LIGHT AND SHADOW

135

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.

136“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!”

137Pasha 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, 138every 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!”

139“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.

140The 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! 141You 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, 142and 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?”

143“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.

144

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 145with 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——”

146“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!”

147Fedia 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 148I’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. 149No 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 150fellow? 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.

151

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 152the 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. 153The 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 154have 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 155of 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!”

156“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!”

157

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 158talent. 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 159house 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 160drank 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.

161“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 162a 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. 163“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.

164“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.

II

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 165moving 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 166went 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.

167“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 168knew 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 169brooding 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 170doorway 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!”

171

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. 172“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.”

173“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 174beg 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 175a 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!”

IV

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!

176Startseff 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 177the 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 178relieve 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.”

179She 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.

180“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 181and 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 182of 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 183garden 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.

184

V

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 185still 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.

186“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.

187

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.

188So 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, 189as 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 190the 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 191far 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:

192“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.

II

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 193room 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.

194“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.”

195

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. 196“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 197and 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.

198The 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.”

199“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 200stay. 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. 201She 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.

202“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 203and 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.