Chương Chương 4 · IONITCH

. IONITCH

I

WHEN visitors to the provincial town S---- complained of the dreariness

and monotony of life, the inhabitants of the town, as though defending

themselves, declared that it was very nice in S----, that there was a

library, a theatre, a club; that they had balls; and, finally, that

there were clever, agreeable, and interesting families with whom one

could make acquaintance. And they used to point to the family of the

Turkins as the most highly cultivated and talented.

This family lived in their own house in the principal street, near the

Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself--a stout, handsome, dark man

with whiskers--used to get up amateur performances for benevolent

objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very

amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was

fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from

which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest.

His wife, Vera Iosifovna--a thin, nice-looking lady who wore a

pince-nez--used to write novels and stories, and was very fond of

reading them aloud to her visitors. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a

young girl, used to play on the piano. In short, every member of the

family had a special talent. The Turkins welcomed visitors, and

good-humouredly displayed their talents with genuine simplicity. Their

stone house was roomy and cool in summer; half of the windows looked

into a shady old garden, where nightingales used to sing in the spring.

When there were visitors in the house, there was a clatter of knives in

the kitchen and a smell of fried onions in the yard--and that was always

a sure sign of a plentiful and savoury supper to follow.

And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district

doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S----, he, too,

was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the

acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan

Petrovitch in the street; they talked about the weather, about the

theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed. On a holiday in the

spring--it was Ascension Day--after seeing his patients, Startsev set

off for town in search of a little recreation and to make some

purchases. He walked in a leisurely way (he had not yet set up his

carriage), humming all the time:

"'Before I'd drunk the tears from life's goblet....'"

In town he dined, went for a walk in the gardens, then Ivan

Petrovitch's invitation came into his mind, as it were of itself,

and he decided to call on the Turkins and see what sort of people

they were.

"How do you do, if you please?" said Ivan Petrovitch, meeting him

on the steps. "Delighted, delighted to see such an agreeable visitor.

Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him,

Verotchka," he went on, as he presented the doctor to his wife--"I

tell him that he has no human right to sit at home in a hospital;

he ought to devote his leisure to society. Oughtn't he, darling?"

"Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside

her. "You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous--he

is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will

notice nothing."

"Ah, you spoilt chicken!" Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and

he kissed her on the forehead. "You have come just in the nick of

time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has

written a 'hugeous' novel, and she is going to read it aloud to-day."

"Petit Jean," said Vera Iosifovna to her husband, "dites que l'on

nous donne du thé."

Startsev was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, a girl of eighteen,

very much like her mother, thin and pretty. Her expression was still

childish and her figure was soft and slim; and her developed girlish

bosom, healthy and beautiful, was suggestive of spring, real spring.

Then they drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats, and with very

nice cakes, which melted in the mouth. As the evening came on, other

visitors gradually arrived, and Ivan Petrovitch fixed his laughing

eyes on each of them and said:

"How do you do, if you please?"

Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces,

and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. It began like this: "The frost

was intense...." The windows were wide open; from the kitchen

came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions.... It

was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair; the lights had such a

friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the

moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated

in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult

to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was

lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy

plain. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess founded

a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love

with a wandering artist; she read of what never happens in real

life, and yet it was pleasant to listen--it was comfortable, and

such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind, one had

no desire to get up.

"Not badsome ..." Ivan Petrovitch said softly.

And one of the visitors hearing, with his thoughts far away, said

hardly audibly:

"Yes ... truly...."

One hour passed, another. In the town gardens close by a band was

playing and a chorus was singing. When Vera Iosifovna shut her

manuscript book, the company was silent for five minutes, listening

to "Lutchina" being sung by the chorus, and the song gave what was

not in the novel and is in real life.

"Do you publish your stories in magazines?" Startsev asked Vera

Iosifovna.

"No," she answered. "I never publish. I write it and put it away

in my cupboard. Why publish?" she explained. "We have enough to

live on."

And for some reason every one sighed.

"And now, Kitten, you play something," Ivan Petrovitch said to his

daughter.

The lid of the piano was raised and the music lying ready was opened.

Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and banged on the piano with both hands,

and then banged again with all her might, and then again and again;

her shoulders and bosom shook. She obstinately banged on the same

notes, and it sounded as if she would not leave off until she had

hammered the keys into the piano. The drawing-room was filled with

the din; everything was resounding; the floor, the ceiling, the

furniture.... Ekaterina Ivanovna was playing a difficult passage,

interesting simply on account of its difficulty, long and monotonous,

and Startsev, listening, pictured stones dropping down a steep hill

and going on dropping, and he wished they would leave off dropping;

and at the same time Ekaterina Ivanovna, rosy from the violent

exercise, strong and vigorous, with a lock of hair falling over her

forehead, attracted him very much. After the winter spent at Dyalizh

among patients and peasants, to sit in a drawing-room, to watch

this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and

to listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was

so pleasant, so novel....

"Well, Kitten, you have played as never before," said Ivan Petrovitch,

with tears in his eyes, when his daughter had finished and stood

up. "Die, Denis; you won't write anything better."

All flocked round her, congratulated her, expressed astonishment,

declared that it was long since they had heard such music, and she

listened in silence with a faint smile, and her whole figure was

expressive of triumph.

"Splendid, superb!"

"Splendid," said Startsev, too, carried away by the general enthusiasm.

"Where have you studied?" he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna. "At the

Conservatoire?"

"No, I am only preparing for the Conservatoire, and till now have

been working with Madame Zavlovsky."

"Have you finished at the high school here?"

"Oh, no," Vera Iosifovna answered for her, "We have teachers for

her at home; there might be bad influences at the high school or a

boarding school, you know. While a young girl is growing up, she

ought to be under no influence but her mother's."

"All the same, I'm going to the Conservatoire," said Ekaterina

Ivanovna.

"No. Kitten loves her mamma. Kitten won't grieve papa and mamma."

"No, I'm going, I'm going," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with playful

caprice and stamping her foot.

And at supper it was Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents.

Laughing only with his eyes, he told anecdotes, made epigrams, asked

ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole

time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged

practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit: "Badsome,"

"Hugeous," "Thank you most dumbly," and so on.

But that was not all. When the guests, replete and satisfied, trooped

into the hall, looking for their coats and sticks, there bustled

about them the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called in the family,

Pava--a lad of fourteen with shaven head and chubby cheeks.

"Come, Pava, perform!" Ivan Petrovitch said to him.

Pava struck an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic

tone: "Unhappy woman, die!"

And every one roared with laughter.

"It's entertaining," thought Startsev, as he went out into the

street.

He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk

home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way singing:

"'Thy voice to me so languid and caressing....'"

On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the six miles'

walk. On the contrary, he felt as though he could with pleasure have

walked another twenty.

"Not badsome," he thought, and laughed as he fell asleep.

II

Startsev kept meaning to go to the Turkins' again, but there was a great

deal of work in the hospital, and he was unable to find free time. In

this way more than a year passed in work and solitude. But one day a

letter in a light blue envelope was brought him from the town.

Vera Iosifovna had been suffering for some time from migraine, but now

since Kitten frightened her every day by saying that she was going away

to the Conservatoire, the attacks began to be more frequent. All the

doctors of the town had been at the Turkins'; at last it was the

district doctor's turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a touching letter in

which she begged him to come and relieve her sufferings. Startsev went,

and after that he began to be often, very often at the Turkins'.... He

really did something for Vera Iosifovna, and she was already telling all

her visitors that he was a wonderful and exceptional doctor. But it was

not for the sake of her migraine that he visited the Turkins' now....

It was a holiday. Ekaterina Ivanovna finished her long, wearisome

exercises on the piano. Then they sat a long time in the dining-room,

drinking tea, and Ivan Petrovitch told some amusing story. Then there

was a ring and he had to go into the hall to welcome a guest; Startsev

took advantage of the momentary commotion, and whispered to Ekaterina

Ivanovna in great agitation:

"For God's sake, I entreat you, don't torment me; let us go into the

garden!"

She shrugged her shoulders, as though perplexed and not knowing what he

wanted of her, but she got up and went.

"You play the piano for three or four hours," he said, following her;

"then you sit with your mother, and there is no possibility of speaking

to you. Give me a quarter of an hour at least, I beseech you."

Autumn was approaching, and it was quiet and melancholy in the old

garden; the dark leaves lay thick in the walks. It was already beginning

to get dark early.

"I haven't seen you for a whole week," Startsev went on, "and if you

only knew what suffering it is! Let us sit down. Listen to me."

They had a favourite place in the garden; a seat under an old spreading

maple. And now they sat down on this seat.

"What do you want?" said Ekaterina Ivanovna drily, in a matter-of-fact

tone.

"I have not seen you for a whole week; I have not heard you for so long.

I long passionately, I thirst for your voice. Speak."

She fascinated him by her freshness, the naïve expression of her eyes

and cheeks. Even in the way her dress hung on her, he saw something

extraordinarily charming, touching in its simplicity and naïve grace;

and at the same time, in spite of this naïveté, she seemed to him

intelligent and developed beyond her years. He could talk with her about

literature, about art, about anything he liked; could complain to her of

life, of people, though it sometimes happened in the middle of serious

conversation she would laugh inappropriately or run away into the house.

Like almost all girls of her neighbourhood, she had read a great deal

(as a rule, people read very little in S----, and at the lending library

they said if it were not for the girls and the young Jews, they might as

well shut up the library). This afforded Startsev infinite delight; he

used to ask her eagerly every time what she had been reading the last

few days, and listened enthralled while she told him.

"What have you been reading this week since I saw you last?" he asked

now. "Do please tell me."

"I have been reading Pisemsky."

"What exactly?"

"'A Thousand Souls,'" answered Kitten. "And what a funny name Pisemsky

had--Alexey Feofilaktitch!"

"Where are you going?" cried Startsev in horror, as she suddenly got up

and walked towards the house. "I must talk to you; I want to explain

myself.... Stay with me just five minutes, I supplicate you!"

She stopped as though she wanted to say something, then awkwardly thrust

a note into his hand, ran home and sat down to the piano again.

"Be in the cemetery," Startsev read, "at eleven o'clock to-night, near

the tomb of Demetti."

"Well, that's not at all clever," he thought, coming to himself. "Why

the cemetery? What for?"

It was clear: Kitten was playing a prank. Who would seriously dream of

making an appointment at night in the cemetery far out of the town, when

it might have been arranged in the street or in the town gardens? And

was it in keeping with him--a district doctor, an intelligent, staid

man--to be sighing, receiving notes, to hang about cemeteries, to do

silly things that even schoolboys think ridiculous nowadays? What would

this romance lead to? What would his colleagues say when they heard of

it? Such were Startsev's reflections as he wandered round the tables at

the club, and at half-past ten he suddenly set off for the cemetery.

By now he had his own pair of horses, and a coachman called Panteleimon,

in a velvet waistcoat. The moon was shining. It was still warm, warm as

it is in autumn. Dogs were howling in the suburb near the

slaughter-house. Startsev left his horses in one of the side-streets at

the end of the town, and walked on foot to the cemetery.

"We all have our oddities," he thought. "Kitten is odd, too; and--who

knows?--perhaps she is not joking, perhaps she will come"; and he

abandoned himself to this faint, vain hope, and it intoxicated him.

He walked for half a mile through the fields; the cemetery showed as a

dark streak in the distance, like a forest or a big garden. The wall of

white stone came into sight, the gate.... In the moonlight he could read

on the gate: "The hour cometh." Startsev went in at the little gate, and

before anything else he saw the white crosses and monuments on both

sides of the broad avenue, and the black shadows of them and the

poplars; and for a long way round it was all white and black, and the

slumbering trees bowed their branches over the white stones. It seemed

as though it were lighter here than in the fields; the maple-leaves

stood out sharply like paws on the yellow sand of the avenue and on the

stones, and the inscriptions on the tombs could be clearly read. For the

first moments Startsev was struck now by what he saw for the first time

in his life, and what he would probably never see again; a world not

like anything else, a world in which the moonlight was as soft and

beautiful, as though slumbering here in its cradle, where there was no

life, none whatever; but in every dark poplar, in every tomb, there was

felt the presence of a mystery that promised a life peaceful, beautiful,

eternal. The stones and faded flowers, together with the autumn scent of

the leaves, all told of forgiveness, melancholy, and peace.

All was silence around; the stars looked down from the sky in the

profound stillness, and Startsev's footsteps sounded loud and out of

place, and only when the church clock began striking and he imagined

himself dead, buried there for ever, he felt as though some one were

looking at him, and for a moment he thought that it was not peace and

tranquillity, but stifled despair, the dumb dreariness of

non-existence....

Demetti's tomb was in the form of a shrine with an angel at the top. The

Italian opera had once visited S---- and one of the singers had died;

she had been buried here, and this monument put up to her. No one in the

town remembered her, but the lamp at the entrance reflected the

moonlight, and looked as though it were burning.

There was no one, and, indeed, who would come here at midnight? But

Startsev waited, and as though the moonlight warmed his passion, he

waited passionately, and, in imagination, pictured kisses and embraces.

He sat near the monument for half an hour, then paced up and down the

side avenues, with his hat in his hand, waiting and thinking of the many

women and girls buried in these tombs who had been beautiful and

fascinating, who had loved, at night burned with passion, yielding

themselves to caresses. How wickedly Mother Nature jested at man's

expense, after all! How humiliating it was to recognise it!

Startsev thought this, and at the same time he wanted to cry out that he

wanted love, that he was eager for it at all costs. To his eyes they

were not slabs of marble, but fair white bodies in the moonlight; he saw

shapes hiding bashfully in the shadows of the trees, felt their warmth,

and the languor was oppressive....

And as though a curtain were lowered, the moon went behind a cloud, and

suddenly all was darkness. Startsev could scarcely find the gate--by now

it was as dark as it is on an autumn night. Then he wandered about for

an hour and a half, looking for the side-street in which he had left his

horses.

"I am tired; I can scarcely stand on my legs," he said to Panteleimon.

And settling himself with relief in his carriage, he thought: "Och! I

ought not to get fat!"

III

The following evening he went to the Turkins' to make an offer. But it

turned out to be an inconvenient moment, as Ekaterina Ivanovna was in

her own room having her hair done by a hair-dresser. She was getting

ready to go to a dance at the club.

He had to sit a long time again in the dining-room drinking tea. Ivan

Petrovitch, seeing that his visitor was bored and preoccupied, drew some

notes out of his waistcoat pocket, read a funny letter from a German

steward, saying that all the ironmongery was ruined and the plasticity

was peeling off the walls.

"I expect they will give a decent dowry," thought Startsev, listening

absent-mindedly.

After a sleepless night, he found himself in a state of stupefaction, as

though he had been given something sweet and soporific to drink; there

was fog in his soul, but joy and warmth, and at the same time a sort of

cold, heavy fragment of his brain was reflecting:

"Stop before it is too late! Is she the match for you? She is spoilt,

whimsical, sleeps till two o'clock in the afternoon, while you are a

deacon's son, a district doctor...."

"What of it?" he thought. "I don't care."

"Besides, if you marry her," the fragment went on, "then her relations

will make you give up the district work and live in the town."

"After all," he thought, "if it must be the town, the town it must be.

They will give a dowry; we can establish ourselves suitably."

At last Ekaterina Ivanovna came in, dressed for the ball, with a low

neck, looking fresh and pretty; and Startsev admired her so much, and

went into such ecstasies, that he could say nothing, but simply stared

at her and laughed.

She began saying good-bye, and he--he had no reason for staying now--got

up, saying that it was time for him to go home; his patients were

waiting for him.

"Well, there's no help for that," said Ivan Petrovitch. "Go, and you

might take Kitten to the club on the way."

It was spotting with rain; it was very dark, and they could only tell

where the horses were by Panteleimon's husky cough. The hood of the

carriage was put up.

"I stand upright; you lie down right; he lies all right," said Ivan

Petrovitch as he put his daughter into the carriage.

They drove off.

"I was at the cemetery yesterday," Startsev began. "How ungenerous and

merciless it was on your part!..."

"You went to the cemetery?"

"Yes, I went there and waited almost till two o'clock. I suffered...."

"Well, suffer, if you cannot understand a joke."

Ekaterina Ivanovna, pleased at having so cleverly taken in a man who was

in love with her, and at being the object of such intense love, burst

out laughing and suddenly uttered a shriek of terror, for, at that very

minute, the horses turned sharply in at the gate of the club, and the

carriage almost tilted over. Startsev put his arm round Ekaterina

Ivanovna's waist; in her fright she nestled up to him, and he could not

restrain himself, and passionately kissed her on the lips and on the

chin, and hugged her more tightly.

"That's enough," she said drily.

And a minute later she was not in the carriage, and a policeman near the

lighted entrance of the club shouted in a detestable voice to

Panteleimon:

"What are you stopping for, you crow? Drive on."

Startsev drove home, but soon afterwards returned. Attired in another

man's dress suit and a stiff white tie which kept sawing at his neck and

trying to slip away from the collar, he was sitting at midnight in the

club drawing-room, and was saying with enthusiasm to Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"Ah, how little people know who have never loved! It seems to me that no

one has ever yet written of love truly, and I doubt whether this tender,

joyful, agonising feeling can be described, and any one who has once

experienced it would not attempt to put it into words. What is the use

of preliminaries and introductions? What is the use of unnecessary fine

words? My love is immeasurable. I beg, I beseech you," Startsev brought

out at last, "be my wife!"

"Dmitri Ionitch," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with a very grave face, after

a moment's thought--"Dmitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the

honour. I respect you, but ..." she got up and continued standing, "but,

forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us talk seriously. Dmitri

Ionitch, you know I love art beyond everything in life. I adore music; I

love it frantically; I have dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be

an artist; I want fame, success, freedom, and you want me to go on

living in this town, to go on living this empty, useless life, which has

become insufferable to me. To become a wife--oh, no, forgive me! One

must strive towards a lofty, glorious goal, and married life would put

me in bondage for ever. Dmitri Ionitch" (she faintly smiled as she

pronounced his name; she thought of "Alexey Feofilaktitch")--"Dmitri

Ionitch, you are a good, clever, honourable man; you are better than any

one...." Tears came into her eyes. "I feel for you with my whole heart,

but ... but you will understand...."

And she turned away and went out of the drawing-room to prevent herself

from crying.

Startsev's heart left off throbbing uneasily. Going out of the club into

the street, he first of all tore off the stiff tie and drew a deep

breath. He was a little ashamed and his vanity was wounded--he had not

expected a refusal--and could not believe that all his dreams, his hopes

and yearnings, had led him up to such a stupid end, just as in some

little play at an amateur performance, and he was sorry for his feeling,

for that love of his, so sorry that he felt as though he could have

burst into sobs or have violently belaboured Panteleimon's broad back

with his umbrella.

For three days he could not get on with anything, he could not eat nor

sleep; but when the news reached him that Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone

away to Moscow to enter the Conservatoire, he grew calmer and lived as

before.

Afterwards, remembering sometimes how he had wandered about the cemetery

or how he had driven all over the town to get a dress suit, he stretched

lazily and said:

"What a lot of trouble, though!"

IV

Four years had passed. Startsev already had a large practice in the

town. Every morning he hurriedly saw his patients at Dyalizh, then he

drove in to see his town patients. By now he drove, not with a pair, but

with a team of three with bells on them, and he returned home late at

night. He had grown broader and stouter, and was not very fond of

walking, as he was somewhat asthmatic. And Panteleimon had grown stout,

too, and the broader he grew, the more mournfully he sighed and

complained of his hard luck: he was sick of driving! Startsev used to

visit various households and met many people, but did not become

intimate with any one. The inhabitants irritated him by their

conversation, their views of life, and even their appearance. Experience

taught him by degrees that while he played cards or lunched with one of

these people, the man was a peaceable, friendly, and even intelligent

human being; that as soon as one talked of anything not eatable, for

instance, of politics or science, he would be completely at a loss, or

would expound a philosophy so stupid and ill-natured that there was

nothing else to do but wave one's hand in despair and go away. Even when

Startsev tried to talk to liberal citizens, saying, for instance, that

humanity, thank God, was progressing, and that one day it would be

possible to dispense with passports and capital punishment, the liberal

citizen would look at him askance and ask him mistrustfully: "Then any

one could murder any one he chose in the open street?" And when, at tea

or supper, Startsev observed in company that one should work, and that

one ought not to live without working, every one took this as a

reproach, and began to get angry and argue aggressively. With all that,

the inhabitants did nothing, absolutely nothing, and took no interest in

anything, and it was quite impossible to think of anything to say. And

Startsev avoided conversation, and confined himself to eating and

playing _vint_; and when there was a family festivity in some household

and he was invited to a meal, then he sat and ate in silence, looking at

his plate.

And everything that was said at the time was uninteresting, unjust, and

stupid; he felt irritated and disturbed, but held his tongue, and,

because he sat glumly silent and looked at his plate, he was nicknamed

in the town "the haughty Pole," though he never had been a Pole.

All such entertainments as theatres and concerts he declined, but he

played _vint_ every evening for three hours with enjoyment. He had

another diversion to which he took imperceptibly, little by little: in

the evening he would take out of his pockets the notes he had gained by

his practice, and sometimes there were stuffed in his pockets

notes--yellow and green, and smelling of scent and vinegar and incense

and fish oil--up to the value of seventy roubles; and when they amounted

to some hundreds he took them to the Mutual Credit Bank and deposited

the money there to his account.

He was only twice at the Turkins' in the course of the four years after

Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone away, on each occasion at the invitation of

Vera Iosifovna, who was still undergoing treatment for migraine. Every

summer Ekaterina Ivanovna came to stay with her parents, but he did not

once see her; it somehow never happened.

But now four years had passed. One still, warm morning a letter was

brought to the hospital. Vera Iosifovna wrote to Dmitri Ionitch that she

was missing him very much, and begged him to come and see them, and to

relieve her sufferings; and, by the way, it was her birthday. Below was

a postscript: "I join in mother's request.--K."

Startsev considered, and in the evening he went to the Turkins'.

"How do you do, if you please?" Ivan Petrovitch met him, smiling with

his eyes only. "Bongjour."

Vera Iosifovna, white-haired and looking much older, shook Startsev's

hand, sighed affectedly, and said:

"You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor. You never come and see

us; I am too old for you. But now some one young has come; perhaps she

will be more fortunate."

And Kitten? She had grown thinner, paler, had grown handsomer and more

graceful; but now she was Ekaterina Ivanovna, not Kitten; she had lost

the freshness and look of childish naïveté. And in her expression and

manners there was something new--guilty and diffident, as though she did

not feel herself at home here in the Turkins' house.

"How many summers, how many winters!" she said, giving Startsev her

hand, and he could see that her heart was beating with excitement; and

looking at him intently and curiously, she went on: "How much stouter

you are! You look sunburnt and more manly, but on the whole you have

changed very little."

Now, too, he thought her attractive, very attractive, but there was

something lacking in her, or else something superfluous--he could not

himself have said exactly what it was, but something prevented him from

feeling as before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, her

faint smile, her voice, and soon afterwards he disliked her clothes,

too, the low chair in which she was sitting; he disliked something in

the past when he had almost married her. He thought of his love, of the

dreams and the hopes which had troubled him four years before--and he

felt awkward.

They had tea with cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read aloud a novel; she

read of things that never happen in real life, and Startsev listened,

looked at her handsome grey head, and waited for her to finish.

"People are not stupid because they can't write novels, but because they

can't conceal it when they do," he thought.

"Not badsome," said Ivan Petrovitch.

Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played long and noisily on the piano, and when

she finished she was profusely thanked and warmly praised.

"It's a good thing I did not marry her," thought Startsev.

She looked at him, and evidently expected him to ask her to go into the

garden, but he remained silent.

"Let us have a talk," she said, going up to him. "How are you getting

on? What are you doing? How are things? I have been thinking about you

all these days," she went on nervously. "I wanted to write to you,

wanted to come myself to see you at Dyalizh. I quite made up my mind to

go, but afterwards I thought better of it. God knows what your attitude

is towards me now; I have been looking forward to seeing you to-day with

such emotion. For goodness' sake let us go into the garden."

They went into the garden and sat down on the seat under the old maple,

just as they had done four years before. It was dark.

"How are you getting on?" asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"Oh, all right; I am jogging along," answered Startsev.

And he could think of nothing more. They were silent.

"I feel so excited!" said Ekaterina Ivanovna, and she hid her face in

her hands. "But don't pay attention to it. I am so happy to be at home;

I am so glad to see every one. I can't get used to it. So many memories!

I thought we should talk without stopping till morning."

Now he saw her face near, her shining eyes, and in the darkness she

looked younger than in the room, and even her old childish expression

seemed to have come back to her. And indeed she was looking at him with

naïve curiosity, as though she wanted to get a closer view and

understanding of the man who had loved her so ardently, with such

tenderness, and so unsuccessfully; her eyes thanked him for that love.

And he remembered all that had been, every minute detail; how he had

wandered about the cemetery, how he had returned home in the morning

exhausted, and he suddenly felt sad and regretted the past. A warmth

began glowing in his heart.

"Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?" he asked. "It

was dark and rainy then ..."

The warmth was glowing now in his heart, and he longed to talk, to rail

at life....

"Ech!" he said with a sigh. "You ask how I am living. How do we live

here? Why, not at all. We grow old, we grow stout, we grow slack. Day

after day passes; life slips by without colour, without expressions,

without thoughts.... In the daytime working for gain, and in the evening

the club, the company of card-players, alcoholic, raucous-voiced

gentlemen whom I can't endure. What is there nice in it?"

"Well, you have work--a noble object in life. You used to be so fond of

talking of your hospital. I was such a queer girl then; I imagined

myself such a great pianist. Nowadays all young ladies play the piano,

and I played, too, like everybody else, and there was nothing special

about me. I am just such a pianist as my mother is an authoress. And of

course I didn't understand you then, but afterwards in Moscow I often

thought of you. I thought of no one but you. What happiness to be a

district doctor; to help the suffering; to be serving the people! What

happiness!" Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. "When I thought

of you in Moscow, you seemed to me so ideal, so lofty...."

Startsev thought of the notes he used to take out of his pockets in the

evening with such pleasure, and the glow in his heart was quenched.

He got up to go into the house. She took his arm.

"You are the best man I've known in my life," she went on. "We will see

each other and talk, won't we? Promise me. I am not a pianist; I am not

in error about myself now, and I will not play before you or talk of

music."

When they had gone into the house, and when Startsev saw in the

lamplight her face, and her sad, grateful, searching eyes fixed upon

him, he felt uneasy and thought again:

"It's a good thing I did not marry her then."

He began taking leave.

"You have no human right to go before supper," said Ivan Petrovitch as

he saw him off. "It's extremely perpendicular on your part. Well, now,

perform!" he added, addressing Pava in the hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with moustaches, threw himself

into an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic voice:

"Unhappy woman, die!"

All this irritated Startsev. Getting into his carriage, and looking at

the dark house and garden which had once been so precious and so dear,

he thought of everything at once--Vera Iosifovna's novels and Kitten's

noisy playing, and Ivan Petrovitch's jokes and Pava's tragic posturing,

and thought if the most talented people in the town were so futile, what

must the town be?

Three days later Pava brought a letter from Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"You don't come and see us--why?" she wrote to him. "I am afraid that

you have changed towards us. I am afraid, and I am terrified at the very

thought of it. Reassure me; come and tell me that everything is well.

"I must talk to you.--Your E. I."

* * * * *

He read this letter, thought a moment, and said to Pava:

"Tell them, my good fellow, that I can't come to-day; I am very busy.

Say I will come in three days or so."

But three days passed, a week passed; he still did not go. Happening

once to drive past the Turkins' house, he thought he must go in, if only

for a moment, but on second thoughts ... did not go in.

And he never went to the Turkins' again.

V

Several more years have passed. Startsev has grown stouter still, has

grown corpulent, breathes heavily, and already walks with his head

thrown back. When stout and red in the face, he drives with his bells

and his team of three horses, and Panteleimon, also stout and red in the

face with his thick beefy neck, sits on the box, holding his arms

stiffly out before him as though they were made of wood, and shouts to

those he meets: "Keep to the ri-i-ight!" it is an impressive picture;

one might think it was not a mortal, but some heathen deity in his

chariot. He has an immense practice in the town, no time to breathe, and

already has an estate and two houses in the town, and he is looking out

for a third more profitable; and when at the Mutual Credit Bank he is

told of a house that is for sale, he goes to the house without ceremony,

and, marching through all the rooms, regardless of half-dressed women

and children who gaze at him in amazement and alarm, he prods at the

doors with his stick, and says:

"Is that the study? Is that a bedroom? And what's here?"

And as he does so he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his brow.

He has a great deal to do, but still he does not give up his work as

district doctor; he is greedy for gain, and he tries to be in all places

at once. At Dyalizh and in the town he is called simply "Ionitch":

"Where is Ionitch off to?" or "Should not we call in Ionitch to a

consultation?"

Probably because his throat is covered with rolls of fat, his voice has

changed; it has become thin and sharp. His temper has changed, too: he

has grown ill-humoured and irritable. When he sees his patients he is

usually out of temper; he impatiently taps the floor with his stick, and

shouts in his disagreeable voice:

"Be so good as to confine yourself to answering my questions! Don't talk

so much!"

He is solitary. He leads a dreary life; nothing interests him.

During all the years he had lived at Dyalizh his love for Kitten had

been his one joy, and probably his last. In the evenings he plays _vint_

at the club, and then sits alone at a big table and has supper. Ivan,

the oldest and most respectable of the waiters, serves him, hands him

Lafitte No. 17, and every one at the club--the members of the committee,

the cook and waiters--know what he likes and what he doesn't like and do

their very utmost to satisfy him, or else he is sure to fly into a rage

and bang on the floor with his stick.

As he eats his supper, he turns round from time to time and puts in his

spoke in some conversation:

"What are you talking about? Eh? Whom?"

And when at a neighbouring table there is talk of the Turkins, he asks:

"What Turkins are you speaking of? Do you mean the people whose daughter

plays on the piano?"

That is all that can be said about him.

And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovitch has grown no older; he is not changed

in the least, and still makes jokes and tells anecdotes as of old. Vera

Iosifovna still reads her novels aloud to her visitors with eagerness

and touching simplicity. And Kitten plays the piano for four hours every

day. She has grown visibly older, is constantly ailing, and every autumn

goes to the Crimea with her mother. When Ivan Petrovitch sees them off

at the station, he wipes his tears as the train starts, and shouts:

"Good-bye, if you please."

And he waves his handkerchief.