Mrs. Beecher Stowe.Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
‘Come, I think that’s exaggerated,’ observed Bambaev. ‘“Go away” she certainly did say, that’s a fact, but she didn’t give him a smack!’
‘She did, she did!’ repeated Madam Suhantchikov with convulsive intensity: ‘I am not talking idle gossip. And you are friends with men like that!’
‘Excuse me, excuse me, Matrona Semyonovna, I never spoke of Tentelyev as a friend of mine; I was speaking of Pelikanov.’
‘Well, if it’s not Tentelyev, it’s another. Mihnyov, for example.’
‘What did he do then?’ asked Bambaev, already showing signs of alarm.
‘What? Is it possible you don’t know? He exclaimed on the Poznesensky Prospect in the hearing of all the world that all the liberals ought to be in prison; and what’s more, an old schoolfellow came to him, a poor man of course, and said, “Can I come to dinner with you?” And this was his answer. “No, impossible; I have two counts dining with me to-day ... get along with you!”’
‘But that’s slander, upon my word!’ vociferated Bambaev.
‘Slander? ... slander? In the first place, Prince Vahrushkin, who was also dining at your Mihnyov’s——’
‘Prince Vahrushkin,’ Gubaryov interpolated severely, ‘is my cousin; but I don’t allow him to enter my house.... So there is no need to mention him even.’
‘In the second place,’ continued Madame Suhantchikov, with a submissive nod in Gubaryov’s direction, ‘PraskovyaYakovlovnatold me so herself.’
‘You have hit on a fine authority to quote! Why, she and Sarkizov are the greatest scandal-mongers going.’
‘I beg your pardon, Sarkizov is a liar, certainly. He filched the very pall of brocade off his dead father’s coffin. I will never dispute that; but Praskovya Yakovlovna—there’s no comparison! Remember how magnanimously she parted from her husband! But you, I know, are always ready——’
‘Come, enough, enough, Matrona Semyonovna,’ said Bambaev, interrupting her, ‘let us give up this tittle-tattle, and take a loftier flight. I am not new to the work, you know. Have you readMlle. de la Quintinie?That’s something charming now! And quitein accord with your principles at the same time!’
‘I never read novels now,’ was Madame Suhantchikov’s dry and sharp reply.
‘Why?’
‘Because I have not the time now; I have no thoughts now but for one thing, sewing machines.’
‘What machines?’ inquired Litvinov.
‘Sewing, sewing; all women ought to provide themselves with sewing-machines, and form societies; in that way they will all be enabled to earn their living, and will become independent at once. In no other way can they ever be emancipated. That is an important, most important social question. I had such an argument about it with Boleslav Stadnitsky. Boleslav Stadnitsky is a marvellous nature, but he looks at these things in an awfully frivolous spirit. He does nothing but laugh. Idiot!’
‘All will in their due time be called to account, from all it will be exacted,’ pronounced Gubaryov deliberately, in a tone half-professorial, half-prophetic.
‘Yes, yes,’ repeated Bambaev, ‘it will be exacted, precisely so, it will be exacted. But, Stepan Nikolaitch,’ he added, dropping his voice, ‘how goes the great work?’
‘I am collecting materials,’ replied Gubaryov,knitting his brows; and, turning to Litvinov, whose head began to swim from the medley of unfamiliar names, and the frenzy of backbiting, he asked him what subjects he was interested in.
Litvinov satisfied his curiosity.
‘Ah! to be sure, the natural sciences. That is useful, as training; as training, not as an end in itself. The end at present should be ... mm ... should be ... different. Allow me to ask what views do you hold?’
‘What views?’
‘Yes, that is, more accurately speaking, what are your political views?’
Litvinov smiled.
‘Strictly speaking, I have no political views.’
The broad-shouldered man sitting in the corner raised his head quickly at these words and looked attentively at Litvinov.
‘How is that?’ observed Gubaryov with peculiar gentleness. ‘Have you not yet reflected on the subject, or have you grown weary of it?’
‘How shall I say? It seems to me that for us Russians, it is too early yet to have political views or to imagine that we have them. Observe that I attribute to the word “political” the meaning which belongs to it by right, and that——’
‘Aha! he belongs to the undeveloped,’ Gubaryov interrupted him, with the same gentleness, and going up to Voroshilov, he asked him: ‘Had he read the pamphlet he had given him?’
Voroshilov, to Litvinov’s astonishment, had not uttered a word ever since his entrance, but had only knitted his brows and rolled his eyes (as a rule he was either speechifying or else perfectly dumb). He now expanded his chest in soldierly fashion, and with a tap of his heels, nodded assent.
‘Well, and how was it? Did you like it?’
‘As regards the fundamental principles, I liked it; but I did not agree with the inferences.’
‘Mmm ... Andrei Ivanitch praised that pamphlet, however. You must expand your doubts to me later.’
‘You desire it in writing?’
Gubaryov was obviously surprised; he had not expected this; however, after a moment’s thought, he replied:
‘Yes, in writing. By the way, I will ask you to explain to me your views also ... in regard to ... in regard to associations.’
‘Associations on Lassalle’s system, do you desire, or on the system of Schulze-Delitzsch?’
‘Mmm ... on both. For us Russians, you understand, the financial aspect of the matteris specially important. Yes, and theartel... as the germ.... All that, one must take note of. One must go deeply into it. And the question, too, of the land to be apportioned to the peasants....’
‘And you, Stepan Nikolaitch, what is your view as to the number of acres suitable?’ inquired Voroshilov, with reverential delicacy in his voice.
‘Mmm ... and the commune?’ articulated Gubaryov, deep in thought, and biting a tuft of his beard he stared at the table-leg. ‘The commune!... Do you understand. That is a grand word! Then what is the significance of these conflagrations? these ... these government measures against Sunday-schools, reading-rooms, journals? And the refusal of the peasants to sign the charters regulating their position in the future? And finally, what of what is happening in Poland? Don’t you see that ... mmm ... that we ... we have to unite with the people ... find out ... find out their views——’ Suddenly a heavy, almost a wrathful emotion seemed to take possession of Gubaryov; he even grew black in the face and breathed heavily, but still did not raise his eyes, and continued to gnaw at his beard. ‘Can’t you see——’
‘Yevseyev is a wretch!’ Madame Suhantchikovburst out noisily all of a sudden. Bambaev had been relating something to her in a voice lowered out of respect for their host. Gubaryov turned round swiftly on his heels, and again began limping about the room.
Fresh guests began to arrive; towards the end of the evening a good many people were assembled. Among them came, too, Mr. Yevseyev whom Madame Suhantchikov had vilified so cruelly. She entered into conversation with him very cordially, and asked him to escort her home; there arrived too a certain Pishtchalkin, an ideal mediator, one of those men of precisely whom perhaps Russia stands in need—a man, that is, narrow, of little information, and no great gifts, but conscientious, patient, and honest; the peasants of his district almost worshipped him, and he regarded himself very respectfully as a creature genuinely deserving of esteem. A few officers, too, were there, escaped for a brief furlough to Europe, and rejoicing—though of course warily, and ever mindful of their colonel in the background of their brains—in the opportunity of dallying a little with intellectual—even rather dangerous—people; two lanky students from Heidelberg came hurrying in, one looked about him very contemptuously, the other giggled spasmodically ... both were very ill at ease;after them a Frenchman—a so-calledpetit jeune homme—poked his nose in; a nasty, silly, pitiful little creature, ... who enjoyed some repute among his fellowcommis-voyageurson the theory that Russian countesses had fallen in love with him; for his own part, his reflections were centred more upon getting a supper gratis; the last to appear was Tit Bindasov, in appearance a rollicking German student, in reality a skinflint, in words a terrorist, by vocation a police-officer, a friend of Russian merchants’ wives and Parisiancocottes;bald, toothless, and drunken; he arrived very red and sodden, affirming that he had lost his last farthing to that blackguard Benazet; in reality, he had won sixteen guldens.... In short, there were a number of people. Remarkable—really remarkable—was the respect with which all these people treated Gubaryov as a preceptor or chief; they laid their ideas before him, and submitted them to his judgment; and he replied by muttering, plucking at his beard, averting his eyes, or by some disconnected, meaningless words, which were at once seized upon as the utterances of the loftiest wisdom. Gubaryov himself seldom interposed in the discussions; but the others strained their lungs to the utmost to make up for it. It happened more than once that three or four were shoutingfor ten minutes together, and all were content and understood. The conversation lasted till after midnight, and was as usual distinguished by the number and variety of the subjects discussed. Madame Suhantchikov talked about Garibaldi, about a certain Karl Ivanovitch, who had been flogged by the serfs of his own household, about NapoleonIII., about women’s work, about a merchant, Pleskatchov, who had designedly caused the death of twelve work-women, and had received a medal for it with the inscription ‘for public services’; about the proletariat, about the Georgian Prince Tchuktcheulidzov, who had shot his wife with a cannon, and about the future of Russia. Pishtchalkin, too, talked of the future of Russia, and of the spirit monopoly, and of the significance of nationalities, and of how he hated above everything what was vulgar. There was an outburst all of a sudden from Voroshilov; in a single breath, almost choking himself, he mentioned Draper, Virchow, Shelgunov, Bichat, Helmholtz, Star, St. Raymund, Johann Müller the physiologist, and Johann Müller the historian—obviously confounding them—Taine, Renan, Shtchapov; and then Thomas Nash, Peele, Greene.... ‘What sort of queer fish may they be?’ Bambaev muttered bewildered, Shakespeare’s predecessors having the same relationto him as the ranges of the Alps to Mont Blanc. Voroshilov replied cuttingly, and he too touched on the future of Russia. Bambaev also spoke of the future of Russia, and even depicted it in glowing colours: but he was thrown into special raptures over the thought of Russian music, in which he saw something. ‘Ah! great indeed!’ and in confirmation he began humming a song of Varlamov’s, but was soon interrupted by a general shout, ‘He is singing theMisererefrom theTrovatore, and singing it excruciatingly too.’ One little officer was reviling Russian literature in the midst of the hubbub; another was quoting verses fromSparks;but Tit Bindasov went even further; he declared that all these swindlers ought to have their teeth knocked out, ... and that’s all about it, but he did not particularise who were the swindlers alluded to. The smoke from the cigars became stifling; all were hot and exhausted, every one was hoarse, all eyes were growing dim, and the perspiration stood out in drops on every face. Bottles of iced beer were brought in and drunk off instantaneously. ‘What was I saying?’ remarked one; ‘and with whom was I disputing, and about what?’ inquired another. And among all the uproar and the smoke, Gubaryov walked indefatigably up and down as before, swaying from side to side and twitching at his beard;now listening, turning an ear to some controversy, now putting in a word of his own; and every one was forced to feel that he, Gubaryov, was the source of it all, that he was the master here, and the most eminent personality....
Litvinov, towards ten o’clock, began to have a terrible headache, and, taking advantage of a louder outburst of general excitement, went off quietly unobserved. Madame Suhantchikov had recollected a fresh act of injustice of Prince Barnaulov; he had all but given orders to have some one’s ears bitten off.
The fresh night air enfolded Litvinov’s flushed face caressingly, the fragrant breeze breathed on his parched lips. ‘What is it,’ he thought as he went along the dark avenue, ‘that I have been present at? Why were they met together? What were they shouting, scolding, and making such a pother about? What was it all for?’ Litvinov shrugged his shoulders, and turning into Weber’s, he picked up a newspaper and asked for an ice. The newspaper was taken up with a discussion on the Roman question, and the ice turned out to be very nasty. He was already preparing to go home, when suddenly an unknown person in a wide-brimmed hat drew near, and saying in Russian: ‘I hope I am not in your way?’ sat down at his table. Only then, after a closer glance atthe stranger, Litvinov recognised him as the broad-shouldered gentleman hidden away in a corner at Gubaryov’s, who had stared at him with such attention when the conversation had turned on political views. During the whole evening this gentleman had not once opened his mouth, and now, sitting down near Litvinov, and taking off his hat, he looked at him with an expression of friendliness and some embarrassment.
‘Mr. Gubaryov, at whose rooms I had the pleasure of meeting you to-day,’ he began, ‘did not introduce me to you; so that, with your leave, I will now introduce myself—Potugin, retired councillor. I was in the department of finances in St. Petersburg. I hope you do not think it strange.... I am not in the habit as a rule of making friends so abruptly ... but with you....’
Potugin grew rather mixed, and he asked the waiter to bring him a little glass of kirsch-wasser. ‘To give me courage,’ he added with a smile.
Litvinov looked with redoubled interest at the last of all the new persons with whom it had been his lot to be brought into contact that day. His thought was at once, ‘He is not the same as those.’
Certainly he was not. There sat before him, drumming with delicate fingers on the edge ofthe table, a broad-shouldered man, with an ample frame on short legs, a downcast head of curly hair, with very intelligent and very mournful eyes under bushy brows, a thick well-cut mouth, bad teeth, and that purely Russian nose to which is assigned the epithet ‘potato’; a man of awkward, even odd exterior; at least, he was certainly not of a common type. He was carelessly dressed; his old-fashioned coat hung on him like a sack, and his cravat was twisted awry. His sudden friendliness, far from striking Litvinov as intrusive, secretly flattered him; it was impossible not to see that it was not a common practice with this man to attach himself to strangers. He made a curious impression on Litvinov; he awakened in him respect and liking, and a kind of involuntary compassion.
‘I am not in your way then?’ he repeated in a soft, rather languid and faint voice, which was marvellously in keeping with his whole personality.
‘No, indeed,’ replied Litvinov; ‘quite the contrary, I am very glad.’
‘Really? Well, then, I am glad too. I have heard a great deal about you; I know what you are engaged in, and what your plans are. It’s a good work. That’s why you were silent this evening.’
‘Yes; you too said very little, I fancy,’ observed Litvinov.
Potugin sighed. ‘The others said enough and to spare. I listened. Well,’ he added, after a moment’s pause, raising his eyebrows with a rather humorous expression, ‘did you like our building of the Tower of Babel?’
‘That’s just what it was. You have expressed it capitally. I kept wanting to ask those gentlemen what they were in such a fuss about.’
Potugin sighed again.
‘That’s the whole point of it, that they don’t know that themselves. In former days the expression used about them would have been: “they are the blind instruments of higher ends”; well, nowadays we make use of sharper epithets. And take note that I am not in the least intending to blame them; I will say more, they are all ... that is, almost all, excellent people. Of Madame Suhantchikov, for instance, I know for certain much that is good; she gave away the last of her fortune to two poor nieces. Even admitting that the desire of doing something picturesque, of showing herself off, was not without its influence on her, still you will agree that it was a remarkable act of self-sacrifice in a woman not herself well-off! Of Mr. Pishtchalkin there is no need to speak even; the peasants of his district will certainly in timepresent him with a silver bowl like a pumpkin, and perhaps even a holy picture representing his patron saint, and though he will tell them in his speech of thanks that he does not deserve such an honour, he won’t tell the truth there; he does deserve it. Mr. Bambaev, your friend, has a wonderfully good heart; it’s true that it’s with him as with the poet Yazikov, who they say used to sing the praises of Bacchic revelry, sitting over a book and sipping water; his enthusiasm is completely without a special object, still it is enthusiasm; and Mr. Voroshilov, too, is the most good-natured fellow; like all his sort, all men who’ve taken the first prizes at school, he’s anaide-de-campof the sciences, and he even holds his tongue sententiously, but then he is so young. Yes, yes, they are all excellent people, and when you come to results, there’s nothing to show for it; the ingredients are all first-rate, but the dish is not worth eating.’
Litvinov listened to Potugin with growing astonishment: every phrase, every turn of his slow but self-confident speech betrayed both the power of speaking and the desire to speak.
Potugin did, in fact, like speaking, and could speak well; but, as a man in whom life had succeeded in wearing away vanity, he waitedwith philosophic calm for a good opportunity, a meeting with a kindred spirit.
‘Yes, yes,’ he began again, with the special dejected but not peevish humour peculiar to him, ‘it is all very strange. And there is something else I want you to note. Let a dozen Englishmen, for example, come together, and they will at once begin to talk of the sub-marine telegraph, or the tax on paper, or a method of tanning rats’ skins,—of something, that’s to say, practical and definite; a dozen Germans, and of course Schleswig-Holstein and the unity of Germany will be brought on the scene; given a dozen Frenchmen, and the conversation will infallibly turn upon amorous adventures, however much you try to divert them from the subject; but let a dozen Russians meet together, and instantly there springs up the question—you had an opportunity of being convinced of the fact this evening—the question of the significance and the future of Russia, and in terms so general, beginning with creation, without facts or conclusions. They worry and worry away at that unlucky subject, as children chew away at a bit of india-rubber—neither for pleasure nor profit, as the saying is. Well, then, of course the rotten West comes in for its share. It’s a curious thing, it beats us at every point, this West—but yet we declarethat it’s rotten! And if only we had a genuine contempt for it,’ pursued Potugin, ‘but that’s really all cant and humbug. We can do well enough as far as abuse goes, but the opinion of the West is the only thing we value, the opinion, that’s to say, of the Parisian loafers.... I know a man—a good fellow, I fancy—the father of a family, and no longer young; he was thrown into deep dejection for some days because in a Parisian restaurant he had asked forune portion de biftek aux pommes de terre, and a real Frenchman thereupon shouted:Garçon! biftek pommes!My friend was ready to die with shame, and after that he shouted everywhere,Biftek pommes!and taught others to do the same. The verycocottesare surprised at the reverential trepidation with which our young barbarians enter their shameful drawing-rooms. “Good God!” they are thinking, “is this really where I am, with no less a person than Anna Deslions herself!”’
‘Tell me, pray,’ continued Litvinov, ‘to what do you ascribe the influence Gubaryov undoubtedly has over all about him? Is it his talent, his abilities?’
‘No, no; there is nothing of that sort about him....’
‘His personal character is it, then?’
‘Not that either, but he has a strong will. We Slavs, for the most part, as we all know,are badly off for that commodity, and we grovel before it. It is Mr. Gubaryov’s will to be a ruler, and every one has recognised him as a ruler. What would you have? The government has freed us from the dependence of serfdom—and many thanks to it! but the habits of slavery are too deeply ingrained in us; we cannot easily be rid of them. We want a master in everything and everywhere; as a rule this master is a living person, sometimes it is some so-called tendency which gains authority over us.... At present, for instance, we are all the bondslaves of natural science.... Why, owing to what causes, we take this bondage upon us, that is a matter difficult to see into; but such seemingly is our nature. But the great thing is, that we should have a master. Well, here he is amongst us; that means he is ours, and we can afford to despise everything else! Simply slaves! And our pride is slavish, and slavish too is our humility. If a new master arises—it’s all over with the old one. Then it was Yakov, and now it is Sidor; we box Yakov’s ears and kneel to Sidor! Call to mind how many tricks of that sort have been played amongst us! We talk of scepticism as our special characteristic; but even in our scepticism we are not like a free man fighting with a sword, but like a lackey hitting out with his fist, andvery likely he is doing even that at his master’s bidding. Then, we are a soft people too; it’s not difficult to keep the curb on us. So that’s the way Mr. Gubaryov has become a power among us; he has chipped and chipped away at one point, till he has chipped himself into success. People see that he is a man who has a great opinion of himself, who believes in himself, and commands. That’s the great thing, that he can command; it follows that he must be right, and we ought to obey him. All our sects, our Onuphrists and Akulinists, were founded exactly in that way. He who holds the rod is the corporal.’
Potugin’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes grew dim; but, strange to say, his speech, cruel and even malicious as it was, had no touch of bitterness, but rather of sorrow, genuine and sincere sorrow.
‘How did you come to know Gubaryov?’ asked Litvinov.
‘I have known him a long while. And observe, another peculiarity among us; a certain writer, for example, spent his whole life in inveighing in prose and verse against drunkenness, and attacking the system of the drink monopoly, and lo and behold! he went and bought two spirit distilleries and opened a hundred drink-shops—and it made no difference!Any other man might have been wiped off the face of the earth, but he was not even reproached for it. And here is Mr. Gubaryov; he is a Slavophil and a democrat and a socialist and anything you like, but his property has been and is still managed by his brother, a master of the old style, one of those who were famous for their fists. And the very Madame Suhantchikov, who makes Mrs. Beecher Stowe box Tentelyev’s ears, is positively in the dust before Gubaryov’s feet. And you know the only thing he has to back him is that he reads clever books, and always gets at the pith of them. You could see for yourself to-day what sort of gift he has for expression; and thank God, too, that he does talk little, and keeps in his shell. For when he is in good spirits, and lets himself go, then it’s more than even I, patient as I am, can stand. He begins by coarse joking and telling filthy anecdotes ... yes, really, our majestic Mr. Gubaryov tells filthy anecdotes, and guffaws so revoltingly over them all the time.’
‘Are you so patient?’ observed Litvinov. ‘I should have supposed the contrary. But let me ask your name and your father’s name?’
Potugin sipped a little kirsch-wasser.
‘My name is Sozont.... Sozont Ivanitch. They gave me that magnificent name in honour of a kinsman, an archimandrite, to whom I amindebted for nothing else. I am, if I may venture so to express myself, of most reverend stock. And as for your doubts about my patience, they are quite groundless: I am very patient. I served for twenty-two years under the authority of my own uncle, an actual councillor of state, Irinarh Potugin. You don’t know him?’
‘No.’
‘I congratulate you. No, I am patient. “But let us return to our first head,” as my esteemed colleague, who was burned alive some centuries ago, the protopope Avvakum, used to say. I am amazed, my dear sir, at my fellow-countrymen. They are all depressed, they all walk with downcast heads, and at the same time they are all filled with hope, and on the smallest excuse they lose their heads and fly off into ecstasies. Look at the Slavophils even, among whom Mr. Gubaryov reckons himself: they are most excellent people, but there is the same mixture of despair and exultation, they too live in the future tense. Everything will be, will be, if you please. In reality there is nothing done, and Russia for ten whole centuries has created nothing of its own, either in government, in law, in science, in art, or even in handicraft.... But wait a little, have patience; it is all coming. And why is it coming; give us leave to inquire? Why,because we, to be sure, the cultured classes are all worthless; but the people.... Oh, the great people! You see that peasant’s smock? That is the source that everything is to come from. All the other idols have broken down; let us have faith in the smock-frock. Well, but suppose the smock-frock fails us? No, it will not fail. Read Kohanovsky, and cast your eyes up to heaven! Really, if I were a painter, I would paint a picture of this sort: a cultivated man standing before a peasant, doing him homage: heal me, dear master-peasant, I am perishing of disease; and a peasant doing homage in his turn to the cultivated man: teach me, dear master-gentleman, I am perishing from ignorance. Well, and of course, both are standing still. But what we ought to do is to feel really humble for a little—not only in words—and to borrow from our elder brothers what they have invented already before us and better than us! Waiter,noch ein Gläschen Kirsch!You mustn’t think I’m a drunkard, but alcohol loosens my tongue.’
‘After what you have just said,’ observed Litvinov with a smile, ‘I need not even inquire to which party you belong, and what is your opinion about Europe. But let me make one observation to you. You say that we ought to borrow from our elder brothers: but how canwe borrow without consideration of the conditions of climate and of soil, the local and national peculiarities? My father, I recollect, ordered from Butenop a cast-iron thrashing machine highly recommended; the machine was very good, certainly—but what happened? For five long years it remained useless in the barn, till it was replaced by a wooden American one—far more suitable to our ways and habits, as the American machines are as a rule. One cannot borrow at random, Sozont Ivanitch.’
Potugin lifted his head.
‘I did not expect such a criticism as that from you, excellent Grigory Mihalovitch,’ he began, after a moment’s pause. ‘Who wants to make you borrow at random? Of course you steal what belongs to another man, not because it is some one else’s, but because it suits you; so it follows that you consider, you make a selection. And as for results, pray don’t let us be unjust to ourselves; there will be originality enough in them by virtue of those very local, climatic, and other conditions which you mention. Only lay good food before it, and the natural stomach will digest it in its own way; and in time, as the organism gains in vigour, it will give it a sauce of its own. Take our language even as an instance. Peter the Great deluged it with thousands of foreign words, Dutch, French, andGerman; those words expressed ideas with which the Russian people had to be familiarised; without scruple or ceremony Peter poured them wholesale by bucketsful into us. At first, of course, the result was something of a monstrous product; but later there began precisely that process of digestion to which I have alluded. The ideas had been introduced and assimilated; the foreign forms evaporated gradually, and the language found substitutes for them from within itself; and now your humble servant, the most mediocre stylist, will undertake to translate any page you like out of Hegel—yes, indeed, out of Hegel—without making use of a single word not Slavonic. What has happened with the language, one must hope will happen in other departments. It all turns on the question: is it a nature of strong vitality? and our nature—well, it will stand the test; it has gone through greater trials than that. Only nations in a state of nervous debility, feeble nations, need fear for their health and their independence, just as it is only weak-minded people who are capable of falling into triumphant rhapsodies over the fact that we are Russians. I am very careful over my health, but I don’t go into ecstasies over it: I should be ashamed.’
‘That is all very true, Sozont Ivanitch,’ observed Litvinov in his turn; ‘but why inevitablyexpose ourselves to such tests? You say yourself that at first the result was monstrous! Well, what if that monstrous product had persisted? Indeed it has persisted, as you know yourself.’
‘Only not in the language—and that means a great deal! And it is our people, not I, who have done it; I am not to blame because they are destined to go through a discipline of this kind. “The Germans have developed in a normal way,” cry the Slavophils, “let us too have a normal development!” But how are you to get it when the very first historical step taken by our race—the summoning of a prince from over the sea to rule over them—is an irregularity, an abnormality, which is repeated in every one of us down to the present day; each of us, at least once in his life, has certainly said to something foreign, not Russian: “Come, rule and reign over me!” I am ready, of course, to agree that when we put a foreign substance into our own body we cannot tell for certain what it is we are putting there, bread or poison; yet it is a well-known thing that you can never get from bad to good through what is better, but always through a worse state of transition, and poison too is useful in medicine. It is only fit for fools or knaves to point with triumph to the poverty of the peasants after theemancipation, and the increase of drunkenness since the abolition of the farming of the spirit-tax.... Through worse to better!’
Potugin passed his hand over his face. ‘You asked me what was my opinion of Europe,’ he began again: ‘I admire her, and am devoted to her principles to the last degree, and don’t in the least think it necessary to conceal the fact. I have long—no, not long—for some time ceased to be afraid to give full expression to my convictions—and I saw that you too had no hesitation in informing Mr. Gubaryov of your own way of thinking. Thank God I have given up paying attention to the ideas and points of view and habits of the man I am conversing with. Really, I know of nothing worse than that quite superfluous cowardice, that cringing desire to be agreeable, by virtue of which you may see an important dignitary among us trying to ingratiate himself with some little student who is quite insignificant in his eyes, positively playing down to him, with all sorts of tricks and devices. Even if we admit that the dignitary may do it out of desire for popularity, what induces us common folk to shuffle and degrade ourselves. Yes, yes, I am a Westerner, I am devoted to Europe: that’s to say, speaking more accurately, I am devoted to culture—the culture at which they make fun sowittily among us just now—and to civilisation—yes, yes, that is a better word—and I love it with my whole heart and believe in it, and I have no other belief, and never shall have. That word, ci-vi-li-sa-tion (Potugin pronounced each syllable with full stress and emphasis), is intelligible, and pure, and holy, and all the other ideals, nationality, glory, or what you like—they smell of blood.... Away with them!’
‘Well, but Russia, Sozont Ivanitch, your country—you love it?’
Potugin passed his hand over his face. ‘I love her passionately and passionately hate her.’
Litvinov shrugged his shoulders.
‘That’s stale, Sozont Ivanitch, that’s a commonplace.’
‘And what of it? So that’s what you’re afraid of! A commonplace! I know many excellent commonplaces. Here, for example, Law and Liberty is a well-known commonplace. Why, do you consider it’s better as it is with us, lawlessness and bureaucratic tyranny? And, besides, all those phrases by which so many young heads are turned: vile bourgeoisie,souveraineté du peuple, right to labour, aren’t they commonplaces too? And as for love, inseparable from hate....’
‘Byronism,’ interposed Litvinov, ‘the romanticism of the thirties.’
‘Excuse me, you’re mistaken; such a mingling of emotions was first mentioned by Catullus, the Roman poet Catullus,1two thousand years ago. I have read that, for I know a little Latin, thanks to my clerical origin, if so I may venture to express myself. Yes, indeed, I both love and hate my Russia, my strange, sweet, nasty, precious country. I have left her just now. I want a little fresh air after sitting for twenty years on a clerk’s high stool in a government office; I have left Russia, and I am happy and contented here; but I shall soon go back again: I feel that. It’s a beautiful land of gardens—but our wild berries will not grow here.’
‘You are happy and contented, and I too like the place,’ said Litvinov, ‘and I came here to study; but that does not prevent me from seeing things like that.’
He pointed to twococotteswho passed by, attended by a little group of members of the Jockey Club, grimacing and lisping, and to the gambling saloon, full to overflowing in spite of the lateness of the hour.
‘And who told you I am blind to that?’ Potugin broke in. ‘But pardon my saying it, your remark reminds me of the triumphantallusions made by our unhappy journalists at the time of the Crimean war, to the defects in the English War Department, exposed in theTimes. I am not an optimist myself, and all humanity, all our life, all this comedy with tragic issues presents itself to me in no roseate colours: but why fasten upon the West what is perhaps ingrained in our very human nature? That gambling hall is disgusting, certainly; but is our home-bred card-sharping any lovelier, think you? No, my dear Grigory Mihalovitch, let us be more humble, more retiring. A good pupil sees his master’s faults, but he keeps a respectful silence about them; these very faults are of use to him, and set him on the right path. But if nothing will satisfy you but sharpening your teeth on the unlucky West, there goes Prince Kokó at a gallop, he will most likely lose in a quarter of an hour over the green table the hardly earned rent wrung from a hundred and fifty families; his nerves are upset, for I saw him at Marx’s to-day turning over a pamphlet of Vaillot.... He will be a capital person for you to talk to!’
‘But, please, please,’ said Litvinov hurriedly, seeing that Potugin was getting up from his place, ‘I know Prince Kokó very little, and besides, of course, I greatly prefer talking to you.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Potugin interruptedhim, getting up and making a bow; ‘but I have already had a good deal of conversation with you; that’s to say, really, I have talked alone, and you have probably noticed yourself that a man is always as it were ashamed and awkward when he has done all the talking, especially so on a first meeting, as if to show what a fine fellow one is. Good-bye for the present. And I repeat I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.’
‘But wait a minute, Sozont Ivanitch, tell me at least where you live, and whether you intend to remain here long.’
Potugin seemed a little put out.
‘I shall remain about a week in Baden. We can meet here though, at Weber’s or at Marx’s, or else I will come to you.’
‘Still I must know your address.’
‘Yes. But you see I am not alone.’
‘You are married?’ asked Litvinov suddenly.
‘No, good heavens! ... what an absurd idea! But I have a girl with me.’...
‘Oh!’ articulated Litvinov, with a face of studied politeness, as though he would ask pardon, and he dropped his eyes.
‘She is only six years old,’ pursued Potugin. ‘She’s an orphan ... the daughter of a lady ... a good friend of mine. So we had better meet here. Good-bye.’
He pulled his hat over his curly head, and disappeared quickly. Twice there was a glimpse of him under the gas-lamps in the rather meanly lighted road that leads into the Lichtenthaler Allee.
‘A strange man!’ thought Litvinov, as he turned into the hotel where he was staying; ‘a strange man! I must see more of him!’ He went into his room; a letter on the table caught his eye. ‘Ah! from Tanya!’ he thought, and was overjoyed at once; but the letter was from his country place, from his father. Litvinov broke the thick heraldic seal, and was just setting to work to read it ... when he was struck by a strong, very agreeable, and familiar fragrance, and saw in the window a great bunch of fresh heliotrope in a glass of water. Litvinov bent over them not without amazement, touched them, and smelt them.... Something seemed to stir in his memory, something very remote ... but what, precisely, he could not discover. He rang for the servant and asked him where these flowers had come from. The man replied that they had been brought by a lady who would not give her name, but said that ‘Herr Zlitenhov’ would be sure to guess who she was by theflowers. Again something stirred in Litvinov’s memory. He asked the man what the lady looked like, and the servant informed him that she was tall and grandly dressed and had a veil over her face. ‘A Russian countess most likely,’ he added.
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Litvinov.
‘She gave me two guldens,’ responded the servant with a grin.
Litvinov dismissed him, and for a long while after he stood in deep thought before the window; at last, however, with a wave of his hand, he began again upon the letter from the country. His father poured out to him his usual complaints, asserting that no one would take their corn, even for nothing, that the people had got quite out of all habits of obedience, and that probably the end of the world was coming soon. ‘Fancy,’ he wrote, among other things, ‘my last coachman, the Kalmuck boy, do you remember him? has been bewitched, and the fellow would certainly have died, and I should have had none to drive me, but, thank goodness, some kind folks suggested and advised to send the sick man to Ryazan, to a priest, well-known as a master against witchcraft: and his cure has actually succeeded as well as possible, in confirmation of which I lay before you theletter of the good father as a document.’ Litvinov ran through this document with curiosity. In it was set forth: ‘that the serving-man Nicanor Dmitriev was beset with a malady which could not be touched by the medical faculty; and this malady was the work of wicked people; but he himself, Nicanor, was the cause of it, since he had not fulfilled his promise to a certain girl, and therefore by the aid of others she had made him unfit for anything, and if I had not appeared to aid him in these circumstances, he would surely have perished utterly, like a worm; but I, trusting in the All-seeing Eye, have become a stay to him in his life; and how I accomplished it, that is a mystery; I beg your excellency not to countenance a girl who has such wicked arts, and even to chide her would be no harm, or she may again work him a mischief.’
Litvinov fell to musing over this document; it brought him a whiff of the desert, of the steppes, of the blind darkness of the life mouldering there, and it seemed a marvellous thing that he should be reading such a letter in Baden, of all places. Meanwhile it had long struck midnight; Litvinov went to bed and put out his light. But he could not get to sleep; the faces he had seen, the talk he had heard, kept coming back and revolving,strangely interwoven and entangled in his burning head, which ached from the fumes of tobacco. Now he seemed to hear Gubaryov’s muttering, and fancied his eyes with their dull, persistent stare fastened on the floor; then suddenly those eyes began to glow and leap, and he recognised Madame Suhantchikov, and listened to her shrill voice, and involuntarily repeated after her in a whisper, ‘she did, she did, slap his face.’ Then the clumsy figure of Potugin passed before him; and for the tenth, and the twentieth time he went over every word he had uttered; then, like a jack in the box, Voroshilov jumped up in his trim coat, which fitted him like a new uniform; and Pishtchalkin gravely and sagaciously nodded his well-cut and truly well-intentioned head; and then Bindasov bawled and swore, and Bambaev fell into tearful transports.... And above all—this scent, this persistent, sweet, heavy scent gave him no rest, and grew more and more powerful in the darkness, and more and more importunately it reminded him of something which still eluded his grasp.... The idea occurred to Litvinov that the scent of flowers at night in a bedroom was injurious, and he got up, and groping his way to the nosegay, carried it into the next room; but even from there the oppressive fragrance penetrated tohim on his pillow and under the counterpane, and he tossed in misery from side to side. A slight delirium had already begun to creep over him; already the priest, ‘the master against witchcraft’ had twice run across his road in the guise of a very playful hare with a beard and a pig-tail, and Voroshilov was trilling before him, sitting in a huge general’s plumed cock-hat like a nightingale in a bush.... When suddenly he jumped up in bed, and clasping his hands, cried, ‘Can it be she? it can’t be!’
But to explain this exclamation of Litvinov’s we must beg the indulgent reader to go back a few years with us.
Early in the fifties, there was living in Moscow, in very straitened circumstances, almost in poverty, the numerous family of the Princes Osinin. These were real princes—not Tartar-Georgians, but pure-blooded descendants of Rurik. Their name is often to be met with in our chronicles under the first grand princes of Moscow, who created a united Russia. They possessed wide acres and many domains. Many a time they were rewarded for ‘service and blood and disablement.’ They sat in the Council of Boyars. One of them even rose to a very high position. But they fell under the ban of the empire through the plots of enemies ‘on a charge of witchcraft and evil philtres,’ and they were ruined ‘terribly and beyond recall.’ They were deprived of their rank, and banished to remote parts; the Osinins fell and had never risen again, had never attained to power again. The ban was taken off in time, and they were even reinstated in their Moscow house and belongings,but it was of no avail. Their family was impoverished, ‘run to seed’; it did not revive under Peter, nor under Catherine; and constantly dwindling and growing humbler, it had by now reckoned private stewards, managers of wine-shops, and ward police-inspectors among its members. The family of Osinins, of whom we have made mention, consisted of a husband and wife and five children. It was living near the Dogs’ Place, in a one-storied little wooden house, with a striped portico looking on to the street, green lions on the gates, and all the other pretensions of nobility, though it could hardly make both ends meet, was constantly in debt at the green-grocer’s, and often sitting without firewood or candles in the winter. The prince himself was a dull, indolent man, who had once been a handsome dandy, but had gone to seed completely. More from regard for his wife, who had been a maid-of-honour, than from respect for his name, he had been presented with one of those old-fashioned Moscow posts that have a small salary, a queer-sounding name, and absolutely no duties attached. He never meddled in anything, and did nothing but smoke from morning till night, breathing heavily, and always wrapped in a dressing-gown. His wife was a sickly irritable woman, for ever worried over domestic trifles—over getting her childrenplaced in government schools, and keeping up her Petersburg connections; she could never accustom herself to her position and her remoteness from the Court.
Litvinov’s father had made acquaintance with the Osinins during his residence at Moscow, had had occasion to do them some services, and had once lent them three hundred roubles; and his son often visited them while he was a student; his lodging happened to be at no great distance from their house. But he was not drawn to them simply as near neighbours, nor tempted by their comfortless way of living. He began to be a frequent visitor at their house after he had fallen in love with their eldest daughter Irina.
She had then completed her seventeenth year; she had only just left school, from which her mother withdrew her through a disagreement with the principal. This disagreement arose from the fact that Irina was to have delivered at a public function some verses in French, complimentary to the curator, and just before the performance her place was filled by another girl, the daughter of a very rich spirit-contractor. The princess could not stomach this affront; and indeed Irina herself never forgave the principal for this act of injustice; she had been dreaming beforehand of how she would risebefore the eyes of every one, attracting universal attention, and would deliver her speech, and how Moscow would talk about her afterwards!... And, indeed, Moscow would have talked about her afterwards. She was a tall, slim girl, with a somewhat hollow chest and narrow unformed shoulders, with a skin of a dead-white, rare at her age, and pure and smooth as china, with thick fair hair; there were darker tresses mingled in a very original way with the light ones. Her features—exquisitely, almost too perfectly, correct—had not yet quite lost the innocent expression that belongs to childhood; the languid curves of her lovely neck, and her smile—half-indifferent, half-weary—betrayed the nervous temperament of a delicate girl; but in the lines of those fine, faintly-smiling lips, of that small, falcon, slightly-narrow nose, there was something wilful and passionate, something dangerous for herself and others. Astounding, really astounding were her eyes, dark grey with greenish lights, languishing, almond-shaped as an Egyptian goddess’s, with shining lashes and bold sweep of eyebrow. There was a strange look in those eyes; they seemed looking out intently and thoughtfully—looking out from some unknown depth and distance. At school, Irina had been reputed one of the best pupils for intelligence and abilities, but of uneventemper, fond of power, and headstrong; one class-mistress prophesied that her passions would be her ruin—‘vos passions vous perdront’, on the other hand, another class-mistress censured her for coldness and want of feeling, and called her ‘une jeune fille sans cœur.’ Irina’s companions thought her proud and reserved: her brothers and sisters stood a little in awe of her: her mother had no confidence in her: and her father felt ill at ease when she fastened her mysterious eyes upon him. But she inspired a feeling of involuntary respect in both her father and her mother, not so much through her qualities, as from a peculiar, vague sense of expectations which she had, in some undefined way, awakened in them.
‘You will see, Praskovya Danilovna,’ said the old prince one day, taking his pipe out of his mouth, ‘our chit of an Irina will give us all a lift in the world yet.’
The princess got angry, and told her husband that he made use of ‘des expressions insupportables’; afterwards, however, she fell to musing over his words, and repeated through her teeth:
‘Well ... and it would be a good thing if we did get a lift.’
Irina enjoyed almost unlimited freedom in her parents’ house; they did not spoil her, they even avoided her a little, but they did notthwart her, and that was all she wanted.... Sometimes—during some too humiliating scene—when some tradesman would come and keep shouting, to be heard over the whole court, that he was sick of coming after his money, or their own servants would begin abusing their masters to their face, with ‘fine princes you are, to be sure; you may whistle for your supper, and go hungry to bed’—Irina would not stir a muscle; she would sit unmoved, an evil smile on her dark face; and her smile alone was more bitter to her parents than any reproaches, and they felt themselves guilty—guilty, though guiltless—towards this being on whom had been bestowed, as it seemed, from her very birth, the right to wealth, to luxury, and to homage.
Litvinov fell in love with Irina from the moment he saw her (he was only three years older than she was), but for a long while he failed to obtain not only a response, but even a hearing. Her manner to him was even overcast with a shade of something like hostility; he did in fact wound her pride, and she concealed the wound, and could never forgive it. He was too young and too modest at that time to understand what might be concealed under this hostile, almost contemptuous severity. Often, forgetful of lectures and exercises, hewould sit and sit in the Osinins’ cheerless drawing-room, stealthily watching Irina, his heart slowly and painfully throbbing and suffocating him; and she would seem angry or bored, would get up and walk about the room, look coldly at him as though he were a table or chair, shrug her shoulders, and fold her arms. Or for a whole evening, even when talking with Litvinov, she would purposely avoid looking at him, as though denying him even that grace. Or she would at last take up a book and stare at it, not reading, but frowning and biting her lips. Or else she would suddenly ask her father or brother aloud: ‘What’s the German for patience?’ He tried to tear himself away from the enchanted circle in which he suffered and struggled impotently like a bird in a trap; he went away from Moscow for a week. He nearly went out of his mind with misery and dulness; he returned quite thin and ill to the Osinins’.... Strange to say, Irina too had grown perceptibly thinner during those days; her face had grown pale, her cheeks were wan.... But she met him with still greater coldness, with almost malignant indifference; as though he had intensified that secret wound he had dealt at her pride.... She tortured him in this way for two months. Then everything was transformed in one day. It was as though lovehad broken into flame with the heat, or had dropped down from a storm-cloud. One day—long will he remember that day—he was once more sitting in the Osinins’ drawing-room at the window, and was looking mechanically into the street. There was vexation and weariness in his heart, he despised himself, and yet he could not move from his place.... He thought that if a river ran there under the window, he would throw himself in, with a shudder of fear, but without a regret. Irina placed herself not far from him, and was somehow strangely silent and motionless. For some days now she had not talked to him at all, or to any one else; she kept sitting, leaning on her elbows, as though she were in perplexity, and only rarely she looked slowly round. This cold torture was at last more than Litvinov could bear; he got up, and without saying good-bye, he began to look for his hat. ‘Stay,’ sounded suddenly, in a soft whisper. Litvinov’s heart throbbed, he did not at once recognise Irina’s voice; in that one word, there was a ring of something that had never been in it before. He lifted his head and was stupefied; Irina was looking fondly—yes, fondly at him. ‘Stay,’ she repeated; ‘don’t go. I want to be with you.’ Her voice sank still lower. ‘Don’t go.... I wish it.’ Understanding nothing, not fully conscious what hewas doing, he drew near her, stretched out his hands.... She gave him both of hers at once, then smiling, flushing hotly, she turned away, and still smiling, went out of the room. She came back a few minutes later with her youngest sister, looked at him again with the same prolonged tender gaze, and made him sit near her.... At first she could say nothing; she only sighed and blushed; then she began, timidly as it were, to question him about his pursuits, a thing she had never done before. In the evening of the same day, she tried several times to beg his forgiveness for not having done him justice before, assured him she had now become quite different, astonished him by a sudden outburst of republicanism (he had at that time a positive hero-worship for Robespierre, and did not presume to criticise Marat aloud), and only a week later he knew that she loved him. Yes; he long remembered that first day ... but he did not forget those that came after either—those days, when still forcing himself to doubt, afraid to believe in it, he saw clearly, with transports of rapture, almost of dread, bliss un-hoped for coming to life, growing, irresistibly carrying everything before it, reaching him at last. Then followed the radiant moments of first love—moments which are not destined to be, and could not fittingly be, repeated in thesame life. Irina became all at once as docile as a lamb, as soft as silk, and boundlessly kind; she began giving lessons to her younger sisters—not on the piano, she was no musician, but in French and English; she read their school-books with them, and looked after the housekeeping; everything was amusing and interesting to her; she would sometimes chatter incessantly, and sometimes sink into speechless tenderness; she made all sorts of plans, and was lost in endless anticipations of what she would do when she was married to Litvinov (they never doubted that their marriage would come to pass), and how together they would ... ‘Work?’ prompted Litvinov.... ‘Yes; work,’ repeated Irina, ‘and read ... but travel before all things.’ She particularly wanted to leave Moscow as soon as possible, and when Litvinov reminded her that he had not yet finished his course of study at the university, she always replied, after a moment’s thought, that it was quite possible to finish his studies at Berlin or ... somewhere or other. Irina was very little reserved in the expression of her feelings, and so her relations with Litvinov did not long remain a secret from the prince and princess. Rejoice they could not; but, taking all circumstances into consideration, they saw no necessity for putting a veto onit at once. Litvinov’s fortune was considerable....
‘But his family, his family!’ ... protested the princess. ‘Yes, his family, of course,’ replied the prince; but at least he’s not quite a plebeian; and, what’s the principal point, Irina, you know, will not listen to us. Has there ever been a time when she did not do what she chose?Vous connaissez sa violence!Besides, there is nothing fixed definitely yet.’ So reasoned the prince, but mentally he added, however: ‘Madame Litvinov—is that all? I had expected something else.’ Irina took complete possession of her futurefiancé, and indeed he himself eagerly surrendered himself into her hands. It was as if he had fallen into a rapid river, and had lost himself.... And bitter and sweet it was to him, and he regretted nothing and heeded nothing. To reflect on the significance and the duties of marriage, or whether he, so hopelessly enslaved, could be a good husband, and what sort of wife Irina would make, and whether their relations to one another were what they should be—was more than he could bring himself to. His blood was on fire, he could think of nothing, only—to follow her, be with her, for the future without end, and then—let come what may!
But in spite of the complete absence ofopposition on Litvinov’s side, and the wealth of impulsive tenderness on Irina’s, they did not get on quite without any misunderstandings and quarrels. One day he ran to her straight from the university in an old coat and ink-stained hands. She rushed to meet him with her accustomed fond welcome; suddenly she stopped short.
‘You have no gloves,’ she said abruptly, and added directly after: ‘Fie! what a student you are!’
‘You are too particular, Irina,’ remarked Litvinov.
‘You are a regular student,’ she repeated. ‘Vous n’êtes pas distingué’; and turning her back on him she went out of the room. It is true that an hour later she begged him to forgive her.... As a rule she readily censured herself and accused herself to him; but, strange to say, she often almost with tears blamed herself for evil propensities which she had not, and obstinately denied her real defects. Another time he found her in tears, her head in her hands, and her hair in disorder; and when, all in agitation, he asked her the cause of her grief, she pointed with her finger at her own bosom without speaking. Litvinov gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Consumption!’ flashed through his brain, and he seized her hand.
‘Are you ill, Irina?’ he articulated in a shaking voice. (They had already begun on great occasions to call each other by their first names.) ‘Let me go at once for a doctor.’
But Irina did not let him finish; she stamped with her foot in vexation.
‘I am perfectly well ... but this dress ... don’t you understand?’
‘What is it? ... this dress,’ he repeated in bewilderment.
‘What is it? Why, that I have no other, and that it is old and disgusting, and I am obliged to put on this dress every day ... even when you—Grisha—Grigory, come here.... You will leave off loving me, at last, seeing me so slovenly!’
‘For goodness sake, Irina, what are you saying? That dress is very nice.... It is dear to me too because I saw you for the first time in it, darling.’
Irina blushed.
‘Do not remind me, if you please, Grigory Mihalovitch, that I had no other dress even then.’
‘But I assure you, Irina Pavlovna, it suits you so exquisitely.’
‘No, it is horrid, horrid,’ she persisted, nervously pulling at her long, soft curls. ‘Ugh, this poverty, poverty and squalor! How is oneto escape from this sordidness! How get out of this squalor!’
Litvinov did not know what to say, and slightly turned away from her.
All at once Irina jumped up from her chair, and laid both her hands on his shoulders.
‘But you love me, Grisha? You love me?’ she murmured, putting her face close to him, and her eyes, still filled with tears, sparkled with the light of happiness, ‘You love me, dear, even in this horrid dress?’
Litvinov flung himself on his knees before her.
‘Ah, love me, love me, my sweet, my saviour,’ she whispered, bending over him.
So the days flew, the weeks passed, and though as yet there had been no formal declaration, though Litvinov still deferred his demand for her hand, not, certainly, at his own desire, but awaiting directions from Irina (she remarked sometimes that they were both ridiculously young, and they must add at least a few weeks more to their years), still everything was moving to a conclusion, and the future as it came nearer grew more and more clearly defined, when suddenly an event occurred, which scattered all their dreams and plans like light roadside dust.