The Bet, and other stories
tea. Suddenly my wife cries out, presses her hands to her heart, and
falls back in her chair. We carried her off to her bed and ... and I
rubbed her forehead with sal-volatile, and splashed her with water....
She lies like a corpse.... I’m afraid that her heart’s failed.... Let
us go.... Her father too died of heart-failure.”
Kirilov listened in silence as though he did not understand the Russian
language.
When Aboguin once more mentioned Papchinsky and his wife’s father, and
once more began to seek for the doctor’s hand in the darkness, the
doctor shook his head and said, drawling each word listlessly:
“Excuse me, but I can’t go.... Five minutes ago my ... my son died.”
“Is that true?” Aboguin whispered, stepping back. “My God, what an
awful moment to come! It’s a terribly fated day ... terribly! What a
coincidence ... and it might have been on purpose!”
Aboguin took hold of the door handle and drooped his head in
meditation. Evidently he was hesitating, not knowing whether to go
away, or to ask the doctor once more.
“Listen,” he said eagerly, seizing Kirilov by the sleeve. “I fully
understand your state! God knows I’m ashamed to try to hold your
attention at such a moment, but what can I do? Think yourself--who can
I go to? There isn’t another doctor here besides you. For heaven’s sake
come. I’m not asking for myself. It’s not I that’s ill!”
Silence began. Kirilov turned his back to Aboguin, stood still for a
while and slowly went out of the hall into the drawing-room. To judge
by his uncertain, machine-like movement, and by the attentiveness
with which he arranged the hanging shade on the unlighted lamp in the
drawing-room and consulted a thick book which lay on the table--at
such a moment he had neither purpose nor desire, nor did he think of
anything, and probably had already forgotten that there was a stranger
standing in his hall. The gloom and the quiet of the drawing-room
apparently increased his insanity. As he went from the drawing-room to
his study he raised his right foot higher than he need, felt with his
hands for the door-posts, and then one felt a certain perplexity in
his whole figure, as though he had entered a strange house by chance,
or for the first time in his life had got drunk, and now was giving
himself up in bewilderment to the new sensation. A wide line of light
stretched across the bookshelves on one wall of the study; this light,
together with the heavy stifling smell of carbolic acid and ether
came from the door ajar that led from the study into the bed-room....
The doctor sank into a chair before the table; for a while he looked
drowsily at the shining books, then rose and went into the bed-room.
Here, in the bed-room, dead quiet reigned. Everything, down to the
last trifle, spoke eloquently of the tempest undergone, of weariness,
and everything rested. The candle which stood among a close crowd of
phials, boxes and jars on the stool and the big lamp on the chest of
drawers brightly lit the room. On the bed, by the window, the boy lay
open-eyed, with a look of wonder on his face. He did not move, but it
seemed that his open eyes became darker and darker every second and
sank into his skull. Having laid her hands on his body and hid her face
in the folds of the bed-clothes, the mother now was on her knees before
the bed. Like the boy she did not move, but how much living movement
was felt in the coil of her body and in her hands! She was pressing
close to the bed with her whole being, with eager vehemence, as though
she were afraid to violate the quiet and comfortable pose which she had
found at last for her weary body. Blankets, cloths, basins, splashes on
the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle of
lime-water, the stifling heavy air itself--everything died away, and as
it were plunged into quietude.
The doctor stopped by his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser
pockets and bending his head on one side looked fixedly at his son. His
face showed indifference; only the drops which glistened on his beard
revealed that he had been lately weeping.
The repulsive terror of which we think when we speak of death was
absent from the bed-room. In the pervading dumbness, in the mother’s
pose, in the indifference of the doctor’s face was something attractive
that touched the heart, the subtle and elusive beauty of human grief,
which it will take men long to understand and describe, and only
music, it seems, is able to express. Beauty too was felt in the stern
stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and did not weep, as
though they confessed all the poetry of their condition. As once the
season of their youth passed away, so now in this boy their right to
bear children had passed away, alas! for ever to eternity. The doctor
is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his
faded sick wife is thirty-five. Audrey was not merely the only son but
the last.
In contrast to his wife the doctor’s nature belonged to those which
feel the necessity of movement when their soul is in pain. After
standing by his wife for about five minutes, he passed from the
bed-room, lifting his right foot too high, into a little room half
filled with a big broad divan. From there he went to the kitchen. After
wandering about the fireplace and the cook’s bed, he stooped through a
little door and came into the hall.
Here he saw the white scarf and the pale face again.
“At last,” sighed Aboguin, seizing the doorhandle. “Let us go, please.”
The doctor shuddered, glanced at him and remembered.
“Listen. I’ve told you already that I can’t go,” he said, livening.
“What a strange idea!”
“Doctor, I’m made of flesh and blood, too. I fully understand your
condition. I sympathise with you,” Aboguin said in an imploring voice,
putting his hand to his scarf. “But I am not asking for myself. My wife
is dying. If you had heard her cry, if you’d seen her face, you would
understand my insistence! My God--and I thought that you’d gone to
dress yourself. The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you.”
“I can’t come,” Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his
drawing-room.
Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve.
“You’re in sorrow. I understand. But I’m not asking you to cure a
toothache, or to give expert evidence,--but to save a human life.” He
went on imploring like a beggar. “This life is more than any personal
grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed--in the name of
humanity.”
“Humanity cuts both ways,” Kirilov said irritably. “In the name of the
same humanity I ask you not to take me away. My God, what a strange
idea! I can hardly stand on my feet and you frighten me with humanity.
I’m not fit for anything now. I won’t go for anything. With whom shall
I leave my wife? No, no....”
Kirilov flung out his open hands and drew back.
“And ... and don’t ask me,” he continued, disturbed. “I’m sorry....
Under the Laws, Volume XIII., I’m obliged to go and you have the right
to drag me by the neck.... Well, drag me, but ... I’m not fit.... I’m
not even able to speak. Excuse me.”
“It’s quite unfair to speak to me in that tone, Doctor,” said Aboguin,
again taking the doctor by the sleeve. “The thirteenth volume be
damned! I have no right to do violence to your will. If you want to,
come; if you don’t, then God be with you; but it’s not to your will
that I apply, but to your feelings. A young woman is dying! You say
your son died just now. Who could understand my terror better than you?”
Aboguin’s voice trembled with agitation. His tremor and his tone were
much more convincing than his words. Aboguin was sincere, but it is
remarkable that every phrase he used came out stilted, soulless,
inopportunely florid, and as it were insulted the atmosphere of the
doctor’s house and the woman who was dying. He felt it himself, and
in his fear of being misunderstood he exerted himself to the utmost
to make his voice soft and tender so as to convince by the sincerity
of his tone at least, if not by his words. As a rule, however deep
and beautiful the words they affect only the unconcerned. They
cannot always satisfy those who are happy or distressed because the
highest expression of happiness or distress is most often silence.
Lovers understand each other best when they are silent, and a fervent
passionate speech at the graveside affects only outsiders. To the widow
and children it seems cold and trivial.
Kirilov stood still and was silent. When Aboguin uttered some more
words on the higher vocation of a doctor, and self-sacrifice, the
doctor sternly asked:
“Is it far?”
“Thirteen or fourteen versts. I’ve got good horses, doctor. I give you
my word of honour that I’ll take you there and back in an hour. Only an
hour.”
The last words impressed the doctor more strongly than the references
to humanity or the doctor’s vocation. He thought for a while and said
with a sigh.
“Well, let us go!”
He went off quickly, with a step that was now sure, to his study
and soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced
impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied
him out of the house.
Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the hall. Now in the darkness
the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the
long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face
Aboguin’s big face could now be seen and a little student’s cap which
hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in
front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.
“Believe me, I’m able to appreciate your magnanimity,” murmured
Aboguin, as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. “We’ll
whirl away. Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!”
The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings,
which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save
that at the end of the yard a bright light from someone’s window broke
through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the
separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove
into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the
whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began
to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they
knew that the doctor’s son was dead and Aboguin’s wife ill. Then began
to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big
black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now
the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it
became completely still.
Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once
Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured.
“It’s terrible pain. One never loves his nearest so much as when there
is the risk of losing them.”
And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov
gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him,
and he began to move impatiently.
“Let me go,” he said in anguish. “I’ll come to you later. I only want
to send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone.”
Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattling against the
stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss
about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in
the scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank
disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth
and boundless as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim
lights were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel
with the road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on
the hill a big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a