The Bet, and other stories
topic of conversation--serious actresses degrade themselves by singing
sentimentalities, and tragic actors sing music-hall songs, laughing at
husbands who are deceived and unfaithful wives who are pregnant. In
short, it was amazing that the profession, in the provinces, was not
absolutely dead. The marvel was that it could exist at all with such
thin, rotten blood in its veins.
In reply I sent Katy a long and, I confess, a very tedious letter.
Among other things I wrote: “I used to talk fairly often to actors in
the past, men of the noblest character, who honoured me with their
friendship. From my conversations with them I understood that their
activities were guided rather by the whim and fashion of society than
by the free working of their own minds. The best of them in their
lifetime had to play in tragedy, in musical comedy, in French farce,
and in pantomime; yet all through they considered that they were
treading the right path and being useful. You see that this means
that you must look for the cause of the evil, not in the actors, but
deeper down, in the art itself and the attitude of society towards
it.” This letter of mine only made Katy cross. “You and I are playing
in different operas. I didn’t write to you about men of the noblest
character, but about a lot of sharks who haven’t a spark of nobility in
them. They are a horde of savages who came on the stage only because
they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. The only ground they have for
calling themselves artists is their impudence. Not a single talent
among them, but any number of incapables, drunkards, intriguers, and
slanderers. I can’t tell you how bitterly I feel it that the art I love
so much is fallen into the hands of people I despise. It hurts me that
the best men should be content to look at evil from a distance and
not want to come nearer. Instead of taking an active part, they write
ponderous platitudes and useless sermons....” and more in the same
strain.
A little while after I received the following: “I have been inhumanly
deceived. I can’t go on living any more. Do as you think fit with my
money. I loved you as a father and as my only friend. Forgive me.”
So it appeared that _he_ too belonged to the horde of savages. Later
on, I gathered from various hints, that there was an attempt at
suicide. Apparently, Katy tried to poison herself. I think she must
have been seriously ill afterwards, for I got the following letter from
Yalta, where most probably the doctors had sent her. Her last letter
to me contained a request that I should send her at Yalta a thousand
roubles, and it ended with the words: “Forgive me for writing such a
sad letter. I buried my baby yesterday.” After she had spent about a
year in the Crimea she returned home.
She had been travelling for about four years, and during these four
years I confess that I occupied a strange and unenviable position in
regard to her. When she announced to me that she was going on to the
stage and afterwards wrote to me about her love; when the desire to
spend took hold of her, as it did periodically, and I had to send her
every now and then one or two thousand roubles at her request; when
she wrote that she intended to die, and afterwards that her baby was
dead,--I was at a loss every time. All my sympathy with her fate
consisted in thinking hard and writing long tedious letters which might
as well never have been written. But then I was _in loco parentis_ and
I loved her as a daughter.
Katy lives half a mile away from me now. She took a five-roomed
house and furnished it comfortably, with the taste that was born in
her. If anyone were to undertake to depict her surroundings, then the
dominating mood of the picture would be indolence. Soft cushions, soft
chairs for her indolent body; carpets for her indolent feet; faded,
dim, dull colours for her indolent eyes; for her indolent soul, a
heap of cheap fans and tiny pictures on the walls, pictures in which
novelty of execution was more noticeable than content; plenty of
little tables and stands, set out with perfectly useless and worthless
things, shapeless scraps instead of curtains.... All this, combined
with a horror of bright colours, of symmetry, and space, betokened a
perversion of the natural taste as well as indolence of the soul. For
whole days Katy lies on the sofa and reads books, mostly novels and
stories. She goes outside her house but once in the day, to come and
see me.
I work. Katy sits on the sofa at my side. She is silent, and wraps
herself up in her shawl as though she were cold. Either because she
is sympathetic to me, or I because I had got used to her continual
visits while she was still a little girl, her presence does not prevent
me from concentrating on my work. At long intervals I ask her some
question or other, mechanically, and she answers very curtly; or, for
a moment’s rest, I turn towards her and watch how she is absorbed
in looking through some medical review or newspaper. And then I see
that the old expression of confidence in her face is there no more.
Her expression now is cold, indifferent, distracted, like that of a
passenger who has to wait a long while for his train. She dresses as
she used--well and simply, but carelessly. Evidently her clothes and
her hair suffer not a little from the sofas and hammocks on which she
lies for days together. And she is not curious any more. She doesn’t
ask me questions any more, as if she had experienced everything in life
and did not expect to hear anything new.
About four o’clock there is a sound of movement in the hall and the
drawing-room. It’s Liza come back from the Conservatoire, bringing her
friends with her. You can hear them playing the piano, trying their
voices and giggling. Yegor is laying the table in the dining-room and
making a noise with the plates.
“Good-bye,” says Katy. “I shan’t go in to see your people. They must
excuse me. I haven’t time. Come and see me.”
When I escort her into the hall, she looks me over sternly from head to
foot, and says in vexation:
“You get thinner and thinner. Why don’t you take a cure? I’ll go to
Sergius Fiodorovich and ask him to come. You must let him see you.”
“It’s not necessary, Katy.”
“I can’t understand why your family does nothing. They’re a nice lot.”
She puts on her jacket with her rush. Inevitably, two or three
hair-pins fall out of her careless hair on to the floor. It’s too much
bother to tidy her hair now; besides she is in a hurry. She pushes the
straggling strands of hair untidily under her hat and goes away.
As soon as I come into the dining-room, my wife asks:
“Was that Katy with you just now? Why didn’t she come to see us. It
really is extraordinary....”
“Mamma!” says Liza reproachfully, “If she doesn’t want to come, that’s
her affair. There’s no need for us to go on our knees.”
“Very well; but it’s insulting. To sit in the study for three hours,
without thinking of us. But she can do as she likes.”
Varya and Liza both hate Katy. This hatred is unintelligible to me;
probably you have to be a woman to understand it. I’ll bet my life on
it that you’ll hardly find a single one among the hundred and fifty
young men I see almost every day in my audience, or the hundred old
ones I happen to meet every week, who would be able to understand why
women hate and abhor Katy’s past, her being pregnant and unmarried and
her illegitimate child. Yet at the same time I cannot bring to mind
a single woman or girl of my acquaintance who would not cherish such
feelings, either consciously or instinctively. And it’s not because
women are purer and more virtuous than men. If virtue and purity are
not free from evil feeling, there’s precious little difference between
them and vice. I explain it simply by the backward state of women’s
development. The sorrowful sense of compassion and the torment of
conscience, which the modern man experiences when he sees distress have
much more to tell me about culture and moral development than have
hatred and repulsion. The modern woman is as lachrymose and as coarse
in heart as she was in the middle ages. And in my opinion those who
advise her to be educated like a man have wisdom on their side.
But still my wife does not like Katy, because she was an actress,
and for her ingratitude, her pride, her extravagances, and all the
innumerable vices one woman can always discover in another.
Besides myself and my family we have two or three of my daughter’s
girl friends to dinner and Alexander Adolphovich Gnekker, Liza’s
admirer and suitor. He is a fair young man, not more than thirty years
old, of middle height, very fat, broad shouldered, with reddish hair
round his ears and a little stained moustache, which give his smooth
chubby face the look of a doll’s. He wears a very short jacket, a
fancy waistcoat, large-striped trousers, very full on the hip and very
narrow in the leg, and brown boots without heels. His eyes stick out
like a lobster’s, his tie is like a lobster’s tail, and I can’t help
thinking even that the smell of lobster soup clings about the whole
of this young man. He visits us every day; but no one in the family
knows where he comes from, where he was educated, or how he lives. He
cannot play or sing, but he has a certain connection with music as well
as singing, for he is agent for somebody’s pianos, and is often at the
Academy. He knows all the celebrities, and he manages concerts. He
gives his opinion on music with great authority and I have noticed that
everybody hastens to agree with him.
Rich men always have parasites about them. So do the sciences and the
arts. It seems that there is no science or art in existence, which
is free from such “foreign bodies” as this Mr. Gnekker. I am not a
musician and perhaps I am mistaken about Gnekker, besides I don’t know
him very well. But I can’t help suspecting the authority and dignity
with which he stands beside the piano and listens when anyone is
singing or playing.
You may be a gentleman and a privy councillor a hundred times over; but
if you have a daughter you can’t be guaranteed against the pettinesses
that are so often brought into your house and into your own humour, by
courtings, engagements, and weddings. For instance, I cannot reconcile
myself to my wife’s solemn expression every time Gnekker comes to our
house, nor to those bottles of Château Lafitte, port, and sherry which
are put on the table only for him, to convince him beyond doubt of
the generous luxury in which we live. Nor can I stomach the staccato
laughter which Liza learned at the Academy, and her way of screwing up
her eyes, when men are about the house. Above all, I can’t understand
why it is that such a creature should come to me every day and have
dinner with me--a creature perfectly foreign to my habits, my science,
and the whole tenour of my life, a creature absolutely unlike the men I
love. My wife and the servants whisper mysteriously that that is “the
bridegroom,” but still I can’t understand why he’s there. It disturbs
my mind just as much as if a Zulu were put next to me at table.
Besides, it seems strange to me that my daughter whom I used to think
of as a baby should be in love with that necktie, those eyes, those
chubby cheeks.
Formerly, I either enjoyed my dinner or was indifferent about it.
Now it does nothing but bore and exasperate me. Since I was made an
Excellency and Dean of the Faculty, for some reason or other my family
found it necessary to make a thorough change in our menu and the dinner
arrangements. Instead of the simple food I was used to as a student and
a doctor, I am now fed on potage-puree, with some _sossoulki_ swimming
about in it, and kidneys in Madeira. The title of General and my renown
have robbed me for ever of _schi_ and savoury pies, and roast goose