Kabanata Kabanata 8 · AN ANONYMOUS STORY

. AN ANONYMOUS STORY

I

THROUGH causes which it is not the time to go into in detail, I had to

enter the service of a Petersburg official called Orlov, in the capacity

of a footman. He was about five and thirty, and was called Georgy*

Ivanitch.

*Both _g's_ hard, as in "Gorgon"; _e_ like _ai_ in _rain_.

I entered this Orlov's service on account of his father, a prominent

political man, whom I looked upon as a serious enemy of my cause. I

reckoned that, living with the son, I should--from the conversations I

should hear, and from the letters and papers I should find on the

table--learn every detail of the father's plans and intentions.

As a rule at eleven o'clock in the morning the electric bell rang in my

footman's quarters to let me know that my master was awake. When I went

into the bedroom with his polished shoes and brushed clothes, Georgy

Ivanitch would be sitting in his bed with a face that looked, not

drowsy, but rather exhausted by sleep, and he would gaze off in one

direction without any sign of satisfaction at having waked. I helped him

to dress, and he let me do it with an air of reluctance without speaking

or noticing my presence; then with his head wet with washing, smelling

of fresh scent, he used to go into the dining-room to drink his coffee.

He used to sit at the table, sipping his coffee and glancing through the

newspapers, while the maid Polya and I stood respectfully at the door

gazing at him. Two grown-up persons had to stand watching with the

gravest attention a third drinking coffee and munching rusks. It was

probably ludicrous and grotesque, but I saw nothing humiliating in

having to stand near the door, though I was quite as well born and well

educated as Orlov himself.

I was in the first stage of consumption, and was suffering from

something else, possibly even more serious than consumption. I don't

know whether it was the effect of my illness or of an incipient change

in my philosophy of life of which I was not conscious at the time, but I

was, day by day, more possessed by a passionate, irritating longing for

ordinary everyday life. I yearned for mental tranquillity, health, fresh

air, good food. I was becoming a dreamer, and, like a dreamer, I did not

know exactly what I wanted. Sometimes I felt inclined to go into a

monastery, to sit there for days together by the window and gaze at the

trees and the fields; sometimes I fancied I would buy fifteen acres of

land and settle down as a country gentleman; sometimes I inwardly vowed

to take up science and become a professor at some provincial university.

I was a retired navy lieutenant; I dreamed of the sea, of our squadron,

and of the corvette in which I had made the cruise round the world. I

longed to experience again the indescribable feeling when, walking in

the tropical forest or looking at the sunset in the Bay of Bengal, one

is thrilled with ecstasy and at the same time homesick. I dreamed of

mountains, women, music, and, with the curiosity of a child, I looked

into people's faces, listened to their voices. And when I stood at the

door and watched Orlov sipping his coffee, I felt not a footman, but a

man interested in everything in the world, even in Orlov.

In appearance Orlov was a typical Petersburger, with narrow shoulders, a

long waist, sunken temples, eyes of an indefinite colour, and scanty,

dingy-coloured hair, beard and moustaches. His face had a stale,

unpleasant look, though it was studiously cared for. It was particularly

unpleasant when he was asleep or lost in thought. It is not worth while

describing a quite ordinary appearance; besides, Petersburg is not

Spain, and a man's appearance is not of much consequence even in love

affairs, and is only of value to a handsome footman or coachman. I have

spoken of Orlov's face and hair only because there was something in his

appearance worth mentioning. When Orlov took a newspaper or book,

whatever it might be, or met people, whoever they be, an ironical smile

began to come into his eyes, and his whole countenance assumed an

expression of light mockery in which there was no malice. Before reading

or hearing anything he always had his irony in readiness, as a savage

has his shield. It was an habitual irony, like some old liquor brewed

years ago, and now it came into his face probably without any

participation of his will, as it were by reflex action. But of that

later.

Soon after midday he took his portfolio, full of papers, and drove to

his office. He dined away from home and returned after eight o'clock. I

used to light the lamp and candles in his study, and he would sit down

in a low chair with his legs stretched out on another chair, and,

reclining in that position, would begin reading. Almost every day he

brought in new books with him or received parcels of them from the

shops, and there were heaps of books in three languages, to say nothing

of Russian, which he had read and thrown away, in the corners of my room

and under my bed. He read with extraordinary rapidity. They say: "Tell

me what you read, and I'll tell you who you are." That may be true, but

it was absolutely impossible to judge of Orlov by what he read. It was a

regular hotchpotch. Philosophy, French novels, political economy,

finance, new poets, and publications of the firm _Posrednik_*--and he

read it all with the same rapidity and with the same ironical expression

in his eyes.

* I.e., Tchertkov and others, publishers of Tolstoy, who issued good

literature for peasants' reading.

After ten o'clock he carefully dressed, often in evening dress, very

rarely in his _kammer-junker_'s uniform, and went out, returning in the

morning.

Our relations were quiet and peaceful, and we never had any

misunderstanding. As a rule he did not notice my presence, and when he

talked to me there was no expression of irony on his face--he evidently

did not look upon me as a human being.

I only once saw him angry. One day--it was a week after I had entered

his service--he came back from some dinner at nine o'clock; his face

looked ill-humoured and exhausted. When I followed him into his study to

light the candles, he said to me:

"There's a nasty smell in the flat."

"No, the air is fresh," I answered.

"I tell you, there's a bad smell," he answered irritably.

"I open the movable panes every day."

"Don't argue, blockhead!" he shouted.

I was offended, and was on the point of answering, and goodness knows

how it would have ended if Polya, who knew her master better than I did,

had not intervened.

"There really is a disagreeable smell," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"What can it be from? Stepan, open the pane in the drawing-room, and

light the fire."

With much bustle and many exclamations, she went through all the rooms,

rustling her skirts and squeezing the sprayer with a hissing sound. And

Orlov was still out of humour; he was obviously restraining himself not

to vent his ill-temper aloud. He was sitting at the table and rapidly

writing a letter. After writing a few lines he snorted angrily and tore

it up, then he began writing again.

"Damn them all!" he muttered. "They expect me to have an abnormal

memory!"

At last the letter was written; he got up from the table and said,

turning to me:

"Go to Znamensky Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna

Krasnovsky in person. But first ask the porter whether her husband

--that is, Mr. Krasnovsky--has returned yet. If he has returned, don't

deliver the letter, but come back. Wait a minute!... If she asks whether

I have any one here, tell her that there have been two gentlemen here

since eight o'clock, writing something."

I drove to Znamensky Street. The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had

not yet come in, and I made my way up to the third storey. The door was

opened by a tall, stout, drab-coloured flunkey with black whiskers, who

in a sleepy, churlish, and apathetic voice, such as only flunkeys use in

addressing other flunkeys, asked me what I wanted. Before I had time to

answer, a lady dressed in black came hurriedly into the hall. She

screwed up her eyes and looked at me.

"Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?" I asked.

"That is me," said the lady.

"A letter from Georgy Ivanitch."

She tore the letter open impatiently, and holding it in both hands, so

that I saw her sparkling diamond rings, she began reading. I made out a

pale face with soft lines, a prominent chin, and long dark lashes. From

her appearance I should not have judged the lady to be more than five

and twenty.

"Give him my thanks and my greetings," she said when she had finished

the letter. "Is there any one with Georgy Ivanitch?" she asked softly,

joyfully, and as though ashamed of her mistrust.

"Two gentlemen," I answered. "They're writing something."

"Give him my greetings and thanks," she repeated, bending her head

sideways, and, reading the letter as she walked, she went noiselessly

out. I saw few women at that time, and this lady of whom I had a passing

glimpse made an impression on me. As I walked home I recalled her face

and the delicate fragrance about her, and fell to dreaming. By the time

I got home Orlov had gone out.

II

And so my relations with my employer were quiet and peaceful, but still

the unclean and degrading element which I so dreaded on becoming a

footman was conspicuous and made itself felt every day. I did not get on

with Polya. She was a well-fed and pampered hussy who adored Orlov

because he was a gentleman and despised me because I was a footman.

Probably, from the point of view of a real flunkey or cook, she was

fascinating, with her red cheeks, her turned-up nose, her coquettish

glances, and the plumpness, one might almost say fatness, of her person.

She powdered her face, coloured her lips and eyebrows, laced herself in,

and wore a bustle, and a bangle made of coins. She walked with little

ripping steps; as she walked she swayed, or, as they say, wriggled her

shoulders and back. The rustle of her skirts, the creaking of her stays,

the jingle her bangle and the vulgar smell of lip salve, toilet vinegar,

and scent stolen from her master, aroused in me whilst I was doing the

rooms with her in the morning a sensation as though I were taking part

with her in some abomination.

Either because I did not steal as she did, or because I displayed no

desire to become her lover, which she probably looked upon as an insult,

or perhaps because she felt that I was a man of a different order, she

hated me from the first day. My inexperience, my appearance--so unlike

a flunkey--and my illness, seemed to her pitiful and excited her

disgust. I had a bad cough at that time, and sometimes at night I

prevented her from sleeping, as our rooms were only divided by a wooden

partition, and every morning she said to me:

"Again you didn't let me sleep. You ought to be in hospital instead of

in service."

She so genuinely believed that I was hardly a human being, but something

infinitely below her, that, like the Roman matrons who were not ashamed

to bathe before their slaves, she sometimes went about in my presence in

nothing but her chemise.

Once when I was in a happy, dreamy mood, I asked her at dinner (we had

soup and roast meat sent in from a restaurant every day):

"Polya, do you believe in God?"

"Why, of course!"

"Then," I went on, "you believe there will be a day of judgment, and

that we shall have to answer to God for every evil action?"

She gave me no reply, but simply made a contemptuous grimace, and,

looking that time at her cold eyes and over-fed expression, I realised

that for her complete and finished personality no God, no conscience, no

laws existed, and that if I had had to set fire to the house, to murder

or to rob, I could not have hired a better accomplice.

In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at

Orlov's before I got used to being addressed as "thou," and being

constantly obliged to tell lies (saying "My master is not at home" when

he was). In my flunkey's swallow-tail I felt as though I were in armour.

But I grew accustomed to it in time. Like a genuine footman, I waited at

table, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on errands of all sorts.

When Orlov did not want to keep an appointment with Zinaida Fyodorovna,

or when he forgot that he had promised to go and see her, I drove to

Znamensky Street, put a letter into her hands and told a lie. And the

result of it all was quite different from what I had expected when I

became a footman. Every day of this new life of mine was wasted for me

and my cause, as Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his visitors,

and all I could learn of the stateman's doings was, as before, what I

could glean from the newspapers or from correspondence with my comrades.

The hundreds of notes and papers I used to find in the study and read

had not the remotest connection with what I was looking for. Orlov was

absolutely uninterested in his father's political work, and looked as

though he had never heard of it, or as though his father had long been

dead.

III

Every Thursday we had visitors.

I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to

Eliseyev's to send us caviare, cheese, oysters, and so on. I bought

playing-cards. Polya was busy all day getting ready the tea-things and

the dinner service. To tell the truth, this spurt of activity came as a

pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were for us the most

interesting days.

Only three visitors used to come. The most important and perhaps the

most interesting was the one called Pekarsky--a tall, lean man of five

and forty, with a long hooked nose, with a big black beard, and a bald

patch on his head. His eyes were large and prominent, and his expression

was grave and thoughtful like that of a Greek philosopher. He was on the

board of management of some railway, and also had some post in a bank;

he was a consulting lawyer in some important Government institution, and

had business relations with a large number of private persons as a

trustee, chairman of committees, and so on. He was of quite a low grade

in the service, and modestly spoke of himself as a lawyer, but he had a

vast influence. A note or card from him was enough to make a celebrated

doctor, a director of a railway, or a great dignitary see any one

without waiting; and it was said that through his protection one might

obtain even a post of the Fourth Class, and get any sort of unpleasant

business hushed up. He was looked upon as a very intelligent man, but

his was a strange, peculiar intelligence. He was able to multiply 213 by

373 in his head instantaneously, or turn English pounds into German

marks without help of pencil or paper; he understood finance and railway

business thoroughly, and the machinery of Russian administration had no

secrets for him; he was a most skilful pleader in civil suits, and it

was not easy to get the better of him at law. But that exceptional

intelligence could not grasp many things which are understood even by

some stupid people. For instance, he was absolutely unable to understand

why people are depressed, why they weep, shoot themselves, and even kill

others; why they fret about things that do not affect them personally,

and why they laugh when they read Gogol or Shtchedrin.... Everything

abstract, everything belonging to the domain of thought and feeling, was

to him boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear. He

looked at people simply from the business point of view, and divided

them into competent and incompetent. No other classification existed for

him. Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence. Drinking,

gambling, and debauchery were permissible, but must not be allowed to

interfere with business. Believing in God was rather stupid, but

religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some

principle to restrain them, otherwise they would not work. Punishment is

only necessary as deterrent. There was no need to go away for holidays,

as it was just as nice in town. And so on. He was a widower and had no

children, but lived on a large scale, as though he had a family, and

paid three thousand roubles a year for his flat.

The second visitor, Kukushkin, an actual civil councillor though a young

man, was short, and was conspicuous for his extremely unpleasant

appearance, which was due to the disproportion between his fat, puffy

body and his lean little face. His lips were puckered up suavely, and

his little trimmed moustaches looked as though they had been fixed on

with glue. He was a man with the manners of a lizard. He did not walk,

but, as it were, crept along with tiny steps, squirming and sniggering,

and when he laughed he showed his teeth. He was a clerk on special

commissions, and did nothing, though he received a good salary,

especially in the summer, when special and lucrative jobs were found for

him. He was a man of personal ambition, not only to the marrow of his

bones, but more fundamentally--to the last drop of his blood; but even

in his ambitions he was petty and did not rely on himself, but was

building his career on the chance favour flung him by his superiors. For

the sake of obtaining some foreign decoration, or for the sake of having

his name mentioned in the newspapers as having been present at some

special service in the company of other great personages, he was ready

to submit to any kind of humiliation, to beg, to flatter, to promise. He

flattered Orlov and Pekarsky from cowardice, because he thought they

were powerful; he flattered Polya and me because we were in the service

of a powerful man. Whenever I took off his fur coat he tittered and

asked me: "Stepan, are you married?" and then unseemly vulgarities

followed--by way of showing me special attention. Kukushkin flattered

Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his corrupted and blasé ways; to please him

he affected malicious raillery and atheism, in his company criticised

persons before whom in other places he would slavishly grovel. When at

supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and

perverse voluptuary. As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond

of talking of their abnormal tastes. Some young actual civil councillor

is perfectly satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some unhappy

street-walker on the Nevsky Prospect, but to listen to him you would

think he was contaminated by all the vices of East and West combined,

that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous secret societies

and was already marked by the police. Kukushkin lied about himself in an

unconscionable way, and they did not exactly disbelieve him, but paid

little heed to his incredible stories.

The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general; a

man of Orlov's age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold

spectacles. I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a

pianist's; and, indeed, there was something of a musician, of a

virtuoso, about his whole figure. The first violins in orchestras look

just like that. He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed

invalidish and delicate. Probably at home he was dressed and undressed

like a baby. He had finished at the College of Jurisprudence, and had at

first served in the Department of Justice, then he was transferred to

the Senate; he left that, and through patronage had received a post in

the Department of Crown Estates, and had soon afterwards given that up.

In my time he was serving in Orlov's department; he was his head-clerk,

but he said that he should soon exchange into the Department of Justice

again. He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to

another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him

seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled

good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism: "It's only in the

Government service you learn the truth." He had a little wife with a

wrinkled face, who was very jealous of him, and five weedy-looking

children. He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his

children when he saw them, and on the whole was rather indifferent to

his family, and made fun of them. He and his family existed on credit,

borrowing wherever they could at every opportunity, even from his

superiors in the office and porters in people's houses. His was a flabby

nature; he was so lazy that he did not care what became of himself, and

drifted along heedless where or why he was going. He went where he was

taken. If he was taken to some low haunt, he went; if wine was set

before him, he drank--if it were not put before him, he abstained; if

wives were abused in his presence, he abused his wife, declaring she had

ruined his life--when wives were praised, he praised his and said quite

sincerely: "I am very fond of her, poor thing!" He had no fur coat and

always wore a rug which smelt of the nursery. When at supper he rolled

balls of bread and drank a great deal of red wine, absorbed in thought,

strange to say, I used to feel almost certain that there was something

in him of which perhaps he had a vague sense, though in the bustle and

vulgarity of his daily life he had not time to understand and appreciate

it. He played a little on the piano. Sometimes he would sit down at the

piano, play a chord or two, and begin singing softly:

"What does the coming day bring to me?"

But at once, as though afraid, he would get up and walk from the piano.

The visitors usually arrived about ten o'clock. They played cards in

Orlov's study, and Polya and I handed them tea. It was only on these

occasions that I could gauge the full sweetness of a flunkey's life.

Standing for four or five hours at the door, watching that no one's

glass should be empty, changing the ash-trays, running to the table to

pick up the chalk or a card when it was dropped, and, above all,

standing, waiting, being attentive without venturing to speak, to cough,

to smile--is harder, I assure you, is harder than the hardest of field

labour. I have stood on watch at sea for four hours at a stretch on

stormy winter nights, and to my thinking it is an infinitely easier

duty.

They used to play cards till two, sometimes till three o'clock at night,

and then, stretching, they would go into the dining-room to supper, or,

as Orlov said, for a snack of something. At supper there was

conversation. It usually began by Orlov's speaking with laughing eyes of

some acquaintance, of some book he had lately been reading, of a new

appointment or Government scheme. Kukushkin, always ingratiating, would

fall into his tone, and what followed was to me, in my mood at that

time, a revolting exhibition. The irony of Orlov and his friends knew no

bounds, and spared no one and nothing. If they spoke of religion, it was

with irony; they spoke of philosophy, of the significance and object of

life--irony again, if any one began about the peasantry, it was with

irony.

There is in Petersburg a species of men whose specialty it is to jeer at

every aspect of life; they cannot even pass by a starving man or a

suicide without saying something vulgar. But Orlov and his friends did

not jeer or make jokes, they talked ironically. They used to say that

there was no God, and personality was completely lost at death; the

immortals only existed in the French Academy. Real good did not and

could not possibly exist, as its existence was conditional upon human

perfection, which was a logical absurdity. Russia was a country as poor

and dull as Persia. The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky's

opinion the overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good

for nothing. The people were drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate. We

had no science, our literature was uncouth, our commerce rested on

swindling--"No selling without cheating." And everything was in that

style, and everything was a subject for laughter.

Towards the end of supper the wine made them more good-humoured, and

they passed to more lively conversation. They laughed over Gruzin's

family life, over Kukushkin's conquests, or at Pekarsky, who had, they

said, in his account book one page headed _Charity_ and another

_Physiological Necessities_. They said that no wife was faithful; that

there was no wife from whom one could not, with practice, obtain

caresses without leaving her drawing-room while her husband was sitting

in his study close by; that girls in their teens were perverted and knew

everything. Orlov had preserved a letter of a schoolgirl of fourteen: on

her way home from school she had "hooked an officer on the Nevsky," who

had, it appears, taken her home with him, and had only let her go late

in the evening; and she hastened to write about this to her school

friend to share her joy with her. They maintained that there was not and

never had been such a thing as moral purity, and that evidently it was

unnecessary; mankind had so far done very well without it. The harm done

by so-called vice was undoubtedly exaggerated. Vices which are punished

by our legal code had not prevented Diogenes from being a philosopher

and a teacher. Cæsar and Cicero were profligates and at the same time

great men. Cato in his old age married a young girl, and yet he was

regarded as a great ascetic and a pillar of morality.

At three or four o'clock the party broke up or they went off together

out of town, or to Officers' Street, to the house of a certain Varvara

Ossipovna, while I retired to my quarters, and was kept awake a long

while by coughing and headache.

IV

Three weeks after I entered Orlov's service--it was Sunday morning, I

remember--somebody rang the bell. It was not yet eleven, and Orlov was

still asleep. I went to open the door. You can imagine my astonishment

when I found a lady in a veil standing at the door on the landing.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch up?" she asked.

From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken

letters in Znamensky Street. I don't remember whether I had time or

self-possession to answer her--I was taken aback at seeing her. And,

indeed, she did not need my answer. In a flash she had darted by me,

and, filling the hall with the fragrance of her perfume, which I

remember to this day, she went on, and her footsteps died away. For at

least half an hour afterwards I heard nothing. But again some one rang.

This time it was a smartly dressed girl, who looked like a maid in a

wealthy family, accompanied by our house porter. Both were out of

breath, carrying two trunks and a dress-basket.

"These are for Zinaida Fyodorovna," said the girl.

And she went down without saying another word. All this was mysterious,

and made Polya, who had a deep admiration for the pranks of her betters,

smile slyly to herself; she looked as though she would like to say, "So

that's what we're up to," and she walked about the whole time on tiptoe.

At last we heard footsteps; Zinaida Fyodorovna came quickly into the

hall, and seeing me at the door of my room, said:

"Stepan, take Georgy Ivanitch his things."

When I went in to Orlov with his clothes and his boots, he was sitting

on the bed with his feet on the bearskin rug. There was an air of

embarrassment about his whole figure. He did not notice me, and my

menial opinion did not interest him; he was evidently perturbed and

embarrassed before himself, before his inner eye. He dressed, washed,

and used his combs and brushes silently and deliberately, as though

allowing himself time to think over his position and to reflect, and

even from his back one could see he was troubled and dissatisfied with

himself.

They drank coffee together. Zinaida Fyodorovna poured out coffee for

herself and for Orlov, then she put her elbows on the table and laughed.

"I still can't believe it," she said. "When one has been a long while on

one's travels and reaches a hotel at last, it's difficult to believe

that one hasn't to go on. It is pleasant to breathe freely."

With the expression of a child who very much wants to be mischievous,

she sighed with relief and laughed again.

"You will excuse me," said Orlov, nodding towards the coffee. "Reading

at breakfast is a habit I can't get over. But I can do two things at

once--read and listen."

"Read away.... You shall keep your habits and your freedom. But why do

you look so solemn? Are you always like that in the morning, or is it

only to-day? Aren't you glad?"

"Yes, I am. But I must own I am a little overwhelmed."

"Why? You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon

you. I've been threatening to come every day."

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to carry out your threat to-day."

"I didn't expect it myself, but that's all the better. It's all the

better, my dear. It's best to have an aching tooth out and have done

with it."

"Yes, of course."

"Oh, my dear," she said, closing her eyes, "all is well that ends well;

but before this happy ending, what suffering there has been! My laughing

means nothing; I am glad, I am happy, but I feel more like crying than

laughing. Yesterday I had to fight a regular battle," she went on in

French. "God alone knows how wretched I was. But I laugh because I can't

believe in it. I keep fancying that my sitting here drinking coffee with

you is not real, but a dream."

Then, still speaking French, she described how she had broken with her

husband the day before and her eyes were alternately full of tears and

of laughter while she gazed with rapture at Orlov. She told him her

husband had long suspected her, but had avoided explanations; they had

frequent quarrels, and usually at the most heated moment he would

suddenly subside into silence and depart to his study for fear that in

his exasperation he might give utterance to his suspicions or she might

herself begin to speak openly. And she had felt guilty, worthless,

incapable of taking a bold and serious step, and that had made her hate

herself and her husband more every day, and she had suffered the

torments of hell. But the day before, when during a quarrel he had cried

out in a tearful voice, "My God, when will it end?" and had walked off

to his study, she had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and,

preventing him from shutting the door, she had cried that she hated him

with her whole soul. Then he let her come into the study and she had

told him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that

that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she

thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might

happen, if she were to be shot for it.

"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his

eyes fixed on the newspaper.

She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee. Her cheeks

glowed and she was a little embarrassed by it, and she looked in

confusion at Polya and me. From what she went on to say I learnt that

her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and finally

tears, and that it would have been more accurate to say that she, and

not he, had been the attacking party.

"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all right,"

she told Orlov; "but as night came on, my spirits sank. You don't

believe in God, _George_, but I do believe a little, and I fear

retribution. God requires of us patience, magnanimity, self-sacrifice,

and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel my life to suit

myself. Is that right? What if from the point of view of God it's wrong?

At two o'clock in the night my husband came to me and said: 'You dare

not go away. I'll fetch you back through the police and make a scandal.'

And soon afterwards I saw him like a shadow at my door. 'Have mercy on

me! Your elopement may injure me in the service.' Those words had a

coarse effect upon me and made me feel stiff all over. I felt as though

the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling

with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I

should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow

cold to me--all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a

nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but

then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose

of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a

tangle--I was in despair and did not know what to do or think. But the

sun rose and I grew happier. As soon as it was morning I dashed off to

you. Ah, what I've been through, dear one! I haven't slept for two

nights!"

She was tired out and excited. She was sleepy, and at the same time she

wanted to talk endlessly, to laugh and to cry, and to go to a restaurant

to lunch that she might feel her freedom.

"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of

us," she said, walking rapidly through all the rooms when they had

finished breakfast. "What room will you give me? I like this one because

it is next to your study."

At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study,

which from that time she called hers, and she went off with Orlov to

lunch. They dined, too, at a restaurant, and spent the long interval

between lunch and dinner in shopping. Till late at night I was opening

the door to messengers and errand-boys from the shops. They bought,

among other things, a splendid pier-glass, a dressing-table, a bedstead,

and a gorgeous tea service which we did not need. They bought a regular

collection of copper saucepans, which we set in a row on the shelf in

our cold, empty kitchen. As we were unpacking the tea service Polya's

eyes gleamed, and she looked at me two or three times with hatred and

fear that I, not she, would be the first to steal one of these charming

cups. A lady's writing-table, very expensive and inconvenient, came too.

It was evident that Zinaida Fyodorovna contemplated settling with us for

good, and meant to make the flat her home.

She came back with Orlov between nine and ten. Full of proud

consciousness that she had done something bold and out of the common,

passionately in love, and, as she imagined, passionately loved,

exhausted, looking forward to a sweet sound sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna

was revelling in her new life. She squeezed her hands together in the

excess of her joy, declared that everything was delightful, and swore

that she would love Orlov for ever; and these vows, and the naïve,

almost childish confidence that she too was deeply loved and would be

loved forever, made her at least five years younger. She talked charming

nonsense and laughed at herself.

"There's no other blessing greater than freedom!" she said, forcing

herself to say something serious and edifying. "How absurd it is when

you think of it! We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is

wise, but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people. Up

to the last minute I was afraid of what other people would say, but as

soon as I followed my own instinct and made up my mind to go my own way,

my eyes were opened, I overcame my silly fears, and now I am happy and

wish every one could be as happy!"

But her thoughts immediately took another turn, and she began talking of

another flat, of wallpapers, horses, a trip to Switzerland and Italy.

Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still

suffering from the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning. He

smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she spoke of

anything seriously, he agreed ironically: "Oh, yes."

"Stepan, make haste and find us a good cook," she said to me.

"There's no need to be in a hurry over the kitchen arrangements," said

Orlov, looking at me coldly. "We must first move into another flat."

We had never had cooking done at home nor kept horses, because, as he

said, "he did not like disorder about him," and only put up with having

Polya and me in his flat from necessity. The so-called domestic hearth

with its everyday joys and its petty cares offended his taste as

vulgarity; to be with child, or to have children and talk about them,

was bad form, like a petty bourgeois. And I began to feel very curious

to see how these two creatures would get on together in one flat--she,

domestic and home-loving with her copper saucepans and her dreams of a

good cook and horses; and he, fond of saying to his friends that a

decent and orderly man's flat ought, like a warship, to have nothing in

it superfluous--no women, no children, no rags, no kitchen utensils.

V

Then I will tell you what happened the following Thursday. That day

Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Content's or Donon's. Orlov returned home

alone, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learnt afterwards, went to the

Petersburg Side to spend with her old governess the time visitors were

with us. Orlov did not care to show her to his friends. I realised that

at breakfast, when he began assuring her that for the sake of her peace

of mind it was essential to give up his Thursday evenings.

As usual the visitors arrived at almost the same time.

"Is your mistress at home, too?" Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.

"No, sir," I answered.

He went in with a sly, oily look in his eyes, smiling mysteriously,

rubbing his hands, which were cold from the frost.

"I have the honour to congratulate you," he said to Orlov, shaking all

over with ingratiating, obsequious laughter. "May you increase and

multiply like the cedars of Lebanon."

The visitors went into the bedroom, and were extremely jocose on the

subject of a pair of feminine slippers, the rug that had been put down

between the two beds, and a grey dressing-jacket that hung at the foot

of the bedstead. They were amused that the obstinate man who despised

all the common place details of love had been caught in feminine snares

in such a simple and ordinary way.

"He who pointed the finger of scorn is bowing the knee in homage,"

Kukushkin repeated several times. He had, I may say in parenthesis, an

unpleasant habit of adorning his conversation with texts in Church

Slavonic. "Sh-sh!" he said as they went from the bedroom into the room

next to the study. "Sh-sh! Here Gretchen is dreaming of her Faust."

He went off into a peal of laughter as though he had said something very

amusing. I watched Gruzin, expecting that his musical soul would not

endure this laughter, but I was mistaken. His thin, good-natured face

beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he, lisping and

choking with laughter, said that all that "dear _George_" wanted to

complete his domestic felicity was a cherry-wood pipe and a guitar.

Pekarsky laughed sedately, but from his serious expression one could see

that Orlov's new love affair was distasteful to him. He did not

understand what had happened exactly.

"But how about