Part 12

“You think that? Quite uselessly. . . . He's such a scoundrel, such a rascal, that I am not at all sorry for him. . . . A rascal can never be unhappy, he'll always find his way out.”

“Why do you abuse him in that way?”

“Because he's a rogue. You know that I esteemed him, that I trusted him as a friend . . . I and you too—in general everybody considered him an honest, respectable man who was incapable of cheating. Meanwhile he has been robbing, plundering me! Taking advantage of his position of bailiff, he disposed of my property as he liked. The only things he did not take were those that could not be moved from their places.”

I, who knew Urbenin to be a man in the highest degree honest and disinterested, jumped up as if I had been stung when I heard these words spoken by the Count, and went up to him.

“Have you caught him in the act of stealing?” I asked.

“No, but I know of his thievish tricks from trustworthy sources.”

“May I ask from what sources?”

“You needn't be uneasy. I would not accuse a man without cause. Olga has told me all about him. Even before she became his wife she saw with her own eyes what loads of slaughtered fowls and geese he sent to town. She saw how my geese and fowls were sent as presents to a certain benefactor where his son, the schoolboy, lodged. More than that, she saw flour, millet and lard being dispatched there. Admitted that all these are trifles, but did these trifles belong to him? Here we have not a question of value but of principle. Principles were trespassed against. There's more, sir! She saw in his cupboard packets of money. In answer to her question whose money it was and where he had got it, he begged her not to mention to anybody that he had money. My dear fellow, you know he's as poor as a church mouse! His salary is scarcely sufficient for his board. Can you explain to me where this money came from?”

“And you, stupid fool, believe this little vermin?” I cried, stirred to the depths of my soul. “She is not satisfied with having run away from him and disgraced him in the eyes of the whole district. She must now betray him! What an amount of meanness is contained in that small and fragile body! Fowls, geese, millet. . . . Master, master! Your political economistic feelings, your agricultural stupidity are offended that at holiday time he sent a present of a slaughtered bird which the foxes or polecats would have eaten, if it had not been killed, and given away, but have you even once checked the huge accounts that Urbenin has handed in? Have you ever counted up the thousands and the tens of thousands? No? Then what is the use of talking to you? You are stupid and a beast. You would be glad to incriminate the husband of your mistress, but you don't know how!”

“My connexion with Olga has nothing to do with the matter. If he's her husband or not her husband is all one, but since he has robbed me, I must plainly call him a thief. But let us leave this roguery alone. Tell me, is it honest or dishonest to receive a salary and for whole days to lie about dead drunk? He is drunk every day. There wasn't a single day that I did not see him reeling about! Low and disgusting! Decent people don't act in that way.”

“It's just because he's decent that he gets drunk,” I said.

“You have a kind of passion for taking the part of such gentlemen. But I have decided to be unmerciful. I paid him off to-day and told him to clear out and make room for another. My patience is exhausted!”

I considered it unnecessary to try to convince the Count that he was unjust, unpractical and stupid. It was not for me to defend Urbenin against the Count.

Five days later I heard that Urbenin with his schoolboy son and his little daughter had gone to live in the town. I was told that he drove to town drunk, half dead, and that he had twice fallen out of the cart. The schoolboy and Sasha had cried all the way.

XX

Shortly after Urbenin had left, I was obliged to go to the Count's estate, quite against my will. One of the Count's stables had been broken into at night and several valuable saddles had been carried off by the thieves. The examining magistrate, that is I, had been informed and _nolens-volens_, I was obliged to go there.

I found the Count drunk and angry. He was wandering about the rooms seeking a refuge from his melancholy but could not find one.

“I am worried by that Olga!” he said waving his hand. “She got angry with me this morning and she left the house threatening to drown herself! And, as you see, there are no signs of her yet. I know she won't drown herself. Still, it is nasty of her. Yesterday, all day long, she was rubbing her eyes and breaking crockery; the day before she over-ate herself with chocolate. The devil only knows what such natures are!”

I comforted the Count as well as I could and sat down to dinner with him.

“No, it's time to give up such childishness,” he kept mumbling during dinner. “It's high time, for it is all stupid and ridiculous. Besides, I must also confess she is beginning to bore me with her sudden changes. I want something quiet, orderly, modest, you know—something like Nadenka Kalinin . . . a splendid girl!”

After dinner when I was walking in the garden I met the “drowned girl.” When she saw me she became very red and (a strange woman) she began to laugh with joy. The shame on her face was mingled with pleasure, sorrow with happiness. For a moment she looked at me askance, then she rushed towards me and hung on my neck without saying a word.

“I love you!” she whispered, clinging to my neck. “I have been so sad without you. I should have died if you had not come.”

I embraced her and silently led her to one of the summer-houses. Ten minutes later when parting from her, I took out of my pocket a twenty-five-rouble note and handed it to her. She opened her eyes wide.

“What is that for?”

“I am paying you for to-day's love.”

Olga did not understand and continued to look at me with astonishment.

“You see, there are women who love for money,” I explained. “They are venal. They must be paid for with money. Take it! If you take money from others, why don't you want to take anything from me? I wish for no favours!”

Olga did not understand my cynicism in insulting her in this way. She did not know life as yet, and she did not understand the meaning of “venal women.”

XXI

It was a fine August day.

The sun warmed as in summer, and the blue sky fondly enticed you to wander far afield, but the air already bore presages of autumn. In the green foliage of the pensive forest the worn-out leaves were already assuming golden tints and the darkening fields looked melancholy and sad.

A dull presentiment of inevitable autumn weighed heavily on us all. It was not difficult to foresee the nearness of a catastrophe. The roll of thunder and the rain must soon come to refresh the sultry atmosphere. It is sultry before a thunderstorm when dark leaden clouds approach in the sky, and moral sultriness was oppressing us all. It was apparent in everything—in our movements, in our smiles, in our speech.

I was driving in a light wagonette. The daughter of the Justice of the Peace, Nadinka, was sitting beside me. She was white as snow, her chin and lips trembled as they do before tears, her deep eyes were full of sorrow, while all the time she laughed and tried to appear very gay.

In front and behind us a number of vehicles of all sorts, of all times, of all sizes were moving in the same direction. Ladies and men on horseback were riding on either side. Count Karnéev, clad in a green shooting costume that looked more like a buffoon's than a sportsman's, bending slightly forward and to one side, galloped about unmercifully on his black horse. Looking at his bent body and at the expression of pain that constantly appeared on his lean face, one could have thought that he was riding for the first time. A new double-barrelled gun was slung across his back, and at his side he had a game-bag in which a wounded woodcock tossed about.

Olga Urbenin was the ornament of the cavalcade. Seated on a black horse, which the Count had given her, dressed in a black riding-habit, with a white feather in her hat, she no longer resembled that “girl in red” who had met us in the wood only a few months before. Now there was something majestic, something of the _grande dame_ in her figure. Each flourish of her whip, each smile was calculated to look aristocratic and majestic. In her movements, in her smiles there was something provocative, something incendiary. She held her head high in a foppishly arrogant manner, and from the height of her mount poured contempt on the whole company, as if in disdain of the loud remarks that were sent after her by our virtuous ladies. Coquetting with her impudence and her position “at the Count's,” she seemed to defy everybody, just as if she did not know that the Count was already tired of her, and was only awaiting the moment when he could disentangle himself from her.

“The Count wants to send me away!” she said to me with a loud laugh when the cavalcade rode out of the yard. Therefore she knew her position and she understood it.

But why that loud laugh? I looked at her and was perplexed. Where could this dweller in the forests have found so much push? When had she found time to sit her horse with so much grace, to move her nostrils proudly, and to show off with commanding gestures?

“A depraved woman is like a swine,” Doctor Pavel Ivanovich said to me. “If you set her down to table she puts her legs on it.”

But his explanation was too simple. Nobody could be more infatuated with Olga than I was, and I was the first to be ready to throw stones at her; still, the uneasy voice of truth whispered to me that this was not push nor the swagger of a prosperous and satisfied woman, but the despairing presentiment of the near and inevitable catastrophe.

We were returning from the shoot to which we had gone early in the morning. The sport had been bad. Near the marshes, on which we had set great hopes, we met a party of sportsmen, who told us the game was wild. Three woodcocks and one duckling was all the game we were able to send to the other world as the whole result of ten guns. At last one of the lady riders had an attack of toothache and we were obliged to hurry back. We returned along a good road that passed through the fields on which the sheaves of newly reaped rye were looking yellow against the background of the dark, gloomy forests. . . . Near the horizon the church and houses of the Count's estate gleamed white. To their right the mirror-like surface of the lake stretched out wide, and to the left the “Stone Grave” rose darkly. . . .

“What a terrible woman!” Nadinka whispered to me every time Olga came up to our wagonette. “What a terrible woman! She's as bad as she's pretty! . . . How long ago is it since you were best man at her wedding? She has not had time to wear out her wedding shoes, and she is already wearing another man's silk and is flaunting in another man's diamonds. If she has such instincts it would have been more tactful had she waited a year or two. . . .”

“She's in a hurry to live! She has no time to wait!” I sighed.

“Do you know what has become of her husband?”

“I hear he is drinking. . . .”

“Yes. . . . The day before yesterday father was in town and saw him driving in a droshky. His head was hanging to one side, he was without a hat, and his face was dirty. . . . He's a lost man! He's terribly poor, I hear; they have nothing to eat, the flat is not paid for. Poor little Sasha is for days without food. Father described all this to the Count. . . . You know the Count! He is honest, kind, but he is not fond of thinking about anything, or reasoning. ‘I'll send him a hundred roubles,’ he said. And he did it at once. I don't think he could have insulted Urbenin more than by sending this money. . . . He'll feel insulted by the Count's gift and will drink all the more.”

“Yes, the Count is stupid,” I said. “He might have sent him the money through me, and in my name.”

“He had no right to send him money! Have I the right to feed you if I am strangling you, and you hate me?”

“That is quite true. . . .”

We were silent and pensive. . . . The thought of Urbenin's fate was always very painful to me; now when his ruined wife was caracoling before my eyes, this thought aroused in me a whole train of sad reflections. . . . What would become of him and of his children? In what way would she end? In what moral puddle would this pitiful, puny Count end his days?

The creature seated next to me was the only one who was respectable and worthy of esteem. There were only two people in our district whom I was capable of liking and respecting, and who alone had the right of turning from me because they stood higher than I did. . . . These were Nadezhda Kalinin and Doctor Pavil Ivanovich. . . . What awaited them?

“Nadezhda Nikolaevna,” I said to her, “quite without wishing it, I have caused you no little sorrow, and less than anybody else have I the right to expect your confidence. But I swear to you nobody will understand you as well as I can. Your sorrow is my sorrow, your joy is my joy. If I ask you a question, don't suspect it is from idle curiosity. Tell me, my dear, why do you allow this pigmy Count to approach you? What prevents you from sending him away and not listening to his abominable amiabilities? His courting is no honour to a respectable woman! Why do you give these scandalmongers the right to couple your name with his?”

Nadinka looked at me with her bright eyes, and evidently reading sincerity in my face, she smiled gaily.

“What do they say?” she asked.

“They say your papa and you are trying to catch the Count, and that in the end you'll find the Count is only pulling your leg.”

“They speak so because they don't know the Count!” Nadinka flared up. “The shameless slanderers! They are used to seeing only the bad side of people. . . . The good is inaccessible for their understanding.”

“And have you found the good in him?”

“Yes, I have found it! You are the first who ought to know. I would not have let him approach me if I had not been certain of his honourable intentions!”

“Consequently your affairs have already reached ‘honourable intentions,’” I said with astonishment. “Soon! . . . And on what are they based—these honourable intentions?”

“Do you wish to know?” she asked, and her eyes sparkled. “Those scandalmongers do not lie: I wish to marry him! Don't look so surprised, and don't laugh! You will say that to get married without love is dishonest and so on. It has already been said a thousand times, but . . . what am I to do? To feel that one is a useless bit of furniture in this world is very hard. . . . It's hard to live without an object. . . . When this man, whom you dislike so much, will have made me his wife, I shall have an object in life. . . . I will improve him, I will teach him to leave off drinking, I will teach him to work. . . . Look at him! He does not look like a man now, and I will make a man of him.”

“Et cetera, et cetera,” I said. “You will take care of his enormous fortune, you will do acts of charity. . . . The whole of the district will bless you, and will look upon you as a good angel sent down to comfort the miserable. . . . You will be the mother and the educator of his children. . . . Yes, a great work indeed! You are a clever girl, but you reason like a schoolgirl!”

“My idea may be worthless, it may be ludicrous and naïve, but I live by it. . . . Under its influence I have become well and gay. . . . Do not disenchant me! Let me disenchant myself, but not now, at some other time . . . afterwards, in the distant future. . . . Let us change the subject!”

“Just one more indiscreet question! Do you expect him to propose?”

“Yes. . . . To judge by the note I received from him to-day, my fate will be decided this evening . . . to-day. . . . He writes that he has something very important to say to me. . . . The happiness of the whole of his life depends upon my answer.”

“Thank you for your frankness,” I said.

The meaning of the note that Nadia had received was quite clear to me. A base proposal awaited the poor girl. I decided to save her from that ordeal.

“We have already arrived at our wood,” the Count said, coming up to our wagonette. “Nadezhda Nikolaevna, would you not wish to make a halt here?”

And without waiting for an answer he clapped his hands and ordered in a loud, shaky voice:

“Ha‑a‑lt!”

We settled ourselves down in the skirts of the wood. The sun had sunk behind the trees, illuminating with purple and gold only the summits of the very highest alders and playing on the golden cross of the Count's church that could be seen in the distance. Flocks of frightened orioles and sparrow hawks soared over our heads. One of the men fired into them, alarming this feathered kingdom, still more, which aroused an indefatigable bird concert. This sort of concert has its charms in the spring and summer, but when you feel the approach of the cold autumn, in the air, it only irritates the nerves and reminds one of their near migration.

The coolness of evening spread from the dense forest. The ladies' noses became blue and the chilly Count began rubbing his hands. Nothing at that moment could be more appropriate than the odour of charcoal in the samovars and the clatter of the tea service. One-eyed Kuz'ma, puffing and panting and stumbling about in the long grass, dragged forward a case of cognac. We began to warm ourselves.

A long outing in the fresh cool air acts on the appetite better than any appetising drops, and after it the balyk,* the caviar, the roast partridge and the other viands were as caressing to the sight as roses are on an early spring morning.

* Salted and smoked sturgeon.

“You are wise to-day,” I said to the Count as I helped myself to a slice of balyk. “Wise as you have never been before. It would have been difficult to arrange things better. . . .”

“We have arranged it together, the Count and I,” Kalinin said with a giggle as he winked towards the coachmen, who were getting the hampers and baskets of provisions, wines and crockery out of the vehicles. “The little picnic will be a great success. . . . Towards the end there will be champagne!”

On this occasion the face of the Justice of the Peace shone with satisfaction as it had never shone before. Did he not expect that in the evening his Nadinka would have a proposal made to her? Did he not have the champagne prepared in order to drink the health of the young couple? I looked attentively at his face and, as usual, I could read nothing there but careless satisfaction, satiety, and the stupid self-importance that was suffused over the whole of his portly figure.

We fell upon the _hors d'œuvres_ gaily. Only two of the guests looked with indifference on the luxurious viands that were spread out on carpets before us: these two were Olga and Nadezhda Kalinin. The first was standing to one side leaning against the back of a wagonette, motionless and silently gazing at the game-bag that the Count had thrown on the ground. In the game-bag a wounded woodcock was moving about. Olga watched the movements of the unfortunate bird and seemed to be expecting its death.

Nadia was sitting next to me and looked with indifference on the gaily chewing mouths.

“When will all this be over?” her tired eyes said.

I offered her a sandwich with caviar. She thanked me and put it to one side. She evidently did not wish to eat.

“Olga Nikolaevna, why don't you sit down?” the Count called to Olga.

Olga did not answer but continued to stare as immovable as a statue, looking at the bird.

“What heartless people there are,” I said, going up to Olga. “Is it possible that you, a woman, are capable of watching with indifference the suffering of this woodcock? Instead of looking at his contortions, it would be better if you ordered it to be dispatched.”

“Others suffer; let him suffer too,” Olga answered, frowning, without looking at me.

“Who else is suffering?”

“Leave me in peace!” she said hoarsely. “I am not disposed to speak to you to-day . . . nor with your friend, that fool the Count! Go away from me!”

She glanced at me with eyes that were full of wrath and tears. Her face was pale, her lips trembled.

“What a change!” I said as I lifted up the game-bag and wrung the woodcock's neck. “What a tone! I am astounded! Quite astounded!”

“Leave me in peace, I tell you! I'm not in the humour for jokes!”

“What's the matter with you, my enchantress?”

Olga looked at me from head to foot and turned her back on me.

“Only depraved and venal women are spoken to in that tone,” she continued. “You consider me such an one . . . well, then, go to those saints! . . . I am worse and baser than any other here. . . . When you were driving with that virtuous Nadinka you were afraid to look at me. . . . Well, then, go to her! What are you waiting for? Go!”

“Yes, you are worse and baser than any other here,” I said, feeling that I was gradually being mastered by rage. “Yes, you are depraved and venal.”

“Yes, I remember how you offered me damned money. . . . Then I did not know its meaning; now I understand. . . .”

Rage mastered me completely. And this rage was as strong as the love had been that at one time was beginning to be born in me for “the girl in red.” . . . And who could—what stone could have remained indifferent? I saw before me beauty that had been cast by merciless fate into the mire. No mercy was shown to either youth, beauty or grace. . . . Now, when this woman appeared to me more beautiful than ever, I felt what a loss nature had sustained in her person, and my soul was filled with painful anger at the injustice of fate and the order of things. . . .

In moments of anger I am unable to control myself. I do not know what more Olga would have had to hear from me if she had not turned her back upon me and gone away. She walked slowly towards the trees and soon disappeared behind them. . . . It appeared to me that she was crying. . . .

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I heard Kalinin making a speech. “On this day when we all have met for . . . for . . . in order to unite . . . we are assembled here, we are all acquainted with each other, we are all enjoying ourselves and this long desired union we owe to nobody else but to our luminary, to the star of our province. . . . Count, don't get confused. . . . The ladies understand of whom I am speaking. . . . He, he he! Well, ladies and gentlemen, let us continue. As we owe all this to our enlightened, to our youthful . . . youthful . . . Count Karnéev, I propose that we drink this glass to . . . But who is driving this way? Who is it?”

A calash was driving from the direction of the Count's house towards the clearing where we were seated.

“Who can it be?” the Count said in astonishment, turning his field glass on the calash. “Hm! . . . strange! . . . It must be someone passing by. . . . Oh, no! I see Kaetan Kazimirovich's face. . . . With whom is he?”

Suddenly the Count sprang up as if he had been stung. His face became deadly pale, and the field glass fell from his hand. His eyes strayed around like the eyes of an entrapped mouse, and they rested sometimes on me, sometimes on Nadia, as if looking for aid. Not everybody noticed his confusion as the attention of most was directed on the approaching calash.

“Serezha, come here for a minute!” he whispered to me, seizing hold of my arm and leading me to one side. “Golubchek, I implore you as a friend, as the best of men! . . . No questions, no interrogating glances, no astonishment! I will tell you all afterwards! I swear that not an iota will remain a secret from you! . . . It is such a misfortune in my life, such a misfortune, that I am unable to find words to express it! You will know all, but no questions now! Help me!”