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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 “Eh? I am a feeble, stupid old man,” he answered. “What use
would my advice be? You shouldn’t worry yourself.... I really don’t
know why you worry yourself. Don’t disturb yourself, my dear fellow!
Upon my word, there’s no need,” he whispered genuinely and
affectionately, soothing me as though I were a child. “Upon my
word, there’s no need.”
“No need? Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their huts,
and they say there is typhus somewhere already.”
“Well, what of it? If there are good crops next year, they’ll thatch
them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after us. Anyway,
we have to die—if not now, later. Don’t worry yourself, my dear.”
“I can’t help worrying myself,” I said irritably.
We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule. Ivan Ivanitch
suddenly took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something
evidently very important, looked at me in silence for a couple of
minutes.
“Pavel Andreitch!” he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set
face and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he
had once been famous and which was truly charming. “Pavel
Andreitch, I speak to you as a friend: try to be different! One is ill at
ease with you, my dear fellow, one really is!”
He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded
away, his eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly:
“Yes, yes.... Excuse an old man.... It’s all nonsense... yes.”
As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to
balance himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck,
he gave me the unpleasant impression of a sort of crab.
“You ought to go away, your Excellency,” he muttered. “To
Petersburg or abroad.... Why should you live here and waste your
golden days? You are young, wealthy, and healthy.... Yes.... Ah, if I
were younger I would whisk away like a hare, and snap my fingers
at everything.”
III
My wife’s outburst reminded me of our married life together. In old
days after every such outburst we felt irresistibly drawn to each
other; we would meet and let off all the dynamite that had
accumulated in our souls. And now after Ivan Ivanitch had gone
away I had a strong impulse to go to my wife. I wanted to go
downstairs and tell her that her behaviour at tea had been an insult
to me, that she was cruel, petty, and that her plebeian mind had
never risen to a comprehension of what I was saying and of what I
was doing. I walked about the rooms a long time thinking of what I
would say to her and trying to guess what she would say to me.
That evening, after Ivan Ivanitch went away, I felt in a peculiarly
irritating form the uneasiness which had worried me of late. I could
not sit down or sit still, but kept walking about in the rooms that
were lighted up and keeping near to the one in which Marya
Gerasimovna was sitting. I had a feeling very much like that which I
had on the North Sea during a storm when every one thought that
our ship, which had no freight nor ballast, would overturn. And that
evening I understood that my uneasiness was not disappointment,
as I had supposed, but a different feeling, though what exactly I
could not say, and that irritated me more than ever.
“I will go to her,” I decided. “I can think of a pretext. I shall say
that I want to see Ivan Ivanitch; that will be all.”
I went downstairs and walked without haste over the carpeted
floor through the vestibule and the hall. Ivan Ivanitch was sitting on
the sofa in the drawing-room; he was drinking tea again and
muttering something. My wife was standing opposite to him and
holding on to the back of a chair. There was a gentle, sweet, and
docile expression on her face, such as one sees on the faces of
people listening to crazy saints or holy men when a peculiar hidden
significance is imagined in their vague words and mutterings. There
was something morbid, something of a nun’s exaltation, in my wife’s
expression and attitude; and her low-pitched, half-dark rooms with
their old-fashioned furniture, with her birds asleep in their cages,
and with a smell of geranium, reminded me of the rooms of some
abbess or pious old lady.
I went into the drawing-room. My wife showed neither surprise
nor confusion, and looked at me calmly and serenely, as though she
had known I should come.
“I beg your pardon,” I said softly. “I am so glad you have not gone
yet, Ivan Ivanitch. I forgot to ask you, do you know the Christian
name of the president of our Zemstvo?”
“Andrey Stanislavovitch. Yes....”
“Merci,” I said, took out my notebook, and wrote it down.
There followed a silence during which my wife and Ivan Ivanitch
were probably waiting for me to go; my wife did not believe that I
wanted to know the president’s name—I saw that from her eyes.
“Well, I must be going, my beauty,” muttered Ivan Ivanitch, after I
had walked once or twice across the drawing-room and sat down by
the fireplace.
“No,” said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand. “Stay
another quarter of an hour.... Please do!”
Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a
witness.
“Oh, well, I’ll wait a quarter of an hour, too,” I thought.
“Why, it’s snowing!” I said, getting up and looking out of window.
“A good fall of snow! Ivan Ivanitch”—I went on walking about the
room—“I do regret not being a sportsman. I can imagine what a
pleasure it must be coursing hares or hunting wolves in snow like
this!”
My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the
corner of her eyes without turning her head. She looked as though
she thought I had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.
“Ivan Ivanitch, do take me out hunting some day,” I went on
softly. “I shall be very, very grateful to you.”
At that moment a visitor came into the room. He was a tall, thick-
set gentleman whom I did not know, with a bald head, a big fair
beard, and little eyes. From his baggy, crumpled clothes and his
manners I took him to be a parish clerk or a teacher, but my wife
introduced him to me as Dr. Sobol.
“Very, very glad to make your acquaintance,” said the doctor in a
loud tenor voice, shaking hands with me warmly, with a naive smile.
“Very glad!”
He sat down at the table, took a glass of tea, and said in a loud
voice:
“Do you happen to have a drop of rum or brandy? Have pity on
me, Olya, and look in the cupboard; I am frozen,” he said,
addressing the maid.
I sat down by the fire again, looked on, listened, and from time to
time put in a word in the general conversation. My wife smiled
graciously to the visitors and kept a sharp lookout on me, as though
I were a wild beast. She was oppressed by my presence, and this
aroused in me jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to
wound her. “Wife, these snug rooms, the place by the fire,” I
thought, “are mine, have been mine for years, but some crazy Ivan
Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason more right to them than I.
Now I see my wife, not out of window, but close at hand, in ordinary
home surroundings that I feel the want of now I am growing older,
and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as years ago in my
childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse. And I feel that
now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and loftier
than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her, to
stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do
it.”
“Monsieur Marten,” I said, addressing the doctor, “how many
hospitals have we in the district?”
“Sobol,” my wife corrected.
“Two,” answered Sobol.
“And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?”
“Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you,” said my wife.
She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room. I got up
and followed her.
“You will go upstairs to your own rooms this minute,” she said.
“You are ill-bred,” I said to her.
“You will go upstairs to your own rooms this very minute,” she
repeated sharply, and she looked into my face with hatred.
She was standing so near that if I had stooped a little my beard
would have touched her face.
“What is the matter?” I asked. “What harm have I done all at
once?”
Her chin quivered, she hastily wiped her eyes, and, with a cursory
glance at the looking-glass, whispered:
“The old story is beginning all over again. Of course you won’t go
away. Well, do as you like. I’ll go away myself, and you stay.”
We returned to the drawing-room, she with a resolute face, while
I shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile. There were some more
visitors—an elderly lady and a young man in spectacles. Without
greeting the new arrivals or taking leave of the others, I went off to
my own rooms.
After what had happened at tea and then again downstairs, it
became clear to me that our “family happiness,” which we had
begun to forget about in the course of the last two years, was
through some absurd and trivial reason beginning all over again, and
that neither I nor my wife could now stop ourselves; and that next
day or the day after, the outburst of hatred would, as I knew by
experience of past years, be followed by something revolting which
would upset the whole order of our lives. “So it seems that during
these two years we have grown no wiser, colder, or calmer,” I
thought as I began walking about the rooms. “So there will again be
tears, outcries, curses, packing up, going abroad, then the continual
sickly fear that she will disgrace me with some coxcomb out there,
Italian or Russian, refusing a passport, letters, utter loneliness,
missing her, and in five years old age, grey hairs.” I walked about,
imagining what was really impossible—her, grown handsomer,
stouter, embracing a man I did not know. By now convinced that
that would certainly happen, “‘Why,” I asked myself, “Why, in one of
our long past quarrels, had not I given her a divorce, or why had she
not at that time left me altogether? I should not have had this
yearning for her now, this hatred, this anxiety; and I should have
lived out my life quietly, working and not worrying about anything.”
A carriage with two lamps drove into the yard, then a big sledge
with three horses. My wife was evidently having a party.
Till midnight everything was quiet downstairs and I heard nothing,
but at midnight there was a sound of moving chairs and a clatter of
crockery. So there was supper. Then the chairs moved again, and
through the floor I heard a noise; they seemed to be shouting
hurrah. Marya Gerasimovna was already asleep and I was quite
alone in the whole upper storey; the portraits of my forefathers,
cruel, insignificant people, looked at me from the walls of the
drawing-room, and the reflection of my lamp in the window winked
unpleasantly. And with a feeling of jealousy and envy for what was
going on downstairs, I listened and thought: “I am master here; if I
like, I can in a moment turn out all that fine crew.” But I knew that
all that was nonsense, that I could not turn out any one, and the
word “master” had no meaning. One may think oneself master,
married, rich, a kammer-junker, as much as one likes, and at the
same time not know what it means.
After supper some one downstairs began singing in a tenor voice.
“Why, nothing special has happened,” I tried to persuade myself.
“Why am I so upset? I won’t go downstairs tomorrow, that’s all; and
that will be the end of our quarrel.”
At a quarter past one I went to bed.
“Have the visitors downstairs gone?” I asked Alexey as he was
undressing me.
“Yes, sir, they’ve gone.”
“And why were they shouting hurrah?”
“Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a
thousand bushels of flour and a thousand roubles. And the old lady
—I don’t know her name—promised to set up a soup kitchen on her
estate to feed a hundred and fifty people. Thank God... Natalya
Gavrilovna has been pleased to arrange that all the gentry should
assemble every Friday.”
“To assemble here, downstairs?”
“Yes, sir. Before supper they read a list: since August up to today
Natalya Gavrilovna has collected eight thousand roubles, besides
corn. Thank God.... What I think is that if our mistress does take
trouble for the salvation of her soul, she will soon collect a lot. There
are plenty of rich people here.”
 Dismissing Alexey, I put out the light and drew the bedclothes
over my head.
“After all, why am I so troubled?” I thought. “What force draws
me to the starving peasants like a butterfly to a flame? I don’t know
them, I don’t understand them; I have never seen them and I don’t
like them. Why this uneasiness?”
I suddenly crossed myself under the quilt.
“But what a woman she is!” I said to myself, thinking of my wife.
“There’s a regular committee held in the house without my knowing.
Why this secrecy? Why this conspiracy? What have I done to them?
Ivan Ivanitch is right—I must go away.”
Next morning I woke up firmly resolved to go away. The events of
the previous day—the conversation at tea, my wife, Sobol, the
supper, my apprehensions—worried me, and I felt glad to think of
getting away from the surroundings which reminded me of all that.
While I was drinking my coffee the bailiff gave me a long report on
various matters. The most agreeable item he saved for the last.
“The thieves who stole our rye have been found,” he announced
with a smile. “The magistrate arrested three peasants at Pestrovo
yesterday.”
“Go away!” I shouted at him; and a propos of nothing, I picked up
the cake-basket and flung it on the floor.
IV
After lunch I rubbed my hands, and thought I must go to my wife
and tell her that I was going away. Why? Who cared? Nobody cares,
I answered, but why shouldn’t I tell her, especially as it would give
her nothing but pleasure? Besides, to go away after our yesterday’s
quarrel without saying a word would not be quite tactful: she might
think that I was frightened of her, and perhaps the thought that she
has driven me out of my house may weigh upon her. It would be
just as well, too, to tell her that I subscribe five thousand, and to
give her some advice about the organization, and to warn her that
her inexperience in such a complicated and responsible matter might
lead to most lamentable results. In short, I wanted to see my wife,
and while I thought of various pretexts for going to her, I had a firm
conviction in my heart that I should do so.
It was still light when I went in to her, and the lamps had not yet
been lighted. She was sitting in her study, which led from the
drawing-room to her bedroom, and, bending low over the table, was
writing something quickly. Seeing me, she started, got up from the
table, and remained standing in an attitude such as to screen her
papers from me.
“I beg your pardon, I have only come for a minute,” I said, and, I
don’t know why, I was overcome with embarrassment. “I have learnt
by chance that you are organizing relief for the famine, Natalie.”
“Yes, I am. But that’s my business,” she answered.
“Yes, it is your business,” I said softly. “I am glad of it, for it just
fits in with my intentions. I beg your permission to take part in it.”
“Forgive me, I cannot let you do it,” she said in response, and
looked away.
“Why not, Natalie?” I said quietly. “Why not? I, too, am well fed
and I, too, want to help the hungry.”
“I don’t know what it has to do with you,” she said with a
contemptuous smile, shrugging her shoulders. “Nobody asks you.”
“Nobody asks you, either, and yet you have got up a regular
committee in my house,” I said.
“I am asked, but you can have my word for it no one will ever ask
you. Go and help where you are not known.”
“For God’s sake, don’t talk to me in that tone.” I tried to be mild,
and besought myself most earnestly not to lose my temper. For the
first few minutes I felt glad to be with my wife. I felt an atmosphere
of youth, of home, of feminine softness, of the most refined
elegance—exactly what was lacking on my floor and in my life
altogether. My wife was wearing a pink flannel dressing-gown; it
made her look much younger, and gave a softness to her rapid and
sometimes abrupt movements. Her beautiful dark hair, the mere
sight of which at one time stirred me to passion, had from sitting so
long with her head bent come loose from the comb and was untidy,
but, to my eyes, that only made it look more rich and luxuriant. All
this, though is banal to the point of vulgarity. Before me stood an
ordinary woman, perhaps neither beautiful nor elegant, but this was
my wife with whom I had once lived, and with whom I should have
been living to this day if it had not been for her unfortunate
character; she was the one human being on the terrestrial globe
whom I loved. At this moment, just before going away, when I knew
that I should no longer see her even through the window, she
seemed to me fascinating even as she was, cold and forbidding,
answering me with a proud and contemptuous mockery. I was proud
of her, and confessed to myself that to go away from her was
terrible and impossible.
“Pavel Andreitch,” she said after a brief silence, “for two years we
have not interfered with each other but have lived quietly. Why do
you suddenly feel it necessary to go back to the past? Yesterday you
came to insult and humiliate me,” she went on, raising her voice,
and her face flushed and her eyes flamed with hatred; “but restrain
yourself; do not do it, Pavel Andreitch! Tomorrow I will send in a
petition and they will give me a passport, and I will go away; I will
go! I will go! I’ll go into a convent, into a widows’ home, into an
almshouse....”
“Into a lunatic asylum!” I cried, not able to restrain myself.
“Well, even into a lunatic asylum! That would be better, that would
be better,” she cried, with flashing eyes. “When I was in Pestrovo
today I envied the sick and starving peasant women because they
are not living with a man like you. They are free and honest, while,
thanks to you, I am a parasite, I am perishing in idleness, I eat your
bread, I spend your money, and I repay you with my liberty and a
fidelity which is of no use to any one. Because you won’t give me a
passport, I must respect your good name, though it doesn’t exist.”
I had to keep silent. Clenching my teeth, I walked quickly into the
drawing-room, but turned back at once and said:
“I beg you earnestly that there should be no more assemblies,
plots, and meetings of conspirators in my house! I only admit to my
house those with whom I am acquainted, and let all your crew find
another place to do it if they want to take up philanthropy. I can’t
allow people at midnight in my house to be shouting hurrah at
successfully exploiting an hysterical woman like you!”
My wife, pale and wringing her hands, took a rapid stride across
the room, uttering a prolonged moan as though she had toothache.
With a wave of my hand, I went into the drawing-room. I was
choking with rage, and at the same time I was trembling with terror
that I might not restrain myself, and that I might say or do
something which I might regret all my life. And I clenched my hands
tight, hoping to hold myself in.
After drinking some water and recovering my calm a little, I went
back to my wife. She was standing in the same attitude as before, as
though barring my approach to the table with the papers. Tears
were slowly trickling down her pale, cold face. I paused then and
said to her bitterly but without anger:
“How you misunderstand me! How unjust you are to me! I swear
upon my honour I came to you with the best of motives, with
nothing but the desire to do good!”
“Pavel Andreitch!” she said, clasping her hands on her bosom, and
her face took on the agonized, imploring expression with which
frightened, weeping children beg not to be punished, “I know
perfectly well that you will refuse me, but still I beg you. Force
yourself to do one kind action in your life. I entreat you, go away
from here! That’s the only thing you can do for the starving
peasants. Go away, and I will forgive you everything, everything!”
“There is no need for you to insult me, Natalie,” I sighed, feeling a
sudden rush of humility. “I had already made up my mind to go
away, but I won’t go until I have done something for the peasants.
It’s my duty!”
“Ach!” she said softly with an impatient frown. “You can make an
excellent bridge or railway, but you can do nothing for the starving
peasants. Do understand!”
“Indeed? Yesterday you reproached me with indifference and with
being devoid of the feeling of compassion. How well you know me!”
I laughed. “You believe in God—well, God is my witness that I am
worried day and night....”
“I see that you are worried, but the famine and compassion have
nothing to do with it. You are worried because the starving peasants
can get on without you, and because the Zemstvo, and in fact every
one who is helping them, does not need your guidance.”
I was silent, trying to suppress my irritation. Then I said:
“I came to speak to you on business. Sit down. Please sit down.”
She did not sit down.
“I beg you to sit down,” I repeated, and I motioned her to a chair.
She sat down. I sat down, too, thought a little, and said:
“I beg you to consider earnestly what I am saying. Listen....
Moved by love for your fellow-creatures, you have undertaken the
organization of famine relief. I have nothing against that, of course;
I am completely in sympathy with you, and am prepared to co-
operate with you in every way, whatever our relations may be. But,
with all my respect for your mind and your heart... and your heart,” I
repeated, “I cannot allow such a difficult, complex, and responsible
matter as the organization of relief to be left in your hands entirely.
You are a woman, you are inexperienced, you know nothing of life,
you are too confiding and expansive. You have surrounded yourself
with assistants whom you know nothing about. I am not
exaggerating if I say that under these conditions your work will
inevitably lead to two deplorable consequences. To begin with, our
district will be left unrelieved; and, secondly, you will have to pay for
your mistakes and those of your assistants, not only with your purse,
but with your reputation. The money deficit and other losses I could,
no doubt, make good, but who could restore you your good name?
When through lack of proper supervision and oversight there is a
rumour that you, and consequently I, have made two hundred
thousand over the famine fund, will your assistants come to your
aid?”
She said nothing.
“Not from vanity, as you say,” I went on, “but simply that the
starving peasants may not be left unrelieved and your reputation
may not be injured, I feel it my moral duty to take part in your
work.”
“Speak more briefly,” said my wife.
“You will be so kind,” I went on, “as to show me what has been
subscribed so far and what you have spent. Then inform me daily of
every fresh subscription in money or kind, and of every fresh outlay.
You will also give me, Natalie, the list of your helpers. Perhaps they
are quite decent people; I don’t doubt it; but, still, it is absolutely
necessary to make inquiries.”
She was silent. I got up, and walked up and down the room.
“Let us set to work, then,” I said, and I sat down to her table.
“Are you in earnest?” she asked, looking at me in alarm and
bewilderment.
 “Natalie, do be reasonable!” I said appealingly, seeing from her
face that she meant to protest. “I beg you, trust my experience and
my sense of honour.”
“I don’t understand what you want.”
“Show me how much you have collected and how much you have
spent.”
“I have no secrets. Any one may see. Look.”
On the table lay five or six school exercise books, several sheets of
notepaper covered with writing, a map of the district, and a number
of pieces of paper of different sizes. It was getting dusk. I lighted a
candle.
“Excuse me, I don’t see anything yet,” I said, turning over the
leaves of the exercise books. “Where is the account of the receipt of
money subscriptions?”
“That can be seen from the subscription lists.”
“Yes, but you must have an account,” I said, smiling at her
naivete. “Where are the letters accompanying the subscriptions in
money or in kind? Pardon, a little practical advice, Natalie: it’s
absolutely necessary to keep those letters. You ought to number
each letter and make a special note of it in a special record. You
ought to do the same with your own letters. But I will do all that
myself.”
“Do so, do so...” she said.
I was very much pleased with myself. Attracted by this living
interesting work, by the little table, the naive exercise books and the
charm of doing this work in my wife’s society, I was afraid that my
wife would suddenly hinder me and upset everything by some
sudden whim, and so I was in haste and made an effort to attach no
consequence to the fact that her lips were quivering, and that she
was looking about her with a helpless and frightened air like a wild
creature in a trap.
“I tell you what, Natalie,” I said without looking at her; “let me
take all these papers and exercise books upstairs to my study. There
I will look through them and tell you what I think about it tomorrow.
Have you any more papers?” I asked, arranging the exercise books
and sheets of papers in piles.
“Take them, take them all!” said my wife, helping me to arrange
them, and big tears ran down her cheeks. “Take it all! That’s all that
was left me in life.... Take the last.”
“Ach! Natalie, Natalie!” I sighed reproachfully.
She opened the drawer in the table and began flinging the papers
out of it on the table at random, poking me in the chest with her
elbow and brushing my face with her hair; as she did so, copper
coins kept dropping upon my knees and on the floor.
“Take everything!” she said in a husky voice.
When she had thrown out the papers she walked away from me,
and putting both hands to her head, she flung herself on the couch.
I picked up the money, put it back in the drawer, and locked it up
that the servants might not be led into dishonesty; then I gathered
up all the papers and went off with them. As I passed my wife I
stopped and, looking at her back and shaking shoulders, I said:
“What a baby you are, Natalie! Fie, fie! Listen, Natalie: when you
realize how serious and responsible a business it is you will be the
first to thank me. I assure you you will.”
In my own room I set to work without haste. The exercise books
were not bound, the pages were not numbered. The entries were
put in all sorts of handwritings; evidently any one who liked had a
hand in managing the books. In the record of the subscriptions in
kind there was no note of their money value. But, excuse me, I
thought, the rye which is now worth one rouble fifteen kopecks may
be worth two roubles fifteen kopecks in two months’ time! Was that
the way to do things? Then, “Given to A. M. Sobol 32 roubles.” When
was it given? For what purpose was it given? Where was the receipt?
There was nothing to show, and no making anything of it. In case of
legal proceedings, these papers would only obscure the case.
“How naive she is!” I thought with surprise. “What a child!”
I felt both vexed and amused.
V
My wife had already collected eight thousand; with my five it
would be thirteen thousand. For a start that was very good. The
business which had so worried and interested me was at last in my
hands; I was doing what the others would not and could not do; I
was doing my duty, organizing the relief fund in a practical and
business-like way.
Everything seemed to be going in accordance with my desires and
intentions; but why did my feeling of uneasiness persist? I spent
four hours over my wife’s papers, making out their meaning and
correcting her mistakes, but instead of feeling soothed, I felt as
though some one were standing behind me and rubbing my back
with a rough hand. What was it I wanted? The organization of the
relief fund had come into trustworthy hands, the hungry would be
fed—what more was wanted?
The four hours of this light work for some reason exhausted me,
so that I could not sit bending over the table nor write. From below I
heard from time to time a smothered moan; it was my wife sobbing.
Alexey, invariably meek, sleepy, and sanctimonious, kept coming up
to the table to see to the candles, and looked at me somewhat
strangely.
“Yes, I must go away,” I decided at last, feeling utterly exhausted.
“As far as possible from these agreeable impressions! I will set off
tomorrow.”
 I gathered together the papers and exercise books, and went
down to my wife. As, feeling quite worn out and shattered, I held
the papers and the exercise books to my breast with both hands,
and passing through my bedroom saw my trunks, the sound of
weeping reached me through the floor.
“Are you a kammer-junker?” a voice whispered in my ear. “That’s a
very pleasant thing. But yet you are a reptile.”
“It’s all nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,” I muttered as I went
downstairs. “Nonsense... and it’s nonsense, too, that I am actuated
by vanity or a love of display.... What rubbish! Am I going to get a
decoration for working for the peasants or be made the director of a
department? Nonsense, nonsense! And who is there to show off to
here in the country?”
I was tired, frightfully tired, and something kept whispering in my
ear: “Very pleasant. But, still, you are a reptile.” For some reason I
remembered a line out of an old poem I knew as a child: “How
pleasant it is to be good!”
My wife was lying on the couch in the same attitude, on her face
and with her hands clutching her head. She was crying. A maid was
standing beside her with a perplexed and frightened face. I sent the
maid away, laid the papers on the table, thought a moment and
said:
“Here are all your papers, Natalie. It’s all in order, it’s all capital,
and I am very much pleased. I am going away tomorrow.”
She went on crying. I went into the drawing-room and sat there in
the dark. My wife’s sobs, her sighs, accused me of something, and to
justify myself I remembered the whole of our quarrel, starting from
my unhappy idea of inviting my wife to our consultation and ending
with the exercise books and these tears. It was an ordinary attack of
our conjugal hatred, senseless and unseemly, such as had been
frequent during our married life, but what had the starving peasants
to do with it? How could it have happened that they had become a
bone of contention between us? It was just as though pursuing one
another we had accidentally run up to the altar and had carried on a
quarrel there.
“Natalie,” I said softly from the drawing-room, “hush, hush!”
To cut short her weeping and make an end of this agonizing state
of affairs, I ought to have gone up to my wife and comforted her,
caressed her, or apologized; but how could I do it so that she would
believe me? How could I persuade the wild duck, living in captivity
and hating me, that it was dear to me, and that I felt for its
sufferings? I had never known my wife, so I had never known how
to talk to her or what to talk about. Her appearance I knew very well
and appreciated it as it deserved, but her spiritual, moral world, her
mind, her outlook on life, her frequent changes of mood, her eyes
full of hatred, her disdain, the scope and variety of her reading
which sometimes struck me, or, for instance, the nun-like expression
I had seen on her face the day before—all that was unknown and
incomprehensible to me. When in my collisions with her I tried to
define what sort of a person she was, my psychology went no
farther than deciding that she was giddy, impractical, ill-tempered,
guided by feminine logic; and it seemed to me that that was quite
sufficient. But now that she was crying I had a passionate desire to
know more.
The weeping ceased. I went up to my wife. She sat up on the
couch, and, with her head propped in both hands, looked fixedly and
dreamily at the fire.
“I am going away tomorrow morning,” I said.
She said nothing. I walked across the room, sighed, and said:
“Natalie, when you begged me to go away, you said: ‘I will forgive
you everything, everything’.... So you think I have wronged you. I
beg you calmly and in brief terms to formulate the wrong I’ve done
you.”
 “I am worn out. Afterwards, some time...” said my wife.
“How am I to blame?” I went on. “What have I done? Tell me: you
are young and beautiful, you want to live, and I am nearly twice
your age and hated by you, but is that my fault? I didn’t marry you
by force. But if you want to live in freedom, go; I’ll give you your
liberty. You can go and love whom you please.... I will give you a
divorce.”
“That’s not what I want,” she said. “You know I used to love you
and always thought of myself as older than you. That’s all
nonsense.... You are not to blame for being older or for my being
younger, or that I might be able to love some one else if I were free;
but because you are a difficult person, an egoist, and hate every
one.”
“Perhaps so. I don’t know,” I said.
“Please go away. You want to go on at me till the morning, but I
warn you I am quite worn out and cannot answer you. You promised
me to go to town. I am very grateful; I ask nothing more.”
My wife wanted me to go away, but it was not easy for me to do
that. I was dispirited and I dreaded the big, cheerless, chill rooms
that I was so weary of. Sometimes when I had an ache or a pain as
a child, I used to huddle up to my mother or my nurse, and when I
hid my face in the warm folds of their dress, it seemed to me as
though I were hiding from the pain. And in the same way it seemed
to me now that I could only hide from my uneasiness in this little
room beside my wife. I sat down and screened away the light from
my eyes with my hand.... There was a stillness.
“How are you to blame?” my wife said after a long silence, looking
at me with red eyes that gleamed with tears. “You are very well
educated and very well bred, very honest, just, and high-principled,
but in you the effect of all that is that wherever you go you bring
suffocation, oppression, something insulting and humiliating to the
utmost degree. You have a straightforward way of looking at things,
and so you hate the whole world. You hate those who have faith,
because faith is an expression of ignorance and lack of culture, and
at the same time you hate those who have no faith for having no
faith and no ideals; you hate old people for being conservative and
behind the times, and young people for free-thinking. The interests
of the peasantry and of Russia are dear to you, and so you hate the
peasants because you suspect every one of them of being a thief
and a robber. You hate every one. You are just, and always take your
stand on your legal rights, and so you are always at law with the
peasants and your neighbours. You have had twenty bushels of rye
stolen, and your love of order has made you complain of the
peasants to the Governor and all the local authorities, and to send a
complaint of the local authorities to Petersburg. Legal justice!” said
my wife, and she laughed. “On the ground of your legal rights and in
the interests of morality, you refuse to give me a passport. Law and
morality is such that a self-respecting healthy young woman has to
spend her life in idleness, in depression, and in continual
apprehension, and to receive in return board and lodging from a
man she does not love. You have a thorough knowledge of the law,
you are very honest and just, you respect marriage and family life,
and the effect of all that is that all your life you have not done one
kind action, that every one hates you, that you are on bad terms
with every one, and the seven years that you have been married
you’ve only lived seven months with your wife. You’ve had no wife
and I’ve had no husband. To live with a man like you is impossible;
there is no way of doing it. In the early years I was frightened with
you, and now I am ashamed.... That’s how my best years have been
wasted. When I fought with you I ruined my temper, grew shrewish,
coarse, timid, mistrustful.... Oh, but what’s the use of talking! As
though you wanted to understand! Go upstairs, and God be with
you!”
My wife lay down on the couch and sank into thought.
“And how splendid, how enviable life might have been!” she said
softly, looking reflectively into the fire. “What a life it might have
been! There’s no bringing it back now.”
Any one who has lived in the country in winter and knows those
long dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark
and even the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on
such evenings has been troubled by awakening conscience and has
moved restlessly about, trying now to smother his conscience, now
to interpret it, will understand the distraction and the pleasure my
wife’s voice gave me as it sounded in the snug little room, telling me
I was a bad man. I did not understand what was wanted of me by
my conscience, and my wife, translating it in her feminine way, made
clear to me in the meaning of my agitation. As often before in the
moments of intense uneasiness, I guessed that the whole secret lay,
not in the starving peasants, but in my not being the sort of a man I
ought to be.
My wife got up with an effort and came up to me.
“Pavel Andreitch,” she said, smiling mournfully, “forgive me, I don’t
believe you: you are not going away, but I will ask you one more
favour. Call this”—she pointed to her papers—“self-deception,
feminine logic, a mistake, as you like; but do not hinder me. It’s all
that is left me in life.” She turned away and paused. “Before this I
had nothing. I have wasted my youth in fighting with you. Now I
have caught at this and am living; I am happy.... It seems to me
that I have found in this a means of justifying my existence.”
“Natalie, you are a good woman, a woman of ideas,” I said,
looking at my wife enthusiastically, “and everything you say and do
is intelligent and fine.”
I walked about the room to conceal my emotion.
“Natalie,” I went on a minute later, “before I go away, I beg of you
as a special favour, help me to do something for the starving
peasants!”
 “What can I do?” said my wife, shrugging her shoulders. “Here’s
the subscription list.”
She rummaged among the papers and found the subscription list.
“Subscribe some money,” she said, and from her tone I could see
that she did not attach great importance to her subscription list;
“that is the only way in which you can take part in the work.”
I took the list and wrote: “Anonymous, 5,000.”
In this “anonymous” there was something wrong, false, conceited,
but I only realized that when I noticed that my wife flushed very red
and hurriedly thrust the list into the heap of papers. We both felt
ashamed; I felt that I must at all costs efface this clumsiness at
once, or else I should feel ashamed afterwards, in the train and at
Petersburg. But how efface it? What was I to say?
“I fully approve of what you are doing, Natalie,” I said genuinely,
“and I wish you every success. But allow me at parting to give you
one piece of advice, Natalie; be on your guard with Sobol, and with
your assistants generally, and don’t trust them blindly. I don’t say
they are not honest, but they are not gentlefolks; they are people
with no ideas, no ideals, no faith, with no aim in life, no definite
principles, and the whole object of their life is comprised in the
rouble. Rouble, rouble, rouble!” I sighed. “They are fond of getting
money easily, for nothing, and in that respect the better educated
they are the more they are to be dreaded.”
My wife went to the couch and lay down.
“Ideas,” she brought out, listlessly and reluctantly, “ideas, ideals,
objects of life, principles....you always used to use those words
when you wanted to insult or humiliate some one, or say something
unpleasant. Yes, that’s your way: if with your views and such an
attitude to people you are allowed to take part in anything, you
would destroy it from the first day. It’s time you understand that.”
She sighed and paused.
 “It’s coarseness of character, Pavel Andreitch,” she said. “You are
well-bred and educated, but what a... Scythian you are in reality!
That’s because you lead a cramped life full of hatred, see no one,
and read nothing but your engineering books. And, you know, there
are good people, good books! Yes... but I am exhausted and it
wearies me to talk. I ought to be in bed.”
“So I am going away, Natalie,” I said.
“Yes... yes.... Merci....”
I stood still for a little while, then went upstairs. An hour later—it
was half-past one—I went downstairs again with a candle in my
hand to speak to my wife. I didn’t know what I was going to say to
her, but I felt that I must say some thing very important and
necessary. She was not in her study, the door leading to her
bedroom was closed.
“Natalie, are you asleep?” I asked softly.
There was no answer.
I stood near the door, sighed, and went into the drawing-room.
There I sat down on the sofa, put out the candle, and remained
sitting in the dark till the dawn.
VI
I went to the station at ten o’clock in the morning. There was no
frost, but snow was falling in big wet flakes and an unpleasant damp
wind was blowing.
We passed a pond and then a birch copse, and then began going
uphill along the road which I could see from my window. I turned
round to take a last look at my house, but I could see nothing for
the snow. Soon afterwards dark huts came into sight ahead of us as
in a fog. It was Pestrovo.
 “If I ever go out of my mind, Pestrovo will be the cause of it,” I
thought. “It persecutes me.”
We came out into the village street. All the roofs were intact, not
one of them had been pulled to pieces; so my bailiff had told a lie. A
boy was pulling along a little girl and a baby in a sledge. Another
boy of three, with his head wrapped up like a peasant woman’s and
with huge mufflers on his hands, was trying to catch the flying
snowflakes on his tongue, and laughing. Then a wagon loaded with
fagots came toward us and a peasant walking beside it, and there
was no telling whether his beard was white or whether it was
covered with snow. He recognized my coachman, smiled at him and
said something, and mechanically took off his hat to me. The dogs
ran out of the yards and looked inquisitively at my horses.
Everything was quiet, ordinary, as usual. The emigrants had
returned, there was no bread; in the huts “some were laughing,
some were delirious”; but it all looked so ordinary that one could not
believe it really was so. There were no distracted faces, no voices
whining for help, no weeping, nor abuse, but all around was
stillness, order, life, children, sledges, dogs with dishevelled tails.
Neither the children nor the peasant we met were troubled; why was
I so troubled?
Looking at the smiling peasant, at the boy with the huge mufflers,
at the huts, remembering my wife, I realized there was no calamity
that could daunt this people; I felt as though there were already a
breath of victory in the air. I felt proud and felt ready to cry out that
I was with them too; but the horses were carrying us away from the
village into the open country, the snow was whirling, the wind was
howling, and I was left alone with my thoughts. Of the million
people working for the peasantry, life itself had cast me out as a
useless, incompetent, bad man. I was a hindrance, a part of the
people’s calamity; I was vanquished, cast out, and I was hurrying to
the station to go away and hide myself in Petersburg in a hotel in
Bolshaya Morskaya.
 An hour later we reached the station. The coachman and a porter
with a disc on his breast carried my trunks into the ladies’ room. My
coachman Nikanor, wearing high felt boots and the skirt of his coat
tucked up through his belt, all wet with the snow and glad I was
going away, gave me a friendly smile and said:
“A fortunate journey, your Excellency. God give you luck.”
Every one, by the way, calls me “your Excellency,” though I am
only a collegiate councillor and a kammer-junker. The porter told me
the train had not yet left the next station; I had to wait. I went
outside, and with my head heavy from my sleepless night, and so
exhausted I could hardly move my legs, I walked aimlessly towards
the pump. There was not a soul anywhere near.
“Why am I going?” I kept asking myself. “What is there awaiting
me there? The acquaintances from whom I have come away,
loneliness, restaurant dinners, noise, the electric light, which makes
my eyes ache. Where am I going, and what am I going for? What
am I going for?”
And it seemed somehow strange to go away without speaking to
my wife. I felt that I was leaving her in uncertainty. Going away, I
ought to have told that she was right, that I really was a bad man.
When I turned away from the pump, I saw in the doorway the
station-master, of whom I had twice made complaints to his
superiors, turning up the collar of his coat, shrinking from the wind
and the snow. He came up to me, and putting two fingers to the
peak of his cap, told me with an expression of helpless confusion,
strained respectfulness, and hatred on his face, that the train was
twenty minutes late, and asked me would I not like to wait in the
warm?
“Thank you,” I answered, “but I am probably not going. Send
word to my coachman to wait; I have not made up my mind.”
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