STORIES OF YOUTH

79

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 80her 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?”

81I 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 82just 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:

83“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 84with 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 85her 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.

86

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 87are 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 88education, 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 89from 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 90deal 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!”

91

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 92rudely 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 93Nyuta, 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 94be 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 95woman? 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, 96Volodia 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.

97He 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 98me, 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 99frightened 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!

100“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 101civilian 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 102Nyuta 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!”

103Nyuta 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 104wheelbarrow 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.

105Nyuta 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 106heart. 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 107the 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 108horn 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 109makes 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 110his 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.

111

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 112aspire 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!” 113answered 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.

114The 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.

115

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 116existed, 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:

117“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!”

118Mitia 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.

119

TWO BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

I

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 120a 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. 121I 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, 122crimson, 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 123ideal 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 124as 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 125hoofs, 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 126over 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 127aware. 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.

II

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 128of 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 129was 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 130to 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 131leaning 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.

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