Part 4

A rumble was heard, somewhat like the sound of a distant vehicle or the rattle of a game of skittles. Somewhere, far beyond the forest, there was a peal of thunder. Mit'ka, who had been watching us the whole time, shuddered and crossed himself.

“A thunderstorm!” the Count exclaimed with a start. “What a surprise! The rain will overtake us on our way home. . . . How dark it is! I said we ought to have turned back! And you wouldn't, and went on and on.”

“We might wait in the cottage till the storm is over,” I suggested.

“Why in the cottage?” Urbenin said hastily, and his eyes blinked in a strange manner. “It will rain all night, so you'll have to remain all night in the cottage! Please, don't trouble. . . . Go quietly on, and Mit'ka shall run on and order your carriage to come to meet you.”

“Never mind, perhaps it won't rain all night. . . . Storm clouds usually pass by quickly. . . . Besides, I don't know the new forester as yet, and I'd also like to have a chat with this Olenka . . . and find out what sort of a dickey bird she is. . . .”

“I've no objections!” the Count agreed.

“How can you go there, if—if the place is not—not in order?” Urbenin mumbled anxiously. “Why should your Excellency sit there in a stuffy room when you could be at home? I don't understand what pleasure that can be! . . . How can you get to know the forester if he is ill? . . .”

It was very evident that the bailiff strongly objected to our going into the forester's house. He even spread his arms as if he wanted to bar the way. . . . I understood by his face that he had reasons for preventing us from going in. I respect other people's reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I persisted, and we entered the house.

“Walk into the drawing-room, please,” bare-footed Mit'ka spluttered almost choking with delight.

Try to imagine the very smallest drawing-room in the world, with unpainted deal walls. These walls are hung all over with oleographs from the “Niva,” photographs in frames made of shells, and testimonials. One testimonial is from a certain baron, expressing his gratitude for many years of service; all the others are for horses. Here and there ivy climbs up the wall. . . . In a corner a small lamp, whose tiny blue flame is faintly reflected on the silver mounting, burns peacefully before a little icon. Chairs that have evidently been only recently bought are pressed close together round the walls. Too many had been purchased, and they had been squeezed together, as there was nowhere else to put them. . . . Here, also, there are armchairs and a sofa in snow-white covers with flounces and laces, crowded up with a polished round table. A tame hare dozes on the sofa. . . . The room is cosy, clean and warm. . . . The presence of a woman can be noticed everywhere. Even the whatnot with books has a look of innocence and womanliness; it appears to be anxious to say that there is nothing on its shelves but wishy-washy novels and mawkish verse. . . . The charm of such warm, cosy rooms is not so much felt in spring as in autumn, when you look for a refuge from the cold and dampness.

After much loud snivelling, blowing, and noisy striking of matches, Mit'ka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they had been milk. We sat down in the arm-chairs, looked at each other, and laughed.

“Nikolai Efimych is ill in bed,” Urbenin said, to explain the absence of the master, “and Olga Nikolaevna has probably gone to accompany my children. . . .”

“Mit'ka, are the doors shut?” we heard a weak tenor voice asking from the next room.

“They're all shut, Nikolai Efimych!” Mit'ka shouted hoarsely, and he rushed headlong into the next room.

“That's right! See that they are all shut,” the same weak voice said again. “And locked—firmly locked. . . . If thieves break in, you must tell me. . . . I'll shoot the villains with my gun . . . the scoundrels!”

“Certainly, Nikolai Efimych!”

We laughed and looked inquiringly at Urbenin. He grew very red, and in order to hide his confusion he began to arrange the curtains of the windows. . . . What does this dream mean? We again looked at each other.

We had no time for perplexity. Hasty steps were heard outside, then a noise in the porch and the slamming of doors. And the “girl in red” rushed into the room.

“I love the thunder in early May,” she sang in a loud, shrill soprano voice, and she cut short her song with a burst of laughter, but when she saw us she suddenly stood still and was silent,—she became embarrassed, and went as quietly as a lamb into the room in which the voice of Nikolai Efimych, her father, had been heard.

“She did not expect to see you,” Urbenin said, laughing.

A few minutes later she again came quietly into the room, sat down on the chair nearest the door and began to examine us. She stared at us boldly, not as if we were new people for her, but as if we were animals in the Zoological Gardens. For a minute we too looked at her in silence without moving. . . . I would have agreed to sit still and look at her for a whole hour in this way—she was so lovely that evening. As fresh as the air, rosy, breathing rapidly, her bosom rising and falling, her curls scattered wildly on her forehead, on her shoulders, and on her right hand that was raised to arrange her collar; with large, sparkling eyes. . . . And all this was found on one little body that a single glance could envelop. If you glanced for a moment at this small object you saw more than you would if you looked for a whole century at the endless horizon. . . . She looked at me seriously, from my feet upwards, inquiringly; when her eyes left me and passed to the Count or to the Pole I began to read in them the contrary: a glance that passed from the head to the feet, and laughter. . . .

I was the first to speak.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, rising and going up to her. “Zinov'ev. . . . And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev. . . . We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house without an invitation. . . . We would, of course, never have done so if the storm had not driven us in. . . .”

“But that won't cause our little house to tumble down!” she said, laughing and giving me her hand.

She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on our walk. Our conversation began with the weather—the beginning of all beginnings. While we were talking, Mit'ka had had time to offer the Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water. Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace and shook his head after each glass.

“Perhaps you would like some refreshments?” Olenka asked me, and, not waiting for an answer, she left the room.

The first drops of rain rattled against the panes. . . . I went up to the windows. . . . It was now quite dark, and through the glass I could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some of the nearest pines.

“Are the doors shut?” I heard the same tenor voice ask again. “Mit'ka, come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what torments!”

A peasant woman with an enormous, tightly tied-in stomach and a stupid, troubled face came into the room, and, having bowed low to the Count, she spread a white table-cloth on the table. Mit'ka followed her carefully carrying a tray with various _hors d'œuvres_. A minute later, we had vodka, rum, cheese, and a dish of some sort of roasted bird on the table before us. The Count drank a glass of vodka, but he would not eat anything. The Pole smelt the bird mistrustfully, and then began to carve it.

“The rain has begun! Look!” I said to Olenka, who had re-entered the room.

“The girl in red” came up to the window where I was standing, and at that very moment we were illuminated by a white flash of light. . . . There was a fearful crash above us, and it appeared to me that something large and heavy had been torn from the sky and had fallen to earth with a terrible racket. . . . The window panes and the wineglasses that were standing before the Count jingled and emitted their tinkling sound. . . . The thunderclap was a loud one.

“Are you afraid of thunder-storms?” I asked Olenka.

She only pressed her cheek to her round shoulders and looked at me with childish confidence.

“I'm afraid,” she whispered after a moment's reflection. “My mother was killed by a storm. . . . The newspapers even wrote about it. . . . My mother was going through the fields, crying. . . . She had a very bitter life in this world. God had compassion on her and killed her with His heavenly electricity.”

“How do you know that there is electricity there?”

“I have learned. . . . Do you know? People who have been killed by a storm or in war, or who have died after a difficult confinement go to paradise. . . . This is not written anywhere in books, but it is true. My mother is now in paradise! I think the thunder will also kill me some day, and I shall go to paradise too. . . . Are you a cultivated man?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will not laugh. . . . This is how I should like to die: to dress in the most costly fashionable frock, like the one I saw the other day on our rich lady, the landowner Sheffer; to put bracelets on my arms. . . . Then to go to the very summit of the ‘Stone Grave’ and allow myself to be killed by the lightning, so that all the people could see it. . . . A terrible peal of thunder, and then, you know, the end!”

“What an odd fancy!” I said, laughing and looking into her eyes that were full of holy horror at this terrible but effective death. “Then you don't want to die in an ordinary dress?”

“No! . . .” Olenka shook her head. “And so that everybody should see me.”

“The frock you are in is far better than any fashionable and expensive dress. . . . It suits you. In it you look like the red flower of the green woods.”

“No, that is not true!” And Olenka sighed ingenuously. “This frock is a cheap one; it can't be pretty.”

The Count came up to our window with the evident intention of talking to pretty Olenka. My friend could speak three European languages, but he did not know how to talk to women. He stood near us awkwardly, smiling in an inane manner; then he lowed,—inarticulately, “Er—yes,”—and retraced his steps to the decanter of vodka.

“You were singing ‘I love the thunder in early May,’” I said to Olenka. “Have those verses been set to music?”

“No, I sing all the verses I know to my own melodies.”

I happened by chance to glance back. Urbenin was looking at us. In his eyes I read hatred and animosity: passions that were not at all in keeping with his kind, meek face.

“Can he be jealous?” I thought.

The poor fellow caught my inquiring glance, rose from his chair and went into the lobby to look for something. . . . Even by his gait one could see that he was agitated. The peals of thunder became louder and louder, more prolonged, and oftener repeated. . . . The lightning unceasingly illuminated the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its pleasant but blinding light. . . . The rain was not likely to end soon. I left the window and went up to the bookshelves and began to examine Olenka's library. “Tell me what you read, and I will tell you what you are,” I said. But out of the goods that were so symmetrically ranged on the shelves it was difficult to arrive at any estimate of Olenka's mental capacities or “educational standard.” There was a strange medley on those shelves. Three anthologies, one book of Börne's, Evtushevsky's arithmetic, the second volume of Lermontov's works, Shklyarevsky, a number of the magazine _Work_, a cookery book, _Skladchina_ . . . I might enumerate other books for you, but at the moment I took _Skladchina_ from the shelf and began to turn over the pages. The door leading into the next room opened, and a person entered the drawing-room, who at once diverted my attention from Olenka's standard of culture. This person was a tall, muscular man in a print dressing-gown and torn slippers, with an original countenance. His face, covered all over with blue veins, was ornamented with a pair of sergeant's moustaches and whiskers, and had in general a strong resemblance to a bird. His whole face seemed to be drawn forwards, as if trying to concentrate itself in the tip of the nose. Such faces are like the spout of a pitcher. This person's small head was set on a long thin throat, with a large Adam's-apple, and shook about like the nesting-box of a starling in the wind. . . . This strange man looked round on us all with his dim green eyes, and then let them rest on the Count.

“Are the doors shut?” he asked in an imploring voice.

The Count looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“Don't trouble, papasha!” Olenka answered. “They are all shut. . . . Go back to your room!”

“Is the barn door shut?”

“He's a little queer. . . . It takes him sometimes,” Urbenin whispered to me as he came in from the lobby. “He's afraid of thieves, and always troubling about the doors, as you see.”

“Nikolai Efimych,” he continued, addressing this strange apparition, “go back to your room and go to bed! Don't trouble, everything is shut up!”

“And are the windows shut?”

Nikolai Efimych hastily looked to see if the windows were properly bolted, and then without taking any notice of us he shuffled off into his own room.

“The poor fellow has these attacks sometimes,” Urbenin began to explain as soon as he had left the room. “He's a good, capable man; he has a family, too—such a misfortune! Almost every summer he is a little out of his mind. . . .”

I looked at Olenka. She became confused, and hiding her face from us began to put in order again her books that I had disarranged. She was evidently ashamed of her mad father.

“The carriage is there, your Excellency! Now you can drive home, if you wish!”

“Where has that carriage come from?” I asked.

“I sent for it. . . .”

A minute later I was sitting with the Count in the carriage, listening to the peals of thunder and feeling very angry.

“We've been nicely turned out of the little house by that Pëtr Egorych, the devil take him!” I grumbled, getting really angry. “So he's prevented us from examining Olenka properly! I would not have eaten her! . . . The old fool! The whole time he was bursting with jealousy. . . . He's in love with that girl. . . .”

“Yes, yes, yes. . . . Would you believe it, I noticed that, too! He would not let us go into the house from jealousy. And he sent for the carriage only from jealousy. . . . Ha, ha, ha!”

“The later love comes the more it burns. . . . Besides, brother, it's difficult not to fall in love with this girl in red, if one sees her every day as we saw her to-day! She's devilish pretty! But she's not for his net. . . . He ought to understand it and not be jealous of others so egoistically. . . . Why can't he love and not stand in the way of others, all the more as he must know she's not destined for him? . . . What an old blockhead!”

“Do you remember how enraged he was when Kuz'ma mentioned her name at tea-time?” the Count sniggered. “I thought he was going to thrash us all. . . . A man does not defend the good fame of a woman so hotly if he's indifferent to her. . . .”

“Some men will, brother. . . . But this is not the question. . . . What's important is this. . . . If he can command us in the way he has done to-day, what does he do with the small people, with those who are at his disposal? Doubtless, the stewards, the butlers, the huntsmen and the rest of the small fry are prevented by him from even approaching her! Love and jealousy make a man unjust, heartless, misanthropical. . . . I don't mind betting that for the sake of this Olenka he has worried more than one of the people under his control. It will, therefore, be wise on your part if you put less trust in his complaints of the people in your service and his demands for the dismissal of this or that one. In general, to limit his power for a time. . . . Love will pass—well, and then there will be nothing to fear. He's a kind and honest fellow. . . .”

“And what do you think of her papa?” the Count asked, laughing.

“A madman. . . . He ought to be in a madhouse and not looking after forests. In general you won't be far from the truth if you put up a signboard: ‘Madhouse’ over the gate of your estate. . . . You have a real Bedlam here! This forester, the Scops-Owl, Franz, who is mad on cards, this old man in love, an excitable girl, a drunken Count. . . . What do you want more?”

“Why, this forester receives a salary! How can he do his work if he is mad?”

“Urbenin evidently only keeps him for his daughter's sake. . . . Urbenin says that Nikolai Efimych has these attacks every summer. . . . That's not likely. . . . This forester is ill, not every summer, but always. . . . By good luck, your Pëtr Egorych seldom lies, and he gives himself away when he does lie about anything. . . .”

“Last year Urbenin informed me that our old forester Akhmet'ev was going to become a monk on Mount Athos, and he recommended me to take the ‘experienced, honest and worthy Skvortsov’ . . . I, of course, agreed as I always do. Letters are not faces: they do not give themselves away when they lie.”

The carriage drove into the courtyard and stopped at the front door. We alighted. The rain had stopped. The thunder cloud, scintillating with lightning and emitting angry grumbles, was hurrying towards the north-east and uncovering more and more the dark blue star-spangled sky. It was like a heavily armed power which having ravaged the country and imposed a terrible tribute, was rushing on to new conquests. . . . The small clouds that remained behind were chasing after it as if fearing to be unable to catch it up. . . . Nature had its peace restored to it.

And that peace seemed astonished at the calm, aromatic air, so full of softness, of the melodies of nightingales, at the silence of the sleeping gardens and the caressing light of the rising moon. The lake awoke after the day's sleep, and by gentle murmurs brought memories of itself to man's hearing. . . .

At such a time it is good to drive through the fields in a comfortable calash or to be rowing on the lake. . . . But we went into the house. . . . There another sort of poetry was awaiting us.

V

A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters tell us that a soldier, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody—and believed it himself—that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death. . . .

“I am very glad that you ate nothing at the forester's and haven't spoilt your appetite,” the Count said to me as we entered the house. “We shall have an excellent supper. . . . Like old times. . . . Serve supper!” He gave the order to Il'ya who was helping him to take off his coat and put on a dressing-gown.

We went into the dining-room. Here on the side-table life was already bubbling over. Bottles of every colour and of every imaginable size were standing in rows as on the shelves of a theatre refreshment-room, reflecting on their sides the light of the lamps while awaiting our attention. All sorts of salted and pickled viands and various _hors d'œuvres_ stood on another table with a decanter of vodka and another of English bitters. Near the wine bottles there were two dishes, one of sucking pig and the other of cold sturgeon.

“Well, gentlemen,” the Count began as he poured out three glasses of vodka and shivered as if from cold. “To our good health! Kaetan Kazimirovich, take your glass!”

I drank mine off, the Pole only shook his head negatively. He moved the dish of sturgeon towards himself, smelt it, and began to eat.

I must apologize to the reader. I have now to describe something not at all “romantic.”

“Well, come on . . . they drank another,” the Count said, and filled the glasses again. “Fire away, Lecoq!”

I took up my wineglass, looked at it and put it down again.

“The devil take it, it's long since I drank,” I said. “Shouldn't we remember old times?”

Without further reflection, I filled five glasses and emptied them one after another into my mouth. That was the only way I knew how to drink. Small schoolboys learn how to smoke cigarettes from big ones: the Count looked at me, poured out five glasses for himself, and, bending forwards in the form of an arch, frowning and shaking his head, he drank them off. My five glasses appeared to him to be bravado, but I drank them not at all to display my talent for drinking. . . . I wanted to get drunk, to get properly, thoroughly drunk. . . . Drunk as I had not been for a long time while living in my village. Having drunk them, I sat down to table and began to discuss the sucking pig.

Intoxication was not long in succeeding. I soon felt a slight giddiness. There was a pleasant feeling of coolness in my chest—and a happy, expansive condition set in. Without any visible transition I suddenly became very gay. The feeling of emptiness and dullness gave place to a sensation of thorough joy and gaiety. I smiled. I suddenly wanted chatter, laughter, people around me. As I chewed the sucking pig I began to feel the fullness of life, almost the self-sufficiency of life, almost happiness.

“Why don't you drink anything?” I asked the Pole.

“He never drinks,” the Count said. “Don't force him to.”

“But surely you can drink something!”

The Pole put a large bit of sturgeon into his mouth and shook his head negatively. His silence incensed me.

“I say, Kaetan . . . what's your patronymic? . . . why are you always silent?” I asked him. “I have not had the pleasure of hearing your voice as yet.”

His two eyebrows that resembled the outstretched wings of a swallow were raised and he gazed at me.

“Do you wish me to speak?” he asked with a strong Polish accent.

“Very much.”

“Why do you wish it?”

“Why, indeed! On board steamers at dinner strangers and people who are not acquainted converse together, and here are we, who have known one another for several hours, looking at each other and not exchanging a single word! What does that look like?”

The Pole remained silent.

“Why are you silent?” I asked again after waiting a moment. “Answer something, can't you?”

“I do not wish to answer you. I hear laughter in your voice, and I do not like derision.”

“He's not laughing at all,” the Count interposed in alarm. “Where did you fish up that notion, Kaetan? He's quite friendly. . . .”

“Counts and Princes have never spoken to me in such a tone!” Kaetan said, frowning. “I don't like that tone.”

“Consequently, you will not honour me with your conversation?” I continued to worry him as I emptied another glass and laughed.

“Do you know my real reason for coming here?” the Count broke in, desirous of changing the conversation. “I haven't told you as yet? In Petersburg I went to the doctor who has always treated me, to consult him about my health. He auscultated, knocked and pressed me everywhere, and said: ‘You're not a coward!’ Well, you know, though I'm no coward, I grew pale. ‘I'm not a coward,’ I replied.”

“Cut it short, brother. . . . That's tiresome.”