The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories

By the time they reached the house, Yegor Semyonitch had got up.Kovrin did not feel sleepy; he talked to the old man and went to the garden with him.Yegor Semyonitch was a tall, broad-shouldered, corpulent man, and he suffered from asthma, yet he walked so fast that it was hard work to hurry after him.He had an extremely preoccupied air; he was always hurrying somewhere, with an expression that suggested that if he were one minute late all would be ruined!

"Here is a business, brother ..."he began, standing still to take breath."On the surface of the ground, as you see, is frost; but if you raise the thermometer on a stick fourteen feet above the ground, there it is warm....Why is that?"

"I really don't know," said Kovrin, and he laughed.

"H'm!...One can't know everything, of course....However large the intellect may be, you can't find room for everything in it.I suppose you still go in chiefly for philosophy?"

"Yes, I lecture in psychology; I am working at philosophy in general."

"And it does not bore you?"

"On the contrary, it's all I live for."

"Well, God bless you!..."said Yegor Semyonitch, meditatively stroking his grey whiskers."God bless you!...I am delighted about you ...delighted, my boy...."

But suddenly he listened, and, with a terrible face, ran off and quickly disappeared behind the trees in a cloud of smoke.

"Who tied this horse to an apple-tree?"Kovrin heard his despairing, heart-rending cry."Who is the low scoundrel who has dared to tie this horse to an apple-tree?My God, my God!They have ruined everything; they have spoilt everything; they have done everything filthy, horrible, and abominable.The orchard's done for, the orchard's ruined.My God!"

When he came back to Kovrin, his face looked exhausted and mortified.

"What is one to do with these accursed people?"he said in a tearful voice, flinging up his hands."Styopka was carting dung at night, and tied the horse to an apple-tree!He twisted the reins round it, the rascal, as tightly as he could, so that the bark is rubbed off in three places.What do you think of that!I spoke to him and he stands like a post and only blinks his eyes.Hanging is too good for him."

Growing calmer, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.

"Well, God bless you!...God bless you!..."he muttered."I am very glad you have come.Unutterably glad....Thank you."

Then, with the same rapid step and preoccupied face, he made the round of the whole garden, and showed his former ward all his greenhouses and hot-houses, his covered-in garden, and two apiaries which he called the marvel of our century.

While they were walking the sun rose, flooding the garden with brilliant light.It grew warm.Foreseeing a long, bright, cheerful day, Kovrin recollected that it was only the beginning of May, and that he had before him a whole summer as bright, cheerful, and long; and suddenly there stirred in his bosom a joyous, youthful feeling, such as he used to experience in his childhood, running about in that garden.And he hugged the old man and kissed him affectionately.Both of them, feeling touched, went indoors and drank tea out of old-fashioned china cups, with cream and satisfying krendels made with milk and eggs; and these trifles reminded Kovrin again of his childhood and boyhood.The delightful present was blended with the impressions of the past that stirred within him; there was a tightness at his heart; yet he was happy.

He waited till Tanya was awake and had coffee with her, went for a walk, then went to his room and sat down to work.He read attentively, making notes, and from time to time raised his eyes to look out at the open windows or at the fresh, still dewy flowers in the vases on the table; and again he dropped his eyes to his book, and it seemed to him as though every vein in his body was quivering and fluttering with pleasure.

II

In the country he led just as nervous and restless a life as in town.He read and wrote a great deal, he studied Italian, and when he was out for a walk, thought with pleasure that he would soon sit down to work again.He slept so little that every one wondered at him; if he accidentally dozed for half an hour in the daytime, he would lie awake all night, and, after a sleepless night, would feel cheerful and vigorous as though nothing had happened.

He talked a great deal, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars.Very often, almost every day, young ladies of neighbouring families would come to the Pesotskys', and would sing and play the piano with Tanya; sometimes a young neighbour who was a good violinist would come, too.Kovrin listened with eagerness to the music and singing, and was exhausted by it, and this showed itself by his eyes closing and his head falling to one side.

One day he was sitting on the balcony after evening tea, reading.At the same time, in the drawing-room, Tanya taking soprano, one of the young ladies a contralto, and the young man with his violin, were practising a well-known serenade of Braga's.Kovrin listened to the words—they were Russian—and could not understand their meaning.At last, leaving his book and listening attentively, he understood: a maiden, full of sick fancies, heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a holy harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven.Kovrin's eyes began to close.He got up, and in exhaustion walked up and down the drawing-room, and then the dining-room.When the singing was over he took Tanya's arm, and with her went out on the balcony.

"I have been all day thinking of a legend," he said."I don't remember whether I have read it somewhere or heard it, but it is a strange and almost grotesque legend.To begin with, it is somewhat obscure.A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia....Some miles from where he was, some fisherman saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface of a lake.This second monk was a mirage.Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend does not recognise, and listen to the rest.From that mirage there was cast another mirage, then from that other a third, so that the image of the black monk began to be repeated endlessly from one layer of the atmosphere to another.So that he was seen at one time in Africa, at another in Spain, then in Italy, then in the Far North....Then he passed out of the atmosphere of the earth, and now he is wandering all over the universe, still never coming into conditions in which he might disappear.Possibly he may be seen now in Mars or in some star of the Southern Cross.But, my dear, the real point on which the whole legend hangs lies in the fact that, exactly a thousand years from the day when the monk walked in the desert, the mirage will return to the atmosphere of the earth again and will appear to men.And it seems that the thousand years is almost up....According to the legend, we may look out for the black monk to-day or to-morrow."

"A queer mirage," said Tanya, who did not like the legend.

"But the most wonderful part of it all," laughed Kovrin, "is that I simply cannot recall where I got this legend from.Have I read it somewhere?Have I heard it?Or perhaps I dreamed of the black monk.I swear I don't remember.But the legend interests me.I have been thinking about it all day."

Letting Tanya go back to her visitors, he went out of the house, and, lost in meditation, walked by the flower-beds.The sun was already setting.The flowers, having just been watered, gave forth a damp, irritating fragrance.Indoors they began singing again, and in the distance the violin had the effect of a human voice.Kovrin, racking his brains to remember where he had read or heard the legend, turned slowly towards the park, and unconsciously went as far as the river.By a little path that ran along the steep bank, between the bare roots, he went down to the water, disturbed the peewits there and frightened two ducks.The last rays of the setting sun still threw light here and there on the gloomy pines, but it was quite dark on the surface of the river.Kovrin crossed to the other side by the narrow bridge.Before him lay a wide field covered with young rye not yet in blossom.There was no living habitation, no living soul in the distance, and it seemed as though the little path, if one went along it, would take one to the unknown, mysterious place where the sun had just gone down, and where the evening glow was flaming in immensity and splendour.

"How open, how free, how still it is here!"thought Kovrin, walking along the path."And it feels as though all the world were watching me, hiding and waiting for me to understand it...."

But then waves began running across the rye, and a light evening breeze softly touched his uncovered head.A minute later there was another gust of wind, but stronger—the rye began rustling, and he heard behind him the hollow murmur of the pines.Kovrin stood still in amazement.From the horizon there rose up to the sky, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, a tall black column.Its outline was indistinct, but from the first instant it could be seen that it was not standing still, but moving with fearful rapidity, moving straight towards Kovrin, and the nearer it came the smaller and the more distinct it was.Kovrin moved aside into the rye to make way for it, and only just had time to do so.

A monk, dressed in black, with a grey head and black eyebrows, his arms crossed over his breast, floated by him....His bare feet did not touch the earth.After he had floated twenty feet beyond him, he looked round at Kovrin, and nodded to him with a friendly but sly smile.But what a pale, fearfully pale, thin face!Beginning to grow larger again, he flew across the river, collided noiselessly with the clay bank and pines, and passing through them, vanished like smoke.

"Why, you see," muttered Kovrin, "there must be truth in the legend."

Without trying to explain to himself the strange apparition, glad that he had succeeded in seeing so near and so distinctly, not only the monk's black garments, but even his face and eyes, agreeably excited, he went back to the house.

In the park and in the garden people were moving about quietly, in the house they were playing—so he alone had seen the monk.He had an intense desire to tell Tanya and Yegor Semyonitch, but he reflected that they would certainly think his words the ravings of delirium, and that would frighten them; he had better say nothing.

He laughed aloud, sang, and danced the mazurka; he was in high spirits, and all of them, the visitors and Tanya, thought he had a peculiar look, radiant and inspired, and that he was very interesting.

III

After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think about the monk.But a minute later Tanya came in.

"Here, Andryusha; read father's articles," she said, giving him a bundle of pamphlets and proofs."They are splendid articles.He writes capitally."

"Capitally, indeed!"said Yegor Semyonitch, following her and smiling constrainedly; he was ashamed."Don't listen to her, please; don't read them!Though, if you want to go to sleep, read them by all means; they are a fine soporific."

"I think they are splendid articles," said Tanya, with deep conviction."You read them, Andryusha, and persuade father to write oftener.He could write a complete manual of horticulture."

Yegor Semyonitch gave a forced laugh, blushed, and began uttering the phrases usually made use of by an embarrassed author.At last he began to give way.

"In that case, begin with Gaucher's article and these Russian articles," he muttered, turning over the pamphlets with a trembling hand, "or else you won't understand.Before you read my objections, you must know what I am objecting to.But it's all nonsense ...tiresome stuff.Besides, I believe it's bedtime."

Tanya went away.Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin and heaved a deep sigh.

"Yes, my boy ..."he began after a pause."That's how it is, my dear lecturer.Here I write articles, and take part in exhibitions, and receive medals....Pesotsky, they say, has apples the size of a head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made his fortune with his garden.In short, 'Kotcheby is rich and glorious.'But one asks oneself: what is it all for?The garden is certainly fine, a model.It's not really a garden, but a regular institution, which is of the greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new era in Russian agriculture and Russian industry.But, what's it for?What's the object of it?"

"The fact speaks for itself."

"I do not mean in that sense.I meant to ask: what will happen to the garden when I die?In the condition in which you see it now, it would not be maintained for one month without me.The whole secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I love the work.Do you understand?I love it perhaps more than myself.Look at me; I do everything myself.I work from morning to night: I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting myself.I do it all myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and irritable till I am rude.The whole secret lies in loving it—that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease, with one's heart far away, afraid that something may have happened in the garden.But when I die, who will look after it?Who will work?The gardener?The labourers?Yes?But I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy in the garden is not a hare, not a cockchafer, and not the frost, but any outside person."

"And Tanya?"asked Kovrin, laughing."She can't be more harmful than a hare?She loves the work and understands it."

"Yes, she loves it and understands it.If after my death the garden goes to her and she is the mistress, of course nothing better could be wished.But if, which God forbid, she should marry," Yegor Semyonitch whispered, and looked with a frightened look at Kovrin, "that's just it.If she marries and children come, she will have no time to think about the garden.What I fear most is: she will marry some fine gentleman, and he will be greedy, and he will let the garden to people who will run it for profit, and everything will go to the devil the very first year!In our work females are the scourge of God!"

Yegor Semyonitch sighed and paused for a while.

"Perhaps it is egoism, but I tell you frankly: I don't want Tanya to get married.I am afraid of it!There is one young dandy comes to see us, bringing his violin and scraping on it; I know Tanya will not marry him, I know it quite well; but I can't bear to see him!Altogether, my boy, I am very queer.I know that."

Yegor Semyonitch got up and walked about the room in excitement, and it was evident that he wanted to say something very important, but could not bring himself to it.

"I am very fond of you, and so I am going to speak to you openly," he decided at last, thrusting his hands into his pockets."I deal plainly with certain delicate questions, and say exactly what I think, and I cannot endure so-called hidden thoughts.I will speak plainly: you are the only man to whom I should not be afraid to marry my daughter.You are a clever man with a good heart, and would not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the chief reason is that I love you as a son, and I am proud of you.If Tanya and you could get up a romance somehow, then—well!I should be very glad and even happy.I tell you this plainly, without mincing matters, like an honest man."

Kovrin laughed.Yegor Semyonitch opened the door to go out, and stood in the doorway.

"If Tanya and you had a son, I would make a horticulturist of him," he said, after a moment's thought."However, this is idle dreaming.Goodnight."

Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and took up the articles.The title of one was "On Intercropping"; of another, "A few Words on the Remarks of Monsieur Z.concerning the Trenching of the Soil for a New Garden"; a third, "Additional Matter concerning Grafting with a Dormant Bud"; and they were all of the same sort.But what a restless, jerky tone!What nervous, almost hysterical passion!Here was an article, one would have thought, with most peaceable and impersonal contents: the subject of it was the Russian Antonovsky Apple.But Yegor Semyonitch began it with "Audiatur altera pars," and finished it with "Sapienti sat"; and between these two quotations a perfect torrent of venomous phrases directed "at the learned ignorance of our recognised horticultural authorities, who observe Nature from the height of their university chairs," or at Monsieur Gaucher, "whose success has been the work of the vulgar and the dilettanti."And then followed an inappropriate, affected, and insincere regret that peasants who stole fruit and broke the branches could not nowadays be flogged.

"It is beautiful, charming, healthy work, but even in this there is strife and passion," thought Kovrin, "I suppose that everywhere and in all careers men of ideas are nervous, and marked by exaggerated sensitiveness.Most likely it must be so."

He thought of Tanya, who was so pleased with Yegor Semyonitch's articles.Small, pale, and so thin that her shoulder-blades stuck out, her eyes, wide and open, dark and intelligent, had an intent gaze, as though looking for something.She walked like her father with a little hurried step.She talked a great deal and was fond of arguing, accompanying every phrase, however insignificant, with expressive mimicry and gesticulation.No doubt she was nervous in the extreme.

Kovrin went on reading the articles, but he understood nothing of them, and flung them aside.The same pleasant excitement with which he had earlier in the evening danced the mazurka and listened to the music was now mastering him again and rousing a multitude of thoughts.He got up and began walking about the room, thinking about the black monk.It occurred to him that if this strange, supernatural monk had appeared to him only, that meant that he was ill and had reached the point of having hallucinations.This reflection frightened him, but not for long.

"But I am all right, and I am doing no harm to any one; so there is no harm in my hallucinations," he thought; and he felt happy again.

He sat down on the sofa and clasped his hands round his head.Restraining the unaccountable joy which filled his whole being, he then paced up and down again, and sat down to his work.But the thought that he read in the book did not satisfy him.He wanted something gigantic, unfathomable, stupendous.Towards morning he undressed and reluctantly went to bed: he ought to sleep.

When he heard the footsteps of Yegor Semyonitch going out into the garden, Kovrin rang the bell and asked the footman to bring him some wine.He drank several glasses of Lafitte, then wrapped himself up, head and all; his consciousness grew clouded and he fell asleep.

IV

Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya often quarrelled and said nasty things to each other.

They quarrelled about something that morning.Tanya burst out crying and went to her room.She would not come down to dinner nor to tea.At first Yegor Semyonitch went about looking sulky and dignified, as though to give every one to understand that for him the claims of justice and good order were more important than anything else in the world; but he could not keep it up for long, and soon sank into depression.He walked about the park dejectedly, continually sighing: "Oh, my God!My God!"and at dinner did not eat a morsel.At last, guilty and conscience-stricken, he knocked at the locked door and called timidly:

"Tanya!Tanya!"

And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying but still determined:

"Leave me alone, if you please."

The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the whole household, even in the labourers working in the garden.Kovrin was absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he, too, felt dreary and uncomfortable.To dissipate the general ill-humour in some way, he made up his mind to intervene, and towards evening he knocked at Tanya's door.He was admitted.

"Fie, fie, for shame!"he began playfully, looking with surprise at Tanya's tear-stained, woebegone face, flushed in patches with crying."Is it really so serious?Fie, fie!"

"But if you knew how he tortures me!"she said, and floods of scalding tears streamed from her big eyes."He torments me to death," she went on, wringing her hands."I said nothing to him ...nothing ...I only said that there was no need to keep ...too many labourers ...if we could hire them by the day when we wanted them.You know ...you know the labourers have been doing nothing for a whole week....I ...I ...only said that, and he shouted and ...said ...a lot of horrible insulting things to me.What for?"

"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair."You've quarrelled with each other, you've cried, and that's enough.You must not be angry for long—that's wrong ...all the more as he loves you beyond everything."

"He has ...has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on, sobbing."I hear nothing but abuse and ...insults.He thinks I am of no use in the house.Well!He is right.I shall go away to-morrow; I shall become a telegraph clerk....I don't care...."

"Come, come, come....You mustn't cry, Tanya.You mustn't, dear....You are both hot-tempered and irritable, and you are both to blame.Come along; I will reconcile you."

Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on crying, twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands, as though some terrible misfortune had really befallen her.He felt all the sorrier for her because her grief was not a serious one, yet she suffered extremely.What trivialities were enough to make this little creature miserable for a whole day, perhaps for her whole life!Comforting Tanya, Kovrin thought that, apart from this girl and her father, he might hunt the world over and would not find people who would love him as one of themselves, as one of their kindred.If it had not been for those two he might very likely, having lost his father and mother in early childhood, never to the day of his death have known what was meant by genuine affection and that naïve, uncritical love which is only lavished on very close blood relations; and he felt that the nerves of this weeping, shaking girl responded to his half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron to a magnet.He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked woman, but pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.

And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand and wiping away her tears....At last she left off crying.She went on for a long time complaining of her father and her hard, insufferable life in that house, entreating Kovrin to put himself in her place; then she began, little by little, smiling, and sighing that God had given her such a bad temper.At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool, and ran out of the room.

When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were walking side by side along an avenue as though nothing had happened, and both were eating rye bread with salt on it, as both were hungry.

V

Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park.Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh—visitors were arriving.When the shades of evening began falling on the garden, the sounds of the violin and singing voices reached him indistinctly, and that reminded him of the black monk.Where, in what land or in what planet, was that optical absurdity moving now?

Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination the dark apparition he had seen in the rye-field, when, from behind a pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out noiselessly, without the slightest rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey head, all in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his black eyebrows stood out conspicuously on his pale, death-like face.Nodding his head graciously, this beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.

For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though he were thinking something to himself.

"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin."Why are you here and sitting still?That does not fit in with the legend."

"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not immediately turning his face towards him."The legend, the mirage, and I are all the products of your excited imagination.I am a phantom."

"Then you don't exist?"said Kovrin.

"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile."I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist in nature."

"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though you really had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin."I did not know that my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena.But why do you look at me with such enthusiasm?Do you like me?"

"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of God.You do the service of eternal truth.Your thoughts, your designs, the marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your life, bear the Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are consecrated to the rational and the beautiful—that is, to what is eternal."

"You said 'eternal truth.'...But is eternal truth of use to man and within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"

"There is eternal life," said the monk.

"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"

"Yes, of course.A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men.And the more there are like you on earth, the sooner will this future be realised.Without you who serve the higher principle and live in full understanding and freedom, mankind would be of little account; developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long time for the end of its earthly history.You will lead it some thousands of years earlier into the kingdom of eternal truth—and therein lies your supreme service.You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which rests upon men."

"And what is the object of eternal life?"asked Kovrin.

"As of all life—enjoyment.True enjoyment lies in knowledge, and eternal life provides innumerable and inexhaustible sources of knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In My Father's house there are many mansions.'"

"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!"said Kovrin, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

"I am very glad."

"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of your reality.You are a phantom, an hallucination.So I am mentally deranged, not normal?"

"What if you are?Why trouble yourself?You are ill because you have overworked and exhausted yourself, and that means that you have sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at hand when you will give up life itself to it.What could be better?That is the goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble natures strive."

"If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?"

"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not see phantoms, too?The learned say now that genius is allied to madness.My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd.Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously agitate those who place the object of life in the present—that is, the common herd."

"The Romans used to say: Mens sana in corpore sano."

"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true.Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk—is repellent to the animal side of man—that is, his physical health.I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to the common herd."

"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said Kovrin."It is as though you had seen and overheard my secret thoughts.But don't let us talk about me.What do you mean by 'eternal truth'?"

The monk did not answer.Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish his face.His features grew blurred and misty.Then the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the evening twilight, and he vanished altogether.

"The hallucination is over," said Kovrin; and he laughed."It's a pity."

He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy.The little the monk had said to him had flattered, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being.To be one of the chosen, to serve eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the kingdom of God some thousands of years sooner—that is, to free men from some thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to sacrifice to the idea everything—youth, strength, health; to be ready to die for the common weal—what an exalted, what a happy lot!He recalled his past—pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what he had learned himself and what he had taught to others, and decided that there was no exaggeration in the monk's words.

Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a different dress.

"Are you here?"she said."And we have been looking and looking for you....But what is the matter with you?"she asked in wonder, glancing at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of tears."How strange you are, Andryusha!"

"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders."I am more than pleased: I am happy.Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an extraordinary, nice creature.Dear Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!"

He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:

"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment.But I can't tell you all about it or you would call me mad and not believe me.Let us talk of you.Dear, delightful Tanya!I love you, and am used to loving you.To have you near me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has become a necessity of my existence; I don't know how I shall get on without you when I go back home."

"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days.We are humble people and you are a great man."

"No; let us talk in earnest!"he said."I shall take you with me, Tanya.Yes?Will you come with me?Will you be mine?"

"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not come, and patches of colour came into her face.

She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the house, but further into the park.

"I was not thinking of it ...I was not thinking of it," she said, wringing her hands in despair.

And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant, enthusiastic face:

"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you, Tanya, can give me.I am happy!I am happy!"

She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten years older all at once, while he thought her beautiful and expressed his rapture aloud:

"How lovely she is!"

VI

Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance had been got up, but that there would even be a wedding, Yegor Semyonitch spent a long time in pacing from one corner of the room to the other, trying to conceal his agitation.His hands began trembling, his neck swelled and turned purple, he ordered his racing droshky and drove off somewhere.Tanya, seeing how he lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over his ears, understood what he was feeling, shut herself up in her room, and cried the whole day.

In the hot-houses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the packing and sending off of these tender and fragile goods to Moscow took a great deal of care, work, and trouble.Owing to the fact that the summer was very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every tree, and a great deal of time and labour was spent on doing it.Numbers of caterpillars made their appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers.In spite of all that, they had already to book autumn orders for fruit and trees, and to carry on a great deal of correspondence.And at the very busiest time, when no one seemed to have a free moment, the work of the fields carried off more than half their labourers from the garden.Yegor Semyonitch, sunburnt, exhausted, ill-humoured, galloped from the fields to the garden and back again; cried that he was being torn to pieces, and that he should put a bullet through his brains.

Then came the fuss and worry of the trousseau, to which the Pesotskys attached a good deal of importance.Every one's head was in a whirl from the snipping of the scissors, the rattle of the sewing-machine, the smell of hot irons, and the caprices of the dressmaker, a huffy and nervous lady.And, as ill-luck would have it, visitors came every day, who had to be entertained, fed, and even put up for the night.But all this hard labour passed unnoticed as though in a fog.Tanya felt that love and happiness had taken her unawares, though she had, since she was fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry her and no one else.She was bewildered, could not grasp it, could not believe herself....At one minute such joy would swoop down upon her that she longed to fly away to the clouds and there pray to God, at another moment she would remember that in August she would have to part from her home and leave her father; or, goodness knows why, the idea would occur to her that she was worthless—insignificant and unworthy of a great man like Kovrin—and she would go to her room, lock herself in, and cry bitterly for several hours.When there were visitors, she would suddenly fancy that Kovrin looked extraordinarily handsome, and that all the women were in love with him and envying her, and her soul was filled with pride and rapture, as though she had vanquished the whole world; but he had only to smile politely at any young lady for her to be trembling with jealousy, to retreat to her room—and tears again.These new sensations mastered her completely; she helped her father mechanically, without noticing peaches, caterpillars or labourers, or how rapidly the time was passing.

It was almost the same with Yegor Semyonitch.He worked from morning till night, was always in a hurry, was irritable, and flew into rages, but all of this was in a sort of spellbound dream.It seemed as though there were two men in him: one was the real Yegor Semyonitch, who was moved to indignation, and clutched his head in despair when he heard of some irregularity from Ivan Karlovitch the gardener; and another—not the real one—who seemed as though he were half drunk, would interrupt a business conversation at half a word, touch the gardener on the shoulder, and begin muttering:

"Say what you like, there is a great deal in blood.His mother was a wonderful woman, most high-minded and intelligent.It was a pleasure to look at her good, candid, pure face; it was like the face of an angel.She drew splendidly, wrote verses, spoke five foreign languages, sang....Poor thing!she died of consumption.The Kingdom of Heaven be hers."

The unreal Yegor Semyonitch sighed, and after a pause went on:

"When he was a boy and growing up in my house, he had the same angelic face, good and candid.The way he looks and talks and moves is as soft and elegant as his mother's.And his intellect!We were always struck with his intelligence.To be sure, it's not for nothing he's a Master of Arts!It's not for nothing!And wait a bit, Ivan Karlovitch, what will he be in ten years' time?He will be far above us!"

But at this point the real Yegor Semyonitch, suddenly coming to himself, would make a terrible face, would clutch his head and cry:

"The devils!They have spoilt everything!They have ruined everything!They have spoilt everything!The garden's done for, the garden's ruined!"

Kovrin, meanwhile, worked with the same ardour as before, and did not notice the general commotion.Love only added fuel to the flames.After every talk with Tanya he went to his room, happy and triumphant, took up his book or his manuscript with the same passion with which he had just kissed Tanya and told her of his love.What the black monk had told him of the chosen of God, of eternal truth, of the brilliant future of mankind and so on, gave peculiar and extraordinary significance to his work, and filled his soul with pride and the consciousness of his own exalted consequence.Once or twice a week, in the park or in the house, he met the black monk and had long conversations with him, but this did not alarm him, but, on the contrary, delighted him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such apparitions only visited the elect few who rise up above their fellows and devote themselves to the service of the idea.

One day the monk appeared at dinner-time and sat in the dining-room window.Kovrin was delighted, and very adroitly began a conversation with Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya of what might be of interest to the monk; the black-robed visitor listened and nodded his head graciously, and Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya listened, too, and smiled gaily without suspecting that Kovrin was not talking to them but to his hallucination.

Imperceptibly the fast of the Assumption was approaching, and soon after came the wedding, which, at Yegor Semyonitch's urgent desire, was celebrated with "a flourish"—that is, with senseless festivities that lasted for two whole days and nights.Three thousand roubles' worth of food and drink was consumed, but the music of the wretched hired band, the noisy toasts, the scurrying to and fro of the footmen, the uproar and crowding, prevented them from appreciating the taste of the expensive wines and wonderful delicacies ordered from Moscow.

VII

One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed, reading a French novel.Poor Tanya, who had headaches in the evenings from living in town, to which she was not accustomed, had been asleep a long while, and, from time to time, articulated some incoherent phrase in her restless dreams.

It struck three o'clock.Kovrin put out the light and lay down to sleep, lay for a long time with his eyes closed, but could not get to sleep because, as he fancied, the room was very hot and Tanya talked in her sleep.At half-past four he lighted the candle again, and this time he saw the black monk sitting in an arm-chair near the bed.

"Good-morning," said the monk, and after a brief pause he asked: "What are you thinking of now?"

"Of fame," answered Kovrin. "In the French novel I have just been reading, there is a description of a young savant, who does silly things and pines away through worrying about fame.I can't understand such anxiety."

"Because you are wise.Your attitude towards fame is one of indifference, as towards a toy which no longer interests you."

"Yes, that is true."

"Renown does not allure you now.What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding?Moreover, happily there are too many of you for the weak memory of mankind to be able to retain your names."

"Of course," assented Kovrin."Besides, why should they be remembered?But let us talk of something else.Of happiness, for instance.What is happiness?"

When the clock struck five, he was sitting on the bed, dangling his feet to the carpet, talking to the monk:

"In ancient times a happy man grew at last frightened of his happiness —it was so great!—and to propitiate the gods he brought as a sacrifice his favourite ring.Do you know, I, too, like Polykrates, begin to be uneasy of my happiness.It seems strange to me that from morning to night I feel nothing but joy; it fills my whole being and smothers all other feelings.I don't know what sadness, grief, or boredom is.Here I am not asleep; I suffer from sleeplessness, but I am not dull.I say it in earnest; I begin to feel perplexed."

"But why?"the monk asked in wonder."Is joy a supernatural feeling?Ought it not to be the normal state of man?The more highly a man is developed on the intellectual and moral side, the more independent he is, the more pleasure life gives him.Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius, were joyful, not sorrowful.And the Apostle tells us: 'Rejoice continually'; 'Rejoice and be glad.'"

"But will the gods be suddenly wrathful?"Kovrin jested; and he laughed."If they take from me comfort and make me go cold and hungry, it won't be very much to my taste."

Meanwhile Tanya woke up and looked with amazement and horror at her husband.He was talking, addressing the arm-chair, laughing and gesticulating; his eyes were gleaming, and there was something strange in his laugh.

"Andryusha, whom are you talking to?"she asked, clutching the hand he stretched out to the monk."Andryusha!Whom?"

"Oh!Whom?"said Kovrin in confusion."Why, to him....He is sitting here," he said, pointing to the black monk.

"There is no one here ...no one!Andryusha, you are ill!"

Tanya put her arm round her husband and held him tight, as though protecting him from the apparition, and put her hand over his eyes.

"You are ill!"she sobbed, trembling all over."Forgive me, my precious, my dear one, but I have noticed for a long time that your mind is clouded in some way....You are mentally ill, Andryusha...."

Her trembling infected him, too.He glanced once more at the arm-chair, which was now empty, felt a sudden weakness in his arms and legs, was frightened, and began dressing.

"It's nothing, Tanya; it's nothing," he muttered, shivering."I really am not quite well ...it's time to admit that."

"I have noticed it for a long time ...and father has noticed it," she said, trying to suppress her sobs."You talk to yourself, smile somehow strangely ...and can't sleep.Oh, my God, my God, save us!"she said in terror."But don't be frightened, Andryusha; for God's sake don't be frightened...."

She began dressing, too.Only now, looking at her, Kovrin realised the danger of his position—realised the meaning of the black monk and his conversations with him.It was clear to him now that he was mad.

Neither of them knew why they dressed and went into the dining-room: she in front and he following her.There they found Yegor Semyonitch standing in his dressing-gown and with a candle in his hand.He was staying with them, and had been awakened by Tanya's sobs.

"Don't be frightened, Andryusha," Tanya was saying, shivering as though in a fever; "don't be frightened....Father, it will all pass over ...it will all pass over...."

Kovrin was too much agitated to speak.He wanted to say to his father-in-law in a playful tone: "Congratulate me; it appears I have gone out of my mind"; but he could only move his lips and smile bitterly.

At nine o'clock in the morning they put on his jacket and fur coat, wrapped him up in a shawl, and took him in a carriage to a doctor.

VIII

Summer had come again, and the doctor advised their going into the country.Kovrin had recovered; he had left off seeing the black monk, and he had only to get up his strength.Staying at his father-in-law's, he drank a great deal of milk, worked for only two hours out of the twenty-four, and neither smoked nor drank wine.

On the evening before Elijah's Day they had an evening service in the house.When the deacon was handing the priest the censer the immense old room smelt like a graveyard, and Kovrin felt bored.He went out into the garden.Without noticing the gorgeous flowers, he walked about the garden, sat down on a seat, then strolled about the park; reaching the river, he went down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the water.The sullen pines with their shaggy roots, which had seen him a year before so young, so joyful and confident, were not whispering now, but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not recognise him.And, indeed, his head was closely cropped, his beautiful long hair was gone, his step was lagging, his face was fuller and paler than last summer.

He crossed by the footbridge to the other side.Where the year before there had been rye the oats stood, reaped, and lay in rows.The sun had set and there was a broad stretch of glowing red on the horizon, a sign of windy weather next day.It was still.Looking in the direction from which the year before the black monk had first appeared, Kovrin stood for twenty minutes, till the evening glow had begun to fade....

When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service was over.Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were sitting on the steps of the verandah, drinking tea.They were talking of something, but, seeing Kovrin, ceased at once, and he concluded from their faces that their talk had been about him.

"I believe it is time for you to have your milk," Tanya said to her husband.

"No, it is not time yet ..."he said, sitting down on the bottom step."Drink it yourself; I don't want it."

Tanya exchanged a troubled glance with her father, and said in a guilty voice:

"You notice yourself that milk does you good."

"Yes, a great deal of good!"Kovrin laughed."I congratulate you: I have gained a pound in weight since Friday."He pressed his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: "Why, why have you cured me?Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision, cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every step—all this will reduce me at last to idiocy.I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and even happy; I was interesting and original.Now I have become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like every one else: I am—mediocrity; I am weary of life....Oh, how cruelly you have treated me!...I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any one?I ask, what harm did that do any one?"

"Goodness knows what you are saying!"sighed Yegor Semyonitch."It's positively wearisome to listen to it."

"Then don't listen."

The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated Kovrin now; he answered him drily, coldly, and even rudely, never looked at him but with irony and hatred, while Yegor Semyonitch was overcome with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily, though he was not conscious of any fault in himself.At a loss to understand why their charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya huddled up to her father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to understand and could not understand, and all that was clear to her was that their relations were growing worse and worse every day, that of late her father had begun to look much older, and her husband had grown irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and uninteresting.She could not laugh or sing; at dinner she ate nothing; did not sleep for nights together, expecting something awful, and was so worn out that on one occasion she lay in a dead faint from dinner-time till evening.During the service she thought her father was crying, and now while the three of them were sitting together on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.

"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration," said Kovrin."If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog.Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin.If only you knew," Kovrin said with annoyance, "how grateful I am to you."

He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got up quickly and went into the house.It was still, and the fragrance of the tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in at the open window.The moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano in the big dark dining-room.Kovrin remembered the raptures of the previous summer when there had been the same scent of the marvel of Peru and the moon had shone in at the window.To bring back the mood of last year he went quickly to his study, lighted a strong cigar, and told the footman to bring him some wine.But the cigar left a bitter and disgusting taste in his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour as it had the year before.And so great is the effect of giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of wine made him giddy, and brought on palpitations of the heart, so that he was obliged to take bromide.

Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:

"Father adores you.You are cross with him about something, and it is killing him.Look at him; he is ageing, not from day to day, but from hour to hour.I entreat you, Andryusha, for God's sake, for the sake of your dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind, be affectionate to him."

"I can't, I don't want to."

"But why?"asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over."Explain why."

"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin carelessly; and he shrugged his shoulders."But we won't talk about him: he is your father."

"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a fixed point."Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house.You have changed, grown unlike yourself....You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense....Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you.Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words."You are clever, kind, noble.You will be just to father.He is so good."

"He is not good; he is just good-natured.Burlesque old uncles like your father, with well-fed, good-natured faces, extraordinarily hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch me and amuse me in novels and in farces and in life; now I dislike them.They are egoists to the marrow of their bones.What disgusts me most of all is their being so well-fed, and that purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach."

Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.

"This is torture," she said, and from her voice it was evident that she was utterly exhausted, and that it was hard for her to speak."Not one moment of peace since the winter....Why, it's awful!My God!I am wretched."

"Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the innocents.Of course."

His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant.Hatred and an ironical expression did not suit him.And, indeed, she had noticed before that there was something lacking in his face, as though ever since his hair had been cut his face had changed, too.She wanted to say something wounding to him, but immediately she caught herself in this antagonistic feeling, she was frightened and went out of the bedroom.

IX

Kovrin received a professorship at the University.The inaugural address was fixed for the second of December, and a notice to that effect was hung up in the corridor at the University.But on the day appointed he informed the students' inspector, by telegram, that he was prevented by illness from giving the lecture.

He had hæmorrhage from the throat.He was often spitting blood, but it happened two or three times a month that there was a considerable loss of blood, and then he grew extremely weak and sank into a drowsy condition.This illness did not particularly frighten him, as he knew that his mother had lived for ten years or longer suffering from the same disease, and the doctors assured him that there was no danger, and had only advised him to avoid excitement, to lead a regular life, and to speak as little as possible.

In January again his lecture did not take place owing to the same reason, and in February it was too late to begin the course.It had to be postponed to the following year.

By now he was living not with Tanya, but with another woman, who was two years older than he was, and who looked after him as though he were a baby.He was in a calm and tranquil state of mind; he readily gave in to her, and when Varvara Nikolaevna—that was the name of his friend—decided to take him to the Crimea, he agreed, though he had a presentiment that no good would come of the trip.

They reached Sevastopol in the evening and stopped at an hotel to rest and go on the next day to Yalta.They were both exhausted by the journey.Varvara Nikolaevna had some tea, went to bed and was soon asleep.But Kovrin did not go to bed.An hour before starting for the station, he had received a letter from Tanya, and had not brought himself to open it, and now it was lying in his coat pocket, and the thought of it excited him disagreeably.At the bottom of his heart he genuinely considered now that his marriage to Tanya had been a mistake.He was glad that their separation was final, and the thought of that woman who in the end had turned into a living relic, still walking about though everything seemed dead in her except her big, staring, intelligent eyes—the thought of her roused in him nothing but pity and disgust with himself.The handwriting on the envelope reminded him how cruel and unjust he had been two years before, how he had worked off his anger at his spiritual emptiness, his boredom, his loneliness, and his dissatisfaction with life by revenging himself on people in no way to blame.He remembered, also, how he had torn up his dissertation and all the articles he had written during his illness, and how he had thrown them out of window, and the bits of paper had fluttered in the wind and caught on the trees and flowers.In every line of them he saw strange, utterly groundless pretension, shallow defiance, arrogance, megalomania; and they made him feel as though he were reading a description of his vices.But when the last manuscript had been torn up and sent flying out of window, he felt, for some reason, suddenly bitter and angry; he went to his wife and said a great many unpleasant things to her.My God, how he had tormented her!One day, wanting to cause her pain, he told her that her father had played a very unattractive part in their romance, that he had asked him to marry her.Yegor Semyonitch accidentally overheard this, ran into the room, and, in his despair, could not utter a word, could only stamp and make a strange, bellowing sound as though he had lost the power of speech, and Tanya, looking at her father, had uttered a heart-rending shriek and had fallen into a swoon.It was hideous.

All this came back into his memory as he looked at the familiar writing.Kovrin went out on to the balcony; it was still warm weather and there was a smell of the sea.The wonderful bay reflected the moonshine and the lights, and was of a colour for which it was difficult to find a name.It was a soft and tender blending of dark blue and green; in places the water was like blue vitriol, and in places it seemed as though the moonlight were liquefied and filling the bay instead of water.And what harmony of colours, what an atmosphere of peace, calm, and sublimity!

In the lower storey under the balcony the windows were probably open, for women's voices and laughter could be heard distinctly.Apparently there was an evening party.

Kovrin made an effort, tore open the envelope, and, going back into his room, read:

"My father is just dead.I owe that to you, for you have killed him.Our garden is being ruined; strangers are managing it already—that is, the very thing is happening that poor father dreaded.That, too, I owe to you.I hate you with my whole soul, and I hope you may soon perish.Oh, how wretched I am!Insufferable anguish is burning my soul....My curses on you.I took you for an extraordinary man, a genius; I loved you, and you have turned out a madman...."

Kovrin could read no more, he tore up the letter and threw it away.He was overcome by an uneasiness that was akin to terror.Varvara Nikolaevna was asleep behind the screen, and he could hear her breathing.From the lower storey came the sounds of laughter and women's voices, but he felt as though in the whole hotel there were no living soul but him.Because Tanya, unhappy, broken by sorrow, had cursed him in her letter and hoped for his perdition, he felt eerie and kept glancing hurriedly at the door, as though he were afraid that the uncomprehended force which two years before had wrought such havoc in his life and in the life of those near him might come into the room and master him once more.

He knew by experience that when his nerves were out of hand the best thing for him to do was to work.He must sit down to the table and force himself, at all costs, to concentrate his mind on some one thought.He took from his red portfolio a manuscript containing a sketch of a small work of the nature of a compilation, which he had planned in case he should find it dull in the Crimea without work.He sat down to the table and began working at this plan, and it seemed to him that his calm, peaceful, indifferent mood was coming back.The manuscript with the sketch even led him to meditation on the vanity of the world.He thought how much life exacts for the worthless or very commonplace blessings it can give a man.For instance, to gain, before forty, a university chair, to be an ordinary professor, to expound ordinary and second-hand thoughts in dull, heavy, insipid language—in fact, to gain the position of a mediocre learned man, he, Kovrin, had had to study for fifteen years, to work day and night, to endure a terrible mental illness, to experience an unhappy marriage, and to do a great number of stupid and unjust things which it would have been pleasant not to remember.Kovrin recognised clearly, now, that he was a mediocrity, and readily resigned himself to it, as he considered that every man ought to be satisfied with what he is.

The plan of the volume would have soothed him completely, but the torn letter showed white on the floor and prevented him from concentrating his attention.He got up from the table, picked up the pieces of the letter and threw them out of window, but there was a light wind blowing from the sea, and the bits of paper were scattered on the windowsill.Again he was overcome by uneasiness akin to terror, and he felt as though in the whole hotel there were no living soul but himself....He went out on the balcony.The bay, like a living thing, looked at him with its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes, and seemed beckoning to him.And it really was hot and oppressive, and it would not have been amiss to have a bathe.

Suddenly in the lower storey under the balcony a violin began playing, and two soft feminine voices began singing.It was something familiar.The song was about a maiden, full of sick fancies, who heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a holy harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven....Kovrin caught his breath and there was a pang of sadness at his heart, and a thrill of the sweet, exquisite delight he had so long forgotten began to stir in his breast.

A tall black column, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, appeared on the further side of the bay.It moved with fearful rapidity across the bay, towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it came, and Kovrin only just had time to get out of the way to let it pass....The monk with bare grey head, black eyebrows, barefoot, his arms crossed over his breast, floated by him, and stood still in the middle of the room.

"Why did you not believe me?"he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin."If you had believed me then, that you were a genius, you would not have spent these two years so gloomily and so wretchedly."

Kovrin already believed that he was one of God's chosen and a genius; he vividly recalled his conversations with the monk in the past and tried to speak, but the blood flowed from his throat on to his breast, and not knowing what he was doing, he passed his hands over his breast, and his cuffs were soaked with blood.He tried to call Varvara Nikolaevna, who was asleep behind the screen; he made an effort and said:

"Tanya!"

He fell on the floor, and propping himself on his arms, called again:

"Tanya!"

He called Tanya, called to the great garden with the gorgeous flowers sprinkled with dew, called to the park, the pines with their shaggy roots, the rye-field, his marvellous learning, his youth, courage, joy—called to life, which was so lovely.He saw on the floor near his face a great pool of blood, and was too weak to utter a word, but an unspeakable, infinite happiness flooded his whole being.Below, under the balcony, they were playing the serenade, and the black monk whispered to him that he was a genius, and that he was dying only because his frail human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius.

When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came out from behind the screen, Kovrin was dead, and a blissful smile was set upon his face.

VOLODYA

AT five o'clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain, shy, sickly-looking lad of seventeen, was sitting in the arbour of the Shumihins' country villa, feeling dreary. His despondent thought flowed in three directions. In the first place, he had next day, Monday, an examination in mathematics; he knew that if he did not get through the written examination on the morrow, he would be expelled, for he had already been two years in the sixth form and had two and three-quarter marks for algebra in his annual report. In the second place, his presence at the villa of the Shumihins, a wealthy family with aristocratic pretensions, was a continual source of mortification to his amour-propre. It seemed to him that Madame Shumihin looked upon him and his maman as poor relations and dependents, that they laughed at his maman and did not respect her. He had on one occasion accidently overheard Madame Shumihin, in the verandah, telling her cousin Anna Fyodorovna that his maman still tried to look young and got herself up, that she never paid her losses at cards, and had a partiality for other people's shoes and tobacco. Every day Volodya besought his maman not to go to the Shumihins', and drew a picture of the humiliating part she played with these gentlefolk. He tried to persuade her, said rude things, but she—a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through two fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank—did not understand him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.

In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him....It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the Shumihins' cousin, who was staying with them.She was a vivacious, loud-voiced, laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her thin lips.She was neither young nor beautiful—Volodya knew that perfectly well; but for some reason he could not help thinking of her, looking at her while she shrugged her plump shoulders and moved her flat back as she played croquet, or after prolonged laughter and running up and down stairs, sank into a low chair, and, half closing her eyes and gasping for breath, pretended that she was stifling and could not breathe.She was married.Her husband, a staid and dignified architect, came once a week to the villa, slept soundly, and returned to town.Volodya's strange feeling had begun with his conceiving an unaccountable hatred for the architect, and feeling relieved every time he went back to town.

Now, sitting in the arbour, thinking of his examination next day, and of his maman, at whom they laughed, he felt an intense desire to see Nyuta (that was what the Shumihins called Anna Fyodorovna), to hear her laughter and the rustle of her dress....This desire was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and about which he dreamed every night when he went to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible; he was ashamed of it, and afraid of it as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was disagreeable to confess even to himself.

"It's not love," he said to himself."One can't fall in love with women of thirty who are married.It is only a little intrigue....Yes, an intrigue...."

Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable shyness, his lack of moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, and put himself in his imagination side by side with Nyuta, and the juxtaposition seemed to him impossible; then he made haste to imagine himself bold, handsome, witty, dressed in the latest fashion.

When his dreams were at their height, as he sat huddled together and looking at the ground in a dark corner of the arbour, he heard the sound of light footsteps.Some one was coming slowly along the avenue.Soon the steps stopped and something white gleamed in the entrance.

"Is there any one here?"asked a woman's voice.

Volodya recognised the voice, and raised his head in a fright.

"Who is here?"asked Nyuta, going into the arbour."Ah, it is you, Volodya?What are you doing here?Thinking?And how can you go on thinking, thinking, thinking?...That's the way to go out of your mind!"

Volodya got up and looked in a dazed way at Nyuta.She had only just come back from bathing.Over her shoulder there was hanging a sheet and a rough towel, and from under the white silk kerchief on her head he could see the wet hair sticking to her forehead.There was the cool damp smell of the bath-house and of almond soap still hanging about her.She was out of breath from running quickly.The top button of her blouse was undone, so that the boy saw her throat and bosom.

"Why don't you say something?"said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down."It's not polite to be silent when a lady talks to you.What a clumsy seal you are though, Volodya!You always sit, saying nothing, thinking like some philosopher.There's not a spark of life or fire in you!You are really horrid!...At your age you ought to be living, skipping, and jumping, chattering, flirting, falling in love."

Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and thought....

"He's mute," said Nyuta, with wonder; "it is strange, really....Listen!Be a man!Come, you might smile at least!Phew, the horrid philosopher!"she laughed."But do you know, Volodya, why you are such a clumsy seal?Because you don't devote yourself to the ladies.Why don't you?It's true there are no girls here, but there is nothing to prevent your flirting with the married ladies!Why don't you flirt with me, for instance?"

Volodya listened and scratched his forehead in acute and painful irresolution.

"It's only very proud people who are silent and love solitude," Nyuta went on, pulling his hand away from his forehead."You are proud, Volodya.Why do you look at me like that from under your brows?Look me straight in the face, if you please!Yes, now then, clumsy seal!"

Volodya made up his mind to speak.Wanting to smile, he twitched his lower lip, blinked, and again put his hand to his forehead.

"I ...I love you," he said.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in surprise, and laughed.

"What do I hear?"she sang, as prima-donnas sing at the opera when they hear something awful."What?What did you say?Say it again, say it again...."

"I ...I love you!"repeated Volodya.

And without his will's having any part in his action, without reflection or understanding, he took half a step towards Nyuta and clutched her by the arm.Everything was dark before his eyes, and tears came into them.The whole world was turned into one big, rough towel which smelt of the bathhouse.

"Bravo, bravo!"he heard a merry laugh."Why don't you speak?I want you to speak!Well?"

Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta's laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back.He held her round the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief and said in a calm voice:

"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine influence.But what a wicked, angry face you have!You must talk, laugh....Yes, Volodya, don't be surly; you are young and will have plenty of time for philosophising.Come, let go of me; I am going.Let go."

Without effort she released her waist, and, humming something, walked out of the arbour.Volodya was left alone.He smoothed his hair, smiled, and walked three times to and fro across the arbour, then he sat down on the bench and smiled again.He felt insufferably ashamed, so much so that he wondered that human shame could reach such a pitch of acuteness and intensity.Shame made him smile, gesticulate, and whisper some disconnected words.

He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his shyness, and, most of all, that he had had the audacity to put his arms round the waist of a respectable married woman, though, as it seemed to him, he had neither through age nor by external quality, nor by social position any right to do so.

He jumped up, went out of the arbour, and, without looking round, walked into the recesses of the garden furthest from the house.

"Ah!only to get away from here as soon as possible," he thought, clutching his head."My God!as soon as possible."

The train by which Volodya was to go back with his maman was at eight-forty. There were three hours before the train started, but he would with pleasure have gone to the station at once without waiting for his maman

At eight o'clock he went to the house.His whole figure was expressive of determination: what would be, would be!He made up his mind to go in boldly, to look them straight in the face, to speak in a loud voice, regardless of everything.

He crossed the terrace, the big hall and the drawing-room, and there stopped to take breath. He could hear them in the dining-room, drinking tea. Madame Shumihin, maman, and Nyuta were talking and laughing about something.

Volodya listened.

"I assure you!"said Nyuta."I could not believe my eyes!When he began declaring his passion and—just imagine!—put his arms round my waist, I should not have recognised him.And you know he has a way with him!When he told me he was in love with me, there was something brutal in his face, like a Circassian."

"Really!" gasped maman, going off into a peal of laughter."Really!How he does remind me of his father!"

Volodya ran back and dashed out into the open air.

"How could they talk of it aloud!" he wondered in agony, clasping his hands and looking up to the sky in horror. "They talk aloud in cold blood ... and maman laughed!... Maman! My God, why didst Thou give me such a mother? Why?"

But he had to go to the house, come what might.He walked three times up and down the avenue, grew a little calmer, and went into the house.

"Why didn't you come in in time for tea?"Madame Shumihin asked sternly.

"I am sorry, it's ...it's time for me to go," he muttered, not raising his eyes."Maman, it's eight o'clock!"

"You go alone, my dear," said his maman languidly. "I am staying the night with Lili. Goodbye, my dear.... Let me make the sign of the cross over you."

She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning to Nyuta:

"He's rather like Lermontov ...isn't he?"

Saying good-bye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face, Volodya went out of the dining-room.Ten minutes later he was walking along the road to the station, and was glad of it.Now he felt neither frightened nor ashamed; he breathed freely and easily.

About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and gazed at the sun, which was half hidden behind a barrow.There were lights already here and there at the station, and one green light glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight.It was pleasant to Volodya to sit still without moving, and to watch the evening coming little by little.The darkness of the arbour, the footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, the laughter, and the waist—all these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and all this was no longer so terrible and important as before.

"It's of no consequence....She did not pull her hand away, and laughed when I held her by the waist," he thought."So she must have liked it.If she had disliked it she would have been angry...."

And now Volodya felt sorry that he had not had more boldness there in the arbour.He felt sorry that he was so stupidly going away, and he was by now persuaded that if the same thing happened again he would be bolder and look at it more simply.

And it would not be difficult for the opportunity to occur again.They used to stroll about for a long time after supper at the Shumihins'.If Volodya went for a walk with Nyuta in the dark garden, there would be an opportunity!

"I will go back," he thought, "and will go by the morning train to-morrow....I will say I have missed the train."

And he turned back.... Madame Shumihin, Maman, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the verandah, playing vintWhen Volodya told them the lie that he had missed the train, they were uneasy that he might be late for the examination day, and advised him to get up early.All the while they were playing he sat on one side, greedily watching Nyuta and waiting....He already had a plan prepared in his mind: he would go up to Nyuta in the dark, would take her by the hand, then would embrace her; there would be no need to say anything, as both of them would understand without words.

But after supper the ladies did not go for a walk in the garden, but went on playing cards.They played till one o'clock at night, and then broke up to go to bed.

"How stupid it all is!"Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed."But never mind; I'll wait till to-morrow ...to-morrow in the arbour.It doesn't matter...."

He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and thinking.All thought of the examination was hateful to him.He had already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there was nothing terrible about his being expelled.On the contrary, it was a good thing—a very good thing, in fact.Next day he would be as free as a bird; he would put on ordinary clothes instead of his school uniform, would smoke openly, come out here, and make love to Nyuta when he liked; and he would not be a schoolboy but "a young man."And as for the rest of it, what is called a career, a future, that was clear; Volodya would go into the army or the telegraph service, or he would go into a chemist's shop and work his way up till he was a dispenser....There were lots of callings.An hour or two passed, and he was still sitting and thinking....

Towards three o'clock, when it was beginning to get light, the door creaked cautiously and his maman came into the room.

"Aren't you asleep?"she asked, yawning."Go to sleep; I have only come in for a minute....I am only fetching the drops...."

"What for?"

"Poor Lili has got spasms again.Go to sleep, my child, your examination's to-morrow...."

She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window, read the label, and went away.

"Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!"Volodya heard a woman's voice, a minute later."That's convallaria, and Lili wants morphine.Is your son asleep?Ask him to look for it...."

It was Nyuta's voice.Volodya turned cold.He hurriedly put on his trousers, flung his coat over his shoulders, and went to the door.

"Do you understand?Morphine," Nyuta explained in a whisper."There must be a label in Latin.Wake Volodya; he will find it."

Maman opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and dark in the half-light....

"Why, Volodya is not asleep," she said."Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine, there's a dear!What a nuisance Lili is!She has always something the matter."

Maman muttered something, yawned, and went away.

"Look for it," said Nyuta."Why are you standing still?"

Volodya went to the cupboard, knelt down, and began looking through the bottles and boxes of medicine.His hands were trembling, and he had a feeling in his chest and stomach as though cold waves were running all over his inside.He felt suffocated and giddy from the smell of ether, carbolic acid, and various drugs, which he quite unnecessarily snatched up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.

"I believe maman has gone," he thought. "That's a good thing ... a good thing...."

"Will you be quick?"said Nyuta, drawling.

"In a minute....Here, I believe this is morphine," said Volodya, reading on one of the labels the word "morph....""Here it is!"

Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his room and one was in the passage.She was tidying her hair, which was difficult to put in order because it was so thick and long, and looked absent-mindedly at Volodya.In her loose wrap, with her sleepy face and her hair down, in the dim light that came into the white sky not yet lit by the sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent....Fascinated, trembling all over, and remembering with relish how he had held that exquisite body in his arms in the arbour, he handed her the bottle and said:

"How wonderful you are!"

"What?"

She came into the room.

"What?"she asked, smiling.

He was silent and looked at her, then, just as in the arbour, he took her hand, and she looked at him with a smile and waited for what would happen next.

"I love you," he whispered.

She left off smiling, thought a minute, and said:

"Wait a little; I think somebody is coming.Oh, these schoolboys!"she said in an undertone, going to the door and peeping out into the passage."No, there is no one to be seen...."

She came back.

Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and himself—all melted together in one sensation of acute, extraordinary, incredible bliss, for which one might give up one's whole life and face eternal torments....But half a minute passed and all that vanished.Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.

"I must go away, though," said Nyuta, looking at Volodya with disgust."What a wretched, ugly ...fie, ugly duckling!"

How unseemly her long hair, her loose wrap, her steps, her voice seemed to Volodya now!...

"'Ugly duckling' ..."he thought after she had gone away."I really am ugly ...everything is ugly."

The sun was rising, the birds were singing loudly; he could hear the gardener walking in the garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow ... and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of the cows and the sounds of the shepherd's pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it? Volodya had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people round about him.

When the footman came to wake him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep....

"Bother it!Damn it all!"he thought.

He got up between ten and eleven.

Combing his hair before the looking-glass, and looking at his ugly face, pale from his sleepless night, he thought:

"It's perfectly true ...an ugly duckling!"

When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said:

"I overslept myself, maman....But don't worry, I will get a medical certificate."

Madame Shumihin and Nyuta waked up at one o'clock. Volodya heard Madame Shumihin open her window with a bang, heard Nyuta go off into a peal of laughter in reply to her coarse voice. He saw the door open and a string of nieces and other toadies (among the latter was his maman) file into lunch, caught a glimpse of Nyuta's freshly washed laughing face, and, beside her, the black brows and beard of her husband the architect, who had just arrived.

Nyuta was wearing a Little Russian dress which did not suit her at all, and made her look clumsy; the architect was making dull and vulgar jokes.The rissoles served at lunch had too much onion in them—so it seemed to Volodya.It also seemed to him that Nyuta laughed loudly on purpose, and kept glancing in his direction to give him to understand that the memory of the night did not trouble her in the least, and that she was not aware of the presence at table of the "ugly duckling."

At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience—all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and muttered:

"Why do you powder?It's not becoming at your age!You make yourself up, don't pay your debts at cards, smoke other people's tobacco....It's hateful!I don't love you ...I don't love you!"

He was insulting her, and she moved her little eyes about in alarm, flung up her hands, and whispered in horror:

"What are you saying, my dear!Good gracious!the coachman will hear!Be quiet or the coachman will hear!He can overhear everything."

"I don't love you ...I don't love you!"he went on breathlessly."You've no soul and no morals....Don't dare to wear that raincoat!Do you hear?Or else I will tear it into rags...."

"Control yourself, my child," maman wept; "the coachman can hear!"

"And where is my father's fortune?Where is your money?You have wasted it all.I am not ashamed of being poor, but I am ashamed of having such a mother....When my schoolfellows ask questions about you, I always blush."

In the train they had to pass two stations before they reached the town.Volodya spent all the time on the little platform between two carriages and shivered all over.He did not want to go into the compartment because there the mother he hated was sitting.He hated himself, hated the ticket collectors, the smoke from the engine, the cold to which he attributed his shivering.And the heavier the weight on his heart, the more strongly he felt that somewhere in the world, among some people, there was a pure, honourable, warm, refined life, full of love, affection, gaiety, and serenity....He felt this and was so intensely miserable that one of the passengers, after looking in his face attentively, actually asked:

"You have the toothache, I suppose?"

In the town maman and Volodya lived with Marya Petrovna, a lady of noble rank, who had a large flat and let rooms to boarders. Maman had two rooms, one with windows and two pictures in gold frames hanging on the walls, in which her bed stood and in which she lived, and a little dark room opening out of it in which Volodya lived. Here there was a sofa on which he slept, and, except that sofa, there was no other furniture; the rest of the room was entirely filled up with wicker baskets full of clothes, cardboard hat-boxes, and all sorts of rubbish, which maman preserved for some reason or other. Volodya prepared his lessons either in his mother's room or in the "general room," as the large room in which the boarders assembled at dinner-time and in the evening was called.

On reaching home he lay down on his sofa and put the quilt over him to stop his shivering.The cardboard hat-boxes, the wicker baskets, and the other rubbish, reminded him that he had not a room of his own, that he had no refuge in which he could get away from his mother, from her visitors, and from the voices that were floating up from the "general room."The satchel and the books lying about in the corners reminded him of the examination he had missed....For some reason there came into his mind, quite inappropriately, Mentone, where he had lived with his father when he was seven years old; he thought of Biarritz and two little English girls with whom he ran about on the sand....He tried to recall to his memory the colour of the sky, the sea, the height of the waves, and his mood at the time, but he could not succeed.The English girls flitted before his imagination as though they were living; all the rest was a medley of images that floated away in confusion....

"No; it's cold here," thought Volodya.He got up, put on his overcoat, and went into the "general room."

There they were drinking tea. There were three people at the samovar: maman; an old lady with tortoiseshell pince-nez, who gave music lessons; and Avgustin Mihalitch, an elderly and very stout Frenchman, who was employed at a perfumery factory.

"I have had no dinner to-day," said maman"I ought to send the maid to buy some bread."

"Dunyasha!"shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent out somewhere by the lady of the house.

"Oh, that's of no consequence," said the Frenchman, with a broad smile."I will go for some bread myself at once.Oh, it's nothing."

He laid his strong, pungent cigar in a conspicuous place, put on his hat and went out. After he had gone away maman began telling the music teacher how she had been staying at the Shumihins', and how warmly they welcomed her.

"Lili Shumihin is a relation of mine, you know," she said."Her late husband, General Shumihin, was a cousin of my husband.And she was a Baroness Kolb by birth...."

"Maman, that's false!"said Volodya irritably."Why tell lies?"

He knew perfectly well that what his mother said was true; in what she was saying about General Shumihin and about Baroness Kolb there was not a word of lying, but nevertheless he felt that she was lying.There was a suggestion of falsehood in her manner of speaking, in the expression of her face, in her eyes, in everything.

"You are lying," repeated Volodya; and he brought his fist down on the table with such force that all the crockery shook and maman's tea was spilt over."Why do you talk about generals and baronesses?It's all lies!"

The music teacher was disconcerted, and coughed into her handkerchief, affecting to sneeze, and maman began to cry.

"Where can I go?"thought Volodya.

He had been in the street already; he was ashamed to go to his schoolfellows. Again, quite incongruously, he remembered the two little English girls.... He paced up and down the "general room," and went into Avgustin Mihalitch's room. Here there was a strong smell of ethereal oils and glycerine soap. On the table, in the window, and even on the chairs, there were a number of bottles, glasses, and wineglasses containing fluids of various colours. Volodya took up from the table a newspaper, opened it and read the title Figaro ... There was a strong and pleasant scent about the paper. Then he took a revolver from the table....

"There, there! Don't take any notice of it." The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. "He is young! Young people of his age never restrain themselves. One must resign oneself to that."

"No, Yevgenya Andreyevna; he's too spoilt," said maman in a singsong voice. "He has no one in authority over him, and I am weak and can do nothing. Oh, I am unhappy!"

Volodya put the muzzle of the revolver to his mouth, felt something like a trigger or spring, and pressed it with his finger....Then felt something else projecting, and once more pressed it.Taking the muzzle out of his mouth, he wiped it with the lapel of his coat, looked at the lock.He had never in his life taken a weapon in his hand before....

"I believe one ought to raise this ..."he reflected."Yes, it seems so."

Avgustin Mihalitch went into the "general room," and with a laugh began telling them about something.Volodya put the muzzle in his mouth again, pressed it with his teeth, and pressed something with his fingers.There was a sound of a shot....Something hit Volodya in the back of his head with terrible violence, and he fell on the table with his face downwards among the bottles and glasses.Then he saw his father, as in Mentone, in a top-hat with a wide black band on it, wearing mourning for some lady, suddenly seize him by both hands, and they fell headlong into a very deep, dark pit.

Then everything was blurred and vanished.

AN ANONYMOUS STORY

I

THROUGH causes which it is not the time to go into in detail, I had to enter the service of a Petersburg official called Orlov, in the capacity of a footman. He was about five and thirty, and was called Georgy* Ivanitch.

*Both g's hard, as in "Gorgon"; e like ai in rain

I entered this Orlov's service on account of his father, a prominent political man, whom I looked upon as a serious enemy of my cause.I reckoned that, living with the son, I should—from the conversations I should hear, and from the letters and papers I should find on the table—learn every detail of the father's plans and intentions.

As a rule at eleven o'clock in the morning the electric bell rang in my footman's quarters to let me know that my master was awake.When I went into the bedroom with his polished shoes and brushed clothes, Georgy Ivanitch would be sitting in his bed with a face that looked, not drowsy, but rather exhausted by sleep, and he would gaze off in one direction without any sign of satisfaction at having waked.I helped him to dress, and he let me do it with an air of reluctance without speaking or noticing my presence; then with his head wet with washing, smelling of fresh scent, he used to go into the dining-room to drink his coffee.He used to sit at the table, sipping his coffee and glancing through the newspapers, while the maid Polya and I stood respectfully at the door gazing at him.Two grown-up persons had to stand watching with the gravest attention a third drinking coffee and munching rusks.It was probably ludicrous and grotesque, but I saw nothing humiliating in having to stand near the door, though I was quite as well born and well educated as Orlov himself.

I was in the first stage of consumption, and was suffering from something else, possibly even more serious than consumption.I don't know whether it was the effect of my illness or of an incipient change in my philosophy of life of which I was not conscious at the time, but I was, day by day, more possessed by a passionate, irritating longing for ordinary everyday life.I yearned for mental tranquillity, health, fresh air, good food.I was becoming a dreamer, and, like a dreamer, I did not know exactly what I wanted.Sometimes I felt inclined to go into a monastery, to sit there for days together by the window and gaze at the trees and the fields; sometimes I fancied I would buy fifteen acres of land and settle down as a country gentleman; sometimes I inwardly vowed to take up science and become a professor at some provincial university.I was a retired navy lieutenant; I dreamed of the sea, of our squadron, and of the corvette in which I had made the cruise round the world.I longed to experience again the indescribable feeling when, walking in the tropical forest or looking at the sunset in the Bay of Bengal, one is thrilled with ecstasy and at the same time homesick.I dreamed of mountains, women, music, and, with the curiosity of a child, I looked into people's faces, listened to their voices.And when I stood at the door and watched Orlov sipping his coffee, I felt not a footman, but a man interested in everything in the world, even in Orlov.

In appearance Orlov was a typical Petersburger, with narrow shoulders, a long waist, sunken temples, eyes of an indefinite colour, and scanty, dingy-coloured hair, beard and moustaches.His face had a stale, unpleasant look, though it was studiously cared for.It was particularly unpleasant when he was asleep or lost in thought.It is not worth while describing a quite ordinary appearance; besides, Petersburg is not Spain, and a man's appearance is not of much consequence even in love affairs, and is only of value to a handsome footman or coachman.I have spoken of Orlov's face and hair only because there was something in his appearance worth mentioning.When Orlov took a newspaper or book, whatever it might be, or met people, whoever they be, an ironical smile began to come into his eyes, and his whole countenance assumed an expression of light mockery in which there was no malice.Before reading or hearing anything he always had his irony in readiness, as a savage has his shield.It was an habitual irony, like some old liquor brewed years ago, and now it came into his face probably without any participation of his will, as it were by reflex action.But of that later.

Soon after midday he took his portfolio, full of papers, and drove to his office. He dined away from home and returned after eight o'clock. I used to light the lamp and candles in his study, and he would sit down in a low chair with his legs stretched out on another chair, and, reclining in that position, would begin reading. Almost every day he brought in new books with him or received parcels of them from the shops, and there were heaps of books in three languages, to say nothing of Russian, which he had read and thrown away, in the corners of my room and under my bed. He read with extraordinary rapidity. They say: "Tell me what you read, and I'll tell you who you are." That may be true, but it was absolutely impossible to judge of Orlov by what he read. It was a regular hotchpotch. Philosophy, French novels, political economy, finance, new poets, and publications of the firm Posrednik*—and he read it all with the same rapidity and with the same ironical expression in his eyes.

* I.e., Tchertkov and others, publishers of Tolstoy, who issued good literature for peasants' reading.

After ten o'clock he carefully dressed, often in evening dress, very rarely in his kammer-junker's uniform, and went out, returning in the morning.

Our relations were quiet and peaceful, and we never had any misunderstanding.As a rule he did not notice my presence, and when he talked to me there was no expression of irony on his face—he evidently did not look upon me as a human being.

I only once saw him angry.One day—it was a week after I had entered his service—he came back from some dinner at nine o'clock; his face looked ill-humoured and exhausted.When I followed him into his study to light the candles, he said to me:

"There's a nasty smell in the flat."

"No, the air is fresh," I answered.

"I tell you, there's a bad smell," he answered irritably.

"I open the movable panes every day."

"Don't argue, blockhead!"he shouted.

I was offended, and was on the point of answering, and goodness knows how it would have ended if Polya, who knew her master better than I did, had not intervened.

"There really is a disagreeable smell," she said, raising her eyebrows."What can it be from?Stepan, open the pane in the drawing-room, and light the fire."

With much bustle and many exclamations, she went through all the rooms, rustling her skirts and squeezing the sprayer with a hissing sound.And Orlov was still out of humour; he was obviously restraining himself not to vent his ill-temper aloud.He was sitting at the table and rapidly writing a letter.After writing a few lines he snorted angrily and tore it up, then he began writing again.

"Damn them all!"he muttered."They expect me to have an abnormal memory!"

At last the letter was written; he got up from the table and said, turning to me:

"Go to Znamensky Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna Krasnovsky in person.But first ask the porter whether her husband —that is, Mr. Krasnovsky—has returned yet.If he has returned, don't deliver the letter, but come back.Wait a minute!...If she asks whether I have any one here, tell her that there have been two gentlemen here since eight o'clock, writing something."

I drove to Znamensky Street.The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had not yet come in, and I made my way up to the third storey.The door was opened by a tall, stout, drab-coloured flunkey with black whiskers, who in a sleepy, churlish, and apathetic voice, such as only flunkeys use in addressing other flunkeys, asked me what I wanted.Before I had time to answer, a lady dressed in black came hurriedly into the hall.She screwed up her eyes and looked at me.

"Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?"I asked.

"That is me," said the lady.

"A letter from Georgy Ivanitch."

She tore the letter open impatiently, and holding it in both hands, so that I saw her sparkling diamond rings, she began reading.I made out a pale face with soft lines, a prominent chin, and long dark lashes.From her appearance I should not have judged the lady to be more than five and twenty.

"Give him my thanks and my greetings," she said when she had finished the letter."Is there any one with Georgy Ivanitch?"she asked softly, joyfully, and as though ashamed of her mistrust.

"Two gentlemen," I answered."They're writing something."

"Give him my greetings and thanks," she repeated, bending her head sideways, and, reading the letter as she walked, she went noiselessly out.I saw few women at that time, and this lady of whom I had a passing glimpse made an impression on me.As I walked home I recalled her face and the delicate fragrance about her, and fell to dreaming.By the time I got home Orlov had gone out.

II

And so my relations with my employer were quiet and peaceful, but still the unclean and degrading element which I so dreaded on becoming a footman was conspicuous and made itself felt every day.I did not get on with Polya.She was a well-fed and pampered hussy who adored Orlov because he was a gentleman and despised me because I was a footman.Probably, from the point of view of a real flunkey or cook, she was fascinating, with her red cheeks, her turned-up nose, her coquettish glances, and the plumpness, one might almost say fatness, of her person.She powdered her face, coloured her lips and eyebrows, laced herself in, and wore a bustle, and a bangle made of coins.She walked with little ripping steps; as she walked she swayed, or, as they say, wriggled her shoulders and back.The rustle of her skirts, the creaking of her stays, the jingle her bangle and the vulgar smell of lip salve, toilet vinegar, and scent stolen from her master, aroused in me whilst I was doing the rooms with her in the morning a sensation as though I were taking part with her in some abomination.

Either because I did not steal as she did, or because I displayed no desire to become her lover, which she probably looked upon as an insult, or perhaps because she felt that I was a man of a different order, she hated me from the first day.My inexperience, my appearance—so unlike a flunkey—and my illness, seemed to her pitiful and excited her disgust.I had a bad cough at that time, and sometimes at night I prevented her from sleeping, as our rooms were only divided by a wooden partition, and every morning she said to me:

"Again you didn't let me sleep.You ought to be in hospital instead of in service."

She so genuinely believed that I was hardly a human being, but something infinitely below her, that, like the Roman matrons who were not ashamed to bathe before their slaves, she sometimes went about in my presence in nothing but her chemise.

Once when I was in a happy, dreamy mood, I asked her at dinner (we had soup and roast meat sent in from a restaurant every day):

"Polya, do you believe in God?"

"Why, of course!"

"Then," I went on, "you believe there will be a day of judgment, and that we shall have to answer to God for every evil action?"

She gave me no reply, but simply made a contemptuous grimace, and, looking that time at her cold eyes and over-fed expression, I realised that for her complete and finished personality no God, no conscience, no laws existed, and that if I had had to set fire to the house, to murder or to rob, I could not have hired a better accomplice.

In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at Orlov's before I got used to being addressed as "thou," and being constantly obliged to tell lies (saying "My master is not at home" when he was).In my flunkey's swallow-tail I felt as though I were in armour.But I grew accustomed to it in time.Like a genuine footman, I waited at table, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on errands of all sorts.When Orlov did not want to keep an appointment with Zinaida Fyodorovna, or when he forgot that he had promised to go and see her, I drove to Znamensky Street, put a letter into her hands and told a lie.And the result of it all was quite different from what I had expected when I became a footman.Every day of this new life of mine was wasted for me and my cause, as Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his visitors, and all I could learn of the stateman's doings was, as before, what I could glean from the newspapers or from correspondence with my comrades.The hundreds of notes and papers I used to find in the study and read had not the remotest connection with what I was looking for.Orlov was absolutely uninterested in his father's political work, and looked as though he had never heard of it, or as though his father had long been dead.

III

Every Thursday we had visitors.

I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to Eliseyev's to send us caviare, cheese, oysters, and so on.I bought playing-cards.Polya was busy all day getting ready the tea-things and the dinner service.To tell the truth, this spurt of activity came as a pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were for us the most interesting days.

Only three visitors used to come.The most important and perhaps the most interesting was the one called Pekarsky—a tall, lean man of five and forty, with a long hooked nose, with a big black beard, and a bald patch on his head.His eyes were large and prominent, and his expression was grave and thoughtful like that of a Greek philosopher.He was on the board of management of some railway, and also had some post in a bank; he was a consulting lawyer in some important Government institution, and had business relations with a large number of private persons as a trustee, chairman of committees, and so on.He was of quite a low grade in the service, and modestly spoke of himself as a lawyer, but he had a vast influence.A note or card from him was enough to make a celebrated doctor, a director of a railway, or a great dignitary see any one without waiting; and it was said that through his protection one might obtain even a post of the Fourth Class, and get any sort of unpleasant business hushed up.He was looked upon as a very intelligent man, but his was a strange, peculiar intelligence.He was able to multiply 213 by 373 in his head instantaneously, or turn English pounds into German marks without help of pencil or paper; he understood finance and railway business thoroughly, and the machinery of Russian administration had no secrets for him; he was a most skilful pleader in civil suits, and it was not easy to get the better of him at law.But that exceptional intelligence could not grasp many things which are understood even by some stupid people.For instance, he was absolutely unable to understand why people are depressed, why they weep, shoot themselves, and even kill others; why they fret about things that do not affect them personally, and why they laugh when they read Gogol or Shtchedrin....Everything abstract, everything belonging to the domain of thought and feeling, was to him boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear.He looked at people simply from the business point of view, and divided them into competent and incompetent.No other classification existed for him.Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence.Drinking, gambling, and debauchery were permissible, but must not be allowed to interfere with business.Believing in God was rather stupid, but religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some principle to restrain them, otherwise they would not work.Punishment is only necessary as deterrent.There was no need to go away for holidays, as it was just as nice in town.And so on.He was a widower and had no children, but lived on a large scale, as though he had a family, and paid three thousand roubles a year for his flat.

The second visitor, Kukushkin, an actual civil councillor though a young man, was short, and was conspicuous for his extremely unpleasant appearance, which was due to the disproportion between his fat, puffy body and his lean little face.His lips were puckered up suavely, and his little trimmed moustaches looked as though they had been fixed on with glue.He was a man with the manners of a lizard.He did not walk, but, as it were, crept along with tiny steps, squirming and sniggering, and when he laughed he showed his teeth.He was a clerk on special commissions, and did nothing, though he received a good salary, especially in the summer, when special and lucrative jobs were found for him.He was a man of personal ambition, not only to the marrow of his bones, but more fundamentally—to the last drop of his blood; but even in his ambitions he was petty and did not rely on himself, but was building his career on the chance favour flung him by his superiors.For the sake of obtaining some foreign decoration, or for the sake of having his name mentioned in the newspapers as having been present at some special service in the company of other great personages, he was ready to submit to any kind of humiliation, to beg, to flatter, to promise.He flattered Orlov and Pekarsky from cowardice, because he thought they were powerful; he flattered Polya and me because we were in the service of a powerful man.Whenever I took off his fur coat he tittered and asked me: "Stepan, are you married?"and then unseemly vulgarities followed—by way of showing me special attention.Kukushkin flattered Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his corrupted and blasé ways; to please him he affected malicious raillery and atheism, in his company criticised persons before whom in other places he would slavishly grovel.When at supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and perverse voluptuary.As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of talking of their abnormal tastes.Some young actual civil councillor is perfectly satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some unhappy street-walker on the Nevsky Prospect, but to listen to him you would think he was contaminated by all the vices of East and West combined, that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous secret societies and was already marked by the police.Kukushkin lied about himself in an unconscionable way, and they did not exactly disbelieve him, but paid little heed to his incredible stories.

The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general; a man of Orlov's age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold spectacles.I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a pianist's; and, indeed, there was something of a musician, of a virtuoso, about his whole figure.The first violins in orchestras look just like that.He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed invalidish and delicate.Probably at home he was dressed and undressed like a baby.He had finished at the College of Jurisprudence, and had at first served in the Department of Justice, then he was transferred to the Senate; he left that, and through patronage had received a post in the Department of Crown Estates, and had soon afterwards given that up.In my time he was serving in Orlov's department; he was his head-clerk, but he said that he should soon exchange into the Department of Justice again.He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism: "It's only in the Government service you learn the truth."He had a little wife with a wrinkled face, who was very jealous of him, and five weedy-looking children.He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his children when he saw them, and on the whole was rather indifferent to his family, and made fun of them.He and his family existed on credit, borrowing wherever they could at every opportunity, even from his superiors in the office and porters in people's houses.His was a flabby nature; he was so lazy that he did not care what became of himself, and drifted along heedless where or why he was going.He went where he was taken.If he was taken to some low haunt, he went; if wine was set before him, he drank—if it were not put before him, he abstained; if wives were abused in his presence, he abused his wife, declaring she had ruined his life—when wives were praised, he praised his and said quite sincerely: "I am very fond of her, poor thing!"He had no fur coat and always wore a rug which smelt of the nursery.When at supper he rolled balls of bread and drank a great deal of red wine, absorbed in thought, strange to say, I used to feel almost certain that there was something in him of which perhaps he had a vague sense, though in the bustle and vulgarity of his daily life he had not time to understand and appreciate it.He played a little on the piano.Sometimes he would sit down at the piano, play a chord or two, and begin singing softly:

But at once, as though afraid, he would get up and walk from the piano.

The visitors usually arrived about ten o'clock.They played cards in Orlov's study, and Polya and I handed them tea.It was only on these occasions that I could gauge the full sweetness of a flunkey's life.Standing for four or five hours at the door, watching that no one's glass should be empty, changing the ash-trays, running to the table to pick up the chalk or a card when it was dropped, and, above all, standing, waiting, being attentive without venturing to speak, to cough, to smile—is harder, I assure you, is harder than the hardest of field labour.I have stood on watch at sea for four hours at a stretch on stormy winter nights, and to my thinking it is an infinitely easier duty.

They used to play cards till two, sometimes till three o'clock at night, and then, stretching, they would go into the dining-room to supper, or, as Orlov said, for a snack of something.At supper there was conversation.It usually began by Orlov's speaking with laughing eyes of some acquaintance, of some book he had lately been reading, of a new appointment or Government scheme.Kukushkin, always ingratiating, would fall into his tone, and what followed was to me, in my mood at that time, a revolting exhibition.The irony of Orlov and his friends knew no bounds, and spared no one and nothing.If they spoke of religion, it was with irony; they spoke of philosophy, of the significance and object of life—irony again, if any one began about the peasantry, it was with irony.

There is in Petersburg a species of men whose specialty it is to jeer at every aspect of life; they cannot even pass by a starving man or a suicide without saying something vulgar.But Orlov and his friends did not jeer or make jokes, they talked ironically.They used to say that there was no God, and personality was completely lost at death; the immortals only existed in the French Academy.Real good did not and could not possibly exist, as its existence was conditional upon human perfection, which was a logical absurdity.Russia was a country as poor and dull as Persia.The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky's opinion the overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good for nothing.The people were drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate.We had no science, our literature was uncouth, our commerce rested on swindling—"No selling without cheating."And everything was in that style, and everything was a subject for laughter.

Towards the end of supper the wine made them more good-humoured, and they passed to more lively conversation. They laughed over Gruzin's family life, over Kukushkin's conquests, or at Pekarsky, who had, they said, in his account book one page headed Charity and another Physiological NecessitiesThey said that no wife was faithful; that there was no wife from whom one could not, with practice, obtain caresses without leaving her drawing-room while her husband was sitting in his study close by; that girls in their teens were perverted and knew everything.Orlov had preserved a letter of a schoolgirl of fourteen: on her way home from school she had "hooked an officer on the Nevsky," who had, it appears, taken her home with him, and had only let her go late in the evening; and she hastened to write about this to her school friend to share her joy with her.They maintained that there was not and never had been such a thing as moral purity, and that evidently it was unnecessary; mankind had so far done very well without it.The harm done by so-called vice was undoubtedly exaggerated.Vices which are punished by our legal code had not prevented Diogenes from being a philosopher and a teacher.Cæsar and Cicero were profligates and at the same time great men.Cato in his old age married a young girl, and yet he was regarded as a great ascetic and a pillar of morality.

At three or four o'clock the party broke up or they went off together out of town, or to Officers' Street, to the house of a certain Varvara Ossipovna, while I retired to my quarters, and was kept awake a long while by coughing and headache.

IV

Three weeks after I entered Orlov's service—it was Sunday morning, I remember—somebody rang the bell.It was not yet eleven, and Orlov was still asleep.I went to open the door.You can imagine my astonishment when I found a lady in a veil standing at the door on the landing.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch up?"she asked.

From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken letters in Znamensky Street.I don't remember whether I had time or self-possession to answer her—I was taken aback at seeing her.And, indeed, she did not need my answer.In a flash she had darted by me, and, filling the hall with the fragrance of her perfume, which I remember to this day, she went on, and her footsteps died away.For at least half an hour afterwards I heard nothing.But again some one rang.This time it was a smartly dressed girl, who looked like a maid in a wealthy family, accompanied by our house porter.Both were out of breath, carrying two trunks and a dress-basket.

"These are for Zinaida Fyodorovna," said the girl.

And she went down without saying another word.All this was mysterious, and made Polya, who had a deep admiration for the pranks of her betters, smile slyly to herself; she looked as though she would like to say, "So that's what we're up to," and she walked about the whole time on tiptoe.At last we heard footsteps; Zinaida Fyodorovna came quickly into the hall, and seeing me at the door of my room, said:

"Stepan, take Georgy Ivanitch his things."

When I went in to Orlov with his clothes and his boots, he was sitting on the bed with his feet on the bearskin rug.There was an air of embarrassment about his whole figure.He did not notice me, and my menial opinion did not interest him; he was evidently perturbed and embarrassed before himself, before his inner eye.He dressed, washed, and used his combs and brushes silently and deliberately, as though allowing himself time to think over his position and to reflect, and even from his back one could see he was troubled and dissatisfied with himself.

They drank coffee together.Zinaida Fyodorovna poured out coffee for herself and for Orlov, then she put her elbows on the table and laughed.

"I still can't believe it," she said."When one has been a long while on one's travels and reaches a hotel at last, it's difficult to believe that one hasn't to go on.It is pleasant to breathe freely."

With the expression of a child who very much wants to be mischievous, she sighed with relief and laughed again.

"You will excuse me," said Orlov, nodding towards the coffee."Reading at breakfast is a habit I can't get over.But I can do two things at once—read and listen."

"Read away....You shall keep your habits and your freedom.But why do you look so solemn?Are you always like that in the morning, or is it only to-day?Aren't you glad?"

"Yes, I am.But I must own I am a little overwhelmed."

"Why?You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon you.I've been threatening to come every day."

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to carry out your threat to-day."

"I didn't expect it myself, but that's all the better.It's all the better, my dear.It's best to have an aching tooth out and have done with it."

"Yes, of course."

"Oh, my dear," she said, closing her eyes, "all is well that ends well; but before this happy ending, what suffering there has been!My laughing means nothing; I am glad, I am happy, but I feel more like crying than laughing.Yesterday I had to fight a regular battle," she went on in French."God alone knows how wretched I was.But I laugh because I can't believe in it.I keep fancying that my sitting here drinking coffee with you is not real, but a dream."

Then, still speaking French, she described how she had broken with her husband the day before and her eyes were alternately full of tears and of laughter while she gazed with rapture at Orlov.She told him her husband had long suspected her, but had avoided explanations; they had frequent quarrels, and usually at the most heated moment he would suddenly subside into silence and depart to his study for fear that in his exasperation he might give utterance to his suspicions or she might herself begin to speak openly.And she had felt guilty, worthless, incapable of taking a bold and serious step, and that had made her hate herself and her husband more every day, and she had suffered the torments of hell.But the day before, when during a quarrel he had cried out in a tearful voice, "My God, when will it end?"and had walked off to his study, she had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and, preventing him from shutting the door, she had cried that she hated him with her whole soul.Then he let her come into the study and she had told him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might happen, if she were to be shot for it.

"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his eyes fixed on the newspaper.

She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee.Her cheeks glowed and she was a little embarrassed by it, and she looked in confusion at Polya and me.From what she went on to say I learnt that her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and finally tears, and that it would have been more accurate to say that she, and not he, had been the attacking party.

"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all right," she told Orlov; "but as night came on, my spirits sank. You don't believe in God, George, but I do believe a little, and I fear retribution.God requires of us patience, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel my life to suit myself.Is that right?What if from the point of view of God it's wrong?At two o'clock in the night my husband came to me and said: 'You dare not go away.I'll fetch you back through the police and make a scandal.'And soon afterwards I saw him like a shadow at my door.'Have mercy on me!Your elopement may injure me in the service.'Those words had a coarse effect upon me and made me feel stiff all over.I felt as though the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror.I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow cold to me—all sorts of things, in fact!I thought I would go into a nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a tangle—I was in despair and did not know what to do or think.But the sun rose and I grew happier.As soon as it was morning I dashed off to you.Ah, what I've been through, dear one!I haven't slept for two nights!"

She was tired out and excited.She was sleepy, and at the same time she wanted to talk endlessly, to laugh and to cry, and to go to a restaurant to lunch that she might feel her freedom.

"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of us," she said, walking rapidly through all the rooms when they had finished breakfast."What room will you give me?I like this one because it is next to your study."

At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study, which from that time she called hers, and she went off with Orlov to lunch.They dined, too, at a restaurant, and spent the long interval between lunch and dinner in shopping.Till late at night I was opening the door to messengers and errand-boys from the shops.They bought, among other things, a splendid pier-glass, a dressing-table, a bedstead, and a gorgeous tea service which we did not need.They bought a regular collection of copper saucepans, which we set in a row on the shelf in our cold, empty kitchen.As we were unpacking the tea service Polya's eyes gleamed, and she looked at me two or three times with hatred and fear that I, not she, would be the first to steal one of these charming cups.A lady's writing-table, very expensive and inconvenient, came too.It was evident that Zinaida Fyodorovna contemplated settling with us for good, and meant to make the flat her home.

She came back with Orlov between nine and ten.Full of proud consciousness that she had done something bold and out of the common, passionately in love, and, as she imagined, passionately loved, exhausted, looking forward to a sweet sound sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna was revelling in her new life.She squeezed her hands together in the excess of her joy, declared that everything was delightful, and swore that she would love Orlov for ever; and these vows, and the naïve, almost childish confidence that she too was deeply loved and would be loved forever, made her at least five years younger.She talked charming nonsense and laughed at herself.

"There's no other blessing greater than freedom!"she said, forcing herself to say something serious and edifying."How absurd it is when you think of it!We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is wise, but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people.Up to the last minute I was afraid of what other people would say, but as soon as I followed my own instinct and made up my mind to go my own way, my eyes were opened, I overcame my silly fears, and now I am happy and wish every one could be as happy!"

But her thoughts immediately took another turn, and she began talking of another flat, of wallpapers, horses, a trip to Switzerland and Italy.Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still suffering from the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning.He smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she spoke of anything seriously, he agreed ironically: "Oh, yes."

"Stepan, make haste and find us a good cook," she said to me.

"There's no need to be in a hurry over the kitchen arrangements," said Orlov, looking at me coldly."We must first move into another flat."

We had never had cooking done at home nor kept horses, because, as he said, "he did not like disorder about him," and only put up with having Polya and me in his flat from necessity.The so-called domestic hearth with its everyday joys and its petty cares offended his taste as vulgarity; to be with child, or to have children and talk about them, was bad form, like a petty bourgeois.And I began to feel very curious to see how these two creatures would get on together in one flat—she, domestic and home-loving with her copper saucepans and her dreams of a good cook and horses; and he, fond of saying to his friends that a decent and orderly man's flat ought, like a warship, to have nothing in it superfluous—no women, no children, no rags, no kitchen utensils.

V

Then I will tell you what happened the following Thursday.That day Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Content's or Donon's.Orlov returned home alone, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learnt afterwards, went to the Petersburg Side to spend with her old governess the time visitors were with us.Orlov did not care to show her to his friends.I realised that at breakfast, when he began assuring her that for the sake of her peace of mind it was essential to give up his Thursday evenings.

As usual the visitors arrived at almost the same time.

"Is your mistress at home, too?"Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.

"No, sir," I answered.

He went in with a sly, oily look in his eyes, smiling mysteriously, rubbing his hands, which were cold from the frost.

"I have the honour to congratulate you," he said to Orlov, shaking all over with ingratiating, obsequious laughter."May you increase and multiply like the cedars of Lebanon."

The visitors went into the bedroom, and were extremely jocose on the subject of a pair of feminine slippers, the rug that had been put down between the two beds, and a grey dressing-jacket that hung at the foot of the bedstead.They were amused that the obstinate man who despised all the common place details of love had been caught in feminine snares in such a simple and ordinary way.

"He who pointed the finger of scorn is bowing the knee in homage," Kukushkin repeated several times.He had, I may say in parenthesis, an unpleasant habit of adorning his conversation with texts in Church Slavonic."Sh-sh!"he said as they went from the bedroom into the room next to the study."Sh-sh!Here Gretchen is dreaming of her Faust."

He went off into a peal of laughter as though he had said something very amusing. I watched Gruzin, expecting that his musical soul would not endure this laughter, but I was mistaken. His thin, good-natured face beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he, lisping and choking with laughter, said that all that "dear George" wanted to complete his domestic felicity was a cherry-wood pipe and a guitar.Pekarsky laughed sedately, but from his serious expression one could see that Orlov's new love affair was distasteful to him.He did not understand what had happened exactly.

"But how about the husband?"he asked in perplexity, after they had played three rubbers.

"I don't know," answered Orlov.

Pekarsky combed his big beard with his fingers and sank into thought, and he did not speak again till supper-time.When they were seated at supper, he began deliberately, drawling every word:

"Altogether, excuse my saying so, I don't understand either of you.You might love each other and break the seventh commandment to your heart's content—that I understand.Yes, that's comprehensible.But why make the husband a party to your secrets?Was there any need for that?"

"But does it make any difference?"

"Hm!...."Pekarsky mused."Well, then, let me tell you this, my friend," he went on, evidently thinking hard: "if I ever marry again and you take it into your head to seduce my wife, please do it so that I don't notice it.It's much more honest to deceive a man than to break up his family life and injure his reputation.I understand.You both imagine that in living together openly you are doing something exceptionally honourable and advanced, but I can't agree with that ...what shall I call it?...romantic attitude?"

Orlov made no reply.He was out of humour and disinclined to talk.Pekarsky, still perplexed, drummed on the table with his fingers, thought a little, and said:

"I don't understand you, all the same.You are not a student and she is not a dressmaker.You are both of you people with means.I should have thought you might have arranged a separate flat for her."

"No, I couldn't.Read Turgenev."

"Why should I read him?I have read him already."

"Turgenev teaches us in his novels that every exalted, noble-minded girl should follow the man she loves to the ends of the earth, and should serve his idea," said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically."The ends of the earth are poetic license; the earth and all its ends can be reduced to the flat of the man she loves....And so not to live in the same flat with the woman who loves you is to deny her her exalted vocation and to refuse to share her ideals.Yes, my dear fellow, Turgenev wrote, and I have to suffer for it."

"What Turgenev has got to do with it I don't understand," said Gruzin softly, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Do you remember, George, how in 'Three Meetings' he is walking late in the evening somewhere in Italy, and suddenly hears, 'Vieni pensando a me segretamente,'" Gruzin hummed."It's fine."

"But she hasn't come to settle with you by force," said Pekarsky."It was your own wish."

"What next!Far from wishing it, I never imagined that this would ever happen.When she said she was coming to live with me, I thought it was a charming joke on her part."

Everybody laughed.

"I couldn't have wished for such a thing," said Orlov in the tone of a man compelled to justify himself."I am not a Turgenev hero, and if I ever wanted to free Bulgaria I shouldn't need a lady's company.I look upon love primarily as a necessity of my physical nature, degrading and antagonistic to my spirit; it must either be satisfied with discretion or renounced altogether, otherwise it will bring into one's life elements as unclean as itself.For it to be an enjoyment and not a torment, I will try to make it beautiful and to surround it with a mass of illusions.I should never go and see a woman unless I were sure beforehand that she would be beautiful and fascinating; and I should never go unless I were in the mood.And it is only in that way that we succeed in deceiving one another, and fancying that we are in love and happy.But can I wish for copper saucepans and untidy hair, or like to be seen myself when I am unwashed or out of humour?Zinaida Fyodorovna in the simplicity of her heart wants me to love what I have been shunning all my life.She wants my flat to smell of cooking and washing up; she wants all the fuss of moving into another flat, of driving about with her own horses; she wants to count over my linen and to look after my health; she wants to meddle in my personal life at every instant, and to watch over every step; and at the same time she assures me genuinely that my habits and my freedom will be untouched.She is persuaded that, like a young couple, we shall very soon go for a honeymoon—that is, she wants to be with me all the time in trains and hotels, while I like to read on the journey and cannot endure talking in trains."

"You should give her a talking to," said Pekarsky.

"What! Do you suppose she would understand me? Why, we think so differently. In her opinion, to leave one's papa and mamma or one's husband for the sake of the man one loves is the height of civic virtue, while I look upon it as childish. To fall in love and run away with a man to her means beginning a new life, while to my mind it means nothing at all. Love and man constitute the chief interest of her life, and possibly it is the philosophy of the unconscious at work in her. Try and make her believe that love is only a simple physical need, like the need of food or clothes; that it doesn't mean the end of the world if wives and husbands are unsatisfactory; that a man may be a profligate and a libertine, and yet a man of honour and a genius; and that, on the other hand, one may abstain from the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, vicious animal! The civilised man of to-day, even among the lower classes—for instance, the French workman—spends ten sous on dinner, five sous on his wine, and five or ten sous on woman, and devotes his brain and nerves entirely to his work. But Zinaida Fyodorovna assigns to love not so many sous, but her whole soul.I might give her a talking to, but she would raise a wail in answer, and declare in all sincerity that I had ruined her, that she had nothing left to live for."

"Don't say anything to her," said Pekarsky, "but simply take a separate flat for her, that's all."

"That's easy to say."

There was a brief silence.

"But she is charming," said Kukushkin."She is exquisite.Such women imagine that they will be in love for ever, and abandon themselves with tragic intensity."

"But one must keep a head on one's shoulders," said Orlov; "one must be reasonable. All experience gained from everyday life and handed down in innumerable novels and plays, uniformly confirms the fact that adultery and cohabitation of any sort between decent people never lasts longer than two or at most three years, however great the love may have been at the beginning. That she ought to know. And so all this business of moving, of saucepans, hopes of eternal love and harmony, are nothing but a desire to delude herself and me. She is charming and exquisite—who denies it? But she has turned my life upside down; what I have regarded as trivial and nonsensical till now she has forced me to raise to the level of a serious problem; I serve an idol whom I have never looked upon as God. She is charming—exquisite, but for some reason now when I am going home, I feel uneasy, as though I expected to meet with something inconvenient at home, such as workmen pulling the stove to pieces and blocking up the place with heaps of bricks. In fact, I am no longer giving up to love a sous, but part of my peace of mind and my nerves.And that's bad."

"And she doesn't hear this villain!"sighed Kukushkin."My dear sir," he said theatrically, "I will relieve you from the burdensome obligation to love that adorable creature!I will wrest Zinaida Fyodorovna from you!"

"You may ..."said Orlov carelessly.

For half a minute Kukushkin laughed a shrill little laugh, shaking all over, then he said:

"Look out; I am in earnest!Don't you play the Othello afterwards!"

They all began talking of Kukushkin's indefatigable energy in love affairs, how irresistible he was to women, and what a danger he was to husbands; and how the devil would roast him in the other world for his immorality in this.He screwed up his eyes and remained silent, and when the names of ladies of their acquaintance were mentioned, he held up his little finger—as though to say they mustn't give away other people's secrets.

Orlov suddenly looked at his watch.

His friends understood, and began to take their leave.I remember that Gruzin, who was a little drunk, was wearisomely long in getting off.He put on his coat, which was cut like children's coats in poor families, pulled up the collar, and began telling some long-winded story; then, seeing he was not listened to, he flung the rug that smelt of the nursery over one shoulder, and with a guilty and imploring face begged me to find his hat.

"George, my angel," he said tenderly."Do as I ask you, dear boy; come out of town with us!"

"You can go, but I can't.I am in the position of a married man now."

"She is a dear, she won't be angry.My dear chief, come along!It's glorious weather; there's snow and frost....Upon my word, you want shaking up a bit; you are out of humour.I don't know what the devil is the matter with you...."

Orlov stretched, yawned, and looked at Pekarsky.

"Are you going?"he said, hesitating.

"I don't know.Perhaps."

"Shall I get drunk?All right, I'll come," said Orlov after some hesitation."Wait a minute; I'll get some money."

He went into the study, and Gruzin slouched in, too, dragging his rug after him.A minute later both came back into the hall.Gruzin, a little drunk and very pleased, was crumpling a ten-rouble note in his hands.

"We'll settle up to-morrow," he said."And she is kind, she won't be cross....She is my Lisotchka's godmother; I am fond of her, poor thing!Ah, my dear fellow!"he laughed joyfully, and pressing his forehead on Pekarsky's back."Ah, Pekarsky, my dear soul!Advocatissimus—as dry as a biscuit, but you bet he is fond of women...."

"Fat ones," said Orlov, putting on his fur coat."But let us get off, or we shall be meeting her on the doorstep."

"'Vieni pensando a me segretamente,'" hummed Gruzin.

At last they drove off: Orlov did not sleep at home, and returned next day at dinner-time.

VI

Zinaida Fyodorovna had lost her gold watch, a present from her father.This loss surprised and alarmed her.She spent half a day going through the rooms, looking helplessly on all the tables and on all the windows.But the watch had disappeared completely.

Only three days afterwards Zinaida Fyodorovna, on coming in, left her purse in the hall.Luckily for me, on that occasion it was not I but Polya who helped her off with her coat.When the purse was missed, it could not be found in the hall.

"Strange," said Zinaida Fyodorovna in bewilderment."I distinctly remember taking it out of my pocket to pay the cabman ...and then I put it here near the looking-glass.It's very odd!"

I had not stolen it, but I felt as though I had stolen it and had been caught in the theft.Tears actually came into my eyes.When they were seated at dinner, Zinaida Fyodorovna said to Orlov in French:

"There seem to be spirits in the flat.I lost my purse in the hall to-day, and now, lo and behold, it is on my table.But it's not quite a disinterested trick of the spirits.They took out a gold coin and twenty roubles in notes."

"You are always losing something; first it's your watch and then it's your money ..."said Orlov."Why is it nothing of the sort ever happens to me?"

A minute later Zinaida Fyodorovna had forgotten the trick played by the spirits, and was telling with a laugh how the week before she had ordered some notepaper and had forgotten to give her new address, and the shop had sent the paper to her old home at her husband's, who had to pay twelve roubles for it.And suddenly she turned her eyes on Polya and looked at her intently.She blushed as she did so, and was so confused that she began talking of something else.

When I took in the coffee to the study, Orlov was standing with his back to the fire and she was sitting in an arm-chair facing him.

"I am not in a bad temper at all," she was saying in French."But I have been putting things together, and now I see it clearly.I can give you the day and the hour when she stole my watch.And the purse?There can be no doubt about it.Oh!"she laughed as she took the coffee from me."Now I understand why I am always losing my handkerchiefs and gloves.Whatever you say, I shall dismiss the magpie to-morrow and send Stepan for my Sofya.She is not a thief and has not got such a repulsive appearance."

"You are out of humour.To-morrow you will feel differently, and will realise that you can't discharge people simply because you suspect them."

"It's not suspicion; it's certainty," said Zinaida Fyodorovna. "So long as I suspected that unhappy-faced, poor-looking valet of yours, I said nothing. It's too bad of you not to believe me, George."

"If we think differently about anything, it doesn't follow that I don't believe you.You may be right," said Orlov, turning round and flinging his cigarette-end into the fire, "but there is no need to be excited about it, anyway.In fact, I must say, I never expected my humble establishment would cause you so much serious worry and agitation.You've lost a gold coin: never mind—you may have a hundred of mine; but to change my habits, to pick up a new housemaid, to wait till she is used to the place—all that's a tedious, tiring business and does not suit me.Our present maid certainly is fat, and has, perhaps, a weakness for gloves and handkerchiefs, but she is perfectly well behaved, well trained, and does not shriek when Kukushkin pinches her."

"You mean that you can't part with her?...Why don't you say so?"

"Are you jealous?"

"Yes, I am," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, decidedly.

"Thank you."

"Yes, I am jealous," she repeated, and tears glistened in her eyes."No, it's something worse ...which I find it difficult to find a name for."She pressed her hands on her temples, and went on impulsively."You men are so disgusting!It's horrible!"

"I see nothing horrible about it."

"I've not seen it; I don't know; but they say that you men begin with housemaids as boys, and get so used to it that you feel no repugnance. I don't know, I don't know, but I have actually read.... George, of course you are right," she said, going up to Orlov and changing to a caressing and imploring tone."I really am out of humour to-day.But, you must understand, I can't help it.She disgusts me and I am afraid of her.It makes me miserable to see her."

"Surely you can rise above such paltriness?"said Orlov, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity, and walking away from the fire."Nothing could be simpler: take no notice of her, and then she won't disgust you, and you won't need to make a regular tragedy out of a trifle."

I went out of the study, and I don't know what answer Orlov received.Whatever it was, Polya remained.After that Zinaida Fyodorovna never applied to her for anything, and evidently tried to dispense with her services.When Polya handed her anything or even passed by her, jingling her bangle and rustling her skirts, she shuddered.

I believe that if Gruzin or Pekarsky had asked Orlov to dismiss Polya he would have done so without the slightest hesitation, without troubling about any explanations.He was easily persuaded, like all indifferent people.But in his relations with Zinaida Fyodorovna he displayed for some reason, even in trifles, an obstinacy which sometimes was almost irrational.I knew beforehand that if Zinaida Fyodorovna liked anything, it would be certain not to please Orlov.When on coming in from shopping she made haste to show him with pride some new purchase, he would glance at it and say coldly that the more unnecessary objects they had in the flat, the less airy it would be.It sometimes happened that after putting on his dress clothes to go out somewhere, and after saying good-bye to Zinaida Fyodorovna, he would suddenly change his mind and remain at home from sheer perversity.I used to think that he remained at home then simply in order to feel injured.

"Why are you staying?"said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a show of vexation, though at the same time she was radiant with delight."Why do you?You are not accustomed to spending your evenings at home, and I don't want you to alter your habits on my account.Do go out as usual, if you don't want me to feel guilty."

"No one is blaming you," said Orlov.

With the air of a victim he stretched himself in his easy-chair in the study, and shading his eyes with his hand, took up a book.But soon the book dropped from his hand, he turned heavily in his chair, and again screened his eyes as though from the sun.Now he felt annoyed that he had not gone out.

"May I come in?"Zinaida Fyodorovna would say, coming irresolutely into the study."Are you reading?I felt dull by myself, and have come just for a minute ...to have a peep at you."

I remember one evening she went in like that, irresolutely and inappropriately, and sank on the rug at Orlov's feet, and from her soft, timid movements one could see that she did not understand his mood and was afraid.

"You are always reading ..." she said cajolingly, evidently wishing to flatter him. "Do you know, George, what is one of the secrets of your success?You are very clever and well-read.What book have you there?"

Orlov answered.A silence followed for some minutes which seemed to me very long.I was standing in the drawing-room, from which I could watch them, and was afraid of coughing.

"There is something I wanted to tell you," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she laughed; "shall I?Very likely you'll laugh and say that I flatter myself.You know I want, I want horribly to believe that you are staying at home to-night for my sake ...that we might spend the evening together.Yes?May I think so?"

"Do," he said, screening his eyes."The really happy man is he who thinks not only of what is, but of what is not."

"That was a long sentence which I did not quite understand. You mean happy people live in their imagination. Yes, that's true. I love to sit in your study in the evening and let my thoughts carry me far, far away.... It's pleasant sometimes to dream. Let us dream aloud, George."

"I've never been at a girls' boarding-school; I never learnt the art."

"You are out of humour?"said Zinaida Fyodorovna, taking Orlov's hand."Tell me why.When you are like that, I'm afraid.I don't know whether your head aches or whether you are angry with me...."

Again there was a silence lasting several long minutes.

"Why have you changed?"she said softly."Why are you never so tender or so gay as you used to be at Znamensky Street?I've been with you almost a month, but it seems to me as though we had not yet begun to live, and have not yet talked of anything as we ought to.You always answer me with jokes or else with a long cold lecture like a teacher.And there is something cold in your jokes....Why have you given up talking to me seriously?"

"I always talk seriously."

"Well, then, let us talk. For God's sake, George....Shall we?"

"Certainly, but about what?"

"Let us talk of our life, of our future," said Zinaida Fyodorovna dreamily. "I keep making plans for our life, plans and plans—and I enjoy doing it so! George, I'll begin with the question, when are you going to give up your post?"

"What for?"asked Orlov, taking his hand from his forehead.

"With your views you cannot remain in the service.You are out of place there."

"My views?"Orlov repeated."My views?In conviction and temperament I am an ordinary official, one of Shtchedrin's heroes.You take me for something different, I venture to assure you."

"Joking again, George!"

"Not in the least.The service does not satisfy me, perhaps; but, anyway, it is better for me than anything else.I am used to it, and in it I meet men of my own sort; I am in my place there and find it tolerable."

"You hate the service and it revolts you."

"Indeed?If I resign my post, take to dreaming aloud and letting myself be carried away into another world, do you suppose that that world would be less hateful to me than the service?"

"You are ready to libel yourself in order to contradict me."Zinaida Fyodorovna was offended and got up."I am sorry I began this talk."

"Why are you angry?I am not angry with you for not being an official.Every one lives as he likes best."

"Why, do you live as you like best? Are you free? To spend your life writing documents that are opposed to your own ideas," Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, clasping her hands in despair: "to submit to authority, congratulate your superiors at the New Year, and then cards and nothing but cards: worst of all, to be working for a system which must be distasteful to you—no, George, no!You should not make such horrid jokes.It's dreadful.You are a man of ideas, and you ought to be working for your ideas and nothing else."

"You really take me for quite a different person from what I am," sighed Orlov.

"Say simply that you don't want to talk to me.You dislike me, that's all," said Zinaida Fyodorovna through her tears.

"Look here, my dear," said Orlov admonishingly, sitting up in his chair."You were pleased to observe yourself that I am a clever, well-read man, and to teach one who knows does nothing but harm.I know very well all the ideas, great and small, which you mean when you call me a man of ideas.So if I prefer the service and cards to those ideas, you may be sure I have good grounds for it.That's one thing.Secondly, you have, so far as I know, never been in the service, and can only have drawn your ideas of Government service from anecdotes and indifferent novels.So it would not be amiss for us to make a compact, once for all, not to talk of things we know already or of things about which we are not competent to speak."

"Why do you speak to me like that?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, stepping back as though in horror. "What for? George, for God's sake, think what you are saying!"

Her voice quivered and broke; she was evidently trying to restrain her tears, but she suddenly broke into sobs.

"George, my darling, I am perishing!"she said in French, dropping down before Orlov, and laying her head on his knees."I am miserable, I am exhausted.I can't bear it, I can't bear it....In my childhood my hateful, depraved stepmother, then my husband, now you ...you!...You meet my mad love with coldness and irony....And that horrible, insolent servant," she went on, sobbing."Yes, yes, I see: I am not your wife nor your friend, but a woman you don't respect because she has become your mistress....I shall kill myself!"

I had not expected that her words and her tears would make such an impression on Orlov.He flushed, moved uneasily in his chair, and instead of irony, his face wore a look of stupid, schoolboyish dismay.

"My darling, you misunderstood me," he muttered helplessly, touching her hair and her shoulders."Forgive me, I entreat you.I was unjust and I hate myself."

"I insult you with my whining and complaints.You are a true, generous ...rare man—I am conscious of it every minute; but I've been horribly depressed for the last few days ..."

Zinaida Fyodorovna impulsively embraced Orlov and kissed him on the cheek.

"Only please don't cry," he said.

"No, no....I've had my cry, and now I am better."

"As for the servant, she shall be gone to-morrow," he said, still moving uneasily in his chair.

"No, she must stay, George! Do you hear? I am not afraid of her now.... One must rise above trifles and not imagine silly things. You are right! You are a wonderful, rare person!"

She soon left off crying.With tears glistening on her eyelashes, sitting on Orlov's knee, she told him in a low voice something touching, something like a reminiscence of childhood and youth.She stroked his face, kissed him, and carefully examined his hands with the rings on them and the charms on his watch-chain.She was carried away by what she was saying, and by being near the man she loved, and probably because her tears had cleared and refreshed her soul, there was a note of wonderful candour and sincerity in her voice.And Orlov played with her chestnut hair and kissed her hands, noiselessly pressing them to his lips.

Then they had tea in the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna read aloud some letters.Soon after midnight they went to bed.I had a fearful pain in my side that night, and I could not get warm or go to sleep till morning.I could hear Orlov go from the bedroom into his study.After sitting there about an hour, he rang the bell.In my pain and exhaustion I forgot all the rules and conventions, and went to his study in my night attire, barefooted.Orlov, in his dressing-gown and cap, was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

"When you are sent for you should come dressed," he said sternly."Bring some fresh candles."

I was about to apologise, but suddenly broke into a violent cough, and clutched at the side of the door to save myself from falling.

"Are you ill?"said Orlov.

I believe it was the first time of our acquaintance that he addressed me not in the singular—goodness knows why.Most likely, in my night clothes and with my face distorted by coughing, I played my part poorly, and was very little like a flunkey.

"If you are ill, why do you take a place?"he said.

"That I may not die of starvation," I answered.

"How disgusting it all is, really!"he said softly, going up to his table.

While hurriedly getting into my coat, I put up and lighted fresh candles.He was sitting at the table, with feet stretched out on a low chair, cutting a book.

I left him deeply engrossed, and the book did not drop out of his hands as it had done in the evening.

VII

Now that I am writing these lines I am restrained by that dread of appearing sentimental and ridiculous, in which I have been trained from childhood; when I want to be affectionate or to say anything tender, I don't know how to be natural.And it is that dread, together with lack of practice, that prevents me from being able to express with perfect clearness what was passing in my soul at that time.

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but in the ordinary human feeling I had for her, there was far more youth, freshness, and joyousness than in Orlov's love.

As I worked in the morning, cleaning boots or sweeping the rooms, I waited with a thrill at my heart for the moment when I should hear her voice and her footsteps.To stand watching her as she drank her coffee in the morning or ate her lunch, to hold her fur coat for her in the hall, and to put the goloshes on her little feet while she rested her hand on my shoulder; then to wait till the hall porter rang up for me, to meet her at the door, cold, and rosy, powdered with the snow, to listen to her brief exclamations about the frost or the cabman—if only you knew how much all that meant to me!I longed to be in love, to have a wife and child of my own.I wanted my future wife to have just such a face, such a voice.I dreamed of it at dinner, and in the street when I was sent on some errand, and when I lay awake at night.Orlov rejected with disgust children, cooking, copper saucepans, and feminine knicknacks and I gathered them all up, tenderly cherished them in my dreams, loved them, and begged them of destiny.I had visions of a wife, a nursery, a little house with garden paths....

I knew that if I did love her I could never dare hope for the miracle of her returning my love, but that reflection did not worry me.In my quiet, modest feeling akin to ordinary affection, there was no jealousy of Orlov or even envy of him, since I realised that for a wreck like me happiness was only to be found in dreams.

When Zinaida Fyodorovna sat up night after night for her George, looking immovably at a book of which she never turned a page, or when she shuddered and turned pale at Polya's crossing the room, I suffered with her, and the idea occurred to me to lance this festering wound as quickly as possible by letting her know what was said here at supper on Thursdays; but—how was it to be done?More and more often I saw her tears.For the first weeks she laughed and sang to herself, even when Orlov was not at home, but by the second month there was a mournful stillness in our flat broken only on Thursday evenings.

She flattered Orlov, and to wring from him a counterfeit smile or kiss, was ready to go on her knees to him, to fawn on him like a dog.Even when her heart was heaviest, she could not resist glancing into a looking-glass if she passed one and straightening her hair.It seemed strange to me that she could still take an interest in clothes and go into ecstasies over her purchases.It did not seem in keeping with her genuine grief.She paid attention to the fashions and ordered expensive dresses.What for?On whose account?I particularly remember one dress which cost four hundred roubles.To give four hundred roubles for an unnecessary, useless dress while women for their hard day's work get only twenty kopecks a day without food, and the makers of Venice and Brussels lace are only paid half a franc a day on the supposition that they can earn the rest by immorality!And it seemed strange to me that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not conscious of it; it vexed me.But she had only to go out of the house for me to find excuses and explanations for everything, and to be waiting eagerly for the hall porter to ring for me.

She treated me as a flunkey, a being of a lower order.One may pat a dog, and yet not notice it; I was given orders and asked questions, but my presence was not observed.My master and mistress thought it unseemly to say more to me than is usually said to servants; if when waiting at dinner I had laughed or put in my word in the conversation, they would certainly have thought I was mad and have dismissed me.Zinaida Fyodorovna was favourably disposed to me, all the same.When she was sending me on some errand or explaining to me the working of a new lamp or anything of that sort, her face was extraordinarily kind, frank, and cordial, and her eyes looked me straight in the face.At such moments I always fancied she remembered with gratitude how I used to bring her letters to Znamensky Street.When she rang the bell, Polya, who considered me her favourite and hated me for it, used to say with a jeering smile:

"Go along, your mistress wants you."

Zinaida Fyodorovna considered me as a being of a lower order, and did not suspect that if any one in the house were in a humiliating position it was she.She did not know that I, a footman, was unhappy on her account, and used to ask myself twenty times a day what was in store for her and how it would all end.Things were growing visibly worse day by day.After the evening on which they had talked of his official work, Orlov, who could not endure tears, unmistakably began to avoid conversation with her; whenever Zinaida Fyodorovna began to argue, or to beseech him, or seemed on the point of crying, he seized some plausible excuse for retreating to his study or going out.He more and more rarely slept at home, and still more rarely dined there: on Thursdays he was the one to suggest some expedition to his friends.Zinaida Fyodorovna was still dreaming of having the cooking done at home, of moving to a new flat, of travelling abroad, but her dreams remained dreams. Dinner was sent in from the restaurant.Orlov asked her not to broach the question of moving until after they had come back from abroad, and apropos of their foreign tour, declared that they could not go till his hair had grown long, as one could not go trailing from hotel to hotel and serving the idea without long hair.

To crown it all, in Orlov's absence, Kukushkin began calling at the flat in the evening.There was nothing exceptional in his behaviour, but I could never forget the conversation in which he had offered to cut Orlov out.He was regaled with tea and red wine, and he used to titter and, anxious to say something pleasant, would declare that a free union was superior in every respect to legal marriage, and that all decent people ought really to come to Zinaida Fyodorovna and fall at her feet.

VIII

Christmas was spent drearily in vague anticipations of calamity.On New Year's Eve Orlov unexpectedly announced at breakfast that he was being sent to assist a senator who was on a revising commission in a certain province.

"I don't want to go, but I can't find an excuse to get off," he said with vexation."I must go; there's nothing for it."

Such news instantly made Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes look red."Is it for long?"she asked.

"Five days or so."

"I am glad, really, you are going," she said after a moment's thought."It will be a change for you.You will fall in love with some one on the way, and tell me about it afterwards."

At every opportunity she tried to make Orlov feel that she did not restrict his liberty in any way, and that he could do exactly as he liked, and this artless, transparent strategy deceived no one, and only unnecessarily reminded Orlov that he was not free.

"I am going this evening," he said, and began reading the paper.

Zinaida Fyodorovna wanted to see him off at the station, but he dissuaded her, saying that he was not going to America, and not going to be away five years, but only five days—possibly less.

The parting took place between seven and eight.He put one arm round her, and kissed her on the lips and on the forehead.

"Be a good girl, and don't be depressed while I am away," he said in a warm, affectionate tone which touched even me."God keep you!"

She looked greedily into his face, to stamp his dear features on her memory, then she put her arms gracefully round his neck and laid her head on his breast.

"Forgive me our misunderstandings," she said in French."Husband and wife cannot help quarrelling if they love each other, and I love you madly.Don't forget me....Wire to me often and fully."

Orlov kissed her once more, and, without saying a word, went out in confusion.When he heard the click of the lock as the door closed, he stood still in the middle of the staircase in hesitation and glanced upwards.It seemed to me that if a sound had reached him at that moment from above, he would have turned back.But all was quiet.He straightened his coat and went downstairs irresolutely.

The sledges had been waiting a long while at the door.Orlov got into one, I got into the other with two portmanteaus.It was a hard frost and there were fires smoking at the cross-roads.The cold wind nipped my face and hands, and took my breath away as we drove rapidly along; and, closing my eyes, I thought what a splendid woman she was.How she loved him!Even useless rubbish is collected in the courtyards nowadays and used for some purpose, even broken glass is considered a useful commodity, but something so precious, so rare, as the love of a refined, young, intelligent, and good woman is utterly thrown away and wasted.One of the early sociologists regarded every evil passion as a force which might by judicious management be turned to good, while among us even a fine, noble passion springs up and dies away in impotence, turned to no account, misunderstood or vulgarised.Why is it?

The sledges stopped unexpectedly.I opened my eyes and I saw that we had come to a standstill in Sergievsky Street, near a big house where Pekarsky lived.Orlov got out of the sledge and vanished into the entry.Five minutes later Pekarsky's footman came out, bareheaded, and, angry with the frost, shouted to me:

"Are you deaf?Pay the cabmen and go upstairs.You are wanted!"

At a complete loss, I went to the first storey.I had been to Pekarsky's flat before—that is, I had stood in the hall and looked into the drawing-room, and, after the damp, gloomy street, it always struck me by the brilliance of its picture-frames, its bronzes and expensive furniture.To-day in the midst of this splendour I saw Gruzin, Kukushkin, and, after a minute, Orlov.

"Look here, Stepan," he said, coming up to me."I shall be staying here till Friday or Saturday.If any letters or telegrams come, you must bring them here every day.At home, of course you will say that I have gone, and send my greetings.Now you can go."

When I reached home Zinaida Fyodorovna was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, eating a pear.There was only one candle burning in the candelabra.

"Did you catch the train?"asked Zinaida Fyodorovna.

"Yes, madam.His honour sends his greetings."

I went into my room and I, too, lay down.I had nothing to do, and I did not want to read.I was not surprised and I was not indignant.I only racked my brains to think why this deception was necessary.It is only boys in their teens who deceive their mistresses like that.How was it that a man who had thought and read so much could not imagine anything more sensible?I must confess I had by no means a poor opinion of his intelligence.I believe if he had had to deceive his minister or any other influential person he would have put a great deal of skill and energy into doing so; but to deceive a woman, the first idea that occurred to him was evidently good enough.If it succeeded—well and good; if it did not, there would be no harm done—he could tell some other lie just as quickly and simply, with no mental effort.

At midnight when the people on the floor overhead were moving their chairs and shouting hurrah to welcome the New Year, Zinaida Fyodorovna rang for me from the room next to the study.Languid from lying down so long, she was sitting at the table, writing something on a scrap of paper.

"I must send a telegram," she said, with a smile."Go to the station as quick as you can and ask them to send it after him."

Going out into the street, I read on the scrap of paper:

"May the New Year bring new happiness.Make haste and telegraph; I miss you dreadfully.It seems an eternity.I am only sorry I can't send a thousand kisses and my very heart by telegraph.Enjoy yourself, my darling.—ZINA."

I sent the telegram, and next morning I gave her the receipt.

IX

The worst of it was that Orlov had thoughtlessly let Polya, too, into the secret of his deception, telling her to bring his shirts to Sergievsky Street.After that, she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna with a malignant joy and hatred I could not understand, and was never tired of snorting with delight to herself in her own room and in the hall.

"She's outstayed her welcome; it's time she took herself off!"she would say with zest."She ought to realise that herself...."

She already divined by instinct that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and, not to let the chance slip, carried off everything she set her eyes on—smelling-bottles, tortoise-shell hairpins, handkerchiefs, shoes!On the day after New Year's Day, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low voice that she missed her black dress.And then she walked through all the rooms, with a pale, frightened, and indignant face, talking to herself:

"It's too much!It's beyond everything.Why, it's unheard-of insolence!"

At dinner she tried to help herself to soup, but could not—her hands were trembling.Her lips were trembling, too.She looked helplessly at the soup and at the little pies, waiting for the trembling to pass off, and suddenly she could not resist looking at Polya.

"You can go, Polya," she said."Stepan is enough by himself."

"I'll stay; I don't mind," answered Polya.

"There's no need for you to stay.You go away altogether," Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation."You may look out for another place.You can go at once."

"I can't go away without the master's orders.He engaged me.It must be as he orders."

"You can take orders from me, too!I am mistress here!"said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she flushed crimson.

"You may be the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me.It was he engaged me."

"You dare not stay here another minute!"cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she struck the plate with her knife."You are a thief!Do you hear?"

Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her dinner-napkin on the table, and with a pitiful, suffering face, went quickly out of the room.Loudly sobbing and wailing something indistinct, Polya, too, went away.The soup and the grouse got cold.And for some reason all the restaurant dainties on the table struck me as poor, thievish, like Polya.Two pies on a plate had a particularly miserable and guilty air."We shall be taken back to the restaurant to-day," they seemed to be saying, "and to-morrow we shall be put on the table again for some official or celebrated singer."

"She is a fine lady, indeed," I heard uttered in Polya's room."I could have been a lady like that long ago, but I have some self-respect!We'll see which of us will be the first to go!"

Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell.She was sitting in her room, in the corner, looking as though she had been put in the corner as a punishment.

"No telegram has come?"she asked.

"No, madam."

"Ask the porter; perhaps there is a telegram.And don't leave the house," she called after me."I am afraid to be left alone."

After that I had to run down almost every hour to ask the porter whether a telegram had come.I must own it was a dreadful time!To avoid seeing Polya, Zinaida Fyodorovna dined and had tea in her own room; it was here that she slept, too, on a short sofa like a half-moon, and she made her own bed.For the first days I took the telegrams; but, getting no answer, she lost her faith in me and began telegraphing herself.Looking at her, I, too, began impatiently hoping for a telegram.I hoped he would contrive some deception, would make arrangements, for instance, that a telegram should be sent to her from some station.If he were too much engrossed with cards or had been attracted by some other woman, I thought that both Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us.But our expectations were vain.Five times a day I would go in to Zinaida Fyodorovna, intending to tell her the truth.But her eyes looked piteous as a fawn's, her shoulders seemed to droop, her lips were moving, and I went away again without saying a word.Pity and sympathy seemed to rob me of all manliness.Polya, as cheerful and well satisfied with herself as though nothing had happened, was tidying the master's study and the bedroom, rummaging in the cupboards, and making the crockery jingle, and when she passed Zinaida Fyodorovna's door, she hummed something and coughed.She was pleased that her mistress was hiding from her.In the evening she would go out somewhere, and rang at two or three o'clock in the morning, and I had to open the door to her and listen to remarks about my cough.Immediately afterwards I would hear another ring; I would run to the room next to the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, putting her head out of the door, would ask, "Who was it rung?"while she looked at my hands to see whether I had a telegram.

When at last on Saturday the bell rang below and she heard the familiar voice on the stairs, she was so delighted that she broke into sobs.She rushed to meet him, embraced him, kissed him on the breast and sleeves, said something one could not understand.The hall porter brought up the portmanteaus; Polya's cheerful voice was heard.It was as though some one had come home for the holidays.

"Why didn't you wire?"asked Zinaida Fyodorovna, breathless with joy."Why was it?I have been in misery; I don't know how I've lived through it....Oh, my God!"

"It was very simple!I returned with the senator to Moscow the very first day, and didn't get your telegrams," said Orlov."After dinner, my love, I'll give you a full account of my doings, but now I must sleep and sleep....I am worn out with the journey."

It was evident that he had not slept all night; he had probably been playing cards and drinking freely.Zinaida Fyodorovna put him to bed, and we all walked about on tiptoe all that day.The dinner went off quite satisfactorily, but when they went into the study and had coffee the explanation began.Zinaida Fyodorovna began talking of something rapidly in a low voice; she spoke in French, and her words flowed like a stream.Then I heard a loud sigh from Orlov, and his voice.

"My God!"he said in French."Have you really nothing fresher to tell me than this everlasting tale of your servant's misdeeds?"

"But, my dear, she robbed me and said insulting things to me."

"But why is it she doesn't rob me or say insulting things to me?Why is it I never notice the maids nor the porters nor the footmen?My dear, you are simply capricious and refuse to know your own mind....I really begin to suspect that you must be in a certain condition.When I offered to let her go, you insisted on her remaining, and now you want me to turn her away.I can be obstinate, too, in such cases.You want her to go, but I want her to remain.That's the only way to cure you of your nerves."

"Oh, very well, very well," said Zinaida Fyodorovna in alarm."Let us say no more about that....Let us put it off till to-morrow....Now tell me about Moscow....What is going on in Moscow?"

X

After lunch next day—it was the seventh of January, St.John the Baptist's Day—Orlov put on his black dress coat and his decoration to go to visit his father and congratulate him on his name day.He had to go at two o'clock, and it was only half-past one when he had finished dressing.What was he to do for that half-hour?He walked about the drawing-room, declaiming some congratulatory verses which he had recited as a child to his father and mother.

Zinaida Fyodorovna, who was just going out to a dressmaker's or to the shops, was sitting, listening to him with a smile.I don't know how their conversation began, but when I took Orlov his gloves, he was standing before her with a capricious, beseeching face, saying:

"For God's sake, in the name of everything that's holy, don't talk of things that everybody knows!What an unfortunate gift our intellectual thoughtful ladies have for talking with enthusiasm and an air of profundity of things that every schoolboy is sick to death of!Ah, if only you would exclude from our conjugal programme all these serious questions!How grateful I should be to you!"

"We women may not dare, it seems, to have views of our own."

"I give you full liberty to be as liberal as you like, and quote from any authors you choose, but make me one concession: don't hold forth in my presence on either of two subjects: the corruption of the upper classes and the evils of the marriage system.Do understand me, at last.The upper class is always abused in contrast with the world of tradesmen, priests, workmen and peasants, Sidors and Nikitas of all sorts.I detest both classes, but if I had honestly to choose between the two, I should without hesitation, prefer the upper class, and there would be no falsity or affectation about it, since all my tastes are in that direction.Our world is trivial and empty, but at any rate we speak French decently, read something, and don't punch each other in the ribs even in our most violent quarrels, while the Sidors and the Nikitas and their worships in trade talk about 'being quite agreeable,' 'in a jiffy,' 'blast your eyes,' and display the utmost license of pothouse manners and the most degrading superstition."

"The peasant and the tradesman feed you."

"Yes, but what of it?That's not only to my discredit, but to theirs too.They feed me and take off their caps to me, so it seems they have not the intelligence and honesty to do otherwise.I don't blame or praise any one: I only mean that the upper class and the lower are as bad as one another.My feelings and my intelligence are opposed to both, but my tastes lie more in the direction of the former.Well, now for the evils of marriage," Orlov went on, glancing at his watch."It's high time for you to understand that there are no evils in the system itself; what is the matter is that you don't know yourselves what you want from marriage.What is it you want?In legal and illegal cohabitation, in every sort of union and cohabitation, good or bad, the underlying reality is the same.You ladies live for that underlying reality alone: for you it's everything; your existence would have no meaning for you without it.You want nothing but that, and you get it; but since you've taken to reading novels you are ashamed of it: you rush from pillar to post, you recklessly change your men, and to justify this turmoil you have begun talking of the evils of marriage.So long as you can't and won't renounce what underlies it all, your chief foe, your devil—so long as you serve that slavishly, what use is there in discussing the matter seriously?Everything you may say to me will be falsity and affectation.I shall not believe you."

I went to find out from the hall porter whether the sledge was at the door, and when I came back I found it had become a quarrel.As sailors say, a squall had blown up.

"I see you want to shock me by your cynicism today," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, walking about the drawing-room in great emotion."It revolts me to listen to you.I am pure before God and man, and have nothing to repent of.I left my husband and came to you, and am proud of it.I swear, on my honour, I am proud of it!"

"Well, that's all right, then!"

"If you are a decent, honest man, you, too, ought to be proud of what I did.It raises you and me above thousands of people who would like to do as we have done, but do not venture through cowardice or petty prudence.But you are not a decent man.You are afraid of freedom, and you mock the promptings of genuine feeling, from fear that some ignoramus may suspect you of being sincere.You are afraid to show me to your friends; there's no greater infliction for you than to go about with me in the street....Isn't that true?Why haven't you introduced me to your father or your cousin all this time?Why is it?No, I am sick of it at last," cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, stamping."I demand what is mine by right.You must present me to your father."

"If you want to know him, go and present yourself.He receives visitors every morning from ten till half-past."

"How base you are!"said Zinaida Fyodorovna, wringing her hands in despair."Even if you are not sincere, and are not saying what you think, I might hate you for your cruelty.Oh, how base you are!"

"We keep going round and round and never reach the real point.The real point is that you made a mistake, and you won't acknowledge it aloud.You imagined that I was a hero, and that I had some extraordinary ideas and ideals, and it has turned out that I am a most ordinary official, a cardplayer, and have no partiality for ideas of any sort.I am a worthy representative of the rotten world from which you have run away because you were revolted with its triviality and emptiness.Recognise it and be just: don't be indignant with me, but with yourself, as it is your mistake, and not mine."

"Yes, I admit I was mistaken."

"Well, that's all right, then.We've reached that point at last, thank God.Now hear something more, if you please: I can't rise to your level—I am too depraved; you can't descend to my level, either, for you are too exalted.So there is only one thing left to do...."

"What?"Zinaida Fyodorovna asked quickly, holding her breath and turning suddenly as white as a sheet of paper.

"To call logic to our aid...."

"Georgy, why are you torturing me?"Zinaida Fyodorovna said suddenly in Russian in a breaking voice."What is it for?Think of my misery...."

Orlov, afraid of tears, went quickly into his study, and I don't know why—whether it was that he wished to cause her extra pain, or whether he remembered it was usually done in such cases—he locked the door after him.She cried out and ran after him with a rustle of her skirt.

"What does this mean?"she cried, knocking at his door."What ...what does this mean?"she repeated in a shrill voice breaking with indignation."Ah, so this is what you do!Then let me tell you I hate you, I despise you!Everything is over between us now."

I heard hysterical weeping mingled with laughter.Something small in the drawing-room fell off the table and was broken.Orlov went out into the hall by another door, and, looking round him nervously, he hurriedly put on his great-coat and went out.

Half an hour passed, an hour, and she was still weeping.I remembered that she had no father or mother, no relations, and here she was living between a man who hated her and Polya, who robbed her—and how desolate her life seemed to me!I do not know why, but I went into the drawing-room to her.Weak and helpless, looking with her lovely hair like an embodiment of tenderness and grace, she was in anguish, as though she were ill; she was lying on a couch, hiding her face, and quivering all over.

"Madam, shouldn't I fetch a doctor?"I asked gently.

"No, there's no need ...it's nothing," she said, and she looked at me with her tear-stained eyes."I have a little headache....Thank you."

I went out, and in the evening she was writing letter after letter, and sent me out first to Pekarsky, then to Gruzin, then to Kukushkin, and finally anywhere I chose, if only I could find Orlov and give him the letter.Every time I came back with the letter she scolded me, entreated me, thrust money into my hand—as though she were in a fever.And all the night she did not sleep, but sat in the drawing-room, talking to herself.

Orlov returned to dinner next day, and they were reconciled.

The first Thursday afterwards Orlov complained to his friends of the intolerable life he led; he smoked a great deal, and said with irritation:

"It is no life at all; it's the rack.Tears, wailing, intellectual conversations, begging for forgiveness, again tears and wailing; and the long and the short of it is that I have no flat of my own now.I am wretched, and I make her wretched.Surely I haven't to live another month or two like this?How can I?But yet I may have to."

"Why don't you speak, then?"said Pekarsky.

"I've tried, but I can't.One can boldly tell the truth, whatever it may be, to an independent, rational man; but in this case one has to do with a creature who has no will, no strength of character, and no logic.I cannot endure tears; they disarm me.When she cries, I am ready to swear eternal love and cry myself."

Pekarsky did not understand; he scratched his broad forehead in perplexity and said:

"You really had better take another flat for her.It's so simple!"

"She wants me, not the flat.But what's the good of talking?"sighed Orlov."I only hear endless conversations, but no way out of my position.It certainly is a case of 'being guilty without guilt.'I don't claim to be a mushroom, but it seems I've got to go into the basket.The last thing I've ever set out to be is a hero.I never could endure Turgenev's novels; and now, all of a sudden, as though to spite me, I've heroism forced upon me.I assure her on my honour that I'm not a hero at all, I adduce irrefutable proofs of the same, but she doesn't believe me.Why doesn't she believe me?I suppose I really must have something of the appearance of a hero."

"You go off on a tour of inspection in the provinces," said Kukushkin, laughing.

"Yes, that's the only thing left for me."

A week after this conversation Orlov announced that he was again ordered to attend the senator, and the same evening he went off with his portmanteaus to Pekarsky.

XI

An old man of sixty, in a long fur coat reaching to the ground, and a beaver cap, was standing at the door.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?"he asked.

At first I thought it was one of the moneylenders, Gruzin's creditors, who sometimes used to come to Orlov for small payments on account; but when he came into the hall and flung open his coat, I saw the thick brows and the characteristically compressed lips which I knew so well from the photographs, and two rows of stars on the uniform.I recognised him: it was Orlov's father, the distinguished statesman.

I answered that Georgy Ivanitch was not at home.The old man pursed up his lips tightly and looked into space, reflecting, showing me his dried-up, toothless profile.

"I'll leave a note," he said; "show me in."

He left his goloshes in the hall, and, without taking off his long, heavy fur coat, went into the study.There he sat down before the table, and, before taking up the pen, for three minutes he pondered, shading his eyes with his hand as though from the sun—exactly as his son did when he was out of humour.His face was sad, thoughtful, with that look of resignation which I have only seen on the faces of the old and religious.I stood behind him, gazed at his bald head and at the hollow at the nape of his neck, and it was clear as daylight to me that this weak old man was now in my power.There was not a soul in the flat except my enemy and me.I had only to use a little physical violence, then snatch his watch to disguise the object of the crime, and to get off by the back way, and I should have gained infinitely more than I could have imagined possible when I took up the part of a footman.I thought that I could hardly get a better opportunity.But instead of acting, I looked quite unconcernedly, first at his bald patch and then at his fur, and calmly meditated on this man's relation to his only son, and on the fact that people spoiled by power and wealth probably don't want to die....

"Have you been long in my son's service?"he asked, writing a large hand on the paper.

"Three months, your High Excellency."

He finished the letter and stood up.I still had time.I urged myself on and clenched my fists, trying to wring out of my soul some trace of my former hatred; I recalled what a passionate, implacable, obstinate hate I had felt for him only a little while before....But it is difficult to strike a match against a crumbling stone.The sad old face and the cold glitter of his stars roused in me nothing but petty, cheap, unnecessary thoughts of the transitoriness of everything earthly, of the nearness of death....

"Good-day, brother," said the old man.He put on his cap and went out.

There could be no doubt about it: I had undergone a change; I had become different.To convince myself, I began to recall the past, but at once I felt uneasy, as though I had accidentally peeped into a dark, damp corner.I remembered my comrades and friends, and my first thought was how I should blush in confusion if ever I met any of them.What was I now?What had I to think of and to do?Where was I to go?What was I living for?

I could make nothing of it.I only knew one thing—that I must make haste to pack my things and be off.Before the old man's visit my position as a flunkey had a meaning; now it was absurd.Tears dropped into my open portmanteau; I felt insufferably sad; but how I longed to live!I was ready to embrace and include in my short life every possibility open to man.I wanted to speak, to read, and to hammer in some big factory, and to stand on watch, and to plough.I yearned for the Nevsky Prospect, for the sea and the fields—for every place to which my imagination travelled.When Zinaida Fyodorovna came in, I rushed to open the door for her, and with peculiar tenderness took off her fur coat.The last time!

We had two other visitors that day besides the old man.In the evening when it was quite dark, Gruzin came to fetch some papers for Orlov.He opened the table-drawer, took the necessary papers, and, rolling them up, told me to put them in the hall beside his cap while he went in to see Zinaida Fyodorovna.She was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, with her arms behind her head.Five or six days had already passed since Orlov went on his tour of inspection, and no one knew when he would be back, but this time she did not send telegrams and did not expect them.She did not seem to notice the presence of Polya, who was still living with us."So be it, then," was what I read on her passionless and very pale face.Like Orlov, she wanted to be unhappy out of obstinacy.To spite herself and everything in the world, she lay for days together on the sofa, desiring and expecting nothing but evil for herself.Probably she was picturing to herself Orlov's return and the inevitable quarrels with him; then his growing indifference to her, his infidelities; then how they would separate; and perhaps these agonising thoughts gave her satisfaction.But what would she have said if she found out the actual truth?

"I love you, Godmother," said Gruzin, greeting her and kissing her hand. "You are so kind! And so dear George has gone away," he lied. "He has gone away, the rascal!"

He sat down with a sigh and tenderly stroked her hand.

"Let me spend an hour with you, my dear," he said."I don't want to go home, and it's too early to go to the Birshovs'.The Birshovs are keeping their Katya's birthday to-day.She is a nice child!"

I brought him a glass of tea and a decanter of brandy.He slowly and with obvious reluctance drank the tea, and returning the glass to me, asked timidly:

"Can you give me ...something to eat, my friend?I have had no dinner."

We had nothing in the flat.I went to the restaurant and brought him the ordinary rouble dinner.

"To your health, my dear," he said to Zinaida Fyodorovna, and he tossed off a glass of vodka. "My little girl, your godchild, sends you her love. Poor child! she's rickety. Ah, children, children!" he sighed. "Whatever you may say, Godmother, it is nice to be a father. Dear George can't understand that feeling."

He drank some more.Pale and lean, with his dinner-napkin over his chest like a little pinafore, he ate greedily, and raising his eyebrows, kept looking guiltily, like a little boy, first at Zinaida Fyodorovna and then at me.It seemed as though he would have begun crying if I had not given him the grouse or the jelly.When he had satisfied his hunger he grew more lively, and began laughingly telling some story about the Birshov household, but perceiving that it was tiresome and that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not laughing, he ceased.And there was a sudden feeling of dreariness.After he had finished his dinner they sat in the drawing-room by the light of a single lamp, and did not speak; it was painful to him to lie to her, and she wanted to ask him something, but could not make up her mind to.So passed half an hour.Gruzin glanced at his watch.

"I suppose it's time for me to go."

"No, stay a little....We must have a talk."

Again they were silent.He sat down to the piano, struck one chord, then began playing, and sang softly, "What does the coming day bring me?"but as usual he got up suddenly and tossed his head.

"Play something," Zinaida Fyodorovna asked him.

"What shall I play?"he asked, shrugging his shoulders."I have forgotten everything.I've given it up long ago."

Looking at the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite expression, with such warmth, such insight!His face was just as usual—neither stupid nor intelligent—and it seemed to me a perfect marvel that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of rising to a feeling so lofty, so far beyond my reach.Zinaida Fyodorovna's face glowed, and she walked about the drawing-room in emotion.

"Wait a bit, Godmother; if I can remember it, I will play you something," he said; "I heard it played on the violoncello."

Beginning timidly and picking out the notes, and then gathering confidence, he played Saint-Saëns's "Swan Song."He played it through, and then played it a second time.

"It's nice, isn't it?"he said.

Moved by the music, Zinaida Fyodorovna stood beside him and asked:

"Tell me honestly, as a friend, what do you think about me?"

"What am I to say?"he said, raising his eyebrows."I love you and think nothing but good of you.But if you wish that I should speak generally about the question that interests you," he went on, rubbing his sleeve near the elbow and frowning, "then, my dear, you know....To follow freely the promptings of the heart does not always give good people happiness.To feel free and at the same time to be happy, it seems to me, one must not conceal from oneself that life is coarse, cruel, and merciless in its conservatism, and one must retaliate with what it deserves—that is, be as coarse and as merciless in one's striving for freedom.That's what I think."

"That's beyond me," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a mournful smile."I am exhausted already.I am so exhausted that I wouldn't stir a finger for my own salvation."

"Go into a nunnery."

He said this in jest, but after he had said it, tears glistened in Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes and then in his.

"Well," he said, "we've been sitting and sitting, and now we must go.Good-bye, dear Godmother.God give you health."

He kissed both her hands, and stroking them tenderly, said that he should certainly come to see her again in a day or two.In the hall, as he was putting on his overcoat, that was so like a child's pelisse, he fumbled long in his pockets to find a tip for me, but found nothing there.

"Good-bye, my dear fellow," he said sadly, and went away.

I shall never forget the feeling that this man left behind him.

Zinaida Fyodorovna still walked about the room in her excitement.That she was walking about and not still lying down was so much to the good.I wanted to take advantage of this mood to speak to her openly and then to go away, but I had hardly seen Gruzin out when I heard a ring.It was Kukushkin.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?"he said."Has he come back?You say no?What a pity!In that case, I'll go in and kiss your mistress's hand, and so away.Zinaida Fyodorovna, may I come in?"he cried."I want to kiss your hand.Excuse my being so late."

He was not long in the drawing-room, not more than ten minutes, but I felt as though he were staying a long while and would never go away.I bit my lips from indignation and annoyance, and already hated Zinaida Fyodorovna."Why does she not turn him out?"I thought indignantly, though it was evident that she was bored by his company.

When I held his fur coat for him he asked me, as a mark of special good-will, how I managed to get on without a wife.

"But I don't suppose you waste your time," he said, laughingly."I've no doubt Polya and you are as thick as thieves....You rascal!"

In spite of my experience of life, I knew very little of mankind at that time, and it is very likely that I often exaggerated what was of little consequence and failed to observe what was important.It seemed to me it was not without motive that Kukushkin tittered and flattered me.Could it be that he was hoping that I, like a flunkey, would gossip in other kitchens and servants' quarters of his coming to see us in the evenings when Orlov was away, and staying with Zinaida Fyodorovna till late at night?And when my tittle-tattle came to the ears of his acquaintance, he would drop his eyes in confusion and shake his little finger.And would not he, I thought, looking at his little honeyed face, this very evening at cards pretend and perhaps declare that he had already won Zinaida Fyodorovna from Orlov?

That hatred which failed me at midday when the old father had come, took possession of me now.Kukushkin went away at last, and as I listened to the shuffle of his leather goloshes, I felt greatly tempted to fling after him, as a parting shot, some coarse word of abuse, but I restrained myself.And when the steps had died away on the stairs, I went back to the hall, and, hardly conscious of what I was doing, took up the roll of papers that Gruzin had left behind, and ran headlong downstairs.Without cap or overcoat, I ran down into the street.It was not cold, but big flakes of snow were falling and it was windy.

"Your Excellency!"I cried, catching up Kukushkin."Your Excellency!"

He stopped under a lamp-post and looked round with surprise."Your Excellency!"I said breathless, "your Excellency!"

And not able to think of anything to say, I hit him two or three times on the face with the roll of paper.Completely at a loss, and hardly wondering—I had so completely taken him by surprise—he leaned his back against the lamp-post and put up his hands to protect his face.At that moment an army doctor passed, and saw how I was beating the man, but he merely looked at us in astonishment and went on.I felt ashamed and I ran back to the house.

XII

With my head wet from the snow, and gasping for breath, I ran to my room, and immediately flung off my swallow-tails, put on a reefer jacket and an overcoat, and carried my portmanteau out into the passage; I must get away!But before going I hurriedly sat down and began writing to Orlov:

"I leave you my false passport," I began."I beg you to keep it as a memento, you false man, you Petersburg official!

"To steal into another man's house under a false name, to watch under the mask of a flunkey this person's intimate life, to hear everything, to see everything in order later on, unasked, to accuse a man of lying—all this, you will say, is on a level with theft.Yes, but I care nothing for fine feelings now.I have endured dozens of your dinners and suppers when you said and did what you liked, and I had to hear, to look on, and be silent.I don't want to make you a present of my silence.Besides, if there is not a living soul at hand who dares to tell you the truth without flattery, let your flunkey Stepan wash your magnificent countenance for you."

I did not like this beginning, but I did not care to alter it.Besides, what did it matter?

The big windows with their dark curtains, the bed, the crumpled dress coat on the floor, and my wet footprints, looked gloomy and forbidding.And there was a peculiar stillness.

Possibly because I had run out into the street without my cap and goloshes I was in a high fever.My face burned, my legs ached....My heavy head drooped over the table, and there was that kind of division in my thought when every idea in the brain seemed dogged by its shadow.

"I am ill, weak, morally cast down," I went on; "I cannot write to you as I should like to.From the first moment I desired to insult and humiliate you, but now I do not feel that I have the right to do so.You and I have both fallen, and neither of us will ever rise up again; and even if my letter were eloquent, terrible, and passionate, it would still seem like beating on the lid of a coffin: however one knocks upon it, one will not wake up the dead!No efforts could warm your accursed cold blood, and you know that better than I do.Why write?But my mind and heart are burning, and I go on writing; for some reason I am moved as though this letter still might save you and me.I am so feverish that my thoughts are disconnected, and my pen scratches the paper without meaning; but the question I want to put to you stands before me as clear as though in letters of flame.

"Why I am prematurely weak and fallen is not hard to explain.Like Samson of old, I have taken the gates of Gaza on my shoulders to carry them to the top of the mountain, and only when I was exhausted, when youth and health were quenched in me forever, I noticed that that burden was not for my shoulders, and that I had deceived myself.I have been, moreover, in cruel and continual pain.I have endured cold, hunger, illness, and loss of liberty.Of personal happiness I know and have known nothing.I have no home; my memories are bitter, and my conscience is often in dread of them.But why have you fallen—you?What fatal, diabolical causes hindered your life from blossoming into full flower?Why, almost before beginning life, were you in such haste to cast off the image and likeness of God, and to become a cowardly beast who backs and scares others because he is afraid himself?You are afraid of life—as afraid of it as an Oriental who sits all day on a cushion smoking his hookah.Yes, you read a great deal, and a European coat fits you well, but yet with what tender, purely Oriental, pasha-like care you protect yourself from hunger, cold, physical effort, from pain and uneasiness!How early your soul has taken to its dressing-gown!What a cowardly part you have played towards real life and nature, with which every healthy and normal man struggles!How soft, how snug, how warm, how comfortable—and how bored you are!Yes, it is deathly boredom, unrelieved by one ray of light, as in solitary confinement; but you try to hide from that enemy, too, you play cards eight hours out of twenty-four.

"And your irony?Oh, but how well I understand it!Free, bold, living thought is searching and dominating; for an indolent, sluggish mind it is intolerable.That it may not disturb your peace, like thousands of your contemporaries, you made haste in youth to put it under bar and bolt.Your ironical attitude to life, or whatever you like to call it, is your armour; and your thought, fettered and frightened, dare not leap over the fence you have put round it; and when you jeer at ideas which you pretend to know all about, you are like the deserter fleeing from the field of battle, and, to stifle his shame, sneering at war and at valour.Cynicism stifles pain.In some novel of Dostoevsky's an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his dearly loved daughter because he had been unjust to her, and you vent your foul and vulgar jeers upon the ideas of goodness and truth because you have not the strength to follow them.You are frightened of every honest and truthful hint at your degradation, and you purposely surround yourself with people who do nothing but flatter your weaknesses.And you may well, you may well dread the sight of tears!

"By the way, your attitude to women. Shamelessness has been handed down to us in our flesh and blood, and we are trained to shamelessness; but that is what we are men for—to subdue the beast in us. When you reached manhood and all ideas became known to you, you could not have failed to see the truth; you knew it, but you did not follow it; you were afraid of it, and to deceive your conscience you began loudly assuring yourself that it was not you but woman that was to blame, that she was as degraded as your attitude to her. Your cold, scabrous anecdotes, your coarse laughter, all your innumerable theories concerning the underlying reality of marriage and the definite demands made upon it, concerning the ten sous the French workman pays his woman; your everlasting attacks on female logic, lying, weakness and so on—doesn't it all look like a desire at all costs to force woman down into the mud that she may be on the same level as your attitude to her? You are a weak, unhappy, unpleasant person!"

Zinaida Fyodorovna began playing the piano in the drawing-room, trying to recall the song of Saint Saëns that Gruzin had played.I went and lay on my bed, but remembering that it was time for me to go, I got up with an effort and with a heavy, burning head went to the table again.

"But this is the question," I went on."Why are we worn out?Why are we, at first so passionate, so bold, so noble, and so full of faith, complete bankrupts at thirty or thirty-five?Why does one waste in consumption, another put a bullet through his brains, a third seeks forgetfulness in vodka and cards, while the fourth tries to stifle his fear and misery by cynically trampling underfoot the pure image of his fair youth?Why is it that, having once fallen, we do not try to rise up again, and, losing one thing, do not seek something else?Why is it?

"The thief hanging on the Cross could bring back the joy of life and the courage of confident hope, though perhaps he had not more than an hour to live.You have long years before you, and I shall probably not die so soon as one might suppose.What if by a miracle the present turned out to be a dream, a horrible nightmare, and we should wake up renewed, pure, strong, proud of our righteousness?Sweet visions fire me, and I am almost breathless with emotion.I have a terrible longing to live.I long for our life to be holy, lofty, and majestic as the heavens above.Let us live!The sun doesn't rise twice a day, and life is not given us again—clutch at what is left of your life and save it...."

I did not write another word.I had a multitude of thoughts in my mind, but I could not connect them and get them on to paper.Without finishing the letter, I signed it with my name and rank, and went into the study.It was dark.I felt for the table and put the letter on it.I must have stumbled against the furniture in the dark and made a noise.

"Who is there?"I heard an alarmed voice in the drawing-room.

And the clock on the table softly struck one at the moment.