Part 24

"He kept the fast days as 'tis fit, He did not eat or drink a bit, His empty stomach felt the pain, But oh! his soul was clean again!"

"So, ho--holiness!" And his harmonica drowned the words with a confused medley of sounds.

"How do you get on with your step-brother?" asked Ilya when Jakov ceased coughing. His friend raised his face, quite blue with the exertion of coughing, and said, struggling to get his breath:

"He doesn't live here. His superiors won't let him--because of--the business. He--is bearable--a little uppish--plays the gentleman. Comes often for money to his mother. He's always wanting money."

Jakov lowered his voice, and went on in a troubled way:

"Do you remember that book? You know? Yes--he took it away from me--it was rare he said--that it was worth a lot--and so he took it away. I begged him--leave it to me--but no!--he would have it." Ilya laughed aloud. Then the two friends began their tea. Through the chinks in the wooden partition all kinds of noises and different odours made their way into the little room. One angry voice, towering above the rest, shouted:

"Mitry Nikolayitch--don't you throw my words back at me!"

"I'm reading a story now, brother," Jakov went on again; "it's called 'Julia, or the Subterranean Vault of the Muzzini Castle'--most interesting. And you? What are you doing that way?"

"Go to the devil with your subterranean vaults. I don't live so very high above ground myself," was Lunev's sulky answer.

Jakov looked at him sympathetically, and asked:

"Is there anything gone wrong with you?"

Lunev did not reply. He was wondering whether to tell Jakov of Masha or not; but Jakov began again gently:

"Ilya, you're so touchy and bitter--about nothing, as far as I can see. Because you see--after all--it isn't anybody's fault. It's all settled. They haven't any hand in it--it was all arranged and ordered long before them."

Lunev drank his tea and said nothing.

"And you know--every man shall be rewarded according to his deeds--that is certain. There's my father--to tell the truth. What is he? Why, a tyrant! And then comes along Thekla Timofeyevna and--crock! She has him under the harrow. He leads a life of it now--ah! ah! He's begun to drink out of worry--and how long is it since they were married? And so for every man there's a Thekla Timofeyevna somewhere for his evil deeds."

Ilya was weary and uninterested; he pushed away his teacup and said suddenly:

"And what are you looking for now?"

"How do you mean? From whom?" replied Jakov in a low voice with eyes wide open.

"Why--in the future--what are you looking for?" Ilya repeated his question sharply.

Jakov hung his head and became thoughtful.

"Well?" said Ilya half aloud, feeling a burning restlessness at his heart and a wish to get away as soon as possible.

"What could I look for?" Jakov began at last softly and without looking at his friend.

"To look for? There's no more of that for me. I shall die--that's all--and soon--that's certain."

He held up his head and went on with a gentle happy smile on his wasted face.

"I always see things blue in my dreams--d'you know? as if everything were sky-blue--not only the sky, but the ground and the trees and the flowers and the grass. Everything! And so quiet--quite, quite peaceful! As if nothing at all existed--everything seems so still--and all bright blue. I feel so light--as though I could go anywhere, without feeling tired--go right on and never stop--and you can't tell whether it's really you or not--so light, so light. Dreams like that--that's a sign of death."

"Good-bye!" said Lunev, and got up.

"Where are you going so soon? Stay a little."

"No. Good-bye!"

Jakov got up also. "Very well then--go!"

Lunev pressed his hot hand and looked at him silently, finding no words to bid his comrade farewell; he wanted to say something, wanted so strongly and so much that his heart pained him.

"Why do you look at me like that?" asked Jakov, smiling.

"Forgive me, brother," said Lunev slowly and heavily, lowering his eyes.

"What then?"

"Just that--forgive."

"Am I a priest then?" said Jakov, smiling gently. "But wait, wait a minute. I forgot what I wanted to say to you. Mashutka--you know?"

"What?"

"She too--have you heard? She has a bad time too."

"Yes. I heard."

"You see, we all have the same fate. You too. I feel sure. Your heart is sad--isn't it?"

He spoke with a dull smile. The tone of his voice, and every word of his conversation, everything about him seemed bloodless, colourless; Lunev let go his hand--and it fell slackly down.

"Well, Jasha--forgive me, anyway."

"God forgives! You'll come again?"

Ilya went out without replying. Once in the street his heart felt lighter and less weary. He saw that Jakov must soon die, and the knowledge irritated him vaguely. He did not exactly pity Jakov, because he could not imagine how this gentle, quiet youth could live in this world. Long ago he had come to regard his friend as one who was ordained to depart from the riot of life. But what irritated him was the thought--Why do people torture this harmless man? Why do they drive him out of the world before his time? And from this thought his hostile feeling against life now became almost the most deeply rooted of his sensations, grew and strengthened. That night he could not sleep. In spite of the open window the room was close.

He went out into the courtyard and lay down on the ground under the elm-tree by the fence. Lying on his back, he looked up into the clear sky, and the more intently he gazed the more stars he could see. The Milky Way stretched across the heavens from one end to the other, like a silver tissue, and to look up at it through the branches of the tree was at once pleasant and saddening. The sky where no one lives glitters with stars, and the earth--What is there to adorn it? Ilya blinked his eyes, the branches seemed to mount up higher and higher; against the blue velvet of the arch of heaven sown with sparkling stars, the black outlines of the leaves looked like hands stretched up in the attempt to scale the heights. Ilya thought involuntarily of his friend's "blue dreams," and before his mind appeared the image of Jakov--blue, light, and transparent, his kind eyes shining like stars. There--that was a man, and he was martyred because he lived peaceably. But the tormentors live on as their hearts desire, and will live long.

XXIII.

From henceforth there was a new and rather disturbing feature in Ilya's life. Gavrik's sister began to visit his shop almost every day. She appeared always anxious over one thing or another, greeted Ilya with a hearty handshake, and vanished again after exchanging a few words with him. But always she left something new in Ilya's mind. Once she asked him:

"Do you like a business like this?"

"Not so very much," answered Ilya, shrugging his shoulders; "but a man must earn his living some way or other."

She looked at him attentively with her serious eyes, and her face looked even more tense than usual.

"A man must live!" repeated Ilya with a sigh.

"Have you never tried to make your living by work?"

Ilya did not understand.

"How?"

"Have you ever worked?"

"Always. All my life. I--sell things," answered Ilya doubtfully.

She smiled, and Ilya felt a little hurt at her smile.

"You think--selling things--is work?"

"Yes, surely. It often makes me tired." Looking in her face he felt that she was not joking, but speaking earnestly.

"Oh, no"--the girl went on with a condescending smile. "To work means to make something by the exercise of one's strength--to create something. Thread or ribbons or chairs or chests--d'you see?" Lunev nodded and blushed; he was ashamed to say that he did not understand.

"But trade--what's the good of it? it makes nothing," she said with conviction, and looked challengingly at Ilya.

"Yes," he answered slowly and carefully. "You're right there--it isn't difficult when you're used to it. But still trade must be some use, or else there wouldn't be any, would there?"

She did not reply to this, but turned away and began to speak to her brother. Soon after she took her leave, only nodding to Ilya as she went. Her expression was cold and proud, even as it was before the encounter with Masha. Ilya pondered on this; could he by any chance have hurt her feelings by a careless word? He thought over everything he had said, and could find nothing in it to wound her. Then he began to consider her words, and the more he thought the more they occupied him. What sort of difference could she see between trade and work?

She interested him more and more; but he could not understand why her features looked cross and irritable when she herself was so kind, and could not only sympathise with people, but also help them. Pavel had visited her at home, and was full of enthusiastic praises for her and all the mode of life in her family.

"The minute you come in--at once, they say, 'Welcome.' If they're at table, then--'Sit down with us.' If they're having tea--'Have a cup of tea with us.' It's so simple--and the people, there--my word!--and so happy--they drink tea and talk all at once and quarrel over books; and the books all lie about as if it were a book-shop. It's often crowded, you knock into your neighbour, and he laughs. All educated people--one is an advocate, another will soon be a doctor, and students and that sort. You forget altogether who you are, and laugh as if you were in your own set, and smoke and so on. It's splendid--so jolly, and so sensible."

"Ah--they'll never ask me," said Lunev, gloomily, "that proud young lady."

"Proud?--she?" cried Pavel. "I tell you, she's simplicity itself. Don't wait for an invitation--meet her by accident at the house door--and there you are. All people are equal, there--like in an inn, my boy. You feel so free. I tell you--what am I compared to you? But after two visits--like a child of the house!--and interesting--the noise, the row--the words start up--it's like a game."

"Well, and how's Mashutka?" asked Ilya.

"Pretty well, she's picked up a bit--sits and smiles now and then. They look after her--give her lots of milk--as for Ehrenov, he'll catch it! The advocate said the old devil would get it properly. Masha will be taken to the Judge of Inquiry--and as for my girl, they're taking a lot of trouble to bring the case on soon. Ah--it's good to be near them--the little house--people there like wood in the stove--they glow."

"But she, she herself?" asked Ilya.

Of "her" Pavel began to talk, as once he had talked of the prisoners who taught him to read and write. Every nerve was tense, and he talked emphatically, his speech full of interjections.

"She, brother? Oh--ho! Where did she learn it? She orders them all about, and if any one says anything unfair, or else--she, frrr--like a cat."

"I know that," said Ilya, and smiled involuntarily.

Yet he envied Pavel; he longed to visit the house, but his self-conceit forbade him to take the straight way there.

Standing behind the counter he thought obstinately:

"All the men there are, every one looks out for a chance to get something somehow from the rest. But she, what good does it do her to take up Mashutka and Vyera? She's poor; perhaps everything in the house has to be reckoned. That means she must be very good. And yet she talks to me that way, how am I worse than Pavel?"

These thoughts troubled him so, that he began to feel almost indifferent to everything else. A chink seemed to have opened in the darkness of his life, and through it he felt, rather than saw, something glimmer that he had never perceived before.

"My friend," said Tatiana Vlassyevna to him, coldly but impressively: "The stock of narrow tape wants renewing; the trimming, too, is almost used up, and there's very little black thread number fifty. A firm offers us pearl buttons at--the traveller came to me. I sent him on here. Has he been?"

"No," answered Ilya shortly.

This woman became more repugnant to him daily. He had a suspicion that she had taken Karsakov, recently named District Chief of Police, for a lover. She appointed meetings with Ilya more and more seldom, although she had just the same tender, gay manner with him as before. He did his best to avoid even these rarer meetings on one pretext or another, and finding that she was not at all annoyed, he called her in his heart fickle and shameless.

She was especially irksome to him when she came to the shop to inspect the stock. She turned about like a top, jumped on the counter, hauled out the cardboard boxes from the highest shelves, sneezing in the dust she raised, shook her head, and worried the life out of Gavrik.

"An apprentice in business must be quick and ready, he isn't fed to sit in the door all day and rub his nose; and when he's spoken to he ought to listen attentively, and not stare like a scarecrow."

But Gavrik had a character quite his own. While he listened to her flood of comments he preserved a complete indifference. Especially when she was rummaging about among the upper shelves, and holding up her skirts, Gavrik would look mischievously at his master. When he addressed her it was roughly and without any sign of respect, and when she departed he would remark: "There goes the plover at last."

"You mustn't speak of your mistress like that," said Ilya, trying to hide a smile.

"What sort of a mistress is she?" answered Gavrik. "She comes here and chatters, and hops off again! You--are the master."

"She is, too," said Ilya feebly, for he liked the honourable, high-spirited lad.

"Ah; she's a plover," insisted Gavrik.

"You teach that youngster nothing," said Madame Avtonomov to Ilya on another occasion. "And I must say, frankly, that lately everything seems carried on without enthusiasm, with no love for the work."

Lunev said nothing, but in his soul he hated her so that he thought:

"I wish to goodness, you she-devil, you'd break your leg; coming skipping about here."

One day he received a letter from his uncle, and learnt that Terenti had not only been to Kiev, but also the Sergius Monastery and in Valvam. He had nearly gone to Solovky, on the Dvina, but had abandoned that pilgrimage, and expected soon to reach home again.

"Another joy," thought Ilya bitterly. "He'll come here to live for certain."

He considered eagerly how to arrange that his uncle should live alone. But he had little time for thought; customers came in, and while he was busy with them, Gavrik's sister appeared. She seemed tired and out of breath, greeted him, and asked, nodding at the door of the room behind:

"Is there any water there?"

"I'll get it," said Ilya.

"No, I'll go."

She went into the room and stayed there till Lunev had finished with his customers, and followed her. He found her standing before the "Steps of Man's Life." Turning her head towards him, she said, indicating the picture:

"What awful taste!"

Confused by the remark, Ilya smiled, and felt somewhat guilty.

"Burr! What middle-class sentiment!" she repeated with disgust, and before he could ask for an explanation she was gone. A few days later she brought her brother some new linen, and reproved him for being careless with his clothes, tearing and soiling them.

"Well," said Gavrik, crossly. "That's enough. That woman's always on at me, and now you're beginning."

"What's the matter with him? Is he very rude?" she asked Ilya at this.

"N--no. He doesn't mean to be," answered Ilya kindly.

"I--I always keep quite quiet!" said the boy.

"His tongue goes a little fast!" said Ilya.

"Do you hear?" asked his sister, knitting her brows.

"Oh, yes, I hear!" cried Gavrik crossly.

"It doesn't matter much," said Ilya good-humouredly. "A man who can show his teeth has always an advantage over the rest. A man who bears blows silently gets beaten to his grave by the stupid people."

She listened and a smile of pleasure came over her face. Ilya noticed it.

"I wanted to ask you----" he began, in some confusion.

"Well?"

The girl came closer and looked right into his eyes. He could not meet her glance, but hung his head and went on:

"As far as I can make out, you don't care for tradesmen?"

"Not much."

"Why?"

"Because they live on the work of others," she explained, speaking very distinctly.

Ilya threw up his head, and his brows contracted. The words did not only astonish him, but pained him; and she said them so simply, so much as if it were a matter of course.

"But--excuse me--that isn't true!" he said loudly, after a pause.

Her face twitched and she blushed.

"How much does this ribbon cost you?" she asked coldly and sternly.

"Ribbon?--this ribbon?--Seventeen kopecks the arshin."

"And how do you sell it?"

"At twenty"

"Very well. The three kopecks that you make don't really belong to you, but to the one who made the ribbon. Do you see?"

"No," confessed Lunev frankly.

A flame shot from her eyes. Ilya saw it, and was afraid, yet angered with himself because of his fear.

"Yes. I thought it wouldn't be easy for you to understand such a simple idea," she said, and turned away towards the door. "But see, now--imagine you are a worker, that you've made all this yourself,"--she swept her hand round with a big gesture, and went on to explain to him how labour enriches all except the labourer. At first she spoke in her ordinary manner, coldly, distinctly, and her ugly face was unmoved; but presently her eyebrows quivered and contracted, her nostrils dilated, and, standing close to Ilya, with head erect, she hurled mighty words at him, nerved by her youthful, unshakeable confidence in their truth.

"The retailer stands between the worker and the purchaser. He does nothing himself, he only increases the cost of the goods. Trading! It's only legal, permissible robbery."

Ilya felt deeply hurt, but he could find no words to answer this bold girl, who told him to his face he was a loafer and a robber. He clenched his teeth and listened silently, but did not believe, he could not believe; and while he ransacked his brain for the word to controvert her argument, to silence her forthwith, while he marvelled at her boldness, the contemptuous phrases, so amazing to his ears, stirred in his mind the question: "Why--what have I done to her?"

"All that is just not true," he interrupted her finally in a loud voice, feeling that he could not listen any longer without contradicting. "No--I can't agree with you."

"Then disprove it!" the young girl replied quietly. She sat down on a stool, drew the long plait of her hair over her shoulder, and began to play with it. Lunev turned away to avoid her challenging glance.

"I'll disprove it!" he cried, no longer able to contain himself. "I'll disprove it by my whole life. I--perhaps I did commit a great sin once before I came to this."

"So much the worse--but this is no argument," answered the girl; and her words fell on Ilya like a cold douche. He supported himself with both hands on the counter, and bent forward as though he were going to spring over, and gazed at her for some seconds in silence, cut to the heart, and astonished at her quietness. Her glance and her unmoved countenance, full of profound conviction, restrained his anger and confused him; he felt something fearless, impregnable in her, and the words he needed to refute her died on his tongue.

"Well? What then?" she asked with a cool challenge, then laughed, and said triumphantly:

"It's impossible to disprove it, because I spoke the truth."

"Impossible?" repeated Ilya in a dull voice.

"Yes, impossible. What can you say against it?"

She laughed again condescendingly.

"Good-bye!" and she went out, her head even higher than usual.

"That's all nonsense! It isn't true, excuse me"--Lunev shouted after her. But she did not turn round. Ilya sat down on the stool. Gavrik stood at the door and looked at him, evidently well pleased with his sister's behaviour; his face had an important triumphant expression.

"What are you staring at?" cried Lunev crossly, feeling annoyed by the boy's expression.

"Nothing."

"Oh! oh!" cried Lunev threateningly; then after a short pause he added: "You can go, take a holiday."

He felt the necessity for solitude, but even when alone he could not collect his thoughts. He could not grasp the sense of the girl's words; they pained him before everything. Leaning his elbows on the counter, he thought in irritation:

"Why did she abuse me? What have I done to her? And she's kind, too. Comes here, condemns me, and goes away--without any justice; without even finding out anything. She is very clever; but wait till you come back here--I'll answer you."

But even while he threatened his mind was searching for the fault wherefore she had so attacked him. He remembered what Pavel had said of her intelligence and simplicity.

"Pashka--no fear--she wouldn't hurt him."

Raising his head he saw his reflection in the mirror, and as he looked he seemed to question his image. The black moustache moved on his lip, the big eyes looked weary, and a red flush burned on his cheek-bones; but yet, in spite of its look of annoyance over his defeat, the face was handsome, with a coarse, peasant's beauty; certainly more handsome than Pavel's yellow, bony countenance.

"Does she really like Pashka better than me?" he thought, and at once answered his thought:

"What good's my face? I'm no man for her. She'll marry some doctor or advocate, or official. Whatever interest could she take in us?"

He smiled bitterly, and began to question again:

"But why has she asked Pashka to go and see her? Why does she despise me? A tradesman--is he a thief? He doesn't work--think. I live on the work of others? And who is it stands here stiff and tired all day long, and never gets away?"

Now he began to oppose her, and found many words to justify his life; but now she was not there, and his fine words did not console him, but only increased the feeling of exasperation that glowed within him. He got up, went into his room, swallowed a mouthful of water, and looked round him. It was close and stuffy in the low room, with the iron railings in front of the window; the picture caught his eye with its bright colours; standing in the doorway, he raised his eyes to the "Steps of Life," so accurately measured out, and thought:

"All a lie! As if life were like that!" He looked long at the picture, comparing in his mind his own life with this sample, set out in such glowing colours.

"Is that life?" he repeated to himself, and suddenly added, hopelessly: "Yes, even if it were really, it's dreary and monotonous--clean enough, but not jolly!"

He stepped slowly up to the wall, tore the picture down, and carried it into the shop. There he laid it on the counter, and began again to observe the development of man as it was here depicted. Now he regarded it with scorn, but while he looked, he thought only of Gavrik's sister.

"As if she knew that I strangled the old man! However little she likes me, why need she say such things?"