The Duel and Other Stories
He tried to restrain himself, covered his mouth with his hand, but
the laugh choked his chest and throat, and his hand could not cover
his mouth.
"How stupid it is!" he thought, rolling with laughter. "Have I gone
out of my mind?"
The laugh grew shriller and shriller, and became something like the
bark of a lap-dog. Laevsky tried to get up from the table, but his
legs would not obey him and his right hand was strangely, without
his volition, dancing on the table, convulsively clutching and
crumpling up the bits of paper. He saw looks of wonder, Samoylenko's
grave, frightened face, and the eyes of the zoologist full of cold
irony and disgust, and realised that he was in hysterics.
"How hideous, how shameful!" he thought, feeling the warmth of tears
on his face. ". . . Oh, oh, what a disgrace! It has never happened
to me. . . ."
They took him under his arms, and supporting his head from behind,
led him away; a glass gleamed before his eyes and knocked against
his teeth, and the water was spilt on his breast; he was in a little
room, with two beds in the middle, side by side, covered by two
snow-white quilts. He dropped on one of the beds and sobbed.
"It's nothing, it's nothing," Samoylenko kept saying; "it does
happen . . . it does happen. . . ."
Chill with horror, trembling all over and dreading something awful,
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bedside and kept asking:
"What is it? What is it? For God's sake, tell me."
"Can Kirilin have written him something?" she thought.
"It's nothing," said Laevsky, laughing and crying; "go away, darling."
His face expressed neither hatred nor repulsion: so he knew nothing;
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was somewhat reassured, and she went into the
drawing-room.
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear!" said Marya Konstantinovna, sitting
down beside her and taking her hand. "It will pass. Men are just
as weak as we poor sinners. You are both going through a crisis. . . .
One can so well understand it! Well, my dear, I am waiting for
an answer. Let us have a little talk."
"No, we are not going to talk," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, listening
to Laevsky's sobs. "I feel depressed. . . . You must allow me to
go home."
"What do you mean, what do you mean, my dear?" cried Marya
Konstantinovna in alarm. "Do you think I could let you go without
supper? We will have something to eat, and then you may go with my
blessing."
"I feel miserable . . ." whispered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she
caught at the arm of the chair with both hands to avoid falling.
"He's got a touch of hysterics," said Von Koren gaily, coming into
the drawing-room, but seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he was taken
aback and retreated.
When the attack was over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought.
"Disgraceful! I've been howling like some wretched girl! I must
have been absurd and disgusting. I will go away by the back stairs
. . . . But that would seem as though I took my hysterics too seriously.
I ought to take it as a joke. . . ."
He looked in the looking-glass, sat there for some time, and went
back into the drawing-room.
"Here I am," he said, smiling; he felt agonisingly ashamed, and he
felt others were ashamed in his presence. "Fancy such a thing
happening," he said, sitting down. "I was sitting here, and all of
a sudden, do you know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my side
. . . unendurable, my nerves could not stand it, and . . . and it
led to this silly performance. This is the age of nerves; there is
no help for it."
At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an abrupt
sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the
pain. And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed him, and
he saw that.
After nine o'clock they went for a walk on the boulevard. Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her, did her best
to keep all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna and the children.
She felt weak with fear and misery, and felt she was going to be
feverish; she was exhausted and her legs would hardly move, but she
did not go home, because she felt sure that she would be followed
by Kirilin or Atchmianov or both at once. Kirilin walked behind her
with Nikodim Alexandritch, and kept humming in an undertone:
"I don't al-low people to play with me! I don't al-low it."
From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along
the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the
water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent.
XIV
"It's time I went to my _vint_. . . . They will be waiting for me,"
said Laevsky. "Good-bye, my friends."
"I'll come with you; wait a minute," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and
she took his arm.
They said good-bye to the company and went away. Kirilin took leave
too, and saying that he was going the same way, went along beside
them.
"What will be, will be," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "So be
it. . . ."
And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had
taken shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing
heavily, while she, like a fly that had fallen into the inkpot, was
crawling painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky's side
and arm with blackness.
If Kirilin should do anything horrid, she thought, not he but she
would be to blame for it. There was a time when no man would have
talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she had torn up her security
like a thread and destroyed it irrevocably--who was to blame for
it? Intoxicated by her passions she had smiled at a complete stranger,
probably just because he was tall and a fine figure. After two
meetings she was weary of him, had thrown him over, and did not
that, she thought now, give him the right to treat her as he chose?
"Here I'll say good-bye to you, darling," said Laevsky. "Ilya
Mihalitch will see you home."
He nodded to Kirilin, and, quickly crossing the boulevard, walked
along the street to Sheshkovsky's, where there were lights in the
windows, and then they heard the gate bang as he went in.
"Allow me to have an explanation with you," said Kirilin. "I'm not
a boy, not some Atchkasov or Latchkasov, Zatchkasov. . . . I demand
serious attention."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's heart began beating violently. She made no
reply.
"The abrupt change in your behaviour to me I put down at first to
coquetry," Kirilin went on; "now I see that you don't know how to
behave with gentlemanly people. You simply wanted to play with me,
as you are playing with that wretched Armenian boy; but I'm a
gentleman and I insist on being treated like a gentleman. And so I
am at your service. . . ."
"I'm miserable," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna beginning to cry, and
to hide her tears she turned away.
"I'm miserable too," said Kirilin, "but what of that?"
Kirilin was silent for a space, then he said distinctly and
emphatically:
"I repeat, madam, that if you do not give me an interview this
evening, I'll make a scandal this very evening."
"Let me off this evening," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she did
not recognise her own voice, it was so weak and pitiful.
"I must give you a lesson. . . . Excuse me for the roughness of my
tone, but it's necessary to give you a lesson. Yes, I regret to say
I must give you a lesson. I insist on two interviews--to-day and
to-morrow. After to-morrow you are perfectly free and can go wherever
you like with any one you choose. To-day and to-morrow."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.
"Let me go," she murmured, trembling all over and seeing nothing
before her in the darkness but his white tunic. "You're right: I'm
a horrible woman. . . . I'm to blame, but let me go . . . I beg
you." She touched his cold hand and shuddered. "I beseech you. . . ."
"Alas!" sighed Kirilin, "alas! it's not part of my plan to let you
go; I only mean to give you a lesson and make you realise. And
what's more, madam, I've too little faith in women."
"I'm miserable. . . ."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna listened to the even splash of the sea, looked
at the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it
all, and get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea,
stars, men, fever.
"Only not in my home," she said coldly. "Take me somewhere else."
"Come to Muridov's. That's better."
"Where's that?"
"Near the old wall."
She walked quickly along the street and then turned into the
side-street that led towards the mountains. It was dark. There were
pale streaks of light here and there on the pavement, from the
lighted windows, and it seemed to her that, like a fly, she kept
falling into the ink and crawling out into the light again. At one
point he stumbled, almost fell down and burst out laughing.
"He's drunk," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "Never mind. . . . Never
mind. . . . So be it."
Atchmianov, too, soon took leave of the party and followed Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and
looked over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no
lights.
"Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!" he called.
A moment passed, he called again.
"Who's there?" he heard Olga's voice.
"Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?"
"No, she has not come in yet."
"Strange . . . very strange," thought Atchmianov, feeling very
uneasy. "She went home. . . ."
He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced
in at the windows of Sheshkovsky's. Laevsky was sitting at the table
without his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.
"Strange, strange," muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky's
hysterics, he felt ashamed. "If she is not at home, where is she?"
He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's lodgings again, and looked at the
dark windows.
"It's a cheat, a cheat . . ." he thought, remembering that, meeting
him at midday at Marya Konstantinovna's, she had promised to go in
a boat with him that evening.
The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and there
was a policeman sitting asleep on a little bench at the gate.
Everything was clear to Atchmianov when he looked at the windows
and the policeman. He made up his mind to go home, and set off in
that direction, but somehow found himself near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's
lodgings again. He sat down on the bench near the gate and took off
his hat, feeling that his head was burning with jealousy and
resentment.
The clock in the town church only struck twice in the twenty-four
hours--at midday and midnight. Soon after it struck midnight he
heard hurried footsteps.
"To-morrow evening, then, again at Muridov's," Atchmianov heard,
and he recognised Kirilin's voice. "At eight o'clock; good-bye!"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna made her appearance near the garden. Without
noticing that Atchmianov was sitting on the bench, she passed beside
him like a shadow, opened the gate, and leaving it open, went into
the house. In her own room she lighted the candle and quickly
undressed, but instead of getting into bed, she sank on her knees
before a chair, flung her arms round it, and rested her head on it.
It was past two when Laevsky came home.
XV
Having made up his mind to lie, not all at once but piecemeal,
Laevsky went soon after one o'clock next day to Samoylenko to ask
for the money that he might be sure to get off on Saturday. After
his hysterical attack, which had added an acute feeling of shame
to his depressed state of mind, it was unthinkable to remain in the
town. If Samoylenko should insist on his conditions, he thought it
would be possible to agree to them and take the money, and next
day, just as he was starting, to say that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna
refused to go. He would be able to persuade her that evening that
the whole arrangement would be for her benefit. If Samoylenko, who