Part 10

She remembered how Gronsdiev was playing with Maxim the poodle after tea yesterday; how he told a story afterwards of a very clever poodle who was chasing a crow in the yard. The crow gave him a look and said:

“Oh, you swindler!”

The poodle did not know he had to do with a learned crow. He was terribly confused, and ran away dumfounded. Afterwards he began to bark.

“No, I’d better love Gronsdiev,” Nadya decided and tore up the letter.

She began to think of the student, of his love, of her own love, with the result that the thoughts in her head swam apart and she thought about everything, about her mother, the street, the pencil, the piano. She was happy thinking, and found that everything was good, magnificent. Her happiness told her that this was not all, that a little later it would be still better. Soon it will be spring, summer. They will go with mother to Gorbiki in the country. Gorny will come for his holidays. He will walk in the orchard with her, and make love to her. Gronsdiev will come too. He will play croquet with her and bowls. He will tell funny, wonderful stories. She passionately longed for the orchard, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars. Again her shoulders trembled with laughter and she seemed to awake to a smell of wormwood in the room; and a branch was tapping at the window.

She went to her bed and sat down. She did not know what to do with her great happiness. It overwhelmed her. She stared at the crucifix which hung at the head of her bed and saying:

“Dear God, dear God, dear God.”

THAT WRETCHED BOY

Ivan Ivanich Lapkin, a pleasant looking young man, and Anna Zamblizky, a young girl with a little snub nose, walked down the sloping bank and sat down on the bench. The bench was close to the water’s edge, among thick bushes of young willow. A heavenly spot! You sat down, and you were hidden from the world. Only the fish could see you and the catspaws which flashed over the water like lightning. The two young persons were equipped with rods, fish hooks, bags, tins of worms and everything else necessary. Once seated, they immediately began to fish.

“I am glad that we’re left alone at last,” said Lapkin, looking round. I’ve got a lot to tell you, Anna--tremendous ... when I saw you for the first time ... you’ve got a nibble ... I understood then--why I am alive, I knew where my idol was, to whom I can devote my honest, hardworking life.... It must be a big one ... it is biting.... When I saw you--for the first time in my life I fell in love--fell in love passionately! Don’t pull. Let it go on biting.... Tell me, darling, tell me--will you let me hope? No! I’m not worth it. I dare not even think of it--may I hope for.... Pull!

Anna lifted her hand that held the rod--pulled, cried out. A silvery green fish shone in the air.

“Goodness! it’s a perch! Help--quick! It’s slipping off.” The perch tore itself from the hook--danced in the grass towards its native element and ... leaped into the water.

But instead of the little fish that he was chasing, Lapkin quite by accident caught hold of Anna’s hand--quite by accident pressed it to his lips. She drew back, but it was too late; quite by accident their lips met and kissed; yes, it was an absolute accident! They kissed and kissed. Then came vows and assurances.... Blissful moments! But there is no such thing as absolute happiness in this life. If happiness itself does not contain a poison, poison will enter in from without. Which happened this time. Suddenly, while the two were kissing, a laugh was heard. They looked at the river and were paralysed. The schoolboy Kolia, Anna’s brother, was standing in the water, watching the young people and maliciously laughing.

“Ah--ha! Kissing!” said he. “Right O, I’ll tell Mother.”

“I hope that you--as a man of honour,” Lapkin muttered, blushing. “It’s disgusting to spy on us, it’s loathsome to tell tales, it’s rotten. As a man of honour....”

“Give me a shilling, then I’ll shut up!” the man of honour retorted. “If you don’t, I’ll tell.”

Lapkin took a shilling out of his pocket and gave it to Kolia, who squeezed it in his wet fist, whistled, and swam away. And the young people did not kiss any more just then.

Next day Lapkin brought Kolia some paints and a ball from town, and his sister gave him all her empty pill boxes. Then they had to present him with a set of studs like dogs’ heads. The wretched boy enjoyed this game immensely, and to keep it going he began to spy on them. Wherever Lapkin and Anna went, he was there too. He did not leave them alone for a single moment.

“Beast!” Lapkin gnashed his teeth. “So young and yet such a full fledged scoundrel. What on earth will become of him later!”

During the whole of July the poor lovers had no life apart from him. He threatened to tell on them; he dogged them and demanded more presents. Nothing satisfied him--finally he hinted at a gold watch. All right, they had to promise the watch.

Once, at table, when biscuits were being handed round, he burst out laughing and said to Lapkin: “Shall I let on? Ah--ha!”

Lapkin blushed fearfully and instead of a biscuit he began to chew his table napkin. Anna jumped up from the table and rushed out of the room.

And this state of things went on until the end of August, up to the day when Lapkin at last proposed to Anna. Ah! What a happy day that was! When he had spoken to her parents and obtained their consent Lapkin rushed into the garden after Kolia. When he found him he nearly cried for joy and caught hold of the wretched boy by the ear. Anna, who was also looking for Kolia came running up and grabbed him by the other ear. You should have seen the happiness depicted on their faces while Kolia roared and begged them:

“Darling, precious pets, I won’t do it again. O-oh--O-oh! Forgive me!” And both of them confessed afterwards that during all the time they were in love with each other they never experienced such happiness, such overwhelming joy as during those moments when they pulled the wretched boy’s ears.

ENEMIES

About ten o’clock of a dark September evening the Zemstvo doctor Kirilov’s only son, six-year-old Andrey, died of diphtheria. As the doctor’s wife dropped on to her knees before the dead child’s cot and the first paroxysm of despair took hold of her, the bell rang sharply in the hall.

When the diphtheria came all the servants were sent away from the house, that very morning. Kirilov himself went to the door, just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned, without wiping his wet face or hands, which had been burnt with carbolic acid. It was dark in the hall, and of the person who entered could be distinguished only his middle height, a white scarf and a big, extraordinarily pale face, so pale that it seemed as though its appearance made the hall brighter....

“Is the doctor in?” the visitor asked abruptly.

“I’m at home,” answered Kirilov. “What do you want?”

“Oh, you’re the doctor? I’m so glad!” The visitor was overjoyed and began to seek for the doctor’s hand in the darkness. He found it and squeezed it hard in his own. “I’m very ... very glad! We were introduced ... I am Aboguin ... had the pleasure of meeting you this summer at Mr. Gnouchev’s. I am very glad to have found you at home.... For God’s sake, don’t say you won’t come with me immediately.... My wife has been taken dangerously ill.... I have the carriage with me....”

From the visitor’s voice and movements it was evident that he had been in a state of violent agitation. Exactly as though he had been frightened by a fire or a mad dog, he could hardly restrain his hurried breathing, and he spoke quickly in a trembling voice. In his speech there sounded a note of real sincerity, of childish fright. Like all men who are frightened and dazed, he spoke in short, abrupt phrases and uttered many superfluous, quite unnecessary, words.

“I was afraid I shouldn’t find you at home,” he continued. “While I was coming to you I suffered terribly.... Dress yourself and let us go, for God’s sake.... It happened like this. Papchinsky came to me--Alexander Siemionovich, you know him.... We were chatting.... Then we sat down to tea. Suddenly my wife cries out, presses her hands to her heart, and falls back in her chair. We carried her off to her bed and ... and I rubbed her forehead with sal-volatile, and splashed her with water.... She lies like a corpse.... I’m afraid that her heart’s failed.... Let us go.... Her father too died of heart-failure.”

Kirilov listened in silence as though he did not understand the Russian language.

When Aboguin once more mentioned Papchinsky and his wife’s father, and once more began to seek for the doctor’s hand in the darkness, the doctor shook his head and said, drawling each word listlessly:

“Excuse me, but I can’t go.... Five minutes ago my ... my son died.”

“Is that true?” Aboguin whispered, stepping back. “My God, what an awful moment to come! It’s a terribly fated day ... terribly! What a coincidence ... and it might have been on purpose!”

Aboguin took hold of the door handle and drooped his head in meditation. Evidently he was hesitating, not knowing whether to go away, or to ask the doctor once more.

“Listen,” he said eagerly, seizing Kirilov by the sleeve. “I fully understand your state! God knows I’m ashamed to try to hold your attention at such a moment, but what can I do? Think yourself--who can I go to? There isn’t another doctor here besides you. For heaven’s sake come. I’m not asking for myself. It’s not I that’s ill!”

Silence began. Kirilov turned his back to Aboguin, stood still for a while and slowly went out of the hall into the drawing-room. To judge by his uncertain, machine-like movement, and by the attentiveness with which he arranged the hanging shade on the unlighted lamp in the drawing-room and consulted a thick book which lay on the table--at such a moment he had neither purpose nor desire, nor did he think of anything, and probably had already forgotten that there was a stranger standing in his hall. The gloom and the quiet of the drawing-room apparently increased his insanity. As he went from the drawing-room to his study he raised his right foot higher than he need, felt with his hands for the door-posts, and then one felt a certain perplexity in his whole figure, as though he had entered a strange house by chance, or for the first time in his life had got drunk, and now was giving himself up in bewilderment to the new sensation. A wide line of light stretched across the bookshelves on one wall of the study; this light, together with the heavy stifling smell of carbolic acid and ether came from the door ajar that led from the study into the bed-room.... The doctor sank into a chair before the table; for a while he looked drowsily at the shining books, then rose and went into the bed-room.

Here, in the bed-room, dead quiet reigned. Everything, down to the last trifle, spoke eloquently of the tempest undergone, of weariness, and everything rested. The candle which stood among a close crowd of phials, boxes and jars on the stool and the big lamp on the chest of drawers brightly lit the room. On the bed, by the window, the boy lay open-eyed, with a look of wonder on his face. He did not move, but it seemed that his open eyes became darker and darker every second and sank into his skull. Having laid her hands on his body and hid her face in the folds of the bed-clothes, the mother now was on her knees before the bed. Like the boy she did not move, but how much living movement was felt in the coil of her body and in her hands! She was pressing close to the bed with her whole being, with eager vehemence, as though she were afraid to violate the quiet and comfortable pose which she had found at last for her weary body. Blankets, cloths, basins, splashes on the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle of lime-water, the stifling heavy air itself--everything died away, and as it were plunged into quietude.

The doctor stopped by his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and bending his head on one side looked fixedly at his son. His face showed indifference; only the drops which glistened on his beard revealed that he had been lately weeping.

The repulsive terror of which we think when we speak of death was absent from the bed-room. In the pervading dumbness, in the mother’s pose, in the indifference of the doctor’s face was something attractive that touched the heart, the subtle and elusive beauty of human grief, which it will take men long to understand and describe, and only music, it seems, is able to express. Beauty too was felt in the stern stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and did not weep, as though they confessed all the poetry of their condition. As once the season of their youth passed away, so now in this boy their right to bear children had passed away, alas! for ever to eternity. The doctor is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his faded sick wife is thirty-five. Audrey was not merely the only son but the last.

In contrast to his wife the doctor’s nature belonged to those which feel the necessity of movement when their soul is in pain. After standing by his wife for about five minutes, he passed from the bed-room, lifting his right foot too high, into a little room half filled with a big broad divan. From there he went to the kitchen. After wandering about the fireplace and the cook’s bed, he stooped through a little door and came into the hall.

Here he saw the white scarf and the pale face again.

“At last,” sighed Aboguin, seizing the doorhandle. “Let us go, please.”

The doctor shuddered, glanced at him and remembered.

“Listen. I’ve told you already that I can’t go,” he said, livening. “What a strange idea!”

“Doctor, I’m made of flesh and blood, too. I fully understand your condition. I sympathise with you,” Aboguin said in an imploring voice, putting his hand to his scarf. “But I am not asking for myself. My wife is dying. If you had heard her cry, if you’d seen her face, you would understand my insistence! My God--and I thought that you’d gone to dress yourself. The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you.”

“I can’t come,” Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his drawing-room.

Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve.

“You’re in sorrow. I understand. But I’m not asking you to cure a toothache, or to give expert evidence,--but to save a human life.” He went on imploring like a beggar. “This life is more than any personal grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed--in the name of humanity.”

“Humanity cuts both ways,” Kirilov said irritably. “In the name of the same humanity I ask you not to take me away. My God, what a strange idea! I can hardly stand on my feet and you frighten me with humanity. I’m not fit for anything now. I won’t go for anything. With whom shall I leave my wife? No, no....”

Kirilov flung out his open hands and drew back.

“And ... and don’t ask me,” he continued, disturbed. “I’m sorry.... Under the Laws, Volume XIII., I’m obliged to go and you have the right to drag me by the neck.... Well, drag me, but ... I’m not fit.... I’m not even able to speak. Excuse me.”

“It’s quite unfair to speak to me in that tone, Doctor,” said Aboguin, again taking the doctor by the sleeve. “The thirteenth volume be damned! I have no right to do violence to your will. If you want to, come; if you don’t, then God be with you; but it’s not to your will that I apply, but to your feelings. A young woman is dying! You say your son died just now. Who could understand my terror better than you?”

Aboguin’s voice trembled with agitation. His tremor and his tone were much more convincing than his words. Aboguin was sincere, but it is remarkable that every phrase he used came out stilted, soulless, inopportunely florid, and as it were insulted the atmosphere of the doctor’s house and the woman who was dying. He felt it himself, and in his fear of being misunderstood he exerted himself to the utmost to make his voice soft and tender so as to convince by the sincerity of his tone at least, if not by his words. As a rule, however deep and beautiful the words they affect only the unconcerned. They cannot always satisfy those who are happy or distressed because the highest expression of happiness or distress is most often silence. Lovers understand each other best when they are silent, and a fervent passionate speech at the graveside affects only outsiders. To the widow and children it seems cold and trivial.

Kirilov stood still and was silent. When Aboguin uttered some more words on the higher vocation of a doctor, and self-sacrifice, the doctor sternly asked:

“Is it far?”

“Thirteen or fourteen versts. I’ve got good horses, doctor. I give you my word of honour that I’ll take you there and back in an hour. Only an hour.”

The last words impressed the doctor more strongly than the references to humanity or the doctor’s vocation. He thought for a while and said with a sigh.

“Well, let us go!”

He went off quickly, with a step that was now sure, to his study and soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied him out of the house.

Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the hall. Now in the darkness the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face Aboguin’s big face could now be seen and a little student’s cap which hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.

“Believe me, I’m able to appreciate your magnanimity,” murmured Aboguin, as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. “We’ll whirl away. Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!”

The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings, which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save that at the end of the yard a bright light from someone’s window broke through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they knew that the doctor’s son was dead and Aboguin’s wife ill. Then began to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it became completely still.

Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured.

“It’s terrible pain. One never loves his nearest so much as when there is the risk of losing them.”

And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him, and he began to move impatiently.

“Let me go,” he said in anguish. “I’ll come to you later. I only want to send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone.”

Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattling against the stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in the scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth and boundless as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim lights were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel with the road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on the hill a big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a mist, and surrounded with fine clouds which seemed to be gazing upon it from every side, and guarding it, lest it should disappear.

In all nature one felt something hopeless and sick. Like a fallen woman who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think of her past, the earth languished with reminiscence of spring and summer and waited in apathy for ineluctable winter. Wherever one’s glance turned nature showed everywhere like a dark, cold, bottomless pit, whence neither Kirilov nor Aboguin nor the red half-moon could escape....

The nearer the carriage approached the destination the more impatient did Aboguin become. He moved about, jumped up and stared over the driver’s shoulder in front of him. And when at last the carriage drew up at the foot of the grand staircase, nicely covered with a striped linen awning and he looked up at the lighted windows of the first floor one could hear his breath trembling.

“If anything happens ... I shan’t survive it,” he said entering the hall with the doctor and slowly rubbing his hands in his agitation. “But I can’t hear any noise. That means it’s all right so far,” he added, listening to the stillness.

No voices or steps were heard in the hall. For all the bright illumination the whole house seemed asleep. Now the doctor and Aboguin who had been in darkness up till now could examine each other. The doctor was tall, with a stoop, slovenly dressed, and his face was plain. There was something unpleasantly sharp, ungracious, and severe in his thick negro lips, his aquiline nose and his faded, indifferent look. His tangled hair, his sunken temples, the early grey in his long thin beard, that showed his shining chin, his pale grey complexion and the slipshod awkwardness of his manners--the hardness of it all suggested to the mind bad times undergone, an unjust lot and weariness of life and men. To look at the hard figure of the man, you could not believe that he had a wife and could weep over his child. Aboguin revealed something different. He was robust, solid and fair-haired, with a big head and large, yet soft, features, exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion. In his carriage, his tight-buttoned coat and his mane of hair you felt something noble and leonine. He walked with his head straight and his chest prominent, he spoke in a pleasant baritone, and in his manner of removing his scarf or arranging his hair there appeared a subtle, almost feminine, elegance. Even his pallor and childish fear as he glanced upwards to the staircase while taking off his coat, did not disturb his carriage or take from the satisfaction, the health and aplomb which his figure breathed.

“There’s no one about, nothing I can hear,” he said walking upstairs. “No commotion. May God be good!”

He accompanied the doctor through the hall to a large salon, where a big piano showed dark and a lustre hung in a white cover. Thence they both passed into a small and beautiful drawing-room, very cosy, filled with a pleasant, rosy half-darkness.

“Please sit here a moment, Doctor,” said Aboguin, “I ... I won’t be a second. I’ll just have a look and tell them.”

Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the drawing-room, the pleasant half-darkness, even his presence in a stranger’s unfamiliar house evidently did not move him. He sat in a chair looking at his hands burnt with carbolic acid. He had no more than a glimpse of the bright red lampshade, the cello case, and when he looked sideways across the room to where the clock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid and satisfied as Aboguin himself.

It was still.... Somewhere far away in the other rooms someone uttered a loud “Ah!” A glass door, probably a cupboard door, rang, and again everything was still. After five minutes had passed, Kirilov did not look at his hands any more. He raised his eyes to the door through which Aboguin had disappeared.