III
On the evening of the following day Startseff drove to the Turkins’ to make his proposal. But he proved to have come at an unfortunate time, as Katherine was in her room having her hair dressed by a coiffeur before going to a dance at the club.
Once more Startseff was obliged to sit in the dining-room for an age drinking tea. Seeing that his guest was pensive and bored, Turkin took a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and read aloud a droll letter from his German manager telling how “all the disavowals on the estate had been spoiled and all the modesty had been shaken down.”
“They will probably give her a good dowry,” thought Startseff, listening vacantly to what was being read.
After his sleepless night he felt almost stunned, as if he had drunk some sweet but poisonous sleeping potion. His mind was hazy but warm and cheerful, though at the same time a cold, hard fragment of his brain kept reasoning with him and saying:
“Stop before it is too late! Is she the woman for you? She is wilful and spoiled; she sleeps until two every day, and you are a government doctor and a poor deacon’s son.”
“Well, what does that matter?” he thought. “What if I am?”
“And what is more,” that cold fragment continued.“If you marry her her family will make you give up your government position, and live in town.”
“And what of that?” he thought. “I’ll live in town then! She will have a dowry. We will keep house.”
At last Katherine appeared, looking pretty and immaculate in her low-necked ball dress, and the moment Startseff saw her he fell into such transports that he could not utter a word and could only stare at her and laugh.
She began to say good-bye, and as there was nothing to keep him here now that she was going, he, too, rose, saying that it was time for him to be off to attend to his patients in Dialij.
“If you must go now,” said Turkin, “you can take Kitty to the club; it is on your way.”
A light drizzle was falling and it was very dark, so that only by the help of Panteleimon’s cough could they tell where the carriage was. The hood of the victoria was raised.
“Roll away!” cried Turkin, seating his daughter in the carriage. “Rolling stones gather no moss! God speed you, if you please!”
They drove away.
“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startseff began. “How heartless and unkind of you——”
“You went to the cemetery?”
“Yes, I did, and waited there for you until nearly two o’clock. I was very unhappy.”
“Then be unhappy if you can’t understand a joke!”
Delighted to have caught her lover so cleverly, and to see him so much in love, Katherine burst out laughing, and then suddenly screamed as the carriage tipped and turned sharply in at the club gates. Startseff put his arm around her waist, and in her fright the girl pressed closer to him. At that he could contain himself no longer, and passionately kissed her on the lips and on the chin, holding her tighter than ever.
“That will do!” she said drily.
And a moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and the policeman standing near the lighted entrance to the club was shouting to Panteleimon in a harsh voice:
“Move on, you old crow! What are you standing there for?”
Startseff drove home, but only to return at once arrayed in a borrowed dress suit and a stiff collar that was always trying to climb up off the collar-band. At midnight he was sitting in the reception-room of the club, saying passionately to Katherine:
“Oh, how ignorant people are who have never loved! No one, I think, has ever truly described love, and it would scarcely be possible to depict this tender, blissful, agonising feeling. He who has once felt it would never be able to put it into words. Do I need introductions and descriptions? Do I need oratory to tell me what it is? My love is unspeakable—Ibeg you, I implore you to be my wife!” cried Startseff at last.
“Dimitri Ionitch,” said Katherine, assuming a very serious, thoughtful expression. “Dimitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the honour you do me. I esteem you, but—” here she rose and stood before him. “But, forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us be serious. You know, Dimitri Ionitch, that I love art more than anything else in the world. I am passionately fond of, I adore, music, and if I could I would consecrate my whole life to it. I want to be a musician. I long for fame and success and freedom and you ask me to go on living in this town, and to continue this empty, useless existence which has become unbearable to me! You want me to marry? Ah no, that cannot be! One should strive for a higher and brighter ideal, and family life would tie me down for ever. Dimitri Ionitch—” (she smiled a little as she said these words, remembering Alexei Theofilaktitch) “Dimitri Ionitch, you are kind and noble and clever, you are the nicest man I know” (her eyes filled with tears). “I sympathise with you with all my heart, but—but you must understand——”
She turned away and left the room, unable to restrain her tears.
Startseff’s heart ceased beating madly. His first action on reaching the street was to tear off his stiff collar and draw a long, deep breath. He felt a little humiliated, and his pride was stung, for he had not expecteda refusal, and could not believe that all his hopes and pangs and dreams had come to such a silly ending; he might as well have been the hero of a playlet at a performance of amateur theatricals! He regretted his lost love and emotion, regretted it so keenly that he could have sobbed aloud or given Panteleimon’s broad back a good, sound blow with his umbrella.
For three days after that evening his business went to ruin, and he could neither eat nor sleep, but when he heard a rumour that Katherine had gone to Moscow to enter the conservatory he grew calmer, and once more gathered up the lost threads of his life.
Later, when he remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and rushed all over town looking for a dress suit, he would yawn lazily and say:
“What a business that was!”
Four years went by. Startseff now had a large practice in the city. He hastily prescribed for his sick people every morning at Dialij, and then drove to town to see his patients there, returning late at night. He had grown stouter and heavier, and would not walk, if he could help it, suffering as he did from asthma. Panteleimon, too, had become stouter, and the more he grew in width the more bitterly he sighed and lamented his hard lot: he was so tired of driving!
Startseff was now an occasional guest at several houses, but he had made close friends with no one. The conversation, the point of view, and even the looks of the inhabitants of S. bored him. Experience had taught him that as long as he played cards, or dined with them, they were peaceful, good-natured, and even fairly intelligent folk, but he had only to speak of anything that was not edible, he had only to mention politics or science to them, for them to become utterly nonplussed, or else to talk such foolish and mischievous nonsense that there was nothing to be done but to shrug one’s shoulders and leave them. If Startseff tried to say to even the most liberal of them that, for instance, mankind was fortunately progressing, and that in time we should no longer suffer under a system of passports and capital punishment, they would look at him askance, and say mistrustfully: “Then one will be able to kill any one one wants to on the street, will one?” Or if at supper, in talking about work, Startseff said that labour was a good thing, and every one should work, each person present would take it as a personal affront and begin an angry and tiresome argument. As they never did anything and were not interested in anything, and as Startseff could never for the life of him think of anything to say to them, he avoided all conversation and confined himself to eating and playing cards. If there was a family fête at one of the houses and he was asked to dinner, he would eat in silence with his eyes fixed on his plate, listening to allthe uninteresting, false, stupid things that were being said around him and feeling irritated and bored. But he would remain silent, and because he always sternly held his tongue and never raised his eyes from his plate, he was known as “the puffed-up Pole,” although he was no more of a Pole than you or I. He shunned amusements, such as theatres and concerts, but he played cards with enjoyment for two or three hours every evening. There was one other pleasure to which he had unconsciously, little by little, become addicted, and that was to empty his pockets every evening of the little bills he had received in his practice during the day. Sometimes he would find them scattered through all his pockets, seventy roubles’ worth of them, yellow ones and green ones, smelling of scent, and vinegar, and incense, and kerosene. When he had collected a hundred or more he would take them to the Mutual Loan Society, and have them put to his account.
In all the four years following Katherine’s departure, he had only been to the Turkins’ twice, each time at the request of Madame Turkin, who was still suffering from headaches. Katherine came back every summer to visit her parents, but he did not see her once; chance, somehow, willed otherwise.
And so four years had gone by. One warm, still morning a letter was brought to him at the hospital. Madame Turkin wrote that she missed Dimitri Ionitch very much and begged him to come without fail andrelieve her sufferings, especially as it happened to be her birthday that day. At the end of the letter was a postscript: “I join my entreaties to those of my mother. K.”
Startseff reflected a moment, and in the evening he drove to the Turkins’.
“Ah, be welcome, if you please!” Turkin cried with smiling eyes. “Bonjour to you!”
Madame Turkin, who had aged greatly and whose hair was now white, pressed his hand and sighed affectedly, saying:
“You don’t want to flirt with me I see, doctor, you never come to see me. I am too old for you, but here is a young thing, perhaps she may be more lucky than I am!”
And Kitty? She had grown thinner and paler and was handsomer and more graceful than before, but she was Miss Katherine now, and Kitty no longer. Her freshness, and her artless, childish expression were gone; there was something new in her glance and manner, something timid and apologetic, as if she no longer felt at home here, in the house of the Turkins.
“How many summers, how many winters have gone by!” she said, giving her hand to Startseff, and one could see that her heart was beating anxiously. She looked curiously and intently into his face, and continued: “How stout you have grown! You look browner and more manly, but otherwise you haven’t changed much.”
She pleased him now as she had pleased him before, she pleased him very much, but something seemed to be wanting in her—or was it that there was something about her which would better have been lacking? He could not say, but he was prevented, somehow, from feeling toward her as he had felt in the past. He did not like her pallor, the new expression in her face, her weak smile, her voice, and, in a little while, he did not like her dress and the chair she was sitting in, and something displeased him about the past in which he had nearly married her. He remembered his love and the dreams and hopes that had thrilled him four years ago, and at the recollection he felt awkward.
They drank tea and ate cake. Then Madame Turkin read a story aloud, read of things that had never happened in this world, while Startseff sat looking at her handsome grey head, waiting for her to finish.
“It is not the people who can’t write novels who are stupid,” he thought. “But the people who write them and can’t conceal it.”
“Not baddish!” said Turkin.
Then Katherine played a long, loud piece on the piano, and when she had finished every one went into raptures and overwhelmed her with prolonged expressions of gratitude.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!” thought Startseff.
She looked at him, evidently expecting him to invite her to go into the garden, but he remained silent.
“Do let us have a talk!” she said going up to him. “How are you? What are you doing? Tell me about it all! I have been thinking about you for three days,” she added nervously. “I wanted to write you a letter, I wanted to go to see you myself at Dialij, and then changed my mind. I have no idea how you will treat me now. I was so excited waiting for you to-day. Do let us go into the garden!”
They went out and took their seats under the old maple-tree, where they had sat four years before. Night was falling.
“Well, and what have you been doing?” asked Katherine.
“Nothing much; just living somehow,” answered Startseff.
And that was all he could think of saying. They were silent.
“I am so excited!” said Katherine, covering her face with her hands. “But don’t pay any attention to me. I am so glad to be at home, I am so glad to see every one again that I cannot get used to it. How many memories we have between us! I thought you and I would talk without stopping until morning!”
He saw her face and her shining eyes more closely now, and she looked younger to him than she had in the house. Even her childish expression seemed to have returned. She was gazing at him with naïve curiosity, as if she wanted to see and understand more clearly this man who had once loved her so tenderlyand so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for his love. And he remembered all that had passed between them down to the smallest detail, remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and had gone home exhausted at dawn. He grew suddenly sad and felt sorry to think that the past had vanished for ever. A little flame sprang up in his heart.
“Do you remember how I took you to the club that evening?” he asked. “It was raining and dark——”
The little flame was burning more brightly, and now he wanted to talk and to lament his dull life.
“Alas!” he sighed. “You ask what I have been doing! What do we all do here? Nothing! We grow older and fatter and more sluggish. Day in, day out our colourless life passes by without impressions, without thoughts. It is money by day and the club by night, in the company of gamblers and inebriates whom I cannot endure. What is there in that?”
“But you have your work, your noble end in life. You used to like so much to talk about your hospital. I was a queer girl then, I thought I was a great pianist. All girls play the piano these days, and I played, too; there was nothing remarkable about me. I am as much of a pianist as mamma is an author. Of course I didn’t understand you then, but later, in Moscow, I often thought of you. I thought only of you. Oh, what a joy it must be to be a country doctor, to help the sick and to serve the people! Oh, what a joy!” Katherine repeated with exaltation. “When I thoughtof you while I was in Moscow you seemed to me to be so lofty and ideal——”
Startseff remembered the little bills which he took out of his pockets every evening with such pleasure, and the little flame went out.
He rose to go into the house. She took his arm.
“You are the nicest person I have ever known in my life,” she continued. “We shall see one another and talk together often, shan’t we? Promise me that! I am not a pianist, I cherish no more illusions about myself, and shall not play to you or talk music to you any more.”
When they had entered the house, and, in the evening light, Startseff saw her face and her melancholy eyes turned on him full of gratitude and suffering, he felt uneasy and thought again:
“It’s a good thing I didn’t marry her!”
He began to take his leave.
“No law of the Medes and Persians allows you to go away before supper!” cried Turkin, accompanying him to the door. “It is extremely peripatetic on your part. Come, do your act!” he cried to Pava as they reached the front hall.
Pava, no longer a boy, but a young fellow with a moustache, struck an attitude, raised one hand, and said in a tragic voice:
“Die, unhappy woman!”
All this irritated Startseff, and as he took his seat in his carriage and looked at the house and the darkgarden that had once been so dear to him, he was overwhelmed by the recollection of Madame Turkin’s novels and Kitty’s noisy playing and Turkin’s witticisms and Pava’s tragic pose, and, as he recalled them, he thought:
“If the cleverest people in town are as stupid as that, what a deadly town this must be!”
Three days later Pava brought the doctor a letter from Katherine.
“You don’t come to see us; why?” she wrote. “I am afraid your feeling for us has changed, and the very thought of that terrifies me. Calm my fears; come and tell me that all is well! I absolutely must see you.
Yours,K. T.”
Yours,K. T.”
Yours,K. T.”
Yours,
K. T.”
He read the letter, reflected a moment, and said to Pava:
“Tell them I can’t get away to-day, my boy. Tell them I’ll go to see them in three days’ time.”
But three days went by, a week went by, and still he did not go. Every time that he drove past the Turkins’ house he remembered that he ought to drop in there for a few minutes; he remembered it and—did not go.
He never went to the Turkins’ again.
V
Several years have passed since then. Startseff is stouter than ever now, he is even fat. He breathes heavily and walks with his head thrown back. The picture he now makes, as he drives by with his troika and his jingling carriage-bells, is impressive. He is round and red, and Panteleimon, round and red, with a brawny neck, sits on the box with his arms stuck straight out in front of him like pieces of wood, shouting to every one he meets: “Turn to the right!” It is more like the passage of a heathen god than of a man. He has an immense practice in the city, there is no time for repining now. He already owns an estate in the country and two houses in town, and is thinking of buying a third which will be even more remunerative than the others. If, at the Mutual Loan Society, he hears of a house for sale he goes straight to it, enters it without more ado, and walks through all the rooms not paying the slightest heed to any women or children who may be dressing there, though they look at him with doubt and fear. He taps all the doors with his cane and asks:
“Is this the library? Is this a bedroom? And what is this?”
And he breathes heavily as he says it and wipes the perspiration from his forehead.
Although he has so much business on his hands, hestill keeps his position of government doctor at Dialij. His acquisitiveness is too strong, and he wants to find time for everything. He is simply called “Ionitch” now, both in Dialij and in the city. “Where is Ionitch going?” the people ask, or “Shall we call in Ionitch to the consultation?”
His voice has changed and has become squeaky and harsh, probably because his throat is obstructed with fat. His character, too, has changed and he has grown irascible and crusty. He generally loses his temper with his patients and irritably thumps the floor with his stick, exclaiming in his unpleasant voice:
“Be good enough to confine yourself to answering my questions! No conversation!”
He is lonely, he is bored, and nothing interests him.
During all his life in Dialij his love for Kitty had been his only happiness, and will probably be his last. In the evening he plays cards in the club, and then sits alone at a large table and has supper. Ivan, the oldest and most respectable of the waiters, waits upon him and pours out his glass of Lafitte No. 17. Every one at the club, the officers and the chef and the waiters, all know what he likes and what he doesn’t like and strive with might and main to please him, for if they don’t he will suddenly grow angry and begin thumping the floor with his cane.
After supper he occasionally relents and takes part in a conversation.
“What were you saying? What? Whom did you say?”
And if the conversation at a neighbouring table turns on the Turkins, he asks:
“Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?”
That is all that can be said of Startseff.
And the Turkins? The father has not grown old, and has not changed in any way. He still makes jokes and tells funny stories. The mother still reads her novels aloud to her guests, with as much pleasure and genial simplicity as ever. Kitty practises the piano for four hours every day. She has grown conspicuously older, is delicate, and goes to the Crimea every autumn with her mother. As he bids them farewell at the station, Turkin wipes his eyes and cries as the train moves away:
“God speed you, if you please!”
And he waves his handkerchief after them.
AT CHRISTMAS TIME
“What shall I write?” asked Yegor, dipping his pen in the ink.
Vasilissa had not seen her daughter for four years. Efimia had gone away to St. Petersburg with her husband after her wedding, had written two letters, and then had vanished as if the earth had engulfed her, not a word nor a sound had come from her since. So now, whether the aged mother was milking the cow at daybreak, or lighting the stove, or dozing at night, the tenor of her thoughts was always the same: “How is Efimia? Is she alive and well?” She wanted to send her a letter, but the old father could not write, and there was no one whom they could ask to write it for them.
But now Christmas had come, and Vasilissa could endure the silence no longer. She went to the tavern to see Yegor, the innkeeper’s wife’s brother, who had done nothing but sit idly at home in the tavern since he had come back from military service, but of whom people said that he wrote the most beautiful letters, if only one paid him enough. Vasilissa talked with the cook at the tavern, and with the innkeeper’s wife, and finally with Yegor himself, and at last they agreed on a price of fifteen copecks.
So now, on the second day of the Christmas festival, Yegor was sitting at a table in the inn kitchen with a pen in his hand. Vasilissa was standing in front of him, plunged in thought, with a look of care and sorrow on her face. Her husband, Peter, a tall, gaunt old man with a bald, brown head, had accompanied her. He was staring steadily in front of him like a blind man; a pan of pork that was frying on the stove was sizzling and puffing, and seeming to say: “Hush, hush, hush!” The kitchen was hot and close.
“What shall I write?” Yegor asked again.
“What’s that?” asked Vasilissa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously. “Don’t hurry me! You are writing this letter for money, not for love! Now then, begin. To our esteemed son-in-law, Andrei Khrisanfitch, and our only and beloved daughter Efimia, we send greetings and love, and the everlasting blessing of their parents.”
“All right, fire away!”
“We wish them a happy Christmas. We are alive and well, and we wish the same for you in the name of God, our Father in heaven—our Father in heaven——”
Vasilissa stopped to think, and exchanged glances with the old man.
“We wish the same for you in the name of God, our Father in Heaven—” she repeated and burst into tears.
That was all she could say. Yet she had thought,as she had lain awake thinking night after night, that ten letters could not contain all she wanted to say. Much water had flowed into the sea since their daughter had gone away with her husband, and the old people had been as lonely as orphans, sighing sadly in the night hours, as if they had buried their child. How many things had happened in the village in all these years! How many people had married, how many had died! How long the winters had been, and how long the nights!
“My, but it’s hot!” exclaimed Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “The temperature must be seventy! Well, what next?” he asked.
The old people answered nothing.
“What is your son-in-law’s profession?”
“He used to be a soldier, brother; you know that,” replied the old man in a feeble voice. “He went into military service at the same time you did. He used to be a soldier, but now he is in a hospital where a doctor treats sick people with water. He is the doorkeeper there.”
“You can see it written here,” said the old woman, taking a letter out of her handkerchief. “We got this from Efimia a long, long time ago. She may not be alive now.”
Yegor reflected a moment, and then began to write swiftly.
“Fate has ordained you for the military profession,” he wrote, “therefore we recommend you to look intothe articles on disciplinary punishment and penal laws of the war department, and to find there the laws of civilisation for members of that department.”
When this was written he read it aloud whilst Vasilissa thought of how she would like to write that there had been a famine last year, and that their flour had not even lasted until Christmas, so that they had been obliged to sell their cow; that the old man was often ill, and must soon surrender his soul to God; that they needed money—but how could she put all this into words? What should she say first and what last?
“Turn your attention to the fifth volume of military definitions,” Yegor wrote. “The word soldier is a general appellation, a distinguishing term. Both the commander-in-chief of an army and the last infantryman in the ranks are alike called soldiers——”
The old man’s lips moved and he said in a low voice:
“I should like to see my little grandchildren!”
“What grandchildren?” asked the old woman crossly. “Perhaps there are no grandchildren.”
“No grandchildren? But perhaps there are! Who knows?”
“And from this you may deduce,” Yegor hurried on, “which is an internal, and which is a foreign enemy. Our greatest internal enemy is Bacchus——”
The pen scraped and scratched, and drew long, curly lines like fish-hooks across the paper. Yegor wrote at full speed and underlined each sentence two or three times. He was sitting on a stool with his legs stretchedfar apart under the table, a fat, lusty creature with a fiery nape and the face of a bulldog. He was the very essence of coarse, arrogant, stiff-necked vulgarity, proud to have been born and bred in a pot-house, and Vasilissa well knew how vulgar he was, but could not find words to express it, and could only glare angrily and suspiciously at him. Her head ached from the sound of his voice and his unintelligible words, and from the oppressive heat of the room, and her mind was confused. She could neither think nor speak, and could only stand and wait for Yegor’s pen to stop scratching. But the old man was looking at the writer with unbounded confidence in his eyes. He trusted his old woman who had brought him here, he trusted Yegor, and, when he had spoken of the hydropathic establishment just now, his face had shown that he trusted that, and the healing power of its waters.
When the letter was written, Yegor got up and read it aloud from beginning to end. The old man understood not a word, but he nodded his head confidingly, and said:
“Very good. It runs smoothly. Thank you kindly, it is very good.”
They laid three five-copeck pieces on the table and went out. The old man walked away staring straight ahead of him like a blind man, and a look of utmost confidence lay in his eyes, but Vasilissa, as she left the tavern, struck at a dog in her path and exclaimed angrily:
“Ugh—the plague!”
All that night the old woman lay awake full of restless thoughts, and at dawn she rose, said her prayers, and walked eleven miles to the station to post the letter.
Doctor Moselweiser’s hydropathic establishment was open on New Year’s Day as usual; the only difference was that Andrei Khrisanfitch, the doorkeeper, was wearing unusually shiny boots and a uniform trimmed with new gold braid, and that he wished every one who came in a happy New Year.
It was morning. Andrei was standing at the door reading a paper. At ten o’clock precisely an old general came in who was one of the regular visitors of the establishment. Behind him came the postman. Andrei took the general’s cloak, and said:
“A happy New Year to your Excellency!”
“Thank you, friend, the same to you!”
And as he mounted the stairs the general nodded toward a closed door and asked, as he did every day, always forgetting the answer:
“And what is there in there?”
“A room for massage, your Excellency.”
When the general’s footsteps had died away, Andrei looked over the letters and found one addressed to him. He opened it, read a few lines, and then, still looking at his newspaper, sauntered toward the littleroom down-stairs at the end of a passage where he and his family lived. His wife Efimia was sitting on the bed feeding a baby, her oldest boy was standing at her knee with his curly head in her lap, and a third child was lying asleep on the bed.
Andrei entered their little room, and handed the letter to his wife, saying:
“This must be from the village.”
Then he went out again, without raising his eyes from his newspaper, and stopped in the passage not far from the door. He heard Efimia read the first lines in a trembling voice. She could go no farther, but these were enough. Tears streamed from her eyes and she threw her arms round her eldest child and began talking to him and covering him with kisses. It was hard to tell whether she was laughing or crying.
“This is from granny and granddaddy,” she cried—“from the village—oh, Queen of Heaven!—Oh! holy saints! The roofs are piled with snow there now—and the trees are white, oh, so white! The little children are out coasting on their dear little sleddies—and granddaddy darling, with his dear bald head is sitting by the big, old, warm stove, and the little brown doggie—oh, my precious chickabiddies——”
Andrei remembered as he listened to her that his wife had given him letters at three or four different times, and had asked him to send them to the village, but important business had always interfered, and the letters had remained lying about unposted.
“And the little white hares are skipping about in the fields now—” sobbed Efimia, embracing her boy with streaming eyes. “Granddaddy dear is so kind and good, and granny is so kind and so full of pity. People’s hearts are soft and warm in the village.—There is a little church there, and the men sing in the choir. Oh, take us away from here, Queen of Heaven! Intercede for us, merciful mother!”
Andrei returned to his room to smoke until the next patient should come in, and Efimia suddenly grew still and wiped her eyes; only her lips quivered. She was afraid of him, oh, so afraid! She quaked and shuddered at every look and every footstep of his, and never dared to open her mouth in his presence.
Andrei lit a cigarette, but at that moment a bell rang up-stairs. He put out his cigarette, and assuming a very solemn expression, hurried to the front door.
The old general, rosy and fresh from his bath, was descending the stairs.
“And what is there in there?” he asked, pointing to a closed door.
Andrei drew himself up at attention, and answered in a loud voice:
“The hot douche, your Excellency.”
IN THE COACH HOUSE
It was ten o’clock at night. Stepan, the coachman, Mikailo, the house porter, Aliosha the coachman’s grandson who was visiting his grandfather, and the old herring-vender Nikander who came peddling his wares every evening were assembled around a lantern in the large coach house playing cards. The door stood open and commanded a view of the whole courtyard with the wide double gates, the manor-house, the ice and vegetable cellars, and the servants’ quarters. The scene was wrapped in the darkness of night, only four brilliantly lighted windows blazed in the wing of the house, which had been rented to tenants. The carriages and sleighs, with their shafts raised in the air, threw from the walls to the door long, tremulous shadows which mingled with those cast by the players around the lantern. In the stables beyond stood the horses, separated from the coach house by a light railing. The scent of hay hung in the air, and Nikander exhaled an unpleasant odour of herring.
They were playing “Kings.”
“I am king!” cried the porter, assuming a pose which he thought befittingly regal, and blowing his nose loudly with a red and white checked handkerchief.“Come on! Who wants to have his head cut off?”
Aliosha, a boy of eight with a rough shock of blond hair, who had lacked but two tricks of being a king himself, now cast eyes of resentment and envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.
“I’m going to lead up to you, grandpa,” he said, pondering over his cards. “I know you must have the queen of hearts.”
“Come, little stupid, stop thinking and play!”
Aliosha irresolutely led the knave of hearts. At that moment a bell rang in the courtyard.
“Oh, the devil—” muttered the porter rising. “The king must go and open the gate.”
When he returned a few moments later Aliosha was already a prince, the herring-man was a soldier, and the coachman was a peasant.
“It’s a bad business in there,” said the porter resuming his seat. “I have just seen the doctor off. They didn’t get it out.”
“Huh! How could they? All they did, I’ll be bound, was to make a hole in his head. When a man has a bullet in his brain it’s no use to bother with doctors!”
“He is lying unconscious,” continued the porter. “He will surely die. Aliosha, don’t look at my cards, lambkin, or you’ll get your ears boxed. Yes, it was out with the doctor, and in with his father and mother; they have just come. The Lord forbid such a cryingand moaning as they are carrying on! They keep saying that he was their only son. It’s a pity!”
All, except Aliosha who was engrossed in the game, glanced up at the lighted windows.
“We have all got to go to the police station to-morrow,” said the porter. “There is going to be an inquest. But what do I know about it? Did I see what happened? All I know is that he called me this morning, and gave me a letter and said: ‘Drop this in the letter-box.’ And his eyes were all red with crying. His wife and children were away; they had gone for a walk. So while I was taking his letter to the mail he shot himself in the forehead with a revolver. When I came back his cook was already shrieking at the top of her lungs.”
“He committed a great sin!” said the herring-man in a hoarse voice, wagging his head. “A great sin.”
“He went crazy from knowing too much,” said the porter, picking up a trick. “He used to sit up at night writing papers—play, peasant! But he was a kind gentleman, and so pale and tall and black-eyed! He was a good tenant.”
“They say there was a woman at the bottom of it,” said the coachman, slapping a ten of trumps on a king of hearts. “They say he was in love with another man’s wife, and had got to dislike his own. That happens sometimes.”
“I crown myself king!” exclaimed the porter.
The bell in the courtyard rang again. The victorious monarch spat angrily and left the coach house. Shadows like those of dancing couples were flitting to and fro across the windows of the wing. Frightened voices and hurrying footsteps were heard.
“The doctor must have come back,” said the coachman. “Our Mikailo is running.”
A strange, wild scream suddenly rent the air.
Aliosha looked nervously first at his grandfather, and then at the windows, and said:
“He patted me on the head yesterday, and asked me where I was from. Grandfather, who was that howling just now?”
His grandfather said nothing, and turned up the flame of the lantern.
“A man has died,” he said with a yawn. “His soul is lost and his children are lost. This will be a disgrace to them for the rest of their lives.”
The porter returned, and sat down near the lantern.
“He is dead!” he said. “The old women from the almshouse have been sent for.”
“Eternal peace and the kingdom of heaven be his!” whispered the coachman crossing himself.
Aliosha also crossed himself with his eyes on his grandfather.
“You mustn’t pray for souls like his,” the herring-man said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a sin.”
“That’s the truth,” the porter agreed. “His soul has gone straight to the Evil One in hell.”
“It’s a sin,” repeated the herring-man. “Men like him are neither shriven nor buried in church, but shovelled away like carrion.”
The old man got up, and slung his sack across his shoulder.
“It happened that way with our general’s lady,” he said, adjusting the pack on his back. “We were still serfs at that time, and her youngest son shot himself in the head just as this one did, from knowing too much. The law says that such people must be buried outside the churchyard without a priest or a requiem. But to avoid the disgrace, our mistress greased the palms of the doctors and the police, and they gave her a paper saying that her son had done it by accident when he was crazy with fever. Money can do anything. So he was given a fine funeral with priests and music, and laid away under the church that his father had built with his own money, where the rest of the family were. Well, friends, one month passed, and another month passed, and nothing happened. But during the third month our mistress was told that the church watchmen wanted to see her. ‘What do they want?’ she asked. The watchmen were brought to her, and they fell down at her feet. ‘Your ladyship!’ they cried. ‘We can’t watch there any longer. You must find some other watchmen, and let us go!’ ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We can’t possiblystay. Your young gentleman howls under the church all night long.’”
Aliosha trembled and buried his face in his grandfather’s back so as not to see those shining windows.
“At first our mistress wouldn’t listen to their complaints,” the old man went on. “She told them they were silly to be afraid of ghosts, and that a dead man couldn’t possibly howl. But in a few days the watchmen came back, and the deacon came with them. He, too, had heard the corpse howling. Our mistress saw that the business was bad, so she shut herself up in her room with the watchmen and said to them: ‘Here are twenty-five roubles for you, my friends. Go into the church quietly at night when no one can hear you, and dig up my unhappy son, and bury him outside the churchyard.’ And she probably gave each man a glass of something to drink. So the watchmen did as she told them. The tombstone with its inscription lies under the church to-day, but the general’s son is buried outside the churchyard. Oh, Lord, forgive us poor sinners!” sighed the herring-man. “There is only one day a year on which one can pray for such souls as his, and that is on the Saturday before Trinity Sunday. It’s a sin to give food to beggars in their name, but one may feed the birds for the peace of their souls. The general’s widow used to go out to the crossroads every three days, and feed the birds. One day a black dog suddenly appeared at the crossroads, gobbled up the bread, and took to his heels.She knew who it was! For three days after that our mistress was like a mad woman; she refused to take food or drink, and every now and then she would suddenly fall down on her knees in the garden, and pray. But I’ll say good night now, my friends. God and the Queen of Heaven be with you! Come Mikailo, open the gate for me.”
The herring-man and the porter went out, and the coachman and Aliosha followed them so as not to be left alone in the coach house.
“The man was living and now he is dead,” the coachman reflected, gazing at the windows across which the shadows were still flitting. “This morning he was walking about the courtyard, and now he is lying there lifeless.”
“Our time will come, too,” said the porter as he walked away with the herring-man and was lost with him in the darkness.
The coachman, followed by Aliosha, timidly approached the house and looked in. A very pale woman, her large eyes red with tears, and a handsome grey-haired man were moving two card-tables into the middle of the room; some figures scribbled in chalk on their green baize tops were still visible. The cook, who had shrieked so loudly that morning was now standing on tiptoe on a table trying to cover a mirror with a sheet.
“What are they doing, grandpa?” Aliosha asked in a whisper.
“They are going to lay him on those tables soon,” answered the old man. “Come, child, it’s time to go to sleep.”
The coachman and Aliosha returned to the coach house. They said their prayers and took off their boots. Stepan stretched himself on the floor in a corner, and Aliosha climbed into a sleigh. The doors had been shut, and the newly extinguished lantern filled the air with a strong smell of smoking oil. In a few minutes Aliosha raised his head, and stared about him; the light from those four windows was shining through the cracks of the door.
“Grandpa, I’m frightened!” he said.
“There, there, go to sleep!”
“But I tell you I’m frightened!”
“What are you afraid of, you spoiled baby?”
Both were silent.
Suddenly Aliosha jumped out of the sleigh, burst into tears, and rushed to his grandfather weeping loudly.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” cried the startled coachman, jumping up, too.
“He’s howling!”
“Who’s howling?”
“I’m frightened, grandpa! Can’t you hear him?”
“That is some one crying,” his grandfather answered. “Go back to sleep, little silly. They are sad and so they are crying.”
“I want to go home!” the boy persisted, sobbingand trembling like a leaf. “Grandpa, do let us go home to mamma. Let us go, dear grandpa! God will give you the kingdom of heaven if you will take me home!”
“What a little idiot it is! There, there, be still, be still. Hush, I’ll light the lantern, silly!”
The coachman felt for the matches, and lit the lantern, but the light did not calm Aliosha.
“Grandpa, let’s go home!” he implored, weeping. “I’m so frightened here! Oh,oh, I’m so frightened! Why did you send for me to come here, you hateful man?”
“Who is a hateful man? Are you calling your own grandfather names? I’ll beat you for that!”
“Beat me, grandpa, beat me like Sidorov’s goat, only take me back to mamma! Oh, do! do!...”
“There, there, child, hush!” the coachman whispered tenderly. “No one is going to hurt you, don’t be afraid. Why, I’m getting frightened myself! Say a prayer to God!”
The door creaked and the porter thrust his head into the coach house.
“Aren’t you asleep yet, Stepan?” he asked. “I can’t get any sleep to-night, opening and shutting the gate every minute. Why, Aliosha, what are you crying about?”
“I’m frightened,” answered the coachman’s grandson.
Again that wailing voice rang out. The porter said:
“They are crying. His mother can’t believe her eyes. She is carrying on terribly.”
“Is the father there, too?”
“Yes, he’s there, but he’s quiet. He’s sitting in a corner, and not saying a word. The children have been sent to their relatives. Well, Stepan, shall we have another game?”
“Come on!” the coachman assented. “Go and lie down, Aliosha, and go to sleep. Why you’re old enough to think of getting married, you young rascal, and there you are bawling! Run along, child, run along!”
The porter’s presence calmed Aliosha; he went timidly to his sleigh and lay down. As he fell asleep he heard a whispering:
“I take the trick,” his grandfather murmured.
“I take the trick,” the porter repeated.
The bell rang in the courtyard, the door creaked and seemed to say:
“I take the trick!”
When Aliosha saw the dead master in his dreams, and jumped up weeping for fear of his eyes, it was already morning. His grandfather was snoring, and the coach house no longer seemed full of terror.