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Title: Youth
Author: Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
Translator: C. J. Hogarth
May, 2001 [Etext #2637]
****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Youth, by by Leo Tolstoy****
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E-Text prepared by Martin Adamson
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Youth
by Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
Translated by C. J. Hogarth
I
WHAT I CONSIDER TO HAVE BEEN THE BEGINNING OF MY YOUTH
I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a
new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of
that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to
strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at
once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found
pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from
that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a
moral, active future, while all the time my life had been
continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course,
and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend
Dimitri ("my own marvellous Mitia," as I used to call him to
myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another
still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched.
Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into
my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation
which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been
wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once--that very
second--apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of
never again changing them.
It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.
I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me
lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my
education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the
University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included
certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic
exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good
deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the
house (but more especially along the maidservants' corridor), and
much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I
always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of
repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly,
but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations
under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I
had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there
was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of
the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes
which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be
stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even
less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and
had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in
my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even
refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it
precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also
had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this
seemed to me very shameful.
II
SPRINGTIME
Easter of the year when I entered the University fell late in
April, so that the examinations were fixed for St. Thomas's Week,
[Easter week.] and I had to spend Good Friday in fasting and
finally getting myself ready for the ordeal.
Following upon wet snow (the kind of stuff which Karl Ivanitch
used to describe as "a child following, its father"), the weather
had for three days been bright and mild and still. Not a clot of
snow was now to be seen in the streets, and the dirty slush had
given place to wet, shining pavements and coursing rivulets. The
last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds
were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading
across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a
frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between
the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular
time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence
upon the human soul--when clear sunlight illuminates everything,
yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one's
feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when
the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds.
For some reason or another the influence of this early stage in
the birth of spring always seems to me more perceptible and more
impressive in a great town than in the country. One sees less,
but one feels more. I was standing near the window--through the
double frames of which the morning sun was throwing its mote-
flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably
wearisome schoolroom--and working out a long algebraical equation
on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-
suffering "Algebra" and in the other a small piece of chalk
which had already besmeared my hands, my face, and the elbows of
my jacket. Nicola, clad in an apron, and with his sleeves rolled
up, was picking out the putty from the window-frames with a pair
of nippers, and unfastening the screws. The window looked out
upon the little garden. At length his occupation and the noise
which he was making over it arrested my attention. At the moment
I was in a very cross, dissatisfied frame of mind, for nothing
seemed to be going right with me. I had made a mistake at the
very beginning of my algebra, and so should have to work it out
again; twice I had let the chalk drop. I was conscious that my
hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away
into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast
getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly
into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and
"Algebra" alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I
remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that
therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with
equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily goodhumoured
frame of mind, and walked across to Nicola.
"Let me help you, Nicola," I said, trying to speak as pleasantly
as I possibly could. The idea that I was performing a meritorious
action in thus suppressing my ill-temper and offering to help him
increased my good-humour all the more.
By this time the putty had been chipped out, and the screws
removed, yet, though Nicola pulled with might and main at the
cross-piece, the window-frame refused to budge.
"If it comes out as soon as he and I begin to pull at it
together," I thought, "it will be rather a shame, as then I shall
have nothing more of the kind to do to-day."
Suddenly the frame yielded a little at one side, and came out.
"Where shall I put it?" I said.
"Let ME see to it, if you please," replied Nicola, evidently
surprised as well as, seemingly, not over-pleased at my zeal.
"We must not leave it here, but carry it away to the lumber-room,
where I keep all the frames stored and numbered."
"Oh, but I can manage it," I said as I lifted it up. I verily
believe that if the lumber-room had been a couple of versts away,
and the frame twice as heavy as it was, I should have been the
more pleased. I felt as though I wanted to tire myself out in
performing this service for Nicola. When I returned to the room
the bricks and screws had been replaced on the windowsill, and
Nicola was sweeping the debris, as well as a few torpid flies,
out of the open window. The fresh, fragrant air was rushing into
and filling all the room, while with it came also the dull murmur
of the city and the twittering of sparrows in the garden.
Everything was in brilliant light, the room looked cheerful, and
a gentle spring breeze was stirring Nicola's hair and the leaves
of my "Algebra." Approaching the window, I sat down upon the
sill, turned my eyes downwards towards the garden, and fell into
a brown study.
Something new to me, something extraordinarily potent and
unfamiliar, had suddenly invaded my soul. The wet ground on
which, here and there, a few yellowish stalks and blades of
bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets
glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny
chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac,
with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window;
the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush
below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had
lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and
radiant sunlight--all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of
something new and beautiful, of something which, though I cannot
repeat it here as it was then expressed to me, I will try to
reproduce so far as I understood it. Everything spoke to me of
beauty, happiness, and virtue--as three things which were both
easy and possible for me--and said that no one of them could
exist without the other two, since beauty, happiness, and virtue
were one. "How did I never come to understand that before?" I
cried to myself. "How did I ever manage to be so wicked? Oh, but
how good, how happy, I could be--nay, I WILL be--in the future!
At once, at once--yes, this very minute--I will become another
being, and begin to live differently!" For all that, I continued
sitting on the window-sill, continued merely dreaming, and doing
nothing. Have you ever, on a summer's day, gone to bed in dull,
rainy weather, and, waking just at sunset, opened your eyes and
seen through the square space of the window--the space where the
linen blind is blowing up and down, and beating its rod upon the
window-sill--the rain-soaked, shadowy, purple vista of an avenue
of lime-trees, with a damp garden path lit up by the clear,
slanting beams of the sun, and then suddenly heard the joyous
sounds of bird life in the garden, and seen insects flying to and
fro at the open window, and glittering in the sunlight, and smelt
the fragrance of the rain-washed air, and thought to yourself,
"Am I not ashamed to be lying in bed on such an evening as this?"
and, leaping joyously to your feet, gone out into the garden and
revelled in all that welter of life? If you have, then you can
imagine for yourself the overpowering sensation which was then
possessing me.
III
DREAMS
"To-day I will make my confession and purge myself of every sin,"
I thought to myself. "Nor will I ever commit another one." At
this point I recalled all the peccadilloes which most troubled my
conscience. "I will go to church regularly every Sunday, as well
as read the Gospel at the close of every hour throughout the day.
What is more, I will set aside, out of the cheque which I shall
receive each month after I have gone to the University, two-and-
a-half roubles" (a tenth of my monthly allowance) "for people who
are poor but not exactly beggars, yet without letting any one
know anything about it. Yes, I will begin to look out for people
like that--orphans or old women--at once, yet never tell a soul
what I am doing for them.
"Also, I will have a room here of my very own (St. Jerome's,
probably), and look after it myself, and keep it perfectly clean.
I will never let any one do anything for me, for every one is
just a human being like myself. Likewise I will walk every day,
not drive, to the University. Even if some one gives me a drozhki
[Russian phaeton.] I will sell it, and devote the money to the
poor. Everything I will do exactly and always" (what that
"always" meant I could not possibly have said, but at least I had
a vivid consciousness of its connoting some kind of prudent,
moral, and irreproachable life). "I will get up all my lectures
thoroughly, and go over all the subjects beforehand, so that at
the end of my first course I may come out top and write a thesis.
During my second course also I will get up everything beforehand,
so that I may soon be transferred to the third course, and at
eighteen come out top in the examinations, and receive two gold
medals, and go on to be Master of Arts, and Doctor, and the first
scholar in Europe. Yes, in all Europe I mean to be the first
scholar.--Well, what next?" I asked myself at this point.
Suddenly it struck me that dreams of this sort were a form of
pride--a sin which I should have to confess to the priest that
very evening, so I returned to the original thread of my
meditations. "When getting up my lectures I will go to the
Vorobievi Gori, [Sparrow Hills--a public park near Moscow.] and
choose some spot under a tree, and read my lectures over there.
Sometimes I will take with me something to eat--cheese or a pie
from Pedotti's, or something of the kind. After that I will sleep
a little, and then read some good book or other, or else draw
pictures or play on some instrument (certainly I must learn to
play the flute). Perhaps SHE too will be walking on the Vorobievi
Gori, and will approach me one day and say, 'Who are you?' and I
shall look at her, oh, so sadly, and say that I am the son of a
priest, and that I am happy only when I am there alone, quite
alone. Then she will give me her hand, and say something to me,
and sit down beside me. So every day we shall go to the same
spot, and be friends together, and I shall kiss her. But no! That
would not be right! On the contrary, from this day forward I
never mean to look at a woman again. Never, never again do I mean
to walk with a girl, nor even to go near one if I can help it.
Yet, of course, in three years' time, when I have come of age, I
shall marry. Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can,
and to do gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned
twenty-five, I shall be stronger even than Rappo. On my first
day's training I mean to hold out half a pood [The Pood = 40
Russian pounds.] at arm's length for five minutes, and the next
day twenty-one pounds, and the third day twenty-two pounds, and
so on, until at last I can hold out four poods in each hand, and
be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one should try
to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER, I
shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an
arshin [The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and
just hold him there, so that he may feel my strength and cease
from his conduct. Yet that too would not be right. No, no, it
would not matter; I should not hurt him, merely show him that I--"
Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as
foolish as those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that,
even if it be my fate to live to extreme old age and to continue
my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found
dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am
dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves
me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some
imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly
become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall
of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human
being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious,
consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save
for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the
dreams of each human being, of each age of man, have their own
distinguishing characteristics. At the period upon which I look
as having marked the close of my boyhood and the beginning of my
youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The
first of those sentiments was love for HER--for an imaginary
woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I
somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine
had a little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha
could look when she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and
a little of a certain woman with pearls round her fair white neck
whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a box below
our own. My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted
every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter
my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every one
thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me
for something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment
was the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness
that was impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to
verge upon ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very,
very soon some unexpected chance would suddenly make me the
richest and most famous man in the world that I lived in
constant, tremulous expectation of this magic good fortune
befalling me. I was always thinking to myself that "IT is
beginning," and that I should go on thereafter to attain
everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for ever
hurrying from place to place, in the belief that "IT" must be
"beginning" just where I happened not to be. Lastly, my fourth
and principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled
with regret--yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation
of happiness to which I have referred that it had in it nothing
of sorrow. It seemed to me that it would be so easy and natural
for me to tear myself away from my past and to remake it--to
forget all that had been, and to begin my life, with all its
relations, anew--that the past never troubled me, never clung to
me at all. I even found a certain pleasure in detesting the past,
and in seeing it in a darker light than the true one. This note
of regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chief
mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my
growth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view of
myself, of men, and of God's world. O good and consoling voice,
which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded
silently to the sway of life's falseness and depravity, so often
raised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well as
mercilessly exposed the past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to
love only the pure vista of the present, and promised me all that
was fair and happy in the future! O good and consoling voice!
Surely the day will never come when you are silent?
IV
OUR FAMILY CIRCLE
PAPA was seldom at home that spring. Yet, whenever he was so, he
seemed extraordinarily cheerful as he either strummed his
favourite pieces on the piano or looked roguishly at us and made
jokes about us all, not excluding even Mimi. For instance, he
would say that the Tsarevitch himself had seen Mimi at the rink,
and fallen so much in love with her that he had presented a
petition to the Synod for divorce; or else that I had been
granted an appointment as secretary to the Austrian ambassador--
a piece of news which he imparted to us with a perfectly grave
face. Next, he would frighten Katenka with some spiders (of which
she was very much afraid), engage in an animated conversation
with our friends Dubkoff and Nechludoff, and tell us and our
guests, over and over again, his plans for the year. Although
these plans changed almost from day to day, and
were for ever contradicting one another, they seemed so
attractive that we were always glad to listen to them, and
Lubotshka, in particular, would glue her eyes to his face, so as
not to lose a single word. One day his plan would be that he
should leave my brother and myself at the University, and go and
live with Lubotshka in Italy for two years. Next, the plan would
be that he should buy an estate on the south coast of the Crimea,
and take us for an annual visit there; next, that we should
migrate en masse to St. Petersburg; and so forth. Yet, in
addition to this unusual cheerfulness of his, another change had
come over him of late--a change which greatly surprised me. This
was that he had had some fashionable clothes made--an olive-
coloured frockcoat, smart trousers with straps at the sides, and
a long wadded greatcoat which fitted him to perfection. Often,
too, there was a delightful smell of scent about him when he came
home from a party--more especially when he had been to see a lady
of whom Mimi never spoke but with a sigh and a face that seemed
to say: "Poor orphans! How dreadful! It is a good thing that SHE
is gone now!" and so on, and so on. From Nicola (for Papa never
spoke to us of his gambling) I had learnt that he (Papa) had been
very fortunate in play that winter, and so had won an
extraordinary amount of money, all of which he had placed in the
bank after vowing that he would play no more that spring.
Evidently, it was his fear of being unable to resist again doing
so that was rendering him anxious to leave for the country as
soon as possible. Indeed, he ended by deciding not to wait until
I had entered the University, but to take the girls to Petrovskoe
immediately after Easter, and to leave Woloda and myself to
follow them at a later season.
All that winter, until the opening of spring, Woloda had been
inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them
had cooled greatly towards Dimitri. Their chief amusements (so I
gathered from conversations overheard) were continual drinking of
champagne, sledge-driving past the windows of a lady with whom
both of them appeared to be in love, and dancing with her--not at
children's parties, either, but at real balls! It was this last
fact which, despite our love for one another, placed a vast gulf
between Woloda and myself. We felt that the distance between a
boy still taking lessons under a tutor and a man who danced at
real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their exchanging
mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read
innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be
getting married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she
and Woloda were thus grown-up, they never made friends with one
another, but, on the contrary, seemed to cherish a mutual
contempt. In general, when Katenka was at home alone, nothing but
novels amused her, and they but slightly; but as soon as ever a
visitor of the opposite sex called, she at once grew lively and
amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not
then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me
in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge
in was coquetry--coquetry of the eyes, I mean--that I understood
those strange contortions of her features which to every one else
had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had
begun to wear what was almost a long dress--a dress which almost
concealed her goose-shaped feet; yet she still remained as ready
a weeper as ever. She dreamed now of marrying, not a hussar, but
a singer or an instrumentalist, and accordingly applied herself
to her music with greater diligence than ever. St. Jerome, who
knew that he was going to remain with us only until my
examinations were over, and so had obtained for himself a new
post in the family of some count or another, now looked with
contempt upon the members of our household. He stayed indoors
very little, took to smoking cigarettes (then all the rage), and
was for ever whistling lively tunes on the edge of a card. Mimi
daily grew more and more despondent, as though, now that we were
beginning to grow up, she looked for nothing good from any one or
anything.
When, on the day of which I am speaking, I went in to luncheon I
found only Mimi, Katenka, Lubotshka, and St. Jerome in the
dining-room. Papa was away, and Woloda in his own room, doing
some preparation work for his examinations in company with a
party of his comrades: wherefore he had requested that lunch
should be sent to him there. Of late, Mimi had usually taken the
head of the table, and as none of us had any respect for her,
luncheon had lost most of its refinement and charm. That is to
say, the meal was no longer what it had been in Mamma's or our
grandmother's time, namely, a kind of rite which brought all the
family together at a given hour and divided the day into two
halves. We allowed ourselves to come in as late as the second
course, to drink wine in tumblers (St. Jerome himself set us the
example), to roll about on our chairs, to depart without saying
grace, and so on. In fact, luncheon had ceased to be a family
ceremony. In the old days at Petrovskoe, every one had been used
to wash and dress for the meal, and then to repair to the
drawing-room as the appointed hour (two o'clock) drew near, and
pass the time of waiting in lively conversation. Just as the
clock in the servants' hall was beginning to whirr before
striking the hour, Foka would enter with noiseless footsteps, and,
throwing his napkin over his arm and assuming a dignified, rather
severe expression, would say in loud, measured tones: "Luncheon
is ready!" Thereupon, with pleased, cheerful faces, we would form
a procession--the elders going first and the juniors following,
and, with much rustling of starched petticoats and subdued
creaking of boots and shoes--would proceed to the dining-room,
where, still talking in undertones, the company would seat
themselves in their accustomed places. Or, again, at Moscow, we
would all of us be standing before the table ready-laid in the
hall, talking quietly among ourselves as we waited for our
grandmother, whom the butler, Gabriel, had gone to acquaint with
the fact that luncheon was ready. Suddenly the door would open,
there would come the faint swish of a dress and the sound of
footsteps, and our grandmother--dressed in a mob-cap trimmed with
a quaint old lilac bow, and wearing either a smile or a severe
expression on her face according as the state of her health
inclined her--would issue from her room. Gabriel would hasten to
precede her to her arm-chair, the other chairs would make a
scraping sound, and, with a feeling as though a cold shiver (the
precursor of appetite) were running down one's back, one would
seize upon one's damp, starched napkin, nibble a morsel or two of
bread, and, rubbing one's hands softly under the table, gaze with
eager, radiant impatience at the steaming plates of soup which
the butler was beginning to dispense in order of ranks and ages
or according to the favour of our grandmother.
On the present occasion, however, I was conscious of neither
excitement nor pleasure when I went in to luncheon. Even the
mingled chatter of Mimi, the girls, and St. Jerome about the
horrible boots of our Russian tutor, the pleated dresses worn by
the young Princesses Kornakoff, and so forth (chatter which at
any other time would have filled me with a sincerity of contempt
which I should have been at no pains to conceal--at all events so
far as Lubotshka and Katenka were concerned), failed to shake the
benevolent frame of mind into which I had fallen. I was unusually
good-humoured that day, and listened to everything with a smile
and a studied air of kindness. Even when I asked for the kvas I
did so politely, while I lost not a moment in agreeing with St.
Jerome when he told me that it was undoubtedly more correct to
say "Je peux" than "Je puis." Yet, I must confess to a certain
disappointment at finding that no one paid any particular
attention to my politeness and good-humour. After luncheon,
Lubotshka showed me a paper on which she had written down a list
of her sins: upon which I observed that, although the idea was
excellent so far as it went, it would be still better for her to
write down her sins on her SOUL--"a very different matter."
"Why is it 'a very different matter'?" asked Lubotshka.
"Never mind: that is all right; you do not understand me," and I
went upstairs to my room, telling St. Jerome that I was going to
work, but in reality purposing to occupy the hour and a half
before confession time in writing down a list of my daily tasks
and duties which should last me all my life, together with a
statement of my life's aim, and the rules by which I meant
unswervingly to be guided.
v
MY RULES
I TOOK some sheets of paper, and tried, first of all, to make a
list of my tasks and duties for the coming year. The paper needed
ruling, but, as I could not find the ruler, I had to use a Latin
dictionary instead. The result was that, when I had drawn the pen
along the edge of the dictionary and removed the latter, I found
that, in place of a line, I had only made an oblong smudge on the
paper, since the, dictionary was not long enough to reach across
it, and the pen had slipped round the soft, yielding corner of
the book. Thereupon I took another piece of paper, and, by
carefully manipulating the dictionary, contrived to rule what at
least RESEMBLED lines. Dividing my duties into three sections--
my duties to myself, my duties to my neighbour, and my duties to
God--I started to indite a list of the first of those sections,
but they seemed to me so numerous, and therefore requiring to be
divided into so many species and subdivisions, that I thought I
had better first of all write down the heading of "Rules of My
Life" before proceeding to their detailed inscription.
Accordingly, I proceeded to write "Rules of My Life" on the
outside of the six sheets of paper which I had made into a sort
of folio, but the words came out in such a crooked and uneven
scrawl that for long I sat debating the question, "Shall I write
them again?"--for long, sat in agonised contemplation of the
ragged handwriting and disfigured title-page. Why was it that all
the beauty and clarity which my soul then contained came out so
misshapenly on paper (as in life itself) just when I was wishing
to apply those qualities to what I was thinking at the moment?
"The priest is here, so please come downstairs and hear his
directions," said Nicola as he entered,
Hurriedly concealing my folio under the table-cloth, I looked at
myself in the mirror, combed my hair upwards (I imagined this to
give me a pensive air), and descended to the divannaia, [Room
with divans, or ante-room] where the table stood covered with a
cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered
just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest--a grey-
headed old monk with a severe, elderly face--blessed him, and
Papa kissed his small, squat, wizened hand. I did the same.
"Go and call Woldemar," said Papa. "Where is he? Wait a minute,
though. Perhaps he is preparing for the Communion at the
University?"
"No, he is with the Prince," said Katenka, and glanced at
Lubotshka. Suddenly the latter blushed for some reason or
another, and then frowned. Finally, pretending that she was not
well, she left the room, and I followed her. In the drawing-room
she halted, and began to pencil something fresh on her paper of
peccadilloes.
"Well, what new sin have you gone and committed?" I asked.
"Nothing," she replied with another blush. All at once we heard
Dimitri's voice raised in the hall as he took his leave of
Woloda.
"It seems to me you are always experiencing some new temptation,"
said Katenka, who had entered the room behind us, and now stood
looking at Lubotshka.
What was the matter with my sister I could not conceive, but she
was now so agitated that the tears were starting from her eyes.
Finally her confusion grew uncontrollable, and vented itself in
rage against both herself and Katenka, who appeared to be teasing
her.
"Any one can see that you are a FOREIGNER!" she cried (nothing
offended Katenka so much as to be called by that term, which is
why Lubotshka used it). "Just because I have the secret of which
you know," she went on, with anger ringing through her tone, "you
purposely go and upset me! Please do understand that it is no
joking matter."
"Do you know what she has gone and written on her paper,
Nicolinka? cried Katenka, much infuriated by the term
"foreigner." "She has written down that--"
"Oh, I never could have believed that you could be so cruel!"
exclaimed Lubotshka, now bursting into open sobbing as she moved
away from us. "You chose that moment on purpose! You spend your
whole time in trying to make me sin! I'll never go to YOU again
for sympathy and advice!"
VI
CONFESSION
With these and other disjointed impressions in my mind, I returned
to the divannaia. As soon as every one had reassembled, the
priest rose and prepared to read the prayer before confession.
The instant that the silence was broken by the stern, expressive
voice of the monk as he recited the prayer--and more especially
when he addressed to us the words: "Reveal thou all thy sins
without shame, concealment, or extenuation, and let thy soul be
cleansed before God: for if thou concealest aught, then great
will be thy sin"--the same sensation of reverent awe came over me
as I had felt during the morning. I even took a certain pleasure
in recognising this condition of mine, and strove to preserve it,
not only by restraining all other thoughts from entering my
brain, but also by consciously exerting myself to feel no other
sensation than this same one of reverence.
Papa was the first to go to confession. He remained a long, long
time in the room which had belonged to our grandmother, and
during that time the rest of us kept silence in the divannaia, or
only whispered to one another on the subject of who should
precede whom. At length, the voice of the priest again reading the
prayer sounded from the doorway, and then Papa's footsteps. The
door creaked as he came out, coughing and holding one shoulder
higher than the other, in his usual way, and for the moment he
did not look at any of us.
"YOU go now, Luba," he said presently, as he gave her cheek a
mischievous pinch. "Mind you tell him everything. You are my
greatest sinner, you know."
Lubotshka went red and pale by turns, took her memorandum paper
out of her apron, replaced it, and finally moved away towards the
doorway with her head sunk between her shoulders as though she
expected to receive a blow upon it from above. She was not long
gone, and when she returned her shoulders were shaking with sobs.
At length--next after the excellent Katenka (who came out of the
doorway with a smile on her face)--my turn arrived. I entered the
dimly-lighted room with the same vague feeling of awe, the same
conscious eagerness to arouse that feeling more and more in my
soul, that had possessed me up to the present moment. The priest,
standing in front of a reading-desk, slowly turned his face to
me.
I was not more than five minutes in the room, but came out from
it happy and (so I persuaded myself) entirely cleansed--a new, a
morally reborn individual. Despite the fact that the old
surroundings of my life now struck me as unfamiliar (even though
the rooms, the furniture, and my own figure--would to heavens
that I could have changed my outer man for the better in the same
way that I believed myself to have changed my inner I--were the
same as before), I remained in that comfortable attitude of mine
until the very moment of bedtime.
Yet, no sooner had I begun to grow drowsy with the conning over
of my sins than in a flash I recollected a particularly shameful
sin which I had suppressed at confession time. Instantly the
words of the prayer before confession came back to my memory and
began sounding in my ears. My peace was gone for ever. "For if
thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin." Each time
that the phrase recurred to me I saw myself a sinner for whom no
punishment was adequate. Long did I toss from side to side as I
considered my position, while expecting every moment to be
visited with the divine wrath--to be struck with sudden death,
perhaps!--an insupportable thought! Then suddenly the reassuring
thought occurred to me: "Why should I not drive out to the
monastery when the morning comes, and see the priest again, and
make a second confession?" Thereafter I grew calmer.
VII
THE EXPEDITION TO THE MONASTERY
Several times that night I woke in terror at the thought that I
might be oversleeping myself, and by six o'clock was out of bed,
although the dawn was hardly peeping in at the window. I put on
my clothes and boots (all of which were lying tumbled and
unbrushed beside the bed, since Nicola, of course had not been in
yet to tidy them up), and, without a prayer said or my face
washed, emerged, for the first time in my life, into the street
ALONE.
Over the way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim,
cold dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the
spring morning which had stiffened the pools and mud and made
them crackle under my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not
a cab was to be seen, though I had counted upon one to make the
journey out and home the quicker. Only a file of waggons was
rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a couple of bricklayers
talking noisily together as they strode along the pavement.
However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and
women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to
fetch the day's water supply; until at length, at the cross
streets near the Arbat Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall
and a baker was just opening his shop, I espied an old cabman
shaking himself after indulging in a nap on the box of his be-
scratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck of a drozhki. He
seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the fare to the
monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards, just
as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the
spare end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. "My
horse wants feeding," he growled, "I can't take you, barin.[Sir]"
With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded
him to stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but
nevertheless said: "Very well. Get in, barin." I must confess
that I had some qualms lest he should drive me to a quiet corner
somewhere, and then rob me, but I caught hold of the collar of
his ragged driving-coat, close to where his wrinkled neck showed
sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and climbed on to the blue-
painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off along Vozdvizhenka
Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was covered with a
strip of the same greenish material as that of which his coat was
made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no
longer felt nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.
The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas
of the churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade
the frost had not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy
rivulets of water were coursing along, and it was through fast-
thawing mire that the horse went clip-clopping his way.
Alighting, and entering the monastery grounds, I inquired of the
first monk whom I met where I could find the priest whom I was
seeking.
"His cell is over there," replied the monk as he stopped a moment
and pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of
steps led.
"I respectfully thank you," I said, and then fell to wondering
what all the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out
of the church) must be thinking of me as they glanced in my
direction. I was neither a grown-up nor a child, while my face
was unwashed, my hair unbrushed, my clothes tumbled, and my boots
unblacked and muddy. To what class of persons were the brethren
assigning me--for they stared at me hard enough? Nevertheless I
proceeded in the direction which the young priest had pointed out
to me.
An old man with bushy grey eyebrows and a black cassock met me on
the narrow path to the cells, and asked me what I wanted. For a
brief moment I felt inclined to say "Nothing," and then run back
to the drozhki and drive away home; but, for all its beetling
brows, the face of the old man inspired confidence, and I merely
said that I wished to see the priest (whom I named).
"Very well, young sir; I will take you to him," said the old man
as he turned round. Clearly he had guessed my errand at a stroke.
"The father is at matins at this moment, but he will soon be
back," and, opening a door, the old man led me through a neat
hall and corridor, all lined with clean matting, to a cell.
"Please to wait here," he added, and then, with a kind,
reassuring glance, departed.
The little room in which I found myself was of the smallest
possible dimensions, but extremely neat and clean. Its furniture
only consisted of a small table (covered with a cloth, and placed
between two equally small casement-windows, in which stood two
pots of geraniums), a stand of ikons, with a lamp suspended in
front of them, a bench, and two chairs. In one corner hung a wall
clock, with little flowers painted on its dial, and brass weights
to its chains, while upon two nails driven into a screen (which,
fastened to the ceiling with whitewashed pegs, probably concealed
the bed) hung a couple of cassocks. The windows looked out upon a
whitewashed wall, about two arshins distant, and in the space
between them there grew a small lilac-bush.
Not a sound penetrated from without, and in the stillness the
measured, friendly stroke of the clock's pendulum seemed to beat
quite loudly. The instant that I found myself alone in this calm
retreat all other thoughts and recollections left my head as
completely as though they had never been there, and I subsided
into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of torpor. The rusty alpaca
cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather
bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green
plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above
all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me
intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me--a life of
unity and prayer, of calm, restful happiness.
"The months, the years, may pass," I thought to myself, "but he
remains alone--always at peace, always knowing that his
conscience is pure before God, that his prayer will be heard by
Him." For fully half an hour I sat on that chair, trying not to
move, not even to breathe loudly, for fear I should mar the
harmony of the sounds which were telling me so much, and ever the
pendulum continued to beat the same--now a little louder to the
right, now a little softer to the left.
VIII
THE SECOND CONFESSION
Suddenly the sound of the priest's footsteps roused me from this
reverie.
"Good morning to you," he said as he smoothed his grey hair with
his hand. "What can I do for you?"
I besought him to give me his blessing, and then kissed his
small, wizened hand with great fervour. After I had explained to
him my errand he said nothing, but moved away towards the ikons,
and began to read the exhortation: whereupon I overcame my shame,
and told him all that was in my heart. Finally he laid his hands
upon my head, and pronounced in his even, resonant voice the
words: "My son, may the blessing of Our Heavenly Father be upon
thee, and may He always preserve thee in faithfulness, loving-
kindness, and meekness. Amen."
I was entirely happy. Tears of joy coursed down my face as I
kissed the hem of his cassock and then raised my head again. The
face of the priest expressed perfect tranquillity. So keenly did
I feel the joy of reconciliation that, fearing in any way to
dispel it, I took hasty leave of him, and, without looking to one
side of me or the other (in order that my attention might not be
distracted), left the grounds and re-entered the rickety,
battered drozhki. Yet the joltings of the vehicle and the variety
of objects which flitted past my eyes soon dissipated that
feeling, and I became filled with nothing but the idea that the
priest must have thought me the finest-spirited young man he had
ever met, or ever would meet, in the whole of his life. Indeed, I
reflected, there could not be many such as myself--of that I felt
sure, and the conviction produced in me the kind of complacency
which craves for self-communication to another. I had a great
desire to unbosom myself to some one, and as there was no one
else to speak to, I addressed myself to the cabman.
"Was I very long gone? " I asked him.
" No, not very long," he replied. He seemed to have grown more
cheerful under the influence of the sunshine. "Yet now it is a
good while past my horse's feeding-time. You see, I am a night
cabman."
"Well, I only seemed to myself to be about a minute," I went on.
"Do you know what I went there for?" I added, changing my seat to
the well of the drozhki, so as to be nearer the driver.
"What business is it of mine? I drive a fare where he tells me to
go," he replied.
"Yes, but, all the same, what do you think I went there for?" I
persisted.
"I expect some one you know is going to be buried there, so you
went to see about a plot for the grave."
"No, no, my friend. Still, DO you know what I went there for?"
"No, of course I cannot tell, barin," he repeated.
His voice seemed to me so kind that I decided to edify him by
relating the cause of my expedition, and even telling him of the
feeling which I had experienced.
"Shall I tell you?" I said. "Well, you see,"--and I told him all,
as well as inflicted upon him a description of my fine
sentiments. To this day I blush at the recollection.
"Well, well!" said the cabman non-committally, and for a long
while afterwards he remained silent and motionless, except that
at intervals he adjusted the skirt of his coat each time that it
was jerked from beneath his leg by the joltings of his huge boot
on the drozhki's step. I felt sure that he must be thinking of me
even as the priest had done. That is to say, that he must be
thinking that no such fine-spirited young man existed in the
world as I. Suddenly he shot at me:
"I tell you what, barin. You ought to keep God's affairs to
yourself."
"What?" I said.
"Those affairs of yours--they are God's business," he repeated,
mumbling the words with his toothless lips.
"No, he has not understood me," I thought to myself, and said no
more to him till we reached home.
Although it was not my original sense of reconciliation and
reverence, but only a sort of complacency at having experienced
such a sense, that lasted in me during the drive home (and that,
too, despite the distraction of the crowds of people who now
thronged the sunlit streets in every direction), I had no sooner
reached home than even my spurious complacency was shattered, for
I found that I had not the forty copecks wherewith to pay the
cabman! To the butler, Gabriel, I already owed a small debt, and
he refused to lend me any more. Seeing me twice run across the
courtyard in quest of the money, the cabman must have divined the
reason, for, leaping from his drozhki, he--notwithstanding that
he had seemed so kind--began to bawl aloud (with an evident
desire to punch my head) that people who do not pay for their
cab-rides are swindlers.
None of my family were yet out of bed, so that, except for the
servants, there was no one from whom to borrow the forty copecks.
At length, on my most sacred, sacred word of honour to repay (a
word to which, as I could see from his face, he did not
altogether trust), Basil so far yielded to his fondness for me
and his remembrance of the many services I had done him as to pay
the cabman. Thus all my beautiful feelings ended in smoke. When I
went upstairs to dress for church and go to Communion with the
rest I found that my new clothes had not yet come home, and so I
could not wear them. Then I sinned headlong. Donning my other
suit, I went to Communion in a sad state of mental perturbation,
and filled with complete distrust of all my finer impulses.
IX
HOW I PREPARED MYSELF FOR THE EXAMINATIONS
On the Thursday in Easter week Papa, my sister, Katenka, and Mimi
went away into the country, and no one remained in my
grandmother's great house but Woloda, St. Jerome, and myself. The
frame of mind which I had experienced on the day of my confession
and during my subsequent expedition to the monastery had now
completely passed away, and left behind it only a dim, though
pleasing, memory which daily became more and more submerged by
the impressions of this emancipated existence.
The folio endorsed "Rules of My Life" lay concealed beneath a
pile of school-books. Although the idea of the possibility of
framing rules, for every occasion in my life and always letting
myself be guided by them still pleased me (since it appeared an
idea at once simple and magnificent, and I was determined to make
practical application of it), I seemed somehow to have forgotten
to put it into practice at once, and kept deferring doing so
until such and such a moment. At the same time, I took pleasure
in the thought that every idea which now entered my head could be
allotted precisely to one or other of my three sections of tasks
and duties--those for or to God, those for or to my neighbour, and
those for or to myself. "I can always refer everything to them,"
I said to myself, "as well as the many, many other ideas which
occur to me on one subject or another." Yet at this period I
often asked myself, "Was I better and more truthful when I only
believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so
now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and
am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?" To
this I could return no positive answer.
The sense of freedom, combined with the spring-like feeling of
vague expectation to which I have referred already, so unsettled
me that I could not keep myself in hand--could make none but the
sorriest of preparations for my University ordeal. Thus I was
busy in the schoolroom one morning, and fully aware that I must
work hard, seeing that to-morrow was the day of my examination in
a subject of which I had the two whole questions still to read
up; yet no sooner had a breath of spring come wafted through the
window than I felt as though there were something quite different
that I wished to recall to my memory. My hands laid down my book,
my feet began to move of themselves, and to set me walking up and
down the room, and my head felt as though some one had suddenly
touched in it a little spring and set some machine in motion--so
easily and swiftly and naturally did all sorts of pleasing
fancies of which I could catch no more than the radiancy begin
coursing through it. Thus one hour, two hours, elapsed
unperceived. Even if I sat down determinedly to my book, and
managed to concentrate my whole attention upon what I was
reading, suddenly there would sound in the corridor the footsteps
of a woman and the rustle of her dress. Instantly everything
would escape my mind, and I would find it impossible to remain
still any longer, however much I knew that the woman could only
be either Gasha or my grandmother's old sewing-maid moving about
in the corridor. "Yet suppose it should be SHE all at once?" I
would say to myself. "Suppose IT is beginning now, and I were to
lose it?" and, darting out into the corridor, I would find, each
time, that it was only Gasha. Yet for long enough afterwards I
could not recall my attention to my studies. A little spring had
been touched in my head, and a strange mental ferment started
afresh. Again, that evening I was sitting alone beside a tallow
candle in my room. Suddenly I looked up for a moment--to snuff
the candle, or to straighten myself in my chair--and at once
became aware of nothing but the darkness in the corners and the
blank of the open doorway. Then, I also became conscious how still
the house was, and felt as though I could do nothing else than go
on listening to that stillness, and gazing into the black square
of that open doorway, and gradually sinking into a brown study as
I sat there without moving. At intervals, however, I would get
up, and go downstairs, and begin wandering through the empty
rooms. Once I sat a long while in the small drawing-room as I
listened to Gasha playing "The Nightingale" (with two fingers) on
the piano in the large drawing-room, where a solitary candle
burned. Later, when the moon was bright, I felt obliged to get
out of bed and to lean out of the window, so that I might gaze
into the garden, and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff
mansion, the straight tower of our parish church, and the dark
shadows of the fence and the lilac-bush where they lay black upon
the path. So long did I remain there that, when I at length
returned to bed, it was ten o'clock in the morning before I could
open my eyes again.
In short, had it not been for the tutors who came to give me
lessons, as well as for St. Jerome (who at intervals, and very
grudgingly, applied a spur to my self-conceit) and, most of all,
for the desire to figure as "clever" in the eyes of my friend
Nechludoff (who looked upon distinctions in University
examinations as a matter of first-rate importance)--had it not
been for all these things, I say, the spring and my new freedom
would have combined to make me forget everything I had ever
learnt, and so to go through the examinations to no purpose
whatsoever.
X
THE EXAMINATION IN HISTORY
ON the 16th of April I entered, for the first time, and under the
wing of St. Jerome, the great hall of the University. I had
driven there with St. Jerome in our smart phaeton and wearing the
first frockcoat of my life, while the whole of my other clothes--
even down to my socks and linen--were new and of a grander sort.
When a Swiss waiter relieved me of my greatcoat, and I stood
before him in all the beauty of my attire, I felt almost sorry to
dazzle him so. Yet I had no sooner entered the bright, carpeted,
crowded hall, and caught sight of hundreds of other young men in
gymnasium [The Russian gymnasium = the English grammar or
secondary school.] uniforms or frockcoats (of whom but a few
threw me an indifferent glance), as well as, at the far end, of
some solemn-looking professors who were seated on chairs or
walking carelessly about among some tables, than I at once became
disabused of the notion that I should attract the general
attention, while the expression of my face, which at home, and
even in the vestibule of the University buildings, had denoted
only a kind of vague regret that I should have to present so
important and distinguished an appearance, became exchanged for
an expression of the most acute nervousness and dejection.
However, I soon picked up again when I perceived sitting at one
of the desks a very badly, untidily dressed gentleman who,
though not really old, was almost entirely grey. He was occupying
a seat quite at the back of the hall and a little apart from the
rest, so I hastened to sit down beside him, and then fell to
looking at the candidates for examination, and to forming
conclusions about them. Many different figures and faces were
there to be seen there; yet, in my opinion, they all seemed to
divide themselves into three classes. First of all, there were
youths like myself, attending for examination in the company of
their parents or tutors. Among such I could see the youngest Iwin
(accompanied by Frost) and Ilinka Grap (accompanied by his old
father). All youths of this class wore the early beginnings of
beards, sported prominent linen, sat quietly in their places, and
never opened the books and notebooks which they had brought with
them, but gazed at the professors and examination tables with
ill-concealed nervousness. The second class of candidates were
young men in gymnasium uniforms. Several of them had attained to
the dignity of shaving, and most of them knew one another. They
talked loudly, called the professors by their names and surnames,
occupied themselves in getting their subjects ready, exchanged
notebooks, climbed over desks, fetched themselves pies and
sandwiches from the vestibule, and ate them then and there merely
lowering their heads to the level of a desk for propriety's sake.
Lastly, the third class of candidates (which seemed a small one)
consisted of oldish men--some of them in frock coats, but the
majority in jackets, and with no linen to be seen. These
preserved a serious demeanour, sat by themselves, and had a very
dingy look. The man who had afforded me consolation by being
worse dressed than myself belonged to this class. Leaning forward
upon his elbows, and running his fingers through his grey,
dishevelled hair as he read some book or another, he had thrown
me only a momentary glance--and that not a very friendly one--
from a pair of glittering eyes. Then, as I sat down, he had
frowned grimly, and stuck a shiny elbow out to prevent me from
coming any nearer. On the other hand, the gymnasium men were
over-sociable, and I felt rather afraid of their proximity. One
of them did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying,
"Give that to that fellow over there, will you?" while another
of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, "By your leave, young
fellow!" and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he
wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little
rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely
superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to
treat me with such familiarity. At length, the names began to be
called out. The gymnasium men walked out boldly, answered their
questions (apparently) well, and came back looking cheerful. My
own class of candidates were much more diffident, as well as
appeared to answer worse. Of the oldish men, some answered well,
and some very poorly. When the name "Semenoff " was called out my
neighbour with the grey hair and glittering eyes jostled me
roughly, stepped over my legs, and went up to one of the
examiners' tables. It was plain from the aspect of the professors
that he answered well and with assurance, yet, on returning to
his place, he did not wait to see where he was placed on the
list, but quietly collected his notebooks and departed. Several
times I shuddered at the sound of the voice calling out the
names, but my turn did not come in exact alphabetical order,
though already names had begun to be called beginning with "I."
"Ikonin and Tenieff!" suddenly shouted some one from the
professors' end of the hall.
"Go on, Ikonin! You are being called," said a tall, red-faced
gymnasium student near me. "But who is this BARtenieff or
MORtenieff or somebody? I don't know him."
"It must be you," whispered St. Jerome loudly in my ear.
"MY name is IRtenieff," I said to the red-faced student. "Do you
think that was the name they were calling out?"
"Yes. Why on earth don't you go up? " he replied. "Lord, what a
dandy!" he added under his breath, yet not so quietly but that I
failed to hear the words as they came wafted to me from below the
desk. In front of me walked Ikonin--a tall young man of about
twenty-five, who was one of those whom I had classed as oldish
men. He wore a tight brown frockcoat and a blue satin tie, and
had wisps of flaxen hair carefully brushed over his collar in the
peasant style. His appearance had already caught my attention
when we were sitting among the desks, and had given me an
impression that he was not bad-looking. Also I had noticed that
he was very talkative. Yet what struck me most about his
physiognomy was a tuft, of queer red hairs which he had under his
chin, as well as, still more, a strange habit of continually
unbuttoning his waistcoat and scratching his chest under his
shirt.
Behind the table to which we were summoned sat three Professors,
none of whom acknowledged our salutations. A youngish professor
was shuffling a bundle of tickets like a pack of cards; another
one, with a star on his frockcoat, was gazing hard at a gymnasium
student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles
the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz
[= the English colloquialism "you know."] while a third one--an
old man in spectacles--proceeded to bend his head down as we
approached, and, peering at us through his glasses, pointed
silently to the tickets. I felt his glance go over both myself
and Ikonin, and also felt sure that something about us had
displeased him (perhaps it was Ikonin's red hairs), for, after
taking another look at the pair of us, he motioned impatiently to
us to be quick in taking our tickets. I felt vexed and offended--
firstly, because none of the professors had responded to our
bows, and, secondly, because they evidently coupled me with
Ikonin under the one denomination of "candidates," and so were
condemning me in advance on account of Ikonin's red hairs. I took
my ticket boldly and made ready to answer, but the professor's
eye passed over my head and alighted upon Ikonin. Accordingly, I
occupied myself in reading my ticket. The questions printed on it
were all familiar to me, so, as I silently awaited my turn, I
gazed at what was passing near me, Ikonin seemed in no way
diffident--rather the reverse, for, in reaching for his ticket,
he threw his body half-way across the table. Then he gave his
long hair a shake, and rapidly conned over what was written on
his ticket. I think he had just opened his mouth to answer when
the professor with the star dismissed the gymnasium student with
a word of commendation, and then turned and looked at Ikonin. At
once the latter seemed taken back, and stopped short. For about
two minutes there was a dead silence.
"Well?" said the professor in the spectacles.
Once more Ikonin opened his mouth, and once more remained silent.
" Come! You are not the only one to be examined. Do you mean to
answer or do you not?" said the youngish professor, but Ikonin
did not even look at him. He was gazing fixedly at his ticket and
uttered not a single word. The professor in the spectacles
scanned him through his glasses, then over them, then without
them (for, indeed, he had time to take them off, to wipe their
lenses carefully, and to replace them). Still not a word from
Ikonin. All at once, however, a smile spread itself over his
face, and he gave his long hair another shake. Next he reached
across the table, laid down his ticket, looked at each of the
professors in turn and then at myself, and finally, wheeling
round on his heels, made a gesture with his hand and returned to
the desks. The professors stared blankly at one another.
"Bless the fellow!" said the youngish professor. "What an
original!"
It was now my turn to move towards the table, but the professors
went on talking in undertones among themselves, as though they
were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly
persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the
question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or
whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which
made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave
as though they had not seen me.
When at length the professor in the spectacles turned to me with
an air of indifference, and invited me to answer, I felt hurt, as
I looked at him, to think that he should have so undeceived me:
wherefore I answered brokenly at first. In time, however, things
came easier to my tongue, and, inasmuch as all the questions bore
upon Russian history (which I knew thoroughly), I ended with
eclat, and even went so far, in my desire to convince the
professors that I was not Ikonin and that they must not in anyway
confound me with him, as to offer to draw a second ticket. The
professor in the spectacles, however, merely nodded his head,
said "That will do," and marked something in his register. On
returning to the desks, I at once learnt from the gymnasium men
(who somehow seemed to know everything) that I had been placed
fifth.
XI
MY EXAMINATION IN MATHEMATICS
AT the subsequent examinations, I made several new acquaintances
in addition to the Graps (whom I considered unworthy of my
notice) and Iwin (who for some reason or other avoided me). With
some of these new friends I grew quite intimate, and even Ikonin
plucked up sufficient courage to inform me, when we next met,
that he would have to undergo re-examination in history--the
reason for his failure this time being that the professor of that
faculty had never forgiven him for last year's examination, and
had, indeed, "almost killed" him for it. Semenoff (who was
destined for the same faculty as myself--the faculty of
mathematics) avoided every one up to the very close of
the examinations. Always leaning forward upon his elbows and
running his fingers through his grey hair, he sat silent and
alone. Nevertheless, when called up for examination in
mathematics (he had no companion to accompany him), he came out
second. The first place was taken by a student from the first
gymnasium--a tall, dark, lanky, pale-faced fellow who wore a
black folded cravat and had his cheeks and forehead dotted all
over with pimples. His hands were shapely and slender, but their
nails were so bitten to the quick that the finger-ends looked as
though they had been tied round with strips of thread. All this
seemed to me splendid, and wholly becoming to a student of the
first gymnasium. He spoke to every one, and we all made friends
with him. To me in particular his walk, his every movement, his
lips, his dark eyes, all seemed to have in them something
extraordinary and magnetic.
On the day of the mathematical examination I arrived earlier than
usual at the hall. I knew the syllabus well, yet there were two
questions in the algebra which my tutor had managed to pass over,
and which were therefore quite unknown to me. If I remember
rightly, they were the Theory of Combinations and Newton's
Binomial. I seated myself on one of the back benches and pored
over the two questions, but, inasmuch as I was not accustomed to
working in a noisy room, and had even less time for preparation
than I had anticipated, I soon found it difficult to take in all
that I was reading.
"Here he is. This way, Nechludoff," said Woloda's familiar voice
behind me.
I turned and saw my brother and Dimitri--their gowns unbuttoned,
and their hands waving a greeting to me--threading their way
through the desks. A moment's glance would have sufficed to show
any one that they were second-course students--persons to whom
the University was as a second home. The mere look of their open
gowns expressed at once disdain for the "mere candidate" and a
knowledge that the "mere candidate's" soul was filled with envy
and admiration of them. I was charmed to think that every one
near me could now see that I knew two real second-course
students: wherefore I hastened to meet them half-way.
Woloda, of course, could not help vaunting his superiority a
little.
"Hullo, you smug!" he said. "Haven't you been examined yet?"
"No."
"Well, what are you reading? Aren't you sufficiently primed?"
"Yes, except in two questions. I don't understand them at all."
"Eh, what?"--and Woloda straightway began to expound to me
Newton's Binomial, but so rapidly and unintelligibly that,
suddenly reading in my eyes certain misgivings as to the
soundness of his knowledge, he glanced also at Dimitri's face.
Clearly, he saw the same misgivings there, for he blushed hotly,
though still continuing his involved explanations.
"No; hold on, Woloda, and let me try and do it," put in Dimitri
at length, with a glance at the professors' corner as he seated
himself beside me.
I could see that my friend was in the best of humours. This was
always the case with him when he was satisfied with himself, and
was one of the things in him which I liked best. Inasmuch as he
knew mathematics well and could speak clearly, he hammered the
question so thoroughly into my head that I can remember it to
this day. Hardly had he finished when St. Jerome said to me in a
loud whisper, "A vous, Nicolas," and I followed Ikonin out from
among the desks without having had an opportunity of going
through the OTHER question of which I was ignorant. At the table
which we now approached were seated two professors, while before
the blackboard stood a gymnasium student, who was working some
formula aloud, and knocking bits off the end of the chalk with
his too vigorous strokes. He even continued writing after one of
the Professors had said to him "Enough!" and bidden us draw our
tickets. "Suppose I get the Theory of Combinations?" I thought to
myself as my tremulous fingers took a ticket from among a bundle
wrapped in torn paper. Ikonin, for his part, reached across the
table with the same assurance, and the same sidelong movement of
his whole body, as he had done at the previous examination.
Taking the topmost ticket without troubling to make further
selection, he just glanced at it, and then frowned angrily.
"I always draw this kind of thing," he muttered.
I looked at mine. Horrors! It was the Theory of Combinations!
"What have you got?" whispered Ikonin at this point.
I showed him.
"Oh, I know that," he said.
"Will you make an exchange, then?"
"No. Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did," he
contrived to whisper just as the professor called us up to the
blackboard. "I don't feel up to anything to-day."
"Then everything is lost!" I thought to myself. Instead of the
brilliant result which I had anticipated I should be for ever
covered with shame--more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the
very eyes of the professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my
ticket out of my hands, and handed me his own. I looked at his
ticket. It was Newton's Binomial!
The professor was a youngish man, with a pleasant, clever
expression of face--an effect chiefly due to the prominence of
the lower part of his forehead.
"What? Are you exchanging tickets, gentlemen?" he said.
"No. He only gave me his to look at, professor," answered Ikonin--
and, sure enough, the word "professor" was the last word that he
uttered there. Once again, he stepped backwards towards me from
the table, once again he looked at each of the professors in turn
and then at myself, once again he smiled faintly, and once again
he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "It is no use, my
good sirs." Then he returned to the desks. Subsequently, I learnt
that this was the third year he had vainly attempted to
matriculate.
I answered my question well, for I had just read it up; and the
professor, kindly informing me that I had done even better than
was required, placed me fifth.
XII
MY EXAMINATION IN LATIN
All went well until my examination in Latin. So far, a gymnasium
student stood first on the list, Semenoff second, and myself
third. On the strength of it I had begun to swagger a little, and
to think that, for all my youth, I was not to be despised.
From the first day of the examinations, I had heard every one
speak with awe of the Professor of Latin, who appeared to be some
sort of a wild beast who battened on the financial ruin of young
men (of those, that is to say, who paid their own fees) and spoke
only in the Greek and Latin tongues. However, St. Jerome, who had
coached me in Latin, spoke encouragingly, and I myself thought
that, since I could translate Cicero and certain parts of Horace
without the aid of a lexicon, I should do no worse than the rest.
Yet things proved otherwise. All the morning the air had been
full of rumours concerning the tribulations of candidates who had
gone up before me: rumours of how one young fellow had been
accorded a nought, another one a single mark only, a third one
greeted with abuse and threatened with expulsion, and so forth.
Only Semenoff and the first gymnasium student had, as usual, gone
up quietly, and returned to their seats with five marks credited
to their names. Already I felt a prescience of disaster when
Ikonin and myself found ourselves summoned to the little table at
which the terrible professor sat in solitary grandeur.
The terrible professor turned out to be a little thin, bilious-
looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of
extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's
Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin
not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe
a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time,
conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could
not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous,
when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on
previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never
to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing,
slightly sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a matter of fact, I
contrived to do quite the contrary.
"Evidently you know better than he, since you are laughing," he
said to me in bad Russian. "Well, we shall see. Tell me the
answer, then."
Later I learnt that the professor was Ikonin's guardian, and that
Ikonin actually lived with him. I lost no time in answering the
question in syntax which had been put to Ikonin, but the
professor only pulled a long face and turned away from me.
"Well, your turn will come presently, and then we shall see how
much you know," he remarked, without looking at me, but
proceeding to explain to Ikonin the point on which he had
questioned him.
"That will do," he added, and I saw him put down four marks to
Ikonin in his register. "Come!" I thought to myself. "He cannot
be so strict after all."
When Ikonin had taken his departure the professor spent fully
five minutes--five minutes which seemed to me five hours--in
setting his books and tickets in order, in blowing his nose, in
adjusting and sprawling about on his chair, in gazing down the
hall, and in looking here, there, and everywhere--in doing
everything, in fact, except once letting his eye rest upon me.
Yet even that amount of dissimulation did not seem to satisfy
him, for he next opened a book, and pretended to read it, for all
the world as though I were not there at all. I moved a little
nearer him, and gave a cough.
"Ah, yes! You too, of course! Well, translate me something," he
remarked, handing me a book of some kind. "But no; you had better
take this," and, turning over the leaves of a Horace, he
indicated to me a passage which I should never have imagined
possible of translation.
"I have not prepared this," I said.
"Oh! Then you only wish to answer things which you have got by
heart, do you? Indeed? No, no; translate me that."
I started to grope for the meaning of the passage, but each
questioning look which I threw at the professor was met by a
shake of the head, a profound sigh, and an exclamation of "No,
no!" Finally he banged the book to with such a snap that he
caught his finger between the covers. Angrily releasing it, he
handed me a ticket containing questions in grammar, and, flinging
himself back in his chair, maintained a menacing silence. I
should have tried to answer the questions had not the expression
of his face so clogged my tongue that nothing seemed to come from
it right.
"No, no! That's not it at all!" he suddenly exclaimed in his
horrible accent as he altered his posture to one of leaning
forward upon the table and playing with the gold signet-ring
which was nearly slipping from the little finger of his left
hand. "That is not the way to prepare for serious study, my good
sir. Fellows like yourself think that, once they have a gown and
a blue collar to their backs, they have reached the summit of all
things and become students. No, no, my dear sir. A subject needs
to be studied FUNDAMENTALLY," and so on, and so on.
During this speech (which was uttered with a clipped sort of
intonation) I went on staring dully at his lowered eyelids.
Beginning with a fear lest I should lose my place as third on the
list, I went on to fear lest I should pass at all. Next, these
feelings became reinforced by a sense of injustice, injured self-
respect, and unmerited humiliation, while the contempt which I
felt for the professor as some one not quite (according to my
ideas) "comme il faut"--a fact which I deduced from the
shortness, strength, and roundness of his nails--flared up in me
more and more and turned all my other feelings to sheer
animosity. Happening, presently, to glance at me, and to note my
quivering lips and tear-filled eyes, he seemed to interpret my
agitation as a desire to be accorded my marks and dismissed:
wherefore, with an air of relenting, he said (in the presence of
another professor who had just approached):
"Very well; I will accord you a 'pass'" (which signified two
marks), "although you do not deserve it. I do so simply out of
consideration for your youth, and in the hope that, when you
begin your University career, you will learn to be less light-
minded."
The concluding phrase, uttered in the hearing of the other
professor (who at once turned his eyes upon me, as though
remarking, "There! You see, young man!") completed my
discomfiture. For a moment, a mist swam before my eyes--a mist in
which the terrible professor seemed to be far away, as he sat at
his table while for an instant a wild idea danced through my
brain. "What if I DID do such a thing?" I thought to myself.
"What would come of it?" However, I did not do the thing in
question, but, on the contrary, made a bow of peculiar reverence
to each of the professors, and with a slight smile on my face--
presumably the same smile as that with which I had derided
Ikonin--turned away from the table.
This piece of unfairness affected me so powerfully at the time
that, had I been a free agent, I should have attended for no more
examinations. My ambition was gone (since now I could not
possibly be third), and I therefore let the other examinations
pass without any exertion, or even agitation, on my part. In the
general list I still stood fourth, but that failed to interest
me, since I had reasoned things out to myself, and come to the
conclusion that to try for first place was stupid--even "bad
form:" that, in fact, it was better to pass neither very well nor
very badly, as Woloda had done. This attitude I decided to
maintain throughout the whole of my University career,
notwithstanding that it was the first point on which my opinion
had differed from that of my friend Dimitri.
Yet, to tell the truth, my thoughts were already turning towards
a uniform, a "mortar-board," and the possession of a drozhki of
my own, a room of my own, and, above all, freedom of my own. And
certainly the prospect had its charm.
XIII
I BECOME GROWN-UP
When, on May 8th, I returned home from the final, the divinity,
examination, I found my acquaintance, the foreman from
Rozonoff's, awaiting me. He had called once before to fit me for
my gown, as well as for a tunic of glossy black cloth (the lapels
of which were, on that occasion, only sketched in chalk), but to-
day he had come to bring me the clothes in their finished state,
with their gilt buttons wrapped in tissue paper.
Donning the garments, and finding them splendid (notwithstanding
that St. Jerome assured me that the back of the tunic wrinkled
badly), I went downstairs with a complacent smile which I was
powerless to banish from my face, and sought Woloda, trying the
while to affect unconsciousness of the admiring looks of the
servants, who came darting out of the hall and corridor to gaze
upon me with ravished eyes. Gabriel, the butler, overtook me in
the salle, and, after congratulating me with much empressement,
handed me, according to instructions from my father, four bank-
notes, as well as informed me that Papa had also given orders
that, from that day forth, the groom Kuzma, the phaeton, and the
bay horse Krassavchik were to be entirely at my disposal. I was
so overjoyed at this not altogether expected good-fortune that I
could no longer feign indifference in Gabriel's presence, but,
flustered and panting, said the first thing which came into my
head ("Krassavchik is a splendid trotter," I think it was). Then,
catching sight of the various heads protruding from the doors of
the hall and corridor, I felt that I could bear no more, and set
off running at full speed across the salle, dressed as I was in
the new tunic, with its shining gilt buttons. Just as I burst
into Woloda's room, I heard behind me the voices of Dubkoff and
Nechludoff, who had come to congratulate me, as well as to
propose a dinner somewhere and the drinking of much champagne in
honour of my matriculation. Dimitri informed me that, though he
did not care for champagne, he would nevertheless join us that
evening and drink my health, while Dubkoff remarked that I looked
almost like a colonel, and Woloda omitted to congratulate me at
all, merely saying in an acid way that he supposed we should now--
i.e. in two days time--be off into the country. The truth was
that Woloda, though pleased at my matriculation, did not
altogether like my becoming as grown-up as himself. St. Jerome,
who also joined us at this moment, said in a very pompous manner
that his duties were now ended, and that, although he did not
know whether they had been well done or ill, at least he had done
his best, and must depart to-morrow to his Count's. In replying
to their various remarks I could feel, in spite of myself, a
pleased, agreeable, faintly self-sufficient smile playing over my
countenance, as well as could remark that that smile,
communicated itself to those to whom I was speaking.
So here was I without a tutor, yet with my own private drozhki,
my name printed on the list of students, a sword and belt of my
own, and a chance of an occasional salute from officials! In
short, I was grownup and, I suppose, happy.
Finally, we arranged to go out and dine at five o'clock, but since
Woloda presently went off to Dubkoff's, and Dimitri disappeared
in his usual fashion (saying that there was something he MUST do
before dinner), I was left with two whole hours still at my
disposal. For a time I walked through the rooms of the house, and
looked at myself in all the mirrors--firstly with the tunic
buttoned, then with it unbuttoned, and lastly with only the top
button fastened. Each time it looked splendid. Eventually, though
anxious not to show any excess of delight, I found myself unable
to refrain from crossing over to the coach-house and stables to
gaze at Krassovchik, Kuzma, and the drozhki. Then I returned and
once more began my tour of the rooms, where I looked at myself in
all the mirrors as before, and counted my money over in my
pocket--my face smiling happily the while. Yet not an hour had
elapsed before I began to feel slightly ennuye--to feel a shade
of regret that no one was present to see me in my splendid
position. I began to long for life and movement, and so sent out
orders for the drozhki to be got ready, since I had made up my
mind to drive to the Kuznetski Bridge and make some purchases.
In this connection I recalled how, after matriculating, Woloda
had gone and bought himself a lithograph of horses by Victor Adam
and some pipes and tobacco: wherefore I felt that I too must do
the same. Amid glances showered upon me from every side, and with
the sunlight reflected from my buttons, cap-badge, and sword, I
drove to the Kuznetski Bridge, where, halting at a Picture shop,
I entered it with my eyes looking to every side. It was not
precisely horses by Adam which I meant to buy, since I did not
wish to be accused of too closely imitating Woloda; wherefore,
out of shame for causing the obsequious shopmen such agitation as
I appeared to do, I made a hasty selection, and pitched upon a
water-colour of a woman's head which I saw displayed in the
window--price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had I paid the twenty
roubles over the counter than my heart smote me for having put
two such beautifully dressed shop-assistants to so much trouble
for such a trifle. Moreover, I fancied that they were regarding
me with some disdain. Accordingly, in my desire to show them what
manner of man I was, I turned my attention to a silver trifle
which I saw displayed in a show-case, and, recognising that it
was a porte-crayon (price eighteen roubles), requested that it
should forthwith be wrapped in paper for me. Next, the money
paid, and the information acquired that splendid pipes and
tobacco were to be obtained in an adjacent emporium, I bowed to
the two shopmen politely, and issued into the street with the
picture under my arm. At the shop next door (which had painted on
its sign-board a negro smoking a cigar) I bought (likewise out of
a desire to imitate no one) some Turkish tobacco, a Stamboul
hookah, and two pipes. On coming out of the shop, I had just
entered the drozhki when I caught sight of Semenoff, who was
walking hurriedly along the pavement with his head bent down.
Vexed that he should not have recognised me, I called out to him
pretty loudly, "Hold on a minute!" and, whipping up the drozhki,
soon overtook him.
"How do you do?" I said.
"My respects to you," he replied, but without stopping.
"Why are you not in your University uniform?" I next inquired.
At this he stopped short with a frown, and parted his white teeth
as though the sun were hurting his eyes. The next moment,
however, he threw a glance of studied indifference at my drozhki
and uniform, and continued on his way.
From the Kuznetski Bridge, I drove to a confectioner's in
Tverskaia Street, and, much as I should have liked it to be
supposed that it was the newspapers which most interested me, I
had no choice but to begin falling upon tartlet after tartlet. In
fact, for all my bashfulness before a gentleman who kept
regarding me with some curiosity from behind a newspaper, I ate
with great swiftness a tartlet of each of the eight different
sorts which the confectioner kept.
On reaching home, I experienced a slight touch of stomach-ache,
but paid no attention to it, and set to work to inspect my
purchases. Of these, the picture so much displeased me that,
instead of having it framed and hung in my room, as Woloda had
done with his, I took pains to hide it behind a chest of drawers,
where no one could see it. Likewise, though I also found the
porte-crayon distasteful, I was able, as I laid it on my table,
to comfort myself with the thought that it was at least a SILVER
article--so much capital, as it were--and likely to be very
useful to a student. As for the smoking things, I decided to put
them into use at once, and try their capabilities.
Unsealing the four packages, and carefully filling the Stamboul
pipe with some fine-cut, reddish-yellow Turkish tobacco, I
applied a hot cinder to it, and, taking the mouthpiece between my
first and second fingers (a position of the hand which greatly
caught my fancy), started to inhale the smoke.
The smell of the tobacco seemed delightful, yet something burnt
my mouth and caught me by the breath. Nevertheless, I hardened my
heart, and continued to draw abundant fumes into my interior.
Then I tried blowing rings and retaining the smoke. Soon the room
became filled with blue vapours, while the pipe started to
crackle and the tobacco to fly out in sparks. Presently, also, I
began to feel a smarting in my mouth and a giddiness in my head.
Accordingly, I was on the point of stopping and going to look at
myself and my pipe in the mirror, when, to my surprise, I found
myself staggering about. The room was whirling round and round,
and as I peered into the mirror (which I reached only with some
difficulty) I perceived that my face was as white as a sheet.
Hardly had I thrown myself down upon a sofa when such nausea and
faintness swept over me that, making up my mind that the pipe had
proved my death, I expected every moment to expire. Terribly
frightened, I tried to call out for some one to come and help me,
and to send for the doctor.
However, this panic of mine did not last long, for I soon
understood what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the
sofa with a racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared
dully at the stamp on the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube
coiled on the floor, and the odds and ends of tobacco and
confectioner's tartlets which were littered about. "Truly," I
thought to myself in my dejection and disillusionment, "I cannot
be quite grown-up if I cannot smoke as other fellows do, and
should be fated never to hold a chibouk between my first and
second fingers, or to inhale and puff smoke through a flaxen
moustache!"
When Dimitri called for me at five o'clock, he found me in this
unpleasant predicament. After drinking a glass of water, however,
I felt nearly recovered, and ready to go with him.
"So much for your trying to smoke!" said he as he gazed at the
remnants of my debauch. "It is a silly thing to do, and waste of
money as well. I long ago promised myself never to smoke. But
come along; we have to call for Dubkoff."
XIV
HOW WOLODA AND DUBKOFF AMUSED THEMSELVES
THE moment that Dimitri entered my room I perceived from his
face, manner of walking, and the signs which, in him, denoted
ill-humour--a blinking of the eyes and a grim holding of his head
to one side, as though to straighten his collar--that he was in
the coldly-correct frame of mind which was his when he felt
dissatisfied with himself. It was a frame of mind, too, which
always produced a chilling effect upon my feelings towards him.
Of late I had begun to observe and appraise my friend's character
a little more, but our friendship had in no way suffered from
that, since it was still too young and strong for me to be able
to look upon Dimitri as anything but perfect, no matter in what
light I regarded him. In him there were two personalities, both
of which I thought beautiful. One, which I loved devotedly, was
kind, mild, forgiving, gay, and conscious of being those various
things. When he was in this frame of mind his whole exterior, the
very tone of his voice, his every movement, appeared to say: "I
am kind and good-natured, and rejoice in being so, and every one
can see that I so rejoice." The other of his two personalities--
one which I had only just begun to apprehend, and before the
majesty of which I bowed in spirit--was that of a man who was
cold, stern to himself and to others, proud, religious to the
point of fanaticism, and pedantically moral. At the present
moment he was, as I say, this second personality.
With that frankness which constituted a necessary condition of
our relations I told him, as soon as we entered the drozhki, how
much it depressed and hurt me to see him, on this my fete-day in
a frame of mind so irksome and disagreeable to me.
"What has upset you so?" I asked him. "Will you not tell me?"
"My dear Nicolas," was his slow reply as he gave his head a
nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have
given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no
reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in
exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all
there is to say about it."
"What a marvellously open, honourable character his is!" I
thought to myself, and dropped the subject.
We drove the rest of the way to Dubkoff's in silence. Dubkoff's
flat was an unusually fine one--or, at all events, so it seemed
to me. Everywhere were rugs, pictures, gardenias, striped
hangings, photographs, and curved settees, while on the walls
hung guns, pistols, pouches, and the mounted heads of wild
beasts. It was the appearance of this apartment which made me
aware whom, it was that Woloda had imitated in the scheme of his
own sitting-room. We found Dubkoff and Woloda engaged in cards,
while seated also at the table, and watching the game with close
attention, was a gentleman whom I did not know, but who appeared
to be of no great importance, judging by the modesty of his
attitude. Dubkoff himself was in a silk dressing-gown and soft
slippers, while Woloda--seated opposite him on a divan--was in his
shirtsleeves, as well as (to judge by his flushed face and the
impatient, cursory glance which he gave us for a second as he
looked up from the cards) much taken up with the game. On seeing
me, he reddened still more.
"Well, it is for you to deal," he remarked to Dubkoff. In an
instant I divined that he did not altogether relish my becoming
acquainted with the fact that he gambled. Yet his expression had
nothing in it of confusion--only a look which seemed to me to say:
"Yes, I play cards, and if you are surprised at that, it is only
because you are so young. There is nothing wrong about it--it is
a necessity at our age." Yes, I at once divined and understood
that.
Instead of dealing, however, Dubkoff rose and shook hands with
us; after which he bade us both be seated, and then offered us
pipes, which we declined.
"Here is our DIPLOMAT, then--the hero of the day!" he said to me,
"Good Lord! how you look like a colonel!"
"H-m!" I muttered in reply, though once more feeling a complacent
smile overspread my countenance.
I stood in that awe of Dubkoff which a sixteen-year-old boy
naturally feels for a twenty-seven-year-old man of whom his
elders say that he is a very clever young man who can dance well
and speak French, and who, though secretly despising one's youth,
endeavours to conceal the fact. Yet, despite my respect for him,
I somehow found it difficult and uncomfortable, throughout my
acquaintanceship with him, to look him in the eyes, I have since
remarked that there are three kinds of men whom I cannot face
easily, namely those who are much better than myself, those who
are much worse, and those between whom and myself there is a
mutual determination not to mention some particular thing of
which we are both aware. Dubkoff may have been a much better
fellow than myself, or he may have been a much worse; but the
point was that he lied very frequently without recognising the
fact that I was aware of his doing so, yet had determined not to
mention it.
"Let us play another round," said Woloda, hunching one shoulder
after the manner of Papa, and reshuffling the cards.
"How persistent you are!" said Dubkoff. "We can play all we want
to afterwards. Well, one more round, then."
During the play, I looked at their hands. Woloda's hands were
large and red, whilst in the crook of the thumb and the way in
which the other fingers curved themselves round the cards as he
held them they so exactly resembled Papa's that now and then I
could not help thinking that Woloda purposely held the cards thus
so as to look the more like a grownup. Yet the next moment,
looking at his face, I could see that he had not a thought in his
mind beyond the game. Dubkoff's hands, on the contrary, were
small, puffy, and inclined to clench themselves, as well as
extremely neat and small-fingered. They were just the kind of
hands which generally display rings, and which are most to be
seen on persons who are both inclined to use them and fond of
objets de vertu.
Woloda must have lost, for the gentleman who was watching the
play remarked that Vladimir Petrovitch had terribly bad luck,
while Dubkoff reached for a note book, wrote something in it, and
then, showing Woloda what he had written, said:
"Is that right?"
"Yes." said Woloda, glancing with feigned carelessness at the
note book. "Now let us go."
Woloda took Dubkoff, and I gave Dimitri a lift in my drozhki.
"What were they playing at?" I inquired of Dimitri.
"At piquet. It is a stupid game. In fact, all such games are
stupid."
"And were they playing for much?"
"No, not very much, but more than they ought to."
"Do you ever play yourself?"
"No; I swore never to do so; but Dubkoff will play with any one
he can get hold of."
"He ought not to do that," I remarked. "So Woloda does not play
so well as he does?"
"Perhaps Dubkoff ought not to, as you say, yet there is nothing
especially bad about it all. He likes playing, and plays well,
but he is a good fellow all the same."
"I had no idea of this," I said.
"We must not think ill of him," concluded Dimitri, "since he is a
simply splendid fellow. I like him very much, and always shall
like him, in spite of his weakness."
For some reason or another the idea occurred to me that, just
BECAUSE Dimitri stuck up so stoutly for Dubkoff, he neither liked
nor respected him in reality, but was determined, out of
stubbornness and a desire not to be accused of inconstancy, never
to own to the fact. He was one of those people who love their
friends their life long, not so much because those friends remain
always dear to them, as because, having once--possibly
mistakenly--liked a person, they look upon it as dishonourable to
cease ever to do so.
XV
I AM FETED AT DINNER
Dubkoff and Woloda knew every one at the restaurant by name, and
every one, from the waiters to the proprietor, paid them great
respect. No time was lost in allotting us a private room, where a
bottle of iced champagne-upon which I tried to look with as much
indifference as I could--stood ready waiting for us, and where we
were served with a most wonderful repast selected by Dubkoff from
the French menu. The meal went off most gaily and agreeably,
notwithstanding that Dubkoff, as usual, told us blood-curdling
tales of doubtful veracity (among others, a tale of how his
grandmother once shot dead three robbers who were attacking her--
a recital at which I blushed, closed my eyes, and turned away
from the narrator), and that Woloda reddened visibly whenever I
opened my mouth to speak--which was the more uncalled for on his
part, seeing that never once, so far as I can remember, did I say
anything shameful. After we had been given champagne, every one
congratulated me, and I drank "hands across" with Dimitri and
Dubkoff, and wished them joy. Since, however, I did not know to
whom the bottle of champagne belonged (it was explained to me
later that it was common property), I considered that, in return,
I ought to treat my friends out of the money which I had never
ceased to finger in my pocket. Accordingly, I stealthily extracted
a ten-rouble note, and, beckoning the waiter to my side, handed
him the money, and told him in a whisper (yet not so softly but
that every one could hear me, seeing that every one was staring
at me in dead silence) to "bring, if you please, a half-bottle of
champagne." At this Woloda reddened again, and began to fidget so
violently, and to gaze upon myself and every one else with such a
distracted air, that I felt sure I had somehow put my foot in it.
However, the half-bottle came, and we drank it with great gusto.
After that, things went on merrily. Dubkoff continued his
unending fairy tales, while Woloda also told funny stories--and
told them well, too--in a way I should never have credited him: so
that our laughter rang long and loud. Their best efforts lay in
imitation, and in variants of a certain well-known saw. "Have you
ever been abroad?" one would say to the other, for instance.
"No," the one interrogated would reply, "but my brother plays the
fiddle." Such perfection had the pair attained in this species of
comic absurdity that they could answer any question by its means,
while they would also endeavour to unite two absolutely
unconnected matters without a previous question having been asked
at all, yet say everything with a perfectly serious face and
produce a most comic effect. I too began to try to be funny, but
as soon as ever I spoke they either looked at me askance or did
not look at me until I had finished: so that my anecdotes fell
flat. Yet, though Dubkoff always remarked, "Our DIPLOMAT is
lying, brother," I felt so exhilarated with the champagne and the
company of my elders that the remark scarcely touched me. Only
Dimitri, though he drank level with the rest of us, continued in
the same severe, serious frame of mind--a fact which put a
certain check upon the general hilarity.
"Now, look here, gentlemen," said Dubkoff at last. "After dinner
we ought to take the DIPLOMAT in hand. How would it be for him to
go with us to see Auntie? There we could put him through his
paces."
"Ah, but Nechludoff will not go there," objected Woloda.
"O unbearable, insupportable man of quiet habits that you are!"
cried Dubkoff, turning to Dimitri. "Yet come with us, and you
shall see what an excellent lady my dear Auntie is."
"I will neither go myself nor let him go," replied Dimitri.
"Let whom go? The DIPLOMAT? Why, you yourself saw how he
brightened up at the very mention of Auntie."
"It is not so much that I WILL NOT LET HIM go," continued
Dimitri, rising and beginning to pace the room without looking at
me, "as that I neither wish him nor advise him to go. He is not a
child now, and if he must go he can go alone--without you. Surely
you are ashamed of this, Dubkoff?--ashamed of always wanting
others to do all the wrong things that you yourself do?"
"But what is there so very wrong in my inviting you all to come
and take a cup of tea with my Aunt?" said Dubkoff, with a wink at
Woloda. "If you don't like us going, it is your affair; yet we
are going all the same. Are you coming, Woloda?"
"Yes, yes," assented Woloda. "We can go there, and then return to
my rooms and continue our piquet."
"Do you want to go with them or not?" said Dimitri, approaching
me.
"No," I replied, at the same time making room for him to sit down
beside me on the divan. "I did not wish to go in any case, and
since you advise me not to, nothing on earth will make me go now.
Yet," I added a moment later, "I cannot honestly say that I have
NO desire to go. All I say is that I am glad I am not going."
"That is right," he said. "Live your own life, and do not dance
to any one's piping. That is the better way."
This little tiff not only failed to mar our hilarity, but even
increased it. Dimitri suddenly reverted to the kindly mood which
I loved best--so great (as I afterwards remarked on more than one
occasion) was the influence which the consciousness of having
done a good deed exercised upon him. At the present moment the
source of his satisfaction was the fact that he had stopped my
expedition to "Auntie's." He grew extraordinarily gay, called for
another bottle of champagne (which was against his rules),
invited some one who was a perfect stranger into our room, plied
him with wine, sang "Gaudeamus igitur," requested every one to
join him in the chorus, and proposed that we should and rink at
the Sokolniki. [Mews.]
"Let us enjoy ourselves to-night," he said with a laugh. "It is
in honour of his matriculation that you now see me getting drunk
for the first time in my life."
Yet somehow this merriment sat ill upon him. He was like some
good-natured father or tutor who is pleased with his young
charges, and lets himself go for their amusement, yet at the same
time tries to show them that one can enjoy oneself decently and
in an honourable manner. However, his unexpected gaiety had an
infectious influence upon myself and my companions, and the more
so because each of us had now drunk about half a bottle of
champagne.
It was in this pleasing frame of mind that I went out into the
main salon to smoke a cigarette which Dubkoff had given me. In
rising I noticed that my head seemed to swim a little, and that
my legs and arms retained their natural positions only when I
bent my thoughts determinedly upon them. At other moments my legs
would deviate from the straight line, and my arms describe
strange gestures. I concentrated my whole attention upon the
members in question, forced my hands first to raise themselves
and button my tunic, and then to smooth my hair (though they
ruffled my locks in doing so), and lastly commanded my legs to
march me to the door--a function which they duly performed,
though at one time with too much reluctance, and at another with
too much ABANDON (the left leg, in particular, coming to a halt
every moment on tiptoe). Some one called out to me, "Where are
you going to? They will bring you a cigar-light directly," but I
guessed the voice to be Woloda's, and, feeling satisfied,
somehow, that I had succeeded in divining the fact, merely smiled
airily in reply, and continued on my way.
XVI
THE QUARREL
In the main salon I perceived sitting at a small table a short,
squat gentleman of the professional type. He had a red moustache,
and was engaged in eating something or another, while by his side
sat a tall, clean-shaven individual with whom he was carrying on
a conversation in French. Somehow the aspect of these two persons
displeased me; yet I decided, for all that, to light my cigarette
at the candelabrum which was standing before them. Looking from
side to side, to avoid meeting their gaze, I approached the
table, and applied my cigarette to the flame. When it was fairly
alight, I involuntarily threw a glance at the gentleman who was
eating, and found his grey eyes fixed upon me with an expression
of intense displeasure. Just as I was turning away his red
moustache moved a little, and he said in French:
"I do not like people to smoke when I am dining, my good sir."
I murmured something inaudible.
"No, I do not like it at all," he went on sternly, and with a
glance at his clean-shaven companion, as though inviting him to
admire the way in which he was about to deal with me. "I do not
like it, my good sir, nor do I like people who have the impudence
to puff their smoke up one's very nose."
By this time I had gathered that it was myself he was scolding,
and at first felt as though I had been altogether in the wrong,
"I did not mean to inconvenience you," I said.
"Well, if you did not suppose you were being impertinent, at
least I did! You are a cad, young sir!" he shouted in reply.
"But what right have you to shout at me like that?" I exclaimed,
feeling that it was now HE that was insulting ME, and growing
angry accordingly.
"This much right," he replied, "that I never allow myself to be
overlooked by any one, and that I always teach young fellows like
yourself their manners. What is your name, young sir, and where
do you live?"
At this I felt so hurt that my teeth chattered, and I felt as
though I were choking. Yet all the while I was conscious of being
in the wrong, and so, instead of offering any further rudeness to
the offended one, humbly told him my name and address.
"And MY name, young sir," he returned, "is Kolpikoff, and I will
trouble you to be more polite to me in future.--However, You will
hear from me again" ("vous aurez de mes nouvelles"--the
conversation had been carried on wholly in French), was his
concluding remark.
To this I replied, "I shall be delighted," with an infusion of as
much hauteur as I could muster into my tone. Then, turning on my
heel, I returned with my cigarette--which had meanwhile gone out--
to our own room.
I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what
had happened (and the more so because they were at that moment
engaged in a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to
think over the strange affair. The words, "You are a cad, young
sir," vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my
ears. My tipsiness was gone now, and, in considering my conduct
during the dispute, the uncomfortable thought came over me that I
had behaved like a coward.
"Yet what right had he to attack me?" I reflected. "Why did he
not simply intimate to me that I was annoying him? After all, it
may have been he that was in the wrong. Why, too, when he called
me a young cad, did I not say to him, 'A cad, my good sir, is one
who takes offence'? Or why did I not simply tell him to hold his
tongue? That would have been the better course. Or why did I not
challenge him to a duel? No, I did none of those things, but
swallowed his insults like a wretched coward."
Still the words, "You are a cad, young sir," kept sounding in my
ears with maddening iteration. "I cannot leave things as they
are," I at length decided as I rose to my feet with the fixed
intention of returning to the gentleman and saying something
outrageous to him--perhaps, also, of breaking the candelabrum
over his head if occasion offered. Yet, though I considered the
advisability of this last measure with some pleasure, it was not
without a good deal of trepidation that I re-entered the main
salon. As luck would have it, M. Kolpikoff was no longer there,
but only a waiter engaged in clearing the table. For a moment I
felt like telling the waiter the whole story, and explaining to
him my innocence in the matter, but for some reason or another I
thought better of it, and once more returned, in the same hazy
condition of mind, to our own room.
"What has become of our DIPLOMAT?" Dubkoff was just saying. "Upon
him now hang the fortunes of Europe."
"Oh, leave me alone," I said, turning moodily away. Then, as I
paced the room, something made me begin to think that Dubkoff was
not altogether a good fellow. "There is nothing very much to
admire in his eternal jokes and his nickname of 'DIPLOMAT,'" I
reflected. "All he thinks about is to win money from Woloda and
to go and see his 'Auntie.' There is nothing very nice in all
that. Besides, everything he says has a touch of blackguardism in
it, and he is forever trying to make people laugh. In my opinion
he is simply stupid when he is not absolutely a brute." I spent
about five minutes in these reflections, and felt my enmity
towards Dubkoff continually increasing. For his part, he took no
notice of me, and that angered me the more. I actually felt vexed
with Woloda and Dimitri because they went on talking to him.
"I tell you what, gentlemen: the DIPLOMAT ought to be
christened," said Dubkoff suddenly, with a glance and a smile
which seemed to me derisive, and even treacherous. "Yet, 0 Lord,
what a poor specimen he is!"
"You yourself ought to be christened, and you yourself are a
sorry specimen!" I retorted with an evil smile, and actually
forgetting to address him as "thou." [In Russian as in French,
the second person singular is the form of speech used between
intimate friends.]
This reply evidently surprised Dubkoff, but he turned away good-
humouredly, and went on talking to Woloda and Dimitri. I tried to
edge myself into the conversation, but, since I felt that I could
not keep it up, I soon returned to my corner, and remained there
until we left.
When the bill had been paid and wraps were being put on, Dubkoff
turned to Dimitri and said: "Whither are Orestes and Pedalion
going now? Home, I suppose, to talk about love. Well, let US go
and see my dear Auntie. That will be far more entertaining than
your sour company."
"How dare you speak like that, and laugh at us?" I burst out as I
approached him with clenched fists. "How dare you laugh at
feelings which you do not understand? I will not have you do it!
Hold your tongue!" At this point I had to hold my own, for I did
not know what to say next, and was, moreover, out of breath with
excitement. At first Dubkoff was taken aback, but presently he
tried to laugh it off, and to take it as a joke. Finally I was
surprised to see him look crestfallen, and lower his eyes.
"I NEVER laugh at you or your feelings. It is merely my way of
speaking," he said evasively.
"Indeed?" I cried; yet the next moment I felt ashamed of myself
and sorry for him, since his flushed, downcast face had in it no
other expression than one of genuine pain.
"What is the matter with you?" said Woloda and Dimitri
simultaneously. "No one was trying to insult you."
"Yes, he DID try to insult me!" I replied.
"What an extraordinary fellow your brother is!" said Dubkoff to
Woloda. At that moment he was passing out of the door, and could
not have heard what I said. Possibly I should have flung myself
after him and offered him further insult, had it not been that
just at that moment the waiter who had witnessed my encounter
with Kolpikoff handed me my greatcoat, and I at once quietened
down--merely making such a pretence of having had a difference
with Dimitri as was necessary to make my sudden appeasement
appear nothing extraordinary. Next day, when I met Dubkoff at
Woloda's, the quarrel was not raked up, yet he and I still
addressed each other as "you," and found it harder than ever to
look one another in the face.
The remembrance of my scene with Kolpikoff--who, by the way,
never sent me "de ses nouvelles," either the following day or any
day afterwards--remained for years a keen and unpleasant memory.
Even so much as five years after it had happened I would begin
fidgeting and muttering to myself whenever I remembered the
unavenged insult, and was fain to comfort myself with the
satisfaction of recollecting the sort of young fellow I had shown
myself to be in my subsequent affair with Dubkoff. In fact, it
was only later still that I began to regard the matter in another
light, and both to recall with comic appreciation my passage of
arms with Kolpikoff, and to regret the undeserved affront which I
had offered my good friend Dubkoff.
When, at a later hour on the evening of the dinner, I told
Dimitri of my affair with Kolpikoff, whose exterior I described
in detail, he was astounded.
"That is the very man!" he cried. "Don't you know that this
precious Kolpikoff is a known scamp and sharper, as well as,
above all things, a coward, and that he was expelled from his
regiment by his brother officers because, having had his face
slapped, he would not fight? But how came you to let him get
away?" he added, with a kindly smile and glance. "Surely he could
not have said more to you than he did when he called you a cad?"
"No," I admitted with a blush.
"Well, it was not right, but there is no great harm done," said
Dimitri consolingly.
Long afterwards, when thinking the matter over at leisure, I
suddenly came to the conclusion that it was quite possible that
Kolpikoff took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon me
the slap in the face which he had once received, just as I myself
took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon the innocent
Dubkoff the epithet "cad" which Kolpikoff had just applied to me.
XVII
I GET READY TO PAY SOME CALLS
On awaking next morning my first thoughts were of the affair with
Kolpikoff. Once again I muttered to myself and stamped about the
room, but there was no help for it. To-day was the last day that
I was to spend in Moscow, and it was to be spent, by Papa's
orders, in my paying a round of calls which he had written out
for me on a piece of paper--his first solicitude on our account
being not so much for our morals or our education as for our due
observance of the convenances. On the piece of paper was written
in his swift, broken hand-writing: "(1) Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
WITHOUT FAIL; (2) the Iwins WITHOUT FAIL; (3) Prince Michael; (4)
the Princess Nechludoff and Madame Valakhina if you wish." Of
course I was also to call upon my guardian, upon the rector, and
upon the professors.
These last-mentioned calls, however, Dimitri advised me not to
pay: saying that it was not only unnecessary to do so, but not
the thing. However, there were the other visits to be got
through. It was the first two on the list--those marked as to be
paid "WITHOUT FAIL"--that most alarmed me. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a
bachelor. Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation
between him and myself--myself a sixteen-year-old student!--was
not likely to be interesting. As for the Iwins, they too were
rich--the father being a departmental official of high rank who
had only on one occasion called at our house during my
grandmother's time. Since her death, I had remarked that the
younger Iwin had fought shy of us, and seemed to give himself
airs. The elder of the pair, I had heard, had now finished his
course in jurisprudence, and gone to hold a post in St.
Petersburg, while his brother Sergius (the former object of my
worship) was also in St. Petersburg, as a great fat cadet in the
Corps of Pages.
When I was a young man, not only did I dislike intercourse with
people who thought themselves above me, but such intercourse was,
for me, an unbearable torture, owing partly to my constant dread
of being snubbed, and partly to my straining every faculty of my
intellect to prove to such people my independence. Yet, even if I
failed to fulfil the latter part of my father's instructions, I
felt that I must carry out the former. I paced my room and eyed
my clothes ready disposed on chairs--the tunic, the sword, and
the cap. Just as I was about to set forth, old Grap called to
congratulate me, bringing with him Ilinka. Grap pere was a
Russianised German and an intolerably effusive, sycophantic old
man who was more often than not tipsy. As a rule, he visited us
only when he wanted to ask for something, and although Papa
sometimes entertained him in his study, old Grap never came to
dinner with us. With his subserviency and begging propensities
went such a faculty of good-humour and a power of making himself
at home that every one looked upon his attachment to us as a
great honour. For my part, however, I never liked him, and felt
ashamed when he was speaking.
I was much put out by the arrival of these visitors, and made no
effort to conceal the fact. Upon Ilinka I had been so used to
look down, and he so used to recognise my right to do so, that it
displeased me to think that he was now as much a matriculated
student as myself. In some way he appeared to me to have made a
POINT of attaining that equality. I greeted the pair coldly, and,
without offering them any refreshment (since it went against the
grain to do so, and I thought they could ask for anything, if
they wanted it, without my first inviting them to state their
requirements), gave orders for the drozhki to be got ready.
Ilinka was a good-natured, extremely moral, and far from stupid
young fellow; yet, for all that, what people call a person of
moods. That is to say, for no apparent reason he was for ever in
some PRONOUNCED frame of mind--now lachrymose, now frivolous, now
touchy on the very smallest point. At the present moment he
appeared to be in the last-named mood. He kept looking from his
father to myself without speaking, except when directly
addressed, at which times he smiled the self-deprecatory, forced
smile under which he was accustomed to conceal his feelings, and
more especially that feeling of shame for his father which he
must have experienced in our house.
"So, Nicolas Petrovitch," the old man said to me, following me
everywhere about the room as I went through the operation of
dressing, while all the while his fat fingers kept turning over
and over a silver snuff-box with which my grandmother had once
presented me, "as soon as ever I heard from my son that you had
passed your examinations so well (though of course your abilities
are well-known to everyone), I at once came to congratulate you,
my dear boy. Why, I have carried you on my shoulders before now,
and God knows that I love you as though you were my own son. My
Ilinka too has always been fond of you, and feels quite at home
with you."
Meanwhile the said Ilinka remained sitting silently by the
window, apparently absorbed in contemplation of my three-cornered
cap, and every now and then angrily muttering something in an
undertone.
"Now, I also wanted to ask you, Nicolas Petrovitch." His father
went on, "whether my son did well in the examinations? He tells
me that he is going to be in the same faculty as yourself, and
that therefore you will be able to keep an eye on him, and advise
him, and so on."
"Oh, yes, I suppose he passed well," I replied, with a glance at
Ilinka, who, conscious of my gaze, reddened violently and ceased
to move his lips about.
"And might he spend the day with you?" was the father's next
request, which he made with a deprecatory smile, as though he
stood in actual awe of me, yet always keeping so close to me,
wherever I moved, that the fumes of the drink and tobacco in
which he had been indulging were constantly perceptible to my
nostrils. I felt greatly vexed at his placing me in such a false
position towards his son, as well as at his distracting my
attention from what was, to me, a highly important operation--
namely, the operation of dressing; while, over and above all, I
was annoyed by the smell of liquor with which he followed me
about. Accordingly, I said very coldly that I could not have the
pleasure of Ilinka's company that day, since I should be out.
"Ah! I suppose you are going to see your sister?" put in Ilinka
with a smile, but without looking at me. "Well, I too have
business to attend to." At this I felt even more put out, as well
as pricked with compunction; so, to soften my refusal a little, I
hastened to say that the reason why I should not be at home that
day was that I had to call upon the PRINCE Ivan Ivanovitch, the
PRINCESS Kornakoff, and the Monsieur Iwin who held such an
influential post, as well as, probably, to dine with the PRINCESS
Nechludoff (for I thought that, on learning what important folk I
was in the habit of mixing with, the Graps would no longer think
it worth while to pretend to me). However, just as they were
leaving, I invited Ilinka to come and see me another day; but he
only murmured something unintelligible, and it was plain that he
meant never to set foot in the house again.
When they had departed, I set off on my round of calls. Woloda,
whom I had asked that morning to come with me, in order that I
might not feel quite so shy as when altogether alone, had
declined on the ground that for two brothers to be seen driving
in one drozhki would appear so horribly "proper."
XVIII
THE VALAKHIN FAMILY
Accordingly I set off alone. My first call on the route lay at
the Valakhin mansion. It was now three years since I had seen
Sonetchka, and my love for her had long become a thing of the
past, yet there still lingered in my heart a sort of clear,
touching recollection of our bygone childish affection. At
intervals, also, during those three years, I had found myself
recalling her memory with such force and vividness that I had
actually shed tears, and imagined myself to be in love with her
again, but those occasions had not lasted more than a few minutes
at a time, and had been long in recurring.
I knew that Sonetchka and her mother had been abroad--that, in
fact, they had been so for the last two years. Also, I had heard
that they had been in a carriage accident, and that Sonetchka's
face had been so badly cut with the broken glass that her beauty
was marred. As I drove to their house, I kept recalling the old
Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when
I met her. Somehow I imagined that, after her two years' sojourn
abroad, she would look very tall, with a beautiful waist, and,
though sedate and imposing, extremely attractive. Somehow, also,
my imagination refused to picture her with her face disfigured
with scars, but, on the contrary, since I had read somewhere of a
lover who remained true to his adored one in spite of her
disfigurement with smallpox, strove to imagine that I was in love
with Sonetchka, for the purpose of priding myself on holding to
my troth in spite of her scars--Yet, as a matter of fact, I was
not really in love with her during that drive, but having once
stirred up in myself old MEMORIES of love, felt PREPARED to fall
into that condition, and the more so because, of late, my
conscience had often been pricking me for having discarded so
many of my old flames.
The Valakhins lived in a neat little wooden mansion approached by
a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity
in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page.
He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there
was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran
off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in
solitude in this gloomy place, out of which, in addition to the
front door and the corridor, there only opened a door which at
the moment was closed. Rather surprised at the dismal appearance
of the house, I came to the conclusion that the reason was that
its inmates were still abroad. After five minutes, however, the
door leading into the salon was opened by the page boy, who then
conducted me into a neat, but not richly furnished, drawing-room,
where presently I was joined by Sonetchka.
She was now seventeen years old, and very small and thin, as well
as of an unhealthy pallor of face. No scars at all were visible,
however, and the beautiful, prominent eyes and bright, cheerful
smile were the same as I had known and loved in my childhood. I
had not expected her to look at all like this, and therefore
could not at once lavish upon her the sentiment which I had been
preparing on the way. She gave me her hand in the English fashion
(which was then as much a novelty as a door-bell), and, bestowing
upon mine a frank squeeze, sat down on the sofa by my side.
"Ah! how glad I am to see you, my dear Nicolas!" she said as she
looked me in the face with an expression of pleasure so sincere
that in the words "my dear Nicolas" I caught the purely friendly
rather than the patronising note. To my surprise she seemed to me
simpler, kinder, and more sisterly after her foreign tour than
she had been before it. True, I could now see that she had two
small scars between her nose and temples, but her wonderful eyes
and smile fitted in exactly with my recollections, and shone as
of old.
"But how greatly you have changed!" she went on. "You are quite
grown-up now. And I-I-well, what do you think of me?"
"I should never have known you," I replied, despite the fact that
at the moment I was thinking that I should have known her
anywhere and always.
"Why? Am I grown so ugly?" she inquired with a movement of her
head.
"Oh, no, decidedly not!" I hastened to reply. "But you have grown
taller and older. As for being uglier, why, you are even--
"Yes, yes; never mind. Do you remember our dances and games, and
St. Jerome, and Madame Dorat?" (As a matter of fact, I could not
recollect any Madame Dorat, but saw that Sonetchka was being led
away by the joy of her childish recollections, and mixing them up
a little). "Ah! what a lovely time it was!" she went on--and once
more there shone before me the same eyes and smile as I had
always carried in my memory. While she had been speaking, I had
been thinking over my position at the present moment, and had
come to the conclusion that I was in love with her. The instant,
however, that I arrived at that result my careless, happy mood
vanished, a mist seemed to arise before me which concealed even
her eyes and smile, and, blushing hotly, I became tongue-tied and
ill-at-ease.
"But times are different now," she went on with a sigh and a
little lifting of her eyebrows. "Everything seems worse than it
used to be, and ourselves too. Is it not so, Nicolas?"
I could return her no answer, but sat silently looking at her.
"Where are those Iwins and Kornakoffs now? Do you remember them?"
she continued, looking, I think, with some curiosity at my
blushing, downcast countenance. "What splendid times we used to
have!"
Still I could not answer her.
The next moment, I was relieved from this awkward position by the
entry of old Madame Valakhin into the room. Rising, I bowed, and
straightway recovered my faculty of speech. On the other hand, an
extraordinary change now took place in Sonetchka. All her gaiety
and bonhomie disappeared, her smile became quite a different one,
and, except for the point of her shortness of stature, she became
just the lady from abroad whom I had expected to find in her. Yet
for this change there was no apparent reason, since her mother
smiled every whit as pleasantly, and expressed in her every
movement just the same benignity, as of old. Seating herself in
her arm-chair, the old lady signed to me to come and sit beside
her; after which she said something to her daughter in English,
and Sonetchka left the room--a fact which still further helped to
relieve me. Madame then inquired after my father and brother, and
passed on to speak of her great bereavement--the loss of her
husband. Presently, however, she seemed to become sensible of the
fact that I was not helping much in the conversation, for she
gave me a look as much as to say: "If, now, my dear boy, you were
to get up, to take your leave, and to depart, it would be well."
But a curious circumstance had overtaken me. While she had been
speaking of her bereavement, I had recalled to myself, not only
the fact that I was in love, but the probability that the mother
knew of it: whereupon such a fit of bashfulness had come upon me
that I felt powerless to put any member of my body to its
legitimate use. I knew that if I were to rise and walk I should
have to think where to plant each foot, what to do with my head,
what with my hands, and so on. In a word, I foresaw that I should
be very much as I had been on the night when I partook too freely
of champagne, and therefore, since I felt uncertain of being able
to manage myself if I DID rise, I ended by feeling UNABLE to
rise. Meanwhile, I should say, Sonetchka had returned to the room
with her work, and seated herself in a far corner--a corner
whence, as I was nevertheless sensible, she could observe me.
Madame must have felt some surprise as she gazed at my crimson
face and noted my complete immobility, but I decided that it was
better to continue sitting in that absurd position than to risk
something unpleasant by getting up and walking. Thus I sat on and
on, in the hope that some unforeseen chance would deliver me from
my predicament. That unforeseen chance at length presented itself
in the person of an unforeseen young man, who entered the room
with an air of being one of the household, and bowed to me
politely as he did so: whereupon Madame rose, excused herself to
me for having to speak with her "homme d'affaires," and finally
gave me a glance which said: "Well, if you DO mean to go on
sitting there for ever, at least I can't drive you away."
Accordingly, with a great effort I also rose, but, finding it
impossible to do any leave-taking, moved away towards the door,
followed by the pitying glances of mother and daughter. All at
once I stumbled over a chair, although it was lying quite out of
my route: the reason for my stumbling being that my whole
attention was centred upon not tripping over the carpet. Driving
through the fresh air, however--where at first I muttered and
fidgeted about so much that Kuzma, my coachman, asked me what was
the matter--I soon found this feeling pass away, and began to
meditate quietly concerning my love for Sonetchka and her
relations with her mother, which had appeared to me rather
strange. When, afterwards, I told my father that mother and
daughter had not seemed on the best of terms with one another, he
said:
"Yes, Madame leads the poor girl an awful life with her meanness.
Yet," added my father with a greater display of feeling than a
man might naturally conceive for a mere relative, "she used to be
such an original, dear, charming woman! I cannot think what has
made her change so much. By the way, you didn't notice a
secretary fellow about, did you? Fancy a Russian lady having an
affaire with a secretary!"
"Yes, I saw him," I replied.
"And was he at least good-looking?"
"No, not at all."
"It is extraordinary!" concluded Papa, with a cough and an
irritable hoist of his shoulder.
"Well, I am in love!" was my secret thought to myself as I drove
along in my drozhki.
XIX
THE KORNAKOFFS
MY second call on the route lay at the Kornakoffs', who lived on
the first floor of a large mansion facing the Arbat. The
staircase of the building looked extremely neat and orderly, yet
in no way luxurious--being lined only with drugget pinned down
with highly-polished brass rods. Nowhere were there any flowers
or mirrors to be seen. The salon, too, with its polished floor,
which I traversed on my way to the drawing-room, was decorated in
the same cold, severe, unostentatious style. Everything in it
looked bright and solid, but not new, and pictures, flower-
stands, and articles of bric-a-brac were wholly absent. In the
drawing-room I found some of the young princesses seated, but
seated with the sort of correct, "company" air about them which
gave one the impression that they sat like that only when guests
were expected.
"Mamma will be here presently," the eldest of them said to me as
she seated herself by my side. For the next quarter of an hour,
this young lady entertained me with such an easy flow of small-
talk that the conversation never flagged a moment. Yet somehow
she made so patent the fact that she was just entertaining me
that I felt not altogether pleased. Amongst other things, she
told me that their brother Stephen (whom they called Etienne, and
who had been two years at the College of Cadets) had now received
his commission. Whenever she spoke of him, and more particularly
when she told me that he had flouted his mother's wishes by
entering the Hussars, she assumed a nervous air, and immediately
her sisters, sitting there in silence, also assumed a nervous
air. When, again, she spoke of my grandmother's death, she
assumed a MOURNFUL air, and immediately the others all did the
same. Finally, when she recalled how I had once struck St. Jerome
and been expelled from the room, she laughed and showed her bad
teeth, and immediately all the other princesses laughed and
showed their bad teeth too.
Next, the Princess-Mother herself entered--a little dried-up
woman, with a wandering glance and a habit of always looking at
somebody else when she was addressing one. Taking my hand, she
raised her own to my lips for me to kiss it--which otherwise, not
supposing it to be necessary, I should not have done.
"How pleased I am to see you!" she said with her usual clearness
of articulation as she gazed at her daughters. "And how like your
mother you look! Does he not, Lise?"
Lise assented, though I knew for a fact that I did not resemble
my mother in the least.
"And what a grown-up you have become! My Etienne, you will
remember, is your second cousin. No, not second cousin--what is
it, Lise? My mother was Barbara Dimitrievna, daughter of Dimitri
Nicolaevitch, and your grandmother was Natalia Nicolaevna."
"Then he is our THIRD cousin, Mamma," said the eldest girl.
"Oh, how you always confuse me!" was her mother's angry reply.
"Not third cousin, but COUSIN GERMAN--that is your relationship
to Etienne. He is an officer now. Did you know it? It is not well
that he should have his own way too much. You young men need
keeping in hand, or--! Well, you are not vexed because your old
aunt tells you the plain truth? I always kept Etienne strictly in
hand, for I found it necessary to do so."
"Yes, that is how our relationship stands," she went on. "Prince
Ivan Ivanovitch is my uncle, and your late mother's uncle also.
Consequently I must have been your mother's first cousin--no,
second cousin. Yes, that is it. Tell me, have you been to call on
Prince Ivan yet?"
I said no, but that I was just going to.
"Ah, is it possible?" she cried. "Why, you ought to have paid him
the first call of all! Surely you know that he stands to you in
the position of a father? He has no children of his own, and his
only heirs are yourself and my children. You ought to pay him all
possible deference, both because of his age, and because of his
position in the world, and because of everything else. I know
that you young fellows of the present day think nothing of
relationships and are not fond of old men, yet do you listen to
me, your old aunt, for I am fond of you, and was fond of your
mother, and had a great--a very great-liking and respect for your
grandmother. You must not fail to call upon him on any account."
I said that I would certainly go, and since my present call
seemed to me to have lasted long enough, I rose, and was about to
depart, but she restrained me.
"No, wait a minute," she cried. "Where is your father, Lise? Go
and tell him to come here. He will be so glad to see you," she
added, turning to me.
Two minutes later Prince Michael entered. He was a short, thick-
set gentleman, very slovenly dressed and ill-shaven, yet wearing
such an air of indifference that he looked almost a fool. He was
not in the least glad to see me--at all events he did not intimate
that he was; but the Princess (who appeared to stand in
considerable awe of him) hastened to say:
"Is not Woldemar here" (she seemed to have forgotten my name)
"exactly like his mother?" and she gave her husband a glance
which forced him to guess what she wanted. Accordingly he
approached me with his usual passionless, half-discontented
expression, and held out to me an unshaven cheek to kiss.
"Why, you are not dressed yet, though you have to go out soon!"
was the Princess's next remark to him in the angry tone which she
habitually employed in conversation with her domestics. "It will
only mean your offending some one again, and trying to set people
against you."
"In a moment, in a moment, mother," said Prince Michael, and
departed. I also made my bows and departed.
This was the first time I had heard of our being related to
Prince Ivan Ivanovitch, and the news struck me unpleasantly.
XX
THE IWINS
As for the prospect of my call upon the Prince, it seemed even
more unpleasant. However, the order of my route took me first to
the Iwins, who lived in a large and splendid mansion in Tverskaia
Street. It was not without some nervousness that I entered the
great portico where a Swiss major-domo stood armed with his staff
of office.
To my inquiry as to whether any one was at home he replied: "Whom
do you wish to see, sir? The General's son is within."
"And the General himself?" I asked with forced assurance.
"I must report to him your business first. What may it be, sir?"
said the major-domo as he rang a bell. Immediately the gaitered
legs of a footman showed themselves on the staircase above;
whereupon I was seized with such a fit of nervousness that I
hastily bid the lacquey say nothing about my presence to the
General, since I would first see his son. By the time I had
reached the top of the long staircase, I seemed to have grown
extremely small (metaphorically, I mean, not actually), and had
very much the same feeling within me as had possessed my soul
when my drozhki drew up to the great portico, namely, a feeling
as though drozhki, horse, and coachman had all of them grown
extremely small too. I found the General's son lying asleep on a
sofa, with an open book before him. His tutor, Monsieur Frost,
under whose care he still pursued his studies at home, had
entered behind me with a sort of boyish tread, and now awoke his
pupil. Iwin evinced no particular pleasure at seeing me, while I
also seemed to notice that, while talking to me, he kept looking
at my eyebrows. Although he was perfectly polite, I conceived
that he was "entertaining" me much as the Princess Valakhin had
done, and that he not only felt no particular liking for me, but
even that he considered my acquaintance in no way necessary to
one who possessed his own circle of friends. All this arose out
of the idea that he was regarding my eyebrows. In short, his
bearing towards me appeared to be (as I recognised with an
awkward sensation) very much the same as my own towards Ilinka
Grap. I began to feel irritated, and to interpret every fleeting
glance which he cast at Monsieur Frost as a mute inquiry: "Why
has this fellow come to see me?"
After some conversation he remarked that his father and mother
were at home. Would I not like to visit them too?
"First I will go and dress myself," he added as he departed to
another room, notwithstanding that he had seemed to be perfectly
well dressed (in a new frockcoat and white waistcoat) in the
present one. A few minutes later he reappeared in his University
uniform, buttoned up to the chin, and we went downstairs
together. The reception rooms through which we passed were lofty
and of great size, and seemed to be richly furnished with marble
and gilt ornaments, chintz-covered settees, and a number of
mirrors. Presently Madame Iwin met us, and we went into a little
room behind the drawing-room, where, welcoming me in very
friendly fashion, she seated herself by my side, and began to
inquire after my relations.
Closer acquaintance with Madame (whom I had seen only twice
before, and that but for a moment on each occasion) impressed me
favourably. She was tall, thin, and very pale, and looked as
though she suffered from chronic depression and fatigue. Yet,
though her smile was a sad one, it was very kind, and her large,
mournful eyes, with a slight cast in their vision, added to the
pathos and attractiveness of her expression. Her attitude, while
not precisely that of a hunchback, made her whole form droop,
while her every movement expressed languor. Likewise, though her
speech was deliberate, the timbre of her voice, and the manner in
which she lisped her r's and l's, were very pleasing to the ear.
Finally, she did not "ENTERTAIN" me. Unfortunately, the answers
which I returned to her questions concerning my relations seemed
to afford her a painful interest, and to remind her of happier
days: with the result that when, presently, her son left the
room, she gazed at me in silence for a moment, and then burst
into tears. As I sat there in mute bewilderment, I could not
conceive what I had said to bring this about. At first I felt
sorry for her as she sat there weeping with downcast eyes. Next
I began to think to myself: "Ought I not to try and comfort her,
and how ought that to be done?" Finally, I began to feel vexed
with her for placing me in such an awkward position. "Surely my
appearance is not so moving as all that?" I reflected. "Or is she
merely acting like this to see what I shall do under the
circumstances?"
"Yet it would not do for me to go," I continued to myself, for
that would look too much as though I were fleeing to escape her
tears." Accordingly I began fidgeting about on my seat, in order
to remind her of my presence.
"Oh, how foolish of me!" at length she said, as she gazed at me
for a moment and tried to smile. "There are days when one weeps
for no reason whatever." She felt about for her handkerchief, and
then burst out weeping more violently than before.
"Oh dear! How silly of me to be for ever crying like this! Yet I
was so fond of your mother! We were such friends! We-we--"
At this point she found her handkerchief, and, burying her face
in it, went on crying. Once more I found myself in the same
protracted dilemma. Though vexed, I felt sorry for her, since her
tears appeared to be genuine--even though I also had an idea that
it was not so much for my mother that she was weeping as for the
fact that she was unhappy, and had known happier days. How it
would all have ended I do not know, had not her son reappeared
and said that his father desired to see her. Thereupon she rose,
and was just about to leave the room, when the General himself
entered. He was a small, grizzled, thick-set man, with bushy
black eyebrows, a grey, close-cropped head, and a very stern,
haughty expression of countenance.
I rose and bowed to him, but the General (who was wearing three
stars on his green frockcoat) not only made no response to my
salutation, but scarcely even looked at me; so that all at once I
felt as though I were not a human being at all, but only some
negligible object such as a settee or window; or, if I were a
human being, as though I were quite indistinguishable from such a
negligible object.
"Then you have not yet written to the Countess, my dear?" he said
to his wife in French, and with an imperturbable, yet determined,
expression on his countenance.
"Good-bye, Monsieur Irtenieff," Madame said to me, in her turn,
as she made a proud gesture with her head and looked at my
eyebrows just as her son had done. I bowed to her, and again to
her husband, but my second salutation made no more impression
upon him than if a window had just been opened or closed.
Nevertheless the younger Iwin accompanied me to the door, and on
the way told me that he was to go to St. Petersburg University,
since his father had been appointed to a post in that city (and
young Iwin named a very high office in the service).
"Well, his Papa may do whatsoever he likes," I muttered to myself
as I climbed into the drozhki, "but at all events I will never
set foot in that house again. His wife weeps and looks at me as
though I were the embodiment of woe, while that old pig of a
General does not even give me a bow. However, I will get even
with him some day." How I meant to do that I do not know, but my
words nevertheless came true.
Afterwards, I frequently found it necessary to remember the advice
of my father when he said that I must cultivate the
acquaintanceship of the Iwins, and not expect a man in the
position of General Iwin to pay any attention to a boy like
myself. But I had figured in that position long enough.
XXI
PRINCE IVAN IVANOVITCH
"Now for the last call--the visit to Nikitskaia Street," I said
to Kuzma, and we started for Prince Ivan Ivanovitch's mansion.
Towards the end, a round of calls usually brings one a certain
amount of self-assurance: consequently I was approaching the
Prince's abode in quite a tranquil frame of mind, when suddenly I
remembered the Princess Kornakoff's words that I was his heir,
and at the same moment caught sight of two carriages waiting at
the portico. Instantly, my former nervousness returned.
Both the old major-domo who opened the door to me, and the
footman who took my coat, and the two male and three female
visitors whom I found in the drawing-room, and, most of all,
Prince Ivan Ivanovitch himself (whom I found clad in a "company"
frockcoat and seated on a sofa) seemed to look at me as at an
HEIR, and so to eye me with ill-will. Yet the Prince was very
gracious and, after kissing me (that is to say, after pressing
his cold, dry, flabby lips to my cheek for a second), asked me
about my plans and pursuits, jested with me, inquired whether I
still wrote verses of the kind which I used to indite in honour
of my grandmother's birthdays, and invited me to dine with him
that day. Nevertheless, in proportion as he grew the kinder, the
more did I feel persuaded that his civility was only intended to
conceal from me the fact that he disliked the idea of my being
his heir. He had a custom (due to his false teeth, of which his
mouth possessed a complete set) of raising his upper lip a little
as he spoke, and producing a slight whistling sound from it; and
whenever, on the present occasion, he did so it seemed to me that
he was saying to himself: "A boy, a boy--I know it! And my heir,
too--my heir!"
When we were children, we had been used to calling the Prince
"dear Uncle;" but now, in my capacity of heir, I could not bring
my tongue to the phrase, while to say "Your Highness," as did one
of the other visitors, seemed derogatory to my self-esteem.
Consequently, never once during that visit did I call him anything
at all. The personage, however, who most disturbed me was the old
Princess who shared with me the position of prospective
inheritor, and who lived in the Prince's house. While seated
beside her at dinner, I felt firmly persuaded that the reason why
she would not speak to me was that she disliked me for being her
co-heir, and that the Prince, for his part, paid no attention to
our side of the table for the reason that the Princess and myself
hoped to succeed him, and so were alike distasteful in his sight.
"You cannot think how I hated it all!" I said to Dimitrieff the
same evening, in a desire to make a parade of disliking the
notion of being an heir (somehow I thought it the thing to do).
"You cannot think how I loathed the whole two hours that I spent
there!--Yet he is a fine-looking old fellow, and was very kind to
me," I added--wishing, among other things, to disabuse my friend
of any possible idea that my loathing had arisen out of the fact
that I had felt so small. "It is only the idea that people may be
classing me with the Princess who lives with him, and who licks
the dust off his boots. He is a wonderful old man, and good and
considerate to everybody, but it is awful to see how he treats
the Princess. Money is a detestable thing, and ruins all human
relations.
"Do you know, I think it would be far the best thing for me to
have an open explanation with the Prince," I went on; "to tell
him that I respect him as a man, but think nothing of being his
heir, and that I desire him to leave me nothing, since that is
the only condition on which I can, in future, visit his house."
Instead of bursting out laughing when I said this, Dimitri
pondered awhile in silence, and then answered:
"You are wrong. Either you ought to refrain from supposing that
people may be classing you with this Princess of whom you speak,
or, if you DO suppose such a thing, you ought to suppose further
that people are thinking what you yourself know quite well--
namely, that such thoughts are so utterly foreign to your nature
that you despise them and would never make them a basis for
action. Suppose, however, that people DO suppose you to suppose
such a thing--Well, to sum up," he added, feeling that he was
getting a little mixed in his pronouncements, "you had much
better not suppose anything of the kind."
My friend was perfectly right, though it was not until long, long
afterwards that experience of life taught me the evil that comes
of thinking--still worse, of saying--much that seems very fine;
taught me that there are certain thoughts which should always be
kept to oneself, since brave words seldom go with brave deeds. I
learnt then that the mere fact of giving utterance to a good
intention often makes it difficult, nay, impossible, to carry
that good intention into effect. Yet how is one to refrain from
giving utterance to the brave, self-sufficient impulses of youth?
Only long afterwards does one remember and regret them, even as
one incontinently plucks a flower before its blooming, and
subsequently finds it lying crushed and withered on the ground.
The very next morning I, who had just been telling my friend
Dimitri that money corrupts all human relations, and had (as we
have seen) squandered the whole of my cash on pictures and
Turkish pipes, accepted a loan of twenty roubles which he
suggested should pay for my travelling expenses into the country,
and remained a long while thereafter in his debt!
XXII
INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH MY FRIEND
THIS conversation of ours took place in a phaeton on the way to
Kuntsevo. Dimitri had invited me in the morning to go with him to
his mother's, and had called for me after luncheon; the idea
being that I should spend the evening, and perhaps also pass the
night, at the country-house where his family lived. Only when we
had left the city and exchanged its grimy streets and the
unbearably deafening clatter of its pavements for the open vista
of fields and the subdued grinding of carriage-wheels on a dusty
high road (while the sweet spring air and prospect enveloped us
on every side) did I awake from the new impressions and
sensations of freedom into which the past two days had plunged
me. Dimitri was in his kind and sociable mood. That is to say, he
was neither frowning nor blinking nervously nor straightening his
neck in his collar. For my own part, I was congratulating myself
on those noble sentiments which I have expressed above, in the
belief that they had led him to overlook my shameful encounter
with Kolpikoff, and to refrain from despising me for it. Thus we
talked together on many an intimate subject which even a friend
seldom mentions to a friend. He told me about his family whose
acquaintance I had not yet made--about his mother, his aunt, and
his sister, as also about her whom Woloda and Dubkoff believed to
be his "flame," and always spoke of as "the lady with the
chestnut locks." Of his mother he spoke with a certain cold and
formal commendation, as though to forestall any further mention
of her; his aunt he extolled enthusiastically, though with a
touch of condescension in his tone; his sister he scarcely
mentioned at all, as though averse to doing so in my presence;
but on the subject of "the lady with the chestnut locks" (whose
real name was Lubov Sergievna, and who was a grown-up young lady
living on a family footing with the Nechludoffs) he discoursed
with animation.
"Yes, she is a wonderful woman," he said with a conscious
reddening of the face, yet looking me in the eyes with dogged
temerity. "True, she is no longer young, and even rather elderly,
as well as by no means good-looking; but as for loving a mere
featherhead, a mere beauty--well, I never could understand that,
for it is such a silly thing to do." (Dimitri said this as though
he had just discovered a most novel and extraordinary truth.) "I
am certain, too, that such a soul, such a heart and principles,
as are hers are not to be found elsewhere in the world of the
present day." (I do not know whence he had derived the habit of
saying that few good things were discoverable in the world of the
present day, but at all events he loved to repeat the expression,
and it somehow suited him.)
"Only, I am afraid," he went on quietly, after thus annihilating
all such men as were foolish enough to admire mere beauty, "I am
afraid that you will not understand or realise her quickly. She
is modest, even secretive, and by no means fond of exhibiting her
beautiful and surprising qualities. Now, my mother--who, as you
will see, is a noble, sensible woman--has known Lubov Sergievna,
for many years; yet even to this day she does not properly
understand her. Shall I tell you why I was out of temper last
evening when you were questioning me? Well, you must know that
the day before yesterday Lubov asked me to accompany her to Ivan
Yakovlevitch's (you have heard of him, I suppose? the fellow who
seems to be mad, but who, in reality, is a very remarkable man).
Well, Lubov is extremely religious, and understands Ivan
Yakovlevitch to the full. She often goes to see him, and
converses with him, and gives him money for the poor--money which
she has earned herself. She is a marvellous woman, as you will
see. Well, I went with her to Ivan's, and felt very grateful to
her for having afforded me the opportunity of exchanging a word
with so remarkable a man; but my mother could not understand our
action at all, and discerned in it only superstition.
Consequently, last night she and I quarrelled for the first time
in our lives. A very bitter one it was, too," he concluded, with
a convulsive shrug of his shoulders, as though the mention of it
recalled the feelings which he had then experienced.
"And what are your intentions about it all?" I inquired, to
divert him from such a disagreeable recollection. "That is to
say, how do you imagine it is going to turn out? Do you ever
speak to her about the future, or about how your love or
friendship are going to end?"
"Do you mean, do I intend to marry her eventually?" he inquired,
in his turn, with a renewed blush, but turning himself round and
looking me boldly in the face.
"Yes, certainly," I replied as I settled myself down. "We are
both of us grown-up, as well as friends, so we may as well
discuss our future life as we drive along. No one could very well
overlook or overhear us now."
"Why should I NOT marry her?" he went on in response to my
reassuring reply. "It is my aim--as it should be the aim of every
honourable man--to be as good and as happy as possible; and with
her, if she should still be willing when I have become more
independent, I should be happier and better than with the
greatest beauty in the world."
Absorbed in such conversation, we hardly noticed that we were
approaching Kuntsevo, or that the sky was becoming overcast and
beginning to threaten rain. On the right, the sun was slowly
sinking behind the ancient trees of the Kuntsevo park--one half
of its brilliant disc obscured with grey, subluminous cloud, and
the other half sending forth spokes of flaming light which threw
the old trees into striking relief as they stood there with their
dense crowns of green showing against a blue patch of sky. The
light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy
pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on
the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the
parti-coloured roofs of the Kuntsevo mansion could be seen
projecting above a belt of trees and undergrowth--one side of them
reflecting the glittering rays of the sun, and the other side
harmonising with the more louring portion of the heavens. Below
us, and to the left, showed the still blue of a pond where it lay
surrounded with pale-green laburnums--its dull, concave-looking
depths repeating the trees in more sombre shades of colour over
the surface of a hillock. Beyond the water spread the black
expanse of a ploughed field, with the straight line of a dark-
green ridge by which it was bisected running far into the
distance, and there joining the leaden, threatening horizon.
On either side of the soft road along which the phaeton was
pursuing the even tenour of its way, bright-green, tangled, juicy
belts of rye were sprouting here and there into stalk. Not a
motion was perceptible in the air, only a sweet freshness, and
everything looked extraordinarily clear and bright. Near the road
I could see a little brown path winding its way among the dark-
green, quarter-grown stems of rye, and somehow that path reminded
me vividly of our village, and somehow (through some connection
of thought) the idea of that village reminded me vividly of
Sonetchka, and so of the fact that I was in love with her.
Notwithstanding my fondness for Dimitri and the pleasure which
his frankness had afforded me, I now felt as though I desired to
hear no more about his feelings and intentions with regard to
Lubov Sergievna, but to talk unstintedly about my own love for
Sonetchka, who seemed to me an object of affection of a far
higher order. Yet for some reason or another I could not make up
my mind to tell him straight out how splendid it would seem when
I had married Sonetchka and we were living in the country--of how
we should have little children who would crawl about the floor
and call me Papa, and of how delighted I should be when he,
Dimitri, brought his wife, Lubov Sergievna, to see us, wearing an
expensive gown. Accordingly, instead of saying all that, I
pointed to the setting sun, and merely remarked: "Look, Dimitri!
How splendid!"
To this, however, Dimitri made no reply, since he was evidently
dissatisfied at my answering his confession (which it had cost
him much to make) by directing his attention to natural objects
(to which he was, in general, indifferent). Upon him Nature had
an effect altogether different to what she had upon myself, for
she affected him rather by her industry than by her beauty--he
loved her rather with his intellect than with his senses.
"I am absolutely happy," I went on, without noticing that he was
altogether taken up with his own thoughts and oblivious of
anything that I might be saying. "You will remember how told you
about a girl with whom I used to be in love when was a little
boy? Well, I saw her again only this morning, and am now
infatuated with her." Then I told him--despite his continued
expression of indifference--about my love, and about all my plans
for my future connubial happiness. Strangely enough, no sooner
had I related in detail the whole strength of my feelings than I
instantly became conscious of its diminution.
The rain overtook us just as we were turning into the avenue of
birch-trees which led to the house, but it did not really wet us.
I only knew that it was raining by the fact that I felt a drop
fall, first on my nose, and then on my hand, and heard something
begin to patter upon the young, viscous leaves of the birch-trees
as, drooping their curly branches overhead, they seemed to imbibe
the pure, shining drops with an avidity which filled the whole
avenue with scent. We descended from the carriage, so as to reach
the house the quicker through the garden, but found ourselves
confronted at the entrance-door by four ladies, two of whom were
knitting, one reading a book, and the fourth walking to and fro
with a little dog. Thereupon, Dimitri began to present me to his
mother, sister, and aunt, as well as to Lubov Sergievna. For a
moment they remained where they were, but almost instantly the
rain became heavier.
"Let us go into the verandah; you can present him to us there,"
said the lady whom I took to be Dimitri's mother, and we all of
us ascended the entrance-steps.
XXIII
THE NECHLUDOFFS
From the first, the member of this company who struck me the most
was Lubov Sergievna, who, holding a lapdog in her arms and
wearing stout laced boots, was the last of the four ladies to
ascend the staircase, and twice stopped to gaze at me intently
and then kiss her little dog. She was anything but good-looking,
since she was red-haired, thin, short, and slightly crooked. What
made her plain face all the plainer was the queer way in which
her hair was parted to one side (it looked like the wigs which
bald women contrive for themselves). However much I should have
liked to applaud my friend, I could not find a single comely
feature in her. Even her brown eyes, though expressive of good-
humour, were small and dull--were, in fact, anything but pretty;
while her hands (those most characteristic of features), were
though neither large nor ill-shaped, coarse and red.
As soon as we reached the verandah, each of the ladies, except
Dimitri's sister Varenika--who also had been regarding me
attentively out of her large, dark-grey eyes--said a few words
to me before resuming her occupation, while Varenika herself began
to read aloud from a book which she held on her lap and steadied
with her finger.
The Princess Maria Ivanovna was a tall, well-built woman of
forty. To judge by the curls of half-grey hair which descended
below her cap one might have taken her for more, but as soon as
ever one observed the fresh, extraordinarily tender, and almost
wrinkleless face, as well as, most of all, the lively, cheerful
sparkle of the large eyes, one involuntarily took her for less.
Her eyes were black and very frank, her lips thin and slightly
severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to the left, and
her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man, but
with finely tapering fingers. She wore a dark-blue dress fastened
to the throat and sitting closely to her firm, still youthful
waist--a waist which she evidently pinched. Lastly, she held
herself very upright, and was knitting a garment of some kind. As
soon as I stepped on to the verandah she took me by the hand,
drew me to her as though wishing to scrutinise me more closely,
and said, as she gazed at me with the same cold, candid glance as
her son's, that she had long known me by report from Dimitri, and
that therefore, in order to make my acquaintance thoroughly, she
had invited me to stay these twenty-four hours in her house.
"Do just as you please here," she said, "and stand on no ceremony
whatever with us, even as we shall stand on none with you. Pray
walk, read, listen, or sleep as the mood may take you."
Sophia Ivanovna was an old maid and the Princess's younger
sister, though she looked the elder of the two. She had that
exceedingly overstuffed appearance which old maids always present
who are short of stature but wear corsets. It seemed as though
her healthiness had shifted upwards to the point of choking her,
her short, fat hands would not meet below her projecting bust,
and the line of her waist was scarcely visible at all.
Notwithstanding that the Princess Maria Ivanovna had black hair
and eyes, while Sophia Ivanovna had white hair and large,
vivacious, tranquilly blue eyes (a rare combination), there was a
great likeness between the two sisters, for they had the same
expression, nose, and lips. The only difference was that Sophia's
nose and lips were a trifle coarser than Maria's, and that, when
she smiled, those features inclined towards the right,
whereas Maria's inclined towards the left. Sophia, to judge by
her dress and coiffure, was still youthful at heart, and would
never have displayed grey curls, even if she had possessed them.
Yet at first her glance and bearing towards me seemed very proud,
and made me nervous, whereas I at once felt at home with the
Princess. Perhaps it was only Sophia's stoutness and a certain
resemblance to portraits of Catherine the Great that gave her, in
my eyes, a haughty aspect, but at all events I felt quite
intimidated when she looked at me intently and said, "Friends of
our friends are our friends also." I became reassured and changed
my opinion about her only when, after saying those words, she
opened her mouth and sighed deeply. It may be that she owed her
habit of sighing after every few words--with a great distention
of the mouth and a slight drooping of her large blue eyes--to her
stoutness, yet it was none the less one which expressed so much
good-humour that I at once lost all fear of her, and found her
actually attractive. Her eyes were charming, her voice pleasant
and musical, and even the flowing lines of her fullness seemed to
my youthful vision not wholly lacking in beauty.
I had imagined that Lubov Sergievna, as my friend's friend, would
at once say something friendly and familiar to me; yet, after
gazing at me fixedly for a while, as though in doubt whether the
remark she was about to make to me would not be too friendly, she
at length asked me what faculty I was in. After that she stared
at me as before, in evident hesitation as to whether or not to
say something civil and familiar, until, remarking her
perplexity, I besought her with a look to speak freely. Yet all
she then said was, "They tell me the Universities pay very little
attention to science now," and turned away to call her little
dog.
All that evening she spoke only in disjointed fragments of this
kind--fragments which had no connection either with the point or
with one another; yet I had such faith in Dimitri, and he so
often kept looking from her to me with an expression which mutely
asked me, "Now, what do you think of that?" that, though I
entirely failed to persuade myself that in Lubov Sergievna there
was anything to speak of, I could not bear to express the
thought, even to myself.
As for the last member of the family, Varenika, she was a well-
developed girl of sixteen. The only good features in her were a
pair of dark-grey eyes,--which, in their expression of gaiety
mingled with quiet attention, greatly resembled those of her
aunt--a long coil of flaxen hair, and extremely delicate,
beautiful hands.
"I expect, Monsieur Nicolas, you find it wearisome to hear a
story begun from the middle?" said Sophia Ivanovna with her good-
natured sigh as she turned over some pieces of clothing which she
was sewing. The reading aloud had ceased for the moment because
Dimitri had left the room on some errand or another.
"Or perhaps you have read Rob Roy before?" she added.
At that period I thought it incumbent upon me, in virtue of my
student's uniform, to reply in a very "clever and original"
manner to every question put to me by people whom I did not know
very well, and regarded such short, clear answers as "Yes," "No,"
"I like it," or "I do not care for it," as things to be ashamed
of. Accordingly, looking down at my new and fashionably-cut
trousers and the glittering buttons of my tunic, I replied that I
had never read Rob Roy, but that it interested me greatly to hear
it, since I preferred to read books from the middle rather than
from the beginning.
"It is twice as interesting," I added with a self-satisfied
smirk; "for then one can guess what has gone before as well as
what is to come after."
The Princess smiled what I thought was a forced smile, but one
which I discovered later to be her only one.
"Well, perhaps that is true," she said. "But tell me, Nicolas
(you will not be offended if I drop the Monsieur)--tell me, are
you going to be in town long? When do you go away?"
"I do not know quite. Perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps not for some
while yet," I replied for some reason or another, though I knew
perfectly well that in reality we were to go to-morrow.
"I wish you could stop longer, both for your own sake and for
Dimitri's," she said in a meditative manner. "At your age
friendship is a weak thing."
I felt that every one was looking at me, and waiting to see what
I should say--though certainly Varenika made a pretence of
looking at her aunt's work. I felt, in fact, as though I were
being put through an examination, and that it behoved me to
figure in it as well as possible.
"Yes, to ME Dimitri's friendship is most useful," I replied, "but
to HIM mine cannot be of any use at all, since he is a thousand
times better than I." (Dimitri could not hear what I said, or I
should have feared his detecting the insincerity of my words.)
Again the Princess smiled her unnatural, yet characteristically
natural, smile.
"Just listen to him!" she said. "But it is YOU who are the little
monster of perfection."
"'Monster of perfection,'" I thought to myself. "That is
splendid. I must make a note of it."
"Yet, to dismiss yourself, he has been extraordinarily clever in
that quarter," she went on in a lower tone (which pleased me
somehow) as she indicated Lubov Sergievna with her eyes, "since
he has discovered in our poor little Auntie" (such was the pet
name which they gave Lubov) "all sorts of perfections which I,
who have known her and her little dog for twenty years, had never
yet suspected. "Varenika, go and tell them to bring me a glass of
water," she added, letting her eyes wander again. Probably she
had bethought her that it was too soon, or not entirely
necessary, to let me into all the family secrets. "Yet no--let
HIM go, for he has nothing to do, while you are reading. Pray go
to the door, my friend," she said to me, "and walk about fifteen
steps down the passage. Then halt and call out pretty loudly,
"Peter, bring Maria Ivanovna a glass of iced water"--and she
smiled her curious smile once more.
"I expect she wants to say something about me in my absence," I
thought to myself as I left the room. "I expect she wants to
remark that she can see very clearly that I am a very, very
clever young man."
Hardly had I taken a dozen steps when I was overtaken by Sophia
Ivanovna, who, though fat and short of breath, trod with
surprising lightness and agility.
"Merci, mon cher," she said. "I will go and tell them myself."
XXIV
LOVE
SOPHIA IVANOVNA, as I afterwards came to know her, was one of
those rare, young-old women who are born for family life, but to
whom that happiness has been denied by fate. Consequently all
that store of their love which should have been
poured out upon a husband and children becomes pent up in their
hearts, until they suddenly decide to let it overflow upon a few
chosen individuals. Yet so inexhaustible is that store of old
maids' love that, despite the number of individuals so selected,
there still remains an abundant surplus of affection which they
lavish upon all by whom they are surrounded--upon all, good or
bad, whom they may chance to meet in their daily life.
Of love there are three kinds--love of beauty, the love which
denies itself, and practical love.
Of the desire of a young man for a young woman, as well as of the
reverse instance, I am not now speaking, for of such tendresses I
am wary, seeing that I have been too unhappy in my life to have
been able ever to see in such affection a single spark of truth,
but rather a lying pretence in which sensuality, connubial
relations, money, and the wish to bind hands or to unloose them
have rendered feeling such a complex affair as to defy analysis.
Rather am I speaking of that love for a human being which,
according to the spiritual strength of its possessor,
concentrates itself either upon a single individual, upon a few,
or upon many--of love for a mother, a father, a brother, little
children, a friend, a compatriot--of love, in short, for one's
neighbour.
Love of beauty consists in a love of the sense of beauty and of
its expression. People who thus love conceive the object of their
affection to be desirable only in so far as it arouses in them
that pleasurable sensation of which the consciousness and the
expression soothes the senses. They change the object of their
love frequently, since their principal aim consists in ensuring
that the voluptuous feeling of their adoration shall be
constantly titillated. To preserve in themselves this sensuous
condition, they talk unceasingly, and in the most elegant terms,
on the subject of the love which they feel, not only for its
immediate object, but also for objects upon which it does not
touch at all. This country of ours contains many such
individuals--individuals of that well-known class who,
cultivating "the beautiful," not only discourse of their cult to
all and sundry, but speak of it pre-eminently in FRENCH. It may
seem a strange and ridiculous thing to say, but I am convinced
that among us we have had in the past, and still have, a large
section of society--notably women--whose love for their friends,
husbands, or children would expire to-morrow if they were
debarred from dilating upon it in the tongue of France!
Love of the second kind--renunciatory love--consists in a
yearning to undergo self-sacrifice for the object beloved,
regardless of any consideration whether such self-sacrifice will
benefit or injure the object in question. "There is no evil which
I would not endure to show both the world and him or her whom I
adore my devotion." There we have the formula of this kind of
love. People who thus love never look for reciprocity of
affection, since it is a finer thing to sacrifice yourself for
one who does not comprehend you. Also, they are always painfully
eager to exaggerate the merits of their sacrifice; usually
constant in their love, for the reason that they would find it
hard to forego the kudos of the deprivations which they endure
for the object beloved; always ready to die, to prove to him or
to her the entirety of their devotion; but sparing of such small
daily proofs of their love as call for no special effort of self-
immolation. They do not much care whether you eat well, sleep
well, keep your spirits up, or enjoy good health, nor do they
ever do anything to obtain for you those blessings if they have
it in their power; but, should you be confronting a bullet, or
have fallen into the water, or stand in danger of being burnt, or
have had your heart broken in a love affair--well, for all these
things they are prepared if the occasion should arise. Moreover,
people addicted to love of such a self-sacrificing order are
invariably proud of their love, exacting, jealous, distrustful,
and--strange to tell--anxious that the object of their adoration
should incur perils (so that they may save it from calamity, and
console it thereafter) and even be vicious (so that they may
purge it of its vice).
Suppose, now, that you are living in the country with a wife who
loves you in this self-sacrificing manner. You may be healthy and
contented, and have occupations which interest you, while, on the
other hand, your wife may be too weak to superintend the
household work (which, in consequence, will be left to the
servants), or to look after the children (who, in consequence,
will be left to the nurses), or to put her heart into any work
whatsoever: and all because she loves nobody and nothing but
yourself. She may be patently ill, yet she will say not a word to
you about it, for fear of distressing you. She may be patently
ennuyee, yet for your sake she will be prepared to be so for the
rest of her life. She may be patently depressed because you stick
so persistently to your occupations (whether sport, books,
farming, state service, or anything else) and see clearly that
they are doing you harm; yet, for all that, she will keep
silence, and suffer it to be so. Yet, should you but fall sick--
and, despite her own ailments and your prayers that she will not
distress herself in vain, your loving wife will remain sitting
inseparably by your bedside. Every moment you will feel her
sympathetic gaze resting upon you and, as it were, saying:
"There! I told you so, but it is all one to me, and I shall not
leave you." In the morning you maybe a little better, and move
into another room. The room, however, will be insufficiently
warmed or set in order; the soup which alone you feel you could
eat will not have been cooked; nor will any medicine have been
sent for. Yet, though worn out with night watching, your loving
wife will continue to regard you with an expression of sympathy,
to walk about on tiptoe, and to whisper unaccustomed and obscure
orders to the servants. You may wish to be read to--and your
loving wife will tell you with a sigh that she feels sure you
will be unable to hear her reading, and only grow angry at her
awkwardness in doing it; wherefore you had better not be read to
at all. You may wish to walk about the room--and she will tell you
that it would be far better for you not to do so. You may wish to
talk with some friends who have called--and she will tell you that
talking is not good for you. At nightfall the fever may come upon
you again, and you may wish to be left alone whereupon your
loving wife, though wasted, pale, and full of yawns, will go on
sitting in a chair opposite you, as dusk falls, until her very
slightest movement, her very slightest sound, rouses you to
feelings of anger and impatience. You may have a servant who has
lived with you for twenty years, and to whom you are attached,
and who would tend you well and to your satisfaction during the
night, for the reason that he has been asleep all day and is,
moreover, paid a salary for his services; yet your wife will not
suffer him to wait upon you. No; everything she must do herself
with her weak, unaccustomed fingers (of which you follow the
movements with suppressed irritation as those pale members do
their best to uncork a medicine bottle, to snuff a candle, to
pour out physic, or to touch you in a squeamish sort of way). If
you are an impatient, hasty sort of man, and beg of her to leave
the room, you will hear by the vexed, distressed sounds which
come from her that she is humbly sobbing and weeping behind the
door, and whispering foolishness of some kind to the servant.
Finally if you do not die, your loving wife--who has not slept
during the whole three weeks of your illness (a fact of which she
will constantly remind you)--will fall ill in her turn, waste
away, suffer much, and become even more incapable of any useful
pursuit than she was before; while by the time that you have
regained your normal state of health she will express to you her
self-sacrificing affection only by shedding around you
a kind of benignant dullness which involuntarily communicates
itself both to yourself and to every one else in your vicinity.
The third kind of love--practical love--consists of a yearning to
satisfy every need, every desire, every caprice, nay, every vice,
of the being beloved. People who love thus always love their life
long, since, the more they love, the more they get to know the
object beloved, and the easier they find the task of loving it--
that is to say, of satisfying its desires. Their love seldom
finds expression in words, but if it does so, it expresses itself
neither with assurance nor beauty, but rather in a shamefaced,
awkward manner, since people of this kind invariably have
misgivings that they are loving unworthily. People of this kind
love even the faults of their adored one, for the reason that
those faults afford them the power of constantly satisfying new
desires. They look for their affection to be returned, and even
deceive themselves into believing that it is returned, and are
happy accordingly: yet in the reverse case they will still
continue to desire happiness for their beloved one, and try by
every means in their power--whether moral or material, great or
small--to provide it.
Such practical love it was--love for her nephew, for her niece,
for her sister, for Lubov Sergievna, and even for myself, because
I loved Dimitri--that shone in the eyes, as well as in the every
word and movement, of Sophia Ivanovna.
Only long afterwards did I learn to value her at her true worth.
Yet even now the question occurred to me: "What has made Dimitri--
who throughout has tried to understand love differently to other
young fellows, and has always had before his eyes the gentle,
loving Sophia Ivanovna--suddenly fall so deeply in love with the
incomprehensible Lubov Sergievna, and declare that in his aunt he
can only find good QUALITIES? Verily it is a true saying that 'a
prophet hath no honour in his own country.' One of two things:
either every man has in him more of bad than of good, or every
man is more receptive to bad than to good. Lubov Sergievna he has
not known for long, whereas his aunt's love he has known since
the day of his birth."
XXV
I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS
WHEN I returned to the verandah, I found that they were not
talking of me at all, as I had anticipated. On the contrary,
Varenika had laid aside the book, and was engaged in a heated
dispute with Dimitri, who, for his part, was walking up and down
the verandah, and frowningly adjusting his neck in his collar as
he did so. The subject of the quarrel seemed to be Ivan
Yakovlevitch and superstition, but it was too animated a
difference for its underlying cause not to be something which
concerned the family much more nearly. Although the Princess and
Lubov Sergievna were sitting by in silence, they were following
every word, and evidently tempted at times to take part in the
dispute; yet always, just when they were about to speak, they
checked themselves, and left the field clear for the two
principles, Dimitri and Varenika. On my entry, the latter glanced
at me with such an indifferent air that I could see she was
wholly absorbed in the quarrel and did not care whether she spoke
in my presence or not. The Princess too looked the same, and was
clearly on Varenika's side, while Dimitri began, if anything, to
raise his voice still more when I appeared, and Lubov Sergievna,
for her part, observed to no one in particular: "Old people are
quite right when they say, 'Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse
pouvait.'"
Nevertheless this quotation did not check the dispute, though it
somehow gave me the impression that the side represented by the
speaker and her friend was in the wrong. Although it was a little
awkward for me to be present at a petty family difference, the
fact that the true relations of the family revealed themselves
during its progress, and that my presence did nothing to hinder
that revelation, afforded me considerable gratification.
How often it happens that for years one sees a family cover
themselves over with a conventional cloak of decorum, and
preserve the real relations of its members a secret from every
eye! How often, too, have I remarked that, the more impenetrable
(and therefore the more decorous) is the cloak, the harsher are
the relations which it conceals! Yet, once let some unexpected
question--often a most trivial one (the colour of a woman's hair,
a visit, a man's horses, and so forth)--arise in that family
circle, and without any visible cause there will also arise an
ever-growing difference, until in time the cloak of decorum
becomes unequal to confining the quarrel within due bounds, and,
to the dismay of the disputants and the astonishment of the
auditors, the real and ill-adjusted relations of the family are
laid bare, and the cloak, now useless for concealment, is bandied
from hand to hand among the contending factions until it serves
only to remind one of the years during which it successfully
deceived one's perceptions. Sometimes to strike one's head
violently against a ceiling hurts one less than just to graze
some spot which has been hurt and bruised before: and in almost
every family there exists some such raw and tender spot. In the
Nechludoff family that spot was Dimitri's extraordinary affection
for Lubov Sergievna, which aroused in the mother and sister, if
not a jealous feeling, at all events a sense of hurt family
pride. This was the grave significance which underlay, for all
those present, the seeming dispute about Ivan Yakovlevitch and
superstition.
"In anything that other people deride and despise you invariably
profess to see something extraordinarily good!" Varenika was
saying in her clear voice, as she articulated each syllable with
careful precision.
"Indeed?" retorted Dimitri with an impatient toss of his head.
"Now, in the first place, only a most unthinking person could
ever speak of DESPISING such a remarkable man as Ivan
Yakovlevitch, while, in the second place, it is YOU who
invariably profess to see nothing good in what confronts you."
Meanwhile Sophia Ivanovna kept looking anxiously at us as she
turned first to her nephew, and then to her niece, and then to
myself. Twice she opened her mouth as though to say what was in
her mind and drew a deep sigh.
"Varia, PLEASE go on reading," she said at length, at the same
time handing her niece the book, and patting her hand kindly. "I
wish to know whether he ever found HER again " (as a matter of
fact, the novel in question contained not a word about any one
finding any one else). "And, Mitia dear," she added to her
nephew, despite the glum looks which he was throwing at her for
having interrupted the logical thread of his deductions, "you had
better let me poultice your cheek, or your teeth will begin to
ache again."
After that the reading was resumed. Yet the quarrel had in no way
dispelled the calm atmosphere of family and intellectual harmony
which enveloped this circle of ladies.
Clearly deriving its inspiration and character from the Princess
Maria Ivanovna, it was a circle which, for me, had a wholly novel
and attractive character of logicalness mingled with simplicity
and refinement. That character I could discern in the daintiness,
good taste, and solidity of everything about me, whether the
handbell, the binding of the book, the settee, or the table.
Likewise, I divined it in the upright, well-corseted pose of the
Princess, in her pendant curls of grey hair, in the manner in
which she had, at our first introduction, called me plain
"Nicolas" and "he," in the occupations of the ladies (the
reading and the sewing of garments), and in the unusual whiteness
of their hands. Those hands, en passant, showed a family feature
common to all--namely, the feature that the flesh of the palm on
the outer side was rosy in colour, and divided by a sharp,
straight line from the pure whiteness of the upper portion of the
hand. Still more was the character of this feminine circle
expressed in the manner in which the three ladies spoke Russian
and French--spoke them, that is to say, with perfect articulation
of syllables and pedantic accuracy of substantives and
prepositions. All this, and more especially the fact that the
ladies treated me as simply and as seriously as a real grown-up--
telling me their opinions, and listening to my own (a thing to
which I was so little accustomed that, for all my glittering
buttons and blue facings, I was in constant fear of being told:
"Surely you do not think that we are talking SERIOUSLY to you? Go
away and learn something")--all this, I say, caused me to feel an
entire absence of restraint in this society. I ventured at times
to rise, to move about, and to talk boldly to each of the ladies
except Varenika (whom I always felt it was unbecoming, or even
forbidden, for me to address unless she first spoke to me).
As I listened to her clear, pleasant voice reading aloud, I kept
glancing from her to the path of the flower-garden, where the
rain-spots were making small dark circles in the sand, and thence
to the lime-trees, upon the leaves of which the rain was
pattering down in large detached drops shed from the pale,
shimmering edge of the livid blue cloud which hung suspended over
us. Then I would glance at her again, and then at the last purple
rays of the setting sun where they were throwing the dense
clusters of old, rain-washed birches into brilliant relief. Yet
again my eyes would return to Varenika, and, each time that they
did so, it struck me afresh that she was not nearly so plain as
at first I had thought her.
"How I wish that I wasn't in love already!" I reflected, "or that
Sonetchka was Varenika! How nice it would be if suddenly I could
become a member of this family, and have the three ladies for my
mother, aunt, and wife respectively!" All the time that these
thoughts kept passing through my head I kept attentively
regarding Varenika as she read, until somehow I felt as though I
were magnetising her, and that presently she must look at me.
Sure enough, at length she raised her head, threw me a glance,
and, meeting my eyes, turned away.
"The rain does not seem to stop," she remarked.
Suddenly a new feeling came over me. I began to feel as though
everything now happening to me was a repetition of some similar
occurrence before--as though on some previous occasion a shower
of rain had begun to fall, and the sun had set behind birch-
trees, and I had been looking at her, and she had been reading
aloud, and I had magnetised her, and she had looked up at me.
Yes, all this I seemed to recall as though it had happened once
before.
"Surely she is not--SHE?" was my thought. "Surely IT is not
beginning?" However, I soon decided that Varenika was not the
"SHE" referred to, and that "it" was not "beginning." "In the
first place," I said to myself, "Varenika is not at all
BEAUTIFUL. She is just an ordinary girl whose acquaintance I have
made in the ordinary way, whereas the she whom I shall meet
somewhere and some day and in some not ordinary way will be
anything but ordinary. This family pleases me so much only
because hitherto I have never seen anybody. Such things will
always be happening in the future, and I shall see many more such
families during my life."
XXVI
I SHOW OFF
AT tea time the reading came to an end, and the ladies began to
talk among themselves of persons and things unknown to me. This I
conceived them to be doing on purpose to make me conscious (for
all their kind demeanour) of the difference which years and
position in the world had set between them and myself. In general
discussions, however, in which I could take part I sought to
atone for my late silence by exhibiting that extraordinary
cleverness and originality to which I felt compelled by my
University uniform. For instance, when the conversation turned
upon country houses, I said that Prince Ivan Ivanovitch had a
villa near Moscow which people came to see even from London and
Paris, and that it contained balustrading which had cost 380,000
roubles. Likewise, I remarked that the Prince was a very near
relation of mine, and that, when lunching with him the same day,
he had invited me to go and spend the entire summer with him at
that villa, but that I had declined, since I knew the villa well,
and had stayed in it more than once, and that all those
balustradings and bridges did not interest me, since I could not
bear ornamental work, especially in the country, where I liked
everything to be wholly countrified. After delivering myself of
this extraordinary and complicated romance, I grew confused, and
blushed so much that every one must have seen that I was lying.
Both Varenika, who was handing me a cup of tea, and Sophia
Ivanovna, who had been gazing at me throughout, turned their
heads away, and began to talk of something else with an
expression which I afterwards learnt that good-natured people
assume when a very young man has told them a manifest string of
lies--an expression which says, "Yes, we know he is lying, and
why he is doing it, the poor young fellow!"
What I had said about Prince Ivan Ivanovitch having a country
villa, I had related simply because I could find no other pretext
for mentioning both my relationship to the Prince and the fact
that I had been to luncheon with him that day; yet why I had said
all I had about the balustrading costing 380,000 roubles, and
about my having several times visited the Prince at that villa (I
had never once been there--more especially since the Prince
possessed no residences save in Moscow and Naples, as the
Nechludoffs very well knew), I could not possibly tell you.
Neither in childhood nor in adolescence nor in riper years did I
ever remark in myself the vice of falsehood--on the contrary, I
was, if anything, too outspoken and truthful. Yet, during this
first stage of my manhood, I often found myself seized with a
strange and unreasonable tendency to lie in the most desperate
fashion. I say advisedly "in the most desperate fashion," for the
reason that I lied in matters in which it was the easiest thing
in the world to detect me. On the whole I think that a vain-
glorious desire to appear different from what I was, combined
with an impossible hope that the lie would never be found out,
was the chief cause of this extraordinary impulse.
After tea, since the rain had stopped and the after-glow of
sunset was calm and clear, the Princess proposed that we should
go and stroll in the lower garden, and admire her favourite spots
there. Following my rule to be always original, and conceiving
that clever people like myself and the Princess must surely be
above the banalities of politeness, I replied that I could not
bear a walk with no object in view, and that, if I DID walk, I
liked to walk alone. I had no idea that this speech was simply
rude; all I thought was that, even as nothing could be more
futile than empty compliments, so nothing could be more pleasing
and original than a little frank brusquerie. However, though much
pleased with my answer, I set out with the rest of the company.
The Princess's favourite spot of all was at the very bottom of
the lower garden, where a little bridge spanned a narrow piece of
swamp. The view there was very restricted, yet very intimate and
pleasing. We are so accustomed to confound art with nature that,
often enough, phenomena of nature which are never to be met with
in pictures seem to us unreal, and give us the impression that
nature is unnatural, or vice versa; whereas phenomena of nature
which occur with too much frequency in pictures seem to us
hackneyed, and views which are to be met with in real life, but
which appear to us too penetrated with a single idea or a single
sentiment, seem to us arabesques. The view from the Princess's
favourite spot was as follows. On the further side of a small
lake, over-grown with weeds round its edges, rose a steep ascent
covered with bushes and with huge old trees of many shades of
green, while, overhanging the lake at the foot of the ascent,
stood an ancient birch tree which, though partly supported by
stout roots implanted in the marshy bank of the lake, rested its
crown upon a tall, straight poplar, and dangled its curved
branches over the smooth surface of the pond--both branches and
the surrounding greenery being reflected therein as in a mirror.
"How lovely!" said the Princess with a nod of her head, and
addressing no one in particular.
"Yes, marvellous!" I replied in my desire to show that had an
opinion of my own on every subject. "Yet somehow it all looks to
me so terribly like a scheme of decoration."
The Princess went on gazing at the scene as though she had not
heard me, and turning to her sister and Lubov Sergievna at
intervals, in order to point out to them its details--especially
a curved, pendent bough, with its reflection in the water, which
particularly pleased her. Sophia Ivanovna observed to me that it
was all very beautiful, and that she and her sister would
sometimes spend hours together at this spot; yet it was clear
that her remarks were meant merely to please the Princess. I have
noticed that people who are gifted with the faculty of loving are
seldom receptive to the beauties of nature. Lubov Sergievna also
seemed enraptured, and asked (among other things), "How does that
birch tree manage to support itself? Has it stood there long?"
Yet the next moment she became absorbed in contemplation of her
little dog Susetka, which, with its stumpy paws pattering to and
fro upon the bridge in a mincing fashion, seemed to say by the
expression of its face that this was the first time it had ever
found itself out of doors. As for Dimitri, he fell to discoursing
very logically to his mother on the subject of how no view can be
beautiful of which the horizon is limited. Varenika alone said
nothing. Glancing at her, I saw that she was leaning over the
parapet of the bridge, her profile turned towards me, and gazing
straight in front of her. Something seemed to be interesting her
deeply, or even affecting her, since it was clear that she was
oblivious to her surroundings, and thinking neither of herself
nor of the fact that any one might be regarding her. In the
expression of her large eyes there was nothing but wrapt
attention and quiet, concentrated thought, while her whole
attitude seemed so unconstrained and, for all her shortness, so
dignified that once more some recollection or another touched me
and once more I asked myself, "Is IT, then, beginning?" Yet again
I assured myself that I was already in love with Sonetchka, and
that Varenika was only an ordinary girl, the sister of my friend.
Though she pleased me at that moment, I somehow felt a vague
desire to show her, by word or deed, some small unfriendliness.
"I tell you what, Dimitri," I said to my friend as I moved nearer
to Varenika, so that she might overhear what I was going to say,
"it seems to me that, even if there had been no mosquitos here,
there would have been nothing to commend this spot; whereas "--
and here I slapped my cheek, and in very truth annihilated one of
those insects--"it is simply awful."
"Then you do not care for nature?" said Varenika without turning
her head.
"I think it a foolish, futile pursuit," I replied, well satisfied
that I had said something to annoy her, as well as something
original. Varenika only raised her eyebrows a little, with an
expression of pity, and went on gazing in front of her as calmly
as before.
I felt vexed with her. Yet, for all that, the rusty, paint-
blistered parapet on which she was leaning, the way in which the
dark waters of the pond reflected the drooping branch of the
overhanging birch tree (it almost seemed to me as though branch
and its reflection met), the rising odour of the swamp, the
feeling of crushed mosquito on my cheek, and her absorbed look
and statuesque pose--many times afterwards did these things
recur with unexpected vividness to my recollection.
XXVII
DIMITRI
WHEN we returned to the house from our stroll, Varenika declined
to sing as she usually did in the evenings, and I was conceited
enough to attribute this to my doing, in the belief that its
reason lay in what I had said on the bridge. The Nechludoffs
never had supper, and went to bed early, while to-night, since
Dimitri had the toothache (as Sophia Ivanovna had foretold), he
departed with me to his room even earlier than usual. Feeling
that I had done all that was required of me by my blue collar and
gilt buttons, and that every one was very pleased with me, I was
in a gratified, complacent mood, while Dimitri, on the other
hand, was rendered by his quarrel with his sister and the
toothache both taciturn and gloomy. He sat down at the table, got
out a couple of notebooks--a diary and the copy-book in which it
was his custom every evening to inscribe the tasks performed by
or awaiting him--and, continually frowning and touching his cheek
with his hand, continued writing for a while.
"Oh, DO leave me alone!" he cried to the maid whom Sophia
Ivanovna sent to ask him whether his teeth were still hurting
him, and whether he would not like to have a poultice made. Then,
saying that my bed would soon be ready for me and that he would
be back presently, he departed to Lubov Sergievna's room.
"What a pity that Varenika is not good-looking and, in general,
Sonetchka!" I reflected when I found myself alone. "How nice it
would be if, after I have left the University, I could go to her
and offer her my hand! I would say to her, 'Princess, though no
longer young, and therefore unable to love passionately, I will
cherish you as a dear sister. And you,' I would continue to her
mother, 'I greatly respect; and you, Sophia Ivanovna, I value
highly. Therefore say to me, Varenika (since I ask you to be my
wife), just the simple and direct word YES.' And she would give
me her hand, and I should press it, and say, 'Mine is a love
which depends not upon words, but upon deeds.' And suppose," next
came into my head, "that Dimitri should suddenly fall in love
with Lubotshka (as Lubotshka has already done with him), and
should desire to marry her? Then either one or the other of us
would have to resign all thought of marriage. Well, it would be
splendid, for in that case I should act thus. As soon as I had
noticed how things were, I should make no remark, but go to
Dimitri and say, 'It is no use, my friend, for you and I to
conceal our feelings from one another. You know that my love for
your sister will terminate only with my life. Yet I know all; and
though you have deprived me of all hope, and have rendered me an
unhappy man, so that Nicolas Irtenieff will have to bewail his
misery for the rest of his existence, yet do you take my sister,'
and I should lay his hand in Lubotshka's. Then he would say to
me, 'No, not for all the world!' and I should reply, 'Prince
Nechludoff, it is in vain for you to attempt to outdo me in
nobility. Not in the whole world does there exist a more
magnanimous being than Nicolas Irtenieff.' Then I should salute
him and depart. In tears Dimitri and Lubotshka would pursue me,
and entreat me to accept their sacrifice, and I should consent to
do so, and, perhaps, be happy ever afterwards--if only I were in
love with Varenika." These fancies tickled my imagination so
pleasantly that I felt as though I should like to communicate
them to my friend; yet, despite our mutual vow of frankness, I
also felt as though I had not the physical energy to do so.
Dimitri returned from Lubov Sergievna's room with some toothache
capsules which she had given him, yet in even greater pain, and
therefore in even greater depression, than before. Evidently no
bedroom had yet been prepared for me, for presently the boy who
acted as Dimitri's valet arrived to ask him where I was to sleep.
"Oh, go to the devil!" cried Dimitri, stamping his foot. "Vasika,
Vasika, Vasika!" he went on, the instant that the boy had left
the room, with a gradual raising of his voice at each repetition.
" Vasika, lay me out a bed on the floor."
"No, let ME sleep on the floor," I objected.
"Well, it is all one. Lie anywhere you like," continued Dimitri
in the same angry tone. "Vasika, why don't you go and do what I
tell you? "
Evidently Vasika did not understand what was demanded of him, for
he remained where he was.
"What is the matter with you? Go and lay the bed, Vasika, I tell
you!" shouted Dimitri, suddenly bursting into a sort of frenzy;
yet Vasika still did not understand, but, blushing hotly, stood
motionless.
"So you are determined to drive me mad, are you?"--and leaping
from his chair and rushing upon the boy, Dimitri struck him on
the head with the whole weight of his fist, until the boy rushed
headlong from the room. Halting in the doorway, Dimitri glanced
at me, and the expression of fury and pain which had sat for a
moment on his countenance suddenly gave place to such a boyish,
kindly, affectionate, yet ashamed, expression that I felt sorry
for him, and reconsidered my intention of leaving him to himself.
He said nothing, but for a long time paced the room in silence,
occasionally glancing at me with the same deprecatory expression
as before. Then he took his notebook from the table, wrote
something in it, took off his jacket and folded it carefully,
and, stepping into the corner where the ikon hung, knelt down and
began to say his prayers, with his large white hands folded upon
his breast. So long did he pray that Vasika had time to bring a
mattress and spread it, under my whispered directions, on the
floor. Indeed, I had undressed and laid myself down upon the
mattress before Dimitri had finished. As I contemplated his
slightly rounded back and the soles of his feet (which somehow
seemed to stick out in my direction in a sort of repentant
fashion whenever he made his obeisances), I felt that I liked him
more than ever, and debated within myself whether or not I should
tell him all I had been fancying concerning our respective
sisters. When he had finished his prayers, he lay down upon the
bed near me, and, propping himself upon his elbow, looked at me
in silence, with a kindly, yet abashed, expression. Evidently he
found it difficult to do this, yet meant thus to punish himself.
Then I smiled and returned his gaze, and he smiled back at me.
"Why do you not tell me that my conduct has been abominable?" he
said. "You have been thinking so, have you not?"
"Yes," I replied; and although it was something quite different
which had been in my mind, it now seemed to me that that was what
I had been thinking. "Yes, it was not right of you, nor should I
have expected it of you." It pleased me particularly at that
moment to call him by the familiar second person singular. "But
how are your teeth now?" I added.
"Oh, much better. Nicolinka, my friend," he went on, and so
feelingly that it sounded as though tears were standing in his
eyes, "I know and feel that I am bad, but God sees how I try to
be better, and how I entreat Him to make me so. Yet what am I to
do with such an unfortunate, horrible nature as mine? What am I
to do with it? I try to keep myself in hand and to rule myself,
but suddenly it becomes impossible for me to do so--at all events,
impossible for me to do so unaided. I need the help and support
of some one. Now, there is Lubov Sergievna; SHE understands me,
and could help me in this, and I know by my notebook that I have
greatly improved in this respect during the past year. Ah, my
dear Nicolinka"--he spoke with the most unusual and unwonted
tenderness, and in a tone which had grown calmer now that he had
made his confession--" how much the influence of a woman like
Lubov could do for me! Think how good it would be for me if I
could have a friend like her to live with when I have become
independent! With her I should be another man."
And upon that Dimitri began to unfold to me his plans for
marriage, for a life in the country, and for continual self-
discipline.
"Yes, I will live in the country," he said, "and you shall come
to see me when you have married Sonetchka. Our children shall
play together. All this may seem to you stupid and ridiculous,
yet it may very well come to pass."
"Yes, it very well may " I replied with a smile, yet thinking how
much nicer it would be if I married his sister.
"I tell you what," he went on presently; "you only imagine
yourself to be in love with Sonetchka, whereas I can see that it
is all rubbish, and that you do not really know what love means."
I did not protest, for, in truth, I almost agreed with him, and
for a while we lay without speaking.
"Probably you have noticed that I have been in my old bad humour
today, and have had a nasty quarrel with Varia?" he resumed. "I
felt bad about it afterwards--more particularly since it occurred
in your presence. Although she thinks wrongly on some subjects,
she is a splendid girl and very good, as you will soon
recognise."
His quick transition from mention of my love affairs to praise of
his sister pleased me extremely, and made me blush, but I
nevertheless said nothing more about his sister, and we went on
talking of other things.
Thus we chattered until the cocks had crowed twice. In fact, the
pale dawn was already looking in at the window when at last
Dimitri lay down upon his bed and put out the candle.
"Well, now for sleep," he said.
"Yes," I replied, " but--"
"But what?"
"Now nice it is to be alive in the daylight!"
"Yes, it IS a splendid thing! " he replied in a voice which, even
in the darkness, enabled me to see the expression of his
cheerful, kindly eyes and boyish smile.
XXVIII
IN THE COUNTRY
Next day Woloda and myself departed in a post-chaise for the
country. Turning over various Moscow recollections in my head as
we drove along, I suddenly recalled Sonetchka Valakhin--though
not until evening, and when we had already covered five stages of
the road. "It is a strange thing," I thought, "that I should be
in love, and yet have forgotten all about it. I must start and
think about her," and straightway I proceeded to do so, but only
in the way that one thinks when travelling--that is to say,
disconnectedly, though vividly. Thus I brought myself to such a
condition that, for the first two days after our arrival home, I
somehow considered it incumbent upon me always to appear sad and
moody in the presence of the household, and especially before
Katenka, whom I looked upon as a great connoisseur in matters of
this kind, and to whom I threw out a hint of the condition in
which my heart was situated. Yet, for all my attempts at
dissimulation and assiduous adoption of such signs of love
sickness as I had occasionally observed in other people, I only
succeeded for two days (and that at intervals, and mostly towards
evening) in reminding myself of the fact that I was in love, and
finally, when I had settled down into the new rut of country life
and pursuits, I forgot about my affection for Sonetchka
altogether.
We arrived at Petrovskoe in the night time, and I was then so
soundly asleep that I saw nothing of the house as we approached
it, nor yet of the avenue of birch trees, nor yet of the
household--all of whom had long ago betaken themselves to bed and
to slumber. Only old hunchbacked Foka--bare-footed, clad in some
sort of a woman's wadded nightdress, and carrying a candlestick--
opened the door to us. As soon as he saw who we were, he trembled
all over with joy, kissed us on the shoulders, hurriedly put on
his felt slippers, and started to dress himself properly. I
passed in a semi-waking condition through the porch and up the
steps, but in the hall the lock of the door, the bars and bolts,
the crooked boards of the flooring, the chest, the ancient
candelabrum (splashed all over with grease as of old), the
shadows thrown by the crooked, chill, recently-lighted stump of
candle, the perennially dusty, unopened window behind which I
remembered sorrel to have grown--all was so familiar, so full of
memories, so intimate of aspect, so, as it were, knit together by
a single idea, that I suddenly became conscious of a tenderness
for this quiet old house. Involuntarily I asked myself, "How have
we, the house and I, managed to remain apart so long?" and,
hurrying from spot to spot, ran to see if all the other rooms
were still the same. Yes, everything was unchanged, except that
everything had become smaller and lower, and I myself taller,
heavier, and more filled out. Yet, even as I was, the old house
received me back into its arms, and aroused in me with every
board, every window, every step of the stairs, and every sound
the shadows of forms, feelings, and events of the happy but
irrevocable past. When we entered our old night nursery, all my
childish fears lurked once more in the darkness of the corners
and doorway. When we passed into the drawing-room, I could feel
the old calm motherly love diffusing itself from every object in
the apartment. In the breakfast-room, the noisy, careless
merriment of childhood seemed merely to be waiting to wake to
life again. In the divannaia (whither Foka first conducted us,
and where he had prepared our beds) everything--mirror, screen,
old wooden ikon, the lumps on the walls covered with white paper--
seemed to speak of suffering and of death and of what would never
come back to us again.
We got into bed, and Foka, bidding us good-night, retired.
"It was in this room that Mamma died, was it not?" said Woloda.
I made no reply, but pretended to be asleep. If I had said
anything I should have burst into tears. On awaking next morning,
I beheld Papa sitting on Woloda's bed in his dressing gown and
slippers and smoking a cigar. Leaping up with a merry hoist of
the shoulders, he came over to me, slapped me on the back with
his great hand, and presented me his cheek to press my lips to.
"Well done, DIPLOMAT!" he said in his most kindly jesting tone as
he looked at me with his small bright eyes. "Woloda tells me you
have passed the examinations well for a youngster, and that is a
splendid thing. Unless you start and play the fool, I shall have
another fine little fellow in you. Thanks, my dear boy. Well, we
will have a grand time of it here now, and in the winter,
perhaps, we shall move to St. Petersburg. I only wish the hunting
was not over yet, or I could have given you some amusement in
THAT way. Can you shoot, Woldemar? However, whether there is any
game or not, I will take you out some day. Next winter, if God
pleases, we will move to St. Petersburg, and you shall meet
people, and make friends, for you are now my two young grown-ups.
I have been telling Woldemar that you are just starting on your
careers, whereas my day is ended. You are old enough now to walk
by yourselves, but, whenever you wish to confide in me, pray do
so, for I am no longer your nurse, but your friend. At least, I
will be your friend and comrade and adviser as much as I can and
more than that I cannot do. How does that fall in with your
philosophy, eh, Koko? Well or ill, eh?"
Of course I said that it fell in with it entirely, and, indeed, I
really thought so. That morning Papa had a particularly winning,
bright, and happy expression on his face, and these new relations
between us, as of equals and comrades, made me love him all the
more.
"Now, tell me," he went on, "did you call upon all our kinsfolk
and the Iwins? Did you see the old man, and what did he say to
you? And did you go to Prince Ivan's?"
We continued talking so long that, before we were fully dressed,
the sun had left the window of the divannaia, and Jakoff (the
same old man who of yore had twirled his fingers behind his back
and always repeated his words) had entered the room and reported
to Papa that the carriage was ready.
"Where are you going to?" I asked Papa.
"Oh, I had forgotten all about it!" he replied, with a cough and
the usual hoisting of his shoulder. "I promised to go and call
upon Epifanova to-day. You remember Epifanova--'la belle
Flamande'--don't you, who used to come and see your Mamma? They
are nice people." And with a self-conscious shrug of his
shoulders (so it appeared to me) Papa left the room.
During our conversation, Lubotshka had more than once come to the
door and asked "Can I come in?" but Papa had always shouted to
her that she could not do so, since we were not dressed yet.
"What rubbish!" she replied. "Why, I have seen you in your
dressing-gown."
"Never mind; you cannot see your brothers without their
inexpressibles," rejoined Papa. "If they each of them just go to
the door, let that be enough for you. Now go. Even for them to
SPEAK to you in such a neglige costume is unbecoming."
"How unbearable you are!" was Lubotshka's parting retort. "Well,
at least hurry up and come down to the drawing-room, for Mimi
wants to see them."
As soon as Papa had left the room, I hastened to array myself in
my student's uniform, and to repair to the drawing-room.
Woloda, on the other hand, was in no hurry, but remained sitting
on his bed and talking to Jakoff about the best places to find
plover and snipe. As I have said, there was nothing in the world
he so much feared as to be suspected of any affection for his
father, brother, and sister; so that, to escape any expression of
that feeling, he often fell into the other extreme, and affected
a coldness which shocked people who did not comprehend its cause.
In the hall, I collided with Papa, who was hurrying towards the
carriage with short, rapid steps. He had a new and fashionable
Moscow greatcoat on, and smelt of scent. On seeing me, he gave a
cheerful nod, as much as to say, "Do you remark my splendour?"
and once again I was struck with the happy expression of face
which I had noted earlier in the morning.
The drawing-room looked the same lofty, bright room as of Yore,
with its brown English piano, and its large open windows looking
on to the green trees and yellowish-red paths of the garden.
After kissing Mimi and Lubotshka, I was approaching Katenka for
the same purpose when it suddenly struck me that it might be
improper for me to salute her in that fashion. Accordingly I
halted, silent and blushing. Katenka, for her part, was quite at
her ease as she held out a white hand to me and congratulated me
on my passing into the University. The same thing took place when
Woloda entered the drawing-room and met Katenka. Indeed, it was
something of a problem how, after being brought up together and
seeing one another daily, we ought now, after this first
separation, to meet again. Katenka had grown better-looking than
any of us, yet Woloda seemed not at all confused as, with a
slight bow to her, he crossed over to Lubotshka, made a jesting
remark to her, and then departed somewhere on some solitary
expedition.
XXIX
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE GIRLS AND OURSELVES
OF the girls Woloda took the strange view that, although he
wished that they should have enough to eat, should sleep well, be
well dressed, and avoid making such mistakes in French as would
shame him before strangers, he would never admit that they could
think or feel like human beings, still less that they could
converse with him sensibly about anything. Whenever they
addressed to him a serious question (a thing, by the way, which
he always tried to avoid), such as asking his opinion on a novel
or inquiring about his doings at the University, he invariably
pulled a grimace, and either turned away without speaking or
answered with some nonsensical French phrase--"Comme c'est tres
jolie!" or the like. Or again, feigning to look serious and
stolidly wise, he would say something absolutely meaningless and
bearing no relation whatever to the question asked him, or else
suddenly exclaim, with a look of pretended unconsciousness, the
word bulku or poyechali or kapustu, [Respectively, " roll of
butter," "away," and " cabbage."] or something of the kind; and
when, afterwards, I happened to repeat these words to him as
having been told me by Lubotshka or Katenka, he would always
remark:
"Hm! So you actually care about talking to them? I can see you
are a duffer still"--and one needed to see and near him to
appreciate the profound, immutable contempt which echoed in this
remark. He had been grown-up now two years, and was in love with
every good-looking woman that he met; yet, despite the fact that
he came in daily contact with Katenka (who during those two years
had been wearing long dresses, and was growing prettier every
day), the possibility of his falling in love with her never
seemed to enter his head. Whether this proceeded from the fact
that the prosaic recollections of childhood were still too fresh
in his memory, or whether from the aversion which very young
people feel for everything domestic, or whether from the common
human weakness which, at a first encounter with anything fair and
pretty, leads a man to say to himself, "Ah! I shall meet much
more of the same kind during my life," but at all events Woloda
had never yet looked upon Katenka with a man's eyes.
All that summer Woloda appeared to find things very wearisome--a
fact which arose out of that contempt for us all which, as I have
said, he made no effort to conceal. His expression of face seemed
to be constantly saying, "Phew! how it bores me to have no one to
speak to!" The first thing in the morning he would go out
shooting, or sit reading a book in his room, and not dress until
luncheon time. Indeed, if Papa was not at home, he would take his
book into that meal, and go on reading it without addressing so
much as a single word to any one of us, who felt, somehow, guilty
in his presence. In the evening, too, he would stretch himself on
a settee in the drawing-room, and either go to sleep, propped on
his elbow, or tell us farcical stories--sometimes stories so
improper as to make Mimi grow angry and blush, and ourselves die
with laughter. At other times he would not condescend to address
a single serious word to any member of the family except Papa or
(occasionally) myself. Involuntarily I offended against his view
of girls, seeing that I was not so afraid of seeming affectionate
as he, and, moreover, had not such a profound and confirmed
contempt for young women. Yet several times that summer, when
driven by lack of amusement to try and engage Lubotshka and
Katenka in conversation, I always encountered in them such an
absence of any capacity for logical thinking, and such an
ignorance of the simplest, most ordinary matters (as, for
instance, the nature of money, the subjects studied at
universities, the effect of war, and so forth), as well as such
indifference to my explanations of such matters, that these
attempts of mine only ended in confirming my unfavourable opinion
of feminine ability.
I remember one evening when Lubotshka kept repeating some
unbearably tedious passage on the piano about a hundred times in
succession, while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the
drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as
he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a
Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with
especial irony). "Wrong again! Now--a second time! That's it!"
and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table,
and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject--love.
I was in the right frame of mind to philosophise, and began by
loftily defining love as the wish to acquire in another what one
does not possess in oneself. To this Katenka retorted that, on
the contrary, love is not love at all if a girl desires to marry
a man for his money alone, but that, in her opinion, riches were
a vain thing, and true love only the affection which can stand
the test of separation (this I took to be a hint concerning her
love for Dubkoff). At this point Woloda, who must have been
listening all the time, raised himself on his elbow, and cried
out some rubbish or another; and I felt that he was right.
Apart from the general faculties (more or less developed in
different persons) of intellect, sensibility, and artistic
feeling, there also exists (more or less developed in different
circles of society, and especially in families) a private or
individual faculty which I may call APPREHENSION. The essence of
this faculty lies in sympathetic appreciation of proportion, and
in identical understanding of things. Two individuals who possess
this faculty and belong to the same social circle or the same
family apprehend an expression of feeling precisely to the same
point, namely, the point beyond which such expression becomes
mere phrasing. Thus they apprehend precisely where commendation
ends and irony begins, where attraction ends and pretence begins,
in a manner which would be impossible for persons possessed of a
different order of apprehension. Persons possessed of identical
apprehension view objects in an identically ludicrous, beautiful,
or repellent light; and in order to facilitate such identical
apprehension between members of the same social circle or family,
they usually establish a language, turns of speech, or terms to
define such shades of apprehension as exist for them alone. In
our particular family such apprehension was common to Papa,
Woloda, and myself, and was developed to the highest pitch,
Dubkoff also approximated to our coterie in apprehension, but
Dimitri, though infinitely more intellectual than Dubkoff, was
grosser in this respect. With no one, however, did I bring this
faculty to such a point as with Woloda, who had grown up with me
under identical conditions. Papa stood a long way from us, and
much that was to us as clear as "two and two make four" was to
him incomprehensible. For instance, I and Woloda managed to
establish between ourselves the following terms, with meanings to
correspond. Izium [Raisins.] meant a desire to boast of one's
money; shishka [Bump or swelling.] (on pronouncing which one had
to join one's fingers together, and to put a particular emphasis
upon the two sh's in the word) meant anything fresh, healthy, and
comely, but not elegant; a substantive used in the plural meant
an undue partiality for the object which it denoted; and so
forth, and so forth. At the same time, the meaning depended
considerably upon the expression of the face and the context of
the conversation; so that, no matter what new expression one of
us might invent to define a shade of feeling the other could
immediately understand it by a hint alone. The girls did not
share this faculty of apprehension, and herein lay the chief
cause of our moral estrangement, and of the contempt which we
felt for them.
It may be that they too had their "apprehension," but it so
little ran with ours that, where we already perceived the
"phrasing," they still saw only the feeling--our irony was for
them truth, and so on. At that time I had not yet learnt to
understand that they were in no way to blame for this, and that
absence of such apprehension in no way prevented them from being
good and clever girls. Accordingly I looked down upon them.
Moreover, having once lit upon my precious idea of "frankness,"
and being bent upon applying it to the full in myself, I thought
the quiet, confiding nature of Lubotshka guilty of secretiveness
and dissimulation simply because she saw no necessity for digging
up and examining all her thoughts and instincts. For instance,
the fact that she always signed the sign of the cross over Papa
before going to bed, that she and Katenka invariably wept in
church when attending requiem masses for Mamma, and that Katenka
sighed and rolled her eyes about when playing the piano--all
these things seemed to me sheer make-believe, and I asked myself:
"At what period did they learn to pretend like grown-up people,
and how can they bring themselves to do it?"
XXX
HOW I EMPLOYED MY TIME
Nevertheless, the fact that that summer I developed a passion for
music caused me to become better friends with the ladies of our
household than I had been for years. In the spring, a young fellow
came to see us, armed with a letter of introduction, who, as soon
as ever he entered the drawing-room, fixed his eyes upon the
piano, and kept gradually edging his chair closer to it as he
talked to Mimi and Katenka. After discoursing awhile of the
weather and the amenities of country life, he skilfully directed
the conversation to piano-tuners, music, and pianos generally,
and ended by saying that he himself played--and in truth he did
sit down and perform three waltzes, with Mimi, Lubotshka, and
Katenka grouped about the instrument, and watching him as he did
so. He never came to see us again, but his playing, and his
attitude when at the piano, and the way in which he kept shaking
his long hair, and, most of all, the manner in which he was able
to execute octaves with his left hand as he first of all played
them rapidly with his thumb and little finger, and then slowly
closed those members, and then played the octaves afresh, made a
great impression upon me. This graceful gesture of his, together
with his easy pose and his shaking of hair and successful winning
of the ladies' applause by his talent, ended by firing me to take
up the piano. Convinced that I possessed both talent and a
passion for music, I set myself to learn, and, in doing so, acted
just as millions of the male--still more, of the female--sex have
done who try to teach themselves without a skilled instructor,
without any real turn for the art, or without the smallest
understanding either of what the art can give or of what ought to
be done to obtain that gift. For me music (or rather, piano-
playing) was simply a means of winning the ladies' good graces
through their sensibility. With the help of Katenka I first
learnt the notes (incidentally breaking several of them with my
clumsy fingers), and then--that is to say, after two months of
hard work, supplemented by ceaseless twiddling of my rebellious
fingers on my knees after luncheon, and on the pillow when in
bed--went on to "pieces," which I played (so Katenka assured me)
with "soul" ("avec ame"), but altogether regardless of time.
My range of pieces was the usual one--waltzes, galops,
"romances," "arrangements," etcetera; all of them of the class of
delightful compositions of which any one with a little healthy
taste could point out a selection among the better class works
contained in any volume of music and say, "These are what you
ought NOT to play, seeing that anything worse, less tasteful, and
more silly has never yet been included in any collection of
music,"--but which (probably for that very reason) are to be
found on the piano of every Russian lady. True, we also possessed
an unfortunate volume which contained Beethoven's "Sonate
Pathetique" and the C minor Sonata (a volume lamed for life by
the ladies--more especially by Lubotshka, who used to discourse
music from it in memory of Mamma), as well as certain other good
pieces which her teacher in Moscow had given her; but among that
collection there were likewise compositions of the teacher's own,
in the shape of clumsy marches and galops--and these too
Lubotshka used to play! Katenka and I cared nothing for serious
works, but preferred, above all things, "Le Fou" and "The
Nightingale"--the latter of which Katenka would play until her
fingers almost became invisible, and which I too was beginning
to execute with much vigour and some continuity. I had adopted the
gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently
regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play.
Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were
beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka.
Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well
as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the
conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into
raptures whenever Lubotshka played the "Sonate Pathetique," and
although (if the truth be told) that work had for years driven me
to the verge of distraction, I set myself to play Beethoven, and
to talk of him as "Beethoven." Yet through all this chopping and
changing and pretence (as I now conceive) there may have run in
me a certain vein of talent, since music sometimes affected me
even to tears, and things which particularly pleased me I could
strum on the piano afterwards (in a certain fashion) without the
score; so that, had any one taught me at that period to look upon
music as an end, a grace, in itself, and not merely as a means
for pleasing womenfolk with the velocity and pseudo-sentiment of
one's playing, I might possibly have become a passable musician.
The reading of French novels (of which Woloda had brought
a large store with him from Moscow) was another of my amusements
that summer. At that period Monte Cristo and Taine's works had
just appeared, while I also revelled in stories by Sue, Dumas,
and Paul de Kock. Even their most unnatural personages and events
were for me as real as actuality, and not only was I incapable of
suspecting an author of lying, but, in my eyes, there existed no
author at all. That is to say, the various personages and events
of a book paraded themselves before me on the printed page as
personages and events that were alive and real; and although I
had never in my life met such characters as I there read about, I
never for a second doubted that I should one day do so. I
discovered in myself all the passions described in every novel,
as well as a likeness to all the characters--heroes and villains
impartially--who figured therein, just as a suspicious man finds
in himself the signs of every possible disease when reading a
book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs,
the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-
drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man
of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth.
Likewise I found great pleasure in the fact that it was all
written in French, and that I could lay to heart the fine words
which the fine heroes spoke, and recall them for use some day
when engaged in some noble deed. What quantities of French
phrases I culled from those books for Kolpikoff's benefit if I
should ever meet him again, as well as for HERS, when at length I
should find her and reveal to her my love! For them both I
prepared speeches which should overcome them as soon as spoken!
Upon novels, too, I founded new ideals of the moral qualities
which I wished to attain. First of all, I wished to be NOBLE in
all my deeds and conduct (I use the French word noble instead of
the Russian word blagorodni for the reason that the former has a
different meaning to the latter--as the Germans well understood
when they adopted noble as nobel and differentiated it from
ehrlich); next, to be strenuous; and lastly, to be what I was
already inclined to be, namely, comme il faut. I even tried to
approximate my appearance and bearing to that of the heroes who
possessed these qualities. In particular I remember how in one of
the hundred or so novels which I read that summer there was a
very strenuous hero with heavy eyebrows, and that I so greatly
wished to resemble him (I felt that I did so already from a moral
point of view) that one day, when looking at my eyebrows in the
glass, I conceived the idea of clipping them, in order to make
them grow bushier. Unfortunately, after I had started to do so, I
happened to clip one spot rather shorter than the rest, and so
had to level down the rest to it-with the result that, to my
horror, I beheld myself eyebrow-less, and anything but
presentable. However, I comforted myself with the reflection that
my eyebrows would soon sprout again as bushy as my hero's, and
was only perplexed to think how I could explain the circumstance
to the household when they next perceived my eyebrow-less
condition. Accordingly I borrowed some gunpowder from Woloda,
rubbed it on my temples, and set it alight. The powder did not
fire properly, but I succeeded in singeing myself sufficiently to
avert all suspicion of my pranks. And, indeed, afterwards, when I
had forgotten all about my hero, my eyebrows grew again, and much
thicker than they had been before.
XXXI
"COMME IL FAUT"
SEVERAL times in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an
idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it
incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which
was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became
engrafted upon my life by my upbringing and social milieu.
The human race may be divided into several categories--rich and
poor, good and bad, military and civilian, clever and stupid, and
so forth, and so forth. Yet each man has his own favourite,
fundamental system of division which he unconsciously uses to
class each new person with whom he meets. At the time of which I
am speaking, my own favourite, fundamental system of division in
this respect was into people "comme il faut" and people "comme il
ne faut pas"--the latter subdivided, again, into people merely not
"comme il faut" and the lower orders. People "comme il faut" I
respected, and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my
equals; the second of the above categories I pretended merely to
despise, but in reality hated, and nourished towards them a kind
of feeling of offended personality; while the third category had
no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt
for them was too complete. This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay,
first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially
conversational French. A person who spoke that language badly at
once aroused in me a feeling of dislike. "Why do you try to talk
as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to
ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile. The second
condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well
kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse;
the fourth--and a very important one--indifference to everything,
and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover,
there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me
to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which
he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the
fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out,
and so forth) were his feet. The relation of boots to trousers
was sufficient to determine, in my eyes, the social status of a
man. Heelless boots with angular toes, wedded to narrow,
unstrapped trouser-ends--these denoted the vulgarian. Boots with
narrow, round toes and heels, accompanied either by tight
trousers strapped under the instep and fitting close to the leg
or by wide trousers similarly strapped, but projecting in a peak
over the toe--these meant the man of mauvais genre; and so on, and
so on.
It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become
"comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely
as I did. Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such
enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous
development in my mind. I hardly like to think how much of the
best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of
existence I wasted upon its acquisition. Yet every one whom I
imitated--Woloda, Dubkoff, and the majority of my acquaintances--
seemed to acquire it easily. I watched them with envy, and
silently toiled to become proficient in French, to bow gracefully
and without looking at the person whom I was saluting, to gain
dexterity in small-talk and dancing, to cultivate indifference
and ennui, and to keep my fingernails well trimmed (though I
frequently cut my finger-ends with the scissors in so doing). And
all the time I felt that so much remained to be done if I was
ever to attain my end! A room, a writing-table, an equipage I
still found it impossible to arrange "comme il faut," however
much I fought down my aversion to practical matters in my desire
to become proficient. Yet everything seemed to arrange itself
properly with other people, just as though things could never
have been otherwise! Once I remember asking Dubkoff, after much
zealous and careful labouring at my finger-nails (his own were
extraordinarily good), whether his nails had always been as now,
or whether he had done anything to make them so: to which he
replied that never within his recollection had he done anything
to them, and that he could not imagine a gentleman's nails
possibly being different. This answer incensed me greatly, for I
had not yet learnt that one of the chief conditions of "comme il
faut"-ness was to hold one's tongue about the labour by which it
had been acquired. "Comme il faut"-ness I looked upon as not only
a great merit, a splendid accomplishment, an embodiment of all
the perfection which must strive to attain, but as the one
indispensable condition without which there could never be
happiness, nor glory, nor any good whatsoever in this world. Even
the greatest artist or savant or benefactor of the human race
would at that time have won from me no respect if he had not also
been "comme il faut." A man possessed of "comme il faut"-ness
stood higher than, and beyond all possible equality with, such
people, and might well leave it to them to paint pictures, to
compose music, to write books, or to do good. Possibly he might
commend them for so doing (since why should not merit be
commended where-ever it be found?), but he could never stand ON A
LEVEL with them, seeing that he was "comme il faut" and they were
not--a quite final and sufficient reason. In fact, I actually
believe that, had we possessed a brother or a father or a mother
who had not been "comme il faut," I should have declared it to be
a great misfortune for us, and announced that between myself and
them there could never be anything in common. Yet neither waste
of the golden hours which I consumed in constantly endeavouring
to observe the many arduous, unattainable conditions of "comme il
faut"-ness (to the exclusion of any more serious pursuit), nor
dislike of and contempt for nine-tenths of the human race, nor
disregard of all the beauty that lay outside the narrow circle of
"comme il faut"-ness comprised the whole of the evil which the
idea wrought in me. The chief evil of all lay in the notion
acquired that a man need not strive to become a tchinovnik,
[Official.] a coachbuilder, a soldier, a savant, or anything
useful, so long only as he was "comme il faut "--that by attaining
the latter quality he had done all that was demanded of him, and
was even superior to most people.
Usually, at a given period in youth, and after many errors and
excesses, every man recognises the necessity of his taking an
active part in social life, and chooses some branch of labour to
which to devote himself. Only with the "comme il faut" man does
this rarely happen. I have known, and know, very, very many
people--old, proud, self-satisfied, and opinionated--who to the
question (if it should ever present itself to them in their
world) "Who have you been, and what have you ever done?" would be
unable to reply otherwise than by saying,
"Je fus un homme tres comme il faut,"
Such a fate was awaiting myself.
XXXII
YOUTH
Despite the confusion of ideas raging in my head, I was at least
young, innocent, and free that summer--consequently almost happy.
Sometimes I would rise quite early in the morning, for I slept on
the open verandah, and the bright, horizontal beams of the
morning sun would wake me up. Dressing myself quickly, I would
tuck a towel and a French novel under my arm, and go off to bathe
in the river in the shade of a birch tree which stood half a
verst from the house. Next, I would stretch myself on the grass
and read--raising my eyes from time to time to look at the surface
of the river where it showed blue in the shade of the trees, at
the ripples caused by the first morning breeze, at the yellowing
field of rye on the further bank, and at the bright-red sheen of
the sunlight as it struck lower and lower down the white trunks
of the birch-trees which, ranged in ranks one behind the other,
gradually receded into the remote distance of the home park. At
such moments I would feel joyously conscious of having within me
the same young, fresh force of life as nature was everywhere
exuding around me. When, however, the sky was overcast with grey
clouds of morning and I felt chilly after bathing, I would often
start to walk at random through the fields and woods, and
joyously trail my wet boots in the fresh dew. All the while my
head would be filled with vivid dreams concerning the heroes of
my last-read novel, and I would keep picturing to myself some
leader of an army or some statesman or marvellously strong man or
devoted lover or another, and looking round me in, a nervous
expectation that I should suddenly descry HER somewhere near me,
in a meadow or behind a tree. Yet, whenever these rambles led me
near peasants engaged at their work, all my ignoring of the
existence of the "common people" did not prevent me from
experiencing an involuntary, overpowering sensation of
awkwardness; so that I always tried to avoid their seeing me.
When the heat of the day had increased, it was not infrequently my
habit--if the ladies did not come out of doors for their morning
tea--to go rambling through the orchard and kitchen-garden, and to
pluck ripe fruit there. Indeed, this was an occupation which
furnished me with one of my greatest pleasures. Let any one go
into an orchard, and dive into the midst of a tall, thick,
sprouting raspberry-bed. Above will be seen the clear, glowing
sky, and, all around, the pale-green, prickly stems of raspberry-
trees where they grow mingled together in a tangle of profusion.
At one's feet springs the dark-green nettle, with its slender
crown of flowers, while the broad-leaved burdock, with its
bright-pink, prickly blossoms, overtops the raspberries (and even
one's head) with its luxuriant masses, until, with the nettle, it
almost meets the pendent, pale-green branches of the old apple-
trees where apples, round and lustrous as bone, but as yet
unripe, are mellowing in the heat of the sun. Below, again, are
seen young raspberry-shoots, twining themselves around the
partially withered, leafless parent plant, and stretching their
tendrils towards the sunlight, with green, needle-shaped blades
of grass and young, dew-coated pods peering through last year's
leaves, and growing juicily green in the perennial shade, as
though they care nothing for the bright sunshine which is playing
on the leaves of the apple-trees above them. In this density
there is always moisture--always a smell of confined, perpetual
shade, of cobwebs, fallen apples (turning black where they roll
on the mouldy sod), raspberries, and earwigs of the kind which
impel one to reach hastily for more fruit when one has
inadvertently swallowed a member of that insect tribe with the
last berry. At every step one's movements keep flushing the
sparrows which always make their home in these depths, and one
hears their fussy chirping and the beating of their tiny,
fluttering wings against the stalks, and catches the low buzzing
of a bumble bee somewhere, and the sound of the gardener's
footsteps (it is half-daft Akim) on the path as he hums his
eternal sing-song to himself. Then one mutters under one's
breath, "No! Neither he nor any one else shall find me here!" yet
still one goes on stripping juicy berries from their conical
white pilasters, and cramming them into one's mouth. At length,
one's legs soaked to the knees as one repeats, over and over
again, some rubbish which keeps running
in one's head, and one's hands and nether limbs (despite the
protection of one's wet trousers) thoroughly stung with the
nettles, one comes to the conclusion that the sun's rays are
beating too straight upon one's head for eating to be any longer
desirable, and, sinking down into the tangle of greenery, one
remains there--looking and listening, and continuing in
mechanical fashion to strip off one or two of the finer berries
and swallow them.
At eleven o'clock--that is to say, when the ladies had taken
their morning tea and settled down to their occupations--I would
repair to the drawing-room. Near the first window, with its
unbleached linen blind lowered to exclude the sunshine, but
through the chink of which the sun kept throwing brilliant
circles of light which hurt the eye to look at them, there would
be standing a screen, with flies quietly parading the whiteness
of its covering. Behind it would be seated Mimi, shaking her head
in an irritable manner, and constantly shifting from spot to spot
to avoid the sunshine as at intervals it darted her from
somewhere and laid a streak of flame upon her hand or face.
Through the other three windows the sun would be throwing three
squares of light, crossed with the shadows of the window-frames,
and where one of these patches marked the unstained floor of the
room there would be lying, in accordance with invariable custom,
Milka, with her ears pricked as she watched the flies promenading
the lighted space. Seated on a settee, Katenka would be knitting
or reading aloud as from time to time she gave her white sleeves
(looking almost transparent in the sunshine) an impatient shake,
or tossed her head with a frown to drive away some fly which had
settled upon her thick auburn hair and was now buzzing in its
tangles. Lubotshka would either be walking up and down the room
(her hands clasped behind her) until the moment should arrive
when a movement would be made towards the garden, or playing some
piece of which every note had long been familiar to me. For my
own part, I would sit down somewhere, and listen to the music or
the reading until such time as I myself should have an
opportunity of performing on the piano. After luncheon I would
condescend to take the girls out riding (since to go for a mere
walk at that hour seemed to me unsuitable to my years and
position in the world), and these excursions of ours--in which I
often took my companions through unaccustomed spots and dells--
were very pleasant. Indeed, on some of these occasions I grew
quite boyish, and the girls would praise my riding and daring,
and pretend that I was their protector. In the evening, if we had
no guests with us, tea (served in the dim verandah),would be
followed by a walk round the homestead with Papa, and then I
would stretch myself on my usual settee, and read and ponder as
of old, as I listened to Katenka or Lubotshka playing. At other
times, if I was alone in the drawing-room and Lubotshka was
performing some old-time air, I would find myself laying my book
down, and gazing through the open doorway on to the balcony at
the pendent, sinuous branches of the tall birch-trees where they
stood overshadowed by the coming night, and at the clear sky
where, if one looked at it intently enough, misty, yellowish
spots would appear suddenly, and then disappear again. Next, as I
listened to the sounds of the music wafted from the salon, and to
the creaking of gates and the voices of the peasant women when
the cattle returned to the village, I would suddenly bethink me
of Natalia Savishna and of Mamma and of Karl Ivanitch, and become
momentarily sad. But in those days my spirit was so full of life
and hope that such reminiscences only touched me in passing, and
soon fled away again.
After supper and (sometimes) a night stroll with some one in the
garden (for I was afraid to walk down the dark avenues by
myself), I would repair to my solitary sleeping-place on the
verandah--a proceeding which, despite the countless mosquitos
which always devoured me, afforded me the greatest pleasure. If
the moon was full, I frequently spent whole nights sitting up on
my mattress, looking at the light and shade, listening to the
sounds or stillness, dreaming of one matter and another (but more
particularly of the poetic, voluptuous happiness which, in those
days, I believed was to prove the acme of my felicity) and
lamenting that until now it had only been given to me to IMAGINE
things. No sooner had every one dispersed, and I had seen lights
pass from the drawing-room to the upper chambers (whence female
voices would presently be heard, and the noise of windows opening
and shutting), than I would depart to the verandah, and walk up
and down there as I listened attentively to the sounds from the
slumbering mansion. To this day, whenever I feel any expectation
(no matter how small and baseless) of realising a fraction of
some happiness of which I may be dreaming, I somehow invariably
fail to picture to myself what the imagined happiness is going to
be like.
At the least sound of bare footsteps, or of a cough, or of a
snore, or of the rattling of a window, or of the rustling of a
dress, I would leap from my mattress, and stand furtively gazing
and listening, thrown, without any visible cause, into extreme
agitation. But the lights would disappear from the upper rooms,
the sounds of footsteps and talking give place to snores, the
watchman begin his nightly tapping with his stick, the garden
grow brighter and more mysterious as the streaks of light
vanished from the windows, the last candle pass from the pantry
to the hall (throwing a glimmer into the dewy garden as it did
so), and the stooping figure of Foka (decked in a nightcap, and
carrying the candle) become visible to my eyes as he went to his
bed. Often I would find a great and fearful pleasure in stealing
over the grass, in the black shadow of the house, until I had
reached the hall window, where I would stand listening with bated
breath to the snoring of the boy, to Foka's gruntings (in the
belief that no one heard him), and to the sound of his senile
voice as he drawled out the evening prayers. At length even his
candle would be extinguished, and the window slammed down, so
that I would find myself utterly alone; whereupon, glancing
nervously from side to side, lest haply I should see the white
woman standing near a flower-bed or by my couch, I would run at
full speed back to the verandah. Then, and only then, I would lie
down with my face to the garden, and, covering myself over, so
far as possible, from the mosquitos and bats, fall to gazing in
front of me as I listened to the sounds of the night and dreamed
of love and happiness.
At such times everything would take on for me a different
meaning. The look of the old birch trees, with the one side of
their curling branches showing bright against the moonlit sky,
and the other darkening the bushes and carriage-drive with their
black shadows; the calm, rich glitter of the pond, ever swelling
like a sound; the moonlit sparkle of the dewdrops on the flowers
in front of the verandah; the graceful shadows of those flowers
where they lay thrown upon the grey stonework; the cry of a quail
on the far side of the pond; the voice of some one walking on the
high road; the quiet, scarcely audible scrunching of two old
birch trees against one another; the humming of a mosquito at my
car under the coverlet; the fall of an apple as it caught against
a branch and rustled among the dry leaves; the leapings of frogs
as they approached almost to the verandah-steps arid sat with the
moon shining mysteriously on their green backs--all these things
took on for me a strange significance--a significance of
exceeding beauty and of infinite love. Before me would rise SHE,
with long black tresses and a high bust, but always mournful in
her fairness, with bare hands and voluptuous arms. She loved me,
and for one moment of her love I would sacrifice my whole life!--
But the moon would go on rising higher and higher, and shining
brighter and brighter, in the heavens; the rich sparkle of the
pond would swell like a sound, and become ever more and more
brilliant, while the shadows would grow blacker and blacker, and
the sheen of the moon more and more transparent: until, as I
looked at and listened to all this, something would say to me
that SHE with the bare hands and voluptuous arms did not
represent ALL happiness, that love for her did not represent ALL
good; so that, the more I gazed at the full, high-riding moon,
the higher would true beauty and goodness appear to me to lie,
and the purer and purer they would seem--the nearer and nearer to
Him who is the source of all beauty and all goodness. And tears
of a sort of unsatisfied, yet tumultuous, joy would fill my eyes.
Always, too, I was alone; yet always, too, it seemed to me that,
although great, mysterious Nature could draw the shining disc of
the moon to herself, and somehow hold in some high, indefinite
place the pale-blue sky, and be everywhere around me, and fill of
herself the infinity of space, while I was but a lowly worm,
already defiled with the poor, petty passions of humanity--always
it seemed to me that, nevertheless, both Nature and the moon and
I were one.
XXXIII
OUR NEIGHBOURS
ON the first day after our arrival, I had been greatly astonished
that Papa should speak of our neighbours, the Epifanovs, as "nice
people," and still more so that he should go to call upon them.
The fact was that we had long been at law over some land with
this family. When a child, I had more than once heard Papa raging
over the litigation, abusing the Epifanovs, and warning people
(so I understood him) against them. Likewise, I had heard Jakoff
speak of them as "our enemies" and "black people" and could
remember Mamma requesting that their names should never be
mentioned in her presence, nor, indeed, in the house at all.
From these data I, as a child, had arrived at the clear and assured
conviction that the Epifanovs were foemen of ours who would at
any time stab or strangle both Papa and his sons if they should
ever come across them, as well as that they were "black people",
in the literal sense of the term. Consequently, when, in the year
that Mamma died, I chanced to catch sight of Avdotia ("La Belle
Flamande") on the occasion of a visit which she paid to my
mother, I found it hard to believe that she did not come of a
family of negroes. All the same, I had the lowest possible
opinion of the family, and, for all that we saw much of them that
summer, continued to be strongly prejudiced against them. As a
matter of fact, their household only consisted of the mother (a
widow of fifty, but a very well-preserved, cheery old woman), a
beautiful daughter named Avdotia, and a son, Peter, who was a
stammerer, unmarried, and of very serious disposition.
For the last twenty years before her husband's death, Madame
Epifanov had lived apart from him--sometimes in St. Petersburg,
where she had relatives, but more frequently at her village of
Mitishtchi, which stood some three versts from ours. Yet the
neighbourhood had taken to circulating such horrible tales
concerning her mode of life that Messalina was, by comparison, a
blameless child: which was why my mother had requested her name
never to be mentioned. As a matter of fact, not one-tenth part of
the most cruel of all gossip--the gossip of country-houses--is
worthy of credence; and although, when I first made Madame's
acquaintance, she had living with her in the house a clerk named
Mitusha, who had been promoted from a serf, and who, curled,
pomaded, and dressed in a frockcoat of Circassian pattern, always
stood behind his mistress's chair at luncheon, while from time to
time she invited her guests to admire his handsome eyes and
mouth, there was nothing for gossip to take hold of. I believe,
too, that since the time--ten years earlier--when she had recalled
her dutiful son Peter from the service, she had wholly changed
her mode of living. It seems her property had never been a large
one--merely a hundred souls or so--[This refers, of course, to the
days of serfdom.]and that during her previous life of gaiety she
had spent a great deal. Consequently, when, some ten years ago,
those portions of the property which had been mortgaged and re-
mortgaged had been foreclosed upon and compulsorily sold by
auction, she had come to the conclusion that all these unpleasant
details of distress upon and valuation of her property had been
due not so much to failure to pay the interest as to the fact
that she was a woman: wherefore she had written to her son (then
serving with his regiment) to come and save his mother from her
embarrassments, and he, like a dutiful son--conceiving that his
first duty was to comfort his mother in her old age--had
straightway resigned his commission (for all that he had been
doing well in his profession, and was hoping soon to become
independent), and had come to join her in the country.
Despite his plain face, uncouth demeanour, and fault of
stuttering, Peter was a man of unswerving principles and of the
most extraordinary good sense. Somehow--by small borrowings,
sundry strokes of business, petitions for grace, and promises to
repay--he contrived to carry on the property, and, making himself
overseer, donned his father's greatcoat (still preserved in a
drawer), dispensed with horses and carriages, discouraged guests
from calling at Mitishtchi, fashioned his own sleighs, increased
his arable land and curtailed that of the serfs, felled his own
timber, sold his produce in person, and saw to matters generally.
Indeed, he swore, and kept his oath, that, until all outstanding
debts were paid, he would never wear any clothes than his
father's greatcoat and a corduroy jacket which he had made for
himself, nor yet ride in aught but a country waggon, drawn by
peasants' horses. This stoical mode of life he sought to apply
also to his family, so far as the sympathetic respect which he
conceived to be his mother's due would allow of; so that,
although, in the drawing-room, he would show her only stuttering
servility, and fulfil all her wishes, and blame any one who did
not do precisely as she bid them, in his study or his office he
would overhaul the cook if she had served up so much as a duck
without his orders, or any one responsible for sending a serf
(even though at Madame's own bidding) to inquire after a
neighbour's health or for despatching the peasant girls into the
wood to gather wild raspberries instead of setting them to weed
the kitchen-garden.
Within four years every debt had been repaid, and Peter had gone
to Moscow and returned thence in a new jacket and tarantass. [A
two-wheeled carriage.] Yet, despite this flourishing position of
affairs, he still preserved the stoical tendencies in which, to
tell the truth, he took a certain vague pride before his family
and strangers, since he would frequently say with a stutter: "Any
one who REALLY wishes to see me will be glad to see me even in my
dressing-gown, and to eat nothing but shtchi [Cabbage-soup.] and
kasha [Buckwheat gruel.] at my table." "That is what I eat
myself," he would add. In his every word and movement spoke pride
based upon a consciousness of having sacrificed himself for his
mother and redeemed the property, as well as contempt for any one
who had not done something of the same kind.
The mother and daughter were altogether different characters from
Peter, as well as altogether different from one another. The
former was one of the most agreeable, uniformly good-tempered,
and cheerful women whom one could possibly meet. Anything
attractive and genuinely happy delighted her. Even the faculty of
being pleased with the sight of young people enjoying themselves
(it is only in the best-natured of elderly folk that one meets
with that TRAIT) she possessed to the full. On the other hand,
her daughter was of a grave turn of mind. Rather, she was of that
peculiarly careless, absent-minded, gratuitously distant bearing
which commonly distinguishes unmarried beauties. Whenever she
tried to be gay, her gaiety somehow seemed to be unnatural to
her, so that she always appeared to be laughing either at herself
or at the persons to whom she was speaking or at the world in
general--a thing which, possibly, she had no real intention of
doing. Often I asked myself in astonishment what she could mean
when she said something like, "Yes, I know how terribly good-
looking I am," or, "Of course every one is in love with me," and
so forth. Her mother was a person always busy, since she had a
passion for housekeeping, gardening, flowers, canaries, and
pretty trinkets. Her rooms and garden, it is true, were small and
poorly fitted-up, yet everything in them was so neat and
methodical, and bore such a general air of that gentle gaiety
which one hears expressed in a waltz or polka, that the word
"toy" by which guests often expressed their praise of it all
exactly suited her surroundings. She herself was a "toy"--being
petite, slender, fresh-coloured, small, and pretty-handed, and
invariably gay and well-dressed. The only fault in her was that a
slight over-prominence of the dark-blue veins on her little hands
rather marred the general effect of her appearance. On the other
hand, her daughter scarcely ever did anything at all. Not only
had she no love for trifling with flowers and trinkets, but she
neglected her personal exterior, and only troubled to dress
herself well when guests happened to call. Yet, on returning to
the room in society costume, she always looked extremely
handsome--save for that cold, uniform expression of eyes and
smile which is common to all beauties. In fact, her strictly
regular, beautiful face and symmetrical figure always seemed to
be saying to you, "Yes, you may look at me."
At the same time, for all the mother's liveliness of disposition
and the daughter's air of indifference and abstraction, something
told one that the former was incapable of feeling affection for
anything that was not pretty and gay, but that Avdotia, on the
contrary, was one of those natures which, once they love, are
willing to sacrifice their whole life for the man they adore.
XXXIV
MY FATHER'S SECOND MARRIAGE
MY father was forty-eight when he took as his second wife Avdotia
Vassilievna Epifanov.
I suspect that when, that spring, he had departed for the country
with the girls, he had been in that communicatively happy,
sociable mood in which gamblers usually find themselves who have
retired from play after winning large stakes. He had felt that he
still had a fortune left to him which, so long as he did not
squander it on gaming, might be used for our advancement in life.
Moreover, it was springtime, he was unexpectedly well supplied
with ready money, he was alone, and he had nothing to do. As he
conversed with Jakoff on various matters, and remembered both the
interminable suit with the Epifanovs and Avdotia's beauty (it was
a long while since he had seen her), I can imagine him saying:
"How do you think we ought to act in this suit, Jakoff? My idea
is simply to let the cursed land go. Eh? What do you think about
it?" I can imagine, too, how, thus interrogated, Jakoff twirled
his fingers behind his back in a deprecatory sort of way, and
proceeded to argue that it all the same, Peter Alexandritch, we
are in the right." Nevertheless, I further conjecture, Papa
ordered the dogcart to be got ready, put on his fashionable
olive-coloured driving-coat, brushed up the remnants of his hair,
sprinkled his clothes with scent, and, greatly pleased to think
that he was acting a la seignior (as well as, even more,
revelling in the prospect of soon seeing a pretty woman), drove
off to visit his neighbours.
I can imagine, too, that when the flustered housemaid ran to
inform Peter Vassilievitch that Monsieur Irtenieff himself had
called, Peter answered angrily, "Well, what has he come for?"
and, stepping softly about the house, first went into his study
to put on his old soiled jacket, and then sent down word to the
cook that on no account whatever--no, not even if she were
ordered to do so by the mistress herself--was she to add anything
to luncheon.
Since, later, I often saw Papa with Peter, I can form a very good
idea of this first interview between them. I can imagine that,
despite Papa's proposal to end the suit in a peaceful manner,
Peter was morose and resentful at the thought of having
sacrificed his career to his mother, and at Papa having done
nothing of the kind--a by no means surprising circumstance, Peter
probably said to himself. Next, I can see Papa taking no notice
of this ill-humour, but cracking quips and jests, while Peter
gradually found himself forced to treat him as a humorist with
whom he felt offended one moment and inclined to be reconciled
the next. Indeed, with his instinct for making fun of everything,
Papa often used to address Peter as "Colonel;" and though I can
remember Peter once replying, with an unusually violent stutter
and his face scarlet with indignation, that he had never been a
c-c-colonel, but only a l-l-lieutenant, Papa called him "Colonel"
again before another five minutes were out.
Lubotshka told me that, up to the time of Woloda's and my arrival
from Moscow, there had been daily meetings with the Epifanovs,
and that things had been very lively, since Papa, who had a
genius for arranging, everything with a touch of originality and
wit, as well as in a simple and refined manner, had devised
shooting and fishing parties and fireworks for the Epifanovs'
benefit. All these festivities--so said Lubotshka--would have
gone off splendidly but for the intolerable Peter, who had spoilt
everything by his puffing and stuttering. After our coming,
however, the Epifanovs only visited us twice, and we went once to
their house, while after St. Peter's Day (on which, it being
Papa's nameday, the Epifanovs called upon us in common with a
crowd of other guests) our relations with that family came
entirely to an end, and, in future, only Papa went to see them.
During the brief period when I had opportunities of seeing Papa
and Dunetchka (as her mother called Avdotia) together, this is
what I remarked about them. Papa remained unceasingly in the same
buoyant mood as had so greatly struck me on the day after our
arrival. So gay and youthful and full of life and happy did he
seem that the beams of his felicity extended themselves to all
around him, and involuntarily communicated to them a similar
frame of mind. He never stirred from Avdotia's side so long as
she was in the room, but either kept on plying her with sugary-
sweet compliments which made me feel ashamed for him or, with his
gaze fixed upon her with an air at once passionate and
complacent, sat hitching his shoulder and coughing as from time
to time he smiled and whispered something in her ear. Yet
throughout he wore the same expression of raillery as was
peculiar to him even in the most serious matters.
As a rule, Avdotia herself seemed to catch the infection of the
happiness which sparkled at this period in Papa's large blue
eyes; yet there were moments also when she would be seized with
such a fit of shyness that I, who knew the feeling well, was full
of sympathy and compassion as I regarded her embarrassment. At
moments of this kind she seemed to be afraid of every glance and
every movement--to be supposing that every one was looking at her,
every one thinking of no one but her, and that unfavourably. She
would glance timidly from one person to another, the colour
coming and going in her cheeks, and then begin to talk loudly and
defiantly, but, for the most part, nonsense; until presently,
realising this, and supposing that Papa and every one else had
heard her, she would blush more painfully than ever. Yet Papa
never noticed her nonsense, for he was too much taken up with
coughing and with gazing at her with his look of happy,
triumphant devotion. I noticed, too, that, although these fits of
shyness attacked Avdotia, without any visible cause, they not
infrequently ensued upon Papa's mention of one or another young
and beautiful woman. Frequent transitions from depression to that
strange, awkward gaiety of hers to which I have referred before.
the repetition of favourite words and turns of speech of Papa's;
the continuation of discussions with others which Papa had
already begun--all these things, if my father had not been the
principal actor in the matter and I had been a little older,
would have explained to me the relations subsisting between him
and Avdotia. At the time, however, I never surmised them--no, not
even when Papa received from her brother Peter a letter which so
upset him that not again until the end of August did he go to
call upon the Epifanovs'. Then, however, he began his visits once
more, and ended by informing us, on the day before Woloda and I
were to return to Moscow, that he was about to take Avdotia
Vassilievna Epifanov to be his wife.
XXXV
HOW WE RECEIVED THE NEWS
Yet, even on the eve of the official announcement, every one had
learnt of the matter, and was discussing it. Mimi never left her
room that day, and wept copiously. Katenka kept her company, and
only came out for luncheon, with a grieved expression on her face
which was manifestly borrowed from her mother. Lubotshka, on the
contrary, was very cheerful, and told us after luncheon that she
knew of a splendid secret which she was going to tell no one.
"There is nothing so splendid about your secret," said Woloda,
who did not in the least share her satisfaction. "If you were
capable of any serious thought at all, you would understand that
it is a very bad lookout for us."
Lubotshka stared at him in amazement, and said no more. After the
meal was over, Woloda made a feint of taking me by the arm, and
then, fearing that this would seem too much like "affection,"
nudged me gently by the elbow, and beckoned me towards the salon.
"You know, I suppose, what the secret is of which Lubotshka was
speaking?" he said when he was sure that we were alone. It was
seldom that he and I spoke together in confidence: with the
result that, whenever it came about, we felt a kind of
awkwardness in one another's presence, and "boys began to jump
about" in our eyes, as Woloda expressed it. On the present
occasion, however, he answered the excitement in my eyes with a
grave, fixed look which said: "You need not be surprised, for we
are brothers, and we have to consider an important family
matter." I understood him, and he went on:
"You know, I suppose, that Papa is going to marry Avdotia
Epifanov?"
I nodded, for I had already heard so. "Well, it is not a good
thing," continued Woloda.
"Why so?"
"Why?" he repeated irritably. "Because it will be so pleasant,
won't it, to have this stuttering 'colonel' and all his family
for relations! Certainly she seems nice enough, as yet; but who
knows what she will turn out to be later? It won't matter much to
you or myself, but Lubotshka will soon be making her debut, and
it will hardly be nice for her to have such a 'belle mere' as
this--a woman who speaks French badly, and has no manners to
teach her."
Although it seemed odd to hear Woloda criticising Papa's choice
so coolly, I felt that he was right.
"Why is he marrying her?" I asked.
"Oh, it is a hole-and-corner business, and God only knows why,"
he answered. "All I know is that her brother, Peter, tried to
make conditions about the marriage, and that, although at first
Papa would not hear of them, he afterwards took some fancy or
knight-errantry or another into his head. But, as I say, it is a
hole-and-corner business. I am only just beginning to understand
my father "--the fact that Woloda called Papa "my father" instead
of "Papa" somehow hurt me--"and though I can see that he is kind
and clever, he is irresponsible and frivolous to a degree that--
Well, the whole thing is astonishing. He cannot so much as look
upon a woman calmly. You yourself know how he falls in love with
every one that he meets. You know it, and so does Mimi."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"What I say. Not long ago I learnt that he used to be in love
with Mimi herself when he was a young man, and that he used to
send her poetry, and that there really was something between
them. Mimi is heart-sore about it to this day"--and Woloda burst
out laughing.
"Impossible!" I cried in astonishment.
"But the principal thing at this moment," went on Woloda,
becoming serious again, and relapsing into French, "is to think
how delighted all our relations will be with this marriage! Why,
she will probably have children!"
Woloda's prudence and forethought struck me so forcibly that I
had no answer to make. Just at this moment Lubotshka approached
us.
"So you know?" she said with a joyful face.
"Yes," said Woloda. "Still, I am surprised at you, Lubotshka. You
are no longer a baby in long clothes. Why should you be so
pleased because Papa is going to marry a piece of trash?"
At this Lubotshka's face fell, and she became serious.
"Oh, Woloda!" she exclaimed. "Why 'a piece of trash' indeed? How
can you dare to speak of Avdotia like that? If Papa is going to
marry her she cannot be 'trash.'"
"No, not trash, so to speak, but--"
"No 'buts' at all!" interrupted Lubotshka, flaring up. "You have
never heard me call the girl whom you are in love with 'trash!'
How, then, can you speak so of Papa and a respectable woman?
Although you are my elder brother, I won't allow you to speak
like that! You ought not to!"
"Mayn't I even express an opinion about--"
"No, you mayn't!" repeated Lubotshka. "No one ought to criticise
such a father as ours. Mimi has the right to, but not you,
however much you may be the eldest brother."
"Oh you don't understand anything," said Woloda contemptuously.
"Try and do so. How can it be a good thing that a 'Dunetchka' of
an Epifanov should take the place of our dead Mamma?"
For a moment Lubotshka was silent. Then the tears suddenly came
into her eyes.
"I knew that you were conceited, but I never thought that you
could be cruel," she said, and left us.
"Pshaw!" said Woloda, pulling a serio-comic face and make-
believe, stupid eyes. "That's what comes of arguing with them."
Evidently he felt that he was at fault in having so far forgot
himself as to descend to discuss matters at all with Lubotshka.
Next day the weather was bad, and neither Papa nor the ladies had
come down to morning tea when I entered the drawing-room. There
had been cold rain in the night, and remnants of the clouds from
which it had descended were still scudding across the sky, with
the sun's luminous disc (not yet risen to any great height)
showing faintly through them. It was a windy, damp, grey morning.
The door into the garden was standing open, and pools left by the
night's rain were drying on the damp-blackened flags of the
terrace. The open door was swinging on its iron hinges in the
wind, and all the paths looked wet and muddy. The old birch trees
with their naked white branches, the bushes, the turf, the
nettles, the currant-trees, the elders with the pale side of
their leaves turned upwards--all were dashing themselves about,
and looking as though they were trying to wrench themselves free
from their roots. From the avenue of lime-trees showers of round,
yellow leaves were flying through the air in tossing, eddying
circles, and strewing the wet road and soaked aftermath of the
hayfield with a clammy carpet. At the moment, my thoughts were
wholly taken up with my father's approaching marriage and with
the point of view from which Woloda regarded it. The future
seemed to me to bode no good for any of us. I felt distressed to
think that a woman who was not only a stranger but young should
be going to associate with us in so many relations of life,
without having any right to do so--nay, that this young woman was
going to usurp the place of our dead mother. I felt depressed,
and kept thinking more and more that my father was to blame in
the matter. Presently I heard his voice and Woloda's speaking
together in the pantry, and, not wishing to meet Papa just then,
had just left the room when I was pursued by Lubotshka, who said
that Papa wanted to see me.
He was standing in the drawing-room, with his hand resting on the
piano, and was gazing in my direction with an air at once grave
and impatient. His face no longer wore the youthful, gay
expression which had struck me for so long, but, on the contrary,
looked sad. Woloda was walking about the room with a pipe in his
hand. I approached my father, and bade him good morning.
"Well, my children," he said firmly, with a lift of his head and
in the peculiarly hurried manner of one who wishes to announce
something obviously unwelcome, but no longer admitting of
reconsideration, "you know, I suppose, that I am going to marry
Avdotia Epifanov." He paused a moment. "Hitherto I had had no
desire for any one to succeed your mother, but"--and again he
paused--"it-it is evidently my fate. Dunetchka is an excellent,
kind girl, and no longer in her first youth. I hope, therefore,
my children, that you will like her, and she, I know, will be
sincerely fond of you, for she is a good woman. And now," he went
on, addressing himself more particularly to Woloda and myself,
and having the appearance of speaking hurriedly in order to
prevent us from interrupting him, "it is time for you to depart,
while I myself am going to stay here until the New Year, and then
to follow you to Moscow with"--again he hesitated a moment--"my
wife and Lubotshka." It hurt me to see my father standing as
though abashed and at fault before us, so I moved a little nearer
him, but Woloda only went on walking about the room with his head
down, and smoking.
"So, my children, that is what your old father has planned to
do," concluded Papa--reddening, coughing, and offering Woloda and
myself his hands. Tears were in his eyes as he said this, and I
noticed, too, that the hand which he was holding out to Woloda
(who at that moment chanced to be at the other end of the room)
was shaking slightly. The sight of that shaking hand gave me an
unpleasant shock, for I remembered that Papa had served in 1812,
and had been, as every one knew, a brave officer. Seizing the
great veiny hand, I covered it with kisses, and he squeezed mine
hard in return. Then, with a sob amid his tears, he suddenly
threw his arms around Lubotshka's dark head, and kissed her again
and again on the eyes. Woloda pretended that he had dropped his
pipe, and, bending down, wiped his eyes furtively with the back
of his hand. Then, endeavouring to escape notice, he left the
room.
XXXVI
THE UNIVERSITY
THE wedding was to take place in two weeks' time, but, as our
lectures had begun already, Woloda and myself were forced to
return to Moscow at the beginning of September. The Nechludoffs
had also returned from the country, and Dimitri (with whom, on
parting, I had made an agreement that we should correspond
frequently with the result, of course, that we had never once
written to one another) came to see us immediately after our
arrival, and arranged to escort me to my first lecture on the
morrow.
It was a beautiful sunny day. No sooner had I entered the
auditorium than I felt my personality entirely disappear amid the
swarm of light-hearted youths who were seething tumultuously
through every doorway and corridor under the influence of the
sunlight pouring through the great windows. I found the sense of
being a member of this huge community very pleasing, yet there
were few among the throng whom I knew, and that only on terms of
a nod and a "How do you do, Irtenieff?"
All around me men were shaking hands and chatting together--from
every side came expressions of friendship, laughter, jests, and
badinage. Everywhere I could feel the tie which bound this
youthful society in one, and everywhere, too, I could feel that
it left me out. Yet this impression lasted for a moment only, and
was succeeded, together with the vexation which it had caused, by
the idea that it was best that I should not belong to that
society, but keep to my own circle of gentlemen; wherefore I
proceeded to seat myself upon the third bench, with, as neigh~
hours, Count B., Baron Z., the Prince R., Iwin, and some other
young men of the same class with none of whom, however, was
acquainted save with Iwin and Count B. Yet the look which these
young gentlemen threw at me at once made me feel that I was not
of their set, and I turned to observe what was going on around
me. Semenoff, with grey, matted hair, white teeth, and tunic
flying open, was seated a little distance off, and leaning
forward on his elbows as he nibbled a pen, while the gymnasium
student who had come out first in the examinations had
established himself on the front bench, and, with a black stock
coming half-way up his cheek, was toying with the silver watch-
chain which adorned his satin waistcoat. On a bench in a raised
part of the hall I could descry Ikonin (evidently he had
contrived to enter the University somehow!), and hear him fussily
proclaiming, in all the glory of blue piped trousers which
completely hid his boots, that he was now seated on Parnassus.
Ilinka--who had surprised me by giving me a bow not only cold,
but supercilious, as though to remind me that here we were all
equals--was just in front of me, with his legs resting in free and
easy style on another bench (a hit, somehow I thought, at
myself), and conversing with a student as he threw occasional
glances in my direction. Iwin's set by my side were talking in
French, yet every word which I overheard of their conversation
seemed to me both stupid and incorrect ("Ce n'est pas francais,"
I thought to myself), while all the attitudes, utterances, and
doings of Semenoff, Ilinka, and the rest struck me as uniformly
coarse, ungentlemanly, and "comme il ne faut pas."
Thus, attached to no particular set, I felt isolated and unable
to make friends, and so grew resentful. One of the students on
the bench in front of me kept biting his nails, which were raw to
the quick already, and this so disgusted me that I edged away
from him. In short, I remember finding my first day a most
depressing affair.
When the professor entered, and there was a general stir and a
cessation of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at
him, as also that he began his discourse with a sentence which I
thought devoid of meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from
first to last, so clever that not a word ought to be taken from
or added to it. Disappointed in this, I at once proceeded to draw
beneath the heading "First Lecture" with which I had adorned my
beautifully-bound notebook no less than eighteen faces in
profile, joined together in a sort of chaplet, and only
occasionally moved my hand along the page in order to give the
professor (who, I felt sure, must be greatly interested in me)
the impression that I was writing something. In fact, at this
very first lecture I came to the decision which I maintained to
the end of my course, namely, that it was unnecessary, and even
stupid, to take down every word said by every professor.
At subsequent lectures, however, I did not feel my isolation so
strongly, since I made several acquaintances and got into the way
of shaking hands and entering into conversation. Yet for some
reason or another no real intimacy ever sprang up between us, and
I often found myself depressed and only feigning cheerfulness.
With the set which comprised Iwin and "the aristocrats," as they
were generally known, I could not make any headway at all, for,
as I now remember, I was always shy and churlish to them, and
nodded to them only when they nodded to me; so that they had
little inducement to desire my acquaintance. With most of the
other students, however, this arose from quite a different cause.
As soon as ever I discerned friendliness on the part of a
comrade, I at once gave him to understand that I went to luncheon
with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch and kept my own drozhki. All this I
said merely to show myself in the most favourable light in his
eyes, and to induce him to like me all the more; yet almost
invariably the only result of my communicating to him the
intelligence concerning the drozhki and my relationship to Prince
Ivan Ivanovitch was that, to my astonishment, he at once adopted
a cold and haughty bearing towards me.
Among us we had a Crown student named Operoff--a very modest,
industrious, and clever young fellow, who always offered one his
hand like a slab of wood (that is to say, without closing his
fingers or making the slightest movement with them); with the
result that his comrades often did the same to him in jest, and
called it the "deal board" way of shaking hands. He and I nearly
always sat next to one another, and discussed matters generally.
In particular he pleased me with the freedom with which he would
criticise the professors as he pointed out to me with great
clearness and acumen the merits or demerits of their respective
ways of teaching and made occasional fun of them. Such remarks I
found exceedingly striking and diverting when uttered in his
quiet, mincing voice. Nevertheless he never let a lecture pass
without taking careful notes of it in his fine handwriting, and
eventually we decided to join forces, and to do our preparation
together. Things had progressed to the point of his always
looking pleased when I took my usual seat beside him when,
unfortunately, I one day found it necessary to inform him that,
before her death, my mother had besought my father never to allow
us to enter for a government scholarship, as well as that I
myself considered Crown students, no matter how clever, to be-
"well, they are not GENTLEMEN," I concluded, though beginning to
flounder a little and grow red. At the moment Operoff said
nothing, but at subsequent lectures he ceased to greet me or to
offer me his board-like hand, and never attempted to talk to me,
but, as soon as ever I sat down, he would lean his head upon his
arm, and purport to be absorbed in his notebooks. I was surprised
at this sudden coolness, but looked upon it as infra dig, "pour
un jeune homme de bonne maison" to curry favour with a mere Crown
student of an Operoff, and so left him severely alone--though I
confess that his aloofness hurt my feelings. On one occasion I
arrived before him, and, since the lecture was to be delivered by
a popular professor whom students came to hear who did not
usually attend such functions, I found almost every seat
occupied. Accordingly I secured Operoff's place for myself by
spreading my notebooks on the desk before it; after which I left
the room again for a moment. When I returned I perceived that my
paraphernalia had been relegated to the bench behind, and the
place taken by Operoff himself. I remarked to him that I had
already secured it by placing my notebooks there.
"I know nothing about that," he replied sharply, yet without
looking up at me.
"I tell you I placed my notebooks there," I repeated, purposely
trying to bluster, in the hope of intimidating him. "Every one
saw me do it," I added, including the students near me in my
glance. Several of them looked at me with curiosity, yet none of
them spoke.
"Seats cannot be booked here," said Operoff. "Whoever first sits
down in a place keeps it," and, settling himself angrily where he
was, he flashed at me a glance of defiance.
"Well, that only means that you are a cad," I said.
I have an idea that he murmured something about my being "a
stupid young idiot," but I decided not to hear it. What would be
the use, I asked myself, of my hearing it? That we should brawl
like a couple of manants over less than nothing? (I was very fond
of the word manants, and often used it for meeting awkward
junctures.) Perhaps I should have said something more had not, at
that moment, a door slammed and the professor (dressed in a blue
frockcoat, and shuffling his feet as he walked) ascended the
rostrum.
Nevertheless, when the examination was about to come on, and I
had need of some one's notebooks, Operoff remembered his promise
to lend me his, and we did our preparation together.
XXXVII
AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Affaires du coeur exercised me greatly that winter. In fact, I
fell in love three times. The first time, I became passionately
enamoured of a buxom lady whom I used to see riding at Freitag's
riding-school; with the result that every day when she was taking
a lesson there (that is to say, every Tuesday and Friday) I used
to go to gaze at her, but always in such a state of trepidation
lest I should be seen that I stood a long way off, and bolted
directly I thought her likely to approach the spot where I was
standing. Likewise, I used to turn round so precipitately whenever
she appeared to be glancing in my direction that I never saw her
face well, and to this day do not know whether she was really
beautiful or not.
Dubkoff, who was acquainted with her, surprised me one day in the
riding-school, where I was lurking concealed behind the lady's
grooms and the fur wraps which they were holding, and, having
heard from Dimitri of my infatuation, frightened me so terribly
by proposing to introduce me to the Amazon that I fled
incontinently from the school, and was prevented by the mere
thought that possibly he had told her about me from ever entering
the place again, or even from hiding behind her grooms, lest I
should encounter her.
Whenever I fell in love with ladies whom I did not know, and
especially married women, I experienced a shyness a thousand
times greater than I had ever felt with Sonetchka. I dreaded
beyond measure that my divinity should learn of my passion, or
even of my existence, since I felt sure that, once she had done
so, she would be so terribly offended that I should never be
forgiven for my presumption. And indeed, if the Amazon referred
to above had ever come to know how I used to stand behind the
grooms and dream of seizing her and carrying her off to some
country spot--if she had ever come to know how I should have lived
with her there, and how I should have treated her, it is probable
that she would have had very good cause for indignation! But I
always felt that, once I got to know her, she would straightway
divine these thoughts, and consider herself insulted by my
acquaintance.
As my second affaire du coeur, I, (for the third time) fell in
love with Sonetchka when I saw her at her sister's. My second
passion for her had long since come to an end, but I became
enamoured of her this third time through Lubotshka sending me a
copy-book in which Sonetchka had copied some extracts from
Lermontoff's The Demon, with certain of the more subtly amorous
passages underlined in red ink and marked with pressed flowers.
Remembering how Woloda had been wont to kiss his inamorata's
purse last year, I essayed to do the same thing now; and really,
when alone in my room in the evenings and engaged in dreaming as
I looked at a flower or occasionally pressed it to my lips, I
would feel a certain pleasantly lachrymose mood steal over me,
and remain genuinely in love (or suppose myself to be so) for at
least several days.
Finally, my third affaire du coeur that winter was connected with
the lady with whom Woloda was in love, and who used occasionally
to visit at our house. Yet, in this damsel, as I now remember,
there was not a single beautiful feature to be found--or, at all
events, none of those which usually pleased me. She was the
daughter of a well-known Moscow lady of light and leading, and,
petite and slender, wore long flaxen curls after the English
fashion, and could boast of a transparent profile. Every one said
that she was even cleverer and more learned than her mother, but
I was never in a position to judge of that, since, overcome with
craven bashfulness at the mere thought of her intellect and
accomplishments, I never spoke to her alone but once, and then
with unaccountable trepidation. Woloda's enthusiasm, however (for
the presence of an audience never prevented him from giving vent
to his rapture), communicated itself to me so strongly that I
also became enamoured of the lady. Yet, conscious that he would
not be pleased to know that two brothers were in love with the
same girl, I never told him of my condition. On the contrary, I
took special delight in the thought that our mutual love for her
was so pure that, though its object was, in both cases, the same
charming being, we remained friends and ready, if ever the
occasion should arise, to sacrifice ourselves for one another.
Yet I have an idea that, as regards self-sacrifice, he did not
quite share my views, for he was so passionately in love with the
lady that once he was for giving a member of the diplomatic
corps, who was said to be going to marry her, a slap in the face
and a challenge to a duel; but, for my part, I would gladly have
sacrificed my feelings for his sake, seeing that the fact that
the only remark I had ever addressed to her had been on the
subject of the dignity of classical music, and that my passion,
for all my efforts to keep it alive, expired the following week,
would have rendered it the more easy for me to do so.
XXXVIII
THE WORLD
As regards those worldly delights to which I had intended, on
entering the University, to surrender myself in imitation of my
brother, I underwent a complete disillusionment that winter.
Woloda danced a great deal, and Papa also went to balls with his
young wife, but I appeared to be thought either too young or
unfitted for such delights, and no one invited me to the houses
where balls were being given. Yet, in spite of my vow of
frankness with Dimitri, I never told him (nor any one else) how
much I should have liked to go to those dances, and how I felt
hurt at being forgotten and (apparently) taken for the
philosopher that I pretended to be.
Nevertheless, a reception was to be given that winter at the
Princess Kornakoff's, and to it she sent us personal invitations--
to myself among the rest! Consequently, I was to attend my first
ball. Before starting, Woloda came into my room to see how I was
dressing myself--an act on his part which greatly surprised me and
took me aback. In my opinion (it must be understood) solicitude
about one's dress was a shameful thing, and should be kept under,
but he seemed to think it a thing so natural and necessary that
he said outright that he was afraid I should be put out of
countenance on that score. Accordingly, he bid me don my patent
leather boots, and was horrified to find that I wanted to put on
gloves of peau de chamois. Next, he adjusted my watch-chain in a
particular manner, and carried me off to a hairdresser's near the
Kuznetski Bridge to have my locks coiffured. That done, he
withdrew to a little distance and surveyed me.
"Yes, he looks right enough now" said he to the hairdresser.
"Only--couldn't you smooth those tufts of his in front a little?"
Yet, for all that Monsieur Charles treated my forelocks with one
essence and another, they persisted in rising up again when ever
I put on my hat. In fact, my curled and tonsured figure seemed to
me to look far worse than it had done before. My only hope of
salvation lay in an affectation of untidiness. Only in that guise
would my exterior resemble anything at all. Woloda, apparently,
was of the same opinion, for he begged me to undo the curls, and
when I had done so and still looked unpresentable, he ceased to
regard me at all, but throughout the drive to the Kornakoffs
remained silent and depressed.
Nevertheless, I entered the Kornakoffs' mansion boldly enough, and
it was only when the Princess had invited me to dance, and I, for
some reason or another (though I had driven there with no other
thought in my head than to dance well), had replied that I never
indulged in that pastime, that I began to blush, and, left
solitary among a crowd of strangers, became plunged in my usual
insuperable and ever-growing shyness. In fact, I remained silent
on that spot almost the whole evening!
Nevertheless, while a waltz was in progress, one of the young
princesses came to me and asked me, with the sort of official
kindness common to all her family, why I was not dancing. I can
remember blushing hotly at the question, but at the same time
feeling--for all my efforts to prevent it--a self-satisfied smile
steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and
long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of
years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of
the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned
(as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my utterances.
Anyhow, I went on speaking of the exalted company present, and of
the futility of men and women, until I had got myself into such a
tangle that I was forced to stop short in the middle of a word of
a sentence which I found myself powerless to conclude.
Even the worldly-minded young Princess was shocked by my conduct,
and gazed at me in reproach; whereat I burst out laughing. At
this critical moment, Woloda, who had remarked that I was
conversing with great animation, and probably was curious to know
what excuses I was making for not dancing, approached us with
Dubkoff. Seeing, however, my smiling face and the Princess's
frightened mien, as well as overhearing the appalling rubbish
with which I concluded my speech, he turned red in the face, and
wheeled round again. The Princess also rose and left me. I
continued to smile, but in such a state of agony from the
consciousness of my stupidity that I felt ready to sink into the
floor. Likewise I felt that, come what might, I must move about
and say something, in order to effect a change in my position.
Accordingly I approached Dubkoff, and asked him if he had danced
many waltzes with her that night. This I feigned to say in a gay
and jesting manner, yet in reality I was imploring help of the
very Dubkoff to whom I had cried "Hold your tongue!" on the
night of the matriculation dinner. By way of answer, he made as
though he had not heard me, and turned away. Next, I approached
Woloda, and said with an effort and in a similar tone of assumed
gaiety: "Hullo, Woloda! Are you played out yet?" He merely looked
at me as much as to say, "You wouldn't speak to me like that if
we were alone," and left me without a word, in the evident fear
that I might continue to attach myself to his person.
"My God! Even my own brother deserts me!" I thought to myself.
Yet somehow I had not the courage to depart, but remained
standing where I was until the very end of the evening. At
length, when every one was leaving the room and crowding into the
hall, and a footman slipped my greatcoat on to my shoulders in
such a way as to tilt up my cap, I gave a dreary, half-lachrymose
smile, and remarked to no one in particular: "Comme c'est
gracieux!"
XXXIX
THE STUDENTS' FEAST
NOTWITHSTANDING that, as yet, Dimitri's influence had kept me
from indulging in those customary students' festivities known as
kutezhi or "wines," that winter saw me participate in such a
function, and carry away with me a not over-pleasant impression
of it. This is how it came about.
At a lecture soon after the New Year, Baron Z.--a tall, light-
haired young fellow of very serious demeanour and regular
features--invited us all to spend a sociable evening with him. By
"us all", I mean all the men more or less "comme il faut", of our
course, and exclusive of Grap, Semenoff, Operoff, and commoners
of that sort. Woloda smiled contemptuously when he heard that I
was going to a "wine" of first course men, but I looked to derive
great and unusual pleasure from this, to me, novel method of
passing the time. Accordingly, punctually at the appointed hour
of eight I presented myself at the Baron's.
Our host, in an open tunic and white waistcoat, received his
guests in the brilliantly lighted salon and drawing-room of the
small mansion where his parents lived--they having given up their
reception rooms to him for the evening for purposes of this
party. In the corridor could be seen the heads and skirts of
inquisitive domestics, while in the dining-room I caught a
glimpse of a dress which I imagined to belong to the Baroness
herself. The guests numbered a score, and were all of them
students except Herr Frost (in attendance upon Iwin) and a tall,
red-faced gentleman who was superintending the feast and who was
introduced to every one as a relative of the Baron's and a former
student of the University of Dorpat. At first, the excessive
brilliancy and formal appointments of the reception-rooms had
such a chilling effect upon this youthful company that every one
involuntarily hugged the walls, except a few bolder spirits and
the ex-Dorpat student, who, with his waistcoat already
unbuttoned, seemed to be in every room, and in every corner of
every room, at once, and filled the whole place with his
resonant, agreeable, never-ceasing tenor voice. The remainder of
the guests preferred either to remain silent or to talk in
discreet tones of professors, faculties, examinations, and other
serious and interesting matters. Yet every one, without
exception, kept watching the door of the dining-room, and, while
trying to conceal the fact, wearing an expression which said:
"Come! It is time to begin." I too felt that it was time to
begin, and awaited the beginning with pleasurable impatience.
After footmen had handed round tea among the guests, the Dorpat
student asked Frost in Russian:
"Can you make punch, Frost?"
"Oh ja!" replied Frost with a joyful flourish of his heels, and
the other went on:
"Then do you set about it" (they addressed each other in the
second person singular, as former comrades at Dorpat). Frost
accordingly departed to the dining-room, with great strides of
his bowed, muscular legs, and, after some walking backwards and
forwards, deposited upon the drawing-room table a large
punchbowl, accompanied by a ten-pound sugar loaf supported on
three students' swords placed crosswise. Meanwhile, the Baron had
been going round among his guests as they sat regarding the
punch-bowl, and addressing them, with a face of immutable
gravity, in the formula: "I beg of you all to drink of this
loving-cup in student fashion, that there may be good-fellowship
among the members of our course. Unbutton your waistcoats, or
take them off altogether, as you please." Already the Dorpat
student had divested himself of his tunic and rolled up his
white shirt-sleeves above his elbows, and now, planting his
feet firmly apart, he proceeded to set fire to the rum in the
punch-bowl.
"Gentlemen, put out the candles!" he cried with a sudden shout so
loud and insistent that we seemed all of us to be shouting at
once. However, we still went on silently regarding the punch-bowl
and the white shirt of the Dorpat student, with a feeling that a
moment of great solemnity was approaching.
"Put out the lights, Frost, I tell you!" the Dorpat student
shouted again. Evidently the punch was now sufficiently burnt.
Accordingly every one helped to extinguish the candles, until the
room was in total darkness save for a spot where the white shirts
and hands of the three students supporting the sugarloaf on their
crossed swords were lit up by the lurid flames from the bowl. Yet
the Dorpat student's tenor voice was not the only one to be
heard, for in different quarters of the room resounded chattering
and laughter. Many had taken off their tunics (especially
students whose garments were of fine cloth and perfectly new),
and I now did the same, with a consciousness that "IT" was
"beginning." There had been no great festivity as yet, but I felt
assured that things would go splendidly when once we had begun
drinking tumblers of the potion that was now in course of
preparation.
At length, the punch was ready, and the Dorpat student, with much
bespattering of the table as he did so, ladled the liquor into
tumblers, and cried: "Now, gentlemen, please!" When we had each
of us taken a sticky tumbler of the stuff into our hands, the
Dorpat student and Frost sang a German song in which the word
"Hoch!" kept occurring again and again, while we joined, in
haphazard fashion, in the chorus. Next we clinked glasses
together, shouted something in praise of punch, crossed hands,
and took our first drink of the sweet, strong mixture. After that
there was no further waiting; the "wine" was in full swing. The
first glassful consumed, a second was poured out. Yet, for all
that I began to feel a throbbing in my temples, and that the
flames seemed to be turning purple, and that every one around me
was laughing and shouting, things seemed lacking in real gaiety,
and I somehow felt that, as a matter of fact, we were all of us
finding the affair rather dull, and only PRETENDING to be
enjoying it. The Dorpat student may have been an exception, for
he continued to grow more and more red in the face and more and
more ubiquitous as he filled up empty glasses and stained the
table with fresh spots of the sweet, sticky stuff. The precise
sequence of events I cannot remember, but I can recall feeling
strongly attracted towards Frost and the Dorpat student that
evening, learning their German song by heart, and kissing them
each on their sticky-sweet lips; also that that same evening I
conceived a violent hatred against the Dorpat student, and was
for pushing him from his chair, but thought better of it; also
that, besides feeling the same spirit of independence towards the
rest of the company as I had felt on the night of the
matriculation dinner, my head ached and swam so badly that I
thought each moment would be my last; also that, for some reason
or another, we all of us sat down on the floor and imitated the
movements of rowers in a boat as we sang in chorus, "Down our
mother stream the Volga;" also that I conceived this procedure on
our part to be uncalled for; also that, as I lay prone upon the
floor, I crossed my legs and began wriggling about like a
tsigane; [Gipsy dancer.] also that I ricked some one's neck, and
came to the, conclusion that I should never have done such a
thing if I had not been drunk; also that we had some supper and
another kind of liquor, and that I then went to the door to get
some fresh air; also that my head seemed suddenly to grow chill,
and that I noticed, as I drove away, that the scat of the vehicle
was so sharply aslant and slippery that for me to retain my
position behind Kuzma was impossible; also that he seemed to have
turned all flabby, and to be waving about like a dish clout. But
what I remember best is that throughout the whole of that evening
I never ceased to feel that I was acting with excessive stupidity
in pretending to be enjoying myself, to like drinking a great
deal, and to be in no way drunk, as well as that every one else
present was acting with equal stupidity in pretending those same
things. All the time I had a feeling that each one of my
companions was finding the festivities as distasteful as I was
myself; but, in the belief that he was the only one doing so,
felt himself bound to pretend that he was very merry, in order
not to mar the general hilarity. Also, strange to state, I felt
that I ought to keep up this pretence for the sole reason that
into a punch-bowl there had been poured three bottles of
champagne at nine roubles the bottle and ten bottles of rum at
four--making seventy roubles in all, exclusive of the supper. So
convinced of my folly did I feel that, when, at next day's
lecture, those of my comrades who had been at Baron Z.'s party
seemed not only in no way ashamed to remember what they had done,
but even talked about it so that other students might hear of
their doings, I felt greatly astonished. They all declared that
it had been a splendid "wine," that Dorpat students were just the
fellows for that kind of thing, and that there had been consumed
at it no less than forty bottles of rum among twenty guests, some
of whom had dropped senseless under the table! That they should
care to talk about such things seemed strange enough, but that
they should care to lie about them seemed absolutely
unintelligible.
XL
MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS
That winter, too, I saw a great deal both of Dimitri who often
looked us up, and of his family, with whom I was beginning to
stand on intimate terms.
The Nechludoffs (that is to say, mother, aunt, and daughter)
always spent their evenings at home, at which time the Princess
liked young men to visit her--at all events young men of the kind
whom she described as able to spend an evening without playing
cards or dancing. Yet such young fellows must have been few and
far between, for, although I went to the Nechludoffs almost every
evening, I seldom found other guests present. Thus, I came to know
the members of this family and their several dispositions well
enough to be able to form clear ideas as to their mutual
relations, and to be quite at home amid the rooms and furniture
of their house. Indeed, so long as no other guests were present,
I felt entirely at my ease. True, at first I used to feel a
little uncomfortable when left alone in the room with Varenika,
for I could not rid myself of the idea that, though far from
pretty, she wished me to fall in love with her; but in time this
nervousness of mine began to lessen, since she always looked so
natural, and talked to me so exactly as though she were
conversing with her brother or Lubov Sergievna, that I came to
look upon her simply as a person to whom it was in no way
dangerous or wrong to show that I took pleasure in her company.
Throughout the whole of our acquaintance she appeared to me
merely a plain, though not positively ugly, girl, concerning whom
one would never ask oneself the question,
"Am I, or am I not, in love with her?" Sometimes I would talk to
her direct, but more often I did so through Dimitri or Lubov
Sergievna; and it was the latter method which afforded me the
most pleasure. I derived considerable gratification from
discoursing when she was there, from hearing her sing, and, in
general, from knowing that she was in the same room as myself;
but it was seldom now that any thoughts of what our future
relations might ever be, or that any dreams of self-sacrifice for
my friend if he should ever fall in love with my sister, came
into my head. If any such ideas or fancies occurred to me, I felt
satisfied with the present, and drove away all thoughts about the
future.
Yet, in spite of this intimacy, I continued to look upon it as my
bounden duty to keep the Nechludoffs in general, and Varenika in
particular, in ignorance of my true feelings and tastes, and
strove always to appear altogether another young man than what I
really was--to appear, indeed, such a young man as could never
possibly have existed. I affected to be "soulful" and would go
off into raptures and exclamations and impassioned gestures
whenever I wished it to be thought that anything pleased me,
while, on the other hand, I tried always to seem indifferent
towards any unusual circumstance which I myself perceived or
which I had had pointed out to me. I aimed always at figuring
both as a sarcastic cynic divorced from every sacred tie and as a
shrewd observer, as well as at being accounted logical in all my
conduct, precise and methodical in all my ways of life, and at
the same time contemptuous of all materiality. I may safely say
that I was far better in reality than the strange being into whom
I attempted to convert myself; yet, whatever I was or was not,
the Nechludoffs were unfailingly kind to me, and (happily for
myself) took no notice (as it now appears) of my play-acting.
Only Lubov Sergievna, who, I believe, really believed me to be a
great egoist, atheist, and cynic, had no love for me, but
frequently disputed what I said, flew into tempers, and left me
petrified with her disjointed, irrelevant utterances. Yet Dimitri
held always to the same strange, something more than friendly,
relations with her, and used to say not only that she was
misunderstood by every one, but that she did him a world of good.
This, however, did not prevent the rest of his family from
finding fault with his infatuation.
Once, when talking to me about this incomprehensible attachment,
Varenika explained the matter thus: "You see, Dimitri is a
selfish person. He is very proud, and, for all his intellect,
very fond of praise, and of surprising people, and of always
being FIRST, while little Auntie" (the general nickname for Lubov
Sergievna) "is innocent enough to admire him, and at the same
time devoid of the tact to conceal her admiration. Consequently
she flatters his vanity--not out of pretence, but sincerely."
This dictum I laid to heart, and, when thinking it over
afterwards, could not but come to the conclusion that Varenika
was very sensible; wherefore I was glad to award her promotion
thenceforth in my regard. Yet, though I was always glad enough to
assign her any credit which might arise from my discovering in
her character any signs of good sense or other moral qualities, I
did so with strict moderation, and never ran to any extreme pitch
of enthusiasm in the process. Thus, when Sophia Ivanovna (who was
never weary of discussing her niece) related to me how, four
years ago, Varenika had suddenly given away all her clothes to
some peasant children without first asking permission to do so,
so that the garments had subsequently to be recovered, I did not
at once accept the fact as entitling Varenika to elevation in my
opinion, but went on giving her good advice about the
unpracticalness of such views on property.
When other guests were present at the Nechludoffs (among them,
sometimes, Woloda and Dubkoff) I used to withdraw myself to a
remote plane, and, with the complacency and quiet consciousness
of strength of an habitue of the house, listen to what others
were saying without putting in a remark myself. Yet everything
that these others said seemed to me so immeasurably stupid that I
used to feel inwardly amazed that such a clever, logical woman as
the Princess, with her equally logical family, could listen to
and answer such rubbish. Had it, however, entered into my head to
compare what, others said with what I myself said when there
alone, I should probably have ceased to feel surprise. Still less
should I have continued to feel surprise had I not believed that
the women of our own household--Avdotia, Lubotshka, and Katenka--
were superior to the rest of their sex, for in that case I should
have remembered the kind of things over which Avdotia and Katenka
would laugh and jest with Dubkoff from one end of an evening to
the other. I should have remembered that seldom did an evening
pass but Dubkoff would first have, an argument about something,
and then read in a sententious voice either some verses beginning
"Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive" or extracts from The
Demon. In short, I should have remembered what nonsense they used
to chatter for hours at a time.
It need hardly be said that, when guests were present, Varenika
paid less attention to me than when we were alone, as well as
that I was deprived of the reading and music which I so greatly
loved to hear. When talking to guests, she lost, in my eyes, her
principal charm--that of quiet seriousness and simplicity. I
remember how strange it used to seem to me to hear her
discoursing on theatres and the weather to my brother Woloda! I
knew that of all things in the world he most despised and shunned
banality, and that Varenika herself used to make fun of forced
conversations on the weather and similar matters. Why, then, when
meeting in society, did they both of them talk such intolerable
nothings, and, as it were, shame one another? After talks of this
kind I used to feel silently resentful against Woloda, as well as
next day to rally Varenika on her overnight guests. Yet one
result of it was that I derived all the greater pleasure from
being one of the Nechludoffs' family circle. Also, for some
reason or another I began to prefer meeting Dimitri in his
mother's drawing-room to being with him alone.
XLI
MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS
At this period, indeed, my friendship with Dimitri hung by a
hair. I had been criticising him too long not to have discovered
faults in his character, for it is only in first youth that we
love passionately and therefore love only perfect people. As soon
as the mists engendered by love of this kind begin to dissolve,
and to be penetrated by the clear beams of reason, we see the
object of our adoration in his true shape, and with all his
virtues and failings exposed. Some of those failings strike us
with the exaggerated force of the unexpected, and combine with
the instinct for novelty and the hope that perfection may yet be
found in a fellow-man to induce us not only to feel coldness, but
even aversion, towards the late object of our adoration.
Consequently, desiring it no longer, we usually cast it from us,
and pass onwards to seek fresh perfection. For the circumstance
that that was not what occurred with respect to my own relation
to Dimitri, I was indebted to his stubborn, punctilious, and more
critical than impulsive attachment to myself--a tie which I felt
ashamed to break. Moreover, our strange vow of frankness bound us
together. We were afraid that, if we parted, we should leave in
one another's power all the incriminatory moral secrets of which
we had made mutual confession. At the same time, our rule of
frankness had long ceased to be faithfully observed, but, on the
contrary, proved a frequent cause of constraint, and brought
about strange relations between us.
Almost every time that winter that I went upstairs to Dimitri's
room, I used to find there a University friend of his named
Bezobiedoff, with whom he appeared to be very much taken up.
Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over
with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen
moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty,
shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations
with him were as unintelligible as his relations with Lubov
Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing
such a man for his associate was that in the whole University
there was no worse-looking student than Bezobiedoff. Yet that
alone would have been sufficient to make Dimitri extend him his
friendship, and, as a matter of fact, in all his intercourse with
this fellow he seemed to be saying proudly: "I care nothing who a
man may be. In my eyes every one is equal. I like him, and
therefore he is a desirable acquaintance." Nevertheless I could
not imagine how he could bring himself to do it, nor how the
wretched Bezobiedoff ever contrived to maintain his awkward
position. To me the friendship seemed a most distasteful one.
One night, I went up to Dimitri's room to try and get him to come
down for an evening's talk in his mother's drawing-room, where we
could also listen to Varenika's reading and singing, but
Bezobiedoff had forestalled me there, and Dimitri answered me
curtly that he could not come down, since, as I could see for
myself, he had a visitor with him.
"Besides," he added, "what is the fun of sitting there? We had
much better stay HERE and talk."
I scarcely relished the prospect of spending a couple of hours in
Bezobiedoff's company, yet could not make up my mind to go down
alone; wherefore, cursing my friend's vagaries, I seated myself
in a rocking-chair, and began rocking myself silently to and fro.
I felt vexed with them both for depriving me of the pleasures of
the drawing-room, and my only hope as I listened irritably to
their conversation was that Bezobiedoff would soon take his
departure. "A nice guest indeed to be sitting with!" I thought to
myself when a footman brought in tea and Dimitri had five times
to beg Bezobiedoff to have a cup, for the reason that the bashful
guest thought it incumbent upon him always to refuse it at first
and to say, "No, help yourself." I could see that Dimitri had to
put some restraint upon himself as he resumed the conversation.
He tried to inveigle me also into it, but I remained glum and
silent.
"I do not mean to let my face give any one the suspicion that I
am bored" was my mental remark to Dimitri as I sat quietly
rocking myself to and fro with measured beat. Yet, as the moments
passed, I found myself--not without a certain satisfaction--
growing more and more inwardly hostile to my friend. "What a fool
he is!" I reflected. "He might be spending the evening agreeably
with his charming family, yet he goes on sitting with this
brute!--will go on doing so, too, until it is too late to go down
to the drawing-room!" Here I glanced at him over the back of my
chair, and thought the general look of his attitude and
appearance so offensive and repellant that at the moment I could
gladly have offered him some insult, even a most serious one.
At last Bezobiedoff rose, but Dimitri could not easily let such a
delightful friend depart, and asked him to stay the night.
Fortunately, Bezobiedoff declined the invitation, and departed.
Having seen him off, Dimitri returned, and, smiling a faintly
complacent smile as he did so, and rubbing his hands together (in
all probability partly because he had sustained his character for
eccentricity, and partly because he had got rid of a bore),
started to pace the room, with an occasional glance at myself. I
felt more offended with him than ever. "How can he go on walking
about the room and grinning like that?" was my inward reflection.
"What are you so angry about?" he asked me suddenly as he halted
in front of my chair.
"I am not in the least angry," I replied (as people always do
answer under such circumstances). "I am merely vexed that you
should play-act to me, and to Bezobiedoff, and to yourself."
"What rubbish!" he retorted. "I never play-act to any one."
"I have in mind our rule of frankness," I replied, "when I tell
you that I am certain you cannot bear this Bezobiedoff any more
than I can. He is an absolute cad, yet for some inexplicable
reason or another it pleases you to masquerade before him."
"Not at all! To begin with, he is a splendid fellow, and--"
"But I tell you it IS so. I also tell you that your friendship
for Lubov Sergievna is founded on the same basis, namely, that
she thinks you a god."
"And I tell you once more that it is not so."
"Oh, I know it for myself," I retorted with the heat of
suppressed anger, and designing to disarm him with my frankness.
"I have told you before, and I repeat it now, that you always
seem to like people who say pleasant things to you, but that, as
soon as ever I come to examine your friendship, I invariably find
that there exists no real attachment between you."
"Oh, but you are wrong," said Dimitri with an angry straightening
of the neck in his collar. "When I like people, neither their
praise nor their blame can make any difference to my opinion of
them."
"Well, dreadful though it may seem to you, I confess that I
myself often used to hate my father when he abused me, and to
wish that he was dead. In the same way, you--"
"Speak for yourself. I am very sorry that you could ever have
been so--"
"No, no!" I cried as I leapt from my chair and faced him with the
courage of exasperation. "It is for YOURSELF that you ought to
feel sorry--sorry because you never told me a word about this
fellow. You know that was not honourable of you. Nevertheless, I
will tell YOU what I think of you," and, burning to wound him
even more than he had wounded me, I set out to prove to him that
he was incapable of feeling any real affection for anybody, and
that I had the best of grounds (as in very truth I believed I
had) for reproaching him. I took great pleasure in telling him
all this, but at the same time forgot that the only conceivable
purpose of my doing so--to force him to confess to the faults of
which I had accused him--could not possibly be attained at the
present moment, when he was in a rage. Had he, on the other hand,
been in a condition to argue calmly, I should probably never have
said what I did.
The dispute was verging upon an open quarrel when Dimitri
suddenly became silent, and left the room. I pursued him, and
continued what I was saying, but he did not answer. I knew that
his failings included a hasty temper, and that he was now
fighting it down; wherefore I cursed his good resolutions the
more in my heart.
This, then, was what our rule of frankness had brought us to--the
rule that we should "tell one another everything in our minds,
and never discuss one another with a third person!" Many a time
we had exaggerated frankness to the pitch of making mutual
confession of the most shameless thoughts, and of shaming
ourselves by voicing to one another proposals or schemes for
attaining our desires; yet those confessions had not only failed
to draw closer the tie which united us, but had dissipated
sympathy and thrust us further apart, until now pride would not
allow him to expose his feelings even in the smallest detail, and
we employed in our quarrel the very weapons which we had formerly
surrendered to one another--the weapons which could strike the
shrewdest blows!
XLII
OUR STEPMOTHER
Notwithstanding that Papa had not meant to return to Moscow
before the New Year, he arrived in October, when there was still
good riding to hounds to be had in the country. He alleged as his
reason for changing his mind that his suit was shortly to come on
before the Senate, but Mimi averred that Avdotia had found
herself so ennuyee in the country, and had so often talked about
Moscow and pretended to be unwell, that Papa had decided to
accede to her wishes. "You see, she never really loved him--she
and her love only kept buzzing about his ears because she wanted
to marry a rich man," added Mimi with a pensive sigh which said:
"To think what a certain other person could have done for him if
only he had valued her!"
Yet that "certain other person" was unjust to Avdotia, seeing
that the latter's affection for Papa--the passionate, devoted
love of self-abandonment--revealed itself in her every look and
word and movement. At the same time, that love in no way hindered
her, not only from being averse to parting with her adored
husband, but also from desiring to visit Madame Annette's and
order there a lovely cap, a hat trimmed with a magnificent blue
ostrich feather, and a blue Venetian velvet bodice which was to
expose to the public gaze the snowy, well
shaped breast and arms which no one had yet gazed upon except her
husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and,
in general, there became established between Avdotia and
ourselves, from the day of her arrival, the most extraordinary
and burlesque order of relations. As soon as she stepped from the
carriage, Woloda assumed an air of great seriousness and
ceremony, and, advancing towards her with much bowing and
scraping, said in the tone of one who is presenting something for
acceptance:
"I have the honour to greet the arrival of our dear Mamma, and to
kiss her hand."
"Ah, my dear son!" she replied with her beautiful, unvarying
smile.
"And do not forget the younger son," I said as I also approached
her hand, with an involuntary imitation of Woloda's voice and
expression.
Had our stepmother and ourselves been certain of any mutual
affection, that expression might have signified contempt for any
outward manifestation of our love. Had we been ill-disposed
towards one another, it might have denoted irony, or contempt for
pretence, or a desire to conceal from Papa (standing by the
while) our real relations, as well as many other thoughts and
sentiments. But, as a matter of fact, that expression (which well
consorted with Avdotia's own spirit) simply signified nothing at
all--simply concealed the absence of any definite relations
between us. In later life I often had occasion to remark, in the
case of other families whose members anticipated among themselves
relations not altogether harmonious, the sort of provisional,
burlesque relations which they formed for daily use; and it was
just such relations as those which now became established between
ourselves and our stepmother. We scarcely ever strayed beyond
them, but were polite to her, conversed with her in French, bowed
and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"--a term to
which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and
with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose
Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked
our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward
way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only
person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark
of affection was Lubotshka. Indeed, Avdotia always treated her
with a kind of grave admiration and timid deference which greatly
surprised me.
From the first Avdotia was very fond of calling herself our
stepmother and hinting that, since children and servants usually
adopt an unjust and hostile attitude towards a woman thus
situated, her own position was likely to prove a difficult one.
Yet, though she foresaw all the unpleasantness of her
predicament, she did nothing to escape from it by (for instance)
conciliating this one, giving presents to that other one, and
forbearing to grumble--the last a precaution which it would have
been easy for her to take, seeing that by nature she was in no
way exacting, as well as very good-tempered. Yet, not only did
she do none of these things, but her expectation of difficulties
led her to adopt the defensive before she had been attacked. That
is to say, supposing that the entire household was designing to
show her every kind of insult and annoyance, she would see plots
where no plots were, and consider that her most dignified course
was to suffer in silence--an attitude of passivity as regards
winning AFfection which of course led to DISaffection. Moreover,
she was so totally lacking in that faculty of "apprehension" to
which I have already referred as being highly developed in our
household, and all her customs were so utterly opposed to those
which had long been rooted in our establishment, that those two
facts alone were bound to go against her. From the first, her mode
of life in our tidy, methodical household was that of a person
only just arrived there. Sometimes she went to bed late,
sometimes early; sometimes she appeared at luncheon, sometimes
she did not; sometimes she took supper, sometimes she dispensed
with it. When we had no guests with us she more often than not
walked about the house in a semi-nude condition, and was not
ashamed to appear before us--even before the servants--in a white
chemise, with only a shawl thrown over her bare shoulders. At
first this Bohemianism pleased me, but before very long it led to
my losing the last shred of respect which I felt for her. What
struck me as even more strange was the fact that, according as we
had or had not guests, she was two different women. The one (the
woman figuring in society) was a young and healthy, but rather
cold, beauty, a person richly dressed, neither stupid nor clever,
and unfailingly cheerful. The other woman (the one in evidence
when no guests were present) was considerably past her first
youth, languid, depressed, slovenly, and ennuyee, though
affectionate. Frequently, as I looked at her when, smiling, rosy
with the winter air, and happy in the consciousness of her
beauty, she came in from a round of calls and, taking off her
hat, went to look at herself in a mirror; or when, rustling in
her rich, decollete ball dress, and at once shy and proud before the
servants, she was passing to her carriage; or when, at one of our
small receptions at home, she was sitting dressed in a high
silken dress finished with some sort of fine lace about her soft
neck, and flashing her unvarying, but lovely, smile around her--as
I looked at her at such times I could not help wondering what
would have been said by persons who had been ravished to behold
her thus if they could have seen her as I often saw her, namely,
when, waiting in the lonely midnight hours for her husband to
return from his club, she would walk like a shadow from room to
room, with her hair dishevelled and her form clad in a sort of
dressing-jacket. Presently, she would sit down to the piano and,
her brows all puckered with the effort, play over the only waltz
that she knew; after which she would pick up a novel, read a few
pages somewhere in the middle of it, and throw it aside. Next,
repairing in person to the dining-room, so as not to disturb the
servants, she would get herself a cucumber and some cold veal,
and eat it standing by the window-sill--then once more resume her
weary, aimless, gloomy wandering from room to room. But what,
above all other things, caused estrangement between us was that
lack of understanding which expressed itself chiefly in the
peculiar air of indulgent attention with which she would listen
when any one was speaking to her concerning matters of which she
had no knowledge. It was not her fault that she acquired the
unconscious habit of bending her head down and smiling slightly
with her lips only when she found it necessary to converse on
topics which did not interest her (which meant any topic except
herself and her husband); yet that smile and that inclination of
the head, when incessantly repeated, could become unbearably
wearisome. Also, her peculiar gaiety--which always sounded as
though she were laughing at herself, at you, and at the world in
general--was gauche and anything but infectious, while her
sympathy was too evidently forced. Lastly, she knew no reticence
with regard to her ceaseless rapturising to all and sundry
concerning her love for Papa. Although she only spoke the truth
when she said that her whole life was bound up with him, and
although she proved it her life long, we considered such
unrestrained, continual insistence upon her affection for him bad
form, and felt more ashamed for her when she was descanting thus
before strangers even than we did when she was perpetrating bad
blunders in French. Yet, although, as I have said, she loved her
husband more than anything else in the world, and he too had a
great affection for her (or at all events he had at first, and
when he saw that others besides himself admired her beauty), it
seemed almost as though she purposely did everything most likely
to displease him--simply to prove to him the strength of her
love, her readiness to sacrifice herself for his sake, and the
fact that her one aim in life was to win his affection! She was
fond of display, and my father too liked to see her as a beauty
who excited wonder and admiration; yet she sacrificed her
weakness for fine clothes to her love for him, and grew more and
more accustomed to remain at home in a plain grey blouse. Again,
Papa considered freedom and equality to be indispensable
conditions of family life, and hoped that his favourite Lubotshka
and his kind-hearted young wife would become sincere friends; yet
once again Avdotia sacrificed herself by considering it incumbent
upon her to pay the "real mistress of the house," as she called
Lubotshka, an amount of deference which only shocked and annoyed
my father. Likewise, he played cards a great deal that winter,
and lost considerable sums towards the end of it, wherefore,
unwilling, as usual, to let his gambling affairs intrude upon his
family life, he began to preserve complete secrecy concerning his
play; yet Avdotia, though often ailing, as well as, towards the
end of the winter, enceinte, considered herself bound always to
sit up (in a grey blouse, and with her hair dishevelled) for my
father when, at, say, four or five o'clock in the morning, he
returned home from the club ashamed, depleted in pocket, and
weary. She would ask him absent-mindedly whether he had been
fortunate in play, and listen with indulgent attention, little
nods of her head, and a faint smile upon her face as he told her
of his doings at the club and begged her, for about the hundredth
time, never to sit up for him again. Yet, though Papa's winnings
or losings (upon which his substance practically depended) in no
way interested her, she was always the first to meet him when he
returned home in the small hours of the morning. This she was
incited to do, not only by the strength of her devotion, but by a
certain secret jealousy from which she suffered. No one in the
world could persuade her that it was REALLY from his club, and
not from a mistress's, that Papa came home so late. She would try
to read love secrets in his face, and, discerning none there,
would sigh with a sort of enjoyment of her grief, and give
herself up once more to the contemplation of her unhappiness.
As the result of these and many other constant sacrifices which
occurred in Papa's relations with his wife during the
latter months of that winter (a time when he lost much, and was
therefore out of spirits), there gradually grew up between the
two an intermittent feeling of tacit hostility--of restrained
aversion to the object of devotion of the kind which expresses
itself in an unconscious eagerness to show the object in question
every possible species of petty annoyance.
XLIII
NEW COMRADES
The winter had passed imperceptibly and the thaw begun when the
list of examinations was posted at the University, and I suddenly
remembered that I had to return answers to questions in eighteen
subjects on which I had heard lectures delivered, but with regard
to some of which I had taken no notes and made no preparation
whatever. It seems strange that the question "How am I going to
pass?" should never have entered my head, but the truth is that
all that winter I had been in such a state of haze through the
delights of being both grown-up and "comme il faut" that,
whenever the question of the examinations had occurred to me, I
had mentally compared myself with my comrades, and thought to
myself, "They are certain to pass, and as most of them are not
'comme il faut,' and I am therefore their personal superior, I
too am bound to come out all right." In fact, the only reason why
I attended lectures at all was that I might become an habitue of
the University, and obtain Papa's leave to go in and out of the
house. Moreover, I had many acquaintances now, and often enjoyed
myself vastly at the University. I loved the racket, talking, and
laughter in the auditorium, the opportunities for sitting on a
back bench, and letting the measured voice of the professor lure
one into dreams as one contemplated one's comrades, the
occasional runnings across the way for a snack and a glass of
vodka (sweetened by the fearful joy of knowing that one might be
hauled before the professor for so doing), the stealthy closing
of the door as one returned to the auditorium, and the
participation in "course versus course" scuffles in the
corridors. All this was very enjoyable.
By the time, however, that every one had begun to put in a better
attendance at lectures, and the professor of physics had
completed his course and taken his leave of us until the
examinations came on, and the students were busy collecting their
notebooks and arranging to do their preparation in parties, it
struck me that I also had better prepare for the ordeal. Operoff,
with whom I still continued on bowing, but otherwise most frigid,
terms, suddenly offered not only to lend me his notebooks, but to
let me do my preparation with himself and some other students. I
thanked him, and accepted the invitation--hoping by that
conferment of honour completely to dissipate our old
misunderstanding; but at the same time I requested that the
gatherings should always be held at my home, since my quarters
were so splendid! To this the students replied that they meant to
take turn and turn about--sometimes to meet at one fellow's
place, sometimes at another's, as might be most convenient.
The first of our reunions was held at Zuchin's, who had a small
partition-room in a large building on the Trubni Boulevard. The
opening night I arrived late, and entered when the reading aloud
had already begun. The little apartment was thick with tobacco-
smoke, while on the table stood a bottle of vodka, a decanter,
some bread, some salt, and a shin-bone of mutton. Without rising,
Zuchin asked me to have some vodka and to doff my tunic.
"I expect you are not accustomed to such entertainment," he
added.
Every one was wearing a dirty cotton shirt and a dickey.
Endeavouring not to show my contempt for the company, I took off
my tunic, and lay down in a sociable manner on the sofa. Zuchin
went on reading aloud and correcting himself with the help of
notebooks, while the others occasionally stopped him to ask a
question, which he always answered with ability, correctness, and
precision. I listened for a time with the rest, but, not
understanding much of it, since I had not been present at what
had been read before, soon interpolated a question.
"Hullo, old fellow! It will be no good for you to listen if you
do not know the subject," said Zuchin. "I will lend you my
notebooks, and then you can read it up by to-morrow, and I will
explain it to you."
I felt rather ashamed of my ignorance. Also, I felt the truth of
what he said; so I gave up listening, and amused myself by
observing my new comrades. According to my classification of
humanity, into persons "comme il faut" and persons not "comme il
faut," they evidently belonged to the latter category, and so
aroused in me not only a feeling of contempt, but also a certain
sensation of personal hostility, for the reason that, though not
"comme il faut," they accounted me their equal, and actually
patronised me in a sort of good-humoured fashion. What in
particular excited in me this feeling was their feet, their dirty
nails and fingers, a particularly long talon on Operoff's
obtrusive little finger, their red shirts, their dickeys, the
chaff which they good-naturedly threw at one another, the dirty
room, a habit which Zuchin had of continually snuffling and
pressing a finger to his nose, and, above all, their manner of
speaking--that is to say, their use and intonation of words. For
instance, they said "flat" for fool, "just the ticket" for
exactly, "grandly" for splendidly, and so on--all of which seemed
to me either bookish or disagreeably vulgar. Still more was my
"comme il faut " refinement disturbed by the accents which they
put upon certain Russian--and, still more, upon foreign--words.
Thus they said dieYATelnost for DIEyatelnost, NARochno for
naROChno, v'KAMinie for v'kaMINie, SHAKespeare for ShakesPEARe,
and so forth.
Yet, for all their insuperably repellent exterior, I could detect
something good in these fellows, and envied them the cheerful
good-fellowship which united them in one. Consequently, I began to
feel attracted towards them, and made up my mind that, come what
might, I would become of their number. The kind and honourable
Operoff I knew already, and now the brusque, but exceptionally
clever, Zuchin (who evidently took the lead in this circle) began
to please me greatly. He was a dark, thick-set little fellow,
with a perennially glistening, polished face, but one that was
extremely lively, intellectual, and independent in its
expression. That expression it derived from a low, but
prominent, forehead, deep black eyes, short, bristly hair, and a
thick, dark beard which looked as though it stood in constant
need of trimming. Although, too, he seemed to think nothing of
himself (a trail which always pleased me in people), it was clear
that he never let his brain rest. He had one of those expressive
faces which, a few hours after you have seen them for the first
time, change suddenly and entirely to your view. Such a change
took place, in my eyes, with regard to Zuchin's face towards the
end of that evening. Suddenly, I seemed to see new wrinkles appear
upon its surface, its eyes grow deeper, its smile become a
different one, and the whole face assume such an altered aspect
that I scarcely recognised it.
When the reading was ended, Zuchin, the other students, and
myself manifested our desire to be "comrades all" by drinking
vodka until little remained in the bottle. Thereupon Zuchin asked
if any one had a quarter-rouble to spare, so that he could send
the old woman who looked after him to buy some more; yet, on my
offering to provide the money, he made as though he had not heard
me, and turned to Operoff, who pulled out a purse sewn with
bugles, and handed him the sum required.
"And mind you don't get drunk," added the giver, who himself had
not partaken of the vodka.
"By heavens!" answered Zuchin as he sucked the marrow out of a
mutton bone (I remember thinking that it must be because he ate
marrow that he was so clever). "By heavens!" he went on with a
slight smile (and his smile was of the kind that one
involuntarily noticed, and somehow felt grateful for), "even if I
did get drunk, there would be no great harm done. I wonder which
of us two could look after himself the better--you or I? Anyway I
am willing to make the experiment," and he slapped his forehead
with mock boastfulness. "But what a pity it is that Semenoff has
disappeared! He has gone and completely hidden himself
somewhere."
Sure enough, the grey-haired Semenoff who had comforted me so
much at my first examination by being worse dressed than myself,
and who, after passing the second examination, had attended his
lectures regularly during the first month, had disappeared
thereafter from view, and never been seen at the University
throughout the latter part of the course.
"Where is he?" asked some one.
"I do not know" replied Zuchin. "He has escaped my eye
altogether. Yet what fun I used to have with him! What fire there
was in the man! and what an intellect! I should be indeed sorry
if he has come to grief--and come to grief he probably has, for
he was no mere boy to take his University course in instalments."
After a little further conversation, and agreeing to meet again
the next night at Zuchin's, since his abode was the most central
point for us all, we began to disperse. As, one by one, we left
the room, my conscience started pricking me because every one
seemed to be going home on foot, whereas I had my drozhki.
Accordingly, with some hesitation I offered Operoff a lift.
Zuchin came to the door with us, and, after borrowing a rouble of
Operoff, went off to make a night of it with some friends. As we
drove along, Operoff told me a good deal about Zuchin's character
and mode of life, and on reaching home it was long before I could
get to sleep for thinking of the new acquaintances I had made.
For many an hour, as I lay awake, I kept wavering between the
respect which their knowledge, simplicity, and sense of honour,
as well as the poetry of their youth and courage, excited in my
regard, and the distaste which I felt for their outward man. In
spite of my desire to do so, it was at that time literally
impossible for me to associate with them, since our ideas were
too wholly at variance. For me, life's meaning and charm contained
an infinitude of shades of which they had not an inkling, and
vice versa. The greatest obstacles of all, however, to our better
acquaintance I felt to be the twenty roubles' worth of cloth in
my tunic, my drozhki, and my white linen shirt; and they appeared
to me most important obstacles, since they made me feel as though
I had unwittingly insulted these comrades by displaying such
tokens of my wealth. I felt guilty in their eyes, and as though,
whether I accepted or rejected their acquittal and took a line of
my own, I could never enter into equal and unaffected relations
with them. Yet to such an extent did the stirring poetry of the
courage which I could detect in Zuchin (in particular) overshadow
the coarse, vicious side of his nature that the latter made no
unpleasant impression upon me.
For a couple of weeks I visited Zuchin's almost every night for
purposes of work. Yet I did very little there, since, as I have
said, I had lost ground at the start, and, not having sufficient
grit in me to catch up my companions by solitary study, was
forced merely to PRETEND that I was listening to and taking in
all they were reading. I have an idea, too, that they divined my
pretence, since I often noticed that they passed over points
which they themselves knew without first inquiring of me whether
I did the same. Yet, day by day, I was coming to regard the
vulgarity of this circle with more indulgence, to feel
increasingly drawn towards its way of life, and to find in it
much that was poetical. Only my word of honour to Dimitri that I
would never indulge in dissipation with these new comrades kept
me from deciding also to share their diversions.
Once, I thought I would make a display of my knowledge of
literature, particularly French literature, and so led the
conversation to that theme. Judge, then, of my surprise when I
discovered that not only had my companions been reading the
foreign passages in Russian, but that they had studied far more
foreign works than I had, and knew and could appraise English,
and even Spanish, writers of whom I had never so much as heard!
Likewise, Pushkin and Zhukovski represented to them LITERATURE,
and not, as to myself, certain books in yellow covers which I had
once read and studied when a child. For Dumas and Sue they had an
almost equal contempt, and, in general, were competent to form
much better and clearer judgments on literary matters than I was,
for all that I refused to recognise the fact. In knowledge of
music, too, I could not beat them, and was astonished to find
that Operoff played the violin, and another student the cello
and piano, while both of them were members of the University
orchestra, and possessed a wide knowledge of and appreciation of
good music. In short, with the exception of the French and German
languages, my companions were better posted at every point than I
was, yet not the least proud of the fact. True, I might have
plumed myself on my position as a man of the world, but Woloda
excelled me even in that. Wherein, then, lay the height from
which I presumed to look down upon these comrades? In my
acquaintanceship with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch? In my ability to
speak French? In my drozhki? In my linen shirt? In my finger-
nails? "Surely these things are all rubbish," was the thought
which would come flitting through my head under the influence of
the envy which the good-fellowship and kindly, youthful gaiety
displayed around me excited in my breast. Every one addressed his
interlocutor in the second person singular. True, the familiarity
of this address almost approximated to rudeness, yet even the
boorish exterior of the speaker could not conceal a constant
endeavour never to hurt another one's feelings. The terms "brute"
or "swine," when used in this good-natured fashion, only
convulsed me, and gave me cause for inward merriment. In no way
did they offend the person addressed, or prevent the company at
large from remaining on the most sincere and friendly footing. In
all their intercourse these youths were delicate and forbearing
in a way that only very poor and very young men can be. However
much I might detect in Zuchin's character and amusements an
element of coarseness and profligacy, I could also detect the
fact that his drinking-bouts were of a very different order to
the puerility with burnt rum and champagne in which I had
participated at Baron Z.'s.
XLIV
ZUCHIN AND SEMENOFF
Although I do not know what class of society Zuchin belonged to,
I know that, without the help either of means or social position,
he had matriculated from the Seventh Gymnasium. At that time he
was eighteen--though he looked much older--and very clever,
especially in his powers of assimilation. To him it was easier to
survey the whole of some complicated subject, to foresee its
various parts and deductions, than to use that knowledge, when
gained, for reasoning out the exact laws to which those
deductions were due. He knew that he was clever, and of the fact
he was proud; yet from that very pride arose the circumstance that
he treated every one with unvarying simplicity and good-nature.
Moreover, his experience of life must have been considerable,
for already he had squandered much love, friendship, activity,
and money. Though poor and moving only in the lower ranks of
society, there was nothing which he had ever attempted for
which he did not thenceforth feel the contempt, the indifference,
or the utter disregard which were bound to result from his
attaining his goal too easily. In fact, the very ardour with
which he applied himself to a new pursuit seemed to be due
to his contempt for what he had already attained, since his
abilities always led him to success, and therefore to a certain
right to despise it. With the sciences it was the same. Though
little interested in them, and taking no notes, he knew
mathematics thoroughly, and was uttering no vain boast when he
said that he could beat the professor himself. Much of what he
heard said in lectures he thought rubbish, yet with his peculiar
habit of unconsciously practical roguishness he feigned to
subscribe to all that the professors thought important, and every
professor adored him. True, he was outspoken to the authorities,
but they none the less respected him. Besides disliking and
despising the sciences, he despised all who laboured to attain
what he himself had mastered so easily, since the sciences, as he
understood them, did not occupy one-tenth part of his powers. In
fact, life, as he saw it from the student's standpoint, contained
nothing to which he could devote himself wholly, and his
impetuous, active nature (as he himself often said) demanded life
complete: wherefore he frequented the drinking-bout in so far as
he could afford it, and surrendered himself to dissipation
chiefly out of a desire to get as far away from himself as
possible. Consequently, just as the examinations were
approaching, Operoff's prophecy to me came true, for Zuchin
wasted two whole weeks in this fashion, and we had to do the
latter part of our preparation at another student's. Yet at the
first examination he reappeared with pale, haggard face and
tremulous hands, and passed brilliantly into the second course!
The company of roisterers of which Zuchin had been the leader
since its formation at the beginning of the term consisted of
eight students, among whom, at first, had been numbered Ikonin
and Semenoff; but the former had left under the strain of the
continuous revelry in which the band had indulged in the early
part of the term, and the latter seceded later for reasons which
were never wholly explained. In its early days this band had been
looked upon with awe by all the fellows of our course, and had
had its exploits much discussed. Of these exploits the leading
heroes had been Zuchin and, towards the end of the term,
Semenoff, but the latter had come to be generally shunned, and to
cause disturbances on the rare occasions when he attended a
lecture. Just before the examinations began, he rounded off his
drinking exploits in a most energetic and original fashion, as I
myself had occasion to witness (through my acquaintanceship with
Zuchin). This is how it was. One evening we had just assembled at
Zuchin's, and Operoff, reinforcing a candlestick with a candle
stuck in a bottle, had just plunged his nose into his notebooks
and begun to read aloud in his thin voice from his neatly-written
notes on physics, when the landlady entered the room, and
informed Zuchin that some one had brought a note for him . .
.[The remainder of this chapter is omitted in the original.]
XLV
I COME TO GRIEF
At length the first examination--on differentials and integrals--
drew near, but I continued in a vague state which precluded me
from forming any clear idea of what was awaiting me. Every
evening, after consorting with Zuchin and the rest, the thought
would occur to me that there was something in my convictions
which I must change - something wrong and mistaken; yet every
morning the daylight would find me again satisfied to be "comme
il faut," and desirous of no change whatsoever.
Such was the frame of mind in which I attended for the first
examination. I seated myself on the bench where the princes,
counts, and barons always sat, and began talking to them in
French, with the not unnatural result that I never gave another
thought to the answers which I was shortly to return to questions
in a subject of which I knew nothing. I gazed supinely at other
students as they went up to be examined, and even allowed myself
to chaff some of them.
"Well, Grap," I said to Ilinka (who, from our first entry into
the University, had shaken off my influence, had ceased to smile
when I spoke to him, and always remained ill-disposed towards
me), "have you survived the ordeal?"
"Yes," retorted Ilinka. "Let us see if YOU can do so."
I smiled contemptuously at the answer, notwithstanding that the
doubt which he had expressed had given me a momentary shock. Once
again, however, indifference overlaid that feeling, and I
remained so entirely absent-minded and supine that, the very
moment after I had been examined (a mere formality for me, as it
turned out) I was making a dinner appointment with Baron Z. When
called out with Ikonin, I smoothed the creases in my uniform, and
walked up to the examiner's table with perfect sang froid.
True, a slight shiver of apprehension ran down my back when the
young professor--the same one as had examined me for my
matriculation--looked me straight in the face as I reached across
to the envelope containing the tickets. Ikonin, though taking a
ticket with the same plunge of his whole body as he had done at
the previous examinations, did at least return some sort of an
answer this time, though a poor one. I, on the contrary, did just
as he had done on the two previous occasions, or even worse,
since I took a second ticket, yet for a second time returned no
answer. The professor looked me compassionately in the face, and
said in a quiet, but determined, voice:
"You will not pass into the second course, Monsieur Irtenieff.
You had better not complete the examinations. The faculty must be
weeded out. The same with you, Monsieur Ikonin."
Ikonin implored leave to finish the examinations, as a great
favour, but the professor replied that he (Ikonin) was not likely
to do in two days what he had not succeeded in doing in a year,
and that he had not the smallest chance of passing. Ikonin
renewed his humble, piteous appeals, but the professor was
inexorable.
"You can go, gentlemen," he remarked in the same quiet, resolute
voice.
I was only too glad to do so, for I felt ashamed of seeming, by
my silent presence, to be joining in Ikonin's humiliating prayers
for grace. I have no recollection of how I threaded my way
through the students in the hall, nor of what I replied to their
questions, nor of how I passed into the vestibule and departed
home. I was offended, humiliated, and genuinely unhappy.
For three days I never left my room, and saw no one, but found
relief in copious tears. I should have sought a pistol to shoot
myself if I had had the necessary determination for the deed. I
thought that Ilinka Grap would spit in my face when he next met
me, and that he would have the right to do so; that Operoff would
rejoice at my misfortune, and tell every one of it; that
Kolpikoff had justly shamed me that night at the restaurant; that
my stupid speeches to Princess Kornikoff had had their fitting
result; and so on, and so on. All the moments in my life which
had been for me most difficult and painful recurred to my mind. I
tried to blame some one for my calamity, and thought that some
one must have done it on purpose--must have conspired a whole
intrigue against me. Next, I murmured against the professors,
against my comrades, Woloda, Dimitri, and Papa (the last for
having sent me to the University at all). Finally, I railed at
Providence for ever having let me see such ignominy. Believing
myself ruined for ever in the eyes of all who knew me, I besought
Papa to let me go into the hussars or to the Caucasus. Naturally,
Papa was anything but pleased at what had happened; yet, on
seeing my passionate grief, he comforted me by saying that,
though it was a bad business, it might yet be mended by my
transferring to another faculty. Woloda, who also saw nothing
very terrible in my misfortune, added that at least I should not
be put out of countenance in a new faculty, since I should have
new comrades there. As for the ladies of the household, they
neither knew nor cared what either an examination or a plucking
meant, and condoled with me only because they saw me in such
distress. Dimitri came to see me every day, and was very kind and
consolatory throughout; but for that very reason he seemed to me
to have grown colder than before. It always hurt me and made me
feel uncomfortable when he came up to my room and seated himself
in silence beside me, much as a doctor might scat himself by the
bedside of an awkward patient. Sophia Ivanovna and Varenika sent
me books for which I had expressed a wish, as also an invitation
to go and see them, but in that very thoughtfulness of theirs I
saw only proud, humiliating condescension to one who had fallen
beyond forgiveness. Although, in three days' time, I grew calmer,
it was not until we departed for the country that I left the
house, but spent the time in nursing my grief and wandering,
fearful of all the household, through the various rooms.
One evening, as I was sitting deep in thought and listening to
Avdotia playing her waltz, I suddenly leapt to my feet, ran
upstairs, got out the copy-book whereon I had once inscribed
"Rules of My Life," opened it, and experienced my first moment of
repentance and moral resolution. True, I burst into tears once
more, but they were no longer tears of despair. Pulling myself
together, I set about writing out a fresh set of rules, in the
assured conviction that never again would I do a wrong action,
waste a single moment on frivolity, or alter the rules which I
now decided to frame.
How long that moral impulse lasted, what it consisted of, and
what new principles I devised for my moral growth I will relate
when speaking of the ensuing and happier portion of my early
manhood.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Youth, by by Leo Tolstoy