My dear darling irresistible little Georgi(read Romashov in the sloping, crooked lines he knew so well),—For a whole week you have not been to see me, and yesterday I was so miserable without you that I lay and wept the whole night. Remember that if you fool me or deceive me I shall not survive it. One single drop of poison and I shall be freed from my tortures for ever; but, as for you, conscience shall gnaw you for ever and ever. You must—must come to me to-night at half-past seven.Heis not at home, he is somewhere—on tactical duty or whatever it is called. Do come! I kiss you a thousand thousand times.Yours always,Raisa.P.S.—Have you forgotten the river fast rushing,Under the willow-boughs wending its way,Kisses you gave me, dear, burning and crushing,When in your strong arms I tremblingly lay?P.SS.—You must absolutely attend the soirée next Saturday at the officers’ mess. I will give you the third quadrille. You understand.
My dear darling irresistible little Georgi(read Romashov in the sloping, crooked lines he knew so well),—For a whole week you have not been to see me, and yesterday I was so miserable without you that I lay and wept the whole night. Remember that if you fool me or deceive me I shall not survive it. One single drop of poison and I shall be freed from my tortures for ever; but, as for you, conscience shall gnaw you for ever and ever. You must—must come to me to-night at half-past seven.Heis not at home, he is somewhere—on tactical duty or whatever it is called. Do come! I kiss you a thousand thousand times.
Yours always,Raisa.
P.S.—
Have you forgotten the river fast rushing,Under the willow-boughs wending its way,Kisses you gave me, dear, burning and crushing,When in your strong arms I tremblingly lay?
Have you forgotten the river fast rushing,Under the willow-boughs wending its way,Kisses you gave me, dear, burning and crushing,When in your strong arms I tremblingly lay?
Have you forgotten the river fast rushing,Under the willow-boughs wending its way,Kisses you gave me, dear, burning and crushing,When in your strong arms I tremblingly lay?
P.SS.—You must absolutely attend the soirée next Saturday at the officers’ mess. I will give you the third quadrille. You understand.
A long way down on the fourth page lay written—
I have kissedhere.
I have kissedhere.
I have kissedhere.
This delightful epistle wafted the familiar perfume of Persian lilac, and drops of that essence had, here and there, left yellow stains behind them on the letter, in which the characters had run apart in different directions. This stale scent, combined with the tasteless, absurdly sentimental tone throughoutthis letter from a little, immoral, red-haired woman, excited in Romashov an intolerable feeling of disgust. With a sort of grim delight he first tore the letter into two parts, laid them carefully together, tore them up again, laid the bits of paper once more together, and tore them again into little bits till his fingers got numb, and then, with clenched teeth and a broad, cynical grin, threw the fragments under his writing-table. At the same time, according to his old habit, he had time to think of himself in the third person—
“And he burst out into a bitter, contemptuous laugh.”
A moment later he realized that he would have to go that evening to the Nikoläievs’. “But this is the last time.” After he had tried to deceive himself by these words, he felt for once happy and calm.
“Hainán, my clothes.”
He made his toilet hastily and impatiently, put on his elegant new tunic, and sprinkled a few drops of eau-de-Cologne on a clean handkerchief; but when he was dressed, and ready to go, he was stopped suddenly by Hainán.
“Your Honour,” said the Circassian, in an unusually meek and supplicating tone, as he began to execute a most curious sort of dance before his master. Whilst he was performing a kind of “march on the spot” he lifted his knees right up, one after the other, rocking his shoulders, nodding his head, and making a series of convulsive movements in the air with his arms and fingers. Hainán was in the habit of giving vent to his excited feelings by curious gestures of that sort.
“What do you want now?”
“Your Honour,” stammered Hainán, “I wantto ask you something; please give me the white gentleman.”
“The white gentleman? What white gentleman?”
“The one you ordered me to throw away—the one standing in that corner.”
Hainán pointed with his fingers to the stove-corner, where a bust of Pushkin was standing on the floor. This bust, which Romashov had obtained from a wandering pedlar, really did not represent the famous poet, but merely reproduced the forbidding features of an old Jew broker. Badly modelled, so covered with dust and fly dirt as to be unrecognizable, the stone image aroused Romashov’s aversion to such an extent that he had at last made up his mind to order Hainán to throw it into the yard.
“What do you want with it?” asked Romashov, laughing. “But take it by all means, take it, I am only too pleased. I don’t want it, only I should like to know what you are going to do with it.”
Hainán smiled and changed from one foot to the other.
“Well, take him, then; I wish you joy of it. By the way, do you know who it is?”
Hainán smiled in an embarrassed way, and infused still more energy into his caperings.
“No—don’t know.” Hainán rubbed his lips with his coat sleeve.
“So you don’t know. Well, listen. This is Pushkin—Alexander Sergievich Pushkin. Did you understand me? Now repeat—‘Alexander Sergievich——’”
“Besiäev,” repeated Hainán in a determined tone.
“Besiäev? Well, call him Besiäev if you like. Now I am off. Should any message come from Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, say I’m not at home, andyou don’t know where I have gone. Do you understand? But if any one wants me in the way of business connected with the regiment, run down at once for me at Lieutenant Nikoläiev’s. You may fetch my supper from the mess and eat it yourself. Good-bye, old fellow.”
Romashov gave his servant a friendly smack on his shoulder, which was answered by a broad, happy, familiar smile.
WHENRomashov reached the yard it was quite dark. He stumbled like a blind man into the street, his huge goloshes sank deep into the thick, stiff mud, and every step he took was accompanied by a smacking noise. Now and again one golosh stuck so fast in the mud of the road that it remained there, and he had all the difficulty in the world, whilst balancing himself wildly on his other foot, to recover his treasure.
The little town seemed to him to be absolutely dead. Not a sound was heard, even the dogs were silent. Here and there a gleam of light streamed from the small, low-pitched, white house, against which the window-sills sharply depicted their shapes in the yellowish-brown mire. From the wet and sticky palings along which Romashov slowly worked his way, from the raw, moist bark of the poplars, from the dirty road itself, there arose a strong, refreshing scent of spring, which aroused a certain unconscious sense of joy and comfort. Nay, even with the tormenting gale which swept violently through the streets seemed mingled a youthful, reawakened desire of life, and the gusts of wind chased one another like boisterous and sportive children in a “merry-go-round.”
When Romashov reached the house where the Nikoläievs dwelt, he stopped, despondent and perplexed.The close, cinnamon-coloured curtains were let down, but behind them one could, nevertheless, distinguish the clear, even glow of a lamp. On one side the curtain curved inwards and formed a long, small chink against the window-sill. Romashov pressed his face cautiously against the window, and hardly dared to breathe for fear of betraying his presence.
He could distinguish Alexandra Petrovna’s head and shoulders. She was sitting in a stooping attitude on that green rep divan that he knew so well. From her bowed head and slight movements he concluded that she was occupied with some needlework. Suddenly she straightened herself up, raised her head, and drew a long breath. Her lips moved.
“What is she saying?” thought Romashov. “And look! now she’s smiling. How strange to see through a window a person talking, and not to be able to catch a word of what she says.”
The smile, however, suddenly disappeared from Alexandra Petrovna’s face; her forehead puckered, and her lips moved rapidly and vehemently. Directly afterwards she smiled again, but wickedly and maliciously, and with her head made a slow gesture of disapproval.
“Perhaps they are talking about me,” thought Romashov, not without a certain disagreeable anxiety; but he knew how something pure, chaste, agreeably soothing and benevolent beamed on him from this young woman who, at that moment, made the same impression on him as a charming canvas, the lovely picture of which reminded him of happy, innocent days of long ago. “Shurochka,” whispered Romashov tenderly.
At that moment Alexandra Petrovna lifted her face from her work and cast a rapid, searching,despondent glance at the window. Romashov thought she was looking him straight in the face. It felt as if a cold hand had seized his heart, and in his fright he hid himself behind a projection of the wall. Again he was irresolute and ill at ease, and he was just about to return home, when, by a violent effort of the will, he overcame his pusillanimity and walked through a little back-door into the kitchen.
The Nikoläievs’ servant relieved him of his muddy goloshes, and wiped down his boots with a kitchen rag. When Romashov pulled out his pocket-handkerchief to remove the mist from his eyeglass he heard Alexandra Petrovna’s musical voice from the drawing-room.
“Stepan, have they brought the orders of the day yet?”
“She said that with an object,” thought Romashov to himself. “She knows well enough that I’m in the habit of coming about this time.”
“No, it is I, Alexandra Petrovna,” he answered aloud, but in an uncertain voice, through the open drawing-room door.
“Oh, it’s you, Romashov. Well, come in, come in. What are you doing at the side entrance? Volodya, Romashov is here.”
Romashov stepped in, made an awkward bow, and began, so as to hide his embarrassment, to wipe his hands with his handkerchief.
“I am afraid I bore you, Alexandra Petrovna.”
He tried to say this in an easy and jocose tone, but the words came out awkwardly, and as it seemed to him, with a forced ring about them.
“What nonsense you talk!” exclaimed Alexandra Petrovna. “Sit down, please, and let us have some tea.”
Looking him straight in the face with her clear,piercing eyes, she squeezed as usual his cold fingers with her little soft, warm hand.
Nikoläiev sat with his back to them at the table that was almost hidden by piles of books, drawings, and maps. Before the year was out he had to make another attempt to get admitted to the Staff College, and for many months he had been preparing with unremitting industry for this stiff examination in which he had already twice failed. Staring hard at the open book before him, he stretched his arm over his shoulder to Romashov without turning round, and said, in a calm, husky voice—
“How do you do, Yuri[5]Alexievich? Is there any news? Shurochka, give him some tea. Excuse me, but I am, as you see, hard at work.”
“What a fool I am!” cried poor Romashov to himself. “What business had I here?” Then he added out loud: “Bad news. There are ugly reports circulating at mess with regard to Lieutenant-Colonel Liech. He is said to have been as tight as a drum. The resentment in the regiment is widespread, and a very searching inquiry is demanded. Epifanov has been arrested.”
“Oh!” remarked Nikoläiev in an absent tone. “But excuse my interruption. You don’t say so!”
“I, too, have been rewarded with four days. But that is stale news.”
Romashov thought at that moment that his voice sounded peculiar and unnatural, as if he were being throttled. “What a wretched creature I am in their eyes!” thought he, but in the next moment consoled himself by the help of that forced special pleading to which weak and timid persons usually have recourse in similar predicaments. “Such you always are; something goes wrong; you feel confused,embarrassed, and at once you fondly imagine that others notice it, though only you yourself can be clearly conscious of it,” etc., etc.
He sat down on a chair near Shurochka, whose quick crochet needle was in full swing again. She never sat idle, and all the table-covers, lamp-shades, and lace curtains were the product of her busy fingers. Romashov cautiously took up the long crochet threads hanging from the ball, and said—
“What do you call this sort of work?”
“Guipure. This is the tenth time you have asked me that.”
Shurochka glanced quickly at him, and then let her eyes fall on her work; but before long she looked up again and laughed.
“Now then, now then, Yuri Alexievich, don’t sit there pouting. ‘Straighten your back!’ and ‘Head up!’ Isn’t that how you give your commands?”
But Romashov only sighed and looked out of the corner of his eye at Nikoläiev’s brawny neck, the whiteness of which was thrown into strong relief by the grey collar of his old coat.
“By Jove! Vladimir Yefimovich is a lucky dog. Next summer he’s going to St. Petersburg, and will rise to the heights of the Academy.”
“Oh, that remains to be seen,” remarked Shurochka, somewhat tartly, looking in her husband’s direction. “He has twice been plucked at his examination, and with rather poor credit to himself has had to return to his regiment. This will be his last chance.”
Nikoläiev turned round suddenly; his handsome, soldierly, moustached face flushed deeply, and his big dark eyes glittered with rage.
“Don’t talk rubbish, Shurochka. When I sayI shall pass my examination, I shall pass it, and that’s enough about it.” He struck the side of his outstretched hand violently on the table. “You are always croaking. I said I should—”
“Yes, ‘I said I should,’” his wife repeated after him, whilst she struck her knee with her little brown hand. “But it would be far better if you could answer the following question: ‘What are the requisites for a good line of battle?’ Perhaps you don’t know” (she turned with a roguish glance towards Romashov) “that I am considerably better up in tactics than he. Well, Volodya—Staff-General that is to be—answer the question now.”
“Look here, Shurochka, stop it,” growled Nikoläiev in a bad temper. But suddenly he turned round again on his chair towards his wife, and in his wide-open, handsome, but rather stupid eyes might be read an amusing helplessness, nay, even a certain terror.
“Wait a bit, my little woman, and I will try to remember. ‘Good fighting order’? A good fighting ordermustbe arranged so that one does not expose oneself too much to the enemy’s fire; that one can easily issue orders, that—that—wait a minute.”
“That waiting will be costly work for you in the future, I think,” said Shurochka, interrupting him, in a serious tone. Then, with head down and her body rocking, she began, like a regular schoolgirl, to rattle off the following lesson without stumbling over a single word—
“‘The requisites of “good fighting order” are simplicity, mobility, flexibility, and the ability to accommodate itself to the ground. It ought to be easy to be inspected and led. It must, as far as possible, be out of reach of the enemy’s fire, easy topass from one formation to another, and able to be quickly changed from fighting to marching order.’ Done!”
She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and, as she turned her lively, smiling countenance to Romashov, said—
“Was that all right?”
“What a memory!” exclaimed Nikoläiev enviously, as he once more plunged into his books.
“We study together like two comrades,” explained Shurochka. “I could pass this examination at any time. The main thing”—she made an energetic motion in the air with her crochet needle—“the main thing is to work systematically or according to a fixed plan. Our system is entirely my own invention, and I say so with pride. Every day we go through a certain amount of mathematics and the science of war—I may remark, by the way, that artillery is not myforte; the formulæ of projectiles are to me specially distasteful—besides a bit out of the Drill and Army Regulations Book. Moreover, every other day we study languages, and on the days we do not study the latter we study history and geography.”
“And Russian too?” asked Romashov politely.
“Russian, do you say? Yes, that does not give us much trouble; we have already mastered Groth’sOrthography, and so far as the essays are concerned, year after year they are after the eternal stereotyped pattern:Para pacem, para bellum; characteristics of Onyägin and his epoch, etc., etc.”
Suddenly she became silent, and snatched by a quick movement the distracting crochet needle from Romashov’s fingers. She evidently wanted to monopolize the whole of his attention to what she now intended to say. After this she began to speakwith passionate earnestness of what was at present the goal of all her thoughts and aims.
“Romochka, please, try to understand me. I cannot—cannot stand this any longer. To remain here is to deteriorate. To become a ‘lady of the regiment,’ to attend your rowdysoirées, to talk scandal and intrigue, to get into tempers every day, and wear out one’s nerves over the housekeeping, money and carriage bills, to serve in turn, according to precedency, on ladies’ committees and benevolent associations, to play whist, to—no, enough of this. You say that our home is comfortable and charming. But just examine thisbourgeoishappiness. These eternal embroideries and laces; these dreadful clothes which I have altered and modernized God knows how often; this vulgar, ‘loud’-coloured sofa rug composed of rags from every spot on earth—all this has been hateful and intolerable to me. Don’t you understand, my dear Romochka, that it is society—real society—that I want, with brilliant drawing-rooms, witty conversation, music, flirtation, homage. As you are well aware, our good Volodya is not one to set the Thames on fire, but he is a brave, honourable, and industrious fellow. If he can only gain admission to the Staff College I swear to procure him a brilliant career. I am a good linguist; I can hold my own in any society whatever; I possess—I don’t know how to express it—a certain flexibility of mind or spirit that helps me to hold my own, to adapt myself everywhere. Finally, Romochka, look at me, gaze at me carefully. Am I, as a human being, so uninteresting? Am I, as a woman, so devoid of all charms that I deserve to be doomed to stay and be soured in this hateful place, in this awful hole which has no place on the map?”
She suddenly covered her face with her handkerchief,and burst into tears of self-pity and wounded pride.
Nikoläiev sprang from his chair and hastened, troubled and distracted, to his wife; but Shurochka had already succeeded in regaining her self-control and took her handkerchief away from her face. There were no tears in her eyes now, but the glint of wrath and passion had not yet died out of them.
“It is all right, Volodya. Dear, it is nothing.” She pushed him nervously away. Immediately afterwards she turned with a little laugh to Romashov, and whilst she was again snatching the thread from him, she said to him coquettishly: “Answer me candidly, you clumsy thing, am I pretty or not? Remember, though, it is the height of impoliteness not to pay a woman the compliment she wants.”
“Shurochka, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” exclaimed Nikoläiev reprovingly, from his seat at the writing-table.
Romashov smiled with a martyr’s air of resignation. Suddenly he replied, in a melancholy and quavering voice—
“You are very beautiful.”
Shurochka looked at him roguishly from her half-closed eyes, and a turbulent curl got loose and fell over her forehead.
“Romochka, how funny you are!” she twittered in a rather thin, girlish voice. The sub-lieutenant blushed and thought according to his wont—
“And his heart was cruelly lacerated.”
Nobody said a word. Shurochka went on diligently crocheting. Vladimir Yefimovich, who was bravely struggling with a German translation, now and then mumbled out some German words. One heard the flame softly sputtering and fizzing inthe lamp, which displayed a great yellow silk shade in the form of a tent. Romochka had again managed to possess himself of the crochet-cotton, which, almost without thinking about it, he softly and caressingly drew through the young woman’s fingers, and it afforded him a delightful pleasure to feel how Shurochka unconsciously resisted his mischievous little pulls. It seemed to him as if mysterious, magnetic currents, now and again, rushed backwards and forwards through the delicate white threads.
Whilst he was steadily gazing at her bent head, he whispered to himself, without moving his lips, as if he were carrying on a tender and impassioned conversation—
“How boldly you said to me, ‘Am I pretty?’ Ah, you are most beautiful! Here I sit looking at you. What happiness! Now listen. I am going to tell you how you look—how lovely you are. But listen carefully. Thy face is as dark as the night, yet pale. It is a face full of passion. Thy lips are red and warm and good to kiss, and thine eyes surrounded by a light yellowish shadow. When thy glance is directed straight before thee, the white of thine eyes acquires a bluish shade, and amidst it all there beams on me a great dark blue mysteriously gleaming pupil. A brunette thou art not; but thou recallest something of the gipsy. But thy hair is silky and soft, and braided at the back in a knot so neat and simple that one finds a difficulty in refraining from stroking it. You little ethereal creature, I could lift you like a little child in my arms; but you are supple and strong, your bosom is as firm as a young girl’s, and in all thy being there is something quick, passionate, compelling. A good way down on your left ear sits a charming littlebirthmark that is like the hardly distinguishable scar after a ring has been removed. What charm——”
“Have you read in the newspapers about the duel between two officers?” asked Shurochka suddenly.
Romashov started as he awoke from his dreams, but he found it hard to remove his gaze from her.
“No, I’ve not read about it, but I have heard talk of it. What about it?”
“As usual, of course, you read nothing. Truly, Yuri Alexeitch, you are deteriorating. In my opinion the proceedings were ridiculous. I quite understand that duels between officers are as necessary as they are proper.”
Shurochka pressed her crochet to her bosom with a gesture of conviction.
“But why all this unnecessary and stupid cruelty? Just listen. A lieutenant had insulted another officer. The insult was gross, and the Court of Honour considered a duel necessary. Now, there would have been nothing to say about it, unless the conditions themselves of the duel had been so fixed that the latter resembled an ordinary execution: fifteen paces distance, and the fight to last till one of the duellists washors de combat. This is only on a par with ordinary slaughter, is it not? But hear what followed. On the duelling-ground stood all the officers of the regiment, many of them with ladies; nay, they had even put a photographer behind the bushes! How disgusting! The unfortunate sub-lieutenant or ensign—as Volodya usually says—a man of your youthful age, moreover the party insulted, and not the one who offered the insult—received, after the third shot, a fearful wound in the stomach, and died some hours afterwards in great torture. By his deathbed stood his aged mother and sister, who kept house for him. Now tell me why a duel shouldbe turned into such a disgusting spectacle. Of course the immediate consequence” (Shurochka almost shrieked these words) “was that all those sentimental opponents of duelling—eugh, how I despise these ‘liberal’ weaklings and poltroons!—at once began making a noise and fuss about ‘barbarism,’ ‘fratricide,’ how ‘duels are a disgrace to our times,’ and more nonsense of that sort.”
“Good God! I could never believe that you were so bloodthirsty, Alexandra Petrovna,” exclaimed Romashov, interrupting her.
“I am by no means bloodthirsty,” replied Shurochka, sharply. “On the contrary, I am very tender-hearted. If a beetle crawls on to my neck I remove it with the greatest caution so as not to inflict any hurt on it—but try and understand me, Romashov. This is my simple process of reasoning: ‘Why have we officers?’ Answer: ‘For the sake of war.’ ‘What are the most necessary qualities of an officer in time of war?’ Answer: ‘Courage and a contempt of death.’ ‘How are these qualities best acquired in time of peace?’ Answer: ‘By means of duels.’ How can that be proved? Duels are not required to be obligatory in the French Army, for a sense of honour is innate in the French officer; he knows what respect is due to himself and to others. Neither is duelling obligatory in the German Army, with its highly developed and inflexible discipline. But with us—us, as long as among our officers are to be found notorious card-sharpers such as, for instance, Artschakovski; or hopeless sots, as our own Nasanski, when, in the officers’ mess or on duty, violent scenes are of almost daily occurrence—then, such being the case, duels are both necessary and salutary. An officer must be a pattern of correctness; he is bound to weigh every word heutters. And, moreover, this delicate squeamishness, the fear of a shot! Your vocation is to risk your life—which is precisely the point.”
All at once she brought her long speech to a close, and with redoubled energy resumed her work.
“Shurochka, what is ‘rival’ in German?” asked Nikoläiev, lifting his head from the book.
“Rival?” Shurochka stuck her crochet-needle in her soft locks. “Read out the whole sentence.”
“It runs—wait—directly—directly—ah! it runs: ‘Our rival abroad.’”
“Unser ausländischer Nebenbuhler” translated Shurochka straight off.
“Unser,” repeated Romashov in a whisper as he gazed dreamily at the flame of the lamp. “When she is moved,” thought he, “her words come like a torrent of hail falling on a silver tray.Unser—what a funny word!Unser—unser—unser.”
“What are you mumbling to yourself about, Romashov?” asked Alexandra Petrovna severely. “Don’t dare to sit and build castles in the air whilst I am present.”
He smiled at her with a somewhat embarrassed air.
“I was not building castles in the air, but repeating to myself ‘Unser—unser.’ Isn’t it a funny word?”
“What rubbish you are talking!Unser.Why is it funny?”
“You see” (he made a slight pause as if he really intended to think about what he meant to say), “if one repeats the same word for long, and at the same time concentrates on it all his faculty of thought, the word itself suddenly loses all its meaning and becomes—how can I put it?”
“I know, I know!” she interrupted delightedly.“But it is not easy to do it now. When I was a child, now—how we used to love doing it!”
“Yes—yes—it belongs to childhood—yes.”
“How well I remember it! I remember the word ‘perhaps’ particularly struck me. I could sit for a long time with eyes shut, rocking my body to and fro, whilst I was repeatedly saying over and over again, ‘Perhaps, perhaps.’ And suddenly I quite forgot what the word itself meant. I tried to remember, but it was no use. I saw only a little round, reddish blotch with two tiny tails. Are you attending?” Romashov looked tenderly at her.
“How wonderful that we should think the same thoughts!” he exclaimed in a dreamy tone. “But let us return to ourunser. Does not this word suggest the idea of something long, thin, lanky, and having a sting—a long, twisting insect, poisonous and repulsive?”
“Unser, did you say?” Shurochka lifted up her head, blinked her eyes, and stared obstinately at the darkest corner of the room. She was evidently striving to improve on Romashov’s fanciful ideas.
“No, wait.Unseris something green and sharp. Well, we’ll suppose it is an insect—a grasshopper, for instance—but big, disgusting, and poisonous. But how stupid we are, Romochka!”
“There’s another thing I do sometimes, only it was much easier when I was a child,” resumed Romashov in a mysterious tone. “I used to take a word and pronounce it slowly, extremely slowly. Every letter was drawn out and emphasized interminably. All of a sudden I was seized by a strangely inexpressible feeling: all—everything near me sank into an abyss, and I alone remained, marvelling that I lived, thought, and spoke.”
“I, too, have had a similar sensation,” interruptedShurochka gaily, “yet not exactly the same. Sometimes I made violent efforts to hold my breath all the time I was thinking. ‘I am not breathing, and I won’t breathe again till, till’—then all at once I felt as if time was running past me. No, time no longer existed; it was as if—oh, I can’t explain!”
Romashov gazed into her enthusiastic eyes, and repeated in a low tone, thrilling with happiness—
“No, you can’t explain it. It is strange—inexplicable.”
Nikoläiev got up from the table where he had been working. His back ached, and his legs had gone dead from long sitting in the same uncomfortable position. The arteries of his strong, muscular body throbbed when, with arms raised high, he stretched himself to his full length.
“Look here, my learned psychologists, or whatever I should call you, it is supper-time.”
A cold collation had been laid in the comfortable little dining-room, where, suspended from the ceiling, a china lamp with frosted glass shed its clear light. Nikoläiev never touched spirits, but a little decanter of schnapps had been put on the table for Romashov. Shurochka, contorting her pretty face by a contemptuous grimace, said, in the careless tone she so often adopted—
“Of course, you can’t do without that poison?”
Romashov smiled guiltily, and in his confusion the schnapps went the wrong way, and set him coughing.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” scolded his young hostess. “You can’t even drink it without choking over it. I can forgive it in your adored Nasanski, who is a notorious drunkard, but for you, a handsome, promising young man, not to be ableto sit down to table without vodka, it is really melancholy. But that is Nasanski’s doing too!”
Her husband, who was glancing through the regimental orders that had just come in, suddenly called out—
“Just listen! ‘Lieutenant Nasanski has received a month’s leave from the regiment to attend to his private affairs.’ Tut, tut! What does that mean? He has been tippling again? You, Yuri Alexievich, are said, you know, to visit him. Is it a fact that he has begun to drink heavily?”
Romashov looked embarrassed and lowered his gaze.
“No, I have not observed it, but he certainly does drink a little now and again, you know.”
“Your Nasanski is offensive to me,” remarked Shurochka in a low voice, trembling with suppressed bitterness. “If it were in my power I would have a creature like that shot as if he were a mad dog. Such officers are a disgrace to their regiment.”
Almost directly after supper was over, Nikoläiev, who in eating had displayed no less energy than he had just done at his writing-table, began to gape, and at last said quite plainly—
“Do you know, I think I’ll just take a little nap. Or if one were to go straight off to the Land of Nod, as they used to express it in our good old novels——”
“A good idea, Vladimir Yefimovich,” said Romashov, interrupting him in, as he thought, a careless, dreamy tone, but as he rose from table he thought sadly, “They don’t stand on ceremony with me here. Why on earth do I come?”
It seemed to him that it afforded Nikoläiev a particular pleasure to turn him out of the house; but just as he was purposely saying good-bye to his hostfirst, he was already dreaming of the delightful moment when, in taking leave of Shurochka, he would feel at the same time the strong yet caressing pressure of a beloved one’s hand. When this longed-for moment at length arrived he found himself in such a state of happiness that he did not hear Shurochka say to him—
“Don’t quite forget us. You know you are always welcome. Besides, it is far more healthy for you to spend your evenings with us than to sit drinking with that dreadful Nasanski. Also, don’t forget we stand on no ceremony with you.”
He heard her last words as it were in a dream, but he did not realize their meaning till he reached the street.
“Yes, that is true indeed; they don’t stand on ceremony with me,” whispered he to himself with the painful bitterness in which young and conceited persons of his age are so prone to indulge.
ROMASHOVwas still standing on the doorstep. The night was rather warm, but very dark. He began to grope his way cautiously with his hand on the palings whilst waiting until his eyes got accustomed to the darkness. Suddenly the kitchendoor of Nikoläiev’s dwelling was thrown open, and a broad stream of misty yellow light escaped. Heavy steps sounded in the muddy street, the next moment Romashov heard Stepan’s, the Nikoläievs’ servant’s, angry voice—
“He comes here every blessed day, and the deuce knows what he comes for.”
Another soldier, whose voice Romashov did not recognize, answered indifferently with a lazy, long-drawn yawn—
“What business can it be of yours, my dear fellow? Good-night, Stepan.”
“Good-night to you, Baúlin; look in when you like.”
Romashov’s hands suddenly clung to the palings. An unendurable feeling of shame made him blush, in spite of the darkness. All his body broke out into a perspiration, and, in his back and the soles of his feet, he felt the sting of a thousand red-hot, pointed nails. “This chapter’s closed; even the soldiers laugh at me,” thought he with indescribable pain. Directly afterwards it flashed on his mind that that very evening, in many expressions used, in the tones of the replies, in glances exchanged between man and wife, he had seen a number of trifles that he had hitherto not noticed, but which he now thought testified only to contempt of him, and ridicule, impatience and indignation at the persistent visits of that insufferable guest.
“What a disgrace and scandal this is to me!” he whispered without stirring from the spot. “Things have reached such a pitch that it is as much as the Nikoläievs can do to endure my company.”
The lights in their drawing-room were now extinguished. “They are in their bedroom now,” thought Romashov, and at once he began fancying that Nikoläiev and Shurochka were then talking about him whilst making their toilet for the night with the indifference and absence of bashfulness at each other’s presence that is characteristic of married couples. The wife is sitting in her petticoat in front of the mirror, combing her hair. Vladimir Yefimovitch is sitting in his night-shirt at the edge of the bed, and saying in a sleepy but angry tone, whilst flushed with the exertion of taking off his boots: “Hark you, Shurochka, that infernal bore, your dear Romashov, will be the death of me with his insufferable visits. And I really can’t understand how you can tolerate him.” Then to this frank and candid speech Shurochka replies, without turning round, and with her mouth full of hairpins: “Be good enough to remember, sir, he is notmyRomochka, butyours.”
Another five minutes elapsed before Romashov, still tortured by these bitter and painful thoughts, made up his mind to continue his journey. Along the whole extent of the palings belonging to the Nikoläievs’ house he walked with stealthy steps, cautiously and gently dragging his feet from themire, as if he feared he might be discovered and arrested as a common vagrant. To go straight home was not to his liking at all. Nay, he dared not even think of his gloomy, low-pitched, cramped room with its single window and repulsive furniture. “By Jove! why shouldn’t I look up Nasanski, just to annoyher?” thought he all of a sudden, whereupon he experienced the delightful satisfaction of revenge.
“She reproached me for my friendship with Nasanski. Well, I shall just for that very reason pay him a visit.”
He raised eyes to heaven, and said to himself passionately, as he pressed his hands against his heart—
“I swear—I swear that to-day I have visited them for the last time. I will no longer endure this mortification.”
And immediately afterwards he added mentally, as was his ingrained habit—
“His expressive black eyes glistened with resolution and contempt.”
But Romashov’s eyes, unfortunately, were neither “black” nor “expressive,” but of a very common colour, slightly varying between yellow and green.
Nasanski tenanted a room in a comrade’s—Lieutenant Siégerscht’s—house. This Siégerscht was most certainly the oldest lieutenant in the whole Russian Army. Notwithstanding his unimpeachable conduct as an officer and the fact of his having served in the war with Turkey, through some unaccountable disposition of fate, his military career seemed closed, and every hope of further advancement was apparently lost. He was a widower, with four little children and forty-eight roubles a month, on which sum, strangely enough, he managed toget along. It was his practice to hire large flats which he afterwards, in turn, let out to his brother officers. He took in boarders, fattened and sold fowls and turkeys, and no one understood better than he how to purchase wood and other necessaries cheap and at the right time. He bathed his children himself in a common trough, prescribed for them from his little medicine-chest when they were ill, and, with his sewing-machine, made them tiny shirts, under-vests, and drawers. Like many other officers, Siégerscht had, in his bachelor days, interested himself in woman’s work, and acquired a readiness with his needle that proved very useful in hard times. Malicious tongues went so far as to assert that he secretly and stealthily sold his handiwork.
Notwithstanding all his economy and closeness, his life was full of troubles. Epidemic diseases ravaged his fowl-house, his numerous rooms stood unlet for long periods; his boarders grumbled at their bad food and refused to pay. The consequence of this was that, three or four times a year, Siégerscht—tall, thin, and unshaven, with cheerless countenance and a forehead dripping with cold sweat—might be seen on his way to the town to borrow some small sum. And all recognized the low, regimental cap that resembled a pancake, always with its peak askew, as well as the antiquated cloak, modelled on those worn in the time of the Emperor Nicholas, which waved in the breeze like a couple of huge wings.
A light was burning in Siégerscht’s flat, and as Romashov approached the window, he saw him sitting by a round table under a hanging-lamp. The bald head, with its gentle, worn features, was bent low over a little piece of red cloth which was probably destined to form an integral part of a LittleRussianroubashka.[6]Romashov went up and tapped at the window. Siégerscht started up, laid aside his work, rose from the table, and went up to the window.
“It is I, Adam Ivanich—open the window a moment.”
Siégerscht opened a little pane and looked out.
“Well, it’s you, Sub-Lieutenant Romashov. What’s up?”
“Is Nasanski at home?”
“Of course he’s at home—where else should he be? Ah! your friend Nasanski cheats me nicely, I can tell you. For two months I have kept him in food, but, as for his paying for it, as yet I’ve only had grand promises. When he moved here, I asked him most particularly that, to avoid unpleasantness and misunderstandings, he should——”
“Yes, yes, we know all about that,” interrupted Romashov; “but tell me now how he is. Will he see me?”
“Yes, certainly, that he will; he does nothing but walk up and down his room.” Siégerscht stopped and listened for a second. “You yourself can hear him tramping about. You see, I said to him, ‘To prevent unpleasantness and misunderstandings, it will be best for——’”
“Excuse me, Adam Ivanich; but we’ll talk of that another time. I’m in a bit of a hurry,” said Romashov, interrupting him for the second time, and meanwhile continuing his way round the corner. A light was burning in one of Nasanski’s windows; the other was wide open. Nasanski himself was walking, in his shirt sleeves and without a collar, backwards and forwards with rapid steps. Romashov crept nearer the wall and called him by name.
“Who’s there?” asked Nasanski in a careless tone, leaning out of the window. “Oh, it’s you, Georgie Alexievich. Come in through the window. It’s a long and dark way round through that door. Hold out your hand and I’ll help you.”
Nasanski’s dwelling was if possible more wretched that Romashov’s. Along the wall by the window stood a low, narrow, uncomfortable bed, the bulging, broken bottom of which was covered by a coarse cotton coverlet; on the other wall one saw a plain unpainted table with two common chairs without backs. High up in one corner of the room was a little cupboard fixed to the wall. A brown leather trunk, plastered all over with address labels and railway numbers, lay in state. There was not a single thing in the room except these articles and the lamp.
“Good-evening, my friend,” said Nasanski, with a hearty hand-shake and a warm glance from his beautiful, deep blue eyes. “Please sit down on this bed. As you’ve already heard, I have handed in my sick-report.”
“Yes, I heard it just now from Nikoläiev.”
Again Romashov called to mind Stepan’s insulting remark, the painful memory of which was reflected in his face.
“Oh, you come from the Nikoläievs,” cried Nasanski and with visible interest. “Do you often visit them?”
The unusual tone of the question made Romashov uneasy and suspicious, and he instinctively uttered a falsehood. He answered carelessly—
“No, certainly not often. I just happened to look them up.”
Nasanski, who had been walking up and down the room during the conversation, now stopped beforethe little cupboard, the door of which he opened. On one of its shelves stood a bottle of vodka, and beside it lay an apple cut up into thin, even slices. Standing with his back to his guest, Nasanski poured out for himself a glass, and quickly drained it. Romashov noticed how Nasanski’s back, under its thin linen shirt, quivered convulsively.
“Would you like anything?” asked Nasanski, with a gesture towards the cupboard. “My larder is, as you see, poor enough; but if you are hungry one can always try and procure an omelette. Anyhow, that’s more than our father Adam had to offer.”
“Thanks, not now. Perhaps later on.”
Nasanski stuck his hands in his pockets, and walked about the room. After pacing up and down twice he began talking as though resuming an interrupted conversation.
“Yes, I am always walking up and down and thinking. But I am quite happy. To-morrow, of course, they will say as usual in the regiment, ‘He’s a drunkard.’ And that is true in a sense, but it is not the whole truth. All the same, at this moment, I’m happy; I feel neither pain nor ailments. It is different, alas! in ordinary circumstances. My mind and will-power are paralysed; I shall again become a cowardly and despicably mean creature, vain, shabby, hypocritical—a curse to myself and every one else. I loathe my profession, but, nevertheless, I remain in it. And why? Ah! the devil himself could not explain that. Because I had it knocked into me in my childhood, and have lived since in a set where it is held that the most important thing in life is to serve the State, to be free from anxiety asto one’s clothes and daily bread. And philosophy, people say, is mere rubbish, good enough for one who has nothing else to do or who has come into a goodly heritage from his dear mamma.
“Thus I, too, occupy myself with things in which I don’t take the slightest interest, or issue orders that seem to me both harsh and unmeaning. My daily life is as monotonous and cheerless as an old deal board, as rough and hard as a soldier’s regulation cap. I dare scarcely think of, far less talk of, love, beauty, my place in the scheme of creation, of freedom and happiness, of poetry and God. They would only laugh ha! ha! ha! at me, and say: ‘Oh, damn it! That, you know, is philosophy. It is not only ridiculous but even dangerous for an officer to show he holds any high views,’ and at best the officer escapes with being dubbed a harmless, hopeless ass.”
“And yet it is this that alone gives life any value,” sighed Romashov.
“And now the happy hour is drawing nigh about which they tattle so heartlessly and with so much contempt,” Nasanski went on to say without listening to Romashov’s words. He walked incessantly backwards and forwards, and interpolated his speech, every now and then, with striking gestures, which were not, however, addressed to Romashov, but were always directed to the two corners of the room which he visited in turn. “Now comes my turn of freedom, Romashov—freedom for soul, thought, and will. Then I shall certainly live a peculiar, but nevertheless rich, inner life. All that I have seen, heard, and read will then gain a deeper meaning, will appear in a clear and more distinct light, and receive a deep, infinite significance. My memory will thenbe like a museum of rare curiosities. I shall be a very Rothschild. I take the first object within my reach, gaze at it long, closely, and with rapture. Persons, events, characters, books, women, love—nay, first and last, women and love—all this is interwoven in my imagination. Now and then I think of the heroes and geniuses of history, of the countless martyrs of religion and science. I don’t believe in God, Romashov, but sometimes I think of the saints and martyrs and call to mind the Holy Scriptures and canticles.”
Romashov got up quietly from his seat at the edge of the bed and walked away to the open window, and then he sat down with his back resting against the sill. From that spot, from the lighted room, the night seemed to him still darker and more fraught with mystery. Tepid breezes whispered just beneath the window, amongst the dark foliage of the shrubs. And in this mild air, charged with the sharp, aromatic perfume of spring, under those gleaming stars, in this dead silence of the universe, one might fancy he felt the hot breath of reviving, generating, voluptuous Nature.
Nasanski continued all along his eternal wandering, and indulged in building castles in the air, without looking at Romashov, as if he were talking to the walls.
“In these moments my thoughts—seething, motley, original—chase one another. My senses acquire an unnatural acuteness; my imagination becomes an overwhelming flood. Persons and things, living or dead, which are evoked by me stand before me in high relief and also in an extraordinarily intense light, as if I saw them in acamera obscura. I know, I know now, that all that is merely a super-excitation of the senses, an emanationof the soul flaming up like lightning, but in the next instant flickering out, being produced by the physiological influence of alcohol on the nervous system. In the beginning I thought such psychic phenomena implied an elevation of my inner, spiritual Ego, and that even I might have moments of inspiration. But no; there was nothing permanent or of any value in this, nothing creative or fructifying. Altogether it was only a morbid, physiological process, a river wave that at every ebb that occurs sucks away with it and destroys the beach. Yes, this, alas! is a fact. But it is also equally indisputable that these wild imaginings procured me moments of ineffable happiness. And besides, let the devil keep for his share your much-vaunted high morality, your hypocrisy, and your insufferable rules of health. I don’t want to become one of your pillar-saints nor do I wish to live a hundred years so as to figure as a physiological miracle in the advertisement columns of the newspapers. I am happy, and that suffices.”
Nasanski again went up to the little cupboard, poured out and swallowed a “nip,” after which he shut the cupboard door with much ceremony and an expression on his face as if he had fulfilled a religious duty. Romashov walked listlessly up from the window to the cupboard, the life-giving contents of which he sampled with a gloomy andblaséair. This done, he returned to his seat on the window-bench.
“What were you thinking about just before I came, Vasili Nilich?” asked Romashov, as he made himself as comfortable as possible.
Nasanski, however, did not hear his question. “How sweet it is to dream of women!” he exclaimed with a grand and eloquent gesture. “Butaway with all unclean thoughts! And why? Ah! because no one has any right, even in imagination, to make a human being a culprit in what is low, sinful, and impure. How often I think of chaste, tender, loving women, of their bright tears and gracious smiles; of young, devoted, self-sacrificing mothers, of all those who have faced death for love; of proud, bewitching maidens with souls as pure as snow, knowing all, yet afraid of nothing. But such women do not exist—yet I am wrong, Romashov; such women do exist although neither you nor I have seen them. This may possibly be vouchsafed you; but to me—never!”
He was now standing right in front of Romashov and staring him straight in the face, but by the far-off expression in his eyes, by the enigmatical smile that played on his lips, any one could observe that he did not even see to whom he was talking. Never had Nasanski’s countenance—even in his better and sober moments—seemed to Romashov so attractive and interesting as at this instant. His golden hair fell in luxuriant curls around his pure and lofty brow; his blond, closely clipped beard was curled in light waves, and his strong, handsome head on his bare, classically shaped neck reminded one of the sages and heroes of Greece, whose busts Romashov had seen in engravings and at museums. Nasanski’s bright, clever blue eyes glistened with moisture, and his well-formed features were rendered still more engaging by the fresh colour of his complexion, although a keen eye could not, I daresay, avoid noticing a certain flabbiness—the infallible mark of every person addicted to drink.
“Love—what an abyss of mystery is contained in the word, and what bliss lies hidden in its tortures!” Nasanski went on to say in an enraptured voice.In his violent excitement he caught hold of his hair with both hands, and took two hasty strides towards the other end of the room, but suddenly stopped, and turned round sharply to Romashov with a merry laugh. The latter observed him with great interest, but likewise not without a certain uneasiness.
“Just this moment I remember an amusing story” (Nasanski now dropped into his usual good-tempered tone), “but, ugh! how my wits go wool-gathering—now here, now there. Once upon a time I sat waiting for the train at Ryasan, and wait I did—I suppose half a day, for it was right in the middle of the spring floods, and the train had met with real obstacles. Well, you must know, I built myself a little nest in the waiting-room. Behind the counter stood a girl of eighteen—not pretty, being pockmarked, but brisk and pleasant. She had black eyes and a charming smile. In fact, she was a very nice girl. We were three, all told, at the station: she, I, and a little telegraphist with white eyebrows and eyelashes. Ah! excuse me, there was another person there—the girl’s father, a fat, red-faced, grey-haired brute, who put me in mind of a rough old mastiff. But this attractive figure kept itself, as a rule, behind the scenes. Only rarely and for a few minutes did he put in an appearance behind the counter, to yawn, scratch himself under his waistcoat, and immediately afterwards disappear for a longish time. He spent his life in bed, and his eyes were glued together by eternally sleeping. The little telegraphist paid frequent and regular visits to the waiting-room, laid his elbows on the counter, but was, for the most part, as mute as the grave. She, too, was silent and looked dreamily out of thewindow at the floods. All of a sudden our youngster began humming—