turn over the page—‘The Proboscis of the House Fly as Seen through the
Microscope.’ Goodness what a fly! I wonder what a bedbug would look like
under the microscope, eh? How disgusting!”

The ancient hall clock coughed rather than struck ten times, as if it
were afflicted with a cold. Into the dining-room came Anna the cook and
fell flop at her master’s feet.

“Forgive me my sins, master, for Christ’s sake!” she cried and got up
again very red in the face.

“Forgive me mine, too, for Christ’s sake!” answered Pavel Vasilitch
calmly.

Anna then fell down at the feet of every member of the family in turn
and asked forgiveness for her sins, omitting only Markovna, who, not
being high-born, was unworthy of a prostration.

Another half-hour passed in silence and peace. The _Neva_ was tossed
aside onto the sofa and Pavel Vasilitch, with one finger raised aloft,
was reciting Latin poetry he had learned in his youth. Stepa was
watching his father’s finger with its wedding-ring and dozing as he
listened to the words he could not understand. He rubbed his heavy eyes
with his fist but they kept closing tighter and tighter each time.

“I’m going to bed!” he said at last, stretching and yawning.

“What? To bed?” cried Pelagia Ivanovna. “Won’t you eat your meat for the
last time before Lent?”

“I don’t want any meat.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” his startled mother exclaimed.
“How can you say that? You won’t have any meat after to-night for the
whole of Lent!”

Pavel Vasilitch was startled, too.

“Yes, yes, sonny,” he cried. “Your mother will give you nothing but
Lenten fare for seven weeks after to-night. This won’t do. You must eat
your meat!”

“But I want to go to bed!” whimpered Stepa.

“Then bring in the supper quick!” cried Pavel Vasilitch in a flutter.
“Anna, what are you doing in there, you old slow-coach? Come quick and
bring in the supper!”

Pelagia Ivanovna threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen as if
the house were afire.

“Hurry! Hurry!” rang through the house. “Stepa wants to go to bed! Anna!
Oh, heavens, what is the matter? Hurry!”

In five minutes the supper was on the table. The cats appeared once
more, stretching and arching their backs, with their tails in the air.
The family applied themselves to their meal. No one was hungry, all were
surfeited to the point of bursting, but they felt it was their duty to
eat.

IN PASSION WEEK

“Run, the church-bells are ringing! Be a good boy in church and don’t
play! If you do, God will punish you!”

My mother slipped a few copper coins into my hand and then forgot all
about me, as she ran into the kitchen with an iron that was growing
cold. I knew I should not be allowed to eat or drink after confession,
so before leaving home I choked down a crust of bread and drank two
glasses of water. Spring was at its height. The street was a sea of
brown mud through which ruts were already in process of being worn; the
housetops and sidewalks were dry, and the tender young green of
springtime was pushing up through last year’s dry grass under the fence
rows. Muddy rivulets were babbling and murmuring down the gutters in
which the sun did not disdain to lave its rays. Chips, bits of straw,
and nutshells were floating swiftly down with the current, twisting and
turning and catching on the dirty foam flakes. Whither, whither were
they drifting? Would they not be swept from the gutter into the river,
from the river into the sea, and from the sea into the mighty ocean? I
tried to picture to myself the long and terrible journey before them,
but my imagination failed even before reaching the river.

A cab drove by. The cabman was clucking to his horse and slapping the
reins, unaware of two street-urchins hanging from the springs of his
little carriage. I wanted to join these boys, but straightway remembered
that I was on my way to confession, whereupon the boys appeared to me to
be very wicked sinners indeed.

“God will ask them on the Last Judgment Day why they played tricks on a
poor cabman,” I thought. “They will begin to make excuses, but the devil
will grab them and throw them into eternal fire. But if they obey their
fathers and mothers and give pennies and bread to the beggars, God will
have mercy on them and will let them into Paradise.”

The church porch was sunny and dry. Not a soul was there; I opened the
church door irresolutely and entered the building. There, in the dim
light more fraught with melancholy and gloom for me than ever before, I
became overwhelmed by the consciousness of my wickedness and sin. The
first object that met my sight was a huge crucifixion with the Virgin
and St. John the Baptist on either side of the cross. The lustres and
shutters were hung with mourning black, the icon lamps were glimmering
faintly, and the sun seemed to be purposely avoiding the church windows.
The Mother of God and the favourite Disciple were depicted in profile
silently gazing at that unutterable agony upon the cross, oblivious of
my presence. I felt that I was a stranger to them, paltry and vile; that
I could not help them by word or deed; that I was a horrid, worthless
boy, fit only to chatter and be naughty and rough. I called to mind all
my acquaintances, and they all seemed to me to be trivial and silly and
wicked, incapable of consoling one atom the terrible grief before me.
The murky twilight deepened, the Mother of God and John the Baptist
seemed very lonely.

Behind the lectern where the candles were sold stood the old soldier
Prokofi, now churchwarden’s assistant.

His eyebrows were raised and he was stroking his beard and whispering to
an old woman.

“The service will begin directly after vespers this evening. There will
be prayers after matins to-morrow at eight o’clock. Do you hear me? At
eight o’clock.”

Between two large pillars near the rood-screen the penitents were
standing in line waiting their turn for confession. Among them was
Mitka, a ragged little brat with an ugly, shaven head, protruding ears,
and small, wicked eyes. He was the son of Nastasia the washerwoman, and
was a bully and a thief who filched apples from the fruit-stalls and had
more than once made away with my knuckle-bones. He was now staring
crossly at me and seemed to be exulting in the fact that he was going to
confession before me. My heart swelled with rage and I tried not to look
at him. From the bottom of my soul I was furious that this boy’s sins
were about to be forgiven.

In front of him stood a richly dressed lady with a white plume in her
hat. Clearly she was deeply agitated and tensely expectant, and one of
her cheeks was burning with a feverish flush.

I waited five minutes, ten minutes—then a well-dressed young man with a
long, thin neck came out from behind the screen. He had on high rubber
goloshes, and I at once began dreaming of the day when I should buy a
pair of goloshes like his for myself. I decided that I would certainly
do so. And now came the lady’s turn. She shuddered and went behind the
screen.

Through a crack I could see her approach the altar, prostrate herself,
rise, and bow her head expectantly without looking at the priest. The
priest’s back was turned toward the screen, and all I could see of him
was his broad shoulders, his curly grey hair, and the chain around his
neck from which a cross was suspended. Sighing, without looking at the
lady, he began nodding his head and whispering rapidly, now raising, now
lowering his voice. The lady listened meekly, guiltily almost, with
downcast eyes, and answered him in a few words.

“What can be her sin?” I wondered, looking reverently at her beautiful,
gentle face. “Forgive her, God, and make her happy!”

But now the priest was covering her head with the stole.

“I, Thy unworthy servant,” his voice rang out, “by the power vouchsafed
me, forgive this woman and absolve her from sin——”

The lady prostrated herself once more, kissed the cross, and retired.
Both her cheeks were flushed now, but her face was calm, and unclouded,
and joyous.

“She is happy now,” I thought, my eye wandering from her to the priest
pronouncing the absolution. “But how happy he must be who is able to
forgive sin!”

It was Mitka’s turn next, and my heart suddenly boiled over with hatred
for the little thief. I wanted to go behind the screen ahead of him, I
wanted to be first. Mitka noticed the movement, and hit me on the head
with a candle. I paid him back in his own coin, and for a moment sounds
of panting and the breaking of candles were heard in the church. We were
forcibly parted, and my enemy nervously and stiffly approached the altar
and bowed to the ground, but what happened after that I was unable to
see. All I could think of was that I was going next, after Mitka, and at
that thought the objects around me danced and swam before my eyes.
Mitka’s protruding ears grew larger than ever and melted into the back
of his neck, the priest swayed, and the floor rocked under my feet.

The priest’s voice rang out:

“I, Thy unworthy servant——”

I found myself moving toward the screen. My feet seemed to be treading
on air. I felt as if I were floating. I reached the altar, which was
higher than my head. The weary, dispassionate face of the priest flashed
for a moment across my vision, but after that I saw only his blue-lined
sleeves and one corner of the stole. I felt his near presence, smelled
the odour of his cassock, and heard his stern voice, and the cheek that
was turned toward him began to burn. I lost much of what he said from
excitement, but I answered him earnestly, in a voice that sounded to me
as if it were not my own. I thought of the lonely Mother of God, and the
Disciple, and the crucifixion, and my mother, and wanted to cry and ask
for forgiveness.

“What is your name?” asked the priest, laying the stole over my head.

How relieved I now felt, and how light of heart! My sins were gone, I
was sanctified. I could enter into Paradise. It seemed to me that I
exhaled the same odour as the priest’s cassock, and I sniffed my sleeve
as I came out from behind the screen and went to the deacon to register.
The dim half-light of the church no longer struck me as gloomy, and I
could now look calmly and without anger at Mitka.

“What is your name?” asked the deacon.

“Fedia.”

“Fedia, what?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your daddy’s name?”

“Ivan.”

“And his other name?”

I was silent.

“How old are you?”

“Nine years old.”

On reaching home I went straight to bed to avoid seeing my family at
supper. Shutting my eyes, I lay thinking of how glorious it would be to
be martyred by Herod or some one; to live in a desert feeding bears like
the hermit Seraphim; to pass one’s life in a cell with nothing to eat
but wafers; to give away all one possessed to the poor; to make a
pilgrimage to Kief. I could hear them laying the table in the
dining-room; supper would soon be ready! There would be pickles and
cabbage pasties and baked fish—oh, how hungry I was! I now felt willing
to endure any torture whatsoever, to live in the desert without my
mother, feeding bears out of my own hands, if only I could have just one
little cabbage pasty first!

“Purify my heart, O God!” I prayed, pulling the bedclothes up over my
head. “O guardian angels, save me from sin!”

Next morning, Thursday, I woke with a heart as serene and joyful as a
spring day. I walked gaily and manfully to church, conscious that I was
now a communicant and that I was wearing a beautiful and expensive shirt
made from a silk dress left me by my grandmamma. Everything in church
spoke of joy and happiness and springtime. The Mother of God and John
the Baptist looked less sad than they had the evening before, and the
faces of the communicants were radiant with anticipation. The past, it
seemed, was all forgiven and forgotten. Mitka was there, washed and
dressed in his Sunday best. I looked cheerfully at his protruding ears,
and, to show that I bore him no malice, I said:

“You look fine to-day. If your hair didn’t stick up so and you weren’t
so poorly dressed one might almost think your mother was a lady instead
of a washerwoman. Come and play knuckle-bones with me on Easter Day!”

Mitka looked suspiciously at me and secretly threatened me with his
fist.

The lady of yesterday was radiantly beautiful. She wore a light blue
dress fastened with a large, flashing brooch shaped like a horseshoe.

I stood and admired her, thinking that when I grew to be a man I should
certainly marry a woman like her, but, remembering suddenly that to
think of marriage was shameful, I stopped, and moved toward the choir
where the deacon was already reading the prayers that concluded the
service.

AN INCIDENT

It was morning. Bright rays of sunlight were streaming into the nursery
through the lacy curtain that the frost had drawn across the panes of
the windows. Vania, a boy of six with a shaven head and a nose like a
button, and his sister Nina, a chubby, curly-haired girl of four, woke
from their sleep and stared crossly at one another through the bars of
their cribs.

“Oh, shame, shame!” grumbled nursie. “All good folks have had breakfast
by now and your eyes are still half-closed!”

The sun’s rays were chasing each other merrily across the carpet, the
walls, and the tail of nursie’s dress, and seemed to be inviting the
children to a romp, but they did not notice the sun, they had waked in a
bad humour. Nina pouted, made a wry face, and began to whine:

“Tea, nursie, I want my tea!”

Vania frowned and wondered how he could manage to quarrel and so find an
excuse to bawl. He was already winking his eyes and opening his mouth
when mamma’s voice came from the dining-room saying:

“Don’t forget to give the cat some milk; she has kittens now!”

Vania and Nina pulled long faces and looked dubiously at one another;
then they both screamed, jumped out of bed, and scampered into the
kitchen as they were, barefooted and in their little nightgowns, filling
the air with shrill squeals as they ran.

“The cat has kittens! The cat has kittens!” they shrieked.

Under a bench in the kitchen stood a box, the same box which Stepan used
for carrying coal when fires were lighted in the fire-places. Out of
this box peered the cat. Profound weariness was manifested in her face,
and her green eyes with their narrow black pupils wore an expression
both languid and sentimental. One could see from her mien that if “he,”
the father of her children, were but with her, her happiness would be
complete. She opened her mouth wide and tried to mew but her throat only
emitted a wheezing sound. The squeaking of her kittens came from inside
the box.

The children squatted down on their heels near the box, motionless,
holding their breath, their eyes riveted on the cat. They were dumb with
wonder and amazement and did not hear their nurse as she grumblingly
pursued them. Unaffected pleasure shone in the eyes of both.

In the lives and education of children domestic animals play a useful if
inconspicuous part. Who does not remember some strong, noble watch-dog
of his childhood, some petted spaniel, or the birds that died in
captivity? Who does not recall the stupid, arrogant turkeys, and the
meek old tabby-cats that were always ready to forgive us even when we
stepped on their tails for fun and caused them the keenest pain? I
sometimes think that the loyalty, patience, capacity for forgiveness,
and fidelity of our domestic animals have a far greater and more potent
influence over the minds of children than the long discourses of some
pale, prosy German tutor or the hazy explanations of a governess who
tries to tell them that water is compounded of oxygen and hydrogen.

“Oh, how tiny they are!” cried Nina, staring at the kittens round-eyed
and breaking into a merry peal of laughter—“They look like mice!”

“One, two, three—” counted Vania. “Three kittens. That means one for me
and one for you and one for some one else.”

“Murrm-murr-r-r-m,” purred the cat, flattered at receiving so much
attention. “Murr-r-m.”

When they were tired of looking at the kittens, the children took them
out from under the cat and began squeezing and pinching them; then, not
satisfied with this, they wrapped them in the hems of their nightgowns
and ran with them into the drawing-room.

Their mother was sitting there with a strange man. When she saw the
children come in not dressed, not washed, with their nightgowns in the
air she blushed and looked sternly at them.

“For shame! Let your nightgowns down!” she cried. “Go away or else I
shall have to punish you!”

But the children heeded neither the threats of their mother nor the
presence of the stranger. They laid the kittens down on the carpet and
raised their voices in shrill vociferation. The mother cat roamed about
at their feet and mewed beseechingly. A moment later the children were
seized and borne off into the nursery to be dressed and fed and to say
their prayers, but their hearts were full of passionate longing to have
done with these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and to escape once
more into the kitchen.

Their usual games and occupations faded into the background.

By their arrival in the world the kittens had eclipsed everything else
and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of
the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand
pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain
without a moment’s hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen
until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of
their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious,
absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the
present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one
should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second
should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in
the cellar where there were so many rats.

“But why don’t they open their eyes?” Nina puzzled. “They are blind,
like beggars!”

Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the
eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a
long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children
were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused
all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that
was put under their little noses.

“Come on, let’s make some little houses for the kitties!” Vania
suggested. “Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old
kitty can come and visit them.”

They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens
were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved
to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face,
the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their
former nest.

“Kitty is their mother,” Vania reflected. “But who is their father?”

“Yes, who is their father?” Nina repeated.

“They _must_ have a father,” both decided.

Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of
the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with
a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and
there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken
toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.

“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they
behave themselves!”

Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s
study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the
blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of
the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a
match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as
if he had sprung from the floor.

“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.

“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”

“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy,
you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”

To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for
kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him,
he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:

“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”

At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family
suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a
kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.

“Nina, leave the table at once!” cried her father angrily. “Stepan,
throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute! I won’t have such
filth in the house!”

Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the
slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of
their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans
for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care
of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would
catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the
lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition
that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or
touch the kittens.

When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the
house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had
plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and
were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the
evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who
wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.

“Uncle Peter,” they begged. “Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into
the nursery! Do tell her!”

“All right, all right!” their uncle consented to get rid of them.

Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a
big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was
a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity.
He ignored the children and thumped them with his tail as he stalked by
them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but
this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.

“Do you know what, Nina?” said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. “Let’s
make Nero their father instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is
alive.”

They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit
down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last
papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing
the children—the happy moment had come!

“Come on!” Vania whispered to his sister.

But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:

“Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!”

Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.

“Indeed he has!” chuckled the butler. “He has found the box and eaten
every one!”

The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in
alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this
they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the
appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the
table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great
self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she
roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing
pitifully.

“Children, it’s ten o’clock! Go to bed!” cried mamma.

Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about
the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.

A MATTER OF CLASSICS

Before going to take his Greek examination, Vania Ottopeloff devoutly
kissed every icon in the house. He felt a load on his chest and his
blood ran cold, while his heart beat madly and sank into his boots for
fear of the unknown. What would become of him to-day? Would he get a B
or a C? He asked his mother’s blessing six times over, and, as he left
the house, he begged his aunt to pray for him. On his way to school he
gave two copecks to a beggar, hoping that these two coins might redeem
him from ignorance and that God would not let those numeral nouns with
their terrible “Tessarakontas” and “Oktokaidekas” get in his way.

He came back from school late, at five o’clock, and went silently to his
room to lie down. His thin cheeks were white and dark circles surrounded
his eyes.

“Well? What happened? What did you get?” asked his mother coming to his
bedside.

Vania blinked, made a wry face, and burst into tears. Mamma’s jaw
dropped, she grew pale and threw up her hands, letting fall a pair of
trousers which she had been mending.

“What are you crying for? You have failed, I suppose?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve—I’ve been plucked. I got a C.”

“I knew that would happen, I had a presentiment that it would!” his
mother exclaimed. “The Lord have mercy on us! What did you fail in?”

“In Greek—Oh, mother—they asked me the future of Phero and, instead of
answering Oisomai, I answered Opsomai; and then—and then the accent is
not used if the last syllable is a diphthong, but—but I got confused, I
forgot that the alpha was long and put on the accent. Then we had to
decline Artaxerxes and I got muddled and made a mistake in the
ablative—so he gave me a C—Oh, I’m the unhappiest boy in the whole
world! I worked all last night—I have got up at four every morning this
week——”

“No, it is not you who are unhappy, you good-for-nothing boy, it is I!
You have worn me as thin as a rail, you monster, you thorn in my flesh,
you wicked burden on your parents! I have wept for you, I have broken my
back working for you, you worthless trifler, and what is my reward? Have
you learned a thing?”

“I—I study—all night—you see that yourself——”

“I have prayed God to send death to deliver me, poor sinner, but death
will not come. You bane of my existence! Other people have decent
children, but my only child isn’t worth a pin. Shall I beat you? I would
if I could, but where shall I get the strength to do it? Mother of God,
where shall I get the strength?”

Mamma covered her face with the hem of her dress and burst into tears.
Vania squirmed with grief and pressed his forehead against the wall. His
aunt came in.

“There, now, I had a presentiment of this!” she exclaimed, turning pale
and throwing up her hands as she guessed at once what had happened. “I
felt low in my mind all this morning; I knew we should have trouble, and
here it is!”

“You viper! You bane of my existence!” exclaimed Vania’s mother.

“Why do you abuse him?” the boy’s aunt scolded the mother, nervously
pulling off the coffee-coloured kerchief she wore on her head. “How is
he to blame? It is your fault! Yours! Why did you send him to that
school? What sort of lady are you? Do you want to climb up among the
gentlefolk? Aha! You will certainly get there at this rate! If you had
done as I told you, you would have put him into business as I did my
Kuzia. There’s Kuzia now making five hundred roubles a year. Is that
such a trifle that you can afford to laugh at it? You have tortured
yourself and tortured the boy with all this book-learning, worse luck to
it! See how thin he is! Hear him cough! He is thirteen years old and he
looks more like ten.”

“No, Nastenka, no, darling, I haven’t beaten that tormentor of mine
much, and beating is what he needs. Ugh! You Jesuit! You Mohammedan! You
thorn in my flesh!” she cried, raising her hand as if to strike her son.
“I should thrash you if I had the strength. People used to say to me
when he was still little: ‘Beat him! Beat him!’ But I didn’t listen to
them, unhappy woman that I am! So now I have to suffer for it. But wait
a bit, I’ll have your ears boxed! Wait a bit——”

His mother shook her fist at him and went weeping into the room occupied
by her lodger, Eftiki Kuporosoff. The lodger was sitting at his table
reading “Dancing Self-Taught.” This Kuporosoff was considered a clever
and learned person. He spoke through his nose, washed with scented soap
that made every one in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast-days, and was
looking for an enlightened wife; for these reasons he thought himself an
extremely intellectual lodger. He also possessed a tenor voice.

“Dear me!” cried Vania’s mother, running into his room with the tears
streaming down her cheeks. “Do be so very kind as to thrash my boy! Oh,
_do_ do me that favour! He has failed in his examinations! Oh, misery
me! Can you believe it, he has failed! I can’t punish him myself on
account of being so weak and in bad health, so do thrash him for me! Be
kind, be chivalrous and do it for me, Mr. Kuporosoff! Have mercy on a
sick woman!”

Kuporosoff frowned and heaved a very deep sigh through his nostrils. He
reflected, drummed on the table with his fingers, sighed once more, and
went into Vania’s room.

“Look here!” he began his harangue. “Your parents are trying to educate
you, aren’t they, and give you a start in life, you miserable young man?
Then why do you act like this?”

He held forth for a long time, he made quite a speech. He referred to
science, and to darkness and light.

“Yes, indeed, young man!” he exclaimed from time to time.

When he had concluded, he took off his belt and caught hold of Vania’s
ear.

“This is the only way to treat you!” he exclaimed.

Vania knelt down obediently and put his head on Kuporosoff’s knees. His
large pink ears rubbed against Kuporosoff’s new brown-striped trousers.

Vania made not a sound. That evening at a family conclave it was decided
to put him into business at once.

THE TUTOR

The high-school boy Gregory Ziboroff condescendingly shakes hands with
little Pete Udodoff. Pete, a chubby youngster of twelve with bristling
hair, red cheeks, and a low forehead, dressed in a little grey suit,
bows and scrapes, and reaches into the cupboard for his books. The
lesson begins.

According to an agreement made with Udodoff, the father, Ziboroff is to
help Pete with his lessons for two hours each day, in return for which
he is to receive six roubles a month. He is preparing the boy for the
second grade of the high-school. He prepared him for the first grade
last year, but little Pete failed to pass his examinations.

“Very well,” begins Ziboroff lighting a cigarette. “You had the fourth
declension to study. Decline fructus!”

Peter begins to decline it.

“There, you haven’t studied again!” cries Ziboroff rising. “This is the
sixth time I have given you the fourth declension to learn, and you
can’t get it through your head! For heaven’s sake, when will you ever
begin to study your lessons?”

“What, you haven’t studied again?” exclaims a wheezing voice in the next
room and Pete’s papa, a retired civil servant, enters. “Why haven’t you
studied? Oh, you little donkey! Just think, Gregory, I had to thrash him
again yesterday!”

Sighing profoundly, Udodoff sits down beside his son and opens the boy’s
ragged grammar. Ziboroff begins examining Pete before his father,
thinking to himself: “I’ll just show that stupid father what a stupid
son he has!” The high-school boy is seized with the fury of the examiner
and is ready to beat the little red-cheeked numskull before him, he
hates and despises him so. He is even annoyed when the youngster hits on
the right answer to one of his questions. How odious this little Pete
seems to him!

“You don’t even know the second declension! You don’t even know the
first! This is the way you learn your lessons! Come, tell me, what is
the vocative of meus filius?”

“The vocative of meus filius? Why the vocative of meus filius is—it
is——”

Pete stares hard at the ceiling and moves his lips inaudibly. No answer
comes.

“What is the dative of dea?”

“Deabus—filiabus!” Pete bursts out.

Old Udodoff nods approvingly. The high-school boy, who was not expecting
a correct answer, feels annoyed.

“What other nouns have their dative in abus?” he asks.

It appears that anima, the soul, has its dative in abus, something that
is not to be found in any grammar.

“What a melodious language Latin is!” observes Udodoff.
“Alontron—bonus—anthropos—how marvellous! It is all very important!” he
concludes with a sigh.

“The old brute is interrupting the lesson,” thinks Ziboroff. “Sitting
over us like an inspector—I hate to be bossed! Now, then!” he cries to
Pete. “You must learn that same lesson over again for next time. Next
we’ll do some arithmetic. Fetch your slate! I want you to do this
problem.”

Pete spits on his slate and rubs it dry with his sleeve. His tutor picks
up the arithmetic and dictates the following problem to him.

“‘If a merchant buys 138 yards of cloth, some of which is black and some
blue, for 540 roubles, how many yards of each did he buy if the blue
cloth cost 5 roubles a yard and the black cloth 3?’ Repeat what I have
just said.”

Peter repeats the problem and instantly and silently begins to divide
540 by 138.

“What are you doing? Wait a moment! No, no, go ahead! Is there a
remainder? There ought not to be. Here, let me do it!”

Ziboroff divides 540 by 138, and finds that it goes three times and
something over. He quickly rubs out the sum.

“How queer!” he thinks, ruffling his hair and flushing. “How should it
be done? H’m—this is an indeterminate equation and not a sum in
arithmetic at all——”

The tutor looks in the back of the book and finds that the answer is 75
and 63.

“H’m—that’s queer. Ought I to add 5 and 3 and divide 540 by 8? Is that
right? No that’s not it. Come, do the sum!” he says to Pete.

“What’s the matter with you? That’s an easy problem!” cries Udodoff to
Peter. “What a goose you are, sonny! Do it for him, Mr. Ziboroff!”

Gregory takes the pencil and begins figuring. He hiccoughs and flushes
and pales.

“The fact is, this is an algebraical problem,” he says. “It ought to be
solved with _x_ and _y_. But it can be done in this way, too. Very well,
I divide this by this, do you understand? Now then, I subtract it from
this, see? Or, no, let me tell you, suppose you do this sum yourself for
to-morrow. Think it out alone!”

Pete smiles maliciously. Udodoff smiles, too. Both realize the tutor’s
perplexity. The high-school boy becomes still more violently
embarrassed, rises, and begins to walk up and down.

“That sum can be done without the help of algebra,” says Udodoff,
sighing and reaching for the counting board. “Look here!”

He rattles the counting board for a moment, and produces the answer 75
and 63, which is correct.

“That’s how we ignorant folks do it.”

The tutor falls a prey to the most unbearably painful sensations. He
looks at the clock with a sinking heart, and sees that it still lacks an
hour and a quarter to the end of the lesson. What an eternity that is!

“Now we will have some dictation,” he says.

After the dictation comes a lesson in geography; after that, Bible
study; after Bible study, Russian—there is so much to learn in this
world! At last the two hours’ lesson is over, Ziboroff reaches for his
cap, condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete, and takes his leave
of Udodoff.

“Could you let me have a little money to-day?” he asks timidly. “I must
pay my school bill to-morrow. You owe me for six months’ lessons.”

“Oh, do I really? Oh, yes, yes—” mutters Udodoff. “I would certainly let
you have the money with pleasure, but I’m sorry to say I haven’t any
just now. Perhaps in a week—or two.”

Ziboroff acquiesces, puts on his heavy goloshes, and goes out to give
his next lesson.

OUT OF SORTS

Simon Pratchkin, a commissioner of the rural police, was walking up and
down the floor of his room trying to smother a host of disagreeable
sensations. He had gone to see the chief of police on business the
evening before, and had unexpectedly sat down to a game of cards at
which he had lost eight roubles. The amount was a trifle, but the demons
of greed and avarice were whispering in his ear the accusation that he
was a spendthrift.

“Eight roubles—a mere nothing!” cried Pratchkin, trying to drown the
voices of the demons. “People often lose more than that without minding
it at all. Besides, money is made to spend. One trip to the factory, one
visit to Piloff’s tavern, and eight roubles would have been but a drop
in a bucket!”

“It is winter; horse and peasant——”

monotonously murmured Pratchkin’s son Vania, in the next room.

“Down the road triumphant go—triumphant go——”

“Triumphant!” Pratchkin went on, pursuing the train of his thoughts. “If
he had been stuck for a dozen roubles he wouldn’t have been so
triumphant! What is he so triumphant about? Let him pay his debts on
time! Eight roubles—what a trifle! That’s not eight thousand roubles.
One can always win eight roubles back again.”

“And the pony trots his swiftest
For he feels the coming snow—
For he feels the coming snow.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be likely to go at a gallop, would he? Was he
supposed to be a race-horse? He was a hack, a broken-down old hack!
Foolish, drunken peasants always want to go at breakneck speed, and
then, when they fall into an ice-hole, or down a precipice, some one has
to haul them out and doctor them. If I had my way, I’d prescribe a kind
of turpentine for them that they wouldn’t forget in a hurry! And why did
I lead a low card? If I had led the ace of clubs, I wouldn’t have fallen
into a hole myself——”

“O’er the furrows soft and crumbling
Flies the sleigh so free and wild—
O’er the furrows soft and crumbling——”

“Crumbling—crumbling furrows—what stuff that is! People will let those
writers scribble anything. It was that ten-spot that made all the
trouble. Why the devil did it have to turn up just at that moment?”

“When a little boy comes tumbling—comes tumbling
Down the road a merry child—a merry child.”

“If the boy was running he must have been overeating himself and been
naughty. Parents never will put their children to work. Instead of
playing, that boy ought to have been splitting kindling, or reading the
Bible—and I hadn’t the sense to come away! What an ass I was to stay
after supper! Why didn’t I have my meal and go home?”

“At the window stands his mother,
Shakes her finger—shakes her finger at the boy——”

“She shakes her finger at him, does she? The trouble with her is, she is
too lazy to go out-of-doors and punish him. She ought to catch him by
his little coat and give him a good spanking. It would do him more good
than shaking her finger at him. If she doesn’t take care, he will grow
up to be a drunkard. Who wrote that?” asked Pratchkin aloud.

“Pushkin, papa.”

“Pushkin? H’m. What an ass he is! People like that simply write without
knowing themselves what they are saying.”

“Papa, here’s a peasant with a load of flour!” cried Vania.

“Let some one take charge of it!”

The arrival of the flour failed to cheer Pratchkin. The more he tried to
console himself, the more poignant grew his sense of loss, and he
regretted those eight roubles as keenly as if they had in reality been
eight thousand. When Vania finished studying his lesson and silence
fell, Pratchkin was standing gloomily at the window, his mournful gaze
fixed upon the snowdrifts in the garden. But the sight of the snowdrifts
only opened wider the wound in his breast. They reminded him of
yesterday’s expedition to the chief of police. His spleen rose and
embittered his heart. The need to vent his sorrow reached such a pitch
that it would brook no delay. He could endure it no longer.

“Vania!” he shouted. “Come here and let me whip you for breaking that
window-pane yesterday!”

STORIES OF YOUTH

A JOKE

It was noon of a bright winter’s day. The air was crisp with frost, and
Nadia, who was walking beside me, found her curls and the delicate down
on her upper lip silvered with her own breath. We stood at the summit of
a high hill. The ground fell away at our feet in a steep incline which
reflected the sun’s rays like a mirror. Near us lay a little sled
brightly upholstered with red.

“Let us coast down, Nadia!” I begged. “Just once! I promise you nothing
will happen.”

But Nadia was timid. The long slope, from where her little overshoes
were planted to the foot of the ice-clad hill, looked to her like the
wall of a terrible, yawning chasm. Her heart stopped beating, and she
held her breath as she gazed into that abyss while I urged her to take
her seat on the sled. What might not happen were she to risk a flight
over that precipice! She would die, she would go mad!

“Come, I implore you!” I urged her again. “Don’t be afraid! It is
cowardly to fear, to be timid.”

At last Nadia consented to go, but I could see from her face that she
did so, she thought, at the peril of her life. I seated her, all pale
and trembling, in the little sled, put my arm around her, and together
we plunged into the abyss.

The sled flew like a shot out of a gun. The riven wind lashed our faces;
it howled and whistled in our ears, and plucked furiously at us, trying
to wrench our heads from our shoulders; its pressure stifled us; we felt
as if the devil himself had seized us in his talons, and were snatching
us with a shriek down into the infernal regions. The objects on either
hand melted into a long and madly flying streak. Another second, and it
seemed we must be lost!

“I love you, Nadia!” I whispered.

And now the sled began to slacken its pace, the howling of the wind and
the swish of the runners sounded less terrible, we breathed again, and
found ourselves at the foot of the mountain at last. Nadia, more dead
than alive, was breathless and pale. I helped her to her feet.

“Not for anything in the world would I do that again!” she said, gazing
at me with wide, terror-stricken eyes. “Not for anything on earth. I
nearly died!”

In a few minutes, however, she was herself again, and already her
inquiring eyes were asking the question of mine:

“Had I really uttered those four words, or had she only fancied she
heard them in the tumult of the wind?”

I stood beside her smoking a cigarette and looking attentively at my
glove.

She took my arm and we strolled about for a long time at the foot of the
hill. It was obvious that the riddle gave her no peace. Had I spoken
those words or not? It was for her a question of pride, of honour, of
happiness, of life itself, a very important question, the most important
one in the whole world. Nadia looked at me now impatiently, now
sorrowfully, now searchingly; she answered my questions at random and
waited for me to speak. Oh, what a pretty play of expression flitted
across her sweet face! I saw that she was struggling with herself; she
longed to say something, to ask some question, but the words would not
come; she was terrified and embarrassed and happy.

“Let me tell you something,” she said, without looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Let us—let us slide down the hill again!”

We mounted the steps that led to the top of the hill. Once more I seated
Nadia, pale and trembling, in the little sled, once more we plunged into
that terrible abyss; once more the wind howled, and the runners hissed,
and once more, at the wildest and most tumultuous moment of our descent,
I whispered:

“I love you, Nadia!”

When the sleigh had come to a standstill, Nadia threw a backward look at
the hill down which we had just sped, and then gazed for a long time
into my face, listening to the calm, even tones of my voice. Every inch
of her, even her muff and her hood, every line of her little frame
expressed the utmost uncertainty. On her face was written the question:

“What can it have been? Who spoke those words? Was it he, or was it only
my fancy?”

The uncertainty of it was troubling her, and her patience was becoming
exhausted. The poor girl had stopped answering my questions, she was
pouting and ready to cry.

“Had we not better go home?” I asked.

“I—I love coasting!” she answered with a blush. “Shall we not slide down
once more?”

She “loved” coasting, and yet, as she took her seat on the sled, she was
as trembling and pale as before and scarcely could breathe for terror!

We coasted down for the third time and I saw her watching my face and
following the movements of my lips with her eyes. But I put my
handkerchief to my mouth and coughed, and when we were half-way down I
managed to say:

“I love you, Nadia!”

So the riddle remained unsolved! Nadia was left pensive and silent. I
escorted her home, and as she walked she shortened her steps and tried
to go slowly, waiting for me to say those words. I was aware of the
struggle going on in her breast, and of how she was forcing herself not
to exclaim:

“The wind could not have said those words! I don’t want to think that it
said them!”

Next day I received the following note:

“If you are going coasting, to-day, call for me. N.”

Thenceforth Nadia and I went coasting every day, and each time that we
sped down the hill on our little sled I whispered the words:

“I love you, Nadia!”

Nadia soon grew to crave this phrase as some people crave morphine or
wine. She could no longer live without hearing it! Though to fly down
the hill was as terrible to her as ever, danger and fear lent a strange
fascination to those words of love, words which remained a riddle to
torture her heart. Both the wind and I were suspected; which of us two
was confessing our love for her now seemed not to matter; let the
draught but be hers, and she cared not for the goblet that held it!

One day, at noon, I went to our hill alone. There I perceived Nadia. She
approached the hill, seeking me with her eyes, and at last I saw her
timidly mounting the steps that led to the summit. Oh, how fearful, how
terrifying she found it to make that journey alone! Her face was as
white as the snow, and she shook as if she were going to her doom, but
up she climbed, firmly, without one backward look. Clearly she had
determined to discover once for all whether those wondrously sweet words
would reach her ears if I were not there. I saw her seat herself on the
sled with a pale face and lips parted with horror, saw her shut her eyes
and push off, bidding farewell for ever to this world. “zzzzzzz!” hissed
the runners. What did she hear? I know not—I only saw her rise tired and
trembling from the sled, and it was clear from her expression that she
could not herself have said what she had heard; on her downward rush
terror had robbed her of the power of distinguishing the sounds that
came to her ears.

And now, with March, came the spring. The sun’s rays grew warmer and
brighter. Our snowy hillside grew darker and duller, and the ice crust
finally melted away. Our coasting came to an end.

Nowhere could poor Nadia now hear the beautiful words, for there was no
one to say them; the wind was silent and I was preparing to go to St.
Petersburg for a long time, perhaps for ever.

One evening, two days before my departure, I sat in the twilight in a
little garden separated from the garden where Nadia lived by a high
fence surmounted by iron spikes. It was cold and the snow was still on
the ground, the trees were lifeless, but the scent of spring was in the
air, and the rooks were cawing noisily as they settled themselves for
the night. I approached the fence, and for a long time peered through a
chink in the boards. I saw Nadia come out of the house and stand on the
door-step, gazing with anguish and longing at the sky. The spring wind
was blowing directly into her pale, sorrowful face. It reminded her of
the wind that had howled for us on the hillside when she had heard those
four words, and with that recollection her face grew very sad indeed,
and the tears rolled down her cheeks. The poor child held out her arms
as if to implore the wind to bring those words to her ears once more.
And I, waiting for a gust to carry them to her, said softly:

“I love you, Nadia!”

Heavens, what an effect my words had on Nadia! She cried out and
stretched forth her arms to the wind, blissful, radiant, beautiful....

And I went to pack up my things. All this happened a long time ago.
Nadia married, whether for love or not matters little. Her husband is an
official of the nobility, and she now has three children. But she has
not forgotten how we coasted together and how the wind whispered to her:

“I love you, Nadia!”

That memory is for her the happiest, the most touching, the most
beautiful one of her life.

But as for me, now that I have grown older, I can no longer understand
why I said those words and why I jested with Nadia.

AFTER THE THEATRE

When Nadia Zelenia came home with her mother from the theatre, where
they had been to see “Evgeni Onegin,” and found herself in her own room
once more, she took off her dress, loosened her hair, and hastened to
sit down at her desk in her petticoat and little white bodice, to write
a letter in the style of Tatiana.

“I love you,” she wrote, “but you do not, no, you do not love me!”

As she wrote this she began to laugh.

She was only sixteen and had never been in love in her life. She knew
that the officer Gorni and the student Gruzdieff both loved her, but
now, after seeing the opera, she did not want to believe it. How
attractive it would be to be wretched and spurned! It was, somehow, so
poetical, so beautiful and touching, when one loved while the other
remained cold and indifferent! Onegin was arresting because he did not
love Tatiana, but Tatiana was enchanting because she loved so ardently.
Had they both loved one another equally well and been happy, might not
both have been uninteresting?

“No longer think that you love me,” Nadia continued, thinking of Gorni.
“I cannot believe it. You are clever and serious and wise; you are a
very talented man, and may have a brilliant future before you. I am a
stupid, frivolous girl and you know yourself that I should only hinder
you in your life. You were attracted to me, it is true; you thought you
had found your ideal in me, but that was a mistake. Already you are
asking yourself: why did I ever meet that girl? Only your kindness
prevents you from acknowledging this.”

Nadia began to feel very sorry for herself, she burst into tears and
continued:

“If it were not so hard to leave mamma and my brother, I should take the
veil and go away to the ends of the earth. Then you would be free to
love some one else.”

Nadia’s tears now prevented her from seeing what she was writing; little
rainbows were trembling across the table, the floor, and the ceiling,
and it seemed to her as though she were looking through a prism. To go
on writing was impossible, so she threw herself back in her chair and
began thinking of Gorni.

Goodness, how attractive, how fascinating men were! Nadia remembered the
beautiful expression that came over Gorni’s face when he was talking of
music. How humble, how engaging, how gentle he then looked, and what
efforts he made not to let his voice betray the passion he felt! Emotion
must be concealed in society where haughtiness and chilly indifference
are the marks of good breeding and a good education, so he would try to
hide his feelings, but in vain. Every one knew that he loved music
madly. Endless arguments about music and the bold criticisms of
Philistines kept his nerves constantly on edge, so that he appeared to
be timid and silent. He played the piano beautifully, and if he had not
been an officer he would certainly have become a musician.

The tears dried on Nadia’s cheeks. She remembered that Gorni had
proposed to her at a symphony concert and had later repeated his
proposal down-stairs by the coat rack, where they were standing in a
strong draught.

“I am very glad that you have at last come to know Gruzdieff,” she went
on. “He is a very clever man and you are sure to be friends. He came to
see us yesterday evening and stayed until two. We were all in raptures
over him, and I was sorry that you had not come, too. He talked
wonderfully.”

Nadia laid her arms on the table and rested her head upon them, and her
hair fell over the letter. She remembered that Gruzdieff was in love
with her, too, and that he had as much right to her letter as Gorni had.
On second thoughts, would it not be better to send it to him? A
causeless happiness stirred in her breast; at first it was tiny, and
rolled gently about there like a small rubber ball; then it grew larger
and fuller, and at last gushed up like a fountain. Nadia forgot Gorni
and Gruzdieff, and her thoughts grew confused, but her rapture rose and
rose, until it flowed from her breast into her hands and feet, and a
fresh, gentle breeze seemed to be fanning her head and stirring her
hair. Her shoulders shook with soft laughter; the table shook, the
lamp-chimney trembled, and tears gushed from her eyes over the letter.
She was powerless to control her laughter, so she hastened to think of
something funny to prove that her mirth was not groundless.

“Oh, what a ridiculous poodle!” she cried, feeling a little faint from
laughing. “What a ridiculous poodle!”

She remembered that Gruzdieff had romped with their poodle Maxim
yesterday after tea, and had told her a story of a very intelligent
poodle, who chased a jackdaw around a garden. The jackdaw had turned
round while the poodle was chasing him, and said:

“You scoundrel, you!”

Not knowing that it was a trained bird, the poodle had been dreadfully
dismayed; he had slunk away in perplexity and had afterward begun to
howl.

“Yes, I think I shall have to love Gruzdieff,” Nadia decided, and she
tore up the letter.

So she began to muse on the student, and on his love and hers, but her
thoughts were soon rambling, and she found herself thinking of many
things: of her mother, of the street, of the pencil, and of the
piano.... She thought of all this with pleasure, and everything seemed
to her to be beautiful and good, but her happiness told her that this
was not all, there was a great deal more to come in a little while,
which would be much better even than this. Spring would soon be here,
and then summer would come, and she would go with her mother to Gorbiki,
and there Gorni would come on his holidays, and would take her walking
in the garden and make love to her.

Gruzdieff would come, too; he would play croquet and bowls with her, and
tell her funny and thrilling stories. She longed for the garden, the
darkness, the clear sky, and the stars. Once more her shoulders shook
with laughter; the room seemed to her to be filled with the scent of
lavender, and a twig tapped against the window-pane.

She went across to the bed, sat down, and, not knowing what to do
because of the great happiness that filled her heart, she fixed her eyes
on the little icon that hung at the head of her bed, and murmured:

“Oh! Lord! Lord! Lord!”

VOLODIA

One Sunday evening in spring Volodia, a plain, shy, sickly lad of
seventeen, was sitting, a prey to melancholy, in a summer-house on the
country place of the Shumikins. His gloomy reflections flowed in three
different channels. In the first place, to-morrow, Monday, he would have
to take an examination in mathematics. He knew that if he did not pass
he would be expelled from school, as he had already been two years in
the sixth grade. In the second place, his pride suffered constant agony
during his visits to the Shumikins, who were rich people with
aristocratic pretensions. He imagined that Madame Shumikin and her
nieces looked down upon his mother and himself as poor relations and
dependents, and that they made fun of his mother and did not respect
her. He had once overheard Madame Shumikin saying on the terrace to her
cousin Anna Feodorovna that she was still pretending to be young, and
that she never paid her debts and had a great hankering after other
people’s shoes and cigarettes. Every day Volodia would implore his
mother not to go to the Shumikins’ again. He painted for her the
humiliating rôle which she played among these people, he entreated her
and spoke rudely to her, but the spoiled, frivolous woman, who had
wasted two fortunes in her day, her own and her husband’s, yearned for
high life and refused to understand him, so that twice every week
Volodia was obliged to accompany her to the hated house.

In the third place, the lad could not free himself for a moment from a
certain strange, unpleasant feeling that was entirely new to him. He
imagined himself to be in love with Anna Feodorovna, the cousin and
guest of Madame Shumikin. Anna Feodorovna was a talkative, lively,
laughing little lady of thirty; healthy, rosy, and strong, with plump
shoulders, a plump chin, and an eternal smile on her thin lips. She was
neither pretty nor young. Volodia knew this perfectly well, and for that
very reason he was unable to refrain from thinking of her, from watching
her as she bent her plump shoulders over her croquet mallet, or, as she,
after much laughter and running up and down-stairs, sank all out of
breath into a chair, and with half-closed eyes pretended that she felt a
tightness and strangling across the chest. She was married, and her
husband was a staid architect who came down into the country once a
week, had a long sleep, and then returned to the city. This feeling on
Volodia’s part began with an unreasoning hatred of the architect, and a
sensation of joy whenever he returned to the city.

And now, as he sat in the summer-house thinking about to-morrow’s
examination and his mother, whom every one laughed at, he felt a great
longing to see Nyuta, as the Shumikins called Anna Feodorovna, and to
hear her laughter and the rustling of her dress. This longing did not
resemble the pure, poetic love of which he had read in novels, and of
which he dreamed every night as he went to bed. It was a strange and
incomprehensible thing, and he was ashamed and afraid of it as of
something wicked and wrong which he hardly dared to acknowledge even to
himself.

“This is not love,” he thought. “One does not fall in love with a woman
of thirty. It is simply a little intrigue; yes, it is a little
intrigue.”

Thinking about intrigues, he remembered his invincible shyness, his lack
of a moustache, his freckles, his little eyes, and pictured himself
standing beside Nyuta. The contrast was impossible. So he hastened to
imagine himself handsome and bold and witty, dressed in the latest
fashion....

In the very heat of his imaginings, as he sat huddled in a dark corner
of the summer-house with his eyes fixed on the ground, he heard light
footsteps approaching. Some one was hurrying down the garden path. The
footsteps ceased and a figure clad in white gleamed in the doorway.

“Is any one there?” asked a woman’s voice.

Volodia recognised the voice and raised his head in alarm.

“Who is there?” asked Nyuta, stepping into the summer-house. “Ah, is it
you, Volodia? What are you doing in there? Brooding? How can you always
be brooding and brooding? It’s enough to drive you crazy!”

Volodia rose and looked at Nyuta in confusion. She was on her way back
from the bath-house; a Turkish towel hung across her shoulders, and a
few damp locks of hair had escaped from under her white silk kerchief
and were clinging to her forehead. She exhaled the cool, damp odour of
the river, and the scent of almond soap. The upper button of her blouse
was undone, so that her neck and throat were visible to the lad.

“Why don’t you say something?” asked Nyuta, looking Volodia up and down.
“It is rude not to answer when a lady speaks to you. What a
stick-in-the-mud you are, Volodia, always sitting and thinking like some
stodgy old philosopher, and never opening your mouth! You have no vim in
you, no fire! You are horrid, really! A boy of your age ought to live,
and frisk, and chatter, and fall in love, and make love to the ladies.”

Volodia stared at the towel which she was holding in her plump, white
hand and pondered.

“He won’t answer!” cried Nyuta in surprise. “This is too strange,
really! Listen to me, be a man! At least smile! Bah! What a horrid
dry-as-dust you are!” she laughed. “Volodia, do you know what makes you
such a boor? It’s because you never make love. Why don’t you do it?
There are no girls here, I know, but what is to prevent you from making
love to a woman? Why don’t you make love to me, for instance?”

Volodia listened to her and rubbed his forehead in intense, painful
irresolution.

“It is only proud people who never speak and like to be alone,” Nyuta
continued, pulling his hand down from his forehead. “You are proud,
Volodia. Why do you squint at me like that? Look me in the eye, if you
please. Now then, stick-in-the-mud!”

Volodia made up his mind to speak. In an effort to smile he stuck out
his lower lip, blinked his eyes, and his hand again went to his head.

“I—I love you!” he exclaimed.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in astonishment and burst out laughing.

“What is this I hear?” she chanted as singers do in an opera when they
hear a terrible piece of news. “What? What did you say? Say it again!
Say it again!”

“I—I love you!” Volodia repeated.

And involuntarily, without premeditation and not realising what he was
doing, he took a step toward Nyuta and seized her arm above the wrist.
Tears started into his eyes, and the whole world seemed to turn into a
huge Turkish towel smelling of the river.

“Bravo, bravo!” he heard a laughing voice cry approvingly. “Why don’t
you say something? I want to hear you speak! Now, then!”

Seeing that he was permitted to hold her arm, Volodia looked into
Nyuta’s laughing face and awkwardly, uneasily, put both arms around her
waist, bringing his wrists together behind her back. As he held her
thus, she put her hands behind her head showing the dimples in her
elbows, and, arranging her hair under her kerchief, she said in a quiet
voice:

“I want you to become bright and agreeable and charming, Volodia, and
this you can only accomplish through the influence of women. Why, what a
horrid cross face you have! You ought to laugh and talk. Honestly,
Volodia, don’t be a stick! You are young yet; you will have plenty of
time for philosophising later on. And now, let me go. I’m in a hurry to
get back. Let me go, I tell you!”

She freed herself without effort, and went out of the summer-house
singing a snatch of song. Volodia was left alone. He smoothed his hair,
smiled, and walked three times round the summer-house. Then he sat down
and smiled again. He felt an unbearable sense of mortification, and even
marvelled that human shame could reach such a point of keenness and
intensity. The feeling made him smile again and wring his hands and
whisper a few incoherent phrases.

He felt humiliated because he had just been treated like a little boy,
and because he was so shy, but chiefly because he had dared to put his
arms around the waist of a respectable married woman, when neither his
age nor, as he thought, his social position, nor his appearance
warranted such an act.

He jumped up and, without so much as a glance behind him, hurried away
into the depths of the garden, as far away from the house as he could
go.

“Oh, if we could only get away from here at once!” he thought, seizing
his head in his hands. “Oh, quickly, quickly!”

The train on which Volodia and his mother were to go back to town left
at eight-forty. There still remained three hours before train time, and
he would have liked to have gone to the station at once without waiting
for his mother.

At eight o’clock he turned toward the house. His whole figure expressed
determination and seemed to be proclaiming: “Come what may, I am
prepared for anything!” He had made up his mind to go in boldly, to look
every one straight in the face, and to speak loudly no matter what
happened.

He crossed the terrace, passed through the drawing-room and the
living-room, and stopped in the hall to catch his breath. He could hear
the family at tea in the adjoining dining-room; Madame Shumikin, his
mother, and Nyuta were discussing something with laughter.

Volodia listened.

“I assure you I could scarcely believe my eyes!” Nyuta cried. “I hardly
recognised him when he began to make love to me, and actually—will you
believe it?—put his arms around my waist! He has quite a way with him!
When he told me that he loved me, he had the look of a wild animal, like
a Circassian.”

“You don’t say so!” cried his mother, rocking with long shrieks of
laughter. “You don’t say so! How like his father he is!”

Volodia jumped back, and rushed out into the fresh air.

“How can they all talk about it?” he groaned, throwing up his arms and
staring with horror at the sky. “Aloud, and in cold blood, too! And
mother laughed! Mother! Oh, God, why did you give me such a mother? Oh,
why?”

But enter the house he must, happen what might. He walked three times
round the garden, and then, feeling more composed, he went in.

“Why didn’t you come in to tea on time?” asked Madame Shumikin sternly.

“Excuse me, it—it is time for me to go—” Volodia stammered, without
raising his eyes. “Mother, it is eight o’clock!”

“Go along by yourself, dear,” answered his mother languidly. “I am
spending the night here with Lily. Good-by, my boy, come, let me kiss
you.”

She kissed her son and said in French:

“He reminds one a little of Lermontov, doesn’t he?”

Volodia managed to take leave of the company somehow without looking any
one in the face, and ten minutes later he was striding along the road to
the station, glad to be off at last. He now no longer felt frightened or
ashamed, and could breathe deeply and freely once more.

Half a mile from the station he sat down on a stone by the wayside and
began looking at the sun, which was now half hidden behind the horizon.
A few small lights were already gleaming here and there near the
station, and a dim green ray shone out, but the train had not yet
appeared. It was pleasant to sit there quietly, watching the night
slowly creeping across the fields. The dim summer-house, Nyuta’s light
footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, her laughter, and her waist—all
these things rose up before Volodia’s fancy with startling vividness,
and now no longer seemed terrible and significant to him as they had a
few hours before.

“What nonsense! She did not pull her hand away; she laughed when I put
my arm around her waist,” he thought. “Therefore she must have enjoyed
it. If she had not liked it she would have been angry——”

Volodia was vexed now at not having been bolder. He regretted that he
was stupidly running away, and was convinced that, were the same
circumstances to occur again, he would be more manly and look at the
thing more simply——

But it would not be hard to bring those circumstances about. The
Shumikins always strolled about the garden for a long time after supper.
If Volodia were to go walking with Nyuta in the dark—there would be the
chance to re-enact the same scene!

“I’ll go back and leave on an early train to-morrow morning,” he
decided. “I’ll tell them I missed this train.”

So he went back. Madame Shumikin, his mother, Nyuta, and one of the
nieces were sitting on the terrace playing cards. When Volodia told them
his story about having missed the train they were uneasy lest he should
be late for his examination, and advised him to get up early next
morning. Volodia sat down at a little distance from the card-players,
and during the whole game kept his eyes fixed on Nyuta. He had already
determined on a plan. He would go up to Nyuta in the dark, take her
hand, and kiss her. It would not be necessary for either to speak; they
would understand one another without words.

But the ladies did not go walking after supper; they continued their
game instead. They played until one o’clock, and then all separated for
the night.

“How stupid this is!” thought Volodia, with annoyance. “But never mind,
I’ll wait until to-morrow. To-morrow in the summer-house—never mind!”

He made no effort to go to sleep, but sat on the edge of his bed with
his arms around his knees and thought. The idea of the examination was
odious to him. He had already made up his mind that he was going to be
expelled, and that there was nothing terrible about that. On the
contrary, it was a good thing, a very good thing. To-morrow he would be
as free as a bird. He would leave off his schoolboy’s uniform for
civilian clothes, smoke in public, and come over here to make love to
Nyuta whenever he liked. He would be a young man. As for what people
called his career and his future, that was perfectly clear. Volodia
would not enter the government service, but would become a telegraph
operator or have a drug store, and become a pharmaceutist. Were there
not plenty of careers open to a young man? An hour passed, two hours
passed, and he was still sitting on the edge of his bed and thinking——

At three o’clock, when it was already light, his door was cautiously
pushed open and his mother came into the room.

“Aren’t you asleep yet?” she asked with a yawn. “Go to sleep, go to
sleep. I’ve just come in for a moment to get a bottle of medicine.”

“For whom?”

“Poor Lily is ill again. Go to sleep, child, you have an examination
to-morrow.”

She took a little bottle out of the closet, held it to the window, read
the label, and went out.

“Oh, Maria, that isn’t it!” he heard a woman’s voice exclaim. “That is
Eau de Cologne, and Lily wants morphine. Is your son awake? Do ask him
to find it!”

The voice was Nyuta’s. Volodia’s heart stopped beating. He hastily put
on his trousers and coat and went to the door.

“Do you understand? I want morphine!” explained Nyuta in a whisper. “It
is probably written in Latin. Wake Volodia, he will be able to find it!”

Volodia’s mother opened the door, and he caught sight of Nyuta. She was
wearing the same blouse she had worn when she came from the bath-house.
Her hair was hanging loose, and her face looked sleepy and dusky in the
dim light.

“There, Volodia is awake!” she exclaimed. “Volodia, do get me the
morphine out of the closet, there’s a good boy. What a nuisance Lily is!
She always has something the matter with her.”

The mother murmured something, yawned, and went away.

“Come, find it!” cried Nyuta. “What are you standing there for?”

Volodia went to the closet, knelt down, and began searching among the
bottles of medicine and pill-boxes there. His hands were trembling and
cold chills were running down his chest and back. He aimlessly seized
bottles of ether, carbolic acid, and various boxes of herbs in his
shaking hands, spilling and scattering the contents. The smell
overpowered him and made his head swim.

“Mother has gone—” he thought. “That’s good—good.”

“Hurry!” cried Nyuta.

“Just a moment—there, this must be it!” said Volodia having deciphered
the letters “morph—” on one of the labels. “Here it is!”

Nyuta was standing in the doorway with one foot in the hall and one in
Volodia’s room. She was twisting up her hair—which was no easy matter,
for it was long and thick—and was looking vacantly at Volodia. In the
dim radiance shed by the white, early morning sky, with her full blouse
and her flowing hair, she looked to him superb and entrancing.
Fascinated, trembling from head to foot, and remembering with delight
how he had embraced her in the summer-house, he handed her the bottle
and said:

“You are——”

“What?” she asked smiling.

He said nothing; he looked at her, and then, as he had done in the
summer-house, he seized her hand.

“I love you—” he whispered.

Volodia felt as if the room and Nyuta, and the dawn, and he himself had
suddenly rushed together into a keen, unknown feeling of happiness for
which he was ready to give his whole life and lose his soul for ever,
but half a minute later it all suddenly vanished.

“Well, I must go—” said Nyuta, looking contemptuously at Volodia. “What
a pitiful, plain boy you are—Bah, you ugly duckling!”

How hideous her long hair, her full blouse, her footsteps and her voice
now seemed to him!

“Ugly duckling!” he thought. “Yes, I am indeed ugly—everything is ugly.”

The sun rose; the birds broke into song; the sound of the gardener’s
footsteps and the creaking of his wheelbarrow rose from the garden. The
cows lowed and the notes of a shepherd’s pipe trembled in the air. The
sunlight and all these manifold sounds proclaimed that somewhere in the
world there could be found a life that was pure, and gracious, and
poetic. Where was it? Neither Volodia’s mother, nor any one of the
people who surrounded the boy had ever spoken of it to him.

When the man servant came to call him for the morning train, he
pretended to be asleep.

“Oh, to thunder with it all!” he thought.

He got up at eleven. As he brushed his hair before the mirror he looked
at his plain face, so pale after his sleepless night, and thought:

“She is quite right. I really am an ugly duckling.”

When his mother saw him and seemed horrified at his not having gone to
take his examination, Volodia said:

“I overslept, mamma, but don’t worry; I can give them a certificate from
the doctor.”

Madame Shumikin and Nyuta woke at one o’clock. Volodia heard the former
throw open her window with a bang, and heard Nyuta’s ringing laugh
answer her rough voice. He saw the dining-room door flung open and the
nieces and dependents, among whom was his mother, troop in to lunch. He
saw Nyuta’s freshly washed face, and beside it the black eyebrows and
beard of the architect, who had just come.

Nyuta was in Little Russian costume, and this was not becoming to her
and made her look clumsy. The architect made some vulgar, insipid jests,
and Volodia thought that there were a terrible lot of onions in the stew
that day. He also thought that Nyuta was laughing loudly and looking in
his direction on purpose to let him understand that the memory of last
night did not worry her in the least, and that she scarcely noticed the
presence at table of the ugly duckling.

At four o’clock Volodia and his mother drove to the station. The lad’s
sordid memories, his sleepless night, and the pangs of his conscience
aroused in him a feeling of painful and gloomy anger. He looked at his
mother’s thin profile, at her little nose, and at the rain-coat that had
been a gift to her from Nyuta, and muttered:

“Why do you powder your face? It does not become you at all! You try to
look pretty, but you don’t pay your debts, and you smoke cigarettes that
aren’t yours! It’s disgusting! I don’t like you, no, I don’t, I don’t!”

So he insulted her, but she only rolled her eyes in terror and, throwing
up her hands, said in a horrified whisper:

“What are you saying? Heavens, the coachman will hear you! Do hush, he
can hear everything!”

“I don’t like you! I don’t like you!” he went on, struggling for breath.
“You are without morals or heart. Don’t dare to wear that rain-coat
again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll tear it to shreds!”

“Control yourself, child!” wept his mother. “The coachman will hear
you!”

“Where is my father’s fortune? Where is your own? You have squandered
them both. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed of my
mother. I blush whenever the boys at school ask me about you.”

The village was two stations from town. During the whole journey Volodia
stood on the platform of the car, trembling from head to foot, not
wanting to go inside because his mother, whom he hated, was sitting
there. He hated himself, and the conductor, and the smoke of the engine,
and the cold to which he ascribed the shivering fit that had seized him.
The heavier his heart grew, the more convinced he became that somewhere
in the world there must be people who lived a pure, noble, warm-hearted,
gracious life, full of love, and tenderness, and merriment, and freedom.
He felt this and suffered so keenly from the thought that one of the
passengers looked intently at him, and said:

“You must have a toothache!”

Volodia and his mother lived with a widow who rented a large apartment
and let rooms to lodgers. His mother had two rooms, one with windows
where her own bed stood, and another adjoining it, which was small and
dark, where Volodia lived. A sofa, on which he slept, was the only
furniture of this little room; all the available space was taken up by
trunks full of dresses, and by hat-boxes and piles of rubbish which his
mother had seen fit to collect. Volodia studied his lessons in his
mother’s room, or in the “parlour,” as the large room was called, where
the lodgers assembled before dinner and in the evening.

On reaching home, Volodia threw himself down on his sofa and covered
himself with a blanket, hoping to cure his shivering fit. The hat-boxes,
the trunks, and the rubbish, all proclaimed to him that he had no room
of his own, no corner in which he could take refuge from his mother, her
guests, and the voices that now assailed his ears from the parlour. His
school satchel and the books that lay scattered about the floor reminded
him of the examination he had missed. Quite unexpectedly there rose
before his eyes a vision of Mentone, where he had lived with his father
when he was seven years old. He recalled Biarritz, and two little
English girls with whom he had played on the beach. He vainly tried to
remember the colour of the sky, and the ocean, and the height of the
waves, and how he had then felt; the little English girls flashed across
his vision with all the vividness of life, but the rest of the picture
was confused and gradually faded away.

“It is too cold here,” Volodia thought. He got up, put on his overcoat,
and went into the parlour.

The inmates of the house were assembled there at tea. His mother, an old
maid music teacher with horn spectacles, and Monsieur Augustin, a fat
Frenchman, who worked in a perfume factory, were sitting near the
samovar.

“I haven’t had dinner to-day,” his mother was saying. “I must send the
maid for some bread.”

“Duniash!” shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent on an errand by her mistress.

“Oh, no matter!” said the Frenchman, smiling broadly. “I go for the
bread myself! Oh, no matter!”

He laid down his strong, reeking cigar in a conspicuous place, put on
his hat, and went out.

When he had gone, Volodia’s mother began telling the music teacher of
her visit to Madame Shumikin’s, and of the enthusiastic reception she
had had there.

“Lily Shumikin is a relative of mine, you know,” she said. “Her husband,
General Shumikin, was a cousin of my husband’s. She was the Baroness
Kolb before her marriage.”

“Mother, that isn’t true!” cried Volodia exasperated. “Why do you lie
so?”

Now he knew that his mother was not lying, and that in her account of
General Shumikin and Baroness Kolb there was not a word of untruth, but
he felt none the less as if she were lying. The tone of her voice, the
expression of her face, her glance—all were false.

“It’s a lie!” Volodia repeated, bringing his fist down on the table with
such a bang that the cups and saucers rattled and mamma spilled her tea.
“What makes you talk about generals and baronesses? It’s all a lie!”

The music teacher was embarrassed and coughed behind her handkerchief,
as if she had swallowed a crumb. Mamma burst into tears.

“How can I get away from here?” thought Volodia.

He was ashamed to go to the house of any of his school friends. Once
more he unexpectedly remembered the two little English girls. He walked
across the parlour and into Monsieur Augustin’s room. There the air
smelled strongly of volatile oils and glycerine soap. Quantities of
little bottles full of liquids of various colours cluttered the table,
the window-sills, and even the chairs. Volodia took up a paper and read
the heading: “Le Figaro.” The paper exhaled a strong and pleasant
fragrance. He picked up a revolver that lay on the table.

“There, there, don’t mind what he says!” the music teacher was consoling
his mother in the next room. “He is still young, and young men always do
foolish things. We must make up our minds to that.”

“No, Miss Eugenia, he has been spoiled,” moaned his mother. “There is no
one who has any authority over him, and I am too weak to do anything.
Oh, I am very unhappy.”

Volodia put the barrel of the revolver into his mouth, felt something
which he thought was the trigger, and pulled—Then he found another
little hook and pulled again. He took the revolver out of his mouth and
examined the lock. He had never held a firearm in his hands in his life.

“I suppose this thing ought to be raised,” he thought. “Yes, I think
that is right.”

Monsieur Augustin entered the parlour laughing and began to recount some
adventure he had had on the way. Volodia once more put the barrel into
his mouth, seized it between his teeth, and pulled a little hook he felt
with his fingers. A shot rang out—something hit him with tremendous
force in the back of the neck, and he fell forward upon the table with
his face among the bottles and glasses. He saw his father wearing a high
hat with a wide silk band, because he was wearing mourning for some lady
in Mentone, and felt himself suddenly seized in his arms and fall with
him into a very deep, black abyss.

Then everything grew confused and faded away.

A NAUGHTY BOY

Ivan Lapkin, a youth of pleasing exterior, and Anna Zamblitskaya, a girl
with a tip-tilted nose, descended the steep river bank and took their
seats on a bench at its foot. The bench stood at the water’s edge in a
thicket of young willows. It was a lovely spot. Sitting there, one was
hidden from all the world and observed only by fish and the
daddy-longlegs that skimmed like lightning across the surface of the
water. The young people were armed with fishing-rods, nets, cans
containing worms, and other fishing appurtenances. They sat down on the
bench and immediately began to fish.

“I am glad that we are alone at last,” began Lapkin glancing behind him.
“I have a great deal to say to you, Miss Anna, a very great deal. When
first I saw you—you’ve got a bite!—I realized at last the reason for my
existence. I knew that you were the idol at whose feet I was to lay the
whole of an honourable and industrious life—that’s a big one biting! On
seeing you I fell in love for the first time in my life. I fell madly in
love!—Don’t pull yet, let it bite a little longer!—Tell me, dearest, I
beg you, if I may aspire, not to a return of my affection—no, I am not
worthy of that, I dare not even dream of it—but tell me if I may aspire
to—pull!” With a shriek, Anna jerked the arm that held the fishing-rod
into the air; a little silvery-green fish dangled glistening in the
sunlight.

“Goodness gracious, it’s a perch! Oh, oh, be quick, it’s coming off!”

The perch fell off the hook, flopped across the grass toward its native
element, and splashed into the water.

Somehow, while pursuing it, Lapkin accidentally seized Anna’s hand
instead of the fish and accidentally pressed it to his lips. Anna pulled
it away, but it was too late, their lips accidentally met in a kiss. It
all happened accidentally. A second kiss succeeded the first, and then
followed vows and the plighting of troth. Happy moments! But perfect
bliss does not exist on earth, it often bears a poison in itself, or
else is poisoned by some outside circumstances. So it was in this case.
When the young people had exchanged kisses they heard a sudden burst of
laughter. They looked at the river in stupefaction; before them, up to
his waist in water, stood a naked boy: it was Kolia, Anna’s schoolboy
brother! He stood there smiling maliciously with his eyes fixed on the
young people.

“Aha! You’re kissing one another, are you? All right, I’ll tell mamma!”

“I hope that, as an honourable boy—” faltered Lapkin, blushing. “To spy
on us is mean, but to sneak is low, base, vile. I am sure that, as a
good and honourable boy, you——”

“Give me a rouble and I won’t say anything!” answered the honourable
boy. “If you don’t, I’ll tell on you——”

Lapkin took a rouble from his pocket and gave it to Kolia. The boy
seized it in his wet hand, whistled, and swam away. The young couple
exchanged no more kisses on that occasion.

Next day Lapkin brought Kolia a box of paints from town and a ball; his
sister gave him all her old pill-boxes. They next had to present him
with a set of studs with little dogs’ heads on them. The bad boy
obviously relished the game and began spying on them so as to get more
presents. Wherever Lapkin and Anna went, there he went too. He never
left them to themselves for a moment.

“The little wretch!” muttered Lapkin grinding his teeth. “So young and
yet so great a rascal! What will become of us?”

All through the month of June Kolia tormented the unhappy lovers. He
threatened them with betrayal, he spied on them, and then demanded
presents; he could not get enough, and at last began talking of a watch.
The watch was given him.

Once during dinner, while the waffles were on the table, he burst out
laughing, winked, and said to Lapkin:

“Shall I tell them, eh?”

Lapkin blushed furiously and put his napkin into his mouth instead of a
waffle. Anna jumped up from the table and ran into another room.

The young people remained in this situation until the end of August when
the day at last came on which Lapkin proposed for Anna’s hand. Oh, what
a joyful day it was! No sooner had he spoken with his sweetheart’s
parents and obtained their consent to his suit, than Lapkin rushed into
the garden in search of Kolia. He nearly wept with exultation on finding
him, and caught the wicked boy by the ear. Anna came running up, too,
looking for Kolia, and seized him by the other ear. The pleasure
depicted on the faces of the lovers when Kolia wept and begged for mercy
was well worth seeing.

“Dear, good, sweet angels, I won’t do it again! Ouch, ouch! Forgive me!”
Kolia implored them.

They confessed afterward that during all their courtship they had never
once experienced such bliss, such thrilling rapture, as they did during
those few moments when they were pulling the ears of that wicked boy.

BLISS

It was midnight. Suddenly Mitia Kuldaroff burst into his parents’ house,
dishevelled and excited, and went flying through all the rooms. His
father and mother had already gone to rest; his sister was in bed
finishing the last pages of a novel, and his schoolboy brothers were
fast asleep.

“What brings you here?” cried his astonished parents. “What is the
matter?”

“Oh, don’t ask me! I never expected anything like this! No, no, I never
expected it! It is—it is absolutely incredible!”

Mitia burst out laughing and dropped into a chair, unable to stand on
his feet from happiness.

“It is incredible! You can’t imagine what it is! Look here!”

His sister jumped out of bed, threw a blanket over her shoulders, and
went to her brother. The schoolboys woke up——

“What’s the matter with you? You look like a ghost.”

“It’s because I’m so happy, mother. I am known all over Russia now.
Until to-day, you were the only people who knew that such a person as
Dimitri Kuldaroff existed, but now all Russia knows it! Oh, mother! Oh,
heavens!”

Mitia jumped up, ran through all the rooms, and dropped back into a
chair.

“But what has happened? Talk sense!”

“You live like wild animals, you don’t read the news, the press is
nothing to you, and yet there are so many wonderful things in the
papers! Everything that happens becomes known at once, nothing remains
hidden! Oh, how happy I am! Oh, heavens! The newspapers only write about
famous people, and now there is something in them about me!”

“What do you mean? Where is it?”

Papa turned pale. Mamma glanced at the icon and crossed herself. The
schoolboys jumped out of bed and ran to their brother in their short
nightshirts.

“Yes, sir! There is something about me in the paper! The whole of Russia
knows it now. Oh, mother, keep this number as a souvenir; we can read it
from time to time. Look!”

Mitia pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and handed it to his father,
pointing to an item marked with a blue pencil.

“Read that!”

His father put on his glasses.

“Come on, read it!”

Mamma glanced at the icon once more, and crossed herself. Papa cleared
his throat, and began:

“At 11 P. M., on December 27, a young man by the name of Dimitri
Kuldaroff——”

“See? See? Go on!”

“A young man by the name of Dimitri Kuldaroff, coming out of a tavern on
Little Armourer Street, and being in an intoxicated condition——”

“That’s it, I was with Simion Petrovitch! Every detail is correct. Go
on! Listen!”

“—being in an intoxicated condition, slipped and fell under the feet of
a horse belonging to the cabman Ivan Drotoff, a peasant from the village
of Durinka in the province of Yuknofski. The frightened horse jumped
across Kuldaroff’s prostrate body, pulling the sleigh after him. In the
sleigh sat Stepan Lukoff, a merchant of the Second Moscow Guild of
Merchants. The horse galloped down the street, but was finally stopped
by some house porters. For a few moments Kuldaroff was stunned. He was
conveyed to the police station and examined by a doctor. The blow which
he had sustained on the back of the neck——”

“That was from the shaft, papa. Go on! Read the rest!”

“—the blow which he had sustained on the back of the neck was pronounced
to be slight. The victim was given medical assistance.”

“They put cold-water bandages round my neck. Do you believe me now? What
do you think? Isn’t it great? It has gone all over Russia by now! Give
me the paper!”

Mitia seized the paper, folded it, and put it into his pocket,
exclaiming:

“I must run to the Makaroffs, and show it to them! And the Ivanoffs must
see it, too, and Natalia, and Anasim—I must run there at once!
Good-bye!”

Mitia crammed on his cap and ran blissfully and triumphantly out into
the street.

TWO BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

When I was a schoolboy in the fifth or sixth grade, I remember driving
with my grandfather from the little village where we lived to
Rostoff-on-Don. It was a sultry, long, weary August day. Our eyes were
dazzled, and our throats were parched by the heat, and the dry, burning
wind kept whirling clouds of dust in our faces. We desired only not to
open our eyes or to speak, and when the sleepy Little Russian driver
Karpo flicked my cap, as he brandished his whip over his horse, I
neither protested nor uttered a sound, but, waking from a half-doze, I
looked meekly and listlessly into the distance, hoping to descry a
village through the dust. We stopped to feed the horse at the house of a
rich Armenian whom my grandfather knew in the large Armenian village of
Baktchi-Salak. Never in my life have I seen anything more of a
caricature, than our Armenian host. Picture to yourself a tiny,
clean-shaven head, thick, overhanging eyebrows, a beak-like nose, a
long, grey moustache, and a large mouth, out of which a long chibouk of
cherry-wood is hanging. This head was clumsily stuck on a stooping
little body clothed in a fantastic costume consisting of a bob tailed
red jacket and wide, bright blue breeches. The little man walked
shuffling his slippers, with his feet far apart. He did not remove his
pipe from his mouth when he spoke, and carried himself with true
Armenian dignity, staring-eyed and unsmiling, doing his best to ignore
his guests as much as possible.

Although there was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian’s house, it was
as uncomfortable and stifling and dreary in there as it had been on the
road across the steppe. Dusty and heavy with the heat, I sat down on a
green trunk in a corner. The wooden walls, the furniture, and the floor
painted with yellow ochre smelled of dry wood blistering in the sun.
Wherever the eye fell, were flies, flies, flies—My grandfather and the
Armenian talked together in low voices of pasturage and fertilising and
sheep. I knew that it would be an hour before the samovar would be
brought, and that grandfather would then drink tea for at least an hour
longer, after which he would lie down for a two or three hours’ nap. A
quarter of the day would thus be spent by me in waiting, after which we
would resume the dust, the swelter, and the jolting of the road. I heard
the two voices murmuring together, and began to feel as if I had been
looking for ever at the Armenian, the china closet, the flies, and the
windows through which the hot sun was pouring, and that I should only
cease to look at them in the distant future. I was seized with hatred of
the steppe, the sun, and the flies.

A Little Russian woman, with a kerchief on her head, brought in first a
tray of dishes, and then the samovar. The Armenian went without haste to
the hall door, and called:

“Mashia! Come and pour the tea! Where are you, Mashia?”

We heard hurried footfalls, and a girl of sixteen in a plain cotton
dress, with a white kerchief on her head, entered the room. Her back was
turned toward me as she stood arranging the tea-things and pouring the
tea, and all I could see was that she was slender and barefooted, and
that her little toes were almost hidden by her long, full trousers.

Our host invited me to sit down at the table, and when I was seated, I
looked into the girl’s face as she handed me my glass. As I looked, I
suddenly felt as if a wind had swept over my soul, blowing away all the
impressions of the day with its tedium and dust. I beheld there the
enchanting features of the most lovely face I had ever seen, waking or
in my dreams. Before me stood a very beautiful girl; I recognised that
at a glance, as one recognises a flash of lightning.

I am ready to swear that Masha—or, as her father called her, Mashia—was
really beautiful, but I cannot prove it. Sometimes, in the evening, the
clouds lie piled high on the horizon, and the sun, hidden behind them,
stains them and the sky with a hundred colours, crimson, orange, gold,
violet, and rosy pink. One cloud resembles a monk; another, a fish; a
third, a turbaned Turk. The glow embraces one-third of the sky, flashing
from the cross on the church, and the windows of the manor-house,
lighting up the river and the meadows, and trembling upon the tree tops.
Far, far away against the sunset a flock of wild ducks is winging its
way to its night’s resting-place. And the little cowherd with his cows,
and the surveyor driving along the river dyke in his cart, and the
inmates of the manor-house strolling in the evening air, all gaze at the
sunset, and to each one it is supremely beautiful, but no one can say
just where its beauty lies.

Not I alone found the young Armenian beautiful. My grandfather, an
octogenarian, stern and indifferent to women and to the beauties of
Nature, looked gently at Masha for a whole minute, and then asked:

“Is that your daughter, Avet Nazaritch?”

“Yes, that is my daughter,” answered our host.

“She is a fine girl,” the old man said heartily.

An artist would have called the Armenian’s beauty classic and severe. It
was the type of beauty in whose presence you feel that here are features
of perfect regularity; that the hair, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the
chin, the neck, the breast, and every movement of the young body are
merged into a perfect and harmonious chord, in which Nature has not
sounded one false note. You somehow feel that a woman of ideal beauty
should have just such a nose as Masha’s, slender, with the slightest
aquiline curve; just such large, dark eyes and long lashes; just such a
languorous glance; that her dusky, curly hair and her black eyebrows
match the delicate, tender white tint of her forehead and cheeks as
green reeds match the waters of a quiet river. Masha’s white throat and
young breast were scarcely developed, and yet it seemed as if to chisel
them one would have had to possess the highest creative genius. You
looked at her, and little by little the longing seized you to say
something wonderfully kind to her; something beautiful and true;
something as beautiful as the girl herself.

I was hurt and humiliated at first that Masha should keep her eyes fixed
on the ground as she did and fail to notice me. I felt as if a strange
atmosphere of happiness and pride were blowing between us, sighing
jealously at every glance of mine.

“It is because I am all sunburned and dusty,” I thought. “And because I
am still a boy.”

But later I gradually forgot my feelings, and abandoned myself to her
beauty heart and soul. I no longer remembered the dust and tedium of the
steppe, nor heard the buzzing of the flies; I did not taste the tea, and
only felt that there, across the table, stood that lovely girl.

Her beauty had a strange effect upon me. I experienced neither desire,
nor rapture, nor pleasure, but a sweet, oppressive sadness, as vague and
undefinable as a dream. I was sorry for myself, and for my grandfather,
and for the Armenian, and for the girl herself, and felt as if each one
of us had lost something significant and essential to our lives, which
we could never find again. Grandfather, too, grew sad and no longer
talked of sheep and pasturage, but sat in silence, his eyes resting
pensively on Masha.

When tea was over, grandfather lay down to take his nap, and I went out
and sat on the little porch at the front door. Like all the other houses
in Baktchi-Salak, this one stood in the blazing sun; neither trees nor
eaves threw any shade about it. The great courtyard, all overgrown with
dock and nettles, was full of life and gaiety in spite of the intense
heat. Wheat was being threshed behind one of the low wattle fences that
intersected it in various places, and twelve horses were trotting round
and round a post that had been driven into the middle of the
threshing-floor. A Little Russian in a long, sleeveless coat, and wide
breeches, was walking beside the horses cracking his whip over them, and
shouting as if to excite them, and at the same time to vaunt his mastery
over them.

“Ah—ah—ah—you little devils! Ah—ah, the cholera take you! Are you not
afraid of me?”

Not knowing why they were being forced to trot round in a circle,
trampling wheat straw under their feet, the horses—bay, white and
piebald—moved unwillingly and wearily, angrily switching their tails.
The wind raised clouds of golden chaff under their hoofs, and blew it
away across the fence. Women with rakes were swarming among the tall
stacks of fresh straw, tip-carts were hurrying to and fro, and behind
the stacks in an adjoining courtyard another dozen horses were trotting
around a post, and another Little Russian was cracking his whip and
making merry over them.

The steps on which I was sitting were fiery hot, the heat had drawn
drops of resin from the slender porch railing and the window-sills, and
swarms of ruddy little beetles were crowded together in the strips of
shade under the blinds and steps. The sun’s rays were beating on my
head, and breast, and back, but I was unconscious of them, and only felt
that there, behind me, those bare feet were pattering about on the deal
floor. Having cleared away the tea-things, Masha ran down the steps, a
little gust sweeping me as she passed, and flew like a bird into a
small, smoky building that was no doubt the kitchen, from which issued a
smell of roasting mutton and the angry tones of an Armenian voice. She
vanished into the dark doorway, and in her stead there appeared on the
threshold an old, humpbacked Armenian crone, in green trousers. The old
woman was in a rage, and was scolding some one. Masha soon came out on
the threshold again, flushed with the heat of the kitchen, bearing a
huge loaf of black bread on her shoulder. Bending gracefully under its
weight, she ran across the court in the direction of the
threshing-floor, leaped over the fence, and plunged into the clouds of
golden chaff. The Little Russian driver lowered his whip, stopped his
cries, and gazed after her for a moment; then, when the girl appeared
again beside the horses, and jumped back over the fence, he followed her
once more with his eyes, and cried to his horses in a tone of
affliction:

“Ah—ah—the Evil One fly away with you!”

From then on I sat and listened to the unceasing fall of her bare feet,
and watched her whisking about the courtyard, with her face so serious
and intent. Now she would run up the steps, fanning me with a whirl of
wind; now dart into the kitchen; now across the threshing-floor; now out
through the front gate, and all so fast that I could barely turn my head
quickly enough to follow her with my eyes.

And the oftener she flashed across my vision with her beauty, the more
profound my sadness grew. I pitied myself, and her, and the Little
Russian sadly following her with his eyes each time that she ran through
the cloud of chaff and past the straw-stacks. Was I envious of her
beauty? Did I regret that this girl was not and never could be mine, and
that I must for ever remain a stranger to her? Did I dimly realise that
her rare loveliness was a freak of nature, vain, perishable like
everything else on earth? Or did my sadness spring from a feeling
peculiar to every heart at the sight of perfect beauty? Who shall say?

The three hours of waiting passed before I was aware. It seemed to me
that I had scarcely had a chance to look at Masha, before Karpo rode
down to the river to wash off his horse, and began to harness up. The
wet animal whinnied with delight, and struck the shafts with his hoofs.
Karpo shouted “Ba—ack!” Grandfather woke up. Masha threw open the
creaking gates; we climbed into our carriage and drove out of the
courtyard. We travelled in silence, as if there had been a quarrel
between us.

Three hours later, when we could already see Rostoff in the distance,
Karpo, who had not spoken since we left the Armenian village, looked
round swiftly and said:

“That Armenian has a pretty daughter!”

And as he said this he lashed his horse.

Once again, when I was a student in college, I was on my way south by
train. It was May. At one of the stations between Byelogorod and
Kharkoff, I think it was, I got out of the train to walk up and down the
platform.

The evening shadows were already lying on the little garden, the
platform, and the distant fields. The sunlight had faded from the
station, but by the rosy glow that shone on the highest puffs of steam
from our engine we could tell that the sun had not yet sunk beneath the
horizon.

As I strolled along the platform I noticed that most of the passengers
had gathered round one of the second-class carriages as if there were
some well-known person inside. In that inquisitive crowd I found my
travelling companion, a bright young artillery officer, warm-hearted and
sympathetic as people are with whom one strikes up a chance
acquaintanceship for a few hours on a journey.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

He did not answer, but motioned me with his eyes toward a female figure
standing alongside the train. She was a young girl of seventeen or
eighteen, dressed in Russian costume, bareheaded, with a kerchief thrown
carelessly over one shoulder. She was not a passenger on the train, but
probably the daughter or the sister of the station superintendent. She
was chatting at a window with an elderly woman. Before I could realise
exactly what I was looking at, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the same
sensation that I had experienced in the Armenian village.

The girl was extraordinarily beautiful, of this neither I nor any one of
those who were looking at her could have the slightest doubt.

Were I to describe her lineaments in detail, as the custom is, the only
really beautiful point I could ascribe to her would be her thick, curly,
blond hair, caught up with a black ribbon. Her other features were
either irregular or frankly commonplace. Whether from coquetry or
short-sightedness, she kept her eyes half-closed; her nose was vaguely
tip-tilted; her mouth was small; her profile was weak and ill-defined;
her shoulders were too narrow for her years. Nevertheless, the girl gave
one the impression of being a great beauty, and as I looked at her I
grew convinced that the Russian physiognomy does not demand severe
regularity of feature to be beautiful; on the contrary, it seemed to me
that, had this girl’s nose been straight and classic as the Armenian’s
was, her face would have lost all its comeliness.

As she stood at the window chatting and shrinking from the evening
chill, the girl now glanced back at us, now stuck her arms akimbo, now
raised her hands to catch up a stray lock of hair, and, as she laughed
and talked, the expression on her face varied between surprise and mimic
horror. I do not remember one second when her features and body were at
rest. The very mystery and magic of her loveliness lay in those
indescribably graceful little motions of hers; in her smile; in the play
of her features; in her swift glances at us; in the union of delicate
grace, youth, freshness, and purity that rang in her voice and laughter.
The charm of her was the frailty which we love in children, birds,
fawns, and slender saplings.

Hers was the beauty of the butterfly that accords so well with waltzes,
with flutterings about a garden, with laughter, and the merriment that
admits neither thought, nor sadness, nor repose. It seemed that, should
a strong gust of wind blow along the platform, or a shower of rain fall,
this fragile figure must crumple to nothing, and this wayward beauty
dissolve like the pollen of a flower.

“Well, well, well!” murmured the officer, sighing as we walked toward
our compartment after the second starting-bell had rung.

What he meant by that “Well, well, well,” I shall not attempt to decide.

Perhaps he was sad at leaving the lovely girl and the spring evening,
and returning to the stuffy train, or perhaps he was sorry, as I was,
for her, and for himself, and for me, and for all the passengers that
were languidly and unwillingly creeping toward their several
compartments. As we walked past a window at which a pale, red-haired
telegraph operator was sitting over his instrument, the officer, seeing
his pompadour curls, and his faded, bony face, sighed again, and said:

“I’ll bet you that operator is in love with the little beauty. To live
among these lonely fields, under the same roof with that lovely little
creature, and not to fall in love with her would be superhuman. And, oh,
my friend, what a misfortune, what a mockery, to be a round-shouldered,
threadbare, colourless, earnest, sensible man and to fall in love with
that beautiful, foolish child, who is not worth a thought from any one!
Or, worse still, supposing this operator is in love with her, and at the
same time married to a woman as round-shouldered, and threadbare, and
colourless, and sensible as himself! What misery!”

Near our compartment the train conductor was leaning against the
platform railing, gazing in the direction of the beautiful girl. His
flabby, dissipated, wrinkled face, haggard with the weariness of
sleepless nights and the motion of the train, wore an expression of
profoundest melancholy, as if in this girl he saw the spectre of his
youth, his happiness, his sober ways, his wife, and his children. His
heart was full of repentance, and he felt with his whole being that this
girl was not for him and that, with his premature old age, his
awkwardness, and his bloated face, every day, human happiness was as far
beyond his reach as was the sky.

The third bell clanged, the whistle blew, and the train moved slowly
away. Past our windows flashed the conductor, the station
superintendent, the garden, and at last the beautiful girl herself with
her sweet, childishly cunning smile.

By leaning out of the window and looking back, I could see her walking
up and down the platform in front of the window where the telegraph
operator was sitting, watching the train and pinning up a stray lock of
hair. Then she ran into the garden. The station was no longer kindled by
the western light; though the fields were level and bare, the sun’s rays
had faded from them, and the smoke from our engine lay in black, rolling
masses upon the green velvet of the winter wheat. A sense of sadness
pervaded the spring air, the darkling sky, and the railway-carriage.

Our friend the conductor came into our compartment and lit the lamp.

LIGHT AND SHADOW

THE CHORUS GIRL

One day while she was still pretty and young and her voice was sweet,
Nikolai Kolpakoff, an admirer of hers, was sitting in a room on the
second floor of her cottage. The afternoon was unbearably sultry and
hot. Kolpakoff, who had just dined and drunk a whole bottle of vile
port, felt thoroughly ill and out of sorts. Both he and she were bored,
and were waiting for the heat to abate so that they might go for a
stroll.

Suddenly a bell rang in the hall. Kolpakoff, who was sitting in his
slippers without a coat, jumped up and looked at Pasha with a question
in his eyes.

“It is probably the postman or one of the girls,” said the singer.

Kolpakoff was not afraid of the postman or of Pasha’s girl friends, but
nevertheless he snatched up his coat and disappeared into the next room
while Pasha ran to open the door. What was her astonishment when she saw
on the threshold, not the postman nor a girl friend, but an unknown
woman, beautiful and young! Her dress was distinguished and she was
evidently a lady.

The stranger was pale and was breathing heavily as if she were out of
breath from climbing the stairs.

“What can I do for you?” Pasha inquired.

The lady did not reply at once. She took a step forward, looked slowly
around the room, and sank into a chair as if her legs had collapsed
under her from faintness or fatigue. Her pale lips moved silently,
trying to utter words which would not come.

“Is my husband here?” she asked at last, raising her large eyes with
their red and swollen lids to Pasha’s face.

“What husband do you mean?” Pasha whispered, suddenly taking such
violent fright that her hands and feet grew as cold as ice. “What
husband?” she repeated beginning to tremble.

“My husband—Nikolai Kolpakoff.”

“N-no, my lady. I don’t know your husband.”

A minute passed in silence. The stranger drew her handkerchief several
times across her pale lips, and held her breath in an effort to subdue
an inward trembling, while Pasha stood before her as motionless as a
statue, gazing at her full of uncertainty and fear.

“So you say he is not here?” asked the lady. Her voice was firm now and
a strange smile had twisted her lips.

“I—I—don’t know whom you mean!”

“You are a revolting, filthy, vile creature!” muttered the stranger
looking at Pasha with hatred and disgust. “Yes, yes, you are revolting.
I am glad indeed that an opportunity has come at last for me to tell you
this!”

Pasha felt that she was producing the effect of something indecent and
foul on this lady in black, with the angry eyes and the long, slender
fingers, and she was ashamed of her fat, red cheeks, the pock-mark on
her nose, and the lock of hair on her forehead that would never stay up.
She thought that if she were thin and her face were not powdered, and
she had not that curl on her forehead, she would not feel so afraid and
ashamed standing there before this mysterious, unknown lady.

“Where is my husband?” the lady went on. “However it makes no difference
to me whether he is here or not, I only want you to know that he has
been caught embezzling funds intrusted to him, and that the police are
looking for him. He is going to be arrested. Now see what you have
done!”

The lady rose and began to walk up and down in violent agitation. Pasha
stared at her; fear rendered her uncomprehending.

“He will be found to-day and arrested,” the lady repeated with a sob
full of bitterness and rage. “I know who has brought this horror upon
him! Disgusting, abominable woman! Horrible, bought creature! (Here the
lady’s lips curled and her nose wrinkled with aversion.) I am impotent.
Listen to me, you low woman. I am impotent and you are stronger than I,
but there is One who will avenge me and my children. God’s eyes see all
things. He is just. He will call you to account for every tear I have
shed, every sleepless night I have passed. The time will come when you
will remember me!”

Once more silence fell. The lady walked to and fro wringing her hands.
Pasha continued to watch her dully, uncomprehendingly, dazed with doubt,
waiting for her to do something terrible.

“I don’t know what you mean, my lady!” she suddenly cried, and burst
into tears.

“That’s a lie!” screamed the lady, her eyes flashing with anger. “I know
all about it! I have known about you for a long time. I know that he has
been coming here every day for the last month.”

“Yes—and what if he has? Is it my fault? I have a great many visitors,
but I don’t force any one to come. They are free to do as they please.”

“I tell you he is accused of embezzlement! He has taken money that
didn’t belong to him, and for the sake of a woman like you—for your
sake, he has brought himself to commit a crime! Listen to me,” the lady
said sternly, halting before Pasha. “You are an unprincipled woman, I
know. You exist to bring misfortune to men, that is the object of your
life, but I cannot believe that you have fallen so low as not to have
one spark of humanity left in your breast. He has a wife, he has
children, oh, remember that! There is one means of saving us from
poverty and shame; if I can find nine hundred roubles to-day he will be
left in peace. Only nine hundred roubles!”

“What nine hundred roubles?” asked Pasha feebly. “I—I don’t know—I
didn’t take——”

“I am not asking you to give me nine hundred roubles, you have no money,
and I don’t want anything that belongs to you. It is something else that
I ask. Men generally give presents of jewellery to women like you. All I
ask is that you should give me back the things that my husband has given
you.”

“My lady, he has never given me anything!” wailed Pasha beginning to
understand.

“Then where is the money he has wasted? He has squandered in some way
his own fortune, and mine, and the fortunes of others. Where has the
money gone? Listen, I implore you! I was excited just now and said some
unpleasant things, but I ask you to forgive me! I know you must hate me,
but if pity exists for you, oh, put yourself in my place! I implore you
to give me the jewellery!”

“H’m—” said Pasha shrugging her shoulders. “I should do it with
pleasure, only I swear before God he never gave me a thing. He didn’t,
indeed. But, no, you are right,” the singer suddenly stammered in
confusion. “He did give me two little things. Wait a minute, I’ll fetch
them for you if you want them.”

Pasha pulled out one of the drawers of her bureau, and took from it a
bracelet of hollow gold, and a narrow ring set with a ruby.

“Here they are!” she said, handing them to her visitor.

The lady grew angry and a spasm passed over her features. She felt that
she was being insulted.

“What is this you are giving me?” she cried. “I’m not asking for alms,
but for the things that do not belong to you, for the things that you
have extracted from my weak and unhappy husband by your position. When I
saw you on the wharf with him on Thursday you were wearing costly
brooches and bracelets. Do you think you can play the innocent baby with
me? I ask you for the last time: will you give me those presents or
not?”

“You are strange, I declare,” Pasha exclaimed, beginning to take
offence. “I swear to you that I have never had a thing from your
Nikolai, except this bracelet and ring. He has never given me anything,
but these and some little cakes.”

“Little cakes!” the stranger laughed suddenly. “His children are
starving at home, and he brings you little cakes! So you won’t give up
the things?”

Receiving no answer, the lady sat down, her eyes grew fixed, and she
seemed to be debating something.

“What shall I do?” she murmured. “If I can’t get nine hundred roubles he
will be ruined as well as the children and myself. Shall I kill this
creature, or shall I go down on my knees to her?”

The lady pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and burst into tears.

“Oh, I beseech you!” she sobbed. “It is you who have disgraced and
ruined my husband; now save him! You can have no pity for him, I know;
but the children, remember the children! What have they done to deserve
this?”

Pasha imagined his little children standing on the street corner weeping
with hunger, and she, too, burst into tears.

“What can I do, my lady?” she cried. “You say I am a wicked creature who
has ruined your husband, but I swear to you before God I have never had
the least benefit from him! Mota is the only girl in our chorus who has
a rich friend, the rest of us all live on bread and water. Your husband
is an educated, pleasant gentleman, that’s why I received him. We can’t
pick and choose.”

“I want the jewellery; give me the jewellery! I am weeping, I am
humiliating myself; see, I shall fall on my knees before you!”

Pasha screamed with terror and waved her arms. She felt that this pale,
beautiful lady, who spoke the same refined language that people did in
plays, might really fall on her knees before her, and for the very
reason that she was so proud and high-bred, she would exalt herself by
doing this, and degrade the little singer.

“Yes, yes, I’ll give you the jewellery!” Pasha cried hastily, wiping her
eyes. “Take it, but it did not come from your husband! I got it from
other visitors. But take it, if you want it!”

Pasha pulled out an upper drawer of the bureau, and took from it a
diamond brooch, a string of corals, two or three rings, and a bracelet.
These she handed to the lady.

“Here is the jewellery, but I tell you again your husband never gave me
a thing. Take it, and may you be the richer for having it!” Pasha went
on, offended by the lady’s threat that she would go down on her knees.
“You are a lady and his lawful wife—keep him at home then! The idea of
it! As if I had asked him to come here! He came because he wanted to!”

The lady looked through her tears at the jewellery that Pasha had handed
her and said:

“This isn’t all. There is scarcely five hundred roubles’ worth here.”

Pasha violently snatched a gold watch, a cigarette-case, and a set of
studs out of the drawer and flung up her arms, exclaiming:

“Now I am cleaned out! Look for yourself!”

Her visitor sighed. With trembling hands she wrapped the trinkets in her
handkerchief, and went out without a word, without even a nod.

The door of the adjoining room opened and Kolpakoff came out. His face
was pale and his head was shaking nervously, as if he had just swallowed
a very bitter draught. His eyes were full of tears.

“I’d like to know what you ever gave me!” Pasha attacked him vehemently.
“When did you ever give me the smallest present?”

“Presents—they are a detail, presents!” Kolpakoff cried, his head still
shaking. “Oh, my God, she wept before you, she abased herself!”

“I ask you again: what have you ever given me?” screamed Pasha.

“My God, she—a respectable, a proud woman, was actually ready to fall on
her knees before—before this—wench! And I have brought her to this! I
allowed it!”

He seized his head in his hands.

“No,” he groaned out, “I shall never forgive myself for this—never! Get
away from me, wretch!” he cried, backing away from Pasha with horror,
and keeping her off with outstretched, trembling hands. “She was ready
to go down on her knees, and before whom?—Before you! Oh, my God!”

He threw on his coat and, pushing Pasha contemptuously aside, strode to
the door and went out.

Pasha flung herself down on the sofa and burst into loud wails. She
already regretted the things she had given away so impulsively, and her
feelings were hurt. She remembered that a merchant had beaten her three
years ago for nothing, yes, absolutely for nothing, and at that thought
she wept louder than ever.

THE FATHER OF A FAMILY

This is what generally follows a grand loss at cards or a drinking-bout,
when his indigestion begins to make itself felt. Stepan Jilin wakes up
in an uncommonly gloomy frame of mind. He looks sour, ruffled, and
peevish, and his grey face wears an expression partly discontented,
partly offended, and partly sneering. He dresses deliberately, slowly
drinks his vichy water, and begins roaming about the house.

“I wish to goodness I knew what br-rute goes through here leaving all
the doors open!” he growls angrily, wrapping his dressing-gown about him
and noisily clearing his throat. “Take this paper away! What is it lying
here for? Though we keep twenty servants, this house is more untidy than
a hovel! Who rang the bell? Who’s there?”

“Aunty Anfisa, who nursed our Fedia,” answers his wife.

“Yes, loafing about, eating the bread of idleness!”

“I don’t understand you, Stepan; you invited her here yourself and now
you are abusing her!”

“I’m not abusing her. I’m talking! And you ought to find something to
do, too, good woman, instead of sitting there with your hands folded,
picking quarrels with your husband! I don’t understand a woman like you,
upon my word I don’t! How can you let day after day go by without
working? Here’s your husband toiling and moiling like an ox, like a
beast of burden, and there you are, his wife, his life’s companion,
sitting about like a doll without ever turning your hand to a thing, so
bored that you must seize every opportunity of quarrelling with him.
It’s high time for you to drop those schoolgirlish airs, madam! You’re
not a child nor a young miss any longer. You’re a woman, a mother! You
turn away, eh? Aha! You don’t like disagreeable truths, do you?”

“It’s odd you only speak disagreeable truths when you have indigestion!”

“That’s right, let’s have a scene; go ahead!”

“Did you go to town yesterday or did you play cards somewhere?”

“Well, and what if I did? Whose business is it? Am I accountable to any
one? Don’t I lose my own money? All that I spend and all that is spent
in this house is mine, do you hear that? Mine!”

And so he persists in the same strain. But Jilin is never so crotchety,
so stern, so bristling with virtue and justice, as he is when sitting at
dinner with his household gathered about him. It generally begins with
the soup. Having swallowed his first spoonful, Jilin suddenly scowls and
stops eating.

“What the devil—” he mutters. “So I’ll have to go to the café for
lunch——”

“What is it?” asks his anxious wife. “Isn’t the soup good?”

“I can’t conceive the swinish tastes a person must have to swallow this
mess! It is too salty, it smells of rags, it is flavoured with bugs and
not onions! Anfisa Pavlovna!” he cries to his guest. “It is shocking! I
give them oceans of money every day to buy food with, I deny myself
everything, and this is what they give me to eat! No doubt they would
like me to retire from business into the kitchen and do the cooking
myself!”

“The soup is good to-day,” the governess timidly ventures.

“Is it? Do you find it so?” inquires Jilin scowling angrily at her.
“Every one to his taste, but I must confess that yours and mine differ
widely, Varvara Vasilievna. You, for instance, admire the behavior of
that child there (Jilin points a tragic forefinger at his son). You are
in ecstasies over him, but I—I am shocked! Yes, I am!”

Fedia, a boy of seven with a delicate, pale face, stops eating and
lowers his eyes. His cheeks grow paler than ever.

“Yes, you are in ecstasies, and I am shocked. I don’t know which of us
is right, but I venture to think that I, as his father, know my own son
better than you do. Look at the way he is sitting! Is that how
well-behaved children should hold themselves? Sit up!”

Fedia raises his chin and sticks out his neck and thinks he is sitting
up straighter. His eyes are filling with tears.

“Eat your dinner! Hold your spoon properly! Don’t dare to snuffle! Look
me in the face!”

Fedia tries to look at him, but his lips are quivering and the tears are
trickling down his cheeks.

“Aha, so you’re crying? You’re naughty and that makes you cry, eh? Leave
the table and go and stand in the corner, puppy!”

“But—do let him finish his dinner first!” his wife intercedes for the
boy.

“No—no dinner! Such a—such a naughty brat has no right to eat dinner!”

Fedia makes a wry face, slides down from his chair, and takes his stand
in a corner.

“That’s the way to treat him,” his father continues. “If no one else
will take charge of his education I must do it myself. I won’t have you
being naughty and crying at dinner, sir! Spoiled brat! You ought to
work, do you hear me? Your father works, and you must work, too! No one
may sponge on others. Be a man, a M-A-N!”

“For Heaven’s sake, hush!” his wife beseeches him in French. “At least
don’t bite our heads off in public! The old lady is listening to every
word, and the whole town will know of this, thanks to her.”

“I’m not afraid of the public!” retorts Jilin in Russian. “Anfisa
Pavlovna can see for herself that I’m speaking the truth. What, do you
think I ought to be satisfied with that youngster there? Do you know how
much he costs me? Do you know, you worthless boy, how much you cost me?
Or do you think I can create money and that it falls into my lap of its
own accord? Stop bawling! Shut up! Do you hear me or not? Do you want me
to thrash you, little wretch?”

Fedia breaks into piercing wails and begins sobbing.

“Oh, this is absolutely unbearable!” exclaims his mother, throwing down
her napkin and getting up from the table. “He never lets us have our
dinner in peace. That’s where that bread of yours sticks!”

She points to her throat and, putting her handkerchief to her eyes,
leaves the dining-room.

“Her feelings are hurt,” mutters Jilin, forcing a smile. “She has been
too gently handled, Anfisa Pavlovna, and that’s why she doesn’t like to
hear the truth. We are to blame!”

Several minutes elapse in silence. Jilin catches sight of the
dinner-plates and notices that the soup has not been touched. He sighs
deeply and glares at the flushed and agitated face of the governess.

“Why don’t you eat your dinner, Varvara Vasilievna?” he demands. “You’re
offended, too, are you? I see, you don’t like the truth either. Forgive
me, but it is my nature never to be hypocritical. I always hit straight
from the shoulder. (A sigh.) I see, though, that my company is
distasteful to you. No one can speak or eat in my presence. You ought to
have told me that sooner so that I could have left you to yourselves. I
am going now.”

Jilin rises and walks with dignity toward the door. He stops as he
passes the weeping Fedia.

“After what has happened just now you are fr-ee!” he says to him with a
lofty toss of the head. “I shall no longer concern myself with your
education. I wash my hands of it. Forgive me if, out of sincere fatherly
solicitude for your welfare, I interfered with you and your
preceptresses. At the same time, I renounce forever all responsibility
for your future.”

Fedia wails and sobs more loudly than ever. Jilin turns toward the door
with a stately air and walks off into his bedroom.

After his noonday nap Jilin is tormented by the pangs of conscience. He
is ashamed of his behaviour to his wife, his son, and Anfisa Pavlovna,
and feels extremely uncomfortable on remembering what happened at
dinner. But his egotism is too strong for him and he is not man enough
to be truthful, so he continues to grumble and sulk.

When he wakes up the following morning he feels in the gayest of moods
and whistles merrily at his ablutions. On entering the dining-room for
breakfast he finds Fedia. The boy rises at the sight of his father and
gazes at him with troubled eyes.

“Well, how goes it, young man?” Jilin asks cheerfully as he sits down to
table. “What’s the news, old fellow? Are you all right, eh? Come here,
you little roly-poly, and give papa a kiss.”

Fedia approaches his father with a pale, serious face and brushes his
cheek with trembling lips. Then he silently retreats and resumes his
place at the table.

THE ORATOR

One Sunday morning they were burying the Collegiate Assessor Kiril
Ivanovitch, who had died from the two ailments so common amongst us:
drink and a scolding wife. While the funeral procession was crawling
from the church to the cemetery, a certain Poplavski, a colleague of the
defunct civil servant, jumped into a cab, and galloped off to fetch his
friend Gregory Zapoikin, a young but already popular man. As many of my
readers know, Zapoikin was the possessor of a remarkable talent for
making impromptu orations at weddings, jubilee celebrations, and
funerals. Whether he was half-asleep, or fasting, or dead drunk, or in a
fever, he was always ready to make a speech. His words always flowed
from his lips as smoothly and evenly and abundantly as water out of a
rain-pipe, and there were more heartrending expressions in his
oratorical vocabulary than there are black beetles in an inn. His
speeches were always eloquent and long, so long that sometimes,
especially at the weddings of merchants, the aid of the police had to be
summoned to put a stop to them.

“I have come to carry you off with me, old chap,” began Poplavski. “Put
on your things this minute and come along. One of our colleagues has
kicked the bucket and we are about to despatch him into the next world.
We must have some sort of folderol to see him off with, you know! All
our hopes are centred on you! If one of our little fellows had died, we
shouldn’t have troubled you; but, after all, this one was an Assessor, a
pillar of the state, one might say. It wouldn’t do to bury a big fish
like him without some kind of an oration!”

“Ah, the Assessor is it?” yawned Zapoikin. “What, that old soak?”

“Yes, that old soak! There will be pancakes and caviar, you know, and
you will get your cab-fare paid. Come along, old man! Spout some of your
Ciceronian hyperboles over his grave and you’ll see the thanks you’ll
get from us all!”

Zapoikin consented to go with alacrity. He ruffled his hair, veiled his
features in gloom, and stepped out with Poplavski into the street.

“I know that Assessor of yours!” he said, as he took his seat in the
cab. “He was a rare brute of a rascal, God bless his soul!”

“Come, let dead men alone, Grisha!”

“Oh, of course, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_, but that doesn’t make him
any less a rascal!”

The friends overtook the funeral cortège. It was travelling so slowly
that before it reached its destination they had time to dash into a café
three times to drink a drop to the peace of the dead man’s soul.

At the cemetery the litany had already been sung. The mother-in-law, the
wife, and the sister-in-law of the departed were weeping in torrents.
The wife even shrieked as the coffin was lowered into the grave: “Oh,
let me go with him!” But she did not follow her husband, probably
because she remembered his pension in time. Zapoikin waited until every
sound had ceased and then stepped forward, embraced the whole crowd at a
glance and began:

“Can we believe our eyes and our ears? Is this not a terrible dream?
What is this grave here? What are these tear-stained faces, these sobs,
these groans? Alas, they are not a dream! He whom, but a short time
since we saw before us so valiant and brave, endowed still with all the
freshness of youth; he whom, before our eyes, like the untiring bee, we
saw carrying his burden of honey to the universal hive of the sovereign
good, he whom—this man has now become dust, a mirage! Pitiless death has
laid his bony hand upon him at a time when, notwithstanding the weight
of his years, he was still in the very bloom of his powers, and radiant
with hope. We have many a good servant of the state here, but Prokofi
Osipitch stood alone among them all. He was devoted body and soul to the
accomplishment of his honourable duties; he spared not his strength, and
it may well be said of him that he was always without fear and without
reproach. Ah, how he despised those who desired to buy his soul at the
expense of the public good; those who, with the seductive blessings of
earth, would fain have enticed him into a betrayal of the trusts
confided to him! Yea, before our very eyes we could see Prokofi Osipitch
giving his mite, his all, to comrades poorer than himself, and you have
heard for yourselves, but a few moments since, the cries of the widows
and orphans who lived by the kindness of his great heart. Engrossed in
the duties of his post and in deeds of charity, he knew no joy in this
world. Yea, he even forswore the happiness of family life. You know that
he remained a bachelor to the end of his days. Who will take the place
of this comrade of ours? I can see at this moment his gentle,
clean-shaven face turned toward us with a benevolent smile. I seem to
hear the soft, friendly tones of his voice. Eternal repose be to your
soul, Prokofi Osipitch! Rest in peace, noble, honourable toiler of
ours!”

Zapoikin continued his oration, but his audience had begun to whisper
among themselves. The speech pleased every one and called forth numerous
tears, but it seemed a little strange to many who heard it. In the first
place, they could not understand why the speaker had referred to the
dead man as “Prokofi Osipitch” when his real name had been Kiril
Ivanovitch. In the second place, they all knew that the departed and his
wife had fought like cat and dog, and that therefore he could hardly
have been called a bachelor. In the third place, he had worn a thick red
beard, and had never shaved in his life, therefore they could not make
out why their Demosthenes had spoken of him as being clean-shaven. They
wondered and looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders.

“Prokofi Osipitch!” the speaker continued with a rapt look at the grave.
“Prokofi Osipitch! You were ugly of face, it is true, yea, you were
almost uncouth; you were gloomy and stern, but well we knew that beneath
that deceitful exterior of yours there beat a warm and affectionate
heart!”

The crowd was now beginning to notice something queer about the orator
himself. He was glaring intently at some object near him and was
shifting his position uneasily. At last he suddenly stopped, his jaw
dropped with amazement, and he turned to Poplavski.

“Look here, that man’s alive!” he cried, his eyes starting out of his
head with horror.

“Who’s alive?”

“Why, Prokofi Osipitch! There he is now, standing by that monument!”

“Of course he is! It was Kiril Ivanovitch that died, not he!”

“But you said yourself it was the Assessor!”

“I know! And wasn’t Kiril Ivanovitch the Assessor? Oh, you moon-calf!
You have got them mixed up! Of course Prokofi Osipitch used to be the
Assessor, but that was two years ago. He has been chief of a table in
chancery now for two years!”

“It’s simply the devil to keep up with all you chaps!”

“What are you stopping for? Go on! This is getting too awkward!”

Zapoikin turned toward the grave, and continued his oration with all his
former eloquence. Yes, and there near the monument stood Prokofi
Osipitch, an old civil servant with a clean-shaven face, frowning and
glaring furiously at the speaker.

“How in the world did you manage to do that?” laughed the officials as
they and Zapoikin drove home from the cemetery together. “Ha! Ha! Ha! A
funeral oration for a live man!”

“You made a great mistake, young man!” growled Prokofi Osipitch. “Your
speech may have been appropriate enough for a dead man, but for a live
one it was—it was simply a joke. Allow me to ask you, what was it you
said? ‘Without fear and without reproach; he never took a bribe!’ Why,
you _couldn’t_ say a thing like that about a live man unless you were
joking! And no one asked you to dwell upon my personal appearance, young
gentleman! ‘Ugly and uncouth,’ eh! That may be quite true, but why did
you drag it in before every one in the city? I call it an insult!”

IONITCH

If newcomers to the little provincial city of S. complained that life
there was monotonous and dull, its inhabitants would answer that, on the
contrary, S. was a very amusing place, indeed, that it had a library and
a club, that balls were given there, and finally, that very pleasant
families lived there with whom one might become acquainted. And they
always pointed to the Turkins as the most accomplished and most
enlightened family of all.

These Turkins lived in a house of their own, on Main Street, next door
to the governor. Ivan Turkin, the father, was a stout, handsome, dark
man with side-whiskers. He often organized amateur theatricals for
charity, playing the parts of the old generals in them and coughing most
amusingly. He knew a lot of funny stories, riddles, and proverbs, and
loved to joke and pun with, all the while, such a quaint expression on
his face that no one ever knew whether he was serious or jesting. His
wife Vera was a thin, rather pretty woman who wore glasses and wrote
stories and novels which she liked to read aloud to her guests.
Katherine, the daughter, played the piano. In short, each member of the
family had his or her special talent. The Turkins always welcomed their
guests cordially and showed off their accomplishments to them with
cheerful and genial simplicity. The interior of their large stone house
was spacious, and, in summer, delightfully cool. Half of its windows
looked out upon a shady old garden where, on spring evenings, the
nightingales sang. Whenever there were guests in the house a mighty
chopping would always begin in the kitchen, and a smell of fried onions
would pervade the courtyard. These signs always foretold a sumptuous and
appetising supper.

So it came to pass that when Dimitri Ionitch Startseff received his
appointment as government doctor, and went to live in Dialij, six miles
from S., he too, as an intelligent man, was told that he must not fail
to make the Turkins’ acquaintance. Turkin was presented to him on the
street one winter’s day; they talked of the weather and the theatre and
the cholera, and an invitation from Turkin followed. Next spring, on
Ascension Day, after he had received his patients, Startseff went into
town for a little holiday, and to make some purchases. He strolled along
at a leisurely pace (he had no horse of his own yet), and as he walked
he sang to himself:

“Before I had drunk those tears from Life’s cup——”

After dining in town he sauntered through the public gardens, and the
memory of Turkin’s invitation somehow came into his mind. He decided to
go to their house and see for himself what sort of people they were.

“Be welcome, if you please!” cried Turkin, meeting him on the front
steps. “I am delighted, delighted to see such a welcome guest! Come, let
me introduce you to the missus. I told him, Vera,” he continued,
presenting the doctor to his wife, “I told him that no law of the Medes
and Persians allows him to shut himself up in his hospital as he does.
He ought to give society the benefit of his leisure hours, oughtn’t he,
dearest?”

“Sit down here,” said Madame Turkin, beckoning him to a seat at her
side. “You may flirt with me, if you like. My husband is jealous, a
regular Othello, but we’ll try to behave so that he shan’t notice
anything.”

“Oh, you little wretch, you!” murmured Turkin, tenderly kissing her
forehead. “You have come at a very opportune moment,” he went on,
addressing his guest. “My missus has just written a splendiferous novel
and is going to read it aloud to-day.”

“Jean,” said Madame Turkin to her husband. “Dites que l’on nous donne du
thé.”

Startseff next made the acquaintance of Miss Katherine, an eighteen-year
old girl who much resembled her mother. Like her, she was pretty and
slender; her expression was childlike still, and her figure delicate and
supple, but her full, girlish chest spoke of spring and of the
loveliness of spring. They drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats and
ate delicious cakes that melted in the mouth. When evening came other
guests began to arrive, and Turkin turned his laughing eyes on each one
in turn exclaiming:

“Be welcome, if you please!”

When all had assembled, they took their seats in the drawing-room, and
Madame Turkin read her novel aloud. The story began with the words: “The
frost was tightening its grasp.” The windows were open wide, and sounds
of chopping could be heard in the kitchen, while the smell of fried
onions came floating through the air. Every one felt very peaceful
sitting there in those deep, soft armchairs, while the friendly
lamplight played tenderly among the shadows of the drawing-room. On that
evening of summer, with the sound of voices and laughter floating up
from the street, and the scent of lilacs blowing in through the open
windows, it was hard to imagine the frost tightening its grasp, and the
setting sun illuminating with its bleak rays a snowy plain and a
solitary wayfarer journeying across it. Madame Turkin read of how a
beautiful princess had built a school, and hospital, and library in the
village where she lived, and had fallen in love with a strolling artist.
She read of things that had never happened in this world, and yet it was
delightfully comfortable to sit there and listen to her, while such
pleasant and peaceful dreams floated through one’s fancy that one wished
never to move again.

“Not baddish!” said Turkin softly. And one of the guests, who had
allowed his thoughts to roam far, far afield, said almost inaudibly:

“Yes—it is indeed!”

One hour passed, two hours passed. The town band began playing in the
public gardens, and a chorus of singers struck up “The Little Torch.”
After Madame Turkin had folded her manuscript, every one sat silent for
five minutes, listening to the old folk-song telling of things that
happen in life and not in story-books.

“Do you have your stories published in the magazines?” asked Startseff.

“No,” she answered. “I have never had anything published. I put all my
manuscripts away in a closet. Why should I publish them?” she added by
way of explanation. “We don’t need the money.”

And for some reason every one sighed.

“And now, Kitty, play us something,” said Turkin to his daughter.

Some one raised the top of the piano, and opened the music which was
already lying at hand. Katherine struck the keys with both hands. Then
she struck them again with all her might, and then again and again. Her
chest and shoulders quivered, and she obstinately hammered the same
place, so that it seemed as if she were determined not to stop playing
until she had beaten the keyboard into the piano. The drawing-room was
filled with thunder; the floor, the ceiling, the furniture, everything
rumbled. Katherine played a long, monotonous piece, interesting only for
its intricacy, and as Startseff listened, he imagined he saw endless
rocks rolling down a high mountainside. He wanted them to stop rolling
as quickly as possible, and at the same time Katherine pleased him
immensely, she looked so energetic and strong, all rosy from her
exertions, with a lock of hair hanging down over her forehead. After his
winter spent among sick people and peasants in Dialij, it was a new and
agreeable sensation to be sitting in a drawing-room watching that
graceful, pure young girl and listening to those noisy, monotonous but
cultured sounds.

“Well, Kitty, you played better than ever to-day!” exclaimed Turkin,
with tears in his eyes when his daughter had finished and risen from the
piano-stool. “Last the best, you know!”

The guests all surrounded her exclaiming, congratulating, and declaring
that they had not heard such music for ages. Kitty listened in silence,
smiling a little, and triumph was written all over her face.

“Wonderful! Beautiful!”

“Beautiful!” exclaimed Startseff, abandoning himself to the general
enthusiasm. “Where did you study music? At the conservatory?” he asked
Katherine.

“No, I haven’t been to the conservatory, but I am going there very soon.
So far I have only had lessons here from Madame Zakivska.”

“Did you go to the high-school?”

“Oh, dear no!” the mother answered for her daughter. “We had teachers
come to the house for her. She might have come under bad influences at
school, you know. While a girl is growing up she should be under her
mother’s influence only.”

“I’m going to the conservatory all the same!” declared Katherine.

“No, Kitty loves her mamma too much for that; Kitty would not grieve her
mamma and papa!”

“Yes, I am going!” Katherine insisted, playfully and wilfully stamping
her little foot.

At supper it was Turkin who showed off his accomplishments. With
laughing eyes, but with a serious face he told funny stories, and made
jokes, and asked ridiculous riddles which he answered himself. He spoke
a language all his own, full of laboured, acrobatic feats of wit, in the
shape of such words as “splendiferous,” “not baddish,” “I thank you
blindly,” which had clearly long since become a habit with him.

But this was not the end of the entertainment. When the well-fed,
well-satisfied guests had trooped into the front hall to sort out their
hats and canes they found Pava the footman, a shaven-headed boy of
fourteen, bustling about among them.

“Come now, Pava! Do your act!” cried Turkin to the lad.

Pava struck an attitude, raised one hand, and said in a tragic voice:

“Die, unhappy woman!”

At which every one laughed.

“Quite amusing!” thought Startseff, as he stepped out into the street.

He went to a restaurant and had a glass of beer, and then started off on
foot for his home in Dialij. As he walked he sang to himself:

“Your voice so languorous and soft——”

He felt no trace of fatigue after his six-mile walk, and as he went to
bed he thought that, on the contrary, he would gladly have walked
another fifteen miles.

“Not baddish!” he remembered as he fell asleep, and laughed aloud at the
recollection.

After that Startseff was always meaning to go to the Turkins’ again, but
he was kept very busy in the hospital, and for the life of him could not
win an hour’s leisure for himself. More than a year of solitude and toil
thus went by, until one day a letter in a blue envelope was brought to
him from the city.

Madame Turkin had long been a sufferer from headaches, but since Kitty
had begun to frighten her every day by threatening to go away to the
conservatory her attacks had become more frequent. All the doctors in
the city had treated her and now, at last, it was the country doctor’s
turn. Madame Turkin wrote him a moving appeal in which she implored him
to come, and relieve her sufferings. Startseff went, and after that he
began to visit the Turkins often, very often. The fact was, he did help
Madame Turkin a little, and she hastened to tell all her guests what a
wonderful and unusual physician he was, but it was not Madame Turkin’s
headaches that took Startseff to the house.

One evening, on a holiday, when Katherine had finished her long,
wearisome exercises on the piano, they all went into the dining-room and
had sat there a long time drinking tea while Turkin told some of those
funny stories of his. Suddenly a bell rang. Some one had to go to the
front door to meet a newly come guest, and Startseff took advantage of
the momentary confusion to whisper into Katherine’s ear with intense
agitation:

“For heaven’s sake come into the garden with me, I beseech you! Don’t
torment me!”

She shrugged her shoulders as if in doubt as to what he wanted of her,
but rose, nevertheless, and went out with him.

“You play for three or four hours a day on the piano, and then go and
sit with your mother, and I never have the slightest chance to talk to
you. Give me just one quarter of an hour, I implore you!”

Autumn was approaching, and the old garden, its paths strewn with fallen
leaves, was quiet and melancholy. The early twilight was falling.

“I have not seen you for one whole week,” Startseff went on. “If you
only knew what agony that has been for me! Let us sit down. Listen to
me!”

The favourite haunt of both was a bench under an old spreading
maple-tree. On this they took their seats.

“What is it you want?” asked Katherine in a hard, practical voice.

“I have not seen you for one whole week. I have not heard you speak for
such a long time! I long madly for the sound of your voice. I hunger for
it! Speak to me now!”

He was carried away by her freshness and the candid expression of her
eyes and cheeks. He even saw in the fit of her dress something
extraordinarily touching and sweet in its simplicity and artless grace.
And at the same time, with all her innocence, she seemed to him
wonderfully clever and precocious for her years. He could talk to her of
literature or art or anything he pleased and could pour out his
complaints to her about the life he led and the people he met, even if
she did sometimes laugh for no reason when he was talking seriously, or
jump up and run into the house. Like all the young ladies in S., she
read a great deal. Most people there read very little, and, indeed, it
was said in the library that if it were not for the girls, and the young
Jews, the building might as well be closed. This reading of Katherine’s
was an endless source of pleasure to Startseff. Each time he met her he
would ask her with emotion what she had been reading, and would listen
enchanted as she told him.

“What have you read this week since we last saw one another?” he now
asked. “Tell me, I beg you.”

“I have been reading Pisemski.”

“What have you been reading of Pisemski’s?”

“‘The Thousand Souls,’” answered Kitty. “What a funny name Pisemski had:
Alexei Theofilaktitch!”

“Where are you going?” cried Startseff in terror as she suddenly jumped
up and started toward the house. “I absolutely must speak to you. I want
to tell you something! Stay with me, if only for five minutes, I implore
you!”

She stopped as if she meant to answer him, and then awkwardly slipped a
note into his hand and ran away into the house where she took her seat
at the piano once more.

“Meet me in the cemetery at Demetti’s grave to-night at eleven,”
Startseff read.

“How absurd!” he thought, when he had recovered himself a little. “Why
in the cemetery? What is the sense of that?”

The answer was clear: Kitty was fooling. Who would think seriously of
making a tryst at night in a cemetery far outside the city when it would
have been so easy to meet in the street or in the public gardens? Was it
becoming for him, a government doctor and a serious-minded person, to
sigh and receive notes and wander about a cemetery, and do silly things
that even schoolboys made fun of? How would this little adventure end?
What would his friends say if they knew of it? These were Startseff’s
reflections, as he wandered about among the tables at the club that
evening, but at half past ten he suddenly changed his mind and drove to
the cemetery.

He had his own carriage and pair now, and a coachman named Panteleimon
in a long velvet coat. The moon was shining. The night was still and
mellow, but with an autumnal softness. The dogs barked at him as he
drove through the suburbs and out through the city gates. Startseff
stopped his carriage in an alley on the edge of the town and continued
his way to the cemetery on foot.

“Every one has his freaks,” he reflected. “Kitty is freakish, too, and,
who knows, perhaps she was not joking and may come after all.”

He abandoned himself to this faint, groundless hope, and it intoxicated
him.

He crossed the fields for half a mile. The dark band of trees in the
cemetery appeared in the distance like a wood or a large garden, then a
white stone wall loomed up before him, and soon, by the light of the
moon, Startseff was able to read the inscription over the gate: “Thy
hour also approacheth—” He went in through a little side gate, and his
eye was struck first by the white crosses and monuments on either side
of a wide avenue, and by their black shadows and the shadows of the tall
poplars that bordered the walk. Around him, on all sides, he could see
the same checkering of white and black, with the sleeping trees brooding
over the white tombstones. The night did not seem so dark as it had
appeared in the fields. The fallen leaves of the maples, like tiny
hands, lay sharply defined upon the sandy walks and marble slabs, and
the inscriptions on the tombstones were clearly legible. Startseff was
struck with the reflection that he now saw for the first and perhaps the
last time a world unlike any other, a world that seemed to be the very
cradle of the soft moonlight, where there was no life, no, not a breath
of it; and yet, in every dark poplar, in every grave he felt the
presence of a great mystery promising life, calm, beautiful, and
eternal. Peace and sadness and mercy rose with the scent of autumn from
the graves, the leaves, and the faded flowers.

Profoundest silence lay over all; the stars looked down from heaven with
deep humility. Startseff’s footsteps sounded jarring and out of place.
It was only when the church-bells began to ring the hour, and he
imagined himself lying dead under the ground for ever, that some one
seemed to be watching him, and he thought suddenly that here were not
silence and peace, but stifling despair and the dull anguish of
nonexistence.

Demetti’s grave was a little chapel surmounted by an angel. An Italian
opera troupe had once come to S., and one of its members had died there.
She had been buried here, and this monument had been erected to her
memory. No one in the city any longer remembered her, but the shrine
lamp hanging in the doorway sparkled in the moon’s rays and seemed to be
alight.

No one was at the grave, and who should come there at midnight?
Startseff waited, and the moonlight kindled all the passion in him. He
ardently painted in his imagination the longed-for kiss and the embrace.
He sat down beside the monument for half an hour, and then walked up and
down the paths with his hat in his hand, waiting and thinking. How many
girls, how many women, were lying here under these stones who had been
beautiful and enchanting, and who had loved and glowed with passion in
the night under the caresses of their lovers! How cruelly does Mother
Nature jest with mankind! How bitter to acknowledge it! So thought
Startseff and longed to scream aloud that he did not want to be jested
with, that he wanted love at any price. Around him gleamed not white
blocks of marble, but beautiful human forms timidly hiding among the
shadows of the trees. He felt keen anguish.

Then, as if a curtain had been drawn across the scene, the moon vanished
behind a cloud and darkness fell about him. Startseff found the gate
with difficulty in the obscurity of the autumn night, and then wandered
about for more than an hour in search of the alley where he had left his
carriage.

“I am so tired, I am ready to drop,” he said to Panteleimon.

And, as he sank blissfully into his seat, he thought:

“Oh dear, I must not get fat!”

III

On the evening of the following day Startseff drove to the Turkins’ to
make his proposal. But he proved to have come at an unfortunate time, as
Katherine was in her room having her hair dressed by a coiffeur before
going to a dance at the club.

Once more Startseff was obliged to sit in the dining-room for an age
drinking tea. Seeing that his guest was pensive and bored, Turkin took a
scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and read aloud a droll
letter from his German manager telling how “all the disavowals on the
estate had been spoiled and all the modesty had been shaken down.”

“They will probably give her a good dowry,” thought Startseff, listening
vacantly to what was being read.

After his sleepless night he felt almost stunned, as if he had drunk
some sweet but poisonous sleeping potion. His mind was hazy but warm and
cheerful, though at the same time a cold, hard fragment of his brain
kept reasoning with him and saying:

“Stop before it is too late! Is she the woman for you? She is wilful and
spoiled; she sleeps until two every day, and you are a government doctor
and a poor deacon’s son.”

“Well, what does that matter?” he thought. “What if I am?”

“And what is more,” that cold fragment continued. “If you marry her her
family will make you give up your government position, and live in
town.”

“And what of that?” he thought. “I’ll live in town then! She will have a
dowry. We will keep house.”

At last Katherine appeared, looking pretty and immaculate in her
low-necked ball dress, and the moment Startseff saw her he fell into
such transports that he could not utter a word and could only stare at
her and laugh.

She began to say good-bye, and as there was nothing to keep him here now
that she was going, he, too, rose, saying that it was time for him to be
off to attend to his patients in Dialij.

“If you must go now,” said Turkin, “you can take Kitty to the club; it
is on your way.”

A light drizzle was falling and it was very dark, so that only by the
help of Panteleimon’s cough could they tell where the carriage was. The
hood of the victoria was raised.

“Roll away!” cried Turkin, seating his daughter in the carriage.
“Rolling stones gather no moss! God speed you, if you please!”

They drove away.

“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startseff began. “How heartless and
unkind of you——”

“You went to the cemetery?”

“Yes, I did, and waited there for you until nearly two o’clock. I was
very unhappy.”

“Then be unhappy if you can’t understand a joke!”

Delighted to have caught her lover so cleverly, and to see him so much
in love, Katherine burst out laughing, and then suddenly screamed as the
carriage tipped and turned sharply in at the club gates. Startseff put
his arm around her waist, and in her fright the girl pressed closer to
him. At that he could contain himself no longer, and passionately kissed
her on the lips and on the chin, holding her tighter than ever.

“That will do!” she said drily.

And a moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and the policeman
standing near the lighted entrance to the club was shouting to
Panteleimon in a harsh voice:

“Move on, you old crow! What are you standing there for?”

Startseff drove home, but only to return at once arrayed in a borrowed
dress suit and a stiff collar that was always trying to climb up off the
collar-band. At midnight he was sitting in the reception-room of the
club, saying passionately to Katherine:

“Oh, how ignorant people are who have never loved! No one, I think, has
ever truly described love, and it would scarcely be possible to depict
this tender, blissful, agonising feeling. He who has once felt it would
never be able to put it into words. Do I need introductions and
descriptions? Do I need oratory to tell me what it is? My love is
unspeakable—I beg you, I implore you to be my wife!” cried Startseff at
last.

“Dimitri Ionitch,” said Katherine, assuming a very serious, thoughtful
expression. “Dimitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the honour
you do me. I esteem you, but—” here she rose and stood before him. “But,
forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us be serious. You know, Dimitri
Ionitch, that I love art more than anything else in the world. I am
passionately fond of, I adore, music, and if I could I would consecrate
my whole life to it. I want to be a musician. I long for fame and
success and freedom and you ask me to go on living in this town, and to
continue this empty, useless existence which has become unbearable to
me! You want me to marry? Ah no, that cannot be! One should strive for a
higher and brighter ideal, and family life would tie me down for ever.
Dimitri Ionitch—” (she smiled a little as she said these words,
remembering Alexei Theofilaktitch) “Dimitri Ionitch, you are kind and
noble and clever, you are the nicest man I know” (her eyes filled with
tears). “I sympathise with you with all my heart, but—but you must
understand——”

She turned away and left the room, unable to restrain her tears.

Startseff’s heart ceased beating madly. His first action on reaching the
street was to tear off his stiff collar and draw a long, deep breath. He
felt a little humiliated, and his pride was stung, for he had not
expected a refusal, and could not believe that all his hopes and pangs
and dreams had come to such a silly ending; he might as well have been
the hero of a playlet at a performance of amateur theatricals! He
regretted his lost love and emotion, regretted it so keenly that he
could have sobbed aloud or given Panteleimon’s broad back a good, sound
blow with his umbrella.

For three days after that evening his business went to ruin, and he
could neither eat nor sleep, but when he heard a rumour that Katherine
had gone to Moscow to enter the conservatory he grew calmer, and once
more gathered up the lost threads of his life.

Later, when he remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and
rushed all over town looking for a dress suit, he would yawn lazily and
say:

“What a business that was!”

Four years went by. Startseff now had a large practice in the city. He
hastily prescribed for his sick people every morning at Dialij, and then
drove to town to see his patients there, returning late at night. He had
grown stouter and heavier, and would not walk, if he could help it,
suffering as he did from asthma. Panteleimon, too, had become stouter,
and the more he grew in width the more bitterly he sighed and lamented
his hard lot: he was so tired of driving!

Startseff was now an occasional guest at several houses, but he had made
close friends with no one. The conversation, the point of view, and even
the looks of the inhabitants of S. bored him. Experience had taught him
that as long as he played cards, or dined with them, they were peaceful,
good-natured, and even fairly intelligent folk, but he had only to speak
of anything that was not edible, he had only to mention politics or
science to them, for them to become utterly nonplussed, or else to talk
such foolish and mischievous nonsense that there was nothing to be done
but to shrug one’s shoulders and leave them. If Startseff tried to say
to even the most liberal of them that, for instance, mankind was
fortunately progressing, and that in time we should no longer suffer
under a system of passports and capital punishment, they would look at
him askance, and say mistrustfully: “Then one will be able to kill any
one one wants to on the street, will one?” Or if at supper, in talking
about work, Startseff said that labour was a good thing, and every one
should work, each person present would take it as a personal affront and
begin an angry and tiresome argument. As they never did anything and
were not interested in anything, and as Startseff could never for the
life of him think of anything to say to them, he avoided all
conversation and confined himself to eating and playing cards. If there
was a family fête at one of the houses and he was asked to dinner, he
would eat in silence with his eyes fixed on his plate, listening to all
the uninteresting, false, stupid things that were being said around him
and feeling irritated and bored. But he would remain silent, and because
he always sternly held his tongue and never raised his eyes from his
plate, he was known as “the puffed-up Pole,” although he was no more of
a Pole than you or I. He shunned amusements, such as theatres and
concerts, but he played cards with enjoyment for two or three hours
every evening. There was one other pleasure to which he had
unconsciously, little by little, become addicted, and that was to empty
his pockets every evening of the little bills he had received in his
practice during the day. Sometimes he would find them scattered through
all his pockets, seventy roubles’ worth of them, yellow ones and green
ones, smelling of scent, and vinegar, and incense, and kerosene. When he
had collected a hundred or more he would take them to the Mutual Loan
Society, and have them put to his account.

In all the four years following Katherine’s departure, he had only been
to the Turkins’ twice, each time at the request of Madame Turkin, who
was still suffering from headaches. Katherine came back every summer to
visit her parents, but he did not see her once; chance, somehow, willed
otherwise.

And so four years had gone by. One warm, still morning a letter was
brought to him at the hospital. Madame Turkin wrote that she missed
Dimitri Ionitch very much and begged him to come without fail and
relieve her sufferings, especially as it happened to be her birthday
that day. At the end of the letter was a postscript: “I join my
entreaties to those of my mother. K.”

Startseff reflected a moment, and in the evening he drove to the
Turkins’.

“Ah, be welcome, if you please!” Turkin cried with smiling eyes.
“Bonjour to you!”

Madame Turkin, who had aged greatly and whose hair was now white,
pressed his hand and sighed affectedly, saying:

“You don’t want to flirt with me I see, doctor, you never come to see
me. I am too old for you, but here is a young thing, perhaps she may be
more lucky than I am!”

And Kitty? She had grown thinner and paler and was handsomer and more
graceful than before, but she was Miss Katherine now, and Kitty no
longer. Her freshness, and her artless, childish expression were gone;
there was something new in her glance and manner, something timid and
apologetic, as if she no longer felt at home here, in the house of the
Turkins.

“How many summers, how many winters have gone by!” she said, giving her
hand to Startseff, and one could see that her heart was beating
anxiously. She looked curiously and intently into his face, and
continued: “How stout you have grown! You look browner and more manly,
but otherwise you haven’t changed much.”

She pleased him now as she had pleased him before, she pleased him very
much, but something seemed to be wanting in her—or was it that there was
something about her which would better have been lacking? He could not
say, but he was prevented, somehow, from feeling toward her as he had
felt in the past. He did not like her pallor, the new expression in her
face, her weak smile, her voice, and, in a little while, he did not like
her dress and the chair she was sitting in, and something displeased him
about the past in which he had nearly married her. He remembered his
love and the dreams and hopes that had thrilled him four years ago, and
at the recollection he felt awkward.

They drank tea and ate cake. Then Madame Turkin read a story aloud, read
of things that had never happened in this world, while Startseff sat
looking at her handsome grey head, waiting for her to finish.

“It is not the people who can’t write novels who are stupid,” he
thought. “But the people who write them and can’t conceal it.”

“Not baddish!” said Turkin.

Then Katherine played a long, loud piece on the piano, and when she had
finished every one went into raptures and overwhelmed her with prolonged
expressions of gratitude.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!” thought Startseff.

She looked at him, evidently expecting him to invite her to go into the
garden, but he remained silent.

“Do let us have a talk!” she said going up to him. “How are you? What
are you doing? Tell me about it all! I have been thinking about you for
three days,” she added nervously. “I wanted to write you a letter, I
wanted to go to see you myself at Dialij, and then changed my mind. I
have no idea how you will treat me now. I was so excited waiting for you
to-day. Do let us go into the garden!”

They went out and took their seats under the old maple-tree, where they
had sat four years before. Night was falling.

“Well, and what have you been doing?” asked Katherine.

“Nothing much; just living somehow,” answered Startseff.

And that was all he could think of saying. They were silent.

“I am so excited!” said Katherine, covering her face with her hands.
“But don’t pay any attention to me. I am so glad to be at home, I am so
glad to see every one again that I cannot get used to it. How many
memories we have between us! I thought you and I would talk without
stopping until morning!”

He saw her face and her shining eyes more closely now, and she looked
younger to him than she had in the house. Even her childish expression
seemed to have returned. She was gazing at him with naïve curiosity, as
if she wanted to see and understand more clearly this man who had once
loved her so tenderly and so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for his
love. And he remembered all that had passed between them down to the
smallest detail, remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and
had gone home exhausted at dawn. He grew suddenly sad and felt sorry to
think that the past had vanished for ever. A little flame sprang up in
his heart.

“Do you remember how I took you to the club that evening?” he asked. “It
was raining and dark——”

The little flame was burning more brightly, and now he wanted to talk
and to lament his dull life.

“Alas!” he sighed. “You ask what I have been doing! What do we all do
here? Nothing! We grow older and fatter and more sluggish. Day in, day
out our colourless life passes by without impressions, without thoughts.
It is money by day and the club by night, in the company of gamblers and
inebriates whom I cannot endure. What is there in that?”

“But you have your work, your noble end in life. You used to like so
much to talk about your hospital. I was a queer girl then, I thought I
was a great pianist. All girls play the piano these days, and I played,
too; there was nothing remarkable about me. I am as much of a pianist as
mamma is an author. Of course I didn’t understand you then, but later,
in Moscow, I often thought of you. I thought only of you. Oh, what a joy
it must be to be a country doctor, to help the sick and to serve the
people! Oh, what a joy!” Katherine repeated with exaltation. “When I
thought of you while I was in Moscow you seemed to me to be so lofty and
ideal——”

Startseff remembered the little bills which he took out of his pockets
every evening with such pleasure, and the little flame went out.

He rose to go into the house. She took his arm.

“You are the nicest person I have ever known in my life,” she continued.
“We shall see one another and talk together often, shan’t we? Promise me
that! I am not a pianist, I cherish no more illusions about myself, and
shall not play to you or talk music to you any more.”

When they had entered the house, and, in the evening light, Startseff
saw her face and her melancholy eyes turned on him full of gratitude and
suffering, he felt uneasy and thought again:

“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!”

He began to take his leave.

“No law of the Medes and Persians allows you to go away before supper!”
cried Turkin, accompanying him to the door. “It is extremely peripatetic
on your part. Come, do your act!” he cried to Pava as they reached the
front hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young fellow with a moustache, struck an
attitude, raised one hand, and said in a tragic voice:

“Die, unhappy woman!”

All this irritated Startseff, and as he took his seat in his carriage
and looked at the house and the dark garden that had once been so dear
to him, he was overwhelmed by the recollection of Madame Turkin’s novels
and Kitty’s noisy playing and Turkin’s witticisms and Pava’s tragic
pose, and, as he recalled them, he thought:

“If the cleverest people in town are as stupid as that, what a deadly
town this must be!”

Three days later Pava brought the doctor a letter from Katherine.

“You don’t come to see us; why?” she wrote. “I am afraid your feeling
for us has changed, and the very thought of that terrifies me. Calm my
fears; come and tell me that all is well! I absolutely must see you.

Yours,
K. T.”

He read the letter, reflected a moment, and said to Pava:

“Tell them I can’t get away to-day, my boy. Tell them I’ll go to see
them in three days’ time.”

But three days went by, a week went by, and still he did not go. Every
time that he drove past the Turkins’ house he remembered that he ought
to drop in there for a few minutes; he remembered it and—did not go.

He never went to the Turkins’ again.

Several years have passed since then. Startseff is stouter than ever
now, he is even fat. He breathes heavily and walks with his head thrown
back. The picture he now makes, as he drives by with his troika and his
jingling carriage-bells, is impressive. He is round and red, and
Panteleimon, round and red, with a brawny neck, sits on the box with his
arms stuck straight out in front of him like pieces of wood, shouting to
every one he meets: “Turn to the right!” It is more like the passage of
a heathen god than of a man. He has an immense practice in the city,
there is no time for repining now. He already owns an estate in the
country and two houses in town, and is thinking of buying a third which
will be even more remunerative than the others. If, at the Mutual Loan
Society, he hears of a house for sale he goes straight to it, enters it
without more ado, and walks through all the rooms not paying the
slightest heed to any women or children who may be dressing there,
though they look at him with doubt and fear. He taps all the doors with
his cane and asks:

“Is this the library? Is this a bedroom? And what is this?”

And he breathes heavily as he says it and wipes the perspiration from
his forehead.

Although he has so much business on his hands, he still keeps his
position of government doctor at Dialij. His acquisitiveness is too
strong, and he wants to find time for everything. He is simply called
“Ionitch” now, both in Dialij and in the city. “Where is Ionitch going?”
the people ask, or “Shall we call in Ionitch to the consultation?”

His voice has changed and has become squeaky and harsh, probably because
his throat is obstructed with fat. His character, too, has changed and
he has grown irascible and crusty. He generally loses his temper with
his patients and irritably thumps the floor with his stick, exclaiming
in his unpleasant voice:

“Be good enough to confine yourself to answering my questions! No
conversation!”

He is lonely, he is bored, and nothing interests him.

During all his life in Dialij his love for Kitty had been his only
happiness, and will probably be his last. In the evening he plays cards
in the club, and then sits alone at a large table and has supper. Ivan,
the oldest and most respectable of the waiters, waits upon him and pours
out his glass of Lafitte No. 17. Every one at the club, the officers and
the chef and the waiters, all know what he likes and what he doesn’t
like and strive with might and main to please him, for if they don’t he
will suddenly grow angry and begin thumping the floor with his cane.

After supper he occasionally relents and takes part in a conversation.

“What were you saying? What? Whom did you say?”

And if the conversation at a neighbouring table turns on the Turkins, he
asks:

“Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?”

That is all that can be said of Startseff.

And the Turkins? The father has not grown old, and has not changed in
any way. He still makes jokes and tells funny stories. The mother still
reads her novels aloud to her guests, with as much pleasure and genial
simplicity as ever. Kitty practises the piano for four hours every day.
She has grown conspicuously older, is delicate, and goes to the Crimea
every autumn with her mother. As he bids them farewell at the station,
Turkin wipes his eyes and cries as the train moves away:

“God speed you, if you please!”

And he waves his handkerchief after them.

AT CHRISTMAS TIME

“What shall I write?” asked Yegor, dipping his pen in the ink.

Vasilissa had not seen her daughter for four years. Efimia had gone away
to St. Petersburg with her husband after her wedding, had written two
letters, and then had vanished as if the earth had engulfed her, not a
word nor a sound had come from her since. So now, whether the aged
mother was milking the cow at daybreak, or lighting the stove, or dozing
at night, the tenor of her thoughts was always the same: “How is Efimia?
Is she alive and well?” She wanted to send her a letter, but the old
father could not write, and there was no one whom they could ask to
write it for them.

But now Christmas had come, and Vasilissa could endure the silence no
longer. She went to the tavern to see Yegor, the innkeeper’s wife’s
brother, who had done nothing but sit idly at home in the tavern since
he had come back from military service, but of whom people said that he
wrote the most beautiful letters, if only one paid him enough. Vasilissa
talked with the cook at the tavern, and with the innkeeper’s wife, and
finally with Yegor himself, and at last they agreed on a price of
fifteen copecks.

So now, on the second day of the Christmas festival, Yegor was sitting
at a table in the inn kitchen with a pen in his hand. Vasilissa was
standing in front of him, plunged in thought, with a look of care and
sorrow on her face. Her husband, Peter, a tall, gaunt old man with a
bald, brown head, had accompanied her. He was staring steadily in front
of him like a blind man; a pan of pork that was frying on the stove was
sizzling and puffing, and seeming to say: “Hush, hush, hush!” The
kitchen was hot and close.

“What shall I write?” Yegor asked again.

“What’s that?” asked Vasilissa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously.
“Don’t hurry me! You are writing this letter for money, not for love!
Now then, begin. To our esteemed son-in-law, Andrei Khrisanfitch, and
our only and beloved daughter Efimia, we send greetings and love, and
the everlasting blessing of their parents.”

“All right, fire away!”

“We wish them a happy Christmas. We are alive and well, and we wish the
same for you in the name of God, our Father in heaven—our Father in
heaven——”

Vasilissa stopped to think, and exchanged glances with the old man.

“We wish the same for you in the name of God, our Father in Heaven—” she
repeated and burst into tears.

That was all she could say. Yet she had thought, as she had lain awake
thinking night after night, that ten letters could not contain all she
wanted to say. Much water had flowed into the sea since their daughter
had gone away with her husband, and the old people had been as lonely as
orphans, sighing sadly in the night hours, as if they had buried their
child. How many things had happened in the village in all these years!
How many people had married, how many had died! How long the winters had
been, and how long the nights!

“My, but it’s hot!” exclaimed Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “The
temperature must be seventy! Well, what next?” he asked.

The old people answered nothing.

“What is your son-in-law’s profession?”

“He used to be a soldier, brother; you know that,” replied the old man
in a feeble voice. “He went into military service at the same time you
did. He used to be a soldier, but now he is in a hospital where a doctor
treats sick people with water. He is the doorkeeper there.”

“You can see it written here,” said the old woman, taking a letter out
of her handkerchief. “We got this from Efimia a long, long time ago. She
may not be alive now.”

Yegor reflected a moment, and then began to write swiftly.

“Fate has ordained you for the military profession,” he wrote,
“therefore we recommend you to look into the articles on disciplinary
punishment and penal laws of the war department, and to find there the
laws of civilisation for members of that department.”

When this was written he read it aloud whilst Vasilissa thought of how
she would like to write that there had been a famine last year, and that
their flour had not even lasted until Christmas, so that they had been
obliged to sell their cow; that the old man was often ill, and must soon
surrender his soul to God; that they needed money—but how could she put
all this into words? What should she say first and what last?

“Turn your attention to the fifth volume of military definitions,” Yegor
wrote. “The word soldier is a general appellation, a distinguishing
term. Both the commander-in-chief of an army and the last infantryman in
the ranks are alike called soldiers——”

The old man’s lips moved and he said in a low voice:

“I should like to see my little grandchildren!”

“What grandchildren?” asked the old woman crossly. “Perhaps there are no
grandchildren.”

“No grandchildren? But perhaps there are! Who knows?”

“And from this you may deduce,” Yegor hurried on, “which is an internal,
and which is a foreign enemy. Our greatest internal enemy is Bacchus——”

The pen scraped and scratched, and drew long, curly lines like
fish-hooks across the paper. Yegor wrote at full speed and underlined
each sentence two or three times. He was sitting on a stool with his
legs stretched far apart under the table, a fat, lusty creature with a
fiery nape and the face of a bulldog. He was the very essence of coarse,
arrogant, stiff-necked vulgarity, proud to have been born and bred in a
pot-house, and Vasilissa well knew how vulgar he was, but could not find
words to express it, and could only glare angrily and suspiciously at
him. Her head ached from the sound of his voice and his unintelligible
words, and from the oppressive heat of the room, and her mind was
confused. She could neither think nor speak, and could only stand and
wait for Yegor’s pen to stop scratching. But the old man was looking at
the writer with unbounded confidence in his eyes. He trusted his old
woman who had brought him here, he trusted Yegor, and, when he had
spoken of the hydropathic establishment just now, his face had shown
that he trusted that, and the healing power of its waters.

When the letter was written, Yegor got up and read it aloud from
beginning to end. The old man understood not a word, but he nodded his
head confidingly, and said:

“Very good. It runs smoothly. Thank you kindly, it is very good.”

They laid three five-copeck pieces on the table and went out. The old
man walked away staring straight ahead of him like a blind man, and a
look of utmost confidence lay in his eyes, but Vasilissa, as she left
the tavern, struck at a dog in her path and exclaimed angrily:

“Ugh—the plague!”

All that night the old woman lay awake full of restless thoughts, and at
dawn she rose, said her prayers, and walked eleven miles to the station
to post the letter.

Doctor Moselweiser’s hydropathic establishment was open on New Year’s
Day as usual; the only difference was that Andrei Khrisanfitch, the
doorkeeper, was wearing unusually shiny boots and a uniform trimmed with
new gold braid, and that he wished every one who came in a happy New
Year.

It was morning. Andrei was standing at the door reading a paper. At ten
o’clock precisely an old general came in who was one of the regular
visitors of the establishment. Behind him came the postman. Andrei took
the general’s cloak, and said:

“A happy New Year to your Excellency!”

“Thank you, friend, the same to you!”

And as he mounted the stairs the general nodded toward a closed door and
asked, as he did every day, always forgetting the answer:

“And what is there in there?”

“A room for massage, your Excellency.”

When the general’s footsteps had died away, Andrei looked over the
letters and found one addressed to him. He opened it, read a few lines,
and then, still looking at his newspaper, sauntered toward the little
room down-stairs at the end of a passage where he and his family lived.
His wife Efimia was sitting on the bed feeding a baby, her oldest boy
was standing at her knee with his curly head in her lap, and a third
child was lying asleep on the bed.

Andrei entered their little room, and handed the letter to his wife,
saying:

“This must be from the village.”

Then he went out again, without raising his eyes from his newspaper, and
stopped in the passage not far from the door. He heard Efimia read the
first lines in a trembling voice. She could go no farther, but these
were enough. Tears streamed from her eyes and she threw her arms round
her eldest child and began talking to him and covering him with kisses.
It was hard to tell whether she was laughing or crying.

“This is from granny and granddaddy,” she cried—“from the village—oh,
Queen of Heaven!—Oh! holy saints! The roofs are piled with snow there
now—and the trees are white, oh, so white! The little children are out
coasting on their dear little sleddies—and granddaddy darling, with his
dear bald head is sitting by the big, old, warm stove, and the little
brown doggie—oh, my precious chickabiddies——”

Andrei remembered as he listened to her that his wife had given him
letters at three or four different times, and had asked him to send them
to the village, but important business had always interfered, and the
letters had remained lying about unposted.

“And the little white hares are skipping about in the fields now—”
sobbed Efimia, embracing her boy with streaming eyes. “Granddaddy dear
is so kind and good, and granny is so kind and so full of pity. People’s
hearts are soft and warm in the village.—There is a little church there,
and the men sing in the choir. Oh, take us away from here, Queen of
Heaven! Intercede for us, merciful mother!”

Andrei returned to his room to smoke until the next patient should come
in, and Efimia suddenly grew still and wiped her eyes; only her lips
quivered. She was afraid of him, oh, so afraid! She quaked and shuddered
at every look and every footstep of his, and never dared to open her
mouth in his presence.

Andrei lit a cigarette, but at that moment a bell rang up-stairs. He put
out his cigarette, and assuming a very solemn expression, hurried to the
front door.

The old general, rosy and fresh from his bath, was descending the
stairs.

“And what is there in there?” he asked, pointing to a closed door.

Andrei drew himself up at attention, and answered in a loud voice:

“The hot douche, your Excellency.”

IN THE COACH HOUSE

It was ten o’clock at night. Stepan, the coachman, Mikailo, the house
porter, Aliosha the coachman’s grandson who was visiting his
grandfather, and the old herring-vender Nikander who came peddling his
wares every evening were assembled around a lantern in the large coach
house playing cards. The door stood open and commanded a view of the
whole courtyard with the wide double gates, the manor-house, the ice and
vegetable cellars, and the servants’ quarters. The scene was wrapped in
the darkness of night, only four brilliantly lighted windows blazed in
the wing of the house, which had been rented to tenants. The carriages
and sleighs, with their shafts raised in the air, threw from the walls
to the door long, tremulous shadows which mingled with those cast by the
players around the lantern. In the stables beyond stood the horses,
separated from the coach house by a light railing. The scent of hay hung
in the air, and Nikander exhaled an unpleasant odour of herring.

They were playing “Kings.”

“I am king!” cried the porter, assuming a pose which he thought
befittingly regal, and blowing his nose loudly with a red and white
checked handkerchief. “Come on! Who wants to have his head cut off?”

Aliosha, a boy of eight with a rough shock of blond hair, who had lacked
but two tricks of being a king himself, now cast eyes of resentment and
envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.

“I’m going to lead up to you, grandpa,” he said, pondering over his
cards. “I know you must have the queen of hearts.”

“Come, little stupid, stop thinking and play!”

Aliosha irresolutely led the knave of hearts. At that moment a bell rang
in the courtyard.

“Oh, the devil—” muttered the porter rising. “The king must go and open
the gate.”

When he returned a few moments later Aliosha was already a prince, the
herring-man was a soldier, and the coachman was a peasant.

“It’s a bad business in there,” said the porter resuming his seat. “I
have just seen the doctor off. They didn’t get it out.”

“Huh! How could they? All they did, I’ll be bound, was to make a hole in
his head. When a man has a bullet in his brain it’s no use to bother
with doctors!”

“He is lying unconscious,” continued the porter. “He will surely die.
Aliosha, don’t look at my cards, lambkin, or you’ll get your ears boxed.
Yes, it was out with the doctor, and in with his father and mother; they
have just come. The Lord forbid such a crying and moaning as they are
carrying on! They keep saying that he was their only son. It’s a pity!”

All, except Aliosha who was engrossed in the game, glanced up at the
lighted windows.

“We have all got to go to the police station to-morrow,” said the
porter. “There is going to be an inquest. But what do I know about it?
Did I see what happened? All I know is that he called me this morning,
and gave me a letter and said: ‘Drop this in the letter-box.’ And his
eyes were all red with crying. His wife and children were away; they had
gone for a walk. So while I was taking his letter to the mail he shot
himself in the forehead with a revolver. When I came back his cook was
already shrieking at the top of her lungs.”

“He committed a great sin!” said the herring-man in a hoarse voice,
wagging his head. “A great sin.”

“He went crazy from knowing too much,” said the porter, picking up a
trick. “He used to sit up at night writing papers—play, peasant! But he
was a kind gentleman, and so pale and tall and black-eyed! He was a good
tenant.”

“They say there was a woman at the bottom of it,” said the coachman,
slapping a ten of trumps on a king of hearts. “They say he was in love
with another man’s wife, and had got to dislike his own. That happens
sometimes.”

“I crown myself king!” exclaimed the porter.

The bell in the courtyard rang again. The victorious monarch spat
angrily and left the coach house. Shadows like those of dancing couples
were flitting to and fro across the windows of the wing. Frightened
voices and hurrying footsteps were heard.

“The doctor must have come back,” said the coachman. “Our Mikailo is
running.”

A strange, wild scream suddenly rent the air.

Aliosha looked nervously first at his grandfather, and then at the
windows, and said:

“He patted me on the head yesterday, and asked me where I was from.
Grandfather, who was that howling just now?”

His grandfather said nothing, and turned up the flame of the lantern.

“A man has died,” he said with a yawn. “His soul is lost and his
children are lost. This will be a disgrace to them for the rest of their
lives.”

The porter returned, and sat down near the lantern.

“He is dead!” he said. “The old women from the almshouse have been sent
for.”

“Eternal peace and the kingdom of heaven be his!” whispered the coachman
crossing himself.

Aliosha also crossed himself with his eyes on his grandfather.

“You mustn’t pray for souls like his,” the herring-man said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a sin.”

“That’s the truth,” the porter agreed. “His soul has gone straight to
the Evil One in hell.”

“It’s a sin,” repeated the herring-man. “Men like him are neither
shriven nor buried in church, but shovelled away like carrion.”

The old man got up, and slung his sack across his shoulder.

“It happened that way with our general’s lady,” he said, adjusting the
pack on his back. “We were still serfs at that time, and her youngest
son shot himself in the head just as this one did, from knowing too
much. The law says that such people must be buried outside the
churchyard without a priest or a requiem. But to avoid the disgrace, our
mistress greased the palms of the doctors and the police, and they gave
her a paper saying that her son had done it by accident when he was
crazy with fever. Money can do anything. So he was given a fine funeral
with priests and music, and laid away under the church that his father
had built with his own money, where the rest of the family were. Well,
friends, one month passed, and another month passed, and nothing
happened. But during the third month our mistress was told that the
church watchmen wanted to see her. ‘What do they want?’ she asked. The
watchmen were brought to her, and they fell down at her feet. ‘Your
ladyship!’ they cried. ‘We can’t watch there any longer. You must find
some other watchmen, and let us go!’ ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘No!’ they said.
‘We can’t possibly stay. Your young gentleman howls under the church all
night long.’”

Aliosha trembled and buried his face in his grandfather’s back so as not
to see those shining windows.

“At first our mistress wouldn’t listen to their complaints,” the old man
went on. “She told them they were silly to be afraid of ghosts, and that
a dead man couldn’t possibly howl. But in a few days the watchmen came
back, and the deacon came with them. He, too, had heard the corpse
howling. Our mistress saw that the business was bad, so she shut herself
up in her room with the watchmen and said to them: ‘Here are twenty-five
roubles for you, my friends. Go into the church quietly at night when no
one can hear you, and dig up my unhappy son, and bury him outside the
churchyard.’ And she probably gave each man a glass of something to
drink. So the watchmen did as she told them. The tombstone with its
inscription lies under the church to-day, but the general’s son is
buried outside the churchyard. Oh, Lord, forgive us poor sinners!”
sighed the herring-man. “There is only one day a year on which one can
pray for such souls as his, and that is on the Saturday before Trinity
Sunday. It’s a sin to give food to beggars in their name, but one may
feed the birds for the peace of their souls. The general’s widow used to
go out to the crossroads every three days, and feed the birds. One day a
black dog suddenly appeared at the crossroads, gobbled up the bread, and
took to his heels. She knew who it was! For three days after that our
mistress was like a mad woman; she refused to take food or drink, and
every now and then she would suddenly fall down on her knees in the
garden, and pray. But I’ll say good night now, my friends. God and the
Queen of Heaven be with you! Come Mikailo, open the gate for me.”

The herring-man and the porter went out, and the coachman and Aliosha
followed them so as not to be left alone in the coach house.

“The man was living and now he is dead,” the coachman reflected, gazing
at the windows across which the shadows were still flitting. “This
morning he was walking about the courtyard, and now he is lying there
lifeless.”

“Our time will come, too,” said the porter as he walked away with the
herring-man and was lost with him in the darkness.

The coachman, followed by Aliosha, timidly approached the house and
looked in. A very pale woman, her large eyes red with tears, and a
handsome grey-haired man were moving two card-tables into the middle of
the room; some figures scribbled in chalk on their green baize tops were
still visible. The cook, who had shrieked so loudly that morning was now
standing on tiptoe on a table trying to cover a mirror with a sheet.

“What are they doing, grandpa?” Aliosha asked in a whisper.

“They are going to lay him on those tables soon,” answered the old man.
“Come, child, it’s time to go to sleep.”

The coachman and Aliosha returned to the coach house. They said their
prayers and took off their boots. Stepan stretched himself on the floor
in a corner, and Aliosha climbed into a sleigh. The doors had been shut,
and the newly extinguished lantern filled the air with a strong smell of
smoking oil. In a few minutes Aliosha raised his head, and stared about
him; the light from those four windows was shining through the cracks of
the door.

“Grandpa, I’m frightened!” he said.

“There, there, go to sleep!”

“But I tell you I’m frightened!”

“What are you afraid of, you spoiled baby?”

Both were silent.

Suddenly Aliosha jumped out of the sleigh, burst into tears, and rushed
to his grandfather weeping loudly.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” cried the startled coachman, jumping
up, too.

“He’s howling!”

“Who’s howling?”

“I’m frightened, grandpa! Can’t you hear him?”

“That is some one crying,” his grandfather answered. “Go back to sleep,
little silly. They are sad and so they are crying.”

“I want to go home!” the boy persisted, sobbing and trembling like a
leaf. “Grandpa, do let us go home to mamma. Let us go, dear grandpa! God
will give you the kingdom of heaven if you will take me home!”

“What a little idiot it is! There, there, be still, be still. Hush, I’ll
light the lantern, silly!”

The coachman felt for the matches, and lit the lantern, but the light
did not calm Aliosha.

“Grandpa, let’s go home!” he implored, weeping. “I’m so frightened here!
Oh, _oh_, I’m so frightened! Why did you send for me to come here, you
hateful man?”

“Who is a hateful man? Are you calling your own grandfather names? I’ll
beat you for that!”

“Beat me, grandpa, beat me like Sidorov’s goat, only take me back to
mamma! Oh, do! do!...”

“There, there, child, hush!” the coachman whispered tenderly. “No one is
going to hurt you, don’t be afraid. Why, I’m getting frightened myself!
Say a prayer to God!”

The door creaked and the porter thrust his head into the coach house.

“Aren’t you asleep yet, Stepan?” he asked. “I can’t get any sleep
to-night, opening and shutting the gate every minute. Why, Aliosha, what
are you crying about?”

“I’m frightened,” answered the coachman’s grandson.

Again that wailing voice rang out. The porter said:

“They are crying. His mother can’t believe her eyes. She is carrying on
terribly.”

“Is the father there, too?”

“Yes, he’s there, but he’s quiet. He’s sitting in a corner, and not
saying a word. The children have been sent to their relatives. Well,
Stepan, shall we have another game?”

“Come on!” the coachman assented. “Go and lie down, Aliosha, and go to
sleep. Why you’re old enough to think of getting married, you young
rascal, and there you are bawling! Run along, child, run along!”

The porter’s presence calmed Aliosha; he went timidly to his sleigh and
lay down. As he fell asleep he heard a whispering:

“I take the trick,” his grandfather murmured.

“I take the trick,” the porter repeated.

The bell rang in the courtyard, the door creaked and seemed to say:

“I take the trick!”

When Aliosha saw the dead master in his dreams, and jumped up weeping
for fear of his eyes, it was already morning. His grandfather was
snoring, and the coach house no longer seemed full of terror.

LADY N——’S STORY

One late afternoon, ten years ago, the examining magistrate, Peter
Sergeitch, and I rode to the station together at hay-making time to
fetch the mail.

The weather was superb, but as we were riding home we heard thunder
growling, and saw an angry black cloud coming straight toward us. The
storm was approaching and we were riding into its very teeth. Our house
and the village church were gleaming white upon its breast, and the
tall, silvery poplars were glistening against it. The scent of rain and
of new-mown hay hung in the air. My companion was in high spirits,
laughing and talking the wildest nonsense.

“How splendid it would be,” he cried, “if we should suddenly come upon
some antique castle of the Middle Ages with towers battlemented,
moss-grown, and owl-haunted, where we could take refuge from the storm
and where a bolt of lightning would end by striking us!”

But at that moment the first wave swept across the rye and oat fields,
the wind moaned, and whirling dust filled the air. Peter Sergeitch
laughed and spurred his horse.

“How glorious!” he cried. “How glorious!”

His gay mood was infectious. I, too, laughed to think that in another
moment we should be wet to the skin, and perhaps struck by lightning.

The blast and the swift pace thrilled us, and set our blood racing; we
caught our breath against the gale and felt like flying birds.

The wind had fallen when we rode into our courtyard, and heavy drops of
rain were drumming on the roof and lawn. The stable was deserted.

Peter Sergeitch himself unsaddled the horses, and led them into their
stalls. I stood at the stable door waiting for him, watching the descent
of the slanting sheets of rain. The sickly sweet scent of hay was even
stronger here than it had been in the fields. The air was dark with
thunder-clouds and rain.

“What a flash!” cried Peter Sergeitch coming to my side after an
especially loud, rolling thunderclap that, it seemed, must have cleft
the sky in two. “Well?”

He stood on the threshold beside me breathing deeply after our swift
ride, with his eyes fixed on my face. I saw that his glance was full of
admiration.

“Oh, Natalia!” he cried. “I would give anything on earth to be able to
stand here for ever looking at you. You are glorious to-day.”

His look was both rapturous and beseeching, his face was pale, and drops
of rain were glistening on his beard and moustache; these, too, seemed
to be looking lovingly at me.

“I love you!” he cried. “I love you and I am happy because I can see
you. I know that you cannot be my wife, but I ask nothing, I desire
nothing; only know that I love you. Don’t answer me, don’t notice me,
only believe that you are very dear to me, and suffer me to look at
you.”

His ecstasy communicated itself to me. I saw his rapt look, I heard the
tones of his voice mingling with the noise of the rain, and stood rooted
to the spot as if bewitched. I longed to look at those radiant eyes and
listen to those words for ever.

“You are silent! Good!” said Peter Sergeitch. “Do not speak!”

I was very happy. I laughed with pleasure, and ran through the pouring
rain into the house. He laughed too, and ran after me.

We burst in wet and panting and tramped noisily up-stairs like two
children. My father and brother, unaccustomed to seeing me laughing and
gay, looked at me in surprise and began to laugh with us.

The storm blew over, the thunder grew silent, but the rain-drops still
glistened on Peter Sergeitch’s beard. He sang and whistled and romped
noisily with the dog all the evening, chasing him through the house and
nearly knocking the butler carrying the samovar off his feet. He ate a
huge supper, talking all kinds of nonsense the while, swearing that if
you eat fresh cucumbers in winter you can smell the spring in your
nostrils.

When I went to my room I lit the candle and threw the casement wide
open. A vague sensation took hold of me. I remembered that I was free
and healthy, well-born and rich, and that I was beloved, but chiefly
that I was well-born and rich—well-born and rich! Goodness, how
delightful that was! Later, shrinking into bed to escape the chill that
came stealing in from the garden with the dew, I lay and tried to decide
whether I loved Peter Sergeitch or not. Not being able to make head or
tail of the question, I went to sleep.

Next morning when I awoke and saw the shadows of the lindens and the
trembling patches of sunlight that played across my bed, the events of
yesterday rose vividly before me. Life seemed rich, and varied, and full
of beauty. I dressed quickly and ran singing into the garden.

And then, what happened? Nothing! When winter came and we moved to the
city, Peter Sergeitch seldom came to see us. Country acquaintances are
only attractive in the country. In town, in the winter, they lose half
their charm. When they come to call they look as if they were wearing
borrowed clothes, and they stir their tea much too long. Peter Sergeitch
sometimes spoke of love, but his words did not sound as enchanting as
they had in the country. Here we felt more keenly the barrier between
us. I was titled and rich; he was poor and was not even a noble, but an
examining magistrate, the son of a deacon. Both of us—I because I was
very young, and he, heaven knows why—considered this barrier very great
and very high. He smiled affectedly when he was with us in town and
criticised high society; if any one beside himself was in the
drawing-room he remained morosely silent. There is no barrier so high
but that it may be surmounted, but, from what I have known of him, the
modern hero of romance is too timid, too indolent and lazy, too finical
and ready to accept the idea that he is a failure cheated by life, to
make the struggle. Instead, he carps at the world, and calls it vile,
forgetting that his own criticism at last becomes vile in itself.

I was beloved; happiness was near, seemed almost to be walking at my
side; my path was strewn with roses, and I lived without trying to
understand myself, not knowing what I was expecting nor what I demanded
from life. And so time went on and on—Men with their love passed near
me; bright days and warm nights flew by; the nightingales sang; the air
was sweet with new-mown hay—all these things, so dear, so touching to
remember, flashed by me swiftly, unheeded, as they do by every one,
leaving no trace behind them, until they vanished like mist. Where is it
all now?

My father died; I grew older. All that had been so enchanting, so
gracious, so hope-inspiring; the sound of rain, the rolling of thunder,
dreams of happiness, and words of love, all these grew to be a memory
alone. I now see before me a level, deserted plain, bounded by a dark
and terrible horizon, without a living soul upon it.

A bell rang. It was Peter Sergeitch. When I see the winter trees,
remembering how they decked themselves in green for me in summer time, I
whisper:

“Oh, you darling things!”

And when I see the people with whom I passed my own springtime, my heart
grows warm and sad, and I whisper the same words.

Peter Sergeitch had moved to the city long ago through the influence of
my father. He was a little elderly now, and a little stooping. It was
long since he had spoken any words of love, he talked no nonsense now,
and was dissatisfied with his occupation. He was a little ailing, and a
little disillusioned; he snapped his fingers at life, and would have
been glad to have had it over. He took his seat in the chimney-corner
and looked silently into the fire. Not knowing what to say, I asked:

“Well, what news have you?”

“None at all.”

Silence fell once more. The ruddy firelight played across his melancholy
features.

I remembered our past, and suddenly my shoulders shook; I bent my head
and wept bitterly. I felt unbearably sorry for myself and for this man,
and I longed passionately for those things which had gone by, and which
life now denied us. I no longer cared for my riches or my title.

I sobbed aloud with my head in my hands murmuring: “My God, my God, our
lives are ruined!”

He sat silent and did not tell me not to weep. He knew that tears must
be shed, and that the time for them had come. I read his pity for me in
his eyes, and I, too, pitied him and was vexed with this timid failure
who had not been able to mould his life or mine aright.

As I bade him farewell in the hall he seemed purposely to linger there,
putting on his coat. He kissed my hand in silence twice, and looked long
into my tear-stained face. I was sure that he was remembering that
thunder-storm, those sheets of rain, our laughter, and my face as it had
then been. He tried to say something; he would have done so gladly, but
nothing came. He only shook his head and pressed my hand—God bless him!

When he had gone, I went back into the study and sat down on the carpet
before the fire. Grey ashes were beginning to creep over the dying
embers. The wintry blast was beating against the windows more angrily
than ever and chanting some tale in the chimney.

The maid servant came in and called my name, thinking that I had fallen
asleep.

A JOURNEY BY CART

They left the city at half past eight.

The highway was dry and a splendid April sun was beating fiercely down,
but the snow still lay in the woods and wayside ditches. The long, dark,
cruel winter was only just over, spring had come in a breath, but to
Maria Vasilievna driving along the road in a cart there was nothing
either new or attractive in the warmth, or the listless, misty woods
flushed with the first heat of spring, or in the flocks of crows flying
far away across the wide, flooded meadows, or in the marvellous,
unfathomable sky into which one felt one could sail away with such
infinite pleasure. Maria Vasilievna had been a school teacher for thirty
years, and it would have been impossible for her to count the number of
times she had driven to town for her salary, and returned home as she
was doing now. It mattered not to her whether the season were spring, as
now, or winter, or autumn with darkness and rain; she invariably longed
for one thing and one thing only: a speedy end to her journey.

She felt as if she had lived in this part of the world for a long, long
time, even a hundred years or more, and it seemed to her that she knew
every stone and every tree along the roadside between her school and the
city. Here lay her past and her present as well, and she could not
conceive of a future beyond her school and the road and the city, and
then the road and her school again, and then once more the road and the
city.

Of her past before she had been a school teacher she had long since
ceased to think—she had almost forgotten it. She had had a father and
mother once, and had lived with them in a large apartment near the Red
Gate in Moscow, but her recollection of that life was as vague and
shadowy as a dream. Her father had died when she was ten years old, and
her mother had soon followed him. She had had a brother, an officer,
with whom she had corresponded at first, but he had lost the habit of
writing to her after a while, and had stopped answering her letters. Of
her former belongings her mother’s photograph was now her only
possession, and this had been so faded by the dampness of the school
that her mother’s features had all disappeared except the eyebrows and
hair.

When they had gone three miles on their way old daddy Simon, who was
driving the cart, turned round and said:

“They have caught one of the town officials and have shipped him away.
They say he killed the mayor of Moscow with the help of some Germans.”

“Who told you that?”

“Ivan Ionoff read it in the paper at the inn.”

For a long time neither spoke. Maria Vasilievna was thinking of her
school, and the coming examinations for which she was preparing four
boys and one girl. And just as her mind was full of these examinations,
a landholder named Khanoff drove up with a four-in-hand harnessed to an
open carriage. It was he who had held the examination in her school the
year before. As he drove up alongside her cart he recognised her, bowed,
and exclaimed:

“Good morning! Are you on your way home, may I ask?”

Khanoff was a man of forty or thereabouts. His expression was listless
and blasé, and he had already begun to age perceptibly, but he was
handsome still and admired by women. He lived alone on a large estate;
he had no business anywhere, and it was said of him that he never did
anything at home but walk about and whistle, or else play chess with his
old man servant. It was also rumoured that he was a hard drinker. Maria
Vasilievna remembered that, as a matter of fact, at the last examination
even the papers that he had brought with him had smelled of scent and
wine. Everything he had had on that day had been new, and Maria
Vasilievna had liked him very much, and had even felt shy sitting there
beside him. She was used to receiving the visits of cold, critical
examiners, but this one did not remember a single prayer, and did not
know what questions he ought to ask. He had been extremely considerate
and polite, and had given all the children full marks for everything.

“I am on my way to visit Bakvist” he now continued to Maria Vasilievna.
“Is it true that he is away from home?”

They turned from the highway into a lane, Khanoff in the lead, Simon
following him. The four horses proceeded at a foot-pace, straining to
drag the heavy carriage through the mud. Simon tacked hither and thither
across the road, first driving round a bump, then round a puddle, and
jumping down from his seat every minute or so to give his horse a
helpful push. Maria Vasilievna continued to think about the school, and
whether the questions at the examinations would be difficult or easy.
She felt annoyed with the board of the zemstvo, for she had been there
yesterday, and had found no one in. How badly it was managed! Here it
was two years since she had been asking to have the school watchman
discharged for loafing and being rude to her and beating her scholars,
and yet no one had paid any heed to her request. The president of the
board was hardly ever in his office, and when he was, would vow with
tears in his eyes that he hadn’t time to attend to her now. The school
inspector came only three times a year, and knew nothing about his
business anyway, as he had formerly been an exciseman, and had obtained
the office of inspector through favour. The school board seldom met, and
no one ever knew where their meetings were held. The warden was an
illiterate peasant who owned a tannery, a rough and stupid man and a
close friend of the watchman’s. In fact, the Lord only knew whom one
could turn to to have complaints remedied and wrongs put right!

“He really is handsome!” thought the schoolteacher glancing at Khanoff.

The road grew worse and worse. They entered a wood. There was no
possibility of turning out of the track here, the ruts were deep and
full of gurgling, running water. Prickly twigs beat against their faces.

“What a road, eh?” cried Khanoff laughing.

The school teacher looked at him and marvelled that this queer fellow
should be living here.

“What good do his wealth, his handsome face, and his fine culture do him
in this God-forsaken mud and solitude?” she thought. “He has abandoned
any advantage that fate may have given him, and is enduring the same
hardships as Simon, tramping with him along this impossible road. Why
does any one live here who could live in St. Petersburg or abroad?”

And it seemed to her that it would be worth this rich man’s while to
make a good road out of this bad one, so that he might not have to
struggle with the mud, and be forced to see the despair written on the
faces of Simon and his coachman. But he only laughed, and was obviously
absolutely indifferent to it all, asking for no better life than this.

“He is kind and gentle and unsophisticated,” Maria Vasilievna thought
again. “He does not understand the hardships of life any more than he
knew the suitable prayers to say at the examination. He gives globes to
the school and sincerely thinks himself a useful man and a conspicuous
benefactor of popular education. Much they need his globes in this
wilderness!”

“Sit tight, Vasilievna!” shouted Simon.

The cart tipped violently to one side and seemed to be falling over.
Something heavy rolled down on Maria Vasilievna’s feet, it proved to be
the purchases she had made in the city. They were crawling up a steep,
clayey hill now. Torrents of water were rushing noisily down on either
side of the track, and seemed to have eaten away the road bed. Surely it
would be impossible to get by! The horses began to snort. Khanoff jumped
out of his carriage and walked along the edge of the road in his long
overcoat. He felt hot.

“What a road!” he laughed again. “My carriage will soon be smashed to
bits at this rate!”

“And who asked you to go driving in weather like this?” asked Simon
sternly. “Why don’t you stay at home?”

“It is tiresome staying at home, daddy. I don’t like it.”

He looked gallant and tall walking beside old Simon, but in spite of his
grace there was an almost imperceptible something about his walk that
betrayed a being already rotten at the core, weak, and nearing his
downfall. And the air in the woods suddenly seemed to carry an odour of
wine. Maria Vasilievna shuddered, and began to feel sorry for this man
who for some unknown reason was going to his ruin. She thought that if
she were his wife or his sister she would gladly give up her whole life
to rescuing him from disaster. His wife? Alas! He lived alone on his
great estate, and she lived alone in a forlorn little village, and yet
the very idea that they might one day become intimate and equal seemed
to her impossible and absurd. Life was like that! And, at bottom, all
human relationships and all life were so incomprehensible that if you
thought about them at all dread would overwhelm you and your heart would
stop beating.

“And how incomprehensible it is, too,” she thought, “that God should
give such beauty and charm and such kind, melancholy eyes to weak,
unhappy, useless people, and make every one like them so!”

“I turn off to the right here,” Khanoff said, getting into his carriage.
“Farewell! A pleasant journey to you!”

And once more Maria Vasilievna’s thoughts turned to her scholars, and
the coming examinations, and the watchman, and the school board, until a
gust of wind from the right bringing her the rumbling of the departing
carriage, other reveries mingled with these thoughts, and she longed to
dream of handsome eyes and love and the happiness that would never be
hers.

She, a wife! Alas, how cold her little room was early in the morning! No
one ever lit her stove, because the watchman was always away somewhere.
Her pupils came at daybreak, with a great noise, bringing in with them
mud and snow, and everything was so bleak and so uncomfortable in her
little quarters of one small bedroom which also served as a kitchen! Her
head ached every day when school was over. She was obliged to collect
money from her scholars to buy wood and pay the watchman, and then to
give it to that fat, insolent peasant, the warden, and beg him for
mercy’s sake to send her a load of wood. And at night she would dream of
examinations and peasants and snow drifts. This life had aged and
hardened her, and she had grown plain and angular and awkward, as if
lead had been emptied into her veins. She was afraid of everything, and
never dared to sit down in the presence of the warden or a member of the
school board. If she mentioned any one of them in his absence, she
always spoke of him respectfully as “his Honour.” No one found her
attractive; her life was spent without love, without friendship, without
acquaintances who interested her. What a terrible calamity it would be
were she, in her situation, to fall in love!

“Sit tight, Vasilievna!”

Once more they were crawling up a steep hill.

She had felt no call to be a teacher; want had forced her to be one. She
never thought about her mission in life or the value of education; the
most important things to her were, not her scholars nor their
instruction, but the examinations. And how could she think of a mission,
and of the value of education? School teachers, and poor doctors, and
apothecaries, struggling with their heavy labours, have not even the
consolation of thinking that they are advancing an ideal, and helping
mankind. Their heads are too full of thoughts of their daily crust of
bread, their wood, the bad roads, and their sicknesses for that. Their
life is tedious and hard. Only those stand it for any length of time who
are silent beasts of burden, like Maria Vasilievna. Those who are
sensitive and impetuous and nervous, and who talk of their mission in
life and of advancing a great ideal, soon become exhausted and give up
the fight.

To find a dryer, shorter road, Simon sometimes struck across a meadow or
drove through a back-yard, but in some places the peasants would not let
him pass, in others the land belonged to a priest; here the road was
blocked, there Ivan Ionoff had bought a piece of land from his master
and surrounded it with a ditch. In such cases they had to turn back.

They arrived at Nijni Gorodishe. In the snowy, grimy yard around the
tavern stood rows of wagons laden with huge flasks of oil of vitriol. A
great crowd of carriers had assembled in the tavern, and the air reeked
of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskin coats. Loud talk filled the room, and
the door with its weight and pulley banged incessantly. In the tap room
behind a partition some one was playing on the concertina without a
moment’s pause. Maria Vasilievna sat down to her tea, while at a near-by
table a group of peasants saturated with tea and the heat of the room
were drinking vodka and beer.

A confused babel filled the room.

“Did you hear that, Kuzma? Ha! Ha! What’s that? By God! Ivan Dementitch,
you’ll catch it for that! Look, brother!”

A small, black-bearded, pock-marked peasant, who had been drunk for a
long time, gave an exclamation of surprise and swore an ugly oath.

“What do you mean by swearing, you!” shouted Simon angrily from where he
sat, far away at the other end of the room. “Can’t you see there’s a
lady here?”

“A lady!” mocked some one from another corner.

“You pig, you!”

“I didn’t mean to do it—” faltered the little peasant with
embarrassment. “Excuse me! My money is as good here as hers. How do you
do?”

“How do you do?” answered the school teacher.

“Very well, thank you kindly.”

Maria Vasilievna enjoyed her tea, and grew as flushed as the peasants.
Her thoughts were once more running on the watchman and the wood.

“Look there, brother!” she heard a voice at the next table cry. “There’s
the schoolmarm from Viasovia! I know her! She’s a nice lady.”

“Yes, she’s a nice lady.”

The door banged, men came and went. Maria Vasilievna sat absorbed in the
same thoughts that had occupied her before, and the concertina behind
the partition never ceased making music for an instant. Patches of
sunlight that had lain on the floor when she had come in had moved up to
the counter, then to the walls, and now had finally disappeared. So it
was afternoon. The carriers at the table next to hers rose and prepared
to leave. The little peasant went up to Maria Vasilievna swaying
slightly, and held out his hand. The others followed him; all shook
hands with the school teacher, and went out one by one. The door banged
and whined nine times.

“Get ready, Vasilievna!” Simon cried.

They started again, still at a walk.

“A little school was built here in Nijni Gorodishe, not long ago,” said
Simon, looking back. “Some of the people sinned greatly.”

“In what way?”

“It seems the president of the school board grabbed one thousand
roubles, and the warden another thousand, and the teacher five hundred.”

“A school always costs several thousand roubles. It is very wrong to
repeat scandal, daddy. What you have just told me is nonsense.”

“I don’t know anything about it. I only tell you what people say.”

It was clear, however, that Simon did not believe the school teacher.
None of the peasants believed her. They all thought that her salary was
too large (she got twenty roubles a month, and they thought that five
would have been plenty), and they also believed that most of the money
which she collected from the children for wood she pocketed herself. The
warden thought as all the other peasants did, and made a little out of
the wood himself, besides receiving secret pay from the peasants unknown
to the authorities.

But now, thank goodness, they had finally passed through the last of the
woods, and from here on their road would lie through flat fields all the
way to Viasovia. Only a few miles more to go, and then they would cross
the river, and then the railway track, and then they would be at home.

“Where are you going, Simon?” asked Maria Vasilievna. “Take the
right-hand road across the bridge!”

“What’s that? We can cross here. It isn’t very deep.”

“Don’t let the horse drown!”

“What’s that?”

“There is Khanoff crossing the bridge!” cried Maria Vasilievna, catching
sight of a carriage and four in the distance at their right. “Isn’t that
he?”

“That’s him all right. He must have found Bakvist away. My goodness,
what a donkey to drive all the way round when this road is two miles
shorter!”

They plunged into the river. In summer time it was a tiny stream, in
late spring it dwindled rapidly to a fordable river after the freshets,
and by August it was generally dry, but during flood time it was a
torrent of swift, cold, turbid water some fifty feet wide. Fresh wheel
tracks were visible now on the bank leading down to the water’s edge;
some one, then, must have crossed here.

“Get up!” cried Simon, madly jerking the reins and flapping his arms
like a pair of wings. “Get up!”

The horse waded into the stream up to his belly, stopped, and then
plunged on again, throwing his whole weight into the collar. Maria
Vasilievna felt a sharp wave of cold water lap her feet.

“Go on!” she cried, rising in her seat. “Go on!”

They drove out on the opposite bank.

“Well, of all things! My goodness!” muttered Simon. “What a worthless
lot those zemstvo people are——”

Maria Vasilievna’s goloshes and shoes were full of water, and the bottom
of her dress and coat and one of her sleeves were soaked and dripping.
Her sugar and flour were wet through, and this was harder to bear than
all the rest. In her despair she could only wave her arms, and cry:

“Oh, Simon, Simon! How stupid you are, really——”

The gate was down when they reached the railway crossing, an express
train was leaving the station. They stood and waited for the train to go
by, and Maria Vasilievna shivered with cold from head to foot.

Viasovia was already in sight; there was the school with its green roof,
and there stood the church with its blazing crosses reflecting the rays
of the setting sun. The windows of the station were flashing, too, and a
cloud of rosy steam was rising from the engine. Everything seemed to the
school teacher to be shivering with cold.

At last the train appeared. Its windows were blazing like the crosses on
the church, and their brilliance was dazzling. A lady was standing on
the platform of one of the first-class carriages. One glance at her as
she slipped past, and Maria Vasilievna thought: “My mother!” What a
resemblance there was! There was her mother’s thick and luxuriant hair;
there were her forehead and the poise of her head. For the first time in
all these thirty years Maria Vasilievna saw in imagination her mother,
her father, and her brother in their apartment in Moscow, saw everything
down to the least detail, even to the globe of goldfish in the
sitting-room. She heard the strains of a piano, and the sound of her
father’s voice, and saw herself young and pretty and gaily dressed, in a
warm, brightly lighted room with her family about her. Great joy and
happiness suddenly welled up in her heart, and she pressed her hands to
her temples in rapture, crying softly with a note of deep entreaty in
her voice:

“Mother!”

Then she wept, she could not have said why. At that moment Khanoff drove
up with his four-in-hand, and when she saw him she smiled and nodded to
him as if he and she were near and dear to each other, for she was
conjuring up in her fancy a felicity that could never be hers. The sky,
the trees, and the windows of the houses seemed to be reflecting her
happiness and rejoicing with her. No! Her mother and father had not
died; she had never been a school teacher; all that had been a long,
strange, painful dream, and now she was awake.

“Vasilievna! Sit down!”

And in a breath everything vanished. The gate slowly rose. Shivering and
numb with cold Maria Vasilievna sat down in the cart again. The
four-in-hand crossed the track and Simon followed. The watchman at the
crossing took off his cap as they drove by.

“Here is Viasovia! The journey is over!”

THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR

Early in April in the year 1870, my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow
of a lieutenant, received a letter from her brother Ivan, a privy
councillor in St. Petersburg. Among other things the letter said:

“An affection of the liver obliges me to spend every summer abroad, but
as I have no funds this year with which to go to Marienbad, it is very
probable that I may spend the coming summer with you at Kotchneffka,
dear sister——”

My mother turned pale and trembled from head to foot as she perused this
epistle, and an expression both smiling and tearful came into her face.
She began to weep and to laugh. This conflict between laughter and tears
always reminds me of the glitter and shimmer that follow when water is
spilled on a brightly burning candle. Having read the letter through
twice, my mother summoned her whole household together, and in a voice
quivering with excitement began explaining to them that there had been
four brothers in the Gundasoff family; one had died when he was a baby;
a second had been a soldier, and had also died; a third, she meant no
offence to him in saying it, had become an actor, and a fourth——

“The fourth brother is not of our world,” sobbed my mother. “He is my
own brother, we grew up together, and yet I am trembling all over at the
thought of him. He is a privy councillor, a general! How can I meet my
darling? What can a poor, uneducated woman like me find to talk to him
about? It is fifteen years since I saw him last. Andrusha, darling!”
cried my mother turning to me. “Rejoice little stupid, it is for your
sake that God is sending him here!”

When we had all heard the history of the Gundasoff family down to the
smallest detail, there arose an uproar on the farm such as I had not
been accustomed to hearing except before weddings. Only the vault of
heaven, and the water in the river escaped; everything else was
subjected to a process of cleaning, scrubbing, and painting. If the sky
had been smaller and lower, and the river had not been so swift, they
too would have been scalded with boiling water and polished with cloths.
The walls were white as snow already, but they were whitewashed again.
The floors shone and glistened, but they were scrubbed every day.
Bobtail, the cat (so-called because I had chopped off a good portion of
his tail with a carving-knife when I was a baby), was taken from the
house into the kitchen and put in charge of Anfisa. Fedia was told that
if the dogs came anywhere near the front porch, “God would punish him.”
But nothing caught it so cruelly as did the unfortunate sofas and
carpets and chairs! Never before had they been so unmercifully beaten
with sticks as they now were in expectation of our guest’s arrival.
Hearing the blows, my doves fluttered anxiously about, and at last flew
away straight up into the very sky.

From Novostroevka came Spiridon, the only tailor in the district who
ventured to sew for the gentry. He was a sober, hard-working,
intelligent man, not without some imagination and feeling for the
plastic arts, but he sewed abominably nevertheless. His doubts always
spoiled everything, for the idea that his clothes were not fashionable
enough made him cut everything over five times at least. He used to go
all the way to the city on foot on purpose to see how the young dandies
were dressed, and then decked us in costumes that even a caricaturist
would have called an exaggeration and a joke. We sported impossibly
tight trousers, and coats so short that we always felt embarrassed
whenever any young ladies were present.

Spiridon slowly took my measurements. He measured me lengthways and
crossways as if he were going to fit me with barrel hoops, then wrote at
length upon a sheet of paper with a very thick pencil, and at last
marked his yardstick from end to end with little triangular notches.
Having finished with me, he began upon my tutor Gregory Pobedimski. This
unforgettable tutor of mine was just at the age when men anxiously watch
the growth of their moustaches, and are critical about their attire, so
that you may imagine with what holy terror Spiridon approached his
person! Pobedimski was made to throw his head back, and spread himself
apart like a V upside down, now raising, now lowering his arms. Spiridon
measured him several times, circling about him as a love-sick pigeon
circles about his mate; then he fell down on one knee, and bent himself
into the form of a hook. My mother, weary and worn with all this bustle
and faint from the heat of her irons in the laundry, said as she watched
all these endless proceedings:

“Take care, Spiridon, God will call you to account if you spoil the
cloth! And you will be an unlucky man if you don’t hit the mark this
time!”

My mother’s words first threw Spiridon into a sweat and then into a
fever, for he was very sure that he would not hit the mark. He asked one
rouble and twenty copecks for making my suit, and two roubles for making
my tutor’s. The cloth, the buttons, and the linings were supplied by us.
This cannot but seem cheap enough, especially when you consider that
Novostroevka was six miles away, and that he came to try on the clothes
four different times. At these fittings, as we pulled on our tight
trousers and coats all streaked with white basting threads, my mother
would look at our clothes, knit her brows with dissatisfaction and
exclaim:

“Goodness knows we have queer fashions these days! I am almost ashamed
to look at you! If my brother did not live in St. Petersburg I declare I
wouldn’t have you dressed in the fashion!”

Spiridon, delighted that the fashions and not he were catching the
blame, would shrug his shoulders, and sigh, as much as to say:

“There is nothing to be done about it; it is the spirit of the times!”

The trepidation with which we awaited the arrival of our guest can only
be compared to the excitement that prevails among spiritualists when
they are awaiting the appearance of a spirit. My mother had a headache,
and burst into tears every minute. I lost my appetite and my sleep, and
did not study my lessons. Even in my dreams I was devoured by my longing
to see a general, a man with epaulettes, an embroidered collar reaching
to his ears, and a naked sword in his hand; in short, a person exactly
like the general I saw hanging over the sofa in our drawing-room glaring
so balefully with his terrible black eyes at any one who ventured to
look at him. Pobedimski alone felt at ease. He neither trembled nor
rejoiced, and all he said as he listened to my mother’s stories of the
Gundasoff family was:

“Yes, it will be pleasant to talk with somebody new.”

My tutor was considered a very exceptional person on our farm. He was a
young man of twenty or thereabouts, pimply, ragged, with a low forehead,
and an uncommonly long nose. In fact, this nose of his was so long that
if he wanted to look at anything closely he had to put his head on one
side like a bird. He had gone through the six grades of the high-school,
and had then entered the Veterinary College, from which he had been
expelled in less than six months. By carefully concealing the reason of
his expulsion, my tutor gave every one who wished it an opportunity for
considering him a much-enduring and rather mysterious person. He talked
little, and when he did it was always on learned subjects; he ate meat
on fast-days, and looked upon the life about him in a high and mighty,
contemptuous fashion, which, however, did not prevent him from accepting
presents from my mother in the shape of suits of clothes, or from
painting funny faces with red teeth on my kites. My mother did not like
him on account of his “pride,” but she had a deep respect for his
learning.

We had not long to wait for our guest. Early in May two wagons piled
with huge trunks arrived from the station. These trunks looked so
majestic that the coachman unconsciously took off his hat as he unloaded
them from the wagons.

“They must be full of uniforms and gunpowder!” thought I.

Why gunpowder? Probably because in my mind the idea of a general was
closely connected with powder and cannon.

When my nurse woke me on the morning of the tenth of May, she announced
in a whisper that my “uncle had come!” I dressed hastily, washing anyhow
and forgetting my prayers, and scampered out of my room. In the hall I
ran straight into a tall, stout gentleman with fashionable side-whiskers
and an elegant overcoat. Swooning with horror, I drew myself up before
him, and remembering the ceremonial taught me by my mother, I bowed
deeply and attempted to kiss his hand. But the gentleman would not give
me his hand to kiss, and stated that he was not my uncle, but only
Peter, my uncle’s valet. The sight of this Peter, dressed a great deal
better than Pobedimski and myself, filled me with the profoundest
astonishment which, to tell the truth, has not left me to this day. Is
it possible that such grave, respectable men as he, with such stern,
intelligent faces can be servants? Why should they be?

Peter told me that my uncle and mother were in the garden, and I rushed
thither as fast as my legs could carry me.

Not knowing the history of the Gundasoff family and my uncle’s rank,
Nature felt a great deal freer and less constrained than I did. There
was an activity in the garden such as one only sees at a country fair.
Countless magpies were cleaving the air and hopping along the garden
paths, chasing the mayflies with noisy cries. A flock of crows was
swarming in the lilac bushes that thrust their delicate, fragrant
blossoms into my very face. From all sides came the songs of orioles and
the pipings of finches and blackbirds. At any other time I should have
darted off after the grasshoppers or thrown stones at a crow that was
sitting on a low haycock under a wasp’s nest turning its blunt bill from
side to side. But this was no time for play. My heart was hammering and
shivers were running up and down my back. I was about to see a man with
epaulettes, a naked sword, and terrible eyes!

Imagine, then, my disappointment! A slender little dandy in a white silk
shirt and a white military cap was walking through the garden at my
mother’s side. Every now and then he would run on ahead and, with his
hands in his pockets and his head thrown back, he looked like quite a
young man. There was so much life and vivacity in his whole figure that
the treachery of old age only became apparent to me as I approached from
behind, and, peeping under his cap, saw the white hairs glistening
beneath the brim. Instead of a stolid, autocratic gravity I saw in him
an almost boyish nimbleness, and instead of a collar to the ears he wore
an ordinary light blue necktie. My mother and uncle were walking up and
down the path, chatting together. I crept up softly from behind and
waited for one of them to turn round and see me.

“What an enchanting place you have here, Klavdia!” my uncle exclaimed.
“How sweet and lovely it all is! If I had known how beautiful it was
nothing could have taken me abroad all these years!”

My uncle stooped abruptly, and put his nose to a tulip. Everything he
saw was a source of curiosity and delight to him, as if he had never
seen a garden, or a sunny day before in his life. The strange little man
moved as if on springs and chattered incessantly, not giving my mother a
chance to put in a word. All at once Pobedimski stepped out from behind
an elder bush at a turn of the path. His appearance was so unexpected
that my uncle started and fell back a step. My tutor was dressed in his
gala overcoat with a cape, in which he looked exactly like a windmill,
especially from behind. His mien was majestic and triumphant. With his
hat held close to his chest in Spanish fashion he took a step toward my
uncle, and bowed forward and slightly sideways like a marquis in a
melodrama.

“I have the honour to present myself to your worshipful highness,” he
said in a loud voice. “I am a pedagogue, the instructor of your nephew,
and a former student at the Veterinary College. My name is Gregory
Pobedimski, Esquire.”

My tutor’s beautiful manners pleased my mother immensely. She smiled and
fluttered with the sweet expectation of his next brilliant sally, but my
tutor was waiting for my uncle to respond to his lofty bearing with
something equally lofty, and thought that two fingers would be offered
him with a “h’m—” befitting a general. In consequence, he lost all his
presence of mind and was completely embarrassed when my uncle smiled
cordially and heartily pressed his hand. Murmuring some incoherent
phrases, my tutor coughed and retired.

“Ha! Ha! Isn’t that beautiful?” laughed my uncle. “Look at him. He has
put on his wings, and is thinking what a clever fellow he is! I like
that, upon my word and honour, I do! What youthful aplomb, what life
there is in those silly wings! And who is this boy?” he asked, suddenly
turning round and catching sight of me.

“This is my little Andrusha,” said my mother blushing. “The comfort of
my life.”

I put my foot behind me and bowed deeply.

“A fine little fellow, a fine little fellow!” murmured my uncle taking
his hand away from my lips, and patting my head. “So your name is
Andrusha? Well, well—yes—upon my word and honour. Do you go to school?”

My mother began to enumerate my triumphs of learning and behaviour,
adding to them and exaggerating as all mothers do, while I walked at my
uncle’s side and did not cease from bowing deeply according to the
ceremonial we had agreed upon. When my mother began hinting that with my
remarkable attainments it would not be amiss for me to enter the
military academy at the expense of the state, and when, according to our
plan, I should have burst into tears and implored the patronage of my
uncle, that relative suddenly stopped short and threw up his hands in
astonishment.

“Heavens and earth, who is that?” he exclaimed.

Down the garden path came Tatiana, the wife of our manager, Theodore
Petrovitch. She was carrying a white starched skirt and a long ironing
board, and as she passed us she blushed and glanced shyly at our guest
from under her long lashes.

“Worse and worse!” said my uncle under his breath, looking tenderly
after her. “Why, sister, one can’t take a step here without encountering
some surprise, upon my word and honour!”

Not every one would have called Tatiana beautiful. She was a small,
plump woman of twenty, graceful, black-eyed, and always rosy and sweet,
but in all her face and figure there was not one strong feature, not one
bold line for the eye to rest upon. It was as if in making her Nature
had lacked confidence and inspiration. Tatiana was shy and timid and
well behaved. She glided quietly along, saying little, seldom laughing;
her life was as even and smooth as her face and her neatly brushed hair.
My uncle half-closed his eyes and smiled as he watched her. My mother
looked intently at his smiling face and grew serious.

“Oh, brother, why have you never married?” she sighed.

“I have never married because——”

“Why not?” asked my mother softly.

“What shall I say? Because things did not turn out that way. When I was
young I worked too hard to have time for enjoying life, and then, when I
wanted to live—behold! I had put fifty years behind me! I was too slow.
However, this is a tedious subject for conversation!”

My mother and uncle sighed simultaneously, and walked on together while
I stayed behind, and ran to find my tutor in order to share my
impressions with him. Pobedimski was standing in the middle of the
courtyard gazing majestically at the sky.

“He is obviously an enlightened man,” he said, wagging his head. “I hope
we shall become friends.”

An hour later my mother came to us.

“Oh, boys, I’m in terrible trouble!” she began with a sigh. “My brother
has brought a valet with him, you know, and he is not the sort of man,
heaven help him, whom one can put in the hall or the kitchen, he
absolutely must have a room of his own. Look here, my children, couldn’t
you move into the wing with Theodore and give the valet your room?”

We answered that we should be delighted to do so, for, we thought, life
in the wing would be much freer than in the house under the eyes of my
mother.

“Yes, I’m terribly worried!” my mother continued. “My brother says he
doesn’t want to have his dinner at noon, but at seven as they do in the
city. I am almost distracted. Why, by seven the dinner in the stove will
be burned to a crisp. The truth is men know nothing about housekeeping,
even if they are very clever. Oh, misery me, I shall have to have two
dinners cooked every day! You must have yours at noon as you always do,
children, and let the old lady wait until seven for her brother.”

My mother breathed a profound sigh, told me to please my uncle whom God
had brought here especially for my benefit, and ran into the kitchen.
Pobedimski and I moved into the wing that very same day. We were put in
a passage between the hall and the manager’s bedroom.

In spite of my uncle’s arrival and our change of quarters, our days
continued to trickle by in their usual way, more drowsily and
monotonously than we had expected. We were excused from our lessons
“because of our guest.” Pobedimski, who never read or did anything, now
spent most of his time sitting on his bed absorbed in thought, with his
long nose in the air. Every now and then he would get up, try on his new
suit, sit down again, and continue his meditations. One thing only
disturbed him, and that was the flies, whom he slapped unmercifully with
the palms of his hands. After dinner he would generally “rest,” causing
keen anguish to the whole household by his snores. I played in the
garden from morning till night, or else sat in my room making kites.
During the first two or three weeks we saw little of my uncle. He stayed
in his room and worked for days on end, heeding neither the flies nor
the heat.

His extraordinary power of sitting as if glued to his desk appeared to
us something in the nature of an inexplicable trick. To lazybones like
ourselves, who did not know the meaning of systematic work, his industry
appeared positively miraculous. Getting up at nine, he would sit down at
his desk, and not move until dinner time. After dinner he would go to
work once more, and work until late at night. Whenever I peeped into his
room through the keyhole I invariably saw the same scene. My uncle would
be sitting at his desk and working. His work consisted of writing with
one hand while turning over the pages of a book with the other, and
strange as it may seem, he constantly wriggled all over, swinging one
foot like a pendulum, whistling and nodding his head in time to the
music he made. His appearance at these times was extraordinarily
frivolous and careless, more as if he were playing at naughts and
crosses than working. Each time I looked in I saw him wearing a dashing
little coat and a dandified necktie, and each time, even through the
keyhole, I could smell a sweet feminine perfume. He emerged from his
room only to dine, and then ate scarcely anything.

“I can’t understand my brother,” my mother complained. “Every day I have
a turkey or some pigeons killed especially for him, and stew some fruits
for him myself, and yet he drinks a little bouillon and eats a piece of
meat no larger than my finger, after which he leaves the table at once.
If I beg him to eat more he comes back and drinks a little milk. What is
there in milk? It is slop, nothing more! He will die of eating that kind
of food! If I try to persuade him to change his ways, he only laughs and
makes a joke of it! No, children, our fare doesn’t suit him!”

Our evenings passed much more pleasantly than our days. As a rule the
setting sun and the long shadows falling across the courtyard found
Tatiana, Pobedimski, and me seated on the porch of our wing. We did not
speak until darkness fell—what could we talk about when everything had
already been said? There had been one novelty, my uncle’s arrival, but
that theme had soon become exhausted as well as the others. My tutor
constantly kept his eyes fixed on Tatiana’s face and fetched one deep
sigh after another. At that time I did not understand the meaning of
those sighs, and did not seek to inquire into their cause, but they
explain much to me now.

When the shadows had merged into thick, black darkness Theodore would
come home from the hunt or the field. This Theodore seemed to me to be a
wild and even fearsome man. He was the son of a Russianised gipsy, and
was swarthy and dark with large black eyes and a tangled curly beard,
and he was never spoken of by our peasants as anything but “the demon.”
There was a great deal of the gipsy in him beside his appearance. For
instance, he never could stay at home, and would vanish for days at a
time, hunting in the forest or roaming in the fields. He was gloomy,
passionate, taciturn, and fearless, and could never be brought to
acknowledge the authority of any one. He spoke gruffly to my mother,
addressed me familiarly as “thou,” and treated Pobedimski’s learning
with contempt, but we forgave him everything, because we considered that
he had a morbidly excitable nature. My mother liked him in spite of his
gipsy ways, for he was ideally honest and hard working. He loved his
Tatiana passionately, in gipsy style, but his love was a thing of gloom,
almost of suffering. He never caressed her in our presence, and only
stared at her fiercely with his mouth all awry.

On coming back from the fields he would furiously slam down his gun on
the floor of his room, and come out on the porch to take his seat beside
his wife. When he had rested a while he would ask her a few questions
about the housekeeping, and then relapse into silence.

“Let’s sing!” I used to suggest.

My tutor would tune his guitar, and in a thick, deaconly voice would
drone: “In Level Valleys.” We would all chime in. My tutor sang bass,
Theodore an almost inaudible tenor, and I contralto in tune with
Tatiana.

When all the sky was strewn with stars, and the frogs’ voices were
hushed, our supper would be brought to us from the kitchen, and we would
go into the house and fall to. My tutor and the gipsy ate ravenously,
munching so loudly that it was hard to tell whether the noise came from
the bones they were crunching or the cracking of their jaws. Tatiana and
I, on the contrary, could scarcely manage to finish our portions. After
supper our wing of the house would sink into deep slumber.

One evening at the end of May we were sitting on the porch waiting for
our supper. Suddenly a shadow flitted toward us, and Gundasoff appeared
as if he had sprung from the ground. He stared at us for a long time,
and then waved his hands and laughed gaily.

“How idyllic!” he cried. “Singing and dreaming under the moon! It is
beautiful, upon my word and honour! May I sit here and dream with you?”

We silently looked at one another. My uncle sat down on the lowest step,
yawned, and gazed at the sky. Pobedimski, who had long been intending to
have a conversation with this “new person,” was delighted at the
opportunity that now presented itself, and was the first to break the
silence. He had only one subject for learned discussions, and that was
the epizooty. It sometimes happens that, out of a crowd of thousands of
persons with whom one is thrown, one face alone remains fixed in the
memory, and so it was with Pobedimski. Out of all he had learned at the
Veterinary College he remembered only one sentence:

“Epizooty is the cause of much loss to the peasant farmers. Every
community should join hands with the state in fighting this disease.”

Before saying this to Gundasoff, my tutor cleared his throat three
times, and excitedly wrapped his cape around him. When my uncle had been
informed concerning the epizooty, he made a noise in his nose that
sounded like a laugh.

“How charming, upon my word and honour!” he said under his breath,
staring at us as if we were maniacs. “This is indeed life! This is real
nature! Why don’t you say something, Pelagia?” he asked of Tatiana.

Tatiana grew confused and coughed.

“Go on talking, friends! Sing! Play! Don’t waste a moment! That rascal
time goes fast and waits for no man. Upon my word and honour, old age
will be upon you before you know it. It will be too late to enjoy life
then; so come, Pelagia, don’t sit there and say nothing!”

At this point our supper was brought from the kitchen. My uncle went
into the house with us, and ate five curd fritters and a duck’s wing for
company. He kept his eyes fixed on us while he despatched his supper; we
all filled his heart with enthusiasm and emotion. Whatever silliness
that unforgettable tutor of mine was guilty of, whatever Tatiana did,
was lovely and charming in his eyes. When Tatiana quietly took her
knitting into a corner after supper, his eyes never left her little
fingers, and he babbled without a moment’s pause.

“Friends, you must hurry and begin to enjoy life as fast as you can!” he
said. “For heaven’s sake, don’t sacrifice the present to the future! You
have youth and health and passion now, and the future is deceitful—a
vapour! As soon as your twentieth year knocks at the door, then begin to
live!”

Tatiana dropped a needle. My uncle jumped up, picked it up, and handed
it to her with a bow, at which I realised for the first time that there
was some one in the world with manners more polished than Pobedimski’s.

“Yes,” my uncle continued. “Fall in love! Marry! Be silly! Silliness is
much more healthy and natural than our toiling and striving to be
sensible.”

My uncle talked much and long, and I sat on a trunk in a corner
listening to him and dozing. I felt hurt because he had never once paid
the least attention to me. He left our wing of the house at two o’clock
that night, when I had given up the battle, and sunk into profound
slumber.

From that time on my uncle came to us every evening. He sang with us and
sat with us each night until two o’clock, chatting without end always of
the same thing. He ceased his evening and nocturnal labours, and by the
end of July, when the privy councillor had learned to eat my mother’s
turkeys and stewed fruits, his daytime toil was also abandoned. My uncle
had torn himself away from his desk and had entered into “real life.” By
day he walked about the garden whistling and keeping the workmen from
their work by making them tell him stories. If he caught sight of
Tatiana he would run up to her, and, if she were carrying anything,
would offer to carry it for her, which always embarrassed her
dreadfully.

The farther summer advanced toward autumn the more absent-minded and
frivolous and lively my uncle became. Pobedimski lost all his illusions
about him.

“He is too one-sided,” he used to say. “Nothing about him shows that he
stands on the highest rung of the official hierarchic ladder. He can’t
even talk properly. He says ‘upon my word and honour’ after every word.
No, I don’t like him!”

A distinct change came over my tutor and Theodore from the time that my
uncle began to visit us in our wing. Theodore stopped hunting and began
to come home early. He grew more silent and stared more ferociously than
ever at his wife. My tutor stopped talking of the epizooty in my uncle’s
presence, and now frowned and even smiled derisively at sight of him.

“Here comes our little hop o’my thumb!” he once growled, seeing my uncle
coming toward our part of the house.

This change in the behaviour of both men I explained by the theory that
Gundasoff had hurt their feelings. My absent-minded uncle always
confused their names, and on the day of his departure had not learned
which was my tutor, and which was Tatiana’s husband. Tatiana herself he
sometimes called Nastasia, sometimes Pelagia, sometimes Evdokia. Full of
affectionate enthusiasm as he was for us all, he laughed at us and
treated us as if we had been children. All this, of course, might easily
have offended the young men. But, as I now see, this was not a question
of lacerated feelings; sentiments much more delicate were involved.

One night, I remember, I was sitting on the trunk contending with my
longing for sleep. A heavy glue seemed to have fallen on my eyelids, and
my body was drooping sideways, exhausted by a long day’s playing, but I
tried to conquer my sleepiness, for I wanted to see what was going on.
It was nearly midnight. Gentle, rosy, and meek as ever, Tatiana was
sitting at a little table sewing a shirt for her husband. From one
corner of the room Theodore was staring sternly and gloomily at her, in
another corner sat Pobedimski snorting angrily, his head half buried in
his high coat collar. My uncle was walking up and down plunged in
thought. Silence reigned, broken only by the rustling of the linen in
Tatiana’s hands. Suddenly my uncle stopped in front of Tatiana, and
said:

“Oh, you are all so young and fresh and good, and you live so peacefully
in this quiet place that I envy you! I have grown so fond of this life
of yours that, upon my honour, my heart aches when I remember that some
day I shall have to leave it all.”

Sleep closed my eyes and I heard no more. I was awakened by a bang, and
saw my uncle standing in front of Tatiana, looking at her with emotion.
His cheeks were burning.

“My life is over and I have not lived,” he was saying. “Your young face
reminds me of my lost youth, and I should be happy to sit here looking
at you until I died. I should like to take you with me to St.
Petersburg.”

“Why?” demanded Theodore in a hoarse voice.

“I should like to put you under a glass case on my desk; I should
delight in contemplating you, and showing you to my friends. Do you
know, Pelagia, that we don’t have people like you where I live? We have
wealth and fame and sometimes beauty, but we have none of this natural
life and this wholesome peacefulness——”

My uncle sat down in front of Tatiana and took her hand.

“So you won’t come with me to St. Petersburg?” he laughed. “Then at
least let me take this hand away with me, this lovely little hand! You
won’t? Very well then, little miser, at least allow me to kiss it!”

I heard a chair crack. Theodore sprang to his feet and strode toward his
wife with a heavy, measured tread. His face was ashy grey and quivering.
He raised his arm and brought his fist down on the table with all his
might, saying in a muffled voice:

“I won’t allow it!”

At the same moment Pobedimski jumped out of his chair, and with a face
as pale and angry as the other’s, he also advanced toward Tatiana and
banged the table with his fist.

“I—I won’t allow it!” he cried.

“What? What’s the matter,” asked my uncle in astonishment.

“I won’t allow it!” Theodore repeated, with another blow on the table.

My uncle jumped up and abjectly blinked his eyes. He wanted to say
something, but surprise and fright held him tongue-tied. He gave an
embarrassed smile and pattered out of the room with short, senile steps,
leaving his hat behind him. When my startled mother came into the room a
few moments later, Theodore and Pobedimski were still banging the table
with their fists like blacksmiths hammering an anvil, and shouting:

“I won’t allow it!”

“What has happened here?” demanded my mother. “Why has my brother
fainted? What is the matter?”

When she saw the frightened Tatiana and her angry husband, my mother
must have guessed what had been going on, for she sighed and shook her
head.

“Come, come, stop thumping the table!” she commanded. “Stop, Theodore!
And what are you hammering for, Gregory Pobedimski? What business is
this of yours?”

Pobedimski recollected himself and blushed. Theodore glared intently
first at him and then at his wife, and began striding up and down the
room. After my mother had gone, I saw something that for a long time
after I took to be a dream. I saw Theodore seize my tutor, raise him in
the air, and fling him out of the door.

When I awoke next morning my tutor’s bed was empty. To my inquiries, my
nurse replied in a whisper that he had been taken to the hospital early
that morning, to be treated for a broken arm. Saddened by this news, and
recalling yesterday’s scandal, I went out into the courtyard. The day
was overcast. The sky was covered with storm-clouds, and a strong wind
was blowing across the earth, whirling before it dust, feathers, and
scraps of paper. One could feel the approaching rain, and bad humour was
obvious in both men and beasts. When I went back to the house I was told
to walk lightly, and not to make a noise because my mother was ill in
bed with a headache. What could I do? I went out of the front gate, and,
sitting down on a bench, tried to make out the meaning of what I had
seen the night before. The road from our gate wound past a blacksmith’s
shop and around a damp meadow, turning at last into the main highway. I
sat and looked at the telegraph poles around which the dust was
whirling, and at the sleepy birds sitting on the wires until, suddenly,
such ennui overwhelmed me that I burst into tears.

A dusty char-à-banc came along the highway filled with townspeople who
were probably on a pilgrimage to some shrine. The char-à-banc was
scarcely out of sight before a light victoria drawn by a pair of horses
appeared. Standing up in the carriage and holding on to the coachman’s
belt was the rural policeman. To my intense surprise the victoria turned
into our road and rolled past me through the gate. While I was still
seeking an answer to the riddle of the policeman’s appearance at our
farm, a troika trotted up harnessed to a landau, and in the landau sat
the captain of police pointing out our gate to his coachman.

“What does this mean?” I asked myself. “Pobedimski must have complained
to them about Theodore, and they have come to fetch him away to prison.”

But the problem was not so easily solved. The policeman and the police
captain were evidently but the forerunners of some one more important
still, for five minutes had scarcely elapsed before a coach drove into
our gate. It flashed by me so quickly that, as I glanced in at the
window, I could only catch a glimpse of a red beard.

Lost in conjectures and foreseeing some disaster, I ran into the house.
The first person I met in the hall was my mother. Her face was pale, and
she was staring with horror at a door from behind which came the sound
of men’s voices. Some guests had arrived unexpectedly and at the very
height of her headache.

“Who is here, mamma?” I asked.

“Sister!” we heard my uncle call. “Do give the governor and the rest of
us a bite to eat!”

“That’s easier said than done!” whispered my mother, collapsing with
horror. “What can I give them at such short notice? I shall be disgraced
in my declining years!”

My mother clasped her head with her hands and hurried into the kitchen.
The unexpected arrival of the governor had turned the whole farm upside
down. A cruel holocaust immediately began to take place. Ten hens were
killed and five turkeys and eight ducks, and in the hurly-burly the old
gander was beheaded, the ancestor of all our flock and the favourite of
my mother. The coachman and the cook seemed to have gone mad, and
frantically slaughtered every bird they could lay hands upon without
regard to its age or breed. A pair of my precious turtle doves, as dear
to me as the gander was to my mother, were sacrified to make a gravy. It
was long before I forgave the governor their death.

That evening, when the governor and his suite had dined until they could
eat no more, and had climbed into their carriages and driven away, I
went into the house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into
the drawing-room from the hall, I saw my mother there with my uncle. My
uncle was shrugging his shoulders, and nervously pacing round and round
the room with his hands behind his back. My mother looked exhausted and
very much thinner. She was sitting on the sofa following my uncle’s
movements with eyes of suffering.

“I beg your pardon, sister, but one cannot behave like that! I
introduced the governor to you, and you did not even shake hands with
him! You quite embarrassed the poor man. Yes, it was most unseemly.
Simplicity is all very pretty, but even simplicity must not be carried
too far, upon my word and honour——And then that dinner! How could you
serve a dinner like that? What was that dish-rag you gave us for the
fourth course?”

“That was duck with apple sauce,” answered my mother faintly.

“Duck! Forgive me, sister, but—but—I have an attack of indigestion! I’m
ill!”

My uncle pulled a sour, tearful face and continued.

“The devil the governor had to come here to see me! Much I wanted a
visit from him! Ouch—oh, my indigestion! I—I can’t work and I can’t
sleep. I’m completely run down. I don’t see how in the world you can
exist here in this wilderness without anything to do! There now, the
pain is commencing in the pit of my stomach!”

My uncle knit his brows and walked up and down more swiftly than ever.

“Brother,” asked my mother softly. “How much does it cost to go abroad?”

“Three thousand roubles at least!” wailed my uncle. “I should certainly
go, but where can I get the money? I haven’t a copeck! Ouch, what a
pain!”

My uncle stopped in his walk and gazed with anguish through the window
at the grey, cloudy sky.

Silence fell. My mother fixed her eyes for a long time on the icon as if
she were debating something, and then burst into tears and exclaimed:

“I’ll let you have three thousand, brother!”

Three days later the majestic trunks were sent to the station, and
behind them rolled the carriage containing the privy councillor. He had
wept as he bade farewell to my mother, and had held her hand to his lips
for a long time. As he climbed into the carriage his face had shone with
childish joy. Radiant and happy, he had settled himself more comfortably
in his seat, kissed his hand to my weeping mother, and suddenly and
unexpectedly turned his regard to me. The utmost astonishment had
appeared on his features——

“What boy is this?” he had asked.

As my mother had always assured me that God had sent my uncle to us for
my especial benefit, this question gave her quite a turn. But I was not
thinking about the question. As I looked at my uncle’s happy face I
felt, for some reason, very sorry for him. I could not endure it, and
jumped up into the carriage to embrace this man, so frivolous, so weak,
and so human. As I looked into his eyes I wanted to say something
pleasant, so I asked him:

“Uncle, were you ever in a battle?”

“Oh, my precious boy!” laughed my uncle kissing me. “My precious boy,
upon my word and honour! How natural and true to life it all is, upon my
word and honour!”

The carriage moved away. I followed it with my eyes, and long after it
had disappeared I still heard ringing in my ears that farewell, “Upon my
word and honour!”

ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE

It was a tiny town, worse than a village, inhabited chiefly by old
people who so seldom died that it was really vexatious. Very few coffins
were needed for the hospital and the jail; in a word, business was bad.
If Jacob Ivanoff had been a maker of coffins in the county town, he
would probably have owned a house of his own by now, and would have been
called Mr. Ivanoff, but here in this little place he was simply called
Jacob, and for some reason his nickname was Bronze. He lived as poorly
as any common peasant in a little old hut of one room, in which he and
Martha, and the stove, and a double bed, and the coffins, and his
joiner’s bench, and all the necessities of housekeeping were stowed
away.

The coffins made by Jacob were serviceable and strong. For the peasants
and townsfolk he made them to fit himself and never went wrong, for,
although he was seventy years old, there was no man, not even in the
prison, any taller or stouter than he was. For the gentry and for women
he made them to measure, using an iron yardstick for the purpose. He was
always very reluctant to take orders for children’s coffins, and made
them contemptuously without taking any measurements at all, always
saying when he was paid for them:

“The fact is, I don’t like to be bothered with trifles.”

Beside what he received for his work as a joiner, he added a little to
his income by playing the violin. There was a Jewish orchestra in the
town that played for weddings, led by the tinsmith Moses Shakess, who
took more than half of its earnings for himself. As Jacob played the
fiddle extremely well, especially Russian songs, Shakess used sometimes
to invite him to play in his orchestra for the sum of fifty copecks a
day, not including the presents he might receive from the guests.
Whenever Bronze took his seat in the orchestra, the first thing that
happened to him was that his face grew red, and the perspiration
streamed from it, for the air was always hot, and reeking of garlic to
the point of suffocation. Then his fiddle would begin to moan, and a
double bass would croak hoarsely into his right ear, and a flute would
weep into his left. This flute was played by a gaunt, red-bearded Jew
with a network of red and blue veins on his face, who bore the name of a
famous rich man, Rothschild. This confounded Jew always contrived to
play even the merriest tunes sadly. For no obvious reason Jacob little
by little began to conceive a feeling of hatred and contempt for all
Jews, and especially for Rothschild. He quarrelled with him and abused
him in ugly language, and once even tried to beat him, but Rothschild
took offence at this, and cried with a fierce look:

“If I had not always respected you for your music, I should have thrown
you out of the window long ago!”

Then he burst into tears. So after that Bronze was not often invited to
play in the orchestra, and was only called upon in cases of dire
necessity, when one of the Jews was missing.

Jacob was never in a good humour, because he always had to endure the
most terrible losses. For instance, it was a sin to work on a Sunday or
a holiday, and Monday was always a bad day, so in that way there were
about two hundred days a year on which he was compelled to sit with his
hands folded in his lap. That was a great loss to him. If any one in
town had a wedding without music, or if Shakess did not ask him to play,
there was another loss. The police inspector had lain ill with
consumption for two years while Jacob impatiently waited for him to die,
and then had gone to take a cure in the city and had died there, which
of course had meant another loss of at least ten roubles, as the coffin
would have been an expensive one lined with brocade.

The thought of his losses worried Jacob at night more than at any other
time, so he used to lay his fiddle at his side on the bed, and when
those worries came trooping into his brain he would touch the strings,
and the fiddle would give out a sound in the darkness, and Jacob’s heart
would feel lighter.

Last year on the sixth of May, Martha suddenly fell ill. The old woman
breathed with difficulty, staggered in her walk, and felt terribly
thirsty. Nevertheless, she got up that morning, lit the stove, and even
went for the water. When evening came she went to bed. Jacob played his
fiddle all day. When it grew quite dark, because he had nothing better
to do, he took the book in which he kept an account of his losses, and
began adding up the total for the year. They amounted to more than a
thousand roubles. He was so shaken by this discovery, that he threw the
counting board on the floor and trampled it under foot. Then he picked
it up again and rattled it once more for a long time, heaving as he did
so sighs both deep and long. His face grew purple, and perspiration
dripped from his brow. He was thinking that if those thousand roubles he
had lost had been in the bank then, he would have had at least forty
roubles interest by the end of the year. So those forty roubles were
still another loss! In a word, wherever he turned he found losses and
nothing but losses.

“Jacob!” cried Martha unexpectedly, “I am going to die!”

He looked round at his wife. Her face was flushed with fever and looked
unusually joyful and bright. Bronze was troubled, for he had been
accustomed to seeing her pale and timid and unhappy. It seemed to him
that she was actually dead, and glad to have left this hut, and the
coffins, and Jacob at last. She was staring at the ceiling, with her
lips moving as if she saw her deliverer Death approaching and were
whispering with him.

The dawn was just breaking and the eastern sky was glowing with a faint
radiance. As he stared at the old woman it somehow seemed to Jacob that
he had never once spoken a tender word to her or pitied her; that he had
never thought of buying her a kerchief or of bringing her back some
sweetmeats from a wedding. On the contrary, he had shouted at her and
abused her for his losses, and had shaken his fist at her. It was true
he had never beaten her, but he had frightened her no less, and she had
been paralysed with fear every time he had scolded her. Yes, and he had
not allowed her to drink tea because his losses were heavy enough as it
was, so she had had to be content with hot water. Now he understood why
her face looked so strangely happy, and horror overwhelmed him.

As soon as it was light he borrowed a horse from a neighbour and took
Martha to the hospital. As there were not many patients, he had not to
wait very long—only about three hours. To his great satisfaction it was
not the doctor who was receiving the sick that day, but his assistant,
Maksim Nicolaitch, an old man of whom it was said that although he
quarrelled and drank, he knew more than the doctor did.

“Good morning, your Honour,” said Jacob leading his old woman into the
office. “Excuse us for intruding upon you with our trifling affairs. As
you see, this subject has fallen ill. My life’s friend, if you will
allow me to use the expression——”

Knitting his grey eyebrows and stroking his whiskers, the doctor’s
assistant fixed his eyes on the old woman. She was sitting all in a heap
on a low stool, and with her thin, long-nosed face and her open mouth,
she looked like a thirsty bird.

“Well, well—yes—” said the doctor slowly, heaving a sigh. “This is a
case of influenza and possibly fever; there is typhoid in town. What’s
to be done? The old woman has lived her span of years, thank God. How
old is she?”

“She lacks one year of being seventy, your Honour.”

“Well, well, she has lived long. There must come an end to everything.”

“You are certainly right, your Honour,” said Jacob, smiling out of
politeness. “And we thank you sincerely for your kindness, but allow me
to suggest to you that even an insect dislikes to die!”

“Never mind if it does!” answered the doctor, as if the life or death of
the old woman lay in his hands. “I’ll tell you what you must do, my good
man. Put a cold bandage around her head, and give her two of these
powders a day. Now then, good-by! Bon jour!”

Jacob saw by the expression on the doctor’s face that it was too late
now for powders. He realised clearly that Martha must die very soon, if
not to-day, then to-morrow. He touched the doctor’s elbow gently,
blinked, and whispered:

“She ought to be cupped, doctor!”

“I haven’t time, I haven’t time, my good man. Take your old woman, and
go in God’s name. Good-by.”

“Please, please, cup her, doctor!” begged Jacob. “You know yourself that
if she had a pain in her stomach, powders and drops would do her good,
but she has a cold! The first thing to do when one catches cold is to
let some blood, doctor!”

But the doctor had already sent for the next patient, and a woman
leading a little boy came into the room.

“Go along, go along!” he cried to Jacob, frowning. “It’s no use making a
fuss!”

“Then at least put some leeches on her! Let me pray to God for you for
the rest of my life!”

The doctor’s temper flared up and he shouted:

“Don’t say another word to me, blockhead!”

Jacob lost his temper, too, and flushed hotly, but he said nothing and,
silently taking Martha’s arm, led her out of the office. Only when they
were once more seated in their wagon did he look fiercely and mockingly
at the hospital and say:

“They’re a pretty lot in there, they are! That doctor would have cupped
a rich man, but he even begrudged a poor one a leech. The pig!”

When they returned to the hut, Martha stood for nearly ten minutes
supporting herself by the stove. She felt that if she lay down Jacob
would begin to talk to her about his losses, and would scold her for
lying down and not wanting to work. Jacob contemplated her sadly,
thinking that to-morrow was St. John the Baptist’s day, and day after
to-morrow was St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker’s day, and that the
following day would be Sunday, and the day after that would be Monday, a
bad day for work. So he would not be able to work for four days, and as
Martha would probably die on one of these days, the coffin would have to
be made at once. He took his iron yardstick in hand, went up to the old
woman, and measured her. Then she lay down, and he crossed himself and
went to work on the coffin.

When the task was completed Bronze put on his spectacles and wrote in
his book:

“To 1 coffin for Martha Ivanoff—2 roubles, 40 copecks.”

He sighed. All day the old woman lay silent with closed eyes, but toward
evening, when the daylight began to fade, she suddenly called the old
man to her side.

“Do you remember, Jacob?” she asked. “Do you remember how fifty years
ago God gave us a little baby with curly golden hair? Do you remember
how you and I used to sit on the bank of the river and sing songs under
the willow tree?” Then with a bitter smile she added: “The baby died.”

Jacob racked his brains, but for the life of him he could not recall the
child or the willow tree.

“You are dreaming,” he said.

The priest came and administered the Sacrament and Extreme Unction. Then
Martha began muttering unintelligibly, and toward morning she died.

The neighbouring old women washed her and dressed her, and laid her in
her coffin. To avoid paying the deacon, Jacob read the psalms over her
himself, and her grave cost him nothing, as the watchman of the cemetery
was his cousin. Four peasants carried the coffin to the grave, not for
money but for love. The old women, the beggars, and two village idiots
followed the body, and the people whom they passed on the way crossed
themselves devoutly. Jacob was very glad that everything had passed off
so nicely and decently and cheaply, without giving offence to any one.
As he said farewell to Martha for the last time he touched the coffin
with his hand and thought:

“That’s a fine job!”

But walking homeward from the cemetery he was seized with great
distress. He felt ill, his breath was burning hot, his legs grew weak,
and he longed for a drink. Beside this, a thousand thoughts came
crowding into his head. He remembered again that he had never once
pitied Martha or said a tender word to her. The fifty years of their
life together lay stretched far, far behind him, and somehow, during all
that time, he had never once thought about her at all or noticed her
more than if she had been a dog or a cat. And yet she had lit the stove
every day, and had cooked and baked and fetched water and chopped wood,
and when he had come home drunk from a wedding she had hung his fiddle
reverently on a nail each time, and had silently put him to bed with a
timid, anxious look on her face.

But here came Rothschild toward him, bowing and scraping and smiling.

“I have been looking for you, uncle!” he said. “Moses Shakess presents
his compliments and wants you to go to him at once.”

Jacob did not feel in a mood to do anything. He wanted to cry.

“Leave me alone!” he exclaimed, and walked on.

“Oh, how can you say that?” cried Rothschild, running beside him in
alarm. “Moses will be very angry. He wants you to come at once!”

Jacob was disgusted by the panting of the Jew, by his blinking eyes, and
by the quantities of reddish freckles on his face. He looked with
aversion at his long green coat and at the whole of his frail, delicate
figure.

“What do you mean by pestering me, garlic?” he shouted. “Get away!”

The Jew grew angry and shouted back:

“Don’t yell at me like that or I’ll send you flying over that fence!”

“Get out of my sight!” bellowed Jacob, shaking his fist at him. “There’s
no living in the same town with swine like you!”

Rothschild was petrified with terror. He sank to the ground and waved
his hands over his head as if to protect himself from falling blows;
then he jumped up and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. As
he ran he leaped and waved his arms, and his long, gaunt back could be
seen quivering. The little boys were delighted at what had happened, and
ran after him screaming: “Sheeny! Sheeny!” The dogs also joined barking
in the chase. Somebody laughed and then whistled, at which the dogs
barked louder and more vigorously than ever.

Then one of them must have bitten Rothschild, for a piteous, despairing
scream rent the air.

Jacob walked across the common to the edge of the town without knowing
where he was going, and the little boys shouted after him. “There goes
old man Bronze! There goes old man Bronze!” He found himself by the
river where the snipe were darting about with shrill cries, and the
ducks were quacking and swimming to and fro. The sun was shining
fiercely and the water was sparkling so brightly that it was painful to
look at. Jacob struck into a path that led along the river bank. He came
to a stout, red-cheeked woman just leaving a bath-house. “Aha, you
otter, you!” he thought. Not far from the bath-house some little boys
were fishing for crabs with pieces of meat. When they saw Jacob they
shouted mischievously: “Old man Bronze! Old man Bronze!” But there
before him stood an ancient, spreading willow tree with a massive trunk,
and a crow’s nest among its branches. Suddenly there flashed across
Jacob’s memory with all the vividness of life a little child with golden
curls, and the willow of which Martha had spoken. Yes, this was the same
tree, so green and peaceful and sad. How old it had grown, poor thing!

He sat down at its foot and thought of the past. On the opposite shore,
where that meadow now was, there had stood in those days a wood of tall
birch-trees, and that bare hill on the horizon yonder had been covered
with the blue bloom of an ancient pine forest. And sailboats had plied
the river then, but now all lay smooth and still, and only one little
birch-tree was left on the opposite bank, a graceful young thing, like a
girl, while on the river there swam only ducks and geese. It was hard to
believe that boats had once sailed there. It even seemed to him that
there were fewer geese now than there had been. Jacob shut his eyes, and
one by one white geese came flying toward him, an endless flock.

He was puzzled to know why he had never once been down to the river
during the last forty or fifty years of his life, or, if he had been
there, why he had never paid any attention to it. The stream was fine
and large; he might have fished in it and sold the fish to the merchants
and the government officials and the restaurant keeper at the station,
and put the money in the bank. He might have rowed in a boat from farm
to farm and played on his fiddle. People of every rank would have paid
him money to hear him. He might have tried to run a boat on the river,
that would have been better than making coffins. Finally, he might have
raised geese, and killed them, and sent them to Moscow in the winter.
Why, the down alone would have brought him ten roubles a year! But he
had missed all these chances and had done nothing. What losses were
here! Ah, what terrible losses! And, oh, if he had only done all these
things at the same time! If he had only fished, and played the fiddle,
and sailed a boat, and raised geese, what capital he would have had by
now! But he had not even dreamed of doing all this; his life had gone by
without profit or pleasure. It had been lost for a song. Nothing was
left ahead; behind lay only losses, and such terrible losses that he
shuddered to think of them. But why shouldn’t men live so as to avoid
all this waste and these losses? Why, oh, why, should those birch and
pine forests have been felled? Why should those meadows be lying so
deserted? Why did people always do exactly what they ought not to do?
Why had Jacob scolded and growled and clenched his fists and hurt his
wife’s feelings all his life? Why, oh why, had he frightened and
insulted that Jew just now? Why did people in general always interfere
with one another? What losses resulted from this! What terrible losses!
If it were not for envy and anger they would get great profit from one
another.

All that evening and night Jacob dreamed of the child, of the willow
tree, of the fish and the geese, of Martha with her profile like a
thirsty bird, and of Rothschild’s pale, piteous mien. Queer faces seemed
to be moving toward him from all sides, muttering to him about his
losses. He tossed from side to side, and got up five times during the
night to play his fiddle.

He rose with difficulty next morning, and walked to the hospital. The
same doctor’s assistant ordered him to put cold bandages on his head,
and gave him little powders to take; by his expression and the tone of
his voice Jacob knew that the state of affairs was bad, and that no
powders could save him now. As he walked home he reflected that one good
thing would result from his death: he would no longer have to eat and
drink and pay taxes, neither would he offend people any more, and, as a
man lies in his grave for hundreds of thousands of years, the sum of his
profits would be immense. So, life to a man was a loss—death, a gain. Of
course this reasoning was correct, but it was also distressingly sad.
Why should the world be so strangely arranged that a man’s life which
was only given to him once must pass without profit?

He was not sorry then that he was going to die, but when he reached
home, and saw his fiddle, his heart ached, and he regretted it deeply.
He would not be able to take his fiddle with him into the grave, and now
it would be left an orphan, and its fate would be that of the birch
grove and the pine forest. Everything in the world had been lost, and
would always be lost for ever. Jacob went out and sat on the threshold
of his hut, clasping his fiddle to his breast. And as he thought of his
life so full of waste and losses he began playing without knowing how
piteous and touching his music was, and the tears streamed down his
cheeks. And the more he thought the more sorrowfully sang his violin.

The latch clicked and Rothschild came in through the garden-gate, and
walked boldly half-way across the garden. Then he suddenly stopped,
crouched down, and, probably from fear, began making signs with his
hands as if he were trying to show on his fingers what time it was.

“Come on, don’t be afraid!” said Jacob gently, beckoning him to advance.
“Come on!”

With many mistrustful and fearful glances Rothschild went slowly up to
Jacob, and stopped about two yards away.

“Please don’t beat me!” he said with a ducking bow. “Moses Shakess has
sent me to you again. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘go to Jacob,’ says
he, ‘and say that we can’t possibly manage without him.’ There is a
wedding next Thursday. Ye-es, sir. Mr. Shapovaloff is marrying his
daughter to a very fine man. It will be an expensive wedding, ai, ai!”
added the Jew with a wink.

“I can’t go” said Jacob breathing hard. “I’m ill, brother.”

And he began to play again, and the tears gushed out of his eyes over
his fiddle. Rothschild listened intently with his head turned away and
his arms folded on his breast. The startled, irresolute look on his face
gradually gave way to one of suffering and grief. He cast up his eyes as
if in an ecstasy of agony and murmured: “Ou—ouch!” And the tears began
to trickle slowly down his cheeks, and to drip over his green coat.

All day Jacob lay and suffered. When the priest came in the evening to
administer the Sacrament he asked him if he could not think of any
particular sin.

Struggling with his fading memories, Jacob recalled once more Martha’s
sad face, and the despairing cry of the Jew when the dog had bitten him.
He murmured almost inaudibly:

“Give my fiddle to Rothschild.”

“It shall be done,” answered the priest.

So it happened that every one in the little town began asking:

“Where did Rothschild get that good fiddle? Did he buy it or steal it or
get it out of a pawnshop?”

Rothschild has long since abandoned his flute, and now only plays on the
violin. The same mournful notes flow from under his bow that used to
come from his flute, and when he tries to repeat what Jacob played as he
sat on the threshold of his hut, the result is an air so plaintive and
sad that every one who hears him weeps, and he himself at last raises
his eyes and murmurs: “Ou—ouch!” And this new song has so delighted the
town that the merchants and government officials vie with each other in
getting Rothschild to come to their houses, and sometimes make him play
it ten times in succession.

A HORSEY NAME

Major-General Buldeeff was suffering from toothache. He had rinsed his
mouth with vodka and cognac; applied tobacco ashes, opium, turpentine,
and kerosene to the aching tooth; rubbed his cheek with iodine, and put
cotton wool soaked with alcohol into his ears, but all these remedies
had either failed to relieve him or else had made him sick. The dentist
was sent for. He picked at his tooth and prescribed quinine, but this
did not help the general. Buldeeff met the suggestion that the tooth
should be pulled with refusal. Every one in the house, his wife, his
children, the servants, even Petka, the scullery boy, suggested some
remedy. Among others his steward, Ivan Evceitch came to him, and advised
him to try a conjuror.

“Your Excellency,” said he, “ten years ago an exciseman lived in this
county whose name was Jacob. He was a first-class conjuror for the
toothache. He used simply to turn toward the window and spit, and the
pain would go in a minute. That was his gift.”

“Where is he now?”

“After he was dismissed from the revenue service, he went to live in
Saratoff with his mother-in-law. He makes his living off nothing but
teeth now. If any one has a toothache, he sends for him to cure it. The
Saratoff people have him come to their houses, but he cures people in
other cities by telegraph. Send him a telegram, your Excellency, say:
‘I, God’s servant Alexei, have the toothache. I want you to cure me.’
You can send him his fee by mail.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Humbug!”

“Just try it, your Excellency! He is fond of vodka, it is true, and is
living with some German woman instead of his wife, and he uses terrible
language, but he is a remarkable wonder worker.”

“Do send him a telegram, Alexei!” begged the general’s wife. “You don’t
believe in conjuring, I know, but I have tried it. Why not send him the
message, even if you don’t believe it will do you any good? It can’t
kill you!”

“Very well, then,” Buldeeff consented. “I would willingly send a
telegram to the devil, let alone to an exciseman. Ouch! I can’t stand
this! Come, where does your conjuror live? What is his name?”

The general sat down at his desk, and took up a pen.

“He is known to every dog in Saratoff,” said the steward. “Just address
the telegram to Mr. Jacob—Jacob——”

“Well?”

“Jacob—Jacob—what? I can’t remember his surname. Jacob—darn it, what is
his surname? I thought of it as I was coming along. Wait a minute!”

Ivan raised his eyes to the ceiling, and moved his lips. Buldeeff and
his wife waited impatiently for him to remember the name.

“Well then, what is it? Think harder.”

“Just a minute! Jacob—Jacob—I can’t remember it! It’s a common name too,
something to do with a horse. Is it Mayres? No it isn’t Mayres—Wait a
bit, is it Colt? No, it isn’t Colt. I know perfectly well it’s a horsey
name, but it has absolutely gone out of my head!”

“It isn’t Filley?”

“No, no—wait a jiffy. Maresfield, Maresden—Farrier—Harrier——”

“That’s a doggy name, not a horsey one. Is it Foley?”

“No, no, it isn’t Foley. Just a second—Horseman—Horsey—Hackney. No, it
isn’t any of those.”

“Then how am I to send that telegram? Think a little harder!”

“One moment! Carter—Coltsford—Shafter——”

“Shaftsbury?” suggested the general’s wife.

“No, no—Wheeler—no, that isn’t it! I’ve forgotten it!”

“Then why on earth did you come pestering me with your advice, if you
couldn’t remember the man’s name?” stormed the general. “Get out of
here!”

Ivan went slowly out, and the general clutched his cheek, and went
rushing through the house.

“Ouch! Oh Lord!” he howled. “Oh, mother! Ouch! I’m as blind as a bat!”

The steward went into the garden, and, raising his eyes to heaven, tried
to remember the exciseman’s name.

“Hunt—Hunter—Huntley. No, that’s wrong! Cobb—Cobden—Dobbins—Maresly——”

Shortly afterward, the steward was again summoned by his master.

“Well, have you thought of it?” asked the general.

“No, not yet, your Excellency!”

“Is it Barnes?” asked the general. “Is it Palfrey, by any chance?”

Every one in the house began madly to invent names. Horses of every
possible age, breed, and sex were considered; their names, hoofs, and
harness were all thought of. People were frantically walking up and down
in the house, garden, servants’ quarters, and kitchen, all scratching
their heads, and searching for the right name.

Suddenly the steward was sent for again.

“Is it Herder?” they asked him. “Hocker? Hyde? Groome?”

“No, no, no,” answered Ivan, and, casting up his eyes, he went on
thinking aloud.

“Steed—Charger—Horsely—Harness——”

“Papa!” cried a voice from the nursery. “Tracey! Bitter!”

The whole farm was now in an uproar. The impatient, agonised general
promised five roubles to any one who would think of the right name, and
a perfect mob began to follow Ivan Evceitch about.

“Bayley!” They cried to him. “Trotter! Hackett!”

Evening came at last, and still the name had not been found. The
household went to bed without sending the telegram.

The general did not sleep a wink, but walked, groaning, up and down his
room. At three o’clock in the morning he went out into the yard and
tapped at the steward’s window.

“It isn’t Gelder, is it?” he asked almost in tears.

“No, not Gelder, your Excellency,” answered Ivan, sighing
apologetically.

“Perhaps it isn’t a horsey name at all? Perhaps it is something entirely
different?”

“No, no, upon my word, it’s a horsey name, your Excellency, I remember
that perfectly.”

“What an abominable memory you have, brother! That name is worth more
than anything on earth to me now! I’m in agony!”

Next morning the general sent for the dentist again.

“I’ll have it out!” he cried. “I can’t stand this any longer!”

The dentist came and pulled out the aching tooth. The pain at once
subsided, and the general grew quieter. Having done his work and
received his fee, the dentist climbed into his gig, and drove away. In
the field outside the front gate he met Ivan. The steward was standing
by the roadside plunged in thought, with his eyes fixed on the ground at
his feet. Judging from the deep wrinkles that furrowed his brow, he was
painfully racking his brains over something, and was muttering to
himself:

“Dunn—Sadler—Buckle—Coachman——”

“Hello, Ivan!” cried the doctor driving up. “Won’t you sell me a load of
hay? I have been buying mine from the peasants lately, but it’s no
good.”

Ivan glared dully at the doctor, smiled vaguely, and without answering a
word threw up his arms, and rushed toward the house as if a mad dog were
after him.

“I’ve thought of the name, your Excellency!” he shrieked with delight,
bursting into the general’s study. “I’ve thought of it, thanks to the
doctor. Hayes! Hayes is the exciseman’s name! Hayes, your Honour! Send a
telegram to Hayes!”

“Slow-coach!” said the general contemptuously, snapping his fingers at
him. “I don’t need your horsey name now! Slow-coach!”

THE PETCHENEG[1]

One hot summer’s day Ivan Jmukin was returning from town to his farm in
southern Russia. Jmukin was a retired old Cossack officer, who had
served in the Caucasus, and had once been lusty and strong, but he was
an old man now, shrivelled and bent, with bushy eyebrows and a long,
greenish-grey moustache. He had been fasting in town, and had made his
will, for it was only two weeks since he had had a slight stroke of
paralysis, and now, sitting in the train, he was full of deep, gloomy
thoughts of his approaching death, of the vanity of life, and of the
transient quality of all earthly things. At Provalye, one of the
stations on the Don railway, a fair-haired, middle-aged man, carrying a
worn portfolio under his arm, entered the compartment and sat down
opposite the old Cossack. They began talking together.

Footnote 1:

Petchenegs, wild tribesmen of the Caucasus.

“No,” said Jmukin gazing pensively out of the window. “It is never too
late to marry. I myself was forty-eight when I married, and every one
said it was too late, but it has turned out to be neither too late nor
too early. Still, it is better never to marry at all. Every one soon
gets tired of a wife, though not every one will tell you the truth,
because, you know, people are ashamed of their family troubles, and try
to conceal them. It is often ‘Manya, dear Manya,’ with a man when, if he
had his way, he would put that Manya of his into a sack, and throw her
into the river. A wife is a nuisance and a bore, and children are no
better, I can assure you. I have two scoundrels myself. There is nowhere
they can go to school on the steppe, and I can’t afford to send them to
Novotcherkask, so they are growing up here like young wolf cubs. At any
moment they may murder some one on the highway.”

The fair-haired man listened attentively, and answered all questions
addressed to him briefly, in a low voice. He was evidently gentle and
unassuming. He told his companion that he was an attorney, on his way to
the village of Duevka on business.

“Why, for heaven’s sake, that’s only nine miles from where I live!”
cried Jmukin, as if some one had been disputing it. “You won’t be able
to get any horses at the station this evening. In my opinion the best
thing for you to do is to come home with me, you know, and spend the
night at my house, you know, and let me send you on to-morrow with my
horses.”

After a moment’s reflection the attorney accepted the invitation.

The sun was hanging low over the steppe when they arrived at the
station. The two men remained silent as they drove from the railway to
the farm, for the jolting that the road gave them forbade conversation.
The tarantass[2] bounded and whined and seemed to be sobbing, as if its
leaps caused it the keenest pain, and the attorney, who found his seat
very uncomfortable, gazed with anguish before him, hoping to descry the
farm in the distance. After they had driven eight miles a low house
surrounded by a dark wattle fence came into view. The roof was painted
green, the stucco on the walls was peeling off, and the little windows
looked like puckered eyes. The farmhouse stood exposed to all the ardour
of the sun; neither trees nor water were visible anywhere near it. The
neighbouring landowners and peasants called it “Petcheneg Grange.” Many
years ago a passing surveyor, who was spending the night at the farm,
had talked with Jmukin all night, and had gone away in the morning much
displeased, saying sternly as he left: “Sir, you are nothing but a
Petcheneg!” So the name “Petcheneg Grange” had been given to the farm,
and had stuck to it all the more closely as Jmukin’s boys began to grow
up, and to perpetrate raids on the neighbouring gardens and melon
fields. Jmukin himself was known as “old man you know,” because he
talked so much, and used the words “you know” so often.

Footnote 2:

A rough carriage used in southern Russia.

Jmukin’s two sons were standing in the courtyard, near the stables, as
the tarantass drove up. One was about nineteen, the other was a
hobbledehoy of a few years younger; both were barefoot and hatless. As
the carriage went by the younger boy threw a hen high up over his head.
It described an arc in the air, and fluttered cackling down till the
elder fired a shot from his gun, and the dead bird fell to earth with a
thud.

“Those are my boys learning to shoot birds on the wing,” Jmukin said.

The travellers were met in the front entry by a woman, a thin,
pale-faced little creature, still pretty and young, who, from her dress,
might have been taken for a servant.

“This,” said Jmukin, “is the mother of those sons of guns of mine. Come
on, Lyuboff!” he cried to his wife. “Hustle, now, mother, and help
entertain our guest. Bring us some supper! Quick!”

The house consisted of two wings. On one side were the “drawing-room”
and, adjoining it, the old man’s bedchamber; close, stuffy apartments
both, with low ceilings, infested by thousands of flies. On the other
side was the kitchen, where the cooking and washing were done and the
workmen were fed. Here, under benches, geese and turkeys were sitting on
their nests, and here stood the beds of Lyuboff and her two sons. The
furniture in the drawing-room was unpainted and had evidently been made
by a country joiner. On the walls hung guns, game bags, and whips, all
of which old trash was rusty and grey with dust. Not a picture was on
the walls, only a dark, painted board that had once been an icon hung in
one corner of the room.

A young peasant woman set the table and brought in ham and borstch.[3]
Jmukin’s guest declined vodka, and confined himself to eating cucumbers
and bread.

Footnote 3:

Borstch: the national soup of Little Russia.

“And what about the ham?” Jmukin asked.

“No, thank you, I don’t eat ham,” answered his guest. “I don’t eat meat
of any kind.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a vegetarian. It’s against my principles to kill animals.”

Jmukin was silent for a moment, and then said slowly, with a sigh:

“I see—yes. I saw a man in town who didn’t eat meat either. It is a new
religion people have. And why shouldn’t they have it? It’s a good thing.
One can’t always be killing and shooting; one must take a rest sometimes
and let the animals have a little peace. Of course it’s a sin to kill,
there’s no doubt about that. Sometimes, when you shoot a hare, and hit
him in the leg he will scream like a baby. So it hurts him!”

“Of course it hurts him! Animals suffer pain just as much as we do.”

“That’s a fact!” Jmukin agreed. “I see that perfectly,” he added
pensively. “Only there is one thing that I must say I can’t quite
understand. Suppose, for instance, you know, every one were to stop
eating meat, what would become of all our barnyard fowls, like chickens
and geese?”

“Chickens and geese would go free just like all other birds.”

“Ah! Now I understand. Of course. Crows and magpies get on without us
all right. Yes. And chickens and geese and rabbits and sheep would all
be free and happy, you know, and would praise God, and not be afraid of
us any more. So peace and quiet would reign upon earth. Only one thing I
can’t understand, you know,” Jmukin continued, with a glance at the ham.
“Where would all the pigs go to? What would become of them?”

“The same thing that would become of all the other animals, they would
go free.”

“I see—yes. But, listen, if they were not killed, they would multiply,
you know, and then it would be good-by to our meadows and vegetable
gardens! Why, if a pig is turned loose and not watched, it will ruin
everything for you in a day! A pig is a pig, and hasn’t been called one
for nothing!”

They finished their supper. Jmukin rose from the table, and walked up
and down the room for a long time, talking interminably. He loved to
think of and discuss deep and serious subjects, and was longing to
discover some theory that would sustain him in his old age, so that he
might find peace of mind, and not think it so terrible to die. He
desired for himself the same gentleness and self-confidence and peace of
mind which he saw in this guest of his, who had just eaten his fill of
cucumbers and bread, and was a better man for it, sitting there on a
bench so healthy and fat, patiently bored, looking like a huge heathen
idol that nothing could move from his seat.

“If a man can only find some idea to hold to in life, he will be happy,”
Jmukin thought.

The old Cossack went out on the front steps, and the attorney could hear
him sighing and repeating to himself:

“Yes—I see——”

Night was falling, and the stars were shining out one by one. The lamps
in the house had not been lit. Some one came creeping toward the
drawing-room as silently as a shadow, and stopped in the doorway. It was
Lyuboff, Jmukin’s wife.

“Have you come from the city?” she asked timidly, without looking at her
guest.

“Yes, I live in the city.”

“Maybe you know about schools, master, and can tell us what to do if you
will be so kind. We need advice.”

“What do you want?”

“We have two sons, kind master, and they should have been sent to school
long ago, but nobody ever comes here and we have no one to tell us
anything. I myself know nothing. If they don’t go to school, they will
be taken into the army as common Cossacks. That is hard, master. They
can’t read or write, they are worse off than peasants, and their father
himself despises them, and won’t let them come into the house. Is it
their fault? If only the younger one, at least, could be sent to school!
It’s a pity to see them so!” she wailed, and her voice trembled. It
seemed incredible that a woman so little and young could already have
grown-up children. “Ah, it is such a pity!” she said again.

“You know nothing about it, mother, and it’s none of your business,”
said Jmukin, appearing in the doorway. “Don’t pester our guest with your
wild talk. Go away, mother!”

Lyuboff went out, repeating once more in a high little voice as she
reached the hall:

“Ah, it is such a pity!”

A bed was made up for the attorney on a sofa in the drawing-room, and
Jmukin lit the little shrine lamp, so that he might not be left in the
dark. Then he lay down in his own bedroom. Lying there he thought of
many things: his soul, his old age, and his recent stroke which had
given him such a fright and had so sharply reminded him of his
approaching death. He liked to philosophise when he was alone in the
dark, and at these times he imagined himself to be a very deep and
serious person indeed, whose attention only questions of importance
could engage. He now kept thinking that he would like to get hold of
some one idea unlike any other idea he had ever had, something
significant that would be the lodestar of his life. He wanted to think
of some law for himself, that would make his life as serious and deep as
he himself personally was. And here was an idea! He could go without
meat now, and deprive himself of everything that was superfluous to his
existence! The time would surely come when people would no longer kill
animals or one another, it could not but come, and he pictured this
future in his mind’s eye, and distinctly saw himself living at peace
with all the animal world. Then he remembered the pigs again, and his
brain began to reel.

“What a muddle it all is!” he muttered, heaving a deep sigh.

“Are you asleep?” he asked.

“No.”

Jmukin rose from his bed, and stood on the threshold of the door in his
nightshirt, exposing to his guest’s view his thin, sinewy legs, as
straight as posts.

“Just look, now,” he began. “Here is all this telegraph and telephone
business, in a word, all these marvels, you know, and yet people are no
more virtuous than they used to be. It is said that when I was young,
thirty or forty years ago, people were rougher and crueller than they
are now, but aren’t they just the same to-day? Of course, they were less
ceremonious when I was a youngster. I remember how once, when we had
been stationed on the bank of a river in the Caucasus for four months
without anything to do, quite a little romance took place. On the very
bank of the river, you know, where our regiment was encamped, we had
buried a prince whom we had killed not long before. So at night, you
know, his princess used to come down to the grave and cry. She screamed
and screamed, and groaned and groaned until we got into such a state
that we couldn’t sleep a wink. We didn’t sleep for nights. We grew tired
of it. And honestly, why should we be kept awake by that devil of a
voice? Excuse the expression! So we took that princess and gave her a
good thrashing, and she stopped coming to the grave. There you are!
Nowadays, of course, men of that category don’t exist any more. People
don’t thrash one another, and they live more cleanly and learn more
lessons than they used to, but their hearts haven’t changed one bit, you
know. Listen to this, for instance. There is a landlord near here who
owns a coal mine, you know. He has all sorts of vagabonds and men
without passports working for him, men who have nowhere else to go. When
Saturday comes round the workmen have to be paid, and their employer
never wants to do that, he is too fond of his money. So he has picked
out a foreman, a vagabond, too, though he wears a hat, and he says to
him: ‘Don’t pay them a thing,’ says our gentleman, ‘not even a penny.
They will beat you, but you must stand it. If you do, I’ll give you ten
roubles every Saturday.’ So every week, regularly, when Saturday evening
comes round the workmen come for their wages, and the foreman says:
‘There aren’t any wages!’ Well, words follow, and then come abuse, and a
drubbing. They beat him and kick him, for the men are wild with hunger,
you know; they beat him until he is unconscious, and then go off to the
four winds of heaven. The owner of the mine orders cold water to be
thrown over his foreman, and pitches him ten roubles. The man takes the
money, and is thankful, for the fact is he would agree to wear a noose
round his neck for a penny! Yes, and on Monday a new gang of workmen
arrives. They come because they have nowhere else to go. On Saturday
there is the same old story over again.”

The attorney rolled over, with his face toward the back of the sofa, and
mumbled something incoherent.

“Take another example, for instance,” Jmukin went on. “When we had the
Siberian cattle plague here, you know, the cattle died like flies, I can
tell you. The veterinary surgeons came, and strictly ordered all
infected stock that died to be buried as far away from the farm as
possible, and to be covered with lime and so on, according to the laws
of science. Well, one of my horses died. I buried it with the greatest
care, and shovelled at least ten poods[4] of lime on top of it, but what
do you think? That pair of young jackanapes of mine dug up the horse one
night, and sold the skin for three roubles! There now, what do you think
of that?”

Footnote 4:

Pood: Russian measure of weight = 40 pounds.

Flashes of lightning were gleaming through the cracks of the shutters on
one side of the room. The air was sultry before the approaching storm,
and the mosquitoes had begun to bite. Jmukin groaned and sighed, as he
lay meditating in his bed, and kept repeating to himself:

“Yes—I see——”

Sleep was impossible. Somewhere in the distance thunder was growling.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” answered his guest.

Jmukin rose and walked with shuffling slippers through the drawing-room,
and hall, and into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

“The worst thing in the world is stupidity,” he said, as he returned a
few minutes later with a dipper in his hand. “That Lyuboff of mine gets
down on her knees and prays to God every night. She flops down on the
floor and prays that the boys may be sent to school, you know. She is
afraid they will be drafted into the army as common Cossacks, and have
their backs tickled with sabres. But it would take money to send them to
school, and where can I get it? What you haven’t got you haven’t got,
and it’s no use crying for the moon! Another reason she prays is
because, like all women, you know, she thinks she is the most unhappy
creature in the world. I am an outspoken man, and I won’t hide anything
from you. She comes of a poor priest’s family—of church-bell stock, one
might say—and I married her when she was seventeen. They gave her to me
chiefly because times were hard, and her family were in want and had
nothing to eat, and when all is said and done I do own some land, as you
see, and I am an officer of sorts. She felt flattered at the idea of
being my wife, you know. But she began to cry on the day of our wedding,
and has cried every day since for twenty years; her eyes must be made of
water! She does nothing but sit and think. What does she think about, I
ask you? What can a woman think about? Nothing! The fact is, I don’t
consider women human beings.”

The attorney jumped up impetuously, and sat up in bed.

“Excuse me, I feel a little faint,” he said. “I am going out-of-doors.”

Jmukin, still talking about women, drew back the bolts of the hall door,
and both men went out together. A full moon was floating over the
grange. The house and stables looked whiter than they had by day, and
shimmering white bands of light lay among the shadows on the lawn. To
the right lay the steppe, with the stars glowing softly over it; as one
gazed into its depths, it looked mysterious and infinitely distant, like
some bottomless abyss. To the left, heavy thunder-clouds lay piled one
upon another. Their margins were lit by the rays of the moon, and they
resembled dark forests, seas, and mountains with snowy summits. Flashes
of lightning were playing about their peaks, and soft thunder was
growling in their depths; a battle seemed to be raging among them.

Quite near the house a little screech owl was crying monotonously:

“Whew! Whew!”

“What time is it?” asked the attorney.

“Nearly two o’clock.”

“What a long time yet until dawn!”

They re-entered the house and lay down. It was time to go to sleep, and
sleep is usually so sound before a storm, but the old man was pining for
grave, weighty meditations, and he not only wanted to think, he wanted
to talk as well. So he babbled on of what a fine thing it would be if,
for the sake of his soul, a man could shake off this idleness that was
imperceptibly and uselessly devouring his days and years one after
another. He said he would like to think of some feat of strength to
perform, such as making a long journey on foot or giving up meat, as
this young man had done. And once more he pictured the future when men
would no longer kill animals; he pictured it as clearly and precisely as
if he himself had lived at that time, but suddenly his thoughts grew
confused, and again he understood nothing.

The thunder-storm rolled by, but one corner of the cloud passed over the
grange, and the rain began to drum on the roof. Jmukin got up, sighing
with age and stretching his limbs, and peered into the drawing-room.
Seeing that his guest was still awake, he said:

“When we were in the Caucasus, you know, we had a colonel who was a
vegetarian as you are. He never ate meat and never hunted or allowed his
men to fish. I can understand that, of course. Every animal has a right
to enjoy its life and its freedom. But I can’t understand how pigs could
be allowed to roam wherever they pleased without being watched——”

His guest sat up in bed; his pale, haggard face was stamped with
vexation and fatigue. It was plain that he was suffering agonies, and
that only a kind and considerate heart forbade him to put his irritation
into words.

“It is already light,” he said briefly. “Please let me have a horse
now.”

“What do you mean? Wait until the rain stops!”

“No, please!” begged the guest in a panic. “I really must be going at
once!”

And he began to dress quickly.

The sun was already rising when a horse and carriage were brought to the
door. The rain had stopped, the clouds were skimming across the sky, and
the rifts of blue were growing wider and wider between them. The first
rays of the sun were timidly lighting up the meadows below. The attorney
passed through the front entry with his portfolio under his arm, while
Jmukin’s wife, with red eyes, and a face even paler than it had been the
evening before, stood gazing fixedly at him with the innocent look of a
little girl. Her sorrowful face showed how much she envied her guest his
liberty. Ah, with what joy she, too, would have left this place! Her
eyes spoke of something she longed to say to him, perhaps some advice
she wanted to ask him about her boys. How pitiful she was! She was not a
wife, she was not the mistress of the house, she was not even a servant,
but a miserable dependent, a poor relation, a nonentity wanted by no
one. Her husband bustled about near his guest, not ceasing his talk for
an instant, and at last ran ahead to see him into the carriage, while
she stood shrinking timidly and guiltily against the wall, still waiting
for the moment to come that would give her an opportunity to speak.

“Come again! Come again!” the old man repeated over and over again.
“Everything we have is at your service, you know!”

His guest hastily climbed into the tarantass, obviously with infinite
pleasure, looking as if he were afraid every second of being detained.
The tarantass bounded and whined as it had done the day before, and a
bucket tied on behind clattered madly. The attorney looked round at
Jmukin with a peculiar expression in his eyes. He seemed to be wanting
to call him a Petcheneg, or something of the sort, as the surveyor had
done, but his kindness triumphed. He controlled himself, and the words
remained unsaid. As he reached the gate, however, he suddenly felt that
he could no longer contain himself; he rose in his seat, and cried out
in a loud, angry voice:

“You bore me to death!”

And with these words he vanished through the gate.

Jmukin’s two sons were standing in front of the stable. The older was
holding a gun, the younger had in his arms a grey cock with a bright red
comb. The younger tossed the cock into the air with all his might; the
bird shot up higher than the roof of the house, and turned over in the
air. The elder boy shot, and it fell to the ground like a stone.

The old man stood nonplussed, and unable to comprehend his guest’s
unexpected exclamation. At last he turned and slowly went into the
house. Sitting down to his breakfast, he fell into a long reverie about
the present tendency of thought, about the universal wickedness of the
present generation, about the telegraph and the telephone and bicycles,
and about how unnecessary it all was. But he grew calmer little by
little as he slowly ate his meal. He drank five glasses of tea, and lay
down to take a nap.

THE BISHOP

It was on the eve of Palm Sunday; vespers were being sung in the
Staro-Petrovski Convent. The hour was nearly ten when the palm leaves
were distributed, and the little shrine lamps were growing dim; their
wicks had burnt low, and a soft haze hung in the chapel. As the
worshippers surged forward in the twilight like the waves of the sea, it
seemed to his Reverence Peter, who had been feeling ill for three days,
that the people who came to him for palm leaves all looked alike, and,
men or women, old or young, all had the same expression in their eyes.
He could not see the doors through the haze; the endless procession
rolled toward him, and seemed as if it must go on rolling for ever. A
choir of women’s voices was singing and a nun was reading the canon.

How hot and close the air was, and how long the prayers! His Reverence
was tired. His dry, parching breath was coming quickly and painfully,
his shoulders were aching, and his legs were trembling. The occasional
cries of an idiot in the gallery annoyed him. And now, as a climax, his
Reverence saw, as in a delirium, his own mother whom he had not seen for
nine years coming toward him in the crowd. She, or an old woman exactly
like her, took a palm leaf from his hands, and moved away looking at him
all the while with a glad, sweet smile, until she was lost in the crowd.
And for some reason the tears began to course down his cheeks. His heart
was happy and peaceful, but his eyes were fixed on a distant part of the
chapel where the prayers were being read, and where no human being could
be distinguished among the shadows. The tears glistened on his cheeks
and beard. Then some one who was standing near him began to weep, too,
and then another, and then another, until little by little the chapel
was filled with a low sound of weeping. Then the convent choir began to
sing, the weeping stopped, and everything went on as before.

Soon afterward the service ended. The fine, jubilant notes of the heavy
chapel-bells were throbbing through the moonlit garden as the bishop
stepped into his coach and drove away. The white walls, the crosses on
the graves, the silvery birches, and the far-away moon hanging directly
over the monastery, all seemed to be living a life of their own,
incomprehensible, but very near to mankind. It was early in April, and a
chilly night had succeeded a warm spring day. A light frost was falling,
but the breath of spring could be felt in the soft, cool air. The road
from the monastery was sandy, the horses were obliged to proceed at a
walk, and, bathed in the bright, tranquil moonlight, a stream of
pilgrims was crawling along on either side of the coach. All were
thoughtful, no one spoke. Everything around them, the trees, the sky,
and even the moon, looked so young and intimate and friendly that they
were reluctant to break the spell which they hoped might last for ever.

Finally the coach entered the city, and rolled down the main street. All
the stores were closed but that of Erakin, the millionaire merchant. He
was trying his electric lights for the first time, and they were
flashing so violently that a crowd had collected in front of the store.
Then came wide, dark streets in endless succession, and then the
highway, and fields, and the smell of pines. Suddenly a white crenelated
wall loomed before him, and beyond it rose a tall belfry flanked by five
flashing golden cupolas, all bathed in moonlight. This was the
Pankratievski Monastery where his Reverence Peter lived. Here, too, the
calm, brooding moon was floating directly above the monastery. The coach
drove through the gate, its wheels crunching on the sand. Here and there
the dark forms of monks started out into the moonlight and footsteps
rang along the flagstone paths.

“Your mother has been here while you were away, your Reverence,” a lay
brother told the bishop as he entered his room.

“My mother? When did she come?”

“Before vespers. She first found out where you were, and then drove to
the convent.”

“Then it was she whom I saw just now in the chapel! Oh, Father in
heaven!”

And his Reverence laughed for joy.

“She told me to tell you, your Reverence,” the lay brother continued,
“that she would come back to-morrow. She had a little girl with her, a
grandchild, I think. She is stopping at Ovsianikoff’s inn.”

“What time is it now?”

“It is after eleven.”

“What a nuisance!”

His Reverence sat down irresolutely in his sitting-room, unwilling to
believe that it was already so late. His arms and legs were racked with
pain, the back of his neck was aching, and he felt uncomfortable and
hot. When he had rested a few moments he went into his bedroom and
there, too, he sat down, and dreamed of his mother. He heard the lay
brother walking away and Father Sisoi the priest coughing in the next
room. The monastery clock struck the quarter.

His Reverence undressed and began his prayers. He spoke the old,
familiar words with scrupulous attention, and at the same time he
thought of his mother. She had nine children, and about forty
grandchildren. She had lived from the age of seventeen to the age of
sixty with her husband the deacon in a little village. His Reverence
remembered her from the days of his earliest childhood, and, ah, how he
had loved her! Oh, that dear, precious, unforgettable childhood of his!
Why did those years that had vanished for ever seem so much brighter and
richer and gayer than they really had been? How tender and kind his
mother had been when he was ill in his childhood and youth! His prayers
mingled with the memories that burned ever brighter and brighter in his
heart like a flame, but they did not hinder his thoughts of his mother.

When he had prayed he lay down, and as soon as he found himself in the
dark there rose before his eyes the vision of his dead father, his
mother, and Lyesopolye, his native village. The creaking of wagon
wheels, the bleating of sheep, the sound of church-bells on a clear
summer morning, ah, how pleasant it was to think of these things! He
remembered Father Simeon, the old priest at Lyesopolye, a kind, gentle,
good-natured old man. He himself had been small, and the priest’s son
had been a huge strapping novice with a terrible bass voice. He
remembered how this young priest had scolded the cook once, and had
shouted: “Ah, you she-ass of Jehovah!” And Father Simeon had said
nothing, and had only been mortified because he could not for the life
of him remember reading of an ass of that name in the Bible!

Father Simeon had been succeeded by Father Demian, a hard drinker who
sometimes even went so far as to see green snakes. He had actually borne
the nickname of “Demian the Snake-Seer” in the village. Matvei
Nikolaitch had been the schoolmaster, a kind, intelligent man, but a
hard drinker, too. He never thrashed his scholars, but for some reason
he kept a little bundle of birch twigs hanging on his wall, under which
was a tablet bearing the absolutely unintelligible inscription: “Betula
Kinderbalsamica Secuta.” He had had a woolly black dog whom he called
“Syntax.”

The bishop laughed. Eight miles from Lyesopolye lay the village of
Obnino possessing a miraculous icon. A procession started from Obnino
every summer bearing the wonder-working icon and making the round of all
the neighbouring villages. The church-bells would ring all day long
first in one village, then in another, and to Little Paul (his Reverence
was called Little Paul then) the air itself seemed tremulous with
rapture. Barefoot, hatless, and infinitely happy, he followed the icon
with a naïve smile on his lips and naïve faith in his heart.

Until the age of fifteen Little Paul had been so slow at his lessons
that his parents had even thought of taking him out of the
ecclesiastical school and putting him to work in the village store.

The bishop turned over so as to break the train of his thoughts, and
tried to go to sleep.

“My mother has come!” he remembered, and laughed.

The moon was shining in through the window, and the floor was lit by its
rays while he lay in shadow. A cricket was chirping. Father Sisoi was
snoring in the next room, and there was a forlorn, friendless, even a
vagrant note in the old man’s cadences.

Sisoi had once been the steward of a diocesan bishop and was known as
“Father Former Steward.” He was seventy years old, and lived sometimes
in a monastery sixteen miles away, sometimes in the city, sometimes
wherever he happened to be. Three days ago he had turned up at the
Pankratievski Monastery, and the bishop had kept him here in order to
discuss with him at his leisure the affairs of the monastery.

The bell for matins rang at half past one. Father Sisoi coughed, growled
something, and got up.

“Father Sisoi!” called the bishop.

Sisoi came in dressed in a white cassock, carrying a candle in his hand.

“I can’t go to sleep,” his Reverence said. “I must be ill. I don’t know
what the matter is; I have fever.”

“You have caught cold, your Lordship. I must rub you with tallow.”

Father Sisoi stood looking at him for a while and yawned: “Ah-h—the Lord
have mercy on us!”

“Erakin has electricity in his store now—I hate it!” he continued.

Father Sisoi was aged, and round-shouldered, and gaunt. He was always
displeased with something or other, and his eyes, which protruded like
those of a crab, always wore an angry expression.

“I don’t like it at all,” he repeated—“I hate it.”

Next day, on Palm Sunday, his Reverence officiated at the cathedral in
the city. Then he went to the diocesan bishop’s, then to see a general’s
wife who was very ill, and at last he drove home. At two o’clock two
beloved guests were having dinner with him, his aged mother, and his
little niece Kitty, a child of eight. The spring sun was peeping
cheerily in through the windows as they sat at their meal, and was
shining merrily on the white tablecloth, and on Kitty’s red hair.
Through the double panes they heard the rooks cawing, and the magpies
chattering in the garden.

“It is nine years since I saw you last,” said the old mother, “and yet
when I caught sight of you in the convent chapel yesterday I thought to
myself: God bless me, he has not changed a bit! Only perhaps you are a
little thinner than you were, and your beard has grown longer. Oh, holy
Mother, Queen of Heaven! Everybody was crying yesterday. As soon as I
saw you, I began to cry myself, I don’t know why. His holy will be
done!”

In spite of the tenderness with which she said this, it was clear that
she was not at her ease. It was as if she did not know whether to
address the bishop by the familiar “thee” or the formal “you,” and
whether she ought to laugh or not. She seemed to feel herself more of a
poor deacon’s wife than a mother in his presence. Meanwhile Kitty was
sitting with her eyes glued to the face of her uncle the bishop as if
she were trying to make out what manner of man this was. Her hair had
escaped from her comb and her bow of velvet ribbon, and was standing
straight up around her head like a halo. Her eyes were foxy and bright.
She had broken a glass before sitting down, and now, as she talked, her
grandmother kept moving first a glass, and then a wine glass out of her
reach. As the bishop sat listening to his mother, he remembered how,
many, many years ago, she had sometimes taken him and his brothers and
sisters to visit relatives whom they considered rich. She had been busy
with her own children in those days, and now she was busy with her
grandchildren, and had come to visit him with Kitty here.

“Your sister Varenka has four children”—she was telling him—“Kitty is
the oldest. God knows why, her father fell ill and died three days
before Assumption. So my Varenka has been thrown out into the cold
world.”

“And how is my brother Nikanor?” the bishop asked.

“He is well, thank the Lord. He is pretty well, praise be to God. But
his son Nikolasha wouldn’t go into the church, and is at college instead
learning to be a doctor. He thinks it is best, but who knows? However,
God’s will be done!”

“Nikolasha cuts up dead people!” said Kitty, spilling some water into
her lap.

“Sit still child!” her grandmother said, quietly taking the glass out of
her hands.

“How long it is since we have seen one another!” exclaimed his
Reverence, tenderly stroking his mother’s shoulder and hand. “I missed
you when I was abroad, I missed you dreadfully.”

“Thank you very much!”

“I used to sit by my window in the evening listening to the band
playing, and feeling lonely and forlorn. Sometimes I would suddenly grow
so homesick that I used to think I would gladly give everything I had in
the world for a glimpse of you and home.”

His mother smiled and beamed, and then immediately drew a long face and
said stiffly:

“Thank you very much!”

The bishop’s mood changed. He looked at his mother, and could not
understand where she had acquired that deferential, humble expression of
face and voice, and what the meaning of it might be. He hardly
recognised her, and felt sorrowful and vexed. Besides, his head was
still aching, and his legs were racked with pain. The fish he was eating
tasted insipid and he was very thirsty.

After dinner two wealthy lady landowners visited him, and sat for an
hour and a half with faces a mile long, never uttering a word. Then an
archimandrite, a gloomy, taciturn man, came on business. Then the bells
rang for vespers, the sun set behind the woods, and the day was done. As
soon as he got back from church the bishop said his prayers, and went to
bed, drawing the covers up closely about his ears. The moonlight
troubled him, and soon the sound of voices came to his ears. Father
Sisoi was talking politics with his mother in the next room.

“There is a war in Japan now,” he was saying. “The Japanese belong to
the same race as the Montenegrins. They fell under the Turkish yoke at
the same time.”

And then the bishop heard his mother’s voice say:

“And so, you see, when we had said our prayers, and had our tea, we went
to Father Yegor——”

She kept saying over and over again that they “had tea,” as if all she
knew of life was tea-drinking.

The memory of his seminary and college life slowly and mistily took
shape in the bishop’s mind. He had been a teacher of Greek for three
years, until he could no longer read without glasses, and then he had
taken the vows, and had been made an inspector. When he was thirty-two
he had been made the rector of a seminary, and then an archimandrite. At
that time his life had been so easy and pleasant, and had seemed to
stretch so far, far into the future that he could see absolutely no end
to it. But his health had failed, and he had nearly lost his eyesight.
His doctors had advised him to give up his work and go abroad.

“And what did you do next?” asked Father Sisoi in the adjoining room.

“And then we had tea,” answered his mother.

“Why, Father, your beard is green!” exclaimed Kitty suddenly. And she
burst out laughing.

The bishop remembered that the colour of Father Sisoi’s beard really did
verge on green, and he, too, laughed.

“My goodness! What a plague that child is!” cried Father Sisoi in a loud
voice, for he was growing angry. “You’re a spoiled baby you are! Sit
still!”

The bishop recalled the new white church in which he had officiated when
he was abroad, and the sound of a warm sea. Eight years had slipped by
while he was there; then he had been recalled to Russia, and now he was
already a bishop, and the past had faded away into mist as if it had
been but a dream.

Father Sisoi came into his room with a candle in his hand.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed, surprised. “Asleep already, your Reverence?”

“Why not?”

“It’s early yet, only ten o’clock! I bought a candle this evening and
wanted to rub you with tallow.”

“I have a fever,” the bishop said, sitting up. “I suppose something
ought to be done. My head feels so queer.”

Sisoi began to rub the bishop’s chest and back with tallow.

“There—there—” he said. “Oh, Lord God Almighty! There! I went to town
to-day, and saw that—what do you call him?—that archpresbyter Sidonski.
I had tea with him. I hate him! Oh, Lord God Almighty! There! I hate
him!”

III

The diocesan bishop was very old and very fat, and had been ill in bed
with gout for a month. So his Reverence Peter had been visiting him
almost every day, and had received his suppliants for him. And now that
he was ill he was appalled to think of the futilities and trifles they
asked for and wept over. He felt annoyed at their ignorance and
cowardice. The very number of all those useless trivialities oppressed
him, and he felt as if he could understand the diocesan bishop who had
written “Lessons in Free Will” when he was young, and now seemed so
absorbed in details that the memory of everything else, even of God, had
forsaken him. Peter must have grown out of touch with Russian life while
he was abroad, for it was hard for him to grow used to it now. The
people seemed rough, the women stupid and tiresome, the novices and
their teachers uneducated and often disorderly. And then the documents
that passed through his hands by the hundreds of thousands! The provosts
gave all the priests in the diocese, young and old, and their wives and
children marks for good behaviour, and he was obliged to talk about all
this, and read about it, and write serious articles on it. His Reverence
never had a moment which he could call his own; all day his nerves were
on edge, and he only grew calm when he found himself in church.

He could not grow accustomed to the terror which he involuntarily
inspired in every breast in spite of his quiet and modest ways. Every
one in the district seemed to shrivel and quake and apologise as soon as
he looked at them. Every one trembled in his presence; even the old
archpresbyters fell down at his feet, and not long ago one suppliant,
the old wife of a village priest, had been prevented by terror from
uttering a word, and had gone away without asking for anything. And he,
who had never been able to say a harsh word in his sermons, and who
never blamed people because he pitied them so, would grow exasperated
with these suppliants, and hurl their petitions to the ground. Not a
soul had spoken sincerely and naturally to him since he had been here;
even his old mother had changed, yes, she had changed very much! Why did
she talk so freely to Sisoi when all the while she was so serious and
ill at ease with him, her own son? It was not like her at all! The only
person who behaved naturally in his presence, and who said whatever came
into his head was old man Sisoi, who had lived with bishops all his
life, and had outlasted eleven of them. And therefore his Reverence felt
at ease with Sisoi, even though he was, without doubt, a rough and
quarrelsome person.

After morning prayers on Tuesday the bishop received his suppliants, and
lost his temper with them. He felt ill, as usual, and longed to go to
bed, but he had hardly entered his room before he was told that the
young merchant Erakin, a benefactor of the monastery, had called on very
important business. The bishop was obliged to receive him. Erakin stayed
about an hour talking in a very loud voice, and it was hard to
understand what he was trying to say.

After he had gone there came an abbess from a distant convent, and by
the time she had gone the bells were tolling for vespers; it was time
for the bishop to go to church.

The monks sang melodiously and rapturously that evening; a young,
black-bearded priest officiated. His Reverence listened as they sang of
the Bridegroom and of the chamber swept and garnished, and felt neither
repentance nor sorrow, but only a deep peace of mind. He sat by the
altar where the shadows were deepest, and was swept in imagination back
into the days of his childhood and youth, when he had first heard these
words sung. The tears trickled down his cheeks, and he meditated on how
he had attained everything in life that it was possible for a man in his
position to attain; his faith was unsullied, and yet all was not clear
to him; something was lacking, and he did not want to die. It still
seemed to him that he was leaving unfound the most important thing of
all. Something of which he had dimly dreamed in the past, hopes that had
thrilled his heart as a child, a schoolboy, and a traveller in foreign
lands, troubled him still.

“How beautifully they are singing to-day!” he thought. “Oh, how
beautifully!”

On Thursday he held a service in the cathedral. It was the festival of
the Washing of Feet. When the service was over, and the people had gone
to their several homes, the sun was shining brightly and cheerily, and
the air was warm. The gutters were streaming with bubbling water, and
the tender songs of larks came floating in from the fields beyond the
city, bringing peace to his heart. The trees were already awake, and
over them brooded the blue, unfathomable sky.

His Reverence went to bed as soon as he reached home, and told the lay
brother to close his shutters. The room grew dark. Oh, how tired he was!

As on the day before, the sound of voices and the tinkling of glasses
came to him from the next room. His mother was gaily recounting some
tale to Father Sisoi, with many a quaint word and saying, and the old
man was listening gloomily, and answering in a gruff voice:

“Well, I never! Did they, indeed? What do you think of that!”

And once more the bishop felt annoyed, and then hurt that the old lady
should be so natural and simple with strangers, and so silent and
awkward with her own son. It even seemed to him that she always tried to
find some pretext for standing in his presence, as if she felt uneasy
sitting down. And his father? If he had been alive, he would probably
not have been able to utter a word when the bishop was there.

Something in the next room fell to the floor with a crash. Kitty had
evidently broken a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoi suddenly snorted,
and cried angrily:

“What a terrible plague this child is! Merciful heavens! No one could
keep her supplied with china!”

Then silence fell. When he opened his eyes again, the bishop saw Kitty
standing by his bedside staring at him, her red hair standing up around
her head like a halo, as usual.

“Is that you, Kitty?” he asked. “Who is that opening and shutting doors
down there?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

He stroked her head.

“So your cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people, does he?” he asked, after
a pause.

“Yes, he is learning to.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yes, very, only he drinks a lot.”

“What did your father die of?”

“Papa grew weaker and weaker, and thinner and thinner, and then came his
sore throat. And I was ill, too, and so was my brother Fedia. We all had
sore throats. Papa died, Uncle, but we got well.”

Her chin quivered, her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, your Reverence!” she cried in a shrill voice, beginning to weep
bitterly. “Dear Uncle, mother and all of us are so unhappy! Do give us a
little money! Help us, Uncle darling!”

He also shed tears, and for a moment could not speak for emotion. He
stroked her hair, and touched her shoulder, and said:

“All right, all right, little child. Wait until Easter comes, then we
will talk about it. I’ll help you.”

His mother came quietly and timidly into the room, and said a prayer
before the icon. When she saw that he was awake, she asked:

“Would you like a little soup?”

“No, thanks,” he answered. “I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t believe you are well—I can see that you are not well. You
really mustn’t fall ill! You have to be on your feet all day long. My
goodness, it makes one tired to see you! Never mind, Easter is no longer
over the hills and far away. When Easter comes you will rest. God will
give us time for a little talk then, but now I’m not going to worry you
any more with my silly chatter. Come, Kitty, let his Lordship have
another forty winks——”

And the bishop remembered that, when he was a boy, she had used exactly
the same half playful, half respectful tone to all high dignitaries of
the church. Only by her strangely tender eyes, and by the anxious look
which she gave him as she left the room could any one have guessed that
she was his mother. He shut his eyes, and seemed to be asleep, but he
heard the clock strike twice, and Father Sisoi coughing next door. His
mother came in again, and looked shyly at him. Suddenly there came a
bang, and a door slammed; a vehicle of some kind drove up to the front
steps. The lay brother came into the bishop’s room, and called:

“Your Reverence!”

“What is it?”

“Here is the coach! It is time to go to our Lord’s Passion——”

“What time is it?”

“Quarter to eight.”

The bishop dressed, and drove to the cathedral. He had to stand
motionless in the centre of the church while the twelve gospels were
being read, and the first and longest and most beautiful of them all he
read himself. A strong, valiant mood took hold of him. He knew this
gospel, beginning “The Son of Man is risen to-day—,” by heart, and as he
repeated it, he raised his eyes, and saw a sea of little lights about
him. He heard the sputtering of candles, but the people had disappeared.
He felt surrounded by those whom he had known in his youth; he felt that
they would always be here until—God knew when!

His father had been a deacon, his grandfather had been a priest, and his
great grandfather a deacon. He sprang from a race that had belonged to
the church since Christianity first came to Russia, and his love for the
ritual of the church, the clergy, and the sound of church-bells was
inborn in him, deeply, irradicably implanted in his heart. When he was
in church, especially when he was taking part in the service himself, he
felt active and valorous and happy. And so it was with him now. Only,
after the eighth gospel had been read, he felt that his voice was
becoming so feeble that even his cough was inaudible; his head was
aching, and he began to fear that he might collapse. His legs were
growing numb; in a little while he ceased to have any sensation in them
at all, and could not imagine what he was standing on, and why he did
not fall down.

It was quarter to twelve when the service ended. The bishop went to bed
as soon as he reached home, without even saying his prayers. As he
pulled his blanket up over him, he suddenly wished that he were abroad;
he passionately wished it. He would give his life, he thought, to cease
from seeing these cheap, wooden walls and that low ceiling, to cease
from smelling the stale scent of the monastery.

If there were only some one with whom he could talk, some one to whom he
could unburden his heart!

He heard steps in the adjoining room, and tried to recall who it might
be. At last the door opened, and Father Sisoi came in with a candle in
one hand, and a teacup in the other.

“In bed already, your Reverence?” he asked. “I have come to rub your
chest with vinegar and vodka. It is a fine thing, if rubbed in good and
hard. Oh, Lord God Almighty! There—there—I have just come from our
monastery. I hate it. I am going away from here to-morrow, my Lord. Oh,
Lord, God Almighty—there——”

Sisoi never could stay long in one place, and he now felt as if he had
been in this monastery for a year. It was hard to tell from what he said
where his home was, whether there was any one or anything in the world
that he loved, and whether he believed in God or not. He himself never
could make out why he had become a monk, but then, he never gave it any
thought, and the time when he had taken the vows had long since faded
from his memory. He thought he must have been born a monk.

“Yes, I am going away to-morrow. Bother this place!”

“I want to have a talk with you—I never seem to have the time—”
whispered the bishop, making a great effort to speak. “You see, I don’t
know any one—or anything—here——”

“Very well then, I shall stay until Sunday, but no longer! Bother this
place!”

“What sort of a bishop am I?” his Reverence went on, in a faint voice.
“I ought to have been a village priest, or a deacon, or a plain monk.
All this is choking me—it is choking me——”

“What’s that? Oh, Lord God Almighty! There—go to sleep now, your
Reverence. What do you mean? What’s all this you are saying? Good
night!”

All night long the bishop lay awake, and in the morning he grew very
ill. The lay brother took fright and ran first to the archimandrite, and
then for the monastery doctor who lived in the city. The doctor, a
stout, elderly man, with a long, grey beard, looked intently at his
Reverence, shook his head, knit his brows, and finally said:

“I’ll tell you what, your Reverence; you have typhoid.”

The bishop grew very thin and pale in the next hour, his eyes grew
larger, his face became covered with wrinkles, and he looked quite small
and old. He felt as if he were the thinnest, weakest, puniest man in the
whole world, and as if everything that had occurred before this had been
left far, far behind, and would never happen again.

“How glad I am of that!” he thought. “Oh, how glad!”

His aged mother came into the room. When she saw his wrinkled face and
his great eyes, she was seized with fear, and, falling down on her knees
by his bedside, she began kissing his face, his shoulders, and his
hands. He seemed to her to be the thinnest, weakest, puniest man in the
world, and she forgot that he was a bishop, and kissed him as if he had
been a little child whom she dearly, dearly loved.

“Little Paul, my dearie!” she cried. “My little son, why do you look
like this? Little Paul, oh, answer me!”

Kitty, pale and severe, stood near them, and could not understand what
was the matter with her uncle, and why granny wore such a look of
suffering on her face, and spoke such heartrending words. And he, he was
speechless, and knew nothing of what was going on around him. He was
dreaming that he was an ordinary man once more, striding swiftly and
merrily through the open country, a staff in his hand, bathed in
sunshine, with the wide sky above him, as free as a bird to go wherever
his fancy led him.

“My little son! My little Paul! Answer me!” begged his mother.

“Don’t bother his Lordship,” said Sisoi. “Let him sleep. What’s the
matter?”

Three doctors came, consulted together, and drove away. The day seemed
long, incredibly long, and then came the long, long night. Just before
dawn on Saturday morning the lay brother went to the old mother who was
lying on a sofa in the sitting-room, and asked her to come into the
bedroom; his Reverence had gone to eternal peace.

Next day was Easter. There were forty-two churches in the city, and two
monasteries, and the deep, joyous notes of their bells pealed out over
the town from morning until night. The birds were carolling, the bright
sun was shining. The big market place was full of noise; barrel organs
were droning, concertinas were squealing, and drunken voices were
ringing through the air. Trotting races were held in the main street
that afternoon; in a word, all was merry and gay, as had been the year
before and as, doubtless, it would be the year to come.

A month later a new bishop was appointed, and every one forgot his
Reverence Peter. Only the dead man’s mother, who is living now in a
little country town with her son the deacon, when she goes out at sunset
to meet her cow, and joins the other women on the way, tells them about
her children and grandchildren, and her boy who became a bishop.

And when she mentions him she looks at them shyly, for she is afraid
they will not believe her.

And, as a matter of fact, not all of them do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

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