THREE MEN (continued 5)

The yellow, bloated face of the cobbler grinned down at Ilya from the stove, and his voice creaked like a broken branch in the autumn wind. Lunev looked at him disgustedly.

"Ehrenov made one condition: I'm never to show up at his house! 'You can come to the shop,' he says. 'I'll give you schnapps and odds and ends, but to the house—never! It's shut to you, like Paradise.' Now then, Ilya Jakovlevitch, couldn't you hunt up a five-kopeck piece, to get a drink. Please give me five kopecks."

"You shall have 'em in a minute," said Ilya. "What are you going to do now?"

The cobbler spat on the ground, and replied: "I'll just become an out-and-out drunkard. Till Masha was provided for, I used to worry. I worked sometimes. I had a sort of conscience with her. But now I know she's enough to eat and shoes and clothes, and is shut up in a box, so to speak, I can devote myself, free and unhindered, to the drinking profession."

"Can't you really give up brandy?"

"Never!" answered the cobbler, and shook his shaggy head in a vigorous negative. "Why should I?"

"Is there nothing else in life you want?"

"Give me five kopecks. I don't want anything else."

"I can't understand that," said Ilya, shrugging his shoulders. "I can't understand how a man can live, and want nothing out of life."

"I'm different from the rest," answered Perfishka, with philosophical calm. "I think this way: keep quiet!—Fate gives what it will, and if a man is hollow and empty, so that nothing can be put in him, then, what can Fate do? Once, I admit, I wanted things, while my dead one was alive—I knew of Jeremy's pile. I'd have liked to have a fist in that. 'If I don't rob him,' I thought, 'some one else will.' Well, thank God, two others actually got in before me. I don't complain, but then I understood that one must learn, too, how to wish."

The cobbler laughed, climbed down from the stove, and added:

"Now give me the five kopecks. My inside's on fire. I can't stand it any more."

"There! Have your glass," said Ilya. Then he looked at Perfishka with a smile, and asked:

"Shall I tell you something?"

"Well, what?"

"You're a humbug, and a good-for-nothing, and a miserable drunkard. That's all certain."

"Yes, it's certain," confessed the cobbler, standing before Ilya with the five-kopeck piece in his hand.

"And yet," Ilya went on seriously and thoughtfully, "I don't believe I know a better man than you, by God, I don't."

Perfishka smiled incredulously, and looked at Lunev's serious but friendly face.

"You're joking?"

"Believe it or not, it is so. I don't say it to praise you, but only because, so far as I can see, that's my opinion."

"Wonderful! my head's too stupid I'm afraid; did I understand you to say——But let me have a mouthful, perhaps then I'll be cleverer."

"Not so fast!" said Ilya, and caught him by the shirt sleeve. "I want to ask you one thing—do you fear God?"

Perfishka shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, and said in a voice that sounded a little hurt:

"I have no reason to fear God. I do no harm to anyone—never have."

"And now, do you pray?"

"Oh, I pray, of course—not often."

Ilya saw that the cobbler had no desire to talk, and that his whole soul was longing for the tap room.

"There you are, Perfishka—ten more!"

"My word! that's what I call treating!" cried Perfishka and beamed with joy.

"But tell me, how do you pray?" Lunev pressed him again.

"I? Quite simply. I don't know any prayers. I knew 'the Virgin Mother of God' once, but I forgot it long ago. There's a beggar's prayer: 'O Lord Jesus,' and so on, I know that by heart right to the end. Perhaps when I'm old I'll use it. But now I just pray in my own way. 'Lord have mercy,' I say."

Perfishka looked at the ceiling, nodded with conviction, and went on.

"He'll understand up there. Can I go now? I've an awful thirst."

"Go on—go on," said Ilya, and looked at Perfishka thoughtfully. "But see here, when the day comes, when the Lord asks you, How have you lived?"

"Then I'll say, 'when I was born I was small, and when I died I was dead drunk. So I don't know.' Then He'll laugh and forgive me."

The cobbler smiled pleasantly and hurried away.

Lunev remained in the cellar alone. He was strangely moved to think that Masha's pretty little face would never again appear to him in this narrow, dirty cave, and that Perfishka would soon be turned out.

The April sun shone through the window and illuminated the floor, now long uncleaned. Everything there was untidy, hateful, and melancholy, as though a dead body had just been borne away. Ilya sat upright on his chair, looked at the big stove, rubbed away on the one side, and gloomy thoughts passed in succession through his mind.

"Shall I go out and confess?" flashed suddenly up in his heart.

But he thrust the thought away from him angrily.

XVI.

On the evening of this day Ilya was compelled to leave Petrusha's house. Events fell out in this way. When he returned, his uncle met him in the courtyard, with downcast countenance, led him aside to a corner behind a pile of wood, and said:

"Now, Ilusha, you must get away from here. The things that have happened here to-day—awful, I tell you." The hunchback closed his eyes, wrung his hands, and broke into a fit of coughing. "Jashka got drunk and called his father to his face, 'You thief' and other bad names—'Shameless beast,' and 'heartless fellow.' He just screamed like a madman, and Petrusha hit him in the mouth, and tore his hair, and kicked him till he bled all over; and now Jashka's lying in his room and groaning and crying.—And then Petrusha began at me. 'It's your fault,' he growled. 'Get your Ilya away.' He thinks you've stirred up Jakov against him. He shouted awfully.—It was terrible!"

Ilya took the straps from his shoulders, handed his box to his uncle, and said, "Wait a minute!"

"Wait! But what? Why? He'll——"

Ilya's hands trembled with wrath against Petrusha and pity for Jakov.

"Hold my box, I say!" he said impatiently, and went into the bar. He clenched his teeth till his jaws ached, and a buzzing noise went through his head. He heard his uncle call after him something about police and damaging himself, and prison, but he did not stop. Petrusha stood behind the counter, smiling and talking to a raggedly-dressed man. The lamp-light fell on his bald head, and it shone as though the whole gleaming cranium smiled.

"Aha! Mr. Merchant!" he cried mockingly, and his brows contracted at the sight of Ilya, "you're just in time."

He stood before the door of his room, his body hiding it. Ilya went close up to him, insolent and overbearing, and said loudly:

"Out of the way!"

"Wh—at?" drawled Petrusha.

"Let me by! I want to see Jakov."

"I'll give you something to remember your Jakov!"

Without another word, Ilya struck out with all his might and hit Petrusha on the cheek. He howled aloud and fell on the floor. The pot-boys ran from all sides, and some one cried: "Hold him! Thrash him!"

The customers sprung up as though boiling water were poured on them, but Ilya sprung over Petrusha's body, went into the room behind, and bolted the door. A tin lamp with a blackened chimney burned flickeringly in the little room, made still smaller by wine-bins and boxes of all kinds.

At first Ilya did not distinguish his friend in the dark, cramped space. Jakov lay on the floor, his head in the shadow, and his face seemed black and dreadful. Ilya took the lamp, and, bending down, examined the maltreated lad. Bluish spots and bruises covered the face like a horrible dark mask; the eyes were swollen; he breathed with difficulty and groaned and evidently could not see, for he asked, as Ilya bent over him:

"Who is it?"

"I," said Lunev softly, and straightened himself.

"Give me something to drink!"

Ilya turned round. There was a loud knocking at the door, and some one called out:

"We'll try it from the stairs at the back!"

"Run for the police!" said another.

Petrusha's whimpering rose above the noise: "You all saw it! I never touched him. O—oh!"

Ilya smiled rejoicingly. He liked to realise that Petrusha was suffering. He stepped to the door and began to parley with the besiegers.

"Hullo, you there! Stop your noise! If I gave him one in the mouth, he won't die of it, and I'll take my punishment from the magistrate. Don't you shove yourselves in! Don't bang on the door! I'll open it."

He opened the door, and stood on the threshold, his fists clenched in case of an attack. The crowd gave back before his strong figure and fighting look. Only Petrusha growled, pushing the others aside:

"Ah, you robber! Wait, I'll——"

"Take him away—and look here, just look here!" cried Ilya, inviting the crowd to enter, "see how he's handled this fellow!"

Several customers came in, with anxious side glances at Ilya, and bent down over Jakov.

One said, astonished and frightened:

"He's smashed him up!"

"He's absolutely cut to ribbons!" added another.

"Bring some water," said Ilya, "and then we must have the police." The crowd was now on his side, he read it in their manner, and said aloud and with emphasis:

"You all know Petrusha Filimonov; you know that he is the biggest rascal in the street, and who has a word to say against his son? Well, here lies the son, wounded, perhaps maimed for life; and the father is to get off scot-free, is he? I have struck him once; I shall be condemned for that, is that right and fair? Is that even justice? And so it is all round. One man may do as he likes, and another must not move an eyelash."

One or two sighed sympathetically, others went silently away. Ilya was going on, but Petrusha burst into the room and turned them all out.

"Get out! Be off! This is my affair. He's my son, I'm his father. Be off! I'm not afraid of the police, and I don't need 'em, either—not a bit of it. I'll settle with you, my lad. Clear out of this!"

Ilya kneeled down, gave Jakov a glass of water and looked with deep compassion at his friend's swollen closed eyes and discoloured face. Jakov drank and whispered:

"He's knocked my teeth out, it hurts me to breathe, get me out of the house, Ilusha, get me away!"

Tears flowed from his swollen eyes down over his cheeks.

"He'll have to be taken to the hospital," said Ilya sternly, turning to Petrusha. Petrusha looked at his son and murmured to himself unintelligibly. Of his eyes, one was wide open, the other swollen up like Jakov's from the blow of Ilya's fist.

"Do you hear?" shouted Ilya.

"Don't shout so!" said Petrusha, suddenly becoming quiet and peaceful. "He can't go to the hospital. There'd be a row! You've made bother enough already here. I'm a town councillor, you know. It's bad for my reputation."

"You old blackguard!" said Ilya, and spat contemptuously. "I tell you, take him to the hospital, or there'll be another sort of row."

"Now, now, don't—keep your temper! you know it's half imagination."

Ilya sprang up at these words, but Filimonov was already at the door and called to a waiter:

"Ivan, call a droshky to go to the hospital! Jakov, pull yourself together, don't make yourself out worse than you are; it's your own father beat you, not a stranger—yes—I usen't to be so tenderly handled, my word, no!"

He moved restlessly about the room, took Jakov's clothes from their pegs, and threw them to Ilya, still dilating freely upon the thrashings he had received in his young days.

"Thanks," said Jakov in a voice hardly audible to Ilya, and the tears flowed on from his swollen eyes over his blood-stained cheeks. Terenti was standing behind the counter; he whispered shyly in Ilya's ear: "What'll you have? three kopecks' worth or five? There—please, five—caviar?—the caviar's all gone. I'm sorry, will you try a sardine?"

After Lunev had left Jakov at the hospital he realised he could not return to Filimonov's house, and he went to Olympiada. He felt as though a cold mist drove through his body, something gnawed at his heart and stole away his strength. Sadness lay heavy on his breast, his thoughts were confused, he walked wearily; one thing only stood out clearly, he could not live much longer in this way. The dream of a little pretty shop, a life apart from the world in cleanliness and comfort, rose up anew and more strongly.

Next day he hired a lodging, a little room next to a kitchen. A young woman in a red blouse let it to him. Her face was rosy, with a little saucy nose and a small, pretty mouth; she had a narrow brow framed in black curly hair that she frequently threw back with a quick movement of her slender, small fingers.

"Five roubles for such a pretty little room, that is not dear!" she said cheerfully, and smiled as she saw that her dark, vivacious eyes threw the broad-shouldered lad into some confusion.

Ilya looked at the walls of his future home, and wondered what sort of young woman this might be.

"You see the paper is quite new, the window looks on the garden, what could be nicer? In the morning I'll put the samovar outside your door, but you must take it in yourself."

"Do you do the waiting here, then?" asked Ilya with curiosity.

The girl ceased to smile, her eyebrows twitched, she drew herself up and said, condescendingly:

"I am not the housemaid, but the owner of this house, and my husband——"

"Why, are you married?" cried Ilya in astonishment, and looked incredulously at her pretty slender figure. She was not angered, but laughed gaily:

"How funny you are! first you take me for a housemaid, then you won't believe I'm married."

"How can I believe it, when you look just like a little girl?" said Ilya, and laughed too.

"And I tell you, that I've been married for three years, and that my man is district inspector—in the police."

Ilya looked in her face and smiled quietly, he did not know why.

"What a silly!" cried the girl, shrugging her shoulders and inspecting Ilya curiously. "Well, anyhow, will you take the room?"

"Agreed! D'you want a deposit?"

"Of course, a rouble, at least."

"I'll bring my things in, in two or three hours."

"As you please. I'm glad to have such a lodger, you're a cheerful one, I fancy."

"Not specially," said Lunev, smiling.

He went out into the street still smiling, with a feeling of pleasure in his breast. He liked both the room, with its blue wall-paper, and the brisk little woman, and he liked specially to think he was going to live in the house of a police inspector.

It seemed to him at once comical, with a certain irony, and rather dangerous.

He was on his way to visit Jakov at the hospital, and took a droshky to get there sooner. On the way he laughed in his heart and considered what to do with the money, and where to hide it. When he reached the hospital, he was told that Jakov had just had a bath, and was now fast asleep. He stood by the corridor window, and did not know whether to go away or wait till Jakov woke up. Patients passed him, shuffling slowly in slippers, in yellow night-gowns, and as they went they looked at him with melancholy eyes. They chattered in low voices with one another, and through their whispers rang a painful, groaning coming from somewhere far off. A dull echo, redoubling every sound, boomed through the long corridor; it was as though some one floated invisible on the heavy air of the hospital, groaning mournfully and lamenting.

Ilya felt he must leave these yellow walls at once, but suddenly one of the patients came up to him with outstretched hand, and said in a muffled voice:

"How are you?"

Lunev looked up, then stepped back in surprise.

"Pavel? Goodness! are you here too?"

"Who else is here?" asked Pavel quickly.

His face was curiously grey, his eyes blinked restlessly and confusedly.

"Jakov is here! his father thrashed him—and now you here too! Been here long?" Then he added compassionately: "Ah, brother, how changed you look!"

Pavel sighed, his lips twitched and his eyes looked strangely dull. He hung his head as though guilty, and repeated hoarsely: "Changed? Oh yes."

"What's the matter?" asked Lunev sympathetically.

"Matter? You can guess, surely."

Pavel glanced at Ilya's face, and then let his head fall again.

"Not Vyera?"

"Who else?" answered Pavel gloomily.

Ilya shook his head, was silent a moment, then said bitterly:

"It's our fate, who knows when my turn'll come?"

Pavel smiled sadly, then came closer and looking confidingly in Ilya's face, he said:

"I thought you'd be disgusted with me. I was walking here and all at once I saw you. I was ashamed and turned my face away as I passed you."

"That was a very clever thing to do," said Ilya, reproachfully.

"How's one to know how people take a thing like that? To tell the truth, it's beastly. Ah, brother! two weeks have I been here. The torture, the dreariness! You go about, and lie in bed and think, think! The nights are awful. Like lying on red-hot coals. The time draws out, like a hair in the milk. It's like being drawn down into a swamp, and you're alone and can't call for help." Pavel spoke almost in a whisper. A shudder passed over his face, as if from cold, and his hands grasped convulsively at the collar of his dressing-gown. He shook his head, and said, still half-aloud: "Once fate starts against you to mock you, it goes like a hammer on your heart."

"Where is Vyera?" asked Ilya, thoughtfully.

"The devil knows!" said Pavel, with a bitter smile.

"Doesn't she come to see you?"

"Once. But I sent her packing. I can't bear the sight of her, the little beast!" cried Pavel angrily.

Ilya looked reproachfully at his altered face, and said: "Nonsense! If you want justice, then be just! Why, is it her fault? Think a minute."

"Then, whose fault is it?" cried Pavel, passionately, but in a low voice. "Whose? Tell me. Often I lie awake all night, and think how it is I have made such a mess of my life. It's just through loving Vyera. She took the place of mother and sister and wife and friends. I loved her. I can't say in words how much, nor even write it on the skies in writing of stars." His eyes grew red, and two big tears rolled down his face. He wiped them away with his sleeve, and went on, in a low voice:

"She lay in my way like a stone that I have stumbled over."

"That is not right," said Lunev, who felt clearly that he pitied Vyera even more than his friend. "What way do you speak of? You had no way. All that's just talk. You have longed for the mead, and praised it, that it was strong; now it has made you drunk, you blame it for getting into your head. And how about her? Isn't she ill too?"

"Yes," said Pavel, then suddenly continued, his voice trembling with emotion, "Do you think I'm not sorry for her?"

"Of course. How can you help it?"

"I'm hard on her. Is it much wonder? I sent her away; and when she went and began to cry, so softly and bitterly, then my heart was wrung. I felt I should weep too, but I had no tears in my soul, only stones. And then I began to think it all over. Ah, Ilya! The life I live's no life at all."

"Yes," said Lunev slowly, with a strange smile. "Things go very oddly in life. There's something takes us all by the throat and strangles—strangles us. There's Jakov, who's good. His father makes his life a burden; they've married Mashutka to an old devil; you're here in hospital——"

Suddenly he smiled quietly, and said in a lower voice:

"I'm the only lucky one! Fact! As soon as I wish for anything—pat, it comes!"

"How?" asked Pavel, with curiosity and suspicion.

"Trust me. I have luck. It draws me on and on."

"I don't like the way you talk," said Pavel, and looked at Ilya searchingly. "Are you laughing at yourself?"

"No, it's some one else who laughs at me," replied Ilya, and his brows contracted gloomily. "There's some one somewhere, laughs at us all. I could tell you things. Wherever I look, there's no justice anywhere."

"I can see that," cried Pavel softly, but with intensity. "Come, let's go into that corner, there."

They went along the corridor, close together, looking into one another's eyes. Red patches appeared in Pavel's cheeks, and his eyes sparkled brightly, as in the days when he was healthy. "And I can see how we're robbed down to the last stitch," he whispered in Ilya's ear. "Whatever you can see, none of it is for us."

"That's true."

"Everything for the others. See—my little girl. She was as good as my wife. I need her all. Every man wants his wife for himself. But I can't have mine, and she can't live for me, as she wanted. Why? Just because I am poor? Well, but I work, don't I? I've slaved all my life, ever since I was ten years old. Surely I may be allowed to live, at least!"

"Petrusha Filimonov lives without working, so easily and comfortably, and can have everything he wants, do whatever he likes. Why is that?" said Ilya, seconding his friend's speech, with a scornful laugh.

"The doctor shouts at me, as if I were a criminal—why?" went on Gratschev. "He's an educated man. He ought to treat people decently. I'm a man, surely. Eh? And so it comes. I turned Vyerka out, but I know quite well it's not her fault."

"It's not the stick that gives the pain, but the one who uses it."

They stayed in the dark corner close to the corridor window, whose panes were streaked with yellow colour, and here side by side they conversed in passionate words, each catching the other's thought as it flew.

The heavy groaning came again from far away. The monotonous moan was like the muffled tone of a bass string, plucked at regular intervals, which vibrates wearily and hopelessly, as though it knew that no living heart beats fit to understand and appease its melancholy, quivering lament. Pavel was flaming with irritation over the buffets that life's heavy hand had dealt him.

He too, vibrated, like that string, with excitement, and whispered hurriedly, disconnectedly his grievances and complaints, and Ilya felt that Pavel's words fell on his heart like sparks, stirring to life in his own breast something dark and contradictory, that constantly troubled him, now flaming up, now sinking down. It seemed as though, in place of the dull, evil doubt, with which till now he had faced life, something else was suddenly kindled in his soul, brightening its darkness and shaping for it rest and relief for ever.

"Why is a man holy, if he's enough to eat? is he always in the right, if he's educated?" whispered Pavel, standing close to Ilya, and looking round him as though he were aware of the unknown enemy who had spoilt his life. "See," he went on, "if I am hungry, if I'm stupid, still I have a soul! Or hasn't a hungry man a soul? I see that I have no decent, real life, they have ruined my life, they've cut short my wishes and set up barriers on all my ways, and why?"

"No one can say," cried Ilya harshly, "and there's no one we could ask who would understand? We are all strangers."

"That's true, whom can we talk to?" asked Pavel, with a despairing gesture, and was silent.

Lunev looked straight before him down the wide corridor, and sighed deeply.

The dull moaning was heard again, now they were silent, it sounded more clearly; it seemed to come from the breast of a big, strong man, struggling with great pain.

"Are you still with Olympiada?" asked Pavel.

"Yes, still," answered Ilya.

"And think," he added with a strange smile, "Jakov has got on so well with his reading that now he's doubtful about God."

"Really?"

"Yes, he's found such a book! And you, what do you think about that?"

"I, you see," said Pavel, thoughtfully, "I've never thought much about it. I never go to church."

"And I do think about it, I think a lot about it, and I cannot understand how God endures it all!"

And they began to talk again, short, disconnected sentences, and they remained absorbed in their conversation till an attendant came up to them and said severely to Lunev:

"Why are you hiding here? eh?"

"I'm not hiding."

"Don't you see all the visitors are gone?"

"I didn't notice. Good-bye Pavel—give Jakov a look up."

"Now then, get on—get on!"

"Come again soon, for God's sake!" implored Gratschev.

"I tell you, get on!" and the attendant followed Ilya muttering:

"These fellows, loafers, hiding in corners."

Lunev slackened his pace and as the attendant came up to him, he said quietly and maliciously:

"Don't growl, else I'll have to say, 'lie down dog! lie down!'"

The attendant stopped suddenly, but Lunev went quickly on and felt an evil pleasure in having insulted a man.

In the street he fell again into brooding on the fate of his friends. Pavel, since he was a little lad had fended for himself, had been in prison, and tried all sorts of hard work. What hunger and cold, what blows he had endured! And now finally he had come to the hospital.

Masha would hardly see happy days again, and Jakov the same; how should a being like Jakov keep a whole skin in this world?

Lunev saw that, as a matter of fact, of all the four he had the best of it. But this consciousness brought him no comfort, he only smiled, and looked suspiciously about him.

XVII.

Ilya settled quietly into his new dwelling-place, and his landlords interested him deeply. The woman's name was Tatiana Vlassyevna. As gay as a little bird, and always ready to chatter, she had given the new lodger a complete description of her life before he had spent many days in the little room.

In the morning, while Ilya drank his tea, she bustled about in the kitchen, with skirts tucked up and sleeves rolled above her elbows, but gave many a smiling glance into his room, and said, cheerfully:

"We're not rich, my husband and I, but we've got education and intelligence. I went to the progymnasium, and he was in the cadet corps, even if he didn't quite finish his time there. But we want to be rich, and we'll manage it too. We've no children; they're the big expense. I do the cooking and go to market, and I keep a maid for the rest, and she lives in the house, and gets a rouble and a half a month. You see what a lot I save!"

She remained in the doorway and, shaking her curls, began to reckon:

"Cook's wages, three roubles, and what she'd cost, seven—makes ten roubles. She'd steal at least three roubles' worth a month—thirteen roubles. Then I let her room to you—eighteen roubles. That's the cost of a cook, you see. Then I buy everything wholesale, butter—half a pood, flour—a whole sack, sugar by the loaf, and so on. I save another twelve roubles that way—that's thirty. If I had a place at the police-station or telegraph office, I should only work as a cook; and now I cost my man nothing, and I'm proud of it. One must understand how to arrange one's life, remember that, young man!" She looked roguishly at Ilya with her laughing eyes, and he smiled with some embarrassment. She pleased him, but yet inspired him with respect. When he waked in the morning she was already working in the kitchen, with a pock-marked, undersized girl, who stared at her mistress and every one else, with colourless, frightened eyes. In the evening, when Ilya came home, Tatiana opened the door to him, smiling and active, with a pleasant perfume surrounding her. When her husband was at home he played the guitar, and she chimed in with her clear voice, or they played cards for kisses. Ilya could hear everything in his room—the tones of the strings, gay or sentimental, the turning of the cards, and the kisses. Their dwelling consisted of two rooms—the bedroom and another adjoining Ilya's apartment, which served the pair for dining and drawing-room, where they spent their evenings. Clear birds' voices resounded from here in the mornings, the titmouse peeped, the siskin and thistle-finch sang for a wager, the bullfinch whistled in between, and, through it all, the linnet sounded his serious, gentle song.

Titiana's husband, Kirik Nikodimovitch Avtonomov, was a man of twenty-six years, tall and big, with a big nose and black teeth. His good-tempered face was thick with pimples, and his watery blue eyes looked at everything with imperturbable calm. His close-cropped light hair stood up like a brush on his head, and in his whole plump figure there was something helpless and comical. His movements were clumsy, and immediately after his first greeting to Ilya, he said, for no particular reason:

"Do you like singing birds?"

"Very much."

"Do you ever catch any?"

"No," answered Ilya, looking wonderingly at the inspector, who wrinkled his nose, thought a moment, then said:

"Used you ever to catch them?"

"No."

"Never?"

"Never."

Kirik Avtonomov smiled in a superior way, and said:

"You can't be said to like them, if you've never caught any. Now, I love them, and have caught them often, and was dismissed from the cadet corps because of that. I'd like to catch 'em now, but I don't want to get into trouble with my superiors, for though the love of singing birds is a noble passion, to catch them is not a proper occupation for an established man. If I were in your shoes I'd catch siskins like anything. The siskin's a jolly bird. That's why he's called God's bird."

Avtonomov looked with the expression of an enthusiast into Ilya's face, and a certain embarrassment came over Ilya as he listened. He felt as though the inspector spoke of bird-catching allegorically, with a hidden reference. His heart palpitated and he pricked up his ears. But the sight of Avtonomov's watery blue eyes quieted him, he saw in a moment that the inspector was quite a harmless individual, without any subtlety; so he smiled politely, and murmured some reply or other. The inspector was evidently taken with Ilya's modest demeanour and serious face, and said, smiling:

"Come and have tea with us of an evening, when you feel inclined. We're simple people, without any style. We'll have a game of cards. We don't get many visitors. Visitors are all very well, but you have to treat them, and that's a nuisance and comes expensive." The longer Ilya observed the comfortable life of his landlords, the better it pleased him. Everything they had was so solid and clean, their existence ran so easily and peacefully, and they were evidently much attached to one another. The brisk little woman was like a tomtit, and her husband like a clumsy bullfinch, and their rooms were as tidy and pretty as a bird's nest. When Ilya was home of an evening, he listened to their conversation, and thought: "That's the kind of life!" He sighed enviously, and dreamed more vividly of the time when he would open his shop and have a little bright room of his own. He would keep birds, and live as in a dream, alone and quiet, peacefully and methodically.

The other side of the wall, Tatiana was telling her husband how she bought everything she needed in the market, how much she had spent, and how much saved, and he laughed pleasantly and praised her.

"Ah, the clever little woman! My dear little bird! Come, give me a kiss!"

Then he would begin and relate all that had happened in the town, the processes he had drawn up, what the Chief of Police or any of his superiors had said. They talked of the possibility of a rise of salary for him, and discussed minutely whether, in such an event, they ought to take a bigger house.

Ilya lay and listened till suddenly a melancholy weariness fell on him. The little blue room was too narrow; he looked restlessly round as if to seek the cause of his moodiness, then, unable longer to endure the weight that lay at his breast, he went to Olympiada, or loafed aimlessly in the streets.

Olympiada became more and more full of reproaches. She plagued him with jealousy and more and more frequently they fell into contention. She grew thin, her eyes were sunken and looked darker, her arms were thinner, and all this was not pleasing to Ilya. Still less, however, did he like the fact that of late she had begun to talk of conscience and God, and of going into a nunnery. He did not believe in the genuineness of her words, for he knew she could not live without the society of men.

"You needn't pray for me if you take the veil," he said one day with a mocking smile. "I'll manage my own sins alone."

She looked at him full of fear and sadness.

"Ilya, don't make a jest of it!"

"But I mean it."

"You don't believe that I shall go to a nunnery? You'll see, then you'll believe."

"Not at all—I believe you; lots of people turn monks or nuns out of sheer wickedness."

Olympiada grew angry with him and they quarrelled fiercely.

"You unlucky, proud man!" she cried, with sparkling eyes. "Just wait! However you stiffen your back in your pride, you'll be bent down! What are you so proud of? Your youth and your beauty? It will all go—all, and then you'll creep on the ground like a snake and beg for mercy. 'Have pity!' and no one will care."

She heaped reproaches on him, and her eyes grew so bloodshot that it seemed as though great drops of blood instead of tears would flow over her cheeks. When they quarrelled she never spoke of Poluektov's murder, indeed, in her better moments she would bid him "forget." Lunev wondered at this, and asked her one day after a quarrel:

"Lipa! tell me, when you're angry, why do you never speak of the old man."

She answered readily:

"Because that was really neither my doing nor yours. Since they haven't found you out, it must have been his fate. You were the instrument, not the force; you had no reason to strangle him, as you say yourself. So he only met his due punishment through you."

Ilya laughed incredulously.

"O—Oh! I thought that a man must either be a fool or a rascal—ha! ha! Anything is right for him if only he wants to do it, and in the same way anything can be wrong."

"I don't understand," said Olympiada, and shook her head.

"Where's the difficulty?" asked Ilya, sighing and shrugging his shoulders. "It's quite simple! Show me any one thing in life that holds for every one; find anything that a clever man can't make either right or wrong; anything that stands fast, permanent; you can't. That is what I meant to say. There is nothing fixed in life; it is all changing and confused, like a man's own soul—yes."

"I don't understand," said the woman after a pause.

"And I understand so well," answered Ilya. "That this is just the knot that strangles us all."

At last, after one of the periodical quarrels, when Ilya had not been near Olympiada for four days, he received a letter from her; she wrote:

"Good-bye, my dear Ilyusha, good-bye for ever; we shall never meet again. Don't look for me, you won't find me. I'm leaving this unlucky town by the next steamboat; here I have destroyed my soul for ever. I'm going away, far away, and shall never come back; don't think of me and don't wait for me. With all my heart, I thank you for the good you have brought me, and the bad I will forget. I must tell you the plain truth. I'm not going into a nunnery, I'm going away with young Ananyin, who has been entreating me for a long time. I have agreed at last, what does it matter to me? We go to the sea to a village where Ananyin has fisheries. He is simple, and even means to marry me, good, silly boy! Good-bye! We have met as if in a dream, and when I waked there was nothing. Forgive me too! If you knew how my heart burns with longing. I kiss you—you, the one man in the world for me. Don't be proud before men; we are all unfortunate. I have grown calm, I, your Lipa, and I go as though under the axe,—my heart pains me so.——

"OLYMPIADA SCHLYKOVA."

"I am sending you a token by the post, a ring. Please wear it.—O.S."

Ilya read the letter and bit his lips till they smarted. He read it again and again, and the more often he read, the better it pleased him; it was at once a pain and a pleasure to read the big irregularly written characters.

Previously, Ilya had given little thought to determine what the nature might be of Olympiada's feelings for himself; now, however, he felt that she had loved him dearly and warmly, and as he read her letter he felt a deep peace sink into his heart. But the peace gave way gradually to a sense of loss, and the consciousness that there was no one now to whom he could reveal the bitterness of his soul depressed him.

The image of this woman stood vividly before his eyes, he remembered her passionate caresses, her sensible talk, her jests, and more and more clearly he felt in his breast a harsh feeling of wretchedness. He stood moodily by the window, looking into the garden, and there in the darkness the elder-bushes rustled softly, and the thin, thready twigs of the birch-trees waved to and fro. From behind the wall the strings of the guitar resounded mournfully, and Tatiana sang in her high voice:

"Let him who will search through the seas To find the amber golden——"

Ilya held the letter in his hand and thought: "She always said she was persistent, and that I brought her good fortune, and yet she has left me, so the fortune can not have been so very good after all."

He felt himself in the wrong before Olympiada, and sorrow and compassion weighed heavy on his soul.

"But bring me back my little ring from out the deep blue sea," sounded behind the wall. Then the inspector laughed aloud and the singer chimed in merrily from the kitchen. Then, however, she was silent. Ilya felt her nearness, but dared not turn round to look, though he knew his room door was open. He gave the rein to his thoughts, and stood motionless, feeling himself deserted.

The tree-tops in the garden shivered, and Lunev felt as though he had left the ground, and were floating out there in the cold twilight.

"Ilya Jakovlevitch, will you have your tea?"

"No," answered Ilya.

The solemn note of a bell resounded through the air. The deep tone made the window panes quiver. Ilya crossed himself, remembered that it was long since he had been to church, and seized the occasion to get away from the house.

"I'm going to evening service," he called as he went out.

Tatiana stood in the doorway, her hands against the door-posts, and looked curiously at him. Her inquiring glance confused Ilya, and as if excusing himself, he said:

"I haven't been to church for ever so long."

"Very well. I'll get the samovar ready by nine o'clock," she replied.

As he went, Lunev thought of young Ananyin. He knew the man; he was a rich young merchant, partner in fish business—Ananyin Brothers—a thin, fair young man, with a pale face and blue eyes. He had but recently come to the town and lived there at a great pace.

"That is really living," thought Ilya bitterly, "like a rich young man does—hardly out of the nest before he gets a mate for himself."

He entered the church in a discontented mood, and chose a dark corner, where lay the ladder to light the chandeliers.

"O Lord, have mercy!" came from the left-hand choir. A choir boy sang with a shrill, unpleasing voice, and could not keep in tune with the hoarse, deep bass voice of the precentor. The lack of harmony embittered Ilya's mood still further, and roused a desire in him to seize the boy by the ears. The heating stove made the corner very hot, it smelt of burning rags. An old woman in a fur jacket, came up to him and said, grumbling:

"You're not in your right place, sir."

Ilya looked at the fox tails adorning the collar of her jacket, and went to one side silently, thinking: "Even in the church there's a special place for us."

It was the first time he had been to church since the murder of Poluektov, and when he remembered this, involuntarily he shuddered. He thought of his guilt and forgot everything else, though the idea no longer terrified him, but only filled him with sorrow and heaviness of soul.

"O Lord, have mercy!" he whispered and crossed himself. The choir burst into loud, harmonious song. The soprano voices, giving the words clearly and distinctly, rang under the dome like the clear, pleasant tones of sweet bells. The altos vibrated like a ringing tense string, and against their continued sound, flowing on like a stream, the soprano notes quivered like the reflection of the sun on a transparent pool. The full deep bass notes swept proudly through the church, supporting the children's song; from time to time the beautiful strong tones of the tenors pierced through, then again the children's voices rang out, and rose into the twilight of the dome, whence, serious and thoughtful, clad in white garments, the figure of the Almighty looked down, blessing the faithful with majestic outstretched hands. The waves of sound and the scent of incense rolled up to Him, and flowed round Him, and it seemed as though He floated in the midst, and swept ever higher into the depths of boundless space.

When the music ceased, Ilya sighed deeply. His heart was light, and he felt no fear nor repentance, not even the irritation that had disturbed him when he entered the church. His thoughts flew far away from his own sins. The music had cleansed and lightened his soul. He could not trust his own sensations, feeling so unexpectedly calm and peaceful, and he strove to awaken in himself a sense of remorse, but it was in vain.

Suddenly the thought darted through his mind: "Suppose that woman goes into my room out of curiosity and looks about and finds the money."

He hurried away out of the church, and hailed a droshky to reach home as quickly as he could. All the way the thought tormented him, and set him in a quiver of excitement.

"Suppose they do find the money, what then? They won't lay an information about it, they'll just steal it."

And this thought roused him still more; he became quite positive that if it should happen he would go straight to the police in this same droshky and confess that he had murdered Poluektov. No, he would not any longer be tortured, and live in dirt and turmoil while others enjoy in peace and comfort the money for which he sinned so deeply. The mere idea of it drove him nearly crazy. When the droshky drew up at his door, he darted out and tugged at the bell; his fist clenched and his teeth locked, he waited impatiently for the door to open. Tatiana appeared on the threshold.

"My, what a ring you gave! What's the matter? What's wrong?" she cried, frightened at the sight of him.

Without a word he pushed her aside, went quickly to his room, and assured himself in one glance, that his fears were unnecessary. The money lay behind the upper window-boxing, and he had stuck on a little scrap of down, in such a way that it must be removed if any one tried to get at the packet. He saw the white fleck at once against the brown background.

"Aren't you well?" asked his landlady, appearing at the door of his room.

"I'm all right; I beg your pardon, I pushed you."

"That's nothing; but see here, how much is the droshky?"

"I don't know, ask him please, and pay him."

She hurried away, and Ilya in a moment sprang on a chair, snatched away the packet of money, knew by the feel that it had not been tampered with, and dropped it in his pocket with a sigh of relief. He was ashamed now of his anxiety, and the precaution of the scrap of down seemed foolish and ridiculous.

"Witchcraft!" he thought, and laughed to himself. Tatiana Vlassyevna appeared again.

"I gave him twenty kopecks—but what's the matter? were you faint?"

"Yes. I was standing in the church, and then all at once——"

"Lie down," she said, and came into the room. "Lie down quietly. Don't worry! I'll sit by you a little. I'm at home alone. My husband's working late and going on to his club."

Ilya sat down on the bed, while she took the only chair.

"I disturbed you I'm afraid," said Ilya, with an embarrassed smile.

"Doesn't matter," she answered, and looked in his face with frank curiosity. There was a pause. Ilya did not know what to talk about. She still looked at him, and suddenly laughed in an odd way.

"What are you laughing at?" said Ilya, and dropped his eyes.

"Shall I tell you?" she asked, mischievously.

"Yes, tell me!"

"You can't pretend well, d'you know?"

Ilya started and looked at her uneasily.

"No, you can't. You are not ill; only you've had a letter that troubles you. I saw—I saw——"

"Yes, I've had a letter," said Ilya slowly.

Something rustled in the branches outside. Tatiana looked quickly out at the window, then again at Ilya.

"It was only the wind, or a bird," she said. "Now, young man, will you listen to my advice? I'm only a young woman, but I'm not a fool!"

"If you'll be so good—please," said Lunev, and looked at her with curiosity.

"Tear up the letter and throw it away," she said in a decided tone. "If she has written you your dismissal, she's acted well, and like a sensible girl. It's too soon for you to marry. You've no settled standing, and you ought not to marry without. You're a strong young man and you work, and you're good-looking. You're bound to get on. Only take care you don't fall in love. Earn a lot of money, and save, and try to get on to something bigger. Open a shop, and then, when you've got firm ground under your feet, you can marry. You're bound to get on. You don't drink, you're unassuming, you've no ties."

Ilya listened, with bowed head and smiled quietly. He longed to laugh out loud.

"There's nothing more silly than to hang your head down," continued Tatiana, in the tone of an experienced man of the world. "It will pass. Love is a disease that is easily cured. Before I was married I fell in love three times, fit to drown myself, but it passed. And when I saw that it was time for me to marry, I married without all that love."

"Ilya raised his head and looked at the woman as she said this:

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Afterwards I learnt to love my husband. It happens often that a woman falls in love with her husband."

"What does that mean?" asked Ilya, opening his eyes. Tatiana laughed gaily. "I was only joking—but quite seriously, you can really marry a man without love, and come to care for him afterwards."

And she chattered away and made play with her eyes. Ilya listened attentively, and looked with great interest at the little, trim figure, and was full of wonder. She was so small and slender and yet she had such foresight and strength of will, and good sense.

"With a wife like that," he thought, "a man couldn't come to grief." He found it pleasant to sit there with an intelligent woman, a real, trim, neat housewife, who was not too proud to chat with him, a simple working lad. A feeling of gratitude towards her arose in him, and when she got up to go, he sprang up at once, bowed, and said:

"Thank you very much for the honour you have done me; your talk has done me a lot of good."

"Really, think of that!" she said, smiling quietly, while her cheeks reddened and she looked for a second or two steadily in Ilya's face. "Well then, good-bye for the present," she added with a strange intonation and slipped out with the easy gait of a young girl.

XVIII.

Ilya came to like the Avtonomovs better every day, and he envied them their peaceful, sheltered life. In a general way he had no love for police officials, for he saw many evil qualities among them. But Kirik seemed like a simple working-man, good-tempered, if limited. He was the body, and his wife the soul. He was seldom at home, and not of much importance there. Tatiana Vlassyevna became more and more at home with Ilya. She got him to chop wood, fetch water, empty away slops. He obeyed dutifully, and these little services gradually became his daily duty. Then his landlady dismissed the pock-marked girl who helped her, and only had her on Sundays. Occasionally visitors came to the Avtonomovs. Korsakov, the assistant town inspector, often came, a thin man with a long moustache. He wore dark glasses, smoked thick cigarettes, and could not endure droshky drivers, speaking of them always with great irritation. "No one breaks rules and orders so often as these drivers," he used to say. "Insolent brutes! Foot passengers in the streets you can deal with easily; it only means a police notice in the papers. Those going down the street keep to the right, those going up to the left, and at once you get excellent discipline. But these drivers, you can't get at them with any notice. A driver, well, the devil only knows what he's like!"

He could talk of droshky drivers a whole evening, and Lunev never heard him speak of anything else.

Also the inspector of the Orphan Asylum, Gryslov, came occasionally, a silent man, with a black beard. He loved to sing, in his bass voice, the song: "Over the sea, the deep blue sea," and his wife, a stately, stout woman with big teeth, always ate up the whole provision of sweetmeats, a feat which occasioned remarks after her departure.

"Felizata Segarovna does that on purpose. Whatever sweets come on the table, she always swallows the lot."

Alexandra Fedorovna Travkina used to come with her husband. She was tall and thin, with a large nose and short red hair. She had big eyes and a piping voice, and blew her nose frequently with a sound like the tearing of calico. Her husband suffered from a disease of the throat, and spoke in consequence in a whisper. But he would talk incessantly by the hour, and the sounds that came from his mouth were like the rustling of dry straw. He was very well-to-do, had served in the Excise Department, and was a director of a flourishing benevolent society. Both he and his wife spoke of little else but charitable institutions.

"Just think what has just happened in our society!"

"Ah, yes, yes. Just imagine!" cried his wife.

"An appeal has been presented for assistance."

"I tell you, these charitable institutions ruin the people——"

"A woman writes, her husband is dead. She has three children. They are starving and she is always ill."

"The old story, you know——"

"They were to get three roubles——"

"But, for my part, I don't believe in this widow," cried Alexandra Fedorovna, triumphantly.

"My wife says to me, 'Wait,' she says: 'I'll see first what kind of a person it is.'"

"And what do you think? The husband had been dead five years."

"She's two children, not three."

"The things they say!"

"And she's as healthy as can be."

"Then I said to her: 'See now, my friend, how would you like to be tried for fraud?' Of course, she fell at my feet."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Kirik Avtonomov. And every one praised Fedorovna for her acuteness, and blamed the poor, because of their lying and greed, and want of respect towards their benefactors.

Lunev sat in his room, and listened attentively to the conversations that went on close by. He wanted to understand what these people thought and said of life. But what he heard was incomprehensible to him. It seemed as though these people had made up their minds about life, had settled all questions, and knew everything; and they condemned in the strongest terms every one who lived differently from themselves. Most frequently, they talked of all kinds of family scandals, of different services in the cathedral, or of the evil behaviour of their acquaintances. It wearied Ilya to listen.

Sometimes his landlord invited him to tea in the evening. Tatiana Vlassyevna was merry, and her husband waxed enthusiastic over the possibility of becoming rich, when he would retire from the service and buy himself a house.

"Then I'd keep fowls," he said, and screwed up his eyes. "All sorts of fowls—Brahmahpootras, Cochin Chinas, Guinea-fowl, and turkeys—and a peacock—yes. Think of sitting at the window in a dressing-gown, smoking a scented cigarette, and seeing the peacock, my own peacock, in the courtyard, spreading his tail. That would be something like a life. He'd stalk round like a police officer, and say: 'Brr—Brrll—Brrll!'"

Tatiana smiled, and, looking at Ilya, went on in her turn:

"And every summer I'd go away somewhere, to the Crimea or the Caucasus, and in winter I'd be on some charitable committee. Then I'd have a black cloth dress, quite simple with no ornament, and I wouldn't wear any jewels except a ruby brooch and pearl ear-rings. I read a poem in the 'Niva,' where it said, 'that the blood and tears of the poor are turned to rubies and pearls,'" then with a soft sigh, she added, "Rubies look so nice on dark women."

Ilya smiled and said nothing. It was warm and clean in the room, an odour of tea and of some pleasant scent mingled in the air. The birds, little feather balls, were asleep in the cages. A few gaudy pictures hung on the walls. A little étagère between the two windows was covered with all kinds of pretty little boxes, china birds, and gay Easter eggs of sugar or glass. The whole place pleased Ilya and filled him with a kind of soft, comfortable melancholy. Sometimes however, especially when he had earned little or nothing, this melancholy changed into a restless fretfulness. Then the china fowls and the eggs and the boxes annoyed him; he wanted to throw them on the ground and smash them.

This mood disturbed and frightened him; he could not understand it and it seemed strange and unlike himself. As soon as it came upon him, he maintained an obstinate silence, kept his eyes fixed on one spot, and was afraid to speak lest he should somehow hurt the feelings of these good people.

Once, however, as he was playing cards with them, he could not contain himself, and asked Kirik drily, looking him straight in the face:

"I say, Kirik Nikodimovitch, you've never caught him—the murderer of the merchant in Dvoryanskaya Street?"

As he spoke he felt a pleasant tingling in his breast.

"Poluektov, the money-changer?" said the inspector, thoughtfully, as he examined his cards. "Poluektov? Ah! ah! No! I have not caught Poluektov—ah! I haven't caught him, my friend; that's to say, of course, not Poluektov, but the man who——I haven't even looked for him. I don't want him, anyhow—I only want to know who has the queen of spades? You, Tanya, played three cards—queen of clubs, queen of diamonds and—what was the other?"

"Seven of diamonds—hurry up!"

"He's quite lost!" said Ilya, and laughed scornfully.

But the inspector paid no attention to him, he was absorbed in the game.

"Quite lost," he repeated mechanically, "and he twisted poor Poluektov's neck—ah! ah!"

"Kirya, do stop that, ah! ah!" said his wife. "Be quick!"

"Patience, patience."

"He must be a smart fellow who murdered him," remarked Ilya.

The indifference with which his words were received roused in him a desire to speak of the murder.

"Smart?" said the inspector slowly. "No! I am the smart fellow! There!" and he played a five, slapping the card down on the table. Ilya could not follow suit, and lost the round.

The husband and wife laughed at him, and he grew more restive. As he was dealing, he said defiantly:

"To kill a man in broad daylight, in the main street of the town, that takes some courage."

"Luck, not courage," Tatiana corrected.

Ilya looked first at her, then at her husband, laughed softly and asked:

"You call it luck to kill some one?"

"Why, yes; to kill some one and not get caught."

"You've given me ace of diamonds again," cried the inspector.

"I could do with an ace," said Ilya seriously.

"Kill a rich man, that's the best ace!" said Tatiana jokingly.

"Hold on a bit with your killing, here's an ace of cards to go on with," cried Kirik, with a loud laugh and played two nines and an ace.

Ilya glanced again at their pleasant, happy faces, and the desire to speak further of the murder left him.

Living side by side with these people, separated only by a thin wall from their sheltered, peaceful life, Ilya was seized more and more frequently with fits of painful dissatisfaction. The feeling poured over him like a dense, cold flood, and he could not understand whence it came. At the same time thoughts of life's contradictions rose up in him, of God who knows everything, yet does not punish but waits patiently. Why does He wait?

Out of sheer boredom he began to read again. His landlady had a couple of volumes of the "Niva," and the "Illustrated Review," and a few other odd volumes. Just as in his childhood, so now, he cared only for tales and romances, in which a strange unknown life was depicted, and not at all for representations of the real, the wrong and misery filling the life that surrounded him. Whenever he read tales of actual life, dealing with simple folk, he found them wearisome and full of false descriptions. Sometimes it is true they amused him, when it seemed as though these tales were written by clever people, anxious to paint this miserable, dull, grey life in fair colours and gloss over its wretchedness. He knew this life and daily learned to know it better. As he passed through the streets he never failed to see something that appealed to his critical faculties. In this way once he witnessed a scene on his way to visit his friend at the hospital which he related to Pavel:

"This is what they call law and order. I saw some people like carpenters and plasterers going along the pavement. Up comes a policeman. 'Now then, you rascals!' he shouts, and turns them off into the road. That's to say, walk with the horses, else your dirty clothes may soil the fine gentry; build me a house, oh, yes, but I'll chuck you out of it, ah!"

Pavel's wrath was aroused too, by the incident, and added fuel to Ilya's flame. He endured tortures in the hospital, little better to him than a prison; his thoughts would not let him rest, and his eyes glowed with despair and grim defiance. To think where Vyera might then be, consumed him, and he grew thin and wasted. Jakov he did not like, and avoided his society in spite of the wearisomeness that plagued him.

"He's half silly," he answered when Ilya asked after Jakov.

But Jakov, two of whose ribs it appeared were broken, lived very happily in the hospital. He had made friends with the patient next him, a servant in a church, whose leg had been amputated a little while before for sarcoma. He was a short, thick-set man, with a big bald head and a black beard that covered his breast. His eyebrows were thick and bushy, and he moved them constantly up and down; his voice sounded hollow as though it came from his stomach. Every time Lunev visited the hospital he found Jakov by the bedside of this man, who lay and moved his eyebrows without speaking, while Jakov read half-aloud out of a Bible, that was as short and thick as its owner.

"'Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste and brought to silence,'" read Jakov. "'Because in the night Kin of Moab is laid waste and brought to silence.'"

Jakov's voice sounded weak and creaking, like the noise of a saw cutting wood. As he read, he held up his left hand, as if to summon all the patients in the ward to hear the calamitous prophecies of Isaiah. The blue bruises were not yet quite gone from his face, and the big, thoughtful eyes in the midst of them gave him a very strange expression. As soon as he saw Ilya, he threw down the book, and always asked the same anxious question:

"Haven't you seen Mashutka?"

Ilya had not seen her.

"O God!" said Jakov sadly. "How strange it is! Like a fairy tale! She was there, and suddenly a magician snatches her away, and she's disappeared."

"Has your father been to see you?"

"Yes—he came again."

A shiver passed over Jakov's face, and he looked anxiously here and there.

"He brought a pound of cakes, and tea and sugar. 'You've loafed round here enough,' he said, 'let them send you out!' But I begged the doctors not to send me away yet. It's so jolly here, quiet and comfortable. This is Nikita Jegarowitch. We read together. He has a Bible. He's read it for seven years. He knows it all by heart and can explain the prophecies. When I'm well, I'm going to leave my father and live with Nikita. I'll help him in the church and sing in the choir."

The church servant lifted his eyebrows, underneath which a pair of big dark eyes moved slowly in deep sockets. Quiet and lustreless, they looked at Ilya's face with a fixed, dull look, and Ilya tried involuntarily to avoid them.

"What a lovely book the Bible is!" said Jakov, quite enraptured, Mashka, his father, and all his dreams forgotten. "What things it says, brother! What words!"

His widely-opened eyes glanced from the book to Ilya's face and back again, and he shook with excitement.

"And that saying is in it—do you remember?—that the old preacher said to your uncle in the bar—'The tabernacles of robbers prosper!'—It's there, I found it, and things worse than that!"

Jakov shut his eyes and said solemnly, with uplifted hand:

"'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out, and how oft cometh destruction upon them! God distributed sorrows in his anger'—Do you hear?—'God layeth up his iniquity for his children: He rewardeth him and he shall know it.'"

"Does it really say that?" said Ilya, incredulously.

"Word for word."

"Then I think that is—not right—wicked," said Ilya.

The church servant drew down his bushy brows till they shaded his eyes, his beard moved up and down, and he spoke clearly in a dull, strange voice:

"The boldness of the man who seeks the Truth is not sinful, for it springs from divine prompting."

Ilya shuddered. The speaker sighed deeply, and went on, slowly and distinctly:

"'The Truth itself bids a man seek Me! For Truth is God, and it is written: It is a great glory to follow the Lord.'"

The man's face, covered with thick hair, inspired Ilya with shyness and respect. There was in it something strong, sublime. His brows went up again, he looked at the ceiling, and his big beard moved again:

"Read him, Jakov, from the Book of Job, the beginning of the tenth chapter."

Jakov turned over the leaves quickly, and read, in a low, trembling voice:

"'My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say unto God, do not condemn me: Show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto Thee that Thou shouldest oppress; that Thou shouldest despise the work of Thine hands?'"

Ilya stretched out his neck and looked at the book with blinking eyes.

"You don't believe it?" cried Jakov. "How silly you are!"

"Not silly, only cowardly," said the church servant, quietly, "because he cannot look God in the face."

He turned his dull eyes from the ceiling to Ilya's face, and went on sternly as though he would shatter him with words.

"There are parts that are more difficult than that one. The third verse of the twenty-second chapter says plainly: 'Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous? or is it gain to Him that thou makest thy ways perfect?' You need to think very diligently, so as not to go astray in these matters and to understand them."

"And you, do you understand?" asked Lunev softly.

"He?" cried Jakov. "Nikita Jegarowitch understands everything."

But the church servant said, sinking his voice lower:

"For me, it's too late already. It is time for me to understand death; they've taken off my leg, but it's swelling higher up, and the other leg is swelling, and my breast, and I shall soon die of it."

His eyes stared steadily at Ilya and he continued slowly and quietly:

"And I do not want to die yet, for I have lived wretchedly in sickness and bitterness, with no joy in my life. I've worked ever since I was a little boy, and like Jakov, under the scourge of a father. He was a drunkard and a brute. Three times he damaged my skull, once he scalded my leg with boiling water. I had no mother, she died when I was born. I married; I was compelled to take a wife who did not love me; three days after the wedding she hanged herself. Yes. I had a brother-in-law who robbed me, and my own sister said to my face that I drove my wife to her death. And they all said it, although they knew I had not touched her, that she died a maid. Then I lived nine years, alone and solitary. It is terrible to live alone. I've always waited for happiness to come at last, and now I'm dying. That is my whole life."

He closed his eyes, paused a moment, then asked:

"Why was life given to me? Guess that riddle."

Ilya listened, pale, with fear in his heart.

A dark shadow lay on Jakov's face and tears glimmered in his eyes; both were silent.

"Why was I born? I ask. The Lord has done me wrong. I do not pray that He will lengthen my life. I find no words to pray with. I lie here and think and think: Why has life been given to me?"

His voice choked. He broke off all at once, like a muddy brook that flows along and suddenly vanishes under ground.

"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion," said the church servant after a while in the words of the Scripture; then again his eyebrows went up, his eyes opened and his beard moved.

"Also in Ecclesiastes it says: 'In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider. God also hath set the one over against the other to the end that man should find nothing after him.' Well?"

Ilya could hear no more. He got up quietly, gave Jakov a hand, bowed low to the sick man, as though he were taking leave of the dead; and this he did involuntarily.

This time he left the hospital with a new, strangely oppressive feeling. The talk with the church servant had left no clear impression on his brain, but the mournful spectacle the sick man presented was stamped deep on his memory.

Another was added to the men, he knew, whose lives had proved a delusion. He held the words of this man clear in his memory, and turned them over and over to get at their secret meaning. They confused him and disturbed something in the depths of his soul, where he hid his faith in the justice of God, and these words which he could not fathom, awaked in him a bitter gnawing brain-activity that drove him on to examine and analyse all that he saw or experienced. It appeared to him now that somehow, in a way unknown to himself, his faith in the justice of God had sustained a shock and was no longer so firm as of old. Something had gnawed at it, like the rust gnaws the iron. He felt clearly that this had happened; the fierce commotion into which the lament of the church servant had thrown him, convinced him. There were sensations and ideas in his breast as irreconcilable as fire and water, continually at strife. His bitterness against his own past, against all men and all the laws of life, broke out with new strength. In his anger he came finally to the question:

"Thoughts grow in the soul like roots in the ground, but where is the fruit?"

He would gladly have torn all these troubles from his heart, that he might begin the realisation of his dream of a solitary, peaceful, sheltered life.

"I will mix with men no more. It's no good to me or any one. I can't live like this."

He took to wandering the streets for hours, and came back home tired and moody.

Every day the Avtonomovs became more friendly and obliging to Ilya. Kirik clapped him on the shoulder, jested with him, and said, in a tone of conviction:

"You busy yourself with useless things, my friend. So modest and serious a lad must take a wider view. It isn't good to remain district inspector if you're fit to look after the whole town."

Tatiana, too, began to ask Ilya definitely and in detail, how his peddling trade did, and how much he put by every month. He talked freely to her, and his respect for this woman, who could make so tidy and comfortable a life out of small possibilities, grew every day.

One evening, as he sat by the open window of his room, in a dark mood, looking at the garden and thinking of the faithless Olympiada, Tatiana Vlassyevna came out of her dining-room to the kitchen and called Ilya to tea. He accepted the invitation against his will. He could not break free from his moodiness, and had no inclination to talk. He sat at the table, sulky and silent, and, looking at his hostess, noticed that her face wore an unusually solemn and troubled expression. Neither spoke; the samovar bubbled cheerily, a bird fluttered in a cage, the air was full of the scent of fried onions and eau-de-Cologne. Kirik twisted about on his chair, drummed with his fingers on the edge of the tea-tray, and sang under his breath.

"Ilya Jakovlevitch," began his wife, with an important air, "we—my husband and I—have arranged a little matter, and would like to talk seriously with you."

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the inspector suddenly, and rubbed his big red hands. Ilya started and looked at him in surprise.

"Wait, Kirik! There's nothing to laugh at," said Tatiana.

"We've arranged it," cried Kirik, with a big laugh, then looked at Ilya and winked towards his wife. "Clever little girl!"

"We've saved some money——"

"We! We've saved money! Ho! ho! ho! My clever, dear little wife!"

"Kirya, be quiet!" said Tatiana, severely. Her face seemed thinner and more pointed than ever.

"We have saved close on a thousand roubles," she went on half aloud, and bent over towards Ilya and looked him full in the face with her sharp little eyes. He sat quiet, but in his breast something seemed to jump for joy.

"The money's in the bank, and brings us four per cent," went on Tatiana.

"And that's too little, devil take it!" cried Kirik, and struck the table with his hand. "We want——"

His wife silenced him with a reproving look.

"Naturally, we are quite satisfied with this return, but we should like to help you in case you care to start on a bigger scale. You are so steady——" She paid Ilya a compliment or two, and then proceeded:

"They say that a fancy ware shop can bring in twenty per cent., or even more if you go about it the right way. Now, we are ready to find you the money for a bill of exchange, at sight, of course, on condition that you open a shop. You will manage it under my supervision, and we'll halve the profits. You will insure the goods in my name, and you'll give me besides a document of some sort, nothing of importance. And now, think over the matter, and tell us simply—yes or no."

Ilya listened to the thin, clear voice, and rubbed his forehead hard. While she spoke he looked many times at the corner where the golden frame of the eikon shone between the two wedding candles. He felt a kind of helplessness and fear as he listened to his hostess's words. Her proposal all at once assured his dream of years. It astonished him and filled him with joy. Smiling in confusion, he looked at the little woman and thought:

"That's it, it's Fate."

She spoke now in a motherly tone:

"Consider it well, look at it from all sides! whether you have confidence in yourself, if you have enough strength—enough experience for it? And then tell us, what could you put to it besides your work,—our money won't go so very far, will it?"

"I can," said Ilya slowly, "put in five hundred roubles. My uncle will give them to me—I have an uncle—I told you. He'll give me the money, perhaps more."

"Hurrah!" cried Kirik.

"Then is it a bargain?" asked Tatiana.

"Yes. I agree," said Lunev.

"Well, I should think so!" cried the inspector. Then he put his hand in his pocket and called out: "Now, let's have some champagne. Ilya, my boy, run to the wine merchant, and bring some champagne. Let's crack a bottle,—here's the money, you're our guest, of course. Ask for Don Champagne at ninety kopecks, and say it's for me, for Avtonomov, then they'll give it you for sixty-five,—hurry up, my lad!"

Ilya looked smilingly at the beaming faces of the couple and went.

So Fate had pushed him and buffeted him, led him to grievous sin, troubled his soul, and now suddenly she seemed to ask his forgiveness, to smile on him and offer her favours. Now before him the way lay open to a sheltered corner in life, where he could live quietly and find peace for his soul. He had taken a man's life, and for that he would help many and so make amends before the Lord. No, the Lord would not punish him severely, for He knows all. Olympiada was right; in the murder he was only the instrument, not the will, and evidently the Lord Himself was helping him to straighten his course, since he had made easy the attainment of his life's desire. Thoughts whirled through Ilya's head as in a happy dance, and inspired his heart with joys of life unknown till now. He brought from the wine shop a bottle of real champagne for which he paid seven roubles.

"Oho!" cried Avtonomov, "that's what I call proper, my boy; that's an idea! Ha! yes."

Tatiana thought differently; she shook her head disparagingly and said in a tone of reproach, looking at the bottle:

"Seven roubles! Ei—ei! Ilya Jakovlevitch, how unpractical, how foolish!"

Lunev stood before her, happy, deeply stirred; he smiled and said joyfully:

"It's real champagne,—for the first time in my life I'll drink something real. What's my life been up to now? All spoilt, dirt and coarseness, and stuffiness, injuries and insults, and all kinds of torment. Is that a real life do you suppose? Can any one go on living like that?"

He touched the sore place in his heart; his words rang bitterly, his eyes grew gloomy; he sighed deeply, and went on firmly and decidedly:

"Ever since I was small I've looked for the real thing and have lived all the time like a wood-shaving in a brook. I was swept about, now here, now there, and all round me everything was dull and dirty and restless. I didn't know where to catch hold; only misery and injustice and knavishness all round me, and all that disgusts me: and now fate brings me to you, for the first time in my life I see how people can live in peace and comfort and love."

He looked at them with a bright smile and bowed to them.

"I thank you. With you I've found relief for my soul, by God! You've helped me for my whole life, now I can step out boldly, now I know how a man should live! It will go well with me and no other shall suffer for me. How many unlucky ones there are in the world! how many go under. I've seen it all, I know it all."

Tatiana Vlassyevna regarded him with the look of the cat who lies in wait for the bird, ravished by his own song. A greenish fire gleamed in her eyes and her lips twitched; Kirik was busy with the bottle, he had it between his knees and bent over it. The veins of his neck swelled and his ears moved.

"My friends," continued Ilya, "for I have two friends——"

The cork popped, hit the ceiling and fell on the table; a glass that it fell against rang, quivering.

Kirik smacked his lips, filled the glasses and commanded:

"Ready."

Then when his wife and Lunev had taken their glasses, he held his high over his head and cried:

"To the firm of Tatiana Avtonomov and Lunev; may it bloom and flourish! Hurrah!"

XIX.

The following days were spent by Lunev and Tatiana Vlassyevna in arranging together the details of the new undertaking. She knew everything and spoke of everything with as much certainty as if she had dealt in fancy wares all her life. Ilya listened with amazement, smiled and was silent. He wanted to find a suitable place to make a beginning as soon as possible, and he agreed to all Tatiana's proposals, without considering their significance at all.

At last everything was settled, and it appeared that Tatiana had a suitable shop ready chosen. It was arranged exactly as Ilya had imagined to himself, in a clean street, small and neat, with a room at the back. Ilya knew the shop; there had formerly been a milk shop there, and he had often visited it with his wares. Everything went splendidly, down to the least detail, and Ilya was triumphant, energetic, and happy. He visited his friends in the hospital. Pavel met him, cheerful for once. "To-morrow I'm to be discharged!" he explained with joyful excitement, even before he answered Ilya's greeting. "I've had a letter from Vyerka. She grumbles, says I insulted her, little devil!"

His eyes shone and his cheeks reddened. He could not keep still a moment, but shuffled with his slippers on the ground and flourished with his hands.

"Take care of yourself," said Ilya. "Be careful."

"Of course. I shall simply say: 'Mam'selle Vyera Kapitanovna, will you marry me? Please! No?—then there's a knife in your heart!'" A convulsive shudder passed over his face.

"Come, come!" said Ilya, laughing. "What, threaten her with a knife straight away?"

"No—believe me, I've had enough of it. I can't live without her. And she too; she's no good without me; she's had enough of her beastly life. She must be sick of it. To-morrow it shall be settled between us, this way or that."

Lunev looked at his friend's face and thought: "In a mood like this he might kill her." Suddenly a clear, simple idea came into his head. He blushed, then smiled. "Pashutka, think, I've made my fortune," he began after a pause, and told his friend shortly what had happened to him. Pavel listened, sighed with bent head, and said:

"Ye—es, you are lucky!"

"Envious?"

"Rather! Devil take it!"

"Really, I'm ashamed of my luck with you, speaking quite honestly."

"Thank you!" said Pavel, with a dull laugh.

"Do you know?" said Ilya slowly, "I'm not boasting. I mean it. I am ashamed, by God!"

Pavel glanced at him without speaking, and hung his head lower.

"And I'll say something to you. We've hung together in bad times. Let us share the good times."

"H—m—m!" growled Pavel. "I've heard that happiness can't be shared, any more than a woman's love."

"Oh, yes, it can! Just you find out all that is wanted to set up as a well-sinker—instruments and so on—and how much it costs, and I'll find the money."

"Wha—at!" cried Pavel, looking at his friend incredulously.

Lunev seized his hand with a lively gesture, and pressed it.

"Really, you silly! I'll find it for you."

But it needed a long conversation to assure Pavel of the seriousness of his intentions. Pavel kept shaking his head, growling, and saying: "No, it'll come to nothing."

Finally Lunev succeeded in convincing him. Then Pashka embraced him, and said, in a voice full of emotion:

"Thank you, brother! You'll pull me out of the pit. Now, listen to me. A workshop of my own—that's not for me. Give me some money, and I'll take Vyerka and go away from here. It will be easier for you, and you won't need to give me so much, and it'll suit me better. I'll go off somewhere and get an assistant's job in a workshop."

"That's ridiculous," said Ilya. "It's much better to be your own master."

"What sort of a master should I be?" cried Pavel. "I don't know how to deal with workmen like a master. No, a business of my own, and all that goes with it, is not to my taste. I know the sort of fellow a man must be for that, it isn't in my line. You can't turn a goat into a pig."

Ilya did not understand clearly Pashka's conception of a master, but it pleased him and drew him still nearer to his comrade. He looked at him full of joy and love, and said jestingly:

"True! You are very like a goat. Just about as thin. Do you know whom you remind me of? Perfishka, the cobbler. Well, then, we'll meet to-morrow, and then I'll give you the money to make a start, till you get a job. And now I'll have a look at Jakov."

"Agreed, and thank you, brother!"

"How do you get on now with Jakov?"

"Same as before; we can't hit it off," said Gratschev laughing.

"He's an unlucky fellow. It's not easy to deal with him," said Ilya thoughtfully.

"Ah, we've most of us something to put up with," answered Pavel, and shrugged his shoulders. "He always seems to me not quite all there, half silly. Well, I'm off."

"Good-bye, then."

And when Ilya had already left him, he called after him once more from the passage:

"Thank you, brother!"

Ilya nodded to him with a smile. He found Jakov quite sorrowful and cast down. He lay on his bed, his face upturned to the ceiling, looking up with wide-open eyes, and did not notice Ilya's approach.

"Nikita Jegarovitch's gone to another ward," he said gloomily.

"That's a mercy," answered Lunev. "He really looked too terrible, and then he said such odd things! God be with him!" Jakov looked at him reproachfully, but said nothing.

"Getting on?" asked Ilya.

"Ye—es," answered Jakov with a sigh. "I mayn't even be ill as long as I want. Yesterday father was here again. He's bought another house. He says he's going to open another inn, and all that'll be on my head."

Ilya wanted to speak of his own success, but something restrained him.

The spring sun shone gaily through the windows and the yellow walls of the hospital seemed still more yellow. In the bright light, the paint showed many spots and gaps. Two patients were sitting on their beds, silently playing cards, quite absorbed in their game. A tall thin man, with his bandaged head bent down, walked noiselessly up and down the ward. All was quiet, save for an occasional smothered cough, and the shuffling of the patients' slippers as they walked in the corridor.

Jakov's yellow face seemed lifeless and his dull eyes had a troubled expression.

"Oh, I wish I were dead!" he said in his dry, creaking voice. "When I lie here I say to myself, 'it must be interesting to die.' Up there things are very different—so different, that no one has ever seen, no noise, everything is easy to understand and bright and clear." His voice sank lower, became more muffled. "There are kind angels there; they can explain everything to you, and answer all your questions—the angels——"

He was silent and began to blink his eyes, watching the pale reflection of the sun rays play on the ceiling.

"Do you know——?" began Lunev.

Jakov interrupted him at once.

"Haven't you seen Mashutka?"

"N—No."

"Ah! you—you ought to have gone to see her long ago."

"I forgot. I can't remember everything."

"You must remember with your heart."

Lunev was embarrassed and said nothing. A little man on crutches wearing a moustache with pointed ends, hobbled in out of the corridor, and said in a hoarse, hissing voice to the tall man with the bandaged head:

"Schurka has not come again, the rascal."

Jakov looked at him, sighed and threw his head backwards and forwards on the pillow restlessly.

"Nikita Jegarovitch will die, and he doesn't want to,—the surgeon told me, he must die, and I want to die, and I can't. I shall get well again and go behind the counter, and drink brandy and so I go down."

His lips lengthened into a melancholy smile.

"To endure this life, a man needs an iron body and an iron heart, and he must live like all the rest, without thinking, without conscience."

Ilya detected in Jakov's words something hostile and cold, and his brow wrinkled.

"And I'm a glass between stones," Jakov continued, "if I turn, there's a smash."

"You grumble far too much," said Lunev carelessly.

"And what about you?" asked Jakov.

Ilya turned away and did not speak. Then observing that Jakov showed no signs of going on, he said thoughtfully:

"It's hard for us all. Look at Pavel, for instance."

"I don't like him," said Jakov, and made a grimace.

"Why not?"

"Oh! Just I don't like him."

"Well, I do."

"I don't care."

"H'm—yes—well, I must be off."

Jakov held out his hand in silence, and then implored, in a tearful, entreating voice:

"Do find out about Mashutka, will you? for Christ's sake!"

"Yes. I will," said Ilya.

It disturbed and worried him to listen to Jakov's eternal complaints, and he felt relieved when he got away from him. But the entreaty to find out about Masha roused a certain feeling of shame in him for his conduct towards Perfishka's daughter, and he determined to look up Matiza, as she was certain to know how Mashutka was taking to her new life. Like all the people in Petrusha's house, he knew that Matiza used to wash the floors every Saturday at the house of Ehrenov, receiving a quarter-rouble for the task, and also for granting more personal favours. Ilya took the road towards Filimonov's tavern, and his soul was full of thoughts of his future. It seemed to smile sweetly on him, and lost in his fancies, he passed the tavern without noticing, and when he discovered his mistake felt no inclination to turn back. He went on right out of the town; the fields stretched away in front of him, bounded far off by the dark wall of the forest. The sun was setting; its rosy reflection gleamed on the tender green of the turf. Ilya strode forward with head high and looked up to the sky, where purple clouds stood almost motionless, flaming in the sun's rays. He felt at ease, wandering thus aimlessly; every step forward, every breath awakened a new thought. He imagined himself rich and mighty and with the power to ruin Petrusha Filimonov, in his dream he had brought him to beggary, and Petrusha stood before him weeping, but he addressed the suppliant:

"Have compassion, should I? And you, have you ever had compassion on a soul? Have you not maltreated your son, and led my uncle into sin? Have you not looked down on me and despised me? In your accursed house no one has ever been happy, no one has ever known joy. Your house is rotten through and through, a trap for men, a prison for those that live in it."

Petrusha stood there, shivering and groaning with fear, lamenting like a beggar and Ilya thundered on at him:

"I will burn your house, for it brings misery to all who dwell in it, and do you go out in the world and beg forgiveness from all that you have wronged; go, wander till the day of your death, and then die of hunger, like a dog!"

The evening twilight had fallen on the fields, the forest rose in the distance like a thick dark wall, like a mountain range. A little bat flitted noiselessly through the air like a dark speck, seeming to sow the darkness. Far off on the river was heard the beating noise of a steamboat's paddles; it was as though somewhere in the distance a monstrous bird were wheeling, making the air tremble with mighty strokes of its wings. Lunev remembered all the people who had opposed him on his way through life, and haled them all without mercy before his judgment seat. A pleasant sense of relief came to him, and as he strode alone through the fields, wrapped now in darkness, he began to sing softly. Suddenly the odour of rubbish and decay filled the air. He stopped singing; but the odour had only pleasant associations for him. He had reached the town rubbish-heap, in the narrow valley where he had so often searched with Jeremy.

The stench seemed to him more penetrating and suffocating than in his childhood.

The vision of the old rag-picker rose in his memory, and he glanced round to find in the twilight the spot where the old man used to rest with him. But he could not find it; evidently it was buried under new mountains of refuse and rubbish. He sighed, and felt that there was a part of his soul smothered beneath the refuse of life.

"If only I hadn't killed that man; then I should want nothing." The thought flashed through his brain; but immediately from his heart came another, answering: "What has that man to do with my life? He is only my misfortune, not my sin."

Suddenly there was a slight rustling, a little dog slipped past Ilya's feet, and fled, whimpering softly. Ilya shuddered; he felt as though a part of this darkness of night had taken life and then vanished again, groaning.

"It's all the same," he thought. "Even without that, there'd be no peace in my heart. How many injuries I have endured; how many more I have seen others bear! Once the heart is wounded, it never ceases to feel pain."

He paced slowly along the edge of the valley. His feet sank in the dust. He could hear the wood-shavings and pieces of paper rustle and crackle as he walked. An open part of the ground, not yet encumbered with rubbish, led away into the valley like a narrow tongue of land. He went to the end of it, and there sat down. Here the air was fresher, and as his eyes travelled along the gully, they rested far off on the steely ribbon of the river. The lights of invisible vessels glimmered on the water, which seemed as still as ice, and one light swayed, like a red speck, in the air. Another glowed steadily, green and foreboding, without rays; and at his feet, full of mist, the wide throat of the valley seemed itself like the bed of a stream, wherein black air-waves rolled noiselessly. Deep melancholy fell on Ilya's heart. He looked down and thought, "A moment ago I felt full of courage, light, and happy, and now it's all gone again. Why does life drive a man on and on against his will, where he has no desire to go? Everything in life is so oppressive and heavy, full of injustice, full of perplexity! Perhaps Jakov is right—men must first of all understand themselves, how they live and by what laws?"

He remembered how strange, almost hostile, Jakov had been towards him to-day, and he grew more sorrowful as he remembered. Suddenly there was a noise in the valley, a mass of earth had loosened and rolled down. The damp night wind breathed on Ilya's face; he looked up to the sky. The stars burned shyly, and over the wood the great red ball of the moon heaved slowly up, like a huge, pitiless eye. And like the bat through the twilight, dark images and memories fluttered through Ilya's soul. They came and went without solving the riddles that oppressed him, and denser and heavier grew the darkness over his heart.